Belly Up

Today, I arrived at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at 9AM for a slicing.

At 11AM, I was brought into the pre-op, quickly attached to a saline bag. (I actually like the drip. I think it’s the only time my body ends up with the proper electrolytes. That weird, endless LA headache seems to go away.)

The surgery was supposed to be at 11. It didn’t happen until 12:30.

So I had a lot of time to listen. I was lying across from the coffee station in that pre-op room of a thousand movable curtains. I heard a woman getting ready for a second knee surgery to reduce the pain, “But,” the doctor said, “the clicking might still be there.” Another girl, next to me, very young, was getting ready for something or other. She told the nurse that she drinks heavily, socially, only had Tylenol III yesterday and Nighttime Tylenol last night to get to sleep and that she has Gilbert’s disease (turns yellow with jaundice when she’s sick or stressed, just like her father) and in general, sounded a bit silly. Across from me, I could hear the conversation of another patient...getting ready for an abortion. It must have been a bit late in the term and the young woman sounded sad about having this procedure. She talked about seeing a thread that she thought was the umbilical cord in some picture. The doctor told her that there was no cord yet, that it was just the yolk sac. There was mention of a stoma in the cervix through which the procedure would take place, that it was going to be quick. Was this pregnancy entopic? Unwanted? Good baby gone bad? Who knows!

But how weird to listen to all of this. And, how glad am I that I cannot conceive. So much to think about!

I was there for a very simple operation. I had this umbilical hernia. Basically, if one has any hernia at all, one is born with it. It’s, as they say, congenital. It’s just a matter of time before something protrudes. In my case, that happened very young, though I didn’t know it. I basically had a normal inny with a teeny outy in there. That outy wasn’t supposed to be. Who knew? Then, about six years ago, it all started getting quite ugly. And it hurt. And the doctors kept saying, “Just wait. It’s not an emergency.” Eventually, it kept pinging and even turned a bit purple. I made an appointment. The doctor said I should go for it.

Soon after I planned on making a date for the surgery, our electrician who was doing our kitchen, the estimable John Bennett, had to cancel an appointment with us because he had to have emergency surgery because part of his small intestines had protruded through his umbilical hernia, strangulating its blood supply and killing the section. This is apparently very painful and quite deadly if untreated and one of the possible hazards of having an untreated umbilical hernia. They have to go in and cut out that part of the strangled hose.

That did not sound like something I ever wanted to have to face.

So, all the more reason to go under the knife for the simple job of pushing in a little blob of what-not, and sewing up the crevice in the lining.

Done.

I woke up nicely from surgery. Why, I don’t know. But it’s one of my skills. And the day was spent traveling the Vicodin Highway. A very pleasant road trip, indeed.

Boy, am I going to look hot in my bikini this year.

Slice Me Up, Gunther

This morning, at 11 AM, I go under the knife.

What a fun expression. I love strong words with a Germanic base. (Norse, even.)

Knife. Knife. Slice. Knife.

The word says it all.

Knife me. Cut into the flesh. Clean entrance. Knife. Knife.

The doctor puts a KNIFE in the belly.

Such a sharp, clean word. It sounds more like the sound of what it does to flesh than what it would do to a rock or a tree. A knife can clang on a rock. Clang is a great word.

Knife. Strong. Gets the job done. The sharper, the more precise.

I can’t wait to meet my knife.

Free to Be O.C.D.

THE BAD O.C.D.:

I’m so glad I do not need medication for my O.C.D tendencies.

But the question remains: Why do I like the Container Store so much? After finishing our kitchen, we had to buy some shelving to place next to the stacked washer and dryer inside the laundry cupboard that was built with twelve extra inches all along the vertical side for the purpose of detergent and cleaning supplies to rest on neat shelves. We jumped on the ELFA bandwagon. It’s just the coated white bars shelving stuff...but it goes in extremely easily. You just screw in the top cross bar and everything else hangs from it. Fun. Problem solved. And it just feels Swedish and right. In addition, we purchased a little bit of shelf liner for just a couple of shelves (oily things) and a silverware tray. Golden. It all works well.

But in addition, some O.C.D. mania set in. We bought a container or a holder-of-a-something for almost everything else we own. An ironing board and iron holder, a plastic bag dispenser, a sponge holder, all sorts of clips and hooks, a slidey thing for the cleanser basket under the sink, lid holders and spice risers, another big hangy hook, extra collapsible laundry baskets. You name it.

We’re returning all of it. I was not the only guilty party in acquiring all this landfill. A nice O.C.D. guy named Wally helped us to pluck all these crazy things off the shelves even before he designed our very practical ELFA system. Adam, my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, was just as nuts as I was before we got to the ELFA meat of the matter of our journey, filling up our cart. When we returned home, most of the holders either didn’t fit or were unnecessary or just plain old took up more room than the thing it was supposed to hold. What a load of plastic! It’s so nice that stores these days will take back almost anything. That stuffed gopher. Sure.

Never shop when you’re hungry.

Never go to the Container Store, ever. It just makes you want to box up everything.

And now for THE GOOD O.C.D.:

I had one of those recurring annoying error messages every time I turned off my computer. What could be wrong????

I looked up ccsvchost.exe online (the crux of the error message) and it became clear to me that I had a registry problem. You see---as the years go by and you delete programs from your computer, the registry (the place in the system that makes a list of everything and points things where they need to be pointed, or something) ends up being loaded with all sorts of dead, useless entries. Sometimes, the system reads these as errors. And, having all this old stuff there clogging up the works, slows the machine down. So, what you need is, get ready, A REGISTRY CLEANER! For $29.95, you can buy one and download it and clean your clock. After reading the reviews on CNET.com (my nerdy Bible), I purchased the most highly recommended one, Max Registry Cleaner. It really is wonderful. I did a scan of my registry and it found 1800 items that needed killin’. So I killed them. Then, I scanned my startup menu and got rid of the nonessential items there, making startup faster.

My computer is humming like bird. Though, Max Registry Cleaner now has a little piece in the Startup...which slows the startup down a bit.

As I often say about Norton: The anti-virus IS the virus.

Keep it clean, babies. And at the end of the day for all your productivity, guess what you’ll have? Order and Cleanliness and Dearth of anything else.

And isn’t that what it’s all about?

C02: Look Which Way the WIND is BLOWING

How wonderful, yet ludicrous.

It takes the SUPREME COURT to get the EPA to do their JOB?

The big conflict over what is reality is so saddening. That our chief justice does not even believe there is causality between greater C02 concentrations and global warming is a tragedy. Blinded by the denial about what is happening to our planet, like so many other conservatives, our chief justice QUESTIONS the SCIENCE???

Okay, I’m being a sore winner here. But the win was very close and very infuriating. About half this country is wrong on everything. Thank goodness the about-half is now under 50% as opposed to the six years of being just a hair over 50%. There is much to rejoice. But many men clinging together in a bullying denial is a scary, awful situation.

After the war is over and alternative fuels are developed and gay people can marry sans probleme, what then will the wrong 50% find to despise and destroy?

My guess: Transsexuals and National Parks.

The Hills They Are a-Burnin'

What if the Hollywood Sign had burned down? Would a new sign be built to take its place?

I doubt it.

And we would have been left with no discernible landmarks. The palm tree postcards do not represent any specific place.

The Jetson’s LAX former air traffic control tower would have been really silly as the only remaining iconic structure in this Pacific Gothem. Besides, it’s a frigging airport building.

How about something more personal—perhaps the silicone boob? Too many to be unique.

The divorced blond pushing fifty on Rodeo drive? Why bother! That’s like putting a rat on a flag to celebrate the New York subway.

We have almost nothing. No Eiffel Tower. No Empire State Building. Not even a silly Arch denoting the “Gateway to the West.”

If the Hollywood Sign had burned down, we would have become as indiscernible as our neighbors to the East. Another Monrovia or San Dimas.

Without the Hollywood Sign, Los Angeles would appear only as what it is: a cement town of car washes and 99 cent stores of pure, unplanned function. I do somehow like how unapologetic the place is with its splashing exhaust and slapdash bungalows. It is a poetic city. The civic bone of beauty is so bare. Clarity arrives when there is not much in the way to obfuscate one’s vision. But one does like to hang one’s hat on SOMETHING. The edge of the Y in Holly?

I am glad the sign did not burn. The editorials would have been exhausting. The replacement--maybe something hideously overdone.

I once hiked up to the Hollywood Sign. The letters are very big.

Racism in Mammals

I really love dogs from Yorkshire the best.

I was walking Louise tonight and I was thinking, “I have absolutely nothing to blog about. I’m exhausted. It was a long night of poker---$61 win—and this week has been hellish with my little production accounting jobs that are all in the throes of fiscal year end. How dull. Little dull me. Dull. Tired. Chop wood, carry water.:

And then I looked down.

I love my dog. I just love her. I know everyone really loves their dogs. Like everyone thinks their two month old baby is super special. But being aware of these things does not make any of it less true.

