Defending James

Perhaps you remember a few posts ago, when I (finally) blogged about the whole James Frey fiasco. I sent a letter to the blog, James Frey Owes Me Money, and they published it on the site. Well, because we live in a world where a President can be a draft dodger, an unrepentant liar, cheater, ne'er-do-well, a poser and otherwise felonious conspirator, and some asshole somewhere will still make excuses for him, don't you just know an anonymous little James Frey defender jumped on the opportunity to chastise me for my failure to express harsh opinions against the war in Iraq, the current administration, genocide, starvation, etc.

• 
  Anonymous said...
  What is this crap? Please at least waste your life doing something more productive than whining about this book being mislabeled. You are the person in front of me in line in the supermarket bitching that you want the can of soup cheaper. This is the most laughable shit in the world. Get angry about injustice in the White House, or war, or starvation, or genocide, or anything that requires real tangible decisions.

I felt compelled to answer him... or her... we'll just refer to this pointless, nameless little fleshbag of wasted human DNA as "it".... to answer "it" by pointing it to my two blogs in which -- and I think you all will vouch for me here -- useful, pointed and topical opinions are not lacking.

• 
  Catharine said...
  Dear Anonymous -- Thanks for your articulate response to my letter. Believe me when I tell you that I have enough anger to go around. Hence my two blogs about things like injustice in the White House, racism, war, genocide, bad movies and cheaper soup. No, wait... I don't like soup. You've mistaken me for someone else who eats soup.This blog is about letters to James Frey, however, so I pretty much tried to stay on topic and to the point. See you in line at the supermarket. I'll wave if I see you -- if you ever lift your nose out of the latest issue of Weekly World News, that is. ~C~

I was somewhat bemused as to how a post about genocide really would have been relevant at a blog about James Frey and A Million Little Pieces, but this kind of good common sense did not deter Anonymous. I was particularly taken with it's utterly meaningless soup analogy, as I fail to see what buying cheap soup has to do with a nationally publicized book fraud. I was also a little baffled by its reference to the "mislabeling" of Frey's book, as both the publisher and Frey's agent have said that Frey presented the book to them as memoir, and, golly, you learn the difference between a novel and a memoir in English 101. Perhaps it never took English 101. Perhaps it doesn't even speak English at all, and used Altavista's Babelfish to translate its response into English, which would explain the idiotic, random soup metaphor.

Anyway, just thought you guys might be interested in seeing what happens when generations of first cousins choose to marry and procreate. I hope I didn't confuse Anonymous with my brusk editorial style; however, it's obvious to me that vital, articulate opinion is what Anonymous hungers for most. So here it is, Anonymous -- my little opinion, just for you, terse and edgy though it may be. I hope it somehow fills the ridges and cracks in your empty, dreary little life.

And I hope someday, after years of therapy, you finally find both a name and a good, cheap can of soup.

~C~

MARSVILLE AND VENUSTOWN

Or "Why I Think John Gray is Just a Nice Guy Who Has His Head WAY Up His Ass."

This all started with that book. That damned book. Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus. A seemingly innocuous little tome, written by a former monk-turned-psychologist, who was only trying to help by pointing out to us that men and women are so totally different in every way that they could have come from separate planets. And we bought into it.

No, wait. I bought into it. I won't include you all in this, since some of you had the supreme good sense to call a crock of shit a crock of shit when you saw one. I bought into it because I wanted to find the simple reason why my relationships had been so unequivocally disasterous up to that point. I bought into it because it was important at the time for me to believe that it was just a matter of finding out the right words, spoken in the right order, of understanding what my man's frame of mind was -- that he wasn't leaving me when he "went into the cave," but that he was a rubber band that needed to stretch back into shape before he snapped.

And I bought it. Hook, line and rubberband ball. Because it was easier to tell myself that I wasn't the one being abandoned. It wasn't me he wasn't communicating with. It wasn't me he wasn't talking to. He was in the cave. He was a rubberband that had been overstretched by the demands that life makes on men that taxes them so substantially that they simply cannot function without some downtime. It wasn't me; it was him. "I'll leave him alone. He's in the cave." Nothing wrong with me -- he's just a man being Martian.

Upon further reflection of this concept, from a position of advanced age and sultry wisdom, I say this: Fuck off and die, John Gray!

Sorry. That was strong. I actually think Dr. Gray means well. I don't think he ever meant to be condescending and insulting. I think he set out to explain why we weren't all getting along. I also think thatwhat he knows about women you could make dance on the head of a pin.

Here's the thing. Is there really anyone out there who has ever known a mother, working or at home, married or single, who believes for an instant that there haven't been at least fifteen times in the course of a day when she wants to pack it in and go hide in a cave, thereby being left alone to do as she pleases for a specified period of time, without being bothered by her 24/7 job of wiping snotty noses or poopy bottoms, refereeing sibling boxing matches, listening to the incessant whines from a napless, overtired, can't-sleep-now-its-too-close-to-bedtime child? Is there anyone who knows a wife, at home or in the workplace, who wouldn't at some point, like to kiss her husband good-bye and go spend a week or so away from the incredibly wearing task of bearing the responsibility for the emotional end of an entire relationship, handling the spiritual and psychological baggage, making all the excuses, looking after someone who may or may not reciprocate affection in a way that rewards her? He is leaving her when he goes into the cave, even if its just for a day or so. He's leaving her to flounder in a sea of both of their making, while he reclines on the beach and gives himself a little break from the struggle commitment requires.

Men are NOT from Mars. Women are NOT from Venus. We are all from HERE -- the planet Earth, and while it spins and whirls and tilts on its little axis, we all have things we have to do. We have jobs to go to, people to conduct business with, classes to attend, papers to write, partners and spouses to emotionally connect with, children to raise and nurture, dishwashers to load and unload, laundry to do. And it's exhausting. For everybody. And I refuse to believe for a second that the male sex is so frail and unstable that it isn't up to the task. One, because that lets men off the hook far too easily. And, two, because I have a couple of men friends who are far more capable than I of keeping all the balls in the air.

The only non-anatomical difference between men and women that I can find is that men give themselves permission to go into the cave, while women just stick around here and plug it out, because that's what we're taught we must do. We don't have permission to retreat and lock ourselves away to watch sports or play golf or nap. We're busy being okay and making everyone around us okay, because that's our job. It's what we do. It's what makes having a "wife" far more desirable to me than having a "husband" at this stage of my life (more about this in future blog posts).

So to every man who has taken to his cave, secure in the knowledge he's rightly entitled to it, then actually thrown it in the face of a woman he knows by telling her it was all becoming too much for him to bear, I say here and now, "Knock it off and get back to work, mister. I don't care what planet you think you're from, you're here now, and the trash needs taking out!"

~C~

(original artwork by Ted Nasmith can be found, full-sized, here.)

You're As Young As You Feel... On Mars.

It seems I had two important birthdays this past November. My Earth birthday, which took place on November 2, 2005 at 10:42pm, PST, rendered me forty-seven. But I don't feel forty-seven. I've been told I don't look forty-seven. I'm always appalled when 60-year-old men approach me as of I'm datable, and it feels like I'm looking at my grandfather. (Sorry, guys, but.... Ew.)

I'm thinking that, perhaps its because of the other birthday. See, if I were still living on the planet Mars, one week after my Earth birthday, I would have celebrated my Mars birthday, on November 9, 2005, at 4:31 am. There would have been a mere twenty-five candles on my little cake. Of course, due to the lack of atmosphere on Mars, they wouldn't have stayed lit for very long. But its the thought that counts. And I feel much closer to twenty-five than I do to forty-seven (though I'm pretty sure I look closer to forty-seven than I do to twenty-five).

All of this comes courtesy of Timeanddate.com, a nifty little website that computers dates and times and breaks birthdays down to seconds and minutes. I turned a billion seconds old last July... so very depressing. But not nearly so depressing as realizing that there are 1,071 days until a new President is inaugurated on January 21, 2009.*

So, go see how old you are. Maybe you're do for a landmark birthday on some other planet. (I've always wanted to see Jupiter in the spring).

~C~

* Assuming there are no Presidential impeachments, resignations, or hunting trips with Dick Cheney, that is.

Happy Valentine's Day

Hope you get all the flowers, chocolates, kissed and hugs you can stand.

As for me, I intend to spend my Valentine's Day evening, dining in with a very handsome fellow in a tuxedo.

~C~

Environmental Concerns - Journal Entry # 5

11/10/05 -- ENCINO, CA.

I live in a large, 2 bedroom apartment with two roommates. They are both freeloading at the moment, since I'm the only one of us who is gainfully employed. While one of them has job prospects, the other is destined to spend his days sleeping on the couch all day and being waited on by women. The job hunter is pictured at right. The permanent loafer is playing the part of a fur stole.

