Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life
The recent book by Graham Nash, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, begins in the same place as “Songs for Beginners.” England is at war, and the luftwaffe is visiting Manchester regularly. Young mothers go to a safe place in North England to have their babies. One turned out different.
The Nash family lived in what was called a “council home.” In America, it would be called a project. Things did not get better when father went to prison. Years later, when Graham came home for a visit, he saw his mother making out with another man.
Now, in stories like this, it is music that saves the young man. He meets Allan Clarke in school, and the two sing well together. Various singing groups follow, more musicians are recruited, and they name a band after Buddy Holly.
Mr. Nash spoke an event to promote this book. At seventy two, he has a full head of snow white hair. Many of the stories in the book were told here, some with details added. One of these tales is the time the Everly Brothers came to Manchester. Graham and Allan were determined to meet their heroes, and hung out on the steps of a hotel until late at night. Finally, the Everly Brothers arrived. They spent a half hour talking to the star struck young men. This story is on Page 43.
So the Hollies make it big, and go to America. Graham Nash meets Mama Cass, who introduces him to David Crosby and Steohen Stills. Somehow, he meets Joni Mitchell. Graham makes beautiful music with all three, not always playing the same instrument. Joni is well known for her open tuning.
Grahams mind is expanding, with a little help from his friends. The decision to leave the Hollies is made. Atlantic records trades Richie Furay to Epic records for Graham Nash. A music publishing contract is torn up. Don’t try this at home.
One day, Joni and Graham go into a thrift store. Joni buys a vase. They go home. Graham says “I’ll light the fire, while you put the flowers in the vase that you bought today.”
Crosby Stills & Nash become superstars. Neil Young, bless his heart, joins the band. They go to Woodstock, and get scared shitless. Joni Mitchell stays in New York City, because her manager does not want her to miss the Dick Cavett Show on Monday. (Listen to Grace at 10:05) Joni writes a song about the event she missed.
Time marches on. The various relationships, both musical and romantic, come and go. A man makes a bet with Graham that he cannot write a song in a half hour. The result is “Just a song before I go.”
No story involving David Crosby is complete without a drug lecture. One story was so explosive, the legal department called Graham before the book was published, just to confirm the story. It is on page 263. David sold his Mercedes for crack. The man who bought it od’d. David broke into his house, stole the bill of sale and car keys, took the car, and sold it again.
Somehow, David Crosby is still alive today. So is Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. This might be surprising to some. Even if Graham were to fall over dead today, he leaves a fine body of work behind him. This book is just another part. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. .
Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Four
This is the fourth, and final, report on the 2014 Bulwer-Lytton fiction writing contest, at least for 2014. Parts one, two, and three were previously published. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Dr. Fulton Crisp DMD, stoic superintendent of the prestigious Northwoods Dental College, entered the symposium for new students, took the dais amid the clamor of the first day of classes, produced a #6 dental pick from a pocket, held it aloft for all to see and spoke the immortal words, “May I have your attention please, this is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill.” — Jim Biggie, Melrose MA
As Farmer Brown’s train pulled out of the station at 10:00am traveling east at 50 mph, he had no idea that at that very same moment Farmer Green was 100 miles away on a west-bound train heading straight for him at 60mph and that because of a tragic track-switching mistake he was going to die in a fiery head-on train crash at exactly … uhm … well … err … sometime later that day.
Shanon Conner, San Angelo TX
This is a tale of love, pain, loss, and redemption – and of a baboon, Amelia.
Talha bin Hamid, Karachi, Pakistan
There it stood regally atop the marble counter, the clear, sensuously curvaceous container, with its golden cargo, crowned with a spherical stopper, with its tapered base in intimate contact with the neck of the vessel, a vitreous phallus waiting to deprive the oleaginous content of its extra-virginity.
Anthony Newman, Collinsville CT
Long, sleek legs protruded from her tantalizingly round abdomen; thick, bristly hairs clung to his skin, communicating “I need you” in her innocent, nymphean way; wide, multifaceted eyes stared lustrously into him – yes, the little maggot he’d taken in but weeks before had blossomed into a voluptuous young housefly, and he feared he could no longer resist her beauty.
