THE MODEL

R was our model. As I struggled with my makeshift easel, she offered to help me through the door. I said I was fine but thanks, and entered behind her. Her gait seemed wobbly, as though the leg joints were worn down and slid from side to side. She is slender. She appears to live simply, so I can’t attribute the smoked-chicken tone of her body to tanning. Maybe that’s her natural color. Her age was hard to pin down. She looked old and young at one and the same time. The wrinkles on her chiseled face were prominent enough to notice, while not enough to detract from a sense of youthfulness. I’m guessing she’s in her early 60’s, although Sandi thinks she might be older. Her body is wonderful, with firm breasts—only with imagination can one discern hints of incipient sagging. Wrinkles on her abdomen are concentrated in one or two places, and don’t detract from her otherwise tight skin. While she took lovely poses, none of them showed her back. Her bottom might have been wrinkled, but one of two glimpses of it as she got in and out of poses showed nothing that would detract from her overall appeal to average male tastes (well, to men of a certain age). Her hair was bundled roughly on top of her head. It was a sort of khaki colored—dyed, certainly-- that blended with her skin. She let it down for the final pose, the subject of this drawing. Her vulva was surprisingly narrow. The facts of her age, personality and physical appearance made me think of her as someone I could have known well but never seen naked. I prefer to think of her that way.

BOOGIE NIGHTS, 1997

This movie will take you on a trip and bring you back. Amid swimming pools, nightclubs and booze, it's immersed in a sleazy world, ruled over by LA porn film maker par excellence, Burt Reynolds. The film itself seems trashy, as cheap as the lives around Burt (Jack Horner), but the intermingling disco and classical music and the smooth, slick, hallucinogenic scene changes, are interesting. Enough to compensate for the broken people and the orgy of fuckups? Dunno. The cast is spectacular, including Mark Wahlberg (whose vicissitudes as porn celebrity anchor the story), Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. So it’s a great cast, and Reynolds was nominated for an Oscar, but I still don’t get it. The film features failure, frustration, ambition, drugs, murder, and a sort of redemption, and was more about these than about porn. While there was a lot of purported porn, the relentless cutting away of anything juicy was bothersome. I think of the trend toward non-simulated sex in mainstream movie—e.g., The brown Bunny and Shortbus. Would this movie be better had it gone that route?

THE NEW FACE OF HOMELESSNESS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/homeless-america_n_808339.html


The new middle class homelessness. While the article focuses on an unfortunate woman, the cover photo shows a possible way out of her predicament, and a possible way out for others in her circumstances.

The photo is of a beautiful RV, lit by bright sun. A well groomed man is attending to his equally presentable son. He had the intelligence and clarity of mind to crease a deck from planks, supporting it on small rocks gathered in the yard. It cost nothing, other than, perhaps, for the planks. It's a nice, sunny space that a child would like. The family has a roof over their head, and they have transportation. While this is the face of poverty in the USA, it is paradise by the living standards of half the world. Between living on the streets and living in a Mc Mansion, there are many viable options still open to us.

LEFT VS. RIGHT

Events of the past three days make me think once again of our political dilemma. I think the Right is fundamentally wrong, and that the Left is fundamentally right. I do believe, however, in carefully giving this alligator of the Right its due, treating it as a force of nature to be respected, but that must be contained for the benefit of humanity. I believe that the margins between our two camps can be rendered soft and relatively porous. And I'm for working assiduously to bring this about.

There are the famous stories of Tip O’Neil knocking back a few with Reagan at night, and being a fierce partisan by day. This is a good model for legislators (and us) to follow. It can’t hurt to find opportunities for friendship and cooperation.

We have to avoid being overwhelmed with bitterness by our fundamental disagreements, and try our utmost to bridge the chasm without sacrificing our principles. I believe that we should hold fast to our GOALS while negotiating with the Right on TACTICS. The right leans in a direction that brings out the need for creativity. Dems need to embrace this quality, guarding against its tendency to be overly mechanical and cerebral. This means embracing faith-based and market initiatives. It means being able to embrace American exceptionalism. More than anything, it means thinking outside the box, all toward creating a more caring, compassionate and sensible nation.

HEAVENS ABOVE, 1963

Considered a satirical masterpiece, and ahead of its time, the plot features Peter Sellers as a humble, caring vicar accidentally assigned to a comfortable, snobbish English country village in place of an upper-class cleric with the same name. The black and white picture quality is iridescent, like sand sculpture sprayed silver. The credits, showing the town, convey a feeling for the emerging and exciting pop-art aesthetic of the time. Sellers’ cockney accent and disregard for upper-class norms, as well as his prominent, slightly hooked nose, reminds me of John Lennon, who was ascending with the Beatles during that period. In this immaculately crafted, low budget film, Sellers influences the town’s dowager and chief business scion to give her riches to the poor. But all does not go well. One of her memorable quotes: “There’s a conspiracy to prevent one doing good.” The bewildered archdeacon is amusing, too, as he talks of Sellers’ child-like directness and “quite unjustifiable happiness.” There is outstanding truth of types. The gypsies that the vicar takes in are parasites, but are shown in the round, not as stereotypes. Brock Peters plays the genial West Indian immigrant and garbage collector selected by Sellers to be the vicar’s assistant, causing many to display the racial attitudes of the time.

BRINGING IN THE NEW YEAR

There is no nicer way to bring in a new year than to watch a Marx Brothers marathon. And that is what TCM presented this New Year’s Eve. Among those I sat through or glimpsed were Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Oper, all from the early 30’s.

Marx Brothers films are like musicals; you can look at them repeatedly and never get tired. Correction: They are musicals. They all include music and dance performances. In Monkey Business, Groucho dances with the hoodlum’s wife. He’s clowning, but he’s really dancing too. They dance on the floor, then dance on the bed, as if it were another dance platform, then dance on the floor again. I think of Astaire’s sofa-stunt choreography--dancing onto and capsizing the sofa--during a dance years later. Groucho’s is like a rough sketch for later, more polished performances. Harpo is a musician, a wonderful, under-appreciated harpist. But the non-stop jokes are timed in a way not unlike musical performances.

There is inspiration in these films too. In Monkey Business, the villain, tall, mean, dangerous, is on the verge of bumping off Groucho, But Groucho shows that you don’t have to respond according to program. He continues being a wiseass even as death hovers over him, and this unlikely behavior actually saves him!