Don't Do This: Bees Edition

A man in St. Charles, MI, found out something important right before he died.

The important thing he found out was: don't crash your car into an abandoned house that is full of bees.

He may have lost control of his car due to some sort of medical emergency, the article states.

I don't think it will scare me as much anymore when I'm driving down the road and imagine myself having a heart attack at the wheel while driving by huge fields of corn.

If on a Winter's Week a Movie Buff

If I still lived someplace where it snows, I now know what I would do with myself if a blizzard hit and I could not leave my house for a few days.

This knowledge came to me when I learned that some beautiful outfit has put together a huge collection of Werner Herzog's body of work.

I know! I said "Holy crap on a steamship being dragged over a mountain!" myself!

I would forget all about Netflix and binge-watch the shit out of these 13 discs!

The Bloke with the ££ in His Eyes

I stumbled across an old article on the Mirror's website about Kate Bush's first boyfriend, Steve Blacknell, who revealed in 2010 a "secret" about Bush:

"I've been told by those around her that I was indeed 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes' and I know that those words were given to me by someone very special. I'm proud to have known and loved her."

I believe him. Otherwise, I would never understand how he "put the hand-written lyrics [to 'The Man with the Child in His Eyes'] up for sale at £10,000."

That's almost $17,000!

Honestly, though, 40,000 Steve Blacknells could not love Kate Bush as much as John Lydon loves her....

Portia and Ellen: More WTF (Baby Edition)

Practicing the "fake baby bump caress"
for the cameras.

So I've been wondering (maybe a little too much, and my friend Jones would probably agree) about the whole rumor mill cranking out conjecture about Portia de Rossi and Ellen Degeneres's on/off divorce plans.

Now I'm finding that the couple has answers to these problems they're having.

There was one quick fix announced in the form of a move into a "luxury condo" (read: the entire top floor of a building) in Beverly Hills.

The second, more disturbing fix to their marital woes announced? That they're going to start a family. According to one misguided cheerleader, "a baby could be exactly what the two need to patch things up."

Isn't this supposed to be the worst way for a couple to save a marriage - by bringing an innocent human being into the mix?

Especially after the tenacious rumors about de Rossi's recent stint in rehab and Degeneres's alleged infidelity and their mutual tendency to take part in screaming matches precipitated by de Rossi's insecurities and Degeneres's supposed control-freakiness, it seems that raising a baby together would not be the best idea either woman has ever had.

Another entertainment blog cites Degeneres's main qualification for being a parent thusly: "Whenever Ellen encounters a baby, she has them laughing in seconds because she starts making funny faces and doing her cartoon voices with the kid."

Oh, well then! I stand corrected. Considering how hard it is to make a baby laugh (see evidence below), and how a baby's laughing correlates directly with how useful said baby will be in saving a marriage, I guess there's only one road to travel for these two.

Still, it could all end up like that old Hoodoo Gurus song, "Death in the Afternoon" if you ask me.

Angsty 4-year-old is a heartbreaker

Oh. My. God. The little girl in this video is either going to be winning an Oscar or sneaking through doggy doors stark naked by the time she's 18.

Portia and Ellen: WTF?

"What do you mean I 'look like Lady Elaine Fairchilde'?"

For the last month I've been seeing rumors about the impending divorce of Sonic Youth-loving actress/author Portia de Rossi and her tuxedo-wearing, not-funny other half, Ellen Degeneres.

I've never been surprised by these rumors, and, while they're very consistent and damning, they just keep stretching on and on and on.

I need to know if they are true. Anyone?

In the meantime, I would like to say for the record the same thing my now-deceased mother once said about now-deceased Whitney Houston and still-living Bobby Brown when I asked my mother's opinion of their relationship status: "She needs to get away from him and stay away from him!" ("She" being de Rossi in this case, and "him," of course, being Degeneres. [Though, also for the record, my late mother loved Ellen with the light of ten thousand smartphone camera flashes.])

Maria Popova, Professional Show Off,* Turns 30

I've been reading the Brainpickings blog for several years, now, and rarely find a post on it that doesn't interest me on some personal or intellectual level. I have it in my RSS feed, I follow it on Twitter (which I never look at) and I have "liked" it on Facebook.

This is where I found out that the creator of Brainpickings, Maria Popova, has turned 30 years old today.

That seems so young, now, but I'm not so ancient that I don't vividly remember a time when I thought someone turning 30 was probably just a few steps from the grave.

That's how your mind works in the middle of your life. These days, I work with people who are in their 70s, 80s and 90s; they view the point at which I am in life in the same spirit that I view Popova: with calculated wistfulness and distanced affection based solely on how far she still is from shuffling off this mortal coil.

Popova chose "the 7 most important things [she] learned in the past 7 years of reading, writing, and living" on the occasion of her 30th birthday. Below are my 7 favorite posts of past years.

The Daily Routines of Famous Writers

Bohemians: A Graphic History of Creative Mavericks

Against Positive Thinking: Uncertainty as the Secret of Happiness

The Breathtaking Love Letters of Violet Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West

Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton

The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook: A Rare 1961 Treasure Trove of Unusual Recipes and Creative Wit

Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives

* - I mean "show off" in the nicest way possible.

This is What the Internet is For

I saw in the New York Times today that some egghead has received a grant to prepare a publicly accessible archive of the oral histories compiled by Studs Terkel during his writing career.

Imagine being able to listen to the voices Terkel transcribed and put together in books like Working, Hard Times, The Good War, etc.

I'm pretty sure some asshole Congressman will complain at some point about spending the taxpayers' money on venerating the life's work of Terkel and his left-leaning, Commie-loving bullshit.

That's what they always want to say about the National Endowment for the Humanities, and that's a significant part of what makes them assholes.

A Beastly Realization

You know what I just thought about the whole 50 Shades of Grey series of books and the forthcoming movie release?

It's kind of like that 80s TV show "Beauty and the Beast" for the current generation of sexually dissatisfied straight women, isn't it?

Except, you know, all the women who read that trilogy of books and watched "Beauty and the Beast" back in the 80s because they were sexually dissatisfied? They probably never did meet the right beast; if they did, those guys probably left them during midlife crises.

I am serious. What is wrong with this world?

Nothing New Walking the Street

It's often said "there's nothing new under the sun." This applies to most areas of living and the experiences gained thereby, especially when it comes to romance.

Shakespeare knew it in the 17th century. Goethe really, really drove the point home in the 18th century. And Jane Austin reminded everyone of it in the early 19th century, while George Gissing let it be known in the late 19th century.

(I guess most of us know that nobody could shut up about it for even ten minutes during the 20th century, regardless of two world wars and the torment we endured at the hands of USA for Africa when they released "We Are the World.")

I think about the sameness of love in a changing world all the time, but it was a quote by Gissing from New Grub Street that caught my eye today:

"Man has a right to nothing in this world that he cannot pay for. Did you imagine that love was an exception? Foolish idealist! Love is one of the first things to be frightened away by poverty."

If the phrase "sad but true" means anything, this is one of the saddest things I've ever heard.

This Blog is Called Hijinks

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