Get This Party Started Right
Lately Mondays kill me, they really do. It’s a terrible feeling, especially as I’ve never been this sort of person before. When I graduated college I swore two things: That I would find an occupation that didn’t require a separate wardrobe—“beware of all enterprises that require new clothes!”—and that I wouldn’t be a 9-5 Working Josephina.
Two decades later, I still wear whatever I please and I still work very off hours. On the rare occasions that I am forced to ride a rush-hour train I feel dismay of the “oh, the humanity!” variety. Aside from washing my clothes at the laundromat, nothing makes me feel so much like my life has failed to meet my expectations. Continue Reading →
Razzle-Dazzle Redshirts: ‘Trumbo’
Dalton Trumbo may not be well-known today but at the height of the Hollywood Red Scare he was a household name. The author of the National Book Award-winning novel Johnny Got His Gun (1939), he was a former war correspondent who, in the 1940s, became one of the country’s highest-paid screenwriters. (Credits include “Spartacus” and “Exodus.”) He was also an outspoken member of the American Communist Party, which raised the hackles of the Joseph McCarthy-led House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the 1947 investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry. Trumbo soon became one of the “Hollywood Ten” – a group of screenwriters and filmmakers who, upon refusing to testify in Congress, served one-year prison sentences and were subsequently blacklisted for more than a decade from working for any movie studio. Still, he won two Academy Awards while blacklisted – one was originally given to a front writer, and the other was awarded to “Robert Rich,” Trumbo’s pseudonym – and, after the ban was lifted in 1960, received official credit for both: “Roman Holiday” and “The Brave One.” He died at age seventy, a vindicated man.
Trumbo’s story is one of the few Hollywood tales that actually deserves to be made into a movie (though many more are), and “Trumbo,” directed by Jay Roach and adapted by John McNamara from Bruce Cook’s biography, is duly a study in Tinseltown razzle-dazzle, complete with gorgeous costumes and set designs, original film footage, zinging one-liners, and enough hokum to hurt our teeth even as we’re pumping our fists in the air. Bryan Cranston stars, and it’s his first endeavor since “Breaking Bad” that makes good use of his character-actor charisma in a leading role. When he’s not playing for the cheap seats with big, meaty speeches, he’s writing in bathtubs with cigarette holders clamped between his teeth and glass tumblers of scotch by his side; the succession of his shiny manual typewriters is enough to make us long for Hollywood’s golden era, warts and all. Continue Reading →
All-Purple, All-Purpose, All-Soul Kittens
It’s 5:00 am, I’m drinking really gorgeous French-press coffee with a splash of heated cream, my permakitten is mawing her breakfast, and we’re both impatiently awaiting the sun, who’s not planning to grace us with her presence for another 90 minutes.
It’s that time of year. Today is All Saint’s Day. Yesterday was Hallow’s Eve or Samhain, the festival of the dead and the end of harvest. And with the clocks turning back, this evening has lasted an extra hour.
It’s safe to say the veil is lifted.
My overfamiliar and I have really felt it. At 3 am yesterday we were gently tugged awake by guides who normally let us rest. At first I was cross—it had been a terrifically taxing week and I needed the sleep—but as I floated up to full consciousness I could feel the magic pulsing all around us. Gracie’s head swiveled everywhere: she saw plainly what I only sensed. From my kitchen window the cityscape twinkled brighter than usual.
I needed that fairy dust. Change is still afoot, and I welcome any wind on my back to ensure it’s beautiful, not just brazen. So I piled autumn fruits and gourds upon my altar, lit some sage, and threw on the purple and gold mumu that has been my uniform this fall. I visualized purple light all around me, just as a clever witch suggested, and lit a small fire in my impromptu cauldron (a purple bowl. Lately all I crave is purple). Then I created some space. I chanted and wept, and honored all the deaths I’d experienced this year—good situations that had soured, the departure of my dear auto Sadie, lovely friends who’d left the Earth. 
I meditated on some energies that had outlived their utility—sexual jealousies, internalized glass ceilings, the traumas of the ancestors—and gave them to my cauldron. I drank wine and ate apples and basked in the most hallowed voices in my record collection: Nina, Ella, Aretha, Stevie. I invited the dead to join me. Then I burned more sage, and bathed in salt and oils, and said goodbye to everyone.
After that, I floated through my day. I put on long layers of tweed and wool and fur—purple sneakers and lipstick, even—and tried for the fifth time to score Hamilton tickets at the Richard Rogers theater on Broadway. I cheered for the winners without regrets; ate a bowl of hot beans and pork and rice at a Mexican diner; and walked home over the bridge. I felt lighter, I really did. When I got back the house was wonderfully empty.
And now we’re ready for a new day.