AFFLECK-- PALIN-- ARMSTRONG.

Catchy news:

Ben Affleck, 42, who today is an unstoppable rising actor-director, devastated fans when it was revealed that he and his wife of ten years were living apart, and are now divorcing.

Bristol Palin, 24 -- famous because of her famous mom -- has broken up with a current boyfriend, and is, again, pregnant.

 Lance Armstrong, 43, former professional road racing cyclist, recently said he is thrilled that he's become the biggest failed, disappointing, sinful celeb. He held seven Tour de France titles until he was stripped of them in 2012 because it was proved that he was doping.

I feel like a butterfly catcher with my net aimed -- wham -- ponking down, and grabbing creatures to pin to my wall collection.

Celebrities are our royalty -- our kings and queens -- what they do or don't do shapes our lives. Armstrong embarrasses me. When the whispers came out about him lying, I believed that he was truly what he wasn't. When he finally told the world that he'd been lying, my sense of my own good sense shriveled. Now, when celeb news penetrates my world, I ponder it. I don't trust it.

Affleck, once his days as a fiance of J. Lo were over, began to improve his work, and it impressed me. The man was emerging. Like a real artist, he was putting what he felt about the subject into whatever film on which he was working. His canvas has become movies; his knowledge is his paint.

Bristol... well, instinctively I am agin' her, because of the high walls of ignorance that surround her mom. But Bristol, performing in "Dancing With The Stars," let herself be recreated, and became a young woman with a sense of herself that had genuine grace. Bristol became much more than her mother's daughter.

Will she'll emerge in politics? Are some of her mother's ideas instilled in her? I hope not. I don't think Bristol will be a Sarah junior.

So these three celebs do more than catch my eye. They teach me about my own life, where I was heading and where I am heading now.

Ok. It's your turn to post a few names of celebs. Pinning them to the wall, what do you see about YOU and why is what's on YOUR mind ON your mind?

Maybe you're not busy enough? Maybe you're worried about where our country is heading, because wherever America goes, go you? Maybe we are focusing on politics because our country is suffering, because our Black President is deliberately being thwarted -- stopped from doing what he knows our country needs to do, because racism is still such a huge, major, serious, unsolved issue?

I rarely write about politics. I don't want to lose readers whose ideas differ from mine, so I probably wrote about three celebs, who surely fascinate you like they fascinate me, and found a way to squeeze in a few words about President Obama whom I deeply admire.

REVISITING YOKO ONO

This is Yoko Ono in 1971 at MOMA in New York, and her "Painting To See In The Dark." She posted a sign next to it saying that she'd released five flies on the grounds, and invited guests to track them around New York City.

This prestigious museum has a retrospective of her paintings --1960 -1971 -- on exhibit June to  Sept 7, 2015.

New York Magazine said, "The work she did at her peak suddenly looks very in step with the culture we inhabit today."

ArtNet.com said, "She was a significant figure in the devElopment of conceptual art. Ono inaugurated her audience participation experiment with works like the self explanatory, "Painting To Be Stepped On."
Describing her "Cut PIIece" for which she sat on the floor and let audience members cut her clothing into shreds, the critic said, "The tricky and brilliantly fearless thing about Ono's art is that it has always directed focus onto the audience embracing even the ugliest  of impulses."

Here's a link to the Yoko Ono. post I wrote in 2013. It continues to pain me -- that her presence in Lennon's life made collaboration amongst the Beatles more difficult and finally impossible. Golly, for us who loved their music, what a loss it was.

Nevertheless, this woman, in her eighties now, has continued to speak out fearlessly on many major issues aside from her "liberation" -- she was blatantly liberated long before it was in vogue. Her paintings, like her music (recordings of her singing songs that she wrote), are avant garde. The words that describe what she was, and still is  artistically, are what I chose not to be, back in my dancing days.

Avant garde means innovative, original, experimental, left-field, ahead of the times, cutting/leading/edge, modern, trend-setting, pioneering, trailblazing, revolutionary. I wanted something else -- to reach touch, affect plain, average people -- not necessarily my fellow artists.

As I write about Ono today, I realize why I don't want to write about her. Ono's success -- what she is now tells me that she has succeeded where I have probably failed.

The New York Times, describing Ono's 1966 "Ceiling Painting" -- that invites viewers to make a climb up a spiral staircase that extends to a skylight -- said, "Near the top, something unnerving happens. The structure wobbles. Just when you thought you were in for a bit of transcendence, you've been given a wakeup poke, a little slap of fear, a reminder that looking for light is perilous. Danger is always near, which is the message that this imaginative, tough-minded artist has been delivering for years."

No doubt about it, Yoko was, and still is, a truly creative poetess, musician, woman, communicator and preacher.

I don't want to be inspired by her, but I am.