Number one with a
bullet on Pollyanna’s playlist—ladies and gentlemen, I give you the happiest song ever!
"The Loving," XTC
A friend of mine once said that all songs have balls—some are
enormous, some are small, some are hardly there at all. This song boasts a veritable
bunch of balloons, big and birthday-colored, filled to a breath below bursting
and delivered to you by a troupe of Siamese kittens. In lederhosen!
Seriously, though, I’m blown away by that big, fat
ujjayi-breathing guitar chord in the chorus that makes you feel all oceanic.
Freud might’ve really dug it if he could get past the whole ball-sizing thing.
Given his fear of loud and annoying
objects like the vaccuum cleaner, you'd think that Lorenzo would be
more frightened of this doofy voice-activated skull that burps and
says “Excuse me.” Perhaps he just appreciates good
manners.
I was in Yellow Springs, Ohio, eating lunch when the Chocolate Toad strode by. I had this feeling he was used to being photographed, and I wanted in on the action. My friend Lorie handed me her fancy camera and I knelt, clueless as to how to use it, and somehow accidentally snapped this pic of the toad mid-hop. I had no idea there was a big busy foot to my left until I saw this photo. That's a mini-miracle in itself. But I immediately thought, Dang! if only it'd come out better. Better composition, and in focus, and with the toad looking more toadlike.
That's like finding a winning lottery ticket for, like, $500, and wishing it was the jackpot. How big does a freakin' miracle have to be these days?! Geesh.
Looking through old journals today and came across this entry from, hmmm, about 13 years ago…
A pigeon came to M's window today and she said 'Ewwww! Gross!!!' I got sad and angry, and her response to this: '99% of the people hate pigeons.' That can't be true, that just can't be true.
Have you looked at a pigeon lately? 'Cause if you haven't, they're absolutely beautiful. Iridescent feathers all grey and green like abalone shells, and some are even white with black speckles that remind me of chocolate chips. And then of course they bob and strut like the funkmeisters of the bird world. It's not their fault they suffer from the not-so-rara avis syndrome. 99% of the people would like pigeons if there were 99% less pigeons.
Anyway, I like pigeons, everybody…SO THERE!
P.S. I came upon the sweet one in this photo during the aftermath of Hurricane Whatshername last summer. I didn't want to bother him, but was happy to see he didn't remain in the doorway too long.
Wow, hard to believe no one's in the stands in this next one. It's like when Spinal Tap played at those fairgrounds in like, Idaho, and there were like 23 people in the audience:
When it comes to toys, Derrick's pretty easy to please. Plastic grocery bag? It is best when rustled! Smudge on the wall? I must touch it with my big paw! But he really, really seems to like this new one, a Dalmatian with a nose that lights up and a voice that says "Merry Christmas" sounding suspiciously like Pepe the King Prawn.
It makes me think of the toys I played with as a kid. Or didn't play with, rather. I don't know why, but I really didn't have many. A Chrissy doll with hair that grew longer when you pushed a button on her back. Eventually, her hair made me frustrated..short or long, short or long, short or long…and she fell permanently out of my favor. Breyer horses on an endless journey across land and sea, as they made their way across a green and blue blanket. I guess mostly I read. And drew pictures of ladies with hair piled high on their heads, in dresses with bustles (???). And wrote stories about duck families surviving on bread crusts during terrible storms. And spent lots of time looking at the sky, and zooming from room to room while dancing to my sister's records, which weren't as good as my brother's, but I didn't know how to turn on his stereo.
Re: this next one: I hate when he says he's fat as a cow, but this one does contain a few of those random Wilsonian lyrical "Wha?"s: In the morning people are so happy/And that's the time when I'm a mister businessman.
It took Bing 10 minutes to get into this position, which is actually pretty good for him. I don't know what's going on in his self-described matinee idol mind, but his MO is like this: he'll sidle up to Derrick and just kind of loom over him, staring, not moving, but very obviously engaged in some sort of special for-kitties-only spatial/energy-moving task. Then, after what could amount to 15-20 minutes of this, he hunkers down, first try, in the most comfortable, perfect position. His moves are few and well-choreographed--but then again, I've been saying all along he's a minimalist.
Lately I've been working on being energy efficient. Not like an air conditioner or anything, but as it applies to movement. I have no lack of strength or force, but I tend to fritter away my energy in the moments before and after I really need it. Like, hmmm… when you do pirouettes, the preparation is the most important thing--it's your time to center yourself and prepare for lift-off. If you get all excited and anxious about it, like I sometimes do, you might hop into your preparation, thinking you can use that extra force for pirouette-y goodness. No, no, no, though. You're actually screwing up your delicate balance. Far better to step the foot down, and use that errant kilowatt or however you measure energy--what is it? ergs? newtons?--for the actual turn.
Then of course you can waste energy on the back end, too, like fidgeting when you finish a yoga pose, which is sort of like laughing nervously at the end of an otherwise smart-talkin' sentence. Not that I'm some sort of energy prude, but geesh…things go much smoother when you don't blow your wad before you even start.
P.S. Snort! Somehow this post didn't end how I'd expected.
Don't have kittens, people--Jayne's back for another Meezer Monday!
I'm not sure there's a lot I can add here--the image really speaks for itself. But what the heck is it saying?! It's wonderliciously whack if you ask me. Jayne's putting on a brave, maternal sort of face, and I find it interesting that the mom meezer chose to have her babies on what appears to be a hardwood floor. I mean, we know all the 8 bathrooms in the Pink Palace have wall-to-wall-to-wall fluffy pink carpeting! And Jayne gets props for being so respectful of the mini meezers, not picking them up and posing by the heart-shaped pool and jacuzzi just to get a better shot or anything.
OK, so I never thought this wasn't about a baby...
P.S. Click here to watch the kittens play "The Immigrant Song."
I envy Derrick and Bing sometimes. They don't have to worry about what to wear every day (though Bing does have a set of devil horns, a top hat and a baby blue hoodie with skulls from the Martha Stewart Collection), and they aren't weighed down by the desire for material possessions.
To some degree we're all addicted to buying stuff, to getting that bag and carrying around what's in it, even if it's just some crappy hair gel and gummy worms. Why, that's what makes us good Americans after all! Like, the stores all closed early on Saturday 'cause of Hurricane Irene, and on Sunday I saw people forlornly walking the streets, all sad-sack and jonesing cause there was nothing to BUY. I watched a family sprint to CVS when they saw it had opened, practically gasping for air as they set their sights on Pringles and Blistex (random items to be sure, but they kinda go together, don't they? Especially if we're talking pizza-flavored Pringles).
At least with cats, their thrills are relatively cheap. Derrick loves his rainbow catnip cigar, but I don't think he thinks about it when it's not there. Nor does he need to get it in multiple colors and styles, or worry that they'll stop making the rainbow stripe kind and life will never be the same again.
The Q, as interpreted by anthropomorphized sea life, remindin' us what it's really all about:
Have you ever played the Question Game? The last time I did was after the funeral of the mother of a dear friend of mine. Cho was a beautiful spirit, a straight-talking, tempura-slinging lady who liked to sing "Danny Boy" and loved her daughters something fierce. She wouldn't have wanted us to be sad, so the Question Game, middle name: gleeful and inane, was a fitting tribute. The rules are deceptively simple: You look at someone and ask them a question. That player doesn't answer the question, but instead looks at a different player and asks another question, but it has to be completely unrelated to the question they were asked.
So… on that day it went something like this:
P to R: "How do you want your eggs cooked?"
R to S: "What's the speed of sound?"
S to M: "Can we talk?"
M to entire group: "Does the cat have an ass?"
Does the cat have an ass?!! Where the heck did THAT come from? It was so outrageously silly that it immediately put an end to the game, and poor M. got chastised for being so ridiculous. But you know the best part? He truly wanted to know if the cat had an ass and, come to think of, that's a REALLY good question.
Consequently, I have a soft spot for what may or may not be cat butts large or small, including the leonine glutes of steel shown here. This mighty dude was one of four to act as my guides during my recent trip to DC, affording me safe passage by the light of a honkin' mo-fo of a moon. A rare one that shone on things known/unknown.