Zachary Bezemek, West Bloomfield MI
Perhaps it was the unnatural angle of her neck that bothered Clint, or perhaps it was the fact that she was beautiful – far too beautiful to be having a body bag zipped up over her, but he knew one thing for certain: the untouched chocolate mud cake on the counter was looking more appetizing by the minute. — Dave Roberts, Oatley, NSW, Australia
Fearing his subordinates were after his job, and having denied their requests for promotions, Edgar Bergen felt the first pangs of job insecurity upon discovering Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd poring intently over dog-eared and well-worn copies of Ventriloquism for Dummies.
John Tracy, Shoreline WA
The full moon over distant hill bathed the lovers in joyful radiance, glowworms merrily winked and glimmered, swamp gas emanated an ethereal shimmer, and fireflies twinkled, flickered and fluttered – pinging their pinprick flashes like optical exclamation points, the whole light show engendering a veritable cornucopian cacophony of Kinkadesque scintillation. — Kenneth Leake, Fairbanks AK
The cheesemonger’s wares reminded me of the days of my feckless youth – the soft white clouds of paneer encapsulated my leisurely summer in Gujarat, the block of sweet, caramel-brown Brunost made my autumn sojourn in Oslo float to mind, and the pungent scent of Stilton, its yellowish-white wedges embellished with veins of blue-green mould, brought back memories of discovering the Staffordshire Strangler’s first five corpses. — Vina Prasad, Singapore
It was cool but muggy – I was schvitzing like a mohel at his first bris – and one thing was for certain: that Rosetta Stone course in Yiddish was worth the gelt. — Kelben Graf, Milwaukie OR
Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Three
This is part three of the chamblee54 exhibition of the 2014 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Parts one, and two, were previously published. There will be a part three, sometime. The writers will be forgiven. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
He was a stolid man, prone to excessive and extended bursts of emotionlessness; but when Maurice loved, he loved with the passion of a dog itching its face against the grain of a firm pile carpet.
Stephen Sanford, Seattle WA
Cole kissed Anastasia, not in a lingering manner as a connoisseur might sip a glass of ‘82 La Pin, but open-mouthed and desperate, like a hobo wrapping his mouth around a bottle of Strawberry Ripple in the alley behind the 7-11. — Terri Meeker, Nixa MO
The Contessa’s heart was pounding hard and fast, like an out-of-balance clothes washer, which can get that way if you mix jeans with a lot of light things, though the new ones have some sensor thing to counteract that or shut off, but the Contessa’s heart didn’t have anything like that, so she had to sit down and tell Don Rolando to keep his hands to himself for a while. — John Hardi, Falls Church VA
The young lovers’ lips latched to each other not unlike the way in which two coital snails would, with much slime and suction, frothing as if someone had just poured salt on them.
Peter S. Bjorkman, Rocklin CA
His ex-wife’s personality was like chocolate – not the smoky, tangy, exquisitely rich and full-bodied type, but the over-sweet, tooth-cracking, factory-processed, made-with-vegetable-oil kind that leaves one with diabetes and an aneurysm the size of a grape. — Shalom Chung, Hong Kong
It seemed fair to say that her werewolfism was putting a strain on their relationship, the way she had earned the ire of the neighbors by devouring their pets and howling far past the bedtimes of their children, but bring it up to her, and she’d just snarl, “Why do you keep harping on this?” around a mouthful of the Smiths’ cat. — Eva Niessner, Cockeysville MD
Raoul’s deep slate eyes sucked Natalie in, and there she remained lodged like the wadded knee-hi clogging the tube of her Hoover Electrosuction Model 612 that once belonged to her grandmother, or some other dead relative, its vacuum bag so overstuffed with gunk, shed skin cells, and insect exoskeletons it nearly exploded like Natalie’s heart bursting with love for Raoul.
