I Scream "No" To Lost Love

I was walking downstairs , staring at the cover of a book I had just finished, realizing I didn’t have one thing to say about it. Did I enjoy the book? Yes. Aren’t there clever quotes inside? Yes. But what popped into my mind was all of these women who achieved world fame; lasting fame that has carried them from their time into the beyond, and each had, for want of a better expression (and forgive me, ladies,) “unrequited love.” I became frozen to the place where I stood.

Emily Dickinson locked in her room in white, pouring out her passion. Edith Wharton giving us poor, fallen Lily Bart that society rejects at its hard door. Edith, swathed in familial and earned wealth, never got her man either and lies in an untended grave in France. Dorothy Sayers. Plain as boiled potatoes, but wrote one of the most passionate passages ever written about a woman in love. Nancy Mitford, recreating her rejecting lover over and over again in her literature. Why weep at my bed now, lover? Now that I am dying?

Critics and theorists who rip through their lives and words say, “They chose the wrong man.” “They needed to live solitary lives to create.” “It was subconscious.” “He had to be unavailable.”

At the moment I arrived at that thought, I silently screamed “NOOOOO” at the top of my lungs into eternity.

“NOOOOOO.” They loved.

“NOOOOOO.” For them, “he” was their true love.

“NOOOOOO”, you people who sit and judge a life. You are wrong.

Remaining where I had stopped, I wrote Emily a poem:

That bundle you call “joy?”
Was the last nail
In the coffin I call “hope.”


I guess I had something to say, after all.

Do I Really Want To Be Joan Of Arc?

I was lying in bed this morning, thinking about Joan of Arc, how she rallied her countrymen in fighting through victories in The Hundred Years Wars, and how great it must be to be able to gather people around you to do something, because I can't even get AT & T on the phone.

Of course, if Joan were around now, what's she gonna do? Twitter it? gather@4ish for a burning. It's me that's burning, so don't even begin to tell me you're busy, aiight?

I'm on hold with AT&T, by the way, after having been told I got "Texas," disconnected, given a number to use that gave me everything in Spanish, redialing, and getting India, where I am on hold....wait...I got someone...in Los Angeles...really Los Angeles. I'll take it! God bless.

P.S. I may also have scored another victory, because I just blogged the above, while on hold.

What's In My Head: Nefertiti - Miles Davis For Cyndy

The epitome of cool

Who, What, When, Where, How

Lately in the news, it's the same ole, same ole. I wonder if the same ole standards of good reporting still apply: Who, What, When, Where, Why?

"She's gonna love Queen's "We Will Rock You."

1) What is with the Queen's iPod?

QEII asked the Obama's for an iPod, and they obliged, filling it with her favorite Richard Rodgers show tunes. What was he gonna slap on there? Me So Horny by 2 Live Crew? Be glad Obama gave her Richard Rogers. I would have picked an iPod in acid green and slammed the Sex Pistols opening with “God Save the Queen,” followed by The Clash doing “London Calling,” The Kinks doing “Victoria,” and “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina,” then The Beatles, “Her Majesty,” (Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say.”) The Obama gift? Trust me. It could have been worse. How about Queen doing "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy," "Another One Bites the Dust," and "We Are the Champions (of the World.)"

2) When are we going to get over the whole cutsey-bowing thing. Our Queen, Elizabeth Taylor, said, "I've met them, and they are just regular people. Shake their hand and act normally."

Frankly, I’d be more impressed meeting Ms. Taylor. Could the Queen rule in her slip, the way Liz did in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Could QE II make her Christmas speech, uttering a line like, “Mama, face it: I was the slut of all time,” like Liz did in Butterfield 8.

Don't You Just Know That Madonna Was That Kid Saying "I'm taking the ball and going home if we don't play my game." Only now she's taking home her baby, her millions, a phalanx of media coverage and that promised party.

3) Who's is happy that Madonna's adoption fell through in Malawi?

Me, Me, Me!!! Happy over the Madonna decision? Yes. She goes in waving her fame and money around trying to actively circumvent a country’s laws. Who named her Queen of the April? And I read she had a temper tantrum back in her hotel room after the Court ruling, storming at her lawyer’s failings, “How could this happen to me?” With her child Lourdes….her CHILD folks, wrapping her arms around her mother trying to calm her down. Reflect. WHAT is wrong with this picture? THEN she decides to…oh I don’t know…THROW A PARTY. This isn’t about a child in a Malawi orphanage, and don't try convincing anyone otherwise.

4) Where is that great baby video?

Go watch this past weekend’s satire on Saturday Night Live where “Angelina” and “Madonna” fight over babies. The sketch is called “Spicy Brown Babies and (spoiler alert) Angelina wins the baby game when she announces she’s getting a baby from Russia that has a baby, within a baby, within a baby. This is what really has people up in arms. It’s not the poor orphaned child and rescue thereof. It’s motive. And we aren’t fools.


5) How come Nefertiti always looks so good without plastic surgery?

Recent reporting indicates that Nefertiti, history's first great beauty, also may have undergone history's first makeover. The famous bust of Nefertiti has long been a standard of beauty. Now researchers have discovered that beneath the stucco head, there exists another face, the original created from stone. The differences are minor — creases at the corners of the mouth, a little bump on the nose.

" These creases and bumps? What surgery? What plaster covering? This is me. I never had a bump. I just….eat healthy, drink lots of lotus juice and rub tons of eucalyptus oils followed by a mask of pyramid dust clay. Oh yeah…munching a grape…my trainer has me run out to the Valley of the Kings then do Pyramid steps. Great for the abs and butt. And those rumors about my having my organs removed and put in Canopic jars? I mean…really. I’m Queen of the Nile….Madonna….or should I say…Denial?

What's on MY iPod? D'uh..."Walk Like An Egyptian."

What's In My Head: Legend of a Girl Child Linda

My blog friend M.A. over at her blog The Culture Wars has once again resurrected her "Haiku Tuesday" moments. I added this at her blog, and just another "hello" through the internet waves, M.A., this song as well:


Listen to me now
And I will sing you my songs
Drifting in your boat

There is no romance
In the litany of flowers
If you choose to float

Madoff Enough For Ya?

Lately, I've seen a lot of articles about Bernard Madoff crop up where Madoff is compared in appearance to George Washington, or if you look like Madoff, you can't hail a cab. Many people are calling Madoff a "Shylock," which I don't like at all. For starters, Shylock was this Jewish character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice that was a cliché of the moneylender as "penny for a pound," where Shylock literally weighs your overdraft flesh to take. For the longest time, he was always portrayed with a large, hooked nose, rubbing his greedy fingers and speaking with an English-Yiddish accent. A bit of anti-Semitism from The Bard.

"Will You Be My Special Friend?"

Oddly, it’s not Madoff's thievery among best friends that interests me the most, but rather his character. It’s what he did to alleged "friends," even until the last moments of exposure and arrest. Words like "pathological," and "sociopath," come to mind, and don’t mistake those words to mean "serial killer." It involves missing parts of self like "the ability to feel emotion," "empathy," but also to perhaps possess personality traits most of us wouldn’t want landed on our brow: being evaluated a "Narcissistic Sadist." Endulge me in my posting this. I found it on Goggle by the search query: "narcissistic sadist." It is a diagnostic evaluation. You can get back many, many articles on this, all more or less using the exact same language:

"The narcissist simply discards people when he becomes convinced that they can no longer provide him with narcissistic needs. This is an evaluation, subjective and highly emotionally charged. It does not have to be grounded in reality. Suddenly - because of boredom, disagreement, disillusion, a fight, an act, inaction, or a mood - the narcissist wildly swings from idealization to devaluation. He then "disconnects" immediately. He needs all the energy that he can muster to obtain new Sources of Narcissistic Supply and would rather not spend these scarce and expensive resources over what he regards as human refuse, the waste left by the process of extraction of Narcissistic Supply.That the victims of his sadism are still his only or major sources of Narcissistic supply, but are perceived by him to be intentionally frustrating and withholding it.

Sadistic acts are his way of punishing them for not being docile, obedient, admiring and adoring as he expects them to be in view of his uniqueness, cosmic significance and special entitlement.The narcissist is not a sadist or a paranoiac, per se. He does not enjoy the application of pain to his victims. He does not believe firmly that he is the focal point of persecution and the target of conspiracy. But he does enjoy punishing himself - it provides him with a sense of relief, exoneration and validation. In this restricted sense he is a masochist. Because of his lack of empathy and his rigid personality he often inflicts great (physical or mental) pain on meaningful others in his life - and he enjoys their writhing and suffering. In this restricted sense he is a sadist. The narcissist is an artist of pain as much as any sadist. The difference is motivation.

The narcissist tortures and abuses as a means to punish and to reassert superiority and grandiosity. The sadist does so for pure enjoyment. But both are adept at finding the chinks in people’s armors. Both are ruthless and venomous in the pursuit of their prey. Both are unable to empathize with their victims, being, self-centered, and rigid.He acts the guru to her need of guidance, the avuncular or father figure, the teacher, the only true friend, the old and the experienced. All this in order to weaken defenses and to lay siege. So subtle and poisonous is the narcissistic variant of sadism that it might well be regarded as the most dangerous of all.Luckily, the narcissist’s attention span is short and his resources and energy limited. In constant, effort consuming and attention diverting pursuit of Narcissistic Supply, the narcissist lets his victim go, usually before an irreversible damage occurs. (I would add, or get caught.)

The victim is then free to rebuild their life from ruins. The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, devastation, an inescapable verdict. He nurtures his ill-repute, stoking it and fanning the flames of gossip. It is an enduring asset. Hate and fear are sure generators of attention. It is all about narcissistic supply, of course - the drug which narcissists consume and which consumes them in return.Deep inside, it is the horrid future and inescapable punishment that await the narcissist that are irresistibly appealing. Sadists are often also masochists. In sadistic narcissists, there is, actually, a burning desire - nay, NEED - to be punished. In the grotesque mind of the narcissist, his punishment is equally his vindication. By being permanently on trial, the narcissist claims the high moral ground and the position of the martyr: misunderstood, discriminated against, unjustly roughed, outcast due to his very towering genius or other outstanding qualities. To conform to the cultural stereotype of the "tormented artist" - the narcissist provokes his own suffering. He is thus validated.

His grandiose fantasies acquire a modicum of substance. "If I were not so special - they wouldn’t have persecuted me so". The persecution of the narcissist IS his uniqueness. He must be different, for better or worse. The streak of paranoia embedded in him, makes this outcome inevitable. The Narcissist is in constant conflict with lesser beings: his spouse, his shrink, his boss, and his colleagues. Forced to stoop to their intellectual level, the narcissist feels like Gulliver: a giant strapped by Lilliputians. His life is a constant struggle against the self-contented mediocrity of his surroundings. This is his fate which he accepts, though never stoically. It is a calling, a mission and a recurrence in his stormy life."

This was quite a lot to dump out, and I edited it down, but all of the studies say more or less the same. Sound like anyone you’ve ever known or heard about? I have to admit I've known a few.

There was a good reporting about Madoff in the recent issue of Vanity Fair. One recurring theme kept popping up. The need of his friends to be let into the exclusive "club" of his earning genius, and since he only allowed "friends," in: also being considered a friend (and all that it encompassed.) One individual negatively affected by this man said, "He did these things to me, knowing he was about to be charged. How could he?" How, indeed.

TAX....!Fuggetaboutit

Twitter Twatter: Oh No You Didn't

Sigh. What a hard, hard week. Some respiratory thing that had me low for days, when I wasn't begging some deity to put me out of my misery. Toward the end of this week, and back in the world, everything was such a struggle, and I had to get it done, so pushpushpush, tiredtiredtired, stressstressstress. Tonight I had several errands to run; those things you "have" to do, like go to a bank.

Folks? While I've been in bed sick, and reading when I could, I started thinking about things I wanted to write about in the future, and one of them was just how thin that societal veneer can be when money is involved, but overall the idea that we haven't come as far as we'd like to believe and we can be reduced to club wielders in a blink, with the right trigger.

My last stop (and ounce of strength) involved entering a Whole Foods (on a Friday night) for precisely five things. I was sick, but I had a list! I had fought bad traffic, I had made all my stops, I was in the 15 or less aisle, the one where the doors open and close to exit? I had just turned my cart toward the door and this woman stepped in front of me, stopped, lifted her bag from the cart and just walked away, leaving the cart completely blocking the now opened door.

The second she did that, in a voice that can only be described as something involving brimstone, this roar issued from my mouth screaming, "YOU BITCH!" There were three Asian employees standing there and they all let out an audible gasp, that sounded like what you would release after inhaling tsunami wind. My hand popped to my mouth. My eyes widened. I said "She just left her basket there, completely blocking the exit." They said, "Oh"....relaxing...."people do that all of the time."

I walked to my car feeling like I had been eating fire. Of such things, my readers, are civilization constructs . "People do that all of the time."

Good to know since, I felt like I had just stepped back onto the planet from hell.

What's Playing In My Head: Little Jimmy Scott The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Yeah, I know...Roberta Flack owns it, and she used to sing at Mr. Henry's on Capitol Hill. Upstairs. Gay bar downstairs. Every time Little Jimmy Scott sang at Blues Alley, I was so there, and I am so grateful I was.

How Does Love Weather A Recession

I’ve been living a practical life for the past few years, and it is humdrum, given that I love luxe. I still follow all of the personal maintenance I believe in, but it is stretched out further between appointments.

Nancy Mitford wrote a scene in Love in a Cold Climate. Linda, a British "Hon," has landed in Paris and begins an affair with a Duke, Fabrice. Fabrice insists Linda return to England at the onset of World War II, and he goes out and buys her things he believes will get her through the war including a mink throw and velvet boots. "He seemed to regard the acquisition of clothes as one of the chief duties of woman, to be pursued through war and revolution, through sickness, and up to death. It is as one might say, "whatever happens the fields must be tilled, the cattle tended, life must go on." He was so essentially urban that to him the slow roll of the seasons was marked by the spring tailleurs, the summer imprimés, the autumn ensembles, and the winter furs of his mistress."

I was reorganizing things tonight in this little triangular antique semaniere (no regrets there) where I keep hair accessories, scarves and gloves, and while I got rid of a few things, for the most part, the rest remained as active wardrobe. I stay on top of weeding out, and try not to buy "regrets." Before you issue a sour "Well good for you," (and I hope you’re laughing,) it got me thinking about an article I’ve been trying to find ever since I read it.

It was in The New York Times Sunday magazine, and it was a two-paged piece about how expensive it is to have an affair. It was dead-on truth listing expenses for anyone engaged in a relationship that wants to put her (or his) best bits forward. Workouts with personal trainers, spray tans, waxings, expensive lingerie, a lot of very costly shoes that may never touch the ground, Wolford lace-topped hose, jewelery, makeup, teeth bleaching, anything involving a plastic surgeon including surgery and the regular "needled touch-ups," plane tickets, hotel suites, private beach houses, on and on. When you saw it all laid out over two pages (with the average price of each thing,) it was appalling. And if things go wrong? You’re left gasping; walking around like a shadow, and paying off some very expensive bills.

It left me wondering tonight. How does love weather the recession? That former sheaf of cellophaned wrapped orchids may well become a a daffodil secretly picked in a public park…and I hope equally cherished and pressed between the pages of a beloved book.

Your Dog Is Fat Adorable!

"Was That Phat?"

Late last night, I was reading columinist Liz Smith over at wowOwow about Peggy Siegal and her upcoming piece on the Oscars. Ms. Smith said, "I like even better her complaint as a writer who has to put up with being over-edited. Siegal sniffed at Avenue’s hand on her manuscript: “Why, they wouldn’t let me describe Barbra Streisand’s little Maltese dog as "fat?" I had to change it to ‘"adorable.’”

I wrote back, "If Ms. Siegal described the dog as "fat," I am assuming that was her first impression, or overall impression, "That dog is FAT!" ::scribbling in notebook:::

So she gives her piece to her editor and it’s fat "Adorable!" If the dog is fat, could we say the dog is "portly," "rotund," "chunky," "solid?"

What is really at stake here? That a reader will see the word "fat," and jump to the mindset, "Barbra is fat!" "Zut!"

"Barbra is fat!" "Wait a minute. Siegal put an extra "a" in Barbra. Strike that, tooz." Isn't that what this is about? That means Kirstie Alley is fat... adorable? "Marie Osmond is a lot less adorable than she used to be?" "Wyonna Judd wants to be a lot less adorable?"

"Adorable!" STET

-30- *

*And for those not in the know, STET was (and maybe still is) editor language for "leave it alone - as is,"

while -30- began in the Civil War at the end of messages to mean "this is the end of the message." This practice shifted over to newspapers to mean -30- "this is the end of the piece."

April Food Day

My blogging friend over at a Baltimore blog called Pigtown Design (and Pigtown is an old, ethnic community of Baltimore under revitalization,) has asked fellow bloggers to acknowledge and promote April Food Day.

I am using her words, "Everyday, the news is filled with the dire news about the current economic climate and a lot of us use the blogging community to take a break from the constant drumbeat. However, we can not ignore the fact that friends and family members, and even some blogger friends have lost their jobs because of the recession.

People who never had a worry in the world now have to think about where their next meal is coming from. People who never would have dreamt that they would need help are now showing up at the local food banks. But when they get there, the shelves are bare. There is not enough food being donated to meet the sudden rise in demand. There is not enough money to buy the food for the food banks. There is not a general understanding that food banks need help to help fill their shelves.

Bloggers and their readers across the country are posting on April 1 and asking their readers to make a contribution to either a local food bank or the national food bank, Feeding America. Every dollar contributed provides seven meals or 10 pounds of food. A gift of $25 provides 75 meals. If we all post together and ask our readers to make a contribution on April 1, we can make a huge difference in our communities.

We hope that you will help us help others. The need is great and the time is now. Thank you.
April Food Blog.

I know from recent articles I've seen in the media that food banks are hurting. I would add my own reflection, as you consider a donation.

When I was in college, through the Campus Ministry, I was sent to counsel homeless women in a shelter called New Endeavors for Women. They are still there doing good work in taking homeless women, teaching them skills while in a safe environment, setting up bank accounts, and helping them find careers and places to live to rebuild their lives. I am not going to lie. The shelter was in a terrible community off North Capitol Street. At the time, there was a drug kingpin ruling D.C., living in his Momma's house, just blocks from the place.

I would head to the shelter on Sunday mornings and face down the boys on the corners, tossing hand signals for drugs. The funny thing is, as I became known in the community, I would hear my name being yelled out in greeting. One time, sitting with a friend at the stoplight at New York Avenue and Florida Avenue, car windows down, we heard my name being yelled out from the large bus stop there. My friend said, "Are they yelling for you?" Expect the unexpected. That's all I can say.

I am also not going to lie. It was depressing working there and hearing the stories, sometimes listening to lies, seeing the poverty. I remember going outside to gather some leaves for an autumn table to make it prettier, and every leaf looked diseased. The birds looked horrible. Missing feathers, misshappened. Poverty hits nature full force, too.

Often I would stay past my time and help the ladies fix lunch; all the food donated from various food banks. Again. Why lie? The food looked horrible. Boxes of bruised apples. Fungal potatoes. Things you would peel down into ongoing spirals, getting rid of the bad bits, until you were holding a golf ball sized potato in your hand. And guess what? Poor people don't want to eat a diseased, rotten potato any more than you do.

So I would say, having seen it. If you do donate, and I wish you would? Chose wisely. Even think creatively. The food banks get a ton of cans of beans (any kind of bean,) or soup. Think, what might be something...a real treat they never get...and splurge on a bag or Oreo cookies, or a bag of candy, sodas, a jar of salsa. String beans they've got, 'til they would come out of your nose. Ditto peanut butter.

People can become poor in a blink. Do not think it could not happen to you. I saw people lose their lives in a matter of two months: a husband dies or leaves them. They miss the rent or mortgage payment in two months. Already it begins, and then it spirals, very quickly: you can't make the car payment, the phone bill, the utility bills. If it gets bad enough, children are taken and the next thing you are in a shelter with a schizophrenic prostitute telling you she was a realtor (true story.) And "no" she wasn't a realtor. Visit the April Food blog. If you can spare a little, they would truly be grateful. If not, no shame. Maybe next time. I find it does the soul good, even when you might be able to donate a tiny bit yourself, despite your own worries, because it lets you retain some pride, and a sense that you, too, are part of a community, in all it's varied aspects.

.

Haiku Achoo

I'm into Day Four of (for want of a better wording,) what they used to call "La Grippe." Some respiratory, flu, "I don't feel so good thing." I thought I was better this morning, and Lord God Jesus, "no."

I was bopping around your blogs in between bouts of "retreat to the bed," and I noticed my friend "M.A." over on her blog The Culture Wars was also not feeling well, but not "off" enough not to return to her past habit of "Haiku Tuesday":

An Old Standby: Haiku Tuesday!

Forgive me, for I am out of practice.

1.
So, I cannot hear
sound is clogged in my right ear
time to see someone.
2.
Before I was silenced
by acute laryngitis
I did not sound good.
3.
What is going on?
A sign for me to slow down?
Yes! Of course it is.
4.
Me. This is all me.
Argh. How much more can you take?
Vacation time, please!
5.
Blah. blah, blah, blah blah.
This is what I sound like now.
Yes, this will change soon.

In empathy, I wrote her back:

I sit here with flu
Achoo instead of haiku
Yes, this will change soon

Cherry blossoms bloom
Construction next door goes boom
The world is all change

Nurture yourself now
Return stronger to the fray
Of life's constant needs

We will heal and write
We will return to the flow
Read my words and rest

I need to go make some tea, I think....

What's In My Head: Chaiyya Chaiyya

If you go to India, it's trains all the way. Why aren't we doing this on the Metro? I guess we remember that old adage from George of the Jungle, "Watch out for that tree!"

It's Aht With Heart, People

The bullets are at the end of this piece...

Over at wowOwow, they were asking, "Who's Your Favorite Artist, Toots?"

Too many to choose from, but off the top of my head: Henry Ossawa Tanner, J.M.W. Turner and James Whistler, and all for the same reason. Each began his creative process thoroughly engrossed in depicting their world in finely tuned detail: Tanner and African-American culture (The Banjo Lesson):

Turner’s masts and waves:


Whistler’s ….Mother.

As each artist grew in skill and his search to see with new eyes, they became more and more abstract. (This is true also of Michaelangelo’s unfinished pieces where you can sense the figure in motion, trying to emerge beneath the chipped stone):

Later in their careers, Tanner’s "Annunciation," becomes an angel that is no more than a line of blinding gold:

Whistler’s "Nocturne: The Fallen Rocket: Black and Gold" leads art into Impressionism:

and Turner’s Abstracts from the Biblical Book of Revelation, "The Angel Standing in the Sun," that swirls with the blur between heaven and hell.


Drown in Eternity, Suckahs

Footnotes? We gotta have footnotes and musings, and I did promise you "bullets" and such:

* Bill Cosby owns a lot of Tanner paintings. This reminds us that Bill Cosby is a very rich man.

* Not "too" long ago, The National Gallery of Art had a Turner exhibit. I went on my birthday, taking on the Christmas crowds. I "did" the ships rooms, but I soon tired of the pressing crowds and loud critiques, "Look at that whitecap," and headed for those Bible paintings. That's where I spent the bulk of my time, letting myself fall right into them and hang out for a while."

*You want to see some Whistler? Go to the Freer Gallery of Art, but first go to the National Gallery of Art to pay a visit to "Symphony No. 1, The White Girl," a painting I went to see FIRST, every time my Mama took me to the gallery. Also, often told, but here it is again: the infamous story of being five years old, and my mother and I were going down the winding (and massive) back staircase of the Gallery, me holding Mama's hand and saying "I want to live here." She said,"Oh no, Little Cubie. Wouldn't you be afraid to live here all by yourself? Me: (shooting her a look) "No." Then go on over to the Freer Gallery and do "The Peacock Room." Ask the guard to show you the secret window. Charm him. Get him to say "Okay, but don't tell." Then hit Whistler's "Nocturnes." Old man Freer was loaded and bought a ton of them. Think about fog. Think about London. Think about why London doesn't have fog like that anymore.

*Michelangelo's stuff screams to be touched. We won't go into why David screams to be touched, and how you'd be screaming if you did. Walk tall and carry a big stick, indeed.

*Tanner's "The Annunciation." Lemme tell ya something. I became so obsessed with this painting, that when I was presenting a paper at Georgetown University (with slides people, but no snacks,) I was so gaga over it, I heard a loud "AHEM" from the back of the room, basically my professor saying, "Wind it up." Back then, you could not shut me up about Tanner.

Don't even ask me who my favorite artist is. Talking to a friend while I wrote you guys just now? We both went off on 1) Georg Groz; 2) David Stone Martin; 3) Friedensreich Hundertwasser; 4) Edward Keinholz; 4) Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross; 5) The Belarusian School of Icon Painting and 6) the Desert Eagle large-bore, gas-operated, semi-automatic pistol.

"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. " ~~ Arthur Koestler

What's In My Head: The Harlem Shuffle

I've been dropping these protracted comments all over blogdom, including a woman's blog called wowOwow. A question was posed on "wow" about the value of the iPod, and I wrote,
"I have an iPod. I rarely use it. So many other ways to hear music including You Tube and iTunes on your computer. When I hear "iPod shuffle," it makes me think of the "The Harlem Shuffle" (the Bob and Earl version, not the Rolling Stones,) and whaddya know. It’s on You Tube.

Remember me warning you about ear worms, folks? REMEMBER???? Because apparently I don't. Would someone please thwack me with a rolled newspaper right now?

Twitter Twatter: You're An Acter. Act.

"You will be a creative soldier, once you get all this "thinking" knocked out of you. "

Recently on wowOwow, the query was posed, "Is it fair for us to hold actors up as role models?" Well. Let's see. Just in this past week, Lindsay Lohan has begged to be taken seriously as an actor, and Madonna has lectured her daughter to be true to herself, while if what is true about Madonna lately is that she is running around with a man much younger than herself and has asked her assistant to go to Malawi to pick a new baby; an appropriate baby that would "fit in." Sorta a "I hope it matches the drapes kinda thing." Role model for what, I query.

I just finished a biography about Marlon Brando, Somebody: the Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando by Stefan Kanfer. Brando would have done better focusing on his craft, rather than belittling his talent (being an actor is like being a butcher,) while demanding justice for (fill in the blank.) The Native-American? He sent one up to make his acceptance speech for his Oscar win in The Godfather. Full buckskin regalia, too. Only it turned out she wasn't really what she said she was. Same with Wife Number One: Anna Kashfi, given to wearing sari's and nose rings (even at their wedding,) only it turned out she was really Joan O'Callaghan. Didn't he check under the carpet? Weren't the freckles a give away? "Freckle? I thought that was a bindi spot."

"Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great." ~~ Fred Allen

I have to relay one moment from the book. In the film The Young Lions, where Brando plays an overly blonde Nazi, he fought with the director (Edward Dmytyrk,) and at one point in the script he wanted to have his character, Christian Diestl, make a speech about racial inequality in America and the Scottsboro boys. When he also suggested that Christian (in his death scene) wind up twisted in barbed wire and arms extended like a wounded Christ, co-star Montgomery Clift said, "If Marlon's allowed to do that, I'll walk off the picture." Brando didn’t. Instead he died in a muddy pool of water, and lay there so long, technicians came running up to make sure he wasn't truly dead. Now that's acting. Playing a Nazi with a British accent? Uh.....not so good.

"Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke."

Not that we can't learn life lessons from the movies. To quote from the most quotable movie of all time; George Sanders as Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (speaking of the Marilyn Monroe character as an "actress,") "Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art."

That pretty well sums it up. Learn your lines. Learn your fellow actor's lines, while you're at it. Show up on time. Do your work. Go home. I think Robert Mitchum said that.

"I kept the same suit for six years and the same dialogue. They just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady. "