In Which My Lazy Ass Creates a Blog Post Out of Tweets

I was in high school back in the Mesozoic Era - when you had to TYPE your papers and use WHITEOUT or re-do the whole page to correct mistakes.

One day my AP English teacher, Mrs. Timm, praised me with words along the lines of “You’re the best ‘tight’ writer I’ve ever had in a class.”

I don’t think she meant I was at my peak while drunk. Rather, I expressed my thoughts well in a concise manner.

Oh, Mrs. T., my papers were just short ‘cos I wrote them late the night before. But it turns out I also was prepping myself for My Future Career in writing - songs, scripts, brief features on deadline.

And too, it helped me ready for the even farther-in-the-future hobby of goofing around on the Internet thingy, where brevity is the soul of tweets.

So without further ado - or a transition 'graph - herewith are some of my 2011 140-character strokes of genius (twitter.com/amyjp3):

* You better watch out, better not cry, better not pout, I'm telling you why: The Google car might be taking your picture.

* Shortest note I've ever written to myself re: a possible script topic: "MARS." (Plz don't tell me anyone else already wrote a story on that.)

* Great news re: Gabrielle Giffords' speech, walking, memory, personality, no impulsivity issues. IOW she's better than 1/2 of Congress already.

* "Spacewalk choreographer" sounds like the world's coolest job. [Just heard the term used on NASA TV.]

* More and more lately I find myself hearing a name and can't remember if that's someone I work with or the latest hot thing on a WB show.

* MY attractive politician is a charismatic, telegenic, visionary leader. Yours is a Barbie/Ken bubblehead.

* MI guv dumps EITC. Sez poor losing only .20 for every $1 they still get from Feds. IOW "Let them eat 20% less cake."

* I watched classical music on PBS tonite. Forgot about Grammys. But that's OK- a violist on Live from Lincoln Ctr. entered in an egg.

* The feel-good word of the day is "toast." (Posted 5:21 PM Feb 9th)

* Comment on YouTube vid of 2001:A Space Odyssey theme - "I want to make it so this piece plays every time my garage door opens."

* I don't watch the show regularly but it seems like Dexter's coworkers must be the worst cops in the world.

* (After the 2011 “Civility” State of the Union) Re:"Who sat where" - I think I saw the Levins side by side. Couldn't get a date with an (R) so they had to sit with their brother.

* Can't Jack & Liz stay married? They don't have to have the sex or anything.

* Foursquare - another thing that makes me feel 173 years old. (She tweeted, just to prove that she wasn't a total Old.)

Ode to YouTube - and a Woman Named Valaida

I recall life pre-Net. I lived a goodly portion of my life without instant access to the wit and wisdom of Ashton Kutcher, or knowing how much blow (and blowing) Paris Hilton did last night.

For decades my life was rows and rows of stacks and stacks of books. Typewriters and whiteout correction tape. Waiting for the print edition of the Sunday New York Times to arrive in my small town at midweek.

33 and 1/3 vinyl.

That was my access to the world as a child and young adult.

What's Dial-up, Daddy?
Hell, it changes so fast. Even the sound of a modem (ssssshhhhh, wack-wack, doodle-doodle, eeehhhhhhhh) is ancient history to a mid-teen. Soon, discussing what a Blog is, or how you sometimes read it on a machine at a desk, will be lost to the text-only gen.

It's changing every second. A cousin to my first computer, an iMac, is at The Henry Ford Museum already. Down the road - in about 18 months - your i-This and your Bluetooth that, your Flip-corder and your 3D TV will seem so ancient. People will laugh at images of us *TYPING*. With our FINGERS!!!

The commercials made these 50-pound bastards seem like so much fun.

And yet, though I remember my life BC (before computers) I still can't believe some of the wonders I missed. Maybe it's because I remember that I still occassionally feel the magic of it.

Golly, How They Do That?
"Letters" that are transmitted more quickly than I can type one individual letter of the alphabet.

Becoming good friends with someone you've never met. Online friends versus those old-fashioned RL friends.

Bing Maps and Google Earth.

And You-freaking-Tube. Where was that all my life?

As a writer and musician, I know all too well the downside: That we can get so much for free that we once might've paid for. And yet, I can't help soaking up so much of it myself, rolling around in it like my dog used to roll around in a good pile of wet sod.

So I end 2010 with a couple more of my YouTube discoveries.

This smoking, mysterious voice calling to us from 80 years past. Valaida Snow* performing Ellington's Caravan. And"I Can't Give You Anything But Love" And St. Louis Blues.

And wow, what a fascinating, tragic life - A black female trumpet player and singer from the Jim Crow South, accused of bigamy when she married a handsome teenaged dancer 10 yrs. her junior. 

An ex-pat in the late 30s. Legends of her being driven around Paris in her orchid-colored Mercedes. 

A controversial missing period of her life: Was she confined to a Danish prison for drug use or actually thrown into a Nazi concentration camp?

Whatever the answer to that, it's said she returned to the U.S. broken, and had an early death around age 50, in the mid-fifties. 

This woman who recorded 78s would've never imagined the technology that would bring her voice and story to us. And what a story.


[Bio info from Encyclopedia of the Harmlem Renaissance]

Shake It One Time For Me, Honey!

Miscellaneous YouTube Finds

Ostensibly this was all found through research for my scripts. Yeah, research, that's what it was.

1. There is nothing that is not fantastic and fun about this vintage vid of Jerry Lee Lewis killing it on the mid-60s Brit telly. His insanity, the arrangement, the audience. Check out the goofy, cute blonde guy to Jerry's right. (This'd be a great jive for my ballroom dancing script, "International Latin.") 


2. And why, why, why do I love Latin-style dancing? Do you still need an explanation?
Exhibit A (Karina & Max, Burn the Floor) (See about :50 seconds in.)

3. Among the hundreds of songs I've screened while planning the ballroom script, this reminder of  Peggy Lee's sizzling greatness on "Fever." 

(Ignore the visuals and just enjoy the performance. I like to imagine the choreography for my "imaginary friends" in the script.)

And yeah, yeah, I should write some longwinded (me, longwinded?) post about how as a former musician and longtime writer I worry that YouTube equals bad for creative people. That composers and musicians and writers and actors, etc., are shortchanged on compensation for their life's efforts.

But then I read comments from kids who've had their ears opened to Brahms and Benny Goodman, their eyes dazzled by the Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire, in part thanks sonic surfing on the Net - and well, I can't help be a little glad for it.

4. One more. For my feature film, "Do Not Delete," two 30-somethings time travel back to college days. Researching what we were listening to in the late 80s/ early 90s brought me to Bruce's Pink Cadillac. Lousy picture, great performance. (And speaking of longwinded - if you want to skip the Garden of Eden part, jump to around 6:20.)


Yep, not for the first time, or even the thousandth time, do I wonder what I did without the www.

Bette Midler is Still Divine

You Cannot Stay Depressed Watching Bette Midler Dressed as a Mermaid Singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy *

Back in the Mesozoic era, when I was a wee young teen, I saw Bette on the Carson show. The next day I was raving about her, and my friends didn’t know who she was.

That may have been the first time I knew I had to get out of Essexville, MI.

What a lovely woman, who has survived this crazy business and her personal ups and downs and remained gracious and entertaining.

I love that she managed to raise her beloved daughter out of the spotlight, and allowed her to develop her own interests. And her charity work to put more of another favorite thing of mine - trees :) - in NYC.

The reason I happened to meander farther into Bette territory on the YouTubes today? I’ve been listening to her fine interpretation of Mambo Italiano to get myself inspired while writing the International Latin script.

So hey, goombah, enjoy.

* BTW, my favorite exchange on the YouTube Boogie-Woogie comments:
"WTF? ... i have a version of this song with gene krupa. its way better."
"Was Gene Krupa wearing a Mermaid costume?"

EXACTLY!