It's Official -- I'm a Blancmange

I was looking in a full-length mirror the other day, and suddenly it hit me. After two years of going to school while working simultaneously, and having to forego the gym for nearly a year.... I've turned in to a bland, custardy British dessert product.

This is not good. I have a massive crush on someone. If it turns out, when it all comes out in the wash, that he feels the same, how will I ever be able to get naked with him? I can only hope that once this is all over, and I'm done with the two-days-a-week in class thing, I'll be able to drag my sorry, custardy ass back into the gym and beat the "blancmange" out.

On the other hand, maybe he likes blancmange. Oh, don't be stupid, Catharine. Who really likes blancmange?

~C~

Other Dancers With Voodoo

I just closed what will probably be the last show I do for a while, given my upcoming schedule. It was a Broadway revue with a spiritual bent that played to several churches around the L.A. area, and in Newport Beach. Three of the songs were choreographed by an L.A. dancer named Sarah Harkness, who miraculously managed to make all of us look somewhat like dancers, though many of us were most definitely... well... not.

Sarah founded a dance company called Meh-Tropolis Dance Theatre, and I wanted to give it a plug for those of you around Los Angeles (and for those of you who aren't, but haven't bought your Christmas cards yet). They are selling handmade Christmas/Holiday cards and gift tags which are lovely in their own right. But they are also sponsoring what I consider one or two very worthy causes.

First, they are supporting the arts in Los Angeles at a time when every politician and evangalistic neo-con is fighting to drag money out of the arts (but not football, you'll notice) in schools and communities all over the country. We need to keep dance, drama, art and music alive, and since our public schools have such limited ability to expose our children to this, we must rely on local companies like Sarah's to provide access and inspiration. Second, a quick trip to the Photos section of the Meh-Tropolis website will reveal that Sarah's dance company is filled with something you don't see too often in the dance world. Breasts. Not huge breasts, mind you. But breasts nonetheless. The female dancers, both principal and corps, in the company are, for the most part, normal-wieght, healthy women in fabulous condition, rather than the boy-shaped stick figures you see on stages in New York and in Europe. Meh-Tropolis dancers are real folks who can dance up a storm, and who don't inspire one to stop the show just to fix them a ham sandwich, lest they perish before the second act curtain.

Meh-Tropolis is providing little girls who have a yen to dance with a proper role model that says, "Dancers don't have to starve to dance." So buy a box of cards or some gift tags. Or a t-shirt with the really neat logo I kiped that starts this post. Or maybe make a teensy donation to the toe shoe fund -- every little bit helps.

Support the arts, and you support the things that bring us closer to ourselves. In the words of Agnes de Mille: "To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking."

~C~

Paranoid-Schmaranoid -- The Whole World *Is* Against Me.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I had finally managed to get over my academic writer's block and turn in two written assignments yesterday, and I was feeling pretty hopeful about finishing this quarter, and going on the MFA program.

Then I went to the mailbox (I really must stop doing that!). There, in the box, was a bill from my university, for an additional $210 in tuition that wasn't covered by financial aid. That makes $465 I have to scrape together from my already exhausted budget in just two and a half weeks. On top of my other financial obligations.... I can tell you... it's just not happening.

I am pretty sure there's no way out of this for me. Without the cash, they won't release my transcripts. Without the transcripts, I can't go on to the MFA program.

I have pretty much reached the end of my emotional (not to mention my financial) reserves. These are the moments when I get so resentful that I have to do this all by myself, I want to scream and rip somebody's hair out. Not my hair, of course. Cuz... well... that would hurt....

~C~

More on Love and "The Thing"

Ever since I posted the thing on "The Thing," I've gotten some interesting responses -- some in comments, some in e-mail form -- about relationships and whatnot. Good advice, from women who have found Mr. Right... Or rather Mr. As-Right-As-He's-Ever-Gonna-Get-Cuz-Nobody's-Perfect-Right? I made a point on the Chron of stating that I have spent the last year and a half, two years choosing not to fall in love. Actually, I've spent the last six years choosing not to fall in love, but I had a brief reprieve with a long-distance relationship with someone I loved (still love, in many ways, in fact) dearly.

I think the main concern I've been having lately is that by choosing not to choose, choosing not to get involved, I have maybe set myself up for something I hadn't anticipated. I notice -- mostly while doing "The Thing" -- that the idea of even entering into a relationship invokes feelings of genuine fear and anxiety. I look at my father -- old and alone -- and I think maybe the acorn doesn't fall too far from the oak. Maybe by choosing not to get involved with anyone, and reiterating that choice every day thereafter, I've only made it harder to find someone or to imaging myself with someone.

