The mind reels, right? My mind anyway. I’m reading a couple of different books. Debra Winger, the actress (or ex-actress), wrote a short sort of autobiography. It’s not bad but it doesn’t really paint a broad picture of her life. It’s like little vignettes about things she remembers, like her parents, or trips to foreign countries, almost none of them having to do with her work as an actress. She includes some bad poetry too. I wish people wouldn’t do that. I mean, I’ve written plenty of bad poetry in my time, so I don’t begrudge her that. But I don’t inflict it on other people—or at least not very often. Anyway, one thing I didn’t know about her is that she is Jewish. And devoutly so, apparently. With a name like Winger?
Incidentally, the actress Joanna Arquette once made a documentary called “Searching For Debra Winger.” It was about female actresses who as they get older find that they cannot find meaningful work in Hollywood because of sexism, ageism, the old boy’s network, male chauvinism etc. I watched this flick but don’t remember a single moment of it. But Joanna Arquette herself I do remember. She sat next to me at Allen Ginsberg’s memorial service in St Mark’s back in ‘97. Wow! Did this woman emanate SEX! It doesn’t really translate to me when I see her on screen but in person she was va-va-VOOM!
Speaking of Jews, I’m also reading Paul Shaffer’s autobio. Shaffer of Dave Letterman band fame. I don’t begrudge anyone their faith but Mr Shaffer has a banal way of insisting upon the superiority of his Jewishness. Is it just me or is that annoying? He proudly relates that he insisted his Italian Catholic wife renounce her Catholicism and convert to Judaism. Why is he bragging about that? I think that’s a shameful thing, to force someone to renounce their faith as a precondition of marriage. I’m not a good Catholic, god or whomever knows, but my Catholicism does still make up a lot of who I am. I’m also Irish American. If someone came up to me and said, “Yeah, ummm, that whole Irish Catholic thing you have going on? Yeah, that’s gonna have to stop. Yeah, you want to hang out with me, you’re no longer Irish Catholic. I want you to start taking classes in Indian history and the Indian language. You’re going to practice Buddhism from now on. You are going to eat Indian food and hang out with Indian people and celebrate Indian holidays. Any kids you might have? Yeah, they’re gonna be raised Indian. No more Irish anything anymore, you hear me? We’re gonna burn all that Irish right out of you!”
Pardon me but FUCK YOU. That’s a fucking insult. I know many proud Jewish people. How would they feel if someone insisted they renounce their Jewish faith? They would be OUTRAGED. And rightly so. So Paul Shaffer, supposed “nice guy” pianist and bandleader, loses points with me.
I did come across Paul in a doorway one night in Greenwich Village, as he was coming out of a record store and I and my friends were going in. This was back in the early 80s, you know, when vinyl records were the norm. That was my New York life back in my mid-teen years: Greenwich Village record stores and head shops, Washington Square Park and McSorley’s Old Ale House. All those dreadlocked Jamaican drug dealers exhorting us from the leafy shadows, “Sess, sess, chiba, chiba…” Danger vibed. We grokked it.
I just finished Julie Powell’s follow up to Julie and Julia. Cleaved, it’s called. Definitely not what I expected. Has anybody else read this latest book? You ask me, she should never have published it. Written it, maybe, for her eyes only, as therapy. She does not come off looking good. Do I want to hear that she routinely cheats on her husband and he routinely cheats on her? Do I want to hear how she loves some man who is not her husband and pines for this man like a giddy schoolgirl while he pushes her aside because she’s so damned irritating? Do I want to know that her husband is not good in bed? Do I want to know how she has anonymous hookups with strange men she meets online, dressing like a slut to get fucked and then feeling guilty about it afterward? How she likes to get chained up and slapped around during rough sex? Actually, that sounds like some crazy sexy stuff, right? Forget it, it just comes off sounding sad. And all the endless descriptions of carving meat! Pages and pages of butcher porn! She does include some helpful recipes for all you “foodies” out there though, so dig in! But it turns out Julie’s not fulfilled by any of this so later on in the book she decides to go on several “sabbatical” treks around the world that last for months and have no ultimate point. I’m glad Julie is now rich enough to afford to live like this, but I personally don’t relate. “Oh, I think I’d like to drink bull’s blood straight from the vein! I must fly to Africa immediately and live among the Masai!” Don’t we already have Andrew Zimmern for that? Sorry, Julie, but this is just ugly narcissism. Uglier than my own anyway.
March 10, 2010 at 9:26 am |
Hahahah! Brilliant ~ I thought “Cleaved” sucked ass, but then I thought Julie & Julia did too. Shitty books from a shitty writer ~ spurns me on to finish mine! At least I can be entertaining. I will refrain from religious comments ~ so as not to “offend” any of your dear readers. Continue ranting dear B ~ and make sure you buy some new boots.