----
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'Now here’s a difficult case: an undeniably excellent poet who died in prison, serving a sentence for having molested his daughter; a poet whose early work seems to show a visionary breadth and bounding imagination, but who barely published any new poems (or republished, times over, older poems) during the latter part of his life; and a poet Charles Bukowski called “the best unread poet in America” whose style synthesized elements of the most opaque of Olson’s Maximus poems or the collage aesthetic of the Tennis Court Oath (but who was also, at times, sexually frank, morally unambiguous in his amorality, and could tell a good story, like a West Venice West Georges Bataille).
'Outside of this small group (most of which also appear in his first collection, called John Thomas), Thomas published a chapbook of poems called Nevertheless in 1990, and contributed to the volume Abandoned Latitudes (with Paul Vangelisti and Robert Crosson) in 1983. A good, if not probing, obituary was published in the UK Independent (1); a much more detailed, and harrowing, account of his personality by his daughter, Gabrielle Idlet, appeared a little later in the LA Weekly (2). -- Brian Stefans, Free Space Comix
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(1) fromJohn Thomas: Beat poet known for his inability to write
Adrian Dannat, The Independent
"How does one review the work of a poet who mocks the societal role of the poet, who has no desire to publish his poetry and says that he has no interest in the familiar moral values of poetry and poets?" This was the question posed by Lawrence Lipton, fabled chronicler of the "Beat" group in California, about one of his most fascinating subjects, the poet John Thomas. In many ways Thomas was the antithesis of the hipsters, Bohemians and Beatniks chronicled in Holy Barbarians and sometimes seemed trapped by the wacky underground counter-culture he was widely assumed to be part of.
Indeed, he almost seemed an active enemy of the sprawling, self-indulgent alternative literary community of Los Angeles. He was something of an 18th-century figure, with a certain fondness for antique weapons (he collected sabres, dress swords and foils and, as any poet should, had a weakness for duels or the idea of them), orgies and satire; at 6'4" and weighing over 300 pounds, even his physical build betokened another, more heroic age.
A self-proclaimed "writer", one day Thomas was asked by the poet Maurice Lacy, "What do you write?" Without thinking Thomas replied, "I'm a poet", and thus had no choice but to write some of the stuff. Poetry certainly suited Thomas better than novels; as he admitted, "The novel-writing ambition was just sheer, vulgar pretence, wanting to be a great man." But even free verse was still a painful process for Thomas and his NOT writing and deep inability to write became his central theme if not celebrity.
The eponymous book John Thomas was put out in a limited edition of 405 copies, 30 of which were signed, numbered and even "sealed" by the author, presumably so they could not be read. This was published in 1972 and followed in 1976 by the elegant Epopoeia or the Decay of Satire. (In fact this second volume was the same as the first, except Thomas had deleted some works rather than adding any, further reducing his oeuvre.)
Thomas's last and perhaps fourth wife was Philomene Long, herself no small local legend, who had left her cloistered convent as a Catholic nun to escape to LA and as poetess/ film-maker documented the scene in such movies as Venice Beat and The California Missions, with Martin Sheen. Long also introduced Thomas to the Zen Center of LA, where they studied with the revered Maezumi Roshi, who gave her the Buddhist name "Gyokuho" or "Fragrant Jewel". In 1983, in a burst of activity, Thomas published Abandoned Latitudes, or rather he contributed a thin shard, "From Patagonia", to this collection of three LA writers. This was Thomas's most engaging finale, even if he was to live for almost 20 more years.
![]()
(2) fromHitting the Beats
Gabrielle Idlet, LA Weekly
My father, ”Venice West“ poet John Thomas, died of congestive heart failure on March 29 at the age of 71. His April 7 Los Angeles Times obituary describes him as ”the sage of Venice“ (Beyond Baroque executive director Fred Dewey), ”mentor“ (Wanda Coleman), even ”the best unread poet in America“ (Charles Bukowski). Another journalistic elegy, appearing in Los Angeles Magazine, depicted my father as a man with a ”piercing wit [and] generous spirit,“ for whom ”poverty and love were equal teachers in a life of wisdom.“ His obituary was carried by wire across the nation, even making news at the Washington Post.
No publication mentioned that my father was, at the time of his death, serving a sentence in Los Angeles County Jail for sexually molesting his daughter -- my half sister Susan. Posthumous descriptions of his life left out other significant information: that he was a fraud, a thief and an endangerer of children, and that, while he often bragged that he‘d ”retired at 28,“ he’d made an impressive career of consumption. In the nearly two decades my father spent with my mother, he didn‘t work, and he wrote virtually nothing except for ”From Patagonia,“ a prose poem about what he described as his inner landscape of desolation. Real-world decimation, however, was his true accomplishment.
His name changed frequently, in fact. A late-’60s issue of the men‘s magazine Oui published a feature on my father, celebrating him as the country’s leading perpetrator of mail-order fraud. Growing up, I watched him feast on raw hamburger, grabbing it straight from the Styrofoam package. In order to avoid taking out the garbage, he found two industrial-size trash cans for the kitchen and let scraps collect for months at a stretch. I knew it was summertime when I stepped barefoot onto a sea of maggots that dropped from the trash, wriggling toward the dog-hair-dense carpet.
Equally noxious and permeating was my father’s sexuality. While he made a game of insulting my mother and describing himself to me as her ”gigolo,“ he encouraged me to read his journals -- beautifully calligraphed legal pads filled with detailed sex fantasies. At his bedside, paperback porn invited attention -- one flashy spine read Father-Daughter Lust. Our walls were covered with photos of Hitler, outlaws, corpses and orgies. ”Tickle Time,“ a game that invariably ended with his giant hands making their way beneath the waistline of my underwear until I writhed in laughing confusion, punctuated our days at home alone.
In the early ’70s, my father flew his teenaged daughter Susan from his first marriage (whom he hadn‘t seen since she was 3) to Los Angeles, drugged her with a potent pharmaceutical hallucinogen, and submitted her to sexual abuse a several times over the course of her three-week visit -- on at least one occasion with the participation of my mother, who had also supplied the drugs. Afterward, my father bragged to friends about his conquest. In March of this year, thanks to a 1993 law allowing victims of child sexual abuse to file charges years later -- and my sister’s determination to find healing through justice -- he was convicted and incarcerated for his crimes.
While I lived with my father, he never pursued publication -- it was a point of honor for him. He responded to requests from editors, however, so his poems did make their way into the world. And his work was generally well respected. But as far as I can tell, his notoriety derives principally from two facts: He outlived many of his Beat cohorts, and he was friendly, for a time, with Charles Bukowski. Simply living long enough to be a rarity, though, should not give a person icon status. As for literary talent vs. humanity, Bukowski himself said it best: ”It‘s so easy to be a poet and so hard to be a man."
The last reading by John Thomas & Philomene Long, 2002
----
*
p.s. Hey. ** Scunnard. Hi, J. Yeah, step delicately into the possibility and see what happens while keeping your instincts on alert. Typing the word emoticon instead of typing an emotion itself was a classy move, and I appreciate both the restraint involved and the mystery that resulted. Man, I don't know about your sun, but ours is way, way too hot and in roasting mode. ** Kyler, Yeah, you gotta take some kind of precautionary measures about the crash 'cos it's a definite danger when that first birth-related burst of stuff ends and your book becomes one of all those books out there. But it can be good, instructive, sobering, clarifying and all that stuff too. Congrats on the Betsy Lerner props. ** David Ehrenstein, He is one restless and rangy cat, that Lynch. RIP: Elaine Stritch. When I think of her I always think of her in 'Providence' wherein she is so spectacular. ** Kier, Hi, K. Yeah, I don't think 'Roar' was so good unless you're bonered-out by the sight of the young Heath Ledger. Black currant, like the jam. Weird: of course there would have to be a fruit called black current for there to be the jam but somehow I sort of unthinkingly imagined that 'black currant' was just a made up name like one of those Ben & Jerrys flavors. Banana muffins are one of nature's best collaborations with the human mind. Yum. Cool about you getting to redesign the signs. Take photos, obviously. And your Udo shirt is kind of perfect. Wow, your art looks so good on t-shirts, it's kind of amazing. My day was a lot of sitting around writing emails and trying to figure out stuff so I could write emails that could detail what I had figured out. And it was miserably hot. And I had a coffee with this guy Paul who's one of the performers in the next scene we're shooting for our film. He plays an anarchist who, along with an anarchist friend, abandons society and decides to live in the woods and dress up as a Krampus 24/7, which leads to bad shit happening. Anyway, he's cool, and it was nice. I wrote a little, novel-wise, but the heat fucked that good intention up for the most part. That was most of my day. Yours? ** Steevee, Hi. Really cool about your interview with Richard Linklater! Yeah, it seems like you would have to figure out a really savvy way to phrase that personal drug use question if you want to avoid his raised eyebrows, but I like that challenge. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. It's hot here too, fuck, ugh, already at ... what is it, 8:47 am. I so like those Studio Jamming plans. Cool, excellent. Stay as cool as you can and enjoy the best of Leeds. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff! You can't have been as slow as I feel at the moment. Mine is mostly heat-related, as I keep saying/whining. Yeah, that review was hilarious, no? Nice comments, lovely, thank you. Oh, nice alert. Everyone, the honorable Jeffrey Coleman alerts everyone to the fact that you can now preorder the upcoming new book by the great Peter Sotos. It's called 'Desistance', and you can pre-score your copy here. ** Mark Doten, Mark! Holy whoa! It's incredibly nice to see you! I've gotten so used to reading you on FB. This is really nice. Cool about the new Matt Bell, natch. And that's cool that the BOMB book is finally happening. So, Mark, when is your novel coming out? That's the massive burning question in my head. Next year, right? I'm unspeakably excited! Anyway, you sound really good, work-buried or not. I'm work-buried too. It's not so bad, right? So great to see you, my pal! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Oh, yeah, that over-sensitive thing is a drag. When sensitivity collides with excessive self-absorption, the results can be very non-pretty. 'Johnny Rottencrotch' seems like a retort that bad kids from my mom's and grandma's generation would have said. Or like from 'Happy Days' or something. Oops, about your nephew's Twitter thing. Does Twitter censor tweets? I don't even know. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Summer holiday, ywah indeed. That is a good word. Much, much, much better that 'mwah', which I hate. The high heat here yesterday prevented my full plunge back into the novel, and it's even hotter today, but I going to try to tough my way into the novel anyway. Do join me! That would help a lot. 'Bubblegum Funeral' is such a good name. Is that yours? Everyone, there's an exhibition opening tomorrow in London at the art space Punk & Sheep that's called 'Bubblegum Funeral' and it features collab works made by the super great Paul Curran and the super great Marc Hulson aka d.l. Tender prey. You really, really want to check that out if you're in the realm of London. Seriously, no joke. Read about the show here and/or, alternately, here, and visit Punk & Sheep's FB page for more literal scoop here. How is Marc? He hasn't been in these parts in ages. I miss him. ** Bill, It'll probably be some ages before any clips from our film go public, but I'm looking into the okayness of posting some behind-the-scenes photos I shot with my iPhone. Need to see that 'Dune' doc. It must be streaming somewhere. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! 'Babyfucker' is a nice comparison. Huh, I can see that. I don't know Marijuana Simpsons, but you can bet I will by this time tomorrow. Everyone, excellence in human form Chris Dankland draws all of your and my attentions to the twitter account Marijuana Simpsons, and you can get a consolidated intro to it by clicking this. All so true and totally about the admirableness and role model-ness of Lynch's way of using his talent, absolutely. I'm having a good if glossy aka sweaty morning, but it's good, it is. I hope yours is everything and more. ** Rewritedept, Bene and Michael are in Italy at the moment. Yeah, let's try to sort the Skype thing out. I'm busier than I imagined I would be, but let's try. Maybe you want to consider putting a piece of your novel-in-progess in a writer's workshop post? I don't know. It might be a good way to let people here see it and talk to you about it. Never seen nor heard of 'Wet Hot American Summer', no. I'm not so good with parody movies, but I'll try a clip. Wow, you being optimistic is a nice, refreshing thing. I hope that the things that got your optimistic side up and running pan out and much more. Later. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Wow, that's an interesting interpretation of me. I don't think I'm particularly uneasy or hyper-sensitive, but ... what do I know, I guess. Curious. I certainly don't think you need to tiptoe around me, in any case. ** Okay. I thought I'd pull up this old rerun because there was something about it that said, 'Pull me back up.' Hence, your post for today. See you tomorrow.
I think maybe today a poem I hope
after breakfast I start trying
pulling it out of my own gut
mostly by force – thin stuff
& careless, about people in Venice here &
things that happened to me once
most days even all my strong arming
doesn't help me & I
give up, read, or
whine about it in my journal
& piss away the day
swimming/eating/sneering around in a coffeehouse.
'Now here’s a difficult case: an undeniably excellent poet who died in prison, serving a sentence for having molested his daughter; a poet whose early work seems to show a visionary breadth and bounding imagination, but who barely published any new poems (or republished, times over, older poems) during the latter part of his life; and a poet Charles Bukowski called “the best unread poet in America” whose style synthesized elements of the most opaque of Olson’s Maximus poems or the collage aesthetic of the Tennis Court Oath (but who was also, at times, sexually frank, morally unambiguous in his amorality, and could tell a good story, like a West Venice West Georges Bataille).
'Outside of this small group (most of which also appear in his first collection, called John Thomas), Thomas published a chapbook of poems called Nevertheless in 1990, and contributed to the volume Abandoned Latitudes (with Paul Vangelisti and Robert Crosson) in 1983. A good, if not probing, obituary was published in the UK Independent (1); a much more detailed, and harrowing, account of his personality by his daughter, Gabrielle Idlet, appeared a little later in the LA Weekly (2). -- Brian Stefans, Free Space Comix
(1) fromJohn Thomas: Beat poet known for his inability to write
Adrian Dannat, The Independent
"How does one review the work of a poet who mocks the societal role of the poet, who has no desire to publish his poetry and says that he has no interest in the familiar moral values of poetry and poets?" This was the question posed by Lawrence Lipton, fabled chronicler of the "Beat" group in California, about one of his most fascinating subjects, the poet John Thomas. In many ways Thomas was the antithesis of the hipsters, Bohemians and Beatniks chronicled in Holy Barbarians and sometimes seemed trapped by the wacky underground counter-culture he was widely assumed to be part of.
Indeed, he almost seemed an active enemy of the sprawling, self-indulgent alternative literary community of Los Angeles. He was something of an 18th-century figure, with a certain fondness for antique weapons (he collected sabres, dress swords and foils and, as any poet should, had a weakness for duels or the idea of them), orgies and satire; at 6'4" and weighing over 300 pounds, even his physical build betokened another, more heroic age.
A self-proclaimed "writer", one day Thomas was asked by the poet Maurice Lacy, "What do you write?" Without thinking Thomas replied, "I'm a poet", and thus had no choice but to write some of the stuff. Poetry certainly suited Thomas better than novels; as he admitted, "The novel-writing ambition was just sheer, vulgar pretence, wanting to be a great man." But even free verse was still a painful process for Thomas and his NOT writing and deep inability to write became his central theme if not celebrity.
The eponymous book John Thomas was put out in a limited edition of 405 copies, 30 of which were signed, numbered and even "sealed" by the author, presumably so they could not be read. This was published in 1972 and followed in 1976 by the elegant Epopoeia or the Decay of Satire. (In fact this second volume was the same as the first, except Thomas had deleted some works rather than adding any, further reducing his oeuvre.)
Thomas's last and perhaps fourth wife was Philomene Long, herself no small local legend, who had left her cloistered convent as a Catholic nun to escape to LA and as poetess/ film-maker documented the scene in such movies as Venice Beat and The California Missions, with Martin Sheen. Long also introduced Thomas to the Zen Center of LA, where they studied with the revered Maezumi Roshi, who gave her the Buddhist name "Gyokuho" or "Fragrant Jewel". In 1983, in a burst of activity, Thomas published Abandoned Latitudes, or rather he contributed a thin shard, "From Patagonia", to this collection of three LA writers. This was Thomas's most engaging finale, even if he was to live for almost 20 more years.
(2) fromHitting the Beats
Gabrielle Idlet, LA Weekly
My father, ”Venice West“ poet John Thomas, died of congestive heart failure on March 29 at the age of 71. His April 7 Los Angeles Times obituary describes him as ”the sage of Venice“ (Beyond Baroque executive director Fred Dewey), ”mentor“ (Wanda Coleman), even ”the best unread poet in America“ (Charles Bukowski). Another journalistic elegy, appearing in Los Angeles Magazine, depicted my father as a man with a ”piercing wit [and] generous spirit,“ for whom ”poverty and love were equal teachers in a life of wisdom.“ His obituary was carried by wire across the nation, even making news at the Washington Post.
No publication mentioned that my father was, at the time of his death, serving a sentence in Los Angeles County Jail for sexually molesting his daughter -- my half sister Susan. Posthumous descriptions of his life left out other significant information: that he was a fraud, a thief and an endangerer of children, and that, while he often bragged that he‘d ”retired at 28,“ he’d made an impressive career of consumption. In the nearly two decades my father spent with my mother, he didn‘t work, and he wrote virtually nothing except for ”From Patagonia,“ a prose poem about what he described as his inner landscape of desolation. Real-world decimation, however, was his true accomplishment.
His name changed frequently, in fact. A late-’60s issue of the men‘s magazine Oui published a feature on my father, celebrating him as the country’s leading perpetrator of mail-order fraud. Growing up, I watched him feast on raw hamburger, grabbing it straight from the Styrofoam package. In order to avoid taking out the garbage, he found two industrial-size trash cans for the kitchen and let scraps collect for months at a stretch. I knew it was summertime when I stepped barefoot onto a sea of maggots that dropped from the trash, wriggling toward the dog-hair-dense carpet.
Equally noxious and permeating was my father’s sexuality. While he made a game of insulting my mother and describing himself to me as her ”gigolo,“ he encouraged me to read his journals -- beautifully calligraphed legal pads filled with detailed sex fantasies. At his bedside, paperback porn invited attention -- one flashy spine read Father-Daughter Lust. Our walls were covered with photos of Hitler, outlaws, corpses and orgies. ”Tickle Time,“ a game that invariably ended with his giant hands making their way beneath the waistline of my underwear until I writhed in laughing confusion, punctuated our days at home alone.
In the early ’70s, my father flew his teenaged daughter Susan from his first marriage (whom he hadn‘t seen since she was 3) to Los Angeles, drugged her with a potent pharmaceutical hallucinogen, and submitted her to sexual abuse a several times over the course of her three-week visit -- on at least one occasion with the participation of my mother, who had also supplied the drugs. Afterward, my father bragged to friends about his conquest. In March of this year, thanks to a 1993 law allowing victims of child sexual abuse to file charges years later -- and my sister’s determination to find healing through justice -- he was convicted and incarcerated for his crimes.
While I lived with my father, he never pursued publication -- it was a point of honor for him. He responded to requests from editors, however, so his poems did make their way into the world. And his work was generally well respected. But as far as I can tell, his notoriety derives principally from two facts: He outlived many of his Beat cohorts, and he was friendly, for a time, with Charles Bukowski. Simply living long enough to be a rarity, though, should not give a person icon status. As for literary talent vs. humanity, Bukowski himself said it best: ”It‘s so easy to be a poet and so hard to be a man."
The last reading by John Thomas & Philomene Long, 2002
----
*
p.s. Hey. ** Scunnard. Hi, J. Yeah, step delicately into the possibility and see what happens while keeping your instincts on alert. Typing the word emoticon instead of typing an emotion itself was a classy move, and I appreciate both the restraint involved and the mystery that resulted. Man, I don't know about your sun, but ours is way, way too hot and in roasting mode. ** Kyler, Yeah, you gotta take some kind of precautionary measures about the crash 'cos it's a definite danger when that first birth-related burst of stuff ends and your book becomes one of all those books out there. But it can be good, instructive, sobering, clarifying and all that stuff too. Congrats on the Betsy Lerner props. ** David Ehrenstein, He is one restless and rangy cat, that Lynch. RIP: Elaine Stritch. When I think of her I always think of her in 'Providence' wherein she is so spectacular. ** Kier, Hi, K. Yeah, I don't think 'Roar' was so good unless you're bonered-out by the sight of the young Heath Ledger. Black currant, like the jam. Weird: of course there would have to be a fruit called black current for there to be the jam but somehow I sort of unthinkingly imagined that 'black currant' was just a made up name like one of those Ben & Jerrys flavors. Banana muffins are one of nature's best collaborations with the human mind. Yum. Cool about you getting to redesign the signs. Take photos, obviously. And your Udo shirt is kind of perfect. Wow, your art looks so good on t-shirts, it's kind of amazing. My day was a lot of sitting around writing emails and trying to figure out stuff so I could write emails that could detail what I had figured out. And it was miserably hot. And I had a coffee with this guy Paul who's one of the performers in the next scene we're shooting for our film. He plays an anarchist who, along with an anarchist friend, abandons society and decides to live in the woods and dress up as a Krampus 24/7, which leads to bad shit happening. Anyway, he's cool, and it was nice. I wrote a little, novel-wise, but the heat fucked that good intention up for the most part. That was most of my day. Yours? ** Steevee, Hi. Really cool about your interview with Richard Linklater! Yeah, it seems like you would have to figure out a really savvy way to phrase that personal drug use question if you want to avoid his raised eyebrows, but I like that challenge. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. It's hot here too, fuck, ugh, already at ... what is it, 8:47 am. I so like those Studio Jamming plans. Cool, excellent. Stay as cool as you can and enjoy the best of Leeds. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff! You can't have been as slow as I feel at the moment. Mine is mostly heat-related, as I keep saying/whining. Yeah, that review was hilarious, no? Nice comments, lovely, thank you. Oh, nice alert. Everyone, the honorable Jeffrey Coleman alerts everyone to the fact that you can now preorder the upcoming new book by the great Peter Sotos. It's called 'Desistance', and you can pre-score your copy here. ** Mark Doten, Mark! Holy whoa! It's incredibly nice to see you! I've gotten so used to reading you on FB. This is really nice. Cool about the new Matt Bell, natch. And that's cool that the BOMB book is finally happening. So, Mark, when is your novel coming out? That's the massive burning question in my head. Next year, right? I'm unspeakably excited! Anyway, you sound really good, work-buried or not. I'm work-buried too. It's not so bad, right? So great to see you, my pal! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Oh, yeah, that over-sensitive thing is a drag. When sensitivity collides with excessive self-absorption, the results can be very non-pretty. 'Johnny Rottencrotch' seems like a retort that bad kids from my mom's and grandma's generation would have said. Or like from 'Happy Days' or something. Oops, about your nephew's Twitter thing. Does Twitter censor tweets? I don't even know. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Summer holiday, ywah indeed. That is a good word. Much, much, much better that 'mwah', which I hate. The high heat here yesterday prevented my full plunge back into the novel, and it's even hotter today, but I going to try to tough my way into the novel anyway. Do join me! That would help a lot. 'Bubblegum Funeral' is such a good name. Is that yours? Everyone, there's an exhibition opening tomorrow in London at the art space Punk & Sheep that's called 'Bubblegum Funeral' and it features collab works made by the super great Paul Curran and the super great Marc Hulson aka d.l. Tender prey. You really, really want to check that out if you're in the realm of London. Seriously, no joke. Read about the show here and/or, alternately, here, and visit Punk & Sheep's FB page for more literal scoop here. How is Marc? He hasn't been in these parts in ages. I miss him. ** Bill, It'll probably be some ages before any clips from our film go public, but I'm looking into the okayness of posting some behind-the-scenes photos I shot with my iPhone. Need to see that 'Dune' doc. It must be streaming somewhere. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! 'Babyfucker' is a nice comparison. Huh, I can see that. I don't know Marijuana Simpsons, but you can bet I will by this time tomorrow. Everyone, excellence in human form Chris Dankland draws all of your and my attentions to the twitter account Marijuana Simpsons, and you can get a consolidated intro to it by clicking this. All so true and totally about the admirableness and role model-ness of Lynch's way of using his talent, absolutely. I'm having a good if glossy aka sweaty morning, but it's good, it is. I hope yours is everything and more. ** Rewritedept, Bene and Michael are in Italy at the moment. Yeah, let's try to sort the Skype thing out. I'm busier than I imagined I would be, but let's try. Maybe you want to consider putting a piece of your novel-in-progess in a writer's workshop post? I don't know. It might be a good way to let people here see it and talk to you about it. Never seen nor heard of 'Wet Hot American Summer', no. I'm not so good with parody movies, but I'll try a clip. Wow, you being optimistic is a nice, refreshing thing. I hope that the things that got your optimistic side up and running pan out and much more. Later. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Wow, that's an interesting interpretation of me. I don't think I'm particularly uneasy or hyper-sensitive, but ... what do I know, I guess. Curious. I certainly don't think you need to tiptoe around me, in any case. ** Okay. I thought I'd pull up this old rerun because there was something about it that said, 'Pull me back up.' Hence, your post for today. See you tomorrow.