Opera as it should be

Rene Temple of The Highwaymen vocal group and player, with my farbetterhalf, John, in the ground-breaking improve group, War Babies, just sent me a link to a video capture of one of their more stellar moments. Here's the group, from left top row, Rene, John, Marsha Meyers, Jed Mills: bottom row from left; Archie Hahn, Maryedith Burrell, Susan Krebs, and Karen Caye (Mrs. Temple.)
Unfortunately, not in this photo, but in the video, is Peter Reigert.


Seeing John in this performance sealed my fate. He had bedazzled me with his talents in The Hostage (a Brendan Behan play wherein we met) but after seeing this, I was toast. For a look at a totally improvised musical marvel click here.

NOW - for all of you who keep waiting for something about SEX in this blog, here's a wonderfully informative clip on female orgasm.
(So there.)

Howie Gordon just sent me this pic.

I emailed him back:
"Oh my stars and garters! When and where was this taken?
Howie Gordon wrote: 

"It came from backstage at the AFAA Erotic Awards when we both got
Best Supporting for THE DANCERS...I would guess 1982 or '83. 


I do believe that was my last appearance at the annual "company picnic," which is how I thought of the awards festivals.

Boy. Talk about the glory years. Around then, I think everyone in the "other" movie industry thought we were on our way to equal footing with the "real" one.

Well, ha ha and ha.

Oh sure, there have been stellar "cross-over" incidents, but let's face it, they are two very different worlds. I can only think, from my lofty position as most senior surviving retired actor of the latter, that there is a good reason for this. My good friend until his passing, the director and producer of sex films, Henri Pachard, used to say at any and every opportunity, "The trouble with you kids is, you don't think sex is dirty. I'm trying to put the dirty back in it."

He felt, probably rightly so, that I was one of the guilty ones. Howie (aka Richard Pacheco) was another. Howie's beautiful and amazing wife, Carly, who was on the set when he and I did our "Shakespearean" sex scene (which, incidentally, Howie wrote) in Dancers, concurs. 

As young hippies, we all wanted to build a better world. We still do. Unfettered presentation of the realities of life, including sex, was one of our goals. Sex, segregated from reality and there for it's own sake only, was not.

Even though both of us have settled into monogamous marriages, finding the greatest satisfaction therein, our dedication to the demise of hypocrisy has not wavered. I can't wait for HIS book to come out. Soon, I hope.

Thanks for the memories, Howie.  

A LITTLE S&M COULDN'T HURT... COULD IT?

I have this thing about my tits.

I just don't like having them squeezed hard enough to hurt.
I am NOT into pain.
For those who like it, fine. Do your thing. Just don't invite me.
 
For the last thirty years, I have "just said no" whenever my wonderful, trusted friend and physician, Doctor Thom has gently insisted I get a mammogram. Then last week, I felt just the slightest twinge of a hurtyness in the right puppy. Well, I'm very much a do-it-yourself, Campho-Phenique and Epsom Salts sort of gal, but I'm not entirely stupid. Soooo, I call and let them schedule me for the procedure. Now if ever there were a word to make my flesh crawl, that's it. "Procedure" just sounds like something from an S&M scenario to me and here's the S&M film I never want to see, much less live through again. Mamory Mangler.

Place tit in vice, close vice until tit is squeezed into an IHOP special - sans the syrup. Fainting is not an option, as slumping will only increase the pain. Hold breath (as if you could breath through the pain) until technician, who has gone to another county to avoid the radiation, returns to pull out one plate and stick in another. Rinse, repeat, and so forth. Then you get to do the other tit!
 

Now, I admit, I have done some fairly kinky things in my checkered past, both as as a porn actress and, prior to those heady days, on numerous casting couches. 


But I have never, ever, ever in my whole entire life, experienced pain of this magnitude. 

Not even the time I tried to keep my sailboat
from hitting the dock by sticking my hand down between it and the pilings. 

I was trying to protect the beautiful brightwork I had just spent two months applying. 

OK. That was stupid, but my own doing. 

The mamogram monster looms as an inevitable torture that women are expected to endure periodically, just because they're women. Like childbirth, I suppose. Could cancer hurt any worse? I may live to find out, because, I ain't getting these babies caught in that kind of wringer ever again, no how, no way, uh uh.

End of rant. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am. Better yet, feel free to invent a way to screen for breast cancer without a PROCEDURE that simply can NOT be good for that sensitive tissue.

Hee hee - in response to this rant, I just received:

The challenges of an actor's wife

This is Sara Wells - the talented actress who portrayed Marilyn Monroe in the staged reading of "Norma Jean and Johnny" that my darling hubby did recently.

He is now busy re-growing his mustache just in case they get to do it again.

I must be out of my mind, right?

Rites of Spring

We saw a notice at our gym yesterday that it would be closed today. OK. We head over the hill this morning to the North Hollywood branch. Well, of course, it, too is closed. IT'S EASTER. We knew that.
It was a lovely drive. Our wet wet spring has bestowed upon us flowers rarely seen and everything is so GREEEEEN. Even the hodge-podge of my beloved backyard is - excuse me, but it's true - breath-taking.

It has very little to with my sporadic, unskilled efforts, and I am more grateful for it all than I know how to say.
Thank You, GOD, comes to mind.
Everyone has their own picture of GOD: Stern Father, Nurturing Mother, Pure Light, The Force, etc. etc. One day while meditating (OK, zoning out) in the sauna, it came to me. GOD stands for General Oversight Department. One CEO? Board of Directors? I donno. I do know I didn't create this gorgeous world that I've the great privelege of visiting. I'm assured from many organizations whose job it is to make these sorts of assurances, that a memo simply addressed to Allah, Our Father, Tu, or even my default salutation, To Whom it may concern; will be delivered. Many even assure me that they have receved responses. Just being where I am is response enough for me. I just hope that I did something sooooo good in some former life that I earned this in some way. I hate thinking that I'm gonna get a bill for it all some day.