Bakery Frosting

Dick Polman's 2010 article in Obituary Magazine castigating Hitchcock's Psycho at 50 was fair, perceptive in view. I do not think Judith Rossner's Looking For Mr. Goodbar would have been possible without the reverberation of the first slasher movie on camera, but I also cannot find an archive version of Polman's piece for reference, and Dick has no reason to help me out, nor twitter as a whole, despite my pleading. 

Polman was one of the first journalists I read on Blogger, and if I wanted to be that kind of introverted groupie, I could drive to University of Pennsylvania's campus and attempt to place my disenfranchisement in his path, but I was never that far gone for our locally grown national analyst; drifted away from him, not from any distinct animus, not in terms of ideology, though his entirely wasted opinion about Romney and the sect that stuck in Utah provides a good indicator of my waning enthusiasm, with some exceptions, his byline in Obituary being one. I could scold and say "Dick, by the time I get to the library guide to periodicals." Or just be myself and say Dick can you help an old woman out? Unlike Scorsese, who can teach us about what Hitchcock was doing with Janet Leigh in terms of artistry, Dick does not like the legacy of Psycho's impact, which some critics suggest Hitchcock himself attempted to address with the later and even more chilling Frenzy, circa 1972. The opening rape strangulation in Frenzy was a vivid remonstrance of my childhood, and I did not need ThisTV to remind me that British pathology can be just as pernicious, and far worse than Jason in a hockey mask.

Hitchcock, however, is an unabashed structuralist, Polman's grasp of the culture shock in Psycho's wake notwithstanding.. What came after also got messier, and I believe Richard Brooks tried to take his cue from this in Goodbar's climax, which, if the filter is correctly applied, might be seen as Rossner's argument against Hitchcock's stark, manipulative fantasy sacrifice, and not simply in terms of Theresa's masochism goading her into her dangerous liaisons and lack of caution. Rossner's work begins the process of de-glamorizing pathological misogyny which Hitchcock consistently elevated, and Spielberg parodies with devastating irony in his use of Jude Law as the automaton which may not even know it is innocent of our fascination with murder of women in A.I. Law's Gigolo parody is an enhanced version of of the chameleon he plays in Music From Another Room, the Clinton era touchy feelly romance of manner which has not sold me, yet none the less wrestles a rebuttal against too much of a sweet tooth for dandies.

What I feel about Andrew Sullivan's departure as an online columnist, now, is contempt. He deserves credit for pushing back against LBGT militancy to silence hostile and trauma- considered it persons such as myself--but he is in part responsible for this path where the inclusion and destigmatizing of every form of conduct will ultimately be our own undoing. I'd like to see Andy take on the corruption of activists like Erik von Schmettering and Jimmi Shrode. If I had the dexterity I could make a best seller writing a title like Faggot Wars.

Fossilized Valor

Looking For Mr. Goodbar has to be studied when it is passed around on the small screen, as there is little other way to view it in the present tense. I cannot compete with Ebert's pique at Richard Brooks. I was too young, and though my mother let me into a hedonistic and disturbingly subversive world as a tantrum throwing evil coming of age tyrant I was (Milkman and his passive mother in Morrison's daddy novel imprinted on my psyche in a bad way: I was too young for Solomon even though my rereading of the novel was immediate and intense as an upperclassman), she kept the gate closed on Judith Rossner, with good reason, as I am now haunted by Theresa Dunn, I knew Goodbar as a cultural marker in my younger days, but wasn't literate as to what these markers truly entailed, and now that I am, I have to go back and read the novel. Brooks may have distorted Rossner's story, but the masochistic elements remain, a rotten egg transliterating anger into bad behavior, even if Keaton does obscure Theresa's more destructive triggers: Did I self-consciously want to die when I defied my father and Jerry, my surrogate authority figure who abandoned me (!), according to my inner child (I knew he didn't but my solution to this emotional need to cleave to this Irish Shakespearean was to flee, and no, I am not over it, though he looks like Gandalf today and I am Roseanne Barr who cannot afford veneers) and moved into the inner city?

I almost succeeded. And it takes a great deal of courage to look as closely and boldly as Rossner did in her investigation. She opened the flood gates, with nary a closure in sight. For myself, I may have the courage, but was never a long form fiction writer. My story that fictionalizes my assault is stark, and highly prejudicial. A former farmer friend named Jack suggested "I tone it down," and did, but I let the main character have my anger, and run with it. My conceptualization of its arc is the most difficult literary motif I've ever envisioned.

LeVar Burton's Home Remedy For the Exsanguination of Diane Keaton

"The only thing I can say is there is a hell of a lot more Arabians than there is Jews." Billy Carter

The Family Stone might in some ways be a capitulation to Keaton's character in Looking For Mr. Goodbar, offered as a fumigating afterthought, missing the first 40 minutes or so of the classic dark side of liberal promiscuity. Thursday morning futilely challenging creditors who assuredly know, barring a miracle, the Treasury Department will soon garnish my entitlement. What would they do, my account holders, if the minority bitches get what they want and make me a new old home for cripples problem? Thus it is to be boxed in, seething with a detonator's destruction. I hate Keaton, always have, with her toothy minuets of peevish dismay, with Berenger aptly encapsulating the macho fag, since he later plays a genocidal racist against Winger in Betrayal, or whatever it was, the end of Goodbar was nonetheless a shock. Not graphic, but a shock. Feminist Liberal Self-Sacrifice in big capitals, my body is still adjusting to the Aero's demise. "Give it time," I coax myself, the correspondences are obvious. The deaf kids of Keaton's teacher, the deaf gay couple in the latter film whom Parker zings in much more polite reactive fashion than you'd get from me.

My mother passed away quite suddenly in 2005, which is when I accidentally lit my hair on fire, and my then support coordinator, Ann Piccinotti, sent me a voodoo priestess from Germantown. "I took care of a Jewish woman who said let me give you my money." This is what I had to deal with, in the middle of bankruptcy, my parent's funeral, I had to fend off an African with gaping teeth in head scarfs who thought she could siphon me. Progressive disability activists call this "mutual respect". I call it Spencer's cash register, though even if I still had some of my assets, I wouldn't fund him. not that I am above seeing that the far right generates cash flows. Most American neo-Nazis are, for evident reasons of non-adaptation, welfare recipients. My smirk is one thing. Calling for body armor then charging into battle against the infidel motherfucker is another matter.

I remembered my spin off pitch from the Cosby scandal, and need to put it in my file. Joan might be useful for this, although I wonder if we're all learning more about the strange aspects of black libido than we really wish to know. I'm still angry about the rapacious ghetto woman violating the sanctity of my grief. I got rid of her with a future truth, that Liberty Resources would no longer be my provider. Imagine how deep my impulses must run for a stocking to fill with ignots, sweet to crack a skull. I may be better tuned over the weekend, awaiting deliveries.