hi, i'm back. did you miss me? i was gone a few days and i'm going to tell the story. it ain't a pretty story but it has a fairly happy ending.
i got sprung today from the hospital. been there 3 days. a heart thing.
(SPOILER ALERT)...................................
i'm writing so i obviously didn't die.
but i had quite the little adventure.
backstory.............
i have a history of congestive heart failure dating back about 8 years. complete recovery. (although i'll tell the story of the road to another time. ) so, over the years my physical being a/k/a.... my body, has moments. a skip or two of a heartbeat, the sound of blood rushing in my ears, stiff neck, numb feet, etc......so the first year or two you're a constant kvetch. my feet hurt, i have palpitations, and on and on like your grandma. and everyone, including yourself, sometimes, thinks you're a hypo.....and that's a pretty bad rap, so after a while, you roll with most of the internal shit, unless it's something really fucked up.........like potassium poisoning and all that encompasses...........and then it's off to the hospital.........(another story for another time, i promise).
ok. here's the story.
about a week ago i began having a rapid heartbeat. it's always rapid, but this was even more so. i didn't dwell on it because i also have a stiff neck and suddenly my right index finger is threatening arthritis, (see what i mean?) so it just seemed like an average week. but by tuesday, husband said call the doc, so wednesday morning i did. doc was concerned, knowing my history, but not panicked, and told me to come in first thing thursday morning. so we drive down thursday, do an e.k.g. in his office, and he informs me that i ought to be in a hospital taking tests............
and an hour later, i was.................. WTF?
now, remember, i'm feeling fine, just a rapid heartbeat, and i'm not worried because it happens all the time. but suddenly, we, husband and i, perform a dramatic entry, complete with papers, though the emergency room doors, flashing documents, and immediately are taken in for treatment........no waiting in the waiting room. .......right in. (i'm not sure if it's because my doc has clout, or if i was on death's door. i'd like the think the former.)
so onto a gurney i go, with drips in my arm not 5 minutes after i go through the double doors, like a goddamm episode of E.R........hoses everywhere........me, i swear i'm fine.......and then, suddenly, just in case something goes wrong, and i don't make it........everything stops........and a woman with a rolling computer comes over to ask a lot of questions, not the least of which is what is your primary insurance?
fast foward 3 or so hours...........
i'm in a bed in mercy hospital in coconut grove, florida. it's a private room, albeit a bit spartan (considering it is a catholic hospital.........shit, jew boy in a catholic hospital, i wanted stained glass windows.....), but that would have obstructed the view.
5th floor room, with an east view of biscayne bay, you know, the w i d e view, with key biscayne behind it, the very island with 2 nationally rated beaches) ........
so there are 2 drips in my arm, my heart averaging about 155, with a blood pressure of.........get this........a kicker........120/78.
told ya, my body does things,.........can't take it too seriously..........
so they do the 2nd e.k.g. (the 1st was in the doc's office), and an echocardiogram, and these 2 amazing attending doctors come to their conclusions, and i need 1 or both of a choice of procedures.
digress........don't you hate that word, procedure, i mean medically? oh, her kegel exercises aren't working, she'll need a procedure...... or...........you see how that cheek droops on your face, dear? we can fix that with a little procedure.
a bit about the amazing attending doctors. my primary doctor is a whiz kid, although no kid. truly brilliant. and so, lucky me, i catch him 48 hours before a diving vacation in Bonaire.....leaving for 8 days or so, and me with drips........... and so he contacts these heart guys to take me and fix me, and i trust him, literally, with my life.
one of the things i learned, (and this is big, if you don't know), is that there are 2 kinds of heart doctors........the plumber, and the electrician. ok, chortle chortle.........
seriously, the plumber gives you the catheter, through the tubes, takes the pictures, roto rooters your arteries, stents, angioplasty, crap like that. he's in charge of blood flow.......you get it. the electrician is the guy that has to fix the rhythm. tachacardia, palpitations, ya know. and so it begins..........
i mentioned the 2 amazing attending doctors, chosen by my doctor.......my good doctor. they were both so...........i dunno......but really, let's just start with the plumber.
we're talking movie star here. underwear ad guy. dark, flashing eyes, black cuban hair, although his mother might be french. or maybe dad is and mom is cuban. works either way. he was breathtaking. true story.........i was lying there in the bed palpitating, as i said. that's what i was in for. and the cardiologist walks in, in his scrubs, looking like antonio banderas having a johhny depp kind of day, and we exchanged pleasantries, hi i'm dr barquet, hi i'm david, and chat a sec. and i said to him, i'm in for rapid heartbeat and dr, and just looking at you is making it worse..........he laughed. i was nervous and he knew it. and then we got down to business of making me well. (the scrubs made him extra hot, (you know, we all have fantasies), but i swear, if he had been dressed like a fireman, i'd be dead of a coronary.)
the second doctor, the electrician, also a hottie. stepped out of a body by jake video. i can only imagine what kind of shape HIS heart is in, looking at the shape his BODY is in. makes me want to go back to the gym, instead of being a slug. (when did doctors buff up like that? these 2 were like the doctors on soap operas, except dammit, they never took their shirts off. oh well, actually, that's NOT what i was in for.............. )
digress..............
hospitals have changed since last i've been, give or take 7 years. now it's all wristband. like your admission to disney, or on a cruise ship. they put in on your arm, the minute you come aboard, and then turn you loose. have a good time........and they scan it....barcode........not a room number, but your entire life in a barcode and they scan it .....A LOT!
at first i didn't realize. i thought they were just making sure it was me, so's not to make any mistakes. and i'm certain that's part of it. but then the cruise ship stuff started to happen. a nurse came to give me a set of pills. she scanned my wristband flashed it into her rolling computer, scanned the pills one by one, and handed them to me. i'm guessing they got put on my itemized bill. blood pressure time, scan, flash, scan. change the i.v. bag....scan, flash, scan. feels a little like you're on the self-checkout at b.j.'s. the hospital was just different from what i remembered.
ooooh, and the lunch tray???? in the room???? completely styrofoam. tray, plates, cups, lids, everything. (oh boy, i'm hoping they recycle), except the flatware, that's still fabulous, million year, half life, plastic. and nobody's washing dishes anymore.
and now there seems to be a lot of staff.
i had a nurse, whose name was on the top of the dry board on the wall, and that changed every day (it was a dry erase board) and a nurse's asst, whose name was on the bottom, (ditto), a blood pressure attendent, a pharmacy delivery attendant, a woman that empties the trash, and another woman who dusted the window sill, and never thought to dust halfway up the window, you know that spot where the window lock is? that mini-sill gets dusty too. ) and still another who mopped the floor, a candy striper, a chaplain and of course the 2 doctors and their assistants. anybody still wondering why healthcare is expensive?
back............
anyway, so the drips in my arms took their effect, and they did a test looking for blockages, in my arteries. and get this........you know that catheter thing up your thigh leg and into your heart with dye and pictures to find blockages and do angioplasty and put in stents and all that stuff?
i didn't have anything!!! told ya, my body does things.
no blockages. that's like telling the marlboro man his lungs are clear, or telling george hamilton he has a nice skin quality. me, an old guy with clean arteries? give it up for, make some noise, let's have a shout out, for my man.......in the house!!!
yep, it's the truth. clean. they did find, however, a tiny electrical short which they'll fix this week.
(side note.....everyone. if they ever tell you you need a catheter up your leg to look at your heart, don't freak. this one is such an easy one. tiny shot, and you're awake the whole time watching, and in 15 minutes or so, you're done. left with a band-aid. a single band-aid. no big deal.)
ooh, i got serious, but consider that my public service message.
so by saturday afternoon, they realized, nothin' much was going to happen until monday, so they sprung me. and i'm home, having lost my view, but gained my freedom. and i simply had to begin the story. it will continue as the electrician gets to work.
so as i said, did you miss me?
to be continued.......................
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
who's your daddy?
a more peronal blog tonight. it's all about me. (ok, i hear you all saying....you, you, you........all about you.......), but truth be told, so far, this forum has not been so much about me, as about my experiences and of course "observations". so what could be so bad about my observations about my cats?
to begin.
i was an extraordinay kid. but then, hey, weren't we all? that's what kids are. these tiny little minds, all agog with promise and fantasy. a four or five year old child, if you watch it, is all pretend and make believe and i'm a sorcerer and i'm a gypsy and i'm a dragon slayer and i'm a train conductor....and .......ok, you get it. and it isn't until we, ahem.....adults......tell the tyke he/she can't be a dragonslayer, sorcerer, that the kid is stifled. we stomp out their dreams, because they belong to us and we want them focused on what we need....... soccer. spelling. violin. football. swimming. debating. the shit that WE want them to do. because we're so caught up in our own image and appearances, that we can't help ourselves. (our own image. hmmmmm..... bible talk......if you're a bible person.......god made man in his own image......and so we seem to be stuck on my own image.... and how can i mold my child thus?.......whew...
wow, didn't mean to get all heavy and shit.
that's not tonight's topic. child rearing and the mistakes that parents make. (i'm saving that for another time. too redundant to do it on "fathers day".......)
when i said i was an extraordinary kid, i meant it. smart, funny, precocious..
digress......
i just said precocious. i saw mary poppins last night, the broadway tour. good shit, truly. and that crazy song........ supercalifragilistexpialidocious. and of course in the play they rhyme it with precocious. can't get it out of my head. amazing show. see it if you can, on tour. (that was leftover from the tony blog)
i'm back....
my only flaws........if you could call them that.......were allergies. horses, dust, pollen, hay fever, rose fever and of course the biggest allergen of them all.......(probably still is, these days, in spite of air pollution, holes in the ozone, oil spills, peanut vapor on a plane, so the flight attendent can't give a bag of peanuts, because the lady 30 aisles back might die? ....WTF??? and the like)......would be .......
say it class........aloud.......all together now.........CATS!!!
we never had cats growing up. everyone in the family was allergic. we had a dog. dad brought him home when we were kids. he was a mutt. great dog, but a true "heinz 57". the guy that gave him to dad said he thought the dog was a beagle.
digress........
you all know beagle. SNOOPY!!...from peanuts?.... black and white or brown and white......and it's a pure breed. in the category of hound. they howl. owuuuuuuu. owuuuuuu. (picture the sound a wolf makes). signature sound. coyote sound. our dog NEVER made that sound.
back.....
our dog was a black and brown mix. not even a beauty, until of course he came to stay and then he was "our dog" and magnificent. see picture..........
this dog never sat next to a beagle on a bus. but dad, bless his heart, took the guy at his word, and thought he was a beagle.....he wasn't......but dad named him .......god love him.....snoopy.
so he was the family dog........actually, not really. he became my father's dog so dad could walk him and escape my mother......ooooooh.......another blog, another time....so sorry..........
anyway, there were no cats in any of our lives for fear of eyes swelling shut, sneezing 100 times, hives, you get it.....just a real attractive family at best when cats were around.
i always loved the look of cats. the quietude, elegance, cleanliness. but i dared not touch, lest i be consumed with "the misery".( this was way before you could carry around a hypodermic to shoot yourself in the thigh to circumvent anaphalactic shock.)
so thirty three years go by, in my life, and i can't touch or love cats. and then one summer in provincetown, (i stayed a couple of seasons as a bartender).....ooooh..
another subject for another time........i'm on a roll........i stayed in an apartment and there were two young lesbians in the next apartment with a kitten named zowie. i know, sounds stupid, but if you could have seen him.....well, see picture below..............
and he was just so cute, that i couldn't resist, and i picked him up, figuring i'd just sneeze for an hour as retribution.
and lo ........and behold......i was cool. nothing. nada....el zippo......trapped in disbelief, i nuzzled the kitty. nothing. and suddenly, i recalled an article in the NY Times that said that about every 22 years or so, you regrow all your cells, and grow in and out of allergies, (except your brain cels.... kids.... so don't do drugs......anymore.....) and i realized that zowie was appropriately named, because ZOWIE, i wasn't allergic anymore!!!!!!!
fast forward....
