november 18, 1978

Her name is Christine Miller: she is African American, 54, and amidst the perverse, raw insanity of the final forty-five minutes of Jonestown--recorded by Jones himself on a cassette tape--she tries, again and again, to thwart a massacre in the making.

Calmly, she engages Jim Jones (his speech thick-tongued compared to her clear declarations) in a battle for control of Jonestown. She plays his own beliefs off against him--"I feel as long as there's life, there's hope. That's my faith", she says, quoting Jones back to himself--and points out that surely the defection of only twenty members isn't worth the whole community dying.

Surrounded by guards with guns and bows and arrows, she insists that she should be given a chance to follow her own destiny, that the children should be allowed to live, that their contact in Russia be called for an emergency airlift--all rebuffed by Jones, increasingly urgent in his demand that one and all surrender to the joys of Revolutionary Suicide, a suicide the community rehearsed over and over, in fear and awe of this day.

And then the tone shifts and the crowd turns foul and ugly--shouting her down, insulting her--even as Jones praises her for being an honest agitator, for presenting two sides of an argument; as if it were a debate society, not a death wish blooming. As if Jones had never held a gun to her head and then lowered the weapon, stopped by her insistence that he could kill her, but he would first respect her. As if love had never been part of his message; as if none of it had ever happened.

And then her voice disappears from the conversation, and she is gone, silenced by a treat given to children at birthday parties, a treat laced with poisonous drugs, none of them--as Jones falsely promised--kind-in-death: convulsions and pain in a paper cup. She is gone, replaced by babies screaming and Jones hissing "Hasten, hasten, hasten with the medication!" as the music playing in the background slows down, the generator dying.No farewell, no note to those left behind who loved her, no way to touch anyone who didn't understand why she followed Jones into the jungles of Guyana, or what drove her so far from home: just gone, gone, gone.

But even as she stood in the presence of a madman she once followed--a madman who now kept his flock imprisoned within the filthy walls of a latter day concentration camp--she still claimed her right to challenge and speak as she saw fit: she is the other side of Jonestown, and her name is Christine Miller.

of imagination all compact

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

~Mary Oliver, "House of Light"

newman's own

Always the king of lo-fi cool, Paul Newman also had a million and one dazzling moments playing the aching, slow ride to nowheresville--many of which turn up in "The Verdict"--and script aside (the Rampling character is a stick figure, drawn with a nasty crayon) it's Newman at the height of his acting power. There's nothing showy or false creeping into the frame--no reluctance to be as physically drained, as emotionally craven and damaged as necessary--it's a heartbreaking performance, just heartbreaking. The still considerable beauty of his face at odds with the booze, the humiliation, the long dormant, now-woken hunger to matter, to heal, to win. He (and director Lumet) took a workaday plot and turned it into something substantial, something that lingers.

Newman was also a powerhouse at acting with: there are many great couplings in his film career (including Redford, of course) but one of Newman's best can be found in "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof". Playing yet another alcoholic, opposite Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the Cat--and contrary-wise to Maggie's most famous line, "Sometimes I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof"--Newman builds a performance that is ripe with feline grace and cool disdain; even his rage at life and love and Big Daddy seeming to come with an arched back and low, rolling hiss. All of which might have destroyed the balance if not for Taylor's equal smarts as a movie star--she turns up as a wolf in cat's clothing, circling him until victorious--and whether by accident or design or some mix therein, it's breathtaking to watch.


But whatever the script or co-star, through it all, one thing is constant with Paul Newman: one of Hollywood's most beautiful men always chose the work--the part, the play, the guts of it all--instead of sliding by on a blue-eyed wink and a smile. As one of his shrewd, savvy characters might have said: he's gone, baby, gone--and we're the worse for it.

tubory

For years, I thought he was Terry of France: the name mangled by memory, the music perfectly recalled, but--like all true loves!--I never forgot the essence of my first tv re-run boyfriend. A dark, handsome hero with a slingshot in hand, living some kind of Robin Hoody existence (a not particularly comely lass by his side) and a pack of dirty-faced villager types suddenly swarming out from the forest, to follow Terry--Thierry la Fronde--anywhere:



