Bashing It In Bainbridge

So it's a new blog. My old blog bit the dust, not even a footprint of it left, didn't even bite the dust, it simply...........whoooooosh. Bye, Bye, Miss Bainbridge Pie, took my Mad in Pursuit down the Chimney Shoot Till the Shoot was left dry....

.......Oh, how good it is to be back in the land of BLOGGING again!!

So much has happened. Not big stuff. Little stuff. Little big stuff.

Like: I'm in Bainbridge's store PAPER PRODUCTS and it's a slow day, a snow day, and I'm talking to the two gentlemen behind the counter, one's a youngish man, one's an elderlish man, and one of us (but who/which?) mentions the movies. Hve you seen "The Artist?' ""Hugo?" "The Ides of March?" Finally I ask, I dare to ask, "Who is your favorite director of All Time?" I ask this of each of the two men. One young, one old.

I wait.

The older gentleman goes first. "I would say......Fellini," he says.

"Ah, Fellini!" I say. "8 !/2!" "Juliette of the Spirits!" Plus his wonderful wife, Giuletta Masina!" (Pardon the spelling, I have more than probably gotten it wrong). But anyway, the gentleman nods his head up and down approvingly. From Fellini we go to Woody Allen, who is a great fan of Fellini and who has attempted, in his own Allen way, to pay homage to Fellini in certain of his films.

I turn to the younger man. "And you?" I ask, "your favorite director?" (thinking, all the while, that it would be some young director, someone I likely have never heard of).....whereupon he says, "I will have to say" [and he blushes} "..Kurosawa.'

Baboom.

Kurosawa.

My own most favorite film director in all the world.

So I tell him so and he steps out from behind his cubicle and we hug and pat each other on the bat and then he says, this youngish man, "You know, years ago, I took a class on film from......from a professor at Olympic College named Dr. ..........Dr. ..........Deeeeeeeee ....well, I can't remember his name right this moment, but this man was such a powerful instructor in terms of film, he taught so intelligently about film, that I have never been able to watch a film again without A) being able to appreciate a film without thinking of this professor, and, B) without being able to "read" a film in terms of all that a film has to offer, from beginning to end."

The young man lowered his head, shook it, looked down at me and smiled.

"Could that man perhaps have been named Dr. Robert Dietz?" I asked.

The young man beamed.

"Yes! Yes! That is his name, how do you know!" he exclaimed.

"Because," I said, "I, too, have taken one of his film classes, and because he happens to be one of my oldest and dearest friends. In fact, I am seeing him and his wife, Mel, this very afternoon and I will tell him about this conversation."

At which point the youngish man exploded into a paroxysm of joy.

It was one of those Bainbridge moments that are happening to me more frequently.

How can I explain.
**********************
ANOTHER?

I was singing in the fruit and vegetable aisles of TOWN & COUNTRY. "You say tomato and I say tomatoe/ you say potato and I say potatoe/ potato/potatoe/tomato/tomatoe/ Let's call the whole thing off".............

........and yes, on Bainbridge there are lots of "non-looks", that is, people who behave as if you simply "are not there", the kind of withering "stance-look" that poor Jimmy Stewart earned in the wonderful movie "Harvey" from those poor people with such low insecurity or low imaginational-forums that render them simply unable to bear those around them who are doing something that is unnaturally (to them) foreign, such as: singing or dancing IN PUBLIC! [ahem, ahem] - - - when all of a sudden: a beautiful, stylishly dressed woman in her fifties, I'd guess, walked up to me and said, "It's so nice to hear somebody singing. May I ask what it is that you DO?" "Me?" I said. "Why, I'm a psychologist!" "Wow," she said, "it's doubly nice to meet a Happy Psychologist! WE have a lot of dance in OUR family," she said, smiling at me. I was beginning to feel that uncomfortable feeling that one feels when one has just been complemented by a lunatic, when she said...."My husband's sister is the choreographer Twyla Tharp."

