{"id":3268,"date":"2005-06-27T20:48:16","date_gmt":"2005-06-28T00:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2010-07-12T23:22:10","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T03:22:10","slug":"glories-strung-like-beads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3268","title":{"rendered":"Glories Strung Like Beads"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got this from Norm<\/a>. This is my version.<\/p>\n

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

I love the opening chords of “Smells like Teen Spirit”. Gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I hear it.<\/p>\n

I love a flawless double play.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love the poetry of Seamus Heaney.<\/p>\n

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

I love Christopher Guest.<\/p>\n

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

I love the show Hill Street Blues<\/i>. One of my favorites from way back when.<\/p>\n

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

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

I love old maps.<\/p>\n

I love Fenway Park.<\/p>\n

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

I love James Joyce. I love his writing, sure, but more than that, I just love the FACT of him.<\/p>\n

I love how fat babies’ arms and legs are. I love how they have creases where their ankles and wrists should be. I love how babies smell. I love their soft big heads.<\/p>\n

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

I love men. I love their hands, their laughs, their body language, how they smell, how they are strong but how they can suddenly turn gentle.<\/p>\n

I love Mark Bowden’s book Black Hawk Down<\/a>\"\"<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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

I love the soundtrack to Ragtime<\/i>. Glorious!! Now THAT is a musical!<\/p>\n

I love Ellen von Unwerth’s photography.<\/p>\n

I love polar bears. I love them to DEATH.<\/p>\n

I love the movie Moulin Rouge<\/i>. I found it crushingly moving.<\/p>\n

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

And finally: I love the last scene in Notorious<\/i>. I never get tired of it. Never.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got this from Norm. This is my version. I love to go back and re-read the books I was forced to read on my high school summer reading lists. Some are still stinkers (uhm Billy Budd anyone?) but some … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18887,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions\/18887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}