The Sheila Variations

It's because his brother is a minister. How silly. He's going to decay and turn to dust anyway, but you can't bury him nude. How silly.

Hopefully, God will let him go naked in heaven. :)

If it was just me living there, I think I would have ignored him. (Gardening in the nude? Dude we invented clothes to keep those orifices clean. Ever heard of soil borne bacteria and fungi?)

But if I had kids in the house, I would have shot him in the nuts with a BB gun to teach him some manners with repect to his fellow man. It worked with the dog that kept crapping on our lawn when I was a kid.

Jesus Christ. It's his own property.

The couple who live above my apartment have loud raucous sex morning, noon, and night. It's kind of a drag (for me, I mean), but whatever, man. It's their apartment. I choose to live in close proximity to fellow human beings. If they wanted to have sex in front of my doorstep so I had to see them, then maybe I would complain. But if I've got a problem with how my neighbor behaves on his own damn property? I should move to a fucking 1000 acre ranch in Montana where I never have to encounter anybody else.

I like Brenda's attitude way better than yours.

"Well, we arrested him last spring. Then we didn't see much of him ..."

That was one of the saddest stories... here is this guy who just wants to live his life the way HE wants. What a bunch of jerks to go against his wishes. Certainly he will come back to haunt them and appear in the nude in all manner of awkward situations for them. During a sermon, in the shower, at the grocery store.
Ah, sweet revenge.

olaf - heh heh heh.

Uhm, why is there a naked ghost in the frozen food section?

red, there's an idea! A remake of the Ghost and Mrs. Muir -- with a naked ghost! Very "Downtown!"

I believe if a naked ghost appeared to me in my bedroom I, too, would shoot him with a BB gun. There goes my great romance!! POW.

Well, if I let my grass grow and all sorts of small animals come and live in the yard and get into other people's yards (not that they don't now, I'm a killin' moles left and right, but my neighbor is an 88 acre forest) - then the neighbors have a right to complain. It's my property, but I've got to live in peace and harmony with my fellow man, or I am a dipstick.

This guy struck me as a dipstick. An in-your-face, aren't-you-a-prude nudist. He knew what his neighbors' reactions would be and kept doing it. Did he never hear of a fence? I bet with a 6 ft. wood fence no one would have said a thing about what he did on his own property. Because out of sight is (thankfully) out of mind. And if you are that far outside of the norm it is up to YOU, the non-conformist, to make the effort if your actions offend your neighbors (obviously there are exceptions, if your neighbors all do something immoral). The behavior was illegal, and he knew it. Like I said, if it were just me living there, I would not even have called the cops. Might have even helped out with money for the fence, 'cause I really don't want to see someone else's hairy wanker out the window while I'm enjoying my morning coffee and paper, I just don't.

But if he did this for attention, as I suspect he did, and if he did it in a neighborhood with kids, then I think he'd need an attitude adjustment. A .177 caliber attitude adjustment. He sounds like he was aggressive like an over eager Evangelical (who are also badly in need of attitude asjustments). That's just the vibe I got from the repeated arrests.

But on the subject of his last wishes, his family is just plain wrong. My grandmother had her daughters burn pictures of her in a bathing suit (in the 1920s!) after her death. I wish I would have been old enough to argue her out of that, but her daughters did the right thing. I am the last human alive who saw those pictures, and I really would like to have kept them, but her daughters respected her wishes. We can do nothing more for the dead than that, and we owe them that.

I believe if a naked ghost appeared to me in my bedroom I, too, would shoot him with a BB gun.

Unless it was the ghost of Cary Grant. Then all bets are off, right?

Oh that story about your grandmother makes me sad!

But I most definitely agree: last wishes should be granted. How you want to go, how you want to be buried. One of the really interesting ongoing themes on 6 Feet Under is that. The person who died says: "I would like to be buried in the shiny blue casket with the floating Virgin Mary's all over it." The son, who is upwardly mobile, says about his dead mother's choice: "My mother will NOT be buried in that ghetto coffin. I think THIS is much more classy." The undertaker has to say, in an uncomfortable moment; "But your mother liked this one. She chose this one."

It comes up a lot.

Back to Nudie Man:

John - the dude sounds like a dipstick to me as well. I said I thought he was a nut, myself. I found the whole story rather humorous, actually. There are dipsticks among us. Oh well. There goes Nudie Neighbor. What a weirdo.

