I promised fashion tips when I birthed this blog. Reluctantly, that time's arrived.
It WOULD involve my very very dear, very very old friend, First Lady Mickie (Michelle Obama to you).
Where to begin. You can’t just cinch a $1,200 Givenchy silver belt over your Tae-Kwando workout sweats and expect to be taken seriously at some random press conference.
Next, locate your waist. Hire a dowser if you have to. But belt THERE instead of directly under your mammaries, Mickie.
Beautiful as you are, you look like a gravid strip-mall martial-arts instructor who’ll break water with her next snap-kick demo.
Which we know you’re not so this insincere retro-rehash reads “Flashdance” meets Planned Parenthood at Gold’s Gym (a deservedly-shunned look over two decades ago when it first came out, Mickie, and was instantly proclaimed, “Unawesome.”)
Do yourself and America a favor.
Go home to the White House . . . change . . . and limo back.
I LOVED attending the inaugural, as you recall, and I voted for Obama. Though I didn’t get as much face-time with Barry and beautiful Mickie as I’d have liked, it was a thrill in a lifetime.
Haven’t heard from them since, but I know they’re busy and after this I’ll probably never hear from them again. Or maybe I’m doing them a favor and we’ll become BFFs. Who’s to say? They know how to reach me.
Let’s go, Razorbabies.
Remember when Rush Limbaugh called our President “Barack the Magic Negro?” A typically puerile Racist Rush insult.
Insiders now privately whisper the tag may be true regarding Obama’s campaign promises of “Change” and “Equality” for all Americans.
What’s Obama actually DONE since then?
Here’s what.
______________
Maya Angelou said, “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”
Revisit the beginning of Obama’s campaign and his promises of change and equality. What exactly was he telling Americans then . . . and now?
Obama – oops! – suddenly left his church of 20 years and his minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who married Barry and Mickie and baptized their daughters.
You remember Rev. “God Damn America” Wright? Rev. “Them Jews Won’t Let Me Talk To Him” Wright? The Rev. Wright whose hate speech sermons went viral online and who then “retired?”
“Some” black LGBT leaders claim Rev. Wright is “inclusive.” But is he for same-sex equality, including federal recognition of marriage? Nope.
GLBT sheep and their tithes are “welcome” in Wright’s church. His ministry is “caring” toward those with HIV/AIDS.
In other words, Rev. Wright smiles and takes gays’ money and looks “inclusive” at photo-ops with sick and dying gays (who prove his point about the “lifestyle”) but if you’re GLBT and healthy and partnered in love, forget about equal civil rights in Wright’sAmerica.
Just another Black making Bucks off Bigotry.
Here’s what one member of his congregation said at the time about Rev. Wright’s hateful sermons: "I wouldn't call it radical. I call it being black in America."
Hate’s black? Uh . . . .
Here’s what I call it: Rev. Wright has modeled stereotypical black religious bigotry and hypocrisy as a "leader" of his “faith” community ALL his life. It's his living.
No sooner did Obama drop his minister of 20 years with the implausible claim of not being present for “those” sermons, than it became evident that – unlike all other candidates – Obama had no GLBT liaison. He waited tellingly late in his campaign for that.
Then came Obama’s choice of “ex-gay” gospel warbler Donnie McClurkin to rouse the largely black audience at a campaign rally in South Carolina. HUGE controversy in the GLBT population! Obama stood by his “ex-gay.”
Except graphic transcripts of tapes surfaced of McClurkin enjoying anal intercourse with a paid male motel trick two weeks before. Donnie McClurkin’s about as “ex-gay” as Richard Simmons.
That’s TWO black religious bigoted hypocrites embraced by Obama’s team – prominent in the campaign. Insiders now say, “We should have known. But who else could we vote for?”
Exactly. Obama knew that then and he knows that now.
Next, Obama invites Rev. Rick Warren to give the Invocation at the Inauguration.
Rick, thankfully, is white. But he’s a spiritual bro’ because he’s ALSO against equality for all Americans. A religious bigot and liar.
‘Member, Razorbabies? Rev. Rick swore on Larry King that he NEVER supported California’s anti-gay Prop. 8. Until all those inconvenient videos of him doing exactly that showed up on YouTube.
Obama supported a bi-racial trio of religious bigots and lying hypocrites for highly public key roles during his campaign.
As Maya Angelou said, “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”
I wish Maya had said “show” instead of “tell,” because actions speak louder than “blah, blah, blah.”
It was all in plain sight during Obama’s campaign. Or WAS it?
Barry says his “goal” as President is still to repeal DADT and DOMA. “I am determined to blah, blah, blah.”
But the Department of Justice’s infamous recent statement on preserving DOMA by comparing same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia – and Obama’s deafening non-response – speaks reams.
Not surprising, given Obama’s previous seemingly deliberate offensive campaign postures.
Obama’s total inaction on DADT – despite Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and a majority of Americans in favor of Obama’s suspending anti-gay discharges (which Obama legally CAN suspend, but won’t, so far) . . . the Obama administration’s anti-gay slurs and slanders have escalated from subliminal to Smash-Face assaults and vicious lines in the sand.
Holy Hussein!
Hence Obama stages a PR signing last week granting same-sex partners of gay and lesbian federal workers SOME (but not all, including health insurance) of the civil rights of heterosexuals. It pretended to be progressive but was in fact demeaning and dismissive. AGAIN.
Is Obama as stupid, bigoted, hateful, insulting and condescending to the American electorate as Bush?
Let's not stop NOW, Razorbabies!
__________
Here we are, inevitably, cowering before the dreaded African American Elephant in the Living Room.
That would be black religious bigotry and intolerance toward same-sex Americans. HUGE! You know, like an elephant and stuff.
Everybody knows it. We’ve always known it. At least those who read and who have black friends. (Are ALL blacks anti-gay? No. Are all whites? No. But start chipping away, conversationally, until you get to subjects like marriage and adoption and . . . are you surprised?)
Black anti-gay religious bigotry and its ugly role in Prop. 8 and throughout much of America.
So far, from his actions, President Obama embodies the worst collective stereotypes of black religious bigotry and hypocrisy toward GLBT Americans.
Coward or Leader? Too soon to tell?
Maybe.
The B-Ball (for Bigotry) is in Barry’s court. It’s only the Constitution at stake.
Maybe Obama IS legislatively working behind-the-scenes to ultimately achieve his stated “goals” of overturning DADT and DOMA and end minority discrimination in America.
Maybe Obama WILL prove to be “The Magic Negro” in ways Limbaugh never intended. Maybe Obama will give the lie to his being just a black Retro-Bush President.
Maybe America’s first black President will shatter ALL the institutionalized stereotypes, prove a Leader instead of a Slave to political expediency and – as AN HONORABLE BLACK PRESIDENT, our first – do for America’s last “okay-to-hate” minority what a white President and a black Reverend finally did for blacks. Constitutionally acknowledge and achieve full civil equality.
Obama’s at the fork in the road LBJ and Martin Luther King faced. This is THAT crucial. Right vs. Wrong for America, wherever it leads.
If Obama tacks Wrong, as he consistently has so far, Rush Limbaugh’s nailed it.
If Obama tacks Right, as he still can and may be doing as we speak, he will indeed be “The Magic Negro” for all America to admire, Lincoln-like, through the Ages – like Martin Luther King – and turn Limbaugh’s childishly derisive epithet on its repulsive head for all time.
The first American President descended from Slaves issues the Final Emancipation Proclamation fully recognizing equality for the last officially, irrationally, "religiously" scorned Americans.
Whee!
Break it on down, Razorbabies.
There’s still the Supremes.
Obama stands to become another black leader / hero like Martin Luther King . . . or squander his and America’s historic moment by shuck-and-jiving his administration into a subservient Stepin Fetchit minstrel turn that tries to appease and entertain all sides.
There AREN’T “sides” to equality. You’re either an equal American or not. Now or never.
MLK was nobody’s minstrel.
Barack Hussein Obama?
America’s first black President is historically positioned to nail shut the coffin of America’s historic (religiously justified) bigotry. More than any previous President, Obama knows it firsthand.
ONE SMALL STEP FOR SAME-SEX EQUALITY . . . ONE GIANT LEAP FOR DISCO . . .
Thanks to my many GLBT fans and GLBT supporters for alerting me to President Obama’s desperate damage-control effort from this week’s DOJ statement on same-sex marriage (lumped with incest and pedophilia as “traditionally unacceptable” marriages) and the demeaning PR stunt granting “some” equal rights to federal workers’ same-sex partners.
A “first step” toward full equality, America is assured.
Joining a one-night-only reunion of the Village People onstage at the Apollo to combat the fallout is NOT the second step, Homey.
Don’t think I’m not happy to be back in The Rock from Cannes because I am.
Here’s my problem.
The fucking gnats and mosquitoes. The paparazzi on the red carpet are NOTHING compared to these teeming teensy blood-suckers.
What to do! How to protect myself!
Who better, Norma, I said to myself, than the always-loving Arkansas Blog community – my Razorbabies!
Here’s why your help is essential.
Last week I took Monique, my 3-year old Lhasa, down to the Murray Park Dog Run early one morning.
I like to get Monique out of sheltered Chenal and expose her to canines of all classes. It’s so broadening – for both of us, actually -- to realize she couldn’t care less about pedigrees here in The Rock’s canine circles.
Anyhoo, I’m down there in Murray Park, which is a river on one side and a brackish swamp on the other, the PERFECT breeding-ground for gnats and mosquitoes – with Monique and all her happy rompy canine compatriots who adore her as much as I do except for this one bi-polar unmedicated yappy Yorkie named Dagon (I am not making this up) whom I’m afraid might rape Monique behind the water tubs while I’m not looking and I wind up with a litter of cute but incessantly annoying bi-polar Diva Terriers barking 24 / 7 in my garage all because Dagon thinks that nailing Monique's gonna move him up in the world from his Hillcrest garage apartment to my place in Chenal – fighting off these fucking gnats and mosquitoes.
Which is where YOU come in.
A caring pal at the dog run sprayed me with Off. I’m serious. You couldn’t see in front of you, they were swarming so. I mean, MurrayPark is a former SWAMP, Razorbabies.
