A friend of mine who is more clever by three halves than Cheney,(pronounced Cheee-ney, which sounds more like what the man is, but no one gets right except Chris Matthews on MSNBC) sent me what amounts to a psychological background check of our benighted Vice President. It seems that in Natroma County High School, where my friend also went, the lovely Lynne, whose strong-willed mother carried a deputy badge even though she did only clerical work for sheriff's office, had this tendency to go after girlfriends' boyfriends, baton-twirling her way to the state championship, with what was referred to in the piece from "Truthout.org" as a "Playboy figure"which my friend, who was in high school with them says is an exaggeration-- she wasn't that sexy. But apparently she was to little Dick, who had been a fairly pleasant fellow up to that point, according to friends, which he had then. She took him from her closest friend, Joan Frandsen, became Homecoming Queen, at which point he became her campaign manager for Mustang Queen, another Wyoming honor. Passive and dazzled by her, he followed her urgings, abetted by a scholarship she got him from a rich Casper donor, to Yale where he flunked out.
I have to say now, intruding myself, that I am in a great struggle not to chortle. He floundered at Yale, and eventually flunked out. From the University where 'W' got Cs.
As Cheney himself later explained it, Lynne "made it clear she wasn't interested in marrying a lineman for the county." So she pushed him along and ruined the world for us all, except for those who have relatives or stock in Halliburton.
He went to Casper Community College, then the University of Wyoming, married her and got five draft deferments, the fifth one three months into a pregnancy the fruit of which was their daughter, (that daughter?) born exactly nine months and two days after Selective Service eliminated special protection for childless married men.
I have to interrupt this bloodless(except for other people's) saga to tell you that I had an emergency sushi run yesterday afternoon, where I talked to a man, an Iranian, who now lives in Dubai, and very well, too, I would imagine having heard some stories about Dubai and seen his card. Having just come from reading this piece, I imparted some impressions about Lynne being a strong woman, and the real cojones of the operation. "You think that's why their daughter is a lesbian?" he asked me. (Did you know Lynne once wrote erotic lesbian books? And when Wolf Blitzer tried to talk about that on her interview on CNN she blew him to blitz?)
Anyway, it's all very sad, especially as the authors, one a college professor specializing in the creative process, the other a retired psychotherapist, conclude Bush, like Lynne, offers the role of bully to Cheney's passive. So it's really Bush who's in charge, in spite of all the jokes. Oh, Hurry clock! Tick us alive into better days. And let nothing happen to that failed Wyoming lineman, except, since he's such a fiend for secrecy, that he die by a thousand revelations.
Another one, my life being sweetly serendipitous: when Cheney shot his friend in the face, my Jewru was in Bali. And as his life is more than serendipitous, he was at the time with a co- owner of the ranch where the shooting occured. It turns out the reason it took so long for Cheney to call in about the shooting was not because of his blood alcohol rate(which probably might have high, and so illegal, at least for shooting a buddy, and he had a history of drink as an anxious post-schoolboy) but because he was at the ranch with a woman, the wife of a European ambassador, and had to get her out before Lynne found out.
My friend, whom I believe is the country's greatest libel lawyer, even knowing my history, wants me to do something with the early part of this tale as fiction. Oh, I would, I would, but I doubt I'd be able to afford him to defend me.
As Fitzgerald might have said, the very Republican are different from you and me. Yes, might have answered Hemingway: they have passively aggressive Dicks.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
As the Dollar Plummets
So as I look forward to my brief European sojourn at summer's end, today's New York Times tells me how I will hardly be able to afford a coffee. The good news is that I had a visit from my most wonderful souvenir of Belfast-- you remember, the place that was the apotheosis of problems until George Bush switched the focus-- Fiona, who was, when I visited there for a piece for the Journal, the Lady Mayoress, married to David Alderdice, a moderate, a philosophy and position no more favored there than it is here, given as we seem to be to an age of extremists. Fiona is more than a breath of fresh air, she is a zephry. So I was able to fully appreciate where and how I live through her very clear, blue eyes. Also we went to a spa in Lake Arrowhead where none have gone before from my circle, which is about the size of a rubberband. All the men wear baseball caps, so my mother, if alive or reincarnated, with her addiction to believing men were the solution, would not find it good prospecting. But it was interesting to discover the high desert region near San Bernardino, and having missed the turnoff to 10 on the way out of town, we traveled unintentionally to El Segundo, where surely no one from Northern Ireland has ever been. Anyone can go to Las Vegas.
Having returned Sunday night in time to go to the theater, in order to make her trip as close as you can in LA to cosmopolitan, we attended the Pasadena Playhouse re-production of 'Can Can'. Here, my review.
The much touted re-do revival at the Pasadena Playhouse of the 1953 Cole Porter-Abe Burrows musical 'Can Can' did not live up to expectations, yet another argument why you shouldn't have them. In spite of great sets by Roy Christopher, promises in the program and in publicity for the show, which features for all of its failings a few miracle songs, it remains a disappointment. The problems of the original book have not been solved; the first few songs are third rate Porter, and silly. But when a male lead with a truly wondrous voice opens up his throat and his talent in the bridge of a ballad, "I am in Love"-- you remember what a great musical comedy was about. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Not that this was that good in the first place. But it is an elevation to the spirit to hear a truly musicianly phrase sung by a genuine Broadway voice, even if Broadway is three thousand miles away, and this kind of musical is over half a century old. Kevin Earley, as Aristede Forestier, the uptight magistrate who doesn't want those naughty dances, has the glorious pipes, and is winning (enough) in a role that is stilted and cliched. Allegedly this was written as an homage to the late, great Abe Burrows, whose son Jim, the writer, is a hero to David Lee, the re-Creator, in partnership with Joel Fields. Lee is one of the brains behind 'Frasier', but his real love is supposedly the theater. In particular, the musical theater, which 'Can Can' is a sometimes satisfying remnant of. But the show that failed the first time isn't fully rescuscitated now, in spite of all efforts to breathe life into it. Still, Lord, Lord, there are those songs! "C'est Magnifique." "I Love Paris." Not even Porter at his best, they are still pulse-quickeningly better than most of what we've had since, and anything we have now. Hum me a ballad from 'A Light in the Piazza.'
