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.)

My Fair Lady: Happy Double-Nickel Anniversary

If I had a time machine with a limited number of journeys allotted me, I’d be sorely tempted to spend one of them visiting the New York City of March 15, 1956. Premiere night of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.”

Why that moment in theatre history? Because "My Fair Lady" is simply the perfect musical. (This is not open for discussion.)

Wonderfully adapted book from the Shaw play. Fantastic score. L & L made it all seem so easy. The same material that had defeated the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein in trying to  adapt it.

Fussy, sexy Rex Harrison. Julie Andrews, at the time still younger than most college graduates but bearing a voice from heaven.

Well, hell, I’m just gonna let the score make my argument.

In 'artfor, 'ereford and 'ampton, 'urricanes 'ardly hever 'appen. The Rain in Spain (Film version)

Wouldn't It Be Loverly (TV broadcast of OBC)

Freddie, an insipid, two-dimensional character who gets to sing the gorgeous On the Street Where You Live. (Film version)

I only know when he began to dance with me I Could Have Danced All Night. (Julie Andrews)

Oh, and Audrey was a lovely person. But still, Julie wuzrobbed.

Happy Valentine's Day from Ella, Etta, Fred & Frank

I'm dipping back into the old Great American Songbook again.

Note how many of the comments accompanying the YouTube videos are by 19 year-olds who say, "They don't write them like that anymore."

You'll see that sentiment in regards to the great 60s songs of Motown and the Beatles too.

Good taste, Youth.


I never thought of Ella Fitzgerald as particularly sexy until I heard her sing All The Things You Are. (Music - Jerome Kern, Lyrics - Oscar Hammerstein.)


Meanwhile Etta's gonna love you Come Rain or Come Shine. (Music - Harold Arlen, Lyrics - Johnny Mercer.)

Fred sings to Ginger and Frank sings to everyone:

"Someday when I'm awfully old,
And the world is cold,
I will get a glow just thinking of you,
and the way you look tonight."
(Kern-Dorothy Fields)

Dorothy Fields said of that last song: "The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn't stop, it was so beautiful."

Le sigh.

If you're with someone, enjoy it for Valentine's day. If you're not, enjoy it 'cos it's damn great music. And we'll always have YouTube.

I Need a Hero or a Hug or a Good Song or Four

Long time no post. Feeling like I should write something big and profound and worthy of the the electricity and pixels and bits & bytes.

But instead I had a cold. Was writing articles.  Doing the day gig. Creative writing & workshopping.

And all of it overshadowed by the what happened in Tucson. Me obsessively following it and trying to decide if I wanted to say something, something about the many things that it brings up, here.

Maybe later.

Instead, I've been turning to old classic songs for comfort. Well, maybe not all classics, but somehow fitting and/or lifting my mood.

This one seems appropriate. I Need a Hero  Let's dedicate it to Daniel Hernandez. Twenty-freaking-years old. Daniel Hernandez who, five days into his college internship, was called upon to be extraordinary and did not disappoint. 

Daniel Hernandez who is not allowed to marry whom he would like to in most U.S. states, and who could be stopped for no reason in Arizona because he's Hispanic. But who still gives me hope for this country.

And jumping to Broadway, from a few years earlier than Bonnie Tyler's song, I found myself listening to a musical plea that means ever more to me as the years go by. Give me a chance to come through ...  Cassie of "A Chorus Line," begging just for a chance to do what she knows she can do. And even in this old, blurry B & W video something extraordinary shines through, the talents of of Michigan's own Donna McKechnie.

Maybe there is a theme here. Because another song I've been drawn to is about Michael Jackson's man in the mirror, who wants to be special too. Wants to show he can give something back.

And with all this YouTube surfing, the old tunesy website brought me back to this video. I can't believe I've never written about it here. Ms. Patti LaBelle, baby, one of the great modern R & B-ers.

 Lady Marmalade Live With Audience

But how in the world does this, the raunchy Lady Marmalade, fit with the people in the songs above, the ones longing for a hero, or begging to be given another chance, or admonishing themselves to be a standup guy?

Well hell, it's pretty great to see these four regular dudes holding their own against one of the pop world's great divas. That's something special.

Plus, it makes me smile.

And I needed that.

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]

Passive-Aggressive Alvin & Other Christmas Songs

Did you ever notice how many characters in Christmas songs seem deeply troubled? Require some type of professional help?

Rudolph needs rhinoplasty.

Alvin and his perpetual, petulant tardiness issues should be addressed by his guidance counselor.

And after mama has a fling with Santa Claus she could use a session with Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura or maybe even a legitimate therapist. She could get a two-for-one deal with that oversexed lady from “Santa, Baby.”

Then there’s the idiot on the radio telling me it’s the most wonderful time of the year. He obviously doesn’t have my long commute through the snow. I need a one-horse covered-up sleigh.

But the kings of trippiness are Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith, who conspired by a fire back in the 30’s to write “Winter Wonderland.”

Gone away is the bluebird,
Here to stay is a new bird

‘kaaaaay. Dunno what that means, but we’ll let it slip.

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
Then pretend that he is Parson Brown
He'll say: Are you married?
We'll say: No man,
But you can do the job
When you're in town.

Now what the hell is that all about? When I was a kid I used to think they were singing Farmer Brown, not Parson Brown. But either way this makes no sense. When is Parson Brown going to be in town? And what does that old bastard care if they’re married or not? Oh wait, it’s not really him. It’s a snowman.

Far out, man.

And we haven’t even gotten to Grandma’s lawsuit against the reckless reindeer or the kind of migraine I’d get from twelve drummers drumming and eleven pipers piping while six geese pooped all over the Christmas tree.

Which Christmas characters do you think need an intervention? 

Annie Lennox makes "Winter Wonderland" almost tolerable

"Down-and-out Detroiters Dance"

You're stressed from the weekend. Stressed from going back to work. Or not having any work to go back to.

That can only mean one thing.

Time for a cha-cha break, baby. Because Hey, Daddy, it's just like what Steve Martin used to say about playing the banjo. You can't be sad listening/ dancing to cha-cha.

Not to mention some people find it a little sexy.

And it's that sass, that sex that drives my people in "International Latin," the play-turned TV show. They may be unemployed, hopelessly in love, running from their past, wanting a baby or dealing with daddy issues - but they let it all out on that dance floor:

INTERNATIONAL LATIN
excerpt from the television pilot
copr. 2010 Amy J. Parrent

TEASER
FROM BLACK:

The irresistible driving force of HOT LATIN POP MUSIC: BONGOS and CONGAS and TIMBALES, saucy tenor TRUMPETS, a clinking syncopated PIANO running wild up and down.

Glimpses of gyrating HIPS. Trim TUMMIES and tight BUTTS. A FLASH OF SHOULDERS, a SWIRL OF HAIR.

FOREPLAY ON THE DANCE FLOOR.

INT. A SMALL HOTEL BALLROOM, DETROIT - NIGHT
A BRIGHTLY LIGHTED DANCE SPACE. Surrounded by hazy dimness.

As if the sideline is just a dream and the golden dance floor the only reality.

And in that hot-white light SEVERAL PAIRS OF DANCERS peacock with all they’ve got. Strutting. Pulsating. Posing.

While JUDGES on the fringes eye them intently -- Like bow-tied and evening-gowned lions looking for the weakest gazelles to fell.

A SMALL AUDIENCE ON THE SIDELINES, alert to the ballroom bacchanalia before them.

AND THREE COMPETING COUPLES STAND OUT:

MICHAEL POWERS and LALANA CHASE PATEL. HIM: 18, your average suburban white boy dancing ballroom. HER: A divalicious 20-year-old, half South Asian-/half African-American.

FRANK TITAN and KAROLE MARKER. FRANK: Around 30. One big tight top and snug pair of pants, showing off a still-fit jock bod.

KAROLE: Early 30s. Less pizazz than the others. Dress a Saturday Night Fever reject. But works what she has. Perhaps a vague resemblance hints that they’re cousins.

SASHA SARKOV and NATALIA DUBANSKAYA (aka NATALIE HUNTER). Sparkliest of all, top of the game. Pelvises like Slinky toys.

NATALIE an elegant mid-30s. Legs up to here match a dress slit down to there. SASHA’S shirt opens even closer to the earth’s core. He’s slim, hanging on to late 20s, moody Slavic good looks.

They’ll speak with RUSSIAN INFLECTION, though her accent fluctuates.

Each couple winds their way around the floor. Marking their territory.

Frank, alpha-male-gone-wild, guides Karole too close for comfort to the Russians.

Sasha won’t back down. Two objects fighting to occupy the same space at the same time.

It’s Natalie who saves the day from a sequin-and-satin disaster. She whirls, and with a quick, sparkly flaunt, parades away, Sasha stalking after her.

In the front row ARNIE TYLER, a slim 70-year-old black man, smiles, whispers to his young seatmates, CAITLIN LAKE and BEN RYAN. The boy’s in tiny tails, the girl Ginger Rogers, Jr.

THE SONG ENDS. The dancers move to sidelines. Judges confer.


Photo: Slavik Kryklyvyy & Karina Smirnoff