imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Saturday, December 10, 2005
CLOONEYSTRUCK
Miss Snark has finally chosen a winner in her Snarkling Contest. The contest was to finish this story in 25 words or less, an excellent exercise in being concise.
With over 100 entries from 88 snarklings, she posted honorable mentions, as well. Two of my favorites were honorable mentions:
Category: Best Use of Rules for Submission
Mr. Clooney was curiously mum. Later reports revealed that he'd forgotten to include an SASE, and therefore never received an answer.
Category: Best Use of Canine Characters
the proposal of a lifetime, Miss Snark was tragically unavailable. The only response was from someone calling himself Killer Yapp, who said "Bite me."
Check out the one she chose as the winner. And to think I inspired such creativity :~)
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Friday, December 09, 2005
IT'S A SNARKLING CONTEST!
(Click image to enlarge)
Not here, over at Miss Snark's place.
Yours truly inspired a contest.
But y'gotta hurry because it's over 3:00pm EST TODAY!
In case you're new to Miss Snark, here's a bit of background:
1) Miss Snark is a literary agent who lives and works in the 212 area code of Manhattan. The 212 is important to New Yawkers ever since Manhattan had to establish another area code. Everyone wanted the coveted 212 for its prestige.
2) Miss Snark has a little dog named Killer Yapp, she adores George Clooney, and she drinks gin (from her gin pail).
The hilarious MS began blogging in June; readers of her blog are known as snarklings. Her priority is to educate writers on the business of writing and publishing while having fun along the way. Several months ago, there was a lot of speculation as to who Miss Snark really is. About that same time, the conversations on her blog included references to Seinfeld, which reminded me that Elaine Benes (Julia Dreyfus) worked in publishing -- as an editor, I think. So, I found an Entertainment Weekly with Julia on the cover and had some fun! The result is above on the left.
Since then, I've doctored other things, including the UK's Sun News (top right), which announced last month that George had gone loony. Shortly after that, I doctored an online article in which Clooney talks about the past year being the worst of his life. It's that article which is the basis of the contest.
The contest is fun AND Miss Snark is offering an actual PRIZE!
So hurry over to check out the SNARKLING CONTEST!
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Thursday, December 08, 2005
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YEAH YEAH YEAH
I was never a Beatles' fan. Even as a kid I thought they were dopey. The only good thing about them was that they bugged the adults in my life :) Kinda like when Zappa liked Ozzy Osborne. (He actually wrote a report on Ozzy for his English class in junior high.) Soanyways, I'm not into this keening and gnashing of teeth over John Lennon's death and the anniversaries in perpetuity. I was sorry to hear someone was killed on the mean streets of NYC, yet again. I have never gone to the trouble of looking up the stats, but I think it's safe to say that there were other murder victims on December 8, 1980, in the Big Apple, some probably even more gruesome than Lennon's. I was sorry he left loved ones, but no doubt the other murder victims did as well. I won't bother with/argue with anyone as to why exactly John Lennon is any more friggin' special ... @#$%^&*
Uno momento. Take a deep cleasning breath. In with the good; out with the bad. siiiiigh. That's good. Yes, I'm much better now :)
Where was I? Oh, yes, idiotic adulation of a druggie pacifist.
Soanyways ... I was reading the NY Post online this morning and checked out John Podhoretz's column 'STARTING OVER' without even an inkling that it was about you-know-who. It begins innocently enough:
DEC. 8, 1980: I was 19 years old and sitting in a dorm room at the University of Chicago, watching Monday Night Football ...
Uh, oh! "Dec. 8,1980"? Crap! Can't I get through my morning at least without hearing about that limey?
Deep breath! Deep breath! Get a grip, Kitty.
Whatthehell; Podhoretz continues:
John Lennon wasn't an obsession or even a particular favorite of mine — already a reactionary, I preferred Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. But the high spirits of
his contributions to "Double Fantasy" were infectious and exciting.
Now here is where Podhoretz's column gets kinda interesting:
He had spent several years before the recording of "Double Fantasy" in a state of emotional incapacitation. The ostensible cover story was that he was being that new-fangled creature, a stay-at-home dad to his very young son Sean.
But inside the walls of his apartment at the Dakota, Lennon was evidently having a far darker and sadder time of it.
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The Dakota, an unthinkably grand old building whose apartment walls were covered not by paint but by rich wood paneling, seemed like a suitably dark and sad place to live at the time, and not just because it had been the main location for the unforgettable Satanic thriller "Rosemary's Baby."
Until a startling cleaning job turned the Dakota back to the unexpectedly cheery yellowish brick in which it had been built in 1872, it was black with a hundred years of New York soot and looked like the castle of an unfriendly king.
My high-school friend Nina Solomon lived downstairs from the Lennons. Her apartment was overwhelming — startlingly beautiful, but forbidding at the same time. Like all middle-class Manhattan kids, I spent my teens hanging out with kids who lived in quarters so much fancier, more comfortable and geographically safer than my own that I was often sick with envy. That apartment in the Dakota was the one place I remember leaving with a sense of relief.
Maybe I have an overliterary imagination, but I can't help thinking that the grim interior life of John Lennon had been reflected back inside him by the dark wooden walls of his agoraphobic abode. "I'm doing fine watching the shadows on the wall," he sang, unconvincingly.
