Hoop Dreams

I was not an athletic or especially graceful child - the many dance classes I started then and have continued since were intended as a corrective - and I was always chosen last for kickball and other recess games. To my great shame, I was never able to do two specific things, besides that awful shimmying-up-a-rope test: cartwheels and hula-hooping.

Those who read this blog closely will recall that I previously said I wasn't interested in the latter activity; please forgive the fib, but the specific inability has haunted me. Periodically, in the decades since the first hoop I encountered clattered to the ground, I would encounter one, give it a try, and realize I still had no skills.

Well, thanks to the entertaining, pink-haired Miss Saturn, who offers a hula-hoop workshop via my new friends at the School of Burlesque, I have now fulfilled my childhood dream. I can spin a hoop for quite a long time, in opposite directions (I can even spin two at a time!), and I actually know a few tricks. I was so thrilled that I bought a large hoop, bedecked with sparkly tape, and brought it home on a crowded subway - entertaining in itself. Then I realized that I have nowhere to store it out of view (the colors don't match my black-and-white-and-red-all-over decor, though this blog does) and no single space large enough to practice in, but I always have the basement, or the park.

Next up, I think I'll try to learn to cartwheel (it looks like, if I go here, I could learn the rope-shimmy as a bonus). It's not as if I lack self-confidence, but perhaps knowing that I won't embarrass myself will make my fearful inner child shut up. (She was pretty vocal in Monday's post, but the meeting I was dreading turned out just fine.)

After that, maybe I'll learn persistence, and not just the persistence of memory. Where do you think they teach that? The School of Hard Knocks has not been all that helpful.

I saw Miss Saturn's act Saturday night at the Slipper Room, and she was spectacular. See for yourself.

The Member of the Wedding

"A second marriage," said Samuel Johnson, "is the triumph of hope over experience." This is a quotation I should have considered before my second wedding, which took place in a drive-up chapel in Reno, after a few margaritas and a stop at an ATM. (Fashion note: The bride wore a white Anne Fontaine swimsuit coverup and matching Keds.) Despite my request for a non-religious ceremony, the officiant decided no marital union, even one between a bitterly lapsed Episcopalian and a carol-despising Jew, was complete without a mention of Jesus.

The witness was my sister, then a mature-looking 11, so with an illegal signature and a violation of the Second Commandment, it's possible the whole thing was void from the start (an argument I considered, then rejected, during the discussions of the generous spousal support I wound up paying). It was, however, madcap in a way that seemed right for us. After all, we did get engaged in a Brazilian jewelry store.

On the way back to the home of the friends we were visiting, we waved to Reno's residents, pageant-queen style, from our borrowed convertible. But when we leapt into one of the guest room's twin beds to consummate, it turned out it was sheetless. That's when I started to cry.

Perhaps it was the margaritas wearing off. Or maybe I remembered that my new husband's second vow of everlasting love (this was his third) had been pledged at the San Francisco Opera House, in between Acts Two and Three of La Bohème, with all attendees dressed in black tie and red shoes.

Those are the sort of details I would have preferred to be recounting, just as I can remember all the details of my very modest but lovely first wedding in an apple orchard, except why I decided to marry the groom in the first place. But somehow the Napa wedding that #2 and I were going to have on our first anniversary never happened, nor did it on our fifth; and by our tenth, the support payments were over.

I was reminded of this not long ago when he sent me an elaborate script for a wedding ceremony at which he'll be officiating in a few weeks, for the grown son of friends. It seemed ironic to me, and I don't mean "rain on your wedding day" ironic. And not just because I once bought him a 1768 edition of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.

I did not grow up playing "wedding." I grew up playing "princess," far more satisfying in that there only has to be one of you and you can totally rule, yet you still get to dress up in something poufy. And I have always thought that obsessiveness about weddings happens most often to those who have not thrown many large-scale parties, as I have both personally and professionally. (I've also written for numerous bridal publications and their corporate overlords.) Weddings can be wonderful celebrations, including the four in my immediate family that I've been to, but in my case the resulting marriages haven't worked out that well. It's about who you're marrying, not how.

However, I am a product of my culture, and though I have successfully avoided seeing Bride Wars and the Sex and The City movie, I do have strong opinions about diamonds and dresses, and I think it's unfortunate that I see either as some kind of validation.

It will soon be 15 years since that night in Reno, and only two likely candidates for the party of the second part (not including foolish crushes) have showed up. Both are fiercely opposed to marriage, after dire experiences with their first wives 30 years ago. One recently attended his college friend's third wedding, which will probably confirm his opinion. I will be meeting the other's new flame tomorrow. I am very happy for him, but I have to confess that if she turns out to be The One, I'll wish them well, but... well, I'll listen to this.

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Wondering where the post title came from? Go here. Tired of me explaining my allusions? (My illusions - see above - are inexplicable.) Tell me off in the comments.

And They All Lived Happily Ever After

I am not generally privy to academic brouhahas, unless you count all the times I heard my English-professor dad complain about the chairman of his department when I was a child. Thus, I was unaware of the raging debate among scholars of folklore recounted in The Chronicle of Higher Education and picked up by the Times' Idea of the Day blog today.

The argument is between those who assert that fairy tales grew out of oral traditions and those who say they were actually written "in urban settings where such stories would appeal to people in rags exposed to riches around them." The discussion features a 16th-century Italian writer named Straparola (which would be an excellent burlesque name).

I side with those who believe in writers. Sure, Adam Lambert and other Cinderellas are already out there, but their stories, though oral tradition may well play a part (rimshot!), are entirely manufactured for the pleasure of an audience more likely than at any time in the last 75 years to be in rags.

I Wake To Sleep

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night, shopping on Amazon long after I'd found what I was looking for.

So, struggling to open my eyes this morning, I of course thought of
Theodore Roethke's awed and awe-inspiring villanelle,
"The Waking," which begins:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I last wrote a villanelle many slow wakings ago, when I was 16, and the sonorous beauty of the form (Dylan Thomas's better-known "Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night" is another example), which will now stay with me all day, is inspiring me to try another one.

But first I have to get some dog biscuits, and a duvet cover, and...

Every Picture Tells A Story

I have been thinking a lot about photography lately, and about how the photographer creates the world he or she captures through the lens, becoming the most important presence in it. Which led me back to Susan Sontag and her notion, expressed in her seminal essay On Photography. that the profusion of photographs in our lives has actually changed the way we see the world. (Sontag, of course, would probably have preferred that her thinking be called ovicular.)

We look at that world through its photographers' eyes, whether that photographer is Aunt Sadie, just back from China, or my longtime friend Brian Moss's pictures of strange and curious people (some NSFW) or the great Richard Avedon, who once said, "My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph. " As a subject I've always tried to look back into the lens, and through it to the person on the other side, but ultimately the moment is not mine.

Avedon is the subject of a new retrospective at ICP, and it's instructive to read the Times art critic's review as well as the fashion critic's appraisal; the former is outside the pictures, looking at them; the latter is inside them, looking out. And I'm not usually a fan of narrated slideshows, but this one, by the ICP's curators, is quite good. I'm looking forward to seeing the show.

With enough budget, photographers can do astonishing things, as in this iconic Avedon image of "Dovima With Elephants":


I am particularly fond of his photos of the wonderful Dorian Leigh, like this one, all angles:


But I also like this off-handed, far more intimate one of Leigh from Harper's Bazaar (found at Fashionologie). Every picture does tell a story, don't it?

Grazing in the Grass

It's my dog Cassie's first spring in New York, and she's really enjoying the long, soft grass in Central Park (which her yard in Los Angeles didn't have) and the supremely doggy act of a luxurious roll in it, like this.

As I understand it, dogs love this activity because the soft surface feels great on their skin and the rolling motion produces exquisite sensations. It's also cause for ecstasy because it smells delicious (which is why they dive their faces in first), most likely because something died in it. Nonetheless, it's usually harmless, and almost always irresistible.

I was trying to think of an analogous human experience (without which no animal anecdote is complete), and realized that it's exactly like being in a bed you've been in before.

(Post title from the sunny-day instrumental by the great Hugh Masekela.)

To Boldly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before

I'm a confessed geek, so I enjoyed the new Star Trek movie on its own merits as a fast-paced space-opera adventure filled with plot twists and alternate realities.

But it's got a very powerful subtext: as the prequel to the original TV series, which started its run in 1966, it explores the foundational mythology of a baby-boomer cultural touchstone. Forty years after that series went off the air, with five other TV series and ten films spun out of the franchise, it was time to start all over again.

I wasn't old enough when the series first aired to watch it, but there were endless reruns (there's probably one on right now), and I got to to know the characters well. So good casting was key to my enjoyment of the new film, and they largely got that done. Chris Pine has Kirk's swagger and bravado, and is much better-looking than Shatner ever was, Zachary Quinto has been a Heroes standout and makes a excellent Spock; John Cho is a very studly Sulu and Simon Pegg is an exceptionally entertaining Scotty. (Zoe Saldana looks great in her underwear, but she sadly just doesn't have Nichelle Nichols' gravitas as Uhura, and is risible in her big love scene.)

It was fun to see how they handled their characters' stock phrases, which, if the knowing laughter of the Upper West Side audience I was with is any indication, were well-remembered, and had been burnished by ongoing repetition in previous movies starring the increasingly creaky original cast members. And learning more about Kirk and Spock's childhoods was fun in the way that re-encountering college friends and getting to know them better than you ever did then can be - it reaffirms why you liked them in the first place.

I'm not alone in seeing this as a cultural moment. I noticed today that Sunday's New York Times Week in Review has three different Star Trek pieces, two of them Op-Eds (a Trek-to-news ratio that begins to approach Usenet circa 1993). One of those was Maureen Dowd's column, which incorporated the hilarious photo illustration below.

It's not surprising that our first non-baby-boomer president is so Spockian. As the movie ended with the original series music swelling and the now 78-year-old Leonard Nimoy intoning the "boldly go where no one has gone before" voiceover, tears were running down my cheeks. I realized that something remarkable had happened: the filmmakers had succeeded in doing two crucial things for the Star Trek franchise:

1. Making the boomers like me in the audience believe, if only for a moment, that they, like Kirk, Spock and Bones, can and will live on as younger, sexier versions of themselves (I told you we were amortals!); and
2. Making the universe safe for the next generation, even while flagrantly disobeying the Prime Directive.

That's how I felt when Obama won, too. Nicely done, guys.

Tesla Girls (No, No, No)

This the best photo I've seen in ages, from a New York Times article about the brilliant, bizarre inventor Nikola Tesla and his laboratory on Long Island, which is now for sale (the "real estate listing" sidebar: excellent!). It was a multi-exposure publicity photo. The next time I have a headshot done, I want it to look just like this.

Of course I thought immediately of the silly '80s song (is that redundant?) by OMD. Thus the silly post title.

My Celebrity Lookalike, Myself

For years, people have been telling me that I look like a movie star. Generally, they have a particular one in mind. In my teens, the comparison was Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, so much so that when I first arrived at my college freshman orientation an upperclassman dubbed me "Liz," a name that stuck with me through my tumultuous time on campus.

The "Did anyone ever tell you that you look like" question then shifted to the high-contrast brunette of the moment (Sherilyn Fenn, anyone?), though occasionally a specific feature or two has been sufficient. Sean Young and I, for instance, have identical noses (though very different kinds of crazy). Geena Davis flashes a very similar wide smile to mine, and we've both often sported a curly, chin-length bob.

Over the past decade or so, the name I've heard most is Jennifer Connelly's, particularly when my hair was longer than it is now. Fair skin? Check. Thick, dark brows? Yes. Light, greenish eyes? Indeed. Fifties-fashion-friendly figure? Yup. Alto voice? Sure. Longtime New Yorker? But of course. Oscar on the mantel? Oops, not me.

The resemblance is apparently strong enough that it transcends national boundaries. About five years ago, my sister and I were having a late lunch at the legendary Benoit in Paris. A middle-aged couple a few tables away kept glancing at us, so I smiled at them. When our tarte Tatin arrived, so did a crème brulée we hadn't ordered, which the waiter indicated had come from the couple in question. Of course, we thanked them, and that's when they asked me for my autograph. I was sorry to have to tell them that, while I may have a beautiful mind, I had not been in the film of the same name. But the crème brulée, which they insisted we keep, was delicious.

Connelly, who has a deal with Revlon, spoke at the New York Run/Walk for Women on Saturday and then walked the event. I ran it, so I was able to catch up with her in Central Park, jog nearby briefly and unobtrusively, and consider my doppelgänger. And she actually does look more like me than the sister I was having lunch with that day does.

Which doesn't mean I'd rather go to Paris with her. Though between us we could probably do pretty well on dessert.

I Can't Go On. I'll Go On.

Last night, I was lucky enough to be at the opening night of the excellent new Roundabout Theatre production of Waiting for Godot. Ben Brantley's Times review says everything I could have said about it, though I found it more poignant than he did. It is, after all, and among many other things, a study of two bickering, entirely co-dependent couples.

It sent me back to the text, which my often brilliant current ex-husband once produced with a cast of lifers at San Quentin (audience members had to sign a waiver that the prison could take no responsibility for their safety), for this exchange, bemusing yet entirely clear:

VLADIMIR: I missed you . . . and at the same time I was happy. Isn't that a strange thing?
ESTRAGON: (shocked). Happy?
VLADIMIR: Perhaps it's not quite the right word.
ESTRAGON: And now?
VLADIMIR: Now? . . . (Joyous.) There you are again . . . (Indifferent.) There we are again. . . (Gloomy.) There I am again.
ESTRAGON: You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone too.
VLADIMIR: (vexed). Then why do you always come crawling back?
ESTRAGON: I don't know.

And this, a few lines later:

VLADIMIR: Ah no, Gogo, the truth is there are things that escape you that don't escape me, you must feel it yourself.
ESTRAGON: I tell you I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR: Perhaps you weren't. But it's the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living.
ESTRAGON: I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR: You must be happy too, deep down, if you only knew it.
ESTRAGON: Happy about what?
VLADIMIR: To be back with me again.
ESTRAGON: Would you say so?
VLADIMIR: Say you are, even if it's not true.
ESTRAGON: What am I to say?
VLADIMIR: Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON: I am happy.
VLADIMIR: So am I.
ESTRAGON: So am I.
VLADIMIR: We are happy.
ESTRAGON: We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy?

(Photo of, from left, Nathan Lane, John Goodman and Bill Irwin from a Times slideshow about productions of Godot through the years. The Times also has a fine essay by Charles Isherwood on that topic.)