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FEMME FATALES & FILM NOIRS

8/26/2014

CLASSIC FEMME FATALE: VERONICA LAKE & ALAN LADD in "THIS GUN FOR HIRE", 1942

& MODERN FATALE, AVA LORD (EVA GREEN), in Latest "SIN CITY", 2014

FEMME FATALES: REAL & FANTASY

& FILM NOIRS by Alan L. Chrisman

There’s a long tradition of “Femmes Fatales” in history and culture. In the Bible, there was the first, perhaps, Eve, and Delilah and Sampson. During WW1, Mata Hari was a supposed spy for the Germans. The dictionary defines femme fatale as “an alluring woman who causes men  ‘distress’.

But it was really in the 1940’s, with hard-boiled detective books and films, that it came into its own in popular culture. Writers like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James Cain saw their novels and characters turned into Hollywood films, which became known as Film Noir.

My parents had actually named me after Alan Ladd, a 40’s film noir star, who was in several of these. I was, as well, named after the lead character from the old radio show, “The Shadow”, so naturally I’ve always been fascinated by this genre and Femme Fatales. Probably the ultimate Femme Fatale of this era was played by Veronica Lake. She appeared alongside Alan Ladd in three films now considered classics, This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key (’42), and The Blue Dahlia in 1946. She was especially known for her blonde, hair over her eye, “peek-a-boo” hairstyle and sultry presence. Actually, she was originally chosen for her first role opposite Ladd because she was one of the few Hollywood actresses shorter than him, who played the tough, but sensitive guy on screen. She became a very popular pin-up girl for the soldiers of WW 2 and women copied her hair. She’s also was in one of my favorite films, Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, where all-American actor, Joel McCrea, playing a big Hollywood director meets her down on her luck character in a diner and buys her breakfast. He later becomes, through a mistaken identity, trapped on a southern chain gang, and learns that what the poor prisoners like, rather than big social-statement films, are ones that make them laugh. Woody Allen was later to be reminded of this too in his “Stardust Memories” (1980), when the aliens advise him to “make funny films”.

There were many other femme fatales portrayed on the big screen in the 40’s and 50’s, often based on the books or screen plays by the three master authors above. Famously in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (’41), Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) finally tells Mary Astor, ”I’m not taking the fall for you”. And of, course, Bogart is Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in

The Big Sleep with “the look”, Lauren Bacall. He had met the much younger Bacall in Hemmingway’s To Have and to Hold and they soon became ‘Bogart and Baby’ in real life. There was also Rita Hayworth singing up a sexy storm for Glenn Ford in Glida. In James Cain’s Double Indemnity, Barbra Stanwyck tries to get insurance man, Fred MacMurray, and Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, try to get their lovers to get rid of their husbands.

Alfred Hitchcock always chose cool, blondes, like Ingrid Bergman (Notorious), Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief), Janet Leigh (Psycho), Tippi Hedron (Marnie, The Birds) and North By Northwest ( Eva Marie Saint) as his hero’s opposite. In Vertigo even veteran cop, Jimmy Stewart, is fooled by deceptive Kim Novak. Interestingly, these often tough, street-wise male characters were looked down upon at one time as just pulp fiction creations, but today they are considered classics. And they and even the sophisticated characters, such as Cary Grant played, equally couldn’t resist these ladies’ charms.

In the James Bond films, ladies-man Bond always had to watch his step around the latest Bond “girl”. The early ones were especially seductive Ursula Andress (Dr. No) and Goldfinger (’64) with Honor Blackman as “Pussy” Galore. In these politically-correct times it’s doubtful they could get away with that name today! The genre and its femme fatales would continue on in Hollywood: China Town with Jack Nicholson (’74) and in a remake of Postman Always Rings Twice in ’81.   Kathleen Turner was in Body Heat the same year. Sean Young was in Blade Runner (’82) and of course, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (’92).

Woody Allen even got in some laughs about it in three of his early films with Diane Keaton: Play It Again, Sam where he envisions Bogart’s ghost for meeting women; in Love and Death (’75), Keaton tries to get Allen to assassinate Napoleon and in Sleeper, set in the future, he has to deal with a still-spoiled Keaton character. Even on TV, there was a funny take-off of the femme fatale character on the popular U.S. 60’s series, Dobie Gillis.   Love-struck high school boy, Dobie, would chase after the blonde, but stuck-up Thalia (beautiful Tuesday Weld), and each episode she would lead him on, but drop him because he wasn’t rich like his handsome rival (originally Warren Beatty).   Dobbie’s quirky beatnik side-kick, Maynard G. Krebs was played by Bob Denver who later starred on Gilligan’s Island. This was at the time, a light comedy , but looking at some DVD’s of the shows recently, I realized underneath, it was perhaps, saying some things about a certain kind of woman, that men might fall for.

Now some feminists might argue with this view of women as seductresses and dismiss it as just man’s fantasy, but as I say, it has been around in history (some say Cleopatra manipulated both Caesar and Mark Anthony) and in popular culture. On the other hand, some women have always been attracted to “bad boys” from rock stars to bikers. Remember Marlon Brando playing a motorcycle gang member, being asked what he’s rebelling against by a small town waitress in The Wild One (‘ 53) and Brando replies,” What’d Got?”. In the new film, Sin City, the femme fatale is played by the dark-eyed beauty, Eva Green (who was also a Bond girl in Casino Royale, 2006), so some things never seem to change. And maybe it’s a question of who really does hold the seductive powers and charm in the relationship between the sexes.

“FEMME FATALE”                     song(rocker) lyrics by Alan Chrisman

<Intro>                                                            c. 2012

Saw her across the aisle
out the corner of my eye
She knew she had me
even if, I didn't know why

She could have been a fashion queen
She put Audrey Hepburn to shame
in her cool blue jeans
I just had to know her name

CHORUS:
But she's a Femme Fatale
She took my breath away
With her killer smile
even though, I know I'm gonna pay

<interlude - instrumental>

So I gave her a ride
in my car
She said fine
but I may take you too far

What's this power, they can have over us
even though, it seems to make our day
It's better sometimes, just to take the bus
and have a clean getaway

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May 08th, 2014

8/26/2014

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Lewinsky,The Clintons, Donald Sterling & Political Correctness

An Essay about Our Times by Alan L. Chrisman, 2014

Monika Lewinsky says in the June issue of Vanity Fair that she is still being vilified over the Clinton affair. And it’s created quite a reaction. How dare she drudge up this scandal again! Media panelists’ have complained that she just move on with her life. But she maintains she has tried, but has been unable to find jobs (despite going to the London School of Economics). One female pundit said she could have volunteered to aid in Africa (like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates’ foundation) or changed her name, etc.   Male P.R. consultants said she should have just re-created a new public “narrative” as ex-President Clinton has done. America just loves a comeback story.

I always thought it strange that it was, ironically, the female feminists who most criticized her but forgave Bill Clinton, the womanizer. Of course they were mainly Democrats and consider themselves and him progressive, so it could be excused. And there is a whole history of ‘progressives’ like the Kennedy’s being womanizers and it being dismissed. Of course, they can’t wait for Hillary to run for President in 2016. I recommend you read Roger Morris’s “Partners in Power”: The Clintons and their America, to get another view.   CNN host, Don Lemmon, said Lewinsky should have been more mature, as he was when her age he hinted, than to have an affair with a married man. Lewinsky was an intern at the White House but only in her early 20’s when she became involved with the most powerful “boss” on earth. But we have long had a double standard for males and male politicians. At the worse, they became jokes like Anthony Weiner and Elliot Spitzer or right-wing fundamentalists, caught with their pants down. But as Lewinsky argues, we continue to blame the women. I was surprised myself, when my own mother had said at the time of the Clinton scandal, that it was Lewinsky’s fault.

We live, and have for a while now, in a time of political correctness. People outside the U.S .(as in Canada, where I now live) often have this view of America as a very religious, conservative place. Canadians see themselves as more liberal and nice and less violent (despite their love of hockey fights). But almost all the U.S. media is owned by big and ‘liberal’ corporations on the East and West coasts. And of course, Hollywood wants to have a social conscious with its overpaid actors and executives.
The recent Donald Sterling incident, the L.A. Clippers owner, when he was
caught making racist remarks, is also revealing. He has evidently had these views for years and the NBA knew it and allowed it all this time. It’s interesting: he actually grew up in one of the poorest and mixed-race neighborhoods in L.A., as did his supposed girlfriend (she went to the same high school 50 years later), V. Stiviano or “Visor” woman as she has become known in the media. And they both had created a new “narrative” in the American way: he changed his Jewish name to Sterling and she her’s too and has had plastic surgery, to hide her ethnic background.

So I think he’s genuinely surprised with all the controversy. Afterall, he made the mistake of just saying out loud what he’s probably thought all along and those around him have dismissed ( even Stiviano says he’s not a racist). Again, he’s just lived the American Dream and become a capitalist and escaped from the ghetto, like the rappers, and couldn’t understand why his girlfriend would want to dredge up the past by hanging around with a black athlete (even though the majority of NBA players are). He’s just an old man who has racist views, but like a lot of us, nobody wants to admit we’re not as unprejudiced in all kinds of things, as we think we are.

As I said in my own book, “It’s A Long Way Home”, (see 'memoir/book' heading), after living both in the U.S. and Canada, I believe politics is really about both liberals and conservatives each thinking that the other has less morals than they do. Liberals think conservatives are not “open” enough and conservatives think liberals are too “open”. But to me, there seems a lot of hypocrisy on both sides and in both the Clinton affair and the Sterling incident.

And the media is also guilty of its own.

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THE BEATLES: WHY THEY STILL MEAN SO MUCH

8/17/2014

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“THE BEATLES EFFECT”: WHY THEY STILL MEAN SO MUCH

by Alan L. Chrisman

I just re-read Chris O’Dell’s book, Miss O’Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, Stones, Dylan, & The Women They Loved, about working for many of rock’s greatest artists. It’s been out a few years now, but you know how sometimes you don’t always fully get an album or book the first time. But as Patti Boyd, says on the cover, “It’s a riveting, honest, brave account and I couldn’t put the book down”. She would know because she was George Harrison’s first wife and O’Dell became one of her best friends.

Miss O’Dell, a girl from small-town Oklahoma, through a chance meeting with Derek Taylor, one of their close associates, gets a job possibility to come to London and work for the Beatles’   new company, Apple Corps., 1968.   Just the right amount of smarts and assertiveness leads her to become one of their most trusted inner-circle. She stays at their homes and becomes good friends with their wives. She does many things, especially, for George and Patti, including the typing of George’s lyrics for his break-through solo album, All Things Must Pass and he writes a song for her,” Pisces Apple Lady”. She attends Beatles’ recording session (something that even Beatle wives weren’t supposed to do, until Yoko) and sings behind “Hey Jude”. She also meets many of their rock star friends like Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, and was briefly intimate with them as well as Ringo, even, at one point. For she becomes their confidante, as well, something that rock idols seemed to need, as they have to live in often isolated worlds.

She tells these amazing inside stories and gives us a glimpse at what these larger than life personalities were really like and is especially good at capturing the complexities of each. Miss O’Dell shows us what it’s like to be Rock Royalty. We think their lives are so glamorous and they are, and they can indulge their excesses-drink, drugs, and egos more because they have the power and money to do so. But it seems it’s just one less thing to worry about perhaps, for as human beings, there’s always something else wanted. So each Beatle tried to find his own peace, in different ways. At one point, George tells Miss O’Dell, that she’s “the lucky one”, a less complicated life perhaps and without all the increased expectations. Many of them would also pay a price for their fast lives in the 60’s, as a list of their relatively-early deaths, at the end of her book reveals.

But when The Beatles fall apart and she has to find another job, she misses being in on the action, and becomes increasingly involved in heavier drugs herself. She then becomes the tour manager for some of the top other rock acts, Stones, Dylan, CSNY, and many others. Her organizational skills and abilities at satisfying rock star’s demands and egos come in handy. It’s no wonder she later went back to school and became a Professional Personal and Abuse Counselor. She remained friends with The Beatles and their wives and ex-wives and many others she knew closely. So, Miss O’Dell is a fascinating and rare inside story of The Beatles and her own life.

You Never Give Me Your Money & The Beatles After the Break-up by Peter Doggett

Reviewed by A. Chrisman

I’ve always been most fascinated with two periods of The Beatles, especially, their beginnings in Liverpool and Hamburg and in their later years 1968-70, before their break-up. The irony is that I think they made some of their most interesting music at those times. Besides many of us being affected by them, The Beatles Story is, I think so intriguing, because it really encompasses a bit of everything-from rags to riches beginnings, youthful ideals, artistic success, love, later in-fighting, and perhaps even, eventually a kind of redemption. In other words, all the things, that all of us, as human beings probably go through in our own relationships and lives. But their journey happens at a much higher profile and speeded-up rate. After all, they as a group, The Beatles, only lasted about 10 years. It’s hard to believe because so much happened in that time. It truly was at a special time in history, “The Sixties: The Decade That Changed the World’, as some have called it.

They were a big part of that, for they revolutionized not only pop music and culture, but so much more. I think that is why The Beatles continue to fascinate us, not only the Baby boomers who grew up with them, but also generations to come.

Peter Doggett points out in his book, You Never Give Me Your Money & The Beatles After the Break-up that their own company, Apple Corps. began in 1968 originally as a way, suggested by their financial advisors, to protect their money from the British tax system. But The Beatles, being artists and not businessmen, saw it also as a way to help other up-and-coming artists. They never forgot how they themselves had been pretty well ignored by the music industry, until a little-respected branch of Britain’s EMI record label and a potential-seeing producer, George Martin, finally gave them a chance.

They had this idealistic and youthful 60’s ideal that they could perhaps offer that chance to others at the same time. But pretty soon, as with the excesses of the sixties, a lot of freeloaders started taking advantage of them and Apple. And it was fast becoming a financial mess. On top of that, The Beatles were going in different directions themselves, personally and creatively. Always before they had, despite the differences between members, especially John and Paul, the creative-opposites and main songwriters on which they revolved, been able to come together. There was always a bit of rivalry between John and Paul, as anyone who’s has had an older sibling can understand, and they needed the others’ approval, and it made for a balance in their song writing. But now George too, was coming into his own as a songwriter, and felt unrecognized by the other two. They were also, at the same time, fighting just to keep control of their song publishing, for which they had had to made deals in the beginning. They had left all the business decisions to their manager, Brian Epstein, but he was no longer there to protect them and the businessmen and lawyers saw their chance. So it was the perfect storm. Soon The Beatles were divided into different camps. There was street-wise, Allan Klein, that John & Yoko admired (and George and Ringo went along with) on one side and McCartney and his wife, Linda Eastman’s more refined lawyer family on the other. Doggett documents, step by step, the long drawn out battle. The interesting thing though is, it seemed nobody really did totally want to end their fruitful partnership, but like in a torn marriage, no one also wants to admit they’re wrong. And the divorce proceeds.

So it comes to an end, tellingly, at the same time as the 60’s decade ends. The split, especially in such acrimony, sends shockwaves throughout the pop culture. For, as I say, The Beatles had become more than just a pop band. They represented the hope of the Woodstock generation that we could all get along on just love and peace. Then John Lennon, in one of his first Beatles-split solo albums sang, “ The dream is over” and that he didn’t believe in Beatles as well as all the other icons we had looked up to.   He said he just believed in “Yoko and me and that’s reality”. He was no longer the Elvis-inspired, teenage wannabe rocker that had gotten him to start The Beatles.

Many fans still hoped, for years after, that somehow they (or our idealized vision of them) would somehow hold time at a standstill and re-unite. But it was not to be. Times had changed and so had they. They had grown up and so would we. They continued in their solo albums and lives, Paul with Linda and Wings, John with Yoko, George fulfilled his acceptance as a songwriter, and Ringo just being himself. But The Beatles were always more than the sum of their individual parts, as became apparent. Ironically, they were still to compete with each other throughout their solo careers (and secretly meet with each other) and even came close a couple times to, possibly, re-forming. By 1973, Klein was replaced as head of Apple by their long time loyal Liverpool assistant and got it back on track, Neil Aspinall (whom my Russ/Cdn. friend, Yury Pelyushonok, got to know a bit when they were discussing possibly publishing his book about the Beatles’ effect on the Soviet Union and he described Aspinall as their “guardian angel”).   But then John was assassinated by a fan and later George was stabbed by another mentally ill fan and then died of cancer.

So The Beatles’ Story, took on almost Shakespearian proportions. As I said, it had everything-innocence, great achievement, even sadly, tragedy. It also paralleled our own lives and journeys as many of us also went through our own innocence, loves and perhaps relationship break-ups. But of course, there are the magnificent songs that have remained timeless.   True artists articulate a society’s and people’s feelings, often in advance, and perhaps when we hear or see them, we see our own reflections. The Beatles were able in their songs, more than any other group, perhaps, to capture a range of emotions with which a wide cross-section of us could identify. The energy, hope and innocence of their early “Yeah Yeah” songs to the experimental albums and songs of Rubber Soul, Revolver, Peppers, White Album, to the bittersweet/ break-up Let it Be and yet they were somehow to end with the beautiful harmonies of Abbey Road. And their solo albums also reflected their and our more coming to grips with our maturity. The Beatles were always able to affect people on many different levels at the same time. “ I am he as you are he and we are all together”, as John Lennon sang on, “I Am The Walrus”. “Imagine” is played every New Year’s Eve in Times Square and John Lennon is respected for his ideals and music and Harrison for his songs and his spirituality. The Beatles finally released the documentary & The Anthologies in the mid-90’s, which Neil Aspinall had first conceived and had been compiling since 1970 and it sold 30 million copies and were the top selling albums in the world those years and showed their longevity. 50 years later and counting, Paul and Ringo are still performing and able to bask in their well–earned legacy. And there’s even a kind of redemption in that.

I ‘m still amazed myself, how new generations are still affected by them, all these years later, a half-century later now since their North American Invasion. I was at a family get-together, recently, and a grand- nephew of mine came up to me to introduce his high school girlfriend to me. Evidently he had told her that I knew some things about The Beatles. She was all ga-ga (and not for Lady Ga-Ga evidently), but for The Beatles. So I told her a couple of my own Beatles’ experiences and gave her a copy of my book, “It’s A Long Way Home” (& How Beatles’ Music Saved My Life). I noticed that she was like those young awe-struck first Beatles’ fans or like we were when we first saw them on the Ed Sullivan show. She could relate just as much to them, even all these decades later. Somehow their songs were able to still capture all those moments in time and the emotions. And it wasn’t just the Babyboomers, like me who had grown up with them, but for new generations to come too, it seemed.  The girl insisted on giving me a hug after, and I knew some things would always feel the same. “Yeah Yeah Yeah”

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DIANE KEATON("ANNIE HALL") HAS STILL GOT IT!

8/5/2014

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DIANE KEATON (“ANNIE HALL”) HAS STILL GOT IT!

By Alan L. Chrisman

Like many men, I’ve long had a crush on Diane Keaton, especially since her defining role of Annie Hall in Woody Allen’s classic film of the same name in 1977. But even before that, she stood out in his previous films, Play It Again, Sam (’72) Sleeper (’73) and Love and Death (‘75).

The accomplished actress has also been a director, producer, and photographer and writer. She just released her 2nd memoir/ book, Let’s Just Say, It Wasn’t Pretty, after her previous one, Then Again.

I’ve always wondered though, how much she was really like her screen persona (or was she more of a Woody Allen-created character?). She says in her new book that Woody Allen made Diane Keaton, the actress (her real name was Diane Hall). He also had a relationship with her and its clear his Annie Hall film and character was partly based on their real relationship, which is why I think it rings so true still.

She made films and had relationships with Al Pacino (The Godfather ’72), Warren Beatty (Reds ’81) and Jack Nicholson (with whom she later made Something’s Gotta Give, 2003). But these men were at the time, certainly, not the settling-down type of guys. Although, as with Allen, who she says is still one of her best friends, she has remained good friends with them too.

But she has remained unmarried. A large part of “Pretty” is about her present life as a single mother with her two adopted teen-aged children, Dexter and Duke.

So what is she really like? She reveals in the book, she likes to buy and renovate houses (her dad was a real estate agent and engineer). Her mother was a homemaker and creative and inspired her to pursue an artistic profession. She has portraits on her wall of some of her favorite men’s faces: Abraham Lincoln, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Sam Shepard, (which may say something about her ideal of men, or perhaps, is reminiscent of her late father).

She’s 68 now and still wearing the thick belts, wide brimmed hats, etc. which she made fashionable in the 70’s. She has a new film And So It Goes out now with another “silver fox”, as she calls him, Michael Douglas. She’s resisted plastic surgery as so many other actresses her age haven’t; she says young people mix her up with everyone from Jane Fonda to Katy Perry!

In the book she even quotes some of the funny dialogue from two of my other favorite Woody Allen films with Keaton in them, Sleeper and Love and Death. There’s a scene in Sleeper, set in the future, where they’ve escaping from the bad guys and they’re hungry so Woody (Miles) finds these giant vegetables and fruit growing and he drags this gigantic banana for them to munch on, and Keaton (Luna), playing a spoiled woman of the future, says is that the best you can do? In Love and Death, Russian Sonja (Keaton) wants to get Boris (Allen) to join in a plot to assassinate Napoleon; he just wants to have sex with her and says he might not be up to a performance, although he wouldn’t mind “rehearsing”. In Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex, Allen playing a jester, finds a wife wearing a metal chastity belt and tries to break through it at her crotch using a large lance, as he says something like, “Yes, I shall try and openeth thy box with thy trusty shaft”.   In all these, Allen shows the lengths men (sometimes foolishly) will go for a beautiful woman like Keaton. In Annie Hall, one of its many great scenes, is when Allen and Keaton are in a park just observing people go by and Woody asks people what makes relationships work- everyone has a different answer. Soon they see a super-handsome couple, like out a Hollywood poster, and the couple says,” We’re both superficial and shallow”. Allen, when at his best, has no equal when it comes to expressing both the pain and joy in relationships and yet making us laugh, hilariously, at the same time.

Is Diane Keaton really like Annie Hall? From her books and interviews on late night TV shows, she sure seems to be a lot like her-that same unique, quirky, but lovable character of a woman. It’s easy to see why Allen and so many others of we men have fallen for her.

LA-DI-DA! Diane Keaton still has It!

I had my own sort of “Annie Hall” moments in a relationship. This is a short excerpt from my own recent memoir, “ It’s A Long Way Home”: CHAPTER 19: LADY IN RED pt. 2 (“Annie Hall”)

I had over the past two years, since I’d first noticed that “LADY IN RED” walking down the street, seen her around my neighborhood. A couple of times, I saw her with a cute little girl. I figured she must be a single mom. I was still very curious about her, but had been trying to make my marriage work. Finally, one day, when I was divorced and separated again, I saw her walk by my store.   I just ran up to her on the street. I didn’t know what to say, so I mumbled, believing somewhat in astrology, the worst pick-up line, ”When’s your birthday?’ She replied, ”Why it’s tomorrow!” I had guessed someone’s sign again. I mentioned that I had a little record shop in the neighborhood and maybe she would like to drop by sometime (thinking I had probably blown it).

But the very next week, to my immense surprise, she did come in. And she was wonderful-very intelligent, warm, had a great laugh, and was beautiful (my ideal). We hit it off from the first time. She said her name was Anne and that she was a photographer. She continued coming in on a regular basis. We didn’t always agree, but she was always stimulating. I started buying her lunches from a take-out pita place next door when she would drop in, as well as our usual tea. It was good to have someone to treat once in a while. Like I said, she was full of surprises. It was nearing Christmas and I asked her what I could get her and she asked for a certain book.

I now called her Annie, the same as one of my favorite Woody Allen characters, played by Diane Keaton in “ANNIE HALL”.

But sometimes the pressures would build up and we’d argue over books, movies, music, anything, and she’d withdraw for a while. Once, early on, she hadn’t talked to me for several weeks. I saw her go by my store and next door to the pita place. I had been rehearsing a joke in case I did run into her, from a Woody Allen movie: “A man goes into a bar, and he notices a guy with carrots in his ears. The man asks the bartender, “Why?”   The bartender says, “Why don’t you ask him when he comes in tomorrow at 5 p.m.?” Next evening, sure enough, the guy comes in, but this time the guy has bananas in his ears. So the man asks the guy, “Why the bananas in your ears?” The guy replies, ”Because I ran out of carrots”.

Woody Allen said that relationships are like that; they often don’t make any sense, but we need them. So I tell her the joke while she waits for her pita. And she laughs. It works! And she drops by my store right after and we talk.

Another time, she cuts off me for 6 months! It’s the worse winter in years; record snowfalls. She won’t even talk to me, but each pay check, I leave a little gift in her mailbox-a book, DVD movie, music, etc. Finally, one time I leave a note. She angrily calls me back and says never to leave a note again. But I asked her if I could still leave gifts, and she said, ”OK”. I knew she was keeping the door open a little. Soon after, I ran into her in a parking lot. I had changed cars, I didn’t think she recognized me, so I rolled down the window and said, ”You know you could call me sometime”. The next morning, she calls me and we discuss it very briefly.   And she always did it this way; she puts the phone down and then calls right back. I ask her if she’d like to go for lunch.   We meet and it’s soon forgotten and we’re back on track again. So it was never dull. People outside, even friends, can try to judge, but nobody can really understand anybody else’s relationships. Sometimes even the people inside them don’t even know how they work or don’t. The old carrot and banana joke again.

“Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge.       Others only gargle”.      Woody Allen.

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MUSIC AND POP CULTURE BLOG, Written by Alan L. Chrisman

FEMME FATALES & FILM NOIRS

May 08th, 2014

THE BEATLES: WHY THEY STILL MEAN SO MUCH

DIANE KEATON("ANNIE HALL") HAS STILL GOT IT!

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