A Pox on You and Your Damnable Invention - Alexander Graham Bell

Well, no, not really.  The telephone as Bell invented it was a marvelous, wondrous thing.......it is what it has morphed into that I must rant against and I'll tell you why.

I remember the days when the telephone was considered a miraculous, blessed , mind boggling gift, and, by God,  when it rang you answered it!  Of course, there was only one such instrument in the house and it was always located where you weren't.   If you were upstairs in the bathroom brushing your teeth when it rang, you dropped the toothbrush in the sink and clattered down the stairway, mouth foaming with toothpaste and grabbed the receiver frantically from it's location near the kitchen (or in the hall)  before the calling party hung up.  If you were in the basement doing laundry and the phone rang upstairs you dropped the washboard and everything back into the tub and rushed madly up the steps dripping suds and water all the way and if you were out in the yard weeding or gathering Japanese beetles from your rose bushes you galloped inside wiping your muddy hands on the back of your pants in order to snatch up the receiver and find out who was  calling.

Missing a call was tantamount to spending hours in the first circle of hell wondering who it was and what they might have wanted to say.........  Oh, the misery and the mystery of the missed phone call.  Agony.
But, my recollection is that most of the time somebody answered  when you called them and obviously vice versa. It was a very satisfactory arrangement.  And there were no area codes.....GRAnite 4226 was all you needed to remember and to dial.  Life was good.

Fast forward 75 or so years to early this morning when I needed to call my visiting Florida cousins to cancel an appointment I had made with them to visit me.  There were at least three adults in the house I was calling and at least 4 different phone numbers.....one land line (which I knew in advance that no one ever answered......in fact they had the ringer shut off so that it didn't wake the baby so, in effect, it was useless as a contact vehicle except for them) and three cell phones, 2 of which had Florida prefixes and one of which had a West LA prefix rather than a SF Valley one making all of them long distance for me.  Well, what the hell......I can aford it.

But, who can remember all those damned 11 digit numbers......a few, yes, but not all by any means.  So first I have to schlepp out of bed (via the inconvenient left side because my kitty, Gussie, is sound asleep glued to my right flank) and lurch around to the right side to get my cane off the door knob because in the mornings my limbs have forgotten that they are supposed to hold me upright and transport me from here to there ......and thence to the dining room where my phone book lives and subsequently back to bed  because I am performing this phone business way before my normal arising time in order to enable my cousins to make other plans if they want to.  Next I must find my glasses by the bedside, find the switch of  the reading light and find the proper phone numbers.   Tenks gott they are all under "K".   

I call the first one, it rings endlessly until the bright, cheery mesage voice chirps the usual crap that Oh yes, they do want to talk to me and etc., etc., etc.  So, I search out the 2nd number and call it with the identical results.  I am down to my last chance so I call the 3rd number belonging to the resident....the daughter whom the Florida cousins are visiting......dammit, she should be up and should have her cell phone turned on, wouldn't ya' think?   Sure, when pigs fly.  So I leave three messages and go back to sleep whereupon, of course, the phone rings and I, who was raised to answer phones if at all possible, pick up and speak to my cousin and the situation is taken care of.  And I am too pissed off to go back to sleep again.  Not at my cousins whom I love dearly, but at the bastardization of a perfectly wonderful system.

This marvelous invention intended to facilitate communication has turned into an instrument of torture and frustration.   On the one hand there is half the world's population (those you have no wish whatsoever to EVER  talk to) who spend what must be 23 hours of every day with their cell phones turned on, glued to their ears and in constant use, talking into same at the top of their lungs regardless of where they happen to be at the moment....on street corners, in elevators, in doctors' waiting rooms, in supermarket lines and particularly at the table next to you in restaurants.......deluging your ears with their inane chatter and forcing you to hear the disgusting details of their innermost boring lives.  Urk and Faugh..

As upsetting as this may be, the other side of the coin is worse.....involving the other half of the population to whom you MAY possibly want or desperately need to speak.  They of course, to a man, have their cell phones turned off and are totally unreachable until they damned well feel like it.....usually after you have gone to bed, or after the business day is concluded or perhaps several days later in the week if they feel so inclined.  Meanwhile, you have the privilege of listening to their goddam recorded answering messages and, if you feel so inclined, of hitting your head against the nearest wall in quiet desperation.

Can this  be what dear old A.G. Bell had in mind for his brilliant invention?   I think NOT!

And if you are going to ask me what I suggest to solve this wretched state of affairs, all I can say is call me tomorrow and if I don't answer leave a message.  I may or may not get back to you.   I will be in the corner playing with my precious old rotary dial phone saying things like, "Hello, Central, give me a line....."and thanking heaven that Mabel, the operator, is a live person who doesn't chirp or tell me to leave a message.

Laughs and Titters at my Own Expense

Sorry I cannot give proper credit for this wonderful cartoon...I did not draw it but I have loved it from first sight  and I will tell you that I was sicker than that doggie looks..


This was me yesterday......I knew when I could not get out of bed in the morning that I must have the latest version of the 24 hour Flu. Everything hurt and the..... uh..... frowing up I had done during the nite gave me a further clue. Worse yet, I knew my cats had no intention of or talent for curing me or giving me comfort....


Today I am delighted to report that it probably WAS the 24 hour flu because I am considerably better.....tenks gott.   (10 hours in bed and 14 hours on the living room couch moaning piteously seems to have taken care of most of the awfulness......today I am back with the assortment of  familiar unenhanced aches and pains with which I started )

I don't know why I am inspired to write today about a muddle of things where the joke was on me.  Like, for instance,  my feeling of  incredible ignorance when I first  realized that there were plants other than the ones you ate.

When I was a child we lived in a  typical red brick row house in Philadelphia.....semi detached is what they were called, which meant that you had only one common wall and, on the unattached side, the walkway led to a small back yard where you hung the laundry on Monday, Wash day and in the middle of it was a small  patch of lawn lawn   (Tuesday was, of course, Ironing Day.....you guys with washers and dryers simply won't understand....)    What you did with it the rest of the time was up to the individual and in my Grandma's world it meant browsing the Burpee's Seed Catalog all Winter and spending every spare minute of the rest of the year on one's knees digging in the dirt.  Come Spring she would take out a bunch of little paper envelopes, some Burpee's and some handmade holding seeds from last years blooms,  and she and my Mamma would begin the kneeling process.   For  all I knew or cared they might have  been praying to the Plant Gods.....I thought they were crazy to be scrabbling in mud when they could have  been playing Street Ball or jumping rope. Flowers were pretty, but......no match for jumping rope.

However, when June came around I did admire and enjoy the plethora of gorgeous blooms of every kind which sprang up like magic and obscured what had once  been just muddy beds and made my Grandma's back yard the envy and talk of the neighborhood..   Of course, the downside was that I would be summoned  to water the flowers once in a while and, worse yet, when the Japanese Beetle Plague happened one year, I was instructed constantly to go out and find those wretched little hard  shelled monsters that were eating up our roses, pluck them off the plants and deposit them in the beetle traps that hung from every wrought iron Laundry post in the yard.  I really hated that job (not  because I was a caring person with kind thoughts for the  beetles) but because the little creatures tickled scrabbling inside your closed fist and made me a bit uneasy and queasy.   I tried not to think about it, but I knew what I was doing was no favor to the beetles......

Fast forward about 30 years to when I bought my first "property" and I discovered that houses other than those in Philadelphia had lots of muddy beds around the back yards and, yes, even the front and side yards too.  And California was worse, in one way, than Philly had  been, in that "stuff" seemed to grow almost all year round, not just in April through September.  What was a person who got no great turn-on from mud to do?  Before I knew what was happening to me I had bought a bunch of 6-pack growing plants from the Hardware Store   (who knew from Plant Nurseries?)  and found myself one June day on my knees in front of a stretch of dirt.   It was that moment when I realized that my fate was sealed.  First, I remembered that I had forgotten to find out what the prayer was that one had to utter in front of every bed of dirt to turn it Green and, worse yet, I did not have a clue about how to grow things.  As  I squatted there pushing Petunia plants into little holes in the ground I heard someone behind me laughing derisively.  I turned and found a lady on the sidewalk observing me and shaking her head.  Oh, God, was she going to tell me that the flower part was supposed to go above ground?   Well, not quite, but she gave me a bit of advice about how far apart seedlings should be planted and left still shaking her head and saying over her shoulder.....It is better to plant young plants when it isn't 101 in the shade at noon."   "Too  bad", I thought, "they will just have to deal with it."  Amazingly, the petunias survived and thrived and I was smug and arrogant and thought I knew the secret of  The Green Thumb".  Yeah, sure.

Fortunately, my comeuppance did not happen with an audience.  I had secretly snapped off a few springs of a neighbor's huge geranium bush and shoved them into a pot of earth as I had seen my Grandma do with all sorts of plants, and, miracle of miracles,  I found that they grew.  My smugness and arrogance knew no bounds.  A few weeks later the geraniums even blossomed!    Merciful heavens, that thumb thing must be heredity in the genes, I decided.....it might  be well not to get too cocky.

But, when I saw some little black seedy looking things on my geranium plants I decided I would snatch them up and reserve them for planting when I had more time. Who needed  Burpee's?   I did not bother to make a little paper envelope....I used a  Baggie.  Several days later I collected a bunch more of the little black seedy looking things and when the weekend came and I was off work I planted some of them in a pot and set them on the railing of the porch balcony.  Each day as I left for work I examined the pot I had put on the  balcony  beside the pot of flourishing geraniums looking for my first born.  Nothing.  As days stretched into weeks and the flourishing geraniums began to look just a bit peaked I began to wonder.  Maybe it wasn't a gene thing after all.  Then I examined the geranium plant more carefully....it was still producing those little  black seedy looking things.....but it definitely did not look happy doing it........and the stems were looking absolutely....well strange and lumpy.  I bent down and looked closer as one of the lumps moved forward a millimeter and left behind it a little black seedy thing.   A Eureka Moment.  The End of my smugness and Green Thumb arrogance.  All I can say is, tenks gott the seeds I planted didn't grow or I would have ended up with a huge crop of Geranium Worm Turds!

Thanks !

Just a few words to thank you all for your sweet thoughts and prayers for my dear old buddy, Stel.  Glad to report that she is out of the hospital and in a rehab facility.  I haven't been able to reach her yet today but will talk to her shortly, I hope. Meanwhile....keep thinking good thoughts and I will report in later.

Love you all.

Just Checking In with Last Kilowatt.......For Funny Stuff Go Elsewhere

Hello, darlings all.........just want you to know I am still ticking even though I have taken a licking....(anybody remember the old Timex Watch commercial?)

My oldest and only remaining friend from my childhood is having a bad year....something like the one I had last year only worse and my heart is breaking.  She had a small stroke in January,  a disastrous cataract operation
last month and, having gone down to Boston to consult an eye specialist, fell and broke her arm in 2 places before the consultation, ending up back in New Hampshire in the local Hospital.

I am bereft, heartbroken because there is nothing I can do to fix this.  Can't even help.  Of course I have called and spoken to her and will continue to do so, but I can't even send her funny cards.....funny cards are not funny when someone has to read them to you.  Flowers.....nah.   Chocolate......maybe.......  Last time I sent a bunch of Lindt Truffles......Oh, shit, piss, fuck.  Life is indeed cruel sometimes......

I will blog again when my funnybone revives.....meanwhile, it couldn't hurt if you sent good thoughts and a prayer or two to my dear friend, Stel.

Bless you all....and as I always say......DON'T FALL DOWN.

Looking For Miracles in All the Wrong Places???

 I have been wanting to write this blog for some time and didn't know quite how to get into it.   Well, dear old things, just to prove that procrastination doesn't really pay off,  I still don't.  However, when has that ever stopped me before?......my life often gives a different meaning to the phrase "Ignorance Is Bliss"......if I said it once, I've said it a thousand times....."oy, had I but known what I was getting myself into I would have duct taped myself to the chair till the impulse passed by:")

I never cease to marvel at (and be grateful for)  how some of my unplanned, spontaneous and accidental  and even foolish actions have resulted in the most amazing outcomes.   If you have been reading me for some time you know about some of the things I am talking about.  (i.e. meeting my hero, Magic Johnson, on my BD and, what's more, accidentally having my camera with me so I can prove to myself that I didn't dream it).  You may not agree but I call them my small (and not so small) miracles and no one will ever convince me that they aren't.  Well, I offer up the following story and if you don't agree with me that it is a blooming miracle..........well, I have to just feel sorry for you.  And regardless of whether you agree with me or not, there is a reward waiting for you at the end of this thing.

I  really do not have many friends.  (I truly believe that the blog world has changed that a bit, but let's not get bogged down in semantics here......)  From the time I was a child I have not had a huge circle of friends, but the ones I have had and the few that are still hanging in there are more precious than rubies etc.  When I lost my ultra - shyness some time back and became the intrepid talker to strangers, you might think that that might have changed, but when I became more outgoing I think I also became much more particular and consequently my precious circle has remained small....and that is OK with me because I find it hard to spread myself too thinly.......I mean,  there is only so much Lois to go around, ya' know?

Anyway,  one of the things that I love to do is to offer, nay, slather,  praise unreservedly where it is deserved.  I deplore the fact that so much goodness goes unthanked, so much brilliance goes unlauded and unrecognized.  It really breaks my heart that mediocrity barely one step removed from dog dung gets all the medals and true genius so often does not even get a superficial pat on the head for trying.  Now, if I were running things......sob....but I digress.

So, where was I?  Ah, yes......so in my old age I have taken to not only thanking every dear soul who holds a door open for me, I have taken to...... shamelessly writing fan letters.  (there, I've confessed).

Some years ago I happened upon some animation gems created by one of God's gifts to the world, a real genius named Bruno Bozzetto.  I had never heard of him but as soon as I saw a few samples of his work I immediately found my way to his website and gobbled up all the goodies he had set forth and I was totally overwhelmed.  I found that in Europe he was sort of the Italian Walt Disney but with a huge difference.  His art and humor was for adults and, thank heaven, was being properly appreciated  by garnering  every award offered.  (In fact, I found that he was nominated for an Academy Award  in the U.S a few years ago, but lost to.....well, I am not going to go there....just let me say....he wuz robbed).

After  a few days of replaying all of the bits of his work I could get my hands on thru the Internet, I calmed down enough to collect my thoughts and sat down and wrote him a fan email.  I truly do not remember if I included a sketch of myself worshiping at his feet in that first letter, but I blathered on endlessly in my usual unreserved fashion heaping mounds of praise on the poor man's unprotected head and finally ended with "Love, Lo" when I ran out of superlatives.  

I  felt good at having at least made this already recognized genius aware that one more person in the world appreciated his talents.  Then I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and went back to my important tasks of making the north hollywood humming birds too fat to fly and really forgot about the whole thing..


You can never know my amazement and joy a few days later when I saw in my email the name "Bruno Bozzetto" and found an utterly adorable and charming email in slightly broken English thanking me for my kind words.  (He apologized for his English with lovely self-deprecating humor describing it as  being in the category of "Me Tarzan....You Jane".)  (It was NOT). 

Since that moment we have been in constant touch........he writes to me about his current activities and family stories.   We send each other hand drawn greetings for different occasions.  He has showered me with gifts of his works....some original Cells from his movies, tapes and a full set of CD's of many of his productions.  I have been lucky enough to be able to reciprocate by sending him some things he wanted and it has been altogether wonderful.  A few years ago when I was planning a trip to Venice I checked on the map and found that there was Italian rail service from Venice to Milan and Bergamo (his base).  I cheekily wrote and told him of my trip and asked, if I were to take the train up to his area, if he would meet me and let me buy him a cup of coffee.  He wrote back excited and enthused, told me his (adult) twin daughters also  wanted to meet me and the 3 of them would drive to Milan from Bergamo  and take me to lunch.

And it happened just like that and it was heavenly.

I remember it like it was a dream......3 gorgeous Bozzettos and me having Risotto and salad and expresso (though I cannot remember eating at all).  He is a handsome and charming  and amazingly humble man and his girls are exquisite and delightful.....I hope I can find the photos we took so I can post them here.  (if I cannot find them now I promise to publish them soon.)

And we still keep in touch....the girls just wrote to me and have involved me in helping them and Bruno critique some English translations of a new script they are working on and, of course, I am honored to hell.  Who would  believe? And all I intended was to say "thank you" to someone who brought me some joy. What a reward!I am thrilled and honored beyond words to have this remarkable man and his family for my friends.

Now, I ask you......is not that whole thing a goddamned miracle or what ?

And now, for an encore I present you with a website which offers 8 little 5 or so minute works of the fabulous Bruno Bozzetto.  I believe there were 13 in all....I do not know what they were meant for.  They are wonderful little gems that just show a bit of his whimsical humor and vision of the world.  Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/user/otrokrisank#p/u/1/3gX7il1_R8A

Odds and Ends

Well, here I am......at least most of me, or perhaps that should be some of me............I think I dissolved or decontructed during the various BD celebrations and the strain of  my siege with the Driving Test  to get my License renewed.   Since then I have been lolling about in reclining chairs gasping quietly waiting for feeling to return to my limbs and clear thought to my brain..........I fear my memory is beginning to get a bit frayed around the edges...........(I spent two days last week trying to remember the name of the tree with the lavender flowers that blooms in June and finally came up with Jacaranda....I didn't even know how to Google that one).  I am periodically overcome with the terror of approaching Alzheimer's and have taken to making lists of my lists......but that is another story.
 
Anyway I had made a few notes of questions you had asked in your comments and that I had not yet answered and figure that might not tax my poor limp brain too much, so here goes:

Cathy of  "Still Waters" wanted to know, after my miraculous Magic Johnson BD encounter, what I would do for an encore next BD.....and that one is easy.......just make sure I am around for the next one.

Maybelline of "Maybelline's Gardens" whose sharp mind has a tendency to slide dangerously near to the line of demarcation between good clean fun and soft porn asked whether, in the photo of Nina, me and Magic Johnson,  I am invisibly clutching, patting or stroking Magic's butt........no, believe it or not my arm is around his waist where I did detect a tiny bit of a love handle on that magnificent bod.  If I had had all of my wits about me, which I didn't, I might have surreptitiously stroked that wonderful backside, but, woe is me, I didn't think of it.

And speaking of butts, Bobbie of "Cottleston Pie"  referred to my comment about the Mark Harmon movie that had a beautiful scene in which the Gorgeous Man is shown totally nekkid from the rear.  She asked me to reveal the title saying, "Inquiring minds want to know".   I will happily tell you that it is called "Fourth Story" and co-stars Mimi Rogers.  It is definitely not the best of Mark's movies........for one thing he plays a bumbling, nerdy Private Detective with horn rimmed glasses which he is always misplacing......a part you cannot imagine Mark Harmon in unless you see it with your own eyes.  I swear I believe he modeled the character after Woody Allen (whom I adore, but not in the same sentence or genre with Mark Harmon....it was definitely a character he had trouble getting into).  However, he does fall out of character a few times and it is worth watching just for the scene in which a noise makes him rise out of Mimi's bed (having finally shed some of his nerdiness) and he walks stealthily through the apartment sans any garments whatsoever. Beautiful back view from head to toe.

I am ashamed to say I do not remember who asked me which restaurants I celebrated in during my 2 day BD extrvaganza, but for any of you who plan to be passing through North Hollywood and Studio City I will gladly reveal that the site of my encounter with Magic was a wonderful Italian restaurant at Laurel and Ventura called "Louise's  (if you go do order and share the appetizer "Grilled Portabello Mushroom stuffed with Cheese and Spinach.  And the source of those mussels in broth and the incredible profiterole was the "Outtake Bistro" just as half a block east on Ventura.  I can definitely recommend both of them without shame and also wish to mention that their prices are amazingly reasonable.....(Hell, you all know how cheap I am but I demand both quality and reasonable prices).


And finally, I must clarify the subject of the California Driving Test for License renewals.  It is only half blind folks like me who are subjected to this torture every year or two, and in all fairness....how can you blame them?   My neighbor who is a year older than I am but who can pass the vision test with both eyes just had her license renewed for  5 years without having to take the driving test, only the written test and the eye test.
The Inspectors who administer the Driving Test are Devils who manage to find 21 mistakes you make even when you think you did everything perfectly.  It is impossible to guess what they are going to chew you out about so all you can do is pray that they do not find 22 mistakes and fail you.  As for the maniacs out there on the streets who are determined to kill or maim you and wouldn't know a correct driving procedure if it bit them on the ass, they don't have to take any damned driving test from first license until they reach the age of 70.....their renewed licenses are mailed to them automatically prior to their expiration.

The moral of that story is that, of the gazillion drivers who are licensed to drive in Los Angeles, half of them are in their dotage  and are half blind, they know how to drive well but are physically unable to do so for one reason or another......the other half are younger people who have forgotten every good driving rule or choose to simply ignore them all while they drive, chat, text, apply mascara, eat subway sandwiches, move wildly to the beat of their blasting stereos, or simply drive with their heads turned backward while they scream endlessly at their kids in the back seat and rarely cast an eye to the front at all.

When you think about it, it is a bloody miracle anyone in California who sets foot in a car survives to do it again another day.......

Huzzah! Clear the road! Lo Is Licensed to Drive!

Just a quick report today......I finally got all the Eye doctors' reports completed in time and this morning I shlepped all the papers to the DMV and was "allowed" to take the Driving Test to get my Drivers" License renewed.

The happy words are:    I PASSED !

Tenks Gott.  Now I think I will go back to bed.  Have not slept well for 2 weeks since this whole nonsense began.  Have another drink on me, everyone!

More later.