Another Mystery Model

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John has one of the most magical voices I have ever heard.  I recently read somewhere that Hugh Jackman had confided to Olivia Newton-John that, when he was in school, he had a photo of her pasted on the inside of his desk, and kissed it every morning.  Well, Hugh Jackman, it could easily have been me.

Not only did ONJ have an angelic voice, but she also had an angelic countenance, and when the movie Xanadu came out, in my opinion she was at the height of her beauty.  I think she had suffered a few years of emotional setbacks, and a little of that pain was reflected in her eyes.  But in the movie, she flirted and laughed with her co-star (let me look it up ...) Michael Beck, as well as with Gene Kelly, and one could easily believe that she was divine, in a sort of 1980s way!  And the absolute pinnacle of her divinity was the song Magic, which was a no. 1 hit for her.

Here is the video on YouTube

Just close your eyes --some of the horrible style of 1980 still comes through the photograph-- and listen to her voice!  This is a performance of a lifetime.  Truly this woman was charmed.

Kay.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Jane in Canada

"Jane" is the book, of all the books I have published, that has been downloaded the most.  The biggest reason for its popularity, as far as I can guess, is that it is free.  But I greatly enjoyed writing it, and it is a lot of fun, not in the sense of being funny or exciting, but that there are several interesting characters, including a pair of twins, and a cute fourteen-year-old.

In addition, Jane is a sort of superhero.  Quite by accident, Jane attended a Metal Fetish convention in Baltimore, and acquired a reputation as a masked personality called Scorpia.  It was initially a lot of fun; she always wore a mask, of course, and disguised her voice, and soon she was getting requests for photographs which people wanted to feature in various commercials.  Jane established a website, with the help of her brother Artie, and after a while, she was being interviewed on various TV shows and radio shows.

At any rate, the book Jane starts at the point where Jane has tragically lost two girlfriends on 9/11, and shortly afterwards, and she has a lover who has been diagnosed with HIV.  We watch as the two of them face the problems of AIDS, and the girl dies, surrounded by Jane's family.

Jane is shattered, but her friends help her to carry on, in particular, two young girls who posed for her; Jane was a photographer.  And Jane is introduced to a supermodel, Gillian, who becomes Jane's closest friend.  The rest of the book is about how Jane, Gillian, and Gillian's twin sister, Angela, become Jane's sort of family in New York City, and their various little adventures.  The book ends with Jane getting involved with a new friend, Lisa Love, a reformed glamour model, who has the hots for Jane.  In fact, Lisa Love has the hots for both Jane, and Scorpia, not realizing that they are one and the same.

I just uploaded to Smashwords the further adventures of Jane and Lisa Love.  Entitled Jane on Holiday, the story goes as follows.  It is the middle of a heat wave across the US, and Jane and Lisa sneak off to a vacation cabin in a resort in the hills of British Columbia.  This story is rated at least R, so be warned.  On the other hand, if purple prose is all you're interested in, you might be disappointed.  I'm a sentimental slob, and my stories get moderately mushy.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Politics from Kay Brown

I know: you have other sources for your political opinions, and this is the last place you look for that sort of thing!  Anyway, I offer this to you, and then I will keep quiet.

Our family is sort of at the lower edge of Middle Class, which you can easily gather from reading any of the stories I write.  You can also gather that most of the satisfying elements in those stories come from interactions between people of different classes and backgrounds.  I have been deeply unhappy with Donald Trump's essay into politics, and for a long time I shied away from watching video of his speeches.  Anyway, this post is not an attempt to persuade anyone to frustrate Donald Trump's attempt to be elected President.  Whatever will happen will happen; I for one will not vote for him.

But we are seeing a phenomenon we have to take seriously; there is a swath across America of poor white people whom we have always viewed with annoyance and frustration.  They have never understood the dynamics of the economic stratification that lies mostly above them.  They only know that, of the underdogs of the political process, Blacks and minorities have an unfair share of power.  Even women have more power.  For more than two centuries these folks have been pushed further and further into the dust, and they are baffled and angry.

They have, intermittently, been subject to Marxist ideas, but they're deeply suspicious of these clever college kids who're throwing all this propaganda at them.  They're sure that if they go the route of voting the way they're being encouraged, they will end up being the losers.  The only language they understand is the put-down rhetoric of racism.  In a recent piece in Stir magazine, a writer traces the origins of the suspicion of these poor whites back to the early colonial days, when wealthy landowners actually fomented the distrust between poor whites and black slaves in order to disrupt the emergence of a dangerously unified underclass.

Having read that article, watching a Trump video, or a quotation from Trump, or a report about Trump makes a whole new kind of sense.  You can even watch Trump supporters at a rally explaining why they support him, despite the complete lack of meaningful principles in his essentially one-man campaign.

The inanity of the utterances of Trump supporters, their grammar, their syntax, their lack of logic, their stereotypes, their world view, their social principles, their paranoia, all suddenly makes sense.  And to think: these are our fellow-citizens.  But few or none of them avail themselves of the various aspects of the social safety-net that is available to urban Blacks.  They keep away from any sort of Government "hand-out" because of being unwilling to identify with Blacks, and hating the thought of associating closely with them.  I can imagine that they hate even entering an office that might be staffed by a Black or minority, or even worse, a Mexican.

And this is my point: no matter what happens in this election, this sector of our citizenry must be brought into our society.  Their faults appear to be the fault of foolishness and lack of intelligence, but an enormous proportion of what holds them back is education.  For years I thought that the shortcomings of US education were greatly exaggerated.  But we're talking about a different sort of education: the broadening of the mind that has little or nothing to do with formal schooling, and everything to do with awareness of the wider society.  Not just video footage of migrant workers, but some opportunity to interact in a positive way with people outside their immediate neighbors.  I can't see how it can be done, but as long as their insularity is allowed to continue, they will be a festering wound, and my heart goes out to their kids, who will inevitably absorb the prejudices of the parents for lack of alternatives.  It is no wonder that they view practically everything about the modern world with fear.  Donald Trump assuages their fears simply by not talking about anything substantive, except to assure these ones that he hates what they hate just as much, and that he has a plan.

If Donald Trump does get into power, and he betrays the best interests of these foolish innocents, he will be truly cursed.  I hope he realizes that there are eyes watching him that do not want to see him adding to his power and his wealth by crushing his blind followers.

Kay