My little girl dog is so sweet and cute and affectionate. But because she’s a terrier, she’s quite brazen and sturdy. She is a combination that I can relate to. Could it be because I am basically Irish and Italian---easily wounded yet tough as granite?

Whatever it is, she’s the dog for me.

So though it may have appeared that I had nothing to blog, the deal is---I’m all about love, man, love for my pooch. My gorgeous Yorkshire Terrier from some corner of the world that bred the very perfect dog for me.

Lastly. I don’t want to hear loud Rap music any longer. It’s just, I don’t like drums. I never have. Being a soft hits of the seventies kind of guy, I feel isolated in a world of pounding S.U.V.’s I miss Karen Carpenter. And there is nothing I can do about these feelings but accept my little white old-man pussy-boy taste. I try to be more accepting of music that I don’t like. I can’t do it.

I’m going to bed, right now, to be with my sweet dog. Sweet sweet amazing girl that was born for love. For me to love. Born to kill rats and then lovingly nuzzle up to me with her proud rat breath. It takes all kinds.

Minimal Misery

I don’t want “ultimate happiness”.

I just want minimal misery.

I am naturally happy. Now, just keep the misery out of my life.

More Reason to Love Paris...

Paris Embraces Plan to Become City of Bikes
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 24, 2007; A10

PARIS, March 23 -- Paris is for lovers -- lovers of food and art and wine, lovers of the romantic sort and, starting this summer, lovers of bicycles.
On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.
By the end of the year, organizers and city officials say, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1,450 stations -- or about one station every 250 yards across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere -- particularly in Lyon, France’s third-largest city, which launched a similar system two years ago -- regular users of the bikes will ride them almost for free.
"It has completely transformed the landscape of Lyon -- everywhere you see people on the bikes," said Jean-Louis Touraine, the city's deputy mayor. The program was meant "not just to modify the equilibrium between the modes of transportation and reduce air pollution, but also to modify the image of the city and to have a city where humans occupy a larger space."
The Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delano?, has the same aim, said his aide, Jean-Luc Dumesnil: "We think it could change Paris's image -- make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life."
But there is a practical side, too, Dumesnil said. A recent study analyzed different trips in the city "with a car, bike, taxi and walking, and the bikes were always the fastest."
The Lyon rental bikes, with their distinctive silver frame, red rear-wheel guard, handlebar basket and bell, can also be among the cheapest ways to travel, because the first half-hour is free, and most trips are shorter than that.
"It's faster than the bus or metro, it's good exercise, and it's almost free," said Vianney Paquet, 19, who is studying law in Lyon. Paquet said that he uses the rental bikes four or five times a day and pays 10 euros (about $13) a year, half for an annual membership fee and half for rental credit that he never actually spends because his rides typically last just a few minutes.
Anthonin Darbon, director of Cyclocity, which operates Lyon's program and won the contract to start up and run the one in Paris, said 95 percent of the roughly 20,000 daily bike rentals in Lyon are free because of their length.
Cyclocity is a subsidiary of outdoor advertising behemoth JCDecaux, which runs much smaller bike businesses in Brussels, Vienna and the Spanish cities of Cordoba and Girona. London, Dublin, Sydney and Melbourne reportedly are considering similar rental programs.
The Cyclocity concept evolved from utopian "bike-sharing" ideas that were tried in Europe in the 1960s and '70s, usually modeled on Amsterdam's famous "white bicycle" plan, in which idealistic hippies repaired scores of bicycles, painted them white, and left them on the streets for anyone to use for free. But in the end, the bikes were stolen and became too beat-up to ride. A number of U.S. cities, including Portland, Ore., have also experimented with community-use bicycle programs.
JCDecaux experimented with designs and developed a sturdier, less vandal-prone bike, along with a rental system to discourage theft: Each rider must leave a credit card or refundable deposit of about $195, along with personal information. In Lyon, about 10 percent of the bikes are stolen each year, but many are later recovered, Darbon said.
And to encourage people to return bikes quickly, rental rates rise the longer the bikes are out. In Paris, for instance, renting a bike will be free for the first 30 minutes, $1.30 for the next 30 minutes, $2.60 for the third half-hour, and $5.20 for the fourth half-hour of use and every 30 minutes after that. That makes the cost of a two-hour rental about $9.10.
Membership fees in Paris will be steeper than in Lyon, from $1.30 for one day to about $38 for a year.
The Paris deal will bring the world's biggest bicycle fleet to the City of Light in a complex, 10-year public-private partnership.
JCDecaux will provide all of the bikes (at a cost of about $1,300 apiece) and build the pickup/drop-off stations. Each will have 15 to 40 high-tech racks connected to a centralized computer that can monitor each bike's condition and location. Customers can buy a prepaid card or use a credit card at a computerized console to release a bike.
The company will pay start-up costs of about $115 million and employ the equivalent of about 285 people full time to operate the system and repair the bikes for 10 years. All revenue from the program will go to the city, and the company will also pay Paris a fee of about $4.3 million a year.
In exchange, Paris is giving the company exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards, including the revenue from them, for the same period. About half the billboard space will be given back to the city at no cost for public-interest advertising.
Based on statistics from Lyon, company officials estimate that each bicycle in Paris will be used on average 12 times a day, for a total of about 250,000 trips a day, or 91 million trips a year.
In Lyon, according to deputy mayor Touraine, the city's 3,000 rental bikes have logged about 10 million miles since the program started in May 2005, saving an estimated 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being spewed into the air. Overall, vehicle traffic in the city is down 4 percent, he said, and bicycle use has tripled, not just on account of Cyclocity, but also because the program has prompted a boom in private bicycle use and sales.
The main complaint voiced by riders is that at certain times in certain places -- such as mornings at local universities -- all the racks can be occupied, making it impossible to return a bike. "I'm going to start using my own bike, because sometimes there are not enough spaces in the rack" at school, said art student Cecile Noiser, 19.
Company and city officials said that because the system sends in electronic data about which bikes are where, they are exploring ways to redistribute bikes using trucks to better match customers' needs. Touraine said the glitches are minor compared with the benefits.

Just in from LAX

I just got home from a couple of flights....Quick here.

The good news, unrelated:

1) Ms. Coulter seems to be falling in esteem, in general.

2) Though I am feeling chubby, there’s still hope.

Brown Vs. Board of Fagunation

It’s like being an African American in 1954!

Today, while Adam, my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, and I were walking down the road in my parent’s very clean, lovely, lakey subdivision about seven miles west of Palm Beach in Florida, some horrible kid teen screamed out of his window, “FUCKING FAGGOTS!”

It was quite jarring. And I thought, “He must be referring to Adam and those two pretty mallards getting it on over there.”

I’ve been living a peaceful life lately. But really, guys, isn’t it high time that I carry a gun? Or maybe start a rap group that sings, “Kill Straighty and leave him in the gutter, boom, chucka, boom-boom.”?

You know---the only good new is things are so nasty when it comes to the Homos that it means something huge is going on. Of course, we won’t riot. But we must stand up. It’s time. Something big. Can you imagine some kid leaning out his window these days, screaming, “ LAZY NIGGER!” or “GREEDY HEBE!” ?

People out there---you must rise up and help us. We gay folk are less than ten percent of the population. The fundamentalists and the orthodox won’t have us. The homophobes of all stripes won’t have us. Black preachers won’t have us. The military won’t let us be known. But we need some help here. Loud help. Women? Can you jump in here? Midgets with a chip on their shoulder, lend a little hand? Club kids, put some clothes on and march on Washington?

Okay, it was just one little aggressive incident. But can you imagine how many of these gay people have endured in a lifetime? Five-hundred direct attacking remarks in forty years? That would be a low estimate. Twenty-thousand off-the-cuff "harmless" insulting remarks in entertainment and light social situations over the same span? Try five times that much.

Enough.

Time to kick some ass.

Hooray for Hollywood

Author Friends

My friends are getting published left and right! It’s great.

Noel Alumit’s book, Talking to the Moon, was number four on the paperback fiction in the LA Times this Sunday! Talking to the Moon is about a Filipino man who is gunned down by a racist hate monger while working as a postman. It’s tragic, yet somehow affirming. His family is around him. The book travels back and forth in time and shows the stark reality of trusting immigrants coming from a naïve culture who land in this rough and tumble America. There’s a bit of a gay thing going on, too, which is always appreciated. Each character has a very unique spiritual bent. The gunned down man is a pagan. His wife is a devout Catholic. Their gay son is basically non-religious. Seemingly at odds, the family comes to the same point in their own way, reaching across time, death and despair.


Talking to the Moon

My old friend from New York, Karen Rizzo, has written a book that is formatted in a very unique way. Things To Bring, S#!T To Do is a memoir, plain and simple. However, it is presented in lists. Karen always made lots of lists and she kept them. And from these shards of must-do’s and memory, she has created a really entertaining, breezy and thoughtful book. Huge things happen to her. She leaves New York City, a place she thought she could never leave. She gets married, has children, deals with the death of both her parents and gets on with it. And she’s funny. She writes as if her book is meant for her best friends. It’s warm. The unique format enhances the ride. She’s survives in a way that is both funny and graceful. She’s an unsung human hero. Great style here.


Things To Bring, S#!t To Do

While I Was Busy

After lifting my head up after ten weeks of a kitchen remodel, I see that the war is still on?

When are they going to stop this war? At this point, it’s like some crazy person you know who insists on continuing their pursuit of the perfectly tasty and digestible wool meatball.
At some point, it becomes all about stubborn pride, no?

After ten weeks of scraping and painting, I see that this country still hates the homos.

Coulter, that self-loathing drag queen with her fag remark, and that wretched Peter Pace, with his fear and ignorance, calling gay men immoral? I put down my paint brush for this?

After seventy-four days of sweeping, vacuuming and hauling off waste, I finally get my nails clean and take a movie break, and I have to sit through a militaristic propaganda film?

300 was so stupid and so obviously a “stay the course” war propaganda film. It sports a gayish villain and the hero dies at the end in a martyred crucifixion pose. How obvious is this crap? I don’t care how naked these guys are, running around protecting Sparta, the whole thing wreaks of simplistic, moronic thinking—playing to the blood thirsty single- neuroned heads of, well, children, I guess. Children and their trog parents!—because the movie is rated R.

All finished, I look at my kitchen and I can’t believe that we get to live in it.
But sadly, I can’t believe the world the kitchen is in.

Kitchen Renovation

The Kitchen Renovation is complete. January 6-March 19, 2007.

It was dirty and very inconvenient.

And now---it’s a showroom.

It’s so new! We went full-on bungalow style.

Standing in the middle of it, you just can’t get over how sparkly the new appliances are. And everything works so well. But it was truly a slog.

There are more difficult struggles in life, of course. However, I would place renovating a kitchen as a once-in-a-lifetime-is-enough kind of thing.

Scroll down. Enjoy. Click on a pic to make it larger. Come over for dinner.

South Wall

 

West Wall

 

North and East Walls

 

The Happy Chef

 

Virginia Woolf

Come on!

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was first seen in New York City just three months after I was born?

This is nuts.

I saw it for the first time in its entirety this weekend at The Ahmanson with Kathleen Turner, Bill Irwin, David Furr and Kathleen Early. Directed by Anthony Page.

It was so good. The writing. The writing. The writing. Stunned, really.

Everyone knows the movie. And I love the movie, of course. But the real thing, the real thing, the real thing!

Must be seen.

What they do so brilliantly in this production is they make everyone human. Vulnerable. They are mean and bitter and sad and aggressive and nasty as ever, Martha and George are, but they are not impervious. They get stung. And it hurts. And they counterattack for their lives.

It is truly brilliant.

Knowing that Edward Albee was adopted and that this play is ultimately about the dashed lives of a childless couple reconfirms my theory that the best stuff really is all just autobiography—though, artfully presented.

The language. Film can’t do that. Only theatre can do that. Film can fuss with it a little bit. But language stuff often comes off as annoying in film.

Kathleen Turner was brilliant to do this play at this point in her career.

The whole cast was at a perfect pitch. (Though Kathleen Early as Honey seemed to be channeling Sandy Dennis a bit. Too bad. But her humanity and her drunkeness were all there.)

If it hadn’t closed today, I’d say go see it. If it is revived again with the same cast or some other, go see that one.

Inspiring to see something that amazing. The language so shockingly great. The whole play so intense and so realized.

From before even Kennedy’s assassination. Genius stuff. Good times.

Friday

Sometimes, the week comes to an end and all you can say is, “Thank God it’s Friday”—even if you don’t believe in God.

Tomorrow is almost our last day of kitchen shenanigans. This has gone on for ten weeks. Monday, the hood will be installed and we will be finished with all the workers.

It will be worth it. But it has been absolutely unfun.

But more importantly—here are two movies you need to see:

ZODIAC

And

THE LIVES OF OTHERS


Just go. See them. Guarantee them.

War

The Free Market. Sure.

But what I can’t stand any longer is the War of Programs gong on in today’s computers.

Google, Yahoo, Apple and Windows are all battling with each other. Yahoo’s home page looks like crap on an iMac. Google’s Blogger templates don’t always work well in Window’s Internet Explorer. Universal file sharing, while pretty good, is awful when it comes to music.

On and On.

Now, I know I am merely jejune when I proffer, “Why can’t we all get along and just make things work seamlessly!” in this world where competition truly is king and admittedly does foster new ideas and services. But all this innovation and slugging-it-out is ugly when I’m on the latest, sexiest Apple at the office and suddenly I have a tiny little field in an online log-in page and I can barely read the squeezed letters because Apple hates Microsoft’s Web Browser.

Personal computers really do feel personal. But corporations run the suckers, no doubt. And these corporations battle it right in our homes. And we feel it.

Blech.

The Gold

I had to be in Pasadena at 7:30. Lucky for me, I could take the Metro. How easy was it? Simple. I walked up the street to the Red Line. The train showed up within minutes. I got to Union Station and the Gold Line showed up within two minutes. The Gold Line is particularly enjoyable. My favorite bit is after Chinatown. The train picks up huge speed along the Corn Field (that park just north of downtown) and then goes over the Los Angeles River. It’s pretty dramatic.

To be able to go to Pasadena and to read the paper, relax and not look at the rear end of an S.U.V. is my idea of a vacation.

The trains were pretty full. I wish they were packed.

See the map below. The transit lines are growing. For those who do not live in LA...we also have these funky busways that operate like trains in that they are completely dedicated rights-of-way that do not ride in surface traffic. The only thing is, it’s a bus on a magic road. I have not yet been on the Orange Line out to Woodland Hills. I don’t know what’s stopping me. Could it be I have an aversion to office parks and Islands Restaurants?

Take public transportation in LA. It’s fun. It takes longer, sure. But it’s better for you.


Los Angeles MTA

White People Are So Special

Don’t you just feel it?

There’s something about Whitey...with his whiteness.

Standing there, all white, making sure he gets what he wants, in his white way.

It’s beautiful. It’s sexy. Everyone wants to be white.

Everyone.

It’s odd.

Whitey is king. Powerful. Has the key to the silo.

Whitey demands service.

Whitey insists. Whitey plans. Whitey achieves.

How does Whitey do it?

By exploiting, in a very organized manner, every resource on the earth?

By organizing markets so the poorest brown people eat enough and are well enough to work in Whitey’s world...but not much more.

Is Whitey just smarter? Does Whitey have a history of better government and philosophy? Does Whitey deserve the very best? And why does Whitey always get it?

What is the secret to Whitey? Other than a lightening of the skin to allow greater production of Vitamin D in cloudy, northern climes---

Whitey. You did it all. And everyone wants a piece.

You alabaster Gods. You busy busy albino beavers.

Take me out to the ballgame.

Trying Twenties

Men in their Twenties are just Boners and Pain.

Nanny

Sometimes, as loyal Open Trench blog readers know, I will open a diary to the same date from twenty or thirty years ago and type what happened.

March 9, 1974 was a dull entry so it is not here. But I read about two months of entries. They were short entries because I was just a kid. But what was so sweet about them was how sweet a person can be at that age. It was all about my Nanny, a bunny that never materialized and tropical fish.

My grandmother was living with us for the better part of a year. She was in the middle of a separation from my grandfather and while that was going on he died. My mother got my grandmother an apartment six miles away and we moved her in. For weeks before in the journal, I wrote about my grandmother, the date she was moving. We all helped her move on a Saturday and I stayed over the first night in her apartment. I remember it very well. The towel she laid on the couch where I slept, my incredible sadness that my grandmother, who we called Nanny, was going to live alone for the first time in her life. I was also very aware that she was very aware that this was the last home of her life. It was also a bit institutional in a 1970’s garden apartment, subsidized by the local government kind of way.

On Sunday, I helped with unpacking and cleaning and it came time for my parents to come pick me up. And Nanny kept talking. She did not want to be left alone and in her anxiety she just kept talking and talking about anything. Picture hooks. Pots and pans. The stove. And I felt terrible that I had to leave her alone.

The next two weeks of entries, I wrote about calling Nanny. I called her almost every night. The first weekend after she moved into her apartment, I went over and “I helped clean the rug and had a lot of fun.” And my mother gave me a dollar for helping and then she gave my brother a dollar, even though he didn’t help, because she didn’t want him to feel bad.

The weekend after that was Easter and we had the Easter egg hunt at Nanny’s apartment. It wasn’t too much fun. My Uncle Joe came, too. I think it was a secondary Easter egg hunt. My father was good about dying lots of eggs. I noticed that my mother and my uncle weren’t thrilled to be at Nanny’s apartment. In fact, they both seemed itching to get out of there. I felt terrible that they didn’t really like being there because I loved it. Then, I got a feeling that I wasn’t supposed to like being there either. Besides, I had visited three weekends in a row. It seemed like Nanny was getting used to living there. I went less often and called less often. But I still called and visited a lot.

