pop culture like gumdrops

A couple of my favorite celebrity photographs:


This confectionary little Eve Arnold shot just happens to grace the cover of this month's Summer Reading issue of Poets& Writers Magazine. Mary Gannon, the magazine's editor, comments thusly:

Along with a certain irony (blonde bombshell tackles her century's most baffling book), the photo--everything about it-- has nostalgic appeal.

Interestingly, the narrative behind this photo suggests that it is not posed at all. She really was lugging that fat bastard of a book around in her car and struggling through it-- as so many of us have-- in whatever spare moments she could capture. Beyond nostalgia, too, I find the earnestness of her gaze and the slack of her jaw to be kind of touching. You can see it in her face, can't you? This palpable grappling with tough literature. It's active in her-- that process of seeking and responding to text. I think it's an inspired snapshot, really.


[UPDATE] -- On my small laptop screen, you can't really tell what Marilyn's reading in the photo above. And that "baffling book" would, of course, be Joyce's Ulysses. (In my opinion, Pound's Cantos beat out Ulysses in the Modernist Lit Bafflement Pageant any day, but that is neither here nor there. Poetry doesn't really count, does it?)

And this one was printed in Julia's memoir, My Life in France. Apparently, it appeared on a Valentine's Day card with a caption: "Wish you were here. Happy Valentine's Day, from the heart of old downtown Plittersdorf on the Rhine." The dude is Paul Child, her husband.

I'd blow this one up to poster-size and hang it on my wall if I could. I love the incongruity: the world's largest culinary television personality having a little soak. I'm also a little curious as to where their hands are. And who the photographer allowed access to such intimacy was.

So cute. Cute as puppies.

freakin' the effin' fuck right on out... and crashing

A short while ago, I put my mom on a flight back to Nash Vegas. Her presence over the past 5 days is the primary reason for my recent blog silence. When one does nothing but gab all day long for 5 days straight with one's mother, one has little verbiage left over for one's blog.

That said, I freaked out a whole bunch of times over the last several days.

I freaked out every time my home-purchase bottom line (including closing and moving costs, new furniture purchases, etc., etc., etc.) notched itself skyward. Like a rocket, really.

I freaked out when my mom mentioned the upcoming analog-to-digital TV broadcast conversion. Yeah, I don't know why this stresses me out, but it does.

I freaked out when I discovered that my new bathroom does not have any towel racks-- or a toilet paper holder.

I freaked out when I realized that my new kitchen doesn't have one single drawer. NOT ONE! Do DC residents not need places to put their effin' silverware EVEN MORE than they need Congressional representation? I mean, c'mon!

I freaked out when I went into the unit directly below mine (not yet sold) and heard a mysterious water-drippy sound coming from the washer/dryer closet.

I freaked out when I realized that the nearest organic grocery is at least 14 blocks away from my new place. And the Trader Joe's is way farther away than that. And as a result, I might not be able to sell my fossil-fuel-consuming, Iraq-War-perpetuating, carbon-exhaust-spewing, internal-combustion-engined chariot any time soon.

I freaked out when I ran into a dude who's made skeevy comments on my other blog.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised to receive an extra special cuteness discount from Pier 1 today.It seems I'm having to buy a few extra pieces of storage furniture as closet and cabinet space are both at a minimum in this place. The little assistant manager dude at my nearest Pier 1 here in Alexandria seems to have taken a shine to me. First he laughed at all my jokes (some of which weren't even actual jokes-- nor were they actually funny). Then he asked me about my taste in music (a weird question from a little dude selling me a linen chest). Then he knocked 10% off the top of said linen chest. Then he confessed that the 10% off was an incentive to bring me back to his store. Awwww... sweet. Sometimes it kind of kicks ass to be not entirely uncute. And my cuteness discount worked some magic in terms of calming my generally wigging state of mind.

And now? Now, between three weeks of near-relentless insomnia and chasing after a exceptionally energetic woman 30-ish years my senior for 5 days, I am worn the fuck out.

And I'm out of days off.


Weekend, weekend, weekend, weekend, weekend, where are you already?

Oh, and Mom? Can you please come back and feed me porridge in bed and take care of all this scary stuff and let me come back out and be a grown-up again when it's all over? I missed you immediately.

And now, in pussy teeth news...

Since I posted about the movie Teeth a couple of months ago, the images in that post have generated the most hits-- knocking the post in which I refer to Uma Thurman's tits in the title off it's most-searched pedestal. Apparently, I'm not the only one curious about what the bounteous internet has to offer in terms of Vagina Dentata art.

Apparently, I'm not the only website catering to that whim, either.

Today, I found Dentata.net-- and was a little happier in the world because of its existence. In particular, I very much enjoy the link to the recipe for Vampire Vagina cookies.

And also, this photo, entitled "Your Mom -- circa 1964" :