The Sheila Variations

Liberty

Okay, I'm just going to try to regain a vocabulary here. But I am in a mood where words are inadequate.

I went to Liberty Cafe, in Hoboken (otherwise known as "Sheila's home away from home for the last week and a half"). David and Maria were joining me. I scored bar stools for all of us. We had a perfect spot. Perfect. David was in full Red Sox regalia, head to toe.

I'm sorry - I have forgotten how to write.

The same crowd was there ... the crowd I have gotten to know by sight over the last couple of years.

Above our head was a massive skylight. Through that, we watched the moon turn red, and then disappear.

I mean - you just can't script something like that: A blood-red moon, a lunar eclipse, seen through a skylight of a bar where there are huddled 100 insane Red Sox fans watching the historic moment of a World Series sweep??... You just couldn't script it.

I have screamed myself hoarse. I am hung over. I can't calm my brain down. Maria and I were handed free glasses of champagne when we won.

It was utter mayhem. We were out of our minds. I still get a bit choked up thinking about it. David - screaming - screaming - text messaging - screaming - Maria with her hand over her mouth - and then suddenly LOSING it.

I wish I had taken notes during the game. I'll just babble some thoughts.

-- D-Lowe: As much as I have always had affection for you, I have to admit I doubted you quite a bit this season. You seemed a bit mental, too emotional ... I would watch the bright pink spots come out on your cheeks, watch you blow out your breath in a huff, and think: Uh-oh. He's cracking. He's a headcase, his psyche is delicate ... Uhm - Derek, I owe you a big fat apology.

-- When Lowe came back to the dugout after his amazing feat ... there was this shot ... of Pedro Martinez hugging him. Did anyone else see that? The hug went on and on and on, Derek actually stopped the hug ... in that way that you do sometimes ("Okay. Nice hug, but now it should be ending now...") - but Pedro, with this huge grin on his face, didn't let go. Would not let go. We all saw that moment - David, Maria, and I. I said, "Wow. That is extraordinary. Look at how this group of men have bonded. They are a TEAM." I mean, I have known that this was true, but it was the Pedro-hug-that-wouldn't-end moment that made it real for me.

-- Uhm ... the constant shots of Red Sox fans in bars in New York and LA? Lame. Freakin' lame.

-- I absolutely loved the lunatic shot at the press conference afterwards, when they're trying to talk to Bud Selig or someone ... and a drenched Pedro wanders into the camera shot, with this huge grin on his face, holding the trophy ... and then wanders out again. I loved that.

-- I still kind of can't get past the mayhem that erupted after Foulke's underhanded throw to Mientkiewicz at first ... I keep going back to it. Re-living it. I can't help it - it continues to unfurl in my mind's eye like a beautiful movie on replay. It was spectacular. I mean ... I guess I never really believed that I would ever have that moment, that it would ever be ME going nuts in October ... People were out of their minds. There was one guy across the bar from us who looked like a traveling preacher from The Apostle or something. He was a young kid with a buzz cut, but he just stood there - for about 10 minutes - arms up in the air ... head thrown back ... occasionally shaking his head ... occasionally putting one hand over his eyes ... but standing frozen ... like he was about to preach fire and brimstone. Like he was having a revelation from above or something. He was completely overcome.

-- Here is what I noticed, during the mayhem (I only notice this in looking back on it): The crowd at the bar was erupting in waves, the waves breaking, receding, pulling back, and then pounding the shore again. Nobody was doing the same thing at the same time ... there were multiple waves, all having their own arcs and peaks ... so at any given moment when you looked around the bar you could see:

1. People jumping up and down like maniacs
2. People huddled over their cell phones
3. People sitting quietly with their hands over their mouths, or up on the sides of their cheeks, staring up at the TV, quietly. In awe. Disbelief.

And we ALL went through each ONE of these phases ... but at different times. Waves breaking, pulling back, sucking at the shore, gathering strength, and then crashing in again ...

I was jumping up and down like a maniac. Hugging strangers. Jumping, screaming, jumping. Then I would grab David's phone and call someone, quickly. Huddling into the phone against the mayhem, screaming a couple of words at the person on the other line. Hanging up. And then it would hit me on a whole deeper level, and I would have to sit down, quietly, with my hand over my mouth, staring up at the TV.

As I'm jumping up and down, Maria sits in stunned silence, staring at the TV, while David screams into his cell phone. Then David hangs up, sits down in stunned silence, and suddenly Maria is the one on the phone, while I'm still jumping up and down. Then David starts jumping up and down, and Maria is on the phone, and I'm staring up at the TV quietly ...

This kind of trade-off of different emotional states happened with the entire crowd - over and over and over - for about 35 minutes.

-- I can't even look at Curt Schilling without wanting to ... cry? Yes. But also molest him. (Lovingly, of course.) I just want to do something for that guy. He came to this team with a single focus. He adapted to the team, yes, he accepted what it meant ... he was embraced by Boston, he was ubiquitous in the chat rooms and call-in shows ... he embraced Boston - but at the same time, he did not accept all the stupid curse baggage that came with it. This guy ... this guy ... I don't mean to lay the ENTIRE victory at his feet - but he certainly deserves the lion's share.

That's the great thing, though - and I heard this comment on the radio this morning too - there were any number of guys on the Red Sox who could have been MVP. I thought it would be Ortiz, but there were many others, too. This was a team. A group. The sum is greater than all the parts. Or something like that.

I still don't know how to speak about this.

-- David turned to me at one point, during the mayhem afterwards, and shouted, "WE WILL NEVER FORGET ANY OF THESE MEN - NONE OF THEM - WE WILL REMEMBER THEIR NAMES FOREVER."

-- And during the mayhem ... the TVs are still blasting ... and one commercial came on ... a commercial that obviously they only would have run if the Red Sox had won. I do not even know what the hell it was for. But the shot was of 4 Boston fans, sitting in the stands at Fenway ... with a rolling scroll of dates beneath ... starting with 1918. And as the dates scroll ... you watched the people morph, and change. You watched the 1920s fashions morph into 1930s fashions ... you watched the hairdos change ... you watched people come and go ... and the dates kept scrolling ... The faces were elated, the faces were grumpy, the faces were excited, or devastated ... 1970s fashion now ... 1980s ... 1990s ... and finally ... the last shot had the date 2003 underneath ... and there were 4 old guys sitting there ... (I think it was 4 men, I don't know) ... 4 white-haired old gents ... watching their team play ... 2003. How long those gentlemen have waited ... and then the screen went to black, and the date showed, large: 2004. Anyway, that was a long-ass description of that commercial. But there was a kind of nostalgic music playing, a sweet tender music ... and as I watched the dates change, and the faces change, and as I thought about my grandfather, my uncles, my aunts, my cousins ... I thought about Boston as a whole ... so much of my own childhood tied up with this team ... Silly, I know, but I didn't shed a tear until I saw that commercial. Suddenly - watching that commercial - it hit me what had actually happened. And then I was standing there, with tears rolling down my face.

Tears of happiness, sure, but also tears of relief. We did it. After all these damn years, we did it. We hung with our team, we got beat, we got our hearts broke, we had to endure taunts, smug petty taunts, we had to be taunted with a stupid Curse that I don't even believe in ... Generations pass down the allegiance. I know it was the case in my family.

Relief that we did it, but also great great joy and pride in HOW we did it. In HOW it happened.

A sweep? What?? Beating the Yankees in their own damn stadium? What?

And to win that series through the strength of our PITCHING ... The Cardinals obviously have some of the best players in the league. But they could not get past our ranks of pitchers.

-- I came home (had left the cell phone at home, because I'm an idiot) - and there were 15 incoherent messages on my phone. One after the other after the other. "AHHHHHH" "YEE-HAW" Wild cackles of laughter. My brother screaming: "WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!" I listened to all of them, standing in my quiet apartment, it's 1 in the morning, I'm drunk, but my head is buzzing, my blood pumping with adrenaline ... and I felt connected. I felt connected with all of them.

-- And all the players continuously thanking US ... We all kept cheering and losing it whenever any of them acknowledged "Boston fans" - as though they were literally talking to us face to face, personally. "He means me!! He's talking about me!!"

-- Johnny Damon. Holy moly. You know what strikes me about him, besides his Grizzly Adams/Jesus general hot-ness? How un-attached he seems. By that I mean: he goes up there, with very little drama, and just does what he needs to do. You don't see him LINGER in moments. Home run? Run around the bases, move on. Next play. Strike out? Oh well, move on. His face reveals nothing (unlike the Derek Lowe nervous-boy face which made me so anxiety-stricken all summer ... Derek Lowe has seemed TOO attached - like his entire self-esteem and happiness and self-worth rest on his success ... But again: I OWE HIM A BIG FAT APOLOGY for doubting him.) Damon seems to just get the job done, and move on. LOVE that man.

I can't seem to stop talking now.

I know I'm writing badly. But my head hurts and my brain is spinning and I just don't care.

-- Most of all, I am so thrilled that - if I couldn't watch that momentous game with my family - I got to watch it with David and Maria. I'll never ever in my life forget last night.

How do you say Thank you to these guys? How do you say ... THANK YOU?? DO THEY HEAR ME?

I'm beside myself.

One comment.

Scott Stapp? Scott Stapp? Is that that jackass from Creed's name?

EWWWWWWW

Some other links

Here are a couple from Cubs fan Big Stupid Tommy:

Thoughts from 1:51 in the AM

Boston Yes. Curt Schilling should be given a throne. I can't even really think about that guy directly without getting misty-eyed.

Bambino's Curse is shutting down. Hopefully he will re-emerge with a new domain name ... but the "curse" domain is done.

Bill McCabe describes a perfect evening.

Steve Silver comments:

"Yes, Fox's coverage of the postseason pretty much sucked from start to finish. But their closing credits of the Series contained a masterstroke: it closed with the still photo, from the "Cheers" opening credits, of the guy behind the bar holding up a newspaper reading "WE WIN."

As a young fan I used to always love the closing montage of World Series highlights every year, and this was a nice reminder."

And finally - just go over here to Llama Butchers, and scroll down. Tears in my eyes from this one.

This is brilliant

There are 5 Red Sox fans living in Tashkent, Uzbekistan...

"This is bigger than the 25 guys in this clubhouse."

This photo ....

Johnny Pesky hugging Curt Schilling. I mean ... that's just huge.

I can't even look at that for too long. It's too much. Too much.

Last night, a champagne-drenched Theo Epstein said, "This is for anyone who ever played for the Red Sox, anyone who ever rooted for the Red Sox, anyone who ever saw a game at Fenway Park. This is bigger than the 25 guys in this clubhouse. This is for all of Red Sox Nation, past and present."

I guess I still can't really speak yet.

I can't even speak yet

Gimme a second.

In the meantime, read this. This is what it's all about. This is what this victory means.

I can't speak yet.

Game 4

Harvest moon. Lunar eclipse. Ted Hughes. Psychology. Three games won. Three games won? Yes. Three games won. Bambino's Curse has it all.

You know, I'm trying to avoid the self-referential, chip on the shoulder, Red Sox fan attitude that so infuriates the rest of the world, the "It's all about us" attitude, but what fans other than Red Sox fans would find themselves so wedged between this historical Scylla and Charybdis? No team comes back from 0-3 except our team who came back from 0-3, round and round the whirlpool cum cesspool of possible imagined outcomes spins and spins in my mind.

How did this happen?

And what of this moon?

Tonight, for Game 4, I'm meeting up with David and his wife Maria at a Red Sox bar in Hoboken - the same one where I overheard the "smotheration" conversation.

To cynics, all of this means "nothing". That's the "it's just a game" crowd. But those people don't count. They're party-poopers, and "it's just a game" adds NOTHING to the conversation.

I know it's just a game. I know. I know.

But what a game.

The pros and cons of "Smotheration"

Okay, so ... in waiting for the game to start last night ... (I was at a bar. I am very much looking forward to next week when I don't spend literally HOURS every night in a bar). Two guys were sitting next to me. They were friends, obviously. They both had on backwards baseball caps, and they were chowing down on a plate of buffalo wings. From comments they dropped, I gathered they were Yankee fans, and just couldn't get enthusiastic about the Series.

I admit that I eavesdropped. Blatantly. I had to hold myself back from taking out a pen, then and there, to transcribe the whole thing.

I will just list the facts here, as in: here is what they said. I will do my best not to editorialize or interpret. Although I will probably have to add little notes indicating HOW they said certain things, my interpretation of their tone.

For whatever reason, this male-bonding conversation really got to me. It touched me. It seemed quite deep - although, being the type of guys who wear backwards baseball caps and eat a pile of buffalo wings - they aren't going to speak in psycho-babble, or over-analyze themselves, or be touchy-feely. But it was DEEP SHIT, nonetheless.

I had to restrain myself from leaning over and saying, "I have been listening to this whole thing, and I just love both of you. I wish you both well."

From what I could gather, here's the situation:

These guys are old close friends. And one of them has started to date a girl (whom I will refer to as Katie) - and it looks like it's getting pretty serious - and so ... there seemed to be some issues around this. But remember - they're old close friends.

I tuned into their conversation at the point where the friend was saying, "Listen, I really like Katie, but ..."

Try to follow it if you can.

"Listen, I really like Katie, but ... and ... I probably have no right to say this to you ... but ..."

"What?"

"I guess I feel like ... Listen, she's great, okay? I just ..." (long silence - My heart went out to the guy speaking - I thought: Come on, dude, just say what's on your mind. Ooops. I'm editorializing. I'll stop now.) "I just guess I feel like she smothers you sometimes. Like ... there's some smotheration going on."

"Yeah."

"You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, man, I know. I know ... I guess I kinda like it, though." (Silence.) "Like ... it's just so nice hanging out with her. It's so nice ... I can relax with her, you know?"

Then came a conversation about the problems Katie may be having with another friend of theirs - who is a girl. Possibly an ex-girlfriend? I don't know.

Guy dating Katie said, "I've tried to explain to her that ... Heather is just a friend ... and ... we never ... You know. Heather and me never ..."

"Of course not. No, it's like ... Yeah, I get what you're saying."

"Like - she doesn't need to be ... nervous about Heather."

"Right. Like - you're not gonna cheat on her or whatever."

"No. Totally."

"Like I said - that's kind of what I mean. And I like Katie too, I really do - she's a lot of fun - but it's the smotheration thing."

Silence.

Guy dating Katie said, "I know. I know."

"Cool. Just so long as you know."

"Still, though - it's just that - if I have to choose - and I hope it doesn't come to that - but if I have to choose - I choose Katie. Because ... yeah, I know, she kind of smothers, and stuff ... but I'm tellin' ya - it's just so nice being with her."

(I thought to myself: I bet he ends up marrying that girl.)

His friend thought about this for a long time. Then said, quietly, "I'd like to have a girl like that."

Later on ... they came back to the "smotheration" issue.

The friend (the one who was concerned about the smothering) started talking about HIS love-life. Which sounds very frustrating.

He had gone on a couple of dates with one girl. And that day she had emailed him, and all the email said was: "Do you think I'm totally empty inside?"

Jesus. I have a message for women who send emails like that: DON'T.

The guy said to his friend, "What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? 'Do you think I'm totally empty inside?' What? I was going to email her back with a bunch of question marks ... but then I thought - fuck it, I don't even know what the hell she's talking about. I mean ... I've called her a couple times ... but - I don't want to deal with that shit."

Long pause. They both sat there, thinking. Not speaking. Then the same guy said, seriously, "What do you think that means - 'Do you think I'm empty inside'?"

Friend (the one dating Katie said): "Oh who the fuck knows. One of her friends probably said something to her about whatever, and now she's all fucking dramatic about everything."

"Yeah, but what the hell do I have to say about her being empty inside? Jesus. She's nuts."

Then the same guy started talking about a semi-"relationiship" he was having with some other chick named Meg ... and I felt bad for him. (Especially in light of the revealing moment when he said to himself, "I'd like to have a girl like that.") The situation appears to be: he is really into Meg. They have a great time together, whenever they get together. But it's really difficult for them to hook up, there's a lot of phone tag, etc.

He said, "Like ... she's really really busy." (Ha. Like my friend Jackie has said to me before, "No one's ever that busy. If they're into you, they'll call you, they'll make it happen.")

He said, "I respect the fact that she doesn't have a lot of time ... I don't want to push or whatever ... but still ... I guess it's that she's really really independent." (I'm thinking to myself: Oh boy. She's giving him the "I'm really busy and I'm really independent" line?? Poor guy! He deserves better, he definitely does.)

Meanwhile, he's talking to his friend, who is being "smothered" by his girlfriend - but his friend obviously likes it - and doesn't feel "smothered" at all. What his friend feels is taken care of. This girl gives a crap enough to let him know she's interested, she's available, etc. She doesn't leave him out hanging.

Okay. Interpretation over.

Friend kept saying, "And whenever we hang out - it's great, you know? It's totally great. But for the past couple weeks - I haven't been able to see her - but she text-messages me all the time. I got one from her last night ... it's just kind of frustrating ... cause I don't want to be ... like ... I respect the fact she's busy and all that."

(I wanted to lean in and say, "No one is ever that busy. If she's into you, she'd find a way.")

But then came the coolest part:

Katie, the famous "smothering" Katie, arrived. Her boyfriend got up, gave her a big hug, a kiss ... and made her sit on his bar stool. She struck me as a cool woman. She didn't just talk to her boyfriend, she also engaged in conversation with his friend.

