Seeking Benedick.

Last single girl standing.

It's a formidable idea, and a bit of a badge of honor, I should think.

I have a handful of girlfriends that have been confidants and lovely friends since we were children. Since kindergarten, and second grade, and third grade. You know those friendships that are changeless because they've been through so much change? Here's the wonderful thing: they're all matched up. Some are married, some are about to be, and some are maybe just in very wonderful committed relationships.

And then there's me.

I imagine it has something to do with fear. And something to do with the peripatetic nature of my life for the past few years. And also maybe something to do with the fact that I know what I don't want. The problem is: I really don't know what I DO want. From life. Not definitively.

Occasionally, I should imagine, people make a success out of living in perpetual limbo.

But when I am blue (and you may know this), I watch Much Ado About Nothing. And every single time I cry "heigh ho!" for Beatrice, my kindred spirit of merriment and mirth and wit and self-deception.

And every time, every single time, I fall in love with Benedick.

I am seeking Benedick. I am seeking a man's man who's tongue is quick. Who can wink back at me without looking like a child, nor like a creep. (I am, so my friends tell me, a first-class winker. Strange talent. But true!). I am seeking a man who, like me, doesn't know what he's looking for, but is waiting for it to break upon him.

My problem, my perpetual problem, is that I try to become what a man thinks he wants. And then I wake up one day and realize I'm misrepresenting myself and must cut and run.

Which is why I'm waiting for Benedick. Someone who cannot stomach a dependent woman. Someone who has fight in them, but also compassion. Someone who will push back when I push. Someone who is not easy to love for anyone but me.

Sometimes I think that's too much to ask. Most times I think it's worth it to wait. Wait for love to break upon me. My friends tell me I have too many expectations.

I just want someone who's stronger than me.

And dimples wouldn't hurt.... ;)

Stars in the Mailbox.

We all know that finding an actual letter in the mailbox is something to celebrate. But how about when, instead of the standard-issue forever stamp, you find the dashing Gregory Peck staring up at you from beside your name?

I just bought a sheet of these, and am fondly recalling my long-since-departed sheets of Katharine Hepburn and Gary Cooper stamps.

So next time you send some snail mail, post it with a star.

Here's to the little things in life!

Paris @ Midnight

Have you ever seen Paris at Midnight?

You should.

I am an Italophile, through and through. But like all good Europeans in pursuit of personal fulfillment and an enviable cache of life experiences, occasionally I dally on the side.

After seeing Woody Allen's latest film last night, I'm pretty sure Paris would make an ideal mistress. She's always dressed perfectly for any occasion, and she has plenty of secrets and stories and grace.

I've never been to France at all. I may just have to find a way.

Paris at Midnight. The film is the improbable combination of the fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Woody Allen's inimitable comedic style.

It's every romantic's dream, combining multiple memorable Parisian epochs to weave quite a story.

Add to this the delight of not only seeing actors and actresses pop up on screen that spur the thought, "Oh I love her!" "Oh I love him!",

and oohing over the inspired costume design (fashionistas beware; you'll be aching to accent your wardrobe with 20's-inspired items), but the characters themselves make up an echelon of the cultural icons who challenged the mores of society and created cultural milestones, markers, and entire classifications of art. You'll come home and pull out all your school books, desperate to begin reading and learning and reacquainting yourself with these greats.

And until you can feed the hungry intellectual giant that no doubt broods inside your skulls, you can just ooh and ah over the costumes and sceneries, and giggle over Allenisms given renewed vitality by contemporary actors.

And you'll probably find yourself making plans, like I did, to somehow, some way, go dancing in Paris.

Play it Again, and Again, and Again.

It's coming...

The Atlanta Symphony is presenting Casablanca this Friday, film on the big screen, while the magnificent Atlanta Symphony Orchestra plays the score. CAN YOU IMAGINE!

This is not to be missed. And maybe to prepare, I'll do a little 'round robin of classic films starring the truly fantastic actors and actresses of the Silver Screen. We'll start with Bogey and add Audrey for some Sabrina.

