Feeling like you need something sweet in your Mother's Day Sunday, regardless of whether or not you've birthed yourself some babies? Come on over to The Undaunted Baker for Dim Sum Sunday. Those of you who are mothers, I hope your day is totally splendid and you are showered with love, Chanel, or whatever the equivalent is for you. For those of you who are not, I raise a glass as well, and say, Whoo Hoo! Drunk again on a Sunday!
I'm starting to read poetry again, due in part to Troll's Haiku contests and also to my niece telling me recently she may want to grow up to be a poet, which is kind of cool if we forget for a moment that every bone in my body itches to scream at her, no, honey no! grow up to be a lawyer! Then I remember, wait a minute, I'm just supposed to be the aunt, and the Cool One at that, so pffffft. I'll leave the reality-of-life stuff up to her father.
I also have all these poetry books on my shelves. Like, a gazillion of them. Like, if someone from the television show Hoarders were to come to my house, they might have to call Someone In the Know to see if I do, in fact, qualify for at least a side bar on one of the shows about a lady who devotes an entire wall of her house to three huge bookshelves for God Only Knows What Reason because, sweet Jesus, has she never heard of a library? Then again, my books are so very neatly arranged, and besides, S.B. still has room for his big ass television, so leave me alone.
Anyway, in addition to revisiting Yeats (rocks) and Anne Sexton (maybe not so much as I used to think), I'm also getting interested in some modern stuff. Like Tom Walmsley, whose poem below was sent to me by a reader a year or so ago. It's from his collection, What Happened, and naturally, it spoke to me immediately:
leaving aside the tree itself & whether it was an act of progress through rebellion or mutiny to eat & know good & evil & leaving aside possibilities of patriarchal plots the woman eve succumbing & corrupting & leaving aside the nutty idea any of it actually happened i say
isn't the point the big point that he ratted her out that he the man adam pointed the finger at her & if she eve the disobedient sidekick is the true problem the sinner the cause of the fall is that why it's been decided it has been preached that ratting out isn't nearly as bad as disobedience &
in some sermon somewhere the point should be shouted that adam was a genuine pussy & i think the lesson is when you rat out your neighbour's friends relatives strangers because it's a law- abiding patriotic thing to do then the rat & the ratted are both banished to the land of nod but only one of you can hold up her head.
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So, tell Moi: do you read poetry?
1. No! Poetry's for hippies. I prefer pin up calendars and comic books. 2. But of course! With a nice Chianti and some fava beans. 3. Sometimes. Like, when I'm looking for a birthday card.
Feel free to share your favorite stanza or line, too.
There's a difference, I think, between a bad performance and downright wrong-headed casting, especially during the 1940s and 1950s, when even loosey goosey Hollyweird couldn't quite wrap their brains around using ethnic actors. Those who were Hispanic or Native American by birth were Anglicized beyond recognition while the red and brown parts went to the white folk. One of strangest (and at times laughable) bits of miscasting was Charlton Heston as a Mexican cop in Orson Welles' last film, the baroque Goth-Noir classic, A Touch of Evil (1958). Perhaps most famous for its breathtaking, three-minute single tracking shot in the opening scene, the film is otherwise stupendously weird, some would even say shocking. Heston, alas, is horribly miscast:
Want to check out more worst of the worst? Head on over to Boxer's Place:
If you've ever pondered the potential for fun in the six-hour expanse of a mid week evening in Miami, under a post storm star-lit sky, on the patio of La Diva and DJ Nevah L8's high rise apartment at the edge of the water, the lights of half a dozen Star Island celebrity homes winking on and off across the bay (shame on you, Matt Damon, wasting all that electricity), well, I'm here to tell you.
First, you drink.
Then, you gossip.
Next, you eat (tostones! grilled steak!).
After which, you soak in the hot tub and decide that it's impossible to solve the world's problems on one dinner and two bottles of wine alone.
Finally, you go back to your table for dessert (fig compote!) and talk music. During which convo, DJ Nevah L8 suggests what just might be one of the most brilliant pairings in the history of rock and roll:
Plus:
= genius
Come on. You know you think so, too. Besides, how could it possibly be any more strange than this:
I have to admit it. I'm terrible at hating the French. Because I just love way too many of the things they have contributed to Western Civilization. Seriously? Can you imagine life without Brie? Without Chanel perfume or Dior gowns? Without the realization that food is so much better, by golly, slathered in butter, doused with cream, and sprinkled with bacon and that, but of course! you can refusé to become a slave to culinary puritanism?!?!
Can you imagine, life without Alain Delon?
(I tried to come up with a suitable double entendre to accompany this photo, but apparently, there is only so much Babelfish can handle before blowing a fuse.)
I can't even imagine expressing myself properly without the French. Hardly a week goes by that I don't trot out an avant garde here or agent provocateur there. Fashion without prêt-à-porter, a meal minus ala mode, or, God forbid, life itself without laissez-faire? Perish the thought.
Perhaps my most favorite French word of all, however, is louche, which means something along the lines of having questionable taste or morality. Americans use it mainly in a sartorial context, i.e., "Those see-through silk hip hugger pants by Alexander McQueen are tres louche."
It is also the first word that comes to my mind when trying to describe Miami. A place that is at once First World and Third, high and low, discrete and obvious, elegant and piss-in-the-gutter vulgar. In other words, just my kind of town.
Still, I simply must ask. In a place so fired up sunny and golden skin glowy, why on earth does the car of choice among the upper crust seem to be this?
I'm sorry, I know I'm going to offend more than my usual share of folks when I say this, but has there ever been put into production a more butt ass ugly car than the Porsche? It totally makes sense that this is what the Germans came up with when tasked with developing their very first sports car. Because it looks exactly, as Lewis Grizzard once so succinctly put it, like a fat lady wearing a tutu.
Driving a Porsche in Miami to flash your wealth makes about as much sense as preventing sunburn by wearing a Michelin Tire Man outfit. If I've learned anything in life it's that, first and foremost, one must learn to choose the right tool for the right job.
Which means if I were wheeling around Miami in all my louche glory? I'd do it in this:
You know who the Germans stole this from? That's right: the French.
This isn't technically a Moi's Adventures in Miami post, but it is related. Almost everyone who knows me well knows I'm afraid to fly, and as a result have crafted for myself a notebook-full of self-soothing behaviors of the kind that probably only make sense to me, a handful of behavioral therapists, and Duc Kwan, counter clerk at the liquor store down the road. Unfortunately, I don't get to visit Duc all that much anymore, now that the NTSB has made it a major no-no for me to hip flask my favorite cocktail through security. Stupid NTSB.
So now I'm down to positive affirmation and visualization techniques culled from a variety of self help books and therapists so earnest, I'm beginning to fear that if I actually fully take these exercises seriously ("envision angels, sent from heaven, pouring golden light from a crystal urn through the top of your head, flowing through your body, and banishing all the bad, purple light") I just might be set on the path towards full blown New Age Hippiedom, and Lord, none of us wants to see that happen.
Still, what to do with sweat-slicked palms and jive jumping heartbeat?
Luckily, this time around, I got through on my way out thanks to utter exhaustion (I was up at 3:30am to meet a 6am flight) and my way back home thanks to a cute, young F-18 pilot who animatedly explained to me with that peculiar-to-the-military mix of ego and humility that it is, in fact, quite possible to survive almost any kind of plane crash. Well, except for those that involve a mid-air explosion . . .
However, after said cute, young marine disembarked in the ATL leaving me to my eventual fate pinched in the middle between two people who prompted me to wonder if perhaps hitting the booze before noon is not such a great idea after all (yes, I said it), I was left to my own devices.
Which, roughly translated, means: reading a stack of magazines I wouldn't ordinarily be caught dead reading at any other time except at my hairdressers, the Jiffy Lube, and emergency panic situations. So you'll forgive me if I happen to know that Camilla Parker-Bowles nearly tossed herself off a bridge at the prospect of bonnie Prince William hip-butting her precious Charles from the throne. I know, huh?Poor Camilla. Always a bride's maid . . .
Or that I revisited my punk musical adolescence with the current issue of Uncut, which at first I thought would be way too esoteric por Moi, but which actually turned out to be almost as cool as the dearly departed Creem and nowhere near as yawn-inducing as Rolling Stone. Hefty features on Captain Beefheart, the Stooges, and Adam Ant are what got me through. Unfortunately, they also reminded me what a tragically neurotic adult I've grown to become. If the former Pink Mohawked Moi could meet today's Quaking in Her Peep Toes counterpart, she'd have quite a sneer. Although perhaps reach an understanding over their mutual, everlasting love for Adam Ant. Seriously, Party People. Dude was über hot.
How awesome is it to live in a country so far-flung wide that you can leave one place at noon in sub-tropical heat and arrive at another at six in a snowstorm?
It's good to be home. But I got a piled-high plate of work in front of me and likely won't resurface for at least 2-3 days. Still, tell me: what's new and unusual in your world?
