LEGENDS! like dinosaurs!

Last Tuesday, Feb 20th Paul and I saw LEGENDS!

An onstage endorsement for BOTOX, and probably setting the stage for an eponymous chain of quick laser plastic surgery kiosks, stop in at JOAN (Collins) AND LINDA (Evans)'s, free crows feet removal with every chin lift. I enjoyed it, first play we had seen in a long time. Paul said the storyline was lacking, a few days later so did the reviewers.

Check it out:

www.legendsthecomedy.com

Before the play we went to Carson Pirie Scott for one last time, it closed the next day. There were mannequins, I love MANNEQUINS! There is a picture of Paul.....


I love google docs…….

Ah the theater of the aged replaces the theater of the ABSURD....

Winter as Migraine

I think the extreme cold weeks are like a migrain in slow motion. Dull, stifling, aching. Tormenting. I expect cold in the winter – but not sub zero wind chills for weeks on end. Its slowly depressing, creating aches in knees, enough immobilizing layering to qualify as basic training gear. HELL.

Like a migraine.

Now when the SUN comes out I grin like an idiot- ok, more of an idiot than normal. Even if the wind makes it feel like -15.

SO in a week or two when the sun comes out and the temperature hits, oh, maybe 33 what will happen? That merging of weather joys?

If you have ever had a migraine you know how debilitating it is. BUT YOU ALSO KNOW THE EUPHORIC JOY when it lifts: you lived, the pain is gone. The metal spikes that were boring into your head are gone. Relief. EUHPORIA. You feel like a new person.

After the cold spell (so fitting a term if not almost backwood patois) will the Midwest feel a Euphoria? Will Upstate New Yorkers dance in the streets like Druids at solstice? Will it be akin to the last survivors of a nuclear war opening the bomb shelter door in an old movie and looking up at a blue sky? The end of a long winter St. Petersburg night: to see the SUN?

In Chicago its odd; there are large black birds, crows. Paul and I call them flying dinosaurs - . Even in this weather they are gliding from building to building. They will survive (I have not seen a cockroach in years, but they too will survive).

Ah, weather.com indicates Euphoria may strike next week!

oh, where is Tippi Hedren when you need her?

books, authors, rare books, collecting

I read this fine book on books. If you are curious about the interplay between authors and their (or other's) physical works this is a great read. Gekoski knew them all, from Tolkein to Graham Green to Rushdie and relates great quirky stories. . .

The Toronto Star

December 19, 2004 Sunday

HEADLINE: True tales between the lines

Author Rick Gekoski might cringe to
hear it but his wildly readable Nabokov's Butterfly is like the E! True
Hollywood Story of celebrated 20th century literature. It's a behind-the-scenes
tell-all with all the hallmarks: huge successes, bitter rejections, elicit
affairs (straight and gay), bad planning, worse executions and piles of money
made and lost.

Call it word porn for book nerds. Nabokov's
Butterfly is a page-turner. Bet you never thought you could say that and James
Joyce in the same breath. As we're told in the introduction, Gekoski, an
expatriate American in England, early on traded a career in teaching for a tour
of duty as a "full-time rare book dealer specializing in 20th century first
editions and manuscripts.

"Admittedly," he writes, "it was a risky
thing to do but it worked. I was happier being my own boss, swanning about
buying and selling the odd book. In the first year I made twice my previous
university salary, and had three hundred times more fun."

BBC Radio
soon realized anyone diving headlong into - not to mention wagering thousands of
dollars on - coveted copies of Salinger, Golding, Kerouac, Tolkien, Rushdie, et
al., would have some neat tales to tell. Nabokov's Butterfly picks up where
Gekoski's Rare Books, Rare People radio series left off.

The
criteria for inclusion are simple yet arbitrary. Books must have what Gekoski
describes as "complex biographies. They must be valued in the rare book market.
In many cases I have good stories to tell about them, from a dealer's point of
view."

Truth in advertising there. Gekoski dishes riveting back
stories about such hallowed titles as Lord Of The Flies, The Catcher In The Rye,
Brideshead Revisited, Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, Animal Farm,
Ulysses, Lolita and The Satanic Verses, to name eight of the 20
explored.

