What I want for Christmas (if I could) . . .

I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops,
priests and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology,

nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the
human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels. I would
have them tell all their “flocks” to think for themselves.

I would like to see all the politicians changed to statesmen,
– to men who long to serve their country, — to men
who care more for public good than private gain — 
men who long to be of use.

I would like to prohibit slander and misrepresentation, 
and to let the private affairs of the people alone.

I would like to see the whole world free — free from superstition.  

This would do for this Christmas. 
The next Christmas, I may want more.

I drink to that

Is it too early for a Negroni?  No, I rather thought not.

The Ms Edna Negroni

15ml Campari

15ml Martini Rosso

15ml Gordon's Gin

Shove in a slice of orange.  Drink. Feel better.

Enough

This subtle but arresting image came from a friend.  After a bitter year for so many people, I thought it was very appropriate.  It has an even more elegiac quality when you know that this is the site of the Battle of the Somme which took place during the First World War between 1 July and 18 November 1916. One of the most traumatic military operations ever recorded; there were more than one and half million casualties.

Squint, and it is yesterday. Glamor, Glitz, and Gallivanting.

If there’s a Heaven, everything in it will be like lunch at the Polo Lounge. 

Cell phones? How bourgeois.  In 1941, when the El Jardin restaurant at the Beverly Hills Hotel morphed into the Polo Lounge, pink phones were brought to your table on a silver tray, thank you. 

Those were the days when power had a little flair.  Long before Instagram and Snapchat made fame a universal (read: dreary) fifteen-minute commodity.

Just a few of the players (and fans) who frequented the Polo Lounge-Leslie Howard, Carole Lombard, and Spencer Tracy.

Named for a polo-playing bunch, who gathered after polo matches at Will Rogers’ ranch, including Darryl Zanuck (whose picture is behind the bar along with Will Rogers), Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, and Walt Disney, the high-style commissary famous for its McCarthy Salad and Dutch Apple Pancakes became grand ground zero for Hollywood’s swell set, including “don’t mess with me” Marlene Dietrich, who without delay checked out of the hotel when the restaurant refused to seat her wearing her trademark slacks (they quickly changed their policy), she was the first woman to wear pants in the Polo Lounge. 

When Watergate hit the fan in 1972, Nixon’s campaign manager, John Mitchell, heard the news mid-supper at the Polo Lounge and began shouting at the top of his voice: “Son of a bitch! They blew it! They blew it!”

Today, the Polo Lounge still attracts visitors looking for a connection to Hollywood’s exciting, pink-hued golden era. Just remember, in twenty-sixteen you have to step outside and make your own phone calls … if you must.

Despots, Demagogues & Dictators when despair hits I go to the movies.

"…for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court…"                                 ~ Shakespeare, Richard II

While I try to keep this little corner of the internet relatively apolitical, even the most politically inactive, apathetic or far-removed of us has had cause to gape in awestruck disbelieve at the campaigns being run for the nomination for President of the United States.  With soundbites and speeches that sound like satire, and countless elegant and not-so-elegant take downs - of suitability, honesty, intelligence, basic decency, even business savvy-apparently doing little to stem the incomprehensible popularity, I have done what I always do when despair hits I go to the movies.

Richard III - "Richard III" (1995)
As icy as Ian McKellen's blue-eyed stare, this brilliant version of Shakespeare's "Richard III," updated to a parallel 1930s fascist Britain, must rank among the chilliest films ever made.

 

President Judson Hammond - “Gabriel Over The White House” (1933)

Anyone looking for an insight into the mindset the last time that the world saw the rise of an unstoppable powerful authoritarian, totalitarian leader could do a lot worse than to watch Gregory La Cava’s utterly bonkers 1933 curio “Gabriel Over The White House”.

Idi Amin - "The Last King Of Scotland" (2006)

"The Last King of Scotland" is a bruising and brutal experience. But it's not just in tracking the rise of Amin, who would suspend the country's constitution, establish a military dictatorship and go on to murder 300,000 of his countrymen, that the story is valuable. With its fictionalized elements, it also becomes an intelligent dissection of the kind of willful blindness that can afflict those nearest to the intoxicating influence of absolute power.

