Not For Public Consumption

I've been watching the PBS American Masters special on Woody Allen, and God, I find him refreshing.  Death!  Anxiety! Hypochondria! Death!  Remember that scene in "Hannah and Her Sisters," when he is so relieved to find out he doesn't have a brain tumor that he leaps along the sidewalk and then stops dead (no pun) realizing that one day it will be bad news?  Oh, Woody!

Shelves 2 and 3 

  I've got an out-of-the-way bookshelf in my studio with books pertaining to my own personal obsessions, which overlap with some of Allen's. Shelf 1:  Death and Anxiety  ("Dying at Home," "The Heal Your Anxiety Workbook,").  Shelf 2: Travel guides, always more than one for any locality because you never know what could go wrong. I've seen a documentary about Woody Allen in Venice and he is very anxious about water and boats and canals.  A definite tie-in.  Shelf 3:  Biographies and memoirs of first ladies, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt.  I'm at a loss here re Woody, although I would love it if he did a time-travel number on Pat Nixon.

The other day a contractor I've known for a long time was in my studio checking out leaky windows.  I saw him studying the shelves.

"Ah, Liz, I see you're interested in first ladies, " he said.  He is a very progressive Berkeley liberal.  "Laura Bush?"

I doubt Woody would have been chagrined, but I was.  He reveals the damndest things about himself, and people find them entertaining, maybe because they think he's more neurotic than they are.  I wonder.  In the meantime, Shelves 1-3 stay upstairs and pretty much out of sight.