Girl, Girl, Girl
Linda
In 1982, one fictional Brad Hamilton, the mascot of every boy’s autobiography, watched from the bathroom — only he wasn’t eye, but mind watching, lids and palm closed over his eyes and penis, respectively — a fictional Linda remove her red bikini and approach him with that timeless face of two nipples, nose of a navel, and nether smile, to open mouth him with chlorine-flavored lips. I must have watched that scene ∞ times in my life, each time saddened by what I had missed, my hetero-normative tastes so vanilla ice-cream you’ll need a brownie to help it go down. We’ll accept the disembodied rain or sprinkler behind Linda, placed, mind you, by woman director Amy Heckerling, as some natural timely event, for the best muse has a production team working behind her; or rather, in front of her, behind the cameras. The trick of painting a nude in a landscape is not the nude, but the landscape — the wiggle and waddle of foliage so natural, it goes unnoticed. Heckerling’s faint dabs of purple play with Monet’s Giverny, at times breached by the Seine, which the latter painted numerous times, the schizophrenic morning light never loyal to the day before. So Monet kept painting the same scene, the same Seine, retroactively polishing memory into a final sheen. Phoebe Cates goes on to Private School…for Girls (1983), a sex comedy in which you know what happens without watching. Voyeurism was always mental anyways.
ZOETROPE, PLEASE.
I got an email from Zoetrope with the subject line: “Fall Preview! The Horror Issue” and my first thought was, Awesome, I’ll probably have to resubscribe to Zoetrope: All Story.
Then I opened it and read the email’s content:
Zoetrope’s Fall 2011 release is a specially themed horror edition that includes scary stories from Jim Shepard, Karen Russell, Alexandra Kleeman, and Ryu Murakami.
Are you fucking kidding me? Those are the authors you pick for your horror issue, Zoetrope? READ MORE >
The Writerly Life: Part Uno
Started teaching at a new place today. Was hired on Friday. That’s one weekend to prep. It’s a freshman writing class. Nice kids. First day of college, etc. etc. They all get laptops. I do too. I don’t like teaching when I’m not doing it. I like it okay when I am. We talked about some fiction-y things. They wrote a little about an impossible thing that didn’t happen to them but did, ala truth vs. Truth in fiction, etc. I don’t know. I had no time to prep this class that I’ve never taught. It will not be taut. But they will write some things and revise a few. Maybe they’ll develop a writing vocabulary. They are art students so they will also draw some things. They will put these words and pictures together and make new things. I said something about Sid Vicious. I said fuck. I wore a nice teal dress and some heels. You know, like a real-live-person. This morning, before everything, I wrote a poem about X-ray Astronomy but really about pain or something. This is part of a new hour-a-morning scheme. And then I worked at another job where I wrote emails and shuffled papers, which was fine. I dealt with some drama here and there. Then I went to the other job, teaching writing. Then I went to an art collective meeting. Then I went home and crawled into my pajamas and a hoodie. I wrestled the tennis ball away from the pit-chow mix. I can stick my hand into his mouth, and he won’t bite me. Sometimes he growls if I tug on his paws. Sometimes I try to stick my head in his mouth. I did not walk too much today. Or do my special physical therapy exercises. But nothing hurts too bad. There was coffee. I smell like cigarettes.
50 Endings: Hemingway
Rinaldi was a disappointing audience.
Yes.
I got a lot of use for that arm.
After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.
In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.
“I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
But they could not help his fear because he was up against an older magic now.
First there were birds, then me, then the Greeks, and even the birds got more out of her than I did.
“We’ll have to go,” Nick said. “I can see we’ll have to go.”
Looking back from the mounting grade before the track curved into the hills he could see the firelight in the clearing.
Then he was dead.
When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.
A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.
It was a good thing to have in reserve.
On god, Michele Bachmann, and BSG
I’ve been thinking about God lately. Or, I’ve been thinking about how God is used and abused in speeches, especially of the political nature. The other day, as I was finishing up Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, I saw Michele Bachmann’s Iowa straw poll victory speech. Think what you will of Bachmann, in her excitement and adrenaline, she demanded, “God bless America!” and “God bless you!” at least a dozen times within a few minutes. I use the word “demanded” purposefully. Somewhere along the way, we as an English-speaking people went from asking or requesting that God bless us – “May God bless you” – to commanding this omnipotent, omniscient powerhouse to bless us. Whereas the omission of “May” may be a simple elision, that is, it was just more convenient for us to drop the “may” in order to be more efficient with our time. One syllable can make a difference.
Taco
Likes: Seeing someone with authentic bounce in their step (00.9, 0.49). Initial 3-pointer is to go over 110 points, thus granting free tacos for fans. Rodman’s houses never had furniture, only a mattress (though he already owns the coffin he will be buried in and sometimes sleeps in it) and a giant TV to watch game tapes. (He obsessively studied trends on where an individual player’s missed shots tended to bounce.) Announcer goes with Mexican food puns. Rodman’s friends know him as shy. He once married himself. In midst of this 3-pointer run, Rodman plays excellent D (1:06), causing near air-ball. This quote on a phone call he received while gambling at a casino.
“It was like the ‘somebody died call’. I picked up the phone and Madonna was like, ‘I’m ovulating, I’m ovulating. Get your ass up here’. So I left my chips on the table, flew five hours to New York and did my thing. We got done and she was standing on her head in an attempt to promote conception — just like any girl trying to get pregnant. I flew back to Las Vegas and picked up my game where I left off.”
Dislikes: Pick or scratch at 31? Ref should have said ‘fuck it’ and gave Rodman last 3. Pippen’s black belt with brown suit. (Wish we could see his shoes and get a significant argument going.)
Book + Beer: Betty Superman and Modelo Especial
I hope you’re not an amateur, the type to quaff dark beer in the summer, light in the winter. The sun all splattered as a flung ball of cheese, so time for Mexican. Today, Modelo Especial (of behemoth Grupo Modelo). You’ll need a heavy, cold glass. (If you can, a chalice [or goblet] would be best, preferably one with scoring [You can do this yourself with a glass cutter] on the inside bottom of the glass, to create a CO2 nucleation point.) You do drink your beer from glass? You do understand that aroma, clarity, head retention, bubble stream, the sheer synaptical rush, the anticipation, etc. is dependent on glass? Listen: Do you want a quality head? Yes, yes, you do—it traps the essential effervescent volatiles. What? You want to just release the volatiles like a bunch of damn kids running round the Walgreens parking lot? Ah, Jesus. You sick-ass. You know what, let’s move on.
Parents. Or, a parent, this woman (the men whirl around with all the gravitas of a vacuum cleaner). Betty Superman (Rose Metal winner) dominates, is the word I’m using. Who is she? Mingy fuss-budget. Rueful drag. Lying truth-yawper. Despotic depressive tarantella. Candy bar cad. Underdeveloped sloppy-knocker. God gossiper. Emphysemic tart. Mother. To this narrator. To this daughter trying to figure out something about her mother. To settle something. To grapple, to slam, to lift to a light, to see, to step upon, something. Tiff Holland (several glow poems here) has created a case study of characterization. A repulsion and an embrace. A homage and an exorcism. A bring up and a take down, of Betty Superman, not so easy—she dominates.
Do you even know how to pour a beer?
60
Likes: Penis shorts. Announcers who just say things. Announcers who call the basket “the hole” and “the well.” True no-look at 1:36. Bird threatens a mullet. Oh fuck it, Bird goes mullet. NBA players with flabby, spaghetti arms. McHale ugly and gracious. Robert Parish wearing number 00. Robert Parish having 2 ounces of weed Fed-exed to his door in 1991, busted, pays fine of $37. Ainge much like a gray squirrel. Socks striped. Socks up to knees. Opponents (Atlanta Hawks) falling off bench/waving towels/cheering for (4:13, 5:07, etc.), Bird. DJ gravitas. No one in crowd texting. Cameraman at 4:52 frames up stark silhouettes of back of crowd member’s heads–attempt at cinematography. Shot at 4:13 (slo-mo 4:48) will make you laugh or go get a beer: They both release endorphins.
Dislikes: Fan in salmon colored shirt (3:55). Not a good hue. It makes a person appear sallow.
