Limpin' 'Bout My G-G-Generation

Just got back the X-rays from Friday’s doctor appointment, and the diagnosis is arthritis in my so-excruciatingly-painful-for-the-past-month-it-had-me-limping right knee. Or, as he rather sensationally put it, “We found a good deal of degenerative joint disease.” When I asked for English, please, he said arthritis. So? I asked. Possible knee replacement, he said. I said WTF! And he backed off, oh not for years probly, lotsa stuff we can do in the meantime as long as you can stand the pain. Uh-HUH. I’ll be talking to my regular doctor about it next week, and we’ll just see about that.

"Joint disease," forsooth! Joints had nothing to do with this...though I wouldn't say no to one right about now, maybe, even...

But still. It kinda shoots all to hell my theory of my skeletal system being kryptonite-indestructible ’cause of all the damn milk I’ve drunk since childhood. (I have theories on blood circulation and electricity, too, that may now have to be rethought.)

(Briefly, Patricia’s theory of blood circulation is that blood DOESN’T circulate, William Harvey to the contrary notwithstanding. You have finger blood, arm blood, toe blood. When you have a blood test and the doctor can’t get more blood out of your poor needlestuck finger? That’s because there’s no more blood in the area, and you have to wait till it fills up again, like a well.
And electricity: the little electrons runrunrun along the wires goingohsofast and then they hit the lightbulb and explode, and that makes the light. Then their little dead electron corpses float to the floor and those make the dustbunnies.)
(I tell ya, I’m closing in on that Nobel…)

Not to mention the fact that just about everybody in my family on both sides has been afflicted with osteoarthritis sooner or later and it was always a question of When, not If, it would get around to me.

Not to mention the further fact that I am, after all, 60 years old, hard though I find it to believe, and hence a Dowager Boomer.

I say again, but still. Boomers are meant to live forever. We are meant to remain 25 years old physically, if not perhaps mentally. Though maybe that too. Arthritis is something, dare I say it, OLD people get.

We’re not old, we boomers. We hoped we’d DIE before we got old, remember? And though lots of us did, here the first of us—me, Cher, Goldie Hawn, Bill Clinton, yes, even Oliver fucking Stone—are all crashing through the 6-0 Barrier this year. Weird, I tell ya, weird!
But as long as Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger are still older than us, and they always will be, I’m not worried.

And even if I have to hobble around on my Irish blackthorn walking stick from here on in (though what I REALLY want is a sword-cane, or even a sword-brolly like John Steed), I am NOT old. I am just…cumulatively yearful.

I Love Quizzes

This is from my niece Shannon's blog...I won't publish her user name....

If you leave a comment to this post I will:
1) Respond with something random about you.
2) Tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3) I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4) I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5) I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6) I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7) I'll tell you something that I've always wondered about you.
If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal.


On August 25th, 2006 12:08 am, [my niece] replied:
1) Nassssty hobbitsesss, preciousss.
2) Pirates of the Caribbean or Lord of the Rings … take your pick!
3) Licorice.
4) “I’ll get that blasted mouse if it’s the last thing I ever do!” (And no, we aren’t making it up, it did happen.)
5) My first clear memory of you was that Christmas, but there are much better ones later on. One of my favorites of course being Trilogy Tuesday and the day you took me to get my Rose.
6) A phoenix. :)
7) I wonder where your courage came from to defy what was taught to you as a child in order to take a different route. I wish I had that kind of courage, and I wonder if my headstrong mother shouldn’t take more of the blame for me being in a position that doesn’t suit me right now.


On August 28th, 2006 04:00 pm, pkmorrison replied:
Ha!

I hate licorice...how 'bout CHOCOLATE? Or even raspberry?? Or chocolate raspberry??? ;)

As for #7, let's just put it down to sheer unadulterated orneriness from birth and the inspiration of my role model Lucy Van Pelt... And you can be that way too! :D

And because turnabout is fair play:
1) Boots!
2) LOTR or POTC…depends on the day. “Chocolat” good, too… ;)
3) Watermelon
4) “I love the smell of cutlass in the morning!”
5) First: when I picked you up for the first time and did everything but juggle with plates to get you to smile. You were a tough audience...and still are! Clearest: you singing with your sister, in the limousine in the rain with your grandma and me (you remember…☹ ), both lovely and sad—and I sat and listened with tears and thought how very, very lucky I was in the niece department…
6) Otter.
7) I wonder how the heck you got to be so incredibly smart in math and science AND are also so literary.

Presumption Is Guilt

I got a letter from a Keltiad reader the other day, bemoaning the fact that the series is pretty much dead in space. Which was of course both flattering and gratifying to hear.

However.

She saw fit to sign herself “Aeron the Queen,” which, as you might imagine, did very little to endear her to me, and also pretty much guaranteed she was not getting a response. Or at least not the response she might have been hoping for…read on.