And then - the boyfriend left to go make a phone call or something - and Katie and the other guy started talking.

And within 2 or 3 exchanges, he started telling her about this "independent busy" woman. Like ... he may think Katie smothers his friend, but there's also something in her that he can trust. I LOVED that.

Sorry. I am interpreting this like a fiend, I realize. I can't help it!!

Anyway, I heard him saying the same things - only it was a tiny bit different because he was talking to a girl, and not a guy.

"I don't know ... she text messages me and stuff ... and keeps saying she wants to get together ... but ... Do you think that means she doesn't really want to see me?"

Why did I find all of this so touching? I was bored waiting for the game to start. I got very emotionally involved.

Katie took kind of a hard-line. "Pick up the phone and call her. Say to her, 'I want to see you.' Just do it! You say you really like her?"

"Totally. You met her that one night we went to blah blah blah, member?"

"Wait ... which one?" Katie thought and then said, "Oh! Right! Yeah, she was great! Okay, so be persistent. Call her. Do it."

(Go, Katie. You tell 'im.)

Katie and the boyfriend eventually went out to put their car into a parking garage, I believe ... leaving the friend by himself at the bar.

And I shit you not: the guy dialed someone on the phone. I wasn't paying attention anymore ... the game was almost started.

But then I heard him say, "Meg - hey."

I thought to myself: Meg! Oh! He's calling her right now!! The famously "busy" Meg! Katie's words helped him make the call!

And, BLESS HIM, he leapt right in. "Listen - I'd like to take you out to dinner this week. Would you like to do that?" He listened to her response. "You would? Great ... uh ... how about Thursday? I could pick you up after ..." Meg made some comment. "Great. 7:30 it is."

Good work, my good man. Good work. And I can see why Katie is beloved by her boyfriend, even though she might "smother" him. A common-sense girl, that one.

I probably haven't described why I eavesdropped on this ... why I found it so wonderful to listen to. I guess I ended up having great affection for all of the people involved (well, except for maybe "busy independent" Meg.)

It was a brief glimpse into a friendship, a situation ... and I liked it. I liked them all.

All the way from Australia ...

... they discuss the Sox.

Are you the type of fan who keeps the phone lines open during the game so every moment can be picked apart with your friends and family, also watching, but separated by geography?

Or are you the kind of fan who withdraws into solitude, so that you "may more deeply and harmfully dwell on the fortunes of [your] team"?

Tim Blair wants to know. Tim is the latter kind of fan. He withdraws. He "harmfully dwells". heh heh.

(Some of the comments in that thread, though, were so annoying that I couldn't even read further. "Kerry's from Boston, I hope the Sox lose, they deserve to lose." Yawn. Boring boring boring. I can't think of anything more uninteresting than seeing EVERYTHING through the filter of which political "side" you are on. Gawd. Get a life. Also one of the comments was: "It's Just a game, guys ... chill out." Another boring response.)

But back to the question at hand:

I myself keep the phone lines open.

However - I will not take the call if I know it's someone who's not watching the game, or unaware of what is going on, OR just calling me to bust on how into the game I am.

I keep the lines open for those who get it.

Uh ... what?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I have moments, sudden flashes, where it will hit me what is actually going on, what we are seeing. Other than that, I am moving around like in a dream almost.

The Pedro who pitched last night was the Pedro everyone had been praying would show up. There he was.

Read the first couple of paragraphs of this article. Gives the old girl a lump in the throat, I tell ya. If I saw Curt Schilling on the street, I would attack him. I would throw my arms around his neck. I would kiss his stapled-on foot. I would give him a huge kiss on the lips. I would wash his blood-soaked socks by hand in the sink. I don't know. I want to do SOMETHING for the guy. I can't even express the admiration I have for that man.

But Pedro. Man, what a rush. What a rush.

Sports Guy, as always, expresses better than I ever could what is actually going on with all of us right now. Not just about the games and everything, but what is going on with our emotions. Why this is big, why this is different, etc.

Sports Guy references a real tear-jerker of a post: Win It For, which, actually, my good friend Dan sent to me last week. Take a second and scroll through "Win it For". I dare you to do so without getting choked up. The post itself is a command to "win it for" people like:

Win it for Johnny Pesky, who deserves to wear a Red Sox uniform in the dugout during the 2004 World Series. Mr. Henry, the trophy needs to be presented first of all to him.

And

Win it for Carl Yastrzemski. While his heart still aches today, may a smile break through his personal storm-cloud this evening. His beloved son, Mike, will show us the way. God speed, number eight.

And

Win it for Tony, who taught us all the meaning of courage and grit. A day doesn't go by when I don't think of you, number 25.

On and on it goes, but it ends with:

Most of all, win it for James Lawrence Kelly, 1913-1986. This one's for you, Daddy. You always told me that loyalty and perseverance go hand in hand. Thanks for sharing the best part of you with me.

GULP. There are now HUNDREDS of comments to this one post - with everyone saying "win it for my grandfather who dreamt of this day ..." "win it for my friend whose dad has Alzheimers ... She so wishes her father were aware of what was happening..." "win it for my grandfather who took me to my first game..."

It's killer.

I say:

Win it for my Uncle Jimmy. My long-haired godfather who was one of the craziest Red Sox fans I have ever met. (Brendan - member the high-speed race up 95 he took you on, in order to get you to Fenway on time?) I can honestly say that not a day goes by when my Uncle Jimmy doesn't enter my mind ... and I can also say that as things happen to me in my life, big things, little things - and also things like this Red Sox series, I think of Uncle Jimmy and wish that he were here to be a crazy part of it.

I went to my first Red Sox game ever with all of my O'Malley uncles and cousins. They were playing the Oakland A's, and I sat with my new cousin Brenda, Jimmy's stepdaughter from his new marriage. Brenda and I became good friends during that game. It was a night game. My first time at Fenway. I was very small. We had all clattered down to the stadium on the trolleys, being very loud, very riotous, very O'Malley-ish. There were about 12 kids in tow, and 6 uncles. The stadium lights beamed down, the flag whipped in the air, the Citgo sign gleamed ...

Win it for all of my uncles and aunts. Win it for my cousin Brenda. Win it for my cousin Mike. All my cousins.

Win it for my father. Please. Win it for my father.

Win it for my sister Siobhan, my brother Brendan, my sister Jean, her boyfriend Pat ... all of them ... sitting on the edges of their seats ... watching ... watching with dawning understanding. Can we be excited yet? Can we give over yet? Win it for Siobhan ... who has, on her coffee table, a line of those little Russian dolls - the ones that get smaller and smaller and smaller ... only these guys are all famous Red Sox players, past and present. Win it for Siobhan, who also has a "Nomar flip-book" on her coffee table.

Win it for my mother. "Hunkering down" on the couch for the games. Immediately following each game, my cell phone rings - It's my mother. Calling me to discuss.

But most of all, win it for my Uncle Jimmy. God, I wish he were here.

Tonight?

Game 3 of the World Series.

In which the Red Sox are playing.

In which the Red Sox have won 2 - 0.

Is this for real, man?? Hang tight. Hang tight. It's not over til it's over.

A Halloween Photo Album

Unfurling below you are some of the Halloween costumes I (and my siblings, my friends, boyfriends) have worn throughout the years. As usual, with a blabber-mouth with me, there's a story to go along with each one of them.

Unfortunately, there are no photos of my sojourn as Squeaky Fromme through the streets of San Francisco.

There's also an infamous picture of my brother and I - I must be 3, and he is 2 years old ... I am wearing a witch's hat that for whatever reason has a bodacious BLONDE wig attached to it. (A blonde witch?) And my little baby brother is a small Casper ghost. He's such a little thing, and his little face peeks out of the sheet ... It is such a cute picture. I thought I had it in my own album, but alas, I do not.

The below will have to suffice.

Links to costumes through the years:

Witch

Flapper

Blind dumb French beggar 1

Blind dumb French beggar 2

Jackie's grandparents

Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow

Sharon Tate 1

Sharon Tate 2

Halloween

This is the earliest Halloween photo I have from my childhood. I am in kindergarten. So that means that my brother (LOOK AT HIS CLOWN HAT ... Oh God, that just makes me laugh SO HARD ... the hat is taller than his little body) ... so my brother is 3, and I am 4.

My mother made that rabbit costume. Actually, she probably made the clown costume too.

Thanks, Mum.

Halloween in the pre-teen years

My best friend and I went through a HUGE 1920s phase ... I'm not sure why it came about. It might have been because we both saw Bugsy Malone, and we wanted to be flappers.

I am in a very very awkward stage of development here. I am ... 12? The fangs in my teeth show me that this is pre-braces.

Sadly, my friend and I worked SO HARD on our "flapper costumes", and the subtlety of all of it was lost on the masses. We even researched the decade, we looked up old fashion magazines of the day, makeup styles of the day, etc.

On Halloween night, we strolled around our old childhood neighborhood, where we had grown up. It would be our last time trick-or-treating, and we knew it ... and horror of horrors: everyone thought we were dressed up as "hookers". We didn't even know what hookers were. I remember one woman saying, laughing, "Oh, it's two ladies of the evening!" Again - we had no idea what that was.

We were flappers. We had researched the Prohibition era. We knew about the jazz age. We knew about the cars, the makeup, the pearls ... "ladies of the evening"? What's that?

Before

And here I am, with one of my college boyfriends at a Halloween party.

He is a nerd. (No shit. LOOK at that costume. Crikey.)

And I am a blind dumb French beggar. (Uh ... what, Sheila?) The sign around my neck says "J'ai faim".

I'm insane. Anyway - here we are at the beginning of the party. The post below this one shows us nearing the end of the party.

After

And here is the "After" shot.

We are much later into the evening now, of course ... Er ...

'Nuff said.

Halloween -

This photo needs a bit of set-up, but it might be my favorite of all of them.

It's two of my best friends in the world - Mitchell and Jackie.

Mitchell and Jackie came as Jackie's grandparents, Chester and Millie, who had been married for 60 years or something like that. Both of them had very distinctive ways of walking, talking, being. Jackie adored them. When one of them passed away, the other one followed a couple of months later. It was that kind of relationship.

So this was Jackie and Mitchell's tribute to Chester and Millie.

There is so much about this photo that I find hilarious. I look at it - and I can't even really LAUGH.

It's like - these are NOT my friends. They are "Chester and Millie". The expression in Jackie's eyes ... in Mitchell's ... they are CHANNELING those 2 people.

Halloween ...

Mitchell and I, if we are geographically near to one another, like to choose costumes that "go" together for Halloween. For example, the one below. He is Andy Warhol, and I am Edie Sedgwick - Warhol's siver-haired "it" girl for about 2 seconds. So obscure, I know - but Mitchell and I were obsessed with "Edie and Andy".

LOOK AT THE EXPRESSION on Mitchell's face. So SUPERIOR - it just makes me LAUGH. We picked up those ridiculous glasses for you, along with my false eyelashes, at CVS, as I recall.

Heh heh. We were "in character" for about half an hour, and then we just had to drop the pose. It was too tiresome!

That party was insane. I had it at my place. This was the party where my friend Beth, infamously, became "an angry clown".

This Halloween costume ...

... was a job for two. It was just at the time of the Woody Allen - Soon Yi brou-haha, and so Mitchell and I went to a Halloween party dressed as Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. There are a couple of funny things to note here (we got SO into our costumes, they are highly detailed).

-- I dressed as frumpy and as "passive-aggressively" as possible. I had baby toys in all my pockets, and I carried a rag doll.

-- Now onto Mitchell: First of all: notice his frozen horrified face. I think that may be favorite part.

But also note:

-- Mitchell is carrying Crime and Punishment. Woody is a Dostoevsky freak, but also - at that time in his life - the title of the book seemed quite a propos.

-- But the creme de la creme is the bookmark. Mitchell found a semi-erotic photograph of Geisha girls, and placed it in Crime and Punishment as a bookmark. I couldn't even look at that darn book, with the Geisha girls peeking out from the pages, without guffawing with laughter.

Sadly, mortifyingly: the party we had been invited to turned out NOT to be a costume party. Only this hadn't been made clear to us. I mean, Jeez, the party was a "Halloween party". Now ... wouldn't you assume that this meant "wear costumes" as opposed to "wear evening gowns"? We showed up, looking like that, and were confronted by a crowd of guys wearing suits, and women wearing small black sheaths and open-toed shoes.

To add another level of mortification to it: Even though Mitchell and I look TERRIBLE, it is not immediately apparent that these are, in fact, costumes. I mean, it's not like we showed up as giant Pepsi cans or something. These actually could be our real clothes. If we were clueless slobs, that is. So ... the first 10 minutes of the party ... he and I were surrounded by the glammed-out crowd ... saying to everyone we came across, "No ... we don't really dress like this ... this is a costume ... we're Woody Allen and Mia Farrow ..."

For this Halloween costume ...

I am going to hell. I described my guilt over it here before. We had to dress up as actual dead people ... That was the theme of the party ... The invites had given explicit instuctions: "You must come as an actual dead person ..."

and so ... I chose ...

Poor Sharon Tate.

It's a full-frontal view so you can't see that I'm ... er ... with child.

Horrible. I know. Horrible.

And here is the costume ...

... from another angle. Sharon here is dancing with Jackie-Kennedy-at-Hyannisport and Mrs. Al Capone.

I am definitely going to hell.

Thoughts on William Holden

William Holden, over his long career, racked up an astounding body of work. He is one of our greatest actors. Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17 (later to be made into a TV series called Hogan's Heroes, baby), Picnic, he played Joe Bonaparte in the film version of Golden Boy, Country Girl .... Jeez, what else? Bridge on the River Kwai. The Wild Bunch. I mean - very very few actors build up such a resume, and turn in such consistently fine performances over a long lifetime. Also, all of these films, in their own way, are still considered to be classics.

The list goes on and on.

Then there's his genius turn in Network. I don't use that term lightly. He acts everybody else (including the great Robert Duvall - whom I love, but who I think turns in kind of a wooden one-note performance in that movie) off the screen. Who can forget Holden's sex scene with Faye Dunaway? The sadness of it, the comedy of it? She's getting undressed, casually, jabbering on and on about "market shares" and her upcoming show "the Mao Tse Tung Hour" ... They begin to have sex, and she never ever shuts up. Holden lies beneath her, staring up at her, with ... something I can't even describe on his face. Humor? Partly. There's desire there, too. But mixed in with that desire is the sadness of the middle-aged man, the guy cheating on his wife, the guy who knows that this won't last ... His great great scene with his wife at the end (Beatrice Straight - she got an Oscar for her less than 10 minutes on screen) - and then, my favorite: when he breaks up with Faye. His monologue there could not be better. She doesn't say a word, and he is as gentle as he can be, but also firm, and sad, and ... a bit pathetic. A bit of that speech is:

I feel lousy about the pain that I've caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken, and all of those things you think sentimental, but which my generation calls simple human decency. And I miss my home, because I'm beginning to get scared shitless, because all of a sudden it's closer to the end than the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me, with definable features.

Watch that movie again ... and watch how he says those lines.

A truly courageous actor. In that role, he faced the fact head-on that no, he was not the "leading man" anymore. Think of other male movie stars growing old ... and you can see how rare it is for them to face that fact. They hold on. They hold on desperately. But Holden came out onto the other side ... he was once a leading man, and he kind of became a character actor later.

Holden, as a young actor, was known as "the Golden Boy". That was one of his nicknames. Because he had played the "Golden Boy" himself, but also because of his regular every-day American good looks, the quarterback good looks, the breezy certainty of his handsomeness. - William Holden's handsomeness is immediately apparent, in an empirical way. You look at him and think: "There's a handsome guy." But it's not glamorous, or knock-you-off-your-feet gorgeousness, or off-putting, like some brands of good looks are. Holden looks like you could meet him in real life. There are good-looking guys like that in real life. He didn't have the glitter or the sexual mystery of Cary Grant. It was hard to figure out what exactly, at times, was going on with Cary Grant - which is part of his enduring appeal. The voice? The walk? He's gorgeous - but he's a goof - is he British - is he American? But William Holden was immediately place-able: An open-faced American guy, with a mop of hair, and a huge sunny smile. He was an American golden boy. I heard somewhere that he was descended from George Washington, which sort of makes sense.

He won an Oscar for Stalag (directed by Billy Wilder). I can't remember if Holden won more Oscars, but he was certainly nominated multiple times.

Billy Wilder loved William Holden, loved him dearly, as a man and as an actor, couldn't say enough loving things about him. Wilder's two favorite actors were Holden and Cary Grant. Wilder ended up working with Holden multiple times - and with Cary Grant none. (Wilder was bummed about it til the end of his life!) But still - Wilder had great affection for the skill, humor, and dedication of Holden. Also the fearlessness. He'd do anything.

Wilder has talked about the scene in Sunset Boulevard where Norma shoots Holden's character, and he topples into the pool. Holden was an athlete, graceful, physically fit ... Holden pulls off a difficult stunt there. Not every actor could throw himself into the pool in the way he does in that scene - it's an amazing bit of physical acting. If you get a chance, watch it again. See how easy he is with his body, and how REAL that moment looks.

Holden's end is haunting to me. The man was a drunk. He had been a pretty serious drunk for years. I do not know what demons he had to combat, but his drinking was notorious. One night, he was alone in one of his apartments (he had apartments everywhere - Hong Kong, LA, he had a house in Africa ... he was a peripatetic type) - and he was drunk, and he fell and cracked his head open on a coffee table. The fall alone did not kill him. He lay there and bled to death. He didn't phone for help, he lay there - probably half in and out of consciousness - or maybe just too wasted to realize the danger he was in - probably unaware that he was going to die if he didn't get help.

I look at his craggy lined face in Network, and wonder.

That character (Max) is a sad man. A workaholic, kind of skating along in his marriage. Being pushed aside at work, no longer needed. A man who also has a bit of trouble with drinking. Just a bit, though. It's hard for actors to play things so close to them. Or, at least, it often is. But Holden wasn't afraid. He didn't protect himself, in that part. He let us see the reality of who he was NOW - in all of his middle-aged loneliness, his sexual insecurity, his fear of death ... A lot of actors as they get older do not want you, as the audience, to see all that stuff. They still want to be the tough-guy, the hero, whatever. This is why Cary Grant retired. He didn't want to suddenly be the old guy with 4 lines in a movie. He was done. William Holden, the golden boy, the handsome guy, one of the biggest stars of his day, a heart-throb, voted "one of the sexiest stars of the 20th century" in 1995 ... did not hang on to his old persona. His segue into power-house middle-aged parts is very rare. Not a lot of people can pull it off - especially those whose careers were based mainly on their looks, and on the fact that female fans went ga-ga. But Holden was a talent. Always was.

Maybe his private drinking was where he put all his grief, his sadness about what he had lost ... but up on screen, he didn't hang onto it. He didn't seem to be saying to us: "MEMBER ME? MEMBER WHEN I WAS THE BIG SEXY STAR IN THE 1950S? WELL, I STILL GOT IT. I STILL GOT IT."

It's hard for actors to grow old. It's harder for women - there's a black-out period in between the ages of 35 and 60 when it's nearly impossible for women to get good parts. Especially with the tendency of male movie stars in their 60s to have 25 year old actresses cast as their wives. This is vanity, make no mistake about it. "I can't be married to a 60 year old! Not if I'm still trying to prove I'm a virile stud!" However, male actors growing old have their own set of challenges. Particularly for those who were once sex-symbols, or heart-throbs, or leading men. (This problem does not exist for "character actors" - those who were never good-looking enough to be sex symbols. The character actors, male and female, NEVER stop working. EVER. They will get parts until they're 80.) But former heart-throbs, like William Holden was, had BETTER have more going on with them than just their good looks, or the ease that comes with being young.

You had BETTER have some gift for this mysterious thing called acting.

Otherwise ... you'll have a short career.

Recently I saw a movie Holden made with Jennifer Jones called Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, which I thought was a snooze-fest. A manipulative boring tear-jerker. Blech. Holden plays a journalist, I think, stationed in Hong Kong. He falls in love with a "Eurasian" doctor, played by Jennifer Jones. They have a sweeping love affair, where they have to deal with prejudice, also with the Communist revolution in China, and there are multiple scenes with swelling violins, etc. It's not very effective. There's next to no chemistry between Holden and Jones.

But I thought to myself, as I watched it: Okay. What is missing here? What, exactly, is wrong?

Here's what I think it is:

And this may just be me projecting William Holden's performance of dark sadness in Network back over his earlier career ... but I don't think so. I think that Holden is best in darker material. Edgier material. Yeah, he's got all-American good looks. But he wasn't quite believable saying to Jennifer Jones, "I am so in love with you ... I love you, darling ..." etc. He's more believable when he's not so forthright, when he has ulterior motives, or when he's trapped. Trapped into living a lie. Think of his character in Sunset Boulevard. How attracted he is to his co-writer, how much he loves being with her, the intellectual stimulus, the companionship ... it could be a true romance. And yet, then ... there's Norma Desmond's web he is caught in ... and finally, at the end of the film, he reveals: that he LIKES being caught in that web. He LIKES being a "kept" man. Many actors turned down Sunset Boulevard for that reason. They found it too embarrassing - to play a character who would willingly become the "house-boy/love-slave" of an aging movie star - merely because she buys him expensive suits and cigarette cases. He's a sort of prostitute in that movie. He's trapped in that house - she uses him for sex, and he uses her back. Holden had no problem with any of this. He's great in that movie. He's sexy, too, in a sort of dark and unexpressed way. It's not your basic leading-man part ... not at all ... He is in quite an emasculated position for the entirety of the film - he's a sex-slave to Norma ... He plays the role typically played by women - the money-hungry woman who puts up with anything as long as her tormentor keeps her in furs and nice clothes ... but perhaps THAT is part of his complex appeal.

It's certainly part of his complex appeal in Network.

In Love is a Many-Splendored Zzzzzzzzzzzz, Holden pretty much plays your straight-up romantic leading man, and it falls flat. It doesn't work. It doesn't seem true. I kept wondering what he was hiding, what he was lying about.

Holden's good looks concealed a secret: this was a man tormented by insecurity, by sadness, by addiction. He drank himself to death, basically. He wasn't an old man when he died. Not at all.

It was when directors saw beneath his good looks - and got a glimpse of the darkness beneath - that Holden's true genius could be exploited.

Thinking about William Holden makes me sad, for some reason.

A great actor. Is he really remembered now? Does he really get the props he deserves?

Those of you out there who have seen and loved any of his performances, anything you would like to comment on? Let's have a little collective tribute to this guy.

I Believe (David)

When I want to write about the Red Sox I go and read Bill Simmons latest article and I realize it's futile. He lets me know what I am thinking and feeling. He's it. His latest article, "Why Not Us?" (And I would do that cool thing where you just have to touch those words "Why Not Us?" and you'd go right to it, since Sheila has told me how on several occasions, but I just can't for the life of me remember) is preparing me for the eventual end of this magical season. There's still a ways to go and of course there's absolutely no telling how it's going to turn out, but it is winding down isn't it?

I remember watching the home games last year, when they wore those fabulous red jackets, and thinking to myself, "I'd absolutely die for one of those babies!" They were rather expensive and I couldn't justify spending money on them, but man did I want one. I promised myself if they made the World Series I would buy one. Well, we know how last year ended, and needless to say I didn't get my jacket.

Another luxury I didn't afford myself was buying the extra innings package through my cable company so I could watch all the games here in Yankee Country. Instead I'd listen to them on the radio through my computer and try to convince my wife (the only person unfortunate to be nearby) that this team was amazing. They had heart and character beyond belief. They never quit; they came from behind more than any other team. She finally got hooked during the playoffs last year and I watched her fly into elation when they came back from 0-2 against Oakland only to plummet into despair because of Aaron bleeping Boone. She was seriously upset with me for coaxing her into the Red Sox Nation and she vowed not to let it happen again. I understood and felt bad for bringing her down that road. I remember feeling that baseball shouldn't hurt this much. Driving my delivery truck around NYC the next day was a torture I'll never forget. I was glad I didn't have my red jacket.

Then began this magical 2004 season. My wife stayed in the wings while I listened to my games on the computer and watched the occasional ESPN game and, of course, all the YES Yankee/Red Sox games. On one particular July afternoon I was watching the struggling Sox square off against the Yanks. They had been previously swept by them and things were beyond frustrating. I had had it with this rivalry. We were on the losing side again and things weren't looking up. Then Varitek shoved his mitt in A-Rod's face. Later in the game, in extra innings, Trot Nixon came up against Mariano Rivera and hit a shot that seemed destined to leave the park. I leapt off the couch daring to believe again and then the wind caught it and so did Sheffield. I let loose a vitriolic outburst. I described it in a post I wrote that very same evening right here on Sheila's Blog called Pathetic or Prophetic (again, I'd do that fancy "touch the words" thing but I can't, OK? I'll just Ctrl C, Ctrl V the damn thing) here's a piece of it:

I must admit that I was down and out. It has been a harrowing season already and I had reached my annual limit early of eating Yankee dust and swallowing Yankee crow. When Trot Nixon’s seemingly game tying homer in the bottom of the ninth was knocked down by the wind and caught by Sheffield, I let go some pretty choice and inappropriate expressions in front of my children. I’m not proud of this mind you, but I’m not ashamed either. I had felt all the defeats of the season and all the seasons past in that moment. “Why can’t things go right for the Red Sox,” I wailed pathetically. “Why can’t we catch one God damn, mother bleeping break!?” But when Bill Mueller hit that home run, I began to believe again. Seeing Varitek and Francona run out of the clubhouse to congratulate their team sent a surge of hope right through me.

It was then I started to believe. And it was then I got my wife involved again, this time by explaining to her what Jason Varitek did to lead his team. This was the hook and it has since become a full fledged love affair on her part. I'm often required to wear a catcher's mask to bed now while she calls me "Tekky". I really don't mind.

I broke down and ordered extra innings and have watched every game since while listening to Bob Orsillo and the Rem Dawg on NESN, something New Englanders take for granted. It was heaven. But I still couldn't break down and buy the coat. Not yet. "Maybe if they make it to the World Series this year," I promised myself.

On my Birthday, later last summer, my wife handed me some presents she had gotten at Macy's. "Odd", I thought, "She never buys me clothes." We don't do that for each other, we still rarely hit each other's tastes after being together over 16 years. I grinned and braced for the disappointments. I got a pair of shorts (since returned for a nice wallet) and some boxers (I only wear during emergency boxer depletion times). The biggest present was coming and I couldn't hide my anxiety. Now I'm sure you've already guessed what was in it, but I didn't. I filled up. I wore it in the 90-degree heat. It was the best present I had gotten since I was a boy! I couldn't wait until Fall to wear my authentic, down to the stitching, Major League Red Sox home jacket.

We also bought a big Red Sox Banner that flies on our flagpole outside our front door. Our neighbors hate us! We've had that all summer too. When we went down 3-0 to the Yankees I felt devastated that I'd be wearing my coat in shame all winter, if at all, and I knew I'd take the flag down the second we lost.

We all know the story up to now and needless to say the flag is waving proud (next year I'm installing a spotlight for it) and the coat has not come off. It's that bright, bright red and I've gotten some pretty nasty looks for it.

It's been a magical year to be a Red Sox fan, but it ain't over. I won't lie, if we lose this World Series, it'll be devastating. I was kidding myself that the victory over the Yankees could carry me through it, but it won't. At least my wife didn't wait to buy the coat and I think that's a good sign. The baseball Gods like that sort of thing.

That girl in the picture ...

Ready for some fun with scanning? Here we go. I also have a little Halloween-photo retrospective coming up ... but for now ...

It's all Red Sox, all the time.

I came across this picture of myself yesterday - during a fall-cleaning frenzy (I got waylaid in my photo albums - as is wont to happen). I'm holding our cat Widdy, it's in our backyard, I am 10 years old. Maybe 9. So this is the mid to late 1970s. A time of darkness in Red Sox Nation. But what strikes me, of course, is my shirt. This is the young girl who used to get in fights with Andrew Wright about who would get to "be Carlton Fisk" when we re-enacted his famous home run. Of course Andrew usually won the fight, because he was a boy, and also because I deeply deeply loved him. It didn't rob my soul TOO much to let him win ... because I loved him, and really, what did it cost??

So I can't help but think about this young girl in these oh so exciting days. I'm glad I came across her yesterday. I like the sense of a continuum. From her to me ...

The Brothers K

OH. MY. GOD.

It's kicked in now. It's finally kicked in. I am impatient to get back to the book when I am not reading it. For example, I am thinking about it right now. There are certain passages which are so ominous, or so insightful, so PERFECTLY put, that I have to put the book down, and just sit there for a while, thinking about it.

Yes, there is a long boring-ass chapter about the dying Father Zossima and his death-bed words ... (which went on for 35 pages) ... This was in the middle of the growing suspense, you could feel the forces gathering, you could feel some terrible event approaching ... and then suddenly, boom, we have to hear Father Zossima ramble on for hours on end.

I know Dostoevsky does nothing on a whim, though. So I knew that the chapter did indeed have a "point". I would say that the "point" of that chapter (I'm just guessing - and please don't reveal what ends up happening in the book - I haven't finished it yet ...) is to set up the opposing mindset that the world is a God-given place, something to be reveled in, that everything on the planet is given by God. The leaves, the sky ... So never be sad. Fill your heart with love. Be grateful, be hunble ... be glad. This is Zossima's message.

The Karamazovs are dark, brutal, earthy ... there is a big deal made of their "sensuality". They are all about the pleasures of the earth. Or the brutality of the earth. Zossima's death-bed soliloquy is there as a contrast - that there is something more to strive for. There is the possibility of love, of hope, of purity.

It also sets up the contrast to Ivan's viewpoint (which is just fanTAStic. Not that I agree with him, exactly, but I could read about Ivan forever - he's the most interesting brother to me, so far) Ivan is cynical - and more chilling because of it. But there's something very compelling there. He is obviously going to THINK about life. There is no such thing as received wisdom, as far as Ivan is concerned. Ivan's the one who tells the story of the Grand Inquisitor. Which blew my socks off, frankly. Can't get more of an opposite viewpoint from Father Zossima than the Grand Inquisitor!

But I'm not ready to really post my thoughts on all of this yet - what it all adds up to - because I haven't finished the book yet.

I am now at the part where Dmitri (the pleasure-seeking sensual brother - engaged to Katerina, and messing around with Grushenka) is kind of slipping off the rails ... He needs 3000 roubles. He has become absolutely convinced that if he can only get 3000 roubles, then Grushenka will run away with them, and they can start "fresh". But ... his schemes to get the money are ... frankly ... insane. Dostoevsky writes about his racing around in such a way that gives you the necessary distance. You can look at Dmitri's behavior and think: "Wow. This guy is completely losing it." We are not totally inside Dmitri's head, we have a tiny bit of distance, so we can be afraid ... and we can also have NO idea what he will do next. Also, the way the narrator describes to us Dmitri's schemes to get the roubles, we are able to get the sense that: This will not work out - he is flailing about - he is desperate - none of this will work. We, however, the readers, are a couple steps ahead of Dmitri ... so it's upsetting. It's upsetting to read about a man who is still back in the dark tunnel, when you've emerged a tiny bit into the light. You want to reach in and stop the catastrophe, whatever it is ... but you know you can't.

My favorite parts of the book - and this was true of Crime and Punishment as well - are his brief piercing psychological insights. So spot on that they are SCARY. This man could see all sides of humanity. This man could see the flaws, the fears, the hopes - and not only could he see them all - but he could describe in writing how the brain operated in those revealed moments. He can take us, the reader, step by step through a tiny epiphany (tiny, and yet earth-shaking). The tiny moments in life, tiny, not big, when we are faced with a fork in the path ... it could go this way or that way. Dostoevsky writes about big things, too, obviously - love and sex and murder and God and politics - and all of that is very interesting, too - but what is the stand-out for me are the very small moments when a human being looks into his own soul, sees something there, and then makes a choice. He chooses to go either this way or that way. And of course, this seemingly tiny choice usually has enormous consequences.

The insights into how the human mind works, and how it can unhinge itself, are literally beyond compare. Freud should hang his head in shame!! I wonder if Freud ever referenced the superior nature of Dostoevsky's psychological analysis.

I have moments when reading this book when I almost feel pissed off. Like Dostoevsky has been peeking into my journal or something. No, that's not it, either - because the moments Dostoevsky describes are things I wouldn't write about myself, I barely recognize these things in myself ... They are in my unconscious. Dostoevsky, in those teeny moments, shows the hidden side of my own heart to myself.

I think: Ohhh, so THAT'S what was going on with me in that moment!!

Or ... Wow. I remember feeling EXACTLY like that that one time but I had no idea WHY ... I think that here is why ...

It's quite astonishing.

My fingers itch to pick it up again. Tonight.

There's no game tonight, so I can get some reading in.

Some good reads

The Cult of Che - by Anthony Daniels (There seems to be a lot of de-bunking-of-the-Che-myth going on right now, and I am quite glad of this. The sainting-of-Che, the ubiquitous T-shirts everywhere ... I have always found it offensive. This is quite a good article)

The Men Who Would be Orwell - Ron Rosenbaum's great piece on Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan - It's terrific. I have been reading these guys for a long long time ... but Rosenbaum explains what exactly happened post-Sept. 11 and how these two fiery tireless ex-pats have FRAMED the conversation. It's true. They got out in front of this thing almost immediately ... Anyway. Go check it out.

Well. Those are two good reads. I highly recommend both. Everything else I've read today has to do with the Red Sox. I am in a state of suspended animation. Waiting until tomorrow night. I am also exhausted. I woke up today with an absolutely sleep-crushed face. Usually, my face bounces back from sleep almost immediately ... Today, I looked vaguely slack-jawed and sleepy-eyed until nearly 11 am. I'm wiped out.

I spoke with my friend David today. It's almost like ... we can't even believe it's happening ... that we're winning ... It's weird to not have the Yankees be in the Series. It's just - I feel like I don't know where the hell I AM, at times. Am I here? Is this really happening right now?

Game 1

Woah, there, now that was some messy baseball. A messy SLUGFEST. I suppose that's no surprise. Uhm ... can we say "errors"?? Game 1 was like a Keystone Cops skit of baseball. Starring Kevin Millar and Manny Rivera.

