The scene: a nice little college town, where everyone is happy and peppy and civic minded, and really loves the football team. Someone from Colorado or someplace, transfers into town for a new job and … starts noticing things. It turns out that the town patriarch (Paterno) isn’t even the ruler…
Something Else is…
A comment from Rod Dreher's ever-interesting blog at The American Conservative.
From Dotson Rader's great, great Tennessee: Cry of the Heart, 1985
Rader writes: Tennessee went on to talk about the one time Truman came to Key West.
"It was two years ago. he had flown to Key West from Mexico, where he was to stay with Mrs. [Lee] Radiwill but left in a hurry because the mosquitoes were terrible. So he came to Key West from the Yucatan. He had never been on the island before, and I suspect that he never will be there again. He was robbed the first night, losing all his credit cards, his address book, and about two thousand dollars. He said that he wasn't in his hotel room when the robbery occured, but the police found no evidence of forced entry. I think he was cleaned out by some street boy he invited home for a private session!"
"Truman came to Key West because he sold excerpts of his book [Answered Prayers] to Esquire, he made one of the conditions of the contract that the editor of the magazine [Don Erickson] had to fly to Key West to pick up the manuscript. He did that because Hemingway used to make Arnold [Gingrich, the editor/found of Esquire] came to Key West to edit his stories before they were published. Truman was not about to get one thing less thatn Hemingway."
"One night Truman, Jimmy Kirkwood, and a friend of Truman's, I, and some other men went to dinner. His friend was very drunk. The restaurant was full of tourists in double-knit suits, and since it was quite late, most of them were as tipsy as Truman's boyfriend. Some distance away, at a round table, sat three couples. Truman noticed them staring at us, and he said, "Watch out! They'll be coming over for autographs!" And a few minutes later, one of the women at the table got up and came over, carrying a menu. She asked Truman to autograph the menu. He did. She left, and a few minutes later her husband came to our table and glared at Truman.
"Are you Truman Capote?" And Truman said, "I was this morning!" And the man unzipped his pants, and pulled out his cock. He said, holding it in the palm of his hand, "Can you put your signature on this? And Truman looked down at the cock, and up again, and he said. "I don't know about my signature. But I can initial it!"
"A bad memory is a great convenience."
Tennessee Williams, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, 1950
The quote is from the nouvella. Here's the poster from the first movie made of this story.
[My god, what a cast! Lotte Lenya?!? Who was nominated for Best Supporting for the role? I have to see this picture.]
In the aftermath of the hurricane, came complaints about hype: Was Hurricane Irene a disappointment?
Media analyst Howard Kurtz says yes. After all, Irene wasn't even a hurricane when it made landfall in NYC. Other New Yorkers are equally dismissive: A NYC gossip site called Irene The Sudden Sex Celebrity without Much Bang. Scallywag wrote:
she’ll more than likely be the sexy hot dame that tantalized us and left us a smidgen disappointed that we didn’t get to experience the type of rude shock that we were told to look out for.
An anonymous texter had a similarly sexualized reaction to the storm:
Last night in my drunkenness I bought hurricane supplies which included a jug of wine and a bouquet of flowers. Apparently I'm going to woo Irene.
Even Susan Orlean, The New Yorker writer, saw the storm as beddable (on Facebook).
If Irene were my boyfriend, I'd say enough with the foreplay, dude. The moment has passed.
But Orlean, who is funny, was kidding. Her coworker Elizabeth Kolbert, after surveying the science on the did global warming cause Irene question? pointed out what needed to be said:
When we add all of these risk factors together, we can say with a great deal of confidence that in the future, there will be more and more events like Irene. We can comfort ourselves by saying that this particular storm was not necessarily caused by global warming. Or we can acknowledge the truth, which is that we are making the world a more dangerous place and, what’s more, that we know it.
Maybe if Kolbert was looking at the natural world through the TV screen, for entertainment. she'd react differently.
Although considered politically naive by some, Tennessee Williams did know how to make a scene. Especially when it came to love.
If you want the unbuttoned Tennessee Williams, you have to read Dotson Rader's entertaining Cry of the Heart. It's a wonderfully breezy and entertaining book about the mature Tennessee Williams, but even better, it's a sort of biography by dialogue. We quickly understand how much Tennessee Williams' fourteen-year-long love affair from Frank Merlo meant, both to Williams, and to Merlo.
During the fifties, as his fame grew, Tennessee became very sensitive to slights against [his longtime companion and] friend Frankie, insisting that he always be included whenver Tennessee was invited anywhere. It didn't always work out that way.
Tennessee was angered when Irene Selzick [the powerful heiress who produced the movie version of "Streetcar"] invited him to her socially prestigious dinners in her Hotel Pierre apartment and would add, "Oh, and ask Frank to drop in afterward, if he likes."
"Tell her to go fuck herself," was Frank's usual response.
Or Tennessee would raise hell when they checked into a suite in a fancy hotel and there would be two single beds rather than one king-size. He would threaten to leave and never return unless they were moved to a suite with a proper bed or a proper bed was delivered to the suite they were in at once.
Whent he Royal Orleans in New Orleans refused to allow them to share a room with only one bed, Tennessee created a scene in the lobby.
"But it simply isn't done, Mr. Williams," the night manager tried to assure him. "We never allow two men to sleep in the same bed. Why would two men want to sleep in a bed together?"
"So they can fuck!" Tennessee said, before he and Frank marched out.
[Here's the only picture I can find of Merlo and Williams together -- sort of.
From the height of Williams' glory days, from left to right, Frank Merlo, Elia Kazan, Tennessee Williams, Charles Feldman. Courtesy of a play at NYC called Love of Men Ferocious]
From Dotson Rader's spectacularly colorful memoir of Tennessee Williams, Cry of the Heart, about his much older friend and lover, here's a note about Williams and Los Angeles:
"Los Angeles [was] a city Tennessee hated more than any other in the world.
"I always feel like a whore there," [he said]. "I don't appreciate works of art being referred to as a "property," like a play of mine was a piece of undeveloped land in the Hollywood Hills. It is a city where everyone and everything is assumed to be up for sale. Everyone is thought to have a price. Well, some things cannot be priced!"
"Tennessee used to moan every time he had to go to Los Angeles on business. Like William Faulkner, he viewed it as a place where one held's one nose and got as much money as one could in as short a time as possible, and then grabbed the next red-eye out."
"The only culture in L.A. is in a carton of yogurt!"
Then Rader, whose wonderful book was published in l985, throws in a scene from the 1950's that deserves to be seen on stage someday this year, this 100th year of Williams' birth:
"Warner Brothers had bought the rights to "The Glass Menagerie." Tennessee and Frank [Merlo, his long-time companion] went to the studio to have lunch with Jack Warner in the commissary. When they arrived, Warner stood up, and said, "Well, well! At last, here you are! Welcome to Warner Brothers!" And shook hands with Frank Merlo, thinking he was Tennessee.
Tennessee started to laugh, and Warner, now utterly confused, said to Frank, "And what do you do, young man?"
Frank looked him straight in the eye, and replied, "I sleep with Tennessee Williams.'"
[pp220]
That's according to a Harvard psychologist quoted in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.
“As men have lost more economic power, more social power, they’ve wanted to look more pumped up,” [Emily] Fox-Kales said, pointing to the recent recession that disproportionately hit male-dominated jobs like construction and manufacturing. “Muscles have become an accessory, like pickup trucks.”
The piece in the newspaper is mostly fluff, focusing on the latest stars and their stupendous biceps, but it does include Fox-Kales interesting paradox, and a hilariously straight-faced graphic.
"A bit more brawny," indeed.
The piece also throws in some history, which helps make the point:
This isn’t the first time social forces have coincided with changing movie star aesthetics — the preponderance of bodybuilder action heroes such as Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in the 1980s, for instance, came just as a generation of American women were marching off to work in record numbers.
Gotta love the remote in the American male's hand. Closest thing to a gun for a couch potato.
The New York Times has many famous columnists, and one funny one: Gail Collins.
Which brings us to sex. What is it with Republicans lately? Is there something about being a leader of the family-values party that makes you want to go out and commit adultery?
They certainly don’t have a lock on the infidelity market, and heaven knows we all remember John Edwards. But, lately, the G.O.P. has shown a genius for putting a peculiar, newsworthy spin on illicit sex. A married congressman hunting for babes is bad. A married congressman hunting for babes by posting a half-naked photo of himself on the Internet is Republican.
A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child is awful. A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child by a staff member of the family home and then fails to mention it to his wife for more than 10 years is Republican.
A married senator who has an affair with an employee is a jerk. A married senator who has an affair with an employee who is the wife of his chief of staff, and whose adultery is the subject of ongoing discussion at his Congressional prayer group, is Republican.
We haven’t even gotten to Newt Gingrich yet!
Don't worry, she won't overlook him. She's not afraid of him, unlike her cohort David Brooks.
Kidding, kidding...
I believe that the way to write a good play is to convince yourself that it is easy to do -- then go ahead and do it.
Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan -- till the first draft is finished.
Then Calvary -- but not till then.
Doubt -- and be lost -- until the first draft is finished.
A Play is a Phoenix -- it dies a thousand deaths.
Usually at night -- In the morning it springs up again from the ashes and crows like a happy rooster.
It is never as bad as you think.
It is never as good as you think.
It is somewhere in between and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it actually approaches more closely.
But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft.
An artist must believe in himself -- Possibly not so passionately as [D.H.] Lawrence -- but passionately. Your belief is contagious. Others say -- He is vain -- but they are affected.
I have never had much of that faith -- I have been a little too honest with myself and people.
Let us make up some brilliant lies! -- No -- let's don't -- Let's fight it out the old way --
...
Today I have been writing well. I look in the mirror. My face is fresh and glowing. I look young again...
[Still from a production of Williams late play Vieux Carre: in this picture we see a young writer character crouching, watching a good girl from privilege, Jane, who for her own desperate reasons has fallen in with a mean stripshow barker. It's as if he's watching himself learn about life.]
[Quote from Williams' notebooks to himself, dated Sunday, 5 October l941, when he was living in New Orleans as a young writer]
The editor of an American College of Surgeon's publication has been forced to resign for remarks considered sexist.
He wrote, from his post atop a bastion of male privilege, on Valentine's Day, that semen is good for women, bodily and emotionally, better even than chocolate. The argument focused on semen's physical powers; as evidence, he cited a couple of studies.
That's what makes it sexist, surely, the lack of consideration to women themeslves. As if they were just bodies to be manipulated, and not individuals, with their own minds and thoughts.
But back to semen for a moment. Was the good doctor wrong on the science of semen?
What did he say?
It’s been known since the 1990s that heterosexual women living together synchronize their menstrual cycles because of pheromones, but when a study of lesbians showed that they do not synchronize, the researchers suspected that semen played a role. In fact, they found ingredients in semen that include mood enhancers like estrone, cortisol, prolactin, oxytocin, and serotonin; a sleep enhancer, melatonin; and of course, sperm, which makes up only 1%-5%. Delivering these compounds into the richly vascularized vagina also turns out to have major salutary effects for the recipient. Female college students having unprotected sex were significantly less depressed than were those whose partners used condoms (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2002;31:289-93). Their better moods were not just a feature of promiscuity, because women using condoms were just as depressed as those practicing total abstinence. The benefits of semen contact also were seen in fewer suicide attempts and better performance on cognition tests.
For the full text of the column, see the Detroit Free Press link above, or this one from RetractionWatch.
The Detroit Free Press medical columnist notes that the study cited apparently hasn't been replicated, although it's often discussed in the media.
This well-known column in Scientific American delves into the same study, and others showing helpful results to the organism from application of semen, without disrespecting the science.
It's funnier, though.
Regarding the 2002 study, one might speculate that the positive effects of the application might have something to do with a relationship, and not a, um, product?
Yet and still Surgery News not only pulled the column from the web, but then went on and retracted the entire issue!
Are surgeons sexist, or are we Americans prudes? Or both?