a year later, i decide to get a cat. (talk about a cliche`....a single queen with a cat.) my first pet of my own. (not the family thing, not my sister's dog. mine.) suddenly i'm daddy. and i name him buddy. how not? he was indeed just that. and a trouper. if there was a game to be played, he'd say, daddy, count me in.......... see pictures.
digress.......
lots of you have cats. and i know you'll go toe to toe with me that your cat is better than mine. (you'd lose). but i really, honestly, get.... that cat lovers love their beasts. to be "cat owned" is a unique experience that you can't know about until you are. and i know, and i hope that you know, it's not a contest. (even though i'd win). this is about the love of the most exotic creatures ever. let's talk "just cats" a minute.
how do i love thee? let me count the cats.........
buddy was a mutt from the humane society, little when i got him, soon to be a big beast. almost 25 lbs. funny me, i thought that was big once. more about that later. when i was home with him, he was like the leftover love child of the '60's, all sweet and purring and cute. when alone, he was a terror. tore up the house whenever i'd leave. he'd unroll the toilet paper, turn over the chairs, shred the garbage, get into mischief.....truly a psycho. see sample picture below. that's my computer.......
a co-worker, whom i'll call the "cat lady of miami", with like 15 cats, said to me, "he's lonely, get him a buddy". hmmmm.. couldn't hurt, (although in retrospect, that was her answer to everything. that's how she came to have 15 cats. but oh well.....
so then came came the female,
maggie. as in maggie the cat is alive! (ok, if you don't know that's cat on a hot tin roof by tennessee williams).
i named her so, because she was really small when she arrived, and the boy was almost 20 lbs, and on first visit he hissed at her, this little fluff piece, and she stood up to him and hissed right back and puffed and it just came to me. i'm alive. maggie the cat is alive! as she grew, she became a great beauty, so i'm glad i named her for an elizabeth taylor character in the movie. and we all lived happily in cat-wedded bliss for 18 years glorious years. (notwithstanding the kitty litter).
gaze upon her beauty.
isn't she something?
during the final 6 years or so of their lives, i met husband. they adopted him, but truth be told they were already older than i, so the "fun days" were but my distant memory. husband didn't know that part; the kitten part. eventually they passed on, at the ripe old age of 18........i'll spare you the tears, you have your own.......and i was grief stricken. the house was so empty. i mourned the proper amount of time, and finally said to husband, "i can't stand it. the house is too quiet." (this was right around christmas time of that year, and we had a festive tree up, and the season was upon us) and i turned to husband and said........."i need a kitten. "
so a humane society visit later, came peeps.
see picture below, in all her christmas kittenhood. she was small, so she'd climb the tree and survey her domain.
she was a tiny, tiny, beast with just the most incredible eyes. and tiny was good because buddy and maggie were both so big, i figured a small lap cat might be nice. i never knew the tyke's parents so there was no way to know that she'd grow. and i mean big time.
yep, same cat. and those eyes.........
it was a great kittenhood, as you with cats can attest. the usual bonding, frolicking, territorial shit, and then the boredom of the only child set in. she needed a buddy. so off we went, one more time and brought home a new boy.......rocky......a big moniker for such a small tyke. see picture. note the size of the kitten relative to daddy's finger. a wee one.........
ok, i heard you. you all said "awwwwwww"......and rightfully so.......
and again, didn't know the parents, and had no idea he'd grow to 30 pounds in a couple of years. i should have ventured into the everglades and simply adopted a panther. see picture.
where are siegfried and roy when you need them?????
happy father's day, everyone.
to begin.
i was an extraordinay kid. but then, hey, weren't we all? that's what kids are. these tiny little minds, all agog with promise and fantasy. a four or five year old child, if you watch it, is all pretend and make believe and i'm a sorcerer and i'm a gypsy and i'm a dragon slayer and i'm a train conductor....and .......ok, you get it. and it isn't until we, ahem.....adults......tell the tyke he/she can't be a dragonslayer, sorcerer, that the kid is stifled. we stomp out their dreams, because they belong to us and we want them focused on what we need....... soccer. spelling. violin. football. swimming. debating. the shit that WE want them to do. because we're so caught up in our own image and appearances, that we can't help ourselves. (our own image. hmmmmm..... bible talk......if you're a bible person.......god made man in his own image......and so we seem to be stuck on my own image.... and how can i mold my child thus?.......whew...
wow, didn't mean to get all heavy and shit.
that's not tonight's topic. child rearing and the mistakes that parents make. (i'm saving that for another time. too redundant to do it on "fathers day".......)
when i said i was an extraordinary kid, i meant it. smart, funny, precocious..
digress......
i just said precocious. i saw mary poppins last night, the broadway tour. good shit, truly. and that crazy song........ supercalifragilistexpialidocious. and of course in the play they rhyme it with precocious. can't get it out of my head. amazing show. see it if you can, on tour. (that was leftover from the tony blog)
i'm back....
my only flaws........if you could call them that.......were allergies. horses, dust, pollen, hay fever, rose fever and of course the biggest allergen of them all.......(probably still is, these days, in spite of air pollution, holes in the ozone, oil spills, peanut vapor on a plane, so the flight attendent can't give a bag of peanuts, because the lady 30 aisles back might die? ....WTF??? and the like)......would be .......
say it class........aloud.......all together now.........CATS!!!
we never had cats growing up. everyone in the family was allergic. we had a dog. dad brought him home when we were kids. he was a mutt. great dog, but a true "heinz 57". the guy that gave him to dad said he thought the dog was a beagle.
digress........
you all know beagle. SNOOPY!!...from peanuts?.... black and white or brown and white......and it's a pure breed. in the category of hound. they howl. owuuuuuuu. owuuuuuu. (picture the sound a wolf makes). signature sound. coyote sound. our dog NEVER made that sound.
back.....
our dog was a black and brown mix. not even a beauty, until of course he came to stay and then he was "our dog" and magnificent. see picture..........
this dog never sat next to a beagle on a bus. but dad, bless his heart, took the guy at his word, and thought he was a beagle.....he wasn't......but dad named him .......god love him.....snoopy.
so he was the family dog........actually, not really. he became my father's dog so dad could walk him and escape my mother......ooooooh.......another blog, another time....so sorry..........
anyway, there were no cats in any of our lives for fear of eyes swelling shut, sneezing 100 times, hives, you get it.....just a real attractive family at best when cats were around.
i always loved the look of cats. the quietude, elegance, cleanliness. but i dared not touch, lest i be consumed with "the misery".( this was way before you could carry around a hypodermic to shoot yourself in the thigh to circumvent anaphalactic shock.)
so thirty three years go by, in my life, and i can't touch or love cats. and then one summer in provincetown, (i stayed a couple of seasons as a bartender).....ooooh..
another subject for another time........i'm on a roll........i stayed in an apartment and there were two young lesbians in the next apartment with a kitten named zowie. i know, sounds stupid, but if you could have seen him.....well, see picture below..............
and he was just so cute, that i couldn't resist, and i picked him up, figuring i'd just sneeze for an hour as retribution.and lo ........and behold......i was cool. nothing. nada....el zippo......trapped in disbelief, i nuzzled the kitty. nothing. and suddenly, i recalled an article in the NY Times that said that about every 22 years or so, you regrow all your cells, and grow in and out of allergies, (except your brain cels.... kids.... so don't do drugs......anymore.....) and i realized that zowie was appropriately named, because ZOWIE, i wasn't allergic anymore!!!!!!!
fast forward....
a year later, i decide to get a cat. (talk about a cliche`....a single queen with a cat.) my first pet of my own. (not the family thing, not my sister's dog. mine.) suddenly i'm daddy. and i name him buddy. how not? he was indeed just that. and a trouper. if there was a game to be played, he'd say, daddy, count me in.......... see pictures.
digress.......
lots of you have cats. and i know you'll go toe to toe with me that your cat is better than mine. (you'd lose). but i really, honestly, get.... that cat lovers love their beasts. to be "cat owned" is a unique experience that you can't know about until you are. and i know, and i hope that you know, it's not a contest. (even though i'd win). this is about the love of the most exotic creatures ever. let's talk "just cats" a minute.
how do i love thee? let me count the cats.........
buddy was a mutt from the humane society, little when i got him, soon to be a big beast. almost 25 lbs. funny me, i thought that was big once. more about that later. when i was home with him, he was like the leftover love child of the '60's, all sweet and purring and cute. when alone, he was a terror. tore up the house whenever i'd leave. he'd unroll the toilet paper, turn over the chairs, shred the garbage, get into mischief.....truly a psycho. see sample picture below. that's my computer.......
a co-worker, whom i'll call the "cat lady of miami", with like 15 cats, said to me, "he's lonely, get him a buddy". hmmmm.. couldn't hurt, (although in retrospect, that was her answer to everything. that's how she came to have 15 cats. but oh well.....
so then came came the female,
maggie. as in maggie the cat is alive! (ok, if you don't know that's cat on a hot tin roof by tennessee williams).i named her so, because she was really small when she arrived, and the boy was almost 20 lbs, and on first visit he hissed at her, this little fluff piece, and she stood up to him and hissed right back and puffed and it just came to me. i'm alive. maggie the cat is alive! as she grew, she became a great beauty, so i'm glad i named her for an elizabeth taylor character in the movie. and we all lived happily in cat-wedded bliss for 18 years glorious years. (notwithstanding the kitty litter).
gaze upon her beauty.
isn't she something?during the final 6 years or so of their lives, i met husband. they adopted him, but truth be told they were already older than i, so the "fun days" were but my distant memory. husband didn't know that part; the kitten part. eventually they passed on, at the ripe old age of 18........i'll spare you the tears, you have your own.......and i was grief stricken. the house was so empty. i mourned the proper amount of time, and finally said to husband, "i can't stand it. the house is too quiet." (this was right around christmas time of that year, and we had a festive tree up, and the season was upon us) and i turned to husband and said........."i need a kitten. "
so a humane society visit later, came peeps.
see picture below, in all her christmas kittenhood. she was small, so she'd climb the tree and survey her domain.
she was a tiny, tiny, beast with just the most incredible eyes. and tiny was good because buddy and maggie were both so big, i figured a small lap cat might be nice. i never knew the tyke's parents so there was no way to know that she'd grow. and i mean big time.
yep, same cat. and those eyes.........
it was a great kittenhood, as you with cats can attest. the usual bonding, frolicking, territorial shit, and then the boredom of the only child set in. she needed a buddy. so off we went, one more time and brought home a new boy.......rocky......a big moniker for such a small tyke. see picture. note the size of the kitten relative to daddy's finger. a wee one.........
ok, i heard you. you all said "awwwwwww"......and rightfully so.......
and again, didn't know the parents, and had no idea he'd grow to 30 pounds in a couple of years. i should have ventured into the everglades and simply adopted a panther. see picture.
where are siegfried and roy when you need them?????
but grow he did, and became the "lord of the manor", as cats will do. peeps is not crazy about him. (and i got him for her.....go figure). she's just so elegant and he's just too feisty and boyish. she's a lady, thank you very much. but for the most part they get along.
the dog is now old, (the dog story, savannah, is for another day), but still kind of spry, as long as i buy the doggie joint juice from k-mart, (see k-mart blog).
and the cats are in their miss jean brodie "prime", and husband and i help each other along as we age. (not all that gracefully, i might add, but grateful that they let us live there at all, if you know the feline way), and in spirit, the cats keep us young at heart. they are truly our children.
and sometimes, after husband goes to bed, and peeps is all tucked in, rocky who is attached to me at the hip, will stay up a little, and we'll have a cocktail together, like a good son with his daddy.
happy father's day, everyone.
Monday, June 14, 2010
tony, is that you?
hey. i was stuck for a day or so. wondering if my muse will sustain. i never dreamed i'd write 6 of these things in a week or so. and i find myself lying in bed at night, as always, marvelling at the universe through my own warped perception.
i watched the tony awards last night. i'm sorry. i mean, the americal theater wing awards. WTF does that mean? used to be the antoinette perry awards for theater. tony for short. oh well. you live long enough, everything changes a little.
i'm a big theater fan. oh, not like some. i live in fort lauderdale, (there, i've shared a piece of personal stuff), and i don't make it a habit to fly to new york every six weeks to see 6 shows on a weekend. as groucho used to say......i love my cigar, but i take it out of my mouth once in a while.
i have friends....well, acquaintances, that live in my 'hood, and still maintain an apartment "in the city", and do just that. fly up, see everything, and then.......they use theater as a weapon.
i say, the touring company of jersey boys is in town. we saw it and it's a great theatrical experience.
they say, yes, of course, dahling, we saw it on BROADWAY, the year it opened. not the same thing.
i say, years ago, i saw liz taylor do the little foxes with richard burton at the parker playhouse.
they say, nice, but when tallulah bankhead premiered it, it was magic.
shit. like liz taylor is "slumming it"? (i feel a bitch slap coming on..........)
why can't it just be, i say........i saw a great "fill in the blank", last night, and the answer is.........good for you, girlfriend, we must all support live regional theater. i dunno..........i think the answer is queens.)
speaking of which.....the tony awards. sean hayes was the host. that cute little gay man that just came out recently, and is currently the nominated star of promises, promises,, that burt bacharat hit, revived this year, and a smash hit at that. after years of his just jack, on will and grace, he's become a great character actor, and now, finally, a leading man. he sings, he dances, he's a comic, and is a well rounded fine entertainer.
digress....there was an article in a magazine lately, that threw vitriol. the reviewer purported that a gay man, shouldn't be playing a straight leading man, because it's not believable. um. really? like what fucking planet does this putz come from? how old was he when monty clift, marlon brando, tab hunter, richard chamberlain, and a whole bunch of others were hollywood and tv kings, while secretly gay/bisexual?
anyway, that's not this blog. that's for another time.
this one is about the state of theater today. as i said, i see the road shows. but once a year i get excerpts from the very broadway itself, in the form of the tony awards show. i'm sorry. the american theater wing awards. WTF?? and this year was outstanding, and a little disconcerting.
let's start with outstanding.
the show opened with a number from million dollar quartet. (now, truth be told, i have a horse in this race, but i'll talk about that later.) it was an amazing presentation of talented men. 4 of them. elvis, carl perkins, johnny cash, and jerry lee lewis, and these guys were smokin'. truly, a great opening number.
sean hayes rose to the occasion, in light of the slander/vitriol of the review. he appeard as himself, spiderman, little orphan annie, ballet tights, and other irreverant guises, and kissed kristen chenowith smack on the mouth....a little tongue, etc. a true trouper. not to be fucked with. (um, i offered in a previous blog, i'm a grammarian). let me rephrase.......a man with whom not to fuck. (how's that, janis? caught it before you did.)...
digress......
janis is my friend. my good friend. back in the day, during the learning years, she was a major english major. (oooh, i'm sorry, that sounds like it might be a tad redundant, but she'll correct me if it is). you see, she reads this blog and offers amazing insight whenever i fuck up. not often, but nice to have a literary person on your team.
back.
so, there were all of the obligatory best nominee for a musical performances and all were breathtaking. geez, louise, if i lived in nyc, i'd see everything....shows, plays, opera, ballet, you name it......if, of course, i were a person of substantial wealth,.......(you see, before seeing the actual plays, there's rent, parking, (if you have a car), dinner (which in manhattan is actually more than my mortgage), and all that. but the excerpts, million dollar quartet, memphis, american idiot, fela,, were all outstanding. and among them.......the disconcerting.......
fela.......
wow, what a great company.....costumes.....choreography......and a smash hit......
but truth be told.....and let's never forget my opening salvo on day 1, blog 1, i'm old.....and it was a cacophany........omg..... i never turn DOWN the volume on a musical number....except sometimes.....and um, this was one of those times. in this case i'll invoke my judaism. i'll take a passover on this one.
american idiot.
noiser than fela. omg. what's happening to me? (did my parents think that west side story was too noisy? hip? loud?
you probably heard by now memphis won the tony, antoinette perry, american theater wing, whatever.......award. and most likely, rightfully so. one of the objects of the game is to bring theater out of new york to the masses, and so you need a play that will travel and bring joy. (jersey boys, wicked, the 39 steps, in the heights, you get it. so, fela, a south african very black show, might not bring in the masses in, say, birmingham, or even orlando. (which can still be a little redneck-ish, sometimes.) but memphis, almost as black, is about rock and roll, and plays better with the boomers. (even the redneck ones). and it won best musical. and i can't wait to see it on tour.
now for my horse.
about 5 years ago, i was on a gay cruise. (oh, milord, i could go on about that, but i won't right now). and husband and i were on our way to the dining room for yet another foray into the elegant trough that is dinner on a cruise ship. and as we walked the corridor i heard music from one of the areas designated as "lounge lizard" turf. we'd walked the ship for a few days prior, and never lost our gait, but that night, um.......how can i describe it?
digress......i have many degrees in classical music. i have ears that people only dream about. i wish there were a competition. i'd win. i hear things. (don't get crazy.....i don't hear things that aren't there.....i just hear things that are).
back......
so as we shuffled toward the baby lamb chops, i was stopped in my tracks. literally.
i heard a piano and a man singing. different. it was some good shit. so i grabbed my husband's shirtsleeve and said "let's go in here". and so we sat.
there was a man. a boy, actually. probably 20-ish. early 20's. singing. and playing piano. softly, as a whisper. loudly, like jerry lee lewis. i was smitten.
(ok, he was 20 something and gorgeous, but this is not about that, this is about his talent). anyway, husband and i got cozy, and listened for an hour or so. and then the next night, and the next...each night on our way to dinner.
i chatted the young man up, and found out his story, and bought a couple of his cds, to help further his career. i said to husband, "this boy is going places".
i kissed the boy good luck at the end of the cruise and went on my way.
on that same cruise, my husband and i met del shores and jason dottley. (ok, i know what you're thinking......the queen is dropping names......but i swear it's an intergral part of this story.....and my husband had a business meeting with del....), and subsequently, we became.....email buds........
not bffs, nothing like that, just professional acquaintences that occasionally email.
fast forward 2 years.........
as i said, i live in fort lauderdale. and during the course of emails with del and jason, i learned that they were coming to town to do a double bill of sordid lives and southern baptist sissies., 2 plays written by del, with jason in both plays, and directed by mr shores. (jason's quite the accomplished actor.....who knew back then?) so as good little groupies we attended, and there was this weird thing......during the course of sissies, there was the part of the "male prostitute", played by a mostly naked, hot, man, with not much of a part. and at the end of the show....the very end, kindof after the credits, he got to sing a song. and everyone said, "geez, the boy is terrific, but what was the purpose of the song at the end"?
and the answer is......no purpose, other than del wanted him to sing, to show off what he had. (have you guessed yet? this is the same kid from the cruise lounge.)
so now that's twice i've seen the lad.
next up, i hear from facebook that he's in a show in memphis called million dollar quartet about elvis and them, and i say "good boy getting gigs." and it's a hop-skip til i hear that they're taking the show to broadway with the young lad in tow.
last fast forward.
my young discovery (my ears, remember?), is currently in million dollar quartet on broadway, and this last sunday night, (i'm kvelling), he won the tony award, the very goddam antoinette perry, american theater wing, award for best featured actor in a musical! (oooh, as annie hall would say.....la de dah.....la de dah....).
the boy's........ahem......man's name is levi kreis. extraordinary.
digress.......back in 2001, there was a movie entitled frailty, with bill paxton and matthew mcconaughey. seriously disturbing movie. crazy people, murders, etc. and levi had a small but crucial part. i didn't know who he was back then, but i've rewatched it since.
back......i read a review that said "when he plays piano, it's like he's speaking in tongues". pretty good description. anyway, look for him. he'a gonna be a big star.
gosh i've always loved the tony awards. ok, the goddam american theater wing, antoinette perry awards. i especially loved them this year.
hats off to sean hayes for hosting a good time and of course to levi.
and as always, i'll drink to that.
i watched the tony awards last night. i'm sorry. i mean, the americal theater wing awards. WTF does that mean? used to be the antoinette perry awards for theater. tony for short. oh well. you live long enough, everything changes a little.
i'm a big theater fan. oh, not like some. i live in fort lauderdale, (there, i've shared a piece of personal stuff), and i don't make it a habit to fly to new york every six weeks to see 6 shows on a weekend. as groucho used to say......i love my cigar, but i take it out of my mouth once in a while.
i have friends....well, acquaintances, that live in my 'hood, and still maintain an apartment "in the city", and do just that. fly up, see everything, and then.......they use theater as a weapon.
i say, the touring company of jersey boys is in town. we saw it and it's a great theatrical experience.
they say, yes, of course, dahling, we saw it on BROADWAY, the year it opened. not the same thing.
i say, years ago, i saw liz taylor do the little foxes with richard burton at the parker playhouse.
they say, nice, but when tallulah bankhead premiered it, it was magic.
shit. like liz taylor is "slumming it"? (i feel a bitch slap coming on..........)
why can't it just be, i say........i saw a great "fill in the blank", last night, and the answer is.........good for you, girlfriend, we must all support live regional theater. i dunno..........i think the answer is queens.)
speaking of which.....the tony awards. sean hayes was the host. that cute little gay man that just came out recently, and is currently the nominated star of promises, promises,, that burt bacharat hit, revived this year, and a smash hit at that. after years of his just jack, on will and grace, he's become a great character actor, and now, finally, a leading man. he sings, he dances, he's a comic, and is a well rounded fine entertainer.
digress....there was an article in a magazine lately, that threw vitriol. the reviewer purported that a gay man, shouldn't be playing a straight leading man, because it's not believable. um. really? like what fucking planet does this putz come from? how old was he when monty clift, marlon brando, tab hunter, richard chamberlain, and a whole bunch of others were hollywood and tv kings, while secretly gay/bisexual?
anyway, that's not this blog. that's for another time.
this one is about the state of theater today. as i said, i see the road shows. but once a year i get excerpts from the very broadway itself, in the form of the tony awards show. i'm sorry. the american theater wing awards. WTF?? and this year was outstanding, and a little disconcerting.
let's start with outstanding.
the show opened with a number from million dollar quartet. (now, truth be told, i have a horse in this race, but i'll talk about that later.) it was an amazing presentation of talented men. 4 of them. elvis, carl perkins, johnny cash, and jerry lee lewis, and these guys were smokin'. truly, a great opening number.
sean hayes rose to the occasion, in light of the slander/vitriol of the review. he appeard as himself, spiderman, little orphan annie, ballet tights, and other irreverant guises, and kissed kristen chenowith smack on the mouth....a little tongue, etc. a true trouper. not to be fucked with. (um, i offered in a previous blog, i'm a grammarian). let me rephrase.......a man with whom not to fuck. (how's that, janis? caught it before you did.)...
digress......
janis is my friend. my good friend. back in the day, during the learning years, she was a major english major. (oooh, i'm sorry, that sounds like it might be a tad redundant, but she'll correct me if it is). you see, she reads this blog and offers amazing insight whenever i fuck up. not often, but nice to have a literary person on your team.
back.
so, there were all of the obligatory best nominee for a musical performances and all were breathtaking. geez, louise, if i lived in nyc, i'd see everything....shows, plays, opera, ballet, you name it......if, of course, i were a person of substantial wealth,.......(you see, before seeing the actual plays, there's rent, parking, (if you have a car), dinner (which in manhattan is actually more than my mortgage), and all that. but the excerpts, million dollar quartet, memphis, american idiot, fela,, were all outstanding. and among them.......the disconcerting.......
fela.......
wow, what a great company.....costumes.....choreography......and a smash hit......
but truth be told.....and let's never forget my opening salvo on day 1, blog 1, i'm old.....and it was a cacophany........omg..... i never turn DOWN the volume on a musical number....except sometimes.....and um, this was one of those times. in this case i'll invoke my judaism. i'll take a passover on this one.
american idiot.
noiser than fela. omg. what's happening to me? (did my parents think that west side story was too noisy? hip? loud?
you probably heard by now memphis won the tony, antoinette perry, american theater wing, whatever.......award. and most likely, rightfully so. one of the objects of the game is to bring theater out of new york to the masses, and so you need a play that will travel and bring joy. (jersey boys, wicked, the 39 steps, in the heights, you get it. so, fela, a south african very black show, might not bring in the masses in, say, birmingham, or even orlando. (which can still be a little redneck-ish, sometimes.) but memphis, almost as black, is about rock and roll, and plays better with the boomers. (even the redneck ones). and it won best musical. and i can't wait to see it on tour.
now for my horse.
about 5 years ago, i was on a gay cruise. (oh, milord, i could go on about that, but i won't right now). and husband and i were on our way to the dining room for yet another foray into the elegant trough that is dinner on a cruise ship. and as we walked the corridor i heard music from one of the areas designated as "lounge lizard" turf. we'd walked the ship for a few days prior, and never lost our gait, but that night, um.......how can i describe it?
digress......i have many degrees in classical music. i have ears that people only dream about. i wish there were a competition. i'd win. i hear things. (don't get crazy.....i don't hear things that aren't there.....i just hear things that are).
back......
so as we shuffled toward the baby lamb chops, i was stopped in my tracks. literally.
i heard a piano and a man singing. different. it was some good shit. so i grabbed my husband's shirtsleeve and said "let's go in here". and so we sat.
there was a man. a boy, actually. probably 20-ish. early 20's. singing. and playing piano. softly, as a whisper. loudly, like jerry lee lewis. i was smitten.
