Me and Kate

OK, the day I met Katherine Hepburn--well, almost: It was about 20 million years ago, and I was working in Manhattan as a gofer ("editorial assistant") for a children's book publisher. The company was in the Crown Building on Fifth Avenue at 57th Street--a very chi-chi address for a book publisher, especially this one. (Their claim to fame was Disney's My First Encyclopedia, for which I actually wrote a few entries. It was illustrated with Disney characters, and we always called it The Mickey Mouse Encyclopedia.) One day, I had to take some papers to an office on another floor. I got into the elevator, noticing that two older women were in it also, but I didn't really look at them. Then I heard an oddly familiar voice. I looked up and realized that one of the women was Katherine Hepburn. She looked like she was in her late 70s, and she was talking with the other woman, who looked even older. Eventually "Kate" (ahh, why not call her that, at this point?) sensed that I was staring at her. She slowly turned her head and gave me a very imperious look and a little smile--"just like in the movies," as they say. I was too shy to say anything, and embarassed about staring, so I quickly looked down at my papers. The elevator stopped at my floor and I got off. As the doors closed, I heard the two women chuckling softly, and the "other one" (Hepburn's companion?) said, "Well, that was easy." I guess they had expected that I would ask for an autograph or something dumb like that. I later learned that Hepburn's dentist was in the same building, so presumably that's what she was doing there.

Maybe someday I'll tell you about passing Dustin Hoffman on the street.

Van Goghing once, Van Goghing twice . . .

According to Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar, on this day in 1987, Vincent Van Gogh's "Le Pont de Trinquetaille" was sold for a staggering $20.4 million at an auction in London. That's amazing when you consider that Van Gogh never sold a single painting during his lifetime. Sooner or later, talent is always recognized, cultural gatekeepers are fond of saying. Sometimes too late . . . .

Many thanks to The Writing Life for the link. There are many, many historic cultural events listed for each day of the year on this site, and Dr. Mac's will probably be a daily visit.

Something Fishy

A company in Taiwan has developed a tropical fish that glows in the dark. It's a zebra fish (one of the most common aquarium critters) that's been genetically modified with jellyfish DNA to give off a ghostly green light. It's also been made sterile, so it won't breed more eerie glowfish if it somehow gets loose in lakes and rivers. Might make an odd but fun addition to an aquarium, though it's rather pricey at US$17.

If we have to play God with DNA, I suppose this is a benign enough innovation. What's alarming, though, is that other companies are apparently working on modified tropical fish that will survive at colder temperatures. And that could present a big problem, even if they're sterile. Just imagine dipping your foot into your favorite lake or stream and having it nibbled on by a piranha.

The Black Album?

According to the, ahem, People's Temple website, Charles Manson has released a CD of studio recordings he made in 1967. The album is called All the Way Alive, and the cover art is a reverse of the Beatles's "White Album" (i.e., it's completely black except for some tiny white lettering). If you know anything about cult leader/serial killer Manson and his "family," you know that the more cryptic lyrics of the White Album were supposedly his "inspiration."

I sure hope this is some kind of sick joke, but it doesn't look like it.

People's Temple Records

Quote of the Day

"But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications.

After all, suppose that a politician -- or a journalist -- admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability -- and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect.

Yet if we can't find people willing to take the risk -- to face the truth and act on it -- what will happen to our democracy?" --Paul Krugman, New York Times, 24 June 03

We won't have a genuine democracy anymore. We'll have a proto-fascist plutocracy. Or something like that. It scares me, but what scares me more is that so few people seem to care about the slippery slope the US is on. My impression is that most Americans are numb. Not deep thinkers at the best of times, "we the people" have been zombified since 9/11. "Whatever" has become the national motto. There's just nothing happening that I can see--culturally, economically, politically--except paralysis and putrefication. There's an old saying: "a fish stinks from the head." If we don't have real "regime change" in 2004, the smell is going to get a lot worse. How long can people hold their noses?

Someone to talk to . . . some thing to talk to . . .

I've always found "talking" to chat bots rather frustrating. The conversations are usually quite limited and circular, and I lose interest after a few minutes. A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) is more entertaining and sophisticated than most. The program doesn't claim to be anything other than a computer that is still "learning" (though it seems to know a lot already), and the conversations are surprisingly natural (as these things go).

Chat with A. L. I. C. E. here.

Quote of the Day

"Why are so many folks glued to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and wrestling smackdowns? Contemporary mass culture, if you let it run your life, essentially teaches you to be an uncritical consumer of whatever puke they throw at you. Poetry, like music and photography, gives you something to think through and see the world. It is a way of engagement that no one can take away from you. It gives you a way of mediating the world. By writing a poem you actually create that rarest of creatures in the world capitalist culture--something with virtually no monetary or utilitarian value."
--Joel Lewis

For "poem," you could substitute "blog entry" or (generally speaking) "short story" or "essay" or--these days--"literary novel." Writing has to be its own reward or . . . blah, blah, blah.

Here's another quote:

"You can make a fortune from writing--but you can't make a living." --James Michener (think about it)

Grave Site

I've never liked cemeteries, which is why I hope to be scattered to the winds someday. Boneyards give me the shivers--I can't help thinking about what I'm stepping on, or over--but I have to admit that, visually, they can be impressively atmospheric and creepy. And that I do like. The City of Shadows site contains some beautiful photos of one of the eeriest cemeteries of all, London's Highgate. Enter if you dare.

Haiku 551

A branch of willow
Stuck in a glass of water
My only decor

If only. Sometimes I look at all the clutter in this place and wish I could hire a Zen monk as an interior decorator. I'd have nothing but cushions on the floor, stacks of books and a computer.

Greetings and Felicitations:

For some strange reason, the correct salutation to use on a paper letter is "Dear ___," even if it's a business letter; even if you're writing to someone you don't find particularly endearing. This is apparently one of those archaic bits of etiquette that has become automatic and essentially meaningless--no one reads the "Dear" literally. The question that's been buzzing around my head is what salutation to use on an e-mail message. In my freelance writing work, I often have to send e-mails to people I don't know personally to request an interview. But "Dear So-and-So" seems far too affected and corny for this digital medium. I've thought about using "Greetings," but that sounds like something a government entity (such as a draft board) would use. "Attention" is too harsh, like a command. Occasionally, I've used "Hello," but that seems odd when written out, as opposed to spoken. For now, I've decided to use "Mr. Jones:" or "Ms. Smith:" It's too minimalist, and it reads more like something you'd say to interrupt someone than a salutation, but I suppose it gets the job done . . . .

Unwritten

I have to admit that I sometimes fail to write about the things that really interest me. That’s usually because I think they’re too embarassing or trivial or weird. Here are three things that interested (obsessed?) me in the past week, but that I couldn’t bring myself to blog about. Till now.

--There’s this enormously fat man I often encounter on my daily walks to the post office. He bounces up and down while he waddles down the sidewalk. He has red hair, a serene expression, and is usually smoking a pipe. (You don’t see too many guys smoking pipes these days.) We never make eye contact as we pass. I wonder what he’s thinking about. I’m thinking about Humpty Dumpty.

--A strip of chrome fell off the back end of my car—or some vandal pulled it off—and is now lost forever. A spare parts dealer quoted me a price of $217 to replace it (the entire taillight assembly would have to be replaced, as they don’t sell the chrome strip separately). The car looks strange to me without it, but I’m not going to pay that! I’m wondering if I should just get a jar of chrome paint and paint the dark plastic strip underneath the place where the chrome strip once was. For some reason, I keep debating this with myself late at night.

--What is it about actress Julie Newmar? My son likes to watch the 1960s Batman show on TV Land, and sometimes I watch with him. Newmar played Catwoman, and she was very, very sexy in her skin-tight cat suit—and very, very kooky. She played this feline “special guest villainess” (as she was credited) as someone who might just as well end up in a mental hospital as a prison. She was evil but also extremely funny. I can’t quite capture in words the daffy-yet-confident persona she projected.

Crossing the Street

Maybe you've noticed this about urbanites: Whenever they're crossing a one-way street, they always look in the right direction first to see if any car is approaching. They seem to do this automatically, as if by instinct, and "it's a good thing," as a certain domestic diva now under criminal indictment would say. Yet they also cast a quick, furtive glance in the other direction--almost always. I find myself doing this, too. It's a sign, I believe, that we can never quite trust that the universe will act the way it's supposed to; we suspect that someday all will go haywire, and some big, terrifying machine will go tearing through town the wrong way on a one-way street, mowing down everyone in its path. Look both ways, Mom always said. She programmed us well.