I’d heard the famous story how Tina Turner, back when she was Mrs. Turner, taught a shy young Mick Jagger how to dance, specifically showing him the moves to The Pony.

Only recently, I wondered if I’d recognize someone Ponying, except in the Post Parade at the track. I never would have predicted where I’d be when I’d finally spot it.

What is The Pony anyway?

Chubby Checker, more so than Fred Astaire, taught Baby Boomers how to dance, like The Twist.

In 1962, I must have been otherwise engaged when he taught us The Pony. Then, again, I was in second grade. Life was coming me fast.

If you can’t see the video of Chubby Checker and friends performing “Pony Time,” click here.

You heard the man. “Do like a pony now.” Got that? Naw. Me neither.

Ponies “do” a lot of things, including a head-tossing, hollowed-out trot when they’re in a snit.

So, I looked up another YouTube lesson video that broke down the moves into slo-mo steps. I won’t post the link here because I had to ice my knee after I tried it.

While chillin,’ and not in the “good way,” I fumed. The Pony looked so simple when I saw it a few days earlier. Like skipping in place. Like a dancing horse. Wait – I’d seen horses do that move. What was move called?

Click here if you can’t see the video or for more information about the horse.

Look familiar? Like from the Olympics? Like dressage? Like when one of the touring Lipizzaner troupes comes to town?

It’s a piaffe. Prancing in place. (Uh, yes, I do realize the video freezes on the levade instead.)

So, here’s a horse-lover’s tip for doing The Pony:

Bend your knees and get collected.

Imagine you’re a Lipizzaner. Or Steffen Peters and Ravel dancing to the freestyle.

Most people find enlightenment at a yoga retreat. I found The Pony.

A standard commercial fiction conference sent me to an unconventional writing program.

I usually attend writer’s programs targeted toward commercial genre fiction. We learn what stories are selling, how to “hook” readers, what body language cues characters use and how to pitch our stories to literary agents.

I won a prize at the Connecticut Romance Writer’s Association’s annual Connecticut Fiction Fest, a gift certificate for a retreat at the Kripalu Center for Fitness and Health. Instead of doing a yoga retreat,  I applied my prize to a writers program instead.

Author, psychotherapist and yogi Laraine Herring led “The Writing Warrior” workshop. We’d begin each class seated in a circle with a chime followed by breathing exercises.

Yes, we did write. A lot.

On our first full day, Laraine had us stand and face the wall, then she cranked up some world music drums and told us to dance.

Afterward, breathless and with our feet tingling, we sat down to write. Energized.

Unless your treadmill has a laptop keyboard over the time and distance digital readout, writing is a sedentary endeavor. Most writing advice emphasizes BIC (Butt In Chair) and yet ignores the mind-body connection, even though the deepest fiction comes from the subconscious mind.

Writing is also a solo endeavor, which Laraine accommodated by giving us plenty of free time to go off, find a spot and write. I worked on workshop exercises, but I also revised key scenes in my novel. Have netbook, will travel.

Back in the class room, reading our writing exercises aloud introduced us to our class mates. We did a couple more dance sessions, too. Soon we weren’t facing the wall, but facing each other while still dancing as if no one watched.  Because we’d all become good friends.

Our last day, before Laraine sent us “warriors” back out into the world, we stood in a wide circle for one last dance.  Laraine cranked up Prince’s “Let’s Get Crazy.”

That’s when I finally I spotted a classmate doing The Pony. Bing!

Enlightenment.

Share on Facebook

If you can’t see the above embedded video of Ron Huebel and Paul Scheer interviewing the War Horse, click here.

You knew it had to happen.

First came the newsworthiness of a “Stephen Spielberg film,” then the buzz, followed by the critical acclaim and the award nominations – and then the comic spoofs.

Here’s a compilation of some of the best from TV and the Internet. Enjoy!

The “Funny or Die” War Horse page

“Funny or Die,” a ratings site for comedy sketches, has an entire “War Horse” page. The “Actor’s Studio”-type interview that leads off this post is there, as are movie posters, re-edited “mash-up” trailers, comedy sketches, etc.

Some are SFW (Safe For Work), some aren’t. One of the trailer spoofs will freak out you tender-hearted readers. If you used up a lot of tissues while watching “War Horse” and you click on one of the “War Horse” trailers, the one with a girl and a truck? You’re gonna fuh-REEK. The humor’s extraordinarily dark, too dark even for me.

Speaking of dark, this next one re-casts Joey as a villain in a horror movie. What I also find remarkable is that the editor simply re-cut the real trailer without adding any new footage. Alas, this one didn’t receive many Funny votes, although I gave it one on the basis of “craft” alone.

If you can’t see the above embedded video of the horror movie version of “War Horse,” as found on the Funny or Die website, click here. 

Saturday Night Live

We all know that a cultural barometer is NBC’s Saturday Night Live.  You haven’t “arrived” until SNL sends you up. Here’s SNL’s spoof of the play, not the film.

If you can’t see the embedded video from NBC’s Saturday Night Live’s spoof of “War Horse,” click here.

“The Tonight Show Starring Jay Leno”

Jay has romped with a couple of “War Horse” bits. The first is billed as “the Chinese bootleg” trailer.

If you can’t see the embedded link to The Tonight Show’s “Chinese bootleg” version of “War Horse,” click here.

After the “War Horse” movie had been out a few weeks, a Tonight Show segment called “Ask Jay Anything” fielded a question about the continued adventures of “War Horse” (FWIW, it’s the first question in the segment.)

If you can’t see the embedded video of The Tonight Show’s new interpretation of “War Horse,” click here. (Remember: it’s the first question.)

Share on Facebook

The interviewee receives a list of a dozen or so horse-related questions. Of those questions, said interview subject picks four to answer. Not all require deep horsey knowledge. And most are fun. You’ll see.

Author Jennifer Fusco

*

1.       The Kentucky Governor has invited you to join him and the First Lady in their box at the Kentucky Derby. Tell us about your outfit.

Well, it’s more about the hat than the outfit, isn’t it?  My hat is pink, flamingo pink, with feathers and a pink satin bow.  It is big and blocks the people’s view behind me, but I don’t really care because I’m sitting in box seats with the Governor and his wife.  I imagine my dress as an eggshell white to tone down my pinky pink hat.  But pink pumps, of course!

2.       Your escort for Royal Ascot will be a Mr. Bond – James Bond. Which Bond do you want to accompany you?

 My goodness, what a tough question!  For me, it’s a toss-up between Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan. If we’re talking modern day though, I’m choosing Brosnan, as long as he wears a tux!

3.       Do you have a horse? (Name, breed – if known, color, most memorable experience)

I don’t have a horse.  I live inside city limits.  If I did, I’m sure it would the situation would resemble that of Chestnut on the CBS TV Show, “Two Broke Girls.”

4.       Did you have a horse or pony in childhood? (Name, breed – if known, color, most memorable experience)

I did, actually, I had 3 horses.  They all lived at my Grandmother’s house in North Carolina. All of them were brown and named Peanut, Major and Tobey.  Peanut, was of course, my favorite, until I fell off him one day.  My biggest mistake was never getting back on. Even today, I don’t ride horses, but I watch them from a distance. What beautiful animals!

Thanks for the drive, Jennifer!

The latest, the third, MARKET OR DIE book by Jennifer Fusco

Even if you’re not an author wanting to sell a book, you might be selling/promoting something, so you might be interested in the MARKET OR DIE books. (FWIW, her exercises and lessons don’t sound as dire as the title might suggest.)

To order books and keep up with the MARKET OR DIE doings, especially free mini lessons on the blog, check the MOD website at http://www.marketordie.net/index.html 

Jennifer’s website is http://jennifer-fusco.com/index.html

Share on Facebook

Still, CBS ran a disclaimer prior to the piece and so will I. No blood, no gore that I could see. Still, brace yourselves. If the horse sculptures don’t get you, the social commentary with the historical figures might.

If you can’t see the CBS News video embedded above, click here.

I’d been seeing unidentified pictures of the horses from this exhibit, especially the horses hanging suspended from the ceiling, for weeks. They looked slightly familiar.

A diorama in the Kentucky Horse Park’s International Museum of the Horse depicts the transport of horses to the New World, aka “the western hemisphere.” Except the horses weren’t led up a plank. They were shown in mid-air, lifted aboard the ships like cargo in a sling. Check out the photo on this entry on the Just Me Finding My Way blog (scroll down to see them.)

Well, okay. So, maybe that one doesn’t look identical to what’s in the show, which appear to be exclusively bay horses. Still, you can probably pick up the same theme.

Maurizio Catelan’s “All” at the Guggenheim

Anyway, the big Cattelan retrospective exhibit just about to close at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, NY, features several taxidermied equids. Let’s take a closer look at some of them, thanks to various photos from the Internet.

The Guggenheim usually displays art inside its spiral balconies. For Cattelan’s exhibit titled “All,” the sculptures hang suspended from the ceiling in the center like the world’s most expensive and detailed mobile. Visitors walk around the perimeter of the display, as you saw in the CBS video and the series of photos in this Opening Ceremony post.

You may have noticed that the hanging works are really segments of larger works. Aside from the “cool factor,” of everything hanging together, the new setting gives each work a new context depending on what’s hanging near it.

OR could the original intent have been for the piece to take context from its display surroundings?

Hmmm … I’ve been thinking a lot about how modern art could be more about what’s going on inside us when we look at it instead of reflecting or enhancing reality the artist saw. So, it’s meant to provoke a reaction. Wild, huh?

Sacred cows are fair game

Let’s poke around on the Internet to see if we can find out more, especially about those horses.

I didn’t swipe the images, despite the ease of such theft these days, but I’m sending you to the source sites via the links. If you skip clicking on the links, you’ll miss all the fun. (The links just go to event and exhibit sites. That’s all.)

“Novocento” (1997)

Here’s the horse who’d reminded me of the Kentucky Horse Park’s diorama. “Novocento” is shown in one setting and another installation in Sydney.

Notice how both the stark modern setting and the palatial baroque room each add a different energy to the display.

Let’s take a look at another work from the Guggenheim grouping.

“Untitled” (2007)

Remember the headless horse? (Silly question.)

Here it is in another context in the New Museum’s “After Nature” exhibit. The web page says the quote came on cards in the display.

Installing the horse that presumably leaped high up into the wall up above viewers appears to be a theme, as shown on this page with more of Cattelan’s works.

Photographer Jill Krementz, in a link to an article I’ll include below, mentions how this horse seems to be a hunting trophy in reverse. She adds re-interpreting hunting trophies seems to be a theme of Cattelan’s.

What does it all mean?

As you read around the few links I included, you’ll probably notice that the art works, especially modern art, can open to interpretation.

As I said earlier, photographer Jill Krementz takes us along as she looks at “All.” The article is well worth reading and studying.  She explains Cattelan’s apparent comfort with using taxidermy, plus she shows how each work relates to its neighbor in the display. You’ll even see that “sacred cow.” Literally.

Again, each work takes on new meaning depending upon the context of its location.

Presumably, “All” will be Cattelan’s final exhibit. He’s retiring, so he says, but I believe a mind like his is working, working all the time, and seeing all sort of ironies and hang-ups in the world around him. One of those is bound to inspire him to pick up a sketch pad again.

It’s all only a matter of time.

What do you think? Were you profoundly moved by anything you saw? Are you having trouble getting past the horses that were? Do you think Cattelan has more to say? Have you been to the Guggenheim to see “All” up close and personal? And why do you think they’re all bays?

Share on Facebook

If you can’t see this embedded parody of the classic Old Spice commercial, “White Collar”-style, click here.

Had I been able to embed the video of the scene, especially the Behind-the-Scenes video from the USA Network website showing a clip of the scene and all the riding lessons that went into it, I would have, but the above fan-edited parody will have to do for the moment.

A go-to  scene in many movies and TV shows set in New York city is a character galloping after or away on a commandeered police horse for a chase. The TV show “White Collar” recently did its own interpretation.

The link here will take you to the “White Collar” website where you’ll see actor Tim DeKay, who plays FBI agent Peter Burke, saddling up again.

Share on Facebook

If you can’t see the embedded video about the Circle G Foundation, click here:

A British lady is leading efforts to preserve Elvis’s country retreat where he’d honeymooned with Priscilla and had kept some of his horses.

Circle G Ranch, or what remains of it, is near Memphis out in Horn Lake, Mississippi. The property has been on the market for a while. The asking price is $4.9 million.

Lesley Pilling and her husband Jim had been here in the states celebrating Elvis Week in 2010 when she learned about the Circle G and found it in such precarious condition.

What started as a Facebook page has now become the Circle G Foundation. Lesley and her bunch have been keeping hope alive with a Facebook page and on Twitter.

Viva la Circle G!

Share on Facebook

If you can’t see the video embedded above about the horses used in TV’s “Merlin,” click here.

Check out the film credits of Horse Master Dylan Jones. You’re see “War Horse” listed, as well as its competitor this holiday season “Sherlock Holmes.”

Dylan is part of Dolbadarn Film Horses, a family-owned and – run Welsh company that provides horses to the movies.  Click around the Dolbardarn website meet some of their horses.

The website doesn’t mention Facebook, but you might want to Like Dolbadarn’s Facebook page, too. Lots of cool photos there.

“Merlin” on the Syfy network is about exactly who you think it’s about – the wizard who worked with King Arthur.

Share on Facebook

If you can’t see the embedded video of Dusty the movie horse playing dead, click here.

No, this handsome buckskin who answers to “Dusty” isn’t in “War Horse.” Be sure to read the YouTube comments in the above link, though. He likes vanilla wafers.

Anyway, Dusty sure is good at playing dead.  Just like those fine equine actors who “decorate” the battlefields in “War Horse.”

Share on Facebook

A presentation of the horses at the Trowbridge's Ltd. Holiday Open House showcases the personalities of the horses/Photo by Rhonda Lane

You were expecting reindeer? Here??

On the Twitter stream, a note from blogger Arabian Glimmer announced an open house at an Arabian horse barn not far from me. A Holiday open house complete with a presentation of the horses, photo ops for children and cookies.

Of course, I had to go. And now you get to tag along.  More pictures and a video follow.

Just go get your own refreshments. I only can offer you “virtual” coffee, tea or cookies.

Trowbridge’s Ltd.of Bridgewater, CT, has held a Holiday Open House for 16 years, an apparent area tradition considering the size of the crowd and the apparent number of “repeats.”

Up-close-and-personal visits with the horses are a big draw. While some of the horses received their grooming prior to the presentation, their stall door might be open so small hands could reach curious muzzles.

"Hi. Glad you could come visit. "/Photo by Rhonda Lane

Heaters in the barn took the chill off the visitors, although this visitor wasn’t taking any chances.

"Kangaroo Kitty" stayed warm and snuggled the entire time/Photo by Rhonda Lane

Trowbridge’s came up with a simple way to get rid of those old show ribbons – give them away as souvenirs. (I think you’ll spot some in the video below.) Or on the Open House page, which may change as time passes.

Even Santa showed up, although he mostly lurked near the main heater and cookie table.

We’ll close with the video, a little “sampler” of the day with lots of smiling happy people and perked ears.

If you can’t see the above embedded video, click here for the 2011 Holiday Open House at Trowbridges Ltd.

Happy Holidays, y’all!

Share on Facebook

If you can’t see the above video from the Wall Street Journal website, please click on this link.

Ever since I saw an advance screening of “War Horse,” I’ve fielded a variety of questions about the movie’s emotional intensity.

Can I take my children? has been one question. Another has been, There aren’t any dead horses in it, are there?”

The vibe out there is, I want to see it, but I don’t want to get too upset.

People are worried. They’ve got enough upsetting them in real life, maybe too much to let a sad movie send them over the edge.

Yet, this is an emotional movie about animals – horses – used in war.

So, let’s get some information. Let’s take some glimpses behind the curtain of movie magic. Knowledge is power. Maybe a little knowledge can give us the power to keep us from losing it in public?

If you’re a purist and you don’t want to know any “spoilers, you’ve probably seen too much already. Still, I hope what little you’ve seen already has piqued your curiosity about the movie.

Still, I don’t think you’ll lose the magic by reading this. You might come away with a new appreciation of the achievement on the screen.

So, consider this another Sad Movie Survival Tip:  learn how movies are made. Especially movies with real horses.

Starring as the title character? Finder!

Although fourteen equine actors portrayed Joey, one stands out among the rest. You’ve seen him as one of the many Seabiscuits and with Zorro (yes, with a black vegetable dye job) and fretting near  that out-of-control train in “Unstoppable.”

He’s a bay off-the-track thoroughbred now named Finder. I wonder what his Jockey Club registered name was? Apparently, Finder didn’t like racing, although he made a convincing enough movie racehorse.

His movie trainer and owner Bobby Lovgren met him on the set of Seabiscuit and bought him from the producers. They’ve been working together ever since. They even flew out from California to Great Britain for “War Horse.”

The London Daily Mail tracked down Lovgren and Finder back home in California and the article has Lovgren describing Finder’s personality. Apparently, he’s got a mind of his own, according to this article in The Sun.

As an actor, Finder has range, as you’ll see in “War Horse.” (Spoiler ahead) Finder plays the horse trapped in fake rubber barbed wire. (Yes! It’s rubber! The Wall Street Journal says so!) Finder even plays Joey’s mother, as this interview with Lovgren says.

As the New York Times Carpetbagger says, some horses need their own IMDB page. (Internet Movie Database page.)

And I say, what with his steadily growing list of credits?

Finder needs a fan club.

For the humans, a director. For the horses? A horse master

In Britain, where the movie was filmed, they’re called “horse masters.” In the US, probably thanks to Hollywood being out west closer to cattle drives than fox hunts, that job on the movie set is called “lead wrangler.”

Either way, they’re the guys who train the horses and give them cues for ways to react on camera. The Wall Street Journal article tells how, off-camera, wranglers/masters would prompt reactions out of the horses for benefit of the camera.

Want to get a horse to look a certain way? Have you ever taken a posed photo with a horse and had somebody doing something off camera to attract the horse’s attention?

The same idea works in the movies. See the Wall Street Journal article.

Plus, the Guardians

The American Humane Association was on set every day, Lovgren said, as well as a veterinarian. The horse doctor was never needed.

What’s more, Lovgren said in the London Daily Mail that he won’t work on a movie in which the animals aren’t independently monitored.

Fran Jurga says on her War Horse News blog that the AHA gave “War Horse” its highest level of certification.

I’ll say it again: all the animals on “War Horse” were safe.

It’s all pretend. Even if the music and the pacing and the acting and appearances may appear otherwise.

Now you know more

Knowledge is power. Still …

“War Horse” is meant to be emotionally powerful. There’s no getting around that.

Newsflash: Fran Jurga’s “War Horse News Blog” is now Live. WarHorseBlog.com

More Sad Movie Survival Tips:

Yeah, crying makes our eyes swell up and our noses run and maybe even gives us the queasies, but maybe the catharsis might be good for you? Like, the catharsis of tears from watching “War Horse?” Like I said in this post?

Share on Facebook