Gekoski hammers some titles mercilessly, though he's very
funny. Take this passage about Salman Rushdie:

"Like many readers,
I never finished The Satanic Verses. On every page I found something to admire
... It had genius, but there was something unrelentingly same-y about the prose,
and the succession of scenes, that made me feel that, after a few hundred pages,
I'd had enough. I wasn't disappointed exactly, just prematurely
satisfied."

Or this, detailing Gekoski's litigious brush with
reclusive author J.D. Salinger: "No sooner had the material arrived, than I
received a phone call from the offices of Salinger's literary agents ... I was
informed by a woman with a voice racked by indignation and cigarettes, which
could have frozen the blood of an Orc, that I was in serious
trouble."

Naturally, nothing compares to the stories, some
well-worn, some apparently fresh, about the books themselves. How Harry Potter
author J.K. Rowling was initially rejected by everyone from Penguin to
HarperCollins. How Kerouac's buddy Ginsberg carved On The Road as "crazy in a
bad way." How D.H. Lawrence was unable to craft Sons And Lovers until his
mother, who Gekoski reckons had "appropriated" her son's life, died in
1911.

Supporting such drama are juicy bits detailing how Gekoski
came to buy and sell copies of the books in question, including the prices he
paid and the sums he earned through shrewd maneuvering. We meet everyone from
Graham Greene to "Mr." Tolkien, Frodo's creator.

Nabokov's
Butterfly is irresistible for anyone who digs real-life yarns stuffed with
triumph, tragedy and a litany of mishaps by publisher.

Kim Hughes
is a lead reviewer for amazon.ca.

Nabokov's
Butterfly:

And Other Stories Of Great Authors And Rare Books

are you somebody? do you think?

I KNOW I need to ad corn starch to this.

THE NEXT GIANT DISSONANCE:

The FIRST PERSON’S NEED for the THIRD PERSON’S SMILE: (as in grammar)

A Clash of Civilization, or maybe a nascent cultural war: a future battle between musical lyrics and philosphy, between a statement written by the Father of Philosophy (pointless over thinking) with rat pack popularized lyrics (pointless nostalgia).

Descarte’s 1637 observation (to call it a realization imples accpetance, huh?) “COGITO ERGO SUM” versus a song from the waning years of WW II’s “You’re nobody till Somebody Loves You” made famous by Dean Martin, then Frank Sinatra. Hardly known are the big name THINKERS/composers, Cavanaugh, Morgan and Stock.


I have telepathied this to the UN SECURITY COUNCIL about this inchoate conflict, but they had left the Chambers for PJ CLARK’S after a question about a deaf mute in a forest who saw a single armed man attempting to clap while a flock of vultures suffering unmedicated incontinence flew over head.


GUESS being/thinking is second to that one, illusration by Van Gogh forthcoming.

FYI:


KEY Lyrics:
You're nobody, nobody 'til somebody loves you
So find yourself somebody

Gotta get yourself somebody

Because you're nobody 'til somebody loves you
You're nobody 'til somebody cares

(http://www.geocities.com/merrystar3/allysongs/YoureNobodyTilSomebody )


You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You"
By James Cavanaugh, Russ Morgan and Larry Stock


“You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" is a popular song.

It was written by Russ Morgan, Larry Stock, and James Cavanaugh (musician) and published in 1944. The song was first recorded by Morgan, but it is best known in versions by Dean Martin and by The Mills Brothers. It has also been recorded by many others.

or

COGITO ERGO SUM:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#4

[ from the looks of things the song has one the minds of the today, for in an episode of the Simpson’s giant monster advertising CHARACTERS came to life and terrorized Springfield after a bolt of lightning and incensed by Homer’s theft of a donut. THE MONSTERS VANISHED when they were ignored . . . clearly not thinking to being on their parts –unloved and ignored they DIED. But wait, they were inanimate, but no, they were alive, like frankensteins monster. Without his moral underpinings – they are Madison Avenue thought controllers after all.]

Dateline: the Ice Station Zero Chicago Style, but no fire in the moors!

I made a fine stew, you know its kind of cold here. Zero now and then below zero; and a wind chll of -15 – 30 now and then. So stew, made in a slow cooker a devoted friend sent me for my birthday. I still have the Walt Whitman she sent me in 1997 sitting right here. GREAT birthday momentos. Recipe below.

