The guilty undertaker sighs,
The lonesome organ grinder cries,
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn,
But it's not that way,
I wasn't born to lose you.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep,
They wait for you.
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to
Open up the gate for you.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
Now all my fathers, they've gone down
True love they've been without it.
But all their daughters put me down
'Cause I don't think about it.
Well, I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid.
She knows that I'm not afraid
To look at her.
She is good to me
And there's nothing she doesn't see.
She knows where I'd like to be
But it doesn't matter.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit,
He spoke to me, I took his flute.
No, I wasn't very cute to him,
Was I?
But I did it, though, because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I . . .
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
I saw an old, forgotten man On an old, forgotten road. Staggering and numb under the glare of the Spotlight. His eyes so dull and grey, Slide from right to left, to right, Looking for his life, misplaced in a Shallow, muddy gutter long ago. I am found, instead. Seeking a hiding place, the night seals us together. A transient spark lights his face, and in my honor He pulls out forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat, And walks a straight line along the crooked world.
today, i will station my ass and write. and am supposedly here under the assumption that this will get my writing juices flowing. but it seems i only write in here to reference things i like, because it's easier being an eternal critic and fan instead of putting original(does such a thing exist) ideas out there (of which do i have any?). what i like a lot right now is Esquire. and Tom Chiarella. his interview/article with Halle Berry stands as the favorite piece i've read recently. makes me want to be famous so i can be interviewed by this feller.
it's not new. but it was to me yesterday. it's a back and forth between HBandTC. i'll paste an excerpt and add a titillating HB photo. full article here
Halle Berry's Date with a Perfect Stranger
A writer sat across the table from an actress. She told him most
writers screw up the story. He told her writing isn't easy. She asked
to give it a shot. This is what happened.
By Halle Berry & Tom Chiarella
The next day, Tom and I were to spend the day together shopping for
a dinner party that I was giving for a few of my closest friends...As
we parked and headed toward the door, one of the perfect strangers that
had been following us all morning taking our picture asked Tom his
name. (23)
Tom replied, "Tom Chiarella." The perfect stranger replied, "You look
like Kevin Smith." Then, to my surprise, I heard Tom, aka Cuddly Bear, (24)
shout, "Fuck you." Then the perfect stranger said, "Like Kevin Smith
before he lost the weight." To which Cuddly Bear said, "Then my name is
Fuck You Twice." And as a result, rumor has it Cuddly Bear is now known
on the Net as Fuck You Twice. (25)
After laughing our asses off, we headed into the market and fell right
into the whole couple-going-shopping thing. He grabbed the cart from
the back and I pulled it from the front. Although we were perfect
strangers, we appeared to be the perfect couple. I led him around like
women do to men in supermarkets, grabbing everything I needed for
dinner with skillful precision. He was careful not to run the cart up
on my heels, just like his mother taught him. One perfect stranger
after another offered us all kinds of delectable treats as we shopped.
While I passed them all up like a woman on a crazed mission to get out
of the store ASAP, Tom delighted in tasting every free treat he could
get his hands on. (26) I didn't dare tell him, but he did kinda look like Kevin Smith. (27)...
Off we went to our final destination: Greenblatt's. My favorite deli.
Greenblatt's is more than a deli; it's a place that houses the finest
wine in the city. I ordered a case for my little dinner party, and we
decided to sit and end our outing with a bite to eat. I was starving by
now and ordered the pastrami on rye with spicy mustard, while Tom
ordered the cheese-and-paté plate. I was like, Is that all you're going
to eat? He replied, "After that Kevin Smith comment, I've been on a
diet for the last thirty minutes." I thought to myself, Poor guy, he
wouldn't last a minute in my shoes with that thin skin. Sure enough, a
perfect stranger brought my sandwich and Tom instantly became moist at
the mouth. (29)
As I ripped into the meat like a wild boar eating its kill, I could see
the desire on Tom's face. He immediately canceled his cheese plate and
ordered what I had. And of course, like most people who have been on a
diet for only thirty minutes, he was relieved to see the real food
arrive. The funny part was that he said he wasn't going to eat the
bread, as if the fatty pastrami was void of 80 percent of the calories
of the meal. (30)
Annotations, by Tom Chiarella
(23)But here she is blurring her use of the term "perfect strangers," which is the way she wants to describe the two of us (perfect strangers who hit it off) and the greasy shithead paparazzi who follow her all dayand night taking pictures. They were everywhere we went. At this point, sixteen hours into an eighteen-hour relationship, I was sick of them,too. But H.B. is twenty years with this stuff now, and she was graciously indifferent, like a woman in the presence of a shittyex-boyfriend. There's history. She could say something to them. But she won't. Return to story.
*** (24) "Cuddly Bear?" WTF? What happened to "teddy bear"? Even that was better. Return to story. *** (25) When I shouted "Fuck you" to them, it seemed to make her immensely happy, and the "Fuck You Twice thing was really just to get a laugh from her, because it's sweet when H.B. laughs. But check your notes, ace reporter: This happened when we were on the way out. "Return to story. *** (26) I think I ate one sample of Stilton and a piece of Asian pear. Jesus. Return to story. *** (27) Fuck Kevin Smith, too. Return to story. *** (29) Not sure what this means. But she's the writer. Return to story. *** (30) Hey, genius, ever heard of the Atkins diet? Return to story.
oh my, it's 1pm. must go now. keep ass stationed and produce thoughts.
Call it what it is, Eve, this ain't no spa. This is fat camp. You're here. You're fucked. You better suck it in. I don't know about you but I'm starving. Where are the Cheetos?
They busted a girl in my bunk last night. She had hoarded hundreds of packs of contraband gum, stuffed in the ripped-off head of her little teddy bear. She tried to smush it back together but she had already broken its neck. Fool, she deserves to be starving. (Looks at Eve)
The big question is, Who let the skinny girls in? Skinny bitches don't belong in this camp. They make the rest of us look fat. Skinny bitches drive me nuts. (Looks down at lunch) You don't mean to call this lunch.
Skinny bitches don't deserve to be thin. They have no personality. They're just Skinny Bitches. They're always trying to make us feel sorry for them when their entire torso could fit up my sleeve.
(Imitates a skinny bitch) "Oh, look, does this make me look fat? Focus. Focus. Right here. Please look, be honest."
I wanna choke their skinny necks. Keep complaining about their six-pack when I'm carrying a keg.
Fat is as low, disgusting, as gross as you can get. Like when I'm shopping in the regular stores they always keep the plus sizes in the back like porn. I feel like a ho trying things on and the PLUS SIZE sign is always so huge. Just 'cause I'm fat doesn't mean I'm blind.
Skinny bitches never have to work at anything. They're skinny. Fat girls do everything double. We have to be funny. Fat girls give the best head. Don't we, Eve? We work harder to keep our men. Fat girls always swallow.
You know, Eve, last night, after the counselors went to sleep, some of us fat girls, we had a wicked night. We stripped off our bathing suits and we went chunky-diving in the pool. We jumped off the high diving board and made huge waves. Some of the beach chairs just floated away. It felt so good. We did some fat-girl water ballet. Some Swan Ass Lake. We were pointing our chubby toes and kicking our legs. We look so much better naked than in those made-for-skinny-bitches bathing suits. I have to tell you, in the moonlight we were all round and moundy. We looked beautiful. (Beat) Now the skinny bitches are back at lunch huddled around their spoonful of nonfat yogurt and half a nut. I don't know why I'm fat, Eve. I just am. I am fat, I like food. The way it tastes. The way it goes down. I eat for happiness. (Beat) I never missed my mom so much. I don't look fat when I'm with my mom. I'm starving. Give me my momma's home cooking and her fluffy, duck ass.
Fat girls are good people. Aren't we, Eve? We deserve to be skinny bitches.
- Eve Ensler The Good Body
may7 i think i posted the above entry with reckless abandon, lacking context
and though i thought about prefacing or following it with something of
the sort, i got lazy and reclusive. so here it is now. sort of.
a few weeks ago, i picked up Insecure at Last, a political memoir by Eve Ensler (aka the Vagina lady, best known for The Vagina Monologues).
O: The Oprah Magazine's accolade tops the cover, "Might be the most
important book you read all year." And as Liz Lemon put it, "I don't
follow a religion, I just do whatever Oprah says to do." Well, it
really is riveting and wrenchingly insightful and highlights some of
the most devastating and crucial issues of our times. A few chapters
in, i picked up TVM and finished The Good Body eager to know more about Ensler and her works.
The Good Body is a play similar in format to TVM. It's
very short and can be read in one sitting easily. The night I read it,
I was on day4 of a miserably depriving detox diet (actually, it's not
so bad--it's a really healthy balanced one, but it is depriving me of
bread and delicious artery incinerating food).
Anyway, I just want to insert this to explain the last post. Ensler shares on her experience touring The Good Body play
in 2005-->post-Hurricane Katrina, after her travels to post-Tsunami
South Asia, Taliban-run Afghanistan, Juarez, Mexico and her travels to
dozens of other places with their own devastating realities.
From TGB, for my handful of blog readers:
"Each
night I stood on stage, I stood in the center of this storm...I stood
on a platform and felt how deeply distracted Americans were by their
corporate-rigged self-hatred, by their sense that they were not enough,
that they did not know enough, that they had to surrender their will
and imagination and instincts and morality to the rich and Ivy Leagued
and powerful who convinced them through corporate takeover and fear and
mind control that they need to consume product after product to make
themselves thinner, prettier, lighter, tighter--that somehow this
consumption would ultimately lead to their security. I stood on the
stage and I felt in my bones the loneliness and pointlessness of this
pursuit. I felt the isolation that this pursuit has engendered. I felt
the exploitation of the world's peoples and resources through this
ravenous pursuit...
Each night after the show audience members
stopped me on the street. They told me how fat they felt or ugly or
stupid or how they just couldn't figure it out. Each night they told me
how they were starving themselves or stuffing themselves or hiding or
taking drugs.
I wanted to throw myself on the stage as in a
Greek drama and wail and wail and pull out my hair and scream: This is
not accidental what you feel. This is not personal. There is a plan to
make you feel ugly and powerless, insignificant and insecure. There is
a plan to make you feel like someone or something is coming to fix and
rescue you. Give up the illusions of security!...There is no
solution..no reason to fix it. No one smarter or better or on top. You
are already enough. Enough. Each and every one of you. Enough. Enough."
I
loved Bernice's story. Because I laughed my hungry ass off the night I
read it. I connected with her. So this is my disclaimer(post-entry) for her story.
