In putting the finishing touches on one of my two upcoming books, I am trying to obtain permission to use copyrighted material: excerpts from other books and lyrics from two songs. I've had luck with the books; one turned out to be in the public domain, so no permission was necessary. With the other book, I contacted the publisher, who responded and sent me a permission form. But the song lyrics? That's proving to be a little more difficult. Not with requesting permission, but in trying to find out exactly who holds the copyright. On a very old song, it may have changed hands over the years, and in trying to look up the ownership, all kinds of names and LLCs are listed. Heck, I don't even know what an LLC is. I wish I had Lilly's help on this one. She could knock off these two permission requests without missing a beat on her regular job. If it proves too difficult, I could just fudge it, use only the song titles and "write my way" around the lyrics, but it would lessen the effect of the story.
So screw it, I'll keep trying.
Last night's movie was "Fright"(1956), about a woman under hypnosis who believes she's a reincarnated princess. Nancy Malone co-stars as "Ann Summers", who falls into a trance as a spectator at a crime scene when psychiatrist Eric Fleming, assisting the police on a suicide call, uses "suggestion" to keep a murderer from jumping off a bridge. Because he is using a loudspeaker to talk, the crowd hears his voice, and Malone is "put under", just as Gilligan was when the Professor hypnotised Mary Ann and Gilligan was listening through the window.
Then Mary Ann became Ginger, and Ginger had to pretend she was Mary Ann so Mary Ann wouldn't "see herself" and freak out.
Have you ever been hypnotised? I have. I used to think it had happened to me once or twice, maybe five times. I wasn't sure. Now, I have no idea how many times I've been hypnotised, because it is apparently fairly easy to hypnotise me, if you know the secrets. Of course, you also have to be trained in hypnosis. And, it helps to slip me a Rohypnol. Not that I'll be accepting drinks from anyone anytime soon, but yeah, I've been "put under" many, many times. How about you?
Let's reverse that. Have you ever put anyone under hypnosis? Have you hypnotised anyone? If so, how did you do it? Did you use a mirror? Or maybe a small flashlight attached to your keychain? Was it a high-powered halogen light? I remember one time when the evil David Friedman wanted to show me a small but powerful halogen flashlight he'd been given. It wouldn't have fit on a keychain, but you get the idea. The shrink in last night's movie used a small flashlight in his technique. It looked like a halogen; who knew they had those in 1956?
Okay, so you have hypnotized people before. But have you ever tried to do it and the halogen light didn't work? Or it only worked halfway? Maybe your subject's eyes were still open, or maybe he or she was immobilized but still talking, or protesting, asking "what did you put in my drink?" Or maybe they were saying "I can't move but I can hear everything you are saying". Did that ever happen to you when you were hypnotizing people? And have you ever had to resort to the neck buzzer, or something even stronger like a stun gun?
You have? You've used the neck buzzer? Okay, good. So you know what one is. For those who don't, it's a buzzer, like a doorbell-sized thing but flatter, that a hypnotist holds in his palm and zaps you on the neck with when you aren't expecting it. He or she does this when they want to knock you out and you aren't cooperating. It you are only halfway knocked-out, from the Rohypnol they have slipped you, and the mirror-and-flashlight technique that almost-but-didn't-quite work, you will go down for the count like a good little subject when the hypnotist sneaks the neck buzzer on you.
That almost always works. But if it doesn't, then you're in for the stun gun, which is no fun. Boy, I can tell you about that one.
Now...I'm afraid I do have to ask you: have you ever used a stun gun on a person? Not to hypnotize them but to knock them the F out, when the hypnotism didn't work? You have? Wow. You are hard core.
Wait a sec. You say you haven't used a stun gun? Which is it? You have or you haven't? Now I'm gonna have to ask if you still beat your wife.
Okay, okay.....so you haven't used a stun gun on any of your hypnosis subjects. But you know about the neck buzzer, no?
Then I say: you are one heck of a hypnotist.
Me? Though I've been hypnotised many times (how many I shudder to guess), I have never hypnotised anyone. I wouldn't know how.
Let's change course. Here is a term for you: "partying". When I first heard it, in high school, my instinct was that I didn't like it. I knew about parties, like birthday parties.....but when I first heard someone use that term as a verb I thought "what in the world is party-ing"? It didn't sound good, and things that did not sound good did not feel good to me. They gave me a bad feeling. Not that party-ing was a huge deal, but I knew, upon hearing it, that it was not clean-cut like a birthday party with cake and ice cream. Party-ing was something frivolous. I knew this in my psyche, even as a fifteen or sixteen year old, or however old I was when I first heard someone say it. The word sounded silly. Then there was the attached question: "Do you party?" Aside from making no sense in a grammatical context, it just sounded stupid. It sounded cheap, but also intended to lure one into a dark pink undercurrent if asked by girls and a stoned-out wasteland by guys.
"Do you party?" What the F kind of question is that?
Well anyhow, if you're not hypnotizing anyone at the moment, or stomping on anyone's head with your steel toed boots, we can.....what's that? You say you don't wear your steel toed boots anymore? No? Oh, that's right. You've gone vegan and you don't wear leather. Forgive me, I forgot about that. There's so much to remember these days, what with all the information coming in. Yeah, veganism is cool. I'm not vegan myself, but it's admirable not to eat animals or use animal products. But I mean, you could still wear your boots. The cow that provided the leather is already dead. You might as well honor him by wearing him.
Or not. I sure don't wanna get into any vegan political debates.
But what I was gonna say (and forget about the boots; wear 'em or don't wear 'em, it's your life) is that if you aren't hypnotizing anyone at the moment, maybe we could do something. Like what? Oh, I dunno. Maybe catch a movie?
Okay. I can see you're busy. I can come back another time. Hey - what do you do when you put a person under hypnosis anyway? Do you ask 'em questions, or get 'em to do silly stuff, like Pat Collins the Hip Hypnotist? Remember her? She had a stage show in which she'd take volunteers from the audience, put them under, then have them do silly stuff in front of all the people in the club. It was just for laughs, and it was voluntary. That's the important point.
Say, wait a minute. You don't put anyone under hypnosis without their permission, do you? You what?
You don't? It sounded like you said you do. I don't know why you would say that, or why you would put anyone under hypnosis without asking their permission, because that would be taking advantage, and we haven't got time right now to write a whole treatise on taking advantage of people. I won't ask you again what you just said, but it did sound like you answered "yes" to my question.
And I'm not gonna ask you again if you still beat your wife.
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