bon bons of impertinence

2010-12-11T22:24:00.000-05:00

Of Elegance, Monster Soakies, The Rapture and Product Placement in Literary Classics

2010-12-01T00:55:00.000-05:00

As you may have noticed I have not been writing much as of late. Mea Culpa. I shall try to rectify the situation as quickly and as elegantly as possible. We are rediscovering elegance you know.
As I sit poised at the Louis XIII desk in the study at Chez Moose, I ponder poor Louis and the Thirty Years' War against the House of Habsburg. To think, France's greatest victory in the war came at the Battle of Rocroi, five days after Louis' death — apparently from complications of intestinal tuberculosis. Un destin terrible!
I catch my reflection in the glass covering a Russian Icon portraying John the Baptists severed head as a single, thin, gloved finger, hovers over my lip like a stray branch - I notice I need my roots done.
Anyhoo, in the span of months I have spent away I have taken time to carefully re-read some of the classics and noticed the blatant use of product placement even in some of our favourite books, which I am now quite excited to share with you, but I will tell you, over the last six months I have found it to be almost excruciating to write.
It’s not so much elaborate Emu quill plume to paper or the fluid dance of my fingers across the keyboard so much as writing that doesn’t make my skin try to escape off my bones. When I get the feeling of a hag fish nestling in the cavity of my chest, I know that what I am about to write will not be good. It will not have pizzazz, as they say. Then when I pause to think, the only genius that springs to my tongue seems to be that of other people, as I am always quoting some dead saint or libertine. My word, I think, surely there must be some left of my own somewhere out here.
The very prospect of writing down the million or so ideas and interesting experiences that seem to come in rapid succession often daunts me. I suppose that these days it might be called stress.
Once upon a time it may even have been called hysteria and diagnosed as wandering body parts – this has always been my favourite Victorian diagnosis as it makes me think that my insides are like a dark forest and my body parts some small girl in a cloak. I long for the days of my youth when stress relief was only as far away as a bubble bath with my favourite Colgate Soaky. (I only liked the movie monsters naturally) Why, now I have to resort to extremes, like setting Lamborghinis on fire and pushing them off cliffs. - Try it, you'll be amazed.
I dislike the word stress. Stress is not elegant. Stress is always frizzy hair. Lopsided (lopsided is our current favourite word) glasses and frantic hand gestures. Move slowly, readers, always. In your car, pull out like it weighs nothing and is carried like a skein of silk on the breeze – you will never have a crash because everyone will stop in your presence. Use your hands slowly, like you are moving through molasses. Elegance is slowness, patience and eyes that could shoot a whole room dead if they wanted to. Go slow, speak quieter and hold longer, then people will listen.
Have you ever tried speaking quieter in a chatty group? Everyone gabs louder and louder and as soon as you open your mouth their silence and rapture.

Oh – I must mention. I saw something recently that discussed the word Rapture. It seems that it has been misappropriated to an odd cause. The Second Coming, that of Mr. Christ and his cronies, will come down and take away (vanish, evaporate) those worthy to heaven – Leaving their clothes behind. My word, I thought, the only reason this might be possible is because there would be new wardrobes up there waiting – which almost made me convert but the fine print mentioned nothing of it. Even then, though, to leave behind my museum, my clothes, my photographs – surely I can pack a little overnight bag, Mr Christ? I shant take any of the champagne as I’m sure you are well stocked. Or perhaps I should, as you are better prepared for the middle class with your water to wine party trick.

What I mean to say, without diversions, is that elegance is knowing you have freckles, ginger hair and buck teeth, but knowing full well that these are precisely the reason you are not tanned and working for InStyle magazine. I was never a face woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s not exactly what worked in my favour. You’d be able to pick me out of a line up blindfolded in the thickest wool.

Oh piffle. Now where was I? I get so distracted. Oh yes....
Below, a few examples. Read carefully. See if you can discern the advertisement so well-woven into the text as to be indivisible from it. Truly, copy-writing genius at work.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Chapter Three
I Have a Change

The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. If only he'd given the horse Dr. Locock's Pulmonic Wafers. They provide perfect freedom from coughs within ten minutes and instant relief and a rapid cure of asthma and consumption, coughs, colds, and all disorders of the breath and lungs. The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say 'drove', but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Chapter Twenty-Two

Fanny, having been sent into the village on some errand by her aunt Norris, was overtaken by a heavy shower close to the Parsonage; and being descried from one of the windows endeavouring to find shelter under the branches and lingering leaves of an oak just beyond their premises, was forced, though not without some modest reluctance on her part, to come in. A civil servant she had withstood; but when Dr. Grant himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to be very much ashamed, and to get into the house as fast as possible. Oh, to have a W. & J. Sangster Alpaca umbrella! The superiority of Alpaca over every other material for Umbrellas being now generally acknowledged, W.&J. Sangster also always have a Stock of cheap Silk Umbrellas. The two sisters were so kind to her, and so pleasant, that Fanny might have enjoyed her visit could she have believed herself not in the way, and could she have foreseen that the weather would certainly clear at the end of the hour, and save her from the shame of having Dr. Grant's carriage and horses out to take her home, with which she was threatened.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Chapter Eight
"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?"
I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer "No."
"Do you know what I touch here?" she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.
"Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the young man.)
"What do I touch?"
"Your heart."
"Broken!"
She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.
"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play."
I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.
"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick fancy for my Vigor's Horse-Action Saddle. It invigorates the system by bringing all the vital organs into inspiriting action! And I haven't had any action, inspiriting or otherwise, since the sun dawned upon the day you were born. There there!"

Silas Marner by George Eliot
Chapter Two

There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain. In the early ages of the world, we know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to bitterness. The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrow, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night. Would that he had a passel of Field's "Ozokerit Candles" for brilliant light, safety, economy and reliability to burn the Star-Lit Nights!
His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and he went on with this unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he was come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the tale of Mrs. Osgood's table-linen sooner than she expected...

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Chapter Ten

When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality of the children's food; the brackish, fetid water used in its preparation; the pupils' wretched clothing and accommodations--all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution: Frampton's Pill of Health. This most excellent Family Medicine is the most effective remedy for Indigestion, Bilious and Liver Complaints, Sick Headache, Loss of appetite, Drowsiness, Giddiness, Spasms, and all Disorders of the Stomach and Bowels; and where an Aperient is required nothing an be better adapted.
Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing introduced; the funds of the school were entrusted to the management of a committee.

Dracula by Bram Stoker
Chapter Eleven
Dr. Seward's Diary

Without an instant's notice he made straight at me. He had a dinner knife in his hand, and as I saw he was dangerous, I tried to keep the table between us. He was too quick and too strong for me, however, for before I could get my balance he had struck at me and cut my left wrist rather severely.
Before he could strike again, however, I got in my right hand and he was sprawling on his back on the floor. My wrist bled freely, and quite a little pool trickled on to the carpet. I saw that my friend was not intent on further effort, and occupied myself binding up my wrist, keeping a wary eye on the prostrate figure all the time. When the attendants rushed in, and we turned our attention to him, his employment positively sickened me. He was lying on his belly on the floor licking up, like a dog, the blood which had fallen from my wounded wrist. He was easily secured, and to my surprise, went with the attendants quite placidly, simply repeating over and over again, "The blood is the life! The blood is the life!"
Yes, indeed, For the Blood is the Life - Clarke's World Famed Blood Mixture is warranted to cleanse the blood from all impurities, from whatever cause arising. For Scrofula, Scurvy, Sores of all kinds, Skin and Blood Diseases its effects are marvelous. Thousands of testimonials from all parts.
I cannot afford to lose blood just at present. I have lost too much of late for my physical good, and then the prolonged strain of Lucy's illness and its horrible phases is telling on me. I am over excited and weary, and I need rest, rest, rest. Happily Van Helsing has not summoned me, so I need not forego my sleep. Tonight I could not well do without it. If only I had some of Dr. J. Collis Browne's Chlorodyne, the Original and Only Genuine. If you wish to obtain quiet refreshing sleep, free from headache, relief from pain and anguish, to calm and assuage the weary achings of protracted disease, invigorate the nervous media, and regulate the circulating systems of the body, you will provide yourself with that marvelous remedy discovered by Dr. J. COLLIS BROWNE (late Army Medical Staff), to which he gave the name CHLORODYNE, And which is admitted by the Profession to be the most wonderful and valuable remedy ever discovered.

Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Chapter Twenty

The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps, the old gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and Dobbin parted pretty good friends.
"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs," George said, laughing. "How they must set off her complexion! Surely she avails herself of Madame A.T. Rowley's Toilet Mask (or Face Gloves), a natural beautifier for bleaching and preserving the skin and removing complexional imperfections. It is soft and flexible in form, and can be worn without discomfort or inconvenience. A perfect illumination it must be when her jewels are on her neck. Her jet-black hair is as curly as Sambo's. I dare say she wore a nose ring when she went to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knot she would look a perfect Belle Sauvage."

There. There are a few examples. Shocking is it not? Absolutely astonishing. It is enough to get my heart pounding, if I hadn't sold it to the fellow made out of tin. Russian oligarch, I believe. He was so elegant, how could I say no?
If you need me, I'll be in the bath.

Flaming Lamborghini
1 oz Kahlua coffee liqueur
1 oz sambuca
1 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
1 oz Bailey's Irish cream

Pour the sambuca and kahlua into a cocktail glass. Pour the baileys and blue curacao into two separate shot glasses either side of the cocktail glass. Set light the concoction in the cocktail glass and start to drink through a straw (this drink should be drunk in one). As the bottom of the glass is reached put out the fire by pouring the baileys and blue curacao into the cocktail glass and keep drinking till it's all gone. yumz.

frosty the golem

2010-11-30T04:00:00.000-05:00

“My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” - Psalms 139:15

There seems to be a significant amount of strange and supernatural phenomenon in childhood entertainment, from the Brothers Grimm and Harry Potter to the Disney classics.

I think it is lovely, for it guarantees that there will always be dark little thoughts formed alongside all of the faux wholesome tripe that is constantly forced down the throats of the child fortunate enough to be a scion of these times. Balance, you know, is so important.
Pondering these noir childhood entertainments, combined with the balmy weather, makes me think about the season that lies six or so months from now, it gives a new perspective on the Ho-Ho-Holiday stories that we all take for granted in the winter months, and nothing says "supernatural vengeance" like a mass of unliving natural materials animated and set on a path of justice by those who have suffered at the hands of others.

Frosty the Snowman, the sanitized Rankin-Bass television special aside, is a Golem in the traditional sense.The famous seasonal song immortalized by Gene Autry holds much clear evidence as to Frosty's origins and ultimate purpose. The lyrics of the tune are easy enough to interpret correctly. Frosty is in actuality a creature of Old Testament-style power created by Kabala-worshiping children to correct the inequities they suffered at the hands of the citizens and from the horrible pogroms of the anti-Semitic town in which they reside. Lacking tools or anything that could be used as a weapon the desperate and faithful children build a Golem of legend out of the only material they could easily manipulate and gather: Snow.
By placing a hat (very likely a yarmulke) imbued with powerful magic upon a humanoid form fashioned of inanimate matter, a Golem is brought to a semblance of life by a vengeful God in answer to the children's anguished prayers. Dubbed "Frosty"by the innocent and non-ironic children, the creature is sent from its birthing place in the forest armed with a "broomstick" (rather, a huge club of some sort) into the village on a mission of vengeance. Song scribes Steven "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson do not even attempt to hide the terrible descriptions of the Snow-Golem's murderous spree of righteous retribution to be found in the lyrics of the song.
The phrase "Thumpety thump thump" is repeated several times during the song, succinctly describing not the martial tune of an impromptu parade of happy children following an imaginary character into innocent play, but rather the continuous blows of icy fists made hard as granite by the bitter cold against the flesh of those who would oppress the innocent. Frosty's first target of retribution upon entering the village is a "police officer" who is actually the symbol of racist, intolerant government and authority. Just as in the classic legend of the Golem, once the ice creature completes it's mission it departs and returns to its previous state of lifeless, inanimate matter, promising to "be back again some day" if needed to mete out swift punishment against evil-doers.
While it is true that the Golem is merely a weapon that acts as the instrument of God's will sometimes not all of the missions end in large scale destruction and death. On occasion God is merciful and Frosty the Golem is set on a path not of destruction but enlightenment.
In the story adapted from ancient legends for the 1954 issue of Dell Comics "Frosty the Snowman" the Golem is summoned by a victim of intolerance and battles racism by the simple act of patrolling a village. Frosty the Golem appears harmless and even helpful in the all-ages version of the tale, but doubtlessly the very presence of the creature forced the terrified citizenry to re-think their intolerant ways and accept the cultures and people that do not act, think, worship or dress as they do.
Earlier audiences were treated the with “The Snowman,” a 1932 classic from Ted Eshbaugh. This is the cheerful story of a jolly little boy and his jolly pet seal who live above the jolly arctic circle, having a jolly old time with all the other jolly animals until one day when they build a snowman who comes to life and becomes a horrible flesh eating monster. Grrr.
Yeah, well, this is the same Eshbaugh who gave us “The Sunshine Makers”, so you knew the ride was gonna be a little twisted. No telling how many baby boomers sought therapy in their middle years as a direct result of multiple childhood viewings of this golden oldie.

There is supposed to be a real golem in Prague. It lies waiting. Inhuman, both protector and destroyer. All he needs is one word to be brought to horrifying life. The origin of this unthinking giant can be found in an appropriately macabre place; its creator lies buried in the oldest Jewish cemetery in all of Europe. The cemetery was established in the mid 1400’s and was part of Josefov, the Jewish Ghetto, an area created as a way of oppressing and controlling the Jewish population of Prague. With only a tiny plot of land on which it was legal for Jews to bury their dead, it was a crowded affair from the very start. Used until 1787, it came to contain the skeletal remains of over 100,000 Prague Jews. Graves were layered one on top of the other like pages in a book, reaching up to 12 deep. No doubt over time the simple coffins have disintegrated and the skeletons have drifted into complex three dimensional patterns of bone. The Old Jewish cemetery in Prague a wonder to behold. A stone forest of over 12,000 slabs grows from the mossy earth. The ground rolls and undulates through the cemetery and the massively weighty gravestones lean against each other at odd angles like a group of old drunks. One coffin along the winding path through the cemetery stands out from the rest. The large bed-shaped headstone is the resting spot of Rabbi Judah Lew ben Bezalel, or as he is often known, the Maharal of Prague. While he was an important Jewish figure for a number of reasons, he is remembered for one thing above all. His hands were the one that brought to life that proto-Frankenstein, that original man-made monster, the Golem of Prague. In 1580 the Jewish community was under attack, and was about to be accused of a ritual child murder, a common way a arousing public hatred against Jews and inciting a mob to anti-Jewish violence. It was also an excuse often used to expel the entire Jewish community from a city. Worried, the Maharal asked God what to do. That night in his dreams he was given instructions on how to create a Golem: a creature made of clay. Even for the holiest of men creating life is forbidden by Jewish law, but in this case an exception was to be made. The task would be a dangerous one. He was to use the “Shem Hameforash”, the true name of God, a word so powerful that it could easily kill its speaker. After purifying himself, the Maharal went to the river, and by torchlight sculpted a giant body out of the river clay. After performing the complicated rituals from his dream, he wrote the word Emet, meaning God’s truth, across the muddy forehead. The Golem’s fiery eyes snapped opened to his master. The Golem is soulless and unintelligent, a brute enforcer. It is said the Golem successfully defended the Jewish community against its aggressors, but that as it grew larger and larger it began attacking Gentiles and terrifying Prague. In some tales the Golem turns even on the Jews and its own creator. Eventually the Maharal was forced to destroy the creature by wiping off the first letter written on its forehead, changing the word from Emet, or God’s truth, to the word Met or death. However the body of the Golem was to be stored in the attic of the Synagogue in Prague. Perhaps the Golem still resides there today, waiting for the word, waiting to be summoned.

Can a golem G.I. Joe action figure be far behind? Hmmm... Until then, here is a little article from some magazine called the "New York Times" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/europe/11golem.html?_r=1
Cheers.

Monster Piss

1 1/2 oz Absolut® lemon vodka

1 1/2 oz Captain Morgan® Parrot Bay coconut rum

4 oz pine-orange-banana juice

2 oz Sprite® soda

Mix everything in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake and pour into glass. Add the sprite to the glass. Grrrr.

Robots

2010-07-28T22:41:00.000-04:00

Early 1980's. Alphabet City. Segments are airing on national TV about drugs, guns, general life-threatening disorder. Yet, still and all, it's where the artists live. Coax a cab east and try your luck.

On Avenue B, half-windowed buildings. Puerto Rican mafia guys lurking. Street lights, but they do little more than rattle and buzz. Rats. You carefully watching your footsteps to avoid another one-beneath-as-one-scuttles-atop scenario. Maybe one of the discarded syringes will trip-up the fucker before you do. The Gas Station on your left as you and yours tumble out of the cab, which pulls off before you fully close the door. Kind of pretty in its charred regal manifestation. The usual gathering of performance artists, drug addicts and experimental bands (as in experimenting at being a band, as in GG Allin). Halos seem to float miraculously above them. You swear you can smell the gasoline wafting across the incessant breeze, but your date reminds you it's been forever since the joint burnt or exploded or was just in general abandoned and the drug addict artists took over. Shit. No electricity. No heat. Around the corner, on 2nd, Lucky Seven, a hopping heroin den. More images of rats skewered on myriad needles. Doubtful. You watch your feet.

Then: the door. Formidable. Grey. You seem to be alone on the street. How did that happen? A sound. Another. Closer? You've got to knock. There's a postcard sized peephole, which slides open and two rather naughty eyes eye you. You try to look cool, which could mean a number of things depending upon the doorman's mood. Mostly, it would seem, it means sufficiently seedy enough to add that je ne sais quoi, yet also capable of paying for the illegal overpriced limited-option drinks. The peephole slides shut. Clang! You're fucked.

On other nights, perhaps, though, you're not. Perhaps you're selected by the six something foot bald guy in the mini skirt and high heels who works the door. He's a doll if he knows you. A sweetheart. A gem. If he doesn't, he's finicky, sassy and, at times, downright mean. Of course, he's on drugs. Aren't we all? Cocaine is the prima donna at this affair. Most of the junkies prowling about aren't interested in what Save The Robots has to offer, though there's always the exception. Speed is drug-of-choice #2. Good luck with the john. Most nights, Joey Ramone is developing his crack habit in its wet tomb.

So: you get through the door, through the gate, past Dean, the doorman. Then: the hall. Long, like shoelace licorice. Skinny in the same way. Then: a narrow and not necessarily trustworthy set of stairs. You're cooking now. You can smell the sawdust that awaits you on the floor below. It's faux-Japanese restaurant decor though perhaps its hard to state as much with any authority. Dark. There's a couple of fold-out tables covered in white paper. Maybe they're bare. Does it matter? It's after 2:00. All the legal clubs are shut. You saunter over. Order a Budweiser or an orange juice and vodka.A screwdriver. Ten dollars either way. Bud comes out of a plastic cooler. Top flips up. Then, flips down. Pfft. Early enough it's cold; as the morning unfolds, the ice melts. Brewskis become lukewarm. Orange juice, warm or otherwise, tastes like Kool-aid. Bartender asks you if you're from around here. You develop a hankering for spiked kids' drinks.

There's a lot of folks down here. And you wonder what they're all on about. What they're doing here. But you already know. Sally Randall. Rudolph. Diane Brill. John Sex. Terry Toy. Heterosexual. Homosexual. Bisexual. Transvestite. Yeah, those are hot. They draw the most glee. Big hair on the "girls." A lot of up do's. Mermaid dresses. And so on. Lots of make-up all round in colours that twinkle and glow. A man in slip-on stilettos lets you borrow his lipstick. It's Dean, the doorman, and he's left the door, locked, for a quick spin on the dance floor. Though, not so quick you notice, as he pirouettes and stomps and slithers crammed in tight against others who are doing the same. The guys, the straight ones, still sport a few mohawks. Others, though, like me, are growing it long. It trails about behind them like rainbows. Dean is bald, you refresh watching him go, the only one. Jesus, he's pale. Never sees much daylight. Who here does?

They all live in this neighbourhood, you discover. When the epic clubs--Area, Dancetaria and so on--close at 2:00, (in the City That Never Sleeps) the clubbies, those ebullient few who make the clubs "clubs," traipse over yonder. Fuck the cabs. Most of them walk. No money. Plus, they have a nice buzz--from drinking free at marquee clubs, sweetened in by owners looking for the authentic goods--and the city looks beautiful that night. Plus again, who are they going to be afraid of? Okay, the mafia thing can get, um, dicey, but mostly not.

Dean the doorman had opened his own club, he tells you, when you get to know him, around the corner from Save The Robots just months before Robots opened. He'd named it Uncle Bud's Amway. After his Uncle Bud. And his Uncle Bud's employer. He'd established a velvet rope and refused everybody entry, perched on his high backed chair, glittering beneath the murky stars in sequined skirts and iridescent knit tops. The lines grew verbose. Soon enough, however, the mob guys wanted in. Hence: Dean's current employment where someone else tends to the tricky bits. Denis Provost and his wife Alexandria to be precise, the proprietors. Alexandria's father worked in robotics and he designed robots or parts of robots. Hence: the name of the club. Or so the bartender tells you. You've just purchased drink number two. Your date's ahead of you, #4, #5, #6? And he's mingling. You wonder how many of these people have made it into those segments on television.
One night, your date tells you having, briefly, wandered back, the cops busted the joint. The thing was, they'd just busted the after-hours hole a few streets over and they'd confiscated everybodys' crack. He smirks as he says confiscated. There's so much smoke around you, it's a bit the way you imagine the eye of a hurricane. When you think that, you think of Dean's eyes sizing you up the first time you came and you're glad you made it in the second. Mostly that's cuz your date has formed a pithy New York band and he's causing a little stir. Roboters like stirs. Or so it seems. So they confiscated it, he goes on. Then then did all the shit themselves so by the time they got here they were all fucked up. They busted the place up royal. Holes in the walls. Handcuffing and shit. Take everyone down to jail and lock them in the same cell with the people from the other club. They partied all night and were let go some time in the afternoon. This story amuses your date. As if the club had some sort of edge on the cops. You try to imagine your fellow revelers, heads currently bent over rolled up bills, released into the sun. Not likely.

And then? Well, they couldn't do shit to the club. I mean, they'd fucked up the bust. It's lucky Alexandria and Denis didn't press charges against the pigs. Except, of course, that would have been madness because their whole thing here is illegal. But you're certain, as you search the spray-painted walls for cop-punched holes, your date really does know as much.

There's music playing, of course. Dance, mostly, loud. Your feet vibrate. Your tendons too. And so on. Everybody's dancing. Thumping, pounding, whirling. Except, naturally, Joey. He's hogging the john. John Hall is in charge. He's spinning hip hop as well. You wonder what hip hop is. Though you notice there's a bunch of black guys hanging around looking mischievous. And chances are they've got something to do with it.

Later, when you're a regular and the door opens before you knock and Dean kisses you and slips you candies and the bartender sometimes doesn't charge you and Joey lets you use the toilet, sometimes, and you know all the songs John is spinning except for a few and when you ask him what those are he'll answer you, Alexandria and Denis open the upstairs. It's a lounge. They've acquired a couple of couches and chairs from somewhere. The street? They've embellished them: spray paint. You can sit there, for hours, and think about all the folks on the outside who didn't get in. And you know, if you think about it, that their hearts are breaking. That somehow Save The Robots is, inexplicably, The Promised Land. And Dean, teetering prettily in heels, holds your salvation in his large, and overly-white, you think, hands. Though perhaps that's pushing it.

It's after legal club time and there's nowhere to go. And now there's here. And everyone who's anyone, in those terms, has agreed that here is It. And Dean: eying. Later, around 7ish. The mawkish crowd moves northward, landing themselves at Pyramid. Reeks like old, old beer and smokes. Wired on coke and speed it's all talk, no listening. Then late afternoon sleep. Do they sleep? Or a job. Doubtful. Unless, of course, it's at one of the clubs.
Eventually Save The Robots gets sold to some out-of-towners. Out-of-countryers. Turns out, it's famous around the world. Who knew? Punks and hardcore kids and goths and speed bands and the nascent hip-hoppers and old school dance-heads and the new school techno-heads and so on. Check it out. Bridge and tunnel, now, as well. And you start to make some inner-housekeeping changes of your own.

Then: flash forward; 2002. Same streets, same sense of cool urging about. New generation. And a whole lot of gentrification. Guernica, a trendy restaurant on hallowed Robots ground, serving up, well, what the fuck, no Kool-aid here. The Gas Station, decimated. Brought down to honor a Kings Pharmacy and flights of yuppies. Lucky Seven, an Italian haunt. Good food. Visiting movie stars taste the fares: Julia Roberts, Benjamin Bratt. Separate dates.

Windows, now, lots of them. Street lights. Parents wouldn't let them live there without. Rents you couldn't make if you worked a dozen club jobs. Not true, not true. But where are the clubs these days? Still and all, it's hell over here. Carcasses of times barely recalled. You walk around a bit, check out the kids in their false-punk get-ups and mighty heels, know they are convinced they're the edge just as you were once convinced as much, stealing some other generation's way. But that was back before it took more than one beer, albeit Guinness, to give you a hang over.

Wind still blows, Northeast mostly. The Towers proved that. Alone? Hah, these days. Not. Likely. Then: maybe you are. And it smells like gasoline. Don't embellish. But smells the same, like back in the day, somehow. And you pass Il Bagatto, hang a louie on B, pass Kings, there she is: Guernica.
And you try, this quiet Sunday morning, to recollect.
But you can't.
They tore the fucking door down...

Cheers.

Rise Robot Rise
1/2 pint Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey
1/8 pint Absolut vodka
5 drops grenadine syrup
Combine jack daniel's, vodka and grenadine in a highball glass. Mix well, add ice, and serve.

poetic ooze

2010-07-19T17:45:00.007-04:00

You know I'm devoted to poetry. Yes, I know simply everyone is these days, but I think I am especially in tune with it being an artiste and all. I simply ooze it from my pores like last nights tequila.
Sadly, poetry has taken a backseat to a cacophony of meaningless chatter; beautiful verse having been exiled to the greeting card section of your local supermarket- sigh. And everyone seems to be at it these days, blah blah blah!

Thanks to the Internet with it's E-mail, texting, sexting and IM (ing), we compose messages to each other as spontaneously as our parents picked up the telephone.
Among the literate classes of Europe, who did not have "Spellcheck", poetry used to be a kind of social media too.

Here, let me take a break from my morning routine of hunting eBay for Raymor vases and firing off snitty missives to NPR about their recent foray into celebrity tabloid coverage and fill you in on a little history.
Poetry back "in the day" worked in ways similar to ancient Japanese poetry, which, as Sei Shonagon’s 10th-century Pillow Book tells us, involved courtiers “texting” poems to each other, albeit on exquisite paper. Like Japan’s court poetry, English poetry in the early 18th century, the so-called Augustan Age
The first half of the 18th century, during which English poets such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift emulated Virgil, Ovid, and Horace—the great Latin poets of the reign of the Emperor Augustus flourished as a kind of messaging between members of a social circle.
But, informed by the rigors of metrical and rhetorical convention, it sparkled in a way that our missives—texts written in haste, or comments dashed off in high dudgeon—often do not.
These poems were in the form of “epistolary verse,” or letter-poems, and they were both public and private displays of alliance and conflict. Writing artfully to provide amusement for friends with good taste, the epistolary poets also regarded their high style as a persuasive tactic.

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, was one writer of Augustan epistolary verse, and her poem “The Answer” is an elegant example of the form. Swellegant even.
As with electronic messages, to understand “The Answer” you have to know what it was replying to. In this case, Finch’s poem is a response to another poem, “Impromptu,” by Alexander Pope, itself composed in answer to a rumor that Finch disapproved of him. The reigning poet of his day, Pope was 27 years younger than Finch. He had heard from a mutual friend that she objected to some diminishing remarks about female writers in his masterpiece “The Rape of the Lock”—yet another response poem, this one to a young woman Pope knew who threw a tantrum over a suitor’s bit of mischief. Finch thought his lines were misogynistic attacks on her female associates, to whom she was devoted. “Impromptu” was Pope’s way of charming himself back into her good graces:

In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore,
And cite those Sapphos we admire no more:
Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit;
But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ.
Of all Examples by the World confess’d,
I knew Ardelia could not quote the best;
Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne;
Fights and subdues in Quarrels not her own.
To write their Praise you but in vain essay;
Ev’n while you write, you take that Praise away:
Light to the Stars the Sun does thus restore,
But shines himself till they are seen no more.

“Impromptu” is a sly attempt to deflect his friend’s criticism with flattery. You think you’re defending your sisters, he says, but you’re so superior to them that by picking up your pen you just prove me right: “To write their Praise you but in vain essay; / Ev’n while you write, you take that Praise away.” By Pope’s logic, Finch is unconsciously a more devastating critic of (other) women’s writing than he could ever be.
“The Answer” matches wits with the cocky young Pope. Finch demurs, adopting a silken tone of feminine conciliation—“The contest I give oer.” She pleads for mercy yet calls him by his first name, which in debate is a tactic used to undermine the authority of one’s opponent. Then she laughs at him, comparing him to the mythic singer Orpheus. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Orpheus was torn limb from limb by frenzied maenads—basically, female fans. His dismembered head kept singing all the way downstream to the sea, washing up on Lesbos, Sappho’s isle. Don’t worry, Finch says to Pope: this won’t happen to you because “you our follies gently treat.” Where Orpheus offered “scoffing rhymes,” Finch grants that Pope has spun the “thread” of his poem finely. And when she promises, “The lock won’t cost the head,” she is wittily confusing the beheaded singer with Belinda’s snipped tress in “The Rape of the Lock.” Grandiose Orpheus would have written as amusingly as Pope “[h]ad he in London town been bred, / And polished too his wit.”
Continuing her alternate reading of the myth, Finch mocks Orpheus’s failure to save his wife, Eurydice, when his music moved the god of Hades: “But he poor soul thought all was well, / And great should be his fame, / When he had left his wife in hell. . . .” By making light of this drama at the expense of the pompous Poetic Hero, Finch deflates Pope by analogy. She is treating serious things lightly—the opposite of Pope’s mock-heroic strategy in “The Rape of the Lock”—which undermines her apparent sincerity.
In her coup de grace, Finch reassures Pope—“Our admiration you command”—before a final, ambiguous insult: as she tells “the ladies,” wit is easy enough, but wisdom is something we learn—by others’ reprimands. Yet who is reprimanding who? While superficially conceding to Pope’s complaint, Finch sneaks in her own admonition to the younger man to mind his manners. And Pope’s response? He requested permission to publish her piece alongside “Impromptu” in his next book. Ever the lady, Finch softened her final version by omitting the beheading. Their friendship prevailed, more firmly bonded by this mutually amusing contest.
“The Answer,” like “Impromptu,” is a rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Both poems pretend to be reasonable while wielding the imbalances of power—her maturity, his maleness—as stealth weapons. Their reputations were imbalanced as well. Anne Finch, like many exceptional female poets, stood slightly apart from the mainstream of her time; it is only recently that she has been rehabilitated as an important 18th-century poet. Pope, on the other hand, was always the spokesman of the Augustan Age, an absolute master of its prevalent modes—satire and didacticism. After all, the period was dubbed “Augustan” because it harked back to the learned poets of Augustus’s reign in Rome—like Horace, who all but invented the epistolary form and was a wicked satirist as well.
The Augustans have long been overshadowed by the Romantics.
(A poetic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that turned toward nature and the interior world of feeling, in opposition to the mannered formalism and disciplined scientific inquiry of the Enlightenment. English poets such as William Wordsworth, . . . )
The Augustans prized neoclassical virtues such as reason and proportion; the Romantics enshrined vision and extravagance.
Following the Romantics, we have privileged the individual genius and the masterpiece, but perhaps Anne Finch has another message for us: take Alexander Pope off his damned pedestal.
We can look at Augustan poetry as a network of poets engaging one another with verse inseparable from their back-stories. Pope helped found the Scriblerus Club with Jonathan Swift and wrote The Dunciad to satirize the specific writers he loathed; Finch had many female contemporaries, though most of their names—Katherine Philip, Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Sarah Fyge Egerton, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Elizabeth Carter, Sarah Dixon, Jane Brereton, Mary Jones, Mary Masters, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, among others—are, sadly, obscure to us now.
Without denying the fact that some writers are more talented than others—and without exiling the notions of genius or mastery—it is possible to see the highly networked milieu of English verse at this time as a social practice rather than a spiritual one—a precursor to our own secular, highly networked times.

We might learn something, as well, from the forms these poets’ messages took.
Their banter was charged with ironies but always civil; the rules of metrics and the bounds of discourse played their part in defusing hard feelings.
As it happens, the lines in “The Rape of the Lock” to which Finch objected not only were misogynistic but also could be construed as a very personal attack.
A character called Spleen is told that women write only to self-medicate, and “The Spleen” is in fact the title of Finch’s poem about her recurring depression.
But the conventions of Augustan poetry sublimated emotion into a contest of wits, so what could have been a petty complaint resulted in works that have instead lasted centuries.
While I’m certainly not suggesting that contemporary flame wars be conducted in epistolary rhyming hexameters, I feel it’s absolutely impossible to read the repartee between Finch and Pope and not feel pressed to raise the bar on our own poetic rhetoric.... unless you are an absolute boob, and you aren't are you? Hmmmm...?
Cheers.

Ruby Heart
1 shot peach schnapps
1 shot vodka
1 shot Malibu® coconut rum
pineapple juice
cranberry juice
Combine peach schnapps, vodka and Malibu rum in a cocktail glass. Almost fill with pineapple juice, add a splash of cranberry juice, and serve.

In Memoriam

2010-05-31T21:39:00.003-04:00

A poem, on the rising glory of America by Hugh Henry Brackenridge

LEANDER.
No more of Memphis and her mighty kings,
Or Alexandria, where the Ptolomies.
Taught golden commerce to unfurl her falls,
And bid fair science smile: No more of Greece
Where learning next her early visit paid,
And spread her glories to illume the world,
No more of Athens, where she flourished,
And saw her sons of mighty genius rise
Smooth flowing Plato, Socrates and him
Who with resistless eloquence reviv'd
The Spir't of Liberty, and shook the thrones
Of Macedon and Persia's haughty king.
No more of Rome enlighten'd by her beams,
Fresh kindling there the fire of eloquence,
And poesy divine; imperial Rome!
Whose wide dominion reach'd o'er half the globe;
Whose eagle flew o'er Ganges to the East,
And in the West far to the British isles.
No more of Britain, and her kings renown'd,
Edward's and Henry's thunderbolts of war;
Her chiefs victorious o'er the Gallic foe;
Illustrious senators, immortal bards,
And wise philosophers, of these no more.
A Theme more new, tho' not less noble claims
Our ev'ry thought on this auspicious day
The rising glory of this western world,
Where now the dawning light of science spreads
Her orient ray, and wakes the muse's song;
Where freedom holds her sacred standard high,
And commerce rolls her golden tides profuse
Of elegance and ev'ry joy of life.

ACASTO.
Since then Leander you attempt a strain
So new, so noble and so full of fame;
And since a friendly concourse centers here
America's own sons, begin O muse!
Now thro' the veil of ancient days review
The period fam'd when first Columbus touch'd
The shore so long unknown, thro' various toils,
Famine and death, the hero made his way,
Thro' oceans bestowing with eternal storms.
But why, thus hap'ly found, should we resume
The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordain'd
With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak
Fam'd Amazonia's stream with dead! Or why,
Once more revive the story old in fame,
Of Atabilipa by thirst of gold
Depriv'd of life: which not Peru's rich ore,
Nor Mexico's vast mines cou'd then redeem.
Better these northern realms deserve our song,
Discover'd by Britannia for her sons;
Undeluged with seas of Indian blood,
Which cruel Spain on southern regions spilt;
To gain by terrors what the gen'rous breast
Wins by fair treaty, conquers without blood.

EUGENIO.
High in renown th' intreprid hero stands,
From Europes shores advent'ring first to try
New seas, new oceans, unexplor'd by man.
Fam'd Cabot too may claim our noblest song,
Who from th' Atlantic surge descry'd these shores,
As on he coasted from the Mexic bay
To Acady and piny Labradore.
Nor less than him the muse would celebrate
Bold Hudson stemming to the pole, thro' seas
Vex'd with continual storms, thro' the cold strains,
Where Europe and America oppose
Their shores contiguous, and the northern sea
Confin'd, indignant, swells and roars between.
With these be number'd in the list of fame
Illustrious Raleigh, hapless in his fate:
Forgive me Raleigh, if an infant muse
Borrows thy name to grace her humble strain;
By many nobler are thy virtues sung;
Envy no more shall throw them in the shade;
They pour new lustre on Britannia's isle.
Thou too, advent'rous on th' Atlantic main,
Burst thro' its storms and fair Virginia hail'd.
The simple natives saw thy canvas flow,
And gaz'd aloof upon the shady shore:
For in her woods America contain'd,
From times remote, a savage race of men.
How shall we know their origin, how tell,
From whence or where the Indian tribes arose?

ACASTO.
And long has this defy'd the sages skill
T' investigate: Tradition seems to hide
The mighty secret from each mortal eye,
How first these various nations South and North
Possest these shores, or from what countries came.
Whether they sprang from some premoeval head
In their own lands, like Adam in the East;
Yet this the sacred oracles deny,
And reason too reclaims against the thought.
For when the gen'ral deluge drown'd the world,
Where could their tribes have found security?
Where find their fate but in the ghastly deep?
Unless, as others dream, some chosen few
High on the Andes 'scap'd the gen'ral death,
High on the Andes wrapt in endless snow,
Where winter in his wildest fury reigns.
But here Philosophers oppose the scheme,
The earth, say they, nor hills nor mountains knew
E'er yet the universal flood prevail'd:
But when the mighty waters rose aloft
Rous'd by the winds, they shook their solid case
And in convulsions tore the drowned world!
'Till by the winds assuag'd they quickly fell
And all their ragged bed exposed to view.
Perhaps far wand'ring towards the northren pole,
The straits of Zembla and the Frozen Zone,
And where the eastern Greenland almost joins
America's north point, the hardy tribes
Of banish'd Jews, Siberians, Tartars wild
Came over icy mountains, or on floats
First reach'd these coasts hid from the world beside.
And yet another argument more strange
Reserv'd for men of deeper thought and late
Presents itself to view: In Pelag's days,
So says the Hebrew seer's inspired pen,
This mighty mass of earth, this solid globe
Was cleft in twain--cleft east and west apart
While strait between the deep Atlantic roll'd.
And traces indisputable remain
Of this unhappy land now sunk and lost;
The islands rising in the eastern main
Are but small fragments of this continent,
Whose two extremities were Newfoudland
And St. Helena.--One far in the north
Where British seamen now with strange surprise
Behold the pole star glitt'ring o'er their heads;
The other in the southern tropic rears
Its head above the waves; Bermudas and
Canary isles, Britannia and th' Azores,
With fam'd Hibernia are but broken parts
Of some prodigious waste which once sustain'd
Armies by lands, where now but ships can range.

LEANDER.
Your sophistry Acasto makes me smile;
The roving mind of man delights to dwell
On hidden things, merely because they're hid;
He thinks his knowledge ne'er can reach too high
And boldly pierces nature's inmost haunts
But for uncertainties; your broken isles,
You northern Tartars, and your wand'ring Jews.
Hear what the voice of history proclaims.
The Carthaginians, e'er the Roman yoke
Broke their proud spirits and enslav'd them too,
For navigation were renown'd as much
As haughty Tyre with all her hundred fleets;
Full many: league their vent'rous seamen sail'd
Thro' strait Gibraltar down the western shore
Of Africa, and to Canary isles
By them call'd fortunate, so Flaccus sings,
Because eternal spring there crowns the fields,
And fruits delicious bloom throughout the year.
From voyaging here this inference I draw,
Perhaps some barque with all her num'rous crew
Caught by the eastern trade wind hurry'd on
Before th' steady blast to Brazil's shore,
New Amazonia and the coasts more south.
Here standing and unable to return,
For ever from their native skies estrang'd,
Doubtless they made the unknown land their own.
And in the course of many rolling years
A num'rous progeny from these arose,
And spread throughout the coasts; those whom we call
Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians rich,
Th' tribes of Chili, Paragon and those
Who till the shores of Amazon's long stream.
When first the pow'rs of Europe here attain'd
Vast empires, kingdoms, cities, palaces
And polish'd nations stock'd the fertile land.
Who has not heard of Cusco, Lima and
The town of Mexico; huge cities form'd
From Europe's architecture, e're the arms
Of haughty Spain disturb'd the peaceful soil.

EUGENIO.
Such disquisition leads the puzzled mind
From maze to maze by queries still perplex'd.
But this we know, if from the east they came
Where science first and revelation beam'd,
Long since they've lost all memory, all trace
Of this their origin: Tradition tells
Of some great forefather beyond the lakes
Oswego, Huron, Mechigan, Champlaine
Or by the stream of Amazon which rolls
Thro' many a clime; while others simply dream
That from the Andes or the mountains north,
Some hoary fabled ancestor came down
To people this their world.

LEANDER.
How fallen, Oh!
How much obscur'd is human nature here!
Shut from the light of science and of truth
They wander'd blindfold down the steep of time;
Dim superstition with her ghastly train
Of dæmons, spectres and forboding signs
Still urging them to horrid rites and forms
Of human sacrifice, to sooth the pow'rs
Malignant, and the dark infernal king.
Once on this spot perhaps a wigwam stood
With all its rude inhabitants, or round
Some mighty fire an hundred savage sons
Gambol'd by day, and filled the night with cries;
In what superior to the brutal race
That fled before them thro' the howling wilds,
Were all those num'rous tawny tribes which swarm'd
From Baffin's bay to Del Fuego south,
From California to the Oronoque.
Far from the reach of fame they liv'd unknown
In listless slumber and inglorious ease;
To them fair science never op'd her stores,
Nor sacred truth sublim'd the soul to God;
No fix'd abode their wand'ring genius knew;
No golden harvest crown'd the fertile glebe;
No city then adorn'd the rivers bank,
Nor rising turret overlook'd the stream.

ACASTO.
Now view the prospect chang'd; far off at sea
The mariner descry's our spacious towns
He hails the prospect of the land and views
A new, a fair a fertile world arise;
Onward from India's isles far east, to us
Now fair-ey'd commerce stretches her white sails,
Learning exalts her head, the graces smile
And peace establish'd after horrid war
Improves the splendor of these early times.
But come my friends and let us trace the steps
By which this recent happy world arose,
To this fair eminence of high renown
This height of wealth, of liberty and fame.

LEANDER.
Speak then Eugenio, for I've heard you tell
The pleasing hist'ry, and the cause that brought
The first advent'rers to these happy shores;
The glorious cause that urg'd our fathers first
To visit climes unknown and wilder woods
Than e'er Tartarian or Norwegian saw,
And with fair culture to adorn that soil
Which never knew th' industrious swain before.

EUGENIO.
All this long story to rehearse would tire,
Besides the sun toward the west retreats,
Nor can the noblest tale retard his speed,
Nor loftiest verse; not that which sung the fall
Of Troy divine and smooth Scamander's stream.
Yet hear a part.--By persecution wrong'd
And popish cruelty, our fathers came
From Europe's shores to find this blest abode,
Secure from tyranny and hateful man.
For this they left their country and their friends
And plough'd th' Atlantic wave in quest of peace;
And found new shores and sylvan settlements
Form'd by the care of each advent'rous chief,
Who, warm in liberty and freedom's cause,
Sought out uncultivated tracts and wilds,
And fram'd new plans of cities, governments
And spacious provinces: Why should I name
Thee Penn, the Solon of our western lands;
Sagacious legislator, whom the world
Admires tho' dead: an infant colony
Nurs'd by thy care, now rises o'er the rest
Like that tall Pyramid on Memphis' stand
O'er all the lesser piles, they also great.
Why should I name those heroes so well known
Who peopled all the rest from Canada
To Georgia's farthest coasts, West Florida
Or Apalachian mountains, yet what streams
Of blood were shed! What Indian hosts were slain
Before the days of peace were quite restor'd.

LEANDER.
Yes, while they overturn'd the soil untill'd,
And swept the forests from the shaded plain
'Midst dangers, foes and death, fierce Indian tribes
With deadly malice arm'd and black design,
Oft murder'd half the hapless colonies.
Encourag'd too by that inglorious race
False Gallia's sons, who once their arms display'd
At Quebec, Montreal and farthest coasts
Of Labrador and Esquimaux where now
The British standard awes the coward host.
Here those brave chiefs, who lavish of their blood
Fought in Britannia's cause, most nobly fell.
What Heart but mourns the untimely fate of Wolf,
Who dying conquer'd, or what breast but beats
To share a fate like his, and die like him?

ACASTO.
And he demands our lay who bravely fell
By Monangahela and the Ohio's stream;
By wiles o'ercome the hapless hero fell,
His soul too gen'rous, for that dastard crew
Who kill unseen and shun the face of day.
Ambush'd in wood, and swamp and thick grown hill,
The bellowing tribes brought on the savage war.
What could avail O Braddock then the flame,
The gen'rous flame which fir'd thy martial soul!
What could avail Britannia's warlike troops,
Choice spirits of her isle? What could avail
America's own sons? The skulking foe,
Hid in the forest lay and sought secure,
What could the brave Virginians do o'erpower'd
By such vast numbers and their leader dead?
'Midst fire and death they bore him from the field,
Where in his blood full many a hero lay.
'Twas there O Halkut! thou so nobly fell,
Thrice valiant Halkut early son of fame!
We still deplore a fate so immature,
Fair Albion mourns thy unsuccesful end,
And Caledonia sheds a tear for him
Who led the bravest of her sons to war.

EUGENIO.
But why alas commemorate the dead?
And pass those glorious heroes by, who yet
Breathe the same air and see the light with us?
The dead, Acasto are but empty names
And he who dy'd to day the same to us
As he who dy'd a thousand years ago.
A Johnson lives, among the sons of same
Well known, conspicuous as the morning star
Among the lesser lights: A patriot skill'd
In all the glorious arts of peace of war.
He for Britannia gains the savage race,
Unstable as the sea, wild as the winds,
Cruel as death, and treacherous as hell,
Whom none but he by kindness yet could win,
None by humanity could gain their souls,
Or bring from woods and subteranean dens
The skulking crew, before a Johnson rose,
Pitying their num'rous tribes: ah how unlike
The Cortez' and Acosta's, pride of Spain
Whom blood and murder only satisfy'd.
Behold their doleful regions overflow'd
With gore, and blacken'd with ten thousand deaths
From Mexico to Patagonia far,
Where howling winds sweep round the southern cape,
And other suns and other stars arise!

ACASTO.
Such is the curse Eugenio where the soul
Humane is wanting, but we boast no seats
Of cruelty like Spain's unfeeling sons.
The British Epithet is merciful:
And we the sons of Britain learn like them
To conquer and to spare; for coward souls
Seek their revenge but on a vanquish'd foe.
Gold, fatal gold was the assuring bait
To Spain's rapacious mind, hence rose the wars
From Chili to the Caribbean sea,
O'er Terra-Firma and La Plata wide.
Peru then sunk in ruins, great before
With pompous cities, monuments superb
Whose tops reach'd heav'n. But we more happy boast
No golden metals in our peaceful land,
No flaming diamond, precious emerald,
Or blushing saphire, ruby, chrysolite
Or jasper red; more noble riches flow
From agriculture and th' industrious swain,
Who tills the fertile vale or mountain's brow,
Content to lead a safe, a humble life
'Midst his own native hills; romantic scenes,
Such as the muse of Greece did feign so well,
Envying their lovely bow'rs to mortal race.

LEANDER.
Long has the rural life been justly fam'd;
And poets old their pleasing pictures drew
Of flow'ry meads, and groves and gliding streams.
Hence old Arcadia, woodnymphs, satyrs, fauns,
And hence Elysium, fancy'd heav'n below.
Fair agriculture, not unworthy kings,
Once exercis'd the royal hand, or those
Whose virtue rais'd them to the rank of gods.
See old Laertes in his shepherd weeds,
Far from his pompous throne and court august,
Digging the grateful soil, where peaceful blows
The west wind murm'ring thro' the aged trees
Loaded with apples red, sweet scented peach
And each luxurious fruit the world affords,
While o'er the fields the harmless oxen draw
Th' industrious plough. The Roman heroes too
Fabricius and Camillus lov'd a life
Of sweet simplicity and rustic joy;
And from the busy Forum hast'ning far,
'Midst woods and fields spent the remains of age.
How grateful to behold the harvests rise
And mighty crops adorn the golden plains?
Fair plenty smiles throughout, while lowing herds
Stalk o'er the grassy hill or level mead,
Or at some winding river slake their thirst.
Thus fares the rustic swain; and when the winds
Blow with a keener breath, and from the North
Pour all their tempests thro' a sunless sky,
Ice, sleet and rattling hail, secure he sits
In some thatch'd cottage fearless of the storm;
While on the hearth a fire still blazing high
Chears every mind, and nature fits serene
On ev'ry countenance, such the joys
And such the fate of those whom heav'n hath bless'd
With souls enamour'd of a country life.

EUGENIO.
Much wealth and pleasure agriculture brings;
Far in the woods she raises palaces,
Puisant states and crowded realms where late
A desart plain or frowning wilderness
Deform'd the view; or where with moving tents
The scatter'd nations seeking pasturage,
Wander'd from clime to clime incultivate;
Or where a race more savage yet than these,
In search of prey o'er hill and mountain rang'd,
Fierce as the tygers and the wolves they flew.
Thus lives th' Arabian and the Tartar wild
In woody wastes which never felt the plough;
But agriculture crowns our happy land,
And plants our colonies from north to south,
From Cape Breton far as the Mexic bay
From th' Eastern shores to Missisippi's stream.
Famine to us unknown, rich plenty reigns
And pours her blessings with a lavish hand.

LEANDER.
Nor less from golden commerce flow the streams
Of richest plenty on our smiling land.
Now fierce Bellona must'ring all her rage,
To other climes and other seas withdraws,
To rouse the Russian on the desp'rate Turk
There to conflict by Danube and the straits
Which join the Euxine to th' Egean Sea.
Britannia holds the empire of the waves,
And welcomes ev'ry bold adventurer
To view the wonders of old Ocean's reign.
Far to the east our fleets on traffic sail,
And to the west thro' boundless seas which not
Old Rome nor Tyre nor mightier Carthage knew.
Daughter of commerce, from the hoary deep
New-York emerging rears her lofty domes,
And hails from far her num'rous ships of trade,
Like shady forests rising on the waves.
From Europe's shores or from the Caribbees,
Homeward returning annually they bring
The richest produce of the various climes.
And Philadelphia mistress of our world,
The seat of arts, of science, and of fame
Derives her grandeur from the pow'r of trade.
Hail happy city where the muses stray,
Where deep philosophy convenes her sons
And opens all her secrets to their view!
Bids them ascend with Newton to the skies,
And trace the orbits of the rolling spheres,
Survey the glories of the universe,
Its suns and moons and ever blazing stars!
Hail city blest with liberty's fair beams,
And with the rays of mild religion blest!

ACASTO.
Nor these alone, America, thy sons
In the short circle of a hundred years
Have rais'd with toil along thy shady shores.
On lake and bay and navigable stream,
From Cape Breton to Pensacola south,
Unnumber'd towns and villages arise,
By commerce nurs'd these embrio marts of trade
May yet awake the envy and obscure
The noblest cities of the eastern world;
For commerce is the mighty reservoir
From whence all nations draw the streams of gain.
'Tis commerce joins dissever'd worlds in one,
Confines old Ocean to more narrow bounds;
Outbraves his storms and peoples half his world.

EUGENIO.
And from the earliest times advent'rous man
On foreign traffic stretch'd the nimble sail;
Or sent the slow pac'd caravan afar
O'er barren wastes, eternal sands where not
The blissful haunt of human form is seen
Nor tree not ev'n funeral cypress sad
Nor bubbling fountain. Thus arriv'd of old
Golconda's golden ore, and thus the wealth
Of Ophir to the wisest of mankind.

LEANDER.
Great is the praise of commerce, and the men
Deserve our praise who spread from shore to shore
The flowing fall; great are their dangers too;
Death ever present to the fearless eye
And ev'ry billow but a gaping grave;
Yet all these mighty feats to science owe
Their rise and glory.--Hail fair science! thou
Transplanted from the eastern climes dost bloom
In these fair regions, Greece and Rome no more
Detain the muses on Cithæron's brow,
Or old Olympus crown'd with waving woods;
Or Hæmus' top where once was heard the harp,
Sweet Orpheus' harp that ravish'd hell below
And pierc'd the soul of Orcus and his bride,
That hush'd to silence by the song divine
Thy melancholy waters, and the gales
O Hebrus! which o'er thy sad surface blow.
No more the maids round Alpheus' waters stray
Where he with Arethusas' stream doth mix,
Or where swift Tiber disembogues his waves
Into th' Italian sea so long unsung.
Hither they've wing'd their way, the last, the best
Of countries where the arts shall rise and grow
Luxuriant, graceful; and ev'n now we boast
A Franklin skill'd in deep philosophy,
A genius piercing as th' electric fire,
Bright as the light'nings flash explain'd so well
By him the rival of Britannia's sage.
This is a land of ev'ry joyous sound
Of liberty and life; sweet liberty!
Without whose aid the noblest genius fails,
And science irretrievably must die.

ACASTO.
This is a land where the more noble light
Of holy revelation beams, the star
Which rose from Judah lights our skies, we feel
Its influence as once did Palestine
And Gentile lands, where now the ruthless Turk
Wrapt up in darkness sleeps dull life away.
Here many holy messengers of peace
As burning lamps have given light to men.
To thee, O Whitefield! favourite of Heav'n,
The muse would pay the tribute of a tear.
Laid in the dust thy eloquence no more
Shall charm the list'ning soul, no more
Thy bold imagination paint the scenes
Of woe and horror in the shades below;
Or glory radiant in the fields above;
No more thy charity relieve the poor;
Let Georgia mourn, let all her orphans weep.

LEANDER.
Yet tho' we wish'd him longer from the skies,
And wept to see the ev'ning of his days,
He long'd himself to reach his final hope,
The crown of glory for the just prepar'd.
From life's high verge he hail'd th' eternal shore
And, freed at last from his confinement, rose
An infant seraph to the worlds on high.

EUGENIO.
For him we sound the melancholy lyre,
The lyre responsive to each distant sigh;
No grief like that which mourns departing souls
Of holy, just and venerable men,
Whom pitying Heav'n sends from their native skies
To light our way and bring us nearer God.
But come Leander since we know the past
And present glory of this empire wide,
What hinders to pervade with searching eye
The mystic scenes of dark futurity?
Say shall we ask what empires yet must rise
What kingdoms pow'rs and states where now are seen
But dreary wastes and awful solitude,
Where melancholy sits with eye forlorn
And hopes the day when Britain's sons shall spread
Dominion to the north and south and west
Far from th' Atlantic to Pacific shores?
A glorious theme, but how shall mortals dare
To pierce the mysteries of future days,
And scenes unravel only known to fate.

ACASTO.
This might we do if warm'd by that bright coal
Snatch'd from the altar of seraphic fire,
Which touch'd Isaiah's lips, or if the spirit
Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old,
Should fire the breast; but yet I call the muse
And what we can will do. I see, I see
A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities and men
Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore;
Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town
Of note: and where the Missisippi stream
By forests shaded now runs weeping on
Nations shall grow and states not less in fame
Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast
Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings
That in the womb of time yet dormant lye
Waiting the joyful hour for life and light.
O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days
When, through the veil of dark antiquity,
Our sons shall hear of us as things remote,
That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas!
How could I weep that we were born so soon,
In the beginning of more happy times!
But yet perhaps our fame shall last unhurt.
The sons of science nobly scorn to die
Immortal virtue this denies, the muse
Forbids the men to slumber in the grave
Who well deserve the praise that virtue gives.

EUGENIO.
'Tis true no human eye can penetrate
The veil obscure, and in fair light disclos'd
Behold the scenes of dark futurity;
Yet if we reason from the course of things,
And downward trace the vestiges of time,
The mind prophetic grows and pierces far
Thro' ages yet unborn. We saw the states
And mighty empires of the East arise
In swift succession from the Assyrian
To Macedon and Rome; to Britain thence
Dominion drove her car, she stretch'd her reign
Oer many isles, wide seas, and peopled lands.
Now in the West a continent appears;
A newer world now opens to her view;
She hastens onward to th' Americ shores
And bids a scene of recent wonders rise.
New states new empires and a line of kings,
High rais'd in glory, cities, palaces
Fair domes on each long bay, sea, shore or stream
Circling the hills now rear their lofty heads.
Far in the Arctic skies a Petersburgh,
A Bergen, or Archangel lifts its spires
Glitt'ring with Ice, far in the West appears
A new Palmyra or an Ecbatan,
And sees the slow pac'd caravan return
O'er many a realm from the Pacific shore,
Where fleets shall then convey rich Persia's silks,
Arabia's perfumes, and spices rare
Of Philippine, Coelebe and Marian isles,
Or from the Acapulco coast our India then,
Laden with pearl and burning gems and gold.
Far in the South I see a Babylon,
As once by Tigris or Euphrates stream,
With blazing watch towr's and observatories
Rising to heav'n; from thence astronomers
With optic glass take nobler views of God
In golden suns and shining worlds display'd
Than the poor Chaldean with the naked eye.
A Niniveh where Oronoque descends
With waves discolour'd from the Andes high,
Winding himself around a hundred isles
Where golden buildings glitter o'er his tide.
To mighty nations shall the people grow
Which cultivate the banks of many a flood,
In chrystal currents poured from the hills
Apalachia nam'd, to lave the sands
Of Carolina, Georgia, and the plains
Stretch'd out from thence far to the burning Line,
St Johns or Clarendon or Albemarle.
And thou Patowmack navigable stream,
Rolling thy waters thro' Virginia's groves,
Shall vie with Thames, the Tiber or the Rhine,
For on thy banks I see an hundred towns
And the tall vessels wafted down thy tide.
Hoarse Niagara's stream now roaring on
Thro' woods and rocks and broken mountains torn,
In days remote far from their antient beds,
By some great monarch taught a better course,
Or cleared of cataracts shall flow beneath
Unnumbr'd boats and merchandize and men;
And from the coasts of piny Labradore,
A thousand navies crowd before the gale,
And spread their commerce to remotest lands,
Or bear their thunder round the conquered world.

LEANDER.
And here fair freedom shall forever reign.
I see a train, a glorious train appear,
Of Patriots plac'd in equal fame with those
Who nobly fell for Athens or for Rome.
The sons of Boston resolute and brave
The firm supporters of our injur'd rights,
Shall lose their splendours in the brighter beams
Of patriots fam'd and heroes yet unborn.

ACASTO.
'Tis but the morning of the world with us
And Science yet but sheds her orient rays.
I see the age the happy age roll on
Bright with the splendours of her mid-day beams,
I see a Homer and a Milton rise
In all the pomp and majesty of song,
Which gives immortal vigour to the deeds
Atchiev'd by Heroes in the fields of fame.
A second Pope, like that Arabian bird
Of which no age can boast but one, may yet
Awake the muse by Schuylkill's silent stream,
And bid new forests bloom along her tide.
And Susquehanna's rocky stream unsung,
In bright meanders winding round the hills,
Where first the mountain nymph sweet echo heard
The uncouth musick of my rural lay,
Shall yet remurmur to the magic sound
Of song heroic, when in future days
Some noble Hambden rises into fame.

LEANDER.
Or Roanoke's and James's limpid waves
The sound of musick murmurs in the gale;
Another Denham celebrates their flow,
In gliding numbers and harmonious lays.

EUGENIO.
Now in the bow'rs of Tuscororah hills,
As once on Pindus all the muses stray,
New Theban bards high soaring reach the skies
And swim along thro' azure deeps of air.

LEANDER.
From Alleghany in thick groves imbrown'd,
Sweet music breathing thro' the shades of night
Steals on my ear, they sing the origin
Of those fair lights which gild the firmament;
From whence the gale that murmurs in the pines;
Why flows the stream down from the mountains brow
And rolls the ocean lower than the land.
They sing the final destiny of things,
The great result of all our labours here,
The last day's glory, and the world renew'd.
Such are their themes for in these happier days
The bard enraptur'd scorns ignoble strains,
Fair science smiling and full truth revealed,
The world at peace, and all her tumults o'er,
The blissful prelude to Emanuel's reign.

EUGENIO.
And when a train of rolling years are past,
(So sang the exil'd seer in Patmos isle,)
A new Jerusalem sent down from heav'n
Shall grace our happy earth, perhaps this land,
Whose virgin bosom shall then receive, tho' late,
Myriads of saints with their almighty king,
To live and reign on earth a thousand years
Thence call'd Millennium. Paradise a new
Shall flourish, by no second Adam lost.
No dang'rous tree or deathful fruit shall grow,
No tempting serpent to allure the soul,
From native innocence; a Canaan here
Another Canaan shall excel the old
And from fairer Pisgah's top be seen,
No thistle here or briar or thorn shall spring
Earth's curse before: the lion and the lamb
In mutual friendship link'd shall browse the shrub,
And tim'rous deer with rabid tygers stray
O'er mead or lofty hill or grassy plain.
Another Jordan's stream shall glide along
And Siloah's brook in circling eddies flow,
Groves shall adorn their verdant banks, on which
The happy people free from second death
Shall find secure repose; no fierce disease
No fevers, slow consumption, direful plague
Death's ancient ministers, again renew
Perpetual war with man: Fair fruits shall bloom
Fair to the eye, sweet to the taste, if such
Divine inhabitants could need the taste
Of elemental food, amid the joys
Fit for a heav'nly nature. Music's charms
Shall swell the lofty soul and harmony
Triumphant reign; thro' ev'ry grove shall sound
The cymbal and the lyre, joys too divine
For fallen man to know. Such days the world
And such America thou first shall have
When ages yet to come have run their round
And future years of bliss alone remain.

ACASTO.
This is thy praise America thy pow'r
Thou best of climes by science visited
By freedom blest and richly stor'd with all
The luxuries of life. Hail happy land
The seat of empire the abode of kings,
The final stage where time shall introduce
Renowned characters, and glorious works
Of high invention and of wond'rous art,
Which not the ravages of time shall wake
Till he himself has run his long career;
Till all those glorious orbs of light on high
The rolling wonders that surround the ball,
Drop from their spheres extinguish'd and consum'd;
When final ruin with her fiery car
Rides o'er creation, and all nature's works
Are lost in chaos and the womb of night.

Wakey Wakey

2010-05-21T21:33:00.010-04:00

Deal on, deal on, my merry men all,
Deal on your cakes and your wine;
For whatever is dealt at her funeral today
Shall be dealt to-morrow at mine.
–Maria Edgeworth, 1810

Isn't that nice? I knew you would like that. I procured this quote for mon frère jumeau mauvais, Le Petit-Guignol, for his little pet project http://temerariousbesties.blogspot.com/ , I think its wonderful that he finally has a hobby. Just wondering around that cemetery day and night must be a drag, I mean, honestly, no one to talk to but a bunch of stiffs, get it? I know, I should be on stage. Anywho, I am just glad he had wifi hooked up to the family tomb, now he is less likely to scare the bejesus out of the tourists, now if I could just get him to quit playing musical coffins with the neighbors, its so... unbecoming. Oh well, Family... what are you going to do?

We had the most awful row last week, Le Petit criticized my particular brand of Joie de vivre and said that I was a little too much of a Pollyanna, and that I needed to dim my eternally bright disposition a bit... The nerve! I slammed his coffin lid so hard that it split down the center- I felt so awful about the entire ordeal. I had a puss on for days. But no worries, we have since mended fences-or coffins as it were, He did send me the nicest gift as a peace offering, a tasteful granite marker that says "Wish you were here"- always the charmer.)

Speaking of the dead, and we were, I just attended the most fabulous wake. It was epic - hired mourners wailing away-in Armani- the entire venue veiled in black crepe, the heady scent from ten thousand tuberose's choking the air with their sticky sweetness, a rather ominous looking Sin Eater (that doubled as bartender) and an 18th century clockwork string quartet that played well past midnight until their little automaton fingers were worn out. You should have been there- well maybe you were, it's so hard to tell who's who in all that candlelight with everyone wearing veils and dark sunglasses-it's the silliest thing, oh well, c'est guerre, or rather c'est la mort.

You know, I think wakes are such a great Idea, don't you? I mean, isn't it better to make someones passing a real party with an old fashioned wake rather than your typical American post funeral bring-a-green-bean casserole affair? Well yes, of course I'm right.

Here is a little background to feed your thirst for knowledge of all things macabre. You're welcome.

When many people think of a wake, they envision the typical Irish wake. Friends and relatives of the deceased gathered to have a big hurrah to send their loved one off to their final reward. Drinking, eating, telling stories. But this is not the way the tradition originally began. Over the centuries, the wake has gone from a somber vigil over the dead to a boisterous event condemned by local officials and scorned by the church. The bastards.
Earlier wakes were a more practical affair. Ancient Greeks waited three days between death and burial, observing the dead to make sure they had actually transpired and to protect them from harm, just in case. Ancient Hebrews would also hold a vigil over the body to avoid premature burial and to investigate for signs of foul play. Early Christians continued the practice and allowed relatives and intimates to come and pray for the body and scrutinize it for signs of life.
Over time, this practice evolved to include more lively activities as guards attempted to enliven the tedious task by “rousing the ghost.” This often included practical jokes on superstitious relatives of the deceased and black magic rituals to raise the dead. This became so common that the Council of York forbade any attempts to raise the dead in 1376 and one guild would only allow members to stand watch if the agreed to “abstain from raising apparitions, and from indecent games.”
In some cases, the corpse would play a part in the practical jokes. After the limbs of an arthritic corpse were tied down to straighten them, a prankster would cut the ropes to make the body move or sit up. Irish wakes and their Scottish equivalent, the lykewake, were the most notorious for their rowdiness. Whiskey, wine and porter flowed freely and food was plentiful. In 1896, the Records of Inverness and Dingwall Presbytery wrote of lykewakes, “ƒthey were more boisterous than weddings, the chamber of the dead being filled night after night with jest, song and story, music of the fiddle and the pipe, and the shout and clatter of the Highland reel.” The typical wake included storytelling; the singing of love, patriotic or religious songs; music and dancing (often including the deceased for a reel or two!); and card playing, with the deceased often dealt into the game or being used as the card table. British, Germany and Scandinavian wakes often became even bawdier with lewd games, courtship and lovemaking taking place in the hall.
Attempts were made to decrease the debauchery of the wakes. In one instance, a Scottish schoolteacher removed the corpse and had an accomplice hide under the sheet. He was supposed to rise up and scare the party-goers, but instead he himself passed away! This so frightened the assembled that the merrymaking at lykewakes ceased for a period.

In 906 AD Regino, the abbot of Lorraine, France ordered his monks that “diabolical songs be not sung at night hours over the bodies of the dead, let no one there presume to sing diabolical songs nor make jest and perform dances which pagans have invented by the Devil’s teaching.”

The custom of wake soon diminished in France as his word spread. Wasn't that just like old Regino to ruin everyone's fun like that, the old poof.
As immigrants found homes in Colonial America, the tradition of the wake found its way here, as well. Often it was the only time, aside from weddings, when citizens were allowed to publicly drink alcohol. (huzzah)

In 19th century America, the body was displayed in the home and viewing the remains replaced the custom of visiting before and during death. True to form, the Irish immigrants brought their rowdy practices to the Colonies.

At one particular wake in the late 19th century, two brothers died in a railroad accident a passenger train collided with their handcar. One of the brothers was decapitated, but revelers placed his severed head on high stool with his pipe in his mouth so he could watch the whole affair. This was how ventriloquism was invented. Just kidding, I was checking to see if you were listening. Now sit up straight and get your finger out of your mouth. Thank you.

Often in the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania, the coffin had to be checked before burial to make certain the deceased was inside.

Revelers would often remove the deceased in order to sleep off their inebriation in the comfort of the casket instead of on the hard floor.
The practice of “waking the dead” is not restricted to European society. In South America, the Jivaro Indians would prop up the fully dressed body of the deceased and play dice for his possessions. Food and drink were plentiful during these festivities.

The Tana Toradja tribe of Sulawesi held a mourning ritual that would last for months or years, during which the corpse remained in its home. His wife would continue to care for him and provide him food. A festival would be held, with drinking and games. Finally, when the body was naturally mummified, it would be buried. The Isneg and Apayo tribes of the Philippines went even further by leaving the body to rot during their festivities. During this time, the living spouse is required, by tribal custom, to continue sleeping in the same bed as their dead mate. Once the body had reached an advanced state of decomposition it would be buried. As a result of this practice the tribes have developed a strong stomach in order to handle the constant stench. The Ilongo tribe of the Philippines is less extreme, only requiring that no one bath during the wake.
Over time, the wake has evolved into the contemporary “viewing” where the body is placed on display for respects to be paid to the family of the deceased. Food is still provided in most viewing, but the overall mood has become one of somber respect. Some vestiges of the old-fashioned wake still remain.
In one case, B.T. Collins, a state legislator for California arranged to have a wake held in a ballroom in Sacramento. It included three bars, a seven-piece band and a buffet with a massive ice sculpture.

It was attended by nearly 3,000 party-goers who saw him out in style. Statistically, only 22% of Anglo-Saxon Americans want a wake held for them, and only one-fourth of them want it in their homes.

Some psychologists defend the value of the wake to the bereaved. Bertram S. Puckle maintained that a delay between death and burial conditioned friends and relatives to the changed condition of the deceased and allowed them to observe the corpse to quell hopes that it might return to consciousness. Still, there are those who oppose the wake as a gruesome and needless activity. Perhaps the future will see a return of the traditional Irish wake or Scottish lykewake, but only when we can come to terms with our societal stigma on death.

In the meantime...

Why do cemeteries all have walls?
It’s silly beyond a doubt;
The people outside don’t want to get in
And the people inside can’t get out!

Oh ha ha - I kill me! (I'll be here all week...)

Cheers.

Wednesday Addams
1 oz Vodka
1 oz Southern Comfort
1 oz Amaretto
1/2 oz Sloe gin
1/2 oz Triple sec
Fill with Orange juice
1 dash Lime juice
1 oz Mummy Dust (optional)
Add all ingredients, Stir and serve over ice.

More from the Golden Treasury of Childhood

2010-04-06T23:17:00.016-04:00

Personal Journal. April 6ish Nineteen Hundred Seventy-something.:
I write this while my gracious hosts play cards in the grand salon of a half empty house - built in the Palladian style- on the Côte d’Azur, (named "The Domain"...I call it "The Romaine" because my hostess incessantly refers to a salad she is known for- on the continent- which continent, it seems, is a mystery) I sit here happy as a clam in the never used chapel, scribbling and writing in this book that will never be read by anyone except me. Funny that.
Note to my future self: Your amazing hair was wasted on these people. That is all. Close this book now and die what I hope is a lovely sort of death. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Santi and all that jazz...
I have been dubbed "Cherie" by my hosts, not because of the steadfast affection they display toward my quixotic yet lovable nature, but because I remind them of the character in the movie "Bus Stop" played by Marilyn Monroe- must have been the riveting rendition of "That Old Black Magic" I performed on the terrace after too much champagne- I wonder what my friends in New york would make of this? Fuck them. They are probably all coked out of their minds at Studio. I am the only person I know that hates disco- and Barbara Streisand. I think I need new friends. And maybe some coke. TTFN - le C.

More Artifice and Less Pretence please.

2010-03-12T13:57:00.024-05:00

I found this great photo today while going through some boxes. It is a photo of my Great-Grandmother dressed as a Gothic cathedral. I am assuming that it was for Mardi Gras or a fancy dress party, but with my family it could have been anything from a bris to a royal wedding. *sigh*

Taking a break from whatever it was I needed to take a break from today, going through old photos and such, I decided to trot over to the National gallery while I'm here in DC to look at some of the Bronzino's.
I find it quite amusing that 25 years or so ago I felt so differently about his work- or any of the other Mannerists for that matter. I found an old VHS tape from 1985 of me at a speaking engagement at the Junior League (of all places) talking about how one can learn all sorts of decorative tricks and somehow develop a broader taste for the "Nature morte" tableaux by studying artistic masterpieces through the ages. I seem to have gone off on a tangent, from singing the praises of Flemish Vanitas paintings and how much fun it is to recreate them for your centerpiece at your next dinner party, ("Rotting fruit and human skulls can provide a certain element of surprise for your dinner guests...") then changing the subject and preceding to give my personal opinion ( to audible gasps and clutching of pearls) on how much I detested the Mannerists, everything Picasso and the current unnecessary incessant praise for blue and white Chinese import porcelain.
Although since that time I have softened my opinion- only slightly- on Picasso and blue and white porcelain- I find over the years I have developed quite an appreciation for the Mannerist movement. I discovered that how like the Fauvist, Dada and Pop art movements, the punk phenomena in the seventies or even the couture created by people like Gareth Pugh, Gaultier or the late Schiapparelli, Franco Maschino and Alexander McQueen, the Mannerists were renegades, wishing to change the idea of what is beautiful. (In his day, the then idealized beauty was being created by the "High Renaissance" artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and so forth)
As a stylistic label, "Mannerism" (also referred to at the time as "abrasive art") is not easily pigeonholed. It was used by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt and popularized by German art historians in the early 20th century to categorize the seemingly uncategorizable art of the Italian 16th century — art that was no longer perceived to exhibit the harmonious and rational approaches associated with the High Renaissance.
One of the examples of Bronzino's work at the National Gallery is this painting:

The boy’s ghostly paleness—he is painted over the green background—and his compressed position reflect the painting’s history as much as they do the artist’s decisions. What is typically mannerist, however, is the sitters’ reserved elegance and, for Bronzino, their cold hardness. The woman appears invulnerable behind her detachment. No enigmatic smile here Mona. In the cruel intrigues of the Medici court, this was a useful, perhaps even necessary, protection. It has been said that the typical Bronzino portrait contained figures seemingly made with steel on the inside encased with ice, and was notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities. (More Artifice and less Pretence I always say, I should have that engraved on something, hmmmm?)
The great Bronzino's so-called 'allegorical portraits,' such as that of a Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria as Neptune is less typical but possibly even more fascinating due to the peculiarity of placing a publicly recognized personality in the nude as a mythical figure:

Bronzino was commissioned to paint Andrea Doria for a gallery of portraits of great men. Indeed, there was no more illustrious man of war in the 16th century than this famous Genoese admiral. (Doria (c1466-1560) had a dramatic effect on European history when in 1528 he abandoned his ally, the king of France, and sided with France's enemy Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Spain. He put his galleys at Charles's disposal, and the Genoese fleet became the dominant power in the western Mediterranean on behalf of the Habsburgs. In 1535 Doria and Charles V conquered Tunis in a daring attack on the Ottoman empire. In his power over the sea, Doria seemed comparable to the god Neptune, with whom he is equated here)
Among the distinguishing features, Bronzino has the mighty admiral tantalisingly exposing his pubic hair behind the cloth he holds, which just barely conceals his penis. The painting consciously equates naval and sexual prowess, as Neptune/Doria holds aloft a thick-shafted trident in front of a powerful mast. (oink)
His richly flowing grey beard has the florid abundance of a fertile deity of the green waters; his chest and arms twist, ripple and flex like the rigging of a ship rolling into battle. He is old but his flesh is still supple. There is massive muscular force in his right hand, which shapes itself against the wooden shaft, almost like a crab or a coiling seashell. His beard, too, belongs in the sea, like weeds waving in the water.
He looks as if he has posed - as if Bronzino had painted Doria naked, from life - but this is not the case. And yet the provocative sense of nude posing, and the danger this brings to the image, anticipates Caravaggio in making us aware of a strong frisson of sex and power. Bronzino's admiral on the deck of his ship looks out of the picture, ready for anything, and convinces us that the sea is his to command.
Of course there were other and more "over the top" painters in the Mannerist style, why look at El Greco! He attempted to express the religious tension with exaggerated Mannerism. This exaggeration would serve to cross over the Mannerist line and be applied to Classicism. After the realistic depiction of the human form and the mastery of perspective achieved in high Renaissance Classicism, some artists started to deliberately distort proportions in disjointed, irrational space for emotional and artistic effect. There are aspects of Mannerism in El Greco such as the jarring "acid" color sense, elongated and tortured anatomy, irrational perspective and light of his crowded composition, and obscure and troubling iconography.
Whats not to like?
I could simply go in for hours about him too, but I bore easily, so here is a recap: We are totes Team Mannerist but as far as Blue and white porcelain, meh.
Cheers.

Neptunes Banana
2 oz gin
2 oz Pisang Ambon® liqueur
fill with Sprite® soda
Mix gently, and add ice cubes. Serve with a straw.

Springtime for Xipe Totec (and Germany)

2010-03-10T21:57:00.015-05:00

Spring is here at last.
Spring, as the frenzily copulating neighbors that you can see across the street will tell you, is a time for reproduction, rebirth and regeneration. But Nature, scrupulous accountant that he-she is, demands competition, carnage and sacrifice in return for all that blooming Qi.

As Darwin put it in The Origin:
"We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year."
And while, as Darwin notes, we may personally do our best to ignore the harsh realities of the season, our religious traditions do their darnedest to remind us. Some one billion or so practicing Catholics will be fasting on Good Friday, ostensibly to mark the date a dude was "nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change" (in the words of Douglas Adams). Jews will be celebrating their own spring holiday, Passover, remembering a spate of plagues, the decimation of a reproductive cohort, and a hasty flight into a forbidding desert and all that.
The Mesoamericans had their own grisly spring rites, centered around this guy:
Xipe Totec, "Our Lord the Flayed One"…Sort of an Aztec cross between Demeter, Leatherface and punk rock Jesus.

In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec ("our lord the flayed one") was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, disease, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths and the seasons.

Xipe Totec flayed himself to give food to humanity, symbolic of the way maize seeds lose their outer layer before germination and of snakes shedding their skin. Without his skin, he was depicted as a golden god.

Xipe Totec was believed by the Aztecs to be the god that invented war.

He had a temple called Yopico within the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan.
The worshippers of Xipe Totec emerging from the rotting, flayed skin after twenty days symbolised rebirth and the renewal of the seasons, the casting off of the old and the growth of new vegetation.

The living god lay concealed underneath the superficial veneer of death, ready to burst forth like a germinating seed.

The deity also had a malevolent side and Xipe Totec was said to afflict mortals with rashes, abscesses and skin and eye infections.

The flayed skins were believed to have curative properties when touched and mothers took their children to touch such skins in order to relieve their ailments.

People wishing to be cured made offerings to him at Yopico.
The annual festival of Xipe Totec was celebrated on the spring equinox before the onset of the rainy season, it was known as Tlacaxipehualiztli ("flaying of men in honour of Xipe") and fell in March at the time of the Conquest.

Annually, slaves or captives were selected as sacrifices to Xipe Totec. After having the heart cut out, the body was carefully flayed to produce a nearly whole skin which was then worn by the priests for twenty days during the fertility rituals that followed the sacrifice.

The skins were often adorned with bright feathers and gold jewellery when worn.

The Tlacaxipehualiztli festival both began and culminated with a "gladiator sacrifice" ritual.

During the festival, victorious warrior wearing flayed skins carried out mock skirmishes throughout Tenochtitlan, they passed through the city begging alms and blessed whoever gave them food or other offerings.

When the twenty day festival was over, the flayed skins were removed and stored in special containers with tight-fitting lids designed to stop the stench of putrefaction from escaping. These containers were then stored in a chamber beneath the temple.

Some accounts indicate that a thigh bone from the sacrifice was defleshed and used by the priest to touch spectators in a fertility blessing. Paintings and several clay figures have been found which illustrate the flaying method and the appearance of priests wearing flayed skins.
Various methods of human sacrifice were used to honour this god. The flayed skins were often taken from sacrificial victims who had their hearts cut out, and some representations of Xipe Totec show a stitched-up wound in the chest.
"Gladiator sacrifice" is the name given to the form of sacrifice in which an especially courageous war captive was given mock weapons, tied to a large circular stone and forced to fight against a fully armed Aztec warrior. As a weapon he was given a macuahuitl (a wooden sword with blades formed from obsidian) with the obsidian blades replaced with feathers.

A white cord was tied either around his waist or his ankle, binding him to the sacred temalacatl stone.

At the end of the Tlacaxipehualiztli festival, gladiator sacrifice (known as tlauauaniliztli) was carried out by five Aztec warriors; two jaguar warriors, two eagle warriors and a fifth, left-handed warrior.
"Arrow sacrifice" was another method used by the worshippers of Xipe Totec. The sacrificial victim was bound spread-eagled to a wooden frame, he was then shot with many arrows so that his blood spilled onto the ground.
Other forms of sacrifice were sometimes used; at times the victim was cast into a firepit and burned, others had their throats cut.

See? And you thought doing your taxes this time of year was a sacrifice.

So much for "Ladies Cultural Awareness Day", if you need me, I will be sacrificing my hard earned cash at Sak's.

Cheers.

Death in the Springtime

1 oz absinthe herbal liqueur
3 grenadine syrup
1.5 oz London dry gin
Champagne
Maraschino cherries
Pour the Absinthe into a chilled Champagne flute. Add the Grenadine and then the Gin. Now pour the chilled Champagne into the Flute glass making sure to pour down the side of the glass so the drink mixes itself. Be sure to fill the glass with only just enough room left for the cherry which you should now add. Feel free to adjust the ingredients slightly as they suit your taste.

Hells Angels and Prolific Demons

2010-02-11T12:36:00.006-05:00

Alexander McQueen 1969- 2010 - suicide

The Dance of Death

Carrying a bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,
Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves
With all the careless and high-stepping grace,
And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.

Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed?
Her floating robe, in royal amplitude,
Falls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod
With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod.

The swarms that hum about her collar-bones
As the lascivious streams caress the stones,
Conceal from every scornful jest that flies,
Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes

Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays
Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways,
Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae.
O charm of nothing decked in folly! they

Who laugh and name you a Caricature,
They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure,
The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone,
That is most dear to me, tall skeleton!

Come you to trouble with your potent sneer
The feast of Life! or are you driven here,
To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir
And goad your moving corpse on with a spur?

Or do you hope, when sing the violins,
And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins,
To drive some mocking nightmare far apart,
And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart?

Fathomless well of fault and foolishness!
Eternal alembic of antique distress!
Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides
The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides.

And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find,
Among us here, no lover to your mind;
Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave?
The charms of horror please none but the brave.

Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir,
Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller
Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath,
The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth.

For he who has not folded in his arms
A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms,
Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent,
When Horror comes the way that Beauty went.

O irresistible, with fleshless face,
Say to these dancers in their dazzled race:
"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones,
Ye shall taste death, musk scented skeletons!

Withered Antinoьs, dandies with plump faces,
Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces,
Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath,
Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death.

From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream,
The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream;
They do not see, within the opened sky,
The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high.

In every clime and under every sun,
Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run;
And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye
And mingles with your madness, irony!"

-Charles Baudelaire

*Requiescat in pace

Loquacious reticence at Death's door: My inner monologue takes hostages

2010-01-16T05:22:00.025-05:00

4:20 AM.

What a ridiculous time to be awake when one isn't having any fun.
Here I am fried out of my mind on cold medicine and bored out of my skull. It's like I am trapped in some Quay brothers film.

I fear my cold meds have decided to abandon me at my hour of need- I am sure that my once close relationship with Neo-synephrine is destined soon to be severed. Ha. Snake oil. What kind of name is that for a medication anyway? I prefer names with a punch to them. "Nostrilla" for example, or "Boniva", perfectly descriptive names for the malady they treat.

And besides, those names have have a ring to them- they could quite easily be a proper name in the south. "Well hello Countess, may I present Nostrilla and her sister Boniva?" Charming. Neo-Synephrine indeed. Neal Synephrine, Neely O'Hara-Synephrine. Oh my beautiful dolls...

*Sigh* I am practically on deaths door, (which is surprisingly less ornate in style and scale than one would imagine) in the middle of the night- well the middle for me- and literally drowning in a sea of snot and bad puns.

Why do they call it a "cold" anyway? I am actually kind of overheated, right now. Maybe they should call it "Catching the Hots" instead... no, that sounds a touch obscene...

My Grandmother, Miz Hyacinth, used to have the best remedy for a particularly nasty cold-

Directions: Drink one bottle of the absolute best champagne you have handy, repeat as needed every hour.

Caution: Exceeding recommended dosage may lead to extreme giddiness, drunk dialing, and a strong urge to break out the Mario Lanza records and flounce around the house in ones prettiest penoir until passing out.

Of course it does nothing to cure the cold, but it gives the sickness a sort of histrionic quality....

Will you sit down please? You have been flailing around like a crippled windmill all night. No I do not want to play cards- especially whist.

I was having the most perfectly lovely dream about dear Hyacinth earlier, she had all of those rather large and unnervingly half humanoid porcelain figures of the characters of the Chinese zodiac lined up like bowling pins and was trying for a strike with the King Charles spaniel. She was a firm believer in things like the zodiac- Chinese or otherwise- and at an early age she informed me that I was a Ox- because of the year I was born naturally- and given the month of my birth, December, I was a combination Sagittarius/Ox.
Great thing that, apparently.. wait, since you are up, will you go over to that cabinet and grab a few bottle of Clos du Mesnil '95 and put them on ice? There's a lamb. No, the other cabinet, the Renaissance revival piece. No that's a 17th century bonnetiere, - well, yes it it very well may be a Homme Debout but lets not split hairs about that right now. Yes the cabinet with the painting over it of the rather tubercular saint. Yes, it does look like Thomas Jefferson after a bender... Can I please continue my train of thought? You are trying to derail the choo-choo here.
So, where was I? Oh yes, my untimely demise. *sigh* I feel like the Wreck of the Hesperus. How do I look? Of course I do, I have always thought that I would have had a most promising second career as a chronic yet picturesque invalid. I suppose that sort of thing fell out of fashion after the reign of Victoria didn't it? Pity. I feel so bad maybe I should just end it all- no I am too lazy to commit suicide- passive suicide is another thing all together, death by good living and like that. Oh sure, living well can kill you. I wonder if eating "natural foods" leads to dying a natural death? hmmm, well you know even housework can kill you if you do it right.

Anyway, having your health is the thing now- what's the quote? Something about healths price is "far above rubies." What? oh. that's right. That quote is about a virtuous woman... well, you get the idea.

One of the madness that distinguishes this century from the first is it's almost universal passion for exercise and robust health. You would think that the love of sport that young men and women carry from their school days into their adult lives would wain a bit after some time on the hot pursuit of a career and marriage. One in the previous century would abandon the effort all together after their first mortgage or the birth of their first child.

Pop open a bottle will you? No glasses handy? No don't get up, we can just drink it out of these communion chalices. Hmm? yes, they are real stones- no cheap rhinestones for the for the cup that holds the blood of Christ you know. What? Yes, I suppose it is sacrilegious, but it would be worse if we were drinking a lesser vintage don't you think? What? yes it is good isn't it? Like the tears of neglected children...

Oh, speaking of the profane and muscle, did you see Father Fuque at the King's party? Yes he always looks hot. Steroids probably- yeah, me neither, whatever it takes. Hmm? Oh yes that is his photo there on the piano... Yes he does cut quite a figure in his priest garb doesn't he? What? Oh that's be behind him -under his robe. Yes, well I was pretending he was an antique camera. What a wide angle lens he has... What? Oh nothing...
You know, if I make it through the night I will see him at the gym next week I will tell him you said hello.

What to do, what to do, let's see, I have updated my address book, alphabetized the liquor bottles, found Jesus, (He was hiding behind the little French settee all the time) and created an interpretive dance to the tune of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon" *sigh* So, where are those cards? How about a few hands of Whist?

Cheers.

Classic Champagne Cocktail
3 oz Champagne

1/3 oz cognac

2 dashes Angostura® bitters

1 tsp sugar
Soak one sugar cube in a champagne flute with angostura bitters. Add champagne and cognac. Squeeze in a twist of lemon and discard. Garnish with half a slice of orange.

Use mid-price Champagne please. If you use the good stuff to make this cocktail people will question your breeding...

Of Rising Metaphors and Rococogasms

2009-12-16T00:34:00.035-05:00

"Busy is as busy does." Wait. Is that it or is it "Pretty is as pretty does"? That's it, that sounds better.
Seems there have been a lot of parties and a lot of interesting travel opportunities for yours truly over the last several months, It all started with a particularly splendid party held each year in New Orleans attended by only the people that can trace their lineage back to 18th century France and had a relative that perished by the guillotine during "The Rein of Terror".

It's quite charming actually, everyone wears red ribbons tied around their necks and it is held on October 16th, the anniversary of the day the Queen of France Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne de Habsbourg-Lorraine met her fate.

This year it was held in the ballroom in a private house in the French Quarter. The room had been recently restored to it's original Louis-Louis Rococogasm style, you know the look, all 18th century gold mercury guilt and ceilings with painted skies with chubby little cherubs swooping about like pterodactyls that is so popular here.

There was a lovely young Franco-Japanese man at the party by the name of Kyou, (I think it's a Japanese unisex name meaning "apricot,") who was interviewing a few of us for a magazine, the name of which escapes me at the moment, (it's something like "Vellum" or "Papyrus") but here is a little taste of the interview... gagging is encouraged.