Wendy White Lees, Ho-Ho-Kus NJ
Over KFC, Raul broke up with Sheila a second time (the first time shrinking her heart until it was only fit for a tiny doll), tearing what was left of her heart to shreds, like the shreds of coleslaw now clinging to Raul’s beard; a fitting analogy since the aforementioned doll Sheila was thinking of was a Cabbage Patch doll. — Amelia Kynaston, Las Vegas NV
Pet detective Drake Leghorn ducked reporters at the entrance to the small hobby farm and headed down to the tiny pond where a lone goose was frantically calling for her mate and he wondered why – when so many come to look upon the graceful mating pair – why would someone want to take a gander?— Howie McLennon, Ottawa ON
Six months old, and already their love had picked up memories like lint, which, now that Maddie thought about it, was appropriate, since she and Brian met at the laundromat, when Maddie found herself hampered by a stubborn washing machine coin slot, but then snickered at the thought of being “hampered” while doing laundry, and then found herself explaining her snicker to the nearest laundromat patron, who turned out to be Brian and who, better yet, turned out to have a sense of humor even, well, dryer than her own. — Kirsten Wilson, Superior CO
Some stories are so compelling they almost seem to write themselves, but not this one.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA
Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Two
What follows is part two of the 2014 rendering of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. The opposite of pro is con. In some systems of logic, this makes the opposite of contest is protest. Maybe someone needs to protest this abuse of the english language.
Yesterday was the overview.. Today is the first part of contest selections. If you go to the contest page, you can see all the entries that the “Grand Panjandrum” saw fit to expose. This collection was whittled down, and divided into three parts.
Here is another description of the contest. It is the intro to the 2012 post at chamblee54. When all this is over, there will be more pictures, from The Library of Congress. They were taken by Dorothea Lange, as part of the Farm Service Administration project.
Once upon a time, there was a writer named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. While some of his product is acceptable, Lord Lytton is responsible for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”. Years after his timely demise, an English professor, at San Jose State University, chose to name a contest for bad writing after Lord Lytton. Scott Rice recently overcame his embarrassment to announce the selections of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
PG has written about BLFC before. The announcement of a new crop of perps is a good excuse for text to go between the pictures. This post is written in the style of Margaret Mitchell. After the 4800 word clunkathon published yesterday, the contest selections will be edited.
When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered – this had to mean land! – but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose. — Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA
As he girded himself against the noxious, sulfurous fumes that belched from the chasm in preparation for descent into the bowels of the mountain where mighty pressure and unimaginable heat made rock run in syrupy rivers, Bob paused to consider the unlikely series of events that had led him to become the Great God Vulcan’s proctologist. — Stan Hunter Kranc, State College PA
Finally after ninety-seven long days adrift Captain Pertwee was rescued, mercifully ending his miserable diet of rainwater and strips of sun dried Haddock which was actually far ghastlier than it sounded what with George Haddock being his former first mate. — Phillip Davies, Cardiff, U.K.
Hard-boiled private dick Harrison Bogart couldn’t tell if it was the third big glass of cheap whiskey he’d just finished, or the way the rain-moistened blouse clung so tightly to the perfect figure of the dame who just appeared panting in his office doorway, but he was certain of one thing … he had the hottest mother-in-law in the world. — Carl Turney, Bayswater, Victoria, Australia
“One cannot easily shake off old habits,” was all that retired Detective Tim O’Hara could say when, after rifling through the dead old man’s pockets (which, as he expected, were all empty), inspecting his throat, and forcing open his cold, stiff hand to get his fingerprints, he was gently but firmly pulled away from the coffin by his brother Harry and piloted out of the parlor under the perplexed stares of uncle Mel’s friends and relatives. — Jorge Stolfi, Campinas, SP, Brazil
When the CSI investigator lifted the sheet revealing the mutilated body with the Ginsu Knife still protruding from the bloody chest, Detective Miller wondered why anybody would ever need two of them, even if he only had to pay extra shipping and handling. — Brian Brandt, Lansdale PA
After years of Dame Gothel’s tyrrany, Rapunzel was only seconds from freedom, until, with an agonized scream, the prince plunged to his death in the thorns below, grasping a handful of detached blond strands–the golden stair having been irreparably weakened by the deficiency of Vitamins B3, B6, and B7 in his love’s new celiac-friendly diet. — Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook BC
With her interest in dime-store cowboy novels finally fading and Christmas just days away, little Lizzy Borden sat quietly in the corner and crossed “tomahawk” off her Christmas list, writing instead the word AXE, carefully in her best penmanship, which made her mother and father so proud.
Frank McWilliams, Telford PA
It was a bright and cloudless day, as young Lizzie hummed a cheerful tune to herself, whilst drying and replacing the last knife on its hook, and reminiscing how Mother and Father Borden (lying bleeding in their respective pools of blood upstairs) had been so inappropriately cross with her, such a short while ago. — Carl Turney, Bayswater, Victoria, Australia
Roger proved unable to select a bedspread, due to his raging ennui; however, he was able to purchase an assault rifle, which is probably why his wife left him, although it may have been the ferrets.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA
Little Altars Everywhere
Little Altars Everywhere is a book written by Rebecca Wells. LAE was written before Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, with the same characters.
Arguably, you should read Little Alters before you read Divine Secrets. Life does not work that way. Many saw the Ya-Ya movie who will never even know there were books. In PG’s case, he heard about Ya-Ya long before he found it at a yard sale. A few months later, while trolling the shelves of the Chamblee library, he thought to look under Wells, and found Little Alters.
A central character is Viviane Abbott Walker. Mother of four. Ya-Ya. Alcoholic. Catholic. Does not have a problem with hitting children. According to one son, a child molester. In Ya-Ya, we learn that her true love is killed in World War II. There are some other weird scenes during her childhood. Maybe she is a monster, but she came by it honestly. In Little Alters, all you see is the drinking, the religion, and the bad behavior.
These books are set in Louisiana. This apparently is another world, one that is incomprehensible to others. Atlanta is full of former Louisianans, and is a bit whacky in it’s own way. Thornton LA is a place that works all five senses.
Miss Wells writes about the smells. The cold cream on Vivi’s face, when she crawls in bed with Little Shep. The way Willetta’s smells, like Lipton tea and Ajax. The dark waters of the bayou, full of stuff you don’t want to know about.
Smells are said to be the sensation that goes directly to the brain, without a filter. The direct connection to the animal heart. To know how something smells is to know the essence.
Little Alters is a collection of chapters. Each one tells a different story. Each one is told in a different voice. There is no beginning and end, but a big bulge in the middle. Life is short but wide.
Two of the chapter stories are told by Willetta and Chaney. They are a black couple that lives on the farm, and work for the Walkers. Miss Wells tells their story in the voice of old, country black people. Some might say this is not proper, for a white woman to try and talk like a black man. It is done with compassion and accuracy. Whether Miss Wells should do this is up to the individual to decide.
Little Alters can be a dangerous book for lunch hour reading. One day, PG was in a mid summer funk. The chapter that day was Big Shep’s story. He was on the local draft board during Vietnam. Neighbors came to him. They begged him to keep their sons out of that war. Sometimes he could help, sometimes he could not.
One of the ones to go was Lincoln. He was Chaney’s younger brother. During the Tet offensive, Lincoln was killed. The story of Big Shep going to the funeral home was not cheerful, nor should it be.
This book report is written on a monday morning. At this point in his life, PG gets up early. In many ways, the best part of the day is the couple of hours before going down Buford Hiway to the place days are spent. Little Alters will soon be returned to the Chamblee library. There is no telling what will replace it. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Football Player Flotus
PG is an old fogie. An example might be last night. He stayed home, listening to stuff on the internet, and working on pictures. Facebook can bring a sample of the real world into a boring life.
just another night of queens, fags and a 6 person lesbian restroom fight that resulted in a trash can catching on fire(?), shutting the bar down(?) leaving everyone to fight for their life and escape just in time to see a misplaced hetero trying to conceal the fact that he is puking his guts out in front of everyone with his beer still in his hand. …I feel so PG…
While this was going on, PG was listening to a podcast. Allan Gurganus was on yet another radio show, promoting yet another book. At 13:25 in the show, Mr. Gurganus says “I’m not an ironist. That’s why I’m worth reading.”
Twitter to the rescue. Retweeted by thefieldnegro HoodiesUpMusicLoud™ @MrMilitantNegro This is what racist dumbfuckery looks like: Was Michelle Obama really born as a man?
People in the spotlight are the target of rumors. It is part of the game. Some of them are far fetched. When the FLOTUS is a WOC, this nonsense becomes “racist.”
Here is the story: Shocking New Revelation about Michelle Obama: A Must Read, Christwire Exclusive. The story was in Christwire. CW is a satirical website, sort of like the Onion on crystal meth. A lot of people don’t get the joke.
The current edition of Christwire has a story, One Hit Wonder Cher Once a Peace Activist Now Promotes Hate & Violence. There is a picture. It shows what Cher might look like today, without the plastic surgery. She could have a new career in horror movies.
The FLOTUS story was picked up by the popup ad happy Examiner. In the best internet tradition, the comments are better than the story. “The First Yeti’s look is uncanny ~ Many wonder if she is a tranny ~ Perhaps she’s got a knack ~ To tuck her gear back ~ And carry it in her fanny?
Pictures by “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Local Souls
Local Souls, the most recent product from Allan Gurganus, is due back at the library today. PG is probably not going to finish it.
Mr. Gurganus is much loved by some. He is a good writer, who knows a lot of words. He plays the game well, with entertaining bookshow interviews, and snappy speeches at literary events. To the english department industrial complex, Mr. Gurganus is a star. This does not translate into being fun to read. Plays Well With Others was about a nightmare. Reading PWWO is suitably horrible.
PG was excited to see Local Souls at the library. The first novella is about a peculiar family arrangement. The young couple had moved to a suburb of Atlanta. On page 62, we learn the address: 110 Pickwich Drive, Collunus Heights, GA. According to wikipedia, and common sense, there is not, and never has been, a town called Collunus Heights, GA. This is the point where PG gave up.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Author Insults
These author insults were borrowed from flavorwire. HT to Andrew Sullivan The pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost.
25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound “A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”
24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley “All raw, uncooked, protesting.”
23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”
22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence “Filth. Nothing but obscenities.”
21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820) “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.”
20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.”
19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling “Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.”
18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.”
17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes “Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”
16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864) “I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.”
15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”
12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”
11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972) “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”
10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876) “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”
09. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
08. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger “I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”
07. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923) “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’…. One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”
06. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning “I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”
05. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948) “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”
04. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898) “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
03. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce “the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”
02. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922) “A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”
01. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928) “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”
Bonus. Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”
Bonus two, a comment to the original post.: RomanHans Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Bonus Three, from Flannery O’Connor “I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
Uganda Be Kidding Me
Three weeks ago, PG found “Uganda Be Kidding Me” at the Chamblee library. It is due back today. The bookmark is on page 82. This book is not worth checking out a second time.
Last fall, a copy of My Horizontal Life appeared. It was a fun book. The comic boasting about alcoholic excess was fun to read. If you don’t think about the squalid reality behind the jokes, you enjoy it.
Apparently enough people enjoy the Handler schtick to make money. Some publisher gave her a contract, and needed product for the pipeline. Miss Handler went on a animal watching trip to Africa. Someone thought this would be a good excuse for a book. They were mistaken.
The routine is getting old. Maybe PG is just a retired drunk, lacking a sense of humor. At any rate, the book does not work. Alcoholic jokes are not funny to third parties.
Last fall, Miss Handler made an Atlanta stop on her book tour. One appearance was in a L5P bookstore. The facility was about the size of an SUV. There was a line of a hundred people waiting to get in. The book buyers probably need a shoehorn to get in that small a space with Miss Handler, her ego, and a cash register. Maybe Miss Handler lost some of the weight she gained in Africa.
During this year’s oscars, someone at Huffington Post let Miss Handler use their twitter account. The result was “Chelsea Handler slammed for Lupita Oscar tweet” Miss Handler lives the adage that there is no bad publicity. The two tweets that got the most attention: “Congratulations #lupita To pre order #ugandabekiddingme go to http://amzn.to/1pS4qpG #Oscars.” “Congratulations #12yearsaslave Go to Africa or buy #ugandabekiddingme http://amzn.to/1de1ka9 #aheadofthecurve #Oscars.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Caro, Necie, Teensy, and Vivi are the Ya-Ya sisters. They were kids together in Louisiana when the local movie theater had a Shirley Temple look-a-like contest. The Ya-Yas were kicked out for misbehaving. It was not the only time they got in trouble.
Sidda, the daughter of Vivi, is working on a play. Her mother is not speaking to her. Sidda wants to know about female bonding, and asks one of the ya-yas for help. A scrapbook arrives. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel is about what happens when Sidda looks through the book.
The book is like life… it is short, but deep. If G-d is hiding in the details, maybe people can as well. sometimes the best thing to do is tell one of the stories.
It was the last week that PG would be working at the retail giant headquarters. The cafeteria quit serving at two p.m. The morning chores had lasted past the cutoff time. The break room was full of loud people. PG decided to get out, and found the Waffle House on Atlanta Road.
After ordering lunch, PG stepped back in time. The Ya-Ya girls took a train to Atlanta. They were going to the world premiere of “Gone With The Wind.” They stayed at the house of a wealthy relative. Ginger, a maid, was the chaperone. She had to ride in the “colored” car.
The premiere of GWTW was a big deal. There was a costume ball at the municipal auditorium, which was not exactly a grand place. There was a choir from Ebenezer Baptist Church singing spirituals. One of the singers was ten year old Martin Luther King Jr.
One day, during breakfast, an Atlanta cousin said something rude to Ginger. Vivi threw a plate of food at the Atlanta cousin. The Atlanta relatives were glad to see the Ya-Yas leaving. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Positive Attitude Prattle
Somewhere along the line, the boss decides you have a “negative attitude”. From that point on, you are not allowed to complain. It is almost as if it were a gimmick to keep you in line.
A lady named Barbara Ehrenreich agrees that there is entirely too much positive attitude required of people. She wrote a book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In one interview, she says “And again, you know, don’t worry about the world. Don’t ask the question about where the cancer comes from. Don’t ask why so many people are not employed, even in good times in our country. And it was the same sort of thing. And that’s when I began to think hey, this kind of operates as a way of quelling discontent, quelling dissent, you know, when you can’t say I’m mad about -whatever. You just have to swallow it and smile.”
Ms. Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. She found herself in a pink tsunami of cheerfulness. The pink teddy bears did not do anything for her spirits. The whole culture of happy talk, about a life threatening illness. grossed her out.
At one point, she was given a tote bag. In it were some crayons. I said, “This is really nice, but what’s with the crayons?” And this woman said to me, “Well, that’s in case you want to write down any of your thoughts.” And I said, “I’m a writer. I don’t use crayons.”
The promotional interviews quoted here were conducted in 2009. This was before the Susan G. Komen foundation hired Karen Handel. During the Planned Parenthood meltdown, some unflattering things came out about the SGK foundation. It probably did not help Ms. Ehrenreich’s attitude.
So the book happened. PG has not read it, but has seen a few reviews and interviews. The New York Times has a great review. It says “America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.”
One interview has a stomach churning comment. It should be noted that this is the lady talking, and that there is no confirmation of this. “Yeah. And here’s something that really horrified me that I learned recently and put in the book, is that some breast cancer support groups expel people who go into metastasis and who are clearly going to die. You can’t be in the group because just your presence might bring other people down.” (A google search of the phrase “breast cancer support groups expel people who go into metastasis ” shows little support for this story. Two front page results involve Barbara Ehrenreich interviews. Skepticism should not be limited to positive motivation.)
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Chamblee54 
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