Frida Begins Smoking

On lonely Mondays, Frida smokes cigarettes.
She adds dusty blossoms to her hair of rose and fuchsia,
And dances in the twilight to forgotten guitars,
Her mouth busy with tequila and rumblings of portraiture,
The hours turn orange, plentiful, a crate of clementines.

Show Time

Angels blow hard into tubas during commercial break
The sky glows clean with peppermint soap and prophecies

Quickie

Poem:

I'm giving up candy for Lent.
Today I ate a chocolate turtle.
I hope Jesus forgives me.

PROJECTS:

rooftop camping, cook italian mafia feast, break into swimming pool somewhere, find a deep fryer/ other weirdo appliances at thrift store, build shelter out of bubbles, find spotted dog and train it into ferocious killer, elope to mehico with only $5 and and banjo, make milkshakes (godiva white chocolate liquer and vanilla ice cream), 3 weeks in bed with no TV, kielbasa, skydiving.

"so we burst into colors and carousels"

O Youth and Beauty

Téa Obreht is the new darling of the literary scene and I want to knife her in the chest. She's sinfully young to have published her first novel at 26 years of age, and lauded daily for her maturity, grace, and superlative new book. Téa just published The Tiger's Wife, and the advance praise is nothing short of retardedly amazing: “[a] spectacular debut novel…[Téa] Obreht spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerizing reader wants her never to stop…Obreht will make headlines as one of the most exciting new writers of her generations, a young artist with the maturity and grace that comes of knowing where one is from, and of honoring those who came before." – Entertainment Weekly, Grade: A.

Publishing a novel is one thing, and to be fresh as a daisy is impressive to boot. I'm just jealous as all hell.

At 22 years of age, I fear I'm over the hill. Let's examine the facts. Our nation's current icons are Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Demi Lovato, and Taylor Swift. Justin Bieber was born in 1994 (gasp! babies were made that recently?) yet he's gone platinum and back for his second album My World. Bieber won Artist of the Year, Favorite Pop/ Rock Male Artist, and Best New Artist. Bieber is killing it—he's now instilling prepubescent lust in the private bits of young girls everywhere with his memoir, yes memoir, entitled Never Say Never. And let's not forget that he posed with Kim Kardashian in the Bahamas in an infamous Vanity Fair spread.

Bieber is in good company. His alleged girlfriend, Demi Lovato, at a tender 19 years of age has partnered with Disney and been to rehab, while cohort Miley Cyrus rides stripper poles, draped in the American flag as she reaps in national accolades and buckets of cash.

The point is that the game is changing. The frontier has expanded, and the cowboys and cowgirls, riding high on horses and frenzied with ambition and reckless thirst for power and fame, can now roam free into the scalding sunset. There are no rules. The wild, youthful, and beautiful are welcome to enter the scene, never too inexperienced. The oldest Jonah bro is 23, Miley Cyrus is 19, and Taylor Swift is 20, yet these young flowers form a heady garland, encircling newspapers, tabloids, and billboards on the regular.

Thanks to democratic technology like youtube and twitter, facebook and myspace, all are artists and exposure comes at no price. Bieber used home-grown means to make a youtube video and the rest is history; he has some of the highest ratings and viewings of any performer in the world. And all he had to do was sit in his living room, strumming a guitar, singing above the din of his abode.

Don't get me wrong: this new credo is kind of amazing. I'm enabled by the world-at-large to do my damn thing, to creatively inspire based on my tenacious, infantile wisdom and off-the-cuff humor.

And who knows: maybe I'll be on The New Yorker's “20 Under 40 Issue” munching on duck fat fries in Brooklyn when the paparazzi storm in.

It could happen.

3

HOME:
1. too small bubble bath and books books
2. dog's head on my knee
3. neon wise men+ leftover champagne

HELL:
1. small talk only
2. sweat, open pores
3. no pasta

PARADISO:
1. beauty
2. dreamy sleep
3. boom box in the sky

BOREDOM:
1. no parrots
2. no rain
3. no al green

INDIA:
1. bubbling limca soda
2. hair cuts under silken trees, reflected in moon shaped mirrors
3. monkeys wrestling at Gandhi's bronzed feet

THIS NOW:
1. prayer beads
2. Midnight's Children specifically
3. a goldfish named pepe

The Painting You Stole From Picasso

I admire you, Lovely, wherever you may be.

You talk like Marlene Dietrich
And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire
Your clothes are all made by Balmain
And there’s diamonds and pearls in your hair, yes there are.

You live in a fancy apartment
Off the Boulevard of St. Michel
Where you keep your Rolling Stones records
And a friend of Sacha Distel, yes you do.

You go to the embassy parties
Where you talk in Russian and Greek
And the young men who move in your circles
They hang on every word you speak, yes they do.

But where do you go to my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes i do.

I've seen all your qualifications
You got from the Sorbonne
And the painting you stole from Picasso
Your loveliness goes on and on, yes it does.

When you go on your summer vacation
You go to Juan-les-Pines
With your carefully designed topless swimsuit
You get an even suntan, on your back and on your legs.

And when the snow falls you're found in St. Moritz
With the others of the jet-set
And you sip your Napoleon Brandy
But you never get your lips wet, no you don't.

But where do you go to my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
would you Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes I do.

You're in between 20 and 30
A very desirable age
Your body is firm and inviting
But you live on a glittering stage, yes you do, yes you do.

Your name is heard in high places
You know the Aga Khan
He sent you a racehorse for Christmas
And you keep it just for fun, for a laugh ha-ha-ha

They say that when you get married
It'll be to a millionaire
But they don't realize where you came from
And I wonder if they really care, or give a damn

But where do you go to my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes i do.

I remember the back streets of Naples
Two children begging in rags
Both touched with a burning ambition
To shake off their lowly brown tags, they try

So look into my face Marie-Claire
And remember just who you are
Then go and forget me forever
But I know you still bear
the scar, deep inside, yes you do

I know where you go to my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
I know the thoughts that surround you
`Cause I can look inside your head.

"Where Do You Go To My Lovely" Peter Sarstedt

Desperate Love

Desperate Housewives is the worst show on TV. The characters are petulant and Botoxed to high heaven, the plot lines are preposterous, the dialogue is weak, and the acting is, well, desperate. Now let me clear the decks and tell you the truth. I'm a bottom-feeder and I love this god-awful soap with all my heart. Undoubtedly, you, dear reader, are scratching your head wondering how the hell you've wandered into the clutches of a writer with such poor taste. You put your coffee cup down and bang your head against the table, rattling the floor beneath. You cringe, you writhe.You simply don't understand.
And you know what, reader? I don't get it myself. I surreptitiously pull up Safari and salivate at the thought of spending an hour with Eva Longoria, Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, and Marcia Cross via hulu.com. I probably sound like a lesbian but I'm not, I can promise you that. My love is chaste though these women are objectively fiiine for all of their middle age.

If you've never tuned in, let me break the characters down. Longoria plays Gabrielle Solis—a smokin' hot Hispanic with a penchant for retail therapy, shaming her family, and swishing her pony tail. Next up is Huffman. She plays Lynette Scavo—obnoxiously moral mother of five (or is it more?) with an idiot husband and loads of laundry to do and dishes to wash, always bemoaning the loss of a nonexistent career while flexing yoga-toned arms. Then there's Teri Hatcher, who plays Susan Delfino. Delfino is a shit-show with a heart of gold. She tries to “do the right thing” but burns down a neighbor's home, acts in yuppie-porn, shamelessly seduces an ex-con turned plumber, and just generally runs around like a chicken with her head cut off. Finally, Marcia Cross plays Bree Van de Kamp—a severely uptight woman with stifled sexual urges and a tendency towards manic baking (pastry and not marijuana).

The four live on Wisteria Lane—a manicured street that hums pleasantly with quiet scandal as the flowers inevitably twist over and under the homes. Wisteria Lane is home to the elderly, the gay, the Puerto Rican, the young, the rich, the Black, the middle-class, the once jailed, the once troubled, and the like. This veritable melange of people and circumstances seems highly improbable. On a fundamental level, how are the lavish and the destitute paying the same mortgage? How are ex-cons living next door to beauty queens and manic bakers? Wisteria Lane pushes the borders of reality until we're taken to a perverse and psychotic suburbia. The shenanigans are never-ending and the plot lines move forward, unconcerned with coherent narrative.
In the first season of Desperate Housewives, eternal narrator and distinguished housewife Mary Alice Young commits suicide and shocks the neighborhood. Mary Alice kills herself for fear of a black secret involving her husband and son coming to light. At her wake, Gabrielle, Lynette, Susan, and Bree meet and greet over cucumber sandwiches and noodle casserole, perturbed by their mutual friend's demise.

In the following seasons, I was both disgusted and delighted by the meandering story lines of the housewives. Gabrielle would seduce the beefy, if overly sensitive, high school gardener before finding that her daughter had been switched at birth; Lynette would give birth to a nation of a children before realizing that her husband had once cheated with the black diva next door; Susan would tryst with her ex-husband, marry her beloved ex-con, give birth to a child, star in domestic porn and burn down her enemy's house; and Bree would get divorced, own up to her alcoholism, seduce her AA life coach, seduce a young repair man, cope with her children's raging hatred, and bake pastry after pastry.

I'm seven seasons in and at no point were these story lines believable, and at no point was I bored.

In the show's opening credits, tinny carnival music plays as an apple falls from the tree—a callback to Eve's sinful foray into the forbidden fruit. I wish I could say that I had the willpower, the absolute lack of hunger, to close my lap top and forget the whole sinful charade once and for all. But somewhere in there, I too was seduced, and now I wait with bated breath and infernal hunger. I wait for my computer to load, and for these stupid women to appear like the snake in the mist, offering evil wisdom and glistening, red delight.