At least we won. There was much screaming and carrying on at the game party ... Rachel (a recent baseball-fan convert) reached over and hugged me wildly at one point, waiting for Manny to be safe at first ... she couldn't bear it ... she needed to hug me ... It was a great group. Baseball freaks (to lesser and greater degrees), all of us.

I picked the wrong week to stop biting my nails.

Game 2 tonight. Like my mother said to me in a message she left today, "So we're getting ready to hunker down for Game 2..."

Yup. Hunker on down. It's gonna be a long week. A long messy slug-fest week.

Todd Schmidt asks:

Which was the best World Series ever?

I am having grammar trouble. Schmidt chooses 6 of the series as "the best". I can't write anymore. I hate grammar. Or, let's say: I love grammar. I just hate it when I forget all the rules.

How does one express this?

There are multiple World Series. (Seems like there should be a plural there ... but "series" is already plural ... but each series of however many games is its own singular thing.) Todd Schmidt has chosen 6 of the Series ... (Please. Someone re-word that sentence. Now I want to throw my keyboard out the window.)

Anyway. Who cares. It's really the World Series that matters.

Todd Schmidt lists (and discusses) the following Series:

-- 2001: Diamondbacks def. Yankees, 4-3
-- 1991: Twins def. Braves, 4-3
-- 1986: Mets def. Red Sox, 4-3
-- 1975: Reds def. Red Sox, 4-3
-- 1960: Pirates def. Yankees, 4-3
-- 1955: Dodgers def. Yankees, 4-3

My kind of invite

My sister is hosting a "game party" on Saturday night ... for obvious reasons. The invite reads, in part:

Saturday night, to get that World Series off to a good start, I am having a game party. Or rather, I am having people over to watch the game. We will not party. We will concentrate intently on the game. We will send good vibes. We will make fun of Joe Buck. Maybe later we will have a party.

I have read your invite about 3 times, and continue to find it funny.

"We will not party. We will concentrate intently on the game."

I am so there. And I will completely follow your instructions. I will not party. I will concentrate intently on the game and send good vibes.

Memories of childhood ...

... are most definitely brought back to me from the cheese-ball photos in Lileks' Ice Capades gallery. I loved the Ice Capades. I am a child of the 1970s. I went. I stared at the disco lights. I adored the glitter. And now ... looking at these photos (and reading Lileks' commentary - you have got to read his analysis of the photos) - I cry tears of laughter.

Go. Click through. Remember. Laugh.

Anthony Hecht, RIP

Anthony Hecht, American poet, has died.

I have always found his poems a bit frightening. They're very melancholy (he was famous for his "melancholia"), and he often turns his microscope (or telescope, however you want to put it) onto the horrors of the world. Cruelty, war, genocide ... they're tough poems. The TONE of the poems also make them frightening, outside of the subject matter. He speaks in the overly formal voice of someone who has seen too much (as in Ms. Dickinson's "after great pain a formal feeling comes"?), who battles great demons, and who is doing his damndest to keep himself together. He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. He was a giant in the field of poetry.

He described his work as "formalist ironic" (a sort of inside joke), and modeled his poetry after WH Auden.

Enormously successful in his own lifetime, he used a very formal almost old-school type of poetry (regular meter, and rhyme schemes) to write poem after poem on the chaotic terrible events of the 20th century. He was an infantryman in WWII and witnessed, firsthand, the concentration camps. He has said that what he saw in WWI was more "grotesque" than he could even find words for (and for Hecht to admit he couldn't find the words - any words - is to tell you how beyond the pale that experience was for him).

Here's a great New Criterion article about Hecht (written when Hecht's Collected Poems came out - Hecht was still alive at the time). In this article, David Yezzi takes on the "charge" that Hecht is a "formalist" poet. I like what he has to say:

He is one of our most laureled poets. But the way that critics celebrate Hecht often strikes me as both backhanded and wholly typical of the current climate in American poetry. "An accomplished formalist" recurs as the standard tag, the phrase meant as qualified praise, like complimenting someone's calligraphy - very pretty, no doubt, and once valued, perhaps, but rather too precious for anything today beyond addressing wedding invitations. Elegant but irrelevant.

The ineptitude of this kind of grudging appreciation is not the worst of it. One pities those who feel that a given age can accommodate only one kind of poetry (free verse these days, presumably), as if important work by both Eliot and Hardy, for example, did not issue from the 1920s, or from Larkin and Bunting in the 1960s, or from Geoffrey Hill in both free and metered verse throughout his career. No, the real downside to the appellation "formalist," more damning than the taint of fustiness, is the way it precludes poems from being anything other than formal. A good formalist, the epithet suggests, is one who produces exquisite verse, period.

No one, I think, disputes Hecht's command of English verse, but, because prosodic skill is a rare and useless talent in this free-verse age, his work sometimes arouses the same admiration lavished on a bipedal poodle. Labeling Hecht a formalist, while undeniable in the most obvious sense, misses the point. If anyone puts paid to the notion that metrical skill cancels passion, it's Hecht. What's more, if form and subject matter may be seen as complementary and interdependent, the opposite point better characterizes his work: Hecht may be the foremost "matterist" of his age, a feat more brilliant and difficult, in the end, than the mastery of traditional forms that he so abundantly displays.

Hecht is often lumped in with other "Poets of World War II" (I think he's even included in a book on the subject) - and it's not hard to see why, judging from his dark and terrified subject-matter.

His poem "Rites and Ceremonies" is the poem that announced his entry onto the "important poet" stage. How does one adequately face (and deal with) evil? How does one actually deal with seeing the walking skeletons at Buchenwald? That generation of men came home forever changed from what they had seen. Consider this stanza from "Rites and Ceremonies":

And to what purpose, as the darkness closes about
And the child screams in the jellied fire,
Had best be our present concern,
Here in the wilderness of comfort
In which we dwell.
Shall we now consider
The suspicious postures of our virtue,
The deformed consequences of our love,
The painful issues of our mildest acts?
Where is there one
Mad, poor and betrayed enough to find
Forgiveness for us, saying,
"None does offend,
None, I say,
None"?

Hecht's topic: Man's capacity for evil. Man's inhumanity to man. In this great review of a book of Hecht's poems, (note the date of the review - sheesh) - Kirsch, to my taste, describes what is special about Hecht:

Yet this theme has a double irony in Hecht's poetry, for at the same time as he reflects on the shattering of humanism, his own language continues to pay homage to it. Hecht's regular meter and rhyme, his formal diction ("Much casual death"), and his clear expository sentences betray none of the hesitation that his subject seems to demand. The means of expression are not called into doubt by the horror of what must be expressed. Quite the contrary. Hecht insists on still greater decorum and rigor when his theme is darkness and chaos. He is like the courtier of a deposed monarch, punctually attending the shrunken levees of reason.

Through seven books and nearly five decades, Hecht's poetry has maintained this disciplined disjunction between form and subject. He writes very often of the forces of dissolution - evil, chaos, lust, slovenliness - but always in a decorous style, as though these subjects were explosive chemicals that can only be handled with tongs.

His subject matter is the darkness at the heart of man. And yet the voice he uses is formal, cold, clear.

And now I leave you with my personal favorite Anthony Hecht poem - it's called "The Dover Bitch", an obvious parody of "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold. It's another side of Hecht - funny, biting, cynical, smart.

His voice will be much missed.

The Dover Bitch
by Anthony Hecht

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.

I know it's boring and cliched ...

... to comment on one's own Google search-term referrals - but what can I say. I am boring. I am a cliche.

I just thought it was so funny - These are 5 consecutive Google search terms I saw today in my referral log. One after the other after the other.

To me, it kind of expresses what I enjoy about the space I've created here (well, with the help of you all who read me). It's chaos, it's up, it's down, it's got no theme ...

So here are 5 consecutive Google search terms:

-- Red Sox maniacs
-- The tomb of Timur
-- Laura's monologue from Glass Menagerie
-- psychological profile of sociopaths
-- was Cary Grant's mother insane

And believe it or not ... I have posted on all of these things. So hopefully these random Searchers found what they wanted, here on my lunatic blog.

Tap dancing hedgehogs and enormous bunsen burners ...

Alex's take on our commune weekend. I miss the back porch already. Basically what I'm really saying is - I miss the company.

The journalists have no words

I like this piece by Bob Ryan. He literally doesn't know what to say.

This pretty much sums it up for me:

Of all the conceivable outcomes in last night's game, the one nobody in New England dared fantasize about was the one we saw. And what we saw was a two-way display of dominance. Johnny Damon pretty much personally took care of the offensive end all by himself with his second-inning grand slam and his fourth-inning two-run shot off Javier Vazquez, while Derek Lowe threw perhaps the most efficient six innings of baseball any Red Sox pitcher has submitted all year, holding the Yankees to one hit and one run while dispatching the hated Yankees in a Tewksburyian 69 pitches.

Yesterday I wrote that I was steeling myself, I still felt bruised from last October, I was protecting myself, etc. etc. I never dared fantasize that the game would turn out to be the kind of game it was. It was beyond thrilling. You just had to shake your head, and throw up your hands, and watch it unfold, as belief and faith grew ... solidified ... manifested ... as it all became real.

Here's more from Ryan's great article -

What they did as a group will now be toasted and recounted for decades to come, and it should be. What we just saw was a tribute to 25 athletes and a coaching staff that refused to acknowledge a 100-year history. Baseball teams don't come back from being down, 3-0, they were told. They didn't buy into it.

The week of baseball they gave us would have been phenomenal under any circumstances, but when you're the Red Sox playing the Yankees, it is never a normal circumstance. To come within three outs of being swept in Game 4, to persevere in that extraordinary 14-inning Game 5, to receive the kind of gritty pitching they got from Schilling in Game 6, and then to put everything together in spectacular fashion in Game 7, and to do it all against the Yankees, was an off-the-charts display of class and determination.

One year ago the Red Sox lost a traumatic Game 7 in this very park. It was talked about incessantly. Last Saturday night, the team lost a 19-8 game in Fenway. It was another frustrating chapter in the great Yankee-Red Sox drama. Elimination was imminent. The entire relationship between the Red Sox and their greatest rival seemed fated to remain an endlessly repetitious story in which the dynamics would never change. Call it Groundhog Day. Call it Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Call it Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill. They all apply. Down, 3-0, and having been humiliated in their own park (19 and 22 hits), the Red Sox were regarded as toe-tag material -- again.

There was only one place on earth where there was any hope, and that was inside the Red Sox clubhouse.

What happened last night cannot be compared to other sporting events, other moments ... actually, this whole past week stands alone in its ... Jesus, I've lost my vocabulary. I was just going to write: this past week stands alone in its sheer amazing-ness.

Oh well. That'll have to do.

This week has been nonstop sheer amazing-ness.

Sometimes, emotions are way too deep for words

I can't express it, whatever it is - but I am FULL of it!

The screams, the shrieks, my sister's evil cackle on the other end of the line after Damon's grand slam, my phone ringing off the hook the second the game ended, the hanging on ... hanging on ... still not believing ... even with a lead like the one they had ... The game ain't over until it's over. You can't EVER relax. But then, eventually, it started to gain weight - force - reality ... We might pull this off ... Holy crap ... this might actually happen ... Is 8 - 3 an insurmountable lead? With our history as a team? Absolutely not. That lead could disappear in a flash. And then Pedro came in, and I saw my life flash before my eyes. The entire time he was on the mound I was muttering, with gritted teeth, like a crazy person: "Get him OFF the mound. Take. Him. Out. The End. GET HIM OFF." I couldn't believe we could watch our lead slip away - It would have been like it had never ever happened - I was on the edge of tragedy, on the edge of despair - I could feel victory slipping through my fingers - a terrible moment ... Sorry, Pedro - you're one of the greatest pitchers ever - but it's a tough world, and we needed to get you off the dern mound.

At the insane bar where I watched the game - slowly but surely over the night, all of the Yankee fans disappeared. They couldn't bear to even stay and watch the end. So at the end - when victory came - it was just us Boston-ites. All of us on our phones - screaming - jumping up and down - One guy opened a bottle of champagne and sprayed it everywhere ... The celebration went on and on and on and on and on - with no let-up, no diminishment of sound - for half an hour. I finally dragged myself away.

But then of course couldn't get to sleep. My mind was racing, buzzing, I kept going over and over and over the game ... one of the most incredible sporting events I've ever seen. An historical moment. I cannot believe that I have lived to see it.

I still can't believe it. It feels like a dream. I can't believe it.

As always, Bill Simmons says all of this better than I ever could.

Alex's Great Movies

Alex is doing a continuing series of her choices for "The 50 Greatest Movies of All Time". And so here is Part 2. Alex - where is Part 1? I want to read that, too!

Make sure you take the time to read her mini-essays on all the films she has chosen - they're full of cool tidbits and great observations.

I have very much benjoyed your post, Alex. I must send you a cumquat, to show my appreciation.

Speaking of Network, I watched it yet again my first night home. It's been years since I've seen it, and our conversation about Holden's great work (not to mention Peter Finch's amazing work) made me realize I had to see it again.

Boston Dementia {demens -entis [out of one's mind , insane, senseless]; adv. dementer.}

My aunts and uncles on my mother's side have a couple of things in common: they are Red Sox fans and they are Latin fanatics. I come from a big family of Latin fanatics. Emails have been going back and forth between aunts and uncles (I've been copied on them) - discussing the Red Sox game in ... well ... in Latin. I have been crying with laughter reading some of them. Uhm ... "Who's Your Daddy" in Latin? That's what I'm talking about.

One of the emails opens with:

Ut Bomberi Bronxienses se toppleant in nasibus suis et creaseant pinstripos suos, we pray to the Lord.

More:

Papi Noster qui es in Fenway, sanctificetur nomen tuum...sed libera nos a malo, Amen. Ite missa est.

Everyone has lost their collective minds.

I know plenty of people hate JD Salinger

but I most definitively am not one of those people. (What's Up Doc nod: "I don't know who he is, but she is deFINitely not herself.")

That's fine - to each his own. I don't need to convert people, or try to insist that their perceptions are wrong. As a matter of fact, I can't stand that attitude - especially when it comes to something like taste in art, or novels, or whatever.

Just because I love JD Salinger doesn't mean ... well, it doesn't freakin' mean anything, frankly. It just means I love JD Salinger.

During my Bloomsday extravaganza this past year - which a ton of people seemed to really enjoy, actually - I got a couple of comments in emails, and also a couple of cowards posted stuff about me on OTHER people's blogs (but didn't have the balls to come to me themselves) ... The comments were full of the misguided feeling that somehow I was trying to say I felt I was BETTER than other people because I loved James Joyce. There were comments like: "Maybe I'm ignorant, but I don't think there's anything wrong with loving Robert Ludlum." Er - can you say: PROJECTION??? I know you can! Come on, say it with me: I AM PROJECTING MY OWN ANXIETIES ONTO SHEILA, WHOM I HAVE NEVER EVER MET.

I never said, "To all you idiots who love Robert Ludlum, let me show you what REAL literature is like."

I would never ever do that. And if you think I would, you don't know me at all.

These people imagined I was saying things I did not. They were intimidated by Joyce (and so am I, frankly) and so they needed to negate him, and make it seem like I felt superior to them. Whatever.

So, as a JD Salinger lover, I was interested and annoyed in Jonathan Yardley's column about re-reading Catcher in the Rye. It's a part of that awesome Washington Post series, re-reading old classics, taking a new look at them. I read all of Yardley's columns, I love them, and will continue to do so even though I disagree with him wholeheartedly on this one.

I recently re-read Catcher, and found myself, one night, laughing out loud like a hyena on a silent bus - I was snorting, cackling, etc. I love it! It's the PROSE I love. I can't explain it further than that - it makes me laugh. Yardley finds the prose manipulative (which, for me, is a rather meaningless word ... what does he mean by it?) That Salinger wants to make us feel things? Well, what author DOESN'T want that?

Yardley writes that the book "touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work." I totally disagree with that.

Mr. Crothers (my great 10th grade teacher) taught the book - and yes, indeed, the book "touched emotional buttons" - but there was quite a BIT to think about as well. I remember almost word for word Crothers' discussion on the whole "where do the ducks go when the ponds freeze" conversation that Holden has with the cabbie and various others ... This was not about emotional manipulation, this was a book like any other, a book of puzzle pieces - and for ONCE it was fun to try to put them together. (Unlike putting together the boring symbolic puzzle pieces of Billy Budd - now THAT book is manipulative!!)

Additionally: I have to say to Yardley: Er - why do you have contempt for something that wants to "push adolescents emotional buttons"? It's that kind of hostility towards outright sentiment, or emotion, that I don't like. It's the kind of attitude that thinks Notting Hill is a shitty movie because it wants to make you feel something. There might be a better example than Notting Hill, but whatever. I don't have a problem with sentiment, with open emotion, or with the simple beautiful love expressed in the book between Holden and Phoebe. I LOVE it, as a matter of fact. I don't think Holden is a "saint" with Phoebe. I think he's all messed up with Phoebe. It's a perfect description of the kind of codependent worried vibe that goes on between siblings. I LOVE Phoebe.

Back to "manipulation": I find books like Bridges of Madison County to be manipulative. I found The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks to be so manipulative that I couldn't even finish it, and left it in a drawer in my youth-hostel room in Galway. Now THAT book was going for the emotional jugular without touching your brain ONCE. In that mawkish book I can look right through the prose and see the puppet-strings. And I can tell that the author is aiming right for the lowest common denominator.

Yardley is obviously entitled to his opinion, but this is just my counter-opinion, I suppose. I don't find Catcher manipulative in THAT way at all. The book certainly makes me feel things - and I've read it multiple times. As an adolescent, I read it, and fell in love with Holden. As a young woman I read it, and perceived other depths in it - the love of siblings, the need to have a meaningful life, the unresolved issues of Allie's death. And recently, I just read the damn thing and found a great story. Funny, sad, chaotic, mysterious - I don't know. To me, it's a great story. Even though nothing really happens. It's like a Cassavetes film - an exploration of a state of mind, a minute description of 48 hours.

I don't think a book that wants to make you feel something and ACHIEVES IT is anything to be ashamed of.

A book that desperately wants to make me feel something and FAILS to achieve it, on the other hand, is a blight upon this earth. I can't stand books like that. Or movies, for that matter.

But I've got no problem with emotion, honestly asked-for and honestly-earned. I love books that make me love them. There aren't many. Catcher in the Rye is one of those books for me. I can't say why, because it seems to be a different book every time I read it.

Perhaps it is the fact that there is some mystery at the center of the book - something UNdescribed, UNexpressed - that makes it such a classic. Actually, "classic" is the wrong word. The better word is "beloved".

To me, that book is a beloved book. I grew, when I read it for the first time. Soul-growth, whatever you want to call it. Yardley may look down his nose on the soul-growth of a 14 year old, but I think it's the most important kind of growth. I will always be glad I read the book when I did. It made a huge impact ... and now, when I pick it up again, I'm not looking for insight, or for the answer to the meaning of life ... Usually, when I pick it up now, I'm just looking for a good laugh.

In that respect, Salinger always delivers.

And lastly: Yardley puts down some of the aspects of the book that would only appeal to teenagers (all grown-ups are phonies, etc.) I think THAT, actually, is a snobby attitude. "It can't be a classic if teenagers love the book in droves." Personally, I think that The Pigman, by Paul Zindel, is one of the best books I have ever read. Hands down. It was assigned to my 8th grade English class ... and it's about two teenage misfits who find each other ... and it's full of humor, and pain, and rebellion ... and it continues to be a favorite of mine to this day. I tip my cap to Paul Zindel. I tip my cap to Salinger. I don't think there's anything "lesser" about their books, just because teenagers "get" them.

Update: Erin at Critical Mass weighs in.

What's going on right now - a mish-mash.

-- Trying to re-enter into my life here after a relaxing week away. Not easy. I miss the commune. (Alex? In answer to your question: HEDGEHOG)

-- I woke up this morning to hear the call of the geese, leaving town. It was a cold grey dawn, rain in the biting air, the trees all brown and grey, with that wild sound of the geese, calling, right above my house. Welcome, winter.

-- Curt Schilling. I just don't know what to say. Everyone else seems to be relatively speechless as well, even columnists in the mainstream media.

-- I'm feeling a bit sick about tonight's game. I still don't know where I'm going to go to watch the game - I feel the need to be with others. Others who feel like I do. But I feel sick. Like I almost want it to be tomorrow already. Almost like I can't wait for it to be November 3. I wish I was up in Boston.

-- In other news - I've been thinking about love. I have to believe that God wouldn't have given me such an intense ability to love without someday providing me with an outlet for it. This is what I must believe. Otherwise - what the fuck have I been doing?? I've got love-outlets with my family, with Cashel, with my friends, my work ... I'm talking about the one-on-one mate kind of love. I remember a conversation I had about 4 years ago on this score with 2 friends. I was in a bad way at the time. The 3 of us sat in my kitchen, with the red walls, and candles flickering, drinking wine ... I was in a lot of pain. I ended up sharing with my friends my feelings. "I love him so much ... I just love this man so much ... It hurts ... I want to cut that feeling out of my heart ..." I was trying to let someone go, and I was finding it almost impossible to do so. Anyway, one of my friends (who I didn't really know that well at the time - she was more of a friend of a friend) said something to me I will never forget. She said, "What would it be like if you decided to love the whole world as much as you love this one man? What would it be like for you to share that love? To not just put it on one person, but give it out to everyone?" I still haven't answered her questions. I don't love people like that. I want to give it to one person. But perhaps the answer to my dilemma is somewhere there in her comment. Love the whole world, to the fullness of my ability ... Maybe then I won't miss so much what it is that I don't have. That I have never had, actually. I won't be on hold, waiting, in stasis ... because my life is already full. I am already fully expressed. There is nothing missing. But I certainly have dark moments. Moments of ingratitude and confusion, when all I am aware of is what is missing. I ask God why. What is His plan for me ... I have got to trust that there IS a plan. Or anyway, that's what I try to believe. I try to have faith in that. I'm struggling right now.

So that's where I'm at with all of THAT shite.

-- I'm going through a pretty intense Metallica phase. I seem unable, at the moment, to listen to anything else. I've tried - really, I have. But ... nothing else is doing the trick right now. I've got them playing right now.

-- Watched Sergeant York last night. (Where the hell do I find the time for everything? Red Sox, Brothers K, etc.? I don't know - but I do.) Howard Hawks. What a director he was. There's some sappy stuff in the movie, sure - but there's a couple of moments of honest emotion, stuff not colored by sentimentality, or sugar-coated. A gorgeous shot too of Sgt. Alvin York (played by Gary Cooper) - the pacifist Quaker (reformed from being a wild boy), who is a conscientious objector to WWI, sitting on a hillside with his dog, thinking over his options, praying ... The dog and York are in stark silhouette - both of them looking off to the horizon - like black paper cut-outs, against the dramatically lit sunset (or sunrise) sky. I'll write more about the movie later. Gary Cooper. Howard Hawks. Great stuff.

-- My thoughts back on Game 7. A deja vu from last October. I guess I still haven't really recovered from that. I can feel that somewhere I am protecting myself, steeling myself ... but I need to find the proper venue. Must make some phone calls.

-- I look forward to getting my life back. Just like last October - spending too much time in bars, night after night after night ... I start to think: Home? What's that? My ENTIRE LIFE WILL ALWAYS LOOK THIS WAY: rowdy crowds, baseball, alcohol, late nights ... my entire life will ALWAYS be MOSTLY about baseball. I do not know how to live any other way.

-- Anyway. Hoo-yah, Game 7, bring it on.

It has been raining all day here

Without letup. Will the game go on or no?

Oh, and one other thing...

I am finally reading The Brothers Karamazov which I started this week. I had a rough time with those first two chapters ... as usual. Those Russians with their similar names ... Alexey, and Alyosha, and the vitches added to last names ... I YEARNED for a family tree in the front of the book. Dostoevsky is like Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that respect. I remember when I first read 100 Years of Solitude, Mitchell gave me a tip. "The beginning is really confusing ... because people in different generations all have the same name ... but don't give up ... Stick it out, because then - you're 100 pages in, and you understand everything, and then it is AMAZING." I have found that to be the case with Brothers K. I stuck out the first two chapters, which were sheer drudgery ... but now? I cannot put the dern thing down. It's a page-turner. It's rich, it's dense, it's thought-provoking - but it's also funny, lively ... and it's mostly conversation. Not just narrative.

GREAT stuff. My dad has been telling me to read this book for years, and I'm finally doing it. Crime and Punishment is one of my all-time favorites, so I'm very pleased to be tackling this book as well.

Haven't gotten to the famous "Grand Inquisitor" chapter yet - although it's coming!!!

Here's a random tidbit:

When Marilyn Monroe fled Hollywood, basically on her own personal strike from the horrible material she was being offered, she disappeared for a while - and finally emerged, in New York - where she was taking classes at the Actors Studio. She wanted to develop her own projects, and so she formed a production company. (Hello. Nobody did that then. She was a rebel, a renegade). One of the projects she wanted to do was to put Brothers K on the screen - with herself as Grushenka. She held a press conference announcing her plans, and the hostility of the press is kind of amazing to contemplate in this day and age, when even no-talent whores like Paris Hilton have books published, etc ... It would be hard to imagine a star of Marilyn's magnitude being treated with such contempt and condescension now. One of the reporters asked her, "Do you even know how to spell Dostoevsky, Marilyn?" I would like to see that reporter now and punch him in the nose. And obviously, very few of the reporters there had even read the book ... and so scoffed her "hoity-toity" choice of project. Everyone thought she was illiterate. Marilyn said to them, sweetly (she was always sweet): "Actually, have you read the book? There's a wonderful character in it named Grushenka ... she's a real seductress ... I think it would be a good part for me."

Having read the descriptions of Grushenka, I have to say Marilyn was right on the money. Dostoevsky describes her "ample" hips, her soft hands ... but more than that- her noiseless way of walking. She didn't really walk - she glid, she slithered ... and she had a kind of girlish sweetness about her which hid a rock-hard steely broad underneath.

Marilyn would have been great as Grushenka. So there, condescending snobs.

Snapshots

Things Done This Past Week

-- Kate and Tim's wedding. It could not have been more beautiful. "Pastor Sean" was wonderful. Sean and Guy and I all sat around at the rehearsal dinner, and talked about how emotional we were about this wedding (and we all had major duties to perform - Sean was marrying them, actually marrying them - Guy was singing - and I was reading) -- We all discussed our fears of literally bursting into tears at inappropriate moments. None of that occurred. We got it all out at the rehearsal dinner. I got to know Kate's parents, her brothers, their wives ... It was awesome.

-- Alex did my hair and makeup for the wedding, thank the good Lord above. I came home from my manicure, and Alex had already heated up the hot rollers. I even let her tweeze my eyebrows a bit, which lets you know that I trusted her immediately. I looked a bit glamorous, I must admit. She confessed to me, later, "The second I met you, I wanted to attack your eyebrows."

-- Mitchell and I jitterbugged at the wedding reception. Just like old times. My shoes sucked. I ditched them as soon as possible.

-- We watched Now Voyager.

-- We watched Star is Born. "I need a job ..." Is it me, or is James Mason TOTALLY under-rated? He's fantastic. And Judy's scene in the dressing room is basically what, for me, acting is all about. So freakin' good. Real. Just REAL.

-- I watched Silkwood with Eric.
"Dolly Pellecker..."
"I'm soo tired of your jokes ..."
"They're just seeds, Karen..."

-- We watched Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, a truly bizarre movie starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Haviland and Joseph Cotten. It was supposed to star Joan Crawford, but Olivia ended up doing it - and it's kind of a follow-up to Baby Jane. SO WEIRD. Has anyone else seen it? Alex and I did imitations of Bette Davis' shrieking and barking and growling scene, as she crawled backwards down the stairs... We "did" Bette until we cried with laughter. The shot ends with Bette, right up against the camera, with an absolutely lunatic look on her face, her eyes juuuust slightly crossed. IT IS RIOTOUS. We were roaring. Alex has memorized the entire movie, and not only that - but the WAY people say their lines. "John never ... even ... .... John?"

-- Many many guffaws of laughter. Out. Of. Control.

-- Alex and I explained the American Revolution to Eric, in tag-team fashion. I think we should have a show on the History Channel. It was great fun. We wanted to move into the Civil War, but we got a bit confused on dates, and events. It is not my specialty. Chrisanne is a huge Civil War buff, so we could have used her - only she had gone to bed.

-- I saw Mitchell's circus in downtown Chicago on a freezing biting cold windy day. They perform in Daley Plaza, right by the massive Picasso (that little kids use as a slide - I love that ...) Some incredible circus acts, and people thronging to watch, with their little bundled up kids.

-- Mitchell and I walked through Boy's Town - our old 'hood (or at least one of them). We looked at my old building, I felt so WEIRD looking at it ... my first apartment, ever. We walked down to the lake, it was chilly, grey, bitter - the skyline looked fantastic. They've put this concrete slab all along the water ... a wide slanting slab that goes right up to the lake - the lake slaps against it. The blue lake against the white concrete ... It looks very - er - Greek amphitheatre-ish. The air was wild, whipping past us, it was glorious. The Chicago I remember.

-- In one week, we became a happy commune. Alex, Chrisanne, Eric, Mitchell, and myself. And the 3 cats (who kept looking at all of us a bit askance, like: "When are you going away??"). Alex, the movie fanatic. I bonded with her on that score. And Chrisanne, the history fanatic ... The first day Chrisanne came home (the first moment I met her, actually) - she had stopped off at a book store on her way home. I said, "What did you buy?" She pulled out a biography of Abigail Adams. Um - old movies and John and Abigail Adams? HELLO???

-- We were pretty much all about the wack-job that is Joan Crawford. During the Hollywood Palace footage we watched, she kept messing up her words - because of her drunkenness. "I have benjoyed tonight's show..." Also, at one point ... one of the guests asks Joan Crawford how she managed to succeed as an actress. Here is EXACTLY what Joan said (and please imagine that she said it in the PHONIEST way possible): "You just be natural and be yourself. It's very sample." I mean, we analyzed that moment to SHREDS. First of all: You, Joan Crawford, are telling us to "be natural and be yourself" - as you stand there in long blue gloves, with your adopted children locked up in the closet at home? Second of all: "It's very sample????"

So "sample" became the theme of the week. "I just tried to be sample. That's all." We made fun of Joan Crawford's bumbling words so much that we finally ended up calling her "Crone Jawford":

"Good evening. I'm Crone Jawford. I hope that you have benjoyed tonight's sample show."

-- We watched Straitjacket with Crone Jawford, in possibly one of the LEAST sample performances I have ever seen in my life. Has anyone ever seen this? There's a moment where a slutty Crone Jawford (who is supposed to be a "sample farm girl") lights a cigarette off of a playing record, and the record shrieks to a halt. Now - you kind of have to have been there, I realize that - but Alex, Eric and I laughed so hard at that one moment that we watched it 5 times in a row, literally cackling and guffawing at 1 in the morning - It's amazing we didn't wake up the whole neighborhood. Alex actually did a spit-take at one point. Alex KEPT doing the sound of the record shrieking to a halt. Mitchell had gone to bed, and I asked him the next morning if he had heard our wild laughing shenanigans. He said no. He said, "Were you laughing at the part with the record player?"

People - if you ever get a chance, and want a good laugh - and also want to watch a woman's absolutely incomprehensible performance - watch Strait-jacket.

In the moment BEFORE the record-player extravaganza, Crone Jawford is staring at the psychiatrist, with a look of anger, betrayal ... and then that look disappears ... and she becomes sultry ... knowing ... and then in the next second, she gets swept away by the music, and she claps a couple of times ... then she walks to get a cigarette, throwing the psychiatrist a hostile look ... and then - OOPS - she breaks the match ... showing her sudden nerves ... Etc. Do you get the picture? It was a cornucopia of RANDOM EMOTION. Eric, watching it, commented flatly, "She's in 4 different movies right now."

Alex said later, "Joan was still acting like it was 1940. She completely missed that acting styles had changed."

Oh, people. My stomach still hurts from laughing that night.

-- Alex and I had a huge William Holden appreciation conversation. We re-lived his performance in Network - how good, how damn GOOD he is.

-- The get-together at Guthrie's Tavern was great - Scott Janssens showed up (dude, you completely rock!!!) - plus a bunch of my really old Chicago friends. Scott was a brave soul - he knew no one, and there he was, hanging out with a group of old and dear friends. Great to have you there, Scott.

-- Scott (BLESS HIM) gave me the UN-EDITED UN-TOUCHED UN-MESSED-UP versions of the Star Wars trilogy. WHERE HAN SHOOTS FIRST!!!! Oh I am so thrilled ... so thrilled! Thank you!

-- I ended up doing my Liza Minelli imitation for the entire back room at Guthrie's. The Liza-stagger. The random people at other tables who had no idea what was going on stared up at me, frightened, like: Is she really walking like that??

Things Learned This Past Week

-- That the experience of getting a manicure at Sak's is as unlike your basic 15 dollar manicure as to be another breed of event altogether. Plush, man! Livin' the lush life! Kate, Liz and I all met the morning of the wedding to get the old nails done. They still look fabulous. Kate and I both got lectured about our cuticles, at almost the same moment. "Don't cut your cuticles ..." my manicurist said to me, as I heard Kate's manicurist say across the room, "Push your cuticles back ... but whatever you do, don't cut them..." Who knew?

-- My fears of looking like Bea Arthur in my bridesmaid dress were completely unfounded.

-- Bobby Darin was freakin' HOT. Okay??? I HAD NO IDEA. We watched a clip of him singing "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" (of all things) on the short-lived but unbelievable Judy Garland show, and immediately had to rewind it and watch the whole thing again. I watched it 4 times. I felt like I was 12 years old, seeing Han Solo on the screen for the first time. The dude is toe-curlingly hot, and that's pretty much all I have to say. It's really very sample: BOBBY DARIN'S HOT!!! He's hot in kind of a mean intense way ... in a kind of Robert Mitchum in "Night of the Hunter" way ... in a kind of Russell Crowe in LA Confidential way. Not handsome, no. But hot.

-- I learned that Alex loves Liza Minelli ... and I, kind of, do not, although I think her acting in Cabaret is pretty much as good as it gets. Alex and I had a great debate about Liza vs. Judy (once I had finished doing my staggering imitation of bedhead-Liza). When describing the conversation to Mitchell later, Alex said, "Sheila and I disagreed ... but we talked it over ... and we came out whole." heh heh heh About Liza and Judy!!

-- I learned that a good color of eye shadow for my skin tone is lilac. Lilac and smoke-grey.

-- I learned about the backstage drama of "the gourd" (long long story, which I actually did tell, here) A brief version: An old flame of mine was in a show with Alex 10 years ago. Alex thinks he's nuts, and also thinks I'm a bit nuts for thinking he's great. (However, I explained my relationship with this guy to Alex, and she ended up "getting it" - and she and I came out whole. Once again.) So I had come to see that show 10 years before, basically to check out my old flame ... and, spontaneously, I do not know why, I signed a gourd and sent it to him backstage. I'm a lunatic. I signed it: "Have a good show! From, Sheila". But the FUNNIEST thing about all of this - is that Alex REMEMBERS that night, and remembers how some dumb woman (me) sent this jackass a "cumquat" - (she refused to call it a gourd). "So this cumquat is sent backstage..." Apparently, Alex even wrote in her journal that night about it. "Some idiot girl sent that asshole a cumquat backstage ... Poor woman ..." We were HOWLING about all of this. She described to me his goofy happiness when he opened the paper bag and saw the gourd ... She did an imitation of him saying, "She gave me a cumquat!!" ... Of course I knew none of this at the time. My old flame came out from backstage, and he and I stood talking for a while, and he didn't even mention the cumquat. I don't know - the "night of the gourd" is kind of a famous night for me, in my life - for whatever reason - so to realize that there was actually a spectator - someone I would actually become friends with ... is pretty dern funny. I'm sure I didn't describe that in a way which lets you know how funny it was, but I don't give a crap. Alex will laugh.

"She gave me a cumquat! ho ho ho ho ..."

-- I learned that my eyebrows look quite good when they are cleaned up a bit. It's almost like having a face lift.

-- I learned that Eric laughed so hard once that he thought his eyeball would fall out.

Keep the Faith (This is David, not Sheila)

I wish to God I had posted this when I returned from my family trip to Disney on Sunday night. It would have been more profound had I done that, but I was just too overwhelmed with my reentry into my life in Jersey and also, I had no computer. But something happened to me on the plane ride home. After a fitful Saturday night sleep in which my wife and I were both plagued by baseball stress/anxiety dreams, we packed up, depressed as hell that we were leaving our magical family vacation and that our beloved Red Sox were in a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 hole to the dreaded Bronx Bombers. At the airport I was casually watching a football game on the monitor when my youngest asked me who was winning the baseball game. I told her, loud enough for anyone around me to hear, that it was a football and that I never wanted to watch another baseball game again, that I was done with baseball for a while. A fellow next to me nodded and said, "Red Sox fan huh. Me too." We commiserated, as only fellow Red Sox fans can, and boarded the plane.

Then, while dozing, something overcame me. It started with a visual flash of a popular billboard near Fenway Park. A huge billboard with the words "Keep The Faith” in the Red Sox font and a picture of Manny pointing in his two handed signature point. There's another one nearby exactly the same with a picture of Pedro. Then came a conversation with God. Keep The Faith. Faith. What is faith worth if you didn't have to battle the opposite? Despair. It's easy to dive in when you know there's a net to catch you, but to "Dive in" (an anagram of divine) not sure if there's a net, is true faith. To believe when everything around you says not to, is faith. It's a test of faith. All year the catch phrase for the Sox has been "Keep The Faith". It was easy to believe this was the year when we got Schilling and Foulke. Not so easy to believe when we're down 3-0 against the juggernaut that is the Yankees. How could we possibly win 4 straight against them? We can't, I believed. It's over. And then the billboard came in and I realized I had lost my faith.

Now all this may seem silly, even blasphemous, to some, to talk about faith in regards to a meaningless game. Our faith is often tested on much more profound playing fields in our lives. But talk to any serious Red Sox fan and realize how meaningful a World Series victory is to them. How deeply we feel the losses and victories and it becomes a perfect arena to test one's faith for those more meaningful periods in our lives when a faith in Something is truly needed to get us through. So I decided, on that plane, to believe again.

The plane landed and the man who I had commiserated with was two rows behind me. My wife and youngest were one row behind me and I turned around and kneeled on my seat and looked in both of their eyes and I said, "We're going to win the series. I know it." They laughed and scoffed but I saw them believe too. I saw the glimmer of hope ignite inside them.

All through game 4 I talked to my buddy Brian on the phone and decided to do something that is completely uncharacteristic of me, I decided to believe, no matter what, that the Red Sox would win. His tone was filled with despair, mine was filled with hope. I was a nervous wreck, wracked with anxiety on the surface but deep down filled with a sense of peace and hope believing they would come through. I continually had to quiet myself and contact that reservoir of faith. I spoke out my faith time and time again and Lo and Behold, they won. Game 5 was no different except I felt on more occasions; I had become overwhelmed with doubt and despair. It was much more difficult for me to believe.

Today, I am filled with despair. It's getting harder to believe they can continue this miraculous come back and my doubt and fear is pushing me to put up the barriers of cynicism in order to protect myself from what I believe to be the inevitable crushing defeat; as if these barriers would protect me from the pain of the loss. Better to believe and have faith and stay present throughout the experience and feel whatever there is to feel when it's time to feel it.

Trust me, I am aware of how silly this may sound, but look at it as I do, as a metaphor of all the struggles in my life and the deep internal struggle I have with Cynicism versus Faith. It's easy to be cynical, to not believe that glory is ours to revel in, that it's for others. It's more difficult to have Faith. Particularly if you've lived a life filled with the feeling that joy is for others, not for you. That's the life I've lived and I'm battling, using this year’s ALCS to dive in to a life filled with faith, come what may!

Keep The Faith!

Now, Voyager

I haven't gotten out of my pajamas in 20 hours. Just so ya know. Life is GOOD. We all watched Now, Voyager last night (well, Chrisanne went to bed). Eric and I had never seen it - and Alex and Mitchell are already huge fans. It's got to be some of Bette Davis' best work. It's a melodrama, yes, but it has a deep reality underneath ... She has true pain, true sadness, she's an ugly duckling, trembling on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Some fine freakin' acting there. And it's ALWAYS good to see Claude Rains. The guy is always good. There's much more to say: the famous two-cigarette scene ... Paul Henreid puts two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both, and hands one to Bette. It becomes a "bit", a thing that they do. I had heard about it ... and have to admit I thought: What the heck could the big deal be about that scene? When I saw it I understood. It's done really subtly, it's very sexy ... it's not like a big sweeping moment, it's very casual ... and YUMMY. Thwarted love and all that.

Great flick. Delicious!

I guess I should get dressed now and ... er ... go outside or something. Take my glasses off. Put on some dern shoes. But it's just so cozy here.

Alex picked up her new CD yesterday and we had a ceremonial listening of it in the living room. Which was terrific. She sings "It Goes Like It Goes" which has to be one of my favorite songs ever written. Lovely. She also sings many raucous standards - and as a couple of us sat there listening, Mitchell burst into the living room, wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt, holding a ballpoint pen as a microphone, and he lip synched his way into legendary status. He was DOING Alex singing, right TO Alex. And he appeared from out of nowhere, sweeping in to the center of the room....

We all compared notes about our own lip synching moments in childhood - which we all had. "Okay - so did you use a hairbrush as a microphone or ...?" "I liked to use my curling iron as the mike because of the cord ... it seemed more real ..." Alex made the shocking statement that she NEVER used a pretend mike ... because she wanted to do dramatic diva-esque hand gestures. So apparently she was looking forward in time to the Britney Spears or Madonna head-set mike. Mitchell made the good point that if a cabaret singer (which Alex is) comes out with a CD and it does NOT make you feel like picking up a ballpoint pen and joining in ... it's not a good album. That is what singing the standards is really FOR.

Chrisanne cooked an unbelievable feast. We chowed.

This has been a lovely respite for me. The wedding itself was phenomenal - joyful, so much fun, emotional ... I saw a lot of people I haven't seen in years. I met a lot of new people. It was awesome.

But since then it's been all about cups of coffee, pjs, watching ER every morning at 10 am on TNT, lazing about on the back porch with Mitchell, or Alex, or Eric ... and erupting into howls of laughter randomly.

I did my imitation one night for Alex of when Liza Minelli (a drugged-out bedheaded Liza) came and did a master class with one of my voice classes. The story is a great story all on its own ... but you really have to get the visual of how Liza walked down the aisle of the auditorium to start class ... Without the visual, you can't get the full horror. So I staggered about on the back porch, in my pajamas, showing the Liza walk to Alex, as she screamed with laughter. At one point, Alex was laughing so hard she stood up and said, "I think I've had a stroke ... No, I'm serious ... something is WRONG." heh heh heh The story has to be acted out to be believed. I still can barely believe that it actually happened!

Okay, gotta run now. I've got some serious relaxing to do and I am way behind schedule.

Interesting

... even though I don't understand it. A list of the "20 greatest equations".

It's good to be back

Turns out there's still a place for me here in Chicago, after all.

The streets remember me, the skyline, that curve of Lake Shore Drive, the Drake Hotel ... the Magnificent Mile ... the Southport L stop on the brown-line train (my old train stop when I lived in Wrigleyville) ... the crashing dark-blue waves against the shore ... people jogging ... the Hancock Tower ... the marina ... the old Chicago houses ... I took a long run on Sunday, a gorgeous day - chilly, sunny, with yellow leaves falling. Chicago feels different from Manhattan. It's an energy-thing. Perhaps part of it is that there are many neighborhoods in the city itself where you might as well be out in the suburbs - there are lawns, trees, quiet ...

There's so much to tell about the wedding yesterday, but I'm still kind of coming down from it, processing it. It was an emotional LOVE-BOMB for all of us who were there, for all of us who love the two of them ... It was a great great day. A true celebration, a melding of two families, a day to stand and rejoice that these two beautiful people found each other and came together.

The entire day had this GIDDY vibe. It was one of the happiest weddings I've ever been to.

I feel blessed and honored to have been asked to be a part of it.

I'll probably write more about it ... but for now, that's enough. I got up early this morning, and sat out on the back porch here, having coffee, just thinking over the whole day before again, replaying certain things, laughing out loud randomly remembering some of the funniest moments ... A day to remember.

Meanwhile: my living situation here could not be more fantastic.

Relaxing, warm, quiet ... with 5,000 old movies to choose from. We saw Gentleman's Agreement on our first day here. We also watched Elaine Stritch's Tony-award-winning Broadway show (her one-woman thing) - which is truly extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. It was fantastic.

We also watched an old episode of Hollywood Palace (the old variety show ... hosted by Joan Crawford on occasion) ... and the bizarre-ness of it has to be seen to be believed. Like - half the time I did not know what I was actually looking at. Joan freakin' Crawford ... changing her outfit 10 times over the course of the night - and the outfits were all wayyyyyy over the top - like she was wearing long bright blue gloves at one point. She was drunk out of her MIND and her sloshiness is totally apparent, even though she sashays about like anointed royalty. But you can tell - there's something "off" about her. She makes little errors in pronunciation, there are long inappropriate pauses ... Her head kind of sways on top of her neck ... At the end of the night, she says, flat out, "I have benjoyed tonight's show ..."

Benjoyed?

You just DO NOT SEE out-of-control shit like that on television anymore. Or very rarely. Certainly not a major movie star hosting a show, being drunk and sloppy and WEIRD. But SO ENTERTAINING, can I tell you? It was dee-LISH. Jaon Crawford, at one point during the show, gave a dramatic reading - which was so unbelievably weird and ... I just sat here for 20 seconds trying to figure out how to describe it, but I literally have no words. I had to take a moment to recover after seeing it. (Alex had warned me that this would be the case. "You aren't going to understand what you're seeing - Your brain will not allow you to make sense of it because it is just too damn crazy.") Alex did not exaggerate.

Tonight?

We watch Now Voyager and Holiday.

Tomorrow night? Watching the Sox somewhere ... no idea where, but I will find a way.

Weather is gorgeous, the lake is a slate-blue, the air filled with falling leaves ... Yes, this is the city I remember. This dear city.

Three similar stories

One story stars Clark Gable. One stars Robert Duvall. And one stars Gary Cooper (the latest celeb-crush ... I will never abandon Cary ... how could I? We had a good time together, he and I. We really did. But I felt it was time to move on, and Gary Cooper was available. Such is life.)

I find these stories, put together, very illuminating. And we could probably add to this list indefinitely. But here are three to start off with:

1. Clark Gable

I was looking through Arthur Miller's autobiography Timebends this morning. Long stretches of that book are so deadly dull you want to commit hari-kari (Harry Carey? Whatever, you know what I mean) ... but then there are brief excerpts of such insight that it wipes out the rest of the sanctimonious ya-ya-yawn. It's his descriptions of actors I find most interesting (duh) - and also his insights into Marilyn Monroe. Anyway - he devotes many many pages to the famously difficult shoot of The Misfits - which he wrote, for Marilyn (he had a serious savior complex with her ... I suppose every man wanted to save her). Marilyn was a wreck, their marriage was falling apart, she suffered from chronic insomnia, there were many many issues with this shoot. Shooting was shut down for a month, while Marilyn was hospitalized. Etc. Clark Gable, John Huston, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach - an all-star cast - just sat around in the Nevada desert, on FULL SALARY, waiting for Marilyn to return.

There's the background.

Arthur Miller had written the part of the aging cowboy who falls in love with the girl for Clark Gable - he never could imagine anyone else in the part. It took some convincing to get Gable to agree to sign on. Gable didn't understand the script. He didn't get it. (If you see the movie, you'll see that Gable had a point!!) So Gable invited Miller to come over, and explain the script to him. Miller acknowledges that he was always really bad at that - he never could "pitch" his stuff to anyone. But he decided to give it a shot.

The first thing Gable said to him was, "This is a Western ... right? It's supposed to be a Western? But ... it's not like any Western I've ever heard of."

Miller thought about this and then replied, "It's kind of an Eastern Western."

Gable took this in, and then howled with laughter. That was all he needed to hear. He signed on immediately.

I could talk about The Misfits all day. But I won't. The REAL story I wanted to tell is about the last shot of the film - which was also the last shot they actually did during the film-shoot.

It speaks volumes about the genius of certain actors (all the greats - hands down - they've all got this) ... It also, to me, says that actors, experienced film actors I mean, know their shit. They know that camera as well as the camera-man, as well as the guy who BUILT the camera. They know the lighting equipment as well as the lighting designer. They KNOW how to do their job.

I'll let Arthur Miller tell the story. He admitted that he was very naive about film-making - He knew how to write PLAYS, but the literal-ness of movies, and the craft of movie actors as opposed to stage actors was new to him.

The final shot was also the closing scene of the picture. Langland [Gable] stops his truck so Roslyn [Monroe] can untie his dog, which was left behind while the mustangs were being rounded up. It was a studio process shot done in Los Angeles; a filmed track in the desert rolled away through the truck's back window, coming to a stop when Marilyn jumped out to go to the dog. Gable was supposed to watch her with a mounting look of love in his eyes, but I noticed only a very slight change in his expression from where I stood beside the camera, hardly ten feet away.

"Cut! Fine! Thanks, Clark; thanks, Marilyn." [John] Huston was brisk and businesslike now, in effect refusing any sentimental backward look; hardly lingering, he said he had to be off to work with the film editor.

I asked Gable if he thought he had shown sufficient expression in the final shot. He was surprised. "You have to watch the eyes. Movie acting is all up here" -- he drew a rectangle around his eyes with his finger. "You can't overdo because it's being magnified hundreds of times on the theatre screen."

He turned out to be right, as I was relieved to see in the rushes of the scene; he had simply intensified an affectionate look that was undetectable a few feet away in the studio.

2. Robert Duvall

Dennis Hopper came and did a seminar at my school. He was hilarious, irreverent, funny, WACKO, and very very articulate. He talked about directing Robert Duvall in Colors, I think it was called - the LA gang movie with Sean Penn. Hopper thinks that Duvall is the best American actor working today, and I can't say I disagree.

So Hopper was surprised to see how different it was to DIRECT him, as opposed to sitting in a movie theatre, watching him magnified up on the screen. Robert Duvall's acting is so alive, so powerful, so DEEP - Hopper was expecting THAT guy to show up. But there was Duvall, soft-spoken, quiet, humble ... and Hopper couldn't SEE that anything was happening. He didn't trust that Duvall knew that camera better than HE did ... he wanted to SEE the acting.

Hopper said that he was directing one important scene - where Duvall had to be flipping through a wad of money. Apparently, Duvall was supposed to be pissed as he did this (was it pay-off money? Dirty cop money? Something like that). In the next scene, Duvall's character had to storm into the cop's locker room and shove Sean Penn up against the locker - and give him HELL. So you needed to see the set-up of Duvall's anger in the flipping-through-money scene.

But Hopper, standing by the camera, watching Duvall - from three feet away - couldn't see it. Duvall didn't seem to be DOING anything. He was just flipping through the money. There was no sense of growing anger, of violence, of rage ... Why the hell wasn't Duvall acting? Hopper shot the scene a couple of times - he was almost intimidated by Duvall, didn't want to go up to the guy and give him acting notes, but he still didn't understand why Duvall's anger wasn't showing.