(ok, he was 20 something and gorgeous, but this is not about that, this is about his talent). anyway, husband and i got cozy, and listened for an hour or so. and then the next night, and the next...each night on our way to dinner.
i chatted the young man up, and found out his story, and bought a couple of his cds, to help further his career. i said to husband, "this boy is going places".
i kissed the boy good luck at the end of the cruise and went on my way.
on that same cruise, my husband and i met del shores and jason dottley. (ok, i know what you're thinking......the queen is dropping names......but i swear it's an intergral part of this story.....and my husband had a business meeting with del....), and subsequently, we became.....email buds........
not bffs, nothing like that, just professional acquaintences that occasionally email.
fast forward 2 years.........
as i said, i live in fort lauderdale. and during the course of emails with del and jason, i learned that they were coming to town to do a double bill of sordid lives and southern baptist sissies., 2 plays written by del, with jason in both plays, and directed by mr shores. (jason's quite the accomplished actor.....who knew back then?) so as good little groupies we attended, and there was this weird thing......during the course of sissies, there was the part of the "male prostitute", played by a mostly naked, hot, man, with not much of a part. and at the end of the show....the very end, kindof after the credits, he got to sing a song. and everyone said, "geez, the boy is terrific, but what was the purpose of the song at the end"?
and the answer is......no purpose, other than del wanted him to sing, to show off what he had. (have you guessed yet? this is the same kid from the cruise lounge.)
so now that's twice i've seen the lad.
next up, i hear from facebook that he's in a show in memphis called million dollar quartet about elvis and them, and i say "good boy getting gigs." and it's a hop-skip til i hear that they're taking the show to broadway with the young lad in tow.
last fast forward.
my young discovery (my ears, remember?), is currently in million dollar quartet on broadway, and this last sunday night, (i'm kvelling), he won the tony award, the very goddam antoinette perry, american theater wing, award for best featured actor in a musical! (oooh, as annie hall would say.....la de dah.....la de dah....).
the boy's........ahem......man's name is levi kreis. extraordinary.
digress.......back in 2001, there was a movie entitled frailty, with bill paxton and matthew mcconaughey. seriously disturbing movie. crazy people, murders, etc. and levi had a small but crucial part. i didn't know who he was back then, but i've rewatched it since.
back......i read a review that said "when he plays piano, it's like he's speaking in tongues". pretty good description. anyway, look for him. he'a gonna be a big star.
gosh i've always loved the tony awards. ok, the goddam american theater wing, antoinette perry awards. i especially loved them this year.
hats off to sean hayes for hosting a good time and of course to levi.
and as always, i'll drink to that.
Friday, June 11, 2010
brush up your shakespeare.........
i have always loved shakespeare. well, to be honest, i didn’t love reading shakespeare, but i loved the stories. let’s face it. we begin reading our very first bard epic in grade school. usually romeo and juliet, and with the help of a great english teacher we can make some sense out of all that iambic pentameter. i got through the plays in early life with the beloved cliff notes ensconced inside the pages of my actual play. but later on, as some of them became movies, my interest really began to pique. when ro & j became west side story, i said count me in. i loved that story. doomed star crossed lovers, lots of singing, jerome robbins choreography, with sharks vs. jets instead of montagues and capulets. it just drew me in and knocked me for a loop. (me, an emerging gay boy to be sure. i, naturally, would have been a jet ‘cause I’m white, but i thought bernardo was really the hot one, so i would have bitch slapped anita and stolen him away and made him my hot latino papi.)
later i discovered early incarnations from hollywood. kiss me kate was actually the taming of the shrew, (well it wasn’t exactly a secret, but it felt like one when i found out about it. and kathryn grayson, with her heart shaped mouth and her dulcet tones, was so pretty. she’s definitely part of what made me gay. more about that another time). later, woody allen did an amazing turn with a midsummer night’s dream (sex comedy). then there were julius caesar, othello, and hamlet, which were not made into happy, snappy musicals, (not exactly toe-tapping subjects), but had actors that i really liked, so i watched them and came away with more than than i would have, if i'd simply read them. (one note about the othello. shows you what bigots we really were back then, as opposed to now, when people hide it so much better......the role of othello was played by sir laurence olivier himself, larry, the very. (i know, clutch the pearls).....painted up all black as a moor. (I was never good at simile). imagine, painting up a white man like that? ok, the marx brothers, the three stooges, laurel and hardy. but in shakespeare? hmmmm... except for his inside lips which were crimson. (not sure why, but i was meserized.)
personally, i think that part should have gone to a black actor! but alas, sidney poitier wasn't up to the task (even if they would have hired him) and denzel was not around yet. nor was lawrence fishburne or forrest whittaker or morgan freeman. Those would have been some awesome othellos. not that sir larry wasn't great. he was. but it's a little like casting reese witherspoon to do a remake of the color purple and her playing miss celie. they could paint her up all black and stuff but i think she's just not the best choice for that role, these days.. But I digress.
the julius caesar, had brando as antony, a/k/a mumbles.
(oh that damned lee strassberg and his method).....but i loved brando too, even though he sucked in that role.......wasn't gonna be good again until godfather), and isn't THAT another story?
but it was still tough to love the plays by themselves, with all that wherefore, forsooth, hither and yon, and stuff like that. get thee to a nunnery! egads. zounds.
i don’t have kids, so i don’t really know about grade school curricula today. do they still force the bard on our youth? (by the way, we also read other crap in high school too. one that comes to mind is my antonia by willa cather. i don’t remember much about the book, but i can tell you this…......about every 10 weeks or so, she’s an answer on jeopardy. it’s either a question about my antonia or oh! pioneers. (seems those are the only two books of hers that alex trebek knows). so I’m glad I read that one. i get to impress people when jeopardy is on, and hey, that’s worth a little something.)
i just realized that some of this story is a little stream of consciousness-ish. i feel like i'm channeling somewhere between james joyce and rose nyland.
back to the bard.
romeo, romeo, wherefore art thou romeo?
in today’s parlance that would be
romeo, romeo, fuck thy family, romeo?
or
but soft, what light from yonder window breaks
might be
the bitch up on the balcony is hot
one more
friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
in p. diddy’s hands might be
wassup, heads up, tony's in the house
(i hope you’re paying attention that all of my alternatives are indeed iambic pentameter, just to keep us all in the mood.)
ok, while wer're all on iambic pentameter (and i'm not explaining what that is ...it's like diagramming a sentence.....if you missed it in your education.....well, sue your parents.....or your school board........'cause you ain't gittin' it here.)
how's this one, kids....
to be or not to be, that is the question
(ok, 5 beats, count 'em)
i ask you. to a little emerging fairy boy in grade school, isn't that just a tad too existential? how would an 11 year old know whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or not?
i didn't say this was easy.
ok, i'm coming to the good part now.
so, the other night, husband and i got a movie in the mail from netflix, which i ordered, called, titus. ok class, now how many characters can you identify with the name titus? yep, just the one....titus andronicus, by you-know-who.
i'd never read that one. heard of it but never read it. as i glanced at the netflix description, it starred anthony hopkins, jessica lange, and alan cummings, and directed by julie taymor (miss lion king, herself). good cast. good director
digress....
hopkins, you all remember did that silence of the lambs thing. great shit. academy award shit. hasn't done a bad film in years, and he's always a wonder to hehold.
jessica lange used to be a beauty, you know, back in the tootsie days. a really gorgeous creature with all those white caps. well, to be quite honest, she's a little long in the tooth now, as they say. that expression, in case you don't know, means old. and her teeth really got long as her gums receded. so she's not quite the beauty queen she once was. (but then, i should talk). but she can act up a storm now, better than when she was young. if you haven't seen grey gardens it's worth a watch. she's become a great actress. (if you can take your eyes off of the teeth).
alan cummings is a good actor as well. didn't figure him for shakespeare, but he soars. he gets to play the emperor of rome married to the lange character (who is the biggest monster since hopkins ate that liver with fava beans, in that other movie.) she plays a grotesque, and cummings plays his character so gay and demented it's a joy.
ok, back.
so here's this shakespeare play, made into this movie, titus, that is just over the top. murder, mayhem, orgies, treachery, rape, dismemberment, tongues ripped out, heads cut off, limbs lopped off, cannibalism, just the freakin' works!! (i don't mean to spoil the fun).
and here is the secret. we watch with the closed captions turned on. and line for line, iamb by iamb, the shakespearean dialogue flies by in in all it's splendid pentameter, and you get every word, every inside joke (and there are lots of them), everything, because you're reading and listening. suddenly it takes on another dimension. no joke. there's a reason we still love this stuff......and finally our modern ears can appreciate the bard on a higher plane.
next up for me is definitely the baz luhrman romeo and juliet.
who knows? if i watch enough of these, maybe i can do one blog entry in iambic pentameter. just a thought......
later i discovered early incarnations from hollywood. kiss me kate was actually the taming of the shrew, (well it wasn’t exactly a secret, but it felt like one when i found out about it. and kathryn grayson, with her heart shaped mouth and her dulcet tones, was so pretty. she’s definitely part of what made me gay. more about that another time). later, woody allen did an amazing turn with a midsummer night’s dream (sex comedy). then there were julius caesar, othello, and hamlet, which were not made into happy, snappy musicals, (not exactly toe-tapping subjects), but had actors that i really liked, so i watched them and came away with more than than i would have, if i'd simply read them. (one note about the othello. shows you what bigots we really were back then, as opposed to now, when people hide it so much better......the role of othello was played by sir laurence olivier himself, larry, the very. (i know, clutch the pearls).....painted up all black as a moor. (I was never good at simile). imagine, painting up a white man like that? ok, the marx brothers, the three stooges, laurel and hardy. but in shakespeare? hmmmm... except for his inside lips which were crimson. (not sure why, but i was meserized.)
personally, i think that part should have gone to a black actor! but alas, sidney poitier wasn't up to the task (even if they would have hired him) and denzel was not around yet. nor was lawrence fishburne or forrest whittaker or morgan freeman. Those would have been some awesome othellos. not that sir larry wasn't great. he was. but it's a little like casting reese witherspoon to do a remake of the color purple and her playing miss celie. they could paint her up all black and stuff but i think she's just not the best choice for that role, these days.. But I digress.
the julius caesar, had brando as antony, a/k/a mumbles.
(oh that damned lee strassberg and his method).....but i loved brando too, even though he sucked in that role.......wasn't gonna be good again until godfather), and isn't THAT another story?
but it was still tough to love the plays by themselves, with all that wherefore, forsooth, hither and yon, and stuff like that. get thee to a nunnery! egads. zounds.
i don’t have kids, so i don’t really know about grade school curricula today. do they still force the bard on our youth? (by the way, we also read other crap in high school too. one that comes to mind is my antonia by willa cather. i don’t remember much about the book, but i can tell you this…......about every 10 weeks or so, she’s an answer on jeopardy. it’s either a question about my antonia or oh! pioneers. (seems those are the only two books of hers that alex trebek knows). so I’m glad I read that one. i get to impress people when jeopardy is on, and hey, that’s worth a little something.)
i just realized that some of this story is a little stream of consciousness-ish. i feel like i'm channeling somewhere between james joyce and rose nyland.
back to the bard.
romeo, romeo, wherefore art thou romeo?
in today’s parlance that would be
romeo, romeo, fuck thy family, romeo?
or
but soft, what light from yonder window breaks
might be
the bitch up on the balcony is hot
one more
friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
in p. diddy’s hands might be
wassup, heads up, tony's in the house
(i hope you’re paying attention that all of my alternatives are indeed iambic pentameter, just to keep us all in the mood.)
ok, while wer're all on iambic pentameter (and i'm not explaining what that is ...it's like diagramming a sentence.....if you missed it in your education.....well, sue your parents.....or your school board........'cause you ain't gittin' it here.)
how's this one, kids....
to be or not to be, that is the question
(ok, 5 beats, count 'em)
i ask you. to a little emerging fairy boy in grade school, isn't that just a tad too existential? how would an 11 year old know whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or not?
i didn't say this was easy.
ok, i'm coming to the good part now.
so, the other night, husband and i got a movie in the mail from netflix, which i ordered, called, titus. ok class, now how many characters can you identify with the name titus? yep, just the one....titus andronicus, by you-know-who.
i'd never read that one. heard of it but never read it. as i glanced at the netflix description, it starred anthony hopkins, jessica lange, and alan cummings, and directed by julie taymor (miss lion king, herself). good cast. good director
digress....
hopkins, you all remember did that silence of the lambs thing. great shit. academy award shit. hasn't done a bad film in years, and he's always a wonder to hehold.
jessica lange used to be a beauty, you know, back in the tootsie days. a really gorgeous creature with all those white caps. well, to be quite honest, she's a little long in the tooth now, as they say. that expression, in case you don't know, means old. and her teeth really got long as her gums receded. so she's not quite the beauty queen she once was. (but then, i should talk). but she can act up a storm now, better than when she was young. if you haven't seen grey gardens it's worth a watch. she's become a great actress. (if you can take your eyes off of the teeth).
alan cummings is a good actor as well. didn't figure him for shakespeare, but he soars. he gets to play the emperor of rome married to the lange character (who is the biggest monster since hopkins ate that liver with fava beans, in that other movie.) she plays a grotesque, and cummings plays his character so gay and demented it's a joy.
ok, back.
so here's this shakespeare play, made into this movie, titus, that is just over the top. murder, mayhem, orgies, treachery, rape, dismemberment, tongues ripped out, heads cut off, limbs lopped off, cannibalism, just the freakin' works!! (i don't mean to spoil the fun).
and here is the secret. we watch with the closed captions turned on. and line for line, iamb by iamb, the shakespearean dialogue flies by in in all it's splendid pentameter, and you get every word, every inside joke (and there are lots of them), everything, because you're reading and listening. suddenly it takes on another dimension. no joke. there's a reason we still love this stuff......and finally our modern ears can appreciate the bard on a higher plane.
next up for me is definitely the baz luhrman romeo and juliet.
who knows? if i watch enough of these, maybe i can do one blog entry in iambic pentameter. just a thought......
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
observations on language.....omg
parent, impact, gone missing.....let the language games begin......
i had parents. not an odd thing, you all did. know them or not, like them or not, you had them. biologically, physiologically, genetically you had to. not possible not to. and mine were ...... i dunno....average. better than some, worse than others, but i firmly believe, in my current state of mostly sane, (but for the occasional lapse), they did the best they could with what they had. children of the great depression, both of them. for a while, each, in his/her own family, were kind of poor. ok, very poor. grandma k, (don't forget, i'm davidk) took in boarders, or so i've been told, to make ends meet. grandma s, (mom's side), well, let's just say that after the trip from europe to escape oppression, and some lean years in america at the turn of the 20th century, and the great depression, and subsequent world war, there were a paint store, taxis, some shady deals, a brush, (however big or small) with the mob, and they ended up, well, comfortable. my forebears, were plain people with good intentions who came to america as immigrants, that went through ellis island, all proper like, and began a new life here, with only their home language in their mouths. they stayed, worked hard, made a life, produced 1st generation offspring that spoke english as a 1st language and yiddish as backup. (or vice versa, i wasn't actually there). but both of my parents, were bilingual, mostly english, pretty good yiddish. they went to american schools in jersey city, nj, grew up, met, dad fought in the great war, came home, married, had kids, a/k/a me.....(and a couple of others, whom i'll leave out of the blog until i get permission).....and we grew up with a good (i'd like to say old fashioned) grade school education, except that it wasn't old fashioned. it was 2nd generation new american to our people. might have been old fashioned to the descendents of the mayflower gang, who'd been here awhile, but not so, us. but..... and this is a big but..... we learned grammar. it began right after alphabet. not sure, maybe 1st, maybe 2nd grade. by then you had to speak proper. haha, kidding. properly. or just proper english. (it works either way if you're taught proper grammar). and i was. i'm still smarter than a 5th grader. to this day i can diagram a sentence. (if you don't know what that means, then chances are your grammar sucks). and so i choose to take issue with some daily usage of the current language known as american english.
parent. noun. father or mother. one that begets or brings off offspring. (webster's dictionary...and merriam knows some shit).
for example, i have 2 parents. (noun). jane is about to become a parent. (noun).
hi blanche, how are your parents? (plural noun). oh, she had a kid at 14 but she's a great parent.(noun) and on and on.
suddenly, i hear............moesha doesn't parent very well. (verb)??? her parenting skills are lacking. (adjective? modifying skills?). there are classes at the college in parenting (gerund?).......WTF??? who decided that parent is no longer a noun? i hate to use this excuse but maybe i was absent that day. but you hear it all the time now, and i don't like it. i don't like it one bit. i won't use it. i'd like to see the sentence diagrammed, thank you very much.
impact. noun. the striking of one thing against another; foreceful contact; collision. influence.
for example. the job market statistics had a very negative impact on the stock market. (noun). and so on. i think you get it.
suddenly i hear, the smell of her intoxicating perfume impacted his judgement on whether or not to bed her down. (verb??). putting 2 kids through college will impact your financial as well as mental health. (future verb??). the oil belching from the spill is impacting the tourism in st petersburg, not to mention the political environment. (verb??). HELP!!! what happend to the rules? this is one in which i refuse to participate. i have enough verbs, a dictionary filled with verbs. verbs i haven't even used yet, so i don't need to add impact to the list.
i could go on, but i think you get the drift of it. i urge you all to be wary of bastardizing your language and grammar. be afraid, lest we all speak poorly.
it's a slippery slope at best.
ok. while i'm on the subject, slightly different, but this one pisses me off the absolute most.
GONE MISSING.
WTF?????
i first heard the late peter jennings use it on the nightly news and my eyes crossed. i always loved him. so handsome, so classy, and the best english ever, especially because he was canadian, eh? so.......
let's do grammar drills:
me: where's your son?
mary: : oh, he's.....
gone fishing
gone shopping
gone blading
gone hunting
gone swimming
gone scuba diving...etc.
now, i know how to fish, shop, blade, hunt, swim, scuba dive.....but i don't know how to miss. can someone please tell me how to miss, so i can go missing?
more grammar drills:
me: i miss my momma
i miss the days before i had 12 communication devices
i miss the days when i could hold my water
i miss drinking and driving
i miss qaaludes.... etc.
but i can't wrap my mind around he's gone missing.
see, here's the thing. i'd say,
where is he? oh, he's missing.
or even, as a phrase, he's among the missing.
but he hasn't GONE missing.
me: miss dubois, where's little elmo today?
miss dubois: oh, he's gone missing.?????
me: no, i think it's he missed a day of school.
diane sawyer: two marines went missing today in iraq
me: no, diane, i think two marines went hunting for snipers today and are now missing in action
should we change the lyrics of the hymn amazing grace?
i once was lost, but now i'm found........
to
i once went missing, but now i'm found.....
i think not. i won't have it, i tell you, i just won't!!!! (ok, truth be told, i suppose it sounds cool to say it, because it's a new phrase, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon when there's a new catchy, kitschy item, (like let's give a shout out for oprah......or ..can i get a fist bump, and suddenly everyone at the water cooler is touching knuckles......hmmmm......give me my props, ......catchy, i know, but it's still WRONG!)
i'll fight this gone missing thing til there's i'm no longer able to make a fist or shout out or until i've gone dead.
so let's give it up, give a shout out, high five, david's in the house, show some respect.......for me!!!! (ugh.....how about just, let's hear it for the boy?)
there, now you know. i'm a stickler for language, and this whole generation of bastardized english, ebonics, hip-hop song lyrics, rap, poetic license run amok, and the like, is enough to drive me to a series of martinis. (not that i really need a reason).
i had parents. not an odd thing, you all did. know them or not, like them or not, you had them. biologically, physiologically, genetically you had to. not possible not to. and mine were ...... i dunno....average. better than some, worse than others, but i firmly believe, in my current state of mostly sane, (but for the occasional lapse), they did the best they could with what they had. children of the great depression, both of them. for a while, each, in his/her own family, were kind of poor. ok, very poor. grandma k, (don't forget, i'm davidk) took in boarders, or so i've been told, to make ends meet. grandma s, (mom's side), well, let's just say that after the trip from europe to escape oppression, and some lean years in america at the turn of the 20th century, and the great depression, and subsequent world war, there were a paint store, taxis, some shady deals, a brush, (however big or small) with the mob, and they ended up, well, comfortable. my forebears, were plain people with good intentions who came to america as immigrants, that went through ellis island, all proper like, and began a new life here, with only their home language in their mouths. they stayed, worked hard, made a life, produced 1st generation offspring that spoke english as a 1st language and yiddish as backup. (or vice versa, i wasn't actually there). but both of my parents, were bilingual, mostly english, pretty good yiddish. they went to american schools in jersey city, nj, grew up, met, dad fought in the great war, came home, married, had kids, a/k/a me.....(and a couple of others, whom i'll leave out of the blog until i get permission).....and we grew up with a good (i'd like to say old fashioned) grade school education, except that it wasn't old fashioned. it was 2nd generation new american to our people. might have been old fashioned to the descendents of the mayflower gang, who'd been here awhile, but not so, us. but..... and this is a big but..... we learned grammar. it began right after alphabet. not sure, maybe 1st, maybe 2nd grade. by then you had to speak proper. haha, kidding. properly. or just proper english. (it works either way if you're taught proper grammar). and i was. i'm still smarter than a 5th grader. to this day i can diagram a sentence. (if you don't know what that means, then chances are your grammar sucks). and so i choose to take issue with some daily usage of the current language known as american english.
parent. noun. father or mother. one that begets or brings off offspring. (webster's dictionary...and merriam knows some shit).
for example, i have 2 parents. (noun). jane is about to become a parent. (noun).
hi blanche, how are your parents? (plural noun). oh, she had a kid at 14 but she's a great parent.(noun) and on and on.
suddenly, i hear............moesha doesn't parent very well. (verb)??? her parenting skills are lacking. (adjective? modifying skills?). there are classes at the college in parenting (gerund?).......WTF??? who decided that parent is no longer a noun? i hate to use this excuse but maybe i was absent that day. but you hear it all the time now, and i don't like it. i don't like it one bit. i won't use it. i'd like to see the sentence diagrammed, thank you very much.
impact. noun. the striking of one thing against another; foreceful contact; collision. influence.
for example. the job market statistics had a very negative impact on the stock market. (noun). and so on. i think you get it.
suddenly i hear, the smell of her intoxicating perfume impacted his judgement on whether or not to bed her down. (verb??). putting 2 kids through college will impact your financial as well as mental health. (future verb??). the oil belching from the spill is impacting the tourism in st petersburg, not to mention the political environment. (verb??). HELP!!! what happend to the rules? this is one in which i refuse to participate. i have enough verbs, a dictionary filled with verbs. verbs i haven't even used yet, so i don't need to add impact to the list.
i could go on, but i think you get the drift of it. i urge you all to be wary of bastardizing your language and grammar. be afraid, lest we all speak poorly.
it's a slippery slope at best.
ok. while i'm on the subject, slightly different, but this one pisses me off the absolute most.
GONE MISSING.
WTF?????
i first heard the late peter jennings use it on the nightly news and my eyes crossed. i always loved him. so handsome, so classy, and the best english ever, especially because he was canadian, eh? so.......
let's do grammar drills:
me: where's your son?
mary: : oh, he's.....
gone fishing
gone shopping
gone blading
gone hunting
gone swimming
gone scuba diving...etc.
now, i know how to fish, shop, blade, hunt, swim, scuba dive.....but i don't know how to miss. can someone please tell me how to miss, so i can go missing?
more grammar drills:
me: i miss my momma
i miss the days before i had 12 communication devices
i miss the days when i could hold my water
i miss drinking and driving
i miss qaaludes.... etc.
but i can't wrap my mind around he's gone missing.
see, here's the thing. i'd say,
where is he? oh, he's missing.
or even, as a phrase, he's among the missing.
but he hasn't GONE missing.
me: miss dubois, where's little elmo today?
miss dubois: oh, he's gone missing.?????
me: no, i think it's he missed a day of school.
diane sawyer: two marines went missing today in iraq
me: no, diane, i think two marines went hunting for snipers today and are now missing in action
should we change the lyrics of the hymn amazing grace?
i once was lost, but now i'm found........
to
i once went missing, but now i'm found.....
i think not. i won't have it, i tell you, i just won't!!!! (ok, truth be told, i suppose it sounds cool to say it, because it's a new phrase, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon when there's a new catchy, kitschy item, (like let's give a shout out for oprah......or ..can i get a fist bump, and suddenly everyone at the water cooler is touching knuckles......hmmmm......give me my props, ......catchy, i know, but it's still WRONG!)
i'll fight this gone missing thing til there's i'm no longer able to make a fist or shout out or until i've gone dead.
so let's give it up, give a shout out, high five, david's in the house, show some respect.......for me!!!! (ugh.....how about just, let's hear it for the boy?)
there, now you know. i'm a stickler for language, and this whole generation of bastardized english, ebonics, hip-hop song lyrics, rap, poetic license run amok, and the like, is enough to drive me to a series of martinis. (not that i really need a reason).
Monday, June 7, 2010
tv or not tv, that is the question.....
remember the premise......i'm old.
tv is different now from when i grew up. we had andy and opie and aunt bea, and ozzie and harriet, and donna reed. those wholesome family shows, in a much simpler time were, well, simpler. (don't get me wrong, i don't spend a lot of time pining for little opie and andy and barney fife, or was it barfey nife?). after all, it was a cute show, as were many, but with very few intellectual challenges abounding, even for a 5 year old.
there were others, just as wholesome, but with decidedly different family structures, and one day i'll write about the family way, as i grew up in front of a television.
these days i watch some tv. oh, not like those people where the boob tube, (how many remember calling it that?) is on all day, every day. (that would interfere with my many other distractions, like the computer, email, twitter, facebook, ipod, and such, and of course, work.......and we couldn't have that now, could we?). i know people that get out of bed in the morning and turn the tv on. anything. whatever. just so as not to be alone with their own thoughts, i'm guessing. stuff like game show reruns. imagine, old game shows on the game show network, like password or family feud with that kissing idiot, whatshisname, a one-man mononucleosis factory, if ever there were one (who did he fuck to get that job?) just so the tube is on and there is ambient sound in the room. and that's enough for them.
not so, me.
i have a lot of viewing options, as do most likely most of you. there are literally hundreds of channels. so many, in fact, that if i don't have a plan, i can start surfing at say, 7:00pm, and still be searching at 7:30 and will have missed a half-hour of tv while i was watching! (that somehow seems metaphysically absurd, doesn't it?). anyway......
to be sure, the tv formats haven't changed much. used to be cop shows like dragnet, and hawaii five-o, and kojak, and now there's law and order, CSI and NCIS in a dozen select cities (is it an honor or a comment on how hideous your town is, if there's an NCIS named for your city? miami, new york, las vegas, los angeles etc). used to be lots of sitcoms, amos and andy (now unbearably politically incorrect, never to be found in rerun heaven), all in the family (why wasn't that also equally condemned?), and in recent decades roseanne, mash, seinfeld, friends, designing women (my particular favorite), frazier, and the like. now, there are literally hundreds of such shows and some of these are great classic shows, separated from the run-of-the-mill, average, mouth breather comedies, by one thing and one thing only. WRITERS!!! i can't stress that enough. it doesn't matter who you put in a sitcom, if there's nothing funny to say, it will die. same for drama. same for dramedy (oooh, new late 20th century word). same for rom-com, bro-com, etc. think about it. even though it's almost 500 years later, we still read shakespeare. why? good writing. so one of my big snobberies is...and i'm a little alone in this......i will not watch a show that has no script. which of course, brings us to the reality genre. i'd say don't get me started, but duh.......i've already started................
i think it all began with survivor. the producers took a gaggle of very greedy, vicious people, and supposedly put them on an island somewhere outside of civilization, and we watched as they turned into animals, and then turned on each other, and lied and cheated and stole and conned their way to stay on the island. (of course, this island had a full film crew, and i suppose medical people, if things got too out of hand....one injury or bug bite and all that litigation, you know, and with that bunch on the island, there were bound to be lawsuits). also on hand were costume people, make-up people, wardrobe people, commissary, hotels, etc. (just out of camera range), so this deserted island was itself a hoax. but somehow people found it fascinating to watch a hideous subsection of our society with the appropriate amount of strategically placed mud on their faces, devour each other, figuratively, not literally, of course.
not so, me.
(as fate would have it, the first year's winner, i believe, destroyed his competition, was the lone survivor, won the million bucks, and the the i.r.s., to put it delicately, had their way with him. i love irony, even when it's not scripted.) there was no show script, and quite frankly, watching people pass a torch on a dimly lit island when they ought to be swimming to try and get the mud off of their faces, is not my cup of boullion. it was, however, a hit, and tv producers everywhere rejoiced in the fact that they thought they no longer needed to pay writers.
and, so popular was this bloodsport that it spun off dozens of other like-minded shows and a genre was born. there were more survivor locales, reality dating a la the bachelor, and subsequently, bachelorette, fat people dieting for money and prizes (and food, i imagine), extreme home makeovers, (which is just poor people envying other poor people because now that they won a home makeover, they don't have to live like poor people anymore), people swapping wives, people worried if they're smarter that a 5th grader. (i am, by the way, and i was when i was in 5th grade. why would i worry about that now?), and people giving up their children to strange women pretending to be mary poppins, calling themselves, nannies.
digress........
did you ever see that movie, late in bette davis' career called the nanny? well, that'll teach you to give your kids to a crazy person.........
back......
and now on to my very favorite shows to hate........the ones where they sing and dance.
in my day, (there's that old lady phrase again), we used to have ed sullivan, where actually talented people hawked their wares, like the beatles, the rolling stones, joan sutherland, the moiseyev dance troupe from russia, the bolshoi ballet, elvis, and lots more. ed could really assemble some hot acts. and there were variety shows as well, with singing and dancing. even the jackie gleason show, once it went to an hour and in color, featuring a honeymooners sketch each week, had the june taylor dancers in a segment. (i'm waxing a tad sentimental right about now.)
what do we have today? wait for it....you know this one.....AMERICAN IDOL. personally i can't abide that show. the first half dozen episodes of each season is devoted to.......what? the shit we really, really don't want to watch? the worst of the worst? people who can't carry a tune in a bag? (paper or plastic?)...and they're on tv....remind me again....why? and then many episodes of variation on survivor, meaning, one by one, week after week, one gets voted off the island... i mean stage. til there are the 2 or 3 left that the producers wanted all along (that voting crap is just that......crap), and so we, or rather they, (i don't) watch and listen to what amounts to the prettiest or oddest singers screaming!! they sing songs the titles of which i know, but they warble with such melismatic chaos, that i don't recognize the actual song. (i definitely know that mariah carey started that style of singing and i didn't like it when she did it and i don't like it now, thank you very much). and everyone who i know who purports to be a fan, all tivo and fast forward the entire show except for the songs. the screaming part. WTF? (yeah you do it.....you all do it). and simon......poor simon.....such an asshole, and such a public one at that! they say he's the guy you love to hate. no he's not. he's just the guy you hate! and paula abdul. can you spell insipid? no, no, no. i don't watch it, and i don't tivo it for selected horrible highlights. (when did tivo become a verb? ever think about that?)
side note: nouns becoming verbs. that's an entirely different blog post. start with parent, tivo, disrespect, impact, the list goes on)
and perhaps lastly, after singing, comes dancing......come on, you know this one too.........i'll wait for you.......i gave you the first word...........DANCING WITH THE STARS............which is technically not really dancing and they're not actually stars. i think to qualify as a star, you should at least have been a b player in failed sitcom, no? (like earl holliman in that delta burke series, delta, or david alan grier in that other delta burke series,... dag.......ok, ok, i'll blog about delta burke another time. i do so love her.) at least they had a prominent part in a regular, albeit short-lived tv show. you say stars, i think streisand, redford, harry connick jr, george clooney, julia roberts. but emmet? (ok, he's kind of a football star, but really more of beard dye-gel star). jerry springer? (talk show host, former mayor of a minor city?), kate gosselin? (whose claim to fame is her uterus?), buzz aldrin? (ok, he walked on the moon, but he can't even walk on earth at this point). ladies and gentlemen, i present to you, all of them genuine bona fide stars. (my ass). and the dancing? with bruno screaming between paso dobles standing on his desk like a petulant 5-year-old with ADHD? with carey ann in her infinite wisdom giving advice to astronauts on how to cha cha cha? (who the hell is carey ann anyway? she's not even a star, and they're paying her! come to think of it, neither is bruno, or the old arthur treacher wannabe, whatshisname. we have non-stars judging and giving advice to other non-stars. (are any of you beginning to understand why we need WRITERS AND SCRIPTS???? because without them, you have idol, dancing and shows of that ilk.
no, the tv i watch is minimal. about an hour of news a day (i don't like it and i don't know why i do it. probably for the same unnamed need that draws me to read and hate the daily newspapers). i watch a lot of movies. they're not better, per se, than what anybody else watches, they're just......you know.......... scripted.
and sometimes, when i'm channel surfing, and i land on a seinfeld classic or a friends great rerun, or lucy doing vitameatavegimin, i will pause and watch a bit, and maybe even get a little misty-eyed, and nostalgic, and to be completely honest, i'll always pause a moment for aunt bea.
tv is different now from when i grew up. we had andy and opie and aunt bea, and ozzie and harriet, and donna reed. those wholesome family shows, in a much simpler time were, well, simpler. (don't get me wrong, i don't spend a lot of time pining for little opie and andy and barney fife, or was it barfey nife?). after all, it was a cute show, as were many, but with very few intellectual challenges abounding, even for a 5 year old.
there were others, just as wholesome, but with decidedly different family structures, and one day i'll write about the family way, as i grew up in front of a television.
these days i watch some tv. oh, not like those people where the boob tube, (how many remember calling it that?) is on all day, every day. (that would interfere with my many other distractions, like the computer, email, twitter, facebook, ipod, and such, and of course, work.......and we couldn't have that now, could we?). i know people that get out of bed in the morning and turn the tv on. anything. whatever. just so as not to be alone with their own thoughts, i'm guessing. stuff like game show reruns. imagine, old game shows on the game show network, like password or family feud with that kissing idiot, whatshisname, a one-man mononucleosis factory, if ever there were one (who did he fuck to get that job?) just so the tube is on and there is ambient sound in the room. and that's enough for them.
not so, me.
i have a lot of viewing options, as do most likely most of you. there are literally hundreds of channels. so many, in fact, that if i don't have a plan, i can start surfing at say, 7:00pm, and still be searching at 7:30 and will have missed a half-hour of tv while i was watching! (that somehow seems metaphysically absurd, doesn't it?). anyway......
to be sure, the tv formats haven't changed much. used to be cop shows like dragnet, and hawaii five-o, and kojak, and now there's law and order, CSI and NCIS in a dozen select cities (is it an honor or a comment on how hideous your town is, if there's an NCIS named for your city? miami, new york, las vegas, los angeles etc). used to be lots of sitcoms, amos and andy (now unbearably politically incorrect, never to be found in rerun heaven), all in the family (why wasn't that also equally condemned?), and in recent decades roseanne, mash, seinfeld, friends, designing women (my particular favorite), frazier, and the like. now, there are literally hundreds of such shows and some of these are great classic shows, separated from the run-of-the-mill, average, mouth breather comedies, by one thing and one thing only. WRITERS!!! i can't stress that enough. it doesn't matter who you put in a sitcom, if there's nothing funny to say, it will die. same for drama. same for dramedy (oooh, new late 20th century word). same for rom-com, bro-com, etc. think about it. even though it's almost 500 years later, we still read shakespeare. why? good writing. so one of my big snobberies is...and i'm a little alone in this......i will not watch a show that has no script. which of course, brings us to the reality genre. i'd say don't get me started, but duh.......i've already started................
i think it all began with survivor. the producers took a gaggle of very greedy, vicious people, and supposedly put them on an island somewhere outside of civilization, and we watched as they turned into animals, and then turned on each other, and lied and cheated and stole and conned their way to stay on the island. (of course, this island had a full film crew, and i suppose medical people, if things got too out of hand....one injury or bug bite and all that litigation, you know, and with that bunch on the island, there were bound to be lawsuits). also on hand were costume people, make-up people, wardrobe people, commissary, hotels, etc. (just out of camera range), so this deserted island was itself a hoax. but somehow people found it fascinating to watch a hideous subsection of our society with the appropriate amount of strategically placed mud on their faces, devour each other, figuratively, not literally, of course.
not so, me.
(as fate would have it, the first year's winner, i believe, destroyed his competition, was the lone survivor, won the million bucks, and the the i.r.s., to put it delicately, had their way with him. i love irony, even when it's not scripted.) there was no show script, and quite frankly, watching people pass a torch on a dimly lit island when they ought to be swimming to try and get the mud off of their faces, is not my cup of boullion. it was, however, a hit, and tv producers everywhere rejoiced in the fact that they thought they no longer needed to pay writers.
and, so popular was this bloodsport that it spun off dozens of other like-minded shows and a genre was born. there were more survivor locales, reality dating a la the bachelor, and subsequently, bachelorette, fat people dieting for money and prizes (and food, i imagine), extreme home makeovers, (which is just poor people envying other poor people because now that they won a home makeover, they don't have to live like poor people anymore), people swapping wives, people worried if they're smarter that a 5th grader. (i am, by the way, and i was when i was in 5th grade. why would i worry about that now?), and people giving up their children to strange women pretending to be mary poppins, calling themselves, nannies.
digress........
did you ever see that movie, late in bette davis' career called the nanny? well, that'll teach you to give your kids to a crazy person.........
back......
and now on to my very favorite shows to hate........the ones where they sing and dance.
in my day, (there's that old lady phrase again), we used to have ed sullivan, where actually talented people hawked their wares, like the beatles, the rolling stones, joan sutherland, the moiseyev dance troupe from russia, the bolshoi ballet, elvis, and lots more. ed could really assemble some hot acts. and there were variety shows as well, with singing and dancing. even the jackie gleason show, once it went to an hour and in color, featuring a honeymooners sketch each week, had the june taylor dancers in a segment. (i'm waxing a tad sentimental right about now.)
what do we have today? wait for it....you know this one.....AMERICAN IDOL. personally i can't abide that show. the first half dozen episodes of each season is devoted to.......what? the shit we really, really don't want to watch? the worst of the worst? people who can't carry a tune in a bag? (paper or plastic?)...and they're on tv....remind me again....why? and then many episodes of variation on survivor, meaning, one by one, week after week, one gets voted off the island... i mean stage. til there are the 2 or 3 left that the producers wanted all along (that voting crap is just that......crap), and so we, or rather they, (i don't) watch and listen to what amounts to the prettiest or oddest singers screaming!! they sing songs the titles of which i know, but they warble with such melismatic chaos, that i don't recognize the actual song. (i definitely know that mariah carey started that style of singing and i didn't like it when she did it and i don't like it now, thank you very much). and everyone who i know who purports to be a fan, all tivo and fast forward the entire show except for the songs. the screaming part. WTF? (yeah you do it.....you all do it). and simon......poor simon.....such an asshole, and such a public one at that! they say he's the guy you love to hate. no he's not. he's just the guy you hate! and paula abdul. can you spell insipid? no, no, no. i don't watch it, and i don't tivo it for selected horrible highlights. (when did tivo become a verb? ever think about that?)
side note: nouns becoming verbs. that's an entirely different blog post. start with parent, tivo, disrespect, impact, the list goes on)
and perhaps lastly, after singing, comes dancing......come on, you know this one too.........i'll wait for you.......i gave you the first word...........DANCING WITH THE STARS............which is technically not really dancing and they're not actually stars. i think to qualify as a star, you should at least have been a b player in failed sitcom, no? (like earl holliman in that delta burke series, delta, or david alan grier in that other delta burke series,... dag.......ok, ok, i'll blog about delta burke another time. i do so love her.) at least they had a prominent part in a regular, albeit short-lived tv show. you say stars, i think streisand, redford, harry connick jr, george clooney, julia roberts. but emmet? (ok, he's kind of a football star, but really more of beard dye-gel star). jerry springer? (talk show host, former mayor of a minor city?), kate gosselin? (whose claim to fame is her uterus?), buzz aldrin? (ok, he walked on the moon, but he can't even walk on earth at this point). ladies and gentlemen, i present to you, all of them genuine bona fide stars. (my ass). and the dancing? with bruno screaming between paso dobles standing on his desk like a petulant 5-year-old with ADHD? with carey ann in her infinite wisdom giving advice to astronauts on how to cha cha cha? (who the hell is carey ann anyway? she's not even a star, and they're paying her! come to think of it, neither is bruno, or the old arthur treacher wannabe, whatshisname. we have non-stars judging and giving advice to other non-stars. (are any of you beginning to understand why we need WRITERS AND SCRIPTS???? because without them, you have idol, dancing and shows of that ilk.
no, the tv i watch is minimal. about an hour of news a day (i don't like it and i don't know why i do it. probably for the same unnamed need that draws me to read and hate the daily newspapers). i watch a lot of movies. they're not better, per se, than what anybody else watches, they're just......you know.......... scripted.
and sometimes, when i'm channel surfing, and i land on a seinfeld classic or a friends great rerun, or lucy doing vitameatavegimin, i will pause and watch a bit, and maybe even get a little misty-eyed, and nostalgic, and to be completely honest, i'll always pause a moment for aunt bea.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
observations on shopping.......
i shop a lot. well, not like some. it isn't like the qvc channel is blaring in the background of my office, but in the course of a day, i either run to the grocery or the produce stand near the house, or target or even the occasional foray into........dare i say it.......admit it out loud.......ok, walmart.
ye gods. now, i have friends that won't even say walmart, much less venture inside, but snobbery aside, the chain does have $4 generic drugs, and the cheapest prices on prilosec, and there's this glucosamine/chondrointin product that my old dog simply must have or she's more crippled than i am in the morning. so, occasionally, i go.
let me digress a sec..........
there is a fashion tendency in our society of late that simply baffles me. you know the one, and i know you've seen it. usually lean young black youth with their pants' waistline (where the belt would normally go) down around the mid-thigh area, with checkered boxer shorts kind of ballooning in the area above said belt loops. (i know the origins have to do with thugs in prisons, and emulation and shit like that, and hey, we all need heroes, but i gotta say, every time i see it i just want to grab the pants and pull up as hard as i can, until i give the young man a wedgie!!). i just can't fathom why one would want to look quite that way. but like most old people, i just kind of shrug it off and chalk it up to youthful exuberance. and i'm thinking what is this world coming to? how could it get any worse?
back.....
so i head to walmart, for doggie joint juice and what do i see in the parking lot before i get out of the car?
WTF???
ok, who let grandma go out dressed like that? someone will be punished, for sure.
so i gain my composure and go inside the store.
now walmart stores are notoriously found in underprivileged neighborhoods, because, let's be honest...in an upscale neighborhood with a bergdorf and a walmart side by side, i'm thinking one of 'em ain't gonna make it. it's a kind of either/or situation. people with money for bergdorf don't want what walmart is peddling and bergdorf is too expensive for most of us, so we head to walmart. pretty basic stuff, although i honestly, truly believe that both stores sell MIRRORS!!!!!
once inside the store, i begin to try to shop, and as i grab a cart i see...............
AND I WANT TO PUT OUT MINE EYES!!!!
digress again....
ok, paris hilton in a much smaller size of those pants might stop traffic on the french riviera.
but this woman simply stops traffic because NOBODY CAN GET BY HER BIG GOLDEN ASS!!! good heavens!!
ok, i'm really trying now. i grab the bottle of stuff for the dog and head for checkout. i'm good to go for the express lane as i only have the one item......and who's online in front of me?????
and i swear, i think she's flashing her tits at me, and i'm somewhat grossed out, until i realize
THAT'S HER BACK!!!!!!!
at this point in my adventure, i've decided i no longer have the will to live.
stick a fork in me, i'm done.
i pay for my crap, turn for the door........and no...........no, no, no, no, no...........say it ain't so!!!
and suddenly, in a moment of great lucidity, i have a revelation. an epiphany, of sorts. i realize in the big picture, all things considered, the handsome black youth with his pants down his thighs, was not so bad after all.
ye gods. now, i have friends that won't even say walmart, much less venture inside, but snobbery aside, the chain does have $4 generic drugs, and the cheapest prices on prilosec, and there's this glucosamine/chondrointin product that my old dog simply must have or she's more crippled than i am in the morning. so, occasionally, i go.
let me digress a sec..........
there is a fashion tendency in our society of late that simply baffles me. you know the one, and i know you've seen it. usually lean young black youth with their pants' waistline (where the belt would normally go) down around the mid-thigh area, with checkered boxer shorts kind of ballooning in the area above said belt loops. (i know the origins have to do with thugs in prisons, and emulation and shit like that, and hey, we all need heroes, but i gotta say, every time i see it i just want to grab the pants and pull up as hard as i can, until i give the young man a wedgie!!). i just can't fathom why one would want to look quite that way. but like most old people, i just kind of shrug it off and chalk it up to youthful exuberance. and i'm thinking what is this world coming to? how could it get any worse?
back.....
so i head to walmart, for doggie joint juice and what do i see in the parking lot before i get out of the car?
WTF???
ok, who let grandma go out dressed like that? someone will be punished, for sure.
so i gain my composure and go inside the store.
now walmart stores are notoriously found in underprivileged neighborhoods, because, let's be honest...in an upscale neighborhood with a bergdorf and a walmart side by side, i'm thinking one of 'em ain't gonna make it. it's a kind of either/or situation. people with money for bergdorf don't want what walmart is peddling and bergdorf is too expensive for most of us, so we head to walmart. pretty basic stuff, although i honestly, truly believe that both stores sell MIRRORS!!!!!
once inside the store, i begin to try to shop, and as i grab a cart i see...............
