Gesundheit

Last night, I saw the word "gerund" for the first time in many years.

I know what it means, but it also sounds like a sneeze with a growl in it.

One More Book That Makes Me Deliriously Happy to be Alive

In my enthusiasm about "The Garner Files" (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/03/garner-files-cue-mike-post-theme-music.html), I forgot about one more book that makes me happy to be but one citizen on a planet that releases such books.

Stephen Sondheim, one of my heroes, is putting out the second volume of his life's work. The first was called "Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes."

The second, to finish out the song, "Finishing the Hat", is called "Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Wafflings, Diversions and Anecdotes." Sondheim is one of the few great minds that can make a word like "attendant" work. It doesn't sound so formal, so stiff coming from him. It's just part of who he is as a master Broadway powerhouse.

I also pre-ordered this one. It comes out on October 25.

A Shorter Ventura

Dad and Meridith have the week off from La Mesa Junior High. Spring break. So today, for the first day of this week, we went to Santa Paula, to a bird store there to see about two birds that were possible for a new bird. Our gray finch, Pretzyl, died on Friday, but unlike when Jules, our blue finch, died, I didn't feel much emotion. Pretzyl was good company, a good soul, but I didn't feel really close to her.

One possibility at this bird store was a blue parakeet, and a white finch I had seen last Sunday when we had gone to Ventura Harbor Village and stopped here on the way back to Santa Clarita. I went to see it again and played with it for a while, calling it from the back perch to the perch closest to the front of the cage and it responded most times. The owner of the store told us that this finch was female, because of the darker red beak, and also that it didn't look like it was doing too well, so if we wanted to adopt it, we could, which meant that we could have it without having to pay anything.

I didn't like this. We've gone through many birds that have been expensive that have died not long after. And there's nothing veterinarians can do, because they can't get that inside a bird as they can a dog or a cat. And even the simple act of clipping the ring off one of our birds' legs cost us $67. No, we can't take in every single bird in the world. We're not Doctor Doolittle.

Yes, I liked the bird, but this bird also pecked at the bottom of the cage, pecking off the bird shit and eating some of it. Yes, eating. This did not seem like the actions of a healthy bird. I couldn't chance that and I wouldn't, even as Mom said it would be fine if we had three birds again since we have the cage, Pretzyl's old cage, which she washed last night just in case we came home with a bird today. But no. Even the blue parakeet that Mom liked had the quirk of destroying the newspaper below the grate in his cage, and, as I heard it, shitting all over everything.

Two dogs (Tigger and Kitty) and two finches (Mr. Chips and Ducky). That's enough now. It's even, there's less to clean, and it'll be easier to move when it comes time.

After we left, Mom asked Meridith if she wanted that frog chef figurine we saw in one of the trinket shops at Ventura Harbor Village. Meridith was concerned because in black letters, on the cookbook that the frog holds, is "Frog Legs." She worried that Kitty will be able to read that and not be happy about it because we consider her our froggy, being that when she lays on the floor flat, her legs stick out like a frog's, whereas Tigger looks like he has chicken legs. Since Meridith reads to Tigger and Kitty every morning, we figure that Kitty can read some things pretty well. But Mom told her not to worry about it. If she liked the chef frog, then she should get it. And off we went, back to Ventura Harbor Village.

But this wasn't one of those instances of going to Andria's again, or to Coastal Cone, or back to the arcade for more games of Galaga. This wasn't a birthday. Just a short stopover to that trinket shop. I forgot the name, but it's across from Surf 'N Taco.

Mom and Meridith went in, and I sat down on the bench to the left of the store, opening up to where I left off in "Small Wonder" by Barbara Kingsolver. I had no reason to go in and I didn't feel like heading to the arcade for a few minutes. This was the kind of day not to do anything too exertive. And I play Galaga hard.

No, this was a few moments just to sit in the sun, just to read, just to listen to the clinking of dishes behind me in Surf 'N Taco, the muted conversations, the TV on KCAL9, the afternoon news blaring, which made me check my watch and see that it was just a little after 2.

It felt right, because this wasn't a birthday celebration as it had been last Sunday. No reason to cover the same ground as before. I knew the harbor was there, I knew what I liked about it, and that was enough. The craving for the harbor hasn't fully regenerated itself yet.

Next was to the Pacific View Mall, but only for a few minutes to decide where we wanted to eat and that was Super Panda Buffet, on the outskirts of the mall property, and in front of the parking garage. They call it Super Panda Buffet because by the time you're done, you feel like you're the size of a panda. I did. And I know I don't want to do it again. I don't know how I did it when I was a lot heavier, but I think back then, I wasn't even paying attention to it like I did now. I loved the stuffed shells, the dumplings, the finely chopped peanuts that go on top of the soft-serve ice cream from the machine, but once it was all over, I felt too stuffed. If you don't burp enough in due time, it feels a little painful, and it did. I don't know how some people can eat like that, but I know for sure that I can't anymore.

On the way home, I couldn't even pick up Kingsolver's book. No energy. Lethargy. I just let an index finger linger between pages 78 and 79, while listening to the old Walt Disney World Tomorrowland Transit Authority soundtrack on my mp3 player, remembering those times, because that's all I had the energy to do.

Never again. Never like that.

John Le Carre: My New Hero

John Le Carre withdrew from consideration for the Man Booker International Prize, which is worth $96,070, or 60,000 pounds, to the winner.

In the AFP article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110330/en_afp/artsliteratureaustraliachinabritainbooksbooker), Rick Gekoski, the chair of the judging panel, read a statement from Le Carre, which was received 45 minutes before the announcement of the finalists in Sydney, Australia.

It said: "I am enormously flattered to be named as a finalist. However I do not compete for literary prizes and have therefore asked for my name to be withdrawn."

Gekoski says that Le Carre's name will remain on the list, which I think is wrong. If the Man Booker panel truly respected Le Carre, as they claim to, they would accede to his wish.

I agree with Le Carre. I believe reading is, at times, a solo journey, one in which you find the authors you love and hold fast to them, no matter what the "authoritative" voices say.

What affects you, what inspires you, what makes you want to do more in your own life (Barbara Kingsolver did that for me yesterday when I read part of her essay collection, "Small Wonder"), that's what you go with.

No, These are Special Bananas

The next person who says to me, incredulous, "You must really like bananas," when I get a huge bag of them is getting the reply: "No, they're for an orgy tutorial in Stevenson Ranch."

That's for you, dumbass fellow banana hunter at the huge Wal-Mart!

First Lines from Books I Love #3: Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends

I love books with a clear personality. Joyous, angry, happy, depressed, crazy, introverted, give me words, but give me a person behind those words. John Leguizamo is indeed a person who stands behind all his words, and what words they are in "Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends"!

He does not couch anything in mealy-mouthed language. What he says, man, he means. He has lived this life and he's going to tell you all about it, every triumph, every wrinkle, every conflict, everything.

In what he tells, he's certainly had one of the more interesting Hollywood lives. He started from hardship; he knows what it is to struggle to get what you want, to try to define your voice in an early life that discouraged different voices and was dominated by a hard father. He rises, he falls, like anyone does, but most importantly, he remains true to who he is. He does not change himself for the sake of financial betterment, for more fame.

I get restless with books nowadays. I don't force myself through what I don't want to read. Yesterday, I started "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" by Neal Gabler, because I love Walt Disney. I love what he created, I love what I have been able to establish in my own imagination because of what he left behind, and I know he was a conflicted and complex man. And I don't expect Gabler to adopt how John Leguizamo has written his book, but I was bored at the start. However, with that one, I realized that I probably wasn't in the mood for it right then. Maybe some other time.

Leguizamo pulls you right in like a friend he hasn't seen in a long time. "How the hell are you, man? Now sit down. This is what's going on with me."

This is what pulled me in right away:

"For me, there's always been a fine line between acting and acting out. Like this one afternoon me, English, Xerox, and Fucks Funny are riding the 7 train, the elevated subway that runs from Manhattan way the hell out into Queens. I see that the door to the conductor's booth at the front of the car is open, and no one's inside. And I get this sudden idea for my first public performance. Call it guerrilla theater, except at the time I was a clueless youth and thought guerrilla theater was a show they put on in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo."

Let it pull you in, too.

"Noel Coward: A Life in Quotes", compiled and introduced by Barry Day

One of my heroes is Noel Coward, not just for his delicious bon mots, but because of how he carried himself throughout his life, a private gentleman with a brilliant mind.

"Noel Coward: A Life in Quotes" is yet another book I've checked out of the library repeatedly, but have never gotten to it until now. I'm a bit ashamed to say that I read it today because I've got other books on hold to check out tomorrow that I'm really anticipating, such as more of Sam Shepard's works, this time his plays, and Lisa Lampanelli's autobiography.

I still read the book of quotes in total reverence, and admired how Barry Day smoothly made transitions in each section. The side of the book looks like a crowded city of blue tape flag buildings, which indicate those quotes I've marked off to share. And here they are, with appropriate credit:

"It really is unbelievably difficult to act like a moron when one isn't a moron." - To a child actor colleague, Michael Mac Liammoir

"The theatre must be treated with respect. It is a house of strange enchantment, a temple of dreams. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, illiterate, drill hall serving as a temporary soap-box for propaganda." - 'A Warning to Actors' (1961)

"To believe that public taste can be accurately assessed, even for a short period, is a dangerous illusion. Times and politics and the circumstances of living change and with them changes the public attitude to entertainment." - Play Parade Volume 4 (1954)

"I know nothing so dreary as the feeling that you can't make the sounds or write the words that your whole creative being is yearning for." - Diaries (1945)

"It is true that a writer should try to hold the mirror up to nature, although there are aspects of nature that would be better unreflected." - 'A Warning to Pioneers' (1961)

"BRYAN (THE AUTHOR): Why can't people in the theatre behave like normal human beings?

TONY (DIRECTOR'S ASSISTANT): There wouldn't be a theatre if they did." - Star Quality (unproduced play - 1967)

"On Gladys Cooper's inability to remember hers [her lines] in Relative Values (1951): I did not expect word perfection at the first rehearsal but I had rather hoped for it on the first night."

"Poor darling glamorous stars everywhere, their lives are so lonely and wretched and frustrated. Nothing but applause, flowers, Rolls-Royces, expensive hotel suites, constant adulation. It's too pathetic and wrings the heart." - Diaries (1955)

This was of course back when newspapers were truly hefty: "I love the weight of American Sunday newspapers. Pulling them up off the floor is good for the figure."

"Without America we should have no Coca-Cola, no Marilyn Monroe and hardly any really good literature about sex." - Attributed

"American women mostly have their clothes arranged for them. And their faces, too, I think."

"MELODY: Americans have a passion for speed...and yet no idea of time whatsoever -- it's most extraordinary."

"JENNIFER: I have never been able to take anything seriously after eleven o'clock in the morning." - The Young Idea (1921) - I live this every day!

"Manners are the outward expression of expert interior decoration." - Long Island Sound (unproduced play - 1947)

On taste: "It can be vulgar, but it must never be embarrassing."

"I'm not very keen on Hollywood...I'd rather have a nice cup of cocoa, really." - Letter to his mother (1931)

"I love travelling, but I'm always too late or too early. I arrive in Japan when the cherry blossoms have fallen. I get to China too early for the next revolution. I reach Canada when the maple leaves have gone. People are always telling me about something I haven't seen. I find it very pleasant." - Diaries (1965)

"I have not, as yet, seen the Taj Mahal at all, but I feel that when I do it will probably lie down in a consciously alluring attitude and pretend to be asleep." - Present Indicative (1937)

"Reflecting on a 1944 African trip: "The Dinkas' claim to fame is that they are very tall, have the longest penises in the world and dye their hair with urine; doubtless cause and effect."

"On his travels Coward was increasingly appalled by the mind and manners of his fellow travellers. In Suite in Three Keys (1965) an American lady tourist is complaining to another about her husband's lack of enthusiasm for seeing the sights: I managed to drag him into Saint Peter's in Rome and all he did was stomp around humming 'I Like New York in June' under his breath. I was mortified."

"Love is a true understanding of just a few people for each other. Passionate love we will leave on one side for that rises, gets to its peak and dies away. True love is something much more akin to friendship and friendship, I suppose, is the greatest benison and compensation that Man has." - (1970)

"RUTH: Your view of women is academic to say the least of it -- just because you've always been dominated by them it doesn't necessarily follow that you know anything about them." - Blithe Spirit (1941)

"--I don't think my husband's been entirely faithful to me.

-- Whatever makes you think that?

--My last child doesn't resemble him in the slightest." - This Year of Grace! (1928)

"Garry Essendine on sex: To me the whole business is vastly overrated. I enjoy it for what it's worth and fully intend to go on doing so for as long as anybody's interested and when the time comes that they're not I shall be perfectly content to settle down with an apple and a good book!" - Present Laughter (1939)

"CHARLES: It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit." - Blithe Spirit (1941)

"MADAME ARCATI: Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked." - Blithe Spirit (1941)

"Cole (Lesley) [his personal aide] and I had a long and cosy talk about death the other evening... we came to the sensible conclusion that there was nothing to be done. We should have to get on with life until our time came. I said, 'After all, the day had to go on and breakfast had to be eaten', and he replied that if I died he might find it a little difficult to eat breakfast but would probably be peckish by lunch-time." - Diaries (1961)

"The human race is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden Brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams."

"I do not approve of mourning, I approve only of remembering."

"First I was the enfant terrible. Then the Bright Young Thing. Now I'm a tradition."

"Oh, how fortunate I was to be born poor. If mother had been able to afford to send me to private school, Eton and Oxford or Cambridge, it would probably have set me back years." - Diaries (1967)

"If I don't care for things I simply don't look at them."

"I've had a wonderful life. I've still got rhythm, I've got music, who could ask for anything more?" - Diaries (1961)

"People... have an insatiable passion for labelling everything with a motive. They search busily behind the simplest of my phrases, like old ladies peering under the bed for burglars, and are not content till they have unearthed some definite, and usually quite inaccurate, reason for my saying this or that."