10 ANIMAL SONGS OF THE 1970s

As a writer, I take my chances writing full-length novel manuscripts, essays and articles, hoping each one will find a home and gain a readership. Sometimes, I find no takers. This is an article that I pitched to an online site earlier this year, but it got rejected. Not current or catchy enough, I presume. I'd spent so many hours conducting research and documenting facts pursuant to the site's guidelines that it's hard to let the piece rest in peace. 

Let it be on my own blog. I found so many of the facts to be surprising and listened to these songs countless times, the catchiness of the article coming from the tunes themselves. Admittedly, I was relieved when a couple of these earworms finally exited my brain. Click  on the song links at your own risk!

The ’70s had plenty of animal references in pop culture. Musical acts included the Eagles, Cat Stevens, Three Dog Night and the TV act, The Partridge Family. The box office featured a titular mutt, Benji, and that great white shark in Jaws. Garfield debuted as a syndicated comic strip. The pet rock had legs as a fad. Songs like “Crocodile Rock,” “Fox on the Run” and “Barracuda” mentioned animals but weren’t about them. Other songs, however, included more literal references to beasts in the wild, domesticated companions and even human-created incarnations of the real thing. These songs are truly about the animals.

                        

10        “Shannon” by Henry Gross

 

Let’s get the dead dog song out of the way first. In 1975, Henry Gross was touring with The Beach Boys and, over lunch one day with guitarist Carl Wilson, Gross mentioned his Irish Setter named Shannon. Wilson shared that he too had a setter named Shannon that had recently died after getting hit by a car. As written by Gross, a mother grieves for a dog that seems to have been lost at sea. Gross amps up the sadness and mystery by noting the father’s absence. While the mother is distraught, Gross offers a consoling image: “Maybe she’ll find an island with a shaded tree, Just like the one in our backyard.”

 

The following year, “Shannon” became Gross’s only top ten hit. It’s a pretty ballad that features Gross singing falsetto and dreamy backing vocals reminiscent of The Beach Boys, creating a soothing eulogy for the family pet. 

 

9          “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s

This song made a big splash for the B-52’s, the lead single from their self-titled debut album in 1979. It was the perfect introduction, as fun and kooky as anything they released, featuring Fred Schneider’s spoken delivery, groovy hooks by Ricky Wilson on electric guitar, and heavy percussive beats by Keith Strickland, all of it punctuated with animalistic wails from Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. Fred and Ricky wrote the song after Fred took inspiration from the Atlanta franchise of 2001 Club, a chain of discos popping up across the U.S. in the ’70s. As Schneider tells it, the club projected a slide show that included “puppies, babies and lobsters on a grill” while the music played. The tune’s star attraction is the rock lobster but includes shout-outs to other real and imagined marine animals, from a stingray and jellyfish to a sea robin and bikini whale, during the sprawling, seven-minute album cut, pared down to by two minutes for the single.

 

In addition to creative, nonsensical “fish noises,” Cindy Wilson added screams that Schneider called “the Yoko Ono part.” When John Lennon heard the song, he took it as a sign the world was ready for Yoko’s guttural cries, prompting the couple to hit the studio to record Double Fantasy after a five-year musical hiatus. Yoko joined the band for “Rock Lobster” at the New York City show during their 25^th anniversary tour. 

 

8          “Disco Duck (Part I)” by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots

In 1976, Rick Dees was a disc jockey at radio station WMPS in Memphis. Capitalizing on the disco craze, he wrote and recorded “Disco Duck” about a feverish dancer who flaps his arms and transforms to a duck. The song may remind listeners of the chicken dance, but Dees also gives a nod to Jackie Lee’s soulful “The Duck” which hit #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. “Disco Duck” captures some of the lingo of the ’70s with the lyrics “Get down mama” and “Dyn-O-Mite” which Jimmie “J.J.” Walker popularized on the sitcom Good Times. 

 

As the song took off nationally, WMPS wouldn’t play the song, considering it a conflict of interest. When Dees mentioned the song on air, he was fired. The next week, the song hit number one on Billboard. 

 

“Disco Duck” plays in the movie Saturday Night Fever but was not included on the soundtrack because, as Dees tells it, his agent didn’t want the soundtrack to take away sales from Dees’s own album, The Original Disco Duck. Dees tried unsuccessfully to capitalize on his “Duck” luck, recording “Dis-Gorilla,” which stuck to the same formula. 

 

7          “Snowbird” by Anne Murray

Anne Murray was twenty-five when “Snowbird” became her breakthrough single, reaching #8 on the BillboardHot 100 chart in 1970. The song was written by Canadian Gene MacLellan whom Murray met in the late ’60s on CBC’s Nova Scotia-based music telecast, Singalong Jubilee. The lyrics flutter between hope (“flowers that will bloom again in spring”) and sorrow (“the one I love forever is untrue”). 

 

“Snowbird” was the first single by a female Canadian solo artist to be certified gold in the U.S., selling more than a million copies. The song earned Murray a 1970 Grammy nomination for best female contemporary vocal performance. An instrumental version won Chet Atkins a Grammy in 1972.

 

Murray guested on a 2013 episode of “Family Guy,” welcoming Brian and Stewie into her home with matters devolving to Stewie tying her up and holding her at gunpoint, commanding her to sing the tune while gagged. 

 

6          “Be” by Neil Diamond

It’s hard to explain the phenomenon that helped this song come to be. In 1970, Macmillan published the novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach to little fanfare. As word of mouth grew, the book became the bestselling title of both 1972 and 1973. The story is about a seagull who eschews the obsessive food scavenging of his colony, opting to spend his days in flight, striving to go higher and faster. Due to his differences, Jonathan is banished from the colony. The meaning of the story leans into New Age thinking that gained momentum in the ’70s.

 

In the fall of 1973, Paramount released a live-action movie based on the book, the gulls voiced by actors including Juliet Mills, Hal Holbrook and Dorothy McGuire. The movie was a flop but the soundtrack, composed by Neil Diamond, hit #2 on the Billboard album chart and “Be” was released as a single, reaching #34. The music is a sweeping orchestral arrangement and the lyrics are vague enough to be about a bird, a person striving to reach one’s potential or something more metaphysically muddled (“Lost on a painted sky, Where the clouds are hung for the poet’s eye, You may find him, If you may find him.”).

 

5          “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” by Lobo

In the spring of 1971, this infectious ditty about an American road trip with a canine travel companion hit pop radio, eventually peaking at #5. Often mistaken for a band, Lobo, fittingly a Spanish word for wolf, was singer/songwriter Roland Kent LaVoie. In high school in Winter Haven, Florida, LaVoie had played gigs with Gram Parsons and Jim Stafford. The eponymous pooch was Lobo’s own dog commanded attention while LaVoie wrote the song.

 

The song was produced by Phil Gernhard who’d made a name for himself producing The Royal Guardsmen’s 1967 smash, “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron.” In addition to a string of subsequent hits spanning the ’70s, Lobo also co-produced, with Gernhard, hits for Stafford, including the creepy critter-themed “Spiders & Snakes.”

 

4          “Rubber Duckie” by Ernie

On February 25, 1970, during the first season of PBS’s Sesame Street, Ernie took a bath. Rather than having Bert join him, Ernie shared the moment with “a very special friend,” his rubber duckie. The song was written by the show’s first head writer, Jeff Moss, who won fourteen Emmys for his work and received an Academy Award nomination for Original Song Score in 1984 for The Muppets Take Manhattan. (The Oscar went to Prince’s Purple Rain.) Voiced and sung by Jim Henson and making heavy use of a squeak toy (and Ernie’s distinctive laugh), the tune became a mainstream novelty hit, reaching #16 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the biggest Muppet single ever. (Kermit’s “Rainbow Connection” hit #25 in 1979. A Carpenters cover of the Sesame Street song “Sing” was a Top Three smash in 1973.

 

Little Richard performed “Rubber Duckie” on the show in 1994. Other Sesame Street songs featuring the bath toy included the reggae-infused “Do De Rubber Duck” and “Put Down the Duckie.”

 

3          “Wildfire” by Michael (Martin) Murphey

Murphey’s early success in music came as a songwriter with songs recorded by Bobbie Gentry and The Monkees. While co-writing with Larry Cansler all songs for the 1972 double album, The Ballad of Calico, by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Murphey dreamed the concept of a song he’d call “Wildfire.” The dream recalled a story from boyhood Murphey’s grandfather told him about a ghost horse that cowboys could never catch. In the song, Wildfire escapes its stall in a Nebraska blizzard, leading to the death of the woman who sets out to find him. 

 

The song opens and closes with a piano arrangement based on Russian classical composer Alexander Scriabin’s “Preludes Op. 11 No. 15 in D-Flat.” Nitty Gritty Dirt Band members Jeff Hanna and Jimmy Ibbotson contributed backing vocals. Released in 1975, the single reached # 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and went platinum with sales exceeding two million copies.    

 

2          “Muskrat Love” by Captain & Tennille

In 1972, a Texas singer named Willis Alan Ramsey released his self-titled debut album. To date, it is his only release but it maintains cult status, its songs having been recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Waylon Jennings and Shawn Colvin. One track, “Muskrat Candlelight,” caught the attention of the band America whose first hit was, incidentally, the equine-referenced “A Horse with No Name.” They changed the title to “Muskrat Love.” The song reached #67 on the Billboard Hot 100, a temporary dip in their career.

 

Toni Tenille and Daryl Dragon, known professionally as Captain & Tennille, heard America’s version and added the song to their nightclub act. Needing a final track for their Song of Joy album, they recorded “Muskrat Love.” A&M Records hadn’t planned to release it as a single but a Madison, Wisconsin radio station received overwhelmingly favorable listener feedback when it began playing the album track. It became a #4 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 and topped the Adult Contemporary chart for four weeks. The song continues to draw a love-it-or-hate-it response, Dragon’s synthesizer effects to simulate muskrats mating adding to the kitsch/cringe factor. In 1976, the duo performed the song at the White House for President Gerald Ford, First Lady Betty and Queen Elizabeth II. Some in attendance, including Julia Child, considered the choice risqué and in poor taste. Years later, the former president remembered it as “the song about the mice.” 

            

1          “Ben” by Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson might have earned a spot on the list with “Rockin’ Robin,” a remake of Bobby Day’s 1958 hit—both songs hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100—but his ode to a horror film rat in 1972 better befits the oddness that would characterize the rising superstar. Reaching its apex when Jackson was fourteen, “Ben” was Jackson’s first of thirteen #1s as a solo artist. The song was written for Donny Osmond, but Osmond couldn’t be reached while on tour. (Conversely, The Osmonds’ #1 smash, “One Bad Apple” had been written with Jackson in mind.)

 

The film Ben was made by Bing Crosby Productions, a company established by the Oscar-winning crooner, best known today for his rendition of “White Christmas.” The company also produced movies including the Crosby-Frank Sinatra-Grace Kelly musical, High Society, and TV shows such as Hogan’s Heroes.

 

The ballad “Ben” was written by five-time Oscar nominee Don Black (winner for 1967 song, “Born Free”) and ten-time Oscar nominee Walter Scharf. “Ben” was a contender for Best Song, losing to “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure. It settled for a Golden Globe.  

 

JINGLE BELL BALK

Call me crazy, but there’s something jarring about walking into a drugstore to drop off a prescription for antidepressants and hearing Christmas ditties piped through the speaker system.

 

I’m not The Grinch, I swear. I just seem like that this time of year. 

 

It’s nothing pervasive. I go about my days as I do during all the other calendar months. A routine keeps my mood and mind steady. 

 

Visually, I can take all the lights and decorations we slap on eaves, tape to window frames and wear as necklaces. With night creeping in so early each afternoon and hanging around like that clueless last guest at the party each morning, the strings of white lights and colored bulbs are most welcome. I can smile or good-naturedly cringe as people pass by, winter coats unzipped in balmy Vancouver, flashing their ugly Christmas sweaters. (The ugly is intentional, right?) Lawns filled with blown-up Santas allow the decorating-challenged to make a BIG statement and I’m inexplicably amused each morning when I see them deflated, looking more like melted Frosty than jolly Saint Nick.

 

Any seasonal dissociation doesn’t come from my heart; it’s triggered by my ears. Those Christmas songs, everywhere. 

 

Far from making spirits bright, the drugstore onslaught came off as mean-spirited. Neil Diamond, who is Jewish and presumably celebrated Hannukah, with the requisite “Happy” slapped in front of the holiday, sang a festive love-in imploring that “Children all get happy on Christmas Day.” The dude has released six Christmas albums. Ka-ching! Of course, he’s happy. Neil sang on, commanding that we “Sing a song of love” because “Love is all we need…on Christmas Day.” 

 

All I really needed was to get my prescription filled. It’s possible I may have been particularly cranky—er, grinchy—since the paper in my hand had more on it than usual. For the past four years, I’ve only taken one medication, but after last week’s appointment with my psychiatrist, I walked away with four making the list. Presumably, the new cocktail won’t make get “get happy.” I just need to get by. 

 

I tried to tune out Noël Neil. I’d get my anti-depressants and anxiety pills, grab some toilet paper if it’s on sale (no emergency, thank goodness) and head home.

