lady, make a note of this

Today is the first annual Dorothy Parker Day, during which her birthplace in West End, NJ will be dedicated as a National Literary Landmark. When I lived in LA years ago, I was a fairly regular regular at a now defunct watering hole. When it was about to be closed for renovation for the new owners, some of us took the liberty to graffiti the women's room and I scrawled the following Parker poem:

Godspeed
Oh, seek, my love, your newer way;
I’ll not be left in sorrow.
So long as I have yesterday,
Go take your damned tomorrow!

Words to live by...I remember being quite smitten with a stranger who met me during that time and immediately guessed I was the perpetrator of that paticular writing on the wall. Parker is probably most well-known for her wit, authoring some culturally ubiquitous observations:

• I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.
• Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
• The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed.'
• If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
• It serves me right for keeping all my eggs in one bastard.
• I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
• You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
• Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

She also wrote hundreds of poems (almost all faithfully recorded here), including probably her most famous "Résumé":

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

She was not the happiest of creatures, as Jennifer Jason Leigh captured in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Her position as the top girl dog at the Algonquin Round Table is notable, as is her refusal to name names during the McCarthy trials and her O. Henry Prize for the short story "Big Blonde." I really could go on and on, but in the words of the immortal Ms. Parker, "All of my days are gray with yearning/(nevertheless, a girl needs fun)" so I'm off to enjoy the Sunday. I'll leave you with a recording of the poem "Men" being read by Dorothy herself (and an earlier post).
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