Day: March 13, 2016

From a 3.12 Guardian piece about changing Cuba, by Ed Vulliamy: “For years, visitors to Cuba have been the curious, the adventurous and politically sympathetic; photographers enthralled by the peeling colonial slums, vintage cars and sensuous beauty of the people and their country.

“But for many it might as well be the Bahamas or Costa Blanca — as holidaymakers’ fear of terrorist activity in North Africa encourages them to try the mojitos and cigars of Cuba instead. Central Havana now heaves with cargo-shorts, logo T-shirts and a photo opportunity on every corner.

“Its famously crumbling architecture is slowly but surely undergoing a wash-n-brush-up; a lovely old marketplace adjacent to the Parque Central is closed and wrapped in scaffolding, to make way for yet another luxury hotel providing berths for a new mass tourism, which is still, for the most part, billeted in licensed ‘casas particulares’ — private houses accountable to the state, allowed to take in guests.

“’Every time I return, something else I know has changed,’ says María Jimena Duzán, a Colombian writer who has been visiting Havana for decades. ‘The Americans are here, and that changes everything. One of my favourite places, the lovely old Plaza Vieja, just isn’t the same place, totally transformed.’ Starbucks and Subway on the Parque Central? ‘Oh don’t, please,’ she winces, ‘but indeed, this is just the start of what we’re looking at for Cuba.’

In exactly seven days (3.20.16) I’ll be celebrating four years of sobriety. Not a big deal in AA circles or in the eyes of the usually disapproving Glenn Kenny, I realize, but it sure feels good on this end. I thought about this last night, and it ushered in, ironically, memories of how happy I was in my partying days (late teens to late 20s) and…really, just how blissful things felt from time to time. Sporadically blissful, I mean. Little kisses and shots and caresses.

Not in any grounded or substantive sense — profound spiritual contentment was a long way off — but I was having so many good and happy times in the evenings (and over occasional straight-through weekend marathons). Daytime and work was another thing, but when the sun went down the adventures began! So much laughter and great sex (although the bulk of my luckiness happened between 25 and 35) and hilarious adventures and great craziness with friends.

It began to hit me around 24 or 25 that all this happiness couldn’t last, and that grimming up and getting down in the world of journalism, however satisfying or rewarding this would prove in the long run, would signal the end of my ecstasy period. It was hard, all right. “The page is turning and the joy I knew is slipping away but I have to let it go so I can start the next phase,” I told myself over and over. But God, it was so sad.

The growing awareness that my off-and-on nocturnal delight had to come to an end felt like a virus…as if a kind of spreading melancholia had taken over my system. It was around this time when terms like “the grim slide” (a term coined by Tom Wolfe) and “Hollywood Weltschmerz” became my mantras. I remember sharing the former with Jack Nicholson during a 1982 interview for The Border and Nicholson chuckling and getting it immediately, or at least in a cultural-political sense….”the grim slide!”

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It all started this morning when Sasha Stone tweeted that Mary Elizabeth Winstead‘s performance in 10 Cloverfield Lane contains nods to Sigourney Weaver‘s performances in the two Alien films. To which I replied: “Pour it on for one of the most irritatingly ‘acted’ performances in recent memory. Gasping, wide-eyed, wimpering.”

Within the hour a small army of obsequious little twitter bitches jumped in to defend Winstead’s honor and gallantly protect her from the HE dragon. Key HE/Winstead tweet: “How to flagrantly ACT terrified with calculated ACTING tricks as opposed to naturally exuding the real thing….being, not ACTING.”

Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane.

At some point Winstead herself jumped in. Her first remark asked in a chiding way if I also thought she was fat. (Answer: Nope.) I told her there’s a moment at the end of 10 Cloverfield Lane when she realizes that a certain above-ground reality that has been alluded to is quite real, and she says “c’mon” — THAT was good, I told her.

A couple of the little twitter kiss-asses thought this constituted harassment on my part. The monkey-obeisance instinct always kicks in…”We love you, pretty movie star! That guy who said those mean things?…we’ll defend you!”

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I dropped into Book Soup last night and, for a reason I’ll shortly disclose, decided to buy a $20 trade paperback of Scott Eyman‘s “John Wayne: The Life and Legend.” The Vietnam trip begins late Wednesday night (12 1/2 hour flight from LAX to Seoul and then another five hours from Seoul to Hanoi) and there’s no wifi across the Pacific so I’m figuring a nice comfortable biography will fit right in. Yeah, the irony of Wayne and Vietnam…I get it, I get it.

The following excerpt, an anecdote from Wayne pally Rod Taylor (who died a little more than a year ago) is why I bought the book. It explains that Taylor invited Wayne to “one of his marriages at a church in Westwood.” Taylor was married three times — once in ’54 and once after Wayne died so it had to be a June 1963 wedding to model Mary Hilem, with whom Taylor had a daughter, former CNN financial reporter Felicia Taylor, in 1964. Anyway, here it is:

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I’ve been faintly, floatingly aware of Ariana Grande, of course. Not the donut-shop thing but her performing chops. I knew she could sing pretty well but I never cared enough to listen, no offense. And I damn sure never watched Sam & Fucking Cat. But everything changed last night when she did her awesome JLaw on SNL. Now she’s on the HE map and will stay there until further notice.

Tapper: “You’ve had problems attracting African-American voters. Why is that?” Sanders: “Probably because I look like someone who at some point told them ‘get out of my store.’ They say they don’t know me but they don’t want to know me because I look like I do and I’m from Vermont. That’s it. That’s as deep as it goes. Tribal instinct. Plus…you know, the fact that a lot of African-American voters, no offense, seem to find it hard to pick up a smart phone and read stuff. It’s comforting, I guess, to stay curled up in that low-information foxhole. What are ya gonna do? That guy’s grandma said she ‘don’t know no Bernie’ because she doesn’t wanna know. Plus the gender thing.”