 

Alas, no pills. The pharmacy is busy this time of year. (So it’s not just me!) I’d have to come back tomorrow. Oh, goody.

 

I made my way for the exit and then remembered I needed to pick up something else. I didn’t want to ask for help so I scanned shelves while the Eagles sang “Please Come Home for Christmas.” I was thankful for Don Henley singing the blues: “My baby’s gone, I have no friends.” Dark. I could relax. A range of emotions are okay this time of year. I navigated my way, scanning shelves full of antacids, powders professing to relieve constipation and pills that were supposed to help with chronic pain. Not what I needed, but knowing this didn’t propel me to sing “Joy to the World,” not even the non-holiday Three Dog Night version.

 

But even working through the blues, Henley opted to end the song on a cheery note, conjuring up a reunion with his “baby” when “There’ll be no more sorrow, no grief and pain and I’ll be happy, Christmas once again.” All righty then. Better than Metamucil.

 

Maybe more syrup is all I need.

By now, you’ve probably misjudged me, a bah-humbugging Scrooge if not the Whoville-hating Grinch. While I don’t go all Buddy the Elf at this time of year, I did have fun decorating a tree in a sad little park. I don’t have a tree since turfing all my ornaments in early 2020, anticipating a cross-country move that never happened, but I’m good with plopping my stuffie of Rudolph on a side table, a nice reminder of the 1964 TV production which just so happens to be my favorite show in the whole wide world which I’ve blogged about not once but twice. 

 

Decorating done!

For me, this season is about managing expectations. I’m bipolar and getting too high or too low can be problematic. I don’t like song after festive song telling me to be merry-happy-joyous-cheery because this is without out a doubt The Best Time of Year. I’m all too aware that many people struggle this month, slogging through a rough patch that can’t be conveniently brushed aside by sucking on a candy cane, eating shortbread and drinking eggnog, spiked or otherwise. 

 

I do like a number of Christmas songs, notably Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas,” Stevie Wonder’s “What Christmas Means to Me” and The Carpenters’ version of “Merry Christmas, Darling.” I’ll stop and smile the first time I hear “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” each December. Even that omnipresent Mariah Carey tune sounds fresh during its first three plays of the season. What I don’t like is being assaulted with the sounds of Christmas when I walk into a store, café or restaurant. If I’m not happy happy in that very moment, I feel like something’s wrong with me. Rocks in my stocking. Blitzen ougtta bite me in the butt. Why can’t I snap into that Christmas spirit on command?

 

A Muppet fave, festive
in his candy cane apron.

Is it weird that I don’t feel like humming umpteen rounds “fa la la la la” while trying to shop discreetly for a personal care remedy? A ghastly thought prompted me to stop lingering. I worried the store would play Paul McCartney’s “Simply Have a Wonderful Christmastime” which sounds like it was written by a second grader or, worse, The Muppets’ version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” which I always feel compelled to listen to all the way through, Miss Piggy predictably singing of five golden rings, the Swedish Chef unjustly AWOL or, worst of all, any rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy.” (Et tu, David Bowie?!)

 

Driven by my unmedicated anxiety, I returned to the pharmacy counter, begging to be pointed in the right direction. Aisle 7, between toothpaste and deodorant, top shelf. A-ha! My exit pass. 

 

Seems I may have picked up athlete’s foot or some other itch-inducing infliction at the public pool. Let an $18 bottle of Funga Soap grant me relief. From burning toes if nothing else.

 

GETTING COZY IN A QUEER BOOKSHOP

I like quirk. It’s why I love the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle and why I’ve made it the primary setting for a gay romance novel I’m writing. 

 

Fremont has always been a bigger draw for me than the traditionally gay area of the city, Capitol Hill. While that district may have the gay bars and a larger proportion of gay pedestrians for people watching, the truth is I was done with gay bars by the close of the last century and you can spot queer folks anywhere you go in the Seattle. We really are everywhere. Fremont has a troll under a bridge, a neon Rapunzel peering from a tower at the foot of a drawbridge, huge dinosaur hedges, a rocket ship, a paint-splattered statue of Josef Stalin and, as I discovered just this morning, a piece of the Berlin Wall. It’s also the site of a Google campus and a Solstice Parade which last year featured a fire-breathing dragon, sun gods, a ladybug float and, as always, naked painted cyclists. (Look it up.)

 

Diverse Santas on a 
shopkeeper's roof.