I was disappointed that Easter because I really wanted a rabbit and I didn’t get one. I kept asking for one and it didn’t happen. I had a rabbit when I was a few years younger. Edgar. And he died. Also, I was terribly allergic to rabbits. And I know my parents didn’t want to get me another one because of my allergies.

Most of the other entries in March and April of 1974 were about stocking and loving my aquarium.

I had an aquarium most of my childhood. I loved tropical fish. My best friendships with other boys growing up were completely centered on being an aquarium hobbyist.

It was all so sweet, the entries that I read. I feel so lucky that 1974 was such a sweet year.

Until I went to college and even during college breaks and after I graduated, I would take Nanny grocery shopping almost every week. We went to Italy together when I was a junior in high school. She was a very difficult personality with a pretty solid strain of Mediterranean bi-polarity. Not medicated. I got along with her extremely well. I understood her intense compulsivity and her loneliness. She died in 1989 of ovarian cancer. I visited her in the hospital every day. When she had a stroke during the last week of her life, she lost her speech. One visit, my brother came with me, and my grandmother, who no longer had the words, pointed at both of us with a fierce, protective look in her eye that meant, “You two take care of each other.” She died and I never quite got over it.

I am still very allergic to rabbits.

Like a Self Cleaning Oven

Arrogance takes care of itself.

The Republicans are getting their desserts. Let Cheney be next, clotted pudding that he is.

Too Much Sun

If one is a bit obsessive, and I am, there are so many opportunities to avoid the trap.

However, I rarely avoid. I usually take the bait and get my ankle in the steel bear claw.

Apparently, there is a little bit of computer patching, especially for handheld devices, that needs to be done for this earlier-in-the-year than usual Daylight Savings time. I am not a fan of Daylight Savings. I know most people love it. But for someone who already goes to bed very late, this just makes matters worse.

In my desire to dispel some anxiety over my distaste for the government messing with my clocks, I attempted to take some control over this loathsome tradition. I figured I would go ahead and make the patch for my Cingular HTC 8125 pocket PC cell phone. When I got to the web site that Cingular directed me to, sent to me by text message this morning, the site said, “But before you do this patch, make sure you update your ActiveSync to the latest version.” ActiveSync, for those who don’t know, is the software that synchronizes the phone data with Outlook on the computer when they are joined together in USB matrimony.

I did it. I downloaded the new version.
And then I lost three hours of my life.

The joys of sync software are none. Of course, the new software had to set up a new linking between the computer and the handheld and there was still the old linking. And the new software needed me to delete the old for all this to work. And then after that, there were other problems. The sound note I made of the bells ringing from Notre Dame when I was in Paris---it somehow became corrupted and kept causing a sync error. This error was no big deal—however, I would have had to live with the error remarks for the rest of my synching days and I couldn’t have that.

And there was a sharing protocol that wouldn’t let me delete Quasimodo’s bells.

I kept tweaking around. Finally, after much resetting and turning things on and off, I was able to delete the bells and the error message went away.

All this- and I still never got the daylight savings patch.

What a waste of time. Of course, it was the perfect way to avoid writing. But then, I was so annoyed by Microsoft and so annoyed by my own nature to need things perfect that I focused like a dog and finished the first draft of a major television thing I am writing and then went to my friend’s house and we finished the first half of a first draft of our zombie movie. I was obsessive. But I bounced off the obsession into the original plan for the day. The only thing I missed was going to the gym. But isn’t that obsession, anyway?

Beware the patches. Beware computers in general. Beware obsession.

Daylight Savings is not for me.

Middle Age: The Chickens Really Do Come Home to Roost

There is something about being in your forties that has a kind of crushed-glass-and-vinegar-enema sensation.

But one must live. Lately, I have been looking at my breakneck running speed--if not in body, at least in mind. And I see that it is STILL about childhood stuff. I think this is why Ann Coulter's horrible comment got to me so much.

There she is, all smug--making a faggot joke. And people, though uncomfortably at first but then whole heartedly, had such a great laugh about it.
I can understand her making fun of the ridiculous hypocrisy of someone going into rehab over calling someone a name. Left Wing people do come across as overly controlling and tyrannically PC. I applaud making fun of that. But to link that onto calling a grown, well respected man a faggot?

Ann is an actress, for sure. Perhaps she is our current day Lenny Bruce (with the soul of Ayn Rand). It's so interesting. And let people do what they want. (I use the N word in ironic post-racist constructions and I chide my Jewish friends for their clannish ways.)

But personally, I find using the pejorative in public assembly damaging. If I ever meet Ann, what could I say to this tall, blond, straight, privileged woman who clearly has a high opinion of herself? "Hey Ann, Why the long face?" Or "Man, you're an idiot. Your diatribes aren't even based upon fact." I think I would say nothing to the nut.

Adam, my recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, believes that growing up gay in the 1970's was the toughest time to be gay. It had become very well known by then but was still not at all acceptable. So, one was easily identified and then quickly vilified in turn. Of course, it is a bit gay to think that you are the center of the highest possible era of pain, however---I think his experience of growing up gay in that period was very difficult and his perception of it being quite crappy is, of course, right on.

Not that growing up gay is easy ever. And certainly, it must have been even more awful in earlier decades and centuries when one couldn't even begin to be oneself. Egad.

Pain is pain. And things change at a snail’s pace.

In general, it has been very difficult to live during this administration as a gay person. These right wing loons are bullies and their entertainers are mean spirited and empowered. It seems to me the only thing to do is to organize a gay cross-country walk that begins in New York, weaves its way through the most conservative towns in the country, and ends in Los Angeles. It will be the "I survived the United States" walk.

BOO

I have to give a big BOO to three entities today:

1) To David Mamet. On Bill Maher last week he warned the Jewish people of America that they were absolutely separate in the United States and to not let themselves be fooled that they have any place in this country outside of the Jewish religion. Why is he so paranoid? One of our smartest playwrights—and he suffers from paranoia? And wants all Jews to be strictly observant and religious so as to be protected and stake a separatist claim? Boo.

2) To The Disney Corporation. They are actually suing the city of Anaheim because Anaheim wants to build condos and affordable housing nearby. Disney claims this will interfere with their business. Meanwhile, Disneyland employees live in awful apartment buildings in the area, eight to a room. Affordable housing could help them. Disneyland thinks it owns Anaheim and treats their employees like slaves. Wretched company. Boo.

3) Ann Coulter. Well, it’s a big Boo to her every single day. But calling a respected politician a faggot? Really? One wonders what happened to her growing up. Was she tongue kissed by her father every morning? Was she forced to wear white jeans to school on heavy flow days? Why is she filled with so much hatred? Perhaps she is nothing more than an attention seeking dog and should be dismissed as the sideshow that she is. Or maybe someone should put a bullet in her head. She is completely awful. BOO.

The Cabinets are Installed

 

Long Live the Cabinets.

Going Under to Stay Above

A strong feeling here. I would like two systems of transport.

One is above ground for people. It’s public. It’s clean. And if you want to be left in peace while you travel, you press a button and the Lucite comes down around you. One could enter these trains. Or, one could have a pod and press in a destination and the pod joins into the stream of other pods. Easy enough.

But the other system I have thought about for years and the one I really want to happen is:
The underground railroad for crap. Yes. Anything you buy gets a code put on it and it goes underground with all the other stuff that people by and when you get home, there it is in your personal underground station. All items would be carried on a conveyer belt (up to a certain weight) and the little conveyer belts only turn on when necessary. The conveyer belt from the street to the building where you live would only turn on if there is a package for you. This would save an enormous amount of energy.

There would be larger tunnels for freight...freight depots would be built around cities and farms. There would be no need for trucks. There would be no need for air pollution.

People would live and travel above ground in fresh air. Personal goods and freight would travel below.

Tunnels of love.

NOTE

You don’t have to be well rested to get things done.

Push on.

The LA Times, North Korea, Snark and Precious French Babies

The LA Times is slowly pushing to the right. This is interesting.

Since the Chicago Tribune took over our little hometown paper here in Southern California, things are getting quite gray.

Specifically, the editorials and the slants of many stories seem to be pro-business. For the most part, I am pro-business. I think it is better for people to work than to just sit around all day thinking about ways to clobber a neighbor over the head for their lamb chops. However, I would never be black-and-white minded enough to ever believe that all work is worth doing or even existing in society.

But what scares me more than our newspaper turning away from the good of the common man to the good of the profit seekers, is the situation in North Korea. Can it be that the stubborn posturing of our right wing government is what made that wretched little country give up its nuclear ambitions? Or was it simply something China made happen?

I don’t know. But I am willing to give our bullying government a little credit for this North Korea thing. I mean, it is a pretty great day when some nutty dictator puts down the plutonium in the name of reducing tension. Of course, a deal was struck and everyone has to pay to make this happen. But still, this is a great thing.

I believe in standing firm. I wish we had simply stood firm with Hussein in Iraq. Maybe he would still be dictator today and Iraq would exist as a stable country.

But back to my reading pleasure. The Los Angeles Times blows. It used to be kooky and snarky and funny. And decidedly leftist. It sneered at power. It chided vanity. It loved the cheap bungalows in far flung burbs, the odd Saturday afternoons at flea markets, the tiny movies and funky bands. It did not take itself too seriously yet held onto strong humanist principles---and in turn won mountains of Pulitzer prizes.

Now?

Blech.

I don’t want to dump my local paper. I love reading about local government regulations. I love reading our fluffy calendar section which is nothing more than a peek into the boudoirs of movie stars. And I love the little map on the back page of the California section. If I see nothing but green circles, it means the air quality is fine and I won’t have sinus trouble. If I see yellow circles hovering near downtown, I know I have to be careful.

But frankly, I might just have to bail on that LA fish-wrap and start getting the New York Times. Sure, I can read the New York Times online---but I hate reading newspapers online.

This LA paper has me upset. It’s hard to stomach right-minded people coming into my home every single day.

Speaking of the right, did you know that France passed a law this week that keeps adoption not-an-option for gay couples for the “good of the child”?

Oddly enough, if you are gay and single you can adopt. But not if you are gay and hooked up. Freaky France.

Judgment Days

My nephew has a very funky haircut. Joan Jett meets Liza gone awry. He does it himself. It’s very long in the front, brushed forward and flattened against his face with a certain Goth aesthetic? Or is it Emo? Some sort of hairy something that this old man does not have prior experience with.

It’s very dramatic. Add to this: it has stripes of orange in it. It is cut shorter at the crown of the head in a layer above the long hair so there’s this mini Dr. Zeuss thing going on. The whole do, besides the stripes, is dyed jet black and ironed flat.

Add to this the tight pants, the studded belt, funky shoes, underwear hanging out the back and being quite tall, this guy, at seventeen, cuts quite a visual swath in the world.

While we were in Paris, we went to many restaurants and no one blinked. But one place where we had dinner was in full light with tight tables. We sat at a banquette. On one side next to us was a German couple. The woman of the duo looked at my nephew and a look of disgust came over her face. She quickly turned away. On the other side of us was a French businessman who was eating alone. His look toward my nephew was truly hateful with disdain, a Gallic disapproval that was fleeting yet forceful.

And there I was, the old guy guardian and all I could think was, “I can’t believe my nephew goes out in the world with that hair. Doesn’t he feel the negativity that comes at him?”

And then, quickly, I realized it was my discomfort I was concerned about. Why in the world should I care what people think about anyone, at all? I made the transition over a period of two or three minutes. I actively pursued this acceptance.

I switched fully. I felt proud that my nephew could sit there, in his hair, and just be what he wanted to be while others were unhappy about it. And that made me feel free. And isn’t that the trick? To feel free here?

The French businessman froze his gaze forward for the rest of the night. The German woman started to ask us about our desserts. Apparently, chocolate mousse trumps Bay City Roller Head meets ostrich.

La Tour

 

Our Lady

 

Go to Paris

I took my nephew to Paris because he is turning seventeen in two weeks. I went to Europe for the first time at sixteen (Paris) and then again at seventeen (Italy). Those experiences were invaluable in expanding my world view. And, the food was good and everything was so pretty.

Still is.

My sharp, droll nephew proved to be great company. He is easy going about food (does not have to have three normal meals each day) and he can walk for miles on end without complaint. I also had two old friends who were in Paris, friends from my childhood trip, and we spent a little time with them, too, which broke things up and rounded out the experience. But mostly, it was Daniel and I pounding the streets of Paris.

I recommend going to Paris in February. We had cool, spring weather. We were able to walk at length without having to fight any heat. And though there were certainly tourists, it was not thronged.

This is the thing about Paris. Sure, it's a cliché, but it truly IS the most beautiful city. I have not been to Tokyo or Winnipeg. But I do think Paris would still hold this title in my mind even if I had seen those cities.

The French take great care of everything. There is money in the budget for maintenance. They continue to expand an already huge public transportation system. There were fewer cars there than twenty years ago. The air was extremely fresh and clean. The exhibition rooms at the Louvre have expanded. Brasserie Bofinger still serves up an amazing dish of choucroute garni. Street crepes (simple--with just sucre) are as tasty and easy as they ever were. The architecture: sublime.
Our hotel rooms were in the Fifth with a view to Notre Dame. The French seemed more friendly than I remember from any other trip. People there seem very relaxed and happy. My nephew was amazed at how happy old people were. He said he'd never met a happy old person in the U.S.

You get this sense in France that everything is catalogued, measured and cared for. You also get this sense in France of a certain cultural and politcal oppression.
Is the physical beauty and the moment-to-moment happiness worth having to endure the controlling culture? I'd say yes. Go see for yourself.

From the Pompidou

 

Charles De Gaulle Ahoy

The blog will return February 22. Stay tuned for Paris stories.

Have a lovely weekend and a bountiful week.

What's All This Monkey Business on the Web?

A long day of traveling--followed by a lovely evening with my friends Megan and Martha in Queens--and safely sitting in my apartment with the winter wind howling outside, I bring to you this clip.

I was reading about how kids these days put EVERYTHING online. Naked pictures of themselves. Complete journals of their every action. I have been a daily diarist since February 16, 1973, so I do understand the compulsion to get it all in writing. (And now in images)--

But must we see everything? Is there no mystery left at all?

Paris 2007

Demain, je depart pour New York. Vendredi, j m’en vais a Paris avec mon neveu pour lui montre une piece du monde plus vivant que l’etat de New Jersey.

On va visiter La cathedrale de Notre Dame, La Tour Eiffel, Le Musee D’Orsay et Le Louvre. Eh, bien sur, nous mangerons commes cochons.

Aussi, la musique—nous entendrons la musique. En plus, on va faire des courses pour acheter les chemises, chaussures, etc.

Et les amies seront la. Deux.

A bientot.

Peut-etre je bloggerai pendant que j’y suis.

Pear Blossoms

 

For my friends who do not live in California I give you this picture. We are about a month late this year. It was so cold in January that the jasmin and the pear tree held off.

So we're having January in February. It's so fresh. The back page of the local section of the Los Angeles Times shows the air quality level: green dots all the way inland to San Bernadino!

It's perfect early spring with all the joy that goes with it: clean air, flowers budding, cloudy skies, cool happiness.

Have a lovely day.

The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others is just plain smart and good and up for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Okay, the movie is slow. But you just have to sit back and let East Germany of 1984 take you over. I loved how the streets were almost empty (in the middle of East Berlin).

The director, Florian Henckel Von Dommersmarck, creates a spare and terrifying world where creative human beings are controlled by monster bullies. It’s claustrophobic. The worst dream you’ve ever had about being held down by others. The set design by Silke Buhr is all finished wood paneling and brownish curtains. East Berlin in 1984 looked much like 1962. I love the design. It’s easy on the system. But its neutrality adds to the paranoia.

The three main actors, Sebastian Koch as the playwright who turns against the communist party, Martina Gedeck as the pill-popping actress who is of weak yet beautiful character, and Ulrich Muhe as the Stasi Captain who has a turn of the soul, all give lovely, clear performances that are wonderfully, humanly layered. And the supporting characters, wonderful and interesting all.

About halfway through, I felt a certain disappointment, like, “When is this thing going to get moving?”
And then it did. And it was rough.

Can you imagine not being able to say and do what you want? The movie eventually jumps to 1989 when the wall falls. This is very interesting, too. No need to give away any plot at all. The ride is subtle and harrowing. Humanity triumphs. But not completely.

I visited East Berlin in 1983. It was quite odd. It felt like one was under constant surveillance. It was colorless as there were no signs, no advertisements. And the design of curtains, furniture lighting was definitely from an earlier time. Strange suffocating place.

How did it ever happen?

Can you imagine if Bush is right and we do have to take out the fundamentalist, warring Muslims because of their hatred of freedom? Imagine? Can you?

The Lives of Others

Pariscrastination

I suffer from a certain mild autism. I can listen to the same song over again for three hours while I am writing...even longer.

My favorite television station is The Weather Channel.

And next week I’m going to Paris. I’ve lived there. I’ve been there many times. I’m only going for four nights. I know the city very well. Yet I cannot stop reading guide books.

And I love the metro map.

Could it be that I am procrastinating finishing my television pilot?

Paradigm, big Hollywood agency, has graciously taken me on as a writer and they are working closely with me as I write an original television pilot for them to sell or to use as a sample to get me working on an existing television show. This means I get a lot of notes. And as soon as I say “no” to the notes, the game is over. So, as I want to be in the game---because I’m old and this is my biggest prospect—I keep saying “yes.”

I’m sucking it up. And actually, I think the script does get better with their notes. I mean-why the hell not?

But I take off a lot of time while writing to look at guide books. And web sites.

And the map. The beautiful, lovely, you got it---Paris Metro Map.

Paris Metro

Hedge Hogs

All this talk about hedge funds and corruption. Quelle surprise.

Does one enter into a Wall Street Career because of generosity and an compelling altruism?

Look—the regulators don’t quite regulate because they are having lunch with the regulatees. Would you snip the wings of your pals?

A tiny percentage of people in this country make out like bandits. Fine. Given. Let them have it. It takes a certain kind of personality to keep the market brisk.

My only thing: Would it be so much to ask, while you are skimming as much cash as possible off the top, would it be so much to ask to make sure that the rest of society at least has health coverage and passable public education? That’s all.

It’s a grabby zoo out there. Rise up, you half awake people, and claim what is yours: a life that is worth living with clean air and decent health care. After that, let the pigs rout for truffles. And we can all look at them and laugh at their vanity---but only if we are healthy and safe and educated.

February 10 & 11, 1979: Atlantic City

In 1979, I was in the All Eastern Choir in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was comprised of the best singers from the All-State choirs from many Eastern States. Oddly enough, Adam, my-recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, was also in the choir. I was from New York. He was from Delaware. I don’t remember meeting him. But then again, what chance did I have? The following two entries are from the two major rehearsal days that we had, Saturday and Sunday. It should be well noted that I had a terrible cold all week long according to earlier entries thus causing my lack of enthusiasm.

February 10, 1979:

Today was a good day. We fucken rehearsed all day. I didn’t go to one rehearsal. I’m exhausted. Tonight girls got caught in all the boy’s rooms, what a panic. Goodnight.

February 11, 1979:

We ate out for breakfast, went to rehearsal. Today was real good, we rehearsed. I didn’t go to one rehearsal and watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We went to the exhibits in Convention Hall, walked the Boardwalk. Tonight we just joked around. Goodnight.

The summer of 1978, I was in choir school up in Fredonia, New York and made friends with other choir geeks from all over New York State. Two of my friends, John and Jeff, roomed with me in Atlantic City. We did such brilliant things. We poured baby powder on the floor in front of the threshold of the adjoining door to our neighbor and then turned on a blow dryer to blow the powder into the next room.

The Limiting Factor

Back in the day, I was a Biology major. College. I was required to take eight courses of Biology including two labs. Since I was also pre-med, I had to take two Physics, two inorganic and two organic Chemistries and two Calculus classes. True. Though I did love science in high school, in college, it was another matter. A bit much.

However, what I did love about science and what I still love about it is the way rational thinking is built upon itself to conclusions that you can count on. Every step has to be solid, and if it is, then you can know where things are headed. Also, you can count it, graph it, write it down. Very enjoyable, in a way, in a world that is so topsy-turvy.

One beautiful concept was very simple and also very visible when conducting experiments: limiting factors. The concept of limiting factors is simple. If you run out of a reagent but still have more of something else, well then, the reagent is the limiting factor. You are reagent shy so your reaction slows down to a homeostasis that gives you a reading of, “all done”.

Another limiting factor can be the build up of waste. If you have a load of bacteria in a dish and the bacteria have access to lots of food (say glucose)---and the glucose is in such abundance that no matter how much the bacteria ingest, there’s plenty more glucose to be had, the bacteria will continue to multiply. Eventually one or two limiting factors take over. One is, you can end up with so many bacteria that they start to crowd each other out and so no more bacteria can arise. But usually before that happens, you have the limiting factor of waste. The waste products of the bacteria start getting in the way of the ingestion and the respiration and breakdown of the glucose. Waste, in the face of great abundance, becomes the limiting factor. And the bacteria must slow down their reproductive efforts. In fact, they just do.

You see where I’m going.

We’re the bacteria. The earth is the Petri dish. What will happen naturally, in our carbon-dioxide wasted earth, is we’ll slow down on reproduction because we are suffering from the limiting factor of great waste. It will be interesting to see how this waste actually physically slows down our reproduction.

Seems to me we cannot control ourselves—being driven just like bacteria are driven—by the force of acquisition. But then nature steps in. Fascinating, really.

Are Locusts Next?

Part of the joy of doing construction is the never ending visitation of filthy insect beasts.

Our walls are completely closed. Yet today, while doing some fine spackling of the window molding, I turned around to see a monstrous water bug on the floor. Okay--it was a cockroach. You know---those huge ones that love water. They come in on dry days. I don't like them very much. Killed that fucker.

Then later on, after dinner, I came home and there was a spider the size of Tuscaloosa on the drywall right next to the left side of the window. It was chocolate brown and had two big eyes that were almost comical. It seemed to me they weren't eyes, actually, but some modified structures to make the spider look more beastly to would-be predators. Or maybe they were eyes. Who knows! Usually I just let spiders live. We get them in the house. The little tan ones. The pointy, striped black ones. Whatever. But this thing was so googly-eyed and so big and so nasty---I killed that fucker, too.

Then, I walked the dog and I came home and to the right side of the window there was a cricket. We almost never get crickets. And I thought, "Well, it's just a cricket." But then I had an immediate recall of a story my friend Bradford told me the other night about how his entire side yard is always swarming with crickets and how it's real noisy and like something out of a horror movie. I don't want this happening to us. One less cricket to breed---I killed that fucker and flushed him good.

Of the three beasts that I annihilated, the one that spooged the most juice was the cricket. You think it would have been the roach...but those big hard shelled roaches seem to retain their water in their carapace after the death crunch. The cricket just splattered into a puddle. The spider was, for sure, the creepiest. I made sure I had a big wad of toilet paper to pick up his dead ass. I didn't want any spider poison to touch my skin.

February 2, 1974

Another boring day has gone by. Daddy shaved his moustache off. He looks a little weird. Welp Goodnight.

The Random List

1. I still can’t seem to cut my hair.

2. Global Warming is finally a bi-partisan problem. Fucking Republicans.

3. Congratulations to Megan who bought an ENORMOUS house in North Adams.

4. I’m middle aged—and I like it.

5. The walls in my kitchen are all finally closed up. It’s a joy to behold. Cabinets aren’t far behind! (Like having children, if you knew how painful remodeling a kitchen was, you’d probably never do it.)

6. I’m taking my nephew to Paris for a few days on February 16. Because at sixteen years old, everyone should go to Paris.

7. I am writing hours every day. It’s fun. And it does seem like I’m getting somewhere.

8. I just love spackling.

9. I need to play music, live. For fun. I will more often.

10. I would happily lose fifteen pounds.

The Heave

When I was a child I was very attuned to war and its weird affect on the culture. Vietnam was in full force. What I most remember about Vietnam was the weird word. Nothing in normal English sounded like viet or nam. Never mind Vietnam as a three syllable word all together.

In addition to the odd name, one was also made aware by the conversations around him that war was very wrong. People were awake. The teenagers in the neighborhood had long hair, played guitars and seemed very, what I realize now, stoned. And they were feeling their youth. They wanted their chance at life.

It was not the Vietnam War that formed my real dislike of war did to the culture. It was World War II. Being the “good” war made the idea of any war even worse. If there was such a thing as a good war, than that means one day one might have to go to war. Furthermore, I did not know anyone in the Vietnam War. But my father had five older brothers who were all in World War II.

What I cobbled together from the personalities of my hard drinking uncles and movies about World War II---is that during war (like during illness)—joyful life is compromised.

The protestors of Vietnam during that colorful Hippie time seemed to be fighting not only against the war but for the sensual nature of sweet life and joy.
World War II was more of a total lockdown, “We just have to get very serious and win this thing.” This, of course, was the perfect attitude for that particular war, but a deadly idea for a child.

I hated the thought that people had to get that serious and be constantly enemy focused. Besides, joy opens up possibilities. Seriousness offers nothing but sameness. Just a “think about nothing else until this is finished” mentality.

Bush and his profiteers would have us believe that we are in a very serious “good” war where we must shut off our joy and keep our heads down. But truly, this war is another Vietnam. It is quite different in its particulars but fundamentally the same in its misguided thrust.

I am too old to go to war. But I am affected, like everyone else, by this joyless gray culture in which we live where people have their heads between their trembling legs, terrified of the terrorists and of our own nasty government. Add to that the sad smacking of our lack of social structures for health and civility, and one sees all joy has left our shores. All that is left is coercion, greed and pride.

And where are the young people playing guitars, loving in groups, protesting the wrong headed actions, trying to claim the open, relaxed joy of living? I fear they are all in church praying to a God who demanded they vote for the tyrannical reign that holds them captive.

Time for a Cool Change

Let’s see what Hillary is up to:


Blog for Vote Hillary

Iran

Does it not seem like Quacken Bush is picking a huge fight with Iran?

It is declared that any Iranians causing trouble in Iraq are to be killed.

Will this not bring civil war into full regional war?

I don’t think the president will be happy until World War III is in full force.

OR

Another theory posited:

If all these terrorists are so scary and bad, wouldn’t the government of the United States have already executed a plan to succeed at this job in a timely fashion?

Perhaps imminent danger is nothing more than a bill of goods that has been sold to us. So this whole war may be nothing more than a few greedy men living richly off manufactured chaos.


OR

A bunch of fucked up dudes on both sides just like to fight.

January 26, 1979

Today was a new low. I got in a fight with Sally. She pulled my hair and I punched her so it was pretty bad. I felt horrible. I knocked her off her feet. I thought I killed her. Well we talked, me, Sally, Mom, everything’s o.k. I did my papers. Bruce and Maureen came over about 5:00, we sang. It was fun. We went out for pizza and came back here and fooled around, Bruce left, then Maureen stayed. Goodnight.


This was junior year of high school. My sister, ever my tormentor, was pissed off at me because it was my turn to make dinner and I was playing my guitar and I didn’t want to be bothered...and when she came to my bedroom to tell me to get moving and make dinner (fries and burgers), I told her I’d do it in a minute. She demanded I listen to her and the more she demanded, the more I made it clear that I would make the fries and burgers when I was good and ready. She didn’t like the look on my face and told me to wipe off the smirk and then she started pulling my hair. And with that, finally, at the ripe age of sixteen, I hauled off and hit her...it was the punch that was heard around the world. My sister never touched me again.

Bruce and Maureen were good friends from choir. Bruce sang. Maureen played the piano.

Hair Today

It's happening. My hair is getting very long. It looks awful. And yet, I just can't bring myself to get it cut.

Something about having huge, sloppy hair that makes me feel like there is still time on the meter of my life.

Adam, my recognized-by-the-state-of-California-Domestic-Partner, has a look in his eye that telegraphs, "Don't you think I find you ugly enough already after thirteen years?"

Robyn, a lovely woman I work with who is practically blind--I am not kidding--said to me today, "You look so sexy with that hair."

There is major bozo action happening above the ears. My hair grows out, not down. Yet still, I can't seem to hack it off.

Will I become one of those insane people who never cuts his nails and ends up with those ghastly curled things sticking off the ends of his fingers?

Will I swallow one of those cleansing ropes and pull it out of my ass?

I hope not.

For now, I think I will let this mop get wild. It's winter. I can always wear a hat.

I can't be put in prison for unruly locks.

For some reason, I need to let it fly.

Bushy and Me: Growing up Together

A man eventually faces his solitude.

This Bush guy is facing his.

(My only comment on his State of the Union Speech is: “With that horrific Dick Cheney sitting behind you sending out unctuous waves of greed, how can you be in such denial that this war has been nothing more than a bloody grab for oil money?”)

But then, we all have our delusions.

As one gets older, one may or may not hold fast to one’s convictions when surrounded by the scrum of disapproval.

The questions arrive. “Do I stick with what I want? Do I pay attention to what others want? Do I do what others want while quietly holding onto opposite convictions? Do I change my desires to match the needs of others? Am I right? Am I wrong? Do I know what I am doing?”

And you stand there, perhaps able to answer a few of those questions but certainly not all of them. This not knowing, no matter what your swagger, forces you to face your limited mortal being, your unique separateness.

Revolution

With the income gap widening, are we not seeing the return of a hardened feudalism with the pretense of freedom and opportunity brought to you by Nabisco?

Relinquishing the Hill

Hillary is running. Long live her campaign.

What I look at now, after losing years of my life under the Bush administration, is the fundamental difference between the two major parties of our great nation.

The Democrats support group caring but behave individualistically.

Republicans support individual liberty but push for group conformity.

Like the man who needs to learn the skills of navigation so he takes on a career as a bus driver, each political party arrives with its natural behavior and then proclaims the opposite in order to balance its energies. If this occurrence did not happen, each party would become unstable and splinter. This internal split of stance and action creates stability.

Politically, the two parties then behave dualistically as a huge push-me-pull-you monster. And so it goes. Creation-Conservation-Creation-Conservation.

And now we are moving away from the deadening paternalism of Republicanism to the creative, generative power of the Democratic Party. I encourage the Democrats to be brave, to embrace huge change that will benefit the environment, support the broad education of the citizenry and encourage individual expression.

Why Hags Love their Fags

Because after we spend two straight weeks demolishing the walls, making sure the plumbing and electricity are installed in the exact location, give or take a millimeter, then put up drywall, spackle and paint...we then furiously vacuum, mop, wipe, organize, and curiously wash all the dusty tools and tool box before putting them away.

Climate Haiku

Dead Bodies for Oil
Arrogant as the Sun God
Snow on Malibu

January 17, 1974

Daddy brought home these used skates which didn’t fit. So tomorrow I’m getting skates. I played in the snow with Greg and George.


Greg is my brother. George, best friend down the street.

Jack Frost Murdered my Yard

So---I was up this morning at seven. This is actually true.

Our good carpenter Kurt came to put in the new kitchen window (though the window was too small and we returned it. Have to wait at least ten days for a new custom window. We’ll live.)

But what was so amazing—as I was crossing the backyard to go to the garage to get some things, I looked down and the grass was covered with frost.

I have never seen this in Los Angeles. It was so fresh and fun. Yet so odd. I never even considered that something like frost would show up in my yard. With the lemon tree and everything else.

Well, you know how when your fridge gets real cold you can destroy the spinach or the lettuce? The leaves are destroyed and wilted and wet. (I imagine the ice crystals break down the cell walls.) This is what happened to our nasturtiums in the back yard. And our star flowers. And something that I only know as bat plants (the flowers of this plant look like little purple and red bat faces). Most of the murdered plants formed a border in front of bigger, sturdier plants.

But to see all these dead plants from a winter frost in Los Angeles. It was very strange.

Polar Bear in the Pantry

 

The Hilarity! Coldest January in about seventy years in Los Angeles---and our kitchen walls are open.

Ah, what a great memory it will be. We've put up thick sheets of plastic over the kitchen doors. It works.

The difficulty about a complete kitchen renovation is the incredible inconvenience mixed with the length of time it takes. You do something major, like demo out the old kitchen and you say, "Great. Now we're getting somewhere." Which is true. But the road is so long.

You get the plumbing and electrical taken care of and you realize, "Hell, I better just yank out the rest of the wall that they destroyed." And you do. But you still have such a huge way to go.

And then you put up some dry wall (today)-- but you still have the new window to put in. And the spackling and priming. And they haven't even come to measure for the cabinets yet.

So, the appliances will come on Friday. And they will sit in front of the new dry wall and they will all work. Including a washer and dryer (Thank goodness).

But you have to wait a few weeks while they make the cabinets. And then when they do put them in, you have to get them finished and you need the tile guy (Haven't even figured out who that is yet)...connect everything up. Get the floor refinished. Paint.

And then, it's almost summer.

And we'll remember that the walls were open when it was thirty-eight degrees.

Thursday's Quote by Daniel Kaufman

Someone said to me today, "It's a good thing you aren't suicidal." I said, "I am, just lazy."

Can it Be?

Is The Terminator the man we’ve been waiting for?

Does he have Messianic tendencies?

Did breaking his leg shake his soul?

And why does he care about the air?

I think our governor is one of those middle-Europa practical guys. We know them well. They can fix the broken door, make the sausage, work all day at the plant and then get up early the next morning for swimming. Because it has to be done that way.

The guy is downright grounded. Even with the imperfect healthcare-for-all scenario, he really is going for it. And California is ready.

Plus—encouraging the market to come up with new fueling---completely gets my vote. You can make an economy based on anything. Why not base it on the future? (Who are these people who say things like, "You can't do that! It'll upset business!" whever someone wants to make changes. Are they morons?) We can always do better and the Kahuna in Sacramento knows it. Schwarzenegger---you may not have loved him in Rabbit Test—but the guy sees where things are going and really does run there first.

I hated the whole “Oust-Gray-Davis-with-a-bunch-of-signatures” thing. But here we are. And Arnold is going at it very well.

I am so optimistic about the future. I just, I have to be. The earth is pulsing with positive change.

Words, Philosophers, Mythology

I am curious. Beyond that, I am compulsive. Lastly, my memory is good for the basic underpinning of anything, but not the exact fact. Eg. Hume is in the empirical camp of philosophers--which is not quite right. He was a skeptic, influenced by Locke and Berkeley, who were empiricists.

Desultory means random, not quite connected. I often think it means half-assed.

Avuncular means uncle-like. I often think it means “cheery”.

The ancient Gods: Odin, Norse. Jupiter: Roman? Zeus—Je pense Grecque.

One wants to know. And which plays did Euripides write? Which ones were written by Aeschylus? And how about Sophocles? I think Sophocles wrote the Oedipus ones. Yes, that is true.

I read most of them. I forget them, for the most part.

Avatar? Acolyte?

Yes, I finally know the meanings of these words.

But meretricious? Is that something good or bad? I say bad. In fact, it means something sort of whorey, showy.

I do not know much about the history of China.

And I know very little about the Bible. Though I could name the twelve apostles, most likely.

It seems so essential to know things. Especially now. In this day of information.

And though I just took a break from writing this blog to read about Greek playwrights in the Wikipedia, I know that it will be hard to remember it all. Not that I want to impress...but I do want a grasp. To know where we fit now. To be in the river of time-ideas.

I would like to commit to harboring greater exact knowledge, while resisting becoming an annoyance. Why we want this, or why certain people want to fill their heads with these kinds of things, I do not know.

In the end...I want these things to make me feel alive...I do not want the dry facts to dry me out.

Maybe I should sing in a field instead.

January 9, 1974 Snow Day

There wasn’t any school. I got play-dough today. I made pies and stuff. I played a lot in the snow. I went sleigh riding. We tried to build a snowman but the snow is too soft. I had a GREAT day.

Children of Men

Children of Men

We went.

First of all...this thing is smart. Directed by Alfonso Cuaron and based on the novel by P.D. James—you have this sci-fi chase movie, expertly realized.

Julianne Moore takes on a tiny role as a revolutionary. Michael Cain is brilliant as this old hippie guy in the woods hiding out as civilization is ending.

You see, what has happened is embryos are no longer viable. So extinction of the species has arrived. And the human race is living out its last days knowing the gig is up.
And how do they choose to spend this time? Well, Great Britain does it by setting up a xenophobic fascist state. There’s an uprising. There’s Clive Owen, all hero-like. But truly, the best thing is the filmmaking itself.

Gorgeous shooting of incredible art direction with a scoring that is unique, disturbing and hits it so right.

I love it when a movie knows exactly how to handle vision AND sound.

This is a huge experience into a nasty world. It’s very fucking grim. So don’t go see it if you aren’t in the mood for something like this. But do go see it if you can handle it.

Dead cows burning in fields.

Human Beings at their worst.

Sad, sad, end-of-days racism.

But ultimately, poetic. Oh, and there’s something very positive about it. But it cannot be named without destroying an early-on surprise.

People. Blech. But movies can be very good. Great film maker. If you want something easier on the system, you could rent his brilliant Y Tu Mama Tambien with hot little Gael Garcia Bernal.

Hints from Hell-Louise

We had a party. We have new white chairs.
You can imagine.

Not red wine...just the black sole of a little girl’s shoe...black and gray from living.

Big dirt stain.

I used water to try to get rid of it. The water dried. It left a brown water mark. I knew better than to let water sit on material all night.

The material is made from canvass. It has that very light speckled brown in the white.

Adam, my recognized-by-the-state-of-California-Domestic-Partner, brought home two spot removers. One turns things brownish. One bleaches--but you have to rub.
Together, a lot was accomplished...but then there was a bigger problem.

Some sort of batting exists under the white canvass. The more I worked the fabric, the color came up from the batting and stained the chair, right in the middle of the seat...far away from the original dirt. A whole new problem: Reddish-purple-brown. Like dried blood. In a few spots right in the middle.

Oh my goodness.

So I used hydrogen peroxide and a blowdryer. This helped, but not nearly enough.

Bleach on a cotton ball took out the red-brown stain.

But then, I had this big bleached spot.

So today, I made tea...used a toothbrush to apply the tea to calm down the bleached area.

Sprayed the browner stain remover, mixed with hydrogen peroxide. Speckled in a fine spray. Blowdryer.

Eventually, I ended up with a very decent looking chair except for two darkish brown spots...I continued to use a spray bottle of hydrogen peroxide and the blowdryer to get to the right color on those spots. Sometimes I used a toothbrush to really scrub in the hydrogen peroxide. But you have to be careful---because you can get brown lines...so speckle-spraying is better.

It went on and on...but it appealed to my perfectionist tendencies.

This was brilliant physical therapy between eight hours of reworking my television pilot. One feels guilty for procrastination. But people who create with the mind need to do things with their hands. It frees you up. And you end up with the chair how nature intended it to be.

In my television pilot (because the agents told me to do it)—I have more death and mayhem. Someone actually gets run over by a Brinks Truck. And the maid, running away from the I.N.S., eats the Virgin-Mary-Quesadilla that her daughter was trying to sell on ebay as the maid escapes through her kitchen window. Because in the world of television, these are the kinds of things that happen, so I’m told.

I think I’ll do a few more coats of Hydrogen Peroxide tomorrow. The chair is so close to being back to perfect. Control—anything to control.

Alumni Newsletter: Trying to Forget the Elephant

Alumni newsletters upset me, yet I read them. Why should I care that Rob Burnett from my graduating class was honored at Tufts University for an “outstanding career in the entertainment industry,” as executive producer of the David Letterman show?

I knew Rob very well. He lived on my floor freshman year. He arrived the second semester along with Nancy Jajinski from Ohio. They were both wait listed at Tufts and I guess a couple of freshman must not have made it back from winter break giving these two B+ students a crack at one of the universities in the “Most Competitive” column of the Barron’s.

Rob was a clown. A high energy, nonstop clown. I was also a clown but not so relentless. Plus, I had this darker brooding thing going on. And, I was best friends with Joe and Ed, and Rob tried to horn in.

Rob was not so much funny as he was bossy. And, he was non-handsome yet extremely confident. All that bad hair and a firm belief in the self? How did he do it?

Junior year of college, I studied in Paris for one semester. Nancy Jajinski was also there...in her cape. Rob, though not with the Tufts-in-Paris group, but with the American University in Paris, was living right around the corner from me. We went for a walk together one day through the Bois de Vincennes. He treated me to his very strong views on art. He was against anything abstract. He felt that the only true measure of an artist was whether or not he could paint someone’s face to likeness. No matter what I said about all other forms and styles of art, he would say loud and definitively, “But that’s not as good as someone who can really paint a face or a place that really looks like a face or a place.” A complete literalist, I just rolled my eyes and thought, “Fuck. This person is bullying me with his opinion and he just won’t see my point of view at all. And we all know that the amazing art that was made since the impressionists onward is so important. I mean, come on.”

Deaf to me, we ended our walk and he went back home to his apartment on Boulevard Picpus. And I went back to mine on Boulevard Soult. And I did not see him again for the rest of the semester. But I did see Nancy...in her cape. She hated me. Being one of those very serious blond haired, blue eyed Jewish girls from Ohio, holding on tightly to the idea that she was a proper WASP, shunning anything expressive or vulnerable or creative, in her eyes I was but a riff raff.

So, Rob and Nancy, those wait listed slide-ins, do not figure positively in my life. And there on the cover of my Department of Drama and Dance, Tufts University newsletter, “In the Round” (Our theatre was The Arena Theatre, thus the name), I have to look at Rob’s face with his hand clutching a metal elephant with four other honorees (the elephant is the Tufts mascot—P.T. Barnum gave Tufts his dead elephant, Jumbo, which was stuffed and placed in the Biology building lobby. When the Biology building burned down, so did the taxidermy pachyderm).

I rail. Of course, I’m just jealous.

January 2 is a tired Day

After weeks of flying, eating, buying, dining, drinking, eating, snacking, visiting and eating some more, the holidays finally end.

The Christmas tree is in the green can. (Green cans are for LA clippings. Blue-recycling. Black-Garbage. Can you imagine that meeting?)

Some bills are paid. Some are not.

The big question on January 2 is, “Can we get back to normal, now?”

Finally, for one day, you get to slow down (even though you are actually gearing up). The day has arrived when the whole shebang has been put away for another year. And you realize, “This holiday stuff is exhausting!”

And then you put on your work outfit.

It's a Little Hot Outside

Welcome to the new year. 2007

Beyond my understanding.

Let’s talk about global warming. The next ten years are very exciting because right now, in garages and labs across the country (and in the greatest numbers in California), creative, ambitious people are figuring out how to make very efficient engines; how to easily use bio-refuse as fuel; how to creative a true mathematical model that gives the answer to the world’s troubles in X=trees planted + feet used – burned fuel + anything else that is good.

We were in New York City for two weeks. And it was unseasonably warm. I am not going to say it wasn’t freaky, but it was also not unheard of. As a temperature observant child, I remember some very warm December days. Not for ten days straight. But for maybe two days at a time. Okay, fine—

So I wasn’t so upset about the temperature being so springy while I was there. Many days in a row, strange. But warmish in December, not the worst thing to happen to a person. But there was something going on in New York that was straight out of Science Fiction: Pussy Willows.

You never saw pussy willows in December in th 70’s.. No matter what. December--No Pussy Willows!

But there they were, all silvery and fuzzy, pushing out all along the tips of thin branches.

Pussy Willows were always the first sign of spring. It was so exciting. In December, not so.

Dear Pussy Willows:
I’m sorry we are upsetting your world.

(Note: Great Britain has experienced its warmest year since records have been kept. They started keeping record in 1659.)

But I am optimistic. People are going to figure this out. It’s exciting.