muffy bolding

Speaking as an old, fat, tired, Riot Grrl…may I just say: I used to wanna change the fucking world — now I just wanna be the girl with THE MOIST CAKE.

“I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn’t last long.” — Miss Shelley Winters

Myself and the GORGEOUS and AMAZING Miss Dawn Wells last week on the last day of the movie we just shot together, “Hotel Arthritis” — directed by that brilliant Hollywood boy wonder, Jason Lockhart. The very best part of doing what I am lucky enough to do for a living? Meeting THE AWESOME GODS AND GODDESSES who people the works of art that helped make me who I am as not only a writer and performer, but as a PERSON.

So, here we are: an old hooker AND Mary Ann…here on Gilligan’s Isle!

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

To the brilliant, beautiful, most popular boy at our high skyool who is my date to our class reunion in Fresno this weekend: Do me this one favor, darling. Even though you get TOP-SHELF PUSSY thrown at you like motherfuckin’ Frisbees everyday of your perfect, golden, goddamned life…when we are out cruising around in that limo, PLEASE make a pass at me. Guzzle as much Don Julio as you need to to do so, and you CERTAINLY don’t need to follow through, but I am begging you…MAKE A PASS AT ME — just so I can look at you and say, “Okay, so let me get this straight. REALLY? NOW you wanna fuck me? You didn’t wanna fuck me when I was a smooth, nubile, SMOKIN’ HOT 17 year old with a face like Valerie Bertinelli and titties that went POW — but now that I look like Ernest Borgnine with salt bloat, chin whiskers, and a gunt…NOW you wanna fuck me? NOW? REALLY?”

I beg of you, Markie — with my beloved husband’s blessing — grant an old hooker this one wish and I will TOTALLY love you forever…or blow you for the difference — whichever comes first. I adore you! Can’t wait!

Last night I was on the set of Hotel Arthritis — shooting a scene directed by that visionary Boy Wonder of Directors, Jason Lockhart — alongside the DEAD-SEXY DEAD-FUNNY Miss Jacqui Holland, the MINDBOGGLINGLY HILARIOUS Broadway god John Tartaglia, and the unbelievably gorgeous Miss Dawn Wells, who came into all of our childhood living rooms every single afternoon as Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island — and as we all stood there in between shots, belly laughing, getting our lips touched up, and waiting for them to adjust the lights, I had one of those out-of-body moments where you are hovering above yourself, looking down on your life…and I realized that instead of being addicted, incarcerated, on the pole, or dead like so many of my kin…I am here and alive and I just cannot believe my good fortune. Dumb-Lucky ol’ Hooker. That’s me.

The Jackals began in Fresno, back when we were baby-faced teenagers. A group of ruthless, artistic renegades and degenerates who did not belong there — who knew that hot, flat, vapid land was not and would not EVER be enough for any of us. Over time, the group has expanded to include others of our ilk — those who don’t just blindly believe that something exists; we gotta taste it, touch it, film it, sculpt it, write it, act it, drink it, snort it, smoke it, or fuck it. But first, always…WE BELLY LAUGH AT IT.

In the past week, we have lost two of our beloved Jackal brethren: Bob MacDonald and Jimmy Rosenthal. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE. I shan’t crack a bottle of Don Julio just so that I might pour the first pull onto their graves, like some sort of teary-eyed scooter snatch named Starla. I shall instead drop my white cotton granny panties and, like the Jackal that I am and always will be…SQUAT, AND PISS ON THEM — because that’s how we fucking do it. See you at The Jackalfest, my brothers. I love you. xoxo

The bottom line, kids, is that ALL politicians are bought and paid for to some degree, both Republicans AND Democrats. That is the nature of the beast. If you ain’t bought, paid for, and beholden, you ain’t in office, old sport. It’s as simple as that.

However, allow me to say this: I am a staunch, lifelong Democrat because I would much rather align myself with the party of the ineffectual intellectual elite than the PURELY FUCKING EVIL. Mark my words, Mein Poppets — if elected, this new class of Republicans would have my whining liberal ilk ON THEIR MOTHERFUCKING BLEEDING-HEART KNEES BEGGING FOR THE RETURN OF THAT FECKLESS, DISTRACTED, WAR-PIG, IDIOT-PRINCE GEORGE W. BUSH (& CO.) Knitter, PLEASE. Those crafty bastards just wanted our hard-earned simolians for their counterfeit oil war. These American-Taliban pricks WANT OUR VERY SOULS FOR THEIR RELIGIOUS WAR. That misguided, delusional, frightening Brides of Christ like Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin might even be nominally considered qualified or appropriate for the most powerful office in the world just shows how far-gone we are as a culture.