Fremont does everything with a wink, but I like to believe it also ascribes to a higher consciousness. People who weaponize the word woke might risk an aneurysm walking 36^th Street, peeking in store windows and seeing signs that say, “Black Lives Matter,” “Chefs and Restaurants Against Sexual Harassment,” “A Queer + Trans-Owned Workers Coop!” and “We Invite All Humans, Races, Religions, Countries of Origin, Genders, Sexual Orientations into Our Community. Our Doors and Hearts Are Open.” My kind of place.

 

Even more so as of yesterday. Walking with Evan to brunch, I noticed a small white bungalow with bright purple, pink and orange signage on the front: Charlie’s Books and Gifts. When did that spring up? My eyes are always wide open in Fremont and this was an exciting newbie in the hood. I love a bookstore. An independent one is all the better. (I have no desire to give a dime to Amazon.) I stopped and took a pic. “Let’s go in after we eat,” I said. And then my heart skipped a beat. (Much better than suffering an aneurysm.) The stenciled lettering in the front window said: QUEER BOOKS.

 

What?!

 

Gay book boutiques are a rare find these days. When I moved to Los Angeles three decades ago, I’d often pop into A Different Light Bookstore, an LGBT business in West Hollywood. At one point, the store also had locations in The Castro in San Francisco and New York City’s Greenwich Village. By 2011, they were all gone. NYC’s Oscar Wilde Bookshop shuttered in 2009 while Washington, D.C.’s Lambda Rising closed in 2010. The gay bookstore in Vancouver, Little Sister’s, is a sad remnant of what it once was, now relying on sex toys and skimpy gay apparel to stay in business. To open a new bookstore now only seems like a possibility in some fairytale land at the end of a rainbow. Or in Fremont.

 

What started as a sparkly silver “magical disco book cart” that wheeled its way to Seattle markets and Pride events is now a walled haven for queer bibliophiles, going strong after six weeks. It’s a bright space, a swath of pink paint wrapped around the bottom third of the interior walls, the remainder a clean, crisp white. A butcher block topped cart at the entry showcases current queer and queer-friendly reads such as new books by Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand and The Old Gays. A children’s nook includes stuffed animals, plants on the windowsill and picture books like Big Wig, Perfectly Norman and Bodies are Cool. I browsed general fiction shelves and romance titles while Evan’s eyes were drawn to horror. (I keep telling myself opposites attract.) Near the checkout counter is a bright little banner that says, “YOU BELONG HERE”. Upstairs is a quiet area for reading and writing. What fun it will be to return and write a few scenes of my gay romance on site! 

 

As is the case for most bookstores these days, Charlie’s sells other merchandise, including canvas shopping bags, stickers, cards and t-shirts emblazoned with messages like “Protect Trans Folks” and “Read Banned Queer Books.” 

 

Books and other wares may be ordered online. I tested things out to determine shipping costs, a $20 book costing $6 to ship to Peoria, Illinois to arrive in five business days. It’s a way to back a queer-owned business rather than feeding the ever-ravenous Amazon. I have no ownership in Charlie’s, but sometimes it feels better to spend a little more when it goes to a better place.

 

While browsing, I overheard one of the owners, Charlie Hunts, identified on the store’s website as “a man of trans experience,” telling a queer author that readings and other events are planned for the new year. As part of its own social consciousness, the store is currently decorating a little Christmas tree, each ornament representing a patron’s donation to GenPride Center which seeks to provide housing and services for older LGBTQIA+ residents of Seattle and King County. It’s worth repeating: I love indie bookstores! 

 

I made off with a modest first purchase, First Time for Everything, a gay romance by first-time novelist, Henry Fry. Lots of firsts in that sentence. Here’s hoping Charlie’s lasts.

 

  

OOPS!…I DID IT AGAIN (CHRISTMAS EDITION)

Second year in a row. Does that make it a tradition? 

 

THE SETUP

There’s something about a guerrilla public tree decorating that gives me a festive lift this time of year. Last year, it was a solo effort. I worried my cheery idea might come with consequences. It wasn’t like I was going to chop down a pine tree in a public park and drag it home. No, I’d leave it be, roots intact, its perilous fate subject to other conditions, natural and otherwise. Still, I wondered if a police officer might approach, stand at the bottom of the ladder I’d “borrowed” from my condo building and await my descent (or just knock me off for his own holly jollies), then handcuff and haul me to the station, charged with public mischief, vandalism, theft and bad decorating. 

 

Was it worth the risk? I’m generally a rule-biding citizen, apart from an entrenched habit of jaywalking and crossing dead intersections against the light as other Vancouverites stand at the curb and stare in horror at such blatant disobedience. Vancouver puts my asterisked rule-biding inclinations to shame. I if I lived in New York City, I’d have a drawerful of civic commendations.

