The little boy about seven-years-old knocks on my door, in the trees all the birds are waking, chirping about cats and water
I need help, he says, so we walk hand-in-hand to an empty house a few streets over, I get the rusty latch open and he goes in with a smile
A few hours later, he returns and seems to be at least 10
He asks if I can let him use the phone, sure I say and then he calls his mother in a thin voice to come and get him…mommy, mommy please…and then he hangs up and stands on the street corner like a crushed sheet of paper
Sometime in the afternoon he returns and seems to be a girl maybe eighteen-years-old, but somehow the same…hi, remember me, she asks…sure I do, come in and we talk for a while
You left me all those years ago and now I am without your dreams of turning stream pebbles into light, without your technical drawings of how stairs to the clouds can be built with smiles
I toss and turn with my new face
It’s difficult to move around on this bed
It’s like living inside a tree, everything silent and tightly wrapped as if the night is cut up into large black safes and the steel combinations spin into place, leading me into yet another hollow brick where I suffocate and grow old
In general I don’t correct other people, especially in public. So what if someone doesn’t know a Monet from a Manet? Who cares? Not me!
However if someone says “I love this song from the musical Carousel” and thenproceeds to name a song from the musical Oklahoma, I become an obnoxious know-it-allwho must correct this hideous injustice posthaste and with no sympathy for the miscreant.Embarrassing confession but there it is.I can be a bitch. But there’s a reason why. As a kid I had most of the songs from the musicals written by Rogers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Loewe memorized.
Rodgers and Hammerstein – true geniuses
I had no television growing up.Just a record player and a father who loved musicals. As a girl, I was vaguely aware that some of these musicals tackled serious issues however my focus was on the romance.Would Nellie Forbush overcome her prejudices and accept Emile?Would Eliza Doolittle take old Henry Higgins down a notch or two?
Now when I happen to catch one of them on Turner Classic Movies, it’s definitely not the romances that pique my interest. Let’s face it, there’s not much chemistry between Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn!
I mean really? He’s ninety-nine years older than her.
I’m more interested in how the source material was altered for the musical and why. For example, South Pacific was based on James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, a collection of stories set during WWII.One of the underlying themes is cultural intolerance. Can an army nurse and young lieutenant from Little Rock Arkansas overcome their prejudices towards those “they’ve been carefully taught to hate”?
The nurse eventually does but in the original story, Our Heroine,the man she loves has four mixed-race children from four different women none of whom he married. Horrors! An audience in the early sixties would definitely have trouble seeing him as a hero. So in the musical, R&H gave Emile de Becque only two mixed race children and they are both from his deceased wife making his sin (marrying a heathen) in part redeemable.
R&H had a similar dilemma when writing the musical Carousel.It was based on an earlier play called Lilliom by Ferenc Moinar.In Moinar’s play, the main character, Billy Bigelow kills himself after being caught during a robbery but is still given a second chance to enter Heaven. Recognizing this might make Bigelow less sympathetic to some in the audience, R&H revised the storyline.In Carousel Billy Bigelow falls on his knife while fleeing and thus is eligible for heaven.
I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.Which brings me to The Music Man. This musical is not based on a previous publication but on Meredith Willson’s childhood band experiences in small town Iowa.For the life of me, I do not understand WTF he was trying to say. See if you can.
Here’s the plot for those of you who’ve never seen it.A flimflam man who calls himself Dr. Harold Hill is looking for a town full of people gullible enough to scam and decides River City Iowa might be the ticket. His modus operandi is to play upon people’s fears (sound familiar?) but the good folks of the River City seem content and so he decides he’s got to create a problem that only he can solve.The arrival of a new pool table gives him his hook.
He decides to convince that townspeople that the pool table will ruin the town and turn all their children into shiftless bums. The first thing he does is whip up fear.Then hatred.Finally he proclaims he alone can save them by creating a wholesome boy’s marching band.
Of course, Harold Hill knows nothing about music.But by the time he’s finally revealed as a con man, the whole town has been brainwashed into believing they can have a world class marching band.They no longer care that they’ve been lied to and manipulated.They just want to march happily through the town behind their savior.(I’m not sure what he saved them from – their rationality?)
What are we supposed to make of that? What’s the underlying theme? Was Willson predicting a future where we no longer care if we’re lied to as long as we’re given a good show? I just don’t get it.
Carl couldn’t confess to his dear sweet mother. Nor could he tell his father or his sister or anyone in his family.And he most certainly couldn’t tell his best friend, Dr. Clarabelle Litchfield.
“Now Carl,” whispered the angel assigned to comfort him as she wrapped her wings around him. “God is with you.God loves you.”
“But how could he possibly forgive me?” Carl said aloud.
“What honey?” Clarabelle, who could not hear angels, asked as she leaked oil onto the driveway. “There’s a giant moth wrapped around your shoulders.Should I get out the BlackFlag?”
“She’s my guardian angel.”
“Now dear, I can clearly see, she’s no angel. But we’ll get to that delusion later. Now, why don’t you tell me what has you in such a state. I promise I won’t judge you.”
Carl raised his eyes to her face.She seemed sincere but no, he couldn’t tell her.