Even though the Keltiad is gone, I still have a ginormous problem with people doing stuff like that, and an even bigger one with the people who not only do stuff like that but think I will be okay with, or even approving of, them doing stuff like that.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh so very very wrong.

Just because some genre authors don't mind fannish grabbiness is no reason to think all such authors share that sentiment. From the first 1984 pages of “The Copper Crown” to the last 1999 ones of “The Deer's Cry”, I have consistently and implacably discouraged Keltic fanfiction, Keltic fannish gibber and Keltic wannabes glomming on to my creation and helping themselves to whatever they fancied.

My attitude was possibly quite contributory to the series' demise, despite its considerable fan base. If I'd let readers appropriate it to their hearts’ content, there might have been a lot more of them, with the power of many webrings and such, and they might have helped me save it from extinction at the bloody paws of HarperCollins.

But that's not the way I do things. I'm a control freak—oh, come on, like you haven't guessed?—and I like things my way or the highway (to the end of the night or anywhere else). When I can’t have them, frankly, I’d rather not have anything at all.

And when I can’t get myself the Keltic online handle of my choice on LJ or Lycos or Gmail because someone has already taken it (stolen it…), then it seems to me I am justified in my attitude.

Aeron is mine. Athyn Blackmantle is mine. ANY Keltic character name that I created and envisioned and wrote is mine. Sure, many of them are real names, and as such you’re as free to use them as I was. BUT in conjunction with any title or affix that alludes to Keltia, no, you’re not. (And you could at least have the courtesy to ask first…)

If anyone is going to call herself Queen Aeron, or Aeron Ard-rian, or Athyn Anfa, or any other permutation of any other Keltic character name, it will be their rightful, lawful and only Creatrix.

And you know how Athyn deals with people who meddle with what is hers… But, of course, that’s just fiction—isn’t it?

He Was A Friend Of Mine

*

My longtime friend David G. Walley died suddenly on August 5 at his home in York, Maine, of a massive heart attack. He leaves his wife, Geli, their four children, Melissa, Lindsey, K.C. and Sean, and a book that needed only one chapter to be complete. (Which is probably the thing pissing him off most about being dead.)

I met David on July 5, 1968, when I had recently begun working at Jazz & Pop and had gone back to my former place of employment, Macmillan, to visit friends. David was “The New Patricia”, as the friends teased us both; he had taken over my old job of editorial assistant to the department writing a new children’s dictionary.
I thought he was funny and cute, and gave him an Oreo (the reason I happened to be traveling with a bag of Oreos is lost to the mists of time, though it seems likely to have had something to do with drugs). We started dating, moved in together briefly, found it was a bad idea (we fought a lot, and we were never in love). (I've been in love with exactly two men in my life, and David was neither of them. And he wasn't in love with me either; he never fell in love with anyone until Geli came along. She was, and is, the love of his life, his only wife as he so often called.)
Anyway, he moved out and I moved out too. And then I met Jim, and of course that was that.

We stayed friends, though, which was a far better thing for us both than being boyfriend/girlfriend. Soon after we met I had given him a job writing for Jazz & Pop—likewise his Rutgers friend and roommate, Lenny Kaye (soon to meet Patti Smith due to a Jazz & Pop piece on doo-wop and join her band, where he is to this day)—and he turned in some extremely good work.
Chief among them an interview with the MC5 which is an absolute classic of 60’s rock journalism (this can be found online in various places, if anyone’s interested—on my old site www.lizardqueen.com, though you must now go there through the WayBack Machine, and I believe the MC5’s site as well, as I gave permission a couple of years ago to Robin Tyner’s wife) and another with Iggy of the Stooges, as he was billing himself at the time.

After I left the magazine, David left New York and spent two and a half years in LA. We got him back by offering him a job as an ad copywriter at CBS Records, where I was then copy director, bunch of former rock writers worked there, and he stayed there for a while.
He was living on the Upper West Side then, which is where he met his future wife, the lovely (in all senses of the word) Geli Pearson, and married her in 1984. They subsequently moved to Stephentown, New York and Williamstown, Massachusetts, where I often visited and watched with fond amusement the transformation of this rabble-rousing crazyhaired East Village freakazoid into a country squire with a wife, four kids, dogs, horses, cats and, I believe, bunnies.

David never stopped rousing rabble, though, or anyone else who crossed his personal or writerly path, and that was one of the best things about him. Also his pure, fierce, indignant, Swiftian outrage, still going strong when so many of our contemporaries sold out and threw in the towel. When he began writing various books, I remained his editor, and one of the things I’m proudest of is that he said I was the only person who knew how to edit him properly.

We had our snitfits, of course, no long strong friendship is without them, but we always found our way back into friends. We were on a “hiatus” when he died. I don’t know, this time, if we would have ever gotten back to being friends again, it seemed not to be going to happen, I hoped it would. But though the friends may have been on a break, the friendship never was. I always thought of him with love and I always missed him. And now I always will.

He was a good man, a beloved friend, and he took a lot of my personal past, our past, with him. There are only a few people in the world, outside my family, that I knew as long as I knew him. All things considered, I couldn’t really afford to lose even one.
People with whom you have history, to whom you don't have to explain, with whom there is immediate understanding, a history that you don't have with newer friends no matter how much you love them.
People you can call and say "Do we know So-and-so?" or "Remind me what went down with What's-his-face that night at the Fillmore East?" or "When did _______happen and who was there when it did?" And they will know exactly what you mean, and more.

That's what's gone now with David.

We didn't go in much for presents over our 38 years, at least not for the usual occasions, but he did give me a few treasured things. One of which is a Tiffany sterling stashbox, uh, right, pillbox, engraved with appropriate sentiments for my birthday in 1973. (Typically, he groused that the engraving cost more than the actual silver box.)

Last night, after Geli called to tell me, I got the little box out of the jewel case where I keep it, and round about midnight, I polished it so that it shone again.

And I’m quite sure he and Jim will be sitting down over a beer real soon, if they haven’t already, to shake their heads and clink their glasses and duly bond in fraternal sympathy over that crazy chick Kennealy. And that’s just fine with me.

Rock on, Mishkin! And thank you.

*

True Brit

Can we just hire MI5 and/or 6? They obviously do a far, far better job of catching terrorists than the CIA, FBI and Homeland "Security" all rolled up in one.

By which I mean they actually CATCH them. They don't go strolling off into mental space and declare Mission Accomplished, or forget about Osama, or get wrapped up in general evildoing, or distracted by any shiny thing that comes into view. They DO it.

Failing that, let's just rejoin the British Commonwealth. I'd rather have Queenie with her Giant Royal Handbag long to reign o'er us than Chimpy McFlightsuit and his mate any day of any week...

Hot Laps, No Water

According to the New Rules, you can no longer tote a bottle of Evian onto a plane. (Which is why I won’t be flying again until that rule is relaxed. I need two 2-liter bottles just to get me coast to coast.)
But you CAN bring a Dell laptop with a battery that can explode and burst into flames right there in your lap. Go figure.

Waiting for the Show

I walk past New York's Public Theater almost every day on my way to the gym, and marvel at the lines of devoted playgoers camped outside, in summer, for free tickets to the productions put on at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

This summer, though, the lines have been epic in nature. Not surprising, as the drama currently on offer is "Mother Courage," with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

But still. Usually it's just people sitting on the sidewalk, perhaps using their jackets or a newspaper, or at most one of those collapsible chairs, to keep their little drama-hound bottoms from the nasty sidewalk. For this, though, I have daily seen people in SLEEPING BAGS who have clearly spent, if not the night, then at least the predawn hours kipping outside the theater in hopes of snagging tix.

I have to say that although I find this a tad bit excessive, in my younger years I too waited from early hours for the first showings of "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." No more, though. Now there are midnight or 11:59pm shows of the things I like best, like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean. And a fine thing it is, to be sure.

It's fun seeing stuff like that with a packed theaterful of people who are just as crazy and excited as you. People wearing pointy hats and Gryffindor scarves, or pirate clobber. Or, most notably, people sporting gray cloaks and green-and-silver mallorn-leaf brooches...

When "The Return of the King" opened in December 2003, there was "Trilogy Tuesday" at the big fancy movie house on 42nd Street. All THREE movies, back-to-back-to-back, with ROTK premiering at eleven pm or so. I took my two Elf-mad nieces, Catie and Shannon, their friend Pam and my friend Grace (otherwise known as Little Khaotic One, whom I got to be friends with during my first Mets season back in 1999. More about that later), for what Grace still refers to as "The Night of Smite."

It was amazing. We started at I think 11am with "The Fellowship of the Ring," had a lunch break, then "The Two Towers" followed at around 4, then a longer dinner break. Before the premiere of "The Return of the King", we were plunged into darkness, and then a voice came over the PA: "Hello, preciousssesss!"

It was Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, and everybody went nuts. Then he came in, accompanied by Sean Astin (Sam Gamgee), Dominic Monaghan (Merry Brandybuck), and to the everlasting delight of every teenybopper there, Frodo himself, Elijah Wood. Whose blue eyes could be seen clear to the back wall.

They were clearly amped to be there, and there was much loud and happy discourse. Elijah Wood used the f-word a time or two ("You've been here through two f-ing movies?" Crowd: "YES!" EW: "And you're sticking around for another?" Crowd: "YEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!" EW: "You're all f-ing crazy!" Maybe. And nice mouth for a Hobbit. Bilbo should wash it out with soap...

But it was just incredible, and mathoms were passed out by New Line minions: a neato little gray resin sort of shrine with three actual film cels in each one. I got Gandalf entering Bag End with Bilbo opening the door to him, Aragorn and Eowyn on the march to Helm's Deep, and Sam in Shelob's lair.

And my nieces and their friend got to be on "Entertainment Tonight"! On air and online for a week thereafter. They were interviewed about the movies and the books and how they got into LOTR. I think they were all having out-of-body experiences by that point. So fun to watch them.

We got out at two in the morning, happy and exhausted, having been there from 8am the previous morning. Almost as if we'd been on a journey of our own. Cool.

So I can sort of see where the sidewalk sleepers are coming from. But they just get free tickets. No collectibles. Bummer.

No Turn UnStoned

I see where my onetime director and forever nemesis Oliver Stone’s latest movie opened yesterday.

Yeah. “WTC.”

WTF is more like it…

As usual, he claims it’s a true story. Uh-HUH. Heard THAT song before. Been down THAT road with him. We won’t get fooled again, nosirreebob! Because it's NOT a true story, so stay away from it in droves, anyone out there with a heart and a soul and a brain. If you value truth AND facts.

Even him having directed from someone else’s script, not his own, and being forced to toe the truth line with regard to real live human beings with real live lives, and not being able to invent, embroider, fabricate and make up taradiddles and outright untruths about them, as is his customary wont, hasn't stopped him from giving it the old college-dropout try.

Not for nothing does his name anagram as LIES NOT OVER.

Even though the truth this time was seen and witnessed by millions. You'd think that would have kinda cramped his usual free-and-easy way with actuality.

But no! For Oliver, facts are something that happens to other people.

He's not even daunted in his inventions by (though he, typically, tries to capitalize on) the fact that the real-life people in "WTC" are sympathetic plain American characters. As opposed to the real-life people in "The Doors", who according to Stone's take were merely a passel of caricature boomer rocknrollers for whom audiences would not feel compassion and sorrow at their grief for the loss of someone they loved. (Go to hell, Oliver!)

Now I read on the Slate website that HE'S STILL MAKING THINGS UP. And why oh why oh why are we not surprised?

From Rebecca Liss's excellent piece http://www.slate.com/id/2147350/fr/rss/ :
'Since the filmmakers have repeatedly stated their desire to "chronicle what happened as truthfully as we could," 'World Trade Center' will likely go down in the minds of many as a historical and factual account. But [WTC hero Chuck] Sereika recently told me that he felt the entire rescue, as portrayed in the film, is "fiction"—the facts are so distorted that he didn't recognize what he was seeing as what he lived through.'

Ah, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, I know the feeling and I share your sentiments and I speak from bitter and illuminating experience.
When Oliver was putting together his Doors movie, which was released lo this fifteen years ago (my, how time flies when you’re holding a grudge! it keeps you young when you keep your hate alive, it really does…), all sorts of promises were made, to me and others who had ridden on that particular storm back in the day. Promises about truth and sympathy and understanding, all of which went straight to hell once filming started, in favor of Oliver’s particular brand of nonfiction. Which is to say, FICTION. I've never seen an Oliver Stone movie since.

So I think you will understand when I say I have no intention in this world or any other of going to see “WTC.” I was watching from my rooftop with my neighbors, a mile and a half away, when it actually happened. I saw blazing bits of debris falling off it that turned out to be people. I saw the North Tower spark and collapse like some terrible fountain. I felt the earthquake rumble a few seconds later that made me lose my balance, heard the godawful noise, so frighteningly slow in coming, that I will never, ever forget. It is imprinted on the back of my eyelids, in my inner ear, along my nerve pathways. I don’t need Oliver Stone to recast it for me in the name of entertainment.

I saw truth on my rooftop, not fiction. So having been dissed/lied about/trivialized by Oliver with respect to my religion, my marriage and my general behavior, I decided not to force myself to endure any more Olliewood gospel ever again. Not with a gun to my head. Not though he claims that THIS time it’s really accurate and sensitive to those who endured it. It would be nice if that were true. But come on! It’s Oliver fucking STONE! What are the odds?

He doesn't think he does this, however; he really believes he's not like this. Awwwww...how endearing is THAT?? So when I caught Oliver’s plug (and plugs?) on “Access Hollywood” last night, and actually heard him say with an actual straight face, about “WTC”, that “The facts were the driving force. You don’t want to screw that up”, my shriek of derisive disbelief was probably heard in Hoboken. I was only amazed that his nose didn’t instantly grow so long that it broke on through to the other side of the camera lens. Oh man! Get me rewrite! Pinocchiver!

