Most highly-placed men would put the woman on the payroll in a non-threatening job.
2:34:28 PM comment []
Friday, August 29, 2008
MY BRUNCH WITH ANDREA
"...And then in the midst of aZulu ambush he hit on me! The trauma of naked Zulus all around with their exposed privates wafting in the breeze and this man groping me blew out my wiring and that very day I shaved my head bald and painted a smiley face on it. All over the Amazon forest I was known as "Grumpy girl with Big smile. " When I finally made it back to NY, God only knows how,he stalked me to my favorate antique stores on Second, and watched what I was eyeing, and snatched it away just as I was reaching for it, and told the salewoman to wrap it up post haste. And instead of it being a peace offering he ran off with it under his arm,giggling and doing little back kicks. When he was hit by one of those crazed Second Ave taxis and flew into the air, still clutching the frayed package, I thought, good, the little bastard had it coming... And then when I was swimming nude down in Cabo San Lucas, I was attacked by a shark and, would you believe, I was saved by a famous movie star in a Speedo…what’s his name..and after three celebratory Marqueritas, I ....Well...
I see where the first, second, third, sixth and seventh riches counties in the United States are all suburbs of Washington, D.C. Gee, I wonder how that happened?
…I just read the Hunter Thompson interview, and didn't get as fired up as I usually do.He's sixty-five now, and, if this particular interview is any indication, his peaks and valleys are leveling out.I was a great admirer of the Good Doctor's style.I would recognize it if it came wrapped in the Wall Street Journal.I loved his sentences that would move along, almost serenely, with perfectly normal words and cadences, and suddenly--bang!--an explosion of an unexpected word or phrase.Hunter aimed straight for the heart, rat-a-tat-tat. But, I think he wants to sell his book and has bought his own idea that "playing by the rules of the system" is the way to do it. He is hoisted on his own prose. He could end up being a Centrist, for God's sake.
Naturally I would lash out at Hunter because I wish I were Hunter, living in an architecturally-designed log cabin in the chicest of mountains and saying my piece and being listened to. Hunter tells us that 9/11 let our own vermin into the Administration.Hunter tells us that we are being screwed from on high.Hunter tells us what we are already writing about every damned day on our web logs.The worse part is we are powerless, we know it, and then Hunter goes and sticks it in and breaks it off.
I stopped reading the Gary Hart interview in the NYT's magazine when he used the word "exiled."Heads of state of and occasional military leaders, who have caught the fancy of the public, are exiled.Not the likes of Gary Hart. With that one word, Gary is telling us he thinks he's important enough to be "exiled."The words "forgotten," "dismissed" and "indifferent" are not in his lexicon.Maybe they are and I'll discover it when I pick up the magazine again and read the rest of the piece.Which will be this
afternoon when I crawl toward the sofa, with a bag of Fritos between my teeth..
The roster of Democrats declaring and threatening to declare for the Presidency is a nation-wide yawn.Maybe Kerry.Mr. Lieberman is in trouble because he came down on the side of war, and because he is Jewish.Kennedy broke the taboo against a Catholic as President.But when one considers what is going on with Israel and Palestine, common sense tells us it won't play.Not to mention the Radical Far Right, better known as Fascists, and their streak of Anti-Semitism.They will make life hard for a sweet guy and a Liberal.And speaking of anti's, let us not indulge ourselves in a woman candidate, even for VP.Death in the afternoon.
I am addicted to Blogging.I thought about it Sunday while on the sofa, still in my jammies, and popping Fritos.I even gave up selling on eBay where I once raked it in, and that's the truth.Ebay was my replacement for gambling.It helped me stop playing Omaha High Low, Split the Pot, with ex-felons and unreformed drunks in the card houses.Wherein I risked, not just my money, but my life.In one of them, there had been a killing.At any time, a robbery could occur, complete with mayhem, that could find me dancing naked on a tabletop--guns pointed my way--to save my ass.EBay delivered me from dangerous sleaze, for which I kiss Mr. Bezo's hem. Until I tired of bubble wrap, I actually made money instead of being the designated fish.
Other reasons for loud-mouthing on a web log: A terrible need to be heard, and of being the Invisible Woman, and of being a loner, having alienated all my friends, who do dinner parties, share, and chat as a way of life.So what I have now, for the time being, is a Blog and an online bridge game on Microsoft's Zone.If two people read my Blog, I am content.If
bridge players don't fly off the table when my name comes up, I settle in, happy, and start over-bidding along with the men.
Three days after I arrived from California to go to work in NYC, I was walking down Fifth Avenue in white boots, wondering why everyone was staring at my feet. It was winter. A huge gaffe.
Same afternoon. Wearing my new form fitting pants, an elderly woman walking toward me, hissed "suck it in," as she passed by.
Checking into a hotel where I had to say until my furniture arrived, I got three phone calls to my room from strange men.
Oh, maybe a year later, I was once again on Fifth, when a man I used to work with in Los Angeles, came up to me and said, "I thought I told you to wait in the car."
Deep into my NY experience, I had drinks with Jonathan Winters, whom I picked up at Ratazzi's, and he casually announced that he had cancer, but only on the left side of his body. From his head to his feet, and stopping in the exact center of his body.
In the 60's New York blackout--the big one--some of us fools drank and drank by candlelight. Until we realized we had no where to sleep. A friend offered her apartment. We stood outside her building buzzing her until we had another epiphany. The buzzer was electric. We slept on the floor of a hotel.
Drank my lunch and ate bar peanuts at Toots Shor, with my friend, Helen Gurley Brown, who drank three glasses of water, and ate, I think, one peanut. No designer water in those days.
More drinking over on Third Avenue, where the saloon had fading Thurber drawings on the wood wall.
Noticed that the women at the bar of the Regency Hotel were exquisite. Much later, learned they were hookers.
Waiting for friends at a table in the same bar, another time, a young man tried to pick me up. I was in my very late thirties, and flattered by his attention. The bartender told him to leave me alone. Turns out he was a male hooker, hustling me.
Worked around the corner from the Museum of Modern Art. Never set foot in there. Never went to the Met. Never visited, or even saw the Statue of Liberty. Never went in the Empire State Building. And I lived there five years…
Men and women were segregated at J. Walter Thompson. The men's copy groups worked on things like cars. Women wrote about sanitary napkins. (Billed as anatomically correct, it was refered to around the agency as "the flying wedge.)The men had their own private lunchroom. The women were allowed one day-- Wednesday-- to lunch in it.
Every office at JWT was custom decorated. Mine was done in blue and white chintz. Luncheon menus came around at about 10 A.M. and one could order at the desk. Hot foods arrived on silver plate dishes with dome covers. Very very senior male copywriters had offices with pegged and grooved floors, antique, hand-carved walnut desks, and so forth; the ladies wrote at lady writing desks, heavy with marquetry, and sat in Louis IV chairs. I know now I was lucky to be a copywriter when the business was run by gentlemen and a few ladies. Instead of the meat rack it is now.
I lived out in Bronxville, the New York Central stop just before Scarsdale. One day, my son, home sick from school, locked himself out of the house. So he borrowed money from next door, and took the NYC into Manhattan, where he appeared at my office door in his pj's and bare feet.
Once, drinking with friends, almost missed the last train out of town, fell asleep and rode all the way to White Plains. Home at 3:00.
Drinking again, in a seedy bar with friends, a wonderful lady piano player, playing show tunes (never heard Bobby Short at the Carlyle). Asked her why she was throwing her talent away, and she replied, sotto voce, "I have to play here. Do you understand? I HAVE to play here.Who do you think owns this club, silly girl."
Long gone from NYC to work in L.A., I returned on an assignment and visited one of my old ad agencies--Ted Bates & Co. A friend who still worked there wanted me to see his new commercial. We went into the projection room, and the man who ran it, said to me, "Maxine, you know you need an appointment to show film here."
In the Sixties, Ratazzi's was the ad bar du jour, located several doors from Michael's Pub, where Woody Allen played in a little jazz band. A funny, fortyish woman copywriter, seated at the bar in Ratazzi's, would say to cute guys: "I'm a $100 a night girl. Will you take a check?"
Another great woman friend, upon entering Crist Cella's, a noted male luncheon preserve, remarked, "So many men, so restful."
Three days after I arrived from California to go to work in NYC, I was walking down Fifth Avenue in white boots, wondering why everyone was staring at my feet. It was winter. A huge gaffe.
Same afternoon. Wearing my new form fitting pants, an elderly woman walking toward me, hissed "suck it in," as she passed by.
Checking into a hotel where I had to say until my furniture arrived, I got three phone calls to my room from strange men.
Oh, maybe a year later, I was once again on Fifth, when a man I used to work with in Los Angeles, came up to me and said, "I thought I told you to wait in the car."
Deep into my NY experience, I had drinks with Jonathan Winters, whom I picked up at Ratazzi's, and he casually announced that he had cancer, but only on the left side of his body. From his head to his feet, and stopping in the exact center of his body.
In the 60's New York blackout--the big one--we drank and drank by candlelight. Until we realized we had no where to sleep. A friend offered her apartment. We stood outside her building buzzing her until we had another epiphany. The buzzer was electric. We slept on the floor of a hotel.
Drank my lunch and ate bar peanuts at Toots Shor, with my friend, Helen Gurley Brown, who drank three glasses of water, and ate, I think, one peanut. No designer water in those days.
More drinking over on Third Avenue, where the saloon had fading Thurber drawings on the wood wall.
Noticed that the women at the bar of the Regency Hotel were exquisite. Much later, learned they were hookers.
Waiting for friends at a table in the same bar, another time, a young man tried to pick me up. I was in my very late thirties, and flattered by his attention. The bartender told him to leave me alone. Turns out he was a male hooker, hustling me.
Worked around the corner from the Museum of Modern Art. Never set foot in there. Never went to the Met. Never visited, or even saw the Statue of Liberty. Never went in the Empire State Building. And I lived there five years…
Men and women were segregated at J. Walter Thompson. The men's copy groups worked on things like cars. Women wrote about sanitary napkins. (Billed as anatomically correct, it was refered to around the agency as "the flying wedge.)The men had their own private lunchroom. The women were allowed one day-- Wednesday-- to lunch in it.
Every office at JWT was custom decorated. Mine was done in blue and white chintz. Luncheon menus came around at about 10 A.M. and one could order at the desk. Hot foods arrived on silver plate dishes with dome covers. Very very senior male copywriters had offices with pegged and grooved floors, antique, hand-carved walnut desks, and so forth; the ladies wrote at lady writing desks, heavy with marquetry, and sat in Louis IV chairs. I know now I was lucky to be a copywriter when the business was run by gentlemen and a few ladies. Instead of the meat rack it is now.
I lived out in Bronxville, the New York Central stop just before Scarsdale. One day, my son, home sick from school, locked himself out of the house. So he borrowed money from next door, and took the NYC into Manhattan, where he appeared at my office door in his pj's and bare feet.
Once, drinking with friends, almost missed the last train out of town, fell asleep and rode all the way to White Plains. Home at 3:00.
Drinking again, in a seedy bar with friends, a wonderful lady piano player, playing show tunes (never heard Bobby Short at the Carlyle). Asked her why she was throwing her talent away, and she replied, sotto voce, "I have to play here. Do you understand? I HAVE to play here."
Long gone from NYC to work in L.A., I returned on an assignment and visited one of my old ad agencies--Ted Bates & Co. A friend who still worked there wanted me to see his new commercial. We went into the projection room, and the man who ran it, said to me, "Maxine, you know you need an appointment to show film here."
In the Sixties, Ratazzi's was the ad bar du jour, located several doors from Michael's Pub, where Woody Allen played in a little jazz band. A funny, fortyish woman copywriter, seated at the bar in Ratazzi's, would say to cute guys: "I'm a $100 a night girl. Will you take a check?"
Another great woman friend, upon entering Crist Cella's, a noted male luncheon preserve, remarked, "So many men, so restful."
The sweet old print of the Pied Piper, posted below, originally appeared in a children’s book years ago, and I am sure you interpreted it as a cautionary wordless message.
As a Liberal, I am hoping Conservatives found little comfort in the illustration of children captivated by a musical trickster. That’s if they viewed it as a metaphor for
our current political situation, or mess, if you will.
Naturally I am enthralled with the idea of traipsing off in another direction as far away as possible from the arid, soulless, intellectual void referred to as American politics... One can only hope that this Administration doesn’t try to pull off something cute in the next six months.
The latest road news from California is that an enormous sinkhole opened up on 101, a heavily traveled route.
Our infrastructure is falling apart and, yes, the center will not hold.
This deferred maintenance …roads, highways , bridges, buildings,Just about
everywhere in the nation, stuff is flying part. It is a disgrace. It is also dangerous.
Men are out of work, despairing and drinking six packs in one sitting. Women who
hold down a job as well as run a household are using food to ease their anxiety
and feel better--if only for a short time--about themselves. They are getting fat
but they are now addicted to food.
Why has it not occurred to anyone to do what President Roosevelt did, which
was to create the WPA, (Works Progress Athority) in which a decaying America was shored up by men out of work.The result:Paid work for those with no work, and saving America from becoming a slum.
People brushing teeth, all ages, everywhere on screen.
Particularly obnoxious is the CU of the underside of
the tongue as the toothpaste user slides it across her
front teeth to show how smooth and clean they
are.
Dog scooting across rug on hindquarters. Not funny.
Often a sign of worms.
Pull up shot ofbaby’s chubby arm covered with dark
splotches of wet food, which come off as blood, given
that there is no frame of reference.
OOPs, I almost forgot this cutie…Having worn out that old saw about the man handed a baby with a messy diaper…copywriters have discovered that urine in the face
is an attention-getter.. A new father is diapering his new baby boy.The result:pee arcs around the room, first one way, then the other, hitting the wallpaper, splashing on the panicked guy who apparently has no clue where urine is excreted from the male body.. It’s supposed to be funny. Mothers will disagree, I’m sure, as they remember cleaning up the baby, the male who has scurried from the room,, and sponging down the front room sofa. Of course I forgot the name of the product. The pee was more interesting, I guess.
.
Germs illustrated with colored graphics squirming all over child’s hands,
and various other places, like door knobs. So hideous it is positively
riveting. At Ted Bates, years ago, Rosser Reeves would have
called it “vampire video, “ because it distracted the viewer from
the product. I finally was forced to watch it three times before
I could remember the name: Lysol.
PRINT ADS
EXCU of man sticking his finger in woman’s wide open
mouth. It doesn’t look like a finger. Surely this was not
deliberate.
Man sprawled on his back and wearing tight white trunks,
crotch toward camera. Wraparound black shades. His non
commital leer makes him look like a hood on his day off.
AOL: UPDATE THIS BLOG NOW!!!
9:31:46 AM comment []
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Now it's statins for 8-year-olds!!! We are like a herd of cows in a field, mooing and moving wherever we are led or prodded. At least that's what many of the pharmas believe about Americans, and I am beginning to think they are right.. For god's sake, click on Google, click on statins, then read the side effects. When you get to the euphemism, often called "confusion," think "dementia" instead, because that's what happens to some users. And remember, too, what statins do to the muscles of some users. If they stay on the drug long enough damage to the muscles can be permanent, resulting in pain and weakened muscles. So you can just forget having a star athlete in the family!
9:24:48 AM comment []
Saturday, June 28, 2008
THE RETURN OF THE HERONS
I remember when we bought the little living Chistmas tree and put it on our coffee table. "Isn't it just too precious?" I said to my negative, gloomy, nay-saying husband. "And only $7.95." He perked up.
When Christmas was over I decided to plant this lovely little pine in our scrubby back yard, where even the grass hates us. When it grew a whole foot, I rejoiced, and Norris Negative frowned. "This is only the beginning," he said. "Wait until it grows hundreds of feet and falls on the house."
I laughed knowingly. "It's just an innocent little Christmas tree. But it's alive and I am not about to trash it like the neighbors who treat their trees like dirt. Fine way to celebrate the season...if you ask me." I was still young and hopeful and believed in honoring every holiday on the calendar.
I could have sent this tree to college for what it's cost us. Thirty years later this pine towers over our two storey house, and every other house on our street. Keeping the tree trimmed involves two or three and now four men throwing themselves at it, each anchored by a rope, to the tune of $1,000 and, in recent years $2,000. Now, even tree men who know me talk about short life spans for pines like mine, and that mine is surely going to die at any minute so stand clear. I know it isn't dying; what I also know is that they don't want to climb it anymore, insurance or no insurance. So they tell me it has some kind of pine fungus, or some other evil pine killer in treeman's lore. They remind me of the money I'll save by just letting it die a peaceful death in its own home. Considering our new economy, also known as a depression, (No, I didn't mean recession, I meant depression as written) the idea is gaining momentum.
When the first gang of Herons arrived last year, leaving my backyard looking the way rockers leave hotel rooms, they stayed more than three months during nesting season. While walkers on the street stood out front pointing at the many blue and silver birds, streaking to their nests in the early morning, and marveling at their beauty in flight and counting how many nests they could see hundreds and hundreds feet up in the tree, I was doing my work. Gloves, trash bags in hand I picked up the dead baby Herons that had been kicked out of the nest when there was not enough room for them. Some still fetuses. Remains of other smaller half- eaten dead birds, broken egg shells, large as hens eggs, and of course numerous piles of Heron poo poo.
This second contingent of Herons is preparing to leave, and I will be free, free, free at last to only clean up the discreet white droppings of the sparrows that make my deck look like a feckless painter had walked across it with a dripping paint brush.
The tree stays in the picture. It will outlive me.
Found of Wikimedia
