"when they met, it was murder"

 

Stefanie Powers, Robert Wagner

The TV series Hart to Hart is on Amazon Prime Video now -- when it was new on network television, I noticed it and meant to watch it, but only saw it a few times.  Busy -- going, working, studying, looking for music and dancing and books and good scenes.

        Reruns of it were on in the late 1980s -- on a cable channel, maybe, and I remember seeing parts of it a few times if I was home for lunch and thinking, "I should watch this, when I have time, it's just my style of show..."

Jonathan and Jennifer Hart solve crimes and are beautiful.  Even their dog is beautiful -- and sweet.  That animal sits by them, or between them, and seems to understand what they are talking about, & just looks adoring.  What a love bug -- what a face.

Every episode has a mystery that needs to be solved, and on a rather frequent basis someone will be trying to kill one of the Harts on a rooftop.  It's quite adventurous.

        Light, droll humor is interwoven through the dialogue -- often turning up unexpectedly.  Altogether, components of the show's style create an effect that is otherworldly -- like it's a detective fairy tale, or something.

The clothes and jewelry are terrific -- the costume designer responsible for the looks on the show is Nolan Miller (Dynasty, Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Hotel).

        "Princess" phones appear in the show often -- the fancy ones that look like antiques...?  Those were a new enthusiasm in the late '70s and early '80s.  One of my roommates had one.

It was that Sidney Sheldon - Aaron Spelling - Leonard Goldberg TV Era in L.A.

Doing some scriptwriting and directing on Hart to Hart was Tom Mankiewicz, son of Joseph Mankiewicz, who made the classic films A Letter To Three Wives, and All About Eve.

-30-

the uneasy edge, in modeling

 

Veronica Lake

    movie actress of the 1940s

----------------------- [excerpt from Jerry Hall: My life in pictures] -----------------

In Paris in 1973, Helmut Newton was the top photographer.  He was producing haunting, seductive, shocking photographs for French Vogue and Photo magazine.  Helmut's photos (which are reproduced here from original tearsheets) were both distinctive and stylised.  

There was a buzz about his work; he was inspiring not only to photographers, but also to filmmakers, artists and fashion designers and I longed to work with him.  Helmut had created a world inhabited by powerful, glamorous, sexy women.  He had been brought up in Berlin in the thirties and early memories of his glamorous mother's style of chiffon and lace, her furs and perfume, influenced him.

        Helmut was part-Jewish and had escaped from Germany during the war.  He moved to Australia, where he met his wife, June.  They had married young, and were very much in love when I met them 26 years later.

        I first met Helmut at the Club Sept, the happening club in Paris in the early seventies, where we were introduced by my friend Antonio Lopez.  I wore a gold satin forties vintage suit and a blue ostrich feather boa from the Mesquite Sewing Centre.  

My waist-length hair had been pin-curled, producing a thick wave and I wore red lipstick and gold glitter eye shadow.  Helmut asked me to pose for him for Photo magazine the next day and I was thrilled.  I arrived at his studio at 11 am -- no-one started work early in those days.  We grabbed a taxi and went to Pigalle; the slightly seedy part of town, where there were a lot of sex shops.  

We stopped at one and Helmut and the sales assistant chose a lot of S&M outfits and handed them to me to try on behind a curtain.  They were mostly bits of leather and harness and I felt very uneasy about them and kept saying, 'No, they're too small'.  Finally, I tried on a few things that fitted and Helmut chose some whips and handcuffs to go with them.

        We went back to the studio where he had a hair stylist and make-up artist Jacques Clement waiting.  Helmut's wife June was there, she was very friendly and I started to feel a bit more relaxed about it all.  Helmut was very particular about my hair and make-up; he wanted me to have matte red lipstick, dark eyes and forties Veronica Lake-style hair.

Jacques Clement transformed me; I looked like a Hollywood star from the old black-and-white movies that I had grown up dreaming about.  My hair was perfection; it's still my favourite hairstyle.  Helmut was pleased, but very particular.  To complete the look, he said, my fingernails needed to be painted red.

        When I was ready I was given very high heels, fishnets, a leather pointed bra, leather hot pants and waist cincher.  I went on the set and Helmut gave me a long bullwhip, which I proceeded to crack.  I didn't feel that Helmut was interested in me sexually, but I could see that he was clicking into some fantasy of his own.  

He seemed very pleased with me, but didn't want me to smile or laugh.  The more cross and haughty I looked, the more excited he got.  We did a few other outfits with various whips and paddles and handcuffs, and then he gave me something that looked like a horse bridle to put on next.  

        I burst into tears and he looked shocked and said, 'Please don't cry, I hate it when models cry, you're ruining your make-up'.  He asked me what was wrong and I said, 'I don't want to do porn -- I want to be in Vogue'.  He said, 'Silly girl, this isn't porn, it's art'.  Then he said, 'If Vogue is what you want, we will do that next'.

        He kept his word.  A few weeks later we did the cover of French Vogue Beauty.  Helmut also did an extraordinary shoot for Vogue Beauty, of me with a raw steak on my eye -- the idea was to show readers how to cure a black eye, and it made for a very dramatic picture.

        Helmut, June and I became very good friends.  We worked together for over 30 years and travelled the world together, working in different locations for French and American Vogue.  We had a wonderful, warm relationship and enjoyed many terrific dinners together.  And we produced some beautiful photographs.

__________________________

-30-

good ol' Yah-Vess

 

Jerry Hall in an Opium fragrance ad, 1977

Yesterday here, discussing linear or nonlinear autobiographies, I was trying to describe how Jerry Hall's My life in pictures breaks out from a chronological line sometimes to talk about particular subjects:  example -- in Chapter 2, "Paris," as her modeling career gets going, she has a segment on photographer Helmut Newton, and another on designer Yves Saint Laurent.

        These are followed, in Chapter 3, with a series of back-to-back paragraphs about seven photographers she posed for, and her experience with their work and their style -- all accompanied by startling and unique pictures.

------------------- [excerpt] --------------

Yves Saint Laurent:  A Very Special Designer

When the film Belle du Jour came out in 1967 the fashion world was electrified by the fact that Yves Saint Laurent had designed all the dresses.  In this scandalous erotic film, Catherine Deneuve plays a bourgeois housewife who has a secret life as a daytime prostitute, just for fun.  It gave a double life to luxury clothes.

        When I arrived in Paris, I was invited to model for Yves Saint Laurent and then given a contract to model his designs.  I appeared in all his catwalk shows, and was thrilled to be asked to do the first photo campaign for his new perfume, Opium.    The photographs were taken by Helmut Newton (and are reproduced here as magazine tearsheets) and the campaign was a huge success.

        Yves was a genius and a charming fragile man.  I got to know him well, because as part of my contract, I had to attend high profile parties and events with him -- always dressed in couture YSL, of course.

        Yves always made you feel as if your opinion mattered.  He used to call his design studio 'The House of Love'.  He wanted to know, did you like the outfit?  Did you feel good in it?  He was very sensitive; if you thought a dress might look better slightly different, all you had to do was hold it or lift it a certain way and he would pick up on that and change it and in that way you felt you were contributing and collaborating.  He loved women and he wanted you to be really happy and to think that your outfit was just the best.

I modelled in all of his shows.  The last catwalk show I did, in 2002, was a retrospective of his work in Paris.  Yves had all the models who'd appeared in his clothes throughout the years, Catherine Deneuve, Veruschka, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell and many, many others.  

We showed clothes from the sixties, seventies and eighties.  His health was really failing by then and he died a few years later, but I will always remember him as a lovely man. ------------ [end / excerpt]

________________________________

        When I was going to school in Boston, I bought a fragrance by YSL.  (For some reason it was available at a price I could afford -- not anymore!)  I really liked it, and when another freshman girl asked me about it, I showed her the bottle and said it was,

"Yah - VESS Saint LORR - ent."

She let me know that was pronounced

"Eve Saint Lorr - AHNT."

She didn't tease me about it, or act superior compared to my lack of sophistication.  She just gave me the information.

-30-

strollin' on the boulevards of Paris

 

        Ah! -- I found the video where the legal expert references Samantha in "Bewitched"!

on You Tube

title:  Legal expert reacts to Trump's inaccurate claim about declassifying

uploader / channel:  CNN

        It's at 7:03.

_____________________________________________

        While on this subject (Elizabeth Montgomery, not Donald Trump) I checked Amazon, for biographies of the actress, just out of curiosity -- the customer reviews on one of the books were mostly unfavorable -- one reader addressed the author, writing, "Please don't write ANY more biographies -- or you'll be turned into a TOAD!"

        hahaha  

--------------------- Some of the criticisms of the book were based on its being "non-linear."  Not in chronological order.  

I started thinking about -- instead of biographies, where an author writes about the life of another person, autobiographies, where a person writes about their own life.

Four of my favorite autobiographies are

Chronicles, by Bob Dylan

Life, by Keith Richards

Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures (by Jerry Hall)

I, Tina - by Tina Turner and Kurt Loder.

Tina's and Keith Richards' books are "linear," or, told in chronological order.

Jerry Hall's book and Bob Dylan's are both somewhat chronological, but they depart from that framework to talk about certain subjects.

        I remember when Jerry Hall's book was coming out, I read an article where she originally had a deal with a big publisher, they gave her an advance $$, but then they wanted to guide her about what to write.  And of course they then leaned on her to give "dirt on Mick Jagger."  

So she gave the money back to them and wrote it her way, and found a different publisher.

-30-

casting spells

 

Last week when Donald Trump said he could declassify government documents by thinking about it, one commentator said it's like he believes he can twitch his nose or blink his eyes like Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched and make things happen... he kind of got Bewitched mixed with I Dream of Jeannie -- it was Barbara Eden in the latter show, who made magic by blinking her eyes.

(booiink!)

All those magic sound effects in both of those shows are totally in my memory forever!

-30-

Peppermint Lounge

 

[excerpt from Tina Turner's autobiography] ---------------

1974 ♫ 

Ann Cain:  Ike needed somebody then, because the office was a mess -- there were hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks lying around.  

I had set up Ike's business system originally, so I tried to untangle things.  

The way he worked -- with no manager or anything -- he could make millions from one hit record.  And he had access to lots more.  He'd take bank loans just to establish credit -- start with a twenty-thousand-dollar loan, maybe, take the money and put it in his office safe for a month, then take it back.  He kept doing this with bigger and bigger loans.  

After a while, he could walk into Wells Fargo and get a million dollars easy.  So he had all this money.  But he made all these bad investments with it.

1961  ♫

        In 1961, a new dance craze began sweeping the nation.  Dance-floor fads were nothing unique, of course -- over the years there had been the lindy, the jitterbug, the bunny hop, the cha-cha.  But the twist was different.  Not because it was a black musical phenomenon that went on to make truckloads of money for watchful white entrepreneurs -- that was an old story in the music business.  

The twist was unique in that it marked that curious cultural moment when teenage kicks -- a symbol of all things hip and happening and, above all, youthful -- became the obsession of the social mainstream.  Essentially, it was the beginning of "The Sixties."

        The twist soon spawned a plethora of free-form dances distinguished by an absence of any bodily contact between the dancers.  First came the pony (Checker's "Pony Time" topped the pop charts in March 1961), then the fly, the slop, the Bristol stomp, the mashed potato, the hully gully.  

The nation, now led by John F. Kennedy, the youngest president in its history, was going dance mad.  And the original twist refused to fade.  In New York mainstream celebrities of every stripe -- from Norman Mailer and Jackie Kennedy to, it was said, Greta Garbo -- began flocking to a tacky dance club on West Forty-fifth Street called the Peppermint Lounge, where Joey Dee and the Starliters pumped out nonstop twist music.  

        By January 1962, Chubby Checker's version of the twist was topping the pop charts once again, with "Peppermint Twist," by Joey Dee and the Starliters, lodged firmly in the number-two slot.

        This dance mania provided the perfect context for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, which traded in spectacle as much as it did sounds.  As each new twist-based dance appeared, Tina and the Ikettes, rehearsing endless hours backstage and after shows, would get it down and add it to their act.  

...In the wake of a second big hit, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine," Ike -- a do-it-yourselfer from the outset, and still free of such costly business trappings as managers and producers -- was flush with cash.  In 1962, he decided the time was ripe to move, at last, to California.  The St. Louis scene had been good to him, but by now, with two Top 30 pop hits under his belt, he had outgrown it.

        In L.A., Ike could hustle with the big boys.

________________________

{I, Tina.  written by Tina Turner with Kurt Loder.  Copyright 1986, AVON Books.}

-30-

the Southern District of New York has a long memory

 

Tina Turner, Ike Turner

        I find myself a little bit befuddled by the idea of business plans.  Or maybe I should write it as, Business Plans.

        From what I've heard and read, if you're starting a business and you need to borrow money from a bank, you have to have a business plan, which you've written (typed) and show it to the bank -- they see you have a realistic plan to make profits, and they loan you the money.

        Or -- they say, This isn't realistic, it doesn't look like it could work, and they don't loan you the money because they don't want to lose money.

The part of it I don't understand is, you can write a Business Plan -- I could write one right now -- (researching first, of course) -- but how would I know what the business could develop into, or how much it could make, without doing it first?

I guess you wouldn't know, you would make an educated guess -- is that it?

        Maybe my issue isn't business plans, but learning styles.  My learning style, I don't know necessarily how I am going to do something until I do it.  I find out in the process.

        I remember in childhood -- maybe around 5th or 6th grade, playing board games -- Parcheesi, Clue -- and when trying a new board game at my neighbor's house, and reading the directions for how to play it, I was left thinking, "What?!"

        So we just figured out how to start the game, and then we learned how to play it by playing it.

Someone I know refinishes or paints furniture and makes nails (decorated artificial fingernails) and puts her products on social media accounts -- Instagram; Twitter; Facebook, etc. and then people buy them.

        I imagine she just puts them up there and see what happens.  But then for that, you probably wouldn't need a bank loan, so you don't have to give them a Business Plan.  Right?

But even for a bigger business where it makes a lot of money -- I had met someone who had built up a very profitable business and I asked him if he had it all in mind when he started, several decades before -- he said, incredulously, "No -- do you think I planned all this?"

        Though still, if he got a bank loan at the beginning, he probably wrote a Business Plan for the vision he had then.  But not for all the additions and changes in the future years, right?  Because how could you know...?

______________________________

And this puzzlement recalled that news story from last night where Donald Trump is being sued by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) -- it's alleged that when requesting loans, he was overstating the value of properties he owned, to let himself be eligible for higher amounts of money.  (Apparently he said an apartment he had was 30,000 square feet when it was really only 11,000 square feet.)

        And -- this is not the same, but similar:  the Trump case reminded me of something Ike Turner used to do:  in order to build credit so that he could borrow larger amounts of money, he would go to the bank, borrow money (maybe a hundred thousand dollars), bring it home and put it in a safe for a week -- or a month, or something -- and then take the money out of the safe and pay the bank back, in full.

        Then do the same thing again with a larger amount of money....  If I remember correctly, he built a recording studio -- Bolic Sound -- with the money he was able to borrow.

After I read that, years ago, I spoke to someone I knew who was a small business owner, I told him about what I read and I asked, Is it OK to do that?  And he said No.

        I thought it sounded -- too easy, or something -- like, wouldn't everyone do it, and then every person in America would have a line of credit worth a billion dollars or whatever.  (Would that be good?  How would that work?)

Although -- come to think of it, I don't believe Ike Turner had any legal trouble over that -- he spent time in prison at one point, but I think that was for drugs.

        Maybe the serial borrowing-and-paying-back to get more credit isn't against the law, but just not a good practice.  (As Ross Geller would say, "it's frowned upon.")

Ike Turner had some serious problems as a person, but he was also a musical genius:  he did the arranging of all their songs....

♪♪ ♫

...You take the good -- along with the bad

Sometimes you're happy, and sometimes you're sad

(One more time!)

You know you love him, you can't understand (Tell me 'bout it!)

Why he treat you like he do, when he's such a good man?

-30-

a wonderful evening

 

foreground:  Jerry Hall, King Charles III

I've been reading Jerry Hall's book, My life in pictures, and then lately all this British monarchy stuff -- the two can be combined:

------------ [My life in pictures excerpt] ------------- I've been an ambassador for the Prince's Trust for over twenty years.  I'm a big fan of Prince Charles.  The charity helps disadvantaged young people to find direction and I turn up at events and host fundraising shows.  My children have worked for the Trust too; Jimi helped them with scouting locations for a film. --------------- [end / excerpt]

[another excerpt] --------------- Bryan had such a lovely, funny, playful side; but after a year together I was seeing less and less of the Bryan that I had fallen in love with....

He became very critical of me.  

He wanted me to dress like Kim Novak in Vertigo -- in a grey suit, with pearls around my neck and my hair in a French twist.  

When the two of us were alone he would spend hours staring off into space and when we went to dinner he wouldn't let me talk.  He became jealous and started going through my handbag and finding cards or telephone numbers on bits of paper that I'd been given at parties, then questioning me about them.  

        I started to spend a lot of time in my dressing room crying.  It was a lonely time, I felt the dreams I'd had about our life together were crumbling.

...Back in New York, I threw myself into work.  Bryan was touring Japan and Australia for several months and he wrote me a letter saying it was too expensive to call.  Then I heard from a hairdresser at work that Bryan was having an affair with a model in Japan....

        ...Mick was wearing a white silk suit and a red silk shirt.  He made me laugh all night.  After dinner we went to some live music clubs and we ended up at the Bottom Line, watching Lou Reed perform and then going on to Studio 54, the happening place.  

It was a wonderful evening -- May 21, 1977 -- the day Mick and I got together.  We would celebrate that day for the next 23 years.  Mick was gentle, charming, funny and fascinating.  I loved the way he didn't seem to care a hoot what people thought of him.  He was confident and cool and always in control.

        At the end of the evening he dropped off Ara and another friend first.  When we stopped I went to say goodbye and then realised we weren't at my place.  Mick said it was his house and to please come in for a cup of tea.  

I did, and from that moment on, Mick laid siege to me.  He started sending me flowers and getting me invited to dinners where he would be seated next to me.  And I was flattered.  He was witty and bright and utterly persistent.

        I started an affair with him, on the condition that it would be over at the end of the summer when Bryan came back.  I told Mick that I couldn't see him every day, only every other day.  It was a futile attempt to protect my heart, because I was falling in love with him. ---------- [end / excerpt]

_____________________________

___________________

a poem

stories well told

A story told with sincerity

and well-chosen detail, 

descriptions

floating and bouncing

like pleasant butterflies;

Studio 54, The Bottom Line,

Lou Reed,

and Mick Jagger

funkily dropping in

for the atmosphere.

Stories belong to

everyone who wants to listen

-------------------------------------------------------

-30-

the people dreamed of Queen Diana

 

So many articles and videos about Queen Elizabeth II and the monarchy, and King Charles III.

        So many Comments!...

~ Actually there remains a huge role for modern constitutional monarchs, and that is, ironically, the maintenance of true democracy in their countries and to set an example to others to do so; a function that is apparently becoming more important in this century.  Indeed, in the case of Spain, it was a monarch that actually transitioned a country to a democracy.

~ Yes.  Spain brought back their royal family and established democracy in the form of a constitutional monarchy with King Juan Carlos after many years of dictatorship under Francisco Franco.

~ These critics of the monarchy should take a look at my country.  Right wing extremism threatens democracy.  Republicans try to suppress voting rights and use religious hogwash to attack human identity and women's health.  

We ban books and whitewash history.  

We're gun crazy and elect morons.  

We send suffering migrants across the country like a practical joke.  Be great if our biggest concern was another country's monarchy that most people there seem to be ok with for now.

_____________________________

_________________________________

I read somewhere recently in this flurry of monarchy-discussion that the British monarchy was created in the first place because the barons used to fight each other and kill each other to see who would be in charge next.  The monarchy was there to put an end to that barbarism and bring stability to the society, economy, etc.

        (Watching The Crown, how many times haven't we heard "stability," right?)

------------------------------------------------

King Charles III

        One guy under a Washington Post article commented, "chuck was publicly having sexual relations with a married woman, and was unspeakably cruel to his actual wife.  so there is that."

        When he says "publicly" -- I don't think they were having sex outdoors with people walking by, but he means all their friends knew, that sort of "public."

------------------------- I read a comment under a you tube video which I thought precisely and rather brilliantly broke down and analyzed the Charles-Diana chapter in the monarchy's modern history:

~ She loved him at first - very much - watch the news clips from the time - it's obvious.  She really was a romantic and nineteen so first love and all that.  To give him his due he probably thought he could love her or at least she was good enough - but of the two she definitely got the burnt end of the stick.  

Marrying into that sideshow to a man she loved who quickly became bored with her and her 'needy clingy' ways once the true scope of her new reality became obvious - and who expected her to play the game and allow him to go back to the woman he preferred and stay dignified and silent - I really don't think that was how she hoped things would turn out.

        It was her being so popular which led to the original jealousy - not her fault she fit the mould of a fairy princess way better than he ever fit the prince - not his fault either - but of the two he certainly had the age on her which would have led one to hope he might have had some emotional maturity to deal with the unfairness of the media latching onto her and leaving him for dead - and not blame her as if it was her big plan to marry him and steal his limelight.

She was pretty much still a child when they married while he was a 30-plus well travelled man of the world who'd had many loves so him then behaving like a spoiled child having his toy taken off him was ... well, disappointing.  

Hardly surprising - just disappointing - you would have thought at some point on the downward spiral he might have thought that since he was the one who dragged a child into that insanity and madness - he should have taken some responsibility and at least tried to make the brutality of the whole thing a little more bearable - 

but he just let it eat her alive and added his jealousy and bitterness to the load.  

Very human and he is certainly not the worst person in the world by any means, and goodness knows the entire royal organization has ruined his life in many ways, so I certainly don't hate him and think he did the best he could - even if it was a poor effort.  

But, it must have been a bloody awful life for a woman who thought she's fallen in love with her prince and was about to have a fairy-tale life.  [end / Comment]

imo,

Diana would have made a wonderful queen.

-30-

try sometimes you get what you need

 

--------------- [excerpt, Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures] --------------------

Every summer holiday we were sent to our grandparents for three months.

        Pearl and Oscar Sheffield were our mother's parents and we loved being with them, because at their home we could be like a normal family.  They never raised their voices or seemed to have a cross word to say to one another, they always seemed to enjoy each other's company.  

We had meals together at regular times and we had conversations.  Pearl loved playing cards and dominoes, and we would play and laugh together.  Although she was very religious and strict, she was also fair and we knew where we stood with her.

        Their home was a little wooden plank-board house consisting of one bedroom, a living room and kitchen, and a big wrap-around wooden covered porch where Linda got to sleep on a bed, while us four youngest slept on a pallet in the front room.

        Granny was always complaining that Mama hadn't taught us anything and would ask us 'How did we think you are gonna get a man?'  She taught us to cook and bake bread, how to mend and sew and eight different kinds of needlepoint, which was extremely useful for Terry and me as we always ended up getting all the hand-me-downs.

        We used to love to go with our Grandad to give the chickens their molasses.  We'd sit on the back of his flatbed truck and stop at each little chicken house and pour out their feed and some molasses syrup.  It was sweet and sticky and we'd lick it off our fingers.

------------------------

My aunts, Daddy's sisters, were very beautiful and a bit wild.  Aunt Pearl had lost all her hair, through diphtheria, and she had wigs of every colour.  We loved trying on her wigs and would howl with laughter at the way we looked in them.

         We had a little gang of girlfriends and we often spent the weekends at our friend Karen McRae's house.  Karen had a poster of Mick Jagger on her closet door, we all thought he was cute.

________________________

-30-

once a fair and stately palace

 

Mick Jagger; Jerry Hall

goal:  to be more like Queen Elizabeth

and

Zelensky:  "I am not afraid of you!"

_________________________________

---------------- [excerpt from Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures -- copyright 2010, Quadrille Publishing] ------------------------

        I had very little self-esteem.  I never considered myself good-looking and at junior high, I often got bullied.  They called me 'tall Hall', and the boys used to shout 'string bean'.  I was the gawky, geeky kid who didn't quite cut it with the in-crowd.

        We had very few books at home, but at some point my father had bought the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe.  It was a Reader's Digest special and it soon became my companion.  

I memorized many of the poems and when Daddy was on the rampage, I would hide in the bushes out back and recite Poe's poems over and over while red ants bit my feet.  I could always rely on Poe to get me through hard times and I developed a love of poetry as a result.

        The idea of becoming a model started when I was invited to a house party one weekend by a friend whose parents had gone away.  A boy there gave me some LSD, without telling me what it was.  I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out.  I didn't know what was happening to me -- all I remember is that I looked at myself in the mirror and thought:  'You're really beautiful.  

You should become a model.'  It was the first time that I had ever thought that. -------------------------------------------------- [end / excerpt]

_________________________________

When they were children growing up, Jerry Hall + her four sisters went to stay with their maternal grandparents every summer for three months.  In the book it says their "Granny loved going to funerals (even if she didn't know the deceased)."

In her book Jerry included a poem she wrote about this subject.  I like it -- to me, it's quite evocative.

Strangers' Funerals

My grandmother liked to go to strangers' funerals

Whenever she heard about one we would go

She used to say 'Well, so and so knew them'

And it's nice to have a good turn out

We drove in her old oldsmobile

While she was swattin' flys

To little white plankboard churches

In the middle of nowhere

Fifteen people in attendance

There was an open casket

We filed by

And looked at the dead waxen face

And listened to the sermon

Sometimes we cried

When we got back home

Our grandad was sitting

In the same spot on the porch

Rolling a cigarette

'You girls enjoy yourselves?'

------------------------------------------------------

-30-

mystique and determination

 

"Keep calm and carry on" -- a favorite British saying.  I've thought of this phrase a few times lately, while trying to think of different ways to make myself more like the Queen, when she was alive.

On You Tube, there's a video --

Tina Brown on the Queen's Mystique

uploader / channel:  CBS Sunday Morning

Five-and-a-half minutes, it's interesting.

On Netflix, there's a limited series called The Business of Drugs.  It's educational and horrifying at the same time.

___________________________________

Yesterday the Washington Post had an article about the war in Ukraine -- Ukraine was having a good week.

reader comments:

~ Now Vladimir is cursing

He's losing in Ukraine

Thought it would be piece of cake

It's driving him insane

Oligarchs are angry now

Their yachts and mansions gone

Putie got his Waterloo

Zelensky brought him down

~ Zelensky already said Ukraine won't accept any peace that has Ukraine giving up territory.  Putin has lost, it is only a question of how expensive he wants to make his loss at this point.

~ The real end game here, the ONLY viable way to find a truly lasting peace that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty, is to eliminate Vladimir Putin from the equation.  My sense is that every Intelligence Agency in the world gets this, too, and they are doing everything in their power to make it happen.  

This is no guarantee of success, but I am guessing (hoping) that Putin is more vulnerable today than he has ever been.

~ Sounds like a job for the Israelis.

~ While Putin is a horrible military strategist, he is ex-KGB, and he does know how to protect himself.  I think that even Mossad could not get him.

~ I said this the other day:  Israeli Intelligence community + CIA + MI6 -- Git 'er done!

~ This must be a terrible blow to the Russian psyche because militarism is the essence of their national character.  Russia might be backward, poor, cruel and ugly, but it always comforted itself that it was really tough.

        I mean this is a country that since 1945 has had about 46 closed "military cities" that even ordinary Russians can't enter, all devoted to dreaming up exotic ways to kill and dominate foreigners.  And this failed war against a much smaller neighbour is the sum total of their achievement.

        Without their militarism, they have nothing left.

~ Russian militarism has been a plague on the world for at least 400 years.

~ When your army has to steal bikes in order to flee.....

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♪ ♫ American Woman

 

        I went on You Tube and typed in American Beauty (the 1999 movie) and found that some other people shared my puzzlement and ideas about the Annette Bening character cleaning the house right before the "Open House" for prospective buyers.

comments:

~ Is that standard operating procedure, the agents have to clean the house themselves?

~ How come she has to clean the house herself?  why can't she hire a cleaner instead

~ I was watching this movie and thought "She should've done that last night."

~ I kind of like this house.  But she probably should have cleaned it up prior to open house day.

~ If she cleans it herself that will save her money doesn't have to pay someone for something she can do

~ The woman is a massively uptight perfectionist / control freak.  It would be completely in character for her to do it because she doesn't think a cleaner would do a good enough job

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(I am not the only one worrying about these things...)

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this is my street. this is my life.

 

Annette Bening in American Beauty

The New York Times ran a Queen Elizabeth II story -- the sub-heading said, "she ruled for seven decades..."

---------------------- She did not rule, she reigned.

_____________________________

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My first thought today was that in the movie American Beauty I had believed / assumed that an act perpetrated near the end was done by one particular character in the story -- but first thing today I thought, "I might have been wrong, it might not have been that person who did it, it might have been another person -- a certain one -- who did it."

        I have movies playing while I'm doing things, so I miss some of the visual information that is unaccompanied by dialogue.  Went back and watched, looking at the screen, the end part -- I was right!  I was wrong!  It was the other person.

        That movie is crazy.  And I have a sense that it's probably awash in mega-symbolism that I'm not even picking up on....

        Wikipedia has info on American Beauty -- they actually have it organized in the form of an outline, with Roman numerals, like in school.  I kind of wanted to read it, but then I don't want to, I want to re-watch the film enough times so that I can figure out everything possible on my own, without reading the thoughts of others.

        Then when I can't find anything else, put anything else together, then I can read the Wikipedia Outline.  (And probably get totally intimidated....)

I noticed, after the second viewing (listening) that the characters sometimes speak in a fake-sounding tone.  And sometimes they talk in a more sincere way.

        So that's probably because -- when it sounds real, the character is being real, and when it sounds fake, the character is being fake, or sarcastic.  Why?  Because they are frustrated, unhappy, bored, they feel ill-used, and like no one understands them or cares.  In the one family, the husband and wife both seem to suffer from what the French call ennui.

        The family next door to them -- Yikes, ennui would be an improvement.

One complaint, and one question.

Complaint:  that people could hit their kids, like that.  It's revolting.

Question:  In one scene the wife, played by Annette Bening, seems to be preparing a vacant house to show to prospective buyers.  She has her Doing-Business clothes on:  a nice dress (or a suit, I don't know) and high heels and she's -- dusting and scrubbing and vacuuming...  Is this normal?

        I have never worked selling real estate, but it seems like, if the house needed to be cleaned you would hire that done ahead of time, not the day the clients are coming.  Or if you're literally doing it yourself, you would wear casual clothes and do it the day before.  And then wear your dressier clothes on the day you show the house to people.

        I was baffled.

(Oh God, maybe it's a symbol, and I didn't get it....)

__________________________________________________

Oh, and I forgot to say one thing about this movie:  there is content in it which some viewers may find uncomfortable or offensive, so -- it isn't for everybody.

        Some of it is uncomfortable to me, but what I like about it is how it is so interestingly and artistically presented.

        (Doing this "disclaimer" here, I'm starting to sound like Netflix:

"nudity, violence, drug use, foul language, smoking"

[are these threats, or promises? - lol])

-30-

fifteen prime ministers

 

Coronation, 1953

One of my favorite films is Criminal (2005 - John C. Reilly, Diego Luna, Maggie Gyllenhaal).  It's based on an Argentine film with the title Nine Queens (Nueve Reinas).

        "Nine Queens" makes me think of the 15 prime ministers who served under Queen Elizabeth II.

Churchill

Anthony Eden

Harold Macmillan

Alec Douglas-Home

Harold Wilson

Edward Heath

James Callaghan

Margaret Thatcher

John Major

Tony Blair

Gordon Brown

David Cameron

Theresa May

Boris Johnson

Liz Truss

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Washington Post Reader Comments

-------------------------------------------------

~ Truly the end of an Era.  Winston Churchill was PM, Harry S. Truman was the US President when she assumed the throne!  Television was so nascent at the time, that some hallucination is required to make out the images on the video.

RIP, QEII.

~ "the end of an Era"

And a bridge between eras...consider this:  Her first PM (Churchill) was born in 1874....her last PM (Truss) was born in 1975.

~ Wow.  I hadn't realized that.  That's part of the value of the British monarchy; it's a link between the eras.

        There is a ceremony at the Tower of London called the ceremony of the keys, in which a guard of six presents the keys every night.  Obviously, it is now just a formality, as the security at the Tower is very high tech.

        But the membership of the group of six is staggered.  There are Wardmen A, B, C, D, E, and F, and when Wardman A retires, a new person is added.  So there is an unbroken chain of people going back to 1078.

~ Chris New York

I have no use or admiration for the monarchy, but she did, and she did it right, she was a strong woman who served and loved her people, RIP.

~ kat1813

I disagree.  I think the stability the monarchy brings, especially in crises or periods of change, can't / shouldn't be underestimated.  RIP, Queen Elizabeth.

~ Condolences to the UK and the Commonwealth countries.  Whether for or against the monarchy, I don't think you can deny that this woman spent her whole life in service to her country.

Would that many of our leaders be so diligent about abiding by the oaths they took.

RIP, Queen Elizabeth II.

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"straighten up and fly right"

 

"These are the stakes!  To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark.  We must either love each other, or we must die."

~ Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. President 1963 - 1968

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times

Opinion

Paul Krugman

Why Did Republicans Become So Extreme?

________________________________

Many political analysts have spent years warning that the G.O.P. was becoming an extremist, anti-democratic party.

Long before Republicans nominated Donald Trump for president, let alone before Trump refused to acknowledge electoral defeat, the congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein declared that the party had become "an insurgent outlier" that rejected "facts, evidence and science" and didn't accept the legitimacy of political opposition.

In 2019 an international survey of experts rated parties around the world on their commitment to basic democratic principles and minority rights.  The G.O.P., it turns out, looks nothing like center-right parties in other Western countries.  What it resembles, instead, are authoritarian parties like Hungary's Fidesz or Turkey's A.K.P.

Such analyses have frequently been dismissed as over-the-top and alarmist.  Even now, with Republicans expressing open admiration for Viktor Orban's one-party rule, I encounter people insisting that the G.O.P. isn't comparable to Fidesz.  

        (Why not?  Republicans have been gerrymandering state legislatures to lock in control, no matter how badly they lose the popular vote, which is right out of Orban's playbook.)  

        Yet as Edward Luce of The Financial Times recently pointed out, "at every juncture over the last 20 years the America 'alarmists' have been right."

And over the past few days we've received even more reminders of just how extreme Republicans have become.  The Jan. 6 hearings have been establishing, in damning detail, that the attack on the Capitol was part of a broader scheme to overturn the election, directed from the top.  A Republican-stuffed Supreme Court has been handing down nakedly partisan rulings on abortion and gun control.  

        And there may be more shocks to come; keep your eyes on what the court is likely to do to the government's ability to protect the environment.

The question that has been bothering me -- aside from the question of whether American democracy will survive -- is why.  Where is this extremism coming from?

Comparisons with the rise of fascism in Europe between the wars are inevitable but not all that helpful.  For one thing, bad as he was, Trump wasn't another Hitler or even another Mussolini.  True, Republicans like Marco Rubio routinely call Democrats Marxists, and it's tempting to match their hyperbole.  The reality, however, is bad enough to not need exaggeration.

And there's another problem with comparisons to the rise of fascism.  Right-wing extremism in interwar Europe arose from the rubble of national catastrophes:  defeat in World War I (or, in the case of Italy, Pyrrhic victory that felt like defeat), hyperinflation, depression.

Nothing like that has happened here.  Yes, we had a severe financial crisis in 2008, followed by a sluggish recovery.  Yes, we've been seeing regional economic divergence, with some ugly consequences -- unemployment, social decline, even  suicides and addiction -- in the regions left behind.  But America went through much worse in the past without seeing one of its major parties turn its back on democracy.

Also, the Republican turn toward extremism began during the 1990s.  Many people, I believe, have forgotten the political craziness of the Clinton years -- the witch hunts and wild conspiracy theories (Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster!), the attempts to blackmail Bill Clinton into policy concessions by shutting down the government and more.  

        And all of this was happening during what were widely regarded as good years, with most Americans believing that the country was on the right track.

It's a puzzle.  I've been spending a lot of time lately looking for historical precursors -- cases in which right-wing extremism rose even in the face of peace and prosperity.  And I think I've found one:  the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

It's important to realize that while this organization took the name of the post-Civil War group, it was actually a new movement -- a white nationalist movement, to be sure, but far more widely accepted and less of a pure terrorist organization.  And it reached the height of its power -- it effectively controlled several states -- amid peace and an economic boom.

What was this new K.K.K. about?  I've been reading Linda Gordon's "The Second Coming of the K.K.K.:  The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition," which portrays a "politics of resentment" driven by the backlash of white, rural and small-town Americans against a changing nation.  The K.K.K. hated immigrants and "urban elites"; it was characterized by "suspicion of science" and "a larger anti-intellectualism."  Sound familiar?

OK, the modern G.O.P. isn't as bad as the second K.K.K.  But Republican extremism clearly draws much of its energy from the same sources.

And because G.O.P. extremism is fed by resentment against the very things that, as I see it, truly make America great -- our diversity, our tolerance for difference -- it cannot be appeased or compromised with.  It can only be defeated.

_____________________________________

2 reader comments, with answers from the columnist

RFM

Boston

This isn't the whole answer, but I often think the Iraq War gets short shrift in conversations about the insanity that has gripped the country the past 15 yrs (and which the shameless, criminal GOP has exploited).  

A completely unnecessary war, built on lies, profitable for the powerful and already-rich, and responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, many of them from regions that would become Trump strongholds.  

Oh, and with hardly a single good result.  

Doesn't this sound like a recipe for disaster?

Paul Krugman

NYT

@RFM The radicalization started long before Iraq, but elite lies and failures -- not just Iraq but the financial crisis -- have undermined the credibility of the old establishment, which doesn't help.  Right now I'm actually wondering about the political fallout from the crypto crash.

Neville Crabbe

St. Andrews, N.B., Canada

These winds are blowing north and they're frightful.  This column does a good job identifying a historical precedent, but it doesn't get the 'why'.  Why has one party in a great country filled with kind and generous people become champions of inequality and packmans of meanness and unreasonableness?

Paul Krugman

nyt

@Neville Crabbe I tried to get at the why, but maybe not successfully.  I think it's the blowback against demographic and social change, which seems especially threatening to people who hear about that change rather than experiencing it.  

For example, hostility to immigration is consistently highest in places with very few immigrants; where there are a lot of immigrants, like in New York or New Jersey, they start to look like, well, people.  

        The same was true in the 1920s.  For a while the KKK ruled Indiana, a state which at the time was 92 percent native-born whites.

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