Vital Viewing (Lost Causes Edition)

 

There's nothing worse than the end of a romance.

Except for maybe war, debilitating illnesses, natural disasters, famine, molestation, homelessness, political corruption, environmental destruction, genocide, etc.

But I digress:

Oh, so sad! Is there any way a positive spin can be put on this?

Tomorrow is another day.

1939-2026

Quips and Quotations (What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas Edition)

 

We experienced music in the same visceral way. Music ignited a fiery pent-up passion inside Elvis and inside me. It was an odd, embarrassing, funny, inspiring, and wonderful sensation. We looked at each other move and saw virtual mirror images. When Elvis thrust his pelvis, mine slammed forward too. When his shoulder dropped, I was down there with him. When he whirled, I was already on my heel.

--Ann-Margret

Elvis Presley confided in me soon after he did Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margret that he was considering marrying her. I'm not implying that anything untoward ever occurred between them, but they had marvelous chemistry. But soon after that, I think he might have had it read to him from a review, he heard Ann-Margret described as "a female Elvis," and Elvis reacted negatively. To his mind, it was vaguely homosexual! Whether that's what cooled his feelings for Ann-Margret or not, I don't know.

--Bobby Darin

Vital Viewing (School Daze Edition)

 

Jasmine Guy was born on this day in 1962. She's best known for playing the self-absorbed Southern belle Whitley Gilbert on the late 1980s-early '90s African American college sitcom A Different World. Jasmine ended up being the breakout star of the series, though that wasn't... 

...always the case. Clockwise from the bottom left we have The Cosby Show's own breakout star, Lisa Bonet, continuing her role as Denise Huxtable, the mildly rebellious daughter of Cliff and Claire (as opposed to the wildly rebellious costar of Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad); next is Kadeem Hardison as (the initially) horny math whiz Dwayne Wayne; Dawnn Lewis as Jalessa Vinson, a divorcee who's returned to school; and Marisa Tomei, as talkative white student Maggie Lauten. Missing is the star of today's post, Jasmine Guy. She was on the show, but her character was considered such an outlier that she wasn't even included in the cast picture. The snobbish Whitley also had kind of an antagonistic relationship with the other characters and would have seemed out of place in such a chummy picture. Nevertheless, the character was seen more and more as the first season advanced, and she even got to meet...

...Denise's mother when she paid a visit to fictional Hillman College (said to be based on Howard University.)

Antagonist or not, the character of Whitley Gilbert was eventually deemed important enough to the show that Jasmine Guy got to be included in this later cast photo, and as the first season ended and the second season began, her importance would only increase. For starters, Lisa Bonet got pregnant. This was too much for A Different World's morally righteous executive producer, Bill Cosby. Rumor has it that Cosby was so upset that he mixed a drink to calm his nerves. Or maybe it was to calm somebody else's nerves. Anyway, it's not like Bonet was going to have this child (the future Zoe Kravitz) out of wedlock, but even though she was married in real life, her TV character wasn't. Bonet was canned and off TV for about a year. When she returned it wasn't to A Different World but once again The Cosby Show, as a stepmother(?!)-to-be.

As for ADW, more changes were in the works. The series got great ratings, but sandwiched between the show it was spun off from and another monster hit, Cheers, how could it not? Truth is the show just wasn't that funny (despite the best efforts of Guy and Hardison), was kind of preachy at times (the usual old fart authority figures showing up to wag their fingers at the collegiates latest scrapes), and supervising producer Anne Beatts, who was white, seemed to be merely guessing at what a black college must be like. Actually, she seemed merely to be guessing at what any 1980s college must be like, as her view on the subject seemed to be informed by a 1930s Jack Oakie campus comedy. Former Fame star (as well as Phylicia Rashad's sister) Debbie Allen was brought in to revamp the show. I suspect that she was giver freer rein than former Saturday Night Live writer Beatts, possibly because Allen was an alumnus of Howard University and thus knew the territory well. Several actors, including Marisa Tomei--how was anyone to know there was an Academy Award in her future? --were let go and new ones were brought in. From the second season onward, the show was much funnier, much more edgy, and much more steeped in the black youth culture of the day. There were still moral lessons to be had, at times about some very serious things like racism and date rape, but like any good story, be it a drama or comedy, it avoided the finger-wagging and instead let the characters oftentimes self-created problems speak for themselves.  

