Now Playing in Theaters Part Two: The Empire is Falling (or Judi, Judi, Judi. . . )

(One week earlier on a blustery NYC winter's day. . . .)

The empire is falling!!!

The empire is falling!!!

Both Victoriana and Americanah. . . 

But why worry? We're getting out of here in winter, are we not?

The empire is defined by its art forms.
From hotels to igloos, a million accommodations blares the ad on the little screen prior to take off. Travel is fun!!! It must be!They're telling us it is! It's fun being encased in a stuffy, thin, metal tube for seven hours!!! Enjoy!!! The sorry list of movies by which to lull yourself into a blank, mindless stare during the flight seemed to grow more and more dismal with each peek.

After a rainy, foggy, interminable wait on the runway, followed by a second and third dubious scanning of titles amid the desolation of the friendly sky play list from empire movie hell, I finally am rewarded with not one but two Judi Dench movies (back to back if I choose!), both depicting Queen Victoria at various times in her reign. Does it get any better than this on a cross country flight??? Well, maybe staying home. . . .

Nonetheless, I seize on this soothing crumb left by the airlines for those one or two reclusive, bookish types who still fly. After refusing the Bose on hygienic and political grounds, I shove the familiar, trusty little earpieces I’ve brought with me into my canals, and begin.

Dench, our beloved queen of Brit Thespianas, gets to play Victoria twice. First we find her sitting at various desks looking officious and exceptionally plumped up in stiff lace collars and brooches as an elderly monarch, and later on as the perky “Mrs. Brown” with older, much grizzled acting partner Geoffrey Palmer serving as one of the sneaky court politicians. In this Victoria incarnation I particularly liked the little white furry thing she sported so coquettishly on her head that kind of resembled an upside down rabbit mitten.

Like most addicts of British drama, I adore Judi Dench and so it pained me to see her much reduced as the older queen- nearly dead in fact- and so sadly opposed by the court in her relationship with the fervent, young Abdul. Admittedly though, it did pass the time during my weird aloft sojourn. “Mrs. Brown” on the other hand cheered significantly with all those gorgeous stallions, sexy kilts, resounding highland pipes, winning brogues and steaming cups of grog.

But I digress. The real subject of this rant regards why you should never leave your house in January, and also the failing empire as indicated by our current state of the arts; we're talkin' the movie empire, and maybe the whole culture. Maybe?!?  Fairy tale milieus may help mitigate the dehydrated boredom of flying in these spare times, but the entire list of selections  (euphemistically called the “library”) from which to choose a few hours of oblivion while thirty five thousand feet above the earth is a lot more evocative, though what it evokes ain’t good.

In alpha order, I began to choose as "evidence" of our downfall a few notable examples from a catalogue that barring the two anomalous Brit flick choices was  99% more or less scary:

-American Made

-American Psycho

-American Sniper

-Baby Driver

-Brigsby Bear

-Captain Underpants

-Clueless

-Crazy Stupid Love

-Descipable Me 3

By the time I arrived at the letter”e” I had become so inconsolable I skipped to the end of the alphabet:

-Warm Bodies

-Wayne’s World

-Zootopia (a fitting finale!!)

I spent the rest of the flight pretty well chagrined.

The bright side? I was getting out of New York in January. Upon landing, I waxed philosophical and girded myself for all that well meaning, unsolicited advice I soon would be receiving from happy checkout clerks on that other coast about antioxidants, free radicals, the horror of carbs and the secret to flavinoids. I buoyed my spirits with the expectation of all that sun and Vitamin D that would infuse me with limitless vitality and seven different kinds of magical immunity-  loopy bouts of maniacal health talk from strangers notwithstanding. And although it's possible to die of starvation in southern California without a car, at least for the most part they don't have to deal with snow or rain or sniffles.

However three days after deplaning at La La Land, the very source of most if not all of the above mentioned blockbusters and the mecca of youth, immortality and healthy living amidst a lingering smog and some Hollywood sex addicts, I found myself in the grippe of one of the nastiest, most vengeful flu variants known to health conscious, movie lovin,’ vaccine shunning, fish oil eating, freeway careening enthusiasts ever. . . .

But the empire struck back. I got outta there! I lived to tell about it.  I returned to chilly, damp, wet, grumpy, sniffling New York.

Gotta go now. The doorbell is ringing & I think it's my pizza.

Now Playing in Theaters

Now Playing in Theaters: The Travel Diary Cont’d

It’s just about nine p.m. at one of those recently constructed yet doleful Southern California hotels, the kind newly fashioned out of cardboard and glass. In the background an incessant musak sound track of incessant, original 80’s musak is humming away day and night, and there's also a supposed “Starbucks” (oh, yipppeee), though it’s really just a breakfast counter with the famous green and white logo and serves powdered eggs. Despite the hour and although I’ve been here for a week, it still feels like the darkest midnight that indeed it is on the east coast at the very moment, and I’m floating on a burgeoning cloud of virus particles that have moved from my throat to my head to my chest and back again.

It’s unusually quiet because the soccer gangs and biz travelers are gone, at least for the time being. I am sitting on a stool at an empty bar waiting for yet a fourth cup of exceedingly cheap and tasteless Chamomille tea to go. When it arrives I will  try to lug the perilously unstable paper vessel in which it swirls back up to my room, albeit with sticky fingers from a series of frustratingly un-open-able honey packets, and attempt to do this without the cover falling off and scalding me.

There will no doubt be a fifth, and very possibly a sixth shot of watery healing essence somewhere in the middle of this long night, this last indulgence no doubt when I work my piteously sad, disheveled, weak and croaky voiced persona upon a half asleep, night shift front- desker who would rather keep me alive than have to deal with something more “intense.”` Truth is, I am coughing like crazy, I am not young, and this scares them. And so the night guy half wakes up and trudges the quarter of a mile or so into the big, empty kitchen to find a tea bag and some hot water. He ambles back and sort of half heartedly wishes me well with a look that really means please, pleaze, don’t die lady while I’m on duty.

Like everyone else who has once been, now is, or soon may very well be enjoying this same viral nightmare in the place some of the locals affectionately call “Cally” I currently have the flu, I tried to ignore it at first. It’s just a little cold, I said. It’s the flu though. If it is not the flu, it is the flu’s twin brother, or perhaps a younger, smaller sibling with an eerily striking resemblance. It seems I have the flu. And apparently so does,  did, or soon may almost anyone who plays fast and loose here and sets foot out of their house this January, vaccine notwithstanding, that is if they ever bother to get one.The day clerk scoffs  openly at such an idea although he brags he’s been sick for almost a month, since Christmas.

The giant screen that cruelly dominates the wall above the shiny glasses and bottles that are all lined up to soothe testy travelers is like a taunting distraction from disinterested tech gods in the midst of my great earthly misery, and it’s in hugely bold color as well. There is a lot of fuscia and electric blue. At the moment I am the only testy customer in the whole place and really cannot distinguish between a gladiatorial event taking place across a football field or CNN blaring one of its alarming, disgusted, outraged and appalled diatribes. I am simply too tired to care, too beaten down to hate or to be mildly frightened or even weakly chagrined.

I soooooo want to be home. Sooooooo Sooooooo much. Really a lot!!! Three thousand miles far, far away!!! The closest I’ve come to any kind of hope for surviving this or attaining some sort of soothing balm of creature comfort to ease the aches (other than zoning out on Tylenol which hardly counts) has happened in the dimmest hours of the pre-dawn, and involves the following: locking myself into the windowless, cardboard bathroom, opening the glass shower, flipping the spiffy, confusing circular water handle to its very hottest setting and turning the whole, much too bright, windowless, fluorescent box- yes,, the very one on whose unconcerned floor I am lying prostrate-, into a humongous, steaming neti pot. But there are limits even to this ancient curative as I am certain the paper walls may start to melt away if I pursue the activity with too much gusto. The water already is creating far too many wet, wavy lines on the cardboard surfaces. Actually, this is such a silly thought. I have no gusto whatsoever and feel totally horrible, listless, completely apathetic. Let it fall!

