Poor Signals Binge

"In Rome everything is the color of flesh," -- Diana Dors, another brass platinum defying the patriarchy

Individuals who are as disabled as I don't evict themselves from public housing without a game plan, without even much ability to pack the daybed, the one instance where dead Frank made himself useful, finding a wood frame I liked, with poles I grip after my palsied lateral twist balances my buttock on the sorry twin mattress, a holdover from the unsafe metal bed my mother purchased, the women charging in when I was new, assembling me back together, and yet I've made up my mind that by the end of September I'm rolling out, on a bus, swaddled in a diaper if I can wear the one box of diapers Timothy Artis dropped off when he was still active, in his servile request for rides from the women with cars, myself perhaps only hurrying along Presby's Inspired life in its forgone conclusion, putting myself out on the street to get scuttled in a time of political uncertainty, as I am presuming the election will be a coronation for the Clintons, both of whom look like wax museum figurines, while I wage a titanic mortal struggle within, unseemly at that, checking off the list of lost habits, no Vuse, no pot of coffee on demand, my little plan rolled up in my back pocket, I have to pull myself together and research shelter accommodations, discipline, in this summer torpor, too humid to sleep and nearly too humid to work.

I was always circumspect about Samuel Clemens as a local colorist, meaning I give obeisance to the canon of classification: Great American 19th century author, without caring. Shocking, though of course African American scholars have sabotaged Huckleberry Finn; Clemens too struggled with self-subterfuge, talking himself out of a suicide attempt. He was a successful grandee of American letters. No question of that, but he never anchored himself securely in economic terms, and made a number of bad investments, from which he never truly rebounded, which illustrates creativity in its self destructive tendencies.

For those of you whom I may confuse: I am vacating myself from 22 years of duress from an ineffectual, hypocritical, superficial Protestant dictatorship which exploits damaged humans along the same lines of modern animal husbandry, which is obscene, and a topic which once made Peter Singer the epicenter of activist outrage, along with those grievances, iterated previously,  ambulatory individuals would only endure in a schematic and rigid tragedy like Ethan Frome, which is Wharton's homage to marginalized invalids, the likes of whom are, in contemporary terms, only found in Siberia, or Syria, Libya, maybe New Guinea.


The struggle to destroy Little Vinnie in April turned my one small vinyl suitcase into garbage. to be placed in the trash room before I run around center city demanding an advocate and legal help at the point of a bayonet, as I can. For a dago who used to be able to consume poultry and pork like a pig, I'm eating only in small spoonfuls of stress. You having a decent Monday morning? Time to really work a little and stop panicking, even in the knowledge I am not solving a thing letting blacks continue to make me the heavy, treating me like prey, or bludgeoning me with threats.

Neeson in Dublin

It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never had it fallen flat.  --James Joyce, The Dead

Perhaps Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo was attempting to do something more ambitious with After.Life than what she could deliver, but it is to her credit that I see things in her feature film that echo my undergraduate studies of the early Modernists, things that recall Eliot's grasp for an existence made inert through anesthesia, or Joyce's ability to show a mode of living entirely paralyzed. We have seen such things before. Virtually everyone with the ability to operate a video camera uses a nose bleed to suggest something sinister is afoot in the transient netherworld. We are not told why Ricci's middle school teacher has a bleed, uses meds, or why the mother behaves like a shellfish with a claw attached to your finger. We do not see Liam's Deacon at the initial crash site, and don't know how he gets his victims out of the ER, or why he can fool the doctors so readily with a muscle paralytic. We do not quite need to know these things for the narrative to work better than it does, but Justin Long, scion of Jeepers Creepers the first, is not up to pitting himself against Neeson's absolute and short tempered faith. Long's on and off panic switch is as much static as Ricci's desperate phone call. I am still waiting for little Ricci to inhabit a role I can believe in, her complicity in Monster aside, and I am not entirely clear on Canterbury's Jack. An apprentice, yes, but Wojtowicz seems to want him to stand as an ambiguous observer whose conscience is finally swayed.

More than suspense, Agnieszka seemed to be aiming for suspension, asking us how we live inside the routine entrapments we fear changing: There is the promise of more potential within the failure.