Starting from the left in what I guess is the back row we have Glynn Thurman (ROTC/math professor Colonel Bradford Taylor), Dawnn Lewis, Kadeem Hardison, Lou Myers (Vernon Gaines, the crotchety owner of the campus hangout, The Pit), Sinbad (multiple sports coach and dorm director Walter Oakes, a recurring character in the first season, joined the main cast in the second.) Right to left in what seems to be the front row we have Darryl M. Bell (Dwayne Wayne's best friend and perennial screwup Ron Johnson Jr, another recurring character in the first season, part of the main cast in the second), Charnele Brown (level-headed Kimberly Reese), Cree Summers (hippyish Freddy Brooks), and Jasmine Guy. Though there was some comings and goings as the series run neared its end (a young Jada Plinkett arrives at Hillman), this was the primary cast most of the time. Many, many stories were told, and there were many, many season-length story arcs, with each cast member getting their turn to shine. However, looking at the series as a whole, it's very clear there were two...

...firsts among equals, with their own multiple-seasons-long story arc.

Some years after A Different World went off the air, Jasmine and Kadeem had a talk with Oprah:

Man-oh-man, the way she whips on that that Southern accent! Who needs Gone with the Wind?

Since Jasmine and Kadeem provided most of the laughs in the largely laughless first season, it made comic sense that their characters should get together. It just didn't make any other kind of sense, as Whitley and Dwayne didn't have all that much in common. It's hard to make the case that they were perfect for each other. So what? At the end of the day comedy is about nothing if not about imperfection, and this was the TV era of mismatched lovers. Whitley's and Dwayne's on again-off again-and-on again yet again-relationship, with its miscues and failed seduction attempts, as well as the sudden and surprising opportunities seized, provided just as much laughs as could be had from Sam and Diane on Cheers or David and Maddie on Moonlighting.

Looking for videos online that chronicle Whitley's and Dwayne's rollicking relationship proved no problem at all. In fact, there was an embarrassment of riches. I was ready to post four, five, even six clips in order to give you a fuller picture of the passionate peaks and vitriolic valleys of their riotous romance. Fortunately, I happened upon a single video that tells you in four-and-a-half minutes what six clips otherwise would have told you in a half-hour or so about these loopy lovebirds:

  

 

You may have noticed that they're not always boyfriend and girlfriend in those clips. In fact, the relationship almost ends permanently when a politician named Byron Douglas III (Joe Morton) catches a heartbroken Whitley on a rebound of such force that it lands both of them right smack dab at the altar. And Dwayne? Obviously, for him this the nadir of an off-again relationship. But the nice thing about the light switch metaphor is that the switch flicks up as well as down. Watch:

Diahann Carroll was not known for her physical comedy skills, but that was a pretty neat backwards pratfall at the end. I wonder why she never did anything like that on Julia. Humor too subtle I suppose.

As for Whitley and Dwayne, theirs wasn't the first pop culture instance of a man crashing an ex-girlfriend's wedding, but at least this time...

...no one brandished a weapon.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

 Film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli--that's him in the above picture on the left--died the day before yesterday at the age of 96. He's best known to American audiences for the 1968 movie version of Romeo and Juliet, but it wasn't his first attempt at putting the Bard of Avon's work on film. That happened a year earlier with another box office hit, The Taming of the Shrew, starring Elizabeth Taylor and her hubby at the time, Richard Burton (the other two characters in the above picture.) Take a quick look:

According to Eddie Fisher that's exactly how it happened.

Yes, yes, I know, it all looks a tad involuntary on the bride's part. And the subsequent marriage isn't much better as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf gets rebooted in iambic pentameter. But keep in mind this is 400 years before the #MeToo movement. Women didn't even have the right to vote back then (now that I think of it, no one did.) When it comes to the works of William Shakespeare, you occasionally need a grandfather clause.

Let's leave that quickly behind and move on to a romance where there seems to be some mutual respect:

A love story that ends unhappily. No need to grandfather that, I'm afraid. It can happen in any era.   

