Tue 31 Mar 2009 |
|
 I wanted to call this “The Case of The Really Stupid Slippers," but I am haunted by the ghost of my nitpicking editor who would have told me that the slippers themselves couldn’t be stupid, but me for choosing them, so the title would be inaccurate, misleading, and inappropriate. But I’ve worked on a lot of mysteries (I’ll tell you about Nancy Drew some day), and I love “The Case of" titles. Besides, being appropriate isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.The mystery of the stupid slippers is that I don’t like them much and yet I wear them constantly — even though I have a similar but vastly superior pair sitting in a box in my closet. (Pictured here.) Why would I do this? I’ve heard of closet cases, but this is ridiculous! We may have to call in Dr. Wong from Law & Order on this. To complicate the case, the slippers in the box are the exact duplicates of slippers I wore out after two years. I mean, really wore out — holes-in-the-soles worn out — because I, er, slipped into them every chance I got. So if I liked them so much, why not just get another pair? Problem is, they not only don’t make ’em like they used to, they don't make them, period. Call them irreplaceable. Call me inconsolable. Call me a piano player and we'll have a song parody here . . . But meanwhile, let me say that I didn’t even like the Irreplaceable Ones at first. I thought they were a little too, oh, I don’t know, formal, like the velvet shoes men wear with tuxedos. They were black velvet, from Jacques Levine, with a gold emblem on the top, and even though they said size seven, they fit my size six and a half narrow feet like a glove, if the glove was made for feet and was called a slipper. After a few wearings, I was in love. So I went back to the store where I had half-heartedly bought them in the first place, and now, with great enthusiasm, bought another pair. Looking back, I should have bought two, or three, or four, or however many I might need for the rest of my life. Which, figuring one pair every two years, is: none of your business. But I was naïve then, and believed I could always get more. I should have known this wouldn’t work. I am a person Born Not to Shop, but to get exactly what I want and nothing less. I buy the same basic thing over and over until I either move on or they stop making it. Usually, it’s the latter. My first memory of this was another mystery: nobody could figure out why Revlon discontinued Fire Engine Red lipstick. We all wore it! But I was very, very young then, and not only got over it, but turned to coral shades, which were more flattering anyway: I will go postal now if Estee Lauder discontinues “Frosted Apricot,” as some cruel fool rumored it would. By the way, it’s been scientifically proven, by me and others, that red lipstick makes you look older. Now that’s okay if you’re Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl (more about GG coming soon). But when one actress (who wishes to remain anonymous) had to age fifty years during the course of a mini-series about Queen Elizabeth I, she reported that the makeup people did this largely by darkening the shade of her lipstick a little more for each episode. Of course, the fake wrinkles and the wigs helped too, but still. I will wear Frosted Apricot until I die, or until they stop making it. Why do they always stop making the things you love the most? Strange to say, this even happens to men, with underwear and socks. But mostly to women, with makeup and shoes. A recent case: just today, someone lusted over my short red boots, one of the first collaborations of Cole Haan and Air Nike, that are the absolute perfect casual footwear in so many ways it’s hard to sum it up. But of course I will: cute and comfortable. They were even on sale! They are, however, red, and when I discovered how wonderful they were, I rushed back to Saks to get another pair, in black, I hoped, so they would go with absolutely everything, and in any and every color they might have. Of course, they were all gone and no one knew nothin’ about their fate. I checked with Cole Haan and Nike, no luck. Meanwhile, the slippers, strangely, continued to bother me more. After figuring out that the Ones I Loved, of which I now had, in the manner of Princess Di, a pair and a spare, were no longer made by Jacques Levine, and were not available anywhere online (oh lord, there’s probably a pair languishing out there in some dusty storeroom or even someone’s closet, and that thought is exquisite agony, like an itch just out of reach), I started searching for Something Close. Then, in a moment of madness, I actually threw away the first pair (I left them in a hotel in Seattle, because they really had to go, and if I dumped them out there, I wouldn’t be able go back and retrieve them the way I sometimes do when I ask my doorman to dig up things from the garbage bin that I pretend to have “thrown out by mistake.”) So now, down to one pair, I began to wear them ceaselessly while I promised myself to search for a replacement. After a year of procrastination (Hey, the slippers were still not in tatters), I finally went online in the middle of the night and found something! They were black, they were velvet, they were size seven, they were from Jacques Levine, and they were trimmed with gold. Cute little gold bows. Perfect! Or so it seemed. And yet, when they arrived, my heart sank. The gold is not shiny gold, but more of a muted beigey dull kind of gold. What good is gold if it's not shiny, I say. And the bows, while they try, they really do, they’re not the same as the lovely lustrous medallions of the original. So close.  So why do I wear them, these not-so-great pretenders, and not the nicer spares that sit in the slipper box. (They also serve who only sit and wait.) Well, I had worn those spares for a year already, and I figure that gives them another year of life, so if I save them and wear the ones with the bows (which are also very comfortable), that gives me time to find something great that will make me forget my first love, the originals. I fear that it is too much to hope for to find another pair of the originals. Or is it? I’ve tried E-bay and everything else I can think of already, including talking to the universe. (See the post, Yo Universe!) But maybe someone reading this can help? Please! The real mystery, of course, is: How stupid is this? Forget for a minute the obvious question of why we obsess about things like this at all. Dr. Wong, can you make a house call? They are, after all, (sorry about this) house slippers. But why would I keep wearing these things, twice a day and more on weekends, that are a constant reminder, every time I look down — that you can’t always get what you want. (I know you're out there, Mick Jagger, I can hear you snorting.) And yet. If I wear the originals, a year-old now with only a year to go, they would become more fragile by the day, and that would be a nagging reminder of something worse —that you lose things you love that you can't get back. Like your youth. Or like what June Christy is singing about in Baby, Baby All the Time, the one that got away. So sad. Almost as haunting as Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, which you may know is all about Ava Gardner, the love he lost. Worse than slippers! Worse than anything. In the end, I think I’m actually doing the right thing. Listening to Christy (Get her album, Something Cool, immediately, if you don’t already have it), Sinatra, and just to keep myself in this century, Rod Stewart, wearing the old ones (So maybe, Mick, I got what I need. . .), while saving the sacred spares in their pristine box and waiting for my slippers to come in. Maybe I’ll write a letter to Jacques Levine. Maybe Jacques Levine is an actual person. Stuart Weitzman is. I know, for a fact, because I talked to him in person about another problem with shoes — the silver ones for my wedding. But that’s another story. Later. |
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Bitter Patter
Friday the 13th
Came and went.
I bought a lottery ticket
And didn't win.
Reread
THE 13th FLOOR
To remind myself how lucky I am.
WENT FISHING!
Well, eating fish anyway.
And swimming, although not with the fishes in the Uncle Nunzio sense.
Back from the Caribbean.
But don't be TOO jealous:
My tan has already faded.
Besdies, before we left, I had to go through
THE ELEVEN STAGES OF PACKING
Which is not for sissies.
Just got a call from
(Gasp!) the dental hygienist.
Hasn't she read:
A DEVOUT COWARD
GOES TO THE DENTIST
Do NOT Google Santorum.
I warned you . . .
Just as I posted I WAS THE GIRL PHANTOM, I found a website called The Ghost Who Blogs about The Phantom comics:
http://falkonthewildside.blogspot.com
Writing Comics. . .
Was a small but wonderful part of my checkered career, and doing a post about it brought back a lot of great memories. If you know any other women in NYC who wrote — or are writing — comics, tell me how to get in touch with them.
I'm on a watching-old-movies kick these days.
Great way to lose yourself.
If you're lucky, you'll never be found.
REVIEWS TO PERUSE
I'm All Right, Jack:
"Jack" is not just all right, it's totally delightful and fresh as a daisy after all these years (made in 1959), with Sellers, although not technically the lead, giving the brilliant performance that launched him as an international star. He plays an all-too-zealous union leader and father of a blonde bombshell who falls for Stanley, the British Upper Class Twit played, also to perfection, by Ian Carmichael, who you might remember from the Lord Peter Wimsey series. The makeout scenes between the the Twit and the Bombshell are priceless. But what is Stanley doing in this working class atmosphere anyway? Working. And too well at that. Forced by financial circumstances too dreary to discuss, he gets a job in his uncle's factory and messes things up for the other workers by, well, working, and thus making his fellow employees look bad. The film takes a big shot at unions — but also at management: they are manipulating white-collar thieves who'll do anything for a buck. Or a pound. Except for the ones, like Major Hitchcock, played by Terry Thomas, who are just plain lazy and inept. Needless to say, Stanley foils everybody's plans, labor and management alike, to my great joy and delight. Oh, and on top of everything else, Margaret Rutherford plays dotty dowager Aunt Dolly. Delicious!
The Big Lebowski:
What can you say that hasn't been said before: brilliant, inspired, with some of the most memorable lines ever to come out of a movie, the most quoted being "The Dude abides." Oh yes. For anyone who hasn't yet seen the film, and it's now out in a special Blu-Ray edition if that floats your bowling ball. The Dude in question, played to perfection by Jeff Bridges, is an out-of-work pothead who is roughed up and has his rug destroyed by some thugs mistaking him for another, bigger, Lebowski. The Dude is really upset about this because, man, "that rug really tied the room together," which The Dude says with all seriousness and not a trace of irony, a great comic touch considering the condition his condition is in. Oh, and besides "Just Dropped In," all the music is perfect for the film. The plot, according to Wikipedia, which has been known to be wrong, is "loosely based on Raymond chandler's novel, The Big Sleep." Could be. But who cares. It involves a bowling competition, "the occasional acid flashback," a trophy wife, a group of German nihilists, a kidnapping gone awry, a mad millionaire and his lackey, in another great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Actually, they're all great performances. Never a fan of John Goodman before or since, he is brilliant in this film. And so are John Turturro, overacting his little heart out, Steve Buscemi in a nerdy, needy role that makes you marvel at his star turn in Boardwalk Empire, and even the actors in the smaller parts, especially Julianne Moore and Sam Elliott. Elliott plays The Stranger (God? Everyman? The part of us that roots for the bad boy?) who elicits from Bridges the immortal words, "The Dude abides." Which prompts The Stranger to comment to the audience: "Don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals." We'll never know about the bowling trophy because there's never been a sequel to this 1998 film by the great Coen Brothers, and I hope there never will be. It just abides, as all great films do.
Prince of the City:
Okay, the criticisms of this movie are not totally unfounded: it's too long, and Treat Williams may have overacted a bit, although I found him so deliciously charming I couldn't care less, and there's one part concerning the Jerry Orbach character I just didn't understand. But get over it, The New Yorker, this is one powerful movie. And yes, Dog Day Afternoon it isn't, but what it? The DVD has a great special feature with Williams (I so want to call him Treat) and Sidney (what the hell: I once made a meatloaf sandwich for the man) that explains a lot about filmmaking in general and this movie in particular. Also, Sidney's views on good and evil, and how things are not so black and white as you think. I loved it.
Bad Day At Black Rock:
Recommended on TCM by Robert Osbourne as a film he originally had no interest in seeing, then loved it, and by Alex Baldwin, who pointed out the great actors in the cast, including Lee Marvin, Ernest Brognine and Dean Jagger. Well, after all that, I had to like it, right? I did. A lot. It was a Good Day On My Couch.
Behind the Scenes Stuff: Spencer Tracey was off drinking and wouldn't commit to the film until the producers (who wanted him desperately) told him that they had Alan Ladd, at which point Tracey grabbed it. He was perfect for the part, wearing a dark suit and tie the entire time in a western setting, pulling it off perfectly. Other than that "fashion statement," the film makes a strong case against racism: the hatred of the Japanese during WW2. See it.
Song of The Thin Man:
I usually like these frothy, silly, suave, utter unrealistic films from the 30s and 40s, with William Powell and Myrna Loy as the couple we'd all like to be — if only we had the looks, brains, money, a huge capacity for drinking and a dog like Asta. But this one was a stinker, rather than a stinger, or maybe a sinker, because it turned out to be the last, not to mention the least, in the series. Watch any of the others four sequels, but not this one: Even the pooch jumped the shark.
The Children's Hour:
It had its moments, and just looking at Audrey Hepburn makes life worth living, but mostly I kept thinking that the play, by Lillian Hellman, was so much better. It's about two young women runing a school for girls, who are accused by a hateful little brat of being (GASP!) lesbians. And although the closest we get in this 1961 production to using that actual term is the word "unnatural," it's enough to ruin their lives. A young Shirley McClaine is worth seeing in this, and James Garner, and Audrey Hepburn is, well, Audrey Hepburn. The rumor of the love that dare not speak its name is totally untrue — or is it? And I'll say no more, because you should see the movie for yourself, imperfect as it may be, as is Life Itself.
by martinis alone,
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