Cock your hat - angles are attitudes

Bonjour, mon cherie!

Have you seen Midnight in Paris yet? Sacre bleu, c'est incredible! It has everything j'adore: Paris, romance, inexplicable magic, poetry, and - of course - Golden Age thinking!

I sometimes think how can anyone ever come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t because, like, you look around, every street, every boulevard has its own special art form, and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe Paris exists… and these lights! I mean, come on! There is nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, cafes, people drinking coffee, singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.”

-Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris

Why do people not talk like this anymore?! *Sigh!*:-

"Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present. The name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one is living in. It's a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present."

-Midnight in Paris

Golden age thinking is completely, utterly and unashamedly the basis of my SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS New Year's Eve plans!

I am SO EXCITED!!!

It all started when my beloved camerado had her heart most cruelly broken - and found herself flying back to England on the afternoon of New Year's Eve with a sudden dearth of romantic plans. "Never fear!" said I. "The spirit of Sparkles & Crumbs means you need never spend a New Year's Eve alone!"

And that was that - I would be throwing a spectacular soiree with all of my favourite people [including some eligible single men as unwitting suitors for a New Year's kiss for the camerado! Just call me Emma Woodhouse...]. Now all we needed was a sufficiently fabulous theme... we thought long and hard... then it hit me:

THE RAT PACK!

The heroes of the Golden Age of pizzazz, character, charm, talent, friendship, style, champagne, swingin' and good times. They crooned to Marilyn Monroe and JFK, heeded the wise words of their Den Mother Lauren Bacall, and left an example of living it up, never backing down, holding on to that swagger through love and loss" [~] - all whilst impeccably well-dressed, of course. What could be a better theme for the spirit of a Sparkles & Crumbs NYE soiree?!

"You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough."

-Frank Sinatra

It's going to be invitation only. Sharp suits [and possibly the odd fedoras] for the gentlemen, glittering evening-wear for the ladies worthy of Judy Garland and the great Ms Monroe. Whiskey sours and sparkling flutes of champagne upon arrival. Old Sammy Davis and Sinatra songs on the speakers getting our guests in the mood, before the cocktails kick in and we dance until dawn. And I need YOUR ideas, too, beloved friends! What canapes worthy of the Rat Pack should I serve? Any particular decorating ideas? Cocktail recipes?

Hopefully, we'll make our heroes and heroines proud!

Of course, the age-old Sparkles & Crumbs dilemma... what in the world to wear? Really, I just want an excuse to break out my be-glittered black ballgown again... but these wonders would certainly be worthy of Lorelai Lee and Dorothy Shaw, too!:-

I just want everyone to feel that, for one night, they are living in their favourite Old Hollywood movie...

An old friend: "It is a wonderful theme, but..."

Me: "But what? Of course it's wonderful! There is no but!"

"But, it's not so much a specific theme for a party. It's more 'how Miss Cakewise wants her entire life to be.'"

And what, pray, is wrong with that?

Frank Sinatra' Letter to the LA Times:

"Dear Friends,

When I saw your Calendar cover today about George Michael, "'he reluctant pop star,' my first reaction was he should thank the good Lord every morning when he wakes up to have all that he has, and that'll make two of us thanking God every morning for all that we have.

I don't understand a guy who lives 'in hopes of reducing the strain of his celebrity status.' Here's a kid who 'wanted to be a pop star since I was about 7 years old.' And now that he's a smash performer and songwriter at 27 he wants to quit doing what tons of gifted youngsters all over the world would shoot grandma for - just one crack at what he's complaining about.

Come on George, Loosen up. Swing, man, Dust off those gossamer wings and fly yourself to the moon of your choice and be grateful to carry the baggage we've all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments

And no more of that talk about 'the tragedy of fame.' The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you're singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn't seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin's day. And you're nowhere near that; you're top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in latin means thanks-to-the-fans who were there when it was lonely.

Talent must not be wasted. Those who have it - and you obviously do or today's Calendar cover article would have been about Rudy Vallee - those who have talent must hug it, embrace it, nurture it and share it lest it be taken away from you as fast as it was loaned to you.

Trust me. I've been there.

Signed, 'Frank Sinatra'

"

"I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good friends, fine family - and I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually."

-Frank Sinatra

I can't wait to see out 2011 in true Frank Sinatra style.

Love, Catherine wheels and sparklers xxx

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

OH MY GREG PECK, OH MY GREG PECK!

This looks AMAZING...

"Yes, I love you,’ I said desperately, "but I love you like I love the wind, or the waves. I wouldn’t know how to love you as a person as I’d want to possess you. But I could never dream of possessing you. You are like a beautiful force of nature, forever out of reach."

"But I don’t want to be out of reach. I want to be touched. I want to be hugged. I want to be loved like an ordinary girl. What’s wrong with that?"

~

Love, Marilyn and Maf the dog xxx

And out of all these things I've done, I think I love you better now

Ola, chicas!

Almost three years ago, I wrote about how my fairy tale would go.

Here's how the love story went for real.

Once upon a time...

"When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible."

-Johnathan Safran Froer

My lover asks me:
“What is the difference between me and the sky?”
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.

-Nizar Qabbani

It’s always surprising, this sense
of relief. When you kiss me
unexpectedly, I’m reminded of
the time I left a shoe-box containing
ten or eleven thousand dollars on a
coffee table in a hotel lobby in Northern Italy.
I was between floors in the elevator,
staring at my reflection knowing something
was missing when I remembered what was,
and pushed every button and rolled through
the doors, sprinted hallways in search of the
universal symbol for stairs, barreled
down six flights, and found it
waiting there, untouched,
and haloed by the light
of late-afternoon.

-John K. Samson, 'Everything Will Be Okay'

~

"Dear Joe,

If I can only succeed in making you happy - I will have succeeded in the biggest and most difficult thing there is - that is to make one person completely happy. Your happiness means my happiness."

-A letter from Marilyn Monroe to her ex-husband, found a week after her death.

But what about when your one person isn't completely happy all the time? What then?

Someone once told me that love
is winning the lottery
but losing the ticket.

-Gregory Sherl

And it's dark in a cold December
But I've got you to keep me warm
If you're broken, I will mend ya
And I'll keep you sheltered from the storm that's raging on

I'm out of touch, I'm out of love
I'll pick you up when you're getting down
And out of all these things I've done
I think I love you better now

I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind
I'll do it all for you in time
And out of all these things I've done
I think I love you better now

-Ed Sheeran

"And I swear I grew like a flower every hour of the fifty years I was with you – and that’s not to say we didn’t have bad days. But when morning came, you were laughing. Yeah, there were times we were both half-in and half out the door but I never needed more than the stars of your grin to lead me home... We are paint on a slick canvas – it’s gonna take a whole lot to stick but if we do, we’ll be a masterpiece. On nights you couldn’t sleep, I’d lay awake for hours counting sheep for you and you would rewrite the rhythm of my heartbeat with the way you held me in the morning, resting your head on my chest and I swear my breath turned silver the day your hair did, like I swore marigolds grew in the folds of my eyelids the first time I saw you and they bloomed the first time I watched you dance to the tune of our kitchen kettle in our living room in a world that could have left us hard as metal, we were soft as nostalgia together. For fifty years, we feathered wings too wide to be prey and we flew through days strong and through days fragile as sand-castles at high tide and you would fold your love into an origami firefly and you’d throw it through my passageways until all my hidden chambers were filled with lanterns, now, every trap door, every pore of my heart is open because of you – because of us.”

-Andrea Gibson

Baby, I have no idea how this will end

Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth’s hips

And our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary

Or maybe tomorrow, my absolute insanity

Combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills

Will leave us

Like a love letter

In a landfill

But whatever

Whenever

However this ends...

I want you to know, that right now,

I love you forever

I love you for the hardest mile we walked together

For the night I collected every sharp knife in the house

And threw them one by one on the roof

Then told the sun,

Listen show off,

From now on, you are only to give me blades of grass;

Things that are growing and soft...

Do you know, the night you told me you had a crush on my ears,

I swore to never to become Van Gogh

And look, baby,

They are both still there

Just like my firefly heart is still right there in your glass jar

I never trusted anybody more to poke enough holes in the lid...

You will never lose me to the wind

You are the lightning that made me fill my chest with candles

You are the thunder clapping for the poem that nobody else wants to hear

You are an icicle’s tear watering a tulip on the first day of spring

You melt me alive

You kiss me as deep as my roots will reach

And I want nothing more than to be an eyelash fallen on your cheek

Then being collected by your fingers

And held like a wish

I promise

That whatever I do

I will always try my best

To come true

-Andrea Gibson

Love, unsent letters and Lego blocks xxx