It has been fun and frenzied, Friends. But today I decided that enough was enough, and that the one-time-a-day posting would end today. Hail, Farewell, and Goodby to that.
(NOT April Fool! in the traditional sense. I ended the one-time-a-day posting by posting TWICE, for the first time, today. Ain’t I a Stinker.)
Every year a subset of America goes a little crazy-with-the-flow in a phenomenon called “March Madness.” This is the sixty-four best college basketball teams engage in an elimination tournament so that they become thirty-two, then the Sweet Sixteen, then the Elite Eight, then the Final Four. Alas, the team of my alma mater, the University of Arizona, just got eliminated.
But at least the tragedy was fodder for a journal page, and a deeply allegorical one at that. Even the acrosticization reflects March Madness in its wild interlocking of names and conditions.
When I was a kid there was a show on Saturday called “ABC Wide World of Sports.” Each show had an opening montage with an overvoice declaiming “The thrill of Victory…the agony of Defeat.” (RIP Jim McKay, who was really James Kenneth McManus, host of the show, who was at the 1972 Olympics in Munich when the brutal slaying of Israeli athletes took place. Not to digress, but I think MUNICH is every bit as important a movie to see as SCHINDLER’S LIST.)
This page is in two disproportionate parts: DAYBREAK (The Thrill of Victory) and UPDATE (The Agony of Defeat). Here are most of the words.
— D A Y B R E A K —
UnDEFEATed is my college
EYELASH batting carnaL knowledge
LOTTEries are won & lost
Battles grim; IMPASSES crossed
Craft REENTERS atmosphere
Gazes STEELY show no fear
Phoenix/TEMPE/Mesa leer
— U P D A T E —
Buzzer-BEATen was my team
OLEO has smudged a dream
BoOKRAcks filled w/tomes of woe
cast aSIDE the Place & Show
Heartbroke horns of DiESEls blow
I’ll be okay in a few days, honest.
Breasts are many things. They are definers of mammals. They are enablers of the continued existence of human beings. They are life-threatening catchers of rogue cells. They are distractions, enticements, modified sweat glands, fabric stretchers, objects of desire, objects of derision, objects of adiposity, curiosity, virtuosity–but let’s get on with this post. Here is the page I made yesterday, which is about a specific type of breast, the enhanced breast, and about the instrument of its enhancement, the silicone implant.
Here are the words to the tricky, brain-busting quadruple acrostic:
Stuff cabbage–check! Stuff sausage–yes! stuff silicone? Ten-four
Quick-bobble will make wobblers with more perk than neoprene
Unlike that I Love Lucy star with monogram VV
Implanteds get invited to the finest posh soiree
Some grace a this-month centerfold or ad in social media
Help adolescent boys get off and make a Grandpa swell
Enduring fame may not be hers but O the current melee
Delights that ditzy Jersey girl whose bra size is DD
For the most part I am against breast-enhancement surgery. It seems invasive, dangerous, and barbaric to me. But for a wonderful friend of mine, subjected to a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, and various other tortures of the damned, it may provide a semblance of normalcy and rebelonging, and I’m all for that.
First movement: Allegro
Second movement: Largo
The above pages represent my output for March 25. There is much to be done with both of them, but their ships have sailed. Perhaps their ships will return to dock, but not today.
Note to REPO MAN fans: the acrostic-within-the-acrostic reads LATTICE OF COINCIDENCERS. You might be thinking Plate, or Shrimp, or Plate of Shrimp…
Daily maintenance of a creative journal is ever-challenging. What do you do when you can’t think of anything? You cuss, and censor your cussing with “blankety-blank…,” and realize the ironic relationship between the Blanket and the Blank, and you’re off and running.
Here are the words to the triple acrostic:
Bartleby Beetle–by all rights a snob
Left friendly pheromones gracing a knob
Annie Arabian waylaid her foal
Needing a frisky young stud for a stroll
Kermit Koala gyrated with Leila
Keeping a promise youths make at a gala
Emmett Egret played around with a swan
Easily straying from checkers & flan
Telling such lies stymies joy, but a brick
Though essentially dense, is with dignity thick
What does it mean? It may not mean anything but Blankety Blank. Or it may be a statement about Aesop’s Fabulous absurdity, or it may be a celebration of the Brick similar to the one Woody Harrelson’s character made in INDECENT PROPOSAL. It’s just wordplay and flash-storytelling, really, rated PG-13 for adult themes. I hope it entertains.
More than fifty years ago a Minnesota kid wrote “Song to Woody.” More than four years ago an Arizona kid drew “Song to Bobby.” (He’d just seen I’M NOT THERE.) And just yesterday that same kid did another would-be tribute to his favorite songwriter:
The illustration includes references to “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Mister Tambourine Man,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” “Jokerman,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat.”