The Dakota is prime NYC real estate. And even though I'd find it difficult to peer through my peep hole at some of my neighbors, I'd be elated to have the opportunity just to live there. As it is, I'm shivering in a tiny home with the thermostat set at 60* as our 1940's vintage furnace operates, at best, at 50% efficiency. Unfortunately, the numerous clods of moss growing on our roof do nothing to help insulate against the cold. Still, I have it far better than many people. So I'm sitting here wondering why the inimitable Podhoretz wrote such a sappy piece. I mean, after all, Lennon didn't have to sprawl around his home in the nude. He could have packed up and moved!
Pee Ess: I just want it noted that I never took a swipe at Yucky Oh-No and her spawn.
PeePee Ess: Before you shed a tear for the Lennons, consider this poor family's loss. In two parts: Start here before you read the rest.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
CASTING ABOUT
TOP: Sandra Bullock as Stephanie Plum, Benjamin Bratt as Ranger, Jon Bon Jovi as Joe Morelli
BOTTOM: Mo'Nique as Lula, Ann Gilbert as Grandma, Dan Heydaya as Vinnie
For all of you Janet Evanovich fans out there, you can cast your votes for the Stephanie Plum movie. I would have preferred Estelle Getty (Sophia in Golden Girls)as Grandma Mazur, but I understand that she has dementia. A younger Travolta, with the body he displayed in Staying Alive and the attitude he gave Chili Palmer in Get Shorty (his comeback film, IMHO), would have been perfect as the cop Joe Morelli. siiiiiigh.
Okay, so what are your picks?
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A DAY TO REMEMBER THE BRAVE
And a day to ponder the ramifications had these people been in charge:8 Her Royal Cattle-Futures
8 Dean
8 Kerry, past and present.
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Monday, December 05, 2005
WEEKEND LEFTOVERS
From Sunday's PARADE ...
I used to watch Desperate Housewives -- I think I saw all of a dozen -- but its stereotypical storylines killed it for me. I was interested in the suicide, which had already happened before the show began. But Eva Longoria's character Gabrielle bored me to tears, not to mention Longoria herself. And don't even get me started on that slut Nicollette Sheridan.
I've read all eleven books in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. (I used to be a Ranger woman, but I'm not so sure anymore after reading Eleven On Top. That Morelli was the object of many aerobic dreams:) From the very first page of the first book, I pictured Sandra Bullock as Stephanie Plum and Benjamin Bratt as Ranger. They displayed a lot of chemistry in Miss Congeniality. I'm not at all happy about Reese "star of the moment" Witherspoon playing Steph. Uh uh uh. I mean, really, Sandra Bullock IS Stephanie Plum! Geesh! *
THE PICTURES OF DORIAN GRAY
Oscar Wilde's character Dorian Gray was so vain that he gave his soul in exchange for his youth, or at least the appearance of youth. He had had his portrait painted, and as Dorian grew older his painting aged but he did not. I was reminded of good ol' DG when I saw Ted "Sam Malone" Danson in a recent commercial for an A&E movie he's done, except that Danson looks just as old in real life as he does in that picture. I can take the snow-white hair (although I think I'd dye it a gun metal grey), but those black-rimmed specs have got to go! Maybe wear wire-rims instead. That geezer to the left of Danson (literally speaking) is Tom Skerritt who used to be Rebecca's dreamboat on Cheers, Evan Drake, who was always busy pursuing another woman instead of "Becs." And Robert Redford epitomizes surgery-gone-wrong. Madonna looks older with every gram she loses in body weight. I watched Oceans Twelve yesterday and could not believe how haggard Julia Roberts looked. I realize she was preggers with Hazel Patricia and Phinnaeus Walter (ugh) at the time of filming, but is that the best that the makeup artist could do?
Mary Tyler Moore. 'Nuff said.
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Sunday, December 04, 2005
(FWENCH) PEOPLE, WHO NEED (AMERICAN) PEOPLE
I'll admit that I take a certain satisfaction in the Fwenchies' mizz-a-wees, especially Ch'Iraq's.
CHIRAC TOASTED ON TVFRENCH President Jacques Chirac is French toast following weeks of rioting by Muslim youths. Our man in the land of cheese-eating surrender monkeys reports TV station Canal Plus has a terrific daily satire program, "Les Guignols de Info" ('guignol' means 'puppet show'). It recently showed Chirac seeking help from Jack Bauer, the counterterrorist agent played by Kiefer Sutherland on "24," which is now in its fourth season on French TV. Bauer replied in a horrible accent, "Oui, Messieur President." Our field agent smirked, "Since Chirac constantly attacks the Americanization of French culture, it was particularly great." Meanwhile, Chirac, who just celebrated his 73rd birthday and is thought to be suffering from a stroke, has lost the war against Yankee influence. Plans were just announced for Gallic remakes of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," and "Starksy & Hutch." The French, who think they invented rock 'n' roll, will probably claim credit for inventing these shows, too.
For those who love wine but not the Fwench, Ralph Peters has reviewed the book for you. GIFT IDEA: SOUR GRAPES IN PARIS :JUDGMENT OF PARIS: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine
By George M. Taber
You don't have to dislike the French to enjoy this book, but it doesn't hurt. "Judgment of Paris" recalls how, in 1976, American underdogs bit the big poodle where it really hurt — in the wine culture, where France had been top dog since the Middle Ages.
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The experts were mortified. They'd trashed some of France's most famous wines, while praising unknown wines from California. And none of this would've been publicized if one journalist hadn't shown up during a slow news week: George Taber of Time, the author of this book.
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