The Sheila Variations

The plague of Lotuses

I'd like to see the Lego rendition of THIS.

(I think what she was ACTUALLY referring to was this ... she just got a little confused.)

Moonlight Graham

Steve Silver's post gives me chills!!

That movie, man. DAMMIT. Read that monologue. It's just marvelous cinematic writing, ain't it? The whole script is that way. Of course, we all know how I feel about Annie Kinsella. And it looks like, judging from the comments, that I'm not alone.

But man. Archie "Moonlight" Graham ... as created by both Frank Whaley and Burt Lancaster ... Beautiful. Got a big ol' lump in my throat right now.

Dave has a post about it too. I love it!!

Homework!

So I'm taking a class at the 92nd Street Y. I have homework! For the first time in years, I have assignments. I love it!! There's something very relaxing about setting aside 2 or 3 hours, or whatever, and going about the task at hand, whatever it may be. Certainly has a different energy than homework in high school. Every week, we are assigned to read a short story from You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe, a massive anthology of short stories.

Then we discuss them in class.

Uhm ... can I describe how heavenly this is? To sit around with a bunch of strangers, and we only have one goal for 3 hours once a week: to discuss short stories, to talk about form, and structure, and story, and how an author gets his point across, and what it all means ... It's just plain old awesome.

We sit in one of the nursery-school rooms on the 6th floor of the Y. So there are finger paintings on the walls, and mobiles hanging everywhere. There is an enormous skylight, and last night we could hear the rain beating down on it. It's a cool atmosphere, in general - the 92nd Street Y - you walk in and you can feel the buzz - but I think it's hysterical that we sit around and talk about John Cheever with finger painted blobs all around us, the ghosts and echoes of the little kids who spend most of their days in that room.

But I leave class feeling all pepped up and energized. We also read our work to the class. Which, naturally, is nervewracking - because it's not a place where you get 100% praise. What needs to be worked on is discussed and parsed apart exhaustively. But it's all with the intent to help the writer grow, and push himself or herself, which makes a huge difference. It feels honest. It's not a pampering atmosphere, which has its own brand of dishonesty, and it's not an abusive critical atmosphere, which is also dishonest.

One woman read something she wrote last night, and it made her so nervous to do so. But anyway, the piece this girl read last night was funny (much laughing out loud from all of us), and sweet, and it left us wanting more. It ended in the middle of an anecdote, and we all were dying to find out what happened. But the beginning of the piece meandered a bit - you weren't sure who the narrator was right off the bat - and so there was much discussion about all of this. Meanwhile, the woman was busy writing everything down, nodding, sometimes speaking up to explain herself, but mostly just taking notes. And once she finished reading and started listening to the critique, the beautiful thing was - she didn't seem nervous anymore. Because she was no longer focused on herself, and the "shortcomings" of her work - No. She had found confidence in what she had created, and she was ready to hear about what the next step should be.

It's a cool thing.

So I've been doing a lot of writing, and research for my writing. And also reading all of these great short stories for discussion in class.

This week we have to read Cheever's Goodbye, My Brother, which I've already read ... but I started it again last night, to refresh my memory, and realized how much i had forgotten. how much I had blocked out. It's a painful story. And it's hard to say why, because the tone is so light, so seemingly superficial ... But there's a world of pain and disconnect underneath.

I just love having homework. It's a good way to start structuring my time more efficiently.

Biblical Legos

I'm with Anne and Faustus:

The Brick Testament is AWESOME.

It's the Bible ... told through Legos. You kind of have to see it to believe it.

Here's a random sample:

The Massacre of the Amorites

Look at this dude.

Cain and Abel's different offerings. (And of course we all know how THAT one turned out!)

hahahahaha Look at Noah!! I also enjoy the panic of the three horses in the background.

And here's the flood. So creatively done. I love it.

Uhm ... check out the Holy Ghost coming to Mary. (Also ... I love how the angel has 5 o'clock shadow.)

I mean ... this just kind of speaks for itself. God always looks the same. I love his mad eyebrows.

Genius.

Check out the face of the Israelite with the black hair way over to the right, and also the one up and to the left. The wide open laughing mouth. Or is he fearful? Is he shouting? What the heck is going on with him?

Uhm ... love this one.

A naked Lego Adam watering the flowers in Eden.

I love Adam's little Lego rib.

Adam and Eve ate the apple. Realized they were naked, and became ashamed of it. They promptly covered up (in the Lego version it looks like they are going to a luau, or extras in a Tarzan movie) ... but of course, you cannot fool God. The following image might be my favorite one: God, blurry in the background ... approaching. Adam and Eve know they are going to be in SO MUCH TROUBLE. Look at her cleavage! Look at their faces!!

The whole project is an amazing and relatively insane accomplishment. So much work. Day-um!! I haven't even looked at half of the pictures!

Postpartum vitamins

Here's an interesting and amusing op-ed about how Tom Cruise has inadvertently furthered the cause of Brooke Sheilds.

Funny:

Tom Cruise and Matt Lauer discussing postpartum depression. Hmm. What's wrong with this picture?

Do you think Katie Couric and Brooke Shields would go on national TV to discuss the best way to treat male pattern baldness?

"Trust me, Katie, some guys could really benefit from minoxidil."

"Puh-lease. All they need to do is rub their skulls and eat hairy foods, like peaches."

Yes, generally it's better to leave discussion of any illness to people who have experienced, studied or treated it.

Also - let's not forget. Tom and Nicole ADOPTED their kids. He has no experience, first-hand, with a pregnant woman, or a postpartum woman, and has no idea what he is talking about. (Of course, try to picture arguing that with him, and you'll see the problem. I'm sure he has been personally responsible for helping "postpartum-ly depressed" women "step off" drugs, or ... enrolled them in a good step class maybe?? ... We all know that all they really need to do is just exercise. I am sure he could tell you a million stories about his first-hand experience. But the fact remains: YOU DON'T KNOW, Tom.)

But again: gotta love Brooke Sheilds. She just came out publicly and thanked him, saying that her book sales have skyrocketed, and she has been getting BAGS of letters from women and men all over the world, who have either experienced postpartum depression, or been married to someone who experienced it.

The Books: "Faith Healer" (Brian Friel)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt

So I'm done with Christopher Durang, for now ... the next playwright on the script shelf is the Irish playwright Brian Friel.

I have a a collection of some of his plays, and I'll post excerpts from a few of them in the collection.

Faith Healer, first done here in New York in 1979, is considered one of his most important plays. The plot (and structure) of the play are simple. It tells the story of Frank Hardy, the faith healer, and his wife Grace. The play is told through a series of long monologues - two spoken by Frank, one spoken by Grace, and one spoken by Teddy, Frank's manager. Frank and Grace travel around England, Scotland, and Wales in a caravan, offering to heal the sick. There's a couple of tragedies at the heart of this story - one being the death of Frank and Grace's baby.

I'll post an excerpt from Grace's monologue. All the monologues are about 10 to 15 pages long (memorizing them must be a beeyotch!), so I'll just post a bit of it. The ending of this section of the monologue is just a killer. So well done. It's why he's a successful playwright. He keeps it simple, he doesn't bash you over the head with emotion, but dammit: he gets the job done.

EXCERPT FROM Faith Healer by Brian Friel:

GRACE. Abergorlech, Abergynolwyn, Llandefeilog, Llanerchymedd, Aberhosan, Aberporth ...

It's winter, it's night, it's raining, the Welsh roads are narrow, we're on our way to a performance. He always called it a performance, teasing the word with that mocking voice of his -- "Where do I perform tonight?" "Do you expect a performance in a place like this?" -- as if it were a game he might take part in only if he felt like it, maybe because that was the only way he could talk about it. Anyhow Teddy's driving as usual, and I'm in the passenger seat, and he's immediately behind us, the Fantastic Francis Hardy, Faith Healer, with his back to us and the whiskey bottle between his legs, and he's squatting on the floor of the van -- no, not squatting -- crouched, wound up, concentrated, and happy -- no, not happy, certainly not happy, I don't think he ever knew what happiness was -- but always before a performance he'd be ... in complete mastery -- yes, that's close to it -- in such complete mastery that everything is harmonized for him, in such mastery that anything is possible. And when you speak to him he turns his head and looks beyond you with those damn benign eyes of his, looking past you out of his completion, out of that private power, out of that certainty that was accessible only to him. God, how I resented that privacy! And he's reciting the names of all those dying Welsh villages -- Aberarder, Aberayron, Llangranog, Llangurig -- releasing them from his mouth in that special voice he used only then, as if he were blessing them or consecrating himself. And then, for him, I didn't exist. Many, many, many times I didn't exist for him. But before a performance this exclusion -- no, it wasn't an exclusion, it was an erasion -- this erasion was absolute: he obliterated me. Me who tended him, humoured him, nursed him, sustained him -- who debauched myself for him. Yes. That's the most persistent memory. Yes. And when I remember him like that in the back of the van, God how I hate him again --

Kinlochbervie, Inverbervie,
Inverdruie, Invergordon,
Badachroo, Kinlochewe,
Ballantrae, Inverkeithing,
Cawdor, Kirkconnel,
Plaidy, Kirkinner ...

(quietly, almost dreamily) Kinlochbervie's where the baby's buried, two miles south of the village, in a field of the lefthand side of the road as you go north. Funny, isn't it, but I've never met anybody who's been to Kinlochbervie, not even Scottish people. But it is a very small village and very remote, right away up in the north of Sutherland, about as far north as you can go in Scotland. And the people there told me that in good weather it is very beautiful and that you can see right across the sea to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. We just happened to be there and we were never back there again and the week that we were there it rained all the time, not really rained but a heavy wet mist so that you could scarcely see across the road. But I'm sure it is a beautiful place in good weather. Anyhow, that's where the baby's buried, in Kinlochbervie, in Sutherland, in the north of Scotland. Frank made a wooden cross to mark the grave and painted it white and wrote across it Infant Child of Francis and Grace Hardy -- no name, of course, because it was still-born -- just Infant Child. And I'm sure that cross is gone by now because it was a fragile thing and there were cows in the field and it wasn't a real cemetery anyway. And I had the baby in the back of the van and there was no nurse or doctor so no one knew anything about it except Frank and Teddy and me. And there was no clergyman at the graveside -- Frank just said a few prayers that he made up. So there is no record of any kind. And he never talked about it afterwards; never once mentioned it again; and because he didn't, neither did I. So that was it. Over and done with. A finished thing. Yes. But I think it's a nice name, Kinlochbervie -- a complete sound -- a name you wouldn't forget easily.

"Voici mon secret."

Today is the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Saint-Ex had a brief intersection with the Lindberghs. Anne Lindbergh wrote the whole thing up feverishly in her journal. She spent 24 hours with the man, and she fell in love with him. It was an emotional thing, I think ... it's hard to tell ... there was no affair, nothing like that. But even though they could barely communicate, she felt seen by him in a way she had never felt before. She felt understood. (Being "understood" is probably the most common cause for infidelity - actual or emotional. It's not about the sex. Not really. How many people say, "She really listened to me ..." or "I felt like I could just talk to him ..." when they talk about cheating on their partner.) I'm not sure if Lindbergh realized how lonely his wife was at this point. Who knows. It's all speculation. Lindbergh and Saint-Ex could bond about mechanics and flying - but it was in the realm of art that Anne bonded with the Frenchman. He had written a foreward to one of her books, and it mortified her: how much he had picked up on, how much he had seen ... She hadn't realized how much her books about her trips with her husband revealed about her innermost soul. But Saint-Ex saw, and she loved him for that. She met him, briefly, and he disappeared shortly thereafter. It left her despondent. Her kindred spirit, her soulmate - even if she could never have him - was now gone forever.

Her journal entries about her time with Saint-Ex are FASCINATING and I will post them all here. (Well, actually, I already have - I will just link to the entries). But they're marvelous. They show marvelous insight into who Saint-Ex was, through the eyes of a woman who revered him, was a little in awe of him.

August 4 1939

August 5 1939

August 5 1939, continued

August 5 1939, continued

I have read all of his books on flying, and they are incredible. True high water marks in the genre of aviation writing.

But just for fun, I will post what is probably the most famous chapter of The Little Prince - the chapter where the prince meets the fox. I'll post it in English - but then I also MUST post it in French, because I first read it in French, and sorry - but the translation just is not as beautiful. It is meant to be heard in French, the language is more perfect - it is just as it should be.

Here is Chapter 21:

It was then that the fox appeared.
"Good morning," said the fox.
"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.
"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."
"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."
"I am a fox," said the fox.
"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."
"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."
"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.
But, after some thought, he added:
"What does that mean-- 'tame'?"
"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"
"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean-- 'tame'?"
"Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?"
"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean-- 'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..."
"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."
"Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince.
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
"On another planet?"
"Yes."
"Are there hunters on this planet?"
"No."
"Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"
"No."
"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life . I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
"Please-- tame me!" he said.
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me..."
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me-- like that-- in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."
The next day the little prince came back.
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."
"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.
"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you-- the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

Note from me before we move on to the French: This section pretty much rocked my world when I read it in high school. It changed how I thought about a lot of things: about love, and friendship, and what it means to be loyal.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." Probably the most famous line from the book, and rightly so. But - to be a broken record - it sounds better in French.

Okay, so here comes the French!

Chapter XXI

C'est alors qu'apparut le renard.
-Bonjour, dit le renard.
-Bonjour, r�pondit poliment le petit prince, qui se tourna mais ne vit rien.
-Je suis l�, dit la voix, sous le pommier.
-Qui es-tu? dit le petit prince. Tu es bien joli�
-Je suis un renard, dit le renard.
-Viens jouer avec moi, lui proposa le petit prince. Je suis tellement triste�
-Je ne puis pas jouer avec toi, dit le renard. Je ne suis pas apprivois�
-Ah! Pardon, fit le petit prince.
Mais apr�s r�flexion, il ajouta :
-Qu'est-ce que signifie "apprivoiser"?
-Tu n'es pas d'ici, dit le renard, que cherches-tu?
-Je cherche les hommes, dit le petit prince.Qu'est-ce que signifie "apprivoiser"?
-Les hommes, dit le renard, ils ont des fusils et ils chassent. C'est bien g�nant! Il �l�vent aussi des poules. C'est leur seul int�r�t. Tu cherches des poules?
-Non, dit le petit prince. Je cherche des amis.Qu'est-ce que signifie "apprivoiser"?
-C'est une chose trop oubli�e, dit le renard. Ca signifie "Cr�er des liens�"
-Cr�er des liens?
-Bien s�r,dit le renard. Tu n'es encore pour moi qu'un petit gar�on tout semblable � cent mille petits gar�ons. Et je n'ai pas besoin de toi. Et tu n'a pas besoin de moi non plus. Je ne suis pour toi qu'un renard semblable � cent mille renards. Mais, si tu m'apprivoises, nous aurons besoin l'un de l'autre. Tu seras pour moi unique au monde. Je serai pour toi unique au monde�
-Je commence � comprendre, dit le petit prince. Il y a une fleur� je crois qu'elle m'a apprivois�
-C'est possible, dit le renard. On voit sur la Terre toutes sortes de choses�
-Oh! ce n'est pas sur la Terre, dit le petit prince. Le renard parut tr�s intrigu� :
-Sur une autre plan�te ?
-Oui.
-Il y a des chasseurs sur cette plan�te-l� ?
-Non.
-Ca, c'est int�ressant! Et des poules ?
-Non.
-Rien n'est parfait, soupira le renard.
Mais le renard revint � son id�e :
-Ma vie est monotone. Je chasse les poules, les hommes me chassent. Toutes les poules se ressemblent, et tous les hommes se ressemblent. Je m'ennuie donc un peu. Mais si tu m'apprivoises, ma vie sera comme ensoleill�e. Je conna�trai un bruit de pas qui sera diff�rent de tous les autres. Les autres pas me font rentrer sous terre. Le tien m'appelera hors du terrier, comme une musique. Et puis regarde! Tu vois, l�-bas, les champs de bl�? Je ne mange pas de pain. Le bl� pour moi est inutile. Les champs de bl� ne me rappellent rien. Et �a, c'est triste! Mais tu a des cheveux couleur d'or. Alors ce sera merveilleux quand tu m'aura apprivois�! Le bl�, qui est dor�, me fera souvenir de toi. Et j'aimerai le bruit du vent dans le bl�
Le renard se tut et regarda longtemps le petit prince :
-S'il te pla�t� apprivoise-moi! dit-il.
-Je veux bien, r�pondit le petit prince, mais je n'ai pas beaucoup de temps. J'ai des amis � d�couvrir et beaucoup de choses � conna�tre.
-On ne conna�t que les choses que l'on apprivoise, dit le renard. Les hommes n'ont plus le temps de rien conna�tre. Il ach�tent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands. Mais comme il n'existe point de marchands d'amis, les hommes n'ont plus d'amis. Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi!
-Que faut-il faire? dit le petit prince.
-Il faut �tre tr�s patient, r�pondit le renard. Tu t'assoiras d'abord un peu loin de moi, comme �a, dans l'herbe. Je te regarderai du coin de l'oeil et tu ne diras rien. Le langage est source de malentendus. Mais, chaque jour, tu pourras t'asseoir un peu plus pr�s�
Le lendemain revint le petit prince.
-Il e�t mieux valu revenir � la m�me heure, dit le renard. Si tu viens, par exemple, � quatre heures de l'apr�s-midi, d�s trois heures je commencerai d'�tre heureux. Plus l'heure avancera, plus je me sentirai heureux. � quatre heures, d�j�, je m'agiterai et m'inqui�terai; je d�couvrira le prix du bonheur! Mais si tu viens n'importe quand, je ne saurai jamais � quelle heure m'habiller le coeur� il faut des rites.
-Qu'est-ce qu'un rite? dit le petit prince.
-C'est quelque chose trop oubli�, dit le renard. C'est ce qui fait qu'un jour est diff�rent des autres jours, une heure, des autres heures. Il y a un rite, par exemple, chez mes chasseurs. Ils dansent le jeudi avec les filles du village. Alors le jeudi est jour merveilleux! Je vais me promener jusqu'� la vigne. Si les chasseurs dansaient n'importe quand, les jours se ressembleraient tous, et je n'aurait point de vacances.
Ainsi le petit prince apprivoisa le renard. Et quand l'heure du d�part fut proche :
-Ah! dit le renard� je preurerai.
-C'est ta faute, dit le petit prince, je ne te souhaitais point de mal, mais tu as voulu que je t'apprivoise�
-Bien s�r, dit le renard.
-Mais tu vas pleurer! dit le petit prince.
-Bien s�r, dit le renard.
-Alors tu n'y gagnes rien!
-J'y gagne, dit le renard, � cause de la couleur du bl�.
Puis il ajouta :
-Va revoir les roses. Tu comprendras que la tienne est unique au monde. Tu reviendras me dire adieu, et je te ferai cadeau d'un secret.
Le petit prince s'en fut revoir les roses.
-Vous n'�tes pas du tout semblables � ma rose, vous n'�tes rien encore, leur dit-il. Personne ne vous a apprivois� et vous n'avez apprivois� personne. Vous �tes comme �tait mon renard. Ce n'�tait qu'un renard semblable � cent mille autres. Mais j'en ai fait mon ami, et il est maintenant unique au monde.
Et les roses �taient g�n�es.
-Vous �tes belles mais vous �tes vides, leur dit-il encore. On ne peut pas mourir pour vous. Bien s�r, ma rose � moi, un passant ordinaire croirait qu'elle vous ressemble. Mais � elle seule elle est plus importante que vous toutes, puisque c'est elle que j'ai arros�e. Puisque c'est elle que j'ai abrit�e par le paravent. Puisque c'est elle dont j'ai tu� les chenilles (sauf les deux ou trois pour les papillons). Puisque c'est elle que j'ai �cout�e se plaindre, ou se vanter, ou m�me quelquefois se taire. Puisque c'est ma rose.
Et il revint vers le renard :
-Adieu, dit-il�
-Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret. Il est tr�s simple : on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
-L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, r�p�ta le petit prince, afin de se souvenir.
-C'est le temps que tu a perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante.
-C'est le temps que j'ai perdu pour ma rose� fit le petit prince, afin de se souvenir.
-Les hommes on oubli� cette v�rit�, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas l'oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivois�. Tu es responsable de ta rose�
-Je suis responsable de ma rose� r�p�ta le petit prince, afin de se souvenir.

Voici mon secret. Il est tr�s simple : on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

I could say that all day. "L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" Beautiful.

"Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on"

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam:

When [Ted] was generous there was no one more generous, and when he was petulant there was no one more petulant, and sometimes he was both within a few seconds. Once in the mid-1950s, Pedro Ramos, then a young pitcher with Washington, struck Ted out, which was a very big moment for Ramos. He rolled the ball into the dugout to save, and later, after the game, the Cuban right-hander ventured into the Boston dugout with the ball and asked Ted to sign it. Mel Parnell was watching and had expected an immediate explosion, Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on, and he was not disappointed. Soon there was a rising bellow of blasphemy from Williams, and then he had looked over and seen Ramos, a kid of 20 or 21, terribly close to tears now. Suddenly Ted had softened and said, "Oh, all right, give me the goddamn ball," and had signed it. Then about two weeks later he had come up against Ramos again and hit a tremendous home run, and as he rounded first he had slowed down just a bit and yelled to Ramos, "I'll sign that son of a bitch too if you can ever find it."

Heat wave

This piece - about what it's like here during a heat wave - is so right ON. Makes me laugh out loud.

I won't sit here and try to tell you that it's like The Truman Show over here. It ain't. Looting happens. Desperation happens. People lose their shit. Eight million people in one place, not everyone's going to behave all the time. But when a transformer blows up on 4th Avenue at midnight and the city sends 30 trucks from 11 different fire houses, six black-and-whites, a transit van, a Salvation Army mobile transfer unit, the bomb squad, the K-9 squad, and a bunch of dudes in construction helmets, it's not a riot situation. It's an open a window, lean out to rubberneck, see your neighbor doing the same thing, wave and ask her what she knows, tell her what you know that you heard on a police scanner on the Web because you are nosy and a nerd, head downstairs to ask the deli guys what they know because the deli guys function like a subplot seismograph for your block (see also: nosy; nerd), buy some coffee, eavesdrop, swap theories with the lady with the Pomeranians who lives on 2nd Street, swap Pomeranian Lady's theory with Afrika Bambaataa T-Shirt Guy whose friend knows a dude whose brother works at the Lyceum and the brother says it's not the subway at least ("thank you, Simone"), bum out a cigarette to a cop, hear it's not an evacuation deal, and go back upstairs situation. Jury duty, same thing. Five prospective jurors, one Times crossword…you find a way to work it out. Especially if it's the Friday.

Hahahaha So TRUE.

And with the heat? This observation is bang on the money:

Eighty-five, eighty-eight, everyone's still in the game with the linen separates and the eye liner and the neatly knotted tie, pretending to ignore the convection current currently turning everyone on the N/R/Q/W platform into jerky. Any temperature starting with a nine, a collective decision is made, unwittingly, that any pretense of cool in the social sense is only contributing to the lack of cool in the weather sense, and it's just out the window, everywhere you go -- entrances into department stores accompanied by bursts of the Hallelujah chorus, Hiltonoids pulling out their camis from their chests and just blatantly blowing down between their boobs, pocket squares used to wipe armpits, moms putting bags of ice into strollers under the babies, married couples picking the longest movie out in theaters and catching some sweat-free shut-eye in the back row. You walk past a pod of teenage girls while drinking one Diet Coke and rolling the other one around under your tank top when it's only eighty-four, you're going to get mocked. You do it when it's ninety-four, you're going to get copied.

"the linen separates" hahaha

You've got to read the whole thing. She is so great.

The Books: "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You" (Christopher Durang)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

More from Christopher Durang Volume I: 27 Short Plays

The following excerpt is from his funny (and angry) play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You. Durang obviously grew up Catholic. His essay about why he wrote this play (and when he wrote the play - during the year that his mother was dying) is fascinating. He grew up in the 1950s, so his experience of Catholicism was strictly pre-Vatican II. He wrote:

Looking back, I realized that the Catholicism of my childhood had an answer for absolutely everything -- it was extremely thorough. I had this impulse to write a play in which a nun came out and explained everything -- the nature and purpose of the universe, if you will, but as told through the prism of Catholic dogma.

And so that's what he did. Sister Mary Ignatius sweeps on stage, in full habit, and talks at us for 10 pages in an uninterrupted (VERY FUNNY) monologue. It is not one of those "hahaha look at the crazy nun" things, Durang is very clear about that in his notes to the actors. Mary Ignatius must be completely sincere, whether or not you think she is bonkers or not. She COMPLETELY believes that everyone is going to hell, and everyone is on the verge of moral collapse at all times. She is SINCERE in this fear. Play it for real. I've seen actresses play it for real, and when they do? When they don't turn her into stereotype rigid nun, and really play her as a believer who is TRULY frightened for the rest of humanity ... it is absolutely hilarious. But only if you play it real.

After the Sister lectures us (and "explains it all"), 4 or 5 adults knock on her door, and enter ... turns out that they were her students back in the 1950s, and they have come back to ... well, to confront her.

Remember though - this play is a comedy. A broad comedy. It's really hard to get the tone right. Durang did not hate Catholicism. But he did hate the black and white "have an answer for everything" side of it, and so he completely lampoons it in this play. Sister Mary Ignatius has all the answers, knows how you should respond to every situation, and that's FINAL.

Mary Ignatius, still a terror in the same way she was to the other characters when they were children, interrogates them on their life choices since they left her school. All hell breaks loose.

EXCERPT FROM Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, by Christopher Durang.

SISTER. (to Philomena) You, with the little girl. Tell me about yourself.

PHILOMENA. Well, my little girl is three, and her name is Wendy.

SISTER. There is no Saint Wendy.

PHILOMENA. Her middle name is Mary.

SISTER. Wendy Mary. Too many Y's. I'd change it. What does your husband do?

PHILOMENA. I don't have a husband.

(Long pause)

SISTER. Did he die?

PHILOMENA. I don't think so. I didn't know him for very long.

SISTER. Do you sign your letters "Mrs." or "Miss"?

PHILOMENA. I don't write letters.

SISTER. Did this person you lost track of marry you befolre he left?

PHILOMENA. (sad) No.

SISTER. Children, you are making me very sad. (to Philomena) Did you get good grades in my class?

PHILOMENA. No, Sister. You said I was stupid.

SISTER. Are you a prostitute?

PHILOMENA. Sister! Certainly not. I just get lonely.

SISTER. (to Philomena and the audience both) The Mother Superior of my own convent may get lonely, but does she have illegitimate children?

ALOYSIUS. There was that nun who stuffed her baby behind her dresser last year.

(Sister stares at him)

ALOYSIUS. It was in the news.

SISTER. No one was addressing you, Aloysuis. Philomena, my point is that loneliness does not excuse sin.

PHILOMENA. But there are worse sins. And I believe Jesus forgives me. After all, he didn't want them to stone the woman taken in adultery.

SISTER. That was merely a political gesture. In private Christ stoned many women taken in adultery.

DIANE. That's not in the Bible.

SISTER. (suddenly very angry) Not everything has to be in the Bible. (to audience, trying to recoup) There's oral tradition in the Church. One priest tells another priest something, it gets passed down through the years.

PHILOMENA. But don't you believe Jesus forgives people who sin?

SISTER. Yes, of course. He forgives you, but he's tricky. You have to be truly sorry, and you have to truly resolve not to sin again, or else. He'll send you straight to hell just like the thief He was crucified next to.

PHILOMENA. I think Jesus forgives me.

SISTER. Well I think you're going to hell. (to Aloysius) And what about you? Is there anything the matter with you?

ALOYSIUS. Nothing. I'm fine.

SISTER. But are you living properly?

ALOYSIUS. Yes.

SISTER. And you're married?

ALOYSIUS. Yes.

SISTER. And you don't use birth control?

ALOYSIUS. No.

SISTER. But you only have two children. Why is that? You're not spilling your seed like Onan, are you? That's a sin, you know.

ALOYSIUS. No. It's just chance that we haven't had more.

SISTER. And you go to mass once a week, and communion at least once a year, and confession at least once a year? Right?

ALOYSIUS. Yes.

SISTER. Well, I'm very pleased then.

ALOYSIUS. I am an alcoholic. And recently I've started to hit my wife. And I keep thinking about suicide.

SISTER. (thinks for a moment) Within bounds, all those things are venial sins. (to audience) At least one of my students turned out well. (to Aloysius) Of course, I don't know how hard you're hitting your wife; but with prayer and God's grace ...

ALOYSIUS. My wife is very unhappy.

SISTER. Yes, but eventually there's death. And then everlasting happiness in heaven. (with real feeling) Some days I long for heaven. (to Gary) And you? Have you turned out all right?

GARY. I'm okay.

SISTER. And you don't use birth control?

GARY. Definitely not.

SISTER. That's good. (looks at him) What do you mean, "Definitely not"?

GARY. I ... don't use it.

SISTER. And you're not married. Have you not found the right girl?

GARY. In a manner of speaking.

SISTER. (grim, choosing not to pursue it) Okay. (walks away, but can't leave it, comes back to him) You do that thing that makes Jesus puke, don't you?

GARY. Pardon?

SISTER. Drop the polite boy manner, buster. When your mother looks at you, she turns into a pillar of salt, right?

GARY. What?

SISTER. Sodom and Gomorrah, stupid. You sleep with men, don't you?

GARY. Well ... yes.

SISTER. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! We have a regular cross section in here.

GARY. I got seduced when I was in the seminary. (Sister looks horrified) I mean, I'd been denying it up to then.

SISTER. We don't want to hear about it.

GARY. And then when I left the seminary, I was very upset, and then I went to New York and I slept with five hundred different people.

SISTER. Jesus is going to throw up.

GARY. But then I decided I was trashing my life, and so I only had sex with guys I had an emotional relationship with.

SISTER. That must have cut it down to about three hundred.

GARY. And now I'm living with this one guy who I'd gone to grade school with and only ran into again two years ago, and we're faithful with one another and stuff. He was in your class too. Jeff Hannigan.

SISTER. He was a bad boy. Some of them should be left on the side of a hill to die, and he was one.

GARY. You remember him?

SISTER. Not really. His type.

GARY. Anyway, when I met him again, he was still a practicing Catholic, and so now I am again too.

SISTER. I'd practice a little harder if I were you.

GARY. So I don't think I'm so bad.

SISTER. (makes a "vomit" sound) Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeggghhhhhhh. You make me want to "bleeeeeegggghhhh."

War of the worlds

Tom Cruise, whether he knows it or not, really needed War of the Worlds to be a smash hit. I am not sure he is aware of the damage he has done to his own reputation in the last couple of months, but that wouldn't matter AT ALL if the movie was a smash hit. Sorry, purists. That's the breaks. We live in a capitalist society. Huge ASSHOLES have remained stars for DECADES because their films bring in the doe. It's about the MONEY. All of that being said: Cruise needed this movie to be a huge hit, along the lines of ... oh ... Top Gun. A hit that could, conceivably, sweep away the last couple of months ... so that suddenly all we can talk about is the MOVIE as opposed to his bouncing chimpy ravings. This is what really needed to happen, at this point in Cruise's career. How quickly the mighty fall (but again - I'm not sure that he's aware of how his star has fallen - at least not yet. He is now surrounded entirely by "yes" men - or to be more accurate: "yes" women. So I'm not sure reality is really getting in there yet.)....

So now it looks like the smash hit won't happen. I've read a couple of reviews and while they are not hostile, or unremittingly negative (no, they couldn't be. Spielberg is too good for that) - they certainly aren't emanating "smash hit". It will not be enough to sweep away the public perception that Tom Cruise is now legitimately insane, and either needs to shut UP, or just GO AWAY.

Ebert's review is really interesting, I think. He gets caught up in the WHYS of the alien invasion, which - under the circumstances - is a really good question. He kind of can't get past it, which is not a good sign for the film as a whole.

The problem may be with the alien invasion itself. It is not very interesting. We learn that countless years ago, invaders presumably but not necessarily from Mars buried huge machines all over the Earth. Now they activate them with lightning bolts, each one containing an alien (in what form, it is hard to say). With the aliens at the controls, these machines crash up out of the Earth, stand on three towering but spindly legs and begin to zap the planet with death rays. Later, their tentacles suck our blood and fill steel baskets with our writhing bodies.

To what purpose? Why zap what you later want to harvest? Why harvest humans? And, for that matter, why balance these towering machines on ill-designed supports? If evolution has taught us anything, it is that limbs of living things, from men to dinosaurs to spiders to centipedes, tend to come in numbers divisible by four. Three legs are inherently not stable, as Ray demonstrates when he damages one leg of a giant tripod, and it falls helplessly to the ground.

This paragraph I think is particularly interesting:

Does it make the aliens scarier that their motives are never spelled out? I don't expect them to issue a press release announcing their plans for world domination, but I wish their presence reflected some kind of intelligent purpose. The alien ship in "Close Encounters" visited for no other reason, apparently, than to demonstrate that life existed elsewhere, could visit us, and was intriguingly unlike us while still sharing such universal qualities as the perception of tone. Those aliens wanted to say hello. The alien machines in "War of the Worlds" seem designed for heavy lifting in an industry that needs to modernize its equipment and techniques. (The actual living alien being we finally glimpse is an anticlimax, a batlike, bug-eyed monster, confirming the wisdom of Kubrick and Clarke in deliberately showing no aliens in "2001").

That's a good point, I think.

Ebert keeps going back to his questions, although he does touch briefly on the acting and the special effects. But to him: it's almost a childlike response (which is one of the best responses a reviewer can have ... Kids smell bullcrap from MILES away).

Ebert:

The thing is, we never believe the tripods and their invasion are practical. How did these vast metal machines lie undetected for so long beneath the streets of a city honeycombed with subway tunnels, sewers, water and power lines, and foundations? And why didn't a civilization with the physical science to build and deploy the tripods a million years ago not do a little more research about conditions on the planet before sending its invasion force? It's a war of the worlds, all right -- but at a molecular, not a planetary level.

All of this is just a way of leading up to the gut reaction I had all through the film: I do not like the tripods. I do not like the way they look, the way they are employed, the way they attack, the way they are vulnerable or the reasons they are here. A planet that harbors intelligent and subtle ideas for science fiction movies is invaded in this film by an ungainly Erector set.

Looks like the film War of the Worlds will not be enough to take our attention away from "the crazy".

It is interesting to contemplate, though: The dude has been everywhere lately. Yes, because he's a big movie star, and he got engaged, and so the tabloids will be interested. But obviously, the REAL reason he has been everywhere lately, is because he has a movie coming out. (You wouldn't know that from his interviews, where he seems to focus on his medical expertise rather than THE MOVIE ... but still. That is the primary reason why Tom Cruise is all over the place. He has a MOVIE coming out.)

Okay, so now the movie's opened.

No more press junkets, no more blitzkriegs, no more public spotlight (I mean ... relatively. Cruise always lives in the public spotlight, he can't help it). But ... what on earth will he do now? The press blitzkrieg will die out in a couple weeks ... but then what? He and Katie will settle down to decorate their house ... or ... what? Cruise lives with his entire family, his sisters, his mother, their kids, all of whom are scientologists. Will Katie be moving into that commune? Or ... Still, that's a side question. The real question is: without a built-in reason to be here, there, and everywhere (big movie coming out) - how will Tom Cruise deal with reality? How will the couple deal with the relationship OUT of the glare? What the heck?

I think the next couple of months will be very very interesting.

God, I am so embarrassed

But I am ADDICTED to that reality show Blow Out - about the hotshot alpha male hairdresser. I find him FASCINATING. I just ... God. I am succumbing. What am I saying ... I HAVE succumbed. It's over. I'm in. I'm hooked.

Dan Update

Please keep Dan and his wife in your thoughts. He's in the hospital right now.

More crazy!!

More crazy! More crazy!! This is so much crazy for a 48 hour period, I don't even know what to do!!

Watch the video. I absolutely love the guy interviewing him. Great job, dude.

A couple of things I need you to notice:

-- the absolute aggression of the laugh. If you weren't paying attention, you might really think that it was real. But it is not. Watch. The. Laugh.

-- look at the dimwitted expression on Katie Holmes' face. The girl appears to be on some kind of psychotropic drug although we know that is not possible.

-- he refers to her as his "soulmate". Well. Yippee for them. I, however, have skepticism about the very word "soulmate" (here, here, and here) and think it's often a smokescreen for other emotions. Say: TERROR??? SELF-LOATHING??? INABILITY TO BE CLOSE TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING??? People like THAT break out the "soulmate" word. Sigh. I need to calm down. I need my Xanax. Don't tell Tom.

-- and now: watch the shift when he starts to talk about Ritalin. Just watch the transformation. I am now getting used to that shift, but I still find it alarming to watch. He goes into Defcon One mode.

Reconciliation

This is big news.

Nathan Lane got his start in Terrence McNally's plays, making enormous splashes for himself in Lisbon Traviata, Lips Together, Teeth Apart and Love, Valour, Compassion. It was one of those relationships between a playwright and an actor that you dream of finding. Rare. Lane was almost McNally's muse. McNally brought out the best in Nathan Lane, and Nathan Lane lifted McNally's words off the page and made his plays LIVE. If all you know of Nathan Lane is his performance in The Birdcage (which is wonderful, by the way) - then you only know half of what this man can do. To see him onstage??? People. People. The man is a stage actor. It's not just that he is funny and broad and over-the-top, although he is all of those things. But ... it's a matter of technique, I guess, or spirit. Not sure. He plays to the back row. His work is specific, emotionally connected, like a laser beam, he has comedy down to a SCIENCE and yet you never feel him mugging or pandering to you ... He is great in The Birdcage but he is one of the best there is onstage.

Lane and McNally had a rather famous falling out. I am not sure of the wheres and whyfores of it, but I believe it had something to do with whatshisname from Seinfeld - Jason Alexander - being cast in Lane's role in the movie version of Love, Valour, Compassion. Both Lane and McNally have been rather reticent on this, but it is apparent that something pretty bad went down between the two friends over this issue. Lane made a kind of wistful comment about it when he came and talked at my school, basically saying that he would love to work with McNally again, and wouldn't it be great, wouldn't it be something ... But he made that comment years ago.

Now it looks like it is actually happening. Nathan Lane has joined the cast of Terrence McNally's new play Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams , premiering at Primary Stages.

I saw the notice today and it made me happy. Made me happy to think that these two old New York pros had obviously buried the hatchet, and decided to work together again. Wonderful.

Whatever you do:

Do not be GLIB!

Tom Cruise knows a lot of shite.

(I think my favorite part is ""Listen, Conan. You shouldn't be sitting here, leading America on, by saying that the space shuttle is lifted from the ground by the burning of liquid oxygen from the booster tanks. That's just not true. NASA "scientists" [makes diacritical marks] have known since 1947 that the only way to get propulsion of such magnitude is to defy the artificial gravity created by Xenu that keeps us tethered to Earth--they've known this since 1947, and they keep telling you otherwise. I know for a fact that if you can perform a high-enough level audit, you can fly. I fly all the time. The first time I flew my heterosexual girlfriend Penelope Cruz crapped her pants.")

hahahaha

But please. NO MORE GLIBNESS. Accept the Cruise-ology. Accept. Surrender.

I am an enormous geek

Why? Because here are the results to Norm's "best movie star" poll (a poll in which I participated) and Cary Grant is number one. He is number one! YEAH. I am LAUGHABLY geeky about that man. But then again, you guys know that. I feel proprietary about him, which, if you think about it, is completely inappropriate and actually a little bit creepy. Oh well. I enjoy it.

But still. I love that he's number one. I want to have a party.

Here is my list.

1. Cary Grant
2. Katherine Hepburn
3. Marilyn Monroe
4. Humphrey Bogart
5. Ingrid Bergman
6. Jeff Bridges
7. Marlon Brando
8. Gary Cooper
9. Clark Gable
10. John Travolta

(And here I explain my choices.)

I guess I'm kind of shocked that Clark Gable and Gary Cooper didn't make the top list over at Norm's. And Jodie Foster did??? Huh? I mean, Jodie's fine, whatever, but ... she beat Clark Gable??? (But then again: I have a couple of issues with Jodie, on occasion. Nothing huge, nothing like my Renee Z. pathology ... I just think her acting can get a bit busy, if she's not directed well. She does too much. Maybe I'll get into that at some other point.)

I knew Travolta and Bridges were wild cards, and it's interesting - it appears that they were on nobody else's lists.

I maintain my position on both of these guys. Riveting, amazing, actors MADE to be on film. These guys are BORN to be film stars.

But yeah: let's hear it for Cary Grant!!

(geek, geek, geek, geek ...)

Picture of a scene from Bringing Up Baby below. One of my favorite scenes, actually - when they try to serenade the leopard down from off the roof, and end up getting dragged off to jail. My favorite part of the scene? When David Huxley suddenly, spontaneously, stops being all flustered and anxious ... and actually has a moment of pride because he found a nice harmony line during the serenade. Does anyone remember that moment? It's hilarious. Makes me laugh every time I see it.

The Books: "The Actor's nightmare" (Christopher Durang)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

More from Christopher Durang's selection of short plays

The following excerpt is from his funny play The Actor's Nightmare. The actor's nightmare happens to all of us: we dream that we are suddenly in the middle of a production of Macbeth, and we are playing Lady Macbeth, and there is a packed house out there, only we have had no rehearsals, we don't know ANY of our lines, and we have no idea what is going on. I've had 5,000 of these dreams.

Christopher Durang wrote a play about it.

A guy named George suddenly finds himself having to go on in a play he has never heard of, and even worse: his co-stars are 3 famous stage actors from history: Sarah Siddons, Ellen Terry, and Henry Irving. I'll post the opening of the play, so you can get the jist of it. It's very funny.