 

After some fretting, I took the risk and evaded arrest. This is Canada so maybe I’m on the Most Wanted list. Me and that otter who raided koi from the nearby Chinese gardens.

 

This year, I had accomplices, aiders and abetters. I’d lured both of them into bad decorating, a burgeoning gang, The Red Garlands. 

 

THE SETTING

First, however, some background about the setting. After some research, I feel it’s important to share.

 

I walk by a neglected pocket park every day, only a block from home. It’s a stopping point for the unhoused to sit and to maybe smoke something legal (cigarettes, pot) or otherwise (in a bubble pipe). I don’t judge. How does anyone cope with life on the streets? Sometimes there are a couple of tents set up. I imagine that, even though it’s right by the railroad tracks and trains run throughout the night (I know this firsthand!), it’s a less chaotic spot to try to sleep than so many other purported options. 

 

Officially, the park is known as Wendy Poole Park, described in a single sentence on Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation website: 

Wendy Poole Park is a tiny park at the foot of Main Street, with a curving pathway, trees, and outlook to Burrard Inlet.

I could contact the board, give them an update. Trees is an overstatement. The dead skeleton of a tree with only two remaining branches—a stick tree—was removed at some point over the past year. It’s now down to one, a sad-looking pine, twelve feet tall, dwarfed by the tall building immediately to the west and the concrete overpass to the east. With its lower limbs removed, it’s a lollipop of a tree, mostly stick, not much pop, and definitely nothing that would conjure some fanciful image for lolli. 

 

Honestly, I don’t think the Parks Board cares. Its attention to this tiny space may have ended in late 2000 with the naming of park after First Nations and Downtown Eastside (DTES) groups and individuals lobbied to have it dedicated to Wendy Poole, a member of the Tsay Keh Dene First Nation. In January 1989, she was a twenty-year-old woman, pregnant with her second child. She’d moved from Northern British Columbia to Vancouver six months prior, looking for something more, finding her way, starting out by working in fast food. On January 26^th of that year, she was stabbed to death in her second-floor co-op, a murder that remains unsolved. She is one of many murdered and missing women remembered in Vancouver every Valentine’s Day during the Women’s Memorial March.

 

Had I not committed to giving the tree in the park a little seasonal spark, I would never have known the story behind its naming. There’s a plaque and a lovely rock with words etched in it. Like most of us in the community, I passed these markers by, unread. I’d seen the name. It’s really big on the rock. I’d foolishly assumed the place was named for a moneyed, prominent Vancouverite. Elsewhere in the downtown area is Jack Poole Plaza, named for a highly successful real estate developer who’d led the official campaign to bring the Winter Olympics to Vancouver and Whistler in 2010. I mistakenly assumed Wendy must have been his wife. Jack and Wendy’s lives were so starkly different.

 

There’s the history. Wendy would have turned forty-five this year. Let sharing be part of honoring and remembering her. (Sadly, I can find no photo.)

 

THE ADMISSION

Last week, with only days until my boyfriend Evan’s next trip up from Seattle, I floated the idea of him being my partner in Christmas mischief. He didn’t hesitate. That’s my guy. Man of many talents. New skill for that LinkedIn account: elf.

 

Upon his arrival, we scanned the long aisle of decorations at a downtown dollar store and I returned the next day to buy all the tree trimmings. (Nothing was a dollar, of course. It’s self-apparent that The Few Dollars Store doesn’t have quite the right ring to it. Still, the glittery haul was a bargain.)

 

Rain got in the way of decorating. Heavy rain. Bah, humbug, Mother Nature! Heavy snow would have been perfect. Tomorrow then. Or the tomorrow after that. Or not. (I didn’t want the decorations to get swooshed off the tree in the first hour. I also didn’t want to break my leg, slipping on an upper rung on the ladder!)

 

On the morning Evan was to return to Seattle, the weather cleared. Not sunny but anything not involving rain is a gift this time of year. I grabbed the bag of decorations and we headed to my building’s parking garage to grab one of the ladders. (It’s a building of lofts. These ladders are for common use…or at least that’s been my assumption. Why ask? 

 

Hi, officer. Just talking the ladder for a walk. No dog so you gotta make do, right?

 

Last year’s graffiti had been painted over, now replaced by new tagging. Bigger! Bolder! Only one tent was pitched as we arrived to decorate the sad little pine tree. A gentleman sat at the lone picnic table, smoking a cigarette, not paying any attention to two guys with a ladder.

 

I decided to put the star on first. It would be the trickiest part. It also required standing on the highest rung. Let me get that over with before any dormant fear of heights awakened within and before I got too casual from all the ups and downs, less alert, more accident-prone. The star wouldn’t stay. Evan offered directions from ground control, but I got flustered. Your move, Evan. 

 

He’d only signed on to be a helper elf. Ladder climbing wasn’t in the job description. But my merriness was in a precarious state. Evan’s all too aware of how quickly I can shut down when I decide I can’t do something. He climbed, he fiddled and fidgeted, he willed that star to stay. The ornament was heavier than the pine tufts it topped so there was a sag to its stance. Quirky. Let’s call it whimsical. I don’t care what Martha Stewart would say.

 

We switched roles again, with me navigating the ladder and Evan unpacking ornaments. As we decorated, I caught the man at the picnic table glancing over a couple of times. At first, I wondered if we were an unwelcome presence. Maybe he’d come here for some solitude only to be disturbed by a couple of wannabe elves. His face was hard to read. Then he called: “Need some help? I could hold the ladder.” 

 

And so he did. 

 

Last year’s project was a solo effort but, with three of us, it went faster and felt merrier. I noticed a few people smiling as they passed and one person shouted, “Dr. Seuss!” probably in a nod to the sagging star atop the tree. She followed up with a robust “Merry Christmas!” Was she always this excited or did we lift her spirits?

 

And yet he cropped just so to
keep the bags under my eyes!

My new ladder assistant held it in place each time we rotated it. He nodded off ever so briefly, hand still on it, committed, doing his best. He added an ornament to one of the lower branches.

 

We exchanged names. I took his picture, but he didn’t have a phone to forward it. He took ours, too. I could tell he was too close to get us and the tree. I knew the shot would be one of those flawed pics from the days of going to Fotomat. All the better. 

 

He said he was from the BC Interior and had come to Vancouver’s sketchy Downtown East Side to get his son but, in so doing, he’d relapsed. Addiction is relentlessly opportunistic.

 

Yes, Martha. That's the tree.

All done, Evan and I walked the ladder home and I turned my head back to see my ladder assistant walking slowly down the street in a different direction, his face blank again. It was a novel start to the day for each of us and a rare chance for strangers living different realities to connect, however briefly. 

 

This “tradition” is evolving.

 

WHAT WOULD CARLY SAY?

In January 1973, Carly Simon hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “You’re So Vain.” It’s an iconic song with lyrics I feel compelled to listen to every time YouTube decides I need to hear it again, a frequent occurrence since the music provider has surmised I’m happily stuck in the ’70s. 

 

As a young kid growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, I loved the fact the song had a Canadian shout-out: You flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun. Of course, there was so much more, with a guy wearing an apricot scarf, his hat strategically dipped below one eye and references to a life of wealth, including yachting and horse racing. The man in the song is clearly a playboy who dashed Carly’s dreams—clouds in my coffee—and had no remorse, cozying up to some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend.   

 

The cad!

 

Still, of all the lyrics, the line that’s appalled and amused me the most is in the chorus:

You’re so vain,

You probably think this song is about you.

Dude thinks he’s all that. It’s not a slam but an honor. “Got me a song. Carly can’t shake me. (Of course she can’t!)” Okay, that last aside wouldn’t even be in parentheses, would it?

 

Ever since the song’s release, people have speculated over the subject of the song. Figment of Carly’s imagination? Nah. Where’s the fun in that? 

 

One guy or an amalgamation of the guys she met amongst the wealthy and in celebrity circles? (Her father, Richard, was the co-founder of American big five publisher Simon & Schuster.) 

 

Warren Beatty seems to come up the most. Sometimes Mick Jagger gets a nod, which seemingly adds an extra jolt to the song’s renown since Carly got him to sing backing vocals. Was he in on the joke or simply the subject of it? Lots of other names have been suggested and, over the years, it’s gotten silly, with Carly whispering the subject’s name to the highest bidder at a charity auction and offering letter clues: A and E, then R. Warren and Mick still a possibility.

 

No one cares anymore. 

 

WHAT?!

Half a century has passed. People are too consumed with whom Taylor’s dating, what the deal is with Jada and Will and perhaps who Cow and Donut are on The Masked Singer. (I had to look up that last tidbit. Have never watched an episode. Ten seasons?! What the hell is that all about anyway?) 

