Bet you didn’t know Adam LeFevre, the actor who plays the dad in Sony’s Lewis Family commercials, is a poet—his poems appeared in Ploughshares once and in the über prestigious Paris Review five times (twice in consecutive issues), and his collection Everything All at Once was published by Wesleyan in 1978. LeFevre also has a few plays to his name.
UPenn’s library has two undated photos of him that I’m guessing (from the hair and clothes) were taken in the late 70s or early 80s, in case you want to see what he looked like before he began to appear in movies. Not that many people know what character actors look like, except maybe Steve Buscemi or William H. Macy, but whatever.

From the fantastic, absolute must-read “Calling All Authors: A Biography in Letters, and Phone Calls” by Marc Scott:

My habit of calling authors started in 1993, but not exactly because of what Richard Howard told me. Richard passed on W.H. Auden’s idea to me, that the only thing an American had to do was list his (or her) phone number and register to vote. I learned all this after I learned that Richard made use of the phone to call up poets whose poems he liked and wanted to “buy.” He called my friend Rick, for example, two days after Rick mailed him some poems. “This is Richard Howard.” Rick had been sending poems to Richard Howard for years, but not to his apartment. Rick swore that they were returned to him unread by editorial assistants at Western Humanities Review. “Where have you been?” Richard said to Rick.

Rick urged me to send some poems to Richard. I did, and two days later I got the call. “This is Richard Howard.” I said hello. He said he wanted a poem called “Drosophila,” and that the other four poems I sent him didn’t “resist themselves enough.”

Not long after that, I saw Richard Howard at the Modern Language Association convention in New York. He was dressed in red from eyes to feet. I introduced myself. “Have you been to my apartment?” he asked. I had not; I had only read his translations of Barthes, Baudelaire, and Cioran, some of his poetry, and several of his essays and reviews. I knew of him. “You should come over.” I said I would. Before I could ask him where he lived, he said, “Call me. I’m listed.”

Richard would tell me that Howard Moss, when he was poetry editor for the New Yorker, received any number of sour, angry, and hateful phone calls. Richard had had his share, too. “But Auden said that it was the duty of an American citizen to vote and have a listed phone number.” He then told me that Auden got some sickening phone calls, one of which he received while Richard was there. The caller said, “You faggot. I’m going to cut your balls off.” Richard saw Auden’s face. Auden said, “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number.”

If the poetry in Scott’s collection Tactile Values is anywhere near as ballsy as he is, I must read it.
Also, I must work on being less shy around famous people. There must be some support group for this; it feels like there are support groups for every last thing in the U.S.!

The Onion’s A.V. Club sent out a handful of people to ask celebrities, “Is There A God?” and I’m pleased to see some of my peeps were totally representin’:

The Onion: Is there a God?
Conan O’Brien: Yes. Wait, hold on. No.

The Onion: Is there a God?
Sarah Vowell: Absolutely not.

The Onion: Is there a God?
Joss Whedon: No.
O: That’s it, end of story, no?
JW: Absolutely not. That’s a very important and necessary thing to learn.

More interesting to me though, especially given everything that’s happened over the past year, are these two responses:

The Onion: Is there a God?
Andy Richter: I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t think about it much, because I figure, what’s the point? I don’t know if it’s agnosticism. There are things that are beyond our comprehension, so why bother? That’s sort of my spiritual feelings. I feel like there might be some design. You can’t think, like, “Well, how did everything get here?” I don’t know. That’s how it is. “I don’t know, next, now what’s for lunch?” When you pray, I don’t think anyone’s listening. Besides other people, I don’t think anyone cares if you murder people or masturbate or shove things up your butt. I don’t think there’s anybody sitting in the sky watching you. You’re on your own. All you have is other people around you, and how you treat them. I actually think that not having a focus on God would make life better, because there would be more of an imperative to be nice to each other. There would be no more brand-name wars over stuff, and pointless arguments over east side/west side, go-fight-win. But I don’t know. People have got to worry about something, and there’s obviously some kind of anthropological, almost zoological need. This particular animal does this particular thing. Instead of constructing a hive out of paper that they chew up, they create a God. It’s just something that they do.