AND I WANT TO PUT OUT MINE EYES!!!!
digress again....
ok, paris hilton in a much smaller size of those pants might stop traffic on the french riviera.
but this woman simply stops traffic because NOBODY CAN GET BY HER BIG GOLDEN ASS!!! good heavens!!
ok, i'm really trying now. i grab the bottle of stuff for the dog and head for checkout. i'm good to go for the express lane as i only have the one item......and who's online in front of me?????
and i swear, i think she's flashing her tits at me, and i'm somewhat grossed out, until i realize
THAT'S HER BACK!!!!!!!
at this point in my adventure, i've decided i no longer have the will to live.
stick a fork in me, i'm done.
i pay for my crap, turn for the door........and no...........no, no, no, no, no...........say it ain't so!!!
and suddenly, in a moment of great lucidity, i have a revelation. an epiphany, of sorts. i realize in the big picture, all things considered, the handsome black youth with his pants down his thighs, was not so bad after all.
the stiff neck..........
evening ............
i was walking to the dumpster taking the garbage out, and, and on the way asked myself, did you take the "stupid” pill for the pain in your neck? a
long with the fistful, did you take it? (see fistful, left). you might wonder why i’d ask that, but I’m buzzed……oh. a vodka on the rocks, (or two), and a fabulous dinner. (i’ll talk about that later, along with my ritual…….a fistful of pills in the morning, and a bigger fistful at night…….the vitamins, you know). So I took the evening fistful, and a few minutes later, buzzed, I can’t remember if i included the stupid pill.
wait. i'm rambling......
I guess I should start with…….I HAVE A STIFF NECK!
oh, I know what you’re thinking…what’s with the capital letters? what’s the big deal?
but this is a kind of i have spinal meningitis stiff neck. a kind of emergency room stiff neck. i can’t stand, i can’t lie down (without a heating pad) i can’t sit at the computer and type, (ok, i am, but i’m in pain). can’t even sit at the kitchen table and read the Times, without moving it from left to right rather than move my neck. (hey, if i hold the newspaper and move it from right to left to read it, does that make me a republican or a democrat? food for thought). i’m not sure what’s causing the neck, although, truth be told, I did take a flu shot and a pneumonia shot this weekend. could be related….maybe not. anyway, i’m thinking that a long knitting needle jabbed through my right eye would take my mind off of the neck.
back to the pill. i hate the pain pill. vico…something. or oxy…moron….something.
oh, don’t get me wrong. in my day, (see, i told you i was old, because young people don’t begin sentences with in my day), but, ahem, in my day, i could do a quaalude with the best of them, and walk and talk, albeit, sloppily, and dance lilke the wind, (or elaine benis) and drive (before Mothers Against…….ya know)…and have a good old time. but now, in my dotage, and perhaps senility, i hate the pain pill. it makes me stupid and sludgy the next day. so i really don’t want to take it, but as i said, there’s that or the knitting needle. so i contemplate taking it.
back to the dinner. (i did promise after all)
i’ve just begun weight watchers. i’m not fat, but i’m not quite as svelte as i’d like to be.
husband, being supportive, has agreed to jump in. so we bought weight watcher cookbooks and we take turns making fabulous recipes while we count our points. tonight was a spicy stir-fry pork thing with veggies and cellophane noodles. delish. honestly.
well, truth be told, it’s not a lot of food, and it doesn’t really absorb the martinis, and hence, buzzed was i, taking the garbage out to the dumpster, so that through the night, while we were sleeping and unsuspecting, the cats couldn’t explore the table-top can on the granite island in the kitchen, that we use for trash as we cook, to find untold treasure table scraps, pull them out and perform the ritual happy cat dance. and my neck, which should be in a collar, with me on a traction table somewhere, is screaming, and so i asked myself…again, for the umpteenth time.…….did you take the stupid goddamn pain pill? and as i write this missive, my neck is a tad eased, and i think perhaps, i did.
off to bed………….
.
.
.
.
morning......
um , it’s a good morning, sludgy, but good. i slept well. i definitely took the stupid pill and slept like a viking. (i’m guessing about the viking part, not ever having been a viking...... or even having known a viking...... or even having run great distances with a sword in my hand........ or even having been a jock in a sports venue. but my guess is, at the end of a viking's day, he sleeps well. and this was a manly sleep, thanks, of course to the oxy something.) ok, truth be told, i’m not some guy that takes things without knowing. it was a soma and a vicodin combo. there i said it. and i told you it makes me stupid. i got them from my doctor some time ago when my back once did what my neck was doing last night. and he warned me about the sludge. but sleep i did, and my neck is a little better. good doctor. good pills. oh dear. my grammar is all bullshit here, and i pride myself on being a good gramma. ok kidding. grammarian. but i’m working on a style here. and i finally understand the great writers (and i am not comparing myself to them, in any way), but e.e. cummings, t.s .elliot, and that bunch, they didn’t use capital letters and i know why. just a bunch of lazy, shiftless, bastards too tired to hit the shift key. (shift---less........get it?) i don’t need caps, because i too am lazy, and shifting is hard work, or at least more work than necessary. so with your indulgence i’ll forego the shifting to CAPS and just go with the smalls. and i can use the queen’s grammar, because i am, after all, a queen. there are wildly successful authors using grammar that is far less perfect than my own. so if i am to spin these yarns, and turn them into woven stories, grammar be damned, style be created, and of course, inhibitions checked at the door.
let the tale begin.
(not surprisingly, the next line is not….i was born in a trunk in the princess theater, in pocatella, idaho.)
ok, i’m gay. very gay ,( although i’m not sure gay takes a modifier. kind of like pregnant. you either are or you are not), but i’m gay enough to know a star is born, and the line in that song has been used and used.
so let me begin another way……..
i was born in a hospital in Jersey City, to a mother who ate her young……… (wow, same cadence as the star is born ditty…..how cool is that?).
to be continued.........
i was walking to the dumpster taking the garbage out, and, and on the way asked myself, did you take the "stupid” pill for the pain in your neck? a
long with the fistful, did you take it? (see fistful, left). you might wonder why i’d ask that, but I’m buzzed……oh. a vodka on the rocks, (or two), and a fabulous dinner. (i’ll talk about that later, along with my ritual…….a fistful of pills in the morning, and a bigger fistful at night…….the vitamins, you know). So I took the evening fistful, and a few minutes later, buzzed, I can’t remember if i included the stupid pill.
wait. i'm rambling......
I guess I should start with…….I HAVE A STIFF NECK!
oh, I know what you’re thinking…what’s with the capital letters? what’s the big deal?
but this is a kind of i have spinal meningitis stiff neck. a kind of emergency room stiff neck. i can’t stand, i can’t lie down (without a heating pad) i can’t sit at the computer and type, (ok, i am, but i’m in pain). can’t even sit at the kitchen table and read the Times, without moving it from left to right rather than move my neck. (hey, if i hold the newspaper and move it from right to left to read it, does that make me a republican or a democrat? food for thought). i’m not sure what’s causing the neck, although, truth be told, I did take a flu shot and a pneumonia shot this weekend. could be related….maybe not. anyway, i’m thinking that a long knitting needle jabbed through my right eye would take my mind off of the neck.
back to the pill. i hate the pain pill. vico…something. or oxy…moron….something.
oh, don’t get me wrong. in my day, (see, i told you i was old, because young people don’t begin sentences with in my day), but, ahem, in my day, i could do a quaalude with the best of them, and walk and talk, albeit, sloppily, and dance lilke the wind, (or elaine benis) and drive (before Mothers Against…….ya know)…and have a good old time. but now, in my dotage, and perhaps senility, i hate the pain pill. it makes me stupid and sludgy the next day. so i really don’t want to take it, but as i said, there’s that or the knitting needle. so i contemplate taking it.
back to the dinner. (i did promise after all)
i’ve just begun weight watchers. i’m not fat, but i’m not quite as svelte as i’d like to be.
husband, being supportive, has agreed to jump in. so we bought weight watcher cookbooks and we take turns making fabulous recipes while we count our points. tonight was a spicy stir-fry pork thing with veggies and cellophane noodles. delish. honestly.
well, truth be told, it’s not a lot of food, and it doesn’t really absorb the martinis, and hence, buzzed was i, taking the garbage out to the dumpster, so that through the night, while we were sleeping and unsuspecting, the cats couldn’t explore the table-top can on the granite island in the kitchen, that we use for trash as we cook, to find untold treasure table scraps, pull them out and perform the ritual happy cat dance. and my neck, which should be in a collar, with me on a traction table somewhere, is screaming, and so i asked myself…again, for the umpteenth time.…….did you take the stupid goddamn pain pill? and as i write this missive, my neck is a tad eased, and i think perhaps, i did.
off to bed………….
.
.
.
.
morning......
um , it’s a good morning, sludgy, but good. i slept well. i definitely took the stupid pill and slept like a viking. (i’m guessing about the viking part, not ever having been a viking...... or even having known a viking...... or even having run great distances with a sword in my hand........ or even having been a jock in a sports venue. but my guess is, at the end of a viking's day, he sleeps well. and this was a manly sleep, thanks, of course to the oxy something.) ok, truth be told, i’m not some guy that takes things without knowing. it was a soma and a vicodin combo. there i said it. and i told you it makes me stupid. i got them from my doctor some time ago when my back once did what my neck was doing last night. and he warned me about the sludge. but sleep i did, and my neck is a little better. good doctor. good pills. oh dear. my grammar is all bullshit here, and i pride myself on being a good gramma. ok kidding. grammarian. but i’m working on a style here. and i finally understand the great writers (and i am not comparing myself to them, in any way), but e.e. cummings, t.s .elliot, and that bunch, they didn’t use capital letters and i know why. just a bunch of lazy, shiftless, bastards too tired to hit the shift key. (shift---less........get it?) i don’t need caps, because i too am lazy, and shifting is hard work, or at least more work than necessary. so with your indulgence i’ll forego the shifting to CAPS and just go with the smalls. and i can use the queen’s grammar, because i am, after all, a queen. there are wildly successful authors using grammar that is far less perfect than my own. so if i am to spin these yarns, and turn them into woven stories, grammar be damned, style be created, and of course, inhibitions checked at the door.
let the tale begin.
(not surprisingly, the next line is not….i was born in a trunk in the princess theater, in pocatella, idaho.)
ok, i’m gay. very gay ,( although i’m not sure gay takes a modifier. kind of like pregnant. you either are or you are not), but i’m gay enough to know a star is born, and the line in that song has been used and used.
so let me begin another way……..
i was born in a hospital in Jersey City, to a mother who ate her young……… (wow, same cadence as the star is born ditty…..how cool is that?).
to be continued.........
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
it's always best to begin at the beginning...
i'm a little old.
ok, a lot old.
but i've never kept an actual diary, or journal, in the sense of sitting down, taking time out of my day and putting my thoughts, ideas, plans, and mostly observations to paper. (or keyboard and CRT as is now the current vogue). wow, i just realized that the entire paper era of journal/diary/memoir keeping, came and went, and lasted over a century, and i missed it. talk about out of step!
but i figure, at this point, being old, i've observed a lot of stuff. some of it great, some less so, some beautiful, a lot of ugly, some smart, some just plain old dumn ass, and a tremendous amount of funny.
silly and funny and indescribable and unbelievable and if i hadn't witnessed this genre myself, i probably wouldn't have believed half of what i'll describe in the coming days. but that's why i'm here. to report some of my observations along the journey called life, as i enter my dotage with dignity, (although i can't promise it will be a quiet dignity.)
these observations will be in no particular order chronologically, as that would be more of an autobiography and i'm not sure why anybody would want to read that. you each have your own autobiography to write, so don't be wasting time reading mine (should i decide to write it someday). no, this will be more of a how funny is that? kind of thing. or a wait til you hear this kind of story.
and so it is with both excitement and great trepidation that i welcome you (and i do hope there's someone out there.....LOL) to my venue a/k/a, my blog entitled .........
OBSERVATIONS.
the next installment is entitled "the stiff neck".
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