Environmental Concerns -- Journal Entry #3

10/16/05 – ENCINO, CA

I think somebody’s grandmother is buried under the roses in the courtyard of my apartment building. No, seriously. There has to be something in the soil or the atmosphere that those roses love, because they bloom longer and bigger than any rose bushes I’ve ever seen. My late godmother, who had one of the greenest thumbs I’ve known, used to tend roses in her very sunny garden every year. And every year, depending on the variety of the bush, some would bloom in April, and when they closed up shop at the end of the summer, others would pick up the slack from October to December. But no one of her rose bushes bloomed the entire time.

The roses in the courtyard start blooming in early April, and don’t quit until sometime around early to mid-December. The gardeners who tend them are instructed by the apartment manager to cut them back to the stalk every year in January. After a couple of months, there they are, grown back to around four feet tall and blooming again. I am not the person best suited to explain this phenomenon. I have mentioned before that I am a “herbicidal maniac.” When my godmother passed away in 1999, I was given the heartiest of her plants, the nearly indestructible pothos she’d tended for years (my reputation for horticultural devastation is renowned among family members – and yet, they love me anyway, which is sweet of them). It’s a well-known fact that to kill a pothos takes the coordinated effort of both a gasoline flame-thrower and the gravest gypsy curse. Linny’s pothos is dead now.

It was an accident. I swear.

So, why the roses bloom all year round is a mystery, especially to me. There is a rumor -- having nothing to do with the roses per se, but inspired by other weird, inexplicable phenomena -- that the building is haunted. This appeals to my twisted imagination, but I have little faith in its voracity as an explanation for the blooming foliage.

If I had to speculate, I’d say the prime reason for the roses’ constant state of blossom has to do with the layout of the building itself. The white stucco walls of the apartment reflect light from all angles, during most times of the daylight, most times of the year. Even on an overcast day, diffused light bounces off the walls and comes at objects in the courtyard from all angles. I know this because it’s a terrific place to take pictures, if you’re looking for good quality diffused lighting. What takes a fashion photographer’s camera assistants an hour to pull off with bounce cards and reflectors occurs naturally in our courtyard. I wonder if being bombarded with light all day long, from all directions, doesn’t confuse those poor little roses something awful. Maybe they can’t tell the difference between April and October because the light is little different between those months here. Roses love light, and they get it in spades in this place. And they love water, which they also get in abundance, as the leaky hose hooks up to the spigot at the corner of the rose bed when the manager waters the plants on her patio.

So maybe that’s enough to keep them happy to bloom from spring through winter every year. Then again, there’s still my “buried granny” theory. Which, when you think about it, dovetails nicely into the “haunted apartment” theory. Which, when you think about it some more, sounds like the beginning of an interesting short story. Hmmm….

Environmental Concerns -- Journal Entry #2

Second in the series of Environmental Landscape journals I wrote for class.

10/13/05 -- CENTURY CITY, CA

I am on a mission from God. Okay, not God exactly. My good friend, who is working on a project for Disney, needs me to drop something off at the Fox television clip library, which is housed on the Lot. I get to leave the high-rise where I work -- Fox Plaza, otherwise known in the movies as "Nakatomi Plaza" (from the movie "Die Hard" which was shot here). The reason for my joy is two-fold. One, I get to take a walk in the open air (away from a buidling where the windows don't open and the climate control is always off), and see some "outside"; and, two, because Thursday is sushi day at the Fox Commissary.

The Fox TV clip library is housed on one of the only parts of the 20th Century Fox lot that was part of the original studio, before it was sold off and developed in the early 70s by that ratbastard Marvin Davis (I'm sorry -- that just slipped out). It's my favorite part of the studio, because there's lots of history here. The old dressing room bungalows have been converted to production offices, and the two "Writers Buildings" (old and new) now serve to hold the staple production companies (David E. Kelley, Matt Groening) that make the shows that are currently keeping the studio afloat. (Nature lesson #1 -- The one who gathers the most resources at his disposal gets the choicest real estate.)

