TV for Smart People- Studio 60

Let me start by saying that I didn't watch The West Wing. I just want that out of the way. I did watch Sportsnight. I do love a lost cause.

Please, please, please don't cancel Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I am sure it is going to come up soon. It's a good show. A really good show. Great, witty writing. Solidly funny performances. So much potential.

There is no good drama on TV right now. I used to have Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, 24. 24 and The Sopranos are on hiatus and nothing has really come to take their place. Brothers and Sisters had potential but it is extremely heavy handed. The writing isn't even in the same universe as Studio 60. Desperate Housewives is getting, well, sort of desperate. (Really, the love child and baby's mama? A coma? Please).

TV, in general, is pretty slim pickings right now.

So NBC, I beseech you. Please don't cancel Studio 60. Don't be that network. If you cut too much I'm just going to quit watching altogether. I can Tivo, you know? I don't have to watch your sponsors ads at all if I don't want to. So please remember that I buy laundry detergent too. Even if I am a California liberal, I still shop. I can still buy just as many tires or sleeping pills or whatever it is you're selling. So keep Studio 60. Because not only can I Tivo, I can force friends into watching reruns on said Tivo. Sometimes I even get friends to switch laundry soap.

The Miracle Man

My grandpa is currently amazing Long Beach cardiologists by watching three baseball games per day, roaming the hallways and complaining about the lack of salt in the food. 

The nurses keep asking him if he's the 83 year old that they've been hearing about. The doctors are talking about letting him come home tomorrow. (His original release date was to be sometime this weekend). He just had heart surgery on Monday! Aren't you just totally impressed? 

He has pink cheeks. He hasn't had pink cheeks in ages. He sounds, I don't know... chipper? It is very very very cool. 

Sickness and Health

It's all just so frustrating. You know?

I just hope I die quickly and never get some debilitating illness. I'd rather get hit by a bus and be done with it.

Sigh.

Waiting

It has been one of those weeks. I've been forced to examine the concept of waiting. My grandfather went to the hospital with chest pains. He has to have open heart surgery to open his five blocked arteries. It has been a little stressful, to say the least.

I'm waiting, we're all waiting. This somehow reminds me of a day some years back when I was working as an extra (or the fancier term "background artist") on some show on location at a high school in Hollywood. It was a day in late May or early June and the sunlight has this sort of t.v. quality to it. Have you ever seen real movie lighting? The complexity of it, the sheer quantity necessary to emulate simple daylight? The rigs, the stands, the gels? It was the kind of light an art director would flog a team of 30 guys to get on tape. It was just sort of clean, with a hint of gold. It was one of those rare hot days in Los Angeles where there’s no smog yet, but there is a siren call from the ocean that you just want to obey without question.

I was sitting in the shade by myself (I burn rather easily), a little bit away from the other extras. Just waiting. And I felt that pull; that desire for time to push forward, to zip quickly by. To get to whatever it is you are waiting for. But I wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. I was just waiting. Sitting in the shade of that day, waiting in that perfect light. Watching the dew evaporating from the grass. Waiting.

I’m pregnant. That’s kind of the ultimate form of waiting, stretched out for nine (actually count ‘em, ten) months. You can’t hurry it up; you can’t open this present before the birthday. You just have to wait. (The kid is about 4 inches long right now, per Babycenter.com).

Last week my grandfather went to the hospital with chest pains. He is scheduled for open heart surgery on Monday. He is a prisoner in his house, chained to his pill bottles by the doctors orders. Waiting to have someone crack his chest cavity. My dad, my sister, me?

We’re waiting to see that he’s going to be ok. That we’ll all be ok.

I’ve been so lazy with this blog and so brain-dead lately. This will end up being my longest post in quite a while, I am guessing.

I just read a rather entertaining article about how conservatives are out-procreating the liberals. It’s called “Attention Liberals: Please Breed. Conservatives are outbirthing libs by a wide margin. How soon can you get knocked up?” You can read it at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/09/29/notes092906.DTL. (I tried to make the link happen but it didn't want to work. You'll have to be industrious and copy and paste it).

Very funny stuff. I particularly like this sentence: “I am here to inspire the resistance, to propose solutions to this disastrous fertility gap and to help get liberals into the sack sans protection so they may go forth and multiply the number of people who adore "The Daily Show" and read actual books and think Aaron Sorkin is some sort of god.” (Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle). Has anyone seen “Studio 60”? It makes me miss “Sportsnight”....

