How to turn into Michael Jackson

Just follow the ever so simple instructions on the screen.



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You can say anything about Imelda Marcos but you mustn't forget the shoes

My friend Frankie shared this with me on Facebook from David Byrne's homepage.

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Watching this, I remembered when I first arrived in London back in 1989. It seemed to me at the time that I couldn't strike up a conversation without anyone mentioning Imelda Marcos - specifically her shoes. It sucked so much that I wrote a poem about it:

Small Talk

"How is Imelda Marcos?

Are her shoes still on the go?"

When I first came to London

It was all they wished to know

I tried to say that there was more

To me than meets the eye

That a flat brown nose and straight black hair

Does not mean I can’t ask why

They don’t try to get to know me

Or find out what I do

Or say Fine Weather Isn’t It?

Or ask me How Are You?

I tried to talk of normal things

Like Politics and Fashion,

Burglaries, Movie Stars,

Sport and Television

I wanted them to talk to me

The way they talked to each other

But all that seemed to interest them

Was Imelda’s collection of shoe leather.

Now David Byrne's spending time in the Philippines making a musical about Imelda with Fatboy Slim.

It fascinates me to read in a Times article that the one thing Byrne has ommitted is the magic cupboard with the 3000 shoes.

... there are no references whatsoever to her infamous collection of 3,000 pairs of designer shoes, stored in a wing of the so-called Manila White House, the Malacanang Palace. “The shoes were a very big problem,” Byrne concedes. “For me it became, how do you get beyond the shoes? But the shoes weren’t discovered, along with the house full of Heinz Sandwich Spread, until after the Marcoses were airlifted out of the palace in 1986, and for me the story ends right there.”

These many years later, I've mellowed. I forgive people for mentioning Imelda's shoes.

In fact, I would actively encourage it.

Imelda's shoes are a weighty metaphor that continues to remind us of Imelda's dark side as she reinvents herself again and again with more imagination and energy than Madonna herself. It reminds us of the huge inequalities that continue to exist in Philippine society.

So, David Byrne, please mention the shoes.

Imelda's shoes would have more relevance to Filipinos than a fat album of photographs of her posing with other dictators.

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Does the world need another blog like it needs a hole in the ozone layer?

Another blog, you say? But aren't I all blogged out? What about my blog Notes from the Slushpile?

Clearly, I am insane.

Well, maybe only slightly.

The thing is, you see, it used to be that my blog readers were fellow writers.

We discussed stuff to do with getting published like craft, the publishing industry, literary agents, editors, marketing, endurance, what rejection feels like, how rejection hurts, how horrible rejection can be, how rejection gets you down  ... okay, I admit it, sometimes we went a little stir crazy from rejection.

When I finally got a book contract, people kept asking me, what are you going to do now? You aren't on the slushpile any more, you can't keep pretending you're on the slushpile.

Well, I think I'm still on the slushpile, really. Publication is never guaranteed. And I like whining blogging about trying to get published. So I'm not junking Notes from the Slushpile just yet.

But finally getting published means I've got to pay some attention to those lovely, astonishingly gorgeous and intelligent folks out there who will be buying and reading my books.

All this time, I'd been blogging for writers. Now that my book Tall Story is coming out (Pre-order! NOW! On Amazon! Just saying), I have to think about blogging for READERS.

Photo stuartpilbrow, Via Creative Commons with thanks!

So here is my new blog.

If you like reading, if you like reading my books (of which someday there will be hundreds! HAHAHAHA ... oops, sorry. Must curb tendency towards maniacal laughter) ... follow my new blog, join in the conversation, have a laugh. Who knows, famous people might want to hang out with us.

See you on the web!