I don't know. Didn't strike me as this huge issue. So what if he did it for attention? I do lots of weird shit for attention sometimes. I also behave in a certain way in private which, because of the proximity of my neighbors, might seem rude. Occasionally, I sing at the top of my lungs as I clean. By myself. With all my windows open. I sing show tunes, at the top of my lungs. It's probably annoying to my neighbors. Nobody's complained though. So I keep doing it. It's a quirk. I find singing relaxing. Hopefully no one shoots me with a BB gun for it. They probably roll their eyes across the backyard, thinking: "There goes our sad spinster neighbor, singing to herself again. What a lonely weirdo."

Barry - uhm. Yes. All bets would then be off. I think I just peed my pants a little bit at the thought.

Urk. Sorry 'bout that.

Off topic - What's your favorite show tune to sing by yourself?

Well, Sheila, Carey was planning on stopping by until that last comment.

I love to sing "Bill" from Show Boat. That's always my first number in my own private cabaret/cleaning show.

"He's just my Bill
An ordinary guy
He hasn't got a thing that I could brag about
And yet to be
Upon his knee
So comfy and roomy
Seems natural to me ..."

I also love to sing "He Touched Me" - immortalized by Barbra Streisand in her Central Park concert. Yes. Immortalized. Unbelievable - it's a damn hard song, but so so fun to sing. I really let 'er rip on that one.

"He touched me ...
He tou-ou-ched me
And SUDDENLEEEE
Nothing ... nothing, nothing, nothing ...
is --
the --
saaaaaaame..."

Oh! Awesome song!!

I also do a heart-cracking ballad from the show Closer than ever called "I've been here before":

"The man says things he needs to say
Turns to smile as he stands at my door
And then I see his eyes are grey
Oh God
I've been here before..."

That's a pretty love-lorn set of songs, come to think of it. Think I need to jazz it up a bit with something a bit more up-tempo. (That'll please the neighbors. They'll think: Wow, she's trying out some new material!)

Try something easy like, "Your Fault" from Into the Woods or "I'm Not Getting Married Today" from Company. You know, some simple Sondheim (an oxymoron if ever there was...)

Barry - Oh God, no. Not Sondheim.

Actually, I do sing one Sondheim on occasion - called Losing my Mind. I love that song! From Follies - that's Sondheim, I believe - or did he just do the lyrics?

"The sun comes up
I think about you
The coffee cup
I think about you ..."

Heart-breaking song.

But other Sondheim? No.

I love Sondheim - don't get me wrong. I just find that I cannot sing the guy's stuff at ALL.

"Uhm, why is there a naked ghost in the frozen food section?"

That sounds like a poor choice of a place to manifest to me. I mean, produce, bakery, canned foods, OK. But nude in the frozen foods section?

Have you considered singing show tune filks? If not, you might take a look at Heroine Barbarian, sung to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's Modern Major General.

BTW, I don't think it's necessary to sing the footnotes.

On a more serious note, I'm ambivalent about the importance of following last wishes. I think funerals and last wishes and the like are for the living, the dead being incapable of showing any interest in the matter. (I understand that others will differ, this is JMO.)

If it makes those closest to the dead feel better knowing that the deceased is decomposing with clothes rather than without, I don't see the harm.

This doesn't address the situation when family members differ about what should be (or should have been) done, of course. I don't think there is any easy way to handle such disputes.

If someone writes down - in a will -

"I would like to be married in the wedding dress to my first husband" - (ha! Now that would be a good short story - especially if she had been married for 30 years to some other dude!) - then you must follow their wishes.

One of my best friends lost both her parents suddenly when a tree fell on their car during a freak wind storm in Rhode Island.

Thankfully - both of them had living wills, and had said: "do not resuscitate" on it - and had very specific messages about how they wished to die.

My friend (an only child) spent those terrible crazy days honoring every last one of her parents wishes - including having a jazz band at the graveside ceremony. Yup - a jazz band, playing "when the saints came marching in". They weren't a smooth jazz band - They were 3 old black men, wearing fedoras, and they looked like they had stepped out of a juke joint in New Orleans. They didn't play it like a dirge, they played it like a triumphant celebration. It was like a PARTY in that snowy graveyard. It was what her mother had wanted. Unconventional, yes ... but oh how amazing and unforgettable.

There were people at the ceremony who were confused and kind of disapproving. The tune was too happy - they exchanged glances like: "well, now, isn't this ... strange ..." - etc. - but I remember seeing all the little old ladies from my friends' mother's knitting group - her dear friends - and they all started roaring with laughter through their tears, saying to each other, "Oh, this is just what she wanted!"

I think it is very very important that a family honor the wishes of the dead.

Shiela,

I could take a neighbor gardening in the nude, but I gotta draw the line at singing show tunes. [Channeling Cusack's character in A Sure Thing ...

And no Sondheim?! One of my favorite shower singing includes Sondheim:

The Jets are gonna have their day
Tonight
The Jets are gonna have their way
Tonight
The Puerto Ricans grumble
'Fair fight'
But if they start a rumble
We'll rumble'em right
(don't picture me in the shower; picture my wife rolling her eyes while brushing her teeth)

hahahaha That is definitely a good shower song.

And The Sure Thing! Tim Robbins sulking because no one is singing. "I'm not going to sing if they don't sing. It just takes the fun right out of it." So damn FUNNY!!!!

"I'm Gary Cooper." [Pause] "But not the Gary Cooper that's DEAD." [Maniacal laugh.]

Weird aside 1:

The Sure Thing was the first (and last?) movie I ever recorded (VCR to VCR, circa late 1985) that wouldn't record properly... The producers had used a new technology that made the signal strong enough to display on your TV, but too weak to record. This method was used for maybe 3 months, until people complained to video rental places that it was causing poor viewing on many TVs.

Weird aside 2:

I wanted to name my son "Nick" but my wife nixed that idea and I relented as long as we wouldn't name him "Elliot" .

Ah, but what would a naked ghost sing if you shot him with a bb gun? Probably "Comedy Tonight!" from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum...

If he sings "Tonight" from West Side Story, take Eddie Murphy's advice and Get The Fuck Outta The House!

I'd LOVE to hear you sing "He Touched Me," Red! BS gave it such a showbiz pizzazz, just incredible. Seems to me I heard a perfume commercial once a long time ago with that as the theme. Isn't that perfect?

He touched me ---- heeeeee touched meeeee
And SUUUUUUUU DENNNN LEEEEEEE
Nothing, nothing, nothing is . . . . the same.

Well, I for one wouldn't really care, but as a legal matter my first impression is that his neighbors seem perfectly within their rights. So might you be if your neighbors' constant sex kept you from sleeping: most states (maybe all of them?) create an implied warranty of peaceable enjoyment in residential leases that can't be disclaimed except in favor of language that protects the tenant even more. Your property rights end where someone else's begin: when you use your property in a way that affects how others can use their property, they can argue that it's a nuisance.

If they could see me now
That same old gang of mine.
Driving a comp'ny car
And wearing shoes that shine...

stevie -

What amazes me about that song is how damn HIGH it is. Like ... Barbra BELTS it. I do not have a belt that goes that high. So I have to go into soprano-mode - which is my normal mode. If you put power and breath behind the soprano part of the voice, it can SOUND like a belt ... but it just doesn't have the same goosebump effect.

You need a high high belt to sing on Broadway. Ah well. There goes my big musical career.

When she suddenly - spontaneously (it sounds like) repeats "nothing" 3 times ... I swear to God, tears come to my eyes every time I hear it.

Red - yup, it's amazing how she belts it like that when it's so high, and then pulls it back to the "nothing, nothing, nothing . . . " Sigh. When I try to sing along and belt it, I'm afraid it sounds like I'm stepping on the hoof of a goat. I'm plenty loud (just ask my dog, who goes running from the room) and I'm on key, but the sound is so harsh. I watched Barbra's Millennium concert on DVD last night because you put me in the mood for a little BS, and she sings like that for almost three hours and her voice is still as pure and clean on the "belts."

Have you ever heard her sing "Free Again?"

Damn!

Free Again? No ... how does it go? what album is it on?

Red - Barbra Streisand's Greatest Hits (released 1964, if you can believe it!) Slightly premature for a greatest hits album. On the album cover she's got long wringlets coming from a boufant crown, and green eye shadow. Ummm, wild!

The song isn't available on iTunes, but it goes like this (it drips with sarcasm):

"Free again,
Back to being free again,
Back to being ME again,
with all my precious freedom, my precious precious freedom,

On my own,
Back to being on my own,
Back to live the life I'd known,
Before I ever knew him, I ever, ever knew him.

(huge crecendo) FREE AGAIN!
In-de-pen-dent ME, free again,
Back in circulation now,
raise the roof and shout it now,
time to have a PARTY! A PARTY! [dripping with irony]

[quiet now] All alone,
back to being . . . all alone,
Back to live the life I'd known,
Back to being all alone,
Free again,
Free again,
(whispered) Free

It's a great big sixties masochistic woman's blues number, but FABULOUS, of course, and it's ready for a comeback with a cynical twist. I wonder if Alex sings it? She'd hit it out of the park. As would you, I suspect :)

Sheila- As you know, I am in Va on vacation with my in-laws. The other morning, over coffe with George, I noticed the article about the nudie guy, and brought it to my father-in-laws attention. We both agreed it was quite mean. We went back to reading the paper. After a quiet minute or two, George remarked (without even looking up) "Well, at least I hope they let him go commando before they put the pants on him..." I love that man!!