Poem by Peter Schneider: The Thumb
In a nanosecond David lost his thumb,
the one his mother painted
with pine pitch when he was four
to keep him from forever sucking it.
Unable to distinguish human flesh
the McCormick silo filler
sliced it off—
nail, bone, knuckle—
and blew it skyward
an ounce of humanity
in a thousand tons of silage.
Good Comedy Lines by Roseanne Barr
Today is Roseanne Barr’s birthday. Courtesy of the Writer’s Almanac, here are some of her good lines.
Because [Roseanne] and her husband were short on money, she took a job outside the house, as a cocktail waitress. She began trying out her jokes, largely about the incompetence of the male species, and the people frequenting her bar loved it. To men who did not wash dishes, she said, “What’s the matter—is Lemon Joy kryptonite to your species?” and about husbands who couldn’t find their own socks, she said, “They think the uterus is a tracking device.” A lot of her comedy came from her observations and experiences as a housewife and stay-at-home mom.
“As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I’ve done my job.”
“Experts say you should never hit your children in anger. When is a good time? When you’re feeling festive?”
“Women complain about PMS, but I think of it as the only time of the month when I can be myself.”
Continue ReadingFrank Rich: In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad
This is one of the best columns Frank Rich (NY Times) has written in a long time. I am not sure, however, if he does not exaggerate the decline of the media’s critical abilities. At the turn of the 20th century, America’s journalist were clearly not anywhere close to the role model that Rich is painting for us. Maybe 30 years ago things were better but clearly not 100 years ago.
FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated “balloon boy” spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation’s unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: “All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine.” Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family “did this for the show,” we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado.
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On this Day in 1819, 23-year-old John Keats wrote a love letter
considered one of the most beautiful ones ever written. I discovered this listening to the daily podcast of the Writer’s Alamac. Here are the written words:
My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else—The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life—My love has made me selfish.
Continue ReadingBeautiful Poem by Sonia Gernes
Golden
for my parent’s fiftieth anniversary
In the old photographs, it is always autumn.
Colors fade to the sepia of remembered thought:
my mother in a flapper dress, my father
proud beside the Model A. They glow
in the light of dreams that I can never know.
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500 Days of Summer
Think back to a past relationship. If you have kept a diary, read the entry for every day for as long as the relationship lasted. At the end of each day, decide whether you felt good or bad because of the person you were with. This will allow you to do a brutally honest accounting of how much happiness or suffering a relationship has brought you. Now imagine that you assign each day in the relationship a number from 1 to the last day. Let’s say it lasted 500 days. Now randomly pick out days, and reread your diary. This is exactly what 500 Days of Summer does, except in the medium of film. It is brilliant because it captures so well the ups and downs of every past relationship. After all, if it had not downs, it would not be past relationship! Don’t miss this wonderful film about the 500 day relationship between Tom (boy) and Summer (girl). It breaks new ground in how to tell a story.
Recount
The film takes a look behind the scenes of how Gore and Bush fought out their electoral battle for five weeks after the election. Even for someone who read the newspaper every day during this period, the writer and director manage put on a gripping drama. Clearly, the movie is written from the Democratic (loosing) perspective. But with the exception of how James Baker and Warren Christopher are portrayed (the come across differently when they are on TV), the film is splendid.
The Proposal
The Proposal is a lot better than I had expected after seeing the trailer for it. The short preview made it look like a silly film with a lame plot and stale humor. The heroine (Sandra Bullock) starts out a bitch. She is the chief editor of a distinguished book publisher in New York City. Showing how far women have come, she successfully harasses our hero (Ryan Reynolds). In an effort to avoid deportation from the U.S. because of a visa violation, she forces him to agree to marry her. Our hero goes along with her proposal not simply because he is weak but because he able to get something in return: The heroine agrees in return to promote our hero from her mere assistant to an independent editor at her publishing house. If you are up do date on immigration law enforcement, you will know that the IRS does not like it when you marry someone just to help them stay in the country.
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