I start tearing a relationship down before I even enter into it. "He's too neurotic." "He's too smooth and flattering." "He couldn't possibly find me attractive (despite all evidence to the contrary -- like, he asked me out!)"

Alone is safer. Alone is more comfortable and less trying. Maybe it's the "full plate" issue. There really isn't room for one more thing before the end of the year. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think its something inside that I am refusing to address.

I worry I may be destined to be alone. Or maybe I just think I'm destined to be alone, since my mother ended her life alone and without companionship, and my father seems headed down the same path.

Now may be the time to choose something else. Maybe that's what is cooking deep inside this issue. Now may be the time to chuck caution to the wind and put myself out there. The last time I did that, it didn't work out so well. But I didn't die from it.

Hmmmm....

All of this is just thinking out loud, isn't it. Yes, well.

We'll see.

~C~

(illustration: "Dry Spell" by C.A. Sowards, 2005)

Doing "The Thing"

Best Available's Deirdre Cooley has abandoned us and gone off to movie locations in other states, because she is, to quote Bridget Jones, "extremely busy and important." Before she left, she took me out to dinner for my birthday, and the one of our code phrases reared its ugly head.

You know how it is. When you're friends with someone -- close friends -- you develop your own little language, to which the rest of world just isn't privileged (unless one of the friends is a big mouth with her own blog... tee hee...). With Deirdre and me, it's... "The thing." It's the thing women tend to do when we are attracted to someone, in those stages before we know whether they are attracted back. It is the dissection, the analysis, the post-mortem, the reinterpretation, the folding, the spindling the mutilating of every e-mail, every look, every word exchanged from the desirable party, in order to suss out the "hidden messages." The conversation usually presents itself thusly:

"I'm doing 'the thing.'"

"Okay. Shoot."

"So, I was talking to him today, and he said the strangest (cutest/funniest/nicest) thing...."

And so begins the odyssey of what he said, and how he looked when he said it, and whether he meant what we hope he meant, or whether we're just reading way too much into it all.

We've both been doing "the thing" lately. She calls me with tales of hers and I call her with tales of mine, and we spend time doing the forensics ("Okay, just exactly what was his body language when he was saying this to you?"), like little bitty Margaret Meads, translating each gesture and intonation of tribal beings whose language we do not speak. Then we come to the conclusion ("Oh, no. He's definitely interested in you."), because what else can we say to each other. We're direly interested in us, so why wouldn't he be? Is he some kind of fool?

After a couple of years of enforced solitude, refusing to do "the thing," because being alone was safer and easier than caring about a man's tone of voice, or the exact inflection at the end of his sentence, I am now back in "thing" territory. And, as I confessed to Deirdre, as we sat in a movie theatre, waiting for the movie to start, it all makes me kind of nauseous.

"Yeah," she replied, "but it's a good kind of nauseous."

A good kind of nauseous? Uh-huh.

Anyway, I was on the phone with him today. And he said the strangest thing....

~C~

The Iraqi Monks Are No-Hit Wonders!

Forget the Iraqi Monks. I got my first communique as an MFA student today. The cohort name they've selected is....

Wait for it....

Purple Martins... they are running out of bird names, it would appear.

But I think it's a great name. I'm rechristening the all-girl punk rock band....

Jelly Belly Porsche and the Purple Martins....

Are we liking it?

My Band Name

Big, self-important voice-over: "Previously, on Naked Voodoo Chicken Dance...."

(I've been watching "The West Wing" again, haven't I....)

Last post, I mentioned that my punk rock band name would be Jelly Belly Porsche and the Reflective Egg Beaters. I still like it (you know it's going in a short story, don't you), but I went back to the website, and tried their "Band Name Generator."

The name for my po-mo alt music, KROQ band?

Your Band Name is:

The Iraqi Monks

Band Name Generator

The Iraqi Monks?

I love it.

I'm keeping it.

~CA~

A Me By Any Other Name

Catharine Amanda Sowards's Aliases

Your movie star name: Oreos Howard

Your fashion designer name is Catharine Berlin

Your socialite name is Tina Vegas

Your fly girl / guy name is C Sow

Your detective name is Cat Providence

Your barfly name is KitKat Vodka Collins

Your soap opera name is Amanda Vanowen

Your rock star name is Jelly Belly Porsche

Your star wars name is Catjer Sowdon

Your punk rock band name is The Reflective Egg Beater

The Amazing Meganame Generator

I think Oreos Howard is a just-plain-silly name for a movie star. Come on ahready. On the other hand, I am actually thinking of forming a punk rock band called Jelly Belly Porsche and the Reflective Egg Beaters. I wasn't before, but I am now. And I think that "Amanda Vanowen" makes a better socialite name than "Tina Vegas." If "Tina Vegas" is a socialite, it's because she seduced the son of a wealthy family, got herself knocked up and insisted on a shotgun wedding, lest she go to the tabloids and sully their old-money family name (which I still insist is "Vanowen.") I'm digging the idea of a female private detective named "Cat Providence." I may have to write some noir short stories, just to breathe life into the name. And I'll be a Star Wars character named "Catjer Sowdon," but only if it's preceded by the title "Ambassador."

But let's get one thing straight, right here, right now. My fly girl name will never be "C Sow." Are we clear here? Good. Now.

I have to go now and find a bar, so I can randomly introduce myself as "KitKat Vodka Collins." I'll let you know what happens.

~C~

Roman Mythology

I have been watching/reading/spotting-before-I-can-turn-away a lot of press on the upcoming Oliver Twist, directed by Roman Polanski. Stephanie Zacharek wrote a glowing review for Salon on 9/23, praising the film's beauty and artistic sensitivity. I must admit, reading it, I felt a little queasy. Maybe it is that I have five planets in Scorpio (you know we Scorpios can really hold a grudge), or maybe it is that I'm overly sensitive to the subject of all child abuse, sexual or otherwise. But I am appalled at the glory and praise we heap upon this man.

Even more repugnant to me was this CNN article about Polanksi which depicts him as a victim of sorts. Though Polanski's people declined an interview with the article's author, the director is depicted as having been wrongly persecuted for 30 years by overzealous D.A.s and law enforcement agencies into hiding in Europe (where, apparently, sex with children is no big deal). The most frightening part of the article for me is the description of him today: "He lives in Paris with his third wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, and their children, and has slowly shed his reputation as a partier. Friends say he is a devoted father who remains young at heart." The article fails to point out -- so I shall -- that Polanski's daughter, Morgane, is a mere one year younger than the girl he abused in 1978. I wonder how he feels now, looking at her every day -- "devoted father" as he is, realizing how very young 13 really is.

I wrote a letter to Salon, which I doubt they'll ever print, seeing as how their own house critic loves, loves, loves this guy. Besides, their entertainment editor is too busy chasing after Kate Moss and her coke stash to be so concerned about one letter in protest of one little movie review. So I figured I'd speak my mind here. Because I can. So there.

Stephanie Zacharek's review of Roman Polanski's "Oliver Twist" evoked so many emotions in me, it was difficult to settle on just one. The fact that filmgoers and the international movie industry continue to laud this man as a brilliant, sensitive artist, to give him ovations at film festivals, to award him with Oscars, just kind of turns my stomach. Is our collective memory truly that short?

Have we really reached the point where we cannot hold our artistic icons to the most basic standards of decency? By his own admission in open court, Roman Polanski drugged and had sex with a 13-year-old child. He knew she was a child -- this was no "she looked 18 to me" misadventure. His obscene excuses -- that it didn't matter because she wasn't a virgin, that her actress mother presented her to him, that the girl knew what she was doing -- only serve to make his actions more despicable.

Roman Polanski has suffered more tragedy and misery in one life than anyone should have to. I would be the first to have compassion for him, had it not been for the crime he committed and his utter refusal to accept responsibility for it. I find this particular film disturbing in light of the fact that making it put children in the path of a man who, had he faced the music in California in 1978, would have certainly been required to register as a sex offender. It is fine that his victim has forgiven him. Good for her -- she deserves to be able to heal in peace. But his victim did not file the charges against him. She was simply the complaining witness. The case was entitled The People of the State of California versus Roman Polanski.

Perhaps Ms. Zacharek is too young to remember 1978. I am not. I was a year out of high school, and I remember this nasty business quite well. It was my first introduction to the reality that a man has different rights, and his behavior is held to different standards than those to which a woman is held. That goes double for a wealthy, famous man, with wealthy, famous friends.

As a person of the state of California who has yet to receive the justice that we are owed by Mr. Polanski, I refuse to see any movie, regardless of its "melancholy glow," which has been crafted by a man who drugged and raped a child. Given what tortures Mr. Polanski has said he experienced as a youth at the hands of Nazis, and his later encounters with senseless violence against his wife and unborn child, he should have been the first to be empathetic to a child who was clearly being exploited by the adults around her. Instead, he just took his own turn at exploiting her, in the most heinous of ways, then ran away and hid to avoid being held accountable.

A man like that has no soul. Art from a soulless man has no value, regardless of its temporal, superficial beauty.

Naked Chicken and Fall Movies

This is the time of year that the Naked Chicken loves to go to the movies. All the fun stuff comes out between September and December. Here are a few movies that the Chicken looks forward to and hopes are good:

Corpse Bride -- I love Tim Burton. I shouldn't. I don't know why I do. Maybe it's my unrelenting attraction to nerdy guys rearing it's nerdy-sexy head again. But I just think he's funny and kinda dopey and his stuff works for me. I really enjoyed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and recently Charlie and the Chocolate Factory salvaged a fairly dismal moviegoing summer, so I kind of owe him. Voice talent by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (who knew she had so much fun in her, anyway) is an appealing notion as well. I can only hope that we haven't seen the best of this movie in the ubiquitous television trailers. Release date: Currently in limited release

The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio: This one I'm least sure about. I saw an interview with Terri Ryan, the woman who wrote the book on which this is based, and it seems intriguing. In the 50's television and it's advertising were in their infancy, and America was just starting to fall in love with the medium. The Ryan family of Defiance, Ohio is no exception. Evelyn Ryan (Julianne Moore), mother of ten and wife of underachiever Leo (Woody Harrelson), struggles to keep the family fed and clothed in the face of bill collectors and repo men. She begins to enter the ever-present jingle contests on television, and, lo and behold, she has found her calling. As she continues to win ever more fabulous gifts and prizes, Leo becomes more and more resentful, seeing every victory prize as something he couldn't give her. He sulks and simpers and explodes, alternately, every time she wins. Truth be told, it was one line in the trailer that made me want to see this movie. Leo is hugging Evelyn and he tells her, "I just want to make you happy." And she says, "I don't need you to make me happy. I just need you to leave me alone when I am." Hear, hear, sister. Release date: September 30, 2005

Elizabethtown - Orlando Bloom. Kirsten Dunst. What's not to love? Okay, a lot, potentially. But under the direction of Cameron Crowe from his own script? Now, I ask you... what's not to love? Fast Times at Ridgmont High, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky.... oops... went one too far, didn't I? Oh, come on. It's been a while since we've seen an amusing romantic comedy. I'm not sure why this appeals to me so much. Perhaps because Tom Cruise isn't in it. I was desperate for a little romantic comedy this summer. Neither Bewitched (blech, pew) nor Broken Flowers (terrific, but dark) filled the void. Let's go see this together and hope it all comes out in the end. Release date: October 14, 2005

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -- I've told every one of my book hound friends, including my own daughter, that I'll start reading the books when Number 7 is released, so I don't have to wait forever from one book to the next. That's the truth, too. But there's another truth here, one that I keep to myself. I kind of don't want the books to interfere with the movies at this point. I have an investment in this Harry, not the novelized Harry. I have a relationship with these children, with these wizards, with this Dobby. Nobody gets that. I'll read the damn books eventually. And I'll love them. But for now, just let me love these children, this Hagrid, these Weasleys. The trailers for this movie are captivating, because they flash through all three previous movies, allowing you to see how far these children have come, how much they've grown and changed. I am so looking forward to this movie, and I hope it doesn't disappoint me. (Prisoner of Azkaban wasn't so good, I'm afraid.) Release date: November 18, 2005.

Brokeback Mountain - This film is based on the amazing short story by Annie Proulx, and tells the story of Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger), two very masculine young cowhands who find themselves drawn to each other in a relationship that moves through friendly rivalry to friendship to a profound and abiding love in a time and place (Wyoming in the early 60s) when such a relationship can simply never be. The short story from Proulx's collection, Close Range: Wyoming Stories, is written with a gruff tenderness that completely lacks sentimentality and melodrama. Proulx's simple, straightforward storytelling style and her decision to keep the focus on a love so deep that it lasts decades keeps the story from being salacious or, worse, sappy. My hope for the movie is that it avoids those same traps. Release date: December 9, 2005

So, ever optimistic, the Naked Chicken launches into the fall movie season with a heart full of hope and a purse full of sour Jellie Bellies.

~C~

THE CONSTANT GARDENER: A First Class Departure

[WARNING: THIS IS A POST ABOUT THE MOVIE "THE CONSTANT GARDENER", AND MAY CONTAIN… NO… DOES CONTAIN A SPOILER OR TWO, AS MOST REVIEWS TEND TO. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS FILM, AND WANT TO BE SURPRISED, READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.]

If you have been tuning into this blog regularly, you know I have not had many happy moments at the movies this season. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a welcome joy. I seemed to be alone in my full appreciation for Broken Flowers, but then we've already established that intelligent, nerdy guys (yes, Jim, I don't care how full your luscious lips are -- with that haircut, you're officially a nerd) kind of turn me on, especially when they march to the beat of their own drummer.

Alas, aside from these couple of exceptions, life at the movies has ricocheted from unsurprisingly banal (Must Love Dogs), to embarrassingly bad (Bewitched) too deeply, profoundly disappointing (War of the Worlds). If I've seen other movies this summer, I've forgotten them. That alone should tell you something. Now that summer is waning and the kiddies are going back to school, the movies have started to fall back into the hands of the grown-ups, and The Constant Gardener is a great way to kick off that new season.

In this nifty adaptation of John Le Carré's novel of the same title, Ralph Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a young, straight-laced British diplomat who has been assigned to travel to Northern Kenya as a low-level attaché at the British High Commission (BHC). Immediately before leaving England, he embarks on a passionate, whirlwind romance with Tessa (beautifully played by Rachel Weisz), a fiery activist, who proposes marriage on the eve of Justin's departure. Once in Africa, the Quayles each pursue their own interests -- Justin's being his job and his love of gardening, and Tessa's being her bating of the BHC and corporate opportunists whom she believes are exploiting the Kenyan people. Unfortunately, though initially deeply in love, the two separate courses of their lives seem to begin to pull on the Quayles' marriage, and Justin becomes suspicious of Tessa's close friendship with a handsome Nairobi doctor (Hubert Koundé).

When Tessa is found raped and murdered and the doctor comes up missing in what initially appears to be a roadside attack by local bandits, rumor and innuendo from his associates at the BHC only serve to solidify Justin's conviction that his wife was being unfaithful. Still, his devotion to her, and his gradual realization that no one in his life is as he assumes they are, drives Justin to seek out the truth about Tessa and the "other" life she kept so furtively hidden from him. The more Justin delves into Tessa's murder, the more nervous he makes his friends at the BHC, who actively discourage him from asking questions for his own sake.

I'm not one of those women (rare as we may be) who is all gaga over Ralph Fiennes. He has always been a bit to reserved for my tastes. Still, Fiennes is very powerful in the role of a man who only discovers who his wife is after she is dead, and realizes that she was a remarkable and complex woman, very different from the one he thought he'd married. Fiennes creates a Justin Quayle who is very British, very withheld, very intact, until he loses the one thing he never realized he had -- the love of his life. His grief makes him raw and his loss makes him disoriented and determined. Fiennes shows us that in a very subtle, very controlled way, which works beautifully for the character.

Weisz' Tessa is everything Fiennes' Justin is not. Vivacious, socially charming, funny, exuberant, passionate. However, there is an air of danger about her from the beginning. The first scene in the film is a good-bye scene, where we are introduced to the alleged "love triangle" -- Justin, Tessa, the Nairobi doctor -- and immediately, before any chance at innuendo, the audience thinks, "Hmmm… is she…? With him…? Are they… ?" It is a lovely set-up, very underplayed by all, and it sets the stage nicely for what follows. Weisz is charming without being cloying, and passionate without being overbearing (unless you work at the BHC or one of the offending corporations, that is). Her insistence on protecting the Nairobi people from clutching, grasping corporate imperialism is naïve, but sincere in just the right way.

Director Fernando Meirelles (City of God), working from a fine screenplay adaptation by longtime BBC TV writer Jeffrey Canine (Dempsey & Makepeace, Bodyguards, CatsEyes), stays true to Le Carré's book, moving freely backward and forward through time to unravel Tessa's life, before and after her death. As Justin comes to know Tessa, we do, too. We fall in love with the real Tessa at the same time Justin does, hopelessly post-mortem. Though I have not read the Le Carré novel, I consulted with someone who has both read the book and seen the film. He says that the one thing Le Carré could not capture in the book was the sense of Africa. Meirelles reunites with his City of God cinematographer, César Charlone, to do just that. The grinding poverty of the AIDS-stricken Nairobi village is addressed convincingly, but it doesn't beat us over the head. It is a backdrop against which people are living their lives -- mothers care for their children, children manufacture games amidst the masses of trash and refuse by the roadside, people work and scrape, seeking to make the best existence for themselves and their families here. I'm not an enormous fan of handheld camera work, especially since it's usually done so very badly, but it is used sparingly in this film and to great effect, making the action more immediate and intense. All of it is underscored by Alberto Iglesias' score and evocative performances by Kenyan percussionist Ayub Ogada on the original soundtrack (Amazon has some sample snippets worth listening to).

The supporting cast bolsters Fiennes' and Weisz' fine performances. Danny Huston is suitably solicitous as the Quayles' ambitious and somewhat creepy BHC crony with a hidden agenda. Koundé plays the charming, handsome Nairobi doctor with such elegance, it's hard to imagine that Tessa is not having an affair with him. Richard McCabe (Vanity Fair) plays Tessa's adoring cousin, Hamm, with a sweet earnestness. Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Underworld) has a small, but pivotal role as the smarmy bad guy British royal who masterminds the entire conspiracy from London, and as the modern-day Schweitzer with slightly slanted ethics, Pete Postlethwaite (The Lost World, The Shipping News) is as good as… well, Pete Postlethwaite (and that's pretty damn good).

Do not go into the theatre expecting something lighthearted and upbeat. The only thing uplifting about The Constant Gardener is that it is a rare (these days) display of fabulous film making and acting coming together with a very good script. The results are gripping and entertaining, as well as emotionally charged and unpredictable. It is, in the end, a poignant story of a man who loses his wife, only to discover how much he truly loved her and how little he knew of her.

A definite must-see….

A Tale of Two Funerals

Chief Justice William Rehnquist's casket, September 6, 2005, draped with an American flag, in Washington D.C.


















Katrina victim Vera, date unknown, draped in a bedsheet and rubble in New Orleans.
















"Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console." ~Charles Caleb Colton, English writer (1780 - 1832)


Rest in peace.

~CA~

Nerdy-Sexy

In Kissing Jessica Stein, two women are discussing men and the term "ugly-sexy" comes up. One of them defines the quality by listing a number of actors who have it: Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, James Woods. Yeah (except for Keitel, who rather repulses me on every level), I can get behind that list. But I am more of a nerd-loving kind of girl. I just love really brainy guys with quirky looks who aren't dangerous or menacing (unlike Woods and Keitel, for example).

I have since compiled a list of nerdy-sexy guys to whom I've grown attached of late. Some of them are characters in much-loved movies and t.v. shows, some of them, the actors who play them.

Jefferson Smith (as portrayed by Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) - Jefferson Smith is one of my favorite nerds. Earnest, bright, but not very worldly, he finally catches wise and learns how to make the system work in his favor. His sincerity and integrity prevail over the twin evils of greed and injustice and he manages with one philibuster to clear his good name, foil the unholy, power-mongering politicians and get Jean Arthur by end titles. Where are the Jefferson Smiths when you need 'em?

Alan Rickman (British actor, director) -- I've had it bad for Alan Rickman for a very long time. Why he doesn't just leave his lifelong partner of 30 years, economist Rima Horton, and run away with me, I'll never understand. I think I completely fell in love with him for his portrayal of sniffly ghost Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply. Oh, sure, he's plenty menacing in a lot of his roles, but even as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and his uneasy, secretive Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, there was a touch of abject nerdy awkwardness. He's quirky and a more than a little odd, and anyone who can pull down his trousers to reveal a sexless, Ken-doll-like pubic area (as Metatron in Dogma) with such dash and aplomb -- why, that's the nerd for me.

Dr. Carl Sagan -- Smart, sexy, a stylish little overbite and, man, oh, man, those turtlenecks. I was in college (the first time around) when Cosmos debuted on PBS in 1980. I never missed an episode. He was forthright about his belief in the Drake equation, which used mathematical calculation to prove that there must be life in the universe, because for Earth to be the only planet that bore life would simply be statistically improbable. Any guy who can make algebra sexy (while wearing a turtleneck, mind you) can whisk me away to his alternative universe any day. Sagan scoffed at all the then-popular "ancient astronauts" claptrap, because the claims couldn't withstand the scientific standards for putting theories to the test in his book "The Demon- Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," (the title alone just makes you want to sleep with him, doesn't it?) which included such axioms as "Try not to get too attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours," and "If there are two hypotheses that explain the data equally well choose the simpler (Occam's razor)." If he had an enormous ego (he was a Scorpio, after all -- ahem), he managed to keep it well-hidden in favor of the science.

Adrien Brody (Academy-award winning actor who kissed Halle Berry like she's never been kissed before or since -- and who was kissed the following year by Charlize Theron). Let me tell you something. I got me five dollars here that says there were girls in Adrien Brody's high school who swore they'd die before they'd let him anywhere near them, who are now kicking their own ever-expanding Elmhurst housewife asses for being so stupid. If I were twenty years younger, I'd stalk this boy and marry him right quick. You go, boy. (Darn that Halle Berry anyway -- she gets to have all the fun!)

Frank Darabont (director, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Majestic) -- the only one of my nerd crushes that I've actually met (I moderated this Q&A with him for Fox Searchlab). Frank happily embraces his nerdiness and flaunts it like a badge of honor, God love 'im. Frank seems to have settled nicely into the filmmaker nerd role, along with friends George Lucas (maxo-nerd) and Steven Spielberg (uber-nerd of the first order). We are less than two months apart in age and grew up less than three miles apart, and I'm stunned I never met him while we were growing up (I knew a bunch of kids at his school, Hollywood High). Now, I understand he's gotten married to Collateral producer Julie Richardson. I guess it was never meant to be between Frank and me. Which is a damn shame, since my daughter was already picking out the color Porsche she was going to buy if he ever became her stepfather. Sucks to be her, I guess, huh.

David Levinson (as portrayed by Jeff Goldlum in Independence Day) -- if Goldblum's Ian Macolm (Jurassic Park) was "ugly-sexy", his scientist-turned-superhero in ID4 was the height of nerdy-sexiness. Geeky, awkward, hopelessly in love with a wife who won't talk to him, and jealous of the man he thinks has stolen her affections (who also happens to be the hunky President of the United States) -- so much so that he actually punches him in the nose -- Levinson finds himself shunted into herodom with his cranky father (Judd Hirsch) and hotdog fighter pilot (Will Smith). Still, he's funny when he's frightened and charming when he's falling all over himself and how Margaret Collin manages to resist him for the first 120 minutes of the movie is an utter and complete mystery to me.

And, finally, Dann Florek (L.A. Law (as direct-marketing nerd-king Dave Meyer; Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU (as slightly less nerdy, but just-nerdy-enough-to-be-sexy Capt. Donald Cragen)) -- Dann Florek won my heart as the painfully socially challenged Dave Meyer, who managed to pursuade financially troubled legal secretary Roxanne Mehlman to marry him on NBC's L.A. Law. He went on to play badge-and-gun-toting-nerd-of-authority Capt. Don Cragen on the first three seasons of Law & Order and then to reprise the role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for the past six (going on seven) seasons. Aside from being a really good dramatic actor, he's got a way with comedy, and he can take a potentially obnoxious character like Meyer and embue in him such an underlying sweetness that he was watchable for a season or two (rather than what I'm sure would have been, with any other actor in the role, six episodes at most, then -- blam! -- hit by a bus). Florek also distinguishes himself in another way. Florek doesn't just play a nerd on t.v. -- he actually is one in real-life. According to his L&O:SVU bio, Florek started as a math and physics major at Eastern Michigan University, only to switch to theater because -- get this! -- he thought acting might be "more fun than synthetic projective geometry." Oh, my Jesus gay! Beat me, whip me, teach me differential calculus -- baby, I'm all yours.

So, there's more about me than you ever wanted to know, I'm sure. I suppose I like nerds because I know that I need a guy with a brain, who can hold up his end of the conversation. I need someone who is more interested in what's going on with the world than what's going on with his crow's feet. I just sense that I'd work with a nerd, perhaps because I'm kind of one myself (or so my kid tells me). Not a math nerd -- more of a natural sciences nerd, who as young child pointed out to her mother that paisley was kind of creepy because the pattern looked like amoebae swimming around under a microscope. I figure there must be a nerd out there with my name on him. It's only a matter of time before he finds me.

~CA~

Sometimes, the Blog Posts Just Write Themselves

The Toronto Sex Crimes Unit has uncovered an alarming connection between pedophiles and Star Trek. Seems that, in Toronto anyway, the vast majority of child sexual predators also claimed to be devout fans of the sci-fi series. Ellen Ladowsky describes it all quite neatly and succinctly, along with some dissenting opinions, posted yesterday at Huffington Post. It's a fascinating piece, and, honestly, I have nothing to add, except to say that it doesn't say anything about whether people who wrote Star Trek, so I think my family's* in the clear so far.

For the latecomers who were seated at the first available break of this Blog in Three Acts, my father wrote the screenplay for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Of course, my father isn't really a fan that much. He's watched the show, he likes the show, but he's far from seeing it as a blueprint for how we should live our lives. It might be because he was a struggling actor at around the same time Shatner and Nimoy were trying to break in to the biz. They used to hang around at the same delis, with all the other unemployed actors. It's hard to suspend your disbelief when you've witnessed a guy weaving an audition yarn, while simultaneously eating potato salad.

I guess we should have been a little suspicious about those Trekkies (or Trekkers, as some prefer). After all, ST2:TWoK was released over 24 years ago, yet when my father attended his last Trek convention, it was something out of that Bill Shatner sketch from Saturday Night Live -- people asking the most in-depth questions about utter minutae. You gotta wonder about people who would concern themselves with that stuff for a quarter century.

But I would rather die than bites the hand that feeds me, so I'll leave it all to you guys to sort out.

Have a good weekend.

~CA~

The Other Amanda Sowards

I have to submit a performance bio -- you know, those little blurbs they put in the programs of plays that say, "Ms. Sowards has enjoyed success in a number of local Los Angeles productions, including..." and then a list of all the things the performer has been in -- for the musical I'm doing in October. Because I'm inordinately lazy and am loathe to do anything more than once, I was doing a global search to find the old website that had my bio for the production of Godspell I did last year. A little "block and copy"... a little "cut and paste"... you get the picture.

So I googled "Amanda Sowards." I was pleased my main blog, Catharine Chronicles, popped up. And all of my fractal artword, which I display at a site called digitalart.org, came up, too. I even found somebody had written something so sweet, which was quoted in the Google description -- somebody had written, "Amanda Sowards is really beautiful." When I clicked into the site, however, I was shocked to find that I was not the Amanda Sowards to whom the compliment was directed.

There is (insert scary suspense music here) another Amanda Sowards. She's in high school. She's from North Caroline. She just won the Miss Carolina Cover Girl Photo Contest. You know what this means, don't you?

It means that my alterego is a teenage Southern beauty queen.

Like the song says, "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours, but I think that God has a sick sense of humour, and when I die, I expect to see him laughing."*

~CA~

*from Depeche Mode's Blasphemous Rumours

Music News

Sad news from the Music Industry today....

Hootie and the Blowfish announced today that they haven't broken up.

(I could just cry.)

~CA~

Snapple Real Fact #30

U

Fish have eyelids.


Who knew?


~CA~

THIS, THAT AND THE OTHER DAMN THING

I'm discovering as time goes by that sitting at my desk, doing… uhmmm… well… "deskly" things, for lack of a better word, is becoming more and more difficult. Instead, I'm all caught up in reading online newspapers or TIME magazine or Salon.com. I have to fight with all my energy to get anything done that's on my desk.

I have a bunch of agreements to distribute. I have a bunch of filing that needs purging and sending away. But I can't seem to bring myself to get to it. Why is that? I have managed to get my reading and writing for school done. I have managed to post to my blogs and make comments on the blogs of others. So why can't I bring myself to get excited about distributing Maria Bello's signed agreement on FLICKA?

It's a rhetorical question, of course. I already know the answer. It's quite simple, really. You want to know what it is?

See… I want to do this thing. This writing thing. But before I can do this thing, I have to that other thing. That contract thing. Because it's the other thing that subsidizes the big thing I want to do. Barring a big win in the lotto (I'm on my way -- I won $12 on Saturday), I'll have to do the other thing a while longer. And I really must start getting better at it again.

I used to be great at the other thing. I used to be the Queen of the Other Thing. People still think I am. They ask me questions. They come to me for answers. I want to scream at them.

"Don't bother me, damn you! Can't you see I've got this thing now?"

But they can't see. They don't know. And it's just as well, since I need to keep doing the other thing to support the writing thing. This thing.

It's six o'clock. I have to get ready to go home now. I have to go home and write.

See… I've got this thing….

~CA~

The Naked Chicken Has No Time to Dance

It's Week Five in a ten week quarter, and I'm deluged with work.

I'll see you guys in a week or so, when I can dig my way out from under.

~C~

The Page 84 That Ate Cleveland

When, in the course of copious rewrites a single scene is lengthened during shooting, in order to preserve the integrity of the scene numbers and approximately where they fall (the budgeting, boarding and scheduling of a movie is based on the scene numbers of the shooting script), pages will be designated with a letter after the number. So if Page 18 is rewritten and goes a bit longer than before, and spills over onto the next page, the second page will be referred to as Page 18A.

Today, we got the 3rd yellow pages for the Rainbow Screenplay movie.

The notorious Page 84 now consists of 84 and 84A. It's getting bigger. The army will not be able to stop it. The scientists will be useless in the fight against it. It will unleash its terror on an unsuspecting world.

Hey, wait a minute... do I see... Is it.... breathing?

(duh-DUH-duuuuuughhhhhhhhh!)

~C~