Gnats and mosquitoes apparently THRIVE on Off because I’m sitting here scratching connect-the-dots between scabs on my arms. SO not my image.
“Vanilla extract,” somebody said is a good repellant.
“Avon’s ‘Skin So Soft!’ ” somebody else swore by.
“ ‘Bounce’ tissues. Every golfer knows that,” claimed another.
So, really, I’d like to continue rounding out Monique’s Life Journey by exposing her to mongrels but PLEASE help me conquer these fucking mosquitoes.
“WHAT? Sharon – it’s the middle of the fucking night. Go to the -- ?
“It’s only midnightin L.A. and it’s not THE can, you idiot, it’s Cannes! The film festival! I need a lady in waiting! Mine just got the flu!” Sharon was begging me.
“. . . The swine flu?”
“No. The regular flu. She’s Jewish. Vegan. Grew up on a fucking kibbutz for Christ's sake. I can switch her tickets and e-confirm you later this morning. You’ve gotta say yes.”
“But . . . Mercury’s retrograde . . . .”
“Like my career, honey. And don’t tell me you’ve got a better offer in fucking Little Rock, I need you!”
So Sharon threw in a couple of days for me in Parisafter Cannes, and another couple of days in London, so I could see old friends.
There is nothing I won’t do for an old friend in need who’s covering my expenses. Just how I am.
I was suddenly on the Sharon Stone Express to Cannes.
Checking into the Cap in Antibes, the desk required me to sign a five-page nondisclosure agreement from Chaos Productions, Sharon’s production company. Except I’m thinking, “Is Chaos still in business? Or is this some not-really-legal bullshit on Sharon’s defunct production company’s letterhead?”
Legally I’m not supposed to drop names or talk about events on this trip. Not that I would, but let’s get started.
Sharon wore a lot of Malandrino-ish things, which look fabulous on her. And she SERIOUSLY worked the amFAR Gala and Auction Thursday night.
(You HAD to ask. I wore – well, I have a sort of tacit non-compete clause with Sharon at these things. I always go severe ballerina bun with the hair; dress down in vintage Armani neutrals and NO bling. Lois Lane for the New Millennium to Sharon’s latest reinvention of her signature role, Catherine Tramell.)
My two most thrilling moments at Cannes 2009? Honestly?
LUNCH, one day, prepared by my very very dear, very very old friend, chef Arnaud Poëtte at the Cap. Striped bass with fennel mousseline and tomato Beurre Blanc. I can die now, Arnie. Except for –
Witnessing Sharon become “Sharon Stone” that first night in her suite, and every day and night thereafter. Talk about your resurrections. I learned - not just about wardrobe and makeup and hair, but - a profound Life Lesson too!
Sharon’s amazingly organized. THAT outfit with THAT hair and THOSE accessories for THAT function. Yet she’s a spontaneous whirling dervish too! Pisces with her Moon in Sag.
Plus it’s Mercury retrograde so she keeps changing her mind(s) and genre(s) whilst her stylists (and I) try to keep up.
One thing Sharon DOESN’T vacillate about is The Face.
She's naturally pretty. Holding well at 51. But the goal is to Stop Traffic. Here's how she does it.
I sit by her, hypnotized, as she expertly applies surprisingly little makeup – yet somehow refines, sculpts and perfects her moneymaker in the mirror. She knows I’m fascinated.
“It’s all about contrast and blending,” she confides, deftly morphing into “Sharon Stone” before my eyes. Takes maybe 15 minutes, total, she has it so down. How’d she become so expert at this?
“Honey, I know more tricks than Marlene Dietrich.”
I’m working out exactly what that means when Sharon rises, throws off her robe, nakedly extends both arms and motions her wardrobe duo, “Let’s get dressed.”
No undergarments are involved. (Note to self: Try This At Home.)
We dress her in a sheer black Malandrino. Accessorize her. Her eyes never leave the mirror. She turns, shifts . . . studies The Face from every angle in the room’s light.
Now she scrutinizes her body line. Turns. Throws a glance at the mirror over her shoulder. Quickly scans the pose from head to toe. Makes small adjustments. Turns again. Poses anew. Instantly critiques the view.
Shakes her head. “Still too dark. Get this thing off me and bring me that foundation. I am NOT taking these nipples into that room.”She’s out of the Malandrino, naked again.
Sharon lightens her areolae and nipples with La Prairie. Snaps her fingers: “Lipstick.” Pinks-‘em-up. Snap. “Spritz.” She sets her nipple makeup with Daria Werbowy’s “Model in a Bottle.”
Back in the sheer Malandrino, she re-surveys herself in the mirror.
“Perfect! Great job, guys. Let’s go kill.” She’s off, entourage swimming in her wake.
I’m thinking, “She could be right about the ‘Dietrich’ thing. Sharon may still be doing this, looking the same, still crossing and uncrossing her legs commando in ‘Basic Instinct:2040 – iMAX’ when she’s 83.”
Everything else at Cannes pales in comparison to Sharon’s becoming "Sharon Stone.”
She’s fabulous as always at the amFAR event honoring President Clinton’s work fighting HIV/AIDS worldwide. The credit crunch, unfortunately, has hit Cannes. Sharon and her 700 pals are barely able to raise $5 million – about HALF what they raised last year.
But it doesn’t get better than Arkansas’ own President Big Dawg blowing his sax up and down the Riviera and talking about STDs.
I don’t know what Paris and Ivana and Donatella are here for but it’s fun playing catch-up backstage. Plus Annie’s still got it. Fabulous performer and singer. (Swears her secret is shea butter, so I’m looking into it now that I’m back.)
Sadly, I couldn’t live-blog ANY of Cannes to you Razorbabies! Here’s why.
BYE, BYE BLACKBERRY
I only had two days to get ready and go. Forget last-minute wardrobe decisions, packing, arranging for household maintenance and pet care. That took one whole day.
But have you ever tried to set up your Blackberry for Europe? I hadn’t.
It involves “unlocking” the thing; SIM card shizz; a BB data plan on the TMO Europe account for BES . . . on and on. I had help (Bruno from Bridgeway), but finally did it.
Then my Blackberry fell out of my blouse pocket the first day at some yacht party when a recently-unemployed William Morris agent who was let go in last week’s merger with Endeavor accidentally jostled a sushi roll from my hand and I leaned over to retrieve it and my Blackberry bounced off the deck into the fucking Mediterranean. Which, BTW, looks fabulous for its age.
Plus I’m on the Sharon Stone Express and barely have time to go to the can at Cannes, much less text to a blog.
(Strangely, I’m still haunted by my Blackberry resting at the bottom of the sea like that robot kid in “Artificial Intelligence” in the amphibi-pod, bleating faithfully, waiting to be turned into a Real Phone and play all the voice messages I’ve gotten since May, 2009. It only lived to serve . . . and now . . . sad, somehow.)
Which reminds me: the films.
“Up.” Magnificent. 3-D or 2-D. Standing ovation. Not a dry eye in the Palais full of hard-core Industry movers and shakers and critics in goggles.
“Lars von Trier’s / Antichrist” – All Employees Must Wash Hands Before Leaving Restroom. Really. Won Best Actress for somebody named Charlotte Gainsbourg. Really.Meryl Streep she’s not. It’s Mel Gibson’s male S&M “The Passion” only hetero- and without the religion but with close-ups of bloody genital mutilation and a pseudo-profound theme of grief and eroticism that I’m pretty sure won’t connect with local demographics except the recreational-substance audience who frequent Market Street Cinema (God love ‘em) and not even most of them. People actually puked and fainted. And I'm not the only one.
“Inglourious Basterds” – oh, honey, it’s Quent! On-purpose misspellings, historical bitch-slaps, Brad Pitt at his worst or maybe his best, and all. It’s Quent! Wonderful and silly and startling and thought-provoking and exuberant film-making and shitty and audacious and frankly he’s just the nicest guy. ADD and twitchy, but a sweetheart. I loved it. Others not.
Then, two days in Paris and two days in London with old friends and new.
I met Richard Dawkins when he lectured in Little Rock a year or so ago and I bought “The God Delusion.” I didn’t realize until I got home that he’d signed it, “Fondly, Mickey Dolenz.” Which I had to Google because the Monkeys and their oeuvre were before my time.
We’ve since become email pals – Dick, not Mick – so we’d arranged lunch in London with several of his friends and students before my Blackberry drowned. This time he really signed my copy of “The God Delusion.”
“For Norma – Dick.”
The Continent loves Obama and they’re obsessed with two things American: Religion and Healthcare.
“What’s with the States and the Religion thing? Is it getting worse?” and “What’s up with healthcare? My God, are you people ever going to catch up? Take the States back from the thieves?” One of them emailed me this link for when I got back, to post for you.)
Best thing was nearly two weeks without a mention of Adam Lambert or Kris Allen.
Despite Mercury Retrograde mix-ups even WORSE than eLwood acknowledges, I finally arrive back in Little Rock (via detour to Turkey), to THIS:
The A-B’s veered into titillating intra-blogger virtual-sex flirtations; Doyle Webb’s gone down on Kathy Webb (no relation) for being too Suze Orman; Kim Hendren’s retro- “that Jew” stand-up routine gets him booed off the political stage; an alligator hauls its prehistoric ass up Hwy 71 to escape the poisonous Lake Greeson / Turk Plant coal thingie and find a cleaner swamp; my favorite Kavanaugh late-night bar’s now dubbed “Brokeback Fountain” and I can’t stop laughing when I learn why.
Plagiarism at Heifer (unattributed quotes from CHICKENS? I don’t understand. I’ve been out of the country). New (or re-nicked) and ever-more-irrational trolls here who embody Time Magazine’s succinct summation of Carrie Prejean: “Passionately defends her right to infringe on others’ rights.”
God, despite prayers by Funnel Cake vendors from as far away as Florida, rains on RiverFest. Uruguay, despite prayers, lifts its ban on gays in the military. Uruguay?
California, despite prayers, upholds legal religious discrimination in its State Constitution. Except for the 18,000 couples it doesn't discriminate against. Huh?"Xenu, I'm home!"
I DO miss the Concorde, Razorbabies . . . .
But I’m home. HOME! And this is my blog, and you're all here. And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Uncle Max – it’s all about contrast and blending!