The Onion: Is there a God?
Bill Maher: I think there is. We did a show last night about God and religion with Dave Foley, who I love, and we were arguing against this one woman who had a book called I Like Being Catholic. Someone said, “Oh, boy, a lot of atheists on this panel.” I said, “I’m not an atheist. There’s a really big difference between an atheist and someone who just doesn’t believe in religion. Religion to me is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don’t need. But I’m not an atheist, no.” I believe there’s some force. If you want to call it God… I don’t believe God is a single parent who writes books. I think that the people who think God wrote a book called The Bible are just childish. Religion is so childish. What they’re fighting about in the Middle East, it’s so childish. These myths, these silly little stories that they believe in fundamentally, that they take over this little space in Jerusalem where one guy flew up to heaven—no, no, this guy performed a sacrifice here a thousand million years ago. It’s like, “Who cares? What does that have to do with spirituality, where you’re really trying to get, as a human being and as a soul moving in the universe?” But I do believe in a God, yes.

(Many thanks to Lille for sending me this while we were backstabbing others having a pleasant chat over AIM. Friends send friends quality linkage.)

I finally went and had lunch at Shopsin’s today, which some of you might remember from this fantastic article from the New Yorker earlier this year.
Many thanks to Michael of Gulfstream for pointing it out then and to Judith for mentioning it recently—I had a lovely fifteen minute walk to Shopsin’s from Tisch and an even lovelier meal because of them. I’m thinking of stopping in for lunch every Tuesday, although even if I do that without fail for the next two years and order something different each time, I still won’t be halfway through the Shopsin’s menu!

Condoms are becoming harder to get than ever in the Philippines and Pinky Serafica of Women’s Feature Service Philippines on why that is:

The Catholic Church is going underground. This pretty much sums up Strategy 2002 of silence and stealth that followed decades of fire-and-brimstone trained on anything that smacked of “family planning.”

Now, women’s groups say that condoms are missing from convenience stores and that some “pro-life” local government units have advised barangay health centers to turn down women asking for pills and reproductive health services, and worse, conservatism is creeping in national governance—all done quietly until one day we will wake up to ask, “where have all the condoms gone?”

I’ve never had any problems asking for condoms, but then that’s me and I’m weird—I know some lower-income ladies who know about reproductive health and rights and where to go to get contraceptives and check-ups for free, but are just too shy to go, and from their stories about friends and relatives they’re hardly in the minority. One woman got pregnant unexpectedly in her late forties and didn’t go to see a doctor at all until she gave birth because she was afraid “they’d think she was horny for having sex with her husband when she was so old.” I mean, WTF.
While I do have problems with the Catholic church in the Philippines being so arch-conservative and teaching its faithful to be so sex-negative, it’s still something I can live with because people have a choice to stay in the church and follow its teachings, the flip side being that they can always leave if they feel it isn’t right for them. What drives me batty is when old men who have never had sex and old ladies who have never enjoyed sex think they have the right to make decisions for everyone in the damn country, including those of us who aren’t Catholic and don’t fall under their jurisdiction. If you have a problem with premarital sex and contraception, fine, then tell your flock not to do the first and to do the second. Trying to remove my rights to contraception because you’re so insecure that your people aren’t following instructions isn’t cool, and neither is making such a big fuss over contraception while never bothering to make a serious stand against other important things that affect women, like spousal abuse and marital rape.

From The Diary of Shirley Manson, circa 1999:

Tuesday 23rd: L.A.
Flew out to L.A. and drove straight to see a doctor about this cold of mine. He stuck a tube up both my nostrils and sucked out the gunk. It was highly thrilling and spectacularly depressing at the same time. How unglamorous can I get? Am I not supposed to be in my hotel room right now, snorting cocaine and fucking Johnny Depp? Oh, no…not for me…a nose vacuum will do nicely, thank you.

Even kick-ass super hot rock stars have bad days. And unwanted mucus.
(The men of Garbage, while not as showy as Ms Manson, are pretty cool in their own right. She says, “I’m totally unfreaked out about any kind of bodily function. My band are with it too; they’ll carry my tampons round in their pockets if I don’t have a bag.” All boy friends should be so enlightened.)

The lady who wrote this letter to the editor gets a free beer or cup of coffee on me if I ever meet her. Why, you ask?

Beyond the expenses for “the metal pipes and the reflectorized green placards” which carry Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” that line the Pan Philippine highway according to reader Manuel R. Mendoza III, non-literature majors must know that the poem “Trees” is a bad poem. (…)

But why does “Trees” appeal to a certain sector of society? The same question is asked by the New Critics, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren who pointed out the technical weakness of the poem. “Trees” does not work because of its “confused and inconsistent imagery,” they said.

If our government officials want us to celebrate Arbor Day every day, let us patronize our own like Anthony Tan’s “Talking to a Tree by the Boulevard” and Edith Tiempo’s “Plants and People.” Stop bad poetry on the highway!

I haven’t read either of the two poems she suggests so I can’t speak for them, but I have an intense dislike of “Trees.”
Actually, that’s an understatement: I hate it so much that it’s become one of the signs that warns me off of people I’m probably not going to get along with long-term (i.e. I think to myself, “He finds “Trees” deeply moving, makes plans around watching “Ally McBeal” and says Gwyneth Paltrow is hot. We cannot be friends.”) I dread visiting Baguio partly because of the long drive and partly because the damn thing’s posted on a series of metal placards leading into the city. Halfway through grade school our nice (but flaky) principal Mrs Castillo created a “peace garden” where we had our Monday morning assemblies and yearly class photos and I avoided it as much as I could because “Trees” was of course posted all over the place (although in fairness I must say the tacky wishing well, which was a metal barrel painted to look like it was made out of bricks, didn’t help things along).
Okay, so I can be a bit of a snob, but I’m hardly alone: when Kilmer attended Columbia, he was VP of The Philolexian Society, which now holds The Annual Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest “to read our own grotesque verse to each other in Mr. Kilmer’s honor.” Adam Fields has put some of his entries up for our enjoyment and this is one of my favorites:

Turgid Wrecking Balls Glow Fiercely Unto The Night
(Ode to a Peanut Butter Twix)

I miss the cookie crunch,
The Peanut Buttery Crispety Crunchety,
oh wait That’s Butter-Finger
Crispety-Crunchety Crunchety-Crispety

Cookie Crunch. Chocolate. Peanut Butter. Cookie.
Was that so bad?

Why, oh why, oh why did they have to take it away?
Was it wrong? Was it rude? Did it flay?
Did it corrupt children on the Internet? NO!
Did it solicit campaign funds illegitimately? NO!

Chocolate. Peanut Butter. Cookie.
Was that so bad?

Fain fair imposter Crunchy Peanut Butter Cup.
I don’t even want to eat you up.
You taste like a block of salt, you Judas treat.
If you can’t stand the kitchen, get out of the heat.

The Aero bar survived. Caramello made it past ten.
Why, even Payday hits the jackpot now and then.
Hershey squirts and Nestle tries.
As Cadbury seeks the prize.

Chocolate. Peanut Butter. Cookie.
Was that so bad?

I Think That I Shall Never See
A Twix Bar that Can Ever Be
As Good As My Peanut Butter Glee.
None For You, But Two For Me.

Genius. I may hate “Trees” but I’ve always loved Twix.

I wouldn’t normally post an animated gif, especially one over 100kb (!), but I couldn’t resist sharing this:

Forgive me.
[ via hungry alien ]

Speaking of poems, here’s one I read recently (thanks to The Boy) and loved:

Fable

Then I looked down and saw
the world I was entering, that would be my home.
And I turned to my companion, and I said Where are we?
And he replied, Nirvana.
And I said again But the light will give us no peace.

Louise Glück, from The Seven Ages

I am so in love with “Even the Queen,” a story by Connie Willis that Asimov’s Science Fiction had the wisdom to put on their site, that I am now a Willis fan for life and will buy anything she puts out. This is my favorite part:
“I’ve always wondered if Lizzie Borden had PMS,” Viola said, “and that was why–”
No,” Mother said. “It was having to live before tampons and ibuprofen. An obvious case of justifiable homicide.”
[ via little ms. “sweet and innocent.” ]