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Movies are a search for the magic in our lives. Vincente Minneli

Midnight in Paris

This movie is a mashup of art history 101 and meet the Fokkers. Why Woody is obsessed with the upper class is beyond me. He was not born into it and was a stand up comedian. The characters are one dimensional. It is interesting to hear Hemingway speak with text from his novels and a fun gimick. Owen Wilson is a screenwriter who lives in Malibu just like his character. He co wrote great movies with wes ANDERSON. It's great that Gertrude Stein is in it somewhat redeeming the homophobic jokes in many of his movies.

The plot revolves around whether the parents will accept him or not, a trite summer comedy plot.

Movie star Toby jugs

I call them mugs they call them jugs. These collectible beverage containers are available on e-bay by someone from Milton Keynes England. Wouldn't you like Edward G. Robinson, Bogart and Cagney mugs next to your Winston Churchill on top of your mantlepiece too?

Legal: I have no connection with the seller or manufacturer.

Using metaphors correctly

He was the incarnation of a book-thief. Of this metaphor, H.W. Fowler says: What is the incarnation of a thief ? Too, too solid flesh indeed!

The Year in Review

Burl Ives Toby Mugs

Christmas is almost here and the Amish are working their fingers to the bone to create these delightful Toby-style mugs. What a delight to drink your grog and your nog out of Burl Ives head! Collect all eight Burl Ives Toby-style mugs crafted with old Amish workmanship: Frontier Burl, Reb, Dixieland, Sea Captain, Bum, CIA Agent, Bowler-hatted Brit and, of course, Big Daddy. Each mug smokes a cigar. The handles are very durable - Rebs even looks like a tree branch, though the others are unimaginative. Order now from the Bryce Mint and a buggy will pull up to your house Christmas morning. Cheers!

Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

Saw The Birds yesterday at the Castro theater. One of my favorite in-jokes is when Mitch is tending to Melanie's scalp wound from a seagull with a bottle of antiseptic and Melanie asks "What is that?" Mitch replies, "Peroxide."

This is the first viewing where I realized that Patty, I mean Melanie's father is a San Francisco newspaper owner. Now prankish daughters of socialite newspaper owners are an interesting subject. We learn that Melanie misbehaved in Paris (don't all debs and sub-debs do that?). I might point out that when Mitch's twee neighbor in San Francisco tells Melanie that Mitch is out of town in Bodega Bay she asks "Where is that?"

There are two reasons why Melane should know where Bodega Bay is

1. She is a socialite.
2. She works for Travelers Aid

But I gues the audience needs to know where it is.

The only two excellent actors in the movie are Veronica Cartwright and Jessica Tandy. Tippi tries, and Rod looks confused. But Rod will later triumph in V.I.P.'s

Catalan Yule Log

According to the pedia this actual log is wrapped in a blanket and fed grass. After a few days it is hit a few times with a stick and expels presents.

The Drunken Remote Control Jungle Cruise Boat

The story is that Victor Hugo gave French poet Arthur Rimbaud the nickname Shakespeare Infant, but it now known it came from an unscrupulous Belgian phrenologist. In addition, there is now ample evidence that the poem The Drunken Boat refers to the famous remote control jungle cruise boats on the grounds of a famous hotel in Anaheim, California proving that Arthur and boyfriend Germain Noveau travelled further west than Java.

On Java, Rimbaud's first job was a rock pile supervisor, next a rockstar Java programmer.This enabled the guys enough money to make their next stop in Hawaii where they went to Auntie Things Luau located in an industrial area outside of Honolulu. Weakened pineapple juice and even weaker rum did not bother Boy Shakespeare as he was able to drink anything, even absinthe.

They worked as French tour guides on Waikiki Beach and earned enough money to buy e-tickets to southern California.

The Chi of Cheese

The NYT says Kraft shares are wobbling

But I'm buying

Not just for the gobbling

'cause Feng Shui is back

And cheese chi a fact

Whether it artisan, singles or aerosol foam

Goings on

Turandot at the ballpark was fab. Our posse included Lady Graham and Mr Mark St Mark. Fab singing, acting. Costumes and sets. Doing research on You Tube I found the Met's version from many years ago with a dragon set the size of the stage. This was with Pav' and the Cab'.

Painting with white

Groundsqwerl, the San Francisco-based fashion, art and archictecture magazine did a fashion shoot at my atelier in the Mission. The theme was white, a daring transgression after Labor Day that almost qualifies as heresy, but you know those groundsqwerls!

When the Fall issue came out I was expecting photos, but the photos were used as models for paintings of models in my abode. Because the stunning male fashion model "Kennedy" was wearing a white shirt and white pants, the artist had to dirty the corners of my ceiling by squeezing a tube of black oil paint on his pallette so that Kennedy could even be seen. I pride myself on my absolutely pristine apartment. The walls are so clean you can eat off them.

My attorney said that my contract did not give them permisssion to paint my walls.

camping in the high sierras

Hello all

History of Cha-Cha-Cha

I was furious when I received the uncorrected proof of my latest book "History of Cha-Cha-Cha," which the publisher mislabeled "History of the Cha-Cha-Cha," which makes it sound very dull. The only duller title would be "A History of Cha-Cha-Cha," which sounds as exciting as a treatise on Medieval war machines. We're talking about dancing here, people. We're talking about swinging the hips, letting our tailbones slip.

"This is cha-cha-cha!" I screamed into the phone to my editor. "Not one of your

Distressed Hoodie

I'm not really into fantasy science fiction, but since my kitchen with its lemon yellow mid-century metal cabinets and fridge was rented out for a popular brand's distressed hoodie photo shoot, I ended up having lunch with a distressed gnome hired to model the distressed hoodie. The stylist, the person who arranges things and sets up the photo, brought along a nasty-looking long-haired cat named Dibble, who was affectionate and shed all over my kitchen.

Don't let me become one of those people who...

collect ceramic owls. There are already two people in my neighborhood who do. One is the guy with the owl window. His building has bay windows on the second and third floors, but the first floor suddenly becomes very L.A. His famous owls are displayed in a big, square picture window which I believe is SLIDING GLASS which is heresy in S.F. It's hard to see inside; he also has lots of plants, and he works at home among many plants and his wise totems.

Exaggerated Bow

Here is self-referential humor at its finest. The exaggerated bow. It celebrates the world's most famous Kitty' s 35th anniversary. Yes, she was born in 1977. In London (??). Like many children's stories her parents are never mentioned. She does have kindly grandparents though. The first person I knew into hk was a performance artist named Werther Ornot. I was stepping off a bus from Chico where I had given a lecture on equestrian statues. Werther was headed to Berkeley and proceeded to open an hk coin purse and pull out a New Zealand 10 pence. His most famous piece involved creating a series of fake weather maps with non-existant cold fronts. Actually he was better known for his experimental music at Mills College. You know, comedienne Rose Marie is very up on the arts. She funded and owns an installation I did at the Oroville Museum of Contemporary Art. It is called The Floating Cup Garden. A small travertine plaza has a maze drilled into it. The width of these canals, that branch out at right angles, is slightly wider than a tea cup and their depth slightly deeper. In the beginnig the cups full of fragrant, inspirational tea float in an artificial, kidney-shaped pond. A great loon call is heard and a running outboard motor is lowered into the pond. This causes the steaming vessels of hot liquid to disperse into the Floating Cup Garden, each on its way like a drunken boat. A series of travertine pavilions shade the mini- canals. Here poets stand in long gold robes. They are not to move and only IF a cup is stuck in the maze do they gracefully squat, take the cup from the water, stand, drink and declaim an extemporaneous poem. Then Rose Marie declares the best poem and the winning poet takes an exaggerated bow.

Nonline Dictionary

I was so excited to have saved fiive dollars on a paperback dictionary that I shared my delight with a group of friends over veggiie omlettes at the Hawk's Perch. A friend who resembles a small neurotic dog barked "A dictionary? Why can't you just look things up on the web??"
You mean those online dictionaries that were created with YEARS of scholarship and research?

One of the pleasures of looking up an entry in a paper dictionary is that I get lost on the way.

Our new home (Bill and me)

A wonderful architect has designed and built a vacation home for us on Long Island. We are both high-level, hi-tech executives in Seattle, but need our sunbaths during the summer. Also, it's easier to fly to Europe from Long Island.

The house is shaped like an airplane hanger and is mostly underground. Image an enormous pipe pushed into the earth. Very green, n'est-ce pas? It complies with zoning regulations by not being obviously ostentatious. The only change I asked for after completion was that the concrete staircase down to the hidden underground level be ripped out, redesigned and rebuilt. They were concrete steps held up by steel cables like a suspension bridge. I wasn't walking down that thing. After Joan Crawford's husband Al Steele's accident in their two-level penthouse, I didn't want any chi-leaking stairs.

Being 6'3", a house with a sloping ceiling didn't work too well for me. Bill is short so he never thought of the limitations of such a design. He suggested that we put up beaded curtains where the slope became dangerous to my noggin. This was an excellent idea, especially since I had just published an article in "Film and Cinema Review" about beaded curtains in motion pictures. The first curtain I mention is in Otto Preminger's "Advise and Consent" a film about political blackmail. One character, sort of a male maven, answers the door of his apartment wearing a caftan. The set decorator uses a beaded curtain in the scene to indicate the character is a homosexual. Now, there is nothing wrong with caftans. I ordered mine as soon as one appeared in the "Ah Men" catalog in 1968. The next beaded curtain I explore is in "Color Me Kubrick" where John Malkovitch plays a guy who impersonates Stanley Kubrick to con people out of thousands of dollars. The con artist was gay, though Kubrick was not. Malkovitch, in his beaded curtained apartment, plays the con man with the usual limp wrist gestures he applies to all his gay roles. (Even though it was stereotypical, I enjoyed the movie). During the commentary, the director mentions that he actually met the real con artist. He said the guy didn't seem very "gay acting" at all. Duh. Finally the last film I mention is, of course, Hitchcock's "Beaded Curtain."