Hear LA Times critic Kenneth Turan on Oliver:
“The old Stone was not exactly a bargain, but he was never this pious or this conventional.
“The difficulty here, though, is not that Stone has gone all sincere on us but that he has no gift for that state of mind, not to mention that the depiction of ordinary people in crisis has not always been his strength.
“As a result, "World Trade Center" often feels like something constructed from a blueprint of standard movie situations rather than honestly felt in any genuine way.”

Bingo! Turan goes on to say:
“Even more puzzling is that Stone, usually viewed as the antichrist in conservative circles, has made a film that rightist commentators are falling all over themselves to applaud. Cal Thomas, in a much-quoted example, has called it "one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see." This tribute comes in part because "World Trade Center" makes an explicit connection between Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq that will make the Bush White House and the Republican National Committee eager to embrace it as their own.”

—Sorry, I was laughing too hard to type. Hey, check it out, Stone! We call that dramatic irony…not that you’d recognize anything that subtle if it bit you on the butt.

But maybe I should cut him a little slack? What do you think? He HAS sort of half-assed apologized for That Damn Movie...Ye-e-e-es?
…NOOOOOOOO! Never gonna happen. To quote a character in one of my books, I do not forgive and I do not forget.

Well, I’ll never forget. But I just might forgive. If.

IF, and I say again if, I get a personal and public apology from Oliver, to me AND to Jim AND to the Sixties, at high noon in Times Square with him wearing a French maid’s outfit and kneeling humbly at my feet. Yeah. That might do it. (Except he might actually LIKE that French maid part…)

Still, maybe Oliver’s learned a bit in the 15 years since a picture of him was wrapped in tin foil and placed at the back of my freezer. (NOT a curse! Just the Karma Mirror being held up to him, an instructional tool reflecting back upon him all the bad fu he puts out there into the universe. I’m a very lazy Witch, and I prefer to see him do it to himself. He’s been very obliging in that respect, really…)

As I say, perhaps he’s learned. But I won’t be unthawing him anytime soon.

Dog in Manger, Snake in Grass

I'm not a Connecticut voter, but I've been closely following that state's Democratic primary for the Senate nomination over the past weeks. Now it's over, Lieberman is the loser he's always been, and new blood Ned Lamont has locked it down. I am content.

Lieberman's the Neville Chamberlain of the Dems (well, most of them are also appeasers, but he's particularly noxious). He's spent the last few years with his mouth firmly planted on Bush-butt, and he has broken his promise not to run again with his declaration that hey, after he's sucked up everything the Democrats could offer him, now he's going to run in November as an Independent, to feed his massive, bloated ego and his sense of demiroyal entitlement. Just so HE can stay a Senator and enjoy his committees (from which he should IMMEDIATELY be removed) and his Beltway schmoozing and the adoration of his misguided CT-izens.

He has learned well from his dark masters. A Republican by any other name, he stinks up the place just as much as they do. So fond is he of his senatorial perks and suchlike that he is willling to force his ostensible party to spend tons of money against him, money that could be better spent elsewhere fighting the Republithugs.

So now all his cronies are crying foul, that the voters shouldn't use a primary (or any other election, apparently) to "send a message to Bush." Huh??? How the hell ELSE are we supposed to send messages and make our will known to our public SERVANTS? Oh, right, I forgot. We're not.

To borrow a rallying cry from an election long since, "THROW THE BASTARDS OUT!"

A Name By Any Other Rose

Why is it when you introduce yourself or sign your name as, oh, let’s say, just f’rinstance, “Patricia”, all too often the other person responds right back by calling you “Pat”?

I don’t know about you, but when this happens to me, I get really, really steamed, very often to the point of actual (gasp!) rudeness in correcting them. But then they’re oblivious to rudeness anyway, or they would never have miscalled you in the first place, and they just don’t seem to get that their unauthorized nomenclatural curtailing is an insult as well as a problem.

My general first response is a friendly, if warning-toned, “‘PATRICIA’???!!!...”. Sometimes the correction works, particularly if I am giving off an armed and dangerous vibe. But all too often it doesn’t. And I wonder why people are so (a) discourteous, (b) ignoring, and (c) stupid.

In high school, it was really, really hard to get people to call me “Patricia”. I didn’t yet have either the confidence or the forcefulness to correct the miscreants and make sure they STAYED corrected, so I accepted the hateful “Pat”, even though I loathed it more than you can possibly imagine.
In college, everyone but boyfriends called me “Kennealy” (or, if they were professors, “Miss Kennealy”), which was just fine. Boyfriends called me “Patty”, as my family did (and still does), but no one else was, or is, allowed.

If I were to consider this sort of thing from a sociological standpoint, I would guess that the automatic shortening of someone’s name is a handy old means for the other person to diminish and control, or else a misguided attempt at intimacy or informality. Or just laziness. But whatever the motive, it’s unthinkingly and seriously rude.

I mean, if someone tells you what their name is, then THAT’S THEIR FREAKING NAME.!!! That’s how they see themselves and that’s how they want you to see them and address them, and you have no right whatsoever to dis them by calling them something else.

My response of choice at the moment is to simply and completely ignore any misguided mannerless moron who doesn’t call me by my preferred and indeed actual name. If they question my nonresponse, I just point out that Hey, MY name is PATRICIA, I have no idea who this “Pat” you’re addressing might be. Then they get all huffy, and I can enjoy that. Quite a lot.

Of Cabbages and Kings

Okay, enough with the politics...let's talk about something that doesn't make my ears bleed.

1. Went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean" again, and it's even better the second, or, well, oKAY, fifth, time around. Once you're not concentrating so hard on following what is after all a fairly complex plot, you can just dig the fun stuff going on around the edges. Like Jack in yoga meditation on the beach while Norrington and Elizabeth dig up the chest (noticed it the first time, but it still makes me laugh out loud every time I see it), or that hilarious conversation between Pintel and Ragetti on the correct pronunciation of "Kraken", or the way Jack runs (Johnny Depp says he modeled his running style on a gecko, which is perfect).

Or checking out the jewelry, always an important part of my moviegoing experience. Jack has three new rings, quite nice ones, and steals another from Tia Dalma (notice what else she has on that cluttered table...), but Elizabeth, sadly, does not weigh in on the jools side, spending most of the movie in cabin boy drag. Disappointing.


2. I found a new place to cook lobsters for me! Huzzay with three times three to, natch, The Lobster Place. They have two branches, one in Chelsea Market over on 15th Street and 9th Avenue, and one on Bleecker and I think Leroy, perilously close to Pearl's Oyster Bar (which makes the best lobster rolls in NYC, only they don't do takeout). But they will steam lobsters for you, and they make their own lobster rolls, supposedly, though I myself have never seen this and there's no sign or anything (at least at Chelsea Market), and they have a lot of other nice stuff too.

So sucks to YOU, Whole Foods!


3. Back in the head-exploding category: Lord God of Hosts, do I HATE K-MART! I don't go there often...a K-mart in the East Village is just WRONG...but it's useful for kitchen stuff and gym socks and suchlike. (Word of warning: Don't buy the big decorative pillows---they bump and clump and sag alarmingly, although their soft chenille covers are so tempting. And Martha Stewart sheets and towels are horrible. But then so is she.)

Anyway, this morning, 9:30, quarter to ten, they had ONE register, count it, one, open downstairs where I had gone to buy water and juice for work and chocolate to feed my staff. ONE register, and five people ahead of me on line who were apparently furnishing their entire apartments, so many and so large were the items they had lugged to the register. Oh, and the escalator was broken AGAIN, as it seems to be pretty much all the time, and my knee was acting up so I couldn't climb very well.

I pointed all this out to the two "Associates", as they're rather demeaningly called, having a merry talkfest in the vicinity, but the lollygagging pair just said there's only one register open (like I couldn't see that, you morons?) so go upstairs and pay if you don't want to wait. I replied in a loud voice that I WOULD if only I were able to CLIMB THE BROKEN FREAKIN' ESCALATOR, and then dumped all my stuff and walked out. Well, they had nothing to do, let THEM pick up after me...

4. So then I thought I'd go over to the Dark Side (Starbucks, across the street) for a double chocolate chip creme frappuccino venti no whipped cream, my indulgence of choice. Hey, I deserved it, I'd had a bad start to the day...the heat, K-mart, the heat, the heat...but Starbucks was CLOSED. The heat, the heat...the lack of power. Which made me concerned. If they're having power issues, right there in our neighborhood, which had successfully dodged blackouts over the past few weeks, what bodes it for the rest of us? There was a red Con Ed emergency truck parked across the street from my building as I left for work, which put the wind up, I can tell you...

I think maybe I need to go see "Pirates" again just to calm me down...yeah. That's the ticket.

Well, Thank Allah SOMEbody Gets It!

Now if only the rest of them would follow her brave lead...Nonie Darwish, blogging on Huffington Post...


"However, it is time for the Arab street to get smart. The terror groups' have distracted Arabs from solving their real human challenges while bringing them humiliating defeats. Arabs must join the world community and turn away from self-destructive patterns and tribal obligations. They must come to understand there is more pride in protecting their homes, families and society than in having fake pride by supporting reckless terror groups and attacks against Israel. Otherwise, Arab society is doomed to destruction, terror and despair.

"Every moderate Muslim must be appalled by the likes of Hezbollah, which means the party of Allah. Hezbollah is desecrating God's name and is destroying the lives of Muslim men for a promise of heaven with 72 virgins. Religious leadership has failed Muslim young men, who must be taught that they are needed right here on earth to help make it a better place.

"We Arabs must abandon this obsession to destroy Israel and tend to more important issues, such as honor killing of Muslim girls, stoning of Muslim women, killing and torturing of gays, amputation of limbs of criminals, female genital mutilation, the murder of apostates who leave Islam, polygamy and its devastating effects on family relations, and the imprisonment of Arab reformists and writers and cutting the tongues of those who speak out. We must speak out against the self-anointed and hateful Ayatollahs and Sheikhs who incite violence, rage and anger from the pulpits of mosques. They are condemning the beautiful Middle East society to a permanent condition of war, terror and jihad.

"No longer do we want to hear our religious leaders proudly curse non-Muslim infidels and Jews in Friday prayer sermons, calling them "apes and pigs" and "enemies of God." We are all God's creation. The Arab street must not sympathize with Hezbollah. The silent Muslim majority must abandon its silence and "dark-age mentality." We must join the 21 st century's civilization."


Read the rest:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nonie-darwish/the-muslim-majority-must-_b_26467.html

A Plague On All Your Houses

I’m getting reeeeally tired (though not as tired as the Israelis, of course…) of everybody blaming Israel for what basically comes down to self-defense.

Israel is far from unresponsive to the unending Muslim gimme’s. It pulled out of Lebanon in 2000. Pulled out of Gaza. Was in the process of pulling out of the West Bank. What the hell more do the Islamofascists want?

Well, we KNOW what they want. They want Israel gone. Not gonna happen! I’m not crazy about some of Israel’s military actions---they're arrogant bullies on too many unnecessary occasions---but compared with the Islamists they are cooing doves of peace and saints of restraint and the only public voice of moderation in the Middle East.

Oh right, they want the West gone, too, of course, or at least brought under the Shari'a, rules devised a millennium and a half ago for illiterate tent-dwelling nomadic shepherds and totally unsuited for today. Islam World. Also not gonna happen, however much the jihadists think Allah is on their side. He's not.

Where's the Islamic Martin Luther to come along with a reformation to clear away the dross of primitive religiosity and superstition and hatred-death-glorification culture? To nail his theses to a mosque door? This HAS to happen if Islam is to live in amity with the modern world---always provided Islamists actually want to live and not just die---and it has to come from within Islam, not be imposed upon it from outside.

They claim Islam is a religion of peace. Prove it.

Because all I see is hate. I'd love to see a religion of peace and enlightenment, but you make it pretty much impossible.

So...
Prove me wrong, all you people who go around shouting "Death to the West!" and then demand all the benefits of the West when you flock here like lemmings to live, deserting your Islamic homeland to feed off the tolerant West
.
Prove me wrong, all you males (you're not men, you're not even dogs or pigs or goats---you're worms) who have NO honor for indulging in "honor" killings of women or female genital mutilation (NOT IN THE KORAN, even); show me you're not just murdering sexist subhuman thugs who are lower than the scum of the earth.

Prove me wrong, all you scholars who repudiate the incendiary calls for jihad and murder and fire and slaughter in of your holy book, or who at least decry such literal atavisms, the way Christians and Jews decry the old outdated calls for slavery and stoning and suchlike in their own holy book.

Prove me wrong, rational and thoughtful imams and mullahs who have issued stern fatwas condemning jihadists.

What's that? You haven't? You didn't? You aren't? You don't? You can't? Not even a little?? Well, there you are then. You'd probably kill anyone who tried to drag Islam kicking and screaming into the same century as the rest of the world, anyway. Because as it has been shown to my eyes, Islam is a religion of war, not peace; hate, not love; death, not life. And its book says so.

Show me I'm in error in my assessment. Please. Explain to me. Because I just don't, you know, see it.

And then we have the violent cultural incursions Islam is making upon the West. Holland, Denmark, Britain, the rest of Western Europe. In danger of losing their ancient national identities to an invader much more insidious and much more dangerous, even, than Attila the Hun or Hitler himself. But neither cleric nor politician in the West will stand up to this, and nobody in the Middle East either (looking at YOU, King of Jordan! Looking at YOU, King of Saudi Arabia!).

I almost can't blame them. In Holland, Dutch people who have spoken out against Islamification of Europe have been threatened with beheading by these practitioners of a so-called PEACEFUL faith. Some of them, indeed, have been killed. This is more than unacceptable---it must be punished and it must be stopped. Just like the clinic-bombing Christian fundies of this country. It's wrong. It's not the word of ANY god. And anyone who claims it is is no better than a blasphemer.

