Fame, thy (thou?) breath is so sweet

There we go...yes, this is little Michael, the serious looking guy, dead center

We interrupt our broadcast...

...Jeff Bozos (Amazon) has tweeted this picture under the heading... 

...The Perfect Plan to Deal with Donald Trump

Philippines (2)

"Lying with your beard" would be a more appropriate header, perhaps...

Sunday matinée

The grass is always greener on the other side...

Interstellar --- Seattle (2)

We're late with this review because we're always late---plus, we're early in the sense that the movie hasn't yet been released world wide.

Unfortunately, the sound through the Delta Airline ear plugs on Flight 467 from London-Heathrow to Seattle-Tacoma is so bad that we have trouble following the plot---although, wait---now having read the flick's Wikipedia entry we're realizing we somehow did manage to follow the plot but failed to appreciate the redeeming influence of Caltech professor Kip Thorne, the only excuse for this movie ("highly accurate, the movie, scientifically, highly accurate," reviewers rave). Kip Thorne is a real physicist and knows everything about black holes and wormholes and Einstein ("gravitational waves"), and he's listed as executive producer of this sci-fi production set in the year 2060.

What is it? You normally know inside 60 seconds whether you're watching a bad movie, right? Is it because the titles stink? That's oft the case, but not now. No, its something about the Midwestern accent of Texas-born Matthew McConaughey. It's like when you drive past this sex worker and you need to look no further, there's one layer of makeup too many. There has been one script conference too many for this movie, and Christopher Nolan, the director knows, knows deep inside...

Find a caption

New Year's resolutions 

Arresting Justin Bieber --- Write a novel see the world (1)

 

(Update: and while we are at it, here's Justin's lastest picture:)

Anything more we have to say about Justin, a fragment perhaps? We mention him once in the Green Eyes, but in our first novel, Freedom Fries, he gets a serious literary treatment. Here it is:

Context: Pamela Woods, the Dean of Berkeley Law school is busy conspiring against one of her faculty member, John Yoo, the author of the Bush-era torture memos. And Justin Bieber jr? That's her vice dean. And---spoiler alert---the scene is set on the day of Justin Bieber's breakthrough: 

  She collects the secret phone---Zack could call any minute now---hides it in her bag, and leaves the office. She will take up position in the lobby, where she will play the Populist Dean. The populist dean is expected of her anyhow, occasionally, and her performance is not without merit (despite mixed reviews), especially on Friday afternoons when people want to go home early, an inclination she applauds with one hand and dismisses with the other. Anyhow, there she stands, expansive as always (not always, only since twenty years), dispensing kisses, Hi’s, compliments (“you look great”), compliments (“you look great”), feedback (“we missed you at the budget meeting, where were you”), more compliments (“where did you get that tan?”), as her academic subjects are drifting toward TGI weekend.

Berkeley Law School, west side

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, Pamela is waiting for Yoo to go home to his wife and two children, his wife the estranged daughter of the Pulitzer prize winning face of the first gulf war, Peter Arnett, his children the estranged grandchildren of the Pulitzer prize winning face of the first gulf war, at least, that’s how she assumes Yoo’s family works. But perhaps she is wrong, Arnett looms large in her own life since it had been him, the CNN correspondent in Baghdad, who had watched over her final fall from svelteness during one month of uninterrupted couch attendance in the run-up to the war. Tragically, she was on sabbatical leave at that time; planning to write another law book, she had turned down visiting appointments elsewhere and was stuck in front of the TV with an excessive supply of macaroons and productive procrastination. She had gained twenty additional pounds when the war was over, twenty pounds that had tipped the balance of her life.

Parking garage of Berkeley Law

She has already sent six faculty, twelve students, and three staff into the weekend when Vice Dean Bieber descends the stairs. A small, middle-aged man of nondescript appearance, Justin Bieber Jr. is the son of Justin Bieber Sr. and the father of Justin Bieber III. She opens her arms wide---he is scared of big women and will keep a certain distance. “How’s going,” she cheers, “haven’t seen you in fifteen minutes.”
“Great, Pamela, great going,” Bieber replies, “I’ve just taken a few minutes off my vice-deanly obligations to check on my blog.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t have a chance to catch up with your blog recently, but I promise.”

The Golden Century --- Connubial bliss

Prologue. The Golden Century is an all-you-can-eat oriental restaurant located right next to the landing strip of the Cannes-Mandelieu airfield. If there's any magic to proximity, and if there's any proximity to Hollywood, it’s here. From Brad Pitt to George Clooney to Benedict Cumberbatch, they’ve all been dozens of time inside a two hundred yard circle centered upon the main buffet of the Golden Century. This is the spot where private-jet celebrities touch down on their way to the Festival de Cannes.

The main buffet of the Golden Century

Act I. I had been there once, by sheer coincidence, a few minutes before the place opened for the first time at 7 PM on a nondescript weekday. The doors were already unlocked, I entered unsuspectingly. The place was empty, except for a few nervous waiters and an interior design so intense in its lacquered combination of Formica wood and red lanterns that I fainted.

Spot the difference

We had this interview on The Way She Writes about "linguistically challenged" writers like us, where we were saying typical &t-things like...

I am (and have always been) fairly absent-minded. Absentmindedness is a strength, I think, not a weakness, in general it’s a good thing to be somewhere else with your mind.

...and there was this author picture...

...and people responded with nervous emails along the lines of...what's your secret, what's your secret...?

Here it is (the secret):

Spot the difference.

PS: Cathy Ulrich from Hollywood Hates Me writes: "What difference? I can see no difference."

The world soccer (football) cup and us (and our dentist)

Its always thus: while Bernard-Henri Lévy (don't ask, or google "pictures of French Intellectuals"---they are all his), so while Lévy and Dominique Strauss-Kahn (the IMF chief who fell onto his penis over a few sexual minutes in his Hotel Suite) are "good friends" who "know each other well," us---we only know the concierge of Michel Foucault, the other French intellectual, the guy who died an early AIDS-death in 1985. And even that isn't true (we don't know the concierge, that is).


Along those lines. We never met Sepp Blatter, the much-discussed head of the FIFA, the organization that runs the world soccer cup. BUT---we know his brother, almost. Have a look at this picture.

We took the picture this morning on the way to the dentist. It's a car dealership, located at the entrance of Visp, the nearest town from us down in the Valais valley. The home town of the Blatter clan.The Blatter AG, you see it? On the sign, to the left. That Blatter's brother, and we almost know the guy because they also have a car-wash where we have our car cleaned irregularly. Cool, isn't it.

And the dentist. Lives in nearby Naters (picture (this morning)). Don't get jealous. We've added a bit magenta to the picture. The real colors are less picturesque.

Celebrity deficiency?

Not famous enough? Go public with your ménage (à trois):

The hottest criminal ever

Yes, we know, this is a stupid header. Anyhow, Jeremy Meeks got himself arrested in 2002:

And again in 2008:

2008

And now what? We have Facebook now, so he decides to go viral, and have himself arrested one more time:

2014

His mug shot triggers 50,000 likes on Facebook in one day. And comments like these:

-'He didn't know any different. I could turn him into a "model" citizen. Where can I pay his bail?'
-'He needs to be a model. I would buy whatever he's selling!'
-'What is he guilty of?! First Degree Sexiness?!'
-'He'll probably be on next years prison calendar...Mr....EVERY MONTH!'
-'Marry me, Mr Meeks! Hopefully he changes his ways - but I'll take him any day...'
-'I would go to prison for aiding and aBEDding him'
-'I wanna be in his cell!'

Jeremy Meeks!

Demons (Imagine Dragons)

(Let's put it this way: we're only one year behind: this was published on May 7, 2013) 

When the days are cold

And the cards all fold

And the saints we see

Are all made of gold

When your dreams all fail

And the ones we hail

Are the worst of all

And the blood’s run stale

Shakespeare---let's celebate his 450th birthday...

...and repost our piece about his 18th sonnet:

(So, it starts:)

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18:

San Francisco (12) --- Bullit

While Chang and I were strolling through San Francisco yesterday, the conversation turned to the peculiarities of the street layout here, each street being its own turnpike, as it were, connecting A and B like Alpha Romeos would in the old days, no, wrong, we mean via the shortest route afforded by Euclidean geometry, straight, that is, straight, regardless of the third dimension---and the opportunities this affords to the cinematography of car chases. So here it is---you've certainly seen it a hundred times already---the car chase scene from Bullit, the 1968 movie with Steve McQueen:

San Francisco (7) --- Pitch-O-rama (1)

We arrive at San Francisco SFO (San Francisco International Airport, why SFO?) and the international press, the paparazzi ("paps"), the adolescent girls and boys, all of them, there's a riot. A blogger with 390,000 page views comes all the way from Europe and there's a riot. Well, no, sorry, that was Seoul, Korea, the airport, when we got mixed up with a charismatic baseball player.

So we feel un-famous and under-appreciated and seek consolation on the internet and find a page belonging to the San Francisco Writer's Conference. We send them a message about feeling un-famous and under-appreciated and get a prompt reply pointing us to an upcoming pitchfest of the Women's National Book Association San Francisco Chapter on Saturday in the Women's building around the corner from where we reside. It would be an opportunity to "connect." We procrastinate, then sign up via Paypal.

Spoiler alert: a pitchfest is about pitching manuscripts to agents and publishers, and we're in possession of such a manuscript, the Green Eyes, gay romance/erotica, easily the most topical subject when it comes to Women's Lib. We're not, however, in possession of  a printer here in our temporary abode, and the battery of the laptop won't live for longer than a minute when unplugged. So we don't have any material to take to the event, not even a calling card or anything that could get agents and publishers interested in our work. Plus, one of the participating agents, Andy Ross, has a post on his blog about this: he, Andy, would never go to a pitchfest, not as a pitcher at least, since he wouldn't survive the humiliation of being turned down by his colleagues. That decides the case. We will go, but not pitch. Perhaps there's enough in it for another short story. That's what failed writers do, they write about failed writers. Do your research.

We're apprehensive nonetheless, and it starts early, at 8 AM, and it rains, and we overtip the taxi driver out of sheer apprehension. We expect a crowd of young women, multi-faceted, multi-racial, done up in neo-Afro-look, i.e., all looking like Angela Davis waiving Angela-Davis-inspired manuscripts---waiving their manuscripts at us, balding, aging, failed writers of gay porn---think of a wind farm during a hurricane.

Angela Davis

Reality meets art (Glenn)

Find a caption

(In Seattle they have a sex cinema with a sign outside: "Veni, vidi, veni." Along those lines, how about "Fail, fame, fail?")
(Okay, just trying.)

Erosion

Heavy rains washed a lot of debris into the sea this morning---the stream ends up in the left corner, next to the marina---and you can see the border between the muddy rain water and the sea water. 

Interesting, isn't it?

And while we are at it...our Korean in-laws are still visiting...

Sunday matinée

We were at such a low, we considered joining the ranks of tasteful bloggers and post this picture for the Sunday Matinée...

...instead of, say, this one...

But then we discovered this article about the X-factor applied to Italian writers (link), clearly a phenomenon we failed to appreciate when starting to write the "Green Eyes." The article has a link to a Monty Python sketch, a sketch you doubtlessly knew already, but we didn't, so here it is: