whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent
Here’s some more early Tom Hanks weirdness … he starred in ABC’s cross-dressing comedy “Bosom Buddies” between 1980 and 1982. The show ran for just two scant seasons. I’m surprised at that, because I seem to remember it being a much bigger deal in the 1980’s — maybe just because it was a big hit at my house, when I was in second and third grade. I wanted to be like the guys in the show, albeit without the cross-dressing. I wanted to be grow up to live in New York City with my best friend and a beautiful blond girlfriend name “Sunny,” and get into zany hijinks.
I remember thinking that Hanks’ co-star, Peter Scolari, was the cool and funny one. I thought Hanks was annoying, even if he did look like Billy Joel, whose music my older sister had taught me to really like. (Joel’s “Glass Houses” album was stacked vertically with the others beside the living room record player, not far from where I watched this show on the family’s color television.) And that is indeed Billy Joel’s “My Life” playing as the show’s theme song — but it had a different vocalist, for some reason. (No matter how many times I hear it, that song will always take me back to the 80’s.)
Scolari’s career following the short-lived “Bosom Buddies” certainly hasn’t paralleled Hanks, but he’s still done a hell of a lot of television. (Among many other things, he surprisingly starred as Commissoner Loeb in “Gotham” in 2015. I didn’t see that one coming.)
As you can see from the opening credits below, the central plot device for “Bosom Buddies” was that the two guys had to pretend to be women in order to live at an all-women’s apartment building. It only occurs to me now as I’m writing this that the show’s title was a double entendre. I actually asked my Dad what the word “bosom” meant when I was a kid, and he gave me an answer that was accurate, if incomplete. (He explained the colloquial meaning of the expression — a “bosom buddy” was a best friend, who you figuratively held close to you. I subsequently told my best friend next door that he was my “bosom buddy” at one point.)
Yeah, I know it’s strange that I can remember a conversation from 39 years ago about an obscure TV show. It’s weird what people remember.
J.E.R. Pictures, Inc.
You are not “an enemy of the American people.” Nobody sane actually believes that. (And no sane president would say it.)
The people who make this claim that are the very same poorly educated whites and insecure, blustering religious zealots who put the dangerous imbecile in office (with a little help from America’s actual enemies, in Russia).
They don’t want their leader held accountable. They would vastly prefer that the free press be censored so that he is portrayed only in a positive light. They would rather see the president have the same rigid controls over the media as the vicious dictators abroad who he fawns over. (The man consistently uses the adjectives “strong” and “beautiful” in connection with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un — you don’t need to be a Freudian to see his adolescent infatuation with homicidal strongmen.)
I honestly believe that even Trump’s supporters, on some level, are embarrassed at the words that come out of his mouth. The man is a train wreck. As of this writing, the president just today boasted about “a beautiful letter” he received from Kim Jong Un — and he seemed to comment that he would prohibit the CIA from spying on Kim. In a separate news item, Trump said that he would accept foreign help in the 2020 presidential election. (That second item broke less than an hour ago.)
It is easier for Donald Trump supporters to believe that the news media is a sprawling conspiracy than it is to admit the truth — that their anointed leader is a moron. It’s a very old joke, but I’ll resurrect it here anyway — denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Don’t let the bastards get you down.
I love the way you
draw your lips, divine,
in your tilting smile.
If I could only
draw your lips, in lines,
the portrait would beguile.
Would that I could
draw your lips, to mine.
Delight me for a while?
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2019
“Dance,” Alfons Mucha, 1898
Tempera on panel.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
— Nick Carraway, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Photo credit: By Anthony Ross – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69287951
Chalk and watercolor on paper.
If you’ve been stuck indoors for days on end because of the rain, then stop by The Bees Are Dead. You can always find the best in post-apocalyptic prose, poetry, art and photography.
The editors have been especially proud recently to host the superlative poetry of Linda Imbler, Robert Mullen, Benjamin Blake, Michael Griffith and Marina Kazakova.
Photo credit: Decryptys [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
Oil on canvas.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 