On my way out of the Old Writers' Building, where the clip library is stashed, I see two of the Fox's finest. No, not the security guards. I mean the Lot cats. Almost all backlots, from Paramount to Disney, are full of feral cats that have been abandoned or have made their way there. They're speedy little devils, though, and before I can capture them on my camera phone, they've ducked under the little wildernesses that someone has planted between the production bungalows. The Fox cats have one single job on the lot -- they are the rat police. A couple of studios have tried to rid themselves of the inconvenient cat population, only to reinstate it later when they discovered that with the absence of the cats came the large, unchallenged daring rodents. Now most studios institute a "neuter-and-release" program, whereby the cats are not allowed to breed out of control, but are allowed to continue unmolested as they do their thing. (Nature lesson #2: In the presence of a balanced eco-system, introducing a man-made disturbance regime is often ill-advised and always tedious to rectify.)

In front of the New Writers' Building, where the writers for The Simpsons and Family Guy hang out (clearly a disturbed bunch), there is an old fountain that has not worked correctly since the first time I visited the lot in the early '80s. The trickle of water, which is intended to flow from the top, then down all sides of the two-tiered structure, and into the pool below, has been rendered ridiculous with a single trickle down the right-hand side. The only thing that makes the fountain even remotely useful, other than as a nostalgic conversation piece, is that some impetuous fool has stocked the fountain with koi fish. This was not a Fox executive decision, I'm sure. Fox studio executives don't tend to make decisions that create artful little patches of nature anywhere. Still, the fish are pretty happy here (at least, they seem to be -- with fish, who can tell?), and the odd circumstance of their enclosure has not seemed to dampened their appetites. As I walk around the fountain, they follow me, gathering in a school at the fountain's edge, jawing the water, waiting for me to feed them. (Nature lesson #3: Life can pretty much happen anywhere it's given a foot in the door; and Nature lesson #4: Being chased and stalked by rapacious koi fish is weird and creepy.)

From a slightly different angle, it appears that the fountain has actually become a watering hole for expensive motor vehicles. There's a metaphor here somewhere, but the whole koi fish episode has kind of creeped me out and I can't find it save my life. You're welcome to take a whack at it. (Nature Lesson #5: see Nature Lesson #7).

Fox doesn't tend to like "accidental nature" too much (I refer you back to the paragraph on feral cats). Fox likes its nature planned, coordinated, architected, drawn and then brought in on flatbed trucks. Nowhere was this more evident when Rupert Murdoch's wife… make that Rupert Murdoch's former wife (not to be confused with the sweet young thing that currently holds that particular distinction) -- decided that Fox needed a bit of gussying up. In her defense, she couldn't have been more right. Ten years ago, we who had once worked at Paramount (arguably the most architecturely beautiful and still intact studio remaining to date) referred to Fox as "Tobacco Road." Trailers abounded, there was nothing even remotely resembling a landscape design, and even the Executive Building, where the chief-high-muckity-mucks worked, smelled something like a stable on a hot July day.

Anna Murdoch set about to create one little patch of civility in the midst of disaster. Thus was born "The Walk." Extending from Studio 20 (where Reba is filmed) down to the Commissary and Studio Store, it was designed as place employees could gather during lunch breaks, sit, eat, read and/or relax. Note the neatly trimmed lawns, the curbed plant beds, the carefully trimmed and maintained trees (ignore that high-rise in the background -- that's the MGM Building on Constellation. Big weinies. We hate them.) Anna left no stone unturned. Or did she?

Back in the olden days, when I was still chubby and Anna Murdoch was still the au current Mrs. Murdoch, my job then necessitated several trips from the Plaza to the Lot everyday. I was getting more nature than I knew what to do with back then; I just didn't know it. The day that construction of The Walk got interesting was the day they brought in some nature -- carefully sandblasted, cut to order, sanitized for our protection -- as, of course, all nature should be.

There are four such little seating areas along The Walk, all of them carefully delineated by these boulders, carefully placed so as to look as if some landslide had simply deposited them there by chance. It takes a lot of effort to make nature look so random. Just ask the crew of four flatbed trucks, two Bobcat dozers, and twelve workmen, all slaving away to place the boulders to the "just-so" specifications of Anna Murdoch and her landscape architect.

This is how Fox likes its nature. Nature here needs to be carved or trimmed or otherwise created in a controlled way, lest it break out of its designated borders and run roughshod all over the place. (Nature lesson #6: Nature must never be left to its own anarchic devices because its sneaky and if given an inch will take a mile.)

The Walk ends at the Fox Commissary, and today is (as I've mentioned) sushi day. But before we go in and secure our stash of cold, dead fish, let us take one last look at nature the way it was before we ever got here.

Behold, a group of plastic patio tables, gathered for a late morning graze. Huge herds of these noble beasts used to roam unmolested over the vast open prairie land of what is now Century City, Westwood and West Los Angeles, before the white man came and drove them to near-extinction with their incessant BBQs and weinie roasts. Now, only scattered small clusters remain to remind us of a time in our history before movie studios, trophy wives, multinational corporate moguls, feral cats and imported boulders shaped our environment. (Nature lesson #7: Anything can look like nature if viewed from the proper angle.)

Okay… I'm done…. Clearly, I need protein. I have a date with some cold, dead fish. At least these guys know their place -- they stay put in the tray and don't follow me around, like those damn koi fish.

~C~

Environmental Concerns - Journal Entry #1

I just finished a class called Environmental Landscapes. Part of the assignment in class was to observe the phenomenon of urban nature -- wildlife and nature as it exists in an urban setting -- and write journal entries about it, then send them to the professor. Since I'm kind of doubting he ever really read them (I do go on, after all), and because I'm busy with my MFA stuff (first packet due Jan. 21st), I thought I'd start posting them here, to keep the Naked Chicken fresh, and so's they shouldn't go to waste. Think of it as a sort of literary recycling, in keeping with the environmental theme.

10/07/05 -NEWPORT BEACH, CA

I have very little interest in surfing myself. I saw "Jaws" when I was fifteen and, though I'm told the odds of shark attack are minimal, I feel reasonably certain that remaining on the beach reduces one's chances to next to none. Also, the Pacific Ocean is freakin' cold. All year round. Wet suit, schmet suit. I am a morning person only to the degree that I can avoid being cold and wet before noon.

I do love to watch surfers surf, though. It comes from having friends, an ex-husband and ex-in-laws who surf(ed). It's a big ocean, and it's interesting to watch how people --especially large male-type people who are all well over 6'3" --try to tame or conquer it. Getting out past the breakpoint, where one is in a position to actually catch the wave seems to be about 70% of the work right there, because you're fighting the incoming waves all the way out. The sooner you can get belly onto board and start paddling out, the easier it is.

But today in Newport, it isn't the men that have caught my eye. For they are nearly all men today. Today, a family of three arrives --a father, his son who is (I'm guessing) around 17, and his daughter, who is 12, at most. At first, I don't even realize that she's a girl. Dressed in a black wetsuit, with boy-short pixie cut sun-bleached blonde hair, too young to exhibit any secondary sex characteristics, she could be a boy from the back. Then she drops her board on the sand so she can secure her ankle strap. The board is the tip-off --bright baby blue, with a cherry-hot pink heart painted in the center. I remember now that my ex-husband had urged my daughter to decorate her board with loud, easily spotted decals, so that if she wiped out and lost her board while they were surfing, he'd know immediately when the board popped to the surface without her.

The father and the son, who are about the same height, head straight out into the water, as all the other surfers have done so far. They barge through the incoming waves until they are waist-deep, then belly onto their boards and paddle out past the break. But our Mizz Thang can't do this. She weighs maybe 65 pounds and she is, at this point, soaking wet. The waves merely pick her up and toss her back to the beach, with little effort or ceremony. How is this tiny thing going to get herself into a position to catch a single wave, I wonder?

She stands knee-deep in the water, as the waves finish breaking and skid to a stop on the beach. She drops her board onto one of the spent waves and hops on it, riding it nearly to the end. Then she cuts back in toward the surf, catches the tail end of another wave, rides it out a bit, cuts back, and so on. She keeps doing this over and over, and I'm fooled at first into thinking this is what she's come here for. Then I realize. The waves come in and go out, and after a couple of minutes, she's managed to use the ocean against itself to get to the point where she can drop down on the board and paddle to the breakpoint, where her father and brother are waiting.

Did someone teach her this? Did someone show her that if she just used the ocean's own power to draw her out to sea, she wouldn't have to charge headlong into oncoming surf? Did someone teach her to compensate for the wicked riptide and undertow that hangs near the shore? Clearly, her father has had her on a board since before she could stand. Maybe he was once a 65-pound weakling, too, and he learned to master the ins and outs of the waves to help him get past the surf. Somehow, I don't think so. I think this very little girl has figured this out for herself. It seems, instead of fighting the ocean, she's found a way to make some peace with it, and to get it to cooperate with her. They both get what they want. The ocean gets to come and go as it pleases, and she gets a ride out past the waves.

