Comic Book Heroines

Wretchedly busy, but have been thinking about these things for days--
My daughter grabs the paper every morning now to read the comics. I took her to free comic book day a few weekends ago, and they gave her a whole stack of comics, and the end was served--she's hooked. Mama got a special Swamp Thing reissue. Here are my other favorites:

I don't always agree with this young lady, especially what she did to her boyfriend's guitar, but that's easy for a person who doesn't get jealous to say. But here, Judge Judy meets Courtney Love and Margaret Choand I concede her brilliance.

Alison Bechdel got me through some tough days back in the '80s. This handsome reissue of Dykes to Watch Out For plays like a box set.

Carol Lay's graphic novel memoir has gotten some controversy because it's a weight-loss book. I peeked through it because I couldn't figure out how she'd managed to gain weight at Burning Man. I've only ever been to my little local regional, and I always lose about five pounds, cause I'm so busy stumbling around and I'm so paranoid about food poisoning. It's not as anti-fat evil size-ist bad as people say--gets into a lot of issues of women's body images, food habits, some Omnivore's Dilemma-esque musings, etc. You know, if it's OK to be any size, why is it evil to choose to be smaller? (And it was cause she ate the s'mores. Didn't she realize you can get listeriosis from those things???)

UPDATE: I am so fucking embarrassed--I typed Sandra Oh instead of Margaret Cho above, fixed now. Does this mean I'm an anti-Asian racist deep inside? I'm going to be all freaking about this for weeks. I don't even watch Gray's Anatomy! (But somebody posted about the show on Facebook and all the sudden I had this rush of remembering a mistake, damn!) I know the difference between the two Tony Leungs, damnit! (Big Tony is handsomer and gets the straight sex scenes, and Little Tony is a better actor. And gay.) Does any of that make a difference? No. Lack of sleep? No. It's indefensible. And I'm sorry.

A Bit of Vertigo

Torn from the Lonely Planet

San Francisco was the site
Of the coldest summer solstice I've experienced.
We'd been running the roads at Big Sur,
Jade pebbles, seal barks, rogue waves;
Then the winding drive up the coast;
A ball game, the Portuguese water dogs
Plunging into the Bay with all the abandon
Of Kim Novak in one of her trances
(They were never phony to me, Scottie);
The filtered light behind the screens
At a Japanese noodle house; the movie
Where the singer's space helmet filled with water
As the last words of his song bubbled out,
Take after take, he endured; a reading
At the famous occult store, the counsel:
Cultivate the quality of discrimination,
The need to balance these ambiguities persists,
You'll have to shoulder those swords
A little bit longer, dear.

And then the ceremony, just south
Of the Sutro baths. The witches came
Carrying wood, built a bonfire,
And one set a chair in the sand, in the west.
The priestess sat with her back to the ocean
And hoisted the swords into position, and nodded
When she was ready for the blindfold.
I had a few pages I was finished with;
I fed them to the fire.

Tomorrow Leaf

The Batman alerted me to the story of poet Craig Arnold, who went missing on a simple hike while in Japan and is now presumed dead.

His last blog post is a beautiful page on the plant angelica, and the LA times blog above has some links to poems online.

Healing and Stealing

I keep forgetting and can't afford/get childcare, but you could go! Eternal Return, a collaborative performance piece at the Source, Friday and Saturday eves and Sunday 3 p.m. Hey, actually maybe I could go Sunday. That would mean not pulling invasive plants that day as I had planned. What is the right thing to do? The critical choices one is faced with. Why is life So Hard.

Involving my favorite local living artist: Rosemary Feit Covey, BosmaDance and the Smith Farm Cancer Center for Healing and the Arts. She has an exhibit at Torpedo Factory in cahoots with it as well. She did a whole series on emerging diseases, how can you not love that.

We just had an ethical issue in the Cougar household cause DD thought up a scheme whereby she could get more than her two allotted library books through a convenient evasion of the truth. My daughter lied so she could get more library books. And my heart is torn. I mean, means and ends? We have been discussing it and acting to correct it for two days now. She is now afraid to tell the librarian (the next step in trying to make it right), but I told her that her librarian looks to me like a person who has seen it all and will understand. Which is true. She's kind of Goth, in a good way, and I like her very much.

Photo: Stolen from BosmaDance website, and created by Enoch Chan--more of his photos are here.

Renaissance Men vs. Medieval Haters

Wow. Cool wild lightning flashes and big Thor thunder outside.

The once admirable civil rights fighter Marion Barry has folded, refusing to support equal rights and standing on the side of ignorance, along with a gang of "ministers" just about holding pitchforks outside the DC council meeting.

And just a few days ago, there I was calling out to DH over breakfast, reading aloud chunks of Colbert King's column and banging the table in astounded approval. He reports on Morehouse College president Robert M. Franklin's recent address, in which he calls Morehouse students "Renaissance men with social conscience and global perspective."

The column goes on to quote the speech:

"As an all-male institution with the explicit mission of educating men with disciplined minds," said Franklin, "the great challenge of this moment in history is our diversity of sexual orientation."

"Why don't we," he asked the students, "use this opportunity to model something our community needs?"

"Straight men," Franklin said, "should learn more about the outlooks and contributions of gay men. Read a book by a gay author. Have an intelligent conversation with a gay neighbor." Franklin reminded the Morehouse students: "At a time when it was truly scandalous to have homosexual friends or associates, Dr. King looked to Bayard Rustin, a black gay man, as a trusted adviser. And, Malcolm X regarded James Baldwin, a black gay man, as a brilliant chronicler of the black experience."

"To my straight brothers," he said, "diversity at Morehouse is an opportunity that can enrich your education if you are courageous enough to seize the opportunity. We cannot force you, but we invite you to learn from your environment."

Um, amen?

Photo: More info on the film.

Singing on a Kia

It's not all bad.

And I've got such a crush on Margaret Chan.

What we are now hearing is calls for a fundamental re-engineering of the international systems. We are hearing clear calls, from leaders around the world, to give these systems a moral dimension and to invest them with social values – like equity, sustainability, community, and social justice.

Personally, when I hear these calls, I cannot help but think of primary health care and the value system articulated in the Declaration of Alma-Ata 30 years ago.

Even before the financial crisis, many public health leaders saw great merit in returning to the values, principles, and approaches of public health.

In my view, values like equity and social justice are more important now, in this out-of-balance world, than ever before.

Human society has always been characterized by inequities. History has long had its robber-barons, and its Robin Hoods. The difference today is that these inequities, especially in access to health care, have become so deadly.

Technical tools for saving and prolonging lives keep getting better, yet more and more people are left behind, excluded from the benefits of even the older tools.

Not Much More to Say

Than this.

Jesus on a Cheez-It

When I did a search for an image of wisteria, all this TV stuff came up, and I couldn't resist the pun. I've only seen it once, the pilot--but I do love me some Felicity Huffman.

But seriously folks: Fuck newspaper corporations, fuck you, fuck you. That will be all.

The Alley Fence

I can't see a wisteria without
Remembering him telling me
About the snake that surmounted
The thick brown vine that twined
Along the alley fence,
Stretched itself, sunning.

His intention was to prune.
He'd heard snakes liked the plant.
He'd already cleared out "that, and that,"
He gestured with the long tongs,
Pointing to the corners of the backyard,
South and east, then paused to turn the meat.

I think it's a convenience
To attribute to them the motives
Of a human: The snake, we would say,
Is patient, is sly, even feels
A sense of ownership. He (the snake
Will be he; again, convenience) was there
Before they bought the place, after all.
But with summer slowing my breath,
I was moved to speculate:
Does that tightly focused bud
Of the reptile brain contain layers
Of elaborate perception I would never know?
What is it like to smell with the tongue,
To swallow it whole? The screen door slams,
And I jump, a skinny stray,
As his wife hands me a glass.

"You'll Be Surprised You're Doin' the French Mistake"

Even after 13 years of marriage (a lucky anniversary for a Dan Marino fan), there are always, always surprises! Like the other night, when I came home from rehearsal for a fabulous new production and flopped down in absolute exhaustion next to my husband on the king-size bed, as he attempted to watch some kind of game.

Me: I had choreographed simulated butt sex. Again.
DH (eyes not leaving screen): Oh God I hope I get it.
Me: (laughs)
Me (sitting up): Wait a minute. What did you just say?
DH watches game.
Me: Did you just quote from a musical?
DH (watching game): Yeah, just, you know.
Me: How do you know a line from a musical?
DH: I know things.
Me: But a musical? You've seen a musical?
DH: There's just six minutes left.
Me: That's until the year 2525 in non-game time. When did you see a musical?
DH: We lived in New Jersey. My parents took us to see Broadway musicals. A lot.
Me: (who would have given anything to have done that) No way! You've never told me that.
DH: I tried to forget.
Me: What did you see?
DH: The usual stuff. Annie. Jesus Christ Superstar. Godspell. You know.
Me: Jesus. You were getting more christian stuff than I was. (Pause.) Though that makes sense, I bet your mom went for that subversive take on God. It really was considered pretty subversive then. As musicals go. (His parents are Jewish atheists; mine, Catholic.) Did you like them?
DH: I was a kid, what did I know. I had to go.
Me: What was that line you said from?
DH: You know.
Me: I'm testing you.
DH: "One...singular sensation..."
Me: Oh my god. I never knew.
(Pause)
Me (laughing): That was pretty funny.
DH: What.
Me: That line.
DH: You should lie down. I want to see the end of this game.

Photo: The beautiful Uma, in one of the greatest musicals ever made. Used without permission because I can't help myself. And the headline is a Mel Brooks production, too.

The View from the Tube

A day of jury duty has left me staggered. I am happy I wasn't called to help decide anyone's fate.

Yesterday I rebuilt my garden fence, all by myself. Happy Earth Day!

Three good reads:

--Wells Tower attempts to recreate a sort of redneck version of Cheever's The Swimmer in a pimped out inner-tube on the rivers of North Florida. It had me on the floor laughing, it was so true of North Florida (and hoping I can get my daughter onto the Ichetucknee before you can't see clear through to the bottom anymore). And it reminded me how much I liked an older story about him traveling with his father after his father beat cancer and decided he had to see the world.

--John Goodman takes on Godot and his demons.

--And a horror story. There isn't enough money in the world to pay your debt if you have a catastrophic health crisis, by the way. You will never, never, pay it off, no matter how rich you are. You will sink completely if you have a catastrophic illness or accident:

"If there is an upside to the country's healthcare crisis, it is that the problem is hurtling toward a point at which it absolutely cannot be ignored without immediate and disastrous consequences. If there is an upside for me, it is this: returning to those difficult days of poverty and fear in 1969 also means returning to a place where anger inspires activism. I was a young woman then, of course, with a lifetime of battles ahead. I am not so young now. But I have enough years left to have one more fight in me. Healthcare is it."

Then go back and start over again with Wells Tower. Fear about health insurance is still not a good enough reason not to seize the opportunity to sit in a pimped-out inner tube in alligator-filled waters. Sometimes you have to put your butt into a slightly dangerous situation in order to feel alive. Just ask the guy with the whip.

Photo: Burt Lancaster is The Swimmer.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

On a friend's Facebook recommendation, I think I might break the no-buying policy and get a copy of Brad Gooch's Flannery O'Connor bio. (Certainly solely on his recommendation and not on the wretched review in the NYT a couple weeks back--the way it was written was wretched, I mean, not that it was a bad review. And thus is introduced our theme of precision of language.)

When the book came out, there was some controversy about new revelations, chief being that O'Connor used to seemingly revel in telling racist jokes to a particularly sensitive, liberal friend. I dip into The Habit of Being, Sally Fitzgerald's collection of O'Connor letters, which had expurgated the most obvious offenses, but not all, as you'll see. But the last time I read it through was about 20 years ago. O'Connor's formidable skills as an apologist almost had me getting unlapsed from being a Catlick, as she liked to write it, but I managed to hold onto my Old Time Religion (paganism), thank goddess.

Anyway, the reactions to the racist joke revelations tended to fall into two paths:

1) Oh, dear, I so loved Flannery O'Connor and those quirky Southern "characters" of hers! She was such an eccentric! So weird! So Outsider! Where did she get those names? But now I can't like her anymore, because she's a racist! I will never read her again. Why do all my idols have to fall?

2) She was a woman of her time, and she just couldn't HELP it if she thought like that. Everyone thought like that back then. Look at Fitzgerald and Wharton--they were anti-semites!

Both arguments are wrong in too many ways to know where to begin, and I think, just from my reading, that they're both wrong about O'Connor, too. Her other published letters, while not as explicit as perhaps the material in Gooch's book, make it clear that she just really, really liked fucking with people, especially Northern liberals. Check this little parody piece out from a letter to a friend and see if it isn't kin to Randy Newman's "Rednecks":

"What you ought to do is get you a Fullbright to Georgia and quit messing around with all those backward places you been at. Anyway, don't pay a bit of attention to the Eyetalian papers. It's just like Cuddin Rose says all us niggers and white folks over here are just getting along grand--at least in Georgia and Mississippi. I hear things are not so good in Chicago and Brooklyn but you wouldn't expect them to know what to do with theirself there."

She thought James Baldwin was a blowhard and got ticked when people kept telling her she had to meet him. But she also got ticked when her Catholic friends tried to make her go to Lourdes (and she made fun of the place, even as she caved and went on a pilgrimage). She was terribly impatient with the veneration of the Virgin, and she said just looking at the book The Nun's Story made her want to throw up. And all this from one of the most devout, thoughtful, committed Catholics anywhere. She mocked hypocrisy wherever she found it, flicked her own forehead for her petty sins of pride and vanity (without making a big, breast-beating deal out of it--because that's about the most vain, prideful thing to do of all). I recognize in the letters the character in the stories who is the modern thinker, the enlightened progressive, and usually grotesquely evil (she preferred, by the way, word grotesque to the word gothic). I speculate that in those characters she saw herself as she sometimes was, might have been, might be, but, quite literally, for the grace of God.

In short--equal opportunity hater, a woman with little time or patience for anyone. "My question is usually, would this person be endurable if white?" she wrote in another letter. And she found very few whites endurable. I don't think anything really mattered to her but the truth of the incarnation, the mystery of flawed people making up the perfect Church, and the mortal modern error of denying the existence of the Devil. Her God stops at nothing, including allowing the death of his son and self, asking simply if he deigns to speak at all: Where were you when I made the world?

None of which I believe, and none of which robs her writing of a bit of power for me.

It's not about people with funny names and odd habits and colorful diction. It's not about color much at all, but about our reaction to it, and our desperate need to believe we are good, decent people, when by most lights, we are pretty shaky, maybe mostly monstrous, and by the lights of a Catholic like her, without grace we are all condemned, and all the rearranging of bus seats in the world (Everything that Rises) won't change that.

I think if O'Connor were alive today, she might well be like Colbert or Sarah Silverman--or at least writing sketches making fun of movies with a Magic Negro, maybe, or the Crying Indian. Colbert popped into my head because he is also a Southern Catholic, and because of his still untopped and wildly, widely misunderstood jerimiad at the Correspondent's Dinner. But I'm glad she lived and wrote when she did.

And Fitzgerald and Wharton? Fitzgerald was a basket case who was so insecure he'd put anyone down that he could get away with. He wasn't so much a racist or anti-semite as a narcissist (those are related a lot, I think). But don't forget the venal Tom quoting Henry Ford in Gatsby. Balance goes to Fitzgerald. As for House of Mirth, Rosedale and Lily are two of a kind, the only ones who see the whole game and realize they have to play it carefully, and see each other playing it. He always respects her skills, but it isn't until the end that she sees past her prejudice and respects his. The snap judgments are in the mouths of the characters, not the author, in that case, I believe.

Photo: Once I went to Macon and everyone there kept telling me about Flannery O'Connor and Duane Allman. I don't know as how they had read or listened to much of either, respectively. It got annoying, because I am extremely fond of both. I have a story based on it maybe I'll polish up.

Keeping Up Appearances

"Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances. There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example."
The Talented Voice and Impeccable British Phrasing of Miss Susan Boyle, 47.

I confess to sinning in this regard myself, because I watched five minutes of The Cougar and judged it entirely on appearances. The interior design of that house they were in made me cringe. Jesus, the leather, the iron, gaaaghh. It was like the house James M. Cain describes in the opening of Double Indemnity, on steroids.

I watched long enough to see the young men toasting on a party bus, then sliding slickly into the manse on a hair gel disaster of Valdez proportions. But even the vision of Vivica A. Fox poured into that ruched emerald charmeuse number couldn't distract me from that awful faux primitive tile.

So I switched over to In Treatment. That Gabriel Byrne, he's OLD, man. But he looks like he's really keeping himself up. Good for him! Stayin in shape! Good on you, dude!

Oh, he can really act, too. Almost forgot about that part.

The TV watching came just because I was looking for something to do while I enjoyed my two-three times weekly cigarette. I love to smoke, but I don't have time to do it very often. So yesterday I got home from work, got my kid, went to my friend's house for the kiddie Seder (9 kids under age 9), helped with that, came home, helped get my kid to bed, helped her past a meltdown inspired by my not letting her stay up all night and read, finished up some work, poured a glass of wine and sat down on the couch with the windows open and the fan on, and what should be just starting but...So I tried, and failed, to watch a full episode of a reality show, again.

But I was inspired to write a poem while running this morning.

To A Cougar
Dear lady, cease your striving, for they have not what you seek--
The breath of promotional vodka and Axe cologne from these Young Masters reeks,
And tomorrow's nachos soon lay waste to this night's taut physique
I tell you truly, best succumb to charms of the regal Vivic(a).

(For it is no secret that the fairest of the Deadly Vipers has my heart entombed
Ever since I saw her fire a gun through the bottom of a box of Kaboom.
But forgive me, lady, as I get distracted
From this TVland reality you have enacted.)

Your pride, your hopes, the fierce strength of your dream
Will come to naught, for I suspect most of these guys play for the other team.
While naught is wrong with that, no naughty nights ensue
For tis not their inclination to be that into you.

Bright golden Cougar, do not be trapped by time
You could still turn this bus around while in your prime:
Make a startling publicity-engineered revelation that it is really older men you prefer,
Marry a rich retired commercial real estate broker, settle in, and lick your fur.

The Lady or The Tiger, The Cougar, or The Fox?

Because of my nom de blog, people sometimes send me cougar-related news. That and the ads everywhere you look made me aware that there's a "reality" dating show featuring an "older" (40, jesus on a ritz, she's only fucking 40!) woman and younger "men."

I named myself "cougar" out of irony, because I'm often surrounded by women with the dry-cleaned jeans and the manicures and the big, ugly, overpriced handbags, expensive jewelry, and I'm kind of in awe of them. I feel like I'll never measure up to what a woman of my age (47) is supposed to look and act like. I don't do manicures or makeup most of the time, I don't wear much jewelry, I can never seem to care about designers or men with money, I'm always doing foolish things--I'm just out of place, as always. So the name is a joke.

But back to the show. For once I'll be like my mother and just believe and quote unquestioningly what I read in the New York Times: Their reviewer said the young gentlemen were indistinguishable save for their haircuts, and wondered how anyone could keep their attention on a 40-year-old anonymous blonde when Vivica A. Fox, the host of the show, was in the house.

The really weird part is it's on TVland, the home of Brady Bunch reruns. Well, OK, Florence Henderson, someone had to say it. She had some Wessonality allright.

I was hoping to dig up some blogger rage about all this, but all I found even remotely readable was a a woman on Huffington Post who's all ticked about the show and says she's "the real cougar woman." That's kind of funny. She doesn't look like a cougar, either. She looks like a nice midwestern lady, and she's writing about things like her "journey into menopause." Come back, Shane! Guess you never can tell who's a cougar on the inside.

I've never seen a reality show episode all the way through, but I loved a "reality" movie--Series 7, The Contenders, where lottery winners have to shoot each other down to get the money. I was hugely pregnant (just like the star, played by the brilliant Brooke Smith) and laughing my head off in the theater, sitting between BA and my husband, and I think I scared some folks. But that "Love Will Tear Us Apart" video was priceless, wasn't it?

If there were real equality, there'd be a "rock of love" type show where the competing young men would wear silly clothes and get very drunk and stumble around and pee themselves and tongue-kiss for the cameras. Oh, forgot, that's Smith Point!

If there were real equality, there'd be a show called The Old Lech or The Roue or some damn thing with an old guy who likes young girls. Oh, forgot, that's...pretty much everywhere.

If there were real equality, there'd be a show where I could get a date with Vivica A. Fox! Oh, forgot, that's...only in my dreams.

"Guess I'm a Fool; At Least I'm Not Innocent"

Did 10 miles on the towpath today; had been heading for the Crescent Trail, but took a turn at the last minute. Surprised to find easy parking at Old Angler, surprised to find the path deserted north of Great Falls, surprised at my respectable time. Bluebells all the way out and the wind behind me all the way back.

I'm in an odd dull place between any hurts, passions or obsessions. Paying work is only too happy to fill my every moment, and some of this packed-in-cotton feeling is the result of tamping myself down to meet the onslaught of relatives that has come my way in the past few weeks. If this keeps up, I'll have no choice but to become obscenely healthy and work on the novel. I'm tempted to do magic, just to see what spirit or spark or wave manifests, but with all the prosaic plodding, I don't have the time or the head space.

Besides, after a tarot reading I got recently at a witch event, I'm experimenting with not doing much intentional magic. It was a very intense reading with many scary cards (ever get the 9 of swords, the tower, the 5 of wands, the 7 of swords...I mean it was almost a parody!) but the reader couldn't have been kinder or more thoughtful about how he framed things. Nevertheless, what I was seeing--essentially, you will have no place to hide and every compromise and duct-tape solution you thought would hold is no longer viable--came through his words, and halfway through the reading I burst into tears, and kept on that track through the end.

But before that, there was the Fool. And here's how he described that card to me: You're used to thinking: There's something you want, so you choose the time and the accessories and the words carefully, and you create a ritual, and that's magic for you, right? Well, you're not going to need to do that anymore. See, the Fool is walking down the street, and he realizes he's hungry. And right up ahead, there's a hot dog vendor, and the Fool reaches into his pocket, and there's the money, just enough to get a hot dog. But it's only there when he needs it. If he's walking down the street and he's not hungry?--no hot dog, no money. That's the new way magic is going to work for you.

I've been testing the theory.

Right after the reading, I went into the ladies room and was wiping my eyes, and who should appear at the sink next to me but a woman, a writer and teacher who is pretty famous in witch world both for her work and because she is strikingly beautiful and charismatic. The last time I had seen her was 10 years ago in one of her classes, when I had burst into uncontrollable tears halfway through.

It made me laugh (not out loud). I said hi, and that I was looking forward to going to her class later. Then I wondered to myself if I sounded like some weird crying stalker. Then I blew my nose and went out and got some coffee. That's a fool for you.

I don't eat hot dogs, but I have a feeling a symbolic kind of hot dog might be just ahead.

"Symbolic kind of hot dog." That would be a good title.

Photo: Today's headline was written by Mr. Cole, the original big dark brooder.

"It Is Certain," As the Magic 8-Ball Would Put It

Man I'm so tired of working and not sleeping and not running enough and sitting in restaurants and working and sitting in restaurants and working and working all night long. I feel like...hey, here he comes now! All the way from the Seventh Seal, ladies and gentlemen, it's--

(XIII)
Wait, Rider

I chose
My battles
He -- their end
His flag
A rose
The field commands
His crown
The sky
The reins -- clutched
In his hands

Before him
Rises majesty
Beneath -- the bones
Abound -- above
Wait, Rider --
Comes the cry
The hooves
Crush out

The First Occasional Kiss My Happy Heinie Foundation Awards

Because I might spend time in another life under another identity encountering occasional clueless nonprofits that are really good at bumbling away money on "initiatives" that no ordinary human actually putting up some cash money will ever understand or see any results from...I started thinking a few years back that if I had a foundation, I could do better.

It gave me something to think about on long runs--If I won the lottery and started my foundation, how would I do it? I actually get paid to think of names and taglines for nonprofits, and that process can take weeks. But my name and tagline took less than a quarter-mile: The Kiss My Happy Heinie Foundation: Giving Money to Folks Maria Thinks Are Cool. Can't you just hear that on NPR?

Once on a women's weekend, a friend suggested I should soften the name to the Ki-My-Ha-He Foundation, to make it a little more accessible and give it some of that NA cachet, but that would be so damn wrong.

Obviously, this fantasy is well-formed. But you have to have something to think about to make you forget how much your knees hurt.

The "business model" is like the MacArthur: Surprise! Have some cash, you cool person, you! Sometimes I run into people or read about folks I wish I could give a Kiss My Happy Heinie Award to, but alas, I have no money. But this evening I thought, screw it, neither does anyone else, so I'm just going to give away imaginary money.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first occasional KMHH award ceremony. It's all on a blog, so it's virtually free! Which means more imaginary money for you someday, when you win one, too!

From a Washington Post story on Chitown and other web-based micro news services trying to fill the gaps in Chicago, here's the first honoree:

"Megan Cottrell, 26, a former dancer who started last year as a volunteer, is now a full-time staffer assigned to the Chicago Housing Authority. "They despise me," she says. But spokesman Matthew Aguilar says Cottrell has mostly been fair -- and that the Tribune and Sun-Times no longer cover the authority regularly."

Honey, if they hate you, you're doing it right. They can Kiss Your Happy Heinie!

The site is funded by a foundation, which I'm not so sure about. There are Conrad Black types in foundations, too. And Rupert Murdoch types. And unfortunately, this graf is also true: "WMAQ-TV's Carol Marin, a Sun-Times columnist, says sites such as Chitown do "a good job" but don't have the resources to "push back against the powerful." The Sun-Times is helping her fight a subpoena to testify at mob-related trial. "One of the things lost in the stripped-down blogosphere is the ability to fight for your stories," Marin says."

Second, tho MacArthur might get to him first: Ari Roth of Theatre J for staging the readings and discussions of Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children. Some people can open the mind and the mouth and give people a safe place to work out these complex issues, without denying any of their complexity. Heart, balls and everything in between--and people who blast off protests and view any "side" as absolutely faultless can Kiss His Happy Heinie!

The third, in the science category, goes to my Hot Friend E, so she can develop her health-promoting-cum-conceptual-art project, the Hydration Bra. It's a combination pushup bra and Camelback water jugs. You fill the cups with water in the morning, and sip through the tube throughout the day. People could tell by your boob size whether you have been drinking enough water that day, and call your attention to it, so you'll stay hydrated. And everyone would want to attend the morning meetings, right?

By the way, feel free to send a virtual donation. It's tax deductible in my dreams.

Say My Name, Um, I Mean, Say Your Name

Got another one last night.

Writing Erotica

A tongue otherwise occupied can't tell tales.
Twin hungers: To touch or to hover,
Framing the picture. I'm not above
Taking notes. Sometimes the inclinations tangle:
Which do I obey? To the two sides of
Every story, the moment or the memory,
It's not just a time-honored device but inevitable
To add a third. Always a welcome arrival.
Could I give her your name?
The reader, the witness, flows into her own
Pleasure and writes herself
Out of that moment. So it sways,
What is, what is told, cup to cup,
And not a drop is lost but to the air,
And that becomes the rain
And fills the cup again.

Don't imagine there's no technique involved.
The honest construction of momentum,
Obstacle, delay, completion, enlivened
By the immediacy of remembered detail.
But you have to start somewhere. Like they say,
Write what you know.

Jacob, a man of experience, wrestled
The Angel of creative power, on and on,
For hours and hours. A man I know of painted
The scene of that struggle, and ran away--
On another island, he lived to fight another day.

In Like a Lion

I guess eventually I'll write one to go with all of them, major and minor arcana.

The Judgment Card

Why, you! And here I thought you
were dead. Across a crowded room,
What's new, probably she was bored,
All that. There's nothing like a glimpse
Between the gilded pillars, between the stems
Of those huge exotic blooms, the pricey trumpet
Lilies of the kind I didn't think we'd see again.
Nor those rich robes, so fresh. I see them
Swirl around her ankles as the chains fall away.
Oh roar away, and clash a cymbal or so.
What I'm listening for is her breath,
Filtered through nicotine, drawing down,
(She breathes his need, you know. No blood
For that vamp. All it takes is a whisper
Of despair, and she's there!) Oh blow;
The lion, the lamb, the lily, the rose,
The stage, all set; the revelation, yes,
And the wings, poised to lift
Those who lie to new life.

Pardon Me, Boy

I hate the Connecticut coach. He ought to go work for AIG. Go Chattanooga.

Wash, FSU, Gonzaga with a z, Louisville.

UPDATE: Christopher Walken's Twitter!

Your Weekly World News

This is a partial list of the people on this earth who, I believe, were/are actually space aliens or beings from some alternate universe. Feel free to add your votes.

Oscar Wilde
Harriet Tubman
George Washington
Sappho
Isadora Duncan

I got to thinking about Wilde because of St. Patrick's Day. As my one allowable prejudice, I have taught my daughter this nationalistic, jingoistic, party line: The Irish are the greatest writers in the whole world.

The Miley Cyrus/Radiohead "feud" may make my daughter's head explode. She likes both. So do I. I listened to "Pyramid Song" in labor.

A guy I know reported that Miley was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt during a show setup, and people threw down all over his Facebook comments, disrespecting her, saying how dare she, she couldn't really like Sonic Youth! My take: If Thurston Moore can like Karen Carpenter, why can't Miley Cyrus like Thurston Moore? I'm gonna get even more Camille Paglia here and start going into how Miley Cyrus plays adolescent female identity politics--Hannah can be sharp and sexy and mysterious, while Miley must be goofy and gangly; Hannah can drive, Miley must walk; Hannah is independent and talented, Miley gets a family and friends...it's a training ground for how a woman must segment herself according to assigned roles, right?

Look. Miley Cyrus is not allowed to fail, to be a loser, to recognize ambiguity or subtlety in any form; she is forbidden to deal with anger, loss or pain in her music; she cannot rail, she cannot scream, she cannot be a feminist, she cannot have a sexual identity of any kind or she will risk her own and her family's livelihood, she will disappoint everyone. She is a factory, a CEO, a religious devotee in her terribly, frighteningly restricted life and stunted art.

Thom Yorke, please, she has so very little in her life. You could be kind.

UPDATE: There are all sorts of flashing police lights outside my window as I write this. DH gets home with the news: Someone has left an "unidentified case" outside of Fannie Mae. Somebody's scared somebody's letting that Populist Outrage get the better of them, hmm?

Photo: Poets' Graves.