There was a time and a place for those curls

My Millicent,

I read your last letter while in my topless cubbyhole of an office, and surprised myself by uncontrollably tittering when I read your comparison of the gun cartridges to super-absorbent tampons. I am sorry that your last time at the range was so…deserving of note for all the wrong reasons. In one way, I expected more of that to be present during our initial dip into riflery. Instead, we were met by people just as calm and gawky as we were, and the nudging to try a gun upgrade seemed so polite. This gun you described sounds nothing like gunnie. It sounds terrifying, and I admire you for actually shooting it, not destroying anything, and keeping your cool while the cartridges hit your head. I think my biggest fear at the range is overreacting to a cartridge and shooting myself in the nose, or losing control of the gun with it’s kick, and accidentally killing or paralyzing somebody’s date or grandfather. I don’t think I would have been able to have tried. I would have seen all the possible disasters, gotten sweaty, and opted for good old itty bitty lethal gunnie instead. Of course, what we have also stumbled upon is that perhaps the ideal shooting outing is always in two parts, at least. The shooting, and then the bathing–or at least something that is as generously soothing and calm as shooting is firey and agressive. Maybe with wacking the system out of balance with the shooting (it’s danger, control, power, setting, characters, etc.), the real pleasure lies in the restoration of the soul afterwards?

I was also thinking about Debra Messing’s hair, and I think another important aspect to remember is that her hair was fab, for the nineties. It was made for black pants and Pottery Barn coffee tables. Even Debra’s hair doesn’t look like her Grace hair of old in ‘The Women’ poster. If anything, Ryan looks too arch to me, far too laquered (and not in a strong, laquer-is-power way).  You are absolutely right, the dandelion is gone, and I think the dandelion is what we loved.  If I wanted arch housewife, Gwyneth would have been just fine.  I also think Ryan’s strange new “I’m old, but young” look is very reminiscent of Dyan Cannon, who I know about for some reason, but have no idea what movies she has been in.  See?

Dyan Cannon

Okay-while finding this picture (I must find a better way to include pictures in our letters), I found out that Dyan Cannon is pretty cool.  She was amazing in Bob, Ted, Carol, and Alice, (have you seen this? This movie has one of the most charmingly earnest and odd endings of any movie I have seen in a very long time. And it talks about sex retreats. And Eliot Gould is in it), and she was married to Cary Grant once.  She’s in her seventies.

Speaking of movies, I don’t think this ‘Women’ is here to be celebrated.  The original ‘The Women’ is a strange campy amazing movie (all female cast, Rosaline Russell, Joan Crawford) and it has an entire plot based around the nail polish color “Jungle Red.” I love this movie.  I have a distinct memory of watching it with my mom, and chatting about it’s writer, Clare Booth Luce, who, as a congresswoman, ambassador, etc., was always kind of pissed because she didn’t write more.  I was seventeen or so, and this made writing sound like the most important thing a woman could do.  So Luce was super conservative and her political views were a bit, emmm, strict.  I didn’t know that part until last week when her name came up in an article on thinktanks.  Whatever this ‘The Women’ is, it may be campy and high comedy, but I think it is going to go more in the line of ‘The Banger Sisters.’ Do you remember that one?

I’ve gone on too long.
More soon.  I send you a mental sitcom, 28 minutes full of delight and easy wonder,

CF