I took this picture of a NYT Book Review (review) left behind on a table for Dominic to find and read.
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| "Dominic Read What A Low Life Sinatra Was" |
It reminded me of an Althouse blog post of a note she found inside a book. The Note Althouse found in the book said...
There is more in the note Althouse found, but, you can read it for yourself.
Enjoy life : we are lucky, we live our lives in chapters... make your life a good long novel like this one! :)
There is more in the note Althouse found, but, you can read it for yourself.
I Looked up the Review Online to see if the cursively written review, I took a picture of, matched. Here is a small segment pertaining to what I believe Dominic was supposed to find.
Following her friend Lana Turner again, as she [Eva Gardner] did by getting involved with Rooney and Hughes, she married Lana’s ex, Artie Shaw, an autocratic autodidact who constantly put her down. “I lost complete confidence in myself,” she said, adding: “I got drunk because I was so insecure.” In a year, he dumped her for the author of “Forever Amber,” which she had been reading to improve her mind.
Then she went to what a friend called “the University of Sinatra,” where the pair were “kissing the bottle,” drinking martinis in big Champagne glasses with Scotch and bourbon chasers, making “woo-poo” and scrapping and making up. They shot up a California town with .38s. She had an abortion. He got fired by MGM and had cry-for-help feints with suicide, including overdoses and firing a gun into a pillow to scare her while she was in the next room. As they waited for his divorce to Nancy to come through, she punished him by telling him about a fling with a bullfighter, which drove him nuts.
Sinatra always said that when people looked at them as a couple, every guy wanted to be him and every girl wanted to be her. But it doesn’t sound so great from the inside.
96 comments:
Appearances can be deceiving, and that's the whole point for some people, I suppose.
"...drinking martinis in big Champagne glasses with Scotch and bourbon chasers..."
This sounds as though the author has never actually consumed alcohol and is only passingly familiar with the names of a few drinks and spirits. Martini glasses are bigger than champagne flutes. And even if it's an attempt at amusing hyperbole, why use scotch and bourbon, as closely related to one another as they are?
It makes me wonder how much of the rest of it is true, and how much is just name-dropping.
I wasn't sure which old-timey actress Lana Turner was -- I had to look her up. Dishy. A smoldering brunette with arched eyebrows. I don't know if she thought Sinatra was a low-life -- she called him the love of her life, and they remained friends after they split.
Life on the "inside" of fame is usually not nearly so glamorous or desirable as it appears from the outside.
I often think that when I see little kids gaining fame. Their parents seem so proud. But it usually turns out pretty bad for the kids (despite the fame), and eventually for the kids' relationship with their parents, too.
Even sweet Dorothy Hamill (I've never heard an ill word spoken against her by anyone) surprised me once in an interview at some Winter Olympics, well-past her years of competition. She was asked if she was grateful her mom had pushed her to practice so much as a kid. She hesitated before she answered, and she looked so sad. Her answer, which I don't exactly remember, was very diplomatic, but it made me think that she really regretted a childhood lost, and maybe even a more normal mother-daughter relationship lost, too.
And what a sweet child she must've been. I wouldn't trade my relationship with my own daughter for all the fame in the world.
Althouse has another comment thread, because it's early and there are a lot of issues to discuss about bussing. You may be rejected even if trying to get the issue right, and you may feel in advance : who cares what she thinks is right. Do you want a discussion or not.
She also, in a post below, uses angst as a verb, which can't be done.
The German verb would be Angst haben.
There's a form for causing anxiety, but she wants it the other way.
For this she needs another comment thread or it will never be discussed. There are language inheritance issues. Not just any coinage works.
Notice that you can say anything you want here. There's a feeling that goes with that.
Celebrity is often a fatal disease.
But I cannot judge. Some people's fires burn bright and large and brief, others burn low and long.
Who's to say which is wiser?
Is it really better to burn out than it is to rust?
I dunno.
Just don't be an asshole during the oxidation, either way.
My my, hey hey.
I don't bother seeing if she allows comments or not. After checking her posts for interesting stuff, I come here instead. It has been shown over and over that busing drives whites out of the schools and blacks don't like it either,but they have fewer resources to escape it.
Angst as a verb is like marriage used for civil union.
You can use angst that way but you are destroying things.
Like Obama talking about justice.
There's an open comments thread on dementia. This isn't going to end well.
