CHRISTOPHER RICKS Quote

"If there was one thing worse than being married to a ruthless unsuccessful poet, it was being married to a ruthless successful poet." - Christopher Ricks

WHAT I WANT IN MY SOCK (NOT MY STOCKING! I DON'T WEAR THEM!)

WHAT IS MY HEART'S DESIRE?

My Favorite (Cheap) Chocolate: Hershey's Dark and Hersheys Chocolate with Almonds. (However I'm open to Chocolate Swiss.)

My Favorite Gum: I've been trying all the new chewing gums in their newly designed artistic packages but ORBIT brand in WATERMELON or CITRUS is the best! (It turns out 20 minutes of chewing after each meal really is good for your teeth and digestion!)

My Favorite Nut Candy: Pastel Jordon Almonds.

My Favorite Fruit: Oranges. These are perfect!

A GOLD COIN - much better than a half penny though a half penny will do.

MY LONG LOST RING RETURNED MYSTERIOUSLY (Perhaps an apportation!)

A LOVE LETTER (It must be sincere!)

All the money that is owed to me by various scoundrels (including intellectual property thieves) so I can pay off all my own debts.

A year's supply of Indian incense.

ANDY WARHOL From I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR

In Vogue magazine March 1970

KENT: Do your films ever have scripts and plots?

WARHOL (smiling) Sometimes. Half a page, a paragraph. But, mainly, the stars improvise their own dialogue. Somehow, we attract people who can turn themselves on in front of the camera. In a sense, they're really superstars. It's much harder, you know, to be your own script than to memorize someone else's. Anyhow, scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know what's going to happen...

I don't think plot is important. If you see a movie, say, of two people talking, you can watch it over and over again without being bored. You get involved --- you miss things ---you come back to it---you see new things. But you can't see the same movie 0ver and over again if it has a plot because you already know the ending.

KENT: But isn't improvisational movie making a matter of luck, depending upon the resources of the people who are doing the improvising?

WARHOL: (Fervidly, as if his own voice had revealed a mystery) : Everyone is rich. Everyone and everything is interesting. Years ago, people used to sit looking out of their windows at the street. Or on a park bench. They would stay for hours without being bored although nothing much was going on. This is my favorite theme in movie making ---just watching something happening for two hours or so.

Interview with Letitia Kent


I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews
Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop
MasterEdited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts.)

SAMUEL GOLDWYN on FREE SPEECH

"When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."



From "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said" by Ross and Kathryn Petras published by Doubleday

CHRISTINE TRZYNA - WRITERLY LIFE RIGHTS INFORMATION

Christine Trzyna BlogSpot / Christine Trzyna

Every once in a while I'll be posting a notice like this one that reminds readers that the content of this blog is Copyright Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.





THANKS!

Excerpt from THE AGE OF THE UNTHINKABLE by JOSHUA COOPER RAMO

page 134 of mini chapter "Where Can I Fail?"

Buddhist masters like to say that if you're trying to reach enlightenment, you must develop, in this order, "right view, right intention, and right action." If you're not seeing the world properly, you have no hope of this sort of breakthrough. The question I want to explore now is" what is the right view when it comes to life in a revolutionary age? When the defining trait of life in those sandpile developments that, by definition, are new in our experience, how should we look at the world? Do we have anything to learn from people who are particularly successful in places where fast change and surprise are daily facts of life? These are vitally important questions if you;re trying to train yourself to make sense of a world order that looks increasingly out of control...

Page 185

"Many of our problems today aren't the result of too little information. Instead, they come from the challenge of sorting through a huge (and growing) amount of data, all constantly changing, and much of it irrelevant or misleading....

C 2009 Joshua Cooper Ramo, the author. Little Brown and Company is the publisher

CHRISTINE TRZYNA REVIEWS THE AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS ! "I didn't feel entertained. I felt HUMILIATED for Womankind."

I and a group of friends, many African American, and ranging in age from early twenties to sixties, watched the AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS last night.

My prime curiosity was Lady Gaga, who I expected to be over the top. She was on the edge of performance art and owns a voice with a range and power that surpasses Madonna, who has no doubt been an inspiration and, I hear, is a follower.

I also pride myself, whatever my musical tastes at the moment, to have a good idea of what's happening in pop culture music now, and fully expected the Micheal Jackson legacy to be continually enhanced, which it was.

I find it interesting that so many women singers are solo acts these days. My generation of women had a hard time infiltrating the music business, coming after the girl groups of the 1950's and the soulful strummers of the 1960's, and pretty much regulated to being the groupie- sidekicks of punk rockers and hair bands of the 70's and 80's. But exactly how it is that rauch got to be mainstream, I'm not sure.

Let's not forget that Micheal Jackson, now forgotten as highly inappropriate with children, and Madonna, now raising her children as Kaballists, started the crouch rub as a dance move craze years ago. As a matter of fact, at a dinner some of my friends attended recently there were kids running around dancing and doing the crouch rub. Five year olds. Which is where the dance probably originated.

Last nights show disappointed us all. The main reason was that the special effects and displays, the smoke, the fire, the costuming, the chronic sadio-masochistic posturing, imagery, and props, made us feel like we had taken a trip into something far further south than Dr. Suess' 9th floor dungeon. We are uncomfortable with the sickness, both spiritual and psychological, that came with it. No doubt some of the entertainers had amazing voices, but overall it was dark, very dark, and we wondered exactly why the competition had been about special effects and outrageousness. Adam Lambert, the American Idol star who is openly gay, featured a bare-chested-but-for-the-straps dancer who he pushed around. Pee Yew Adam!

Even Carrie Underwood, a country star, went prancing around with a bevy of demonic ladies in waiting! And this is a five time winner? Is this how desperate you are Carrie?

What the hell happened to country ?

Does anyone really want to listen to lyrics that are poison to the mind and heart over and over again? A lot of the words - sometimes entire sentences - to the lyrics were bleeped.

As a woman who has long been a feminist, and who is not shy about erotica in the right place, or lyrics that challenge us, I never the less almost felt a shame that what top women singers do now is disguise their voices with all this calamity around them. I'd rather they leave the stripping to strippers in clubs one chooses as a destination and the pornography to the porn stars and the private bedrooms.

I didn't feel entertained. I felt humiliated for womankind.

C Christine Trzyna 2009 All rights reserved including International and Internet Rights. Contact author for permissions.

STOP COMPLAINING START BOASTING!

Have your friends ever complained that you complain too much? Much bemused with last nights conversation with a 180. Try this! Use every occasion to gloat, brag, air positive thoughts about yourself... just how long can your friends stand it ? There is something in our society - most- that deplores the person who dares have too much self confidence and self esteem. Maybe we're all afraid to tempt bad luck or seeming competitive!

I will soon be submitting my first Vanity Fair inspired Proustean questionairre since I began this blog...

MARTIN ALLWOOD Quote

"If you do not let love reside in the body it is homeless." - Martin Allwood

THOMAS ALVA EDISON Quote

"I was always afraid of things that worked the first time." Thomas Alva Edison

Edison was the nventor of the first recording machine - the tinfoil phonograph, and in 1877, the wax cylinder recording machine.

ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE REPORTS on THINGS THAT HAVEN'T HAPPENED YET

Looking through the November 27th 2009 edition of Rolling Stone magazine. There is reportage on a concert that has not happened yet...

I had to check the magazine twice to be sure it didn't say October 27, 2009.

A magazine subscription used to come about a week before the news-stand. This was the advantage of a subscription. Now some are coming a good month before they hit the stands and seem to be PREDICTING THE FUTURE rather than reporting JUST BREAKING NEWS.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA REVIEWS THE LOST SYMBOL by DAN BROWN

THE LOST SYMBOL is C 2009 DAN BROWN REVIEW BY CHRISTINE TRZYNA C 2009

So many reviews have already been made of this book, dare I add to the chaos?

Having seen ANGELS and DEMONS on the big screen, for my entire read I kept seeing the actor TOM HANKS in my mind's eye when I encountered the character Langdon.

Is it possible to read a Dan Brown book and not be completely fascinated by cutting edge technology and science clashing and meshing with ancient occult wisdom and spiritual controversy? It's his forte and the long wait for this book was worth it.

Would it be going too far to suggest that this book may be the ANTIDOTE for 9/11 because ultimately it is patriotic? Will the Masons have a resurgence of interest in their organization? If so, what about the Anti-Catholicism of the Masons?

What does it mean when you take notes because you want to look up Noetic Science? Like the aftermath of his other books, I fully expect that Dan Brown has created interest enough in his research for the book for others to go after him for accuracy.

For some reason I felt the story was a bit slow until it got really good. Life intruded and I had to put it down many times but about three forths of the way through I didn't want to.

EXCERPT from IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE

IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers

page 171
"Peter had always been the one to discover, throw himself into, and turn his friends on to the coolest, most interesting music scenes. In the two years since Animal House had prompted a mass migration of unruly New York comics to LA, a new scene had begun to bubble up for the LA music underground. The early stages of punk rock, which in the early to mid - '70's had stormed New York and London, had in large part passed Hollywood by. While bands like the Germs, the Weirdos, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, and X sparked varying degrees of cult devotion in Southern CA, the sound as a whole, and the attitude and aesthetic that came with it, did not really begin to catch on until the later '70's , when the tectonic rumblings of two of punk's most potent second-wave manifestations began to crack the town's placid facade..."

ROLLO MAY Quote

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity." - Rollo May

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY TRUST SITE

Marion Zimmer Bradley, the author of fiction based on the Arthurian legends from a woman's point of view, has a site helpful to writers that includes advice to writers about taxes and so much more. While more books by Bradley emerge from publishers, I recall reading THE MISTS OF AVALON many years ago and being intrigued by the notion of the land of fairy, which is a place one can slip into without realizing it, and years pass by. Whenever her character actually thinks it is time to go, she is incited to join another party, and when finally she does, going back the way she came, she discovers the bones of the horse she rode in on. Many years have gone by, but she gets back on her path... only to discover that people have aged and things have changed...

It happens to all of us. One day I was in West Hollywood and looked into the windows of a restaurant I used to go to a lot, and there were the same group of men playing chess that had been sitting there seven years before.

Re MARIANNE MOORE - POET - WESTWAYS MAGAZINE JUNE 2009

In the June 2009 edition of Westways Magazine (the AAA Auto Club publication) there is this...

"In 1955, Ford Motor Company hired the poet Marianne Moore to suggest names for anew car still on the drawing board. The car maker had big plans for the vehicle, and it asked Moore for words that would convey speed, sophistication, and state-of-the-art design to prospective buyers. Proving perhaps that poets think years ahead of their time, Moore came up with the names Civique and Diamante, among others..."

HELEN GURLEY BROWN Quote

"Living dangerously lengthens and strengthens your life." -Helen Gurley Brown

COMMENTARY ON NEVER MIND ME MARIA MENA

I'll just cast shadows on your wall...

ON DOMINICK DUNNE by GRAYDEN CARTER

One of my favorite writers, Dominick Dunne, died in New York City, age 83, after 30 years of writing books and magazine articles, mining society for stories, and focusing on criminal justice and crimes of the century. Although I never read his creative fiction, what I liked about Dunne's writing is the simple clarity of it. It was as if he had taken the advice of the classic book WRITING WELL. His turn of the phrase was never dependent on fanciness.

This is what Grayden Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine, had to say about him in the November 2009 Editors Letter:

"Dominick died in his penthouse apartment in Manhattan on August 26, at the age of 83, just having completed his last novel, Too Much Money, which will be published in December. A failed, divorced, alcoholic Hollywood producer at 50, he famously recaptured his life and produced an astonishing body of work in the years left to him. Through his hundreds of articles and diary entries for Vanity Fair, his six novels, and his presence at countless dinner parties and social events in this country and abroad, he became one of the most loved and recognizable writers in the world..."

Try This Experiment ...

WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU TRIED SPEAKING IN YOUR l i b r a r y v o i c e ?

WAYNE GRETZKY QUOTE

One hundred percent of the shots you don't make will never enter the net.

HUMOR LEXICON - GELOTOLOGY

GELOTOLOGY - The study of humor and laughter, from the Greek gelos, laughter


This is taken from an article in CALIFORNIA magazine March/April 2009 had a brief alphabetical Humor Lexicon, author doesn't appear.

from VANITY FAIR KILLER@CRAIGSLIST

By Maureen Orth page 158 October 2009 Vanity Fair

LIFE WITHOUT PRIVACY


"Few Americans, even those from the younger, Internet generation, seem to understand how easily their clicks and text messages can be detected, and how little privacy any of us have anymore. Every search, every posting, every text message or Twitter, leaves a cyber footprint. The content of every e0mail sent by any one of us is kept by the Internet service provider and stored for a period of time, usually six to nine months. Google and Gmail used to store e-mails indefinitely; now they claim they're within the same range, but all the e-mail we choose to keep until we delete it can also be accessed by the provider."

GERALD MALANGA interview of ANDY WARHOL

MALANGA: What was the motive behind repeating the same image more than once in a painting?

WARHOL: I don't really know or remember. I think, at the time, I started repeating the same image because I liked the way the repetition changed the same image Also, I felt at the time, as I do now, that people can look at and absorb more than one image at a time.

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews. Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop Master Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts).

From an interview with Gerard Malanga in 1971.

HUMOR LEXICON ZANY

ZANY: The clown's assistant, from the name Zanni, short for Giovanni. In old Italian Dramas, the clown would make fun of the serious characters. The zany would make fun of the clown.

This is taken from an article in CALIFORNIA magazine March/April 2009 had a brief alphabetical Humor Lexicon, author doesn't appear.

GETTY CENTER ART MUSEUM MARGINALIA in MANUSCRIPTS

Out-of-Bounds: Images in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts Daily through November 8, 2009
North Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center

"Part of the genius of medieval art lies in its unique ability to combine serious and profound images with playful and witty ones. In illuminated manuscripts, a primary artistic medium of the Middle Ages, scenes in the margins of a page often comment on the paintings illustrating the text in the center. As often as they expand on the narrative, they poke fun at the lofty themes and, more broadly, at human foibles. Out-of-Bounds: Images in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts explores the margins of medieval books and explains its wealth of subject matter: children playing games, romantic pursuits, men battling fantastic creatures, and composite figures—half-human, half-beast—that wend their ways through the sinuous foliage of the painted borders."

SCREENWRITER NOT

I've been plagued with naysayers at times in my life. One time in a coffee house where I worked writing on my laptop every afternoon, I was in a sea of screenwriters - all male. They were coming and going all day, moving from one coffee house to another to be out of their apartments, active, busy, but also in a clique. They rarely if ever talked to me. One day one of them actually walked to my table. He didn't introduce himself or ask my name or make any small talk at all. All he wanted to know was "Are You A Member of the Screenwriters Union?" I guess all those hours of hearing me type away had gotten to them. I wonder if the other guys put him up to adventuring on over to me. I'm not a screenwriter. But in Los Angeles it often feels like that's the only writing anyone understands or thinks is worth a writers time. As they say, just about everyone has one screenplay in their drawer at their "real job." - And when the time comes I wouldn't be surprised I too adapt a fiction or nonfiction book I've worked on into a screenplay. I can't say it actually infuriated me since, sadly I have grown accustomed to naysayers, but I overheard this same guy talking one of his pals and calling me "THE GIRL WHO TYPES!" It was beyond these sexist men to imagine that I am NOT a GIRL, but a woman, that I am not just TYPING, but creating content or creating a world of imagination. Nasty comments like this are consciously or not, aimed at reducing a hard working, educated, talented, and skillful writer, into a secretary. I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR!

EXCERPT from I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR - ANDY WARHOL

From an interview by Bess Winakor in 1975, page 224

Q: How do you live? How big is your home?
A: About eight rooms, six rooms. Very small. Six or seven rooms.

Q: How are they decorated?
A Just junk. paper and boxes. Things I bring home and leave around and never pick up. Old interviews, magazines.

Q: Do you live alone or live with somebody?
A: I live alone.

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR
The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews
Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop Master
Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts).

ROBERT FROST Quote

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. - Robert Frost

ALBERT SCHWEITZER Quote

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." Albert Schweitzer

EXCERPT from IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE

IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers

page XVIII "... in many ways he (Peter) exemplified the cross-pollination of punks and comics...

page XIX "He made a lot of decisions in his life, and many of them seemed to lead away from the success he so vitally desired. Some called him Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up and face facts, while others rooted for him till his last days. By choosing to live the artistic dreams that they themselves (often admittedly) had given up on, he exuded a fulfillment they could never quite achieve. With a bank account perpetually in the red, he became an unlikely role model - an icon of authenticity and a bottomless source of inspiration, emulation, and adoration - for a generation of pop culture heavyweights..."

(Peter is said to have disrobed freely since childhood.)

page 112 "It was a bad boy stage persona Peter had begun to cultivate only recently. Even his band mates were at a loss.... It all seemed a little too Hollywood. Peter had pulled a similar stunt recently at the Palladium in Hollywood, opening for the New York Dolls. He'd come out in a diaper, with a squirt gun inside it filled with milk, covered with a rubber penis He squirted milk onto the audience, which promptly booed him off the stage. At least with the Dolls crowd, Peter could be excused for expecting some punk-rock enthusiasm for his wild stage antics....

MILTON KLONSKY Quote

From ONE DROP by Bliss Broyard, quoted page 367 "The Village, with its unpredictably digressive streets and twisting free-association byways, was divided from the straight and square-away world uptown like the ego from the id. - Milton Klonsky

PLUTARCH Quotation

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
- Plutarch

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - ROBERT FROST

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no steps had trodden black.
Oh! I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

EXCERPT from IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE

IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers 

page 232 "Helm got the sense that Peter was in search of another alternative community to be a part of. Downtown was the LA art scene's Wild West, a seedy no-man's-land with a tight sense of belonging among its artist pioneers. The social infrastructure was exclusively grassroots, which reinforced the sense of community.There were loft parties, bands playing on loading docks, and one-night-a -week clubs where people packed obscure dead venues just by word of mouth.' "Some of Peter's friends thought he was searching for something more than a new group of collaborators and friends. Peter was still Peter - upbeat and focused on his work - but something had changed. His friends sensed that the separation from Lucy affected him more deeply than perhaps even he knew. He seemed lost. His woman friends in particular .... could tell that Peter was sad, that he didn't understand why things hadn't worked out, that he was feeling a sense of failure...' Page 257 "Meanwhile, many of his friends had chosen instead to focus on the one or two things they did best, had leveraged their talents, and hit it big, achieving the kind of success that always eluded Peter. The wear and tear of constant struggle was beginning to show.... Peter sensed he was being left behind... And there was money. Having mortgaged everything on his dream, Peter was essentially destitute. The minor celebrity he was attaining on new Wave Theatre could not pay for dinner. With increasing frequency he started showing up at friends' houses around mealtime, partially for the company and partially for a free hot meal...' Pages 256-257 In the last decade before his death he (Peter Ivers) had recorded four original records and a demo for a fifth, Nirvana Cuba, which was intended as not only an album but also as a musical performance to be staged and filmed. He had created videos for a number of the Nirvana Cuba songs and secured a National Endowment of the Arts grant for his video work. He had written an iconic song for an iconic movie and a handful of other highly regarded songs and scores for theatre, television, and film. He had countless other original songs in various stages of completion...

EXCERPT from I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR - ANDY WARHOL

From the Afterward by Wayne Koestenbaum


3. The culture police want to limit creators to one medium, one stance. Paint, but don't make films. Write essays, but don't star in soaps. Be a docent, but don't be a public indecency. Warhol spread himself thin; the interview is one more slices of bread he insisted on buttering. Space hog, he laid permanent claim to the word interview by publishing a magazine with that name. His own liminal behavior, whether seen or unseen, exposed the inter within the view; vision, according to Warhol, is always cut, interrupted, interposed by a wedge of thirdness. Warhol's interviews, gathered here, play the wedge fame with indisputable mastery.


5. Andy wanted to be left alone, and yet he paradoxically pretended to seek interpersonal encounter, into the unsafe space of the interview, he inserted not his own, vulnerable, actual body, but a replacement body, a mannequin, a dummy. It looks like me, but it's not. I'm elsewhere,. I seem to be answering your questions, but don't be fooled. Transcendentally indifferent to your groveling, literal-minded suppositions. I protect you from my barbed fury by absenting myself from the scene of polite exchange. I'm priceless: off the market. I'm only pretending to take part in art's barter system.


I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop Master Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE LINK ADDED

Still love to read from books and shiney sheet magazines - it's not the same looking into a computer screen - but in a rush I can still give a look-see to what's new in my favorite magazines on line....

HEROPHILES(300 BC) Quote

"When Health is absent, Wisdom cannot reveal itself, Art cannot become manifest, Strength cannot be exerted, Wealth is useless, and Reason is powerless." Herophiles (300 BC)

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE by JOSH FRANK with CHARLIE BUCKHOLTZ

IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers


... AN UNSOLVED MURDER MYSTERY on the PUNKIEST NEW WAVE SCENE in Los Angeles; Peter Ivers was found bludgeoned to death on March 3, 1983 in his downtown artist's loft, just when he'd picked up a hefty check for a screen play and was quitting his gig as the host of the New Wave Theatre show. The cable television show featured local bands and sketch comedies inspired perhaps by the mad world of National Lampoon Magazine or Saturday Night Live TV.

... Ivers was a hyperactive, we believe heterosexual, character with a zany showman's antics (wearing diapers on stage), a child of privileged back-east class, wealth, and edu, who no doubt had much more to do. He'd just used his big screen play check to pay back friends who had believed in him, his talent and energy, to keep him in that loft for quite some time. He was destitute. Still, Ivers had succeeded beyond most of his Go-West-Young-Man peers. His girlfriend, Lucy, had become a rare executive woman in movie production - a suit, while he held perhaps a bit too long to his own vision. They had recently lived a bit of a retro homespun life in musical Laurel Canyon, with all it implied.

...While the book has caused LAPD to reopen the case and no doubt the authors presented a comprehensive take on the scenesters around Peter, many who speak a few lines, it fails with too much respect to Peter Ivers. Unaddressed is the menace of the real PUNKS versus the POSERS, the competition for material success among Punk bands which most would deny. If anyone had any motivation to kill Peter, he's too beloved for that to be believed anyway, and what really spoiled this read is that the authors failed to get me even a little angry about his murder. It's as if it were reported in the La Weekly's LA DEE DA COLUMN (la dee da as in BORING, get it?), a column where generations of those desperate enough to be famous for being famous bared and glared for a little photo op.

Review by Christine Trzyna C 2009 All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved

PROJECT GUTENBERG (PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS ON LINE) HERE !

I'll probably never give up reading books - paper - in bed, with a pot of hot tea or some crackers and cheese by my side. But if you have the eyes for reading long books on the computer, Project Gutenberg is a great resource.

EXCERPT from I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR - ANDY WARHOL

From an interview with Joseph Gelmis 1969. Gelmis is described as a Newsday magazine film critic. Page 161

G: There's an element of confession and of autobiography in almost everything you film. The people who act for you seem to be constantly confessing. What's your fascination with the confessional?



W: They're just people who talk a lot.

JAMES WOLCOTT AUGUST 2009 VANITY FAIR ARTICLE - LITERARY SNOBS and TECHNOLOGY

"Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices. As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects—digitize and dematerialize—we approach a Star Trek future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles. Reading will forfeit the tactile dimension where memories insinuate themselves, reminding us of where and when D. H. Lawrence entered our lives that meaningful summer. “Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The Barnes & Noble bookstore, with its coffee bar and authors’ readings, could go the way of Blockbuster as an iconic institution, depriving readers of the opportunity to mingle with their own kind and paw through magazines for free. Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.... " James Wolcott writing

MURDOCK's UK WORLD NEWS BREAKS PRIVACY LAWS TO GET THE SCOOPS

It's time to invent your own code language to communicate with cherished and intimate friends and family. FORGET USING THE "NO PRIVACY CELL" PHONE! JUST TRY AND FIND A CLOSE, WORKING PHONE BOOTH! (Recently we learned that Thomas Jefferson wrote in a cryptic code to a friend and 200 some years later the code was finally cracked!)

Maybe I should write this blog in code?

EXCERPT from I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR - ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL interviewed by Gerard Malanga
pg 194

MALANGA: Do you feel you've changed the media?

WARHOL: No, I don't change the media, nor do I distinguish between my art and the media. I just repeat the media by utilizing the media for my work. I believe media is art.

PG 195 - 196

MALANGA: Why do you use a rubber stamp?

WARHOL: I don't always use a rubber stamp for my signature; but I turned towards the idea of a rubber stamp signature because I wanted to get away from style. I feel an artist's signature is part of style, and I don't believe in style. I don't want my art to have style.

MALANGA: Do you think of your self as media?

WARHOL: No one escapes the media. Media influences everyone. It's a very powerful weapon. George Orwell prophesied the potency of the media when he spoke of "Big Brother is watching you" in his visionary novel 1984.

From:
I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR
The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews
Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop Master
Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts).

FROM PARCHMENT TO PIXEL - GREEK BIBLE - BRITISH LIBRARY

Considered to be the worlds earliest surviving book, from the 4th century, and now assembled by the British Library, a handwritten on animal hide parchment bible in Greek... Catch this story now by clicking on the title above...

Parts have been assembled from Britain, Egypt, and Russia... and you can use a translater on some pages...

From ONE DROP by BLISS BROYARD

ONE DROP My Father's Hidden Life - A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard C 2007 Little Brown and Co New York 

Bliss' father was Anatole Paul Broyard, a literary critic for the New York Times, who had been born in New Orleans and had decided to "pass" as White when he began to work. 

Page 366 about Greenwich Village. "In the Village, a cold-water flat could be had cheaply. Barkeepers let a person sit for as long as he could nurse a beer. A ten-cent plate of spaghetti and meatballs from the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue could fend off hunger for most of the day. Among the artists and writers who hung out in the San Remo Bar, the Cedar Bar, and the Minetta and White Horse taverns, conversation was the only currency that mattered. "Nobody cared where a person was from; nobody asked about your family. They wanted to know what you thought --- about Freud, Surrealism, The Modernists. Had you been to Paris?...Were you in analysis?...What did you make of the Stevens poem in the latest Partisan Review? Everyone in the Village had run away---from conventional backgrounds and burdensome family histories, from petty lives short on grandeur and futures that would leave them as normal and discontented as everyone else. It was in Greenwich Village that my father could figure out the person he most felt himself to be... 

Page 387 "Onto this unexplored frontier a new cultural hero appeared --the hispter. Famously portrayed by Norman Mailer in his 1957 essay "The White Negro," this latest incarnation of the American individualist rejected all pressures to conform, ignored society's expectations and traditions, and lived only for the moment and according to the "rebellious imperatives of the self." Found in New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, and especially Greenwich Village, Mailer's hipster too inspiration for "Negros," particularity those associated with jazz...

DAILY NEWS (SAN FERNANDO VALLEY - LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA)

Monday June 29th 2009... Daily News front page.
GENERATION GAP LARGEST SINCE 1960's.
Difference: Split involves everything from use of the Internet to definition of old age.
By Hope Yen of Associated Press....

About 75% of adults 18 to 30 went online daily, compared with 40 %of those 65 to 74 and about 16 % for people 75 and older. The age gap widened over cell phones and text messaging.

DEAD MICHEAL JACKSON ON LA TIMES FRONT PAGE ? CANCEL YOUR SUBSRIPTIONS NOW

MICHAEL JACKSON ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE LA TIMES?

CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS NOW

by Christine Trzyna C 2009 All Rights Reserved

Last night I bet a Micheal Jackson fanatic one dollar that Liz Taylor would somehow manage to get up front in the funeral of the deceased suspected and assumed (if not convicted) child molester celebrity Micheal Jackson. The guy refused to bet. This morning he gleefully showed me a cover of the LA TIMES that features Jackson's death as a front page story.

Perhaps this is why the LA Times is contemplating its slow death as a big city newspaper.

Soft news instead of hard.

Celebrity instead of the Economy.

Wonder what all the children, whose panties were found strewn around Micheal's secretish Neverland Ranch bedroom, all the children who sucked on "Jesus Juice" wine underage, all the children who were brave enough to admit to parents that they had seen and done things that children ought not, think about this coverage.

If you feel as I do, the only thing left to do is cancel your LA Times Subscription. Sorry LA Times, but using your front cover for Micheal Jackson death coverage is beyond poor taste!

Another guy told me to "be a Christian" and "forgive" Jackson. Let us remind ourselves that it is up to God to judge, forgive, punish or reward. Secondly it is up to his suspected and assumed victims to decide if they want to "forgive." But me, I could never.

A woman told me she felt sorry for his mother. Sorry! I believe LaToya! I believe Joe Jackson, their father, was a monster who beat the children to perform, maybe especially Michael. But the mother, if she was any kind of mother at all, would have taken those children and made a run for it! I get the feeling she hung in there same reason every one else did - for the money!

FAIR - FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN REPORTING LINK HERE !

A journalism watch dog straining on a leash - kind of like the old cartoon in the LA Weekly, The Angriest Dog in the World...

HUMOR LEXICON WELLERISM

WELLERISM: After the character San Weller in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, combining a common expression with a facetious sequel.

i.e "It all comes back to me now," said the Captain as he spat into the wind."

This is taken from an article in CALIFORNIA magazine March/April 2009 had a brief alphabetical Humor Lexicon, author doesn't appear.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE IT TO SEE IT?

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE IT TO SEE IT?
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE IT TO SEE IT?
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE IT TO SEE IT?
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE IT TO SEE IT?
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE IT TO SEE IT?

POLISH WRITER DEFENDS PUBLISHING COORESPONDENCE WITH POPE

" She was one of a handful of people by his bedside when he died, and visited him in the hospital when he survived an assassination attempt.

"In the cloistered universe of the Vatican, Pope John Paul II had a woman friend with whom he shared spiritual thoughts in a series of letters that spanned the decades. Now she is defending her recent book of correspondence with the pope against criticism from church officials that she "exaggerated" her friendship with the late pontiff and could delay his beatification.

"Wanda Poltawska, 87, said her book — a collection of her religious meditations and John Paul's letters of spiritual guidance — was harmless to his saint-making process and she dismissed those who sought to minimize her friendship with the Polish-born John Paul.

MONIKA SCISLOWSKA and NICOLE WINFIELD reporting for Associated Press.

From SEX WITH KINGS by ELEANOR HERMAN

SEX WITH KINGS
500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge
C Eleanor Herman 2004
William Morrow - An Imprint of HarperCollings Publishers

Herman used many resources to write this beautifully eloquent book....

Pages 3-4

"The invention of the printing press triggered an explosion of literacy among the nobility. Letter writing became a favorite pastime for courtiers eager to indulge rustic relatives with juicy court gossip... From them we hear of the queens tears, the mistresses temper tantrums, and the kings' insatiable lust...'

" Madame de Maintenon, the final favorite and morganic wife of Louis XIV ( 1638-1715) write more than 90,000 letters in her lifetime. Louis' sister-in-law Elizabeth Charlotte, duchess d' Orleans, wrote 60,000 letters about her life at the court of Versailles over a fifty year period. Madam de Sevigne, who knew Louis XIV's mistresses personally wrote three times a week for twenty-five years to her beloved daughter tucked away in Provence... Some of the personal correspondence of Kings and their mistresses themselves have survived fire, floor, worms, and deliberate destruction and a portion of it deals with the romantic side of life...
"Diaries became the fashion giving eyewitness accounts of royal intrigues...'

" Memoirs became popular...'

HUMOR LEXICON MARGINALIA

MARGINALIA: The stuff written in margins of books, often by way of sly commentary - or criticism, such as, "In case of fire, throw this in."

This is taken from an article in CALIFORNIA magazine March/April 2009 had a brief alphabetical Humor Lexicon, author doesn't appear.

SPELLING BEE'S FOR REALLY COOL NERDS

When I was a kid it was honored that boys were good in math while girls were good in spelling... Sexism like this was totally acceptable. Who can say how many girls were afraid to be good in math because it might mean (horrors!) being thought of as not feminine? Here's breaking Yahoo News "I LOVE NERDS."

READING FICTION versus NONFICTION (AND MY BLOG COMMENTARIES)

READING FICTION versus NONFICTION
by Christine Trzyna

I've been reading more non-fiction than fiction. But I do love fiction. I write less about fiction in this blog because I have focused on excerpting passages from books that I think illustrate interesting language, or information that is thought provoking, or which stood out when I was reading. For the purposes of the usually brief commentary in the blog - on line journal - format, I find it much more difficult to "star" a passage from fiction. I also feel it is difficult to illustrate through an excerpt or quote an important element of fiction, and that is the plot.

I often treat myself to reading an author who I've never read before, especially if a friend has referred me to a book or it appears on the library New Book Shelf or in the LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW. This year I have read a couple fiction stories that I have not commented upon but enjoyed for one reason or another. I recently read and enjoyed SAIL by James Patterson and Howard Rougan, C 2008 by James Patterson only, and put out by Little, Brown, and Company. NY. It falls into a category that I really enjoy SEA TALES.

From MISQUOTING JESUS by BART D. EHRMAN

MISQUOTING JESUS
The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
by Bard D. Ehrman C 2005
Harper/SanFrancisco publishers

page 38... "As it turns out, even defining what it means to read and write is a very complicated business. Many people can read but are unable to compose a sentence, for example. And what does it mean to read? Are people literate if they can manage to make sense of the comic strips but not the editorial page? Can people be said to be able to write if they can sign their name but cannot copy a page of a text?...'

"Throughout most of antiquity, since most people could not write, there were local "readers" and "writers" who hired out their services to the people who needed to conduct business that required written texts; tax receipts, legal contracts, licenses, personal letters, and the like...'

PULITZER PRIZE

Ever wonder how the Pulitzer Prize is determined? Here's the link...

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ON LINE

THE MAIN LIBRARY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA... they have a copy of everything ever written by an American !

WRITERS ALMANAC

Here's the link for WRITERS ALMANAC... Today is Gary Snyder's birthday.. hear his poetry...

From TONY HILLERMAN SELDOM DISAPPOINTED

Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001 author
Harper Colins Publishers
page 233


"Friedman taught a writing course that focused on the essay. He was himself an author, which impressed me, and he saw promise in my work - which impressed me even more. Early in this course he asked me why I never wrote in the first person. I told him journalists are conditioned to be invisible, to be what Walter Lippmann called "the fly on the wall," seeing everything and feeling nothing. Try it, he said. Do me a memoir bit... I proposed a thousand words on something that had happened last months. No, he said."

Dr. Morris Friedman taught Tony Hillerman at the University of New Mexico, English department in winter 1963...

COMMENTARY ON ALANIS MORRISSETTE THANK YOU THANK YOU

Thank you disillusionment!

JEAN COCTEAU quote

page 67

"One day, one of our writers whom I used to reproach with writing best sellers and with never expressing himself, led me in front of a mirror.

"I want to be strong, " he said. "Look at yourself. I want to eat. I want to travel. I want to live. I do not want to become a fountain pen."

From OPIUM, the Diary of a Cure, Peter Owen Limited Publishers, London MCMLVII

WINSTON CHURCHILL Quote

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." - Winston Churchhill

PULITZER PRIZES ANNOUNCED ! LAS VEGAS SUN CONGRADULATIONS ALEXANDRA BERZON !

" The Las Vegas newspaper was cited for the "courageous reporting" of Alexandra Berzon, whose stories about lax enforcement of safety rules on the Las Vegas Strip led to changes in policy and improved workplace conditions.The death toll on the Strip had reached nine in 16 months as casino giants undertook a $32 billion building boom, including the largest private commercial development in U.S. history. Berzon described how the rush to build quickly and at highly congested work sites led to safety shortcuts that contributed to deaths."

SYLVIA PLATH and TED HUGHES son - Another Suicide

Just reading DIVINE MADNESS which profiles Sylvia Plath among many other creative geniuses and their struggle with mental illness...

OR is mental illness and creative genius linked? Sylvia and Ted's son, who also struggled with depression... and I dare say, notoriety.  (Link to Yahoo article may be live if you click on the title!)

"It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska," his sister Frieda Hughes said in a statement published by The Times of London.

There is one comment I have to make... If you get seasonal depression don't live in Alaska or anywhere where the sun doesn't shine almost everyday. Get yourself into the sun belt!

UCLA and LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

IS APRIL 25th and 26th this year....

I usually go when I'm in town. I find the panel discussions interesting but I wish there were more concentration on individual authors speaking and reading...

Free tickets if you hurry.

GORE VIDAL Quote From PALIMPSEST

From PALIMPSEST a memoir by GORE VIDAL

 page 239 hardback

...Although I have had several lifelong friends who were writers, I have never much enjoyed the company of writers. I also did not realize, nor did the others at ... gatherings, that we had arrived on the scene to witness the end of the novel. Today the word novelist still enjoys considerable prestige, so much so that both Mailer and Capote chose to call works of journalism novels. But that was thirty years ago. Today an ambitious writer would be well advised to label any work of his imagination nonfiction, or perhaps, a memoir.

One day, in the spring on 1950, I was invited to lunch by a very ambitious, very young southern novelist who wanted to shine in those social circles that are, for the most part, closed to very young ambitious southern writers. Like Capote, he wanted to be accepted by what was known than as cafe society, and like Capote, he had mistaken it for the great and largely invisible to outsiders, world that Proust had so obsessively retrieved from lost time. In later years , I liked to pretend that Capote had actually picked the right ladder and I would observe,... "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success to get out of." Truman was surprisingly innocent. He mistook the rich who liked publicity for the ruling class, and he made himself far too much at home among them, only to find that he was to them no more than an amusing person who could be dispensed with, as he was when he published lurid gossip about them. Although of little interest or value in themselves, these self-invented figures are nothing if not tough, and quite as heartless as the real things, as the dying Swan discovered when he found that his life meant less to his esteemed ... than her pair of red shoes."

THE LIVING LIBRARY EVERYONE'S AN OPEN BOOK

As reported by Jeanne Storck in the January 2009 Whole Life Times, people ARE books, in The Living Library, an organization that fights prejudice by hosting discussions in local libraries (click on the title here to link which is under construction). "Readers check out "books" (people) by sitting down and talking to those whose lifestyles are subject to preconceptions, "everyone from Buddhists to homeless people to police officers."

The living library was founded by Ronni Abergel, a Danish anti violence activist, and has staged events around the world. LIBRARIES are considered to be neutral spaces, where such discussions can take place on purpose.

NEW YORK DOLLS : TRASH

.
Thinking of Arthur.

VIRGINIA WOOLF quote

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

KCRW JASON BENTLEY LISTEN LIVE

Jason Bentley has taken over MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC, my favorite local radio station, broadcasting from Santa Monica, California.

COMMENTARY ON EMERSON LAKE AND PALMER STILL YOU TURN ME ON

Wanna be a poet?

TONY HILLERMAN from SELDOM DISAPPOINTED answers "Where do you get ideas?"

Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001
Harper Colins Publishers

page 253

The answer to the "Where do you get the ideas" question is that writer's minds are a jumbled, chaotic attic cluttered with plot notions, useful characters, settings for events, bits and pieces of information, overheard remarks, ironies, cloud formations, bumper sticker slogans, unresolved problems, bon mots, tragedies, heroics, etc. One's memory contains enough stuff to produce three or four longer versions of "War and Peace" if only once could sort it out and from it into a coherent fable.

That leads to the next FAQ. "When do you write?" One writes while peeling potatoes, driving to work, standing in line, suffering through a boring mo vie, eating oatmeal, digging out dandelions, trying to drift off into naptime sleep. Finally when the sorting is mostly completed and the next scene is set in the imagination, one goes to the computer and types it onto the screen.

I liken the writer to the bag lady pushing her stolen shopping cart through life collecting throwaway stiff, which, who knows, might be useful some way some day....

COMMENTARY ON THE PRETENDERS are BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG - AND THE ROAD

THE PRETENDERS, one of my favorite bands, is back on tour... and Chrissie Hynde is really allright with me.

JEAN COCTEAU quote

"A writer develops the muscles of his mind. This training leaves hardly any leisure for sport. It demands suffering, falls, laziness, weakness, setbacks, exhaustion, mourning, insomnia, exercises which are the reverse of those which develop the body.



From OPIUM, the Diary of a Cure, Peter Owen Limited Publishers, London MCMLVII

SCRABBLE OFFICIAL WORD LISTS ADDS THREE

Za," "qi" and "zzz" were added recently to the game's official word list for its original English-language edition. Click on the title to get to the Wall Street Journal article!

From JOHN ADAMS by DAVID MC CULLOUGH - about THOMAS JEFFERSON in PARIS and BOOKS

JOHN ADAMS
by David McCullough - Pulitzer Prize Winner EDIT
C2001 the author
Simon and Schuster Publishers

Page 321 of the hardback (note: Thomas Jefferson's library upon his death founded the University of Virginia. Both JOHN ADAMS and THOMAS JEFFERSON DIED ON THE SAME DAY - 4th of July - the same year!)



"Paris booksellers soon found they had an American patron like no other. In the bookshops and stalls along the Seine were volumes in numbers and variety such as Jefferson had never seen, and his pleasure was boundless. To Madison he would describe the surpassing pleasure of "examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hand and putting by everything related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable to every science." There were weeks when he was buying books every day. In his first month in Paris, he could not buy them fast enough, and ran up bills totaling nearly 800 francs... The grand total of books he acquired in France was about 2000, but he also bought books by the boxful for Washington, Franklin, and James Madison."

OUR DAILY MEDS by MELODY PETERSEN (ARE YOU ON MEDS BY DRINKING WATER FROM THE TAP?)

OUR DAILY MEDS How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked The Nation on Prescription Drugs. By Melody Petersen C 2008 Sarah Crichton Books Farrar, Straus, and Giroux... If you're like me you want to be healthy and energetic and live without pain, WITHOUT DRUG addiction - prescription of otherwise. So Petersen's book of how the Big Pharmaceutical Companies manage to get doctors to prescribe their products and people legally hooked on them - at great expense to insurance companies - is fascinating. Actors and athletes in interviews seem to mention their happiness with a particular drug they are taken and thousands call their doctors asking for the same... But what about this? Those frog mutations may not be from solar flares or Global Warming after all. A lot of people on prescriptions pee into their toilets and the drugs turn up in the PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY IN Iowa - THE CORN BELT. Is the water I've been confidently drinking from the tap in Los Angeles TESTED for prescription drugs such as HORMONES AND PAINKILLERS! Until now I thought bottled water was unnecessary. Now I'm not so sure. Pages 255 to 257 Thirty percent of the water samples from Iowas rivers in 2001 were laced with TAGAMENT a heartburn medication Twenty percent had codeine, a powerful narcotic. Another 20 percent CARDIZEN for hypertension. 70 percent of downstream waters polluted with TEGRETOL. for epilepsy..which had been also given for mood disorders and pain. Found also, fragrances, insect repellents, disinfectants, household chemicals in 80 percent of the streams sampled in Iowa and twenty-nine other states. ARE THESE DRUGS THE REAL CAUSES OF CHANGES TO THE ECOSYSTEM that have genetically mutated frogs and killed off fish rather than global warming ?

YIDDISH LITERATURE ARCHIVE IS NOW ONLINE

Interested in Yiddish literature which preserves language, culture, history, and religion? An archive of over 10,000 works of modern Yiddish literature which includes about 150 years of out of print novels, poetry, stories, fiction and nonfiction is on line thanks to Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center non-profit, and Steven Spielberg Digital library. You can read, download, and print...

Click on the link above for more information...

TONY HILLERMAN - SELDOM DISAPPOINTED

Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001
Harper Colins Publishers


pages 262-263 about teaching in academia in the mid 1960's:


"The middle sixties were the ideal time to start if one was fated to spend almost twenty years teaching journalism at an university. Student lethargy still ruled as late as 1963, providing a taste of lecturing to a disinterested audience. But even then the long, loud, and lusty revolution was moving in. Before I could conclude that a professor's life tended to be boring, the late sixties were upon us and students were showing up full of fire, demanding to be taught something relevant, protesting war; the establishment, parking tickets, poorly prepared lectures, prejudices against pot smoking, unisex rest rooms, police brutality, and so forth.'

"Odd as this may sound, it was a wonderful time to be teaching. Students were interested, grade mania and the resulting grade inflation had barely emerged, the curse of political correctness had not yet paralyzed deans and department chairmen and corrupted the faculty. Teaching a roomful of bright young folks who yearned to learn and were willing to argue forced you to defend your position. Sometimes you couldn't. You were learning as much as they were, and it was fun. it wasn't until the early eighties that lethargy restored itself. The numbing dogma of PC hung over the campus, tolerating no opinions but anointed ones. With free speech and free thought ruled out by inquisitors running Women's Studies and the various minorities studies, the joy of learning had seeped out of students. With it went joy of teaching. Time to quit.'

JUDY GRUEN - HILARIUS!

Judy Gruen writes a column for a give-away magazine called Jewish Life. In the February 2009 issue she wrote an article called YOUR RESULTS MAY VARY.


Judy Gruen's latest book is "The Women's Daily Irony Supplement." Clever title!

to quote the article...
"Most of us have been severely chastened by bad economic news, along with an epidemic of business chicanery. Now we are left to wonder: How can we protect ourselves from bunco artists, flimflammers, bamboozlers, rouges and the otherwise slippery, shifty, and shameless? ... One relatively easy way to protect ourselves is to pay closer attention to advertisements, because darned if those ads are not always cleverly sneaking in critical information about their products and services right under our noses.... I became suspicious, however, when it finally dawned on me that the woman pictured in the ad looked young enough to be far more likely candidate for acne cream rather than wrinkle filler. Sure enough, when I whipped out my handy Hubble telescope, I was just able to make out the words: "Model pictured is not an actual customer. In fact, she's not even old enough to buy liqueur legally in most states."

CONVERSATION by Elizabeth Bishop

CONVERSATION

by poet Elizabeth Bishop (deceased)


The tumult in the heart
keeps asking questions.
And then it stops and undertakes the answer
in the same tone of voice.

No one could tell the difference.


Uninnoccent, these conversations start,
and then engage the senses
only half meaning to.


And then there is no choice,
and then there is no sense;
until a name
and all its connotations are the same.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA QUICK BOOK REVIEW OF JUST DO IT BY DOUGLAS BROWN

JUST DO IT
How One Couple Turned Off The TV and Turned on their Sex Lives for 101 Days
(No Excuses)
C Douglas Brown
Crown Publishing New York

Douglas Brown looooves his wife, Annie, and (of course) she loves him. Fourteen years into married life, they have two children who are doted upon and (of course) like to interrupt their parent's sex life whenever possible. The kids got on my nerves with their demands for attention but hey, that's the reality of having children in a household. Annie also got on my nerves. She's entirely too cute. But that's not her fault, it's her husband's perception...And it occurs to me that if she had written the book, from her perspective, I don't think she could get away with being as descriptive of Douglas...

Don't read this book if you're hoping to read for graphic erotica. There are some details but most is left to the imagination. There's a focus on the changes that Douglas and Annie go through as a married couple in their search for permanent "home" which turns out to be - well - WHERE THE HEART IS! Yeesh! But, yes, it's true.

page 267

(CHAPTER: MAKING LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON)
"Love happens. Yes, it takes nurturing, heat, and light. It demands commitment. it requires certain chemistry. Bur for lucky people, for whatever combination of factors, love blossoms. It's unconscious: a force, a fire, a spirit. Romance, by contrast, is alert. It's intentional. It has an intelligence. It's a dance, of sorts. Both people in a relationship must consider what please their partner; but surprise - something new - claims an important piece of the romance puzzle. So delivering romance is much more complicated than simply referring to a list of likes, picking one, and going for it. In sum, it's magicians' work.


Page 217. I learned something new: asshole bleaching is the latest craze - big thing on both coasts - pornography gone mainstream... No. I don't think I personally want a lighter shade of pink!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY !

COMMENTARY ON HARRY CHAPIN TAXI

"Se was going to be an actress and I was going to learn to fly...now she's acting happy and I'm flying in my taxi..." A bitter sweet love song, and lyrics that tell an entire story...

RUMI LOVE POETRY

The intellectual runs away.
afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love
is to drown in the sea.
-Rumi.

TURQUOISE BOOK KITTY

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE LINK ADDED HERE

Smithsonian magazine is one of my favorites. Here's the link to get a paper-mail subscription OR read a bit online. The article about SLAVERY (presently about 2.3 million citizens of earth live as slaves) is of special interest.

