We must all work together to thwart PR Nazis;
we must stop the identity theft killers;
we must stop men from doing women’s hair
The d.j. hero of “Play Misty for Me,” Dave Garver, whispers so intimately into the microphone that an impressionable fan (Jessica Walter) imagines that she has a special bond with him. He sleeps with her a few times, only to discover that she’s a knife-wielding psychopath who won’t let go. This casually made picture featured plentiful views of Eastwood’s bare chest, which appeared in many movies, including “The Beguiled,” which he had made with Don Siegel just before “Dirty Harry.” In “The Beguiled,” Eastwood is a wounded Union soldier who is taken in by the itchy women of a girls’ school at the end of the Civil War. The two portraits of lusted-after men border on narcissism, though, in a surprising turn (which should have alerted us to where Eastwood was going), the hero in each case is a careless opportunist who refuses to take responsibility for the havoc he creates….“Play Misty for Me” ends with Dave Garver knocking his lover through a window and down Big Sur’s rocky cliffs. Eastwood was clearly telling both the studios and the public that they could admire but not possess him. —“Out of the West: Clint Eastwood’s shifting landscape,” David Denby, The New Yorker
A convincing rationale for why the Washington Post insists on “shoving [its] gay business” in your face;
drink up, ladies (unless you like being fat);
flying panty party!
The trickle of forgetfulness that seems to be slipping down through the electrical impulses of my brain is a swollen spring runoff in my mother. The people in her life are like pieces on a chessboard, and every time she goes to make a move she cannot remember which shape is the Bishop, or Queen, and how it is exactly the Knight is played. Even worse, every time she looks away, someone switches all the pieces around and when she looks back she immediately recognizes that none of the players are where she left them. That recognition, to see it, carries a certain poignancy. The unquestioned certainty of my mother’s life has been stalled and in the confusion she senses a checkmate….Our whole family went to my son’s graduation in Middlebury, Vermont, and over the course of the long weekend my mother asked if we were in Andover, Massachusetts, confusing this graduation for that of another grandchild she was slated to attend later in the month. Or she simply asked where we were. The morning of the graduation it rained hard but then stopped suddenly just in time for the ceremonies. As we drove the rented minivan towards Middlebury the sun cleared the sky and Vermont displayed its soft, green valleys and hills. “It’s so beautiful,” my mother said in awe. “I will remember this forever.” Or until 12:15, I thought, whichever comes first. —“Remembering Ray Borque, Eddie Lewis, Ploughshares