EXCERPT FROM The Actor's Nightmare, by Christopher Durang:

Scene: Basically an empty stage, maybe with a few set pieces on it or around it. George Spelvin, a young man, wanders in. He looks baffled and uncertain where he is. Enter Meg, the stage manager. In jeans and sweatshirt, perhaps, pleasant, efficient.

GEORGE. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know how I got in here.

MEG. Oh, thank goodness you're here. I've been calling you.

GEORGE. Pardon?

MEG. An awful thing has happened. Eddie's been in a car accident, and you'll have to go on for him.

GEORGE. Good heavens, how awful. Who's Eddie?

MEG. Eddie.

(He looks blank.)

MEG. Edwin. You have to go on for him.

GEORGE. On for him.

MEG. Well, he can't go on. He's been in a car accident.

GEORGE. Yes, I understood that part. But what do you mean "go on for him"?

MEG. You play the part. now I know you haven't had a chance to rehearse it exactly, but presumably you know your lines, and you've certainly seen it enough.

GEORGE. I don't understand. Do I know you?

MEG. George, we really don't have time for this kind of joshing. Half-hour. (Exits)

GEORGE. My name isn't George, it's ... well, I don't know what it is, but it isn't George.

(Enter Sarah Siddons, a glamourous actress, perhaps in a sweeping cape)

SARAH. My God, did you hear about Eddie?

GEORGE. Yes I did.

SARAH. It's just too, too awful. Now good luck tonight, George darling, we're all counting on you. Of coursre, you're a little too young for the part, and you are shorter than Edwin so we'll cut all the lines about bumping your head on the ceiling. And don't forget when I cough three times, that's your cue to unzip the back of the dress and then I'll slap you. We changed it from last night. (She starts to exit)

GEORGE. Wait, please. What play are we doing exactly?

SARAH. What?

GEORGE. What is the play, please?

SARAH. Coward.

GEORGE. Pardon?

SARAH. Coward. (looks at him as if he's crazy) Coward. Noel Coward. (suddenly relaxing) George, don't do that. For a second, I thought you were serious. Break a leg, darling. (exits)

GEORGE. Coward. I wonder if it's Private Lives. At least I've seen that one. I don't remember rehearsing it exactly. And am I an actor? I thought I was an accountant. And why does everyone call me George?

(Enter Dame Ellen Terry, younger than Sarah, a bit less grand)

ELLEN. Hello, Stanley. I heard about Edwin. Good luck tonight. We're counting on you.

GEORGE. Wait. What play are we doing?

ELLEN. Very funny, Stanley.

GEORGE. No really. I've forgotten.

ELLEN. Checkmate.

GEORGE. Checkmate?

ELLEN. By Samuel Beckett. You know, in the garbage cans. You always play these jokes, Stanley, just don't do it onstage. Well, good luck tonight. I mean, break a leg. Did you hear? Edwin broke both legs. (Exits)

GEORGE. I've never heard of Checkmate.

(Re-enter Meg)

MEG. George, get into costume. We have fifteen minutes. (Exits)

(Enter Henry Irving, age 28-33, also somewhat grand)

HENRY. Good God, I'm late. Hi, Eddie. Oh you're not Eddie. Who are you?

GEORGE. You've never seen me before?

HENRY. Who the devil are you?

GEORGE. I don't really know. George, I think. Maybe Stanley, but probably George. I think I'm an accountant.

HENRY. Look, no one's allowed backstage before a performance. So you'll have to leave, or I'll be forced to report you to the stage manager.

GEORGE. Oh she knows I'm here already.

HENRY. Oh. Well, if Meg knows you're here it must be all right I suppose. It's not my affair. I'm late enough already. (Exits

MEG. (offstage) Ten minutes, everybody. The call is ten minutes.

GEORGE. I better just go home. (Takes off his pants) Oh dear, I didn't mean to do that.

(Enter Meg

MEG. George, stop that. Go into the dressing room to change. Really, you keep this up and we'll bring you up on charges.

GEORGE. But where is the dressing room?

MEG. George, you're not amusing. It's that way. And give me those. (takes his pants) I'll go soak them for you.

GEORGE. Please don't soak them.

MEG. Don't tell me my job. Now go get changed. The call is five minutes. (Pushes him off to dressing room; crosses back the other way, calling out:) Five minutes, everyone. Five minutes. Places.

(A curtain closes on the stage. Darkness. Lights come up on the curtain.)

Happy birthday to ...

Mel Brooks!

I love the following stories about Mel Brooks, told by Gene Wilder when he came to my school.

Gene Wilder, a young actor, was in some show on Broadway, kind of a big break. Forgive me, can't remember what it was. One night, after the show, a knock came on his dressing room door. He opened it, and there was Mel Brooks, a man he did not know. Chit-chat ensued, and Brooks then told him about a project he had in his mind that he would like to do ... and he immediately thought of Gene Wilder for one of the leads. The project was called Springtime for Hitler. This is all so amusing, in retrospect because ... NOW we know how funny The Producers is, NOW "Springtime for Hitler" is recognized as absolutely hilarious ... but ... then? The way Wilder told the story was so funny. Like: who is this nutty small Hobbit-like man who wants me to star in his movie called SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER?? Still, the two of them hit it off. Gene Wilder told him that he would love to read the script, whenever it was ready.

THREE YEARS proceeded to go by. Not a word from Brooks. Nothing. Nada. Wilder continued on with his career, doing plays in New York. Life goes on. He didn't yearn for Springtime for Hitler to come to fruition ... he basically put it out of his head, and never thought about it.

Then - Wilder was doing some OTHER play, it had been 3 years since the original encounter, and again, a knock came on his dressing room door one night after the show. Wilder opened the door, and there stood Mel Brooks. Mel said, "You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you??"

hahahaha And at that point, he had a completed script, and it was now called The Producers and the rest is history.

The other story I like about Mel Brooks, told by Gene Wilder, is this:

Wilder wrote Young Frankenstein, and despite the fact that Brooks only directed stuff that HE wrote, he agreed to take on the project. Apparently, this took some doing. But Wilder and Brooks were very good friends by this point, and finally Brooks said sure, he would direct.

The two then began to have script conferences at Wilder's apartment. (They lived only a couple of blocks away from each other). Apparently, these "script conferences" often degenerated into shouting matches. Creative differences.

There was one particular time when Brooks, disagreeing with Wilder over something, absolutely FLIPPED OUT. Screaming, carrying on, until finally he stormed out of Wilder's apartment, slamming the door behind him.

5 minutes later, Wilder's phone rang. Wilder picked up. "Hello?"

Mel Brooks said, in a calm quiet voice, "Who on earth was that maniac who just left your apartment? I could hear the screaming from down here! What a lunatic, sheesh, you need to be more careful about who you let into your home ..."

So it's Mel Brooks' birthday today. I would imagine he is going through a rather tough time right now, since the death of his wife, Anne Bancroft.

It must be a sad time for him. Meanwhile - the movie version of The Producers musical is being filmed AS WE SPEAK ... how exciting for Mel, right? But I feel for him. It can't be easy to continue on after such a loss.

So happy birthday, Mel! Thanks for the years and years and YEARS of laughter.

"Put ... the candle ... back..."

"Shut up, I'm having a rhetorical conversation."

"Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer."

"You have exactly ten seconds to change that look of disgusting pity into one of enormous respect!"

"How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?"

"I'm tired of men always coming and going, going and coming and always too soon."

"Follow me, faggots!"

"DESTINY! DESTINY! NO ESCAPING DEATH FOR ME! DESTINY! DESTINY! NO ESCAPING DEATH FOR ME!"

"Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags?" "Certainly, you take the blonde and I'll take the one in the turban."

"If science teaches us anything, it teaches us to accept our failures, as well as our successes, with quiet dignity and grace."

Please add more of your favorite Mel Brooks-isms in the comments ...

Glories strung like beads

I got this from Norm. This is my version.

I love to go back and re-read the books I was forced to read on my high school summer reading lists. Some are still stinkers (uhm Billy Budd anyone?) but some (Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter) are revelations.

I love the opening chords of "Smells like Teen Spirit". Gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I hear it.

I love a flawless double play.

I love the late-night scene in Only Angels Have Wings where Cary Grant and Jean Arthur find themselves alone in the now-empty juke joint, and they drink, and talk, and he propositions her. All he says is, "Would you like to come up to my room?" but he makes it sound like the most indecent and FUN thing in the world. Sexual tension never has been played so perfectly.

I love North Dakota. The flatness, the horizon all around, the vistas: thunderstorms seen miles and miles away. There may be a more spectacular place on earth, but I'd have to see it to believe it.

I love the contradictory nature of almost every sentence in Catch 22. Whatever is said in one sentence is then upended in the next, and it gives such an atmosphere or lunacy and madcap chaos.

I love Tori Amos' album Little Earthquakes. I love it because it's a great album, but I love it too because of the associations it brings. Freedom, running along Lake Michigan, single for the first time in years, living on my own for the first time ever ... I was skinny, muscular, with boundless energy, on fire, my hair in crazy red curls ... Tori Amos's album was the soundtrack of that time.

I love reading the letters of John and Abigail Adams. Poetry, romance, passion, intellect. The sacrifice, the compromise, the sense that generations to come would be watching their actions ... It has to be the most romantic correspondence in the public record. "My dearest friend ..."

I love seeing old architecture in New York City. You can still see old signage here and there, in between the neon. I love the gargoyles, the detail of the stonework ... it gives New York City a pagan feel to it. Powerful, primal.

I love the poetry of Seamus Heaney.

I love the transformations Jeff Bridges goes through in The Fisher King, one of my favorite movies ever. I love the scene when he and Mercedes Ruehl take Robin Williams and Amanda Plummer out on a double-date ... and it is kind of a disaster ... but he and Mercedes sit in the background, starting to see the humor of it, and starting to LOSE it with guffawing. Trying to hold back, but they can't help themselves. That scene, to me, is when I realize how much the two of them love each other.

I love Christopher Guest.

I love the overpass going through Milwaukee. It was unfinished when I was there, or under construction ... but I will never forget it, vaulting itself over the Summer Fest, like a dinosaur skeleton, or like one of the structures left behind on earth when all the humans are gone. P.M. called it "Sheila's bridge". I loved it. I have a picture of it, kind of blurry in the sunset mist, and it brings back my time there every time I see it.

I love the show Hill Street Blues. One of my favorites from way back when.

I love the films of John Cassavetes, and the acting of his wife Gena Rowlands in those movies. She doesn't "nail" a scene, she doesn't get anything right, no. Nothing that neat, or intellectual. She plays her scenes on the edges of it, she does not tie things up neat for us, she does not let us know how we should feel. She is my idol. I have her picture on my wall right now.

I love going to the Actors Studio, a converted church on 44th street. The ghosts crowd up against me in the balcony: Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Ben Gazzara, Al Pacino ... The exposed brick at the back of the stage has soaked up the memories of 4 generations. A more potent place on earth there is not.

I love old maps.

I love Fenway Park.

I love the old rock club (no longer there) called Lounge Ax in Chicago. A million memories there. Some of the most important things in my life, to date, happened there. Life, love, friendship, fun, freedom, idolatry ... I am sorry it is gone, but I have the memories. It's also in a scene in High Fidelity, so I can visit Lounge Ax any time I watch that movie.

I love James Joyce. I love his writing, sure, but more than that, I just love the FACT of him.

I love how fat babies' arms and legs are. I love how they have creases where their ankles and wrists should be. I love how babies smell. I love their soft big heads.

I love celebrity gossip. If I had the money, I would subscribe to Us, People, In Touch, Star, Vanity Fair, and a host of others. I love fame. I love watching how people handle it, either gracefully or not.

I love men. I love their hands, their laughs, their body language, how they smell, how they are strong but how they can suddenly turn gentle.

I love Mark Bowden's book Black Hawk Down.

I love the footage of a young un-famous Barbra Streisand appearing on Judy Garland's television show. It's exhilarating. She's 19. She sings a couple of duets with THE Judy, and she is RAW, and FEARLESS ... she wears a middy blouse, she looks unlike anything you have ever seen before ... and that VOICE. She's a TEENAGER. Phenomenal.

I love the soundtrack to Ragtime. Glorious!! Now THAT is a musical!

I love Ellen von Unwerth's photography.

I love polar bears. I love them to DEATH.

I love the movie Moulin Rouge. I found it crushingly moving.

I love Fleet Week. I love seeing soldiers in their whites, strolling through our fair city. I mean, of course, I love it because they all look so hot - but I also love it because it makes me feel so PROUD.

And finally: I love the last scene in Notorious. I never get tired of it. Never.

The Books: "'Dentity Crisis" (Christopher Durang)

Next in my dailiy book excerpt:

More from Christopher Durang's collection of his short plays

The following excerpt is from his short play 'dentity Crisis, a favorite at colleges, and in acting classes. It's a spoof on the therapy culture. I'm going to post the "Peter Pan" monologue, which, in its way, at least in my world, is very well known. In the world of actors everyone knows this monologue - and people have chosen it so frequently as audition material that now you pretty much are advised NOT to choose it, and find something not so well known. It's a scene between Jane, the depressed patient, and Summers, the psychiatrist.

EXCERPT FROM 'dentity Crisis, by Christopher Durang:

JANE. (at piano) I don't remember taking piano lessons.

SUMMERS. Maybe you've repressed it. My wife gave me the message about your attempting suicide. Why did you do it, Jane?

JANE. I can't stand it. My mother says she's invented cheese and I start to think maybe she has. There's a man living in th ehouse and I'm not sure whether he's my brohter or my father or my grandfather. I can't be sure of anything anymore.

SUMMERS. You're talking quite rationally now. And your self-doubts are a sign of health. The truly crazy person never thinks he's crazy. Now explain to me what led up to your attempted suicide.

JANE. Well, a few days ago I woke up and I heard this voice saying, "It wasn't enough."

SUMMERS. Did you recognize the voice?

JANE. Not at first. But then it started to come back to m e. When I was eight years old, someone brought me to a theatre with lots of other children. We had come to see a production of Peter Pan. And I remember something seemed wrong with the whole production, odd things kept happening. Like when the children would fly, the ropes would keep breaking and the actors would come thumping to the ground and they'd have to be carried off by the stagehands. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of understudies to take the children's places, and then they'd fall to the ground. And then the crocodile that chases Captain Hook seemed to be a real crocodile, it wasn't an actor, and at one point it fell off the stage, crushing several children in the front row.

SUMMERS. What happened to the children?

JANE. Several understudies came and took their places in the audience. And from scene to scene Wendy seemed to get fatter and fatter until finally by the second act she was immobile and had to be moved with a cart.

SUMMERS. Where does the voice fit in?

JANE. The voice belonged to the actress playing Peter Pan. You remember how in the second act Tinkerbell drinks som epoison that Peter's about to drink, in order to save him? And then Peter turns to the audience and he says that Tinkerbell's going to die because not enough people believe in fairies, but that if everybody in the audience claps real hard to show that they do believe in fairies, then maybe Tinkerbell won't die. And so then all the children started to clap. We clapped very hard and very long. My palms hurt and even started to bleed I clapped so hard. Then suddenly the actress playing Peter Pan turned to the audience and she said, "That wasn't enough. You didn't clap hard enough. Tinkerbell's dead." Uh ... well, and ... and then everyone started to cry. The actress stalked offstage and refused to continue with the play, and they finally had to bring down the curtain. No one could see anything through all the tears, and the ushers had to come help the children up the aisles and out into the street. I don't think any of us were ever the same after that experience.

SUMMERS. How do you think this affected you?

JANE. Well it certainly turned me against theatre; but more damagingly, I think it's warped my sense of life. You know -- nothing seems worth trying if Tinkerbell's just going to die.

SUMMERS. And so you wanted to die like Tinkerbell.

JANE. No.

SUMMERS. (with importance) Jane. I have to bring my wife to the hospital briefly this afternoon, so I have to go now. But I want you to hold on, and I'll check back later today. I think you're going to be all right, but I think you need a complete rest; so when I come back we'll talk about putting you somewhere for a while.

JANE. You mean committing me.

SUMMERS. No. This would just be a rest home, a completely temporary thing. Tinkerbell just needs her batteries recharged, that's all. Now you just make your mind a blank, and I'll be back as soon as I can.

JANE. Thank you. I'll try to stay quiet 'til you return.

"One good pitch"

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam:

In his playing days, he would be there every day in the clubhouse, holding forth -- the Ted Williams Lescture Series -- at least a speech per day, orating and arguing at the same time. Mel Parnell, the great Boston lefty, told me you failed to listen to him at your own risk, because for all the stuff you did not need to hear, there was always so much to learn, often about hitters on the other team, because he was so smart, and he missed nothing that happened on a ball field.

"I can," John Pesky said 60 years after he heard the basic lecture for the first time, "still hear him telling us, because he said it again and again, 'You'll only get one good pitch to hit. One good pitch. That's all. Don't count on more. So you better know the strike zone. And when you get that one good pitch you better hit it and hit it hard. Remember, just one good pitch.'"

Mental health

Nothing like getting out of the land of concrete - even for just a day and a half.

I feel sun-baked (maybe a couple more freckles on my face) and lazy and relaxed. I slept 9 hours. This is unheard of. Swimming, and hammocks, and shrimp on the grill, and the outdoor shower, and star-gazing ... Nighttime was totally quiet except for the occasional splash of a jumping fish. I had a run-in with a daddy long-legs, and dealt with it calmly. (To be perfectly accurate: I had about three freaked-out run-ins with the terrifying buggers before I was able to deal with it calmly. But what a breakthrough to have the run-in go something like: "Oh, look, there's another one. So anyway, as I was saying ...") Sitting in the shade under the big umbrella-table, doing my homework for my writing class. I also read the Raymond Carver story "Cathedral" which I had never read. Holy CRAP. The guy is amazing. Windows to the lake. The most amazing maple tree - massive. A horse trail near the house ... watching the riders go by. Huge hills covered in trees. A lone woman doing the backstroke in the lake. Kids leaping off the blown-up trampoline in the water. Lazing about. Watermelon. A smoky fire at night. Major stars and also a glowing planet. Oh, and we went to a small cafe which sold:

1. Iced coffee
2. Used books.

Can we say: HEAVEN? I bought David McCullough's Truman for five bucks. Psyched.

Nice to get the hell out of here for even a day.

I think I'm gonna watch North by Northwest tonight.

You know ... the search for stress-release never ends for me:

Harriet the spy

I've been tagged! Thanks, Candace, I love the question, which is:

What was your favorite book during those important early years? What impact has that story had on your life? How can you relate that story to current events?

I had a couple of different choices. The first thing that came to mind was Charlotte's Web. The second that came to mind was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The third that came to mind was Flowers in the Attic. No, just kidding about that last one.

But then I had to throw those precious books aside - as marvelous and important as they were to me - and go with Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh.

I honestly don't know if Harriet the Spy could even be published today. She is such an unconventional heroine. She's not always likable. She's bossy, secretive, contemptuous, and sometimes witheringly mean to her best friends. She sees people's weaknesses - that is Harriet's great gift and great curse. She finds weaknesses interesting. She spies on people. SHE BREAKS INTO PEOPLE'S HOMES TO SPY ON THEM. She hides in the dumbwaiter of one rich old broad's house, who never gets out of bed, and writes down everything the rich old broad says. Harriet sees things like: women buying 50 cans of cat food in the store, and she wonders about it. Why? Can someone have that many cats? And if so, why? What is that woman's life like? Then she will follow that woman home to find out. She peeks through windows, stares through air shafts ... she has certain pitstops she has to hit every day. She memorizes people's schedules so she knows where to be at what time. Harriet is a lunatic. A small criminal in training.

However, when I say Harriet is hugely responsible for who I am today - I am not talking about being a criminal. I'm talking about being observant. I'm talking about finding the human race interesting enough to make it your calling. Observing, imitating, delving into, writing about it. Whatever it may be. Harriet certainly judges. She feels bad for the man with the cats. She hates some of the kids at school. She thinks the Drama teacher is a moron. But above all else: she finds them all interesting. She is a difficult person. She is 11 years old and she is already an eccentric.

I was like that. I was not an easy child. I did not fit into any mold. I knew who I was very early. Harriet seared into me. She flames off the page. Still. Harriet still has the power to make me be brave in scary situations. To face the truth. To grow up. To let go of things that are stupid. To trudge through the tough times, gritting your teeth and bearing it. Etc. She is still my role model, in so many ways. Role models aren't perfect. Anyone who is a paragon of good-ness is highly suspect in my eyes. I don't trust them. In the same way that I do not trust fundamentalists, or those who know - without a shadow of a doubt - that they are right. Nope. That's a house of cards. I do not trust those people. I do not trust people who do not admit weakness in themselves, but who are so eager to see weakness in others. But someone who is flawed? Who struggles, and honestly? Who makes mistakes and maybe is awkward and bumbling at growth? I trust those people.

Through the course of the book, Harriet eventually learns to have compassion for people's weaknesses, as opposed to just ghoulish curiosity. However, there is no real "lesson", or moral here. That's one of the extraordinary things about this book, the difficult things. Kids are spoon-fed stupid morality lessons nowadays - every single piece of literature has to "teach" you something - hence the quality of books have gone down, and difficult complex truths are avoided.

At the very end of the book, after Harriet goes through HELL because the entire school reads her private (and very bitchy and very mean) journal ... Harriet eventually realizes, in a moment of clarity: "Sometimes you have to lie."

Let's hear it again: Sometimes you have to lie.

Those words just echoed through my head when I first read them, and they still echo today. "Sometimes you have to lie." I still think of that, at times. If you think your best friend is ugly and a little bit crazy, does it in any way help her to tell her point-blank, "I think you're ugly and a little bit crazy"? Harriet learns to hold her tongue, and she learns to lie. And in the context of the book, that is a good thing. It is part of growing up. I mean ... what?? (Come to think of it, I just wrote about this this past week.) It's a complex thought, and it's not spelled out for the kids reading the book. It's not wrapped up in a neat little bow to make it palatable and understandable to kids.

Harriet, at the end of the book, is not any less brilliant, or any less ambitious. She is going to be a writer. Or a spy. Or something GREAT. But she has learned to censor herself and her contempt for others. She has been beaten down by too much truth, and she chooses to keep her two best friends in her life (Sport and Janie) rather than lose them.

I love Harriet. It hurts how much I love her. There is NO WAY ON EARTH that you could EVER convince me that Harriet does not live off the page, that she does not go on, that Harriet is not "out there" somewhere. She is REAL.

Maybe the book is about learning to take the high road, even if it means sacrificing things you hold dear. Maybe the book is about not sweating the small stuff. Maybe the book is about loyalty. But loyalty to what? Harriet must not betray her inner voice. Harriet NEEDS to spy on people. Harriet might have a great future in the CIA, who knows. She could be working for the United States government right now. She has a gift. She is 10 years old, and she is damn good at what she does. She sets out every day on her "rounds". She has her notebook, and her special belt - where she has clipped a flashlight, a penknife, and other tricks of her trade. What feeds Harriet? What turns Harriet on? Humanity. PEOPLE. She NOTICES things.

Harriet, with all her faults and failings, is AWAKE.

God, I loved her for that, and I still do. She taught me how to look. How to really see.

Harriet taught me how to be awake. I started keeping a journal because of Harriet, and because Harriet always used one of those black and white composition books, so did I. I used those as a kid, and I still use them today. Diary Friday all comes out of piles and piles of black and white composition books.

Harriet's life looked nothing like mine. She grew up in New York City. She was a strictly urban kid. She had a nanny who was a highly mysterious and bossy woman, a hard-ass, but so lovable you think your heart might crack open, named Ole Golly. (I refused to see the movie because Rosie O'Donnell was Ole Golly. This so offended my interpretation of the character that I refused to subject myself to it. A cutesy eunuch Ole Golly? What are you - out of your mind?? Ole Golly has a secret life, a secret boyfriend ... this is a woman who has de-sexualized herself completely in one area of her life - as a nanny - and who lives it UP in another area of her life - with her secret long-term beau. Ole Golly is a grown-up, dammit, not a pug-faced self-regarding homunculit.) Harriet's parents were urbane busy atheists. Yup - atheists. AND they are not judged for it by the book. They are who they are. The parents leave Harriet HIGHLY unsupervised. I mean, their child goes out every day wearing a SPY OUTFIT, and breaks into people's homes ... and they have no idea. They are going to the opera, to benefits, the theatre ... They are not involved in the nitty-gritty of Harriet's life. But Ole Golly sure as hell is.

I grew up in a small university town, with acres of turf farms on one side, and the Atlantic ocean on the other side. I had parents who loved me and who were very involved. Catholics. I did not have a nanny.

But I related to Harriet's soul. I still do. I still learn from Harriet. I probably read that book once a year. She's one of the greatest female characters of all time. She's right up there with Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina, as far as I am concerned.

I still try to live up to Harriet's high standards. I can be unforgiving like Harriet. I can have contempt for other people's weaknesses. I can hold people to a standard which is impossibly high, so that it sets me up for crushing disappointment. But through writing - through the act of putting pen to paper - I am usually able to see deeper, to go beyond the surface of things.

And to never ... ever ... lose interest in people. Like Tracy Lord says in Philadelphia Story to "Mike" - "The time to make up your mind about people ... is never."

And if I had to say how Harriet relates to current events? I don't know. In terms of my own current events, I think I have already covered that. But in terms of the world? I'll riff a little bit, and see what I come up with:

-- Harriet learns that honesty is not always the best policy. Sometimes it is the better thing to soften the blow, to be more diplomatic. "Sometimes you have to lie." That seems to be relevant.

-- In terms of parenting, and the whole craze of over-protective parents everyone talks about all the time: Harriet is indicative that little kids can handle a lot of independence, and they may get into trouble- Harriet gets into major trouble - but by avoiding trouble, or by protecting your kids vigorously from every brand of trouble - you will be robbing them of great life experiences. Harriet is laid LOW through her troubles. She goes through the bleakest time imaginable when the entire school hates her. It's even hard to read about. But she needs to go through that. Even Ole Golly bails on her. Ole Golly realizes that Harriet no longer needs "a nanny" ... and the best thing for Harriet would be for her to be abandoned. I mean, this is a tough tough lesson, and Ole Golly is willing to do it. Harriet needs to grow the fuck up, and she will be unable to do so as long as Ole Golly is around as a crutch. So Ole Golly leaves. Harriet must fend for herself. This is not an easy book, and Harriet's loneliness and fear is palpable. You want to climb into the book and tell her it's going to be okay, this too shall pass, she's an amazing person, she will be an amazing woman ... but that wouldn't help Harriet. Harriet can't skip that step of growing up. Her parents can't protect her, Ole Golly can't protect her ... Harriet makes mistakes, and she has to learn how to clean up her OWN messes. And she does. This book is a perfect example of how sometimes letting kids just go is the best policy.

The other thing the book shows, in terms of parenting, is that parents can invest too much in their little progeny. They actually believe that they can mold the child's personality, that they can create a mini-them. I'm not talking about instilling values or morals - I'm talking about parents who believe that they can create little mirror images of themselves, and then are SHOCKED when the kid has a mind of her own. Well, that's the parent's fault. The kid is a person on their own. Why don't you just sit back and let the KID tell you who they are? Sure, help them with tough decisions, teach them right from wrong ... but other than that? Leave them alone and maybe YOU'LL learn something from THEM.

Look at her belt! Look at her sneakers! She didn't need the glasses, but she wore them because they made her look sharp and smart. Harriet is NUTS. I love her to death.

This is one of my favorite books of all time.

Stress release

I'm very stressed out. I'm going away this weekend. A weekend in the country. A cabin! A lake! A campfire! A hammock! WHOOPEE, right? But ... I always get stressed out in the last moments before going away. Left some things I have to get done til the last minute (bad Sheila, bad Sheila), I have a writing thing I'm working on that I need to get done, and ... in general ... I just am a nervous Nellie right now.

So what do I do when I get stressed out?

How do I relax?

How do I cope?

Oh, you know. The usual way:

Ahhhh ... that makes me feel a little bit better.

Still stressed, though.

So here's more:

Sigh. Heart rate slowing ....

I need more. Isn't he just beautiful in this one below? That bemused grin. Beauty.

Here's another one below. This is from the pretty terrible movie (but quite daring in its day) where he played a renegade gynecologist, who saves a girl from a botched abortion, and then marries her. Yeah, you heard me right. He plays a renegade bachelor gynecologist who also conducts the orchestra at the univeristy (that's what the photo below is - him conducting). The movie was called People will talk, and it's ridiculous, and Hume Cronyn over-acts up a stinky STORM ... but, as usual, Grant is great in it.

And, of course ... my all-time favorite stress-reliever, a movie that has come to mean so much to me I don't even know how to discuss it anymore: Grant as Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings:

Sigh. Makes me feel all strangely weepy for some reason. I'm just stressed out. The country air will do me good.

Oh boy.

Speaking of not being nice anymore, check out how Berardinelli goes OFF on Bewitched. Uh oh. I had a feeling about this one. Something about it just stank to high heaven - you can tell sometimes. Like with Life of David Gale or whatever that movie was called - with Kevin Spacey (or, as I call him: "the shallowest most over-praised actor in America!") and the lovely Kate Winslet. That thing started to reek LONG before it even opened. You pick up on the smell through osmosis.

But anyway. Woah. Check out the Berardinelli rant!!!

He opens with this sentence:

Warning: vicious personal-sounding attacks to follow. I want revenge on those who stole 100 minutes of my life.

AWESOME! (Not wishing a failure on Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman - I actually like both of them a lot ... but this one had "dud" written all over it. Move along, kids. Better luck next time.)

More notable quotes:

"a stillborn 100 minutes" Wow.

"It's hard to imagine it being worse."

"This movie is enough to convert even the most die-hard Bewitched lover into a fan of I Dream of Jeannie." Now that is truly harsh.

"She gets the nose twitch right - probably because the script smells so bad that it's a natural reaction." Good GOD.

"It's a disgrace from start to finish." Right, right, we got that, but how do you really feel?

"rancid cinematic morsel"

woaaaahhhhhh

"no one that thin could possibly hit."

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam:

[Bobby] Doerr remembered his first glimpse of Ted. It was June 1936, and the original Hollywood Stars had just moved to San Diego and been reborn as the Padres, after Bill Lane, the owner, balked at a 100 percent rent increase for Wrigley Field, the ballpark the Stars and the Los Angeles Angels shared. Some San Diego businessmen induced Lane to move the team south to what then was a city of only 200,000 people. It was right before a game, just as the regulars were taking batting practice, when Williams, who had been playing for a local school, Herbert Hoover High, was brought in for a tryout.

"I was standing right near the batting cage," Doerr remembered, "on the first-base side -- I don't know why I was there, but I remember the scene distinctly. And here is this kid, and he is really skinny. You wanted to laugh -- no one that thin could possibly hit. 'Let the kid hit,' Shellenback is saying, because he's been told that by the owner, Bill Lane, who wants to look at Ted. The veterans are all grumbling -- you know, we all wanted our batting practice swings. No one thinks he can be a ballplayer, he's much too thin, and we've got a game in an hour or two, and he's not even going to play with us. So we're impatient and there's a lot of resentment, a lot of muttering. And then he started to swing. And we all remembered that swing. You paid attention to the swing. He hit six or seven balls very hard, and all the veterans are starting to watch, and it's getting very quiet, and I remember one veteran player saying, 'That kid is going to be signed before the week is out.'"

Dominic DiMaggio remembered a similar scene. "It was my first year in the league. It was early in the season. I was playing for the San Francisco Seals, and we were playing San Diego. I wasn't starting yet. Brooks Holder was our centerfielder, very fast, but he couldn't catch the ball, so there was going to be a place for me. Lefty O'Doul was our manager. The other guys, the San Diego players, are taking batting practice, and eventually Ted comes up to take his swings. And suddenly Lefty, who was a great hitter, and a great hitting instructor, jumps up from our dugout and goes to the other side of the field, near their dugout. That's very unusual -- you just didn't do that in those days. And he waits there, and finally Ted finishes his swings, and Lefty calls him over, and they talk for a little bit. Maybe twenty or thirty seconds. And then Lefty comes back to our dugout. And we're all sitting around, and someone asks him, 'Skip, what was that all about?' And Lefty says, 'That kid is one hell of a hitter. And all I told him was, "Don't let anyone ever tamper with your batting stroke. Just don't let anyone ever touch you."'"

Cult news ...

Last night, Alex and I were on the phone, discussing Tom Cruise like the two maniacs that we are. I call her. She answers on the first ring. She obviously has me programmed into her phone, she knows it's me ... because she does not say "Hi" or "This is Alex" ... No. Her first word to me is: "Wait." Okay, she's in the middle of something. I wait. She periodically repeats the word, "Wait ... wait ..." I continue to wait. At some point, I begin to laugh. She murmurs to me, "Sorry ... just finishing reading something on Cult News ..." hahahahaha

Alex was describing to me a bizarre interaction she had yesterday. I will not go into details, but she was telling me about how her response to this interaction was to just go completely blank ... like, she could not think of an appropriate response ... NOTHING was in her head ...

She said: "If there was a close-up of my face in that moment, you would have seen an absolute BLANK."

Then Alex summed it all up by saying, "I felt like I was in a deleted scene from Waiting for Guffman."

This is outrageous

Heads should roll over this one. What a major mess-up.

The Books: "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls" (Christopher Durang)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

We now must leave Chekhov behind on the script shelf, and go to the next playwright: Christopher Durang!!

I have a collection of his short plays (some of them are only 2 pages long), and some are obviously just glorified skits (not that there's anything wrong with that) and others are meant to be full-on productions. Christopher Durang is a lunatic. He wrote a play called Laughing Wild (a 2-person play - that actually is being done on off-Broadway right now - starring Deborah Monk and Durang himself) which is so NUTS. At one climactic fantasy moment, the guy character emerges from backstage dressed as the Infant of Prague, and the female character suddenly transforms into Sally Jessy Raphael ... and Raphael sets about to interview the Infant of Prague. It's so RIDICULOUS, and so funny. Sally saying, "So, Infant of Prague, tell me ..."

The first play of Durang's I'll excerpt is called For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls - and it is a parody of The Glass Menagerie.

In his introduction to the play, Durang writes:

Though I as a child always felt sympathy for Laura, as an adult I started to find Laura's sensitivity frustrating. I mean, how hard was typing class really?

And though in my youth I found Laura's interest in her glass animals to be sweet and otherwordly (with the appropriately perfect symbolism of her loving her glass unicorn best because it was different), now as an adult, I felt restless with her hobby. Did she actually spend hours and hours staring at them? Couldn't she try to function in the world just a little bit? Why didn't she go out bowling or make prank phone calls or get drunk on a good bottle of bourbon?

Anyway, I started to find Laura annoying and frustrating.

It's out of this irritation with Laura's sensitivity -- a feeling greatly at odds with the Williams' original -- that I seem to have written this parody, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls. (I say "seem" because I often say "seem" and because I approached writing this parody on impulse, unaware consciously of how my feelings toward the play had changed. Writing the parody was a way of playing with, and releasing, some of what I felt after seeing the play for what seemed like the 100th time.)

I'll excerpt the opening scene.

EXCERPT FROM For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, by Christopher Durang:

Enter Amanda, the Southern belle mother.

AMANDA. Rise and shine! Rise and shine! (calls off) Lawrence, honey, come on out here and let me have a look at you!

(Enter Lawrence, who limps across the room. In his 20s, he is very sensitive and is wearing what are clearly his dress clothes. Amanda fiddles with his bow tie and stands back to admire him.

AMANDA. Lawrence, honey, you look lovely.

LAWRENCE. No, I don't, mama. I have a pimple on the back of my neck.

AMANDA. Don't say the word "pimple", honey, it's common. Now your brother Tom is bringing home a girl from the warehouse for you to meet, and I want you to make a good impression, honey.

LAWRENCE. It upsets my stomach to meet people, mama.

AMANDA. Oh, Lawrence, honey, you're so sensitive it makes me want to hit you.

LAWRENCE. I don't need to meet people, mama. I'm happy just by myself, playing with my collection of glass cocktail stirrers. (Lawrence smiles wanly and limps over to a table on top of which sits a glass jar filled with glass swizzle sticks)

AMANDA. Lawrence, you are a caution. Only retarded people and alcoholics are interested in glass cocktail stirrers.

LAWRENCE. (with proud wonderment) Each one of them has a special name, mama. This one is called Stringbean because it's long and thin. And this one is also called Stringbean because it's long and thin. And this one is called Blue because it's blue.

AMANDA. All my children have such imagination, why was I so blessed? Oh, Lawrence, honey, how are you going to get on in the world if you just stay home all day, year after year, playing with your collection of glass cocktail stirrers?

LAWRENCE. I don't like the world, mama. I like it here in this room.

AMANDA. I know you do, honey, that's part of your charm. Some days. But, honey, what about making a living?

LAWRENCE. I can't work, mama. I'm crippled. (He limps over to the couch and sits)

AMANDA. (firmly) There is nothing wrong wtih your leg, Lawrence honey, all the doctors here have told you that. This limping thing is an affectation.

LAWRENCE. (perhaps a little steely) I only know how I feel, mama.

AMANDA. Oh if only I had connections in the Mafia, I'd have someone come and break both your legs.

LAWRENCE. Don't try to make me laugh, mama. You know I have asthma.

AMANDA. Your asthma, your leg, your excema. You're just a mess, Lawrence!

LAWRENCE. I have scabs from the itching, mama.

AMANDA. That's lovely, Lawrence. You must tell us more over dinner.

LAWRENCE. Alright.

AMANDA. That was a joke, Lawrence.

LAWRENCE. Don't try to make me laugh, mama. My asthma.

AMANDA. Now, Lawrence. I don't want you talking about your ailments to the feminine caller your brother Tom is bringing home from the warehouse, honey. No nice-bred young lady likes to hear a young man discussing his excema, Lawrence.

LAWRENCE. What else can I talk about, mama?

AMANDA. Talk about the weather. Or Red China.

LAWRENCE. Or my collection of glass cocktail stirrers?

AMANDA. I suppose so, honey, if the conversation's comes to some godawful standstill. Otherwise, I'd shut up about it. (Becomes coquettish, happy memories) Conversation is an art, Lawrence. Back at Blue Mountain, when I had seventeen gentlemen callers, I was able to converse with charm and vivacity for six hours without stop and never once mention eczema or bone cancer or vivisection. Try to emulate me, Lawrence, honey. Charm and vivacity. And charm. And vivacity. And charm.

LAWRENCE. Well, I'll try, but I doubt it.

AMANDA. Me too, honey. But we'll go through the motions anyway, won't we?

LAWRENCE. I don't know if i want to meet some girl who works in a warehouse, mama.

AMANDA. Your brother Tom says she's a lovely girl with a nice personality. And where else does he meet girls except the few who work at the warehouse? He only seems to meet men at the movies. Your brother goes to the movies entirely too much. I must speak to him about it.

LAWRENCE. It's unfeminine for a girl to work at a warehouse.

AMANDA. Now Lawrence -- if you can't go out the door without getting an upset stomach or an attack of vertigo, then we have got to find some nice girl who's willing to support you. Otherwise, how am I ever going to get you out of this house and off my hands?

LAWRENCE. Why do you want to be rid of me, mama?

AMANDA. I suppose it's unmotherly of me, dear, but you really get on my nerves. Limping around the apartment, pretending to have asthma. If only some nice girl would marry you and I knew you were taken care of, then I'd feel free to start to live again. I'd join Parents Without Partners, I'd go to dinner dances, I'd have a life again. Rather than just watch you mope about this stupid apartment. I'm not bitter, dear, it's just that I hate my life.

LAWRENCE. I understand, mama.

AMANDA. Do you, dear? Oh, you're cute. Oh, listen, I think I hear them.

TOM. (from offstage) Mother, I forgot my key.

LAWRENCE. I'll be in the other room. (starts to limp away)

AMANDA. I want you to let them in, Lawrence.

LAWRENCE. I couldn't, mama. She'd see I limp.

AMANDA. Then don't limp, damn it.

TOM. (from off) Mother, are you there?

AMANDA. Just a minute, Tom, honey. Now, Lawrence, you march over to that door or I'm going to break all your swizzle sticks.

LAWRENCE. Mama, I can't!

AMANDA. Lawrence, you are a grown boy. Now you answer that door like any normal person.

LAWRENCE. I can't.

TOM. (from off) Mother, I'm going to break the door down in a minute.

AMANDA. Just be patience, Tom. Now you're causing a scene, Lawrence. I want you to answer that door.

LAWRENCE. My eczema itches.

AMANDA. I'll itch it for you in a second, Lawrence.

TOM. (from off) Alright, I'm breaking it down.

(Sound of door breaking down. Enter Tom and Ginny Bennett, a vivacious friendly girl dressed in either factory clothes, or else a simple, not-too-frilly blouse and slacks)

AMANDA. Oh Tom, you got in.

TOM. Why must we go through this every night??? You know the stupid fuck won't open the door, so why don't you let him alone about it? (to Ginny) My kid brother has a thing about answering doors. He thinks people will notice his limp and his asthma and his eczema.

LAWRENCE. Excuse me. I think I hear someone calling me in the other room. (Limps off, calls to imaginary person:) Coming! (Exits)

Big news!!!

Mr. Cruise is going to appear on Letterman in half an hour.

Can. Not. Wait. For. The. Crazy.

Quotes
Letterman: "This Tom Cruise guy is so volatile ... romantically ..."

Letterman announced that they have a Justice of the Peace backstage, ready to marry the two at any moment. They just showed the Justice of the Peace, in his black robes, nodding benevolently backstage.

Cruise's entry music? "Jump" by Van Halen. That's pretty funny.

Cruise thinks the judge backstage is hilarious. "That is so funny."

"I've never felt this way before. I don't know how to describe it. It's just amazing and I can't restrain myself." (Oh, Tom. Stop talking.)

Oops. Tom is laughing too hard.

"She's the most stunning woman. She's the most stunning person."

Dude. Stop.

(I feel bad for Cruise. The man is brainwashed by a dangerous cult. It's not his fault. My heart goes out to him.)

"We had chocolate on our first date and just stared at each other."

Ew. How 'bout just going to a movie? How 'bout makin' out on the beach?

No ... that wasn't the first date. It was after their engagement. My bad.

Letterman: Have you had any moments around the house yet where she's said 'Would you pick up your socks?'
Cruise: I'm the kind of guy who just picks up his socks.

I AM NOT KIDDING. HE JUST SAID THAT.

Cruise is charming. I'll give him that.

Now he's talking about how he wants to climb Mt. Everest. That's pretty cool.

Again: it's not his fault that he got hooked in by that evil cult!!!

He really is a squat little pipsqueak, isn't he?

Wow. He's actually TALKING ABOUT THE MOVIE HE'S GOT COMING OUT. Good for you, Tom. Spielberg must be watching thinking, "Jesus Christ, it's about feckin' time."

The two of them are now bonding about being fathers. Cruise brought it up. See, that's why he's a mega-star. He starts asking Letterman questions. See what I mean? "Did it change you ... how do you feel about stuff now?" Etc. Cruise is disarming that way.

Letterman's awesome.

Now we're gonna see a clip.

Okay, it's over now. That wasn't all that crazy, actually. He was charming, funny, present ...you can see why everyone who works with him feckin' loves him. He got that glazed insincere look in his eyes when he talked about Katie ... They've known each other 10 weeks. It just doesn't look real. His acting seems real, but his personality in that context does not seem real.

But other than that ... he was obviously in the mode of being a huge and powerful star, there to promote his film.

I called it.

Back when James Frey's first book came out, there was a fascinating interview with him in the NY Observer ... sadly, the link doesn't work anymore ... but it pissed me off so much that I wrote a rant about it on my old blog when I was much angrier with much more frequency. Posted below. Just want everyone to know I called it. Oprah may have been duped, but I wasn't.

Oh, and let me just say this before we begin: some of James Frey's annoyances with today's literary stars I share. Some of his frustration with the cleverness, and coyness is stuff I also share. I just don't think, as he obviously does, that HE is the solution.

March 2003

I don't think I've ever read an interview with a greater moron than this man. I do not even know where to begin.

Does James Frey (whose first book, A Million Little Pieces, will be published in April by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) actually talk like this? Reading the interview in the New York Observer reminds me of the experiences I have had, usually at parties, where I meet someone, who is so intent on impressing me, and so intent on not seeming like he is trying to impress me, that the obviousness of the behavior is stunning. Vulnerability such as that is almost painful to witness. Like: "Ouch ... do you really want to show me that much at this early juncture in our non-existent relationship?" And the lack of self-awareness, the lack of realizing what exactly it is that he is doing, is astonishing. Cringe-worthy.

Is his book any good?

Let me pick out some quotes from the Observer profile:

"The Eggers book pissed me off. [A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius] Because a book that I thought was mediocre was being hailed as the best book written by the best writer of my generation. F*** that. And f*** him and f*** anybody that says that. I don't give a f*** what they think of me. I'm going to try to write the best book of my generation and I'm going to try to be the best writer. And maybe I'll fall flat on my f***ing face, I'll fall flat on my f***ing face trying to do it."

You might fall flat on your face, but at least you'll flat on your face while trying to fall flat on your face? Is your book as articulate as that?

The following quote shows Mr. Frey's humility:

"[This one agent] went ballistic over [my manuscript], called and said, 'We're going to turn you into an industry.' I said, 'What are you talking about?' 'You know who Deepak Chopra is?' I was like, 'Yeah.' 'You're going to be the Deepak Chopra of recovery. We're going to start a whole line of self-help books with your name on it. We're going to publish your own version of the Tao. We're going to send you out on speaking tours. We're going to build a religion around you.' I was like, 'You must be f***ing kidding me!' I very much admired the enthusiasm, but it was bizarre."

There's something off here. I don't trust this guy. He's got too much to prove. He exudes fragility ... there's something "off".

It gets more obnoxious as the piece goes on, if that is possible. H

"I guess I'm the poster boy for unconventional addiction thought. They were trying to lead me into saying certain things. They kept trying to get me to swear. Stossel was like, 'I heard you swear a lot. I heard you're feisty. Why won't you swear for me?' Because my mom and my wife asked me not to. 'Well forget about them, I need you to swear!' So I was like, 'O.K., f*** you!' I'm terrified of what they're going to do to me now. They're going to cut me up."

Dude, do you hear yourself? Your years of therapy and 12-stepping have not helped you see what you actually are doing. You are NOT terrified of what "they" are going to do to you now. You love it. You love being notorious, you love all the attention, you love being criticized, you love being the wild-card of the literature world ... So just admit it! I find him to be extremely disingenuous. I realize I have never been in his presence, so I can't say for sure, but what the hell. It's my blog and I'll judge if I want to.

The tone continues:

"My wife calls me a savage. Because I eat with my hands. Because my best friends are my dogs. And I like pit bulls. And N.W.A. And I love boxing. I think boxing is beautiful. The purity of fighting is a beautiful thing. Writers aren't like that anymore.all these guys who have f***ing masters' degrees and are so 'sophisticated' and 'educated' and ... well, I'm not a guy with a master's degree. I think I'm sophisticated. I can write big fat books. But I'm not an effete little guy."

What a complete and utter jackass. I like NWA. I don't have a chip on my shoulder about it, though. There's something adolescent here, about how he lists what a pig he is ... it's like a teenage boy choosing to wear smelly socks ... but he's only doing it to thumb his nose at his mother. Like, you might THINK you're being rebellious - but a TRUE rebel isn't always glancing around at authority figures to see how "outraged" everyone is. A true rebel just does his thing and doesn't care. James Frey cares. Oh my God, he cares. I don't believe a word he's saying.

While he was in L.A., Mr. Frey acquired a number of tattoos, his own personal footnotes. "I've seen you glance at this one," he said, displaying a row of letters on the inside of his left wrist: S.P.C.D.H.C. "Simplicity, Patience, Compassion, Discipline, Honesty, Courage," he said. "Words to live by. When I see that, it reminds me that these things embody the person I want to be."

He pulled back his shirt to reveal others. "That's a symbol of birth and rebirth," he said, pointing to a small phoenix. "That is a Taoist symbol of life. I have my wife's initials on my chest. I very deliberately scar myself so that I remember these things. However twisted my logic may be, by scarring myself, I'm making a commitment to myself. I'm committed to the things on my wrist."

WHAT? What the hell are you talking about? "I very deliberately scar myself so that I remember these things." (As opposed to "sort of deliberately scarring yourself"?) "By scarring myself, I'm making a commitment to myself. I'm committed to the things on my wrist."

Euuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! I guess my feeling is: you can FEEL things like that, but don't SAY IT OUT LOUD. You just sound ridiculous. I have a tattoo, bro. Lots of people do for lots of reasons. You are not inventing the wheel. People who think they are inventing the wheel by, rebelling, having sex, getting drunk - whatever - are immature. Besides. Lots of people have tattooes. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is thinking, "Oooooohhhhhh that James Frey ..... he's such a BADASS ... he likes NWA and he has tattooes!" And the fact that I sense he NEEDS that response from me makes me go even colder.

He's not being real. If this was really who he was, fine - go for it. But it's affected.

Then he trashes the literary stars of the day (Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace), always a good ploy right before your first book comes out:

"I think they're full of bells and whistles and tricks and being cute and being ironic and being all this shit. To be honest, I don't understand it. It's not how I think or how I feel...Eggers and I are exactly the same age. If there's a guy out there who is 'The Guy' of my generation, it's Eggers. In that sense, I was honored by the comparison."

Ah, now that sounds a bit like truth. You bitch and moan about Eggers, which seems transparently envious to me, yet you should be "honored by the comparison". Phony. Nothing worse than a big fat phony.

Give me a raging asshole any day of the goddamn week, but spare me from the phonies.

"All that matters is what the feelings are and what the events are. It's not about all this trickery. When I think about writing, I have a very simple formula: Where was I? Who was I with? What happened? And how did it make me feel? Those are the only important things. It doesn't matter if I can write a sentence that's a page long or if I have 30 pages of footnotes in the back or people chuckle at the introduction page. I want to move people and have them understand what I felt, what I went through and what I felt other people were feeling and going through."

And ... let me get this straight ... you are the first person to write in this manner? You are the first writer to ever "want to move people and have them understand"? No other writer has ever done this before? Ever? You sure?

Lastly:

"I don't give a f*** what Jonathan Safran whatever-his-name does or what David Foster Wallace does. I don't give a f*** what any of these people do. I don't hang out with them, I'm not friends with them, I'm not part of the literati. I think of myself as outside of this publishing culture. Kirkus called me pretentious. Am I pretentious in my self-regard because I'm serious about what I do? Because I'm moving against the trend of irony? I don't know. I hope I'm a bullet in the heart of that bullshit."

Frey, you are not a bullet through the heart of anything. You are a tiresome bore.

"Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left"

Read this on the bus this morning. From Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke:

The improvements of the national assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbours the example of the British constitution, than to take models from them for the improvement of our own. In their former they have got an invaluable treasure. They are not, I think, without some causes of apprehension and complaint; but these they do not owe to their constitution, but to their own conduct. I think our happy situation owing to our constitution; but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly; owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have altered or superadded. Our people will find employment enough for a truly patriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding what they possess, from violation. I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve. I should be led to my remedy by a great grievance. In what I did, I should follow the example of our ancestors. I would make the reparation as nearly as possible in the style of the building. A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, a moral rather than a complexional timidity were among the ruling principles of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not being illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He that had made them thus fallible, rewarded them for having in their conducts attended to their nature. Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune, or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and, standing on the firm ground of the British constitution, let us be satisfied to admire rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights the aeronauts of France.

Another one detained

Let's just detain the whole damn island, shall we?

I'm getting sucked into the story. Kind of against my will, because frankly I am sick of the following trend: "Only if you are a cute white chick and preferably pregnant will you get national news coverage as a missing person, mkay?". It drives me nuts. God forbid if you are a fat homely middle-aged woman with a mole on your nose and you happen to go missing. You'll be shit out of luck. The news will not give a crap about your whereabouts. And GOD HELP YOU if you are a minority or a man. Fine - go missing for all we care, get your head chopped off in a smelly ravine ... we don't give a shite. You're on your own. Your family can call the local news stations all they want ... but if your high school picture shows a troll-like pimply dude with horrible teeth ... nobody's gonna jump to promote the story.

Yuk. Makes me really really mad.

But. THAT BEING SAID.

The Aruba case is, actually, quite interesting to me, because of the intrigue that appears to be going on behind the scenes. CW's been posting about it a bit, and his posts have led me to Scared Monkeys, which appears to be information central for this whole thing. Here is today's post. I can certainly understand the frustration of Holloway's family, having to deal with such a different system, and having no sense of what is actually going on, and nobody having been charged yet - even though they are detaining everyone in sight. (Hyperbole is my friend.)

Dutch father and Dutch son (whose face creeps me out, by the way - I know guys like that. Sorry - so general, and so presumptuous of me - but what the hell - I'm not on a jury: I look at that kid's face and I can see that something is missing there - like, uhm, kindness, maybe? Concern for others?) - now both "detained".

(Oh, and to connect the dots on my blog here today: This photo of the Dutch parents being interviewed is from an interview they did with Fox News' Greta van Susteren, who also happens to be a lockstep member of the glazed-eyed thetan-fighting brigade!!)

And another thing ...

... have you noticed how Tom Cruise refers to the woman we all knew as KATIE Holmes, as "Kate"? (Well, besides his constant refrain of "magnificent woman", "magnificent woman", "magnificent woman".) From the beginning, he re-christened her as "Kate". It stood out for me, and always has (in the weeks and WEEKS of time that I have been obsessing about this): it seemed important to him that she was Kate and not Katie. I have spent way too much time wondering why this might be.

My friend Mitchell is always annoyed when people shorten his name to "Mitch", and they usually do it instantly upon meeting him. Nothing wrong with the name "Mitch", but he doesn't go by "Mitch", he goes by "Mitchell".

"Hi, my name is Mitchell." He holds out his hand.

Person shakes hand, says, "Hi, Mitch, nice to meet you."

I've been there when this happens. It happens all the time. Mitchell doesn't make a big deal out of it or anything ... but it sure is an interesting phenomenon. Like: I have told you, in the way I introduce myself, how I refer to myself. I have called myself "Mitchell". And immediately, you ignore that, and give me a nickname? Why??

Mitchell believes (and I agree with him) that because he is gay - those who meet him sometimes have the desire to "butch him up" (Mitchell's words). They are friendly, nice, they shake hands ... it's not a hostile moment or anything like that ... but they do not call him "Mitchell". They choose the "butcher" Mitch.

I don't really have a name that can be shortened, although Mitchell's mother always did call me, with great affection, "She". Mitchell's entire family picked up on that, and I actually loved it. I'd see Mitchell's brother after a long time of separation - we would hug - and he would say, "Hi, She!!"

I would walk into Mitchell's house, and be greeted with happy cries of, "It's She!" "She's here!" "Hi, She!"

But sometimes ... when people decide to shorten your name on their own ... it's a matter of aggression (in a very passive sense, of course) and control.

"Hi, my name is David."
"Hey, Dave, what's up? Nice to meet you."
"Uhm ... I said my name was DAVID."

It's a strange thing, and very common to those who have names that can be shortened.

But here's Tom Cruise, talking about Kate this, and Kate that ... and it's weird to me. So you not only indoctrinate her into your Xenu world, but you adjust her name as well? She's KATIE, bub. I mean, I know she's not a ginormous star (and thanks to you, perhaps now she never will be) ... She's not a household name like, say, Lindsay Lohan is (ahem.)... but still: she's been "Katie" since The Ice Storm, my friend. Why are you shortening her name? Are you trying to butch her up? haha No, but seriously: what's up with that?

I am glad I am not the only one who has noticed this. Because, frankly, this is one of the most important issues of our day.

Check out this, from Fugging it up.

Favorite phrase? "spastic man-child fiance"

hahahahaha

This is She, signing off ...

The Books: "The Cherry Orchard" (Anton Chekhov)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

More from The Plays of Anton Chekhov translated by Paul Schmidt. This excerpt is from The Cherry Orchard.

Can you tell that I love Chekhov? One of the things I love about him is that there always seems to be something new to discover. His plays, while they certainly have plot points, are not really about the plot. At least I don't think they are. And that's why he can be so difficult to play, as discussed before - because instead of focusing on the plot, the actors and director focus on a "mood". Focusing on a "mood" while rehearsing a play is a dastardly mistake. I've been in plays where, at the first rehearsal, the director starts talking about the "mood" he wants to capture, and I immediately steel myself for a disaster. Here's my view: If the director wants to blither on about mood, then he should do it to his production designer. Tell HIM all your ideas on mood, and have him build the mood into the set, the sound effects, the lighting. Set designers are trained to turn abstracts like "mood" into reality. But you talk about "mood" to your actors, and you're in trouble. Why? Because if we start playing the "mood", then you get a dreadful general performance, where the actors are trying to fulfill some vague abstract emotional description - as opposed to doing what an actor's job really is which is: uhm: ACT. (Funny, my great acting teacher Sam Schacht always says, "The name of the job is not FEELER. The name of the job is ACTor." What are you DOING is far more important than what you are FEELING.)

Chekhov, more than any other playwright I can think of, presents the danger of being a "mood piece", as opposed to a series of events, presented on stage. Apparently, the production of Glass Menagerie, on Broadway right now with Jessica Lange, has fallen into the "mood piece" trap. Jessica Lange is playing a mood, the entire production seems designed to express a MOOD, as opposed to tell the damn STORY. I haven't seen it, but I trust Ben Brantley to tell me the truth.

Chekhov called The Cherry Orchard a "comedy". I've read the play many times, and while there are amusing parts in it, and funny lines, etc., the main thing I always remember about that play is the very last moment, where you hear, offstage, the sound of an axe cutting a tree down, and you know the destruction of the orchard has begun. That last moment always struck me as SO TRAGIC - and yet Chekhov calls the play a "comedy". Fascinating. It helps me to read the play in a correct way, it helps me to find, as a great old mentor of mine used to say, "the pulse of the playwright".

It's not about finding your pulse, and how you react to something, and how you respond to something ... A play should always be striving to find "the pulse of the playwright". And you can tell, in productions that are beating along with the pulse of the playwright ... You can FEEL the difference.

There was kind of a famous production of Cherry Orchard done at Williamstown, and Blythe Danner played Dunyasha and Frank Langella played Yepikhodov. I've seen production stills from some of their scenes together, and even just the stills make me laugh! I wish I could have seen it.

The following excerpt is from the party scene, in Act III. As I read it, it becomes obvious that, despite the tragic last moment, this piece is not only a comedy, but it's a high comedy. I laugh out loud reading this play.

EXCERPT FROM The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov

(Anya and Varya dance together. Firs enters, leans his walking stick against the side door. Yasha appears and stands watching the dancers.

YASHA. What's the matter, pops?

FIRS. I don't feel so good. The old days, we had a dance, we had generals and barons and admirals; nowadays we have to send out for the postmaster and the stationmaster. And they're none too eager to come, either. Oh, I'm getting old and feeble. The old master, their grandfather, anybody got sick, he used to dose 'em all with sealing wax. Didn't matter what they had, they all got sealing wax. I've been taking sealing wax myself now for nigh onto twenty years. Take some every day. That's probably why I'm still alive.

YASHA. You're getting boring, pops. (Yawns) Time for you to crawl off and die.

FIRS. Oh, you ... you young flibbertigibbet. (Mumbles)

(Trofimov and Liubov dance through the ballroom, into the sitting room)

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Merci. I need to sit down and rest a bit ... I'm so tired.

(Enter Anya)

ANYA. (upset) There was a man in the kitchen just now, he said the cherry orchard's already been sold!

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Who bought it?

ANYA. He didn't say. And he's gone now. (Dances with Trofimov; they dance off across the ballroom)

YASHA. That was just some old guy talking crazy. It wasn't anybody from around here.

FIRS. And Leonid Andreyich still isn't back. All he had on was his topcoat; you watch, he'll catch cold. He's all wet, that one.

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I'll never live through this. Yasha, go out and see if anybody knows who bought it.

YASHA. It was just some old guy. He left long ago. (laughs)

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: What are you laughing at? What's so funny?

YASHA: That's Yepikhodov. What a dope. Old Double Trouble.

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Firs, suppose the estate is sold -- where are you going to go?

FIRS. I'll go whereever you tell me to.

LIUBOV ANDREYEVNA: What's the matter? Your face looks so funny ... Are you sick? You should go to bed.

FIRS. Yes. Yes, sure, go to bed, and then who'll take care of things? I'm the only one you've got.

YASHA. Liubov Andreyevna, there's a favor I have got to ask you; it's very important. If you go back to Paris, please take me with you. Please! You've got to! I positively cannot stay around here. You can see for yourself this place is hopeless. The whole country's a mess, nobody has any culture, it's boring the food is lousy, and there's that old Firs drooling all over the place and talking like an idiot. Please, take me with you -- you've just got to!

(Enter Pishchik)

PISHCHIK. Beautiful lady, what about a waltz? Just one little waltz! (Liubov crosses to him) You dazzler, you! And what about a loan, just one little loan, just a hundred and eighty, that's all I need. (They begin to dance) Just a hundred and eighty ... (They dance off into the ballroom)

YASHA: (sings to himself) "Can't you see my heart is breaking ..."

(In the ballroom, a figure appears dressed in checkered trousers and a grey top hat, jumping and waving its arms. We hear shouts of "Bravo, Carlotta!")

DUNYASHA: (stops to powder her nose) The missus told me to dance -- there's too many gentlemen and not enough ladies -- so I did, I've been dancing all night and my heart won't stop beating, and you know what, Firs? Just now, the postmaster, you know? He said something almost made me faint.

(The orchestra stops playing)

FIRS. What did he say?

DUNYASHA. That I was like a flower. That's what he said.

YASHA. (yawns) What does he know about it? (goes out)

DUNYASHA. Just like a flower. I'm a very romantic girl, really. I just adore that kind of talk.

FIRS. You're out of your mind.

(Enter Yepikhodov)

YEPIKHODOV. (to Dunyasha) Why are you deliberating not to notice me? You act as if I wasn't here, like I was a bug or something. Ah, life.

DUNYASHA. Excuse me?

YEPIKHODOV. Of course, you may be right. But if you look at it, let's say, from a ... a point of view, then you're the faulty one -- excuse my expressivity -- because you led me on. Into this predicament. Look at me! Every day something awful happens to me. It's like a habit. But I can look disaster in the face and keep smiling. You gave me your word, you know, and you even --

DUNYASHA. Do you mind? Let's talk about it later. Right now I'd rather be left alone. With my dreams. (plays with a fan)

YEPIKHODOV. Every day. Something awful. But all I do -- excuse my expressivity -- is try to keep smiling. Sometimes I even laugh.

The ferry

For 2 years, I took a class every Monday night at the World Trade Center, in the North Tower. The ritual was: I would take the A train downtown, get off at Chambers Street, walk a couple blocks, and cross the massive courtyard to enter the building. I loved it down there, mostly because it was foreign to me - I never spent a lot of time down on Wall Street and it is a whole different world down there. The streets feel like canyons. People struggle to open doors against the wind tunnel effect. But then you emerge onto that courtyard - open, expansive, abstract - with the towers screaming up into the empty sky above you, and you just know that there's no other place in the city like it. Something about the landscape around the World Trade Center, wide-open, concrete, extremely PLANNED, reminded me of DeChirico's eerie paintings, paintings that had haunted me since I first encountered them in Mrs. Franco's humanities class in high school. Of course, the urban landscape down at the World Trade Center was always packed with people, and DeChirico's paintings are always frighteningly empty - except for a long human shadow coming from around the corner, or teeny people in the far distance, dwarfed by the urban structures around them.

The World Trade Center was a part of my everyday life. I knew the security guards, especially one in particular who I really liked. I knew the guy in the coffee shop downstairs, who had my coffee ready for me by the time I got to the counter, having memorized what I liked within 2 days. I could make my way through that Concourse to the underground PATH station in my sleep. My class ended at 10, I think, or 9:45 ... If we got out on time, then I would race down through the echoey Atrium (again, like a DeChirico painting - especially late at night - with the amphitheatre style marble steps, and the massive indoor palms - and everything glass - but since it was nighttime, all you saw was darkness all around you, strange reflections ... an odd space, pregnant with meaning) - burst out through the doors, and tear down to the Hudson, where I would pick up the last ferry to Hoboken. If my class went a little late, then I would miss the ferry, and have to walk through the echoing empty Concourse - with the mannequins in the windows at the Gap standing still, all the lights off in the stores, nobody around, empty escalators running, me the only figure on them, smiling at the 8th security guard I saw at the bottom ... and, of course, racing to catch the train when I heard it coming in, so that I wouldn't have to sit in the bowels of the World Trade Center, in that echoing station by myself. Other random late-night folks were usually milling about, too. This was, after all, the financial district. People worked crazy hours.

But my main goal was to get out of class promptly so I could have the pleasure of taking the ferry.

The station for the ferry was outside the spectacular Atrium, and it was a floating tented dock in the Hudson. You got to it by walking on this metal ramp. As you stood in line to buy a ticket for the ferry, the entire dock bobbed up and down on the small waves of the Hudson. You could see the lights of Jersey across the way. Especially you could see this enormous lit-up clock - south of Jersey City, not sure what town it was in - Bayonne, maybe? When I say "enormous", I mean that it is probably 10 stories tall. Maybe Mr. Bingley knows how big it is. You can easily see the time from all the way across the river. A couple of different ferries used the floating dock - one from Hoboken and the other from further south down the Jersey shore. You could see them leave their docks from across the river, and start to cross the water to get us. I always found that strangely exciting. Seeing my ferry set out from Hoboken, small, making its way south, getting larger, larger ... until there it was ... smacking up against the side of the floating dock. Normally, because I love the night, and I love wind, and I love water ... I wouldn't wait in the enclosed part of the floating dock. I would buy my ticket, walk back up the ramp onto the walkway that runs all around the periphery of the bottom of Manhattan ... and stare out into the Hudson. I loved that part of my night. Even if it was freezing, I would choose to brave the elements. The splashing water against the side of the island of Manhattan, the strange achey creaking sounds that the dock made as it floated up and down ... those were pretty much the only sounds. Way over there, on the river-side of the trade center, you didn't really hear much traffic. It was just the sound of the water, maybe the wind, or raindrops ...

I have such peaceful memories of those few minutes, squeezed into a busy day ... my quiet time, my thoughts roaming free, but there was a mellowness to it, too. There was something soft about how my thoughts felt in my own head, after a long day, ready to go home and go to bed.

Odd. And again, made even more odd by the imposing buildings towering over us. It's a landscape built for people. It is meant to be crowded. It only makes sense if it's crowded. I suppose if I worked there, I would have a whole different experience of the place - I would experience it as a packed madhouse, filled with busy people going through turnstiles, and constant rivers of human beings, moving this way and that. I've temped in massive office buildings before, and I know what rush hours are like. But I was always at the World Trade Center on off-hours, so my memories of it are quieter, echoey ... They have to do with silence ... and ... I'm trying to express this right. You know how some landscapes, whether man-made or natural, seem to just have so much meaning, in their very structure? Like: if you look at the Grand Canyon and you are indifferent, or unchanged ... then frankly something is wrong with you. Not that you should have a particular experience ... not that it should "fill you with awe" ... No. There is no required response. But SOME thing should happen to you. The landscape is trying to tell you SOMEthing. When I first saw the Grand Canyon, I actually felt something akin to deep and powerful despair. I couldn't take it in. Just trying to SEE IT made me feel that I never could really see it. There was no way I could comprehend the entirety of the thing, its massiveness, just the FACT that it is THERE is hard to deal with. The experience of looking filled me with hopelessness. I eventually got used to the size, the scope ... or, no, that's not the right way to say it. I managed to deal with it in small doses. I gave myself a lot of time to just stand there and stare. My point is is that there are certain places on this planet that seem to have some kind of message, or some kind of import ... if you can only listen closely enough. I have felt the same thing on the Mall in Washington DC. Like: something is going on here. A cigar is not just a cigar. There is MEANING in the architecture, everything i see has a message for me ... The World Trade Center, the Atrium, the Concourse, the floating dock ... all of that stuff, on my Monday nights, felt like that for me. I never got used to it. I never was "over" it. I never strolled through there, not noticing where I was. This may sound like retrospective romanticizing, but I assure you it is not. I have the diary entries for my Monday evenings for over 2 years to prove it. It was almost as though the class I was taking was incidental, and not really important. The REAL thing to learn was from the concrete, and the space, and the quiet down there at that time of night.

The ferry would pull up, always with the same cute guys running it ... I got to know their faces too, over those 2 years. They would open the gate, take our tickets, say "Hey, what's up ..." to the 10 of us who were waiting to get home across the river.

For the most part (especially if it was drizzly, or snowing, or cold) everyone would sit in the downstairs area, the enclosed area of the boat.

I don't think I sat down there once. I always trudged up to the roof. I COULD NOT GET ENOUGH of it up there. I soaked it up. The wind in my face, all that stuff ... I just loved it up there, and wished the boat ride were longer. I love being out on the water anyway, it reminds me of being a kid, and going out in the motorboat at Lake Sunapee, and how exhilarating it is to travel on water ...

If nobody else was up there (and usually it was empty), I would lie down on my back across two of the benches, and stare up at the empty black sky - waiting for us to pull away. Because when we pulled away, and did a kind of ferry 3-point-turn, suddenly the glittering towers would swoop into my view blotting out the rest of the sky - and they were right overhead, they were so close. I would get vertigo. The boat would sweep around, the towers would sweep around, and everything seemed enormous and fluid - hard to tell if it was the boat that was moving away from the island, or if it was the island that was moving away from the boat. Then, I would watch the towers recede out of my view.

3 minutes later, we would pull up to the docks in Hoboken, with the same cute guys opening up the gate to let us off ... and I would trudge through the station up to the street, to grab a cab home. My warm bed.

Somehow, if I took the train home, I didn't get the same sense of release, freedom, openness, joy ... as when I took the ferry. The ferry ride had the feeling of a "crossing", in the mythicological sense. I know there are people who take the ferry every day, and they may be used to it, and may have no idea why I got such a kick out of it - but I never got used to it. I think part of it had to do with the fact that it was night-time, too. A quieter more reflective time, contemplative, people giving up the rush of the day.

I still have my World Trade Center identity card, which I needed in order to get into the building. My name's printed on it, and the expiration date is 8/19/01.

I am so sorry

I can't resist ....

One more link:

I know this is a candid shot, and we all can look goofy in candid shots ... but for some reason, I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING about this photograph. (Also, it's kinda creepy to see Scarlett there before the "You must join my crazy cult if you want to be in my next movie" debacle)

And here ...

... is one of the many reasons why I love Poland. (Other reasons? Ryszard Kapucinski, Czeslaw Milosz , Zbigniew Herbert and Lech Walesa to name just a few.)

The chick at the Polish tourist office said: "We decided the best response was humour."

And that right there is why I love Poland.

"The Second Coming" of Bob Geldof

Always loved Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats. We loved them in high school. His stuff, in a way, was a precursor to what took over the world in 1991 with the release of Nirvana's "Nevermind". Or with early Pearl Jam stuff, like "Jeremy". Regular radio stations didn't know what to do with them, really, but the college radio stations (which we listened to obsessively) played their songs all the time. But because this was the mid 1980s, when the airwaves were clogged with Air Supply, Lionel Richie, and Loverboy ... there wasn't really a place for him. It didn't matter. He got our attention anyway. We also were big big big into "DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME AT AAAALLLLL." - the song, sure, but also who Bob Geldof was. He was a hero to us. That he could make such a thing happen. Basically, he just ASKED, and all these mega-stars cleared their schedules and showed up to record that song. How many people have ideas like that, but don't ask ... assuming that everyone will say No? Bob Geldof seems to not experience the word "No" in the way many of us do. It is not an ending. "No" does not mean "No" to Bob Geldof, there's no finality in it. It's just a reason for him to find another way in, to work harder to get people to say "Yes". I really admire him for that. Anyway, I've always thought he was a cool guy, with his head on straight ... who made the kind of music that disenchanted excitable teenage kids adore. I love people like that.

He's been much in the news lately, obviously ... I think it's awesome what he's trying to do.

BUT the point of this post is that Bob Geldof recently did a reading of Yeats poems, with Sinead Cusack and Rupert Graves at the British Library. Damn!! What a night! Wish I could have seen it!!

One question: the Yeats readings are part of a poetry series, created by a woman named "Josephine Cox" in the article. Later in the article, Ms. Cox is identified as the author of Damage - a book that absolutely ROCKED MY WORLD when I first read it. (I wonder if it would hold up now?) Anyway, as far as I knew, her name was Josephine Hart. Is this a mistake? Did she get married? But if she did get married, why would she give up the name that made her famous?

Inquiring minds want to know ...

But anyway: Go, Bob Geldof!!!

The Books: "The Three Sisters" (Anton Chekhov)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

More from The Plays of Anton Chekhov. This excerpt is from The Three Sisters.

There's so many scenes to choose from here, not to mention the HEART-CRACK of the last scene, and Olga's unbelievable monologue that closes the play. But I decided to go with (in honor of my sister Siobhan who played her) Natasha's entrance to the party. The mood here is almost slapstick, and this is in the middle of a Chekhovian drama. That's why I love him. He doesn't choose a tone for his plays. There are tragic moments, thoughtful moments, and absolutely hilarious moments. They feel like life. Or ... life lived by people who really can feel things, who are not cut off.

This scene makes me laugh out loud.

EXCERPT FROM The Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov.

(Enter Natasha; she wears a pink dress with a green belt)

NATASHA. They're already eating ... I guess I'm late ... (Stops briefly in front of the mirror and fixes herself up) Well, at least my hair's okay. (seeing Irina) Irina Sergeyevna, happy birthday! Congratulations, honey! (Gives her a hug and several effusive kisses) You've got so many guests, I feel sort of embarrassed ... Hello, Baron, how are you?

OLGA. (coming into the living room) Well, if it isn't Natalya Ivanova. How are you, my sweet?

(They exchange kisses)

NATASHA. You've got such a big party I really feel awfully embarrassed ...

OLGA. Now, now, none of that, it's all just friends ... (lowers her voice, a bit shocked) A green belt! Darling, that just isn't done!

NATASHA. Why? Is it bad luck or something?

OLGA. No ... it just doesn't look right with that dress ... well, it looks a bit odd, that's all.

NATASHA. But why? It isn't really so green -- I mean, it's more, you know, greenish ...

(She follows Olga into the dining room. Everyone is now at the table; the living room is empty)

KULYGIN. Irina dearest, here's hoping you find a suitable fiance. It's about time you got married.

CHEBUTYKIN. Here's hoping Natlya Ivanova finds herself a boyfriend too.

KULYGIN. Natlya Ivanova already has a boyfriend.

MASHA. (banging her plate with a fork) I'll have another little glass of that wine. Well, we only live once, by God, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

KULYGIN. You get an F-minus in conduct.

VERSHININ. This vodka is delicious. What gives it that spectial taste?

SOLYONY. Cockroach juice.

IRINA. (crybaby voice) Oh! That's disgusting!

OLGA. We're having roast turkey and apple pie for dinner tonight. Thank God, I've got the whole day off, and the evening too ... I hope you'll all be able to come for dinner.

VERSHININ. I hope you'll let me come too.

IRINA. Of course.

NATASHA. They're very informal around here.

CHEBUTYKIN. "It's love that makes the world go round ..." (laughs)

ANDREY. Will you all please stop it! Aren't you tired of it yet?

(Fedotik and Rohde enter with a big basket of flowers)

FEDOTIK. Oh, they're already having lunch.

ROHDE. (in a deep loud voice, with exaggerated 'r's) Lunch? Yes, it's true, they are already having lunch!

FEDOTIK. Wait a minute! (takes a picture) There! Now one more ... everybody hold still! (takes another picture) There! Now you can all move!

(They take the basket of flowers and go into the dining room where everyone greets them noisily)

ROHDE. (in a loud voice) Happy birthday and best wishes! The very best! The weather is just wonderful today, really beautiful. I took some of the high-school boys out for a walk this morning ... I'm the gymnastics coach at the high school.

FEDOTIK. That's all right, irina Sergeyevna, you don't have to hold still, it's all right! (takes a picture) You look very interesting today. (takes a top out of his pocket) Oh, I forgot. A present for you, a top. It makes an amazing sound ...

IRINA. Oh, it's divine.

MASHA. "Beside the sea there stands a tree, and on that tree a golden chain ... and on that chain an educated cat goes around and around and around ..." (tearfully) Why do I keep saying that? I can't get it out of my head ...

KULYGIN. There are thirteen of us at table!

ROHDE. Surely, ladies and gentlemen, you are above such silly superstitions?

KULYGIN. If there are thirteen at table, that means two of them are in love. Ivan Romanich, I certainly hope nobody's in love with you ...

CHEBUTYKIN. Oh, not me. I'm just an old boozer. But look at Natalya Ivanovna: what do you suppose she's got to blush about?

(Everybody laughs loudly. Natasha gets up and runs into the living room. Andrey follows her)

ANDREY. It's all right, don't pay any attention to them! Wait ... don't go, please ...

NATASHA. I'm so embarrassed. I just don't know what's the matter with me; they just make fun of me all the time. I know it's not polite to leave the table like that, but I just couldn't stand it, I really couldn't ...

ANDREY. Oh, darling, please, please don't get upset. They're only joking, honestly they are; they all mean well. Darling, they're all nice people; they love me and they love you too. Come on over here by the window -- they can't see us over here...

NATASHA. It's just that I'm not used to these social occasions ...

ANDREY. Oh, you're so young, so young and beautiful! Darling, oh, darling, don't get upset. Believe me, believe me ... I feel so good. I feel so full of love and I'm so proud ... Oh, they can't see us! Don't worry, they can't see us. I don't know how I fell in love with you, or when, or why -- I just don't understand any of it. Darling, you're so sweet and so ordinary ... I want you to marry me! I love you, I love you ... I've never loved anybody before ...

(They kiss. Two officers enter, see them kissing, and stop in amazement.

CURTAIN

Okay, so I think the funniest line in this scene? Or potentially funniest line? Is Natasha's interjected comment to herself: "They're very informal around here."

Thomas Hardy

Great novelist. I love his writing. Recently re-read Tess of the D'Urbervilles (after not having read it since high school) and was amazed at not only how well he writes, but how much of a page-turner that book is. You can't put the damn thing down, and that is totally not how I remember it from high school.

But he was also a poet (he came to it late - long after he became a successful novelist), and in a way I am more partial to his poetry than his novels.

Ezra Pound said, after reading Hardy's poems: "Now there is clarity. There is the harvest of having written 20 novels first."

The poem he wrote about the Titanic frankly just cannot be beat. I put that one in the extended entry. It gives me chills up my back every time I read it.

But here's another beauty. It's simple, no big revelation, no flowery language ... just a moment described. He's great at that.

A Thunderstorm in Town

She wore a new 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
We sat on, snug and warm.

Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more.

The Convergence of the Twain

I

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?". . .

VI

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

X

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Lies, lies, lies yea-ah

I have been invited to be an understudy, if you will, for one of the Demystifying Divas, who take on a topic a week.

This week's topic?

What lies do we tell our significant other?

The first thing that popped into my head when I read the question for this week was poor Ruth Fisher on 6 Feet Under. Poor repressed Ruth, having had a series of relationships after the death of her husband ... finally finds someone she clicks with. She meets him they date for 6 weeks, they get married. BOOM! It's a tornado. He is funny, giving, sexy, and he looks just like James Cromwell. He is kind, he makes her laugh, and they have sex so loudly that they wake up the rest of the family. Sure he's been married 7 times before, and he doesn't talk to the majority of his kids ... but what does that matter? Ruth is an eternal optimist. She can love him all the way through it, she can love him so HARD, and so TRULY ... that he will have a break-through in communication and suddenly be a great dad to his abandoned kids. Ruth? Don't be an idiot. The dude is what, 68? 69? You think he can change?

But anyway, back to the topic.

While yes, there appeared to be some shadows on the horizon of this new and passionate love during last season ... nothing can compare to what is going on THIS season.

Dude turns out to be an OCD nightmare, gibbering about mercury in the water, and building out a bomb shelter that would rival the one in Blast from the Past. Dude is obsessed with the end of the world. Dude has bouts of complete black despair. Dude is dragged out of the bomb shelter screaming, and put into an ambulance and taken off to the nuthouse. Ruth goes to visit him, carrying an enormous bag of oranges for some reason. As though he will develop scurvy after being in the hospital for only a week. But anyway, the doctor says to Ruth, assuming that she, as the wife, would know this: "Well, of course he has had a long history of mental problems ..."

Ruth did not know this. Ruth was not aware she had married a loony-tunes manic-depressive who is fixated on polluted water to the degree that he is willing to live in a bomb shelter permanently. No. She thought she was marrying a sexy loving geologist who just had some communication issues with his family.

Long point longer: Something like: "I have a history of paranoid schizophrenia" should probably not be withheld from the significant other. It should probably be revealed early on in the dating process, so that the mate is not blindsided by the information. We should always feel free to CHOOSE what we are getting into, and a history of mental illness is important information.

Same thing with sexually transmitted diseases, obviously.

Or information like: "I only have 5 months to live." I would want to know that from the get-go.

Also, if someone is, say, $100,000 in debt ... I think you should obviously know that before settling down with the person. Do you want to marry someone who carries such a huge amount of debt? Are you willing to take that on?

Again: it's important that you feel that you are choosing all this stuff, that even if you do say Yes to this person, at least you know exactly what you are getting into.

All of these things are clues. If someone says, "No. I don't have a raging case of herpes", and they are lying and sleep with you anyway? That's cause for justifiable homicide. Tell the truth. Don't lie if it's going to hurt the other person.

But I also don't think you should always feel the need to tell the truth, and for the same reason. I think sometimes we, in relationships, need to manage our OWN problems, and not involve the partner in every single emotional decision we make, no matter how trivial. People get all caught up in telling EVERYTHING, every thought, breath, up, down ... This to them is "honesty".

But what did Yeats say? "Never give all the heart ..."

Wise words, wise words.

You ever see that movie Closer? They talked a lot about "truth" in that movie. "If I can't be totally truthful with you ..." "I need to be honest with you ..." Well, you know what truth and honesty looked like to me in that movie? A lot of pain and torment. No relaxation whatsoever. Brutality. They used "truth" to hurt one another, to get back at one another. They used "honesty" as a weapon. I have seen couples in real life do this. They spend an exhaustive amount of time being "truthful' and coming clean about EVERYTHING... when from my point of view: why bring it up? What difference does it make? Can you handle working out certain problems on your own? Or do you need constant supervision from your mate?

I can talk myself out of a tizzy fit. Something will happen, a boyfriend will say something that sets me off on a tizzy ... but within 2 or 3 seconds, I can say: "Okay. Wait. You're totally over-reacting. Stop." I don't feel the need to divulge to him every time that happens. Is that a lie? I know some people who feel if they are not basically using their boyfriend as their own Journal, and using him as the repository for every single thought that comes through their heads, then they are not being "honest".

If my boyfriend goes out with his friends and gets a lap dance ... uhm ... am I supposed to feel threatened, first of all? Because I kind of don't. And second of all ... why would he need to tell me? I don't care. I see women put their men through the WRINGER over stuff like this, and I just don't. Like, they ANGST about it, they PUNISH their men over it, they feel almost like he's cheated ... Now if my boyfriend was going to a strip club on a nightly basis, that might give me some pause. But on occasion? Strip clubs don't bother me in the least. I just don't care. Get a lap dance, man, live it up. I don't need to hear about it, you don't need to confess ... and you don't need to feel guilty if you don't tell me. Besides, I'll be home watching Only Angels Have Wings for the third time in a row, which is my equivalent of a strip club ... so if you're not threatened by that behavior, then I'm not threatened by your behavior.

I'm not a big fan of total truth. I'm not a big fan of unblinkered honesty. I think it can get exhausting, and I think a lot of joy and happiness depends on cutting the other person SOME SLACK. And not RIDING THE PERSON'S ASS ALL THE TIME asking them to tell the truth, be honest, share more, share more ...

Uhm, you know what? Please don't share TOO much.

If I've gained 10 pounds, you can rest assured that I already KNOW THAT, and if I ask you, "Does this dress make me look fat?" I am not asking for the truth. I am asking you to reassure me, and tell me I look attractive. This is Dealing With Women 101, and most men know the rules. I do not think we should prey on one another's insecurities. If I am aware that my boyfriend is insecure about, say, his paunch, or his receding hairline (regardless of the fact that I think he's a gorgeous hunk!!) - then I will not mention it. I will not make him more aware of it, and I will bombard him with reassurances of how hot I think he is.

Dear prospective mate: Do I need to know that you were so in love with your ex-girlfriend that when she broke up with you you sold your house, shaved your head, became a Buddhist monk, set yourself on fire, and lived to tell the tale?

Well, actually, yes. I do need to hear that story, because it sounds like a good one.

But to detail every relationship? Especially as I get older, this becomes less and less important to me. Yeah, we all have pasts. My past gets longer by the second. So what. What are we doing right NOW?

There are times, in the early parts of a relationship, when "confessing" stuff is beautiful, part of getting closer. You know. When questions like: "What were you like in high school?" are asked, and then long monologues ensue, with much laughter. Fun conversations where you sort of get caught up on the person's life from before the point at which you met them. I love conversations like that. (I'm only into them once I feel comfortable with the guy, though. If I feel like I'm being interrogated on my past too aggressively - or if it's a quid pro quo kind of thing too early in the game - I get cagey and vague with my answers. You have to earn my trust, it doesn't come on the first date. But I remember with my first boyfriend, we would have these looooong beautiful hilarious conversations where we would tell each other stories from our own childhoods. It was awesome.)

But the nitty-gritty of past relationships? Nah, keep it to yourself. I'm certainly gonna keep the nitty-gritty of my past relationships to myself. It doesn't matter. Let's just start from the here and now, see where that takes us.

More Divas on the topics of LIES:

Fistful of Fortnights, Kathy, Twisty, Silk, and Chrissy (she's the one I'm understudying for - thanks, girl!!)

And the boys weigh in on this topic!

The Wizard, Phin, Stiggy, and Naked Villainy

It's an awesome thing ... all the different opinions, and weigh-ins ... Definitely click around and see what everyone is saying.

Thanks for inviting me to be an honorary Diva, girls!

Here's a tip:

If you see an "s" in an out-of-the-way place in your apartment - say, way up in the corner of the ceiling - and you think to yourself: "Okay. There's an 's'. It's small, but it's hard to get to. I'll kill it later." - just know in your heart that the "s" might not be there later. Just so you know. They do have a tendency to move, as awful a thought as that might be.

And so when the "s" disappears, just know that you are going to have a couple of bad moments, wondering where the hell it went to. And then you will forget about it. Because life goes on, despite disappearing "s"s.

But then the "s" will return, and it will no longer be in an out-of-the-way spot, safely far away from you, it will no longer be stationary and sleeping or whatever it is the "s"s do in their evil webs ... No. The "s" will now reappear, in its full glory, in the shower with you, while you are covered in suds, with soap in your eyes, and it will drop down, literally in front of your soapy eyes, in the process of building its web - AROUND YOUR NAKED BODY. And NOW the "s" will no longer be curled up and stationary, and therefore easy to manage. (Mentally, I mean). No. Now the "s" will be in full work-mode, busy busy busy ... And you will now be defenseless and soapy and you will be forced to leap from the shower and finish rinsing off your hair in the sink, because you are unable to deal with an "s" when you have no clothes on. Then ... hair rinsed, you will begin the process of killing the 's". But the problem is: when an "s" dangles from a thin thread, it is very difficult to tell WHERE IT WILL BE AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT IN TIME. The "s" will dangle, frighteningly, in mid-air ... It could do a Tarzan maneuver without warning and then be ALL THE FECK OVER YOU. You would then die instantly of fear. So you will get a broom. You will swat at it. It wil fall. It does not die. You will get a book. You throw the book at it like a pissed-off judge ... and the book misses! Not only is the "s" still alive, but now your Hitchhikers Guide title page is soaked. Where is my towel? The "s", knowing its moments are numbered now, will struggle down the side of the tub, and that is when you will squash him dead with a wadded-up chunk of paper towel large enough to squash a small rat. You then will flush the "s" down the toilet, victorious.

Lesson learned.

If you see an "s", even if it's in an out of the way spot, kill it immediately. Leave NOTHING to chance. Because if you don't? It will come back to get you GOOD when you are naked and defenseless.

This has been a public service announcement from a freaked-out redhead.

The consequences of love

When I was 19, I fell in love. I was a junior in college. I was carrying a full course-load, not to mention acting in plays. I was the lead in the fall musical, during the height of this wacko relationship. It was a massive part, requiring a hell of a lot of work. And suddenly: LOVE! For the first time! I should probably put that in quotations, actually, due to my retrospective take on the matter: "LOVE"! But still. It was my first romance, so whatever. It sure felt real to me at the time. A sweeping passionate roller-coaster love affair which OBSESSED ME. We were going out, we were breaking up, we were going out, we were breaking up ... (I described the whole thing here - I wrote that piece in the context of the J-Lo and Ben Affleck insanity... member them?)

Anyway, this post DOES have a point, and I will get to it.

Somehow, I still managed to get a 4.0, and kick some MAJOR ASS in the play I was doing ... but it was a struggle, man. It was a struggle to not just concentrate on the dude I was dating (or not dating, depending on the week). All I wanted to do was moon about thinking about him, and writing in my journal. All I wanted to do was hang out at his house and play Mario Brothers. All I wanted to do was be with him, and go to the movies, and flirt over cups of coffee, and fight in public, and make up in public, and wander around the campus having adventures.

But I had bigger fish to fry. I was in school. I am a perfectionist. I needed to do well in school. I was in a play. I had a huge part. It took a lot of work. I had to manage my time - and not only my time, but my mental focus. THAT was the key for me. Because I was in college, and having the busiest semester of my life, my time already was managed for me. From the second I woke up until 11 o'clock at night, I knew where I had to be. There was no free time. So that part was settled. But my mental focus? I could sit in class and just doodle in my notebook, and daydream about my boyfriend. That's all I wanted to do. He took up so much space in my brain - but there needed to be some internal brake put on my own desires, because: I needed to get good grades, and I needed to work my ass off for this play. I needed to say, on a daily basis - sometimes on a minute to minute basis - "Okay. Stop thinking about him. Study." or "Put him out of your mind during your voice lesson. FOCUS, Sheila." And for the most part, it worked. I was able to do my work, AND be crazy wild nuts over this guy.

I ain't saying it was easy. But it was what I had to do. Great lessons there, for the future. Life doesn't stop just because you happen to fall in love. Maybe it stops for a little while, and all you can think about is the new love ... but that phase cannot last. (This is the phase where the person in love totally blows off all her friends. A woman gets a boyfriend and suddenly she disappears off the face of the earth. The friend-blowoff usually happens in this beginning phase. BUT: when that phase ends, and real life picks up again ... this is when the person in love has to make a bunch of apologetic phone calls to her blown off friends. "Hi ... sorry I haven't been around lately ... how are you? I miss you! Can we have a girls night out?" It's a textbook scenario, totally to be expected.) Life has to go on. You still are a PERSON outside of that, you still have your OWN stuff to do, and you cannot neglect those things. You cannot. Otherwise, life gets all messed up.

Why am I rambling about this?

Oh, because I just read this article over at Bill McCabe's.

Quote:

Katie Holmes has reportedly been dropped from the next Batman movie - for getting engaged to laugh-a-minute Tom Cruise.

Warners Bros chiefs are reportedly unhappy that her blossoming love for the Mission Impossible star diverted attention away from Batman Begins.

Katie, Katie ... you've let the first blush of love (however misguided we all think it is) cloud your judgment. You are making the mistake of thinking that this first moment of passion must sweep away all other concerns. You are hurting your career.

More:

Bale as Batman was the first to put pen to paper, followed by Caine as butler Alfred and Freeman as Bruce Wayne's business associate Lucius Fox.

"Everyone is in agreement that the movie's strength is with Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman," a source is quoted in pagesix.com.

And the insider added Holmes is out.

"She won't be in the sequel, the next romantic interest will be a much stronger actress. Warner is happy that people are now focusing on who'll be playing the Joker rather than Katie and Tom," he added.

Ouch. This is a complete reprimand. This is a criticism that she should listen to. This is a total and public rejection. Day-um.

Her behavior over the last 3 weeks has alienated a major movie studio. She lost her priorities. (Maybe Mr. Cruise wants her to lose her priorities?) She lost her "mental focus", if she ever had it. She let the love affair be #1, when it should have been the movie that was #1. These are not easy choices to make ... and I'm not saying I handled my situation with grace AT ALL. I had a lot of meltdowns that fall semester, with everything on my plate.

"Do I pay attention to my mental health and skip a class so I can GET SOME SLEEP??? Or do I suck it up, and go to class, and just know I'm going to be tired ... Do I go out with my boyfriend tonight after rehearsal ... or do I go home and get some shut-eye? When do I sleep? When do I eat? I'M IN LOVE! AHHHHHH No, no, stop thinking about it. You have to get to rehearsal. Keep it down, keep it down ... keep your eye on the ball ... "

Every. Single. Day that was my interior monologue.

And here's the deal (and that was my point in one of the stories I linked to up there - the J-Lo and Ben Affleck one) ... I was lucky enough that I could struggle through all this on the relatively small stage of a university setting. The eyes of the world were not watching, and millions of dollars were not at stake.

If I had decided to just get C's for the semester, oh well, I need to just be in love right now, and I can't focus on my schoolwork ... there definitely would have been repercussions, in terms of my GPA ... but who the hell remembers all of that 20 years after the fact? Who cares? I got an F in Freshman Psychics in high school. An F. It was one of the worst and scariest times of my life. But do I remember it? Do I define myself by it? Do people say about me, "Ah, Sheila. Great girl. She's the one who got an F in Freshman Physics."? No. It is not remembered. I was able to mess up and not ruin my chances for the future.

Katie right now is ruining her chances for the future. It's already happened. She may break up with him, and come back and surprise us all ... but her behavior over the last month will not be forgotten. The public will forget about it quicker than Warner Brothers will.

She messed UP. She pissed off Warner Brothers. What is she, nuts? Being famous can make you lose your bearings, obviously. You live in a bubble, and people around you want to support that bubble, because probably their paychecks depend on you still being famous. So she is protected from what people are really saying.

But this is undeniable. This is proof positive. She will not be involved in the rest of the Batman franchise.

She BLEW IT.

As I have written before: If I had been world-famous during my junior year of college, the tabloids would have had a field day. Not only that ... but by the end of my junior year, the public would have experienced complete Sheila Fatigue. Like: enough. ENOUGH with the dramas, Sheila. Settle down. Either date this guy or break up with him. But ENOUGH with this: ooh, are they together, are they not, they were seen having breakfast at Del Mor's at 7 am ... what does THAT mean?? ... Rumor has it that they did not speak to each other for the entirety of the cast party ... If they were ignoring one another, though, then what is THIS photo about?? Exclusive! Exclusive! This is unconfirmed, but a very reliable source tells us that Sheila threw a pretzel at his head during a recent argument ... Sheila, Sheila, is it true?

No comment.

Wouldn't you roll your eyes in line at the supermarket, staring at the tabloids, if you had to read that malarkey every time you wanted to buy a gallon of milk? Wouldn't you, in your un-famous life, think: "Good God, woman, why do we care about your melodramas? Just break up with the guy. I am sick of you. Why should we care about you and your stupid romance?"

I was young. I was in love. I was insane. And luckily for me and my future reputation: I was not famous.

The Books: "Uncle Vanya" (Anton Chekhov)

Well, it's 6:15 in the morning and you know what that means! It's time for a Chekhov excerpt! I'm a lunatic.

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt:

More from my collected plays of Chekhov, translated by Paul Schmidt. This excerpt is from Uncle Vanya.

This one's for my dear friend Kate, who is currently doing a production of Vanya in Chicago, which I wish I could see!

I think Uncle Vanya is my favorite of all of his plays. It makes me cry.

This is the scene between Yelena and Sonya. It's late at night. People are retiring for the night. The two women are alone. It's a perfect scene, that's all, just a perfect perfect scene. Right up until the very last line, which is an absolute KILLER moment, if played correctly (by both women.) I've seen the last moment sort of skipped over, or missed - which is a shame, but I've also seen it land like a ton of bricks ... Yelena has no lines, it's Sonya's line that ends the scene ... but if the actress playing Yelena misses the opportunity of that last moment ... the scene doesn't really work. At least the last moment doesn't.

It's a perfect scene.

EXCERPT FROM Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov.

SONYA. (alone) He didn't say anything ... I still don't know what he thinks or feels about me, so why do I feel so happy? I told him he was sensitive, that he had a gentle voice ... I hope that was a proper thing to say ... When I said that about having a younger sister, he didn't understand. Oh, why aren't I beautiful? It's awful, just awful, being so plain, and I am, I'm ugly, I know I am, I know I am! Last Sunday coming out of church, I heard two ladies talking about me, and one of them said, "She's such a good girl, such a sweet disposition; it's too bad she's so plain." Plain ...

(Enter Yelena; she goes to a window and opens it)

YELENA. The storm is over. Fell how fresh the air is! (Pause) Where's the doctor?

SONYA. He left.

(Pause)

YELENA. Sophie...

SONYA. What?

YELENA. How long are you going to stay mad at me? We haven't done anything to hurt each other; it doesn't make sense, being angry like this. Let's stop it, shall we?

SONYA. Oh, I've wanted to ... (hugs Yelena) I'm tired of being angry all the time.

YELENA. Oh, I'm so glad!

(Both women are genuinely moved)

SONYA. Is Papa asleep?

YELENA. No; he's sitting up in the living room. It's been weeks now that you and I haven't been speaking -- God only knows why. (Notices the sideboard is open) What's all this?

SONYA. I fixed the doctor something to eat.

YELENA. There's some wine left. Let's drink to friendship -- you want to?

SONYA. All right, let's.

YELENA. Out of the same glass. (Pours a glass of wine) That's the best way. Friends?

SONYA. Friends.

(They drink and kiss)

SONYA. I've wanted to make up for a long time, but I was ashamed, I don't know why ... (starts to cry)

YELENA. What are you crying for?

SONYA. I don't know ... it's just me.

YELENA. There, there ... (begins crying herself) You silly, now you've gotten me started. (Pause) You were mad at me because you thought I took advantage of your father when I married him. I swear to you, Sonya, I married him out of love. Won't you believe me? I was dazzled by him; he was so famous and so intelligent. It wasn't real love, it was all a fantasy, but at the time I thought it was real. And I'm not sorry I married him. But ever since the wedding you've been looking at me with those intelligent, accusing eyes of yours.

SONYA. Oh, don't. Friends, friends -- remember?

YELENA. You mustn't look at people like that. It's not really like you. If you can't trust people, what's the point of living?

(Pause)

SONYA. Tell me something truly, as a friend ... Are you happy?

YELENA. No.

SONYA. I knew you weren't. Let me ask another question. Be honest now ... Wouldn't you rather have a younger husband?

YELENA. What a child you are! Of course I would. Well, go on -- ask me something else.

SONYA. Do you like the doctor?

YELENA. Yes, very much.

SONYA. I must seem stupid, don't I? He just left, and I can still hear his voice and his footsteps, and I look at the darkened window and I think I see his face -- no, let me finish. Only I really can't say it out loud; I'm too embarrassed. Come on up to my room; we can talk there. Do you think I'm being stupid? Do you? (Beat) Talk to me about him.

YELENA. What should I say?

SONYA. He's so smart, he knows about everything, he takes care of people, he plants trees --

YELENA. Oh, it's much more than just caretaking and tree planing. Don't you understand, darling? That man has genius! Do you know what genius means? It means daring, a free-ranging mind, a sense of vision. To plant a tree and be able to imagine that tree a hundred years from now -- that means to imagine the future happiness of humanity! People like that are very rare; they deserve to be loved. Yes, he drinks; yes, he's messy and vulgar; but what's so wrong with that? These days you can't expect a man of genius to be neat and orderly. Think of the life that doctor leads! The miserable roads, the cold, the rain and snow, huge distances he has to travel; these people out here, they're all backward and filthy. A man who struggles with all that day in, day out, you can't expect him to reach his forties and still be sober. With all my heart, I want you to be happy. You deserve to be. Me? I'm boring, I'm trivial. When I play the piano, when I'm home with my husband, in all my relationships, it's always the same. I'm a trivial person. It's the truth. When I think about it, Sonya, I have to face it. I'm a very, very unhappy woman. There is no happiness for me anywhere; no, none. Why are you laughing?

SONYA. Because I am happy -- I'm so happy!

YELENA. I feel like playing the piano now, I really do.

SONYA. Then go play something. I can't go to sleep now. Please play something.

YELENA. All right, I will! (Beat) But your father's still awake. When he's feeling like this, music drives him crazy. Go ask him. If he doesn't mind, I will. Go on.

SONYA. I'll be right back. (Goes out)

(Outside, the watchman's tapping is heard)

YELENA. I've been without music for such a long time. All I want to do now is play and weep, weep like a lost soul. (at the window) Is that you, Yefim?

WATCHMAN: (off) Yes, ma'am, it's me.

YELENA. Don't make so much noise; the Professor isn't feeling well.

WATCHMAN: (off) All right; I was just going home. (whistles to his dog) Here, boy! Come on, boy! Come on!

(Sonya appears in the doorway)

SONYA. He said no.

CURTAIN

Woah

Tom Cruise was squirted in the face with water by a freelance camera crew on the red carpet of the premiere of Batman in London. Follow that link to see the live video of it. He stepped over to give an interview and got a face-full of water. I think a prank like that is over the top and rude, actually. Cruise's anger is completley justified. It's also another example of how Cruise has lost control of his own image and persona. He seems relatively unaware of how much his star has fallen (not because of his acting, but because of his shenanigans and general craziness - which has been kept pretty much under wraps until now) - but his anger in that video clip is palpable. I think he's a nutbag but I was glad he bitch-slapped that camera crew. The camera crew were arrested, by the way.

"Take that, Duff!"

We met up at the AMC Empire theatre in Times Square to see The Perfect Man. You may THINK that this is the new movie starring Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, and Chris Noth ... but you're only half right. It's REALLY the new movie starring my cousin Mike. He is really all that matters, mkay? Just so we got that straight.

Siobhan, Nate and I gathered out front, and purchased tickets. We were very excited. It was funny to be going to see SUCH a major chick flick with Nate. Some of his comments during the film were just cracking me UP. Like ... you think you can resist the pull of the chick flick, but at some point ... you can't help it ... it starts working on you, and you get sucked into the vortex. For instance, once the movie ended, one of Nate's first comments was how he didn't like the tux worn by one of the characters in the last scene. HAHAHA It was such a girlie comment, and Nate is so not girlie. Very funny!!

To see Mike's name on the screen ... so cool!! We couldn't wait for our first view of him.

So let me just say this, as a whole:

Mike has some of the most naturally funny moments in the entire film. People were HOWLING. He plays a guy who works in a bakery, who has one passion in life - one passion, and that is the band Styx. At the first mention of the band "Styx", there was kind of a stunned silence in the movie theatre - and then this one random woman down front just GUFFAWED. And after that, every time he said the word "Styx", you would hear her just start to LOSE IT.

He asks Heather Locklear out on a date. She says Yes. He mentions that he's taking her to a "Styx" concert. Which ... I mean. Come on. That's funny in and of itself.

He comes to pick her up in the most ridiculous overblown vroom-vroom car imaginable, and as they walk out to the car, he starts to list off, like an autistic person, all its features. "Tranny loaded, dual engine, blah blah, it's got an ejector seat, 10 power blah blah ..." It was so SAD!! But he was proud of his car. Then, right as she goes to sit in the car, he says, with this kind of very sad vulnerable look on his face - vulnerable but tight-assed: "Uhm ... could you take your shoes off, please? The mats are new ..." Like: he knows he sounds crazy, but she MUST take her shoes off.

And the Styx concert has to be seen to be believed. Suffice it to say, that Mike's character holds up a lighter, and starts to CRY. But ... it's REAL. That's what's so damn funny about it. We were DYING. Everyone was.

Mike completely endeared himself to the audience. Yes, the guy was kind of a loser ... but he was funny, sweet, kind of bumbling, heartfelt ... and he also has a ridiculously funny private moment when he does air-guitar with a loaf of bread when he thinks nobody is watching.

It was AWESOMELY fun to see him up there. He did a great great job - and hearing the rolling gales of laughter through the theatre every single time he even showed his face - was GREAT.

The title of this post comes from something Nate murmured, when something goes wrong for Hilary Duff's character. Siobhan and I glanced over at Nate, and there he was, all sucked in to watching this chick flick - enough so that he would murmur, with a sense of vindication: "Take that, Duff!"

SO funny.

For me, the movie is all about Mike. He's in the entire film - it's not just a cameo - so every time he would re-appear, you could hear people immediately start to laugh.

GREAT JOB, MIKE!!

The Books: "The Seagull" (Anton Chekhov)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

More from my collected plays of Chekhov, translated by Paul Schmidt. This excerpt is from The Seagull.

The Seagull - one of the classic plays about acting and theatre that is out there. Actually, about "art", in general. There's so much in there. I first read The Seagull in college, I think ... and fell in love with it immediately. Of course: young idealistic actors always fall in love with this play. It fits their idea of life. Especially Nina's tragic end: she gives up happiness for her art. It is her "vocation". Ahhh .... how glorious! To suffer for your art!!! But as I've grown older, the play has changed. (Ha. I love it how that happens.) I can see more clearly Arkadina's frustration with that kind of blind idealism (especially if the blind idealism is not connected to any, uhm, TALENT!!). Nina's blind idealism is the kind of thing that ruins people's lives, it's a steamroller, it runs over everything in its way.

But her monologue ... her "I am a seagull" monologue ... has to be one of the most heartbreaking heartwrenching (and challenging) monologues ever written. It's a marvelous piece of writing. "And when I think of my vocation, I am not afraid of life." Words to live by if you want to call yourself an artist.

So what the hell ... I'll post that last scene.

Konstantin, the young playwright, son of the famous actress Irina Arkadina, sits in the study working on his play, struggling with it. Suddenly Nina - his childhood friend, and teenage sweetheart - appears at the door, bedraggled, shivering. She had run away from home with Trigorin (who had been Arkadina's lover). Trigorin, a middle-aged man, fell in love with Nina's youth and freshness, and the two ran away together, causing a huge scandal, and heartbreak behind them. After that, Nina dropped off the face of the earth. No one heard anything about her for years, except rumors. The romance between she and Trigorin did not last. Then - randomly - she reappears back in the town, but stays with her parents. She does not go to see Konstantin (this hurts him deeply - he's a sensitive neurotic dude).

But on this particular night, she re-appears at her old sweetheart's door. This is the end of the play. There are spoilers involved here, if you do not already know the end.

EXCERPT FROM collected plays of Chekhov, translated by Paul Schmidt. This excerpt is from The Seagull.

(Someone knocks on the window near the desk.)

KONSTANTIN. What's that? (Goes and looks through the window) It's so dark I can't see a thing. (Opens the French doors, looks out at the garden, calls) Who's there? (Goes out; we hear his footsteps on the veranda) Nina! Nina! (In a moment he returns with Nina) Nina!

(NIna leans her head on his chest and sobs softly.)

(Deeply moved) Nina! Nina! You! It's you! I knew you'd come, I knew it! All day long I've had this terrible sense of something wrong ... (Takes off her hat and coat) Oh my darling, my wonderful darling, you've come back! Come on now, we're not going to cry!

NINA. There's someone here.

KONSTANTIN. No, there's not.

NINA. Lock the door; they may come in.

KONSTANTIN. No one will come in.

NINA. I know your mother's here. Please, lock the door ...

(Konstantin goes to the door right and locks it, then crosses to the door left)

KONSTANTIN. There's no lock on this one. I'll prop a chair against it. (Pushes an armchair in front of the door) Don't be afraid; nobody's going to come in.

NINA. (stares at him intently) Let me look at you. (Beat. She looks around.) It's lovely here, nice and warm ... This used to be a parlor, didn't it? Have I changed a lot?

KONSTANTIN. Yes ... You've gotten thinner; it makes your eyes look larger. Nina, do you know how strange this is, seeing you like this? Why didn't you want to see me? Why didn't you come see me before this? I know you've been here almost a week now. I've been going to stand under your window, like a beggar.

NINA. I was afraid you'd hate me. Every night I dreamed you were looking at me and you didn't recognize me. I wish you knew ... Ever since I got here I've been coming out, just to walk around the lake. I walked by this house several times; I just couldn't bring myself to go in. Let's sit down. (They sit) Let's sit and talk and talk. It's so nice here, so comfortable and warm ... Can you hear that wind? There's a passage in Turgenev ... "Happy the man on such a night who has a roof of his own and a place by the fire ..." I'm the seagull ... No, that's not right. (Wipes her forehead) What was i saying? Oh, yes, Turgenev. "...and may the Lord help all homeless wanderers." It doesn't matter. (Sobs)

KONSTANTIN. Nina, don't cry, you're ... Nina!

NINA. It doesn't matter; I feel better now. I haven't cried in two years. I came out here last night, late, to see if our theatre was still standing. And there it was. And I cried for the first time in two years. It made me feel better, lighter somehow. See? I'm not crying anymore. So now you're a writer. You're a writer, and I'm an actress. We've both been sucked into the whirlpool. And that was such a happy life, back then. We were still children. I'd wake up in the morning and start singing. I was in love with you, I was in love with fame ... And now? I have to get up early tomorrow morning to catch the train to Yelets, third class, with all the peasants, and in Yelets I have to put up with the attentions of dirty-minded businessmen who claim to love art. What a horrible life!

KONSTANTIN. What are you going to Yelets for?

NINA. The theatre there hired me for the winter season. It's time for me to go.

KONSTANTIN. Nina, I cursed you, I hated you, I tore up your letters and photographs, but I realized every minute that my soul was tied to yours forever. I can't not love you, Nina, I just can't. Ever since you left, since I saw my first story in print, my life has been unbearable. My youth got snatched away, and I feel as if I've lived ninety years already. I call your name, I kiss the ground you walked on, everywhere I turn I see your face ...

NINA. (with dismay) Why are you telling me all this? Why?

KONSTANTIN. I'm all alone, no one loves me, I'm cold as an empty cave, and everything I write is dead. Stay here with me, Nina, please! Or let me come with you! (Nina quickly takes up her coat and hat.) Nina, where are you going? For God's sake, don't leave me! (Watches her put on the coat and hat.)

(Pause)

NINA. I've got a carriage waiting at the gate. Don't come with me. I want to go by myself. (almost in tears) Can I have a drink of water.

KONSTANTIN. (pours her a glass of water) Where are you going now?

NINA. Back to town. (Pause) Is your mother here?

KONSTANTIN. Yes. My uncle took a turn for the worse on Thursday, so we sent a telegram asking her to come.

NINA. Why did you say you kissed the ground I walked on? You should have killed me instead. I'm so tired! I want to rest, I just want to rest. I'm the seagull ... No, that's not it. I'm an actress. That's it. (From the other room we hear Arkadina and Trigorin laughing. Nina listens for a minute, goes to the left door, and looks through the keyhole.) He's here too. He is, isn't he? Well, never mind. He never believed in the theatre, he laughed at all my dreams, and little by little I stopped believing in it too. And then all the emotional stress, the jealousy; I was always afraid for the baby ... I started getting petty, depressed, my acting was emptier and emptier ... I didn't know what to do with my hands, I didn't know how to hold myself onstage, I couldn't control my voice. You don't know what that's like, to realize you're a terrible actor. I'm the seagull ... No, that's not it ... Remember that seagull you shot? A man comes along, sees her, and destroys her life because he has nothing better to do ... subject for a short story. No, that's not it ... What was I saying? Oh yes, the theatre ... I'm not like that anymore. I'm a real actress now. I enjoy acting, I'm proud of it, the stage intoxicates me. When I'm up there I feel beautiful. And these days, being back here, walking for hours on end, thinking and thinking, I could feel my soul growing stronger day after day. And now I know, Kostya, I understand, finally, that in our business -- acting, writing, it makes no difference -- the main thing isn't being famous, it's not the sound of applause, it's not what I dreamed it was. All it is is the strength to keep going, no matter what happens. You have to keep on believing. I believe, and it helps. And now when I think about my vocation, I'm not afraid of life.

KONSTANTIN. I don't believe, and I don't know what my vocation is. You've found your way in life, you know where you're heading, but I just go on drifting through a chaos of images and dreams, I don't know what my work is good for, or who needs it.

NINA. (Listens) Shhhh...I'd better go. Goodbye. When I become a great actress, come watch me act, won't you? Promise. It's late. I can barely stand. I'm so tired, I'm so hungry ...

KONSTANTIN. Then stay. I'll get you something to eat.

NINA. No, no, I can't. No, don't come with me, I can go by myself; it's not far to where the carriage is ... So she brought him with her, didn't she? Oh well, what difference does it make? When you see Trigorin, don't say anyting about this ... I love him. I love him even more than before. Subject for a short story. I love him, I love him, I love him to despair. Things were so lovely back then, Kostya, weren't they? Remember? We thought life was bright, shining, joyful, and our feelings were like delicate flowers. Remember? (Recites) "Human beings, lions, eagles, quail ... you horned deer, you wild geese, you spiders and you wordless fish who swim beneath the wave ... starfish, stars in heaven so distant the human eye cannot perceive them, all living things, all, all, all ... all living things have ended their allotted rounds and are no more ... For more than a thousand centuries the earth has been lifeless, no single living creature yet remains ... And the weary moon in heaven lights her lamp in vain. The cranes in the meadows awake no more, their cries are silent; the flight of beetles in the linden woods is stilled ..." (Embraces Konstantin suddenly, then runs out through the French doors.)

KONSTANTIN. I hope nobody sees her in the garden and tells Mama. Mama would be upset. (For the next two minutes he tears up all his manuscripts and throws them under the desk. Then he goe sout through the door right.)

DORN. (From outside the door left) Strange. The door must be locked. (Pushes his way in, puts the chair back where it belongs) What is this, an obstacle course?

(Enter Arkadina, Paulina, Masha, Yakov carrying a tray with bottles, then Shamrayev and Trigorin)

ARKADINA. Put the wine and beer for Boris Alexeyich over here on the table. We'll play lotto and have a few drinks. Come on, everybody, sit down!

PAULINA. (to Yakov) And bring the tea. (lights the candles, then sits down at the card table)

SHAMRAYEV. (Takes Trigorn over to a cupboard) Here's what I was talking about before. (Takes a stuffed seagull fromt he cupboard) I did what you told me.

TRIGORIN. (looking at the seagull) Funny, I don't remember. (Thinks) No, don't remember at all.

(From offstage comes a gunshot; everyone jumps)

ARKADINA. What was that?

DORN. Nothing. Probably a bottle in my medicine bag popped its cork. Don't let it worry you. (Goes out right, and comes back after half a minute) Just like I thought. It was a bottle of ether. (Starts singing) "Once more, love, before you, enchanted I stand ..."

ARKADINA. (sits down at card table) Oof! That scared me! It reminded me of when ... (covers her face with her hands) I thought for a minute I was going to faint.

DORN. (to Trigorin, flipping through the pages of a magazine) There was an article in here two months ago, a report from America. I wanted to ask you about it ... (Puts his arm around Trigorin and leads him downstage) It's a very interesting piece ... (Lowers his voice) Get Irina out of here somehow. Konstantin just shot himself.

CURTAIN

Calling all Catholics

If I have any Catholic readers who have any memories of Vatican II - or any stories to tell of their parents who experienced Vatican II - I would LOVE to hear these stories. It's for one of the projects I am working on. Basically, I am looking for personal reflections and anecdotes about that period of transition in the Catholic Church, and would love to hear personal stories about it - either pro or con, I don't care. What I am NOT interested in is glorified op-ed columns where you tell me your opinion on whether or not Vatical II was a good idea. Opinions are fine - but I really am interested in the anecdotes. Like: "my mother still went to confession once a week" or "I loved how we didn't have to kneel so much anymore" That's what I'm really after.

Any help any of you Catholics can give would be greatly appreciated.

Pauline Kael: "Sylvia Scarlett"

Sylvia Scarlett 1936

This Katherine Hepburn film, directed by George Cukor, was not a success -- and, fascinating as it is, you'll know why. Taken from a Compton MacKenzie novel, and set in Cornwall but actually shot on the California coast, it features an oddly erotic transvestite performance -- Hepburn is dressed as a boy throughout most of the flim -- and a pecularily upsetting love affair between Edmund Gwenn, as her con-man father, and an uncouth young tease (Dennie Moore). The movie seems to go wrong in a million directions, but it has unusually affecting qualities. Cary Grant plays a brashly likable product of the British slums -- this was the picture in which his boisterous energy first broke through. He and a fearfully smirky Brian Aherne are the male leads, and the beautiful Natalie Paley is the bitch-villainess. The extraordinarily free cinematography is by Joseph August; no other Cukor film of the 30s ever looked like this one. But this is a one-of-a-kind movie in any case: when the con artists weary of a life of petty crime, they become strolling players, and at one lovely point, Hepburn, Grant, Gwenn, and Dennie Moore sing a music-hall number about the sea. Script by Gladys Unger, John Collier, and Mortimer Offner. Hepburn tetlls the story that after the disastrous preview at Cukor's house, she and Cukor offered to do another picture for the producer Pandro S. Berman for nothing, and he said, "I don't want either of you ever to work for me again." (They did, though.)

Yes. This is indeed a "one of a kind movie". It can't be classified, and Kael is right about its odd erotic intense charm. It's also fascinating to watch because this is the film which propelled Hepburn out of Hollywood and back to Broadway. It was a disaster for her. On the flipside: this film is Cary Grant's breakthrough. Cukor was the first director to take the reins off of this odd too-tall too-handsome Cockney guy. He wasn't a classic leading man - but his good looks fooled people into thinking he was. Cukor just let him run free. His performance in this is absolutely extraordinary.

Hepburn said, years later, about this film, "I'm very bad in this movie. The only reason to see it is Cary Grant."

I wouldn't go that far. She is notoriously unforgiving of herself. This movie is a gem. And yes, maybe it doesn't work ... as a whole ... but still: it sits in a niche of genius all its own.

I love it.

i wrote a couple different posts about it:

Obsession central: Cary Grant "Sylvia Scarlett"

Cary Grant: "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be"

Finally!

Obsession Central: Archie Leach

Pauline Kael: "Suzy"

Suzy 1936

Jean Harlow in a pasted-together story about an American showgirl barging about London and Paris during the First World War. She marries Irish inventor Franchot Tone in London, then, thinking him dead, goes to Paris and marries famous French aviator Cary Grant. Naturally, Tone comes to Paris to work for Grant ... It's negligible, all right, but it isn't too awful, because Dorothy Parker and the other writers tossed in some dexterous badinage, and Grant brings an elfin bounce to his role, especially in the sequence in which Harlow is trying to sing and he demonstrates that he knows how. His song seems to tickle her -- she smiles in a fresh, open way. (The clip appears in That's Entertianment!)

Pauline Kael: "She done him wrong"

She done him wrong 1933

Mae West, the great shady lady of the screen, wiggles and sings "Easy Rider" and seduces virtuous young Cary Grant. A classic comedy and a classic seduction.

Classic, indeed. This movie is really fun. Mae West is great ... and it's so weird to see Cary Grant before he became, well, Cary Grant. Stardom was just around the corner, but he didn't know it yet.

I discuss this movie obsessively in this, the most obsessive post I think I ever wrote about Archie Leach.

Pauline Kael: "Penny Serenade"

Penny Serenade 1941

Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, who made audiences laugh in The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife, jerked tears this time. They play a childless couple who adopt an infant, learn to love it and then lose it. The director, George Stevens, dragged his feet (the picture is over 2 hours long), and he wasn't very subtle; it's "sincere" in an inert and horribly pristine way. Yet he made the sentimental sotry covincing to a wide audience; many people talk about this picture as if it had been deeply moving. It may be that the unrealistic casting does the trick: the appeal to the audience is that two glamorous stars play an ordinary couple and suffer the calamities that do in fact happen to ordinary people. When tragedy strikes Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, it hurts the audience in a special way. (And Grant could hardly have been better. Using his dark eyes and his sensuous, clouded handsomeness as a romantic mask, he gave his role a defensive, not quite forthright quality, and he brought out everything it was possible to bring out of his warmed-over lines, weighing them perfectly, so that they almost seemed felt.)

Grant was nominated for his first Oscar for this part, mainly because of that one scene where he pleads his case to the judge and starts to cry.

I love him in this. I actually love this movie. Yes, it is schmaltzy and sentimental - and their adopted child is so sickly-sweet that you develop cavities merely from watching the film - but I love the two of them together. The scenes are long (yes, they could have been cut ... but at what cost? There is a long LONG scene where Irene Dunne struggles to diaper the new baby ... and it is funnier the longer it goes ... her bumbling, her trying to show that she knows what she's doing ... she's gorgeous in this part).

And Kael is so RIGHT ON in her observations: Yes, this guy Grant plays is pretty much your average leading man. On paper. But Grant adds this whole other layer. There is something there that he is hiding. He's marvelous at suggesting what it might be, but you never ever quite know. All you know is that he is totally laid low by his "failure" to provide for his family. It strikes at the heart of this man's ego. You really feel for him. He is shattered.

Also: I love one of the early scenes, from when the two characters are dating. They're at the beach. They eat Chinese food, and look at their fortunes. It's subtle what he does in this scene ... he actually doesn't seem like a leading man. He seems like a regular guy. He is a bit uncomfortable with how much he feels for this woman. Like real people are in real life. He tries to brush it off, he tries to play it cool, but ... you know he's gaga. It's a lovely little scene.

Need to watch this movie again. I find it deeply satisfying.

Here's my long-ass raving post about it.

Pauline Kael: "Once Upon a Honeymoon"

Once Upon a Honeymoon 1942

This clammily contrived anti-Nazi comedy-melodrama, set in Europe, attempts to show the public the evils of Nazism while sugar-coating the message. Ginger Rogers is an American burlesque queen married to an Austrian baron (Walter Slezac) who is a Nazi agent. Cary Grant is the American radio correspondent who tries to show her the miseries that her husband and his associates are causing. Grant twinkles with condescending affection when the (supposedly adorable) nitwit stripper develops a political consciousness and helps a Jewish hotel maid escape from danger. With Albert Dekker, Albert Basserman, and Hans Conried. Directed by Leo McCarey, who also wrote the script, wtih Sheridan Gibney. They must have been very eager to be done with this abomination, because they finally dispatch the Nazi baron by means of a casual sick joke so they can have Rogers and Grant get together.

Pauline Kael: "Notorious"

Notorious 1946

Alfred Hitchcock's amatory thriller stars Ingrid Bergman as the daughter of a Nazi, a shady lady who trades secrets and all sorts of things with American agent Cary Grant. The suspense is terrific: Will suspicious, passive Grant succeed in making Bergman seduce him, or will he take over? The honor of the American is saved by a hairbreadth, but Bergman is literally ravishing in what is probably her sexiest performance. Great trash, great fun.

Absolutely. One of the best movies ever made. We certainly never saw Grant give such a performance again. Amazing film. And yes: Bergman is out of control good in this movie. If you haven't seen it, all I can say is: you are really missing out. Rent it. Love it. Go forth and prosper.

Last year, I actually started having sort of a PROBLEM. I couldn't stop obsessing over this film. I think I probably watched it every day, for about 10 days in a row. And I STILL didn't get to the bottom of its appeal.

Great great film.

My posts on it, if you're interested:

Speaking of Cary Grant ...

A couple of Notorious facts

I admit it ...

Obsession central: Cary Grant in Notorious

The last scene in Notorious

Sheila's daily fix

Top 5 moments in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious

Pauline Kael: "North by Northwest"

North by Northwest 1959

The title (from Hamlet's "I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw") is the clue to the mad geography and improbably plot. The compass seems to be spinning as the action hops all over the US and people rush about in the wrong direction. Though not as cleverly original as Strangers on a Train, or as cleverly sexy as Notorious, this is one of Hitchcock's most entertaining American thrillers. It goes on too long, and the script seems shaped to accommodate various set pieces (such as the chase on Mount Rushmore) that he wants to put in. But it has a classic sequence, in which a crop-dusting plane tries to dust the hero (Cary Grant), and a genial, sophisticated, comic tone. Just about everybody in it is a spy or a government agent (except Grant, who is mistaken for one). His performance is very smooth and appealing, and he looks so fit that he gets by with having Jessie Royce Landis, who was born the same year he was, playing his mother. The heroine is Eva Marie Saint, who doesn't seem quite herself here; her flat voice and affectless style suggest a Midwestern Grace Kelly, and a perverse makeup artist has turned her face into an albino African mask. With James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau as the blue-eyed menace Leonard, and in smaller roles, Josephine Hutchinson, Philip Ober, Carleton Young, Adam Williams, and Ned Glass. The music is by Bernard Hermann; the script, by Ernest Lehman, has a family resemblance to Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (and bits of it turn up again, slightly transposed, in Lehman's script for Mark Robson's The Prize.

"a perverse makeup artist has turned her face into an albino African mask"

hahahahaha

Pauline Kael: "Night and Day"

Night and Day 1946

William Bowers, one of the three scenarists, said later that he was so ashamed of this picture that about a year after it came out he called Cole Porter, whose biography it is purported to be, and told him how sorry he was, and Porter said, "Love it. Just loved it. Oh, I thought it was marvellous." Bowers says that he told Oscar Hammerstein how puzzled he was by this, and Hammerstein said, "How many of his songs did you have in it?" Bowers answered, "Twenty seven," and Hammerstein said, "Well of course he loved it. They only turned out to be twenty-seven of the greatest songs of all time. You don't thin khe heard that stuff that went on between his songs, do you?" This utterly wretched movie is possibly endurable to others who can blank out on that stuff in between, which involves Cary Grant, as the composer, starting as an excruciatingly unconvincing bouncy Yale undergraduate. Later on , Grant embraces Alexis Smith from time to time, but nervously, unwillingly -- as if she were a carrier of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. No doubt the movie was trying to tell us something. Grant looks constrained and distracted -- as if he would give anything to get out of this mess; he relaxes briefly when he sings "You're the top" with Ginny Simms. With Monty Woolley and many other unfortunates.

Ah yes, the film that tries to convince us that Cole Porter's "problems" in his marriage were due to him being a workaholic. Ah yes, of course. Meanwhile: what problems in the marriage? It is my understanding that his wife knew he was gay, and had no problem with it. It was a marriage based on companionship, and support. He adored her. Obviously, they couldn't deal with THAT complexity, so they just ignored his homosexuality blatantly - and the film shows the strain. Most definitely.

Cary Grant is wonderful in the aforementioned scene, though. It's very fun to hear him sing.

But the whole thing is laughable, because it refuses to mention THE BIG ELEPHANT IN THE CENTER OF THE ROOM. The elephant ain't in the corner, he's front and center: Cole Porter is gay. And everyone knew it. Cary Grant was friends with Cole Porter. What a strange thing.

I do love the anecdote in Kael's review though ... about Cole Porter loving the movie. Of course. Makes perfect sense.

Pauline Kael: "My Favorite Wife"

My Favorite Wife 1940

Tennyson wrote Enoch Arden in 1864, and the movies have been making versions of it ever since. DW Griffith did it in 1908 (and again in 1911.) This one is the most famous and the funniest. On the day Cary Grant (as Nick Arden) marries Gail Patrick, his wife, Irene Dunne, shipwrecked seven years before comes home. She follows the newlyweds on their honeymoon, prevents the consummation of the marriage, and, like a smart kitty, purrs herself to an ultimate victory. Garson Kanin was 27 (and at his liveliest) when he directed this screwball-classic hit. Randolph Scott plays the vegetarian scientist who was Dunne's companion on the island.

A version of this film Something's Got to Give was to be Marilyn Monroe's last film. She played the Irene Dunne part. But she was fired from the film, and died soon after - so the movie remains unfinished.

Pauline Kael: "Mr. Lucky"

Mr. Lucky 1943

A wartime comedy-melodrama, with Cary Grant as a draft-dodging gambler out to bilk a charity organization. He meets a wholesome society girl (Laraine Daly) and reforms. It's meant to be breezy, and Grant does get a chance to use Cockney rhyming slang, but the script is gimmicky. He looks uncomfortable in the role of a brash heel and his mugging doesn't help.

Oh, Pauline, I love this movie. Let me just say this: It is hard to imagine (I know) that there could be a bigger fan of Cary Grant out there than yours truly. But there is, and her name was Pauline Kael. She held him to the highest of high standards and was less forgiving than I am about stuff that doesn't work. She literally thought that he was the Best There Ever Was.

Anyway, enough of that. I loved Mr. Lucky, especially the scene where he learns to knit. It's so RIDICULOUS, but what is so funny in that scene, is how seriously he takes the lesson. He is REALLY trying to learn. Very very funny.

He's also damn sexy in this film.

Pauline Kael: "Indiscreet"

Indiscreet 1958

Rather tired. One of those would-be fluffy comedies written by Norman Krasna. Cary Grant, an American diplomat abroad, pretends to be married so that Ingrid Bergman, an actress with whom he's having an affair, won't get matrimonial ambitions. Of course, he's found out, and the wheels grind on to a happy ending. Stanley Donen directed; Cecil Parker and Phyllis Calvert round out the cast of people who are a little overage for the childish pranks.

One of the joys of this movie is just watching Grant and Bergman together again, after their spectacular pairing in Notorious. And yes, they do seem to be a bit too old to be acting so insane. But the scenes between the two of them are delicious to watch.

Also, this is the only film where Cary Grant got to actually be a leftie because it's in the script that the character is left-handed. Grant, a natural leftie - at a time when perhaps there was more stigma attached to it - had to make all of his characters be right-handed. You wouldn't think that would even matter, but apparently it did in those days. Having someone write with his left hand called attention to itself, and so he acted like a rightie. When there were close-ups of his hand writing a note, or something, he would have to have a "handwriting double" do the job for him.

However, if you're as insane as I am, you can catch him slip a hundred times. I grew up in a family of lefties, so I know all the signs.

The dinner scene in Bringing up Baby - how he uses knife and fork. The lighting cigarette scenes in Only Angels ... he lights his cigarette the way a leftie would.

I'm nuts. I realize. But you know what? I'm very happy.

In Indiscreet, the character boldly says he's a leftie ... and Cary Grant loved that.

Pauline Kael: "The Howards of Virginia"

The Howards of Virginia 1940

Cary Grant, miscast as a rough-hewn surveyor at the time of the American Revolution. Costume pictures were never his forte, and he gives one of his rare really bad performances in this one. Martha Scott is the highborn woman he courts; Cedric Hardwicke is her proud, aristocratic brother. The script, by Sidney Buchman, from Elizabeth Pageg's novel The Tree of Liberty, also saddles Grant with a crippled son, whom he rejects until the maudlin end, when his son's bravery wins him over. Glimpses of Jefferson (Richard Carlson), Washington (George Houston), and Patrick Henry (Richard Gaines) provide a cultural note without adding much to the party.

Cary Grant agreed with Pauline Kael's assessment. "I was very bad in that movie."

Pauline Kael: "Holiday"

Holiday 1938

In the 30s, Katherine Hepburn's wit and nonconformity made ordinary heroines seem mushy, and her angular beauty made the round-faced ingenues look piggy and stupid. Here she is in her archetypal role, as the rich tomboy Linda in Philip Barry's romantic comedy. She had understudied the role in 1928 on Broadway and had used it for her screen test, and she was the moving force behind this graceful film version, which Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman tailored for her and which George Cukor directed. In the pivotal role of a man who wants a holiday in order to discover his values, Cary Grant manages to make a likable and plausible character out of a dramtist's stratagem. With Edward Everett Horon and Jean Dixon as the man's friends; Lew Ayres as Linda's brother; Henry Kolker as her father; Doris Nolan as her stuffy, patrician sister; and Henry Daniell and Binnie Barnes among her obnoxious relatives.

I love this movie. I love his acrobat tricks when he feels nervous. They're amazing. I love the theme of the film. I think Lee Ayres, as the dissipated brother, gives the performance of his life. It's funny, it's tragic ... He steals every scene he's in, and rightly so. He's fantastic.

Pauline Kael: "His Girl Friday"

His Girl Friday 1940

In 1928 Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote The Front Page, the greatest newspaper comedy of them all; Howard Hawks directed this version of it -- a spastic explosion of dialogue, adapted by Charles Lederer, and starring Cary Grant as the domineering editor Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson, the unscrupulous crime reporter with printer's ink in her veins. (In the play Hildy Johnson is a man.) Overlapping dialogue carries the movie along at breakneck speed; word gags take the place of the sight gags of silent comedy, as this race of brittle, cynical, childish people rush around on corrupt errands. Russell is at her comedy peak here -- she wears a striped suit, uses her long-legged body for ungainly, unladylike effects, and rasps out her lines. And, as Walter Burns, Grant raises mugging to a joyful art. Burns' callousness and unscrupulousness are expressed in some of the best farce lines ever written in this country, and Grant hits those lines with a smack. He uses the same stiff-neck cocked-head stance that he did in Gunga Din: it's his position for all-out, unstuble farce. He snorts and whoops. His Burns is a strong-arm performance, defiantly self-centered and funny. The reporters -- a fine crew -- are Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Porter Hall, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey; also with Gene Lockhart as the sheriff, Billy Gilbert as the messenger, John Qualen, Helen Mack, and Ralph Bellamy as chief stooge -- a respectable businessman -- and Alma Kruger as his mother.

Honestly, is there a funnier movie out there? It's hard to figure where Cary Grant is funnier - in Bringing up Baby or in this ... The humor is so different in each movie. It's amazing. Bringing up Baby, of course, features him playing the # 1 Geek who has ever lived. Sputtering, unsure of himself, DESPERATELY trying to be polite ... even when all his plans are derailed ... I mean, the images of him trying to be polite to Katherine Hepburn even as she embarrasses him publicly time after time ... are enough to make me laugh out loud just thinking about them. But Walter Burns is a completely different creation. Confident, loud, rude, rarely ruffled, the dude has NO problem with not being polite. And the pairing of Grant and Russell has pretty much never been topped.

Love. This. Movie.

Pauline Kael: "Gunga Din"

Gunga Din 1939

One of the most enjoyable nonsense-adventure movies of all time -- full of slapstick and heroism and high spirits. RKO intended to make one of those trouble-in-the-colonies films, and it was supposedly to be "inspired" by the Rudyard Kipling poem. Howard Hawks was set to direct; he brought in Hecht and MacArthur, who stole the plot of their own The Front Page and threw some wonderful hokum together. Then Hawks brought in William Faulkner for some rewriting. RKO soon decided that the project was becoming too expensive, got rid of Hawks, and put George Stevens, who was under contract, in charge. Stevens brought in Fred Guiol, a gagwriting buddy from Stevens' Laurel & Hardy days, and at some point Joel Sayre also did some rewriting. The result of these combined labors is a unique pastiche -- exhilarating in an unself-consciously happy, silly way. The stars are a rousing trio: Cary Grant, having the time of his life as a clowning roughneck; the dapper, gentlemanly Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; and the eternal vulgarian, Victor McLaglen. Who was forgotten Eduardo Ciannelli in dark makeup as some sort of mad high priest, or Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din, the essence, the soul of loyalty? Who remembers Joan Fontaine as the pallid and proper heroine?

"Exhilarating" is, indeed, the word for Gunga Din. I know it's considered a "boy movie", etc., but I love every feckin' second of it. The last 20 minutes of this movie is just plain old genius. Every shot has been copied ad nauseum by film-makers in following years. They probably don't even realize anymore what they're imitating - but Gunga Din started it. It's one of THE action-adventure movies. So much fun.

Run Scarlett Run!

Good for Scarlett Johansson! Damn, this story just keeps getting better and better.

Interesting, that the room she was taken into was supposedly "stifling hot". Another classic brainwashing technique.

The Books: "Collected Plays of Anton Chekhov" - 'Swan Song' (Anton Chekhov)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next book on the script shelf is my collected plays of Chekhov, translated by Paul Schmidt (funnily enough, he came up a day or so ago here.) I had owned an old copy of some old translation for years - whenever I worked on a scene or a monologue, it was that one I worked from. Can't remember the translation. Then a couple of years ago, my friend Kate recommended the Paul Schmidt translation to me, raving about it, and so I, with no trepidation at all, switched translations. It makes SUCH a difference! If you're into Chekhov, and you've read him in different manifestations, I highly recommend the Paul Schmidt translation.

First play in the collection is a really moving short play called Swan Song: A Dramatic Sketch in One Act. It is 7 pages long and there are two characters: Vasily Vasilich Svetlovidov (a 68 year old actor) and Nikita Ivanich (a prompter in the theatre). It takes place out "in the provinces", on a theatre stage, late at night, after the audience has gone home. Basically, Svetlovidov, an actor coming to the end of his life, does not want to leave the theatre. The void at the heart of a life of an actor.

Middle of the Night

EXCERPT FROM Swan Song, by Anton Chekhov.

NIKITA INVANICH: (gently, respectfully) Vasily Vasilich, it's time for you to go home.

SVETLOVIDOV: No, no, I can't! I haven't got a home! I can't! I can't!

NIKITA IVANICH: Oh dear. Did you forget where you live?

SVETLOVIDOV: I won't go back there -- I can't! I'll be all alone, Nikita. I haven't got anybody -- no wife, no children, no family. I'm all alone. I'm like the wind in an empty field ... I'm goingt o die, and no one will remember me ... It's awful to be alone. No one to hug you, keep you warm, put you to bed when you're drunk ... Who do I belong to? Does anybody need me? Does anybody love me? Nobody loves me, Nikita!

NIKITA. (almost in tears) The audeince loves you, Vasily Vasilich!

SVETLOVIDOV: The audience? Where are they? They've gone home to bed and forgotten all about me. No, nobody needs me, nobody loves me. No wife, no children ...

NIKITA. Now, now, what are you getting all upset about?

SVETLOVIDOV. I'm a human being, aren't I? I'm still alive, aren't I? I've got blood in my veins, not water. And I come from a good family, Nikita, a very good family. Before I got involved in show business I was in the army. I was an officer -- I was an artillery officer. You should have seen me when I was young. I was so good-looking, I was clean-cut, strong, full of energy, full of life! Oh my God, where did it all go? And what an actor I was, Nikita, huh? (gets up, leaning on Nikita's arm) Where did it go, all that? My God, I ... Tonight I looked out into that darkness, and it all came back to me, everything! That darkness swallowed up forty-five years of my life, Nikita. But what a life! I look out into that darkness and I can see it all again, just like I see you now! My youth, my confidence, my talent, the women who loved me ... the women who loved me, Nikita!

NIKITA. Vasily Vasilich, I think it's time for bed.

SVETLOVIDOV. When I was a young actor, and just beginning to feel how good I was, I remember, there was this one woman ... She loved me for my acting! She was tall, beautiful, elegant, young, innocent. She burned with a pure flame, like the dawn light in summer! One look from those blue eyes, that magic smile, you couldn't resist! I remember one time, I stood before her, just like I'm standing before you now. She was so beautiful that day, so beautiful, and she was looking at me -- I'll never forget that look, not to my dying day. Her eyes like velvet, full of love, full of passion, the dazzle of her youth! I wanted her, I was mad for her, fell to my knees in front of her ... (His voice starts to trail off) And she said, you have to choose. Me or the theatre. (Beat.) Give up the theatre! You understand? She wanted me to give up the theatre. She could make love to an actor, but marry one -- never! And I remember that day; I was playing ... oh, it was some awful part, nothing but cliches, and I was out there onstage ... and all of a sudden my eyes were opened! And I realized then there was no holy art of acting, it was all lies and pretending, and I was just a toy, a slave to other people's pleasure, a clown! Just a cheap clown! That's when I realized what the audience was after, what they wanted from me! And after that I never believed the applause, the bouquets of flowers, the glowing reviews. It's true, Nikita! They applaud me, they buy my photographs, but we are strangers to one another, and they think of me as trash, as a whore! They want to get to know me because I'm a celebrity -- it flatters them -- but they wouldn't lower themselves to let me marry one of their sisters or daughters! And I don't believe their applause! (falls back onto the stool) I just don't believe them anymore!

NIKITA. Vasily Vasilich, you're scaring me ... You look just awful! Let's you and me go home. Come on now ...

SVETLOVIDOV. That's when I finally found out what it was all about, Nikita. I understood what they were like, and that knowledge has cost me dear! After that -- after that girl -- I rished off without any direction, didn't care what my life was like, never thought ahead. I played cheap parts, cynical parts, I played the joker, I seduced anyone I could get my hands on...But what an actor I was, what an artist! And then I let my art go, I got vulgar and commercial, I lost the divine spark ... That black hole out there swallowed me up! I didn't realize it until now, but now, just now, when I woke up, I looked back, and I saw those sixty-eight years! I'm old! My life is over! I have sung my swan song! (sobs) I have sung my swan song!

"Recovered memories"

An absolutely amazing article about a woman who has been "missing" since 1990. Her mother has been tireless in trying to find out what happened to her daughter, convinced that she was still alive.

Well, it turns out that yes, she is alive. Illinois police have confirmed that they have located this woman, now 33 years old. She is living under an assumed identity.

At the time of the disappearance, Robin Mewes had been receiving mental health counseling in Paris, Ill. Reports about the circumstances indicate a counselor convinced the teenager that she was a victim of intergenerational satanic cult abuse - a claim her mother says is false.

In mid-September 1990, Mewes told family members she was on her way to see a friend in southern Illinois. She never showed.

A day later, she was seen at a Rax Restaurant in Terre Haute. Her mother believes Robin met with her counselor and three police officers before receiving a new Social Security number and taking on a new identity. Her family has not seen her since.

Okay, you got that? This whole "recovered memory" trend of therapy has always been fascinating to me - I guess because it taps right into my questions about identity, reality, and ... what is memory? What is it?? What is the self? Can someone get into your brain and actually plant things in there?? Well, of course they can. That's what brainwashing is all about. I'm fascinated by that whole process. It frightens me, yet draws me in ... Is my identity so fragile? What about in situations like the aborted Stanford Prison Experiment? Personalities shattering under completely phony circumstances ... Within 24 hours, the "guards" behaved like brutal prison guards and the "prisoners" began to panic and crumble. Amazing. You would think ... that under a manufactured experiement ... SOME part of you could maintain your sense of self, your sense of "this is only make-believe" but not one person did. Not even the guy who set up the experiement!! Even he ended up getting sucked into the charade, and his "role". 5 days in, his main goal became to "protect the prison" - as though he were a warden. He forgot that his main goal was to "monitor the effects of the experiement" ... He forget who he was!! Fascinating and very frightening. I know it's a controversial experiment to this day, and I have problems with some of it (the experiment itself, and also how the results are used to push certain public policies) - BUT I think we ignore the message there about personality/identity/pressure at our peril.

Added later: The following paragraph is a rant based merely on past experience. Which is kind of silly, I know. We all must try to live in the present. So take it with a grain of salt. I won't edit it, because the sentiments I express are true - and I meant them when I wrote them ... but I was probably over-reacting based on being condescended to by assholes in the past.

(And please, here's a message to all you know it alls out there who, in general, find my curiosity about things kind of silly - no matter the topic - and feel the need to talk down to me whenever I have the vulnerability to ask a question: Do not scorn the fact that I ask questions, and if you provide a too-ready or too-facile answer, then I do not trust you. Sorry to be blunt and rude, but whenever I write on this stuff, I always get some know-it-all scorning the fact that I'm curious at all, because the answers to all my questions are sooooooo self-evident. PLEASE. Do not be boring like that. If you're interested in speculating about this with me, if you have anything to add ... feel free. But a too-quick assumption of complete knowledge - at least in this area - is a huge red flag of dishonesty to me. So don't do it.) I'm interested in this problem of the "personality", and the self, and drawn to it - my longest post about it is here ... even more so witnessing the quick and complete surrender of Katie Holmes ... Where is the identity? If you lock me in a closet for 2 weeks, and tell me my family are evil ... would I then emerge, and put on a black beret, and change my name to Tania, and shoot up a bank? It is hard to contemplate, but it's FASCINATING to me. The nature of consciousness, of personality, of self ... how fluid is it, how impressionable are we really?

What is "recovered memory" therapy? I wrote a really long post about it, providing links to a couple of really informative sites. Dorothy Rabinowitz won a Pulitzer for her investigative journalism in this area. It's a deep deep pool - this whole recovered memory thing. It appears that therapists can implant false memories of abuse - which appears to be what has happened in the case of this woman from Illinois. It's a tricky thing to talk about - because there are real cases of real abuse out there, and those must not be discounted, but there are also charlatans out there, like these therapists, who are creating chaos where there was none. This "recovered memory" stuff has ruined families - it seems to come in waves, too. I'm not sure - but a wave of hysteria about ritualistic Satanic cult abuse will overtake a community - one child says he remembers something - then another child says he remembers the same thing ... when all of it could very well be fabricated.

Rick Ross (as always) has an extensive archive on some of these "recovered memory" cases. It's horrifying reading.

Pamela Freyd is executive director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

The article about the Illinois woman says:

Freyd says 23,000 families have contacted the foundation since, seeking help when family members have broken off contact after being convinced through therapy sessions of being abused as children.

According to the foundation's Web site, about 18 percent of families they surveyed have been accused of being part of an intergenerational cult that dress in robes, sacrifice babies and engage in cannibalism and bestiality. No evidence supports existence of such an intergenerational cult, the site says.

Freyd does not downplay the problem of sexual abuse. She knows it's real.

She also knows that some therapy techniques are detrimental.

"In therapy, we've had a lot of fads that have taken hold and existed for awhile," she said. She is optimistic that the trend of recovered memory is waning; the foundation is receiving fewer reports of false memory syndrome.

Robin Mewes, the woman who "disappeared" in 1990, so far has not been reunited with her family.

Freyd of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation said that's not an easy process.

"Something has to get through to them that makes them question the reality of their beliefs," Fryed said. About half of the families surveyed by the foundation have been reunited.

(via Cult News - which is now the first place I stop every day.)

Steve McQueen

A really interesting essay by Matt Feeney about Steve McQueen. McQueen fans (and I am one of them): check it out. He is one of the most mysterious of movie stars - his appeal (at least in my opinion) goes under that strange and rare heading of "Magic". Whatever it was about his face, and not just his face - but more importantly how the camera saw his face ... whatever you want to call it, that alchemy was magic.

Feeney describes perfectly, I think, where McQueen's appeal comes from (because although he is, most certainly, an actor people LOVE ... and many people list some of his movies as their favorite movies EVER) ... his is an elusive talent. Even the directors who worked with him said that about him. He was mercurial, touchy, and completely relied upon spontanaiety. McQueen could not rehearse. He was a "first take- only take" kind of actor. After repetition, he lost the magic. This is not a criticism. It's just something that is really interesting. Steve McQueen refused to even do 'walk throughs" of the set before a day's shooting. Some actors like to stroll around, try out the doors, walk through the space ... just to get familiar. Like: if the set is supposed to represent their character's kitchen - then of course the room should be familiar to you, right? You should know automatically that the door to the dining room swings in, not out, right? All that stuff. McQueen didn't care about any of that stuff. He knew, instinctively, that his talent was mercurial, and ... unreliable. So he kept himself, as much as he could, in a state of complete unknowingness - he relied on the spontaneity of the first time. As you can see from his performances, his instincts about himself were pretty much spot on. Directors who forced McQueen to rehearse got bad acting out of the guy. Best to just leave him alone.

Mark Rydell (who directed On Golden Pond) but also directed McQueen in ... The Rievers, I think - spoke at my school and talked extensively about working with the guy. How much McQueen tested directors, what a son of a bitch he could be, how difficult he could be, how broken he was ... McQueen looked for a father figure in every single man he met, and he looked for one in Rydell. When Rydell made him do something he might not have wanted to do, he would throw a temper tantrum - as though he were a toddler, and Rydell were the "bad father". He was really messed up and weirdly fragile, for all his tough-guy stuff, and riding around on a motorcycle. Rydell said something very interesting (and again: this is in no way a criticism): "Steve McQueen was not a great actor. But he was a great movie star. One of the greatest we have ever had."

You can teach someone how to be more a competent actor. But you can never teach anyone to have even a smidgeon of what Steve McQueen had. It's innate. If you don't have it? Learn to live without it and learn to work with what you got ... because it cannot be taught, bought, borrowed or stolen.

Feeney writes:

McQueen cultivated his own mythology through a strenuously aloof style of acting that is not without its critics. David Thomson, for one, observes a certain "dullness" about McQueen. Perhaps, but it was an especially radiant sort of dullness. With McQueen, it's hard to decide whether you hardly notice him, or you hardly notice that you never take your eyes off of him. He had one of the greatest of all movie faces, even though he wasn't perfectly handsome. The broad masculine nose and deep leathery creases around his taut mouth didn't connect to those scary blue eyes. What brought his features alive on-screen were his wide cheekbones and a narrow tapering chin—the kind of triangular bonework more commonly associated with female beauty. Shot from certain high angles, McQueen could resemble an extremely macho elf.

He definitely had a face made to be in the movies!

More on his craft:

As an actor, McQueen seemed to emit no excess, no psychic surplus that might register as hamminess or irony. Yet he was a deeply insecure and conflicted man, and fanatically willful about his craft. Watching the laconic, slow-to-react title characters in The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and Bullitt (1968), it's easy to imagine that the performance is just Steve McQueen showing up and acting like himself. But when Steve McQueen showed up and really acted like himself, it wasn't pretty: He was a hothead and a paranoid, a grimly compulsive womanizer and a prolific druggie far ahead of his time (according to the biographer Christopher Sanford, McQueen was into LSD and peyote by the early '60s and later became a serious cokehead).

McQueen is in the very short list of actors (Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper) who, upon receiving any script, sat down and cut out most of his own lines. He knew that he could do more with a turn of his head than another actor could do with 10 explanatory lines. His power and magnetism lay not in his voice, or even in the PARTS he played ... it lay in that face, and what it could convey, with absolutely no language.

And here, I think, Feeney makes a genius point - genius:

The raw inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability was there all along, and the great McQueen mystique—the "cool" that was somehow so feverish, the poker face that was somehow so animated—came from his half-successful effort to hide it.

YES!!! A true movie star will always have secrets, and will never reveal everything. There is a mystery at the heart of Marilyn Monroe that keeps people coming back. Same with Cary Grant. Clark Gable. They do not wear their hearts on their sleeves. They are hiding things. Their success comes from the "half-successful efforts" to hide it.

Perfect example: Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings. I babbled about it ad nauseum here. Geoff Carter has to be the crankiest leading man in all of cinematic history. He is a big CURMUDGEON. And yet ... there are flashes ... moments ... momentary looks in his eyes (that great late-night scene with Jean Arthur) ... when you see his loneliness. The sensitivity at the heart of this cranky macho guy. But he never makes a big deal out of it, and Cary Grant never EVER fetishizes his own emotions. EVER. (So many actors do that these days. They have a self-important aura around every feckin' tear they shed. As though we should give them a goddamn medal for having a heart and a soul.) Cary Grant HID his emotions ... and therefore, we loved him for it. Because we knew they were there anyway.

Very human. REAL human beings don't walk around showing us their emotions all the time. Or if they do? They probably should be institutionalized. Real human beings try to hide their vulnerability. Doesn't mean we can't see it all the same ... but that's not the point.

McQueen had that cool aloof thing going on ... but there's a reason why he has such massive appeal to not only men but also women. There was something cracked underneath the exterior, something sweet, and in need of the female. But he would NEVER broadcast this, or fetishize it. He was too busy trying to HIDE that vulnerability, so we wouldn't guess his weaknesses.

This duality, this inner contradiction, is part of what makes a great movie star. He keeps us guessing. We want to get "in there" with him, but he never satisfies us completely.

It's deeee-lish.

The Books: "Middle of the Night" (Paddy Chayevsky)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the script shelf is from my collected stage plays of Paddy Chayefsky: Middle of the Night.

I touched on it a bit yesterday. Middle of the Night is a really simple play. No bells and whistles. But it somehow just works. There's a young woman - she works as a secretary in a factory (her boss is "The Manufacturer" in the excerpt below). She's a very beautiful girl (Gena Rowlands played her in the original production - and she was - and still is - a stunner), and she married a horn player. She basically married him for the sex (the play takes place in the 50s. That was the only legitimate way you could have sex, and so "the girl" married him because of they had that kind of chemistry - only to rue the day later). She and the horn player had a steamy sex life but not much else. They teeter on the edge of separation ... she moves home with her parents ... and she starts to suffer from insomnia (ahem - the title) - and general nervous problems. In comes her boss: "The Manufacturer", a middle-aged married man. They are two lonely people, connecting in the middle of the night. It's a rather bleak play, but damn good. As you will see in the excerpt below, the writing is nothing spectacular. By that I mean: it doesn't call attention to itself. There's no poetry in it - except for the everyday kind of poetry you sometimes hear when people are speaking from the heart. Paddy Chayefsky's gift lies in his ability to capture moments of raw emotional truth.

This excerpt is all about that.

EXCERPT FROM Middle of the Night, by Paddy Chayefsky.

THE MANUFACTURER. (Smiling) You know what time it is?

THE GIRL. Boy, I�ve been talking your head off.

THE MANUFACTURER. It�s half-past six. Do you mind if I use your phone?

THE GIRL. Mr. Kingsley, I�m terribly sorry I used up your afternoon like this.

THE MANUFACTURER. Don�t be sorry. Do you feel better?

THE GIRL. Oh, I feel much better. (She stands) I really do, got this all off my chest. Gee, half-past six. I don�t know where my mother and my sister are. My mother�s on a new shift now. I don�t know what time she gets home. Would you like to stay for dinner, Mr. Kingsley?

THE MANUFACTURER. No, I don�t think so. I have to make a call though.

THE GIRL. The phone�s right there. (He reaches for the phone, but before he can pick up the receiver, THE GIRL is talking again.) So, what do you think I ought to do? I�ve been considering a divorce for a couple of months now, but it seems so complicated. I don�t know anybody who�s divorced, so I don�t know how you go about it. My mother, she won�t hear about divorce. My grandmother was Catholic. My mother�s a Lutheran, but even so. My husband, it would just kill him. His vanity would be so hurt. (She sits and stares at the middle-aged cigar-smoking man in the soft chair.)

THE MANUFACTURER. Betty, tell me something. How old are you?

THE GIRL. I�ll be twenty-four in March.

THE MANUFACTURER. Twenty-four years old. I have a daughter of my own, twenty-five years old, lives out in New Rochelle, she�s married now with two fine children, and you make me think of her when she was ten years old. So I�m going to talk to you like I was your father. About twenty times tonight, you�ve asked me, �What should I do about my husband?� Betty, this is a decision you have to make for yourself. Don�t expect your mother to make it for you, or your husband�s mother, and don�t worry so much about hurting your husband.

THE GIRL. Because I know this would hurt him.

THE MANUFACTURER. The only person you have to worry about hurting is yourself. You have to do what you want to do, not what other people want you to do; otherwise you and everyone else concerned will be miserable. You have to say to yourself, �Do I want to go back to him or do I think I can find something better for my life?�

THE GIRL. I don�t want to go back to him.

THE MANUFACTURER. All right, there�s your decision. (THE GIRL looks at him, a little confused at the sudden clarity of her situation.) If it means a divorce, then you go ahead and get one. You go to a lawyer, and he�ll tell you what you have to do. It may be a little complicated, but nothing is too complicated. Then you start going out on dates again, and take my word for it, you�ll run across some young fellow who will understand that you need a lot of kindness. There are plenty of nice young fellow around, believe me.

THE GIRL. You know something? I really feel much better now ...

THE MANUFACTURER. Sure, you do ...

THE GIRL. ... talking it out like this.

THE MANUFACTURER. Well, you made a decision, and suddenly there�s not such big, black clouds in the sky, and it isn�t going to rain, and life isn�t so terrible. Life, believe me, can be a beautiful business. And you�re a young kid, and you got plenty of joy ahead of you. So go wash your face. I want to make a phone call.

THE GIRL. (stands) I want to thank you very much, Mr. Kingsley, for letting me pour my heart out.

THE MANUFACTURER. There�s nothing to thank, sweetheart. (THE MANUFACTURER reaches over for the phone and begins to dial.)

THE GIRL. Your wife must have had a wonderful life with you. (THE MANUFACTURER pauses in his dialing to look up at THE GIRL.)

THE MANUFACTURER. That�s a very sweet thing for you to say, my dear.

THE GIRL. Well, I�ll go wash my face. (She turns and goes out into the foyer, disappearing to her right. We see her passing the open doorway of her sister�s room. THE MANUFACTURER returns to his dialing. He waits, then gets an answer.)

THE MANUFACTURER. (on the phone) Hello, Evely, this is Jerry ... No, I�ll tell you what happened. Is Lillian still there? ... Well, I see it�s half-past six. I tell you, I�m very, very tired right now. Why don�t you drive out with Lillian, and I�ll catch a bite around the corner, and you can take the train in from New Rochelle tomorrow ... Well, I�ll tell you. I never got out to Brooklyn. Remember I told you about this girl in the office who was sick? ... I didn�t tell you? ... No, Betty Preiss, the very pretty one. She sits by the reception window ... You know her. The very pretty one. So I had to stop off at her house, pick up some papers she had, she didn�t come in today. So I come up here, I tell you, this girl was in an emotional state. So, to cut a long story short, I talked to her, it turns out, she�s leaving her husband, that�s why she couldn�t come in today, and it poured out of her, the whole story ... No, no, no, the blond girl, the very pretty one. The fat one is Elaine ... The exceptionally attractive one. I used to look at her, I used to think, �A beautiful girl like that, what problems could she have? The young men must fall all over themselves.� This girl is a real beauty. I�ve seen lots of girls on television who aren�t so beautiful. An intelligent girl, a good worker, but emotionally very immature ... (Annoyed) Oh, don�t be foolish. What did you mean, I�m showing a marked interest in how beautiful she is? It happens that she�s a very pretty girl ... All right, so you go out to New Rochelle if you want to and ... I�ll tell you the truth, I think I�ll just come home and go to bed ... (THE GIRL returns to the living room doorway, where she pauses. THE MANUFACTURER darts a look at her) No, I�ll be fine...Apologize to Lillian for me ... Absolutely, why should you stay in the house? ... Fine, give my regards to Jack and the kids ... All right, I�ll see you. (He hangs up, stands, frowning for some unaccountable reason.)

THE GIRL. I don�t know what happened to my family. (THE MANUFACTURER has found his coat and is putting it on.)

THE MANUFACTURER. I�ll take the slips here with me.

THE GIRL. I hope I didn�t inconvenience you too much, Mr. Kingsley.

THE MANUFACTURER. It was no inconvenience. I was supposed to go out to the factory, but, I tell you, I was grateful to get out of it. I had the boy deliver the stuff. (He puts on his hat.) I have the feeling you didn�t eat anything at all today.

THE GIRL. You know, I really don�t think I did.

THE MANUFACTURER. Well, eat something now. (He starts for the door to the foyer, pauses on the threshold, looks at his watch) It�s almost seven o�clock. (He frowns) Listen, you want a bite to eat? Come on, I�ll buy you a little bite to eat. (THE GIRL considers this suggestion with no particular expression.)

THE GIRL. I�d like to very much, Mr. Kingsley. I have to put some makeup on.

THE MANUFACTURER. Hurry up, put some makeup on.

(THE GIRL smiles briefly, turns and heads for the foyer door.)

THE GIRL. (As she goes) I�ll just be a minute, Mr. Kingsley.

(She disappears into the foyer, carrying her purse, which she has picked up on her way out. THE MANUFACTURER moves slowly downstage into the living room. He puts his hands into his coat pockets and walks slowly around the room.)

THE MANUFACTURER. (suddenly calling out) You like Italian food? Very good restaurant here on Seventy-ninth Street. (Apparently THE GIRL doesn�t hear him, for there is no answer. He moves around the room aimlessly. He pauses by a wall, pokes it with his fist. Then he moves downstage again, almost up to the footlights. He punches his head lightly, self-admonishingly. He mutters.) Jerk. Jerk. What are you doing? Jerk. (He continues to move around the room.)

Curtain

"Unctuous". "Happiness." "Anger."

This is one of the funniest sites I have come across in a long time.

Eric Conveys an Emotion. It's self-explanatory. I can't stop clicking through.

My favorite "acted-out emotion" so far is "sarcastic respect for authority figures". Check out "satanic" too, though. hahaha I also love that he has "pending requests".

Genius. I love the Internet.

(Thanks for pointing to it, Dean)

Waiting in line

My post about acting in Chekhov made me think of a piece I wrote called "The Line".

In it, I describe the time I waited in line for 18 hours to get free tickets to Mike Nichols' production of The Seagull in Central Park. It was in August, 2001. You might not think that waiting in line for that long would be dramatic or tension-filled or fascinating ... but it WAS. I discovered a lot. First of all: the mere act of waiting in line itself and what that does to the human personality. It's stressful. People get obsessed with "cutting", etc. Second of all: we're all used to waiting in line for, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes ... but 18 hours? That's a whole different kind of waiting and has even MORE of an impact on the human personality. Many revelations there. Third of all: just the plain old human element. It was amazing.

Anyway. I thought I'd post the essay I wrote about it, entitled "The Line". It's not been published elsewhere. YET.

It's long ... so read it when you have the leisure and only if you feel like it.

Oh, and a weird time-travel moment: Chandra Levy was still missing at this point in time. I mention her often.

It's funny: I read this, and it's almost like my own love letter to New York City. To New Yorkers themselves. Camping out for 18 hours - and in some cases - 36 hours - to score tickets to the event of the summer. A love letter to New York a month before September.

And now I present to you: THE LINE.

August, 2001

Although I knew I would be sleeping and sitting on the ground for eighteen hours, I neglected to bring a blanket or a pillow. I did, however, bring a bag of books. To keep me company through the night. Hours later, lying curled up on the hard dirt, rocks jutting into my back, using my lumpy book-filled knapsack as a pillow, staring at everyone else's elaborate sleeping contraptions set up around me, I contemplated my choices in life.

I remembered The Scarlet Letter and forgot the blanket. That is all that needs to be said about my entire personality.

Meryl Streep. Kevin Kline. Christopher Walken. Chekhov’s The Seagull directed by Mike Nichols. A much-anticipated event. Come August I started hearing the stories: people camping out, sleeping in Central Park, waiting in line for the coveted free tickets handed out at 1 p.m. by The Delacorte Theatre the day of each performance.

I was, to some degree, waiting for the random phone call from the random friend: "Hey, I have an extra ticket!" Three weeks into the run, I realized that the show was closing soon, and I had to take control of my destiny. I decided to go join the line.

Thursday

6:45 p.m. I approached the already-existing line on the green slope of grass outside The Delacorte, in Central Park. My behavior was tentative, shy. I was afraid that there were invisible rules and that I would be accosted immediately for some infraction.

Because I so believe that people are out to get me, I find that people are often actually out to get me. Which is what happened the second I joined the line.

7:00 p.m. "Excuse me – you just CUT."

My attacker had three Saran-Wrapped cushions tied to a little cart, a cooler slung over one shoulder, and some bedrolls strapped to her back. She looked like a Sherpa.

"That was MY SPOT. You can't just come along and TAKE SOMEONE'S SPOT."

Would a Sherpa yell at someone like this?

I have no way of knowing if this woman is normal and polite in her real life. To my eyes, she was a lunatic. Not to mention the fact that she was wearing a miner's helmet and I had no idea why. Hours later, in the dead of night, when I saw her reading by the beam of light shooting out of her forehead, I understood (and envied) her madness.

But at the time of the attack she was just a fiery-eyed Sherpa in a miner's helmet yelling at me.

I still don't understand how I cut in line since no one was behind me. But apparently there were invisible rules (there always are), and I broke all of them at once.

I felt like screaming, "I DIDN'T MEAN TO CUT!"

One sweet gentle guy with little round glasses came up and said, "We really would appreciate it if you would move back and give her back her spot."

His gentleness was more terrifying than the Sherpa's rage. I got very scared at his use of "we". It was an intimidation tactic, which worked like a charm. I stepped back, baffled, embarrassed, and for the next ten minutes entertained extremely satisfying revenge fantasies. Saying with haughty scorn, "Listen, Sherpa-Bitch, cut me some slack…"

I could not discern at the time that three hours later I too would become a fire-breathing maniac if someone tried to cut in front of me. And I would not have cared one bit if they "didn't mean to", either. A lot of people don't MEAN to do evil in this world and they go ahead and do it anyway. Does that mean they should go unpunished?

I learned an important lesson in that first moment. The worst crime in the universe, unforgivable, is cutting in line. The revolutionary battles in France and America can be explained thus: people simply had had it with other people who felt that it was their right to cut and get in the front of the line. The British empire lasted so long because the English accept their place in the line, and rarely try to barge ahead.

7:30 p.m. I sat in the dirt.

There was a dude to my right who had come all the way up from Baltimore just to get himself in the line. He was a playwright, choked up with possibility. He hadn't brought a blanket or sleeping bag either, so he and I eventually were complete dirtballs.

To my left were Max and Elena. He was from Long Island and she was from Russia. It was perfect that I waited in line for The Seagull with an actual Russian. I became very involved with Max and Elena's relationship through proximity and osmosis.

They got into an argument at one point during the evening. She said to him, "Max, I thought that we were in this together. I thought that we were a team. Why do you abuse me because you lost your glasses? Why is that?"

His comment was, "This is the Cold War all over again."

He had a long conversation on his cell phone with his mother who was going in for some sort of scary surgery the following morning. I did not know Max, but I could hear the anxiety hovering in his voice.

Right before he hung up he said, trying to get her attention, "Ma?…Ma?…Ma—"

I thought to myself, "He wants to tell her that he loves her."

There was a pause, when clearly his mother settled down enough to listen, and he said, "I love you, Ma. Okay? I love you." He hung up and lay back down on his mat, not saying a word, clearly "replete with very thee". Actually, just "replete with very 'Ma'". Elena rolled over and took him into her arms. They lay there silently, in the line, holding each other. I heard Max murmur into Elena's neck. "She's really nervous."

I thought of my own mother with longing and fear.

7.40 p.m. I called my parents from my cell phone, and left a message telling them I loved them.

8:00 p.m. We could sense when the show inside began because of the way the molecules shifted in the atmosphere, creating more space. You could smell the excitement, like ozone in the air.

8:30 p.m. His name was Gabriel, which was quite a propos, since he saw himself as a messenger. However, he didn't quite bring us tidings of great joy.

He moved down the line, in a vaguely militaristic way, shouting at different sections of the ever-lengthening line.

"Hi, everybody! My name is Gabriel and I've waited in line now 13 times—" (a little rustle of alarm went up and down the line. We said to one another, "13 times? What?") "So let me tell you how this works! We all wait in line here until 1:30 a.m., which is when they close the park. At that time, the cops come along and kick us out. There's one cop named Officer Foccaccia…" (something like that) "He gets what we're trying to do here and tries to help us maintain the integrity of the line as we march out to Central Park West—"

I got a chill at the words "maintain the integrity of the line". Suddenly Gabriel was no longer the Angel of the Lord to me. He was more like Robespierre.

"But it's up to us to keep the order of the line. So we're gonna send a list down. Just sign it and pass it on. The Delacorte will not honor this list – it's mainly for us to police ourselves. We stay out on Central Park West until 5:30 a.m. when they open up the park again. And then we come back here. There's a girl who works for the Delacorte whose job it is to watch over the line. Her name is Kathleen. If anyone tries to jump the line – and they will – tell Kathleen. They start to give out tickets at 1 p.m. No more than two tickets per person. Do you guys have any questions?"

Up went Elena's hand.

Gabriel turned to her. "Yes?"

Elena asked, her voice filled with incomprehension and scorn, "Why would you wait in line 13 times?"

I do not believe that this was the sort of question Gabriel had in mind.

He said briefly, "My uncle's a congressman" and then moved down the line to repeat his speech to the next group of people, leaving us with more questions than answers. We discussed the meaning of "My uncle's a congressman" endlessly. Was the congressman so selfish that he kept saying to Gabriel, "I've got two tycoons who invested in my campaign, they want to see The Seagull, please wait in line", knowing that this meant 18 hours out of Gabriel's life? Was that any way for an uncle to treat his nephew? And what was the matter with Gabriel that he kept saying yes?

8:40 p.m. A lifelong bond formed between two guys and two girls over to my left, strangers before getting in line. One of the girls looked so much like Chandra Levy that I considered calling the FBI. Or at least approaching her and saying, "A lot of people are very worried about you right now."

The four of them huddled around a lantern while the guys taught the girls a card game. The girls were very slow at picking up the rules. An hour into the game I could still hear what sounded like extremely elementary questions coming from Chandra and her friend.

"So … do two 5's beat three 3's?"

I hate card games and can never retain the rules because I nearly collapse from the psychological boredom but even I could tell that that was a pretty simplistic question coming so late in the game. But the guys just kept teaching the girls the same rules, over and over, by the glow of the lantern, their low laughter floating through the night air.

8:45 p.m. One guy (who had forgotten, as I did, to bring along a miner's helmet) moved his lawn chair out of the line to sit under a streetlight with John Irving's latest. Max and Elena and I murmured to one another, anxiously admiring his boldness. "Is that allowed?" I huddled over The Scarlet Letter, squinting at the pages, tilting the book towards the light, ruining my eyes in the space of one evening.

8:55 p.m. Max started to get restless and irritable. The reality of his situation was hitting him hard.

"What are we DOING?" he demanded of Elena.

Elena said calmly, "We are waiting in line for a great theatrical event, Max."

"Yeah, but … Chekhov? Maybe for Ibsen I'd wait in line all night, but Chekhov? All these people are just here to see the celebrities. And that's it."

"Max, you have absolutely no feeling for the theatre. We are not here to see the celebrities. We are waiting in line to see actors interpret a classic."

I thought, "Yes. Russians understand art."

9:10 p.m. I polished off The Scarlet Letter, closed the book, the wind moving the trees above, and put my head down on my knees. I had tears in my eyes. I wondered what became of Pearl, what her life was like.

9:30 p.m. Parts of the show reached our ears, carried on the wind. Echoes, reverberations of the play occurring 200 feet away. At one point, we could clearly hear Meryl Streep's agonized shriek. An electric current passed down the line, and we all fell silent, listening intently. I heard Chandra murmur seriously, "That was her."

"Her".

I lay down in the dirt, my head on my bumpy knapsack. The dark trees covered the night sky above me. So often in life I anticipate or worry about what is coming next. But right then, in Central Park, the moment was enough. More than enough.

9:35 p.m. People crawled into sleeping bags, settling in for the night, as though this were a normal time for night-owl New Yorkers to go to bed. It was dark and we could not leave the line. What else was there to do? Elena and Max curled up underneath a blanket. I heard her whisper at one point, "Bite my elbow." I did not peek to see if Max complied with her request.

9:50 p.m. My teeth felt fuzzy. I was hungry.

I wanted to leave the line and find a deli over on Lexington. Gabriel had told us that if we left the line for over half an hour our spot might not be there when we return. "The Line does not look kindly upon you if you leave for three hours and return looking rested and freshly showered and still expect to have your place…" Gotcha, Robespierre.

It took me 15 minutes to get up the nerve to leave.

I told Baltimore Dude my plans, just in case. I trusted he would stick up for me and my spot in line (#56) should questions or accusations arise.

10:05 p.m. I hurried through empty shadowy Central Park as though I had nothing to be apprehensive about, and gangs of wilding boys were not waiting to attack me. I was not just a foolish girl walking through Central Park at night; I knew I was part of something much much bigger.

10:08 p.m. I raced to a deli, feverishly grabbing snacks, my eyes on the clock, ants in my pants. "It's been almost ten minutes! Hurry!!" Nature abhors a vacuum and I coveted my place. Others, further back in the Line, were not guaranteed a ticket. It was a crapshoot for them. But I loved my #56 placement. For me, seeing the show the following evening was a done deal.

As I returned, coming over the grassy knoll, I could feel the Line check their watches, monitoring the length of my absence.

11:00 p.m. The audience emerged from the show, strolling by our refugee camp. They were all dressed up, suits, high heels, clean hair, but the night before they were lying in the dirt, too. There was a sort of force field between the two groups. They smiled over encouragingly. But warily, too. They did not approach us. It was like we were under quarantine.

One of the card-playing guys called out to them, "How was the show?"

Answers came back.

"Oh, wonderful!"

"Terrific!"

"Wait until you see her!"

But one guy said flatly, "If you're not too busy to take the day off and wait in line, then the show's okay."

This last comment angered the Line. We only wanted raves. Be positive and enthusiastic or keep your mouth shut, please.

I heard people on our side repeating it to each other, contemptuously. "'If you're not too busy'?? What the hell kind of answer is that??"

Envy radiated from both sides of the force field. The envy from our side came from the obvious fact that we still had 14 hours of waiting ahead of us. It was an eternity. The envy from their side was subtler. We in the Line still had so much ahead of us, so much to look forward to. Their experience was over, on its way to being just a memory.

11:20 p.m. A good friend called my cell phone before going to sleep in her warm bed, to see how I was holding up. Baltimore Dude was snoring lustily beside me, and I held the phone out towards him so that she could hear. I described to her the scene before my eyes. The dark serpent of people weaving through the trees, little rounded tents, bobbing lights, low distant conversation. "I feel like I'm in The Hobbit, you know?"

11:30 p.m. I curled up in the dirt, the wind on my face, and fell asleep.

Friday

1:30 a.m. Movement. Confusion. I opened my eyes and saw people on their feet all around me. Squinting into the flashing lights of Officer Foccaccia's vehicles, completely disoriented but following orders, I got to my feet, lugging my bag of books up onto my shoulder.

The great Migration from Central Park out to the street was soon underway.

Maintaining the Line during our march was paramount. The pace was ruthless. If your shoe became untied, if you dropped something, if you tripped and broke your leg, the Line would flow mercilessly on, never looking back. The Sherpa dropped her shrink-wrapped cushion contraption and we all marched past her unfeelingly.

Well.

This is not strictly true.

I had some feelings.

I had feelings of triumph and glee. I felt like calling out, "Better you than me, sister!"

Within six hours of being in line I did not recognize myself. All compassion for my fellow human creatures dissolved in favor of keeping the Line in order.

Emerging onto Central Park West had its own particular brand of chaos. People were hanging around out there, waiting to join the Line and we in the already-established Line were blatantly not happy to see them. They could easily take advantage of our sleepy pandemonium and start cutting left and right.

We barked at these newcomers. "Stay back! Stay back!" "The end of the line is THAT way." "I SAID STAY BACK." We were bleary-eyed and punchy, racing to re-establish the Line, tearing about, staking territorial claims. I saw people toss sleeping bags down ahead of them and take flying leaps into place. I scored two feet on a park bench. Chandra and her friend feverishly erected a tent on the sidewalk. The two guys they had befriended joined them inside. As though they had known each other all their lives. I wondered about the sexual politics of the situation. Baltimore Dude, a successful man with a good job, curled up on the cobblestones surrounded by cigarette butts. Elena put her yoga mat down on the sidewalk and lay on her back. Max took up the rest of the bench with me.

During the flurry of activity, Max glanced up and down the line, taking it all in, transfixed, and then shook himself, saying, "I forgot for a second what we all were doing here."

1:55 a.m. Unbelievably, I was still #56 after all that mayhem. Someone actually went up to the front once everyone had settled down, and counted back, obsessively.

2 a.m. Max glanced down at Elena, stretched out in solitary state on the sidewalk, her hair fanning out, arms folded over her chest like a mummy. He contemplated her for a while and then said, "Right now you look just like you looked the day I fell in love with you."

After 2 Busses lumbered by with eerie lit-up interiors, like an Edward Hopper on wheels, all the people inside staring out at the scene in disbelief.

A cab drove by and I heard a guy scream from the back seat, triumphantly, "I SAW IT!!" I don't think he meant the production, I think he meant the phenomenon of the Line. The Line had been written up in the New York Times, and he had "seen it". Like aurora borealis. Or Snuffleupagus. But of course I cannot be sure of what he actually meant because I never got to ask him about it.

After 2 It did not take the Line long to discern that this was the evening for Upper West Siders to toss their furniture out onto the sidewalk. A frantic scavenger hunt began, people dashing up and down 81st and 82nd, lugging the discarded mattresses back to the Line. Mattresses, which had just that day been up in some penthouse, were now comforting the Seagull squatters a block away.

Max dragged back a single mattress for him and Elena to share, which was a relief for me. It had seemed odd to me to see Max way up on the bench with Elena way down on the pavement. There was something very wrong about all that empty space between them.

2:30 a.m. or so The newcomers looked crestfallen when they emerged from the subway station outside the Museum of Natural History and saw the sprawling tent-city which stretched into the distance. They thought they were so on top of things, so radical, setting out to get in line at 2 a.m., but they were unaware that there were throngs of people in NYC crazy enough to grab a spot in line at 7 p.m. One cute little couple slowly walked by us, holding bedrolls, making their way around Chandra's tent, glancing down at Elena and Max on their mattress. They did not say a word as they passed us, but as they moved on I heard the guy murmur to the girl, "We're never gonna get tickets. These people are hardcore."

3 a.m. or so The mugginess of the day disappeared, and a chilly wind blew over us. My goal was to find a position on the bench where none of my skin touched the air. This became an interesting project for me and took up quite a bit of time. I must have looked like a Kama Sutra for When You're By Yourself video. Eventually I slept. Sort of.

Sometime after that I opened my eyes for no apparent reason. The Line slept. Everything was quiet and dark and chilly. The windows of the penthouse apartments lining CPW stared down on us darkly. I wondered what we looked like from up there. Occasional empty cabs floated up the avenue aimlessly.

I looked down at Max and Elena, curled up on their bare mattress, spooning, their legs intertwined, arms wrapped around each other. In full view. Beautiful. Simple. They were a haiku made manifest, on the pavement.

Sleepily, I thought of Michael, one of my ex-boyfriends. My favorite ex-boyfriend. He would have been a perfect partner for an adventure such as this. I lay there, shivering, twisted up like a pretzel, images of him drifting by. Suddenly, even though our relationship was long buried, I missed him intensely. It seemed wrong that I had lost track of him so completely. I have no idea where he is right now, if he is alive or dead, happy or not. I hate that: how some people are lost, and disappear forever.

5:30 a.m. The Return of Officer Foccaccia.

The world was grey. The grey dawn light seeped into the buildings, the trees, the grass, and our sleepy skin. We got ourselves together and began the surreal procession back through the misty deserted park. We walked calmly and silently in single file, sleeping bags draped over shoulders, mattresses hoisted over heads like canoes. This march had none of the cutthroat anxiety of the first one. How easily one grows accustomed to insanity. How quickly the absurd becomes mundane.

Camps were re-erected in all of two seconds. People fell back asleep instantly.

7:15 a.m. Morning in Central Park. Normal New Yorkers slowed down as they passed by us, dogs on the leash, staring at us blatantly, wondering what the hell we were doing. The Line was still asleep, for the most part, so we must have looked a bit like Jonestown.

We, by that point, had been in line for so long that our normal everyday lives had completely disappeared. We had taken time off work, gotten babysitters, cancelled plans. It was incredible to us that there were people on the planet who were NOT in line and who had no desire to get in line.

Who are these freaks? we thought, as we lay on our stolen mattresses and curled up in the dirt, brushing our teeth in public. What is the MATTER with them?

8:30 a.m. One of the members of the line began to stretch. Endlessly. This was not your basic morning knee-bend. She stretched as though she were about to randomly run a marathon and be back in time so she wouldn't lose her place. She flipped herself over a park bench and did crunches. She used trees in innovative ways. She did dance-y runs up and down the path in front of us, her long grey hair billowing. Perhaps she had taken a break from her Navy SEAL training to join the line. I tried to read Catch 22 but she kept pulling focus. I heard Chandra say to her friend, "I wish she'd stop. She's stressing me out."

9:10 a.m. Kathleen from the Delacorte stalked up and down the line, screaming at us, letting us know what was going to happen and when. Gabriel had done the same thing the night before and the Line, as a whole, had bristled with resentment. Who does he think he is? Who elected him Lord of the Line? Who gives a damn that his uncle is a congressman? But our night out in the open had beaten us down a bit. We accepted autocracy meekly and gladly now. People waiting in line, confused, bored, ambitious, cling to the one who promises to organize them. The Line yearned for a strong hand after a time of chaos and hardship. Many incomprehensible regimes from history began to make sense to me.

10:30 a.m. "Would you like to sign our petition?" "Want to join this mailing list?" "Here's a petition – you want to sign?" Representatives of every boneheaded cause in New York moved up and down the line. Or at least the causes seemed boneheaded to me on three hours sleep. By the time the 5th or 6th person came down the line asking us to support turning all of the East Village into some matriarchal society of grass huts, we categorically refused to sign. Please stop taking advantage of us because you know we cannot get away from you.

10:40 a.m. A festival of bonding around me. The card players finalized plans to get together again in their normal lives, outside the Line. Strangers found obscure things in common. Two men, one from Norway and one from Mexico, who had met only because they sat next to each other, struck up a chess game. A deep emotional bond clearly had formed between them. I gave my email address to at least five people. I overheard one man say to a woman he had just met in the Line, "Well, send me your resume. I can pass it on to HR."

11:10 a.m. My cell phone rang. Tearing myself away from Catch 22, I answered.

"Hello?"

I heard my friend Rich say, "How do you like your coffee?"

11:45 a.m. Rich appeared, carrying a picnic basket which contained two steaming thermoses of hot coffee, and two bagels with cream cheese. He sauntered up, grinning, and tossed a New York Times into my lap. We chowed on bagels and I talked his head off. I beamed upon him, thinking, like the song says, that I "must have done something good" to have such a one as he in my life.

12:10 p.m. As Rich was about to leave, a petitioner approached, her smile tentative from rejection. "Hi … excuse me … we're trying to get cars banned from Central Park. Would you like to sign our petition?"

Elena said, kindly but firmly, "I don't think that will ever happen."

The woman's smile looked now like a shriek of rage. "I was there when they took down the Berlin Wall and people thought that would never happen either."

Rich said, "But Central Park was built for cars to be able to go through it."

A guy sitting to our right chimed in, "I think we have more to fear from the roller bladers in Central Park. One of them plowed into me once."

A tense silence fell, and No-Car woman snapped, "Okay, fine. So I guess you guys don't want to sign" and stalked off.

Rich and I marveled at the ludicrous equation of no cars in Central Park to the Berlin damn Wall coming down. What are you SAYING, woman?

"Only a truly privileged person would make a comparison like that," I said with gusto, gulping down the last of my coffee, filthy, happy, righteous. (And privileged myself.)

12:30 p.m. Kathleen ordered us around like Lucy Van Pelt. "Okay, everybody! Stand up! Make a single line! Tickets are handed out starting at 1 p.m." We obeyed, packing up our sprawling selves, sucking our meanderings into a single-line formation. We felt threatened by the people wandering around on our outskirts like hyenas, eyeing us greedily, waiting for us to look the other way so that they could leap into the line. We huddled together, closing up the vulnerable spaces between us.

12:40 p.m. Baltimore Dude and I had a conversation with only three elements to it:

1. One of us would state the title of one of Meryl Streep's films.
2. Both of us would make some sort of brief subjective exclamation.
3. The other would vehemently list another one of her films.

And so on. It went on forever.

"Silkwood! Amazing!"

"Oh! Totally! And Sophie's Choice! Come ON!"

"Yes! And how about French Lieutenant's Woman? Gorgeous!"

"Oh my God. And Postcards From the Fucking Edge. Hilarious!"

"Brilliant! And don't forget Kramer vs. Kramer—"

"My GOD…"

What can I say. We had had three hours of sleep in the dirt. We did the best we could.

12:50 p.m. Baltimore Dude told me that he had just had spinal surgery and was missing his morphine. He blatantly confessed, "Morphine is great for the pain, but it makes it really hard to go to the bathroom." There was a pause. He went on, clarifying the finer points for me: "Number One and Number Two."

I did not find it at all odd that a stranger would confess this to me, or that an adult would say the words "Number Two" right to my face. I was completely sympathetic and horrified for him. "Wow. No Number Two, either? That sounds terrible!"

"Oh, it is! It is!"

12:52 p.m. The inevitable occurred. Someone "cut". It was far back in the line and word of it flashed up to us in front at the speed of light.

"Someone cut—"

"What? What?"

"Where?"

"Wait – what? Someone cut?"

"Who cut? Who cut?"

We craned our necks to see "the cutter", all of us straining out of the line diagonally, surging with blood lust. Someone, a grown man, called out at the top of his lungs, "KATHLEEN! SOMEONE CUT!" His face was in a frenzy of rage. We applauded him. Tattle-tales get what they want out of life.

Kathleen catapulted into action, and charged down the path toward the "cutter". We cheered ferociously, as though we were at the Coliseum.

"You GO, Kathleen!"

"You get him, Kathleen!"

She was a tiny girl for a gladiator, wearing plastic barrettes and high-top sneakers, but she was our defender because we could not defend ourselves. We loved her.

The entire line had turned away from the Delacorte to watch Kathleen's blazing trail. Suddenly Max exclaimed, in a tone of horrified realization, "It's a diversionary tactic! Now the front of the line is undefended!" Alarmed, we whirled around to face the Delacorte again. Max kept talking, pumping up our paranoia: "It's a classic flank maneuver! This is how Napoleon won the battle at Lodi!"

1:15 p.m. The next thing I knew my dirty little fingers clutched two free purple tickets.

1:20 p.m. Baltimore Dude and I had a happy beaming moment of parting, saying, "I'll look for you tonight." I floated down the path, triumphant, in my filthy baggy overalls, my hair sleep-spiked around my face. All around me I saw people saying goodbye to the new friends they had made in line.

"I'll see you tonight."

"I'll see you tonight."

We looked forward to seeing one another again.

7:00 p.m. I ran into Elena outside the Delacorte in the midst of the teeming hoard, while waiting for my sister Siobhan. Elena and I greeted one another with the affection of old friends. Her green eye shadow swooped upwards, like Cleopatra. Over to our right I could see the line burgeoning on, folks getting ready to spend their second night out in Central Park.

7:50 p.m. Once we were inside the theatre, Siobhan eventually stopped asking, "How do you know that person?" I recognized almost everyone there from the Line. I heard a woman say a few rows back, "It's so funny seeing everyone look so nice now. The last time I saw these people, they were all so grubby."

I saw the Sherpa. I almost didn't recognize her without all the gear strapped to her back. Now that she was out of the line she seemed like a perfectly nice normal woman. Her mission was accomplished and she was in HER seat. At long last. Having a seat of one’s own was what each of us wanted, after all.

The Seagull A couple of times during the show, when we all would laugh or clap, my consciousness would slip itself up over the wall and peer down on the Tolkien landscape below. I could see the twisting line, the gnomes crumpled in the dirt, pricking up their ears, keeping hope alive in their Hobbit hearts. I remembered when we heard Meryl Streep's voice flying out over us, and how exciting it was. Hearing her voice helped us to endure, to hang on, because at the end of the 18 hours, at the end of the line, there would be her.

We had waited long hours, we had peed in the bushes, we had no sleep. All for them. In return, they bombarded us with their gifts. We were a raucous vocal entranced audience, letting them know at every second how we felt about them. It was a two-way current of love and appreciation, the likes of which I have rarely experienced in the theatre.

At some point during the ovations, I burst spontaneously into sobs. I cannot explain why I was crying except to say that suddenly I was overwhelmed with the "too much-ness" of everything.

11:00 p.m. Siobhan and I staggered down the path, not speaking. I glanced over and saw the lanterns, the tents, the dark forms on the ground. The Line went on, but it was a different Line now. Not my Line. I felt a little bit lonely for my Line. I wondered how Max liked the show. If he became reconciled to Chekhov, and forgave the seagull for not being a wild duck.

11:03 p.m. A couple charged up to us, holding hands, smiling excitedly. I noticed the sleeping bags under their arms. The guy demanded, "Is it worth it?"

For a brief moment I hesitated, for the production was not without its flaws.

But as I took in the happy open-faced couple, I remembered how angered we all were the night before at the "If you're not too busy to wait in line, it's okay" comment. So I said, smiling, "Oh, yeah. It is totally worth it." I spoke the truth. It was worth every second.

In my own dear bed that night, my final thought was not of Meryl Streep or Kevin Kline or Anton Chekhov. My final thought before drifting off was of Max's mother. I wondered how her surgery went and I hoped that she was all right. I thought of Max and Elena, too. I hoped that all was well with them, and that all would continue to be well.

I am sure ...

... we are all well aware of a certain celebrity engagement that has just been announced.

His comment? ""Today is a magnificent day for me, I'm engaged to a magnificent woman.... The Eiffel Tower is magnificent, her new movie is magnificent, and the poop I took this morning was beyond magnificent. Magnifcent magnificent day!"

My comment?

FINALLY they're engaged. Damn, I thought he would NEVER pop the question.

Sheesh!

They were so back-and-forth and up-and-down for so long ... I was getting frustrated. It was like J-Lo and Ben Affleck all over again. Like: PLEASE. MAKE UP YOUR MINDS ALREADY. ENOUGH with the WAFFLING.

No but seriously: the whole thing is creepy and ultimately very entertaining to watch. Because it's not happening to me personally.

Also, I love this comment from him:

"We haven't discussed that — one step at a time," he said. "Let's see. We're not sure."

One step at a time??? bwhahahahahahaha There were STEPS involved here?

1st step. Call the publicists of 5 upcoming starlets.
2nd step. Set up meeting with 5 upcoming starlets.
3rd step. Make a choice. FAST. I've got a movie coming out.
4th step. Gross everybody out with red-carpet make-outs.
5th step. Immediately enroll her in Scientology classes so she can clear out her BTs.
6th step. Attack Oprah.
7th step. Go all psycho on Access Hollywood.
8th step. Steal Christian Bale's spotlight.
9th step. Discover the word "magnificent".

So ridiculous to talk about "one step at a time" as though it's a normal romance as opposed to an 8-week crash course in brainwashing, getting "clear", and publicity hogging.

An O'Malley announcement

My cousin Mike, long-time star of the CBS sitcom Yes Dear, brother of Liam (my resident Kinks expert), father of two, also a sometime commenter here (how's that for a resume) is in the movie Perfect Man, which just opened - it stars Hillary Duff and Heather Locklear. Needless to say, I MUST see it. He was also in 28 Days, and I remember going to see that in some random theatre on 23rd Street with my brother, and we had such a fun time ... sitting there, watching our cousin up on the big screen.

What is especially awesome about this whole Perfect Man thing is that the lukewarm New York Times review closes with this paragraph:

The wittiest character, though, isn't Mr. Kressley's worn-out stereotype but Jean's co-worker Lenny Horton (Mike O'Malley), a weepy lug obsessed with the band Styx who falls head over heels for his vanilla yogurt dream girl the moment he lays on eyes on her. Even after he screeches "Lady" under her window, Jean is so desperate for a husband that she refuses to rule him out as a possibility. You can't get more desperate than that.

GO, MIKE!

Diary Friday

I am about to embarrass not only myself but all of my friends from high school who read this blog.

Every junior class in our high school had to put on a production, a variety show if you will, called "SK Pades". (My town's initials were "SK"). SK Pades is a tradition. It is a HUGE deal. There are faculty advisors for the show, of course - but other than that: it is completely student-run. Students come up with the theme, the skits, the order, who does what ... Usually, a lot of the skits have to do with impersonating different teachers, and - most importantly - impersonating members of the senior class. It's a good-natured (hopefully) night of making fun of EVERYONE. It is a wonderful experience for a bunch of 16 year old self-involved kids, actually. You learn leadership, organization, compromise ... also how to get OVER yourself ... Because everyone in the class is involved in it - there are no clicques - the most unpopular kid in the class is also involved. The crazy pecking order diminishes a little bit. So what ended up happening (at least with our year) is that with all of our differences, and adolescent problems, and hatreds, and rivalries ... we came together, we had meetings, we had rehearsals ... and we bonded as a group. It was amazing. The geeky kids from the AV Club were suddenly TOTALLY important. The "band geeks" were also suddenly TOTALLY important. Hierarchies shifted, and everyone was appreciated. I may be romanticizing this ... and there were probably those back then who felt left out. High school is rough, man. I had a terrific core group of friends who are still my friends, but I wasn't in the "popular" crowd ... and I had had an awful time in junior high school, when I was actively "unpopular". So I had a complex about being disliked and judged. I was very sensitive about it, as this long-ass entry will reveal.

SK Pades is put on for two nights only. The entire school comes. The entire class' families are in attendance. And everyone compares the current year's SK Pades to the year before. It is inevitable.

The SK Pades of the junior class 2 years before ours remains legendary to this day. (I may be exaggerating, but I don't think so.) Anyone who saw it could never forget it. It was like a professional Saturday Night Live evening. Brilliant. So we were very aware of the competition and everyone worked their asses off to do a good show.

Here is my ranting and raving about the SK Pades. There are many many many names listed here. "so and so said this, and then so and so said that ..." Meanwhile: my unrequited invisible love affair with "David" continued. Full throttle. I was the only one who was aware of it (I mean, besides my friends), but that didn't make it any less intense.

MARCH

Diary, this shall be a very very long entry. I'm in the mood now to write it all down to the minutest detail. [Lucky us.] SK Pades is over. But I realize right now: This, so far, has been the peak of my high school years. This is the best I have ever felt. I feel loved, like I belong - My class -- Diary, I love them all for who they are. And they love me!

Okay. I'll tell you all. I am on such an enormous high. My senior year is gonna be GREAT. Our class has really pulled together. Everyone is so nice, so wonderful. OH BROTHER, I LOVE EVERYONE!

All right.

After work on Friday, I went to the junior high. [SK Pades was held in the auditorium/cafeteria in the junior high since my high school DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A PROPER THEATRE. It does now, but it didn't then.] I wasn't psyched yet. It hadn't hit me yet. During all the rehearsal though, I've felt it all coming together. It's been great. Dress rehearsal took about 4 hours and was really disorganized, but on Friday, as everyone started getting ready, I felt myself start to tingle. Not wiht nervousness but with anticipation. I knew that for Saturday night I would be a wreck! [Saturday night was, per tradition, when the entire senior class came to see, to compare, to judge, and sometimes to heckle. Fights have broken out in years past between the class performing on stage and the class sitting in the audience. You know. Drama.] Buzzy, Rick, Dave, Jayne - I didn't even want to talk about it. Nick and Eric, too!

Putting on makeup was fun. I never wear makeup anyway, so it was neat to overdo it. I had on so much and this bright purple lipstick, and slowly, it started to hit me. This is our SK Pades! Our class!! I remember being a freshman and gaping at Travis, Matt, Josh Lott ... SK Pades was a foreign concept then. And now: it's happening. It's so unreal how everything rushes by so fast. All of us just kept looking at each other and saying, "Can you believe SK Pades is really here?"

It was hysterical putting makeup on the boys. Absolutely hysterical. At about 7:00, someone was trying to get Bill Moclair to sit down and get makeup on - he was saying, "No. I don't want to put it on until the moment when I absolutely have to." All the big football players checking out their properly-applied foundation in the mirror. It was so endearing. Also endearing was all those same guys not being afraid to be up on stage and look silly. I felt such a togetherness with everybody, you wouldn't believe. I never thought our class could be so human.

As it grew closer to 8, everyone started getting really psyched. Tension was building and it was a full house. We all were in costume and running around. Ms. Force and Lori gave us all pep talks, which we ended with screams and hugs and then we all tore off to go backstage.

The show started. I could not believe it. The dress rehearsal was awful, and honest to God, our Friday night show was FLAWLESS! It went so smoothly and everyone was great - our class rose to the occasion. YIPPEE! It was so incredibly fun I can't even describe it to you! We all were in a state of shock and JOY. It was great how everyone cooperated. Like, there was a skit onstage once, and the kids who were in the next skit (the Argyle skit) were practicing around the corner and they were too loud, so I came out into the hall and hissed to Keith who was down the hall, "Keith ... tell them to be quiet ..." And he nodded and whispered, "Hey you guys ... keep it down ..." The communication. Everyone was helping out, changing sets, saying "Good luck" to each other.

My song was the all-time high for me, personally. [I sang the Tom Lehrer song "So Long, Mom". I dressed in head to toe fatigues, and carried an American flag.] It went really excellent. They laughed in all the right parts, and were really enthusiastic. I had a lot of fun. It's hard being up onstage alone knowing that backstage everyone else is just sitting around, listening to you. But after, when I came dancing off, brandishing my flag, everyone (not just my friends) were saying, "Good job ... good job ..." I BELONG. [See what I mean? I had a bit of a complex.]

Andy really cares. [Andy who? Oh you know. The spitball Valentine boy.] He's the perfect class president. He cares about people, and their feelings. In the skit with all the football players, he plays Mr. James (the coach) - and he was perfect. But he had one line that really cut down on Tommy J. (played by Bill Moclair), and he didn't say the line. When they came off stage, Bill asked him, "Why didn't you say it?" And Andy said, "Cause his parents are in the audience. I don't want to do that to him." My heart just ached. He has always been that kind of guy. I have known him, honestly, forever. From 6th to 8th grade, I was madly and passionately in love with him. I'm not anymore but there is a very special friendship there that I love. We have been friends since kindergarten. So weird. He is special. So is Keith M.

Then we ALL crowded on stage for the finale, call clutching streamers, and we sang our song. [Part of the tradition is that every SK Pades ends with the entire class on stage, singing a song that everyone has agreed upon will be "the song" of the class. Ours was the theme song from "Cheers". "Where everybody knows your name..." I remember there was a big controversy - and the administration didn't want to let us have that song, because it referred to a bar ... but somehow, we over-ruled them.] Everyone had their arms around each other. It almost brought tears to my eyes (of course!) We ended with throwing up mounds of confetti and releasing balloons and screaming.

Right before we went on for the finale I was talking to David Grey - another terrific kid - and I was saying, "I can't believe we pulled this off so perfectly!" And he said, "Yeah, I know. I was really worried last night." Before the show, while Ms. Force was talking, he was standing next to me, bouncing up and down. I asked him if he was nervous, and he nodded vigorously in time with his bouncing. A lot of boys were trying to act cool and over-it, and couldn't just admit to being nervous. Also, it was just so funny - seeing him with makeup on his face.

I went home sailing. Success. I loved everybody and myself and SK Pades and my friends. We really feel like a class now. Crissy Judge said beforehand, "Even if this isn't the best show in the world, if it unites the class it'll be worth it." [If I recall correctly, she won "Most School Spirit" the next year. Easy to see why.] It has made us a class, and is it worth it! I have made so many friends with people I used to consider snobs and grubs. [Uhm ... "grubs", Sheila? Do you include youself in the "snobby" category, because I really think you should.]

Then the next night. I was more nervous. I mean, I felt sick to my stomach. Kate kept saying, "I don't want to discuss who's going to be in the audience." Okay -- DAVIDE [the dude I loved, a senior], Nick, Eric, Buzzy [honest to God, Buzzy? Who the hell is Buzzy? Beth - do you remember?] Rick, Matt, Trav, and JAN GRANT!! (my director for 6 years) [Jan Grant deserves her own post.] I had to be fabulous for her! When Betsy told me Jan was coming, I almost fainted. Including the entire critical senior class out there that always jumps on the chance to put us down. I was really worried about that. But most of all, I felt very faint just knowing that Dave’s eyes would be on me. When there was applause, his hands would be part of it. When I said that, Kate cried, “Oh, Sheila, I never thought of that! What a terrible thing to think!” [I would think it would be even more terrible if they DIDN’T clap … but this is just with decades of perspective.] I got ready in a daze. David was going to be watching me. You can’t imagine what it felt like waiting for that. I was nervous, but in a weird way. I mean, don’t get the wrong idea – but I knew he’d think I was okay – but I felt positively jittery about it. The waiting was the worst. I mean, by 7:30, I knew he was out there. Ohmygod. I put on makeup with my heart pounding. There were all these rumors going around that the seniors were planning to run up on the stage and ruin it, but Mr. Klaiman talked to them (lectured) and if they tried anything like that, their Prom would be taken away. I can’t imagine Dave running up there on the stage to ruin our show. God, the whole class was already bracing themselves for cracks during the show. The seniors can be obnoxious jerks (some of them).

We had another pep talk, where they told us not to relax or get cocky – and to stay above the seniors – even if they heckled. If they make fun of us, ignore them. Keep going. We all screamed again, and that felt GOOD. My heart was fluttering. We were all screaming, “Good luck” at each other. I bounded down the hall wishing I could scream some more to release some energy. I was talking to Anne as we went down the hall, and suddenly she nudged me, “Sheila – look –“ I turned around and there HE WAS going into the bathroom. All the guys were hailing him: “DaVID, DaVID …” He was smiling as he went into the bathroom. He didn't look malicious at all. [Huh?? This made me laugh out loud. I guess we really did take the threat of senior-sabotage seriously - and so I was surprised that David wasn't skulking around backstage, cackling like Iago ... too funny. "He didn't look malicious..."] He looked like Dave, the GUY I LOVE! [Who else would he look like?] I couldn't talk to him though because he disappeared into the bathroom. Feeling so excited I almost couldn't contain myself - feeling my heart suspended on a string - I leaped backstage FULL OF LOVE FOR DAVID. [Good grief.]

I got so excited I had to move around, so I went out to get a drink from the bubbler. I suppose i did it also on the slim chance that we might cross paths. (In all honesty, Diary, that was the only reason I went out to get a drink from the bubbler.) [HAHAHAHA] So just as I came out of the backstage door, he came out of the bathroom door. We saw each other and he smiled at me so kindly, so fondly. I stopped, smiled back. That smile -- it was the reallest smile I've ever seen on his face. He looked really and honestly thrilled and happy to see me. [One quick word, from the retrospect of many years: Although I was way off base in having this imaginary love affair with him, and I was headed for MAJOR disappointment because of that ... he really was a nice person. I wasn't THAT off base. He was a good guy.] He came over to me and said really sincerely, "Good luck tonight, Sheila. I really mean it. I am looking forward to it." And Diary, he wasn't like, "Hey, good luck, break a leg!", being all excited - No. He was very serious. I mean, he was smiling, but he really meant it. I smiled, said, "Thanks" really soft voice - and he headed off, smiling over his shoulder at me. HE'S SO TALL. [hahahaha Random outburst.] I just stood there watching him go off. Then I launched into a mad ballet routine, by myself in the hallway. [HAHAHAHA]

Kate came backstage, and I hissed to her, "HE SPOKE TO ME." She hissed back, "WHAT?" But then the show started.

The first number was a bunch of us dancing around on the stage [I believe we danced to "All Night Long" by Lionel Richie...], I felt so good. But also weird. Knowing that he was out there, his eyes were on me. But I really got into it, wanting to do my best.

Then during our Bloom County skit, things started happening. I had to rattle off all of Binkley's fears and frustrations -- a long list of words beginning with "F" -- factoring, faculty, fallout, females, fire, fig newtons, fillet-o-fish, fist fights, fission reactions, flab, flame throwers, flow charts, flouride treatments, flying buttresses, French, fractions, fungus, fusion, and the future. Well, some dopey old person said something in the audience that I assume was adding one more F word to the list - and then this little group of people burst out roaring, purposefully laughing really exaggeratedly and loudly - to take attention away from us, to distract me ... but I kept going, even louder - I didn't even smile, or get flustered.

There was one group of senior girls who were so mean. Cunts. The senior boys weren't mean at all - they were really supportive. All the senior football players - who we made fun of in skit after skit after skit - they just LOVED it. They were howling and high-fiving each other. They can take it. It was all good-natured jabbing, they all do it anyway. But the girls. So immature. Bitches. They're just jealous because they can't get up onstage and do anything worthwhile. They never do anything without their friends. They dress alike. They snicker as I walk by in the cafeteria. I wish them DEAD. They're afraid. While Soccore was singing Flashdance (sorry, but she is better than irene Cara - when I first heard her sing, the goosebumps rose on my arm. It's a beautiful voice.) - Anyway, she messed up once, maybe her voice cracked - and that one group of girls all raised their arms up high and flipped Soccore off. I didn't see it - neither did Soccore, thank God. Why did they want to ruin it for us? Because they're cunts, that's why. [Sorry everyone. Fierce language from a 16 year old. But it's appropriate in this case. These girls were the "mean girls" of SK.] The joking between seniors and juniors is really the base of the show, but what they did was just plain old mean and stupid.

I was starting to be afraid about what they would do to me during my song. I was really afraid they would ... do something. What if they laughed at me, in front of Dave ... and JAN! (She sent us all a bouquet of flowers, by the way. I love that woman.) So I went out there in my army clothes, I picked up my mike ... already I could hear some snickers from that group of cunts. I gritted my teeth, I ignored them, and I started my song. I know in my heart that more that 3/4 of the place loved me, and that's who I sang to. Mr. and Mrs. W., Jayne, Jan, Buzzy, [I swear to God, if I say "Buzzy" one more time ... WHO IS BUZZY AND WHY WAS HE/SHE SO IMPORTANT?] Trav, Davide ... but that little group of girls - they were right in the front row, so that is all I remember. People came up to me afterwards telling me they liked it, but my lastingimpression was the sarcastic snickers from the Bitch Brigade. At one point, as I sang, I became convinced my fly was down so I tried to subtly check it. Difficult to do when you are holding a mike and an American flag. I don't know what they were laughing at, but I did not have ANY fun up there. My spirit started to sag in the middle of it. I could feel it happen. They were getting to me. I was giving up. But then I remembered: I AM ON STAGE. I am ALONE. DAVE is watching. Also: I am GOOD. They can fuck off. So I kept going, and I sang like crazy. I shouldn't have let that little group of losers get me down, because at the end I got a few whistles, and cheers - clapping - but I ran off stage, and I just felt humilitaed.

I was up there alone. Totally vulnerable - and exposed. I hated that feeling. I know it must seem like I am the biggest crybaby, but I came back stage and I did have tears in my eyes. It's not fair. What were they laughing at??? Michele Laurent (thank God for her) came over to me and said, "Hon, what's wrong?" I told her and she hugged me for the longest time. I really needed that right then. Andy ran by, stopped, ruffled my hair and said, "That was perfect, Sheila." Lori - I have always despised her - but she came running up to me and said, "Those bitches don't have the guts to do what you do. Forget about them." Now I love Lori. People stuck up for me. We became one unit. A class. We stuck together.

I was leaning up against a locker, in between skits, and Keith came over to me, cupped my face in his hands, and said, "Whatsa mattah? You are so cute." (That's a line in the show: "You're cute!") It cheered me up. That group of girls in the front row were making fun of everything and everybody, so we all just bonded together against them. And for the first time, I really felt like a part of this class.

We pulled off the show, and it was terrific. They loved me, Betsy, Kate, and J. doing "We got the beat". We dressed up like Go-Gos and danced up the stairs onto the stage singing, "See the people walkin' down the street ... Fall in line watchin' all the feet - they don't know where they want to go but they're walkin' in time ...We got the beat, we got the beat YEAH" And right there, Mere peeked her head out in the middle of the curtain, and said, just like the lady in the commercial, "Where's the beets??" And then, from behind our backs, we took out enormous beets, and kept singing, using the BEETS as our microphones. People howled.

You know, I'm sort of glad (not glad) that there were a few jerks in the audience because everyone just supported each other and we kept going. We did not let them break us down. Everyone just became so human. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I BELIEVE THIS: I'm with Anne Frank - I believe that humans, by nature, are good. They are.

After our crazy finale, and 5,000,000 sets of screams and opening and closing the curtain, we went out front. The first person I saw was Jayne. We were screaming and hugging - then Dolores and I did - and Mr. and Mrs. W came over beaming - Mrs. W. was practically crying. I was just standing there looking around when I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around and there was Jan Grant. I screeched and we threw our arms around each other. Oh, she was so proud! She's beautiful! I love her! I am so very glad she came. She's the one who started me off, put the performing bug in me. A while later, Trav came over to me, gave me a hug. He looks great. New haircut, all chopped up. "I did it myself." "Oh really? I never would have guessed." Then he said, "Hey, you really were good singing Flashdance." He said that to everyone. Kate came over, he said it to her. Beth came over, he said it to her, Mrs. W came over, he said it to her.

Suddenly, I turned and saw through the crowd Mere - and tears were streaming down her cheeks. In the 5 years I've known her, I have never seen her cry like that. Those tears just shook me. I went over to her and just said, "Mere!" She was sobbing. She put her arms around me and clutched on to me, so I clutched her back - even though I didn't know why. We hugged for about a minute. I'm not kidding. Tears started streaming down my face, too, hearing her crying into my shoulder. Finally, she told me: It was Jan. Jan came running up to Mere, beaming, bursting with pride and excitement - Mere said she had turned around, saw Jan, and practically keeled over. We haven't seen Jan in millions of years, so it just HIT Mere in the gut, seeing her. Seeing how proud she was of us.

And - here is the high point of my night. I mean, of my LIFE. [What do you wanna bet it has to do with Dave?] Diary, I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS. This whole time I was very aware of big tall Dave milling around (could it be a coincidence that he was always somewhere near me?) [Hm, Sheila, that's a tough question. Let me ponder it. Uhm, here's the answer: YES. It is always a coincidence. Carry on.]

I saw Buzzy [oh for Christ's sake, again with the Buzzy] and I ran over to hug him. I was still hoping that Dave might say Hi or something. WELL, I finally was alone - just standing there - and he was just wandering around, and he stopped, and our eyes met. [Cue music] Usually, when I meet eyes with someone, I smile or say, "Hello", whatever - Anyways, he didn't just pass by. He smiled and said, (I quote this word for word) "That was good when you sang." Oh Diary, I want to cry. THEN - suddenly - he put his arms around me and hugged me. [I know I'm making fun of myself and everything, but this whole thing is kind of disturbing to read. Is it just me, or do I come off as completely fragile? I don't know. I sound pretty break-able to me. Like: a hug is SUCH an earth-shattering event. Onward...]

The hug lasted about a second ... (but the pause between this sentence and the last one lasted about 15 minutes) ... but it was enough time for me to hug him back. It felt very quick and awkward. I couldn't even speak. That is literally the most monumental of my entire life.

Then I walked off [monumental moment over, I suppose] saw Kate and J, and we all leaped at each other, hugging, and screaming. I told them about Dave hugging me. I've always said that telling them stuff is half the fun, and it is. Was. We all just were hugging, and jumping up and down.

I ran back to the dressing room - I can't remember being in this good a mood ever.

After the audience left, our whole class settled down to eat the 20 pizzas we sent out for, and the 20 cases of soda we bought. As we ate, we all pulled up chairs to watch the video tape of our performance.

Mrs. Aaronson said in her pep talk, "You started rehearsals for SK Pades as juniors, and you are coming out of this a class."

We watched the tape, and we just cheered for each other. Every single skit in the show received cheers, applaus - it was heaven, sitting around, passing around pizzas. When my song came on, and the spotlight picked me up, Crissy Judge sat up and cried, "Oh goody, this is great." Everyone knew I had been mad at those bitches - so ... I thank God for human beings. I thank Him for my old friends, surely, but also the new ones I've just made. I sat there, and we all watched the film of me singing- and everyone laughed at the funny parts - and at the end - they all clapped for me - for SO LONG. Everyone just started cheering. And Keith stood up, clapping and smiling at me - John Long was clapping, smiling at me, saying, "Really good, Sheila." Michele Laurent was jumping up at down ... for about 15 seconds, the whole class was about me. I can't tell you how moved I was. I saw Kate's smile across the room. I saw Andy grinning over at me, clapping ... I will never ever forget what that felt like. Ever.

After, when we were all getting ready to go, I went over to Michele and said, "You're a good kid." We squeezed each other tight.

It feels so good to discover so many wonderful people in the world in just a WEEK.

I went home. It was 1:30 a.m. No one was up. I sat at the dining room table, put my head down in my arms, and thanked God for them all. All of them. I just listed the names of every single person in my class ... and thanked God for them.

I'm still high! I've been writing all day, and I'm still psyched!!

The difficulty of playing Chekhov

Anyone who's ever acted in a Chekhov play ... or seen a Chekhov play ... or worked on a Chekhovian monologue ... or did a scene from a Chekhov play in scene study ... KNOWS how difficult he is.

When it's done right? There is nothing better. Chekhov is absolutely glorious.

When it's done badly? You twitch in your seat, wondering: "Why the hell is this playwright so hard to do???"

I saw The Seagull in Central Park ... starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marcia Gay Harden ... directed by Mike Nichols ... and it was one of the most satisfying and wonderful theatrical experiences I have ever had. (One of the reasons was that I slept overnight ON THE GROUND in Central Park with hundreds of other people, in order to get tickets. Uh-huh. I curled up in the dirt for Chekhov.) But what I loved about the play was how FUNNY it was. Meryl Streep got a laugh on every line. But ... with no hamming it up. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the only one who was "doing Chekhov badly", and I normally like him, but he fell into the Chekhov trap. His character kills himself at the end of the play. It should come as a shock, even if you know the play. But Hoffman, from his FIRST SCENE, was telegraphing to us in the audience: "I am going to kill myself." It was pretty bad. It made him look like an amateur actor. But the rest of it? God, when you see Chekhov done with a sense of joy and life, you feel like there has never been a better playwright.

The people in Chekhov's plays are stuck. They want a better life. They dream of release, of joy. Think of the three sisters in Three Sisters, dreaming of Moscow. The trap in Chekhov is to play it like this:

-- We are doomed to be disappointed. We will never get to Moscow. Life is dreary and meaningless. Oh, woe is me. My dreams will never come true. I am sad.

NO. This is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Chekhov was a man full of life!! He called most of his plays "comedies". The three sisters FULLY BELIEVE they will get to Moscow. It is the driving force of their lives. It is not a pipe dream. It is REAL.

When it doesn't come about by the end, you should be left with a dull sense of tragedy, heartache, sadness. But only because they had dreamed so big, and believed it so fully.

I'm writing like this because there's a new production of The Cherry Orchard here in New York, and I winced when I read the first paragraph of the review:

To laugh or not to laugh. To cry or not to cry. The debate about evoking the proper measurements of humor and pathos in the plays of Anton Chekhov will endure as long as they are produced, which is to say as long as civilization endures. The new staging of "The Cherry Orchard" that opened last night at the Atlantic Theater Company, directed by Scott Zigler, settles the question, evenly if dubiously: it fails more or less equally at eliciting laughter and tears.

Ouch. You must not play Chekhov carefully or preciously. It sounds as though this may be a precious and careful production - eager not to step on toes, eager not to discredit Chekhov ... and in their caution, they have not pleased anyone.

The review closes with a paragraph that I find to be so RIGHT ON. It is what I have experienced myself, when working on Chekhov (which it cannot be underestimated: he is TOUGH) ... and what I have experienced when I have seen unsuccessful productions:

Strangely, Chekhov's plays have a way of disintegrating entirely when they are presented in ineffective productions like this one. Despite our affirmed knowledge of this dramatist's artistry, we find ourselves mystified, staring at a stage full of ill-defined characters hurling sighs, gripes and non sequiturs at one another. Where did all the genius get to?

So true. Chekhov's plays rely on the acting. Unlike Shakespeare where, even if the actors suck, there is still that LANGUAGE. The language transcends bad acting. Chekhov's language does not. It depends on absolute truth and honesty from the actors. If there is self-consciousness or self-importance or unspecificity in the performances - the language disappears. You feel like you have never loved the play before. You look at it and think: "Why on earth do people care so much about Chekhov?"

It's an interesting problem, and one of the reasons why Chekhov can be so satisfying. If you nail Chekhov? If you "do it right"? The glory of the language flows forth in a way unrivalled by any other playwright. An odd thing. Meryl Streep, in her unbelievably terrific performance, made acting in Chekhov look like the ONLY thing an actor should EVER do.

The Books: "Marty" (Paddy Chayevsky)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the script shelf is one of the plays from my collected screenplays of Paddy Chayefsky: Marty.

Paddy Chayefsky has always been one of my faves. His play Middle of the Night (which was Gena Rowlands' first big success) is one of my favorites. I'm way too old for that main part now, but damn - it's a great role!! I wish I could have seen Gena do it. Apparently, a young John Cassavetes went and saw it, and was so impressed that he went backstage after the show to meet the lead actress and demand that she go out with him. 3 months later they were married. (So that goes to show you that the brou-haha over the quick timing of ... oh ... say TOMKAT ... is a bit unimaginative. I mean, there are many other issues there - like, er: being cult-members and hogging red carpets and leaping upon Oprah ... but in terms of the speed of it all, I, for one, could certainly see myself marrying someone after only 3 months. I don't need 3 years to figure out whether or not I get along with someone, and whether or not we fit. Are we ready? Let's go!) Anyhoo, that's what happened with Gena and John.

Marty was one of Paddy Chayefsky's television plays. He wrote at a time when tv was live - and when everyone working on television was either a Broadway star, or a Broadway hopeful ... or working their ass off at the Actors Studio. TV was based in New York. They filmed everything live, like a play ... so obviously they needed competent actors to deal with such a stressful thing. I would have LOVED to be a part of those early days of television. When people like Arthur Penn were directing for television, and you could work on pieces by people like Paddy Chayefsky.

Marty was a big hit and it launched the young Rod Steiger's career. It ended up being done again, it had been so successful - only this time in more of an expanded version - starring Ernest Borgnine. You can still see Marty, if you're interested - I rented the Rod Steiger version. Has anyone seen either one?

You know who would be GREAT as Marty in the actors of today? John C. Reilly. He's born to play a part like this one. He kind of already did in Magnolia ... it's that same type of guy. Oh, and you know who John C. Reilly was NOT born to play? Stanley Kowalski. I'm just sayin'.

The script itself is what is so juicy and marvelous. It's heart-wrenching. So HUMAN. Basically: it's about this 34 year old guy named Marty ... who lives with his parents, never been married ... and ... well, not much happens except he goes on one date with this girl named Clara and there is a barrage of talk. The way Paddy Chayefsky characters talk: they always have their guard up. They're tough guys, they know how to shield themselves, they're New York tough guys ... but underneath is a world of loneliness. You just ache for Marty. Marty is literally doing the best he can, he is really trying to find a girl, fall in love, get a life that he likes ... But watching this, knowing his chances (he is not attractive - he comforts himself with how ugly his father was: "If an ugly guy like my father can get married..."), your heart just aches for him.

If you ever see a copy of Marty anywhere, I highly recommend you pick it up. It's really cool, first of all, to see how television was done in them thar olden days ... but it's also just a wonderful script, wonderful story ... well worth it.

So now for the excerpt. This is part of the marathon-long date Marty goes on during the course of the play. He meets a girl at a dance in the opening scenes, and they hit it off, and go out for coffee and talk for hours. It is obvious how out of practice he is with the whole romance thing. You just ache for the poor dude. Stop telling her about your problems!! But that's the thing: he can't. You never judge him. At least I don't. I just feel compassion for him, and I so want him to be happy. Now this just might be me - or an actor-thing - but I read Paddy Chayefsky's words, and I feel I MUST say them out loud. They BEG to be spoken.

EXCERPT FROM Paddy Chayefsky's Marty.

GRAND CONCOURSE LUNCHEONETTE

CLOSE ON Marty and Clara still in the booth, but two more cups of coffee have been set down in front of each of them. There are also two pie-plates. Clara has left half of her pie. Also an empty pack of cigarettes, and another pack half-gone. They are both smoking. Marty is still talking, but the mood is no longer laughter. A pensive, speculative hush has fallen over them. They have been talking for hours, and they have reached the stage where you start tearing designs in the paper napkins.

MARTY. ... When I got outta the army, Clara, I was lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was twenny-fived years old, what was I gonna do, go back to my old job, forty cents an hour. I thought maybe I go to college under the G.I. Biller Rights, you know? But I wouldn't graduate till I was twenny-eight, twenny-nine years old, even if I made it in three years. And my brother Freddie wanted to get married, and I had three unmarried sisters -- in an Italian home, that's a terrible thing. And my kid brother Nickie, he's a one got marrie dlast week. So I just went to pieces. I used to walk inna streets till three, four o'clock inna mornings. My mother used to be so worried about me. My uncle Mario come over one time. He offered me a job driving his hack onna night shift. He got his own cab, you know. And God forgive me for what I'm gonna say now, but I used to thinka doing away with myself. I used to stand sometimes in the subway, and God forgive me what I'm going to say, I used to feel the tracks sucking me down under the wheels.

CLARA. (deeply sympathetic) Yes, I know.

MARTY. I'm a Catholic, you know, and even to think about suicide is a terrible sin.

CLARA. Yes, I know.

MARTY. So then Mr. Gazzara -- he was a frienda my father -- he offered me this job in his butcher shop, and everybody pleaded with me to take it. So that's what happened. I didn't wanna be a butcher.

CLARA. There's nothing wrong with being a butcher.

MARTY. Well, I wouldn't call it an elegant profession. It's in a lower social scale. People look down on butchers.

CLARA. I don't.

(Marty looks quickly up at her, then back down.)

MARTY. Well, the point is Mr. Gazzara wantsa sell his shopo now, because he and his wife and lonely, and they wanna move out to California in Los Angeles and live near their married daughter. Because she's always writing them to come out there. So it's a nice little shop. I handle his books for him, so I know he has a thirty-five percent mark-up which is not unreasonable, and he takes home net maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks a week. The point is, of course, you gotta worry about the supermarkets. There's two inna neighborhood now, and there's an A&P coming in, at least that's the rumor. Of course, mosta his trade is strictly Italian, but the younger Italian girls, they get married, and they don't stick to the old Italian dishes so much. I mean, you gotta take that into account too.

CLARA. It's my feeling that you really want to buy this shop, Marty.

MARTY. That's true. But I'm gonna have to take outta loan inna bank eight thousand dollars. That's a big note to carry, because I have to give Mr. Gazzara a mortgage, and what I have to weigh is: will it pay off in the end more than I can make onna salary?

Clara looks down at her fingers, her face alive and sensitive. She carefully assembles her words in her mind. Then she looks at the squat butcher across the table from her.

CLARA. Marty, I know you for three hours, but I know you're a good butcher. You're an intelleigent, sensitive, decent man. I have a feeling about you like sometimes a kid comes in to see for one reason or another. And some of these kids, Marty, in my classes, they have so much warmth in them, so much capacity. And that's the feeling I get about you.

Marty shuts his eyes, then opens them quickly, bows his head.

CLARA. If you were one of my students, I would say, "Go ahead and buy the butcher shop. You're a good butcher."

Clara pauses.

MARTY. (not quite trusting the timbre of his voice.) Well, there's a lotta things I could do with this shop. I could organize my own supermarket. Get a buncha neighborhood merchants together. That's what a lotta them are doing. (He looks up at her now. Wadda you think?

CLARA. I think anything you want to do, you'll do well.

Tears begin to flood his eyes again. He quickly looks away. He licks his lips.

MARTY. (still looking down) I'm Catholic. Are you Catholic?

Clara looks down at her hands.

CLARA. (also in a low voice) Yes, I am.

Marty looks up at her.

MARTY. I only got about three bucks on me now, but I just live about eight blocks from here on the other side of Webster Avenue. Why don't we walk back to my house? I'll run in, pick up some dough, and let's step out somewhere.

CLARA. I really should get home ...

She twists in her seat and looks toward the back of the luncheonette.

MARTY. It's only a quarter of twelve. The clock's right over there.

CLARA. I really should get home, I told my father ... Well, I suppose a little while longer. I wonder if there's any place around here I could put some makeup on ...

Marty considers this problem for a second, then leans out of the booth and calls out

MARTY. Hey, Mac!

CAMERA ANGLES to include the Proprietor of the luncheonette. He is sitting in one of the booths ahead reading the Sunday Mirror. He looks up twoard Marty.

MARTY. You gotta Ladies' Room around here?

PROPRIETOR. Inna back.

MARTY. (to Clare) Inna back.

Clare smiles at this innocent gaucerhie, then edges out of the booth, taking her purse with her.

Ah, to be recognized

... and not only recognized, but correctly recognized.

I'm in the Today's Blogs section on Slate today, and I am called a "Joyce fanatic". Not only that - but out of all my Joycean quotes today, they also excerpt something I said. Like I'm an expert or something!

So yes. As Kathy pointed out, I'm nuts. But to have my lunacy called out in a validating way??

Beautiful. I have arrived. Where exactly, I am not sure. But it feels nice.

My relationships in the past ...

... were wonderful. But there was always something missing. Sometimes it was obvious what the missing piece was, other times it only became apparent in retrospect. Some relationships I STILL can't put my finger on what it was I lacked.

But now I know REALLY what I was missing in all those old relationships in the past. Every. Single. One of them.

Was it emotional support? Nah, the boyfriends had that covered.

Was it a sense of fun and excitement? Nah, my boyfriends were always really fun people who kept me laughing.

Was it open cmmunication? No, I like guys who are straight-up with that.

No.

What I was REALLY missing was a Scientology baby-sitter to "keep me on the path" and fight off any "suppressers".

Of course! No relationship is complete without a baby-sitter like that.

And all along I thought there might be something wrong with ME!!

(thanks, Noggie, for the heads up)

Bloomsday:

It's all about Bloomsday here today. June 16 is eternally reserved.

Thanks, Jim!

yes I said yes

Here's Ewan McGregor as James Joyce, in the film he produced and starred in: Nora:

You know. I just had to include Ewan. I had to!!

This is the scene where he waits for her to show up for their first "date", and she blows him off (basically because she can't get off work.) (Description of that from Ellmann's biography of Joyce here.)

The next time the two met, it was a couple days later, on June 16, 1904.

And here is McGregor as Joyce, and the marvelous Irish actress Susan Lynch as his wife Nora:

Bloomsday ...

Here is a photo of James Joyce, Nora Joyce, and their solicitor - directly following getting married in 1931. They had eloped to the Continent in 1904, had two kids (Giorgio and Lucia) before they eventually decided to make it official.

Nora said, of her relationship with James: "You can't imagine what it was like for me to be thrown into the life of this man."

yes I said yes I will Yes

And here is the ending of Molly's 60-page run-on sentence that closes the book. If you read it out loud, it will become immediately clear what is going on, what she is doing:

yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes

"It is not to be read"

Samuel Beckett said, on the language of Finnegans Wake:

You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.

"the odour of ashpits"

James Joyce had a hell of a time getting Dubliners published anywhere, but it was most difficult in Ireland. Here is his response to a potential publishers objections to material in The Dubliners:

"It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass."

Joseph Campbell weighs in ...

Joseph Campbell:

If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake.

"the immense prodigy"

Here are a couple of different quotes from TS Eliot - which give you a sense of the real vertigo that other serious writers felt when they first read Joyce's book:

"I wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it."

and

"How could anyone write again after achieving the immense prodigy of the last chapter?"

"It is an entirely new thing"

Here are two different quotes from WB Yeats about Ulysses:

1. He read a chapter or two of Ulysses, which had been serialized in the Little Review from Paris. His first comment was: "A mad book!"

2. Not too long after making that first comment, Yeats had this to say, "I have made a terrible mistake. It is a work perhaps of genius. I now perceive its coherence ... It is an entirely new thing -- neither what the eye sees nor the ear hears, but what the rambling mind thinks and imagines from moment to moment. He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist of our time."

"What about the mystery of the conscious?"

James Joyce:

Why all this fuss and bother about the mystery of the unconscious? What about the mystery of the conscious? What do they know about that?

Rejoyce!

More below ... in honor of James Joyce.

This picture, for some reason, just kills me.

This quote is for my friend David:

I think he'll like it.

James Joyce said: "Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize."

Nora and Finnegans Wake

James Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake for 17 years or something like that.

Nora, looking at the gibberish pages, the ciphers, the codes, said, "Why don't you write books people can read?"

Ha!

However: Nora always thought that Finnegans Wake - which pretty much the entire world thought was incomprehensible - was his best book. She understood it. She understood the language.

By the way, if you ever feel like taking on that book - I cannot stress how important it is to read it out loud. It's incomprehensible on the page, but when you HEAR it? It's marvelous. It's meant to be read out loud.

Years after his death, she was still pestererd by reporters about her famous genius husband. And nobody ever asked about Finnegans Wake . It was always Ulysses, Ulysses, Ulysses.

She commented once, confused, irritated, "What's all this talk about Ulysses? Finnegans Wake is the important book."

For some reason, that gives me a chill. I think she might actually be onto something. She - an uneducated unintellectual wild-haired country girl - got it. That's why Joyce knew that the most important decision he had ever made in his life was choosing this particular woman.

"an Irish safety pin"

James Joyce:

"To me, an Irish safety pin is more important than an English epic."

"With me ..."

To those of you who have not read James Joyce, and might feel intimidated by him, or like: Jesus, what the hell is the big deal, etc., here is a quote from James Joyce, which I love:

"With me, the thought is always simple."

And you know what? It's TRUE. Even in Finnegans Wake.

"It seemed to me that I was fighting a battle with every religious and social force in Ireland for you"

Letter from James Joyce to Nora on Sept. 16, 1904 - shortly before the two of them fled Ireland together, without getting married:

"When I was waiting for you last night I was even more restless. It seemed to me that I was fighting a battle with every religious and social force in Ireland for you and that I had nothing to rely on but myself. There is no life here -- no naturalness or honesty. People live together in the same houses all their lives and at the end they are as far apart as ever ... The fact that you can choose to stand beside me in this way in my hazardous life fills me with great pride and joy ... Allow me, dearest Nora, to tell you how much I desire that you should share any happiness that may be mine and to assure you of my great respect for that love of yours which it is my wish to deserve and to answer."

Joyce's conclusion

James Joyce:

"I have come to the conclusion that I cannot write without offending people."

You tell 'em, Nora

Nora Joyce (Joyce's wife) - after Joyce's death - was asked about which new writers she read. Here is what she said:

"Sure, if you've been married to the greatest writer in the world, you don't remember all the little fellows."

What happened on June 16, 1904

Excerpt from Ellmann's masterful biography, about the events of June 16, 1904:

The experience of love was almost new to [Joyce] in fact, though he had often considered it in imagination. A transitory interest in his cousin Katsy Murray had been followed by the stronger, but unexpressed and unrequited, interest in Mary Sheehy. He shocked Stanlislaus [Joyce's brother] a little by quoting with approval a remark of a Dublin wit, 'Woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month and parturiates once a year.' Yet tenderness was as natural to him as coarseness, and secretly he dreamed of falling in love with someone he did not know, a gentle lady, the flower of many generations, to whom he should speak in the ceremonious accents of Chamber Music.

Instead, on June 10, 1904, Joyce was walking down Nassau Street in Dublin when he caught sight of a tall, good-looking young woman, auburn-haired, walking with a proud stride. When he spoke to her she answered pertly enough to allow the conversation to continue. She took him, with his yachting cap, for a sailor, and from his blue eyes thought for a moment he might be Swedish.

Joyce found she was employed at Finn's Hotel, a slightly exalted rooming house, and her lilting speech confessed that she was from Galway City. She had been born there, to parents who lived in Sullivan's Lane, on March 21, 1884. Her name was a little comic, Nora Barnacle, but this too might be an omen of felicitous adhesion. (As Joyce's father was to say when he heard much later her last name was Barnacle, 'She'll never leave him.') After some talk it was agreed they should meet in front of Sir William Wilde's house at the turning of Merrion Square on June 14. But Nora Barnacle failed to appear, and Joyce sent her a note in some dejection:

60 Shelbourne Road

I may be blind. I looked for a long time at a head of reddish-brown hair and decided it was not yours. I went home quite dejected. I would like to make an appointment but it might not suit you. I hope you will be kind enough to make one with me -- if you have not forgotten me!

James A. Joyce 15 June 1904

The appointment was made, and for the evening of June 16, when they went walking at Ringsend, and then arranged to meet again.

To set Ulysses on this date was Joyce's most eloquent if indirect tribute to Nora, a recognition of the determining effect upon his life of his attachment to her. On June 16, as he would afterwards realize, he entered into relation with the world around him and left behind him the loneliness he had felt since his mother's death. He would tell her later, "You made me a man." June 16 was the sacred day that divided Stephen Dedalus, the insurgent youth, from Leopold Bloom, the complaisant husband.

Here's a photograph of the young Galway girl, Nora Barnacle:

Who killed the 19th century?

TS Eliot:

"He single-handedly killed the 19th century."

(This pissed Gertrude Stein off, because she thought that SHE had single-handedly killed the 19th century. Sorry, Gertrude. A century is a century is a century, right?)

In honor of Bloomsday ...

5,000 more quotes - about Joyce, by Joyce ... you name it. Every June 16 I lose my mind.

Here's a picture of Joyce, and Sylvia Beach (the courageous woman who decided to publish Ulysses):

"I just assumed he was someone they knew"

Actress Fionnula Flanagan:

Like James Joyce, I was born and raised in Dublin. Those years of the grey post-war fifties, seem to me now, looking back, to have been a time when Dublin was cobwebbed, as it were, by a leftover Edwardianism of a uniquely Irish kind. Many of the landmarks of Joyce's world remained, their coinage unchanged and in common usage -- street names, certainly, newspapers and adverts, shops and pubs, churches, restaurants and monuments, the turn of phrase, the prejudices, the mythologies, the past.

My father, Terry, knew Dublin intimately, loved it fiercely. He would take us children on Sunday "rambles" into the inner city during which odysseys he talked, nonstop, of its history. Bloom-like, we walked everywhere. On Saturday nights in my Grandma Flanagan's front parlor, while my aunts sipped port and conversed in whispers about "women's ailments", my father and my uncles sang operatic arias loudly, drank whiskey, and hotly argued Irish politics. Shades of "The Dead" and "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," although I didn't yet know of the existence of those stories. Of course I also didn't know I was living in the geography of the very world Joyce had known and then recreated so brilliantly in his writings. Whenever my parents quoted or paraphrased him, casually -- as in "Joyce understood that" or "As Joyce said ..." -- I just assumed he was someone they knew, an acquaintance from the vigorous Dublin intellectual set of their youth. But Joyce was everywhere in my childhood, in all the ordinary things we did that made up the fabric of our lives. We went to funerals in Glasnevin Cemetery -- half my family is buried there -- and on very special occasions we were treated to lunch at Jammets. We tramped out to the Shelley Banks and watched the Liverpool boat until it was just a speck, then raced miles out to find the tide on Sandymount Strand; we spied on the naked men swimming in the Forty Foot below the Martello Tower, where Buck Mulligan held his shaving bowl aloft. In summer the Howth tram swayed us to the top of the Head with its rhododendrons blazing purple and we tumbled on the grassy mound where Molly Bloom gazed out over Dublin Bay while Poldy pressed her to say "yes". I went to school in Eccles Street and walked by No. 7 twice a day. Of course the Blooms had lived there. Lived there still, had anyone asked me. For all that the house is gone, they are there yet.

"Several grains of salt ..."

Ray Gandolf:

My favorite Joyce story was told to me by Gilbert Seldes many years ago. Many years before that, as a young, callow, and nervous reporter, he had managed to secure an interview with Joyce in Paris. All he could recall of the meeting, said Seldes, was that Joyce's favorite Irish whiskey was Jameson's. Because, said Joyce, according to Seldes, its distillery was downstream from a sewage outlet on the River Liffey -- and thus contained the true essence of Dublin. Several grains of salt are recommended.

"Henceforth no sin"

Henry Miller:

After the closing picture of Molly Bloom a-dreaming on her dirty bed we can say, as in Revelation -- And there shall be no more curse! Henceforth no sin, no guilt, no fear, no repression, no longing, no pain of separation. The end is accomplished -- man returns to the womb.

"Joyce's champion game"

Vladimir Nabokov:

Ulysses, of course, is a divine work of art and will live on despite the academic nonentities who turn it into a collection of symbols or Greek myths. I once gave a student a C-minus, or perhaps a D-plus, just for applying to its chapters the titles borrowed from Homer while not even noticing the comings and goings of the man in the brown mackintosh. He didn't even know who the man in the brown mackintosh was. Oh, yes, let people compare me to Joyce by all means, but my English is pat ball to Joyce's champion game.

"it is a book to which we are all indebted"

TS Eliot:

I hold Ulysses to be the most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape.

"goddamn wonderful"

Ernest Hemingway, true to form:

Joyce has a most goddamn wonderful book.

"a picture of Dublin so complete"

James Joyce:

I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.

February 2, 1922

Sylvia Beach (publisher of "Ulysses"):

I was on the platform, my heart going like the locomotive, as the train from Dijon came slowly to a standstill and I saw the conductor getting off, holding a parcel and looking around for someone -- me. In a few minutes, I was ringing the doorbell at the Joyces' and handing them Copy No. 1 of Ulysses. It was February 2, 1922.

"faith"

William Faulkner:

You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

"Blast it!"

James Joyce:

Ulysses is the epic of two races (Israel - Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses always fascinated me ever since boyhood. I started writing it as a short story for Dubliners fifteen years ago but gave it up. For seven years I have been working at this book-- blast it!

"a ferocious masturbation"

Henry Miller:

Endowed with a Rableaisian ability for word invention, embittered by the domination of a church for which his intellect had no use, harassed by the lack of understanding on the part of family and friends, obsessed by theparental image against which he vainly rebels, Joyce has been seeking escape in the erection of a fortress composed of meaningless verbiage. His language is a ferocious masturbation carried on in fourteen tongues.

His last words

Eva Joyce - James' sister:

His last words were, 'Does nobody understand?' -- and I'm afraid that's what none of us did -- understand him.

"I'm sure of one thing..."

Nora Barnacle - James Joyce's wife:

I don't know whether or not my husband is a genius, but I'm sure of one thing, there is no one like him.

"a curious sense of his own powers"

Oliver St. John Gogarty:

Looking back, there was something uncanny in his certainty, which he had more than any other writer I have ever known, that he would one day be famous. It was more than mere wishful thinking. It goerned all his attitudes to his compatriots and accounts for what many referred to as his arrogance. He was never really arrogant, but seemed to have a curious sense of his own powers and wouldn't tolerate anyone who didn't really appreciate his work.

"he liked blackberry jam"

Edna O'Brien:

He would carry his work "like a chalice" and all his life he would insist that what he did "was a kind of sacrament." Father, Son and Holy Ghost along with Jakes McCarthy informed every graven word. On a more secular note he liked blackberry jam because Christ's crown of thorns came from that wood and he wore purple cravats during Lent.

"To call this man angry ..."

Edna O'Brien:

To call this man angry is too temperate a word, he was volcanic.

Today will be all Joyce ...

... all the time. In honor of Bloomsday. (Here is what I wrote about Bloomsday last year - which was the 100th anniversary.)

Many snippets below. More to come.

"I prepare myself for a sacrament"

Philippe Soupault:

Together we went often to the theatre, which, like all good Irishmen, he loved. It was the theatre as theatre that he loved. I mean that he was attracted less by the play than by the atmosphere, the footlights and spotlights, the spectators, the kind of solemnity in a theatre. He preferred opera. When he had decided to go, he was happy as a child. He chose a companion, refused to dine (I prepare myself for a sacrament, he told me, explaining this abstinence), and after the performance he had supper at a restaurant, where he had arranged to have his favorite white wines. At the theatre, seated in the first row -- presumably because of his very bad eyesight -- he carefully watched the actionn and listened closely to the performers. Only children are as passionately attentive as Joyce was.

"He might have other timidities"

Herbert Gorman:

Where the arts were concerned, Joyce was far from timid. He might have other timidities, might in fact be a curious amalgam of sensitive superstitions and nervous fears, but he was entirely unselfconscious when it came to those profound expressions that were liberated by musical notes and written words.

"one long self-confession"

Paul Leon:

The student of the human soul should read attentively Joyce's writings in which it is mirrored, for Joyce made no distinction between actual life and literary creation. His work is one long self-confession, and in this respect he is akin to the greatest of the romantics.

"when he writes ..."

Stanislaus Joyce (Joyce's brother):

"Jim says that he writes well because when he writes his mind is as nearly normal as possible.

"Mad Ireland"

Edna O'Brien:

He would never relinquish the anger that he felt then, revolt at the sight of the grey block of Trinity College "set heavily in the city's ignorance," or the statue of Thomas Moore, the national poet, covered in vermin. Even the guileless flower girl entreating him to buy flowers exasperated him and reinforced his fury over his own poverty. No Proustian madeleine would summon up this rigorous landscape. For him, as Auden would say of Yeats, "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry."

Joyce and Proust and truffles

Arthur Power:

Joyce met Proust once at a literary dinner, and Proust asked Joyce did he like truffles, and Joyce said yes, he did, and I know Joyce was very amused afterwards. He said " ... the two greatest literary figures of our time meet and they ask each other if they like truffles."

"allied to an inner strength"

Paul Leon:

The most general and lasting impression I shall always retain of Joyce the man is his exquisite genteness, together with his infinite power of comprehension. By this I do not mean a quality of heart ... I am referring to a more general characteristic, one that partakes, as it were, of the elementary force of his makeup. For gentleness and comprehension, in his case, did not spring from weakness or indifference, but were allied to an inner strength, a directed spiritual activity, such as I have never seen in anyone else.

"it will appear overwhelming"

Paul Leon:

[Joyce] had the necessary courage, perseverance, inner strength, and energy of mind -- any one of which might easily have been insufficient -- to overcome all obstacles, all suffering, and to attain perfection. When his work comes to be judged according to its true value, as posterity will judge it, it will appear overwhelming, if only because of the crushing labour that it obviously represents, and one man's life will seem to have been conceived on too small a scale in comparison with the immensity of the effort involved.

"he had never met a bore"

Sylvia Beach:

As for Joyce, he treated people invariably as his equals, whether they were writers, children, waiters, princesses, or charladies. What anybody had to say interested him; he told me that he had never met a bore.

Judge Woolsey's "obscenity" decision, in regards to "Ulysses"

Read the whole thing. Astonishing.

United States Discrict Court, Southern District of New York, Opinion A. 110-59

December 6, 1933

On cross motions for a decree in a libel of confiscation, supplemented by a stipulation -- hereinafter described -- brought by the United States against the book "Ulysses" by James Joyce, under Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930, Title 19 United States Code, Section 1305, on the ground that the book is obscene within the meaning of that Section, and, hence, is not importable into the United States, but is subject to seizure, forfeiture and confiscation and destruction.

United States Attorney -- by Samuel C. Coleman, Esq., and Nicholas Atlas, Esq., of counsel -- for the United States, in support of motion for a decree of forfeiture, and in opposition to motion for a decree dismissing the libel.

Messrs. Greenbaum, Wolff and Ernst, -- by Morris L. Ernst, Esq., and Alexander Lindey, Esq., of counsel -- attorneys for claimant Random House, Inc., in support of motion for a decree dismissing the libel, and in opposition to a motion for a decree of forfeiture.

WOOLSEY, J:
The motion for a decree dismissing the libel herein is granted, and, consequently, of course, the Government's motion for a decree of forfeiture and destruction is denied.

Accordingly a decree dismissing the libel without costs may be entered herein.

1. The practice followed in this case is in accordance with the suggestion made by me in the case of United States v. One Book Entitled "Contraception", 51 F. (2d) 525, and is as follows:

After issue was joined by the filing of the claimant's answer to the libel for forfeiture against "Ulysses", a stipulation was made between the United States Attorney's office and the attorneys for the claimant providing:

1. That the book "Ulysses" should be deemed to have been annexed to and to have become part of the libel just as if it had been incorporated in its entirety therein.
2. That the parties waived their right to a trial by jury.
3. That each party agreed to move for decree in its favor.
4. That on such cross motions the Court might decide all the questions of law and fact involved and render a general finding thereon.
5. That on the decision of such motions the decree of the Court might be entered as if it were a decree after trial.

It seems to me that a procedure of this kind is highly appropriate in libels for the confiscation of books such as this. It is an especially advantageous procedure in the instant case because on account of the length of "Ulysses" and the difficulty of reading it, a jury trial would have been an extremely unsatisfactory, if not an almost impossible, method of dealing with it.

2. I have read "Ulysses" once in its entirety and I have read those passages of which the Government particularly complains several times. In fact, for many weeks, my spare time has been devoted to the consideration of the decision which my duty would require me to make in this matter.

"Ulysses" is not an easy book to read or to understand. But there has been much written about it, and in order properly to approach the consideration of it it is advisable to read a number of other books which have now become its satellites. The study of "Ulysses" is, therefore, a heavy task.

3. The reputation of "Ulysses" in the literary world, however, warranted my taking such time as was necessary to enable me to satisfy myself as to the intent with which the book was written, for, of course, in any case where a book is claimed to be obscene it must first be determined, whether the intent with which it was written was what is called, according to the usual phrase, pornographic, -- that is, written for the purpose of exploiting obscenity.

If the conclusion is that the book is pornographic that is the end of the inquiry and forfeiture must follow.

But in "Ulysses", in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist. I hold, therefore, that it is not pornographic.

4. In writing "Ulysses", Joyce sought to make a serious experiment in a new, if not wholly novel, literary genre. He takes persons of the lower middle class living in Dublin in 1904 and seeks not only to describe what they did on a certain day early in June of that year as they went about the City bent on their usual occupations, but also to tell what many of them thought about the while.
Joyce has attempted -- it seems to me, with astonishing success -- to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing.

What he seeks to get is not unlike the result of a double or, if that is possible, a multiple exposure on a cinema film which would give a clear foreground with a background visible but somewhat blurred and out of focus in varying degrees.

To convey by words an effect which obviously lends itself more appropriately to a graphic technique, accounts, it seems to me, for much of the obscurity which meets a reader of "Ulysses". And it also explains another aspect of the book, which I have further to consider, namely, Joyce's sincerity and his honest effort to show exactly how the minds of his characters operate.

If Joyce did not attempt to be honest in developing the technique which he has adopted in "Ulysses" the result would be psychologically misleading and thus unfaithful to his chosen technique. Such an attitude would be artistically inexcusable.

It is because Joyce has been loyal to his technique and has not funked its necessary implications, but has honestly attempted to tell fully what his characters think about, that he has been the subject of so many attacks and that his purpose has been so often misunderstood and misrepresented. For his attempt sincerely and honestly to realize his objective has required him incidentally to use certain words which are generally considered dirty words and has led at times to what many think is a too poignant preoccupation with sex in the thoughts of his characters.

The words which are criticized as dirty are old Saxon words known to almost all men and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally and habitually used, I believe by the types of folk whose life, physical and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe. In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.

Whether or not one enjoys such a technique as Joyce uses is a matter of taste on which disagreement or argument is futile, but to subject that technique to the standards of some other technique seems to me to be little short of absurd.

Accordingly, I hold that "Ulysses" is a sincere and honest book and I think that the criticisms of it are entirely disposed of by its rationale.

5. Furthermore, "Ulysses" is an amazing tour de force when one considers the success which has been in the main achieved with such a difficult objective as Joyce set for himself. As I have stated, "Ulysses" is not an easy book to read. It is brilliant and dull, intelligible and obscure by turns. In many places it seems to me to be disgusting, but although it contains, as I have mentioned above, many words usually considered dirty, I have not found anything that I consider to be dirt for dirt's sake. Each word of the book contributes like a bit of mosaic to the detail of the picture which Joyce is seeking to construct for his readers.
If one does not wish to associate with such folk as Joyce describes, that is one's own choice. In order to avoid indirect contact with them one may not wish to read "Ulysses"; that is quite understandable. But when such a real artist in words, as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the lower middle class in a European city, ought it to be impossible for the American public legally to see that picture?

To answer this question it is not sufficient merely to find, as I have found above, that Joyce did not write "Ulysses" with what is commonly called pornographic intent, I must endeavor to apply a more objective standard to his book in order to determine its effect in the result, irrespective of the intent with which it was written.

6. The statute under which the libel is filed only denounces, in so far as we are here concerned, the importation into the United States from any foreign country of "any obscene book". Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930, Title 19 United States Code, Section 1305. It does not marshal against books the spectrum of condemnatory adjectives found, commonly, in laws dealing with matters of this kind. I am, therefore, only required to determine whether "Ulysses" is obscene within the legal definition of that word.
The meaning of the word "obscene" as legally defined by the Courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to sexually impure and lustful thoughts. Dunlop v. United States, 165 U.S. 486, 501; United States v. One Book Entitled "Contraception", 51 F. (2d) 525, 528; and compare Dysart v. United States, 272 U.S. 655, 657; Swearingen v. United States 151 U.S. 446, 450; United States v. Dennett, 39 F. (2d) 564, 568 (C.C.A. 2); People v. Wendling, 258 N.Y. 451, 453.

Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and thoughts must be tested by the Court's opinion as to its effect on a person with average sex instincts -- what the French would call l'homme moyen sensuel -- who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the same role of hypothetical reagent as does the "reasonable man" in the law of torts and "the man learned in the art" on questions of invention in patent law.

The risk involved in the use of such a reagent arises from the inherent tendency of the trier of facts, however fair he may intend to be, to make his reagent too much subservient to his own idiosyncrasies. Here, I have attempted to avoid this, if possible, and to make my reagent herein more objective than he might otherwise be, by adopting the following course:

After I had made my decision in regard to the aspect of "Ulysses", now under consideration, I checked my impressions with two friends of mine who in my opinion answered to the above stated requirement for my reagent.

These literary assessors -- as I might properly describe them -- were called on separately, and neither knew that I was consulting the other. They are men whose opinion on literature and on life I value most highly. They had both read "Ulysses", and, of course, were wholly unconnected with this cause.

Without letting either of my assessors know what my decision was, I gave to each of them the legal definition of obscene and asked each whether in his opinion "Ulysses" was obscene within that definition.

I was interested to find that they both agreed with my opinion: that reading "Ulysses" in its entirety, as a book must be read on such a test as this, did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts but that its net effect on them was only that of a somewhat tragic and very powerful commentary on the inner lives of men and women.

It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned. Such a test as I have described, therefore, is the only proper test of obscenity in the case of a book like "Ulysses" which is a sincere and serious attempt to devise a new literary method for the observation and description of mankind.

I am quite aware that owing to some of its scenes "Ulysses" is a rather strong draught to ask some sensitive, though normal, persons to take. But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of "Ulysses" on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.

"Ulysses" may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.

JOHN M. WOOLSEY
United States District Judge

"A moment of silence"

Nola Tully on "Ulysses":

The response to Ulysses was immediate and extreme. Writer and literary critic Malcolm Cowley described it using the metaphor of a stone dropped into water: there was a moment of silence, the stone was dropped, "then all the frogs who inhabited the pool began to talk at once.

Below: a compilation of quotes from "all the frogs" talking at once.

George Bernard Shaw:

A famous letter from Shaw to publisher Sylvia Beach:

"To you possibly Ulysses m,ay appeal as art; you are probably (you see I don't know you) a young barbarian beglamoured by the excitements and enthusiasms that art stirs up in passionate material; but to me it is all hideously real: I have walked those streets and know those shops and have heard and taken part in those conversations. I escaped from them to England at the age of twenty; and forty years later have learnt from the books of Mr. Joyce that Dublin is still what it was, and young men are still drivelling in slackjawed blackguardism as they were in 1870. It is, however, some consolation to find that at last soembody has felt deeply enough about it to face the horror of writing it all down and using his literary genius to force people to face it. In Ireland they try to make a cat cleanly by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject. I hope it may prove successful."

Wow.

Ford Madox Ford

"For myself then, the pleasure -- the very great pleasure -- that I get from going through the sentences of Mr. Joyce is that given me simply by the cadence of his prose, and I fancy that the greatest and highest enjoyment that can be got from any writing is simply that given by the cadence of the prose."

-- Ford Madox Ford

James Joyce says:

"The pity is, the public will demand and find a moral in my book -- or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it."

-- James Joyce

Hart Crane

"The sharp beauty and sensitivity of the thing! The matchless details! His book is steeped in the Elizabethans, his early love, and Latin Church, and some Greek ... It is my opinion that some fanatic will kill Joyce sometime soon for the wonderful things said in Ulysses."

-- Hart Crane

Dr. Joseph Collins ...

"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua and Pantagruel immortalized Rabelais and The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky ... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence."

-- Dr. Joseph Collins, reviewing "Ulysses" in The New York Times

EM Forster:

"Ulysses is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud. It is an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell."

-- EM Forster.

EM Forster also called Ulysses: "Perhaps the most interesting literary experiment of our day."

As you can see, no one was neutral about this book.

Sylvia Beach

A bit of biographical information about her here. I wrote about her on her birthday.

"Joyce was soon deriving a steady income from Ulysses in spite of the fact that it was denied its normal outlets in the English-speaking countries. And, of course, its reputation as a banned book helped the sales. It was saddening, however, to see such a work listed in catalogues of erotica alongside Fanny Hill, The Perfumed Garden and that everlasting Casanova, not to speak of plain pornography like Raped on the Rail. An Irish priest, purchasing Ulysses, asked me, 'Any other spicy books?'"

-- Sylvia Beach

Carl Jung's letter to Joyce

Here is the letter Jung wrote to Joyce, after he finished Ulysses:

Dear Sir,

Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem, that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters.

Ulysses proved to be an exceedingly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusual efforts, but also to rather extravagant peregrinations (speaking from the standpoint of a scientist). Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about three years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I'm profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don't know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn't help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run at the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil's grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman, I didn't.

Well I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.

With the expression of my deepest appreciation, I remain, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,
C.G. Jung

Joyce was very proud of this letter, very proud that he had won Jung's boredom and admiration, that he had made Jung curse him. Joyce read it out loud to a group of people, Nora (his wife) included. Nora's comment was typically brief. Joyce finished reading the letter, and Nora turned to someone beside her and said flatly, "Jim knows nothing at all about women."

William Carlos Williams

"Joyce is too near for me to want to do less than he did in Ulysses, in looseness of spirit, and honesty of heart -- at least."

-- William Carlos Williams

Stephen Spender ...

"It is a stupendous attempt to present us with a truer picture of the human mind than has ever been achieved before, by creating the discontinuous stream of thoughts, habits of mind rising from the past, disturbances caused by the environment, and even suggested by purely physical movements of the body, which pass through the fragmentary and interrupted consciousness of people at every moment."

-- Stephen Spender

James Douglas ...

"I say deliberately that it is the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature. The obscenity of Rabelais is innocent compared with its leprous and scabrous horrors. All the secret sewers of vice are canalised in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words. And its unclean lunacies are larded with appalling and revolting blasphemies directed against the Christian religion and against the name of Christ ... The book is already the bible of beings who are exiles and outcasts in this and every civilised society. It is also adopted by the Freudians as the supreme glory of their dirty and degraded cult."

-- James Douglas, reviewing "Ulysses" in the Dublin "Sunday Express". Hahahaha See why Joyce felt the need to attach Ireland, hold her down, and shove a mirror in her face? Because of dudes like Douglas.

Crane ...

"I feel like shouting EUREKA! Easily the epic of the age."

-- Hart Crane

Wharton ...

"It's a turgid welter of pornography (the rudest schoolboy kind) & unformed & unimportant drivel; & until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation & thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening."

-- Edith Wharton

Wilson ...

"Yet for all its appalling longeurs, "Ulysses" is a work of high genius. Its importance seems to me to lie, not so much in its opening new doors to knowledge -- unless in setting an example to Anglo-Saxon writers of putting down everything without compunction -- or in inventing new literary forms -- Joyce's formula is really, as I have indicated, nearly seventy-five years old -- as in its once more setting the standard of the novel so high that it need not be ashamed to take its place beside poetry and drama. "Ulysses" has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy."

-- Edmund Wilson

Pound ...

"In a single chapter he discharges all the cliches of the English language like an uninterrupted river."

-- Ezra Pound

Yeats ...

"It is an entirely new thing -- neither what they eye sees nor the ear hears, but what the rambling mind thinks and imagines from moment to moment. He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist of our time."

-- WB Yeats

Frank McCourt: "The book sings in your head."

Frank McCourt on "Ulysses", and the famous readings done at Symphony Space every June 16 - called "Bloomsday on Broadway":

Nineteen sixty-four, the year of my forgettable thesis, was the sixtieth anniversary of Bloomsday. (Richard Ellmann had published his masterly biography in 1959.) Joyceans might have marked June 16 on their calendars in 1964 but you'd search in vain for the kind of celebration the day has engendered since. In certain places Ulysses, all of it, is read by people, some who haven't the foggiest notion of what they're reading. Still, the book sings in your head for a long time and you won't forget its characters -- Bloom, Stephen, Molly, Blazes Boylan, or scenes. It's your life.

At these readings there is still a thrill in the crowd with the opening line that Joyceans know refers to my man, Gogarty: "Stately plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead ..." We're off on a journey through Dublin and Ireland and family and Catholicism and eroticism and love and infidelity. The journey ends on a powerful, tumescent note, "yes I will Yes." (Note the uppercase Y on the final Yes. This is not an end but a beginning.)..

Look! Ulysses is more than a book. It's an event -- and that upsets purists, but who's stopping them from retiring to quiet places for an orgy of textual analysis?

I will read at "Bloomsday on Broadway" as long as Isaiah permits me and as long as I can croak out Joyce's wondrous words.

Over the years we've aged, the hair whitening or graying, and many of us have long passed the age at which Joyce died, fifty-eight. Joyce's work has liberated many an artist while his life stands as a lesson for all of us. He suffered greatly: the growing failure of his eyes, the growing madness of his daughter. All his days he skirmished for pennies and fought pitched battles for his art. He was a family man, fiercely tribal, and we must not forget he was driven by love.

Did he love Ireland? As the squirrel loves the nut.

Did he love Catholicism? Imagine his work without it.

From James Joyce's "Ulysses" ...

... in honor of Bloomsday:

This is from the Scylla and Charybdis episode in the book. The episode in the library, when Stephen Dedalus finally starts to speak. And out comes a flood of words. The discussion? Hamlet. Interesting. Peter Greenblatt, author of the book Will in the World, about Shakespeare, has mentioned that the "discussion about Hamlet in Ulysses" is beyond compare, and helped him, as a younger man, to deepend his understanding of that play. It's true. You may think you know Hamlet - but if you think that? If you are sure in your knowledge and you HAVEN'T read Ulysses? Then, sorry - no understanding of Hamlet is anywhere near complete without studying that chapter. People have devoted their entire lives to studying this particular chapter.

In this following excerpt ... a chatty librarian talks about an upcoming compilation of poets, and the fact that Ireland has yet to inspire a real epic. heh heh heh That was James Joyce's big thing. When librarian says: "they say we are to have a literary surprise" I can't help but think that Joyce is speaking about his own book, Ulysses. A surprise for Ireland, indeed. But he was living in exile - unlike all the other writers mentioned in this excerpt. He had rejected Ireland, he couldn't bear to live there. Yet it remained his lifelong obsession - to describe it, to hold up a mirror to its face, to immortalize it so well that you could use his books as a literal streetmap through Dublin 100 years hence. (And you kind of can.)

From Ulysses:

--They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumor has it, is gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.

Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone.

See this. Remember.

Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one hat.

Listen.

Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part. Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked Collum's Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing, genius. Do you think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems.

June 16

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!!

The Books: "Road" (Jim Cartwright)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the script shelf is from my collected plays of Jim Cartwright: Road. Road was commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre in London, and the first production of it was in 1986. It was a huge hit, and was voted, on some British poll, as the 36th most important play of the 20th century. It was an angry, political, and despairing story about England in the mid-80s. Kind of like Angels in America was seen when it first came out. A snapshot of What We Are Like Now.

Road is an actor's dream. It's basically a series of long monologues - juicy challenging monologues - spoken directly to the audience. Scullery, the main character, walks up and down a road, acting as a kind of tour guide for us. He points out things for us to notice, and he sets up the context for the lives of the people who live along the road. This is not, in any respects, a happy play. It's bleak, dark, and angry. There are also lots of funny moments, too - Cartwright can be marvelously funny - but the underlying emotional themes are despair and fear.

Cartwright, by the way, as you will notice through the excerpt, is masterful at writing accents. They're so specific, and also: HOW people speak, the way they construct their sentences ... each character is completely different from the one before it. Cartwright has an unbelievably good ear for that stuff.

I also love Cartwright because he wrote the play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice specifically for the marvelous Jane Horrocks (one of those situations where her GINORMOUS talent was not being utilized, her range not explored - and so he set out to rectify the situation). It was a massive hit, and it eventually became a movie and Jane Horrocks was nominated for an Oscar. Rightly so. The movie is called Little Voice. I HIGHLY recommend it. And NOT just because Ewan McGregor is in it.

Now on to the excerpt. Two small background things: Joey is a teenager, and he has gone on hunger strike, in his parent's house. He feels despair about the future, the prospects for his generation (this is an entirely working class and under-class play) - his young girlfriend Clare begs him to eat, his parents beg him to eat, he has locked himself in his room, and refuses to eat. Eventually, Clare joins him in his hunger strike, and the two starve to death.

EXCERPT FROM Road, by Jim Cartwright.

The lights come up on Joey's room. Two weeks later. Joey is sitting up in bed with his arm around Clare. She is sleeping. Joey's face really shows the strain now, it is taut and white.

JOEY. I feel like England's forcing the brain out me head. I'm sick of it. Sick of it all. People reading newspapers: 'EUROVISION LOVERS', 'OUR QUEEN MUM', 'MAGGIE'S TEARS', being fooled again and again. What the fuck-fuck is it? Where am I? Bin lying here two weeks now. On and on through the strain. I wear pain like a hat. Everyone's insane. The world really is a bucket of devil sick. Every little moment's stupid. I'm sick of people -- people, stupid people. Frying the air with their mucky words, their mucky thoughts, their mucky deeds. Horrible sex being had under rotten bedding. Sickly sex being had on the waterbed. Where has man gone? Why is he so wrong? Why am I hurt all through? Every piece of me is bruised or gnawed raw, if you could see it, my heart's like an elbow. I've been done through by them, it, the crushing sky of ignorance, thigh of pignorance. What did I do! What was my crime? Who do I blame? God for giving me a spark of vision? Not enough of one, not enough of the other, just enough for discontent, enough to have me right out on the edge. Not able to get anyone out here with me, not able to get in with the rest. Oh God I'm so far gone it's too late. I'm half dead and I'm not sad or glad. I'm not sad or glad, what a fucking, bastard, bitching, cunt state to be in. I'm black inside. Bitterness has swelled like a mighty black rose inside me. Its petals are creaking against my chest. I want it out! out! out! Devil, God, Devil, God, Devil, God, save me something. Anything. There's got to be summat will come to help us. If only we can make the right state. If I can only get myself into the right state. This is it. This is why I'm on the diet. (He looks around, remembering) Fucking hell am I in a film or what? Or snot, or what? (He is tightening) IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII bring up small white birds covered in bile and fat blood, they was my hopes. I bring up a small hard pig that was my destiny. I'd like to bring it all out but bbbbbbbbbbbbut I've gone all constipated on bitterness, it won't remove itself. God give me a laxative if you got one. Ha! AArrrrrrgh! Arrrrrrgh! Oh AAArrrrrgh! (He's sweating and straining) Come out, come out, you tight bastard. Oh no! Death suck me up through that straw inside my spine! No leave me! Oh I'm full of dark frost. Who's done this to me! And why? Oh why? Is it worth that extra bit of business to see me suffer, is it? I blame you BUSINESS and you RELIGION its favorite friend, hand in hand YOU HAVE MURDERED THE CHILD IN MAN! MURDERERS! CUNTS! I'D LIKE TO CUT OPEN YOUR BELLIES AND SEE THE BROWN POUR!

(It should appear that he's going to get out of bed to really kill somebody. Then Clare wakes. She puts her arm on him.)

CLARE. Joey.

JOEY. Eh?

CLARE. Joey, I feel so faint and white. I can't hardly see my Joey.

JOEY. Don't worry about it. There might be a message or a sign soon.

CLARE. Uh?

JOEY. You never can tell when it's a going to come on y ou. Fuck me I wish I could sweat or something. I'm like paper.

CLARE. I'm empty and dried-out too, it's so weird now Joe. (Silence) Joe, is my skin cracking?

JOEY. No.

CLARE. Around my mouth at the corners is there any cracking?

JOEY. (a quick glance) No.

CLARE. It feels like it is. (She starts to sing to herself, very soft.) 'Don't know much about history. Don't know much about society. But I do know that I love you and I know if you'd love me too what a wonderful world this would be. What a wonderful world this would be.'

Silence.

I love you so much, Joey.

JOEY. Eh?

CLARE. I love you, my man. Perhaps if I cried you could drink up my tears.

JOEY. Be quiet now.

CLARE. It feels right funny. I can feel things very fine with my body now. Very fine like the silence within silence within silence. Joey is it death-time?

JOEY. (shocked) Stop it! You're talking now like you've never talked in your life.

CLARE. Where's it coming from?

JOEY. You! You!

CLARE. Who?

JOEY. Oh no. You're more advanced now than me. You're going somewhere. A state. Into a state.

CLARE. Eh?

JOEY. Are you in a trance or what?

CLARE. I don't know.

JOEY. Just shout out things. That's how I'll test you. Just say things what come into your head.

CLARE. How can a? A can't hardly speak.

JOEY. What do you mean?

CLARE. I'm so knackererd out. A feel I'm just holding on my the threads. One or two fine wet threads, the rest have dried an' broke.

JOE. Oh my dear.

CLARE. Don't worry. I still love you, that's left. I keep on seeing faces, like me dad's, me mum's, me dad's again. I still want to cry when I see me dad's dismantled face. He lost his last job you know. Just think one day there might be the last job on earth. And everyone will come out to see the man lose it. They'll all watch as he comes up to his last hour. The last hooter blow whoooooooooo oh oooooooo ooooooooooooooooo I'm being corny now, in't a Joey? Oh my it's white in here behind the eyes, so mist.

She closes her eyes. Joey holds her. He makes a fist. He shakes it at the audience. He shakes it up at the sky. He shakes it at the door where the family are outside. He shakes it down under the bed. Then he puts it in front of his face and bites into his hand.

Blackout.

Message to Karl Marx : Dude, you were so WRONG!

A must-read book review by Roger Kimball about what seems to me to be a must-read book: Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown, by Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski.

Kimball describes it as:

In its nimble mastery of intellectual history and generous humanity, the book has no equal. Kolakowski�s survey of Marxist thought is breathtaking in its sweep�from the Bible and the Greeks through the web of nineteenth-century socialist thought and the florid dissemination of Marxist and quasi-Marxist ideas in the �new-age� redoubts of the twentieth century, Kolakowski has provided the definitive account of a spiritual-political itinerary gone terribly wrong.

A massive 3-volume book, originally published in 1978 - it has now been reissued, except all 3 volumes are now one volume. So the book must be massive. I MUST have it. (Read that article to see its publication history in France. Faaaaaaascinating.)

Kimball writes:

As far as I can tell, the text is unchanged except for the addition of a brief preface. Although only a few pages long, the preface is valuable for three things. It reminds us straightaway�this emerges as a theme of the book�that Marxist doctrine, by calling for the abolition of private property and the more or less total subordination of the market to state control, provided �a good blueprint for converting human society into a giant concentration camp.� (�[T]he abolition of the market,� Kolakowski comments elsewhere, �means a gulag society.�) Kolakowski also makes the important point that, notwithstanding the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism is still eminently worth studying, not least because its aspirations continue to percolate in the dreams of various utopian planners. (You needn�t go to China or even Cuba: just look at the increasingly pink and authoritarian complexion of the European Union.) Moreover, as Kolakowski puts it in his introduction to My Correct Views on Everything,

Communism was not the crazy fantasy of a few fanatics, nor the result of human stupidity and baseness; it was a real, very real part of the history of the twentieth century, and we cannot understand this history of ours without understanding communism. We cannot get rid of this specter by saying it was just �human stupidity,� or �human corruptibility.� The specter is stronger than the spells we cast on it. It might come back to life.

... The philosopher David Stove once observed, �As an item on the intellectual agenda, Marxism is scarcely even a joke� . Marxism is a fearful social�and police�problem, but so is the drug trade. It is a fearsome political problem, but so is Islamic fundamentalism. But an intellectual problem Marxism is not, any more than the drug trade or Islamic fundamentalism.� Kolakowski has devoted the 1500 pages of Main Currents of Marxism as well as a dozen or more essays to Marxism, its genesis, its permutations, its horrifying record of mass murder.

Sounds like my kind of philosopher. I've always had a gut feeling that the actual POINT of Communism was for a couple of dudes to become ruthless brutal mass murderers with a ton of power. All the "life will be wonderful, and rivers will flow with milk, and the proletariat will join hands" crap seemed like a smokescreen. A brilliant smokescreen. There's the section in the "secret book" in 1984 which basically admits this smokescreen. I should excerpt that - it makes my blood run cold. The calculating indifference to human suffering, the ruthless grabbing of power, the stomping boot on millions and millions of people - ... none of that was a byproduct of a mis-guided philosophy, or the result of a couple of over-zealous believers ... No. It was the actual POINT of the endeavor.

Kimball writes of Kolakowski:

He does not give Marxism the benefit of the doubt, exactly, but he does give it the benefit of patient scrutiny and the highest level of historical intelligence.

The results of that scrutiny are devastating. Notwithstanding its pretensions to �science� (perhaps the most grotesque aspect of Marxism�s intellectual pretension�remember, for example, Engels� insistence that social laws were no less objective than geological deposits), Marxism has proven to be completely barren as an instrument of social understanding or prediction. This does not mean, as Kolakowski points out, that Marx�s theories have not been useful. It�s just that their usefulness has been confined entirely to providing �a set of slogans that were supposed to justify and glorify communism and the slavery that inevitably goes with it.�

All of Marx�s major predictions have turned out to be wrong. He said that societies based on a market economy would suffer spiraling class polarization and the disappearance of the middle class. Every society lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of a market economy shows that Marx was wrong about that. He predicted the growing immiseration and impoverishment of the working class in capitalist societies. (Actually, he didn�t merely predict that it would happen, he predicted that it would happen necessarily and inevitably�thanks, Hegel!) The opposite has happened. Indeed, as Kolakowski notes, �in the second edition of Capital Marx updated various statistics and figures, but not those relating to workers� wages; those figures, if updated, would have contradicted his theory.�

Marx further predicted the inevitable revolution of the proletariat. This is the very motor of Marxism. Take away the proletarian revolution and you neuter the theory. But there have been no proletarian revolutions. The Bolshevik revolution, as Kolakowski points out, �had nothing to do with Marxian prophesies. Its driving force was not a conflict between the industrial working class and capital, but rather was carried out under slogans that had no socialist, let alone Marxist, content: Peace and Land for Peasants.� Marx said that in a capitalist economy, untrammeled competition would inevitably squeeze profit margins: eventually�and soon!�the economy would grind to a halt and capitalism would collapse. Take a look at capitalist economies in the hundred and fifty years since Marx wrote: have profit margins evaporated? Marx thought that capitalist economies would hamper technical progress: the opposite is true.

Anyway. MUST read this book. I kind of want to go out and buy it right now.

It's definitely worth it to read Kimball's review in its entirety.

Yayyyy!!!!

For our unsung hero of the week ...

Berardinelli has this to say:

Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney allowed the costume to dominate their performances. Here, it's the other way around. Bale comes close to being the definitive Batman.

!!!!! Hoo-yah! Revenge!! I've read mixed reviews of the film, and most of the criticisms seem to say: "woah. It's frigging BATMAN, okay, not Clausewitz. It takes itself waaaayyy too seriously." However: Berardinelli is one of my most trustworthy reviewers and I am so pleased to see Christian Bale (you know: THE STAR OF THE FILM) get some props, in light of the moronic behavior of his dipshit brainwashed-in-6-weeks costar.

And here's my mean side coming out: She's been getting uniformly bad reviews. I'm glad. I'm unabashedly glad.

Strange. I've always liked her in the past. I liked Dawson's Creek, I liked her in Ice Storm, in Wonder Boys ... I think she has the qualities of a young Michelle Pfeiffer, and also that much potential.

But I'm glad that the bubble has burst, at least in terms of her reviews. Maybe it'll be a necessary shock of reality in her nutso BT-ridden world. I look forward to the day (which I believe is inevitable) when this "magnificent woman" (according to her OT-6-level boyfriend) is single again, and able to get back to the business of her career. It's bound to happen. She deserves it.

But let me reiterate: Yay for Christian Bale. Give the boy the props!!

And here is what Ebert has to say:

This is at last the Batman movie I've been waiting for. The character resonates more deeply with me than the other comic superheroes, perhaps because when I discovered him as a child, he seemed darker and more grown-up than the cheerful Superman. He has secrets. As Alfred muses: "Strange injuries and a nonexistent social life. These things beg the question, what does Bruce Wayne do with his time?"

AWESOME. I realize I am treating this like a personal triumph, which is completely inappropriate because I had nothing to do with this movie ... but still. After the publicity-hogging red-carpet behavior of TomKat over the last few weeks, I think it's about time that people pay attention to ... uhm ... you know ... THE MOVIE. Good.

Ebert on Bale:

Bale is just right for this emerging version of Batman. It's strange to see him muscular and toned, after his cadaverous appearance in "The Machinist," but he suggests an inward quality that suits the character.

And he ends with this slam-dunk:

I said this is the Batman movie I've been waiting for; more correctly, this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for, because I didn't realize that more emphasis on story and character and less emphasis on high-tech action was just what was needed. The movie works dramatically in addition to being an entertainment. There's something to it.

Again: I feel a surge of inappropriate pride and victory. Sheila, you were not involved in the making of this film .... Sorry. Still: YAY!!!!

More from the New York Times.

Read the first damn paragraph.

Near the big-bang finish of "Batman Begins," the title avenger, played by the charismatic young British actor Christian Bale, scoops up a damsel in distress, played by Katie Holmes, and spirits her away to his lair. Watching this scene, it was hard not to think how nice it would have been if Batman had instead dispatched the infernally perky actress, whose recent off-screen antics have threatened to eclipse this unexpectedly good movie. As it happens, the most memorable rescue mission in "Batman Begins" isn't engineered by the caped crusader, but by the film's director, Christopher Nolan.

I can only imagine how displeased Warner Brothers is with her right now. That's what I 'get' from that paragraph, and so many others. She has been reprimanded - she has tried to rectify matters - but she can't help herself. Interviewers only want to know about Tom, so she only talks about Tom ... and the whole circus completely took over. It was forgotten that an actual FILM was about to open.

But still: let's get back to Bale. Here's some snippets from the Times about Bale's performance:

Conceived in the shadow of American pop rather than in its bright light, this tense, effective iteration of Bob Kane's original comic book owes its power and pleasures to a director who takes his material seriously and to a star who shoulders that seriousness with ease. Until now, Mr. Bale, who cut his teeth working with Steven Spielberg on "Empire of the Sun" almost two decades ago, has been best known for his scarily plausible performance in "American Psycho," an intellectual horror movie that now seems like a prelude to this one: think American Psycho redux, this time in tights.

As sleek as a panther, with cheekbones that look sharp enough to give even an ardent lover pause, Mr. Bale makes a superbly menacing avenger. His Batman is leagues away from Adam West's cartoony persona, which lumbered across American television screens in the mid- and late-60's with zap and pow, but never an ounce of real wow. Mr. Bale even improves on Michael Keaton, who donned Batman's cape both in Tim Burton's 1989 "Batman" and its funhouse sequel three years later, and gave the character a jolt of menace. What Mr. Keaton couldn't bring to the role, and what Mr. Bale conveys effortlessly, is Bruce Wayne's air of casual entitlement, the aristocratic hauteur that is the necessary complement of Batman's obsessive megalomania.

Also, big ol' props to director Christopher Nolan - which really pleases me:

What Mr. Nolan gets, and gets better than any other previous director, is that without Bruce Wayne, Batman is just a rich wacko with illusions of grandeur and a terrific pair of support hose. Without his suave alter ego, this weird bat man is a superhero without humanity, an avenger without a conscious, an id without a superego. Which is why, working from his and David S. Goyer's very fine screenplay, Mr. Nolan more or less begins at the beginning, taking Batman back to his original trauma and the death of his parents. With narrative economy and tangible feeling, he stages that terrible, defining moment when young Master Wayne watched a criminal shoot his parents to death in a Gotham City alley, thereby setting into motion his long, strange journey into the self.

Gonna have to see this one.

Mary Gordon on "The Dead"

The course material for this writing class I am doing is very simple - we are working solely out of the anthology You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe.

I love the slant of this book. Today's leading fiction writers tell us which short story most inspired them to be a writer - and they also explain why in little introductory essays coming before each of the short stories. It's a wonderful book. We've got Tobias Wolff writing on Raymond Carver's Cathedral, we've got Sue Miller writing on Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find, we've got John Irving writing on Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There are many stories in here I have never read, so I really look forward to that.

Last night, I read Mary Gordon's essay on James Joyce's The Dead.

What I love about her essay is - well, a couple things. I've read that story countless times, but I never get tired contemplating it, and hearing different interpretations, responses to it. It's exciting to me. I swear to God, just thinking about the last 4 pages (not to mention the last paragraph) is enough to give me goosebumps. Best. Writing. Ever. Don't argue. At least not here.

I also love how Gordon's essay ends. It's exactly how I feel. Yes!!!

Mary Gordon on James Joyce's "The Dead"

It begins with a slap in the face. "Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet."

Well, and did you fall for that one? Literally? Don't you know the difference between literally and figuratively? You're no better than Lily herself, are you? Or perhaps you're not Lily, but the garrulous speaker of the second paragraph, the platitude-spouting fool. "It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance ... Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style as long as anyone could remember ... Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout."

"The Dead" is built around a party, and for most of its duration we, like partygoers, swim in a clamor of voices, not only Gabriel's and the omniscient narrator's. Even Gabriel has many voices. There is the self-conscious Gabriel, the prissy Gabriel, the pompous Gabriel, the affectionate Gabriel, the lustful Gabriel. But many others speak: Miss Ivors, the political nettler; Mr. Browne with his forced jokes; Freddy Malins, who's just a little bit "screwed"; his mother, who tells us everything is "beautiful", including the fish her son-in-law caught in Scotland and had boiled for their dinner by the innkeeper. There is the novelettish voice of such sentences as "Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief," and the society-page gabble of "the acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time." There is Aunt Julia's voice singing "Arrayed for the Bridal" and Bartell D'Arcy's singing "The Lass of Aughrim." There is the voice of Patrick Morkan, Gabriel's grandfather, imitated by Gabriel: the very model of a stuffy twit when his h orse makes a fool of him by walking round and round the statue of the King: "Go on, sir! What do you mean, sir? ... Most extraordinary conduct! Can't understand the horse!"

To add to the tumult, Joyce offers us a series of lists, giving us information we have no need of: things that are only there for the pleasure of their naming. Guests are introduced briefly, for the sound of their names: Mr. Bergin, Mr. Kerrigan, Miss Power, Miss Furlong, Miss Daly. There are the secondhand booksellers on the Dublin quays: Hickey's on Bachelor's Walk, Webb's and Massey's on Aston's Quay, O'Clohissey's in the by-street. And, most important, the meal spread out before us, like Homer's catalogue of ships. Followed by dessert, the sweetmeats joined together by their jumpy integument of "and's".

This is the hubbub of realims, the buzz and Babel of the nineteenth century. Words, words, words, talk talk talk, and in so many voices, such an abundance that of course there must be misunderstandings and mistakes. "The Dead" is chock full of mistakes, beginning with Gabriel's ill-considered joshing of Lily about her beau, to which she replies, "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you." Twice, Aunt Julia misunderstands: she doesn't know what galoshes are and doesn't get Gabriel's reference to the Three Graces. Browne repeated calls Freddy Malins Teddy and embarrasses the young laides by telling the kind of joke they don't like. Errors of tone abound. Gabriel takes the wrong tone in responding to Miss Ivors's political challenge, and he mistakes the pressure of her hand for a conciliatory gesture, when it is really a prelude to her standing on tiptoe to whisper into his ear: "West Briton." Aunt Kate offers an ill-considered criticism of the pope's decision to banish women from choirs in favor of young boys, and she is chastised for doing this in the presence of Mr. Browne, who is of "the other persuasion". A conversation about monks sleeping in their coffin is dropped because it is too "lugubrious". And Freddy is ready to pick a fight in defense of a black opera singer whom no one, in fact, has criticized. "And why couldn't he have a voice too? Is it because he's only a black?"

The mistakes and misunderstandings seem to be smoothed over by Gabriel's speech in praise of his aunts and cousin, whom he compliments for their hospitality, their harmoniousness. There is the bustle of leave-taking, when Freddy Malins and Mr. Browne can't make the cabdriver understand them, and everyone shouts directions from the door, only adding to the confusion. Finally, the cab takes off, and upstairs there is the sound of music.

In the quiet surrounded by music, Gabriel sees his wife standing on the stairs. "There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of."

We usually think of mistakes as affairs of language, a by-blow of the very separateness that causes us to wish to communicate with one another. But what Gabriel perceives and tries to create in silence -- a woman who is a symbol -- constitutes the central mistake both of his life and of the story. He assumes that the light in her eyes and the color on her cheeks have to do with him, as he will later assume that she has understood his desire for her and shared it. In his silent creation of Gretta -- a creation brought about without a word from her -- Gabriel has misconstrued the woman he has lived beside. Just as the narrator refers to Gretta only as Mrs. Conroy or Gabriel's wife, Gabriel assumes that Gretta's whole identity is connected to him. It is only after she speaks what is in her heart, after she tells her story, that the vision which both takes in and transcends separateness can occur.

She tells him of a boy she knew as a young girl in the West Country, a boy who died for love of her. Afterward, she sleeps. And in this silence, the silence which comes after true speech, Gabriel is transformed from petty if dutiful pedant to a man of vision.

The process happens in stages. He is dully angry, and this anger rekindles his lust. He is jealous. He is ironic. He feels humiliated, seeing himself as far less than the boy who died for her. When he speaks, his voice is "humble and indifferent," the humility and indifference Joyce thought to be the necessary conditions of the true artist. Then he is terrfied at the "impalpable and vindictive being ... coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world." He notes that Gretta's not as young as she used to be and feels disgust for the reality of her body, represented by her petticoat string and the limp upper of her boot.

He thinks of his Aunt Julia's impending death, and this thought, born of benevolence, leads him to understand that to be alive is to be in the process of becoming a shade. Tears fill his eyes, and his blurred physical vision allows him to imagine the dead boy -- a shade, to be sure, but standing near, under a dripping tree. Gabriel loses himself, that distinct and separate self by which he has been able to be named. He is among the dead.

"His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world in itself which these had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling." What a strange word, the word "reared". What does it imply? That the dead have nurtured the world we think of as the real one as parents "rear" a child, feeding it, sheltering it, educating it, until it is ready to leave them?

Gabriel's vision takes him to the graveyard where the boy is buried. The snow is falling. In the extraordinary last paragraph of "The Dead", the word "falling" is repeated seven times: seven, the theologically magic number, the number of the seven deadly sins, the seven moral virtues, the seven corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

The vagueness of the flickering shades subsides. Gabriel sees the snow on "the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns," those singular sharp things asserting, inexorably, their individuality, their separateness from their fellows. But the snow that is falling generally falls on them all alike and muffles their sharpness, their distinctness. "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Consider the daring of Joyce's final repetitions and reversals: "falling faintly, faintly falling" -- a triumph of pure sound, of language as music. No one has ever equaled it; it makes those who have come after him pause for a minute, in awed gratitude, in discouragement. How can any of us come up to it? Only, perhaps, humbly, indifferently, in its honor and its name, to try.

And he did it all when he was twenty-five. The bastard.

The Books: "By the Bog of Cats" (Marina Carr)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the scripts shelf was given to me by my sister Siobhan - I believe she saw it done at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and absolutely loved it. It is called By the Bog of Cats, and it's by Marina Carr. Another Irish playwright.

This play is so full of juicy great female characters that you think you've died and gone to heaven. It's set in rural Ireland at a place called The Bog of Cats, and it's a re-telling of Medea - with all the same themes of betrayal, revenge, murder, abandonment. It tells the story of Hester Swane, a tinker (that's probably a politically incorrect term now) - who is deeply connected to the land in a way that is almost a torment. (Of course it is. She's Irish.) Hester was born to tinker parents, she killed her brother years ago, and now she has to watch the love of her life, the father of her child, marry someone else. She snaps, and goes on a journey of revenge.

The tone of the play is not realistic. It's kind of poetic, mysterious, and ... scary, frankly.

Here's how it opens. I just loooove her writing.

From By the Bog of Cats, by Marina Carr.

Dawn. On the Bog of Cats. A bleak white landscape of ice and snow. Music, a lone violin. HESTER SWANE trails the corpse of a black swan after her, leaving a trail of blood in the snow. The GHOST FANCIER stands there watching her.

HESTER. Who are you? Haven't seen you around here before.

GF. I'm a ghost fancier.

HESTER. A ghost fancier. Never heard tell of the like.

GF. You never seen ghosts?

HESTER. Not exactly, felt what I thought were things from some other world betimes, but nothin' I could grab onto and say, that is a ghost.

GF. Well, where there's ghosts there's ghost fanciers.

HESTER. That so? So what do you do, Mr. Ghost Fancier? Eye up ghosts? Have love affairs with them?

GF. Dependin' on the ghost. I've trailed you a while. What're you doin' draggin' the corpse of a swan behind ya like it was your shadow?

HESTER. This is auld Black Wing. I've known her the longest time. We used to play together when I was a young wan. Wance I had to lave the Bog of Cats and when I returned years later this swan here came swoopin' over the bog to welcome me home, came right up to me and kissed me hand. Found her frozen in a bog hole last night, had to rip her from the ice, left half her underbelly.

GF. No one ever tell ya it's dangerous to interfere with swans, especially black wans?

HESTER. Only an auld superstition to keep people afraid. I only want to bury her. I can't be struck down for that, can I?

GF. You live in that caravan over there?

HESTER. Used to; live up the lane now. In a house, though I've never felt at home in it. But you, Mr. Ghost Fancier, what ghost are you ghoulin' for around here?

GF. I'm ghoulin' for a woman be the name of Hester Swane.

HESTER. I'm Hester Swane.

GF. You couldn't be, you're alive.

HESTER. I certainly am and aim to stay that way.

GF. (looks around, confused) Is it sunrise or sunset?

HESTER. Why do ya want to know?

GF. Just tell me.

HESTER. It's that hour when it could be aither dawn or dusk, the light bein' so similar. But it's dawn, see there's the sun coming up.

GF. Then I'm too previous. I mistook this hour for dusk. A thousand apologies.

Goes to exit. HESTER stops him.

HESTER. What do ya mean you're too previous? Who are ya? Really?

GF. I'm sorry for intrudin' upon you like this. It's not usually my style.

Lifts his hat, walks off.

HESTER. (shouts after him) Come back! --- I can't die -- I have a daughter.

Brain space

My apartment is awesome. I should take some pictures some time and post them. It's adorable and I personally think it has the best vibe in the world. Especially with the advent of
1. The curtains.
2. My feng shui makeover.

However ... the size is SUCH a challenge, and I am talking on an every day basis. Like: every feckin' day. I have to manage the encroaching chaos daily. I have storage space, I have lots of bins ... everything has its place ... but man, one pile of books lying on the floor beside my chair, and it looks like all hell has broken loose. In a cavernous house, you wouldn't notice, but in mine sometimes I get tormented by my own belongings.

Like: STAY PUT, DAMMIT.

Today: an orgy of cleaning and organizing.

I have things I need to work on, stuff I need to do ... and I just can't do it in chaos. I wish I could. I'd be the most productive person in the world.

But when my space is pristine and clear, it opens up space in my BRAIN. I don't look at the pile of books, or the hamper of laundry ... and think: AH, MY STUFF IS TAKING OVER MY LIFE!!! This, as I said, is all exacerbated by the smallness of my space.

A sense of well-being and tranquility when I have all my ducks in a row. When the shelves are dusted. When the drawers are closed. When the books are where they belong.

Ready to get to work.

Random quote

Me: God, I am SO hungry!

Ann Marie: (in a tone of complete agreement) Yeah, I could kill someone.

Top 10 theatrical moments I would have liked to have seen

1. Laurette Taylor as Amanda Wingfield in Glass Menagerie - in Chicago. BEFORE it came to New York. Oh, what I would give to have seen that ...

2. Marlon Brando in the premiere of Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. What a thing that performance must have been live.

3. Eleanora Duse doing anything. She's famous for all kinds of things - known as one of the greatest stage actresses to ever practice the craft. But what is always referenced when Duse comes up - is her blush. Her sense of the reality of the moment was so true, and so deep, that she would blush, onstage.

4. One of Meyerhold's legendary productions in Russia

5. Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth. She did that role in 1785, but its reputation among theatrefolk lives on. It is said that her interpretation of that role is, to this day, "unequaled". WOW. A fellow actor in the production with her said that in preparation for her "out damn'd spot" scene, she would go out behind the theatre and chop wood. In a frenzy. To get herself into the proper state of mind. This is long before "method", or anything like that. It was her instinct, her genius, that led her to that choice. She must have been absolutely extraordinary.

6. Any of the plays of the ancient Greeks - comedy or tragedy - it doesn't matter. I so would love to see how those plays were REALLY done, way back when in antiquity.

7. The premiere of the first production of Oklahoma on Broadway. A revolution in the American musical. And people were aware of it as it was happening, which is what is so amazing. The bar had been raised. I so would have loved to have seen that.

8. I would have loved to be in the audience to see Clifford Odets' masterful piece of Communist agitprop: Waiting for Lefty. It wasn't even in a real theatre - not the first production of it anyway. It was in some community center way downtown. The audience not only erupted into a rageful frenzy at the end - when it is revealed "Lefty" was killed - the audience started rioting immediately - and Elia Kazan (who played the lead role of Agate) stood down center and started shouting the last lines: "STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!" The audience picked up the call, started shouting "STRIKE, STRIKE, STRIKE ...", stamping their feet, and then they literally stormed the stage - to embrace the actors ... there was no fourth wall. The Group Theatre, an organization completely of its time, had broken down the barrier between actor and audience. I so would have loved to have been there. Lefty doesn't work now. The writing is wonderful, I love Odets, but the love affair with Communism seems stupid and naive. It doesn't matter to me. It's the theatrical event I'm talking about.

9. I would have loved to be at the Actors Studio on the day that Marilyn Monroe did a scene from Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie. The place was apparently PACKED with onlookers, hanging off the balcony, peering down. I've been to the Actors Studio many times. It's in an old church on 44th Street. There's a balcony, a working-space (not really a stage) with an exposed brick back wall. Actors go to the Actors Studio like a class. You work on scenes for the moderator of the week (moderators have been Harvey Keitel, Ellen Burstyn, Lee Grant, Estelle Parsons, Arthur Penn etc.). And Marilyn, trembling like a leaf, signed up to do a scene. She was a massive movie star at the time, but she wanted to work on her craft and be a serious actress. Apparently, her work was tremendous that day. You could have heard a pin drop in that space. I know this not only from Shelley Winters' biography, but also from one of my teachers who was there that day. Such a risk for her to take - and I would have loved to have seen it.

10. I would love to have been in the a