My view of the world on this fine day

Periodically random thoughts and impressions go through my mind. None of them are extensive enough to turn them into full-fledged blog items, so I thought I would instead do a sort of potpourri. This is not going to be a regular feature, or necessarily even a spasmodic thing. In fact, I may never do it again. But, today I decided to do it. It’s just an April 17, 2008 kind of thing. Here goes:

I like the word lissome – or, lissom, if you prefer. Certain females are described as being ‘lissome’. Mainly it means agile and bendable, like a dancer. Audrey Hepburn was lissome and Gwynneth Paltrow is, as well. Pam Anderson is decidedly not.

My favorite possession, after my car, is our Jacuzzi tub. It is sensual and relaxing and wonderful either solo or a deux. There’s something highly civilized about it.

Really, I wasn’t seriously ticked off by Kim Cattrall’s failure to acknowledge me in that article. Maybe she’s ticked off by something I said when I was interviewed for a segment of Biography on her. In truth, I am happy for her career, even if her oeuvre doesn’t enchant me so very much.

People seem to think the word nubile, as applied to a young woman is some reference to ‘stacked like gangbusters’, or something equally lewd and suggestive. All it really means is of marriageable age, meaning all of a young lady’s ‘big girl’ bits are in place for childbearing.

Whenever I see octogenarian Mickey Rooney on a chat show or somesuch, I am shocked. In my mind Rooney still looks like he did in the old Andy Hardy movies of the 1930s. They were made long before my time, but I used to like watching them when I was a
kid. I also could never understand how Andy, of munchkin size, was able to score with somebody as delicious as the impossibly young in those days, Lana Turner.

Speaking of very old Rooneys, I must admit I periodically provide space in my schedule for Andy Rooney. Sometimes he’s tiresome and pedantic and overstates the obvious, but once in a while he hits a hard home-truth in his lovably curmudgeonistic way. But, how many people realize that Rooney was a notable war correspondent in Europe during World War Two. As far as I’m concerned he has a place on 60 Minutes until he’s 200 – about five years from now.

Also, considering age and accomplishments, a favorite comment of mine was one made by musical satirist Tom Lehrer a number of years ago in which he mused: “When Mozart was my age, he’d already been dead for three years.”

If I were ever to run off with somebody – which I am absolutely not planning to do -- I think it would be with the lovely lady who does my hair. Cindy has seen to my tonsorial needs for over a decade-and-a-half. She knows my scalp intimately. So, I thought, she is pretty, she is funny, I love her company, and if we blew this town together, I would also look good all the time. I was dismayed at one point when I learned that a friend of mine also goes to Cindy. I felt a twinge of jealousy because I’d thought she was mine and mine alone, or at least that all her other customers were female.

I don’t like getting older. But, I like the alternative even less.

Sometimes in the morning when I am feeling devoid of ambition I wander around singing the old Todd Rungren song, 'I don't wanna work, I just want to bang on the drum all day'. I don't even have a drum. But, it's not a bad metaphor.

I turned down a job today. I don't really like doing that. It was an inquiry from a young Turk fledgling publisher who wondered if I would be interested in both writing for and editing his new trade publication. The thing is just starting, and the tasks he would want me to see to are extensive, and the pay quite frankly sucks. I found liberation in the idea that I don’t really need that job, nor do I want to make the time commitment. The irony is that 20 years ago I would have killed for such a thing and would have seen it as a leg up. This doesn’t mean that I’ve reached the stage in my life where I am coasting, it’s just that I think I have the freedom to prioritize what I want and need. What he needs is a young guy or girl who is starting to climb up that greasy publishing pole, not me.