To which I said, elegantly enough, "YOUR HUSBAND'S SISTER IS THE CHOREOGRAPHER TWLA THARP?"

To which the stylishly elegant lady smiled and nodded, "Yup."

To which I said again, but louder, because I am from, after all, a farm in Silverdale, but hey, I AM well read and smart{as hell,} "YOUR HUSBAND'S SISTER IS TWYLA THARP???"

To which the stylish lady once again replied, "Yes," and then she said the following: "And I am going right home and call Twyla and tell her that I have just met a Happy Psychologist who has actually heard of her, on Bainbridge Island."

So there you go. I don't know where you went, but there you do.


These things happen to me all the time.
********************

So the other day my husband, Alan, and I were OFF the island, getting me an Upper GI and a Lower Bowel, which was hilarious in itself, if you think of it, and I did. Me, the target person, in thin scrubs, and the doctor and two nurses, all in thick radiation-repellant clothing. Yeah, thanks so much.

I'm on this long board with this other big expensive piece of space-looking-equipement hovering over me and, every now and again, one of the thickly-attired-radiation-proofed-nurses would make a run at me with a thermos full of Barium with a bendy straw, while the doctor, standing behind a screen, would call out, "DRINK! SWALLOW! HOLD YOUR BREATH! LET IT OUT! BREATHE! GOOD!" And they would continue that while I, the thin-scrubbed-person, was being turned over and over on the piece of expensive {God-bless-it} equpment, as the nurse kept making runs at me with the thermos filled with Barium.

So Alan is standing there with the doctor and the nurses and he is looking at the pictures coming through, which are pictures of my intestines and stomach areas.

And Alan says, "Oh, my GOD! WHAT IS THAT!"

And a nurse says, "That's Kay's stomach."

And Alan says, "Oh my God, what's WRONG with her STOMACH!!!???!!"

And the nurse says, "NOTHING is wrong with her stomach, her stomach is a good stomach, that's a GOOD stomach, Alan."

And Alan is going, "AAAOIDHGNLOAAAAA,".....

And finally the nurse says, "I get it, HOW OLD ARE YOU? Maybe......you are used to......THE KIDNEY BEAN STOMACH."

And the nurse goes on to describe and illustrate for Alan "the kidney bean stomach" that we were all educated about, in the fifties and sixties. The nice little kidney bean shaped stomach. Which has nothing to do with the REAL Saturday Night Live Shaped stomach.

"Yeah," the nurse said, nodding sympathetically to Alan, "I used to think that all Wisconsin was GREEN, because it was green on the map," she said.

Ha. Ha. As my North Dakota relatives used to say.
I heard all this.
While I was slopping down Barium.
While being rushed at by nurses.
And, later, being congratulated by the Doctor for being his Best Patient in a Long, Long Time because: Guess What, Folks: I. Just. Kept. On. Singing.

Because that's what my mama taught me to do.
And it's not a bad lesson.

"Bash" can mean a party. It can mean a celebration. That's what I mean it to mean when I say "Bashing it in Bainbridge". Mostly, here, it can be a celebration.

The other day I overheard somebody on the street, a longtime Bainbridge-Islander, tell a NEW-Island-Islander ....that she {the old timer) didn't like Tofu. Oh my God. Imagine that. The old tim Bainbridge Islander actually saying she didn't like Tofu. "It has no taste," she said, "it has no color, and it barely has no chew." And I thought that the woman she was saying this news to was gonna faint. Oh, Joseph Conrad, where are you! The horror, the horror.

Tomorrow evening, Alan and I will have dinner with our great friend and the resplendent film professor, Dr. Dietz and his gorgeous wife {and our dear friend} Mel and our wonderful friends, Ann and Jan. At Poulsbo's restaurant, Mor-Mor's, where Alan and I said our wedding vows. We will raise our glasses high and toast to mortal love and playfulness and music and film and poetic feeling and creativity.....or maybe we will simply order and smile at each other and just dig in and eat.