Kandinsky at the Guggenheim

I am not going to review Kandinksy. That would be silly. However, I will say it is worth the trip over to Fifth Avenue and 88th Street. The show is in chronological order. The helix of the museum accentuates any time-hung show. I particularly liked his middle period, the paintings he is famous for. Less did I enjoy the paintings that were Miro or Klee inspired. I think as Kandinsky got older he did not have the strength to resist the style of the era. But, that happens. Okay, I reviewed it.

I am so happy, so very very happy, to go see art, especially art that arises from someone in a very strong, personal way. It gets me so excited and calm at once. Excited, because visual art is often fresh, unique and energized. Calm, because someone else on earth had the balls to be themselves and to put it “out there,” and they didn’t drop dead from ridicule (like I fear might happen to me one day).

Plus, I am not a visual artist, so the pressure is off and my competitive side is not too aroused.

It makes me want to write…and often it makes me want to write things that are not at all narrative, or linear or contextualized. Free. A yam. A string. A song. A bone. Something pushed inside a hole.


This blog entry, and more like it, is from www.opentrench.blogspot.com

Thankful as Hell

Please have a wonderful time this Thanksgiving week with family and-or friends or alone if you choose! I know some people love to be alone.

I have had a great life…and before I commit suicide, I just want to say---

Okay, let’s try this again.

I have had a great life and I would like to say I am grateful for:

Kevlar
Q-Tips
Pasta
France
My Martin Guitar
Artichokes
My friends from High School, College, Acting School, writing classes, my twenties in New York, friends from LA, my new friends in New York, my friends all over the country, my family, my dead dog.
My father having had the audacity to open a bicycle shop in the ‘70’s
Cheap TJ wine
California
Joni Mitchell
Imperfect Democracy
Theatre
Sean Penn
Joan Didion
Nanny
Tufts
Facebook
Computers
Macaroni and Cheese
Meryl Streep
Scotland
Ireland
Oceans
Biology
Fuel efficient cars
Mary, Jeff, Anne, Noel, Margot, Bradford, Noel, Karen, Tecia
Upstate New York
New York City
Virginia Woolf
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Suffern
Sarah and Jeff
Dan and Leslie
Gary
The Neighborhood Playhouse
The Periodic Table of Elements
Fermi
Noam Chomsky
T.S. Elliot
Richard Ford
My producers
My agent
My Yamaha electric piano
My Baldwin Hamilton piano
My Los Angeles kitchen
My studio apartment in Queens
Adam, always Adam, Adam
Weather
The Weather Channel online
The Ramapo River
George
Janet, Don, Sally & Greg
West Coast Ensemble
The Production Company
Lyda
Kevin
Todd
Palm Springs
Yosemite
Big Sur
Joshua Tree
Oregon
Canada
New Jersey
Obama
Hillary
Bill
Hewlett Packard
Megan, always Megan
Adam’s family, all of them
Cribbage
Cigarettes, when necessary
Good Musicals
Music theory
Voice lessons
Simple food
Legs
Walking
The George Washington Bridge
The Hollywood Hills
South Beach
Paris
Paris
Paris
Germany
The Enlightenment
Chardin
Ionesco
Albee
Woody Allen
Lanford Wilson
Chekov
Aaron Copland
Ravel
Faure
Debussy
Satie
The Pompidou
Kathy K and Stacy K
Henry and Zoe
Expensive Chocolate
Flowering trees
Sweet dogs
Funny cats
Yonkers
The Middle Class
Fat people and Smoke people (Plays)
Suburbia
Urbania
Bucolica
Salt
Spinach
Cheese
Pizza
Beans
Soup
Overcast days
Nudity
Dancing
Picasa
Accounting
Rogaine
Cheap imitation Claritin
Canada Pharmacy
Physical Therapy
Allergy Shots
Hair dye
The gym
The Hudson River
Santa Monica
Book shelves
Blankets
Chairs
Tables
Air






This blog entry, and more like it, is from www.opentrench.blogspot.com

List Time

I think being a vegetarian is not a bad idea. But I do not know that I could do it.

Squirrels have a 4 – 7 year lifespan. Shorter in cities.

Bill Paxton is a good actor.

Small ideas can become large ones if paid attention to.

Thanksgiving is fine. I think it would be interesting if holidays were every other year. Or, you could have the same holiday, but it could be practiced differently every year over a five to seven year cycle. Could really give you that big arc feeling about living.

I look forward to snow. The colder it is, the fewer allergies I suffer from.

Since we all die, I still strongly feel that throwing our bodies into a huge compactor could give us fuel. And maybe even water. Separate the oil and the water.

Turns out that many people from my high school are now gay. We could have had a club--Other than “Boys who cut gym to hang out in the piano room and the girls who love them.” Thank you Facebook.

I never leave my apartment. I’m writing a lot. I did go to the bakery yesterday and to Walgreens today.

I am becoming a hunchback. I need a new desk.

The problem with the world is over population. Truly. And there is no way to solve this problem. Colonization of other planets?

Never a new thought. Never a new moment. And then it’s all new.

Smallish green men, in the form of pigeons, are no longer living on my air conditioning window ledge because we put in those plastic pigeon spikes. Sorry birds, but we weren’t in the mood.

I am an outer borough leaf lover.

Strange, if you eat less, you do feel and look better.

Living in a clean space is relaxing.

Weaker men than I have done greater things. I must keep moving.

If I had children, I would not buy them colorful, plastic toys. I just wouldn’t.

I need to read fewer New Yorker articles and more books.

I love Megan’s squash lasagna. You must go to Epicurious.

Squash Lasagna

I have nothing to prove. Yet I try.



This blog entry is from www.opentrench.blogspot.com

When Everything Was Great

As we know, Conservatives have been on the wrong side of everything since forever, since before the Haldron Collider. It is hilarious to watch them all puffed up like, well, puffer fish in their latest near-blockage of health care. The big concern? IT’LL COST TOO MUCH!

Well, it already costs too much. Health is a dying industry. Everyone dies and along the way, you try to prevent it but you can’t. This gets real expensive. But we do eventually give up and die. Imagine trying to hold a large beach ball under water. That takes energy. And if you are trying to hold down millions of these beach balls, it would get very expensive. It’s a losing business. Losing businesses bleed money. That’s just how it is.

Given that healthcare is ultimately a cash-loss game for the bodies—but actually, one notes, very helpful for productivity while the bodies still work—this healthcare thing is something we have to do. We have no choice. It simply must be done. It’s not even a moral thing. It’s fucking practical.

So, back to the Conservatives. What will they say in a hundred years after this is all over? “Wasn’t it great back when health care cost private citizens billions of dollars and bankrupted all kinds of folks and then there were the people who died because they couldn’t get access to health care from anyone? I LOVED THAT! And then, there were all those middle men who made wild decisions, based on their profit motive, to get as wealthy as possible off the carcasses of dead people? THAT WAS THE WAY! IF ONLY WE COULD HAVE THOSE DAYS AGAIN!”

I always think of Progressives as those who are simply going back to the future. It’s like, there is this great state we can all live in (Some call it Sweden)—and it is taking us all this effort to fight against those who would have us not return to the natural, better state.

Sad little people.

“IT’S TOO EXPENSIVE!”

Yeah, it is. Just means a few less luxury items for the CEO of Blue Cross.

“HOW DARE YOU TRY TO TAKE AWAY ANOTHER PATH TO BUSINESS WEALTH!”

Oh honey, just shut up and go find another path.




This blog post and others at www.opentrench.blogspot.com

Here Comes Our New Health Plan!

Oh MY! It's so Socialist, right? Come on people. You know, it looks like, now, we might have the votes. And if it passes, well, it's law. And if it's law, well...we are in for a new era.

I thought today, "How many people have died, truly died, because of our heinous health care system?"

I wish there were a way to count it. It makes you sick even thinking about it...but until health care passes, don't think about it, because you don't want to get sick before the new legislation!

Look, so many people think they will not be affected---but everyone will be affected in three major ways.

1) The tension that you feel at the doctor's office will be much less.
2) You won't sweat your medical bills.
3) The national and WORLD economy will improve.

So, put down those pork skins, get on the treadmill, and do your part to keep the United States trim and healthy. And rest assured--when the huge corporations give you cancer as a byproduct of all the other "great" things they give to you, at least they can't do that final sweep after your death and take up all your money for healthcare bills, too.

People hate sharing. It means they have to forego the idea of endless wealth. Ugly gorillas.

I'm Writing a Movie

I usually don’t talk too much about what I am writing. I mean, it is one thing to write but then to write about what you write? (And it requires a certain amount of writing to even figure out what you are going to write and then once you figure that out, there is all this writing that happens to organize the writing so you can get down to writing.)

Clearly---a chore-filled thing to do. So why would anyone want to hear about these chores? My father was an accountant at a car dealership. He never talked about his work. But my mother, who was kind of chatty, talked a lot about her work in a doctor’s office, which was just talk about work. I was always amazed how my father never said a word about what he did. But I kind of liked it, too, because he was very present, over the minute steaks or meat loaf or chicken under canned soup, and we did not have to listen to how his day was put together.

So, whether I have made a choice to not talk about my writing for some esoteric reason or I am simply modeling my father’s behavior or I would rather wait until my writing is complete so I can yell, “Surprise!” when I unveil it, will remain a mystery to us all.

But breaking tradition, and using this blog entry as a bit of procrastination between hour long bouts of movie writing, I am announcing that I am writing a movie. And it is enjoyable. There is much planning that goes into a movie. And lucky for me, I am working closely with a company that has made some big movies, so I am getting notes, really good ones, in fact, the first good notes I’ve ever gotten, so I am not flying blind. This feels perfect. And, if you are going to write something commercial (that is also, hopefully, unique) you might as well make sure it has a commercial swing to it.

So, I am writing a movie. I said it. It’s comedic. There is a murder-by-negligence that gets the story really moving. One world falls apart to reveal another one. Right now---I am finishing up the major scaffolding. Scenes to fly out shortly.

If you are writing a movie, I hope you are having a good time. I survive on homemade vegetable soup with lots of cabbage (Thank you my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner Adam), Typhoo tea (I reuse the bag about six times so the tea just gets weaker and weaker---like I’m an old lady on a fixed income), almonds, and those digestif cookies that are really crackery with a glaze of good chocolate over the top. That’s enough.

And—my new computer with the 4gig Ram. RAM ON!

I like movies. I always have. They can be very crisp, bright events. They can carry you off. They are a good break from that dull life of shoe laces and email. And even though they say film is a visual medium, I can assure you, words, words, words are the basis.

Money

Let’s all face the truth. New York is all about money and that’s a problem.

I love the subways. But I have never been anywhere on earth that is more about the greenback than New York City.

It is no wonder they flew the planes into the World Trade Center. I would have, if I was some sort of religious freak.

This town is out of control when it comes to cash. It is expensive and the simplest dinner costs a hundred bucks.

Blech.

A Friend of Mine from College Reminded Me of my Wall Poster