All débutantes say it's good

  And every
  star out
  in far
  Hollywood

  Seems to
  give it a
  try

  . .

                         So why be that guy?

                      

                         Orlando has remade

                         this year, and giv-

                         en resolution to an

                         uninspiring option

                         in November. We did

                         notice the names at

                         Pulse. They aren't

                         anglicised anymore.

                         

Cole Porter

Jubilee

  Why Shouldn't I

1935

Xavier Serrano

Break time at Balmain

  Fashion workers and daylight
  seldom mix, and rarely get
  further than a corner of the
  rue Balzac. On a recent break
  from dressing up at Balmain, 
  pride of place on the utility
  grate fell to Xavier Serrano,
  channeling Marilyn Monroe, al-
  beit swaddled in jeans and T.

  Well, for context on parade,
  what would you have? A scruffy
  pack of freshly minted capital-
  ists, or a revue of rednecks
  mocking the rights of man? If
  it can't take one to the Bris-
  tol, what use is the street?

The indecent descent

Yesterday, in the op-ed pages of

The New York Times, Texas' Sen-

ator Cruz revived confidence in

our dread of Friday the 13th by

fulminating in highest evangel-

ical dudgeon, for the principle

that the foreign policy of the

United States should be shaped

in the most extreme Right wing

of the ruling coalition in Is-

rael's Knesset. When you peel

away the languour in his rhet-

orical swoons, as the fetching

draping of a fisherman's sweat-

er from the fallen trapezius of

his argument, it exposes his

chronic insinuation of lubri-

cious fervor where discipline 

has failed. We know vampires

of cooler head. 

Americans now know, only one

candidate is commenting with

the discipline and the candor

necessary to guide themselves

and the peoples of Palestine

away from the revolting escap-

ist habit of sentimental war.

Much shenanigan and sideshow

lend cover in this season for

ignominy more enduring and bi-

partisan than the parodies we

suffer in our discontent. Our

seduction by contentment hums

along on continuing consensus.

Even Le Pavillon closed as yet

another fashionable restaurant.

Xavier Serrano

And you're not going to forget this, are you

         I can't believe
         that I am saying
         that a candidate
         for President of
         the United States
         has bragged about
         sexually assault-
         ing women.

Michelle Obama
New Hampshire
October 13, 2016

Tim Egan
The New York Times
  Burning Down the
  House
October 14, 2016

Xavier Serrano

Escape from the helix

               My first letters about finding and mov-
               ing into my house were vivid, but then
               as I settled down to my hermit's exis-
               tence they became more tedious and pro-
               lix.. I only wrote well when something
               was happening that interested me.. I 
               became an articulate letter writer many
               years before I could compose a tolerable
               paragraph - I imagine because I found it
               easier to communicate what I felt to a
               person I wished to amuse and please than
               to compose something of an impersonal sort
               for a faceless public.

I was always divided in my loyalty
to 'Bloomsbury', considered as a
group. There could be no doubt a-
bout the high level of their in-
telligence, while their cult of
good conversation made them very
stimulating people to know. But I
thought that Maynard Keynes' de-scription of them as water spiders swimming gracefully on the surface of the stream contained a good deal of truth.. This attitude was illustrated for me by their opin-ion of Joyce's Ulysses.. They lived by good taste and I saw with regret that I was being carried along the same road and being obliged to live by it too.

                          

  However anything I write
  on Hemingway must be mere
  speculation. I did not see
  him often enough to speak
  of him with any conviction.
  I will only add, he exuded
  vitality. One did not have
  to read his books to feel
  his greatness as a man.

Gerald Brenan
Personal Record
  1920 - 1972
Alfred A. Knopf, 1975©

Xavier Serrano

Dancing home

The papers are full of an ex-
citement one can well imagine,
that Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn is
now playing on the screen. He
requires no introduction, but
if he did, I think it could 
be reduced to the sentence he
assigns to his heroine, mid-
way through the novel at page
137, after she had become at
ease with a partner with whom
she would meet for dancing on
Fridays, and movies another
night each week. Or here, at
least, is the overture his
readers hear, to the dimming
of the cineplex, for him - 


   She thought it was
   strange that the mere
   sensation of savouring
   the prospect of some-
   thing could make her
   think for a while that
   it must be the prospect
   of home.

In the previous thirty pages

he has allowed this improbable

equation to imply itself, per-

sistently, with the subtlest 

application, allowing his prose

the patient assurance of an al-

most perfect dancing partner.