I now realize that my first tv boyfriend was a sexually ambiguous male wearing a necklace ominously presaging the coming disco era (when man-jewelry went ape-shit) and the lass was actually much comelier than I thought, despite her unfortunate hair. (About the opening crotch shot--combined with slingshot wrist action--least said, soonest mended!)

radio silence

If the anti-science conservatives win the battle for hearts and minds--a battle happening right now in America--by the year 2055 there will be a top rated radio show named "What Is Your Opinion About This Fact?", with people calling in ("Hello Fayetteville, Arkansas, you're on the line!") and saying: "I don't much agree about this gravity thing" or "Who says water is always wet? Who says?"

I will be dead or addled by 2055, but for the record (a silly scientific concept) all the faith-based belief being pushed by conservative he-men and preachers and creationist teachers--the elevation of opinion over fact, of religious fervency over science--is at core touchy-feely, twinkly and hippie-dippy. They have become the cultural thing they used to mock--the "If it feels good, man, just go with it" mantra now applied to dinosaurs and global warming, instead of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll--sharing a bed (however unknowingly) with those they once despised.

Like Oprah and "The Secret", tarot card readers and UFO abductees, they know that what they Believe Is True. Which would be fine and dandy and their own business, if only it were enough for them--but it never is, for any true believer.



They are also demanding that the culture completely rework itself--from schools to government studies, everything bending and twisting to suit their anti-science conviction--in the process robbing the rest of us of something precious: knowing the difference between truth, and belief.

how 'bout them man-apples?

Gossip from Jossip: "Carolyn Hinsey, editor of Soap Opera Weekly and Soap Opera Digest, was just fired, we're told. Hinsey is described to us as a "truly malicious, horrible human being." If true, then more of you must have stories!"

The thread at Jossip has now swollen to almost 2,000 responses, turning into a soap opera itself in the process. All of Hinsey's former employees are posting tell-all tales about their former boss, along with gossip about soap actors. My favorite bit of dish is about Y&R: seems that back in the day, Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki Newman) and Eric Braeden (Victor Newman) never learned their lines, depending mostly on cue cards.

The actor playing Jack Abbott, Peter Bergman, constantly ribbed Braeden and Scott about not knowing their lines, until one day Bergman went one joke too far and Braeden put up his dukes, beating Bergman to the tune of 27 stitches on Bergman's face. The cops were initially called in, Braeden was hidden away, no charges were filed, all was smoothed over and Bergman was shot from angles hiding his injuries...but now, whenever Victor Newman turns up wearing a wife beater and boxing gloves--for one of his trademark workouts in the Genoa City gym--I'll be grinning just a little bit harder.


PISS-ANTS OF THE WORLD, DON'T FUCK WITH ME--YOU GOT THAT?

ancient blogverb

Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.




http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/anthem.html

myths of the right wing

That sex will always be between perfect people in a perfectly committed marriage, solely for the creation of perfect children; and therefore, no need for birth control, reproductive rights, or divorce laws.

That Big Business is always happening between perfect Big Businessmen, in a perfectly committed Big Business relationship with the Little Guy: and therefore, no need for an FDA, no need for laws protecting the right of citizens to sue corporations, no need for any law regulating the stock market.

That life is always perfectly fair, and always happens fairly to the people who work perfectly hard, in fair right-to-work states, with a perfect and fair lifetime reward awaiting those who perfectly follow the fair rules: and therefore, no need for Social Security, national health care, or Medicare.

There is not a single right wing politician who abides by these myths: time and again, they have revealed themselves to be serial divorcers, eager patrons of prostitutes and leather queens, enthusiastic supporters of reproductive rights via paying for abortions for their mistresses, and cheaters on their wives (often with men--no need for birth control there!--so in this single instance, one myth holds semi-true).

They never met a competitive marketplace they didn't fear, running instead into the soft, plush arms of partisan think-tanks and sucking on the public tit via government positions (jobs they claim to disdain for anyone, oddly, but themselves), enjoying unfair access to near-luxurious levels of health care, pension plans and regular cost-of-living increases to those pensions.

In fact--in truth, in reality, in actual world terms--if you're a right wing politician, sex is often messy, complicated and imperfect, Big Business is cold and cut-throat, and life is hardly ever fair (which is what life is like for everyone else) but instead of owning that, they spam the public with ideas that do not work, with myths they themselves cannot ever catch hold of, finally left with nothing but a profound, deeply sick hypocrisy upon which to build a life or lead a nation (which is what the rest of us call living in hell).

And all this they do while claiming purity and goodness and love of country: the self-proclaimed decency of their motives being the biggest myth of all.

summer pasta

Summer pasta is an old Silver Palate recipe that I first tasted in my sister's kitchen, years and years ago.

I was working my way through grad school, spending summers waitressing in a restaurant that specialized in desserts (which meant I constantly craved all things salty) and my sister began raving about this recipe--this combo of tomatoes and brie and garlic--and slowly, the mere description of the dish became the call of the siren: something to weigh against the endless ice cream sundaes and almond pastries I ran back and forth from table to table, section to section, forever in the weeds (tanned legs never moving fast enough to stay ahead of the movie crowd, cigarette break never long enough to justify two smokes, the end of my shift never winding down before one A.M.)

One rare night off, towards the end of July, I dropped by my sister's after she had (as she put it) made a boatload of summer pasta, and while she and her best friend sat on the back verandah drinking red wine and smoking cigarettes, I nosed through the fridge until I found it, and then--after calling out I got it, no need to get up, please save me some wine--I shoved a lovely big bite into my mouth.

And then nearly spat it all out, the way babies--so practically, so methodically--spit out Things They Find Horrifying.

Summer pasta is best warm, but it also delivers a pleasing taste when mildly cold (or so my sister said) and I had dug in, only to find myself with a mouthful of icy, gelatinous nastiness. After I was silent for a full minute she called out, "What, you don't like?" (as if she were an old Jewish mother, not an Irish Catholic Grrl) and I considered my options: I was confused (THIS was the recipe I'd been obsessing about?) and horrified (This was the recipe my SISTER had been obsessing about?) and enraged (What is this nasty shit recipe in my MOUTH?)

"It's interesting," I said, and that word--that tone--said it all and she flew into the kitchen, shook her head at the container in my hand, removed a bowl from the fridge and said: "You're eating cold soup, you silly asshole--try this."

I did, and it was wonderful and salty and smooth--so good I wanted to lick the bowl--and now, every time I make this sauce, I think of high summer, her kitchen, the shock of jelly-like horror in my mouth, followed by the perfection of my first bite of summer pasta.

Revulsion and joy, all within less than three minutes: like being in the restaurant weeds, only to find a twenty dollar tip in your section.


Summer Pasta

Ingredients

4 large peeled, ripe tomatoes, 1/2 inch dice
1 lb Brie, rind removed, torn into small chunks
1 cup clean basil leaves, cut into strips/chiffonade
3 garlic cloves, finely minced
3/4 to 1 cup, best grade olive oil
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
a dash of red pepper flakes
1 box linguine /fettucine
freshly grated imported Parmesan cheese

Directions

To peel tomaotes: bring five quarts of water to boil, then drop tomatoes into boiling water for about thirty seconds. When the skins just start to split, you can go two ways: remove the tomatoes, drop them into an ice water bath and then peel five minutes later or (my version) remove, then immediately hold under cold running water as you peel.

Combine diced tomatoes, peeled Brie, olive oil and garlic in large serving bowl: let sit, covered, at room temp for at least three hours.

Bring 6 quarts water to a boil in a large pot. Add pasta and cook according to directions for al dente. Drain pasta, toss with sauce and correct seasoning with salt and freshly ground pepper. Let sit a few minutes (original recipe says serve immediately, but waiting five to seven minutes allows the sauce to develop better, IMO), then toss a few more times. Serve with freshly grated parm.

the story

one degree at a time.