Tastes like. . . like. . .

Why Archie and Jimmy Olsen are the same person

Are you gay or bipolar?

Actual conversation, recently overheard at a party.

(Her) So they're saying, you know, he's (blblblb)

(Him) He's bi-whut?

You know. Bipolar. That's where -

Yeah, I know what it is, baby.

So he says he's like, on this stuff that's like, um I guess it's like lithium, and I'm like

What sort of shit is that?

You know, it's like when you have mood swings?

Shit.

And you take this and it like, levels them out?

Bipolar. That's all I ever hear about. All of a sudden everybody's bipolar.

Like, I don't think so? Like, he's never been what you'd call normal.

If I thought my son was bipolar, you know what I'd do?

(seductively) Whuu-uut?

I'd take him out back and shoot him.

You would?

Put him out of his misery. Hell, I'd do it for my goddamn dogs.

So, you'd like. . . I mean, kill him if he was like. . .

Like I said, put him out of his misery. I'd rather he be dead than fucking crazy.

What if he was, you know?

(mockingly, but she doesn't get it) Whuuu-uuut?

You know, gay.

Jesus.

What would you do?

Well. (Thinks, with difficulty). I don't know, I guess if he has a job -

And a haircut? (giggles)

If he was, you know, holding it together. If he kept on going to church.

Does your son go to church?

What the hell are you talking about?

I mean, do you know anybody like that.

Of course not. But I mean a person can change.

They can change if they're bipolar?

Shit no. I just told you I'd shoot him in the head and it would be the best thing for him.

But they can change if they're you know. . .(coyly) gay?

I saw this thing on TV. Gospel camp, a bunch of ex-gays. Sure, a person can if they want to.

Can they?

Hey, listen. If you were in love with your boss, would you just come up to him and say. . .

Doubt it (giggles).

So you'd keep it to yourself.

So it's OK to be gay if you keep it to yourself.

That's what I'm sayin'. It's a decision, you just don't act on it.

So if you're like, heterosexual, you can just decide not to act on it.

I guess maybe. . . I don't know, that's different. But I guess so.

So being gay is OK so long as you don't act on it.

If you don't make a big deal out of it. Just keep it to yourself.

But if you're bipolar -

I told you, I'd blow his brains out.

What if he like learned to, like, keep it together? Kept on going to church.

I see where you're going. No thanks, dear, it's a whole 'nother issue.

I don't believe you.

I told you already. I'd do it out of love. I'd do it for one of my dogs, and I'd do it for my son.

But is it OK if you, like, keep it to yourself?

Forget it, darlin'. Mental illness is the end of the line.

One more time. . . one more time

Johnny Adams - There Is Always One More Time

Bukowski!

So You Want To Be A Writer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Outrunning the black dogs

Right. This is one of those mornings that I wish I could make disappear. The weather around here has been putrid, unrelentingly cold and wet and grey, dank, with dampness seeping in everywhere. My beautiful new Mother's Day hanging baskets of flowers are wilting and turning slimy and brown. I don't want to go out.

I had something happen to me today, and I guess I shouldn't even been surprised, but it has lit the fuse of memory of every other time I have been stepped on as a writer. I know I shouldn't feel that way, and somehow that just makes it worse. I should be cool and detached and never take offense. But I've never been any good at that.

Sometimes I think that writers (like me, I mean, not successful ones) have to roll around showing their pink bellies to people who then slash at them with a razor blade. Or something like that. And I'm supposed to be fine with it.

I'm not fine with it. I hurt so bad it might just ruin this whole week, so I want to throw my mind into a topic I've been turning over for quite a long time. (It seems the only anodyne to the agony of being a writer is more writing.)

Several years ago, before I was run out of town by some people with very sharp teeth, I wrote a blog for Open Salon. I had been trying to read Gone with the Wind for about the third time, and was once more getting stuck on black stereotypes that sometimes made me feel literally nauseated.

I started doing an exploration of such things, and what popped out of the Google images was a riot of pulsating energy and saturated color: the works of dozens and maybe even hundreds of African- American artists, many of them taking the phenomenon of the black stereotype and turning it on its ear.

Drawing on ceramic salt-and-pepper sets of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, old ads with grinning black children eating watermelon, and (in a much darker exploration) the old slave posters that equated selling a human being with "needles, pins, ribbons &c. &c.", these artists recombined the images into a potent mixture of parody and protest, shoving it under our noses in the most provocative way possible.

Betye Saar created Aunt Jemima's Revenge, seen above, in which the comfy and familiar Mammy-figure on the pancake-mix box wields a shotgun. There were so many others I had not heard of: Robert Colescott, Kara Walker, Mark Steven Greenfield. There was a unique creative energy here, subversive, riotous and "in your face".

One of the purposes of art, of course, is to disturb and unsettle. Back a few years ago when I did my GWTW exploration, I encountered paintings that were probably the most extreme of any of them: deeply saturated colors so vibrant they could trigger a migraine, with figures that were both fierce and embarrassing.

Embarrassing only because of their Mammy-ness, their Little Black Sambo-ness, their resemblance to those Golliwog dolls that people like to buy at craft fairs and collect. They were salt-and-pepper shakers come to life.

The artist was a man, and there was a web site, and I didn't save the link because I was sure I could find it again. Art this potent had to have a following.Well, guess what.
I can't find it. Can't even find his name.

I've been looking for days now, beating the bushes. I've found sites that list literally hundreds of African-American artists in every genre. My artist might be in there, but I just don't have time to go through all of them.

In some cases, I found long, stuffy, scholarly articles that filled the entire screen with flyspeck print, and no illustrations. Fooey. Even if he's in there, he's buried.

So all the little girls in neon gingham, the little boys with spikily nappy hair, and all those other down-on-the-old-plantation characters that he has transformed into a strange kind of protest, is lost to me, seemingly forever.

What happened? How can you suck back something that's been on the 'net for years? You can't. So I don't know what's going on. If I just had a name. I'd have something to go on.

So I could forget this punch in the stomach. Maybe.

Woof, woof, cha-cha-cha

Yeah, but the bike has training wheels!

Kirstie Alley: in it to win it

Get one thing straight, people. I never watch Dancing with the Stars. It's just too cheesy and spangly and phony. OK, I did watch Kate Gosselin until she was eliminated, but that was that.

I don't quite know how I got hooked in this time, but I am ashamed to admit that, like a lot of people, I began to follow Kirstie Alley because I was surprised that she'd even try a thing like this. I think a lot of people tuned in to see her fail.

The thing about Kirstie is that she rampages through life with a lusty recklessness that kind of reminds me of Elizabeth Taylor. She's up, she's down; she's a Vulcan in Wrath of Khan, she's a wisecracking comedienne on Cheers; she's fat, she's thin, she's on Oprah showing off her body in a bikini, then, shit, she's fat again!

Because of her yo-yoing weight, women view her with a mixture of compassion and scorn. For God's sake, an attractive woman like that - a woman who used to look downright sultry, with smoky eyes and a husky, almost Kathleen Turner-esque voice - how could she ruin it all with nachos and beer? On top of that, she made a desperate grab at restoring her career by starring in a "reality" show called Fat Actress. It was a case of "look at me, I'm pathetic," and I had to look away.

But this is a different Kirstie, feisty, energetic, and determined to win. In a marriage of opposites, she has been paired with Maksim Chmerkovskiy, a man who has that arrogant indifference (combined with a prowling panther's body) that attracts women like kamakaze flies. The two of them either hit it off, or hit each other, I'm not sure which.

Her first dance was dynamite and wowed the judges, who were probably feeling sorry for her right out of the gate. I think it was a cha-cha, the kind of dance where your feet can't be half an inch out of place. She was rather heavy but looking sultry again, and her joy in performing was evident.

There followed a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs which somehow reflected the course of Kirstie's life: Max's leg collapsed under him and both of them tumbled to the floor. This was a fault in choreography, as far as I am concerned - a 200-lb. woman should not throw her whole weight on a 150-pound man's knee. But it was painful to see the "fat girl" fall, and I am sure many people sneered.

And just when you thought she had (literally) picked herself up again, there she was sitting on the floor frantically fiddling with her shoe. It had partly come off and she was trying to get the strap back on. It was an awkward moment, but somehow they graced through it.

After fast-forwarding innumerable boring routines by I-don't-care-who (including that guy who used to be the Karate Kid, who seems to be cleaning the floor with his feet), my admiration for the Big K just grows. We're coming up to the finals next week, and Kirstie's still in! It's obviously gruelling work for a 60-year-old of substantial build. The rehearsal scenes look painful: she always seems to be falling down. She looks blowsy and dishevelled, and you wonder how in the world she'll ever make it.

But every week it's the same: she somehow pulls herself together and, tossing back that caramel mane, struts out onto the dance floor with her Ukrainian (or whatever-he-is) paramour. She sells the dance through sheer acting talent and a kind of voluptuous joie de vivre. When she and Maks or Max or whatever-he's-called did their Argentine tango, he showed off her considerable weight loss by lifting her gracefully and effortlessly off the floor.

Kirstie Alley is more than twice the age of most of the other dancers and at least 50 pounds heavier, though every week more of it seems to melt away. In reality, she's rehearsing and rehearsing (and cursing) it off. She's in it to win it. It's not likely, but she'll give the others (and who cares what their names are anyway? That guy with the Chiclet teeth, that blonde, or those blondes - hey, are they really the same person?) a good run for their money.

Kirstie Alley is back, and we're glad to see her center-stage where she belongs. Cheers.

MR. ED - intro en español

Ola, Wil-burrrrr!

I Remember

There's a story behind this song. I posted the lyrics yesterday because I think they're stunning: Stephen Sondheim mixes cliches with simple yet startlingly original images ("and ice like vinyl on the streets, cold as silver, white as sheets/Rain like strings, and changing things/Like leaves.")

This wasn't written for one of his legendary musicals, but for a quirky little TV special from the mid-'60s called Evening Primrose. A disillusioned poet (played by that disillusioned poet of Hollywood, Anthony Perkins) breaks into a department store at night, hoping to find shelter from a cruel and uncaring world, and encounters a whole subculture living there (kind of a prequel to that cheesy '80s fantasy/drama Beauty and the Beast, which I used to slavishly watch every Friday night while putting away copious quantities of fizzy peach cider).

Anyway, since no one taped things in those days (it was deemed too expensive, which is why the networks erased most of Ernie Kovacs' programs and taped quiz shows over them), this 50-minute musical was long lost except to memory. But sometimes a kinescope (a crude sort of tape taken from the TV monitor) remained, and not long ago someone unearthed a "pristine" copy from a vault somewhere and reissued it on DVD. It's on its way to me from Amazon, and I'll be reviewing it in agonizing detail when it comes.

The reason I'll bother is that the song I Remember, now a classic, was written for this show. Unfortunately, Charmion Carr, fresh from her triumph as the eldest Von Trapp daughter in The Sound of Music, played the inevitable romantic interest, just so Tony Perkins could have his usual awkward, ambivalent love scenes with her.

Unfortunately, and in spite of TSOM, Carr couldn't sing. So she basically massacred this lovely, haunting song, this song which makes me cry every time even though I always swear I won't. When I hear it, it makes me wish Anthony Perkins had sung it: with his sweet lyric tenor and great care with lyrics, he would have given it its due. (And I think he knew what it was all about.)

Since recording artist were quick to issue covers for this gem (kind of like that hymn to dysfunctional relationships, Send in the Clowns), I encountered a few different versions on YouTube, but I remembered one from a CD called Cleo Sings Sondheim that never failed to stir me.

This video has its limitations. Every Cleo Laine video I've seen has silly special effects, and this one is no exception. Losing my Mind has the following choreography:

"The sun comes up, I think about you." (Cue the sun streaming in the window.)
"The coffee cup, I think about you." (Cleo sips from a Starbuck's cup.)
And so on, and so on (giving little "gee, what shall I do" headshakes that almost destroy the song's indescribable yearning). All that's missing is the Swiffer duster to illustrate "all afternoon, doing every little chore".

I Remember is almost as inane. When the lyrics mention snow, little bits of styrofoam begin to sift down on her. When it's "leaves", pieces of paper blow into a doorway. It's just too sad.

But the performance: no one else captures the delicacy and pathos of this song, especially those last lines, "I remember days, or at least I try. But as years go by, they're a sort of haze/And the bluest ink isn't really sky. And at times I think/I would gladly die/for a day of sky."

Close your eyes, and sink into it.

By Sondheim

I remember sky --
It was blue as ink.
Or at least I think
I remember sky
I remember snow --
Soft as feathers
Sharp as thumbtacks
Coming down like lint
And it made you squint
When the wind would blow
And ice, like vinyl on the streets,
Cold as silver, white as sheets,
Rain like strings
And changing things
Like leaves.
I remember leaves --
Green as spearmint, crisp as paper
I remember trees --
Bare as coat racks
Spread like broken umbrellas.
And parks and bridges, ponds and zoos,
Ruddy faces, muddy shoes.
Light and noise
And bees and boys
And days.
I remember days --
Or at least, I try.
But as years go by
They're a sort of haze.
And the bluest ink
Isn't really sky.
And at times, I think
I would gladly die
For a day
Of sky.