“Are you gay?”
“No!”
“It’s alright if you are. In fact there are some nice guys at -”
“No. I am not. Oh god, how could this have happened?”
“Did you tell that moth or guardian angel thing?”
“No, but she knows.”
Clarabelle addressed the angel. “Moth, I implore you to tell me what the problem is so that I can help my friend.He’s clearly distraught and I am a licensed psychoanalyst.”
The angel rose to her full height, spread her ten foot wings and, then enfolding the two of them, whispered Carl’s shameful secret.
“NOOOOOOO!” Clarabelle cried in disgust.“You can’t be addicted to that brain dead television show!It’s idiotic and so phony.What’s happened to your brain?”
The angel’s eyes turned into those of an irate tigress. “That’s my favorite show too, you snobby bitch!”
Dr. Annabelle Litchfield soon found herself in a puddle on the parking lot.
[I suppose there’s a moral to this story but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.]
There are some movies I will watch again and again for just one scene.
In the movie The Darkest Hour, Winston Churchill rides the Underground for the first time as his advisors urge him to surrender to the Nazis. The bulk of the British army is surrounded at Dunkirk and the Americans are refusing to join the fight. Surrender seems to be the only way to avoid catastrophic defeat. Those politicians on the side of surrender have talked themselves into believing they can come to reasonable terms with a depraved madman butChurchill knows otherwise.The scene I love in that movie opens with Churchill gazing out at ordinary Londoners trying to escape the rain from his limousine. It’s a stark reminder that wars are begun by men in chauffeur-driven limos but it’s the man on the street who pays the price. Suddenly he disappears. When next seen he is trying to figure out the system map much to the surprise of the commuters. Aristocrats don’t ride the Underground everyday. Once they warm up to him, he asks how they feel about surrendering to Germany and to a man, woman and even a child they say “Never Surrender.”
And of course Churchill weeps and I wept along with him.
After the movie I made the mistake of watching the news. Good grief.Today a senate committee questioned some muleheaded nincompoop determined to stonewall them unless he could expound upon the dignity of human life (code speak for “take away a woman’s right to choose.”)Any time a committee member came up with a reasonable question about his credentials, some jackass from the other party interrupted their time by yelling “point of order” which actually had nothing to do with order but had more to do with defending a nincompoop put into enormous power by a madman and I wanted to yell “NEVER SURRENDER” loud enough that it could be heard in Washington D.C.
On a lighter note, here are a few favorite scenes from movies I’ll take the time to watch just for a few unforgettable scenes:
Mortimer discovers his dear sweet aunties are serial killers.
Ralphie gets a rude awakening from Santa
Winger and Ziskey discover they’ve joined the “wrong” army.
There are many more of course.And we need them these days, we surely do. Is there a movie you’d watch again just for one scene or am I the only one addicted to sentimentality?
Apparently, President Trump and the Republican Party do not believe that everyone deserves to have a happy Valentine’s Day, Modern Philosophers.
The Republicans today vowed to shoot down Cupid’s proposed plan for Universal Love.
According to the plan set forth by the little archer in the diaper, love would be made available to all, free of charge.
The members of the GOP, which I’m assuming stands for Gang Of Partypoopers, said there is no way such a plan would be allowed on their watch.
“America is a country of freedom and independence, not socialism,” President Trump reminded everyone in a Tweet. “Love is not a right. It is a privilege, and wealthy white males get first crack at it. Cupid can’t just demand that everyone gets love. Free love was outlawed after the sixties, and it’s going to stay that way!”
The only logical place to be today is in the sun. The skies have stopped dumping ice crystals and only a lump of cumulous sits anchored above, but it is cold.
I’m very superstitious. If a black cat crosses the road in front of me, I will make a U turn, knock on wood and throw salt over my shoulder. I don’t walk under ladders or open umbrellas in the house. And I painted my front door beet red. But nothing is sillier than habitually reading a daily horoscope that has never been even remotely accurate. I’d be better off with the Ouija Board, Tarot Cards or even tea leaves.
A few years back I found out that, according the Chinese, my mother and I were both born in a Year of the Tiger. No wonder we were always at each other’s throats, I thought. We couldn’t help it. We’re impetuous, untamable beasts. So I decided maybe there was something to Chinese astrology that warranted looking into.
Didn’t last long. In 2017 tigers, whether born in 1926 or 2010, were guaranteed bodice-ripping, once in a lifetime, grand and passionate love affairs. Great news to my mother who was raring to go. But I greeted the news as one would an infestation of wasps. Actually, the wasps would be more welcome.
But today is the Chinese New Year and so predictions are everywhere. Here’s one of the predictions for tigers in this Year of the Pig.
The Tiger needs to be cautious in dangerous situations such as walking in narrow dark alleyways in the evening, high places such as cliff tops, busy building sites or participating in dangerous activities. It is advisable for the fire Tiger to wear a red string around his/her waist for the year, or to wear red socks or underwear for support.
I guess this means I can dawdle down dark alleyways at night, do cartwheels on cliffs and pirouette through dangerous work sites as long as I’ve got on my magic red panties.
and around and around the town square they march. I could swear I saw a few MAGA hats in the crowd.
