life, the universe, and everything

I've Got A Crush On You and this thing about men

Okay, this is Frank singing for Columbia Records in 1948. He was 32ish. This is a little over 3 minutes long.

I've Got A Crush On You

And here he is for his own label, Reprise Records, in 1960. He was 44ish. And it's about a minute shorter, which is too bad, but it's because there's not so much horn action.

I've Got A Crush On You

I mean, you see what I'm saying here? They're both very good. But only one of them sends me. 

Youth is wasted on the wrong people. 

 

 

middle-aged middle ground

The ten or so of you who've followed my blogs off and on over the whatever know that I go through a period of time each month in which I…experience a heightened degree of…tractability, let's call it. At this point in my life, it's about 3 of every 4 weeks.

"I do seem somewhat soaked in nature's fecund blessing." (Yes, Mybug was speaking of rain, but whatever.)

Anyway. I was thinking lately that over the past few years I've expanded my imaginary boyfriend horizons to include a few candidates outside my "composite male" profile that I developed about 29yearsago. It's originally why I came up with the Holodeck idea, well, not only for ones who are very short or dead, but also those British ones who still smoke cigarettes, and things like that. I can either manipulate reality or just ignore bits of it. 

Where was I? 

Oh, yes. 

A couple nights ago, I was at Petsmart buying the obnoxiously expensive food I feed these two cats who live at our house, and I saw him. The Composite Male. Don't get me wrong, I've seen most of him before, once in a great while, but I mean, there he was. 100%. Okay, 99% because originally, the Composite Male was 6'-6' 2" and this man was about 5' 10" with extremely nice shoes on. However, I am not 17 anymore. And those were awfully nice shoes. 100%.

He was in line and I was behind him, and then a cashier called him to a new line, and so I just followed. I had to, and never mind the small child with him and the fact that he was holding a bag of crickets. 

He had black or nearly black hair, short and sharp, with bits of grey flecked through it, and just the perfect face that stays in my head, I mean, perfect to me, not necessarily anyone else, a little lined, a nicely carved mouth and intelligent eyes, and he was wearing a very nice dark suit and a black overcoat. And he was quite slim, but not skinny. 

When I was a Young Person, I was more attracted to the baseball physique than the football one. Remember how baseball players used to trend kinda slim? Maybe you aren't that old…but only some of the pitchers and catchers were ever on the larger side of the scale. Well, I was a very skinny young person, so large men sort of alarmed me. Plus they seemed to my childish mind to be accompanied by cans of cheap beer or voices that were too loud, or referred to themselves as themselves. Forgive me, internet stranger who might wander by, but we're all really only as deep as we pretend to be, most of the time. 

I like a man who looks (and hopefully actually is) active and fit. At my age, this is probably an important consideration in an imaginary mate, because there'd be, like, heart issues and things to contend with. But on the other hand, unless I know he's active and fit, one who is too thin probably isn't a good idea, either. There's a reason most of us put on a few more pounds as we age. Sure, we might be less active, but also, one good flu will carry off an old person if they don't have any fat reserve to draw on. 

So as I'm watching the cheesy Christmas movies this season, I'm noticing that many of the males (the ones who don't seem too gay to be very believable in the role, which is an unfortunate truth with some of the ION entries, but of course they're often inexperienced in movies and also with girls, but at least the movie experience can bring improvement,) are very attractive even though they aren't all thin, and that while I'm never going to be attracted to those men in firefighter calendars with all their pectoral bulges and whatnot, there's a lot more good stuff in the middle than I had previously bothered to notice. 

As well, I mean, consider Simon Baker. Not only is he a rather small person, but he has light-colored hair. Yet he is very attractive. Go figure.

I figured out that it's all because one side of my brain has worked out I no longer need to find the correct physical match for continuing the family line, while another side has decided I still need to find as many matches as possible, on a much broader scale. 

And that is why I have so many more imaginary boyfriends these days, and why William Holden zoomed to the top of the dead celebrity list over the past year. The "father of my children" part of the deal is no longer the most important part. 

Still, I wonder if that man goes into Petsmart for crickets every week…he drove a Hyundai Tiberon…I don't know, I mean, in 1982, the Composite Male drove a cooler car than that, but times have changed. 

 

dream lover, part two

For a week or more, a couple months ago, I made a nightly effort before sleep to imagine a romantic scenario which could appear in a dream for me to enjoy, though not usually with a specific person, even from my giant catalog of dead actor loves and the dozen or so living ones I'd meet at the jazz club in the holodeck if only our paths ever crossed. But I kept getting distracted. I have so little focus lately, and so my thoughts would turn toward simply shutting my mind down for rest. Yet I always feel that if I could put myself in the right frame of mind, I could have many more such dreams, as I used to quite often. This morning's dream took me by surprise and now I feel rather unsettled and curious.

There aren't, by the way, certain defining characteristics possessed by every dream man except that he's fit, knows how to talk...well, that's about it, really. They've come in a variety of ages, heights, levels of confidence, etc., otherwise. This one was in that indistinct time of life one thinks of as 40, and was, shockingly, someone I recognized.

It's too late, you know, to remember more than impressions and sensations. I had to get up and get moving a little earlier than usual, and my focus was instantly removed. Our brains immediately put away all the unnecessary elements and then, too, reshape and define what we can't recall but wish to retain. 

So I remember this: he took me down, on a bed in the middle of a room, and made love to me. I remember the feel of his hands on my skin, light and firm and serious. I remember how his skin felt beneath my hands; taut, that is to say, perhaps slightly younger than my mind tends to conjure when I picture him (if you happen to be my age or older, you may know what I mean by that) muscular, but in a strong or sinewy sense, not overly large or overly developed. I don't remember some of the things you remember about a real man, like how the hair on his legs feels when they are intertwined with your own, or running my hand down the length of his spine to rest my fingertips in the hollow at the back of his waist. I wish I could remember that. I remember his scent. I remember my hands at the back of his neck, and recognizing the tenor of his voice, not fully polished, but soft, confident, and retaining that unique resonance which is so charming on screen. I remember my hand on his chest, just below the hollow of his throat, and I remember the way his eyes looked as he bent forward to kiss me, with one hand on my shoulder. 

When we stood, he was just perceptibly taller than me, his nose above my own, but he was speaking then, and I kept thinking about the way he sounded; I was really focused on it, and I felt completely drawn in and taken over. That sensation hasn't left me. Also, I hadn't before considered how dark his hair really was, but I kept touching it as he spoke, and then we would fall together, connected all over again. That happened two or three times. 

We talked a lot, like people who really know each other and have spent solid time together. But the only topic I remember is the lake nearby, and him telling me we'd spend a lot of time there. He was playful when he spoke, but when he touched me he became very serious. 

Well, the dream went bats, and there was a baby, and I was feeding it a bottle attached to my breast with some kind of Nuk nipple, and an old female celebrity whose identity I can't recall was talking about the silliness of Playtex bottles and when they were invented and we commiserated over that, which is strange, since my six kids were mostly all breastfed, with two short-term exceptions. And I remember thinking back then that those Playtex ones were a good idea.

And I kept drifting in and out of sleep, realizing in half-waking state what I'd just conjured and wanting desperately to go back to the more precious moments of it. 

Why did my semi-conscious brain choose this man as an object of desire? He wasn't on my mind last night. As I said, I've had many romantic and/or sexy dreams, and it's not usually anyone recognizable, which at the moment I'm thinking is a good thing, because in this case, I won't be able to look at him now without wondering if I know something of what it would have felt like to have his arms around me, but that doesn't, after all, make him any more real or corporeal, does it? 

Dream Lover, part one

this is about 1200 words. not for everyone. self-indulgent, but almost honest, and very much me. and there's a lot more to come. (other things to come include a short book review for my friend Alex, and a couple quick movie reviews this weekend. i feel like writing again, yay.)

First, the shoes. Proper shoes, from a time before men could get away with wearing so-called athletic shoes all day every day. Shoes that don't look quite right with jeans, because they were meant for something better. 

The digression spirals. It's a game I'm no longer very good at. At which I'm no longer very good. Further digression into concerns over syntax for sentences that were never going to be written, because they're all forgotten by morning. And then, as though I'm 17 years old again, bored in class and working over my list of requirements for the Composite Male, I suddenly start worrying about the feet inside the socks inside the shoes. Of course the socks are all right; a man with the correct shoes will naturally be wearing the correct socks. But what deficits do they hide? 

When you are 17, this can seem to matter greatly. When you are 45, it shouldn't even enter your mind. But it enters mine, because I can no longer easily trade in idle fantasy; reality intrudes and keeps me from sleep. Because that's all this is: an exercise for sleep, my own version of counting fire engines. 

The point is, or was, the shoes are a deal-breaker, or would be, should a situation ever again arise during which a deal might be struck. This is the theory, anyway. 

I've always been a very good sleeper. And whenever I have been not such a good sleeper, I play a game; the exact same game I have played for 30 years. Creating a man to find in my dreams. At 15, these men were most often major league baseball players, classic film stars, or exotic Mediterranean men who were looking for just the right girl to coax them fully into heterosexuality. I had no experience with men at that time, of course, or even boys. Externally, that was my Awkward Year. I had all the right clothes and shoes, but my skin and teeth were a mess, my hair frizzy and unmanageable, my countenance still sometimes too quirky for comfort—not yet balanced out by my growing inner confidence. I wasn't thinking about sex yet, at least not in the way I came to understand it later. That sort of hunger that takes hold of most of us just hadn't presented itself yet. I wanted to experience the tension that comes before the sex; the little tastes of pleasure that lead us toward more, though more of what I did not spend much time considering. It was largely about the drama, and it was also about the presentation. 

He'd have a short, sharp haircut with dark hair that set off his angular features and well-chiseled lips. He might have a slight early bit of grey over the ears. With strong, squarish hands, he'd be slim and possibly lanky, standing four to seven inches taller than me, and he'd know how to dress and how to walk in what he wore. 

My tastes in this regard have changed little, though the typical baseball player's physique has changed considerably, and I'm no longer interested in showing any man on which road his sexuality should naturally travel. He will have already sorted that out in the Navy, or college, presumeably.

The thing about the shoes is that it demonstrates a particular strength of character; one that fits well with my own, indicates an attention to detail, and also reveals a becoming sense of self-satisfaction. So it's not just one certain style of shoe, you see. It is a manifestation of personal style. But to think on this too long spoils the game, and that's the problem I'm dealing with lately. 

When I was younger, it was enough to compose a picture of someone with an attractive countenance, and then decide what I wanted to happen next. I'd drift off to sleep in the midst of a cool or cozy date, and not unoften, end up seeing it played out in my dreams. Lately, burdened with a sensation of being permanently stuck on an elevator going down, I keep stopping at the shoes, mind wandering off in no good direction, restless and bothered by the heat of the pillow. 

Because, of course, now I know what comes next. All the excitement, pleasure, joy, misery, pain, loss, confusion and loneliness. Neverending grief over what was, and what was, what is, meant to be. But at night, none of that should matter at all. At night, only the sleep and the dreams should matter. The dreams should be composed of anything I like, and not merely the unravelling knots of consciousness that tangled themselves through another endless, relentless day. Even if the combination Jimmy Stewart/John Slattery/Craig Ferguson of my creation doesn't appear during sleep, and he rarely does anymore, the counting still leads to a more peaceful rest. Only the numbers, worse than appearing out of order, keep getting stuck at one. 

So. The shoes. I chose them for him, and although he wouldn't have stopped to look at them twice, he's delighted with how they fit and how he somehow thinks he looks taller in the mirror. I warn him they'll take a little breaking in, but once he has, he'll feel like they always belonged there. He strides away with confidence, attracting the eye of a woman younger than me as he passes out of the store and sets off down the sidewalk. She catches up to him and I watch them both laugh as they disappear around the corner.

Well, that's hardly the guy, is it? I never even got to imagine loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar. Just handed him off to someone younger, the same way it happens to women my age in real life. 

(No one ever tells you about that when you're 17, and that hunger begins springing to life. You think you'll be 17 forever, and, worse, you have no inkling of how much that hunger grows, demanding to be fed and to feed another in turn, only to learn that a man's hunger is often fickle, desirous of newer, if not always more raw, energy. Sometimes the hunger still comes alive at night, in dreams, and these are not the dreams of a girl fumbling through the newness of sexual identity. But neither are they, by now, the dreams that startled you awake, sated without quite understanding or remembering how. So, like Ernie counting fire engines, I surround myself with pillows and compose a scene that will never happen, but might happen, in the enchantment of sleep. It's a romantic scene I attempt to compose, but it is not the romance I had in mind before I'd ever experienced any of my own. And much less exciting than fire trucks.)

(Now, it's easier to love a dead celebrity than a live one, and if you're good to yourself, you never imagine the real person, only some character he played, or one you imagine him playing. Because let's face it; we now know too much about anybody famous to be able to imagine one of them as the guy with whom we spend an enchanting afternoon exploring the cemetery, or the art museum, or just sitting outside a cafe, sipping coffee, watching people walk in and out of the big beautiful hotel across the street before he whispers in our ear, "Let's go in.")

(Plus, a fictional man will always be wearing the correct shoes, if he's the man for me.)

 

Long, slow, self-indulgent cocktail: Jack Lemmon, Herb Alpert & a drop of Steve Martin

It's a day off for the kids because schoolkids are out whooping it up for Columbus Day. One of those beautiful October days that sneak in and trick you into thinking impending winter might not be so bad after all. All the boys have congregated for it elsewhere, and it's very quiet here.

So, after a weekend spent largely in bed with what would manifest itself as a simple cold in other people, but in me takes the form of a vague, sinking malaise, along with experiencing up-close the mysterious ebb and flow of life's energy in the form of a tiny cat, I decided to indulge myself. 

I'm cleaning the bedroom. It takes me all day, because I use it for catharsis. Dusting, rearranging, vacuuming, etc., just a little bit at a time, and in between bits, putting together the following:

Today's Love is still Jack Lemmon. I watched Cowboy (1958) this weekend, and How To Murder Your Wife (1965,) and lots of bits and pieces of other things on YouTube. Here's one of them. 

 

[I noted that in the Netflix reviews for Under The Yum-Yum Tree (1963,) which is a silly movie I meant to watch but they screwed up the Instant streaming for—and I think it was in a review for that movie, but could have been another—someone stated it wasn't credible for Lemmon to play a character who was such a swinger, with so many women interested in him. I guffaw. Surely this statement was made by a man, because so many men just have no clue what attracts women in reality.]

Then I scanned the May 1964 Jack Lemmon Playboy interview for your perusal, while listening to Herb Alpert, because that seemed right for the magazine. 

 

I have 7 or 8 Herb Alpert albums on vinyl, but the songs in this post are from the Definitive Hits digital recording. 

A Taste Of Honey

 

When I was a young girl and teenager, Crown Center in Kansas City held these international festivals several weekends each summer. My favorite was always the Greek Festival. It was fairly authentic, as there was a travelling group from actual Greece, who would go around and put these things on. One year, when I was 13 or 14, I met a boy there, who played bouzouki in his parents' band. He was just dreamy. We stared at each other a lot, then took a walk around the festivities, him speaking in broken English, me probably giggling too much. He squeezed my hand when we said goodbye. I don't remember his name; his last name ended in -olopoulos, but then, so many do, don't they? 

Zorba The Greek

 

An actual living crush of mine made a gorgeously asinine tribute to Jack Lemmon:

 

 

And, well, the fact is, when I was an even littler girl, I also had a deep giggly fondness for Herb Alpert himself. I would get really moony every time I heard this song. 

This Guy's In Love With You

I still do. But then, I'm like that most days these days, anyway.

 

 

the Holodeck: an update

You know I do this once or twice a year or all of the time in my mind; decide who I'd like to keep company with in a holodeck. There's the live version, the dead version, and the never was alive or dead version. 

I'm pretty sure that after last night's episode of House, Hugh Laurie tops the one list this week or month or something. But anyway, this isn't about that. I mean, well, yes, it is, but also. 

Here's my current Top Five on the dead guy list, in semi-random order:

A. François-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire

Voltaire was a happening guy. He wasn't just part of the Enlightenment, he kind of was the enlightenment. He used a jillion pen names, and seems to have come up with them in much the same way I think of mine, meaningful yet slightly tangential. Anyway, I'm aware there's an ongoing view of how much French people didn't used to bathe, but a man who says plain truth like this to me, en francais, is worth the price of a bar of soap. 

François-Marie

Put two men on the globe, and they will only call good, right, just, what will be good for them both. Put four, and they will only consider virtuous what suits them all: and if one of the four eats his neighbour's supper, or fights or kills him, he will certainly raise the others against him. And what is true of these four men is true of the universe. 

(Mettez deux hommes sur la terre, ils n'appelleront bon, vertueux et juste, que ce qui sera bon pour eux deux. Mettez-en quatre, il n'y aura de vertueux que co qui conviendra à tous les quatre ; et si l'un des quatre mange le souper de son compagnon, ou lo bat, ou le tue, il soulève sûrement les autres. Ce que je dis de ces quatre hommes, il lo faut dire do tout l'univers.)

Being French means examining society, its contracts and your role in them. He understood that, too, pointing out that each society chooses its rules based on who its people are. What tastes good to the French does not necessarily taste good to the Germans. I've been thinking a lot about that lately, so I'd let him pour me some wine and tell me these things, and then whatever. 

B. Thomas Jefferson

Thomasjefferson-big

I'm not really into the ginger thing, like the lost dwarf, but Jefferson has to be an exception. I think it's pretty clear he knew what it was all about, when it came to women. Also, nature, liberty, and the cultivation and preparation of good food. That's sexy, my friend. 

I bet Jefferson and Voltaire would have an interesting holodeck discussion of this statement:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. 

And these two, as well:

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned—this is the sum of good government. 

C. Dean Martin

Dean Martin - One For My Baby...

D. Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan - 4th Dimension

You can see more of that at YouTube, here. 

E. James Clerk Maxwell

I know you're thinking Michael Faraday was a hotter-looking 19th century physicist, but it's my contention that Maxwell had a lot more going on where it counts. I mean, I don't even know what I mean by that, but anyway. Maxwell was Scottish. At some point in his career he started growing this manky beard and just let the thing go, all willy-nilly, but before that, he was a handsome young man. 

Maxwell's colour top

I'd happily bore you with actual facts, but I won't, so if you are interested, you can start here for a light overview.

Basically, he invented what became modern physics. Maxwell led to Einstein, Planck, and the fictional invention of the holodeck, which is not 100% fiction anymore. 

Plus, he was Scottish. 

Craig Ferguson/9-11/blather

This is part of an ongoing conversation I've been having with my best online mate. Later, I'll talk about the camping trip, share some pictures, and start the process of putting every blog entry I've ever done, backdated, into this one. That will be a long-term project, but I feel good about it.

Me: Craig Ferguson is this year's top entry for a holodeck weekend. Discuss.

Chickengrrl: His monologue is truly a thing of beauty, a work of art. My only complaint (and granted, it is beyond minor) is that it's an eensy bit too long. I think I've gotten overused to Letterman's too-short one, so Ferg's seems extra long by comparison. I think somewhere in between (but closer to the length of Craig's) is more right.

The man, he is a genius. Maybe not my free pass, but a genius. ;-)

Me: I could listen to him talk for an hour. I am not very interested in the guests, unless they can really hold their own.

Chickengrrl: Yes - I think his one flaw as a host is that he's not a very good interviewer. Yet. I think he's improving, but he sort of turns everything around to talk about himself, or he obsesses about something silly (like Toni Collette saying she was menstruating). But he's better than a lot of people in that sort of position. And I think part of the problem with his guests is that he's on so late, he tends to get quasi-lame ones a lot of the time.

Chickengrrl: OK, I've found another minor flaw, and I hate to be critical of the little darling, but he does the "gay" thing way too much. Honestly, it's starting to get old.

Me: I'd probably have to agree with that. I wonder why it's so?

Chickengrrl: Please tell me you were watching last night, and saw Craig kiss Steve Carell on the mouth. I don't know what led up to it, as I was actually on the phone with P before then, but it was awesome.

Me: I didn't see it last night, but I saw it the first time it was on. It was awesome. (For those who don't watch Craig, and are now wondering at the possible hypocrisy of this conversation, let me point out that the "gay thing" we're tired of is frequent allusions to his sexuality being in question. Since it isn't, that can get old. However, watching him kiss Carell was another thing entirely, even though I have no credible way of explaining it. He's funny when he just does the gay thing, instead of talking about it, maybe.)

Chickengrrl: And tonight's is the awesomest awesome that ever awesomed. In honor of the 9/11 anniversary, his guests tonight were Aaron Brown, who was on CNN for 15 hours straight on 9/11 - and this just a couple of months after he started there, it sounds like - and Ralph Geidel, a retired NYC firefighter from Oregon who lost a brother in the North Tower on 9/11 and who worked for a year doing recovery at Ground Zero. While Aaron has officially become one of my new crushes - he makes me wish I'd been able to tear myself away from NBC that day, but I didn't know him then and I needed the familiar avuncularity of Tom Brokaw to soothe me, although it seems Mr. Brown has a special brand of palliative himself - but this firefighter guy is amazing. Not only did he help with the recovery and retrieval of hundreds of bodies, he got throat cancer for his efforts. I hope they rerun this soon so you can see it, or your DVR caught it. Any paltry complaints I've ever had about Craig's interviewing style have been permanently put to rest. He does know how to interview, and quite well. I just wish he would stop interrupting his guests to be funny, but still at least he's no Leno - not even close. He did a great job tonight. I'm so sorry I slept through his monologue, so I look forward to catching it in reruns He pointed out at the end of the show, too, that he had no politicians on. Good on him.

I'm having horrible deja vu today. I can only imagine what people for whom 9/11 actually hit close to home are going through.

Me: We watched it last night. It was the Emmy entry, wasn't it?

He really is a good interviewer. When he's "on," he interrupts more than usual, but I find he does that much less often than most other talk show hosts.

Anyway, I love him for this. Here is the monologue; as soon as I saw that he was wearing a tie, I knew something was up. It's not his usual sharp brilliance, instead, it's just a guy, talking about something he still can't get a grasp on. Very poignant.

We were talking about how we still feel funny when planes fly close overhead. For weeks after the attack, we had surveillance aircraft overhead every hour, day and night, sometimes many of them. The skyline north of Sandy Hook and to the east was brown for weeks, New York smelled bad for months. Every time we got on a train, we wondered if those were next. Sometimes we were told they could be.

I'd cross the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge and look down the river to the bay, across which you can see the bridge to Staten Island. And beyond that the buildings of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the air towers at JFK and LaGuardia. Since moving to New Jersey, it had always been exciting to look over and see those tall landmarks on the horizon. So after this happened, I'd look over, to see the brown air where the buildings used to be. And it was startling when I realized that it wasn't brown anymore, sometime in the winter. But for well over a year, it still just felt like there was a hole in the landscape. And after that, I'd realize now and then I was beginning to get used to the changed shape of it, that the Empire State Building was the landmark, that Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia, and it made me mad, so I'd force my eyes to put the shape of the towers back in.

See, that's what I've been saying all along

Okay, I should warn anyone who reads this that the link below leads to an essay I thoroughly agree which is posted on a website I--don't thoroughly agree with. But Ilya Somin might be my new holodeck-boyfriend-for-a-day. He said this, "Perhaps the most fundamental cause of ignorance resides in the collective action problem created by the insignificance of any individual vote in determining an electoral outcome..." The essay quoting him is by Jacob Sullum and can be found here.

I have friends who really do pay attention to what's going on, what legislation means, who's running the courts these days, etc. They'd freak if they truly understood my views on "democracy." But at least they're attempting to be relevant. I won't argue with them on that.

always with the men

here are some good lurvematches i made recently at astroadvice's celebrity synastry page. can you say quirky self-possessed individualist?

Mandy Patinkin 99%
Brent Spiner 99%
Gene Hackman 98%
Jack Lemmon 96%
Peter Gabriel 95%
David Bowie 93%
David Byrne 93%
Michael Richards 93%
Frank Sinatra 92%
James Stewart 89%
David Lynch 87%
Geoffrey Rush 86%
Bruce Willis 86%

sadly, i did not score as highly with Dean Martin, Jeff Goldblum or Johnny Depp. apparently, having traits in common is good; too much in common is less so. the page is here, but you have to join and offer birth info to play with the synastry.

i decided that Holodeck II could be a reminiscent kind of thing. so i might include some past loves such as Val Kilmer and C. Thomas Howell. (pretty sure people just call him Tom, don'tcha think?)

you know, i was never really a Marlon Brando fan, big surprise, right? but he totally, totally rocked in Apocalypse Now, a movie that came out when i was 13ish.

as with other R-rated films at the time, i got a few cool points at school for being allowed to watch that. my family, like many in our country, was more inured to violence than to sex, at least as suitable viewing material for a kid. but on the whole, even though my mom was very concerned with my always being wholesome and pure, there was little i was prevented from seeing or reading.

anyway, Apocalypse Now was a pretty remarkable film, certainly for that time period. i wonder how people would feel if it was released now instead? jaded, i think. but Colonel Kurtz was just what i imagined military leaders to be in our lifetime; mostly sharply focused, but without an endpoint goal, and pretty much nuts. i don't know that my perceptions were all that far off, but i mean no offense to anyone individually.

they called it slumming

here's how you know that MenWeek™ has accelerated out of control. you remember Ronnie Van Zant? you ever have warm fuzzy feelings about him? hah. it's not pretty. anyway, he was only 29 when he died. we'll never know what he would have looked like all mature and cleaned up and shaved. but he had a manly voice.

so it's past time for holodeck fantasies, part two, don't you think? i was going to do the fictional character version. i wrote vignettes of me with Archie Goodwin, Rupert Giles, and Fox Mulder. and i started a whole series about a fake me with Julian Crane. but i'm not into it just now.

okay, as an aside? i'm pretty sure that rabbits are taking over my neighborhood. no, i'm serious. it's kinda scary, how they just congregate each night, like they're scoping the area. there are 3 right outside my window right now. sometimes you see 5 or 6, and they will meet in one yard or another. i tell you, they're planning something, and it's not good.

here is the antithesis of what i find appealing in men. still, he was a man. men are nice.

okay actually? men, en masse (and to quote one,) are gross. yet i love them. nah, i could never love him up there./ ^ /but i do love him down there. / v / in the holodeck way, of course. not one of those scary fan-people.

some other non-fiction holodeck 2 choices besides Tim Hutton, let's see...

still can mostly only think of dead folks. or else i'm pretty sure they're gay. that's sort of tiresome. i mean, in terms of creating a proper fantasy? maybe that's just me.eh, whatever. it's a holodeck.

i guess i might try Joseph Fiennes, because whenever i do those silly astrology or biorhythm compatibility thingies, he's always my perfect match. he's 5 years younger than me, so that's a bit weird. but okay.