Bits and Pieces

Solitude
The house is quiet now that the hordes have departed. I’ve been thinking of a few pearls of wisdom some of them passed along. I’ll try to incorporate them in a post shortly.

Basic Brown
Willie made some cogent observations in his Chron column yesterday. Among other things, he said what I’ve said for months, namely that Obama is his own worst enemy. I’m convinced that Barack is on the edge of losing this election unless he begins to drive the discussion away from Iraq and toward the economy.

Let’s face it. He doesn’t look like a commander in chief. Yes, he looks presidential, but the two are horses of a different color. A stubborn prognathus jaw is required of a CIC. A President has to look, well, thoughtful, stately, Presidential. Barack meets the second spec, but needs a little surgery to create the appropriate pissed-off look of a well-rounded modern American head of state.

Firefox
I downloaded the latest edition of the Firefox browser a few days ago and it has been working well so far. The new one is Version 3.0.1, a much improved browser according to the hype. Previous editions were unstable and on several occasions, I removed the program to prevent computer lockups. If my latest download continues to work as it has for the past several days, the bugs that put the whammy on my machine are gone. Let’s hope…!

The latest version came with a new feature that I like, the ability to enlarge images on the ‘net with your mouse or pad. Most browsers permit type enlargement, but Firefox is the only browser I know about that will enlarge an image.

On my laptop, I can enlarge images by holding the Ctrl key down and clicking ++ several times to get a larger image. On my desktop, the feature works by holding down Ctrl and rolling the mouse scroll wheel.

I don’t know if this feature has any practical application unless you have a fetish for finding warts, pimples, and wrinkles on the faces of people you don’t like, which isn’t a bad idea come to think of of.

Are you into romance?
The Romance Writers of America (RWA) is holding its annual conference July 30-August 2, 2008, at the Marriott Hotel, 55 Fourth Street, San Francisco.

Holy Romance, Lover Man! Is that a suitable location for the flowering of love? I suppose so. An imaginative writer could cook up a plot involving love at first sight between a street denizen who turns out to be a member of Britain’s Royal family and an innocent maiden from Hays, Kansas. I just threw Hays in because there aren’t too many innocent maidens in SF.

Golf can be hazardous to your health
Poor ole Michelle Wie had another kiss of death planted on her Saturday. After playing three rounds of sub-par golf, which put her one stroke behind the leader in the LPGA State Farm Classic going into Sunday, LPGA officials discovered that she had  departed the “Signing” area after the completion of her Saturday round without signing her scorecard, an automatic disqualification.

What else could happen to this poor kid? I can’t think of anything, unless perhaps she gives birth on the 18th hole when she’s fifteen strokes ahead in the world’s most prestigious golf tournament. Birthing during a tournament is probably an automatic disqualification.

Technorati Tags: Willie Brown,Barack Obama,Firefox,Visitors

Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

I’m sitting here watching PBS and listening to some great doo wop sounds.

The audience is definitely into the music. They sort of remind me of golfing fans. They emulate the gestures of the vocalists and mouth the words, all with impeccable rhythm.

The songs are ancient, sure, but they have an enduring quality about them. Music crosses borders and spans generations. Music unites.

Sitting before the TV, I find myself keeping time and finally standing up and moving as if I have a partner.

Doo wop’s sounds and tempos speak to romanticism, and its subtle lyrics are in sharp contrast to the wall of sound and frenzied  movements of modern music.

Doo wop is for slow and easy romance, mood music for lovers. There is an anticipatory tension about doo wop that speaks to the gentleness of true love. True love rarely lasts forever, but doo wop extends that promise.

At least until tomorrow morning.

Tonight you’re mine completely
You give you love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes
But will you love me tomorrow?
The Shirelles

Technorati Tags: Doo Wop,PBS,The Shirelles

Shades of Zane Grey

…only better…

Occasionally, I run across nice people on the ‘net. One such is Jeannie Watt. No, I don’t know her personally. She’s a romance novelist who writes about ordinary people in modern-day small town communities in Nevada’s Cowboy Country where she lives.

She’s the best author I’ve stumbled across in recent memory. When I say “stumbled across” I mean it literally. I’d been looking through a book rack in a supermarket when my eye caught the partial cover of a book in the bottom row. I glimpsed a cowboy and a ranch building in the background and quickly grabbed it without reading the back cover or browsing any of the pages.

When we returned home, I discovered that the book was Jeannie’s The Brother Returns, a novel classified in the Romance genre. I almost discarded it but decided to look through it because I had nothing else to do. Imagine my pleasant surprise when the book turned out to be an excellent read about two ordinary, 21st Century people in a small community in Nevada’s Cowboy Country. I was so captivated by Jeannie’s style and talents that I immediately logged onto Amazon’s site and ordered another of her novels, A Difficult Woman. This one was a page-turner of the first rank.

A Difficult Woman chronicles the relationship between Tara Sullivan and Matt Connors, two individuals who labor under the umbrella of unwarranted suspicion and mistrust. Tara’s family members are the virtual outcasts of the community of Big Sky, Nevada, and as usual in small towns, descendents are the beneficiaries of the sins of their mothers and fathers. In Tara’s case, her father served prison time.

Matt, a Reno police officer, is suspected of being a crooked cop because his father had been involved with a ring of crooked cops. The old corruption of blood characteristic of humans applies in Matt’s case as well.

At any rate, call if fate if you wish, the two wind up in Big Sky, Nevada, where Matt helps Tara renovate an old pioneer house bequeathed to her by an aunt.

Naturally, as you would suspect in a romance novel, romance flares. I don’t intend to include any spoilers here. Suffice to say, their path to love is filled with a few surprising twists and turns.

The pleasure in Jeanne’s style is the very ordinariness of its characters, ordinary people in an ordinary small town who go about their business in an ordinary way. There are no lords and ladies, no descendents of royalty, no powerful and experienced men teaching innocent maidens the exquisite joys of sex.

She doesn’t offer passages of glorious ecstasy, no orgasmic explosions or rocket trips to the moon. Jeannie Watt is a skilled author, a master of the art of suggestion. Imagination is always more powerful than detailed graphic descriptions. Diane creates the subtle illusion of the ultimate sexual experience and when the ultimate finally occurs, our imagination convinces is that we could be Tara or Matt.

A Difficult Woman was Jeannie’s first novel, but I swear you wouldn’t suspect it. Her dialogue is superb. In fact, if you didn’t know she is a woman, you’d think the author is a male. No woman could create such realistic male dialogue. That requires a great deal of observational and listening skills.

And she created a great little gathering spot, Big Sky’s only casino which also serves as a restaurant. She touched one of my nerves with its name–the Owl Club. I used to hang out at a spot called the Owl Club on San Pablo Avenue in San Pablo, which was remarkably similar to the one in Big Sky, Nevada.

Although Jeannie’s novels are of the Romance genre and published under the Ballantine imprint, they aren’t purely and solely about non-stop romance. Jeannie weaves love into her stories when it is appropriate, but the underlying currents run deeper, touching on hopes and dreams and the abilities of regular people to meet the challenges of life and cope with hardships.

We’ve all experienced the same kinds of travails. It’s good to read about people like us. And it’s good to be reminded once in awhile that ordinary people can experience extraordinary romance with a degree of intensity equal to that of lords and ladies and worshipful virgins.

Jeannie has other works in the mill which I fully intend to read. This is unusual for me because I do not read romance stories. Until now. Jeannie’s works are the first I have read in more years than I care to mention.

One final thought. As a classic American male, I am not overly romantic (at least not publicly). My reading tastes run to Westerns. Every little boy wants to grow up to be a cowboy, right? Somehow, Jeannie tapped into my interest in the West and my subterranean romantic tendencies.

Technorati Tags: Romance Novels,Jeannie Watt,Nevada

I’m in the Mood for Love

Why not take a trip thru time this Valentine’s Day and celebrate romance as your parents and grandparents did?

Romance is ageless and although the elders may look a little wrinkled here and there, they knew in their youth as they know now that nothing is guaranteed to get us in the mood for love like romantic music.

In fact, there’s an old song called I’m in the Mood for Love. The first few lines go like this:

I’m in the mood for love,
Simply because you’re near me.
Simply because you’re near me,
I’m in the mood for love.

So if you live and die in 30-minute sitcon intervals but you want to stop and smell the flowers with your inamorata, create the proper atmosphere with some romantic music when the two of you are together. Here are some of your elders’ favorites, in no particular order.

• Can’t help falling in love with you, Elvis Presley
• My Eyes Adored You, Frankie Vali
• Unchained Melody, Al Hibler
• I just called to say I love you, Stevie Wonder
• Dream Lover, Bobby Darin or Rick Nelson
• La Vie En Rose, Edith Piaf or Madelyn Peroux
• O Sole Mio (It’s Now or Never) Elvis Presley
• Stand by Me, Ben E. King or Mickey Gilley
• Till, Tony Benett
• I Can’t Stop Loving You, Ray Charles
• I’m Yours, Don Cornell

Now, here’s a romantic scenario for February 14th. Select one or more of the songs you like from the list above and arrange with the maitre d’ of your selected fancy dining locale to pipe them in just as your waiter delivers 12 long-stemmed roses to your private nook. Or, if you have the guts, launch into your powerful karate-style crooner’s voice when the roses arrive. This is a good one to start the evening, a ballad by Don Cornell, aka Luigi Francisco Varlaro:

I’m yours
Heart and soul I am yours
Can’t you see it my eyes
Can’t you hear it in my sighs
I’m yours

My life and my love, dear
Are yours to command
I stand here before you
My heart in my hand

I’m yours
All the world knows
I’m yours.

Sounds trite and hokey, doesn’t it? Even makes me want to gag a little, but you might be surprised to learn how effective it is.

Now, it’s up to you.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Oh, almost forgot. While your ritual is underway, you’ve got to look sincere. Practice avoiding your trademark imminent and annoying half-snigger quivering lip. On Elvis, it looks good. On you…

Nicholas Sparks’ novel “True Believer”

For the past several days, I have noticed an increasing number of hits on three old posts about a review of Nicholas Sparks’ novel True Believer.

Then this morning, the hits skyrocketed, followed by this comment:

“I am writing a research paper on Nicholas Sparks and I need to know your name so I can correctly credit you. This seems to be critical material and it would be crucial support for my paper. I would appreciate it very much if you would provide me with this information.”

Apparently a school class in North Carolina, scene of Sparks’ novel, had been assigned to review and analyze the book, and in the course of searching the internet for information to support their conclusions, they had stumbled across this site.

Their interest in Sparks isn’t unusual for a couple of reasons. In addition to his stature as a world renowned author, Sparks is also one of North Carolina’s favorite residents. And, a class of teens or pre-teens by their nature would be interested in a romantic novel set in their state.

Of course I responded, but perhaps not as they had expected. I explained that my article wasn’t a criticism but a tongue in cheek satiric look at romance from the perspective of men of the West as opposed to views from the romantic South.

And, in my response, I explained that I thought Sparks is an excellent writer with a talent for surprising his readers. Whether he writes about romance or not, his works are complete with real-life situations and the detailed processes he uses to solve mysteries. He is adept at catching a reader’s interest and sustaining it.

Is there a deeper massage here? Probably not, but if this (assumed) student’s message illustrate anything, it might speak to the difficulty we have in recognizing humor. We live in a day and age when our antennas are eternally raised for anything we can use to elevate a molehill to the status of a mountain.

If the message is from a student, then the difficulty is understandable, but when supposed adults can’t figure out if innocuous comments are or are not humorous, then the world is in serious trouble.

No City Hall Romance?

Shades of…who?

The SF Weekly Snitch a few days ago carried an interesting headline: “Daly Fondles Scepter of Purity: Plans to Ban City Hall Romance in Tuesday’s BoS.

Branding Daly an habitué of “the far right” because he wants to outlaw consensual sex between city department managers and their employees seems like a stretch to me.

It isn’t true at all that a liberal or a progressive who opposes sex in the workplace is by definition a far right kook. More probable in my book anyone who believes in unlimited humping on the taxpayer’s dime has never run a city or anything else.

Had such a restriction been in effect when the Gabster became mayor, one hell of a lot of public funds and workplace disruption could have been avoided.

Daly’s proposal makes sense in principle, but the devil is always in the details. The language ought to make it crystal clear that the rules apply to elected officials as well as your normal run of the mill apparatchiks.

San Francisco may have a long and distinguished history of sexual freedoms. So what? The city does not have a history of taxpayer funded sex breaks with a sex-break room on every floor, each complete with coffee, donuts, and cigarettes, as a literal reading of Snitch’s article would lead some bureaucratic literalist (or mayor) to just do it. That ole slippery slope in action.

It’s clear that Daly’s proposal doesn’t stand a chance of a snowball in hell of making it anywhere beyond his imagination. So, why should the Snitch waste space talking about it? And why should I waste blog space?

I can only speak for myself, but bitching and moaning is a good relaxant, almost as good as sex.

Sex with Aunty Em

If you’re into the sex scene, you probably know Emily Morse. Otherwise the name may escape you.

She’s the host of a podcast called Sex with Emily on 106.9 FM Saturday nights from 11 p.m.-2 a.m. She’s sort of the modern version of Sue Johnson, Canada’s premier sex conversationalist and counselor we see on Oxygen TV. Only, Emily Morse is younger and better looking. No insult, Sue. That’s just a law of life—people get old. Emily hasn’t reached that stage yet.

According to IMDB, the movie database, Emily acted in the movie I am a Sex Addict and co-produced and co-directed the movie See How They Run. I am a Sex Addict was scheduled for a television showing on TMC, Wednesday, September 26, 2007, at 3:05 a.m., an un-Godly hour if ever there was one.

The more interesting film, though, is See How They Run. According to IMDB, this is a behind-the-scenes look at a “showdown” between Mayor Willie Brown and supervisor Tom Ammiano. The cast of characters reads like a who’s who of San Francisco’s political elite: Willie Brown, Jerry Brown, Diane Feinstein, and Tom Ammiano.

No mention of His Gavness, but the cast also included a slew of celebrities: Kathie Lee Gifford, Arianna Huffington, Jesse Jackson, Bill Maher, Sean Penn, and Regis Philbin.

I haven’t watched any of her film work and probably never will. My only experience with Emily was a brief YouTube clip of one of her radio broadcasts called Emily is Visited by Three Sexy Women on Her Radio Show.

Boooring. To be perfectly honest—and this is just my own personal philosophy—it’s more fun to do it than listen to someone else talk about it or even watch someone else on film or tape. I really could not care less about Britney’s or Paris’s crotch shot.

Well, if I’m not interested in sex, why am I writing about Emily Morse? I did not say I am not interested in sex. I am very much interested in my own sex life. I’m no more interested in other people’s sex habits than I was listening to how many cheerleaders the captain of the football team banged last Friday night. Most people lie about sex anyway.

My primary interest is in the modern cultural phenomenon of young women and not-so-young women who choos careers, if you can call them that, in the sex business. Emily Morse is an example of this phenomenon. Why would a young girl with great intelligence and great promise wish to change the world one orgasm at a time? While orgasms are very pleasurable, I can’t help but wonder if somewhere along the line, they are the root cause of the 6 billion-and-counting over populated world we live in. From the angle of saving the world, it sounds like birth control would be a more fruitful social contribution as well as a promising economic activity. Combine that with the abundance of orgasms at any given moment, and you may have a winner.

Don’t get me wrong. Emily Morse is undoubtedly a nice person. It’s just that she doesn’t look like a sex pot. She looks like that kid down the block who walks past your house to high school. How can a girl pass as a sexpot when she looks so innocent? Actual innocence is something else entirely. We’re talking about appearances here.

One day, she will reach the age of Sue Johnson, the age of knowledge and reason. I’d be willing to bet Aunty Em knew more about sex than Dorothy.