Parade

Could we pretend that the British pronunciation of it is "par-ODD"?

Response to Eric's letter to his unborn child upon the election of Barack Obama as President

To Eric's unborn child upon the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State

If you are born a girl baby (and you should know right away- do you want to hold your penis or see "Twilight"?) you can't possibly know of the immensely rich history of women that precedes you. No, you're not stupid! How could you know of strides and paths and ceilings made, blazed and broken by women as diverse as Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
Women were once charged with a lot of the really necessary yet unrewarding tasks under which mankind labored- gathering, cooking, childbirthing, fetching 2 pails of water on yokes balanced on their shoulders, housecleaning, Olson twinning and Pussycat dolling. Women like Hillary Clinton, a hardscrabble prairie lawyer who worked her way up from fiance to wife, and now from Senator to Secretary of State benefitted from the actions of women who challenged what ladies call, coquettishly, the male hegemony. Ladies have graced the office of Secretary of State previously- but if not the first woman, she is the most woman, if you get me.
Yes. Women have not had an easy time of it. How much you would learn if only you could summon a woman from the past! (No, you're not stupid. You can't.) A woman like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "What are these people you call co-eds?" she would exclaim. "Lady astronauts? You're crazy!" she'd exclaim. "A man cooking dinner and styling celebrities? Is this topsy-turvy world?" she'd exclaim.
Oh, there have been what your father might call lagniappes and what your mother might call accessories along the way, but by and large women have been regarded like the 3rd rail, the 3rd overtime or the 3rd Superman. What, you ask, would some woman that I summoned from the past (though it is impossible) feel women had actually accomplished when it seems that women must, in this day and age, constantly testify to their own verity? "They're real!" you hear from bar to tavern to pub, "Feel them!" How this summoned voice, let's say Elizabeth Barrett Browning would cry- "Do not ever feel that you are less than real! Were my struggles and the struggles of other women in history whose names I cannot at the moment remember in vain? A resounding no I say." And it is true. At the dawn of this great new age, when Senator Hillary Clinton is poised to become the Secretary of State for the United States, keep in mind that without Elizabeth Barrett Browning who was a very, very well-known poet, placing her footsteps in the sand although I believe she couldn't walk or did not really enjoy walking, then the women who followed her, like.... like.... Chyna would have to forge their own paths- if you understand me. I am glad that we have had this little chat about a significant historic or historical milestone. I am not doing this for Paul Volcker. I do have a life.

Yours, Mike McConnell

Mom cooks spinach for lunch

watching what I shouldn't

Watching the mirthless Mad, Mad, Mad,  etc. World, the bloated, turned eclair filled with the redoubtable cast. It is frantically unfunny. The only interesting part is the bizarre but brilliant speech given by the delightful Terry-Thomas on the American gynocracy:

"As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated- they're like slaves. They die like flies from coronary thrombosis while their women sit under hairdryers eating chocolates and arranging for every second Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day! and this infantile pre-occcupation with bosoms. In all my time in this god-forsaken country, the one thing that has appalled me most of all is this preposterous preoccupation with bosoms. Don't you realize they have become the dominant theme in American culture: in literature, in advertising and all fields of entertainment. I'll wager you anything that if American women stopped wearing brassieres, your whole national economy would collapse overnight."

Faulkner calls them "mammalian ludicrosities".Of course, my feelings about breasts are complex. There is something vestigial about them. Structurally they have the sophisticated lines of flying buttresses. They seem an after thought, or an inconveniently added necessity maybe- like fanny packs.

After Mad, Mad...'s bizarre end where the comedians are thrown lethal distances off an out of control fire truck ladder, some onto live power lines- I witnessed the equally apocalyptic end of "Kiss Me Deadly"-whose last shot is of a nuclear device that slowly blazes over the girl who opens the box in which it is detonating. It is weird at best- though it oddly prefigures the ark of the covenant scene from Raiders.

