7/31/08
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET ?
The next several blog posts are meant to get us through the hot August days with a sense of fun.
7/29/08
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Column One - "PEN OF A POET IN THE FIST OF A FIGHTER" AUGUST KLEINZAHLER
Yesterday's LA Times - front cover- for Monday July 28th, 2008, featured an article of the title above about AUGUST KLEINZAHLER, who shuns academic poets and literary snobs and has been known to get into fist fights in bars when insulted. Literary journals are publishing his work... ABOVE IS THE LINK TO READING THIS LA TIMES ARTICLE byline JOHN GLIONNA on line... I achieved it by Googling LA TIMES and the headline which I already knew because I bought the paper paper (yes I still do once in a while, when I know I will have the time to read it!) The Times is having a hell of a time continuing to publish because of electronic media like this one. I found the front paging of news about a POET especially interesting. What is the strategy in placing news about a poetry renegade on the front page?
7/28/08
Coming Up... ARE MEN NECESSARY? by MAUREEN DOWD
I'm reading this book which has a great retro-1950's trash novel cover, by the Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, with great interest and a sense of humor...
WHAT DOES IT TAKE :JUNIOR WALKER and his ALLSTARS
This is the song that went playing in my head as I walked five miles to yoga class this morning. I haven't heard it in a long time so I know it's not an ear worm.
7/27/08
STARVELINGS : A NEW WORD For Me
TRAIN WRECK - The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith
by Donna Hogan (her sister) as told to Henrietta Tiefenthaler
intro vi and vii
"Anna Nicole Smith was an exception to the starvelings who usually flaunted themselves in pages of Playboy weighing in at one hundred and forty pounds, partly accounted for by an expensively enhansed chest the size of Texas."
by Donna Hogan (her sister) as told to Henrietta Tiefenthaler
intro vi and vii
"Anna Nicole Smith was an exception to the starvelings who usually flaunted themselves in pages of Playboy weighing in at one hundred and forty pounds, partly accounted for by an expensively enhansed chest the size of Texas."
7/26/08
A WRITERS LIFE by GAY TALESE
A Writers Life - Gay Talese
By Gay Talese
C 2005
Alfred A Knopf publisher
excerpts from pages 75-76
"Often I involve myself with two or three unrelated subjects at the same time, and I shift from one to another when I become bogged down and believe it wiser to put aside what I am doing and reappraise it at some point in the future.... Thy Neighbor's Wife - one of four books that I had begun and completed between 1965-1999; but during this period I had also started several other books and had finished one of them. My curiosity drives me in different directions, but until I have invested lots of my time --- months, years--- I have no idea whether a chosen subject will sustain my interest. Sometimes I toss into the trash various drafts of what I have written, while at other times I put them aside, file them away, reread them a year or two later, rewrite and refile them perhaps, or decide that they are not worth saving after all, and so I tear them up and rid myself of them forever.
'Writing is often like driving a truck at night without headlights, losing your way along the road, and spending a decade in a ditch..."
By Gay Talese
C 2005
Alfred A Knopf publisher
excerpts from pages 75-76
"Often I involve myself with two or three unrelated subjects at the same time, and I shift from one to another when I become bogged down and believe it wiser to put aside what I am doing and reappraise it at some point in the future.... Thy Neighbor's Wife - one of four books that I had begun and completed between 1965-1999; but during this period I had also started several other books and had finished one of them. My curiosity drives me in different directions, but until I have invested lots of my time --- months, years--- I have no idea whether a chosen subject will sustain my interest. Sometimes I toss into the trash various drafts of what I have written, while at other times I put them aside, file them away, reread them a year or two later, rewrite and refile them perhaps, or decide that they are not worth saving after all, and so I tear them up and rid myself of them forever.
'Writing is often like driving a truck at night without headlights, losing your way along the road, and spending a decade in a ditch..."
7/25/08
ANNE SEXTON / THE BLACK ART
from THE COMPLETE POEMS
C 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr.
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston
THE BLACK ART
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.
A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetiches!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wars were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.
Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and hats,
we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.
(Click on the title above to get to a YouTube video of Anne Sexton "rare clips" - not reading this particular poem.
Video expired... removed Oct 2022
7/21/08
GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE DISCRIMINATES AGAINST BACKPACK WEARING CONCERT GOERS (The Very Same Stuff in a Big Purse is OK!) FOR THE DOWNLOAD 2008 CONCERT
GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE RULE DISCRIMINATES AGAINST
BACKPACK WEARING CONCERT GOERS
(The Very Same Stuff In a Big Purse is OK!)
by Christine Trzyna
Yesterday I ended up feeling like a dumb schmuck (one of those Yiddish words that is loose in LA vocabulary) for trying to attend one of those multiple band concerts that we suspect to be yet another pay for play venue in La La Land, at GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE, which is approached through UNIVERSAL CITY WALK. We were to attend a long day of music, the DOWNLOAD 2008 concert put on by LIVE NATION.
I and a slightly mobility disabled friend decided to SKIP THE OUTRAGEOUS PARKING RATES AT UNIVERSAL CITY WALK COMPLEX and take the sluggish Sunday MTA which was a 40 minute ride for us. Then we waited for one of those TOURIST TRAMS to take us up, up, up, the steep hill to the entrance of the Universal City Walk et al entrance. We then strolled the mock country lane up to GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE, where we were just on time for the 1:30 concert. Then one of those "Sorry, I'm just doing my job," clerks told us that I/We could not enter because I was carrying a BACKPACK.
I told her it was fine with me if she went through everything in my small green pack, which contained a comfortable pair of shoes, a jeans jacket, a small cosmetic bag containing eyedrops, lipgloss and a money bag with a few bucks and a photo ID. She told me that I could go put my backpack in a locker. The locker location was somewhere out there- by now the concert had started- and the CATCH is that it would cost me $5.
Now I asked, if I had the same stuff in a big purse or bag if then it would be OK to carry it in, and she said yes... So of course I asked for the name and location of the head of Security, and wouldn't you know it, these days clerks do not know such names. They do not know the company they work for, how to locate their immediate supervisor or boss, or who really writes their paycheck. But this isn't their fault. They aren't supposed to know or they'd be trained to know.
THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE NONSENSE WHICH I SWEAR COMES TO THIS: I AM NEVER EVER GOING TO UNIVERSAL CITY WALK OR THE GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE AGAIN, not for ANYTHING, not for FREE, not to see a movie, nadda! It was a waste of time - an afternoon of rare time off, money - my eco-correct friend and I skipped the high cost of gas and parking but you might not. I'm appalled at the extremes that the Patriot Act has apparently taken things; apparently terrorists use backpacks (as if any terrorist doesn't know this and hasn't switched to something else to carry explosives in). I'm even more appalled at the typical UNIVERSAL CITY WALK - TOURIST TRAP ASSOCIATED GREED!
My friend and I walked to an INFORMATION BOOTH and repeated our story. We were given the phone number of a guy named Fred. We called Fred on the cell phone. He wasn't in but SOME OTHER GUY, warned by the Information Booth Guy that he was about to get an "angry" phone call, did speak to me. I never raised my voice. I did say I was going to BLOG about this. I explained that I had been advised that carrying heavy sacks off my shoulders was not a good idea so I had switched to using a back pack. I had no problem with the back pack being inspected. Fred's SUBSTITUTE said that it was on the WEB SITE. But we didn't get our tickets from a WEB SITE, they were handed to us COMPED by a mutual friend. Nothing on the ticket says "NO BACKPACKS" or anything about ANY limitation when it comes to what you bring into the GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE. We said that. We asked WHO this STUPID RULE originated with. We were told THE PEOPLE PUTTING ON THE CONCERT - LIVE NATION.
Well, we got nowhere, and we were both disgusted. We considered hiding the backpack in a bush somewhere but we just went home and BITCHED to EVERYONE WHO WOULD LISTEN.
Just to make it WORSE, who do we meet up with but a couple guys - associates of ours- who said that they had that very same day just walked right into UNIVERSAL STUDIO TOUR without paying, and with heavy army store green sacks hanging off their shoulders!
WHERE'S MY FIVE THUMBS DOWN ICON WHEN I NEED IT?
THE BEATLES : IF I NEEDED SOMEONE COMMENTARY
One Saturday I ran into an old friend, a major Beatles fan, who had been in town a few weeks and was on the way out. This song was on the radio when I came out of the bathroom at a Carls Junior after he and I had words - recriminations - about who didn't try hard enough to keep in touch and who wasn't easily available and why and how - messages not received, e-mails not picked up, cell phone batteries and cell phones dead. And so we happened to see each other around...
It was one of those horrific synchronicity moments when IF I NEEDED SOMEONE went on. And the synchronicities went on. We passed a billboard that had a black and white statement INDEPENDENCE just after he accused me of being too independent.
Sometimes when synchronicities happen you feel you are on your path just as it was meant to be.
I've also been picking up a penny a day, often tails. My New Yorker friend tells me that in New York you only pick up the heads. I say kick the penny till it turns up heads and then pick it up OR just pick it up already!
It was one of those horrific synchronicity moments when IF I NEEDED SOMEONE went on. And the synchronicities went on. We passed a billboard that had a black and white statement INDEPENDENCE just after he accused me of being too independent.
Sometimes when synchronicities happen you feel you are on your path just as it was meant to be.
I've also been picking up a penny a day, often tails. My New Yorker friend tells me that in New York you only pick up the heads. I say kick the penny till it turns up heads and then pick it up OR just pick it up already!
7/17/08
LIFE SAVING ADOPTATHON FOR ANIMALS CAUGHT IN PERFECT STORM / LA Animal Services Stages Reduced Fee Adoption of Pets
City of LA has just released important news: www.LAAnimalServices.com
"LA Animal Services is responding to a perfect storm that has resulted in an EXTRAORDINARY INFLUX OF ANIMALS into the City's six Animal Care Centers. The storm includes ANIMALS SURRENDERED IN RECORD NUMBERS AS A RESULT OF THE TRAGIC HOUSING CRISIS, animals lost as a result of the 4th of July celebrations, and the fact that the summer is typically a high volume time for animal intakes into shelters...
Saturday and Sunday July 19th and 20th Dogs and Cats available at $43 per dog and $28 per cat. (60% reduction)
call 1-888-452LA-PET1 / 1-888-452-7381
IF YOU ARE IN LA and HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO PREVENT ANOTHER ANIMAL FROM MEETING SHELTER AUSCHWITZ please contact LA Animal Services.
"LA Animal Services is responding to a perfect storm that has resulted in an EXTRAORDINARY INFLUX OF ANIMALS into the City's six Animal Care Centers. The storm includes ANIMALS SURRENDERED IN RECORD NUMBERS AS A RESULT OF THE TRAGIC HOUSING CRISIS, animals lost as a result of the 4th of July celebrations, and the fact that the summer is typically a high volume time for animal intakes into shelters...
Saturday and Sunday July 19th and 20th Dogs and Cats available at $43 per dog and $28 per cat. (60% reduction)
call 1-888-452LA-PET1 / 1-888-452-7381
IF YOU ARE IN LA and HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO PREVENT ANOTHER ANIMAL FROM MEETING SHELTER AUSCHWITZ please contact LA Animal Services.
7/16/08
LYNN TWIST from THE SOUL OF MONEY
The Soul of Money
Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
C 2003 C Lynn Twist
W.W. Norton and Company publishers
page 18
Vicki Robin, in Your Money of Your Life, writes about people who, instead of making a living, more accurately "make a dying," or, in some cases, make a killing. The work they're doing is unfullfilling, perhaps even detrimental to their own or other's well being. Or perhaps they're embarrassed about their work. They hate it. They wish they didn't have to do it. They pretend that it doesn't matter, but in truth, their spirit - or someone else's - is being killed off..."
On her prejudice against rich people...
page 35
"... In her reply she admonished me, saying that while I had expressed my compassion for the poor, the sick, the faint, the weak, all my life, that would be a place where my self expression and service would easily flourish. The vicious cycle of poverty, she said, had been clearly articulated and is widely known. What is less obvious and goes almost completely unacknowledged is the vicious cycle of wealth. There is no recognition of the trap that wealth so often is, and of the suffering of the wealthy: the loneliness, the isolation, the hardening of the heart, the hunger and the poverty of the soul that can come with the burden of wealth.
page 36
"Mother Theresa's admonition and my subsequent fund-raising work with the very wealthy taught me that, surprisingly, wealth is no protection from human suffering. I would come to learn that people with excess wealth - not all of them, but many - struggle in lives disconnected from the qualities of the soul. They lived trapped in a prison of privilege in which material comforts are plentiful, but spiritual and emotional deprivation are real and painful. In that prison they loose touch with the values of the heart. They can become manifestation of money's dark side. For some, wealth only serves as a weapon that expands their capacity to do harm.
Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
C 2003 C Lynn Twist
W.W. Norton and Company publishers
page 18
Vicki Robin, in Your Money of Your Life, writes about people who, instead of making a living, more accurately "make a dying," or, in some cases, make a killing. The work they're doing is unfullfilling, perhaps even detrimental to their own or other's well being. Or perhaps they're embarrassed about their work. They hate it. They wish they didn't have to do it. They pretend that it doesn't matter, but in truth, their spirit - or someone else's - is being killed off..."
On her prejudice against rich people...
page 35
"... In her reply she admonished me, saying that while I had expressed my compassion for the poor, the sick, the faint, the weak, all my life, that would be a place where my self expression and service would easily flourish. The vicious cycle of poverty, she said, had been clearly articulated and is widely known. What is less obvious and goes almost completely unacknowledged is the vicious cycle of wealth. There is no recognition of the trap that wealth so often is, and of the suffering of the wealthy: the loneliness, the isolation, the hardening of the heart, the hunger and the poverty of the soul that can come with the burden of wealth.
page 36
"Mother Theresa's admonition and my subsequent fund-raising work with the very wealthy taught me that, surprisingly, wealth is no protection from human suffering. I would come to learn that people with excess wealth - not all of them, but many - struggle in lives disconnected from the qualities of the soul. They lived trapped in a prison of privilege in which material comforts are plentiful, but spiritual and emotional deprivation are real and painful. In that prison they loose touch with the values of the heart. They can become manifestation of money's dark side. For some, wealth only serves as a weapon that expands their capacity to do harm.
7/7/08
YOU BELONG TO ME : CARLY SIMON
"You don't need to prove to me that you're beautiful to strangers..."
GIRLS LIKE US by SHEILA WELLER
GIRLS LIKE US
Sheila Weller
C Kellwell Inc
Atria Books Division of Simon and Shuster
QUICK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA
Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, perhaps the three most influential singer-songwriters of 20th century popular music; they reflected and influenced pop culture through their unconventional lives and original music that so very many of us still sing in the shower. While Carole embodied the Jewish earth mother who kept her children and family life apart from her career, Carly was the vampish sex positive intellectual with the (frequently) true heart who wasn't always sure she wanted a career. Joni decided early that her creativity would prevail over personal relationships but her angst over giving up her long secret love child for adoption was the underlying theme that effected both profoundly.
OK so guess who made it through all three ladies' lives? That Lothario James Taylor! (I can see you now going right to the index to read the specific parts about James....)
So which lady is most interesting to me? Probably Carly.
But since this book follows the three women through their lives as expressing the challenges of a generation of women, lets go to page 292-293 where we read this....
"On the one hand, being an old lady, or a "lady" - the kind of arty, sensual, esoterically spiritual chick for whom the coolest men had lust and awe- well, you couldn't beat that. All over the country, young women were trying to shoehorn their personalities into that fashionable archetype" talkative girls got stoned and talked slower; unaesthetic girls took to wearing dangly jewelry; pragmatic girls started reading their horoscopes. Verbal, argumentative girls pretended to be anti-intellectual and serene. But many young women (especially, it seemed, in Laurel Canyon) didn't have to try; they naturally personified this glamorous new femininity.... '
"On the other hand, medieval courtliness had its blowback: When you were someone's old lady, a piece of you belonged to your old man- and he was always coming out ahead, because he was a man....'
Pages 296-297
"Ladies of the Canyon" (Joni Mitchell's) was released in March 1970 and it was shot though with idealism and idealization: idealized long-skirted ladies, the pitfalls of worshipful love, the chafing between idealistic women and "straight" moneyed men, the inequity between rock star's wealth and a street musician's poverty, the misguided destruction of "paradise," for the sake of money..."
Sheila Weller
C Kellwell Inc
Atria Books Division of Simon and Shuster
QUICK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA
Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, perhaps the three most influential singer-songwriters of 20th century popular music; they reflected and influenced pop culture through their unconventional lives and original music that so very many of us still sing in the shower. While Carole embodied the Jewish earth mother who kept her children and family life apart from her career, Carly was the vampish sex positive intellectual with the (frequently) true heart who wasn't always sure she wanted a career. Joni decided early that her creativity would prevail over personal relationships but her angst over giving up her long secret love child for adoption was the underlying theme that effected both profoundly.
OK so guess who made it through all three ladies' lives? That Lothario James Taylor! (I can see you now going right to the index to read the specific parts about James....)
So which lady is most interesting to me? Probably Carly.
But since this book follows the three women through their lives as expressing the challenges of a generation of women, lets go to page 292-293 where we read this....
"On the one hand, being an old lady, or a "lady" - the kind of arty, sensual, esoterically spiritual chick for whom the coolest men had lust and awe- well, you couldn't beat that. All over the country, young women were trying to shoehorn their personalities into that fashionable archetype" talkative girls got stoned and talked slower; unaesthetic girls took to wearing dangly jewelry; pragmatic girls started reading their horoscopes. Verbal, argumentative girls pretended to be anti-intellectual and serene. But many young women (especially, it seemed, in Laurel Canyon) didn't have to try; they naturally personified this glamorous new femininity.... '
"On the other hand, medieval courtliness had its blowback: When you were someone's old lady, a piece of you belonged to your old man- and he was always coming out ahead, because he was a man....'
Pages 296-297
"Ladies of the Canyon" (Joni Mitchell's) was released in March 1970 and it was shot though with idealism and idealization: idealized long-skirted ladies, the pitfalls of worshipful love, the chafing between idealistic women and "straight" moneyed men, the inequity between rock star's wealth and a street musician's poverty, the misguided destruction of "paradise," for the sake of money..."
7/4/08
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Follow this link to the American Memory Internet site that has all the important documents! The DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Follow the link provided under the title of this blog to go to the LIBRARY of CONGRESS where you can read the founding documents and important historical papers of the United States of America!
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