I once slept on the beaches of Nice. These were my companions: Elizabet, Soborek and Caroline. I don’t know them now but I imagine they’re thinking about waking that morning to the fishermen returning from the sea.
Author JT Twissel
ThursdayDoors: Matchless Orinda
These are the doors to the Orinda Theatre, the symbol of my small town.
Over the years, the citizens of the town have fought many battles to protect this fine example of “streamlined moderne” architecture. As a movie theatre it’s never been particularly profitable and so in order to keep it going the town has begun holding many different events in the large auditorium including a short lived film festival and a talent contest for kids called the “Orinda Idol.”
The murals inside the main auditorium depict the Four Elements of Man, a popular motif of the time (1941). I can’t show you the inside for two reasons – it’s too dark to get good pictures and I’ve been advised not to trespass by Norm Frampton, the creator of the #ThursdayDoor event (he won’t bail me out if I get caught) but here’s a description of what you would see:
As you enter the spacious auditorium, Anthony Heinsbergen’s lavish murals of The Four Elements of Man greet you. They are an eclectic combination of references to classical mythology and modern technology. Fruits and flowers represent Earth, an Aqua God depicts Water, wings and a stylistic airplane portray Air and workers forging steel symbolize Water. The hand painted murals stretch from floor to ceiling. In recognition of Heinsbergen’s contribution to American mural design, the Smithsonian curated a special traveling exhibition, “Movie Palace Moderne” in 1972-1974 highlighting 43 examples of his monumental achievement which included 3 of the original water color drawings of the murals. Said to be some of Heinsberger’s favorites, the originals are still in the office Sweeping curves of wood and iron rail work, warm neon tucked behind oval coves, nudes floating among stars and a red and gold butterfly with the body of a boy complete the embellishments. This was the rich architecture of fantasy that is missing in today’s theatres. From the Lamorinda Film and Entertainment Foundation website.
A familiar site in Orinda – fog rolling in from the bay.
Fun fact: Orinda, which was originally part of four different Spanish land grants, was named after the poem Matchless Orinda by a 17th century poetess named Katherine Philips. Philips wrote primarily about the platonic love women have for each other -because they lack the equipment to consummate their love sexually.
What’s your town famous or infamous for?
4th of July Rehash
For the next few days I’ll be driving hither and thither and won’t have much time to blog so I’m going to leave you with links to Fourth of July posts from the last few years.
Girl in hat watching parade.
Performers from Seussical
July 2014, The Girl with the Flag in her hair
Last year for some reason I did not write a Fourth of July post. So here are some random pictures from the 2015 parade:
The Lafayette Fire District can never be accused of age discrimination!
I like to joke that there are more people in the parade than there are in the town. Often we have no idea why people are marching or who they represent. I suppose it doesn’t really matter!
Anyway, that’s Fourth of July in small town America! Happy Fourth to all my American buddies and Happy Monday to everyone else!
Please don’t let me be misunderstood
I just watched the movie Layer Cake, a gritty blood bath in which every other word is “motherfucker” and every character is a con artist who gets shot to shit. The movie ends with Joe Cocker’s rendition of “I’m Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are Good” probably because the movie opens with the protagonist (Daniel Craig) telling us how he’s going to change his evil ways and get out of the drug trade. Poor guy just ends up getting in deeper and deeper until he becomes the frosting on the cake (a metaphor for killing your way to the top of a mob and not for getting some extra special reward).
One of the many dead bodies in Layer Cake
I don’t know what message viewers are supposed to take away from this movie other than drugs are bad and drug dealers are unreliable (really? whod’ve thunk?), but that song sent me running for a Google window. Does that ever happen to you? You hear a song and suddenly have to know everything about it. Who wrote it? Why? And then, of course, you have to blog about it because your followers have nothing better with their time than to read what you write about a song. I really do live a blogger’s fantasyland, don’t I? I need an intervention.
Anyway, if you’re still with me, over the years this song has hit the charts in a number of different genres – rap, soul, blues and, of course, rock and roll. It’s also been featured in countless movies besides Layer Cake, most notably Kill Bill and The Birdman.
The story of the song’s inception is a sad but probably familiar one to anyone in the arts or entertainment world. A musician of only moderate repute named Horace Ott wrote the original chorus line and melody after a “falling out” with his girlfriend. She took his plea for leniency to her partners and from it they created a song, apparently with jazz singer Nina Simone in mind.That was back in the early sixties when record companies owned the artists and Ott, not being in the proper union, was not included on the original credits. That must have stung. Here’s Simone’s rendition:
Her spin on the song is how it was intended. A plea for leniency. Unfortunately the record did not “chart” as they say and the song went widely unknown until a certain British group virtually made it their own. You know who, of course, unless you’re really, really young!
Eric Burden’s “soul with a bit of rock and roll” rendition hit Number 3 on the charts and the song was subsequently recorded by a gazillion others including: The Moody Blues, Elvis Costello, Cyndi Lauper, King Kong &D’Jungle Girls, Mike Batt, Trevor Rabin No Mercy, John Legend, Lou Rawls, New Buffalo and many more. Don’t ask me who some of those folks are because I don’t know. I did recognize this guy, who generally writes his own songs:
Cat Steven’s plea for leniency and understanding takes on a universal feeling, as if he’s asking the whole world not to be so quick to judge each other. It’s a good message.
#ThursdayDoors: Set Design
These doors are magic in the making. One night soon the Starlight Players will emerge on stage to perform to small but loyal audiences. If you peak through the “windows” you’ll see another door.
Door to the dressing room?
Prop room?
I’m guessing the above pic shows the prop room. I was trespassing as all good ThursdayDoors folk must at some point or another. The Players are in the process of getting ready for their first performances of the summer. On the day we visited no one was working on the set but this is a community theatre group, most of whom probably have day jobs. For obvious reasons they don’t perform in the winter!
View from the stage, the stone stairs on which the audience sits.
I dabbled a bit in theatre in high school but I’m shy and can’t act so I primarily either helped with set design or props and watched the magic from behind the curtains. There’s a lot of flurry backstage during a performance. A lot of excitement. It’s addictive like so many things, for instance, blogging. I tell myself I must stop. The day is beautiful and there are things to see and do. But here I sit.
The Marquee
Check out other ThursdayDoors, the brainchild of Norm Frampton.
Professor Flappy Pants
Dad where he was happiest – on a ranch in Montana
In honor of Father’s Day, a repost from last year.
This is a day on which those of us whose fathers have died often flay about with our emotions. At least I do.
My father’s words could kill. He had no patience with sickness, weakness or young children. His idea of the perfect family vacation was a grueling four hour back-packing trek up the face of Mt. Whitney (generally behind a pack of pooping donkeys), followed by a night spent next to an insect-infested lake with no plumbing facilities and the likely prospect of a visit from a bear.
On the other hand, he was a Renaissance man, well-versed in the Greek mythology, astronomy, literature and classical music. As a pilot he was a madman in the skies but on the ground, never once got a traffic ticket. He never swore and always had a book in his hands. He often said “when I become a burden to the tribe, I will wander out into the desert with just the clothes on my back.” I don’t know how many times I heard him say that, especially as his parents aged. I’m sure it comes from the years he spent with the Sioux.
We fought about everything. He was a hunter while I liberated rabbits from their cages. He supported the Vietnam War while I helped friends burn their draft cards. He wouldn’t let me ride on the back of motorcycles with boys so I bought my own Honda 90.
He ordered me not to live with my boyfriend before getting married. You can probably guess what I did.
For someone perceived as somber and dignified, he did have his quirks. He insisted on wearing WWII era ski pants which flapped in the breeze as he marauded down the slopes. My sister and I called him Flappy Pants.
WWII Era Ski Pants
Although his eye sight was excellent, he often went to work wearing mismatched socks. He had a legendary weakness for bow ties, particularly red bow ties. And he often got so wrapped up in the lab he forgot about his classes. They tried to make him Dean of Engineering and it was a total disaster. He was far too honest and forthcoming with his opinions to run the department or get along with other college VIPs.
He lived long enough to laugh at the fact Arnold Schwartzenegger was elected governor of California but not long enough to see the rise of Obama, which is a shame as I think he would have been proud. Racist was one thing he could never have been called.
Dad didn’t die in the desert with just the clothes on his back. He died in the Pacific Ocean in his speedos. I like to think he was trying to swim to China.
Luck
We all have fathers and we all lose them. Either we die or they die, but we are eventually and forever lost to each other. Fathers can be good or bad, but always they are part of our blood; answering questions before we speak because they know better than us. They can turn the pages of a book without hands or fingers and they give breath to our sixth sense. A Navy corpsman killed my father one night in a hospital room. He overdosed him on morphine. Earlier in the afternoon the corpsman had called me and said that my father would not make it through the night. I had received other calls like that one over the years and always my father had not died, but this time was different. My father was a Marine and this Navy corpsman decided that he was going to put my father out…
View original post 431 more words
I’m a Loser
Oft times I feel like such a loser. I’ve tried so many things and failed. But, I do have wonderful children. One of them was born on this day many years ago.
My rosy cheeked boy!
June 11th was also the birthday of Jacques Clouseau.
Which leads me to offer a big shout out to another champion of the oceans, Liz Cunningham.
Liz has traveled worldwide talking to people involved in ocean conservation and has recently published Ocean Country, One Woman Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to Save the Oceans. 
Currently she and her husband are touring the US in their efforts to raise awareness about global efforts to save the oceans. Go Liz! You and Charlie are an inspiration to me, especially when I’m feeling down.
What things keep you from feeling like a complete loser? Friends, children, dogs?
T.R. Wonderful and the Sinking of the SS Milvia
Yesterday my buddy Cinda and I took the train over to the Bay Area Book Festival. It was a nice day. A little smoggy but nice. I hadn’t been to downtown Berkeley in several years but some things never change; college kids still fly up and out of BART like locusts, hopping over those of us with squeaky knees. The homeless still camp where they want. Restaurants still have signs in their windows reading “Bathrooms for customers only.” There’s still a whiff of pot in the air.
Shattuck Hotel and BART Station from Bing images
We were there to attend (among other things) a session at the iconic Shattuck Hotel on writing memoirs. Having worked in that neighborhood for many years, the hotel itself brought back many memories. The lobby had been remodeled since my last visit but the upstairs meeting rooms were the same.
As the memoirists discussed their process, I flashed back to one particular day in 1995. I believe it was in the fall, not long after the lean, fast-paced company I worked for had been swallowed by its parent, a whale full of corporate babble and blubber called TRW.
If you’ve ever worked for a monster company you know the first thing that happens in these instances is reprogramming. Shortly after the “we have taken over but don’t worry” announcement we were signed up for a session in “corporate expectations” at the Shattuck and ordered to attend, regardless of our work loads or even what we did. Facility manager, receptionist, janitor – it didn’t matter. Of course, we all knew the end was coming. Reprogramming is usually either proceeded or followed by “corporate restructuring.” And sure enough, as we sat in Shattuck, our new lords and masters laid off friends who’d been excused from the reprogramming so they could be fired, a brain-dead effort to appear kind that back-fired. I don’t know what they were thinking because at lunch the news flashed through the Shattuck, causing several members of my “class” to storm out of the session, middle-fingers raised in salute to our instructor who was just some poor rah-rah from Cleveland where TRW was called T.R. Wonderful.
Me, on the first floor of the SS Milvia.
We were all friends then, just a happy tribe of musicians, artist and writers who supported each other while working our day jobs. Email was in its infancy and required keystrokes, thus it was the medium through which we could bare our souls without upsetting the purveyors of corporate values.
The SS Milvia, once the home of pirates and outlaws, now modernized.
The SS Milvia where we all worked and played is still moored about a block away from the Shattuck. After the class in memoirs I wandered past it which was a mistake. Someone’s modernized the facade; they’ve probably also replaced those sabotaged toilets that flooded the lab the day we were uprooted to Oakland. And fixed the elevator that froze between floors every time the big guys got rowdy. I’m sure the foosball table is gone. I’m sure it’s no longer a shoes-optional building. And I’m sure no one working there uses email to start a flaming debate about abortion or the death penalty. Those times have passed.
I stood and looked at the SS Milvia until the memories whispered good-bye, its time to move on.
Have you ever wandered past a place once held dear and wished you hadn’t?
Okay Hollywood, Brad Pitt’s not getting any younger
After a month of feeling lost and stressed to the point of damaging my health, I’ve decided not to rush my books back into print but to steady my nerves and move forward one step at a time.
It’s mortifying to think back on those first heady months as a “published writer.” Don’t laugh, but I actually bought a day planner to keep track of all the events I’d be invited to, the book signings, the interviews, the meetings with Hollywood producers all begging to transform FLIPKA into a block-buster mega hit starring Brad Pitt as Captain Wug.
Those of you who’ve read the book are thinking “Pitt’s too young.” Well, if and when FLIPKA ever makes it to the big screen, he’ll be too damn old.
Suffice it to say, the day planner was a complete waste of money. Oh, I worked my fanny off begging and pleading for reviews, blogging, tweeting, pinning, throwing a release party, meeting with a book club (thanks MA) and signing books up in Reno (thanks Mom) – but as the months went by, no calls from Hollywood.
After realizing there would probably never be a FlipkaWorld at Disneyland I moved on to my next hope for fame and fortune, The Graduation Present. Surely it would intrigue the movie people. It had adventure, romance and another made-for-Hollywood character, Oncle Boob. But they better hurry. Brad Pitt will soon be too old to play him too.
Brad Pitt lookalike, Oncle Boob
Unknowingly I had committed a mortal sin by writing that book. I’d changed genres. Cross-genre writers are literally the two-headed monsters of the literary world. Ask any expert on “branding.”
Ah well. I’ll probably republish the first two books with minor changes. However the third book I need your help with. I’ve never liked the title – Willful Avoidance. Sure, it deals with a grim subject – Innocent Spouse Relief – but that doesn’t mean it has to be saddled with a grim name. Can you think of a funny title for a book about divorce and taxes that ends with a talking dog? Thanks!
Saying nothing in particular 