I thought Althouse held back on that Obama "press conference" yesterday.
Rhhardin, you're the best.
Angst is pageant talk.
I'm not sure but that's what it sound like.
I have to go
I wasn't aware you can't do that in German. In Russian, the equivalent noun (toská) does have a verbal form, e.g. toskúyu = I am in a state of toská.
btw, for those who are interested, the sitemeter for Althouse shows a dip in hits starting between 7/2-7/3, bottoming out on 7/13. There was a slight uptick, but now it's back to the 7/13 nadir.
There was a slight uptick, but now it's back to the 7/13 nadir.
May be that is why she is walking back on her 'No Comments for you' soup-nazi attitude. Yeah, she will get a new crop of commenters, some of the old ones will reappear.. but all that drama, what a drama. Wow, was that a PR stunt gone wrong?
I quickly skimmed Althouse and it occurred to me that maybe she has finally decided to drop the haughty diva routine.
That would be nice.
I don't recall that Icarus got a second chance but this is reality we're talking about, sort of.
I went and did a test comment on the Althouse thread, it lasted ten minutes. I was just curious how it would work. Seems like as it always was.
I learned I was too much of a Hatey McHaterson to be acceptable there anymore.
Pastafariian's comment above is spot on.
I suggested to her in an email to open up her Cafe posts for comments and let her loyal commenters back in that way. That would have been a smart compromise to still keep her friendly audience happy. Instead I was told that the comments were outsourced to Lem.
All those things seem so cheesy now, no matter how glamorous they appeared then. Did they plow it down? The Stardust?
I cannot say doze it down. In Japan, a Japanese man said to me and my brother, "That's a bulldozer. They call it that because the bull used to do all the work and now this machine does it so the bull can go off to sleep." And Barry and I are looking at each other like, wow, this Japanese guy is pausing to deign to explain intuitive English words to us.
So plow it down. Because it's cheesy by now. Like Graceland. Oi. All of the celebrities homes. I went home for lunch with a girl from work to her house, she lived with her parents and their house was like that. Like they copied what celebrities did a long time ago. I nearly barfed. Sort of freaky coming up to the place with all the emphasis on equestrian containment, white woven wood fences, stables all over, but then first thing inside is a chandelier with a classical statue inside and filaments dripping with oil eeeesh. And then everything oversized, wainscoting at ear-level, an impossibly large kitchen and so on everything chosen on the basis of size. Strange land of the giants house, I imagined her father to be twelve feet tall and a metric ton.
But he had blue eyes.
So? So do I, and they see just fine.
And he did it his way. A song about totally fucking up, someone else's life more than one's own, and being proud of it. While the performer sings the song, cruelly, a shepherd's hook appears, extends by unseen hands to encircle the performer, and tugs him off the stage. And everybody goes, "I'm glad he's gone."
After all that, I don't have anything in i-Tunes acknowledging his existence, but I sure do like Nancy in a miniskirt and knee boots stomping around angrily all over the place. Ew ew ew stomp stomp stomp all 110 lbs of her.
And very dramatically, overdramatically, melodramatically,
In my roooom.
Way at the ennnnnd of the haaaaal
I sit and stare at waaaal each day is just like the laaaaaast for I live in the paaaaaaaaast.
She crapped on us all and laughed while she was doing it. Hell with her and her head games and her arrogance. She doesn't deserve any of us.
Lem, this is nice blog post and that picture is very good for the subject matter. But I have nothing to say on except that celebrities are overrated in this country.
Instead I was told that the comments were outsourced to Lem.
That must mean she's finally put him on her blogroll and in a prminant position indicating that that's where we should go to comment.
Good.
Things are looking up.
Helen Thomas blew it after a lengthy career and the world piled on. Read her Wiki bio. Like Paula Deen, she apologized, but it was not accepted. Thomas never made amends with the world and remained defiant. Surely her horse was name Pride.
That must mean she's finally put him on her blogroll and in a prminant position
I don't know if she has done that. Rhhardin could check and now that Meade is here, he may be able to tell us.
Instead paying Lem money, you could just give (honor) him (with) a nice link for his blog, no, Meade?
I too live in the past and it is very cheesy.
I searched [egyptian bowl] saw a design I liked and copied it. Since then many more photos of Egyptian bowls have been added and the one I saw moved way down the display. It's still there but hardly noticeable. And now I uploaded that photo and labeled it "egyptian bowl" and somebody else will come along and search [egyptian bowl] and this picture will come up, eventually it will once the image is crawled. And the person who sees it will not know right off if it is real cheese or what. I didn't say egyptian style bowl, I claimed it is Egyptian and added to the confusion and I'm a bit sorry about that.
No I'm not.
pm317 said...
Wow, was that a PR stunt gone wrong?
Some combination of this and a schoolmarm's determination to make the class obey the rules.
The reason people read Drudge back when was that if a scandal came up, it would be there. No MSM filter would intervene.
The reason I read Weasel Zippers is the same. They're off the wall outraged social right wing, but you won't miss real stuff that the MSM won't cover. Also they post constantly.
The reason to have outrageous comments in your comment thread is that it shows you can say anything.
It doesn't ruin it, it validates it.
pm317 said...
Lem, this is nice blog post and that picture is very good for the subject matter. But I have nothing to say on except that celebrities are overrated in this country.
This
And Meade, I would point out that we don't deserve your potshots either.
Grow up.
Is ths a "high level comment"?
Asking for a friend.
The Palestinians are Trayvon Martin.
Ann is sort of a minor blo celebrity..and I agree with Meade that celebrities are overrated.
EBL: gasp--you are not telling me the Kardashians are not celebrities? Who knew.
[Long-time delurking, relurking lurker]
pm317 asks, "Was that a PR stunt gone wrong?"
I am not sure what it was. I only know that two -- or is it three? -- weeks later, I am [knock wood] clean and sober. I no longer feel the faintest interest in what Ann Althouse has to say about anything.
This after reading her daily almost since she began blogging. Agree or disagree, I was always eager to click the AA bookmark and read for hours as she and all of you brilliant commentariat chewed over everything from the profound to the silly. Every day I was entertained, and every day I learned something.
As time went on, however, it was less from her and more from you guys. So I am so grateful you've settled in here at Lem's place.
Meanwhile, the recent blow-up/melt-down/scorched-earth in Madison has been discussed from every possible angle, and discussed well, so I won't pile on. I'll just say that of course Althouse had every right to shut comments down after a cruel spam attack from her old nemesis "Mary" and some of the other nonsense that was going on, yada yada.
No, what did it for me was "Scrunched Little Faces."
What the HELL was that?!?
Whatever it was, it upset and angered me like nothing on that blog had ever upset and angered me before.
The Duke was in a Vegas hotel room right below where Sinatra was having a very loud party one time. Twice he called to complain about the noise and was told to take the proverbial flying leap.
The third time, he walked down, knocked on the door, and, when Sinatra answered, Wayne flattened him.
Pastafarian said...
I wasn't sure which old-timey actress Lana Turner was -- I had to look her up. Dishy. A smoldering brunette with arched eyebrows
Lana Turner, a brunette?
She was the blondest of blondes, right up there with Marilyn and Jean Harlow.
You must be thinking of Ava Gardner.
But Sinatra respected a good a good punch so it is all good.
I wasn't sure which old-timey actress Lana Turner was -- I had to look her up. Dishy. A smoldering brunette with arched eyebrows.
Cue one of my favorite Frank O'Hara poems which he composed on the Staten Island ferry to a poetry reading with Robert Lowell. Apparently the poem was so successful with the audience that Lowell said something to the effect, "Well, I'm sorry I didn't write a poem on the way over here," and not in a nice way.
Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
I read a story that Ava and Frank and some others were sitting around the pool. Frank said something Ava didn't like, so she stripped naked and did a perfect jackknife off the diving board. Or was it a swan dive? Can't find it on google.
Sinatra: How suave does it get?
Somebody else wrote My Way.
Imus had him on recently.
I don't remember who.
Anyway it was somebody else's my way.
I have only one thing to say.
How suave does it get, you ask.
Oh my, deborah...that Shatner thing....it was horrifying for a while and I didn't think it could get worse. Painful to watch throught the first split screen. When it reached the third split screen it finally became absurdly laugh out loud funny.
I am not sure what it was. I only know that two -- or is it three? -- weeks later, I am [knock wood] clean and sober. I no longer feel the faintest interest in what Ann Althouse has to say about anything.
elcrain: Welcome aboard! And likewise.
Althouse is still on my RSS aggregator list and I check her topics occasionally to see what's going on over there, but overall it's a relief not to have her "haughty diva" (good one, Mitchell!) voice in my head anymore.
Her sitemeter reading is a 30-day moving average, so we won't see the full effects of the new regime until mid-August.
Her traffic news is bad and will continue to be so. She will continue to seek ways to reinstate commenting, Meade's obfuscation to the contrary, but the old ecosystem there is dead, and has been successfuly replanted to this blog...so far.
We'll see how that goes. I'm cautiously optimistic. I've never seen this in the blog world before.
I'm reminded of when Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and six other top employees left William Shockley to form Fairchild Semiconductor, which was the spark that created Silicon Valley as we know it.
Not that I'm expecting that level of success for Comment Home.
Poor, misunderstood, down-trodden Evi. The evil bloggerlady deleted her comments. What ever can be done?
creeley23 I always liked that poem, too. I first saw it in one of those great anthologies of 20th c American poetry, can't remember which one though.
Personally I always cut celebrities a lot of slack. If you love what they do, like Sinatra's singing, you gotta take the good with the bad. A very close hipster friend always tells me that's why we love celebrities though, b/c of their bad behaviors. Personally I disagree.
C Stanley, it's so awful it's great. And of course Shat being in on the joke makes it even funnier.
There's an open comments thread on dementia. This isn't going to end well.
I didn’t get that right away. lol
creeley23 I always liked that poem, too. I first saw it in one of those great anthologies of 20th c American poetry, can't remember which one though.
phx: I saw it in Hayden Carruth's "The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century." It was a cheap Bantam paperback which was one of the all-time buys as far as poetry anthologies go.
It may also have been in Donald Allen's "The New American" poetry, which covered O'Hara, but I'm not sure it included that poem. A good chance though, since "Lana Turner Has Collapsed!" captures O'Hara at his off-the-cuff funniest.
I must add, though, that O'Hara was a serious poet, as well as an assisant curator at MOMA and one of the central personalities of the New York art world.
People were talking about how it seemed sunny yesterday.
That was true but the real reason is the AOM index was l00%.
Personally I always cut celebrities a lot of slack.
phx: Maybe not a lot of slack, but some. Celebrity is as corrosive as alcohol. I don't spend much time feeling sorry for celebrities, but that good fortune has serious drawbacks.
Celebrity seems especially hard on American writers. Few escape the curse. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Kerouac, Mailer, and Capote all made it to the public eye and were destroyed. Kesey managed a retreat to his family's dairy farm but never wrote seriously again.
The only exception I can think of is Tom Wolfe, who it can be argued was famous for his subjects and his white suits, but not so much as Tom Wolfe.
It's reassuring to read about celebrities. They let us know that people with good looks, talent, and money have worse lives than ourselves.......They say that after about $80,000, more money doesn't buy a corresponding increase in happiness. Maybe the same principle holds true with good looks and talent. Ava Gardner was too beautiful. After forty or whenever she lost it, her life became a postscript.
AOM index was 100%
Googling AOM index didn't give me anything weather related and add weather to search string and googal asks me 'Did you mean UV index weather?'
@Trooper York, did you mean that?
I have been noticing a pinkish bright golden glow for the last couple of days in the evening at around sunset.
AOM= Absence of Meade.
Just sayn'
See for yourself how pleasant it is when the AOM is 100%
Oh no, I got punk'd.. :)
This is the only place where Meade can comment.
Thanks for the welcome, creeley! This forum really *is* unique in the annals of internet blow-outs. I hope it grows and grows.
@ Meade: That's not the Scrunched-Up Face I was talking about. Which you know quite well. Way to get smart-ass with a new commenter!
@ Trooper: Over the last day or two I too had noticed (with relief yet some sadness, because I always liked Meade and this entire situation just makes me sad -- when it isn't making me mad) the AOM, until to my surprise I saw his reply to my comment.
Sorry if I was the one who precipitated this Disturbance in the Force.
This attitude of proving one's worth as a commenter is what kept many lurkers lurking for so many years. Some of us have thin skins already, and the added fear of being humiliated by an Althouse slap down kept me quiet there. That and some of the more aggressive commenters.
Stardust Memories
You referring to your self Meade?
Whomever you're calling "Mary," Meade, I suggest you check IP addresses. I'll even send you mine, upon request.
Was he calling me Mary?!
phx: I saw it in Hayden Carruth's "The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century."
That's the one - what a great pb that was. I remember the Conrad Aiken one to on "The winds of doctrine blow both ways at once..." Made a big impact on me in high school.
Yeah I bought one of Frank O'Hara's books from that publisher of beats, can't remember the name of the company. I don't think it was Ferlinghetti's but the one that published a lot of Ginsberg books. Anyway it was called Lunch Poems, it was very very entertaining.
I don't spend much time feeling sorry for celebrities, but that good fortune has serious drawbacks.
No, I don't feel much sorry for celebrities - but as I said I do cut them some slack. I have a tendency to feel sorry for the young celebrities, like Bieber and the ones that always get crucified in the media. They build them up to smash 'em down and usually in a very unfair way.
But in general I don't like feeling sorry for people. I don't think that's what they really need.
@ Katelyn - I think he was calling one, and maybe both, of us two delurkers Mary.
Either way, and assuming the "Hail Mary" play was meant to intimidate the uninitiated, it's baloney. I may be new to commenting with these folks, but I am no newbie in the ways of the Internet. Identities can be verified.
PHX ssid: Personally I always cut celebrities a lot of slack. If you love what they do, like Sinatra's singing, you gotta take the good with the bad
All of us have good traits and bad traits. The bad traits seem to be magnified in celebs, mostly because they work so hard to craft an image without those traits.
One of the celebs for whom I have the most contempt is Alec Baldwin. Even so, I don't mind his occasional blow up. All that paparazzi would drive anyone nuts, all day every day.
if all you have is a restricted comment policy, everything looks like a Mary
I don't think there's proof of a good commenter. There's proof of bad commenting, to be sure, when it crosses the lines (whatever they are), shuts down conversation, tries to be abusive through various means.
Most people have something to say, it's still their thing to say, and it adds texture the more people comment.
That said, I like having Meade around here, as just one of the commenters again.
That said, I also like having a lot of lurkers making comments. It makes me feel like we're doing something right.
elcrain, my ip addy most certainly would prove I'm not Mary also. What a strange thing for Meade to do, despite the abuse he and Althouse received from her. We can't suspect everyone of being an arch nemesis.
It's not at all readily apparent to me why Mary shouldn't be allowed to comment here.
Did she get banished from the internet or soemthing?
Is Althouse saying that either she goes or I go?
Forgive me, please. I can be dense.
I traveled through Versailles once.
[Yes--traveled--is more correct.]
I was overcome with an overwhelming urge to vomit.
Years later I am at a blog--about perfume?
I'm getting the urge to vomit--I notice something more that was right before me --a picture, of a bedroom.
The nausea is building.
Could it be?
Why yes--it is that place.
A picture of ----
Cake or Death.
Mitchell, there's a long history there, and it went beyond just a persistent commenter. There's a personal history, real-life, and abusive/threatening type behavior. There's a back story, but we were never, that I know of, told the details. I do know that repeated attempts to say, "Not welcome" were never heeded.
So, someone who does not respect a host has shown repeatedly they're not around for good conversation, but to harass.
Mitchell, it would be interesting to know what Lem's position is on Mary posting as Mary, and not as a sockpuppet. I have seen her make cruel remarks about Althouse's son and make hostile references about a divorced colleague of Althouse's. IIRC correctly Althouse has a restraining order against her to post on her blog, and I would assume, approaching her physically. Mary can make insightful comments, but is on the whackadoodle side. Althouse reports that she's a member of the Wisconsin Bar.
Thank you for your responses.
I'll keep trying to piece all this together.
Regardless, it will always be true that I hope this blog succeeds just as I wish Althouse well, same as Mary, whatever her cross might be to bear.
After all the jacks are in their boxes,
And the clowns have all gone to bed,
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street,
Footprints dress in red.
And the wind whispers Mary.
A broom is drearily sweeping
Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life.
Somewhere a Queen is weeping,
Somewhere a King has no wife.
And the wind cries Mary.
The traffic lights turn blue tomorrow
Shine their emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags downstream
'Cos the life that they lived is dead.
And the wind screams Mary.
Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past
With this crutch, its old age and its wisdom
It whispers, "No, this will be the last."
And the wind cries Mary.
--- Jimi Hendrix
Meade makes ugly comments and gets personal.
Lem needs to kick him out now.
No, what did it for me was "Scrunched Little Faces."
What did it for me was the entire blog post about the constipated minds of people who like comments.
"oh Lana Turner we love you get up"
Love it.
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