Fran Lebowitz’ 1-star Amazon reviews for The New Yorker
Could be DiCenzo channeled Fran, pretty good job…
Crayons (Crayola, Sixty-Four-Count)
“You never see something written in crayon and think, Now this I gotta read. The crayon is the tool of children and idiots. If the Declaration of Independence were written in crayon, we wouldn’t be a country today. No one would take it seriously. They’d go, “What is this, a placemat?”
There are 14 more of these to lighten your day and here’s the Lebowitz Day-lightener Link. I Love Fran! (And Mike DiCenzo too, if he wrote the piece for New Yorker Humor. His name is on it.)
The Gangsta Gardener of S. Central L.A.
This is a 17-minute video, which I’ve watched a half-dozen times. It seems much shorter to me. I am including it in this blog because I believe in its worth, in its message or truth. I usually don’t include stuff that uses the f-bomb, the s-bomb, or language, but as you’ll see, it’s merely the protective coloring of a resident of South Central Los Angeles and it’s not excessive; give it a minute or two and it subsides into a very inspiring manifesto. This guy Ron Finley is great in my opinion; I’d like to follow him around in that garden, maybe get some morning glory seeds or cuttings, find out why the tomatoes did poorly this year. Here’s the Link.
Ai Weiwei installation
His commission for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney AU is 500 cast iron combat helmets. To create it, the artist cast hundreds of sculptures in iron from a single mold based on a twentieth-century military helmet. (Link)
It wouldn’t have made much of an impression upon me except here’s the weird part: some say it commemorates one country’s feeble “gift“ to help Ukraine fight the illegal Putin incursion; surplus helmets. Nothing else, just that. BFD. That’s what it means to me: Gee, thanks guys, for the metal hats. That should turn the tide here. No stopping us now.
BTW take special notice of the next bus you see; note the passengers. Kids, oldsters, regular folks going to work. People like you and me. Then think about Putin targeting such a bus in Ukraine. Targeting it. Yep, sure did. Blew it to hell—a full city bus. This was not “collateral damage,” it was a “successful” hit. Planned. If you have any really bad juju that works, send it to that psycho. Special little room in hell for that (-------).
Banned Books Week was the biggest yet
Ban MY books. Please! They need the sales boost. I’m sure the book banners can find something in them they’ll dislike. Anyway it was a huge year for book banning. See how many your state banned. (Link)
I read my banned books poem with the clunky title for Larry Robin’s Banned Books Zoom reading a week or so ago. And it made the anthology.
BANNED stands for Biased And Non Negotiably Egregiously Denied.
Books in this case. Some of them dull.
Most have passages detested by the powerful
elite, so they are simply banned. Read them
in quiet acts of disobedience. You’ll be more
connected to the universal consciousness,
feared by rulers everywhere. And if not,
you’ll have ducked into an alley where they
can’t follow yet. Banned books are more fun.
Even that Atwood one, if a bit less so. Still.
Banned means “Read this first.”
Banned means “Must Read!”
Ferlinghetti fought the banned and sold the
SCOTUS “Howl.” No longer a “Must Read,”
it became an “Okay to read.” Not so much fun.
But it’s banned again, I’m sure. Somewhere.
SNIPPETS
The people asking ChatGPT who to vote for will get what they deserve.
Mamdouh Eldamaty, Cairo archaeologist, says Nefertiti’s burial place may be located soon. This is why I think cremation is such a great alternative.
Florida, U.S. Highway 1 turns into the Overseas Highway linking the Keys from Key Largo to Key West. It crosses 42 (!) bridges over open water, creating the sensation of driving across the sea.
If a chili pepper was nosy it might get jalapeño business. (Thanks Rhonda)
A S&R crew had to intervene to pluck a 16-year-old off a cliffside after he followed an AI-generated hiking route into dangerous terrain. Yep, AI is out to get us, one way or t’other.
Shouldn’t the plural of still life be still lives?
Weatherisms my family told me as a child: chili today, hot tomale. Tomorrow will be muggy, followed by tuggy, weggy, thurggy…I laughed so hard I was incontinent. I was a good room.
In Switzerland it’s illegal to own just one goldfish. Two or more, okay. They are considered herd or group animals and it’s for their emotional welfare to be around others of their kind.
The Charging Bull of Wall Street was a crime to begin with; the sculptor made it and had it dropped off in the dark of night as a 3-ton gift to NYC. It was removed but protest brought it back and now it has a permit.
The Statue of Liberty’s “skin” is copper the thickness of two pennies stacked one on another. When she turned green, the bureaucrats wanted to paint it. Artists intervened saying “That’s patina, dumb***” Whew, close one. Patinated she remained.
When a famous comedian got tipsy after his act in Las Vegas he drove his car into the fountain at Caesar’s Palace. A soaked policeman, trying to talk to him, reported he kept yelling “No wax!” and breaking up.
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”--William Blake
“ Is that a cap W?” --Guinotte Wise
The Great Cornell Tower Pumpkin Halloween Mystery
Who (or what) stuck the pumpkin on the spire of Cornell’s McGraw Tower? It’s a bit more than a prank; it’s a serious feat of, well, derring-do. And it took no little daring and plenty of doing as the spike at the top is 173 feet from the ground and steep as a steeple.
Some Halloween college pranksters took a history prof’s VW and placed it between the columns at Westminster College back in the fifties. But that’s much more do-able. It had only inches to spare and it took several strong backs to do it. It couldn’t be driven down the steps as there was no way to un-parallel park the vehicle. It had to be carried sideways and out. We volunteered, some of us, and carried it to safety, unharmed, and what did we get for our trouble? Not even a sixpack—just a cloud of suspicion. It seemed our precision work came together too quickly.
Oh well, that was long ago. It’s history as they say. The Cornell mystery is only 20 years old but the who and how-done it have never been solved. Here’s a link to the story. (And a really annoying overkill assortment of internet ads, jeez.)
The mouth bow was once instrumental to Mountain Music
(This is a static screenshot. To access video, click on bold link in text below.)