Kyou: "So 'le C', what’s your drink of choice?
Me: "Hmm. Well, besides the blood of robust virile men, which is more of a medicinal thing anyway, I suppose if I had my druthers, I would only drink Framboise Lambic, which is a raspberry-flavored, frothy, garnet Belgian ale that tastes like unicorn tears."
Kyou: "Do you collect anything?"
Me: "Collect? Let's see... maybe a few odds and ends... There's the Medieval embroidery, 'gently used' murder weapons- knives are most desirable, human bones- skulls with a nicely symetrical pterygoid process are a favourite, all things Hello Kitty, the milk teeth of particularly beautiful children, vintage couture, overly dramatic religiosa- you know like divinely gruesome Spanish 18th century crucifixes, depictions of the Anima Sola or Saints that were martyred in an interesting fashion, unredeemed gift certificates, vanitas paintings, jewels with curses, other peoples husbands... just teasing, I was just checking if you were listening."

Kyou: "Hanging on every word."

Me: "Oh goody."

Kyou: "I was invited here tonight thinking that it was a birthday party. Will anyone here actually be guillotined tonight?"

Me: "Sadly no, but a lot of these people will wake up tomorrow wishing that they had lost their heads. Have you tried the punch?"

Kyou: "I have. Wow."

Me: "That's why they call it punch."

Kyou: "Truly. And what are some of your most memorable birthdays?"

Me: "Well now, I missed my birthday when I was five- I was in a coma because I had been struck by lightning a few months earlier, after that missed birthday my parents gave me an 'Un-birthday' party every month, except for the month of my real birthday of course..."

Kyou: "Oh my thats's terrible, but it sounds like a lot of 'Un-birthdays' over the years... any other memorable years?"
Me: "Oh sure! Let's see, on my 10th birthday I met my first boyfriend, when I was 15 I received a full scholarship to NYC Ballet, on my 20th birthday I was homeless yet had a net worth of three million dollars, On my 25th birthday I spent the evening stuck in a limousine -that broke down in the freezing weather- with Joan Rivers of all people, On my 30th birthday I asked for a Mercury Cougar, -I was enthralled with the new trapezoidal waterfall grille and "cat's-eye" headlamps- but instead my mom presented me with a cougar cub, -I named him Murphy- I have his photo here in a locket, Adorable huh? He was rescued after some hunters killed his mother, I thought about calling him Bambi... Anyway, when my Grandmother finally lost her mind she would strip down to her scanties and wrestle with Murphy out in the formal gardens, Oh the times they had, I can still see them romping through the bougainvillea..."

Kyou: "Indeed?"

Me: "Hmm. On my 35th birthday, I was supposed to assasinate Count Whatshisname.... oh, blah blah blah. Now I'm bored with birthdays, shall we change the subject?"
Kyou: "Absolutely. Others here have told me about your delightful sense of style and your devotion to beauty as well as something you call 'radiant decay' can you tell me what that is?"

Me: "I think the concept of what is beautiful is being forced upon us. I believe what is considered beautiful is usually decided equally by the times we live in as well as the products their makers want to sell us. I believe that most of the consuming population believes beauty can't exist without it's opposite- like good cannot exist without evil. I believe decay is beautiful. as winter is as beautiful as spring. I believe the children are our future. No, not really.

When I see some thing or some beautiful person, I have an automatic response in which I see its/their entire lifespan, from inception to disintegration- If it is a beautiful sculpture, painting, or piece of furniture for that matter, I see in my mind its creation from raw materials all the way through its descent into dust-It's the same with people. I will meet or observe some one and immediately and simultaneously see their progression through life- as a child, in their prime and as a dessicated corpse. It's quite unnerving actually- But this also makes my perception of what is 'beautiful' somewhat askew, as I see breath-taking beauty in imperfection. When I meet a true beauty for the first time I will be both fascinated and frustrated with them until I find a flaw of some sort- the bigger the better- it's only then that I can truly accept them and relate to them- it sounds awful I'm sure, but honestly, who really wants 'true perfection' in a friend or loved one? the same goes for things. I totally understand the concept behind the artisan incorporating a flaw in an Amish quilt, but I suppose that is another story all together- and 'Radiant Decay'? It is the state in which you see the real beauty of things- the rose that is just past full bloom, the man that is just at his prime, oozing sensuality, architecture that has been weathered by the ages- patina! Viva Patina! That's what I say..."
Kyou: "So you don't believe in plastic surgery?"

Me: "Oh no.. I mean yes! If someone wants that it's up to the isn't it? It is their body after all. Until they are dead that is, then they become something like public domain. And besides that, face-lifts, botox and that sort of thing are about artifice isn't it? And I am all for that.

Kyou: "And for you?"

Me: "And for me what?"

Kyou: "Plastic surgery?"

Me: "No, I quite like watching time slowly having its way with my face. But it's fashionable to complain about ones looks though isn't it?"

Kyou: "It is. Is your 'look' something that you have created over time?"
Me: "I suppose so. I think all of us create ourselves over a period of years or even every morning for that matter. It is natural to want to emulate what we find attractive in others. Strength, fragility, its all up to the individual."

Kyou: "Do you think beautiful people have the advantage in the world?"

Me: "Naturally. Beauty is the great emancipator. We put way too much faith into it. Anything we think of as beautiful is automatically thought to be 'good'. We expect beautiful people to have grace and dignity. We expect babies and puppies to smell good -always. We expect that beautiful things have been made by people who, if not beautiful physically, to have beautiful souls. We expect beautiful acts of generosity to have no under-layer of self-interest. Because these expectations are unshakable, they might be called convictions. It may be confusing when expectations go unmet, but it is disturbing when convictions are shown to be mistaken.
Here's an example. I received a huge bouquet of out of season flowers that sat on the table for several weeks. The entire life cycle of a flowers seems - to me anyway, so poetic, it pleased me to no end every time I looked at them, because even their decay seemed glamorous. The enjoyment ended when I went, last week, to refill the crystal vase in which the flowers stood I found gooey black mold at the tips of the branches and a smell of confined, humid life. It smelled like the combined smells of a dumpster behind a Chinese fast food restaurant, the underside of a bathmat and a week long unwashed uncut penis. Begrudgingly the flowers soon went into the trash and the trash went out to the curb. So you see, although I enjoyed the beauty of the flowers entire life cycle visually, the stench of decay was off-putting -even to me. And I wasn't about to have 'dead flower stink' ruin my day or my memory of the flowers. Are you with me so far?"

Kyou: "I am struggling, but yes. You seem to have strong convictions."

Me: "As a human, I like convictions reinforced as often as possible, even if that means editing my way through life. Edit, edit edit."

Kyou: "Are you saying you want to see this interview before it goes to print?"

Me: "Exactly."

Cheers.

A Curious Feeling

2 oz gin

1 oz Angostura® bitters

2 oz orange juice

1 oz Kahlua® coffee liqueur

1 oz Mott's® clamato juice

1 tsp brown sugar
Combine dry gin, bitters, coffee liqueur, and orange juice in a mixing glass and stir. Decant contents into a microwave-safe container and microwave for 30 seconds. Add ice to a blender and pour contents of container into it. Add clamato juice and brown sugar, cap container, and turn blender on. When mixture has the consistency of a frozen drink, pour into highball glass. Garnish with straw, a dash of kosher salt, and peppermint leaves.

say hi to forever

2009-11-20T12:49:00.005-05:00

Daul Kim 1989-2009 -suicide
*

orange marmalade
*

하고픈일도 없는데

nothing i want to do

되고픈것도 없는데

nothing i want to be

모두들 뭔가 말해보라해

everyone tells me to say something

별다른 욕심도없이

without any greed

남다른 포부도없이

without any extraordinary ambition

이대로이면 안되는걸까

can't it be this way

나

이상한걸까

i a little strange?

어딘가 조금

somewhere little

삐뚤어져버린

deformed

머리에는

mind

매일매일 다른 생각만 가득히

filled with different thoughts

나

괜찮은걸까

i okay

지금 이대로

as of right now

어른이되버린 다음에는

after i become adult

점점 더 사람들과 달라지겠지

more and more i will be different from everyone

모든사람이 나와같다면

if everyone were like me

아무갈등도

no conflict

미움도 없이

without hatred

참좋을텐데

it would be so nice

참좋을텐데i

t would be so nice

나

이상한걸까

i a little strange

어딘가조금

somewhere

삐둘어져버린

deformed

머리에는 매일 매일 다른 생각만 가득히

head different thoughts everyday

나

괜찮은걸까

i okay

지금이대로

as of right now

어른이 되버린 다음에는

i become adult

아니 난 자라지 않을것만 같아

no i don't think i will grow

(from her blog http://iliketoforkmyself.blogspot.com/)

Of Peonies and Afabit

2009-10-27T05:01:00.030-04:00

I know my postings have been quite scarce for a while -mea culpa- and I suppose many of you thought that I have been off on a wild toot in some exotic local and had been kidnapped and held for ransom, eventually seducing my swarthy captors and enticing them to kill each other in fits of jealousy and passion for my sole attention.
Well, yes, all that has happened recently but more importantly, I just had the dining room at Chez Moose painted. (I know, squeals abound)
The color is called “Lady Honoria Dedlock Peony” -it is the same hue of pinky peach as my Grandmother had in hers for years, (She referred to it as Hyacinth pink) it is also a color that I admired on the walls while having a rousing romp in the Gothic revival library with the new head gardener in Arley Hall. (a divine English country house owned by Viscount Ashbrook)
This particular shade is also the exact color of walls in the grottoes of Markus Sittikus von Hohenems summer palace Hellbrunn in Salsburg, the color of a particularly memorable piece of salmon I had at the house of Edward Albee and Jonathan Thomas in Montauk in 1978 when I was seventeen, a dead ringer for the color in the diadem of Empress Theodora in the mosaic on the right apsidal wall in the basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna and the same color as the fancy party dress my childhood friend Afabit wore for a solid 6 years.
Afabit was a little girl from “back of town” who got her moniker from the fact that she was called so many names by so many people, a literal alphabet of nicknames.
Sister Taffy called her "Sunshine", Mrs. Russo called her “Ladybug”, the corner grocer “Cookie” called her “Candy Cane” -because she always would save her pennies to buy as many as she could after Christmas at a deep discount- Mr. Jackson called her “Peaches" and Mrs. Legendre called her "Tee-Lilou"…. the list goes on.
Afabit and I were friends ever since the infamous “My name ain't Cat Food” debacle. She not only was the only one of my friends at the time that indulged my fantasy that I was a deposed Chinese princess, she was also the one that help remove the corn-rows from my hair after I pissed Irene Price off half way through having my hair plaited by inferring that she was full of beans.
Afabit and I would meet at the city park and play on the playground rockers we called “The Duckies”- they were over-sized animals on large springs that were set into the ground, there was a duck, a chicken, a horse, a cow, a sheep and inexplicably yet marvelously thrown into the barnyard theme, a lion. She would take the duck and I would sit on the chicken, talking and wobbling to and fro for hours, telling each other fantastic tales until it started getting late, as we both had to be “On the front steps when the street lights came on."
When we were both about seven, Mrs. Giacomo, a nice lady we knew, lost her daughter in to one of those childhood disease that were spoken of only in hushed tones among the grownups, German measles maybe. In a lovely act of charity she gave Afabit some of her daughters clothes, including a perfect silk taffeta dress with a deep portrait collar that sat slightly off the shoulder with a wide sash. The intense color of the dress more than complimented Afabit’s café au lait skin and when she wore it, which was often, she was the image of perfection.
Afabit used to flounce around in that dress with an air of divinity mingled with a touch of superiority. I loved it because when she wore that dress it would assure that she would invariably sit me down like the student to her teacher and teach me some old sayings that her Grandpa used to tell her, things like , “Without the fur you can't tell the difference between a mink and a coon hide.”, “Don’t be tryin’ to dry today’s cloths with tomorrows sun.” and "If she's High yella, she'll steal yo fella..."- she also taught me old Billie Holiday songs and how to shoot dice, and how to say saucy things in Creole French... -stuff that I still find myself smiling at when I think of them.
That same fancy party dress that hung on her like cheap drapes at seven, became quite scandalous in its fit by age twelve, when Aphabit began blossoming, quite early, into who we all knew would be a stunningly beautiful woman. About that time Afabit up and moved away with her mother, to Mississippi I heard, and I never saw her again.
But the day after I heard she left, I went down to the city park to look for her, on the ducks head was the sash to her fancy party dress, neatly tied in a bow.

Cheers,

The Duckies
1 1/2 oz Myer's® dark rum
1 1/2 oz Malibu® coconut rum
1/4 oz peach schnapps
1/4 oz blackberry schnapps
1/2 oz orange juice
1/2 oz cranberry juice
1/4 oz pineapple juice
Shake well with ice and pour into Hurricane glass. Add a floater of Myer's dark rum for an additional kick.

Dim Sum, You Lose Some

2009-10-01T22:31:00.004-04:00

(From a recent automatic writing session during a seance/Dim-sum party to summon Yves Klein -but we got Yves Saint Laurent instead)

Ooooh, mes amis, it’s a little brisk outside!. I could see my breath this morning, if I were still breathing! Un boue de souffle! I should not like to be caught dead in this weather, but ha ha I am however!
Autumn is so pretty! Apples and golden leaves that spiral down into the garden. So peaceful! And another opportunity to be elegant!
Yesterday I spent hours watching a leaf attached to a spider trail, so it remained all afternoon suspended between earth and sky, like myself. Oh, I watched as the maid brought out the chocolatiere set. Mother gave me the chocolatiere, it is made of lovely porcelain and the cups are so small and lovely, as it is a treat, to be sipped. I hope the new owners paid a fortune for it.

A moment so sweet that cocoa has its own serving set, so precious. The falling leaf, the hot chocolate in little cups so fine you can see your fingers if you hold them up to light, oh what a lovely way to spend an afternoon. Did you smell the plums that fell to the ground?
Bone china comes from pieces so delicate you can see through. It is hardly ever made from the dessicated bones of your rivals all ground up. Well, not so much anymore.
Demitasse are the lovely little cups coffee used to be served on, before the whole big gulp drinking coffee. They are right, you are getting fat.
Autumn is a wonderful time to invite friends over for oysters and a nice Riesling. Do you eat oysters off lovely oyster plates so ornate with little wells for lemon and salt?
So, that reminds me of the 1970s, what a lovely time. So creative, before this orgy of consumption. Oh, fashion wasn’t so fast, and littered with day time television people, clutching around their supersized coffees. Ugh, that is right up there with a truffle burger. Truffles, like fine cocoa or coffee, is meant to be savored, and appreciated, not mashed into the burger. Who are these people following off a cliff, like it’s the fall of the Roman Empire?
Do you need a faster computer? A “phone app” to “make it easier to order fast food”? How much easier and faster does fast food need to be? Are you going to stand in front of your microwave screaming Hurry Up? Fried chicken at the Met Ball? It is gluttony.
Slow down and enjoy yourself.
Enjoy the dahlias of this time of year. Some are sunset, dark orange centers with apricot spikes radiating out from the center. Some a royal purple, some a lipstick pink, or vibrant red. Have you seen the French Vogue cover from summer 1983 with Jerry Hall straddling an Air France Jet, wearing only bright red lipstick? It was my lipstick, of course.
Oh, I hope this economy means magazines go back to putting models on the covers.
Oh, this economy isn’t a bad thing, It’s a chance to learn about what counts. If you have a black skirt and sweater, you have what counts. You supply the elegance. Those editors trying to force unwearable clothes on you, ha, budget cuts mean they don’t even have stir sticks for their fake sugar in their coffees.
Oh, I meant for us to chat to day about wonderful plaids and timeless clothes. Oh, plaids. So beautiful for fall. But I am really quite tired. We’ll talk again soon, about plaid. I am dozing off, but my lips smile at a joke of Karl’s. Why do Scotsman wear kilts? Because zippers scare the sheep!

A bientot mes amis! As I am dead, I shall remain bored- Stiff! (ha ha) - Yves

Cheers,

Autumn Moon

1 oz light rum

1/2 oz apricot brandy

1/2 oz Galliano® herbal liqueur

1 tsp lemon juice

2 oz pineapple juice

Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with an orange slice.

A little nunsense, now and then,

2009-09-18T17:31:00.016-04:00

My, my my. Here we are in the Atlantic Northeast again. I am currently at the cunning cottage in the Summer Colony we call "The Framptons" (because of it's frequent inhabitant, You-know-Who) sitting in the "Robespierre Room" so name for the clever decor, the French furnishings with a portrait above the mantle of the rooms namesake. The most interesting touch are the silver silk draperies with valances shaped like the blades of a guillotine- complete with a blood red border on the edge- smashing idea in my opinion, anyway, I am here to celebrate the birthday of a beloved friend, Rosé who turns eighty this year, though you would never know it the way she carries on.

As I strut and fret about what to wear and if Fidelia can iron french cuffs properly in time, I put a 78 on the gramophone of "Kitten on the keys" and await the arrival of all the handsome men shaped to be easily annoyed in their blazers the blue of a spring midnight and their honey colored and diamante covered wives that will begin in a few hours, and although the season officially ended on Labor day, we all gather around from near and far on this important day to have, as Rosé puts it "One last toot."

I spent the day on a friends boat, the "Sally Forth", with Mr. Moose and an old friend of the family, Sister Taffy, a SSND nun, jaunting down to Fire Island and back, to take in the air and get the rest of the Summer dish I have missed out on. I decided to record the entire conversation in case the champagne and the sea air gave me amnesia later.

Here are a few of the highlights:

"I'm going to go look at the chandelier."
"I didn't give birth to anything. I was under pressure."
"I'm working on my alcoholism. I'll just have a glass"
"Waking up the next morning can make you a coward again."

"How's my hair?"

"Tedious."

"So she says, 'I will use every astrological barb to destroy the 16-year-old übergoth who doesn't think I'm cool."
"They go on Egypt binges."
"I don't want to go home with the hiccups. They're very revealing."
"You don't have to mention that nothing else happened but this."
"I want to buy a mess of pumpkin seeds."

"Having the hiccups is a lot like premature ejaculation. It's not a complete act."

"It's very easy to impress neophytes."
"Tongue in cheek. That's what we like."
"We might as well exploit ourselves over and over again."
"We have inexhaustible material."
"Just remind me a lot."
And then we had a conversation with a well-groomed boy, who wanted Angelina's number, about Giotto and the whole extinction of pandas thing.
"It [my bladder] just has a small capacity."
"This will redeem you. You've had Rick James come onto you. You MUST enrapture Clive Barker."
"We're just wrong."
"Sick and wrong."
"We need awards."
"I thought you said we needed more champagne."

"We don't take ourselves seriously. We deserve everything."
"Yes, there are many different ways to combine words."

"Fallopian Testimonies"
"Follicular Marmalade"

"Everyone flirts with you."

"It's because I don't care,"
"It's because you look good in a bar."

"I used to think you looked like Jesus when your hair was long."

"I wish men could wear wimples."
"He's just a little off. It might be drugs."

"Who? Oh whatshisname, but he looks great."

"What ever happened to wimples?"

"I agree, the portrayals of Jesus during the Renaissance were rather sexy."
"Is that's why nuns used to go into ecstasies at the drop of a hat?"

"Is that a pterodactyl or am I getting hammered?"

"Did I used to look like sexy Jesus?"

"Why do they call it Fire Island again?"

"I am craving PEZ."

"That sounds hormonal."

"I saw Kitty looking at real estate in Bridgehampton last week."

"Oh dear, are we out of Champagne?"

"Lets go to Uruguay!"

"I still have the hiccups"

"Try sugar on your tongue"

"There's only Splenda."

Cheers.

Champagne ala Sally Forth

1 1/2 oz passion-fruit puree

simple syrup

Champagne

1/2 oz Alize® liqueur
Pour passion fruit puree into a champagne saucer and stir in the simple syrup (to taste). Slowly add the champagne whilst stirring gently. Float the alize on top, and serve.

My Cherry Armoire and other Beloved Furniture

2009-09-08T15:20:00.023-04:00

How time flies when you are having fun. During the recent Labor Day holiday celebrations I spent time in my beloved New Orleans around friends and loved ones as well as the throngs of male crudité that invade our little hamlet during the yearly festival know as Southern Decadence. As the scores of unwashed masses usually do not provide even an ounce of mental stimulation, relying on visual and tactile stimuli instead- like so much decorative furniture- I was more than pleased-as-rum-punch when during one of many parties (hmmmf) I had a most pleasurable conversation with a rather handsome man about, of all things, the return of astrology as a reliable source of matchmaking, you know, by figuring out someones personality- without all that time spent chatting away mano a mano over countless bottles of (shudder) inexpensive wine. Boxed even.

Choosing a rather perilously low divan - because as you know I have the kind of figure that is well suited for reclining among cushions- I chatted away with the aforementioned gentleman, a certain French celebrity of sorts, almost half my age yet well beyond the age of reason with dancing golden brown eyes and muscular pecs to match and hair the color of neglected brass, you know who I mean, don't be coy.

A one point in our conversation about astrology, he lifted the glass filled with amber liquid, holding it, regarding it as though looking at me through a lorgnon, and said in a throaty accent: "You know cherie, you could have saved many a Grand Duke or Saudi Prince from finding himself in the fearful midnight hour, pouring his heart out in a letter filled with his unrequited passion before then turning to the service revolver lying on the table simply by comparing your astrological signs first..." I realized how right he was - beautiful people so often are- So here is a bit of a run down of signs and their somewhat cliche personality traits for your carful study; mix and match like IHOP syrups to find your own cherie amour.

Capricorn December 22 -January 19

Tends to be very private and as a result learns little about real life. Tends to be passive aggressive. Tendency for show-boating, especially in their careers. Best as child. Famous Capricorns: Jesus, Marilyn Manson, Susan Lucci.

Aquarius January 20 -February 18

Creative and modern thinking. Often mistaken for not-to-bright. Does not learn from experience. Likes shiny objects and/or other peoples husbands/wives. Famous Aquarians: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dan Quale, Sharon Tate.

Pisces February 19 -March 20

Emotionally powerful if a bit paranoid Makes up by being a bully for what lacks in real bravery. Has no pets but complex imaginary friends instead. Famous Pisceans: Jack Kerouac, Patty Hearst, Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Aries March 21 -April 19

Tendency toward being outdoorsy and independent, or at least dresses the part. Walks away rather than have a decent discussion. Better without progeny. Makes excellent Sherpa. Famous Arians: Joan Crawford, William Shatner, Debbie Reynolds.

Taurus April 20 -May 20

Great stick-with-it-ness. Often quite successful later in life- usually by crooked means. Famous Taurians: Prescott Bush, Adolf Hitler, Jim Jones.

Gemini May 21 -June 20

Dual natured. Intelligent if schizophrenic. Neither aspect of personality admirable. Fast at making deals, Fast at loosing friends/shirt. Famous Geminis: Jeffery Dahmer, King George III, Paula Abdul.

Cancer June 21 -July 22

A good listener and quite easy to take advantage of. Wildly emotional, barely able to function in an adult environment. Tendency toward deep seated sexual infantilism. Famous Cancerians: Lizzie Bordon, P.T. Barnum, George W. Bush.

Leo July 23 -August 22

Clever. Stubborn and forceful. Pulls wool over others eyes as a hobby. Seems to listen but doesn't really care. Makes good cop. Famous Leos: Miss Cleo, Aldous Huxley, Madonna.

Virgo August 23 -September 22

Weighs facts carefully often resulting in complete inaction. Obsessively clean and therefore hard to be with because of it. Whines a lot. Famous Virgos: Queen Elizabeth I, Upton Sinclair, Josie and The Pussycats.

Libra September 23 -October 22

Sensitive to music, art and literature. Happy completely alone much to the delight of everyone. Famous Libras: Truman Capote, Mark Rothko, Al Sharpton.

Scorpio October 23 -November 21

Sneaky. One way sensitivity. Easily hurt, but unconscious of other peoples feelings. Makes excellent file clerk or facist rebel. Famous Scorpios: Fedor Dostoevsky, Tonya Harding, Charles Manson.

Sagittarius November 22 -December 21

Wide open. Gives too much information on personal matters but also otherwise known to take creative liberties with The Truth. Sees the bright side of everything however senseless. Known to follow lemmings. Famous Sagittarius's: Nostradamus, Catherine of Aragon, Jay Bakker.

There now... all better? Hmmm, you're welcome, all for science...

Cheers.

cherie amour

3 oz vodka

4 oz coconut rum

4 sliced bananas

1 pint strawberries

Combine all ingredients in a blender with enough ice to achieve a smooth consistancy. Serve in coupe glass.

unrelated mental sinuosities

2009-08-19T17:02:00.033-04:00

Exclaiming "Mein schatz!" after tasting Halen Mon Taha's Vanilla sea salt for the first time, I was convinced the perfect girl for me was Irona, Richie Rich's robot maid.

Using hubris sparingly while turning the soil in my flower garden of love

After a long evening spent watching "Gossip Girl" and drinking girly drinks with his gays, my friend Jason Hiqury was a little embarrassed at his alcohol fueled erectile dysfunction. He had a good laugh however as "Hiqury Daiquiri Dick" seemed like a great - If some what dyslexic- name for a nursery rhyme.

This afternoon, as I tried to fend off the crazed feral cat that had attacked me in the alley, I heard the neighborhood ice cream truck making its rounds. As I feverishly beat the cat with a stick to remove it and it's fangs from my calf, I noticed the truck, that usually plays "Camp-town Races", now plays the theme from "Love Story".... In a bitterly ironic twist, the doctor only had Hello Kitty Band-aids.

Overheard during a Titanium lift facial at the Chantecaille Energy Spa at Barneys New York: "I'm sooo worried about Yasmin Khan, her uterus is leaking." One can only hope Yasmin Khan is a poodle.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

While walking through a cemetery today, I spied what appeared to be a note on top of the tombstone of someone recently interred, with a small stone to secure it from being blown away. Being naturally curious, I looked at the note- It was a recent parking ticket belonging to the deceased.

A bird in the hand is just a nice way of saying someone is flipping you off.

.
Today I sent myself a letter. Not really a letter, more of a contingency plan of what to do in the event of waking up one morning a member of the aristocracy. Well it's not really a contingency plan, it's more or less a list of the required jewelry.
.
"Delicate bodies that decay beneath their clothing play cards in an empty house in Paris as the wreckage of our hero lies broken in the corner but everyone pretends he likes to live that way." -Best lyrics ever?
.
I think they're sisters. It's like Little Women with chunky knits and styrofoam coffee cups. The one with the lazy eye is totally Jo. And "Laurie" Laurence, the charming, playful, and rich young teenager next door neighbor is one of her students - who in reality is an Emo with a thing for Milf's.
.
Never combine spiced rum and white chocolate, they are enemies, and it's really gay. Like Disney's Fantasia (The Pastoral Symphony part with cupid showing the pegasi it's butt) gay.
.
Some days are like being in a bubble bath full of glow in the dark rubber duckies with all the lights off- mildly amusing, better after a few drinks and always sound a little disturbing when described to your friends.
.
Overheard in line at Target....
Girl #1: "Well my boyfriend criteria is this, Smart, Cute, Funny, will watch scary movies with me and did not pick Charmander as first Pokemon..."
Girl #2. "Entia non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem."
Girl #1. "Yeah, totally...."
Girl #2. " You want Przewalski's horse while you are at it?"
Girl #1 "No but I do want a Reecy PBC."
Girl #2. "Reecy PBC?"
Girl #1. "Reece's Peanut Butter Cup"
Girl #2. "Oh... that's a pretty vague reference Amber..."
.
Note found written in crayon: Dear Summer-time, I want you to be my white slave zombie. The last thing you will eat is a stinkin' cupcake made with poison ivy. Every time you are a horse I am a lion. Grr.. Bye. Kill you later. Your enemy, Winter-time
.
I live in constant fear of falling asleep in front of the Television only to wake up to The Bernie Mac Show.
.
Postsynaptic potential? Yup I'm for it.
.
In the middle of the fifth playing of "Limbo Rock" I had the personal epiphany that although all the limbo boys and girls all around the limbo world are not entitled to government provided heath care, it would certainly be a nice gesture on the governments part.
.
Costume idea: Dress as a giant lab rat with a cardboard sign that says "Will press lever for food"
.
Best accidental display ever: A clearly marked cardboard kiosk formally used for display of "There will be Blood" DVDs with copies of "Bambi II" in it instead.
.
Cheers.

Fantasia
2 oz Grey Goose® L'Orange vodka
2 oz Barenjager® honey liqueur
thinly sliced orange
Pour both ingredients into a shaker. Strain and pour into a highball glass and garnish with an orange slice.

ce n'est pas un poteau de blog

2009-08-17T22:50:00.001-04:00

paryushan

2009-08-16T11:37:00.007-04:00

Today starts the Jain "Festival of Uplifting the Self by the Holy Observation of Ten Universal Virtues" So put down the french fries...
The Jain community like other communities throughout the world celebrates many social and religious functions annually. The superb Jain festival popularly known as ‘Paryushan Parva’ organized every year in the auspicious month ‘Bhadrapad’ of the Hindu calendar extends from the fifth day to fourteenth day of the bright fortnight. The festival ordains the Jains to observe the ten universal supreme virtues in daily practical life. Besides assuring a blissful existence in this world and the other world for every living being, it aims at the attainment of salvation - the supreme ideal for mundane soul. The non-Jains also express high reverence for this Jain festival. All members of Jain community- high and low, young and old, and males and females, participate with full vigor and zeal in the various religious rituals and cultural programs. They listen with rapt attention to the holy sermons of the saints and learned Jain scholars arranged during the ten-day festival. In these celebrations lie dormant the seeds of the well being, peace and happiness of the common man. On the eve of this festival all activities, which add to social discord or bitterness are declared taboo from the temple pulpits. These celebrations harbinger social harmony and amity and preach the lofty Jain motto ‘Live and Let live’.