How did I get here? Were there auguries? Omens? Occasional spurious prophecies from tall soothsayers with long, scraggly, white beards and crazy eyes?

Hmmmm. . . let me think. . .oh yeah. . .  about six days ago, I got on a plane and the guy across the aisle had this persistent, dry cough. . . . Then some sniffling, hacking away hotel staff signed me in and another with dripping nose and look of pure agony served me a frozen bagel in the morning with my Starbucks. . . .

Of course I am home now or I would not be plopped dazedly at a keyboard, just rambling on in the present tense. But I still have the flu, even though at this point I’m supposed to say “the worst” may be over. It's not. I also have prednisone and jet lag.

(Next Friday “Part Two," and a flashback!)

Words-Words-Words Nootchie

She purposefully is marching toward birthday number three, just about a fraction over halfway there in fact, and bursting with talk-talk-talk.

We skype a lot and engage in virtual hugs- it's not the real thing, but I'll take it.

Even screen time, frustrating though it can be, yields some truly rare gems.

One "video chat" day, after watching the whirling Nootchie jumping up and down and doing some truly "unusual" footwork, she holds up to the screen the miniscule, beloved figurine known simply as “baby pony”- a little totem that accompanied her to New York on her last visit. After I duly admire this offering, the Nootch disappears stage left and reappears  a moment  later holding up a pink “Runaway Bunny” t-shirt: Yoo bawd mee dis! She shouts triumphantly up at the computer.

It’s true!!! I bawd her dat! What memory! What recall! What perception the kid has!!! It happened during her last visit to the east coast several months back. We nabbed the t-shirt on a trip to a very neat children's book store, and she picked it out herself! Her intelligence clearly is amazing. What does it matter that this spontaneous epiphany about the origin of the “Runaway Bunny” t-shirt had absolutely nothing to do with the conversation we had just been having?She’s reminiscing, yes reminiscing about some of our fonder moments together in the good ol' days of a previous visit!

On another screen encounter, Nootchie is trying to figure out exactly what to say in answer to a question  about her daily life when suddenly she bursts out: I hadda bubba bat!  Oh, how marvelous! A bubba bat! With soap and all kinds of bubbas, and in the tub!!! Such a great conversationalist- it’s incredible, and still only in “the twos. . . .” I’m blown away, really. Plus of course she is describing something fun that she did, true proof of her unbelievable social facility and communicative expertise.

A week or so later I am making the usual one-sided, much too loud conversation and she is listening,  laughing and jumping up and down, when apropos of nothing she lifts up her shirt to expose what appears to be her belly, replete with belly button, and shouts: I hadda tattoooo!  Wow! Fanstastic!!! Transfers are alive and well, children are still entranced with them. Nootchie is a fearless explorer of new experiences, even if she didn't get to keep the little picture that for an instant or two lived on her tummy; she remembers with fondness that it once was there, however briefly.

When we finally get together in person and I can hug her for real, the pearls come cascading forth:

- yoo will stay a-wile?

-you sit heeere!

-I neeed sumting to eeeet.

-lie down! (command given during bedtime stories)

-I hadda boo boo. . . . . (uttered in an a most plaintive, almost heartbreaking little voice)

-I wantoo wear dis (said like a true fashionista).

And much, much more. Oh, so much more, I could write a novel.

C’mon, these are sentences folks, subjects, predicates, with modifiers and connectors occasionally thrown in, nominal and verbal slots, all in the right order! She even knows the term “yesterday,”  attesting to her beginning mastery of physics and the concept of time. . . . 

The weeks fly by, and a couple of months later the Nootch actually is able to call on the phone and blurt out proudly and emphatically, Happpy noo yee-ah.

Really, the kvelling is becoming almost too much to bear.

I say almost. . . .

Holiday Reprint-O-Rama: "Beautiful Things" Revised, Part One (or How We Used to Shop)

The shop “Beautiful Things" had been a fixture on Sycamore for as long as anyone could remember, one of those old fashioned anchors that fixes time in a fast changing neighborhood. The street  actually was not called Sycamore but merely showed a number. Such nondescript numerals however doing no justice to the long rows of large, stately trees that lined the sidewalk, I decided to change the name of this story to something more pastoral and homespun.

Sycamore was only one block long, a winding and steep incline connecting two broader avenues with a kind of mid-century appeal that made this part of the city feel more like a village than an urban grid of humorless red brick buildings. Alongside the two-family houses and pre-war apartments, the street housed just four small “ma & pa” businesses: a bakery, a tiny beauty  salon, a shoe repair and the gift shop; together these comprised a small town fantasy in the midst of a large, increasingly noisy residential area that slowly had been taken over by a  gang of cheap chain stores and their influx of tacky, useless merchandise- outdated bags of chocolate, fuzzy red Christmas stockings of strange fabric, plastic serving trays with odd holiday motifs. These kinds of schlock bazaars usually were plopped down in busier, more heavily trafficked locations.

Beautiful Things was wedged in between the shoe repair and pastry shop about halfway up the hill on a quiet street, its hallmark a display window quite small but nothing less than mesmerizing. It was impossible to resist gazing into its semi-precious cave of wonders while out doing the chores and running from one mind numbing errand to the next. On rich, black velvet jewelry pads carefully placed for optimum viewing sat marcasite pins that blazed like diamonds, glittering ovals of amber and polished stones of blue topaz, each sharing the reflected glow of the overhead track lights with pewter letter openers and miniature Tiffany-style lamps; semi-precious objects totally unnecessary for survival but succeeding in prompting all sorts of forgotten longings and desires for small luxuries. The window itself faced southwest, and when the afternoon sun bounced off the glass the whole sparkling collage became purely hypnotic.

The interior of the shop was no larger than fifteen by twenty feet or so, with a kind of closet-office in the back hidden behind a flowery curtain. Once inside one immediately was bedazzled by the jewelry boxes- some of them musical with slowly turning ballerinas- along with a colorful selection of silk scarves and ties, one-of-a-kind tea pots, ceramic vases, hand-painted dishes and of course piles of rings, bracelets and chokers, all neatly stacked inside the three-tiered glass case behind which the proprietors ruled their little kingdom of chotchkas. 

The display also included a few obligatory gag gifts such as miniature slot machines and sleek, tiny clocks with sun dials that went all the way up to the year of infinity, but everything was tastefully arranged and carefully selected at the “shows” which the owners Mel and Ruby seemed to be attending at regular intervals. 

This all took place of course before smart phones, smart watches, smart toys, smart food, smart shoppers and consequently the smart billionaires of the information super highway who came smartly cashing in on that unending consumer thirst for smartness.

The upside of once shopping "live" also meant that you actually got to see and smell and touch things, hear the bustle, talk to other people. As a little girl floating through the bedazzling splendor of a lush Christmas stage set on the main floor of Macy's at Herald Square, I was completely entranced; I still see the glittering, festive tinsel, the colored and smooth ornaments, the dark green wreaths with their thick, perfectly tied red ribbons; I recall the happy ping of the elevator bells and the sheer magic of the scene. 

The downside of face to face commerce of course was that at times you might not want to interact as you browsed fancifully and took it all in, much less have someone hovering nearby annoyingly to make a sale. Nonetheless, many of us still miss that kind of human contact as we settle in resignedly in front of our little screens on all our Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays.