My boys in blue won tonight. We may actually make it into the playoffs. Very very very cool.

More soon.

Tony Won!!!

There was apparently a contest for the "The Office" television program wherein fans were to create promos for the show. My friend Tony won! His promo can be seen at: Nbc.com. It's called "Playing at Work." It's very funny. Yay for Tony! It will be on after "The Office" either this coming Thursday or the following Thursday. We're so very proud....

And Then There Were Three....

Well, I haven't posted in a couple weeks. I've been feeling rather brained by the heat we've been having. My handy Apple Dashboard Widget says that it is currently 95 degrees in Long Beach right now, down from a high of 97. 

My other excuse is that I'm pregnant. Surprise! 

The following are the answers to the questions everyone keeps asking me:

Due in the latter half of March. 

We'll be happy with a boy or girl, but I find myself wanting a girl a little more. 

Yes, the husband is quite pleased with himself. 

I am about five weeks along, brain cells malfunctioning more and more- although that may be from quitting smoking and caffeine (my two most favorite vices) and drinking. 

Yes, it is 95 degrees and not even a Red Stripe to console me. Even my very first rejection letter can't make me that upset, though....  

Happy 4th...

I guess. Woo hoo freedom. Drunk drivers and illicit (in Long Beach) fireworks. June bugs smacking into my screens- someone needs to let them know it is actually July. I have a mosquito bite on my ankle after 5 minutes outside. Ahh, summer. 

I played tennis today, for the second time in a week. My sister and I now have a two time per week date to play incredibly bad tennis together. The Williams sisters we are not. I smoke a pack a day and generally prefer to be sitting in front of the air conditioner with said cigarette and laptop. But we try, so that's ok. 

I bought the Oprah magazine July edition to read Harper Lee's letter about the love and necessity of reading. I can't say that it is all that satisfying. I want fiction from the woman, as does the rest of the world. But good for Oprah, anyhow. 

I like Oprah in a sort of way that involves never watching her television show or buying her products. (I avoid novels with "Oprah's Book Club" stickers). I think I just like the idea of a woman media mogul. President Oprah and VP Barack Obama, anyone? She could easily be the one, I am just saying.... I want a female African American president and a Chicano female VP, but I'd settle for Obama. Or Edwards- I love a Southern Democrat with a drawl. I miss hearing Bill Clinton speak, that's all. An intelligent politician. With that adorable Alabama accent.... Sigh. 

Why do I have absolutely no direction in my posts? I can't even control it when I know what I want to say....

Sending it Out... and other things...

I've sent out another story. I hope and hope. I wait and wait. 

I miss writing. I haven't been at the keyboard that often recently. Although I've an idea percolating....

On a completely unrelated subject: my right hand has been hurting a lot. I've been having trouble sleeping. It aches and aches and aches. I think I might resort to that primitive thing- the doctor. I believe in never going, it that gives some sort of idea. I believe that blood belongs inside of me, not in a vial. I hate hospitals. The phrase "ICU" gives me chills since the three days I spent watching my grandmother's still frame under the watchful eye of beeping electronics. She died after useless intervention and the prolonging of my families' pain and useless raising of hope. I am no longer trusting. I hate the smell of those places. 

One of my friends is pregnant with her first child. Hospitals. They make me worried, those places. They are inherently frightening, full of chemicals and things I know nothing of. 

The sight of blood, indeed the thought of blood, makes me lightheaded and prone to fainting. I worry about friends entering those halls. 

I take Aleve every day, almost, to help with the pain in my hands, avoiding the doctors still. I hope that I will be able to avoid hospitals in my lifetime, whenever possible. The thought of the end of ones' life in a place like that... It doesn't bear thinking about, really. 

I wonder, occasionally, how exactly I will die. I don't mean this to sound as if I am hastening the day, merely that I wonder how it will happen. Inevitably one turns to the seminal "Six Feet Under" series, with their haunting opening scenes and the macabre and hilarious deaths. Shall I be the one to trip and impale my head on a sharp metal object? The one who runs into traffic, mistaking lost blow-up dolls for angels? The one who dies by skillet to the head? So many possibilities... I hope I have a moment to savor the situation and understand what it happening. That's all I really want from death. 

I am not quite sure how this post devolved as it has. 

A Game of Chance

Friday night. The weekend stretching in front of me like the cat when he wakes up from his nap. It's truly a beautiful thing.

The California lottery is up to 82 million this weekend. I may buy a ticket, just to be able to dream for a few hours. I actually know someone who won an obscene amount of money in the lottery. A couple years ago, a former co-worker won over 60 million. At age 25.

He got to quit work and travel as much as he wanted. I think he even eventually bought a new car (he drove a decade old car with oxidation eating away the paint on the hood). I was jealous, except for the happiness that kept intruding on me. He was a really really really nice person. (Who even quietly voted on the side of the angels -amazing in the OC). If I could have nominated someone, I could not have made a better choice. A good person, with a solid head on their shoulders, who would really have a great life and do some actual, measurable good. For a long time.

I did field a bunch of questions about him, afterwards, and the question came up over and over again. What would you do, if you won?

I can't ever seem to quite make up my mind. It is hard to imagine what you would actually do if something like that happened to you. What if your life changed, in some permanent, but generally good way- tomorrow?

What would you do?

It's interesting to reflect on what each person says they would do. I think that the generally more honest people tend to say things about trips they would take, where they would live. People who want to seem somehow morally above everyone else (this is a common response) tend to say things about how much money they would give to the homeless, or more often (again- the OC) how they would give money to their church. How they would keep working. (I can't see anyone I work with actually sticking to that one- I sure wouldn't).

It's the church one that gets me, ever the atheist. The church I went to didn't even have a soup kitchen. Nothing ever went out of that church into the community except condescension and occasionally, scorn. What exactly do they do with all that money? Convince people in Africa that sex is evil and abstinence is the only way to prevent AIDS? Send zealous children to convert the heathens?

I'd rather hear that they would buy a swimming pool and a BMW, to be honest.

I think I would go to Gombe, to go out into the forest and see the descendants of Jane Goodall's original chimpanzees. I would have to suck it up about the freakish bugs in the rain-forest, but my gosh. Chimpanzees in the wild. Sigh.

Vietnam. Pho eaten from bowls. The greenest trees. I've never been. But I would if I could.

The little town in Norway that lies half-way between Oslo and Bergen that I visited years ago with my grandparents. It's literally unspellable for me, but you say the name something like Soj-nya-fjord. There's a little train that you can take up the mountain there, that stops so you can stand on a rickety platform and feel the spray of the unexpected waterfall on your face, and watch the rainbows flicker in and out of sight. You can't hear anything above the noise of the water, and I remember thinking that it was so beautiful. I'd take my husband and see if I remember right.

Help Koko the gorilla (fine animal gorilla) go live in Hawaii. Probably a lot of research into where to send money. Mainly to help chimps. Maybe some to help people. Probably.

There are a lot of things I would do, I suppose. I'm no different than anyone else, really. Except that there would be a big contribution to the Socialist Party in my particular list. Maybe a house in Sweden. Or Canada.

It's fun to play pretend, for a little while. Sometimes I even think it's worth a dollar.

It's been a long time (almost a month) since I last posted here. Well, I found out I didn't get into Squaw. (I'm on the waiting list, which is good and bad- I didn't think there was really a waiting list until it was confirmed by others- so I just considered it a flat out rejection). The nail on the coffin was finding out that literally everyone else I knew who had applied was accepted. So I felt a bit pathetic. I still feel a bit pathetic.

But I'm doing better now. I mailed out a story to a literary magazine today. I'm getting back on the horse. I have decided that once I hit one hundred rejections I may then re-examine this whole writing thing, but it would be silly to act as if this particular rejection was the end of the world. I am actually getting a little tired of thinking about it at all. It is a bit hard since one of my friends was accepted, so I have to keep hearing about the d**n thing.

I was having a hard time wanting to write anything since I heard. I've since begun writing other things again, so I felt that now was a good time to rejoin the blog.

Sorry if this is a bit self indulgent, but I was thinking that I needed to write a bit about this, just to get it out of my own head. So I am officially finished with worrying about it.

I didn't even win the lottery this week. Can you believe it?

A Pox on Houghton Mifflin

My brand new copy of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is missing about 30 pages. (There is a duplicate section, instead). Thanks, Houghton Mifflin.

Now I've got to get back to the bookstore and hope they've got a copy with all the pages. Bah.

It's good so far. Up to page 164, that is, where my copy jumps to page 197. Although I think I prefer The Interpreter of Maladies. Of course, it had all of its' pages, so I may be slightly biased.

Lame.

Laurie R. King's The Art of Detection

Laurie R. King's book, The Art of Detection came out today and I've just finished it. She's a California author whom I've enjoyed for some time. You can read an excerpt of the first chapter on her website. 

How many mysteries have you read that feature a lesbian detective in San Francisco with Sherlock Holmes? 

I'm guessing not many. Buy a copy and read it- it's a good read. You can locate a signed copy by e-mailing Crossroads Books, the address is available on her website.

Or, if you prefer to follow clues and feel a little lucky, you can check out her most recent blog entry.

The Case of the Bloody Pawprints...

A couple weeks ago, my husband called me on my lunch hour to tell me that he hadn't gone to work. It seemed odd, as he had been awake when I left for work that morning, and for all that I knew he had absolutely intended to go. The strange thing had detained him was not that he had fallen ill, that our house had burned down, or our car had broken down.

No, what had prevented him from going to work was a trail of bloody paw prints tracking across the white cement of the sidewalk in front of our house. They are still there, in fact, although the blood has since dried.

My husband is a man who has an extreme affinity for animals. He loves animals and takes unfriendly creatures as a personal challenge.

He could not walk away from a hurt animal, evidenced as it was by the wet blood leading down our street.

He followed the paw prints.

He ended up on a strange sort of journey, on that warm May day. He followed the prints and eventually ended up on the front yard of our former neighbor's house, a few miles from our house, that she shares with her girlfriend, who happened to be home. (We've not been there before- nor did we know where they live). He hunted for over an hour and a half, until he lost the trail through an alley. By this time, he was tired and it was hot, so he took a bus back home.

Sitting on our front porch, he spoke to others who added to the story. People walking their dogs, or pushing their strollers shared pieces of the story. One woman said that a dog walker, the dog walker that the swanky people, the rich ones, use had lost a dog. The dog leapt from a window of the dog walker's van, she said. He injured his paws and ran in fear.

Later this theory was called into dispute, as others among our neighbors believe that dog was dragged from the van, and then wrenched free- the blood from his paws seeped for a couple miles. This theory has gained prominence among our neighbors.

We didn't hear anything more until last week. One of our neighbors came with a photo of the dog, recovered by his owner.

An oddly satisfying ending to the story- Richard never found the dog, though we did finally find out the ending to the story when the photo came to us. The dog was hit by a car, whose driver took him to a vet. They called the dog's owner who came to claim him. He is doing well, although all four paws were bandaged in the photo that is being passed around those animal lovers in our neighborhood.

Strange, to see genuine concern in a stranger's face as they tell this story again and again. There is no blame, in most of these faces. Simply concern, for the dog and his owner. Strange to feel part of a community in this rather odd way.

Woody Guthrie

There's a good article on Woody Guthrie over at The Nation magazine's website. The good ole U.S. of A. is making me depressed this week, as well as increasingly paranoid. 
Why, exactly, is it ok for the government to track everyone I call? 

Here's a quote for today:

"If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activites, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all."

-Erica Jong 

The President

"A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt."

-Aldous Huxley

Punk Rock in the LBC

When I was younger, I loved punk rock. I loved the screaming, the swearing, the freedom. I was raised in a Baptist family with a Catholic dad. My mother listened to classical music and christian music. We didn't watch very much television. I read a lot. I was the oldest kid. 

When I discovered punk rock- a friend made me a mix tape of Dead Kennedys, Crass, the Subhumans- I wore out the tape in my 1981 Rabbit's tape deck. I would drive down PCH to go surfing at the cliffs with my sunroof open, the windows down and I would scream along with the music. 

Last night, a friend and her husband invited us to see a punk rock show in our own hood, at the Que Sera, famous former lesbian bar (they are very nice- with a charming sign on the desk where you pay your cover that says, "The Que Sera is not a lesbian bar- everyone is welcome" and the girl who says cheerfully, "Give me your little paws" as she stamps my hand). 

I haven't seen or heard punk rock recently- my punk rock phase was relatively short and long ago. (Although I did buy a couple Crass CDs a year ago- nostalgia). It was strange; I felt as if I was watching my younger self bounce around screaming along, as I sipped my Guinness and played pool in the back. It was fun, although I felt about a million years old. Everyone was wearing black, so I stood out. Actually, all of my friends stood out- none of us were dressed terribly punk rock. There's something kind of poignant about punk rock to me, something kind of amazing and lost- that ability to stand and scream what you feel to a rocking drum beat and thumping guitar. It's hard to give words to the feeling... But I felt something akin to nostalgia. 

So I sit here in my house and my ears are still ringing. It makes me remember myself back when, and I feel a little sad to lose that girl. The girl who wanted to scream along with the punk rock. 

Interesting Idea....

One of my favorite writers, Laurie R. King, was selected as the Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year. As part of the festivites, she's has elected to write a story live, in front of the world. She was given a prompt this morning, and the results are being published live online at the same time. Her blog has a bigger description of the event. 

You can read the results at: www.scparks.com. 

This is a little strange to read, as it is really nothing like her normal work. (The prompt was something about a middle schooler...) You can read more about Laurie at her website. I began reading her when a friend's father, who was in the habit of giving her a box of used paperbacks per month that he had read, included "The Beekeeper's Apprentice". Click here to read a portion of the first chapter. I was immediately engrossed; an intelligent female, Jewish, who befriends Sherlock Holmes. It doesn't sound as if it would be a good book, but I've found that books that defy description are the ones I love the most. I'm not a huge mystery novel fan, however, I really have enjoyed LRK's Mary Russell books. 

A Beautiful Obituary

Don't we all have a wish to be be remembered well after we are gone? The people I admire and love the most are the people who ask difficult questions, who struggle with life. A friend of mine asked me recently to write her obituary. (She's not dying, nor is she elderly). She said, "I just want to see what you'll write." 

I am honored and yet I feel a sense of trepidation about the entire thing. How can one write an obituary for someone who gets to read it? What should be included in a good obituary? I have a lot of questions about the entire endeavor, honestly. 

I was reading CNN.com today, as I often do, and I came across the write up of the death of former U.S. poet laureate, Stanley Kunitz, at the age of 100. You can read it yourself by clicking here.

It is a beautiful summing up of a life well lived. Born in tragedy, (his father's suicide when Kunitz himself was still in his mother's belly), he became a writer who valued community in the arts, won a Pulitzer for his work, shared his love for the arts with others, and was a man who stuck by his principles. 

How can you ask for more in an obituary? Or a life?

Finis

Je suis finis. I am finished with this semester, for all intents and purposes. Hurrah! Huzzah!

This shan't the longest post in history, simply a jubilant little message to tell the world I've taken my last (real) final for the spring semester. 

All I need to do now is crank out a few critiques and find a good first line from a book for workshop. Simple enough, considering the past weekend (le weekend dernier) was spent writing two papers, editing said papers, finishing French homework, and cramming for the French examen finale. 

I am just so happy to be done. C'est finis, and I am so excited I might even be able to drum up some enthusiam for the summer semester. Which, thanks to the brilliant minds in charge of scheduling at IVC, begins next Monday. (Lundi prochain).  Some break, huh? I have a grand total of three days rest before beginning anew...

My brain is melting a bit, due to an overdose of conjugating. I am glad that the fall semester schedule hasn't been posted yet; the idea of thinking about what to take makes me feel a bit dizzy at the moment. 

So, I will take my meager pittance of joy and spread it all the way until Monday night- my first class for the summer semester. (I was fighting the urge to spell that "semestre"- that's when you know you just need to stop for a while). 

As Edward R. Murrow used to say, "Bon nuit, et bonne chance."

Salut!

Wasting Time...

I'm pretty accomplished at wasting time. I can manage to spend at least a few minutes doing pretty much anything. 

Today I wasted three hours and eight minutes. Doing what, you may well ask? 

Watching Peter Jackson's "King Kong". A terrifically dull waste of time. I should have mopped or cleaned the bathtub instead. At least those activities could possibly have some sort of payoff at the end. 

May I suggest, that the next time Peter Jackson decides he simply must make a movie someone somewhere explain the concept of editing and revision to him?

All I can say: dinosaurs? Really? Since when was the giant ape and creepy island not enough? Jurassic Park meets King Kong wasn't really what I signed up for. At least at my house I can smoke and turn it off. All those poor people who paid to see it in the movie theatre... I feel truly sorry for all of them. 

I simply wanted a break from writing papers. I should have just stared at a wall for a few minutes. More entertainment in that than this nonsense. By the way, why did Naomi Watts sign up for this one? She's really not bad enough to be doing this kind of tripe...