The Sheila Variations

Song catalog

We've got some freezing rain here on the last day of the year. I spent the day outside, am now cozy and inside. And The Rookie is on. Uhm - can you say "sheer Sheila joy"? I bought 3 Cds today: Eminem's Curtain Call, Fiona Apple's latest, and Franz Ferdinand.

Which reminds me that I found this today:

Tell me what the first song that comes to your mind: (By the way - I took this to mean the sentiment expressed in the song itself - not necessarily the way it makes ME feel. Like - the first one - Hate song - the first thing that came to my mind is Everclear's blistering song about a father who abandoned him. This isn't MY hate, it's HIS hate. So that's kind of where I went with this ... if that makes sense. Sometimes the two things overlap - like with "something to talk about" - it's about being flirty, and having a "crush" - that's the topic of the song. And it also happens to make ME feel like being an outrageous flirt. Something in the music, or how it's all put together - puts me in a flirty social mood. So whatever. Onward.)

1. Hate song? "Father of mine" - Everclear

2. Love song? "I saw her standing there" - the Beatles - that's probably more of a "lust" song, but to be honest, I don't see the difference. It's the pheromones, you understand. Converging the two has always worked for me. So "I saw her standing there" stands as my choice.

3. Crush or Flirt song? "Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About" - Bonnie Raitt

4. Fuck song? "Black Hole Sun" - Soundgarden. Also "Crazy On You" by Heart

5. Goofy song? Travis' awesome cover of Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time"

6. Dance song? "Tragedy" - the Bee Gees

7. Rage song? "Kim" - Eminem

8. Slow song? It seems so high schoolish to think of "slow songs". My mind is a blank. All I can think of is "Purple Rain" because that's how all of our high school dances ended.

9. Make-up Song? "If you leave" - Good Charlotte

10. Redneck song? Uhm - Toby Keith? Hate that jackass. But not because he's a 'redneck'. I just hate him because he's a big fat phony. But then I also thought of that kind of fun song "I'm a redneck woman" - love it - which has a different fun-loving spin on the word "redneck"

11. Make-out song? "Tempted" - Squeeze

12. Break-up song? "Washing of the Water" - Peter Gabriel - I find that song almost too painful to listen to. Amazing.

13. Happy song? "Fields of Joy" - Lenny Kravitz - also the theme song from The Greatest American Hero which is an amazing song - better than Prozac - it literally has the ability to TOTALLY change my mood. I could be having a blue day, and suddenly I hear it on some nostalgic radio station - and my heart fills with hope and joy.

14. Sad song? "Life Story" from the musical Closer than Ever. Kills me. Also "Your Face" by Cliff Eberhardt. There was a good 5 years when i was unable to listen to that song. Which was a bummer because I loved that album.

15. Corny song? "I've never been to me" - Charlene. Yup. This really dates me. I have no idea why this song became such a huge hit. It was played endlessly. The lyrics are so cringe-worthy that you are embarrassed for everyone involved.

Hey lady, you lady, cursing at your life
You're a discontented mother and a regimented wife
I've no doubt you dream about the things you'll never do
But, I wish someone had talked to me
Like I wanna talk to you.....

Oh, I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run
I took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun
But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free
I've been to paradise but I've never been to me

Please lady, please lady, don't just walk away
'Cause I have this need to tell you why I'm all alone today
I can see so much of me still living in your eyes
Won't you share a part of a weary heart that has lived million lies....

Oh, I've been to Niece and the Isle of Greece while I've sipped champagne on a yacht
I've moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got
I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things that a woman ain't supposed to see
I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

[spoken]
Hey, you know what paradise is?
It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be
But you know what truth is?
It's that little baby you're holding, it's that man you fought with this morning
The same one you're going to make love with tonight
That's truth, that's love......

Sometimes I've been to crying for unborn children that might have made me complete
But I took the sweet life, I never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet
I've spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that costs too much to be free
Hey lady......
I've been to paradise, (I've been to paradise)
But I've never been to me

I just have no words. The thing fisks itself. "subtle whoring"? WHAT? Nice justification there, babe. Oh, so if it's "subtle" it's not really "whoring"? And what IS 'subtle whoring"? I am embarrassed to still be asking these questions but I've been wondering about it ever since the song first came out.

The spoken-word section makes me want to punch a wall.

16. Christmas song? "Christmas Is a Time to Say I love You" - Billy Squier - I love to have any excuse to reference this song on my blog.

17. Perverted or Horny song? "Hungry like the wolf" - duran duran - the woman moaning in the background at the end always made me feel very uncomfortable in high school when it came on while my mother was driving me to play practice or whatever

18. Boring song? Any time Van Morrison starts "riffing". Which is in every song. The only Van Morrison song I like is when they do "Raglan Road" with The Chieftains. Other than that? Every 25 goddamn minute song could easily be a 3 minute song, and be FAR better. Stop "expressing yourself", please.

19. Favorite song? Oh Lord. At the moment? Or eternally? At the moment: "Gone" by Kelly Clarkson. Also "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin. "Holiday" by Green Day as well. Eternally? I'd have to say "Fields of Joy", by Lenny Kravitz - "Rape Me", by Nirvana, "Monkey Wrench" by Foo Fighters, "Say Yeah" by Pat McCurdy - I am sure there are a gazillion more, but these just come to mind.

20. Funeral song? Uhm ... "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" - I have no idea.

Please feel free to leave your own choices in the comments section!

Year in review again

Idea stolen from Ann Althouse.

I just scanned through my blog, and chose posts I like - either because the topic is interesting, or I like my writing, or the conversation in the comments was particularly lively and awesome. As ever - thanks for reading my blog, all of you out there!

JANUARY 2005: O, how full of briers is this working-day world! - As You Like It

Advice on how to find public bathrooms in NYC

FEBRUARY 2005: The Oscars

This blog's group project: Our review of Christo's The Gates (the project was born here)

MARCH 2005: I come out as a snob

Ah, for a hot Amish fella

APRIL 2005: Embracing the lame

RIP Ruth Hussey

Celluloid dreams

MAY 2005; I actually live-blogged Riding the Bus with my sister, starring the atrocious Rosie O'Donnell

JUNE 2005: In rambling praise of Dave Grohl

And also: Bragging about my favorite ex

JULY 2005: The Phys Wrecks story:
Introduction
The story continued
The story continued
The story continued
The story continued
The last part of the story

AUGUST 2005: Road works ahead

Happy 20th birthday to The Breakfast Club

SEPTEMBER 2005: The two days that came before

The "great live squid"

OCTOBER 2005: Tim and Dawn

Future Oscar winners: Men

Future Oscar winners: Women

NOVEMBER 2005: Today in History: Nov. 7, 1917

What, in my view, constitutes sexy?

Catharsis

DECEMBER 2005: I admit that I have been wrong about Patrick Dempsey

Albums from my childhood

2005: Year in review

Here is the complete list of books I read in 2005.

Underworld, by Don DeLillo - which I had started in the fall of 2004- before I went to Ireland - and it took me FOREVER to finish it. The damn thing is so LONG though that I didn't feel like i could stop reading, even though I eventually found it so boring. I had put in so much time that I had to finish it. So no - the whole book wasn't worth it. But the opening 100 pages? Cannot be touched in terms of brilliance. The rest of the book doesn't live up to it ... but that opening. I still pick it up and read it on occasion.

Okay - I won't comment on every book but on that one I had to.

George Washington: A Life - by Willard Sterne Randall

The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams - this is probably my 5th time reading it all the way through

East of Eden - John Steinbeck (a re-read. I love this book. I've read it about 4 times)

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson - Joseph Ellis (this is one of the best books I've ever read on Thomas Jefferson)

Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler - it far surpassed my expectations. Chilling - couldn't get the book out of my mind

The Prince - Machiavelli (this is a re-read. I have periodically gone back and re-read all the stuff I was forced to read in high school.)

The Great Terror: A Reassessment - by Robert Conquest (huge post about it here) One cannot fully understand the events of the 20th century without having read this book.

102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers - by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn

Crowds and Power - by Elias Canetti. (Woah. That's all I have to say)

To the Heart of a Conflict: Chechnya - by Andrew Meier (yawn. Not that the Chechnya situation is a yawn - but Meier somehow made it all about HIM. Blech. If a Robert Kaplan or a Rebecca West traveled through the region - I wouldn't have been so annoyed - because even though they are characters in their own travelogues - they do not come across as annoying or ... too pleased with themselves. Meier's book, to me, read like: "whoo-hoo! Look at me! Risking my life! I'm like Robert Kaplan now!" Uh, no. You're not.)

Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time - by David Edmonds and John Eidinow (some fun excerpts here, here , and here.)

The Aran Islands - by John Millington Synge. Ahhhh. Love this book. (Here's a huge post I wrote about Synge)

Charming Billy, by Alice McDermott. Wonderful novel.

The Secret History of the IRA, by Ed Moloney. The jury's still out on this one. Very glad I read it though.

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing, by Margaret Atwood

Middlemarch, by George Eliot. Wow!!! I blithered about it here.

Aspects of the Novel, by EM Forster

On Writing, by Stephen King (phenomenal)

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit , by Brenda Ueland (writers out there: do yourself a favor and pick up this book. Dumb title. Great great book.)

Tracy and Hepburn, by Garson Kanin. So good I never wanted it to end.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens.

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror , by Bernard Lewis

Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May - September 1787, by Catherine Drinker Bowen. This book was literally like injesting crack. Even though I've never injested crack. I am a drug addict though. A Second Constitutional Congress drug addict.

Letters To a Young Contrarian, by Christopher Hitchens. hahahaha

Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke. Another re-read. Even better than the second time. Is it wrong to have a crush on him? Don't worry, Anne - I won't steal your dead boyfriend. I already have my own.

The Teammates, by David Halberstam - a wonderful book about Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio, and Bobby Doerr (here's one of my favorite stories from that book)

Cary Grant - Marc Elliot. Good and interesting on the development of Grant's extraordinary career.

Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season - Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King (a re-read. So much fun. Again. Like crack.)

Room With a View, by EM Forster

Harry Potter and the Sorecer's Stone - JK Rowling - I had read it before. But then lost track of the series. I am a latecomer to the mania. So this year I decided to read the entire series, get caught up. So glad I did.

9/11 Commission Report - hahahahaha I'm sorry, don't mean to laugh - it just cracks me up - to go from Harry Potter to that, but hey - that's what the list says. So it must be true!! Welcome to my world.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - JK Rowling

The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing - Jayna Davis (I guess I like my Harry Potter experience to be bookended by the war on terror. This book scared the shit out of me.)

Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media - by Seth Mnookin - really really enjoyed this book. Fascinating.

Rose Madder - by Stephen King. Not wacky about it. Had to force myself to finish it

The Pigman - Paul Zindel (one of my favorite books - this is a re-read)

The Pigman's Legacy - Paul Zindel (see above comment)

Pardon Me, You're Stepping On my Eyeball - Paul Zindel (LOVE this book - another re-read - I think it's one of his best.)

Children of the Arbat - by Anatoli Naumovich Rybakov

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - by JK Rowling

Combatting Cult Mind Control : The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults by Steven Hassan - written by an ex-Moonie who is now one of the world's leading "exit counselors". He prefers that term to "deprogramming". Terrifying book about brainwashing - very very good.

The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems - by William Butler Yeats

The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery : Volume V: 1935-1942 - by L. M. Montgomery

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion - just finished it. A devastating book written in the aftermath of the death of her husband of 40 years. It's up there with CS Lewis' book on grief. It should become a classic in the genre.

I suppose I should also count all of the plays I re-read this year - especially the entire work of Tennessee Williams.

Looking back over this list makes me think that I really want to read more fiction in 2006. More than I did in 2005, anyway. And so I will!!

The Books: "Reckless" (Craig Lucas)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Reckless and Other Plays, by Craig Lucas

I did this play in college. It's one of the funnest craziest things I've ever worked on. It deserves an entire post of our backstage shenanigans - but for now I'll just say - we all were in it. I played Pooty - the paraplegic wife of Lloyd, one of the main characters. Pooty PRETENDS to be deaf and mute. I can't remember why - but she is fluent in sign language - Lloyd believes she is deaf - and she just can't bring herself to tell him the truth, because she knows how much it will hurt him. She loves him. She lives her life as a deaf-mute woman. This is the only time I've gotten to do a death scene on stage. I drink poisoned champagne at a Christmas celebration and die in my wheelchair, shrieking in agony - thereby revealing to Lloyd, right at the moment of my death, that I had been lying for our entire marriage. It was hilarious. The play is obviously a black BLACK comedy. At the time of Pooty's death, she sits in her wheelchair, and she is wearing reindeer antler's on her head, in honor of Christmas - antlers draped with fir garlands. So ... dying with that damn thing on my head was one of the greatest pleasures I have ever had as an actress.

Believe it or not, though, Pooty is not the lead of the show. heh heh The lead of the show is a neurotic woman named Rachel who basically flees her husband in the first scene - for no apparent reason - and surges out into a snowstorm where she proceeds to have all kinds of weird adventures. She meets Lloyd. Lloyd and Pooty take her in. Rachel's husband finds her, shows up at the door, and pretends to be fine with her betrayal - gives her a bottle of champagne (which he has poisoned). The champagne was meant for her. But Pooty drinks it instead.

Then things start to go downhill. Lloyd goes off the rails. When Pooty dies, he was wearing a Santa hat. So he refuses to ever take the Santa hat off again. He becomes a drunk on the level of Charles Bukowski in two days. He holes up in cheap motels, raving about the joys of Christmas, wearing his Santa hat. My friend David played Lloyd to perfection - and his scene in the motel room, where he stands on the bed, wasted, shouting in a drunken slur about Christmas - was so goddamn funny that I would sneak around to the vom where I could watch the whole scene every night, unseen by the audience.

Mitchell played a bunch of characters - but his main scene was some kind of TV game show host. I can't remember why - but Lloyd, Pooty, and Rachel all go onto a game show - kind of like a Family Feud type thing. Each "team" has to dress in costumes. We dress up as the solar system. So please imagine: each one of us has a huge papier mache globe around our head - with a little hole cut out for our faces. I believe I was the earth. So my globe was blue with white cotton-ball clouds floating across it. David's globe was the sun, so his globe made him look like the Heat Miser. Rachel was Venus, I think. I so wish I had photographs of us in those globes. Especially because I was in a wheelchair. And talking in sign language. All with a globe on my head. It was one of the funnest plays I've ever done.

For old times sake, I will excerpt the game show scene.

EXCERPT FROM Reckless and Other Plays, by Craig Lucas

ANNOUNCER. And here's your host, Tim Timko.

TIM. Okay, here we go, how does this game work, where are we? Oh yes, it all comes back to me, like last night. Who was that girl? Okay, enough of that, it's good to be back, let's see who's here. [Houselights reveal families dressed as vegetables, household appliances, etc.] All you need's a mother, a wife, and the crazy idea that you could tell the difference. Looks like an awful lot of bag ladies slipped in, how're we all doing? ["Great, Tim!" "We're fine!" "Over here, Tim!"] Anybody want to play this thing, what's it called, Your Brother's Wife? ["We do!" "Pick us!" "We're a salad!"] Your Sister's Best Friend's Mother-in-law? [Sign lights] Your Mother Or Your Wife. Knew it would come to me -- Wait, wait a minute, nobody move, I know what I like and don't tell me now: you folks are dressed as the solar system, aren't you? [Rachel, Lloyd, and Pooty with globes over their heads]

LLOYD. That's right, Tim.

RACHEL. [at the same time] Yes, Tim!

TIM. Uh-huh. This looks like the planet earth down there. [Pooty]

LLOYD. That's my mother, Tim.

RACHEL. [same time] Mother Earth!

TIM. Mother Earth. I'll bet your world revolves around your sun too, doesn't it?

RACHEL. That's right!

TIM. Okay, what's your name, Sir?

LLOYD. Lloyd.

TIM. You have a last name, Lloyd?

LLOYD. Bophtelophti.

TIM. Say it?

LLOYD. Bophtelophti.

RACHEL. [same time] Bophtelophti!

TIM. Okay. This is the little lady.

LLOYD. That's right, Tim.

RACHEL. Venus!

TIM. One touch of Venus.

RACHEL. That's right!

TIM. Okay, you've met all our requirements, Lloyd.

LLOYD. I should tell you, Tim, my mother is deaf.

TIM. What's that?

LLOYD. But my wife speaks sign language.

TIM. I don't see any problem and she won't have to listen to my jokes, so get yourselves up here and get set to play Your Mother or Your Wife. [Music] Correctly identify which of these two lovely ladies answered each of three scintillating questions supplied by our highly educated audience of Nobel Prize laureates and win yourself up to twenty thousand dollars, Lloyd, and a chance to play for our grand prize.

ANNOUNCER. Tim, the Bophtelophtis will be playing for a grand cash total of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars!

TIM. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars. All right, Lloyd, are you ready for our glass booth?

LLOYD. I guess so, Tim.

TIM. Then take him away! Okay -- [Lloyd is escorted into the wings] What Lloyd doesn't realize is there are no air holes in our glass booth and it will quickly fill up with carbon monoxide, but never mind. Ladies, welcome.

RACHEL. It's great to be here, Tim!

TIM. You're going to translate?

RACHEL. That's right.

TIM. No funny business. Anybody here speaks deaf, keep an eye on these two. Venus, first question: Would you say Lloyd is more like a pingpong ball or a paper clip. Venus? A pingpong ball or a paperclip?

RACHEL. Oh, I'll say a pingpong ball.

TIM. Any particular reason?

RACHEL. Oh, he bounces around a lot. I don't know.

TIM. Okay, Mom? A pingpong ball or a paperclip? Two P's.

RACHEL. She says a paperclip.

TIM. Because --?

RACHEL. Because he holds the family together.

TIM. Aw. Okay, question number two: If blank were a salad dressing, what flavor would he be? Mom first this time. If Lloyd were a salad dressing, what flavor would he be?

RACHEL. She says blue cheese.

TIM. Getting a little moldy.

RACHEL. And I'll say blue cheese.

TIM. Blue cheese it is. Ladies, third question: if you could choose between your husband leaving you for another woman or, in Mom's case, her son leaving her for another Mom ... Guys, this question doesn't make sense. What's he going to do, get another mother? ... Judges say fly with it. All right -- choose between your husband leaving you for another woman or staying together, knowing he didn't love you, Venus -- Which would it be? Okay, fair enough.

RACHEL. I'll have to say another woman.

TIM. Another woman. All right, Mom: between losing your son to another mother or knowing he didn't love you ...

RACHEL. She says another mother.

TIM. M is for the many ways. All right, ladies, for our grand prize: who does Lloyd love most, you or Mom? Good question. Venus?

RACHEL. Oh gosh, his mother.

TIM. Mom? This should be interesting. Who does Lloyd really love, his mother or his wife? And -- she says you! All right, we'll be back with the three happy Boopy-boppies after this word from the good folks at Nu-Soft. Don't go away.

ANNOUNCER. We're going right on. [Lloyd is escorted back onstage] Ten seconds.

TIM. Say your name for me.

RACHEL. Bophtelophti.

TIM. Bophtelophti.

ANNOUNCER. Five, four, three ... Rolling.

TIM. And we're back with the Bophtelophtis --

RACHEL. Right!

TIM. From Springfield, Massachusetts. Bophtelophti, is that Polish?

RACHEL. Yes, Tim --

LLOYD. [same time] No, well, it's --

RACHEL. It's ...

LLOYD. Welsh, actually.

RACHEL. Welsh and Polish.

TIM. Welsh and Polish. How long have you been married?

LLOYD. Ten --

RACHEL. Ten.

LLOYD. Years.

RACHEL. [same time] Years.

TIM. Ten years. Any kids so far?

LLOYD. None so far, Tim --

RACHEL. [same time] Nope.

LLOYD. But we're hoping.

TIM. Well, best of luck to you.

LLOYD. Thank you.

RACHEL. [same time] Thanks!

TIM. Because you're going to need it. Okay, here we go, round two, Lloyd, for five thousand dollars -- when asked if you reminded them of a paper clip or a pingpong ball, who said "Paper clip" and I quote "because he holds the family together" -- Your mother or your wife?

LLOYD. Uh ... my mother.

TIM. Right you are if you think you are. For ten thousand dolalrs, when asked what type of salad dressing you reminded them of, who said "Blue cheese" -- your mother or your wife?

LLOYD. That's my favorite.

TIM. We're not all that interested in your personal life, Lloyd. No, I'm just kidding, take your time.

LLOYD. Oh, I'll say both.

TIM. Both it is for a quick ten grand. All right. For twenty thousand dollars and a chance to lose it all, Lloyd: Which ... Wait, let me get this straight: Which of the women in your life said they would rather lose you to another woman, wife or mother as the case may be, than believe you to be unhappy in your home? Mother Earth or the Venus de Milo, Lloyd? Lose to another woman before they would see you unhappy in their home.

LLOYD. Both?

TIM. Both it is! Congratulations, Lloyd Bophtelophti from Warsaw, Wales, you've just won twenty thousand dollars and a chance to go home before you ruin your marriage.

LLOYD. No, we want to keep going.

TIM. Remember, if you miss this one we keep it all, Lloyd, but you do go home with a free home version of Your Mother or Your Wife.

LLOYD. We'll play.

TIM. He said he'll play. All right, Mr., Mrs. and Mom -- no eye contact now and no help from those salad ingredients, you know who you are -- Lloyd, for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, we asked your mother and your wife: Who does Lloyd love most, his mother or his wife. Who said -- keep breathing, Lloyd -- you love your wife the most? Your mother, your wife or your mother and your wife, it could be both, don't think too hard, Lloyd.

LLOYD. Boy.

TIM. Your mother, your wife or your mother and your wife ... We're running out of time. We'll have to have an answer, Lloyd, I'm sorry.

LLOYD. My mother.

TIM. Lloyd Bophtelophti from Springfield Massachusetts, you've said the magic word, take the money, be happy, this is Tim Timko, saying goodnight, we'll see you next week with your mother, your wife, your mistress --

ANNOUNCER. For tickets to Your Mother or Your Wife, all you do is write your name and address ona postcard and mail it to Your Mother or Your Wife, Box Twelve Twenty-five, New Hope Station, New Hope California.

RACHEL. [same time as announcer] We didn't lose!

LLOYD. [same time] We didn't lose!

RACHEL. [same time] We didn't lose!

LLOYD. [same time] Pooty!

RACHEL. [same time] We didn't lose!

LLOYD. [same time] We didn't lose!

RACHEL. For once! We didn't lose!

LLOYD. One hundred and twenty thousand dollars!

RACHEL. I'll never complain again as long as I live, I swear!

LLOYD. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars!

RACHEL. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars!

LLOYD. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars!

I had one shred of sanity left

And now it is gone forever.

Thanks to Mark I am now a drooling driveling idiot with melting butter for a brain.

Diary Friday

Okay, so I'm gonna stick with the junior year in high school because ... well ... it's all just so ridiculous. Wildly in love with someone from afar. I'm picking a couple of entries from December of that year - preparing for Christmas, etc. I was crying with laughter reading some of this. I sound like such a moron.

The first paragraph of the first entry is just so unselfconsciously insane that I am still laughing about it.

DECEMBER 17

Today I'm going Christmas shopping with Mere, then sleeping over. I can't wait. On a wild impulse, I'm wearing my high-tops. I've got to get all my presents today. Probably take a McNugget break too.

[There's just too much that's funny there to even break it down. It takes a "wild impulse" to wear high-top sneakers? I still wear them on an almost daily basis. What the HELL am I talking about?]

Oh yes, I've got to tell about yesterday. I went to school, blah blah. Then came French. [French was one of the two classes I shared with my Prince Charming. Hence - my entire life revolved around French class and gym] He was in the room before me. I came in and he was just wandering around. [What? "Just wandering around"? Why does this make me laugh??] He saw me come in and he spoke to me. I didn't have to throw a question at him. He said, "Did you go to the concert?" "Yes." I smiled over at him. He said, "Better than the school one, huh? What did you think?" [Oh, stop fishing for compliments, jagoff.] Ah - oh - ee - ah [What the hell is that? Am I making each vowel sound?] I was tongue tied. How would I say, "God, you are a great sax player"? Well, that's just what I said, "God, you are a great sax player!" [Hahahahahaha So obviously I found it very easy to say "God, you are a great sax player" The thing that is funny to me here is that I seem unaware of the humor in my wording.] I asked him, "How much do you practice?" He shrugged. He's really sort of modest with compliments. "Never. I never practice." [Uhm - maybe we should say FALSELY modest with compliments.] He said, "I swear I never looked at that music until last night." "Right. Sure." I said sarcastically. He grinned at me and I said, "Wow, though. You were really excellent. You really got into it, huh?" [Good for you, Sheila. Giving the boy what he wants to hear. You were a generous soul and he did not fucking deserve it. Onward.] He laughed and shrugged again, and that was it.

You know what I'm gradually realizing? [Oh God. Not a realization.] I look back on 7th and 8th grade, even as far back as 6th grade, and I look at the guys I had crushes on, and they were all such babies. [Uhm, yeah. That's because they were 11 years old.] Boys were so young and immature - scrawny little bodies - but I thought Andy - who was about three feet tall - I thought he was the best thing going. [hahahaha He was three feet tall because he was ELEVEN. Mkay? This is Andy of the famous spitball Valentine. LOVED him.]

After History I go across the hall to Chemistry and as the room empties, I always see DW coming down the hall to his locker after Physics. I stand outside the door just to see him. [hahahaha] I don't think he's aware that I watch him -- If I thought he was aware, I'd never do it -- but it's a perfect spot to just look at him. Oh, I'm awful, I know! But -- [here comes the realization] it occurred to me one day as I was just standing there, looking at him getting his books [Sheila, why do you think he is not aware of you when you are basically just standing there, watching him??] -- he's so tall and lean - with broad shoulders - this isn't some 11 year old kid I'm in love with. [yeah, because that would be freaky.] What I'm really thinking is - when I was 11 and was in love with Andy - he seemed perfectly grown up and gorgeous to me. But we were both such children. I don't know what I'm trying to say - I'm not trying to say that DW and I are adults, blah blah - but just looking at him in that moment, it came to me in a flash - I don't know -- I felt in wonder of his humanity, his body (please don't get the wrong idea) - the way he moves - and how he's not a kid. Neither am I anymore. [Actually, that's a pretty cool realization. To have that moment when you realize that you're not a little kid anymore.] God I feel like a kid sometimes.

Diary, I really don't understand "growing up". Does anyone ever grow up successfully? How the hell is anyone supposed to go about it? I think I have this thing of always being conscious. Sometimes it's wonderful. I mean, the beauty of life and the world is always amazing me. Now -- I always notice sunsets and trees and I wonder "How could I have even lived 15 years without knowing that those things were there?" But - I do have the need - I want to know who I am. I can't just live, you know - day by day - I can't just be. [I still can't.] I have to know and consciously grow - that's what I want, but how? I want to be like Jimmy Dean. [Live fast, die young, Sheila?] I don't want to just wander around [like DW in French class??] - I don't want to just live. How do I get conscious?

Who is DW? Does he ever think who am I? (Not me, Sheila. But him. You know, does DW ever think - Who am I?) I think of myself at 25, 30, 40 - How am I going to change and become an adult? [I still wonder that.] I know that I can't feel like this inside when I'm 30. I'm so hopelessly young. But then again, at times, I feel -- not adult - but sort of pleasantly content at being a teenager. It's so interesting. I have a unique - maybe not, but it's a nice thing to have - talent for being able to step back out of my own shoes, and look at my life - never me for some reason though - but suddenly at times - brief flashes in the weirdest places - when I feel like the all-American teenage girl. I don't feel like that inside - but sometimes I get an outside glimpse. I think of liking DW and all that stuff. I'm rambling. I've lost track of what I was saying.

Everything is so confusing. I have to become an adult. How do I do that? It's fun, though - being a teenager - being capable of liking someone the way I like DW.

Diary, it's weird. I won't be satisfied with just gazing from afar from this time. I want more. I HOPE I HOPE he wants more too!!!

DECEMBER 18

[I am putting this in here because I just can't get over the GIFTS I am giving people. It's such a time-machine moment.]

Christmas shopping yesterday was crazy. My Christmas spirit feels seriously bruised. I had to get everyone's present yesterday because Betsy's having a Christmas party tomorrow. I look back on yesterday and it seemed fun, but while it was going on I was crazy. It seemed a monumental task. I had so many people to buy for. But I did so well. I got everyone presents and they weren't desperation presents either. Mere and I shopped from 11:30 to about 3:00. We ate at McDonalds. It was fun! Okay, my gifts:

Jayne: Yentl album

Mere: Adam Ant album - homemade card

Betsy: Lionel Richie album - a card that says "Friends are flowers in the garden of life"

Kate: a stuffed animal seal, a rainbow magnet that says "This day is made for you", a little shiny black box with a design and a card that says "Thank you for being a treasured friend" [Sheesh - why did Kate get to receive 2,000 presents and I only got Betsy and Mere one a piece?]

J.: a stuffed animal bull (our private joke), a journal, and a Baryshnikov card

Beth: a beautiful mug with dolphins on it (Beth has a love affair with dolphins)

April: a shiny silver and sparkley blue notebook - a tiny purple Chinese lantern, a Charlie Chaplin card

Christmas shopping is wonderful once it's all over. [Those presents absolutely KILL ME]

Just watched Animal House. Talk ab out feeling like a teenager. Wow. I watched that movie and all I thought of was Travis, Matt, Bobby Records, Josh L. -- they could have written the script - it was so like them. The toga party part could have been taken right out of our toga dance. I CAN'T WAIT. We have such a wicked school. I really like the kids.

[Sheila, calm down.]

DECEMBER 20

[I hesitated to include the first sentence of this diary entry because even I, with my passion for self-exposure and self-deprecation, found it a bit too embarrassing. But then I decided: what the hell.]

I could very easily fall in love with a statue. I could. I already am! Michelangelo's David. Oh, it is so hard to believe that he is not a real flesh and blood man. God, he is wonderful.

Lately, I feel so strangely emotional. [Honey, you are and you always will be "strangely emotional". I am now writing to you from TWENTY YEARS IN YOUR FUTURE and all I have to say to you is: Get used to it.] We are studying the Renaissance in English and they had this slide of the David standing there - and I just felt my heart beat faster. The beauty of the art. I wish I could see it in person and the Sistine Chapel.

God, what a day. Today is the kind of day when all you can do to retain your sanity is to sit back and just laugh. Life is a joke. Life is one big fat joke. [Now don't get bitter] Why do I take it so seriously? [Again: see note above about "get used to it"]

Chemistry was a riot. We had a quiz yesterday. Diary, 99% of the class failed. One person passed, and that person got a D. It was probably the funniest thing that's happened to me in weeks. I honestly think this should tell Mr. Amoeba something. I got a 7 out of 19. Mere beat me by 2 points.

Mr. Amoeba was actually nice to me today. I had fun pretending to be a diligent student, asking questions, looking perplexed. [Oh man. I'm such a bitch! hahahaha I was ACTING. Amoeba was one of those teachers who needed students to be confused, and lost. He loved it when the whole class didn't know what he was talking about. The only way to get ahead in that class was to consistently say stuff like: "I have no idea what that means ... could you explain it more?" He had no respect for kids. That was really what was going on. Can you tell I despised him?]

Last night was Betsy's party. Oh, it was so fun! All the best buddies were there. We call ourselves a clicque. For some reason yesterday I was just fizzing and bubbling over with energy. We all got over to Betsy's and Betsy put on her Grease record. [Record!!] We all were dancing - it was so fun - I felt wonderful and funky and jazzy [Oh. My. God. SHUT. UP.] Then we put on the Beatles. Mere and I sang harmony. Beth kept saying, "How do you do that? Is it 2 notes above or below?" Then we all sat down to open presents. Very disorganizaed. [I just want to say one thing. I love my friends. We are all still the best of friends. Beth. Mere. Betsy. I just love the image of all of us - age 16 - having a little Christmas party for each other.]

I think I honestly like giving presents better than getting. I LOVE I LOVE to give presents. I had written little letters to everyone. I love making people happy. It is hard to write how much I love someone without sounding sappy. Kate said once, "It's easy to lie on paper." Isn't that true?

Actually, I'm the wrong person to have a diary. I can easily record a day's activities but when it comes to describing my feelings about DW or a serious thing - my mind's blank. Well, not blank - my heart is screaming and throbbing - but the words just don't come out of me. It's frustrating sometimes. Like on Dec. 17 - I knew what I was feeling - but I just couldn't explain it!

I think I know now what I was trying to say. I feel it whenever I look at DW. Like once in Project Adventure [this was our gym class - an awesome Outward Bound type program] - we had this whole awful day of physical challenges. Climbing ropes, pull ups, balancing, jumping -- I was waiting in line to do something and I glanced over at the pull up place. DW was about to go. Then he started - He did about 30. I mean, he's not a muscle man - but he's strong, he's masculine - [he's not 3 feet tall] - he's a man physically, even though he's 17 - He could carry me on his shoulders. His strength appeals to me. Wimps don't do a thing for me. I'm a wimp. [hahaha.] I did about an eighth of a pull-up - but then we had to climb the ropes. I have no upper body strength. None. I have never ever been able to climb the damn ropes. While I was waiting in line for the pullups, I glanced over at the ropes - and DW was climbing. There are 2 ropes hanging, you had to hold onto each, and climb up. And I watched him climb the ropes. It "turns me on". [Ha. Love the quotation marks. I was still a little girl] He is so desirable to me anyway but to see that he is strong ... Anyway, he was way up in the air - I could see his belly button - AH! [or should I say: "ah - oh - ee - ah ..."] His face was straining in determination, his arms were shaking with the effort, his teeth grit together - I doubt I have ever seen anything so beautiful in my life.

He looked so manly. Oh, give it up. Why can't words be my slaves? [Because of a little thing called the 13th amendment]

His personality is what I really admire [you know, his "modest" personality] - but suddenly his physical traits were screaming at me and I love him. I love his face, his body, everything. He's not JW - who's like Mr. America in a really ikky way - he looks like he has big muscles - huge ones in his arms so that he can't even put his arms down at his sides - he's got these rounded buns that make me kind of sick [jeez, Sheila ... don't hold back!] - His body doesn't do a thing for me. It's superficial.

But DW?

I cannot stand myself anymore. My feelings feel like they've been pent-up for years and suddenly they're loose but racing and tearing around inside me - bumping into each other - no way out. I wish I had a vent for all this. Thank you, Diary, for listening to me, but after all: you are only a book. You are not a tall strong senior with dark hair, glasses, a baggy Oxford shirt, Levis, and a wonderful sauntering walk.

The monetary black hole of pastries

A very funny essay about the trials and tribulations involved in opening and running a rather twee little coffee shop in New York City.

I loved this paragraph:

Pastries, for instance, are a monetary black hole unless you bake them yourself. We started out by engaging a pedigreed gentleman baker with Le Bernardin on his résumé. Hercule, as I'll call him, embodied every French stereotype in existence: He was jovial, enthusiastic, rude, snooty, manic-depressive, brilliant, and utterly unreliable. His croissants were buttery, flaky, not too big, and $1.25 wholesale. We sold them for $2 and threw away roughly 50 percent—in other words, we were making a negative quarter on each croissant. After a couple of months of this, we downgraded to a more Americanized version of the croissant (vast and pillowy). The new croissants ran 90 cents each and made us feel vaguely dirty. We sold them for the same $2. Ironically, their elephantine size meant that every time someone ordered a croissant with cheese, we had to load it up with twice as much Gruyère.

The Books: "The Owl and the Pussycat" (Bill Manhoff)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is The Owl and the Pussycat: A Comedy in Three Acts (Samuel French Play Series), by Bill Manhoff

I remember seeing the film version of this when I was a kid - 10 or 11 - and laughing so hard at the whole "the sun spits morning" sequence that I was incapacitated for about 5 minutes. Also - Barbra Streisand's ridiculous nightie is ... pure comedy. They're having these serious scenes and she's wearing THAT. Also, you want to see why Barbra Streisand is such a good actress? Watch her during the scene where she is laid low by a case of the hiccups. Hiccups are HARD to re-create. And the hiccups have to come at certain points in the lines - in order to achieve the greatest comedic effect. You can't just hiccup randomly. Barbra Streisand being taken over by hiccups is just a wonderful piece of physical acting and you never - for a SECOND - think that she's acting or "pretending" to have hiccups. I love that.

So. The script. It was originally produced in 1964 with Alan Alda as Felix and Diana Sands as Doris. If you've seen the movie you know the plot. It's another one of those two-person plays - get two people into a room - two wildly different people - and see what happens.

Felix is a "writer". He also considers himself an intellectual. He is snobby, elitist, and finicky. Doris is a whore who lives across the alley. Felix has binoculars and has basically been spying on Doris - and when he sees that she is having sex for money - he tells the landlord of her building. Doris gets thrown out on her ass. And she somehow finds out that Felix is the one who turns her in - so she comes a-knockin' on his door, dragging a suitcase and her television set - demanding that he put her up until she can find a new place. They've never met. This is how the play begins - with Doris banging on his door at 2 in the morning.

Felix resists Doris. Felix condescends to Doris. Doris is VERY sensitive about not having an education and she FLIPS OUT when he uses a word she doesn't know. Somehow she wears down his resistance and he lets her sleep on the couch. There is a VERY funny moment where she can't sleep and she asks him to read to her. He ends up starting to read his unpublished novel to her and the first sentence of it is: "The sun spit morning into Werner's face". Doris kind of can't get past it ... she's never read a book in her life but she knows that "the sun spit morning" is crappy writing. She keeps referencing it throughout the rest of the play. "Okay, so the sun spit morning, I know, I know ..."

They end up having a steamy sexual relationship which rocks the foundations of Felix's beliefs about himself - that he has conquered his body with his mind, that (to quote the Elphant Man) HE IS NOT AN ANIMAL - He has split himself off into different compartments.

The relationship progresses. Felix decides that Doris is train-able - he starts giving her little tasks - she is supposed to look up a word a day in the dictionary and then use it in a sentence, etc. hahahaha She resents this, but she does her best.

Here's a scene from later in the play - when there is trouble in paradise.

EXCERPT FROM The Owl and the Pussycat: A Comedy in Three Acts (Samuel French Play Series), by Bill Manhoff

FELIX. How many times did you say you used the dictionary today?

DORIS. I don't know. What's wrong, honey?

FELIX. Please go over to the dictionary and look at it closely.

DORIS. [Doris goes and looks at the dictionary] What am I supposed to see?

FELIX. Look at the edges -- at the top --

DORIS. What's this? [Peeling off a strip of scotch tape]

FELIX. That is a strip of Scotch tape. It's been there for two days. Undisturbed. Where were you this afternoon?

DORIS. That's such a nasty thing to do.

FELIX. Where were you yesterday afternoon?

DORIS. I do not care for the tone of your voice.

FELIX. Where did you get the dirty but brand new radio?

DORIS. I'm warning you -- stop it -- this warning will not be repeated.

FELIX. We're not going to fight. We're going to have an honest unemotional discussion.

DORIS. Yeah? So you start out by calling me a liar.

FELIX. I did not call you a liar. I'm not going to lose my temper.

DORIS. You might as well. I'm gonna lose mine!

FELIX. Would you care to tell me what's wrong?

DORIS. What's wrong? You're a creep that puts scotch tape on the dictionary -- you know that word -- "creep"? Used in a sentence: "Fred Sherman is a big creep".

FELIX. [starting at "Fred"] What did you call me?

DORIS. It's your name. Fred -- Freddie -- I thought that would jar your apricots! I found your yearbook from school -- Fred Sherman. You didn't tell me you changed your name, did you? You creep. I'm sorry -- pardon my language, but you are a creep.

FELIX. It's all right -- it's a step up from "fink". Congratulations -- now -- I'd like to hear why you feel you have to sneak out afternoons and lie to me.

DORIS. I just got bored. I had to get out. Look -- I tried. I tried working on hats. I tried looking for a job, right? I tried.

FELIX. Have you been plying your old trade?

DORIS. Have I been what? No, I haven't. I told you I was through doing that.

FELIX. Where'd you get the radio?

DORIS. I collected some money. Somebody owed me some money and they paid me.

FELIX. I see. Why didn't you tell me that?

DORIS. Because I knew you wouldn't believe it. I knew what you'd think.

FELIX. I see.

DORIS. Dont' say "I see", like you were looking through your lousy spy glasses. Listen -- why don't you stop trying to make out like you're a human being? I mean the strain must be terrible -- why don't you just relax and admit you're God and you know all about everything?

FELIX. Why did you have to lie? I just want to know why you lied to me about going out and about looking up words.

DORIS. Because I'm a liar, okay?

FELIX. Why didn't you tell me?

DORIS. Why didn't you tell me you changed your name from Fred to Felix?

FELIX. [ignoring her question] I'm very sad. You had a chance to do something important for yourself and you're quitting. You're not giving yourself a chance.

DORIS. I gave myself a chance -- you had me going there for a while, but it's silly. I'm a dope and that's all there is to it.

FELIX. You're not a dope. You're a bright girl.

DORIS. Not when it comes to dictionaries and the history of philosophy, I'm not.

FELIX. You have a potential capacity for --

DORIS. No, I don't have any potential anything.

FELIX. [losing the fight against his temper] Don't interrupt me -- who do you think is better qualified to judge mental capacity -- you or I?

DORIS. You --

FELIX. Then why are you arguing with me?

DORIS. Felix, I --

FELIX. Would I be wasting my time with you if you didn't have a brain?

DORIS. Felix --

FELIX. Do you think an intellectual such as myself would waste his time with a dumbbell?

DORIS. Felix, I know myself -- you can't tell me --

FELIX. I tell you you're a very intelligent girl, and you'd know it yourself if you weren't so damned stupid!

DORIS. I am not stupid! I've got good healthy everyday brains. I haven't got your kind of brains and I'm glad, because I'm gonna tell you something -- I think your brains are rotten!

FELIX. Ah -- the cat turns inevitably and bares her atavistic fangs.

DORIS. To use those ugly, lonely words nobody else uses -- that's all your brains are good for. To keep people away because you're scared to death of people!

FELIX. She spits in inarticulate fury!

DORIS. You know what your brains are good for? To make up your own lousy little language that the rest of the world can't even understand.

FELIX. Well, all right -- stay with the rest of the world -- don't let anybody make you a foreigner there by teaching you to speak the English language!

DORIS. [going to closet] What a dope I was to listen to you. [Mimicking him] I'm gonna save you, Doris! [In her own voice] You are such a phony. I can't believe it. You don't write for money but you keep sending your junk to magazines, don't you? And you keep getting it sent back, don't you? Meanwhile all you got is a phony job, a phony girlfriend, a phony apartment and a phony bunch of words. [she has taken the suitcase from the closet and started to throw garments into it as she talks]

FELIX. What are you doing?

DORIS. What does it look like I'm doing?

FELIX. Now don't get washed away. Think, Doris. Try to understand one basic thing. Try to hold on to what I see in you.

DORIS. [Yelling] You see nothing! You don't see me at all! You don't see anything. Because even your eyes are phony! [Knock on the wall. Doris addresses the wall; yelling] I'll be through in a minute! [To Felix] You know what you see in me? You never had a girl that made you feel like a big man in bed -- that's all.

FELIX. Doris --

DORIS. Well, I want to tell you something about what a hot stud you think you are in the sack --

FELIX. Don't say it, Doris --

DORIS. You leave me cold, Fred. You're nothing at all.

FELIX. You're raising your voice.

DORIS. You do nothing to me, Freddie -- you only think you do. You know why?

FELIX. I know -- you're a great actress and to you that bed is theatre in the round -- I know all about it -- well, now I'm going to tell you something -- I don't leave you cold -- I find you cold -- "frigid" -- is that word in your meager stock?

DORIS. Drop dead.

FELIX. Sure you're an actress in bed -- because you can't be a woman.

DORIS. With a man I can, Fred -- Freddie, it takes a man.

