Feb. 15: Yellow
When I was 10, I had this idea for a movie about this kid who
suffered really bad hallucinations whenever he saw anything that was
yellow. Poor kid had to live in a house devoid of bananas, lemons, and
little Lego men. And he couldn't go outside during the day. Not with the
sun.
The name of this movie was to be Illusic Yellow. There is no such word as Illusic (Microsoft Word has underlined it in red both times it appears in this paragraph) but I didn't care. I decided it would be a portmanteau of illusion and sick. By the way, I think that is the first time I have ever used the word portmanteau in anything at all. Yay me!
I told only one other person about this idea - a kid in my class named Fernando Urego. I decided that Fernando would be perfect for the role of the kid who saw devils and monsters and teachers unions everytime he saw the old Vancouver Canucks home uniforms or everytime he looked in the toilet while going pee.
Fernando loved the idea and we spent one recess talking about things that could happen in the movie. Fernando came up with the idea of the kid going outside and seeing the sun and having a hallucination attack. I thought it would be swell if his mom came home wearing a yellow dress and the poor kid had a conniption. We thought the story should have a plot - like maybe there would be a neurologist who tried to figure out what was wrong with the kid's melon. We decided we'd talk more about it the next day but then Fernando discovered that one of the two girls in the class named Melanie liked him and he spent that recess trying to figure out if it was Hanna or Yates.
-
In theatre school, our instructor divided us into groups and assigned us each a colour. We were supposed to perform a tableau inspired by that colour and see if our fellow students could guess it.
We got red. We did a tableau of a fistfight. Paul played the devil, grinning in the background. Everyone knew it was red. Red is the colour of anger. It is also the colour of ketchup, which makes me very angry whenever anyone tries to put it near anything I am eating. (Ketchup is universally bad and it should be banned on any continent where I am.)
Another group got green and they did a tableau where a guy and girl were embracing while another guy stood nearby, glaring at them. Envy. Green with envy. We all knew it was green.
Poor Kathy and Debbie and Joanne. They got yellow.
What in the world can you do with yellow? Red is the colour of rage and green is envy and when you're feeling blue, you're sad and when you're Donnie and Marie Osmond, you're white. But yellow? Well I've heard it said that you're scared yellow but that's a little obscure. What in the world can you do with yellow?
The sun is yellow.
So Kathy decided to be the sun. She stood on a table and she smiled and she held her hands up above her head, curving her arms to indicate she was a large bright round object up in the sky. Debbie was a sunbather. Joanne was a vampire, dying in the sunlight. No one knew what it was. Those girls failed to construct a tableau that properly conveyed the colour yellow.
As a result, today, none of those girls are professional actors, like Dirk Van Stralen (who, like most actors, does not vote Conservative.)
-
You know what's great? Yellow legal pads.
I love yellow legal pads. I like to buy 'em when I go out of town to do a writing excursion in a motel. The motel I usually use is Motel Belair in Rigaud, PQ.* I have not been there in a long time. The bed in the motel is hard and uncomfortable and the TV is small and there is a fridge where I can store Dr. Pepper and oranges and other things I eat while I am writing.
I write on the yellow legal pads, using my fountain pen. I do not bring my laptop because sometimes I am tempted to play Criminal Case or minesweeper instead of write.
I would not like the legal pad if it was not yellow. It has to be yellow.
-
There is much conjecture as to why the legal pads are yellow. These pads were created by a guy named Thomas Holley in Massachusettes near the end of the 19th century. He started making them out of paper scraps from the mill where he worked. Soon he got rich off selling the pads and he left the job. Some people think the pads are yellow because it's easier on the eyes than white. Other people think it's because the paper was such bad quality that it could be disguised by a quick dye job.
-
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
-
In junior high, Mr. Gibson got mad at me for writing with green ink on yellow paper. It actually seriously offended him and he screamed at me in front of the class. He said he wanted blue or black ink on white paper only. He called me "Mellow Yellow" for a short while after that.
-
Isn't there a song called Yellow? I think the video is of a guy standing on a beach on a rainy day. Let me google it. Ah yes. It is Coldplay. It was filmed on a beach in England, which is why it was raining. It always rains in England. Here is a picture:
-
Here is something I know about yellow: It is the first colour that the eye registers. This is why school buses are yellow.
-
Black and yellow are my favourite colours - which is why the blog version of this note has the colour scheme that it does. Somewhere along the way, I learned that black and yellow are the colours that contrast the most. This is one of the reasons why bumblebees are so freakin awesome.
-
There is a multi-vitamin that, as a side effect, makes your pee really yellow. I'm talking really really yellow. It's so yellow that you'd almost think your pee glows in the dark.
I discovered this reality when I was 13 and I started taking these multi-vitamins. I actually felt sorry for girls because they would never get to fully appreciate the glorious reality of the neon urination.
Please note that this bit is not followed by a jpeg.
You're welcome.
-
But my favourite thing that is yellow is the HAPPY FACE!!!
Look. A happy face.
I am now feeling much better than I was yesterday, which is why my Feb. 14 note was such a downer. (Ten years from now, when a publisher is trying to put together a collection of Shteevie's greatest hits, the Feb. 14 note will not make the cut. But this one might.)
I think I will close by reprinting the lyrics to Happy Face City, which is a song Jason and I wrote in high school. Warning: It has a bad word. This blog now has a PG rating.
I'm packing up all my bags
I'm moving down 2 Happy Face City
I've had enough of this world
treating me so shitty.
Across the parking lot by the rainbow
there's a unicorn next 2 a pot of gold
Swimming in the galaxy's biggest swimming pool
in a city where the streets are paved with gold.
2 many people have tried 2 damn me
2 many people throwing dirt on my grave
2 many people telling me there's nothing
and I don't have any hope in getting saved
I've made my decision, and I'm sticking 2 it
see y'all in 20 years or so
gonna die 2 the world and be alive in the city
that's Happy Face City, do y'allwanna go?
The devil's not allowed in Happy FaceCity
He gotta stay outside in the cold
He don't deserve any Girl Guide cookies
He ain't gonna mess with my soul.
-
And now, for no reason at all, I feel like listening to Prince sing Emancipation.
And I will do that.
Because I can.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
-
* When I tell people I am going to book myself into a cheap motel for three days so I can work on a writing project, they rarely believe me. Most of them assume I am going there to consort with prostitutes. This is not true and I am offended by this for many reasons. Besides, the muse only visits when I'm celibate.
The name of this movie was to be Illusic Yellow. There is no such word as Illusic (Microsoft Word has underlined it in red both times it appears in this paragraph) but I didn't care. I decided it would be a portmanteau of illusion and sick. By the way, I think that is the first time I have ever used the word portmanteau in anything at all. Yay me!
I told only one other person about this idea - a kid in my class named Fernando Urego. I decided that Fernando would be perfect for the role of the kid who saw devils and monsters and teachers unions everytime he saw the old Vancouver Canucks home uniforms or everytime he looked in the toilet while going pee.
Fernando loved the idea and we spent one recess talking about things that could happen in the movie. Fernando came up with the idea of the kid going outside and seeing the sun and having a hallucination attack. I thought it would be swell if his mom came home wearing a yellow dress and the poor kid had a conniption. We thought the story should have a plot - like maybe there would be a neurologist who tried to figure out what was wrong with the kid's melon. We decided we'd talk more about it the next day but then Fernando discovered that one of the two girls in the class named Melanie liked him and he spent that recess trying to figure out if it was Hanna or Yates.
-
In theatre school, our instructor divided us into groups and assigned us each a colour. We were supposed to perform a tableau inspired by that colour and see if our fellow students could guess it.
We got red. We did a tableau of a fistfight. Paul played the devil, grinning in the background. Everyone knew it was red. Red is the colour of anger. It is also the colour of ketchup, which makes me very angry whenever anyone tries to put it near anything I am eating. (Ketchup is universally bad and it should be banned on any continent where I am.)
Another group got green and they did a tableau where a guy and girl were embracing while another guy stood nearby, glaring at them. Envy. Green with envy. We all knew it was green.
Poor Kathy and Debbie and Joanne. They got yellow.
What in the world can you do with yellow? Red is the colour of rage and green is envy and when you're feeling blue, you're sad and when you're Donnie and Marie Osmond, you're white. But yellow? Well I've heard it said that you're scared yellow but that's a little obscure. What in the world can you do with yellow?
The sun is yellow.
So Kathy decided to be the sun. She stood on a table and she smiled and she held her hands up above her head, curving her arms to indicate she was a large bright round object up in the sky. Debbie was a sunbather. Joanne was a vampire, dying in the sunlight. No one knew what it was. Those girls failed to construct a tableau that properly conveyed the colour yellow.
As a result, today, none of those girls are professional actors, like Dirk Van Stralen (who, like most actors, does not vote Conservative.)
-
You know what's great? Yellow legal pads.
A picture of something that is great.
I love yellow legal pads. I like to buy 'em when I go out of town to do a writing excursion in a motel. The motel I usually use is Motel Belair in Rigaud, PQ.* I have not been there in a long time. The bed in the motel is hard and uncomfortable and the TV is small and there is a fridge where I can store Dr. Pepper and oranges and other things I eat while I am writing.
I write on the yellow legal pads, using my fountain pen. I do not bring my laptop because sometimes I am tempted to play Criminal Case or minesweeper instead of write.
I would not like the legal pad if it was not yellow. It has to be yellow.
-
There is much conjecture as to why the legal pads are yellow. These pads were created by a guy named Thomas Holley in Massachusettes near the end of the 19th century. He started making them out of paper scraps from the mill where he worked. Soon he got rich off selling the pads and he left the job. Some people think the pads are yellow because it's easier on the eyes than white. Other people think it's because the paper was such bad quality that it could be disguised by a quick dye job.
-
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
-
In junior high, Mr. Gibson got mad at me for writing with green ink on yellow paper. It actually seriously offended him and he screamed at me in front of the class. He said he wanted blue or black ink on white paper only. He called me "Mellow Yellow" for a short while after that.
-
Isn't there a song called Yellow? I think the video is of a guy standing on a beach on a rainy day. Let me google it. Ah yes. It is Coldplay. It was filmed on a beach in England, which is why it was raining. It always rains in England. Here is a picture:
-
Here is something I know about yellow: It is the first colour that the eye registers. This is why school buses are yellow.
-
Black and yellow are my favourite colours - which is why the blog version of this note has the colour scheme that it does. Somewhere along the way, I learned that black and yellow are the colours that contrast the most. This is one of the reasons why bumblebees are so freakin awesome.
-
There is a multi-vitamin that, as a side effect, makes your pee really yellow. I'm talking really really yellow. It's so yellow that you'd almost think your pee glows in the dark.
I discovered this reality when I was 13 and I started taking these multi-vitamins. I actually felt sorry for girls because they would never get to fully appreciate the glorious reality of the neon urination.
Please note that this bit is not followed by a jpeg.
You're welcome.
-
But my favourite thing that is yellow is the HAPPY FACE!!!
Look. A happy face.
I am now feeling much better than I was yesterday, which is why my Feb. 14 note was such a downer. (Ten years from now, when a publisher is trying to put together a collection of Shteevie's greatest hits, the Feb. 14 note will not make the cut. But this one might.)
I think I will close by reprinting the lyrics to Happy Face City, which is a song Jason and I wrote in high school. Warning: It has a bad word. This blog now has a PG rating.
I'm packing up all my bags
I'm moving down 2 Happy Face City
I've had enough of this world
treating me so shitty.
Across the parking lot by the rainbow
there's a unicorn next 2 a pot of gold
Swimming in the galaxy's biggest swimming pool
in a city where the streets are paved with gold.
2 many people have tried 2 damn me
2 many people throwing dirt on my grave
2 many people telling me there's nothing
and I don't have any hope in getting saved
I've made my decision, and I'm sticking 2 it
see y'all in 20 years or so
gonna die 2 the world and be alive in the city
that's Happy Face City, do y'allwanna go?
The devil's not allowed in Happy FaceCity
He gotta stay outside in the cold
He don't deserve any Girl Guide cookies
He ain't gonna mess with my soul.
-
And now, for no reason at all, I feel like listening to Prince sing Emancipation.
And I will do that.
Because I can.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
-
* When I tell people I am going to book myself into a cheap motel for three days so I can work on a writing project, they rarely believe me. Most of them assume I am going there to consort with prostitutes. This is not true and I am offended by this for many reasons. Besides, the muse only visits when I'm celibate.
Comments
Post a Comment