Coffee Talk Week 2: Answer. Post. Link Up.

I finally gave in and joined Tumblr. Do you Tumble? Join me there.


Natalie Blair's blog, simply called Natalie Blair, is one of my new fave stalking reading grounds. On some things, we're similar, and on other things we're really different. I like that. I don't mind that she doesn't like The Hunger Games. No one who has any kind of human empathy likes it when Rue dies. (My uncle and I were just talking about it at brunch on Sunday.) I get that.

You should read Natalie's post about why she got an Arabic tattoo. P.S. Anybody who would judge a person for having a tattoo in Arabic is kind of a shit.

1. What's your favorite kind of coffee?

I like a hot, flavored coffee, or a plain coffee with a French vanilla or hazelnut creamer. I'm not opposed to whipped cream.



2. What is your dream laptop/computer? What are you using right now?

I still miss the mini-HP that my hubby tried to fix and ended up destroying. It was tiny. I could take it everywhere. Now I'm using a bigger HP laptop, a Pavilion g6. Not so easily portable.

3. Have you ever regretted a blog post?

Yeah - No More Content Warning. I thought I could get rid of my content warning, but apparently Google won't let me. I'm too dirty for my own good.

4. What is your favorite book?

That is not a fair question to ask a certified book nerd.

I'm a little obsessed with James Jones right now, but could I possibly pick a favorite between From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line and Whistle? No - I love them all. You can't break up a trilogy.

(A related obsession - Montgomery Clift.)

Seriously, I have a new favorite all the time, but if I were stranded on a desert island, I really hope I'd have Wuthering Heights. The Scarlet Letter is another one of my all-time favorites, and so is Fahrenheit 451.

5. What's in your bag?

Ugh, my bag. I'm a backpack-purse girl, 'cause my mini-HP used to fit in one. One day hubby and I were at the mall, and for some reason we went into Zumiez. I think we are the oldest people who have ever been in a Zumiez. (I'm a wannabe surfer, not a wannabe snowboarder/skater, anyway.) That's where I saw this rainbow-striped backpack purse I thought was really cool (I might have been a little drunk - we might have just come from Granite City). So I got it, but it turns out to be way bigger than I actually want or need.

So I'm not loving my current bag.

It's mostly full of empty space, but also a butterfly change purse, some i.d. and my debit card, $13 cash (not much of a cash person), my writer business cards, cherry Chapstick, sugar cookie lip gloss, a lipstick (but it's not really any good to me until I get a lip liner that matches - it's a lavender-ish neutral), pens and a list of books to look out for at next week's library used book sale.

https://amzn.to/467d0Kj - this is an affiliate link

'From Here to Eternity' Backstory + My 'Killers' Video

So I'm reading Montgomery Clift by Patricia Bosworth. Beautiful man, very talented in short bursts. Really insecure. Lots of addictions, way too much alcohol. Oddly close relationships with his twin sister and "Irish twin" brother. A Freudian wet dream, really. He had a weird thing about lying and crawling on floors, as if he preferred not to stand up (which you see Perce doing in The Misfits, and it works wonderfully for that character).


My favorite parts of this book are the parts with James Jones, regarding the filming of From Here to Eternity in 1953. (I've finished reading The Thin Red Line and started Whistle. I'm only on page 26 and already about to cry because Bobby Prell - the third avatar of Robert E. Lee Prewitt - is so gravely wounded.)

Jones, Clift and Frank Sinatra got along really well. Bosworth quotes an unnamed press agent as having said, "Jones looked like a nightclub bouncer with his thick neck and broken face. And there's this edgy cocky little wop Sinatra always spoilin' for a fight, and then Monty who managed to radiate class and high standards even when he was pissing in the gutter." Sorry for the ethnic insult, but that's the exact quote.

Jones was quoted as saying, "He'd come crawling down the fire escape, agile as a monkey, and then swing into my room. He'd be brandishing a bottle of Scotch and a pot of espresso. First time I ever tasted that kinda coffee. I hated it, but I drank it 'cause Monty did...He was an odd man, but I felt a strange rapport with him while we were making the movie."

Bosworth writes, "Driving out of Los Angeles Jones talked sotto voce to Jeanne [Green; she and her husband Fred were Clift's close friends] about Monty, saying he found him strange and asking if he was a homosexual. Jeanne said, 'I got very prim and said I had no idea. With that Jones suddenly confided, "I would have had an affair with him but he never asked me." ' "

Given that many James Jones characters are sexual opportunists willing to make love to whoever happens to be at hand, it's not too surprising that James was, most likely, bisexual. Just one more reason for me to feel affinity for the late author.

I don't share his dislike of espresso, though.

Clift was not fond of Burt Lancaster, and called him a bad actor behind his back. (Jim Caviezel and Sean Penn, playing essentially the same characters in The Thin Red Line, did not get along particularly well either. Must be a Prewitt-Warden/Witt-Welsh thing.) He was upset that Lancaster got first billing. He didn't get along with Marlon Brando, either, and he thought James Dean was just "weird." Of course, Dean was a very conscious imitator of both Clift and Brando.

The role of Adam in East of Eden (the "good" brother, not the one James Dean played) is one that Clift turned down. He was also offered a part in a production of Fahrenheit 451; he could have made a really great Montag. (When I first read 451 in middle school, I imagined that Montag was really old - I was surprised when I re-reread it earlier this year that Montag was 30- younger than I am now!)


Incidentally, I made this one-minute video with Ava Gardner stills from The Killers today.


Ava Gardner was married to Frank Sinatra during the filming of From Here to Eternity. Bosworth wrote,   "[Sinatra] seemed obsessed with [Gardner] - she had left him, unable to cope with his rages and his entourage, which followed him everywhere.

"Once during the course of the filming he became so depressed by her rejection he threatened suicide. Monty talked him out of it."

I do not think it would be an ethnic insult - or a stretch - to say that Frank Sinatra was kind of a drama queen. A straight guy drama queen.  At least the way Patricia Bosworth tells it.