If there is, indeed, a god — may he help us all.

Every writer has a direct “creative genealogy” that can be traced back to a single source, a literary ancestor, the echoes of whose work and/or influence can be felt in your own.

If that is true, then I owe MUCH to this man, who fully nurtured and produced two of the three amazing writing mentors who fully nurtured and produced ME: Wayne Cole, Bonnie Hearn Hill, and DeWayne Rail. These three taught a wry, ambitious, working class girl from Fresno to simply put ass in seat and just fucking WRITE — and helped me believe not only that I could, but that I should. And so, I do. Everyday.

Philip Levine is my literary grandfather — to whom I paid reverent homage in my poem, “Librarian” — the ruthless, fearless, in-your-face teacher with the powerful countenance and the loud fruit:

“One who eats thunderous apples…to fill my sullen silence.”

and to him I owe more than I could ever repay.

Congratulations, sir — and thanks.

Fresno’s Philip Levine named nation’s poet laureate

By Donald Munro/The Fresno Bee

Philip Levine, the powerhouse poet whose Pulitzer Prize helped put the writing program at California State University, Fresno, on the international map, will receive another significant honor today: The title of poet laureate of the United States.

Levine, 83, will be named to the position today by the Library of Congress. He will be the 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, the post’s official title, and will serve for 2011-12. The position has been in existence in various forms since 1937.

Levine’s name had been kicked around for years in connection with the title, which includes a $35,000 stipend and the opportunity to work on a project while at the library.

“Actually, because of my age, I just assumed that I had been found wanting some years ago,” Levine said Tuesday with a typical dose of self-deprecation. “I didn’t even think about it much.”

The job description includes giving an annual lecture, introducing poets in the library’s annual poetry series and raising “the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.”

It does not involve actually writing any poems, a common misconception that again brings up a lighthearted Levine riff. “I don’t know if they’d want me writing for official events,” Levine said. “A poem to Congress? No, thank you.”

In a statement, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington called Levine one of America’s great narrative poets.

“His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’ — about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.”

Levine, who has written 20 collections of poems, received the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for “The Simple Truth.” He won the National Book Award in 1991 for “What Work Is” and in 1980 for “Ashes: Poems New and Old.”

He is a professor emeritus at Fresno State and also taught at New York University, Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of California at Berkeley, among others.

Critics have called him “a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland” for his emphasis in his poems on the lives of factory workers trapped by poverty and the drudgery of the assembly line. Joyce Carol Oates once called him “a visionary of our dense, troubled, mysterious time.”

Levine was born in Detroit and started teaching at Fresno State in 1958. The university didn’t even have a creative writing program at the time.

His close friend and fellow poet Peter Everwine, who taught with Levine for many years, said the poet laureate designation is a significant honor for Levine that caps a long and distinguished career. And it means more bragging rights for the university.

But there is something deeper to consider: the timing.

“The country seems to be so occupied with who we are, what we are, what kind of country we are,” Everwine said. “We have a dysfunctional government, an economy falling apart, two wars, terrible unemployment. Everyone is sort of saying, ‘Who are we as a people?’ I think Phil’s poetry is directly related to those kinds of things.”

Levine splits his time these days between Fresno, where he lives seven months out of the year, and Brooklyn, where he lives the other five. Although retired from full-time teaching, he makes guest appearances at writers’ conferences around the country.

But he considers Fresno home, even with all the changes over the years.

“The air and the water got worse, but aside from that, the living got better,” he said.

Pepperoni pizza, juice boxes, “Fight For Your Right To Party” and “Dick In A Box” cranked to 11, “Magic: The Gathering” card game, my beautiful 17 year old man-child with a Mohawk, and his crew of adorable 17 year old man-child friends in my dining room…having the time of their lives. I am listening to them BELLY LAUGH right now. It’s like the cast of SUPERBAD up in this motherfucker. I am in SHEER BLISS.