Coming Soon: A Poetry Salon! (Give Me Some Zombie Fries and I'll Get You In)

Go left and down and hit Salonista Central if you're curious. It's a wiki. I posted this today in the "memories of the salon" section. When it comes to words, I like to multipurpose.

MR: Just to start the ball rolling, I'll recount a fairly recent salon moment burned into these old retinas -- and into the old stirrup and anvil, too. It was a salon hosted by Lyle and Matt to which Lyle had invited some of her classiest musical friends, those interested in your classical music of equal amounts beauty and obscurity, a wonderful ride on the wayback machine, don't you know?

But these delicates did not know much about the salons and (I assume) assumed there would be a certain daintiness about the proceedings.

*Then came Wieder.*

He did a where-are-they now bit in which he managed to defame the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and all the Kennedys. Ah, the moment dances in memory, as half of us howled for the wit of it but also for the *Wieder* of it. But some of Lyle's guests physically recoiled, having come to the zoo to enjoy the peacocks and prairie dogs only to see the monkeys F**K.

You see, you have to earn the right to be at a salon. Wieder plunges you into an acid bath. When it comes to Wieder, that which does not destroy you, makes you laugh.

Hamlet 2: It Likes Me Well

Image via Wikipedia

E. and I watched Hamlet 2 with Steve Coogan Friday night and enjoyed it. It's quite a shaggy tale in that Coogan, as a failed actor turned execrable HS drama teacher, is obtuse to the point of madness. But it's a comedy, though some the pain in his personal and professional life is actually felt, which makes one just uneasy enough to wonder how far the story will go before bending back toward a happy ending.

Maybe it won't. They call it "art" (quotes intended ironically, as all one-word quotations should be intended).

Irony aside, It's knowing the happy ending is coming that makes so much narrative art pedestrian, though no less comforting. Of course, this one had a happy happy ending, with the crazy play within the "play" -- a literally deathless Hamlet; Jesus in a time machine being serenaded with the song "Rock me, sexy Jesus" -- enraging the rubes and touching the sophisticates and thus ending up on Broadway in the best Mickey/Judy "let's give a show" spirit.

What surprised me was the payoff derived to my surprise from the narrative thrust provided by the Coogan character's desire to deal through art with a brutal childhood in which he was apparently sexual abused -- "raped in the face"?; oh no; that cracks the glass.

But see here: In the climax of the inner Hamlet 2, Hamlet forgives his father and Jesus forgives *his* father. And I was touched. No, I didn't see that coming.

One of the pleasures of the Internet age is being able to repair to Rotten Tomatoes to see what the critical consensus was last year when the movie was in a theater near you. Among the "top critics," it was pretty much a 50-50 split. And it's true the tale was really shaggy, with a flaw for every two virtues. It's kind of a parody of flamboyant teachers inspiring "ethnic" students, and the parody of the Tucson Hispanic community is cringeworthy.

But, as they say, it worked for me, sweetly surreal, and Coogan *is* a remarkable comedian. I recommend it to you, if only for the blasphemy.

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Don't Cry for Me, South Carolina

Actually a Bit Frightening. Glad Kos is Trying to Laugh These Bag Boys Into the Shadows.

Four Long Years Ago in the Daily Kos! How Could I Have Missed it?

More more more. Lovely funny stuff.

Those were the days, my friend. I really did think they'd never end. Perhaps, I am too complacent now, too slow to provide razor-sharp critique of the Dems missteps. But Obama on his worst day really is better than Bush on his best.

Literally. And I literally mean literally.