February SNOWFLAKES

HOORAY Snow flakes and more snow flakes.. fa la la la la la la laaaaaaaa:)
Me Chariot taking a well needed break and getting a bath too..
ta da..

J.D. Salinger, Dead at 91

J.D. Salinger is dead, if you care to know. That’s the way the reclusive author might have written his own obituary. Since moving, in 1953, to a 90-acre leafy hillside in rural New Hampshire, Salinger has assiduously avoided even glancing contact with the larger world outside his hermitage.


While a student at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Salinger amused and annoyed his fellow students by traipsing about campus proclaiming that he would be the author of the next Great American Novel.

That his Catcher in the Rye was such a book is indisputable. There is scarcely a man born in the last 50 years or so that didn’t pass through a Holden Caulfield phase. Salinger’s Caulfield was the proto-typical angst-ridden youth who felt set adrift in a sea of nonsense perturbed only by whitecaps of false illusion. Nothing mattered and nobody got it. That was the Caulfield view of the world and it is shared, if only momentarily, by so many young people who see the confusion of the adult world through lenses not yet ground properly.

In the book that made Salinger a star and a secluded man-myth within a few years, Caulfield is restless young man from a well-to-do family that bristles at the “phoniness” and idiocy of the manicured lawns and ivy-gripped bell towers of Pencey Prep, a university prep school from which he is expelled. Caulfield is the both protagonist and narrator, and his clipped analysis of the universe in which he fancies himself nothing more intimate than an observer reads like a lettered flurry of fat-fisted punches.

Although Catcher in the Rye is financially speaking Salinger’s most notable success (and to be fair, it is that work that made his name memorable), there are other equally impressive works of art in the Salinger oeuvre. There was Nine Stories, a collection of short stories published in 1953, and it is described as an example of Salinger’s skill in capturing the “pitch perfect dialogue” of common speech. There was in these tales a cadence and modulation the written imitation of which is mastered by but a few authors.

This inimitable typesetting of tonality was displayed in his stories about the Glass Family, a barely fictional family consisting of two retired vaudeville performers and their seven precocious children: Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Walt, Waker, Zooey, and Franny. Salinger continued relating the history of the Glass clan, producing in all a seven-story progeny that provided a pastiche of family life, with particular attention on Seymour, the troubled eldest child.

These other, perhaps less profitable parts of the Salinger canon, were of immeasurable influence on the work of other American authors, Philip Roth and John Updike, to name but two of the most recognizable devotees. Updike is quoted in the New York Times as admiring the “open-ended Zen quality they [the Nine Stories] have, the way they don’t snap shut.”

There was another side to J.D. Salinger, an almost heroic side that is disregarded in the perpetuation of the mythologizing of the reclusive author. In the Spring of 1942, just a few months after the New Yorker accepted for publication a short story by Salinger wherein was found the genesis of Holden Caulfield, Salinger was drafted into the Army and assigned to the 4th Infantry Division and landed on Utah Beach as part of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Later, Salinger fought at the Battle of the Bulge and volunteered to stay in the Army and use his language skill to assist in the “de-nazification” of Germany.

After joyfully exchanging the glitz of Manhattan for the camouflage of Cornish, New Hampshire, Salinger was rarely seen and never gave interviews. Actually, he did give one illustrative interview. In the fall of 1953, Salinger reportedly consented to be interviewed by a local high-school student for publication in the school’s newspaper. When the article’s tone didn’t appeal to Salinger, he reacted by banishing the cub reporter and erecting a six-and-a-half foot privacy fence around his compound.

Salinger surfaced occasionally, most often to litigate or be litigated. In 1974, he periscoped just long enough to shore up the walls around his privacy by denouncing the proposed publication of an unauthorized collection of stories. In 1988 and again in 2000, there were ruptures in the shroud of enigma in which the author was enveloped, as memoirs were published by a former lover and a child that described a tyrannical and troubled man with more in common with Howard Hughes than Mark Twain. Not surprisingly, this accumulation of notoriety only augmented the legend of Salinger.

Now that J.D. Salinger has passed away, the fervor for finding a hidden cache of unpublished work is flowing. There are heard here and there rumors of a safe stocked with pages of prose. Alternatively, there are those Salingerologists who maintain that it is more in keeping with the pathos of their idol to have written sheaths of brilliant stories only to later throw them onto the fire, proof that he needed the approbation of no one and that the evidence of his now ashy prolificacy was only the medium of exorcising the poetic demons that prodded his muse.

