Sunday, October 28, 2018
An Explanation of History
Every thirty years
people laugh at
different things.people laugh at
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Smitten
Professor Denzler amazed at
the parallel to the sexual dances
of New Hano and other Pacific islands
Yet Marjorie Dawning had invented it herself.
Performed it at the Lions.
He had room in the budget to invite her to the Anthropology Club, then to show the old British Pathe footage of the island dances.
Frenzies might be the better label.
Anyway, her performance seized grad
student Bill Ortway, and he later stood in
the sudden ice storm outside her small
hotel and stared.
Bea Hoddles noted him from the kitchen
window as she made sandwiches for
Room Service.
Later brought him hot chocolate.
Her art wasn’t dance but warmth, and
Bill quickly changed the object of his
smittenness.
She brought him home that midnight,
and her helter-skeltered dolls glowed
in approval.
Labels: attraction, behavior, culture, cultures, loneliness, seduction, sex, smitten
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Visions
One. And Done.
-My editor wants your vision
in words our readers get.
-Vision? Ponderous word to
face the world with!
-Bear with me.
-I just paint.
-Yes! Exhibit One, this Wawa Hoagie
so real I want to devour it! Ham,
Swiss, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Onion!
Mayo-o-o-o!
-Me too.
-And Exhibit Two! This...thing.
-Same hoagie.
-I don’t wish to devour it.
-I do, and much else there.
-And not there?
-Especially.
-I’m getting this on tape, you know.
If you’d care to focus.
-Whole world’s on tape! Who gives a shit?
-If you do, it’s vaguely. Help me out here!
-Something more specific?
-Just a bit.
-Nippur was the Capital of Babylonian
Religion for three thousand years.
-Hooray for the Nippurians! But we’re
dealing with Americans who put bread
on the table.
-Hooray for them!
Labels: abstraction, art, artist, culture, exposition, painter, painting, realism
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Playing With Cars
When Dorine met Dr Rodgehill, at Home Depot,
he tried to sell her a course he still had open at
the Cow Ridge Night School.
Genealogy. No interest.
So he asked her what she was interested in,
and told her he could design a course for
her and a friend or two, and get a few
others to join.
“Tell me a film you particularly like. That could
be a starting point.”
She and buddy Georgette, had watched Jules and Jim
innumerable times.
So he designed “New Wave Cinema and Lit”
and got Dr Maurice Petit from the French
Department of the university to handle it.
When Malcolm heard about it from Georgette
at his accounting firm, he decided to enroll,
knowing nothing of the field but desperately
requiring some culture.
He had a new Lexis and it seemed important
that the three arrive at the high school in it.
He worked out the logistics wherein the other
two would drive to his house. Then his wife,
Buster, insisted they bring their mates and
the three would have an impromptu party as
the scholars did their thing. Then welcome
them upon their academic return!
“Buster” because she had been a tomboy, and
it stuck.
Things became out of whack that first night,
though. Grandma was late picking up the kids,
and they left a mess in the den.
Buster attempted to sweep up up the toy cars scattered
about, but the husbands of Dorine and Georgette, Jerry
and Cart, stopped her and started playing with them.
She left to get beers and their voices drifted up
to the kitchen. A children’s language.
“You must be Stump Stumpzel, a real bastard
of a dirty driver, and I’m Joe Curley, the champ!
And you try to–-”
“You mean like this and this and THIS!” Sounds of
crashes.
When she showed with the beer, Cart asked her
to be Doris Dale, a female driver trying to break
into the boys club.
“No way! I fight that fight every day! I’m Count
Briley and I’m dying, and this’ll probably be
my last race.” Then she made great pre-launch
RMMM RMMM sounds!
“And I’ll WRECK you!” screamed Jerry over them.
But Cart tried to intercept him and wreck him
instead.
In the protracted fury, Buster ran the car into
the old broken TV console. And was killed!
Whereupon, she became Rookie Don Darling!
He’d show the other two some new tricks!
Well, the evening went this way, but they
didn’t tell the scholars anything when they
returned, primed for conversation existential.
The course lasted five more nights over three weeks
and Buster, as Holy Hodge Pettigrew, finally won the
championship race against two of the filthiest villains ever!
The excitement had faded a bit when the other trio returned.
Dr Petit, a calligrapher also, had fashioned each a Certificate
of Completion.
Labels: automobile racing, children's play, cinema, culture, existential, French, New Wave, playing, suburbs, toy cars
Monday, February 22, 2016
Often At Debate
-Well I’m just EXHAUSTED!
-Whatever for? Did you actually DO anything?
-Played tennis early on.
-That should have worn off by now. Recovery Phase.
-You think?
-Who won?
-The four of us just ass around.
-Then? Let me guess, boutique-ing!
-I’ll kill if I don’t get a pair of Maxie Prentisses.
-Aren’t those just painted army boots?
-Not JUST! The Earth and Moon and Stars!
-Whatever floats your boat.
-Mine is sinking!
-Bear up! Somewhere at this moment a person
your age is going off to be killed in a war.
-Well that’s horrible!
-Our rare agreement.
-You don’t count.
-And YOU were once called a Bright Young Thing! In F Scott Fitzgerald novels.
-That’s ancient history, and you’re ancienter!
-Making up words?
-You just stay with the old ones! And then die.
-This conversation is for the ages. And the gods!
-They’re dead too.
-Too bad! They’d all be clomping around in
Maxie Prentisses!
Labels: boutique, Bright Young Thing, cultural history, culture, F Scott Fitzgerald, fashion, generation gap, gods, shoes, tennis
Friday, January 24, 2014
Barrel of Despicables
Prayer And Culture
-You've been described to me as godly.
-That's a stretch. I do pray.
-Well, I don't. I both envy you, and scorn you for being
in a barrel of despicables. Hypocrites!
-Not to judge. All faiths tell you that. And even Voltaire
instructed in cultivating your own garden.
-You're all set then. But I'm in motion, and can't quite get
to that garden.
-Must put that on top.
-And nothing tears at you in your benign...?
-Whoa! I haven't GOTTEN anywhere. It's a process of arriving.
I’m not immune to despair, depression. But I give them over.
-We part on that giving up.
-Enemies I hope not.
-Yes and no.
Labels: culture, cynicism, depression, despair, hypocrisy, Prayer, religion
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Of Great Event
What’s New?
Fashionable friend collapses in swirl of cape
and scarves
Rick runs for a glass of water; Heather fans her
with a wrinkled newspaper out of a box of dishes.
“I’ll come again to this new abode, but won’t look up!”
she finally whispers from her chaotic nest.
“These popcorn ceilings!” hissed Heather. “I told you!”
“And I told you no freakin money to get rid of ‘em
right now!”
Labels: culture, friend, marriage, popcorn ceiling, Real Estate, relationship, taste
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Reflecting on the month I got culture
& the marvelous applicability plus
ecstatically mixed-media thrust
of the phrase artsy-fartsy.
& the marvelous applicability plus
ecstatically mixed-media thrust
of the phrase artsy-fartsy.
Labels: culture, mixed media