And then there's Audrey and Greg Peck in the inimitable Roman Holiday.

Next is Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall in Designing Woman.

Then How to Marry a Millionaire for some keynotes delivered by Betty, Lauren, and Marilyn.

Marilyn and Tony Curtis warm things up with Some Like It Hot.

How about the more obscure Kings Go Forth with Curtis and Natalie Wood.

Also starring The Voice himself, Mr. Frank Sinatra.

Which of course means I'll have to take time for one of my favorites: Sinatra and Grace Kelly in High Society.

And next is Kelly and Cary in To Catch a Thief.

Then Bringing Up Baby with Cary and Katharine.

Or The Rainmaker with Katherine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster.

From Here to Eternity stars Lancaster and the lovely Deborah Kerr,

who starred in The Journey with Yul Brynner.

(And was photographed by him!)

Apparently Brynner was a marvelous photographer, because while on set of Anastasia,

he also captured the beautiful Ingrid Bergman.

Which brings us back to where we started, to Bergman and Bogey at Sam's piano in Rick's Cafe Americana.

So if you're in Atlanta this weekend, head to the amphitheatre in Alpharetta and catch the sweeping drama of Casablanca with a LIVE soundtrack. If it plays and you're not there, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of your life!

Sunrise, Sunset...

Trying to write my article on Ethan Hawke today.

Interviewed him a week ago and am just now finding the TIME to put it together...

Well... not just now, more like in 8 hours, after my crazy busy day...

Wish me luck!

With a Hey Nonny Nonny!

I watched Much Ado About Nothing last night for several reasons.

1. After subjecting myself to the dismal, stomach-wrenching sacrilege of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's go at Taming of the Shrew, I was in desperate need of some deftly handled Bard.

2. Much Ado's clever banter always seems to remind me what I'm looking for.

3. It never fails to lighten my spirits.

From those opening lines, with Emma Thompson perched so perfectly in an olive tree, reading to the picnic on the Tuscan hillside, it gets me.

Sigh no more, ladies.

Sigh no more.

Men were deceivers ever.

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey Nonny Nonny!

With a quick opening scene and a prelude of what's to come, the viewer is then surrendered to the joyous strains of Patrick Doyle's masterful score, which sweeps you down the hillside, back to the villa, infecting your blood with the high spirited anticipation of what's to come.

The best part, however, is the masterful execution of banter between Emma Thompson's Beatrice and Kenneth Branaugh's Benedick. After watching an over-the-top Petruchio who milked the audience in awkward silences that he misinterpreted as interest, and the hectic Katherine who threw tantrums, not shrew storms, on stage, throwing Shakespeare's clever lines back and forth at each other at level 11 with little emotional range and less understanding of what they were saying, it was like manna from heaven to watch Beatrice and Benedick. Thompson and Branaugh deliver lines as though they were modern vernacular, as though these words, and none other, sprang to mind. They don't ride Shakespeare's clever coattails. They breathe his artform like it is air. And they leave me smiling.

Beatrice: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

Benedick: God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face.

Beatrice: Scratching could not make it worse on't were such a face as yours...

Benedick: When I said I will die a bachelor, I did not think I would live till I were married...

Beatrice: I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest...

Benedick: Thou and I are too wise to love peaceably.

Benedick: Serve God. Love me. And mend.

Benedick: For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion...

Thursday! It can't be! It's too gruesome!

Darlings! Guess what I'm reading?

None other than Truman Capote's immortalized novella...

Haven't watched the movie in awhile... I'm waiting to see how different the book is. But I also find myself humming MoonRiver while I amble down Pearl Street. (Henry Mancini, you set the 60's to music...).

Holly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?

Paul: The mean reds? You mean like the blues?

Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long; you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

Paul: Sure.

Holly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

Holly: What do you do, anyway?

Paul: I'm a writer, I guess.

Holly: You guess? Don't you know?

Paul: OK, positive statement. Ringing affirmative. I'm a writer.

Holly: It's useful being top banana in the shock department.

Holly: I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead.