UK FLIM-FLAM: THE FERTILITY SHOW

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The November 12. 2009 London Daily Mail offers us a a glimpse of England’s first-ever “fertility show” with Claudia Connell’s cleverly titled, There’s one born every minute… We know we’re in for a first class tour as soon as Claudia walks through the gate: Stepping into the huge exhibition hall at London Olympia, I haven’t had time to look at my programme guide before I’m approached by a young American woman carrying a clipboard and dressed like an air hostess. ‘Hi, good to see you. Are you ready to discuss your fertility options?’ she asks, dazzling me with her megawatt smile. Before I can say anything, she continues: ‘We’re here today all the way from Connecticut in the U.S. to help people just like you. For the next 8 hours Claudia takes us on a Wonderland trip of high tech repro hardsell for teary women and a handful of embarrassed, sullen men, who’d seem much happier nursing a pint of Taddy Porter that walking the halls of female babydesire. It’s a shame she didn’t have a video camera with her. “Everywhere I look,” she writes, “I can see pictures of cherubic babies, while skilfully manipulative videos, showing pregnant women lovingly Continue Reading →

MORE FILM–THAT HAGAN GIRL: YOU THINK YOU’VE GOT PROBLEMS. BE GLAD YOU’RE NOT MARY!

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Bastardette is short on time today, but we need to plow through Adoption NaBloPoMo, so we’re cobbling together another film clip. This time, That Hagan Girl, (1947) one of Bastardette’s all-time favorite bastard films. The film is hard to find. As far as I know it has never been released on video or DVD, but it shows up on TCM occasionally. Several years ago I was given a bootleg copy as a Christmas present. Due to its scarcity, and my inability to watch it, I previously wrote about the film secondhand, based on what critics had said at the time of release. I also used comments by its stars Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan who found the movie, at best, career-humiliating. Yet, when I finally watched That Hagan Girl, I was blown away by Shirley’s first rate performance (despite the silly plot) of a teenager who endures years of vague small town gossip, learns that she is adopted despite 18 years of family denial, and her whole life has been a lie. I have never seen any film that addresses adoption lies, bastard anger, isolation, and identity dislocation as this film does–even if it doesn’t mean to. In it’s clumsy Continue Reading →

THE GREAT LIE. THE GREAT CAT FIGHT. ONE OF MY FAVORITE ADOPTION FILMS

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The Great Lie is one of Bastardette’s favorite adoption films. What’s not to like about a good old-fashioned Hollywood cat fight? Especially when its between inconveniently pregnant career woman of mature years with a butch haircut “Sandra,” and softly coiffed Maryland horse farmer of pap entitlement, “Maggie?” My initial viewing of the film about 25 years ago, pre-bastard consciousness, put me squarely on the side of Davis’ pappery and amommery. I mean, are we really supposed to root for somebody who prefers Tschiakovsky over motherhood? When I watched the film again in the mid-1990s, I’d turned completely around. Sandra was my new hero, who even as she acquiesces, still has the moral victory over whiney wifey, who’s gonna spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. I can’t wait for “Peter” and “Pete, Jr.” to learn the truth 20 years later. If nobody else tells them I will! Here is what I wrote about the film in The Happy Family (part 3 of “Scarlet Women, Bastards, and Happy Families,” published in the Winter 2001 issue of the Bastard Quarterly. Re-written from the original to correct a mistake. A not-so-tolerable and often disturbing relationship is explored in The Great Continue Reading →

CONGRATULATIONS DAN CHAON!

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Cleveland adoptee Dan Chaon’s latest book, Await Your Reply. “a novel of shifting identity” has been named to Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 Best Books of 2009: Await Your ReplyDan Chaon (Ballantine) Chaon was a National Book Award finalist for Among the Missing, and this gripping account of colliding fates, the shifty nature of identity in today’s wired world and the limits of family is easily as good, if not better. It’s a literary page-turner, a cunningly plotted and utterly unputdownable novel. We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Dan, though we’ve exchanged a small handful of emails over the last 15 years. He supports fully our rights. Dan’s book, (adoptee fav) You Remind Me of Me, was named one of the best books of the year, by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and Entertainment Weekly . He was the the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Here’s three inverviews with Dan: Poets and Writers, July 19, 2004 Hot Metal Bridge, Spring 2009 Bookslut, October 2009 Support our writers!

MY FIRST ADOPTEE: RONNIE BURNS

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Ronnie Burns was the adopted son of George Burns and Gracie Allen. There had never been any secret about his adoption. He came from The Cradle. Gracie said they chose him because he was the most sickly baby there and needed the most care. Ronnie was always referred to by the press as “the adopted son of.” He was just one of many of those “adopted son/daughter ofs” in the First Golden Age of Hollywood Adoption, but he was the only one, as far as I knew, who was on TV. He was the first visible adopted person I ever “knew.” See, back then, even during that Golden Age, where it seemed half of Hollywood was adopting, adoption in the real world wasn’t discussed in public. I’m not sure that was a bad idea . If the Internet had been around then, and my parents adoptaobsessed like adopters are today, I’d have been mortified. It was bad enough being adopted without having your business spread all over front street. I don’t remember feeling any externalized identification with Ronnie as an adoptee; he just was. I was 9 or 10 years old when he joined the cast of the Burns & Continue Reading →

HAWAI’I: THEY’RE BACK–MORE MORONISY

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Bastardette has gotten nothing done today, so we plan to spend the rest of the evening in bed with James Ellroy and start over tomorrow. We cannot, however, let our NaBloPoMo duties slide. After we finished our second entry this week about the abandonment/dump hoax in Lewis Center, Ohio. I received a electronic hectorette from Mrs. Morrisey. I’m not posting the entire comment, but here’s how it starts: Too Bad Marley, but you are WRONG again! I’ve got better things to do than to post on your ridiculous boring blog! But, not too busy to READ my ridiculous boring blog, huh? Funny how all those snarks are lobbed from Lexington, Mass and are posted with a very specific point-of-origin identification. Perhaps some cranky neighbor is sneaking into the Morrisey home at the crack of dawn and sending comments on their computer into the ether. The Ms should file a police report. But I digress. Mrs. Morrisey goes on to point out how she and the Mr. and their BSh songsperson Renee Maracou, have been way busy, off on another jaunt to Hawai’i to pick up ANOTHER prize for their good work in undermining traditional Hawai’ian culture and sound child welfare Continue Reading →

11-11-11: PVT . FRANK LAWRENCE RIP

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Eleven-Eleven-Eleven On Armistice Day 2009 I want to remember Private Frank Lawrence, 44384, 12th Gloustershire Regiment who died a German POW on October 21, 1918, less than one month before the armistice was signed. Frank was the son of my great grandmother’s brother Walter Lawrence and his wife Sarah. His sisters Beatrice and Winifred and brothers Cebert, Harry, and Walter survived. As did many cousins, including my biological grandfather, Courtnay Granecome. Clevedon Civic Society World War 1 Casualty ListFrank Lawrence, aged 19 of 9 Strode Road, went to France in April 1918, three weeks later he was wounded and captured . He died in the German Hospital, Antwerp as a result of poor medical conditions.St. Andrews Church Honor Roll in Clevedon: 2th (Service) (Bristol) Battalion. Private 44384. Born Clevedon. Enlisted Taunton. Formerly 68185 Devonshire Regiment. Died 21st October 1918.Aged 19. SCHOONSELHOF CEMETERY. Plot IIa, 47. Commonwealth War Graves Commission Certificate: Frank Lawrence

STATE-APPROVED ABANDONMENT HOAXES CANNOT PIMP BABY DUMPING

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Early this morning, Mr. or Mrs. Morrisey (probably Mrs.) hiding under the cloak of “anonymity” attempted to post a comment here regarding yesterday’s entry. The fact that for the last 2 1/2 years the couple has been banned from posting on The Daily Bastardette hasn’t stopped them from sending dozens of traceable comments to me. All their snark-bombs have been archived. I suppose one of these days I should post an anthology, complete with 4-letter explicatives, for reader amusement. But today, I am breaking my own rule and posting this morning’s M comment: The baby has its full medical and familial history due to the SH law, so this is a positive outcome! As usual, the Ms and their ilk miss the point: ODJFS/DJFS is abusing Ohio’s “safe haven” law. The state, in essence from what we can tell, has unilaterally and administratively amended Ohio’s “safe haven” law; created a post facto defense hatch for women who lie to police. The Passewitz abandonment was a hoax. If Ms. Passewitz intended to legally dump her baby via “safe haven,” she made no effort to do so at the time of her 911 call. She did not, in the ill-chosen words of Continue Reading →

OHIO ABANDONED BABY CASE SOLVED: WE KNEW IT! HOAX!

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I‘ve held back on this entry waiting for some follow-up, which hasn’t happened. So, here it is…except for some additions, as I wrote it on October 30. Back in early June, a justborn, umbilical cord still attached, was found by “passing motorist” Allison Passewitz, 24, on a patch of grass near the Meijer (discount store) parking lot in Lewis Center, just north of Columbus, To be specific, at the intersection of Owensfield and Neverland Drive. (Can I make that up?) The discovery received much local press coverage, including the release of the 911 call made by the heroic Ms. Passsewitz (who “did the right thing” by rescuing an infant in distress when she could have just sped right by on her way to the gym) to the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department. Ms. Passewitz fortuitously had a bedsheet in the backseat of her car in which to wrap the deserted baby. Bastardette was ready to bet a Hyatt Cap South Sunday Brunch that the quick-witted Ms. Passewitz was the mother. It was a way-too-typical “coincidence” to be anything else. But, I’m not the Sheriff, so we let it play out. (The link to the original June 9 Channel 6 video, which Continue Reading →