Saturday, February 28, 2009
I've Been Challenged,Part 1 or:You Cannot Be Serious
It must have been a surprise to my family when, aged three, I rather matter-of-factly picked up a Little Golden Book and, with it right-side-up, began to read. No one, you see, had actually set out to teach me.It must have been organic, the natural result of an already marked fascination with the written word: even as a toddler, I wandered around the house clutching books in my hands, imploring every adult to read to me, please. At my grandparents' house, I would often slip away from my playroom, or anywhere else I was suppose to be, to go read in the hall coat closet. Yes, the coat closet: it is where a box containing all of my books was kept. After struggling to open the door, then again to snap the light on by pulling the long white string that dangled from the ceiling, it was easier to plop down and "read" right there, next to the vacuum and my grandpa's golf shoes. After awhile, my worried family ceased their worrying, as my whereabouts were set in cement.
There are a few commonalities to the hundreds of photographs snapped by my family during my first five years. Within the frame can be found me, my light brown musical teddy bear and books. "Start as you mean to go on" is a phrase that I have seen randomly popping up on the web in recent weeks. It is trite but manages still to neatly encapsulate the course of my life in the thirty years since I first decoded that Little Golden book.
My love for reading things in book form is fierce and adamantine. It is one of the tallest and sturdiest pillars of my being; my self-identity is en-coiled so completely with books that I am unsure if I could ever unravel it, even if I chose to try. This, then, is the very thing that has been asked of me: to forsake books for the entire month of March.
This gauntlet was hurled at me by The Chef, a seasoned veteran in putting challenges to me that at first seem cruel or needless and, on occasion, flat-out silly. He has proven himself on a number of these occasions to have a surprising depth of insight into my character and motivations.Example: Steak, the noshing of, by his birthday. I was a vegetarian at that time, something that I have since ceased to be. That is another story, however, but it is an example of a compelling coerciveness that I have never met in another person, save myself.
When he first suggested that I not read a book, except for professional needs, for an entire month--and a month of 31 days, at that--I took it for a joke. It was merely an off-handed comment, after all, spoken in his normal voice while he was dressing for work one morning. I would have expected such heterodoxy, if it was truly meant, to be accompanied by the opening of the very earth beneath our feet ,gale-force winds or, at the least, by a circling of ravens above our heads. As those things did not happen, I laughed off his suggestion as a jest.
But, no, the man was serious, and remains so. He maintains the position that it would do me good to be a non-reader for a month. I asked him if he thought it would do him good to be a non-breather for a month, as it nearly amounts to the same thing. I would not, could-not give such a ridiculous challenge a thought. What could I, or anyone, possibly gain intellectually, spiritually, philosophically or in any way that matters, by not reading books? The answer, now that it has come, is exoteric: how would I know? I have gone no more than a day or two, in all my years as a reader, without picking up a book or two ( or three) and greedily ingesting at least a few pages.
The first of March is a scant few hours away, and I remain undecided in my response. While I am reluctant to attempt something that seems to be designed to entirely impoverish my soul, I am not entirely unwilling. A month is not a lifetime, it is a gathering of days that will quickly disappear.I am wise enough to know that there is something to be learned from the brief absence of words, although what that is, exactly, is yet unknown.
If I take up this challenge, I will not be entirely bereft of words: the fast is for (non-professional) books only, leaving the internet and magazines open to my perusal.While I try to decide, I am going to take a cue from these rules. Instead of finishing the night with Charlotte Bronte, I am going to close it with the March Issue of 'Marie Claire' and a glass or two of wine.
Tomorrow, in Part II, I will contemplate a life without books while explaining why my life is contained,explained and justified, in so large a part, within them.
THE ABOVE PHOTO IS BY LIN KRISTENSEN OF NEW JERSEY. IT IS LICENCED UNDER THE CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 2.0. CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO SEE ALL OF THE INFORMATION.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Storm in a Teacup: My 3 1/2 Cents on the GOOP-roversy
If popular entertainment during the Depression--the Great one-- taught us anything about flaunting conspicuous consumption during lean times, it is that what is acceptable on that immense white screen is not as warmly or widely welcomed in the flesh-and-blood world.In an effort to bring customers into theatres in a society so recently fallen from post-war affluence to grinding poverty, breadlines and tent cities, Hollywood spit out an obscenely divergent product in large number. There was something for everyone (if not several somethings), much of it escapist.The Thirties was, after all, the pinnacle of the musical, gangster, horror, costume drama, biographical, social realism and screwball comedy genres.The latter, in fact, is only truly at home during that decade of despair. Screwball comedies made since then are not actually "screwball" comedies: they are simply funny movies featuring wacky characters engaged in crazy antics. The soul has left the genre ,though not consciously: it is simply the result of society's changed face.
Screwball comedies gave us a new breed of heroine: the whimsical, well-educated, devil-may-care heiress. Playing such a role was practically a rite of passage for most leading ladies. For others, it became a career in and of itself. (The versatile Claudette Colbert won her only Academy Award playing just such a confection.)This virtual army of manic, breezy, fast-talking beauties--for they were always beautiful--wreaked their way through the rest of the decade, winning the men of their choice (be he a newspaperman, a male gadabout or a regular working bloke) by the time FINIS flashed on the screen.
