CRISPY CONSIDERS, BING WITH KISSES

It’s no secret that I love movies and that I don’t pay attention. So it shouldn’t come as a shock to you that, in watching “We’re Not Dressing,” the Carole Lombard vehicle that also stars George Burns, Gracie Allen, Ethel Merman and Ray Milland, that I find myself distracted.

First of all, I think about Carole Lombard being blown up to bits in an airplane. Then I think about George Burns sitting on Gracie Allen’s grave every day talking to her and asking her advice. Then I think about why Ray Milland stopped calling himself “Raymond Milland” and wonder if he thought it would make him more loveable, which it didn’t. Then I think about Bing Crosby’s butt (covered of course) because it sort of codifies his body, which is a terrible looking and yet paradoxically charming body that makes no sense as it is found, in a way that makes you love the world because everyone is so different, terrible and charming, and yet, we are all one and both, as reflected in metaphor by the body of Bing Crosby.

I didn’t mention the loving and kissing bear rolling around the ship on roller skates. That part made me sad. And who needs comedy? Not bears, no: it would be us. And if I am laughing, it’s only because the bear is chasing Bing, and we can see him running thither, annoyed and then captured and secured, like us, unworthy, and yet finding no escape from so many kisses.



all artwork, except likenesses of Lyndon B. Johnson, by Crispy Flotilla ® 2006