 

If we applied 1973 standards to 2023, most of us would warrant a VAIN label. Who in the ’70s took their Polaroid Instant Camera and turned the lens on themselves rather than on Grams blowing out candles on her cake? Who photographed the Mediterranean hummus bowl they just made? (Not even a meal then. Why would anyone want to document yet another steak dinner with baked potato and carrot-pea vegetable medley?) Would anyone take a photo of a new haircut, drop it off at Fotomat and then order three dozen copies to mail off to friends, family and ABSOLUTE STRANGERS hoping a significant portion would reply three weeks later with a letter that says, “I like your haircut,” which, by then, could use a little trim? Ridiculous!

 

We take our own photos all the time now, maybe adding a new pose after this post: closeup, hat strategically dipped below one eye, maybe even accessorized with an apricot scarf. Thanks, Carly!

 

I remember all the slideshows from family vacations while I was growing up, a finger blocking half of Niagara Falls, a zoo lion with only half its head in frame, every single shot of nine-year-old me flashing my teeth in a geeky, ill-conceived attempt at a smile. What kid doesn’t know how to smile perfectly now? Five-year-olds have already figured out their better side and at least four on-command poses.

 

It’s so easy now, isn’t it? Get into a heated conversation with Uncle John at Thanksgiving dinner, interrupted briefly—“Smile for the Facebook post”—before flinging words like racist, woke, Boomer and socialist along with forkfuls of mashed potatoes at one another. 

 

In my teens, I’d disappear when someone pulled out a camera. There was always time since it was in a fancy camera bag and there were lenses to be removed and carefully placed so they wouldn’t be lost before the strap went around the designated photographer’s neck. There were inevitably a few practice rounds of saying cheese since the camera hadn’t been wound and then the flash didn’t go off and then cousin Timmy’s hands had to be restrained so he’d stop giving cousin Lucy bunny ears. 

 

(Remember that awful phase when everyone was digitally adding bunny ears? Yeesh.)

 

Now someone says, “Let’s get a selfie” and everyone crowds in with their well-rehearsed half-laughs and fish lip poses. Four pics, all the same, never red eye, never someone saying, “I wasn’t ready.”

 

We’re always ready.

 

It’s too much but it is what is. 

 

Yep. Guilty. I tell myself it's different
because I "blendie." I try to find a
matching background. Maybe you
can't even see me.

I selfie, too. (My Word doc didn’t even question my use of selfie as a verb.) I’ll admit to using my phone camera’s selfie mode for checking my hair and ensuring I don’t have a flax seed nestled between my teeth. It’s so much clearer than the image in a passing window. Purses must be a tad lighter without requiring a hand mirror. 

 

Weekend blendie. Lines on face
unintentionally adding to the
blend effect. Ack!

But I’m deeper in the selfie sphere than I’d like to admit. Yes, I adjust the zoom lens, I do a little circle with the phone in hand checking for the best light, I smile, I click. Again. A third time, in profile, if I dare. (I hate my profile shots.) I don’t look right away and consider retakes. Enough already! I’ll look later. At home or on an elevator to look busy and to avoid an inane conversation about Vancouver’s rain. (Is there anything left to say?) 

 

Another blendie. Sunglasses
are so forgiving!

It gets worse, of course. I selfie and I post. On Facebook. On Instagram.  On Twitter (even though it feels like it’s in hospice care). On Blue Sky Social (even if it still doesn’t feel like a thing).

 

Worse still. I check in more during the day. Did anyone other than my mother and my aunt like the post? Oh, no! My mother “liked” the painted fire hydrant but not my selfie sipping my umpteenth oat latte. Is she signaling that I need to ease up on the selfies? Is she anti-oat? Is she saying I’m having a bad hair day? 

 

When did I start relying on a “like” count to decide whether I should go the rest of the day with a baseball cap?  

 

When did I start relying on a “like” count for anything?

 

Please “like” me. Retweet? [Why would anyone do that?] Like me! Comment?

 

It goes on and on...

It sounds so sad when I write it out, when I articulate these trivial brain tics. Vanity is laced with insecurity instead of overconfidence these days. 

 

Maybe the next selfie will get more likes. Maybe if I wear green. Maybe if I add a croissant. Would they be liking the pastry and not the person? Some questions must not be asked. Is it weird to stop a dog walker and ask to get a shot with their Yorkie? Sunshine would brighten the shot. Damn Vancouver rain!

 

It doesn’t stop. Neither the rain nor the selfies. 

 

I’m thinking “You’re So Vain” is due for a 2023 cover, maybe by Carly herself. She may be the only one to knock some sense in all of us.