The ‘Paryushan Parva’ celebrated annually for self-purification and uplift is meant to adhere to the ten universal virtues in practical life; and leads us on the right path, far from the mad strife for material prosperity, which ultimately leads us to our true destination i.e., salvation. Two popular titles of this festival, viz. (i) Paryushan Parva and (ii) Dash Lakshan Parva are in vogue; but the mode of performance and aim of the festival is same. According to Sanskrit grammar the underlying idea of the festival and its interpretation is given below:
“Parismantadushayante dhante karmani yasimannasau paryushnm”
I.e., The celebration through which the karmic matter attached to the soul is totally burnt or

vanquished (both internally and externally) is known Paryushan i.e., self-purification.

Various meaningful and sublime titles have been assigned to this festival in different Jain scripture; e.g.,
Parva Raj - The festival which carries a special and greater significance; its celebrations spread over a longer duration and it is more soul-stirring than any other Jain festival.
Maha Parva - It is an ancient and chief of all Jain festival.
Dash Lakshan Parva - The festival for the observance of ten universal virtues; viz., forgiveness, contentment, and celibacy, which aim at the uplift of the soul and are vividly preached and practiced during the festival.
Paryushan Parva - The festival through which an attempt is made to put an end to all vices, passions and lustful desires in thought, speech and deeds.
Paryu-Prasa - The festival in which one meditates upon the inherent virtues of the soul in thought, speech and action; or one attains peace of soul i.e., celestial peace.
Paryupshamn or Pajjusvana - The festival in which an attempt is made to obtain peace discarding all passions and lustful desires through various means; and observe harmony in the soul through the study of scriptures.
Pajjushana - This word of Prakrit language carries the same meaning as explained in Paryushan Parva.
Samvatsari Parva - The festival which is celebrated annually to subdue all passions and lustful desires. This title is popular to the Swaitamber sect of Jainism.

Paryushan Parva gives expression to the perfectly purified trait of the soul, through which one gets rid of worldly discords and allurements and one gets fully absorbed in the eternal truth on experiencing and realizing the true nature of soul. In other words we can say that the natural realization of the trio ‘the True, the Good and the Beautiful’ is fully possible only through Paryushan. In fact the other name of the Jainism, which is universal religion, is Paryushan. This festival puts an end to all evils in man; gives him realization of the eternal bliss, and spiritualism becomes alive by the celebration of this festival.

Since times immemorial the living beings have fallen prey to the bewitching worldly allurements. They are involved day and night in such a poisonous environment of lustful desires and sensuous pleasures that despite being cautioned time and again, they fail to rid themselves from the bondage of the net work of worldly illusions. Jain Acaryas have, through their sermons and ideal moral code of conduct, inspired the mundane souls to keep aloof from the blemishes of the world, which breed nothing but sorrow and misery for the mankind. But the insatiable ambition of man for sensuous pleasures, material comforts and luxurious life has always allured him since antiquity. Consequently man has bitterly failed to make distinction between self and non-self, and to understand the real nature of soul.
During the eight-day Paryushan festival, many fast and perform pratikaraman, meaning 'turning back'. It is a form of meditation where one reflects on his spiritual journey and renews his faith. During this time, many drink boiled water and eat before sunset. Many abstain from onions/garlic/potatoes (root vegetables), fermented food, and even green vegetables. Penance and fasting are the key words in these days. The reason for such restriction is to hurt as less living beings as possible. Items previously mentioned have far greater number of lives (atmas) than simple grains. For example, when you take any piece of potato and put it in water, it will grow. but the same is not true for rice grain. By doing this, we commit less sin and bind with fewer bad karmas. this will later help us on our jouney to moksha.
This festival has its own age-old history, but nothing definite can be said about its origin and since when it is being celebrated. In fact, the celebration of this festival is beyond the scope of known history. The truth is that spiritual matters like self-purification and renunciation cannot be measured by Time scale. When the auspicious month of Bhadrapad comes every year, the whole Jain community celebrates this festival unitedly without any difference of high and low, rich and poor. The Digambaras and the Swaitamberas, both sects of Jain community celebrate the self-uplifting festival with great enthusiasm. The fifth day of the bright fortnight of the holy month of ‘Bhadrapad’ is auspicious for both. The Digambaras celebrate this festival annually for ten days, from the fifth day to the fourteenth day of the bright half of the month. Whereas the Swaitamberas celebrate it only for eight days, and the fifth day is the main day of their celebrations held under the title ‘Samvatsari Parva’.
Now, with a little Wiki help...
Pratikramana (Samayika): Renewal meditation:
Pratikramana means turning back. It is a form of meditation, called Samayika where one reflects on his spiritual journey and renews his faith. For both Swetambaras and Digambaras, it takes the form of periodic meditation. The period can be twice daily (morning and evening), once every lunar phase, every four months, or every year. The annual Pratikramana in some form is the minimum for a Sravaka.
The annual Pratikramana is Samvatsari Pratikramana, in short Samvatsari. Since it coincides with Paryushana, the terms "Samvatsari" and "Paryushana" are sometimes used interchangeably.
Pratikramana includes:
samayika: to stay in equanimity by withdrawing to the self.
Prayers to the Five Supremes, 24 Jinas and the 4 mangalas, including the Dharma as presented by the ancient Masters.
Prayer to the Master(Guru) or the Deity.
Reflections on vratas and past transgressions.
Kayotsarga: detachment from the body by controlling it.
Pratyakhyan: making resolutions for the next period (next year for Samvatsari Pratikramana).
The detailed recommended procedure can be found in the handbooks. Detailed Pratikramana takes about 3 hours, however all essentials can be done in a much shorter time if needed.
Pratikramana is also sometimes termed Samayika in the Digambara tradition.
By tradition certain postures are recommended for Pratikramana.

Dasha-Lakshana Vrata:
This is a vrata that celebrates 10 components of the dharma: Noble kshama (forbearance), mardava (gentleness), arjava (uprightness), shaucha (purity), satya (truth), sanyam (restraint), tapa (austerity), tyaga (renunciation), akinchanya (lack of possession) and brahmcharya (chastity), as described by Umaswati.
In the full form, it is a 10 day vrata that spans 10 years. It may be undertaken during Shukla Panchami to Chaturdashi of Bhadrapada, Magh or Chaitra. However it is common to do it during Bhadrapada, in which case it starts with Paryushana.

Requesting Forgiveness
At the conclusion of the festival, the Sravakas request each other for forgiveness for all offenses committed during the last year. This occurs on the Paryusha day for the Swetambara and on Pratipada (first) of Ashwin Krashna for the Digambara. Forgiveness is asked by telling "Micchami Dukkadam" to each other. It means "If I have caused you offence in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, in thought word or deed, then I seek your forgiveness".

To sum up, Paryushan Parva is a grand Jain festival of self-introspection, self-enlightenment and self-achievement, which ultimately leads to the one and only one final goal, i.e., liberation or salvation.

carnal symmetry in 25 yards of peau de soie

2009-08-11T00:32:00.013-04:00

Remembering Charles James. (1906-1978) A somewhat forgotten superstar of fashion.

Here are a few numbers:
200 - number of dresses Charles James designed in his life.
1 - time he got drunk with his pal Halston and threw a plate at policeman.
Several - times he delivered late gowns.
Several - times he delivered his creations after dancing in it all night.
3 - Prizes won . One refused because the fashion system was not equal/moral.
1 - Declaration by Balenciaga. "He's the best couturier in the world".

Charles James was born in London. His father was an English military officer, while his mother came from a socially prominent Chicago family. After he was expelled from Harrow as the result of a sexual escapade, his family packed him off to Chicago to work. Not long after, he began his career as milliner. His shop at 1209 North State Street was called Charles Boucheron, the surname borrowed from a school friend. Two years later he moved to New York City and began designing dresses with the same sculptural sense that characterized his millinery. “Charles James is not only the greatest American couturier, but the world’s best and only dressmaker who has raised it from an applied art form to a pure art form,” declared the great Spanish couturier, Cristóbal Balenciaga. (and you know how we love him)

His famous “butterfly Dress,” www.flickr.com/photos/chicagohistory/2967815278/ originally created for Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Jr. in 1954, is made of 25 yards of peau de soie and nylon net, the dress weighs 18 pounds. Its most notable features are structured side wings and a back bustle skirt. The Chicago History Museum has more than a dozen dresses by Charles James, many of which were donated only a few years after they were first worn, possibly because they were so difficult to store.

Cheers.

Galliano Daiquiri
1 oz gold rum

3/4 oz Galliano® herbal liqueur

juice of 1/2 limes

1/2 oz sugar syrup
Shake briefly with a glassful of crushed ice, and pour into a frosted cocktail glass. Garnish with a slice of lime, and serve.

of poisoned apples and eydie gormé

2009-08-09T07:24:00.021-04:00

So.
I had just gotten off the line with B. discussing his kitchen renovation- (counter tops to be exact- he was deciding between granite and what he called "Coriander") when, in the middle of cleaning my Hello Kitty AK47 while listening to the 1961 recording of "I Feel so Spanish" by Eydie Gormé, (if you remember, her version of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" with Steve Lawrence was the song I used during the processional at my last wedding) my princess telephone in the boudoir rang again.....
It was Mazeppa. Frantic. Seems that her mothers personal maid Chutiyah had locked herself in the slate lined guest bathroom shower, doused herself with gasoline and lit a match. The poor dear had recently lost her husband, and in the spirit of being old school, she naturally decided it would be perfectly proper to commit what until the last century was a common practice known as suttee. (albeit her husband was on the other side of the planet, I guess its the thought that counts) I found out later in the conversation that the main cause of Mazeppas freak fest was the minor detail that she had an important dinner party that evening where Itzhak Perlman was the guest of honor. Pretending not to hear her when she asked where I bought my potpourri and if they sold it in bulk, I suggested moving the party part and parcel to a nice restaurant, but she decided to make a few phone calls and change the menu to barbecue and the venue out of doors. She also had the where with all to find and serve Nestle Itzakadoozie ice pops in his honor. Always on her toes that one.
The Grim Reaper must get less commission on those people that choose to end their own lives, don't you think?
I am certain that he has had quite a summer so far, what with all the suicidal hi-jinks going on around the globe and in our own back yards. Like the idiot that went into that aerobics class and killed those poor women, and like Warren. Dear, dear Warren.
My old pal Warren Pease was a man as thick and wordy and full of conflict as the novel that shares his name. We went to the same school when we were children and sat next to each other in Sister Oubliette's Math class, always chose each other when we were choosing people for our side in Sister Mary Truncheon's Phys Ed class and were often seen sitting together waiting for our turn outside the Mother Superior's office for some slight infraction. Like the time we tried to exorcise Mary Anne Montenegro's “Mrs. Beasley” doll with a railroad spike, it's a long story.
Admittedly, it was a bit of a shock when I heard not only that Warren had taken his own life, but also the way he chose to do it. It seems after he failed to come home one evening, he was found the next morning in his office dressed up like Snow White with the remainder of a poisoned apple in his hand. Of course the police questioned everyone that worked with him, including seven coworkers that just happen to be "little people"- you could say that at least one of the gentlemen questioned were not amused at the inquiry, grumpy even.
Though surprising, Warren and I had always joked around about having the final word when it came to our own mortality. I always thought he would end it all with a measured amount of flair and panache, and after that certain summer at camp, I was almost certain he would very likely choke himself to death during auto-fellatio, or perish during one of our infamous and rousing games of Strip Russian Roulette.
Suicide is an awful thing to do, dying for that matter is considered outre these days, yet many people I come into contact with every day do so passively by over eating, drinking, taking drugs, getting diseases and generally acting a fool until they die. I think the act itself is terribly selfish, you should consider the feelings of others before you commit such an act, especially if you are what they refer to as an adult.
A clearly willful act of suicide in early youth is not only preferable and more interesting to the public, it also is the only time in ones life that you can get by with the general "I am ending it all because no one understands me" sort of explanation without coming off as being overly dramatic. If you are young and priggishly determined to get back at all of those people that question your beliefs by ending it all, try and include as many of them as you wish by leaving a number of well composed suicide notes to each of your tormentors, explaining in detail how they were the principal cause of your despair. The psychiatric community will thank you for this. Also, young people should never commit suicide over college grades until their final exam scores have lowered the class curve. Your peers will thank you for that. Do not kill yourself to get back at your parents, if they actually do detest you, you'll just be playing into their hands.

As for the rest of us far beyond the Age of Reason, If you absolutely, positively must end it all, please do so as you would perform any other gesture as personal as this, neatly or in an interesting manner and always in good taste. Murder-suicide is considered the lowest form of bad taste so it should absolutely never even be considered. -Even if you are used to having an entourage wherever you go.- (this includes being a suicide bomber. The idea of ending it all for a cause seems calculating at best and tends to give others impolite thoughts about how empty your life must be otherwise... tre declasse)
My suggestion? Try and be creative with your method of self destruction, travel to San Juan Capistrano and handcuff yourself to something in the bell tower around the time the swallows return -being fluttered to death even sounds like fun- or work at an abortion clinic for ten years, go to a Catholic country and turn yourself in for mass murder. Or, go with a surprise ending. It's always fashionable to try to be beaten to death by a bunch of teenagers in the restroom of a public park that's known as a hangout for gays or by going to the red light district and slapping the first pimp you find. This will give people lots to say, especially your wife and children.

The value of planning cannot be over estimated. If you are going to really make headlines, you should start laying the groundwork early in life by being a nice quiet straight A student and a dutiful child to your parents. It gives no end of pleasure to everyone when a person like that throws themselves on fire into the Senate from the visitor's gallery or commits Seppuku with a string fed lawn trimmer. Some people try to add extra shock value by committing the deed in the all-together, i.e. nude. Just a grace note here, try and be honest about how you look in the buff will you? Remember, there is always the chance that you might not be found for a while and, like television, death, initially adds at least ten pounds- what with the bloating and all. It is much safer to wear something simple in white, to contrast with the blood, or a smart ensemble that will show your superior breeding, even if its only to the crime lab. And be sure to empty your bladder and bowels beforehand, gore from a bullet wound might be dramatic but there's always an element of low comedy to excrement. You're welcome.

If you are a traditionalist, among the classics are climbing out of a window onto a ledge so that crowds can gather and urge you to jump, but be sure to let at least one policeman climb out to reason with you before you jump, as this is how they get get medals and promotions. Guns are also a classic- if a bit expected- and razors lead to all kinds of messes as one forgets if it is better to go "across the street" or "down the road". Using natural gas, though it seems to be the most green of means, comes across as being wasteful of our natural resources and drugs are too chancy as you might miscalculate the dosage and just have a really good time -or you might wind up in the hospital as a human vegetable. In which case you'll spend the rest of your life being pestered to become the head of a "Grassroots" Republican group.

There are times and places that it would be very bad manners to commit suicide. Never do it at someone else's funeral, it is stealing the show and much too pushy. (This is how the British improved manners on the Indian subcontinent when they put a stop to suttee, more or less) Try and not kill yourself in a way that will result in your becoming a martyr. The world does not need more hideous portraits painted on black velvet of the type seen depicting MLK, JFK, Jesus or Elvis, on T shirts with Tupac, Biggie or Kurt Cobain or the horror of Franklin Mint plates with images of Princess Diana, or Michael Jackson.

As a final thought, a classic from an expert on the subject, Dotty Parker.

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

Now, how about a drink, something light. Cheers,

Hari Kari

1 oz brandy

1 oz Cointreau® orange liqueur

2oz orange juice
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake well, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.

notes from the cerebral museum - night shift

2009-08-03T03:55:00.008-04:00

* when I write "bff" I secretly mean bunny foo foo

* the wagging tail drops like a stone to the floor when he sees the suitcases

* me in one of those ill fitting gowns bring subtle nudges and widened eyes from hit men and hypocrites
* you're not really the lord of darkness, so try not to drown
* your windsong stays on my mind, that, and the time you pooped in the bed

* sorry I didn't tell you about trotsky, little dead shrew or the sleep-talking baby foxes and the marmoset, I didn't think it was important
* the queen of france's earrings and lots of blood on the snow
* love love love plus one? yes, I question everything
* inept blood bringer father figure smug in a lab coat
* notes on a sandal, lasts seasons jimmy choos

* just half a cup please
* demure mystery roses and confessional sweet nothings to an ape in tigger socks, kiss me on the mouth please
* thieving knave nicks kiss, leaves feeling illuminated
* the strange fortunes of fond creatures

* i'm an animal trapped in your hot car, let's make out
* meaningless notes on fridges, this dilemma requires a soundtrack
* mid discussion about when dargelos died and cocteau ran away to marseilles to live among sailors and prostitutes, I swallowed my fortune and had to purge, I didn't know it was a holy water font
* easter salt in valentine wounds circa 1939 leads to bouncing dishes on a regency sofa
* tomorrow's graveyard forage: look for the father of the man that dreamed of wires
* fully expecting speculaas before december 5th, and full guest compliance
* layeth me down in green pastures or I'm going to a robot-making party

* the people that live in the boats in my hair dream of black pony kisses and my yellow mane
* it was becoming golden, dressing a shadow and combing it's hair, for whom do you model? the boston strangler?

* she was just a ghost until she met him, now they're both just demons
* one can't be weeping over schubert all of the time, anton reicha is another story, if only for the irregular time signatures
* watching a colossal youth sleeping outside the chatty cathy caravan with scooby douche
* when we were pretty and took turns with crimpers I burned you hair on purpose because you ruined my barbie makeup head with a marksalot

* we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time, but the tivo is broken
* medicine administered by a cute doctor is the best medicine, a close second is going to bed in little brown socks with garlic cloves in them
* watching the turkish karaoke talking about how now and again he puts me on parole
* she's half german, half french, has "follow me home hair" and looks exactly like bambi - not surprisingly, looks great in the woods

* leonor fini still gives surreal enfant terrible value
* my hopes of being head gardener at the palace of versailles have been dashed, as I realise I am horribly put off by rose bush scratches. and dirt

* if you hadn't died, you'd be recovering from a black eye, I hope you are at the cosmos cotillion with serena and uncle arthur

* the aging chanteuse droned on, making sounds like a hammer horror cellar door, with only the scent of violette in the air making it bearable

* a heart shaped post-it saying 'no switchy offy' in an apartment in hells kitchenette

* when life gives you lululemons, make lululemonaide- in the downward dog position

Cheers.

Raspberry Long Island Slurpee

1 oz vodka

1 oz rum

1 oz 1800® Tequila

1 oz gin

1 oz triple sec

1 1/2 oz sweet and sour mix

1 oz Chambord® raspberry liqueur

Put all ingredients in blender with ice cubes, blend and serve with a crazy straw.

wurzeltod

2009-07-31T13:00:00.015-04:00

From the archives:

We listen to them don't we?

You will be like us, think like us, worship like us, laugh like us, live like us.

You will know this to be wrong, but you will notice that the days are waning when support exists for the individual and for deviation. That was a luxury of richer times, and it is none too surprising that in the days when such support existed, deviation was the norm, and all other thought was suspect. So much for tolerance.

And SURPRISE, some people prefer to be sheep. Some people prefer to be led. And that is why we're back. Because you're tired. Because you're weary. Because you stopped wearing those paisley bell-bottoms you bought in the thrift shop for $1.99 because they were so retro-60s, and although you were born in the 60s, you are too young to remember it but wanted to believe it was a time of respect for deviance and the individual.

And, anyway, whoever led you to believe that paisley was so altogether all-fired deviant and individualistic? Hell, that particular pattern on your pants came from a tapestry made for an ancient Persian despot who had his subjects beheaded regularly for forgetting which way to face. Think about that while you watch "The View" and spoon that bran over your cereal.

You will never be anything real in this lifetime. You cannot make your own reality. Not anymore.You have forgotten who you wanted to be. That isn't surprising. It's in the design.

What do disaffected people do when they get old? Does the sulking ever stop? You've made an art form out of sulking and wishing you were French.

There are other ways to live.
In books, in movies, bleak landscapes of cyberpunk worlds have been conjured, playgrounds for the disaffected and disenfranchised. You wonder how close that reality could be. You have, with your misbegotten aspirations, become unsuccessful in your lifetime. You will never afford to have all the things you need. You live an unfulfilled existence, and dream no American dream.

You can imagine living where people will fight to survive among the ruins of a corrupt technological-rich, spiritually-bereft world. It wouldn't take much lurching forward to come to that. Science fiction authors you've read and digested -- you pull their thoughts to your chest and ruminate. Here, on the landscape, one foot in the pretend veneer of a 50s family portrait and the other in a wasteland predicted by cynical visionaries. Thrust into an accelerated world with not enough of the technological advances that were actually possible because we, the corrupt, keep progress profitable only for our kind. Your rejection of us is your own doom. You make your bed and lie in it. We short-sheet your linens. For your own good. Wake up. The world is hopelessly lost, burgeoning at the seams with stuff, and yet so little has come to pass. Humanity sits on its ass. As you are doing. You are not poor, yet your biggest act of biggest charity was giving a panhandler $1.43 in spare change this morning. Usually, you never do. You are asked at least twenty times a day for money, and you don't have enough money for twenty people. So, you simply stopped, but feel guilty nonetheless because it's not the ideal.

But the one this morning popped out of no where in the fog, appeared at the intersection behind you as you waited for the light to change. He'd come from the direction of the overpass. The dirt and grime layered on him suggested that he might have spent the night there. He wrapped his arms around his thin body and shivered. You remember thinking how young, strikingly handsome and that he had on glasses like John Lennon. How odd that seemed. Conversationally, looking past you, he said, "Isn't the weather painful?"

You gave him all your change.

You take a long thoughtful sip of your four dollar "Makeitworkalatte" as you sit in the requisite cafe. Your blood work came back abnormal that afternoon. You take a sip of beer. Your bills were due yesterday. You pop another Xanax. This is what being an adult is about, isn't it? This isn't art. No one will buy your art, anyway. Will they?

You cyberpunk artists (or whatever label we'll exploit you by) distrust the powers-that-be. You might even complain that corporations have taken over the arts and make it near to impossible to achieve a dream, to be redeemed as an artist. Redemption? We will sell you indulgences, and nothing more.

I will only tell you this once and never again -- art doesn't lie in the money, in the bottom line, it lies in the souls of all humans, and anyone can access it regardless what they try to tell you.

Art is magick, magick is art, and it doesn't need to be dispensed by some Hierophant in a pin-striped suit. It just is. Perhaps those little squiggles drawn on newsprint and tacked up on the refrigerator are intrinsically as beautiful as Guernica. Just more people have seen and will see Guernica, and they bring their collective experience to it, worship it, lay their experiences before it. Picasso may have painted it, but thousands of others have shaped that painting since. It is owned by all of us, anyone who cares to find their own soul in it. That is what art is, it is a reaching out to others and giving them a place to put their own souls in.

And, sure, it makes money. Anything that sustains makes money. But art that doesn't make money is still art. Artists who never make money are still artists. The money thing is parallel, but not intrinsic, to the art.

In fact, if artists didn't need to eat and live and consume, the money thing might not matter at all. But they do. That is the most unfortunate thing.

And bloody little good that does you, does it? You can sigh. Think that no one understands. Everyone has it as bad as you, if not worse. You sip your whisky and gingerale and wonder. Wonder about the life you aspired to have as a child: money, influence, the ability to give your money to those who needed it -- which you thought you might have through art. Oh, you. You will cave in. You will soon be like us, think like us, worship like us, laugh like us, live like us.

Otherwise, you are the needy, not that needy, perhaps, but notice how you've never been able to do anything but tread water ever since you first were thrust into this go-to-work-pay-the-bills world. All of life seems dismal and indulgent, hurtful and strung out.

You walked into the club tonight, unabashed. Tonight is the night that you feel reproached, that you know that you didn't make the proper observances on the Equinox. You and your bloody ancient neo-religions. You're just trying to be weird, aren't you? We know that game.

Someone kisses the back of your neck, someone kisses your lips, but the next week, it's time to start all over again. It's too easy to use sex as an addiction. The supply is even more abundant than a good old-fashioned drug high, which is wrong anyway on this day, although in your formative years, it was so much the norm, and you don't understand how it suddenly became wrong.

This has become one of those nights, starting off alone, knowing somehow the person you wish to see won't appear. There was no reason to be moving through the club, waiting, hoping, just hanging around waiting for the love scene to manifest. There won't be any love scene. Wake up. You could go up to someone, say "wanna fuck?" and they might take you up on it, and it might be fun, but your viscera will gnaw at you, say to wait, find someone you can hold an entire conversation with, although you feel hopeless and at the mercy of your stupid stupid brain. Why do you bother? Why do you choose someone and attempt pursuit? You don't want to cage them, you don't want to have them. You want to love them, but it seems such an imposition to love people. They are forever disappearing. In one way or another. "All you need these days are a strand of pearls and the perfect little black dress."

Now, wouldn't it be better to do it our way? We have the programs and pamphlets telling just how it can be done. Just follow us, the chance to start again in a brand new world of limited opportunity and candy coated numbness is waiting just for you!

There is no accounting for humans. They spend their whole lives reaching for something. The slope of your neck, and the insecurity because you are not, you are not anything, and those you try to touch go running.

Why do you want to touch the ones in motion? Blossom Dearie, where are you now that we need you even more? Do pencils really come from Pennsylvania? Shall we cherish our questions, not our answers? Isn't the weather painful?

Cheers.

The Neely Sparkle

2 cup(s) Smirnoff No. 21 Vodka (25 oz. per bottle)
2 bottle(s) Moët & Chandon Champagne
1.25 cup(s) pomegranate juice
1 cup(s) simple syrup
thinly sliced lemon
Combine ingredients in a punch bowl with ice.
Add simple syrup to taste.
Mix in lemon slices.
Makes 18 servings

a baphometine vision

2009-07-24T23:59:00.010-04:00

Something from the Archives:

Berlin is a curious city, I've been wanting to do this for a while.
I'm sitting on a brown velvet couch in the center of the Berlinische Galerie, facing a full-length portrait of Baladine Klossowska. It was executed by her brother, the painter Eugen Spiro.
In this painting a young Baladine dips to one side, arms extended, grasping a diaphanous black gown in her fingers. Lemon flowers tinged with green cluster around her face. An emerald jewel glitters on her forehead. It's all very theatrical, ostentatiously so. Her gown is like a sinister counterpoint to Loïe Fuller's ectoplasmic ruffling, twirling confection; underneath her dress she's ivory-limbed and lean (I divine); a pale pearl of a belly melts into mysterious green-gray shadowy regions; she's put rouge on her breasts and painted her knees pink... Underneath she is Salome, and strands of Jokanaan's fallen locks are woven into her petticoats and tucked amid the foliage in her coiffure. I'm pleased that the floor of the museum is echoed in the painting and that the black tips of my shoes correspond to the black tips of hers, which are shimmering with a patch of white light reflecting obnoxiously like a gemstone on velvet.
I've sat down today with the intent of summoning Baladine's breath, a la her son Pierre's baphometine vision of departed Templar saints and sinners. So it's a séance of sorts, even though I believe in ghosts, my thoughts are mixed about the afterlife so many people hope for, you know Heaven and all (though one can hope, in ghosts at least). In order to conduct this most make-shift of séances, I've armed myself with a copy of Klossowski's Baphomet, a Moleskin full of empty pages, and a pen poised in my hand, awaiting automatic instructions, babblings, whisperings, a rustle of silk, etc.

I imagine her breath smells like old, shattered silk. Or like rouged cheeks and camellias. A breath like hers would be a dervish in black crape, a whirlwind in suspension, cool and pale, stuttering gusts of broken poetry. (I am sure she is equally Ogier de Beauséant and Saint Theresa) It would hum and cry and coo and wail deliciously and it would whisper across my cheek frailly, describing to me the febrile and impassioned embrace of her poet. It would murmur a memory of his manhood, solid and well-formed, which also smells of camellias and rouge...
I shut my eyes and detect the breath of Theresa's ecstasy emanating from Rilke's roseate head, like ebullient ectoplasm curling through space . ..

Alas. Just then a wholly disruptive museum guard walks by and hesitates, glancing at my book, which has fallen open on my lap all fluttering and yellowing. I think she thinks I'm trespassing some norm of museum propriety which would prohibit impromptu/amateurish séance experiments orchestrated on three-way conversation furniture, and whether or not this is actually the case, she inquires after the title of my book, insisting that she's eternally grateful for new reading material. I flash the cover at her but the name Klossowski fails to make any notable impression, so I gesture at the portrait of Madame K. and explain the relationship in brief, but she's already darting off. She casts a phrase over her shoulder, something about Her being beautiful. Across the room I overhear a woman commenting on a set of well-formed nostrils. . . .

Cheers.
Mme. Baladine
1 oz apple brandy
1 oz apricot brandy
1/4 oz Pernod licorice liqueur
Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Chez les heureux du monde

2009-07-20T11:36:00.001-04:00

On a cold Friday morning in January, a young violinist entered the Washington DC metro station during rush hour and, with barely anyone noticing, chose a wall to lean against, pulled his violin out of its case, and began to play. For 45 minutes, lost in a sea of analysts, policy managers, budget officers and contractors all on their way to work, the young man played. Nearly 1097 people passed by him. Of the thousands, only six people actually stopped to listen to him play and 20 people slowed just enough to give him money. He made $32.17.

When I read this story, I thought of a tale from The Phantom Tollbooth, when the main character, Milo, visits a city called Reality. Though once an extraordinary place full of glorious things to see, the citizens of Reality eventually realized that the quickest way to get from point A to point B is if one didn’t stop to admire the things that came in between. And so they began to walk faster and faster without ever looking up, without ever slowing down, and without ever stopping. Moving as fast as they did, they got to where they needed to be in record time, but at the sacrifice of their beloved city, and of course, their own lives. They never stopped to admire its beauty, they didn’t realize as it become uglier and dirtier each day, and they failed to notice as it disappeared completely. “They went right on living here just as they’d always done, in the houses they could no longer see and on the streets which had vanished, because nobody had noticed a thing. And that’s the way they have lived to this very day.”
The story of the violinist may seem unremarkable, and you may even be wondering why I’m telling it to you; except that that violinist wasn’t your average street musician. He was Joshua Bell, one of the most famous violinists in the world. The violin he played is almost 300 years old and worth over $3.5 million; and three days before that cold Friday morning in that subway station, he had played a sold out show at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where tickets go for a minimum of $100 each.
The land of the in-between, tucked neatly between where we are at this moment and where we need to be eventually, is absolutely pulsing with life. Let us take heed, therefore, that we have the wisdom and the courage to slow down just long enough to see it.
Cheers.
Elderflower Martini

1 oz elderflower cordial

1 oz Bombay Sapphire® gin

1 oz Cinzano® dry vermouth

1/2 oz lime juice
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake until very chilled; serve immediately.

diner dans le cimetière

2009-07-16T18:10:00.028-04:00

In light of the recent developments in my family life, you know, death, betrayal and all that lovely Southern Gothic stuff, I have been in a rather reflective mood.
During this period I have been lucky enough to spend quality time with people that I love, and over the July 4th holiday I had the good fortune to find myself among friends and extended family in lavishly appointed yet comfortably intimate interiors and exquisite gardens of that particularly lovely area of Long Island also known as the Summer Colony.

Upon my return to DC I thought I would do something fun to lift my spirits. So, naturally, I went to the boneyard, Rock Creek cemetery to be precise. While walking along, enjoying the unusually cool summer day, I happened across the tomb of Evalyn Walsh McLean an American mining heiress and socialite who was famous for being the last private owner of the Hope Diamond as well as another famous diamond, the Star of the East. (She's the original "Mrs. Gotrocks")
As I stood in front of the mausoleum, the dappled light streaming through the clouds, I thought, what an interesting life the old girl had. You can't write this stuff. Some peoples lives play out with great stories. I have decided my life has already been made in to a movie- or rather, movies, the ever changing character of my starring role has, thus far, been a mixture of the Oz obsessed waif Dorothy, played by Fairuza Balk in "Return to OZ", the bisexual cocaine-addict fashion model Margaret (Anne Carlisle) in "Liquid Sky" and the Helen Twelvetrees role as long suffering good girl in "Millie", OK, and a little Zerbinetta from "Ariadne auf Naxos" with a soupçon of Princess Ninetta from "The Love for Three Oranges" and Jackie O from "The House of Yes" thrown in for good measure.

Later, as I continued to stroll with my trusty hound Boudin, I came across the graves of Upton Sinclair, Rosalie Mackenzie Poe, (Edgars sister) Melville Bell, (Alexander Graham Bells dad) Charles Truman Jenkins, (Inventor of television) Charles Corby, (the inventor of baking technology used for Wonder Bread) and Howard Austen, you know, Gore Vidal's partner. (they met long after Vidal's relationship with Anaïs Nin and Joanne Woodward) Can you imagine what interesting dinner partners they would make? I'm sure the conversations around the bone yard get pretty lively around midnight... Cant you just see old Upton reading from his 1906 novel The Jungle over a nice boeuf bourguignon?

Cheers.

First Blush
2 oz Three Olives® vodka

1oz Canton® ginger liqueur
1.5oz agave juice
a squeeze of fresh lime juice

1 strawberry
4 basil leaves
In a mixing tin, muddle the strawberry, basil, and Agave nectar. Add the rest of the ingredients, shake very well with ice and strain into a glass. Garnish with a strawberry.

Ling Chi

2009-07-05T20:04:00.007-04:00

What is the worst aberration?

That which we ignore, gravely holding out for wisdom?

That from which, when we see it, we know there is no escape?

- Bataille, Method of Meditation

requiescant in pace

2009-07-03T00:13:00.003-04:00

For my brother. June 3, 1960- July 1, 2009

PEACE

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there

But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
-Rupert Brooke

poppycock

2009-06-29T22:17:00.007-04:00

OK. So today I am at the National Gallery, at 3:30pm, racing through the second floor with Mr. Moose, trying to find the four paintings called "The Voyage of Life" by Thomas Cole - a series of paintings that represent an allegory of the four stages of human life- that used to be on the first floor but now are in gallery #60, for some god-awful reason- before the parking meter expired on the south side of the building at 4 pm. After we found them, we took a moment to wander into the adjoining room so I could ramble on about the fashions depicted in the paintings by late 18th century British painters, and how the French court continued to influence the world even after the Revolution. Mid blab in front of the Gainsbourough and the Reynolds, I thought about Prince Poppycock.

“A Louis XIV confection or occasional Nancy Sinatra-esque chanteur/chanteuse in gold glitter boots with world-class vocal talent. Mr. Quale is a true artist and transforms himself Klaus Nomi style once he graces the stage. Nina Hagen would be proud, as would Diamanda Galas.” -Roy Rogers Oldenkamp for WeHoNews.com
"Part randy dandy, part rock star, part drunken courtesan, Poppycock instantly owns the audience with but a glance and a wiggle of bedazzled pantaloons, and that’s just the beginning. His operatic prowess, glamourous costumes and ostentatious prose leave not a heart unstirred. A masterpiece of self-transformation, the Prince is also recording artist John Quale, but I’m secretly hoping Poppycock will take over completely one day, to reign supreme in a glittery victory of feathers and gold spandex." I think he is simply divine.

Cheers.

Hummingbird's Tongue

1 oz bananas

1 oz coconut cream

1 oz creme de bananes

1 oz rum\1/2 oz Tia Maria® coffee liqueur

1 oz strawberries

crushed ice
Mix all ingredients in a blender until smooooooth.

of splendid obsequies

2009-06-27T08:48:00.000-04:00

HARPER'S BAZAR: APRIL 17, 1886
MOURNING AND FUNERAL USAGES

[Victorian Etiquette for Funerals]

NOTHING in our country is more undecided in the public mind than the etiquette of mourning. It has not yet received that hereditary and positive character which makes the slightest departure from received custom so reprehensible in England. We have not the mutes, or the nodding feathers of the hearse, that still form part of the English funeral equipage; nor is the rank of the poor clay which travels to its last home illustrated by the pomp and ceremony of its departure. Still, in answer to some pertinent questions, we will offer a few desultory remarks, beginning with the end, as it were - the return of the mourner to the world.
When persons who have been in mourning wish to reenter society, they should leave cards on all their friends and acquaintances, as an intimation that they are equal to the paying and receiving of calls. Until this intimation is given, society will not venture to intrude upon the mourner's privacy. In cases where cards of inquiry have been left, with the words "To inquire" written on the top of the card, these cards should be replied to by cards with "Thanks for kind inquiries" written upon them; but if cards for inquiry had not been left, this form can be omitted.
Of course there is a kind of complimentary mourning which does not necessitate seclusion - that which is worn out of respect to a husband's relative whom one may never have seen. But no one wearing a heavy crape veil should go to a gay reception, a wedding, or a theatre; the thing is incongruous. Still less should mourning prevent one from taking proper recreation: the more the heart aches, the more should one try to gain cheerfulness and composure, to hear music, to see faces which one loves: this is a duty, not merely a wise and sensible rule. Yet it is well to have some established customs as to visiting and dress in order that the gay and the heartless may in observing them avoid that which shocks every one - an appearance of lack of respect to the memory of the dead- that all society may move on in decency and order, which is the object and end of the study of etiquette.
A heartless wife who, instead of being grieved at the death of her husband, is rejoiced at it, should be taught that society will not respect her unless she pays to the memory of the man whose name she bears that "homage which vice pays to virtue," a commendable respect to the usages of society in the matter of mourning and of retirement from the world. Mourning garments have this use, that they are a shield to the real mourner, and they are often a curtain of respectability to the person who should be a mourner but is not. We shall therefore borrow from the best English and American authorities what we believe to be the most recent usages in the etiquette of mourning.
As for periods of mourning, we are told that a widow's mourning should last eighteen months, although in England it is somewhat lightened in twelve. For the first six months the dress should be of crape cloth, or Henrietta cloth covered entirely with crape, collar and cuffs of white crape, a crape bonnet with a long crape veil, and a widow's cap of white crape if preferred. In America, however, widows' caps are not as universally worn as in England. Dull black kid gloves are worn in first mourning; after that Gants de Duede or silk gloves are proper, particularly in summer. After six months' mourning the crape can be removed, and grenadine, copeau fringe, and dead trimmings used, if the smell of crape is offensive, as it is to some people. After twelve months the widow's cap is left off, and the heavy veil is exchanged for a lighter one, and the dress can be of silk grenadine, plain black gros grain, or crape-trimmed cashmere with jet trimmings, and crepe lisse about the neck and sleeves.
All kinds of black fur and seal-skin are worn in deep mourning.
Mourning for a father or mother should last one year. During half a year should be worn Henrietta cloth or serge trimmed with crape, at first with black tulle at the wrists and neck. A deep veil is worn at the back of the bonnet, but not over the head or face like the widow's veil, which covers the entire person when down. This fashion is very much objected to by doctors, who think many diseases of the eye come by this means, and advise for common use thin nuns' veiling instead of crape, which sheds its pernicious dye into the sensitive nostrils, producing catarrhal disease as well as blindness and cataract of the eye. It is a thousand pities that fashion dictates the crape veil, but so it is. It is the very banner of woe, and no one has the courage to go without it. We can only suggest to mourners wearing it that they should pin a small veil of black tulle over the eyes and nose, and throw back the heavy crape as often as possible, for health's sake.
Jet ornaments alone should be worn for eighteen months, unless diamonds set as mementos are used. For half-mourning, a bonnet of silk or chip, trimmed with crape and ribbon. Mourning flowers, and crepe lisse at the hands and wrists, lead the way to gray, mauve, and white and black toilettes after the second year.
Mourning for a brother or sister may be the same; for step-father or step-mother the same; for grandparents the same; but the duration may be shorter. In England this sort of respectful mourning only lasts three months.
Mourning for children should last nine months. The first three the dress should be crape- trimmed, the mourning less deep than that for a husband. No one is ever ready to take off mourning; therefore these rules have this advantage - they enable the friends around a grief stricken mother to tell her when is the time to make her dress more cheerful, which she is bound to do for the sake of the survivors, many of whom are perhaps affected for life by seeing a mother always in black. It is well for mothers to remember this when sorrow for a lost child makes all the earth seem barren to them.
We are often asked whether letters of condolence should be written on blackedged paper. Decidedly not, unless the writer is in black. The telegraph now flashes messages of respect and sympathy across sea and land like a voice from the heart. Perhaps it is better than any other word of sympathy, although all who can should write to a bereaved person. There is no formula possible for these letters; they must be left to the individual's good taste, and perhaps the simplest and least conventional are the best. A card with a few words pencilled on it has often been the best letter of condolence.
In France a long and deeply edged mourning letter or address, called a faire part, is sent to every one known to the family to advise them of a death. In this country that is not done, although some mention of the deceased is generally sent to friends in Europe who would not otherwise hear of the death.
Wives wear mourning for the relatives of their husbands precisely as they would for their own, as would husbands for the relatives of their wives. Widowers wear mourning for their wives two years in England; here only one year. Widowers go into society at a much earlier date than widows, it being a received rule that all gentlemen in mourning for relatives go into society very much sooner than ladies.
Ladies of the family attend the funeral of a relative if they are able to do so, and wear their deepest mourning. Servants are usually put in mourning for the head of the family - sometimes for any member of it. They should wear a plain black livery and weeds on their hats; the inside lining of the family carriage should also be of black.
The period of mourning for an aunt or uncle or cousin is of three months' duration, and that time at least should elapse before the family go out or into gay company, or are seen at theatres or operas, etc.
We now come to the saddest part of our subject, the consideration of the dead body, so dear, yet so soon to leave us; so familiar, yet so far away - the cast-off dress, the beloved clay. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes!
As for the coffin, it is simpler than formerly; and while lined with satin and made with care, it is plain on the outside - black cloth, with silver plate for the name and silver handles, being in the most modern taste. There are but few of the "trappings of woe." At the funeral of General Grant, twice a President, and regarded as the savior of his country, there was a gorgeous catafalque of purple velvet, but at the ordinary funeral there are none of these trappings. If our richest citizen were to die to-morrow, he would probably be buried plainly. Yet it is touching to see with what fidelity the poorest creature tries to "bury her dead dacent." The destitute Irish woman begs for a few dollars for this sacred duty, and seldom in vain. It is a duty for the rich to put down ostentation in funerals, for it is an expense which comes heavily on those who have poverty added to grief.
In dressing the remains for the grave, those of a man are usually "clad in his habit as he lived." For a woman, tastes differ; a white robe and cap, not necessarily shroud-like, are decidedly unexceptionable. For young persons and children, white cashmere robes and flowers are always most appropriate.
The late Cardinal, whose splendid obsequies and whose regal "lying in state" were in keeping with his high rank and the gorgeous ceremonial of his Church, was strongly opposed to the profuse use of flowers at funerals, and requested that none be sent to deck his lifeless clay. He was a modest and humble man, and always on the right side in these things; therefore let his advice prevail. A few flowers placed in the dead hand, perhaps a simple wreath, but not those unmeaning memorials which have become to real mourners such sad perversities of good taste, such a misuse of flowers. Let those who can afford to send such things devote the money to the use of poor mothers who cannot afford to buy a coffin for a dead child or a coat for a living one.
In the course of a month after a death all friends of the deceased are expected to leave cards on the survivors, and it is discretionary whether these be written on or not. These cards should be carefully preserved, that, when the mourner is ready to return to the world, they may be properly acknowledged.

Cheers.

Peachy Death

3/4 oz vodka

3/4 oz peach schnapps

3/4 oz amaretto almond liqueur

Serve on the rocks. Great for picnics in the graveyard

M.J. la vie après la mort

2009-06-25T21:22:00.019-04:00

A sensationally gifted child star who rose to become the “King of Pop” and the biggest celebrity in the world only to fall from his throne living through a freakish Gothic novel existence as well as a series of scandals, died today. An immense talent who at a young age provided a racially divided America music that brought people of all races together only to become a beloved icon as well as a provide a kind of precautionary tale of the pitfalls of the decedent and hedonistic bacchanal that is super stardom. Feeling a bitter yet strangely satisfying sense of irony, I watched live coverage of his body being routinely transported from helicopter into a simple van that was to transport the man -that was known to most of our planet for decades- to the county morgue. Death is indeed the great equalizer. As a side item, a whole lot of other people died today.
People who also might have had unusual relationships with monkeys or small boys. People who may also have hired someone to create children for them. People who also didn't pay their bills on time and who required a court order for selling off possessions to pay back their debt owed. People who hung their children out over a balcony. People who wore surgical masks and bizarre get ups in public. People that died owing a pharmacist over a hundred thousand dollars for a single years worth of medication. Yup. Just ordinary good people, with immense talents of their own, who push on through life trying to leave it slightly better than it was when they found it.
It is an understatement to say that he made some really innovative, amazing, uplifting and astonishingly great music. What will be his lasting legacy? Surely the music, but I am fascinated that people feel so strongly about a man that was sadly incapable of a normal relationship with his family or associates. I am curious about the immense adoration and the sense of ‘loss’ people are talking about. Sadly, for almost a decade he has been nothing more than fodder for the gossip mills, and artistically silent, not uncommon for an artistic genius of his caliber, but given his quite public downward spiral, should we really be surprised at the 'untimely' demise of someone who was a self professed Peter Pan, someone who wanted to "stay young forever"?
My one encounter with this megastar was in 1985 when he and his entire family were staying in the Ritz Carlton where I also happened to be at the time. The King had the most lux suite in the hotel and the banquet kitchen was reserved only for his personal chef who prepared all the meals for him and his entourage, but one night his sisters, one of whom a year later would make quite a name for herself as well, were inspired to have one the bodyguards to pop out and retrieve a large bucket of the Colonel's secret spicy chicken. A while later, a call came over the security guards radio that there was some trouble on the twelfth floor. (I know this because the radio was on the nightstand at the time- don't ask) the security guard rushed up to find that the King of Pop had eaten too much of the delicious chicky chicky bok bok, saw a large palmetto bug in his room and proceeded to have what the security report described as a "Hissy fit", ultimately barfing all over the once beautiful antique Tabriz carpet -with a lovely fish design medallion if I remember correctly- in the grand foyer of the suite. A team of housekeepers and a expert rug cleaner tried but failed to remove the stains, soon afterwards the carpet mysteriously vanished. I have a feeling that it will join the Shroud of Turin in its veneration one day.

A true showman in every way, in his dazzling costumes and his quirky personal style of dress has been an inspiration to me over the years, so in his memory, I've made a solemn promise to myself to break from the gay herd and give up the habit of wearing that ubiquitous article of style-less clothing known as "cargo shorts" during the summer months -That is, once I am flush enough to afford a proper Hermes "Kelly" man-purse to carry my Demerol around in - and a Balmain Jackson-esque military jacket.

Bon Voyage.

Jesus Juice

4 oz Bell's® Scotch whisky

4 oz Smirnoff® vodka

4 oz Foster's® lager

4 oz Strongbow® cider

1 splash blackcurrant squash
Get a beer glass, and fill a 1/4 of it with the whisky. Add vodka until half full, then the Fosters beer until 3/4 full. Add the cider 'til glass is almost full. Add a hint of blackcurrant squash.

Sigmund the Sea Monster and Ex Oblivione

2009-06-20T00:14:00.015-04:00

I have been imbibing in a little frothy summer reading as of late. Usually at bed time.
Nothing relaxes one more after a long day hacking through the Glamour Jungle than perusing a slim volume of histoires de sortilège. Just a little Poe, Lovecraft or a little Evelyn Waugh, for example, always helps send me off to dream land.
The best part are the creative dreams that come about after reading these authors. Here is my latest dream, hmmm how shall I explain it... Lets see if I can explain it in a mathematical equation. OK it goes something like this: Sid and Marty Krofft + H.P. Lovecraft = S&M Lovekrofft... "The Call of Sigmund!" *sigh* Did I ever tell you the story about Me, Johnny Whitaker and the co-star from "The Mystery In Dracula's Castle", Scott Kolden? Oh, well. Maybe some cold evening in front of the fire...

So now then, here's a bedtime story! Enjoy.

Ex Oblivione

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victims body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.
Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars.
Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight, iridescent arbours, and undying roses.
And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a little gate of bronze.
Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein.
After awhile, as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon the little gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return.
So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. And I would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more lovely and radiant as well.
Then one night in the dream-city of Zakarion I found a yellowed papyrus filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city, and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world. Therein were written many things concerning the world of dream, and among them was lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wall pierced by a little bronze gate. When I saw this lore, I knew that it touched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus.
Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through, I resolved to take it when next I awaked.
Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antique wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never return.
But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and the dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hope to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

- H. P. Lovecraft

Cheers and pleasant dreams!

Tokyo Tea

1/2 oz vodka

1/2 oz rum

1/2 oz gin

1/2 oz 1800® Tequila

1/2 oz triple sec

1 oz Midori® melon liqueur
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake, strain into a small highball glass filled with ice, and serve.

she's in parties (part cinq)

2009-06-14T21:25:00.011-04:00

"And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man." -A.E. Housman

Ah drinking. The Booze, the Hooch, the ruin of many a good man and the shaper of empires. Why, my own father ran rum over the Canadian border during the Prohibition days, the so called noble experiment, he made quite a nice fortune of it really, working for Jewish gangsters in Chicago. Really. I know, Jewish gangsters... huh. I also learned that the word Hooch came from the Hoochinoo Indians in Alaska that made an especially potent bootleg liquor, yeah, I know, funny that.

Anyway, there is a time and place for everything and I think that this would be a nice time to ramble off about drinking. How to do it and what to drink.

How, of course is the most important thing I shall talk about because, just like piloting an aeroplane or having sex, its much more conducive to a "happy landing", shall we say, if one knows how to properly conduct oneself in the "drivers seat." It is much much more than tipping back ones little beaky and guzzling the last of the tequila along with the worm. Oh yes, there is a certain protocol one must adhere to.

The Why of Hooch

But first why drink at all? As the how of drinking properly is not really a matter of manners, the why is that it is a matter of necessity, as modern life would be unbearable if one had to always face it stone cold sober. Think "piano recital featuring ten year old children".

There now, don't you agree? Hmmmm?

Speaking of ten year olds, the Drink is most important for young people because it provides a sort of "liquid adulthood."
If you are young and drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, age your face horribly until you resemble an apple-head doll - if you know what that is you get the visual- and make you fat in the most unattractive areas of your body.

In other words, it turns you into an adult. If you want to have one of those great, beefy, impressively red faces that politicians and corporation presidents have, better start drinking as early in life and stay with it. Heavy drinking will also give you a mature and authoritative-sounding voice, especially when combined over a long time spent in smoky bars.

If you are are older, alcohol is even more important. Even if you are a follower of Objectivism, it provides you with all of those things that are lacking in modern life because of the rapid disappearance of organized religion and domestic servants. Booze makes you feel important when you are not, it makes you feel sexy when you are not, it makes you feel witty, well, etc. and so forth. If you are important, sexy or witty, it makes you have a smug sense of security, and it gives you the incontrovertible reason not to have sexual relations. And, what's best, is the fact that booze can provide the one thing so many adults are so laking these days, sleep.

The other side of the coin is that it is the tried and true method of slowly and methodically ending your life prematurely, ala the Barrymore family and their ilk.

The single drawback in ones attempt at self destruction is that you may not drink enough and will see the things come to pass that you have been dreading, like the greenhouse effect, nuclear war, years of bad television and becoming one of those crazy old drunks -you know, the ones that think they are Ab Fabulous but are indeed not- that outlive all of their peers and are bumming drinks at resort hotel bars and wearing iridescent white sunglasses that match their lipstick. (and their adult diapers)
There is a side to drinking that does have to do with courtesy, however. That is, there are times when it would be very bad manners to be sober. Some of these occasions are at a funeral of someone you knew or claimed to, your daughter's wedding reception, your own wedding reception, a Bris Milah- unless you are the Mohel- and anytime the Dow-Jones average drops more than 500 points in a day. Not to be a little tight during these situations will make you seem, unfeeling, insensitive, and in the case of the last, financially inconsequential.

And that would drive one to drink.

Cheers.

Altas Shrugged

perfect for summer reading and/or drinking
2 parts Senator's Club® whiskey

1 part Blue Curacao liqueur

1 splash orange juice

fill with cranberry juice

Mix in shaker with ice. Strain and serve.

she's in parties (part quatre)

2009-06-06T15:16:00.023-04:00

Today I had a bit of a rude awakening. The "Stuffed Animal Bed-Side Lite Opera Ensemble", headed by spokes-plushes Polie and The Monkey, announced to me that it was time to present a new piece, something about stipulations in their contracts, blah blah blah, so I am now committed to finish writing the epic "Porky and Asbestos", an opera about the rise of a humble yet beautiful young pig from the blush of youth through a tumultuous career with OSHA. Look for it playing in my bed in the near future.

Thinking about opera got me thinking- about opera. I have always been a big fan. Why, right before I was born, my Dear Papa and Mam'zelle went to see Maria Callas as Medea in a rare US performance. Mother recalls that when Callas walked up the long set of stairs on the stage in her red wig and blood-smeared costume, grasping a blood-stained knife with which she has killed her two children, I kicked her so hard, she lost her breath.
I didn't want her getting any ideas, always looking ahead, that's me.

For many people, the word opera only brings to mind funny visual images like Bugs Bunny in drag as Valkyrie Brünnhilde opposite Elmer Fudd as the demigod Siegfried in composer Richard Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. This is not at all a bad thing, that cartoon gave many a young person the important message that opera is not only totally accessible, but that sometimes its good to shake it up a little, to blow the dust off as it were.
I saw Ken Russell's production of Madama Butterfly (Puccini) during Spoleto and again in Houston. It was unbelievable. The "cast" was mingling around outside the opera house (in full costume) and I had this great feeling like I was in the middle of a Ken Russell movie.
Russell said in an interview, "I wanted to get across Puccini's message- the real clash between East and West. I mean, I feel the piece was prophetic. Why, for example, should Puccini have chosen to set in in Nagasaki? He could have chosen hundreds of other places in Japan. Well, when I saw that, the rest just fell into place. I worked back from the bomb and ended up in a brothel".
Ken's direction includes Madama Butterfly putting a Mickey Mouse mask on her child to illustrate his Americanization, at the wedding feast the sailors bring cans of beer. During the beautiful and moving "Coro a bocca chiusa" when Suzuki and Cio-Cio San (Madama Butterfly) are spreading flower blossoms around the place -in the usual production- to prepare for the return of her beloved, Russell has Butterfly spread corn flakes around instead. Russell ends the opera with Butterfly committing suicide- not in front of a statue of Buddha but instead in front of the Frigidaire ice box, a present from Pinkerton, and with a simulation of the explosion of the atom bomb, cleverly staged by suddenly flashing two hundred keg lights arranged around the front of the stage, pointed at the audience- that makes for blinding yet truly brilliant theater.
For some it is a sad thing that opera has become so accessible and wide spread, that it is getting harder and harder to admit that you know nothing about it. No worries, my lips are sealed.

And so this primer is for the ill informed and designed to help you keep your head at least above water with a real aficionado (who won't let you talk much anyway) you may have the chance to chat with at a cocktail party, wake or post-coitally and to dazzle the countless people who think that opera is only for the very rich or the very clever. (You want to be at least one of these.)

General information is that Italian operas have beautiful melodies, German operas are long and "heavy", French opera has ballets and choruses, Russian opera is Boris Godunov, British opera is Benjamin Britten, is in English, but is totally indecipherable, and American Opera is not an issue- sneer at the mere suggestion- but say you like Akhnaten written by composer Philip Glass, simply because it's libretto is true to its eighteenth dynasty (1336 BC or 1334 BC.) Egyptian storyline, and on occasion you have enjoyed Gershwin's Porgy and Bess only for it's guileless charm.

And then there is Mozart.

A word or two about Mozart, he wrote his first opera when he was twelve. it's called La Finta Semplice, is short and uninteresting, "but isn't it amazing that a twelve year old could write an opera?" Don Giovanni is arguably the greatest opera ever written, but the Magic Flute (refer to it merely as "Flute" in conversation) has the most glorious music. The Marriage of Figaro is delightful, and it is okay to prefer it in English, because "so much of the wonderful humour is lost in Italian." This and Die Fledermaus are the only operas you will not prefer in the original language.

As for Wagner and his problems, he was first and foremost a rotten human being. He was married to Franz Liszt's daughter, but he cheated on her. He wrote the words and the music to his operas, and was Hitler's favorite composer. The Ring cycle is sixteen hours long and is too much to digest, but you "love Tristan and Isolde, it has such sensual music."

Verdi vs. Puccini" Verdi is greater, but you find Puccini far more "moving and realistic."

Verdi wrote in three basic periods- early, middle and late- really, this is real opera terminology.

Verdi wrote Othello when he was seventy-three and Falstaff when he was seventy-nine, you find them "right up there with Don Giovanni for greatness."

Puccini died right before he finished Turandot, someone else finished it, just like when Bela Lugosi died during the filming of "Plan Nine from Outer Space". Hmmm, well sort of.

A general roundup of other composers include Rossini, who retired at thirty-seven and threw parties in Paris, Bellini, who died at thirty-three and wrote operas that are hard to sing, Donizetti, who contracted syphilis and wrote very little after he was thirty-five. He did however manage to squeeze in almost seventy operas. And of course the one hit wonder of the opera world, Mascagni, who never wrote anything as good as Cavalleria Rusticana.

There now. This should be enough knowledge for you to buck the most headstrong opera buff in a social situation, but next time you are at the nearest Barnes and Noble looking at "Art Photography", wander over and crack a book of opera stories, you'll be hooked.

Cheers.

The Opera House Special

1 shot 1800® Tequila

1 shot gin

1 shot white rum

1 shot vodka
1 shot pineapple juice

1 shot orange juice

1 shot sweet and sour mix

Add all ingredients to a metal mixer and strain into a shot glass. Now you can sit through the entire Ring Cycle, albeit in an alcoholic stupor...

she's in parties (part trois)

2009-05-31T21:53:00.018-04:00

"If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." -Oliver Goldsmith
"Even when given more than a thousand choices, people prefer the sound of their own voices."- le Cornichon

Searching for successful ways and means in the quest to being an upstanding citizen, socially that is, is a task that can be as daunting as the search for Flaubert's Parrot, The Holy Grail or finding something in my size from the Jean Pierre Braganza Autumn/Winter ‘09 collection. (*sigh* I need those fur shoes...) To start with, it is of the utmost importance to let the world know you exist. To "blow your own horn" so to speak. The best way to let yourself heard, is, well, to let yourself be heard. The shrewed art of conversation has been key to the rise of such sows ears to silk purses as Helena Rubinstein, who was a keen conversationalist and also known for apocryphal quips, such as when an intoxicated French ambassador expressed vitriol toward Edith Sitwell and her brother Sacheverell: “Vos ancêtres ont brûlé Jeanne d’Arc!” “What did he say?," Rubinstein, who knew little French, asked a guest. “He said, ‘Your ancestors burned Joan of Arc.’ ” Rubinstein replied, "Well, someone had to do it". Cheeky monkey that Helena...

But why talk at all? How clever and original to be silent, But no one in their right mind does that, because talking accomplishes so many things that silence cannot. Conversation gives substance to vaporous emotions, room to air hidden anxieties. It exalts the ego, perfects the self image and puts your mark on the environment. When you go around the room at a party, speaking to each person in turn, you're like a naughty kitty marking every corner of a new penthouse. Bad puss puss.
In the present philosophical haze, talk is used as a sort of foghorn for the ship of the mind. It announces your ever shifting opinions on things in the hope that you will escape having your hull punctured by such metaphysical icebergs as religious fundamentalism, solving the economic downturn or support for the wars raging on in "those dusty parts of the planet." The fact that foghorns are useless for avoiding icebergs only improves the metaphor.
Conversations also help fill certain voids in existence. In a world in which we are constantly bombarded by stimuli- broadcast media, Muzak, bright lights, bold graphics, scents: indeed, sounds sights and smells of every kind- even the damned cheerful sounds of birds singing, for some reason, in those ungodly hours before noon when proper persons are still sleeping- there are still moments of quiet repose and calm. You can get rid of them by talking. One thing mere talk cannot accomplish, however, is communication. This is because every body's talking too much to pay attention to what anyone else is saying. Real communication therefore should be done through lawyers or through the purchasing of air time for a late night infomercial.
Actually people do pay attention every now and then if what is being said is intensely personal. Therefore people will always listen to Flattery and Gossip. These sisters are very important gals to get acquainted with in your rise to the top of the dung heap, um, I mean social ladder, of course... Lets invite them up into our Chanel Tree-house, shall we? Oh look. cupcakes! Yums. Let's begin.

