Spelling Counts!

orlando

Valentine’s Day is over; next stop, St. Paddy’s Day.  So, as winter clings to the Northern Hemisphere like a drunk clinging to a lamp post, and Mother Nature and Old Man Winter fight it out to see who marks the calendar this month, let’s find a cozy place out of the wind and rain, take a page out of Puck’s book and wonder “what fools [we] mortals be!”

Celebrity tattoos are as common as hen poop in a barnyard, so it’s no big deal that Orlando Bloom got a new one the other day.  You remember Orlando Bloom: he’s the “actor” who played Legolas, a Middle Earth elf with an emotional range of .07 on a scale of 1 to 1,000.  Anyway, it seems Mr. Bloom was having a little trouble remembering his son’s name (Flynn) and, rather than constantly bother his entourage about it, he decided to get it permanently inked into his arm.  Problem solved?  Not quite!  First of all, Standard Written English wasn’t cool enough for Bloom, so he had it printed in Morse code, a form of communication that’s been dead since Roy Rogers roamed the Earth.  Unfortunately, something got screwed up in the translation, and they spelled the name wrong.  Okay, a “dot” here, a “dash” there; it was an honest mistake.  But here’s the good part.  Nobody noticed!  Obviously, tattoo artists are not known for their cryptographic skills and there’s no app I know of that spellchecks Morse code, but … here’s the deal!

You’re an A-list (high B-list?) movie star.
You’ve got a ton of people around you every day with nothing better to do than suck up to you.
Every single one of them has an iPhone, iPad, iWatch, iWhatever.
Yet, not one of them, from your publicist to your personal assistant, cared enough about you to take 30 seconds and say, “Siri, what’s Flynn in Morse code?”

That, boys and girls, is a cold and lonely life.

Anyway, the ink dried, and there’s Orlando on Instagram, proud as a puppy with a chewed-up slipper.  He’s selfie-d a forearm shiver with what looks like a surgical diagram drawn on it, and the teasing caption reads “new #tattoo can you guess who?”

And here is where we veer off into the land of WTF!

Apparently, Orlando’s Instagram audience includes more than a few people who took the time and trouble to figure out his body art was Morse code (Remember: it’s not a written language.) and then were willing to spend even more time translating it. (I doubt if many people can do Morse code from memory, these days.)  Plus, they know enough about the life and times of Orlando Bloom to realize that this was his son’s name and that the dolt had misspelled it.  Then, they felt morally compelled to publicly point that out to him – a number of times.

At last glance, Orlando and son are doing fine, despite the looming years of therapy.  But honestly, folks!  Our world has a bunch of people with way too much time on their hands.

Fiction — Valentine’s Day

sylvia

Sylvia looked at the moon, a smudged coin disappearing in a cloudy sky.  It would rain soon, probably before morning.  That didn’t matter: she planned to be safe in bed by then.  Tomorrow night, she was going north, but tonight – tonight was hers.  Tonight was an ice-cubed whiskey in a heavy glass.  The fish?  No, the beef — with scallops to start and a wine so red it turned black on her tongue.  Then coffee and honey-wet pastry, sticky and sweet, and a hotel bedroom key.  It was a night of boat neck shoulders, cuff length sleeves and a tight walk hemline.  It was a night of long jewelry earrings that touched her throat, a dancing emerald ring and tall heels.  It was a night that men and their women noticed her when she walked in, watched her sit down and wondered who she was there for.  It was a night of little tongue candles that made licking shadows.  A night of dim shaded faces and intimate reflections.  It was a night of eyelashes and lipstick and deep silver fingernails.  It was a night breathing with seduction.

Once, a few years ago, when she was much younger, she’d brought a man to a night like this.  He was a handsome European with diplomatic immunity and a coming career.  He spent the evening trying to recruit her into his bed, like a qualified negotiator.  The evening faded and finished, and Sylvia walked away.  Unfortunately, a couple of days later when Sylvia didn’t call, he came looking for her and ended up meeting Mirac in an underground carpark.  Since then, Sylvia kept these nights to herself.

On the other side of the moon, Karga was reading a bedtime story to his two sons, Mustafa and Taavi.  It was a tale of a reluctant thief and a clever slave girl, Morgiana, who made him rich.  He read parts in English so his boys would get to know the words.  And when he was done, he went downstairs, drank tea with his wife and waited for the rain.

Sylvia raised her glass to where the moon should have been.  And all alone in a crowded restaurant, she touched her lips to the cold glass, drank, and waited for the warmth of the whiskey.

Oscars — 2020 (Part 2)

oscar

Normally, ten minutes after the Oscars are over, I’ve quit complaining and moved on.  However, this year, bland as Oscar has become, there was a bunch of stuff that stuck with me.  Nothing earth-shattering, but just a few random thoughts beyond who won for Best Animated Short Subject.

For the third year running, Hollywood fashions suck.

I have no clue who Billy Porter is, but apparently he’s a “fashion activist” — and if that isn’t a contradiction in terms, I don’t know what is.

Bare shoulders and dragging hemlines are ridiculous trends outside California in the middle of February.

Kirsten Wiig came dressed as a large red lasagna noodle.

Diane Keaton remains trapped inside Annie Hall.

Joaquin Phoenix remains trapped in 1968, definitely takes his coffee black and really, really likes cows.

Tom Hanks is such a good actor he replaced both Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson as the Old Person in the Front Row.

When Brie Larson, Sigourney Weaver and Gal Gadot come out together to present an award, you know the fix is in.

“Let It Go” is a way better song than “Into the Unknown.”

I’m so old I remember when Elton John was an eccentric heterosexual.

The Oscars would get a lot more people watching if they had cool commercials like the Super Bowl.

Imagine my surprise when Greta showed up!

This is the second time the Joker has won an Oscar, so I’m pretty sure Helena Bonham Carter and Elizabeth Banks are at least thinking about it.

If you close your eyes and listen, Jane Fonda is still Barbarella.

From the look on Billie Eilish’s face, she had no idea what Eminem was doing performing at the Oscars (and, quite frankly, neither did I.)

You can make a mediocre year for movies look good if you haul in a bunch of Koreans.

And finally:

Oscar still hates Martin Scorsese.