LENI (LENI RIEFENSTAHL) by STEVEN BACH : CHRISTINE TRYZNA BOOK REVIEW

Christine Trzyna quick review... and a quote LENI is C 2007 by Steven Bach and published by Borzoi - Alfred Knopf This book asks the question "Was film-maker Leni a Nazi?" and attempts to answer it fairly. Leni Rifenstahl is known for her films that "glorified" the reign of Adolph Hiter and the Nazi's which today provide us historical footage. But Leni, who lived to be 101 and who, after being out of work for a long time after WWII, got back to work in old age, was an person who self invented all along. And so, are we to believe her protests that she was unaware of the atrocities? Leni went filming in Africa when she was in her 80's. She would have it that she was a rare person - a WOMAN FILM MAKER - at a time when few women made films. She would say that when she got the assignment she was sure to give it her best efforts, to fulfill the job description and advance her career. Who hasn't had a boss they didn't like but they kissed ass on? Leni used her careerism as her reason or excuse for fraternizing with Nazi's. She may have even submitted a faked genealogy to cover her own Jewish bloodline. The feminist me is interested in the issue of a woman having a career in the 1940's, especially a woman who was not of the class to be formally educated, but who had insane energy (to put it in modern terms) and was driven and ambitious, as well as willing to make her love interests useful to her career. Leni's work is controversial but she has her advocates who admire what she has pulled off at a time when film making didn't benefit from the technologies now assumed. There is another reason I took to this book. I have come to believe that the Nazi's came to power in a Germany in which there was great poverty - a horrible economy - and so the people wanted to believe the newest political messiah, even as his message turned ugly. Are we in danger of this in the United States today? The Berlin that Leni grew to adulthood in is described as so poor that entire families commit suicide rather than endure the cold and hunger while homeless... And this is what the author, Steven Bach, had to write on page 18 of the hardback. "The ripples grew larger with the daily struggle for survival. Postwar (WWI) food shortages and influenza hastened a breakdown in prewar morality. The pervasive mood was one of perpetual emergency in which opportunism of every kind flourished until, as one observer put it, "a kind of insanity took hold." In this volatile atmosphere, Alfred Riefenstahls (her father) - still unaware of his daughter's new obsession with dance - decided to sequester her.... no scheme could have been better calculated to provoke resistance in Leni, who thought of domesticity as drudgery is she thought of it at all..." Hilter accession to the office of chancellor in 1933 was thought of as "a seizure of power" though it was "not violent, illegal, or inevitable (page 98)... On February 27th the home of the German Parliament was set ablaze - arson (page 99) and what was called terrorism... It set the stage for what is called a "blueprint for dictatorship"... Page 100... "The decree read, in part, "Curbs on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, of association, and of assembly, surveillance over letters, telegrams and telephone communications, searches of homes and confiscations of as well as restrictions of property, are hereby permissible beyond the limits hitherto established by law." Such measure have found echoes in more recent times as responses to acts of terrorism, though Hitler's dramatic expansion of executive power, restrictions of civil liberties, and surveillance of citizens were openly detailed in the Nazi press." C Christine Trzyna

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER's OBAMA INAUGURATION POEM

"Poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked small moments and great sacrifices leading up to President Barack Obama's Inauguration while delivering her poem at the day's events. Obama had asked the African-American studies professor from Yale to compose and read...." CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE!

EMERSON LAKE AND PALMER FROM THE BEGINNING

"You see it's all clear. You were meant to be here...from the beginning..."

OVERCROWDED YOGA CLASSES, BEGGING TEACHERS, and PLEDGE DRIVES TO FINANCE IT ALL !

OVERCROWDED YOGA CLASSES, BEGGING TEACHERS, LATE STUDENTS

and PLEDGE DRIVES TO FINANCE IT ALL !

East Valley YMCA

by Christine Trzyna

My yoga class has become so popular it is desperately overcrowded and I've lost my sense of humor about this. No one can console me. Certainly not the woman who keeps coming in late, making me and some others move their mats and then strikes advanced poses - her foot fanned out at the end of her long leg, just about at my nose. Show off!

The noise of the mat movement breaks my concentration, my will to make the exercise class that is rooted in Hindu belief systems a spiritual one. No, I don't want to get chatty. I don't even want to talk to anyone before, during, or after class. I want to close my eyes, hear my own breathing, stretch my limbs and gain strength. Not compete. Not feel self-conscious. This hour and a half is supposed to be me stealing some time just for me to connect with my inner being and get away from what is pretty much constant bombardments of noise for the rest of the day and half of the night. Today we even skipped the "Final Relaxation" part, the reward.

Today we moved mats a couple times to accommodate late comers. The teacher, who I generally think very well of, was also late. Parking, traffic; how come I can get up early, take a bus, and walk fifteen minutes and be there before the class starts? A couple times despite all this I got to the studio late and saw that the class had begun. I wouldn't think to feel entitled to take it. I put near an hour to get to my class. Hey, I don't want to put anyone else out ! I guess you could say my manners are archaic. But do any of you manage to likewise keep your jobs and your friends by showing up whenever? One time a woman said "I have two kids." I thought "Too damn bad." Some of these people are driving expensive vehicles and expect a parking spot to open up for them at the last moment. They aren't on the bus or foot. Having children is a privledge these days, so don't expect me to feel sorry for your plight as a mommy! Sorry but chronic late comers are people who want ATTENTION even if they have to get it in a negative way !

As for my teacher, I hate to think it, but he seems to have bought into this idea that rudeness should be accommodated in some silly notion of "tolerance." How come we're all tolerating all the time? This wouldn't have something to do with the latest trends in psychology would it?

Today I realized that I'm pretty much getting what I can afford. Yes, a discount rate. But then photos of crowded classrooms in advertisements for other yoga studios that charge a lot more came into my mind's eye. Wow! How ridiculous that students, wanting to be seen at the most chi-chi studios are willing to pay a hell of a lot more to jam together. I wouldn't. I've never been one to cow-tow to living idols.

What does it mean to jam together? It means that there are a lot of movements that you don't dare reach to the fullest even when you can because you may hit into someone else's body with your body. It means that the teacher chooses postures that can be done in a small area, many repetitions of certain ones, to curb the possibility of body collisions. It means that when you bend over, your ass may be in someone else's face and visa versa. (Hope you showered.) It means that when I cannot hold my balance falling may mean falling on someone. It means I feel crumpled and cramped. It also means that the classroom gets over-hot from body heat for which there seems to be no solution for, no matter how many years this North Hollywood YMCA has been in existence, it seems absolutely no one on staff knows how to work the temperature thermostat and going from freezing to overheat quickly is usual, without the overcrowding making it faint provoking.

After the class is over, our teacher who attracts this kind of crowd, must beg for money. You might say "Just like in India," but that's an excuse too. By now, I've read, there are more people taking yoga in California than all of India. How can the YMCA get away with attracting talented teachers who persevere with cranky students like me in their classes, AND NOT PAY THEM THE GOING RATE? Apparently, because they can. The YMCA thus becomes the training ground for teachers working through certification to be instructors who will move on once they are officially worth more money. I feel embarrassed that I can't afford to also tip the teacher but I think this is some kind of racket.

Why? Because of the pledge drives. It's nice that the YMCA can afford to send so many impoverished children to camps but apparently only by cutting the budget for adult classes. This means that the YMCA, which operates somewhere between a non-profit and a capital enterprise, is not succeeding as a business, at least not at this branch.

Yes, I have a decision to make. Stay and put up, shut up, or Go...

C 2009 Christine Trzyna