I moved into this apartment in 1996. Come August of next year, I will have lived here ten years. That's about twice as long as I've ever lived anywhere in my life. It is also the first place I've ever lived where I spent time actually apartment hunting, chose it myself with no outside input, and have paid the rent and the bills myself (with no help and with varying degrees of success through time). It is my home. But until last year, it was gravely lacking.

When I signed the lease, it was made pretty clear that no pets were allowed. My manager had been begging and pleading with the landlord to change the policy, but he refused to consider it. I personally feel landowners who ban pets should be subjected to any number of creative and innovative tortures (like being forced to watch every episode of all ten seasons of Survivor back-to-back). Denying someone the company of an animal is cruel. Jerry came in through the back door early this year, stayed secret for a week, then was tacitly accepted by the management in what has come to be a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

I have been raised with pets my entire life (minus the eight years I lived here under this bio-fascist regime). By rough count, the permanent pets* I have had in my life consisted of five dogs, seventeen cats, one bird (a cockateil -- 'nuff said there), a quarter horse, a couple of Oriental fire-bellied toads, five hamsters and a guinea pig. My daughter kept her iguana at her father's house, which explains why Iggy has since shuffled off this mortal coil. My ex is a nice guy, but clueless about the care and feeding of dependent, confined things. I've laid down the law in this regard: The next exotic pet my daughter acquires, she pays for, and it lives at our house (Note: Tarantulas need not apply).

Jerry is what they call an "inside cat." He used to be an "inside/outside" cat when he lived in Savannah's father's house. But we live close enough to the hills that letting him run around outside makes me uncomfortable. I've already sacrificed one cat to the Coyote Gods -- I'd rather not do it again. Even in his tom-catting days, he wasn't a hunter. His sister was. Her reputation for bringing home half-eviscerated baby rabbits is the stuff of cat lore throughout the feline worldm I'm sure. But Jerry can't hunt. Won't hunt. Shows no interest in it. Unless he's sitting on one side of the glass, and the sparrows are pecking the seeds off the patio concrete on the other. Then he becomes the Great White Hunter.

Through the sliding glass door, he stalks them, follows them, conceals himself behind the vertical blinds, and makes that noise that my ex-college roommate used to refer to as "eeping" -- his jaw drops and "chatters", while a soft, very low machine-gun sound comes out of his mouth. I can only assume that the low-frequency sound is meant to help cats in the wild coordinate their conjoined attack on the unsuspecting prey. As it happens, because of the glass that separates them, the cat could be belting a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and the "prey" would be oblivous. But it doesn't stop him from having his little primal "lion" (or "puma" or "ocelot") take over and drive him to hunt. The cruel sadist in me waits for the day when, after I've cleaned the sliding glass door, he actually decides to throw caution to the wind and pounce.

Watching him, I'm reminded that he started as a "wild thing." He wasn't really designed to live "inside," though doing so means he'll live a longer, healthier life. He was created to hunt other wild things. The same markers that dot his DNA are the ones carried by whatever feral feline began his lineage thousands of years ago, and DNA dies hard.

What about our DNA, then? What prompts so many of us to require the companionship of real, live "wild things" (domesticated though they may be) in our dwellings? Why does that give us such comfort -- lowering our blood pressure, raising our endorphines, curing all manner of physical ailment? What coaxed the first hunter/gatherer to believe that bringing home the pups of the wolf he'd just killed, then raising them as pets was a good idea -- especially knowing what truly awful pets tamed wolves make? (How many Neanderthal toddlers went missing, do you think?) Is it the control over nature? Is it companionship they give us? I don't live alone, after all. I have a teenager at home. And she actually wants to spend a lot of her time with me, as crazy as that sounds. So why the need for a big, largely inert furball that gives very little in the way of material benefit?

I don't have an answer yet. It very well might be the subject of my final paper. Film at eleven….

*This does not include the countless fosters -- rescued litters of barely-weaned feral kittens, stray dogs and homeless cats, rats and injured squirrels which came to live for a while, then later found new homes elsewhere.

I Swore I Wasn't Going to Post About This!

But, really, who are we kidding? This has been bugging the crap out of me. James Frey. Oprah Winfrey. A Million Little Pieces.

I keep thinking if I talk about that lying little sack of poo, it only serves to give him more publicity. I read the first few chapters of the book weeks and weeks ago (before all the hoopla), and found it to be poorly written and ill-conceived, even for a memoir. As a work of fiction, it's like a bad rip-off of Go Ask Alice.

I have been stewing about it for a couple of weeks. The talk all over my MFA program forums is frightening. "Beautiful, man. He was totally playing with genre." And (from an instructor, no less), "What difference does it make? Everybody lies." And from the fiction writers: "Gee, golly, but we make shit up all the time." You're FICTION writers, you idiots!!!! The moral turpitude that is alive and well and living in the American literary community is breathtaking. No wonder this generation's literary claims to fame are the Jayson Blairs and the Judith Millers and the James Freys of the world. One creative non-fiction instructor, Hope Edelman, redeemed the entire program for me, though, with her post on Huffington Post.

But I found a website that has given me an outlet for my anger. It's called James Frey Owes Me Money. I wrote my letter to James last night, and we'll see if it makes the cut there. If it does, I'll link to it here. If it doesn't, I'll post the whole thing. Not all the posts are anti-Frey, but there are enough there to make me realize that I am not alone in the world. People out there do recognize that he is a liar and a fraud and an otherwise not-nice human being, and aren't afraid to tell him so in public.

So, keep your fingers crossed that my letter makes the site, so I can finally have some closure.

~C~

Update: My letter to James was indeed posted on the website, and here's the link.

In or Out, Make up Your Mind

The Chron is up and running again, so I've moved the Feminism post back to its rightful place. I have another post planned for here in a day or so.

Now, if we can just keep the computer fairies happy, we'll all be fine.

~C~

Environmental Concerns - Journal Entry #4

Fourth (actually, fifth, but the original No. 4 was so boring, I decided to spare you all -- you can thank me later) entry in my Environmental Landscapes Journal.

10/23/05 – ENCINO, CA

Did you know that, prior to 1994, the state of California spent two times more on freeway shoulder landscaping than on the earthquake retro-fitting overpasses and abuttments? That’s what Michael Ventura said in his article for the May-June, 1994 issue of Psychology Today. The result, of course, was that a bunch of overpasses either actually fell down, or at least threatened to, following the Northridge quake of January 17, 1994. Clearly, the vegetation that we drive past every day is critically important to us. I started to write “the vegetation that we whizz past at 65 mph,” but who are we kidding here? Whizzing? I personally spend most of my time crawling along at a breathtaking 25 mph on the freeway these days.

Yesterday, I spent more time than usual regarding it when my distributor went to the Great Irretrievably Broken Auto Parts Graveyard in the Sky on the southbound 405, just short of Mulholland. Not the most interesting spot on the freeway, granted. A couple of bushes of mustardweed, which, if I’m not mistaken, is indigenous There’s nothing much to look at, except to stare longingly into one’s rear-view mirror, waiting for the tow truck that’s promised to come and rescue me. (Hey, wait a minute… those cars are whizzing, aren’t they. That blurred SUV just to the left my rear-view mirror is most assuredly whizzing. Bastards!).

So, being me, and a bit perverse, I came home and looked up “freeway landscaping + california” in a couple of search engines to see what I can find on all that “landscaped” real estate that we pass by every day. It turns out that we in California spend a lot of money on freeway landscaping. A large chunk of the alotted $27.5 million set aside for road maintenance is earmarked for planting and maintaining the vegetation that grows along the freeways that run across and along the entire State of California. This is where the mustardweed comes in, apparently. Recycled water is being used in some areas, but it seems to be meeting resistance from some locals who don’t fully trust what they’re neighbors are doing in their sinks and showers (and, really, can we blame them?) And because we’re trying not to water anything extra these days, landscapers are choosing low-maintenance, native plants that require little extra care than the environment gives on its own. Mustardweed and lantana are the biggies, with laurel sumac and certain ground cover flowers (ice plants, ivy, etc.) coming up strong behind. I personally have a soft spot for lantana from childhood, when I found that the little blossoms make fabulous Barbie wedding bouquets.

No lantana today, though. Just some rather ratty mustardweed, a few trees on the hillside across the way, and a bunch of taillights from the cars whizzing (oh, yes, I said whizzing) by as I wait for Triple A. And because this is a journal – one that you insist on reading, you glutton for punishment – if I have to suffer through this misery, so do you.

Welcome to my fresh hell.

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)