Monday, August 27, 2007
2 Down, 2 to Go
Alberto Gonzales resigned today. Karl Rove resigned recently. Now (of course it's a Hail Mary prayer) if we could just have the resignations of Lord Voldemort and Howdy Doody. (Amen.)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
One of My Favorite Months: Not So Hot, Figuratively Speaking
We've had many days this month when the heat index or just the damn temperature has exceeded 100, and it has called for staying indoors. August has always been the month when we've had a taste of Hoosier autumn, with cool mornings, dry and blue as Nevada at its best. But it hasn't happened this month. Maybe it will in the next five days but it doesn't look promising.
I've been thinking about Erik Erikson and his theory of the stages of adult development, the next to last being "generativity versus stagnation," and how I'm in that phase and in my case it looks like stagnation is the winner. As my buddy Kurt put it, "So it goes." And as my grudgingly admired cohort, Al Ellis, would put it, "Tough shit." (That means the same thing in New York as it does in Madison, Indiana.)
Watching "In Harm's Way" this afternoon. Stars the Duke and Kirk Douglas and one of my favorites, Stanley Holloway (Alf Doolittle of "My Fair Lady.") The score is by one of my main men, Jerry Goldsmith, who passed away about the time of Elmer Bernstein and David Raksin ("Laura"). So it goes.
Rudy is sacked out in the next chair. He is the soul of serenity. I contemplate him and when I do all is well, in spite of whatever shit is happening. I grieve, but tough shit. So it goes. What else can I say?
The tulip poplars have had a few leaves turn yellow. Autumn's a-comin'.
I've been thinking about Erik Erikson and his theory of the stages of adult development, the next to last being "generativity versus stagnation," and how I'm in that phase and in my case it looks like stagnation is the winner. As my buddy Kurt put it, "So it goes." And as my grudgingly admired cohort, Al Ellis, would put it, "Tough shit." (That means the same thing in New York as it does in Madison, Indiana.)
Watching "In Harm's Way" this afternoon. Stars the Duke and Kirk Douglas and one of my favorites, Stanley Holloway (Alf Doolittle of "My Fair Lady.") The score is by one of my main men, Jerry Goldsmith, who passed away about the time of Elmer Bernstein and David Raksin ("Laura"). So it goes.
Rudy is sacked out in the next chair. He is the soul of serenity. I contemplate him and when I do all is well, in spite of whatever shit is happening. I grieve, but tough shit. So it goes. What else can I say?
The tulip poplars have had a few leaves turn yellow. Autumn's a-comin'.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Mawwiage ... And Wove, Twue Wove ...
Hooray! My son and his lovely bride got married today! They have my richest blessings! Hooray! Yippee! Hallelujah!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Sent This One to My Sponsor
Two men are drinking in a bar at the top of the Empire State Building.
One turns to the other and says: "You know last week I discovered that if you jump from the top of this building - by the time you fall to the 10th floor, the winds around the building are so intense that they carry you around the building and back into the window."
The bartender just shakes his head in disapproval while wiping the bar.
The 2nd Man says: "What are you a nut? There is no way in hell that could happen."
1st Man: "No it's true let me prove it to you." So he gets up from the bar, jumps over the balcony, and careens to the street below. When he passes the 10th floor, the high wind whips him around the building and back into the 10th floor window and he takes the elevator back up to the bar.
The 2nd Man tells him: "You know I saw that with my own eyes, but that must have been a one time fluke."
1st Man: "No, I'll prove it again" and again he jumps and hurtles toward the street where the 10th floor wind gently carries him around the building and into the window. Once upstairs he urges his fellow drinker to try it.
2nd Man: "Well what the hell, it works, I'll try it." So he jumps over the balcony, plunges downward, passes the 11th, 10th, 9th, 8th floors...and hits the sidewalk with a 'splat.'
Back upstairs the bartender turns to the other drinker: "You know, Superman, you're a real asshole when you're drunk."
One turns to the other and says: "You know last week I discovered that if you jump from the top of this building - by the time you fall to the 10th floor, the winds around the building are so intense that they carry you around the building and back into the window."
The bartender just shakes his head in disapproval while wiping the bar.
The 2nd Man says: "What are you a nut? There is no way in hell that could happen."
1st Man: "No it's true let me prove it to you." So he gets up from the bar, jumps over the balcony, and careens to the street below. When he passes the 10th floor, the high wind whips him around the building and back into the 10th floor window and he takes the elevator back up to the bar.
The 2nd Man tells him: "You know I saw that with my own eyes, but that must have been a one time fluke."
1st Man: "No, I'll prove it again" and again he jumps and hurtles toward the street where the 10th floor wind gently carries him around the building and into the window. Once upstairs he urges his fellow drinker to try it.
2nd Man: "Well what the hell, it works, I'll try it." So he jumps over the balcony, plunges downward, passes the 11th, 10th, 9th, 8th floors...and hits the sidewalk with a 'splat.'
Back upstairs the bartender turns to the other drinker: "You know, Superman, you're a real asshole when you're drunk."
Monday, August 13, 2007
Rudy on Duty
Excuse the sentimentality of this. It has all the makings of a Guideposts story. I'll just try to tell it simply and directly. Rosalie's cousin Orville has prostate cancer. He has been told he has two months to live. He came today expecting this visit to be his last. He behaved as he always has: cheerfully, upbeat, without self-pity, with hope and faith. I am really fond of this man and have been honored and delighted to get to know him.
When Orville came in today with his wife Ruth, he sat in the recliner and asked to put his feet up, so I lifted the footrest for him. Rudy was very attentive to him and was well-behaved. I urged him to lie down on the footrest next to Orville and he complied. Soon he laid his muzzle across the shin of Orville's leg as he has only done with me to date. He bonded with Orville in a way I have never seen him do, serene and relaxed with this gentleman he has seen only one other time, fitting in his company just like an old shoe. (Thence the nickname, one of course many I've given him.)
Orville said that Rudy gave him great comfort and intimated that it would be nice to have Rudy's company from now on. I said that I would like to send Rudy home with him but he goes crazy when he travels. I could not let him go, of course. He comforts me too much to let him go. I was right there as Rudy lay beside Orville. He would grieve for me if he were gone away from here, as Rosie observes. He grieved for his original master for a long, long time.
Anyhow, it is awfully good that Rudy was good to Orville today, for whatever reason. Thanks, Old Shoe.
When Orville came in today with his wife Ruth, he sat in the recliner and asked to put his feet up, so I lifted the footrest for him. Rudy was very attentive to him and was well-behaved. I urged him to lie down on the footrest next to Orville and he complied. Soon he laid his muzzle across the shin of Orville's leg as he has only done with me to date. He bonded with Orville in a way I have never seen him do, serene and relaxed with this gentleman he has seen only one other time, fitting in his company just like an old shoe. (Thence the nickname, one of course many I've given him.)
Orville said that Rudy gave him great comfort and intimated that it would be nice to have Rudy's company from now on. I said that I would like to send Rudy home with him but he goes crazy when he travels. I could not let him go, of course. He comforts me too much to let him go. I was right there as Rudy lay beside Orville. He would grieve for me if he were gone away from here, as Rosie observes. He grieved for his original master for a long, long time.
Anyhow, it is awfully good that Rudy was good to Orville today, for whatever reason. Thanks, Old Shoe.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Mundane Musings
Listening to cowboy music (Lonesome Dove Suite by Basil Pouledoris) with earphones. Boob tube is off. Rosie is visiting on the phone or working on her genealogy or both. Rudy is in the chair opposite me, muzzle on paws.
We got a break from the fiercest of the heat today with a high merely in the mid-nineties and less humidity. I leaped (well, slouched) to the opportunity to mow grass. After cutting about a fifth of the yard, I bent the mower's blade, or rather a tree root bent it. Tragic error! David counsels that I'll have to go to Sears and get a new blade. Manana, muchachos y muchachas. Till then, !fiesta y siesta!
Rosie lay down and slept like the dead this afternoon for a full hour and a half and afterwards remonstrated about being so lazy. She has been in a dead run in the service of her family all week in this infernal heat and I reminded her of that.
Rosie is back in her chair and Rudy has moved to the back of this recliner behind me. It's comforting for both of us for him to be back there.
TCM had some Edgar Allan Poe movies on today, which reminded me of Poe's "tales of ratiocination," as he called them, i.e. detective stories in which the mystery solver uses logic to untangle the mystery. Poe invented a Parisian sleuth named August Dupin, on whom Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is said to have been modeled. The two Dupin stories are "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." The one I like best is "The Gold Bug," in which the protagonist finds buried treasure by solving a cryptogram, in which the letters of a message are substituted for by other letters, e.g. c stands for y, g for a, etc. Various newspapers have such puzzles and I think they're on the internet, of course. The Merriam-Webster dictionary site has word games, although M-W is not as generous in making a variety of games available as they used to be.
Alison Stewart has subbed for Keith the last two nights and has done a wonderful job as usual. She is fun and I think it would be nice if she and Keith would partner all the time with him doing the political news up front and her doing the "Oddball" etc. She did the banter with Michael Musto last night and was great. I think those things are somewhat scripted with the straight host setting Michael up to do his comic remarks. The buffoons of choice last night were Britney and "K-Fed."
The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are not seen on Fridays. I think it is a wise choice not to overexpose. Jon has been going after Mitt Romney a lot lately. The guy is pompous, and he is inserting his foot in his mouth more and more with increasing public exposure. I love the latest remark about how his five sons were serving their country best by (instead of serving in Iraq) campaigning for him. John liked it too and went after it with his usual brilliant satire. I wish satire would save our country. I suppose sometimes it does, but its wheels grind exceedingly slow and, I fear, exceedingly coarse.
Well, enough of that. Last night we also watched La Ley de Herodes (Herod's Law), a Mexican film. It was gallows-humor and a morality tale about political corruption in Mexico, set in 1949, and it prompted me to reflect that los Estados Unidos has turned into a banana republic, with a vote, and rhetoric about "freedom" and opposition to "evil," but with everybody on the take and brutal repression of dissent, and every peasant humping along trying to keep from going under and pretending that it's the best it can be.
I've pretty much stopped using this as a forum for criticizing the government, or rather the people who have hijacked our government, an institution that I believe can be good and useful to its citizens, from the decent people who once ran it. In 1949, the president was Harry Truman, who was a good and honorable public servant and, it so happened, a man of the people. He was followed in office by a good and honorable public servant, Ike Eisenhower, an excellent military commander and not so bad as a president. Both of these men, a Democrat and a Republican, believed in the potential of government as a force for good and saw themselves as servants of the people, all of the people.
After Watergate and the resignation of Nixon, the journalists were crowing about how our government had survived a constitutional crisis, some saying they knew all along that it would. Will we survive this one? I think we've been weakened and corrupted to perhaps that "tipping point" that they speak of, one of their buzz phrases. I guess we'll see. I think we've tipped for sure and we're sliding and not many perceive our slide into the abyss.
Maybe it will become more evident when we're over the edge and in free fall.
We got a break from the fiercest of the heat today with a high merely in the mid-nineties and less humidity. I leaped (well, slouched) to the opportunity to mow grass. After cutting about a fifth of the yard, I bent the mower's blade, or rather a tree root bent it. Tragic error! David counsels that I'll have to go to Sears and get a new blade. Manana, muchachos y muchachas. Till then, !fiesta y siesta!
Rosie lay down and slept like the dead this afternoon for a full hour and a half and afterwards remonstrated about being so lazy. She has been in a dead run in the service of her family all week in this infernal heat and I reminded her of that.
Rosie is back in her chair and Rudy has moved to the back of this recliner behind me. It's comforting for both of us for him to be back there.
TCM had some Edgar Allan Poe movies on today, which reminded me of Poe's "tales of ratiocination," as he called them, i.e. detective stories in which the mystery solver uses logic to untangle the mystery. Poe invented a Parisian sleuth named August Dupin, on whom Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is said to have been modeled. The two Dupin stories are "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." The one I like best is "The Gold Bug," in which the protagonist finds buried treasure by solving a cryptogram, in which the letters of a message are substituted for by other letters, e.g. c stands for y, g for a, etc. Various newspapers have such puzzles and I think they're on the internet, of course. The Merriam-Webster dictionary site has word games, although M-W is not as generous in making a variety of games available as they used to be.
Alison Stewart has subbed for Keith the last two nights and has done a wonderful job as usual. She is fun and I think it would be nice if she and Keith would partner all the time with him doing the political news up front and her doing the "Oddball" etc. She did the banter with Michael Musto last night and was great. I think those things are somewhat scripted with the straight host setting Michael up to do his comic remarks. The buffoons of choice last night were Britney and "K-Fed."
The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are not seen on Fridays. I think it is a wise choice not to overexpose. Jon has been going after Mitt Romney a lot lately. The guy is pompous, and he is inserting his foot in his mouth more and more with increasing public exposure. I love the latest remark about how his five sons were serving their country best by (instead of serving in Iraq) campaigning for him. John liked it too and went after it with his usual brilliant satire. I wish satire would save our country. I suppose sometimes it does, but its wheels grind exceedingly slow and, I fear, exceedingly coarse.
Well, enough of that. Last night we also watched La Ley de Herodes (Herod's Law), a Mexican film. It was gallows-humor and a morality tale about political corruption in Mexico, set in 1949, and it prompted me to reflect that los Estados Unidos has turned into a banana republic, with a vote, and rhetoric about "freedom" and opposition to "evil," but with everybody on the take and brutal repression of dissent, and every peasant humping along trying to keep from going under and pretending that it's the best it can be.
I've pretty much stopped using this as a forum for criticizing the government, or rather the people who have hijacked our government, an institution that I believe can be good and useful to its citizens, from the decent people who once ran it. In 1949, the president was Harry Truman, who was a good and honorable public servant and, it so happened, a man of the people. He was followed in office by a good and honorable public servant, Ike Eisenhower, an excellent military commander and not so bad as a president. Both of these men, a Democrat and a Republican, believed in the potential of government as a force for good and saw themselves as servants of the people, all of the people.
After Watergate and the resignation of Nixon, the journalists were crowing about how our government had survived a constitutional crisis, some saying they knew all along that it would. Will we survive this one? I think we've been weakened and corrupted to perhaps that "tipping point" that they speak of, one of their buzz phrases. I guess we'll see. I think we've tipped for sure and we're sliding and not many perceive our slide into the abyss.
Maybe it will become more evident when we're over the edge and in free fall.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Best Years of Our Lives
Rosie has gone to Suzy's. Keith had a good Countdown tonight. This evening John Gibson of Fixed News Network was awarded the dishonor of being the Worst Person in the World. Joe Biden was a guest and would make a good president but he's not in the running now and probably won't be between now and the 2008 Democratic convention. Now The Best Years of Our Lives is on TCM, this being Dana Andrews day. I've seen it two hundred and six times but I'll have to stay with it until Al (Frederic March) gives his speech to the annual dinner of the Corn Belt Savings and Loan Association. Right now Sticky Merkel is having his say in the drugstore. Come to think of it, he kind of reminds me of John Gibson.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Marilyn in Your White Dress, We Need You Now!
We're having the scorchiest heat wave we've had in a long time. Senator James Inhofe, the Senator from Exxon, assures us we need not worry that this is related to man-made global warming. Thanks, Jim. Louisville had a record high of 101 degrees Fahrenheit today. (Temp is way in hell higher than Inhofe's IQ. Let's see. Shall we wait 'til -- January?)
Mammaries -- excuse me, I meant memories -- of Marilyn in The Seven Year Itch arise -- come to mind. It was hooter -- excuse me, hotter -- than blazes in New York, almost as hot as Joltin' Joe DiMaggio was under the collar when they kept filming takes of Marilyn's skirt blowing up as she stood over the subway grating while bystanders -- New Yorkers, past masters of baiting, versed in the art of heckling and cracking wise -- stood watching and making a hot air commentary of the (ob)scene.
The reality was sad for both Joe and Marilyn, as everyone knows, not to mention Tom Ewell, who became alcoholic and had a long interruption in a brilliant career of comic acting. His last gig was as the sidekick of Baretta, played by Little Beaver Perry Smith Bobby Blake, on television. MaMa liked Baretta. Even the music (I love the scene of Tom's fantasy of seducing Marilyn to Rachmaninoff's piano concerto) was by a brilliant man now known to have suffered from manic-depression.
But the movie was wonderful. Somebody said the movies should be more like real life. A wise man said, on the contrary: real life should be more like the movies.
Anyhow, as I've said thousands of times, thank god for a-c.
Mammaries -- excuse me, I meant memories -- of Marilyn in The Seven Year Itch arise -- come to mind. It was hooter -- excuse me, hotter -- than blazes in New York, almost as hot as Joltin' Joe DiMaggio was under the collar when they kept filming takes of Marilyn's skirt blowing up as she stood over the subway grating while bystanders -- New Yorkers, past masters of baiting, versed in the art of heckling and cracking wise -- stood watching and making a hot air commentary of the (ob)scene.
The reality was sad for both Joe and Marilyn, as everyone knows, not to mention Tom Ewell, who became alcoholic and had a long interruption in a brilliant career of comic acting. His last gig was as the sidekick of Baretta, played by Little Beaver Perry Smith Bobby Blake, on television. MaMa liked Baretta. Even the music (I love the scene of Tom's fantasy of seducing Marilyn to Rachmaninoff's piano concerto) was by a brilliant man now known to have suffered from manic-depression.
But the movie was wonderful. Somebody said the movies should be more like real life. A wise man said, on the contrary: real life should be more like the movies.
Anyhow, as I've said thousands of times, thank god for a-c.
Monday, August 06, 2007
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
That's the title of a book by Milan Kundera, which I tried to get interested in, as I tried to get interested in his The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Don't know much about the writings but I love his titles, especially the title The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
I'm laughing and trying to forget certain things. I succeeded in making myself laugh a little while ago when Rosie got up and left the room. There was a reason for her departure: a new CD I have was about ten minutes into the First Symphony of Darius Milhaud. He was French, one of Les Six (Groupe des Six). Everybody I know hates them but me: I love the music of Milhaud (I do not know the rules of pronunciation of French, but the jocks all pronounce his name "Me-YO" -- not MILL-howd, as I read it the first time, and as I'm sure it would be pronounced in Millhousen, Indiana). I also love the music of Francis Poulenc, one of the others who somehow got designated Les Six.
I was listening to this work on the radio the other day and looked it up in iTunes. They didn't have it so I went to Amazon.com and found all his symphonies. I clicked the wrong prompt (the right one really, heh, heh, heh) and bought a boxed set of all the symphonies of Milhaud, twelve in all. This will be a solitary pleasure, as I say, because everybody hates him, including present company. Rudy hasn't moved a muscle, didn't when I started the music and didn't when I was asked to turn it off and thanked for turning it off.
But I will go into my soundproof closet and listen, heh heh heh, laughing and forgetting the while.
Keep cool, my babies.
I'm laughing and trying to forget certain things. I succeeded in making myself laugh a little while ago when Rosie got up and left the room. There was a reason for her departure: a new CD I have was about ten minutes into the First Symphony of Darius Milhaud. He was French, one of Les Six (Groupe des Six). Everybody I know hates them but me: I love the music of Milhaud (I do not know the rules of pronunciation of French, but the jocks all pronounce his name "Me-YO" -- not MILL-howd, as I read it the first time, and as I'm sure it would be pronounced in Millhousen, Indiana). I also love the music of Francis Poulenc, one of the others who somehow got designated Les Six.
I was listening to this work on the radio the other day and looked it up in iTunes. They didn't have it so I went to Amazon.com and found all his symphonies. I clicked the wrong prompt (the right one really, heh, heh, heh) and bought a boxed set of all the symphonies of Milhaud, twelve in all. This will be a solitary pleasure, as I say, because everybody hates him, including present company. Rudy hasn't moved a muscle, didn't when I started the music and didn't when I was asked to turn it off and thanked for turning it off.
But I will go into my soundproof closet and listen, heh heh heh, laughing and forgetting the while.
Keep cool, my babies.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
A Woman in Charge
I'm reading A Woman in Charge, a biography of Hillary Clinton by Carl Bernstein, one of the duo of Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate scandal. His bio of her is not puffery. Bernstein is a good journalist, a real one, who doesn't worship or demonize anybody. (He doesn't work for Rupert Murdoch.) I'm enjoying the bio very much. I think a good ticket would be Hillary for president and Barack Obama for v-p. Or vice versa.
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