Though some Dutch and Danish politicians have come to speak out, really the only national Western leader with any balls in this matter is the Prime Minister of Australia, who basically said to the acting-up Muslims in his country, Hey! YOU came among US! We didn't ask you to come here, but since you did, YOU will abide by OUR rules, not we by yours, and if you won’t then you will get the hell out or be kicked out.
Now THAT's sacked up! And I give him the hugest props imaginable. You’re no Chimpy McFlightsuit, sir!

At least now the Dutch and the Danes are belatedly waking up to the fact that they’ve been invaded by people who have no intention or desire to conform and every desire to transform, the wakeup call coming in the form of murder and unrest and hate speech and separatism. Hopefully, they’re not too late to do something about it…and hopefully the rest of the West will follow suit.

If you want to come to and live in a country that is not your own, you follow its goddamn rules and societal mores. If for some bizarre reason I decided I wanted to move to Saudi Arabia or Iran or Syria, I would certainly realize I would be expected to adhere to the laws of those lands---or suffer the consequences, which are far, far nastier than any we inflict on Muslims, those still being primitive societies run by spiritual and political thugs. (Not so different from ours, eh?)
And which laws and mores of theirs of course I detest, so I won’t be going any time soon. But still.

If Muslims want to live in the West, to make money, or whatever, they must realize they have to obey the Western rules. If they don’t like it, too bad. They demand the benefits of the West...freedom of speech and worship, tolerance, acceptance and understanding of their own ways...yet they are not willing to extend such things to everyone else. They don't want to be a part of the countries they move to, yet they expect those countries to change to accommodate their demands.

Well, I say they should not be allowed to enjoy anything they deny to others, and if they won't abide by the rules they chose to live under, uninvited, then they need to go someplace where THEY can make the rules. Like back where they came from. If they love Islam so much, why do so many of them flee Islamic lands for the kindly West? And if they come to the West to be freer, why do they try to mess it up with hate?

Lebanon wouldn’t be getting bombed back to desert dust if civilians there weren’t supporting and exalting Hezbollah. The bombs would not be falling on Lebanese civilians if the despicable Hezbollites weren’t hiding behind those civilians, using their own children and elderly people and the other helpless as a shield for their vile and cowardly heads. It's THEIR fault, not Israel's, not America's---and they brought it upon themselves. Can't have it both ways. Either kick Hezbollah out and publicly revile it, or suffer the consequences.

When the people of Lebanon (and the other Arab countries) decide to come join the rest of us in the twenty-first century and condemn Hezbollah (and Hamas) for the cowards and wackos and murderers and creatures of evil they truly are, we will welcome them. Until then, they deserve everything they get. As for the terrorists, bomb them with bacon and send them home to hell.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now we get noted Biblical scholar Mel Gibson foaming at the mouth about Jews being responsible for the wars of the world.
He claims drunkenness, and he's only too right there, but in vino veritas: You don’t suddenly become a raving anti-Semite just because you’ve had a few too many. Something had to be there to be let out by alcohol. (Though booze doesn’t help explain the jihadists. Or…DOES it?)
Lest we forget, not only did Mel make that pornographic self-invented Aramaic snuff film couple years back, but Mel’s daddy stoutly and publicly denies the Holocaust. I see the anti-Semitic apple didn’t fall too far from THAT tree…and now it’s off to rehab, as well it should be.
I'm sorry for his family and friends, but the man's proved himself an ape on too many previous occasions to be given a pass now. Though as they say, any publicity is better than none...somewhere Tom Cruise is on his knees thanking Xenu the Clam God.

Actually, though, the truth is more like BRITAIN is responsible for the wars of the world, not the Jews. Think about it. Everyplace the Brits stuck their meddling little fingers of empire (which the sun never set on only because God didn’t trust them in the dark) and solved local sectarian problems by partition, their political tool of choice, we ended up with sectarian wars. Cyprus. Northern Ireland. Israel/Palestine. Pakistan/India. Various African states. Only in South Africa has this pattern been broken, thanks to Nelson Mandela and other heroes, and even then it went on way too long. Blame the Brits.

But hey, if it can happen there, it can happen in all the other places. Perhaps people should indeed be resettled in these troubled lands, only on a REALLY local level. Every other house: Muslim/Jew/Muslim/Jew/Muslim/Jew, Catholic/Protestant/Catholic/Protestant/Catholic/Protestant, Muslim/Hindu/Muslim/Hindu/Muslim/Hindu, etc. That would either escalate the conflict until everybody’s dead (not the best possible outcome, I know, but beginning to look more and more like the most probable one) or it would force people to get along with their actual in-fact neighbors. If the houses on either side of yours belong to your enemies, you would quickly learn to make them your friends.

Well, that’s MY plan for world peace. I’m sure the check for the Prize is already in the mail from Stockholm.