Tuesday: Adam's Rib. Judy Holliday was given an Oscar for Born Yesterday when she deserved one for Adam's Rib. The role was the same- her acting method so radically new that it is still startling to watch. Take it away from her for Born Yesterday and give it to Bette Davis for All About Eve. Rip the award from Susan Hayward's cold dead hands and give it to Roz R. Oscar revisionist chess. Truly some of the worst performances captured on film were accorded the damn thing- Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field. Cliff Robertson in Charly. Unwatchable. Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Harold Russell, Jenifer Hudson- all rotten. Teresa Wright ruined so many great films, there should be some way to digitally replace her. Almost every horrible actor of note has been given one- with the exception (so far) of Candice Bergen (nominated), Cybill Shepherd (Golden Globe) and Screech.

Winnowing

I am paring down the number of books I own. I am trying to read as much of each as I can before their purge. Some have proven instantly unlikable.  I am at peace with getting rid of the Wapshots, but I have given the Forsytes a week to ingratiate themselves with me. Goodbye, unread Kobo Abe. Adios Amos Oz. Bye-bye Scott Bradfield. Go, Timothy Mo. You've worn out your welcome, Fay Weldon. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Joe Keenan, Nino Ricci, Greg MacGuire, John Fowles: after the first dozen to the first hundred pages- they are all on notice. The first editions I have are not really worth listing for sale: Toni Morrison & John Irving have all signed limited run editions that predate my trade 1sts and wholly devalue them.

I am burning stacks of old New York Reviews after tearing out articles that I might find informative later, but again I must only keep what is practical and light the rest in the fireplace because the furnace is not working. I must admit that I will never read long pieces on Marianne Moore or Rabindarath Tagore, Pynchon, or Roth, because I will never ever read Moore, nor Tagore, nor Pynchon, nor Roth. 

I can't settle now on anything absorbing to read for pleasure- I have begun Rites of Spring on Stravinsky, Modernism and War, Martin Amis' House of Meetings, (which opens unpromisingly with an often used subversion of the medium by commenting on the failings of that medium. "If this were fiction, it could never convey... sort of thing. Such a cliche, but who has the strength to avoid it? Amis, one would think-but we get something like: 'after all, what are words on a page? A collection of black marks...') I've begun an enjoyable book on the Victorian medium Daniel Home, & the 3rd volume of the Graham Greene bio by Sherry, whose 1st 2 volumes I believe I own- though they may be buried in trunks in the garage, somewhere I assume near Greene's books themselves, handsome, discreet little cloth-bound hardcovers in uniform editions from Viking. All I can find inside is A Burnt-Out Case.

Please, Dean, no!

Every morning, once I have set the soy milk steaming in the kitchen, I will open Pandora, an online streaming music site, on my Mac. I can wander out, as I did today, and paint a cabinet and an hour later come back to hear a song and artist that reflects the genre, the style or the generation of the artist I had selected as a "seed" station. The seed is analyzed, and it qualities plotted. Pandora chooses the songlist based on similarities. I find it, then, somewhat peculiar that every song, artist or style I have selected inevitably leads to the same fucking song: Dean Martin singing "On the Street Where You Live". This is a song originally from the musical "My Fair Lady". It was covered widely, but seldom to odder effect. For Martin it was given a slow, swinging Big Band arrangement. It seldom matters who I have selected to listen to- after an hour, it has lead to Dean Martin singing "On the Street Where You Live". Blondie to Grace Jones to Sylvester to "I have often walked, down this street before". Prokofiev to Stravinski to Rimsky-Korsakov to "I have often walked, down this street before".  Dinah Washington to Carmen MacRae to Nancy Wilson to "I have often walked....? Copland? Daft Punk? "I have often walked...." Dean Martin has become my online stalker.

It could be worse. I have nothing against Dino, as he was called. He was not the classic songbook type of artist, more of a movie-star personality than a vocalist. For some unrecoverable reason, I loved Matt Helm movies, though Dean seemed the least physically apt hand-to-hand combatant on film. It was, luckily, the era of the glancing karate chop to the neck. Though Martin lacked physical authority, he epitomized a sort of easy-going, boozy, hip, masculinity. Like Sinatra, he turned a lack of athleticism into a sort of non-threatening but unsurpassed virility. They never seemed to take a woman by force. They sort of melted underneath her. They were straight bottoms.

