Happy Half-Birthday

Since this is the mid-point of my personal year, it's both the ideal time to look back as well as forward.

Well, I looked back. When they finally woke me up, they said it seemed a shame, because I looked so peaceful.

For all that I've done so far this year (this blog being the bulk of it) it's been a pretty boring year. A day or two a week of interesting followed by five or six days of the dreariest rut imaginable does not make for a magical life. Imagine living in East Berlin in the 70s but spending weekends in Venice; the good days don't seem to relieve the dull ones so much as mock them.

Yet most of the ways I can think of to liven things up involve other people - with their hard eyes and their instant hatred - and that's where my ambition usually crumbles. I've often wondered if I became a writer because I am a natural recluse or if these two manias of mine developed independently. Nowadays, given half a chance, I'd make Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton.

Although one of my original intentions in starting this blog was to maybe reach out and help others come to terms with their self-loathing by writing about my own in some relatable way, I have been so thoroughly shouted down whenever I've tried to that I have discontinued these posts. The problem is, it's a hard subject to write about without actually doing.

So I do still write about self-loathing, I just don't publish most of what I write anymore. I'm tired of people telling me I shouldn't hate myself when I clearly still do. I know that if I can't sort out my disordered thinking somehow, I'll never get better; certainly, every time I have written about it, I've felt better afterwards, even if these efforts did leave my readers feeling a bit queasy.

Until I get this self-loathing of mine under control, the rest of my years are all going to blur together like the past six months have, and I may end up a bitter, lonely old queen. This is the one thing I do not want to be. I may enjoy being alone, but there is no enjoyment in being lonely.

Today, for my half-birthday, I looked up at a dusken sky and made a wish upon Venus. I sure hope it comes true. In the meantime, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it does. At least I've got that to look forward to.

Now Showing - "Match Game"

Gene Rayburn has had enough, and he's turned the tables on Charles Nelson Reilly; turns out hosting's not as easy as it looks.

Also with Brett Somers, Eva Gabor, MacLean Stevenson, Marcia Wallace, and a celebrity I cannot identify named Bart. Alas, Marcia Wallce never yelled at him in the Mrs. Krabappel voice we've all come to know and love.

(Is it just me, or does the set look like psychedelic Dixie?)

RIP Charles Nelson Reilly

In the 70s, when I was a little 'mo, there were two bright beams of light, and they both appeared on game shows. One was, of course, Paul Lynde. The other was Charles Nelson Reilly.

And now they're both gone.

I doubt that Match Game would have had half the zing it did without Charles Nelson Reilly's witty zingers and double entendres, playfully scrapping with Brett Somers the way he did.

He never bothered to come out, he said, because he never needed to. He lived openly in Beverly Hills with his partner Patrick, and just kept on with his patented schtick. In later years he turned to teaching, schooling both Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler in the art of funny.

In a career spanning fifty years he did it all: Broadway, movies, television. He acted, directed, and wrote, as well as teaching.

He will be missed.