MIchelle Duffy makes a noble go at the role of Pistache, the scampish proprietress of the Bal du Paradis in Monmartre, circa the '90s(the ones before the last.) In rehearsal and in full view, derriere too, is the dance that's causing all the fuss. Pistache has a passion for the success of her demimondaine dance hall, and a past deep amour for Forestier, the back story Lee and Fields have given them to enrich the book and make it work. It still doesn't. But she looks darkly attractive, in wonderful gowns by Randy Gardell, and tries to seem savvy in the songs, but isn't. Her voice is okay, but as Pistache she makes a Pastiche of such simple and wonderful lyrics as 'Oo La La... c'est magnifique!' running the words and the notes together in an arythmic way, a clear try for originality in a song she treats as though we have heard it every day and are tired of the same old delivery. In fact, we have not heard it, or anything like it in a musical for far too long, so it would be a treat to have it sung straight out, authentically.
Wonderful things are done by the orchestra, a good joke that is played on and with the audience. Adorable as a would-be dancer in the Bal du Paradis, is Yvette Tucker, whose energy and smile are radiant. She is partnered with Amis Talai as a sculptor who lives off her and whose supposed talent is later revealed as ludicrous which is supposed to make a comedic point. It doesn't. Except maybe 'Let Sleeping Musicals Lie.' But, wait a minute! Isn't it great to hear those songs?
Go!
So there you have it. My debut as a theater critic. You will not be stunned to know that the online theater website I wrote that for as a favor turned down the review, saying... what was it exactly...? that I should make it kinder and gentler, that that was what gave critics a bad name. Really? i thought that was what made them honest and sometimes witty.
In the same e-mail slog that brought me my debut's rejection came news that three Jane Austen novels, author disguised, character's names changed, chapters and outlines offered, had been turned down for representation by eighteen British literary agents, saying they would not know how to place them.
Having returned Sunday night in time to go to the theater, in order to make her trip as close as you can in LA to cosmopolitan, we attended the Pasadena Playhouse re-production of 'Can Can'. Here, my review.
The much touted re-do revival at the Pasadena Playhouse of the 1953 Cole Porter-Abe Burrows musical 'Can Can' did not live up to expectations, yet another argument why you shouldn't have them. In spite of great sets by Roy Christopher, promises in the program and in publicity for the show, which features for all of its failings a few miracle songs, it remains a disappointment. The problems of the original book have not been solved; the first few songs are third rate Porter, and silly. But when a male lead with a truly wondrous voice opens up his throat and his talent in the bridge of a ballad, "I am in Love"-- you remember what a great musical comedy was about. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Not that this was that good in the first place. But it is an elevation to the spirit to hear a truly musicianly phrase sung by a genuine Broadway voice, even if Broadway is three thousand miles away, and this kind of musical is over half a century old. Kevin Earley, as Aristede Forestier, the uptight magistrate who doesn't want those naughty dances, has the glorious pipes, and is winning (enough) in a role that is stilted and cliched. Allegedly this was written as an homage to the late, great Abe Burrows, whose son Jim, the writer, is a hero to David Lee, the re-Creator, in partnership with Joel Fields. Lee is one of the brains behind 'Frasier', but his real love is supposedly the theater. In particular, the musical theater, which 'Can Can' is a sometimes satisfying remnant of. But the show that failed the first time isn't fully rescuscitated now, in spite of all efforts to breathe life into it. Still, Lord, Lord, there are those songs! "C'est Magnifique." "I Love Paris." Not even Porter at his best, they are still pulse-quickeningly better than most of what we've had since, and anything we have now. Hum me a ballad from 'A Light in the Piazza.'
MIchelle Duffy makes a noble go at the role of Pistache, the scampish proprietress of the Bal du Paradis in Monmartre, circa the '90s(the ones before the last.) In rehearsal and in full view, derriere too, is the dance that's causing all the fuss. Pistache has a passion for the success of her demimondaine dance hall, and a past deep amour for Forestier, the back story Lee and Fields have given them to enrich the book and make it work. It still doesn't. But she looks darkly attractive, in wonderful gowns by Randy Gardell, and tries to seem savvy in the songs, but isn't. Her voice is okay, but as Pistache she makes a Pastiche of such simple and wonderful lyrics as 'Oo La La... c'est magnifique!' running the words and the notes together in an arythmic way, a clear try for originality in a song she treats as though we have heard it every day and are tired of the same old delivery. In fact, we have not heard it, or anything like it in a musical for far too long, so it would be a treat to have it sung straight out, authentically.
Wonderful things are done by the orchestra, a good joke that is played on and with the audience. Adorable as a would-be dancer in the Bal du Paradis, is Yvette Tucker, whose energy and smile are radiant. She is partnered with Amis Talai as a sculptor who lives off her and whose supposed talent is later revealed as ludicrous which is supposed to make a comedic point. It doesn't. Except maybe 'Let Sleeping Musicals Lie.' But, wait a minute! Isn't it great to hear those songs?
Go!
So there you have it. My debut as a theater critic. You will not be stunned to know that the online theater website I wrote that for as a favor turned down the review, saying... what was it exactly...? that I should make it kinder and gentler, that that was what gave critics a bad name. Really? i thought that was what made them honest and sometimes witty.
In the same e-mail slog that brought me my debut's rejection came news that three Jane Austen novels, author disguised, character's names changed, chapters and outlines offered, had been turned down for representation by eighteen British literary agents, saying they would not know how to place them.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
With Liberty and Justice for All
So on our nation's birthday, like 60% of its citizens, I am incensed. Oliver Stone, having been turned down for a documentary on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "as part of the Great Satan" by Iran's president wished "the Iranian people well," and hopes "their experience with an inept, rigid, ideologue president goes better than ours," a statement that is smarter than any of Stone's pictures. I have a call in to a friend at the Department of Justice which she asked me not to make to her at work, for unspoken but obvious reasons, and a copy on my bed of 'Breakfast of Champions," one of the delicious books by my late but early as far as consciousness is concerned friend Kurt Vonnegut, who quietly railed in that book at the stupidity of 'The Star Spangled Banner,' empty as the lyrics were of any salute to the American people, an anthem composed of 'gibberish,' exclamation points' and 'question marks.' Thus it is that I turn to the words of our salute to the flag, that piece of cloth that Kurt points out is the only one in the world that it is an offense to let touch the ground.
When I was little, as everyone was once, I struggled with words, as most little people do. Having been lovingly incarcerated in a nunnery by my mother who was seeking her fortune or at least her survival and didn't know what to do with me at that moment, the first of many, I had to pray every morning with the other children who, I assume, were all Catholics, in front of the nuns. I was filled with terror, not so much of the nuns, scary as they seemed, but of God, who knew, unlike those around me, that I was Jewish. I was sure He would be mad at me for praying to Mary, with Jesus waiting in the wings. The prayer went, according to my recollection now, "Holy Mary, Mother of God,' etcetera, 'blessed be the fruit of thy womb." Womb. A tough word for a five year old. I never heard it clearly, and afraid to ask, for fear that would brand me an Israelite, said what I heard, which was, "the fruit of thy woo."
In the same way, when I got to P.S.9 in New York, my parents having reunited as was their erratic custom, I put my hand on my little heart in assembly and recited my allegiance to the flag. And what I heard and repeated was "One nation invisible." It was not until I stood next to an eight year old patriot, quick to correct my stupidity, that I learned the word was 'indivisible.' But I think now that my child's intution was probably correct. Maybe even in both cases. All those who believe in immaculate conception have my apology, but reason will prevail.
Except in our nation's capital. I am so sad. Sadder, I think, than angry, because I spent the whole day the day before yesterday being in a rage when the news of Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence came in, accomplishing nothing, I was so incensed, too infuriated even to take it out on the pool going swimming, or on the sidewalk walking my dog, and then Beverly Sills died. And I thought "I have wasted the whole day Beverly Sills died," and thought how much she would have enjoyed being aBle to go swimming, or to walk her dog. And I sorrowed not only for her and the great artist and woman she was, but for my country, which I loved with a great passion, even when Nixon was president.
John Edwards said at the fund raiser I attended for him, where a woman as unbending in her wish to get rid of Bush as Bush is in his wish to get rid of democracy as we knew it insisted on wasting his question time by asking about impeachment. Edwards wisely said, having served in the Senate at the time of Clinton's impeachment proceedings, that the process in Congress would interfere with anything else being accomplished. But I wonder if, indeed, the country can survive until the day he is gone. A friend gave me one of those little tickers that reads 'Bush's Last Day,' counting off the seconds and the moments and the hours until he goes, and something went berserk in its mechanism, as something has gone berserk in Washington, and it kept adding on days till I got so upset I had to throw it away.
We are hated all over the world, our spiritual stock having fallen even lower than the dollar against the Euro. England suffers for Blair's having supported this retard, a word that is no longer politically correct, but as politics is no longer correct, the hell with it,-- let's call a spade a spade except when it involves a spade. I said to my friend Billy Danoff who wrote 'Country Roads' and 'Afternoon Delight' and just got back from Ireland where at least in Shannon airport people saluted our troops, suicidally on their way to Iraq, "isn't it sad what a little moron can do?" and he suggested I put it to music, the tune of "ooooooooooo, what a little moonlight can do." OOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo, what a little moron can do. I don't know. What's the next line? Have we got time for the next line?
I remember a 4th of July where we stood on the South Lawn of the White House even though Nixon was still in it, loving our country, waiting for the fireworks, and one of our cadre-- I won't give her name, in case the Justice Department is rifling this website-- said "Let's smoke a joint for Mama Cass(who had passed that year)" Why do all the wrong people die too soon? How many stints can work to save the heart of a man who has none?
Keith Olbermann went on the air yesterday with a Zola speech, J'accuse!, accusing Bush and Cheney of everything of which they are guilty, and calling for them to resign. In Hong Kong the people marched at great personal peril on the 10th anniversary of the handover to China, pleading, insisting on the promise of democracy being fulfilled. We didn't just have a promise. We had it. How could this have happened? Why aren't we marching?
When The Little Prince got to a planet inhabited by a king, the king greeted him as a 'subject.' And the little prince wondered how the king could have known who he was if he'd never seen him before. "He didn't realize that for kings," wrote Saint-Exupery, "the world is extremely simplified. All men are subjects."
When I was little, as everyone was once, I struggled with words, as most little people do. Having been lovingly incarcerated in a nunnery by my mother who was seeking her fortune or at least her survival and didn't know what to do with me at that moment, the first of many, I had to pray every morning with the other children who, I assume, were all Catholics, in front of the nuns. I was filled with terror, not so much of the nuns, scary as they seemed, but of God, who knew, unlike those around me, that I was Jewish. I was sure He would be mad at me for praying to Mary, with Jesus waiting in the wings. The prayer went, according to my recollection now, "Holy Mary, Mother of God,' etcetera, 'blessed be the fruit of thy womb." Womb. A tough word for a five year old. I never heard it clearly, and afraid to ask, for fear that would brand me an Israelite, said what I heard, which was, "the fruit of thy woo."
In the same way, when I got to P.S.9 in New York, my parents having reunited as was their erratic custom, I put my hand on my little heart in assembly and recited my allegiance to the flag. And what I heard and repeated was "One nation invisible." It was not until I stood next to an eight year old patriot, quick to correct my stupidity, that I learned the word was 'indivisible.' But I think now that my child's intution was probably correct. Maybe even in both cases. All those who believe in immaculate conception have my apology, but reason will prevail.
Except in our nation's capital. I am so sad. Sadder, I think, than angry, because I spent the whole day the day before yesterday being in a rage when the news of Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence came in, accomplishing nothing, I was so incensed, too infuriated even to take it out on the pool going swimming, or on the sidewalk walking my dog, and then Beverly Sills died. And I thought "I have wasted the whole day Beverly Sills died," and thought how much she would have enjoyed being aBle to go swimming, or to walk her dog. And I sorrowed not only for her and the great artist and woman she was, but for my country, which I loved with a great passion, even when Nixon was president.
John Edwards said at the fund raiser I attended for him, where a woman as unbending in her wish to get rid of Bush as Bush is in his wish to get rid of democracy as we knew it insisted on wasting his question time by asking about impeachment. Edwards wisely said, having served in the Senate at the time of Clinton's impeachment proceedings, that the process in Congress would interfere with anything else being accomplished. But I wonder if, indeed, the country can survive until the day he is gone. A friend gave me one of those little tickers that reads 'Bush's Last Day,' counting off the seconds and the moments and the hours until he goes, and something went berserk in its mechanism, as something has gone berserk in Washington, and it kept adding on days till I got so upset I had to throw it away.
We are hated all over the world, our spiritual stock having fallen even lower than the dollar against the Euro. England suffers for Blair's having supported this retard, a word that is no longer politically correct, but as politics is no longer correct, the hell with it,-- let's call a spade a spade except when it involves a spade. I said to my friend Billy Danoff who wrote 'Country Roads' and 'Afternoon Delight' and just got back from Ireland where at least in Shannon airport people saluted our troops, suicidally on their way to Iraq, "isn't it sad what a little moron can do?" and he suggested I put it to music, the tune of "ooooooooooo, what a little moonlight can do." OOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo, what a little moron can do. I don't know. What's the next line? Have we got time for the next line?
I remember a 4th of July where we stood on the South Lawn of the White House even though Nixon was still in it, loving our country, waiting for the fireworks, and one of our cadre-- I won't give her name, in case the Justice Department is rifling this website-- said "Let's smoke a joint for Mama Cass(who had passed that year)" Why do all the wrong people die too soon? How many stints can work to save the heart of a man who has none?
Keith Olbermann went on the air yesterday with a Zola speech, J'accuse!, accusing Bush and Cheney of everything of which they are guilty, and calling for them to resign. In Hong Kong the people marched at great personal peril on the 10th anniversary of the handover to China, pleading, insisting on the promise of democracy being fulfilled. We didn't just have a promise. We had it. How could this have happened? Why aren't we marching?
When The Little Prince got to a planet inhabited by a king, the king greeted him as a 'subject.' And the little prince wondered how the king could have known who he was if he'd never seen him before. "He didn't realize that for kings," wrote Saint-Exupery, "the world is extremely simplified. All men are subjects."
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
AN ARGUMENT FOR TORTURE
Although my friends, all of whom I consider illuminated, and the majority of the American people are appalled at the idea of torture, perhaps an exception should be made in the case of Ann Coulter. I can think of no name to call her that would be vile enough to call her-- not 'bitch', which seems lightweight considering the object, or the c word that so offends, as it would be an insult to all the other c___s. It shames me that she is a woman, if indeed she is.
That she would attack John Edwards as she did, sneeringly alleging that he had a bumper sticker about the death of his son, and actually try to bring down Elizabeth Edwards, one of the most admirable women of my lifetime, whose courage and bravery and genuine intelligence are palpable even in this time of mass idiocy(see Paris Hilton/ George Bush-- has anyone seen them together? could they be the same person?) is a rent in the cloth of decency. Even as Elizabeth struggled to stay the great lady she is on Hardball today, asking Coulter politely to pull back on personal attacks, Coulter continued, attacking. What is the matter with the media, that they give this harridan a forum?
I am especially incensed because I went to a fundraiser for Edwards last night, in a genial setting, the Brentwood home of a real estate developer, Tom Safran, who went all out(sushi and chocolate covered strawberries, no piker he, gracious in the bargain, insisting we stay and eat even after Edwards had gone as he didn't want any leftovers) Of all the potential candidates in '04, Edwards was the one I believed: he seemed to me a consummately honest man. Now that we are faced with candidates who are divisive or unlikely to win, and Bloomberg, whom I like, stands to cost the Democrats if he runs, I continue to be moved by Edwards. I watched him last night through a lens, lightly: the video camera of the man in front of me in the garden, filming him. It seemed a fine portrait, handsome, of course, but also believable and smart. He asked the man to turn off the video while he made the following statement: "Of all the potential candidates, I am the most progressive, and the most electable." i wondered why he wanted the camera off for that one, but a smart friend said it was shorthand for 'I'm not a woman, and I'm not black.' If that's what it was, I'm afraid he's right. But I'm more afraid of Hillary. And more impressed by what he said when the video camera was on: "Bush is an idiot." That seemed to me direct, and fearless. Everybody with a brain knows that Bush is an idiot, but it takes a lot of balls to go on the record with that, in this environment.
On the way home I spoke to a friend who told me the talk in political circles is that big money people have dried up on Edwards, because of Elizabeth's illness-- they're afraid he won't go the distance. I wish I had a pile of money to give him. I wish elections weren't about money. I wonder what would happen to Abraham Lincoln if he were here and wanted to run. With today's vile decision by the Supremes to put corporations back in the catbird seat for picking their man(oh, who could it be? A Republican? Gee!) I wonder what's going to happen to this country. If they win again, I think we are lost forever.
Maybe Ann Coulter can be Queen. Or at least the madam of the whorehouse where they practice Bondage and Domination. I am so sad for my country. Dick Cheney and Paris Hilton. What's happened to us? If it weren't for the wrestler murdering his wife and son and then hanging himself, there might be nothing else on the news.
That she would attack John Edwards as she did, sneeringly alleging that he had a bumper sticker about the death of his son, and actually try to bring down Elizabeth Edwards, one of the most admirable women of my lifetime, whose courage and bravery and genuine intelligence are palpable even in this time of mass idiocy(see Paris Hilton/ George Bush-- has anyone seen them together? could they be the same person?) is a rent in the cloth of decency. Even as Elizabeth struggled to stay the great lady she is on Hardball today, asking Coulter politely to pull back on personal attacks, Coulter continued, attacking. What is the matter with the media, that they give this harridan a forum?
