To linger and/or bedazzle

August 27, 2008 by Leave a comment

Dear great fox in the cornfield,

I appreciate the new meaning attributed to my name.  Before “compare” or “contrast,” Carla Fran has usually only meant “to mix wine with butter” or “to quit smoking, again.”  As you can see in the title of this post, I am playing with what Millicent means to me.

Also, I was dazzled by your last letter.  I still would like to defend Angie as Hera, only because I have always pictured Hera (probably due to an educational filmstrip, long ago) as a giant woman in the sky, with great eyebrows. Also, even though often pissed at Zeus, she seems to usually know what’s what, and be the brains behind the endeavor of their little mountain.  I can see Angie planning Hera’s strange revenges.  That is, if the whole saving the world thing grows old, the UN stops returning her calls (or vice versa) and she tries out a Norma Desmond-ish stage.  However, your comparison to Leda is stunning, as is the mention of her attempts at Demeterishness and Athenaaity.  I think you are correct on both accounts. 

I also want to defend Anniston as our Penelope.  While she is not literally weaving tapestries or placemats every night, I feel that her constant almost-marriages and walking around in front of the paprazzi in jeans, and her ” joyous but going through some shit and dealing just fine” glare/walk are her tapestries.  US Weekly is her trusty servant in this endeavor.  But the Hera thing works, too, perhaps citing Brad’s initial attraction to both women?

In other parts of my brain, I was thinking about the democratic convention.  Driving home today, I heard the vote on the radio, and have deduced that our nation’s democrats might be drunk all day at this convention, and not on glee or hope for the future.   They also kept announcing each “great state of _____” as the birthplace of so and so, and in my opinion none of the so and so’s were important enough to have their birthplace honored.  Maybe they were playing a drinking game that I didn’t know the rules to, and which public radio couldn’t quite capture by sound alone.

My neighbor is laughing loudly at her television this evening–great hulks of laughter that shock me, then delight me, and then shock me again as they come through my window.

 How are you?

Besties,

Carla Fran

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Populating the Pantheon

August 26, 2008 by 1 Comment

 

Dear CF (I hope you don’t mind my addressing you thusly, but I’ve taken to turning my friends’ names into verbs; here, you mean to “compare” or “consult”)–

 

Brad strikes me as a trifle unmusical for Apollo. (He also lacks the reputation for athleticism and pederasty). I agree that he’s no Zeus. Adonis? Strikingly handsome, slightly vapid, a beautiful cipher for all his roles (and wives)? This makes Jolie Aphrodite—or her Phoenician counterpart Astarte, which fits her better—and her progeny Cupids. Born out of the sea-froth of Voight’s severed genitals, Angie springs out of the ocean, fully grown, and is married off to ugly but skilled Hephaestos (Billy Bob Thornton).

 

For this to really work there would need to be an Ares in the background—some sort of warrior god with whom she has fabulous sex. Again, definitely not Brad, Troy notwithstanding. Ah: I have it. MEL GIBSON. Yes—the right combination of warlike and crazy, her opposite in every way. If the next Jolie-Pitt comes out be-kilted, we’ll have our answer.

 

Angie aspires to be a cross between Demeter and Athena, but a) she’ll never make the full transition to the hearth, and b) she’ll NEVER be Athena, no matter how many clicking gold owls she adopts.

 

A better identification, I think, is Brad as the swan and Jolie as Leda, who gave birth to two eggs, each containing a set of twins. Maddox and Pax as Castor and Pollux, and Shiloh and Viv as Helen and Clytemnestra. Zahara’s just a rock star, and poor Knox will have to occupy some other myth. Maybe Donatella will bless him with a technicolor dreamcoat. One doesn’t exactly hope for his eventual kidnapping and sale into slavery, of course, but it would be nice, for the sake of epic and poetry, to stick to the story.

 

I like Aniston as Penelope, although she doesn’t exactly seem to spend her nights undoing tapestries to keep the suitors at bay. I’m going to fly in the face of popular opinion and submit her as a non-virginal Artemis, what with her rage at the paparazzi who pry into her house. If she could, she’d turn them into stags and have them hunted to death with their own dogs. I suspect that she might be similarly committed to childlessness (recent tabloids notwithstanding) and to outdoor activities. I get the sense that, while she’d like a man, she wants to run on beaches and bathe naked (as do we all).

 

Then again, she might be Hera, the vengeful wife, although she hasn’t yet transformed Angie into a cow.

 

In sum, time will tell. Either

 

a) Knox gets kidnapped by white slavers

b) Viv kills her husband when he comes back from fighting a ten-years war
c) Angie’s seventh’s first word is in Aramaic or

d) she shows up on the red carpet in platinum horns specially designed by Karl Lagerfeld

 

and then we can put all this speculation to rest.

 

Congratulations on confronting the children. I confront mine on Friday. In the interim (and in your memory), I plan to go shoot guns.

 

Fondly,

Millicent

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Pantheons and Lace Roses

August 25, 2008 by Leave a comment

Dearest,

Your idea for the cameo/stamp/explanation patent has taken my breath away. Proceed post-haste!

I spent today among the younger generation, and then more of today convalescing by reading the gossip blogs. As we once discussed, while there is the classic pantheon of the tabloids, there is a new crop of unfamiliar demi-gods. I don’t know their names, and when I am forced to read about their lives (forced!) or assess their fashion choices/tanning abilities, I wonder if I am losing the edge that got me so far in life (where and how are other stories, for other times).

Angelina=Hera (she makes for a spectacular Hera, of course)

Brad=Apollo (tricky, because he isn’t Zeus, but I just don’t think he is Zeus material. Thoughts?)

Jenifer Anniston=Penelope (not a goddess, which makes sense because she really doesn’t work much, but we still watch her waiting for her hubby to come home, and she keeps almost marrying all these other suitors…unweaving the loom, perhaps? Of course this now means that Brad is Odysseus, but lets just say that I can mix my epics and pantheons for the sake of parsing these everpresent idols. I love the word “parsing” by the way.)

Paris/Heidi/Lauren=I want to make them all (and their like) the Scylla. Not sure why. It might be that the Scylla has a growling wolf head growing from her waist. Which, as I type, sounds cooler than I would like to allow for this pack. Hmm….they are awaiting further definition.

There are so many more. Perhaps you could help me in my classifications? As for these other newbies, Gossip Girls, I guess, I am struck with how they have arrived at celebrity without my acknowledgment of their existence. Is this what aging is–less acknowledgment of existence?

In other news, I read today that Christina Applegate is recovering from her double mastectomy by making lace roses by the hundreds, as reported by friend Lance Bass (via Jezebel). He seems to have said it with wonder, adding “she doesn’t know what she is going to do with them.” This all makes me very sad, and yet it does seem to capture how healing and loss create some odd artifacts in their wake.

Yours,

Carla Fran

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