Joan Crawford Teaches Us About Life (And, As Always, Eyebrows)

Even a casual observer of the films broadcast on, say, AMC, or Lifetime (not that I spend a lot of time watching Lifetime, no. Not that there was a period of time, say, back in graduate school, when I ritualistically flipped to the Lifetime Network in search of Sally Field’s stunning performance in the 1991 Not Without My Daughter, and not that I found myself finding Not Without My Daughter eight out of every ten ritualistic flips, and not that I found myself screaming, after Betty Mahmoody’s anguished and tortured outburst, “Noooo! Goddamn you all!!!” seven out of the ten times that I found Not Without My Daughter) will notice that there is one particular theme that often pops up in the most Fashionable Films of Fashion, and that one particular theme is this: what you do in your past will come back to haunt you. Take, for instance, the Fashionable Film mentioned in our Fashionable Must-Haves: the 1964 William Castle masterpiece, Strait-Jacket, in which a be-wigged and big-eyebrowed Joan Crawford shows us exactly what this lesson means when the double murder she committed twenty years ago comes back to haunt her (and chop off several peoples’ conveniently-bowed heads with conveniently-located axes).

This Fashionable Lesson of Fashion also become clear to Zelda and myself this evening. In order to proceed, Vivienne must make a confession: Vivienne cannot talk on the phone unless she is doing something else: loading her dishwasher, painting her toenails blood red, chewing Nicorette, and/or, as she did this evening whilst in the middle of a Teleconference of Fashion with her Most Fashionable Writing Partner Zelda, cleaning out her file cabinets. In the midst of cleaning out her file cabinets, Vivienne was faced with the horror of horrors: the worst — no, the WORST — poems she wrote in graduate school. There they were, just sitting there, staring at her, blank-eyed and bloody, like the two decapitated heads staring at Strait-Jacket Joan Crawford from the pillow next to hers.

Vivienne, at first, felt tugged by the tides of inadequacy (and, sadly, not for the first time today). Then, she remembered the lessons she would like to say that she learned from Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but that she actually learned from Carol Burnett in The Carol Burnett Show‘s send-up of Gone with the Wind: when one feels tugged by the tides of inadequacy, it’s time to take down the drapes and make some fashion, all the while screaming, “Nooo! Goddamn you all!!!!” And so we came to the FaOuLiPoWriMoFa assignment / OuLiPoAss (OuLiPoAssignment) for tonight: to find potential for literature in the worst poem we wrote in graduate school through the Fabulous Restriction of Fashion, Haikuization. All I will tell you, gentle readers, of the text from which this poem comes is that it was an assignment in my Forms class — to write in blank verse. Shiver and shudder. Shudder and shiver.

After Months and Miles

Viv morphs into Plath.

I say it in a whisper, I say it as a prayer. LOWENSTEIN! LOWENSTEIN!

The composing of Zelda’s poemlogue was interrupted this evening by a most fashionable phone call. This phone call of fashion, however, did not begin as such. In fact, it began as a phone call of despair. My most fashionable friend D, on location for a Most Fashionable Wedding, called me late this evening to say that he was lost, that he was near a bridge, that he had no idea how to get to the airport to pick up his friend who had just flown in from Japan, that he had no idea how to get from the airport back to his hotel. Being as I was sitting in front of my computer with Walt Whitman in one hand and a ginger ale in the other (as I am most Friday nights, but this does not cause me sorrow, does not cause me sorrow at all), I was able to help D find his way. Hooray for D! Hooray! Hooray!

But! Dearest Reader. The story does not end there. If you remember, D was near a bridge when he first called. Yes, yes. And, Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader, this was not any bridge. No, no, no. It was the bridge. It was the Cooper River Bridge, the bridge Tom Wingo drives across at the end of The Prince of Tides, the bridge on which he says two words in a whisper, as a prayer, as regret, as praise, the bridge on which Tom Wingo says these two words: Lowenstein. Lowenstein.

[Let us pause for a moment while Zelda wipes a tear from her eye.]

Lowenstein, of course, being Barbara Streisand’s most fashionable character in the movie adaptation of The Prince of Tides.

Now, careful followers of bridge demolitions around the United States will know that the bridge D was near when he called me (and the bridge he and his friend from the airport crossed later, the bridge from which D and his friend cried out two special words in whispers and prayers while still on the phone with me as per my request) is not the actual bridge Tom Wingo crossed, being as Tom Wingo’s bridge was demolished a few years ago. The bridge pictured above is the present-day Cooper River Bridge.

I have posted a video below of the demolition of Tom Wingo’s bridge. This has a Very Special Meaning to me. For the bridge in the video below is not only Tom Wingo’s bridge — it is also the bridge which instilled in me a Great Fear of Bridges. The bridge below is the reason I still, to this day, roll down all my windows when crossing any bridge. The bridge below is the reason I keep a Very Special Tool within arm’s length in my car at all times, a Very Special tool that will shatter a car window quite easily if aforementioned car happens to become completely submerged in water. Not only is Tom Wingo’s bridge Tom Wingo’s bridge, but it is also the Bridge of Great Fear.

Oh yeah! The poem! For tonight’s OuLiPo Poem of Fashion, I have created a Chimera. My primary text was an exerpt from The Badass Girl’s Guide to Poker by Toby Leah Bochan. I removed its nouns, verbs, adjectives, and proper names. I replaced the nouns with nouns from Chapter Eight of the 1997 edition of Contemporary Business by Louis E. Boone and David L. Kurtz. I replaced the primary text’s verbs with verbs from Recipe for Murder: The Nancy Drew Files Case 21 by Carolyn Keene. I inserted adjectives from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” into the primary text, and I used biblical proper names.

Irretrievable

[yeah, the pome is irretrievable, betches!]