The beauty of flattery is that it is so easy. Say anything that pops into your head, "What lifelike maquillage you are wearing this evening Countess!" or "Oh twaddle, hairy knuckles are this seasons must have, Your Majesty!" See how easy it is? Flattery is like money, it does not need to have any intrinsic worth, and neither its source nor the intended object of its use deprives it of any charm in peoples eyes. You cannot go to far with flattery, if you want to be polite. Tell people they're brilliant, beautiful, important and accomplished with the morals of a saint. This is known as lying, but it is old fashioned but still widely used by those people who are smart enough to know whether they are telling the truth or not.
A much more modern approach than lying, one that requires less thought and energy, is to develop a lack of personal sense of judgement, so thorough that you really believe the people you are talking to are brilliant, beautiful, important and accomplished with the morals of a saint. This state can be achieved by not paying attention to what anyone says for twenty or so years or by drinking grain alcohol for breakfast- not recommended if you carpool.
Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present. Gossip is very similar to flattery in that sense and judgement should play no part in its formulation. Gossip can far more solidly grounded in fact than flattery, especially vicious gossip, given the way most people conduct themselves these days, this should pose no problem.
Never gossip about people you don't know, the best subject of gossip is someone you and your audience know and love dearly, the enjoyment of gossip is thus doubled: "To the delight of disapprobation is added the additional delight of pity." Mmmm delish, I know.

So, make sure you audience not only loves the person that you are telling something dreadful about, but also the kind of dreadfulness about which you are telling. That is, if you are speaking to thieves, gossip about someone stealing. The thieves will have an intimate understanding of the subject and in addition ill be flattered that you assume they are honest; if you didn't, you wouldn't be be talking about thievery and such in front of them... win win win...as they say.... somewhere, I think in corporate cubes- or rather cubicle.... um, things.

A far superior topic for gossip than stealing is, of course, sex. This is because most sex acts take place in private and are easy to deny, and, mon petite, nothing indicts like denial. Other worthwhile subjects of your precious venom are secret drunkenness and drug addiction. You certainly can also gossip about someones public drug or alcohol consumption that 9 out of 10 times if asked they will freely admit to, and if a person has no shame about his behavior, it's really your duty to supply some. Bon mots and bouquets are sure to follow, as manners are supposed to increase the pleasure, and half the pleasure of acting up is the feeling of having done something terribly naughty or socially forbidden.

It would be wrong, however, to assume that all gossip is negative. You can gossip about your friends tremendous success, like the faboo movie directing job he just got by stealing the idea from someone else- that will remain nameless (toujours- oui? ha ha) and committing a perverted sex act that included a Barbie doll in the roll of the Christ Child's Immaculate birth with the producer. Whatever your tidbit of prime boeuf is, make sure you tell your audience not to say they heard it from you. This will, of course, remind them to say that you did. It's an old trick, albeit a sneaky one, but you don't want all the gruesome stories that took you so long to dig up being circulated without attribution. Progeny being Destiny and all that rot. Yawn. More later- you are looking a little tired dear. Are you sleeping well? Oh well, here's a wee nightcap to conjure up old Morpheus... or is it Hypnos... a white trash elixir that will knock you off your Manolo's.

The Southern Death Cult

2 oz Jack Daniel's® Tennessee whiskey

2 oz Southern Comfort® peach liqueur

2 oz Wild Turkey® bourbon whiskey

3 oz Coca-Cola

3 oz 7-Up soda
Put ice in a highball glass and the add the liquors. Top the glass off with Coke and 7-up and a lemon twist. Stir. Do not under any circumstances tell anyone where you got this recipe. Promise? Oh goody.

she's in parties (part two)

2009-05-24T21:51:00.033-04:00

"Members of the upper class, love the sound of breaking glass." - Maurice Barring

"A Gentleman is one who never inflicts pain." -Cardinal Newman
"Unintentionally." -Oscar Wilde

The subtle and magical art of acting up is, I am afraid , a bit of a dying art, outside of a ivied walls of the Skull and Bones "Tomb", the so called secret society at Yale University, or the bar at the Ritz in Paris on a Thursday night. Knowing the difference between acting up and acting the fool is as important as knowing the difference between Lerner and Loewe and Leopold and Loeb.

I started my own career in the art of acting up as a wee child, (until then I was just dabbling really) in an experiment that went rather well. I came bounding into the sitting room at age two, and proceeded to pull my rompers down to my ankles, bend over and called the new puppy into the room to lick my ass. All this in front of the noticeably startled Archbishop that was having tea and, until that moment, a more or less pleasant conversation with my parents at the time. I went pro a few years later when I took it upon myself to steal... excuse me, borrow, the skeleton key that my Bisnonna Tick Tock always kept with her- the key to all the rooms in her enormous plantation house, including the rooms that I, or anyone, were not allowed in- this act not only led to the rising of my starring role as the Duke of never-ending naughtiness, it also led to my fascination of all things slightly macabre and/or decorated with skulls as well as the realization that my life was to be one big Southern Gothic novel. With extra sparkles please.

I suppose it is important to explain my desire to borrow this important key from my Bisnonna; quite simple actually, I had started pretending, on a regular basis, that I was a secret KGB operative by the name of May-Ling Mitsuko, and the key was to the nuclear missile launcher. See? Doesn't that make perfect sense? Of course it does.

Truly, it is in my humble opinion that it is a basic tenant of modern manners that everyone likes to act up. There is nothing wrong with this, but remember what I have said before about rules, like table manners, and be sure you are fully aware of which rules you are breaking, as the only unforgivable acts of misbehavior are accidental. Ignorance of the law is no defence and ignorance of the laws of etiquette is a crime in itself. (punishable by unthinkable tortures like being made to wear black shoes with a brown belt for six months to a year, or worse, during The Season)

Now, if you throw a drink in the face of a congressman, it will be regarded as a political statement, or as a moral judgement if you are from New Orleans, or as an enviable thing others have been dying to do. But if you did not know he was a congressman, it will be regarded as a felonious assault. - with me so far? Oh, goody.

Once you know what you're doing is wrong, it's easy to learn how to get away with it. The first technique of misbehavior is to be cute. When generations after World War II began to act up, they wore flowers and feathers in their hair, painted their bodies with fluorescent paint, danced around in a drugged haze at city parks, and went around sticking daisies into rifle barrels. The media adored it because it was cute, but later when the same people began doing things like threatening to vote, it was necessary to give them the brown acid and kill them at Kent State. Their worst violation of course was their decision to grow old and become lawyers and congressmen, to be cute you must be young or at least appear so, even if only mentally. If you had a great big adult dog that whined all night, chewed your Manolo's to bits and piddled on Great Grand Ma-Ma's rug, you would have it put down, but when a puppy does those things it's cute. If you absolutely positively cant find it in you realm of experience to be cute, be rich.

Rich people are allowed to water stock issues, manipulate commodity prices, and trade bonds with privileged information gained on the squash court. The equivalent sort of things, when done by the poor, are called stealing. The same double standard applies to a number of other activities such as operating motor vehicles under the influence (as long as the motor vehicle is a 50 foot yacht) and creating a public nuisance, like Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles. We allow a great deal of latitude to the rich, this is our way of making it up to them for creating a society in which everything can be had, for a price, but indeed, nothing that is offered is worth having. (except cake) Even better than being cute or rich is being pretty.

Pretty people are forgiven absolutely everything and anything they do, There is a good reason for this, if it weren't for them, our sexual fantasies would be ever so much the duller and there would have never been the phenomenon of "Friends" and it's one-million-dollar-an-episode-a-cast-member-apiece price paid for such dull comedy.

If you are adult, homely, and what is known as poor, the best thing to do is to be charming. Try to make the bad things you do fun for absolutely everyone. If you are drinking and driving and you smash you car into someone else's car, be equipped to give the other driver a drink as well, and always be sure to offer one to the police when they arrive, although it won't keep you out of the inevitable trouble that surely will follow, it certainly makes for a more festive get-together for all parties involved.

If you lack charm, claim insanity. Being insane is an excellent way to get away with silly and impulsive behavior like throwing a shoe at the President or a running chainsaw at a lover. (toujours. ha ha.) The only problem with the insanity plea is that insanity has become so fashionable these days that you may run across a judge that is as crazy as you are and could end up in something much worse than jail, such as being bent over said judges lap wearing a pinafore and a bonnet having your ass spanked on a bi-weekly basis or a three book deal with a questionable publisher.

If none of this is working, (takes big gulp of absinthe) turn the destruction on yourself. When you have been around the dance floor at the bachelors cotillion discreetly shooting bleach out of a water pistol on the other dancers finery, don't forget your own brand new seven thousand dollar Alexander McQueen suit. You will hardly notice a difference.

When you are busting up someones collection of Boheme china birds, bust them onto your own forehead. (nothing cuts as well as bisque china, outside of coral) It's people who live in brick houses who shouldn't throw stones, for by hurting yourself you show others that what you're doing is "adorable" and "extravagant" or "uncontrollable" because of your nature, not aggressive. This, my dears, was the difference in Jim Jones on Guyana and Charlie Manson in LA, for instance. Sort of.

Speaking of suicide- and we were- that's a great ploy too, if you've been very, very bad. With a little experimentation you will find there are a dozen way to cut yourself around the wrist area and bleed all over the place without actually causing any lasting damage- other than the carpet- or, you don't actually have to do anything at all, just call a friend or someone whom has been on the receiving end of your acting up, and say that you have taken an entire bottle of Nembutal, or whatever it is the kids are doing these days. Everything will be forgiven, but of course the hospital will insist on pumping your stomach, but this will seem a small price to pay if you have checked to see what Boheme china birds are worth these days. If you decide that suicide is a bit too formal a way to pay for whatever destruction you have wrought, there is nothing wrong with paying for it in money. Alas, if you have had any real fun, full compensation will be way beyond your means. The easiest thing to do is to carry a big roll of cash around with you wherever you go. This should consist of a fifty dollar bill wrapped around about fifty one dollar bills. (anyone should be willing to pay a measly hundred dollars for a really spectacular melee in which he starred as the center of attention) Then- when you have upended your hostesses Hepplewhite chairs and piled them in the center of the room to reenact your Great Uncle's exploits at the siege of Ladysmith, and then torn down your hostesses drapes to do your impression of Armani's fall line, and used the remaining case of Beaujolais-Villages to prove to her how much better the Chinese rug would look in burgundy- then you can toss your roll of bills on the hall table and swiftly bid a fond adieu. You will be long gone by the time she has counted it, and later when she tells everyone that you didn't leave enough to cover the damages, they will think that she's trying to belittle your grand gesture.

The very last, endmost, most desperate means of getting away with misbehavior is by making an excuse. This is very risky and should be left to experts. All the world hates excuses. It starts with "The dog ate my homework" and progresses, dismally, from there. Also, an excuse only works when you have an audience that's very sympathetic to you in the first place, like your Mother. Sometimes you do something really bad- like being a Nazi, for instance- that demands some kind of excuse. Here is an exercise in excuse making which illustrates some of the difficulties. Pretend, if you can, that you are Adolph Eichmann and you are trying to excuse yourself to your Mother for having killed hundreds of thousands at Auschwitz. See if any of these excuses work:

*I was in a real rush and I just threw something together.

*Isn't that just like me? I could just kick myself!

*Ugh, I was under a lot of pressure at work.

No they don't. So. There you are.
Cheers.

Pomegranate Vodka Martini
A bottle of Jack and case of beer may be every man’s summertime staple, but we bet your girl is tired of drinking PBR out of that cooler that’s been in your yard since last year…
1.5 oz Three Olives® Pomegranate Vodka
1 oz POM® pomegranate juice
1.5 oz fresh Blackberry Puree
1 oz cranberry juice
Shake well with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass.

she's in parties (part one)

2009-05-19T22:14:00.017-04:00

"...It was at the Sacré Coeur spring dance and garden party, at Missy Boudreaux's house- on St. Charles- We hadn't even been properly introduced , but she was sweet enough to follow me into the powder room and hold my hair while I puked into the bidet. It was my deb year so I of course was wearing white, and do you know, she was kind enough to pin her wrist corsage over the puke stain on my dress... That's the kind of friend she was... " -Bitsy Charbonnet (from Uptown)

I tend to attend parties, so of course, it is natural that I should want to sing their praises as well as pick them apart as do piranhas adore picking apart a careless cow stooping to drink from the Amazon river.
So, speaking of Piranhas, lets start with the most archaic of parties, one that is held outside, for some godless reason.
Garden parties are afternoon affairs that were extremely popular in the first half of the twentieth century -and still remain as popular among the elite of the south-eastern quarter of the United States- that were invented and encouraged by nationalistic European governments in order to make people so bored that they were willing to have a first and second World War- anything to get out of attending another garden party.
Garden parties consist of standing around in a garden -with perhaps the addition of drinking dismally low proof yet sticky sweet drinks in the heat of the day, as a reward for showing up in your crinolines and/or seersucker and/or linen finery.
That is all.
The only way to get a worthwhile amount of alcohol out of this is to sneak in your own flask or if you fail to have the opportunity to spike the punch yourself, actually dunk your entire head into the punch bowl. As a matter of fact the real cause of the first World War was a German ambassador doing just that at a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. (for public consumption, however, a story was circulated about Archduke Ferdinand's assassination.)
There are particular types of persons that are key to the success of these parties.
There is of course The Debbies, the young and fresh, shiny, happy people, (usually because of the contents of Mummy's medicine cabinet) that, at first blush, are shy, demure and dewy, or bronzed, stacked, blond and full of "All American Team Spirit", who are later to be found having sex in the parking lot or in the formal powder room snorting blow.
Then there's The Hot Walker and the Crypt Keeper, a hot, young and poor man who escorts a old and very rich widow to the party. Everyone is to assume that the two are having "pretend sex" that is, the young man actually does have sex with the older woman, yet we all pretend that it never happens. (Even the young man does this.) Next, there is The Beard.
The Beard is secretly a knob-gobbler that is out on a date with another person that is either secretly a tuna-twizzler or simply bored with her husband who is in the habit of making passes at the other bored female guests in the sweltering heat of the garden. The perfect union occurs when the two decide to marry, then they have a garden party of their own. These unions are for the most part successful, possibly because they play cards a lot. Pansies trump mother in laws tongue.
The Stalking Horse is the next perfect garden party date, they are the person that you go out with in order to make the person you really want to date insanely jealous. The only stipulation is that you actually have to sleep with the Stalking Horse or you won't make the person you really want insanely jealous. It is important that you excite this emotion well enough, hopefully to the point of either causing your jealous suitor to drive Daddy's Bentley into a wall -or bayou- or into his having twenty one roses delivered every other day with a note scrawled "Forgive me" for six months until you either tire of the color choices available in roses or you decide he has suffered enough- for now. This is the highest form of flattery.
There are always the additional ornaments, sparkling figures dressed to kill that you know spent $255.00 on their floral micro briefs (read: man panties for the really rich) from Tomas Maier, (I can get them for $68.00 on gilt.com, don't judge me...) that are welcome, yet somewhat rare, these are Hollywood types, celebrity chefs and/or lawyers and the ubiquitous Mob/Kennedy Family members that make one a trifle uneasy when they tell the hostess she has a "Sweet chassis".........

Mix and mingle...
Garden Party Bomb Pop
A versatile drink. Whether you're making it in a rocks glass, a cocktail glass, or a tall highball or Collins glass, all you need is equal amounts of each ingredient. Simple!
2 oz Bacardi® Razz rum
2 oz lemonade
2 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
Pour the Bacardi Razz rum into a small rocks glass or otherwise. Add blue curacao, and then lemonade, and serve.

"Jerk Chicken" ... wait, what?

2009-05-11T10:58:00.026-04:00

On this trip to New Orleans, I have made quite the glutton of myself, (le oink) having had many extraordinary meals in beautifully appointed private homes and swanky five star restaurants, and last evening was no exception.
I was treated to a delightful meal across the rue from Chez Moose, at Palazzo Petrol, the home of Madame Peu de Joie Petrol And her adorable companion and bodyguard Chevalier Petrol. (Hi-Octane to his friends) We were a small group this particular evening, just the Petrols' and I, and her Parentals, "Dotty" with her husband La vie de Brian. (Once again I was lucky enough to find myself on the receiving end of Mme. Dotty's unyielding passion and heart-touching devotion to subjects not usually known to mere mortals, outside of The Vatican Library) Even though The Petrols' were in the middle of having their entire first floor of said palace renovated, Mme P. was able to prepare and present a fabulous meal, with her own tiny well manicured hands, fab picnic fare -a ton of food, with a sort of nouvelle jerk chicken and brazenly large sausages as prime players in this particular made for TV movie- AND all this without actually having a kitchen at the time, it's the damndest thing, how do people do it? -I will tell you all about the duck a l'orange made on the grill some other time. (And show you the scars.)

It seems like, over the years, I have spent the better part of my leisure time at the table. I am very lucky to not only have a very keen sense of smell and taste- blame it on the lycanthropy- I am also blessed to have a handful of close friends that are quite handy in the kitchen. (it is a well documented fact that some of the best meals I have had prepared and beautifully presented to my grateful snout have been made by Monsieur Moose) The fact that a number of our planets most incredible restaurants happen to be in my own home town of New Orleans does not come as a surprise, as an appreciation for all matter of things that pertain to the five senses seems to be in the blood of this cities citizens.
It is not unusual at the least for a meal to last at least six hours here, for it was not that long ago there were ten meals eaten throughout the day, breakfast, elevenses, lunch, luncheon, tiffin, high tea, tea, dinner, supper and a midnight snack, so naturally we tend to just stay at the table for as long as possible, call it a habit.
In other places where the cuisine is less than stellar, I think playing with food is the reason that dining in restaurants has become more popular. Playing with food is a psychologically powerful way of attracting attention to yourself, other than cleavage. Restaurants are better places to attract attention to yourself than at friends' homes are, anyway because you usually know in advance who is going to be at a friend's home, and one is always excited to perform to a fresh audience, no?
Practically anyone could be at a restaurant, and if you attract enough attention in a restaurant, maybe a rich and beautiful person will give you money or sex. Or cake, which is better.
Where as a food fight is considered rude -and downright dangerous if you run with a fast crowd- playing with food is easy, there are so many wonderful props at hand. Breathes there a man with a soul so dead that he us immune to the charms of blowing air through a straw, making tiny gin and tonic bubbles? And what of the theatrical possibilities of a plate full of fried calamari? Even bank presidents and pontiffs have been know to put the tentacles up to their noses and pretend that they are the monstrous Cthulhu and the garlic bread is the church of Rome.
But playing with food must be done correctly or it will lead to social disaster.
The secret to successful sport with foodstuffs is the correct attitude. The act itself needs to be fast, loud and enthusiastic. You must make your high spirit contagious before anyone has time for second thoughts, second thoughts usually consist of calling the police.
But if your timing and attitude is right, you can floor the crowd with a quick performance, like putting a lettuce leaf mane around the neck of your date, hold him or her at bay with your chair and command them to leap upon the table and rear up on their hind legs- everyone will think it's great fun.

Here are some other ideas to stoke the imagination:
*Use steamed mussels as castanets, slip sugar bowls over the toes of your shoes and perform, in a flamenco style, the seductive Seguidilla ("Près des remparts de Séville") from Carmen.
*If everyone is having beef, run around the table and try and put the cow back together while singing the "Cow-cow Boogie".
*Use any roast bird as a hand puppet, you can achieve startling realistic results by jamming you thumb and forefinger into the wing sockets- point out that the bird has lost it head and either use that as an excuse to have it run around the table pinching the guests noses, or supply the bird with a head using one of the other diners baked potato, then pretend that she is a young black girl in need of a fresh weave. (use vermicelli if available) If an encore is warranted there is always "The Chicken Dance"
*Pretend you are former president Bush (sr.) and illustrate the Persian gulf strategy on the napkin in someones lap. asparagus spears are capital ships; chunks of boeuf bourguignon are air to surface missiles, etc. (if there are any Vietnam vets in the crowd you can use the Sterno from under the chaffing dish to recreate the effects of napalm) Temper your battle plan by the age of the crowd.
*Hang a grilled trout on the wall like a trophy and make your fellow guest pose with it, or better yet stand on the table and re-enact landing it with an umbrella and a shoelace.
*Gather up veal scallops and have an impromptu game of cards- sauce Milanese is trump.
*Use a raw oyster to show a fellow diner what it would be like to French kiss a reptile. Or your 5th grade math teacher, ah, Brother Joseph, toujours plaisant... (caution: can get very "9 1/2 Weeks" very quickly)
*Porterhouse steaks make excellent Frisbees.
*Perform Baptisms or Exorcisms with the water from the finger bowl. You can also re-enact the manicure scene from "The Women". (do both the Olga and the Mary Haines parts for hilarious results)

The list is endless, let imagination rather than taste be your guide.
To your health.

Lethal Weapon
1 shot Bacardi® 151 rum
2 shots vodka
1 can La Casera (a traditional Spanish brand of soda)
dash triple sec
Combine all ingredients into a tall glass and serve with ice.

The Maid of Orleans

2009-05-09T22:56:00.017-04:00

Vivre? Les serviteurs feront cala pour nous.
-Philipe Auguste Villers, De L'Isle-Adam

I often wonder, why it is that I cannot for the life of me keep the simplest of this worlds necessities, a Maid.
I suppose it is a bit daunting to be cleaning all alone in rooms filled with - um, interesting things, shall we say- The unusual "Cabinet of Curiosities", the glorious to some, disturbing to others sacred and profane furnishings of Mt. Varnum and certainly at Chez Moose.
The look has certainly progressed over the years from the opulent "Delusions of Grand Ma-ma" style and into a more "19th century bordello meets the private apartments at the Vatican with a soupcon of Addams Family" vibe.
I have had many a housekeeper run screaming into the bright of day just because, "Dios mio, the paintings eyes, they move!"- or their obnoxious wariness around the countless crucifixes and suffering carved saints, (rescued from monasteries around the world thank you very much) -that tired old and sometimes hysteric complaint about the lovely -and beautifully dentured mind you- collection of two thousand year old human skulls leering at them while they Swiffer the joint, or their reluctance to enjoy the true artisan-ship of the pieces we have amassed over the years, like the life-size 17th century severed head of John the Baptist that rests in a gilded tray on an end table, next to the reliquary collection. The Spanish ones.
I so envy Mazeppa, her girl, Cabeza Cacahuete, is a real gem, truly the Maid of (New) Orleans, she is encouraged to clean the place while wearing some of Mazeppas most precious, and may I say, historic, jewelry. The image of her running the Meila while wearing "Chucks" (she adorably calls them her "Tenis") on her feet and the Grand Arch Duchesses tiara on her head always makes me smile.
What happened?
Until recently a prosperous family employed a housekeeper to superintend the general domestic establishment: a butler to take charge of the dining room, the pantry and parlor floor; footmen to answer the door and assist in serving the table; a valet and ladies maid to attend the personal needs of the master and mistress of the house; parlor maids, kitchen maids, and chambermaids do the cleaning; a gardener to tend the grounds; a cook to prepare meals; a chauffeur to drive the cars; and perhaps a governess and a nurse if there are children.
Today all of these functions are combined to the single person of the cleaning lady who comes in at least once a week. What she does is called "A little dusting."
Among our modern, yet unwritten, rules are that before the cleaning lady arrives, it is necessary to vacuum and "straighten up" the entire house, because she works for other friends of yours and you certainly do not want her to tell them how you really live.
Be especially careful about hiding drug paraphernalia, sex toys or the stray trick/amoureux from the night before.
It is perfectly proper for you to ask your cleaning lady to iron, wash windows, polish silver, do the grocery shopping and clean up after your incontinent dog and/or Grandmother.
You can also ask her to jump through burning rings of fire with a cold leg of mutton in her mouth while lip-syncing to Edith-fucking-Piaf for all the good it will do you. She is going to "Dust a little" if that. (Usually the trick they use is to walk around and move the paintings slightly askew as to appear as if they were dusted, nay, waxed and buffed by the innocent and hardworking hands of a Christian Saint)
It is also quite proper for you to yell, at said cleaning lady, and allow your children and or your tricks/amoureux to do the same, threaten to report her to immigration - or DEA, and give her a lot of condescending advice about what to do with her hair, skin, drunkard husband, thug son or pregnant out of wedlock daughter, (who steals "Tenis" for her "because she works at Lady Foot Locker") for the cleaning lady is someone who not only cleans up after your lazy ass, she also violates your personal space, so it's not bad manners to treat her poorly. she will understand. (and she will reciprocate by not considering it bad manners to "dust heavily", breaking all of your Great-Grandmothers wedding china or steal from you to bring her salary up to approximately minimum wage.)

Cheers.
Mexican Mad Woman
2 oz 1800® Select Silver - 100 Proof Tequila
2 oz cranberry juice
1 oz orange juice
1 dash lime juice
Shake over ice or blend. Garnish with an orange slice.

King Urinal

2009-05-06T20:35:00.012-04:00

A few barbs from the Bard to temper a sleepy Spring afternoon.....

You Banbury cheese.~Merry Wives of Windsor

What hempen homespun have we swaggering here?~A Midsummer Night's Dream
Vile worm, you were overlooked even in thy birth.~The Merry Wives of Windsor
Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born to signify thou came to bite the world.~Henry VI Part 3
I had rather be married to a deaths head with a bone in his mouth.~Merchant of Venice

You egg, you fry of treachery.~Macbeth

King Urinal.... ~Merry Wives of Windsor

He's a disease that must be cut away.~Coriolanus

An index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts.~Othello
If you spend word for word with me, I shall make your wit bankrupt.~The Two Gentlemen of Verona
A huge translation of hypocrisy, vilely compiled, profound simplicity.~Love's Labour Lost
You should be women and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.~Macbeth

Thou didst drink the stale of horses and the guilded puddle which beasts would cough at.~Antony and Cleopatra
Boils and plagues plaster you over, that you may be abhorred farther than seen and one infect another against the wind a mile. You souls of geese that bear the shapes of men.~Coriolanus
In their thick breaths, rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded, and forc'd to drink their vapour.~Antony and Cleopatra
Your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entombed in as ass's pack saddle.~Coriolanus
The terror of the French, the scarecrow that affrights our children so.~Henry VI Part 1
More of your conversation would infect my brain.~Coriolanus
She's the kitchen wench, and all grease ; and I know not what use to put her but to make a lamp of her and run her from her own light. I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world.~The Comedy of Errors
Her complexion is like Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing like so clean kept, for why, she sweats, a man may go over shoes in the grime of it. ~The Comedy of Errors

His kisses are Judas's own children.~As You Like It
You lisp and wear strange suits.~As You Like It

He's a disease that must be cut away.~Coriolanus

Where will thou find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage. Your purpled hands do reek and smoke. You showed your teeth like apes, and fawned like hounds and bowed like bondmen. I do find it cowardly and vile.~Julius Caesar
You are the must chaff, and you are smelt above the moon.~Coriolanus
The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes, when he walks he moves like an engine and the ground shrinks before his treading.~Coriolanus

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.~Macbeth
He hath out-villiain'd villainy so far that the rarity redeems him.~All's Well that Ends Well
And in his brain which is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage, he hath strange places.~As You Like It

Say wall eyed slave, whither wouldst thou convey this growing image of thy fiend like face.~Titus Andronicus

All that is within him does condemn itself for being there.~Macbeth
Thy bones are hollow, impiety has made a feast of thee.~Measure for Measure
False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.~King Lear

He that depends upon your favours swims with fins of lead, and hews down oaks with rushes.~Coriolanus
Toads, beetles, bats, light on you.~The Tempest
A monster, a very monster in apparel.~The Taming of the Shrew
Where will thou find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage.~Julius Caesa
Not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking glass.~Richard III
You have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.~Much Ado About Nothing

Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.~King Lear
I do wish thou were a dog, that I might love thee somthing.~Timon of Athens

Cheers.

Lady Macbeth

1/2 oz vodka

1/2 oz Southern Comfort® peach liqueur

1/2 oz amaretto almond liqueur

1/2 oz triple sec

1/2 oz sloe gin

1/2 oz lime juice

orange juice

Pour all ingredients (except orange juice) into an ice-filled collins glass. Fill with orange juice, and serve.

behaviorism, lethe and a week of wonders

2009-05-06T13:29:00.023-04:00

Three things:
1. I find the language of Skinner's Behaviorism to be excessively arid.

2. If you haven't seen Valerie a týden divu (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), Jaromil Jireš' Czech New Wave masterpiece, then you should make a point to post haste.
Inspired by fairy-tales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red-Riding Hood, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" is a surreal tale in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world. (an essential Eastern European hallucinogenic-baroque-witch-flick)

The soundtrack, recorded by Luboš Fišer in 1970, is a gorgeous confection of bombastic fairy tale Gothic folk tunes: bells (from glockenspiel to church bells) and whips and music boxes all clustered in claustrophobic collage. I haven't heard anything else quite like it, and listening to the tracks closely (as opposed to enjoying the pleasant bizarrerie of the music alongside the film) I appreciate Fišer's deliberation in crafting something that is at once so ensorcelling and terrifying and playful. And while I often find this kind of music too disjointed or distracting to enjoy as casual listening, I've found myself letting Valerie loop a few times with no ill effect, except for, perhaps, the occasional sensation of Victorian goblins fumbling around in the rafters. Which isn't an awful thing per se.

3. Now this, for a friend...

Oblivion! is it not one name of death?

Nay, is not Lethe death's most dismal name,

Death growing hour by hour within our frame,

Death settling slowly in our brain, the breath

Of the soul ebbing, so that he who saith,

I am to-day as yesterday the same,

Lies, for his thoughts are fled like smoke from flame,

And like the dew his sorrow vanisheth.

Changed is the river, though the waves remain,

Which rocks of slowlier-changing circumstance

Plough up in every day of chafing foam.

Changed is the river, gone, gone to the main,

Yesterday's dream and last year's happy chance,

And the heart's thoughts again return not home. -John Barlas

Cheers.

Forget-me-not

1 oz absinthe

1 oz apple schnapps

3/4 oz raspberry (framboise) brandy

1/4 oz Kirschwasser cherry brandy

Pour into an old-fashioned glass filled with broken ice. Garnish with a twist of lime, and serve with a maudlin sigh.

Le Plus Loin Le Plus Serre

2009-05-03T23:03:00.009-04:00

It is the last weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest, and It seems the crowds are bigger than ever. I have left the lot of those jazz-mad puppets of fate, (those women with their sleeveless shifts and their shiftless men in cargo shorts) to their own devices and turned my attentions to more intimate gatherings with my small yet larger than life group of familiar faces- the friends I call family.

I was discussing families, extended or otherwise, with Mr. Moose and it occurred to me that as it is indeed fortunate to be born into a family that is both nurturing and well placed, it seems for many people, it is not necessarily conducive to a successful and fulfilling life just as being from what one used to call a broken home is not in anyway a omen of doom for any child that is by chance it's progeny. It is a good thing, for if our behavior were really determined by our ancestors, we'd all act like amoebas. We would eat by osmosis and reproduce by division, meaning we would smear food all over our bodies and have sex by throwing ourselves under a train. (very David Cronenberg non?)

Well, But really then, which family is really better to be from? That is given the choice...of course.

To become a mannerly and courteous person you want only a few things from your real family: breeding, dignity and piles of money. That is all anyone ever wanted from a family. Yes your family might love you and cherish the quicksand you walk on, but that has very little to do with "True Love." At best family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and bad repetitive pattern, like trance music or Finnish wallpaper.

Are rich families any better? Not necessarily and especially not in America. The dignity evaporates when you discover that they made their fortune in dog laxatives. As for breeding, most rich people are far too busy getting divorced, drinking, and well, breeding to show their sons how to tie a Windsor knot or to tell their daughter not to marry a man with that knot in his tie. Rich children are shipped to boarding schools, often before they are weaned. It would be unfair to say that the atmosphere in these schools are bestial, for a child who was kept in the Bronx zoo would acquire more courtesy and taste. Occasionally boarding schools turns out someone along the lines of the preppy skull-n-bones stereotype, but in real life their graduates are more likely to wind up playing the electronic Xylophone, and singing 50's toothpaste jingles while rubbing raw meat all over themselves as a part of a performance art ensemble.

And, when it comes to money, wealth does not guarantee it. Rich parents are famous for both miserliness and astonishing longevity. And when they do die, you will find that they have left their in inviolate trust to the golden retriever or the sad little brown children they plucked from some orphanage in a third world nation late in life -usually after the gardener is deported or the chauffeur marries someone his own age.

Poor families are much better to be from. Of course the poor family won't give you much breeding, but it will give you preparation for life. It is far more instructive to have a drunk parent right there in the tenement with you that it is to have a drunk parent off in Gstaad. Poor people also tend to scream at each other, never have any real pocket money, and are prone to some really creative violence. This is excellent preparation for becoming, say, president of a large corporation- what with the acrimonious board meetings, constant cash flow problems and corporate products and byproducts that maim and kill people. In fact, I think being poor is generally much better for getting rich that being rich is. Poor people have a lot of time on their hands and spend it thinking up inexpensive and easily marketed fads like crack.

There is also some dignity in being poor. A poor person who has made out even slightly good is more admired than a rich person that has only done slightly bad. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants, laborers, and what is known as the common man. In our modern popular mythology, the lower classes are decent hard working and possessed of simple piety and common sense- as long as they stay downwind. You proletarian dignity, however will do you no good if your kin are one of those that appear on reality television programs wishing to find what is commonly called in certain circles, their "Baby Daddy."

And then there is the rest of them, the Middle Class, that sliding scale of division that we all share knowledge of, or stuck in, with embarrassment. There is Dad, tiresome Tom with his mailman shoes and job selling wholesale something or another with a receding hairline and declining interests. Mom, out-of-it Olivia with her astronauts wife hair-do, MBA and pseudo-Tuscan designed flat in Yawnsville USA.

They might be your loving and devoted parents but the only possible thing to do is either distance yourself from them by telling everyone that they were eaten by pygmies on your tenth birthday while on safari in Ubangystan, or kill them yourself. You will probably get out of the mental hospital in five or six years and then sure as the sun will come up tomorrow there will be a big fat book deal waiting for you when you do. Tell your ghostwriter "I did it because of the little ceramic burro planters with ivy growing out of the little side baskets..." Every sensitive person will understand.

So, cheers.

Raw Diamond
1 oz 1800® Select Silver - 100 Proof Tequila
1/4 oz pear puree
1/4 oz fresh lime juice
1/4 oz agave juice
Combine ingredients and shake with ice Pour into a lightly salted highball glass

beltane

2009-04-30T12:06:00.000-04:00

Also known as May Eve, May Day, and Walpurgis Night, Beltane happens at the beginning of May. It celebrates the height of Spring and the flowering of life. The Goddess manifests as the May Queen and Flora. The God emerges as the May King and Jack in the Green.

The danced Maypole represents Their unity, with the pole itself being the God and the ribbons that encompass it, the Goddess. Colors are the Rainbow spectrum. Beltane is a festival of flowers, fertility, sensuality, and delight.

In Pagan Rome, Floralia, from April 27-May 3 was the festival of the Flower Goddess Flora and the flowering of Springtime. On May 1, offerings were made to Bona Dea (as Mother Earth), the Lares (household guardian spirits), and Maia (Goddess of Increase) from whom May gets its name.

Wiccans and Wiccan-inspired Neopagans celebrate a variation of Beltane as a sabbat, one of the eight solar holidays. Although the holiday may use features of the Gaelic Bealtaine, such as the bonfire, it bears more relation to the Germanic May Day festival, both in its significance (focusing on fertility) and its rituals (such as maypole dancing). Some Wiccans celebrate 'High Beltaine' by enacting a ritual union of the May Queen (May Bride) as personification of the Earth Goddess and Goddesses of Fertility, and the May King (May Groom) as personification of Vegetation God, Jack-in-Green -- often covered in green leaves.
Among the Wiccan sabbats, Beltane is a cross-quarter day; it is celebrated in the northern hemisphere on May 1 and in the southern hemisphere on November 1. Beltane follows Ostara and precedes Midsummer.

Celtic Reconstructionists usually celebrate Lá Bealtaine when the local hawthorn trees are in bloom, or on the full moon that falls closest to this event. Many observe the traditional bonfire rites, to whatever extent this is feasible where they live, including the dousing of the household hearth flame and relighting of it from the community festival fire. Some decorate May Bushes and prepare traditional festival foods. Pilgrimages to holy wells are traditional at this time, and offerings and prayers to the spirits or deities of the wells are usually part of this practice. Crafts such as the making of equal-armed rowan crosses are common, and often part of rituals performed for the blessing and protection of the household and land.

If you just happen to be in Edinburgh on or around the end of April, you owe it to yourself to check out the Beltaine festival they have every year.

Edinburgh’s Beltane festival traditionally takes place on the 30th of April every year on Calton Hill. (The festival originates in the Scottish and Irish Gaelic pre-Christian festival of the same name)
The name itself is thought to have derived from a Gaelic-Celtic word meaning ‘bright/sacred fire’. It was held to mark and celebrate the blossoming of spring, and coincided with the ancient pastoral event of moving livestock to their summer grazing. It did not occur on any fixed solar date (the tradition of solstices and equinoxes is later in origin) but tended to be held on the first full moon after the modern 1st of May. Some sources suggest that the blooming of the Hawthorn was the primary signal for the event before the development of centralised calendars.
It was a celebration of the fertility of the land and their animals. The main traditional element which was common to all Beltane festivals was the fire which gave it its name. All the fires of the community would be extinguished and a new, sacred ‘Need Fire’ was lit by either the village head or spiritual leader. From this source one or two bonfires were lit, and the animals of the community would be driven through or between them. It was believed that the smoke and flame of the fires would purify the herd, protecting them in the year to come and ensuring a good number of offspring. The inhabitants of the village would then take pieces of the fire to their homes and relight their hearths, and dance clockwise around the bonfires to ensure good portents for them and their families.

If you plan on attending, and if you find yourself with strangers, (and really, who but the very chic would find themselves almost naked on a cold, wet, wind-battered hill in Scotland at that time of year) or people you don't know very well and you want to break the ice, simply ask them if they would like to have sex. (on the ground, of course to bless the fields and ensure good crops and all that jazz) This is considered flattering, concerns them personally and will lead to interesting gossip at worst and possibly an invitation to summer in a picturesque Scottish ancestral home- (preferably a castle with hot and cold running water as well as Internet connections) always a nice getaway from that particularly unwholesome curry scented stickiness one finds themselves surrounded by in London during the summer. One can readily recall "The Great Stink" in the summer of 1858 during which the smell of untreated sewage almost overwhelmed people in central London, England... have you ever seen a horse vomit? It's not as hilarious as it sounds...

Cheers....

Jack in Green

3 oz vodka

3 oz White rum

1 oz Blue Curacao liqueur

1 oz dry vermouth

1 oz lime juice

orange juice

Mix all ingredients in this EXACT ORDER. In a shaker filled with cubed ice mix the vodka, white rum, blue curacao, dry vermouth, and the lime juice. Shake until ice cold. Pour into highball glass and add the orange juice until full, or to your liking. If you did it right it should look very green and "Nickelodeon-slime-like." Drink and enjoy. Not too fast, though. This WILL cause you to roll around in the dirt with or without another person much to the dismay of onlookers at the dog park.

oink

2009-04-30T01:00:00.010-04:00

First the bad news- We feel the term "Swine Flu" has an unfortunate ring to it.

The good news is we have come up with a much more poetic term, or terms as it were, for the pandemic- "Aporkalypse" "Epigdemic," "Hogsteria," "Armhogeddon," "Cochonrantine" and "Pigpendemic" are nice but I think "Swine-11" is the best so far... "World boar III" sounds a bit like an aristocratic English title. Peerage, hrumph.

I do however forsee the demise of "Pig-tails" as being an acceptable hair style as well as a decline in the number of Wendy's Bacon Cheeseburgers sold.

Also good news is the fact that I have successfully completed a new years resolution of mine:

Words I Vowed To Use More Often In 2009 And Have Thus Far Done So Within The First 100 Days

areola, Bananarama bandolier bukkake cajole castrato chassis chuff churlish churro cockles cocksure codswallop coquettish cowpoke crantastic or crunchtastic cryptkeeper decoupage derriére doppelganger doubloon elfin flagellate fluegelhorn fortnight gelatinous gordito gunt haberdasher hirsute hunchback intergalactic jackanapes Jewess kismet ladyboy merman mustachioed muttonhead oligarchy ombudsman ornery pansexual pantaloon pantied papacy perineum phrenologist plié plucky plumage pubis pugilist purloin rapier Sasquatchian scalawag schadenfreude scrimshaw scrod scrota scurvy shantytown shewolf skullduggery soothsayer sousaphone Stallonesque succubus swashbuckle taquito teetotaler titular unitard vagician vampirical whoremonger

Aren't those nice? Hmmm? I am sure you have made good on your new years resolutions, yes? No? Oh... well who cares? lets have a drink...

Swine Flew

3 oz gin

3 oz Midori® melon liqueur
3 oz Smirnoff® Vanilla Twist vodka

6 oz Dr. Pepper soda

Mix and drink, after six or seven of these, its guaranteed you will experience flu like symptoms the following morning and / or afternoon.

redeemer two

2009-04-21T01:51:00.005-04:00

all my frankensteins

2009-04-10T19:09:00.011-04:00

Enjoying the fine sunny weather while back in our beloved Chez Moose, it was decided that it would be great fun to rifle through the attic, to play treasure hunt and perhaps make some room for other furniture, paintings and tchotchkes that might soon be exiled for a few years, or decades, as it were.
While going through boxes, tucked in an old copy of FMR magazine and underneath an ancient bottle of Pepto Bismol, (Often, I have much more fun at Rite Aid than in a club. Maybe I'm just getting older and pharmacy is becoming the only place of relief) I found a note, a poem by Blake I had copied down, (with some lyrics to a Marily Manson song written in the margins.) I have often thought the two of them would make the most stimulating dinner partners.
About the note- funny that, the pages still had the faint scent of Guerlain's Jicky perfume on them after all this time. (I would absolutely bathe in it back then- did you know it is a favorite of Sir Sean Connery? yes he wears it, big secret though, shhh.) as I opened the Pepto, checking it as if it were an ancient wine jug from an Egyptian tomb, I gazed at the written page, it is a pretty good tale, or at least part of one, it is not to be tossed aside lightly, if anything it should be thrown with great force as it is rife with latent goth angst. The Pepto however was delegated to the bin, but I made a mental note to go shopping for more later. Pepto Bismol, hmmm... magic Pepto... it may be very common for Americans , but it could be something amazing for a stranger. It is so rare to have fun while sick (usually sick and happy goes straight to Bellevue) .... but look at that combination of yellow/pink! It tastes like a melted Barbie, the pill looks like a smart drug very popular in the 90's and the new cherry flavour adds some red to the ensemble. Why can't other meds we buy be as conceptual as that?
Oh well, here's the poem, written down and stashed away for some long forgotten reason...

To The Accuser Who is The God of This World
Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce

And dost not know the Garment from the Man

Every Harlot was a Virgin once

Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan

Tho thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine

Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still

The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline

The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill

(And this, was written in the margins:)

The sky was blonde like her
It was a day to take the child
Out back and shoot it.
I could have buried all my dead
Up in her cemetery head
She had dirty word witchcraft
I was in the deep end of her skin.
Then, it seemed like a one car wreck
But I knew it was a horrid tragedy.
Ways to make the tiny satisfaction disappear. Blow out the candles
On all my frankensteins.
At least my death wish will come true.
You taste like Valentine's and
We cry,
You're like a birthday.
I should have picked the photograph
It lasted longer than you. Putting holes in happiness.
We'll paint the future black
If it needs any color.
My death sentence is a story
Who'll be digging when you finally let me die?
The romance of our assassination
If you're Bonnie, I'll be your Clyde.
But the grass is greener here and
I can see all of your snakes.
You wear your ruins well
Please run away with me to hell.

Hmmm. Well, at least it seems my penchant for dramatics, written or otherwise, has remained intact over the years, non?

Cheers!
Morbid Angel

2 oz Cutty Black Scotch whisky
2 oz Southern Comfort peach liqueur
2 oz Absinthe herbal liqueur Stir equal parts of each ingredient together in a mixing glass. Strain into a glass, and serve.
I present a video for your entertainment:

Ataraxia (Ἀταραξία) is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a limpid state, characterized by freedom from worry or any other preoccupation.
For the Epicureans, ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person. It signifies the detached and balanced state of mind that shows that a person has transcended the material world and is now harvesting all the comforts of philosophy.
For the Pyrrhonians, owing to one's inability to say which sense impressions are true and which ones are false, it is quietude that arises from suspending judgment on dogmatic beliefs or anything non-evident and continuing to inquire. The experience was said to have fallen on the painter Apelles who was trying to paint the foam of a horse (likely a bit of frothy saliva near its mouth). He was so unsuccessful that in a rage he gave up and threw the sponge he was cleaning his brushes with at the medium, thus producing the effect of the horse's foam. The Stoics, too, sought mental tranquility, and saw ataraxia as something to be desired and often made use of the term, but for them the analogous state, attained by the Stoic sage, was apatheia or absence of passion...

lapin drôle

2009-04-02T22:10:00.017-04:00

I was out in the potting shed this afternoon, in the above outfit, my lapin suicidaire ensemble, checking to see that all was in readiness for the spring planting, and found a pile of old magazines. I totally get into this kind of thing.
This is the kind of diversion I can never resist.
I sat down and had a flip-through. In one of these periodicals--and this was ironic, considering the venue--I found an article about Beatrix Potter. It was written by a British psychiatrist, and in it he attests that Squirrel Nutkin--the eponymous protagonist in one of her tiny, perfect children's nature tales--suffers from Tourette's syndrome. He observed that while Twinkleberry and the other bushy-tailed rodents are hard-working and assiduous, Nutkin is given to disruptive behavious and inappropriate expostulations. "Hum-a-bum! buzz! buzz! Hum-a-bum buzz!" he will exclaim, while dancing up and down "like a sunbeam." He also engages in obsessive, repetitive activities and makes odd whirring noises.
Casebook Tourette's, n'est-ce pas?
Most readers of such a news item, particularly if they are fond of Beatrix Potter, will roll their eyes heavenward and dismiss these shrink-wrapped insights as yet another instance of the evils of the publish-or-perish imperative. However, I have gone back and examined Potter's oeuvre, mostly published between the turn of the century and the First World War, and I can report that she was astonishingly insightful and anticipatory of many of the psychosocial issues and controversies that now tumble about in the lines of some of her artful fables.
Consider The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Superficially, this is the quaint story of the meeting between a stout washerwoman and a girl called Lucie, who is searching for her mislaid handkerchiefs and pinafore. But scratch the surface of this simple tale, and you will find the far-seeing Potter's warning against the terrible dangers of drug abuse. Carefully deconstructing her text, we see that Potter intended Lucie--whose name, after all, means light--as the embodiment of innocence in peril. Directly she enters Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's dark hillside workroom, where the laundress is ostensibly ironing, Lucie notices "a hot singey smell," an odour familiar to anyone who has ever stumbled into a crack den while looking for change for the gum machine. Furthermore, we are told that Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's "little black nose went sniffle, sniffle, snuffle, and her eyes went twinkle, twinkle." Those who have witnessed the effect of cocaine use will recognize these indicators as certain signs that everything is not on the up-and-up with the genial Mrs. T! Any doubt about Potter's deeper motivations is cast off in the closing pages of the book, when Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle strips off her clothes and is proven to be a hedgehog, covered in needles. Potter's bright warning shines through the anthropomorphic conventions of children's literature, leaving us only with the hope that the vile Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle thought to use her laundry bleach to sterilize her syringes before reusing or sharing them.
There's much more to be divined from the Potter canon, once you know where and how to look. For instance, in Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Potter is full of astonishingly prescient advice about what we now call safe sex. Mr. Jeremy Fisher, a bachelor frog, goes down to the pond for an afternoon of trolling. He sensibly wears his macintosh and galoshes. A trout seizes him but finds the taste of protective coating so off-putting that he spits out the well-wrapped frog. In other words, Mr. Jeremy Fisher was saved by wearing rubbers.
In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Potter foretells the rudiments of sociobiology and anticipates the very recently published research which posits that compulsive novelty seekers owe their behaviour in large measure to a surfeit of a chemical dis-inhibitor called dopamine, which they are, in effect, programmed to produce.
Peter's siblings, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, who are "good little bunnies," heed their mother's warning not to go in Mr. McGregor's garden. Peter, however, cannot help himself. Evidently, he inherited his restlessness from his father, who perished during just such a raid and was baked in a pie. Despite this, Peter tempts fate by encroaching on the farmer's turf. Ever the moralist, Potter makes no attempt to excuse the delinquent rabbit's conduct. She is clear that although our behaviour may owe something to our genetic mix, we must still be held accountable for our actions. Hence, Peter's famous humiliation: he is sent to bed with a dose of chamomile tea.
Finally, The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck is a highly charged tract about the need for family planning. You will recall how Jemima Puddle Duck is not allowed to hatch her own eggs. Rather, they are given to a hen who is a more reliable brooder. Distraught, Jemima devises a plan to nest on her eggs away from the barnyard and very nearly runs afoul of a fox.
Thanks to the intervention of Kep the collie, who represents wisdom, she is saved from the whiskered villain, who symbolizes untrammelled fertility.

In the end, Jemima manages to become the happy mother of four wee ones, which should be enough for any one duck.
Beatrix Potter lived a long and fruitful life but is only now gaining the recognition she deserves as an activist, prophet, social critic and tactician.
As Pigling Bland, Miss Moppet, Tom Kitten, the Tailor of Gloucester and all the others begin to surrender their secrets, we can expect to see Beatrix Potter in all her glory, revealed to us as what she is, was and always will be: a writer for now, for then and for the new millenia to come.

now a toast...
Dracula's Bunny
2 oz Absolut peppar vodka
1 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
1 oz DeKuyper Peachtree schnapps
2 oz sweet and sour mix
1/2 oz pear cider
1/2 oz 7-Up® soda
1/2 oz lemon juice
Pour all ingredients into a highball glass 3/4 filled with ice cubes. Stir well, and serve.

Amphigory, Aldo and Super Chicken

2009-03-31T00:00:00.006-04:00

With Easter coming up, I often think about the strange and wonderful Easter customs in my family.
I love the Easter holidays in general but I never enjoyed Easter Monday. All the preparations that precede that day were fun - decorating our home, painting eggs, baking the special Easter bun or the Easter lamb... but then came Easter Monday to ruin it all. I always tried to hide but somehow they always found me. Where my Dads family were from, the boys not only run around to whip you and get an egg or if they are older a shot of home-made brandy - as they do in Bohemia - they come and throw you in a stream, or put your head under a water pipe to be sure to give you a good shower... and NOT just once. It's only when you're in a town that you're lucky there's no stream around and the worst they can do is give you a shower or a swirly in the toilet in your own bathroom. But as if that weren't enough, they spray you with perfume, too, if it were something-anything- from Guerlain, I would not mind a bit, but it was usually Avon's vile elixir (that I am sure caused as many birth defects as Thalidomide) called "Roses, Roses, Roses" that was the weapon of choice. Even though I was/am a boy, I always was the target of the males in my family as there was not a "Girl" - pardon the expression- to be had in the immediate family, save my Mom or my mammy Aida.
Other customs included my getting the first slice of the Simnel Cake since I was the youngest, (The Simnel cake is a rich fruitcake covered with a thick layer of almond paste (marzipan). A layer of marzipan is also traditionally baked into the middle of the cake) not to mention the odd presents I received over the years- usually from my Grandmother "Miz Hyacinth".
On every Easter I would get a basket with the usual fare, the chocolate eggs and bunnies (that I would immediately bite the ears off of, then wander around the house holding it's slowly melting body in my hot little hands saying, "What? What? I can't hear you!") but Mis Hyacinth would always add a few touches of the macabre to this basket-o-sugar.
On more than a few Easter mornings over the years I received the ubiquitous "Lucky Rabbits Foot" key chains, (Not so lucky for the rabbit) a hand mirror with a portrait of Mussolini painted on the back, a Netsuke carving of two Asian people mid coitus, invitations to join the "Daughters of the American Revolution" and "The Sons of Italy", a potted plant (dieffenbachia), a bad imitation Faberge egg and on seven consecutive years, I was gifted with the following Edward Gorey classics-
Age six:
The Bug Book
The Fatal Lozenge: An Alphabet
The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic Tale by Ogdred Weary
The Hapless Child
The Willowdale Handcar: Or, the Return of the Black Doll
Age seven:
The Beastly Baby
The Vinegar Works: Three Volumes of Moral Instruction
The Gashlycrumb Tinies
The Insect God
The West Wing
Age Eight:
The Wuggly Ump
The Nursery Frieze
The Sinking Spell
The Remembered Visit: A Story Taken From Life
Age nine:
The Evil Garden
The Inanimate Tragedy
The Pious Infant
Age ten:
The Gilded Bat, Cape
The Utter Zoo
The Other Statue
The Blue Aspic
The Epiplectic Bicycle
Age eleven:
The Iron Tonic: Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valley
The Chinese Obelisks: Fourth Alphabet
Donald Has A Difficulty
The Osbick Bird
The Sopping Thursday
Age twelve:
The Deranged Cousins
The Eleventh Episode
The Untitled Book
The Awdrey-Gore Legacy
Leaves From A Mislaid Album
The Abandoned Sock
A Limerick
The Lost Lions
After these, I received The Glorious Nosebleed: Fifth Alphabet when I was 14, and The Fraught Settee when I was 28, strange that, huh? I really must complete my library one day...
I totally learned at an early age to appreciate Gorey's way of thinking.
In his own words- "Ideally, if anything [was] any good, it would be indescribable."
Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense, the genre made most famous by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Gorey seemed to love the precision involved in this genre, and, in response to the accusation of being Gothic, he stated, "If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children—oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either."
I concur.
Another strange custom was a song my mammy used to sing to me. Its called "Aldo The Easter Bunny", I am not sure if this was a real song or something she made up... All I know is Aldo is a kind of Italian name for the Easter Bunny...

Al-do The Ea-ster Bun-ny, running on his springy rubber legs,
Aldo The Easter Bunny, bringing kids their Easter Eggs.
One Easter he was running, They say he slipped and fell.
But He didn't break a single egg or even crack a shell.
Then- Hop, hop, hop, Jump, jump, jump, poor Aldo couldn't run!
Hop, hop, hop Jump, jump, jump, around to every-one.
When the children woke that Easter morn, their Easter eggs were there,
But no one knew poor Aldo was a little crippled hare.
Aldo the easter Bunny, had to hop the whole day through,
He couldn't run from hunters like other bunnies do,
Aldo the easter Bunny would hide in bright day light,
He'd gather all his easter eggs and color them at night,
Then Ding, ding, ding, dong, dong, dong, went the Easter bell,
Then- Run, run, run, rush, rush, rush, Aldos knee was well,
When the children woke that Easter morn, their Easter eggs were there,
And Aldo the Easter Bunny, is a happy little hare!

(and they wonder why I drink)
Cheers!

The Crippled Deaf Chocolate Bunny
2 oz dark creme de cacao
2 oz vodka
2 tsp chocolate syrup
2 tsp cherry brandy
Shake creme de cacao and vodka with ice. Strain over ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float chocolate syrup and cherry brandy. Supersauce...

pie a la démodé

2009-03-26T12:00:00.027-04:00

Some of the things I have learned this week: There is no crying in Modeling, Baseball, Porn or Tap dancing- A very close friend thinks a 401k is a very long marathon- Like Eleanor Roosevelt, I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. (But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: - 'No good in a bed, but fine against a wall') - If I wear vanilla scented lotion, I smell like a rice crispy treat- Karl Lagerfeld Entourage Update: Brad Koenig is out. Model Baptiste Giabiconi is in- Even if I buy Prada (the good stuff from Milan, AKA The European epicenter of the fashion universe) I look like I have shopped in a thrift store.

I do admit, I go to thrift stores a lot, (something I'm afraid you may find demode) -it's something my Mother is not very happy with- "All those other people's germs! How can you stand it?"- I've never really been a germophobe about it. Perhaps I'll incorporate a germ mask into tomorrow morning's outfit though, something with a Darth Vader vibe, perhaps?

Now, speaking of fashion, here is a little story told to me by ZaZa, my personal shopper at Sak's...

The continuing story of Karl Bear; a children's story:
Once upon a time there was a bear in a far off land called "The Garment District" named Karl bear.

The time was right now, this instant, because Karl bear did not like the past, as he told journalists in his 18th century mansion. He only liked the "now", so the "time" in in the "once upon a time" is "now". Right now. Even thought this is written in past tense, it is still "now". As you read this book. The "now", hmm?

Karl bear hopes your hands have leather, fingerless gloves on them (Karl bear does not have any because bears have no fingers).

So anyway, one day Karl bear was out for a walk where he was mobbed by some démodé paparazzi. He said to them: You a very boring, go away." Karl does not like boring things. The paparazzi said, in unison because paparazzi are just grown-up choir boys: "Please sir, can we have a picture?"

"Oh fine, just one, hmm?" Karl bear said sternly, as he dreamt up a Chanel nose picker for the hairs in the noses of very démodé people.

Karl bear didn't really know why he was doing this, because a bear is not a person; although some person from PETA is very likely to say "bears are people too!", and with this he inhaled the irony of the previous few sentences most satisfyingly.

He continued his walk until he met Anna bear, who said: "Karl darhling, some more cognac."

"You are drunk, mm?" said Karl bear."I'm just going to pick out the new cover for Vogue. We're do- doinggg, DOOinggggg, oooo, dooooinnnggggg."

"This is very boring, Anna. I know you're not really drunk and just pretending to in order to appear more human (as opposed to the near-anamorphic entity that you are)." Karl said.

Anna looked a little sad, and decided to fire someone as this always warmed her ice-cold heart.

"ANDRE YOU FRICKIN MORON YOU SAID 100% ALCOHOL WOULD GET ME DRUNK" Anna bear exclaimed, as Andre bear, a rather portly bear who looked like a certain blind soul singer when he had dark glasses on, came waddling out. And then Anna glared at poor Andre bear as his stuffing was burnt.
"Oh, he is not poor, hmm?" Karl bear said somehow reading the book because he's that clever- "Andre is very démodé and boring" Then Karl went off to a dinner that was being held by his friend Alber bear, a stylish but slightly plump bear."This is very boring." said Karl bear. "I do not eat".

So Karl bear decided to design another Chanel collection and teach his daughter, Jane bear, how to say "démodé" right. He felt an uncommon sense of pride when she got it right and was rather worried. It was scary- all these "emotions".

Then Yves bear came in through the door, back from the dead and looking adorably mopey in that way that attracted a thousand women to his clothes. "Hello Karl."

"Hello Yves. You are dead, no?"

"Yes, I am sad."

"Ok."

"This story needs a moral, I think, hmmm?" said Karl bear.

"Hmmm" said everyone.
"Okay. How about don't wear traffic cones of your head when driving, or while eating pie, hmm?"

"Very chic" said Alber.

"I am now bored." said Karl bear.

Fin.

Cheers!
The Sundance Lift

(To be served at every Sundance event)

1 oz Le Tourment Vert

1 oz tonic water

1 oz 7-Up® soda

2 lemon wedges

Build all ingredients in a tall glass filled with ice. Squeeze the 2 lemon wedges. Garnish with a lemon. (May be served with pie)

странная версия знакомого рассказа

2009-03-19T07:50:00.002-04:00