FELIX. Sometimes. Even with fantasies, and dirty words and the guilty stink of the sewer you can only sometimes whip yourself into a parody of passion -- sometimes! Isn't that right?

DORIS. Stop yelling. Nobody's listening to you. [She's closing the suitcase]

FELIX. All right. You're lost. Goodbye. I tried.

DORIS. Now try shutting up. I'll send for the TV. I'll send a man! Takes a good look at him.

FELIX. [following her to the door] No matter where you go or what you do or what you call yourself -- you are now and forever a whore named Doris Wilgus.

DORIS. Okay. And what are you now and forever? A miserable magazine peddler named Freddie Sherman and a lousy writer and you always will be and you wanna know why --? [Hitting him deliberately with every word] Because, God damn it! The -- sun -- does -- not -- spit!

BLACKOUT

Notorious on the big screen

We met at one of our favorite places - if any of you all come to New York - I so so recommend it: The restaurant is called 'ino. It has about 5 tables (check out the photo. That's IT.) If you are sitting against the wall and you need to get out to get to the bathroom or something - then many other people, strangers, will be involved - in moving their tables, scooting their chairs over, etc. They have an enormous wine list - and all of the waiters are friendly, personable, and know a TON about wines. They can help you out. The waitstaff is fantastic. The food is scrumptious and unbelievably cheap. We always get the olive bowl. Then there are bruschettas - many different kinds - paninis ... There's exposed brick. The candlelight. The big wine glasses. It's a teeny-tiny enclave in the Village. We just love it there. It's one of those places that you feel so PSYCHED to know about. And you hope that not too many other people find out about it. I took my parents there once - which was really fun - to share it with them.

We ate our olives. We drank wine. We talked like maniacs.

Topics covered:

-- how the brain works, how it processes information.
-- Brokeback Mountain
-- Joan Didion's book Year of Magical Thinking
-- how amazing it is that the EYE has developed - the EYE - the MIRACLE OF THE EYEBALL, the INCREDIBLE-NESS of the evolution of the EYEBALL
-- acting, directing

We were excited. It was an exciting night. We got the check at 6:55 - and then headed over to the Film Forum - to see Notorious. I'm not joking: my heart was literally pounding out of my chest. I felt like I was going to see a Broadway show. I felt like I was standing in line to meet someone I idolized. I was so excited. SO excited to see this film on the big screen. One of my favorite movies ever made. I've only ever seen it by myself. In my apartment. Obsessively. My experience of the film has been sheerly solitary. So to sit in a crowded movie theatre? And watch that film?? What???? I was beside myself.

He had seen it before - years ago. His vivid memory of the film was the scene in the wine cellar - He found it so intense and suspenseful that he couldn't even watch it. He had to stand up and walk around.

I cannot even express how EXCITING it was to sit in a movie theatre - surrounded by people - watching that film. It was a completely different thing - seeing it in that way. Seeing it BIG. Seeing them larger-than-life - rather than on my small television. The film is meant to be seen BIG. There are moments when Ingrid Bergman is in close-up that I literally couldn't catch my breath. Her beauty, her passion, her very LIFE just leapt off the screen and caught me by the throat. You can definitely get that it is a powerful performance - even if you see it on a 12 inch TV - but to see it up there, huge - was a horse of a different color. She is an absolutely extraordinary actress.

But most of the fun came from the LAUGHTER in the audience. I have only seen the film by myself - and I think it's a very witty script - but you know, I've seen it 50 times, sitting alone - I don't sit in my chair, laughing out loud, every time I see it. But the crowd - the energy of the crowd - it was just electric. People just BURSTING into laughter - the scary Fraulein mother got huge laughs on almost every line - it was exhilarating - I felt like I was experiencing the movie for the first time. When the amazing Claude Rains wakes up his mother after his horrible revelation about who his wife is ... and his mother sits up in bed - with that terrifying Germanic look on her face ... he confesses, "It's about Alicia." The mother suddenly QUIVERS with almost visible triumph - only she puts a lid on it - and she reaches out for a cigarette from her cigarette box by her bed - she puts the cigarette in her mouth and says, viciously, "I have expected this." HUGE laugh. I found myself caught up in it too - I saw the moment for the first time. Movie-going is - after all - a communal experience. That's part of the joy of it. I like going to the movies. I like sitting home and watching movies too - but there's nothing like going out, and sitting there with a bunch of strangers, watching a movie. It's one of my favorite things to do.

The wine cellar scene was absolutely excruciating to watch. You could just FEEL people freaking out all around ... It was unbearable. And it is only done through the acting, and the circumstance. There's no special effects - the only "sound" is the distant sound of the orchestra upstairs ... there are no additional elements added onto the scene to tell you how to feel ... It just WORKS. She is terrified. She paces. He inspects the wine bottles. Slowly ... we start to see that because he is reaching behind the first row of bottles ... he has pushed one of the bottles forward. He doesn't notice it - but WE do. People were just gasping all around us. This one poor woman sitting a couple of rows ahead was basically having a nervous breakdown. Then comes the terrible moment when the bottle is pushed off the shelf - we see it go - Cary Grant sees it go - it is too late - The sound of people all around me just REACTING to this horrible occurrence gave me goose bumps. A beautiful sound. One of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

And the last scene. Oh, the last scene. Seen in a darkened movie theatre - the screen glimmering silver and black up front - quiet RIVETED people all around me - the tears glimmering down Ingrid's face - the blazing white pillow behind her head - Cary in blackened shadow - his urgent whisper - her head falling back - Literally you could have heard a pin drop in that theatre.

Cary takes her to the door - shaking her occasionally to keep her conscious - she is afraid - she clings to him - He is now the man he should have been all along. He is protecting her. He is shielding her. He opens the door slowly - ready to face what is ahead.

I have seen the last scene so many times that I guess it's lost its oomph a bit - I forgot, really, how terrifying it is - and how LONG it seems - but I rediscovered it tonight. The two of them emerge from the darkened bedroom into the brightly lit hallway - he starts to lead her towards the stairs - Suddenly we get a shot of Claude Rains approaching the top of the stairs. There he is. Here he comes. People all around us just JUMPED in their seats at the sight of him. A woman caught her breath - alarmed - terrified. It made a huge sound in the quiet theatre. It was so feckin' exciting - to realize, yet again, how DEEPLY that last scene works. How damn effective it is. After all these years. There were a ton of Hitchcock freaks in the audience - myself included - and the VIBE in that theatre was one of absolute involvement. It wasn't a rapt precious atmosphere. We weren't whispering in the presence of the Mona Lisa. We were fully wrapped up in the EVENT of the film. The EVENT still works. People burst out laughing, gasped, squealed from time to time (especially during the wine cellar scene) - it was absolutely awesome.

Oh, and when the screen slowly went to black at the end - after we watched Claude Rains walk back up the steps into his house, with the two Nazi guys waiting for him in the doorway, Rains knowing that he is going to meet his death - the screen slowly went to black - the music is HUGE at that point - and then came the words "THE END" - and the audience burst into raucous applause. Cheering, whooping, clapping - it was just GREAT. Such a release!!

A great night. I'm still high from it.

Can ya tell??

Sheer joy

The year in Britney and Kevin.

What a year, huh??

Wow. I'm bummed it's over. It's been so entertaining.

Just to even out the picture of my personality: I am re-reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire right now.

Spederline 2005.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

They go together if you think about it.

At long last ... Hot gay elf sex

Emily .... look what I found!! I remember doing a damn search on my blog for this essay about Tolkien and elf sex, etc. - I thought I had linked to it - but obviously I hadn't. Or I titled it something incomprehensible. Anyway: HERE IT IS!!

From Eros blog

I thought I was jaded

I truly did. I thought I could no longer be shocked. Or frightened. I thought I had become immune.

But you know what? I look at the image below and find that I still have the capacity to be creeped out down to my innermost bone marrow.

Stare at it at your peril.

Movie poster heaven

A really cool discovery: A blog devoted to movie posters through the ages. It's a goldmine - really really cool stuff.

Here's one example - a side by side analysis of the poster for Titanic and the poster for Brokeback Mountain.

The whole hyphen debacle with the poster for The 40-year-old virgin.

But there's so much more to look at on this wonderful site - I feel like a kid in a candy store. Where to start??

And here - they choose what they feel to be the Best Movie Poster of 2005. And they explain WHY they chose what they chose. I love this stuff.

I blog-rolled this blog immediately.

Thanks, Dave!

Reunion

When Cashel lived in Park Slope, his best friend was a kid named Jack. This was not JUST a best friend. This was a kindred spirit. I only met Jack once, at one of Cashel's birthday parties - he was dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi - and I already just loved the kid, because Cashel loved him so much. Their main bond was Star Wars.

It's really hard when you love Star Wars MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET. It can be a very lonely position. If you love Star Wars MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET then it's truly painful to not have anyone to share it with. It's jarring to hear someone say, "Yeah, it was a good movie, but I liked Harry Potter better..." Ouch! What do you DO when you love Star Wars MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE ON THE PLANET? But thankfully, Cash and Jack never had that problem. They were absolutely in sync in their adoration of all things Star Wars.

Cashel, occasionally, would wax eloquent about the relationship.

He said to my parents once, point blank, "The first time I met Jack, I could see the twinkle of Star Wars in his eyes."

I am not kidding.

They were 6 years old the last time they saw each other. That is an eternity. Cashel moved far far away. But he never forgot Jack. He made new friends in his new schools. But if you asked him, "Who's your best friend?" he would say, with a faraway look in his eye, "Jack." It was hard for Cashel to move away. But you know, kids are survivors. Cashel survived.

Occasionally, Cashel and Jack would have looooooong phone conversations - of course arranged by their mothers. They were still, after all, little boys, who didn't just pick up the phone, and blithely dial phone numbers. They would stay on the phone, and just talk about Star Wars. What more does one need from friendship.

I fully credit the parents of both children, too, for helping this tiny friendship stay alive. Jack's mom always made sure that Jack sent Cash a birthday card. And Cashel's parents did the same with Cash.

So even though Cashel and Jack, two WEE LITTLE BOYS, were a continent apart - they still were friends. I remember saying once to Cash, "I bet you and Jack will be friends still when you're grown-up men." Cash gave me a look that I just will not forget. So funny. He got this quizzical expression - his eyebrows wrinkled up - he had simply never contemplated being an adult. And in the next second, he just started LAUGHING at the idea of Jack as a grown-up, and himself as a grown-up. It was incomprehensible.

Once I was speaking with Cashel, and I mentioned that it was a blizzard in NYC. Cashel immediatley gasped - yes - he gasped - and said, "I hope Jack's okay."

hahaha It's alllll about Jack. "I'm sure Jack is fine, sweetheart."

Two weeks ago, my brother called Jack's mom to let her know that he and Cash would be in town the week after Christmas - and maybe they could arrange a reunion for their kindred spirit sons? Who had not seen each other in TWO YEARS? Jack's mom got all kind of emotional - and said that just the week before Jack had written an essay in school about "his best friend Cashel" (trying to picture the 8 year old handwriting - it just KILLS me). Jack's mom told Bren that everyone in his class just accepts that Jack's best friend is Cashel who lives across the country. Jack has other friends - he is a personable friendly little boy - but everyone knows that you can only have ONE best friend.

I just got word that last night was the long-awaited Cash and Jack reunion. These two little brave kindred spirits - who have been maintaining a long-distance friendship for two years (hard enough to do as an adult - even harder when you are eight!!) - had a sleepover last night at Jack's.

They stayed up talking until 11 pm.

My heart is full. I am so glad for both of them.

May the twinkle of Star Wars always be in their eyes!

2006: Openness

This is a slightly edited piece I wrote last year. It's appropriate once again, for this time of year.

Angel Cards. Last year I picked Harmony. This year I picked Openness.

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I am way too superstitious for resolutions. At least not to fall into the trap of making them for the year ahead. I hate New Year's anyway. In general. The relentless insistence on joy and optimism on that one night goes up my ass. It's alienating. What if you've had a rough year? How do you KNOW it will be a Happy New Year? Does just sayin' it make it so? Also: is "happiness" the be-all end-all of all emotions? I certainly don't think so. I like other words much better. I guess I dont' like celebrations where there's some expectation that you should be in a certain mood. The way New Year's is currently celebrated is with alcohol, party hats, and screaming and jumping up and down with the clock turns over. Nothing more alien to my Sheila sensibility could be imagined. My sensibility leans toward the contemplative and mildly melancholy, actually - especially during a moment when time is marked off like that. I like to reflect, look back, etc. So I like to be in an atmosphere on that night where it isn't WEIRD that you aren't drunk and PSYCHED. Where it isn't weird that you're kind of quiet, and contemplative.

(How weird. In my surfing around the web this morning - AFTER I wrote this piece - I came across this piece from Ann Althouse. Very a propos - freakily a propos!)

So no. I don't make New Year's resolutions. But I do do Angel Cards.

What are Angel Cards? Angel Cards can be bought in any new age-y type store (you know, the kind of store that sells books about yoga, kama sutra, and holds classes on meditation and compost heaps. I got my deck of Angel Cards at a store like that in the Village). The cards come in a very small box, and the cards themselves are very small - probably an inch and a half long, and on each card is a different word. Some of the words on the cards (and I don't know all of them): Power. Love. Joy. Enthusiasm. Kindness. Stuff like that. I keep my Angel Cards on a shelf on my desk, and if I'm ever feeling lost or scared about something ... or like I need guidance, I'll pick an Angel Card. It's not a literal sort of "today you will win the lottery" kind of command, like you find in most daily horoscopes. The angel cards put you in a contemplative inward-looking space. There is silence surrounding each card - a silence filled with meaning - but you must be silent, in order to hear the message. You have to look within. If you are having a rough day - and you pick Joy - how should you interpret it? Well, that's up to you. Perhaps it's trying to make a space for joy, even in the midst of the rough-ness. Perhaps it's a reminder of how much joy there actually is - even when you're stressed out or sad. Perhaps it is another way of saying, "Hang on. This too shall pass. You will feel joy again. You will feel joy again." No right answer here - the cards are meant to guide you. It's not a guessing game.

Here's a couple examples of what they look like:

For many years, my group of friends from college have a tradition of "picking Angel Cards" at the end of each year. It is "our word" for the next year. My friend Liz keeps a running tally of what everyone picks. She's obsessive - she whips out her notebook and writes it all down - and she is able to read out what you picked LAST year. She'll say, "Okay, so you picked Strength last year, and this year you picked Synchronicity." So then you can look back over the last year ... and see if "Strength" played a part ... and what "Strength" might mean. Did you need strength? Did you discover how strong you already were?

Of course you can place any meaning you want to on the Angel Cards. You can place NO meaning on what "your word" means. You can look at it like: This is something I need to "work on". Or you can look at it like: this is just a word to meditate on, and see what it might provide me. Whatever. It's completely up to interpretation. There are no rules. (I mean, how ridiculous would it be to have strict rules about how to pick Angel Cards of all things??) The whole point is to relax, to pick your word, to think about it ...

There have been many interesting Angel Card moments through the years.

For example:

Years ago, a friend of mine picked "Trust". This word pissed him off (things can get pretty emotional during the Angel Card picking ritual). He didn't like "Trust". He was highly scornful of the word. He felt scolded by the word and kept saying, "I have plenty of Trust. I don't have a problem with Trust. This is bull shit, I'm picking another one." And the next card he picked was "Flexibility".

We are still making fun of him for that one.

I have a tendency to be relatively bitter about the Angel Cards, which can make for comedic and stressed-out Angel Card-picking moments. I refuse to give the word too much meaning, I refuse to take it TOO literally. I've had a rocky road these last 10 years. I hesitate to find too much meaning in things. I hesitate to get all googly-eyed about coincidences, and stuff like that. Been there, done that, have the bruises on the ole heart to prove it. Nope. The transformation is kind of amazing - when you consider that I was a major Richard Bach FANATIC in high school, and truly believed in all that New Age stuff, I was a card-carrying member of the soulmate industry. And now? I write long-ass essays (here and here and here) about the MALARKEY of the soulmate industry. The SCAM of it. The BULL SHITE of the whole "soulmate" thing in the first place!! heh heh If you had told my romantic 17 year old self, poring through Bridge Across Forever for the gazillionth time, that such a transformation would come to pass - I would have found it tragic. I would have been disbelieving. But indeed - it is now so!!

The Angel Cards have been under the same kind of umbrella. No more looking for meaning. At least not like that. No more looking for "signs". No more latching onto some stupid Angel Card as having any meaning. I USED to, but NO MORE. As I have said many a time to my girlfriends, "I got BURNED by those Angel Cards, man!"

Here's what happened.

It was 5 or 6 years ago. I was in Chicago for New Year's. I was in a really good and positive place in my life. I felt really excited, really positive about the future ... not just about my career and stuff, but about the possibility of letting love into my life again. For 3 or 4 years, I had put the old heart on ice after a particularly bad loss. Also, I was in grad school, and busy, and focusing on other things. But what was really going on was that I could not recover from the loss. On some level I refused to recover. Years passed. And while I definitely was wounded, torn up, a huge part of myself LEFT OVER THERE WITH HIM - how could I get it back?? - anyway, despite all of that - life moved on. As it does.

And on this particular New Year's Eve I'm talking about, I was back in Chicago, I was doing really well, and I don't know what it was ... it was like there was something stirring in the ice fields ... Little green sprouts coming up or something. I felt that I could love someone again. It had been years. I had no prospects, not even a crush on anyone ... It was just this sense, this kind of emotional sense, that I was ready. I could do it. My last love would not be the last man I loved.

So then comes the Angel Card picking ritual. I was with my dear friends Jackie and Jim. We each picked a card. Funnily enough, Jackie had just found out she was pregnant for the first time. And the card she picked said Expectancy. We loved that!

And the word I picked, unsurprisingly, was Love.

Plain and simple. Love.

Jackie and I had been talking, in depth, about our lives (my favorite kind of New Year's celebration, in case you haven't guessed) - we talked about our struggles, our joys, our excitements - I shared my sense that good things were coming ... that a relationship might be in my future, in my near future ... and I hadn't felt that in years - so then there was my word: Love.

I felt that my Angel Card affirmed my dearest hope.

In looking back, I can say to myself: There are many different kinds of Love. It could mean Love of self, it could mean Love of the work that you do, Love at its most universal. Goodwill towards men, etc. But I had been so burned in love, I was so lonely, so hurt, so at a loss as to what to do, who to be ... that I thought I knew what "Love" referred to. Yup. I know it. Love is coming. I saw what I wanted to see.

Sadly, the following year was one of the bumpiest roughest years of my life. By the end of the year, I felt bruised, battered, roughed around ... I felt like: Jesus, let this year END.

I had two very brief relationships. One with a great guy who I liked very much. He pursued me like gangbusters, and the second he had me, he dropped me. Such a cliche, but still - I was completely thrown by it, I am not cavalier or casual about who I let into my life - and I really liked him, I let him in, and boom - he disappeared. I was hurt, sure, but my hurt was way out of proportion to the relationship, but that didn't matter. I had been protecting myself for so long, barricading up the heart, that I suppose somewhere I felt, naively, that when I did decide to come out of the cloister, things should work out for me, because it's only fair and right. The scales would be balanced. The breakup of this 2 month relationship was crushing to me. I was devastated. My friends were worried about me. But you know how it goes. Eventually I did "bounce back". Mainly by getting pissed off and toughening up. A necessary change, yes, but oh how much was lost in that transfer. Once you harden up so much, it's very very hard to get soft again. That was the year when I got HARD and INTOLERANT. I had to.

And then another guy came into my life, that same year - maybe 4 or 5 months after the breakup of the other relationship. So I was on my way to recovery. This new guy was an Irishman. Another strange thing: I dated him for only 6 weeks. SIX WEEKS. But the impact of it. It made me scared of dating for good. I obviously can't handle it. It was a very innocent kind of dating: we went to movies, we went out for sushi, we drank beer in a local pub - all that kind of dating stuff that I was so out of practice in. It was so much fun. And we clicked. We had an absolutely marvelous time with each other. And even though I dated him for a very short time, I would say that, of all the guys I have loved, many of whom I had much more elaborate relationships with - that lasted much longer - he is the guy I can't think about. To this day. I can't even say his name. It brings back that freezing horrible winter when he suddenly dropped me. He just stopped calling. Avoiding me. Typical dating bullshite, but like I said - I can't handle it. I became a complete lunatic. I lost weight. I lay in bed, literally writhing in psychic pain. I can't even write about it without feeling a small echo of it come back. Finally, I got closure with it - only through my own dogged persistence. I HAD to get closure. I was a wreck until I had spoken to him. So we spoke. It was a good conversation. He explained. I understood. I told him I understood. I wished him luck. We hung up.

Then began the winter of my discontent.

I thought I was going mad. I remember that my whole face changed. I wasn't IN my face anymore. I only realized this later, when I came out of it. I made things worse for myself. I was SO harsh with myself. I was unforgiving, brutal. I was mad at myself for coming out to play - for taking risks - for allowing myself to be put in a situation where I could be hurt again. I had been SAFE! After the Chicago Disaster, I retreated - and yeah, I was lonely, but I was SAFE! Look what the hell happens when I emerge ... I had to have been the stupidest person in the world.

During the winter of my discontent there was no logic. It was all lying in bed at night, with the wide-open eyes of a suffering animal. I was in agony.

I still can't really think about that time.

I am coming back to the Angel Cards now.

That year, in the middle of this horrible time in my life, I went to a small New Year's gathering at my friends David and Maria's house. There were only 4 of us there, all dear friends. One of them broke out the Angel Cards. I was not doing well at this point, I was not sleeping, I looked like crap, I told my friend Ann Marie that I was limping through my days "like a wounded fox". ("Wounded fox" has now become shorthand for us. "So I'm really sad right now, but I'm not a wounded fox." "Oh, that's good.") I was VERY anti-Angel Cards.

Especially because I had picked LOVE the year before. I couldn't get that out of my mind. LOVE! What a fucking LAUGH! I had to have been CRAZY to believe that I would find Love. What was I - a fucking Pollyanna? A fucking idiot? I believed it, and now look what happened - I got burnt. TWICE IN A ROW. I had to have been fucking INSANE to believe that damn card.

I resisted. "I don't want to pick Angel Cards. I just ... I don't want to this year ..."

My friends were kind and sweet. "It doesn't have to mean anything, Sheila ... it could just be a word that you can look to for guidance ... "

So I picked a card. Under protest.

What did I get?

I got Surrender.

And what did I then do?

In a fit of rage, I threw the card across the room. Tears streamed down my face. "Surrender? Jesus Christ, I HAVE surrendered - How much more do I have to fucking surrender? I HATE ANGEL CARDS." Ahhh ... don't you want to have ME at your New Year's Eve bash? Yeah, man, I'm a barrel of laughs.

I know I'm telling this like it was amusing ... and we do sort of laugh a bit about me freaking out about my Angel Card - sort of, but not really. That time was so bad (and I know in the grand scheme of things, having 2 breakups in a row is not too terrible, whatever - but remember: this blog is just my diary. This is a diary entry. All I can do here, all I want to do here, is tell what happened - this isn't an op-ed column, or an essay in some journal where I need to color my words a certain way, in order to be palatable to a wide readership or show both sides - what have you - I have tried to keep the self-deprecation to a minimum here. So back to the point:) That time in my life was so bad, just emotionally - not circumstantially - and I was so submerged in sadness, that although the memory of Sheila whipping an Angel Card across a room is ... to put it mildly ... comedic ... and we do reference the moment on occasion - "Jeez, remember when Sheila threw Surrender across the room and started screaming?" But when we laugh, we do so still remembering how that time was for me. My friend David said that when he hugged me good-bye that night, he felt my sadness literally coming off my skin. He said to me as he hugged me, "Sweetheart... I know ... Fuck the Angel Cards. I know."

Of course, time did its imperfect job and I got over my Irishman. Not completely since - for whatever bizarre reason - he is still a painful memory and I can't reference him casually. "Oh member when I was seeing so-and-so?" Ouch. No. So I did my best. I rigidly put him out of my mind. I joined a gym. I battoned down the hatches. I let go of sadness and I let in RAGE. I refused to write about him, think about him, reference him ... and soon he was out of my heart. Enough so that I could move on.

Funny. Only in looking back on it can I see that all of that was part of "surrender". Which, actually, I DID need to do. I needed to stop trying to control events. I needed to "surrender". God. How weird. I still feel ... all those old emotions of that time ... in writing about this. How MUCH I resisted "surrender" was exactly how much I needed to 'surrender'. But you could not have told me that at the time. I threw the damn card across the room.

Last year, my group of girlfriends had our Angel Card picking ritual. We were at the Art Bar in the Village. Liz always brings the Angel Cards, and also brings her little sheet of paper where she has all of the Angel Cards we all have picked throughout the years. heh heh I love Liz.

Another small set-up to this:

The day before I had woken up and began an essay that I wanted to post on the blog. It was brought on by seeing Something's Got to Give - one of my favorite movies. I started an essay - and it was on Trust and Patience. Basically, if there is a reason I was put on this earth, if there is a method to the madness, then I think I was put here to learn trust and patience. That is my journey. It is all about Trust and Patience. I can't trust. I have no patience. These are the themes. And Something's Got to Give is all about this.

I am sure you can see where I'm going with this.

There was the pile of Angel Cards on the table. I reached out and picked one.

It said Harmony.

I didn't like this. But I basically despise Angel Cards since the one-two punch of Love and Surrender - so I hate whatever I get. I said, "Harmony. Blech. I don't like that" and tossed it back onto the pile.

And my tossing of Harmony caused another Angel Card to spontaneously turn over ... and that card said Patience.

BWAHAHAHAHA

We were howling about this, because I had shared with my friends my thoughts about trust and patience earlier in the night. And so there I was - rejecting Harmony, but then there was Patience, inserting itself into the dialogue. "Hi there. You may not like Harmony, but you do need me!!"

I felt strangely comforted. I felt a vestige of what I used to feel during such rituals. I was not taking the cards literally, because I learned my lesson, with the one-two punch of Love and Surrender, thankyouverymuch.

But still. There are worse things in life than meditating on Harmony and Patience, and thinking about what these two words/qualities can provide me in the coming year, what they can mean to me.

Kerry said, laughing about the Patience moment, "Do not mess with the cards - They will always win!"

Oh, and directly following the Harmony/Patience thing, Liz picked her card and it said TRUST.

So Trust AND Patience both showed their faces that night, on the very same day I had been thinking almost non-stop about those two very things.

Coincidence? I choose to think not.

Like Albert Einstein said (and I paraphrase): "There are two ways to go through life. One is to decide that nothing is a miracle, and one is to decide that everything is a miracle."

2005. A year of Harmony and Patience. How do I feel about that? What are my thoughts? Harmony? How did Harmony work through my life? DID it work through my life? Lots to think about.

And last week, my group of friends had our yearly get-together. Angel Cards picked. In the middle of a smoky LOUD bar in Jersey City.

My word for 2006: Openness.

And for the first time in YEARS - I saw the word - I saw my chosen Angel Card - and my eyes filled up with tears. Tears of ... hope ... validation? A softness - as opposed to a hardness. Am I open? No. Do I want to be? Is it a worthy pursuit? Is it worth the risks?

Still no answers to those questions. We'll just have to see how it goes when the time comes. The easy answers are: "Of course it's better to be open than closed" or "Of course you want a mate! Of course!" But why "of course"? You cannot know what is in my heart, or what is in anyone else's heart. Especially if all you are able to do is look at their life through the limited filter of your own experience. We all do this to one another.

I love this bit from Longfellow:

Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows,
which the world knows not; and oftimes
we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

People who are naturally optimistic and who find it easy to be happy oftentimes cannot understand the darker ones among them. They get frustrated with us. They think it's easy - because it's easy for THEM. They cannot understand that for some people it is a conscious act of WILL to join the human race, to be happy, to be open. It is hard for some of us. And their insistence that it's easy makes things 100% worse.

This is why Tennessee Williams, when asked for his definition of happiness, replied "Insensitivity."

I could think about that quote forever and still not get tired of thinking about it.

An old flame of mine said to me once, wonderingly, "Sheila, you've got a book of men in your heart." He kind of admired it. Even though he couldn't do it himself, and even though he said it with a sort of chastened knowledge about - the sadness that that must bring me, from time to time. He was such a nice guy. He "got it". And to try to change this part of me would be like ... square peg/round hole land. Not just difficult - but damaging. Psychically.

There will be those who will not understand. Who will read my words about "happiness" here and feel the need to argue with me. In my opinion, those people don't "get it". They just don't. I have my own reason for being the way I am, and alot of us don't mind living with a little bit of uncertainty. With a little bit of mystery and contemplation. With frailty.

Let's look at that Longfellow quote again:

Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows,
which the world knows not; and oftimes
we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

I try to remember that, when dealing with my fellow man. It is tough, man. It really is. But I try.

Oftimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

Openness.

I like contemplating it. I don't like BEING it - and, in general, I am NOT open - except on the blog and on the stage - but I do like contemplating the word. Cautiously. Contemplating what the word might provide me in the year to come.

Happy birthday "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"

April 27 Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

On this day, in 1916, James Joyce's first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published. (The last line of the book is above) Dubliners had already been published - and very controversial they were - not embraced by his own country of course (it hit too close to home) - I don't think they were even PUBLISHED in Ireland, come to think of it - but it was Portrait of the Artist which really firmed up his reputation as a writer. Then, naturally, 1922 brought the world Ulysses which changed everything - with that book Joyce, according to TS Eliot, "killed the 19th century". Portrait is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, and it is best to look at it outside of the influence of Ulysses - because Ulysses is one of those things that casts such a long shadow in every direction - it's hard to see anything clearly. It's like trying to appreciate the OTHER playwrights during Shakespeare's time (everyone besides Marlowe, I mean - one can appreciate Marlowe fully, even when he's standing next to Shakespeare - but everyone else just wilts and becomes about half an inch tall). I mean - how does one get Shakespeare out of the way in order to appreciate the lesser accomplishments of his contemporaries? It's very difficult. Ulysses has the same effect - not just on all other writers writing at that time (and they all knew it AS it was happening - amazing - this is not retrospect - Ulysses came out and it was like a bomb went off - the reverberations felt the world around, a bar had been raised, a gauntlet thrown down - what have you) - but on the rest of Joyce's writing.

I love Portrait of the Artist. I have read it many times, and each time I come to it I find something new. It's one of THOSE books. A book you can grow up with. At times in my life I find Stephen Dedalus frustrating. At other times I find him exciting, illuminating. It seems like the book changes with me. I also feel like I will never get to the bottom of the book. It's much more of a straight narrative than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake - but it still has a lot of mystery in it. It's not nonsensical - it's not mysterious for the sake of being mysterious - it's just that it's a deep deep pool. Joyce was a genius, after all. His mind didn't work like everyone else's.

Here is an excerpt from the masterful Richard Ellman biography of Joyce:

To write A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce plunged back into his own past, mainly to justify, but also to expose it. The book's pattern, as he explained to Stanislaus, is that we are what we were; our maturity is an extension of our childhood, and the courageous boy is father of the arrogant young man. But in searching for a way to convert the episodic Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist, Joyce hit upon a principle of structure which reflected his habits of mind as extremely as he could wish. The work of art, like a mother's love, must be achieved over the greatest obstacles, and Joyce, who had been dissatisfied with his earlier work as too easily done, now found the obstacles in the form of a most complicated pattern.

This is hinted at in his image of the creative process. As far back as his paper on Mangan, Joyce said that the poet takes into the vital center of his life "the life that surrounds it, flinging it abroad again amid planetary music." He repeated this image in Stephen Hero, then in Portrait of the Artist developed it more fully. Stephen refers to the making of literature as "the phenomenon of artistic conception, artistic gestation and artistic reproduction," and then describes the progression from lyrical to epical and to dreamatic art:

The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the center of an epical event and this form progresses till the center of emotional gravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the action like a vital sea ... The dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills every person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life ... The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished.

This creator is not only male but female; Joyce goes on to borrow an image of Flaubert by calling him a "god", but he is also a goddess. Within his womb creatures come to life. Gabriel the seraph comes to the Virgin's chamber and, as Stephen says, "In the virgin womb of the imagination, the word is made flesh."

Ellman goes on to discuss Joyce's structural choices for this book - much of it tied up with the fact that Nora (his wife) was pregnant at the time of writing:

His brother records that in the first draft of Portrait, Joyce thought of a man's character as developing "from an embryo" with constant traits. Joyce acted upon this theory with characteristic thoroughness, and his subsequent interest in the process of gestation, as conveyed to Stanislaus during Nora's first pregnancy, expressed a concern that was literary as well as anatomical. His decision to rewrite Stephen Hero as Portrait in five chapters occurred appropriately just after Lucia's birth. For A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is in fact the gestation of a soul, and in the metaphor Joyce found his new principle of order. The book begins with Stephen's father and, just before the ending, it depicts the hero's severance from his mother. From the start the soul is surrounded by liquids, urine, slime, seawater, amniotic tides, "drops of water" (as Joyce says at the end of the first chapter) "falling softly in the brimming bowl." The atmosphere of biological struggle is necessarily dark and melancholy until the light of life is glimpsed. In the first chapter the foetal soul is for a few pages only slightly individualized, the organism responds only to the most primitive sensory impressions, then the heart forms and musters its affections, the being struggles towards some unspecified, uncomprehended culmination, it is flooded in ways it cannot understand or control, it gropes wordlessly toward sexual differentiation. In the third chapter shame floods Stephen's whole body as conscience develops; the lower bestial nature is put by. Then at the end of the fourth chapter the soul discovers the goal towards which it has been mysteriously proceeding -- the goal of life. It must swim no more but emerge into air, the new metaphor being flight. The final chapter shows the soul, already fully developed, fattening itself for its journey until at last it is ready to leave. In the last few pages of the book, Stephen's diary, the soul is released from its confinement, its individuality is complete, and the style shifts with savage abruptness.

Fascinating. If you go back and read the book again, keep in mind the underlying structure. It's subtle - it's all done through metaphor, imagery, and language - but it's there. The development of the soul is never described - it is experienced. Through Joyce's language choices. This is one of Joyce's main contributions to literature as we know it. His accomplishment is breathtaking in this regard, and still cannot be touched. No other writer even comes close - although everyone imitates him. But Joyce was imitating no one. He had many influences - his sense of the tide of literature is encyclopedic - but he knew he was breaking with the past. He didn't break with the past just to break with the past. He wrote the best way he knew how. Literature was old, tired, and language itself had no meaning. Joyce got in there WITH the language - and made it do what he needed it to do. Shakespeare did the same thing. Chaucer did the same thing. I mean, this is the level we're at here. Writers who didn't just accept language as it is. Writers who, through their own work, catapulted language to another level. We cannot think about the English language without talking about Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. It still has the power to take my breath away if I think about it too much. Joyce, with his status as an Irishman, had a lot of feelings about all of this - because the English language was imposed upon his country. It wasn't imposed on him personally - he grew up speaking English - but it was imposed on his ancestors, and he had internalized that cultural disconnect. Most writers who come from countries who were colonized have these feelings about language - it's a very interesting dialogue. Derek Walcott speaks about this, Seamus Heaney speaks about this ... English was the language of the oppressors. If he COULD express himself fully - it would have to be in some OTHER kind of language (which is where Finnegans Wake came from, basically. Huge simplification - but that was what he was working on there. Making a language that would express him. Making a language that was natural for him.) Language ITSELF needed an overhaul. Again - you can count the writers on one hand who actually have this sense - and who are actually genius enough to pull it off. Joyce said once, about writing in English: "I cannot write a word in English without enclosing myself in a tradition." Joyce, being a genius, rebelled. He rebelled against that tradition. He didn't rebel against it by ignoring Shakespeare, or the King James Bible, or all of the great influences on the English language. No. He accepted that tradition, and he took from it what he felt would help him. But he never forgot that English was NOT, in fact, his "native" language.

This is most clearly defined in the famous "tundish" scene from Portrait:

It was too late to go upstairs to the French class. He crossed the hall and took the corridor to the left which led to the physics theatre. The corridor was dark and silent but not unwatchful. Why did he feel that it was not unwatchful? Was it because he had heard that in Buck Whaley's time there was a secret staircase there? Or was the jesuit house extra-territorial and was he walking among aliens? The Ireland of Tone and of Parnell seemed to have receded in space.

He opened the door of the theatre and halted in the chilly grey light that struggled through the dusty windows. A figure was crouching before the large grate and by its leanness and greyness he knew that it was the dean of studies lighting the fire. Stephen closed the door quietly and approached the fireplace.

-- Good morning, sir! Can I help you?

The priest looked up quickly and said:

-- One moment now, Mr Dedalus, and you will see. There is an art in lighting a fire. We have the liberal arts and we have the useful arts. This is one of the useful arts.

-- I will try to learn it, said Stephen.

-- Not too much coal, said the dean, working briskly at his task, that is one of the secrets.

He produced four candle-butts from the side-pockets of his soutane and placed them deftly among the coals and twisted papers. Stephen watched him in silence. Kneeling thus on the flagstone to kindle the fire and busied with the disposition of his wisps of paper and candle-butts he seemed more than ever a humble server making ready the place of sacrifice in an empty temple, a levite of the Lord. Like a levite's robe of plain linen the faded worn soutane draped the kneeling figure of one whom the canonicals or the bell-bordered ephod would irk and trouble. His very body had waxed old in lowly service of the Lord - in tending the fire upon the altar, in bearing tidings secretly, in waiting upon worldlings, in striking swiftly when bidden - and yet had remained ungraced by aught of saintly or of prelatic beauty. Nay, his very soul had waxed old in that service without growing towards light and beauty or spreading abroad a sweet odour of her sanctity - a mortified will no more responsive to the thrill of its obedience than was to the thrill of love or combat his ageing body, spare and sinewy, greyed with a silver-pointed down.

The dean rested back on his hunkers and watched the sticks catch. Stephen, to fill the silence, said:

-- I am sure I could not light a fire.

-- You are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancing up and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

He rubbed his hands slowly and drily over the difficulty.

-- Can you solve that question now? he asked.

-- Aquinas, answered Stephen, says pulcra sunt quae visa placent.

-- This fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye. Will it therefore be beautiful?

-- In so far as it is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose means here esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also says Bonum est in quod tendit appetitus. In so far as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell, however, it is an evil.

-- Quite so, said the dean, you have certainly hit the nail on the head.

He rose nimbly and went towards the door, set it ajar and said:

-- A draught is said to be a help in these matters.

As he came back to the hearth, limping slightly but with a brisk step, Stephen saw the silent soul of a jesuit look out at him from the pale loveless eyes. Like Ignatius he was lame but in his eyes burned no spark of Ignatius's enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of the company, a craft subtler and more secret than its fabled books of secret subtle wisdom, had not fired his soul with the energy of apostleship. It seemed as if he used the shifts and lore and cunning of the world, as bidden to do, for the greater glory of God, without joy in their handling or hatred of that in them which was evil but turning them, with a firm gesture of obedience back upon themselves and for all this silent service it seemed as if he loved not at all the master and little, if at all, the ends he served. Similiter atque senis baculus, he was, as the founder would have had him, like a staff in an old man's hand, to be leaned on in the road at nightfall or in stress of weather, to lie with a lady's nosegay on a garden seat, to be raised in menace.

The dean returned to the hearth and began to stroke his chin.

-- When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question? he asked.

-- From me! said Stephen in astonishment. I stumble on an idea once a fortnight if I am lucky.

-- These questions are very profound, Mr Dedalus, said the dean. It is like looking down from the cliffs of Moher into the depths. Many go down into the depths and never come up. Only the trained diver can go down into those depths and explore them and come to the surface again.

-- If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws.

-- Ha!

-- For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas.

-- I see. I quite see your point.

-- I need them only for my own use and guidance until I have done something for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells I shall try to trim it. If it does not give light enough I shall sell it and buy another.

-- Epictetus also had a lamp, said the dean, which was sold for a fancy price after his death. It was the lamp he wrote his philosophical dissertations by. You know Epictetus?

-- An old gentleman, said Stephen coarsely, who said that the soul is very like a bucketful of water.

-- He tells us in his homely way, the dean went on, that he put an iron lamp before a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole the lamp. What did the philosopher do? He reflected that it was in the character of a thief to steal and determined to buy an earthen lamp next day instead of the iron lamp.

A smell of molten tallow came up from the dean's candle butts and fused itself in Stephen's consciousness with the jingle of the words, bucket and lamp and lamp and bucket. The priest's voice, too, had a hard jingling tone. Stephen's mind halted by instinct, checked by the strange tone and the imagery and by the priest's face which seemed like an unlit lamp or a reflector hung in a false focus. What lay behind it or within it? A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of the thundercloud, charged with intellection and capable of the gloom of God?

-- I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.

-- Undoubtedly, said the dean.

-- One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to know whether words are being used according to the literary tradition or according to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of Newman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained in the full company of the saints. The use of the word in the marketplace is quite different. I hope I am not detaining you.

-- Not in the least, said the dean politely.

-- No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean --

-- Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point: detain.

He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.

-- To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can hold.

-- What funnel? asked Stephen.

-- The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.

-- That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?

-- What is a tundish?

-- That. Thefunnel.

-- Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.

-- It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.

-- A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.

His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the English convert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake of clamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to have entered on the stage of jesuit history when that strange play of intrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been all but given through - a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had he set out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?

The dean repeated the word yet again.

-- Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!

-- The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting. What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth, said Stephen coldly.

-- The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:

-- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

-- And to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the dean added, to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty. And to inquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of the various arts. These are some interesting points we might take up.

Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the dean's firm, dry tone, was silent; and through the silence a distant noise of many boots and confused voices came up the staircase.

-- In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr Moonan. He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.

-- I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.

-- You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despondent. Per aspera ad astra.

He left the hearth quickly and went towards the landing to oversee the arrival of the first arts' class.

Leaning against the fireplace Stephen heard him greet briskly and impartially every Student of the class and could almost see the frank smiles of the coarser students. A desolating pity began to fall like dew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful serving-man of the knightly Loyola, for this half-brother of the clergy, more venal than they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom he would never call his ghostly father; and he thought how this man and his companions had earned the name of worldlings at the hands not of the unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, during all their history, at the bar of God's justice for the souls of the lax and the lukewarm and the prudent.

All one can do when one reads that passage is to just say: "Hats off, Jimmy. I can't write like that, I can never write like that, but whatever man, hats feckin' OFF."

Back to Ellman's analysis of the development of Portrait:

The sense of the soul's development as like that of an embryo not only helped Joyce to the book's imagery, but also encouraged him to work and rework the original elements in the process of gestation. Stephen's growth proceeds in waves, in accretions of flesh, in particularization of needs and desires, around and around but always ultimately forward. The episodic framework of Stephen Hero was renounced in favor of a group of scenes radiating backwards and forwards.¹ In the new first chapter Joyce had three clusters of sensations: his earliest memories of infancy, his sickness at Clongowes (probably indebted like the ending of "The Dead" to rheumatic fever in Trieste), and his pandying at Father Daly's hands. Under these he subsumed chains of related mometns, with the effect of three fleshings in time rather than of a linear succession of events. The sequence became primarily one of layers rather than of years.

In this process other human beings are not allowed much existence except as influences upon the soul's development or features of it. The same figures appear and reappear, the schoolboy Heron for example, each time in an altered way to suggest growth in the soul's view of them. E--- C---, a partner in childhood games, becomes the object of Stephen's adolescent love poems; the master at Clongowes reappears as the preacher of the sermons at Belvedere.
² The same words, "Apologise", "admit", "maroon", "green", "cold", "warm," "wet", and the like, keep recurring with new implications. The book moves from rudimentary meanings to more complex ones, as in the conceptions of the call and the fall. Stephen, in the first chapter fascinated by unformed images, is next summoned by the flesh and then by the church, the second chapter ending with a prostitute's lingual kiss, the third with his reception of the Host upon his tongue. The soul that has been enraptured by body in the second chapter and by spirit in the third (both depicted in sensory images) then hears the call of art and life, which encompass both without bowing before either, in the fourth chapter; the process is virtually compete. Similarly the fall into sin, at first a terror, gradually becomes an essential part of the discovery of self and life.

