Sunday, January 31, 2010

small claims court schedule


8AM...Man claims he got sick eating stale beef jerky purchased in a gas station vending machine.

9AM...Attorney General of The United States Of America seeking unknown damages/guilt of foreigner masterminding World Trade Center destruction.

10AM...Woman seeking damages caused by next door neighbor's dog pooping on her lawn.

And remember...if you have a dispute with somebody, don't take the law into your own hands: YOU take 'em to COURT!

Friday, January 29, 2010

Fields on his birthday


W.C. Fields(1880-1946) in
The Old-Fashioned Way(1934)....yes, with Baby LeRoy too....the reason I ever wanted to learn to juggle...


Thursday, January 28, 2010

Salinger

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

- The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger


I can imagine in the nights to follow I'll dream of perusing his secret vault, heart pounding while thumbing back and forth through 'the unpublished'. And I'll not be the least bit startled by his ghost because that's been his existence for decades, an apparition. Chased away into the isolated snowy New Hampshire woods retracing the steps I came, out of breath, I'll look back one last time and see the red hat way in the distance. Then all of the sudden, turning again to run in silence on the powdered snow, Holden would be running next to me. Misfits, we'd keep going until we left this world.

Monday, January 25, 2010

movie star Monday: Frank Morgan


In the year following his memorable 5 roles in The Wizard Of Oz in 1939, Frank Morgan introduces Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around The Corner, with a rare cameo from the director...



Be sure to catch the next showing this Thursday on TCM.


Sunday, January 24, 2010

your next book

Saturday, January 23, 2010

dressing Audrey



I could've outfitted her for a measly six or seven dollars with money leftover for a malted milkshake and a pack of cigarettes. What a day!

Johnny

The Tonight Show died last night, the day before the 5th anniversary of Johnny's death.



Thursday, January 21, 2010

reverberation


... and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Massachussettser.'

to paraphrase JFK.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

that apartment, that girl


Cardboard colored rooms would've pleased me just fine. I saw Rear Window for the first time before I had my first apartment. I love the over-sized frames sporting black and white action shots, dusty shelves with rough-edge books, piled magazines, a tiny hidden kitchenette opposite, probably with a dented tin can of spilled Chase and Sanborn, and those large bay windows.

And the low light area lamp shades that Lisa. Carol. Fremont. snaps on as she semi-pirouettes through the room. Just enough space for one. But with atmosphere enough to attract a insecure girl looking for a comfortable place to bed down. She would add all the color needed to bring the place to life.

But she wouldn't have to wear a flowing dress to climb up and down ladders, and I would be smart enough to have extra film to snap Kodachrome telephoto slides of suspicious goings on rather than having to rely on probables and assigning the girl in the dress to prow the dark neighborhood. And certainly a well oiled rifle with scope to take out any songwriter that might consider creating three annoying high-pitched chipmunks.


Monday, January 18, 2010

movie star Monday: Grace!


Has any beauty ever made a better screen entrance than Grace Kelly in Rear Window? A lip-smacking close up right into my favorite Hitchcock film...



Sunday, January 17, 2010

maintain low tones

Good eva-ning. Tonight, Gil Shaham performs Romanza Andaluza Op.22, No.1 from Spanish Dances.
Akira Eguchi, Piano.
Let's go down to the stage....

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

elusive

The hummingbird must visit around one thousand flowers a day to stay alive. Imagine the floral birds-eye view! And its heart beats up to 600 times a minute. The last time mine throbbed at that rate was when I was 8 years old and the prettiest girl in school beckoned me by my first name instead of 'hey, four-eyes.' How much did I love her you ask? If she were a hummingbird, I woulda brought all the flowers she woulda needed to stay alive to her backyard. So elusive, alas, one day she just disappeared forever. I like to think she never blended in with the Earth tones like the sparrow, but remained vibrant and breathtaking.

These days my heart remains at a steady slow rate for the most part. Except, as you know, now and then it flutters as I sight the shy babe-in-glasses in a bookstore that I try to attract out of the fiction foliage with the sweet smelling aroma of a mug of hot cocoa. She comes in a flash. Dips her tongue. She darts away.

Monday, January 11, 2010

movie star Monday: Astaire!


My favorite dance sequence, from the guy who 'Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little,' is the dark room scene in Funny Face with my wife from a previous lifetime, Audrey Hepburn.

Try not smiling when he spins her on the chair.

Monday, January 4, 2010

movie star Monday: Garbo!


The most beautiful woman ever to appear on the silver screen, the trailer to my favorite romantic comedy, Ernst Lubitsch's, Ninotchka...




Saturday, January 2, 2010

dogs

11 below whistling wind chill, the mice have come out from their home behind the fridge, up on their hinders shaking clasped front feet, pleading with me to fill in the cracks of my drafty dwelling, forgetting narrow cracks were the portal to to their lovely home behind the giant humming upright white thing with two doors and one light.

I leave, visiting the old book store where it is warm, not really interested in books, wanting instead to scour for babes wearing glasses. Behind me, in the G thru K shelf, a petite girl, flowing Veronica Lake like hair barely revealing her spectacles, stretches for an out of reach book, her top untucks itself from black jeans exposing flesh. Let me get that book, I offer. She smiles at me leveling her black rims with pinched fingers and I am warm, then tell her about the bossy mice back home. She laughs, just a little, Goethe's The Sorrows Of Young Werther held in small fine white hands hugged to her breast, Oh God, I ponder, don't let this beautiful girl be flirting with suicide now.

Who am I though, holding Hemingway's Men Without Women, to counter such a morbid topic? I tell her Hemingway loved cats, and she's clearly confused, looking up at me, a slight wide-eyed tilted head like a Cocker Spaniel. She is silent, but interested, shining brown eyes never looking away. I prefer dogs, I tell her as she pushes her hair aside thoughtfully. But cats would take care of the mice, she counters, moving on thanking me for the book.
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