personal political

mailer

I've never read anything by Norman Mailer though I have visited the street in Brooklyn Heights where he used to live. I didn't read his work because many years ago I saw him in that feminist documentary Town Bloody Hall and that was the end of the story, for me. Joan Smith thinks he was a sexist homophobic reactionary too. I'm glad she said it.

annie and anita

Annie Lennox at the Peace One Day concert in London last week, singing 'There Must be an Angel' for Anita Roddick, who died suddenly a few weeks ago.

sightseeing

We were in David Jones (shopping for warm socks) when we saw a celeb this afternoon.

another tragic elvis

There are elements of my past which can sound like a soap opera. I have a photo on the wall of my study of my first true love - occasionally people ask me who it is and I have to almost-sheepishly explain that she was my lover who became a druggie and died...

So I feel for Elvis Perkins, not only because of his name, but because his father died of AIDS and his mother died in one of the planes which crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11. At this point it's tempting to chuckle over such a bizarre combination of fate, except that I can dimly grasp how difficult it must be (and yet, his only option) to retain a sense of ownership (if that's the right word) of his own loss.

inspiring jews

Rootless cosmopolitan Tony Karon has been running a series on leftie Jews, here and here and here. (The comments threads are interesting too.)

angebrad

Speaking of celeb marriages, it's nice to know that the wax wedding of Pitt and Jolie has been cancelled. I've never been able to see what anyone sees in Brad Pitt - right from the start in Thelma and Louise I thought he had a very plain face with one cardboard expression - but he's won me over with his statement that they won't be getting married until everyone else (ie gay people) is able to be legally married. That's the kind of personal politics I like.

tombrooke

Hey, what's Brooke Shields doing in Rome for Tomkat's wedding? Last I heard, he'd criticised her for taking anti-depressants for postnatal depression and she'd hit back at him. They must have made it up somewhere along the line.

more on madonna's adoption

Madonna has done a series of interviews to defend her adoption of a boy from Malawi. In an interview with the BBC she disputes the Guardian's account of the boy's family situation. Whatever the truths, untruths or ambiguities, she lost me by describing David as very flirtatious - I can't stand it when people project that onto little children.

fisk in sydney

Robert Fisk will be talking in Sydney on Friday March 10.

more lennon memories

Last night we discussed the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death and co-parent remembered her father (who would have been 60 at the time) in tears. The enormous BBC Lennon-death memories website has a lot of stories from people who saw their parents crying. Interesting. I don't remember crying myself, even though I was much more of Lennon's generation than co-p's father. Perhaps you had to be older to recognise the larger significance of such a death.

The Guardian memories site is interesting too - until you get to the obnoxious Julie Burchill quote at the end. Has that woman ever written anything useful, rather than self-aggrandising - I don't think so.

I only scored 5 out of 10 on the quiz. I think you'd have to be a pretty hardcore fan to get 10 (she says defensively).