When I studied the photo later, I was delighted by what I didn't see at first--the big cat basking in the sun/moon/street light, a three-way inversion that somehow still left you standing upright.
And a week later, back home in NYC, the whole thing hit me on a deeper level, when the image cued up Plato's cave and his use of the sun as a metaphor. Basically, he says, we human beans are all prisoners in a cave, chained and immobilized so that the only thing we can see are the shadows of what goes on behind us. Not the real thing, of course, but since that's all we see, we think it to be the big-T Truth In other words, we're pretty stoopid. And slow, too. Were we dragged outside into the light, we'd still think the shadows were more real than the sun. But Plato's not a total buzzkill--read the Republic if you want to know how we gain enlightenment.
As for further Plato exploration, well… I recommend the Symposium, especially the part about how we were all cut in two long ago and go around searching for our other halves, and NOT the paper I wrote as a college senior on Plato's philosophy of aesthetics, which I cobbled together based on random stuff he said about art and beauty. The professor returned my paper, not with a particularly bad grade but with the comment that Plato didn't have a philosophy of beauty.
Yeah, and he'd probably say the cat didn't have an ass.
On Monday I saw this on a billboard for some new store soon to open on 34th Street, and today I had to go back to take this photo. What's in a world that is Puffier for All? Discerning noses (olive oil and blood oranges, your application may be accepted), eyes that look with love...and everything, everything, with parmesan cheese on top.
Puffy get loose! This is the one during which she premieres the first-ever pirouette done by a cat, per the children's story I've been saying I have to write since, well, forever:
This blog gets its title from a nickname given to me by an ex-boyfriend, like way, way long ago. I thought it was sweet and funny at the time, 'cause it rhymes w/my real name, but when I think back on it, it's not nice at all. Who wants to be associated with a wrinkly old fruit known to act as a laxative? Anyway, lucky for me he moved his angry self to Hawaii and, not so lucky for me, left me with 11 snakes and a cat. I found them homes, but I'd like to publicly apologize to them all right now and acknowledge how upsetting that process was. I know it wasn't all my fault, but, heck, we all have to lie in our own bed, or however that one ends up.
Oh, I almost forgot the inspiration for my little photo-montage-collage. I've gotten 3 emails inadvertently addressed to "Prune" in as many weeks. Just an observation, really, but somehow I wanted to respond by creatin' something. And in general, I've decided to take a bigger hint from Derek Jeter, who was quoted in the New York Times, "I don’t like talking about myself. Never have. I don’t even like people who talk about themselves. If you can do it, why do you need to talk about it?”
He's essentially talking about putting your money where your mouth is, which, heck, isn't exactly the issue here…but if my money were prunes, let's just say we'd probably have to call the plumber to fix the toilet here on ssspunerisms.
A lady wore a dress to yoga on Friday night. Who gives a shift (snort!), you ask? Well, apparently I did, and I guess I just need to write it out to figure it out.
From the get-go, I could tell it was gonna be a weird class. There was a lot of space in the room so I had a hard time locating my—for lack of a better term—“power” spot, and it took me 3 tries to get it right. Then, there were a bunch of people who put their mats facing the “wrong” direction, which I was delighted about because it made a few others all huffy-puffy. (Some shim-sham take on schadenfreude? Heck if I know, I’m just a total amateur human being as of late.) So I decided to turn the “wrong” way, too, because otherwise I would have been directly facing the lady with the dress, which I knew would be a distraction. Our very earnest teacher went with the flow.
Actually, I didn’t realize she was wearing a dress (super short, loose, striped, more like a night shirt) until we started moving around, when it was falling down and riding up and revealing her granny panties. So…it’s not just me, that’s sort of curious, right? Would it give you pause? Now, I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ll do it anyway, but I was initially disgusted by what my fear-biting imagination perceived as an overwhelming need for attention on her part. (Hello?! Solipsism-colored glasses much?) Then, I felt awful about myself for having such a nasty thought, so I tried to immediately cue up a positive one (there’s a fancy name for that process, but I’m not sure what it is-- don’t worry, it’s not “life coach” tho!).
It must have worked, because all of a sudden the dress was no longer a threat (what?! Like the cockroach in the elevator last night?!), and I concluded that, even if she either had simply forgotten her pants and/or was just clueless, she clearly really wanted to be in class and was a very joyous practitioner (I could feel it--she was right next to me, remember?)—plus I heard her say “Wow!” when she was leaving—so I couldn’t care less if she was wearing a skunk suit and playing the xylophone.
On the bus home my thoughts returned to the dress. For one, it made me think about the general effect for you and everyone else should you wear something inappropriate/out of context for a situation. At the very least, doing so can re-frame the situation and your experience of it, and to me there’s something very exciting about that. I couldn’t come up with any really good examples, but I did remember that I wore a rose-patterned table cloth to a Pogues concert once. And for years I wore standard-issue all-black to jazz class, until I switched up one day and began to wear…Pink! Red! Green! It actually felt like a new me in a new space, which is kinda cool if the space is a place where you are trying to grow and learn. And clothing is an easy “Reframing for Dummies” way to do it, but heck, I’m still at the intro level for sure.
And the other thing the dress made me think of… there’s always something really cool and brave about showing up to something new with your…granny panties?! No!! With your open mind and willingness to learn. As a kid I didn’t London (my new word—a verb!—for trying something you’ve never done before) very much, and I didn’t fail a lot because I only did things I knew I’d be good at. I literally never got back on the horse when he bucked me off (his name was Blue) and dang me if I’m not trying to make up for it now.
I think it’s good to suck at something because you can’t go anywhere but up. Case in point, the video we made for the Feline Forum in Chicago, September 2009. There’s Bing in a top hat (Sweetie! He just sat there doing exactly what I wanted him to do while I floundered around trying to film), and Elyse and Cindy belting it out. In this case, I was the one with the granny panties in the singing dept. (I’m so bad!), but Elyse was such a firm but gentle production manager, and I always trust the creative process, so the whole thing took on a life of its own. For me, the Londoning wasn’t in the doing, but in the documenting. I always think I look like such a doofus, so I’d rather remember how it felt doing it than how I looked doing it. So far this has served me pretty well and allowed me to make random experiments (i.e. wearing a table cloth). I wish I’d figured out you’re supposed to look at the camera, though, even if you are wearing a cat mask and wagging your tail.
The cosmos offers so many opportunities to London:
P.S. Aha! Perhaps the dress/GPs was one reason why our teacher suggested we do many of the poses with our eyes closed. A whole different world! I wonder, but not too much.
Miss Puffelina in da house! And some of the titles on her reading list? Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone (she liked it but thought it was a little over her head); Derek & Julia Parker’s Compleat Astrologer (like all astrology books, this one unfairly rags on her sun sign, Capricorn); Secrets of the Harem (boring! Like a lynxpoint Siamese kitten needs any help with belly dancing tips!) and her banged-up copy of Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen (she thinks the Rolling Stones could have contributed a better recipe than “Hot Dogs on the Rocks,” and is still pissed off about that misogynist “Under My Thumb” reference).
And when she’s finished ‘em all? This gal’s ready to blow her eardrums off—check out my super hi-fi surround sound! (No, I did NOT stack the left and right speakers on top of each other! That would be as stupid as trying to burn old letters in the oven, just until the edges got brown, I swear, and then going to the corner to buy a chocolate shake.)
I know, I know, I've already used this song in a post about Puff. I can't help it, it's the perfect Puffalicious song.
P.S. In case you’re still worried about the speakers: The bottom one broke down, or whatever the term is, preferring a more quiet life as a stand for the top one. Or maybe it just got tired of listening to K-Tel compilations.
In honor of Saturday’s supermoon—at its cheesiest and pleasy-est in 18 years!!—here is Keith Moon with his wife’s Siamese cat, Fudge. I can’t find a reliable source to confirm that said kitty a) belonged to Keith Moon’s wife’s and b) was deliciously named Fudge, but it’s a durn good story so we’re going with it.
Durn? Who the heck says that? (Editor’s note: Mark Twain, it turns out.)
Anyway, I have definitely felt the pull of the moon, its champagne light glimmer-shimmering in the night like waves in a dark sea, the only thing (but admittedly, a big one) you have left in common with your unrequited love.
Alternately, I do think it’s probably made of cheese, a yummy triple-cream one like Explorateur.
Ah, the title alone...makes me wanna be/live all poetic:
Andy Partridge's demo of a Dukes of Stratsophear tune...you like?
Not necessarily my fave Who tune, but it's meezer-appropriate. And our hero is featured at the beginning.
Sorry, this turned out to be LessWord Wednesday. But what's word order among friends?
I know it’s that time of year, but can we please SLOW THE EFF DOWN, people! I’m so overwhelmed in/by this present that I can only see myself dancing on the empty stage of the past. Is that why these photos of TWA Terminal 5 at JFK Airport, designed by Eero Saarinen in 1962, make me ache?
I don’t know why, but they take my breath away and stop my mind in its chug-a-chug-a-chug-a tracks. They remind me of my favorite line ever from a Christmas song...Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.
And technically these are images of Terminal 5 at Idlewild Airport—that’s what JFK used to be called. Idlewild. The most beautiful, magical word ever. Idlewild…a place where you don’t have to do much for awhile so your mind is free to grow and play. And you get to do all this while dressed in something the Supremes would wear.
Video alert: The song starts a minute in, if you don't wanna listen to the interview.
In all your hurry, you've accidentally locked the gate.
Cojones. It’s like I’m growing a bigger pair lately, ya know? And as such, there are a few things from my past that I would like to address here.
First up: the Great Brownie Bake-Off, junior or senior year in high school. I will try to protect certain identities of those involved because a) I’m so not a name-namer and b.) authorities were involved. Don’t worry, it’s actually a story of unmatched ridiculousness and absurdity. But oh yeah, it f’d me up for a very long time after that.
So me and my friends are playing tennis at our high school courts. Everything was closed for spring break, but one of our teachers happened to be in school and came out to offer us some brownies. Oh, they were so good! I inhaled mine and, Triple Taurus that I am, requested another. Anyway, after awhile, I noticed that I kept missing the ball. Not that I’m a great tennis player to begin with, but it was like I was still swishing and swatting at the balls that I’d just hit and were already on D.'s side of the net. Good thing we had to stop because I had to go to my job at the local library, right?
D. and someone else…why am I thinking an exchange student?...and I rode our bikes there, and they waited for me while I tried to shelve some books. Dewey Decimal and all. But really, the stacks were moving by then, and by the time I hit the 600s we’d figured out something was wrong with them dang brownies.
D. was in better shape than me and called her parents, who came to pick us up (thank you for that and so much more), and all I remember is lying in the back of their station wagon on the way to the emergency room, thinking the songs on the radio sounded so good. You know, all spacey like “Revolution No. 9,” but it was probably just Rick Springfield and Styx. The next thing I know I’m sobbing…no, leaking tears…and slumped in a wheelchair, being greeted—what a coincidence! —by the volunteer coordinator at the hospital whom we both knew very well because we were…yes, candy stripers! No refillin’ water pitchers on North 3 that day tho. “We ate something bad, we ate something bad,” I kept moaning. D. must have lots of happy brain chemicals, because she was laughing the whole time and was able to stand up and walk to the bathroom to provide the urine sample upon request. Not me, no siree! Bring Miss Supine a bedpan, please…
D. went home and ate a cheeseburger (awww, I just remembered her beautiful meezer Coug and platinum-furred Harlow!); I went home, hoping to dream in Yellow Submarine but wound up crying in my room. Later I got to see the school psychiatrist, a soft-spoken man who told me how I might be feeling and I thought I should tell him I agreed. He was pretty on target tho—violated and scared. I had flashbacks for a couple of months but my parents told me I just wanted attention.
Thing is, it is a good story to retell, and the delicious irony is that I was obsessed with drug culture—I plowed through Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, adored Jefferson Airplane (no Dead, though, curiously. I think it’s ‘cause I love glamour and well, Grace and Marty and Paul and Jorma were way more glamorous to me than, uh, Jerry. Sorry.), and secretly admired anyone who could trust in themselves enough to experiment. I thought I was missing out on something creative, but know now that I’m so blessed to have a mind that lucy/sky/diamonds all on its own…
But you know why I’m mad at that teacher? Not because he gave us brownies that were basically so laced with hash that their rich, moist centers were glowing green—but because, a year later, he yelled at me and told me I was disgusting for giving a girl boxer shorts for secret Santa. He called me “perverted” in front of the whole class, and I turned pink with shame.
It was freakin’ fashion-forward for girls to wear boxer shorts then, Mr Blah Blah.
Music to listen to when the pot calls the kettle black Grass XTC Oooh, not too crazy about this video, but if you’ve never heard the song, I think you’re all clear to watch. Gorgeous tune, she swoons.
I Want To Take You Higher Sly & The Family Stone Everybody higher higher HIGHER!
I never thought I truly grokked Hemingway (it’s always been more about Lo. Li. Ta. and the tripping tip of tongue, and Murakami and his talking cats), despite the fact that “Cat in the Rain” is like the most brilliant short story ever. And despite the fact that “Cat in the Rain” nearly brought me to so-beautiful-you-could-cry tears last night.
And no, it’s not really about cats.
I’d also hoped to time this post—in celebration of the whole April showers thing—a little better. The whole country is freakin’ walkin’ on sunshine (eww, for some reason that song is so repellent to me). But it was raining and windy yesterday in Seattle, says Sue, so maybe someone, somewhere was feeling that precipitation-induced melancholy.
So… “Cat in the Rain” is pretty short, and you can read the whole thing here. One line drives me nuts it’s so good (I’ve included the text before it ‘cause you kinda need the context):
> He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.
Liking him she opened the door and looked out.
Oooh, I can’t take it! Liking him…because your emotions and feelings DO inform your actions and the way you move…that sentence tells me a lot about her. Imagine her brain and how she’d open the door if she didn’t like him…ya know? But no, she likes him and she likes a lot of things. She’s a liker.
Music to play when the levee breaks Ballet for a Rainy Day, XTC I Like Rain, The Jean Paul Sartre Experience Oh boy, I’m glad I’d never seen that video before and had my own vision of the song. I hate to be an 80s basher, but geesh! A disco ball and…is that a toilet seat? Great tune, tho!
I can hear the jokes now—the Great Litter Box in the Sky…the dog’s the devil (spewing high fructose corn syrup everywhere, no less!)...but I know I’m not the only one to ponder this question.
Bing, per the animal communicator, practices feng shui in the apartment, so at the very least he’s an animist. I’m sorry for him that he has to negotiate with the couch, though—totally low on the energy scale. But, to be fair, very accommodating…
We do know that the main character in Paul Gallico’s novel, Thomasina, did have a belief system—in fact, she thought she WAS God. In the movie version, The Three Lives of Thomasina, the viewer gets to ride shot-gun on her cosmological journey:
Technically, she believes in a Goddess—specifically Bast, known to have been worshipped in ancient Egypt, where cats wore bling and ate whatever they wanted off their family’s plates at dinner.
(OMG, you guys! I think that must have been a divine message from another world. Something compelled me to do an image search of Flavor Flav + cat. Why would I be randomly thinking of Flavor Flav on a Saturday morning, even though Flavor of Love is my hands-down, all-time favorite reality show? I always knew he was inherently a good person, not automatically eliminating Somethin that time she, um, eliminated something (Season 2, “Something Stinkin’ in the House of Flav).
Back to Thomasina, “flying wildly” through space, “diving and spinning” in the mists of time. Or is it “midst” of time? I like the latter—if anyone can navigate through the middle of something that has no beginning or end, cats can!
And you can only imagine how I feel about the cats chosen to protect the temple! They do sound like goats, don’t they? But I like goats, so it’s all good.
Music to travel through the midst of time by Season Cycle, XTC It’s growing gre-ee-een! ‘Nuff said. Feel Flows, The Beach Boys You go, Carl!