These women and the insulated world they inhabited, before breaking free to sample, however briefly, the plight of the common people, were the most unrealistic of the entire Depression. Yet, they, and their type, were consistently cherished by millions of Americans. Still riotously funny, they represent some of the finest comedies ever put to film.Somehow, the disparity between the easy life of wealth of those celluloid phantoms and that faced by the average man or woman when they stepped back onto the sidewalk was neither inconsiderate nor tacky. It was simply entertainment that allowed you to dream away reality for an hour or two.
When actresses weren't impersonating the wealthy, they were often portraying that other Thirties distaff staple, the working woman: stenographers, operators or shop girls. The type lived in a rented room, worked hard,aspired to something better --and usually got it, along with a nice, regular Joe, by the time the lights flicked back on.These women--picture Ginger sans Fred, if you will,perhaps munching on a burger at a lunch counter--were relatable: clever, pretty, and resourceful, they were fairly realistic role models.
The closest contemporary representation we have of the type is, strangely, that of the Reality Star.Weed out the worst of the media whores, and what you have is a familiar bunch:average women aspiring to something better in increasingly fraught times.Sitting in our living rooms watching the motley parade of aspirants, we aren't intimidated or even intrigued but we do understand where they are coming from.What they are trying to achieve isn't easy but it is reachable, and in ways that young women in the Thirties would likely recognize.
Something that has changed in the last 75 or 80 years is the ridiculous distance between the privileged and the rest of us. The Middle Class is now closer to the bottom of the food chain than to the top. We can no more realistically aspire to real, 21st-Century wealth, measured in the billions, than we could hope to become Lord High Priest(ess) of Mars.During the Great Depression, even the poorest person in that breadline could achieve anything, even a high strata of wealth, if diligence, luck and opportunity were on his or her side.
One effect of this disparity is that the nature of conspicuous consumption has also changed.I cannot pick up a copy of 'Vogue' or Elle and hope to afford anything in the entire issue, except for something from one of the de rigueur Target ads. A recent issue of 'Vogue' jumped, precariously and absurdly, onto the 'Recessionista' bandwagon. After instructing us,volte-face from their usual tack, and with nary a hint of irony, that a great way to save money would be to mend our own (presumably haute-couture) clothes, they immediately fell back off by recommending a designer sewing kit that will set you back the better part of $1,000.00. What a way to be of the people, 'Vogue'. But, wait....where is it written that they, or anyone, even in our nation's current straightened circumstances, must be accessible or even understandable to everyone?
Just because you are eating Ramen and hot dogs doesn't mean that Anna Wintour should change the editorial content of the magazine she heads.In the eyes of the Middle Class, would obliviousness or heedlessness be the greater crime? That is the question that has increasingly plagued Gwyneth Paltrow since she started her e-letter 'GOOP'several months ago.
'GOOP' (sub-titled: nourish the inner aspect )consists of 6 categories: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, See, which are focused on, singly, in a regular rotation. Neither a great fan of the Academy Award winning actress or of hostessing advice in general, I have nonetheless been a 'GOOP' subscriber since the first edition. Having skimmed each newsletter, I am hard-pressed, on the surface, to see what all of the fuss is about ,one way or the other.It is adequately written, holds few surprises, and uses a lot of 'adapted' recipes as well as recommendations from various (usually famous) friends.
Paltrow claims that she started it for altruistic reasons, at the request of (apparently) non-famous friends. If she is to be believed--and I see no reason to allow doubt to enter here--she has a reputation as an excellent and in-the-know hostess/traveler/reader/what-have-you. Let's call her the maven for my generation of all things cultural and domestic and be done with it.
I subscribed to the newsletter out of equal parts curiosity and ego:I was eager to catch it at the beginning, to see it before other people around me knew what it was. I guess I am a snob that way. And Gwynnie has been accused of the same thing though for other reasons. She has been lambasted for elitism, cluelessness, and condescension, just for starters.Flaunting her famous buddies probably doesn't help matters, either.
She admits that she is lucky in her life. She says she is just trying to share her domestic gifts, as well as lessons she has learned, with the masses. That she does it from an undeniable position of advantage is, apparently, polarizing in ways that neither she, nor I, could have imagined. In recent days, the debate over 'GOOP' has exploded all over the popular media, after quietly simmering on blogs and other on-line outlets for months. Paltrow was compelled to publicly defend her newsletter , which, while occasionally grating, is really small potatoes.
Are these loudly complaining critics anti-GOOP because they think the content inferior? Or because they pick up on an underlying superior snottiness that has always, as long as I have seen her give interviews, going back 15 years or longer, been part of her personality? Should she be expected to change along with the times, to go from heiress to shop girl so that the rest of us feel better about our own plights? For me, that would be the true condescension.
From an entertainment or advice standpoint, I don't care if 'GOOP' lasts for years or folds next week. I find it neither compelling nor useful in any practical sense. Yet, if it goes under,as a result of the current furor, I will genuinely mourn its passing. What should have been of limited interest to all but her rabid fans, has, unexpectedly, become a bellwether for these trying times. It has become the center of a divisive debate of which there is no adequate resolution.
Screwball comedies gave us a new breed of heroine: the whimsical, well-educated, devil-may-care heiress. Playing such a role was practically a rite of passage for most leading ladies. For others, it became a career in and of itself. (The versatile Claudette Colbert won her only Academy Award playing just such a confection.)This virtual army of manic, breezy, fast-talking beauties--for they were always beautiful--wreaked their way through the rest of the decade, winning the men of their choice (be he a newspaperman, a male gadabout or a regular working bloke) by the time FINIS flashed on the screen.
These women and the insulated world they inhabited, before breaking free to sample, however briefly, the plight of the common people, were the most unrealistic of the entire Depression. Yet, they, and their type, were consistently cherished by millions of Americans. Still riotously funny, they represent some of the finest comedies ever put to film.Somehow, the disparity between the easy life of wealth of those celluloid phantoms and that faced by the average man or woman when they stepped back onto the sidewalk was neither inconsiderate nor tacky. It was simply entertainment that allowed you to dream away reality for an hour or two.
When actresses weren't impersonating the wealthy, they were often portraying that other Thirties distaff staple, the working woman: stenographers, operators or shop girls. The type lived in a rented room, worked hard,aspired to something better --and usually got it, along with a nice, regular Joe, by the time the lights flicked back on.These women--picture Ginger sans Fred, if you will,perhaps munching on a burger at a lunch counter--were relatable: clever, pretty, and resourceful, they were fairly realistic role models.
The closest contemporary representation we have of the type is, strangely, that of the Reality Star.Weed out the worst of the media whores, and what you have is a familiar bunch:average women aspiring to something better in increasingly fraught times.Sitting in our living rooms watching the motley parade of aspirants, we aren't intimidated or even intrigued but we do understand where they are coming from.What they are trying to achieve isn't easy but it is reachable, and in ways that young women in the Thirties would likely recognize.
Something that has changed in the last 75 or 80 years is the ridiculous distance between the privileged and the rest of us. The Middle Class is now closer to the bottom of the food chain than to the top. We can no more realistically aspire to real, 21st-Century wealth, measured in the billions, than we could hope to become Lord High Priest(ess) of Mars.During the Great Depression, even the poorest person in that breadline could achieve anything, even a high strata of wealth, if diligence, luck and opportunity were on his or her side.
One effect of this disparity is that the nature of conspicuous consumption has also changed.I cannot pick up a copy of 'Vogue' or Elle and hope to afford anything in the entire issue, except for something from one of the de rigueur Target ads. A recent issue of 'Vogue' jumped, precariously and absurdly, onto the 'Recessionista' bandwagon. After instructing us,volte-face from their usual tack, and with nary a hint of irony, that a great way to save money would be to mend our own (presumably haute-couture) clothes, they immediately fell back off by recommending a designer sewing kit that will set you back the better part of $1,000.00. What a way to be of the people, 'Vogue'. But, wait....where is it written that they, or anyone, even in our nation's current straightened circumstances, must be accessible or even understandable to everyone?
Just because you are eating Ramen and hot dogs doesn't mean that Anna Wintour should change the editorial content of the magazine she heads.In the eyes of the Middle Class, would obliviousness or heedlessness be the greater crime? That is the question that has increasingly plagued Gwyneth Paltrow since she started her e-letter 'GOOP'several months ago.
'GOOP' (sub-titled: nourish the inner aspect )consists of 6 categories: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, See, which are focused on, singly, in a regular rotation. Neither a great fan of the Academy Award winning actress or of hostessing advice in general, I have nonetheless been a 'GOOP' subscriber since the first edition. Having skimmed each newsletter, I am hard-pressed, on the surface, to see what all of the fuss is about ,one way or the other.It is adequately written, holds few surprises, and uses a lot of 'adapted' recipes as well as recommendations from various (usually famous) friends.
Paltrow claims that she started it for altruistic reasons, at the request of (apparently) non-famous friends. If she is to be believed--and I see no reason to allow doubt to enter here--she has a reputation as an excellent and in-the-know hostess/traveler/reader/what-have-you. Let's call her the maven for my generation of all things cultural and domestic and be done with it.
I subscribed to the newsletter out of equal parts curiosity and ego:I was eager to catch it at the beginning, to see it before other people around me knew what it was. I guess I am a snob that way. And Gwynnie has been accused of the same thing though for other reasons. She has been lambasted for elitism, cluelessness, and condescension, just for starters.Flaunting her famous buddies probably doesn't help matters, either.
She admits that she is lucky in her life. She says she is just trying to share her domestic gifts, as well as lessons she has learned, with the masses. That she does it from an undeniable position of advantage is, apparently, polarizing in ways that neither she, nor I, could have imagined. In recent days, the debate over 'GOOP' has exploded all over the popular media, after quietly simmering on blogs and other on-line outlets for months. Paltrow was compelled to publicly defend her newsletter , which, while occasionally grating, is really small potatoes.
