COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
YES. TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY! - The best balladeers of the last century, from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald to Rosemary Clooney, Bobby Short, Andrea Marcovici, Michael Feinstein and Nat "King" Cole could not keep themselves from singing Cole Porter tunes. Just as I cannot keep myself from swooning over "King Cole." How could anyone with a romantic bone in their body, some sense of class, and a belief in true love not be mad about a Cole Porter mot?
If you know, please explain it to me.
Sure, Irving Berlin and especially George and Ira Gershwin are right up there on the mountaintop, but Cole was the Master.
"I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," "Love for Sale," I Get a Kick Out of You," rattle through my brain-pan like mantras. Classics like "Miss Otis Regrets" and others are so much a part of my psyche I can't believe I could separate Porter from my life.
If you've ever been truly, madly, deeply in love, then Cole Porter's songs resonate for you. Just the right phrases for what you've been going through, what you feel, how delirious you are or were. He spoke to the highs and lows of love(s.)
So, yes, here I am again, speaking of a Master. Before it was Scorcese and film, this time it is Cole Porter and popular music.
This week, for reasons I can't completely fathom, I had an extended conversation with my "Yes. Truly, madly, deeply!" after years of disappearance, loss, pause.
So, I took a chance and said this:
Okay, this is nuts, but I have no other way of going about it!!!I've *always* been accused of being too subtle and metaphorical. You know, the old thing of talking in parables.
The fact is there is NO ONE else I would rather build by home with than you. It's no accident that I spent all those years trying to find you after you disappeared. You're the only woman I've ever dreamt about. You're the only woman, as Steve said, who could shake me by my damned shoulders and make me ENJOY the beauty of the world. Who do you think I've been writing to/for all of these years?
Yeah. I know. Intense. Have I ever been any other way?
Rod Amis I won't blame you if you quake in fear reading this and think I'm a total ass-hole for even saying it. But I *had* to say it sometime.
"No regrets," used to be one of my mottos. So there is no way that I could lay on my death-bed, whenever that time comes (gods forbid) and Know that I had been too chickenshit to tell you this. (I also know, of course, that this is taking me into crash-and-burn territory.)
Finally, have you ever thought that that SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BE DOING might have to do with us finding our true voices together?
You say you enjoy my voice.... It's only *half* a voice that I've been doing my best to maintain. There's been a hole in me for decades, looking for you, hoping to find you again. Even the only nickname that I let most people know me by came from you. You can't imagine how many times women (who I thought about dating or actually did) have told me that I'd be a fool if I didn't try to find you again.
I have never stopped loving you.
That's the truth.
Rodya
| WIN ROD AMIS'S MONEY!!!
IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER THAN FREE BENJAMINS IN YOUR POCKET? You tell us.
With the holiday spending season looming big-time, wouldn't it be nice if you could spend our publisher's money instead of your own? Well, just click-through to our special Sweepstakes Page and find out how easy that can be, Dreamer. Do it now |
But why should we all be rational? Why can't we expect sunshine and rainbows? I do, now and again. Yes, I DO expect to find the Pot of Blinking Gold one day! What did Auntie Mame say? "Life is a Banquet and some poor suckers starve to death." And also: "Live, live, live!!!"
In other words: Dance like nobody is watching...
Yes, I did it. I said, "Truly, madly, deeply!" That was certainly a stretch for me, all things considered.
I am not the bold type. I don't tell women that I am crazy for them anymore.
Meanwhile, too many women I know tell me that's what I should do. (ARE YOU LISTENING, FEMALE ADVISORS?) I'm starting to believe that that is because my women friends like to see men crash and burn...
Now, for those of you who are probably thinking: "Rod! It's about time!" Don't start celebrating yet.
When do ANY stories like this EVER work out? Can you count them on the fingers of one of your hands?
I CAN.
That's the separation between The Writer and The Cynic. The Cynic is smart enough to know that fools in love are only and actually fools. This ain't the movies.
So don't expect to be reading anywhere on this magazine how I'll be flying off to the south of France any time soon.
My newest plan is to have my Man Friday look for Web sites that offer access to arsenic and cyanide. Much simpler, in my judgment, than attempting to find a Last Woman.
It's dawned on me as I presented this latest part of my saga to you that sooner or later we must reach a point of climax. This story, even with its highlights from the past, will not be as dynamic if I don't *connect* with a new woman soon --- even a disastrous woman --- so that you can say: "See! I told ya'!"
As Fliss or Pam would say, my life here has become much like a novel. I have become, like Henry Miller, more fictional than my best characters. I now accept that part of the fact that I seem fictional is because I am also "virtual." Like a character, no humans actually see me anymore.
The last human who actually saw me in the flesh was my sister-in-law. That was months ago. For years I was "virtual" to her, too.
I might as well be fictional, no?
This week's Poll: WHY are we in this Handbasket, yo?
RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: Oh, man! Rod's Man Friday, Tom O' Branovich just had to recommend we look at the MulletsGalore.com site. Why? Why?
Try out Internet Radio the way we like it:
WinTel users, click on "Preferences" to get 30 additional radio channel selections. Macintosh Users (we love you!) you get the additional channels by surfing over to the Windows Media web site.