Jerome David Salinger is survived by a son, Matthew; a daughter, Margaret; and three grandsons.

I could not let this day go by without a tribute to JD Salinger considering Nine Short Stories and Franny and Zoey are listed among my top all time favorites
Godspeed

Uptown L.A.(Lower Alexandria): 2010 Twenty 10 Two thousand and 10

Uptown L.A.(Lower Alexandria): 2010 Twenty 10 Two thousand and 10

2010 Twenty 10 Two thousand and 10

Sad memories


Happy Times



Old New motto for 2010



Ancient times




and for some comedic RELIEF
From Dave Barry's Blog..highlights:
The annual observance of Earth Hour is observed with one hour of symbolic energy conservation as hundreds of millions of non-essential lights and appliances are turned off. And that's just in Al Gore's house.

In sports and entertainment news, former NFL great Lawrence Taylor, appearing on Dancing With the Stars, accidentally rips off his partner's arms during the cha-cha competition. The judges award Taylor 453 points out of a possible 30, citing his ``energy'' and ``proximity.''

Abroad, North Korea, in what many observers view as a deliberate act of provocation, calls Domino's and, posing as the United States, orders 23 million pizzas delivered to Japan.


. The big health story in April is the rapid spread of swine flu, a dangerous new virus strain developed by the makers of Purell. Public anxiety over the flu increases when Vice President Joe Biden, demonstrating his gift for emitting statements, declares on the Today show that he would not recommend traveling by commercial airplane or subway. A short while later, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs assures reporters that he is ``not aware of any `Vice President Joe Biden.' ''

In another embarrassment for the White House, New York is temporarily thrown into a panic when Air Force One flies low over Manhattan for a publicity photo shoot. Responding to widespread criticism, Gibbs notes that President Obama inherited Air Force One from the Bush administration.
.
ah ha!

In international news, Iran shocks the world by revealing the existence of a previously secret uranium enrichment facility. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists that the uranium will be used only for ``parties.'' United Nations nuclear inspectors note, however, that ``Mahmoud Ahmadinejad'' can be rearranged to spell ``Had Jammed a Humanoid'' and ``Hounded a Jihad Mamma.''

On the environmental front, Copenhagen hosts a massive international conference aimed at halting manmade global warming, attended by thousands of delegates who flew to Denmark on magical carbon-free unicorns.

In the Middle East, U.N. nuclear inspectors become suspicious when Iran attempts to ship to Israel, via UPS, a large crate labeled ``HARMLESS ITEMS -- DELIVER BEFORE TIMER REACHES 00:00.''

There are other troubling year-end developments:

• In a setback for U.S. interests in Central America, voters in Honduras elect, as their new president, Rod Blagojevich.

• The International Space Station is taken over by Somali pirates.
Also, as the year draws to a close, the Centers for Disease Control releases an urgent bulletin warning of a new, fast-spreading epidemic consisting of severe, and in some cases life-threatening, arm infections caused by ``people constantly sneezing into their elbow pits.''

But despite all the gloomy news, the holiday season brings at least temporary relief to a troubled nation -- especially the children, millions of whom go to sleep on Christmas Eve with visions of Santa in his reindeer-powered sleigh flying high overhead, spreading joy around the world.

With a North Korean missile flying right behind.

Try not to think about it. And happy New Year.

Twas eight days BEFORE Christmas

OK, make that eight days, five hours, 10 minutes, 40 seconds and counting..tick tock

Home life :)
Stockings still in bags: check
Chimney loaded with soot: check
Garage filled with boxes and garbage: check
Ashtrays loaded: check
Lists and receipts all over the house: check
All major appliances have hit their planned obsolesence date: check
Stove on the fritz: check
Relatives and family restarted 20 year old family feud: check
Family informs you that diet excludes turkey, ham, and all meat.. gone vegan only;
Exceptions: lobster and jumbo shrimp
Family members are allergic to all alchol except Dom Perignon.


Last heard conversation at McDonald's: Uncle Milt is getting his concealed weapons permit.. I didn't think he was legal..he ain't

Last heard in the Parking lot: Keep honking I am reloading now..

Seriously though OK OK OK

'Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveller back to his own fireside and quiet home!' Charles Dickens




Remember those days? it happened..
HO HO HO and a Merry Christmas to all and to all Good night..