Phoebe Kate

Feel that life has left you at the starting gate?  Don’t know what you want to do when you grow up (and you’re pushing 50)?  Think that you’re running out of time to make your mark on the world?  Are you too old to “live the dream”?

Well, there’s a ray of hope for us late bloomers.           

Angela Pusateri, a 79-year-old grandmother from Hallandale FL, is a rap singer who just released a CD, “Who’s Your Granny?”  This way-cool golden oldie writes her own songs and performs wearing a hockey jersey, baseball cap, dark glasses, and lots and lots of bling.  Here’s a sampling of her sly, witty lyrics:  “I can bring the noise better than P. Diddy/I am older and wiser/I ain’t a disguiser/I am a condo commander in a high riser,” and “Move over, Trick-Daddy, because this is my town/I gotta shuffleboard posse and we’re known to get down.”

Her 13-year-old granddaughter confesses that having a gangsta granny is “sometimes embarrassing.” 

Oh well, to be expected, I guess.  Young people are so narrow-minded.  Give the kid a few decades and she’ll see it all differently.

–phoebe kate    

No, I’m not getting in the Christmas spirit (or into the Christmas spirits) early this year.  Bah!  Humbug!  That’s my official position and I’m sticking to it — but feel free to pass the Yuletide grog my way.

Anyway, today I read a wry little news story concerning the subject of faith.  Seems that in a small town in the South, a fella arrived one day who took a look around and decided what the place lacked was a nice cozy bar.  Nothing sleazy, mind you.  Sort of a Southern “Cheers,” where guys could watch the big game while having a brew or two and the ladies could have their Girls’ Night Out with a couple rounds of pink-colored drinks in pretty glasses with little umbrellas and lots of fruit in them. 

When construction commenced on the property, a local congregation felt inspired by the Holy Spirit to circulate petitions and pray that God would prevent the opening of this roadhouse from hell.  A week before the scheduled opening, a thunderstorm occurred and lightning hit the bar, burning it to the ground.  The bar owner brought suit against the church, claiming that it was responsible by either direct or indirect means.  The church denied having had anything, direct or indirect, to do with the destruction of the property.

The judge assessed the situation with a wisdom worthy of King Solomon.  “Seems we have here a tavern owner who believes in the power of prayer,” he drily remarked, “and a whole congregation who doesn’t.”

–phoebe kate        

Another icon has passed on, and we’re the poorer for his departure but the richer for his having been on this earth and spread his abundant talents so lavishly. My favorite movies of his? Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth and Road to Perdition. He was one of those dedicated actors who never turned in a less-than-perfect performance even if he did occasionally appear in films unworthy of him (think: Towering Inferno.)

His death, for me, is a curiously personal one. Forty years ago, he was my next-door neighbor in New York City. I’ve written about the experience of living cheek-to-jowl with a bona fide celebrity and you can read about here.

Along with his A-list career and boyishly winsome smile, Newman will be remembered as a celebrity who eschewed the high-profile Hollywood lifestyle, opting to make his home in a quiet Connecticut town, and remained married to the same woman, Joanne Woodward, for half a century (yes, that’s a mind-boggling 50 years, folks.) He proved that notability does not have to mean notoriety.

What will we remember our current crop of stars for, when their time comes? DUIs. Dysfunctional relationships. Divorces. Mental breakdowns. Drug busts. Bad behavior. Days in court. Stints in rehab. Sex tapes. Scandals. Cover photos and lurid headlines in the National Inquirer. And all that preening and posturing on those endless and tiresome walks down the Red Carpet.

Rest in peace, old neighbor of mine. You were a great actor and a good man.

–phoebe kate

“Know thyself,” the sages have urged over the centuries, A.D. and B.C.  The words were inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.  It was also inscribed over the Oracle’s door in The Matrix — “Temet nosce,” the modern Latin version of the sentence.    

Big assignment.  The job, one might say, of an entire lifetime.  Mystics, saints, philosophers, theologians and modern psychologists have devoted their years on earth to this eternally challenging quest and filled countless volumes with their accounts.  And they considered the time and effort required for this task well-spent, not wasted.

In an age that offers internet at lightning speed, food effortlessly available when we reach out our hand, the promise of overnight success and instant gratification, are we moving too fast to ever find our true selves?

We’ve got all kinds of personality quizzes purporting to tell us in the few brief minutes we have to spare who we really are.  Horoscopes categorically enumerate our character traits.  Online dating services match us up in a split second with dozens of potential mates when we click “Enter” — and we haven’t even had to get out of our jammies, dress ourselves nicely, polish up our good manners and go out there and actually interact with some real live human beings.               

Well, there’s a new test out there that tells you what your ideal job is – based on your favorite color.  What colors and careers have to do with each other, I don’t know.  This idiotic piece of modern pseudo-psychological chicanery is “powered by the Dewey Color System, the world’s only validated, non-language color-based career-testing instrument”  (as they proudly tout themselves.)  

On the basis of color preferences, the test told this writer and editor that I should actually be an engineer.  Obviously, the test was not interested in the fact that I had flunked geometry three times in high school, barely passed algebra and can’t figure out Sudoku to save my life.

No matter what our society holds out as easy answers and quick fixes, there are no short cuts to self-knowledge.  The question is: can we learn the patience to get the job done before it’s too late?

–phoebe kate 

Sorry to be away for awhile, but I had to take a few sick days.  I’m better and I’m back.

Sick days are a prime opportunity to watch TV that you normally wouldn’t.  This past week, I’ve spent the afternoons watching ghost shows — “docu-dramas,” I’d guess you’d call them, since they’re (supposedly) based on verified hauntings of real houses all over the U.S.  The hour-long episodes use professionals to act out the events, interspersed with on-screen commentaries by the actual people who experienced the supernatural occurrences. 

Ever analytical even when afflicted, I’ve learned quite a bit about the demographics of spirits and their human hosts.  Did you know, for instance, that: 

1. Ghosts are snobs with impeccable taste.  They do not waste their unearthly   presence on trailer park trash.  They only haunt the nicest of homes with lots of rooms and spiral staircases, wainscotting, chandeliers, crown moldings and hardwood floors.  Ghosts could easily transition from the Discovery Channel to HGTV and be very happy there. 
2. Ghosts are real family guys.  They never haunt single people living alone or groups of singles sharing a house.  No, supernatural visitors show a decided preference for married couples with kids – the more, the better.       
3. Ghosts invariably target families where the husband works at night and doesn’t believe in unrestful, troublesome spirits.
4. Ghosts are hyperactive.  They don’t waft, float, drift or hover like a mist.  They appear as dark shadows and race like mad through rooms and down long halls and staircases. 
5. Ghosts are narcissistic.  They always pause in front of mirrors, computer and TV screens, and any other reflective object to admire their other-worldly image (during which time the inhabitants of the house conveniently see them, of course) and then race off again. 
6. Nine out of ten ghosts prefer Catholic families — obviously the logical choice if you want to find lots of children.
7. Catholic families who experience spectral sightings all personally know priests who are happy to drop everything and perform exorcisms and “house cleansings” at all hours. 
8. The one out of ten ghosts who prefers non-Catholics invariably haunts a family who personally knows parapsychologists who are happy to drop everything and haul their cameras, detection equipment and coterie of assistants over to the house at all hours.
9. Ghosts are almost always nocturnal.  Daytime sightings are rare, and if they occur, are likely to be demons.  Demons are easy to recognize.  They are all dead ringers (no pun intended) for the Grim Reaper.  They’re very tall and thin, wear hooded black robes, have red eyes and shadowy skeletal faces, and trail around after you like a faithful, albeit very ugly, dog.
10. Demons obviously haven’t read the rules.  They’re like New York City cockroaches who don’t know they’re supposed to vacate the premises after the exterminator comes to spray.  Demons don’t know that they’re supposed to leave when the priest sprinkles holy water and commands them to go, or the family carries a Bible around and reads scriptures aloud to banish them, or a New Age practitioner tries to shoo them out with tufts of burning sage and surrounds the house in a circle of salt to keep them from returning.  No sirree.  You got visitors from hell, you best be calling Allied Van Lines pronto.  

–phoebe kate