Recommended Reading

Writer Carson McCullers was born on this day in 1917. If you do the math, you'll note that's five days after February 14, but just because McCullers missed out on a holiday dedicated to love and romance doesn't mean she didn't have some thoughts on the subject:

 

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

So what is this 1951 Southern Gothic novella about exactly? It details a romantic triangle involving a woman and two men (one of which happens to be a hunchback.) So who among this trio is the beloved? That's why I'm recommending the book to you, so you'll read it and find out.

I'll tell you what, though, let me google up an image that might clarify things a little. 

"hunchback"..."romantic triangle"..."Southern Gothic"...CLICK!

 OOPS! Wrong hunchback, wrong romantic triangle, and while that building may be Gothic, it sure ain't Southern.

Quips and Quotations (St. Valentine's Day Edition)

Oh, darling, the ice caps are melting, but what does it matter, as long as we have each other?

--Kurt Vonnegut, on the possible consequences of including a romantic subplot in one of his novels

Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.

--George Carlin

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

--Dorothy Parker

It does not matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you do not do it in the street and frighten the horses.

--Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who spent a good deal of her life in the 19th century

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

--Woody Allen

Still waiting for Sally Field.

--Marty Volare

Unpredictable

(I've decided to take a little break from this blog. In my absence, my good friend Marty Volare has agreed to recount for you one of his many romantic misadventures. See if you can read it without choking up. In fact, choke up enough, and Marty might just respond to your comments--KJ)

My name is Martin Dangerfield Volare, and the story I'm about to tell is one of love found and love lost, of love born and love died, of love opened and love closed, of love created and love destroyed, of love bloomed and love withered, of love premiered and love canceled, of love invented and love made obsolete, and of love brand-new right out of the box and love left out on the curb to be taken away with the rest of the trash. It is an old story, as old as the sun and the moon and the sea and the ground and the redwoods and the bones of dinosaurs, but also a story of continual renewal, as new as a baby's laugh, a puppy's bark, a kitten's meow, a chick's chirp, and a lamb's baa. For this tale I tell is not meant to depress but inspire, that though love may burn to a crisp like a marshmallow left too long over a fire at a Labor Day picnic on that last sweet, sultry night of summer, its' smoke will nonetheless rise gently above the Metropark and the trees and the birds and up, up toward the clouds and the heavens and the stars and the galaxies and the extraterrestrials beyond.

Her name was Sonya, and she worked as a barmaid at the Looking-Glass Cafe, where I sometimes go to escape and evade and avoid and elude the desperation and desolation of my lonely existence. Ah, how shall I describe Sonya? She was as lovely as the dawn, as beautiful as the dusk, and as sweet as a mango. And she had a nice smile. I was smitten.

Alas, difficulties loomed! For starters, she slept with this one guy. However, she told me he meant nothing to her and would probably break up with him soon as she got the air conditioning, driver's side power window, and CD player fixed on her Buick Enclave and so wouldn't have to borrow his Mustang all the time. That filled me with hope. She then revealed that she had a two-year old daughter. I asked if the guy she slept with was the father. She said she didn't think so. I was naturally relieved to hear that. Still, if me and Sonya were to get married, it would mean I would have to raise the daughter as my own. Would I be up to the challenges of parenthood? I needed to know the answer.

I found the answer, or thought I had found the answer, or hoped with the hope that gives all sentient beings sustenance that I had found the answer when I saw this flier shoved between one of my windshield wipers while leaving the laundromat. It read as follows:

MADAME IMELDA

Forecaster of Fate, Prophetess of the Paranormal, Seer of the Supernatural, Assessor of the Astral Plane

will predict your future for

$10

Hurry! Limited time offer.

I know it now seems a bit desperate of me to go to a fortune teller to help solve a romantic dilemma, but at the time desperate blood pumped into and out of my desperate heart. I made up my mind to the see the seer.

Her simple clapboard house was located next to a payday lender in a part of town noted for its potholes, pawn shops, foreclosed property, and abandoned cars. I actually found it rather heartening that Madame Imelda should live in such a neighborhood. I like my psychics on the humble side. However, I may have overestimated her humility, for when I walked into her simple clapboard home I was greeted by a giant middle-aged lady dressed in gypsy garb and speaking in a foreign accent, mostly Hungarian, but with what sounded like a little Spanish and Scandinavian thrown in. I took her for a worldly woman.

"I am Madame Imelda" she intoned. "Mistress of Mysticism, Empress of Enchantment, and Diva of Divination! I know past, present, and future! I have access to those worlds beyond normal sight, sound, smell, touch, and thought! I speak with the spirits, hobnob with the hobgoblins, and play host to the ghosts! Now, what can I do for you?"

Awed, I lowered my head, pulled the flier out of my pocket, and handed it to her. She nodded, and led from the foyer into a room full of lit candles, burning incense, and lave lamps. Hanging on one wall was a black velvet painting of a wizard seated on a unicorn, his magic wand doubling as a riding crop. In the middle of the room was a small table with a crystal ball. I sat on one side, Madame Imelda on the other. She held out her hand, and I gave her the ten dollars. She turned away and beckoned,

"Daughter, Daughter, bring me my purse!"

From another room emerged a girl of about nine or ten wearing a Miley Cyrus T-shirt and carrying an oversized purse. Madame Imelda deposited my ten dollars into the purse and the tyke left. Madame Imelda then got down to the business of forecasting the future.

"You shall experience great happiness and great sadness!" she intoned as she peered into the crystal ball. "You shall climb great peaks and descend into deep valleys. You shall laugh and you shall cry. You shall know joy and you shall know heartbreak. That is your destiny. Now leave and tell all your friends about me. I'm here seven days a week, half a day on holidays. I accept credit cards."

Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed at this rather vague prediction. I began to wonder if Madame Imelda was on the level.

"Couldn't you be more specific?" I asked. "I wanted to know about my soon-to-be-girlfriend-soon-to-be-fiancee-soon-to-be-wife."

"Oh, it's specificity you seek? That will be $350. Daughter, daughter, bring me my purse!"

"$350?!"

"Prophecy is not some low-hanging fruit that can be plucked from a tree. You have to go to the farmer's market and pay a little extra for it."

My anger rising, I blurted out, "A farmers market wouldn't try to cheat me like you are!"

The big woman stood up and yelled, "You dare impugn the integrity of Madame Imelda, Chief Executive of the Extrasensory?! Take leave of my prescient presence at once, you worm!"

Faced with such a torrent of sincerity, I had no choice but to apologize, yet so great was my shame, I couldn't even open my mouth. I turned and reluctantly headed toward the door.

"Wait!"

I turned away from the door!

"Madame Imelda is nothing if not fair. Knowing the past, present, and future does that to a person. Ask me a question about this lady friend of yours, and if I get it right, you pay for a full reading."

That sounded reasonable, but what could I ask? Sonya's last name? No, it had to be something I already knew the answer to, just in case Madame Imelda answered falsely. It was Sonya's baby daughter that brought me here in the first place. I could ask something along those lines. The daughter's name, maybe? No, I didn't know that either. Wait, I could just ask the psychic if she even knew Sonya had a baby daughter.

"Tell me, Madame Imelda, who is the most important female in my future girlfriend/fiancee/wife's life?"

Madame Imelda sat down and peered into the crystal ball. In less than a second, she intoned, "Her mother is the most important person in her life!"

"Wrong. Not her mother."

"Not her mother? I'd like to think I'm the most important female in my daughter's life!"

"I said it's not her mother!" I could feel my anger almost returning.

"Her sister?"

"No."

"Grandmother?"

"No."

"Best friend?"

My anger had now most assuredly returned. "Her daughter! Her baby daughter is the most important female in her life!"

"Oh, her baby daughter! You didn't tell me she had a baby daughter."

"You were already supposed to know that!"

Madame Imelda looked back into the crystal ball. "Ah, I see my mistake now. I was looking at the ball's northern hemisphere, when I really should have been looking at its' south. There's the baby, in plain sight. Daughter, daughter, bring me my purse!"

I left in disgust.

Driving home, I was at first despondent, but it didn't last long. Perhaps there was a lesson to be learned here. I had wanted easy assurance from a fortune teller that I wasn't making a mistake, but there are no shortcuts in romance. Love is a matter of faith. This thought put me in a good mood. The Madame Imeldas of the world weren't going to keep me from my soul mate. By the time I arrived at the Looking-Glass Cafe, I was so filled with joyful ardor I skipped right in the place. A couple guys at a pool table laughed at me, but what did I care? I was a paramour in paradise!