Are these loudly complaining critics anti-GOOP because they think the content inferior? Or because they pick up on an underlying superior snottiness that has always, as long as I have seen her give interviews, going back 15 years or longer, been part of her personality? Should she be expected to change along with the times, to go from heiress to shop girl so that the rest of us feel better about our own plights? For me, that would be the true condescension.
From an entertainment or advice standpoint, I don't care if 'GOOP' lasts for years or folds next week. I find it neither compelling nor useful in any practical sense. Yet, if it goes under,as a result of the current furor, I will genuinely mourn its passing. What should have been of limited interest to all but her rabid fans, has, unexpectedly, become a bellwether for these trying times. It has become the center of a divisive debate of which there is no adequate resolution.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
2009-The Year of Influence
1-Joe Strummer - Strummer is my Holy Grail of subjects. He has influenced me immeasurably-- more than anyone, other than my mom and Grandma. The shaping of my social and political stances, and to my encompassing view of humanity, is keenly attributable to the late leader of The Clash and the Mescaleros. His death , 6 years after the fact, still burns.
2-The Clash-See above.
3-Kurt Vonnegut-Vonnegut and I go way back, to my teens, when I won a drama award at my high school name after the man. At that point, I had only read one of his stories. It was for class and, while I was a straight-A+ Advanced English student, I hadn't given his words much thought. I soon rectified that and was instantly hooked. His non-fiction work has, for me, become a cornerstone of honest and ethical humanity.
4-Debbie Harry-I know, how hard could it be to write about the lead singer of Blondie? If you are me, it is a pretty daunting task. When I was a very young girl, perhaps 7, I decided that I wanted to be Debbie Harry when I grew up, and I have never quite shed my disappointment to have not done so.
5-Pablo Neruda-He was the craftsman of the most heart-stopping poetry ever written, in any language. I would love to properly learn Spanish in order to read every syllable of his poetry as it was intended. Still, the English translations, and there are many, prove that his talent is simply beyond reach.
6-Woody Guthrie-I share a birthday with his son Arlo ( Cancer Power ), known for his anti-war masterpiece, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", still played by many radio stations every Thanksgiving. His father was the architect of righteous and inclusive protest songs that remain, sadly, all too relevant and necessary. An American original.
7-Paul Newman-Some day. Just not yet, as his passing was a mere 5 months ago.
8-Bjork-Because she is scarily fascinating and because I have been a fan, in not-quite a train-wreck way, since high school.
9-Amy Sedaris-No explanation needed, I trust.
Shedding Pinpricks of Light: An Intro to a Litany of Subjects I Cannot Bring Myself to Write About....Yet
The Irish ex-pat writer James Joyce revered words. For him, they were not simply a carrier for the plot or a means of conveyance for characterization: they were reason enough for the journey, the nexus of everything he composed. He took heady, drunken pleasure in their sound, shape and use. The way words, when fused together in particular combinations, fall vibrantly or heavily on the senses, especially as, when returned to their essential, primitive use, they are spoken aloud, as best suits his work. His ordering of language was thick, layered yet as mobile and elusive to grasp as mercury unloosed from a thermometer. His quirks ,the arcane mashed with the vulgar, the earthy wed to the elegant, are not the result of egoism or showboating: everything he wrote was, ultimately, an ode to that language, pure and sensual, set down on paper by an artist particularly attuned to its every facet.
All writers must, of necessity if nothing else, have a respect for the language in which they write, as well as their own nonpareil way of mastering it. For some, it is merely a means to an end, the hollowed gourde in which they carry their message to the world. For others, as with Joyce, words themselves are the reason, and everything else is conceived as a way to hold those words up to the light.
Either way, writers write and should be able to do so on any subject that comes to hand, regardless of passion or inherent interest. Shouldn't they? My answer, and my reality, is a firm "no". While possessing my own obsession with language, which apparently pre-dates learning to read at age 3, my facility for expressing it naturally stops far short of , and is formed quite differently, from Joyce's, though I worship at the same altar that he served so well.
I can, and choose to, write about many things. That is the brilliance of free-lancing, and one of the joys of blogging and 'zining professionally. Nothing is thrust on me, ever, unless I choose to allow it, which is rare. Yet, for all of the freedom and creativity that is born from this, it can become too easily ingrained to shy away from certain subjects. The things that I avoid writing about are usually not things at all but, antithetically, human beings. The greater influence an individual has on me--if they have impacted, positively, on my morals, ethics, social conscience, artistry, intellect or sensuous enjoyment of life---the less likely I am able to satisfactorily write about them. Or, to even make the attempt.
I have, a time or two, pushed beyond this self-imposed barrier of fear. Writing an article on George Bernard Shaw, the man whose work and life made me want to be a writer, really a writer, was cathartic. Four years later, I still enjoy that piece so I know that it is, indeed, possible to write passionately and ably, though not worshipfully, about people, literature and events that have helped to form my character and world-view. Following this post, you will find a list of my tricky would-be subjects. It is a professional, and personal, goal of mine to write pieces on each this year, for different outlets, and, in the process, do them and myself justice.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Earlier in the Day the Dog and I Decided to Bake a Little Harlow Cake
The Harlow Cake, all ready to go...
A collage of what I dubbed 'The Harlow Cake', as it was white-on-white. I finished it off with some bright confetti.
Nassau's patience was tried but his superior manners and breeding prevailed.
Dinner for the Oscars
The Chef's Oscar Telecast Menu:Filet, salad with asparagus, green beans, fries (which I drowned with Malt Vinegar) and wine (not pictured)
Traditions Old and New
One of my favourite mother-daughter rituals extends back through the years of my childhood, back to a long-dissolved time when memory ,as such, conscious or concrete, didn't exist. It has held a place in my life's routine for so long, however brief its annual appearance, that it simply is, as it has always been.Other shards of memory flicker through like film running at the wrong speed: the smell of her perfume, which in my mind is always Emeraude, stopped up in its green bottle; eating Jiffy snack cake and drinking hot chocolate, sitting on the floor and dining on the coffee table, as a special treat; watching baseball with my Grandpa on TV, in order to spend time with him after my Grandma exiled him to the bedroom; watching the Miss America and Miss USA pageants in their gaudy, tacky fun, a routine that we mutually stopped some time in my late teens.
The ritual that has outlasted them all, to this day, and with grace and good fortune will stand unbroken for many a year to come, till the as-yet generation has joined us in our revelry, is, of course, the yearly Oscars telecast.We enjoy, as a rule, most of the shows that make up Awards season, from the Emmys to The Golden Globes and BAFTA's. The People's Choice Awards are an exception; apparently we are not of the same mind as 'the people', whoever they may be.
By the time that The Hollywood Foreign Press throws their shindig, we are really geared up. That night is kind of a dry run for what comes a few weeks later. I would aver that the Oscars is like our Super Bowl but that would be markedly sexist and, as I really love football, untrue. Yet we anticipate it with the same sense of fervor and planning, down to the Awards Day Menu, which is usually every bit as fattening, casual and decadent as any Game Day tailgate party.No Oscar glitz and glamour filters down to the cuisine. Nachos, potato-skins,wings or corn dogs, brownies, the sort of caloric gore-fest that you save up for.
The point of watching the awards isn't just as an excuse to chow down on junk food. Other things factor into the celebration as well. Namely, clothing choice and, of course, who wins and who loses. As an ex-acting student and board-treader, the latter always fascinates me, as it would anyone, really, who finds psychological interest in that over-blown popularity contest. The fact that, on occasion, a nerd or new kid in town prevails usually keeps that facet of the spectacle fairly fresh.
Then, the clothes! Ah, we love the fashion and, if you pay attention, you can walk away with a translatable beauty idea or two. We also, from time to time, enjoy bringing out our Mean Girl schadenfreude by watching someone take a sartorial fall from grace. Yes, no one wants to watch a bunch of lovely starlets in stunning, tasteful haute couture forge an unbroken chain of style-perfection. A little bit of ugly keeps us coming back year-after-year.
Above all, watching the telecast year-in, year-out, even when it stales into boredom or predicability, is just another way for an exceptionally close mother-daughter duo to keep up their bond. The last 3 telecasts have been slightly different:we no longer live in the same city and, as it happens on a Sunday evening, a visit is not practical. We still spend the evening together, watching the show separately but simultaneously, taking notes on anything that catches our fancy, makes us laugh or annoys us, syncing our impressions during the commercials, via phone.
This year the routine was altered further, unexpectedly:my live-in boyfriend, The Chef, off from work early, joined me.He will appreciate me noting that he does not, never has and never will, give a rat's ass about the Oscars. He watched because he was off, he was home, and, as I will not hesitate to mention to anyone reading this, because he has a huge, unapologetic, non-sexual man-crush on this year's host, Hugh Jackman.
He was off, he was home and, while not watching Mr. Jackman in awe and wonderment, he cooked dinner with the ease and skill that I swear only he alone possesses. So, this year's meal was actually, in fact, a meal, instead of a series of appetizers. I contributed dessert, we opened a bottle of wine, mom was on the line and, as fate would have it, a brand-new tradition was born. Here's hoping that the handsome, golden-voiced Aussie hosts next year as well.
The ritual that has outlasted them all, to this day, and with grace and good fortune will stand unbroken for many a year to come, till the as-yet generation has joined us in our revelry, is, of course, the yearly Oscars telecast.We enjoy, as a rule, most of the shows that make up Awards season, from the Emmys to The Golden Globes and BAFTA's. The People's Choice Awards are an exception; apparently we are not of the same mind as 'the people', whoever they may be.
By the time that The Hollywood Foreign Press throws their shindig, we are really geared up. That night is kind of a dry run for what comes a few weeks later. I would aver that the Oscars is like our Super Bowl but that would be markedly sexist and, as I really love football, untrue. Yet we anticipate it with the same sense of fervor and planning, down to the Awards Day Menu, which is usually every bit as fattening, casual and decadent as any Game Day tailgate party.No Oscar glitz and glamour filters down to the cuisine. Nachos, potato-skins,wings or corn dogs, brownies, the sort of caloric gore-fest that you save up for.
The point of watching the awards isn't just as an excuse to chow down on junk food. Other things factor into the celebration as well. Namely, clothing choice and, of course, who wins and who loses. As an ex-acting student and board-treader, the latter always fascinates me, as it would anyone, really, who finds psychological interest in that over-blown popularity contest. The fact that, on occasion, a nerd or new kid in town prevails usually keeps that facet of the spectacle fairly fresh.
Then, the clothes! Ah, we love the fashion and, if you pay attention, you can walk away with a translatable beauty idea or two. We also, from time to time, enjoy bringing out our Mean Girl schadenfreude by watching someone take a sartorial fall from grace. Yes, no one wants to watch a bunch of lovely starlets in stunning, tasteful haute couture forge an unbroken chain of style-perfection. A little bit of ugly keeps us coming back year-after-year.
Above all, watching the telecast year-in, year-out, even when it stales into boredom or predicability, is just another way for an exceptionally close mother-daughter duo to keep up their bond. The last 3 telecasts have been slightly different:we no longer live in the same city and, as it happens on a Sunday evening, a visit is not practical. We still spend the evening together, watching the show separately but simultaneously, taking notes on anything that catches our fancy, makes us laugh or annoys us, syncing our impressions during the commercials, via phone.
This year the routine was altered further, unexpectedly:my live-in boyfriend, The Chef, off from work early, joined me.He will appreciate me noting that he does not, never has and never will, give a rat's ass about the Oscars. He watched because he was off, he was home, and, as I will not hesitate to mention to anyone reading this, because he has a huge, unapologetic, non-sexual man-crush on this year's host, Hugh Jackman.
He was off, he was home and, while not watching Mr. Jackman in awe and wonderment, he cooked dinner with the ease and skill that I swear only he alone possesses. So, this year's meal was actually, in fact, a meal, instead of a series of appetizers. I contributed dessert, we opened a bottle of wine, mom was on the line and, as fate would have it, a brand-new tradition was born. Here's hoping that the handsome, golden-voiced Aussie hosts next year as well.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
An Ode, Two Days Late, in Non-Ode Form, to My Favourite Non-Conformist Oscar Winner (My Apologies Ms. Hepburn):Luise Rainer
Sunday night I was, as I am yearly on this day-of-days, curled up on my couch watching the Oscar telecast. The tradition was altered slightly this time, though quite positively, but that is the subject of a future post. The women and men gliding, strutting, finessing and charming their way down the red carpet and across the stage seemed, to my eyes, a different breed from times past, though the same beast. They were slim, glittering, glowing and as unflawed as perfect gems. There was not a genuine, gut-busting sartorial mis-step except, predictably, where it was expected: I am thinking of you as I type this, Mr. Rourke and Ms. Klum. They came, we saw and were, well, not a mote surprised by his disheveled anti-coif, dog-locket (RIP Loki), and sorry stand-in for a suit. Nor did we bat an eye over her stiffly structured, slightly wacky "Modernist-with-a-capital-M" gown. Even if it is a deviation from what everyone else is wearing, if it is expected, well, then, it's not really a risk, is it?
As I was watching everyone so thin, tanned and tall (although the latter is an illusion of the television cameras, to be sure), I couldn't help but wish that things were a bit messier, a bit less careful, a bit more truly glamorous. A bit more, say, 1929 or 1938. Back when it wasn't taken so seriously, when the women wore a celluloid patina but were, somehow, more individualistic, if only because they played to their own studio-enforced image.
Back then, during The Golden Age of Cinema that dwelt without conflict within the dark heart of the Great Depression, when you were different you were spectacularly different. A horde of publicity flacks couldn't hide it no matter how hard they tried or how much was at stake. That is your cue, Ms. Rainer.
Most people, if they have heard the name at all, are vaguely aware of only a fact or two about her. The first and most obvious being, that she is old. Very, very old. Fewer still may know that, at 99 years and 6 weeks, she is the oldest living Academy Award winner, having been the first to win two performance Oscars. Back-to-back. Take that, Spencer Tracy. Then there is, of course, the curse.
It doesn't exist but that hasn't stopped adherents of Schadenfreude from perpetuating that silliness for nearly 70 years. Her story is the origin of the belief that for many performers, winning an Oscar is career suicide. She blazed onto the Hollywood scene, fresh from the German stage, stooped to making movies, conquered the medium with her double-winning knockout before slinking off to oblivion a few short years later. That sounds more like the plot of a movie than real life.
Luise Rainer was a German-born stage actress, Reinhardt trained. To be Reinhardt-trained was to be seriously good at your craft, as he led all of Europe in stage-craft. She did eventually come to America, still in her twenties, getting her start opposite William Powell, among the cream of the MGM crop. She fell in love with leftist radical playwright Clifford Odets, whose life, character and plays were a particular obsession of my late teenage years. It was keenly unhappy, ending in divorce a few years later. She starred in a handful of big-budget, MGM critic's darlings, winning her statuettes for 'The Great Ziegfeld' (1937) and 'The Good Earth' (1938). The Hollywood career that started in 1935 was effectively over by 1938. She clashed with Louis B. Mayer and, to clash with the big man, while insisting on maintaining her privacy and outsider status, was her career suicide, not winning awards. She made a handful of film and television appearances post-1943 . She settled into a long second marriage which left her widowed 4 decades later.
She has also, over the years, made a handful of Academy Award-related appearances even though she does not, apparently, approve of the process. She was intensely talented and it is to Hollywood's shame and sure regret that it never bothered to showcase even a fraction of that talent. She was beautiful and graceful but did not care about her looks; she was stylish but did not care about trends or even what clothes she wore, yet wore them inexpressibly well, which somehow gives her a modern quality. She has lived a long life, most of it away from movie cameras and prying eyes. Yet she is still here, still fierce, still opinionated and always unapologetic for any mis-steps that she has taken. Mis-steps make a life, so why the hell not?
As I was watching everyone so thin, tanned and tall (although the latter is an illusion of the television cameras, to be sure), I couldn't help but wish that things were a bit messier, a bit less careful, a bit more truly glamorous. A bit more, say, 1929 or 1938. Back when it wasn't taken so seriously, when the women wore a celluloid patina but were, somehow, more individualistic, if only because they played to their own studio-enforced image.
Back then, during The Golden Age of Cinema that dwelt without conflict within the dark heart of the Great Depression, when you were different you were spectacularly different. A horde of publicity flacks couldn't hide it no matter how hard they tried or how much was at stake. That is your cue, Ms. Rainer.
Most people, if they have heard the name at all, are vaguely aware of only a fact or two about her. The first and most obvious being, that she is old. Very, very old. Fewer still may know that, at 99 years and 6 weeks, she is the oldest living Academy Award winner, having been the first to win two performance Oscars. Back-to-back. Take that, Spencer Tracy. Then there is, of course, the curse.
It doesn't exist but that hasn't stopped adherents of Schadenfreude from perpetuating that silliness for nearly 70 years. Her story is the origin of the belief that for many performers, winning an Oscar is career suicide. She blazed onto the Hollywood scene, fresh from the German stage, stooped to making movies, conquered the medium with her double-winning knockout before slinking off to oblivion a few short years later. That sounds more like the plot of a movie than real life.
Luise Rainer was a German-born stage actress, Reinhardt trained. To be Reinhardt-trained was to be seriously good at your craft, as he led all of Europe in stage-craft. She did eventually come to America, still in her twenties, getting her start opposite William Powell, among the cream of the MGM crop. She fell in love with leftist radical playwright Clifford Odets, whose life, character and plays were a particular obsession of my late teenage years. It was keenly unhappy, ending in divorce a few years later. She starred in a handful of big-budget, MGM critic's darlings, winning her statuettes for 'The Great Ziegfeld' (1937) and 'The Good Earth' (1938). The Hollywood career that started in 1935 was effectively over by 1938. She clashed with Louis B. Mayer and, to clash with the big man, while insisting on maintaining her privacy and outsider status, was her career suicide, not winning awards. She made a handful of film and television appearances post-1943 . She settled into a long second marriage which left her widowed 4 decades later.
She has also, over the years, made a handful of Academy Award-related appearances even though she does not, apparently, approve of the process. She was intensely talented and it is to Hollywood's shame and sure regret that it never bothered to showcase even a fraction of that talent. She was beautiful and graceful but did not care about her looks; she was stylish but did not care about trends or even what clothes she wore, yet wore them inexpressibly well, which somehow gives her a modern quality. She has lived a long life, most of it away from movie cameras and prying eyes. Yet she is still here, still fierce, still opinionated and always unapologetic for any mis-steps that she has taken. Mis-steps make a life, so why the hell not?
There Once Was a Girl
The talented, whimsically no-nonsense silent film comedienne Mabel Normand died 79 years ago yesterday. Her effervescence lit up early movie screens as the reigning funny lady of the flickers. She, along with the entire young industry, learned camera-acting the hard way, on her feet with the film rolling. At a time when making movies required a physical participation and recklessness almost entirely unthinkable for today's stars ( unless you are, perhaps, Daniel Craig ), even the most delicate flowers exerted, sweated and risked life and limb for the sake of economy, realism and speed.
Mabel learned to drive a car, not well but intoxicatingly fast, at a time when many men had never sat behind a wheel. She climbed up and on things, including the wing of that even newer mode of transportation, the aeroplane. She also went behind the camera, out of necessity and sheer why-the-hell-not-ness, before film-making was even film-making, before it became the near-exclusive purview of men. Even Chaplin, whose genius is more readily remembered than Mabel's, though none-the-greater, owed her more than his ego would ever admit. She helped teach him a thing or ten about being funny for the camera, of which he knew next to nothing before she waltzed his way and showed him how it was done.
She was model-pretty, a man-magnet who cared more for jewels and furs than settling down, much to the chagrin of Mack Sennett and countless other suitors and would-be Romeos. She caused some scandals the old-fashioned way ( by actually doing many of the crazy things that the papers and movie weeklies said she did) and others by knowing the wrong people ( she was involved, though not implicated, in the murder of faux-English Aristo director William Desmond Taylor). Her career never fully recovered from the mountain of bad press.By this time, her health and looks had been tragically undermined by increasing drug use and illness. A late marriage to star Lew Cody did nothing to stop her career from hemorrhaging.
She died of tuberculosis at only 37, many years a has-been.Be sure to check out the wonderful tribute on YouTube that is embedded to the right.Although they can only begin to hint at the talent, inventiveness, and kinetic beauty of Mabel, there are several other short clips available on that site. For any one that has ever seen the otherwise excellent film 'Chaplin' (1992, starring a sublime Robert Downey, Jr.), please try to erase Marisa Tomei's representation of Mabel Normand from your mind. However satisfactory you may find that performance, no stand-in could ever begin to capture the luminous energy, wit and appeal of the real woman. Thanks to YouTube, the lady can finally speak for herself to an even wider audience than she enjoyed in her own brilliant, unforgettable heyday.
Monday, February 23, 2009
For Starters: A Little Tale of (Near) Happenstance or:Jump First, Ask Questions Later
When I look out my windows I see bricks and, above the bricks, clouds. There are bricks and clouds in the foreground of my view, bricks and clouds in the distance;in fact, the only sights my eyes encompass,from the vantage of my little aerie, day in and day out, are bricks and clouds. No, I am not in prison, nor am I imprisoned.
I live in the industrial sector of the city. Our block of flats is amidst warehouses and factories,having once been home to a dress company.At the back of the building,which affords me my only external view, there is not a tree, a bush or the scraggliest patch of grass in residence. This is no hardship,as it is almost exactly how I envisioned my future adult surroundings when, as a child, I used to dream of becoming a writer.
I dreamt that dream long, hard and seriously ,past the point where I could think it feasible.Only in my dreams, which are plentiful and intense to only and cousin-less children, as I matured into young adulthood I was propelled back in time. No, I wasn't drafting a future with an impossible Benjamin Button-esque twist. I simply wanted to be the best kind of writer I could ever envision, the kind that I just didn't see represented around me.In other words, dead.
All of the writers I so admired, from such a young age, were dead or so old that they should--or at any moment could--be.I didn't want to be them in old age, naturally;I wanted to be them in their youth. Anita Loos, Katherine Mansfield, Zelda Fitzgerald ( the next best thing to being a writer was inspiring one to greatness, or so I believed then) and countless others but none more-so than Edna St. Vincent Millay.She was divine, delicious and so admired.By everyone. Even those who disliked her still admired her. Having that effect on people must be heady. And, to give me a bit of real hope, she looked a lot like me: little, redheaded, pale, and beautiful without being pretty. She was also a bohemian. Actually, her mother, sisters and seemingly everyone she knew were intellectuals or bohemians or, when fate really converged in just the right way, both.
Being black-sheep born and raised ( thanks, momma, in the best way!!), I knew the lifestyle I wanted to have when I read about it, even at that young age. Greenwich Village in the 1920's, with the occasional foray to that genuine, across-the-water Bohemia, Paris, was my ideal. I should have been a be-stockinged, be-flasked, bee-stung flapper, one with the added attraction of be-jewling those around her with words. I was robbed.I was cheated. How could fate be so stupid when a kid could figure it out? To this day, I maintain that I was born three-quarters of a century too late to have any fun.
What I wasn't born too late for was success, in art and lifestyle. I have, perhaps a bit belatedly, come to recognize, accept and embrace this fish-out-of water and place-out-of-time-ness to my talent and perspective. It has made me recognizably me and not like anyone else, then or now.
I haven't given up on all of my childish aspirations. I live in an old building that pre-dates the flapper-era, with brick walls and banged up wood floors, with its uncongenial but homey view. I live among well-off professionals instead of starving, snarky geniuses but that's only a small piece of the puzzle missing. As for those poetesses and novelists and girl rogues?
They still inspire me but as one working female artist to another. My admiration is perhaps a bit more prosaic these days--starving for food and publication isn't a whit more fun today than it was then, surely--but it is even more awed because, having long had the privilege of living a sort of modern version of their lives, I now know what fortitude it takes.They made it look whimsical, joyous and easy. It is never easy.
As a quick aside: Yesterday marked the 107th anniversary of the birth of Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fact of which I was only reminded yesterday evening. The title 1000 Follies was, as you may know if you have already read the 'About This Blog' section on the right, inspired by a phrase from one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems. If it were not for the Oscar telecast, this would have been written and posted last night;but then it would have been entirely different. I could have pre-written this post but that would have broken the only self-promise I have made about this blog:while ideas and inspiration may be gathered ahead of time, all writing will be done 'live',which is a rare opportunity artistically. Jump first, Ask Questions Later.
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