The Slacker Stalker Hall of Fame of Whacky Performance Art Spaces that Survived the San Francisco Dot Bomb Today Honors...
(drumroll)
A deep curtsy to the geniuses of...
CELLspace! ...for its transwoman-organized women's skills-building "do it herself" workshops, having creatively decorated iMacs for anyone to freely access the internet (regardless of how you look or if you have a home), for being a great place to have a rollerskating party or political puppetry workshop, and a reliable source of alternative circus entertainment. Their next endeavor, tonight, is an evening infoshare discussion on squatter's rights. Motto for the event: "don't let houses rot." I know they had a fundraiser in the Dot Bomb times to keep the space open, and since that usually spells DOOM for every other space, I bet they worked their asses off to stay. Plus they save money by never heating the place.
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Monday, February 03, 2003
Gross Vocab Builder Moment; or,
The Saponification of Mrs. Ellenbogen
Some people become worm food when they die, some people fish food. Some people, or at least one lady in the 19th century from Philly- SOAP.
The phenomenon is called adipocere: it turns some corpses into a waxy, soap-like substance, depending on factors such as humidity, temperature, the presence of clothing and bacterial activity. The fatter the person, the greater the chance saponification will occur.
Here's another article, but with gruesome photographs for your Monday morning viewing pleasure.
The Saponification of Mrs. Ellenbogen
Some people become worm food when they die, some people fish food. Some people, or at least one lady in the 19th century from Philly- SOAP.
The phenomenon is called adipocere: it turns some corpses into a waxy, soap-like substance, depending on factors such as humidity, temperature, the presence of clothing and bacterial activity. The fatter the person, the greater the chance saponification will occur.
Here's another article, but with gruesome photographs for your Monday morning viewing pleasure.
Sunday, February 02, 2003
John Lennon - a much publified Beatle
Out of Liddypol came this wonderfoul poem (from John Lennon In His Own Write, c. 1964) that I've been wanting to share with you, my responsible citizen readers, because of the clever and frisky use of the Latin verb "to love."
(Please do not truffle yourself to look for hidden meanings.)
Out of Liddypol came this wonderfoul poem (from John Lennon In His Own Write, c. 1964) that I've been wanting to share with you, my responsible citizen readers, because of the clever and frisky use of the Latin verb "to love."
Alec Speaking
He is putting it lithely when he says
Quobble in the Grass,
Strab he down the soddieflays
Amo amat amass;
Amonk amink a minibus,
Amarmylaidie Moon,
Amikky mendip multiplus
Amighty midgey spoon.
And so I traddled onward
Careing not a care
Onward, Onward, Onward.
Onward, my friends to victory and glory for the thirtyninth.
(Please do not truffle yourself to look for hidden meanings.)
Saturday, February 01, 2003
"Something Broke" - Reentry at Mach 18 - and a Love Spell
I was getting myself together to do a little blogging about love spells when I turned on NPR quietly and gradually these words pierced my sense of morning torpor like a fresh volley of the Chinese New Year firecrackers that woke me up at 7:30 am...
Now they are talking about the forensic investigation, and the potential danger to civilians who might try to handle debris that landed on their property.
The first article I came across declares the seven astronauts dead.
Watching the Blue Angels in their vertical aerobatics while sitting in a tarot workshop on interpreting The Lovers card, I suddenly grasped how much love is about the lurching, the sharp ascents and descents. You don't notice love until something forces it into a mercurial climb or fall. And then you understand that the tarot card The Lovers is not all about baked peaches with brown sugar delivered to your bedside with a tea rose in a vase. It's loss, and grief, and dramatic gestures, overacting. It is not a controlled, humble, balanced card. In fact, I've come to believe it represents nothing but the roller coaster of trust gained and lost, and that it has more to do with trust between two people than real understanding. You can trust a person, but do you ever really understand them?
Well seven families, a thousand close friends, and ten thousand people waking up in each succeeding time zone turning on their radios and TVs are feeling that lurch of a formation nose-dive. There is no understanding. And what trust we had in space flight has burned up in reentry. But then, as with Challenger, we will pick up our half-staff flags, hoist them high, and march on unquestioning. What, after all, does anyone know about space flight. As T.S. Eliot said, there is nothing but the trying.
And as in high flying space crafts, so in love. With that, I bring you lovelorn bloggers the formula I use for my very reliable love spells. (I don't do prosperity spells or finding-lost-object spells very well, but I am pretty much a sure thing for love spells and home-finding spells-- I fear loneliness and homelessness more than poverty and losing dear objects.) Remember that these seven astronauts did not fail in their mission: they dreamed, they did, they TRIED. In their heroic passing they give us an object lesson for daring to seek your heart's desire regardless of the consequences.
The basic set of rituals you need to do are 1. the clearing out, 2. the defining of non-negotiables, 3. the inviting in, and 4. the giving thanks.
1. The clearing out: EVERYONE has a love-relationship-conflict that needs to heal. Heal a little so that you have room to give a little. You know you have something to heal.
In meditative space, envision this: you go to the foot of a golden tree with honey for sap. Find a box and open it: find a protective robe from your spirit guide. Put it on and then find yourself in a crystal palace. This is a safe place. Call the spirits of the primary person who has hurt you in a conflict in a love-relationship (not necessarily a romance). Tell her/him everything in your heart that you want her/him to hear. Then thank her/him for bringing you this lesson. Then tell her/him that s/he can talk if s/he wants to. S/he may have things to say, s/he may not. Say
goodbye. Then either call in another spirit, or leave the crystal palace.
2. The Defining of Non-Negotiables: you know you have them.
Make a list of the things you absolutely can't live without in a love-partner. I recommend you make this as detailed as you want. The longest list I made still was answered, except for one or two key things, which I (at the time and later) realized were fair life-lessons for me. I DO RECOMMEND YOU SPECIFY GENDER if you care about that sort of thing. Some people have not defined gender and have quickly found their formerly-straight asses decked out in feathers and being marched down main street in a Gay Pride parade. This is something that you may or may not feel is a fortunate turn of events.
3. The Inviting In-- making these qualities YOU.
Now memorize your list. Chant it. Read it forwards and backwards outloud start-to-finish. Then take a spoonful of honey that you have on hand and eat it all up. You are in-toning, bringing IN TO YOURSELF the qualities you are seeking in another, and making yourself sticky and sweet like honey to that partner who is buzzing around looking for YOU. You want an honest partner? Time to make yourself as honest as you can be. Like attracts like. You may not dye your hair red if you are seeking a red-head, but you will get in touch with your inner-red-head, and that's never a bad thing to do.
4. The Giving Thanks--- don't forget your p's and q's!
The Goddess Oshun, the love goddess whose honey you ate, does appreciate your appreciation. When you get that partner that you called to you, please burn or bury your list of non-negotiables and say thank you to the forces that brought good love into your life.
I was getting myself together to do a little blogging about love spells when I turned on NPR quietly and gradually these words pierced my sense of morning torpor like a fresh volley of the Chinese New Year firecrackers that woke me up at 7:30 am...
Blackout
Mach 18
Reentry
Columbia
Debris
NASA
No information
No explosion
Only break-apart
Seven astronauts
I worked with them for a year and a half; there is no information as to whether they are alive.
Now they are talking about the forensic investigation, and the potential danger to civilians who might try to handle debris that landed on their property.
The first article I came across declares the seven astronauts dead.
Watching the Blue Angels in their vertical aerobatics while sitting in a tarot workshop on interpreting The Lovers card, I suddenly grasped how much love is about the lurching, the sharp ascents and descents. You don't notice love until something forces it into a mercurial climb or fall. And then you understand that the tarot card The Lovers is not all about baked peaches with brown sugar delivered to your bedside with a tea rose in a vase. It's loss, and grief, and dramatic gestures, overacting. It is not a controlled, humble, balanced card. In fact, I've come to believe it represents nothing but the roller coaster of trust gained and lost, and that it has more to do with trust between two people than real understanding. You can trust a person, but do you ever really understand them?
Well seven families, a thousand close friends, and ten thousand people waking up in each succeeding time zone turning on their radios and TVs are feeling that lurch of a formation nose-dive. There is no understanding. And what trust we had in space flight has burned up in reentry. But then, as with Challenger, we will pick up our half-staff flags, hoist them high, and march on unquestioning. What, after all, does anyone know about space flight. As T.S. Eliot said, there is nothing but the trying.
And as in high flying space crafts, so in love. With that, I bring you lovelorn bloggers the formula I use for my very reliable love spells. (I don't do prosperity spells or finding-lost-object spells very well, but I am pretty much a sure thing for love spells and home-finding spells-- I fear loneliness and homelessness more than poverty and losing dear objects.) Remember that these seven astronauts did not fail in their mission: they dreamed, they did, they TRIED. In their heroic passing they give us an object lesson for daring to seek your heart's desire regardless of the consequences.
The basic set of rituals you need to do are 1. the clearing out, 2. the defining of non-negotiables, 3. the inviting in, and 4. the giving thanks.
1. The clearing out: EVERYONE has a love-relationship-conflict that needs to heal. Heal a little so that you have room to give a little. You know you have something to heal.
In meditative space, envision this: you go to the foot of a golden tree with honey for sap. Find a box and open it: find a protective robe from your spirit guide. Put it on and then find yourself in a crystal palace. This is a safe place. Call the spirits of the primary person who has hurt you in a conflict in a love-relationship (not necessarily a romance). Tell her/him everything in your heart that you want her/him to hear. Then thank her/him for bringing you this lesson. Then tell her/him that s/he can talk if s/he wants to. S/he may have things to say, s/he may not. Say
goodbye. Then either call in another spirit, or leave the crystal palace.
2. The Defining of Non-Negotiables: you know you have them.
Make a list of the things you absolutely can't live without in a love-partner. I recommend you make this as detailed as you want. The longest list I made still was answered, except for one or two key things, which I (at the time and later) realized were fair life-lessons for me. I DO RECOMMEND YOU SPECIFY GENDER if you care about that sort of thing. Some people have not defined gender and have quickly found their formerly-straight asses decked out in feathers and being marched down main street in a Gay Pride parade. This is something that you may or may not feel is a fortunate turn of events.
3. The Inviting In-- making these qualities YOU.
Now memorize your list. Chant it. Read it forwards and backwards outloud start-to-finish. Then take a spoonful of honey that you have on hand and eat it all up. You are in-toning, bringing IN TO YOURSELF the qualities you are seeking in another, and making yourself sticky and sweet like honey to that partner who is buzzing around looking for YOU. You want an honest partner? Time to make yourself as honest as you can be. Like attracts like. You may not dye your hair red if you are seeking a red-head, but you will get in touch with your inner-red-head, and that's never a bad thing to do.
4. The Giving Thanks--- don't forget your p's and q's!
The Goddess Oshun, the love goddess whose honey you ate, does appreciate your appreciation. When you get that partner that you called to you, please burn or bury your list of non-negotiables and say thank you to the forces that brought good love into your life.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
A Little on Padiddle
Also: Padaddle, Pididdle, Pediddle, Piddiddle, Piddidle, Perdiddle, etc.
US slang term for car with one headlight. Origin unknown. After a little Googling I've seen it attributed as a term from the mid-1940's, early 1950's, the 1960's, the LATE 1960's, and originating from (or being current in) Maine, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Western New York, Connecticut, and the NYC suburbs. Seeing one and saying "padiddle" entitles you to get some good luck, make a wish, touch your car roof, get a kiss, give a slap, or make someone take off an article of clothing, depending on the company with you in the car. The earliest version, however, was not STRIP padiddle, but kissing padiddle. Today you can call "padiddle" if you see a woman with one erect nipple.
One linguist thinks it goes along with the host of candle-related superstitions that originated with carriage travel, when candles were the headlights.
Another linguist went to TOWN trying to figure out the correct (or most correct) way to spell padiddle, which is uniquely suited to many spellings:
In the end the vote went to "padiddle" because it had the most hits on Google. Oh Google, how you've shaped us.
I won't even get into the different words for cars with a broken taillight. OK, OK, I will. It's either "padungle" or "paduncle."
I used to see a car with a headlight out and make a wish. Now I just see a dead light and shudder to think that this driver is someday certainly going to come racing up invisibly on my right at 90 mph in one of the Bay Area's Darwinian Merge Mazes on some rainy night and make me One with My Gods in a big steaming pile of twisted burning metal and rubber. I tried going back to making wishes, and the only one I could articulate in that heartbeat is "oh god let them drive safely and steer clear of me until they get that headlight fixed." California city driving has made me into a total basket case on the road. Being in a slow-speed low-impact 5-car pile up on Highway 80 coming off the bridge at rush hour two weeks ago didn't help.
The American Dialect Society - my source for most of this stuff- has investigated the origins of Padiddle-- their discussion list has a completely and delightfully searchable archive, for hours of entertainment. From the ADS archives:
A collection of "padiddle" references in texts, including an article posing the idea that padiddle comes from "perdido" (Spanish for "lost").
Another collection of links, including a Washington Post article, and another article that links padiddle with perdido, specifically the 1940's song by Duke Ellington of that name.
Also: Padaddle, Pididdle, Pediddle, Piddiddle, Piddidle, Perdiddle, etc.
US slang term for car with one headlight. Origin unknown. After a little Googling I've seen it attributed as a term from the mid-1940's, early 1950's, the 1960's, the LATE 1960's, and originating from (or being current in) Maine, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Western New York, Connecticut, and the NYC suburbs. Seeing one and saying "padiddle" entitles you to get some good luck, make a wish, touch your car roof, get a kiss, give a slap, or make someone take off an article of clothing, depending on the company with you in the car. The earliest version, however, was not STRIP padiddle, but kissing padiddle. Today you can call "padiddle" if you see a woman with one erect nipple.
-
A very serious introduction to the game of Padiddle in its traditional form.
- The rules for "extreme padiddle."
One linguist thinks it goes along with the host of candle-related superstitions that originated with carriage travel, when candles were the headlights.
If a candle suddenly goes out by itself, it is an omen of a death in the family.
It seems possible that a passing coach or carriage with an extinguished flame might have required an antidote (the kiss). On the other hand the tradition that an accidentally snuffed candle means an impending wedding might have prompted a kiss for a entirely different reason.
Another linguist went to TOWN trying to figure out the correct (or most correct) way to spell padiddle, which is uniquely suited to many spellings:
How to spell a lax vowel (which, in my /f/ environment, after a fricative and before a stop, may actually devoice or disappear) in a "nonwritten" item is an interesting question. When I stress every syllable, I get an "uh" (the vowel of "nut") in the first syllable. No help for the spelling at all.
In the end the vote went to "padiddle" because it had the most hits on Google. Oh Google, how you've shaped us.
I won't even get into the different words for cars with a broken taillight. OK, OK, I will. It's either "padungle" or "paduncle."
I used to see a car with a headlight out and make a wish. Now I just see a dead light and shudder to think that this driver is someday certainly going to come racing up invisibly on my right at 90 mph in one of the Bay Area's Darwinian Merge Mazes on some rainy night and make me One with My Gods in a big steaming pile of twisted burning metal and rubber. I tried going back to making wishes, and the only one I could articulate in that heartbeat is "oh god let them drive safely and steer clear of me until they get that headlight fixed." California city driving has made me into a total basket case on the road. Being in a slow-speed low-impact 5-car pile up on Highway 80 coming off the bridge at rush hour two weeks ago didn't help.
The American Dialect Society - my source for most of this stuff- has investigated the origins of Padiddle-- their discussion list has a completely and delightfully searchable archive, for hours of entertainment. From the ADS archives:
A collection of "padiddle" references in texts, including an article posing the idea that padiddle comes from "perdido" (Spanish for "lost").
Another collection of links, including a Washington Post article, and another article that links padiddle with perdido, specifically the 1940's song by Duke Ellington of that name.
Friday, January 24, 2003
It's Official: The War is CANCELLED!
Today the Lake Merritt lighting authority mostly completed taking down the red, white and blue lights from around the lake. They were rainbow colors (sort of) for East Bay Gay Pride in August, and then about a week later they changed the lights to red, white and blue for September 11. Then they were red, white and blue for Thanksgiving, then they were red, white and blue for Diwali, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Solstice, and Christmas. The whole time I was guessing that they were up to support our troops in their unheroic swoop into Iraq, but today THEY WERE BACK TO THEIR OLD COLOR. A nice off-white. So, the authorities have spoken. The war must have been cancelled. They wouldn't take down this three and a half mile long "necklace of lights" involving twelve thousand or more bulbs unless it was so. Tomorrow they will finish turning it peaceful white, which it will remain until August when it will probably turn rainbow again.
I love Lake Merritt. The brown pelican are a bit pushy around the small black sea birds (cormorants, I think), but mostly it's the geese causing problems with the joggers who wipe out cutting across the goose-poop-laden grass. But it's all worth it when I see traffic slow to a stop next to the lake to let a long train of geese floppyfooting their way across four lanes of blacktop. And though the pelicans are big and splashy there's only 5,000 mating pairs left, so I won't resent their taking up some space.
From Databay:
This is the only salt water lake in the center of an American city, perhaps in any city in the world. As far back as 1870, Lake Merritt was declared America's first state game refuge and today is home to leopard sharks, striped bass, different types of ducks, sea anemones, mussels, herons, egrets and a resident population of Canadian geese. The lake is flushed twice a day by the tidal action of Oakland Inner Harbor and San Francisco Bay.
The Birds of Lake Merritt
Here's the vital statistics for Lake Merrit from the Lake Merritt Institute web site.
And click here for entertaining Oakland and Lake Merritt factoids by Nonchalance.
P.S. The Slacker Stalker Low-Down on Adaptation
Lesbian Movie Standard Score: zero (i.e. no two female characters have any one conversation at all, let alone a conversation about something other than a man).
The Gay Character: Nicholas Cage as the main character is working out a narcissitic relationship with himself through his twin brother, and since narcissism has long been considered the root of homosexuality, I'm making him the gay character.
The Jesus Figure: Also the character(s) played by Nicholas Cage. I don't want to say too much, but he suffers, has the passion in the garden the night before the execution, dies and rises again and is redeemed by love.
And my recommendation? See it. See it at least twice. See it alone and then see it with friends. Or see it with a date, then alone, and then with friends.
This movie completely rocked. I didn't remember anything from the reviews or previews, and so I didn't see anything coming. I, and many of the San Francisco Thursday night audience, laughed a lot, and laughed AND clapped at some points. At very subtle, good humor, too, not just the crazy action that happens later on. This movie was seamless, except for having the Nicholas Cage character drive out of the parking garage at the end in the lane that ends in tire-spikes. I don't think they meant those signs to be visible to the camera.
Today the Lake Merritt lighting authority mostly completed taking down the red, white and blue lights from around the lake. They were rainbow colors (sort of) for East Bay Gay Pride in August, and then about a week later they changed the lights to red, white and blue for September 11. Then they were red, white and blue for Thanksgiving, then they were red, white and blue for Diwali, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Solstice, and Christmas. The whole time I was guessing that they were up to support our troops in their unheroic swoop into Iraq, but today THEY WERE BACK TO THEIR OLD COLOR. A nice off-white. So, the authorities have spoken. The war must have been cancelled. They wouldn't take down this three and a half mile long "necklace of lights" involving twelve thousand or more bulbs unless it was so. Tomorrow they will finish turning it peaceful white, which it will remain until August when it will probably turn rainbow again.
I love Lake Merritt. The brown pelican are a bit pushy around the small black sea birds (cormorants, I think), but mostly it's the geese causing problems with the joggers who wipe out cutting across the goose-poop-laden grass. But it's all worth it when I see traffic slow to a stop next to the lake to let a long train of geese floppyfooting their way across four lanes of blacktop. And though the pelicans are big and splashy there's only 5,000 mating pairs left, so I won't resent their taking up some space.
From Databay:
This is the only salt water lake in the center of an American city, perhaps in any city in the world. As far back as 1870, Lake Merritt was declared America's first state game refuge and today is home to leopard sharks, striped bass, different types of ducks, sea anemones, mussels, herons, egrets and a resident population of Canadian geese. The lake is flushed twice a day by the tidal action of Oakland Inner Harbor and San Francisco Bay.
The Birds of Lake Merritt
Here's the vital statistics for Lake Merrit from the Lake Merritt Institute web site.
And click here for entertaining Oakland and Lake Merritt factoids by Nonchalance.
P.S. The Slacker Stalker Low-Down on Adaptation
Lesbian Movie Standard Score: zero (i.e. no two female characters have any one conversation at all, let alone a conversation about something other than a man).
The Gay Character: Nicholas Cage as the main character is working out a narcissitic relationship with himself through his twin brother, and since narcissism has long been considered the root of homosexuality, I'm making him the gay character.
The Jesus Figure: Also the character(s) played by Nicholas Cage. I don't want to say too much, but he suffers, has the passion in the garden the night before the execution, dies and rises again and is redeemed by love.
And my recommendation? See it. See it at least twice. See it alone and then see it with friends. Or see it with a date, then alone, and then with friends.
This movie completely rocked. I didn't remember anything from the reviews or previews, and so I didn't see anything coming. I, and many of the San Francisco Thursday night audience, laughed a lot, and laughed AND clapped at some points. At very subtle, good humor, too, not just the crazy action that happens later on. This movie was seamless, except for having the Nicholas Cage character drive out of the parking garage at the end in the lane that ends in tire-spikes. I don't think they meant those signs to be visible to the camera.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Blogger Pot Luck
The first dish: OUTRAGE- at the perception of popular approval of Bush, with a side dish of what did I expect. My office is hosting a Quebecois human rights researcher who has lived for many years in Western and Eastern Europe. She is astonished (pleasantly) to find out that there is actually an anti-war movement, and that the US is not 100% behind our Oily Shrub and his campaign to piss off the whole world. I was privately outraged that a researcher, someone who is smart enough to read non-mainstream news and know that network TV doesn't illustrate the average US American's life, would somehow believe that we didn't have an anti-war movement. What I'm saying to my non-US readers (if there happened to be one, ever) is that OF COURSE THERE IS AN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT you idiots. We didn't elect this guy and I don't know where they are getting his approval statistics except out of a range of questions like "answer a or b: A) I want to kill the president and be executed in turn for treason, or B) The president is performing adequately at this time." Read your Indymedia and this wonderful pamphlet "5 Things You Can Do to Make America More Secure" -a parody of Homeland Security literature- if you need reassurance that we're pissed at our president, too.
The second dish: WONDROUS RESISTANCE- did you ever think about the verb "to maroon"? Does it refer to the color of your skin when you are left out on an island to die? The Smithosonian published this short article describing the Maroon tribal society, formed by escaped slaves in the mountains of the West Indies and South America, spreading among the lands of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Mexico and Suriname. One source (a modern annotation to a 1790 sermon criticizing the French Revolution as a bunch of Maroons) connects the name with the tribes via the French marron, from Spanish cimarron meaning "wild," from cima- "a mountain summit." Another article on the Maroons from the Smithsonian says that the name became equated first with runaway cattle in Spain before it was applied to the runaway African slaves. They waged war for their independence and in 1739 signed a treaty in their own favor. "To maroon" someone at one point in history meant leaving a sailor behind on an island where the fierce Maroons might find them. Their culture, retaining African music, weaving, and matrilineal descendency, remains today in small rural villages. Read the side-bar articles on Encyclopedia.com or "Slave Resistance: A Caribbean Study" for more scholarship on these breathtaking rebels.
The third dish: A POINT WITH A VIEW- a tasty castle on the Croatian peninsula. At the moment I'm actually stalking Slovenia to the point of planning an overnight in a hotel built in this 18th century castle 30 minutes' drive south of the border before taking on the land-of-my-dreams. I'm starting Croatian lessons with a tutor in preparation. I'm saving Slovenian lessons for when I find a Slovenian to teach me. It's such a great country that there isn't a much of a Slovene immigrant community here in the US to provide language tutors.
The last dish- dessert!- SPONTANEOUS HEROS: the Automatic Crime Fighting Duo Generator The answer to the dry inkwell of the aspiring mainstream screenplay writer: "He's a suave Jewish librarian with a secret. She's a violent out-of-work former first lady with a knack for trouble." They Fight Crime!
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Spirited Away from Berkeley to Japan to Russia
I knew I had to see this latest movie by Hayao Miyazaki on the big screen. I have never gotten to see My Neighbor Totoro on the big screen, and only got to see Princess Mononoke once in a theater, and then in a big empty cold cheap-seats theater with bad sound in Santa Cruz, the last place playing it in the Bay Area. It cost me a $30 Berkeley parking ticket in a loading zone (in front of an abandoned building!): 2 pm on Saturday is when the entire surrounding three hundred miles of suburbs all drive in to shop and see movies. But luckily that $30 plus the $6 at the California theater door got me and a tightly clustered bunch of fans all the way from Berkeley to Japan to Russia.
You see, Spirited Away is a transporting film. I won't give it a real review, because it is in it's own genre, it's own category, unless you compare it with Totoro or Mononoke. It compares well with them. So how did we get from the Japanese bath house full of Japanese spirits and gods getting their cleansing sweats on to Russia? The elevator to the top floor. Yu-Baba, the mistress of the bath house, is Baba -Yaga! The guardian of the waters of life, prone to hiring young girls to do impossible tasks, and often depicted as having twin sisters, Yu-Baba even looks Russian, in a charicatured way. Her living quarters look royal, a mix of rich red and gold that could be just as easily Russian as Japanese.
Being a fan of this oldest of old Slavic mythic characters-- even believed to be a vestigial form of an ancient water-guardian spirit-- I went on-line to find the discussions that must be taking place about the link between Yu-Baba and Baba-Yaga, just in case other people saw more correspondences to Russian myth in this wonderful tapestry of characters. I didn't find much discussion beyond people pointing out that the Babas are similar, but I DID find this:
The Sor LaLune Fairy Tale Pages --- "A portal to the realm of fairy tale and folklore studies featuring annotated fairy tales." Including the histories of popular fairy tales! I found the discussion board where published authors were directing high school students to chapters on the anti-semitic roots of Rumpelstiltskin, and a discussion on the usage of "female cruelty" to enforce the cultural norm for women to be passive.
In that latter conversation someone pointed out how Miyazaki- who doesn't have purely cruel female characters- is writing for an Eastern (i.e. Pacific/ Asia) audience, people who are more comfortable with ambiguously good/ evil mixed characters. It's possible to have sympathy for almost any character in a Miyazaki story. Baba Yaga and Yu-Baba share this ambiguity, floating between generous and greedy, forgiving/ loving, and defensive/ vengeful. This makes me again think that Russia is more Asian than most people would expect. Their oldest mythic character may even have roots in Siberian or Near-Eastern places, where the myth tellers for centuries past the birth of Jesus still saw (still see) the forces of nature as negotiable, instead of Earth Spirit = BAD, Sky Spirit = GOOD as Judeo-Christian-influenced culture would usually have it.
Since you are ALL wondering, I won't leave you hanging. Spirited Away most definitely and easily meets the Lesbian Movie Standard (once more, the LMS requires a movie to have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man).
I knew I had to see this latest movie by Hayao Miyazaki on the big screen. I have never gotten to see My Neighbor Totoro on the big screen, and only got to see Princess Mononoke once in a theater, and then in a big empty cold cheap-seats theater with bad sound in Santa Cruz, the last place playing it in the Bay Area. It cost me a $30 Berkeley parking ticket in a loading zone (in front of an abandoned building!): 2 pm on Saturday is when the entire surrounding three hundred miles of suburbs all drive in to shop and see movies. But luckily that $30 plus the $6 at the California theater door got me and a tightly clustered bunch of fans all the way from Berkeley to Japan to Russia.
You see, Spirited Away is a transporting film. I won't give it a real review, because it is in it's own genre, it's own category, unless you compare it with Totoro or Mononoke. It compares well with them. So how did we get from the Japanese bath house full of Japanese spirits and gods getting their cleansing sweats on to Russia? The elevator to the top floor. Yu-Baba, the mistress of the bath house, is Baba -Yaga! The guardian of the waters of life, prone to hiring young girls to do impossible tasks, and often depicted as having twin sisters, Yu-Baba even looks Russian, in a charicatured way. Her living quarters look royal, a mix of rich red and gold that could be just as easily Russian as Japanese.
Being a fan of this oldest of old Slavic mythic characters-- even believed to be a vestigial form of an ancient water-guardian spirit-- I went on-line to find the discussions that must be taking place about the link between Yu-Baba and Baba-Yaga, just in case other people saw more correspondences to Russian myth in this wonderful tapestry of characters. I didn't find much discussion beyond people pointing out that the Babas are similar, but I DID find this:
The Sor LaLune Fairy Tale Pages --- "A portal to the realm of fairy tale and folklore studies featuring annotated fairy tales." Including the histories of popular fairy tales! I found the discussion board where published authors were directing high school students to chapters on the anti-semitic roots of Rumpelstiltskin, and a discussion on the usage of "female cruelty" to enforce the cultural norm for women to be passive.
In that latter conversation someone pointed out how Miyazaki- who doesn't have purely cruel female characters- is writing for an Eastern (i.e. Pacific/ Asia) audience, people who are more comfortable with ambiguously good/ evil mixed characters. It's possible to have sympathy for almost any character in a Miyazaki story. Baba Yaga and Yu-Baba share this ambiguity, floating between generous and greedy, forgiving/ loving, and defensive/ vengeful. This makes me again think that Russia is more Asian than most people would expect. Their oldest mythic character may even have roots in Siberian or Near-Eastern places, where the myth tellers for centuries past the birth of Jesus still saw (still see) the forces of nature as negotiable, instead of Earth Spirit = BAD, Sky Spirit = GOOD as Judeo-Christian-influenced culture would usually have it.
Since you are ALL wondering, I won't leave you hanging. Spirited Away most definitely and easily meets the Lesbian Movie Standard (once more, the LMS requires a movie to have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man).
Monday, January 13, 2003
Why Didn't Anyone TELL Me That American Football is as Gay as a Judy Garland Memorial in Greenwich Village?
I mean, it is gay, gay, gay. Flamboyantly, lip-puckeringly, feather-boa-flippingly gay. Violent but gay. Like the Stonewall Riots but televized. I had no idea. I stopped watching TV sports when I moved away from home and didn't have my mother around making me watch it (as well as learn to catch and throw). So this weekend I was sitting around with a lezzie friend and her mother, who raised HER to love football, and had the biggest blast watching these beefy guys in reflective spandex manhandling eachother with SO MUCH obvious affection and pleasure. And the TATTOOS! Somehow I don't remember either the shininess of the stretch fabric OR the body decoration from the TV football of the 1970's and 1980's.
So now I can wholeheartedly root for my hometown Raiders as they strut their shiny boy stuff all the way to the top of a writhing pile of Tennessee punk-ass Titans. Hint to the Titans: they seem to like to BURY PEOPLE under big mounds of themselves. They do it with affection, but really, you could get hurt, so strap on your extra thick butt protectors!
Here is all the LGBT American Football team information you need to go have yourself your own big gay puppypile of overstimulated muscular sweaty bodies in spandex. Yum.
I mean, it is gay, gay, gay. Flamboyantly, lip-puckeringly, feather-boa-flippingly gay. Violent but gay. Like the Stonewall Riots but televized. I had no idea. I stopped watching TV sports when I moved away from home and didn't have my mother around making me watch it (as well as learn to catch and throw). So this weekend I was sitting around with a lezzie friend and her mother, who raised HER to love football, and had the biggest blast watching these beefy guys in reflective spandex manhandling eachother with SO MUCH obvious affection and pleasure. And the TATTOOS! Somehow I don't remember either the shininess of the stretch fabric OR the body decoration from the TV football of the 1970's and 1980's.
So now I can wholeheartedly root for my hometown Raiders as they strut their shiny boy stuff all the way to the top of a writhing pile of Tennessee punk-ass Titans. Hint to the Titans: they seem to like to BURY PEOPLE under big mounds of themselves. They do it with affection, but really, you could get hurt, so strap on your extra thick butt protectors!
Here is all the LGBT American Football team information you need to go have yourself your own big gay puppypile of overstimulated muscular sweaty bodies in spandex. Yum.
Monday, January 06, 2003
Fainting with Frida
You just never know how you internalize someone else's pain experience when you are so close to them that their nausea makes you throw up. Well, my partner died in October, 2001, and for a while I misspoke and said that I died, or we died, because I couldn't accept the truth of the words "she died." She had breast and bone cancer. Her long bones didn't crumble first, so she could still walk until the end. But her neck, hips, and pelvis were starting to crumble, and when her pain medication wore off, well, you wouldn't want even your lover to be alive in that condition. The pain meds weren't enough and she overdosed on tranquilizer to end the pain. I have rare moments of being really glad that her pain is over. Watching the movie Frida, about Frida Kahlo, brought on one of those moments. And a fainting and nausea spell in me, and an epileptic spell in someone else. I made it through The Hours- with its terminal illness sufferer's suicide- because of the awful droning Philip Glass soundtrack that kept me from getting wrapped up in it too much. I cried, but I didn't get dizzy and have to go sit on the floor in a bathroom stall (shaking & sweating) like I had to after the scene where Frida tries to walk without a cane despite her multiply fractured pelvis and spine. If only Salma Hayek had given up a little intensity to a droning weird soundtrack.
So, soes Frida meet the Lesbian Movie Standard? (See yesterday's blog for the lowdown on the LMS.)
Barely barely. Salma trails off to another scene twice with a conversation between Frida and another woman (her sister and Diego's ex-wife) FINALLY turning away from Diego or the sister's abusive husband to the matter of work or money. The mother being asked if the melons were ripe by the sister and the mother saying to give them a few more days- this might count if this weren't a movie about a bisexual artist who had lots of women in her life. Mind you, I really should recuse myself from judging this movie, since I had to leave the theater for about fifteen minutes. But really, if Frida wasn't fucking women she was talking with them about Diego.
The Jesus Figure in Frida? Duh, Frida. Suffered, redeemed (remarried, at least) and rose from the dead.
The Gay Figure in Frida? Duh, Frida. Bi to the bone, actually. But there's a sea of straightness around her. You'd think she didn't know any lesbians. Unless there was a happy lezzie scene when I was in the bathroom.
Should you go see it? Absolutely, if only for the puppet sequence by the Brothers Quay.
Now I know what's nagging at the dark corners of your mind...
How About the New Pedro Almodovar Movie Talk To Her? Does that meet the LMS?
I'm happy to say YES, yes it does. The dance teacher having a scene alone with coma girl, talking with her, helping her do stretches, saves this movie from a negative LMS rating.
The Jesus Figure of Talk To Her? Coma girl Alicia. Died, suffered, and born again.
The Gay Figure? Actually, I'd say our protagonist Marco, because of his love for the antagonist. I don't want to spoil this movie for anyone. This is a very gay movie all around. Not very lezzie, but gay gay gay.
Now everyone go see The Hours. Viva La Lezbiance!
You just never know how you internalize someone else's pain experience when you are so close to them that their nausea makes you throw up. Well, my partner died in October, 2001, and for a while I misspoke and said that I died, or we died, because I couldn't accept the truth of the words "she died." She had breast and bone cancer. Her long bones didn't crumble first, so she could still walk until the end. But her neck, hips, and pelvis were starting to crumble, and when her pain medication wore off, well, you wouldn't want even your lover to be alive in that condition. The pain meds weren't enough and she overdosed on tranquilizer to end the pain. I have rare moments of being really glad that her pain is over. Watching the movie Frida, about Frida Kahlo, brought on one of those moments. And a fainting and nausea spell in me, and an epileptic spell in someone else. I made it through The Hours- with its terminal illness sufferer's suicide- because of the awful droning Philip Glass soundtrack that kept me from getting wrapped up in it too much. I cried, but I didn't get dizzy and have to go sit on the floor in a bathroom stall (shaking & sweating) like I had to after the scene where Frida tries to walk without a cane despite her multiply fractured pelvis and spine. If only Salma Hayek had given up a little intensity to a droning weird soundtrack.
So, soes Frida meet the Lesbian Movie Standard? (See yesterday's blog for the lowdown on the LMS.)
Barely barely. Salma trails off to another scene twice with a conversation between Frida and another woman (her sister and Diego's ex-wife) FINALLY turning away from Diego or the sister's abusive husband to the matter of work or money. The mother being asked if the melons were ripe by the sister and the mother saying to give them a few more days- this might count if this weren't a movie about a bisexual artist who had lots of women in her life. Mind you, I really should recuse myself from judging this movie, since I had to leave the theater for about fifteen minutes. But really, if Frida wasn't fucking women she was talking with them about Diego.
The Jesus Figure in Frida? Duh, Frida. Suffered, redeemed (remarried, at least) and rose from the dead.
The Gay Figure in Frida? Duh, Frida. Bi to the bone, actually. But there's a sea of straightness around her. You'd think she didn't know any lesbians. Unless there was a happy lezzie scene when I was in the bathroom.
Should you go see it? Absolutely, if only for the puppet sequence by the Brothers Quay.
Now I know what's nagging at the dark corners of your mind...
How About the New Pedro Almodovar Movie Talk To Her? Does that meet the LMS?
I'm happy to say YES, yes it does. The dance teacher having a scene alone with coma girl, talking with her, helping her do stretches, saves this movie from a negative LMS rating.
The Jesus Figure of Talk To Her? Coma girl Alicia. Died, suffered, and born again.
The Gay Figure? Actually, I'd say our protagonist Marco, because of his love for the antagonist. I don't want to spoil this movie for anyone. This is a very gay movie all around. Not very lezzie, but gay gay gay.
Now everyone go see The Hours. Viva La Lezbiance!
Sunday, January 05, 2003
Tallying Up With The Lesbian Movie Standard
Yes, I've had a slow holiday season, and I've watched a lot of movies. As long as I brought up the Lesbian Movie Standard (at the tail end of yesterday's stalking Judy Holliday report-back), I might as well catch you up with the running tally. But first, about the Lesbian Movie Standard. From the top.
Q. What is the Lesbian Movie Standard?
A. To have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man.
Q. Why ask this of a movie?
A. Because the movie marketers did a study and found that females identify as easily with male and female protagonists with nearly equal intensity; males, however, have been shown to exclusively identify with male protagonists (at least so far as they will admit on a marketer's survey) so movie makers have no financial incentive to A) have any female roles, much less B) have TWO female roles. And two females having a serious non-boy-centered conversation on the screen is a rarity. You would think females' lives revolved around men. Or that there are no female actors who need jobs. Even Meryl Streep (according to an interview I saw a few years ago) has trouble getting work in mainstream movies. She makes very little money and works hardly at all compared to the actors with penises. So, the Lesbian Movie Standard, which might seem ludicrously easy to meet, is something modern mainstream movies almost never fulfill, I have found. Think for a minute, how many all-male movie casts have you seen? The Shawshank Redemption was an excellent movie with no women in the cast, unless non-speaking extras. I could go on- they are rather easy to find. Now, how many all-female casts have you seen on a movie screen? Outside the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival? Me, outside the festival, I think I've seen none.
Q. Who came up with the Lesbian Movie Standard?
A. I picked it up from a movie reviewer from some lezzie rag like Lesbians on the Loose (from Australia). Or maybe Curve. I hate "Girlfriends" for being all fluff and for Ed in Chief Heather Findlay editing Kris' obituary shittily (even meanly), so if I got it from there I'd still give Curve the credit.
The Tally
In No Particular Order
NEW MOVIES FIRST:
The Two Towers: duh, no.
The Hours: beaucoups conversations on serious topics between many different women characters. An orgy of female verbage.
Maid in Manhattan: surprisingly, yes. The management position discussions. Go, J-Lo! Out Of Sight didn't meet the LMS but it showed how J-Lo can rock and roll on the screen. So it's still one of my fave movies. ("You wanted to tussle, we tussled." ~~sizzle~~)
NEWISH MOVIES:
Magnolia: surprisingly, no. If the mother and daughter had made two sentences of conversation after the "Mommy!" exclamation... but no, it was almost as though the director was making a statement by omitting any direct interaction between females throughout this long and exquisite movie.
The Shipping News: unsurprisingly, no. I would give it props for having a scene with Julianne Moore playing the accordian, though.
Men In Black 2: again, unsurprisingly, no. But please do rent the DVD if you ever have an entire day to kill. Many hours of extras.
Y Tu Mama Tambien: no. But props for NOT showing the heroine becoming decrepit, throwing up and snowed under by morphine drip. If they were more conservative, they could have gone that extra shitty mile to underline the plot's punishing outcome that allows us to excuse/ suspend judgement of the heroine's remarkable steps towards self-determination. But why couldn't they have let her thrive, or even start a brothel for the under-twenty set on the coast?
Josie and the Pussycats: okay, it's kinda old now. But YES, thankfully, yes.
Legally Blonde: duh, yes. Go Reese!
Election: again, kinda old, but as long as we're watching Reese fill the prodigious boots of Judy Holliday, yes. She discusses election strategy with her mom.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding: read my review of this one. Yes, by a hairsbreadth, it meets the LMS. Her grandma telling about HER wedding, passing on the story of the family. I have to give it props for as of the end of November 2002 becoming the highest earning romantic comedy of all time (beating Pretty Woman), and being a production made on a low budget and under the control of the female protagonist, who was telling a fictionalization of her own life.
NOW THE REALLY OLD ONES:
Every Judy Holliday movie listed in my blog yesterday (except The Marrying Kind, which was stolen from my local video store so I haven't seen it yet) has been approved as meeting the Lesbian Movie Standard. Rock on, wherever you are, Judy!
Yes, I've had a slow holiday season, and I've watched a lot of movies. As long as I brought up the Lesbian Movie Standard (at the tail end of yesterday's stalking Judy Holliday report-back), I might as well catch you up with the running tally. But first, about the Lesbian Movie Standard. From the top.
Q. What is the Lesbian Movie Standard?
A. To have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man.
Q. Why ask this of a movie?
A. Because the movie marketers did a study and found that females identify as easily with male and female protagonists with nearly equal intensity; males, however, have been shown to exclusively identify with male protagonists (at least so far as they will admit on a marketer's survey) so movie makers have no financial incentive to A) have any female roles, much less B) have TWO female roles. And two females having a serious non-boy-centered conversation on the screen is a rarity. You would think females' lives revolved around men. Or that there are no female actors who need jobs. Even Meryl Streep (according to an interview I saw a few years ago) has trouble getting work in mainstream movies. She makes very little money and works hardly at all compared to the actors with penises. So, the Lesbian Movie Standard, which might seem ludicrously easy to meet, is something modern mainstream movies almost never fulfill, I have found. Think for a minute, how many all-male movie casts have you seen? The Shawshank Redemption was an excellent movie with no women in the cast, unless non-speaking extras. I could go on- they are rather easy to find. Now, how many all-female casts have you seen on a movie screen? Outside the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival? Me, outside the festival, I think I've seen none.
Q. Who came up with the Lesbian Movie Standard?
A. I picked it up from a movie reviewer from some lezzie rag like Lesbians on the Loose (from Australia). Or maybe Curve. I hate "Girlfriends" for being all fluff and for Ed in Chief Heather Findlay editing Kris' obituary shittily (even meanly), so if I got it from there I'd still give Curve the credit.
The Tally
In No Particular Order
NEW MOVIES FIRST:
The Two Towers: duh, no.
The Hours: beaucoups conversations on serious topics between many different women characters. An orgy of female verbage.
Maid in Manhattan: surprisingly, yes. The management position discussions. Go, J-Lo! Out Of Sight didn't meet the LMS but it showed how J-Lo can rock and roll on the screen. So it's still one of my fave movies. ("You wanted to tussle, we tussled." ~~sizzle~~)
NEWISH MOVIES:
Magnolia: surprisingly, no. If the mother and daughter had made two sentences of conversation after the "Mommy!" exclamation... but no, it was almost as though the director was making a statement by omitting any direct interaction between females throughout this long and exquisite movie.
The Shipping News: unsurprisingly, no. I would give it props for having a scene with Julianne Moore playing the accordian, though.
Men In Black 2: again, unsurprisingly, no. But please do rent the DVD if you ever have an entire day to kill. Many hours of extras.
Y Tu Mama Tambien: no. But props for NOT showing the heroine becoming decrepit, throwing up and snowed under by morphine drip. If they were more conservative, they could have gone that extra shitty mile to underline the plot's punishing outcome that allows us to excuse/ suspend judgement of the heroine's remarkable steps towards self-determination. But why couldn't they have let her thrive, or even start a brothel for the under-twenty set on the coast?
Josie and the Pussycats: okay, it's kinda old now. But YES, thankfully, yes.
Legally Blonde: duh, yes. Go Reese!
Election: again, kinda old, but as long as we're watching Reese fill the prodigious boots of Judy Holliday, yes. She discusses election strategy with her mom.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding: read my review of this one. Yes, by a hairsbreadth, it meets the LMS. Her grandma telling about HER wedding, passing on the story of the family. I have to give it props for as of the end of November 2002 becoming the highest earning romantic comedy of all time (beating Pretty Woman), and being a production made on a low budget and under the control of the female protagonist, who was telling a fictionalization of her own life.
NOW THE REALLY OLD ONES:
Every Judy Holliday movie listed in my blog yesterday (except The Marrying Kind, which was stolen from my local video store so I haven't seen it yet) has been approved as meeting the Lesbian Movie Standard. Rock on, wherever you are, Judy!
Friday, January 03, 2003
Stalking Judy Holliday Over the Holidays: The Smartest Dumb Blonde in 1950's Hollywood
If you like Reese Witherspoon today, try checking out her smarter and more political 1950's counterpart.
This holiday season I have been stalking the dear departed genius of the dumb blonde comedy gag, Judy Holliday, who was reputed to have the highest IQ in all of Hollywood (172, actually a genius), subtly advancing a proto-feminist progressive democratic (lower-case "d") and populist politic within disarming self-deprecating humor. Thanks to typecasting, blacklisting, and breast cancer, she is less well-known than she should be.
Before I delve into Judy, I give special thanks to blogger Laura of Interesting Monstah for turning me on to the Holliday thrill (and inspiring me to start blogging, by the way).
Laura has fished out a poignant Judy quote circa June 15, 1951, on conflict and Amercanism:
We are going through a period of tension and conflict, during which we must soberly and carefully analyze those forces which represent good Americanism as against those which do not.
-- From Judy Holliday's sworn statement to the FBI, when faced with charges of promoting Communism before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Judy Versus the Senators: How She Was Smart and Played Dumb But Still Got Herself a Little Blacklisted
Here is a little Judy Holliday biography at the JHRC (Judy Holliday Resource Center), including this about her testimony before HUAC (note: Billie Dawn is her dumb blonde character in the subversive Born Yesterday - which criticizes government corruption in Washington, DC):
It became apparent that Judy used her dumb blonde image to her advantage, skirting a couple of questions and subtly mocking the outlandish proceedings in a Billie Dawn-like manner.
Question: Are you sure Betty Comden and Adolph Green do not have Communist records?
Answer: "I am as sure of that as I can be of anybody who isn't me."
Question: What about the Communist-front records Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein?
Answer: "I am sure that they got into it the same way I did, because I am sure none of them are Communists. I mean if you are a Communist, why go to a Communist-front? Why not be a Communist? Whatever you are, be it."
Question: Did any of your friends ask you to have that photo taken with the strikers?
Answer: "They must have because I wouldn't wander off over to strikers and ask to have my picture taken."
Her "performance" at the hearing only served to raise the ire of her detractors even more. Even though she was essentially cleared of all wrong-doing, the stigma of the scandal kept her name on the blacklist. Judy worked very little in the 2 years following her Oscar-winning performance {in "Born Yesterday"}.
They failed to get her to denounce a single other person, despite repeated harassment and investigation.
A little tiny memo started the beginning of her blacklist on April 7, 1951, nine days after she won the Best Actress Academy Award for "Born Yesterday"- her first starring role in a feature film, beating out other divas of the day at the peak of their careers, such as Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, one of the great upsets in Academy Award history. Her career never recovered its momentum after the blacklist.
Here is the list of alleged subversive elements with which our heroine associated. It includes the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions.
Judy died June 7, 1965, two weeks short of her 44th birthday (mistakenly reported as her 42nd due to her misreporting of her birth year). She died of cancer which returned after a mastectomy in October, 1960. She faced breast cancer in a time when the disease was so taboo that she kept the nature of her mastectomy surgery secret, and when her diagnosis became terminal, her doctors and family kept the dire prognosis secret from her. Her death's cause was reported to be throat cancer, because breast cancer was not then considered socially acceptable as a cause of death.
The Holidays Are Over But Judy Holliday is Always As Near As Your Video Store:
A Selection of her Major Films
Adam's Rib - her first major film role, a landmark 1949 feminist vehicle for Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn- Judy was handpicked for her role by the costars who had seen her stage performance in her comedy troupe The Revuers and other stage appearances.
Born Yesterday - the 1950 subversive comedy critical of political corruption in post-war Washington, DC. The highest peak of Judy's film career.
The Marrying Kind - a 1952 blue-collar comedy written specifically for Judy H.
It Should Happen to You - This 1954 movie presents a reversal of Jenny Holzer's 1980s anonymous billboard actions (which in part critiqued how women do, and don't, occupy public spaces), instead positing a situation where a woman puts only her name up on billboards-- and then has to battle the unfortunate manipulations of men when she tries to sell that name. Jack Lemmon's film debut, third billing behind our heroine, the headliner, Judy H.
Solid Gold Cadillac - a fabulous and more populist 1956 version of the Hudsucker Proxy.
Full of Life - to my eye nobody among the costars shines as brightly as Judy in this 1957 schlocky comedic piece, but it could be her most serious role- she gets to talk about birth control and religion from the perspective of a very pregnant but assertive, independent and mature woman. And she gets to sing a beautiful Italian aria with an opera star bass making his film debut!
Bells Are Ringing - her last movie, and a brilliant one too-- made in 1960 during her triumphant return to the theater stage. Some say this movie was her finest hour in film.
Some More Remarkable Tidbits About Judy Holliday
The most remarkable thing for me to observe is that every one of these movies that I've seen (which is all of these except The Marrying Kind) meet the lesbian movie standard, a standard that modern mainstream movies almost never fulfill. What is the lesbian movie standard? To have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man. A set of 1950's movies with a diva comedienne at the helm that meets the lesbian movie standard? If this amazes you too, it's time for you to put a little Holliday in your VCR!
Another surprise is that Judy has an amazing, sweet singing voice.. She fell in love with sax player Gerry Mullligan (who appears in Bells Are Ringing as Judy's blind date) and was happily involved with him until her death, reputedly one of her life's most satisfying loves. She made a record of love songs with him (including four songs written by Judy) in 1961 which was only released in 1980- Holliday With Mulligan. You can listen to a RealAudio clip off the album here.
Two other little surprises about our lady Judy: she was at least a little bit bisexual, having a romance with a woman at the age of 18 (although never self-identifying as bi, and partnering with men throughout adulthood), and she was also an inventor. LIFE magazine reported that she was working on a way to make edible teaspoons out of Bisquick pancake mix.
The Judy Holliday Resource Center (JHRC) is a great place to learn about this doe-eyed genius of the stage, if you have a hankering for some more Holliday.
The Reel Classics Judy Holliday site has a few more useful links to explore, good for folks who don't know where to begin searching in the JHRC archives. It also features an MP3 clip of one of Judy's song from Bells Are Ringing.
This little article gives more details and anecdotes about her early acting life, including a story about being chased and pawed by a Fox movie mogul, causing one of her falsies to pop out of her dress. She's reputed to have said "That's all right... it belongs to you."
If you like Reese Witherspoon today, try checking out her smarter and more political 1950's counterpart.
This holiday season I have been stalking the dear departed genius of the dumb blonde comedy gag, Judy Holliday, who was reputed to have the highest IQ in all of Hollywood (172, actually a genius), subtly advancing a proto-feminist progressive democratic (lower-case "d") and populist politic within disarming self-deprecating humor. Thanks to typecasting, blacklisting, and breast cancer, she is less well-known than she should be.
Before I delve into Judy, I give special thanks to blogger Laura of Interesting Monstah for turning me on to the Holliday thrill (and inspiring me to start blogging, by the way).
Laura has fished out a poignant Judy quote circa June 15, 1951, on conflict and Amercanism:
We are going through a period of tension and conflict, during which we must soberly and carefully analyze those forces which represent good Americanism as against those which do not.
-- From Judy Holliday's sworn statement to the FBI, when faced with charges of promoting Communism before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Judy Versus the Senators: How She Was Smart and Played Dumb But Still Got Herself a Little Blacklisted
Here is a little Judy Holliday biography at the JHRC (Judy Holliday Resource Center), including this about her testimony before HUAC (note: Billie Dawn is her dumb blonde character in the subversive Born Yesterday - which criticizes government corruption in Washington, DC):
It became apparent that Judy used her dumb blonde image to her advantage, skirting a couple of questions and subtly mocking the outlandish proceedings in a Billie Dawn-like manner.
Question: Are you sure Betty Comden and Adolph Green do not have Communist records?
Answer: "I am as sure of that as I can be of anybody who isn't me."
Question: What about the Communist-front records Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein?
Answer: "I am sure that they got into it the same way I did, because I am sure none of them are Communists. I mean if you are a Communist, why go to a Communist-front? Why not be a Communist? Whatever you are, be it."
Question: Did any of your friends ask you to have that photo taken with the strikers?
Answer: "They must have because I wouldn't wander off over to strikers and ask to have my picture taken."
Her "performance" at the hearing only served to raise the ire of her detractors even more. Even though she was essentially cleared of all wrong-doing, the stigma of the scandal kept her name on the blacklist. Judy worked very little in the 2 years following her Oscar-winning performance {in "Born Yesterday"}.
They failed to get her to denounce a single other person, despite repeated harassment and investigation.
A little tiny memo started the beginning of her blacklist on April 7, 1951, nine days after she won the Best Actress Academy Award for "Born Yesterday"- her first starring role in a feature film, beating out other divas of the day at the peak of their careers, such as Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, one of the great upsets in Academy Award history. Her career never recovered its momentum after the blacklist.
Here is the list of alleged subversive elements with which our heroine associated. It includes the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions.
Judy died June 7, 1965, two weeks short of her 44th birthday (mistakenly reported as her 42nd due to her misreporting of her birth year). She died of cancer which returned after a mastectomy in October, 1960. She faced breast cancer in a time when the disease was so taboo that she kept the nature of her mastectomy surgery secret, and when her diagnosis became terminal, her doctors and family kept the dire prognosis secret from her. Her death's cause was reported to be throat cancer, because breast cancer was not then considered socially acceptable as a cause of death.
The Holidays Are Over But Judy Holliday is Always As Near As Your Video Store:
A Selection of her Major Films
Adam's Rib - her first major film role, a landmark 1949 feminist vehicle for Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn- Judy was handpicked for her role by the costars who had seen her stage performance in her comedy troupe The Revuers and other stage appearances.
Born Yesterday - the 1950 subversive comedy critical of political corruption in post-war Washington, DC. The highest peak of Judy's film career.
The Marrying Kind - a 1952 blue-collar comedy written specifically for Judy H.
It Should Happen to You - This 1954 movie presents a reversal of Jenny Holzer's 1980s anonymous billboard actions (which in part critiqued how women do, and don't, occupy public spaces), instead positing a situation where a woman puts only her name up on billboards-- and then has to battle the unfortunate manipulations of men when she tries to sell that name. Jack Lemmon's film debut, third billing behind our heroine, the headliner, Judy H.
Solid Gold Cadillac - a fabulous and more populist 1956 version of the Hudsucker Proxy.
Full of Life - to my eye nobody among the costars shines as brightly as Judy in this 1957 schlocky comedic piece, but it could be her most serious role- she gets to talk about birth control and religion from the perspective of a very pregnant but assertive, independent and mature woman. And she gets to sing a beautiful Italian aria with an opera star bass making his film debut!
Bells Are Ringing - her last movie, and a brilliant one too-- made in 1960 during her triumphant return to the theater stage. Some say this movie was her finest hour in film.
Some More Remarkable Tidbits About Judy Holliday
The most remarkable thing for me to observe is that every one of these movies that I've seen (which is all of these except The Marrying Kind) meet the lesbian movie standard, a standard that modern mainstream movies almost never fulfill. What is the lesbian movie standard? To have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man. A set of 1950's movies with a diva comedienne at the helm that meets the lesbian movie standard? If this amazes you too, it's time for you to put a little Holliday in your VCR!
Another surprise is that Judy has an amazing, sweet singing voice.. She fell in love with sax player Gerry Mullligan (who appears in Bells Are Ringing as Judy's blind date) and was happily involved with him until her death, reputedly one of her life's most satisfying loves. She made a record of love songs with him (including four songs written by Judy) in 1961 which was only released in 1980- Holliday With Mulligan. You can listen to a RealAudio clip off the album here.
Two other little surprises about our lady Judy: she was at least a little bit bisexual, having a romance with a woman at the age of 18 (although never self-identifying as bi, and partnering with men throughout adulthood), and she was also an inventor. LIFE magazine reported that she was working on a way to make edible teaspoons out of Bisquick pancake mix.
The Judy Holliday Resource Center (JHRC) is a great place to learn about this doe-eyed genius of the stage, if you have a hankering for some more Holliday.
The Reel Classics Judy Holliday site has a few more useful links to explore, good for folks who don't know where to begin searching in the JHRC archives. It also features an MP3 clip of one of Judy's song from Bells Are Ringing.
This little article gives more details and anecdotes about her early acting life, including a story about being chased and pawed by a Fox movie mogul, causing one of her falsies to pop out of her dress. She's reputed to have said "That's all right... it belongs to you."
Sunday, December 29, 2002
How to Do A 21 Gun Salute
I bet lots of people think a 21 gun salute is twenty-one guys in uniform each shooting their gun once. If they thought that, they'd be wrong. I witnessed a 21 gun salute when I was 13, attending the funeral of a man I didn't know. Well, technically, I didn't attend the funeral, I was on the other side of the pine hedge in my house doing my math homework while I waited for the 21 gun salute my father had read about in the papers. My horse had a habit of jumping out of the pasture and so he called the school and had Mrs. Dick, one of the office ladies, drive me home for the morning to keep an eye on him. The funeral happening on the other side of the pine hedge in the cemetery, about five yards from the pasture fence, was for Robert L. Shippee, burned alive in his sleep on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf by two Iraqi missiles, deemed an accident by Ronald Reagan. He was three weeks away from his 36th birthday. The fire burned all night, all day, and all the next night, but US ships nearby helped save the ship and it went on in 1994 to help fight in the Haitian conflict ("Operation Support Democracy "), and fend off Cuban refugees in the waters off Florida ("Operation Able Vigil ") before heading back to the Persian Gulf.
The seven uniformed soldiers shot their blanks in precise coordination, three times. My horse's head perked up for the shots, and then went back to the fresh spring grass. It was 1987. The US was not at war. The Iran-Iraq war killed about a million people before ending, and in that war the Iraqis killed 37 soldiers asleep on the USS Stark, with no US civilian fuss over why a) we were there, and b) why this reckless nation was our ally. Today we'd be at war over that kind of loss faster than I could send an e-mail. But when the attacker is our friend-of-convenience, we look the other way.
What are the results of that fire caused by the Iraqi Mirage fighterplane's Exocet missiles fired at 9 pm on May 17, 1987? Here are a few. Robert Shippee's son grew up without a father. A man serving on watch on the USS Stark that night went mad and killed a woman and her child with a hammer the following year, claiming post-traumatic stress. In 2001 another survivor of the Stark - decorated for his valor during the fire- is on the lam after fleeing his trial for armed robbery. He also kidnapped his son on his way out of town. A mother of one of the Stark casualties was quoted at a memorial service this past May saying she noticed they put a question about the Stark on Jeopardy. No mention of whether the question was answered correctly.
$142 million was spent repairing the USS Stark so it could be battle ready again. Senator Bob Dole led a Congressional request for an explanation, and in response "the administration thought it wise to delay submission of a proposal to sell new F-15 fighter jets to the Saudis*" (due to Saudi Arabia saying it lacked the authority to pursue the fighterplane that had attacked the Stark) (italics mine). The press made very little of the event, since criticizing the government in war time (even if it isn't our war) is taboo. The Iraqi government apologized, the US became more cozy with Iraq, more hostile to Iran.
After a long inquiry, the Navy Times published a gruesomely detailed account of the events of that night in May when the Iraqis fired on the Stark: "Inferno The Like of Which Had Never Been Experienced" by William Matthews (Oct. 26, 1987).
And what are the results of our involvement in the Iran-Iraq war? The USS Stark was placed in harm's way. Iraq was armed (by the US, France, and other NATO nations) with biological and chemical weapons that they used on the Kurds and Iranians in the late stages of the war. Both Iran and Iraq became more militarized. The US agenda of bringing down Iran failed.
Why are we going back for more? Do we really think we can establish a democracy in Iraq to make a model for the rest of the region? Do we think Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey will tolerate such a thing? How many more have to die for our misguided agenda of controlling oil interests under the guise of caring about human rights?
I found out doing some research on the Stark that the word "tattoo" in reference to the sad bugle solo played at the end of the day in Arlington Cemetery- and military institutions in general- comes from the original function: to tell the soldiers to leave the taverns and go back to quarters, and the barkeeps to "tap to" or "shut" the keg stoppers. So here I will leave space for a silent tattoo wishing the US military leaders drunk on power to sober up and keep another international middle east conflict from setting off another volley of three, solitary, blank shots by seven uniformed soldiers to be sounded in cemeteries across the country.
March is the start of intolerable heat in Iraq, so if the US will make a military move, it will be in the next four weeks.
Read your alternative news sources.
And read *a good Newsweek piece by Jason Manning on the Stark and the continued evolution of our support of Iraq thereafter.
And maybe even read this guy's site- still pissed about the Stark, and the Reagan era in general I guess.
I bet lots of people think a 21 gun salute is twenty-one guys in uniform each shooting their gun once. If they thought that, they'd be wrong. I witnessed a 21 gun salute when I was 13, attending the funeral of a man I didn't know. Well, technically, I didn't attend the funeral, I was on the other side of the pine hedge in my house doing my math homework while I waited for the 21 gun salute my father had read about in the papers. My horse had a habit of jumping out of the pasture and so he called the school and had Mrs. Dick, one of the office ladies, drive me home for the morning to keep an eye on him. The funeral happening on the other side of the pine hedge in the cemetery, about five yards from the pasture fence, was for Robert L. Shippee, burned alive in his sleep on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf by two Iraqi missiles, deemed an accident by Ronald Reagan. He was three weeks away from his 36th birthday. The fire burned all night, all day, and all the next night, but US ships nearby helped save the ship and it went on in 1994 to help fight in the Haitian conflict ("Operation Support Democracy "), and fend off Cuban refugees in the waters off Florida ("Operation Able Vigil ") before heading back to the Persian Gulf.
The seven uniformed soldiers shot their blanks in precise coordination, three times. My horse's head perked up for the shots, and then went back to the fresh spring grass. It was 1987. The US was not at war. The Iran-Iraq war killed about a million people before ending, and in that war the Iraqis killed 37 soldiers asleep on the USS Stark, with no US civilian fuss over why a) we were there, and b) why this reckless nation was our ally. Today we'd be at war over that kind of loss faster than I could send an e-mail. But when the attacker is our friend-of-convenience, we look the other way.
What are the results of that fire caused by the Iraqi Mirage fighterplane's Exocet missiles fired at 9 pm on May 17, 1987? Here are a few. Robert Shippee's son grew up without a father. A man serving on watch on the USS Stark that night went mad and killed a woman and her child with a hammer the following year, claiming post-traumatic stress. In 2001 another survivor of the Stark - decorated for his valor during the fire- is on the lam after fleeing his trial for armed robbery. He also kidnapped his son on his way out of town. A mother of one of the Stark casualties was quoted at a memorial service this past May saying she noticed they put a question about the Stark on Jeopardy. No mention of whether the question was answered correctly.
$142 million was spent repairing the USS Stark so it could be battle ready again. Senator Bob Dole led a Congressional request for an explanation, and in response "the administration thought it wise to delay submission of a proposal to sell new F-15 fighter jets to the Saudis*" (due to Saudi Arabia saying it lacked the authority to pursue the fighterplane that had attacked the Stark) (italics mine). The press made very little of the event, since criticizing the government in war time (even if it isn't our war) is taboo. The Iraqi government apologized, the US became more cozy with Iraq, more hostile to Iran.
After a long inquiry, the Navy Times published a gruesomely detailed account of the events of that night in May when the Iraqis fired on the Stark: "Inferno The Like of Which Had Never Been Experienced" by William Matthews (Oct. 26, 1987).
And what are the results of our involvement in the Iran-Iraq war? The USS Stark was placed in harm's way. Iraq was armed (by the US, France, and other NATO nations) with biological and chemical weapons that they used on the Kurds and Iranians in the late stages of the war. Both Iran and Iraq became more militarized. The US agenda of bringing down Iran failed.
Why are we going back for more? Do we really think we can establish a democracy in Iraq to make a model for the rest of the region? Do we think Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey will tolerate such a thing? How many more have to die for our misguided agenda of controlling oil interests under the guise of caring about human rights?
I found out doing some research on the Stark that the word "tattoo" in reference to the sad bugle solo played at the end of the day in Arlington Cemetery- and military institutions in general- comes from the original function: to tell the soldiers to leave the taverns and go back to quarters, and the barkeeps to "tap to" or "shut" the keg stoppers. So here I will leave space for a silent tattoo wishing the US military leaders drunk on power to sober up and keep another international middle east conflict from setting off another volley of three, solitary, blank shots by seven uniformed soldiers to be sounded in cemeteries across the country.
March is the start of intolerable heat in Iraq, so if the US will make a military move, it will be in the next four weeks.
Read your alternative news sources.
And read *a good Newsweek piece by Jason Manning on the Stark and the continued evolution of our support of Iraq thereafter.
And maybe even read this guy's site- still pissed about the Stark, and the Reagan era in general I guess.
Thursday, December 26, 2002
Happy Ramkwahanusolstimas!
Ramkwahanusolstimas is a self-invented holiday (by me and some long-lost friends) born of the coincidence of Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice, and Christmas all happening within two weeks of eachother one year (1999), causing mass overbooking and stress in well-integrated communities. So we thought it would ease things up if we merged them all.
The gist is that you fast for forty days and forty nights, eating only foods that are taupe or mauve, at the end of which you burn your Christmas Tree. The Ramkwahanusolstimas pageant is a parade of housewives watching daytime soaps. Now, here is the gospel of the prophet of Ramkwahanusolstimas, Harold Angel Ali Jamal Jones Ravenstar Fenkl, a cabbie, written by me in the madness of the moment, December, 1999.
~
Found Stuffed Between Seats on the BART Train
(XXX is destroyed or illegible text)
RamKwaHanuSolstiMas XXXXX!
And spoke unto Us, the God of the Cabdrivers
And said he thusly Io!* (*Latin for "Yo!")
And we were afraid, very afraid,
For it was Yet as like unto an Hallucination
Such as like unto That state thereafter
Begotten by listening to Christmas carols to Excess
And so we Hearkened to the Harold Angel
(Harold Angel Ali Jamal Jones Ravenstar Fenkl).
Said he Thusly-
Go ye forth Blessed among Cabfares
And respect ye the Traditions of ... me.
To the Good of all things Wild and Free
And the Five Pillars of Cabbiedom
And for the Children of Terrib-El
(Second Cousins of the Children of Isra-El)
And the Seven Principals of the Corner Store
And for the Son on a Stick who redeems all Unpaid fares.
Thusly shall ye go forth And from the First day of the
Five Foresaken Holidays,
Ye shall make your bodies Chaste of All foods
And excepting only those foods appearing in color To be
Taupe or mauve, such as Triscuits or cranberries,
Fasting for Forty days and Forty nights,
In which Time ye shall sleep And Watch Daytime Soaps
Exchanging Daily a Present numbered in Parts similar to the Fast Day
Such as (one) a Beer (technically only those beers colored taupe) or
(forty) cranberries.
And preparing all these forty days shall ye a Tree
Decorated with Such Things As Shall Be Flammable
In order that ye May to Please your Ancestors
Who may have been acolytes to Mass Transit if not
themselves Cabbies,
At the end of the Fast
So then this Tree Burn.
Pine burns very well, being of Hardwood,
And so thusly let it be Pine blessed among Trees
To be thus Sacrificed.
In this Fulfillment of Tradition may you
Observe these truths: Cabbies are Your Shepherds
Ye Shall Not Want. They knowest the Great Secrets of Your Kind.
The most Secret of secrets being that which may either
Save or Destroy you, which is XXXX
XXXXXXX
End Manuscript (Remainder of Text Destroyed)
~
--- Now everyone be good to eachother this year, 'kay? 'Kay.
Ramkwahanusolstimas is a self-invented holiday (by me and some long-lost friends) born of the coincidence of Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice, and Christmas all happening within two weeks of eachother one year (1999), causing mass overbooking and stress in well-integrated communities. So we thought it would ease things up if we merged them all.
The gist is that you fast for forty days and forty nights, eating only foods that are taupe or mauve, at the end of which you burn your Christmas Tree. The Ramkwahanusolstimas pageant is a parade of housewives watching daytime soaps. Now, here is the gospel of the prophet of Ramkwahanusolstimas, Harold Angel Ali Jamal Jones Ravenstar Fenkl, a cabbie, written by me in the madness of the moment, December, 1999.
~
Found Stuffed Between Seats on the BART Train
(XXX is destroyed or illegible text)
RamKwaHanuSolstiMas XXXXX!
And spoke unto Us, the God of the Cabdrivers
And said he thusly Io!* (*Latin for "Yo!")
And we were afraid, very afraid,
For it was Yet as like unto an Hallucination
Such as like unto That state thereafter
Begotten by listening to Christmas carols to Excess
And so we Hearkened to the Harold Angel
(Harold Angel Ali Jamal Jones Ravenstar Fenkl).
Said he Thusly-
Go ye forth Blessed among Cabfares
And respect ye the Traditions of ... me.
To the Good of all things Wild and Free
And the Five Pillars of Cabbiedom
And for the Children of Terrib-El
(Second Cousins of the Children of Isra-El)
And the Seven Principals of the Corner Store
And for the Son on a Stick who redeems all Unpaid fares.
Thusly shall ye go forth And from the First day of the
Five Foresaken Holidays,
Ye shall make your bodies Chaste of All foods
And excepting only those foods appearing in color To be
Taupe or mauve, such as Triscuits or cranberries,
Fasting for Forty days and Forty nights,
In which Time ye shall sleep And Watch Daytime Soaps
Exchanging Daily a Present numbered in Parts similar to the Fast Day
Such as (one) a Beer (technically only those beers colored taupe) or
(forty) cranberries.
And preparing all these forty days shall ye a Tree
Decorated with Such Things As Shall Be Flammable
In order that ye May to Please your Ancestors
Who may have been acolytes to Mass Transit if not
themselves Cabbies,
At the end of the Fast
So then this Tree Burn.
Pine burns very well, being of Hardwood,
And so thusly let it be Pine blessed among Trees
To be thus Sacrificed.
In this Fulfillment of Tradition may you
Observe these truths: Cabbies are Your Shepherds
Ye Shall Not Want. They knowest the Great Secrets of Your Kind.
The most Secret of secrets being that which may either
Save or Destroy you, which is XXXX
XXXXXXX
End Manuscript (Remainder of Text Destroyed)
~
--- Now everyone be good to eachother this year, 'kay? 'Kay.
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
The End of the Reign of the Sagittarians
This week ended the month of Sagittarian birthdays that rolls around every year, and reminds me each time of how Sagittarians have shaped my life, for better and worse. I seem particularly prone to tangles with these folks, and this may seem ungrateful, but I feel that people should have a little 411 on how to deal with the quirks of people born under this strange and lonely star. I will try to be generous, for the sake of the Sag teachers and peers who have taught me so much about myself. But I won't candy coat-- these people are armed with some powerful barbed arrows and they run with scissors.
OK, first, THE BASIC RUN DOWN:
Sag affirmation: I know.
Sag people and their relationship to astrology: They dislike or distrust it as superstition, but often know a surprising amount about it. In fact, count on these folks to know a lot of esoterica about things they are skeptical about. They are interested in exact rightnesses and wrongnesses, abstract truths, but will retain amazing scraps of knowledge (and half-truths, and groundless suspicions) to compose their absolute black and white sweeping generalizations. Purely for the shits and giggles they will retain any and all kinds of information and postulate away to their hearts' content. I'm not saying they color the truth with their own opinions. Their own opinions are their absolute truths. Theirs don't need to be your truths; they appreciate the challenge of skeptics. They are strangely confident about their self-constructed realities. Take it as either absent-minded-professorism, child-like self-absorption, or independent thinking.
The Sag Lightbulb Joke: Q. How many Sagittarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. I don't know, I'll let you know when I get back from India.
Sagittarians tend to react to negative feedback from superiors or loved ones by traveling, or retreating deeply into their work. Sharing feelings and confrontation about emotional hurts are easily avoided this way. With Sagittarians, PROCESSING IS PUNISHMENT. They know their capacity to talk before thinking and accidentally hurt people, so any processings must - in their minds- be about faulting them about things they unintentionally did wrong. It's just a nightmare for them to be wrong.
A Phrase I Saw in A Movie That Makes Me Think of Sagittarians: "From gaol [jail] to the throne, he travels fastest who travels alone." (Seen written on a mirror in a background of some 30's Marlene Dietrich movie.) (Marlene was a Dec. 27 Capricorn, by the way.)
The Archetypes and Tarot Cards I Associate with the Sag:
Young/ immature type: Satyr -- tarot card: 0 The Fool-- adventure, carelessness, sponteneity, generosity, optimism.
Adult type: Centaur / Hunter-Archer -- tarot card: 1 The Magician-- Hephaestus experimenting at his forge, the "I wonder what will happen if I mix this and that" attitude.
Mature/ elderly type: The Hermit on the Hill -- tarot card: 9 The Hermit-- the mad scientist in his/her library reading alone by a single lantern, the spiritual seeker-of-truths-within, the teacher of inquiry and skepticism.
OK, now the Care and Handling part of the 411. SOME SAGITTARIAN FOIBLES:
The Sagittarian's Achilles' Heel: All of the Sag archetypes are prone to Foot in Mouth Disease.
It is almost a phobia for Sagittarians to simply not know something, and risk being thought to be stupid, or without an opinion, so they will habitually talk and THEN think. They will take a perceived accusation of Not Knowing Something personally, on very little pretext, and then often confirm how little (or much) they know as quickly as possible. The wise, balanced, and well-therapized Sagittarian takes this little adage to heart: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt," (Voltaire). My father, a Sag, will scamble to add his two cents of wisdom on any topic, even with specious sources (like NPR), even weighing in against eyewitnesses to an event. Sometimes he is so childlike and self-absorbed in his eagerness to be thought smart in trivial arguments, that if he wasn't so smart (in fact) one might think he was retarded. How do you get through to a Sag who spinning her/ his wheels trying to prove themselves right? My mother pokes and tickles my father to get him out of a spin. I try to make my grandmother (a Sag) to laugh to get her out of her spin. Do anything to let them know that you do not consider them a criminal for not knowing, reaffirm your belief in their good intentions and innocent (child-like, immature, self-absorbed) natures. Tickling may not work with your coworkers, however. Try making a small, limited (easy) inquiry that will be a slam dunk for them, so they can rebuild their self-confidence with you. Move on, they are attracted by movement. Just be direct if you can-- "if you don't know what's wrong then I won't bother telling you" won't work here.
Supersensitive people who can't handle a rough-and-tumble verbal tet-a-tet shouldn't tangle with a belligerent Sag. They tend to privately dismiss (watch them delete delete delete your words as you are talking, changing the subject as soon as you pause) those who contradict them, even if they don't say as much as a peep of argument. But trust that they will think about your point of view later. They want to know about it, because at their heart's heart, they do want to KNOW everything.
Cooking with Sagittarians: Beware their concoctions: smell, ask what is in it, THEN taste.
The Centaur hunter/mad scientist is more concerned with expediency than flavor. I have heard about a Sag adding tequila to a bloody mary mix, just to save a trip to the store. My father steamed up our house for days boiling down sap from Box Alders, abundant on our property but a poor cousin to the real thing, the Sugar Maples. He yielded about half a pint of super sweet syrup that nobody would use. This was to save the money we would usually spend on locally made, flavorful REAL maple syrup. The jar was faithfully taken out by him, and the mold boiled off, until he had -- all by himself-- eaten the entire disaster over a course of years. My grandmother (a Sag) wanted to use up some old dried goods, so she added a cup of powdered milk and a cup of Ovaltine to three packets of Swiss Miss cocoa mix, which she then served to an unwitting collection of guests who she was sure wouldn't notice the taste. If she doesn't ask, and nobody says anything, then she is sure her meal-experiments were fine.
She uses this same philosophy with family members who might be sick, hurt, or angry (even if she isn't the culprit). If they don't loudly and directly complain, then things are obviously GREAT. Can you believe she's a practicing minister? The cobbler's kids have no shoes, the minister's kids and grandkids have no nurturing.
You can often find Sagittarian-Americans who are left to their own devices for a meal eating while standing, lost in thought, staring out a window, spooning up cold leftovers that should probably be heated out of the pot in which it was originally cooked. I'm not saying they are uncivilized, just preferring expediency to flavor. In these experiments they can seem "unburdened by the thought process" -- but more accurately they are "unburdened by consideration of anyone else's thought process."
I do know one Sag, a teacher of mine, who is a remarkable, if expedient, cook. Once she wrote a healthy vegetarian cookbook, making a lot of experimental concoctions along the way. Her brown bread is a solid German rye she calls The Wings of Life, which my family calls The Wings of Death: each small loaf is five pounds of solid bread product. If you threw it at someone it could be considered assault with a deadly weapon. But it has a lot of protein, it is simple to make, it doesn't harm the planet, it's EXPEDIENT.
In Summary: Sagittarians make good leaders in group models where practical analysis is more important than consensus, such as in the exact sciences. Sags might be heard to say "This is not a consensus, there is a right answer here." If you love touchy feely gray-area types of relationships, thought-processes, or philosophies, don't expect support from the Sag, but be as open as you can be to their (often cutting) insights: they do have vision and it can put murky situations into high black/white relief, and it is based on knowledge. Just CHECK THEIR SOURCES before you stake your life savings on their stock tips. The real world is a strange place to the Sag, it is their playground, their science lab, and their library. Give the Sag enough space to think and formulate opinions, and s/he can be your best teacher.
I could go on- but I think it's time to watch another Judy Holliday movie. Coming soon on this blog: Celebrating the Greastest Holliday, the smartest dumb blonde in all of 1950's Hollywood.
AND ONE MORE THING BEFORE I GO:
A Correction and An MP3 Link for Cypher in the Snow.
In my blog the other day, I wrongly referred to the music of Cypher in the Snow as "punkabilly." The band's banjo player my friend Lala reminded me of their real sound (which I haven't heard since their live shows of the late 90's) with this no-frills link to a page of high-quality MP3s of songs from their album Blow Away The Glitter Diamonds Stolen From The Crown. If you bought the CD it included a real treasure map. Have a listen: they are obviously not punkabilly but circus-punk.
This week ended the month of Sagittarian birthdays that rolls around every year, and reminds me each time of how Sagittarians have shaped my life, for better and worse. I seem particularly prone to tangles with these folks, and this may seem ungrateful, but I feel that people should have a little 411 on how to deal with the quirks of people born under this strange and lonely star. I will try to be generous, for the sake of the Sag teachers and peers who have taught me so much about myself. But I won't candy coat-- these people are armed with some powerful barbed arrows and they run with scissors.
OK, first, THE BASIC RUN DOWN:
Sag affirmation: I know.
Sag people and their relationship to astrology: They dislike or distrust it as superstition, but often know a surprising amount about it. In fact, count on these folks to know a lot of esoterica about things they are skeptical about. They are interested in exact rightnesses and wrongnesses, abstract truths, but will retain amazing scraps of knowledge (and half-truths, and groundless suspicions) to compose their absolute black and white sweeping generalizations. Purely for the shits and giggles they will retain any and all kinds of information and postulate away to their hearts' content. I'm not saying they color the truth with their own opinions. Their own opinions are their absolute truths. Theirs don't need to be your truths; they appreciate the challenge of skeptics. They are strangely confident about their self-constructed realities. Take it as either absent-minded-professorism, child-like self-absorption, or independent thinking.
The Sag Lightbulb Joke: Q. How many Sagittarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. I don't know, I'll let you know when I get back from India.
Sagittarians tend to react to negative feedback from superiors or loved ones by traveling, or retreating deeply into their work. Sharing feelings and confrontation about emotional hurts are easily avoided this way. With Sagittarians, PROCESSING IS PUNISHMENT. They know their capacity to talk before thinking and accidentally hurt people, so any processings must - in their minds- be about faulting them about things they unintentionally did wrong. It's just a nightmare for them to be wrong.
A Phrase I Saw in A Movie That Makes Me Think of Sagittarians: "From gaol [jail] to the throne, he travels fastest who travels alone." (Seen written on a mirror in a background of some 30's Marlene Dietrich movie.) (Marlene was a Dec. 27 Capricorn, by the way.)
The Archetypes and Tarot Cards I Associate with the Sag:
Young/ immature type: Satyr -- tarot card: 0 The Fool-- adventure, carelessness, sponteneity, generosity, optimism.
Adult type: Centaur / Hunter-Archer -- tarot card: 1 The Magician-- Hephaestus experimenting at his forge, the "I wonder what will happen if I mix this and that" attitude.
Mature/ elderly type: The Hermit on the Hill -- tarot card: 9 The Hermit-- the mad scientist in his/her library reading alone by a single lantern, the spiritual seeker-of-truths-within, the teacher of inquiry and skepticism.
OK, now the Care and Handling part of the 411. SOME SAGITTARIAN FOIBLES:
The Sagittarian's Achilles' Heel: All of the Sag archetypes are prone to Foot in Mouth Disease.
It is almost a phobia for Sagittarians to simply not know something, and risk being thought to be stupid, or without an opinion, so they will habitually talk and THEN think. They will take a perceived accusation of Not Knowing Something personally, on very little pretext, and then often confirm how little (or much) they know as quickly as possible. The wise, balanced, and well-therapized Sagittarian takes this little adage to heart: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt," (Voltaire). My father, a Sag, will scamble to add his two cents of wisdom on any topic, even with specious sources (like NPR), even weighing in against eyewitnesses to an event. Sometimes he is so childlike and self-absorbed in his eagerness to be thought smart in trivial arguments, that if he wasn't so smart (in fact) one might think he was retarded. How do you get through to a Sag who spinning her/ his wheels trying to prove themselves right? My mother pokes and tickles my father to get him out of a spin. I try to make my grandmother (a Sag) to laugh to get her out of her spin. Do anything to let them know that you do not consider them a criminal for not knowing, reaffirm your belief in their good intentions and innocent (child-like, immature, self-absorbed) natures. Tickling may not work with your coworkers, however. Try making a small, limited (easy) inquiry that will be a slam dunk for them, so they can rebuild their self-confidence with you. Move on, they are attracted by movement. Just be direct if you can-- "if you don't know what's wrong then I won't bother telling you" won't work here.
Supersensitive people who can't handle a rough-and-tumble verbal tet-a-tet shouldn't tangle with a belligerent Sag. They tend to privately dismiss (watch them delete delete delete your words as you are talking, changing the subject as soon as you pause) those who contradict them, even if they don't say as much as a peep of argument. But trust that they will think about your point of view later. They want to know about it, because at their heart's heart, they do want to KNOW everything.
Cooking with Sagittarians: Beware their concoctions: smell, ask what is in it, THEN taste.
The Centaur hunter/mad scientist is more concerned with expediency than flavor. I have heard about a Sag adding tequila to a bloody mary mix, just to save a trip to the store. My father steamed up our house for days boiling down sap from Box Alders, abundant on our property but a poor cousin to the real thing, the Sugar Maples. He yielded about half a pint of super sweet syrup that nobody would use. This was to save the money we would usually spend on locally made, flavorful REAL maple syrup. The jar was faithfully taken out by him, and the mold boiled off, until he had -- all by himself-- eaten the entire disaster over a course of years. My grandmother (a Sag) wanted to use up some old dried goods, so she added a cup of powdered milk and a cup of Ovaltine to three packets of Swiss Miss cocoa mix, which she then served to an unwitting collection of guests who she was sure wouldn't notice the taste. If she doesn't ask, and nobody says anything, then she is sure her meal-experiments were fine.
She uses this same philosophy with family members who might be sick, hurt, or angry (even if she isn't the culprit). If they don't loudly and directly complain, then things are obviously GREAT. Can you believe she's a practicing minister? The cobbler's kids have no shoes, the minister's kids and grandkids have no nurturing.
You can often find Sagittarian-Americans who are left to their own devices for a meal eating while standing, lost in thought, staring out a window, spooning up cold leftovers that should probably be heated out of the pot in which it was originally cooked. I'm not saying they are uncivilized, just preferring expediency to flavor. In these experiments they can seem "unburdened by the thought process" -- but more accurately they are "unburdened by consideration of anyone else's thought process."
I do know one Sag, a teacher of mine, who is a remarkable, if expedient, cook. Once she wrote a healthy vegetarian cookbook, making a lot of experimental concoctions along the way. Her brown bread is a solid German rye she calls The Wings of Life, which my family calls The Wings of Death: each small loaf is five pounds of solid bread product. If you threw it at someone it could be considered assault with a deadly weapon. But it has a lot of protein, it is simple to make, it doesn't harm the planet, it's EXPEDIENT.
In Summary: Sagittarians make good leaders in group models where practical analysis is more important than consensus, such as in the exact sciences. Sags might be heard to say "This is not a consensus, there is a right answer here." If you love touchy feely gray-area types of relationships, thought-processes, or philosophies, don't expect support from the Sag, but be as open as you can be to their (often cutting) insights: they do have vision and it can put murky situations into high black/white relief, and it is based on knowledge. Just CHECK THEIR SOURCES before you stake your life savings on their stock tips. The real world is a strange place to the Sag, it is their playground, their science lab, and their library. Give the Sag enough space to think and formulate opinions, and s/he can be your best teacher.
I could go on- but I think it's time to watch another Judy Holliday movie. Coming soon on this blog: Celebrating the Greastest Holliday, the smartest dumb blonde in all of 1950's Hollywood.
AND ONE MORE THING BEFORE I GO:
A Correction and An MP3 Link for Cypher in the Snow.
In my blog the other day, I wrongly referred to the music of Cypher in the Snow as "punkabilly." The band's banjo player my friend Lala reminded me of their real sound (which I haven't heard since their live shows of the late 90's) with this no-frills link to a page of high-quality MP3s of songs from their album Blow Away The Glitter Diamonds Stolen From The Crown. If you bought the CD it included a real treasure map. Have a listen: they are obviously not punkabilly but circus-punk.
Saturday, December 21, 2002
Sorry for the somber subject, but it's time to unload this information in a public place, after passing it along privately for a while now.
Alternative Symptom Control and Immune Boosting for People Living with Cancer
These are methods that I explored with the several friends I've had who survived or didn't survive cancer, including my girlfriend Kris who ended her own life after a long struggle with breast and bone cancer. ** Indicate the most effective & amazing things you should definitely try if you're living with cancer.
Acupuncture- This is not for everyone, and should be tried only with practitioners who are experienced with treating people with your particular kind of cancer. However, it can be much more site-specific than other pain control methods, targeting the exact root of the pain.
** Aromatherapy / Tart and Spicy Taste-therapy- Taste or smell to help with nausea: peppermint oil, cinnamon paste, strong breath mints like Altoids also help. My Kris found the only mint strong enough to stop her nausea were the little tiny lips-shaped mints sold by Victoria's Secret in little tiny pink tins. The clerk who sold me nearly their entire stock in the San Francisco Shopping Center branch told me that she had found the mints very helpful with her nausea when she was fighting Hodgkin's disease. Ginger is also a good taste or smell to help with nausea. Trader Joe's triple ginger cookies were very helpful to Kris. Of course ginger ale is an age-old aid for nausea. Tart smells and tastes like lemon and lime- the tarter the better- can also help stop nausea. Otherwise, strong tastes and smells, even the usually helpful lavender and pine, may provoke nausea.
Hot/ Cold Treatment-Another treatment I can't speak about first or close-second hand. I had a good friend who had struggled with Lupus her whole life, and then was stricken with cancer. She had to be extremely careful with how she stimulated her immune system, because overstimulation could cause her death. One of the immune-stimulating alternative treatments she used alongside the mainstream western treatments was taking hot baths alternating with sitting in an icy cold tub of water. This can be done in smaller proportions (or with showers, instead of baths) to gently stimulate the immune system. Laura, my friend who tried this, did it through the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, the only place she could find affordable care that integrated alternative and mainstream approaches. She actually flew there from San Francisco about every two weeks for treatment.
Juice- Fresh-squeezed orange juice can be especially helpful for immune-system boosts. Get a juicer and some really fresh juice oranges, yum! Feel the effect immediately.
Magnets- Again, not something I've had first or close-second hand experience with, but I have an aunt with bone cancer who uses magnets to control her pain. So, again, this shouldn't be dismissed as a side-effect free addition to your pain-management regime.
Marijuana Tincture- Smoking marijuana has the unpleasant side-effect of being rough on your throat, and of exposing people around you to second-hand smoke. Eating marijuana in food can give you variable degrees of intensity of effect. Finding or making tincture out of marijuana and putting a small eyedropper's amount into hot herbal tea (evaporating the alcohol content and leaving marijuana-essence in the tea) can give you the anti-nausea and sedative benefits without the smoke and with a controlled dosage. The tincture is so strong I've read that you can rub it topically onto sore spots to get pain relief.
Massage & Reiki-The immune system reacts positively to massage. However, you want to find a massage therapist who is experienced with cancer symptoms, particularly with your type of cancer. Some kinds of massage can stimulate the lymph in unhelpful ways. Generally, though, massage relaxes you and stimulates your body to heal itself. If you've gotten to a point where your body is fragile, gentle caressing without any deep pressure, especially with unscented oils and a heating pad adjacent, can still help soothe the body and stimulate an immune response. Reiki- A wonderful, gentle art of righting the energy balance in your body. It neither requires the actual laying on of the hands, nor the presence of the practitioner, if those are impossible or uncomfortable for you.
Methadone-This is a method neither my partner nor anyone I knew actually followed-through and tried for pain control. I believe it is a fairly new approach, as an alternative to morphine. It has side-effects, such as addiction. But if you are unable to tolerate morphine, this is something to try to explore with the help of a clinician experienced in pain management.
** Quartz Crystals-These are used to regulate watches because crystals love order: they generate low electromagnetic fields that try to put everything in their field "to rights." They dislike chaos and extremes, so if any part of your body is in a spasm, or overly hot, or knotted, put a clear (the clearer the better) quartz crystal that's been run under cold water for a minute directly onto the trouble spot, and focus your breathing into that spot. You may not feel suddenly perfect, but the extremes will be controlled and moderated. With Kris, applying crystals to her painful spots would sometimes cause her to fall asleep peacefully, and I allowed the crystals to fall off when she stopped holding them, collecting them from the bed in a way that would not wake her. Even if it's just the coolness of the quartz and a little dose of placebo effect, I found quartz crystals do no harm and often significantly help with small symptom flare-ups. Running the crystals under cool water for a minute after use recharges them with healing negative ions. Store the crystals in a sunny spot if possible. Here is a link to a cancer survivor's homepage, by which she tries to distribute crystals to people suffering from cancer, regardless of ability to pay.
** Supplements: Spes Capsules-An herbal alternative to morphine that has been shown to have cancer-growth-suppressing properties. The most affordable and accessible vendor for this on-line- at least as of last year- is Seacoast Vitamins. Spes comes in two kinds- PC Spes (for prostate cancer) and Spes (for other cancers). BotanicLab, who made the Spes that I bought for Kris, has closed. You can now buy Spes under other names: Prostasol (PC-SPES) and Imusan (SPES). My grandfather and Kris both found it extremely helpful, mainly noticeable when they ran out and couldn't get new tablets right away. Nu-Gen Nutritional System, including Cantron (nee Can-Cell, an electrolyte formula), Colostrum, Magazyme Forte, Noni (derived from a mushroom), OPCs, Squalamax, and Squalamine (the last two are shark liver and shark cartilage, i.e. non-vegetarian)- This is a system that brought my Kris out of a systemic tailspin, and put her in a U-turn to remission within days. Unfortunately, it demands a rigorous system of taking pills (something like eleven per day) and one strange-tasting twice daily liquid. Aside from the annoying frequency of pills (and the stench of one of the shark-derived pills), the only side-effect is being sleepy for the first two or three days of being on the system. Kris went from not being able to bend over to tie her shoes to jogging with her dog within a matter of days when she was able to stay on this system.
Visualization & Meditation- A visualization of a candle in darkness when you are having discomfort or pain can help bring things under control. Imagine the candle: your symptom is causing the flame to flare up too high, or if your energy is too low, the flame to sputter down to almost nothing. Steady the flame and bring it to a perfect and steady still point of light. Meditation-- Otherwise known as taking time to yourself to sit and try to detach from your situation. It can be easy when you're sick to fall into a rhythm of watching TV or keeping some other thing around to busy your mind without taking the time you need to close up the portals of perception, and while still awake, reflect on your experience of the disease and detach from it. With practice this can be a very powerful tool for handling all kinds of symptoms and side-effects. Try to meditate on being IN your body, even with all its problems, and be in it until it becomes a still place where there is no dis-ease.
** Wiggling Fingers and Toes-Taught to me by a yoga instructor who was loathe to let us out of a difficult straining posture too soon. This distracts your nervous system from the trouble spot. It releases the excess energy generated by pain. Notice that when you are in a state of pleasure, you naturally and subconsciously wiggle your fingers and toes- again, to release excess energy. Hence the phrase "making your toes curl" from pleasure.
Yam Cream- for women with breast cancer taking tamoxifen: this is a side-effect free and completely topical way to control night sweats caused by the removal of estrogen from your body. I bought Kris' yam cream at the wonderful herb store in San Francisco The Scarlet Sage.
...and if none of that, and no traditional methods work, and you no longer have a quality of life that you can live with...
Self-Delivery- Seconal tranquilizer, plus vodka, plus antihistimine, plus cellophane plastic bag and rubber band. Control of her own life was a primary concern for my girlfriend. She could not tolerate the thought of losing the use of her legs, and her bone cancer had gone into her hips. She also could not tolerate the thought of relying on other people to help her go to the bathroom or take her medicine, or make decisions for her when her mind started to go. Before she reached that point, she put her affairs in order and ended her own life on her own terms, on her own schedule. She prearranged for her doctor to mis-declare her death to be from cancer, so that there would be no coroner's inquiry. The people in her life who were licensed therapists were specifically kept out of the loop of the details of her planned death, to protect their licenses.. Good timing is essential, and as much honesty as possible with your loved ones about this planned death is also important. Talk to a hospice counselor before making any decisions. In any case, Seconal (Secobarbital) is very hard to come by (Eli Lilly stopped making it two weeks after my girlfriend's OD), and I think can only be obtained from a veterinarian- it's the drug of choice for self-delivery of humans, and for euthanasia of animals.
That is all for now, happy Solstice.
Alternative Symptom Control and Immune Boosting for People Living with Cancer
These are methods that I explored with the several friends I've had who survived or didn't survive cancer, including my girlfriend Kris who ended her own life after a long struggle with breast and bone cancer. ** Indicate the most effective & amazing things you should definitely try if you're living with cancer.
Acupuncture- This is not for everyone, and should be tried only with practitioners who are experienced with treating people with your particular kind of cancer. However, it can be much more site-specific than other pain control methods, targeting the exact root of the pain.
** Aromatherapy / Tart and Spicy Taste-therapy- Taste or smell to help with nausea: peppermint oil, cinnamon paste, strong breath mints like Altoids also help. My Kris found the only mint strong enough to stop her nausea were the little tiny lips-shaped mints sold by Victoria's Secret in little tiny pink tins. The clerk who sold me nearly their entire stock in the San Francisco Shopping Center branch told me that she had found the mints very helpful with her nausea when she was fighting Hodgkin's disease. Ginger is also a good taste or smell to help with nausea. Trader Joe's triple ginger cookies were very helpful to Kris. Of course ginger ale is an age-old aid for nausea. Tart smells and tastes like lemon and lime- the tarter the better- can also help stop nausea. Otherwise, strong tastes and smells, even the usually helpful lavender and pine, may provoke nausea.
Hot/ Cold Treatment-Another treatment I can't speak about first or close-second hand. I had a good friend who had struggled with Lupus her whole life, and then was stricken with cancer. She had to be extremely careful with how she stimulated her immune system, because overstimulation could cause her death. One of the immune-stimulating alternative treatments she used alongside the mainstream western treatments was taking hot baths alternating with sitting in an icy cold tub of water. This can be done in smaller proportions (or with showers, instead of baths) to gently stimulate the immune system. Laura, my friend who tried this, did it through the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, the only place she could find affordable care that integrated alternative and mainstream approaches. She actually flew there from San Francisco about every two weeks for treatment.
Juice- Fresh-squeezed orange juice can be especially helpful for immune-system boosts. Get a juicer and some really fresh juice oranges, yum! Feel the effect immediately.
Magnets- Again, not something I've had first or close-second hand experience with, but I have an aunt with bone cancer who uses magnets to control her pain. So, again, this shouldn't be dismissed as a side-effect free addition to your pain-management regime.
Marijuana Tincture- Smoking marijuana has the unpleasant side-effect of being rough on your throat, and of exposing people around you to second-hand smoke. Eating marijuana in food can give you variable degrees of intensity of effect. Finding or making tincture out of marijuana and putting a small eyedropper's amount into hot herbal tea (evaporating the alcohol content and leaving marijuana-essence in the tea) can give you the anti-nausea and sedative benefits without the smoke and with a controlled dosage. The tincture is so strong I've read that you can rub it topically onto sore spots to get pain relief.
Massage & Reiki-The immune system reacts positively to massage. However, you want to find a massage therapist who is experienced with cancer symptoms, particularly with your type of cancer. Some kinds of massage can stimulate the lymph in unhelpful ways. Generally, though, massage relaxes you and stimulates your body to heal itself. If you've gotten to a point where your body is fragile, gentle caressing without any deep pressure, especially with unscented oils and a heating pad adjacent, can still help soothe the body and stimulate an immune response. Reiki- A wonderful, gentle art of righting the energy balance in your body. It neither requires the actual laying on of the hands, nor the presence of the practitioner, if those are impossible or uncomfortable for you.
Methadone-This is a method neither my partner nor anyone I knew actually followed-through and tried for pain control. I believe it is a fairly new approach, as an alternative to morphine. It has side-effects, such as addiction. But if you are unable to tolerate morphine, this is something to try to explore with the help of a clinician experienced in pain management.
** Quartz Crystals-These are used to regulate watches because crystals love order: they generate low electromagnetic fields that try to put everything in their field "to rights." They dislike chaos and extremes, so if any part of your body is in a spasm, or overly hot, or knotted, put a clear (the clearer the better) quartz crystal that's been run under cold water for a minute directly onto the trouble spot, and focus your breathing into that spot. You may not feel suddenly perfect, but the extremes will be controlled and moderated. With Kris, applying crystals to her painful spots would sometimes cause her to fall asleep peacefully, and I allowed the crystals to fall off when she stopped holding them, collecting them from the bed in a way that would not wake her. Even if it's just the coolness of the quartz and a little dose of placebo effect, I found quartz crystals do no harm and often significantly help with small symptom flare-ups. Running the crystals under cool water for a minute after use recharges them with healing negative ions. Store the crystals in a sunny spot if possible. Here is a link to a cancer survivor's homepage, by which she tries to distribute crystals to people suffering from cancer, regardless of ability to pay.
** Supplements: Spes Capsules-An herbal alternative to morphine that has been shown to have cancer-growth-suppressing properties. The most affordable and accessible vendor for this on-line- at least as of last year- is Seacoast Vitamins. Spes comes in two kinds- PC Spes (for prostate cancer) and Spes (for other cancers). BotanicLab, who made the Spes that I bought for Kris, has closed. You can now buy Spes under other names: Prostasol (PC-SPES) and Imusan (SPES). My grandfather and Kris both found it extremely helpful, mainly noticeable when they ran out and couldn't get new tablets right away. Nu-Gen Nutritional System, including Cantron (nee Can-Cell, an electrolyte formula), Colostrum, Magazyme Forte, Noni (derived from a mushroom), OPCs, Squalamax, and Squalamine (the last two are shark liver and shark cartilage, i.e. non-vegetarian)- This is a system that brought my Kris out of a systemic tailspin, and put her in a U-turn to remission within days. Unfortunately, it demands a rigorous system of taking pills (something like eleven per day) and one strange-tasting twice daily liquid. Aside from the annoying frequency of pills (and the stench of one of the shark-derived pills), the only side-effect is being sleepy for the first two or three days of being on the system. Kris went from not being able to bend over to tie her shoes to jogging with her dog within a matter of days when she was able to stay on this system.
Visualization & Meditation- A visualization of a candle in darkness when you are having discomfort or pain can help bring things under control. Imagine the candle: your symptom is causing the flame to flare up too high, or if your energy is too low, the flame to sputter down to almost nothing. Steady the flame and bring it to a perfect and steady still point of light. Meditation-- Otherwise known as taking time to yourself to sit and try to detach from your situation. It can be easy when you're sick to fall into a rhythm of watching TV or keeping some other thing around to busy your mind without taking the time you need to close up the portals of perception, and while still awake, reflect on your experience of the disease and detach from it. With practice this can be a very powerful tool for handling all kinds of symptoms and side-effects. Try to meditate on being IN your body, even with all its problems, and be in it until it becomes a still place where there is no dis-ease.
** Wiggling Fingers and Toes-Taught to me by a yoga instructor who was loathe to let us out of a difficult straining posture too soon. This distracts your nervous system from the trouble spot. It releases the excess energy generated by pain. Notice that when you are in a state of pleasure, you naturally and subconsciously wiggle your fingers and toes- again, to release excess energy. Hence the phrase "making your toes curl" from pleasure.
Yam Cream- for women with breast cancer taking tamoxifen: this is a side-effect free and completely topical way to control night sweats caused by the removal of estrogen from your body. I bought Kris' yam cream at the wonderful herb store in San Francisco The Scarlet Sage.
...and if none of that, and no traditional methods work, and you no longer have a quality of life that you can live with...
Self-Delivery- Seconal tranquilizer, plus vodka, plus antihistimine, plus cellophane plastic bag and rubber band. Control of her own life was a primary concern for my girlfriend. She could not tolerate the thought of losing the use of her legs, and her bone cancer had gone into her hips. She also could not tolerate the thought of relying on other people to help her go to the bathroom or take her medicine, or make decisions for her when her mind started to go. Before she reached that point, she put her affairs in order and ended her own life on her own terms, on her own schedule. She prearranged for her doctor to mis-declare her death to be from cancer, so that there would be no coroner's inquiry. The people in her life who were licensed therapists were specifically kept out of the loop of the details of her planned death, to protect their licenses.. Good timing is essential, and as much honesty as possible with your loved ones about this planned death is also important. Talk to a hospice counselor before making any decisions. In any case, Seconal (Secobarbital) is very hard to come by (Eli Lilly stopped making it two weeks after my girlfriend's OD), and I think can only be obtained from a veterinarian- it's the drug of choice for self-delivery of humans, and for euthanasia of animals.
That is all for now, happy Solstice.
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Welcome to California, Here's Your Lesbian Name and Smoothie. Remember to end all your sentences like a question. Starbucks is bad. Smoking is bad. NEXT!
If you haven't received your Lesbian Name yet.
If you aren't going to walk away happy with that name. I recommend the "So You Want To Be A Cyborg?" link, being pro-cyborg as I am.
Thanks to Larry Bob of Holytitclamps fame for sending these links out in his events bulletin today. It's good to remind the local queercore folk to keep their names up-to-date per changing sexual orientation, gender identity and political affinity. There's nothing worse than an out-of-date name-- you don't want to see a dyke after two years in the Mission, six tattoos, eight piercings and three gender identity changes still being called Betsy Ravenflower of NorthWomynsland.
If you haven't received your Lesbian Name yet.
If you aren't going to walk away happy with that name. I recommend the "So You Want To Be A Cyborg?" link, being pro-cyborg as I am.
Thanks to Larry Bob of Holytitclamps fame for sending these links out in his events bulletin today. It's good to remind the local queercore folk to keep their names up-to-date per changing sexual orientation, gender identity and political affinity. There's nothing worse than an out-of-date name-- you don't want to see a dyke after two years in the Mission, six tattoos, eight piercings and three gender identity changes still being called Betsy Ravenflower of NorthWomynsland.
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Stalking Nirvana's Krist Novoselic
Or at least some of his more arcane musical endeavors.
I discovered a happy thing today. Part one of the happy thing is that although the band Sweet 75, which I periodically stalk on the web to see if they have issued a second album yet, broke up in 2000, a musician friend-- Lala the banjo player from the punk-a-billy Cypher in the Snow-- whom I asked about it today turned out to know Sweet 75's sweet-voiced singer Yva Las Vegas through some Northwest lesbionic-musician-type connections. Part two of the happy thing is to find out that Sweet 75 was bassist Krist Novoselic's first band after Nirvana, and it turns out he also played with the wonderful Northwest band Sky Cries Mary. Sadly, all these bands are broken up and not producing anything, but the more I found out about Krist the more it sounds like a) I have a particular affection for his particular bass playing, and b) being that he's political, located among smaller bands who know bands I know, and he's Croatian (me being Slavophilic), he and I could have a decent conversation, if not know someone or two in common. Plus Sweet 75 was named after a line in a Roethke poem about a poem, and what's not to like about that?
Krist's political web sites about inclusive democracy and electoral reform.
The best bio of Krist I found on the web, if you can suffer the format. Featuring his being sent back to Croatia, and getting his jaw wired shut.
Listen to low-grade quality versions of Sweet 75's one and only self-titled album. Ode to Dolly is great, but Oral Health is very often my favorite.
Listen to even lower-grade quality versions of Sky Cries Mary's albums. The song Moonbathing on the album that guest-stars Krist, Moonbathing on Sleeping Leaves, has a special place in my heart, since I did a burlesque-y artsy strip to it at the former incarnation of the San Francisco Luna Sea's women-only Amateur Strip Night, wearing a silver wig and silver makeup and red and blue body paint and big long skirts and spinning a lot.
There ain't no Cypher in the Snow mp3s on the web where I can find them, but there are some tour pictures featuring a shot of someone about to brain my friend Lala the banjo player with a wooden dildo.
Or at least some of his more arcane musical endeavors.
I discovered a happy thing today. Part one of the happy thing is that although the band Sweet 75, which I periodically stalk on the web to see if they have issued a second album yet, broke up in 2000, a musician friend-- Lala the banjo player from the punk-a-billy Cypher in the Snow-- whom I asked about it today turned out to know Sweet 75's sweet-voiced singer Yva Las Vegas through some Northwest lesbionic-musician-type connections. Part two of the happy thing is to find out that Sweet 75 was bassist Krist Novoselic's first band after Nirvana, and it turns out he also played with the wonderful Northwest band Sky Cries Mary. Sadly, all these bands are broken up and not producing anything, but the more I found out about Krist the more it sounds like a) I have a particular affection for his particular bass playing, and b) being that he's political, located among smaller bands who know bands I know, and he's Croatian (me being Slavophilic), he and I could have a decent conversation, if not know someone or two in common. Plus Sweet 75 was named after a line in a Roethke poem about a poem, and what's not to like about that?
Krist's political web sites about inclusive democracy and electoral reform.
The best bio of Krist I found on the web, if you can suffer the format. Featuring his being sent back to Croatia, and getting his jaw wired shut.
Listen to low-grade quality versions of Sweet 75's one and only self-titled album. Ode to Dolly is great, but Oral Health is very often my favorite.
Listen to even lower-grade quality versions of Sky Cries Mary's albums. The song Moonbathing on the album that guest-stars Krist, Moonbathing on Sleeping Leaves, has a special place in my heart, since I did a burlesque-y artsy strip to it at the former incarnation of the San Francisco Luna Sea's women-only Amateur Strip Night, wearing a silver wig and silver makeup and red and blue body paint and big long skirts and spinning a lot.
There ain't no Cypher in the Snow mp3s on the web where I can find them, but there are some tour pictures featuring a shot of someone about to brain my friend Lala the banjo player with a wooden dildo.
Sunday, December 15, 2002
A Tiny Break From Cynicism and Criticism
Here below please read the text from Sit In: What It Is Like, a book by the late, great zen poet, artist and philosopher Paul Reps, who, among other cool accomplishments, authored the first North American book of haiku in 1939. Sit In was published by Zen Center Press (San Francisco), in 1975. It is a tiny, sweet out-of-print paperback with Reps' ink painting-poems throughout, bought at San Francisco's Dog Eared Books. He doesn't tell you that he's teaching you how to meditate, but he does. He's basically the only zen poet who writes about how to meditate with a grounded practicality that I can grasp. Yes, it's not short, but it is CONCISE. Trust me, read it. You'll thank me later.
~~start quote~~
Book begins here
Head and heart are not apart
Sit in in-vites you
Into new experiencing
As new all through
Doing (no thing) well
In the Orient
Those who sit in
Become stronger healthier
And surer of their cosmos position
So may you
Humans from over the world
Visit these sitters
And often wonder what they are doing
This book explains what
So they may visit you
The act of sit in
Takes self discipline
Then it takes self guidance
Even to take a step you guide it
Then it takes other guidance
The coming together of cosmos as you
Accepting this togethering thankfully
Graduating from dissatisfaction
All this packs in sit
Keep in before words about it
Do not go beyond in
As men give their life for country
Give yours for life itself
In any position or act of good will
Graduate in
Please compose ourself
This may take a little while
Then
As you sit in
Without moving even a finger
With a friend present or
Present elsewhere
1 minute the first day
2 minutes the second day
3 minutes the third day
Increasing minutely up to 10
Or later maybe more
Preferably at the same time place
Perhaps in an empty quiet room
Your integrity begins to show
Cell rhythms smooth in
And you feel better and
Better
When standing
We balance our human instrument
As three inverted triangles
Head into shoulders
Shoulders into pelvis
Pelvis into feet
As this mobile balancing
Leans slightly
Muscle stress begins to recover
Us into weightless
Perfect
Bliss this
As we compose
Our lowest triangle
Into a firm base
Including our whole body
In-ing begins
Sitting crosslegged
On a hard cushion
Or forward on a low flat seat
with both feet on ground
Somthing amazing happens
We open
Shut up
Up in
Sit comfortably then most
Comfortably erect
Centering your weight equally
On two sit bones
Forehead smooth
Soft eyes near closing
Inbreathflow high through nostrils
Shoulders releasing
Back firm
Neck soft
Jaw not tight
Head floating up from back
As if about to nod yes
Though not yet nodding
The sitting itself
Your answer
The sitting itself
Your healing
Just do it
Difficult when stiff
More and more fluidly flexive
When firm and gentle with you
Impulse subdued
Emotive re-act pacified
Radiance through
Too simple to believe
In experiencing
Millions of years before yoga
Thousands of years before zen
Re-discovered gloriously by buddha
(2500 years ago) and other sages
And variously formalised
If a dull moment comes
Stretch
Loosen
In
"What is it like?"
Like inlight
Actually we are made of light
Too instant for birth death
"How?"
Observe natural breathflow
Outbreathflow
Inbreathflow
Imagine turning palms of hands
Down with outbreathflow
Up with inbreathflow
Continuing without moving hands
In your rhythm of suns and seas
Given with birth
Lo the great harmony
"Are you dreaming it?"
Waking from dream and
From waking dream
Graduate in
"Does it help others?"
Are you others?
Are others you?
Is empty full?
"Can it be done with overstepping
Overdoing overgoing?"
Yes
"Does it get to be a habit?"
If you sit and sag
Try too hard
Try to repeat it
It's electric
Just as it sits
Earned benefits of sit in
May be due in part to:
a) Your willing to practice it
As an act of integrity
b) Charging your batteries
Minding your business
c) Doing nothing beyond in
d) Mind attention accommodating
One aggregate at a time wholly
e) Smoothing broken breathflow
f) In-viting innate nerveflow
Bloodflow lymphflow juiceflow
Cell consciousnessing
g) Pressures on large base
Nerve cluster opening inner doors
To tophead
h) Entering silent sound
Awarefullness
i) Self-learning to do(no-thing)
When about your daily work
Moving water-smooth light-bright
So nothing is the water
j) Multiple other reasons unknown
As yet to us air and light breathers
in this lifetime
IS resolves
to help one individual
you (who me?) so
wondrously put
together
Something
Is
Immediate
Unchanging in change
Inchanting me me
In each grassblade
"Who me?"
Instead of me or I
May one answer
IS -- is does it
Is
Sits
Fresh
Shouts the bud
Strengthening
Trueing
Utterly still
You may feel it is meditating
Or praying or composing
Or graduating from talk-back
Before before say
Keep in
Firm as pyramid
In deep wake
As in deep sleep
Instantly regenerating
Rejuvenating
New life begins here
Thank you for your life
Our energy sea sees us.
Earth and its creatures are negative to light.
We break through to inlight.
any questions?
reps
ZEN CENTER
300 Page Street
San Francisco, Ca 94102
OPEN HERE
~~end quote~~
This guy Paul Reps only has one original book still in print, his famous Zen Telegrams, which is how I found him. The book Zen Flesh Zen Bones, his translations of ancient zen texts, is also still in print, and includes the sexiest poem I've ever read: Centering, with the two sexiest words ever put together in a love letter: "devotion frees."
Here is the most complete bibliography that I can muster for his sixty years of generating random, beautiful little books. I have most of these books, thanks to E-Bay(search titles AND descriptions, people don't always put Reps in the product title), and the Bay Area's (once Reps' home) used book stores, especially Dog Eared Books and Forest Books.
-- 1939 More Power To You: Poems Anyone Can Make. (California). (A book of "visual haiku" published 27 years before Robert Spiess' first collection of haiku, The Heron's Legs, was published, and over 20 years before any of the few other very early North American haiku collections were published in the early and mid-sixties.)
-- 1951 Unknot the World in You.
--1957 Zen Flesh Zen Bones.
-- 1958 Naked Essays by a Wandering Foreigner, publisehd by Komo Hadaka Aruki (Japan).
-- 1960 Big Bath.
--1961 Gold/ Fish Signatures (on ricepaper).
--1962-1964 Picture-Poem Primer (dated 1964 per Bibliography in Letters to a Friend, may be 1963 or earlier).
--1965 Unwrinkling Plays.
--1967 Square Sun, Square Moon.
--1967 Ask a Potato.
--1969 No Need to Kill: 10 Ways to Meditate.
--1971 Be!: New Uses for the Human Instrument.
--1974 Deep Wake.
-- 1975 Sit In, What It is Like.
-- 1978 Juicing: Words & Brushwork.
-- 1981 Letters to a Friend.
-- 1990 Let Good Fortune Jump on You.
and
---- a mysterious undated one-page folded puzzle 8 Ways to You by "Hut-of-Light" (Hawaii).
Read your Reps! It's a panacea better than chocolate, better than a snow day, better than a warm cat asleep on your lap. Or at least more reliable.
Here below please read the text from Sit In: What It Is Like, a book by the late, great zen poet, artist and philosopher Paul Reps, who, among other cool accomplishments, authored the first North American book of haiku in 1939. Sit In was published by Zen Center Press (San Francisco), in 1975. It is a tiny, sweet out-of-print paperback with Reps' ink painting-poems throughout, bought at San Francisco's Dog Eared Books. He doesn't tell you that he's teaching you how to meditate, but he does. He's basically the only zen poet who writes about how to meditate with a grounded practicality that I can grasp. Yes, it's not short, but it is CONCISE. Trust me, read it. You'll thank me later.
~~start quote~~
Book begins here
Head and heart are not apart
Sit in in-vites you
Into new experiencing
As new all through
Doing (no thing) well
In the Orient
Those who sit in
Become stronger healthier
And surer of their cosmos position
So may you
Humans from over the world
Visit these sitters
And often wonder what they are doing
This book explains what
So they may visit you
The act of sit in
Takes self discipline
Then it takes self guidance
Even to take a step you guide it
Then it takes other guidance
The coming together of cosmos as you
Accepting this togethering thankfully
Graduating from dissatisfaction
All this packs in sit
Keep in before words about it
Do not go beyond in
As men give their life for country
Give yours for life itself
In any position or act of good will
Graduate in
Please compose ourself
This may take a little while
Then
As you sit in
Without moving even a finger
With a friend present or
Present elsewhere
1 minute the first day
2 minutes the second day
3 minutes the third day
Increasing minutely up to 10
Or later maybe more
Preferably at the same time place
Perhaps in an empty quiet room
Your integrity begins to show
Cell rhythms smooth in
And you feel better and
Better
When standing
We balance our human instrument
As three inverted triangles
Head into shoulders
Shoulders into pelvis
Pelvis into feet
As this mobile balancing
Leans slightly
Muscle stress begins to recover
Us into weightless
Perfect
Bliss this
As we compose
Our lowest triangle
Into a firm base
Including our whole body
In-ing begins
Sitting crosslegged
On a hard cushion
Or forward on a low flat seat
with both feet on ground
Somthing amazing happens
We open
Shut up
Up in
Sit comfortably then most
Comfortably erect
Centering your weight equally
On two sit bones
Forehead smooth
Soft eyes near closing
Inbreathflow high through nostrils
Shoulders releasing
Back firm
Neck soft
Jaw not tight
Head floating up from back
As if about to nod yes
Though not yet nodding
The sitting itself
Your answer
The sitting itself
Your healing
Just do it
Difficult when stiff
More and more fluidly flexive
When firm and gentle with you
Impulse subdued
Emotive re-act pacified
Radiance through
Too simple to believe
In experiencing
Millions of years before yoga
Thousands of years before zen
Re-discovered gloriously by buddha
(2500 years ago) and other sages
And variously formalised
If a dull moment comes
Stretch
Loosen
In
"What is it like?"
Like inlight
Actually we are made of light
Too instant for birth death
"How?"
Observe natural breathflow
Outbreathflow
Inbreathflow
Imagine turning palms of hands
Down with outbreathflow
Up with inbreathflow
Continuing without moving hands
In your rhythm of suns and seas
Given with birth
Lo the great harmony
"Are you dreaming it?"
Waking from dream and
From waking dream
Graduate in
"Does it help others?"
Are you others?
Are others you?
Is empty full?
"Can it be done with overstepping
Overdoing overgoing?"
Yes
"Does it get to be a habit?"
If you sit and sag
Try too hard
Try to repeat it
It's electric
Just as it sits
Earned benefits of sit in
May be due in part to:
a) Your willing to practice it
As an act of integrity
b) Charging your batteries
Minding your business
c) Doing nothing beyond in
d) Mind attention accommodating
One aggregate at a time wholly
e) Smoothing broken breathflow
f) In-viting innate nerveflow
Bloodflow lymphflow juiceflow
Cell consciousnessing
g) Pressures on large base
Nerve cluster opening inner doors
To tophead
h) Entering silent sound
Awarefullness
i) Self-learning to do(no-thing)
When about your daily work
Moving water-smooth light-bright
So nothing is the water
j) Multiple other reasons unknown
As yet to us air and light breathers
in this lifetime
IS resolves
to help one individual
you (who me?) so
wondrously put
together
Something
Is
Immediate
Unchanging in change
Inchanting me me
In each grassblade
"Who me?"
Instead of me or I
May one answer
IS -- is does it
Is
Sits
Fresh
Shouts the bud
Strengthening
Trueing
Utterly still
You may feel it is meditating
Or praying or composing
Or graduating from talk-back
Before before say
Keep in
Firm as pyramid
In deep wake
As in deep sleep
Instantly regenerating
Rejuvenating
New life begins here
Thank you for your life
Our energy sea sees us.
Earth and its creatures are negative to light.
We break through to inlight.
any questions?
reps
ZEN CENTER
300 Page Street
San Francisco, Ca 94102
OPEN HERE
~~end quote~~
This guy Paul Reps only has one original book still in print, his famous Zen Telegrams, which is how I found him. The book Zen Flesh Zen Bones, his translations of ancient zen texts, is also still in print, and includes the sexiest poem I've ever read: Centering, with the two sexiest words ever put together in a love letter: "devotion frees."
Here is the most complete bibliography that I can muster for his sixty years of generating random, beautiful little books. I have most of these books, thanks to E-Bay(search titles AND descriptions, people don't always put Reps in the product title), and the Bay Area's (once Reps' home) used book stores, especially Dog Eared Books and Forest Books.
-- 1939 More Power To You: Poems Anyone Can Make. (California). (A book of "visual haiku" published 27 years before Robert Spiess' first collection of haiku, The Heron's Legs, was published, and over 20 years before any of the few other very early North American haiku collections were published in the early and mid-sixties.)
-- 1951 Unknot the World in You.
--1957 Zen Flesh Zen Bones.
-- 1958 Naked Essays by a Wandering Foreigner, publisehd by Komo Hadaka Aruki (Japan).
-- 1960 Big Bath.
--1961 Gold/ Fish Signatures (on ricepaper).
--1962-1964 Picture-Poem Primer (dated 1964 per Bibliography in Letters to a Friend, may be 1963 or earlier).
--1965 Unwrinkling Plays.
--1967 Square Sun, Square Moon.
--1967 Ask a Potato.
--1969 No Need to Kill: 10 Ways to Meditate.
--1971 Be!: New Uses for the Human Instrument.
--1974 Deep Wake.
-- 1975 Sit In, What It is Like.
-- 1978 Juicing: Words & Brushwork.
-- 1981 Letters to a Friend.
-- 1990 Let Good Fortune Jump on You.
and
---- a mysterious undated one-page folded puzzle 8 Ways to You by "Hut-of-Light" (Hawaii).
Read your Reps! It's a panacea better than chocolate, better than a snow day, better than a warm cat asleep on your lap. Or at least more reliable.
Saturday, December 14, 2002
In Praise of the Great Ms. Dynamite
I blogged about her before but now I can't find my entry in the archives, so here it is again. Essential music, people!
Please prepare your ears for the amazing sweet groove of Ms. Dynamite, aged 21 and cleaning up the UK music awards after just one album, A Little Deeper. Her genre? Technically UK Garage, but she would fit in among the greats of US Hip Hop. She was a little misfiled under "Soul" at the Berkeley branch of Amoeba Records - but just talk to a nice clerk and they'll point you aright.
I didn't need to know this to love her music, but I heard about her because in September, 2002, Ms. D. won the UK Mercury Music Award, and I'm amazed to find out that (as one journalist wrote) she is " the first black female and youngest-ever winner of the Mercury Music Prize." Someone else wrote "It's official - Ms. Dynamite is the leading light of British music..."
So now I have to try to describe her... she has a silky, strong, slightly higher than Lauryn Hill - but Hill-ish - style voice. She stands out from Hill with a more reggae flavor, and (even) more of an explicitly political feminist set of topics in her songs. It also occurs to me to say that she's the singer Ani Difranco wishes she was. With all due respect to the big A.
Now this isn't the original set of links that I posted, but it will do for now.
The Official Ms. D. Site-- check out the videos, kids!
The BBC's "everything you need to know about" Ms. D.
An informative fan site, actually more informative than the official site.
A high quality version of "It Takes More" --- "if it's not too complex, tell me- how many Africans died for the baguettes on your Rolex?"
Here is the video for "It Takes More" (with the censored, AKA "clean," version of the lyrics). Click on "ADSL" for the RealPlayer version.
Listen to a medium quality version of "Ms. Dy-Na-Mi-Tee"-- Ms. D's first album's hit single whose video caught my attention on the international channel, the chorus thereof thereby lodging itself in my brain and not going away until I hunted down her album and played it about 200 times.
Listen to a medium quality version of "Booo!"-- Ms. D's first hit circa May, 2001-- about clubland violence, with UK Garage luminary Sticky (of So Solid Crew).
Lastly, a site where you can click to see footage of Ms. D LIVE, performing "Put Him Out" -- a nice little song about how a girl just needs to kick out the boy and change all the locks sometimes.
Coming soon--- How to Peacefully Share the Planet with Sagittarian-Americans and Their Tricky Inner Child (Who is Often More Outer than Inner)
I blogged about her before but now I can't find my entry in the archives, so here it is again. Essential music, people!
Please prepare your ears for the amazing sweet groove of Ms. Dynamite, aged 21 and cleaning up the UK music awards after just one album, A Little Deeper. Her genre? Technically UK Garage, but she would fit in among the greats of US Hip Hop. She was a little misfiled under "Soul" at the Berkeley branch of Amoeba Records - but just talk to a nice clerk and they'll point you aright.
I didn't need to know this to love her music, but I heard about her because in September, 2002, Ms. D. won the UK Mercury Music Award, and I'm amazed to find out that (as one journalist wrote) she is " the first black female and youngest-ever winner of the Mercury Music Prize." Someone else wrote "It's official - Ms. Dynamite is the leading light of British music..."
So now I have to try to describe her... she has a silky, strong, slightly higher than Lauryn Hill - but Hill-ish - style voice. She stands out from Hill with a more reggae flavor, and (even) more of an explicitly political feminist set of topics in her songs. It also occurs to me to say that she's the singer Ani Difranco wishes she was. With all due respect to the big A.
Now this isn't the original set of links that I posted, but it will do for now.
The Official Ms. D. Site-- check out the videos, kids!
The BBC's "everything you need to know about" Ms. D.
An informative fan site, actually more informative than the official site.
A high quality version of "It Takes More" --- "if it's not too complex, tell me- how many Africans died for the baguettes on your Rolex?"
Here is the video for "It Takes More" (with the censored, AKA "clean," version of the lyrics). Click on "ADSL" for the RealPlayer version.
Listen to a medium quality version of "Ms. Dy-Na-Mi-Tee"-- Ms. D's first album's hit single whose video caught my attention on the international channel, the chorus thereof thereby lodging itself in my brain and not going away until I hunted down her album and played it about 200 times.
Listen to a medium quality version of "Booo!"-- Ms. D's first hit circa May, 2001-- about clubland violence, with UK Garage luminary Sticky (of So Solid Crew).
Lastly, a site where you can click to see footage of Ms. D LIVE, performing "Put Him Out" -- a nice little song about how a girl just needs to kick out the boy and change all the locks sometimes.
Coming soon--- How to Peacefully Share the Planet with Sagittarian-Americans and Their Tricky Inner Child (Who is Often More Outer than Inner)
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
Hello, the Genetic Disillusionment that is Thanksgiving
I am still choking on the turkey bone of my family dysfunction, trying to understand how so much that is strange, manic-depressive, and twisted could come out of the same country that spawned the wondrousness that is Ikea. It is no wonder that I have not gone and reclaimed my roots and learned Swedish. Every time I turn that way I find out a new layer of alienation and abuse churning down the genetic runway into my veins.
And now I find out my sister is pregnant with twins. For better or for worse, they will probably be born not only twins but GEMINIS - the sign of the twins. As if their genetic makeup wasn't enough of an uphill climb.
On the topic of big happy families, please write to my friend Paul if you have any connection to survivors of Jonestown. Here is his website for his movie After Jonestown.
Here are some other links about mayhem and conspiracy to take your minds off your own unfortunate and inevitable genetic predispositions:
I am still choking on the turkey bone of my family dysfunction, trying to understand how so much that is strange, manic-depressive, and twisted could come out of the same country that spawned the wondrousness that is Ikea. It is no wonder that I have not gone and reclaimed my roots and learned Swedish. Every time I turn that way I find out a new layer of alienation and abuse churning down the genetic runway into my veins.
And now I find out my sister is pregnant with twins. For better or for worse, they will probably be born not only twins but GEMINIS - the sign of the twins. As if their genetic makeup wasn't enough of an uphill climb.
On the topic of big happy families, please write to my friend Paul if you have any connection to survivors of Jonestown. Here is his website for his movie After Jonestown.
Here are some other links about mayhem and conspiracy to take your minds off your own unfortunate and inevitable genetic predispositions:
The Mayhem Crime Archives
The Mayhem Jim Jones Blurb
A fun quote from a letter in the Mayhem archives: "Not all of Congressman Ryan's party got killed. Jackie Spier, then his aide, got shot, but survived, as did at least one other person. She then became a state Assemblywoman here in California [and is currently a CA State Senator, D-San Mateo]. In promoting gun control legislation, she has made pretty good mileage out of getting shot at Jonestown. A paraphrased quote: 'Well, I've been shot before. Have you?'"
The Jonestown Story from the Cult Awareness Network
A well-cited article detailing how Moscone appointed Rev. Jim Jones to a sinecure in order to allow him to commit election fraud and ensure Moscone's reelection.