That is a fine WESTBEND SLOW COOKER, a delectable stew with little to do (stay in bed covered up). By the time I snapped this we had eaten half.

The recent birthday: well momentos of that day have not stoppped: AARP sent a membership offer, now that’s a cheery piece of mail.

So, Saturday, Paul and I were watching Perry Mason in his room. Snug as bugs in rugs with bowls of stew. Then the fire alarm schrieked: Stay in Your Apartment until the Fire Department advises you to leave. Yes, stay in, we knew that, 46 floors, we are on 26 everyone 84 years old . . . . a single unit disaster most likely if anything.

Ok, zero, wind chills. We got dressed up, Paul put on his best watch, I put the book of the moment in my bag. Lined up our prescriptions to grab last. We watched the lobby camera. NO FIRE (no announcement of safety either tho); seems a motor in a heating fan started to smoke. On the floor below us. On the 25th floor.

Do not be alarmed, the planet is ending was on the evening news.

Ah so cold, and global warming seems to exist (but not in Chicago in February). Long ago I read The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilisation by Brian Fagan
284pp, Granta, £20 (review that got me interested: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,,1226990,00.html )

a charming book on what sudden climate shifts did to people in the past 20,000 years – most died or moved – think Katrina, or have you seen THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW? Change long ago was so gradual, now . . . . well . . .

Of course modern man will breed a super potato that can grow in the desert and a 10 foot tall asparagus too - by then the food POLICE WILL have BANned HOLLANDAISE I AM SURE—I think there already is a self basting turkey in DC. Smile and be calm: Pangloss says we will be safe –wait, Pangloss’s smile is knotting up, my god it’s a just a happy mask, ITS ITS : Dick Darth Vader Cheney in an Exxon sweatshirt!

Imagine an unimaginable change in the jet streams that would leave the southeast or the southwest arid deserts. Of course that would never happen, how could it (solar flares, sun spots, man made nuclear devices detonated by some James Bond villain, giant forest fires . . . .). Nah, never happen.

Get out the bagpipes, instrument of choices for dirges . . . . What if Scotland vanished, here today, gone tomorrow? Nah, never happen.

What are those reserved Scots themselves saying?

The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland (UK), and established in 1783)
February
4, 2007

RISING SEA LEVELS THAT POSE THREAT TO
SCOTLAND

Rising sea levels could cause huge damage to low-lying
areas of Scotland, including its major cities, scientists warned
yesterday.

Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perthshire and Dundee, as well as
numerous coastal and river areas, are all under threat, they said, as they
issued their bleakest warning yet about the threat from climate
change.

And:

Agriculture could be particularly hard
hit, with warmer temperatures leading to the possibility of new diseases and
pests and decreased water supplies. Climate change is also likely to affect
tourism hot spots, causing greater erosion in Scottish hills and a rising risk
of fire in the moorlands in hotter, drier summers.

Entire clips: http://www.theherald.co.uk/display.var.1167886.0.0.php?utag=27754


[[ Cheney also defended U.S. opposition to a global warming pact in his comments. He said the accord would have "devastating economic consequences" for this country and cited unresolved scientific questions about the causes of global warming. (Cheney spoke Wednesday afternoon at the National Press Club. The gathering was co-hosted by Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls Inc. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
June 14, 2001 ]]

A terror free environment with wealthy oil companies and no life on the planet…

++

More stew? Oh, time for hot chocolate……

Try it:

SLOW COOKER BEEF STEW

2 1/2 lbs. beef stew meat
5
lg. potatoes, cut in chunks
1 med. onion, chopped (not fine)
4 lg carrots,
chopped in chunks
3 lg. ribs celery
1 1/2 c. tomato juice
1/2 c. dry
red wine or water
1/4 c. quick cooking tapioca
2 tsp. salt
2 sm. bay
leaves
1 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. pepper

Mix all ingredients
in 4 or 6 quart slow cooker. Cover and cook at setting #3 (low) for 7 to 9 hours
or at setting #5 (high) for 3 to 4 hours until meat and vegetables are tender.
(Stir stew several times throughout cooking time.)

OH, the COLD, the TRIBUNE, the cold: