Cori Bush: What you get with DEI

Congresswoman Cori Bush paid her husband a huge fee for "security."
While voting to defund the police, who protect the rest of us.
The above clip is from Fox, but is in Bush's own words. She is an utter DEI lummox.
This is seriously what we want as a representative of the United States?

Mean Note on Car

Post-Covid, I've worked from home, so I don't get in my car every day. When I went out to my car yesterday in my apartment complex, there was a Sharpie-note stuck under my windshield-wiper: LEARN HOW TO PARK, ASSHOLE.

Huh? I don't like "parking assholes" either, so I immediately looked at the parking lines: My car was completely within the lines; not anywhere near even touching them.

This creeped me out:

(1) First and foremost: My car was completely within the parking lines! I can understand if some jerk parks a car across two spaces or something---yes, THAT deserves an "asshole" note!

(2) Someone in my apartment complex who lives in my section and thus parks in the same area thought it was perfectly fine to leave such a creepy note for a neighbor. First, for no reason. And second: Sometimes you accidentally don't get the angle right, etc. (But I must repeat: In this case, I WAS COMPLETELY WITHIN THE LINES!) :)  

Even if I HAD parked my car minimally outside the lines (WHICH I DID NOT!), it's very weirdly hostile to leave such a note, especially when you live in the same environs as the person. Sometimes people just make non-intentional mistakes in their parking. (I've seen a couple of instances myself where the car next to mine was parked super-close---I tried not to ding them when I opened my door.)

I've felt psychologically weird for the past couple of days because of this note. The note also reminded me of a short story I once read a decade or more ago. I don't remember if it was Joyce Carol Oates, or someone similar. But in the story, a woman came out of the hospital where her husband had just died, only to find a similar "Asshole" note on her car because she'd parked incorrectly. Things are often so bad that you can only just shake your head at such extraneously creepy things.

"Shoah" showing on TCM (Saturday, January 27)

This Saturday, January 27, was a UN-designated "Holocaust Remembrance Day." The anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps.

I didn't know what day it was when I woke up Saturday and started watching the 9-hour "Shoah" on TCM (followed by coverage of the Nuremberg trials). I spent all day watching it.

Thanks to TCM for remembering. 

During the day, I flipped over occasionally to my local PBS stations (channels 9 and 20). NOTHING at all about the Holocaust. Why not?

These days, PBS is so constantly and smugly and irrationally diligent about illegal Mexican/South American migrants and about "black roots." Too concerned, perhaps, with the current left-wing propaganda: Hamas attacks Israel and murders Israeli citizens; but when Israel fights back, that's when all hell breaks loose among the Marxists in the US media and on US campuses.

I'm 100% on the side of Israel. I'm 100% against the Marxist Deep State and Swamp that have taken over the US. Yeah, there's some definite draining that's required. Anything to restore some sanity to US policy. (And to completely defund PBS until they're intellectually brought to account for their programming and forced to become actually "diverse," thought-wise, and not just a propaganda mouthpiece for Marxism.)

Elvis Presley: Surrender (1961)

I'd forgotten----this Elvis song is a remake of the below-mentioned "Come Back to Sorrento"!

Paul McCartney: Pipes Of Peace (1983)

I have most of Paul McCartney's solo albums, including this one from 1983. I haven't listened to either the album or song "Pipes of Peaces" for many, many years... I woke up yesterday, though, with this song in my head, and it followed me in the shower, and through the rest of yesterday until today.

Video-wise: I'm sorry to say that, while the theme of this video is an honorable and interesting one---a brief Christmas truce between the English and German troops during World War I---the acting of Sir Paul in his dual role is kind of embarrassingly bad.

Nice try, though---I always get good vibes from Paul McCartney. Even at his worst, he's still decent.

Come Back to Sorrento: Anna Maria Alberghetti (1957)

Alberghetti singing the same song, 4 years earlier than the below post. Again, I got goosebumps.

Come Back to Sorrento: Anna Maria Alberghetti (1961)

I'm currently reading Dawn Powell's "Come Back to Sorrento" (1932) and so was curious about what the song sounded like. (One point of the novel: The main character claimed to have once sung this song, but was never able to sing this song.)

I don't think Alberghetti on the Ed Sullivan Show in the '60s was what Powell's heroine in the post-WWI years had once unsuccessfully attempted to sing! Still, though, this version gave me goosebumps! (Imagine a television show today featuring something this intense and beautiful...)

Semi-Bad '90s Video: Shawn Colvin - Sunny Came Home (1997)

Came across this by accident on a local "Austin Music" cable channel while surfing....

It's actually a pretty good song, but at the time, in the '90s, this was all that was on college radio: Completely fey "Lilith Fair"-type stuff. It got so bad, that I can see the split in my CD collection: Post-mid-'90s, due to the utter depletion of new and good pop/rock music that I had loved so, I then started buying/primarily listening to '50s-'70s Country and '20s-'40s Big Band.

No particular offense to Shawn Colvin, but...She's utterly indicative of the '90s malaise. Especially in this godawful, negligee-wearing video. (I understand that the lyrics are about a disturbed girl who burns her house down---Whoo! Girl Power! Perhaps I would have been more inspired at the time had the video actually indicated anger and vengeance rather than fey posing in a slip and on a swing. Most very angry women don't lounge around in negligees while contemplating grand damage, nor do they pose/smirk/swing self-satisfactorily for a camera's benefit. That's the dichotomy here: The very direct character in the song vs. the plain singer Shawn Colvin trying to look coy and sexy.)

Dawn Powell

After coming off weeks/months of reading Fitzgerald and about his way-overhyped writing and personal life, it was a bit of a relief to come upon Dawn Powell, who also drank steadily and had an unhappy personal life (supposedly gay husband---albeit one for over 40 years, violent autistic institutionalized son)... but maintained a sense of herself and kept her life, and writing output, under control.

Maybe I'll hate her later, but for now, I've read "Dance Night" (1930)---and it's fantastic! (Did that stolid son just BITE his despised date? Did that usually calm mother just travel to another town and attempt to out her fantasy-boyfriend's real-life lover to his wife?)

(Sorry to say that looks matter---had F. Scott Fitzgerald been dumpy-looking, and had he never married Zelda with their subsequent well-publicized neurotic travails, he would not be read today. "The Great Gatsby" is his only very good novel---and it's hardly on the level of historically "great" novels. The man was a creation of his very early promise and publicity, plus his publishing connections; Edmund Wilson, by the way, was a later editor of Dawn Powell.)

1/15 post-script: I'm now on to my second Powell novel, "Come Back to Sorrento"----About a small-town wife and a visiting music teacher, both with delusions of grandeur based on their pasts, who form a psychologically important friendship... The wife (once an amateur singer) remembers both her musical dreams and her carney-show "Tony" of years before who left her; and the pianist teacher remembers his male lover (allegedly an important first novelist) who left him. Both try to re-enact their former perceived importance via how each other presents him/herself in their current small town and reduced circumstances.  Very psychologically complicated and daring for a 1932 novel! As usual, Powell has a very profound and delicate understanding of her characters' hopes and dreams and fears. She's utterly honest but also utterly kind to her people.

When I'm cable TV surfing...

One thing I often come to, and stop on, is "Autopsy: The Last Hours of..." on Reelz.
Oh, it's "fascinating" how John Candy died (he was grossly overweight and he did coke---surprise).

This kind of thing is like surfing the "Daily Mail" website for the day's news. You get the truth, but then you're sick of the decrepit "truth" after only so much of it, sans anything deeper. And you're certainly sick of your fellow viewers' opinions. 

One day, hopefully, you won't be bored and desperate enough to watch these things... But in the meantime, what will you do without them?

I've lived in my current apt (no light) for the past 7 years...

I'm grateful for no noise after the first year. It's interesting to me that this is the longest place I've ever lived anywhere since I was a child.
In apartment life, it's very rare to be in a quiet place, so I'm inclined to stay here. Though----I very much miss trees and views. I do hate being on a subterranean level, though "quiet" is still more important...

"Ava Gardner" + "Mommie Dearest"

I usually watch "The Five" on Fox every weekday afternoon at 4 Central. Judge Jeanine Pirro is often one of the five hosts.

At the end of the show on Friday, each of the five hosts responded to questions from viewers. One question was something like this (paraphrased): "What current trend would you NOT like to see in the future?"

Judge Jeanine's answer: She hates the current trend of drawn-on eyebrows---"like Ava Gardner in 'Mommie Dearest.'"  OK: I thought that everyone by now knew that "big bad eyebrows" + "Mommie Dearest" = "Joan Crawford." 

I looked up the Judge on Wikipedia, and she was born in 1951. So she should ostensibly know the reference. That she did not... While an ignorant thing, maybe it's a GOOD thing for Joan Crawford fans: "Eyebrows" and "Mommie Dearest" have now become so generic that the reference is now interchangeable with any other actress of the same era... (Sorry, Ava!)

Dusty Springfield: Breakfast In Bed ("Dusty in Memphis")

I love my wall. I wish there were 20 feet of this for me to fill in.

 

Vivek Ramaswamy Joins Trump At New Hampshire Rally

I'm a C-SPAN nerd, and I first "discovered" Ramaswamy on his appearances there promoting his books and his ideas. I'm Trump first and foremost (The Warrior), but Ramaswamy is extremely well-spoken and admirable in the expression of his hard-core, anti-Marxist ideas. 

Bravo, Vivek!

Plug-In for Cat Calming

After the intense outburst of cat-aggression between Mama Hennessy and son Pete (both fixed) last November, the fights went on for about a week and then stopped. Then, about a week ago this January, they started again. After the November fights, I bought a "pheromone plug-in" that allegedly was supposed to make cats feel calm. Didn't use it until now. After the recent outburst, plugged it in. Can't tell yet. Still some hissing, but then Mama and Pete also eat together and lie on the same couch together. Which they have always done 99% of the time since Pete was born in April 2019.

George Jones: Walk Through This World With Me (same thought as Rumi poem below)

Walk through this world with me,
Go where I go
Share all my dreams with me,
I need you so
In life we search and some of us find
I've looked for you a long, long time.

And now that I've found you,
New horizons I see
Come take my hand
And walk through this world with me.

Walk through this world with me,
Go where I go
Share all my dreams with me,
I searched for you so.

And now that I've found you,
New horizons I see
Come take my hand,
And walk through this world with me.

Come take my hand,
And walk through this world with me...

13th-century Rumi poem (same thought as the George song above)

Happy is the moment, when we sit together,
With two forms, two faces, yet one soul,
you and I.

The flowers will bloom forever,
The birds will sing their eternal song,
The moment we enter the garden,
you and I.

The stars of heaven will come out to watch us,
And we will show them
the light of a full moon –
you and I.

No more thought of “you” and “I.”
Just the bliss of union –
Joyous, alive, free of care, you and I.

All the bright-winged birds of heaven
Will swoop down to drink of our sweet water –
The tears of our laughter, you and I.

What a miracle of fate, us sitting here.
Even at the opposite ends of the earth
We would still be together, you and I.

We have one form in this world,
another in the next.
To us belongs an eternal heaven,
the endless delight of you and I.

— Version by Jonathan Star
(From a translation by Shahram Shiva)
“A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi”
Bantam Books, 1992

Am I done now?

For the past few months, I've been learning way more than anyone ever needs to know about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

 
I've read almost every published book/story/word, read almost every bio. (Some first read many years before, and some for the first time recently.)

And have learned nothing about life, except: Don't waste it, like these two did.

At this moment in time: The one thing among all of these texts that I think is most heart-felt and valuable is the first 40 pages of Zelda's "Save Me the Waltz." The note the loved girl leaves for her mother before moving away to be married:

My dearest Mamma:
I have not been as you would have wanted me but I love you with all my heart and I will think of you every day. I hate leaving you alone with all your children gone. Don't forget me.

Who knows if this is similar to a note that Zelda might have written her own mother upon leaving her home in Alabama for marriage with F. Scott Fitzgerald in New York City.

Who knows also of the mother and father's conversation upon their porch after their last child has left the home.

After reading everything, including Scott Fitzgerald's few books and many stories, I get the sense of his inflated self-importance and inflated early media importance. His one novel of true beauty is "The Great Gatsby" (1925). His other three novels are poorly done: "This Side of Paradise" (1920) a hodge-podge, but very interesting for such a young first author. "The Beautiful and Damned" (1922) is a tepid re-hash of his first book, with similar "philosophies" thrown in but little insight into a new married life and relations. "Tender Is the Night" (1934 -- a 9-year gap after "Gatsby") is an attempt at exploring the surface vs. the psychiatric depths (and he had great depths to work from, since his own wife had been in psychiatric institutions for the past few years)---interesting theme but extremely poorly organized and not that well written. "The Last Tycoon" first chapter and notes published posthumously reveal, again, an interesting theme (powerful man vs. the current Marxist trend), but poorly written. Had Fitzgerald lived, I don't know that he would have been able to pull this off. (Rosemary in "Tender" as a narrator is as utterly unconvincing and unnecessary as "Cecilia" in "Last Tycoon." As is his suggested last scene of a plane crash, with kids digging through the remnants---one kid supposedly taking the "Tycoon"'s briefcase and thus indicating his future; an example of why Fitzgerald never made it as a screenwriter in Hollywood.)

 

Transition: Frieda Hughes

Slug for a very long time...

After months of just basically staying in my apartment (made easier by working from home and thus never having to go out except for anything but groceries and beer/cigs), I finally made an effort to go out and visit someplace that I was interested in---in this case, a crystal shop. 

At my request, my mother had bought me a gift certificate for this shop for Christmas a year ago (not this year) that still had some money on it, so I went there, vowing to myself to not get annoyed by traffic or anything else. 

Me to self the whole time while driving on this Sunday afternoon:  "You have all the time in the world. You don't have to be there or get back at any certain time. You don't have to get mad at anyone who cuts in front of you in an obnoxious manner, or at anyone who's driving way too slowly in front of you." And while in the shop: "You don't look less 'cool' than anyone else. You know as much about these crystals as anyone else. You have the same right to be here."

I bought a big 7-lb Selenite-chunk lamp with the gift card from last Christmas (2022). It looks beautiful on my shelf.

I need to get out more often.

Prince & The Revolution: Raspberry Beret (1985)

I first posted this because I was feeling nostalgic about the girl in high school that I was in love with, who loved Prince so much, and was mildly louche (only in the sense that she knew about sex and I didn't) in the way that the Raspberry Beret girl was/is louche. (I just love that word "louche.")

Aside from "The Girl I Loved," this song and video were put out in 1985, nearly 40 years ago. But it sounds/looks as fresh as if it were released today.

When Prince died of a prescription drug overdose in 2016, I thought of the girl I used to love, and who loved him so. She died at age 23 in 1988; he died at age 57 in 2016. She would have been sad at his passing. I wish we had been a middle-aged couple together, and that I could have mildly comforted her and that we could have listened to a few Prince albums together in remembrance. There's nobody else that I sent the lyrics to "Purple Rain" to in 1983, trying unsuccessfully to win her back to me.

Prince: Little Red Corvette (1983)

Night of the Iguana: Jelkes and Shannon

Imagine anything this psychologically subtle being attempted in any film today.

Night of the Iguana (1964): Final poem of Nonno

How calmly does the olive branch 

Observe the sky begin to blanch 

Without a cry, without a prayer 

With no betrayal of despair 

 

 Some time while light obscures the tree 

The zenith of its life will be 

Gone past forever and from thence 

A second history will commence 

 

A chronicle no longer gold 

A bargaining with mist and mold 

And finally the broken stem 

The plummeting to earth, and then 

 

An intercourse not well designed 

For beings of a golden kind 

Whose native green must arch above 

The earth's obscene corrupting love

 

And still the ripe fruit and the branch 

 Observe the sky begin to blanch 

Without a cry, without a prayer 

With no betrayal of despair

 

Oh courage! Could you not as well 

Select a second place to dwell 

Not only in that golden tree 

But in the frightened heart of me

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Tennessee Williams has a present-day reputation of being perhaps "overwrought." But not at all. He's actually very spiritual and profound, along with his portrayals of realistic real-world sensuality. This movie, "Night of the Iguana," I've only seen on TCM about 3 times in the past 15 years or so---but every time, I end up crying at, yes, "the humanity."

 

Williams is not a "gay writer," he's a "human writer."

 

In this movie's case, I personally identified with all three of the primary female characters and their stories and proclivities: Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner), Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), and Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall).

 

Richard Burton's defrocked Reverend was a bit less-well-developed and more over the top...but still nearly as heart-breaking.

I think as a viewer, I came to full spiritual attention when the Reverend kept the wild Maxine from fully going off (deservedly) on the closeted lesbian Judith, who had been acting obnoxiously the whole time, accusing the Reverend and Maxine of all sorts of misdoings while perhaps subconsciously pining after her teenaged charge (played by Sue Lyon).

Later, the Rev goes off on Maxine, and Deborah Kerr's character asks him why he was earlier so kind to Judith (whom he disliked) but so cruel to Maxine (whom he cared for). The Reverend's rationale: Judith was actually a moral person, and an internal revelation of her perhaps true (lesbian) nature would be too much for her to handle psychologically, whereas the cruder Maxine could take the heat... Wow. Very complicated, intricate psychological stuff---as is a later scene when Burton asks Kerr about her previous sexual experiences...

Every time I see this movie, I've forgotten what I saw last time and am first fascinated by the mild depravity of Burton and his battles with the church ladies on the bus... and wind up utterly moved to the point of actually crying at the film's ultimate spiritual beauty and humanity.

 

Frieda Hughes (daughter of Ted and Sylvia) Kicks Ass

Ha! What 260K will buy you in Austin.

For the past couple of years, I've been making decent money (at least I thought it was decent money!) and have been getting updates from a Home Buying site re available homes in my price range, which was about $350K. This recent update made me laugh! Here's what $260K will get you in Austin (and in a bad part of town)!