alice

March 5th is just around the corner. Why is this day meaningful? Because Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland opens at a theatre near me! I love Johnny Depp in anything, but I especially love him in roles that are really weird! As usual, this film version contains characters that actually only appear in the sequel, entitled Through the Looking Glass. My favorite aspect of the history of this story is the author's nicknames for the three sisters for whom this story was first told - Prima (Lorina Liddell), Secunda (Alice Lidell) and Tertia (Edith Lidell).

Alice in Chains will be in Nashville tomorrow night. I've decided that I am just too set in my ways to enjoy concerts anymore. My last concert was Prince in Phoenix a couple of years ago. It was an awesome experience, but I found that I was incredibly annoyed by drunken girls who were dressed in clothes that resembled streetwalkers. My three younger friends ditched me to go to an "afta party", which I sooooo did not want to go to.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant. Arlo Guthrie's song and story are 45 years old. Unbelievable! I honestly thought it was recorded when I was about 12 or 13, but I guess not! I love the original story about the Thanksgiving party and the garbage dump conviction that Arlo later claimed prevented him from being drafted and sent to Viet Nam (which wasn't really true). When I was a very young teenager, I knew this was a war protest song, but I somehow also got the impression that it was also a song about smoking pot. Now, when I look at the lyrics and the story that inspired the song, I see that it had very little to do with pot! Although, truth be told, pot was a part of almost everything in those days.


Alice B. Toklas died on March 7, 1967. She is most famous for being the lover of Gertude Stein. But did you know that marijuana brownies actually became popular because she published a recipe for them in 1954? The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook is a wonderful combination of recipes and Alice's memoir. She lived 21 years longer than Gertude, which allowed her to stretch and grow beyond the shadow of Gertude. It turns out that she was a delightful and interesting person in her own right.



Today is the last day of Black History Month, so let's end with a poem by Alice Walker:

Before you knew you owned it

Expect nothing. Live frugally.
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely

Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.