The Beviad–musings, mutterings and myths

Last night’s 79th Oscar Ceremony was an uneventful event. No one wore a terrible dress (although Nicole Kidman, in a red dress with a giant red bow on her right shoulder looked as if she had a pirate’s parrot perched there.) And there were really no surprises in terms of the awards. In that case, I’ll just make observations here.

Certainly it was the most global Oscar ever. And the most comprehensive, involving nominees and winners from many countries and sexual persuasions.

It was an Oscar ceremony in which thankyous were delivered in Italian, in Mexican Spanish, and in Chinese (I think), during which the audience sat raptly attentive, as if they were multilingual and not wondering what the heck was being said.

It was also the first time, I imagine, that a female Oscar winner (Melissa Etheridge) has thanked her wife.

Al Gore was treated like a President in Exile rather than as a failed candidate for the post; you could almost see Hollywood collectively wishing that he had won rather than lost, and thinking, as he joked about running again, “This is the man they said was wooden and cold?Look at how easily he laughs!”

But then, it was a very liberal/Democratic evening, with “Happy Feet” winning instead of “Monster House”, which was the better animated work, mainly because the former deals, not with dancing penguins as the trailers suggested, but with melting Antarctic ice floes.

Ellen Degeneres hosted the event, looking very slim and cute in her red velvet pant suit, showing that women do not have to wear ball gowns (something Melissa also did, as well as one unknown winner who, I immediately thought must be also a lesbian until she thanked her husband and kids.) Ellen made comments of a disingenuous nature, satirizing the formality of it all by calmly going out into the audience to foist a movie script on Martin Scorcese, and to chat with Clint Eastwood. When Ellen says anything witty, she seems like a very bright child saying something wise, which is charming, but also nerve-wracking. I was expecting at any moment that she would get a bad response from someone, but everyone was well-behaved. It was a bit much,however, for her to vacuum the floor in front of the first row of audience members, cheerfully asking Penelope Cruz to move her feathery hem as she passed, but I guess that was funny. Nevertheless, I missed Billy Crystal, who is, I think, funnier.

The best thing about the show, I thought, was the dance troop who kept literally rolling out on the stage, outlined behind a screen, to make shapes that imitated logos for various nominated movies, such as a high heel shoe for “The Devil Wears Prada,” a gun for “The Departed,” or a van carrying people, with one running behind, for “Little Miss Sunshine.” They were absolutely amazing.

The stage, on the other hand, was quite ugly, with a back-drop of what looked like golden hub caps against the wall. It gave the proceedings the look of Art Deco, which I particularly hate.

Apart from all that, it was an entertaining show. Next year will be the 80th ceremony. I can’t believe it, especially when I think that I have probably watched at least 50 of them.

Long ago, when I was in my late teens in Vancouver, I worked for a downtown Woolworth’s on Friday nights and Saturdays. This was one of the worst jobs I ever had, as my bosses had no care about either me or the job. This was obvious when they moved me, one day, from the cosmetics department, where I knew little but at least had some experience, since I myself wore makeup, to the hardware department in the basement, where I knew absolutely nothing. It was a complete joke to put me there; I almost wonder if it was meant to be cruel. I had never hammered a nail or made anything or fixed anything that a hardware department might be involved in. I was lost when customers, invariably men, asked me about nail sizes or screws or almost anything, really, as no one gave me one iota of training for this position.

Still, there in the twilight of the store basement, I was aware of a strange kind of atmosphere, partially caused by the dim lighting, partially by the smell rising from the bags and buckets of nails, screws and other bits of metal, plus the rubbery odor of the garden hoses, the odd chemical smell of hemp matting, the earthy smell of bags of potting soil that kept breaking open. So many things in buckets, so many things coiled or piled or spread or leaning against others against the walls or sides of the counters, like a pirate’s spread-out treasure in some dim cave near the sea. It was a world completely foreign to me, a very male-oriented world in those days, and it fascinated me even as it frightened me. That’s why I found this poem interesting:

Poem: “Ode to Hardware Stores” by Barbara Hamby, from Babel. © University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with permission (buy now)

ODE TO HARDWARE STORES

Where have all the hardware stores gone — dusty, sixty-watt warrens with the wood floors, cracked linoleum,

poured concrete painted blood red? Where are Eppes, Terry Rossa Yon’s, Flint — low buildings on South Monroe,

Eight Avenue, Gaines Street with their scent of paint thinner, pesticides, plastic hoses coiled like serpents

in a garden paradisal with screws in buckets or bins against a brick wall with hand-lettered signs

in ball-point pen — Carriage screws, two dozen for fifty cents — long vicious dry-wall screws, thick wood screws

like peasants digging potatoes in fields, thin elegant trim screws— New York dames at a backwoods hick

Sunday School picnic. O universal clevis pins, seven holes in the shank, like the seven deadly sins.

Where are the men — Mr. Franks, Mr. Piggot, Tyrone, Hank, Ralph — sunburnt with stomachs and no asses,

men who knew the mythology of nails, Zeuses enthroned on an Olympus of weak coffee, bad haircuts,

like railroad spikes, finish nails, fence staples, cotter pins, roofing nails — flat-headed as Floyd Crawford,

who lived next door to you for years but would never say hi or make eye contact. What a career in hardware

he could have had, his blue-black hair slicked back with brilliantine, rolling a toothpick between his teeth while sorting

screw eyes and carpet tacks. Where are the hardware stores, open Monday through Friday, Saturday till two?

No night hours here, like physicists their universe mathematical and pure in its way: dinner at six, Rawhide at eight,

lights out at ten, kiss in the dark, up at five for the subatomic world of toggle bolts, cap screws, hinch-pin clips, split-lock

washers. And the tools — saws, rakes, wrenches, rachets, drills, chisels, and hose heads, hose couplings, sandpaper

(garnet, production, wet or dry), hinges, wire nails, caulk, nuts, lag screws, pulleys, vise grips, hexbolts, fender washers

all in a primordial stew of laconic talk about football, baseball, who’ll start for the Dodgers, St. Louis, the Phillies,

the Cubs? Walk around the block today and see their ghosts: abandoned lots, graffitti’d windows, and tacked

to backroom walls, pin-up calendars almost decorous in our porn-riddled galaxy of Walmarts, Seven-Elevens,

stripmalls like strip mines or a carrion bird’s curved beak gobbling farms, meadows, wildflowers, drowsy afternoons

of nothing to do but watch dust motes dance through a streak of sunlight in a darkened room. If there’s a second coming,

I want angels called Lem, Nelson, Rodney, and Cletis gathered around a bin of nails, their silence like hosannahs,

hallelujahs, amens swelling from cinderblock cathedrals drowning our cries of Bigger, faster, more, more, more.

FUNERAL BLUES

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Poem: “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden from As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse. © Vintage Books. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

I have seen two around from time to time. So has John. They’re still not eating all the peanuts I put out. Maybe they’re eating somewhere else. I don’t know. It’s just nice to see them around. I hope the rest of them are hibernating, unlikely as that seems. In any case, at least I didn’t kill them all.

After all that mild, March-like weather we had in December, winter is now here with a vengeance. Today, after over a week of -13 or more in temperature, it was a balmy -6. It actually felt fairly warm in contrast to how it’s been. Hard to believe that somewhere in the northern hemisphere, lambs are being born—something Pasley reminded me this morning as we discussed the fact that Imbolc is tomorrow (along with Groundhog Day.)

It’s hard to believe in Imbolc. It usually just feels very cold. And the food we eat to celebrate it isn’t the kind that warms you up, either, being generally quiches and soups. Or maybe it’s just that white is the predominate color, whereas I love lots of color at the table. Yellow candles, suggesting Brid’s hair, can also be used. Of course, I don’t have any, but tomorrow I may get some. We are celebrating this year on Sunday. Maybe we could have brunch instead of dinner. There’s a chance the sun will be shining then, flooding our lower floor, and we could drink mimosas. Hmmm. It sounds better already.