Daily Archives: December 23, 2009

Oliver’s Army

Well I just came back from a walk to the Post Office and I find an email telling me I won the Rufus Wainwright: Prima Donna contest. I win 2 autographed posters, a playbill from the opening night in Manchester, England and a Sundance Channel tote bag!

They won’t ship these out until after the holidays so any re-gifting will have to wait until next year. Thems the breaks I suppose. It’s not the Mega Millions.

Someone won the whole $160 million. One person. Not me. But the Sundance channel tote bag is nothing to sneeze at though it might be good to wipe your nose with after the sneeze.

What? Too soon?

Last night I watched the Miracle Worker which I had never seen before. I did read the play ages ago in either Annemarie’s or Brian’s Literature book from Lodi High School. They had to read it, I read it for fun.

I enjoyed it, great performances from Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. There were some scenes where Annie Sullivan who had terrible vision squints into the distance when Helen Keller goes off in the distance with her mother.

The squinting, accompanied by the wringing of hands makes it look like Annie Sullivan is scheming. It is also ripe for satire and I wonder if SCTV ever did a sketch based on it.

It would seem to be a perfect match. There’s probably so many episodes of SCTV that it has to be in there, along with Ben Him and the story of Natalie Ringneck, the girl who was raised by geese.

Right at the buildup for the climactic finale, Harpy called. ‘What is it with Tyler Perry’ ‘What is it with hat hair?’ ‘What is it with…’ blah blah blah. Oh Harpy was in his ivory tower playing the snob. If he didn’t get it, if he was who it was aimed for, he deemed it inferior as are the people who enjoy such things.

He also had a ton of advice for me and this blog and what I should do about it. He did mention one thing and it struck a chord/ Basically this blog is like one of Harpy’s favorite books, The Andy Warhol Diaries.

And it’s true, that’s just one of the influences on this here blog. Andy was an influence on me and how I look at things, and I did get the Diaries when they first came out, and even have the Spy Magazine unofficial index yucked away inside. I just missed being included in page 689 of the hardcover, arriving after the incident happened and the books being sold out. I don’t write about it again so, I wrote about it here:

https://johnozed.com/?p=213

Harpy droned on and whatever momentum I had gained while watching the movie soon petered out. I did watch some of the Paul McCartney: Good Evening New York City, a DVD and CD and book of Macca’s shows at Citifield back over the past summer.

It was a wonderful gift from Annemarie, Rex and Earl. As sweet as the cookies and brownies she sent. I offered to get a copy burned for her but she already got her own. I only watched the first 10 songs and want to watch the rest with Bill sometime soon.

2 pairs of eyes will come in handy trying to find Annemarie & Earl, Julio & Stine and Bill & myself in the stands.

What? It could happen.

Apparently they handed out flip cameras to people in the audience for the recording and you never know, maybe somebody was walking by and caught the six of us doing whatever it was we were doing that night. I honestly don’t remember.

I heard from Casey Chasm, calling with holiday greetings and an update on his life. He seems to be going ahead and joining the army. For the insurance, for he and the missus and the baby. To me it seems drastic, but it’s not my life. I’d rather he didn’t need to enlist, but I support his decision. So good luck to him, Pvt. Chasm.