In the pleasantly lengthening

shelf of his books which we all,

probably, share repeatedly with

friends, we find this faculty

unfolding constantly. Simply to

gather in straight lines of text 

the multifaceted nuances of a 

partnering's becoming home, is

a choreography rare enough to

see if cinema can pull it off.

Of course there is excitement.

Colm Tóibín

Brooklyn

  A Novel

Scribner, 2009©

Xavier Serrano

Yet another mislaid "only"

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said if 

it was her decision, she would scrap open 

primaries and only allow voters registered 

as Democrats to participate in primaries.

"I believe that the party's nominee should 

be chosen - this is Debbie Wasserman 

Schultz's opinion — that the party's nomin-

ee should be chosen by members of the par-

ty," the Florida Democrat said during an 

interview with "MSNBC Live" on Monday.

As reported in The Washington Examiner

and the online publication, The Hill.

Isn't it just gruesome, sometimes,

to expose people in trade of serv-

ing curiosity, for the disadvan-

tages they exhibit? Here, like so

many, a dutiful verbiage provider

lobs an "only" into a sentence, so

indifferent to its placement that

you'd think the word could modify

syntax by instinct. Maybe it does.

In the exclusive club the Floridi-

an services for friends and pat-

rons in the Party's hierarchy, "on-

ly" would rate naturally as a modi-

fier of such prolific utterance, as

to distribute itself promiscuously

throughout her proclamations. Such

trade, in our discretion, we usual-

ly offer ascent by a service stair.

Unitary, exclusionary, protective

to a fault, "only" calls upon the

rarest employment in democracies,

and at the most superfluous place.

Not at the starting line, not in

the stretch, not until the roses.

Isn't it intriguing, for example,

that we have the presence of mind

to condemn demands for barriers a-

gainst all of any belief, yet in-

terpose a blackball to our own?

Everything wrong with the patron

is magnified by the servant. All

of "only" is genuinely a tragic

utterance, on a servant's lips.

It is not in the nature of servi-

tude to succumb to servility. It

takes a whole lot of molestation

in the exercise of exclusivity.

I'd like to be amiable about this,

but that Party poses as a bulwark

against debauch this year. I don't

know that posing is remotely good

enough; but the question doesn't

arise. They haven't mastered it.

Serenely they do not notice, any-

more, an elementary rule, even of

grammar. In Indiana, Senator San-

ders claimed a margin of 40 points

among voters under 30, and of more

than 30 of those under the age of 

45. The "only" this Party wants to

represent inscribes the very signa-

ture of molestation, long indulged,

of indentured loyalists it exploits.

Isn't it gruesome, sometimes, to

expose people in trade, for the 

disadvantages they exhibit?

i   Xavier Serrano
ii  Tim Boot

C'mon, Pruitt, there's something we haven't destroyed

Our metric reference for today's

celebration of the new government

is the immortal exhortation from

Rock Hudson to Elizabeth Taylor,

in George Stevens' 1950s romance

on Texas, Giant. Embracing inter-

racial enlightenment during the

Eisenhower Administration, hotly

rejected in the rise of our New

Greatness (hilariously interpret-

ed only this week by David Brooks

as the rebirth of a frontier spir-

it), Stevens' screenplay finds a

newlywed couple disembarking from

their private rail car at their

imperial ranch in Texas, as the

élitist coastal bride graciously

accepts a welcoming bouquet from

a sub-captive Hispanic retainer

of her man-of-the-people husband.

A touch annoyed by this forbidden

interaction, his final demand to

get into the car for the drive to

the house, rings loud and clear -

C'mon, Leslie, it's 50 miles to coffee!

Amidst all the buffoonery of the new government, yet coiled in plain sight in its horror of illegiti-macy, it is easy to over-look its childlike agony. A workmanlike apparatchik was certain to emerge in the maelstrom of hate mongering headliners staffing the regime. He is the former attorney general for fossilized Oklahoma, and he is destroying everything he possibly can, before the nation's day in Court, much less at the polls. 

In all the President's frenzy in

the stealing of myths, is said to

be some cover for his henchmen's

theft of resources. But his clock

is right, twice a day. They are

inextricable. Nice car, not his.

i    Xavier Serrano

ii   Luc Défont Saviard

iii  Kenneth Blom

      Les palmiers

      2013

v    George Stevens

        director

      Giant

      Elizabeth Taylor

      James Dean

      1956