To my unending mortification, the only time anyone ever caught me in the act of um... self-gratification, I was a teen in my darkened bedroom at home watching "Bells Are Ringing" with Dean and Judy Holiday on a black and white portable. Of course at that age, I could have jacked off to a Porky Pig cartoon. 

I remember from a bio of Martin, but only hazily, Dean's inability to stomach the bathos of Jerry Lewis- the false pathos, the disproportionate straining of sentiment to portray great sadness, which he then contrived to bracket by desperate farce- the mannerisms of a clown, without context or reference. Dean Martin's decision to walk away from Martin and Lewis is one of the great artistic abnegations of the 20th c.- like Rothko slitting his wrists, or dating Yoko, or David Foster Wallace hanging himself, although that's a little less Martin and a little more Lewis. 

Alice B. Toklas never embraced- nor to be frank, admitted being Jewish. She fancifully imagined herself baptized by any leaking Catholic, and fervently believed in an afterlife. Always the more practical of the two, Toklas expected that Gertrude Stein, who had not been baptized, would need to be bailed out of Limbo.  This is something that could only be done by paying the Church for intercession, prayers for her soul, candles lit to burn up Gertrude's minor (subliterary) sins. If Gertrude's will had been clearer, Janet Malcolm believes that Toklas would have liquidated all of the famous Modernist paintings that Toklas was given a living from and they would now be in the Vatican Museum.  In Malcolm's Two Lives, we get the lovely story of May Bookbinder (a young woman for whom  Gertrude had conceived a great passion) whose love letters Alice discovered. It is generally accepted now that Toklas had demanded Gertrude remove every instance of the word 'may" in a piece she was writing, replacing it with "can". Though slavish, and particularly jealous, Toklas never admitted that she and Stein were lesbians. What might have constituted sex between the two of them might possibly not be generally recognized. It's impossible to know even when you are told, as Gore Vidal does, who does what to whom. Malcolm suggests that a passage of Stein's writing clearly signals her sexual attraction to women, Alice particularly, which, though I've read it over and over- something about old clocks and bright handkerchiefs, and food and dirty things- and all it does is confirm my belief that I know nothing about the sexual organs of females.
Malcolm, though able to be succinct and meandering simultaneously, has such a clean, refreshing style, that it makes me doubly reluctant to return to Cynthia Ozick's 'Fame and Folly'. Cynthia's sentences are occasionally overwrought, alliterative and provoking. There is a repugnant piece on her own precocity, as reflected in the envy of her classmate, the subluminary Alfred Chester. It is called Alfred Chester's Wig and she compares their brilliant wordsmithing and she compares his hairlessness to her own broad nose and we see her adolescent desires which must have appalled Chester whose homosexuality she sees as spurious.
It has made me realize that though I preferred dead writers, I had conferred a sort of honorary posthumousness on living female authors who were, well... like Welty and Pym and Ozick. I could read them pleasurably without worrying that they were worrying about their own desirability. I would hate to admit that ugliness confers some degree of integrity. I suppose it makes any renown seem to be hard-earned. Of course initially any peculiarity generates curiosity. Odd names stick in your mind. But you can also ask: would a tall Lautrec have the same reputation? What if Emily Dickinson had been the kind of gal that said "Have you heard this one?" and slapped your back when she guffawed. What if Sartre could see what was in front of him? I don't know if this is worthy of exploration. I think it is generally agreed that isolation might breed the talent to promote one's gifts. Let's say that it was Ozick's good fortune to look like Irvin S. Cobb with a mop on his head. Maybe this made her need to prove some sort of exceptional intelligence. So she spars with Chester, and flaunts her Eliot.  She constantly reminds us, she is nothing if not ardent about her enthusiasms. Her diligence in championing Eliot despite his anti-semitism is only partially to accrue some admiration from decoding Eliot's obscure lists of academic references. 
My experiences with Ozick have never come to equal my first happy chance reading of Levitation, which was in a Pushcart collection, I think. One of the things I found in the UALR library. I didn't understand it but I liked it enormously and began collecting her. Now, for the first time I wonder if I should Ebay all the many volumes of hers which stick together in back rows in cabinets. Ozick. Cheever, and Updike and Colette and Maugham and Brookner- books I once valued so highly and that I will never again be able to commit a moment to; I cannot entirely give them up, but then I don't run into them all that often.
In the humidity of Arkansas books didn't last long...but I still have most of the books I have always had. Their decay will likely be slower than the deliquescence of my ability to read them. 

The election

I concealed an aspirin in a piece of turkey and, though Buddy made his suspicions evident, he took it. The result, I suppose of Barack Obama's election to the presidency, he overwagged his tail and has a sort of hangover. Any excitement or activity causes him to lurch reactively then skid to a quick halt- any movement of his tail is agony. Bud and I ran and jumped and played and then soberly sat and watched Obama's speech, and ran and jumped and played some more. I began the night watching the election returns in the "Elite" a louche bar which has gained a sort of ironic following. It was full of people, shoulder to shoulder, nipple to scapula. I cheered Kay Hagen defeating Liddy Dole whose campaign commercials called Hagen "godless" more times than should fit in 30 seconds. No other results were in before I made a stop at Rob and Steve's where, during commercials I was able to see bits of our mutual friend Bill's newly released pornographic debut. Bill looked very handsome but sounded disconcertingly effeminate. He was being questioned by a policeman outside of his trailer while a younger guy knelt between them, I didn't catch why. The three of them moved with all the pulsing sensuality of a line at the bank. It had a strange pace, but I barely saw him unzipped. Just the static introductory scene, staged in profile only, as flat as an Egyptian mural, but most gay porn is staged like that- like an early round in Password.
But Obama was inspirational, yes, and it was nice to see Bill again.
70% of the African-American vote in California was for banning gay marriage. Dicks.

We carve Jack-O-Lanterns

The finished, lighted pumpkin is mine. Dave's looked..... um.....Canadian.

I am letting my hair grow and I cannot shut up about it

I am King of the Chesterfields, if finding 3 makes you king of something

The first Chesterfield in my life was my own beloved tan suede Chesterfield on which I now sit. I seldom sit unless I sit on it. It is straining at its overuse, pulling itself apart at the seams. Buddy's refuge and playground- where I hold and nest with the stray guy I might have over. It is somewhere between 7 feet and infinity and barely fits. The front door rubs against it. The fireplace blisters against it.  

The Chesterfield has shown up in every medium, symbolizing everything from downtown chic (in a Madoona (typo, but let's leave it) video) to entrenched upper class taste (in every Parliamentarian's office in British film). 

They tend to occur in ox-blood red leather. Indeed, my second was the highly worn ox-blood red leather Chesterfield with box cushions seen in the vicinity of this paragraph. The faded and spotty cushions had to be painted many times with leather paint from McPherson's on 12th. Beneath the velcro'ed cushions is a lining patterned with the logo for "The Leather Store". There was nothing that could be reasonably done to disguise this. The damned thing was also missing a button, a problem which has often been about as easy to ignore as a missing jigsaw puzzle piece.  Smooth leather buttons are virtually nonexistent, and finding an upholsterer to recover a single button would damage my self-abasing nature. Luckily, I was able to snip a smooth leather dime-sized button from a bothersome, hobbled Plycraft chair that I was ridding through the auction. I painted it to match with acrylic paint. 

It looked convincing. I tried for nearly 45 minutes but it was impossible to reach the button with one hand while the other hand pushed the button in from the other side. The Chesterfield sat upended in the neighbor's yard. I stared at it with frustration. Finally, I stopped a group of passersby and asked one to push the button in from the front while I tied it to the frame. 

My most recent Chesterfield sofa is the deep red with the tufted seat spotted here grazing in the same neighbor's front yard. It is from the Sodo Salvation Army. I had stopped shopping at that particular Salvation Army because of the highly delusional prices on uniquely crappy items. Astonishingly, this was $169.00. Unsurprisingly, I only had $158.00.

My cashier repeatedly ran my debit card until we found the price that cleared.

The only other thing of note that I have found, other than Chesterfields, is this blog, whose name I had forgotten. The first thing I did after I tracked the damed elusive thing down was to change its name, from (?) Drastic Folly (Lawsy!).