Largesse in Bed

...like The Mount, it has numerous rooms and a bewildering array of windows.    --Sandra M Gilbert, The Whirling Princess

I can understand why Sheldon Novick tossed out Alice James and her morbidity as a project for my morbidity, and I was always morbid, a horrible child, if that satisfies the mood swing advocates that I am in self-denial. I throw tantrums-- but let not my narcissism stray too far afield. As fond as I am of Dr. Novick's generous spirit, I would become impatient with Alice as a subject, a charge that bedevils Susan Sontag's output. I would prefer not to dismiss a project solely for the hope of money, though if I knew the invalid left a diary I had forgotten it, and remain curious, even in my apparent indulgence for forgiving bad metaphysical quests. Liam's After.Life (09) falls into the same category and is interesting despite itself. Natasha had not yet had her fatal accident at the time of filming, as far as dates go, but for all the intents and purposes of Deacon as character, Liam might have already been cocooned in morbid grief. I want to resist the story line's literalism that our morticians may indeed be serial killers, and for an actor of Neeson's caliber, the plot  might have offered up a more textured ambiguity on Western origin myths, but the premise is indeed interesting, as I mull.

There are lesbians and there are women who grow immeasurably weary of men, and I suspect Sontag had little internal anchor, as opposed to a preference for women's breasts. Her son is still out there, and would probably disabuse my ruminations if I had any name recognition, but I am having trouble remembering why Sontag had a public mantle in the first place. I'd like to read her work on AIDS as metaphor.

I will not hold my breath for audience support on acquiring a copy. 

Half Century Skin

It must be nice for a playwright to spawn something like Heaven Can Wait.
Segall may be a footnote, but his conceit bridges two centuries, and I can think of four, five other films besides the 41 original, only the David Niven version of mild weight, having the right touchstone for its English fable qualities. What underlies the fantasy mechanism between that sacred and profane in temporal transit, is the resolution of interrupted fulfillment. I am sore, perhaps a symptom of diabetes, even though I do not abuse my diet as badly as my mother, on my elbows, and where I bend, under my belly, and I am not ready for prime time. It has turned rather chilly very quickly, and, if I can haul myself out later today, I may need more than my shawl, trying to make breakfast, fighting languor.

We all have to die, at least, thus far; we are not anemones. Some biologists think they are immortal under environmental constants. I would not want immortality, but dying unresolved and unhappy will only increase my anger, sharpen my bitterness. All I want to do is move, and I might as well be igniting the start of the Afghanistan action, rather than watching its withered climax. I am unreasonable and must have a hole in the head if I believe I can leave public housing in this climate, but my weariness is in my marrow, and I am not allowed even this level of selfishness, a change of environment. I opted in for hash browns patties, just two, because I am going back to bed. It may be the fall air. My rage builds, then crashes, builds again, feeling like I have been duped my entire damn life, a naive dunce. Many of my early posts on this study looked at Jodie Foster's film career, as I grew up with the actor that she is, and the thought occurred to me that if I contact her agent for an interview, if I can come up with an idea, I will censor Hinckley on my own, even if the media has their names inextricably linked. I have the publicist. Foster's oeuvre belongs here, and a film like Nell only confirms this, as painfully bittersweet as it was to see Natasha and Liam in a youthful mode.

Natasha Richardson's acting has always felt fake to me, and I think in the context of the girl's story, she almost makes it work, as a flaw, in her conservative supporting role, but the qualifying flag has to remain, almost. I was able to see Neeson's hunger for his wife, but not vice versa, perhaps only a flattered coquetry. If they married in 94, mmm, I have to give it up, whether this was the laudable, drooling set romance that fans, in shallow fashion, ga ga over. kimmy bit me awake at 8 last night for her supper, but next I looked, when I attempted to settle down it was 10:30. Then I managed the film. We'll have more when I can think.

Cher Like A Horse

The late 80's film Suspect slipped my mind, quite simply, since few of you, impaired or not, seem willing to offer me suggestions, or are not sure what to serve up. I have never seen Liam Neeson do a bad job in any of his films, including this one, and he brings a big heart to Carl's pain, but the casting director might have had more courage than allowing for Cher's mind meld as a harried public defender up against sinister force, a villain with an equally sinister mind that knows how to use institutional barriers, and the power of the system, to quash the hard luck minions who slip and vanish into the underclass. I have seen the film at least twice, and could extrapolate further, but I am generally dismissive of the story line, even though I forget why the judge crossed the line into the unforgivable, while Cher and Quaid skirt the ethics to unearth the greater truth. A resounding and familiar theme coming from me, I suppose. In the prime of her maturity, Cher cuts a beloved figure, but not as an average jo of a lawyer who suddenly goes into inspired detection mode.

There are times when the rules have to be broken, but, on the other side of the coin, when legislation designs case management systems that crush would be idealists and engage in collusion, if only on the basis of default, then those who know things are broken have to push back, which is not to convey that I will not return to this adjudicating thriller sometime at a later date, if I get what I wish, which is a more tranquil resettlement for my old age, and less untended consequences that lead to untold, unspoken, mostly silent cruelty from forced social equality those on the left demand.