At Beautiful Things people interacted with each other in a much more intimate setting than Macy's, absence of gorgeous decorations and pinging elevators notwithstanding. I know just what you’re looking for, Ruby would assure you after the better part of an hour spent considering a shiny array of objects, none of which exactly did the trick; You want something smaller, daintier, perhaps with an amethyst in the center, right? They’ll probably have them at the show we’re going to next week- come back then. And she acted very much as if she meant it. She would find this for you.

Ruby worked hard to appear that her mission was truly to satisfy the customer. She did not want to be seen as stoking the embers of your flagging, mindless consumerism in the days when we once went  shopping in stores, an activity fueled by a vague yen that often left you succumbing to useless stuff: seven different kinds of bathroom cleaners, a dozen, unique hand creams, a funny hat perhaps that you wound up never wearing. Ruby's object was to appear as sincerely wanting to locate the one special, shiny thing you desired that would totally change your life- or at least this was what she wanted you to believe. Mel looked on now and again while tinkering and repairing chains and brooches and things with his teeny-tiny pliers, smiling benignly in that vague and special, fidgety way of his.

However Ruby wasn’t always being so really helpful at such moments of extreme shopping indecision, even though she appeared to be holding out the carrot of finding “exactly the right thing. ” This reverse effect mainly had to do with the insane anxiety hovering just beneath the surface of her silk, paisley neck scarf and a barely concealed impatience. In truth, she was so incredibly proprietary and anxiety-ridden about the placement of objects in the shop she could barely conceal a maniacal sense of impending doom, for fear that perhaps one of the display “trees” of dangly earrings just might topple over with the customer’s next sneeze; this nervousness of manner comprised a kind of existential tick that tended to upset the whole tight little sense of controlled cordiality she tried so hard to maintain in the store. . . .

-From "Beautiful Things" (2014), look for Part Two on December 22nd!

Holiday Reprint-O-Rama: "Indian Foothills"

Indian Foothills

With what god-given
mindless scripture pounding
expressionless fire
did puritan maidens
wish the forest?

On which satanic
rough-hewn merciless
icicle of a blue night
could humorless women
childbirth dread?

(July  1995)

Oy,  It's getting to feel a lot like Christmas-
(especially the ads, decorations, promotions. . . .)

Happy Thanksgiving and other seasonal madness!

Yup, I Still Do Not Care for "Skype-ing. . ."

Skype is weird. This merits repeating.

This week's blog is part reprint of an earlier complaint, part continuing rant against virtual "face time" and part frustration because I did not have a new and fascinating post ready in time this week, having spent days fixing computer glitches, setting up a new machine, and thus the slightly re-edited skype post. But the idea is still relevant, more than ever!

In addition, the very word "skype" has become the same kind of word that "fridge" once served as, way back when during the heyday of Frigidaire products when  refrigerators first replaced ice boxes. I mean, does anyone still even use "Skype" or has google taken over that world too? Should we call it "Googlype??"

Yes, Skype is still weird, small or capitalized, in color or black and white and of course Google Hangout is not much better. Let’s face it- you’re not really hanging out. . . .

Two dimensional encounters devoid of real, human contact amid a screen of wavy lines, where the distraction of myriad pixels interferes with the actual talking and being- the human sharing connection- is weird; and this is to say nothing of frozen frames inter-dispersed with moving portraits held hostage to flat, staccato, marionette style images and movements that do not create an environment of intimacy or communication, meaningful or otherwise. 

Occasionally and inexplicably the sound goes out too and we have to resort to screens and phones simultaneously, like something from an old Flash Gordon movie.

Oh yes, you can display things and objects, like haircuts, toys, pets and funny faces as well as living arrangements- kind of like show and tell- but it really doesn’t fly, does it? Group video fests are even more chaotic and incomprehensible, with everyone screaming at each other and the screen simultaneously.

Virtual in actuality means “almost” or “not quite.” The brave new world may long have been both with and upon us, but the “picture phones” of early sci-fi dreams from days of yore (when people still used the entire name "Frigidaire" to signify an electrically powered ice box) now function strangely in the age of the internet; they appear, even now, as primitive, almost stone age devices. I picture earthlings of decades and centuries hence looking at the old footage and roaring.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: skype is weird.

Stay tuned for a more ebullient, fascinating, possibly humorous but always intriguing  post next time. 

Wages of Sin

Sinful wages-

Wow! 12.50 an hour plus benefits my chatty cashier told me, as we chatted chattily at the checkout! Not bad for a kid. . . .

So after I left the store with my cantaloupes and bananas and cans of hot chocolate mix, I began thinking it over, doing the math and such to compare the current rate associated with this kind of job- one that pays just a mite above minimum wage-  to my own buying power at a part time job several decades back, with minimum wage-ish earnings a mere fraction of today's sum, at least on the face of it.

The deal now in the year 2017 was as follows: 12.50 an hour at Whole Foods (aka Amazon) for an eight hour shift plus "benefits" (like standing on your feet endlessly ringing up raw meat, heavy, unweildy melons, unruly bunches of kale, damp clumps of celery, wet lettuce and steaming cups of soup with loose, dripping lids) while trying to be pleasant to the customers. She got two "breaks," one for 15 & another for 30 minutes-
                                                               versus                     
the cashier's previous job, one that she did not care for nearly as much apparently because the salary was a tad lower: 10.80 plus "benefits" at Starbucks plus all the coffee you could drink, or at least inhale! Not sure about the breaks and didn't really get into that with her, though I can well imagine it could get pretty busy when folks were in need of their quick fix; and in fact you might not even have time to go to the bathroom during peak caffeine dosing hours. On the other hand, the lines at Amazon Foods can become kind of scarily endless at times as well. . . .

The result of my computations was that I began to realize all this could be yours too- while living at home that is with a parent, or perhaps two, depending on your domestic situation, and maybe some siblings- as you were trying like the dickens to get your associates degree. . . . so that by the time you attained a bachelor's - if you got that far (highly unlikely because of all the hours put in at the register)- you'd be ready for retirement. In other words, the chances of reaching any significant job goal whatsoever for those who have to work would be incredibly slim. 

All that talk about these kinds of supermarket et al gigs not being "permanent" jobs but merely stepping stones clearly is rubbish, because if you were caught in that net for whatever reason- poor grades in high school, strange family setups, a youth misspent, old fashioned working class poverty- you'd have to hope hard the retail lifestyle did not last and (shudder) become a way of life; in addition, such employments at the register do not ever constitute any sort of real job, as in the kind you can live on, even modestly.

And although it's true that I did not receive any "benefits"  at various scrub employments while at school way back when- stints from receptionist to cashier at a medley of improbable settings prior to the invasion of the chain and box store- and my hourly wage was substantially lower in numbers, my weekly check did seem to purchase a lot more: endless cups of coffee, hamburgers and pizza and lipstick and nail files. 

In other words, just how many organic veggie wraps on the head of a pin can these current salaries actually purchase?    Hmmm. . . .

Finally, I had the benefit of a career later on (meaning not that far down the road from when I graduated), even if a slightly lackluster one, at the onset. There were real jobs waiting. With benefits. 

But alas, no bustling Starbucks for the starry eyed way back when, just diners and a handful of sorry looking, exceptionally prosaic and totally hopperesque Dunkin' Donuts operating mostly for the spiritually downtrodden (it was eons before the famed donut kings made their national expansion and comeback).

In truth, the coffee back then- no matter where you got it- was not that great either and could be downright watery, and certainly there were no flat whites or lattes or designer H2O; but on the other hand, none of it cost a whole lot either. So we drank coke instead. Gobs and gobs of it.

Is there never to be any winning. . . ?