I am especially incensed because I went to a fundraiser for Edwards last night, in a genial setting, the Brentwood home of a real estate developer, Tom Safran, who went all out(sushi and chocolate covered strawberries, no piker he, gracious in the bargain, insisting we stay and eat even after Edwards had gone as he didn't want any leftovers) Of all the potential candidates in '04, Edwards was the one I believed: he seemed to me a consummately honest man. Now that we are faced with candidates who are divisive or unlikely to win, and Bloomberg, whom I like, stands to cost the Democrats if he runs, I continue to be moved by Edwards. I watched him last night through a lens, lightly: the video camera of the man in front of me in the garden, filming him. It seemed a fine portrait, handsome, of course, but also believable and smart. He asked the man to turn off the video while he made the following statement: "Of all the potential candidates, I am the most progressive, and the most electable." i wondered why he wanted the camera off for that one, but a smart friend said it was shorthand for 'I'm not a woman, and I'm not black.' If that's what it was, I'm afraid he's right. But I'm more afraid of Hillary. And more impressed by what he said when the video camera was on: "Bush is an idiot." That seemed to me direct, and fearless. Everybody with a brain knows that Bush is an idiot, but it takes a lot of balls to go on the record with that, in this environment.
On the way home I spoke to a friend who told me the talk in political circles is that big money people have dried up on Edwards, because of Elizabeth's illness-- they're afraid he won't go the distance. I wish I had a pile of money to give him. I wish elections weren't about money. I wonder what would happen to Abraham Lincoln if he were here and wanted to run. With today's vile decision by the Supremes to put corporations back in the catbird seat for picking their man(oh, who could it be? A Republican? Gee!) I wonder what's going to happen to this country. If they win again, I think we are lost forever.
Maybe Ann Coulter can be Queen. Or at least the madam of the whorehouse where they practice Bondage and Domination. I am so sad for my country. Dick Cheney and Paris Hilton. What's happened to us? If it weren't for the wrestler murdering his wife and son and then hanging himself, there might be nothing else on the news.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
LA VIE EN PEONY
So my beloved friend Gena Rowlands, the formidable actress and even more formidable, in a soft way, human being, told me the other night over dinner I had to go see 'La Vie en Rose,' she was so moved and impressed by Marion Cotillard who plays Edith Piaf in the film. Is Edith Piaf, really, once you have seen her. Unbelievable. She occupies her body, and, unmistakably, her spirit. My clever friend Jean Doumanian echoed Gena's sentiments, pointing out to me that the actress is only twenty-eight years old.
My sometimes friend Rex Reed wrote in his review that you would want to see it over and over again, and as I am very suggestible, once was not enough. I went Friday and again Saturday and would have gone again today except I am trying not to be compulsive. The performance is beyond remarkable, and the music is transformational, making you a part of Paris, which I never loved so much when I was living there as I do when I'm longing for it and wishing I had made better use of it. Literary use of it, I suppose, since all my dreams of Paris before the first time I was lucky enough to live there were based on what I had heard and read, Hemingway and Fitzgerald fantasies that never ripened into real.
Still, something happened to me in the course of watching the movie: I realized that my own life was not unlike Piaf's. True, my mother never sang in the streets. but she was a social director at resorts, which is not all that different, amusing people in passing. And she did abandon me when she had a date. Then again, I was encouraged to sing my songs in Paris not by someone who could later have been played in my movie by Gerard Depardieux, but by Maya Angelou, who said to me on that fateful night in the Mars Club when I was so uncomfortable and intimidated, because all the lights were orange and all the people were black, which you could still call them then, "Hoh-nee, you could get up and be bigger than anyone here." Thus it was that I got up onstage and sang my songs that had been such a hit at the Bryn MAwr Junior Prom; and the boss came over and said "You've got a job!" and I wired my mother "I am singing in a night club in Paris," and she wired me back, "Come home immediately." But I didn't. I stayed and sang my heart out, and part of my soul, too, I think, though there was no way I could be mistaken for Piaf unless a waif could be very overweight.
Nor did I ever have an affair with a boxer, but I did have a big hunky guy in my life who left too soon, though not in a plane crash. And then there's the moment when they ask Piaf what would happen if she could no longer sing, and she says she could no longer live, and I feel that way about writing, though it would be nice if there was a later appearance of some young Yves Montand. Also I have never knit, because I had a Nazi housemother in high school, Mrs. Lande, who said knitting required an IQ of 80, and I was afraid of that, as she also turned me away from bridge, which required 100, but Edith didn't play anything but supper clubs and music halls, so that omission doesn't count.
Still, it would be arrogant and delusional to think I could in any way compare myself to that great chanteuse, except I, too, lived in a whorehouse. Of course I didn't know it was a whorehouse, since my innocence extended not only to thinking I would find love and a career path in Paris, but also to assuming those sailors in the hall knocking on doors were in on leave and those were their girlfriends. I had moved to that hotel out of loneliness and desperation, because the French family I lived with and ate dinner with every night spoke to me only on the day my rent was due, and only after opening at the Mars did I feel secure enough to seek out my own lodgings. Sue Stanley, a peppery little Greek who was singing at the Dinarzade, the really upscale boite in Paris at the time, wanted my song "Sex," and so was very kind to me, and when I got sick, came to visit, saw where I was living, said "Oh, My God," packed me up, and got me out of there. "She's living in the only Left Bank hotel on the Right Bank" she said in her gravelly voice, which was not as good as Edith's, but then, whose was?
Certainly not mine. I would not dare to call my movie 'La Vie en Rose,' even if the title was available. I like peonies best at this point in my life, because they start out very tight and keep on opening and opening and even at full, lavish, almost overripe blossom are still lovely enough to paint, because you can see the heart at the center.
My sometimes friend Rex Reed wrote in his review that you would want to see it over and over again, and as I am very suggestible, once was not enough. I went Friday and again Saturday and would have gone again today except I am trying not to be compulsive. The performance is beyond remarkable, and the music is transformational, making you a part of Paris, which I never loved so much when I was living there as I do when I'm longing for it and wishing I had made better use of it. Literary use of it, I suppose, since all my dreams of Paris before the first time I was lucky enough to live there were based on what I had heard and read, Hemingway and Fitzgerald fantasies that never ripened into real.
Still, something happened to me in the course of watching the movie: I realized that my own life was not unlike Piaf's. True, my mother never sang in the streets. but she was a social director at resorts, which is not all that different, amusing people in passing. And she did abandon me when she had a date. Then again, I was encouraged to sing my songs in Paris not by someone who could later have been played in my movie by Gerard Depardieux, but by Maya Angelou, who said to me on that fateful night in the Mars Club when I was so uncomfortable and intimidated, because all the lights were orange and all the people were black, which you could still call them then, "Hoh-nee, you could get up and be bigger than anyone here." Thus it was that I got up onstage and sang my songs that had been such a hit at the Bryn MAwr Junior Prom; and the boss came over and said "You've got a job!" and I wired my mother "I am singing in a night club in Paris," and she wired me back, "Come home immediately." But I didn't. I stayed and sang my heart out, and part of my soul, too, I think, though there was no way I could be mistaken for Piaf unless a waif could be very overweight.
Nor did I ever have an affair with a boxer, but I did have a big hunky guy in my life who left too soon, though not in a plane crash. And then there's the moment when they ask Piaf what would happen if she could no longer sing, and she says she could no longer live, and I feel that way about writing, though it would be nice if there was a later appearance of some young Yves Montand. Also I have never knit, because I had a Nazi housemother in high school, Mrs. Lande, who said knitting required an IQ of 80, and I was afraid of that, as she also turned me away from bridge, which required 100, but Edith didn't play anything but supper clubs and music halls, so that omission doesn't count.
Still, it would be arrogant and delusional to think I could in any way compare myself to that great chanteuse, except I, too, lived in a whorehouse. Of course I didn't know it was a whorehouse, since my innocence extended not only to thinking I would find love and a career path in Paris, but also to assuming those sailors in the hall knocking on doors were in on leave and those were their girlfriends. I had moved to that hotel out of loneliness and desperation, because the French family I lived with and ate dinner with every night spoke to me only on the day my rent was due, and only after opening at the Mars did I feel secure enough to seek out my own lodgings. Sue Stanley, a peppery little Greek who was singing at the Dinarzade, the really upscale boite in Paris at the time, wanted my song "Sex," and so was very kind to me, and when I got sick, came to visit, saw where I was living, said "Oh, My God," packed me up, and got me out of there. "She's living in the only Left Bank hotel on the Right Bank" she said in her gravelly voice, which was not as good as Edith's, but then, whose was?
Certainly not mine. I would not dare to call my movie 'La Vie en Rose,' even if the title was available. I like peonies best at this point in my life, because they start out very tight and keep on opening and opening and even at full, lavish, almost overripe blossom are still lovely enough to paint, because you can see the heart at the center.
Friday, June 15, 2007
MINE OWN MADELEINE
When I first lived in Hollywood, before my move to the infamous Laurel Canyon, consecrated in song and last week's article in The New York Times about the 'Summer of Love,' I stayed at the Park Sunset on that epynonymous(I think it's spelled) boulevard. There was a coffee shop in the front of the hotel/apartment that had in its glass-cased counter Bear Claws, that typical LA pastry with almonds on top, shaped, I would imagine, like some baker's concept of claw, a semi-circle with ridges, glazed. I was a chub, a word that always hurt me as a little girl when it came on the label of a dress size, crazy in love with a wraith, the young and gangly and very beautiful Tony Perkins, whom I didn't know was gay, but considered simply respectful and tasteful, because how could he want a fat girl? His mind was as sharp as his shoulder blades, which were tanned to a creamy coffee brown, and he would tease me with lines from old movies, telling me if I could identify which picture, for example, "Rice pudding... in Egypt you cannot tell if they are flies or raisins" came from, he would take me to dinner. I used that as the springboard for his fictional character, Stephen Ryder, in my first novel Naked in Babylon, which I bowdlerized so Tony would continue to love me, in his fashion, which involved everything but touch, as he was upset that, in the novel at least, his character was a closeted homosexual, which I had faced in writing as I could not in life.
Anyway I was too fat to have the bear claw, because I was twenty and still lived in hope. So this morning when I took Mimi to the groomer and went into the bakery next door, there was a bear claw, so I ate it. Fuck it. Too late to worry about such things. I also remembered being closeted myself when Stanley Kubrick, my best friend of that moment, had me come down from Stanford, and secreted me in the Park Sunset to save him from what was, according to him, the unusable dialogue of Nabokov, and work on the screenplay of Lolita, not permitting me to call any of my friends, because he was sure if they knew I was in town, they would know what I was clandestinely(is it an adjective, too?) involved with. His paranoia knew no bounds. There were bear claws, then, too, that I didn't eat.
I am sad that he left as early as he did, but he could not stand a world he did not control, building his own Vietnam for 'Full Metal Jacket' at his compound in Elstree so he wouldn't have to travel to where there were actually palm trees, building a city for the insufferable 'Eyes Wide Shut'. The rest of us left here are suffering from a world, an administration we cannot control or, sadly, have any impact on, so maybe his genius extended beyond movie-making to timely exits.
My stole caught in the door of my car as I got in to come home, having eaten only of the top of the bear claw, just the slivered almonds and what there was of glaze, so I thought for a moment of Isadora Duncan and remembered having read somewhere of the woman who'd given her the fatal scarf. No other information about her, just that she had gifted her with that scarf. Scott Fitzgerald and wife once sat on a hillside in the south of France once near Isadora, and Zelda got even crazier because he was captivated by her, as we all are who know her legend, and remember the great and fatal last line, "Mes Amies, je vais au le gloire!" just before the end of the scarf caught in the wheel of the sports car she took off in and was strangled on her way to Glory. And I wondered how it was to be the woman who had so gifted her, who did nothing in life but be rich and able to give gifts to the gifted, and if she had suffered all the rest of her (what I imagine to be privileged and long) life because that was the only thing she had done of any real consequence, and that consequence so dark. I wish at such moments that I was de Maupassant(sp?) or Colette and had given myself to short stories instead of this bloody blog.
Mimi has lost fifteen ounces so is weighing in okay for her trip to France at summer's end, but she is hungry a lot of the time as it is hard to explain to her about an ideal of Beauty, or the rules at Air France. We had dinner last night with one of the great people left on the planet from when movies were movies, Gena Rowlands, and Mimi whined the whole time because we were eating some kind of beef she could smell from underneath the table. It was probably for her as it had been for me at twenty, sitting in front of that greasy glass case, filled with longing for an avenue for my talents, a great love and a bear claw.
So much for Proust, and his madeleine.
Anyway I was too fat to have the bear claw, because I was twenty and still lived in hope. So this morning when I took Mimi to the groomer and went into the bakery next door, there was a bear claw, so I ate it. Fuck it. Too late to worry about such things. I also remembered being closeted myself when Stanley Kubrick, my best friend of that moment, had me come down from Stanford, and secreted me in the Park Sunset to save him from what was, according to him, the unusable dialogue of Nabokov, and work on the screenplay of Lolita, not permitting me to call any of my friends, because he was sure if they knew I was in town, they would know what I was clandestinely(is it an adjective, too?) involved with. His paranoia knew no bounds. There were bear claws, then, too, that I didn't eat.
I am sad that he left as early as he did, but he could not stand a world he did not control, building his own Vietnam for 'Full Metal Jacket' at his compound in Elstree so he wouldn't have to travel to where there were actually palm trees, building a city for the insufferable 'Eyes Wide Shut'. The rest of us left here are suffering from a world, an administration we cannot control or, sadly, have any impact on, so maybe his genius extended beyond movie-making to timely exits.
My stole caught in the door of my car as I got in to come home, having eaten only of the top of the bear claw, just the slivered almonds and what there was of glaze, so I thought for a moment of Isadora Duncan and remembered having read somewhere of the woman who'd given her the fatal scarf. No other information about her, just that she had gifted her with that scarf. Scott Fitzgerald and wife once sat on a hillside in the south of France once near Isadora, and Zelda got even crazier because he was captivated by her, as we all are who know her legend, and remember the great and fatal last line, "Mes Amies, je vais au le gloire!" just before the end of the scarf caught in the wheel of the sports car she took off in and was strangled on her way to Glory. And I wondered how it was to be the woman who had so gifted her, who did nothing in life but be rich and able to give gifts to the gifted, and if she had suffered all the rest of her (what I imagine to be privileged and long) life because that was the only thing she had done of any real consequence, and that consequence so dark. I wish at such moments that I was de Maupassant(sp?) or Colette and had given myself to short stories instead of this bloody blog.
Mimi has lost fifteen ounces so is weighing in okay for her trip to France at summer's end, but she is hungry a lot of the time as it is hard to explain to her about an ideal of Beauty, or the rules at Air France. We had dinner last night with one of the great people left on the planet from when movies were movies, Gena Rowlands, and Mimi whined the whole time because we were eating some kind of beef she could smell from underneath the table. It was probably for her as it had been for me at twenty, sitting in front of that greasy glass case, filled with longing for an avenue for my talents, a great love and a bear claw.
So much for Proust, and his madeleine.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
SIC TRANSIT ALSO BUILDINGS
Watching the endless thank yous at the Tonys, I noted in passing, as everything seems to, that when Tommy Tune sang against pictures of theater people who had died this year, at the end a theater itself went up into the darkness, the Brooks Atkinson. I took that to mean that the theater had been demolished, to make way for even more unwatchable musicals with unsingable lyrics, and unwitty plays in larger, more Disneyfied quarters. Brooks Atkinson, for those of you young and wise enough never to have been fixated on Broadway, was a long ago theater critic, commemorated with a building, which they now mostly name for those who run them or own them. I am sadly used to friends departing for unknown shores, but this is the first time I ever lost a building. Even 255 W. 84th Street where I lived as a very little girl, that had a plaque on its side saying 'On this site Edgar Allen Poe wrote the Raven,' which electrified me at 8 and charged me with the thought I had to do something important with words, still stands, although the street sign has been upped to Edgar Allen Poe Way, which puts him on a level with Mervyn LeRoy, who has his own semi-street near the Tavern on the Green, a very touristy restaurant he started, which is not as good as The Raven.
The Brooks Atkinson was the theater where my play, 'The Best Laid Plans' opened the same week as my daughter. Her birth announcement was in The New York Times, 'Mother's Play's Opening Upstaged by Baby's," read the headline, and tout New York phoned me in the hospital because it seemed like I was going to be a hit, so i was inundated with friends none of whom called again once the reviews came in. They wished long life to my baby and instant death to my play. There's a backstory which is probably funnier than the play: Hilly Elkins was the producer with Don, my husband, co-producing, and my baby in my belly, the reason we rushed everything as we had to literally beat the stork. The stork does bring babies, doesn't he? And how come it's a male?
The comedy, (it really was) is about a young woman in love from a distance with a difficult playwright, like a straight Tennessee Williams, if you can imagine, so she goes to his psychiatrist, a very talkative man who failed in show business, and learns all about him, then moves into the apartment next door and pretends to be a drug-addicted, suicidal young woman so he will fall in love with her, which he does. It was really funny, no kidding. But then, out of town in Philadelphia, Hilly got hysterical, the leading lady was fired, the whole things started collapsing, and the law of the theater, "if it can go wrong it will," went into effect. Hilly wanted me to have the heroine do drugs on stage, and I refused. 'Bitch," he said, "you'll change it," "Hilly," said Don, "I remind you you're talking to a woman with a baby in her belly." The invectives continued to fly out of Hilly's mouth, increasingly offensive. Finally Don said "One more word and I'll have to kill you." Hilly said "You and what army?" So BOOM, he was down.
And Don was trying to kill him. The director(Paul Bogart, later to be fired in Boston) came over and took off Don's glasses so he wouldn't be hurt by Hilly's flailing. Nobody in the room made a move to stop Don from killing him, including Mel Brooks who was a friend and had been called down to assuage Hilly's panic, as everybody there despised Hilly. It was a darkly comedic moment. The only thing darker was everybody getting fired, my being in the hospital having Madeleine, unable to protect the play, and Hilly's bringing in Arthur Storch, a moron, to direct, so the play went down the tubes, although mine stayed healthy.
