Ida Lupino. I want a name like “Ida Lupino.” She’s my favorite hard-luck dame–powerful and sexy, and one of my favorites of her films is Road House. I made a photo a few years ago and called it Road House, not because it had anything to do with her, but because I liked thinking of her, Cornell Wilde, Celeste Holm, and Richard Widmark when I looked at it. She sings in the movie, a throaty, gravelly, been-around-the-block-and-back voice that sounds like it’s about to fall apart. “There’s only one kind of lovin’—MY kind of lovin’…”
I’ve been thinking about her because I’m going to show that photo next spring, as well as several other single-image color works that I’ve never shown before–romantic platinum blonde landscapes, peach blossoms, and Jack Radcliffe of course. Maybe. But that’s all I’m going to tell you for now.
It’s just a stunningly beautiful day in San Francisco today. With all the recent rains, everything’s in bloom and everybody’s sneezing and rubbing his eyes. Has it become accepted to use “their” as a single possessive pronoun? I grew up with “his” as the gender neutral choice, but then had “his/her” drummed into me in college to undo the gender bias of my forefathers, I mean foreparents. It still makes me cringe to hear “their” in the same sentence as a single ungendered subject, but even more so to hear “his/her” or “he/she.” What is one to do?