Now Stephen, his character still recomposing the same elements, leaves the Catholic priesthood behind him to become "a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everlasting life." Having listened to sermons on ugliness in the third chapter, he makes his own sermons on beauty in the last. The Virgin is transformed into the girl wading on the strand, symbolizing a more tangible reality. In the last two chapters, to suit his new structure, Joyce minimizes Stephen's physical life to show the dominance of his mind, which has accepted but subordinated physical things. The soul is ready now, it throws off its sense of imprisonment, its melancholy, its no longer tolerable conditions of lower existence, to be born.

¹ It is a technique which William Faulkner was to carry even further in the opening section of The Sound and the Fury, where the extreme disconnection finds its justification, not, as in Joyce, in the haze of childhood memory, but in the blur of an idiot's mind. Faulkner, when he wrote his book, had read Dubliners
and A Portrait; he did not read Ulysses until a year later, in 1930, but he knew about it from excerpts and from the conversation of friends. He has said that he considered himself the heir of Joyce in his methods in The Sound and the Fury. Among the legacies may be mentioned the stopped clock in the last chapter of A Portrait and in the Quentin section.

² In both these instances Joyce changed the actual events. His freedom of recomposition is displayed also in the scene in the physics classroom in Portrait, where he telescopes two lectures, one on electricity and one on mechanics, which as Professor Felix Hackett remembers, took place months apart. Moynihan's whispered remark, inspired by the lecturer's discussion of ellipsoidal balls, "Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry!" was in fact made by a young man named Kinahan on one of these occasions. In the same way, as JF Byrne points out in Silent Years, the long scene with the dean of studies in A Portrait happened not to Joyce but to him; he told it to Joyce and was later displeased to discover how his innocent description of Father Darlington lighting a fire had been converted into a reflection of Stephen's strained relations with the church.

Happy birthday, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce, old father, old artificer, we are forever in your debt.

The Books: "The Woolgatherer" (William Mastrosimone)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is The Woolgatherer, by William Mastrosimone

A play beloved by actors everywhere. Two great characters who have big long juicy monologues - and great dialogue - two characters with objectives and obstacles - it's just an actor's dream. The play is so overdone by now that I truly would not recommend to any actress that she do "the cranes" monologue for an audition. I know. I know it's a terrific monologue - up there in the pantheon of great monologues - but it is TOO done. You will walk in and say, "Hi my name is so-and-so, and I will be doing a monologue from The Woolgatherer" and the people behind the table will secretly roll their eyes. Oh Jesus, the damn cranes monologue again? There's a reason why it is loved - it's feckin' great - but just don't do it!!!

The plot is simple: it's the typical device used by playwrights around the globe: get two characters in a room, and let them just talk. Cliff is a truck driver. His truck has broken down and he is stranded in south Philly for the night while the repairs are done. He meets Rose. He thinks she's cute. He strikes up a conversation with her and she ends up taking her back to his apartment. Naturally he thinks he is in for a night of romance, laughter, sex - a fun one-night-stand. Little does he know that Rose is kind of a wack job. She is prim, proper - she gets shocked and angry when he curses - she has no food in the refrigerator except for wilted produce - she is so broke that she rummages through garbage cans behind grocery stores - She is very literal - doesn't get any of his jokes (he has some great lines) - and she is also like a little prissy virgin. Turns out, though, that she has a MAJOR secret - which is not revealed until the end of the play. She was once a slut - actually, no, let's not characterize her behavior that way: she was a whore. That's a better term. She took guys back to her place and had sex with them for money. But now she has killed off that other person - she speaks about her in the third person - "a girl used to live here ... but she killed herself ..." And now she is a whole new Rose - rigid, uncompromising, and inflexible. Cliff realizes what he's gotten himself into far too late.

Of course by the end of the play - the two characters come to an understanding - they connect on a pretty profound level - It's a classic little piece of playwrighting.

I'll excerpt a bit from the beginning of the play. Rose has taken Cliff home. She is chattering on and on about stuff he doesn't care about. Cliff just wants to have a fun night. This is the scene with Rose's famous "crane monologue". It truly is amazing - and if the actress really goes there and does it well, it is a devastating moment. I've seen actresses do it and your breath catches in your throat - it's so tragic - and I've seen actresses do it where it's a histrionic stupid melodramatic hoo-hah.

From The Woolgatherer, by William Mastrosimone

ROSE. What's your Zodiac sign?

CLIFF. You believe in that crap?

ROSE. It's not ...

CLIFF. What?

ROSE. What you said.

CLIFF. Crap?

ROSE. They proved it's true.

CLIFF. Who proved it?

ROSE. Scientists. When were you born?

CLIFF. Soon after my mother had contractions, and tell you the truth I don't want to hear no bartalk zodiacs with a rising Scorpion on the cusp of diddlydo. Just a bunch of some crap some lazyass cooked up to sell a book.

ROSE. You want to go to the museum and see a dinosaur?

CLIFF. A sore what?

ROSE. A dinosaur. It's about, o, I don't know, fifty or forty feet high. Tyrannosaurus.

CLIFF. Do they let you feed it?

ROSE. No! It's dead.

CLIFF. Rope!

ROSE. No! It's all bones. Bones this thick all wired together. I made friends with the curator and he took me in the cellar and showed me how they wire the bones.

CLIFF. In the cellar, huh?

ROSE. Of the museum.

CLIFF. And did he show you his bone?

ROSE. No. The bones belong to the museum.

CLIFF. O, I see.

ROSE. He told me the dinosaurs disappeared off the face of the earth very suddenly.

CLIFF. How come?

ROSE. Nobody knows.

CLIFF. Mysterious.

ROSE. They think it was the temperature.

CLIFF. They died of fever?

ROSE. No. The climate changed and the dinosaurs couldn't get used to it. It was called The Great Ice Age.

CLIFF. Why didn't they go to Florida?

ROSE. You want to hear this? This is a serious subject.

CLIFF. I know. Never know when you might come across a dinosaur.

ROSE. And guess what? They just found a wooly mammoth in Siberia, or Algeria, or, I don't know, someplace far. And it was froze in ice in perfect condition like it was in a refrigerator for ten thousand years. C'mon. We still have a chance before the museum closes.

CLIFF. That's romantic as hell. Go look at bones.

ROSE. People who can't appreciate culture are just ignorant.

CLIFF. I must be people.

ROSE. Mankind does not understand its past.

CLIFF. That what the museum guy says? Tell him if he wants to know about mankind, tell him stop playing with his bone down in the cellar there and go in a city where you don't know anybody and have your truck breakdown and try and get somebody give you ahand! Don't tell me about bones.

ROSE. It's interesting.

CLIFF. Yeah, so are rock fights. Look, Rose, I'm not too big on culture, see. Now I can get all hepped up over a t-bone or prime rib, but that's about it for bones.

ROSE. I don't think you understand.

CLIFF. Hey, look, sweetheart, I understand. I got two hours to kill in Philly and I'm not gonna spend it looking at bones. Hey, why don't we hoof it to a joint, lay out some frogskin, do a pizza with the works to go, jump on some vino, bring it here, chow down, talk about the moon, acouple laughs, sing dance, waterski, la la la, whatever.

ROSE. I have food here.

CLIFF. I don't want to use your food.

ROSE. I have a lot of food.

CLIFF. C'mon, what do you want to do -- it's up to you.

ROSE. I'd rather stay here.

CLIFF. Terrific. What do you got?

ROSE. This.

CLIFF. Boneless sardines.

ROSE. Magic mountain herb tea. And this.

CLIFF. Cranberry sauce. Dusseldorff mustard.

ROSE. Bouillon cubes. Cinnamon sticks. And this!

CLIFF. My favorite! Sea-weed soup!

ROSE. I got that in a health store.

CLIFF. I thought maybe a pet shop.

ROSE. Dried fruits and nuts. Corn niblets. Artichokes hearts. Asparagus. Jerkins.

CLIFF. Jerkins? [Opening the refrigerator, coming up with a limp celery stalk. Rose grabs it out of his hand and tosses it in the garbage] Hey! Don't!

ROSE. It's wilted.

CLIFF. [picking it out of the garbage] Never know. It might come alive again. [Rose throws it back into the garbage] You live on this stuff?

ROSE. I get fruits and vegetables on Ninth Street when they close.

CLIFF. What, steal it?

ROSE. No, you should see the good stuff they throw away.

CLIFF. Garbage?

ROSE. I wash it off. They throw away lettuce leaves just because it has a brown edge. Or if a peace has a bruise, I cut it out. And stick bread this long. A day old. But I don't eat it all. I break it up and feed the pigeons on the roof.

CLIFF. Get your poncho. I'll take you out for a steak.

ROSE. I thought you wanted to make something here.

CLIFF. Out of this shit? I'd have to be a goddamn magician.

ROSE. You don't have to curse.

CLIFF. What'd I say?

ROSE. You cursed.

CLIFF. No shit. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. [Pause] Hey, sorry. I meant to say all shucks and golly gee.

ROSE. Don't make fun of me.

CLIFF. I'm not.

ROSE. I hate when they make fun of me.

CLIFF. You make a big deal out of every fuckin thing.

ROSE. If you want to curse, you can do it somewhere else.

CLIFF. You don't curse?

ROSE. No.

CLIFF. Bull shit.

ROSE. I don't. And don't say I do.

CLIFF. You never cursed?

ROSE. Never. Not once.

CLIFF. No shit? Why not?

ROSE. Because.

CLIFF. Why because?

ROSE. Because I don't. That's all.

CLIFF. What do you say when you stub your toe? O gosh darn chocolate kisses?

ROSE. I say ouch. And I don't like people who curse.

CLIFF. So you don't like me.

ROSE. Not when you curse like that.

CLIFF. So what are you, a nun?

ROSE. No.

CLIFF. Eh, Sister Rose?

ROSE. If you don't like it ...

CLIFF. Stick it?

ROSE. No.

CLIFF. Sit on it?

ROSE. No!

CLIFF. Shove it?

ROSE. No!

CLIFF. Fry it up with onions? What? If I don't like it what? Eh, Sister Rose?

ROSE. If you don't like it you can go.

CLIFF. For cursing?

ROSE. Yes.

CLIFF. Why?

ROSE. It's ugly.

CLIFF. I didn't invent it.

ROSE. You use it.

CLIFF. It's part of the language.

ROSE. Not my language.

CLIFF. You have some paper and pen?

ROSE. What for?

CLIFF. I'll write a thousand times, I will not say fuck, I will not say fuck, I will not say ...

ROSE. STOP IT! I hate that!

CLIFF. I'm sorry.

ROSE. No you're not! I hate when they curse. Like them kids at the zoo. I hate it.

CLIFF. Here we go.

ROSE. Their radios up against their ears and that wild ugly music and cursing! I hate that!

CLIFF. What kids?

ROSE. I hate that.

CLIFF. What kids at the zoo?

ROSE. Nothing.

CLIFF. They cursed at you?

ROSE. No. At those birds.

CLIFF. O, they cursed at those birds, huh?

ROSE. Those tall birds with the long thin legs.

CLIFF. Ah, yes. The tall thin-legged bird of North America.

ROSE. Derricks!

CLIFF. Derricks?

ROSE. No. Cranes. Some kind of cranes.

CLIFF. And what did the derricks say, Rose?

ROSE. Stop making fun of me.

CLIFF. Did the derricks ask you if you needed a lift?

ROSE. You may think it's funny but I was the last one to see them alive last summer. There was alone seven of them in the world and the zoo had four of them. I used to walk there every night just to watch them stand so still in the water. And they walked so graceful, in slow motion. And they have legs as skinny as my little finger. Long legs. And there was only seven in the world because they killed them off for feathers for ladies hats or something. And one night a gang of boys came by with radios to their ears and cursing real bad, you know, F, and everything. And I was, you know, ascared. And they started saying things to me, you know, dirty things, and laughing at the birds. And one kid threw a stone to see how close he could splash the birds, and then another kid tried to see how close he could splash the birds, and then they all started throwing stones to splash the birds, and then they started throwing stones at the birds, and I started screaming STOP IT! and a stone hit a bird's leg and it bended like a straw and the birds keeled over in the water, flapping wings in the water, and the kids kept laughing and throwing stones and I kept screaming STOP IT! STOP IT! but they couldn't hear me through that ugly music on the radios and kept laughing and cursing and throwing stones, and I ran and got the zoo guard and he got his club and we ran to the place of the birds but the kids were gone. And there was white feathers on the water. And the water was real still. And there was big swirls of blood. And the birds were real still. Their beaks alittle open. Legs broke. Toes curled. Still. Like the world stopped. And the guard said something to me but I couldn't hear him. I just saw his mouth moving. And I started screaming. And the cops came and took me to the hospital and they gave me a needle to make me stop screaming. And they never caught the gang. But even if they did, what good's that? They can't make the birds come alive again.

CLIFF. [Long pause] Yeah, well. I'm really sorry to hear about it. But the fact of the matter is ... it's a rough-tough world out there, and like everything else, if the birds can't hack the jive, maybe it's better they're not around gettin in the way because if you want to survive you got to be rough and tough right back.

ROSE. But they don't have a way to be rough and tough.

CLIFF. Then maybe it was meant to be for 'em to bite the dust.

ROSE. That's mean.

CLIFF. That's life.

ROSE. That's not life.

CLIFF. That's the way Niagara Falls.

ROSE. You're just as bad as them.

CLIFF. I'm not them. I'm me.

ROSE. You stick up for them, you mise will be them!

CLIFF. Hey, did I kill the birds? Did I?

ROSE. You mise well if you stick up for them!

CLIFF. But did I kill the fuckin' birds?

ROSE. NO! [Pause. Apologetic for screaming] No. [Pause] I think you should go.

CLIFF. Yeah, me too. Afterall, you don't want it to get around you hang out with bird killers. Well, kid, it was nice.

ROSE. You think they fixed your truck?

CLIFF. No. Wasn't meant to be.

ROSE. I hope you get the new job.

CLIFF. As they say when you can't stop your rig -- them's the breaks.

ROSE. What kind of job is it?

CLIFF. Testing parachutes.

ROSE. What kind of job is that?

CLIFF. Fifty bucks an hour plus they let you keep the chutes that don't open.

ROSE. What would you do with a parachute?

CLIFF. Make handkerchiefs. Big ones. [Pause. They face each other. Cliff offers a handshake. She slowly accepts] Cold hands.

ROSE. I'm anemic.

CLIFF. Know what's good for that?

ROSE. What?

CLIFF. Boneless sardines. Hey, Rosie-posey, mind if I smoke?

ROSE. No, but don't call me that.

CLIFF. Why not?

ROSE. You're making fun.

CLIFF. No I'm not. Honest. I just can't believe somebody like you exists.

ROSE. What do you mean somebody like me?

CLIFF. I mean you're beautiful.

ROSE. Don't say that kind of stuff to me. I know I'm not beautiful. You're making fun.

CLIFF. I'm afraid to talk. Everything I say hurts you. Maybe I don't use the right words. Hey, I'm gonna watch myself from now on.

Take four

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
1) Library page
2) Karaoke party hostess
3) Receptionist for Donny Osmond's security detail
4) AOL online chat hostess for Comic Relief (I huddled backstage with my laptop and did chats with the comedians - famous goldurn people!! - for AOL users. I still have my press pass. Awesome!)

-- oh, and I've got to put this one on there: I was a lingerie model for one STUPID evening with my good friend Jackie - at a private party - a house full of dutiful husbands, there to buy lingerie for their wives. Jackie's cousin worked for a lingerie company or something - and they do these parties - like a Tupperware party, only with lingerie. It is a RIDICULOUS story (if you knew Jackie and I, I mean) and we still HOWL with laughter about it. The two of us sitting out on the back steps of this gorgeous palatial house, grumpily wearing hundred-dollar lingerie, drinking BUDS from a CAN. Like - we were SO the trashy help. It's one of those classic stories of your life. Crazy funny stuff always happened when Jackie and I were together.

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
1) Only Angels Have Wings
2) GI Jane
3) Center Stage
4) Maltese Falcon

FOUR BOOKS YOU COULD READ AGAIN & AGAIN
1) Balkan Ghosts - by Robert Kaplan
2) Wrinkle in Time - by Madeleine L'Engle
3) The Book of Abigail and John Adams
4) Hopeful Monsters - Nicholas Mosley

FOUR CITIES/PLACES YOU'VE LIVED IN
1) Los Angeles, CA
2) Philadelphia, PA
3) Boston, MA
4) San Francisco, CA

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
1) Breaking Bonaduce
2) Six Feet Under (when it was on)
3) Forensic Files
4) Grey's Anatomy - yup. I've converted.

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION
1) Ireland
2) Ireland
3) Ireland
4) Ireland

This year, however, I will be branching out. Stay tuned!!

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY
1) Alex http://www.livejournal.com/users/abillings/
2) Cult News http://www.cultnews.com/
3) Arts and Letters Daily http://www.aldaily.com/
4) Today in History http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

(Argh - there are so many more! But these are the first that come to mind)

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS
1) Mexican
2) A big yummy well-done hamburger
3) Anything that involves pesto
4) Grape Nuts

FOUR PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW
1) Glendalough
2) Narragansett Beach
3) Lounge Ax on a Monday night circa 1993
4) On the green velvet couches in my apartment on Wayne Street in Chicago - watching 30 something with Mitchell (re-runs every night at 11 pm) before we went out. Yes. At that point in my life my evenings didn't even BEGIN until midnight. What??

From Beth

15 best movie kisses

Lots of photos. Tough choices. Below the fold.

Empire Strikes Back - asteroid belt. That's all I really need to say. One of my favorite movie kisses EVER.

Witness - they meet in the field. He is leaving the next day. They claw at one another, and yet - during one split second - they kind of pull back - and start laughing - their foreheads pressed together. It's one of the best movie kisses I can think of. This is the best I could do - in terms of tracking down an image:

Notorious - at the time this was the longest movie kiss in cinematic history. They had to keep breaking the kiss up to get around the censors. The censorship committee decreed that no screen kiss could last longer than 3 seconds. But Hitchcock made sure that their lips never touched for longer than 3 seconds - so if you put a stopwatch to it (and the censorship committee did) you would find that they were never over the time limit. But then they would pull back, nuzzle, speak against each other's mouths, kiss again for 3 seconds ... and repeat the whole thing. It's amazing - very very sexy. It's also REALLY neurotic. You can just tell that despite their desire for one another they are SO not trusting of each other. It's fascinating.

The Year of Living Dangerously - Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver in Indonesia. This was when Mel Gibson was still hot and not an evangelical bearded weirdo. Couldn't find a picture of the kiss I'm thinking of - it's their first kiss - in the rain. The chemistry between them is electric.

It's a Wonderful Life - the phone scene. I ACHE for them to kiss every time I watch that scene. It is absolutely electric.

Gone with the wind - Rhett sweeping her up the stairs in his arms. It's violent, it's shocking, and it is EXACTLY what she wants and needs.

8 Mile - Eminem and Brittany Murphy in the factory. It seems to go on forever. I read one review that called it "gratuitous". WHAT?? I couldn't disagree with that more strongly.

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, camping out together - going to attack the bridge at first light - so there's a sense that this night will be all they will have. Lots of kisses throughout the night, lots of conversation - I just love the whole scene.

Groundhog Day - the first time they kiss - after the snowball fight. Of course he keeps trying to recreate the magic of the moment, thereby ruining it - but I love that first kiss.

Running on Empty - River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton kissing in the woods at night. He confesses to her his secret about his family. He tells her what his life is. She is SO upset. Major kiss afterwards. It truly means something - unlike so many movie kisses.

Only Angels Have Wings - Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. Maybe it's not the most FAMOUS movie kiss - but it is one of my favorites. Mainly because his character is so curmudgeonly, so cranky - that it is literally breathtaking to watch him succumb to something like that. I LOVE the relationship created between those two characters.

Casablanca - It just has to be there.

To Have and Have Not - when she sits down on his lap and kisses him. He looks up at her. "What'd you do that for?" She replies, "To see if I like it." He says, "What's the verdict?" She says, "I haven't made up my mind yet" and leans in to kiss him again. This time it gets steamier - his hand reaches up to touch her face. She pulls back, smiles down at him, says, "It's even better when you help." Right after this comes the famous "you know how to whistle, don't you" line.

The Sure Thing - well, they don't actually kiss until the very last moment of the film when they're on the roof, surrounded by stars. And it's a sweet little innocent kiss - it's not Body Heat or anything - but it's SO effective because you realize how much it means to both of the characters. I love that moment. This is NOT a picture of the last moment - I failed in my quest to find that image. But this is another sweet moment, definitely leading up to that first kiss - when they are forced to sleep in the same bed, and wake up like this:

Streetcar Named Desire - the kiss between Stanley and Stella after the "STELLLLLAAAAAAAA" moment. It's scarily desperate. It really is. Great moment.

The Big Easy - Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin - in bed - she's all uptight, she starts crying, he's gentle - it's an astounding scene. You rarely see intimate scenes that are so HUMAN.

I think that's 15. And I know I've probably missed some of your favorites - I am sure I missed some of my favorites as well! I wrote this up in like 10 minutes.

I am now thinking of some others that should be on here. Blade Runner. Rocky. Dogfight - so sweet!!! Lady and the Tramp. Tom Selleck and Kevin Kline in In & Out.

Argh - two more:

From Here to Eternity - thanks, Lisa!

Rocky - thanks, Bets!!

I think I need to do top TWENTY kisses.

Music/Book/Location

A really cool thread on I Love Books: Memorable book / music / location combos - (uhm - the first one mentions a South Kingstown Town Beach?? Rhode Island friends? What say you about this??)

Anyway - some of the answers are great -

For example:

December 1989: Aqua-blue beanbag chair placed (awkwardly) between the kitchen and dining room. Watership Down + George M! Original Broadway Recording

hahaha There are a bunch of great ones in the thread. I never would have thought about this combo together, but turns out - once I put my mind to it, I came up with a couple of examples from my own life.

Okay, so here are some of my combos (and I can't help it - I've added some touches of my own)

Time: Summer 1992
Location: My scratchy two-seater couch in my one-room apartment on Melrose Street in Chicago.
Book: Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann (my favorite book I read that year)
Album: Tori Amos "Little Earthquakes". I listened to that album so much that summer that I am pretty much done listening to it for life. It's weird how that happens. I still love that album - but I will probably only listen to it once a decade from now on - because I listened to it SO MUCH in that first frenzy.
Other Sensory Memories from that Summer, listed at random, as I think of them:
-- my black derby
-- the plaintive meow of my new cat Samuel - his glowing green eyes staring at me in the dark
-- the slightly sweet smell of roach motels which was quite strong in the main corridors of my apartment buildings
-- meeting Window Boy. Window Boy calling me to ask if I wanted to go out. The first date. It went well, even though his MOTHER had to come pick him up from the pool hall where we were hanging out. He didn't have a car for some reason at that point. He was so mortified. "I guess I need to go call my mom now so she can come get me ..." Our second date. That went well too. But it was our third date when I thought: hmmmmm. That whole summer was about Window Boy and doing Golden Boy.
-- the B 52's "Love Shack" - blaring in my ears - as I took my daily run along Lake Michigan
-- the taste of Cracklin' Oat Bran - weird. I ate it that whole summer for some reason. And every time I have a bowl of it now - I get a whole flash of the summer of 1992 - Cracklin' Oat Bran makes me think of Tori Amos, B52s, Window Boy, and the smell of roach motels. WEIRD
-- the smell of the Oatmeal & Honey facial mask I bought. I gave myself a facial once a week. I still do, actually. But that summer was when I got really into it. I was BROKE - but I "splurged" and bought a facial mask kit from H20 - which probably cost 20 bucks - but that was a HUGE deal to me. And the mask was rough, and scratchy when you put it on - and it smelled deeply of oatmeal and honey. I can still smell it right now - just by writing about it!! I think I remember that particular mask so well because I had NO money and the fact that I had "splurged" meant a great deal to me - a sign of independence - I was on my own for the first time. I saved up and bought the Oatmeal Honey Mask for 20 bucks. It meant a lot.

Time: October 1991
Location: The Westfalia van my boyfriend and I traveled across America in. It had a small stove - with a blue cooking flame - a pop-up roof - the van was a dirty-brown color - and we camped all across the country, cooking on a grill, putting laundry out to dry, etc. I would wear my long johns, my big wool socks, a flannel shirt over myself, and I had a blue bandana tied around my head - perpetually - that bandana was pretty much on my head for 2 months straight.
Book: Curled up in my sleeping bag, reading The Passion - a novel by Jeanette Winterson
Album: Bonnie Raitt plqying - the "Nick of Time" album. Ouch. Very melancholy time for me.
Other Sensory Memories from that trip, listed at random, as I think of them:
-- The frost freezing our laundry into the shapes they took while on the line.
-- Scotch with ice cubes, sipped at twilight - from little blue tin camp cups
-- the smell of tuna on the grill
-- those damn long johns.

Time: August 1982.
Location: On the beach with my friends (but not South Kingstown Town Beach - because I'm actually not sure what that would be - is there an SK Town Beach?) We all lay there on beach blankets, cramming to finish our summer reading list before the start of school. Transistor radio on our beach blanket.
Book: Tale of 2 Cities
Album: listening to "Rock the Casbah" - on the radio. You could not get away from "Rock the Casbah" that summer, if I recall correctly. So - strangely - when I picked up Tale of 2 Cities to re-read it a couple years ago - out of nowhere, I got a 3-D flash of that summer - of The Clash - strange, how memory works. I read the first couple paragraphs and immediately went back in time to that hot summer, when I basically SPEED-READ Tale of 2 Cities to the accompaniment of "Rock the Casbah".

Time: December 1999
Location: B&B off O'Connell Street in Dublin
Book: Plays well with others, by Allan Gurganus
Album: Robbie Williams' Millennium - again, you could not escape Robbie Williams in Dublin at that time. And why would you want to?? Robbie Williams rocks!
Extenuating Circumstances I always think of when I look at Gurganus' book::
-- I was in Dublin with my dear friend Ann Marie. We were having a blast.
-- I got sicker than I have ever been in my life. There was some kind of influenza breakout and I caught it. Everyone was sick. But this wasn't a workable cold - I could do NOTHING ELSE while I had it - I was bedridden. In Dublin. During the millennium. There was also this huge "we have a shortage of nurses" crisis going on in Ireland at that time. I bought cold medicine which dried me out. I lay in bed. Moaning. Listening to Robbie Williams. Ann Marie would go out and sight-see - by herself - and come back to what she called "the disembodied head" that was once her friend. She told people: "Sheila is now a disembodied head back in the B & B."
-- I lay in bed and read the entirety of Plays Well with Others in one day. It's a kind of long and dense novel. I took no breaks - because basically I could not get out of bed. I read the whole thing. I ALWAYS think of having influenza in damn Ireland every time I look at that book.
-- I actually was well enough by New Year's Eve to go out and have fun. I mean, I probably WASN'T well enough - but I was DAMNED if I would stay home and be sick on that night. Thank God I did go out. If I had stayed home and remained a disembodied head I would have missed this.

40-year-old virgin

So yeah. I rented it last night. Even though I just saw it 3 days ago. I can't get enough.

Things that make me laugh OUT LOUD (but I think the movie really works because it's NOT just a joke - there's real heart here) - but here are the things that make me laugh out loud:

-- the black father at Planned Parenthood, saying, "My daughter is, for lack of a better word ... DUMB ..." I kept rewinding it and it kept being funny. His FACE, the way his eyes are kind of flat and pissed off - Half of the humor is in when he chooses to look at his daughter, and when he chooses to look back at the counselor (played by Nancy Walls - Steve Carell's wife in real life). It wouldn't work if he didn't glance briefly at his daughter during the pause before "dumb". I love that in the gag reel there's one shot of him bursting into laughter during one of the takes. Yup. He knew how funny it was too.

-- The two angry Indian guys who work at the store. They are always walking into the frame, where a scene is already going on, making some bitter comment, and then walking out of the frame. I cannot get enough of them. They are ALWAYS angry. "What are we - Al Qaeda? We can't come to your party?" And when the one angry Indian guy starts to list sexual practices off like a grocery list - saying that "life is not about sex or cock or balls or titties ... life is not about butthole pleasures ... life is not about ..." And Andy's face as he listens to all of this ... It's feckin' hysterical.

-- Jane Lynch - that FABULOUS chick from Best in Show and Mighty Wind who plays the manager of the store. NOBODY plays "ikky" better than that woman. Her performance as the lesbian dog trainer in Best in Show is so ikky and so comedically delicious that it's perfect. You know that kind of self-important person who has ZERO sense of humor about themselves? She pretty much can play that kind of person like nobody's business. And that's what her character is in this film. She is so. GROSS. I love when she starts to sing in Spanish - having no idea just how gross and self-indulgent she is. That actress is brilliant.

-- Andy saying to his friends, after they figure out he's a virgin: "I don't need your help! I have a very fulfilling life!!" Then a quick cut to a montage of his life: strutting around in his apartment playing the French horn badly, painting a very intricate small action figure, doing karaeoke by himself in his living room, and sitting in bed reading a comic book laughing hysterically.

-- The moment when Catherine Keener (love her) finds the plastic model of the vagina in Andy's apartment (you know - the kind they use in health class and stuff) - She picks it up and shoots DAGGERS at him with her eyes. "What is this?" He is mortified but he answers bravely, "That is a vagina." She says, fuming: "And why do you have this??" He splutters out: "For learning!" (There are a couple of moments on the gag reel from this scene. He would say "To learn!" or "For learning!" and Keener would hold it together for half a second, and then just burst into laughter)

-- This guy. He steals every scene he's in. He makes me laugh out loud. But none of it is gags - or gimmicks - it's all just totally real. He's fanTASTIC. This guy has a HUGE career ahead of him.

Larry's taking over.

Catching up on my Sports Guy. Just read his piece on Larry Bird, and I'm all verklempt. I grew up in a household where sports really meant something. Not EVERYTHING, mind you - I knew families where sports were EVERYTHING and they kind of freaked me out ... But I grew up in a family where sports, and the teams we rooted for, really meant something to us. They were a part of our blood, a part of our experience as a family. If you didn't grow up with that, it's kind of hard to describe - but I think Bill Simmons does, as always, a great job putting it all into words.

When the Bird Era crested with that remarkable 67-win season in the 1986 season, it was the ultimate marriage of the perfect crowd and the perfect team. Remember the scene in "Hoosiers" right after Jimmy Chitwood joined the team, the inspiring "This team's coming together" montage? That's what every game felt like that year.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

And:

Did these things make Larry Bird a hero? Probably not. But there were heroic qualities about him, mainly stemming from the fact that everyone in New England believed he was invincible. He just came through too many times for us. After awhile, we started expecting him to come through, and when he still came through, that's when we were hooked for good. Out of all the dramatic Bird moments over the years, I'll always remember a game-winning shot that he missed ... not just because he missed it, but because nobody believed he could miss it.

If you come from a sports-loving family, then these words will most definitely resonate!!

Go read the whole beautiful thing.

The Books: "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" (Terrence McNally)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, by Terrence McNally. A beautiful play by one of my favorite playwrights.

First done in New York with Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham. A huge sensation. An acting triumph for both of them. Kathy Bates had already become kind of a sensation with her performance in Marsha Norman's 'Night Mother in 1983. She was nominated for a Tony. Frankie and Johnny was a massive success for her. How I would have LOVED to see her in this part. Then, of course, Hollywood made the movie of it - and suddenly Frankie looked like Michelle Pfeiffer. What? Can you imagine how much more moving that film would have been if that character looked like Kathy Bates??? That's one of the POINTS of the play. That's who Frankie is. She looks like Kathy Bates. Hollywood lost its nerve - as it so often does - and I'm sorry - Michelle Pfeiffer is a good actress and all, but just putting dark circles under her eyes does not convince me, or anyone, that she is not beautiful. Sorry. Nice try, Michelle, but no cigar. Johnny falls absolutely head over heels in love with Frankie - and she, because of her issues, because of being abused in the past, because of her distrust of men, cannot accept it. She finds Johnny too "intense". She doesn't like how much he loves her, she can't bear it when he goes on and on raving about her beauty. I just think it's so much more moving, and human, and RIGHT that Frankie not be a conventionally beautiful woman. Because love is not reserved for those who are, empirically, beautiful. All kinds of people fall in love with each other. And when you're madly in love with someone - they seem to be the most beautiful person in the world. This is one of those cases when I understand why the powers-that-be decided to put Michelle Pfeiffer in that part - but I truly believe the movie suffered because of it.

Also, it became kind of a joke - to Kathy Bates: she would create these roles on Broadway - it happened to her, I think, 3 or 4 times - and not only would she create the roles, but she would get critical acclaim like you would not believe (if you go back and read some of the original reviews of these shows - it's breathtaking - she was one of THOSE actresses - a Broadway heavy-hitter) - but anyway, she would create these amazing parts, and then Hollywood would buy the script - they'd "let her" audition for it - just to throw her a bone - and then give the part to someone already established. Sissy Spacek in Night Mother, Michelle in Frankie and Johnny - I understand the reality. I understand that Broadway success doesn't mean CRAP to people in Hollywood. But I love it that Kathy Bates has the last laugh now. Look at her career. Look at what happened with her first major role. Uhm - SHE WON A FECKIN' OSCAR, OKAY??? I think she is one of the great examples, one of the great examples of do not give up, do not let it get to you, do not let the set-backs destroy you. Just keep going. Keep going.

The standards of physical beauty are insanely high in California - and Kathy Bates just could not be put into a romantic film like Frankie and Johnny - even though THAT'S WHAT MCNALLY WROTE. Sigh. Again, I understand why this happened, but I still think it stinks. Especially in this case. Frankie and Johnny the movie was not a huge success and most of the reviews made mention of the fact that Pfeiffer was miscast. The fact that she's not skinny is referenced in the text. The fact that she is not beautiful is referenced in the text. Michelle Pfeiffer is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Come on. It was ridiculous. It HURT the movie, that casting choice. Okay - I'll let it go.

Kathy Bates definintely had an uphill road with all of this - she probably had moments of despair about it - to put so much heart and effort into stuff and then not to be able to do the film?? argh! - but still, she had a highly successful New York career - but then along came Misery and her entire life changed. I guess I just really admire her. Always have. Her career, to me, is one of those triumphs, something that I really respect.

So. Back to Frankie and Johnny.

He's a short-order cook. He's also an ex-con. She's a waitress. They're both in their 40s. They both have problems. They go on a date. They end up in bed. It is implied that they have the best sex either of them ever had. But immediately afterwards (which is the start of the play) - when they actually have to deal with each other, things get complicated. Frankie recoils. She revealed too much in her lovemaking, too much tenderness, whatever. She puts the walls back up. Johnny - who is very emotional - a big tough-guy but actually very emotional - wants more from her, feels like he's in love with her - She basically tries to kick him out of the apartment. He keeps pushing. He wants intimacy. She can't deal with intimacy. He is "too much" for her. He keeps telling her how beautiful she is, no matter what she says he thinks it's great ("I love meatloaf" she says and he says, "You do??? I do too! See, this is perfect!") He drives her crazy. She drives him crazy too - but in a different way. Of course the beauty of this play is that you know, deep down, under her scarred exterior - she has fallen for him as well. It's one of the most romantic plays ever written. The entire play takes place over the course of one night. A life-changing night. A night where the barriers between people eventually disappear. But it's a wrenching change - Intimacy is not easy for some people. Intimacy (another word for love, I guess) actually hurts some people. Frankie is one of those people. She is DESPERATE for him to leave. And he will NOT leave. At one point, Johnny spontaneously calls the radio station they have been listening to all night and tells the DJ their story - that their names are Frankie and Johnny - that they are making love in the moonlight - and would he please play "the most beautiful music in the world" so that this thing between them will not "self-destruct". The DJ eventually does come on the radio - and kind of laughs because of the names "Frankie and Johnny" - and then plays "Clair de Lune" for them. The radio, and the music, are a huge part of the play.

I'll excerpt the end of the play. They have tried to make love a second time but Johnny couldn't perform. He's touchy about it. She tries to reassure him. He is devastated. He goes to make her an omelette - she's very hungry - but he keeps talking, raving about how much they are connected, yadda yadda - it makes her more and more uncomfortable. Eventually, they have a bit of a scuffle, he backs into the stove, and gets burned by the skillet. Mayhem ensues - with Frankie trying to put butter on his back, or ice cubes ... They are getting closer and closer to actually being able to talk to each other, actually being able to connect.

Here's the end of the play.

EXCERPT FROM Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, by Terrence McNally.

[Frankie has stopped working on Johnny's back. Instead she just stares at it. Johnny looks straight ahead. The music has changed to the Shostakovich Second String Quartet]

JOHNNY. What are you doing back there?

FRANKIE. Nothing. You want more butter or ice or something? [Johnny shakes his head]

JOHNNY. It's funny how you can talk to people better sometimes when you're not looking at them. You're right there. [He points straight ahead] Clear as day.

FRANKIE. I bet no one ever said this was the most beautiful music ever written.

JOHNNY. I don't mind.

FRANKIE. I don't know what the radio was doing on that station in the first place. That's not my kind of music. But I could tell you were enjoying it and I guess I wanted you to think I had higher taste than I really do.

JOHNNY. So did I.

FRANKIE. I liked what he played for us though, but he didn't say its name.

JOHNNY. Maybe it doesn't need one. You just walk into a fancy record shop and ask for the most beautiful music ever written and that's what they hand you.

FRANKIE. Not if I was the salesperson. You'd get "Michelle" or "Eleanor Rigby" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Something by the Beatles. I sort of lost interest in pop music when they stopped singing.

JOHNNY. The last record I bought was the Simon and Garfunkel Reunion in Central Park. It wasn't the same. You could tell they'd been separated.

FRANKIE. Sometimes I feel like it's still the Sixties. Or that they were ten or fifteen years ago, not twenty or twenty-five. I lost ten years of my life somewhere. I went to Bruce Springsteen last year and I was the oldest one there.

JOHNNY. Put your arms around me. [Frankie puts her arms over Johnny's shoulders] Tighter. [Frankie's hands begin to stroke Johnny's chest and stomach] Do you like doing that?

FRANKIE. I don't mind.

JOHNNY. We touch our own bodies there and nothing happens. Something to do with electrons. We short-circuit ourselves. Stroke my tits. There! [He tilts his head back until he is looking up at her] Give me your moth. [Frankie bends over and kisses him. It is a long one.] That tongue. Those lips. [He pulls her down towards him for another long kiss] I want to die like this. Drown.

FRANKIE. What do you want from me?

JOHNNY. Everything. Your heart. Your soul. Your tits. Your mouth. Your fucking guts. I want it all. I want to be inside you. Don't hold back.

FRANKIE. I'm not holding back.

JOHNNY. Let go. I'll catch you.

FRANKIE. I'm right here.

JOHNNY. I want more. I need more.

FRANKIE. If I'd known what playing with your tit was gonna turn into --

JOHNNY. Quit screwing with me, Frankie.

FRANKIE. You got a pretty weird notion of who's screwing with who. I said I liked you. I told you that. I'm perfectly ready to make love to you. Why do you have to start a big discussion about it. It's not like I'm saying "no".

JOHNNY. I want you to do something.

FRANKIE. What?

JOHNNY. I want you to go down on me.

FRANKIE. No.

JOHNNY. I went down on you.

FRANKIE. That was different.

JOHNNY. How?

FRANKIE. That was then.

JOHNNY. Please.

FRANKIE. I'm not good at it.

JOHNNY. Hey, this isn't a contest. We're talking about making love.

FRANKIE. I don't want to right now.

JOHNNY. You want me to go down on you again?

FRANKIE. If I do it will you shut up about all this other stuff?

JOHNNY. You know I won't.

FRANKIE. Then go down on yourself.

JOHNNY. What happened? You were gonna do it.

FRANKIE. Anything to get you to quit picking at me. Go on, get out of here. Get somebody else to go down on you.

JOHNNY. I don't want somebody else to go down on me.

FRANKIE. Jesus! I just had a vision of what it's going to be like at work Monday after this! I'm quitting my job. I was there first.

JOHNNY. What are you talking about?

FRANKIE. I don't think we're looking for the same thing.

JOHNNY. We are. Only I've found it and you've given up.

FRANKIE. Yes! Long before the sun ever rose on your ugly face.

JOHNNY. What scares you more? Marriage or kids?

FRANKIE. I'm not scared. And I told you: I can't have any.

JOHNNY. I told you: we can adopt.

FRANKIE. I don't love you.

JOHNNY. That wasn't the question.

FRANKIE. You hear what you want to hear.

JOHNNY. Do you know anybody who doesn't?

FRANKIE. Not all the time.

JOHNNY. You're only telling me you don't love me so you don't have to find out if you could. Just because you've given up on the possibility, I'm not going to let you drag me down with you. You're coming up to my level if I have to pull you by the hair.

FRANKIE. I'm not going anywhere with a man who for all his bullshit about marriage and kids and Shakespeare ...

JOHNNY. It's not bullshit!

FRANKIE. ...Just wants me to go down on him.

JOHNNY. Pretend it's a metaphor.

FRANKIE. Fuck you it was a metaphor! It was a blowjob. What's a metaphor?

JOHNNY. Something that stands for something else.

FRANKIE. I was right the first time. A blowjob.

JOHNNY. A sensual metaphor for mutual acceptance.

FRANKIE. Fuck you. Besides, what's mutual about a blowjob?

JOHNNY. I made that up. I'm sorry. It wasn't a metaphor. It was just something I wanted us to do.

FRANKIE. And I didn't.

JOHNNY. Let go, will you! One lousy little peccadillo and it's off with his head!

FRANKIE. Stop using words I don't know. What's a peccadillo?

JOHNNY. A blowjob! Notice I haven't died you didn't do it!

FRANKIE. I noticed.

JOHNNY. And let me notice something for you: you wouldn't have died if you had. Thanks for making me feel about this big. [He gets up and starts gathering and putting on his clothes] I'm sorry, I mistook you for a kindred spirit. Kindred: two of a kind, sharing a great affinity.

FRANKIE. I know what kindred means!

JOHNNY. Shall we go for affinity?

FRANKIE. That's the first really rotten thing you've said all night. Somebody who would make fun of somebody else's intelligence, not worse, their education or lack of -- that is somebody I would be very glad not to know. I thought you were weird, Johnny. I thought you were sad. I didn't think you were cruel.

JOHNNY. I'm sorry.

FRANKIE. It's a cruelty just waiting to happen again and I don't want to be there when it does.

JOHNNY. Please! [There is an urgency in his voice that startles Frankie] I'm not good with people. But I want to be. I can get away with it for long stretches but I always hang myself in the end.

FRANKIE. Hey, c'mon, don't cry. Please, don't cry.

JOHNNY. It's not cruelty. It's a feeling I don't matter. That nobody hears me. I'm drowning. I'm trying to swim back to shore but there's this tremendous undertow and I'm not getting anywhere. My arms and legs are going a mile a minute but they aren't taking me any closer to where I want to be.

FRANKIE. Where's that?

JOHNNY. With you.

FRANKIE. You don't know me.

JOHNNY. Yes, I do. It scares people how much we really know one another, so we pretend we don't. You know me. You've known me all your life. Only now I'm here. Take me. Use me. Try me. There's a reason we're called Frankie and Johnny.

FRANKIE. There's a million other Frankies out there and a billion other Johnnys. The world is filled with Frankies and Johnnys and Jacks and Jills.

JOHNNY. But only one this Johnny, one this Frankie.

FRANKIE. We're too different.

JOHNNY. You say po-tah-toes? All right, I'll say po-tah-toes! I don't care. I love you. I want to marry you.

FRANKIE. I don't say po-tah-toes. Who the hell says po-tah-toes?

JOHNNY. Are you listening to me?

FRANKIE. I'm trying very hard not to!

JOHNNY. That's your trouble. You don't want to hear anything you don't think you already know. Well I'll tell you something, Cinderella: your Prince Charming has come. Wake up before another thousand years go by! Don't throw me away like a gum wrapper because you think there's something about me you may not like. I have what it takes to give you anything and everything you want. Maybe not up here ... [he taps his head] ... or here ... [he slaps his hip where he wears his wallet] ... but here. And that would please me enormously. All I ask back is that you use your capacity to be everyone and everything for me. It's within you. If we could do that for each other we'd give our kids the universe. They'd be Shakespeare and the most beautiful music ever written and a saint maybe or a champion athlete or a president all rolled into one. Terrific kids! How could they not be? We have a chance to make everything turn out all right again. Turn our back on everything that went wrong. We can begin right now and all over again but only if we begin right now, this minute, this room and us. I know this thing, Frankie.

FRANKIE. I want to show you something, Johnny. [She pushes her hair back] He did that. The man I told you about. With a belt buckle. [Johnny kisses the scar]

JOHNNY. It's gone now.

FRANKIE. It'll never go.

JOHNNY. It's gone. I made it go.

FRANKIE. What are you? My guardian angel?

JOHNNY. It seems to me the right people are our guardian angels.

FRANKIE. I wanted things too, you know.

JOHNNY. I know.

FRANKIE. A man, a family, kids ... He's the reason I can't have any.

JOHNNY. He's gone. Choose me. Hurry up. It's getting light out. I turn into a pumpkin.

FRANKIE. [Looking towards the window] It is getting light out! [Frankie goes to the window]

JOHNNY. You are so beautiful standing there.

FRANKIE. The only time I saw the sun come up with a guy was my senior prom. [Johnny has joined her at the window. As they stand there looking out, we will be aware of the rising sun] His name was Johnny Di Corso but everyone called him Skunk. [She takes Johnny's hand and clasps it to her but her eyes stay looking out the window at the dawn] He was a head shorter than me and wasn't much to look at but nobody else had asked me. It was him or else. I was dreading it. But guess what? That boy could dance! You should have seen us. We were the stars of the prom. We did Lindys, the mambo, the Twist. The Monkey, the Frug. All the fast dances. Everybody's mouth was down to here. Afterwards we went out to the lake to watch the sun come up. He told me he was going to be on American Bandstand one day. I wonder if he ever made it. [Johnny puts his arm around her and begins to move her in a slow dance step]

JOHNNY. There must be something about you and sunrises and men called Johnny.

FRANKIE. You got a nickname?

JOHNNY. No. You got to be really popular or really unpopular to have a nickname.

FRANKIE. I'll give you a nickname. [They dance in silence a while. Silence, that is, except for the Shostakovich which they pay no attention to] You're not going to like me saying this but you're a terrible dancer.

JOHNNY. Show me.

FRANKIE. Like that.

JOHNNY. There?

FRANKIE. That's better.

JOHNNY. You're going to make a wonderful teacher. [He starts to hum]

FRANKIE. What's that supposed to be?

JOHNNY. Something from Brigadoon.

FRANKIE. That isn't from Brigadoon. That isn't even remotely from Brigadoon. That isn't even remotely something from anything. [They dance. Frankie begins to hum] That's something from Brigadoon. You can't have kids in a place this size.

JOHNNY. Who says?

FRANKIE. How big is your place?

JOHNNY. Even smaller. We'll be a nice snug family. It'll be wonderful.

FRANKIE. Does it always get light so fast this time of year?

JOHNNY. Unh-unh. The sun's in a hurry to shine on us.

FRANKIE. Pardon my French but that's bullshit.

JOHNNY. You can sleep all day today.

FRANKIE. What are you planning to do?

JOHNNY. Watch you.

FRANKIE. You're just weird enough to do it, too. Well forget it. I can't sleep with people watching me.

JOHNNY. How do you know?

FRANKIE. I was in the hospital for my gall bladder and I had a roommate who just stared at me all the time. I made them move me. I got a private room for the price of a semi. Is this the sort of stuff you look forward to finding out about me?

JOHNNY. Unh-hunh!

FRANKIE. You're nuts.

JOHNNY. I'm happy.

FRANKIE. Where are you taking me?

JOHNNY. The moon.

FRANKIE. That old place again?

JOHNNY. The other side this time. [Johnny has slow-danced Frankie to the bed. The room is being quickly flooded with sunlight]

FRANKIE. If you don't turn into a pumpkin, what do you turn into?

JOHNNY. You tell me. [He kisses her very gently]

FRANKIE. Just a minute. [She gets up and moves quickly to the bathroom. Johnny turns off all the room lights. He starts to close the blinds but instead raises them even higher. Sunlight pours across him. The Shostakovich ends. Johnny moves quickly to the radio and turns up the volume as the announcer's voice is heard]

RADIO ANNOUNCER ... that just about winds up my stint in the control room. This has been Music Till Dawn with Marlon. I'm still thinking about Frankie and Johnny. God, how I wish you two really existed. Maybe I'm crazy but I'd still like to believe in love. Why the hell do you think I work these hours? Anyway, you two moonbeams, whoever, wherever you are, here's an encore. [Debussy's "Clair de Lune" is heard again. Johnny sits, listening. He starts to cry he is so happy. He turns as Frankie comes out of the bathroom. She is brushing her teeth]

JOHNNY. They're playing our song again.

FRANKIE. Did they say what it was this time?

JOHNNY. I told you! You just walk into a record shop and ask for the most beautiful music ...

FRANKIE. Watch us end up with something from The Sound of Music, you'll see! You want to brush? [She motions with her thumb to the bathroom. She steps aside as Johnny passes her to go in] Don't worry. It's never been used. [Still brushing her teeth she goes to the window and looks out] Did you see the robins? [She listens to the music] This I can see why people call pretty. [She sits on the bed, listens and continues to brush her teeth. A little gasp of pleasure escapes her.] Mmmmm! [Johnny comes out of the bathroom. He is brushing his teeth]

JOHNNY. I'm not going to ask whose robe that is.

FRANKIE. Sshh! [She is really listening to the music]

JOHNNY. We should get something with fluoride.

FRANKIE. Sshh!

JOHNNY. Anti-tartar build-up, too.

FRANKIE. Johnny! [Johnny sits next to her on the bed. They are both brushing their teeth and listening to the music. They continue to brush their teeth and listen to the Debussy. The lights are fading.]

END OF THE PLAY

Holy crap!!!

Look at what I almost missed!!!

I missed a bunch of the essentials - I missed my chance to see North by Northwest on the big screen - which is a bummer - but I still have a chance to see:

Suspicion
Notorious - on the big screen???? ARGH!
The Birds
Vertigo
To Catch a Thief ....

Help. I need my day calendar. I need to start planning my time. My heart is POUNDING.

Yet another indication

that I need to get a life and FAST is that even while I was having a great family Christmas myself - I found myself thinking, on occasion: "Can't wait to read about the Hughes Family Christmas whenever he posts it!"

Sheila. Get a life. You do not know this man or his family. Please get involved in your OWN journey.

I will. Someday.

In the meantime:

Here is the photo gallery of the Hughes Family Christmas. There are jello shots, chainsaws, and a man wearing tights - You just have to experience it. The caption "I think he's Canadian" killed me.

The Mommy Box

Now THIS is why I love blogging:

Stories like this. It's a five-part story (keep clicking forward).

Fantastic. I'm still a bit blown away - what a roller-coaster ride. The ending totally took me by surprise. Breathtaking.

Go. Read it.

"Singles night" with monocled gadabouts

A VERY funny piece about a "singles night" hosted by the London Review of Books.

I've been reading the personal ads in London Review of Books for years. Not because I am scoping out a mate - but because they are so fascinating and frequently they are laugh-out-loud funny. Awesome reading. This is another thing I have to thank the doppelganger for. He is the one responsible for getting me hooked onto these blasted things. They do have a cult following - and in my opinion, rightly so. Funnier personal ads you will never see.

The piece above describes the charm of them perfectly:

Instead of dreary, acronym-filled attempts to impress with physical perfection or accommodating personalities, the ads are a riot of exuberant wit, messy emotion, lacerating self-knowledge and thwarted lust.

So true. That's what makes them so funny.

Here's an example of one:

Monocled, plaid-festooned gadabout, out of place in any relationship, or century. Please help me.

"gadabout". hahahahaha

Another example of one from the article:

Unemployable choreographer and amateur harpist (M, 62) seeks recovering alcoholic with feeble mind. Own tap shoes an advantage.

I'm telling you. These personal ads are addictive. "seeks recovering alcoholic with feeble mind". BWAHAHAHAHA

Must enjoy beards and harbour contempt for any music that isn’t Belgian jazz

heh heh heh

None of this high self-esteem crap, invented by America in the 1970s or whatever, which I believe is responsible for the decline of manners and general social standards of behavior - as well as the overwhelming TIRESOMENESS of 90% of the population. It's like everyone you talk to thinks they're funny, thinks they're fabulous, thinks their shit don't stink - and sometimes I feel like saying: who the HELL has been lying to you for 20 years?? Everyone's walking around feeling good about themselves WHEN THEY HAVE NO REASON TO. This is one of the main fascinations with the beginning rounds of American Idol auditions - and how these horrible singers are truly shocked that they are not Pavorotti - and why Simon is such a breath of fresh air. High self-esteem is HIGHLY overrated. I bet Ted Bundy had great self-esteem, for example.

(I'm not saying we all should walk around hating ourselves. I've been there, I've done that - I've still got the scars. Learning to love myself and learning to try to forgive myself for things I've done has been an essential part of growing up - and I'm still in process. But the self-esteem craze nowadays seems to have more to do with LYING to yourself than being HONEST with yourself. And that's just not cool.)

Back to the London Review of Books - another excerpt from the article:

Indeed, the instant affinity provided by literature is perhaps the secret of the column’s matchmaking success: there have been at least two weddings through its pages — although one, unfortunately, has already ended in divorce.

Here's a scene from the singles night party - beautiful!!:

Part of the fun of the evening was trying to guess who was who from the ads. Others seemed to be playing the game too: one woman was even clutching a copy of the current issue with various entries circled. I suspected a man wearing Elvis Presley glasses of being the “deracinated Yank, ex-academic” after “paint, polyphony, alliteration, and auto-eroticism” (he denied it); a wild-haired foppish fellow could well have been the “ ex-superhero, now librarian (M, 31)” seeking “solvent woman to 35 for Scrabble, real ale and spontaneous morphing” — although he would not reveal his secret. I am almost certain that I located the “computer geek and amateur bio-mechanic (M, 32)” looking for a woman “with knowledge of advanced humanoid circuit systems”, and if I am correct then his dating techniques were as disastrous as his advert suggested they would be. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” I heard an artist from Finsbury Park plead. The varicose-veined 93-year-old eluded me.

Genius. "real ale and spontaneous morphing"

The personals in The London Review of Books are more addicting than Missed Connections on Craig's List!

Tooo many books - part 3

Over the past month - from my birthday and up to and including Christmas - I have received so many books that I am a bit overwhelmed and feel kind of ... well ... like I have ADD or something. I read two pages from one new book, two pages of another - I can't sit down and focus. TOOOOO MANY BOOKS!!!

I haven't actually FINISHED a book in a month. Which is rare for me. Well - no, that's not true: I just finished Vol. 5 of LM Montgomery's journals yesterday. So at least I finished something.

When I looked at all the new books stacked up yesterday - waiting for me to shelve them in the proper shelf (that may sound like a simple task but it actually can be rather complex. First of all, I have to decide the genre of the book - and often that is not so easy. I want to have books that are easy to retrieve - but I also want the organization of them to make some sort of sense, in a dramaturgical way. Also, with my small apartment and my glut of books - there is the almost constant re-shuffling that must occur. Finding room for new books is a huge challenge). Okay, so anyway - I looked at the stack of my new books - and first of all felt a bolt of pleasure and excitement. I literally can't wait to read each and every one. Second of all I felt despair and anxiety - because which one should I read first??? And third of all, I felt like laughing because the titles - stacked up together - doesn't seem like they should all belong to the same person. You know how Amazon sort of suggests titles that you might like, based on prior purchases? They kind of don't know what to do with me! Eclectic readers, in general, are not well served by that Amazon functionality.

Here are the books ... argh - SO EXCITED!!

LM Montgomery's Journals: Vol 5 - that one I just completed

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography - by Simon Singh - halfway through - I just keep reading a couple pages at a time. Awesome stuff. But cannot focus on it single-handedly at the moment.

Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat - by Edward McPherson - Peteb from Slugger sent me this one. CAN'T WAIT to read it. Great photos, awesome quotes - and I love, too, how in the introduction McPherson basically says: "This is a biography written by a huge fan. This should be considered more like fan's notes than anything else." I love that. I actually would like to write a biography of Cary Grant in that mode. Uhm ... I think I already have??

Teacher Man - by Frank McCourt. Thanks, Pat!!! I read some interview with McCourt where he talked about his years as a teacher of English at a rough school on Staten Island. You can imagine. He walked into the situation only to find complete and utter chaos. Tough kids, barely enough school supplies, discipline problems, yadda yadda. So McCourt looks at the curriculum and looks at the copies of books that the school actually has to hand out to the students. You know, they're supposed to read Middlemarch and stuff like that. McCourt decided - George Eliot? Staten Island? This won't work. And he decided instead to read Shakespeare's plays with the class. You can imagine the pissed-off goombah response from the students: "We don't know shit about him, Mr. McCourt ... we can't read this shit!" But McCourt persisted - and instead of just reading the plays - he would make copies of the scenes and have the students act them out. Which, of course, changed the entire classroom dynamic. The students got SO into it. Some of them even memorized their lines. They understood Romeo and Juliet most of all (of course. Most teenagers do.) "Yeah, man, poor Romeo ... he just wants to be wid his girl, y'know?" The kid assigned to play Mercutio apparently was just amazing - he had been a total troublemaker - uncontrollable - but he clicked into Mercutio - the wild Mercutio. McCourt still remembered the death scene - with this kid spontaneously doing the death scene, throwing himself into it 110% - Tough kid from Staten Island. Incredible.

So anyway. Cut to 15 years later. The school is having a reunion. McCourt, who no longer teaches there, is invited. He goes. He enters the room where the reunion is taking place, and suddenly - all of his former students - now fully grown adults - all come racing over to him, shouting out all of their Shakespeare lines from the mini-plays they had done 15 years before - - running at him, saying the lines that they had memorized 10 years before, the words still imprinted in their minds.

And I remember what Frank said. He said, "Jesus! I thought to myself - this is the most important moment of my life!"

Life of Pi by Yann Martel - Jean gave this to me. She raves about it. I'm very excited.

The Secret Life of Bees - by Sue Monk Kidd - also from Jean. Another rave! I haven't been reading much fiction these days - so I'm very excited about these two books.

Imperial Grunts : The American Military on the Ground - by Robert Kaplan - Kaplan, one of my writing gods, one of my philosophical gods. I've been reading his books as they come out for years now - since Balkan Ghost. Just got his latest. This is the one I picked up this morning to read. I just read the Yemen prologue, and now I'm in the Colombian chapter. I don't know what it is about his stuff that I find so compelling - it's the writing, for sure, he's a wonderful writer, but it's also the people he introduces me to - but mostly: He helps me to get up a tiny bit higher on that ladder, so I can a bit more perspective on the world and how things work. Yes - he's biased. We all are. And he writes from his bias. But he at least is asking the big questions. He doesn't just assume he has the answer. He goes out to find things out. He also doesn't take a party line. He's too smart for that. He actually is interested in trying to figure out how things actually WORK (his book The Empire Wilderness is one of the best examples of this, I think.) I don't read his stuff and cringe at the right-wing tone, or cringe at the left-wing tone - both of which strike me as extremely unintelligent, not to mention excruciatingly boring. I feel like he's independent. Rebecca West is his idol. It's easy to see why. He attempts to follow in her footsteps, acknowledging upfront that nobody can. But that's the kind of writer he wants to be. Anyway - really excited for this one. I will also be able to add to my "country index card" project substantially!! There were a bunch of factoids about Yemen in ancient times that I did not know! Very important that I jot all that down on my "Yemen" index card. You never know when it might come in handy.

Rise to Rebellion : A Novel of the American Revolution by Jeffrey Shaara - from Jon F. Thank you!!! Anything that has to do with the American Revolution is okay by me.

The Soul of Iran: A Nation's Journey to Freedom - by Afshin Molavi. This one will obviously go on my "Iran Shelf". Very excited - it's a travelogue - and frankly, even though I must have 20 other books on Iran - in my opinion, one can never have enough.

The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 2: 1945-1957 - This is the kind of book I can read comfortably a little bit at a time. It's okay to pick it up and put it down again. Some books need to be read straight through - this one can be dipped into.

Samuel Adams : The Father of American Independence - by Dennis Brindell Fradin - One of the big gaps in my American Revolutionary biography section is Sam Adams. I've got the whole Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington thing covered. But Sam Adams is crucial - so I have to think reader "ricki" for sending me this BEAUTIFUL book. Sam Adams was such a rabble-rouser. He was THE rabble-rouser. It's wonderful to have this book in my collection now.

Combatting Cult Mind Control : The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults by Steven Hassan - Emily sent me this one. You know. We're partners in crime in our disdain for all things cult-ish. I tore through this one in 2 days. Fascinating. Written by an ex-Moonie who is now one of the country's top deprogrammer - he writes not only about his own experiences getting sucked in - but what exactly the proponents of mind control are. He researches brainwashing techniques through the centuries - people's experiences in POW camps - people who have defected from one-party-state countries - and also ex-cult members. It's a FASCINATING book about, really, how the mind works.

The book everyone is talking about right now: Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I'm 3 chapters in now. I know at least 5 people who are also reading this book at this very moment in time. I had heard about it - of course - and she wrote one of my favorite essays ever written, a high-water-mark in essays as far as I'm concerned: it's called "Goodbye to All That" - so I've always been a Didion fan. And the second Year of Magical Thinking came out, you could start to feel the shock waves reverberating. Everyone was talking about it. I had friends call me up randomly and demand that I read it. So now I finally am. It's one of the most extraordinary books about grief I think I've ever read. And I've read a ton. Didion's a real idol. It is a painful book to read - almost too painful - but that's the whole point. She's unbelievable.

So. None of these books have anything in common except that they are all now owned by ME. I have got to do some serious re-arranging to make room for them all!

Happy birthday, Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich was born on Dec. 27, 1901.

Peter Bogdonavich on Dietrich:

What a remarkably dedicated Old World artist she was! The only German superstar, the one European with the longest international appeal -- and this despite two World Wars that made Germany not exactly the most popular country to be from. In a brand-new medium for which no one really knew the rules of the game, Dietrich -- which means "passkey" in German -- had to make them up for herself. There was no way to predict the price she woudl have to pay: her last ten-plus years in seclusion so as not to destroy the legend she had created, the myth that was a part of her art, both of which -- though pretending otherwise -- she took very seriously. Her unique qualities and upbringing, and fate, gave her the remarkable ability and opportunity to express -- through the first six decades of women's official emancipation (the right to vote) -- the many faces of Woman: sacred to profane, victim and killer combined, nurse, bohemian artist, siren, vamp or love goddess to Great Earth Mother.

Marlene's German-born mother -- "the good General," she called her -- had told Dietrich repeatedly: "Do something." And to her European sensibility, implicit in that injunction was: "Do something well." Marlene did everything extremely well, made it all look so easy that many people eventually took her for granted. Many still do: separating her always from the 'serious' actors of the time, as opposed to 'personalities'. But personality-actors were those star-players whose actual personae were uniquely appropriate to the closely analytic eye of a camera: the character and actor merge into one -- a seminal difference about this new performing art-form.

From the extensive obit in the Times (well worth reading - lots of good background for those of you who don't know anything about Marlene Dietrich), I found this:

Perhaps the best description of her face was provided by Erich Maria Remarque, her longtime friend, in his novel "Arch of Triumph":

"The cool, bright face that didn't ask for anything, that simply existed, waiting -- it was an empty face, he thought; a face that could change with any wind of expression. One could dream into it anything. It was like a beautiful empty house waiting for carpets and pictures. It had all possibilities -- it could become a palace or a brothel."

The face of an icon. "One could dream into it anything." People continue to project fantasies and dreams onto the face of Marlene Dietrich - her face existed in the realm of fantasy. She knew it - which was why she lived as a recluse for the last years of her life. Sure, she was probably very vain - didn't want people to see her as an old woman - but on another level - she didn't want to ruin the fantasy for others. The fantasy of Marlene Dietrich. Best to just disappear quietly - and leave the face intact in the mind of the world - so that they can continue dreaming, speculating, projecting ...

They don't make 'em like Marlene Dietrich any more.

Peter Bogdonavich, in his book Who the Hell's In it, describes meeting Marlene Dietrich in his chapter about her. It's a wonderful story. Here are some excerpts:

"Marlene Dietrich's taken your seats." The assistant director was a little out of breath. "You don't care, do you? She likes to sit in the first two on the right. They moved you guys behind her." It was September 1972, and Ryan O'Neal and I were at Los Angeles International Airport with a few others of the cast and crew of Paper Moon, which we were flying to Kansas to shoot. I said we didn't mind.

Ryan was incredulous. "Marlene Dietrich is on our plane going to Kansas?"

No, it turned out she was flying to Denver (we had to switch planes there) to give six concert performances at the Denver Auditorium. Hard to believe, but sure enough, there she was, sitting across from us at the gate, all in white -- wide-brimmed hat, pants, shirt, jacket -- looking great and also bored and a little suspicious of the noisy good spirits around our group.

We went over to say hello. I introduced myself. Ryan said, "Hello, Miss Dietrich. I'm Ryan O'Neal. Love Story?" He grinned.

"Yes," she said. "I didn't see it -- I liked the book too much. I won't see The Godfather for the same reason -- Brando is too slow for it anyway -- why didn't they use Eddie Robinson?" She had that deep voice and distinct German accent.

There were several people I knew who had worked with and loved her, and I mentioned a few of them, trying to get a conversation going, but she was a little frosty, so we slipped away after a few moments. Ryan said, "I think we did great," but I didn't.

She was right behind us as we waited to have our hand baggage searched, not a common event then, and I can't recall why it was done. We tried again; she was nicer this time. "I saw The Last Picture Show," she said to me; the film had opened a year before. "I thought if one more person stripped slowly, I would go crazy."

"Did you see What's Up, Doc?" Ryan said. "We did that together." The picture was still in theatres at the time.

"Yes, I saw it," she said and nothing more.

Not an auspicious beginning, huh? But during the flight she warmed up. Not only did she warm up, but she basically joined their entourage and they all had a riotous flight together - with Bogdonavich pumping her for information about her career. She was more than forthcoming.

The next excerpt from Bogdonavich:

On the plane she sat in front of us, with her blond girl Friday, and by now, she had obviously decided we weren't so bad; she spent almost the whole flight turned backward and leaning over the top of her seat, on her knees, talking to us. She was animated, girlish, candid, funny, sexy, with her baby-talk "r" (that becomes "w") and everything.

I told her I was trying to stop smoking again. "Oh, don't," she said. "I stopped ten years ago and I've been miserable ever since. I never drank before -- and now I drink. I never had a cough when I was smoking -- now I cough. Don't stop -- you'll get fat and you don't want to do that."

We talked about movies she had been in and directors she had worked for. After a while, it became apparent to her that I had seen an awful lot of her pictures. "Why do you know so much about my films?"

"Because I think you're wonderful, and you've worked for a lot of great directors."

"No," she said dubiously. "No, I only worked for two great directors -- Sternberg and Billy Wilder."

"And what about Orson?"

"Oh, well, yes. Orson -- of course."

I guess she wasn't so impressed with Lubitsch or Alfred Hitchcock or Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh or Tay Garnett or Rene Clair or Franz Borzage.

Here's a picture of her from Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.

Bogdonavich talked with her about her performance in Touch of Evil:

I had read somewhere that her own favorite performance was in Welles' Touch of Evil (1958).

"Do you still feel that way?" I said.

"Yes. I was terrific in that. I think I never said a line as well as the last line in that movie -- 'What does it matter what you say about people ...?' Wasn't I good there? I don't know why I said it so well. And I looked so good in that dark wig. It was Elizabeth Taylor's. My part wasn't in the script, you know, but Orson called and said he wanted me to play a kind of gypsy madam in a border town, so I went over to MGM and found that wig. It was very funny, you know, because I had been crazy about Orson -- in the forties when he was married to Rita Hayworth and when we toured doing his magic act [The Mercury Wonder Show, benefits exclusively done for servicemen] -- I was just crazy about him -- we were great friends, you know, but nothing ... Because Orson doesn't like blond women. He only likes dark women. And suddenly when he saw me in this dark wig, he looked at me with new eyes. Was this Marlene ...?"

"Well, he certainly photographed you lovingly."

"Yes. I never looked so good."

I just love that. Her pride in her work.

More from Bogdonavich - watch her total honesty with herself in this excerpt - she is one of the greats:

I asked her if she'd been upset about Sternberg's acerbic autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry, first published in 1965, in which he'd said that he had created her, and implied that she would have been nothing without him. (He once said to me, "I am Marlene Dietrich -- Miss Dietrich is me.")

She pursed her lips, lifted her eyebrows slightly. "No -- because it was true. I didn't know what I was doing -- I just tried to do what he told me. I remember in Morocco, I had a scene with [Gary] Cooper -- and I was supposed to go to the door, turn and say a line like, 'Wait for me' and then leave. And Sternberg said, 'Walk to the door, turn, count to ten, say your line and leave.' So I did and he got very angry. 'If you're so stupid that you can't count slowly, then count to twenty-five.' And we did it again. I think we did it forty times, until finally I was counting probably to fifty. And I didn't know why. I was annoyed. But at the premiere of Morocco -- at Grauman's Chinese Theatre" -- she said the original name of the LA movie palace with just the lightest of mockery -- "when this moment came and I paused and then said, 'Wait for me' ... the audience burst into applause. Sternberg knew they were waiting for this -- and he made them wait and they loved it."

I love the photo below.

Bogdonavich again, watching her concert in Denver (she invited the entire cast of Paper Moon to come see her):

Of course she saw World War II at close range, entertaining the troops for three years with "benefits" -- more than any other star performer did, for which she was awarded America's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, as well as France's most valued order of distinction, the Legion d'honneur. And the experience was all brought back through her touching introduction to "Lili Marlene" - an old German song, forbidden by Hitler in her own country -- which was comprised mainly of a recitation of all the countries in which she had sung "Lili Marlene" during the war. It called to mind what Hemingway had written in his World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms:

... There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates ...

And that was what Marlene conveyed; as she said, "Africa, Sicily, Italy, Greenland, Iceland, France, Belgium and Holland" -- here she paused -- "Germany, and Czechoslovakia", her voice carried with each a different untold story of what she had seen, what the 500,000 soldiers she sang for had seen.

The picture below is from her iconic (and wonderful) performance in The Blue Angel - a bleak bleak movie that I remember I saw for the first time on a feckin' date. Not a good date movie. Word to the wise.

Here's a snippet from Pauline Kael's review of Blue Angel:

Dietrich's Lola Lola is a rather coarse, plump young beauty; as she sings "Falling in Love Again," her smoldering voice and sadistic indifference suggest sex without romance, love, or sentiment. The pedant becomes her husband, her slave, her stooge; he travels with the cafe troupe, hawking dirty pictures of his wife. Dietrich is extraordinary.

That's a picture of Dietrich asLola-Lola in Blue Angel. Bogdonavich writes about that film:

The Blue Angel instantly set Dietrich among the immortals. Her chair-straddling portrayal of cabaret singer Lola-Lola defined her essential image in certain irrevocable ways. She would forever sing the song she is doing (in German) the first time we see her: "Falling in love again ... never wanted to -- What am I to do? Can't help it ..." She too, then, was a fool for love, like all the men who fell for her. Talking with Sternberg one time, I said that among the pictures he made with Dietrich, Blue Angel was actually the only time she really destroyed a man, to which he replied: "She did not destroy him -- he destroyed himself. It was his mistake -- he should never have taken up with her. That's what the story is." Was he speaking of himself a bit or only of the prudish boys'-school teacher [Emil] Jannings played, who fell madly in love with a loose, bawdy, compulsively unfaithful performer? The strain breaks him down to ultimate degradation. Like that line in Jacques Brel's masochistic love chant, "Ne me quitte pas," Jannings becomes content to be to Dietrich "the shadow of your dog ..." The moment when Marlene humiliates Jannings by making him crow for her like a rooster is one of the most chilling in picture history.

I've certainly got to agree with that one. It was so awful that I found myself compelled to turn away from it. I couldn't even watch it.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a piece about Marlene Dietrich for Life magazine. I think a quote from that piece would be a nice way to close this birthday tribute:

If she has nothing more than her voice she could break your heart with it. But she has that beautiful body and that timeless loveliness of her face. It makes no difference how she breaks your heart if she is there to mend it.

Happy birthday, Lili Marlene.

The Books: "Pterodactyls" (Nicky Silver)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Pterodactyls.
, by Nicky Silver. - who is certifiable! He reminds me of Christopher Durang. (Example of Durang wackiness here) Nicky Silver is nuts. (In a good way). He's a fearless playwright. I don't know what you would call his style. Surreal, maybe? Definitely comedy of the blackest dye.

Pterodactyls was one of Silver's first big hits. It also pretty much launched Hope Davis' career. I wasn't even living in New York in 1993 and I remember the buzz about her performance as Emma reaching me in Chicago.

I find this type of material extremely difficult. It's black comedy - it's zany - it's dark, man - and you can't ever stop to take a breath. It's challenging stuff. If you miss the guts of it - if you only go for the cross-fire dialogue, if you only go for PACE - (fast and funny) - then I think the play could fail miserably. There's a lot going on beneath the surface here. But you have to realize very early on to not take ANYthing at face value. Sentimentality and regular old human feeling is also something that does not exist in Pterodactyls. This family does atrocious things to each other, they say terrible unforgivable things to each other - but it's a COMEDY.

Okay - enough trying to describe it.

Briefly, here is the wackadoodle plot:

The Duncan family. They are very very wealthy. The father - Arthur - is rather clueless as a father and husband, but president of the bank. The mother - Grace - is a socialite, consumed with trivial details of life, and also a raging alcoholic. They have two children. There is Emma - who is, at the beginning of the play, going to get married to a boy she has known for 3 weeks. She also has a problem in that she can't remember anything. Her own brother walks in the room and she screams bloody murder, thinking he is an intruder. She cannot hold onto her own life. She has NO MEMORIES. She also is a complete hypochondriac, and really quite mad (meaning: insane). The other Duncan child is a son named Todd - who is obsessed with dinosaurs. He is building a dinosaur skeleton in their palatial living room. He has just returned home after a long time away. He has now contracted AIDS from ragingly unsafe gay sex up and down the Eastern seaboard (he has a graphic monologue about his activities) - and the rest of the family is a state of COMPLETE DENIAL that he is dying. He doesn't have any symptoms - so how can he be dying, is their attitude. Also - everyone is also just really distracted with planning Emma's wedding - they just don't pay attention to anything else. Meanwhile: Mr. Duncan (bank president) is so bummed out that he has a gay son that he won't even call his own son by his real name. He calls him "Buzz" because that's the name of the son he would have LIKED to have had. Butch, manly, blah blah. At the end of the play, Todd has protested about this enough that his father finally caves - and calls him "Buzz-Todd".

Emma's fiance is a guy named Tommy. He is a waiter at something like Olive Garden. Also, he's a really hostile and defensive film buff and is always interjecting into conversations at inappropriate moments: "Have you seen Night Porter?" Or whatever.

Mrs. Duncan cannot bear the thought of having a son-in-law who is a WAITER - so she offers Tommy a job as her maid. He accepts. And he gets so into the job that he basically becomes a raging homosexual in 24 hours time. He wears a small French maid's outfit, he becomes obsessed with banana nut loaf, he loses interest in Emma, and falls in love with Emma's brother Buzz-Todd. And Buzz-Todd falls in love with him. Although Buzz-Todd - with his obsession with dinosaurs, and his disease - can't really care too much about the present moment. He knows that everything is transient - even things like dinosaurs, or true love.

But Tommy - on the day of this GINORMOUS wedding being frantically planned - blurts out his true feelings. Chaos ensues. But chaos is already ensuing so no one really notices.

The play has, of course, a dark ending. Todd gives his sister Emma a gun for a wedding present. When the revelation about Tommy (her fiance) comes out - and he tells her he doesn't want to marry her - she walks offstage and shoots herself. Meanwhile: Tommy and Todd have already had sex - and Todd has passed on the virus to Tommy. Meanwhile: Mr. Duncan lost his job as president of the Bank. The family descends into utter poverty.

It's all kind of hard to describe - so I will just stop. Here's an excerpt from the big pre-wedding scene - with everyone onstage at once - all of them shouting about different things - trying to plan the wedding, dealing with last-minute crises, trying to communicate -

It's a whirlwind. Try to keep up!!

Oh yes - and occasionally - characters will turn "out" and comment on stuff to the audience. Very funny. So if you see a stage direction that says [Out] that's what it means.

From Pterodactyls.
, by Nicky Silver

[The lights come up, revealing Emma, on the sofar, writing thank you notes, wearing a cocktail length wedding dress. Gifts are scattered about. Through the French doors we see that it is autumn. Grace fiddles with the place cards]

EMMA. How do you spell 'escargot'?

GRACE. All the place cards are out of order.

EMMA. You don't know how to spell escargot?

GRACE. Thirty-two is man heavy.

EMMA. What does that mean?

GRACE. It's all men. How did that happen?

EMMA. What difference does it make?

GRACE. Good God, Emma. It makes all the difference -- who on earth sent you snails?

EMMA. Not snails, Mother. Forks. Escargot forks. Two dozen.

GRACE. From whom?

EMMA. Cousin Paul.

GRACE. Typical. Never marries. Sends forks.

EMMA. I like Cousin Paul. I think he's funny.

GRACE. Oh, he's funny all right.

EMMA. "... love, Emma." Can I stop now?

GRACE. How many have you done?

EMMA. Forty-two. And I have writer's block.

GRACE. [shuffling cards] You mean writer's cramp -- If I put Louise at thirty-two, I can put David Cumstock at eleven.

EMMA. Can I change please?

GRACE. Let me see the hem. [As Emma rises, Tommy enters from outdoors, wearing his maid's uniform]

TOMMY. Has anyone called for me?

EMMA. Shut your eyes! Shut your eyes!

TOMMY. Have they?

EMMA. You're not supposed to see me before the wedding!

TOMMY. I see you when I shut my eyes.

GRACE. Isn't that sweet?

TOMMY. Has anyone called?!

GRACE. Tommy, would you mind not sitting with Emma, tomorrow?

TOMMY. No.

EMMA. I'd mind.

GRACE. Have you tried on your tux?

TOMMY. Has anyone called!?

EMMA. No.

GRACE. You're going to look dashing in pants.

TOMMY. Thank you.

GRACE. And isn't Emma's dress beautiful? I'm so glad we decided against the full-length. Is the hem straight?

TOMMY. The hem?

EMMA. I can't breathe.

TOMMY. I think so.

GRACE. I hope I ordered enough champagne.

EMMA. You did.

GRACE. Well, do me a favor and don't drink champagne.

EMMA. At my wedding?

GRACE. Drink Scotch.

EMMA. I don't like Scotch.

GRACE. You haven't given it a chance. Trust me, drink enough of it, you'll like it. [Phone rings. Tommy rushes to answer it]

TOMMY. Hello ... It's for you. [He hands the phone to Grace]

GRACE. Hello? Oh, hello, Mr. Lavie.

EMMA. Where were you all morning?

TOMMY. Out.

EMMA. Out. Out? Out? Out where?

TOMMY. I had some errands to run.

EMMA. What does that mean?

GRACE. [into the phone] Oh, that is too bad --

TOMMY. I had things to do.

EMMA. What kind of things?

TOMMY. Personal things. Private things.

GRACE. [into the phone] No. I don't understand --

EMMA. You have secrets. I hate secrets.

TOMMY. I don't have secrets. I have boundaries.

EMMA. I hate them more. Boundaries make me feel insecure. They make me feel unworthy of being loved. Boundaries make me feel fat.

TOMMY. Don't be stupid.

EMMA. Name calling makes me feel needy and unwanted.

TOMMY. I'm sorry. I'm just nervous.

GRACE. [Into the phone] That simply won't do. [Hangs up] This is terrible!

EMMA. What is it, Mother?

GRACE. That was Mr. Lavie. There's a problem with the rabbit pate.

TOMMY. Rabbit pate?

GRACE. For the cocktail hour -- it seems all the rabbits had cervical cancer and the pate is contaminated.

TOMMY. Ick.

EMMA. I don't like the idea of eating bunnies anyway.

GRACE. That leaves us short on hors d'oeuvres! What am I supposed to do? Pass out Ritz crackers?

EMMA. I like Ritz crackers!

GRACE. I hate Mr. Lavie! He wears a pinkie ring with a diamond in it. And did you see? The tent is mustard and navy! I specifically asked for burnt ochre and midnight!

TOMMY. What's burnt ochre?

EMMA. Mustard.

GRACE. The orchids are heliotrope!

TOMMY. What's heliotrope?

EMMA. Purple.

GRACE. They look like giant bruises! I ordered aubergine!

TOMMY. What's aubergine?

EMMA. Purple.

GRACE. It's all part of the harvest -- the vegetable theme I'm doing. The ochre, the aubergine -- it's a visual cornucopia -- [The phone rings. Grace answers it] Hello?

TOMMY. Is it for me?

GRACE. [waving him away] Oh hello dear!

TOMMY. You were right. I'm sorry we didn't elope.

GRACE. [into the phone] That is too bad. Of course I understand. I'll call you soon. Bye, bye. [She hangs up the phone] I hate her!!!!

EMMA. Who's that?

GRACE. Nina Triten!

EMMA. Who?

GRACE. You remember her, from the club.

EMMA. No.

GRACE. Well, she begs me to have her children at the wedding -- you know I hate children, socially, at an affair -- but she begs me. She plays the devoted mother, can't leave them home, can't leave them with strangers. So I acquiesce. And now, when it's too late to fill her table, she cancels! She and her six, screaming, sticky-fingered little brats!

EMMA. Why?

GRACE. Oh, I don't know. I wasn't listening. Something about death, cancer, lymphoma, one of her children. Who cares? It's obviously an excuse!

TOMMY. Cancer?

GRACE. I should just throw the place cards in the air and start from scratch. Twenty-seven is empty! I could put your father O'Hara there, and the Gideon twins -- I know! Tommy, do you think if I called them right now, eight or nine of those Nuns who raised you might be free tomorrow?

TOMMY. I don't know.

GRACE. Of course they are. What else do they have to do all day?

TOMMY. They supplicate.

GRACE. Oh, they can skip that for one day. This is an emergency. God won't mind -- I better go through my address book -- Oh, why does everything happen to me? [Grace exits up the stairs]

EMMA. I have something to tell you.

TOMMY. Then just tell me! Do you have to narrate everything you do? Can't you just do things? It's not normal.

EMMA. I'm pregnant.

TOMMY. What?

EMMA. I'm going to have a baby.

TOMMY. Who's the father?

EMMA. You are of course! I knew something was happening to me. My colon wasn't hurting and my leg stopped cramping.

TOMMY. Those aren't signs.

EMMA. And I missed my last two periods. The doctor called this morning. Do you want to feel it?

TOMMY. No thank you.

EMMA. Your seed is growing inside of me. I hope it's a boy. Or a girl! I love children. Don't you?

TOMMY. No.

EMMA. What do you mean?

TOMMY. What could I mean by "no"?

EMMA. Children are nice.

TOMMY. Noisy, screaming bundles of goo.

EMMA. You'll come around. No one likes children until they have one.

TOMMY. We'll see.

EMMA. Tomorrow we'll leave here and never come back.

TOMMY. Don't you think we should stay until the baby comes.

EMMA. Why?

TOMMY. You don't know anything about babies.

EMMA. There's nothing to know. My breasts'll make milk.

TOMMY. I just think --

EMMA. You promised me!

TOMMY. I know I did.

EMMA. I can't stay here! It's been all right! I've been all right because I knew I was escaping! I knew there was an end!

TOMMY. I don't want to go.

EMMA. [Not listening to him] Todd scares me! He's creepy. He spends all of his time with the bones of dead things! And my father's possessed -- I know it! He speaks in tongues!

TOMMY. Don't be dramatic.

EMMA. I don't let on because I don't want him to eat me! He comes to me at night. He wears a halo of fire. His feet are cloven, his hair is a tangle of snakes and his tongue is a mile long!

TOMMY. Your father?

EMMA. I can't breathe!

TOMMY. Mr. Duncan?

EMMA. You promised me you'd save me!!

TODD. [Offstage] Hello.

EMMA. [To Tommy] CHEESE IT! [Todd enteres, carrying books on dinosaurs and a gift. To Todd, cheery] Hello.

TODD. You look very beautiful in your dress.

EMMA and TOMMY. Thank you.

TODD. I meant Emma.

TOMMY. Oh.

EMMA. Thank you.

TODD. Although you look well too, Tommy.

TOMMY. This old thing?

EMMA. I had another memory today! We were in a beautiful hot air balloon, with tiny twinkling lights on the basket, listening to "Moonlight Serenade".

TODD. That never happened.

EMMA. But I remember it.

TODD. I've never been in a hot air balloon.

TOMMY. That's from the cult-favorite, much maligned, 1980 Woody Allen film, Stardust Memories.

TODD. [Out] Never saw it.

TOMMY. [Out] Self-indulgent.

EMMA. [Out] Guess I liked it.

TOMMY. How are you feeling?

TODD. Fine.

EMMA. It's remarkable that you have no symptoms.

TODD. I brought you a gift.

EMMA. I love presents! What's the occasion?

TODD. Your wedding.

TOMMY. It's very nice of you.

EMMA. [Unwrapping it] It's beautiful! It's ... a gun.

TODD. Your pattern.

EMMA. It's sweet. It's a sweet looking gun.

TODD. I hope you like it.

EMMA. It's lovely, but, do you really think a gun is an appropriate gift?

TODD. I didn't know what to get you.

EMMA. I like earrings.

TOMMY. Don't be ungrateful.

EMMA. It's pretty!

TODD. [taking the gun, loading it] I thought you might need it.

EMMA. And we don't have a gun. Do we honey?

TODD. I thought since you're leaving --

EMMA. You told him?! I can't believe you told him!

TOMMY. I didn't mean to. It slipped out.

EMMA. We promised we wouldn't.

TOMMY. He won't tell anyone.

EMMA. That's not the point! We agreed!

TOMMY. Well I did it and I can't undo it!

TODD. You'll need it out there. Everything is ending. People are corpses. They trample each other and never notice the cry of sorrow. While mothers, doctors, and civilized men practice their genocide.

EMMA. [bewildered, retrieving the gun] Well ... I'll just go toss this in my hope chest. [Emma exits]

TOMMY. I'm going to die.

ARTHUR. [enters and hangs his jacket on the dinosaur] Grace! Where's Mrs. Duncan? Grace!

TODD. I've asked you not to do that!!!

TOMMY. [removing it] I'll take it sir.

ARTHUR. How are you feeling Buzz-Todd?

TODD. Fine!

ARTHUR. No symptoms?

TODD. No! [Phone rings. Tommy rushes to it, dropping Arthur's jacket on the floor. Todd goes to work on the dinosaur]

TOMMY. Hello?

ARTHUR. Where's your Mother?

TODD. Upstairs.

ARTHUR. Grace!

TOMMY. [irritated, into the phone] Oh, just a minute. [Grace enters]

GRACE. Is that you Arthur? What are you doing home? Isn't it the afternoon? I've lost the thread of the day --

TOMMY. [Handing Grace the phone] It's for you.

GRACE. Thank you, Tommy. Hello?

TOMMY. Can I get you something, Sir?

ARTHUR. Privacy.

GRACE. [into phone] You must be kidding me.

TOMMY. [Hostile] I'm just doing my job.

GRACE. [hanging up] This is terrible!

TOMMY. What is it?

GRACE. Arthur, can you play the violin?

ARTHUR. Of course not.

GRACE. Viola?

ARTHUR. Grace!

GRACE. It seems our violinist was killed this morning by a stray bullet during a bank hold-up.

TOMMY. Did he work at a bank?

GRACE. He was holding one up.

ARTHUR. Who cares? No one'll miss one violin from an orchestra.

GRACE. It's a string quartet.

TODD. Not any more.

ARTHUR. I have to talk to you, Grace.

GRACE. [starting to rush off] Can't it wait? I have to locate a violin and practice like mad.

ARTHUR. No! Something terrible has happened.

GRACE. Oh I know it. The tent is wrong, the flowers are off, the rabbits' malignant and I've got a table full of nuns at twenty-seven.

ARTHUR. [sitting] Get me a drink.

TOMMY. [bitterly] Yes'm Massa Duncan. [Tommy exits]

GRACE. I wish, Arthur, you'd say please to the servants. Your curtness is read as ingratitude. You're the reason we can't keep good help.

ARTHUR. Don't criticize me. I've had a terrible day.

GRACE. So have I. See your set-backs as challenges. That's what I do.

TODD. I had a nice day.

GRACE. Did you?

TODD. But I see my set-backs as set-backs.

ARTHUR. Please. I don't know how to say this -- [Tommy enters with a drink]

TOMMY. Here.

ARTHUR. Why are you still wearing that?

TOMMY. It's my uniform.

ARTHUR. I asked you to wear pants.

TOMMY. Mrs. Duncan said --

ARTHUR. It's awful.

GRACE. It's snappy.

ARTHUR. It's faggy.

GRACE. Arthur, please.

ARTHUR. Well, it is. It's the fruitiest thing I've ever seen.

GRACE. [under her breath] You'll offend Todd.

ARTHUR. Oh, he doesn't care. Do you Buzz-Todd?

GRACE. Arthur, he's homosexual.

ARTHUR. That doesn't mean he's effeminate.

GRACE. He'll have another "fit".

ARTHUR. That's all behind ya, isn't it, Buzz-Todd?

TODD. No.

TOMMY. I think I look like Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot!

ARTHUR. I hated that movie.

TOMMY. [hostile] It's a classic.

GRACE. [to Arthur] You never had a sense of humor.

TODD. I found it politically incorrect in its portrayal of transvestites as buffoons.

GRACE. Didn't you have something to tell me? I left Emma on a stool upstairs with pins in her hem.

ARTHUR. Don't look at me. I don't think I can say this if anyone is looking at me. [The others turn away from Arthur]

GRACE. Oh my. Maybe I should have a drink too.

ARTHUR. Why?

GRACE. It sounds as if I'm going to need one.

ARTHUR. Do you have to?

GRACE. Just one.

ARTHUR. It always starts with "just one", doesn't it?

GRACE. [turning back to Arthur] What does?

ARTHUR. You know very well.

GRACE. I don't know what you're talking about -- Tommy, a scotch. [Tommy rises]

ARTHUR. Sit down, Tommy. [Tommy sits] I'm asking you not to.

GRACE. If I understood your implication, I'd be insulted. A drink, please. [Tommy rises]

ARTHUR. Sit Tommy. [Tommy sits]

GRACE. Stand Tommy. [Tommy rises]

ARTHUR. Grace, it's not even four.

GRACE. So what?

ARTHUR. If you start now, you'll be gone by dinner.

GRACE. Gone? Gone where? Try to avoid the vague euphemism.

TOMMY. Would you like me to leave?

ARTHUR. That would be best. [Tommy starts to exit]

GRACE. Stay put, Tommy. [Tommy sits] If Mr. Duncan wishes to hurl ugly accusations, let him do so in public. What are you trying to say, Arthur?

ARTHUR. You're an alcoholic, Grace.

GRACE. [very still] What did you say to me?

TODD. He called you an alcoholic.

ARTHUR. I wish you wouldn't drink so much!

GRACE. What's "so much"?

ARTHUR. You drink yourself blind every night.

GRACE. You call that "so much"? Please.

Snapshots

-- Christmas without Cashel? What? At least when Brendan called to wish us all Merry Christmas - he informed us that Cashel was, at that moment, sitting in his new blow-up R2 D2 chair and watching his new Star Wars DVD. All is right with the world. I MUST see Cashel sitting in that chair. I had overnighted my gifts - as we all had - and apparently Cashel had a great Christmas. He's all about astronauts and also Superman right now. Oh, and also Green Day. He got many gifts along these lines.

-- Mellow rainy weather. Rolling fog. Christmas morning was grey and foggy. Odd. Sodden leaves on the lawn. A huge bluejay terrorizing all the other birds.

-- Siobhan and I, driving over to Jean's, saw two deer standing on the side of the road. It was dark, so our headlights picked them up. They were perched RIGHT on the side of the winding country road - and they were FROZEN. Just standing there, as though posing for a picture. Magical.

-- Excellent presents. My mom painted us all pictures of Red Sox players - the resemblances are uncanny. You don't even need to see the NUMBERS on the backs of the uniforms to know who they are - because the poses are so specific, so recognizable. Manny's swing - Manny's uniform - how he pulls his pants legs down over his socks .... She just GOT David Ortiz's swing - how that one leg kind of turns in, delicately, almost like a dance move. I got one of Varitek, right after hitting the ball. It's SO Varitek. The calves (mmm, the calves) - and just the entire stance ... so Tek. I hung it on my kitchen wall.

-- Jean and Pat hosted a wonderful dinner party on Christmas eve. Jean cooked lamb - which was absolutely scrumptious. She was nervous about it - new recipe - but it was delicious. Their tree is adorable. Jean, Siobhan and I then plopped down in the living room and watched, according to the yearly tradition, the Sesame Street Christmas special - which Jean found on DVD. For years, we have been watching a beat-up video tape of it - that we had recorded off the television back in the 80s. We all know it by heart. It is absolutely magical. "And he pushes the button - and he steps up on the big step - and then he goes in!" Long pause. Grover looks right out at the camera. "And there you have it, folks!" We also always cry during the Bert and Ernie storyline - which is a variation on the gift of the Magi. I don't care that they are puppets. They are ALIVE and they have facial expressions. They kill me. We had many in-depth discussions in re: Cookie Monster's relentless psychosis, how our friend Nate can't STAND Bob, how cool Gordon was, how nice it is that the Count is accepted by the group even though he's borderline OCD, how much we always loved Olivia, the whole Snuffleupagus controversy, and many other pertinent issues. This may be a good time to unearth my Letter to Cookie Monster.

-- My dad made a fire in the fireplace. I love the smell of woodsmoke. So cozy.

-- Found an old hardcover bound copy of The Federalist Papers upstairs in one of the bedrooms. I'd never seen it before. Gorgeous. A deep red leather cover, with gold embossed lettering: THE FEDERALIST. I flipped through it. The pages have that kind of ... shiny quality - I don't know what it is - but you know how old-fashioned books, printed back in the 19th century have an almost slick paper - and if you run your hands over the pages, you can feel the imprint of the letters? That's what this is like. Also - inserted within the pages were two little scraps cut out of a newspaper: one was an advertisement for Irish lace. The other a Bible quote. Pretty damn awesome. A whole life suggested in those two little scraps from history.

-- Last night, Siobhan and I went over to Jean and Pat's and we watched 40 Year old Virgin - I gave it to Siobhan for Christmas. Siobhan was the only one who had seen it! We all just HOWLED with laughter. GREAT movie. I enjoyed every second of it. The outtakes are especially enjoyable. hahahahaha I need to see it again. I thought it was fantastic. The Age of Aquarius music video at the end was sheer liquid joy. We could not stop laughing. Paul Rudd dancing around as though he were in the original cast of Hair - with a long scarf tied around his head. I couldn't STAND it how funny it was.

-- I got a little terra cotta angel to add to my little terra cotta Nativity set. We each got one. They're so cute, so precious. I have it set up on my little bookcase right now.

-- I slept the sleep of the dead. Normally I wake up so early - I don't need an alarm clock - but I slept until 8 am on Christmas morning!! Unheard of.

-- I am TEARING THROUGH the final volume of LM Montgomery's journals - sent to me by a very kind reader who - sadly - I do not have his email!! So whoever you are: I cannot thank you enough. It's sad reading - she was quite a broken down woman by the end of her life - but I would read the woman's damn grocery list. So I'm having a great time with it. Closing the circle. This is the fifth and final volume. 1935 - 1942. She suffered from mental collapse during these years - which finally made her snap with the outbreak of WWII. She could not recover. And yet - during this time - she kept writing. She wrote every day. She published, I think, 4 or 5 books during those last years. An astonishing thing. The will to create. In the midst of her horrible life, and what appears to be a clinical depression - she kept going. It was the only thing that kept her going. Even more astonishing when you actually read her books - such wonderful life-affirming human books. Not saccharine or sentimental - but firmly positive. And yet - her real life was so awful. It never ceases to amaze me. It makes her novels even MORE incredible. I see them in a whole new light - now that I know what an unhappy woman she was, personally. Anyway - thank you, kind sir out there!

-- The only thing missing was Brendan and Cashel - but they were together and having a lovely Christmas with Melody. So that makes me happy to think of. We'll see Bren and Cash this week when they come down to New York. It will be wonderful. I need a little Cashel face-time.

Christmas Movie Tribute: "White Christmas"

Alex has, once again, outdone herself. Awesome post about the movie "White Christmas".

My wonderful cousin Kerry is having a great time starring in White Christmas in Boston at the moment - check out the website right here. Click through to see pics of the Boston cast (the show is also running in San Francisco and Los Angeles).

Today in history

Dec. 24, 1914 - the Christmas Truce.

Here's a picture of German and British soldiers fraternizing in "no man's land" on that day:

What really happened? What's myth, what's truth? Does anyone care? I kind of don't. From this article:

The meeting of enemies as friends in no-man's land was experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of men on the Western Front during Christmas 1914. Today, 90 years after it occurred, the event is seen as a shining episode of sanity from among the bloody chapters of World War One – a spontaneous effort by the lower ranks to create a peace that could have blossomed were it not for the interference of generals and politicians.

The reality of the Christmas Truce, however, is a slightly less romantic and a more down to earth story. It was an organic affair that in some spots hardly registered a mention and in others left a profound impact upon those who took part.

Many accounts were rushed, confused or contradictory. Others, written long after the event, are weighed down by hindsight. These difficulties aside, the true story is still striking precisely because of its rag-tagged nature: it is more 'human' and therefore all the more potent.

Men on both sides wrote in their journals about the truce - they wrote letters home - their first-hand accounts:

Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxons recorded in his diary: 'The English brought a soccer ball from the trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvellously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.'

The Truce lasted all day; in places it ended that night, but on other sections of the line it held over Boxing Day and in some areas, a few days more. In fact, there parts on the front where the absence of aggressive behaviour was conspicuous well into 1915.

Captain J C Dunn, the Medical Officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, whose unit had fraternised and received two barrels of beer from the Saxon troops opposite, recorded how hostilities re-started on his section of the front.

Dunn wrote: 'At 8.30 I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with "Merry Christmas" on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He [the Germans] put up a sheet with "Thank you" on it, and the German Captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the War was on again.'

Story here.

More here.

The Books: "Same Time Next Year" (Bernard Slade)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Same Time, Next Year A Comedy in Two Acts (acting edition), by Bernard Slade. Playwrights dream of writing a play as successful as this one. Bernard Slade was the Philip Barry of the 1970s. This play was a smash hit on Broadway - with Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin (man, would have loved to see it) - and then it was turned into a smash hit film (with Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda - kinda wished they had maintained Grodin - but I understand - realities of show business) - for which Bernard Slade also wrote the screenplay.

This play is a joy to read. Just like Philip Barry's plays are a joy to read. I don't know - they remind me of one another. The dialogue is rollicking - you get the sense of a finely tuned craftsman at work - He just knows what the hell he is doing. It's FUNNY - you read it and you can FEEL the jokes - they are written into the dialogue (this is not always the case with plays) - Slade was a humorist. And yet - same as Philip Barry - the humor never seems gimmicky or outside of the action of the play. The characters themselves are funny - and this is a comedic universe - where people say funny things. I love playwrights who can do that.

Even though Same Time Next Year is funny - I mean, pretty much every other line is funny - it has a relentless ba-dum-ching rhythm - the heart is not sacrificed, the sense of reality is not sacrificed. These are two people - who have a real relationship - the stakes are high - they run the gamut.

The story is well-known: Two people (married - but not to each other) meet year after year after year - for one weekend a year - to have sex in a nice little country inn. It's only one weekend - after that weekend, they go back to their lives, their kids, their spouses - but one weekend a year, they have a liaison. Of course it is about WAY more than "just sex" - but they turn themselves inside out trying to justify it.

This one-weekend-a-year affair goes on for 25 years. Each scene is a different year.

I feckin' love this play and I would KILL to do this play.

I'll excerpt the opening scene - which is their first night together - the night they met. They think it's going to be a one-night stand - but neither of them have ever cheated on their spouses before - they're not really one-night-stand people ... but - what Slade does here is set up a couple of things: these two people are NEUROTIC. And also: these two people, from the get-go, have a huge connection. It cannot be denied. They do not understand it, it frightens them - since they are already married - but they feel it. This is what makes the one night stand turn into a 25 year affair.

All of that is set up in this opening scene - they have just met - they have just spent the night together.

Just watch how relentlessly funny Slade is. If this is played right, there should be a laugh on almost every other line.

EXCERPT FROM Same Time, Next Year A Comedy in Two Acts (acting edition), by Bernard Slade

ACT ONE SCENE 1

THE TIME: A day in February, 1951

THE PLACE. A bed-sitting room in the cottage of a Spanish style inn near Mendecino, North of San Francisco. It is a cozy comfortable room, large enough to contain a double bed, dressing table, chintz-covered sofa, a baby grand piano, wood burning fireplace and an ottoman. There are two leaded pane glass windows, a closet, a door leading to the bathroom and another door which opens onto the patio-entrance to the cottage. The room's aura of permanence is not an illusion. The decor has been the same for the past 25 years and will not change for the next 25.

AT RISE. George and Doris are in bed. George is sitting up against the headboard of the bed rigidly staring into space. Doris is lying in a sleeping position but her eyes are wide open. Very slowly and carefully George gets out of the bed. When she feels George move, Doris shuts her eyes and pretends to be asleep. George picks up his jacket and puts it on, then he finds a sock and puts that on. As he is putting on the second sock Doris turns to watch him

DORIS. That's a very sharp looking outfit.

GEORGE. Hello.

DORIS. Hi.

GEORGE. Did I wake you?

DORIS. I was awake.

GEORGE. How'd you sleep?

DORIS. Fine, thank you. [Doris reaches for her petticoat which is on the dressing table stool beside the bed. She pulls it under the sheet and puts the sheet over her head while she gets into her slip. George meanwhile has found his trousers and quickly puts them on] What time is it?

GEORGE. My watch is on the bedside table.

DORIS. [Picks up watch] Ten to twelve!

GEORGE. No, it's twenty-five after eight. The stem is broken. It's three hours and twenty-five minutes fast.

DORIS. Why don't you get it fixed?

GEORGE. I was going to. I got used to it.

DORIS. Doesn't it mix you up?

GEORGE. No. I'm very quick with figures.

DORIS. Why are you looking at me like that?

GEORGE. We're in a lot of trouble.

DORIS. Yeah?

GEORGE. Why do you have to look so luminous? It would make it a lot easier if you woke up with puffy eyes and blotchy skin like everyone else.

DORIS. I guess God figured chubby thighs were enough.

GEORGE. Look, this is not going to just go away. We've got to talk about it.

DORIS. Okay. [She gets out of bed, the sheet around her, and starts for the bathroom]

GEORGE. Where are you going?

DORIS. I'm going to brush my teeth.

GEORGE. Dorothy, please sit down. [Doris starts to speak] Please sit down and let me say this. [She sits on the end of the bed] Dorothy, first of all, I want you to know last night was the most beautiful, wonderful, crazy thing that's ever happened to me and I'll never forget it -- or you.

DORIS. Doris.

GEORGE. What?

DORIS. My name is Doris.

GEORGE. Your name is Doris. I've been calling you Dorothy all night. Why didn't you tell me earlier?

DORIS. I didn't expect us to end up like we did. Then I did try to tell you but you weren't listening.

GEORGE. When?

DORIS. Right in the middle of everything.

GEROGE. It was incredible wasn't it?

DORIS. It was -- nice. Especially the last time.

GEORGE. I'm an animal. I don't know what got into me. What was the matter with the first two times?

DORIS. What? Oh -- well, the first time was kinda fast and the second -- look, I feel funny talking about this.

GEORGE. It was a very beautiful thing, Doris. There was nothing disgusting or dirty in what we did.

DORIS. Then how come you look so down in the dumps?

GEORGE. My wife is going to kill me.

DORIS. How is she going to find out?

GEORGE. She knows.

DORIS. You said she was in New Jersey.

GEORGE. It doesn't matter. She knows.

DORIS. How?

GEORGE. Was it as incredible for you as it was for me?

DORIS. Do all men like to talk about it a lot afterward?

GEORGE. Why? You think I'm some sort of pervert or something?

DORIS. No. I just wondered. See, I was a virgin when I got married. At least sort of.

GEORGE. Sort of?

DORIS. Well, I was pregnant but I don't count that.

GEORGE. Doris, that counts.

DORIS. I mean it was by the man I married.

GEORGE. Oh, I'm sorry.

DORIS. [putting on her blouse] That's okay. Harry and me would've gotten married anyway. It just speeded things up a bit. Turns out I get pregnant if we drink from the same cup. [He looks at her] What's the matter?

GEORGE. It's okay. Trojans are very reliable.

DORIS. Who are?

GEORGE. Never mind. I'm in a lot of trouble. I think I love you. It's crazy! It's really crazy! I don't even know if you've read "Catcher in the Rye".

DORIS. I didn't graduate high school.

GEORGE. You see? I don't even care! Of course, I should've known this would happen. There's something about me I didn't tell you.

DORIS. What? [She puts on her skirt]

GEORGE. When it comes to life I have a brown thumb.

DORIS. What do you mean?

GEORGE. Nothing I do ever turns out right. Ever. The first time I had sex I was eighteen years old. We were in the back seat of a parked 1938 Dodge sedan. Right in the middle of it we were rear ended.

DORIS. Gee, that's terrible. Did you have insurance?

GEORGE. You know the song they were playing on the juke box last night when we met?

DORIS. No?

GEORGE. "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd've Baked A Cake"!

DORIS. So?

GEORGE. So that's going to be "our song"! Other people would get "Be my Love" or "Hello Young Lovers". Me -- I get "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd've Baked A Cake"!

DORIS. You're very romantic. I like that.

GEORGE. I think I'm in love with you. Now you want to know the luck I have? I'm happily married!

DORIS. Are you Jewish?

GEORGE. No.

DORIS. Well, how come you're so guilty?

GEORGE. Don't you feel guilty?

DORIS. Are you kidding? Half my high school became nuns.

GEORGE. Catholics have rules about this sort of thing.

DORIS. We have rules about everything. That's what's so great about being Catholic. You always know where you stand.

GEORGE. I tell you, Doris, I feel like slitting my wrists.

DORIS. Are you Italian?

GEORGE. What's with you and nationalities?

DORIS. You're so emotional.

GEORGE. I happen to be a CPA. I can be as logical as the next person.

DORIS. You don't strike me as an accountant type.

GEORGE. It's very simple. My whole life has been a mess. Figures always come out right. I like that. What are you?

DORIS. I'm Italian.

GEORGE. Why aren't you more emotional?

DORIS. When you grow up in a large Italian family, it's enough to turn you off emotion for life.

GEORGE. I wondered why you weren't crying or yelling.

DORIS. I did before in the bathroom.

GEORGE. Crying?

DORIS. Yelling.

GEORGE. I didn't hear you.

DORIS. I stuffed a towel in my mouth.

GEORGE. I'm sorry.

DORIS. That's all right. There's no sense crying over spilt milk.

GEORGE. You're right.

DORIS. Then how come we feel so terrible?

GEORGE. Because we're two decent, honest people and this thing is tearing us apart. I mean I know it wasn't our fault but I keep seeing the faces of my children and the look of betrayal in their eyes. I keep thinking of our marriage vows, the trust my wife has placed in me, the experiences we've shared together. And you know the worst part of it all? While I'm thinking of all these things, I have this fantastic hard on.

DORIS. I really wish you hadn't said that.

GEORGE. I'm sorry. I just feel we should be totally honest with each other.

DORIS. No, it's not that. I have to go to confession.

GEORGE. We're both crazy. I mean this sort of thing happens to millions of people every day. We're just normal, healthy human beings who did a perfectly healthy, normal thing. You don't use actual names in confession do you?

DORIS. No.

GEORGE. May I ask you something?

DORIS. Sure.

GEORGE. Would you go to bed with me again?

DORIS. George, we can't!

GEORGE. Why not?

DORIS. We'll feel worse afterwards!

GEORGE. No. I'm over that now; I just remembered something.

DORIS. What?

GEORGE. The Russians have the bomb! We could all be dead tomorrow!

DORIS. George, you're clutching at straws!

GEORGE. Don't you understand? We're both grown up people who have absolutely nothing to be ashamed or afraid of!!! [There is a knock at the door. They both freeze] Just a second! [Then they go into frantic action. He attempts to straighten up the room. She grabs her hat, jacket, purse and starts for the bathroom] Don't go into the bathroom!

DORIS. Why not?

GEORGE. It's the first place they look! Just a second! I'm coming! [She heads for the window and climbs out. He spots her girdle on the hearth, grabs it and stuffs it part way into his pocket. He opens the door about six inches and squeezes outside, closing the door behind him. We hear a muffled exchange offstage before he reenters carrying a breakfast tray which he places on the coffee table. He looks around for Doris, sees open window and crosses to it] Doris? Doris? [While he is looking out the window, she comes through the front door]

DORIS. You have a woman in here?

GEORGE. [startled, he turns to face her] It's okay. I was very calm. It was old Mr. Chalmers with my breakfast. He didn't suspect a thing.

DORIS. He didn't ask about your girdle?

GEORGE. What? [He looks at his pocket and sees her girdle] Oh, great! Now he probably thinks I'm a homo!

DORIS. [She takes the girdle and puts it into her purse] What do you care?

GEORGE. I stay here every year.

DORIS. You do, why?

GEORGE. I have a friend who went into the wine business near here. I fly out the same weekend every year to do his books.

DORIS. From New Jersey?

GEORGE. He was my first client. It's kind of a sentimental thing.

DORIS. Oh.

GEORGE. Doris, there's something I want to tell you.

DORIS. What?

GEORGE. I know I must appear very smooth and glib -- sexually. Well, I want you to know that since I've been married this is the very first time I've done this.

DORIS. Don't worry, I could tell. Do you mind if I have some of your breakfast?

GEORGE. Go ahead. I'm not hungry. It's funny when I was single I was no good at quick, superficial affairs. I had to be able to really like the person before ... What do you mean -- you could tell? In what way could you tell?

DORIS. What? Oh -- I don't know -- the way you tried to get your pants off over your shoes and then tripped and hit your head on the coffee table. Little things like that.

GEORGE. It's great to be totally honest with another person isn't it?

DORIS. It sure is.

GEORGE. I haven't been totally honest wtih you.

DORIS. No?

GEORGE. No. I told you I was a married man with two children.

DORIS. You're not?

GEORGE. No. I'm a married man with three children. I thought it would make me seem less married. Look, I just didn't think it through. Anyway, it's been like a lead weight inside me all morning. I mean denying little Debbie like that. I don't normally behave like this, I was under a certain stress. You understand?

DORIS. Sure, we all do dopey things sometimes. How come your wife doesn't travel with you?

GEORGE. Phyllis won't go on a plane.

DORIS. Is she afraid of flying?

GEORGE. Crashing.

DORIS. [Noticing that George is staring at her] Why are you looking at me like that?

GEORGE. I love the way you eat.

DORIS. You wanta share some coffee with me?

GEORGE. No thank you. Doris, do you believe that two perfect strangers can look at each other across a crowded room and suddenly want to possess each other in every conceivable way possible?

DORIS. No.

GEORGE. Then how did this whole thing start?

DORIS. It started when you sent me over that steak in the restaurant.

GEORGE. They didn't serve drinks. They're known for their steaks.

DORIS. Then when I looked over and you toasted me with your fork with a big piece of steak on it, that really made me laugh. I never saw anybody do that before. What made you do it?

GEORGE. Impulse. Usually I never do that sort of thing. I have a friend who says that life is saying "yes". The most I've ever been able to manage is "maybe".

DORIS. So then why did you do it?

GEORGE. I was lonely and you looked so vulnerable. You had a run in your stocking and your lipstick was smeared.

DORIS. You thought I looked cheap?

GEORGE. I thought you looked beautiful.

DORIS. I really should be going. The nuns will be wondering what happened to me.

GEORGE. Nuns?

DORIS. Yeah. It didn't seem right to bring up when we met yesterday in the restaurant but I was on my way to retreat.

GEORGE. Retreat?

DORIS. It's right near here. I go every year at this time when Harry takes the kids to Bakersfield.

GEORGE. What's in Bakersfield?

DORIS. His mother. It's her birthday.

GEORGE. She doesn't mind that you don't go?

DORIS. No, she hates me.

GEORGE. Why?

DORIS. I got pregnant.

GEORGE. Her son had something to do with that.

DORIS. She blocks that out of her mind. You see, he was in his first year of dental college and he had to quit and take a job selling waterless cooking. And so now every year on her birthday I go on retreat.

GEORGE. To think about God?

DORIS. Well, Him too, sure. See I have three little kids. I got pregnant the first time when I was eighteen and so I never really had any time to think about what I want. Never mind ... sometimes I think I'm crazy.

GEORGE. Why?

DORIS. Well, take my life. I live in a two bedroom duplex in downtown Oakland, we have a 1948 Kaiser, a blond three piece dinette set, Motorola TV, and we go bowling at least once a week. I mean what else could anyone ask for? But sometimes things get me down, you know? It's dumb!

GEORGE. I don't think it's dumb.

DORIS. You don't? Boy, I can really talk to you. It's amazing. I find myself saying things to you that I didn't know I thought. I noticed that yesterday right after we met in the restaurant.

GEORGE. We had instant rapport! Did you notice that too?

DORIS. No, but I know we really hit it off. Harry's not much of a talker. How about your wife. Do you two talk a lot?

GEORGE. Doris, naturally we're both curious about each other's husband and wife. But rather than dwelling on it and letting it spoil everything why don't we do this. I'll tell you two stories one showing the best side of my wife and the other showing the worst. Then you do the same about your husband and then let's forget that. Okay?

DORIS. Okay.

GEORGE. I'll go first. I'll start with the worst side. Phyllis knows about us.

DORIS. Now you said that before. How could she know?

GEORGE. She has this thing in her head.

DORIS. Oh, you mean like a plate?

GEORGE. Plate?

DORIS. My uncle has one of those. He was wounded in the war and they put this steel plate in his head and now he says he can always tell when it's going to rain.

GEORGE. I'm in a lot of trouble.

DORIS. Why?

GEORGE. I find everything you say absolutely fascinating.

DORIS. Tell me about your wife's plate.

GEORGE. No, it's not a plate -- it's more like a bell. I could be a million miles away, but if I even look at another girl she knows it. Last night at 1:22 I just know she sat bolt upright in bed with her head going, ding, ding, ding, ding!

DORIS. How'd you know it was 1:22?

GEORGE. My watch said 4:47.

Movie quote

I know no one's on line it bein' almost Christmas and all - but here goes:

"I assume there's an accident indemnity clause."
"Never between friends."

Amarillo Army

This is a "music video" that probably many of you have seen - made by British soldiers in Iraq. Click on it to download. If you haven't seen it - watch the whole thing. If it doesn't bring a sponteaneous grin to your face, then I kinda don't want to know you, mkay? No, just kidding. It's just that I, personally, find it one of the HAPPIEST things I've ever seen - just the sheer JOY of it - made even more palpable because of their surroundings. See it!!

The video spread like wildfire throughout the Internet (Here's the story of the video - Thank you so much, Alex, for calling my attention to it) - causing laughter and joy wherever it went. Crashing servers on both sides of the Atlantic.

I myself have viewed it countless times - I just get so caught up in it every time - and no matter how many times I see the Bandaged-Mummy-Esque guy join the procession near the end- I just LOSE it. I love how it's all done in one take - so the cast of thousands are basically WAITING, in place, waiting for the camera to come by so they can leap into action - The image of these soldiers hiding all over the desert camp, in various costumes, waiting for their "turn" is just HYSTERICAL. I love these men and I love their spirits. Watch how the whole thing comes to a perfect and comedic ending. The human spirit. I know they just did this as a GOOF to "lift morale", and keep their spirits up - and it ended up being forwarded ad nauseum - but it's the kind of thing that just makes me really happy that I have seen it, and really happy that these men are on the planet with me. I just find their energy so infectious.

Watch it. Laugh. Joy. Love them.

And a big thank you to our servicemen and women - far away from homes and their families on this holiday!!

Grievances

hahahaha

I share most of Big Stupid Tommy's grievances.

Example:

Folks, the left lane is for passing or for turning. It's for the faster traffic. If you're in the left lane, and that car behind you is riding on your bumper, then chances are, he's wanting to go faster than you. This is not your venue to enforce what you percieve the maximum speed to be. Get into the right lane. In 2006, those drivers who do not get over in a timely fashion will be destroyed with my own bazooka.

"This is not your venue to enforce what you percieve the maximum speed to be." hahahahaha

Here:

You people and your War on Christmas nonsense. Honestly. I could give a shit. Your "wid us or agin us" attitude has gone a ways toward ruining this holiday season. You tell me to say "Merry Christmas," and I won't. Because I know it pisses you off.

Damn straight. I have HAD it with these people - is it me, or do they seem LOUDER than normal this year? I'm with Bill on this one. You want persecution? How 'bout we bring back the lions so you can get a taste of what real persecution is? Frankly, your shenanigans make me want to worship a pagan goddess and dance around a Winter Solstice pole while waving colored diaphonous scarves. And I'm CATHOLIC so that should give you some idea of how much I've feckin' HAD it. If your brain explodes with irritation when someone says "happy holidays" as opposed to "merry Christmas', then I suggest you need to strengthen your faith. PRIVATELY. But NOT IN MY FACE. Sigh. It's gotten to the point where I literally roll my eyes when I hear one of them bitching on Fox News now about the "war on Christmas". It's just another version of victim politics and it's tiresome. So I roll my eyes and start surfing around for Breaking Bonaduce or E True Hollywood Story: Motley Crue, something that is at least EDIFYING.

And this:

ESPN. Constant gripe. Guys, I want to watch the sports. Not the people reporting on it. You aren't working with Lebron James. You're reporting on Lebron James. There's a difference.

That one just made me laugh out loud. But go read the whole thing.

Diary Friday

More high-school-junior madness. Crush on saxophone player (referred to here as DW) growing by leaps and bounds. I crush on people HARD. Always have. This was the crush to end all crushes. It sounds kind of funny now to go back and read these crazy journal entries about him - but it was NOT funny while I was in it - and when it didn't work out - "crushed" doesn't even come close to how I felt about it.

Years later - 4 years maybe?? - DW showed up at a play I was doing in college. It was a huge success, and we got a lot of attention for it. I, specifically, got a lot of attention. So maybe he read one of the articles about the play - and remembered his old high school friend - and decided to come check me out. We had not remained in touch at all. Goodness, no. We were barely FRIENDS in high school. I was just MADLY IN LOVE WITH HIM but we weren't friends. Keeping in touch? I was 16 years old. I didn't want to "keep in touch" with him after he left high school. No way! Moving on!

So I came out into the lobby that night, after doing my show - and when I saw HIM - this boy from my high school past - there he was - leaning up against the wall waiting for me - I just ... could not even believe it. There was this huge THUD within me at the sight of his face. He was now 21. WAY older than the 17 year old I had loved from afar so passionately. So much had happened since high school!

I found my high school self quaint and kind of silly - especially now that I was an old lady of 19. I was dating someone by then - my co-star - and we were having a passionate and melodramatic time of it. (Ahem. And Ahem. And Ahem.) I was consumed with my present-day life - but when I came out of that theatre, and saw the guy I had once LOVED ... from AFAR ... in high school - leaning up against the wall, grinning at me - I thought I would faint. Or vomit. It was unbeLIEVable how strong the response still was. This wasn't about emotion. It was about a physical response. I know I'm in trouble when my stomach does a flip-flop, or when I feel a sense of vertigo. Emotions are nothing compared to that stuff. That stuff seems to last forever - while emotions fade. Anyway, that was the case with me. I was deeply involved in my present-day vertigo-inducing romance with my costar - and yet when I saw high-school-boy my knees nearly gave out.

We had a brief conversation - awkward and poignant and SO sweet. He was so kind. He said, awkwardly, "Yeah, I read about you in the paper ... so I figured ... I'd come and support the old SK graduate!" He came by himself. The whole thing just blew me away. He ... remembered me? He ... saw my name in the paper ... and felt enough connection to me that he would ... come up and see me? It was so WEIRDLY validating - not only of the success I was having in that moment, but also - of who I was in high school. I had invested time and heart into this guy - and ... there he was. If the 16 year old who wrote all the journal entries about him could have ever seen that a mere 4 years later, he would show up at her show in college, and they would have a brief nice conversation in the lobby, and that then her present BOYFRIEND would come up and she would introduce the two of them (what??) - and they all would be nice and polite and grown-up, and the two males would shake hands like adult men - and that she would then sashay off with her BOYFRIEND leaving the guy she had loved so much in high school behind - her head would have exploded. It's just kind of weird.

I'm talking about this way too much and I'm not talking about it all that well. I guess I'm saying that ... his showing up to see my big success was a class act. And it certainly closed the circle for me.

Anyway - here is an entry from November of my junior year. I had never given DW a second thought - he seemed kind of arrogant - but suddenly I had a couple of classes with him in my junior year, and I fell HEAD OVER HEELS in love with the dude.

NOVEMBER 11 - VETERAN'S DAY

I am now here at Meredith's. It's 10:00 but it feels like it's midnight. GOD. AM I TIRED.

Today I went over to Mere's bright and early so we could see the parade together. As Mere got ready (she was still in her pjs), we listened to records, looked at rock magazines, and talked about boys. [Uhm, central casting??] We talked about two boys in particular.

Anyway, we started out and the parade had already started so I rudely tore down the sidewalk and perched on the curb looking for the band. Mere caught up with Dolores -- just then the band was going by -- in their blue suits and hats with plumes.

DW wasn't playing. He was leading the whole thing. He was dressed in a white sort of Sergeant Pepper suit with white sneakers - he held a shiny post with a ball on the end [Uhm - a baton, Sheila?] - he waved that. [Now I know I have so much distance between then and now - but come on. I was in love with this guy and suddenly I get to see him as Harold feckin' Hill?? Of COURSE I was in love with him!! "76 trombones led the big parade ..." I mean, who could resist??] Around his neck hung a whistle. He's such a big shot. I love it. I almost died when I first saw him. He looked so grand. He was walking backwards, facing the band - arms up - conducting - He kept glancing over his shoulder, and then turning back. I never knew he looked so cute. HE WAS GORGEOUS! Mere quietly stood there letting me sob on her shoulder - then - (the parade was a big 3 minutes) - we went down to Hazard School where the whole parade and everyone gathered for the memorial service for the dead veterans.

The whole walk down, I felt so weird inside. My DW feeling.

Everyone was gathered on the lawn around the big plaque - with all the names on it. The band was standing near it in lines, all holding their instruments. DW stood in line with the first row - but off to the side. He leaned his hands on the post in front of him. I didn't know he was going to be so gorgeous. He looked so solemn.

Mere and I stood smack opposite him. He was looking straight my way. Mere murmured to me, "Sheila, he is looking right at you." "I know. I know."

During the prayer, he bowed his head. [And, uhm, obviously you didn't.] I liked to see that. I like to see that he has a serious side. I could talk seriously to him.

After the ceremony, Mere and I ran over to talk to J as the band walked back to the schoool. J's so cute - she kept ordering me, "Come into the band room, Sheila! Come on! Strike up a conversation!" I kept saying, "Right. Right."

Finally, Mere and I did. It was havoc. [It was always havoc in the band room.] All those blue uniforms and plumes running around. J kept giving me burning glares across the room. [My heart is in my stomach! Hahaha Even now - so many years later!] I casually leaned up against a column in the middle of the room, talking to Mere. Suddenly, Mere mouthed hugely, "He's right there." I glanced over my shoulder. There he was. Leaning on the very same post as me. Our backs were touching.

I cannot even explain it. How can anyone explain the feeling? God, I wish I were eloquent. I know exactly the feeling, but I can't put it into words.

It's like this. I like DW so much it aches. It yawns and gnaws away inside me. (How poetic)

Anyway, I turned back to Mere, with an agonized glance - then suddenly DW sort of circled the column - using his shoulder as a pivot - so that he came face to face with me. He is so huge. He turns me on. Tall men! I like that!

He grinned down at me. "So ... how did we look out there marching?"

I wanted to throw myself on him screaming, "YOU ARE SO GORGEOUS!" but I just smiled. "You guys looked really good. Very dignified." "How'd we sound?" "You weren't playing when you passed us." Then someone walked by and asked DW "What time do we gotta be here tomorrow?" DW lifted his hand to his forehead and rubbed it, thinking. His elbow brushed against my forehead. His voice is so deep. "Eight o'clock." I stared at him. "The game starts at eight?" "Oh ... no. But we have to get here early so we can jam and stuff." [I find that absolutely endearing.] "Ah!"

Then DW went off to put his sax away. Mere made this up: DW has "sax appeal". So then. Mere and I waved to J and left. As we left, I heard sly J yell, "See ya tomorrow, Sheila!"

All the way home, Mere and I - I love her - [Note: It is not possible for me to put FOUR underlines beneath the words "I love her" - but just know that that is how it appears in the original] I am the most fortunate girl in the world. Thank you God! THANK YOU, GOD!! Dave turned to talk to me! What am I gonna do?

I'm going to the Homecoming with J and April. Mr. President will probably be there. I will not ask him to dance. I will let him ask me. I think he will if I give him a chance. I'll just strike up a conversation with him. See if he does care or if it's my overactive imagination.

Then - we all went to the Umbrella Factory - the most wonderful little store full of everything - posters of everyone, knick knacks, boxes, jewelry, mobiles - all crammed into a tiny ramshackle building. I bought a new diary. I'm almost run out on this one. My new one is beautiful. It's Chinese - or Japanese? - a woven cover of reds ilk with shiny thread - with little embroidered pagodas and flowers - I love it! And I bought a Jimmy poster [No need for last names. Me and Jimmy Dean - we're like THIS!] and some wicked stationery. [I love when the word "wicked" shows up in this context in these journals. hahahaha]

Then we went to the Gift Barn - a quaint group of stores around a small duck pond. I had run out of money by then but we had a good time anyway. I am exhausted and Mere is now ready for bed - and so am I! [Mere - while I was sleeping over your house - I sat there WRITING IN MY DIARY? How rude. I apologize! I am sure you were busy reading "rock magazines" but still.]

Football game tomorrow.

Diary - this is not a crush!!

David McCullough

This article made me cry.

I think, after reading that, that I need to take myself on a little foot-tour of Revolutionary-War-Era New York. I've never done it and I think it's high time I did!

No wonder why none of McCullough's books have gone out of print. He doesn't just write about history - he seems to imagine himself back into time.

Beautiful. I'm just so moved by the description of McCullough's enthusiasm ... That enthusiasm totally comes across in his writing.

Christmas Movie Tribute: "Meet me in St. Louis"

Here is Alex's tribute to "Meet Me in St. Louis". Believe it or not - I came to this film late. I had never seen it and then I was in college, and I became friends with Mitchell, and I realized that seeing (and loving) Meet Me in St. Louis was pretty much a prerequisite to being in any kind of relationship with him. We could not move forward until I had been "caught up". We saw it together. He pointed out all the things he loved - moments he loved - little acting moments (Judy tasting the soup, for example) - He initiated me into the beautiful world that is this movie. It's like a Currier and Ives world on celluloid. You want to step into that old turn of the century atmosphere - it's so REAL. Every shot is a mini-masterpiece.

But I can't do the film justice - just go read Alex's post.

Mary Astor is, indeed, fantastic. I love her always - but I love her in this film particularly.

Mitchell and I love the moment in that movie when Tootie, the young morbidly obsessed child, lies in bed, moaning (and exaggerating): "He tried to kill me!"

Uhm ... no, Tootie. He did not, in fact, "try to kill" you.

The Books: "The Great Nebula in Orion" (Lanford Wilson)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is a one-act by Lanford Wilson - called The Great Nebula in Orion.

Two old college friends - Carrie and Louise - who have not seen each other in 6 years - bump into each other in Bergdorf's. After exclaiming and carrying on, Louise invites Carrie to come back to her apartment for a cup of coffee - so they can catch up. The play is that "catch up' conversation in Louise's incredible apt. overlooking Central Park.

One very funny thing about this play is that the two characters are constantly turning and speaking to the audience - confiding in the audience. It's supposed to be private - like, what Carrie says to the audience will not be heard by Louise, and vice versa - but there are moments when it is acknowledged by the other what is going on. It's like they give each other the space to have their moments with the audience. Like Louise starts to say something to Carrie, notices that she is talking to the audience, and says, "Oh. Excuse me" and goes back to what she was doing. It would have to be played just right in order to work - but I think it's hysterical. It's also poignant - a way to let the audience know the inner feelings. Because this is a meeting between people who haven't seen each other in years - not a lot of TRUTH is being told. But they both turn and tell the truth to the audience - how hard it is to see that the friend is growing old, because it means they are growing old, etc. Carrie and Louise are not just carefree old friends - there's a lot underneath - a lot not being said. But in this particular play, they get to say it to the audience. (In a way it reminds me of one of my favorite JD Salinger short stories Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut. It has the same "plot". The same tragic undertones.)

Things are not what they seem with these two old friends. Carrie was once an activist - she dated poets, etc. - she then married David, a wealthy guy, and now has 2 kids and lives in a suburb of Boston. She's kind of adrift but she does all the right things - bridge clubs, golf, etc. But ... there's something missing in her life ... meaning, maybe? And Louise is single - a fashion designer - highly successful - no kids, no marriage ... their lives are completely different now ... but by the end of the play, they've both had about 3 brandies and they're pretty LOOPED and all of the subtext comes flooding out. It's gorgeous. I'd love to play either one of these characters. They're beautifully written.

I'll excerpt from the middle of the play. They're both already a bit trashed. Notice the to-the-audience comments, and how they are almost casual - as though this whole thing is happening in retrospect, and they are narrating their own lives.

From The Great Nebula in Orion, by Lanford Wilson

LOUISE. We haven't talked about school.

CARRIE. No.

LOUISE. Thank God. Whatever. [Undecided] Happened to Phyllis Trahaunt?

CARRIE. [But interested] I haven't a clue.

LOUISE. [At random] She was going with someone I think ...

CARRIE. Oh, no. No. You knew.

LOUISE. I've wondered. She's one of the few women I've wanted to dress; she carried herself so well.

CARRIE. [in a hush-hush tone, implying scandal] Oh, she was beautiful. For all the good. But she wasn't going with anyone. Never.

LOUISE. I heard she was.

CARRIE. I don't much think so from what I heard,

LOUISE. No?

CARRIE. She didn't much like the boys, I hear.

LOUISE. Oh, really.

CARRIE. I'm surprised you didn't know. She was in your class.

LOUISE. I guess I never really thought. We had a few classes together.

CARRIE. But she never dated. She was always in Philadelphia.

LOUISE. I just assumed she had family there.

CARRIE. I haven't heard a word of her.

LOUISE. Huh. Nor I. [Pouring another]

CARRIE. None for me. [Louise looks to the audience as if to say something serious, decides against it, corks the bottle. Carrie is looking away, deep in troubled thought. The tone of her voice, serious and troubled, comes from the blue] Louise ...?

LOUISE. [startled, seriously in return] What, darling?

CARRIE. Oh.

LOUISE. I'm sorry, that sounded so odd. I'm hearing oddly today.

CARRIE. Well, I've joined practically everything there is to join. I mean I know yhou aren't interested in politics or anything like that --

LOUISE. Well, more than I was, actually --

CARRIE. Oh, darling, I am glad. But I know I have my children and they are -- well, I won't show you again --

LOUISE. [to the audience] Small favor -- no they're lovely.

CARRIE. And I have a wonderful home and David and the kids --

LOUISE. And you've joined everything.

CARRIE. I've even taken some night courses -- not like your friend --

LOUISE. Berilla, no; I'm sure. I don't mean --

CARRIE. I know. I really, in spite of that, envy you. You're like some of the girls and I don't know how they do it. I know it's just an attitude, I mean a state of mind, but know that doesn't help, does it?

LOUISE. It might, if I knew what the hell we were talking about.

CARRIE. Well ...

LOUISE. I mean they say the first thing an alkie has to do is admit he's hooked.

CARRIE. Well, then, what I've got to admit is that I'm not. Hooked. Even with all my activities I really envy you -- you're --

LOUISE. Darling, I'll trade anytime.

CARRIE. Well, see, though, that's -- you wouldn't really, would you?

LOUISE. Well, no, not really. But then really neither would you.

CARRIE. But I would. When I first saw you I thought you looked all six years older and probably so did I, and I didn't really want to think about it -- and of course I know you're a wonderful success and that's probably never easy but you seem -- engaged.

LOUISE. Oh, I'm engaged.

CARRIE. Well, I'm not much.

LOUISE. What is it, David?

CARRIE. No, I don't really think it's David. I'm afraid it's more me. David is the happiest married man I know of. [Count six] Well, that's silly. It's not really anything. It's just seeing you again after all this time. You start thinking back about the times we had and those times. It's silly.

LOUISE. Is there anything --

CARRIE. [Irritated. Almost uppity] Oh, don't be ridiculous. That's ridiculous.

LOUISE. What is?

CARRIE. Well, weren't you going to ask me if I need help or something? What I need is about two less drinks.

LOUISE. Or two more.

CARRIE. I don't think. [To the audience] Well, now I am uncomfortable and I thought ...

LOUISE. Have another drink then.

CARRIE. No! Thank you.

LOUISE. have you been trying to solve the world's problems again?

CARRIE. No, I don't crusade anymore. It would look rather hypocritical. David has so many very rich friends.

LOUISE. And is no pauper himself.

CARRIE. Oh, dear. I really had no idea when we were married. I mean I knew he had money, but I'd no idea. It's just that being around them you realize that actually the country isn't run quite the way you thought it -- I mean, they're really very powerful people.

LOUISE. I'm sure they are.

CARRIE. And, well, the country isn't run quite the way you think it is. The way people are led to believe it is.

LOUISE. I don't really think people believe it is.

CARRIE. I mean, it's worse than that.

LOUISE. How?

CARRIE. Well, it's all a sham. I don't actually think I should say anything. It's just things I sense. The way they talk. I only meant that I decided crusading wouldn't have much effect. I don't mean I drift and mope. I diet and run about from this to that. You should see my schedule, but I'm just not --

LOUISE. Engaged.

CARRIE. Well, my mind isn't. Or I'm losing it or something. I'm not all there is all. This brandy is something else.

LOUISE. A present, isn't it great?

CARRIE. I'm not so sure. [She finishes it off as Louise looks at her]

LOUISE. [Not too obviously] Richard Roth.

CARRIE. Huh?

LOUISE. I don't know. I think you may have written about him.

CARRIE. I thought I must have. [To the audience] We used to write years ago. But you know, we slacked off and finally just dwindled down to exchanging Christmas cards. [To Louise] Dick never wrote a letter in his life.

LOUISE. Dick Roth. What's he up to now?

CARRIE. Oh, now, who knows? Removed to Australia the last I heard. That was years ago. I wouldn't have any idea now.

LOUISE. I don't know about poets.

CARRIE. Oh, he was great but he was a nut. Everyone reviewed his work, if that means anything. I didn't really know him when he wrote; I really met him in California. I've probably told you: he had these enormous gaps and he knew practically nothing about astronomy or any of that, so I guess it came as a shock to him. He read somewhere that the sun -- you know, our sun -- would burn up in about a billion years or two. Or whatever it's supposed to do: burn out or blow up, and he never wrote a word after that. I suppose he reasoned that anything that was written would simply always be around somewhere but if there was going to be an end to it all one day he didn't see any point. As I said he was a nut. So he left school and came out to California.

LOUISE. Why California?

CARRIE. Astronomy. Mount Palomar. I guess he got very interested in cosmology or something. He was really crazy about it for a while. You know he was one of those types that's never interested in any one thing for any length of time. I think for about a month he was even interested in me. His sister was ecstatic, apparently he'd never been interested in a person before.

LOUISE. [to the audience] After Carrie left school she went for a year out --

CARRIE. A little less.

LOUISE. Out to California.

CARRIE. We used to sit on the beach at night. It was incredible. You've never seen skies like they have. And the nights aren't really cold but you need a sweater. We used to build up a bonfire. There's tons of driftwood around on the beach that washes up and we dragged it in from everywhere. You could have seen it for miles out to sea. You aren't supposed to but no one says anything. There was a group of probably twenty of us. Dick and I used to wander out down the beach -- you couldn't get lost -- and you could see the fire wiht little people running off and dragging up more wood all the time. I even learned a few of the constellations. They're really easy. I mean at first they're just stars, but once you start getting them placed in your mind the whole sky starts dividing up into patterns like a quilt. And you can't look up without seeing, recognizing, Andromeda and Orion and the bears and the seven sisters. It's amazing.

LOUISE. I can't even find the Big Dipper.

CARRIE. Oh, you could -- there's a way -- you just have to find Polaris -- well, I mean, I couldn't either, but you learn. Orion is the one though; you've seen him, you just didn't know what he was.

LOUISE. I don't imagine.

CARRIE. No, you had to. He's the one that you say, I'll bet anything that's some damn constellation. This is Orion. See, there are three stars -- [On the table, with her finger, dot dot dot] big ones across. That's the belt. And here ... [To the audience] Do you know this? [Back to Louise] ... perpendicular to the belt there are three more, closer together and fainter. [On the table] And that's his sword. And this -- the center star in the sword is the Great Nebula in Orion.

LOUISE. The Great Nebula in Orion.

CARRIE. Or of Orion, whichever. Which isn't a star at all.

LOUISE. Of course not.

CARRIE. Do you know this?

LOUISE. No. [To the audience] Crocked, right? Plastered.

CARRIE. Well, it's very interseting. The Great Nebula is a lot of hydrogen gas that's lit up by a couple of stars behind it somewhere, and some by its own heat, because it's condensing. It's moving, like a whirlpool; all the time and getting tighter and tighter -- what was that?

LOUISE. [who has uttered a polite "umm" at "tighter"] Nothing.

CARRIE. And hotter and hotter -- and it will keep getting more and more compact and hotter and smaller -- I mean it's vast -- and tighter and smaller until it's so hot and compact -- just a ball of fire, burning by itself -- that it will be a star. And we could actually see that. I mean the center star, we could see that it was fuzzy; a big fuzzy spot. And Dick said that would be a star someday.

LOUISE. A star is born.

CARRIE. Oh, come on. I thought it was interesting.

LOUISE. I think you had to be there.

Christmas movies: Lessons learned

Lessons learned from Christmas specials - By Curly McDimple.

I couldn't even get past #1 on the list for about 5 minutes. Laughing too hard.

On the lesson learned from A Very Brady Christmas:

Suddenly bursting into song will miraculously lift the heavy rubble thereby releasing said loved one sans paralysis

In this post, Curly continues her tradition of calling cartoon characters nasty names. The tradition began here, I believe, with Curly's bold statement: "In fact, while I'm normally loathe to use this term, I'd go so far as to say that Peppermint Patty is a cunt". And it continues on in Curly's Christmas post when she refers to Albert from Twas the Night Before Christmas as "a total douche bag".

But please. Go read the whole thing.

As an aside: I would just like to add my own personal story which has a correlation to her #14, where she writes: "Santa was a bit of a dick in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Uhm - YEAH. I'd think so!! Santa? Being cold and judgmental? What??

Here is my story:

In college, I was hanging out with my friend Mitchell and a couple of other friends. We were in Mitchell's beach house "down the line" - a rickety shack where we had some of our most insane cast parties. ("Down the line" basically meant you lived down in a shack on the beach as opposed to in the dorms. Living "down the line" was everyone's goal in college! I lived "down the line" as well. We all did.)

So - it was Christmastime. A couple of us had hung out, ordered pizza, whatever - and then we all watched Rudolph on television. I loved it because - here we all were - 19, 20 years old - but we watched it as raptly as if we were 6.

One of our group was Emily - a very good friend of ours. Briefly, here are the facts about Emily:

-- She was from the Dominican Republic

-- She grew up on the streets of Providence - she was in a gang

-- She also happened to be a math whiz. Not only that, but she really enjoyed math.

-- She ended up coming to URI - through her math scores - and was the only minority female in the engineering department.

-- Not only that, but she had a HUGE mohawk

-- She also had a passion for African dance

-- She would wear tiny tartan kilts, ripped black tights, and huge stomping motorcycle boots

So ... put all that together ... what do you have? Emily. Oh, and add onto that:

-- a huge laugh

-- a warm heart

-- a no-bullshit attitude towards friendship - she was as loyal as the day was long - but DO NOT MESS with her

Here's one Emily anecdote. Brooke - another girl in our crowd of friends - mentioned something about the girl's Catholic school she had gone to in Providence - let's call it St. Marks. Emily's face lit up. Sincerely. And she said, "I used to throw bricks at girls from St. Marks!" She meant it in a kindly nostalgic way. Like: ohhh, those were the days, member when I threw bricks at you??

Emily got her life together in a MAJOR way and is now getting her doctorate, I believe. But back in the day, she was throwing bricks at the girls from the Catholic school.

So that's Emily. I just need to set it up because what ended up happening was even funnier because it was EMILY who said it. The tough tattooed Mohawked ex-gang member. Who always had a calculator in her pocket.

We lay around in the living room watching Rudolph. Nobody really spoke. We were LIVING the Christmas special.

Then comes the devastating realization of Santa Claus's coldness - and how he basically shuns Rudolph from polite society. He won't let Rudolph join in the reindeer games - he won't even let him hang OUT with the other reindeer!! Somehow, I took all of this in stride as a child - I just accepted that Santa was kind of an asshole - but suddenly, in this particular viewing, it seemed unbeLIEVably unfair. But I didn't say anything. I just thought it to myself.

Maybe we all were. I don't know. We all just had a silent moment of: "Wow. Santa's really harsh there."

And Emily, sprawled out on the couch, a cigarette dangling from her lips, an ashtray piled high with butts propped on her stomach, her legs with their ripped black fishnets hooked up over the back of the couch, said in a flat dry tone, with dead matter-of-fact eyes, "Santa is a racist motherfuckah."

There was a brief pause, as we all nodded seriously, agreeing with her - we were pissed at Santa too ... but then we all looked at Emily - the mohawk, the scary gang tattooes, the cigarette - she was our friend - but we suddenly saw her EXTERIOR ... we all looked at each other ... and just LOST IT.

We lost it so bad that we missed the rest of the TV special pretty much. Emily was laughing so riotously that she thought she would asphyxiate - she had to go outside and get some air, walk around the frosty yard, try to calm down and stop laughing. We all kept trying to calm down, and breathe through it, but we could. not. get. it. back.

Good God

Look at that wave.

Any of you out there from California? Did any of you go to the beach to look at these waves? That picture amazes me.

Mundane??

Congrats to Jess - for having her blog mentioned in Glamour - even though the chick who wrote the thing seemed to pick out the most mundane quote possible to show how "mundane" blogs are. Jess? Mundane? Are you out of your mind?? The Glamour writer chose to pull out a grocery list quote - but if you read the post in question - you see that it's not mundane at all. This is akin to pulling out-of-context quotes from movie critics and putting them onto the poster for some movie that is TANKING at the box office. So the critic actually said, "I have seen many a terrific film in 2005, but this film isn't one of them" - and suddenly on the poster you see the words: "A terrific film!" with the critic's name underneath. Dirty pool!!

Oh, and Jess - I blog because I'm a self-absorbed exhibitionist too. Doesn't everybody?

Christmas Movie Tribute - part 4

Alex writes about It's a Wonderful Life.

Excerpts:

In “Wonderful Life” Capra lets the story unfold through George Bailey’s eyes. His world and his dreams crumble and we’re in the middle of it. We feel everything he feels and we’re in peril and just as anxious. His beautiful long shots and his tight close ups of Stewart’s grimacing features as his last hope for survival topples in Potter’s office is both claustrophobic and expansive.

And don't even get me started on the phone scene - with Stewart and Reed pressed up close together! They did it in one take. What you see on film is the first and only time they did that scene. INCREDIBLE.

Another beautiful observation from Alex about Donna Reed:

Reed’s ability to embody the girl every boy wants to marry was uncanny. She was able to allow herself to pine over George and wear her heart on her sleeve, and at the same time, pepper her with a steely reserve and a reckless abandon. Watch as Reed pulls out her own Honeymoon money in order to pay back the terrified costumers as they wait restlessly in the lobby of The Bailey’s Building and Loan. Her eyes flash, her hand goes straight up in the air, and there’s not a moment’s hesitation. Reed is wonderful in this role, and it is through her eyes that we see the pain and ultimate allegiance Stewart metamorphosis’s into at the climax of the film. A radiant performance by a very gifted actress.

And one of Alex's comments about Stewart's performance brought tears to my eyes:

I love him when he realizes that Clarence (another wonderful performance by the oft forgotten Henry Travers) is not a dream or a hallucination, and seems to literally wake up in the middle of a crowded bar after a fight with his friend Nick. He turns on the shoulders of the people gathering on the street, and with a look of rage and horror he screams Mary’s name in succession. It’s a bravura moment, and one I’ve never seen in any other Stewart film.

Yes!!

Go read Alex's post. It's unbelievable. Trivia, facts about Capra, comments on the acting ... and then her last paragraph made me well up with tears - where she expresses what the movie really means to her.

The Books: "Serenading Louie" (Lanford Wilson)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Still on the shelf of scripts:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is another play by the always wonderful Lanford Wilson - this one is a real heartbreaker called Serenading Louie. It's hard to choose a scene from the play to excerpt - they are all so damn good. It has a Woody Allen-ish feel to it - you know how Allen's films (the good ones) SEEM like they're improvised but they are NOT? You can't imagine that he WROTE it that way?? Serenading Louie is like that. It SOUNDS like real speech - with interruptions - not just people interrupting each other - but people interrupting themselves - the way we do in real life.

One example of this from the excerpt below: "I remember, when I was ... You'll remember ... everyone remembers ... I don't know when it was ... twelve years ago or more ... I was a kid. No, I was only about twelve or so, so it was longer ago than that."

The language isn't cleaned up - the way playwrights so often do. Look how - through that language - you can feel the character THINKING. You can see how he thinks he knows when it was - but then he remembers that he was "only about twelve" - so he has to adjust. Etc. It's deceptively simple. Almost noboby writes dialogue that sounds so effortless and so human.

But then there are some KICK ASS theatrical monologues as well - revealing human moments - which just blow you away. Lanford Wilson is quite remarkable.

Serenading Louie, if I had to compare it to something with wider appeal - is like The Big Chill. Very much so. In that way it is probably dated now. The baby boomers getting out of college, graduate school - and then having crises of conscience. In Serenading Louie - there's a group of friends - all Northwestern graduates (well, except for one) - and they are all dealing with the harsh realities of adulthood, of actually making promises to one another, of actually accepting commitment, yadda yadda. It sounds tiresome - and maybe to some listeners it would be - but the WRITING. The characters! I love this play of Wilson's. It's wonderful.

There are two couples: Mary and Carl and Alex and Gabby. Mary and Carl were college sweethearts - Carl was a football legend at Northwestern. He is a salt of the earth kind of guy. Went into the army after college. Came home and married Mary. Mary was homecoming queen in college. She is much more protected than Carl. Kind of cold. There is no other woman for Carl. But for Mary ... well ... she's in the middle of having an affair. An affair that doesn't even MEAN anything to her. She is hard and selfish (but also - strangely likable - such is the genius of Wilson). There are no villains here. In a way, Carl - the big strong jock - is a slave to Mary. An uneasy balance. Mary has an affair right under his nose and somehow he just can't care about it. Then there is Alex and Gabby. Alex was part of Mary and Carl's Northwestern crowd - he is ambitious. He's a lawyer with political ambitions. Ambitions which are now coming to fruition. Gabby is his wife - the only non-Northwesterner. And she is just LOST. She knows she is losing her husband - and she gets more and more desperate - it all becomes about sex. If she can get her husband to have sex with her on a daily basis, then that means she isn't losing him. Alex knows this isn't love - he feels exhausted by her - he sleeps on the couch - she hovers over him - it is a bad situation.

There are too many scenes to choose from. There's one amazing group scene when all 4 of them have a dinner party - and everyone is overlapping each other and talking at once - classic Wilson- but ... I thought I'd pick a part of one really long and intense scene between Carl and Alex - the two old college buddies. The jock and the brain. The scene is so long I can only excerpt a part of it. I picked the part where Carl opens up.

Carl is one of my favorite characters that Wilson ever wrote. He touches me at a really deep place. I love this man. I feel I know what he needs ... and if he only had a woman like me ... he'd be happy ... This is good playwriting - because it involves me, an adience level, at a visceral level. We identify - we think we could change the outcome IF ONLY WE WERE THERE ... but we can't. We are helpless. We have to just sit back and watch.

Here's the end of the scene. Alex and Carl are hanging out. Alex opened up a bit about Gabby and the whole sex thing. He is really bummed out about it. He doesn't think he loves her anymore. Carl's wife is cheating on him. They are old friends. Here's what happens. I think my friend David would be absolutely SPECTACULAR as Carl. Okay. Here we go.

Watch how the scene develops. Watch how it ends. Watch where the actors need to go. It is an absolutely thrilling scene. Look at the journey Carl needs to take in this one excerpt alone - the emotional place where he starts, and look at where he ends. Amazing.

EXCERPT FROM Serenading Louie, by Lanford Wilson

CARL. What's with Gabby now? Why isn't that working? What's antagonizing things?

ALEX. I don't want to discuss it; it's fine ...

CARL. You look happy enough to me -- when I see you, the two of you ... you're the perfect couple.

ALEX. I'm happy. I'm OK. I feel great! I don't know why! Of course we look happy to you. We got out and she's fine. We have a ball. We get home and she changes completely. Her voice changes, the way she walks changes, she stops laughing, or she starts laughing seductively.

CARL. He's off again.

ALEX. It's like she has a little movie of the evening up in her head and we've come to the X-rated scene. You should see the array of nightgowns she's got. She must think I've got a fetish. Or maybe she has. Why should it only be men who have fetishes? Outside with you and Mary she's fine. She comes home with just me and she changes completely. I love her too ... out. I could fuck her under the table. We get home and she practically turns to oatmeal on the threshold. She loses every bone in her body. I have to hold her up. Her kisses all turn to tongue. Like she was trying to get me hot. Hell, I was hot already. If I don't bang her in the pachysandra, she's going to turn me off by the time I can get my pants unzipped.

CARL. Your problem is you don't like big sloppy kisses. Other guys I could name live for big sloppy kisses. Some people think big and sloppy is the only way to kiss. Every bood you read, "She melted into his arms with her mouth moist and open ..."

ALEX. I don't know what books you've been reading lately.

CARL. You're making a big issue out of what is basically a matter of taste. I'd say offhand that you didn't love her, but I don't want to hear it.

ALEX. No, not that. Well. Less and less. You don't love someone all the time. You love them for moments. A while now and a while after a while. And with Gabby the times are getting fewer and -- all right -- you like to get me going. Prove my lack of convictions. Get me going. I'm sorry to be such a drag-ass, kvetching about my problems when your business is in such good shape, your married life is on such solid rock, so idyllic -- and so ...

CARL. I didn't say that. Don't start in on me now.

ALEX. The one good island in a shit-soup of disillusions.

CARL. Come on.

ALEX. Carl, you're completely transparent. Never play poker, Carl; you're going to lose your shirt.

CARL. We're not at your hearings, Alex; you're not on the House floor. Don't cross-examine me.

ALEX. Then what is it? You're turning all wooly and introspective. Morbidly thumbing over your ...

CARL. I haven't felt well.

ALEX. You're a physical horse, Carl. Mentally, the species is somewhat different lately.

CARL. I've had headaches for the past ...

ALEX. I don't know how you can tell a hangover from a headache in the condition you're usually in.

CARL. Alex, I'm not interested in being the subject of one of our tirades.

ALEX. Hell's bells and goddamn, Carl; you know she's cheating on you, don't you?

CARL. You son of a bitch!

ALEX. Don't you? [A long pause]

CARL. Does everybody know?

ALEX. I don't think so. Gabby told me.

CARL. She isn't a whore ... I think she really loves him ... it isn't like that.

ALEX. Did she tell you?

CARL. No, she doesn't know I know. I don't imagine. I saw them once. Well, I knew before that. I mean, it's something you know. There uh ... "there needs no ghost", you know? "Come from the grave to tell me this ..."

ALEX. Yeah, yeah, I know, got it.

CARL. He has a family too. Three girls.

ALEX. You know who he is?

CARL. Oh, sure ... no, skip it. This isn't any good. It's no big deal. It's a comedy ... it's a farce; it's not to be serious about.

ALEX. But you know who he is?

CARL. Yes. He's my CPA. See? His firm does the accounts for my office. Now, no more. I don't think about it. It's all the same to me.

ALEX. Mary is a powerhouse, Carl, you've got to keep ahead of her ... Hell, you know that. You used to be ahead of things.

CARL. At least you didn't say I got to keep on top of her.

ALEX. What are you doing? Joking? What are you doing?

CARL. Alex, I see it like I see everything else -- like I'm up in the air and it's down on the ground happening to someone else. It doesn't affect me. Nothing, now ... shut up about it. Please.

ALEX. OK.

CARL. I am doing nothing. To my surprise. Nothing. Waiting.

ALEX. Floating.

CARL. Waiting. It'll burn out. My God, we've been married nine years; it's normal. It's no big deal. I envy your energy that you can be concerned. It isn't Mary; Alex, I'm sorry. I can't get involved with anything. What did you call me, "wooly"?

ALEX. No, no.

CARL. "Wooly" is perfectly fair. But I'm sorry, even as you're going on about Gabby and you, I keep thinking -- I mean, I love you very much -- but if it came to the worst, you'd split up and she'd get the house and alimony and you'd get Washington and the car. And besides, I know it won't come to that. I can't imagine you taking old silent Hayes's seat in the House because I can't imagine anything. I come home and I read what you've been saying and watch the roundup of the day's news events and all that's happening in the world and it seems like a lot is, but I don't follow it. I watch and hope along that something will involve me. Touch me. Grab me. Piss me off. Something. Involve. It's the same thing as with Mary. I can't galvanize any concern. Nothing anyone says is real - how am I supposed to relate to it? Involve. I have an office manager who boils over ... gets worked up over ... I remember,w hen I was ... You'll remember ... everyone remembers ... I don't know when it was ... twelve years ago or more ... I was a kid. No, I was only about twelve or so, so it was longer ago than that. Somewhere in Colorado or Ohio or Wyoming or somewhere in the world a little girl was playing in her backyard or near a mine shaft or somewhere, and the ground caved in or she got too close to the well, but she fell down, way down -- forty or seventy feet or so into a hole. I don't know where it was, but this little girl was in this hole in the ground. She was about three years old or five or something like that. And they couldn't reach her, and firemen came and men with various kinds of gear -- and they were afraid of caving in the sides of the hole, and they tried to dig her ... reach her ... dig her out. They could hear her and knew she was alive. And everyone all over the country stayed around their radios and prayed for her. And teleprogrammed the parents' hope and messages of compassion and love and hope for this little girl. It was like a war, it was like a kidnapping or like that. A whole country -- the whole world -- people twenty thousand miles away -- were alarmed and concerned for this one ... one ... one girl. Little girl. This little kid.

[A long pause]

ALEX. And what? [Beat] What happened?

CARL. [Looking at Alex] Huh? You don't remember that? I thought everyone would remem ... No, I didn't mean it like ... It isn't a story or something. It happened. That wasn't what I meant ... I remember she dies before they could reach her, but that wasn't why I ... I didn't tell it to be sad. I just think of that time as a time when people were involved. Those events where the whole world goes into suspension and holds its breath at once, and for a little while comes together in something they realize is in some way, more important -- significant -- than anything else at that mometn. Some crisis. Some danger. [A wondering, a brief pause] We've gotten much too civilized for our own good, Alex. And I wonder ... at times .. what ... the pagans ... the p;rimitive people .. .how they felt after a public sacrifice. There's a need, some need, somewhere, for that important ... contribution. So many people feel compelled to sacrifice themselves in one way or another, excuse or another, cause or another. Themselves or something very dear. Or expose it to danger. I try to understand her. Mary. I try to understand that she needs for some reason to expose our marriage to danger. That she needs the danger more than she needs whoever it is ... more than she wants anything with Donald. Not sacrifice it if possible, but expose it to danger, herself, our marriage, Ellen. But then probably I just want to think that because I don't like believing that she loves someone else more than she does ... It's usually the man's place to have the affair, isn't it? I thought that was our downfall. [Beat]

ALEX. From the last statistics I read I understand it takes two.

CARL. Maybe I'm just naive about that. Ironic thing, of course, being she's safe really, because I can't for the life of me seem to get involved in being betrayed. Even by someone I love so ... well, you know. Because like everything else for the last two years or so it just doesn't seem worthwhile Al. Alex. Alexander. It happens to someone else. Of course you're tied up into things, various concerns, you're ...

ALEX. Oh, hell, yes. I have concerns out the ass. The government, birth control, the aged, the starving, the homeless and the shiftless, the useless ...

CARL. Yeah. Well, I see it and I try to say all the things I feel, express my concerns, but deep down I'm not fooling myself because I know that really ... honestly ... at bottom ... I don't care. I don't care. I envy you that you can, but I just don't care. I don't care. Care. C-A-R-E.

ALEX. I know how to spell it. I see it on "El" posters.

CARL. When's the last time you were on the el train?

ALEX. A lot. Really, I go. All the time. Never mind. Skip it.

CARL. They make love in the afternoon, for God's sake. When they can get away. We never did that, even before we got married. When I was getting my degree. She was a morning repeater. But not afternoons. She never like to. Does Gabby? [Carl gets a drink]

ALEX. Oh, come on, Carl.

CARL. No, no lie, does she? Gabby? if you don't mind ...

ALEX. You can't learn it by the books. Your experience is not my experience, my experience isn't yours. It isn't even Gabby's experience. Sure. Sometimes. Given Gabby. We have. She loves it!

CARL. [suddenly] Cathy Fiscus. Was the little girl's name. Little Cathy Fiscus.

ALEX. [looks to him, smiles. Pause.] In the afternoons, yeah, sure. Afterwards ... should we go out ... among people ... Saturday afternoon, Sunday. I feel ... well, like I've had it. Castrated. Shot. And I don't mean it funny or clever -- spent. Oh God, now you'll go to work or get on the phone, someone'll ask you what you did you'll say, oh ... spent the whole goddamned weekend hearing this story about a castrating female or about this guy who felt castrated ... but try to see what I mean, past all this, what really is ... for me ... or for you ... or Gabby. I mean walking with her, if we've made love in the afternoon, and go out, sometimes I get really mad at her for having robbed me of something. It's like I'm "safe" now. I feel like I'm this temporary eunuch in her ... power. It's nothing strong, and it's only in the back of my mind, fizzing away back there where it's worse ... But I get furious with her. I'd just like to be reassured that I wasn't the world's only man who felt cut, gelded -- after sleeping with his own wife. Ravaged ... I'd like jus tonce, dear God take me back to the good old eras past, just once like to ravage her! I wish to hell it was Gabby who was ... You don't know how easy you have it.

CARL. Sure, right.

ALEX. You'll never have that delicious feeling of being in service.

CARL. You know I don't agree with any of your ... I always feel very proud ...

ALEX. Hell, you don't know how good you've got it. Mary plays around with your accountant and you stay home ...

CARL. Come on.

ALEX. ... Crocheting a goddamned afghan or something.

[Carl slugs Alex quite hard -- and immediately, with a cry, grabs hold of Alex's shoulders -- holding him tightly]

CARL. Alex, Alex. I do! I do! I try to understand and see what's going on, and I see it all go by sometimes like a movie. But I try to understand why she needs this or how it happened and because I rattle on about it I think it doesn't move me any more than anything else ... Alex, why does she have to do it? [Alex, taken completely off stride, is trying to answer, trying to comfort, but neither is possible. Shouting] WHAT'S SHE TRYING TO DO? I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL, ALEX. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL. I WANT IT BACK -- LIKE IT WAS. IT WAS GOOD THEN. [Flooding. Alex, over, can mumble, "What, Carl, what?"] IT WAS GOOD THEN, GODDAMNIT, WHEN I WAS OVER THERE -- OVERSEAS -- AND WE WROTE LETTERS TO EACH OTHER; IT WAS GOOD THEN, IT WAS GOOD THEN. IT WAS GOOD! IT WAS!

[Blackout]

Cynics, skeptics, and cackling triumphant jagoffs:

Stay away from the comments section to this post.

This is not a bipartisan blog - not in any way - at least not on THIS subject.

It's a painful subject, and I can barely discuss it yet without this feeling of disbelief and .... BETRAYAL ... coming over me. I know that my loyalty to the 2004 lineup is ... emotional. Sentimental. I am attached. Plain and simple. I'm not alone in this, and I know it's not rational, but there you have it. I am attached. But then I remember how attached I was to the 1975 Red Sox. Like - those guys were just IT, for me. I don't care where Fred Lynn played after that. He's always a Red Sock to me. Fisk? Red Sock. Dewey? Red Sock. To me, at the time, there was no other team possible than that 1975 team. MERELY BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH I LOVED THEM. Okay? Do you see the psychosis here? My own feelings of attachment are somehow projected out ONTO A BASEBALL TEAM. I feel the same way about the 2004 team, and I've already had a hard time letting some of them go. Don't even TALK to me about Mueller. I just love that man. That was a real tough one. (Here's a great little montage. Sniff!)

But the bearded one?

He is dead to me now.

He is dead to me now.

Nothing can take away my affection for the 2004 Red Sox. Nothing. Johnny Damon will always be a part of that accomplishment. I am not going to erase him from my pictures of the team - like Stalin used to do every couple of years with pictures of his inner circle. "Oops - we hate him now - we have to erase him from the picture - HE NEVER EXISTED." No. Johnny Damon will always be a part of what was done that year.

However.

My mother is a wonderful painter. She doesn't ONLY paint Red Sox players - but her paintings of "those guys" - the 2004 guys - have become staples in the O'Malley family as birthday presents, Christmas presents, what have you. She has already told us what we're all getting for Christmas this year - she has been working hard on a series of paintings - one for each of us. My painting, I believe, will be of Jason Varitek. So I'm safe. But my brother's was going to be the bearded one. And the betrayal is too deep, the sense of hatred is too deep - my mom immediately began scrambling to finish another painting of another player for Bren in time for Christmas. If it were anyone else - Derek Lowe, Mueller, Dave feckin' Roberts!! - the painting could probably still be given out. But not the bearded one. You'd want to rip it off your wall every time you looked at it.

So. I feel a sense of kinship with other Red Sox fans right now (uhm - right now? How 'bout always?) I felt a certain comfort in reading this.

And so it goes, and so it goes. Life will move on. Being emotionally attached to the 2004 team - the team who did THAT, who gave me THAT, is not, perhaps rational - but nobody ever said Red Sox fans were rational. I remember that 1975 team. I remember being a kid and not wanting the season to end. I remember not feeling ready to let ANY of them go. But I did. I let them go. I was only 10 years old. Now I am older. But it's still the SAME OLD SHITE. This is what it means, to me, to be a baseball fan. There's glory and there's heartbreak. I can't do it if I'm not all emotionally involved.

Therefore my statement stands:

He is DEAD to me now.

NEXT. MOVING ON.

Johnny Damon who?

Here's a great post by the great Beth. With all of the feelings of betrayal I have - I found her persective quite illuminating. Thanks, Beth. Great post. Any post about Johnny Damon that references Schrodinger's Cat is okay by me!

The suck-up theory

Sports Guy fields questions. He has to have the coolest mail in existence.

Here's my favorite. Listen to this email:

Q: I just got through reading an article about how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are getting ready to visit Pakistan to see the quake devastation, and I couldn't help but think this has to be one of the biggest cases of sucking up to a girlfriend/wife/significant other gone wrong in recent history. Like how when you first start dating a girl, you do everything she asks, like going to crappy chick movies, her grandmother's 95th birthday party, picking her cat up from the vet, or stuff like that, just so she thinks you are actually sensitive and care about her interests, not just trying to get in her pants. Except in this instance, instead of going to the crafts store or whatever to pick out yarn for the sweater she is knitting you, you get dragged all over war-torn countries to look at death and devastation, when all you want to do is lie on the couch and watch football. I know it's Angelina Jolie, but surely it's not worth the rest of your independent life. Your thoughts? -- Justin M., Atlanta

SG: In Pitt's defense, I think he's just completely out of his mind -- he probably thinks they're still filming "Mr and Mrs. Smith." Give him the benefit of the doubt here.

"he probably thinks they're still filming 'Mr and Mrs Smith'" - why does that make me laugh???

And I love Justin too. The bit about the "crafts store" killed me.

For the record, I have never WILLINGLY gone to a 'crafts store' and I never will. Remember: I dropped out of Girl Scouts on the day they told us we were going to make duffel bags.

A real nightmare

DeAnna's real-life Nightmare Before Christmas. I cannot even describe how much I relate to her post.

The Books: "Split" (Michael Weller)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Still on the shelf of scripts:

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is another one-act by Michael Weller - a companion piece to At Home (which was yesterday's excerpt) - this one is called Split. In Split, Paul and Carol from At Home have, indeed, split up - and this play is sort of about the repercussions that one couple's breakup can have on their extended group of friends. Like - how do the friends handle it? How do the friends handle Paul or Carol dating again? It's very 30something-ish. The play is a montage of scenes - between Paul and his friends, Paul and his new girlfriend - as well as Carol and her friends (the same friends, at times, as Paul's friends) - and her new boyfriend.

I'll excerpt from the first scene - basically because I LOVE the monologue that opens this play.

Margie is .. well, her mind just doesn't work like other people's minds. She's sort of like Phoebe from Friends. The opening monologue cracks me up.

EXCERPT FROM Split by Michael Weller

[Table. A cafe. Paul and Margie with coffee. Cafe noises]

MARGIE. O.K. Stevie Wonder's blind. He's black and he's blind. That's a lot of things to have going against you, right, but instead of letting it mess him up he turns into this genius level songwriter-arranger-performer who's very fulfilled spiritually according to his songs anyway plus he's famous and rich and cool and he's able to write all these incredibly happy upbeat numbers ... and here I am this white middle-class girl with two good eyes and a college education. That's what I was trying to explain to my shrink. Stevie Wonder makes me deeply deeply depressed. The fact that he exists is really depressing to me. And of course he said I was being adolescent, which he always says. I mean I don't need him to tell me I'm adolescent. I need him to tell me it's all right that I'm adolescent. [Pause] Do you want to stop talking and we'll just sit for a while?

PAUL. No, that's OK. Talk. It's OK.

MARGIE. Why don't you tell me about what happened?

PAUL. There's nothing to tell.

MARGIE. Well, for instance, was it more of a thing where you left her, or did she leave you or what?

PAUL. I don't want to keep boring my friends talking about it. People split up all the time.

MARGIE. A lot of them haven't been married for six years.

PAUL. A lot of them have.

MARGIE. A lot of them aren't my best friends.

PAUL. It's just over, that's all. It's over. There's nothing to say.

MARGIE. You know what I think, Paul? I think it's temporary. You guys belong together. [Pause] Look, you want me to move in with you?

PAUL. Move in? You?

MARGIE. Just for a few days. While you're getting used to Carol not being there. I'd invite you to stay with me and Bob but Bob's learning how to play GO ... it's this Japanese game and you'd probably have to end up having to let him teach you how to play, which might not be kind of what you want to be doing for the next few days.

PAUL. No it's not what I had in mind. Thanks anyway.

MARGIE. I'm just trying to help. It's really lonely at the beginning. I remember when I left this guy once. He said he was a genuine Oglala Sioux Indian and I believed him for two years. Blond hair and blue eyes the guy had. He looked like Sven the Swede. Boy was he full of shit. And I was really naive. Anyway, I really missed him at the beginning even though I didn't like him. You don't look too good.

PAUL. There have been times in my life when I felt better, I must admit. It's crazy; last night I ... I didn't feel like calling anyone. I didn't feel like doing anything. I was just sitting at home watching TV and getting a little drunk and I found I was thinking an awful lot about suicide.

MARGIE. Well. It's something you should think a lot about before you take it up.

PAUL. I'm glad you called, Margie. And I have to start teaching again tomorrow.

MARGIE. You want me to talk to Carol?

PAUL. What's the point. It's just over.

MARGIE. I'll talk to her. First chance I get I'm going to talk to her. I like you guys. I hate to see this happening to you. Other people, I'm glad. You I'm not glad. [Pause] Oh, that's the other thing I meant to tell you about Stevie Wonder. He has this manager, I forgot what the guy's name is, but he goes around killing people. Really. This guy I'm working with, the video guy I told you about before ... oh, I didn't tell you what he does, he takes movies, well, actually they're videotapes, he takes these tapes of himself dancing to all the hit tunes ... all alone in his studio. That's one of the things he does, and the other thing ... oh, and he doesn't wear any clothes. Well, he told me his sister works at a place where there's this guy who used to work for Stevie Wonder's manager and he saw the guy kill someone. He actually saw it. Isn't that amazing. Oh, and anyway, this video guy shows his tapes at parties. And all his friends dance to them, but they turn the sound off so they're only dancing to the way the guy moves and he's a terrible dancer. Don't tell him I said that if you meet him. I'll tell you next time he has a party. [Pause] Don't worry, Paul. I'll talk to her. It'll be all right.

[Enter Waiter with small tray]

WAITER. Coffee and english?

MARGIE. Me.

WAITER. And ice coffee.

PAUL. And some milk with that, please.

WAITER. Did you hear something about an assassination?

MARGIE. What assassination?

WAITER. That's what I was wondering. I guess you didn't hear anything, huh? A guy just said. I think that's what he said. Maybe it was 'examination'. Gotta get my ears checked. Milk, right?

PAUL. Yes.

[The Waiter exits]

MARGIE. I know just what I'm going to say, too. Don't worry, Paul, really.

END OF SCENE

Christmas movie tribute - part 3

I actually teared up reading Alex's tribute to A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Alex writes:

"There is a market for innocence" says Schulz, whose discipline still drives him to his studio every day "to get feelings of depth and roundness, and (to know) the pen line is the best pen line you can make...I don't think I'm a true artist. I would love to be Andrew Wyeth or Picasso...But I can draw pretty well and I can write pretty well, and I think I'm doing the best with whatever abilities I have been given. And what more can one ask?"

Sniff! Sniff!

I still get chills when I think of Linus on that big empty stage, with his voice echoing up to the rafters as he tells the story of "what Christmas is all about". Alex points out something I have never noticed:

During his famed speech, Linus, who is well known to be dependent on his "Security Blanket", actually lets go of it when he recites these words: "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy" which is from Luke 8:10.

Alex writes:

It isn’t just that the speech Linus gives is poignant, it is relevant. There is never a time when the world is not going to need a Special about good will and peace on earth. It’s a careful reminder of what we hope to achieve. Not just at this time of year, but always and while we are living on the planet with each other.

Go read her whole post!

The power of seven

I got this from Roo. Make sure you read hers - they're quite wonderful.

Seven Things to Do Before I Die

1. Travel through Iran. Well, might as throw in the other countries. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, western China, and hell - take the Trans Siberian Express while we're at it. But if I had to choose? Travel all through Iran.

2. Have a baby

3. Publish many books

4. STOP RENTING. START OWNING. I'd like to have a house. Just a wee house. But some kind of house.

5. Find him. Well, #5 will need to come before #2 (for me anyway) but I'm doing this meme in a stream of conscious way. Oh, and along with #5 - have my dad walk me down the aisle.

6. Have a red carpet experience. Where I'm ON the red carpet, not watching from the sidelines

7. Live in Ireland for a while. Not visit. But live. In the west.

Seven Things I Cannot Do

1. Enjoy coconut, applesauce, bananas, or cake. Don't even try, CHiPs. (Explanation for that remark here.)

2. I cannot figure skate at an Olympic level, to my intense sadness

3. I will steal one from Roo: add up a column of numbers only once, without double and triple checking my work, saying things outloud like, "carry the one".

4. Go back in time and change my behavior on April 30, 1994 - oh, what the hell: go back in time and take a WHOLE BUNCH OF SHIT BACK throughout my whole life. Can't erase the past.

5. I can't roll my "r"s convincingly. I sound like a jackass when I try to speak Spanish.

6. I can't have the body type of Heidi Klum

7. I can't think that communism was originally a good idea - if only it hadn't been corrupted by autocratic tyrants. Nope. Communism was a bad idea to begin with, mkay? Don't even try, CHiPs. I'm kind of not even interested in debating it. I know it's obnoxious but I don't respect the intelligence of someone who thinks differently than I do on this one particular matter.

Seven Things that Attract Me to My Mate
What a rude question. I do not have a mate. Although one of roo's answer about her mate was so touching and sweet:

Jeff decided he really should know more about theatre, so he could discuss my work intelligently. In the next week, he read my entire collection of classical plays, which I haven't even done, despite my advanced theatre degree (shhh!). Then he found a site where he could download the entire oeuvres of Euripides and the like, and proceeded to do so. Then I woke up one morning to discover that Jeff hadn't come to bed-- he'd stayed up all night making flash cards, to teach himself Attic Greek.

GORGEOUS! Well, I got no mate. So I will change the question to Seven Things I am Looking For In a Prospective Mate. And please - every time I post something like this where I actually (horrors) say that I have PREFERENCES - some man makes a comment about how picky I am. And it immediately, like clockwork, turns into a bitter generalization: "Women just ..." blah blah blah. Please just SHADDUP. Are men attracted to EVERY FEMALE? I bet not. I feel no obligation to be agnostic in my tastes in something that is so important.

That being said: I know what works with my personality, and what I'm attracted to. And here it is:

1. Compatible senses of humor. If I have to say "that was a joke" more than 3 times then it won't work. Shared laughter is the most important thing.

2. Unselfconsciousness in just being who he is. I hate "cool". I hate games. I love guys who maintain that kid side. Who can just PLAY - whether it's in conversation, or laughter, or kissing me, or playing football with his friends. I hate guys who are concerned with making an effect. Who always have that outside eye on them. Ick. I love guys who throw back their heads when they laugh.

3. Someone who finds women interesting. Lots of men don't get women, they think we're nuts, they think we're crazy, but they find us INTERESTING. This is good. But there are the men who want to be with women (as in: they're straight, they want a mate, they want to have sex) and yet they find women mildly annoying at best and NEVER interesting. Ick!! I've met (and dated) plenty of men who LOVE women and who have no idea what is going on in our heads half the time. But they LOVE us and find us interesting. I find men interesting, even though I don't understand them a lot of the time. I expect the same in return. This is a thing that is innate though - either you have it or you don't.

4. Awesome hands. Hands that make gestures, hands that TALK.

5. Preferably Irish. This coloring KILLS ME: pale skin, black hair, blue eyes. You gotta have all the rest going on (in terms of personality) to KEEP me interested - if you have no sense of humor then I could not give a shit about your damn coloring - but with all the rest? It's a devastating combo. (See Window Boy)

6. Someone who knows how to have a conversation and who knows how to tell a great story. I'm an awesome audience. But you BEST know how to talk. Tell me stories - but not stories where you always get the better of someone, or "show someone what's what". You know people who always tell stories where the moral is: I am great and I am right? Ew!! Irish men (in my experience) are the best at the OPPOSITE of this. Their stories are OPERAS of self-deprecation - they LOVE it when the laugh is on them - which ... charming doesn't even begin to describe it. The art of conversation is dying, my friends. Those who still have it are worth their weight in gold.

7. Must. Like. Kids.

Seven Things I Say Most Often

1. No shit!

2. What a fucking retard.

3. Are you kidding me?

4. I am completely insane.

5. Have you read this book??

6. Please don't judge, but ....

7. What's up?

Seven Books That I Love Oh man. This'll be tough. Okay - so I am going with the word 'love'. Which means my heart is involved, which is not always rational. These are the books that have captured my heart, for whatever reason - books that moved me, made me grow, changed me, what have you.

1. Charlotte's Web

2. Diary of Anne Frank

3. The Shipping News

4. Moby Dick

5. Crime and Punishment

6. Harriet the Spy

7. Little Women

Seven Movies I Watch Over and Over Again

I will steal a quote from Roo: "Please note that this is not necessarily synonymous with My Seven Favorite Movies."

Exactly. Here are the movies I can watch over and over and over and over again.

1. Bring It On ("Brrr - It's cold in here! There must be some Toros in the atmosphere. I said Brrrr - it's cold in here! There must be some Toros in the atmosphere.")

2. Something's Gotta Give (I have to have seen the damn thing 20 times already and it just came out last year or something like that)

3. Bringing Up Baby ("Peabody? WHAT Peabody?")

4. GI Jane (I don't care what anyone says. This is a genius movie. It works every time I see it. Viggo Mortenson is amazing.)

5. Center Stage (oh. my. God.)

6. African Queen ("By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.")

7. Blue Crush (best movie. EVER. Never get tired of it. She's such a horrible surfer - why has she EVER gotten that far?? It makes no sense. I don't care. Love the film.)

Seven People I'm Curious About

I'm gonna go with alive AND dead people.

1. Marilyn Monroe

2. Josef Stalin

3. Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie Van Houten (Linda Kasabian too - but not as much as the other three for obvious reasons)

4. Archie Leach

5. James Joyce

6. Thomas Jefferson

7. Lucy Maud Montgomery

Alex just did this "meme" (hate that word) as well!! Here it is. I think my favorite part is when she says "We can rarely surprise each other. In order for a surprise to work, one of us has to leave the country."

Post Office stories

Just came back from the post office. Things are a bit, shall we say, nutty in New York right now - due to the transit strike, for one thing. The streets are way more crowded than normal, and there is a traffic jam on every corner. Also, with Christmas - New York has that frenetic barely pleasurable last-minute shopping frenzy feel to it. I dreaded the post office. But I went and got there just in time. There were only a couple of people ahead of me.

Now - one thing happened which made me think of something else (ain't that always the way).

A guy stood in front of me. He had a long ponytail which was knotted a couple of times on the way down - so that it had sort of the look of Dumbledore's beard in the latest Harry Potter. The man's hair was greying - so we're talking MAJOR aging hippie energy.

I had a big package, he had a small certified letter.

There were only a couple of windows open, and so there was that kind of tense animal-alert feel through the line. You had to be on your toes. You had to be READY TO GO when it was your turn. If you paused for a MILLISECOND of a MILLISECOND, someone farther back in the line would jump down your throat. You could not pause. It was a group event. We all had to work together. If I paused, or if I got distracted when another window opened up - then I would be affecting the 20 people behind me. BAD collective behavior. New Yorkers are very good at collective behavior.

I've said it before and I will say it again: People think New Yorkers are rude. We might SEEM rude but what is REALLY going on is that we are OBSESSED with manners, WAY more than people who live in regions where the residents actually can have personal space and get the hell away from each other. We cannot get away from each other - therefore, we are OBSESSED with manners. And everyone must play along. In New York good manners mean: wait your turn, don't cut, don't shove, respect other people's boundaries, don't just stop on a crowded sidewalk and stare around - you're messing up the traffic, and DON'T waste other people's time. There are too many of us on this tiny island - we all must work together.

I have seen this dynamic again and again, and I just love it. It cracks me up. We are all in each other's business. If it's a crowded Times Square sidewalk, and you who are in front of me - suddenly STOP and take out your cell phone - so that I crash into you - you will HEAR from me what I think of your behavior. It's selfish. You are not alone. Get out of the line of traffic. Realize that you are not the only person on the planet.

New Yorkers may correct people in a rude way - but it's not random rudeness. It has to do with the fact that people who do not "play along", who think they can play it their OWN way, need to be scolded and corrected. We all take it on ourselves.

Hippie Guy and I stood, silently, waiting. Separate. Alert as animals, staring up and down the line of windows, ready to move IMMEDIATELY at the blessed call, "Step down, please!"

Then - both of us saw the same thing:

A girl tried to bypass the line and walk right up to one of the windows. Because she had just a little something she needed - a book of stamps, a question answered, whatever. I saw this happen - and he saw it happen - we both just stared at her back with rageful eagle-eyes - I was getting ready to do my part in this collective group experience of being in line at the Post Office - and shout, "Hey - there's a huge line! Wait your turn!" - but I didn't have to. Post Office Lady behind counter gestured in a blase manner at the long line, and went back to helping her current customer.

Hippie Man turned and gave me a look. I shook my head in disbelief. He did too. He said, "There's always one person, you know? There's always one person." "Unbelievable." He said, "I have one stupid letter to mail ..." "Right - but you're in line. Because that's what you do." "Exactly." "Unbelievable."

A moment of New York bonding. A moment of Being-in-line bonding. I love it. New Yorkers hate lines, but we respect them. I don't know - the whole thing cracks me up. We police ourselves, basically, because there are just too damn many of us to let everyone go HOG WILD and start CUTTING IN LINE left and right. IT WOULD BE ANARCHY!!!

I have posted a number of funny post office stories here.

So here they are.

Gladys, you're all right - Gladys made such an impression on me that if I saw her on the street today I would recognize her. Loved her.

Post office love and perfume - yet another example of rigid line-behavior (only this time I was the bad person in line - it happens to all of us!)

And of course, the ever-popular and highly controversial Kwanzaa Subterfuge

Always an adventure at the post office. But I loved my outraged bonding moment with Hippie Guy. I felt like he and I were about to charge over there like panthers and drag that girl off to the bushes. No WAY do you cut in line! We have invested TIME out of our LIVES in this line! And you think you can just skip it? The nerve.

But here, though, is what standing in line at the post office REALLY made me think of:

The mother of all standing-in-line stories (at least on this blog, I don't know about elsewhere): The Line. I waited in line for 18 hours to get tickets to a play. I slept in the dirt. Secrets of humanity were revealed. You know. The usual.

Tribute to "The Nightmare Before Christmas"

Part 2 from Alex in her tribute to her favorite Christmas movies: The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Incredible information (as always). Some of her words on the marvelous Danny Elfman:

Elfman’s brilliance lies in his ability to tell us who the character is by the way he treats his foe. Have you ever heard a song in which Santa Clause is referred to as a villain? This is genius. The Boogie Man assumes from what he's heard that Santa Clasu is this awful feared gargoyle that reigns supreme in the monster world, and when he’s presented as a jolly, fat man with a beard, we look at Clause in a whole different light.

Also, I just have to say that I am in agreement with another one of her points: Catherine O'Hara is one of my favorite actresses. Ever.

On the movie itself:

I actually resisted this movie for the longest time. I’m a huge Burton fan, and have been for years, but Holiday Time is about candy canes and bowls full of jelly. I wanted no part of this film. After I saw it however, I realized what Burton had in mind and how he revelled not only in the Holiday itself, but the fact that, as with all great Christmas movies, it’s about what you say, and the fact that you say it all: Be Who You Are. That’s where happiness lies. It’s a wonderful film.

Here's the whole post. Go read it!!

Babalu Christmas

I cherish Val's blog for many reasons - but he knows that one of the main reasons is because occasionally he writes posts like this. His personal posts take my breath away.

Thanks, Val.

Speaking of The Grinch:

Ahem:

Peter Bogdonavich, in his wonderful book, Who the hell's in it, devotes a chapter to Boris Karloff.

Here's an excerpt:

Through four decades during his lifetime, and now more than thirty years later, the name Boris Karloff has not only identified a star actor, but conjured up a certain sort of character as well, a very particular representative image. The identification certainly began with the sensation of Frankenstein, but this was deepened through the years by equally intense, brilliant performances in horror movies that most often were less than inspired. Yet he brought the same concentration and sense of responsibility to things like The Haunted Strangler (1958) as he did to more complicated roles in films like John Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934); or, on the Broadway stage, with wickedly funny self-parody in Arsenic and Old Lace in the forties, or in the fifties with children's story-book menace as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and with poetic realism as the Dauphin to Julie Harris' Joan of Arc in Jean Giraudoux's The Lark -- a beuatiful performance I was fortunate to see - and for whic h he received a Tony nomination. In 1966, his superb narration for the brilliant Chuck Jones feature cartoon of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas helped to make that work an abiding classic.

Considering the majority of the movies in which he was cast (about 140 in all, including 40 silents, starting as an extra in 1916), it is not so remarkable that he almost always transcended his vehicles; but that audiences the world over still treasured him after so much screen junk is unique. They knew that Karloff's star presence in even the worst of these gave them a measure of his consdiderable talent, grace and wit. Therein, of course, was the great irony of his horror image: it was absolutely nothing like the man, any more than the sinister-sounding stage name which William Henry Pratt chose for himself, the surname Karloff by itself sending chills up the collective spine throughout the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. It still does.

Yet the audience also knew in some way that this consummate beyond-evil heavy was actually a tasteful, knowledgeable British gentleman -- shocked by unkindness and never less than polite -- with a sense of humor about himself and his roles, and only genuine gratitude to the public for their long-lasting affection. It was one of the reasons he kept working right through his eighty-first year. He was just an actor, he would say, who had been lucky enough to find a particular place on the screen and, as long as people wanted him, what right did he have to retire?

A tutorial on The Grinch

Alex is doing a series of Christmas movie tributes, and here's her marvelous one on The Grinch. The woman is encyclopedic in her knowledge but then we also have brief paragraphs like this:

I loved transformation movies. Movies where the central character not only learns something about themselves, but that certain something literally catapults them into a different place. They are clearer, wiser, or more spiritually agile. This is true in Grinch. It’s simple, funny, silly, and full of the true spirit of the Holidays. The fact that nothing, no matter how devious or well planned could stop good cheer and selflessness from coming, is gargantuan. It’s not about giving, it’s not about receiving, it’s simply about accepting. Accepting what’s in all of us. Not that we have to search it out, but that no matter what we do, or what anyone else does, that part of who we are is always tangible. It’s up to us as individuals to seek it out, and use it.

Go read the whole post.

The Books: "At Home" (Michael Weller)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is a one-act by Michael Weller which I had completely forgotten about until this morning: At Home. I LOVE Michael Weller. I don't know why he always slips my mind! He's a wonderful playwright - very kitchen sink drama - but also very funny. He wrote Moonchildren - one of his major successes. At Home is a two-character play - Carol and Paul are married. The beginning of the play finds them right after they have had a fight. They are having another couple over for dinner - who have not arrived yet. As they make the salad, they fight about the vegetables or whatever - and eventually, of course, it is revealed that they are fighting about WAY more than vegetables. It's a small play - it's a slice of life play -

I just love his dialogue. It's funny, it's human, it's surprising - it sounds like people talk. I need to get more Michael Weller in my library, actually.

I'll excerpt a bit from the beginning of the play.

From At Home, by Michael Weller

CAROL. Well?

PAUL. She's on her way. She's not there.

CAROL. Who were you talking to?

PAUL. Her machine.

CAROL. Oh. How is it.

PAUL. Fine. Her machine is fine.

CAROL. Are you going to give me a hand?

PAUL. What happened to the other wine glass?

CAROL. It broke.

PAUL. It broke? It just sat there and broke?

CAROL. I broke it.

PAUL. When?

CAROL. A few weeks ago. You put it at the edge of the shelf. I opened the door and it fell out.

PAUL. I did not put the wine glasses near the edge of the shelf. I never put the wine glasses near the edge of the shelf. I always put them in back.

CAROL. Some people broke in. Four men. They moved the wine glasses to the edge of the shelf, closed the cabinet door and got away undetected. I didn't call the police because I didn't want to upset you, I know how important those wine glasses are to you ...

PAUL. They're a wedding present, Carol. It's not funny.

CAROL. All right, it was only two men ...

PAUL. Why does everything get broken around here? Why don't we have a single complete set on anything any more.

CAROL. Well get married again and cash in. We'll get divorced and then get married again.

PAUL. You say the most incredibly stupid things sometimes.

CAROL. So do you. This is still the argument, isn't it. We're still arguing.

PAUL. No. I mean, I don't know.

CAROL. Come on, give me a hand with the salad and show me what I'm supposed to do with that potato thing creation stuff you started.

PAUL. I thought I fuck everything up in the kitchen.

CAROL. Sweetie, I was angry. You're not supposed to listen to what I say when I'm angry. You're just supposed to listen to the noise. It's just noise, it's not words. It didn't happen. I didn't say anything. I take it all back.

PAUL. But why did you get angry, that's what I don't understand. What did I say? What did I do.

CAROL. Nothing. There was no reason. I just got angry, that's all.

PAUL. I thought you liked her. I thought you two were friends.

CAROL. Who? Jean? I do. I like her. I think she's super-duper.

PAUL. She's a friend.

CAROL. That's right, she's a friend. That's why I think she's super-duper. That's why I'm dying to meet her new boopsie, that's why I'm dying to know all about him and it's going to be a great evening and then they're going to go home and leave us alone and we can talk about them behind their backs. Now please, sweetie, give me a hand.

PAUL. You're jealous of her, aren't you.

CAROL. Oh, you know us married women, we're always jealous of the single gals.

PAUL. That's right, make a joke out of it.

CAROL. All right, yes, I'm jealous of Jean. No, I'm not jealous of Jean per se. I'm just ... I'm pissed off, that's all ... I'm tired of her ...

PAUL. Of what?

CAROL. Of her goddamn fucking insinuations. I'm tired of her hovering around all the time ... I'm tired of ... I don't like the way she keeps making such an effort to be my friend when she doesn't like me all that much really and I barely like her at all and she knows it and I ... why does she keep wanting me to go shopping with her and take yoga classes and have lunch.

PAUL. But she does like you.

CAROL. She likes you, Paul. She's your friend. She keeps wanting to hang around with me so we can all be friends so she can be your friend and it won't look so obvious what's going on.

PAUL. That's bullshit.

CAROL. You know what she talks about when we're together? You. What a great guy you are. How lucky I am. How she wishes she had someone like you. How much fun she has with us, meaning you, what a perfect couple we are. I mean, I get the point.

PAUL. Well if you feel that way why do you keep hanging around with her.

CAROL. Because I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of not hanging around with her.

PAUL. You're being absurd, you know that? Jean is a friend. She happens to be a woman. What's wrong with that. What's wrong with the fact that I have a best friend that's a woman. I'm a freak, all right, I'm not normal, I don't like baseball, I don't like poker, I don't like talking about women I'd like to sleep with ... I don't like beer. I like women, I like to be with them, I prefer it. It's not sexual. I just enjoy spending time with Jean.

CAROL. Well that's terrific.

PAUL. You have men friends. It's not sexual.

CAROL. Who?

PAUL. Who? Well, Larry, for one.

CAROL. Larry's gay.

PAUL. Gay? He's living with Vickie.

CAROL. He needs time. He's a slow developer.

PAUL. I don't believe this conversation. This isn't us. I don't recognize us in this conversation.

CAROL. Paul. I'm sorry about ... before. I was just in a good mood. I don't know why you took it the way you did. I mean, don't you think it's a little much for you to get so worked up over a carrot. It's not the end of the world, you know. We do have other carrots. Can I have some wine? [Paul pours her a glass. She drinks. After a moment.]

PAUL. It wasn't the carrot.

CAROL. Thenw hat was it?

PAUL. It was your poking the carrot with a pencil.

CAROL. This is a really grown-up conversation. I feel really adult.

PAUL. You asked.

CAROL. Paul, could we please have a talk-talk. This is stupid. This isn't getting us anywhere.

PAUL. We have to do the meal.

CAROL. I don't care about the meal right now. If we don't figure out what this was all about before they get here I swear when she walks through that door with her Elrod or Ogden or Travis or whatever his name is I'm going to shove the roast down her blouse. I can't stand this, Paul, I can't stand it.

PAUL. All right, we'll talk-talk.

CAROL. Good.

PAUL. You frist.

CAROL. Can I have a little more wine? [He pours for both of them. She giggles]

PAUL. What?

CAROL. You're just so cute. [They drink]

PAUL. Well? It's your turn.

CAROL. All right. Talk-talk. I want to tell you what I think happened. This is how I see it. You were makikng the salad. You were cutting the carrots. I was putting the roast in the oven. You were talking about Jean. Do you agree so far?

PAUL. Yes.

CAROL. OK. Now ... you were saying how much fun Jean is. How she really listens to what you're saying, how she really seems to understand you, how she's really interesting. [Pause] Well, isn't that what you were saying.

PAUL. What are you getting at.

CAROL. Well, I am too, goddamnit, I'm all those things.

PAUL. I never said you weren't.

CAROL. It's still my turn, let me finish.

PAUL. May I just say one thing?

CAROL. What?

PAUL. I think you're all those things, too. It's just that I happened to be talking about Jean.

CAROL. OK, you can tell me when it's your turn.

PAUL. I love you, Carol.

CAROL. OK, don't forget anything you're going to say, but let me finish.

PAUL. You're beautiful ...

CAROL. You were making the salad ...

PAUL. You're sexy ...

CAROL. Thank you ... so I looked at the salad ...

PAUL. I want to make love ...

CAROL. Babe, please, let me finish. Let's just clear this up but don't keep trying to change the subject.

PAUL. All right, but I just want you to know while you're talking, I want you to keep in mind the fact that I have an erection.

CAROL. Paul, why do you always do this!

PAUL. Get an erection ...?

CAROL. Forget it ... [Carol rises angrily and starts out]

PAUL. All right, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an asshole. Come back.

CAROL. Will you listen to me?

PAUL. Yes, I will listen to you. Come on, sit down. [Carol sits back down]

C AROL. You were cutting the carrots and talking about Jean and you didn't see me but I was looking at you. And I was wondering why you always think everyone is so great and interesting and wonderful all the time. And then I wondered what it would be like if I was the same way ... if I felt the same way about everything ... maybe that would be better, maybe I'd be a better person ... I'm just telling you what I was thinking about, and then suddenly I thought you're the most beautiful man I ever saw and that surprised me because we've been married six years and sometimes I look at you and you seem like someone I just met and I want to have a date with you and make you fall in love with me and then I realize you're my husband and it seems amazing to me. So, anyway, I saw you cutting the carrot and I thought wouldn't it be nice if we were bunny rabbits.

PAUL. Bunny rabbits?

CAROL. Yeah. We could be furry brown bunny rabbits and dig a hole in the ground and cuddle up together and ... and never ever see anybody ... and that'd be all I want. It was just a thought. But I also thought this isn't the kind of thing I can say to you because ... well, because that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable so ... so instead I ...

PAUL. You poked my carrot with a pencil.

CAROL. Sweetie, I was just joking around. It's a carrot for christ sake. I thought it was funny. I was having a good time, like wives can have with their husbands, just like their husbands can have with their best non-sexual female friends.

PAUL. I asked you to stop. I didn't get angry at first. I asked nicely. The carrot is for the salad. You don't poke a pencil into a carrot that is going into a salad. It's unsanitary, you could get lead poisoning.

CAROL. Graphite poisoning, they don't use lead in pencils. Look, Jean's weird, she's very weird, but she's not so weird that she's going to go rooting through the salad looking for carrots with puncture holes. We're not suspected of being carrot puncturers.

PAUL. Why did you do it, that's all I want to know.

CAROL. I told you, I was a bunny rabbit.

PAUL. Bunny rabbits eat carrots. They don't poke pencils into them.

CAROL. I was being a bunny rabbit with penis envy. [They laugh briefly]

PAUL. This still feels like an argument. [Suddenly, Carol cries openly, no warning. Paul holds her]

CAROL. What we said before ... we didn't mean it, did we?

PAUL. God, I hope not.

CAROL. You don't want to split up, do you?

PAUL. Of course not ... we were just ... I don't know ...

CAROL. Why did we say it?

PAUL. It doesn't matter. We didn't mean it.

CAROL. We're the best couple I know. You're not tired of being together are you?

PAUL. Carol, we were just angry. That's all. Let's forget about it.

CAROL. Jean told me people think we're the perfect couple.

PAUL. Well then we can't split up, can we. We have too much to live up to. We can't disappoint all our friends.

CAROL. Splitting up was not mentioned tonight. I declare it to have never been mentioned.

PAUL. I second the motion.

CAROL. Let's get drunk before they get here. Let's be really disgusting hosts. See if we can gross-out Jean's new guy. Damn, the beans. Pour me a little more wine. [Carol exits into the kitchen. Paul pours more wine]

PAUL. I never thought you were jealous, that's all. You never have been. That's why I was surprised when ... we have all these friends, we see them all the time, we talk about them behind their backs, they talk about us behind our backs, we all wonder who has the best life, the best relationship, the best sex, the best apartment, the most happiness. I mean, that's what friends are for.
[Carol re-enters]

CAROL. Beans are on. What?

PAUL. I said that's what friends are for, to make you feel your life isn't as good as theirs, or that it's better, or that it even makes any difference. What are you looking at?

CAROL. It scared me, the things we said.

PAUL. It scared me too.

CAROL. Was it moving out of the city? Have you changed your mind?

PAUL. No, I want to get out of here.

CAROL. Was it having a baby?

PAUL. No, I want that, I want everything we've been planning. I want it. I'm happy.

CAROL. Then what was it?

PAUL. Do you really think Jean's trying to get something going with me?

CAROL. If she isn't she's stupid. I would if I were her.

PAUL. Come here. [Carol sits on his lap] I don't know why we talked about splitting up. I don't want to. And I know you don't want to. So, therefore, we never said it. All right.

An exciting new list

Cullen has posted Part 1 of his very own Top 25 all-time best metal albums. I am so excited about this list that I am actually hyperventilating!

I love his comments most of all.

On Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power:

There is no album heavier than this. It’s as simple as that. The title is amazingly apt. There was a visceral power to Pantera that very few bands ever possess. Dimebag Darrell’s guitar work is at it’s best on Vulgar Display … with such powerhouse songs as Walk and This Love shredding your senses. You can feel Phil Anselmo’s anguish as he belts out the vocals. There may be and may have been better musicians than Pantera, but there has never been a band alive that can make you feel exactly what they are feeling. There has never been a band before or since that can translate a boot to the freaking head like Pantera. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

I could not agree more - so well said. I have a hard time expressing music in words - I know what I like, but it's hard for me to say why, or to express why I think something is good. It's much easier for me to talk about actors because I have a vocabulary with acting, and I can get into what exactly it is that they might be doing, and why.

Cullen has that with music. He knows music and he knows how to talk about it. I look forward to more installments!

I am still me

I stood in line at Actors Equity, holding my contract, and my membership form. I was so excited. This has been a day I have long awaited - not that it means anything - not really - but it is definitely a step forward. I have waited a long time. I got a bit choked up when I left the office, emerging onto the throngs on 46th Street, the cold wind whipping across town from the Hudson ... feeling: Just remember this moment. Take a second to revel in this moment. Actors Equity, by the way, is right next door to my favorite church in the city. It's on 46th in between 7th and 6th. If you're ever in town, and like beautiful churches - this one - squished in between two massive office buildings - is a MAGICAL spot. I walk in there and I literally can't even hear the traffic anymore - even though I know that that's just an illusion. It is a true enclave of peace. I even feel like my heart rate slows down when I pass through the big front doors. It's a nice block - and now that block will be MUCH more in my life in a regular way. Which is cool. I can also visit "my" church more often. Equity card goes hand in hand with church-visiting. Good stuff.

But my main anxiety was that my name would already be taken by someone else in the Union. I've talked about this before. I already had a couple of names in my head - to use in case Sheila O'Malley was already taken - but ... I don't know. It would be quite stressful. To suddenly have to have a new name, professionally. To have to change everything - my voice mail, my photos, yadda yadda. Also, I just like my name. I think it's a nice name. I'm not Englebert Humperdinck (and please - let us all remember that his name was actually Arnold George Dorsey and he changed it to ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINCK- Eddie Izzard does a brilliant bit on it - "I just wish I could have been in the room when that decision was made.") But anyway. I had my fingers crossed.

I got in line in the bustling membership department. There were a couple of windows open and two windows became available at the same time - so there were two of us getting our membership at the same moment - and she (the girl next to me) was 30 seconds ahead of me in the process - so as MY representative was looking to see if MY name was taken - she was already getting word that HER name was available. She breathed a sigh of relief, we made eye contact, and she said, "Sometimes you just get lucky" and she showed me her membership application, and her name is, indeed VERY common. I said, "Congratulations! I hope that my name ... well ... my name is Sheila O'Malley." I saw the look cross over her face. She winced. hahahaha There are a gazillion Irish people in Actors Equity - not to mention a gazillion O'Malleys - the majority of whom are my cousins - and Sheila O'Malley is not an uncommon name. She said, "Uh-oh. Good luck with that." Then came a laughing conversation about ridiculous names that we would have chosen if our real names had been taken. I made some STUPID joke about changing my name to something in the Xhosa language - which was SUCH a stupid joke, but everyone just started cracking UP. SO DUMB. Like - you walk into the audition room: "Hi, my name is click!!CLOCK-clock-clickclick and I will be doing a monologue from Macbeth. Thank you." SO STUPID. But it certainly broke up the tension of waiting to see if there was another Sheila O'Malley on the books.

Then my lovely representative said, with a tone of surprise, "Your name has not been taken yet!" It shocked even HER. I said, "Yay!!" And the other girl got so excited - and we actually hugged. "Congratulations, Sheila O'Malley!" she exclaimed.

hahaha One of those random moments of warmth that you sometimes (very rarely) find in the middle of a bureaucracy.

So now I can still be me.

Google search ...

Okay - so most Google searches that lead people to my site are silly. People are looking for something, they get to my site, and immediately click off.

But there are a couple of posts that people habitually stay to read - because - well, either the title of the post was exactly what they were looking for, or it immediately launches into the history of some event that they are curious about.

They are a very strange eclectic group of posts - but it's interesting that somehow these ones are, to quote Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, sticky. People land on them and they seem (at least from the time spent) to stay.

They have nothing in common.

They are

The Playboy Riots

On September 12, 1974 ....

Macedonia: 20th Century Wars

Howard Hughes' OCD (oh, and check out the comment thread on that one ... I have purposefully left it open, even with all the spam attacks, because ... well ... just look at the conversation going on there.)

Azerbaijan's War with Armenia

My post about St. Elmo's Fire

hahahahaha Classic. Azerbaijan and Judd Nelson's flaring nostrils. It all makes sense.

Happy Birthday, Poor Richard

On this day in history, December 19, 1732, Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack was born - and the first issue published. I'll do a bigger post about it tonight when I get home and am near to my awesome LIBRARY where I have a couple of biographies of Franklin to excerpt. Suffice it to say: it was an amazing project - almanacs were big sellers in those days (the best sellers) - so Franklin included all the information that almanacs normally provide - sun rise, sun set, eclipses, weather predictions, yadda yadda. But it was also one of those small things (or - not so small - but let's just say that Richard's Almanack couldn't have done it on its own) that made the colonies feel more like a community. The colonies did things for themselves. They were under the crown, but that feeling of being separate from the crown started very early - and the almanac - with its listing of court dates, and town meetings, and church meetings, etc. - was part of that. It helped foster that. It helped spread information.

But of course - what has withstood the test of time? The PROVERBS.

I remember my grandmother, Mummy Gina, had a huge illustrated Richard's Almanack at her house that we loved to page through as kids . I can still see some of the illustrations in my mind. I remember very well the illustration for the proverb about visitors being like fish (they start to stink after a couple of days).

I love Ben Franklin. He was just so earthy, so funny - not to mention brilliant and inventive. I just love his sense of humor. I feel like he might have been fun to hang out with, really interesting man.

I love this website. Ha!!! Especially in light of the whole key on the kite thing.

Some of the proverbs from the almanac (he freely admitted that he did not invent many of these - they were passed down, or he would put his own humorous spin on them):

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

After three days men grow weary, of a wench, a guest, and weather rainy.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.

Have you something to do tomorrow? Do it today

There are no gains without pains.

The noblest question in the world is: What good may I do in it?

Poor Richard's Almanack is still in print today. Extraordinary.

Snapshots

-- Walking on 9th Avenue last night, and I passed one of those sidewalk Christmas-tree vendors. All the trees tied up and leaning against a fence - a guy with huge gloves handling the trees - it was outside a busy CVS - with flourescent lights and automatic doors - but as I walked by, the scent of pine was just intoxicating. Amazing - how evocative the sense of smell is. Of all the senses, it is truly transportive. I was on a bustling Manhattan street, but one whiff of that pine and I was walking through through the woods by Potter's Pond.

-- Also because it was in Chelsea, all of the people buying Christmas trees, were gay couples. For some reason, it touched me. One couple in particular, with their wool scarves, their little glasses ... walking up and down the row of trees, looking for which one would be right. Excited, laughing.

-- I am now reading the collected letters of Tennessee Williams, volume II (thanks, as ever, peteb!!). After my Tennessee Williams orgy over the last couple of months with the daily excerpts - reading this has been quite appropriate. I'm not ready to leave Williams' universe yet. Volume I is wonderful - it takes you up to the moment when Glass Menagerie opens in 1947. He is on the cusp of success. Volume II now takes you into the world of success itself. Now we're getting into Streetcar - the development of it, his relationship with Elia Kazan, finding Marlon Brando ... It's FASCINATING. He was a wonderful letter-writer. Gore Vidal just made a cameo. Very funny stuff - Williams met Gore Vidal in Rome. Vidal was 23 years old and had just come out with his first book. Williams describes in a letter to someone else how Vidal was literally obsessed by Truman Capote. All he could talk about was Truman Capote - whose first book had ALSO just come out - and how he didn't like his writing - and how HE was better than Capote, etc. etc. Williams is turned off by that competitive spirit amongst writers - he didn't like it - but the glimpse you get of Vidal is very funny. Williams thought Vidal was gorgeous, a young Greek god, (and he really was, back then) - but he did get tired of listening to Vidal bitch about Capote's undeserved success.

-- I watched an old episode of Sex and the City last night - one I had never seen. Matthew McConaghey shows up in it - as himself. He was absolutely HYSTERICAL. Has anyone seen that episode? I was laughing out loud at his portrayal of himself as an overly eager actor, who gets right up into people's faces, and talks too much, and is way ... "too much" in general. He was hysterical.

-- I bought the latest CD by the Trans Siberian Orchestra - haven't listened to it yet - but I'm really excited. I love their first one - which I have.

-- I saw Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was tremulous. I was actually NERVOUS. Jen and I both said we were nervous about it, because we loved the books so much. What if they messed it up?? I'll do a longer post about it if I feel like it - but suffice it to say I do not think they "messed it up". All the Christian websites being all triumphalist (and really really literal) about this movie is kind of annoying - although I understand it - and I know that to THEM they wanted to make sure that the Christian message was intact. Fine. That's not my concern. I didn't read the book as a Christian allegory when I was 10 - although now, of course, I can see that it is an "allegory". But what 10 year old wants to read an allegory? Bah. It's too literal. CS Lewis himself said he wanted it to just be a rollicking good story - although he wasn't as ANTI-allegory as his good friend Tolkien. I read Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe as an unbeLIEVABLE story which caught me up in its spirit and did not let me go. Also: if the special effects took over, if there was too much CGI, if they weren't done in just the right way... you would completely lose one of the main elements of the book - which was its pre-modern pre-Judeo-Christian world of Narnia. It's a world where fauns run around, where nature (in the form of perpetual winter) has taken over, where magic is used - but in a very raw rough pagan way. If you have glittery special effects - and they don't work - then ... you suddenly know you're watching a modern creation. I didn't have a problem with any of the special effects - and the beavers (my two favorite characters as a kid) looked as real as if they were ... you know ... real. I forgot I was watching something digitally created. The battle at the end is a bit ... uhm ... VIOLENT ... I had to cover my eyes a couple times - it was like we were suddenly seeing Henry V or something - but my main concern was with story and character. And they did not sacrifice character for style, or effects. Lucy, the little actress, was amazing. I wouldnt' call her an 'actress' at all. She seemed to just be alive in those circumstances. And Tilda Swinton ... She is not at ALL what I pictured for the part. In the book she has jet-black hair. Tilda's version of the character is more like a giant icicle. Her hair is blonde - and kind of piled on her head in a huge way - as though it has frozen into that shape. And her eyes ... I have no idea what she "did' as an actress, but those were not human eyes. She was as terrifying and unpredictable and AWFUL as the "queen" in the book. Anyhoo - I'll post more on it later, but in general, I was very glad with what they did. They lifted entire sections word for word from the book. It's a little goofy to SEE animals talk - Aslan had a couple of very goofy moments. When you read the book, you accept that animals talk, and you can imagine it - but to SEE it somehow makes it a bit TOO literal, and there was some silliness. Also, the centaur guy with the black hair was way too cheese-cake Hollywood for my taste. And Peter - as a grown-up King - in the second to last scene - has the GOOFIEST Prince Valiant hair I've ever seen. He's wearing tights, for God's sake. The audience snickered when they saw him - which is not quite the effect I think they were going for. It had some of that goofy Renaissance-Fair silliness in the production design. Oh, and the opening - with the children being shuttled off into the country as the bombs fall on London - was spectacular. Somehow it was done in a way that was NOT realistic - although you'll have to see it to see what I mean. It was obviously a real event, it happened in real life - but ... there's something heightened about the planes in the sky, the clouds behind the planes, the volley of bombs falling in slow motion ... It sets it up that this is going to be some kind of heightened realistic style. There's a strange violent poetry in it.

-- I have to re-read the book. My favorite section, as I said, is when they stay with the beavers in their cozy dam ... It just seemed soooo cozy in there, with the white frozen world outside ... and they had food, and a roaring fire, and thick butter (I remember the part about the butter), and they could sleep, and relax ... and the beavers were just charming and amusing. I loved them. I loved them in the movie, too. Therefore - I am pleased. My needs are simple in that respect.

-- I also saw Brokeback Mountain - what can I say - I have been in hibernation since September, what with the show. Now I can catch up. I was resistant to seeing it - I told Emily I wouldn't see it - because, like Narnia, I had read the short story and it cut me to the BONE. That story really means something to me, and I just couldn't bear to see it if they fucked it up. Also - Hollywood RUINED Annie Proulx's other story The Shipping News which is one of my favorite books - and I found their version of it unforgivable. Unforgivable. So did she, apparently. She didn't want to let them adapt Brokeback Mountain because of her experience with what they did to The Shipping News. I remember when Brokeback Mountain came out. I read it in The New Yorker. The writing is so good that you want to put down your pen forever. I love her. But the reviews I read seemed to suggest that Ang Lee has captured what was in that story. It's not a 'gay cowboy' movie. It's a love story. It's a painful beautiful love story that happens to occur between two men. Oh, man. The short story, people ... It's up there on the list of the greatest short stories I've ever read. Argh. Annie Proulx is so damn good. The movie is heartbreaking. I am still processing it. I left the theatre in tears. And again - they got all the elements of the story that I felt were the most resonant, the most powerful. (Of course, they never asked me for my opinion - but oh well - everyone's an expert, ain't they?? It's like the Harry Potter books, too - we all have read them, we all have opinions on what should be included, what could be left out ... how they executed these already beloved stories.) Brokeback Mountain was like that for me. Are they really going to capture Ennis' taciturnity? Will they let him be as gruff and as wordless as he really is in the story? Will they cut out his line, "You know I ain't queer"? Will they put a modern sensibility onto the film - to please the PC crowd? Or will they just let it be in 1963 - with that context? Will they embellish? Please no embellishments!! They did not embellish. And let me just say this: Heath Ledger's performance, as Ennis, is nothing less than remarkable. It's a breakout performance. It's THE breakout performance, as far as I'm concerned. He feckin' broke my heart. Without even saying 2 or 3 words. I always thought Ledger was pretty good, whatever, never gave him much thought. But now? He will be a MAJOR player after this film. It's his movie. It's an old-style really masculine performance - reminiscent of old cowboy movies, with the gruff silent guy squinting at the horizon. He's like Steve McQueen or something. He has that same kind of quiet strength about him - but he is able to suggest entire worlds of emotion going on - stuff he would never ever be able to articulate (or even want to articulate) - stuff he is barely aware of himself. Ennis is a man who does not analyze, does not angst (at least not consciously), does not speak, does not open up to people. Everything must be suggested. Ledger is phenomenal. The movie was devastating. Just as devastating as the short story - and that's really saying something.

-- I wish it would snow again.

-- The other night, out in a pub, Allison and her friend George explained sodoku to me, showing me how it all worked by the light of a tiny candle in a glass jar. They went over the concepts with me, finishing each other's sentences, and answering my questions in unison, and they both had the glazed eyes of addicts, . It was hilarious. But I think I understand it now. I'm afraid to even start getting into sodoku because it seems like a deep deep pool of addiction that I might never come out of.

The Books: "The Rimers of Eldritch" (Lanford Wilson)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Lanford Wilson's eerie The Rimers of Eldritch. It has the same kaleidoscopic style that his Balm in Gilead had - multiple scenes going on at the same time, conversations chopped up so you get two or three lines from it before you switch to the other scene - then you leap back. If it's not done well, I imagine it could be confusing. Also, in Rimers - it's set up backwards. We start with a trial - various people taking the witness stand - and it isn't until the very last scene that we find out what really happened. It's devastating when you do find out.

Rimers takes place in a small former mining town - on its way to becoming a ghost town. There is only a population of about 70 people. Needless to say, everyone knows everyone. It's a very religious town, a very nosy town, and the script - with its multiple scenes, and dialogue from all different characters at the same time - ends up giving the impression of gossip. It feels like the entire cast is whispering in your ear insinuations about their neighbors.

A young handicapped teenage girl (Eva) has been raped. Who did it? Over the course of the play you find out.

I did this play in college. I played Lena, the not-pretty friend to the prettiest girl in the high school. It's a small part - but this piece is what you would call an "ensemble piece" - there's not a 'star' - and all of us were onstage the whole time. It was an amazing production, actually - a very challenging show, challenging material - and it was a damn fine show.

Out of all of the plays I have excerpted - this one is really difficult to find a "scene". The whole thing is like one big cut and paste job - giving you just snippets here, snippets there ... so you have to put it together.

I'll just give the opening of the play. You have Wilma and Martha, the two nosy self-righteous old gossips, who sit on their porch and condemn everyone to hell around them. But you'll see how the dialogue is not quiiiiite realistic. Wilson wasn't interested in realism. At least not in this play and many of his others. Example: the first line of the play is below - it's the Judge's line. The next line is Wilma's - and it appears to be answering the Judge's question - but it is a completely different scene. The trial scene is happening on the other side of the stage - and Wilma's casual remark on her porch has nothing to do with the trial.

From The Rimers of Eldritch by Lanford Wilson

[Wilma and Martha are seated suggesting an evening, in the spring, rocking on the porch]

JUDGE. Nelly Windrod, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.

WILMA. Well, what I heard isn't fit for talk, but I heard that Mrs. Cora Grimes, up on the highway?

MARTHA. Yes.

WILMA. Has taken a boy, she's old enough to be his mother on, and is keeping him up there in her cafe.

MARTHA. In her bed.

WILMA. [with true sympathy] That woman went crazy when her husband left her.

MARTHA. Oh, I know she did.

WILMA. That woman, I swear, isn't responsible for her own actions.

MARTHA. I should say she isn't.

WILMA. I hear he does things around the cafe, whistling around like he belonged there.

MARTHA. Have you ever heard anything like it?

WILMA. I haven't, I swear to God.

[Lights go up on Nelly, standing in the "jury box"]

NELLY. I do.

MARTHA. Why, she called Evelyn Jackson a liar to her face, and Eva too. Swore things the devil and his angels wouldn't believe it. She'd stand up there and swear black was white.

WILMA. And Nelly, poor woman, the life that woman leads. Only God in His Heaven knows the trials that woman has to bear.

MARTHA. That she should have to be dragged through this.

WILMA. She stood there and told the way it was; I said to Mrs. Jackson --

MARTHA. -- I know --

WILMA. Cried the whole time --

MARTHA. I saw.

WILMA. -- Only God in Heaven knows the trials that poor woman has had to bear.

JUDGE. Nelly Windrod, do you solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth --

NELLY. I do, yes.

JUDGE. -- so help you God.

NELLY. I do.

JUDGE. [exactly as before] Nelly Windrod, do you solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

NELLY. I do. Yes.

MARTHA. So help me God I don't know how we let him hang around here like he did. Not talking to nobody.

WILMA. Nobody I know of could live like that.

MARTHA. Like that time he scared young Patsy so bad.

WILMA. Bad for the whole town with someone like that.

MARTHA. Like that way he had of just standing around.

WILMA. Around here everybody knows everybody.

MARTHA. Everybody was scared of him. Everybody knew what he was.

WILMA. A fool like that.

MARTHA. Grumbling and mumbling around; standing and watching it all.

WILMA. I think people'd feel easier now. I know I swear I do.

MARTHA. I do.

NELLY. I do.

JUDGE. Now, Miss Windrod, if you would tell the court in your own words ...

[Lights up on Robert and Mary]

MARY. Now, we have to understand that Nelly is my flesh and blood.

ROBERT. I know.

MARY. Yes, love, she's mym flesh and blood and she thinks she knows but she doesn't know but she thinks she does.

ROBERT. I suppose she does if anybody does.

MARY. Well, she thinks she does. But I know and you know. I was at my window, watching the moon.

ROBERT. Was there a moon?

MARY. You know there was. I'll tell it the way it was. I said to those people, all those new people in town -- there isn't much to know about Eldritch, used to be Elvin Eldritch's pasture till it gave out I guess and they found coal. It was built on coal. Built on coal with coal money and deserted when the coal gave out and here it stands, this wicked old town. All the buildings bowing and nodding.

ROBERT. How do you know so much?

MARY. And still so little? I would puzzle that if I could. I told them none of the people here now were coal people; they are store owners and farmers and the mining people moved off. They raped the land and moved away; there used to be explosives that rattled the windows, oh my, and shook the water in a bucket, day and night.

ROBERT. How come you remember so much?

MARY. And still so little? The last time I saw you, why, you was just a little baby; you've grown up so.

ROBERT. You saw me yesterday, Mrs. Windrod.

MARY. You don't know. Isn't that sweet. The last I saw you, why, you weren't no bigger than that high.

ROBERT. You've known me all my ...

MARY. You've grown up so. I have terrible bruises on my arm there. Look at that.

[Lights up on Cora's cafe]

TRUCKER. I'll see you, Cora.

CORA. Can't avoid it, I guess. You watch it now on those narrow roads.

TRUCKER. It's push-pull with the load; I'll come back through empty day after tomorrow, you remember to tell me that again.

CORA. Stay awake now.

TRUCKER. No danger of that.

WILMA. I'll say one thing for her. How long has it been he's been there?

CORA. [to Walter] Boy.

MARTHA. Two or three months now nearly. Walks around the place whistling like he owned it.

WILMA. Well, he earns his keep.

CORA. Boy.

MARTHA. It's not in the kitchen that he earns his keep, Wilma.

CORA. Boy.

WILMA. Well, I'll say one thing --

CORA. -- I'm getting ready to close up now.

WILMA. -- Whatever it is she looks a darn sight better now than she did a year ago. Since I can remember.

CORA. Boy.

WALTER. [as though waking from a daydream] I'm sorry.

CORA. I'm fixin' to close up. You sleeping?

WALTER. Thinking, I guess.

CORA. Have another cup of coffee, I got time.

MARTHA. That woman isn't responsible for her own actions since her husband left her.

WALTER. Swell.

WILMA. It's not for us to judge.

MARTHA. That's all well and good but anyone who deliberately cuts herself off from everybody else in town.

WILMA. I don't judge, but I know who I speak to on the street and who I don't.

WALTER. Is there work here in town do you know?

CORA. Down in Eldritch? Not if you're looking for wages. Not here.

MARTHA. It's easy to see the devil's work.

WALTER. I had that in mind.

CORA. You might try Centerville; Eldritch is all but a ghost town.

WALTER. You here alone?

CORA. I've managed for seven years; it hasn't bothered me.

WALTER. It might not be a bad idea to take someone on yourself.

WILMA. It's a sin to sashay through Centerville the way she does, buying that boy shirts and new clothes. Keeping him up on the highway.

MARTHA. I don't go, but I understand he's made a showplace out of her cafe.

WILMA. I'd be happier if it was me they made her close it down.

MARTHA. It ought to be against the law serving beer to truck drivers and them having to be on the road so much.

WILMA. The wages of sin lead to death.

CORA. Aren't you cold in just that jacket; that's pretty light for April.

WALTER. No, it's not bad. [They regard each other a moment]

MARTHA. The wages of sin lead to death.

WILMA. Bless her heart, poor old thing.

[Mary Windrod passes the porch]

MARTHA. Good evening, Mary.

WILMA. Good evening, Mary Windrod.

MARY. [she stops] You two. I watch you two sometimes. [Mary talks, almost with everything she says, as though she were describing a beautiful dream to a pet canary]

WILMA. Aren't you cold in that shawl, dear?

MARTHA. Nights are cold in this valley for June.

MARY. It's not bad.

WILMA. You'll be catching a chill next.

MARY. I was once a nurse and I believe that the constant proximity to sickness has given me an immunity to night air.

MARTHA. Never think that.

MARY. Us dry old women rattle like paper; we couldn't get sick. I listen to you old women sometimes.

WILMA. How's your daughter?

MARY. Yes, indeed.

MARTHA. I beg your pardon?

MARY. The proximity to all that sickness.

WILMA. Yes, love.

MARY. Immunity to death itself. My number passed Gabrile right on by. It came up and passed right on by and here I am a forgotten child.

WILMA. You better get inside, love.

MARY. Rusting away, flaking away.

MARTHA. You get in, now.

MARY. This wicked town. God hear a dried up woman's prayer and do not forgive this wicked town!

[Lights come up on the congregation. The congregation bursts into "Shall We Gather at the River" - only a few bars, the song fades. The congregation disperses. Lights brighten and focus on "court". All focus on Nelly]

NELLY. [over the last of the song] And mama came running downstairs and said a man had attacked young Eva Jackson.

JUDGE. Would you point out Eva ...

NELLY. There, poor lamb, can't hardly speak two words since this thing happened and I don't wonder --

[Lights fade out on court and focus on Martha and Wilma]

WILMA. Well, I know I swear I don't know what he sees in her.

[Eva crosses by the porch]

MARTHA. It's nice of him though.

WILMA. Well, I know but Driver Junior's old enough to be taking girls out; he shouldn't be wandering around with her. [Robert begins to cross to get to Eva]

MARTHA. It's nice to have somebody to keep her company. Still and all it doesn't seem natural, I know what you mean.

WILMA. I don't know what he sees in her.

MARTHA. Poor thing.

ROBERT. Eva!

EVA. Are you glad to be out of school?

ROBERT. I liked it all right.

EVA. What are you going to be?

ROBERT. Who knows?

EVA. I bet I know what you won't be, don't I?

ROBERT. What's that?

EVA. A race car driver.

ROBERT. Why do you want to say that? You think I couldn't do that if I wanted to?

EVA. You don't want to get yourself killed.

ROBERT. Driver didn't want it; he just had an accident.

EVA. You want to be like him?

ROBERT. People don't want to do the same thing their brother did; I couldn't see any sense in it.

EVA. I knew you didn't. You aren't going to get yourself killed.

ROBERT. Killed doesn't have anything to do with it. Eva, good lord, I don't want people carrying on like that; honking their horns, coming into town every week like a parade. I never even went to see Driver.

EVA. You decided what you want to be?

ROBERT. I don't have to decide this minute, do I?

EVA. I just wondered.

ROBERT. Do you know? You don't know what you want.

EVA. Of course I know; you know, I told you. So do you know, everybody knows what they want it's what they think they really can do that they don't know.

ROBERT. Well, I don't have to decide yet.

EVA. When's it gonna be autumn? I love autumn so much I could hug it. I want it to be autumn. That's what I want right now. Now. Autumn. Now. [This last as though conjuring]

ROBERT. Good luck, I don't see it.

EVA. [in a burst] Don't you be derisive to me, Driver Junior!

ROBERT. Don't call me that.

EVA. Well, don't you go on Robert Conklin or I'll call you anything I like.

ROBERT. You'll be talking to yourself.

EVA. Everybody else calls you that. Don't go away; I won't, I promise. Don't you wish it was autumn? Don't you? Don't you love autumn? And the wind and rime and pumpkins and gourds and corn shocks? I won't again. Don't you love autumn? Don't you Robert? I won't call you that. Everybody else does but I won't.

ROBERT. I haven't thought about it.

EVA. Well, think about it, right now. Think about how it smells.

ROBERT. How does it smell?

EVA. Like dry, windy, cold, frosty rime and chaff and leaf smoke and corn husks.

ROBERT. It does, huh?

EVA. Pretend. Close your eyes. Are your eyes closed? Don't you wish it was here? Like apples and cider. You go.

ROBERT. And rain.

EVA. Sometimes. And potatoes and flower seeds and honey.

ROBERT. And popcorn and butter.

EVA. Yes. Oh, it does not! You're not playing at all. There's hay and clover and alfalfa and all that. [Hitting him really quite hard, slapping]

ROBERT. [laughing] Come on, it's different for everybody.

EVA. Well, that's not right, it doesn't at all. Are you making fun?

ROBERT. Come on, don't be rough.

EVA. I will too; you're not the least bit funny, Driver Junior! [Robert starts to walk away] Come back here, Robert! Robert Conklin. Driver Junior! Little brother. Your brother was a man, anyway. Coward. Robert? Bobby?

Christmas-y

Met up with Allison yesterday in Union Square. One of the things I like to do every year is to wander through the outdoor Christmas market - just to see all the vendors, see what they have, maybe buy some last minute stuff. It's just so Christmas-y, I love it. I ended up not buying anything, although Allison got very lucky with a couple of purchases - REALLY cool stuff. It wasn't freezing yesterday - as it sometimes is during my yearly jaunts there - so it was much more pleasant, wandering around outside for a couple of hours. As you can imagine, it was absolute mayhem. Just as it should be. Christmas craziness. But I love it - it's the same vendors year after year, from all around the world - and usually each vendor is in the same spot, year after year. I know where the paper-maker is, I know where the felt hat vendor is, I know where my favorite candle vendor is ... It doesn't change. It was really nice, a lovely afternoon.

Then we went to Bar 6 - one of my favorite little bars (you could swear that you were in a little cafe in Paris - wonderful atmosphere) - and had a bit of food, drank wine (in the afternoon! I love it - so decadent) - and talked like magpies. It was awesome. A lovely Christmas-y kind of day.

A year in faces

By The Mighty Jimbo.

Jimbo has been traveling 'round the world for a year now. As he writes: "Twelve months. Seven Continents. Fifteen countries. Countless friends, new and old. And one Jimbo."

Take a look at his phenomenal photo gallery of this past year.

This one really calls to me.

But then there's also this.

And this.

I love this one. Can't you just feel the warm mellowness of the sun - its long slow rays?

And this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

Here's another face.

To pull out just a FEW of his many incredible photos. I've been following his journey all along - and I love his photos. I think he has a really really good eye. For detail, for sensory reality - his photos are not general. He zooms on in to the heart of his experience.

Anyway - here's the whole gallery. Thanks, Jimbo!!

The Books: "The Big Knife" (Clifford Odets)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my shelf o' scripts.

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Clifford Odets' marvelous The Big Knife..

Odets wrote it about (and for) his good friend Cary Grant. But Cary Grant - ever the cautious major star - wouldn't play the part. Perhaps it came too close to home - perhaps he was afraid to go back and do a play after so long. It was produced in 1949 so Grant was the biggest star in the world at that point, and had been for over a decade. Success makes men cautious. But it's a terrific play. John Garfield ended up playing the part - which, if you think about it, is also quite appropriate. He was also a MAJOR star - with roots in the theatre. The play is about a major movie star - the biggest in the world - named Charlie Castle (he changed his name from Charlie Cass). He is now far too successful to ever "go back" and do a play - even though he can't stand the movies he makes now - stupid pictures - and he would LOVE to go back to New York and do quality work. This was always one of Odets' major themes: how does art mix with commerce? How does idealism exist alongside of major monetary success? Odets lived that contradiction himself. Most of his plays deal with this issue (a very American issue, I might add - especially for artists). The "plight" of the artist in a capitalist society. I know many people will roll their eyes at this - but whatever. I can't stop them rolling their eyes, but I stick to my guns. These are questions that people who give a shit about their art really ask themselves. You can see actors struggle with it all the time - and the ones who are able to keep a balance within themselves - are the ones who are not destroyed by their own success. Someone like Johnny Depp deserves all the praise he gets - because he seems to have his own inner compass - what he will and will not do - and he now ends up doing projects because he wants to do them. It so could have gone the other way with him - he could have been used up and spit out by Hollywood - you see it happen with other stars - who maybe have one big success - and then continuously try to recreate it - until they have become a bastardization of themselves. Depp didn't go that route. Actually, come to think of it - Cary Grant is a great example of this as well. Cary Grant, very early on, had control of his own career, at a time when this was unheard of. He had no agent, for God's sake. He was a free agent, moving around from studio to studio. NOBODY did that. And without that freedom, his incredible run from 1938 and 1940 - when he made the movies for which he will be forever known (Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, Gunga Din, His Girl Friday and Philadelphia Story - I don't think any actor since has come close to having such a run - maybe Tom Hanks in the late 1990s, and early 2000s - that's pretty much as successful as any actor can ever get!) would never have been possible.

Anyway - it's an interesting thing to contemplate and Odets spent his whole career contemplating this. It was one of the reasons why he and Cary Grant were such good friends. They both understood this problem intuitively - they had lived it. Their politics could not have been more opposite - but on this cultural level, they were completely in sync.

The story of The Big Knife is one of greed, ambition, and loneliness. Charlie Castle is a major movie star. His marriage has fallen apart. His wife, Marion, knew him when - had married him when he was "just" an actor, in New York, doing plays. She misses THAT man. She doesn't know what happened to her husband. There is much strain between the two of them - they have separated. Meanwhile - the studio has presented Castle with a renewal of his contract - but this time - it will be fourteen years. Castle would be in his 50s when the contract expired. It's a long time. It's too long. It means the studio would own him. There are good and bad sides to being owned by the studio - you are protected, financially. But the bad side is that you have to make their crappy pictures. Castle dreams of going back to New York and trying to do a play again - if he signed this new contract, he would have to give that dream up. Marion has had another marriage proposal from a mutual friend - she tells Charlie that if he signs the new contract, she will leave him for good - and get married again. Try to have a normal life. See how Odets turns up the heat on this? It's all very tense and taut - it all rides on this one decision: will Castle decide to be his own man? But then ... the studio has threatened to sue his ass off if he doesn't sign. The stakes are huge.

To add to these high stakes - Castle has a drinking problem. And a year before, he was driving drunk and he hit and killed a small child. The studio covered up the entire event - and Castle's publicist - Buddy Bliss - a man who has devoted his LIFE to Charlie Castle - went to jail FOR Charlie. Buddy Bliss was willing to say that HE was the one at the wheel - in order to protect Castle's reputation. This event has, obviously, poisoned Castle's soul. As well as Marion's. She cannot respect her husband if he would let a good friend take the fall for him to such a degree. She has grown to LOATHE Hollywood and all it represents. She wants OUT.

Odets is one of my favorite writers. Nobody writes like him although many people try. Tony Kushner (of Angels in America fame) has an Odets-ian quality to his dialogue - he owes a great debt to Odets - they are very similar playwrights with similar concerns - but there's nobody like Odets.

Example: Marion starts to confront Charlie about something and then backs off, saying, "No, if I tell you you'd get too excited."

Charlie's response is: "Play billiards, Angel, or put the cue down."

I just LOVE that. A lesser playwright would have Charlie say, "Come on. Don't back off. Tell me what's on your mind."

But "play billiards, Angel, or put the cue down"?? Now THAT'S dialogue.

Here's the first scene in Act Two. Marion and Charlie - late at night, after a small dinner party with another couple. After the other couple departs - Marion and Charlie talk. They are still warily circling around one another - separated - trying to decide which way to go next.

GREAT scene.

From The Big Knife., by Clifford Odets

[Alone, Marion thoughtfully lights a cigarette and pours herself a small drink. Charlie returns]

MARION. Now that it's over, what was this dinner for?

CHARLIE. I've been ducking him for months. He kinda felt it the other day when Patty Benedict was here! I still can't look him in the eye...

MARION. Yes, I saw. Doesn't Connie know we're separated?

CHARLIE. I don't think she knows. Ain't it dark in here? [He snaps on another lamp and picks up his drink]

MARION. Why do you keep using words like "ain't"?

CHARLIE. [grinning] Ain't ain't a word?

MARION. Not to a man who worked his way through college.

CHARLIE. You know my type, a tight-lipped, reliable, unemotional man of the people -- rock-bottom stuff. Can't let my fans down, can I? You wouldn't castigate my catachresis, would you? How's that for college? [Looking intently at her, he laughs to her smile] You're looking very austere tonight.

MARION. Tired, I'm afraid.

CHARLIE. Me too. I'd give three senators and a dozen congressmen for one real night's sleep.

[Marion holds the Chartreuse up to the light]

MARION. Why can't you sleep ...?

CHARLIE. [soberly] For the same reasons you can't. [Waiting] You've buried me so deep, Angel. Are we really ... at the end?

MARION. [reluctantly] I think so, Charlie. You've been and gone and done it. You've blown up the bridge ... we can't go back.

CHARLIE. Do you think you're being fair ...?

MARION. As fair as I can be. Or at least as human and honest as I can be, after twelve glorious years in Hollywood.

CHARLIE. You think I'm dishonest, don't you?

MARION. [with a moue] No, but I believe the fairy tale is a lie. In real life no one ever comes to wake us up.

CHARLIE. You go on grieving for the past, like a weeping bird. What the hell was Charlie Cass? A hot-head with clenched fists and a big, yammering mouth!

MARION. I liked him mighty fine ...

CHARLIE. There are lots of attractive things about Hollywood. Could Cass guarantee you next week's meals? I never heard you kick about barbecuing four-inch steaks!

MARION. You're right, there's nothing so habit-forming as money! But that's stupid, as justification.

CHARLIE. What do I have to justify? Do I have to be in politics to hold my head up? What, making money? Is that the sin?

MARION. Your sin is living against your own nature. You're denatured -- that's your sin!

CHARLIE. You talk like a fresh, moralistic college kid, who took a course!

MARION. Aren't you the one who says he wants to live a certain way and do a certain kind of work? ... And then pushes a pie in the face of everything he says? Men like Hoff and Coy have their own integrity -- they're what they are! The beetle and the fervid Christian can't be equally corrupted! You can laugh -- you can snort! But the critic who called you the Van Gogh of the American theatre saw, as I did, that you had a Christian fervor! [Beginning to cry] And now you're nothing, common trash -- coarsened down to something I don't even recognize! [Pausing] Don't think I ever condoned what you did to Buddy. Or my part in what you did! [Weeping bitterly] But you're helpless, you're sick and unhappy ... and I go on, trying to help a little, defenseless because you're sick. You feel guilty and it makes you vicious! You've taken the cheap way out -- your passion of the heart has become passion of the appetites! Despite your best intentions, you're a horror ... and every day you make me less a woman and more the rug under your feet! And ... and I won't have it, I won't, I can't, I can't ... [Then, dropping her voice] I can't ... [Charlie waits quietly, giving her his handkerchief which she uses]

CHARLIE. Take it easy, dear.

MARION. Taking it easy is where the trouble begins ...

CHARLIE. Come on now, be yourself ...

MARION. That's another good local remark: "Be yourself," which means "Be just like me, don't be yourself!"

CHARLIE. Can I get you another drink?

MARION. I don't need another drink. [Pausing] Oh God, I wish the world would get serious so I could be my superficial self again! [She stands, rubbing her forehead] Where did I put my car? Oh ... Hank drove me in. He's supposed to pick me up. What time is it now?

CHARLIE. [Looking] Ten of one. Is your car bust?

MARION. I was tired and Hank mentioned he was driving in. [Charlie is really moved by his wife, but as she soon points out, he assumes a light bantering tone now]

CHARLIE. Marion ... don't you miss me out at the beach, in the wilderness of waves and highway traffic roaring past the door?

MARION. Poetry at this late hour?

CHARLIE. Why don't you stay here tonight? You can phone Hank, head him off. [She smiles at his negligent attitude]

MARION. You'd have to want me more than that ...

CHARLIE. Don't I want you ...?

MARION. At the moment you want most to keep your easy pose of detachment. Why expose yourself? After all, I might refuse. Could the great Charlie Castle take rejection?

CHARLIE. [lightly ironic] So ends my love song ...

MARION. It's a burp of the ego, not a love song ...

CHARLIE. Thanks and thanks ... [Shrugging, he drops into a chair]

MARION. [pausing] I'd tell you something ... but you'd get too excited. [Then.] The day I was here, the day you renewed with Hoff ... No, you'd get too excited.

CHARLIE. [smirking] Play billiards, Angel, or put the cue down. [She looks at him with a certain grimness before going on]

MARION. The next day I went and had an abortion.

CHARLIE. [turning slowly] You went and had ... ? [Disbelieving] Why don't you stop it, chum!

MARION. [bitterly, taking his tone] Latch on, while I tell you ... [He slowly stands and stares at her, seeing her seriousness] I waited six long, nervous weeks ... until you signed the contract.

CHARLIE. Why didn't you tell me?

MARION. A husband should know when his wife is three months pregnant. The cook in the kitchen knew.

CHARLIE. All right, I'm a louse. And what about good old Hankus? He knew it too?

MARION. No ... [He stands, looking at her with a menacing quiet, neck stretched, like a snake about to strike. Immobile, after a moment, he crosses and stands behind a heavy chair, gripping it with his hands]

CHARLIE. I'm putting this chair between us. Otherwise ... I might tear your head off ... [Not raising his voice] You come here and fling this handful of naked pigeons in my face and it's all my fault!

MARION. No, I made my own decisions.

CHARLIE. [not changing his tone] How do you feel? Sit down?

MARION. I'm sitting ...

CHARLIE. Would it have killed you to have another child?

MARION. I think I did the sensible thing.

CHARLIE. [blowing up] Will you, for Chris' sake, not be so goddam awful sensible and objective all the time! Are you such a clever lady? Why don't you fall down and let me pick you up, for a change? Why the hell don't you go to pieces? [He begins to prowl like an animal, he turns and shouts] Do you realize what you did?

MARION. Yes.

CHARLIE. [Burning] The zeal with which you ran to do it -- the ZEAL! [Then, twisting and turning] Did it hurt?

MARION. I'll live -- there are coonskin caps on my father's side.

CHARLIE. BUT DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU DID?

MARION. [quietly] It's all over, Charlie, a week ago. Let's talk about something else. We have a handsome intelligent boy. What about his future?

CHARLIE. You don't get Billy! You're leaving me! Then the boy belongs to me!

MARION. Don't be so smug -- who told you you're a father? I'd sooner Billy was raised in a bawdy house.

CHARLIE. Is that what you'd tell the judge?

MARION. [temper slipping] It's what I'm telling you!

CHARLIE. [abruptly] But, Marion, what did you do? What did you go and do?

MARION. Is that the bell?

CHARLIE. I'll go.

MARION. It's probably Hank.

CHARLIE. I said I'll go! [He goes quickly. Alone, Marion finishes her little drink. She is lipsticking her mouth when Charlie enters with Hank Teagle in tow. Hank, nearing 50, limps slightly. He is smiling, tender and affectionate by nature and experience, his face hides a quiet gaiety and a sharper insight. He is unpretentious, quiet and mature, with a gift for devotion. A man with his own tremor, he respects a tremor in another. He is a civilized man in the sense that he makes you feel guilty or inadequate on no score whatsoever]

HANK. Hello, Marion dear.

MARION. Hello, Hank.

HANK. There's the wonderful Rouault ... [Sullen, Charlie hovers near the bar, off balance for the moment]

CHARLIE. Drink?

HANK. [with a chortle] I'm a convert to water. Didn't you hear?

CHARLIE. How did you manage that?

HANK. With prayer.

CHARLIE. You believe in prayer?

HANK. I've always believed in prayer. [Smiling, noting Charlie's sullenness, he turns and asks Marion] How was your dinner?

MARION. I've been more stimulated in my time! [Nervously] How was your dinner?

HANK. Well, get seven of Hollywood's intellectual hill-billies at one night club and you're in titanic trouble. Men of a thousand causes and quips, not one unpopular or human. And then to be so dull -- success has made them all so dull. And think of me -- dull without success ... [He looks at Charlie, who now feels he has to say something]

CHARLIE. You're leaving for New York, I hear. To write a book.

HANK. Yes, another little book.

CHARLIE. [pausing] Marion says you asked her to marry you.

HANK. I did ...

CHARLIE. Let me get this straight. Aren't you my friend?

HANK. Yes, but your butler thinks I'm a wine merchant. I called here twice. He thinks I'm selling wine. Or so he says. I thought you were being "out" to me. [Quietly] Marion makes me want to live; most people affect me differently. I'm sorry you're unhappy, but you lost her years ago. In fairness, you can't blame me.

CHARLIE. I'm not fair tonight. But where the hell did you stash your angel wings? Who gave you the right to make decisions here?

HANK. My only right is to make my own decisions.

CHARLIE. Nuts to you, dear Beau Heart! Marion isn't leaving me, Hank!

MARION. I'll make my own decisions, too.

CHARLIE. Marion, listen --

MARION. No, I want to go home.

CHARLIE. But, Marion, let me say ten words -- ! [Then, morosely] Sorry, Marion, sometimes I rave and rant as if I had something against you. But you've been only good to me. [Grimacing, taking off his tie, he steps behind the bar] It's all a bleak and bitter dream, a real dish of doves. The only friends I can keep are the classy pimps, like Coy. [grimacing] There's only two ways to forget everything -- get drunk or stick a pencil in your eye.

MARION. I'll see the lawyer in the morning ...

CHARLIE. Right. [She turns and starts for the archway, but Charlie beats her to it and blocks her way, arms spread out] But I swear I'm innocent, Marion. I swear that while I'm charming the world with my light fantastic ... I'm bleeding under my shirt. Can't you wait, sweetheart, with the lawyer? Am I the worst oaf in the world?

MARION. [Unsteadily] The world's a big place ... but you're the worst one in my life. Good night. [She walks around him and disappears. Charlie slowly drops his arms and looks at Hank]

CHARLIE. When are you leaving, Hank?

HANK. Tuesday or Wednesday.

CHARLIE. I'll see you before you go? Is Monday good?

HANK. Any time you say ...

CHARLIE. Monday. How can I blame you for loving Marion? Don't think badly of me, Hank.

HANK. I don't. [They shake hands. Hank limps out, saying, "Good night".]

CHARLIE. Good night ...

Guitars

Cullen has a phenomenal post up right now. I knew none of this stuff. It's fascinating.

Today in history: "The infinite highway of the air"

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers - Wilbur and Orville - had their first flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The photo that exists of that moment I found on Aviation History:

Charles Kettering said: "The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility."

Orville said once: "If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance."

Only one photographer was there on Dec. 17, 1903 - apparently no journalists attended this event that would end up changing the world as we knew it.

Here's an article by Orville Wright: How we made the first flight Great stuff but here is the excerpt about the flight itself (the whole article is well worth reading, though - because, of course, a lot led up to the first flight - trial and error, experimentation):

The First Attempt

When the machine had been fastened with a wire to the track, so that it could not start until released by the operator, and the motor had been run to make sure that it was in condition, we tossed a coin to decide who should have the first trial. Wilbur won. I took a position at one of the wings intending to help balance the machine as it ran down the rack. But when the restraining wire was slipped, the machine started off so quickly I could stay with it only a few feet. After a 35- to 40-foot run, it lifted from the rail. But it was allowed to turn up too much. It climbed a few feet, stalled, and then settled to the ground near the foot of the hill, 105 feet below. My stop watch showed that I had been in the air just 3 l/2 seconds. In landing the left wing touched first. The machine swung around, dug the skids into the sand and broke one of them. Several other parts were also broken, but the damage to the machine was not serious. While the test had shown nothing as to whether the power of the motor was sufficient to keep the machine up, since the landing was made many feet below the starting point, the experiment had demonstrated that the method adopted for launching the machine was a safe and practical one. On the whole, we were much pleased.

Two days were consumed in making repairs, and the machine was not ready again till late in the afternoon of the 16th. While we had it out on the track in front of the building, making the final adjustments, a stranger came along. After looking at the mach ine a few seconds he inquired what it was When we told him it was a flying machine he asked whether we intended to fly it. We said we did, as soon as we had a suitable wind. He looked at it several minutes longer and then, wishing to be courteous, remarked that it looked as if it would fly, if it had a "suitable wind." We were much amused, for, no doubt, he had in mind the recent 75-mile gale when he repeated our words, "a suitable wind!"

During the night of December 16, 1903, a strong cold wind blew from the north When we arose on the morning of the 17th, the puddles of water, which had been standing about the camp since the recent rains, were covered with ice. The wind had a velocity of 10 to 12 meters per second (22 to 27 miles an hour). We thought it would die down before long, and so remained indoors the early part of the morning. But when ten o'clock arrived, and the wind was as brisk as ever, we decided that we had better get the machine out and attempt a flight. We hung out the signal for the men of the Life Saving Station. We thought that by facing the flyer into a strong wind, there ought to be no trouble in launching it from the level ground about camp. We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing.

We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one hundred feet north of the new building. The biting cold wind made work difficult, and we had to warm up frequently in our living room, where we had a good fire in an improvised stove made of a large carbide can. By the time all was ready, J.T. Daniels, W.S. Dough and A.D. Etheridge, members of the Kill Devil Life Saving Station; W.C. Brinkley of Manteo, and Johnny Moore, a boy from Nags Head, had arrived.

We had a "Richard" hand anemometer with which we measured the velocity of the wind. Measurements made just before starting the first flight showed velocities of 11 to 12 meters per second, or 24 to 27 miles per hour. Measurements made just before the last flight gave between 9 and 10 meters per second. One made just after showed a little over 8 meters. The records of the Government Weather Bureau at Kitty Hawk gave the velocity of the wind between the hours of 10:30 and 12 o'clock, the time during which the four flights were made, as averaging 27 miles at the time of the first flight and 24 miles at the time of the last.

With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe. After these years of experience I look with amazement upon our audacity in attempting flights with a new and untried machine under such circumstances. Yet faith in our calculations and the design of the first machine, based upon our tables of air pressures, secured by months of careful laboratory work, and confidence in our system of control developed by three years of actual experiences in balancing gliders in the air had convinced us that the machine was capable of lifting and maintaining itself in the air, and that, with a little practice, it could be safely flown.

Wilbur, having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released the wire that held the machine to the track, and the machine started forward in the wind. Wilbur ran at the side of the machine, holding the wing to balance it on the track. Unlike the start on the 14th, made in a calm, the machine, facing a 27-mile wind, started very slowly. Wilbur was able to stay with it till it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run. One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet. The slow forward speed of the machine over the ground is clearly shown in the picture by Wilbur's attitude. He stayed along beside the machine without any effort.

The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center. This gave it a tendency to turn itself when started; so that it turned too far on one side and then too far on the other. As a result the machine would rise suddenly to about ten feet, and then as suddenly dart for the ground. A sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of the track, or a little over 120 feet from the point at which it rose into the air, ended the flight. As the velocity of the wind was over 35 feet per second and the speed of the machine over the ground against this wind ten feet per second, the speed of the machine relative to the air was over 45 feet per second, and the length of the flight was equivalent to a flight of 540 feet made in calm air. This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full f light, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.

The story still has the power to shock, even though I've flown on planes since I was a youngun. The audacity, indeed! Amazing. Man is an amazing creature.

I'll close with a gorgeous quote from Wilbur Wright - gives me goosebumps:

"The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air."

RIP John Spencer

Alex has a great great tribute up to this hard-working amazing actor who died last night.

I was in a loud smoky bar last night - shouting over the mayhem with my friends - all of us having deep conversations - yet we were SHOUTING the deep conversations- "I FEEL LIKE THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS WERE REALLY A TURNING POINT!" "WHAT???" "A TURNING POINT - I'VE TURNED A CORNER -- EMOTIONALLY!" Etc. And that was where I heard (it was shouted at me) about John Spencer dying. I couldn't believe it. I remember his stint on LA Law. I remember it well. I remember him in Presumed Innocent too - he was always good. But he had been working for AGES before that. Go way way back, and he is still there. And look: he died in the midst of having the greatest success of his long long career. Wonderful.

He will be missed.

The Books: "Some Kind of Love Story" (Arthur Miller)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Arthur Miller's one-act Some Kind of Love Story. I love this play - I've worked on it before in scene study class - it's really fun. It's a two-person play and it's written in a very self-conscious film noir style. There's a hard-boiled Irish detective - and there's a floozy woman (who also is schizophrenic) who holds the key to this criminal case he has been working on - and obsessing over - for five years. He keeps coming back - she keeps stringing him along with new clues, new evidence - He is a man obsessed and he has become the laughing stock of the police force because he can't let it go, and he also can't solve it! Along the way he fell in love with her - or - let's say - they slept together many times, and that whole experience awakened something in him. He can't stop coming to her apartment, he is addicted to her - addicted to the case, to sex with her, addicted to the fight to get this innocent man out of jail. And SHE is the key. She has all the answers. Or ... does she? You get the feeling, reading it, that she (a woman who is a hooker, who has been abused and raped her whole life) is madly in love with him - and she knows - that if she divulges all she knows about the case - she will never see him again. It's a dance of evasion and disclosure. Meanwhile - she keeps going in and out of different personalities when the situation gets too stressful. She's like Sybil. She is convinced she's being followed, that she is the main character in a massive conspiracy - So there is much reason to doubt that she has any knowledge at all about the case.

An additional stress is that both characters are married. She (her name is Angela) is married to a violent man who basically acts as her pimp. He hovers on the outskirts of the play - even though he never shows his face. At the beginning of the play, Angela's face is battered because he punched her in the jaw. Great character.

I'll excerpt the beginning of the play.

From Some Kind of Love Story, by Arthur Miller

[A bed in a darkened room. A window. The headboard of the bed is white plastic tufting with gold trim, Grand Rapids Baroque. Skirts, bras, shoes, articles of clothing dropped everywhere. Angela is barely visible sitting up on the bed. The door opens. Tom O'Toole sticks his head in.]

TOM. Are we decent?

ANGELA. Christ's sake, close the door.

TOM. Lemme get in first! [Shuts door behind him. Pushes back his narrow brimmed hat, unbuttons his raincoat, and is forced to peer through the murky air to see her face] Well! -- You're sounding nice and spunky, how's it goin' tonight?

ANGELA. Philly out there?

TOM. In the kitchenette, lip-readin' his racin' form.

ANGELA. Say anything to you?

TOM. Nooo. Just laid one of his outraged-husband looks on me again. What do you say I buy you a spaghetti? -- Come on.

ANGELA. You can turn on the light. And lock the door, will you?

TOM. What's with the rollers? You going out? [She undoes a roller now that her attention has been drawn to it. He locks the door and switches a lamp on. She is sitting up in bed, permed hair, black slip, pink wrapper. Lights a cigarette] Jeeze, you really are swollen. You want ice?

ANGELA. [works her jaw, touching it] It's going down.

TOM. [sitting on a stool beside bed] Hope you don't mind, darlin', but a man who takes his fists to his wife ought to be strung up by his testicles one at a time.

ANGELA. [a preoccupied air] Nobody's perfect. He can't help himself, he's immature.

TOM. Well, maybe I'll understand it sometime -- It's amazing, I always leave here with more questions than I came in with.

ANGELA. He's still the father of my daughter. [gets off bed, tidies up the room a bit] By the way, she called me from LA. She's going to apply to the University of California, being she's so fantastic in basketball.

TOM. [dropping into a chair, hat and coat still on] Well, that'd be nice, wouldn't it. You're lucky to have a kid these days who loves you.

ANGELA. Don't yours?

TOM. Yeah, but they're exceptional. Anyway, I'm unusually loveable. [He guffaws]

ANGELA. What're you laughing at? -- It's true. [Sadly] You're probably the most loveable man I've ever met.

TOM. [to get down to business] You caught me climbin' into bed when you called.

ANGELA. I appreciate you coming, Tom -- this had to be my worst day yet. [She moves to window to look into the backyard]

TOM. No kiddin'. On th ephone you sounded like you seen a ghost.

ANGELA. [a wan smile] You ever going to love me again?

TOM. Always will, honey -- in spirit. [The answer turns her sadder; she restlesslly walks in sighing frustration] I explained it, Ange--

ANGELA. What'd you explain?

TOM. You are part of the case in a certain way; and I can't be concentrating on this case and banging you at the same time. It's all wrong. I'm being as straight as I can with you. -- What happened today?

ANGELA. I don't know -- it just hit me again like a ton of bricks that Felix is still sitting in that cell.

TOM. That's right; it'll be five years October.

ANGELA. You tend to get used to it after so long but today I simply ... I couldn't stand it all over again.

TOM. I can't stand it every day.

ANGELA. [as though reawakened to his value] You're a wonderful man, Tom. You're really one of a kind.

TOM. Personally, I wouldn't mind sharin' the distinction, but I don't see too many volunteers on this case.

ANGELA. [she looks off, shaking her head with wonder at his character] Be proud of yourself -- I mean with all the great people in this state, the colleges, the churches, the newspapers, and nobody lifts a finger except you ... I simply can't believe he's still in there!

TOM. [sensing attenuation] What'd you want to see me about, Ange?

ANGELA. [glances at him, then gets up again, moves] I'm really teetering. My skin is so tight I could scream.

TOM. What happened today?

ANGELA. God how I love to see you sitting here and the sound of your voice ... [at the window] ... Is that drizzle comin' down again?

TOM. But it's kind of warm out; you want to try to walk it off? Come on, I'll take you to the boardwalk, buy you a chowder.

ANGELA. [moves restlessly] God, how I hate this climate.

TOM. I thought it reminded you of Sweden.

ANGELA. I'm a Finn, not a Swede; I said it was like Finland -- Not that I was ever in Finland.

TOM. [a grin] So how's my standing tonight?

ANGELA. You're always in my top three; you know that.

TOM. [wryly] Not always, Ange -- last time I was practically wiped off the scoreboard.

ANGELA. [genuinely surprised] What are you talkinga bout?

TOM. You ordered me never to show my face again, don't you remember?

ANGELA. [vaguely recalling a probability] Well, you were probably pressuring me, that's all; I will not submit to pressure ...

TOM. Well, you called me tonight, kid. So what's it about?

ANGELA. What the hell is this goddam rush, suddenly?

TOM. [Laughs] Rush! You have any idea how long we've been bullshitting around together about this case? It's damn near five years!

ANGELA. And every single thing you know about it came from me and don't you forget it either.

TOM. Well ... not everything ...

ANGELA. [a shot of angry indignation] Everything!

TOM. [a sigh] Well, all right. -- But I'm still nowhere.

ANGELA. This is a whole new side of you, isn't it?

TOM. [sensing her fear -- gently] Baby Doll, the last time on Thursday I spent seven-and-one-half hours in this room with you ...

ANGELA. It was nowhere near seven and ...

TOM. [suppressing explosion] Until two-thirty AM when you give me such a kick in the balls that if it'd landed I'd have gone into orbit. So we can call tonight a strictly professional visit to hear whatever you got to say about the case of Felix Epstein ... and nothing else -- Now what'd you want to tell me?

ANGELA. [dismissing him] Well, I can't talk to you in a mechanical atmosphere.

TOM. [gets up] Then goodnight and happy dreams.

ANGELA. What are you doing?

TOM. [a strained laugh] Gettin' back into my pajamas! -- I have driven here through half an hour of fog and rain!

ANGELA. [open helplessness] I'm desperate to talk to you! Why don't you give me a chance to open my mouth? [turning her back on him, moving ...] I mean, shit, if you want a mechanical conversation go see your friendly Ford dealer.

TOM. I'll tell you something, Angela -- you're just lucky I'm still in love with you.

ANGELA. [She smiles now, tragically] You wouldn't be kidding about that if I wasn't a sick woman -- I'd have walked you off into the sunset five years ago and don't think I couldn't have done it.

TOM. My wife thinks you still could do it.

ANGELA. Go on, she knows why you see me nowadays.

TOM. Maybe that's why she's talkin' separation.

ANGELA. One of the nicest things about you, Tom, is that you're so obvious when you're full of shit.

TOM. She thinks we're still making it, Angela.

ANGELA. [she breaks into a smile, warm and pleasured, gets up and comes to him, takes off his hat and kisses the top of his head] Honestly?

TOM. I mean it. From the way I talk about you she says she can tell.

ANGELA. [sliding her hand toward his crotch] Well as long as she believes it, why don't we, again?

TOM. [grasping her wrists] Y'know ... I had to give up the booze twenty years ago, and then the cigarettes because the doctor told me I have the makeup of an addicts. If I went into you again I'd never come out the rest of my life.

ANGELA. [seizing the respite] Were you ever really in love, Tom?

TOM. [hesitates, then nods] Once.

ANGELA. I don't mean as a kid ...

TOM. No. I was about twenty-five.

ANGELA. What happened to her?

TOM. [hesitates, then grins in embarrassment] My mother didn't approve.

ANGELA. Why not, she wasn't Catholic?

TOM. She was Catholic.

ANGELA. [a wide grin] A tramp?

TOM. No! But she knew I'd stayed over with her a couple of times. And we were a strict family, see.

ANGELA. You've still got a lot of priest in you, Tom -- I love that about you.

TOM. You do? I don't. Leaving that woman was the biggest mistake I ever made. In fact, five or six years later, I was already married but I went back looking for her -- I was ready to leave my wife -- But she was gone, nobody knew where.

ANGELA. [romantically] And you really still think of her?

TOM. More now than ever. In that respect I lived the wrong life.

ANGELA. [she is staring at him, an open expression on her face. On her knees beside his chair she rests her head on his shoulder] Life is so wrong -- a man like you ought to be happy all day and all night long.

Creepy TomKat stuff

These pictures creep me out. I think it's that he's holding back her ponytail so she won't catch on fire. Dude - she can't even blow out her own candles by herself?

What a total tool. You are such a JACKASS.

Also - I don't know - he threw her a party at FAO Schwarz (which opened up after hours for the bash). She's like some zombie child-bride or something. He couldn't handle an adult relationship, with a nice intimate birthday dinner one on one, if you put a gun to his big grinning head..

I mean, come on - what is with the "Oh, here, let me help you blow out the candles because every moment in my life has to be ABOUT ME" gesture??

I have no idea why those innocuous pictures have got me steaming mad (uhm - because you have no life maybe?), but they have!

Metallica on the 29th floor

On the 29th floor. Big apartment building in the West 50s with a spectacular view. The room actually is on a corner - so you get two walls of windows converging.

Lights turned down dim. Teeny Christmas tree, with white lights on it, and sparkley red decorations.

The sparkling skyline of the city unfurling in the canyons outside the window.

Glasses of wine. Soft conversation.

And then:

Out of nowhere:

BLARING Metallica's St. Anger and dancing like absolute MANIACS in front of the glass windows.

hahahaha

It was like a FEVER came over both of us and we just had to GET. IT. OUT.

We didn't discuss it, or say, "Let's play Metallica" - it didn't go along with the mood of our night at all - which was quiet, contemplative. But then the CD popped on in the rotation - and that was IT.

We were thrashing lunatics in front of the plate glass, 29 floors up, for ... oh ... 20 minutes? We had no idea how long we were in that state - taken over by the music. Literally thrashing as though we were at a Metallica concert. We almost missed our movie because of it. We were like, in the middle of the thrashing: "What time is it?" "9:10." "Oops. Let's go." We dropped the thrashing, instantly, put on our coats and left for the movie.

hahahaha Why does this crack me up?

Oh yeah - and snow slanted through the sky, too. Cutting down through the darkness, billowing by the windows 29 floors up.

Awesome.

Sixth grade

Tommy has a great post about it. I love the section about reading Tom Sawyer and I love this:

I have not been able to do math without financial compensation since then.

Diary Friday

A rhapsodic (and insane) entry from my junior year in high school. I was madly in love with a saxophone player. (It was completely unrequited.) So this post is dedicated to every self-described "band geek" out there - who thought that maybe every girl in the high school preferred the jocks or the stoners or the heavy metal dudes who hung out by their cars in the parking lot! Here is a diary entry from one girl who looooooooooooved a band geek.

December

I was in such a good mood today. I felt weirdly apprehensive at the same time. [Now that is an odd mix of emotions.] I felt relieved, like: 'This week has been awful' and also 'Everything's so great. Tomorrow's gonna be a bummer.' Why do I feel the need to do that?

Anyway let me finish off yesterday's news as a lot of nice things happened.

Fourth period. The whole school piled into the gym where the band was set up. I waved to J. and April and they motioned crazily for me to come over. So I did. April took hold of my arm and held it saying, "Sheila, don't sit alone while watching this concert. It will be too much." J. chimed in. "You're gonna die, Sheila." [hahahaha Good friends] I glanced over at the sax section and there he was, leaning over to talk to Erica.

You know, I remember last year in Biology when we were discussing the heart and how all the valves work and the aorta and the veins and the chambers - but I really wonder - what makes you feel things? Because sometimes when I glance at him for a second - I feel a physical thing inside me. My whole heart feels like it's being squeezed, my upper arms feel all tingly - what makes that happen? I mean - like when I was crying - I felt a real horrible awful pain in my heart. Like - a real pain. Not just sadness or an emotion. My heart actually hurt. What is that? It can't be something technical like a valve or aorta or something.

Anyway, that's what happened to me when I looked at him just then. I felt excited (sort of - not really the word) inside - I had to turn around and head for the bleachers. I really don't like people to see -- well -- I think all my friends know how much I like him. I haven't told any of them that I think I love him, but I think they guess. But still. Unless it's someplace like at the dance or something, it doesn't feel right to show that part of me. I used to - you know - swoon and roll my eyes and put my hand over my heart - but that feels very childish - not at all enough. I used to write John John John John John in hearts all over the margins of my notebook but I wouldn't do that with DW. It's so stupid - so teenager-ish - I don't feel towards him that way - not at all.

The concert. First of all, I really love SK. [I am shocked, looking through these journals, how much school spirit I had. I don't remember it that way at all.] We've got some of the nicest kids in the whole world here. Really! Our band is so big - a lot of the other schools in the state have bands of about 10 people - we have a huge band and most kids really respected them during the assembly - keeping quiet while they played and stuff.

Sometimes I wish everyone didn't know about DW because I feel so dumb. Like I'm on stage all the time. While they were playing, everyone knew I was watching only him, so everyone watched me. Slight exagerration. I'm being a jerk. Scratch all that. It's just that it's nice to have secret private thoughts about him without everyone observing me having those secret private thoughts. [I still feel that way, my blog notwithstanding.]

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