As summer settles in, I'm LOVING current discussions over cocktails on the covered patio of the CC of LR. Which is kind of a Jewless environment, really.
(Has the CCLR ever held a bar mitzvah? I mean, I don’t know. But somehow I’m not feeling it, schpilkus.)
I’ve known David forever, it seems. They tell me he used to bring studio dubs over to our house in Brentwood when I was still in the crib and play them for me to see if I got excited. That’s how he made his first fortune.
I guess those were the days he was begging Cher to marry him before he ‘fessed up about being gay (like I’m sure CHER couldn’t tell) and went on to pretty much own everything and know everybody and make some impressive enemies and be worth like $6-7 billion. Yes, billion.
Money isn’t everything, however. Though still at heart just a homespun gay Brooklyn Jew, David has yet to find the right boy. An orthodontist, say, or a shipping mogul. “Look outside the box, David,” I keep telling him. Meaning outside of Hollywood. But it’s all about not marrying Keanu. (Really. They didn't. It was a hoax or something.) And now . . . ?
Geffen’s looking to buy the New York Times’ holdings, terrifying straight male WASPS everywhere. Like the CCLR.
“It’s bad enough working for a Jew. But a GAY Jew?” The bar there at the Club is raking it in, particularly after about eight o’clock every night, from the hardcores.
David Geffen? Rupert Murdoch? News moguls?
Like Cher, I LOVE gay Jews. And vice versa. The Rupert Murdochs? Not so much.
(CNN) — Days after national Republicans launched a new campaign to broaden the party's outreach, former upstart presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says the GOP is at risk of becoming "irrelevant as the Whigs."
Three prominent GOP leaders — Rep. Eric Cantor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — questioned whether Huckabee's lavender tie sends the "wrong" message to the party's base.
"I'm frustrated with all these people who are jockeying for the position to be the 'leader,'" Huckabee said. "It's almost like we're worried about who's going to be the drum major and we don't have a piece of music yet." Observers also report whispers that the former governor may be losing his battle of the bulge.
Said conservative talk-radio host Scott Hennen, "You don't see a lot of overweight drum majors."
(Parts I - Vin sequence . . . scroll downor JUMP to PART II or PART III or PART IV or PART V . . . it's so difficult keeping up with rapidly changing developments when you're clean and sober.)
Guy with a malignant brain tumor visits his neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic, who explains, “We’ll be using intraoperative MRI to make sure we get all of the – “
“No, no,” guy interrupts. “None of this new age crap. They did brain surgery 2,000 years ago and that’s good enough for me!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Guy with a malignant soul condition visits a renowned spiritual counselor who explains, “We’ve made so many compelling discoveries through the millennia about how the mind / body / spirit connection works holistically that I know we can – “
“Oh no you don’t!” guy interrupts. “None of that new age crap. God spoke once, 2,000 years ago and that’s that.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Something’s wrong with both those scenarios.
No sane person in contemporary civilized societies insists on 2,000 year old medical techniques to treat and cure physical disease.
With spiritual disease the reverse is true: the majority stubbornly cling to ancient unchanging myths and superstitions, vehemently reject ever-evolving spiritual discoveries and enlightenment, insist on the equivalent of primitive witch-doctors to heal the world’s increasingly complex socio-political ills.
It’s not hard to pinpoint the sudden (and artificial) “split” between science and religion. Prior to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1450, science and religion were one in the same since prehistoric cave-dwellers (who, yes, performed primitive brain surgery).
Physicians treated the soul simultaneously with the physical body. Monumental architectural achievements like the pyramids and the sphinx were designed and constructed according to Sacred Cosmic Geometry. Physics, matter and spirit were one. All was “God” and “God” was all. Even Gutenberg’s technological invention had a religious component (Google it).
All knowledge resided in High Priests, secret initiation rites, and privilege. THEY were “educated” and “literate” hence powerful. Everybody else was not, and at their mercy.
Suddenly, Bibles were printed, not hand-copied by monks. It was fought by the Church which correctly perceived unprecedented mass distribution of secret Holy Texts would inspire further education and individual literacy, exposing previously concealed contradictions within Holy Scripture and undermining authority.
Knowledge, literacy, information and facts immediately became threats to religious / political power at the same time they birthed the educational and scientific revolution that presently continues, thanks to Gutenberg and print.
Then came the global explosion of information and commerce via the internet, which broke through with ARPANET in the late ‘60s.
Information is no longer confined to High Priests or print distribution: it’s available virtually instantly at the speed of light, at anybody’s desk or cell phone.
Mass availability of facts and information, and accountability, has never been more threatening to the global religious / political power structure than now.
Never more exciting.
Nor, really, ever more appropriate for discussion here than during this ancient celebration of the Vernal Equinox which Christians call Easter.
This holy day (holiday), dating back at least 5,600 years, represents the annualeternal “triumph” of Illumination over Darkness. From now through the Autumnal Equinox, days are longer than nights. Life over Death. Change over Stasis.
Science vs. Religion, a consideration of War and Power, this week’s historic ruling for same-sex equality in Iowa and why its implications are so enormous – for good and / or ill -- for the future of America and the world.
Gays, Guns and Gods.
What’s to come?
It’s all here, if you wish – with links -- between now and Easter Sunday.
50 years of fast and furious dialogue spanning, “Put ‘em in concentration camps,” to, “Let ‘em get married like everybody else,” is boiling since Iowa’s, Vermont’s and D.C.’s rulings for same-sex marriage recognition. Yet nobody’s actually talking – except to the choir. Most – including the MSM – just parrot partisan scripts. Incessantly.
Are rational adult discussions impossible about this?
Can psychology help? Maybe the easiest gateway is through Transactional Analysis (TA).
Psychiatrist Eric Berne’s concepts, pooh-poohed as pop-psychology when “Games People Play” first published, are now widely accepted in psychotherapy for their clarity and effectiveness.
Each of us, every day, shifts among three ego-states: Parent, Adult, Child (PAC). Adult ego states are always appropriate. Parent or Child ego-states may be appropriate and constructive (GOOD), or inappropriate and destructive (BAD), situationally.
All three ego-states, PAC, live in us all, whatever our chronological age. Watch a young child helpfully “parent” another. Or an adult peer comes to you and says, “Look what I made.” It can be curtains for the kitchen or a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It’s still their inner creative Child.
Good Child / Bad Child? Good Parent / Bad Parent? Problems arise when Bad Child ego-states manifest in chronological grownups. Tantrums are increasingly less tolerable through, maybe, 20. Childish tantrums in 50 year olds are signs of psychological trouble.
Bad Parent ego-states can express anything from, “You’ll never amount to a hill of beans,” to, “If you ever leave this house again without my permission, so help me God, I will kill you.”
Bad Parent ego-states can exist in 17 year olds or six-year olds with equal potentials for danger . . . just as Bad Child ego-states can dominate 60-year olds whose destructive gossip, name-calling, backbiting and manipulation LITERALLY remind friends of “junior high.”
Dialogue, or “transactions,” between two or more people can be sustained only between identical or complimentary ego states.
Child-> Child, for instance. Shared creative play. Constructive brainstorming. Artistic collaboration. Or, in the case of BAD Child-> BAD Child transactions; “You MADE me!” “Did NOT!” “Did TOO!” “YOU started it!” “Did NOT!” “Did TOO!” Participants may be theoretical adults but that’s how they sound.
Parent-> Parent. In theory, these transactions can have positive elements concerning, “How do we best care for and raise our children.” PTA and School Board meetings are SUPPOSED to be like this. But Parent-> Parent transactions are notorious for quickly disintegrating into shouting matches between Bad Parent ego-states.
Reason? Parent ego-states are inherently authoritarian. Parent transactions necessitate another Parent or Child ego-state to complete transactions.
Politics and Religion both inherently appeal to Parent-Child ego states and are fundamentally authoritarian. Those ego-states, in turn, rely on transactions between UN-equals, based on fear and threat fueled by factual ignorance.
In groups like School Boards or Senate Floors, EVERYBODY jumps into their Parent. Rooms full of “authorities” become contests about whose Parent ego-state most dominates and intimidates. (See politics and religions. Also MSM, blogs and forums).
Child-> Parent. Another possible transaction by “complimentary” ego-states instead of identical ones. Common in relationships whether one partner “mothers” or “fathers” the other “childish” one. The roles often and quickly reverse.
Adult-> Adult. All of us shift among our PAC ego-states all day, every day. But Adult-> Adult transactions are the goal. They occur between chronological grownups and children as well with other adults. Patiently helping a child work through math problems or learn a sports skill. That’s Adult-> Adult at whatever ages.
Dead-end “crossed” transactions result when an Adult ego-state tries to interact with a Child or Parent ego-state.
One of three outcomes happens. 1) The Adult shifts to the Child or Parent ego-state to continue the transaction, or 2) The Parent or Child shifts to their Adult ego-state to share an Adult-> Adult transaction, or 3) The transaction is terminated by either one.
Nations as well as individuals embody PAC ego-states. The failed “War on Drugs” exemplifies what happens when a country ignores Adult-> Adult scientific facts and instead permits only Parent-> Child exchanges and policies. Result? America’s imprisoned more people per capita than any country on earth.
Magical Thinking! Keep repeating the same irrational actions though they’ve failed consistently, in the superstitious Child-like faith that, “This time it will be different.”
Politics and Religion both inherently appeal to Parent-Child ego states and are fundamentally authoritarian. Those ego-states, in turn, rely on transactions between UN-equals, based on fear and threat fueled by factual ignorance.
That’s why most of us can’t talk about same-sex equality issues, and why it’s taken four decades (plus the internet) for a few Adult-> Adult transactions to forward this issue to where it is . . . shattering ancient religio-political card-houses in slomo, globally.
Unlike most nations, America was founded on religious freedom and tolerance. Anybody can read the Founding Fathers rather than parrot “authoritative” MSM pundits and religious Parents. Few do, preferring to shout –
“No it WASN’T! America was founded as a CHRISTIAN nation!” That statement’s neither Adult ego-state nor factual. It’s pure Pig Parent / Pig Child.
Politics and Religion have bedded and bickered throughout American history. Yet a new urgency has surfaced over the past 20 years because of the internet.
It’s happened slowly at first, this accessible information technology – then exponentially over the past decade. Now, explosively.
People are killing each other because widespread instant information shatters traditional Religio-Political power-paradigms.
Hate crimes against American gays and lesbians shot up 18% over last year.
For every advance in Iowa or Vermont or D.C., there is a setback with another gay-bashing or mass shooting in “too liberal” a church. Religious terrorism.
Ride your search engine back to America’s beginning, to perhaps the STILL the best-written discourse on religion in the past 200+ years:
“The Age of Reason” isn’t taught or studied in most schools because its Adult ego-state so threateningly deconstructs the subsequent two centuries of America's Parent-Child devolution.
Literally, “they” say, knowledge of Paine’s “Age of Reason” – like same-sex marriage – will wreck Democracy, destroy morals and invite God’s wrath onAmerica.
The internet, with readily available philosophical and scientific information like “The Age of Reason” or Dr. Bagemihl’s “Biological Exuberance” is Authorities’ worst nightmare. No more the "homosexuality is unnatural" lie. Same-sex behaviors and life-long partnerships are not only natural throughout the animal kingdom, they are ubiquitous and serve an evolutionary function.
Instant information on demand for ANYBODY to compare, investigate freely on their own, and think for themselves.
Gutenberg’s printing press to the nth degree.
Lies are losing.
Too many people know too much about the lie of WMDs in Iraq, or latex condoms’ permeability to the HIV virus (a lie promoted by the Catholic Church’s current Pope and former “health spokesperson” Cardinal Trujillo, who died last year).
Religious myths are one thing: scientific lies resulting in millions of deaths in Africa because of the Church’s anti-condom distribution policy are quite another. They are genocidal.
Worse? Lies about scientific facts, pronounced in the name of God, simultaneously mock Truth, Creation, and our God-given intelligence to separate lies from facts.
Myths and lies. Political and Religious power and tradition, their slomo collapse and reconstruction under the impact of the internet’s infinite information stream.
Is same-sex equality really the threat to America they say it is? Absolutely. Just not the way “they” say. MUCH more terrifying.
Can we talk?
Yes, it turns out, we can now.
What does the global information stream to your desktop or laptop really say about what’s ahead?
[I planned to be in Little Rock for Easter, but God had other plans. A sudden invitation to Myrtle Beach. One invitation led to another, but I’m finally back in The Rock.]
Easter’s passed over. I spent mine, unexpectedly, in Myrtle Beach. Pretty much what you’d expect from a beach named Myrtle. Down Home, a little loose and sleazy, with a seductive southern twang.
Our Sunrise Service began on the beach-house veranda overlooking the Atlantic surf. Sipping Mimosas.
Speaking of “overlooking,” behind us in the living room Il Papa’sVatican global address replayed on the plasma.
HE conveniently “overlooked” his recent assertion that condoms actually HELP to spread AIDS in Africa / the underdeveloped world (rather than preventing HIV transmission, as shown by decades of science and research) by claiming that Africa and the underdeveloped world in particular need nothing so much as “Hope” this Easter Morn.
Whoa. Let’s parse the Pope, “Hey, third-world ignorant Darkies! No condoms! If you fuck, you’re fucked! Dominos vobiscum.”
Really, who WOULDN’T want to belong to the Catholic Church after THAT heart-rending humanitarian commitment from a former Nazi Youth member who’s upholstered like a brocaded five-piece living-room-group at Hank’s Fine Furniture?
Wearing matching Prada lifts.
(Oh, STOP, Razorbabies. GOOGLE this shiz!)
The Pope SAYS “Hope” is what he most wants for the world this Easter 2009 and “Hope” is fabulous and all but actions speak louder than words. So . . .
What’s the Pope actually DO? Withhold condom-distribution to AIDS-ravaged Africa, ensuring the deaths of 20-60 million, according to the President of the Royal Society of Britain (world’s oldest continuing scientific body).
Preach Hope . . . Perform Genocide. Thank Your Holiness, You Representative of God on Earth, You.
When words and actions contradict,Vatican, it’s your first clue something’s pathologically skewed.
When words and actions contradict, Razorbabies, the words are always lies and the actions always the truth.
I mean, we’re sipping Mimosas on the Myrtle Beach veranda listening to the Pontiff spout “Hope” whilst promoting genocide among ill-educated African countries.
How “loving.”
“My GOD!” somebody inside the house shrieks at the Pontiff on the plasma. ”Bob Mackie looks like a RACOON with rabies!”
“Oh, stop, honey. It’s the Pope.”
Gotta love the Myrtle Beach gays this Easter morn.
But look. It’s Easter sunrise and I’m gonna commune with The Infinite if it’s the last thing I do.
I find the pitcher in the kitchen, pour remaining Mimosas into thermos, trek to beach with thermos and aluminum lawn chair – sprawl happily to contemplate ancient reason for season – Sunrise at Vernal Equinox – enjoying nectar of Gods.
Strange, wonderful, to reconnect with hearts and minds 5,600 years old and older. To re-experience the origin of ALL 30,000+ human religions at once, in the present . . . relishing a slow Easter sunrise across the Atlantic from a lawn chair on Myrtle Beach with a thermos of Mimosas.
Of course, the Pope on the plasma and I on the beach are late for the Vernal Equinox if not for Easter.
The Vernal Equinox this holy day originally celebrated before Christianity absorbed pre-existing “pagan” holidays already occurred back in March.
But look: it’s the Pope: cut him some slack.
The mythical German Goddess Estre or Estra for whom this Spring celebration is named in our part of the world (though it dates back to pre-Dynastic Egypt), is as forgotten as Joey Heatherton.
The Vernal Equinox myths 5,600 years ago already contained the collective symbols of the Cross (the four annual Solstices / Equinoxes), Rabbit (Fecundity) and the Egg (Fertility) . . . (“estre” is the root of the scientific term, “estrogen.”
Yes, once, science and religion were one.
HERE, for instance, is just one link debunking the notion that ancient Egyptians were “primitive.” They were anything but. The layout and construction of the Sphinx and Pyramids at Gizeh have been shown, with today’s astronomical computer models, to be astonishingly precise. Take your time, but READ this stuff. It's where we all came from, religiously.
I'm in a Time Tunnel here on Myrtle Beach this Easter Morn, embracing 5,600+ years old minds and hearts! With mimosas!
God, I wish I had a little we- . . . wait a second – that kid last night, bless his heart, determined to nail a cougar – what was his name? – Artie! – looked like Seth Rogen before his recent weight loss – I STILL have a roach from him in this beach bag!
There IS a God.
Egyptians’ “solar religion” with its various symbolic “deities” was based entirely on minute astronomical observations and calculations.
It is the oldest “religion” of which humanity can be sure. It was based entirely on observed physical science and mathematics. Astronomy, to be accurate, and that science’s relation to earth’s seasons of planting, growth, harvest and mulch.
The oldest religion on earth – pre-dynastic Egyptian – though popularized and personified with the names and myths of the planets and constellations . . . and finally anthropomorphized into “real” human gods on earth (Virgo, the Virgin Mary, from the ancient Egyptian virgin Mari who bore Iassu, Jesus, “The Light of the World,” in a cave / manger on December 25th at the Winter Solstice, for instance, 3600 years before the Jesus story) – that original “science worship” or “astronomical worship” by humanity is probably most closely tied to today’s Deists, who see observational evidence of “God” throughout Nature and Science.
You remember the Deists? The founders of our Country. Like Thomas Paine.
Paine’s thoughts in a nutshell, for those too hurried to read the link in Part II to “The Age of Reason”) . . . THEY’RE HERE.
Sunrise, moon, tides, planting, harvesting . . . Easter . . . Equinoxes, Solstices . . . the origins of the “Cross” . . . it used to take YEARS to find these ancient origins of religions that are now just a click away, if you’re curious.
One of the most beautiful and detailed, if lengthy, treatments of the ancient astronomical religion of Egypt is THIS 23-Chapter site that bridges computer astronomy, ancient cartography, the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
To discuss religion – much less religious bigotry against Jews, blacks, same-sex people, etc. -- with somebody unaware of this stuff is like discussing cosmological mythology with a child who insists a Fat Man with eight tiny reindeer flies around the world in a sleigh one night each year to drop a few billion gifts down chimneys.
Technically, all Myths are Lies if taken literally.
NOT true, however, that all Lies are Myths.
Myths can have compelling positive (or negative) impact on humanity’s “collective unconscious,” as psychiatrist Carl Jung richly explained. Myths indeed underlie all world religions and politics – and wars and prejudice, fears and hatreds.
Here on Myrtle Beach this Easter morn, the Sun has risen. A Mimosa “salud!” this Easter morn, Old Sol!
It IS a Lie – and destructive – to insist that Myths are literal.
To assert that Mithra, or Zeus, or Thor were physical human beings immediately registers those Mythical beings in the crosshairs of rational scrutiny.
“When and where did they actually exist and undergo those fantastic adventures? Where’s the evidence?”
Millennia ago, Faith and Science split as Religious Authorities, to build power and shape nations, realized the observable cosmos (science) had to be anthropomorphized to be believed and accepted by uneducated masses.
In Transactional Analysis terms, (“Part II - CAN WE TALK”) from time immemorial, it’s, “We are the Parents. We KNOW. You are the uneducated Children. You don’t know. We are powerful. You are not.”
The Sun, Moon, Planets, Constellations became “literal Gods on Earth” – actual human beings with verifiable histories.
Natural scientific laws apply to all and fail to elevate one tribe or nation to superiority. Enforced belief in literal human gods is far more effective.
Christianity in particular brutally coerced acceptance of its myths and dogma as “real” at the peril of heresy or death. No options.
The Scientists / Priests knew the myths’ origins. But dry explanations of phenomena like the Precession of the Equinoxes were over the heads of illiterate populations.
Why? Because there is no contemporary or eyewitness historical record of this supposed major figure. The Gospels were written nearly a century (and more) after Jesus’ supposed life, death and resurrection.
King Herod? A relative nobody? Plenty of contemporary proof HE existed.
As Christianity coalesced around dogma and began to be forced on the global Roman Empire, questions about the historicity of Jesus, as with older deities like Mithra, persisted and grew.
Early Christian apologists – caught adopting Egypt’s ancient solar science / religion, making astronomical science “literal” beings, taking over the Roman Empire (the then-World) via a State Religion, reverse-engineered an early forgery to “prove” their mythical dogma.
Since day one, Christians have sought physical proof of the literal existence of Jesus.
Flavius Josephus’ “eyewitness” account? Forged. Shroud of Turin? It’s a carbon-dated Medieval fake. No matter. The fearful “faithful” shoot the messengers and denigrate scientific facts that challenge their dogma.
The ossuary of Peter, supposed brother of Jesus, “discovered” a couple of years ago? The ossuary carbon-dated to the period, all right; but the carvings on it were proved to be contemporary forgeries. Another scam on the antiquities market and the religiously gullible.
The motive behind these fabrications is: prove the myth by making it physical. THEN everybody will believe it, conform, obey, avoid eternal damnation – and we can control the world.
It’s worked for a long time.
What’s changed? The PARENT-CHILD transactional model. People aren’t ignorant and uneducated any more. Majorities cling to PARENT-CHILD traditions because Time moves slowly. But growing minorities know better – know more in larger numbers than ever in history. To be informed is just a click away.
It was clear at the outset that Christianity was entirely derived and constructed in every detail from pre-Dynastic Egyptian sun worship – which is to say Nature Worship (reverence for) the awe inspiring mathematical intricacies of our physical solar system – and beyond – including complex and arcane phenomena like the Precession of the Equinoxes and the Great Year.
So Christianity rapidly and inevitably splintered from science (which threatened and still does to reveal its true origins and destroy its power – with the Contantinople and Nicean Councils in the 300s, CE.
Christianity is a continuing myth, based on similar and far older myths, originally constructed and enforced to unite and control the Roman Empire and eliminate all other religious belief systems and authority.
As an ADULT, however, you dismiss parts of Christianity’s “collective unconscious” myth at your own loss, severing communion with humanity’s oldest, richest, continuous mind-body source.
The apparent weakness at the heart of religious faiths is that, if they are not literally and physically true, they are considered hollow lies and their believers fools.
But that isn’t true either.
Ironically, it is religious literalists who are terrified their faith will fall apart if the Shroud of Turin is a Medieval forgery: if the myths aren’t physical.
Without that shroud, that splinter of the True Cross, that ossuary, faith is lost, they fear.
Simply, that is idol worship. It’s about as far from the inner reality of experiencing God, or All That is, as you can get.
Instead of communing with God as Matthew 6:6 suggests – privately in your closet, shutting the door behind you – ALL organized religions seek to rob you of that most transcendent personal experience and establish themselves as the middlemen – at a price.
Refill my mimosa. Stroll along the sunrise surf. Sign-in to God’s Chat Room. Trod soft sand in my flip-flops. All Joan Collins in “Land of the Pharaohs.”
Here’s the BBC’s documentary take back in the ‘80s. Ignore the helmet-hair on host Derek Partridge. The information is fact. ‘Course, it’s nearly two hours long, so only the choir will watch it.
This stuff used to take years of determined research to uncover, if ever, so successful was Christianity at suppressing it.
This information separates the girls and boys from the women and men in any contemporary discussion of Christianity and religion in general. (As does familiarity with Tom Paine’s “Age of Reason.”)
I’ve never known a brain tumor patient to insist on 2,000 year old surgical techniques in O-R.
I’ve never known a religionist to insist on anything BUT 2,000 year myths to relate with God.
I have NEVER known anybody to actually study the ORIGINS of the religions they so vehemently “believe” with such certainty.
Those dogmas they want to force on the rest of us? Don’t look too closely or start questioning.
“Bible classes” train better parrots. Serious questions and discussions based on outside sources – contradictory facts and arguments about Myths vs. Lies, the supposed historical existence of Jesus, the ancient Egyptian Astro-theosophic origins of contemporary religions, the astronomical origins of Christmas or Easter or the Cross itself? Those questions are never even raised in Bible Class indoctrination.
Thomas Paine, again, nails it.
Followers of Krishna also claim he was historical, yet his advent predates that of Jesus by hundreds to thousands of years. If we assume both are historical, and both are teaching nearly the identical thing, why should we not go to the source and become Krishna followers? Here we see clearly the ugly head of cultural bigotry, when the Christians claim their godman superior to one already in existence that is virtually identical. Why not go with Krishna? Because he was not of the "right" ethnicity. The question is moot, however, since both characters are mythological and, by the arguments of the Christians, should then be dismissed. However, we must not dismiss the Mythos upon which they are formulated, as it is true revelation of the workings of the cosmos.
YOURS is the only one religion of 30,000+ around the world that ISN’T brainwashing. YOURS is the only one that’s really true.
We get it.
Are you catching on how PARENT-ADULT-CHILD ego-states work in real life? Look around the world at the wars, the pettiness, the pollution, the irrational hate, the now-irrelevant nationalism – and speak up, Adults! The human family is dysfunctional. Time for rehab.
By now I’m back in my lawn chair on Myrtle Beach bonding with the pan-Atlantic Easter morning sunrise, emptying the thermos of Mimosas and pondering the Mormons and the Catholics sinking some $83 million in California to legislate religious discrimination against same-sex couples through Prop. 8. Why not interracial couples? Why not Jews? (Oops! Sorry. Christianity already tried those and lost there too.)
But religious discrimination against same-sex couples won in California! (So far.)
$83 million to write religious bigotry into California’s constitution.
That’s the BEST Mormons and Catholics can do for American society with $83 million. Spend $83 million to deny full Federal equality to those Americans who don’t accept Mormon or Catholic religious dogma.
Religionists = PARENTS. Faithful = CHLDREN.
Where in the world are the ADULTS – the ones who’re supposed to be running things?
When was the last time you seriously talked with anybody about this stuff? Seriously informed yourself before voting to harm — or not harm – adults and children you disagree with religiously, who disagree religiously with you?
When did you last behave as an ADULT instead of a CHILD or PARENT?
Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean told judge Perez Hilton and the audience in TV-land that she wasn’t being “politically correct” but “biblically correct,” trying to justify her anti-gay bigotry.
SERIOUSLY, Carrie? “Kill your disobedient children?” Also biblically correct – but – darling –actually KILL people – your own disobedient children – because it’s “biblically correct?”
Millions in many countries ARE serious about religious “honour killings,” Carrie. Women and gays top the victims lists, but. . . .
Biblically correct? Oh, Carrie, Carrie.
You HAD me at blond California Caucasian!
Then you blew it with, “I think I believe in opposite marriage because that’s the way I was brought up. No offense to anybody.”
You’re 23 and never “thought” to ask questions or look into anything?
You coulda been a contender, Carrie, and I’m just heartsick. (Well, as heartsick as I’m gonna get over a dumb 23 year old beauty contestant. Perez was right.)
Has American Democracy and our Republic – not to mention the Miss USA Pageant – come down to a religious litmus test based on dogma supposedly transmitted by an angry, bigoted, tyrannical, contradictory, genocidal God 2,000 years ago – who then shut up and refused to play any more?
Turns out God is Adolph Hitler?
Just blond Aryan males go to Heaven? No Jews, blacks, Arabs, Asians, etc.?
Heaven is pretty much closeted square-jawed Germanic blond hunks in military uniforms and boots or brocaded robes and Prada flats eying each other and striking up small talk?
Eternity is a gay bath house . . . ?
________________________
Uh, let’s walk on through the wind, Razorbabies . . . walk on through the rain of the Gathering Storm . . . finally . . . through Part V (up next) and out of here.
GAYS, GUNS & GODS (V) - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE WHEN QUEENS COLLIDE
Ten millennia of human civilization, ancient revealed religious wisdom, separation of Church and State, and civil equality for all Americans come down to . . .
Two queens at a Vegas beauty pageant owned by Donald Trump?
That's it?
God sure works in mysterious ways.
My April bookings were already hectic and I was on the road before Dump (my affectionate nick for the Trumpster since we dated briefly yet remain close chums in frequent contact because of certain videos in my lock-box) invited me out of the blue to Planet Hollywood in Vegas and the Miss USA Pageant as audience “color.” For $100K.
Yes he’s old enough to be my father. Why do you ask?
Little did I know Dump’s Miss USA Pageant would reward my LifeQuest for answers to 10,000 years of Human Civilization! Yes. My LifeQuest.
In retrospect, it had to be Intelligent Design.
“Planet Hollywood!”
I stepped out of the limo into my greatest spiritual adventure EVER! The sign alone shouted tonight would pretty much open the portals on the Meaning of it All for me and shizz.
“The whole planet! Worshipping Hollywood! In Las Vegas! At a nationalistic beauty pageant! Owned by Dump!” Heaven, Razorbabies.
From that second, every star-worshipping rhinestone and sequin fell into place and made perfect spiritual sense just like Swami Paramahansa Yogananda said it would.
And this is without drugs, Razorbabies, except for a smidgen of Vicodin for cramps (not pooh-poohing). The girls here know.
A spiritual high here at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. Ancient Matriarchal Worshipping Mammary Rites of Spring re-enacted in this glittering pleasure palace in a miraculously water-fed USA desert kinda still run by Republicans who pretty much ignore the last eight Bush years and Vegas’ tanking occupancy and construction rates and act like Moe Dalitz and the Mob are still in charge. (Well, they are. But they’re all legal corporations now and “hits” are so fifties.)
I’m all, “This is like freaky! It’s CHURCH!” Every historical religious-philosophical meme is finally squeezed into Miss California's bikini in Vegas! Yes, this is she. All siliconed Christian and you can't get married but I can and shizz.
Vegas is the most religious city, honestly, in the world, Razorbabies. Everybody worships what they REALLY believe in.
24 / 7 prayer (“Please, God, let me win!”), money, sex, glitz, absolution from non-abstinence (“What Happens in Vegas STAYS in Vegas!”), recreational substances, sports and wagering – everything worth kissing a ring for.
Religion as Eternal Kitsch.
(What’s REALLY funny, Razorbabies, is Vegas has more churches per corner than anyplace in Arkansas; a FAR better educational system; more secure law enforcement; and no state taxes. God has smiled on “The Meadows.”)
Miss USA 2008 Crystle Stewart said, “Miss America is the girl next door. But Miss USA is the girl you wish lived next door.”
So right, Crystle. A little trashy (wouldn’t play in Chenal -- in fact the name "Crystle" is a little too Waffle House for Chenal, just so you know) – but you're so right overall. A tad T&A compared to Miss America. I couldn’t BE more excited to be here for Planet Hollywood "color" for $100K thanks to my Dump.
Miss Carolina, Kristen Dalton, wins Miss USA 2009 and she’s fabulous. 22 years old and an aspiring motivational speaker. Don’t think about that last sentence.
Think, instead, about you’ve never HEARD of Kristen Dalton even though she won because the runner-up, Miss California, Cash 'n' Carrie Prejean sucked all the oxygen and publicity from the moment ever since. And I LOVE her for it!
Say hello, and goodbye, to Miss USA 2009, Kristen Dalton. She’s reached the heights at 22 and it’s all downhill from here. Even now, two seconds later, you can't tell me her name without looking back. Life can be cruel.
Unless Lifetime decides to remake "Sheena - Queen of the Jungle." Like I say. Miss USA? A little trashy. Second tier. But who am I . . . ?
Where is Kristen GOING with the crown? A lifetime of rubber-chicken PETA banquets speaking on "Why I Prefer Prints to Pelts When Jungling?" This tramp in a tree? Spare us.
That train of thought is depressing so let's back up.
In a match that could ONLY have come from intelligent Design, Cash ‘n’ Carrie Prejean (Miss California) draws her question from the Queen of All Media, Perez Hilton.
She laughs, hearing Perez's name -- instantly dismissing him with a snort yet betraying her utter terror at what's to come from his question! (Oh, watch it on YouTube, Razorbabies!)
Perez's pageant-preapproved question? Equality for GLBT Americans. Why or why not?
I’m squirming in Planet Hollywood because it’s such a Transactional Analysis PARENT-ADULT-CHILD moment. Plus these Jimmy Choos are killing me.
Perez Hilton’s dispassionate question about THE issue of the day (Economy? War? Please.) was from his ADULT. You could hear a pin drop.
Cash ‘n’ Carrie answers from her CHILD. A child proud of her new knockers. “I think I believe in opposite marriage because that’s the way I was brought up. No offense to anybody.” (Oh, Google it.)
Pitiful. There’s no ADULT there.
The applause and boos start. The boos are louder than the applause (anybody there will tell you) -- but cleverly edited out of TV news reports so as not to offend, uh, the religious right.
Here is why all the boos. Here is what we're all thinking in our seats. Here's what TV doesn't want YOU to think about.
Cash ‘n’ Carrie might as well have answered, “I think I believe marriage is between same-race opposite-sex Christians because that’s how I was brought up. No offense.”
Let her “answer” ferment whilst considering ensuing revelations.
Cash ‘n’ Carrie Prejean “thinks” GLBT Americans “choose” their sexual orientation. (Despite generations of scientific research proving the opposite. Oh, well, it’s religion: facts don’t matter.)
Cash ‘n’ Carrie Prejean lied, according to Miss USA officials, when she claimed the organization pressured her to make nice with the same-sex community and supporters by denying her religious beliefs. It didn’t.
Cash ‘n’ Carrie, my darling? Did you consider the feelings of the alliance of gay male stylists, cosmetologists, hairdressers, designers, choreographers, scenic and lighting designers, cameramen, musicians, etc. so essential to your life’s work?
Cash ‘n’ Carrie’s moneymakers are lies. The Pageant paid for her new puppies and I couldn’t be happier for her! We understand about hair and makeup. But do all the other contestants get a new rack for their entry fee, Areola, or just you?
Cash ‘n’ Carrie lied about her heterosexual military sister being a gay activist, apparently to show even sisters can disagree.Except her sister isn’t a same-sex activist and promptly said so nationally.
I text the limo to pick me up. I can't take any more.
Dump has funneled my $100K personal appearance fee through a line of credit at Luxor (don’t ask) so I flee there into the night.
That’s how I find myself inside a gigundous casino-hotel replica of an ancient Egyptian pyramid, on the Strip, fronted by an ersatz Sphinx outside, meeting friends from L.A. in the high-rollers slots pit and declaiming my spiritual epiphany at the Miss USA Pageant 10,500 years after the fact.
"God! So many slaves! So many centuries! And THIS is the answer?"
“Oh, Norma, you’ve always been a little bent about this stuff,” whispers one of my dearest and oldest friends who’s been between pictures for about four years now but stands completely with me in favor of gay marriage. Between us we’ve married three.
________________________
I wing home to Little Rock next day, enlightened, ecstatic and grateful.
Race into my Chenal closet, shut the door behind me, speak with God across the aeons . . . about religions and wars and bigotry and gays and beauty pageants and human equality . . . and my Vegas miracle.
“I just want to say, God, thank you for bringing me so far on my journey in my 29 years. And for keeping me real.”
There in the dark I hear the still small voice. “What have you learned, my child?”
“Well,” I begin, “I think that -- if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.
“But anyway, I’m home. Home! And this is my closet and I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you and - oh, God - there's no place like home!”
I just HAD to get away to L.A., Razorbabies. That’s where you go when all the world is a hopeless jumble. Yes, when raindrops tumble all around, heaven opens a magic lane direct to LAX and the stars!
Everything came crashing down at once for me in Little Work. The whole A.I.G. / Goldman Sachs collapsing global economy thingy; neighbors upside-down on their Chenal mortgages; all these concealed guns carrying Arkansans into churches; rising sea levels; Bad Bernie Madoff; space junk so crazy-crowded with decades of flying debris your astronauts can’t even step outside the pod for a quick smoke-break without risking a sudden deadly head-on like on the I-630 at rush hour.
Speaking of smoking, as if everybody isn’t tense ENOUGH, comes perhaps the last straw to civilized life as we know it: double-whammy State AND Federal tax hikes on cigarettes.
Ever see a rampaging smoker on WITHDRAWAL? Mulitply by 75 million Americans to know why we’ll ALL soon be packing concealed weapons.
Stop the madness!
THEN it hit me: If happy little bluebirds aren’t stressed out . . . why, oh why, the fuck am I?
Off to L.A. and pretty people! Kitson and Fred Segal!
I haven’t visited friends on the Coast since last fall’s Obama fund-raiser (shared here), but L.A.’s as glorious and vibrant and star-ful as ever. From Hollywood to Malibu, the most beautiful people on earth. For sale, all.
Somehow, I don’t know, I feel so at home here.
We’re all buffed, botoxed, plumped, implanted, injected, slimmed down, pumped up, toned, ripped, stapled, lipoed, lifted, tight and tan. Vibrantly excited, enthusiastic, charismatic, optimistic and between jobs. The sun always shines, the surf’s always up, tomorrow is another deal.
But this trip was different. Norma’s JUST recovering, Razorbabies. Here’s the heartbreaking backstory why, and it's uplifting third-act denouement.
Kathy unwittingly exposed me to Hollywood’s dark underbelly. I returned to Little Work more stressed and depressed than when I left.
I’m no name dropper, and yes I caught up with all my old friends (I think Courtney’s gonna make it through this connubially hinky period), but Kathy’s as crazy off camera as she is on and she's adorable and we're BFFs.
L.A. worked its spell on me until Kathy dragged me along with her crew to shoot stuff for her show at an “old movie stars” Saturday afternoon meet-and-greet in Burbank.
My Hollywood dreamland fantasies are forever shaken and shattered. Kathy’s fine. She sees this all the time, but I don’t.
First, this Old Stars’ Autograph Swap Meet is on Vineland in North Hollywood at a Holiday Inn. Wilshire and Rodeo in Beverly Hills this ain’t.
I’m thinking: these Old Stars must feel pretty attention-deprived to roll into this Holiday Inn ballroom for all day Saturday for any reason.
Not your ordinary Holiday Inn. This one’s been beautifully renovated. It was owned by an Old Star herself, Beverly Garland, whose heyday glamour portrait, even when you see it around the premises, you won’t recognize either.
“We’ll never forget you, Barbara. Loved you in 'Alligator People.' Beverly? Whatever. An awesome body of work.”
Old Stars aside, I’m not yet feeling the Holiday Inn daytime ballroom Love. Between the outfits and the thick metrosexual makeup, it looks like a West Memphis Tri-State R-V Seniors’ Bingo Tournament cum Mary Kay convention except these are Hollywood STARS.
Kathy and her crew are LOVING it. So are the Old Stars, when they realize who’s there to film them once again! Squeals, hugs, air kisses – LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!
I’m too young to recognize most of these Old Stars. Jane Russell I know. Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren from “The Birds” I remember when Kathy prompts me. Tony Curtis. Angie Dickenson. Them too, when prompted.
Jane! Rod!Who could forget you screen icons!
But . . . Clint Walker? Diane McBain? Jackie Joseph? Joey Heatherton? Jane Withers? Elena Verdugo? They never heard of me either, though they’re perfectly friendly and have remarkable teeth.
The gay ones have held up the best: Tab Hunter and Richard Chamberlain.
I would if THEY would, and still could. But I know and YOU know and THEY know that ain’t gonna happen so it’s pretty much, “I really respect your body of work, Tab. Dick.”
Kathy and her crew round the aisle and there she is: JANE RUSSELL seated behind a cloth-covered card table! Bingo!
Kathy rushes Jane Russell like she’s Jane’s BFF. They’ve never met but they’re all over each other with inane small talk for the cameras. Meanwhile, I’m studying Jane Russell’s face. It’s like two people in there.
I know she’s dolled up as a Tibetan monk in saffron (NOT her color, by the way) and I know everybody’s right and left facial hemispheres are different. But it’s like Jane Russell’s face clashes with itself – stunningly, of course.
Jesus Jane (she’s a full-figured right-winger, you know)? Slutty Jane? Just as I’m figuring which side of Jane Russell’s face is trampier, Kathy and crew spot Rod Taylor seated at a cloth-covered card table and swoop in on him like famished seagulls.
“My God! It’s Rod Taylor! Star of ‘The Birds’!” Kathy gushes.
THAT was the moment I was Traumatized in Tinseltown, Razorbabies.
I was unborn at the film’s original release. I first saw “The Birds” on VHS when I was fifteen with my stepfather in his trailer, and fell in love.
With Rod Taylor I fell in love, Razorbabies.
My stepfather, bless his heart, was an unemployed but lovable shrimp. Mom’s third mistake. I was just dropping off an oh-zee to him. He’s since passed on.
But Rod Taylor?Millions of girls fell as hard for him as I did.
HERE is what we’d have married had our Rod Taylor wish come true.
Rod Taylor IS my stepfather in that trailer. An awesome karmic revelation for me and stuff.
That's the moment my life fell apart, as it often does. This time in Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn on Vineland in front of Rod Taylor at this card table.
"Rod," I thought to myself. "How COULD you do this to me? Why didn't you just stay home and handsome forever?"
I fled Kathy and her crew, turned my back on the Old Stars in Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn ballroom (I kind of waved and winked to Tony Curtis on the way out), rushed outside and caught a cab back to the Beverly Wilshire, got to my room and tearfully called Bridgeway back in Little Rock to book therapy.
Bridgeway or Dr. Phil? Whom would YOU call in times of peril?
I want to thank the magnificent and caring Bridgeway staff for seeing me through this latest disillusionment. Particularly Bruno, my physical therapist, whose touch SO compliments Bridgeway’s psychotherapy and meds.
Bridgeway is there, when all your world is a hopeless jumble and the raindrops tumble all around.
Sadder but wiser, Razorbabies, I've said goodbye to Hollywood. There’s no place like home.
Four days in the Bahamas for pre-summer reparative bikini tan-line therapy, hunky dark-skinned steel-drums and umbrella cocktails . . . with my few friends who still HAVE places in the Bahamas . . . ONE blog post last Tuesday . . . and I come home to THIS!
Belligerence on the BLOG! “Return of the Trolls!” (Same old cast, new User IDs!)
Lurves it! Hates it! Conflicted! Distressed!
Wh-a-a-a? Public information’s not public in Arkansas any longer? Death threats against newspapers linking to public LEA databases succeed in shutting down FOIA?
More UCA BS?
I miss the beach already. (Though I’m brown as a coconut and could pass for HalleBerry in a bikini from fifty paces if you squint.)
Dillard’s needs new buyers to move more high-end shit? I LOVE the Dillards. Amanda’s always been a favorite. But does ANYBODY still shop at Dillards anymore?
The economy keeps tanking? Same-sex equality appears flushed away in California (don’t bet on it)?
Anglo-Saxon language explodes on the Blog? (The one bright spot of my return home!)
Multi-lingual myself, I find Anglo-Saxon perhaps the most subtle and versatile of Romance Languages. Lustfully urgent one minute (“Fuck me . . . “), vicious and threatening the next (“Fuck you!”).
If only our children were taught a thorough grasp of Anglo-Saxon.
An intellectually discerning language, Anglo-Saxon registers the highest frontal cortex and amygdala arousal of all languages. One must stay sharp to ascertain, “Does he / she want to DO ME . . . or DO ME IN?”
So I’m elated, after being babied in the Bahamas, to return all bronzed to The Rock to find issues, tensions, trolls and dissension percolating on the Blog and in Arkansas!
I’m feeling all Rodney King.
“Can we all get along?”
‘Member Rodney? Beaten within an inch of his life by the L.A.P.D. in 1991? Awarded $3.8 million and the cops were acquitted, triggering the L.A. Riots resulting in 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damages to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses?
‘Cause Rodney was drunk and driving over 100mph to avoid another DUI stop because he was already on probation from a previous robbery conviction?
“Can we all get along?”
Then Rodney was later arrested for trying to run down a vice officer who found him with a Hollywood transvestite prostie; then he drunkenly crashed into a block wall in downtown Los Angeles; then he was arrested for hitting his wife with his car and sentenced to 90 days for hit and run; then he was arrested again a few years ago for speeding and running a red light while under the influence of alcohol, failing to yield to officers and slamming his SUV into a house, breaking his pelvis.
Turns out Rodney King and “Can we all get along?” is another Hallmark Card urban myth. We’re hoping Rod’s spent some of his $3.8 mil to enter “Promises” in Malibu for serious re-hab on his Old Milwaukee and bumpa-car issues.
So I guess I’m NOT feeling all Rodney King about the A-T blog after all, though I’m all excited and stuff about the annual Spring Troll Migration, the ever-intricate subtleties of Anglo-Saxon per George Carlin, the death threats and increasing vituperative ad-hominem attacks . . . .
Trust Norma, Razorbabies. The Arkansas Times IS the Voice of Arkansas!
Still, and I ask you from the bottom of my heart in the nicest way, “Can we all get along?”
The California Supreme Court’s coming ruling on the validity of Prop 8 marks the line in the sand for same-sex equality in America. Aren’t you excited?
I AM! There’s just NOTHING like Constitutionally punishing Americans you don’t like because of their color or who they love or their religious beliefs.
Both sides are tense . . . .
Like these two Dads and their kids, who don’t know if they’ll have an intact family after this.
This upcoming decision in the Golden State, the barometer state, the largest and most progressive state, will determine – for awhile or forever – whether America will be ruled by a narrow Christianist religious minority as a theocracy – and whether a slender well-funded and bullying minority of religionists can deny full civil-rights to another minority – or not.
Yep. America is about to learn if 18,000 legal marriages will be invalidated because of largely Mormon and Catholic (and ALL-Christian) Hate and $ Millions in punishing donations to hurt individuals, children and families.
Mormon and Catholic.
Mormon and Catholic.
Mormon and Catholic.
Makes one want to FLOCK to their churches. No?
Never shy away, Razorbabies, from pointing out where hate and ignorance -- and the money behind those -- come from.
Mormon and Catholic.
Stop playing games. These are ugly, hateful tax-free organizations.
It's time and Past Time to stop acquiescing to religious tyrants because they "mean well."
No they don't. They're your friends, your families, your employers. They don't "mean well" at all.
Their love isn't unconditional. Their love is TOTALLY conditional on your agreeing with them, accepting their superstitions without question or contradictory facts and letting them get by with foisting their enormous lies on the world -- including you.
And bullying you.
No wonder Thomas Paine's, "The Age of Reason," will never be taught in our schools.
Trust Norma. If Prop 8 falls in the California Supreme Court, as I expect it will, it marks a gigantic watershed in religious fundamentalists’ attempt to take over America -- and a triumph for Showtunes, Cher and Bob Mackie.
The coming apoplexy and gnashing of teeth over same-sex Americans’ rights after California in March, 2009 . . . oh, JESUS, everybody's sweating the ramifications of all this . . . it’s either “over” for Religionists or it’s “over” for Secularists.
How titillating! How Christopher Lee! How Peter Cushing! How Cher!
(You had to be there. I was but an infant. Slightly twisted but loving parents who figured, misguidedly, vampire moves and CBS's "Sonny & Cher Show" would prepare me for adult life. Result? I'm still terrified of anything with fangs or bangs or sequins -- widdle kittens -- David Bazzel -- Liza Minnelli.)
Once more we voters get to decide which American minorities are okay and which aren’t, according to, you know, “God.”
It's SO hard to decide whom to hate. Gays, Asians, Mexicans, your generic "immigrants," blacks, Jews, Muslims, the Living, the Undead -- STOP THE MADNESS!
SERIOUSLY!
Razorbabies, you thought Abortion stirred up the troops . . . you ain’t seen nothin’ yet when Same-Sex Equality wins in California this month or down the road.
Shock and Awe?
Big Trouble in states (like Arkansas) trying to preserve discrimination in the face of younger generations who just think the whole thing is “silly.”
“Silly.” They know.
March’s California Supreme Courth decision is Loving vs. VirginIa for same-sex Americans.
Yeppers. March is the month that tells America where it’s headed as a nation – direct from California, once again. (HATE California, doncha, for being right all the time.)
From this ONE case, Razorbabies!
Sometimes, the Future – gleaming or glowering -- is so simple and hinges on the turn of a moment.
That moment, for America, is right now – in California – in March, 2009.
We ALL have gays and lesbians as family and friends.
LOVE AMERICANS?
HATE YOU SOME?
Up to you. Which ones? Why?
Just remember: your choice tells us all we need to know about you.
IS THAT A GUN IN YOUR POCKET OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME?
Two recent scenarios have really twisted my Spanx.
1)Publishing ALREADY public records of concealed weapons permit holders online, resulting in threats, and –
2)Publishing ALREADY public records, online, of those who contributed over $100 to support California’s Proposition 8, which denies equality to same-sex Californians and also rescinds their previously-legal marriages, resulting in threats.
It’s not just the clickily-accessible online exposure that’s the common denominator: it’s that these groups don’t want their names, information and affiliations available AT ALL. To ANYBODY!
Why?
Because the subtext of both these contretemps (I didn’t graduate the Sorbonne for nothing) are all about patriarchal sex, power and control.
Penises, when you get right down to it.
Boys in the locker room grown into positions of power, and their athletic supporters of both sexes.
You can’t blame them. Nobody trying to pass for an “adult” in society and in the professions wants to be outed as an adolescent size-queen, but there ya go.
Nothing else explains the irrational uninformed passions these two issues arouse better than Freudian sexual frustration and desire.
So let’s just totally go Sigmund Schlomo Freud here. (I know. Jewish. Supposedly smaller penises than, say, your Africans. I mean, it’s never-ending and it’s ALL about the penises, Razorbabies.)
1)“Their penises (especially if they’re darker than mine) are bigger with bigger bullets and you never know when one of them is going to whip it out in church or on the street and shoot me and my family. So I’m gonna buy a bigger more powerful one than theirs at the gun show and conceal it so I can whip it out on them anytime anyplace when they might whip it out on me and shoot them before they shoot me so there. Like in ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ or whatever.”
“Only I don’t want anybody to know that’s how I think, so don’t tell.”
2)“I don’t care so much about lesbians because they’re, you know, women and don’t have penises. But two men? Abomination! Men aren’t supposed to love each others’ penises and have lifelong commitments and raise children together and stuff. They’re supposed to be dominating each other with their clubs. It’s all in the Bible. So I don’t want ANY of these same-sexuals to have equal rights.
“Only I don’t want anybody to know that’s how I think, so don’t tell that I contributed $100,000 to Prop 8.”
THAT, Razorbabies, is why these peeps don’t want public exposure on Freedom of Information Act lists.
They’re afraid and infuriated that it makes them look juvenile, bigoted, fearful, hateful, backward and defensive to be publicly exposed. They’re afraid it will hurt their businesses. Hurt their standing in the community at large as opposed to their like-minded friends.
They’re right.
This has NOTHING to do with having weapons at home to defend against intruders, or weapons to hunt, etc.
Interesting, that it’s the Right Wing threatening Max for linking to already-public information? Interesting, that it’s the Right Wing threatening blogs for linking to already-public information regarding donors to Prop 8?
Not really. It’s the same old Right Wing juvenility.
All they have to offer is grade-school penis envy that’s derailed our economy (“My portfolio is bigger than yours!”), decimated lives here and abroad (“Shock and awe!”) and shredded America’s honor and reputation (unspeakable sexual humiliations at Gitmo).
In a nutshell, here’s ALL you need to know.
Mike and Janet Huckabee pack concealed weapons.
Mike and Ginger Beebe don’t.
Me? I’m just interested in that bulge in your pocket.
Methinks Little Rock suffers delusions of grandeur. First, our coming “world-class” zoo. (Again.) Now our “revitalized” Main Street. (Again.)
Norma is all about getting down and keeping it real. From Chenal.
The River Market concept was perfect.
But it only works because it was built along the river, connected the already-existing corridor from Robinson Auditorium, the DoubleTree, the Old State House, the Convention Center, the Peabody, the Capital Hotel, to the Clinton Library property . . . built the Riverwalk for kids and adults to play and picnic and exercise in, the Amphitheater for concerts, upscale hotels, residential condos with views . . .
River Market’s a draw, in other words. But then, the street was already a draw, with its existing surroundings and the coming Clinton Library. The River Market was and is about as close as urban renewal comes to a “sure bet.”
So what, exactly, is the “dream” for Main Street? Beyond preserving old Potemkin facades? (I adore Potemkin facades myself, having glamorously maintained this one for more years than you’d guess, Miley Ray.)
What will go on behind those fond old Main Street facades? Blocks of completely redesigned interiors, remodeled, restored, re-wired, re-plumbed spaces for office, residential and retail?
You’ve got to get out of the house more, Razors.
It’s far cheaper to tear down and rebuild.
Retail spaces at sidewalk level up and down Main Street? Are you kidding? Where are the shoppers?
Uh, the shoppers are miles west -- spending their discretionary income in bigger, cleaner, newer shopping developments with free parking and brand-name stores, restaurants and movie theaters.
Main Street will NEVER compete, retail-wise. You think Belks or Fresh Market or the Nieman’s that’s been teased for years is gonna show up on Main? When the money’s ten miles west and further?
THOSE shoppers aren’t going to pay to drive into town to drop more green to navigate a cold concrete parking structure and schlep up and down Main on foot when they can conveniently park for free in front their “out west” shopping destination for a nicely-landscaped door-to-door splurging experience.
TRUST Norma. It’s all about the splurging.
Main Street worked back in the day, when it was the ONLY true shopping destination in the entire state and hummed with excitement and vitality.
Those days, R.I.P., have been gone for four or more decades.
Another alternative? Tear down the Main Street corridor’s old buildings and replace them with new office buildings. Are you kidding?
Little Rock already has plenty of beautiful “new” office buildings built out west with “Spaces for Lease” signs in front of them. You know. West. Where the money is.
Maybe if Main Street were demolished then lined with contemporary or retro-contemporary state-of-the-art architectural wonders! But who’s going to pay to build them and fill them with people who’ll lease them?
Plus what would become of the wig shops and surplus stores? Where would they go?
So what’s the Main Street “vision” in face of the inevitable? A block-by-block, store-by-store, year-by-year tear-down and rebuild approach?
Or completely remodel the interiors to bring them up to code and contemporary office demands – whilst preserving and maintaining the old facades?
All to be structurally earthquake-proofed, since we keep hearing the New Madrid Fault is getting angrier about the gays and lesbians?
To what purpose, these “visions?” What population is going to work in and fill those glorious new office buildings? Who is going to shop those no-name sidewalk-level storefronts and keep them profitable?
Little Rock’s not New York or Los Angeles. We have plenty of space and not enough people.
Wish we did. Los Angeles developers demolished the old 20th-Century-Fox studio’s backlot and built the enormously successful “CenturyCity”: a gargantuan development of retail shopping centers, wondrous office buildings, hotels, theatres, restaurants and high-rise condominiums that instantly became one of the most desirable addresses in the city.
A city within the city. (An Arkansas contractor, no names, was hired a few years ago to update the CenturyCity shopping center. So we’ve got the talent and expertise.)
So what’s going to happen to sad old Main Street? Probably nothing. The buildings will continue to deteriorate until they’re condemned, merchants will continue to leave, bloggers will continue to bemoan its incremental death, the City Board and politicians will continue dangling imaginary carrots on sticks to justify their jobs and feed our pretensions . . . until . . .
. . . well, New York carved Central Park in its midst and THAT’S worked out pretty well. Any property overlooking Central Park goes for top dollar. Including residential, hotel, retail and office space. It’s huge. It’s the center of New York. And it works.
We’ve got the financiers and contractors and engineers (and all their employees) to pull it off. Plus P. Allen Smith and a gaggle of gardeners and landscape architects to design and maintain it. (No, I don’t know P. Allen, but I expect kickbacks from him and everybody else just mentioned.)
Then we can bill ourselves – rightfully – as, “LITTLE ROCK – AMERICA’S GREENESTCITY!”
“Epiphany” is my Vocabulary Builder word for the week.
I use “epiphany” in a sentence three times a day. I think I had an “epiphany” looking at the following Christian leaders (below). Do you have an “epiphany” looking at them too?
Is it just me or is the only Christian without three chins the gay one?
Is that an “epiphany?” Or are ya just glad to see me?
Leave it to Cliff Baker, formerly of The Rep, to pull off another stellar Little Rock fund-raiser successfully disguised as an Event!
Yes, “Lanterns” at Wildwood this weekend!
I was there, of course, but so spectacularly successful was it that absolutely NOBODY paid the least attention to me.
Billed as Arkansas’ only “Mid-Winter Festival”, or something, held at the WildwoodCenter for the Performing Arts, or the Center for the Performing Arts at Wildwood, or the PerformingCenter for the Arts at Wildwood or whatever . . . that place off Kanis you can never find because the signs are too small and so you wind up in Ferndale if you’re not careful . . . (Lucy, COME BACK!) . . . Baker pulled off a magnificent weekend for families and friends young and old . . . with thousands of lanterns from all lands, flying high and lying low, lining paths around the lake and pavilions – including TWO moons!
Yes, only Cliff Fannin Baker (the only man who ever turned Norma down after six mai-tais – MY ticket – at Cajun’s) could have thought this up from his fertile brain and pulled it off so spectacularly.
Cliff and I (or “Effin” as I affectionately call him) are still dear friends, naturally. I congratulated him on drawing over 1,900 guests Saturday, and another 900-1000+ Sunday.
Cliff’s just a great big white polar bear and you want to bury yourself in his fur. But there were children around.
So he beamed, “You know, we’d have been happy with 900 people or so for the weekend. So this is really an incredible turnout!”
As well “Lanterns” should be. It’s one of those genius events that’s an instant success and will forever outlive both Cliff and Norma long after we’ve joined that Bus-and-Truck company of “Annie” in the sky.
NOBODY has seen an event like this in Little Rock!
It’s not the circus, it’s not a concert at Robinson’s, it’s not a rodeo, it’s not RiverFest.
It’s luminaria lining the paths, and horses – including a Clydesdale-drawn carriage – and music, and Victorian ladies and gentlemen reading from Dickens, and food, and wine, and “Make-a-Wish” floating magic lanterns you launch with a dream and watch glide across the lake, and fortune-tellers . . .
(Yes, eLwood, I too was disturbed by the long line of children waiting to have their fortunes told by the turbaned lady in the tent. “I see you ascending to a high level of politics . . . the Senate, maybe . . . then being arrested for sucking a hooker’s toes in the Marriott . . . thank you, Melvin. That’s all I see.” Then watching nine-year-old Melvin straggle back to Mom and Dad going, “What does she mean ‘sucking toes!’ What th- ?”
That and the fact that I didn’t see ONE SINGLE BLACK PERSON, except for the two uniformed Security Guards on Kanis.
I’m not from here. Weird.
Thanks – a hundred times thanks – to By-Lites (among the other sponsors) for making “Lanterns” the unique and hugely successful annual event it has instantly become.
And to Cliff Fannin Baker and the Board and the hundreds of volunteers and sponsors who made “Lanterns” work – out of the gate.
Some draw exclusionary shades on Life and Love, I guess.
Only one month into 2009 and already 7 of my 11 predictions have come true! You can verify my veracity by checking my "2009 Predictions" post, below. 64% -- barreling toward another perfect 100% record!
("Veracity" is my vocabulary builder Word of the Month. Key: you don't have to know what your Word of the Month means . . . just its part of speech, and use it constantly in sentences. "Veracity" happens to be a noun. So it works in Chenal as well as Stuttgart. "That veracity is REALLY flattering!" "Has anybody ever told you you have a beautiful veracity?" "Mind if I have a sip of your veracity?" See? It's all good.)
What's NOT good is what I'm seeing in my crystal ball. Arkansas Times Bloggers are simply DISMISSING my RED DOT!
NONE of you have printed, cut out and laminated my Razorback Red Dot. Nor are you carrying it on your persons to guarantee materialization of your fondest dream in 2009!
Why, it's almost as if you doubt my veracity!
It will ONLY work if it's in a pocket or near your body or under your pillow, or all three, and you focus once or more per day upon your fondest dream!
I peer deeply into my crystal, yet suffer the heartbreak of derision! I've poured all my love and the powerful psychic energies of the Universe into my Red Dot. Yet I see the laughter, the ridicule, the scorn, the middle finger.
Stop! In the name of Love!
Print my Red Dot! Cut it out! Laminate it! Wear it! Place it 'neath your pillow! Focus on it once a day.
Silly?
Nobody but YOU will know!
I promise you . . . your Dream is just around the corner . . . even if you only treat it as a game.
A Damsel in Distress
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