Sunday Bloody Sunday

Ladies in Waiting

Super Powers

The 40-Year-Old Verdict

Over 40. It has its benefits. Big Benefits. You realize how much time you wasted criticizing your looks, your manners, your bad days, your moods, your choices, your relationships, your family, your mistakes.

All that time regretting, picking on yourself, and feeling bad about your skin, legs, stomach, and toes, was time not spent noticing

How perfect your 20-year-old skin is;
How lush your 30-year-old hair looks;
How wonderful your friends are;
How, from a distance, your family is quite normal;

Wisdom is knowing that the Greeks prized long middle toes. And so do I.

The best things about over 40 are small acceptances that add up to loving yourself.


The Big Benefit, is finally knowing that you have always been da bomb.

Weather Hair

What I love about curly hair:
Curly eyelashes.
What I hate about curly hair:
Hair should not act as a barometer. If it’s dry out, I’m golden. The perfectly formed curls are the envy of all and, as everyone without curly hair says, people pay good money to have hair like that. Sure, on a good day. But if there is a touch of moisture in the air and those curls turn into a frizzy untamable fright, you wouldn't wish that mess on your worst enemy.

Shopping Lilly

One of my favorite mommy blogs, The QC Report: Notes from the Underwire, wrote a funny piece on a recent Lilly catalogue. It’s not too early for holiday shopping.

http://qcreport.blogspot.com/2007/08/pictures-of-lilly.html

What Should You Do?

There’s no denying it, with three pee stories, I have officially moved into the realm of too-many-stories-about pee.

I was worked on a show called “What Should You Do?” for Lifetime TV. It was a great show about women overcoming the most difficult situations they would ever face. They were attacked, stalked, survived fires, hurricanes, rapes, and robberies. You name it, the women we profiled survived it. The premise of the show was to answer the question, what did these women do to save themselves? I admired every woman that I spoke with.

One day I was working on several stories at once and ran to the bathroom to pee. I was distracted and busy and slouched on the seat. When I pulled up my jeans, the back waistband was wet. What the H-E-L-L? I had peed on my jeans. Ick.

There was nothing for it but to go back to work until I dried off. Lovely. Once back at my desk, I tried to forget that I had a pee-soaked waistband. Needless to say, I sat perched on the seat and away from the back of the chair. One of the directors going out to tape a story came into my office to talk. She stopped mid sentence.

“It smells like beer in here,” she said.

“Oh, does it?”

Note to self, pee smells like beer.

What would the heroic women think if they knew that, for one afternoon, they were talking to a woman that “smelled like beer?” They'd tell me what to do.

Sunday Prayer?

Ode to Stephen Cole-Bear

A Sloth of Bears next to Stephen protected by a flag and a vacuum next to a Black Bear

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/host/stephen_colbert.jhtml

Eagle Rock

It happened at the same time, but a day apart. Driving on the 134 East looking at the town of Eagle Rock stretched to the South, I felt as if I were the first and only person to see this view. The first to see that exact configuration of lights in the houses and businesses, the street lights, stop lights, green lights, and yellow flashing lights. The children growing, dogs walking, couples shopping, cats eating. I had never felt as if I were the first person to see anything. But, the afternoon before that day, while driving on the same freeway in the late afternoon, I saw it.

The town of Eagle Rock is named after a huge bolder with the profile of an eagle's beak. I've driven by it for years. But that day, I drove around the slopes of the San Gabriel Mountain in the late afternoon and saw the shadow under the eagle's wings as it soared from the rock, its beak pointing toward the sky. Why the eagle took so long to show itself to me is a mystery, but I've been the only person on earth to see many things since that day.

Still In Love

Falling for Joan and David

When David was with Joan and Joan was with David. What year was it? 1993 I think. Freshly divorced with cash in hand, I discovered Joan and David and my first pair of expensive boots. It's been a long summer without them, but the fog and cool air bring my tattered, sewn, shoemaker friendly, resoled, multi-tapped, shoelace replaced babies out of the closet. Hello Joan and David.
Welcome Fall.

A Tiny House of One's Own

The idea of these tiny houses brings out the little girl in me. A place to set up an office or put mini-guests or have a tea party.

http://apersonalspace.com/home2.html

We Will Kick Off! We Will Kick Off!

Sunday football, again. At least the Green Bay Packers won, again. What Sunday Football does week after week is remind me of Bill Cosby and the comedy album my sister and I wore out as kids, Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow Right released in 1963.

"We will kick off! We will kick off! We will receive! We will receive!" from Toss of the Coin mesmerized us.

If you've never heard early Cosby, and this is his first comedy album, you are missing something.

A Polygamist's Polygamist

Friday was day two of the Warren Jeffs' trial.  He's the leader of a group of polygamists in Arizona.  I'm a big fan of the HBO show about a polygamist family, Big Love. The issue of forced under-age marriage isn't addressed on the show the way you imagine is the dirty truth. The Jeff's compound profit character, Roman Grant, played with evil glee by Harry Dean Stanton, was supposed to marry a young charge but she stowed away in the Hendrickson's SUV to reek manipulative havoc on greater Utah. That's not how girls raised in a compound are portrayed in the excellent documentary about Warren Jeffs, Damned to Heaven. As a lone investigator into the compounds many illegal activities says in the doc, "You can't deprogram them." All you can do is try and teach ex-members to survive in the outside world. While in the TV world of polygamy, Bill Hendrickson's tenuous hold on family unity, his business interests, and his relationship with a power-giving God are fun to watch, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near Jeffs. One of the lost boys from Colorado City, Arizona, said that Jeffs is actually shy, but power drives him to drone on in a flat monotone for mountains of taped lectures.

Damned to Heaven is in the same category as the wonderful and terrifying book Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer. Krakauer appears briefly in Damned to Heaven. Watch the Damned to Heaven trailer on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1cTk2cJQac

Pee Jag

As long as I'm on a pee jag, here's a story about Susan. Susan had been a singer in Chicago, a talented and ambitious girl, she decided to move to the Big Show, Los Angeles. There were lots of talented and ambitious singers in LA, so after singing the circuit, Susan became a booker on talk shows. Like a lot of people in LA, a second career was born. I met Susan on a variety show. She was single and lookin'.
During the show, Susan met a guy named Everett. He was a has-been writer in need of a second career but found Susan instead. He moved in to her house. He took. She gave. It's classic.

Susan would say, "Everett's such a talented writer. People won't give him a chance." It was like listening to a mother straining to convince you that it's a blessing to have a difficult child.

Susan couldn't see that she was the prize and this guy was using her. But having a man on her arm seemed enough.

For Everett, things turned out dandy. Susan's talk him up and, with her connections, got him a writing job and he pomptly left her.

One day shortly after the breakup Susan and I were having lunch at Hugo's in West Hollywood. Susan said that she had no regrets and, in fact, Everett had left her with one valuable lesson.

"Everett taught me to pee in the shower."

"What?" I said.

"Men do it all the time," said Susan. "It's a wonderful, freeing feeling."

"I think being free of Everett is the wonderful feeling," I said.

Showering the next morning, I thought about it. It's hard to do because girl muscles are trained to let go only when you're sitting down. But I tried. You know, it is a freeing feeling.

And Susan? She has a tiny dog on her arm now and is living happily ever after...with Hunter.

The Beauty of it All

Coming and Going

Gross alert. While eating cereal this a.m., I suddenly had to pee in a coffee-is-a-diuretic-way. Time was running out for me to get my ass out the door and to work, so I took the bowl into the bathroom with me and kept eating while I was peeing. I was thinking that there must be a word for eating and peeing simultaneously or, better yet, drinking and peeing. Drincretion.

9/11

Walking the dogs in the last of the dusk light -- the time the French call "entre chien et loup," the time when you can't tell a dog from a wolf -- it's quiet and warm. The road winds around the hills and there are few street lights and no cars. The houses are dark except in the Boo Radley house. The big one on the corner with the roof always full of leaves and the curtains old fashioned and lacy. I hear nothing from the house except angry screams every once in a while. There are children in the yard sometimes on hot summer days, but they never seem to grow.
The stillness makes me nervous because it's September 11th. I rush to get the dogs inside and the door closed as the light disappears completely.

Waiting

Holding my breath...
getting blue in the face..
losing oxygen.
dead

Sunday Football

Chicken Charlie

Last night as my head was in the toilet and my guts were in the bowl, I thought maybe it was a sign that I shouldn't be in the kitchen preparing meals but should limit my visits to getting a cold Coke out of the fridge. It was the first time that I'd cooked for friends in a long time (and that was an accident involving a surprise visit). I hate cooking b/c I'm not good at it. There are lots of skills that I master, but cooking has never been one of them. Chef's are considered artists, but we're supposed to pick up a sauce pan and, with no training or calling, make meals.

The recipe is from "Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less," that was in the The New York Times. It's fried chicken strip sandwiches. Easy peasy. But cooking makes me nervous. I don't trust food and am terrified of raw chicken and I'm sure that everything is spoiled. How many fights have I had shoving a milk carton under my partner's nose saying, "Smell that. It's bad."

I had even practiced the meal on my parents over labor day. I called the dish "Chicken Charlie" b/c, while we prepared the sandwiches, my mom was telling a story of when she and my dad were looking for the Mickey Mantle sports bar in Boston. They came to the address on the Google map and my mother read the signature on the bar's sign as "Chicken Charlie" and asked my dad, "Why would they put another sports bar right here next to Mickey Mantle's?" She bought commemorative cups with Mickey's signature on them and asks everyone, "What does that say?"

"Mickey Mantle."

Chicken Charlie went fine at my folks', but that was with my mom handling the chicken, cutting out a nasty looking tendon from the strips that she says makes them tough. I just dredged the strips in flour and plopped them in hot oil. Even with a splash guard, I got smacked a lot. Between the sputtering oil and my "Ouching" and "Damning," it was loud food prep much like in a professional kitchen. I've seen cooking shows. So, I made the chicken sandwiches for friends last night. I tried to take the tendons out but, between touching the chicken and the dull knife I was using, I pocked my finger. It didn't break the skin and no blood was drawn but I was so freaked out about what COULD have happened that I fried them tendons and all.

Everything went well. Chicken Charlie was a hit.

Then, I woke in the night feeling queasy. I tried to open a box of Alka-Seltzer but it was too late. Hello toilet bowl. I was sure I'd killed our house guests that, hours earlier, were laughing and enjoying what little time they had left in life at my kitchen table.

My partner found me passed out this morning under the toilet bowl covered with bath towels, hand towels, small rugs and wash clothes. (I was cold. They were near by.) My partner called our dinner guests and they're fine. It turns out that I was right. Cooking makes me violently ill. Told you.

Flat as a Board

There's a shift that took place without any of us noticing. Every tv starlet and movie actress is with boobage (with the exception of Debra Messing who had a bigger ass than she did breasts so was considered flat chested, that is until she had a baby and she's probably full figured by now).

Watch the '80s nighttime soap opera Falcon Crest and every woman on the show is flat as a board. I mean no curves of any kind. That's what skinny girls look like. Stick with me, the Bio channel (we know it's Biography, and changing the moniker to Bio isn't going to attract the 18-35 year olds who, according to the suits, see the word "biography" and their minds turn off) is showing episodes of the mid-1980s sitcom Kate & Allie. Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James have nothin'. There as flat as their teenage daughters. My friend, B, says it's the hormones in the chicken, milk and cows we grew up eating. Are vegetarians the only women left with pale complexions and tiny tits? What happened in the last 20 years? Discuss.

Joan of Acocella

I was watching an "American Masters" on PBS about Willa Cather. It's my kind of show, lots of talking heads, not much video, but plenty of pictures and vague recreations. It was only interesting until a woman identified as Joan Acocella started talking about Willa Cather as if she'd known her. I looked Joan Acocella up and, sure enough, the director of the show, Joel Geyer, got fired up for the documentary after reading an article in the New Yorker that Joan had written on Cather. You could tell by the way Joan talked about Willa Cather, that she did know her in a way. Joan's passionate knowledge, respect and love poured out during the interview. Interest turned to fascination. This was no ordinary talking head expert. It turns out that Joan is the dance critic for the The New Yorker. Modern dance is like modern painting, you have to pay attention to appreciate it and I'm as ADD is the next 21st Century gal. But that's where Joan comes in. She writes with the same passion as she talked about Willa Cather and takes dance from the rarefied air of theory back into your heart, where it belongs.