Adenoid Hynkel - "The Great Dictator" (1940)

Comparing anyone to Adolf Hitler is a fool's errand, an example of the kind of hyperbole that says less about the one so accused than the person doing the accusing. So I am going to focus on Adenoid Hynkel instead. The centerpiece of Charlie Chaplin's 1940 masterpiece, Hynkel is a not-at-all-veiled approximation of Der Führer right down to mustache, murderously short temper and megalomaniacal desires.

You, Me, and the Apocalypse.

See that vision in leather, fake balloon boobs, and spandex with hair extensions? Her name (and it’s not her stage name apparently) is Amber Marchese. She is one of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” of New Jersey which except for The Real Housewives of Orange County is the most absurdly cartoonish of the franchise.  Anyway, People Magazine has made this woman a voice and face of breast cancer.

Now I feel under-dressed I should wear my good leather to chemotherapy.

You think you are flying to London landing at Heathrow but you end up on Mars.  This is how it felt after I received my 2013 diagnosis.  

Friends you have been understanding but in a culture focused on survivorship those with

metastatic breast cancer can feel isolated.

I have a very no-nonsense way of educating people about metastatic breast cancer.  Someone will ask, when are you finished with treatment and I’ll tell them, when I’m dead. So many people interpret survivorship as a given. Doesn't everybody survive cancer?  No, not everybody survives cancer.

An estimated 155,000-plus women (and men) in the U.S. currently live with “mets,” stage 4 breast cancer that has metastasized, or traveled, through the bloodstream to create tumors in the liver, lungs, brain, bones and/or other parts of the body. While treatable, metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is incurable, between 20 and 30 percent of women with early stage breast cancer go on to develop MBC. Median survival is three years; annually, the disease takes 40,000 lives.

As with primary breast cancer, treatment for mets can often be harsh and unforgiving.  But dealing with an incurable illness and the side effects of its treatment aren't the only burden MBC patients have to bear. Many also have to educate others about their disease, explaining repeatedly that no, the scans and blood tests and treatments will never end. No, the metastasized breast cancer in their lungs is neither lung cancer nor linked to smoking. No, staying positive and “just fighting hard” isn't going to beat back their late-stage disease.

Sadly, people don’t “get” mets. In fact, a recent survey sponsored by Pfizer Oncology shows just how misunderstood it is. Sixty percent of the 2,000 people surveyed knew little to nothing about MBC while 72 percent believed advanced breast cancer was curable as long as it was diagnosed early. Even more disheartening, a full 50 percent thought breast cancer progressed because patients either didn't take the right treatment or the right preventive measures.

I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round and I keep waiting for it to stop. I have lost a lot of acquaintances and feel bad about that. But it’s like musical chairs. I keep wondering when I am going to miss that chair. 

So far, I've been “lucky”.

Ready? Set!

1. Check email.

2. Check Facebook

3. Check blog

4. Check blog statistics

5. Stare off into space and wonder why the blog is suddenly popular in both the Ukraine and China

6. Found 1099

7. Rifle through desk drawer for pass code to tax account 

8. Find photo of friends

9. Copy and e-mail

10. Compose a witty note to go along

11. Send

12. Total all the medical insurance payments

13. Query as to whether proof of medical insurance is necessary

16. See the latest news updates online

17. Click to find out the weather forecast

 18. Nope, not going to fly

19. Ditto

 

20. Check email

21. Wash dishes

22. Vacuum

23. Locate all the interest-paid and interest-received statements

24. Search another desk drawer. Find picture of old boyfriend

25. Google old boyfriend; he's the father of two; admire pics

26. Stare off into space; worry about the children

27. Locate dividend statements

28. Query on difference between qualified and non-qualified dividends

29. Notice that there's a London Spy review

30. Click to see if London Spy is available on DVD

31. It is. Bookmark

32. Search glove box in car for registration tax

33. Find a lost pair of sunglasses in glove box

34. Feel kind of good about that. And they look great. Score

35. Search another desk drawer for paperclip to attach car reg

36. Find sweet pea seed pack in drawer

37. Google whether it's too late to plant sweet pea seeds

38. Oh, what the heck, plant them anyway

39. Google how to plant sweet peas

40. Search tool shed for trowel. Find old hedge trimmer

41. Recharge hedge trimmer

42. Wonder why life isn't more deductible

43. Stare off into space about this

44. Check email

45. There a messages from friends . . .