Thursday, November 19, 2009

"You Know What I Feel? Bored."

Maybe it was the lightning, but the Choir was on fire tonight, spontaneously combusting into two new verses of We Three Kings that had poor Santa possibly being violated in a jail cell. But it turned out to be the beginning of a new romance!

I shouldn't be having a smoke, the way my throat was catching tonight singing, but after the rum, it tastes so good. Which two facts bring us to...

Twimoms, a, um, phenomenon, that's been written about everywhere else, so it was time for the Post to give it a front, in the charmingly tentative way it treats all newfangled trends. Written by Monica Hesse, bless her heart. It's a manu-trend, older women who are obsessed with the Twilight books and movies. I haven't read or seen said books and movies, except for this Buffy mashup (linked for the Facebookers, embedded for the rest).



The Salon columnist steered it to my demographic's conflict with distant Daddies, and I'm really glad I didn't have to read Miss Hesse going there. (I remember interviewing Sherman Alexie in a former life, and there's this line he threw down that stuck with me, tho I couldn't use it in the article: "Brown dads leave, but white dads leave while they're still sitting in the chair. They're reading the newspaper, but they're gone.")

Reader, I'm sticking with Snape. I know, I'm behind the curve, but at least he's a grownup. Disillusioned, bitter, used by the powers that be, working for the Man and never getting the damn job you want and are fully qualified for--I can relate. That Twilight vampire just sounds like more abstinence and stalking--two things I've had way too much of in life and don't enjoy.

But as for the whole, um, phenomenon? It's those Brontes again! Look, working is boring, being a grownup is boring, marriage is boring, it's all a big slog from time to time. Our minds and bodies and emotions are constructed to crave a tough workout, and life gives the typical working woman none of it. A woman today's circumstances are as imprisoning as any corset; you need to watch every bit of what you might do lest you be labeled immature or unhealthy and drugged into dullness--for your own good. I don't blame them one bit for seeking an escape valve. If I didn't have openminded, supportive DH watching my back (as I watch his, believe it or not) and my pseudonyms and writing, I'd be clawing at the yellow wallpaper, too. I wonder what it would be like if all the Twimoms decided to become artists, though. I'd like to see what they'd do.

Now the lightning tonight? That was exciting.

Image: Kris Waldherr's Tarot of the Goddess. She's really beautiful.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Les Autres Blogs

--You owe it to yourself to check out wrekehavok's November project, which is entirely focused on egregious '80s music. It's astounding.

--I think I'm going to have to just break down and buy Kyoto. I like reading fragrance blogs, but a lot of them hate on Comme des Garcons and Kyoto in particular, saying it's "too popular." I actually fought my CDG love for a while for this reason (and because they're expensive as hell). But of all the samples I got last year, they were my winners.

I read a review of Dover Street Market from this guy, who I might actually let be my shrink if I lived in San Francisco, and was a little disconcerted when he said the drydown was like 10 Corso Como, which I hadn't liked at all. So last night after a shower, I opened the sample and gave it another chance. Wince, there I was, Lauren Bacall in the 70s in Halston silk and furs. It ain't me, babe.

I also love two from the CDG Red line, Carnation and Sequoia. Sequoia is a woods/cedar plus carnation/clove and it is perfect, it is Humboldt without skunk weed, it smells like my imagination of Viggo Mortensen sleeping in an elf treehouse; I wear it to work and out sometimes, but not around the house. DH doesn't like clove. He would be very happy if I just stuck to Comptoir Sud Pacific, which is to say smelling like a cupcake. I liked their stuff when I lived in Miami, but the vanilla is too cloying up north. I hear they're Nicole Kidman's favorites, and that fits; Comptoir's vanilla-cocoa-pineapple mixes are exactly what I imagine she'd smell like.

I like men's fragrances or unisex ones best, which also puts CDG ahead.

With fragrances, you have to take into account what makes those closest to you happy, so that means I don't indulge my clove love much. The funniest sample I got was Spirit of the Tiger by Heely, which smells like TIGER BALM! which I smell like half the time anyway.

I liked L'Artisan's Timbuktu when I tried it in Paris, but not when I got home. Maybe the falafel changed my skin composition that afternoon.

Kyoto. Kyoto.

--I miss seeing Fern, but can keep up with the omnivorously brilliant mind of this locavore here.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Exercising the Prerogative Traditionally Extended to Women But Which Actually Goes Both Ways


I changed my mind.

UPDATE: Then changed it again. Really needed editing. Was too tired the other day. It's still not there.

King of Swords

Permission, Forgiveness

You have the power to make the decision
(And I'm ready to let you have it)
Once again I approach to ask,
And--I can't help it--it strikes me--

I know you're not much for art, but
In all these years of submitting my will
(Groomed to a turn) for your perfection,
May I say (may I?) that we've made something

Between us, something you could take
Pride in, really. We do this well.
We do it so it feels like hell--
(That's what she said.) I should say,
There is nothing amateur about it.

All the reasons a woman would get beaten down--
Too sunny, too sparkly, too smiley, too bold--
Oh, just the first course; we ran through that
Quickly, back and forth, like brushing the dirt
From your hands, a laborer done by five. No,

We're in the C-suites, with bonuses, options;
Executives, aligned. I exist,
You destroy; I breathe, you knock it out of me.
No mere well-oiled machine, not you:
A quality provider of comprehensive solutions.
(You've always had mine.) I might say I know
How you operate like my own mind:
What you like to watch, what you like to eat,
What raises your ire, and what puts you to sleep.

And that's how I know now
That this is the right time
To slide closer on my knees
To keep an eye on your eyes,
Closed, to keep singing softly,
And slowly reach my hand
To your lap, to tilt the hilt
And let fall into my hands
The sword you hold
That once was mine.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Rainy Night House

Strange hearing that driving the New York Avenue gateway into the city, seeing condos I wrote ads for years ago with dark windows and the clubs, too early for lines to form. Tonight was very cozy, with a poetry reading by one of my favorite poet friends who just put out her chapbook, and an open mic. I'm always so amazed at what happens at open mics of any size and the odd combinations and congruencies. Tonight it sounded like everyone had a poem about fish, and everyone had a poem about time. You could say that's typical for poets post-surrealism, almost like a ticket in. When the last open mic reader got out his sax and started doing this one-man bebop coffeehouse thing along with a computer track, I started feeling how close we were to the water, with the wind blowing the drizzle around outside and us in this old-house cafe, a small hurricane party of poets.

When I got home, I decided to pick a card for the next poem and I was hoping it would be Page of Cups, with the picture of the man holding a cup with a small fish leaping from it. But it was Knight of Cups, whom I'd actually been thinking about last week, so I'll get to work on that.

And before that a surreal trip to the mall to get DD some shoes. The mall is so big, we kept getting lost. Every few stores I'd have to check the map. There is still so much stuff there, and all of it sparkling and glittery, but not so many people, and thank goddess no Santa bombing, just perfume bombing. Every few steps, someone wanted to help us or show us something, anything, anything but how to get to where we were going to get kids' shoes. DD was a little rattled by all the people pushing us; it was like a souk out there. I tried to explain that it was hard to sell things now because many people didn't have jobs or money to spare. "Are we in the Depression?" she asked. She is fascinated by Kit, the American Girl Depression-era doll. I am glad I won't have to go to a mall anytime soon again.

Me, I'm thinking about a different decade. Shame there's just a glimpse of Jaco Pastorius, but my ears still work sometimes.

Friday, November 6, 2009

My One-Line Holiday Film Guide

In a past life, I was a movie reviewer. Now I wait for them to come out on On Demand and fall asleep. Tis the season for one-line reviews. I'm challenging myself to do this in 20 minutes. See how far into the season I get.

Pirate Radio: I'd do 'em, just for the fashions.

Precious: Got to break the one-line rule on this one. One of my fave Jezebel commentators offers pre-viewing must-reading. But for those concerned that it's just a voyeuristic immersion in one community's pathology, I can offer that there is no lack of depictions of appalling human misery from every corner and culture from anyone who's been able to pick up a camera and try to show the world. If someone uses it as "proof" that [these people] are all [like this], that's a viewer problem, not a filmmaker problem. I hate the idea of self-censoring to create a "proper" impression, precisely because that is at the root of most of the suffering (and gifts) in my own life. I'm of the more-talk-not-less-is-better school, except when it comes to these reviews, so I better cut this--

2012: Slam-dunk on Vatican City!

Bad Lieutenant, New Orleans: Nic Cage does frontal; spoiler alert: He gets eaten by a grizzly at the end. Who then staggers off to get more coke and bet on the Phillies. Oops, broke protocol again!

Fantastic Mr. Fox: Isn't this the Lars Von Trier sequel?

Twilight New Moon: Holding out for Part III, with sea monsters: "Cthulhu, Where Are You?"

The Road: Foraging for food and outrunning cannibals is a typical day in the Cougar household.

Everybody's Fine: Can't deal with DeNiro when he gets all twinkly around the edges.

Serious Moonlight: Will give Hines a chance.

Invictus: "Get off my rugby field, you kids!"

Me and Orson Welles: Awwwwww.

The Lovely Bones: Would like to say something funny about "Heavenly Creatures" and Orson Welles, but truthfully, I just can't even deal with the concept of this picture.

We Live In Public: When it comes to commentary on contemporary social phenomena, I'm waiting for the doc on the Human Carpet.

Avatar: "You write dialogue for a guy and then change the name."

Young Victoria: I'd be the only one in the audience.

Broken Embraces: Such a crush, such a crush.

It's Complicated: Please stop twinkling, please, please.

Nine: Yeah, nine big crushes!

Sherlock Holmes: The slash will write itself.

Up in the Air: Want.

Hey, I made it thru xmas!

Update: Dag, in my haste I messed up formatting. Fixed.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

He Won't Stand Beating


Five of Swords
Beating Time

Each sword a slice of time,
It’s mine, it’s mine, an hour
You left behind, dropped and ran
Into the smoke, into the slime.
Whole days once yours I now possess.

They call us vultures when we glean
The fields for the fallen. Sometimes
Those I step around are still alive. Today, I found
A world from sundown to dawn, time
For one lover, two bottles, three songs—
I keep accounts, pile seconds into stacks.

The oracle said to find time I must be clever;
I will be clever, leave off
Fear or feeling my own wounds.
A chunk of iron to a wing,
Black feathers fly loose,
No matter, no time:
I see another minute
You let fall,
And now it’s mine.

Image: Today I stole the card from Serennu, home of geniuses, the source for any astrological aspect and most obscure asteroid you could want to know about, and a random tarot generator on top of all that.