My obstetrician wanted to go to the opening, so he let me go to the party-- in those days we stayed in the hospital for a while-- I got to the theater in time for the last laugh which wasn't there, so I knew it was a disaster. Mel and Annie drove me back to the hospital. Annie was Anne Bancroft, my favorite friend at the time, still radiantly funny in my eyes from 'Two for the Seesaw' so I had told her at the start of writing it, that I was going to write a play for her, and did, anxious for her to keep doing comedy, especially mine.
She called me after reading it and liking it, but said "I can't do it. I'm doing 'The Devils.' I asked "Why?" She said, "I've never played a hunchbacked nun before."
"Besides," she said. "Who knew you would write it in two weeks?"
So in the car going back to the hospital, as I bled metaphorically, spiritually and really, Mel said "Look: You had two things happen this week: if one of them had to be less than perfect, if your daughter had been born with six toes and two noses, ... that would have been okay: what mattered was the show." So I guess, in a way he saved me, though he hadn't been much help to the play.
I got a telegram from the president of Bryn Mawr saying 'Congratulations and love to the only friend I have who had a baby and a play the same week,' Love, Kathy, (which I didn't know anyone called her, so that sort of lifted my spirit.)
Don and I hid out for several weeks, I ducking behind lampposts when I saw someone I knew, the excoriation in the papers had been so, well, excoriating. We finally moved to California, with his saying "We must never try Broadway again unless we have a million dollars." Now of course a million dollars isn't that much security, the play which cost a hundred and fifty thousand to produce, would cost ten million today, and my theater has been demolished, along with most of my girlish dreams. Also if I were to revive it today the playwright in the play would have to pretend to be gay so he could get something produced and lisp endless thank-yous at the Tonys.
Ah, but I did love the the-a-ter. Katharine Hepburn came back to college once when I was an undergraduate, and those of us who were enamored got to have tea with her. "I suppose I should tell you how Bryn Mawr helped me in the Thee- ahh- terr,"she arched. "But I cahhnnnn't."
Neither cahnnn I.
The Brooks Atkinson was the theater where my play, 'The Best Laid Plans' opened the same week as my daughter. Her birth announcement was in The New York Times, 'Mother's Play's Opening Upstaged by Baby's," read the headline, and tout New York phoned me in the hospital because it seemed like I was going to be a hit, so i was inundated with friends none of whom called again once the reviews came in. They wished long life to my baby and instant death to my play. There's a backstory which is probably funnier than the play: Hilly Elkins was the producer with Don, my husband, co-producing, and my baby in my belly, the reason we rushed everything as we had to literally beat the stork. The stork does bring babies, doesn't he? And how come it's a male?
The comedy, (it really was) is about a young woman in love from a distance with a difficult playwright, like a straight Tennessee Williams, if you can imagine, so she goes to his psychiatrist, a very talkative man who failed in show business, and learns all about him, then moves into the apartment next door and pretends to be a drug-addicted, suicidal young woman so he will fall in love with her, which he does. It was really funny, no kidding. But then, out of town in Philadelphia, Hilly got hysterical, the leading lady was fired, the whole things started collapsing, and the law of the theater, "if it can go wrong it will," went into effect. Hilly wanted me to have the heroine do drugs on stage, and I refused. 'Bitch," he said, "you'll change it," "Hilly," said Don, "I remind you you're talking to a woman with a baby in her belly." The invectives continued to fly out of Hilly's mouth, increasingly offensive. Finally Don said "One more word and I'll have to kill you." Hilly said "You and what army?" So BOOM, he was down.
And Don was trying to kill him. The director(Paul Bogart, later to be fired in Boston) came over and took off Don's glasses so he wouldn't be hurt by Hilly's flailing. Nobody in the room made a move to stop Don from killing him, including Mel Brooks who was a friend and had been called down to assuage Hilly's panic, as everybody there despised Hilly. It was a darkly comedic moment. The only thing darker was everybody getting fired, my being in the hospital having Madeleine, unable to protect the play, and Hilly's bringing in Arthur Storch, a moron, to direct, so the play went down the tubes, although mine stayed healthy.
My obstetrician wanted to go to the opening, so he let me go to the party-- in those days we stayed in the hospital for a while-- I got to the theater in time for the last laugh which wasn't there, so I knew it was a disaster. Mel and Annie drove me back to the hospital. Annie was Anne Bancroft, my favorite friend at the time, still radiantly funny in my eyes from 'Two for the Seesaw' so I had told her at the start of writing it, that I was going to write a play for her, and did, anxious for her to keep doing comedy, especially mine.
She called me after reading it and liking it, but said "I can't do it. I'm doing 'The Devils.' I asked "Why?" She said, "I've never played a hunchbacked nun before."
"Besides," she said. "Who knew you would write it in two weeks?"
So in the car going back to the hospital, as I bled metaphorically, spiritually and really, Mel said "Look: You had two things happen this week: if one of them had to be less than perfect, if your daughter had been born with six toes and two noses, ... that would have been okay: what mattered was the show." So I guess, in a way he saved me, though he hadn't been much help to the play.
I got a telegram from the president of Bryn Mawr saying 'Congratulations and love to the only friend I have who had a baby and a play the same week,' Love, Kathy, (which I didn't know anyone called her, so that sort of lifted my spirit.)
Don and I hid out for several weeks, I ducking behind lampposts when I saw someone I knew, the excoriation in the papers had been so, well, excoriating. We finally moved to California, with his saying "We must never try Broadway again unless we have a million dollars." Now of course a million dollars isn't that much security, the play which cost a hundred and fifty thousand to produce, would cost ten million today, and my theater has been demolished, along with most of my girlish dreams. Also if I were to revive it today the playwright in the play would have to pretend to be gay so he could get something produced and lisp endless thank-yous at the Tonys.
Ah, but I did love the the-a-ter. Katharine Hepburn came back to college once when I was an undergraduate, and those of us who were enamored got to have tea with her. "I suppose I should tell you how Bryn Mawr helped me in the Thee- ahh- terr,"she arched. "But I cahhnnnn't."
Neither cahnnn I.
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