These are the words to the double acrostic:
Begin with a North boy’s decision–he’ll leave Minnesota behind
Beguiled by a Dust Bowl declaimer–by hard times & music defined
On east to a Village whose voice was–just right for the dissolute skinny
On coffeehouse stools for performing–like many a Tom Dick & Vinny
Betokening change for the better–came Capitol Records, & vinyl
Baroquely, the folk went electric–& then came a trauma near spinal
Befuddlement presaged conversion–an episode, not a novella
Bold “Jokerman” waxed infidelic–a multiambiguous fella
Yes, his wont’s to want contradiction–like sallowness under a zap tan
Yet he achieves TRUTH via fiction–& lyrically he is the Captain
I close with the marquee of a wonderful event held annually in Old Town of Cottonwood, Arizona. Last year I was privileged to sing with Joe Neri and the Mystery Tramps, who had audience members sing seven of the ten verses of “Desolation Row.” I got the one with the reference to Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. My voice almost broke on “The Titanic sails at dawn,” but I had a strong finish. [smiles]
The words to the double acrostic:
H A V E A L O C H , E L L I S . . . a monkey named Beppo
Engaged to be merry is F U N if not hep
Lo, tide; hie, poor thermic: Mick hails, re king/Brut
In dust (re: us) Lee seeks a nap — O Lee — Frutti
Can apple us canopied not — or with stadium
An endlessness bodes well des mondes & Dez Tutu
Lest rad (y yo) active . . . . . . unmade of vanadium
Above the acrostic is a drawing of Air Force Two, and above that is the tagline “Featuring AIR FORCE TWO as Candy,” and above that is the double-barreled title ENTITLEMENT, or, Your Guest Is as Good as Mined.
I posted the image in Facebook, and it was met with bafflement, exemplified by my beloved girlfriend’s comment, “??? Well, you done flew that copter right over this poor gal’s head.” I HAD pointed out that, as it was St. Patrick’s Day, I was honoring the occasion by presenting a green-tinted page that was full of Blarney; but that there was a subtext of fiscal conservatism.
The acrostic is loaded with puns. I’ll give you the first one: “Have a loch, Ellis” is a riff on Havelock Ellis, a pioneer in the study of atypical sexuality.
Also, here is my Facebook response to Denise: “Let’s get in the chopper and have a fun ride, Darling. The message is hidden in plane sight: our Founding Fathers did fine with no need for Air Force One, let alone Two. PS: LBJ had a bowling alley installed in the White House basement. PPS: Congresscritters keep voting themselves Louis XVI perks. Sackcloth & Ash em, says I! [smiley face]”
Here are the impossible-to-read-on-the-page words:
Misanthropes are often human–denizens of desks
Others dole out peskiness w/gusto & w/pesk
Sucking vampires if they’re let as deft as Pistol Pete
Quizno-quick & Hoover strong till abdomen’s replete
Unto puddles under trees they hatch, they drink, YOU smart
ICK! to you is YUM! to them–some hot soup à la carte
Tender flesh is Heaven-sent, Maurice Chevalier
Offering A Positive will make a buzzter’s day
Notes: Ironically, I think to call mosquitoes misanthropes is anthropomorphizing. They’re just hungry, which makes them pesky. And is there such a thing as Pesk? Sure, but surprisingly, the word derives not from bugs, but fish.
I’ve wondered sometimes what a mosquito becomes if it sucks blood from a vampire. I’m tickled to express the possibility poetically.
The late Pistol Pete Maravich was a superbly talented but injury-prone professional basketball player. He liked to put some razzle-dazzle into his ball handling and shooting. Tragically, he died at a mere 40 during a pickup game, unaware that he had a congenital heart defect. Don’t ignore symptoms, friends!!
Quiznos is a place that makes sandwiches, fast. Hoovers are vacuum cleaners that suck strongly when new.
Maurice Chevalier was an entertainer and actor. One of the songs he made famous was “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy Magazine, sang that song once, on Saturday Night Live, long ago.
A Positive is a very common blood type, which happens to be my own. And Buzzter is my own corruption of the word Buster.
Questions and comments are most welcome!
Here are the words to the acrostic:
It is wondrous, isn’t it
A soul to keep around & with
Now when the birds tuwit tuwoo
Don’t doubt that they mean You & YOU
No veiled references, no allegory, no twisty wordplay–this is no less nor more than a celebration and remembrance of young love.
I entered one of my latest birds in a juried art show. The poor guy was rejected, and thus we are both dejected. But the elating thing about having a blog is that you are your own juror, and everything you do is juried in. So welcome to my latest one-man, one-bird show!
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Knowledge complicates & wisdom simplifies
It’s light bath & solid making a shadow
The dog catnaps & the cat lies doggo
The ONUS & the HONOR
Yinways & yangward
Please remember that cats have claws and, often, merciless predation.
One with Clay, Image and Text 