"Hiya, Marty," said Sonya from behind the bar. "You look like you're in a good mood."

"I am. I just exposed a fortune teller as a fake."

"Oh, yeah? What'd ya do that for?"

"I asked her a question about you, and she didn't know the answer."

"Oh, yeah? What'd ya ask?"

Smiling, I said, "Who is the most important female in your life?"

"Oh, that'd be my best friend Amy. She let me sleep on her couch this one time when I--"

Panicked, I said, "No, not your best friend Amy!"

"Well, I sometimes spend time with my kid sister."

"No, not your kid sister!"

"My grandmother? I like her. I hope you don't think it's my mother. Me and her just don't see eye to eye."

"It's you're daughter!," I blurted. "You're baby daughter should be the most important female in your life!"

"Oh, yeah. That's right. My daughter."

To make a long lament short, things never did work out between me and Sonya. She left the Looking-Glass Cafe not long after. I hear she's now at some bikers bar near Sandusky. The guy she sleeps with works grill.

And, in case you're wondering, I eventually did pay Madame Imelda her $350. It was only fair.

He Likes Her! He Likes Her!

Stopped by The Looking-Glass Cafe, where I saw my old friend Marty Volare hunched over the bar writing something on a piece of paper, which couldn't have been easy as the beer dribbling down from his mouth caused the ink to run.

"Hiya, Marty!," I said as I walked into the place. "Whatcha' writing?"

Even though we've known each other for years, Marty looked at me quite shyly, and then cast his eyes down, muttering, "Oh, just a love letter."

"A love letter? To who?"

"Sally Field."

"You like Sally Field, huh?"

"Ever since I was a little boy plopped in front of the TV set with my tray of marshmallow pinwheel cookies and a big cup of Tang, the drink the astronauts drank, on the side."

"Can I read it?"

A frightened look appeared on Marty's face, and he clutched the letter close to his chest, not a good idea as his shirt was covered with Cheez-It crumbs.

"Aw, c'mon, Marty, you've known me for years!"

Marty shyly, reluctantly, handed over his letter. It wasn't easy to read, what with all the dribbled beer and smashed Cheez-It crumbs, but read it I did, and, man, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, Shakespeare and the King James Version of The Bible included. Before he sends his letter off to Sally, Marty has graciously allowed me to share it with all of you. Read it, and see if you don't get a lump in your throat.

My Dearest Darling Sally Field,

I have carried a torch for you ever since I was seven years old and the local UHF station played Gidget and The Flying Nun back to back. I first fell in love with you in that little yellow bikini, and then fell in love all over again in that white nun's habit. It might have been better for my psycho-biological development had it been the other way around, but, no matter, whether you were frolicking on the beaches of Southern California, or soaring through the skies above Puerto Rico, so, too, did my heart. Later you appeared in the TV movie, Sybil, and I fell in love with all thirteen of your personalities, though the Mike personality and the Sid personality didn't help my psycho-biological development much either. Not too long after that you appeared in Smokey and the Bandit. Oh, Sally, how I longed to be the Burt Reynolds who would rescue you from the evil clutches of Jackie Gleason, who was even meaner than when he played Ralph Kramden. No matter. He would not send you "to the moon" as long as I was there to protect you. Then there was Norma Rae. Inspired by your performance, I tried to organize a union in my place of employment. Unfortunately, I was working in my grandmother's collectibles shop at the time, and she told my parents on me. Finally, Places in the Heart, for which you won your second Academy Award. Of course, Sally, your place was in my heart all along.

Recently, I was distressed to learn that you suffer from osteoporosis. Oh, Sally, how I want to take those brittle bones of yours in my arms and make them all better. Fortunately, you've discovered Boniva, and, watching those commercials, I was thrilled to see that you're now healthy enough to go to the farmer's market and buy some ripe tomatoes (by the way, I like ketchup.) Still, I was a bit puzzled. Isn't osteoporosis a disease older women get? So I looked up your age on the Internet, and was surprised to see that you're now 63!

Sally, I swear to you from the bottom of my love-stricken heart, you don't look a day over 40.

I, on the other hand, am only 45, yet strangers always mistake me for being a couple of decades older.

Oh, Sally, don't you see? We were made for each other!!!

Lovingly yours,

Martin Dangerfield Volare

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo