April 2, 2007

• Cultural Blender: Marilyn Monroe: Sex Goddess

  This last Sunday, April the 1st, I created The Marilyn Monroe Page which has been added to the "Iconography Section" of the Cultural Blender. Recent pages have celebrated the lives, careers, and pop cultural influence of Shirley Temple, John Wayne, and Elvis Presley. All the pages now have their own comments sections, and supply a carefully compiled section of links, plus some of the best of the photos I could find on the internet, and also feature film and video clips courtesy of YouTube. I've added another minute or two of animated footage to the "Cultural Blender" MikeVideo internet movie, and I also created some composite images of Marilyn, which I am including in this blog article. Marilyn Monroe would have been 81 years old if she had lived. But then, her influence has never died. I hope you have as much enjoyment looking at these images as I had in searching, compiling, and constructing them. On the Marilyn Monroe page are some more photos, a YouTube photo montage tribute (not the one I'm going to do, but one with a lot of great photos, and clip from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", and I wrote all the content on Sunday. So far, only the Elvis site doesn't have my own article, since I started the Marilyn page before completing the Elvis page.   As usual, if you click on the image, the larger one appears in another browser window.

  One of the reasons I did so much this weekend is because I was pretty much in shock after what happened to me on Friday afternoon upon returning home from work. On the door of my rented house, in which I have lived for almost 13 years, was a "60 Day or Quit" notice, giving my cancer ridden roommate and I two months to find a new place to live. The new owner wants to renovate our house so much that he's evicting us in order to do this. He lied to me two months ago, when in the midst of adding the new bathroom, I asked him point blank if I had to worry about him evicting us. He told me not to worry, and I didn't. Silly me. I immediately called the management company, and Cindy told me they quarrelled with the owner for a day about letting us stay at least another year (when I turn 55 and can buy a mobile home in a senior park, which has been my plan). If forced to move, I have to find a rental in the overcrowded and over priced L.A. market, and I will probably need someone to share the rent anywhere. I really don't want to live with Joel when I do move. The owner was supposed to be around the property over the weekend, but he didn't show. I go in to pay the rent tomorrow and I'll ask for a current listing from the management agency. They have offered to rent me another place in the past when we first had troubles with the renovation. (Like when it rained in the living room because they didn't finish the roof before a storm.) I'm still in shock, however. I've been evicted once before, a long time ago. At work, people assure me this is probably a good omen disguised as bad luck. Time will tell. Two months to be exact. What a thing to happen on the weekend of April Fool's eh?  EDIT: 7:30pm pdt. Re: some of the comments so far. When you sign a rental agreement without a lease, there is verbiage allowing either the tenant or the landlord to terminate occupancy within a 30 day time frame. Nobody I know has ever had this happen without provocation, that could be proven on Judge Judy, for example. Joel is able to fend for himself if need be. He's the one who announced to me when this new owner started talking about building the bathroom in the first place that he was going to move as soon as it happened. (Then he admitted he was talking out of his a**, as it were.) We will probably have to share. I haven't seen this month's "price list" of rentals yet. Cancerboy has lots of family even though his parents are dead. His brother is a policeman in Orange County. He talks to aunts and cousins all the time and makes regular visits.

  • 10:02 pm
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