A few minutes later, a really good wave begins to curl just in front of the breakpoint. I know it's a good wave, because five of the bobbing heads that have been sitting on their boards, letting the others pass them by, are now in hot pursuit of the wave. One by one, they drop away, acknowledging that this one isn't theirs, until only one remains. A flash of blue and a cherry-hot pink heart peak out of the curl as she rides the wave in --all the way in to the point where the surf stops short.

Then she drops the board on the dying surf, hops on and begins the patient work of letting the ocean pull her back out so she'll be ready when her next wave comes.

~C~

Is This Fair, I Ask You?

Is it fair to ask two children to grow up in a house with a sibling who carries the DNA of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt? No. Really. I'm just praying this baby is boy, because no matter how beautiful little Zahara turns out to be, there's just no way she's going to measure up to any girl child born of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

It's not fair. It's just not fair. I'm starting a plastic surgery collection fund for these kids today.

~C~

Why Teenagers Should Never Be Allowed to Leave the House.

Oh, my Jesus gay. Am I supposed to be glad this knucklehead got home safe and sound? I know he's running on Cheetos and testosterone, but does he have any idea how many American military lives he put in jeopardy with this stupid whack-assed stunt? When he hits American soil, his parents will probably hug him and tell him how happy they are to have him back in one piece. Which is what I'd do if he were my son and did something so incredibly brainless.

And then -- though I don't believe much in corporal punishment -- I'd smack the shit right out of him. Twice. Hard.

Dumb ass little pischer....

(Dear Lord -- thank you for giving me a child who doesn't clean her room and doesn't do the dishes, but never once entertained the idea of flying to Bahgdad for Christmas vacation.)

~C~

A Dance of Fairies

"Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities."
-from A Midsummer Night's Dream-

"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice

our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up

believing in nothing and having worthless dreams."

-Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi-

I have mentioned Meh-tropolis Dance Theatre to you before (they are the ones who don't starve their dancers to death). They are launching an ambitious dance production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (traditional score by Mendelssohn), running every weekend in January (including Sunday matinees), and if you're in the Los Angeles area, you might want to go. How do I know it's ambitious? I don't really, of course -- except that they are a small, privately funded dance company in a large city where people talk a good game about the arts, but rarely actually support the arts, so I figure any full-length production of anything theatrical constitutes ambition (not to mention giddy optimism and a deliciously whimsical perversity) in the extreme! And because we here at the Naked Dancing Chicken loves us some blind ambition (and some dancing and some Shakespeare, too, for that matter), Meh-tropolis is getting a plug. Also, this ballet is a little nostalgic for me, as A Midsummer Night's Dream was the first ballet I ever saw, at the Hollywood Bowl, when I was seven.

To tempt you, the company has posted photos of their rehearsals for the production on their website. Uh, sidebar, your honor? Why do they all look so cute at their rehearsals? Shouldn't they be all sweaty and gross and haggard-looking? Do you have any idea how awful I usually look at rehearsal? (Don't answer that!) It might have something to do with the fact that they're younger and in better shape, but we won't discuss that if we know what's good for us.

Ticket prices are exceedingly reasonable, especially for a full-length ballet ($18 for adults, $15 for students with ID, seniors and children under 12). You can print out their ticket order form here, and order by mail. I urge you, if you live in the Southern California area, to support companies like Meh-tropolis. If we are going to have access to the arts, we can no longer rely on the big theatres to bring it here, unless we're only interested in whatever Disney movie-turned-musical has sloughed off the Broadway stage.

Order! GO! NOW!

(Sheesh... I hate it when you guys make me shout at you!)

~C~

Did I Say "Icky"?

Okay, so maybe not all icky... some boys aren't completely icky. Not entirely, anyway. As far as we know.

In fact, the proportion of ickiness of certain select members of the male sex is, at present, far from proven, and, I believe, requires further intense study in order to determine the answer definitively.

I shall take this study firmly in hand and attempt to ascertain myself the precise proportion of icky to pretty-freakin'-fabulous by observing at close range a sampling of the target population. This will not be an easy project. It might involve great personal peril. There could very well be unforeseen dangers to which I will be subjected. Still, no sacrifice is too great for the furtherance of genuine scientific knowledge and the edification of humanity.

Wish me luck.

~C~

I Said It When I was Five, and I'll Say It Now.

Boys are icky.

~C~

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~