But then - later that night - when Hopper watched the rushes from the day's shoot - Duvall's skill and brilliance became clear. Hopper felt like an idiot. (After all, he's an actor too). He watched Duvall flipping through the money - and whatever it was he saw in Duvall's face it was a small thing, a tightening of the lips, the way Duvall held his hands around the money ... a tiny look in his eyes - which would have been completely invisible from 2 feet away ...

When Hopper looked at the rushes, what had seemed dull and uninteresting suddenly pulsed with violence and potential. The next scene (Duvall shoving Penn up against the lockers) made TOTAL sense. Hopper could see that Duvall was ready to bust.

Now an actor on stage obviously could not get away with that. You have to SHOW that stuff - you can't just tighten your lips, and change the expression in your eyes - Nobody will SEE it.

But these guys - Gable, Duvall - understood the medium better than their own directors.

3. Gary Cooper

There isn't just one story illustrating this point for Gary Cooper. Director after director after director told the same story:

"His performances seemed dull - when you were standing in the same room with him. He seemed passive. Very very boring. And then you would watch the rushes later that night, and it was the most powerful acting you'd ever seen."

By the end of his career, directors were no longer shocked or worried on the first days of shooting. They no longer thought: "Jesus, this guy is dead in the water, a drippy noodle ... where the hell is the ACTING?" The directors understood by then that Gary Cooper knew his job better than they did - and all they needed to do was wait for the daily rushes. They knew that Gary Cooper was turning in a great performance, even though they couldn't see it yet.

Windy City, What's Up Doc??

Because of the STRESS, I haven't been able to really look forward to the upcoming week. I guess you could say I'm high-strung. But a glimmer of excitement is starting to break through ...

Actually, the exciting thing is ... I am going to be staying with Alex and her wife Crisanne. I've met Alex only a few times, and that was a long looong time ago - when she was in a show with an old flame of mine. But it was really just a "Hey, how are you, nice show" kind of introduction.

But now - because of our blogs - (here's hers) we've become cyber-friends. She comments here all the time. She is the queen of Katherine Hepburn trivia.

Anyway - the thrilling thing is ... Alex and Chrisanne (whom I have never met) also live with Mitchell (one of the best friends I have ... he's the one described in this post here) - and I am going to be staying there for the week. I can already feel the hilarity.

There are going to be so many old movies watched that by the end of the week, we all may have turned black-and-white, like in Pleasantville. Alex sent me a list of suggested titles - so she can get them ready for watching. I am sure there will be a full schedule presented to me upon arriving at O'Hare, so every night is planned out.

Tuesday? Star is Born.
Wednesday? Now, Voyager
Thursday? Dark Victory

Etc.

And of COURSE there will be a ceremonial viewing of What's Up Doc - and of COURSE: I know the movie by heart, Mitchell knows the movie by heart, Alex knows the movie by heart - (I can't speak for Chrisanne) - and it's ONLY fun to sit and recite an ENTIRE movie if everyone around you is doing it, too. Otherwise, it is completely annoying.

I look forward to all of us sitting there, watching that movie, our three voices saying simultaneously:

"Can you fix a hi-fi?"
"No, sir."
"Then SHUT UP."

I look forward to REALLY getting to know Alex - as a real person out in the world, not just a screen name!

It'll be a good week.

"I don't have a badge for a Miss Eunice Burns."

"Who is that dangerously unbalanced woman?"

"I know how you feel, Mister. I hate it when my igneous rocks are even touched."

"Then how much is it without the Bufferin?"

"Well, this last time it was NOT MY FAULT."
"What happened?"
"It was a little classroom ... and it sort of ... burned down ..."
"Burned down?"
"Well, blew up, actually."
"Political activism?"
"Chemistry major."
"Ah."

If Martha Stewart were a man ...

... would the press be so overwhelmingly fascinated by the fact that she was going to be subjected to a strip search? It's mentioned in every article I've read. It was being discussed on the radio this morning.

"Will she have to go through a strip search?" The strip search procedure was then discussed in great detail. Would this be the case if her name were Martin Stewart? I'm serious.

This gleeful fascination with the humiliation of Martha baffles me. I'm not saying she shouldn't be punished, and she doesn't seem all that eager to protest ... She says she's innocent, but she wanted to start her sentence, get it over with ... I admire that.

What I find disgusting is this dwelling on the strip search. Maybe it just seems like "dwelling" to me - but I don't think so. When male celebrities have gone to prison, has the press ALSO obsessed on the image of the famous person having a strip search done? I don't know the answer to that - so I'm willing to be proven wrong. If anyone can remember a famous GUY going to jail and having "strip search" being in every article, then I will eat my hat. Only I'm not wearing a hat.

Regardless, in the case of Martha Stewart, it strikes me as hostile. Hostility towards this hoity-toity woman, and let's revel in her humiliation.

"Ooooh, how exciting that that cool blonde bitch is going to brought down so low ... Let's imagine her squatting and coughing and being searched internally .. HAHAHAHA - isn't that so great???"

That's the vibe I'm getting.

I don't get it. She's a business woman. She made herself into a millionaire. You can't tell me she's any more ruthless than a Bill Gates. It's people's interpretations of how women should act, then. Otherwise why such gleeful hostility? I don't remember gleeful discussions of strip searches when Robert Downey Jr. went to jail. Again, I could be wrong. I'm just observing that it seems to have a different feeling, with this particular celebrity. The word "gleeful" keeps coming up for me. It's just an interpretation, but I'm sticking to it. Would there be such gleeful hostility at the image of OJ Simpson (if he had gone to jail) being subjected to a strip search? Maybe there would have been. But I doubt it.

Oh, I forgot to tell about my morning

I actually was able to sleep last night. I am convinced it is because I actually wrote out my sadness yesterday. I came home ... watched Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (I am such a geek, and I am so happy about it) - and then crawled off into bed and passed out like a dead woman. A dead happy woman.

At some random point - early this morning - it must have been around 5 am ... I was awoken by an enormous BOOM. Not only did the sound itself wake me (it was like an enormous clap of thunder, random, huge) - but it shook my house - and my bed moved from its position out into the room a little bit.

I had been so fast asleep - I assumed it was thunder - which made me happy - I love storms ... and I went back to sleep.

I woke up with my alarm at 5:45. And began my morning. My precious 3 hours before I have to go to work. I realized, to my deep chagrin, that I had run out of coffee. I cannot begin my morning without coffee. Not possible. The store across the street from me opens at 7. So I crawled back into bed, fell asleep, and woke up again at 7.

I walked outside. The New York skyline to my right was in the full glory of sunrise. The sun was still very low in the sky, beaming through the tall buildings, and the rest of the skyscrapers - the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, were all smudgy and purple ... like a Monet ... and the Hudson - the Hudson was an indescribable color. Somewhere in between silver and purple and a deep dark blue. The air was chill. It was dawn. I stared at the view for a while, happily. Such beauty.

I had forgotten the sonic boom of thunder ... but I did notice that there were helicopters hovering above my neighborhood ... filling the air with a steady insistent roar. I noticed it and assumed that maybe there was a traffic jam in the Lincoln Tunnel or something, and these were the traffic-copters. Odd, though - the quiet lilac skyline to my right ... and these loud buzzing copters.

I started to the deli ... and noticed at the end of my street ... what looked like 726 fire engines. A festival of whirling lights.

Clearly, that was no clap of thunder. I asked the guy at the deli and he didn't know ... everyone in the deli was talking about the sonic boom - and how their furniture had moved, too - pictures fell off the wall, etc. What was it? There's construction going on at the end of my block ... maybe a gas line exploded?

Later that morning, fully jazzed on coffee, I headed to work. By that point, the whirling lights were gone, but the end of the street was blocked off, there was a parked fire truck, firemen everywhere, crowds of people, and those helicopters still above.

I stopped a woman and asked her if she knew what had happened. Apparently, a car had zoomed up the hill and crashed directly into a house - but then - the car itself burst into flames. It exploded - I mean, it had to have been massive to wake me up and to move my bed. Just the crashing into the house would not have been enough to wake up an entire neighborhood ... could it? It was the explosion which resonated. Could a small car make such a huge explosion? Even if it "just" crashed into a house? I'm still confused by it. Could the car have crashed into ... an electrical wire ... or ... ??

The driver of the car died. The house burned to the ground. I don't know if the residents were home.

It's weird ... I've never really heard an explosion in real life before. At least I don't think I have. In movies, sure ... but not in real life. I watched the second World Trade tower explode ... but I was on a bus, and couldn't hear it. I have a friend who worked on 18th Street, blocks and blocks and blocks away from the financial district ... so damn far away ... and when the planes hit, she said all of the windows buckled in and out ... and you could feel the impact shiver through the entire building.

More on that whole poetry thing

A while back we had a discussion here about our favorite poems and poets. It was great, except for the random condescending nitwit who showed up and lectured all of us that "Ball Turret Gunner" was OBVIOUSLY about abortion, and gave us some key points on "how" to read poetry. Ick.

But let him not ruin our fun.

The comments to that post are filled with poetry goodness. Go check it out.

I realized today ...

... Well. There's a post I want to write. About something I realized today.

I spent 5 years of my life in Chicago. It was a potent time, full of risks, and excitement - I had so much fun I wanted to DIE, and I had so much heartache I thought I might actually die ... It was a landmark in my life.

I felt I had to move on. Some stuff went down in Chicago which made it impossible for me to imagine living there anymore. (At least living there and being able to have a normal happy life.) GEOGRAPHY was the problem! Yeah, that's it...

So I moved.

Chicago, over the years, has continued to call to me. It's a memory, a mood, a symbol ... It represents for me who I used to be. Well, it represents a lot. Youth, fear, growth, love, tears, howling laughter, coming out of my shell ... All of this huge stuff happened to me while I lived there.

Sorry. Now the tears. I have yet to feel like I have gained back whatever I lost when I moved away.

However, on the flipside - if I hadn't moved to New York, I wouldn't be so near to my family now, which I love ... I wouldn't have met my dear friend and soul-sister Jen, I wouldn't have met my crazy Texan cowboy friend Wade - I wouldn't have met Rich ... oh, and so many others.

But the feeling of Chicago? The feeling of youth? Of insanity? Of spontanaeity and unabashed joy?

I've had a rough last couple of years. Really rough. Thank God for the blog, that's all I have to say.

I haven't been back to Chicago since early 2001. My relationship with the city is now tumultuous, and kind of ... haunted. For a while my feelings about Chicago were all tied up in one person, and I couldn't think of the place without thinking of him. My entire time in grad school I would spend my vacations in Chicago ... I had so many old ties there, so many dear friends ... and not just that ... but I LOVE that damn town. The lakefront, the skyline, the people ... It's one of the nicest cities I have ever encountered, certainly my favorite place I have ever lived.

So then why not move back?

I suppose because I know, in my heart, that ... a part of me (if I moved) would want to "go back" in time ... Like: If I moved back there, perhaps I could capture again the feeling of when I first lived there, a crazy time - I moved there on a whim (brought about by my Westfalia breaking down) ... I walked away from my old life and started a new one. Quickly. I started brand new in a city I had only visited ONCE, and that time for less than 24 hours. It was a risk moving to Chicago. Although I had dear friends there, I had no idea what, exactly, I would do there. I had no idea what I was looking for.

I found so many things during my time there. So many things.

I was in amazing plays, incredible projects ... All of my friends were too.

I had old friends there. College friends. A whole crowd of us had ended up in Chicago ... Like, my best friends in the world. The fun we had was apocalyptic.

And I made new friends. Kate ... Ann Marie ... Derek ... George ...

There was the triumvirate. Spectacular men. All of them. I wish I could see them now, and hug them, and thank them for all that they gave me.

But the city I am going back to is a different city now. Friends have moved on. One of the triumvirate guys is still vaguely in the vicinity but it's really not a good idea for us to be in contact at all. The other two have long since moved away. The landscape itself may be different - new buildings, old favorites torn down ... but it's really the people, (I used to think of them as "constants"), who will have changed.

I used to return to Chicago, like clockwork, on my vacations from grad school ... and I would make the rounds. I knew where I would inevitably find people.

Oh, on this night? So-and-so is bartending so I'll just stop by.

And on this night? He's got his weekly show at such-and-such ... I'll stop by.

I absolutely LOVED that. In a world of flux and loss, it is wonderful to count on such small things. Over 3, 4, 5 years, none of that changed. I could go home to Chicago, and slide back into my old role ... there was still a place there for me.

Well, the constants are no longer constants. I don't know where to find certain people anymore. In growing up, there have been breaking away of connections ... some of them quite wrenching.

I suppose Chicago, and my love of it, was never really about the city itself anyway. It was the people I met there, and the girl I was while I lived there, and the people who randomly came into my life BECAUSE of the girl I was then.

I don't know what has happened ... or what I have lost ... or if I have gained anything ... I can't tell anymore ... I feel very very stressed out right now, and very anxious about traveling ... and suddenly today I feel this overwhelming sadness. Like a huge wave.

I am feeling anxious about returning to this place, this pivotal place, and to find it changed. But more than that ... I suppose ... I am afraid to be confronted with how much I have changed. I don't know why that's so frightening to me ... but it is. I have been so frantic the last couple of days ... bridesmaid stuff - dress - shoes - preparations ... that I have not at all been aware of my inner life. I knew I was extremely anxious and unable to sleep. At all. But I just thought it was because of money worries, and the normal stress before leaving for vacation.

Today, though, talking with Jen ... it all came flooding out. Surprising me as much as her.

"What will it be like to go back to Chicago and have so-and-so not there??" Tears. Major tears.

I suppose this is good information to have - so I won't be completely blindsided at my first view of the Chicago skyline. Now I know.

Now I know what is going on inside of me. It takes me a while sometimes. I'm not all that self-aware. At least not about stuff like this.

I don't know what it will be like to be back in Chicago ... and to not see so-and-so ... and to not do such-and-such ... But maybe I need to have this one week of ... getting to know the place as a new city, perhaps a pure city ... with no preconceptions, no baggage lugged along behind me ...

Maybe someday I will be able to visit Chicago without seeing my entire life flash before my eyes.

J'accuse George Lucas

The trial continues ... led by our Grand Inquisitor Bill McCabe.

A snippet: "Jake Lloyd sucked and you cast him, George."

(A brief note: You know how the abysmal Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire: "You had me at 'Hello'?" (Gag)

Well. I say to George Lucas: "You lost me at Midichlorians."

I find Midichlorians offensive, George. So ... the force is GENETIC? It's ... something IN THE BLOOD ... rather than that mystical energy source that ANYONE can tap into?? Shame on you. Shame!!!! J'accuse!)

Barry ... please. Not a word. This outrage is fun for us. Thank you.

"it was an old song"

More from Jack London's "Call of the Wild"

Here and there, Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealism flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself -- one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.

"the summit of life"

From Jack London's "Call of the Wild"

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew and that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exulatnatly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

"That kid is the greatest goddamn actor..."

I like this story a lot. It's one of those stories which may be a legend, may be an exaggeration ... whatever, I don't care. I like it anyway. I ran across it again this morning in the Goldwyn biography, and remembered how much I liked it.

Gary Cooper (I think his name was actually Frank) had grown up in Montana, on a ranch ... but had also spent 10 years as a child in England ... his formative years. Somehow, as a young man, he ended up in California. Perhaps looking for work? Not sure. If he had ambitions to be a great actor, he wasn't behaving in that way. He met up with two good friends who were strolling down the street in full Western garb. They told him that you could make good money as an extra in cowboy movies. If you could ride a horse, looked good in chaps ... you might make some cash, and you might get a shot at the big time!

This was in the early 1920s.

So I guess Cooper started being an extra on Westerns. A faceless nobody. Just the same as the tons of other young hopeful cowboy-types in Hollywood at the time. However, what made him different (in a way ) was that women fell over for him like ninepins. And very early on - a couple of different actresses noticed this tall lean very very shy cowboy-extra - and tried to help him out, tried to push his career along. They became patronesses, almost. All women. The dude had major sex appeal, and yet was often so shy he could barely get the words out, and he blushed like a schoolboy. (Of course, this made the women go even more nuts over him ... and a couple of them became DETERMINED that even if they couldn't get this guy into bed, they would try to advance his career.) One woman, in particular - who was an actress, very successful, had a huge crush on him - and basically forced directors to look at him, forced the publicity department of the studios to consider him ... etc.

But still - he wasn't an actor. He was a fill-in, a guy who looked good in chaps and a cowboy hat and could ride a horse.

In 1926, he was on location (as an extra) with The Winning of Barbara Worth - directed by Henry King. Again, he was an extra. He had no lines. He was one of the faceless ranch hands.

Meanwhile: some OTHER actor, a "real" actor, had been cast in a very small but very important part. He only had one scene. However, this actor (whoever he was) kept asking for more and more money, or something like that - maybe it was scheduling problems, not sure, but he was negotiating with the studio ...

Henry King (the director), on location, finally decided he couldn't wait any longer for this over-paid actor to show up, and offered the role to the untried Gary Cooper.

All Gary Cooper had to do was knock on the door of the cabin. The woman inside would open the door, and he would collapse inside, from exhaustion. That was the part.

Long afterwards, when he was asked about Cooper, Henry King would describe the first day of shooting with this unknown kid who had never acted before. It also just so happens that Sam Goldwyn himself had come out on location that day, to check up on how things were going.

Henry King said that, while the crew was setting up the lights, etc., he pulled Gary Cooper aside and kept saying to him: "Look, just remember that your character is tired ... you are so tired ... You have been riding for days ... Tired, tired, tired ... When that door opens, I need to see a man who is licked ... who can barely stand ... tired, tired, tired..."

King said that he OVER explained it to Gary Cooper (I mean, obviously, Gary Cooper knows what the word "tired" means), but King didn't think Gary Cooper was an actor. Maybe Gary Cooper didn't yet think that Gary Cooper was an actor. Who knows.

King said that whenever he had a 5 minute break, a 10 minute break, he'd come back over to Gary Cooper's side, and whisper "Tired, tired, tired ..."

Sam Goldwyn saw how much attention the director was giving this glorified EXTRA, and grumbled about it - "Am I paying you so that you can give an extra acting lessons?"

King protested, "The kid isn't an actor ... I've got to explain to him what he has to do ..."

Anyway - finally the time came to shoot the scene. It was an interior shot - You would hear Gary Cooper's knock on the door ... the woman would open the door... and he would fall inside. A simple scene.

Action!

The scene began - a bit of dialogue - blah blah blah -

Then came, at the door, the TIREDEST most weary knock anyone had ever heard. King said that you could barely hear the knock. It was as though the person knocking did not even have the strength to lift his hand up high enough to knock properly. (Obviously ... this "extra" knew how to act - he went for it, he went for tiredness 110%.)

Anyway. After this weary timid knock, the door was opened ... and there was this kid - who right up to the moment before shooting the scene was a tall young lean handsome cowboy. But the door opened on an absolute wreck of a man. King said, "He had become, in the 30 seconds hidden behind that door, a completely different man. A sad sack." Gary Cooper took one step forward, and then collapsed onto the floor ... completely gracefully, completely naturally ... It looked as though his legs just could not hold him up anymore. The cameraman, realizing that some DAMN FINE ACTING was going on, had the presence of mind to follow Cooper's swoon down to the floor.

King said that 2 seconds after he called "Cut", Sam Goldwyn called him over. Sam Goldwyn could be quite terrifying. Especially when he was really really calm. Which he was in this moment.

Goldwyn murmured, "You say that kid's not an actor?"

King said, "He was an extra until this morning."

Goldwyn replied, "Henry, that kid is the greatest goddamn actor I have ever seen in my life."

My library

Occasionally, I have moments where I get this profound sense of well-being. Not often ... but occasionally. They take me unawares.

I've had a couple of these well-being moments over the last couple of extremely stressful days (when anxiety buzzes through my head like a swarm of bees - I'm not kidding ...) ... and both moments had to do with my enormous random library of books.

I finished off Will in the World early this morning (being unable to sleep because of the damn bees in my head) ... Now I have a lot more I want to say about the book, which I found perfectly wonderful. Loved every second of it. Anyway, at one point - Greenblatt was comparing Marlowe's Tamburlaine to one of Shakespeare's earlier plays ... Now, I love Marlowe, always have ... Anyway, there was a line by line analysis of some of the monologues. So. Up I get. I go to the bookcase. I scan. I find my copy of Marlowe's Tamburlaine and I begin to investigate the situation myself.

I LOVE that. I don't know why it fills me with peace ... but it DOES. It sure quieted down those dern bees.

I feel like my father in those moments. A reference library, geared towards my own individual interests, right in my own house.

The other moment, forgive me, was also this morning - only a bit later (we're talking at around 7 am). I had finished off Will in the World. I took about 10 minutes to revel in the book. Thinking about it, looking through the pages again.

I went to get some more coffee. I caught sight of the huge biography I have of Samuel Goldwyn, sitting in my bookcase in the kitchen ... I randomly picked it up. Started flipping through it. Now - because I just saw Ball of Fire, which I fell in love with, and because I knew that it had been produced by Goldwyn, I took the book back into my main room, sat down with the coffee, and started reading the Ball of Fire section.

And I got, again, this odd flush of well-being. Like: I was able to think to myself: "Wow, it would be fun to hear what Goldwyn thought of that movie ... and it would be interesting to know the backstory of it ..." and then - voila - I happen to have a biography of Goldwyn in my house. I LOVE that. I am able to generate my own instant gratification in those moments.

Most of these books I pick up second-hand ... a ton of them I have never read before - although most of them I have ... but I enjoy having them THERE. Even though they've always been a pain in my ass when I move. I like being able to look stuff up in the moment that the thought occurs to me.

I have the books at my fingertips ... if I'm ever in need.

"Quick ... what were Elia Kazan's thoughts on acting with James Cagney?" Boom. I can tell you.

"Quick ... what were Tennessee Williams' thoughts on DH Lawrence?" Boom. I've got it.

"Quick ... what was Montenegro's response to the attempts at Turkish conquest?" Got it. No worries.

Gives me a feeling of peace. Relaxation, I suppose. Which I need these days.

Re-reading stuff

I'm re-reading Call of the Wild right now. Which got me to thinking about books you read in junior high and high school which made little to no impression on you - and then you went back and re-read them, as an adult, and realized: MAN, these are actually GREAT books!!

One of the main examples of that, for me, is Moby Dick. I had to read it on the summer reading list, and I remember sitting on the beach with my friends, a week before the start of school, reading that damn BORING BOOK - a book that had NO GIRLS IN IT (the woman ladling out chowder in the beginning DOESN'T COUNT) ... We speed-read it, over that last week, grumbling, moaning, etc.

I re-read it again in 2000, I think - and it is, by far, one of the greatest and weirdest and most exciting books I have ever read.

Another one is Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I KNOW I read the damn thing in high school ... but not one word of it stuck with me. It was one big stupid YAWN.

I re-read it 2 years ago, and there were sections of it which brought me to tears. Terrific book.

Anyway - we ALL have those books from high school ... Any of you care to talk about the books you went back to re-read, only to find that suddenly they were GREAT, as opposed to boring and pointless? (One book I will never go back and re-read is Billy Budd. I just can't. The first impression it made on me was too horrible. I hated that book. Oh, how I hated it. Perhaps unfairly ... I am sure many of you will write and tell me it's great. But there are some barriers that just cannot be broken.)

Janet Leigh, RIP

She scared the bejeebus out of us ... during the [corrected for emotional clarity] DEADLY - TERRIFYING shower scene ... I can't even think about it directly, without shivering in sympathetic horror ...

Of course, that was not all she did. Her career was long, and she appeared in some true classics. Touch of Evil, The Manchurian Candidate, etc.

I came across the following quote this morning, in one of the obits I read. Leigh described her experience filming Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles. I like the quote because it shows her generosity, her intelligence. The filming of the movie was a "great experience" for her, and yet she was disappointed with what ended up on the screen. She said:

"Universal just couldn't understand it, so they recut it. Gone was the undisciplined but brilliant film Orson had made."

She was 77 years old when she died. Her daughters, Kelly and Jamie Lee Curtis, were both at her side when she died.

Rest in peace, Ms. Leigh. You will not be forgotten.

The marriage of true minds

So next week. I'm in the wedding of one of my dearest friends on the planet. She has asked me to read Sonnet 116, during the service - her favorite sonnet. It's one of my favorites too.

And I am honestly frightened. I "rehearsed" it this weekend, by myself. I went through it, a couple times. And found that I was unable to get through the first two lines without feeling an ALARMINGLY huge lump of tears rise in my throat.

Goldurnit - I MUSTN'T be a crying bridesmaid. That's so cheesy.

And it's not that I'm sad or anything. It's just those damn WORDS.

"it is an ever-fix-ed mark..."

It feels more like a visceral response (the tears) rather than anything connected to a specific circumstance ... Merely SAYING the words brings up this durn lump in the throat.

So my project for this week? To repeat Sonnet 116 (which I know by heart anyway) over and over and over and over ... and cry if I need to ... but perhaps by the 54th time I recite it, I will no longer feel this scary urge to weep. Repetition breeds familiarity which breeds CALMNESS.

Breathe. Breathe.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..."

sniffle, sniffle ...

Repetition will save my ass. This is my hope.

First Lines not yet guessed

The below are un-guessed first lines of novels (from a game played here all weekend).

Anyone? NO CHEATING. Google it if you like, but if you do so - don't post it. Someone will guess it.

1. A screaming comes across the sky.

2. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

Note: This is obviously from ONE of the 2 Lewis Carroll books about Alice. The question now is: which one?? (Er - isn't that how one of his books ends? "Which one do you think it was?")

3. Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

And that's IT!

Excellent work, everyone. I am humbled and awed by each and every one of you.

A brief note ...

I rented the Howard Hawks-directed movie Ball of Fire last night, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper - I had never seen it, and a bunch of you had recommended it to me (espeically in response to my Howard Hawks Woman piece) ... My new video store has it on the shelves, and I snatched it up.

I can't remember the last movie I found so unbelievably delightful - on every level. It's so FUNNY, but it's also tender, and sweet, and sexy ... The dialogue is beyond belief - espeically one prolonged sparring-sexy scene between Cooper and Stanwyck, which ends with them in a passionate clinch. She plays a show-girl who speaks almost completely in slang, and Cooper plays a sexually inexperienced grammarian who has enlisted her help in getting to know the slang terms of the day. There's one long scene they have in the study, when he admits his attraction (but in such a bumbling shy way) and she is putting the moves on him ... The scene goes on and on and on ... they are two virtuosos, at battle. I watched that scene twice in a row. It was so damn good.

Billy Wilder co-wrote the script, so it has that ... WIT, that Puckish naughty cleverness ... but then it also has some positively laugh-out-loud funny moments. What a human being Billy Wilder must have been. I so much appreciate his comedic outlook. His humorous making fun of the flaws and foibles of all of us.

I ADORED this movie. I love any movie that makes me laugh out loud.

But the movie doesn't sacrifice sentiment. When it gets tender, it's quite beautiful - quite moving ... I was particular moved by the kind of defeated and yet tearful way Stanwyck admits to someone else that she loves the stuffy professor. And the LINES she says to declare her love shows Billy Wilder's special brand of genius.

Stanwyck is sitting slumped in an armchair, she's got the glimmer of tears in her eyes ... she's a tough dame, wrapped up with the wrong crowd ... but you can tell she's falling in love with Cooper ... and to describe it, she says, "I'm in love with him because he gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk. I'm in love with him because he doesn't know how to kiss ..." (Then she kind of chokes up ... she can't go on anymore ... Finally she resumes:) "I'm in love with him."

"I'm in love with him because he gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk." God.

Gary Cooper is freakin' FANTASTIC, Barbara Stanwyck is just stunning, and gorgeous, and also so funny - she completely IS that girl - and I particularly adored the other 7 scholars (Gary Cooper plays one of an 8-man team who have been working on putting together an encyclopedia for 9 straight years). These 7 guys are character-actors you would totally recognize ... these old pros, these absolute comedic geniuses - able to create specific characters with a few broad strokes.

They are SO FUNNY.

Thank you so much, everyone who recommended it, for pointing it to me ... I'm kind of in a rush right now (errands, manicures, etc.) so I can't pontificate in my normal way ... but this is one of the nicest funniest sexiest movies I have ever seen. I enjoyed every single moment of it. And after it was done, I couldn't keep the smile off my face for a good 15 minutes.

The impulse to make people laugh - the impulse of comedians and comedic writers - I think is one of the noblest impulses in existence.

Unbearable excitement

As I have described here before (in particular, in this piece, about my 10 year wait for Norman Rush to write another damn book) - when I am a fan of something, I am a fan of that something to such a degree that it can swipe away everything else, it can obscure everything - it completely takes over. It is a passion, over-riding, thrilling. Norman Rush' long-awaited sequel, in fact, STUNK, but ... I still read every word, realizing how much the thing stunk, feeling a vague sense of disappointment, sure ... but not enough to wipe out the immense pleasure that his first book had given me. (And still gives. I probably read the damn thing once a year.)

These passions which get a grip on me (er ... this... er ... that...) can barely be described as pleasurable. Although, of course, they are. But it's a pleasure akin to pain. I love it so much it hurts.

If that makes me sound like a fragile little lunatic, so be it.

I have always been this way. I think it used to make my parents a bit nervous for me when I was little - like such highs brought about by these passions would probably be accompanied by an equally severe low. I still remember my mother gently telling me, when I was 10 or something, that "we won't be able to listen to 'Oliver' any more." BWAHAHA I had obviously just started to play the soundtrack for the 10th time in one afternoon ... and my mother, oh so gently, came in and stopped me. We lived in a small house. If I played Oliver ten times in a row, the entire family had to listen along.

Anyway.

Perhaps some of you will remember when I posted all of those Lucy Maud Montgomery quotes. My obsession with LM Montgomery goes way back. It continues to this day. It began as a childhood thing, loving all of her novels, then it transformed as I got older ... and then in the last 10 years, her journals started to be published.

This is when I really got to know this woman. Those JOURNALS! My GOD! So illuminating.

I DEVOURED them. As it stands, there are four published volumes. The last volume was published a while ago (it feels like centuries to me) - and only brings us up to the year 1935. LM Montgomery died in 1942, a broken woman. I have a volume of letters she wrote to a pen pal, and the letters of the 1940s are almost unreadably despairing. She has lost vocabulary. Letter after letter: "I have completely lost my health. I will not get better. I am broken. Something is broken in me ..." Etc. Some kind of breakdown has occurred, a breakdown from which she never recovered.

But the journals, so far, have not covered that last stretch of her life.

It's been so long since one of the volumes appeared I kind of gave up hope. Occasionally, I would go and check Amazon, to see if anything new was there under LM Montgomery ...

And this morning, I found a new URL in my referral log (www.anneshirley.net ... Anne Shirley, is, of course, the "Anne" of LM Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables). Anyway, Joanne, who runs this site which appears to be a fan site/information site about Lucy Maud and about Anne Shirley ... tripped over my Lucy Maud literary posts, and linked to them, kindly. I started to scan through her site, and came across the following post, which made my heart literally push against my rib cage in excitement:

The fifth and final volume of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journals is scheduled to be released on October 8. Edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston for Oxford University Press, this volume spans the years 1935 to 1942.

I can't describe how excited I am. October 8!!! The excitement is unbearable.

I literally cannot wait to get my hands on that book. I feel like a little kid again ... overcome by this old passion ...

I know that the journals will not be a happy read. Already, by the 4th volume of the journals, Lucy Maud was reaching incoherence, and displaying an increasing incapability of feeling joy. (Except for when she was writing her novels.) The novels are filled with joy, wonder, the fullness of life. Her journals are unremittingly bleak. Bleak stuff.

But I love this woman. I love this woman as much as if I actually knew her. I cherish her. That's what it is. I cherish every word she ever wrote - even in her cornier books, even in her lesser known books - there are lines of such startling beauty and comedy and insight that she takes my breath away.

I am sorry she ended her life so broken, so alone, so grief-struck. The letters at the end of her life bring tears to my eyes, they are so hopeless and dark. And yet I cherish those bleak "I'm a broken woman" sentences as well ... because they were written by her.

October 8!!!!

More of the "First Line" game

Unfurling below you are unidentified first lines of novels.

Please begin the beguine. Some of these are translations, and I feel a bit odd about that, like I should post it in the original. A couple of these books I have ONLY read in their original language - one in particular - I think the first line of this particular book is FAR better in the original language - but oh well. No need to be too pedantic. Chill out, Sheil-babe. It's Saturday.

(Emily? If you're out there? I posted a couple of these for you. You too, Dan - one of these I picked out for you, knowing that you love the author - or ... I seem to recall that you do!)

Oh, and provide title and author, please. (There's a bunch still un-guessed in the lines I posted earlier today.)

Have at it.

First Line

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

First Line

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

First Line

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

First Line

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

First Line

On top of everything, the cancer wing was Number 13.

First Line

Mother died today.

First Line

You better not never tell nobody but God.

First Line

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

First Line

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

First Line

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.

First Line

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow loveable.

First LIne

1801 -- I have just returned from a visit to my landlord -- the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with.

First Line

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.

First LIne

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

First LIne

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

First LIne

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.

First Line

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.

First Line

Robert Cohn was once the middle-weight boxing champion of Princeton.

First Line

Weidmann appeared before you in a five o'clock edition, his head swathed in white bands, a nun and yet a wounded pilot fallen into the rye one September day like the day when the world came to know the name of Our Lady of the Flowers.

First Line

The day had gone by just as days go by.

First Line

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

First Line

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

First Line

A screaming comes across the sky.

First Line

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

First Line

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

First Line

We are at rest five miles behind the front.

First Line

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

First LIne

It is three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today that the citizens of Paris were awakened by the pealing of all the bells in the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town.

First Line

I am a sick man ... I am an angry man.

First LIne

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

First Line

Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

First Line

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

First Line

Call me Ishmael.

First Line

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest.

First Line

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

First Line

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

First Line

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.

First Line

It was a pleasure to burn.

First Line

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

First Line

It was love at first sight.

First Line

Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?

First Line

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

First Line

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's from swerve of share to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

First Line

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."

First Line

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!

First Line

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

First Line

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

First Line

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

First Line

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; -- that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibily the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; -- and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: -- Had they duly weighted and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, -- I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.

First LIne

"Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

First Line

In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him.

First Line

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

First Line

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....