HE USES OLD FACE MASKS AND GARBAGE TO MAKE ART

https://youtu.be/r0GnwY-v-qw  Have not embedded this video because of the commercial... one of the most annoying commercials too. Have a look at the link,

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND : GORDON LIGHTFOOT

You won't read that book again because the ending's just too hard to take. 

IMAGINE : EXPERIENCE THIRTY-FOUR : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 

IMAGINE that you are a bird.  Choose the kind of bird you are.  What is it like to find food?  To build a nest? Tell about your adventures as a bird.  Maybe this is a bird memoir. 

Christine Trzyna

This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop. 

C 2018-2025  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

GREENLIGHTS by MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

McConaughey first states that this is not a memoir, but that is the best genre the book fits. A memoir, unlike an autobiography or biography, does not seek to cover an entire life and more detail, though the author does give us the basics, choosing scenes or descriptions that pretty much say it all about his parents and their parenting.  That's important because it moves the story along.

Frankly, I personally find it difficult to think of people who are abusive as also loving. Does he ever say the word abusive?  No. Perhaps there's an argument for people not knowing better.  Or that his dad was a Texas 'Good Ol Boy' : I had hoped such characters who use violence and extreme control to teach or discipline or get even with their friends and family had been left behind in the Wild Wild West and were capable of the (admittedly slow) progress of intellect and understanding.  However, who deserves their parents?

Personally I think McConaughey's family of upbringing was dysfunctional and that causes me to have anxiety: I hope he is not duplicating this in raising his own children. You see, McConaughey says that from a young age the only role he ever wanted in life was to be a father. He repeats that.  Also, but, however... he tells his story without apology or over-explanation.

As for women, apparently this celebrity used his fame as an advantage and had many every which way but when he met his wife, who he calls a mermaid, it was love at first sight. He says there never was and never will be any other woman for him.  (Never was? He was in his thirties when he met her. Did he not break hearts as he had many women every which way?  No insight into that expressed.)

Matthew McConaughey is a highly successful actor, and it seems acting is rather natural or effortless to him, though he does explain the risk he took in staying firm: No more rom-coms.

I was impressed with the writing in this book flows, it delivers, and McConaughey seems also to be a natural writer.  It was, as they say, a good read. I recommend it - highly.

My biggest criticism of the book is that it also intends to be a red light, yellow light, green light (go) book, enlightening, sharing wisdom, and, in order to do that, excerpts from a long ongoing diary that the man kept are included and are near UNREADABLE. These excerpts are sometimes in small lettering printed on intense black and frankly my vision was not up to the task. It was annoying.  Also sometimes I did not get the point or the connection. There's probably important connections to the text, but I missed out. I'm sure this blackness was an attempt by the publisher for the book to look a bit scrapbook-like and arty. It was a waste of ink.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

MOON

 

EVE BABITZ : SLOW DAYS, FAST COMPANY - THE WORLD, THE FLESH, and L.A. : FAME AND FRIENDSHIP

 re Janis Joplin in previous paragraphs...

Women are prepared to suffer for love; it's written into their birth certificates.  Women are not prepared to have "everything," not success-type "everything." I mean, not when the "everything" isn't about living happily ever after with the prince (where even if it falls through and the prince runs away with the baby-sitter, there's at least a precedent.) There's no precedent for women getting their own "everything" and learning that it's not the answer.  Especially when you got fame, money, and love by belting out how sad and lonely and beaten you were.  Which is only a darker version of the Hollywood "everything" in which the more vulnerability and ineptness you project onto the screen, the more fame, money, and love they load you with.  They'll only give you "everything:" if you appear to be totally confused. Which leaves you with very few friends.

The kinds of friends you get when you have "everything" (after your old friends have decided to send you all their screenplays, so that you're afraid to run into them lest they wonder why you haven't read them) are either your immediate family or other famous people.  A lot of times your immediate family is what drove you into such excess in the first place.  So that leaves other people with "everything." In Hollywood, there's usually a special grace period when you're allowed to grab a few friends before you're pitched into only meeting other famous people ...

Excerpts pages 60-61 Published 1977

MAMA CASS GOT A STAR ON THE PAVEMENT OF HOLLYWOOD YESTERDAY: DAUGHTER OWEN WAS BEHIND IT

With an assembly of those who loved her and cared: once-upon-a-time bandmate Michelle Phillips looking real skinny, Michelle's daughter Chynna, who runs a YouTube station on her Christian life - wearing a giant cross, John Sebastian of Lovin' Spoonful fame, who knew Mama before the Mama's and the Papa's,  music producer Lou Adler wearing rubber shoes and shorts as if he had just come on down from pool-side, Stephen Stills of CSN, and other bands, and other people who you may have heard of, MAMA CASS ELIOTT has gotten a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The person behind it is her daughter OWEN, who was raised after Cass' death by Cass's sister Leah and her husband Russ Kunkel, a drummer who played with - you know his work from albums - Carly Simon, James Taylor, and some others.

The Mama's and the Papa's had a brief reign on the charts, the radio, but their music went on and on, the Oldie stations continued the play and every once in a while you might catch California Dreamin on the air, as fresh as ever.

The thing I've been most impressed with reading around these people and the Los Angeles - Laurel Canyon music scene in particular - is that Mama Cass was not just a talented and ambitious singer, she was also the kind of person who introduced people to people, who was among those who ran a kind of salon.  And, although one might think of it all springing up "organically," through casual encounters, actually, they were all ambitious, they all wanted to earn money, make it big, be rich, and don't let that hippie thing fool you.  It's impossible to sort it all out, especially from such distance, but Cass was integral in making the scene happen because of she was thinking about how to help others achieve theirs. And that willingness to share and include and help people along - that generosity - that knowing it was not all about her - gets her five stars from me.

That's my commentary.

Here's a link to an article from Variety: 

VARIETY : DEDICATED TO THE ONE I LOVE by Roy Trakin

An excerpt: Owen is using the star ceremony as a springboard to finish her own biography of Mama Cass expressing displeasure at the previous one, British writer Eddi Fiegel's 2005 book, "Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot.: With the help of rock estate specialist Jeff Jampol, she is exploring other options for her mom's story, including a biopic.

And another from Daily Mail in which Owen is called a son, and when someone does not know who John Sebastian is, they skip identifying him in a picture.  Probably in hast to beat a deadline...  Also, treats it like a fashion commentary as if one cannot see what people are wearing from the photos.

However some interesting quotes if can bear all the pop up ads and clickbait...

DAILY MAIL : MICHELLE PHILLIPS, CARNIE WILSON HONOR MAMA CASS by Brian Gallagher

C Christine Trzyna

#9 DREAM : JOHN LENNON