Texas: Hitting the High Points, Take One

OK, so, Barbara, I apologize in advance for the spottily written and photo-dependent nature of this post. I been all out and about and whatnot, and, so, yeah. Anyhoo, I thought I'd better get back in blog business before i got spooked, or something.

MY TRIP TO TEXAS, FROM WHENCE I CAME

So here's what I stared at for a while on the way there. I hate flying so much.


Here is Arkansas, which is on the way.


Here is the bedroom I sleep in at my folks' house.



Here is Wilfrid, my wise old nephew. The boy stares right into your soul, don't he?


Here is a bocce ball court at my folks' house. I don't know why, exactly, but it cracks me up that they put in a bocce ball court. My dad hauled roughly fifty wheelbarrowloads of sand.


Here is my sister Annie sitting in it. This is mostly what it's used for. I mean, how much bocce ball can one play?


END PART ONE

More verbal shit to come--I'm mostly performing it onstage, though.

Photo Prodigy

Hi Barbara--

I am in Texas, where they are running me ragged from morning til night. But quick, look at this photo taken of my aunt Beverly Schwartzman.




The thing is, Lilly took it. As in Lilly, my three-year-old niece.

This is Lilly:




Pretty good. Sadly it was extremely bright outside so they look sort of bleached out.

Fodder for PARADE Magazine, If I Had a Better Camera

Look, it's a canine comedy duo.

blog criticism

This is one of those drafts I saved for later elaboration, but now that I look at it again, I'm not sure it's worth developing. So I'll just combine it with this photo, which is a hack photo. It's like the photo version of hackery, maybe. To tell you the truth, there are a lot of aspects of stand-up comedy I don't understand all that well.

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MEAN COMMENTS LEFT ON BLOGS BY OTHER BLOGGERS??
gauguin criticizing van gogh's blog
mary mc carthy --flannery o'connor?
an inanimate object critiquing an animal's blog
historical figures
"this is a generation that doesn't remember life before Dickens."

yuck

The Tiniest Goddamned Snowman

I have to hand in an outline to my editor by May 16 for my forthcoming Clifford the Big Red Dog spin-off opus, Clifford's Puppy Days: The Littlest Snowman. The outline is basically a story idea and art suggestions. Now, what I gotta figure out is, why on earth does there need to be a "littlest" snowman?

Last time, for Clifford's Puppy Days: Backpack Puppy I was told "Clifford stows away in Emily Elizabeth's backpack on her first day in school." But for this one, everything's up to me! I'd like to take this time to let y'all know that I have never in my life built a snowman. I only threw my very first snowball in February of '01, and that was outside a bar.

Any feedback on the ideas below would be appreciated. Not just smartass feedback, neeva--knock yourself out, though--but real kid-book feedback. You moms & dads out there, or if there are any preschoolers in the crowd--why a tiny snowman? Wherefore diminuitive snowman? WHY?

IDEAS
1. Everybody's expecting the first snowfall of the season to be a blizzard, but the accumulated precipitation turns out to be minimal. Clifford is bummed, because he was looking forward to building a big-ass snowman. But instead, they build a tiny-ass snowman with the tiny-ass amount of snow they got, and make the best of it.

2. Little Sidarsky (the Sidarskys are mice who live in the laundry room of C's bldg) is afraid of large snowmen (?), so C and cronies build a little one his size. And he, um, likes it, and hence, snowmen are okay.

3. C, little S, Flo and Zo (these kittens who are C's friends), Daffodil (a rabbit) feel underrepresented by the big honking human-sized snowmen they are subjected to all over the playground and demand that the City build them some smaller animal-sized ones, or something like that. Or that somebody does, maybe not the City. Maybe Emily Elizabeth. Maybe Clifford. Maybe they all build it. Or maybe they each build one. Oh my God.

4. Or maybe there's a snowman contest, and Clifford builds a tiny snowman and feels kinda self conscious about it but then unexpectedly wins a prize. Except Clifford isn't really much of a builder. So Emily-Elizabeth wins it, maybe, but then Clifford destroys the tiny snowman in a fit of jealous rage.

5. Okay, this one is definitely the worst one. It's mid-July, and one of Emily-Elizabeth's little friends is dying of leukemia. But he really wants to see a tiny snowman. But so...Clifford and his friend the rabbit get some ice cubes...you can see where I'm going with this. NOWHERE.

And no, I'm guessing Scholastic does not want a 24-page picture book PBS-tie-in for the preschool market about a midget cocaine dealer.

Anybody got any other ideas?


(Photo is of Conselyea Street, Wmsburg, in March, taken w/ beloved phone camera--note snow, note complete lack of snowmen made by me, and how this seemed not to bother me then.)

Yeah, I Watched Riding The Bus With My Sister

Firstly, I'd like to say that blogging about this movie in no way lessens my guilt and shame at having watched it, okay? First-and-a-half-ly, I would like to reaffirm my stated and deeply-felt opinion that those with developmental disabilities and those who work with them are deserving of the utmost respect.

Secondly, I know full well that it's wrong to refer to persons with developmental disabilties as retarded. However, I think it not only acceptable but mandatory to apply this term to every character, fictional and non-, involved with this particular production.

SOME BITTER IRONIES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS TV MOVIE

1. Anjelica Huston directed this piece of crap! Oh, Anjelica. I can only hope they paid you in gold bars and precious rubies and a Himalayan baby dolphin preserve of your very own to helm this ridiculous...or, no, wait. I hope, instead, that you now have a persistent rash. Not for the rest of your life, but for up to six weeks. A rash on you, Anjelica Huston!

2. For all her presumed good intentions, Ms O'Donnell portrays the retarded lady in the style of a vicious junior-high bully taunting the special ed kids, with Pee-Wee Herman laugh and Punky Brewster shoes added for extra dimension. Except when she's a-cryin,' and then all hell breaks loose. Total Methody apeshit histrionics! Except even her retardo-tantrums have a kind of retro-80's flava to them. To wit: she blatantly steals a physical bit from a 1984 Tarzan movie, wiping her whimpering face with her dead father's hand, a la Christopher Lambert in Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan. And speaking of the cast of Greystoke...

3. Andie MacDowell, oh my God, you are really not a good actress at all. Please, please, Andie MacDowell, do not do a New York accent, or a movie, ever again. Don't they feed you at the haircolor-commercial place they keep you at?

4. But back to Rosie O'Donnell as the empowered retard with the fetching underbite. Why couldn't the retard have been a lesbian? But oh, no. She had to be a str8 retard. They had to go and give her a retarded boyfriend named Jesse, who in addition to being male is also black...and hot...and, incidentally, um, an expert martial artist who beats up criminals. Okay, so this movie is slightly awesome. *

5. Except that, no, it isn't awesome at all. Because for one thing, the title is hideously insensitive. I cannot have been the only viewer who mentally amended the title to Riding the Short Bus With My Sister.


*My roommates and I tried to think of which actress we would cast in the role of Rosie's character's retarded girlfriend, and decided Mary Stuart Masterson might be able to pull it off.

Warning

I left this note on the TV earlier tonight so my roommates would know not to turn the television off.