Nueva Entrada

There are about 12 of these giant Olmec heads at the Museo Antropologica here. They're unbelievably old, about 1500 BC. They have a great aura. I went to the museum this morning and saw the heads and also a lot of other pre-Columbian figures. They figures are all about heads and eyes and lips -- these people were fascinated with faces, and maybe, it follows, with individuals? I liked the emphasis, anyway.

I got the audio tour because all the signs were in Spanish. The audio commentary was in very Spanish-accented English. I didn't understand a lot of it, the same as I wouldn't have followed the Spanish. But I was happy there, staring at larval stone faces, observing their geometrically exact loincloths, learning that closed eyes and an open mouth on a woman figure meant she had died in childbirth wondering why they made their hatchet heads so smooth and shiny, like jewelry.

The giftshop was also a highlight.

I Am Here

in Xalapa, Mexico.

#3

Robot Secretary #3


vacuous, you will find this interesting.

This Knish

Poem for David Berman



At first, you were only the side project of a person I, um, idolized.
You had some magic by association
And healing properties -- you drew the sting away.
Graceful and happier, you walked with a swing in the album photo.
That blitheness made me happy because it had nothing to do with me.

Now I think you are the priest of people like me
Eating a knish by myself at a table for four
At Katz's Delicatessen on Houston.
This knish does not have healing properties, though
with its soft innards and warm shoe-leather crust
It's kind enough.

Today the sadness is like waves slamming a sea wall
I can feel the wild rising, hideous logic --
There's a past tense in there.
I'm drawing thick zigzags and and squares cubed on sticky notes
I want to say to the people around me,
It's not that I'm not friendly,
I swear to you it's not.

But you can't say things like that
So instead you say "Oh thanks" and "Is it still raining?"

Famous people seem like sugar cones
Plunged in their holders.
You never imagine their lives could flap or stagger
Or that looking out a window in winter,
The line of snow might fall behind the trees like people leaving for a party,
with them lonely in their dining rooms, socks grazing the wood floor.

And until you said, "Everyone knows life is hard, but no one ever says it," it was like
playing Murder in the Dark with no one ever finding you, no one ever saying:
You're it.

At Tonic in New York City we all came to watch you read
We came because your songs had been telling us we were perceived.
A shiny child's mirror doesn't mirror, just reflects the blurred facts of things.
To us tense and standing, close and cordoned off, you showed us funny airfields
and dogs and receptionists and boardrooms, and for once
it seemed that it wasn't all our fault.

Poem #6

The hillbillies envy the fry chefs who are down from the hills
The hillbillies envy grand larceny victims
They envy ship-shape memoirs of cattle ranchers and gypsies
They envy morticians, notary publics, and town drunks.
(I had such a good opposite to ‘hillbillies’ yesterday
It was a grand word, it came to me on the subway)
Hillbillies never sit every morning on the subway
They don’t tear paper at their local Goodwill
They’re never hired as zookeepers, they fail to become film editors
All because they have no reality
There is a word but no thing
The word exists on the ground
The people live in the woods
There might be a small hill
But their day is quiet and the words that are spoken
do not include ‘hillbilly’ and no one
Probably says it to their faces and no one
Probably even says it anymore

Some Incredibly Naive and Hopeful Thoughts About the Final Sopranos Episode

A sense of peril in every scene and nearly every character. A sense that things are turned inside out and upside down. For the whole series, music has played only at the very end – this episode starts with music and ends in silence. We don’t know who killed Phil Leotardo or how much jeopardy it puts Tony in. Is Tony “in” the family anymore, with his tight relationship with the FBI guy? Tony has forgotten he said “remember the good times” whereas AJ, normally undependable, remembers.

Meadow is a rising force – standing up to Tony, she could be his eventual downfall. She’s going to be a lawyer investigating crooked industry. She defends AJ and even calls Tony “Fatmouth,” in a nice return to earlier times.

AJ wants to join the army but is easily bought off by a film career dangled before him by his completely controlling parents. They don’t want him to get his legs shot off; they’re only half aware he’s in as much danger in NJ because of Tony. The Godfather is signaled over and over as people get into cars and the camera focuses on the ignition! We wait for the car to blow up and destroy AJ and his lost little girlfriend – instead they speed away in a burst of youthful energy. Even their lovemaking seems like a shoot of spring grass in an endless sprawl of garbage. They decide to throw caution – dysfunction, depression – to the winds and make love. Then the car starts to smoke and we’re certain they’re going to blow up. Chase lards the episode with the terror – real terror – of many people’s lives right now. AJ is right, the world is more with us than we know. Yet AJ joins his parents in eating the onion rings with a smirk of satisfaction. What rough beast, but with onion rings this good – it’s not so seldom you hear people make that argument.

Food can soften the worst situation as we see at Bobby’s funeral. Food is tenderly shot and spoken about.

Paulie is yet again haunted by a creature/painting whose eyes follow him.

Silvio lies in a coma, probably never to wake. Tony realizes how much he loves him.

Tony tries to connect with Junior. Age is claiming Junior. That means Tony’s father is no longer as alive either. Age and fate wipe people out as do guns.

In some sense the episode ended optimistically though there were several potential assassins picked out by the camera in the last scene. Meadow’s rushed, cut-off entrance seemed very highlighted as if she might, she just might interrupt a slaughter. Or be the victim? Is “Don’t Stop Believing” sardonic or honest at the end? Isn’t it partly heartfelt since Tony really does believe in loving and caring for his family? And we can’t help loving that part of him and not wanting him to die.

Why I Have Such a Good Blog

Because I look out for troubled members of the human family like Lindsay Lohan and Colin Farrell.

Because I reference Nietzsche in my post titles.

Because I keep track of contemporary literature in addition to complaining all the time.

Because I complain all the time.

Because I have kept blogging despite all my readers seeming to have dropped off the face of the earth. (sniff)

Because nothing lasts forever, nothing ever could. But in my mind, I ........ something good.
-- Baron Von Trapp at the end of The Sound of Music

Why I Am So Clever

Lindsay Lohan just got out of rehab again. Keep your fingers crossed for her.

Why I Am So Wise

La Misma happened upon a neighborhood film set where a George Clooney movie is being shot, just a few blocks from her apartment, when she walked over to the intersection where a Daily News she read the day before said that George Clooney would be the next day.

La Misma stood watching with other Brooklynites and is indebted to one sharp-eyed one who immediately identified George Clooney -- the salt-and-pepper beard, a gray shirt, those warm slanted eyes. He is so darling. But some were disappointed. "He looks so short!" said my helpful crowdmate. "I want to get closer, because from what I can see, I'm not impressed."

Ouch. La Misma thought that was a bit harsh, and also the peanut-crunching crowd seemed hard for a film star to have to do his daily work in front of but cry me a river, as a woman said near me.

George Clooney ran up to the camera and then back into what looked like an alley next to a house. Then he did it again. The shot was lit up, in broad daylight, with a brilliant spotlight that blasted from behind a screen. Yet it was a sunny day. La Misma would not have used the big light and she would not have employed the large boom mic that hovered above everything. George Clooney is quite welcome to appear in professional, competently made films, or he has the chance to appear in a poorly lit one and be barely audible. The choice is his.

Who Are You Kidding?

Contrary to what Mr. Ricky Gervais might have us believe, an office is not a fun place full of lively personalities and amusing dilemmas happening all the time.

Many offices are actually quite boring!

But television is its own reality. Most people aren't attractive and witty, they're quite drab. And offices often don't have the kind of fun paraphernalia that's portrayed on Mr. Gervais's show!

At my office, no one has put a monkey on top of a coat rack, for instance. And even though Billy Big-Mouth is out of batteries on the show, you know that fish had them all laughing when he was working. We don't have anything like Billy Big-Mouth to cheer us up, at my office.

Where I work, believe it or not, we just work. I'm not saying we don't chat. But there aren't little stories about everyone. There isn't a central, hopeless, impossible ... oh wait, there is.

All I mean is, offices are awful. I don't think Ricky Gervais would try to be so funny next time. Why doesn't he try opening his eyes to reality. Real offices just have unhappy people doing boring jobs. Better luck next time, Mr. Gervais!