We'll die with our options open

Happy Valentine's Day

2010-02-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is coming up. I know it's a little bit off topic...well lets be honest I may have some themes but I don't really have a topic exactly, so this is fine.

You know I love Valentine's Day, but I do have some problems with it. I like Valentine's Day as a celebration of love in all forms whether I'm single or not. When I'm not single (though I've been single for many VDays now) I even like the celebration of romance. What I don't like is the mass bastardization of what romance means. I don't want to be that person that rails against the commercialization, but in this instance I do think commercialization is the problem.

They're trying to sell something and the only way you can sell something to a large number of people is to make it so generic that it doesn't appeal to anyone specifically but to everyone generally.

What do I mean by that? Well, what would you expect would be really bad Valentine's Day gifts for a woman? Kitchen appliances? Tickets to sporting events? Home improvement products? And what would you think would be great Valentine's Day gifts for a woman? Jewelry perhaps? Maybe flowers? Well, I'm a woman and I would far prefer any of the former to the latter. I don't really wear jewelry and one of my cats likes to eat flowers even though they make her sick so I can't have them in my house.

I'm not going to make a case against consumerism really. I'm all for putting as much money as you can into the economy just spend it on the right things. Real romance is paying attention, knowing someone so well that you know the specific things that appeal to them and don't need to fall back on the generalizations that are being sold on every corner. I'm sure lots of women like jewelry and flowers but I'm also sure that many of them would prefer something else (if you're observant enough to figure out what it is).

Men, of course, are a mystery to me, but I would imagine that the same holds true for them.

Anonymity

2010-02-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

I've discovered recently that if you mention Zachary Quinto on your blog many people will read it. The Sarmy is a force to be reckoned with. I've blogged about sports and entertainment both here and at my other blogs and never gotten the kind of traffic that I got when I wrote fan mail to Zachary Quinto.

I never really thought people would read my blogs. What I mean is not that I assumed I had any sort of privacy when I wrote about my personal life in intimate detail and posted it on the internet...it's just that I never really thought about it much. I have a meter and I look at it but it does count things like the google bot and doesn't count things like google reader so I never really paid much attention to the counts until the counter on one of my other blogs had a sudden jump (right after my fan letter to Zachary Quinto).

When I first started blogging (and this was my first) I thought a little about who might read my stuff (as I've mentioned) and specifically didn't tell my friends and family that I was doing it so that they wouldn't read it (strangers I was okay with though). I've gotten over that since and put the link to this and my other blog on facebook where people I actually know can find it, but I still have tried to maintain a sort of anonymity (never mentioning people by name, not having an e-mail address on my profile, etc). I'm giving up one more of those veils now. I put an e-mail address on my profile.

I'm still not sure anyone actually reads this stuff, but if you do and you want to contact me now there is a way to do that. If anything, I expect I will now be graced with e-mails pointing out my lax editing...maybe I should just go through the archives and correct a few spelling errors while I'm thinking of it.

Coincidence

2010-01-29T22:39:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things in the Conan finale (aside from his admonishment against cynicism, which made me cry) was the montage set to Cheap Trick's Surrender. It's one of my favorite songs and the subtext it provided for sending Conan off was perfect. The next day I got in my car and plugged in my Zune (set to shuffle, as usual) and that very same song was the first thing I heard.

An interesting coincidence (if you believe in coincidence).

That week I was reading Fear of Flying (by Erica Jong). I wasn't really enjoying it but as a lit nerd and a woman I felt like I needed to read it. There is a remarkably peripheral mention of Carl Jung in the book (peripheral given that the book is primarily about psychoanalysis), and how he is viewed, by some as antisemitic for taking over Freud's post when he was deported.

When I finished Fear of Flying I started reading Craig Ferguson's Between the Bridge and the River which is by far a better book in almost every respect. It features Carl Jung much more prominently and his theory of the collective unconscious.

Around this same time I found myself suddenly and somewhat inexplicably in a Zachary Qunito fan bubble. I mean, not completely inexplicably, I like Heroes and I loved Star Trek (and yes, Spock was my favorite character but that probably has a lot to do with my love of logic), and yes the juxtaposition of the two characters (Sylar and Spock) does highlight Quinto's range as an actor very well...so yes, I am a fan of his, and have been, but the recent...fixation is somewhat surprising.

I have a new blogging venture. It's my compromise on a dream. I had once dreamed to have a platform, possibly a magazine or TV show but preferably an NPR radio show, where I (and my collaborators whomever they might be) would interview people we are fans of and do articles on things we are fans of and then the people we interviewed would tell us what they are a fan of and we would research that and do an article on that as well (companion pieces). I decided to compromise and start blogging the fan mail instead.

So, when my Zachary Quinto fixation arose a couple weeks ago I started reading everything I could about him (research you might say, for my fan mail, though I didn't use any of it really). I found this interview (from Playboy which, by the way, does often have pretty great articles and interviews) in which Zachary Quinto says that he is a fan of Carl Jung.

Also, as a result of my ZQ fixation, I started re-watching Heroes from the beginning. As I write this I am watching Season 3 Episode 4 in which Parkman is marooned somewhere in Africa with another guy who can paint the future. The future painter tells him he needs to look inside himself and find his "totem, a spirit guide that attaches itself to your subconscious". When Parkman asks him about if that's "some sort of African mystical mojo thing", he responds that it's from Carl Jung's theory of analytical psychology.

I don't think Carl Jung believed in coincidence, though I could be wrong since it's been over a decade since I studied about Jung (during my brief flirtation with majoring in Psychology). I believe that some things are pure coincidence but that many things which appear coincidental are something much larger. I think it's unlikely that I would stumble across four references to Carl Jung in two weeks by pure coincidence. It seems to me like something larger than coincidence but at this point I'm not entirely sure what. I guess I need to look into my subconscious for my totem to give me the answer. Or maybe I should pray about it. Or maybe prayer and analytic psychology are one and the same, maybe God and the Collective Unconscious are one and the same....

Faith

2009-12-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

I have a great URL, so great that I feel a little guilty not using it a) more and b) to discuss matters of faith. So, faith is the subject of the day.

I was raised mostly without religion. There were remnants of it. My mother had been raised Catholic but her entire family lapsed and later in life found out that they were part Jewish so we've adopted some of the traditions and ritual of both but not the daily practice of either religion. And my father wasn't really raised in any specific religion at all. So, as a child my only contact with religion was my friends. I used to go to church, Mormon church, with my friends families sometimes and I really liked it. I liked it for a lot of reasons, mostly because I had an abundance of faith and no other outlet for it, but there's something more specific I want to talk about now.

There were, of course, Sunday school classes at Mormon church, that involved among other things, reading and discussing a passage of either the bible or book of Mormon. I couldn't tell you anymore which passage this is (it's been years since I've read, much less studied, either the bible or book of Mormon), but I have a memory of one weekend when we discussed a passage about the concept of faith conquering fear. The gist being that if you find yourself being attacked by the forces of evil your faith will protect you. All you have to do is ask the Lord for help, for protection, and you will be protected. My seven year old brain didn't quite grasp that maybe the forces of evil weren't flesh and blood daemons but might be metaphorical and that the protection is for your soul not your body. I just liked the idea. I took it literally, and I liked the idea.

Later in life I came to a more broad understanding of that lesson. As with most things, there is a quote from Dawson's Creek that illustrates the jump I made from taking it all so literally to a more basic, general idea. [Yes, I do realize I'm writing about faith and religion and I'm about to quote Dawson's Creek to illustrate something but I couldn't quote the bible passage that illustrates the same concept. I'm okay with it]

"God. I've never really believed in God. In fact, I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to disprove that God exists. But I hope that you are able to believe in God, because the thing that I've come to realize, sweetheart... is that it just doesn't matter if God exists or not. The important thing is for you to believe in something, because I promise you that that belief will keep you warm at night, and I want you to feel safe always."

It's a wonderful thing thing to know that no matter what bad things might happen, they can't hurt you, not really. It actually comes full circle to the other primary principal of Faith. That's faith with a capital F because I think there are certain principals that cross over and belong to all faiths. One of those is forgiveness. If you keep holding on the the bad things that have happened to you then they are still hurting you, but if you let them go then you make it true that nothing can hurt you.

Those two things are the core of my faith, and I think all faith really. Be open, or in other words, don't live your life in fear of bad things, and if you should encounter bad things, let them go. I'm over simplifying, but...actually, maybe I'm not, maybe things just are that simple.

[Also, yes I am aware of the irony of my discussing letting things go on the first night of Chanukkah with the candles still burning in my window and I'm okay with that too. Chanukkah, not so much about letting go, but it does speak to the idea that bad things may happen but that with faith you can keep them from having the power to hurt you.]

My apologies to the 80s

2009-10-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

As someone who claims to be (or at least have been) a film buff there are a fair amount of holes in my film viewing history. For example, I have never seen Citizen Kane. It was on the syllabus for a film class I took but I missed that day. If only I could have been out sick the day we watched Zardoz instead (believe me I wish I could un-see that one), but alas it was Citizen Kane day that I missed.

I'm trying to make up for it now. I've been interspersing classics into my queue in between Entourage and Mad Men viewings at a rate of two per month. Last month it was Funny Face and A Star is Born (the original), this month Eight Men Out and The Natural...but I have a lot of catching up to do.

Some of these are of my own choosing, but many of them are recommendations from people. Someone will say, "You haven't seen _______! Oh my God, it's classic you have to see it" and so I will dutifully add it to my queue and watch it eventually (Yes, Goodfellas is still on there and I will get around to it some day).

For the most part, whether or not they were of my own choosing or recommendations, I've really liked all of the "classics" that have been part of my re-education in film. However, I have to admit, because it's on my mind (and on TV a lot in the run up to Halloween), and I know how unpopular this will be....I really didn't like The Goonies.

I know I should fit perfectly in to this film's demographic. I'm a child of the 80's and a fan of many of the cast members. I should love the The Goonies, but I just can't work up any enthusiasm for it. Maybe if I'd seen it as a kid (as most of my friends who've recommended it did) I'd feel differently, but I didn't. Maybe it just loses something in translation from kid to adult. I don't know, but I really didn't like it. Maybe it was just that it had been so hyped to me that it just couldn't live up to it, but I don't think so. It wasn't just that I didn't see what all the fuss was about, I actually disliked it.

So, my apologies to the 80's, I feel like I've betrayed you, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and mine does not want The Goonies.

Supreme Court

2009-10-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have to justify myself before I make the argument I'm about to make, because as much as I fully believe in this argument the reason for the argument hurts my heart more than almost anything else ever has.

There is a case currently before the supreme court regarding animal cruelty and whether or not it is okay to produce and sell films depicting actual acts of animal cruelty (actual as in not simulated, as in would not and could not have that disclaimer at the end stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the film). More accurately the case is about whether or not it is okay to ban the production and distribution of films depicting actual acts of animal cruelty. Now, here comes my own disclaimer. I am an animal lover. I have volunteered at an animal shelter and given money to the ASPCA and North Shore Animal League. Animal cruelty makes me sick. Hearing about this case, talking about this case, breaks my heart. I can't even bring myself to describe, as I heard described, the acts depicted in the videos that resulted in this case. Hearing the description of these videos made me want to believe in Hell. If there is a Hell, like Dante described, the lowest level of it would be reserved for people who harm the defenseless.

The case is a first amendment issue. The producers of these films are claiming that it isn't constitutional to ban the production and distribution of them.

The opposition is saying that some speech is already banned, namely child pornography, and that these types of films are just as bad and should also be banned federally, or at least be allowed to be banned by state and municipal governments. They also reference snuff films (saying that if there were snuff films that we were aware of we would and should absolutely ban them). Basically they are saying, yes we have free speech, but some types of speech are bad enough that it's okay to ban them.

I basically agree that some things are so bad that it's okay to ban them even though it infringes on free speech. I mean, I don't agree, but if it were up to me to pursue a case against the government for banning something like child pornography or animal cruelty videos, I wouldn't do it simply because my belief in free speech isn't a strong as my belief that it's wrong to hurt animals and children.

Having said all of that, the case has been brought, and I have heard about it and I have to make an argument because I have a compulsion to make arguments and because I do believe in free speech.

Banning the videos is unconstitutional. More importantly (to me anyway, and to other animal lovers) it's unnecessary. Animal cruelty is already illegal. The same holds true for snuff films and child pornography. Molesting children is already illegal. Rape and murder are already illegal. Filming illegal acts doesn't need to be illegal because the acts themselves are illegal. Filming these acts and selling those films (or otherwise distributing them) is actually remarkably ill advised since documenting your criminal behavior, if anything, creates a trail that might make it easier for the authorities to catch you. Regardless, given the constitutional protection of free speech, the animal cruelty videos can't be banned. Animal cruelty itself, however, can be (and has been in most, if not all, states and municipalities in the US).

Serendipity

2009-08-22T23:55:00.001-07:00

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and while I hope that's true of my rabid though minuscule fan base here at faith versus fear I suspect my absence has barely been noticed. I've wanted to write I simply haven't had anything to say. I know, I know, there have been primary elections locally, national political debate about health care, nearly the entire cycling and baseball seasons have past...normally all things that I would have something to say about, why not this year? It was the question. You may recall (and if you don't that's what archives are for) that in one of my last posts I spoke of my decision to go to law school and of a friend who asked me if I was happy with that to which my answer was mostly.

So, after much shock that this person knew me so well, I turned my highly honed debating sense on myself. Mostly happy meant partly unhappy and I had to ask myself why. That's what I've been doing and I'm not sure I have all the answers yet, nor am I at all sure that anyone cares to hear about my internal debate about what to do with my life (even if the original title of this blog was "we'll die with our options open").

If I haven't returned to write self-reflective posts, then why have I ended my hiatus? What prompted me to return to writing?

It was language, and a John Cusack movie (as is to be expected from me I suppose). Last night I got home from work, exhausted, for no good reason...okay a couple of good reasons (beer and whiskey are one, Happy Birthday again my perceptive friend if your reading this, and then staying up too late trying to work out wireless network issues)...the point remains that I was tired, too tired to be bothered even with surfing the channels looking for something good to watch on television. As luck would have it I turned on the TV and something decent happened to be on the channel it was already on.

Serendipity. Not Cusack's best film, sure, but one worth watching. So I did and I enjoyed, as always, the Piven/Cusack dynamic. I'm continually fascinated by these two actors as actors and people. They are, or so it is said, lifelong friends which I think is amazing, perhaps because I don't have many people I can count as lifelong friends. I have a couple (though I don't keep in touch with them as well as I should) and I have at least two that I've only met in the last few years but that I suspect will be lifelong friends, but Piven and Cusack have that history and I'm intrigued by it. Also, they grew up in the same Chicago suburb as my mother, a place that despite the infrequency of my visits to it has always seemed like a second home to me. In any event I'm captivated by them and they fact that they appear together in a film is really enough reason for me to watch it.

At the end of Serendipity Piven's character (Dean), an obit writer for the NY Times, gives Cusack's (Jonathan) the obituary that he wrote for him claiming he'd had writers block trying to come up with a best man speech for Jonathan's now canceled wedding. The mention of writer's block was the first thing that made me think maybe it was time for me to start writing again, but then (in voice over) Dean reads the obit and finally I had something to say.

The last line of that obit is, "Ultimately Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call 'fatum', what we currently refer to as destiny". My first thought was that what the ancients called "fatum" and what we refer to as destiny are not the same concept, and my second thought was that it was a fitting topic for me to write about given the faith required to believe in either.

I realize the distinction is subtle but fate and destiny are not the same thing. Of course, being the language nerd I am I looked up both the definitions and the etymologies to confirm my theory and found that in reality (at least from a definition stand point) I am absolutely wrong, but I'm going to make my case anyway because a) I think the etymology backs me up and b) I think you'll agree I'm right.

The word "fate" does indeed come from the ancient Greek "fatum" which meant spoken (by the Gods) whereas the word "destiny" comes from Old French "destinée" meaning, to make firm or establish. I suppose whether or not you accept my argument will depend on whether or not you believe in free will. You might make the claim that it doesn't matter whether or not you or I believe in free will but whether or not the ancient Greeks did (but that's a whole other argument about etymology in general that I won't get into). If you do believe in free will then just because something is spoken by God (or the Gods) doesn't necessarily mean it will happen, it maybe means it should happen, that it probably will happen, but the ultimate outcome is dependent on the choices you make. In other words if something is fated to happen it is not made firm or established, but something that is destined to happen is established.

So, I say fate and destiny are two separate concepts and likely if you believe in one you don't believe in the other. Or rather, if you do believe in free will you might or might not believe in fate but you couldn't believe in destiny. There are probably a few people out there who believe that we have free will just not all the time, they believe in an interventionist God who lets us be as long as we don't stray too far from His plan, but I think they're a minority. Generally either you believe everything is determined already and, like actors in a play, we're just saying our lines, or you believe that we're improvising (to stick with the metaphor).

So, do I "posses a powerful faith"? In somethings for sure, but not in destiny. I think we are making it up as we go along and if God (or the Gods) has/have a plan it's a flexible one. Of course, I don't really posses a powerful faith in that either, I'm more than willing to accept that I might be wrong. He/They could be up there (wherever that is) laughing at me right now for living out their plan to the letter all the while thinking it was my own idea.

For the love of the game?

2009-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article on Huffington post in which Joseph Spinelli advocates a zero tolerance policy for steroid use in baseball. I know this always comes down to me not having kids. My own dreams of playing major league baseball were dashed at age seven when I learned that women don't play professional baseball, so I have no need for illusions about the purity of the sport, I have no one to protect, but lets make the argument anyway because we can.

The idea of a zero tolerance policy doesn't really track with, well, humanity. As human beings we have certain weaknesses and are prone to making mistakes and to not allow people a second chance is ludicrous. It's not that I'm necessarily opposed to harsher punishment...in cycling for example the punishment for positive doping tests is a two year suspension, granted they don't do 162 races in a season so they could go with a 50 race suspension and it might amount to the same thing, but that's a whole apples to oranges issue and the point is that two years is a long suspension (a harsher punishment than they have in baseball) that in some cases can mean the end of a career but not all cases. Two year suspensions still allow for second chances (look at Daivd Millar).

My other big issue with the article is that he holds up Manny Ramirez as the poster boy of doping in baseball. His zero tolerance policy is specifically directed at Manny. Granted Ramirez is the latest to fall and so he is the current poster boy of doping in baseball, but the irony is that he got caught, or so it seems, because he stopped taking steroids and started taking something else to heal the damage steroid use caused. So he realized the error of his ways, or I prefer to think the Dodgers are a team that won't put up with doping so he had to stop, and now he's trying to play the game clean and now is when we're going to hold him up as an example of someone who should be banned for life. Now he seems to be trying to do the right thing, whatever his reasons, now is when we should give him a second chance.

If you love something, like baseball, you have to accept that it has flaws and love it anyway.

Goodbye

2009-05-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

I went to a memorial service today for a friend who passed away last week. I found out that she'd passed from status messages on facebook and I wanted to be angry about that but I could really only be mad at myself because she'd been sick and I hadn't been to see her. At first I didn't go to see her because I had a sinus infection and her immune system was compromised by chemo therapy. When she decided to stop the treatment I still didn't go to see her though. The truth is that I was afraid to see her sick.

I know it's a cliche, that everyone says things like this when someone dies, but this woman was truly exceptional. She had a wicked (often dirty) sense of humor and the most amazing and infectious laugh. She was just so full of life that I couldn't imagine that life leaving her and I didn't want to see it.

Of course now I'm forced to face the fact that I didn't get to say goodbye to her because of my own stupid fear.

Chuck vs. The Upfronts

2009-04-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

I know it's baseball season and I should be writing about the changes in the Mariner's outfield, but in a couple of weeks the television upfronts will take place and at the moment I'm preoccupied with that. Lucky for me I don't have an editor telling me what I can and can't write about. While I had been holding out hope for all the major networks to abandon the "season" all together and alternate new programming throughout the year it seems unlikely (though the cable networks seem to be starting down that path). At the moment my concern about the season is secondary to my concern that my favorite show might get canceled.

This has become an annual ritual for me going back to 2001 when my all time favorite show (Sports Night) did get canceled. At the time I didn't know about the upfronts, but I learned about them quickly from reading every article I could find on the fate of my favorite show. That was just the first of many shows I've loved and lost. Firefly. Veronica Mars. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The Loop. Every other year or so I find myself on upfront vigil, waiting to see if one of my favorite shows is going to be canceled.

This year I'm lighting candles for Chuck. I feel like I should make a case for keeping the show but I'll keep it short. It's smart and funny and combines drama, comedy, romance and action seamlessly. It has an entire ensemble cast of likable (and three dimensional) characters. The thing is that all the great things I can say about it don't really do it justice. There's an intangible factor that you have to watch the show to really understand. Since it had its season finale on Monday and may get canceled before next season I can only recommend, for now, that you rent (or buy) the DVDs and then pray along with me that it doesn't get canceled. This blog is all about faith after all and I have faith that this one time the universe won't let my favorite show get canceled.

Happiness is...?

2009-04-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

Only a lucky few are talented at something that they love doing and that makes them a decent living. I haven't found anything like that. When I was younger the one thing I was really good at seemed like such a long shot at making me a decent living that I quit and only now do I realize that I might not have really liked it either. It was just easier that anything else. In recent years I've tried to focus on finding things that I am good at and in the process have found that my two greatest skills, empathy and logic, don't really overlap in very many career paths.

Everyone who knew me in High School assumed I would pursue acting and at the time I thought they were right. I was certain I'd go to college and major in theater. Empathy being the primary skill of actors that might have made sense. I chose my (first) college based on the fact that it had a good theater department (well that and the fact that it was relatively small and didn't have a Greek system). I realized pretty quickly that acting, for me, was an escape and that I needed to face whatever it was I was trying to escape from. So I switched, first to psychology, then philosophy, then I thought I'd try business but the school I was at didn't offer a business degree at the time (they do now though, in fact a friend of mine is a Marketing professor there now). I decided to transfer to a bigger school.

I told everyone I was transferring and most people were happy for me. There was a guy I knew from high school, I'd been a little bit in love with him in high school but the timing was always off. When I told him that I was transferring and that I planned to get my degree in business administration he got really mad at me. He said that business wasn't me. Of course, I got mad too because at that point we'd barely seen each other in over a year despite being at the same school. We got into a screaming fight in the middle of campus about it, him yelling at me that I wasn't being true to myself and me yelling at him that he didn't know me well enough to say that. It turned out he was right. I applied for transfer and was accepted but instead I didn't go back to school for about seven more years and when I did I majored in English. I couldn't hear it from him at the time. I didn't want to believe that he knew me better than I knew myself.

Flash forward ten years. I recently decided to go to law school. As is the case with many of my decisions it may or may not take, but right now it's my plan. Everyone I know seems to think it's a great idea. People have been telling me since I was about five years old that I ought to go to law school. It's the logic, my argumentative nature, people see law as a natural outlet for that and they might right.

There's another guy now. I haven't known him very long but in the short time I have known him he's become the yard stick against which every other guy I meet and/or date is measured and usually falls short. A lot of that is because he's great...smart, funny, great taste in music, a talent for writing worthy of envy and adoration, and the type of brooding good looks that women since the time of Bronte (if not before) have been unable to resist...but part of it is because I like to believe I have some sort of intangible connection with him and the reason I like to believe that is because he seems to know me better than he should given the extent of our conversations. That is how he really ruined me for all other men. I told him I'd decided to go to law school and he asked if that was really my final decision and I said yes and he asked me if I was happy with that. I was doing something that seemed out of character and rather than tell me it was the wrong choice, or try to talk me out of, he asked me if I was happy with it.

The truth is I'm mostly happy with it, but I'm always mostly happy. I picked law school because I had to pick some kind of school or I was only ever going to be partially functional. I've thrown myself into house hunting instead of studying for the LSAT because the answer to the question, am I happy with it, wasn't simply yes. The truth is, I don't know what's going to make me happy. What makes me happy is knowing that the people I love are happy but I'm not sure how that translates into a career or life goal.

Tuesdays with Michael Jackson

2009-03-17T21:42:00.001-07:00

For the past several months I've been mostly listening to NPR talk radio in the car on my way to and from work. My commute to work now takes place at 10:30 though and on Tuesdays at 10:30 my NPR station has gardening chat on. So, one Tuesday I switched over to music. The first song I heard was the Alien Ant Farm cover of Smooth Criminal. I was sitting there, at a red light, car dancing, and several things came to mind.

First, of course, I was thinking about what a great cover that is, it might even be better than the original. Then I thought about a good friend of mine who is always saying that every guy she meets is either too young or too old for her. I've come to suspect that she sees an acceptable age difference to be plus or minus one year. I know if she met someone much older or younger than herself that she found she actually had feelings for she'd abandon all concept of what is an acceptable age difference, but I still wonder about what criteria go into determining what is or isn't an acceptable age difference.

Cultural reference points must factor highly. For my parents generation there was the Kennedy assassination factor, i.e. if someone was either not born yet or too young to remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated they were too young. The moon landing was another. Is music one of those cultural reference points?

My first impulse would be to say yes, definitely. Music is important to me. You don't always have to agree with me about music but I have be able to talk about it using the same reference points. Smooth Criminal for example. Michael Jackson was at the height of his popularity when I was kid. Smooth Criminal was on the Bad album which came out in 1987 (when I was 9 years old). But would I assume that someone of a different generation, 10 years either older or younger than me, would not be able to engage in the argument with me about whether or not the Alien Ant Farm version was better, worse, or equal to the original Michael Jackson version? Bob Dylan's original version of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right came out in 1963 and the Johnny Cash cover was 1965, both long before I was born but I still have an opinion about them.

Then again, I have an opinion about everything.

Curiosity

2009-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

When I was in 10th grade I had a class that I loved called World Studies. Actually it was two classes, English and History, but they were linked. When we studied the ancients in history we read Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, then we studied English colonization and read Heart of Darkness, then we transitioned to Asia by watching Apocalypse Now, on to Siddhartha and Survival in Auschwitz (and the attendant historical eras). It was a class that fed my natural curiosity and my appreciation of both fact and fiction.

It also had the added bonus of making me feel smart later on in life. I mean, I've always felt pretty confident about my intelligence in most venues with most people, but being a college dropout gave me a bit of an inferiority complex when I finally went back. Especially on the first day of the quiz section for a core class I had to take when I finally declared my English major. That day happened to be the 10 year anniversary of the day I first started college so I was feeling especially insecure, but the first question the prof asked was about Clytemnestra.

Lately I've been wondering what happened to all that intellectual curiosity I had when I was 15. I must still have it, but not being in school seems to have made it dormant.

Moving forward

2009-02-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

I've often thought that the main reason people have children is to one up their parents. As children we notice every tiny mistake our parents make and we promise ourselves that we will do better. Maybe I just think that because that's the reason I wanted to have children.

My mother worked my whole life. When I was in first grade she went back to school, law school, and she was around even less after that. For a long time I was angry and I resented her not being there. Children need their mothers, girls especially, is what I thought, and my mother would have been Donna freaking Reed if she'd been a stay at home mom. Cooking, cleaning, sewing costumes for dance recitals and Halloween...she excels at stuff like that. I guess she excels at most anything she does actually, but that didn't occur to me at the time.

Now that I look back on it I can hardly believe what an amazing mom she was. It was my dad who put me on the bus for my first day of school, and who drove me to dance classes and doctor appointments, and who picked me up from school when I got sick and my mom who came home late every night, but she did still manage to make it to every one of my dance recitals. In fact, as I said, she sewed my costumes for all of my dance recitals.

Still, I thought that when I had kids I would be there, day and night. I wanted nothing more than to be a housewife and mother so that I could show my mother how it's supposed to be done. But I've come to the realization that even if I did fulfill the fantasy of spending my days doing laundry and baking cookies for my husband and kids I'd still make mistakes, they might not be the ones my mom made, but even if they were, the mistakes my mom made weren't that bad. I turned out okay and now, even though I resented her 20 years ago, I love my mom now (she's my best friend)

From the time I was five years old everyone said that I should go to law school like my mom. At first it was just something people said because people like the idea of daughters following in their mother's footsteps. I swore though, that it was the one thing I would never do. As time went on the suggestion persisted and it became more and more about me. I mean, people started to say that I should be a lawyer because of my argumentative nature not just because of the symmetry of me following in my mother's footsteps. People started to tell me I was born to be a lawyer and I still insisted that it was something I'd never do. I said, I work to live not the other way around and I didn't want to put in the hours that law school, and the practice of law, require because it would take away from what's really important in life (i.e. the people you love).

Lately though, for months now, I've heard myself saying that I need to find a job that takes up all my time. To quote from Sports Night, because what would a post from me be without a quote from Sports Night, I want "a job that involves me, and stimulates me, and rewards me, and takes up a lot of my time". It took hearing myself say that repeatedly, maybe thirty times, before I started to really think about what kind of job that might be. And then I registered for the LSAT.

In all honesty I'm no longer someone who thinks the worst thing in life would be to become my mother. I can't think of many better things that turning out just like my mom. Maybe I'll find the fantasy someday...husband, kids, laundry, cookies, PTA meetings, t-ball games...but if I never find those things at least I'll be able to say that I did something with my life that "involves me, and stimulates me, and rewards me, and takes up a lot of my time".

For the love of cats (the animal not the musical)

2008-12-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

I grew up in the country but we lived on the main highway into town. We always had cats as pets, well once we had bunnies and another time chickens, but mostly cats and they didn't tend to last very long (neither did the bunnies or chickens). It was the country so some of them got eaten by coyotes or sometimes large predatory birds (hawks and eagles), but most of them got hit by cars on the highway. We knew the likelihood that our cats weren't long for the world so we didn't tend to get too attached to them.

We had one cat that had a litter of kittens just before she got hit on the highway. By the time we found them most of the kittens had died, all but one in fact. Our cats were random mixed breeds (barn cats really though we didn't have a barn), but this one was definitely part seal point Siamese (she had dark grey spots though instead of brown and the darker spots were tabby striped). She was super cute. My brother fed her milk with an eye dropper and he named her Nikki (we were both a little obsessed with the movie Who's that Girl at the time and before the kitten got big and developed some dark spots on her tail and ears her fur was sort of peroxide blond colored, like Madonna in that movie). Nikki was most attached to my brother but she was really affectionate with all of us. She was way more of a people cat than most cats.

She lasted a lot longer than most of our pets, probably because she kept closer to the house. My dad got attached to her to so maybe he let her inside the house more than some of our other pets too. Longer for her though was only a couple of years and while the loss was a little harder than the others we'd still always known, in the back of our minds, that Nikki would come to the same kind of end as the others. My dad took it harder, he didn't want to have pets for a long time after that, he still fed all the random cats that were around, but they were no longer our pets just stray cats we fed.

We had a cat at my mom's house too and that was a much less dangerous neighborhood for pets to be outside, but when I was 12 we moved to the city and had to give the cat to a friend because we couldn't bring her with us. That separation was a little traumatic because we'd had that cat for a long time, 6 years I think, but she didn't die...I mean eventually she did but by that time she was someone else's cat.

Now I have two cats. I got them shortly after I moved out on my own and I was in the city so They've always been indoor cats because I'm afraid of letting cats out anywhere near busy streets. I've had them for 9 years and like all good pets they are like a part of my family. I realized recently, for the first time, that these cats are going to get old, and possibly sick and then die, of natural causes. That prospect has me a little worried. I've never had a pet that lived a normal lifespan and died of natural causes. I don't know how I'll handle it.

They're really cute cats, one orange and one black. The black one has a meow that sounds like she's saying "me, me, me". I think she strained her voice by meowing non-stop for the entire hour and half drive home when I picked her up. I think her voice just never developed after that. The orange on the other hand slept the whole time when I brought her home but she's very vocal now. She likes ice cream, she won't touch any other people food but every time I eat ice cream she hovers around hoping to get to lick the bowl. I've had them both since they were tiny little kittens. The first night I brought home the orange kitten she kept following me into the bathroom and it's become a habit for her, she always wants to be in the same room as I am in and that includes the bathroom. I used to have a console television and the black kitten ran immediately under it when I brought her home and wouldn't come out. She still likes to hide under things, mostly whenever new people are around. She's afraid of new people. They have personalities and I've gotten to know their personalities.

I've always been an animal lover. I'm pretty sure I bent the axle on my old car because I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel and hit the curb instead. The mechanic that looked at it that first time said it wasn't bent but the CV boots kept cracking. When their was an animal in the street that I couldn't avoid hitting (an opossum) I cried. I used to volunteer at the Seattle Animal Shelter (walking dogs and matchmaking cats). So, I've always loved animals but I've never been quite so attached to any as I am to these two. In fact, my relationship with these cats is longer than any other I've ever had (with the exception of my family). I'm not sure how I'll handle losing them.

So BA in English

2008-12-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

This is a fairly winding train of thought so I won't blame you if you don't follow it entirely.

A while back I read an interview in the New York Times with Lou Reed and he referred to one of his own comments as "so BA in English" which he has. This week's guest on Elvis Costello's new show Spectacle was Lou Reed and it brought back to mind the comment about his BA in English (which he mentioned in this interview as well).

Last night I went to a the Seattle Women's Chorus winter show at Meany Hall (which was great by the way). Lou Reed and Meany Hall made me think about my own BA in English.

Meany Hall was the scene of my graduation from the University of Washington English department. I mean my main graduation from UW was at Husky stadium (in the freezing, pouring rain), but I also went to my department graduation and that was at Meany Hall. Graduation ceremonies are more for the parents than the students and I went to both of mine for my parents like most student, of course, but the memory of my department graduation is a surprisingly fond one. It turned out that I had a professor or two in that department that had a significant impact on me.

I took a big chunk of time off between my sophomore and junior years in college, and changed majors a bunch, so by the time I declared my final major (English) the requirements had changed and I had to take a core requirement, a linked writing and literature class, that normally would come earlier in the degree progression.

At first it annoyed me to have to take the class. It reminded me of having to take Washington State History in night school because I transferred school districts twice between 8th and 12th grades. At my first school State history was a 9th grade requirement but I transferred to a new school for 9th grade, in my new school district it was an 8th grade requirement so I'd missed it and when I transferred again for 11th grade I'd missed it in that district as well so I had to take it in night school my senior year in order to graduate. The linked lit/writing course at UW was just like that at first. It was just the requirement I'd missed and had to take in order to graduate. Then...well...there's an idea that college is where people go to become independent thinkers and this class made me feel like they wanted me to think for myself only if I thought like them, like him (the professor) so it annoyed me on that level too.

Over time I started to like that class a lot. I suppose that was in small part, or possibly large part, to the huge crush I had on one of the guys in my discussion group. He was, undoubtedly a much greater influence on me than the class itself or the professor and at the time that completely overshadowed the fact that the class and the professor did have an influence on me. But Lou Reed and Meany Hall have got me thinking.

I don't know if reverse psychology was the plan, but that original annoyance I felt with the class translated into my becoming more antagonistic than normal, which is saying something since "for the sake of argument" is kind of my motto to begin with. I said all sorts of stuff in the discussion section of that class just to get people's ire up, just to get arguments going. That class reintroduced me to that part of myself that looks at things from all angles. If I'm honest about it that class did exactly what it was supposed to do. Maybe it didn't teach me to think for myself, because I had a pretty good handle on that already, but it helped me to get back to thinking for myself.

Television and the Gospel of Elvis Costello

2008-12-06T18:13:00.000-08:00

Elvis Costello recently joined the ranks of television personalities and said, of working in television, "For every frustration, for every idiotic suggestion that you get when you work in television, the great moments far outweigh the minor frustrations,". When you're Elvis Costello and your executive producer is Elton John and your show is airing on the Sundance Channel I would imagine you have a lot less idiotic suggestions and a lot more latitude when it comes to taking them than others, with less clout, might have, with shows airing on the major broadcast networks, but I want to believe that the sentiment will hold true for them as well.

You see, I think television is the best medium for storytelling. Costello's show, "Spectacle", is primarily a talk show, or you might call it a variety show since he interviews musicians and occasionally they play some songs. Maybe you wouldn't call that storytelling, and maybe there are plenty of great venues for interviewers (magazines definitely give television a run for its money when it comes to interviews), but he's making a statement that echos the complaints of all my favorite storytellers when it comes to working in television.

Joss Whedon was fed up with television after his experiences with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" and who can blame him. Aaron Sorkin put his annoyance with network interference right back into his shows and, perhaps not coincidentally those two shows ("Sports Night" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"), while just as good if not better than "The West Wing", didn't last very long. Sorkin does a wonderful job with stage and film projects as well, most recently with "Charlie Wilson's War", but even so, I can't help but miss his presence in the television landscape. Whedon too has done well in other mediums, "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog" proved the viability of programing straight to the Internet, but his presence is also sorely missed on television.

Elvis Costello said that the good outweighs the bad though and if Elvis Costello said it I have to believe it's true. I only hope that Sorkin and Whedon (and others like them) take that to heart and keeping pitching television shows so they make it back to my airwaves as soon as possible.

A more perfect disillusion of unions

2008-11-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

With all my talk about how marriage and civil unions are (and ought to be) two separate things (for both gay and straight couples), I didn't really think about divorce until I read this article in the New York Times the other day. Divorce obtained through the courts of the land is a disillusion of a civil union but the spiritual union may be much more difficult to dissolve. The Catholic church, for example, doesn't acknowledge divorce at all. If you are Catholic and you want to dissolve your marriage you have to petition the church for annulment which is a lengthy process, often not coming to fruition until years after the civil union has ended. In the Times article they talk about how difficult it is it for a woman who wants to divorce her husband versus the relative ease with which a man can divorce his wife under Islamic (Shariah) law. It says that most of the rulings of these Shariah courts (made up of panels of Islamic scholars) are not binding under British civil law (i.e. just because the Shariah court grants you a divorce doesn't mean you are divorced under British law), but the Shariah courts are still relevant because civil divorce isn't good enough for the religious community, religious leaders have to approve of the reasons for divorce. Civil unions are a different thing than spiritual unions and civil divorces are a different thing than spiritual ones as well.

I was home sick a couple of weeks ago and I discovered that Bravo airs three re-runs per day of the West Wing. I find the frenetic pace of Aaron Sorkin's characters quite soothing so I watched a couple episodes that day and have been watching it every day since. There was an episode in season one where Sam was disturbed that some town in Alabama was trying to pass a law requiring adherence to the ten commandments. Sam and everyone he mentioned it to wondered how they planned on enforcing them since they have no way of knowing about (or proving) violations of some of the commandments. They were particularly obsessed with how someone might know if you coveted your neighbors wife, or if you didn't honor your father, for example. Of course, regardless of the enforceability of the ten commandments they were, and we should be, opposed to such a law because we live in a country that requires the separation of church and state.

My previous argument was based primarily on the separation of church and state (and equal protection), but there has been an argument made, which many people believe and endorse, that because the words "separation of church and state" don't appear anywhere in the founding documents that no such concept exists in our laws. I would argue, and did in my last post, that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" is pretty clear on the subject and it's intent, it seems to me, is to protect both the people (from having specific religions tenants imposed on them) but also the government (from being unduly influenced by any particular church).

I can't help but return to discussion of same sex marriage over and over because I think it's important. The only argument people have opposing same sex marriage is that the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman (which isn't exactly true, but I can see the clear implication there since all married couples in the bible are male-female...although not always one man and one woman, sometimes one man and several women...but you don't see the people making this argument also advocating legalizing polygamy, but that's another argument). Since the constitution clearly prohibits the passing of any laws respecting the establishment of religion, this argument against gay marriage doesn't really hold water. Especially since the bible also says (explicitly), "Submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake" (Peter 2:13, King James Version), and our constitution prohibits enacting religious rules into law. Is it possible to adhere to both civil and religious laws if civil law allows something religious law prohibits? Absolutely. If you're Jewish your religious law prohibits eating pork, that doesn't mean you would advocate making it illegal to eat pork would you? Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to do it. You can refrain from eating pork even though it isn't illegal.

A more perfect union

2008-11-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

This week Dan Savage was on the Colbert Report talking about California's Prop 8. While I do enjoy seeing two of my favorite people together it's unfortunate that gay marriage had to be banned in California for to bring them together.

I want to talk about gay marriage but my opinion on the subject is a little unusual. I would absolutely vote in favor of legalizing gay marriage if it were on my ballot (but I live in Washington where it hasn't yet been on my ballot) and I'm horrified that it has been banned...well, anywhere, but especially in California.

It's just not okay to deny rights to any citizens that other citizens enjoy. Now some would say, in fact Elizabeth Hasslebeck did say, that the right to marry is not being denied to anyone under these types of bans, but I can't believe anyone is buying that. Yes, it is true that anyone can get married to anyone they chose of the opposite sex, but that denies a significant right from a large number of people (i.e. the right to chose a spouse that they love).

The religious fanatics that are opposed to gay marriage see "civil unions" as the answer. However, I'm pretty sure that would fall under the banner of "separate but equal" rights which I believe the supreme court frowns upon.

My solution to this problem would be if you want to ban gay marriage, you want the state not to recognize gay marriage, well then the state can't recognize straight marriage either. If you believe that the bible defines marriage as between one man and one woman, that's a religious union anyway and the state shouldn't be in the business of recognizing religious unions. The state should only recognize civil unions. If you want to get married, whether you are gay or straight that should be between you, your partner, your clergy member and your God. If, on the other hand, you want all of the legal rights and responsibilities of what has heretofore been referred to by the state as marriage, then that is between you, your partner, two witnesses and a court clerk. Two different things, one spiritual and one civil.

There are, in fact, a lot of gay people (and some straight ones as well), that are married in the eyes of their God but not their state (i.e. they've been joined in a religious ceremony but haven't filed a marriage license). There are also those (far more straight than gay since gay marriage is only legal in a few states right now) who have filed a marriage license but were joined in a civil ceremony (not a religious one).

I say, ban straight marriage too and institute civil unions across the board. That way, if you are opposed to gay marriage you can go to a church that supports that view, with a clergy member who refuses to marry homosexuals, and if you are in favor of it you can go to a church that supports that view and will marry homosexuals. That way, everyone has the same legal rights. That way, the state stays out of religious arguments about what does or doesn't constitute a marriage.

There was an interesting point of view on Huffington Post back when California first legalized gay marriage that talks about some of the same issues. It's title is "Why I'm not getting married again", and in it David Shneer discusses how he had a religious wedding ceremony and later he had a civil one as well (in Canada) and he didn't feel like he needed to get married again now that his home state had finally gotten with the program.

My own family has experience with this as well. My mom and step dad had two weddings. Their first wedding was in a little church in a remote coastal town and a lot of people (all the guests in fact) had traveled a fair distance to be there. When the clergyman gathered them and their witnesses together to get the paperwork done they realized they'd forgotten all about getting the license. So, they did the whole thing again a week later to make it legal.

As it stands now people who are married are (often) joined in both a spiritual union and a civil union. Don't you think it's confusing that those two separate things have the same name? Not just confusing but actively misleading. People like Sherri Shepherd say that they can understand the argument against gay marriage because the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The bible says a lot of things that we don't allow to be written into our laws. In fact, I believe "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" is one of the first rules our founding father's adopted...the first (amendment) in fact, but people have a hard time distinguishing this civil law from religious law simply because they both go by the same name.

A lot of people argue against civil unions because they say it is important to them to be able to say they are "married", but find a clergy member to marry you and you can say that. I am a clergy member now and I am more than willing to marry anyone (gay or straight). I'm not advocating civil unions instead of marriage, I'm advocating them in addition to marriage.

Hope and Faith

2008-11-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

The election is finally over and our new president elect has brought hope to the world. As Stephen Colbert said, the people rejected the politics of fear and embraced faith, and that is, of course, rhetoric I understand.

I want to be really careful with my words hear because I don't want to give the impression that I support in any way the the type of fear mongering politics we've been putting up with for the last eight years. I have faith and hope. I believe that Obama will change a lot of things for the better.

The thing is, I'll consider him a resounding success if he gets more than two of the major items on his agenda accomplished. People get so disillusion with politicians because they promise a lot of things that they don't deliver on, but I think that shows a remarkable lack of understanding of governing (and the world for that matter). If you get two or more people together in a room, chances are they won't agree (at least not entirely) about everything. Passing legislation involves 435 congressmen and 100 senators (which is considerably more than two people) so, if you have an agenda to accomplish chances are that end result won't look exactly like you planned because you'll have to make compromises...or maybe someone else will make a convincing argument and you'll add something to your agenda, or take something off of it. To expect politicians to deliver exactly on all of their agenda items is beyond ridiculous.

I've always said that, despite my interest in politics, I'd never want to be a politician. I'm too idealistic, and too indecisive. I wouldn't want such important decisions to be my responsibility. I suppose I wouldn't mind being one of the zillions of people behind the scenes who makes the arguments that help the politician decide...arguments I'm good at, decisions not so much.

Anyhow my hope is that when we come to the end of Obama's term, which, God willing, will be eight years, I hope that people will let his accomplishments stand alone. I know he's going to do great things, but he's also going to have some really difficult decisions to make and I trust him more than anyone else to make the right ones or I wouldn't have voted for him. I really hope that other people feel the same way.

"Tell Spike Lee to sit down and shut up"

2008-10-31T21:31:00.001-07:00

I've been waiting for 10 years to hear Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme's commentary on Sports Night. A couple weeks ago the tenth anniversary edition DVDs came out and I finally got my wish.

Sports Night is, by far, my favorite television show ever. If you know me, you know that saying something is my favorite anything is a rarity. My favorite food, or movie, or band, or song, or book...if you ask me about any of these things I'm more likely to give you a top ten list...or top twenty. I love television and always have so I could probably give you a top fifty list of my favorite television shows. I could tell you what my favorite currently airing shows are (Chuck and How I Met Your Mother). I could tell you what, in order, what my favorite shows were every year of my childhood. First came Sesame Street which was my favorite for several years (more than most, in fact Sesame Street was my first and only guilty pleasure, the first and last time I ever cared enough to hide what I liked from people for fear of what they'd think). After Sesame Street came the Nick at Night years (Gilligan's Island and Get Smart were among my favorites then), then I got really into reruns of Taxi and Three's Company because my local station had them on every night, then came Family Ties, then Growing Pains, then for several years The Wonder Years (in fact, until Sports Night came along The Wonder Years was my all time favorite show), after that was Sea Quest DSV, then Dawson's Creek, then Sports Night...I've had other seasonal favorites since then (Veronica Mars actually gave Sports Night a run for its money). But ask me what my favorite show of all time is and the answer, without hesitation, is Sports Night.

I loved A Few Good Men, and The American President, and if, at the time, I were the type of person to notice the writing credits on movies and shows I liked I could have guessed I'd like Sports Night, but I don't think I could ever have guessed how much I would like it.

Wordy wouldn't be an inaccurate label for Aaron Sorkin's writing and, as such, my appreciation for his work is predictable. He's not just wordy though, he doesn't just use a lot of words, he uses better than anyone else and he manages to make each word drip with subtext so that, if possible, the things his characters don't say, say as much or more than the things they do say.

So, I've been waiting, for ten years, to hear him his commentary and it's finally here. I'm really hoping he explains his bizarre fascination with Zamfir (master of the Pan flute).

I'm done

2008-10-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

I am generally pretty interested in politics. I've written about it a few times. Right now though, I just can't watch it any more (or read about it, or listen to it).

I could say I'm disappointed in the level of discussion, and that's true, but really even if the level of discussion were great I think I'd still be sick of it. Although, the level of discussion is really pretty low.

I think my disillusionment hit a high last week when I heard someone saying that all Barack Obama has to be is adequate to win this election. It's not that I disagree with the idea that any democrat has a distinct advantage this election season. I've said that myself many times. People are really disappointed with the way things have gone for eight years and they put a lot of the blame for it on the republican party which makes it kind of hard for the democrats to lose this one. My problem was that the person said it in such a way that made it sound like Barack Obama is only adequate, as though he hasn't inspired millions of people, as though he doesn't have the ideas for how to get the country back on the right track.

That's just one example of the fluff reporting, but even the non-fluff, even the legitimate issues are starting to sound like empty noise. Luckily, I have already voted so I can kind of tune it out, but I can't escape it entirely. I can't wait for the whole thing to be over.

The Sun Also Rises

2008-10-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

This is the house where Ernest Hemingway was born (in Oak Park, IL). I've become quite a Hemingway fan lately so on my recent trip to Chicago I took a little westerly detour and visited the Hemingway house (and museum).

My love of Hemingway is somewhat new found. I, like most people, was first exposed to the writing of Ernest Hemingway in high school. I was required to read a couple of his short stories and, at the time, I hated them.

I make no apologies for the fact that I like happy endings and I didn't see them in Hemingway's stories. Not that I dislike all stories without happy endings, but Hemingway's stories often don't seem to have endings at all. When I was younger I hated open endings. I liked my stories tied up in nice tidy bows for me (preferably, happy bows).

My aversion to open ended stories started to diminish over time and was finally abandoned completely because of some really great short stories written by the very same person who inspired me to (among other things) change the title of this blog. He writes really great open endings, I think they're better than any I've read.

There is a real art to open endings. You have to give enough information that the reader feels satisfied, the story does still have to have some resolution, but also leave enough loose ends to that the reader is left thinking about it, wondering. I still don't think Hemingway gets it exactly right a lot of the time, at least not in his short stories.

The other problem I had with Hemingway was what I perceived as pessimism that seemed prevalent in his stories. It turns out there's quite a history of sever depression in the Hemingway family (a lot of suicides). Hemingway himself suffered from depression for much of his life so it stands to reason that his writing might be somewhat dark, but now I'm not so sure I'd call it pessimism.

I started reading his novels at recommendation of my friend who's writing I love so much. First I read Old Man and the Sea, then I re-read some of the short stories, then I read his memoir (A Moveable Feast), then I read The Sun Also Rises...and the more I read, the more I started to think that the pessimism is actually optimism in disguise. There's a sense, especially in The Sun Also Rises, that the current circumstances are unbearable (for the characters) but that they are, that everything is, temporary.

You might think that it is my own optimism that's changed my mind about Hemingway. I can't help thinking that things are just on the verge of getting better for these characters but maybe a pessimist would feel that things were only going to get worse. I don't think though that it's just my personal optimism, I think the optimism is inherent in the stories. The desperation is palpable in almost all Hemingway stories but the characters don't give up. It's especially clear in The Old Man and The Sea. After everything that character goes through in the story, he still gets up the next day and goes on. Right now, my favorite is The Sun Also Rises, it does this same thing but the suffering and desperation are dealt with a little more indirectly and are also more emotional. Even the title of, The Sun Also Rises, seems like it just teetered off the edge of the line between optimism and pessimism firmly onto the optimistic side. It's definitely become one of my favorite books.

Faith vs...Religion

2008-10-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher made a documentary about religion called Religulous (as in religion + ridiculous). The film attacks religion not faith (according to Maher in his press tour...I haven't actually seen the film), but the problem, on both sides of this argument, is that too many people confuse the two.

Do I believe in God...I don't know. That's what Bill Maher says too. The truly logical mind can't rule out the possibility because just as there is no empirical evidence of the existence of God there isn't any evidence to the contrary either. Okay, there are some who would say you don't need to prove the absence of something, that it's assumed a thing doesn't exist until there's proof that it does...like "innocent until proven guilty". I can't endorse that theory. If I have no proof that something doesn't exist than I can't be sure. Aliens, elves, vampires...I don't know...they could be out there somewhere. I don't want to equate God with aliens and vampires, except in that I don't know if either exist. Bill Maher sort of does (equate God with aliens), and I won't argue with it either, I just won't make that analogy myself because I think it's sort of sensationalistic

I make no secret of the fact that I don't believe there is any one true religion. One day, for the sake of argument, I said, maybe it isn't that they (religions) are all wrong, but that they're all, in a way, right. The first time I made this argument, it was something I said sort of off hand and I've come to call it the napkin holder analogy because, at the time, a napkin holder was the first thing I saw. I was sitting at a table with a friend and I couldn't think what to compare it to, but my point was that it's a matter of perception. If I look at that napkin holder and you ask me to describe it maybe I say that it's rectangular and that it holds and dispenses paper napkins, ask another person and they might say that it's red and made of aluminum. It's the same napkin holder but people describe it in different ways. Now take something without any tangible properties that can easily be described and ask a few people to try describe it anyway. You'll probably get an even greater number of different answers. "God" is such an intangible entity. The Judeo-Christian tradition is to anthropomorphize "God", many pagan traditions cast the divine as an animal (or several different animals), the Greeks went the anthropomorphizing way as well but for them it was many gods, another common image is of energy. What if those are all just attempts by people to describe the same thing? It's something that they can't see (or smell, or taste, or touch, or hear), so doesn't it stand to reason that they'd come up with different descriptions? And it also makes sense that they'd all insist that their description is the right one because otherwise they'd have to admit that they don't understand it fully and it's human nature to fear what you don't understand (which would be in direct oposition to faith).

My mother asked me a few months ago if I'd ever considered ministry (as a career choice), and she's not the first person to ask me that. I seem to have a quality that makes people think I have answers to any questions they have. I get asked for directions and for direction a lot.

My adamant refusal to endorse the idea that there's only on right religion means that, even if I had considered it, Christian ministry is not something I could ever do. I did, however, seriously consider going to rabbinical school a couple years ago. I don't know Hebrew, but I could learn it I think. However...I really like bacon and apparently the dietary rules for rabbinical students are even more strict than the regular Kosher rules.

I know several people who've been ordained as ministers of the Universal Life Church. Most of the time people get ordained (which is free and takes about 30 seconds) in order to officiate the wedding of a friend (or family member), but I thought "Universal" might be an indication of agreement with my theory about all religions being right...although "Catholic" also technically means universal and they definitely don't think anyone else is anything close to right so that's not necessarily an accurate indicator. In this case though, it turns out to be fairly accurate. So, I got myself ordained.

I'm no more qualified than I was before to offer advise on matters of faith, but since I am fairly vocal about faith, and since people have always and will always ask me for advice, I figured I might at least get credentialed.

Once upon a time

2008-08-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a land a lot like ours there lived a lot of little girls who wanted desperately to be princesses and princesses who just wanted to live normal lives. There were cats who wanted to be dogs and and dogs who wanted to be cats and plucky British couples who wanted nothing more than to fall out of canoes into shallow bodies of water. There were star crossed lovers and there were bitter rivalries. There were dreamers with single minded determination and there were those who never quite figured out what they wanted. There were those with stories to tell and others with the skill to tell them, and if they were lucky they story tellers were able to find the stories.

Once upon a time in this world I wanted to be a professional baseball player. In the first grade I was sure I was going to be a major league pitcher but then in the second grade someone told me that girls don't play professional baseball and now I throw like a girl. After that I took dance classes for seven years thinking, I suppose, of a future in musical theater, but I'm not such a good singer. For a brief period I wanted to be a model but, while I apparently had the poise for it, I was told I'd never be tall enough for runway modeling (though I did find myself on a catwalk once or twice, not in a professional capacity, strictly amateur, thanks to an aunt who's a designer).

One thing I always wanted to be through all of that was a writer. I've tried numerous types of writing. I won a short story contest in 5th grade and then promptly quit writing short stories forever. I wrote awful angsty poetry when I was in high school and then quit writing poetry forever when I got a C in my college poetry writing contest. After I dropped out of college I decided to try my hand at screenwriting. I studied screenwriting for a year and in the process, I found that I am not a story teller, at least I don't have a natural talent for it. I can do it, sort of, but it's hard for me. One of the professors of my screenwriting class was one of the most natural story tellers I have ever seen (or heard) and I couldn't believe how easy he made it seem (in comparison to how hard it actually is).

So, now I write this stuff instead, but I'm still always looking for a good story to tell. I can't stop trying.

If Google doesn't map it it's not a place on Earth

2008-08-23T00:34:00.000-07:00

In the immortal words of Tiffany, "They say in heaven love comes first" (which I guess makes today's song of the day Heaven Is a Place on Earth). Unfortunately, all to often, heaven is not a place on earth and love does not come first. For many people life gets in the way of love. In life, if love did come first a lot of other things would have to be compromised. Where you want to live, how many (if any) kids you want to have, religion, who is going to be the bread winner, how much sex is enough, who's family to spend the holidays with, where to go on vacation...it seems like every day would present dozens of new things you might have to compromise on.

Most people realize this and when they're single they try to predict what things will be "deal breakers". As a single person you think of things you want in a mate and things you couldn't live with. Many people stick to these guns no matter what, but a lot of people find there's a little more wiggle room in the rules they've written for themselves than they thought. They meet someone who has none of the things they thought they were looking for and/or all of the things they thought they could never live with but they can't help loving that person anyway.

My great-grandfather was a devout catholic. A true believer who thought that he could buy salvation for all his family by donating to the church. When my mom and I went through a bunch of his old papers, searching for clues about our genealogy, we found records of all the money he spent and who's souls he was trying to buy into heaven with each of those donations. We also found my great-grandmother's catechism book. It appears that she had at least planned to convert to Catholicism for him (though I don't recall if we found record of her confirmation or not). I don't know much about them but I can only assume that they loved each very much because for a devout catholic man and Jewish divorcee to end up married there had to be some compromising.

It seems like, maybe, she was the one to do most of the compromising and maybe, it is from her that I've inherited my sense that love conquers all. It wouldn't be the only thing I get from her. At age sixteen, I saw a picture of her and it was the first time I'd ever looked at a photograph of anyone in my family and seen myself reflected back. I suppose it would stand to reason that I get more than my looks from her. Unfortunately she died young and neither I, nor my mom, ever had a chance to meet her. In fact, even my grandmother, who was only three when she died, barely knew her. I asked my mother recently what she died from...I had always assumed it was childbirth for some reason, but it turns out she had an enlarged heart. I'm not making that up. I know it seems like I must be because of the metaphor (i.e. she had such a big heart, she loved so much, that she was willing to make whatever compromise she had to for it), but I'm really not making it up.

I don't know if I get my capacity for love from my great-grandmother, but where ever it comes from, even though heaven isn't always (or even often) a place on Earth, for me love does come first. If I love someone I'll always find a way to compromise.

Ethics: Because I said so

2008-08-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

There was an article in Tuesday's NY Times about the ethical dilemmas presented by new technology. An environmental scientist is quoted in the article saying, "There is no one to say 'Thou shalt not'". That phrasing struck me as odd. "Thou shalt not" is biblical terminology, and the implication of the statement is sort of Nitzschean. I mean, either this woman believes that there never was anyone who said "Thou shalt not" (i.e. there is no God), in which case it doesn't really bear mentioning in this way (because if there never was then it doesn't relate to new technology or anything new for that matter), or, more likely, there was but isn't any more (i.e. God is dead).

Whether you believe that God really dictated to Moses (among others) or not, the fact is that a great many people did believe that, so someone, whether it was God, or just Moses himself, was able to tell people "Thou shalt not", (and have many of them listen and accept it as a commandment they must follow). If someone were to try the same thing today (i.e. to say, whether truthfully or not, that God spoke to them, they would likely be institutionalized (or, depending on where they were from, maybe killed). I wonder, if someone found or claimed to have found, some ancient text adding all sorts of commandments, would people listen?

It isn't so far fetched. The Book of Mormon is a whole lot newer than Moses and his commandments and there are a lot of people out there not drinking coffee, tea or alcohol, because Joseph Smith told them that God didn't want them to and a good many of them believe that it is purely about obedience.

I always thought that God would know what things we might want to eat and drink that could be harmful to us and that those dietary restrictions (which many religions have) were more about God protecting us from harm to our health. However many people who believe in a good and loving God also, apparently, believe that this Father in Heaven, is the type of parent that comes up with arbitrary rules and insists that we follow them because He said so.

I actually like this parental analogy because as an adult I can see that some of the things my parents told me not to do, which at the time seemed arbitrary, were really for my own good (like God's diet laws). They were trying to protect me. For example, when I was 14 my mother told me to stay away from older guys. She explained it really well too. She told me that once I was out of school, age difference wouldn't matter (at least not as much), but until then, people change so much so quickly that older guys would be vastly different that guys my own age and than me, that they would want different things than I wanted. I ignored her, of course, and a year later nearly got myself raped (or more accurately got myself nearly raped).

Even after that happened I still wasn't exactly a paragon of obedience. I'm obedient if I understand the reasons why I should be and sometimes, I have to make the mistake in order to understand the reasoning. When it comes to things that affect my own health and well being (like the things my mother told me not to do, or religious dictates about not drinking coffee or eating pork) I can make my own mistakes but the things they are talking about in this article have potentially harmful effects on humanity as a whole. It seems to me like the absence of someone to say, "Thou shalt not", might actually be a good thing. Especially if the only reason offered would be, "because I said so".

In the absence of such an authority, panels of scientists and philosophers convene to discuss the ethical implications of creating new technologies whose effects on humanity are yet unknown and could potentially be disastrous. These are people who can tell us not just that we shouldn't do these things, but why we shouldn't do them.

The family you make

2008-08-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've had Growing Up Falling Down (the Living End) stuck in my head for the past week or two. According to some my youth ended a couple months so I guess I should be all grown up already but I feel like right now is the moment that I am growing up.

I think that growing up is a lot about the family you make for yourself. As someone who is really close with the family I was born with I never thought about making a family for myself (because I already have one and I'm happy with it). I have been thinking about it a lot lately though.

There was a lot of talk about it in the news coverage of one of this summers big movies (Sex and the City). I didn't see the movie but it was something I questioned about the show so I understood the criticism, the girls families are hardly ever depicted in the movie (or the show), not even at their weddings. The explanation, of course, is that those girls may not be connected by blood, but they are each other's family.

The natural conclusion is that people make their friends into surrogate families because they don't like the families they were born with. Another possibility is people in extreme situations, working super long hours or the like, form those family like strong bonds with each other and it has nothing to do with dissatisfaction with their existing families (you see that in television too, Sorkin does it a lot).

Neither of those things apply to me, and yet, I find myself creating family for myself. Maybe, there was a void to fill...I never had a sister so I found myself one. Ever since then I've been building my family outside my family.

So now, it's not that the roots I have here in this place, my family, mean any less to me, but I have other things in my life now that mean just as much. The other things, other people, are pretty spread out. I know I'm going to be moving soon. The lease on my apartment is up in October and I don't think I'm staying the Seattle area. I'm just not sure where I'll end up. LA, Olympia, and New York are the options...Olympia is probably the most me, I like a laid back place, and one of my best friends is there now. Three years ago I was sure if I ever moved from Seattle it would be to LA, I have friends there, and an entire branch of my extended family in that area. New York is somewhere I swore I'd never live, but one of my best friends just moved there, my sister really (in this family I'm making for myself), and like family, I think we need each other. I'm not sure how it will work out, but no matter where I go I guess I will have family around me, whether it's the family I was born with or the one I make for myself.

Losing yourself

2008-08-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

My first acting teacher told me that you have to keep something of yourself (I think it was 90/10, give 90% to the character and keep 10% of yourself). This is excellent advice especially since if you're any good at all at acting you'll at some point find a character you're playing bleeding over into your own life and personality. It's the reason actors end up dating their costars so often. It's also the reason actors are often crazy, or at least assumed to be crazy.

Heath Ledger is a very good actor, and his Joker was great, and while I'm not trying to say that he's crazy, I don't think it was Oscar caliber work. He played a crazy killer with no motivation what-so-ever. I know it's cliche but actors need to know what their characters motivation is, and the Joker is a character without any motivation. That's not a character that allows for an especially emotionally nuanced portrayal, in fact it's pretty one dimensional. He died tragically, and perhaps deserves a posthumous Oscar both for making the Joker nuanced at all and because he didn't win the one he deserved for Brokeback Mountain, but I am saying that his acting in Dark Knight didn't take my breath away, his acting has taken my breath away, but not in this movie.

Cristian Bale, by the way, is a very good actor, who, it's said, doesn't keep anything of himself. People say that he becomes a completely different person (off camera I mean, since obviously he becomes a different person on camera). Of course, I'm not trying to say that he's crazy either. He had the more three dimensional character and he did very well with it is all. Of course it's kind of hard to see the emotionally nuanced acting when the man is wearing a mask over his eyes for half the film so I don't think anyone is going to be getting any Oscars (for their acting in this film).

Still, when I was watching the movie I totally lost myself. My friend tells me she was watching and she knew they couldn't have killed Gordon, because he wasn't commissioner yet. I should have known that too. I know enough Batman to know that Gordon was commissioner. Then Harvey Dent has gasoline running down the side of his face and I'm so caught up in the story, I should know what's coming, I know enough Batman to know about Two Face, but I don't even realize what's coming. That story had me rapt from beginning to end even though I know Batman. Maybe I have a tendency to let myself get lost in a story more than most people, and maybe this story was particularly compelling for a lot of reasons, but at least one of those reason is convincing actors.

Can you see the real me?

2008-07-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

Dan: Why do I want people to like me?
Abby: Yes.
Dan: Don't you want people to like you?
Abby Sure.
Dan So?
Abby So, I'm a likable person, and I assume people are gonna like me, and many of them do.
Dan: What about the ones who don't?
Abby: I don't really think too much about that.
Dan: Why not?
Abby: 'Cause many of them do.

It was suggested to me by a friend recently that my tendency to blurt things out is not only not a bad thing but actually an enviable trait. She was with me at a pub a couple months ago and she asked the bartender when his birthday was, and when he told us I said, "Of course it is, all the cute boys are Leos". She thought it was great, couldn't believe I'd said it, and she said it took guts.

That pales in comparison to the time I told a guy I had a huge crush on that he shouldn't have any trouble with women as he was smart and funny and cute. Or the time a professor was trying to make a point about insecurities and I claimed that when I was younger I'd never doubted for a minute that I was beautiful and then turned to the guys next to me and asked if they could blame me. At least with the bartender I could claim drunkenness though in truth I wasn't that drunk, and probably would have said it anyway, I mean, I was completely sober in the other cases. Alcohol does bring out this trait in me even more, but, as with most traits, alcohol only enhances what is already there.

I think her assumption is that I don't care what people think about me, but that's not true. It's just that I'm a likable person and I assume people are going to like me and many of them do so I don't worry too much about the ones that don't.

"For the sake of argument" is kind of my motto, so when my professor was tyring to make a point I had to disagree and it wasn't exactly a lie. Of course, the truth isn't that I never had any insecurities as a kid, it's just that they weren't about my looks (more about my personality). I couldn't not say it, you know. And when I think someone is cute, for some reason that thought can't just stay in my head, I have to say it. I can't seem to censor myself. It's not exactly intentional so I can't say that I really have guts. It's just who I am.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song...

2008-07-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

I have in the past made a lot of jokes about meeting people online and how it's impossible to tell anything about someone from their online profiles aside from their favorite music (and books and movies and television). In fact I went so far as to post a facetious profile on the Yahoo personals saying as much (well, actually kind of saying the opposite, but...you know...irony and all that).

I just didn't think someone's taste in music said much about them, or I didn't think that I thought that. It's come to my attention recently that I actually put a lot of weight on a persons taste in music. Maybe more than any other single factor.

Also, the truth is, with my songs of the day, I was hoping to tell someone something about me. I said before that their purpose was to keep in touch (and that's true, and it was pretty effective) but also there was someone I didn't know very well and, while I wanted to get to know him better (probably because he had such great taste in music), more than that, or at least as much as that, I wanted him to get to know me better and I thought a good way to do that was songs of the day.

Being totally honest with myself here, the first time I saw him, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing a Social Distortion shirt, and one of the first conversations I had with him he was talking about seeing the Who live (a subject that I continue returning to, by the way, as seeing the Who live was one of the defining experiences of my adult life). Is it any wonder I wanted to get to know him better (and wanted him to get to know me better)?

Since I didn't actually send the songs of the day daily I often tried to tie songs together with a theme (the Diablo series, or the Chicks Rock series, or the Cheesy Romance series, etc), but with very few exceptions, I didn't really explain why I'd chosen the songs. Once he asked me how I picked them and I told him the same vagueness that I said here (that sometimes they were my favorites, sometimes songs I thought he'd like, or ones that reminded me of him, or songs to suit my moods, and sometimes they were random).

Sometimes I wonder if he got to know me better because of the songs, or just because of time, or because this blog is kind of tell-all-ish, or if maybe he knew me better than I thought already. I tend to believe that there is something fundamental about my character that some people just "get" and others don't and it isn't a matter of them knowing my favorite songs, or even my life story they just get it or they don't.

I like music. A lot. But it's a funny thing, you know. Some songs I like because because of the lyrics (they tell stories, or they make me feel something, or they describe something I have felt), some I like because of the music (they have interesting melodies, or just catchy ones, interesting arrangements, or use of unexpected instruments, etc.), and sometimes I just like a song for no reason that I can identify. Just like the songs of the day...

January 11th - In Gods Country (U2) - Well, U2 is one of my favorite bands, but that's not why I picked this one, he was in Israel (i.e. Gods country)
February 2nd - Never Been to Spain (Three Dog Night) - One of my favorite songs and at that point I hadn't ever been to Spain.
March 6th - Why Don't We Get Drunk (Jimmy Buffett) - I generally put my Zune on shuffle all the time and this song seemed to come on just as I was arriving at class, not every time, but enough times to be considered an interesting coincidence (if you believe in coincidences)
March 7th - Thrill of It (Robert Randolph) - I'd been to see Robert Randolph play at the Showbox that night.
March 12th - Then I'm Gone (Supersuckers) - I thought the titled was fitting since that was the day I left for Switzerland.
March 14th - Old College Try (Mountain Goats) - I thought he'd like this band and this is one of my favorite songs by them. It contains one of my favorite song lyrics ever ("in the way those eyes I've always loved, illuminate this place, like a trash can fire in a prison cell")
March 17th - Fiesta (the Pogues) - This song reminds me of him. He likes it, we talked about it.
April 20th - I Want to Break Free (Queen) - I'd been to see We Will Rock You in London that day
April 25th - Pints of Guinness Make Me Strong (Against Me!) - this was a band he'd recommended to me (that I love), and I'd been in Dublin.
May 7th - Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) - A lyric from which was the title of my blog that week.
May 13th - Jack and Diane (John "Cougar" Mellancamp) - A song I had stuck in my head that day, which I'd had stuck in my head before thanks to him (and thanks to a blizzard which got me snowed in where I was house sitting with among others a Jack and a Diane)
May 22nd - Bring it on Home (Led Zeppelin) - My second favorite Led Zeppelin song. My favorite is Over the Hills and Far Away (song of the day February 18th).
June 9th - Graduated (John Haitt) - This one is pretty self explanatory...it was the day I graduated.
July 21st - It's Only Me (Wizard of Magicland)(Barenaked Ladies) - The day the new Harry Potter book came out

That's just a dozen or so songs (out of over 400). There are, of course, more like these, that I chose for specific (and for the most part fairly obvious) reasons, but in a list of 400 songs, the ones with clear meanings (to me) are the minority. And even the one's with clear meanings...well...

I just wonder, does it really stand to reason that music is somehow a window into my personality?

Broken hearts (and bones)

2008-07-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

I spoke a few days ago about heartbreaking bike crashes and since then the Tour de France has witnessed a couple of them.

In stage Fifteen Oscar Pereiro crashed on a switchback decent, he went over the edge and fell down to the road (when it switched back) below. Easily, that could have been fatal and it wouldn't have been the first fatal crash in the Tour. There have been three fatal crashes in the Tour (most recently Fabio Casartelli in 1995, also in stage fifteen). In fact, at first it looked like this was a fatal crash. The riders slowed down when they passed Pereiro, laying motionless on the pavement. His teammates stopped to check on him, of course. Miraculously he survived with only a broken arm (shoulder or elbow, I'm not entirely sure).

In stage Sixteen John Lee Augustyn crashed on another steep decent. He was fine, but unfortunately he lost his bike and had to wait several minutes for his team car to come with a replacement bike.

Augustyn, the youngest rider in the peleton this year (he'll be twenty-two next month), is riding in the Tour de France for the first time. On the final climb (the highest in the Tour) he dropped all of the top climbers in this years Tour. He accelerated about half a kilometer from the summit and no one could stay on his wheel. Just a few minutes later, on the decent, he crashed and had to do some fancy climbing up the nearly sheer face of the mountain to get back on the road. His bike though was lost and since his team was down to only a few riders by that point they're only allowed one team car and it was following behind the rest of the peleton (about seven or eight minutes behind him).

Crashes in the Tour are often dramatic, but these two are even more so than usual. They really highlight the danger involved in professional bike racing.

The Zen Tour Fan

2008-07-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

Since my personal life has become more complicated than I'd like I've decided to focus my blogging on the Tour de France.

Not that my feelings about the Tour are simple this year either. You see, my favorite team (CSC) lost a rider in the off season. In fact, they lost my favorite rider. Dave Zabriskie switched to the Garmin-Chipotle team. He's not riding in the tour though, so I suppose I'm still free to cheer for Team CSC, and they've got a decent shot, with Frank Schleck, at winning the Tour. He's likely to lose time in the next time trial, but there are still a couple more mountain stages where he could gain enough time to offset the losses he'll see in the time trial. As it stands now he's only got 8 seconds on Evans, 38 seconds on Menchov, 39 on Vandevelde, and 49 on Sastre. Since Carlos Sastre is probably (technically) the CSC team leader, I don't think Schleck would mind losing to him. He lost a minute forty-seven to Evans in the previous time trial which was only about half as long as the upcoming one. Menchov and Vandevelde got time on Schleck in the time trial as well (both weren't far behind Evans).

I suppose I'd also like it if an American to won it. Even though I'm a huge fan of the CSC team and of the Schleck brothers, I'd love to see Vandevelde (who's racing on, the American sponsored, Garmin-Chipotle team as well), win this year.

My loyalties as a cycling fan are difficult to define. Its not like there's a home town team to root for. Although Tyler Farrar of Garmin-Chipotle is from Washington, he's not on their Tour team this year. You can bet, when he is I'll be rooting for him because he's local and because I have the added benefit of having met him and seen him race a bunch locally before he joined a pro team. Obviously, I have a certain amount of national loyalty. I like to see Americans winning races.

Beyond that, I couldn't say why I root for certain riders. I prefer the classics to the tours so I tend to like sprinters, and classics riders more than grand tour contenders. Also, it's not as much a situation where I like rooting for the underdog (like in baseball). I like winners, but I also like guys who seem laid back, whether they win or lose they say in the interviews something like, "Yeah it was/would have been great to win, but it's just a bike race". I like Tom Boonen, despite his resent arrest for cocaine, for all those reasons (i.e. he wins a lot, mostly in sprint stages or one day classics, and doesn't seem to care one way or the other), but I also like the way he looks in spandex so who's to say which of those are the reason I root for him.

This year...I guess I'm just enjoying watching the race and not really invested in the outcome so much.

Welcome to my life...

2008-07-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about getting a tattoo for a long time, so long in fact that it's kind of a joke. Likely I'll go on thinking about it forever and never actually do it. Of course, I thought about getting my belly button pierced for ten years before I finally did it, so I guess I shouldn't say never.

When I was younger I couldn't think of anything that meant enough to me to tattoo on myself and I can't imagine getting a tattoo that didn't mean something to me (in fact I can't imagine getting one unless it meant a lot to me, maybe everything). I finally came up with something I might want to get a tattoo of but then I got stuck on the irony of getting a Hebrew letter tattoo. It seems to be on other peoples minds as well because I've read no less than 5 articles in the last year about the Jewish prohibition of (or, depending on who you ask, aversion to) tattoos, the latest in today's New York Times. Apparently it's not as ironic as I would have thought, or if it is that isn't stopping people from doing it.

So, with that objection out of the way, I'm forced to face a much more difficult one. The thing is, I'm afraid people will think I'm not Jewish enough to brand myself as such. The truth is I don't think I'm Jewish enough. There are two pretty simple tests of Jewishness. One is, do you practice the religion, and the other is, do you have a Jewish mother and my understanding is that they are mutually exclusive. The Orthodox rule is that if you have a Jewish mother then you are Jewish. The Reform rule is that if you were raised practicing Judaism you are Jewish. The first takes a view of Jewishness as race (more than religion) and since I'm not big on organized practice of religion I guess that's the view that I should subscribe to, and that's the only view under which I am Jewish at all and even then I'm a couple of generations of mother's away from anyone that actually practiced the religion...but since that view doesn't really take into account religious practice, just blood ties...well you see why I'm hesitant.

Race is a tricky thing to get a handle on. Maybe there was a time when it was easy, black and white (pardon the pun), but now, at least here, the lines are a little more blurry. I have enough trouble just figuring out my own racial identity much less wondering about other people's lineage.

I recently found out that my great-grandfather (my father's mother's father) was from Finland, Swedish, but from Finland. This is actually not uncommon because the Swedes occupied Finland for quite a while and many of them still live there and identify themselves as Swedish Finns. Presumably that means they identify Swedish as their race and Finnish as their nationality. If that's true, and it seems to be, then it doesn't seem that easy to just lump all the people of European nations into one race, but that's another blog really.

Americans have racial versus national identity issues, perhaps, more than most nations. We're an immigrant nation and like it or not, believe it or not, we really are a melting pot. People came here and though they cut their ties to their home nations they can't sever all ties, some things are in their blood. So now we have Italian Americans, and Irish Americans, and Swedish Finnish Americans, and African Americans, etc, etc, and more to the point, combinations.

A combination is what you might call me (English, Irish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish Finn, either Native American or African, Irish again, Italian, Russian Jewish). So, which of those things should I identify with? Even if I answered that question it still wouldn't bring me closer to getting my tattoo. It would probably just give me more tattoo options (perhaps a shamrock), and we all know how great I am at making decisions.

The breakfast of the indecisive

2008-07-16T08:09:00.001-07:00

I have another blog which I haven't posted on in months. It was created primarily to update friends and family about my trip to Europe last year and to talk about concerts and theater. I decided to fold the theater and concert bits in to this blog (sort of) and phase out the other blog (unless I take another extended trip) but even though I haven't posted on it in more than six months I still get stat reports on it and for a long time it was getting more hits than this one despite the lack of new content there. Most of those hits are coming from Google Images, and of those hits coming from Google Images most are from this picture:

That is a full (proper) English breakfast and I photographed it for several reasons. First of all, I promised a friend of mine that I'd take pictures of all my food on that trip, though in truth I rarely did and had it not been for the other reasons, probably still wouldn't have in this case. The second reason was a guy I met in Munich. He was from Scotland and was constantly complaining about not being able to find a proper breakfast in Germany, I told him I'd order one when I got to London and I promised to eat all of it, even the black pudding, and I took a picture of it both to prove myself (there's also pictures of me eating it for proof) and to make him jealous. The third reason I took this picture has to do with my inability to make even the smallest decision. You see, at greasy diners in the UK (and Ireland), you can walk in and order a full breakfast and cup of tea and they just bring this to you no further questions asked. You don't have a choice of meats, or a choice of toast, or a choice of teas. It's just breakfast and a cup of tea. I love the simplicity of that, even if I don't love baked beans for breakfast, or black pudding ever (unless I forget what's in it).

I love this picture, of course, for the reminder it is of all those things and more, but I don't think it's the best picture I've taken. In fact it's neither the most interesting subject I have pictures of on my other blog, nor the best photo.

There's this picture:

This is the sunrise over Lago Majora. First of all I would imagine Lago Majora to be a frequently searched term as it's a popular resort area of southern Switzerland/northern Italy and also a key location in a famous work of literature (Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway). Also this, I think, is a nice picture. It's one of my favorites. Of course it means something to me as well. I couldn't sleep when I first got to Europe. I should have been exhausted but for the first week or so, I just couldn't sleep in, and was up before dawn everyday. Like kids on Christmas eve who are too excited to sleep because they can't wait to tear into their presents, every day of that trip was a gift that I couldn't wait to tear into. So, yes, the picture means something, but a) so does the picture of my breakfast and b)I would expect this picture to be a more interesting subject (to people who aren't me) and a more visually appealing picture than my breakfast.

I also have pictures on that blog of Robert Randolph playing at the Showbox:

and the Mountain Goats and Pony Up at Triple Door:

Okay, those two aren't especially great pictures, but they are more interesting subjects than my breakfast.

I have all sorts of pictures there, pictures of Bellinzona Castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein, cute animals, cathedrals and landmarks across Europe, not to mention boys in bike shorts,

but what people seem interested in is the picture I took of my breakfast.

Heart and soul

2008-07-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

They have these interesting commercials on Versus this year to accompany the Tour de France. Essentially they are ads for their own tour coverage, but the ad campaign is called "take back the tour", and the slogan, which is more manifesto than ad slogan goes, "screw the dopers, politics, and critics, the false allegations and fair weather fans; they ripped the soul out of this race, but the tour doesn't belong to them...it belongs to us."

There are several of these ads. One that just shows a rider coming up one of the harder climbs in the Tour, through a tunnel of fans and has the above slogan flash across the screen. Another that has reverse footage of some of the famous riders who've been caught doping (or were suspected to be doping) set to Paul Weller's Brand New Start.

They're a little cheesy, and a little too obvious in their design, but I have to admit one of them gets to me a little. There's one that shows crashes with a voice over saying that in a sprint finish they're going an average of 40-45MPH and on a mountain descent up to 50-60MPH and then says "next time you're in your car at 50 miles an hour, strip down to your underwear and jump out the door, that's what it's like to crash in a professional bike race"

There are, of course, a few reasons this ad strikes a chord with me. I did spend several years of my life loving a bike racer and, in addition to washing jerseys, and making smoothies, and grilling chicken, and baking cookies, and standing by the side of the road to cheer and hand him fresh bottles of water, I also played nurse maid to a few cases of really bad road rash and worried constantly about the possibility of other, far more dire consequences of bike crashes.

However, lately I'm thinking that the main reason this particular ad might really get to me is because I seem to have more than my fair share of empathy. The past few years some of my friends have been spectacularly mistreated by other friends, spouses, or exes and I, of course, have a lot of sympathy and/or empathy for them, but remarkably I find myself really feeling sad for the people dolling out all the hateful behavior. I'm saying to my friends, who are in pain, how bad I feel for the person who caused them that pain. The really sad thing, I say, is that they can't love anyone, least of all themselves. Imagine how low their self esteem must be, how afraid they must have to be to not even be able to accept love from someone without having to stomp it out(to say nothing of giving love to anyone). I have friends that are so close they're like family to me and so, when I see people who don't really have friends at all, they have acquaintances, or worse "contacts", but no real friends, no real love in their lives, I feel indescribably sad for them.

I know at first glance these two things might seem unconnected (physical pain vs. emotional pain), but if you've had any close contact with bike racers, if you've seen them lose the race lead due to a crash, or have to abandon a race due to a crash, you know the physical pain of their injuries pales in comparison the the emotional pain of coming so close to something and then having in snatched away. You see guys crying when they have to abandon the Tour and I can almost guarantee they aren't crying because of injuries (at least not entirely, or even mostly, because of their injuries)...okay, I can't say for sure that those tears aren't caused purely by physical pain, but if I were a betting woman (and who am I kidding claiming not to be), my money would be on those tears being, at very most, 40% caused by physical pain and 60% by disappointment.

A prime example would be Tyler Hamilton, who's superhuman pain tolerance is legendary, when he had to abandon the 2004 Tour. My guess would be on an even greater disparity, more like 70-30 or even 80-20, between the disappointment and the physical pain. When they have to abandon Tour riders are almost always crying or clearly trying very hard not to. Even Jonathan Vaughters seemed close to tears when he had to abandon the race in 2001 because he'd been stung by a wasp (which he was violently allergic to) and couldn't take anything for it and also stay in the race because the treatments for such an allergic reaction are banned substances. Dave Zabriskie didn't have to abandon the race (at least not right away) when he crashed in the team time trial, but when he crossed the line, alone, his skin suit all torn up, looking down, he looked so sad, it broke my heart. But maybe my heart breaks a little too easily.

You're my...protagonist?

2008-07-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

From my last post you probably picked up on my pre-occupation with character arc. I took some screenwriting classes several years ago and my classmates and I got into a spirited debate about character arc in action films. There's a pitfall that action films often fall into because people (including, often, writers) equate the character archetypes of "hero" and "protagonist" thereby writing stories that have no one, no character, driving the plot. You see, a hero doesn't have to have arc, and often they don't. The example our professor used to illustrate this concept when defining all the character archetypes at the beginning of our course was James Bond. Bond is not the protagonist in the Bond films. He's the hero. He never changes, his goals and motivations remain static from beginning to end of each film and across the entire series of films. According to my prof the Bond girls are usually the protagonists in those stories.

Spiderman would be a good example a story, or series of stories, where the hero is also the protagonist. You can see though, how it might be easy to write a story with a hero and no protagonist (and therefor no plot) and if you're a lover of action films (like I am) you can probably name, without much effort, a dozen or so films that fell into this trap.

Someone in the class had the audacity to criticize one of my favorite films for this very problem, and I had to set him straight. The film is Armageddon and he believed that Harry (Bruce Willis' character) was trying to do double duty in the story as both hero and protagonist, and he felt that the character didn't really change enough. His claim was that the only difference at the end is that he has come to trust AJ (Ben Affleck's character) more and he didn't think that was enough of a change. I, of course, disagreed and here is what I had to say about it at the time:

I think the change that Harry goes through in Armageddon is multi-faceted. However, trusting AJ was the essential change because it was his passing of the torch, admitting that he couldn't do it all by himself now and that someday (much sooner than he realized) he wouldn't be around to run things anymore, either in the drilling business or in his daughter's life. He had to trust someone to take over for him. Also, he started to trust the captain as well, whether it seems this way to most or not, I think that in attacking the guy the way he did, that whole exchange was about both those characters overcoming their distrust of each other in order to work together and get the job done. The thing about Harry was that he was a control freak and that control was being taken away from him, he couldn't control the asteroid, he couldn't control his daughter, he couldn't control AJ, he couldn't control his crew, he couldn't control the astronauts and in the end he had to let go of it all.

Also, if you want to get deep into the psychology of that character, his goal was not to save the world his goal it was to protect his family which consisted of his daughter and, though he wouldn't admit it, AJ. In the end his putting trust in AJ,his realization that AJ was part of his family, his passing the torch to AJ was the fulfillment of his goal, he saved the Earth and accomplished his real goal which was to protect his daughter, he left her in the best possible hands. I think you aren't looking deep enough at the protagonist's goal. It's more complicated than saying that in Armageddon the goal is to save to world, in Jaws the goal is to kill the shark (or save people from the shark), in Batman the goal is the defeat the villain. Save the world, kill the beast, defeat the villain, those are the action in action films but the real story is why our protagonist feels compelled to do those things or why they are reluctant or what do they really want.

I think that all Harry wanted in the world was to protect his daughter and therefore his trusting AJ is the essential change in that story, he realized what she did and didn't need protection from...she did need to be protected from the asteroid the size of Texas hurtling towards Earth, but she did not need protection from AJ and in fact AJ being younger and likely to be around longer was better suited to protect her.

I think all of the oil drillers had their own motives for wanting to save the world, none of them had as a goal: Save the World. One guys goal was to get chicks, how? Save the world. Another's goal was to make his ex-wife and kid proud, how? Save the world. Harry's goal was to protect his daughter, how? Save the world, but also pass the torch, trust AJ, realize that it's not always the case that if he wants something done right he'll have to do it himself, that he isn't always the best man for the job and that AJ will be better equipped to take care of her for a longer time than he will.

If you have half a brain

2008-07-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going to jump ahead and deviate from my existing songs of the day list because sometimes I'm non-linear that way.

The song for today is Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes. There are several possible reasons that this song might make the songs of the day not the least of which is that it's an unbelievably difficult to shake earworm (almost as bad as Hotel California but not quite). I saw Wanted on Thursday night and this song has been stuck in my head ever since.

Unfortunately I really have nothing to say about Wanted. It was okay. Lots of action very little plot. I find myself far more fascinated by the actors themselves than the characters they portray which is unusual for me because normally I'm far more captivated by fictional characters than real life ones. There are two really interesting characters in the film (Wesley's father and Fox), but they have very small parts.

In fact, even the song (Escape) has more of a plot than the movie. Two people, already together, but both still looking for that one perfect person. One places a personal ad and the other answers it. Both of those characters have arc, albeit a short, three minute or less arc, but arc none the less.

You see in that story a guy gets bored with his honey and he thinks that the one perfect girl is still out there. He reads a personal ad and it strikes a chord with him. He likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. He doesn't like yoga, and he has half a brain. So, he writes his own ad asking the girl to meet him and when she does it turns out the girl from the ad is the same honey he thought he was bored with but he now realizes that she is that one perfect girl he was looking for all along.

Really none of the characters in Wanted have that much of an arc. Wesley, perhaps, is not the same by the end as he was to start, though I would argue that his defining characteristic (i.e. he doesn't know who he is) remains the same. There certainly isn't any compelling evidence that he has any better idea by the end than he did at the beginning. His actions have changed but his motivations really haven't. And the more interesting characters, his father and Fox, definitely don't have arc, they are most interesting precisely for their lack of arc, their stubborn adherence to an ideal that has failed everyone.

In any event, the song was played in the movie and I've had it stuck in my head ever since, now hopefully I've passed it on to some of you.

Blame the writers

2008-07-05T06:51:00.001-07:00

I've been feeling a little creatively stifled lately. For months now. No Inspiration. And in times like these I turn to what I consider the most inspired stories, hoping some of that brilliance will rub off on me. Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night), Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), and Joss Wheadon (Firefly, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

This time I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have this thing about television on DVD. I can't just pick up a DVD an watch one episode, esspecially not one in the middle. I have to start with episode #1 and then over the course of several days, or in the case of a series like Buffy that ran seven seasons, over the course of weeks or months, I watch every episode, in order. So, I've been watching it for a while and it's on my mind.

I have always had an issue with Willow's identity as a lesbian. You see, Willow's first love was a boy, Xander and her second love was also a boy, Oz. Never in the history of literature, film or television has there been a more perfect couple than OZ and Willow. Star crossed, surely, in some ways (he's a wherewolf for one), but perfect none the less. Their's was the ultimate romantic courtship.

Oz knew the first time he laid eyes on Willow, in her head to toe furry Eskimo costume, that she was the one for him. Of course, at that point she was still in love with her best friend (Xander, also a boy). None the less, Oz and Willow began cautiously dating and they hit some obstacles. Oz became a wherewolf and he had to be sure that Willow was really over Xander which took some time. Even though Willow had Oz, she kind of freaked when she found out that Xander had been getting busy with Cordelia in the broom closet.

In that episode Willow asks Oz if he wants to make out:

Willow: (after a pause) Do you wanna make out with me?

Oz: What?

Willow: (looks away) Forget it. I'm sorry. (decides she wants to know) Well, do you?

Oz: Sometimes when I'm sitting in class... You know, I'm not thinking about class, 'cause that would never happen. I think about kissing you. And it's like everything stops. It's like, it's like freeze frame. Willow kissage.

(He nods his head and smiles to himself. Willow smiles over at him. He looks up at her.)

Oz: Oh, I'm not gonna kiss you.

Willow: (confused) What? But freeze frame!

Oz: Well, to the casual observer, it would appear that you're trying to make your friend Xander jealous or even the score or something. And that's on the empty side. (looks off into space) See, in my fantasy when I'm kissing *you*, you're kissing *me*. (looks back at her) It's okay. I can wait.

Oz and Xander are both wonderful guys, and she loves them both a lot, both in many different ways for many different reasons, all of which is well established through both dialoge and action in the show, and neither of these are purely cerebral or emotional attractions.

Oz and Willow finally do kiss, and become a solid couple, but she betrays him with Xander. When Xander and Willow see each other in formal wear they suddenly can't keep their hands off each other. It's a sudden, and physical attraction, and they try to fight it, but they can't and ultimately Cordelia and Oz catch them in a compromising position. And later when Oz has forgiven her (a great scene by the way in which Oz says, "This is what I do know: I miss you. Like, every second. Almost like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso. So, I think I'd be willing to... give it a shot") she's all over him again. When they have sex for the first time she says it's the best night of her life.

The beautiful love of Oz and Willow was tragically cut short by Seth Green's desire to do other kinds of work. While I wish he'd stayed on the show, because he was my favorite character at that point, his leaving was one of the best scenes ever in the show, in fact one of the best scenes of any show. You see, Oz has to leave to tame the wolf that lives inside him, it only comes out at the full moon, but it's always there. He had to go, and Willow, even though she caught him in a compromising position earlier in the episode, doesn't want him to go. She asks him how he can leave, doesn't he love her, and he says that his whole life he's never loved anything else. To me it's more tragic than any other story. Usually in a tragic love story, one or both people die in the end, but here you have two people (or a person and a wherewolf) who love each other more than anything and he has to have the will to leave because if he stays he'll become something that will destory that love (and possibly kill a bunch of people).

That episode has a lot of Willow and Oz in bed together, or references to Willow and Oz in bed together and she seems pretty keen on it. Not the image of a suppressed lesbian, if you ask me.

The thing is, I didn't have a problem with her relationship with Tara. After Oz left, Willow was crushed and it took a long time for her to fully recover. One of the things that helped her finally snap out of it was Tara. Willow fell in love with Tara, she loved Tara just as much as she'd loved Oz and they had great chemistry together. At that point I have to believe that Willow is a girl who puts a premium on love and doesn't care one way or the other if it's with a boy or girl and that was believable.

Willow and Tara's love was also tragically cut short though and in season seven a new love interest was introduced for Willow. Her name was Kennedy and Willow liked her a lot, but didn't really love her, they didn't have a courtship at all. They had one episode in which Willow felt guilty (about killing the guy who'd killed Tara, and about moving on) and, like in a fairy tale, kissing Kennedy brought her back from the brink. But honestly, she looked uncomfortable every time she kissed Kennedy and I don't think that's bad acting. I mean, yes, the actress that played Willow is straight, but she never had a problem making me believe that she loved Tara and liked kissing her. She's a good actress, but it wasn't there in the material she was given. The love that she'd had for Xander, and Oz, and Tara, that was well established, had not been established with Kennedy.

Maybe, while she'd been physically attracted to both Oz and Xander and had loved them both, she found that she preferred women more in general after having a relationship with one and maybe after three such intense loves she just wanted to have a little fun but I didn't see that on screen.

It's true that if you're writing for film and television you can leave some things in the hands of your actors, or the casting agents. Probably if, in casting Kennedy, they'd put more focus on having actresses read with Alysson Hannigan they might have found someone who she had better chemistry with and that chemistry would have been enough to justify their attraction to each other. However, if the actors don't have any chemistry with each other, and they can both be great actors and still have no chemistry, then the onus is on the writer to show why those two characters are drawn to each other. The story has to justify the attraction if the actors have no chemistry, and in the case of Willow and Kennedy the story didn't do it's job. Since she had two clearly great loves that were boys and only one that was a girl and she never looked very comfortable with the one girl she was with after that, she seems to me, a bit like an Anne Heche type lesbian (i.e. someone who, after years of heterosexuality, happened to fall in love with a woman but who just as easily falls in love with men or, basically, she's bisexual).

Clearly I put the blame firmly on the writers' shoulders but maybe I'm too hard on them. Maybe I'm too hard on myself as well. Maybe I should be writing something whether inspiration has hit me or not. Maybe it doesn't have to be good it just has to keep me going. The project I'm working on now, that I've been working on for going on 9 months now and it's gone through several drafts, I started because it was national novel writing month and I didn't want to write a novel (didn't think I could), but I liked the idea of writing something just for the sake of writing, quantity over quality. Like athletes who train in the off season, they don't train at their regular level, they aren't out to set records, but they have to keep in shape. If that was the spirit I started writing in maybe that's the spirit I should continue in.

My happy place

2008-06-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

There's this exercise that they have us do at work that's supposed to be helpful relieving stress which abounds in the medical field because even at the lowest level (like appointment scheduling) you still encounter life and death situations on a fairly regular basis. They tell you to close your eyes and picture you're on tropical beach. It's a variation on the "go to your happy place" trick.

I've never really had a good imagination...not in that way. I mean I can picture a smokey blues club in the French Quarter in New Orleans, filled with people, some in elaborate costumes, some in regular clothes, with a band playing bluesy zydeco music. It's a scene in a story that delivered itself fully formed into my head. But I can't "see" it when I close my eyes.

Also, a tropical beach is not my happy place. This is my happy place:

My happy place is the gardens at the Alhambra. I have a thing about architecture, not that I know anything about it, but I love looking at interesting buildings. Alhambra is certainly interesting architecture, but what I really loved was the gardens. I don't know why, but I felt really happy and at peace there. While I can't close my eyes and call to mind a picture of my happy place I can, with my eyes wide open, recall the feeling of sitting in those gardens on a beautiful day (sunny but not too hot).

Granada is an amazing city, with a somewhat violent history resulting in a sort of odd truce of a kind and there is a lot of beauty there. It seems like there's a light in things there (both actual and metaphorical) that you don't see other places, or that I didn't see other places. There were a lot of places I loved there...the cathedral, the Plaza Nueva, the tea shops...but the gardens at the Alhambra were special.

A misty mellow mood

2008-06-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

It was really misty this morning where I live and that always makes me think of Led Zeppelin for some reason. Mist puts me in a good, mellow mood and there's always music to go with my moods. I'm not the only one who connects weather with mood and mood with music (and therefor weather with music, isn't logic fun). What does this have to do with anything?

Well, take a look at the first several days of my songs of the day:

What Is And What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)

Shh (Atmosphere)

Just Like a Woman (Bob Dylan)

Self Esteem (The Ofspring)

This Year (Mountain Goats)

Juke Box Hero (Foreigner)

Whipping Post (Allman Brothers)

Winter (Rolling Stones)

I started out the year in a good mood, mellow, like today, and the music matched that mood (as did the lyrics, "So if you wake up with the sunrise, and all your dreams are still as new, and happiness is what you need so bad, Well, girl, the answer lies with you, yeah", "If you can drink tap water and breathe the air say, shhh"), but then it was cold and stormy and my mood was foul, you can see it in the music (and lyrics), I went from defeated to angry and back again ("She breaks just like a little girl", "I'm just a sucker with low self esteem", "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me", "Sometimes I feel like I'm tied to the whipping post", "It's sure been a cold, cold winter, And a lot of love is all burned out, It's sure been a hard, hard winter, My feet been draggin' 'cross the ground")

You'll notice I skipped right over Jukebox Hero. That's because the significance of that song had nothing to do with my mood (or the weather). I was in Subway (committing to a sandwich topping) and Jukebox Hero came on the radio and it reminded me of my new found friend (to whom the songs of the day were addressed) because he is a huge Foreigner fan. In fact, if you know him, as I'm sure some of you do since I see his blog in my stats as the referring URL occasionally, you should buy him a Foreigner CD (perhaps as a graduation gift) or make him a Foreigner mix, he'll love it.

Cold Feelings

2008-06-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

It's been suggested to me that I should blog songs of the day and I decided it was a good idea, but rather than starting fresh I'm going to take a nostalgic look back at the songs of the day e-mails I sent. To start with, you should know that I didn't actually do the songs of the day on a daily basis, I sent them weekly, sometimes more often than that but never actually daily. I probably won't blog them daily either both because I'm lazy that way and because I'll have other things I'll want to blog about. Also, not all of the previous songs of the day had significance. Sometimes I just put my Zune on shuffle and used the first song that came up and that won't make for a very interesting blog entry.

To kick things off, I'll tell you how the songs of the day began. It was the afternoon of December 31, 2006 and I was sending out an e-mail to all my close friends and family telling them that, though I'm not usually one for new years resolutions, I was making one that year, and the resolution was to try to keep in touch with them better. Then I thought about someone I'd just met that quarter in school. We weren't that close, but in the run up to finals we'd spent a large amount of time in GChat and not all of it was spent discussing our final. We spent a fair amount of that time talking about music. I'd had a crush on him all quarter, and after talking to him about music and politics and stuff I started to really like him too (you know what I mean, and if you don't then read my archives). Shortly after finals he left the country (for study abroad among other things) and I knew he wasn't going to be back at school until after I graduated. I thought I should make an effort to keep in touch with him too, but I'd already sent the new years resolution e-mail, and I knew that we weren't already close so if I failed at keeping in touch it would close the window completely on that friendship. It wasn't like the other people I'd resolved to keep in touch with who I was already close with and if I failed at keeping touch better I'd still pick up just where I left off next time I see them. I needed something to push me to actually keep in touch. So, I decided on the songs of the day, and I sent him an e-mail explaining it all. I said that sometimes they will be songs to fit my mood that day, sometimes just my favorite songs, sometimes songs that I think he'd like or that remind me of him, and sometimes completely random songs.

The subsequent e-mails just contained song titles (and artist names), but I included a song for the day in that first explanation e-mail too. The song that day was Cold Feelings by Social Distortion. The significance with this song is actually the band, not the song.

I'd been getting interested in punk rock around this same time. Historically I shied away from punk rock out of a deep-seated resentment towards my brother. You see, my brother is four and a half years older than me and my mom let him, as far as I could tell, do whatever he wanted when he was a teenager. He didn't have a curfew, he was allowed to go, alone, into the big bad city to see punk rock shows and she said nothing. In fact, he had a fake ID which my mother found and then returned to him when he explained that the only reason he had it was to get into shows, not for drinking (which apparently was the truth but that's beside the point really). My mother told me at the time that when I was his age I too would be allowed to do such things. Of course that turned out to be a lie and when I called her on it 4 years later her only justification for it was that he's a boy. My cries of sexism (from my mother the lawyer) fell on deaf ears. She didn't even try to deny her sexist double standard. Now, of course, I do go to punk rock shows but I never go to them alone, or let my friends go to them alone, because the idea that girls can't go to punk rock shows alone is so ingrained in me. But for years, I just stayed away from punk rock because it reminded me of the unfairness that is being a girl. However, just before I met the songs-of-the-day guy, I'd been getting interested in punk rock, Social Distortion in particular. So, the first thing I noticed when I met him was that he was wearing a Social Distortion shirt.

In January that year I'd gone to Austin and seen a show at Stubbs as a result of which I ended up on their mailing list and I now get monthly e-mails about who's playing there. A couple months prior to starting the songs of the day e-mails I'd posted a note in facebook lamenting that I didn't live in Texas because both Social Distortion and Joan Jett were on the Stubbs calendar for that month. He posted a reply to the note commenting on my good taste (for liking Social Distortion) and letting me know that Joan Jett was playing that very night here in Seattle. I ended up not being able to go to Joan Jett because I didn't get off work until 8:00 and by the time I made it down to the Showbox it was sold out. The whole thing made me realize that Seattle has almost as much live music going on as Austin and I should be out there seeing some of it. Actually, Seattle doesn't have nearly as much live music going on as Austin but that bar is set unbelievably high; Seattle has a lot of live music. I still haven't seen Social Distortion or Joan Jett but I've been to a lot more shows since then.

The point being that a love of music, and Social Distortion in particular, was, you might say, the foundation of the friendship and that's why I chose a song by them for the first song of the day.

Piecing together the perfect man

2008-06-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

I've devoted a bit of blog space lately to discussion of my "type" (or lack there of), and, in fact, in the past several months the topic has come up surprisingly often with my friends of what we're looking for. What, or who, is the perfect guy (or girl if you go that way)? It's been asked more times than I can count.

In my latest favorite movie (P.S. I Love You), a confused man asks the woman he's interested in what it is that women want and she responds that women have no idea what they want. While that may be true much of the time, we often think we do until we meet someone who doesn't meet any of the criteria and yet we want them anyway. So here, for posterity, is a list of the things I think I want, as embodied by my favorite characters from film and television.

This guy:

That would be Chase Hammond (from the film Drive Me Crazy, written by the incomparable Rob Thomas of Veronica Mars fame), not Adrian Greiner or his more famous character Vincent Chase. What makes Chase Hammond the perfect guy? Lots of things, loyalty, not taking anything (including himself) too seriously, he likes punk rock and baseball, he has a lot of great qualities, but what makes him perfect is his idea of the perfect date. First of all, when he's asked what his idea of the perfect date is, he asks if they mean "date" as in a person or a series of events showing that he has a great appreciation for the intricacies of language (which is another great quality), when it is clarified that they mean the person he says this, "She's the kinda girl that will call you on your bullshit. She isn't afraid to dance and she offers to pay. She doesn't decide before a date whether or not she's going to kiss you; she's not totally earnest, yet she's not completely ironic either...she orders dessert and she can be ready in ten minutes". You have to love that answer.

Next we have this guy:

Not to be confused with this guy:

Which is to say Marc Darcy from Bridget Jones Diary, as opposed to Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice fame, though they bear striking resemblance to each other, not just because both were played by Colin Firth. Mr. Darcy has his moments of perfection as well, as, I'm sure, does Colin Firth, but Marc Darcy has one specific element of perfection that I'm interested in. Marc Darcy likes Bridget Jones just as she is and he tells her so. That's it. That is what makes him perfect. Okay, he's not bad to look at (even in this hideous sweater), and he's a successful lawyer, and not a skeezy corporate lawyer but a Human Rights lawyer, and he's clearly very close with his family, and he's thoughtful, and kind, and he cooks...all good things, but what makes him absolutely perfect is the fact that he's not afraid to tell the girl that he likes her, even though he knows she's sort of involved with someone else who, by the way has already stolen one woman he loved. It's really hard to tell someone that you like them. Sometimes you have to because not telling them is harder, but even then it's still not easy to say, knowing the possible result (even likely result) is rejection.

Look back in the archives and you'll find I have a thing for fictional bad boys. Normally I wouldn't claim that any of those characters are embodiments of perfection since they tend not to have qualities that I look for in real life men (in fact their most appealing quality, their reformation for the love of a good woman, doesn't exist in real life men), but there's one exception.

This guy:

Okay, he's a vampire, and pretty much devoted to murder and anarchy (until he gets his soul back in season 7), but the soulless vampire thing is fiction, like the desire to reform his bad boy ways for the love of a good woman. He does have some traits that are attainable in real life. Primarily a sort of focused devotion. I'll admit that this particular quality can become overbearing, or irritating, especially if it's coming from someone you aren't interested in, but when it's coming from someone you are interested in it's kind of perfect. When Spike loves a woman she is the center of his universe, he'll do anything for her. The other thing he's got that's irresistible is the ability to make anything he says sound like a come on. Again, it's a quality that could come off as creepy, but somehow he manages not to cross that line. Also, he writes poetry and uses words like effulgent.

While we're in the Buffyverse there's another perfect character:

Like most of these paragons of male perfection, Oz has many great qualities. He plays bass in a rock band. He's a genius. He's unflappable. And he notices Willow for the first time when she's dressed head to toe in fur (in an Eskimo costume) which I suppose is evidence of his unique taste, not just in women, but in all things. However, I mostly like him for his dry wit. You can never underestimate the power of a good sense of humor.

While we're on the subject of sense of humor, I have to mention this guy:

Hilarious, yes, but that's not the only thing he's got going for him. Look at his hands. They're perfect, and he talks with them. I have to love a guy who talks with his hands. Also, he gets adorably flustered when his guests unexpectedly start talking about sex, but that's just a bonus. Mainly it's the talking with his hands thing.

Saving the best for last we have this guy:

Pacey actually has all of the great qualities I've talked about and I don't need to reiterate them. Instead lets get specific. One of my favorite episodes of Dawson's Creek is called Stolen Kisses (it's season 3, episode 19). It's the episode where Pacey and Joey finally get together. Joey tells Pacey something like he makes her feel alive and he responds by announcing that he's going to kiss her. He says that, in about 10 seconds, he's going to kiss her and if she doesn't want him to then she's going to have to stop him. Now, on the surface, that may sound like a sort of neanderthal think to say, but it's really not, when you consider that he could have just grabbed her and kissed without saying anything. The announcement gives her the opportunity to walk away if she doesn't want to get kissed. You might say that asking if you can kiss her is the better route to take, and it's certainly more polite, but confidence is attractive and asking if you can kiss someone shows a lack of confidence.

You may wonder, if you know me, why I didn't include this guy:

While Barney is awesome, always well dressed, loyal, he'll do anything for his friends, he knows the retail price of everything under the sun, and he's totally hot, he's also kind of a nightmare with women. So, he gets an honourable mention, but he doesn't make the list.

Songs of the day

2008-06-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

They say that college is where you meet the friends you'll have for the rest of life. My own college experience was a little fractured. I went to college right out of high school and I did make a few good friends, but none that lasted.

Making friends has never been super easy for me. I'm shy. I'm an incredibly open person so I tend to connect with people really quickly but it's all contingent on them engaging me because I don't know how to approach people and start conversations. When I went to college I decided that while I couldn't change that about myself I could say yes to every new experience, and I did, and I may have developed some really great lifelong friends if I'd stayed in school to the end, but I dropped out after two years.

I'm bad at keeping in touch with people and my closest friends were my boyfriends roommates anyway. Not that they were just his friends, but I did think that occasionally and I think I put all the responsibility on him to keep in touch with them. I miss them a lot actually, I wish it had been true that they'd become lifelong friends.

After two years at Western I dropped out and moved back to Seattle from Bellingham (and so did the boyfriend) so we lost touch with our college friends. We'd moved away, we'd left school, we just weren't in the same place as them in either life or location.

I've made some great friends in life. I've even made some really great girl friends in the past 5 years and that's something I never thought would happen. However, I've still felt like I missed out on the lifelong college friends thing.

I went back to school a few years ago to finish my degree and I got a second chance. I met a bunch of really cool people the second time around, which I thought would be hard because I was older but that didn't seem to matter. The problem comes now that I'm done with school. Like I said, I'm really bad at keeping in touch with people. Even if I only manage to keep one friend I made in college though, I'll count that as a success.

So, I made a point of keeping in touch with one friend I made in school the second time around. I decided, to relieve myself of trying to come up with things to say, I would send him e-mails with songs of the day and I did that for a little over a year. I decided to take the training wheels off though and, of course, I'm having some trouble. I don't know how to keep in touch with someone that I don't see everyday. Maybe I should reach for the crutch and re-start the songs of the day, but this inability to keep in touch with people, and the deeper inability to start conversations, is something I'd like to be able to change about myself.

It's in his kiss

2008-06-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school I used to tell my boyfriend(s) (if you can call them that, and the only reason I do is because I've yet to think of a more accurate term), I used to say to them, "kiss me like you mean it". There's this idea that a lot of women have that you can tell a lot of things from a kiss, not just how you feel (if a someone kisses you and you feel nothing then you know, without any further investigation that he's not for you), but how they feel. There's even a wildly popular song about it ("if you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss").

I have not really ever believed this or more accurately I've been on the fence about it. I was always more of the "a kiss is just a kiss" school of thought. When I told boys to kiss me like they meant it I always assumed that they could (regardless of how they really felt about me) but somehow the resulting kisses always fell short of that expectation so maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that there really is something you can tell just from a kiss. I have definitely always had a very specific idea about what makes a good kiss and a bad kiss and yet I've also found that even a remarkably bad kiss can be better than a remarkably good kiss if it makes me feel something.

A friend of mine would probably argue that the answers are in a look, not a kiss. She was recently talking about how hot Timothy Olyphant was in the movie Catch and Release, not because of anything about his appearance, but because of the way he looked at Jennifer Garner. I have a name for this look. I call it the fillet mignon look. You see, sometimes a guy will look at you like he's been starving for months and you are nice juicy fillet mignon. It's a difficult look to resist and, I think, a difficult look to fake (which makes it all the more impressive when you see it portrayed in film).

Perhaps you're wondering what brought all of this to mind. Well, I watched P.S. I love you this weekend. This wouldn't normally be my type of movie. I mean, yes, I'm a girl, so the lure of a good tear jerker isn't lost on me (nor is the lure of naked Jeffrey Dean Morgan lost on me), but I think tear jerkers have a very fine line to tread and this one, from the previews I'd seen, I thought probably crossed the line. You see, tragedy happens and in film there is a tendency to accentuate it with the obvious intention at tugging the viewers heart strings and that contrivance tends to put me off. This movie didn't cross that line though and I was pleasantly surprised. So pleasantly surprised, in fact, that I watched it twice.

In the film there is a minor character that puts potential dates to a rigorous test, first she asks if they're gay, then if they are single, then if they are employed and finally she kisses them. Mind you these are guys she's just introduced herself to, never met them before, and if they fail any of these tests she simply walks away. Clearly the first two are pretty vital tests, the third I might take issue with since she doesn't bother to get into the circumstances at all, but the fourth I really wonder about. Yes, if you kiss someone and feel nothing that could be a deal breaker, but if it's a complete stranger I think you might be skipping a few steps that might have some affect on what you feel when you kiss them (like getting to know them first). She's not the only one that puts a lot of weight on first kisses. The main character has a couple of first kisses as well, one falls short and she and the guy agree they are better as friends and another one that is so great she marries the guy. The girls in this movie clearly believe that the truth lies in his kiss. However, what really struck me were the looks that passed between these characters. Jeffrey Dean Morgan definitely gives Hillary Swank the fillet mignon look several times. If a guy looks at you like that you can't not feel something. You just can't.

Newsworthy

2008-05-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've shut off my mind in the last 6 months. I haven't been reading a lot, I haven't been writing much, and what I have been writing has been less coherent than I'd like. I'm going to pass the buck and put the blame on the fact that I've been sick a large portion of the last 6 months rather than examining the fact that maybe I've chosen not to think about anything too much.

One thing on my intellectual radar has remained (aside from television viewing which I still maintain is not necessarily a brain off activity). I love reading the newspaper. I don't read it cover to cover like some people. I pick and choose the articles I'm interested in. I sometimes do the crossword puzzle (or try to depending on the day). When I moved a while back I had to cancel my newspaper subscription because my new apartment is a lot more expensive than my old one and I was trying to save money, but my mom, knowing how I love my daily paper, got me a gift subscription so I wouldn't have to sacrifice that small pleasure.

Lately though I've noticed an alarming trend. I don't know if the people writing the news are as (alternately) bored, frustrated, and angry with what's going on in the world as I am, but the writing of those articles (in the world and business news sections) is severely less compelling lately than that of the arts, sports, dining and travel sections. I'm not talking about the stories themselves. A riveting story can lose a lot when poorly written and a boring one can gain a lot. I'm talking about just the writing, and the writing is markedly better in the more frivolous sections of the paper lately.

Since I'm on the subject of the paper I think I'll talk a little bit about some of the more interesting things I've read there lately.

In today's Seattle Times Jerry Brewer wrote a great column about how people shouldn't blame the negativity of the reporting about the Mariners (and Seahawks, and Sonics) on the reporters. He makes the excellent point that it's hard to put a positive spin on repeated losses, arrests, and legal battles over relocation of a long standing local team. I'm not interested in arguing the point. I agree with him and while that alone isn't enough to keep me from arguing the point I'm also distracted by something else he said. He referred to the Seahawks as "by far the most dependable Seattle franchise". I know I may date myself here, but I remember a time when the Seahawks were the local joke. I can't really say that any of the Seattle sports teams have ever been dependable (if dependable means that they win on a regular basis). The one truly dependable thing about Seattle sports teams is that they are constantly falling short of greatness (sometimes just barely short, making the playoffs but not to the championship, or making it to the championship but not winning it). I can only assume that he means the Seahawks have been the most dependable local team recently.

Yesterday's New York Times also had an article with a statement I found odd. The article was about the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". The film's star Viggo Mortensen is quoted in the article saying this about his 11-year-old costar Kodi Smit-McPhee, "...I don’t even think of him as a kid. There are things he’s done on this movie that I’ve never seen anybody do before. And there are many adult actors who never have a moment like he has every day." I'm not at all surprised that a kid is able to portray emotions that are elusive to adults. Kids are way less afraid to show any old emotion they have. It's true that with experience comes a complexity of emotion that kids might not yet possess, but with experience also comes a reluctance to share those emotions with anyone. Of course, it becomes a lot less scary to share your emotions when you're able to couch them as not really your own, but belonging to a character you're playing. However, everyone knows that they come from somewhere.

And finally, there's Huffington Post, which I know isn't technically a newspaper but we'll just look the other way for now. Huffinton Post gives us pearls like this article on how to identify a New York Woman. I think it's safe to assume I will never be mistaken for a New York Woman (nor would I want to be).

It's the little things

2008-05-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has a blog called "Little Moments" that's dedicated to tracking her progress in a photography class she's taking. I, of course, am so impressed with her for taking up photography, but also the title of her blog brings all sorts of other things to mind.

I'm a fan of little moments. People who know me well have probably seen me, at least one or two times, stop what I'm doing just to take in a moment and commit it to memory.

Right now, I'm on vacation. I'm two and a half weeks in to my third sinus infection in six months (during which time I also had strep throat once). I went to the doctor on about day nine of sickness but they told me to wait it out. Then, the day after I landed in Colorado for vacation, it got much, much worse. Luckily on day three of vacation I was able to get a prescription for antibiotics called in to a local pharmacy, but as is usually the case for me the antibiotics made me feel worse at first. Given my current state you might imagine my vacation to be ruined, but it hasn't been, because there have been some great moments.

First of all when I went to pick up my prescription a Three Dog Night song came on the radio in the drug store. The song was "Never Been to Spain" and it's one of my favorites. I love it for a few reasons, first of all it's a great song, second it reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of my all time favorite TV show (but that's another blog entry), and third it reminds me of some of the great little moments I had when I did go to Spain last year. The song seemed like a good omen so I started to cheer up. I even had a pretty good day despite being sick; I got a massage and sat in the vapor caves. It turns out I'm in a perfect vacation spot for rest and recuperation anyway.

Later that night my mother and I were trying to decide where to eat dinner and a woman called out to us that the restaurant we were passing had the best food and live music so we decided to try it out. We'd been there about twenty minutes, and the band (actually just one guy with a guitar and an amazing voice) started into "Never Been to Spain". It was a really great moment, sitting with my mom having a fabulous meal and listening to some great live music. Even if the set list hadn't consisted almost exclusively of my favorite songs it would still have been a great moment.

The next morning I felt worse though because, as previously noted, I'd started on antibiotics. I really didn't even want to get out of bed but my mom and I had plans to go see some old friends so I did. We drove about an hour to meet them and I slept the whole way there so I started to feel better. The town we met them in was super cute (I'd say it was so cute it freaked me out but I think the reference might be lost on most of my readers) and while we were there it started snowing. Now, my disdain for snow is pretty well known among my friends and family, but it is entirely based on the practicality of having to drive to work in it. So, when I'm on vacation, in the mountains, and my mom is driving because my birthday was just before we left and I haven't had the chance to renew my driver's license yet, and we're with some really great people who I haven't seen in a long time, well, in that case I love the snow and it makes for one of those really great moments. It was only a little bit of snow but it was enough.

The reason we came to this particular town for vacation was because I'd read an article in the New York Times about it that said it had the largest natural hot springs pool in the country (or maybe the world, I don't remember). However, the first day we got here it was threatening rain and I wasn't feeling well so we didn't go to it. We'd heard the weather was supposed to get better towards the end of the week anyway. The next day it did rain and also we had a bunch of other stuff we wanted to do so, again, we skipped the hot springs pool. Finally today we decided we had to go since it's our last day here before heading back to Boulder. We made the plan to go to the pool after we got back from the above mentioned lunch with old friends, but when we got back it was raining pretty hard. My mom wanted to go anyway. We were standing under the awning at our hotel and I said if it didn't stop raining I refused to go in the pool and she said it looked like it was about to let up. So, we went across the street to the pool and we changed and by the time we came out of the locker room there was no sign it had ever been raining. It was beautiful, and the "healing waters" were remarkably relaxing and actually did make me feel a little better, but that moment when we stepped out and the sun was shining was really terrific.

Some of my favorite little moments involve firsts, especially the first time I eat something I've never tried before. One of the great moments of my aforementioned trip to Spain last year involved my first ever taste of gazpacho. I was with a friend who didn't know me very well at the time so my stopping with the spoon half way to my mouth to enjoy the moment may have seemed a little odd to him. Tonight though, I was with my mother when I had my first bite ever of lobster. I'm not much of a shell fish eater, I've never really liked it (with the exception of crab), perhaps the distaste for shellfish is in my blood, my brother calls lobster (and shrimp) bugs of the sea. I really liked the lobster though. Not only that but just ordering it and the anticipation of eating it, and being here, on vacation with my mom (who is also one of my best friends), made me really, purely, happy.

You don't always have a camera handy, and a photograph won't always capture what makes one of the little moments in life so perfect, but I really think it's great that my friend is cataloging her efforts to capture them on film. While I don't have any pictures from this trip (yet), I think the little moments will stay with me anyway.

I still have my pride

2008-05-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

A lot of people seem to spend time and energy trying to figure out what their "type" is. Of course I'm talking about the things they look for in a mate and everyone has some things that they are attracted to, obviously, but personally I don't put a lot of stock in the idea that I have a type. I did recently find myself exclaiming that all the cute boys in the world seem to share the same astrological sign (Leo), and I do wonder at the fairly large coincidence that all of the guys I've ever had any romantic interest in have been Leos, but they don't share much else in common.

The first guy I fell for, in the 8th grade, was very Catholic. I asked him once, in jest, if he was going to come to school with ashes on his forehead the next day (Ash Wednesday) and he said no, in all seriousness, that he was going to church after school. He was tall (6'2") and skinny with light brown hair and he was painfully shy. The only reason he started talking to me was that I called him (to tell him that I didn't like him).

The next guy that caught my eye was a total Birkenstock wearing, tree hugging, granola head, hippy. He had blond hair and blue eyes and wasn't much taller than me. He was totally confident and focused. At 17 (two years older than me) he knew exactly what he wanted to do and be. He was going to go to Western and major in Environmental Studies and then become a park ranger. And that is exactly what he did. He was the first, and really only, person (so far) that made me feel like I might have that great personality I'm always hoping people will say I have. He gave me the brush off, but as he was doing it he told me, and I couldn't help but believe him because he wasn't the type of guy who said things he didn't mean, that he really liked me and that he was sure if I just let people really get to know me that other people, other guys, would like me too.

After that there was a punk (in both attitude, style, and taste in music). He had long, dark brown hair, shaved on the sides and dyed purple (my favorite color). He had 14 earrings and one belly button ring (he pierced it himself with a safety pin by the way). He played drums and wore golf pants cut off at the knee with converse and he smoked like a chimney. Every girl that met him wanted him (no matter what she thought her type was). The fact that he even looked twice at me was enough to have me fall head over heels for him, but he could not be tied down. I suppose I should have been flattered rather than profoundly confused when he was making out with me one day and trying to fix me up with his best friend the next day (and I mean that literally, it was the next day).

I fell pretty hard for the best friend ultimately too but it took me so long to make the transition that I missed my window with him. He was on the swim team at school and had the build to prove it. He was a huge U2 fan and had the self righteous attitude to prove that (but then so was I and so did I). He was somehow simultaneously confident and self conscious. I'm afraid I might have hurt him with my indecisiveness, but I don't feel too bad about it since he humiliated me with his indecisiveness.

My senior year I went out with a guy who was two years younger than me. I don't know that I really "fell for" him though. I liked him a lot, and at the time I said I loved him, and I probably did in a way, but not in that way. He was the younger brother of a guy I'd gone out with briefly the year before. My friend and I decided to adopt him into our circle of friends, to keep an eye on him because I was still sort of friends with his brother who'd graduated the previous year. We spent a lot of time hanging out with him over the summer and by the beginning of senior year he and I were a couple. I think he really wanted to go out with one of my other friends but she was taken so he settled for me. Not my most romantic relationship but (at 6 months) it was my longest at that point.

After high school I thought I met The One (that was when I believed there was only one person, a soul mate, for every one). He was hard working and smart and funny and good. I don't know how else to put it, he was a really good guy. I knew before I even met him that he would be someone important in my life and when I did meet him I fell in love quickly (if not immediately). It wasn't so fast for him and when he finally did fall in love with me he said he didn't know how he could have been so cold in the face of such kindness. What struck him the most about me was not my big brown eyes, or my hair (which I was quite proud of at the time), or my body, or anything on the surface. He was attracted to my kind heart and I think I loved him all the more for it. He was the kind of guy that you knew would never fail at anything he set his mind to both because he had natural talent (intelligence, athleticism, etc) and because he worked so hard. You could never begrudge him the good things that came to him because you knew he deserved everything good and that it couldn't happen to a better guy.

I became very picky after that. Before I had a new crush every time I turned around. I fell in and out of love at least once a year, but now I'm looking for a whole package. You know, someone who's got looks and personality, who gets me, who I'm attracted to but also have real feeling for. The first date I went on after my one serious relationship ended was with a Jewish boy from LA and I joked that perhaps Jewish boys from LA were going to be my new type. I didn't fall for that first guy though and for the life of me I can't figure out why I didn't feel anything for him since he was smart and funny and cute, too tall but that wouldn't stop me (I don't think), maybe it was just too soon after the break up (that's what I told him).

While I didn't fall for him the joke about Jewish boys from LA becoming my new type did turn out to be kind of apt because the next guy I did really fall for (two years later) was also a Jewish boy from LA. He has a talent that sometimes makes me feel very small by comparison. He'll ask me for my opinion about things he's written and I'll just wonder why. I wonder what he thinks I have to offer. I don't write poetry or short stories. I don't know anything about them. I write fluff. I am a hack. He writes things that are complex and interesting and subtle and often funny. But rather than being discouraged by it I'm challenged. I think that is one of the things that is so attractive to me. For the first time I don't look at someone who decides they want something and goes after it and just think, damn that's hot, I finally also think, damn why don't I do that.

They are an interesting mix aren't they? You want to know what they all have in common (all but one at least). They were all born between the 21st of July and the 22nd of August. I'm generally not a big believer in astrology. I read horoscopes mostly for laughs, but I can't really ignore this level of coincidence. In truth even random guys I meet and think are cute, like the bartender at my new favorite pub, turn out to be Leos. If I did buy into astrology this fact alone might actually be pretty good evidence against its precepts since I am Taurus and I've been told by people who do follow astrology that Taurus and Leo are supposed to be one of the worst combinations in the Zodiac. But of course I don't buy into it. And I certainly don't have a type.

The skeptic's faith

2008-04-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

I have to say I'm very excited about the return of scripted television. Have you been watching The Office? or How I Met Your Mother? I'm one of those people that gets really invested in the relationships of television characters, I'm what the chat rooms and web boards call a "shipper".

Buffy and Spike, Rory and Logan, Joey and Pacey, Veronica and Logan...I've shipped for all of these couples, and more recently Robin and Barney (on How I Met Your Mother) and Jim and Pam (on The Office). So, if you've been watching these shows you'll know why I'm so excited about TV this week.

Another relationship I'm routing for is Booth and Bones (on Bones). They're getting closer every episode. Though they haven't gotten together yet their relationship (still just friendship) leads me to another discussion of faith.

There was an episode of Bones several months ago (before the writers' strike) where Bones and Hodgins got kidnapped and buried alive. It was a serial kidnapper who buried people alive and then demanded huge ransoms from their friends and families. If he got paid he told them where their loved one was buried, if not he let them die.

So, Bones and Hodgins were buried alive and Booth and the rest of the lab techs were having trouble coming up with the ransom because while Hodgins did come from a rich family, he is the only surviving member so with him buried no one could access the money and Booth couldn't really negotiate with the kidnapper because Booth is FBI and the official stance of the FBI is to not negotiate.

Now, Bones is well known to be a skeptic. She doesn't believe in God, she believes in science (I won't get into that more than to say I don't see any reason not to believe in both). So, she and Hodgins only have a few minutes of consciousness left and he is trying to make peace with God but she tells him not to worry that Booth will find them. That statement, he explains to her, is evidence that she does have faith (which she emphatically denies).

Maybe all she has faith in is Booth's detective skills, and his determination, and the fact that he cares about her and Hodgins and life in general. Maybe. Those things she does have plenty of evidence of. However, those things don't constitute evidence that he will find them in time. There's evidence to support that he has the capability to find them and the desire and determination to find them, but there's no way of knowing when he will find them. He could easily be too late, but she believes he will not be and she believes it thoroughly. That's faith, as Hodgins points out to her and she is forced to admit.

I won't go so far as to say that we all have faith, but my point here is that some people think they have no faith because they don't believe in God, or aren't sure about God, when faith isn't about believing in God or not.

A few of my favorite things

2008-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

It's springtime, not that you'd know it from the weather here. There was snow and freezing rain on Friday and I had to walk to work in it. On the bright side if I should have kids some day I can now say to them that when I was their age I had to walk nine miles in the snow and freezing rain to get to work. Of course, I'll have to wait until they are almost thirty for that to really be accurate.

Anyhow, it's springtime, which is one of my favorite things and in honor of it here is an excerpt from an episode of Sports Night (another one of my favorite things) about baseball (another one of my favorite things):

(Jeremy is by the food tables when Casey comes in)
Casey: Hey, Jeremy, you got a second?
Jeremy: You bet.
Casey: I looked over your Cubs/Marlins tape. (hands Jeremy the tape and goes to make a sandwich)
Jeremy: Yes?
Casey: And it's good.
Jeremy: Thank you.
Casey: It's very good.
Jeremy: Thanks.
Casey: Especially for your first time out.
Jeremy: Thank you very much.
Casey: I guess the one note I would have for you would be about length.
Jeremy: Yes?
Casey: Yeah. Usually we get thirty to forty seconds for each game. A little bit more if it's a game chock-full of spectacular plays and/or play-off consequences, and a little less if it goes the other way, but thirty to forty seconds is usually the rule of thumb.
Jeremy: I see. And how long did mine run?
Casey: Eight and a half minutes.
Jeremy: Ah.
Casey: Yeah.
Jeremy: That's long.
Casey: Yeah, it ran a little bit over, yeah.
Jeremy: I don't know what to do.
Casey: You should make it shorter.
Jeremy: I've tried everything.
Casey: You should try making it shorter.
Jeremy: What's the key?
Casey: In this case?
Jeremy: Yeah.
Casey: Making it a lot shorter.
Jeremy: I can't imagine what I'd cut.
Casey: Well, you start off with Cedric, the lead-off batter, in the top of the first inning.
Jeremy: Yes.
Casey: Despite the fact that nobody scored until the fifth inning.
Jeremy: There's action beyond scoring.
Casey: Yeah, but Cedric grounded out to the shortstop and was thrown out at first by quite a large margin.
Jeremy: Yeah.
Casey: Well, that is what is called a routine ground ball. In your search for things that are newsworthy, let the word "routine" serve as a danger sign.
Jeremy: There's nothing routine about it. Casey, the guy's hitting .327 since the All-Star break, he's drawn 22 walks in the lead-off position, and he's a threat to steal second every time you put him on. He fouled off seven pitches.
Casey: And you show each and every one of them.
Jeremy: You bet I do.
Casey: We usually just show the pitch that puts the ball into play.
Jeremy: But then you miss the battle.
Casey: The battle?
Jeremy: Yeah. He started him off with a fastball up and in. Then slider away, slider away, comes back with a split finger change, drops the curve off the table, sets him up off-speed, then jambs him high and tight. That's what got him out.
Casey: It was a ground ball to the shortstop.
Jeremy: The inevitable conclusion to a job well-done.
Casey: (frustrated sigh) We have fourteen baseball games to cover.
Jeremy: Yes.
Casey: Thirty seconds a piece.
Jeremy: Right.
Casey: Your tape is eight and a half minutes.
Jeremy: I'm at a loss.
Casey: You gotta make it shorter!
Jeremy: I'm just not seeing it.
Casey: (sigh) All right, come with me. Come on. (both leave)
(later)
(Casey and Jeremy stand in the editing room, looking tired and frustrated)
Casey: We've been at this for two hours now. Which is just slightly longer than your coverage of the seventh inning stretch.
Natalie: (taps on window) How's it going in there?
Casey: (sardonically) Goin' real good.
Jeremy: Casey and I are having some very healthy creative differences.
Natalie: Casey listens to the Starland Vocal Band, so I wouldn't take any stock in --
Casey: (marching up to window) Go away from me now!
Natalie: Shout if you need me --
Casey: Now! (Natalie runs off) Okay, this section here where the batter taps dirt off his shoe and spits four times?
Jeremy: We can't cut that!
Casey: Jeremy --
Jeremy: No, the storm clouds are gathering.
Casey: All right, just out of curiosity, what kind of voice over would you have me write for this moment?
Jeremy: What's wrong with "the storm clouds are gathering?"
Casey: The storm clouds aren't gathering, he's cleaning his shoe!
Jeremy: He's breaking Carrera's pitching rhythm.
Casey: (sighs)The battle?
Jeremy: The battle.
Casey: The battle. Okay, look --
Jeremy: If people just want the score they can listen to the radio. We have an opportunity to affect their appreciation of baseball.
Casey: (rubs temples and clasps hands as if in prayer) God knows you've affected mine.
Dana: (entering room) Casey, what are you working on?
Casey: An epic miniseries.
Jeremy: It's the Cubs/Marlins.
Dana: I gotta make room for Danny's apology. Just give me the double off the wall, the homer in the 5th and the error at third.
Jeremy: That's a travesty!
Dana: I need it in my hands right now. Casey, we're on the air in fifteen minutes.
Casey: All right. I gotta go change, Jeremy. The storm clouds are gathering. (leaves with Dana)

Oh no I didn't

2008-04-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently was lamenting to me that she sometimes gets accused of being defensive when she's just making an argument. I used to get that a lot too and, I wondered, when does defending yourself against a false accusation become "being defensive". By definition being defensive shouldn't have the negative connotation that it does, as defending oneself isn't really a bad thing (or isn't always a bad thing). However, people tend to say it when they think someone is trying to defend themselves when really they're guilty (or wrong).

I don't usually react that way when I'm wrong. If someone accuses me of something I've actually done, or argues a point with me where I'm not sure I'm in the right, I may try to deny it, but I won't do so vehemently (which is what most people would call "defensive"). I tend to fly off the handle when someone says something false about me which then just fans the fire because they see my "defensiveness" and take it as evidence of guilt.

In the 8th grade when my friends accused me of having a crush on this guy in our algebra class I stood up (on the school bus) and screamed at them. The thing is I didn't even really know the guy. Algebra was the only class I had with him, he was new at our school, and I'd never really talked to him. I made quite the scene. So, I called him to tell him he'd probably be hearing about it the next day at school. He asked me if it was true that I liked him and I told him no, but that it wasn't that I didn't like him, I just didn't know him. We talked for about an hour and by the end of the call I kind of did like him. So it worked out well, but in the beginning I was absolutely adamant that no one think I liked this guy who I didn't even know.

My senior year in high school a rumor started that I stuffed my bra. It's true that I did gain a cup size at the beginning of my senior year in high school (regular readers of this blog may have a theory about why, I know I do), but the one thing I've never in my life done is try to make my boobs look bigger than they are. I was one of two kids at my school who had to get their first bra in the 4th grade, so if anything I was embarrassed about the size of my chest (until very recently). Also, what I suspected to be the real reason my boobs got bigger would have been far more damaging to my reputation at school. I guess I should consider myself lucky that they didn't know the real reason, but the thing is, I never minded people spreading rumors about me that were true. It was when someone said something false about me that I really got my hackles up.

So, when someone says to me, "there's no need to get defensive", I have to disagree. When someone has accused you of something you didn't do, and then calls you defensive for trying to set them right, that's the definition of adding insult to injury.

Over the years it happens to me less and less because I've realized that it's not what you say that makes people think you're being defensive, it's how you say it. I've learned to keep my temper in check which was actually pretty easy since my temper only ever flared in instances like these. In fact I've been described by some as the most even tempered person in the world. There was always just this one exception to my even temper.

Last night, at a friends birthday party, we got to talking about the misdeeds of our youth (or lack there of in some cases), and it turned out I was the bad seed of the group (go figure). My mom was there and we got to talking about things that she thought I'd done in high school as opposed to things I'd actually done. She was way off base. I was upset that she thought, for example, that I'd been drinking beer in my step-dads car (which was essentially like saying I'd been drinking and driving). I just told her in my best debater tone that a) until I got to college I'd never tasted beer and b) until I got to college most of the alcohol I'd had at all was in drinks served to me by her at family functions. We all laughed and no one accused me of getting defensive.

The Ballpark and the Dog Park

2008-04-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing a lot lately. In fact, I haven't been writing at all lately which is unfortunate because I'm almost done with something I've been working on since November, but I haven't written more than a couple pages in 3 months. I haven't even posted a blog in over a month. I just haven't had anything to say.

So, since I don't have anything to say I'm going to follow the premise that actions speak louder than words and take the cue from some of my friends blogs. I'm going to tell you what I've been doing while I haven't been saying anything.

The last two years I've rediscovered my love of live theater and of course, I have season theater tickets again this season. There's one more show left in the season. The last show I went to (How, How, Why, Why, Why) was one of the best this year, though I think my favorite of this season is still Murderers.

I took a trip to California to visit family. It had been two years since I'd been down to visit them so that trip was overdue. It was such a short trip though that I didn't get to see my friends down there so I'll have to go back again soon.

I've been spending a lot of time with my friends and family. One of my best friends is moving so I've been hanging out with her a lot. She's only moving an hour away so it's not like I'll never see her but it does mean that we can't spontaneously decide to go for drinks or, as she pointed out, to a baseball game after work. So, that's what we've been doing. Last week we met up for drinks and dinner and this week we went to ball game.

It was a great game too. It was the perfect spring day, the first really warm day here, so they had the roof open. We sat in the Hit it Here Cafe which I'd never done and Ibanez hit two home runs (he almost hit it there which I always wonder about, you know, does anyone ever actually hit it there). There were a couple Angels fans sitting nearby and the guys in the next row down from us got into the smack talk which is always fun. I had to agree with them, it's hard to believe that the Angels have fans since LA already has real team to route for (the Dodgers).

I've also been spending a lot of time with my mom. My schedule has changed and I've had to adopt the early to bed, early to rise philosophy which hasn't been easy for me. Not that I've ever really been a night owl, but my ideal would be to go to bed around 1:00 and get up at 9:00. What I am, really, is not a morning person or a night person but a middle of the day person and now that I'm getting off work at 3:30 in the afternoon I've been a little bored. I decided that my mom's dog could also really use some entertainment so my mom and I have been taking the dog to the off-leash dog park twice a week. In fact, I'm about to go there now so I'll leave it at that.

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say soon.

Decide to be in a good mood

2008-03-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I was exhausted, getting sick again, and I'd just come home from saying goodbye to my best friend who'd just come to town for three days before returning home (half way across the world). I was feeling kind of lousy and then I did something I've never done before. I watched the special edition DVD commentary on Say Anything.

It's not that I'm opposed to commentary tracks, in fact I love them and usually listen to them immediately upon buying a DVD. It's also not like I dislike Cameron Crowe, John Cusack or Ione Skye. Cameron Crowe is one of my favorite writer/directors and John Cusack one of my favorite actors. I've always found them both to have interesting things to say in interviews or on other commentary tracks I've listened to, and imagined the same to be true of Ione Skye though I haven't seen her interviewed much.

I can only explain not listening to this commentary before because it's possibly my favorite movie. I love this movie so much that at some point I lent it to someone and had to buy a second copy before I got it back from them because I watch it that often. So, when I put it in, even if I think that this will be the time I watch it with the commentary track on I always end up just watching the movie.

This time though, I decided to watch with it with the commentary track on and I discovered something great. The movie is ostensibly about an isolated genius girl who finds a love that helps her see the world in a way she never allowed herself to before, but beneath the surface this is a movie about the revolutionary power of optimism.

The character of Lloyd Dobler was always written as an optimist but originally Crowe had written him as a somewhat blind optimist. John Cusack didn't want to play that part. He said he'd only play the part if the character was fully aware. He wanted Lloyd to know full well that the world can sometimes be an awful place and that sometimes horrible things happen to good people, but to chose optimism anyway. They talk about this element of the story repeatedly, but two instances stood out in particular.

The first was in scene that I'm fond of quoting where Lloyd is talking to his sister about the crap she's had to deal with. He tells her that he's not her dead beat ex that left her a single mother, and he's not their parents who left him with her either. He ends the speech by saying, "how hard is it to just decide to be in a good mood and then be in a good mood", and it's one of my top five favorite movie lines ever. Of course the answer is that it is sometimes unbelievably hard, which Lloyd seems to realize, and yet he still does it.

Crowe said in the commentary that when they were shooting it he kept asking Cusack to deliver it more cheerfully, and Cusack said he'd try it that way, but that he wanted to do some takes his own way, which Crowe let him do and ended up using the more somber takes in the final cut. The end result is a character that sees everything, he sees all the bad that life has to offer (absent parents, dead beat dads, etc) and still believes in the good.

The second instance in the commentary that stood out was at the very end. In the scene where Lloyd visits Diane's dad in prison to deliver a letter to him from his daughter. Mr. Court insults Lloyd in every way he possibly can before Lloyd has a chance to give him the letter, but he does give it to him. As he's reading the letter Mr. Court is upset because it seems so angry, he opines that it must get better and Lloyd tells him to skip to the end, that it does get better "if it's the version that's signed 'I still can't help loving you'". When it turns out that it isn't that version Mr. Court is dismayed but Lloyd says, "Just knowing that a version like that exists, knowing that just for a minute she felt that and wrote 'I can't help loving you'. That has to be worth something". In the commentary John Cusack calls that line "optimism as a revolutionary act".

Lloyd sees the world as it is, he sees the good and the bad, he just chooses to focus on the good and that is revolutionary. One of the other things that they discuss on the commentary is the fact that women are constantly lamenting that they can't find a man like Lloyd. I suppose that means one who will love them unconditionally and see loving them as the primary focus of his life and I get that desire, I do, but for me I think the goal has always been more to be like Lloyd myself than to find a guy like him.

You may notice that one of the quotes in the header here is something Lloyd said in Say Anything about not knowing what he wanted to do. It's no secret that I, like Lloyd, am somewhat aimless. I take comfort, like he does, in the fact that while "I don't know, at least I know that I don't know". I identify with Lloyd Dobler. In the end of the commentary Cameron Crowe relates an incident that happened in a bar the first time someone recognized John Cusack and asked if he was Lloyd. Cusack replied, "on my better days, yes I am" and Cameron Crowe later used the line (in Almost Famous). I too like to think, on my better days, I am Lloyd Dobler (so to speak). I like to think that I too can use my optimism as a revolutionary act.

If faith is a choice and optimism is a type of faith then I choose optimism. So, even though I'm still sick, and this is the twelfth or thirteenth time in as many months that I've been sick, I'm going decide to be in a good mood and then be in a good mood.

Vince Mira: The best of old and new

2008-03-03T23:11:00.000-08:00

Last week I got a last minute invite from my dad to a show at the Triple Door. I didn't know much about the artist, Vince Mira, other than what my dad had told me, that he's 15 years old and primarily known for impersonating Johnny Cash. I didn't know what to expect, but my dad said he was really good so it seemed like a safe bet.

Mira wore Converse and a rhinestone studded shirt with a white tie. He played a guitar almost as big as him and he sang with a voice bigger than any other I've heard. I think Mira's voice is a little smoother than Cash's but the similarity really is amazing. He sang a few original songs as well and they stood up remarkably well next to the Johnny Cash classics that are his staple.

I think the thing that struck me most though about the show was the collaborative aspect. It made me think of a time in music history before I was born that I feel like I really missed out on. The time of variety shows, when several bands would tour together, maybe even playing some songs together. Like Johnny Cash did, with the Carter Family, and the other Sun artists. Until this show I think I'd seen one concert where all the bands/artists on the ticket played together. It just seems like something that doesn't happen anymore.

At this show, the back up band (The Roy Kay Trio, an excellent rockabilly band, also from Seattle) was also one of the opening acts. Another one of his opening bands was headed up by the co-author of one of Mira's original songs (which they sang together). He'd give the stage to his collaborators to do their own thing and then he'd come back and have them join him in duets. He did an especially great duet of Jackson with Amy Nicole Lewis who also sang back up for him with her two sisters on a couple of songs. The Lewis Sisters certainly invite comparisons to the Carter Family and definitely added even more to the collaborative feel of the show.

Vince Mira is a spectacular musician with a voice that I think could fill any room around and still seem larger than life. I think he's not just keeping alive the music of Johnny Cash, he's also seems to be keeping alive that a spirit of musical collaboration that has been noticeably absent from the musical landscape lately.

Vivaldi had four seasons, can't LA have two?

2008-02-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

There is a rigidness that I don't like about television. The strict seasonal aspect, with pilots at a certain time each year, then "mid season replacements", then nothing in the summer. It's gotten a little bit better in recent years, the whole "mid season replacement" idea is actually pretty new, and the major networks have taken to trying out new shows in the summer sometimes. The cable networks, of course, don't really subscribe to the "season" that the broadcast networks do and in the past 3-5 years the cable networks have been busy filling their schedules with original programming. It's getting better, and now the president of NBC has vowed to abolish the traditional pilot development season, but there still exists this weird sense that television is somehow bound and beholden to the season.

The recent writers strike is, in part to thank for the NBC decision to eliminate pilot season, but it also has served to highlight the bizarre and seemingly random television season. Production has restarted on most shows in the last couple weeks, but many are altering story lines, and working at a frantic pace, and still planning to only put out a fraction of the number of episodes they would have had it not been for the strike. It seems to me that while the strike made any orders for certain numbers of episodes void it would be in the best interest of the companies that produce these shows, and the networks that air them, to put on a full "season" even if it meant airing new episodes well into the summer (which is normally a barren wasteland of re-runs and the occasional reality show).

I read today on Huffington Post that the planned storyline for Josh Jackson on Grey's Anatomy had to be scrapped due to the strike. My love of Josh Jackson and the characters he plays is well documented so it should come as no suprise that I was really looking forward to seeing what the Grey's writers had in store for him. Now I'll never know. The Office has scrapped what was supposedly a hilarious Christmas Episode because of the strike. Part of that is that they, like all shows, are trying to condense their season to finish at least close to the same time they would have had there not been a strike and a Christmas episode would logically be easy to cut since it would now be airing in April instead of December. Perhaps some of their actors also have other gigs lined up for the summer hiatus already, but I think the majority of the reason these shows are trying to condense is that they don't know how many episodes the networks would be willing to take.

All the highest paid members of the casts and crews of these shows (i.e. the stars, and show-running writers) who likely had enough in the bank to hold them through the strike feel terribly for their lesser paid colleagues, especially the non-union crew members or those who belong to other unions that weren't on strike (like teamsters). Many people were put out of work and had no union strike fund to help them through three months of unemployment. So, if the networks said they'd like these shows to complete their full 22 (or however many) episode seasons, I suspect that everyone involved (be it writers, actors, crew members, etc) would jump at the chance to do that (barring other things they're already committed to). Sure it might leave them with a cliffhanger in mid-July which people will only have to wait two months (instead of three) to find out the conclusion of, but I can't imagine that would matter to many people.

I can't imagine why the networks wouldn't just put these shows on the air well into June or July in order to finish out the story arcs they had in the works. Viewers will be happier with completed story lines. I suppose there are nuances regarding the advertising (which was largely paid for "up front") and possibly summer schedules (of crappy reality tv) that the networks may already be committed to, but it seems to me like the networks are hanging on to a broken system out of, I can only assume, pure nostalgia.

It seems like advertisers would be happier (and therefore pay more money for air time) if there was new original programming on year round, with no breaks (people don't stop buying in the summertime). If advertisers were happier, and paying more money for air time, that would make the network execs happy as well. If they had to fill twice as much time with original programming that would also make producers, actors, writers, agents, etc. (everyone else who makes their living off of television) happy as well. They could still have a full season be 22-24 episodes giving the creative workers several months off to work on film projects (or take vacations). Just run one show in a given time-slot from September thru February and a different one from March thru August.

Television fans would also be happy because there would be more content for them to choose from. It also might mean that shows with rabid fan bases that end up getting cut, might be given a longer chance to gain an audience because the networks would have a lot more time to fill and might not be so willing to cut great shows just because they were under performing right out of the gate.

We've all heard the Seinfeld story. It originally aired in the summer (premiered July 5, 1989) because the network didn't have a lot of confidence in it. It didn't get huge ratings at first and was shelved. NBC brought it back in 1991 as a mid-season replacement and it went on to become the highest rated sit-com in history. Both of Seinfeld's chances came at times that were non-traditional. Obviously the network executives had taken a personal liking to it, enough that they were willing to give it a second chance, but not enough to risk their television "season" on it. Aren't we all glad they gave it those chances? Even if they were in the summer and then the "mid-season"? Should I get into a list of wildly popular shows that premiered at mid-season because the networks didn't trust them to launch the season with (Grey's Anatomy, for example). Or I could list some great shows that didn't make it but might have if they'd been given a chance to build an audience rather than being cancelled after half a season or less (like Firefly and Kitchen Confidential).

I know it's sometimes hard to tell in LA but there really is more than one season. According to Vivaldi there are four, but I'll settle for two.

Perhaps Queen said it best

2008-02-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

Lately I've had a tendency to fixate on things. I'll hear something, or read something and it will suddenly dominate my thoughts. Last night, just after I'd finally purged myself of my fixation on disengaged youth, a friend of mine sent me a short story he'd written. Now, he's a remarkably talented writer so it's not uncommon that he'll write things that strike a chord with me, but this story did more than that.

It did strike a chord. I have a deeply held belief that we learn the most important things about love and relationships from our parents, primarily by the example they set for us, but ideally they tell us important things about love and relationships as well. The parents in the story are described as best friends in addition to husband and wife and they impart the message to their kid that it's imperative to be best friends. My own parents were divorced, and I now realize that their friendliness toward each other was a facade but they seemed like good friends. From them I too learned of the importance of friendship. That's not why the story has me so fixated though.

I am by no means a relationship expert (though people sometimes treat me like one) and I've never been married, but in my life I've had one serious relationship and the hardest part of the break up was losing my best friend. He's still a friend, but not my best friend anymore.

By all accounts I took that break up remarkably well. He's the only one who really saw me break down about it (because he was there when it happened and because he's the only one that I really let my gaurd down with anyway), but by the next day I was fully on the it's-for-the-best bandwagon and it wasn't just a facade. I really believe that it was for the best. I think he's happy (happier than he was or could have been with me) and I think I'm happy (happier than I was with him). Not that we were unhappy together, but it's relative.

If you asked me I would tell you I'm honestly and truly over it and have been since very soon after it happened. There's one thing though that still hurts and that's the fact that I lost my best friend.

I met him when I was 18 years old and fell in love right away. Not like love at first sight. Lets be honest, when you see someone and immediately think you're in love that's usually more lust than anything else. The first time I saw him I didn't think I was in love, I thought he was going to be a very important part of my life, that I had to get to know him, and that I would always have him in my life somehow. It took three meetings (the first two of which resulted from small-worldy coincidences because I was too shy to actually talk to him in the class we had together) before he started to actually remember me, and about eight months for him to decide he wanted to be with me. During those eight months we became best friends. People who didn't know any better often thought we were already a couple because we were always together and very affectionate (he always had his arm around me, or we'd be holding hands, sometimes we slept together in the literal sense, etc). He's the one that took me out on Valentine's Day, and my 19th birthday. We used to say that we shared a brain.

When we finally broke up I was 26. He'd been my best friend for 8 years and I was beside myself about losing that. It took me about a day to reconcile myself to losing my boyfriend, but it was probably a year later by the time I got over the impulse to immediately e-mail him whenever I had news to share. It's been about three and a half years since we broke up and now we probably e-mail each other once every couple of months, but occasionally I still see something or hear something and have the impulse to call him or e-mail him because he's the only person that would get it in the same way I do.

I've talked a few times about dating and how I hate it and how the guys that like me are rarely the guys I like and even when they are there always seems to be something missing. I'm not the type to compare new guys to my old boyfriend. If I did though, they wouldn't be falling short on looks, or intelligence, or sense of humor, or kindness, but it's hard to compete with best friends. I mean, my other best friends could but they're all women and I'm not attracted to women (even attractive women).

Why should I care?

2008-02-19T20:52:00.000-08:00

I read an article yesterday in the New York Times and I can't stop thinking about it. The head line was "News Isn't Wasted On the Young" and the gist of it was that the presidential candidates and the news outlets are trying to reach a younger audience and succeeding. Young people are interested in politics (and news in general) more now than they have been in decades, but that is not because today's youth are more interested in the news or more engaged, it's because an effort is being made to reach them.

I've been thinking about it for a day and a half because something about it rubbed me the wrong way. I finally realize that it strikes me as wrong that the news media should have to cater to young people, to make the news more appealing to young people. The article refers to the 18-29 demographic as "supposedly disengaged" and goes on the say "maybe the news gave up on them not the other way around". The last part of that statement acknowledges that young people weren't always disengaged and puts the blame on the shoulders of the people reporting the news.

I just don't think that's an accurate reflection. The news and the way it's reported didn't change until recently (in an effort to court, or rather hold on to, the younger demographic). The reason kids are interested in politics and the news now is that there are issues that they feel concern them. There's a war on and guess who fights when it comes time to go to war. That's right, people between the ages of 18 and 29. So, the people at war and all their high school and college buddies back home are concerned, they are paying attention and they are voting. That makes sense, and I suspect if you look at the statistics you'll find that young people suddenly became more interested in politics and news every time their countries went to war.

What bothers me is that it takes a war to get young people interested in politics. I know it's human nature to care more when you feel like something affects you, but what I don't understand is that young people think the issues that politicians discuss all the time (health care, education, social security, civil liberties, etc) don't affect them. The people who are receiving social security benefits right now don't need to care what happens to the social security program in the future, their benefits are ensured. It's people between the ages of 18 and 29 who should care what happens with social security because while it may not affect them right now, they are the ones that will be affected, when they retire, by the changes made to social security today.

The article says of this demographic, "they don't read newspapers, they don't watch news on television, they don't care about politics", but that "a long dormant civic reflex in young people is roaring to life". It concludes with a question, "can old media take this current round of speed-dating and convert it into something that lasts". Putting the onus on the media to appeal to young people, but I think the responsibility should be with parents, and educators, to instill that "civic reflex" and to teach kids that these issues that the politicians are talking about may seem like they don't affect them but they do, or the will. It shouldn't be too hard, it's a similar refrain to a standard lesson parents and teachers are always trying to teach kids: the choices you make today will have an affect, possibly for years to come, that may not be immediately apparent.

I feel obligated to mention that I am still part of this much discussed demographic, at the tail end, and that I've been interested in politics since well before I could vote. I remember debating the merits of Dukakis versus Bush Sr. in 1988 (when I was 10). What made me interested in politics at such a young age? Someone taught me that it was important to pay attention to the world around me and to care about things even if, on the surface, they don't seem to affect me because they might and even if they don't they affect someone and I should care about that too.

The world is my oyster...or actually my Valentine.

2008-02-15T22:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Of course, I am a big fan of Valentine's Day despite the fact that this makes four in a row that I've been single. As someone who values love, of all kinds, I appreciate a day specifically designed for celebrating it. Even if Valentine's Day is often viewed as a celebration of only romantic love, I chose not to see it that way and celebrate all kinds of love.

However, in honor of Valentine's Day, I'm going to explore romantic love a little. Actually not just romantic love, but that kind of love that seems to be all the other kinds combined. Sometimes you meet someone and you have a definite romantic feeling for them but it doesn't seem to be enough because you want it all. Okay, I want it all. I want someone that I can connect with on an emotional level, but also on an intellectual level, on a physical level, on all levels.

It's elusive, and it usually comes in stages. Sometimes the physical first, sometimes the emotional first, sometimes something else first. For me it's often the intellectual first. I'm a sucker for smart and funny guys. They say something that strikes a chord with me, they make a joke, they know about and like the same things that I like. Then the physical. My heart starts racing when I see them, and it gets to the point that I start shaking like a leaf just sitting next to them not out of nerves so much as...I don't know...excitement. Then it's the emotional, I realize in a flash, that they make me feel something.

The problem with finding someone that you feel all of those things for is that relationships are fragile and even when someone does feel the same things for you it doesn't always make a lasting relationship, or they may not ever feel the same thing for you. I've talked before about having faith that if you confess your feelings to them that either you'll be one of the couples that makes it or that at least you won't lose the friendship if the relationship fails or the person doesn't feel the same for you, but what about after that. Your relationship has failed but you're still friends, or you confessed your feelings and were rejected but you're still friends.

I have trouble after the fall. Knowing what it's like to feel all those things for one person I'm just not willing to settle for anything less. I meet my fair share of guys that I like who like me and maybe I even feeling something for them, there's something there, but I just can't go for it because it's not enough something. It's not that I'm pining because frankly after my part has played out, I've made my confession and been rejected, or I've put everything I have into a relationship and it's failed, as long as I haven't lost that person from my life, if I can maintain the friendship, I'm happy with that. I'm just not okay with settling.

If it had only happen once, where I'd met someone that I fell for on every level, then my faith might be shaky enough for me to settle. I might think I'd had my one chance and had failed, or lost, and that it would never happen again. The thing is, it's happened to me more than once. So, I have to assume that it could happen again, and if it's not a once in a lifetime feeling then I have to keep looking for it and, being a person of faith, I have to believe that I'll find it again.

In the meantime I have lots of people I love in lots of different ways and I choose to celebrate all of those kinds of love on Valentine's Day.

Electability, Electability, Electability

2008-02-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

I have some issues with this post on the Slog (the Stranger's daily blog). While I thought portions of this argument were well and passionately stated I don't think that they are especially well thought out.

My first problem is that when you talk about and think about politics as a fight and the desire to win that fight you're really talking about, and should be thinking about two different issues, two different fights. There's the fight to win elections and then there is the fight to get things done (to pass legislation). When Mr. Nelson says, "shouldn't we want a fight", he's talking about the election exclusively and maybe it's at least partially true with regard to an election but he's only partially right in that case and completely wrong in the case of the fight that starts when the election is over.

In an election, who cares how much republicans hate Clinton...well except that republicans hating her would likely bring more of them out to the polls which, yes, would make her less electable and I really can't comprehend why he doesn't think electability is legitimate concern. What does it matter how well a candidate can "carry the news about democratic values" if they can't get elected. If they can't get elected that's a loss not just for that candidate, but also for those values. So, yes we should be concerned about which candidate is more electable, though I agree that we shouldn't use polling data as the exclusive indicator of it nor should we use how much republicans appear to hate one candidate or the other as the exclusive indicator.

Putting aside the issue of Clinton being unelectable because republicans hate her (and it's not just republicans by the way, its many swing voters as well, in fact I've even been known to say that I might seriously consider voting for McCain if Clinton ends up winning the nomination and I'm solidly a democrat), she would also be ineffective as President because she's polarizing. She's alienated a lot of people who's support she would need to get things accomplished (again, not just republicans, David Brooks wrote an interesting op-ed piece about how badly she's alienated Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman). Electability is the first fight, effectiveness is the second and encouraging the other side to fight your agenda is the last thing you want if you want to get anything done. You most certainly don't want someone in the top office of the country who's going to inspire people to try to block his or her legislation just because they don't like him/her.
I know that Sean Nelson wasn't actually advocating for Clinton in his Slog post, in fact he's doing somewhat the opposite, but to advocate ignoring electability is irresponsible (unless you wouldn't mind another republican administration).

My second qualm is this,

"Let’s just say hypothetically: if there were a democratic candidate with an authentically liberal agenda, who spoke to us in language that stirred our souls (not just comparatively), and who was honest the way even forthright-seeming politicians simply can’t be, would it not be worth getting behind him or her not only if but because it made the other side—which, as you rightly say, really is the other side because they want truly different things—upset"

My problem with it is that I don't think anyone, including Mr. Nelson, would vote for this hypothetical candidate because a candidate with an "authentically liberal agenda", if they are "honest the way even forthright-seeming politicians simply can't be" would have to admit publicly that they weren't going to be able to get that authentically liberal agenda put into practice no matter how hard they fought for it and that, therefore, they would have to compromise once elected. The reason politicians can't just be honest is that no one would vote for them if they said, "I'd like to do all these things, but it depends on the House and the Senate and I have little to no control over those things so it might not happen and when push comes to shove, if I have to compromise some of these things to get others done I'm going to do that because the alternative is getting nothing at all done simply because I stuck to my ideals too closely"

At the caucus I attended on Saturday a woman argued passionately for Clinton because she'd attended both rallies and Clinton laid out a timeline for when she was going to accomplish each of her campaign promises where as Obama simply said he would like to accomplish certain things. I think the certainty Clinton offered, while it may be comforting to some, is wildly dishonest. She can't possibly know that she will be able to accomplish those things at all much less within a certain time period. She can say she wants to, and that she'll fight for the things that matter to her (and to us), but she can't say that within 30 days, or 6 months, or a year, she'll have passed any legislation because that's not up to her exclusively and (as previously noted) she may be less able to deliver on those promises because there are more people in Congress and the Senate who might vote against her legislation just because they don't like her (or because she alienated them when she was First Lady). I get the impression that Clinton thinks she, through sheer force of will, can get whatever she wants accomplished, but that's unrealistic. She needs other people to work with her, but working across party lines to get things done is, if anything, a peripheral part of her rhetoric. Where as it is a, if not the, central component of Obama's rhetoric. He talks about getting both sides together to get things done, there's still a possibility that he won't be able to do that but at least he wants to try.

My third problem is that Nelson talks about race as a factor that makes Obama less electable without acknowledging that sex is a factor, in the same way, that makes Clinton less electable as well. Nicholas Kristof, in his editorial about electability, quotes Shirley Chisholm as saying that she's encountered more discrimination for being a woman than for being black and goes on to say that both polling data and psychological research support the fact that sexism is more prevalent than racism in America. Not that racism isn't also prevalent, but that sexism is more so.

If you're having a discussion about electability, the current polling data says Clinton can't beat McCain but Obama can, this country's sexism outpaces its racism, and Clinton's polarizing effect on both the general population and her fellow elected officials, all point to her being less electable than Obama and, unlike Mr. Nelson, I believe that it's a very important factor to consider, if not the most important one. We come to the same conclusion, he supports Obama and so do I, but I have to disagree when he says that electability isn't a stirring reason to back a candidate. It's not the only reason to back Obama, not nearly, but it is definitely a stirring one.

Like I said, the argument is well stated, but while it contains some logical components it is essentially an emotional argument based on a idealized political landscape that is far from reality. Would it be nice if there were political candidates who's ideology lined up precisely with your own? yes. Would it be just great if you could vote for them in a primary (or caucus) based solely on that ideological agreement without any regard to whether or not they could carry the general election? yes. Would it be wonderful if idealism were all it took to get things done once elected? yes. None of those things are true though. You have to think about which candidates are closest to your ideals, and of those candidates which one(s) stand a good chance of getting elected and of those which one(s) would be able to put more of those ideals into practice. In a primary (or caucus) it really comes down to the last two (electability and potential effectiveness) because the candidate's ideologies are very similar, where they primarily differ is in their ideas about how to go about achieving their ideological goals.

That bowl is just super

2008-02-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

I didn't watch the Superbowl. I know it's un-American, and I should count myself lucky that McCarthy's gone, but I don't really like football or even commercials really so what's the point. I did watch it once, when the Seahawks were playing.

The thing is, I think I could see myself liking football, if I understood it better. In fact I loved football when I was in middle school and through my sophomore year in high school even though I didn't understand it at all. I think I could have continued loving it into college if the college I first went to had a football team or if, when I went back to college (at a school that did have a football team) I hadn't been working all the time.

I think for me football was always about community. I lived in a really small town as a kid, so small that it didn't even have its own middle school and high school. We went to the next town over for middle school and it was combined with the high school. Football was a big deal there, as it often is in very small towns, and our high school had a pretty good team. So, when I was in 7th and 8th grades I went to the football games almost every week, or at least when they were home games. Everyone went to them and I don't just mean everyone at school, but everyone in town, in two towns. I didn't understand it at all, but I loved it anyway.

Now that I'm an alumni from a college with a pretty good football team maybe I should get back into football again. I could go and tailgate, and enjoy being a part of the alumni community. Maybe I could even learn a little bit about the game and enjoy it on its own merits. Then I could watch the Superbowl and enjoy it and not have to worry about the ghost of Joe McCarthy coming for me in my sleep. Or at least I could participate in the national conversation the day after.

Sex and Logic?

2008-02-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

I logged on to myspace the other day for the first time in a while and I actually took the bait on the whole myspace-multi-media-experience thing. I clicked on the featured books link because Prude was the featured book and I've been hearing about it so I thought it might be interesting to see what myspace had to say.

The consensus that I've heard and that myspace has endorsed about the book is that it's got a good message (i.e. girls are having sex too young and they aren't prepared for and don't understand the emotional issues involved or the potential consequences and that the problem is likely a result of the focus American culture puts on sex and being sexy), but the message gets lost in political rhetoric (i.e. the author of this book would like no one but married couples to have sex and thinks we should consider the possibility of legislating it because that may be the only way to change our national narrative to something slightly less sex obsessed).

I have to admit I haven't read the book, I've only read about the book. I'm not really planning to read the book either, and I'm not actually planning on writing a lot about the book itself, more about it's premise.

The thing is that I agree with the book's tag line ("How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)") and since I can't speak to the rest of the book I'm going to talk about that. Maybe I don't agree with the last bit. I mean there are cultures out there far more sex obsessed than America's, and I'm not sure it's so damaging to the nation or the national identity, but I agree it's damaging to girls. I might also argue that it's damaging to boys too though this book, I suspect, isn't so concerned about the boys and may even go so far as to claim (or at least imply) that it's natural for boys to be obsessed with sex and to seek it out even at very young ages placing the responsibility for stopping it on the girls. It's a fairly commonly held belief that boys are supposed to be constantly trying to get in a girls pants but the girls don't have to let them.

Leaving that aside, I agree that girls are damaged by having sex too young and even sort of agree that the sex obsessed culture is partly to blame. Of course the sex obsessed culture is only really responsible for about half the girls that have sex too young. The other half have sex too young because of the bizarre need girls have to compete with each other, but that's another story (and one I've already dealt with). So for now let me just deal with the first half.

Yes, the culture is sex obsessed. Case in point, a couple nights ago I was watching the Colbert Report and he had on Tim Harford, author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World. Somehow the interview devolved into a discussion about unprotected sex. The logic man's response to Colbert's claim that unprotected sex is irrational was that, yes, it is, but that as it's become more and more risky to have unprotected sex people do the rational thing and turn more and more to oral sex. Which is so much better right? Is it, really? Maybe the physical consequences are lower with oral sex though that's debatable (new research is pointing towards HPV, which is spread just as easily through oral sex, as a leading cause of mouth and throat cancers, outpacing even tobacco). So, maybe the physical consequences are lower but the emotional ones are just as harsh (if not more so). If I had a young daughter, lets say 12 years old, would I, or should I, be glad to find out that she'd just blown half of the guys in her 7th grade class because at least that way she can't get pregnant and her risk of catching something is lower (though certainly not non-existent)?

Surely the consequences that ensue in the short term for girls when they have sex too young (both physical and emotional) are bad, but I'm more concerned about the long term consequences and the negative feedback loop that's created. Kids that have sex too young grow up and become adults who are desensitized to sex or view it purely as entertainment or as a weapon which just leads to an even more sex obsessed culture and so on and so on. How do you convince people that the idea that it's "just" sex is harmful? Somehow I doubt this book is going to convince many people who didn't already agree so what can I say that would change people's minds? I can't advocate legislating it, passing a law that only married people can have sex. First of all because I think outlawing sex would be as ridiculous and ineffective as outlawing marijuana use has been, but more importantly because I don't think it would be right to say only married people can have sex unless people were legally allowed to marry anyone they wanted and that's not the case yet.

I'd say that the answer lies with parents but as Keanu Reeves (as Tod) said in Parenthood, "you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell you need a license to catch a fish! But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father", and the same holds true for mothers. Even if you have great parents who teach you all the right things about sex there's no guarantee. Circumstances intervene sometimes. What I said about girls being competitive, sometimes even the strongest, most well adjusted girls fall prey to that trap. Not to mention which people, especially kids, will almost never take anyone's word for something when they could find out for themselves.

I don't think I have any answers to this one. I don't think Carol Platt Liebau does either. All you can do is, if you have kids, teach them that sex is more than just physical and then hope. Hope that they listen and hope that in this one case they can learn from the mistakes of their predecessors rather than having to make their own.

Lesson learned

2008-01-30T20:42:00.000-08:00

Dan: You make a lot of charitable donations don't you?
Isaac: I try.
Dan: Who do you give your money to?
Isaac: I used to give to the Democratic Party.
Dan: Not anymore?
Isaac: Well you get your heart broken enough times you learn your lesson.

- Sports Night

I'm giving the Sports Night quote up front this time to put the news of Edwards withdrawal from the presidential race into my own personal perspective. Anyone who pays attention to these kinds of things knew this was coming. He just doesn't capture peoples attention the way Obama and Clinton do. I hate to say it, because I like to believe people are smarter than this, but he doesn't have the cachet of potentially making history. As much as I know that many people have well thought out, well informed, reasons for choosing Obama or Clinton over Edwards, and I've had some excellent debates over the past months about it, I also know that there are many out there who, excited over the idea of the electing the first woman or the first black president, have used that as their sole criteria when casting their votes.

I am, like many, of the opinion that not one of the candidates on either side (or without party affiliation) could possibly be worse at the job than what we've been subjected to these last seven years. I also share the rather popular opinion that it doesn't really matter who the democrats put up on their ticket because this election is practically gift wrapped for them. I share this opinion as well, eloquently voiced by Dan Savage, that I might not mind so much if they did lose to a McCain/Huckabee republican ticket. The thing is though, when you're looking at electoral politics, you may think anything is better, you may think Hillary or Obama (or the two together) could do, not just a better job, but actually a pretty good job, or that even McCain/Huckabee would be, as well, not just better, but actually okay, but the question I put out there is this, who would be the best person for the job?

Not who would be better at it that Bush and Chenny have been. Not who would be good. Not who would be adequate. Not even who's position on the issues do you most closely agree with. Who would be best at the job?

You see there are really three criteria I use in deciding which candidate to vote for. Number one on the list is electability. If they aren't electable it doesn't really matter how good they would be at the job or how much I agree with their positions on the issues. The electability factor isn't so great this time though, because, as I've said, the democrats almost can't lose. The second factor, in a general election, would be agreement on the issues, but I'm not talking about the general election, I'm talking about the primaries. It's true, there are subtle and somewhat important differences between the democratic candidates in this primary and it so happens that I do mostly agree with Edwards, but the difference is so small between Obama, Clinton and Edwards that I pretty much don't take that into account here. The third factor is the most important one in this case and that is effectiveness. Again, it doesn't matter how great the candidates positions are on the issues if, once elected, they can't put any of those great ideas into practice.

The main problem with politics is that it takes two different skills to be electable and to be effective. They aren't necessarily opposites though, there's no reason the two can't exist in one person; Bill Clinton had them both. In fact what it really takes it two different types of charisma, one that appeals to a large audience, that makes the people at large sit up and listen and feel like the understand (even if they don't), the other is the back room deal making type of charisma, the type that is fueled by logic, that backs people into a corner and gives them no choice but to agree with you while simultaneously making them believe that it was their own idea all along. That first type of charisma is what gets people elected; it's what Obama has more of than any of the other candidates out there this year (on either side). The second type though is what gets things done once the ballots are cast and all the inaugural balls are over. That second type is what Edwards has. It's what has made him so successful as a trial attorney.

That ship has sailed though. Edwards isn't going to be the one. I do hope that the winner of this race has the good sense to offer him the vice presidency (and that he has the sense to take it). If it's Obama I don't think he gets much of anything accomplished in his first term if he puts Hillary as his Vice and if he doesn't get anything done in his first term he's less likely to get a second term. If it's Hillary, well, she could probably get some things done with Obama as her Vice instead of Edwards provided she abandons her current philosophy of following rather than leading. If she continues to go with the flow then she needs Edwards to get anything done too.

My secret hope is that Hillary has just been acting the follower in order to get her this far and that once she's elected she turns back into that idealistic fighter that she seemed to be in the early days of her husbands presidency. Since I can't count on that happening, I have to base my opinions on what I've seen not what I hope to see, and I have to say that I'm leaning towards Obama. Of course, Obama only works with Edwards on his ticket as well where as Hillary has the potential to work with anyone else on her ticket so, maybe I'm leaning towards her. I don't think I care much for these two choices.

Why I write (spoiler alert: it's not to impress women or men for that matter)

2008-01-30T00:10:00.000-08:00

A year and a half ago practically no one read this blog and the ones that did were random strangers who happened upon it. I most certainly didn't tell any of my friends and family about it. I was afraid, obviously. Not that I thought my friends and family would laugh at me or put down my writing. They love me and I know they'd say it was good even if it sucked.

The thing is, my greatest fear in life is that I won't be smart, or funny, or interesting. I always wanted to be the girl that people would say has nice personality and I always feared that I wouldn't be. I know "nice personality" is supposedly code for ugly and frankly I never cared because, to me, being pretty but dumb and uninteresting would be far worse than being ugly. Nothing would make me happier than to hear that someone said I had a nice personality.

So, I wasn't afraid of what my friends and family would say to me about my writing. I was afraid of what they would think but not say to me. I was afraid that, after reading what I had to say, they'd be out there telling the potential blind dates they were trying to fix me up on that I was cute but have a horrible personality. Of course, I'd never go on any blind dates because I hate dating but that doesn't mean I don't want my friends and family telling people that I have a great personality.

Things have changed a bit in the last year and a half. Now the most traffic my site gets is probably from friends and family. What got me past the fear? A cute boy, of course. Not that I was trying to impress him. I'm pretty sure I couldn't impress him no matter how hard I tried because I wouldn't be me if I didn't fall head over heels for a boy who would never look twice at me. If I were to fall for one of the guys that do want me I'd know I'd been sucked into Bizaro World. No, I wasn't trying to impress him, he just said something that got to me.

As I may have mentioned before, he said that true faith conquers fear (it's where I got the name for my site). I don't know that he even really meant it. He may have just been saying it for the sake of argument (which would frankly be, if possible, even more attractive to me). He did say it though and it hit me like a ton of bricks or one of those giant anvils from the Warner Brothers cartoons. It hit me so hard that I agreed, wholeheartedly (because I really did agree), rather than disagreeing purely for the sake of argument.

I started writing more after that, a lot more, because it's challenging to me. I said before that there was one in thing that I ever felt like I was really good at, that came naturally to me, and I'll tell you right now that thing isn't writing. As much as I'd like it to be, it's not writing. Writing is hard for me and writing about my opinions is especially hard given my fear that people couldn't care less about my ill informed and uninteresting opinions. But I consider myself a person of great faith and faith, true faith, conquers fear right? So I started writing more and I let my friends and family know about it, but I'm not sure I'm entirely over the fear that no one will ever say that I have a good personality.

Stay tuned though for more of my opinions about things like Super Tuesday (which is likely to end badly for me) and Charlie Wilson's War (which I should probably have know was written by Sorkin). Speaking of Sorkin, it's been a while since I left you with any Sports Night inspirations.

"Dan finally got over his writer's block. He met Stacy at the Smoking Dog. Stacy played on the women's professional beach volleyball circuit and it seems she was especially taken with Dan's writing. Dan was reminded why he got into writing in the first place. It was the same reason men do anything...to impress women." - Jeremy (Sports Night)

The definition of me

2008-01-18T23:00:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I wrote about my inability to come up with a decent about me blurb for my blog profile (or any of my online profiles). That hasn't changed (and neither has what is written in my about me blurb). I'm thinking about finally giving in to the idea that people can be defined by their likes and dislikes and I'm going to test the theory here.

I like satsumas. I think they smell like Christmas which has always been one of my favorite holidays because I also like giving gifts. I like knowing that I know someone really well and that because of that knowledge I can give them something that will make them happy, or be useful to them. In recent years it's become less of a Christmastime thing and more of a year round thing because, well, I'm not really Christian per se, not actively, and while I love the gift giving it's much more satisfying to do it randomly rather than at one predesignated time of year. Even so, I still love satsumas. Not the ones with seeds though, the smell is the same but you only get the full effect of the smell when you peel and eat them and eating them is way less fun with seeds.

I don't like reality television. I don't think it's remotely real and when you consider that, it's far less interesting than scripted television. Plus I have it on fairly good authority that many of the writers that work on reality television shows (not credited as writers, naturally, but rather given producing related titles), would like to join the Writers Guild of America but can't without risking their jobs.

I like music, most types, especially rock, but I really don't like songs about murder. When I say that, you should know, it's not just a bias against rap music. First of all, I like some rap music and secondly the first song I hated because it was about murder was Maxwell's Silver Hammer by the Beatles so I'm an equal opportunity hater. When I was in my junior high choir we did a whole Beatles retrospective and a classmate of mine said we couldn't sing Hey Jude because her father had told her he thought it was about drug use (which by the way it totally is not), but she (and her father) had no problem with us singing Maxwell's Silver Hammer which is quite clearly and indisputably about serial murder.

I like cats. I like dogs too, in fact I like all animals, but there seems to be a prevalent opinion that you have to choose sides and be either a cat person or a dog person and if that's true I have to say I'm a cat person. Even though one of my cats wakes me up three hours before I need to get up every night. If my alarm is set for 6:00AM she wakes me up at around 3:00AM, if the alarm is set for 9:00 she wakes me up at 6:00. I don't know how she knows what time I'm supposed to get up but she always wakes me up right around 3 hours before it's time and then keeps me awake for about an hour. Annoying? Yes, but she's so cute I can't hold it against her. Plus I know that she's doing it out of love. She has to be in the same room as me all the time, she even follows me into the bathroom, that's devotion (so all you haters who think cats don't get attached to people can suck it).

I like springtime. Right now it's still cold, it even snowed a few days ago, but you can feel spring coming even through the cold. I love springtime almost as much as I love fall, sometimes even more. This spring is kind of biter sweet for me now because it makes me miss the English Garden in Munich. I love forget-me-nots, their one of my two favorite flowers (the other is lilacs which are also one of the first flowers of spring) and they were all over the English Garden. They look a little different than the ones we have here in the states but when I saw them there (first in Switzerland) and I asked my step-mom what they were called (in German) she said "vergesse mich nicht". There are parts of the English Garden where you can't see the grass at all because the forget-me-nots cover it completely.

I like learning new things. I like it when people ask me questions that I know the answers to. I like Zoos and Aquariums even though they also make me a little sad. I like cooking, but I like baking more. I like reading the New York Times and doing, or trying to do, the crossword puzzles. I like reading books, and watching movies, and watching television; I like stories. I like arguing. I like limes. I'll order gin and tonic and eat the slice of lime that comes with it. In fact sometimes I order extra slices of line and eat them too. I like taking pictures, especially candid ones. I like going to baseball games but I don't like watching it on tv. I like swimming everyday but not enough to get up earlier to do it because I like sleep more. I like the smell of coffee but not so much the taste (unless it's got a bunch of sugar and cream in it). I like tea, both the beverage and the meal (I enjoy the tiny sandwiches and mini-pastries). I like beer. I used to hate beer and when you don't like beer everyone will tell you it's an acquired taste and you will scoff but it turns out it really is an acquired taste. I like etymology. I like puns. I like asparagus and gruyere quiche. I like ginger ale flavored Halls. I like gyros and vegetable pakora and I really like the fact that there is a restaurant in Seattle that serves them both. I like buying cookbooks, but I rarely consult them when I'm cooking (only when I'm baking). I like bare feet. I also, ironically, like socks. Most women will spend their time browsing for shoes, but I am far more devoted to the hosiery section.

I don't like crowds and traffic so I tend to stay home on holidays like 4th of July and New Years Eve. In fact I don't really like driving at all. I used to love it. The freedom to just get in the car and go anywhere I wanted was nice until I realized that it never really existed. I was never free to go wherever I wanted. I always had responsibilities and I'm not a person who can just ignore my responsibilities.

I don't like tomatoes. I like tomato based foods but not tomatoes themselves.

I don't like snow on roads. I like snow, just not on roads I have to drive on. I like thunder and rain but I don't like lightning and I don't like wind. I was almost struck by lightning as a kid and sometime that same year the picture window in our living room was blown in by a wind storm; I hold a grudge.

I don't like talking on the phone, except to my mom and my best friend, otherwise I prefer e-mail, text messages, GChat, or in person conversations. I don't like folding the corners down on my books, but I also don't like bookmarks so I'll usually just use a folded post-it note. I don't like dance clubs, I like dancing, but I really don't like the clubs. I don't like flying, I think I may have finally overcome the fear of flying but I still don't like it. I don't like s'mores. I like toasted marshmallows, but not s'mores.

I like it when black cats cross my path and I consider the number 13 to be lucky. I like going to the dentist.

I like cream in my coffee. I like to sleep late on Sundays. And I like people who recognise those last two as Lyle Lovett lyrics.

I really don't think this is helping. I still don't know what to put in the about me section of my profile. I think the about me section is kind of like reality tv. I mean, it's not like people can really get an idea what you're like from a short blurb on an online profile. Even if you read every entry of this blog you might not get a good idea what I'm really like. So, I'm not sure why I'm trying so hard to come up with something. It just bugs me that I'm unable to easily define myself.

Not just a great U2 song

2008-01-16T22:58:00.000-08:00

Some people might consider this a guilty pleasure, but I don't believe in feeling guilty about pleasures. So, I have no problem admitting that I love One Tree Hill and not just because it's named after a really great U2 song, and not just because it's one of the only things new on TV right now. Maybe it's a little bit campy and maybe that's even why I like it, but I also don't tend to get too far into analyzing why I like what I like. I just like what I like.

Having said that I feel that One Tree Hill is on a dangerous precipice. It was a high school show and now high school is over for the Tree Hill gang, that always tends to lead a show down hill. Also, it's premiere was shifted to mid-season which must mean that the CW didn't order a full season. To be honest, I don't like it so much that I if it were canceled after this season I'd be distraught, but I like enough to wish it had been given a full season order.

While I might not care too much if the show is canceled after this year there are certain plot points that might make me quite distraught. For example, if Nathan ends up hooking up with the hot nanny Haley hired to take care of their kid then I'll be very upset. If they drag out the Peyton/Lindsay/Lucas love triangle for the whole season I'll be upset. If Brooke ends up running her business into the ground I'll be upset. If Dan gets out of jail and comes back to Tree Hill a changed man (or even the same old evil one) I'll probably stop watching.

I know it seems a little hokey and a lot contrived but I like the fact that the gang is all back in Tree Hill. They went their separate ways after high school but I don't see any reason they shouldn't all be back in town and I like the back stories they've come up with for how and why that happened. I like that Brooke is the biggest success of them all (for the time being). I like this show and I'm glad it's back but I really hope it doesn't take a wrong turn before it's done. If it does, you can count on me to point out exactly where it has gone wrong.

Zunetastic

2008-01-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of brand loyalty, especially when it comes to companies based in my home town, like Microsoft. I wanted an IPod in the beginning but it wasn't a priority for me. When I finally had the disposable income available to buy one without concern for priorities I'd heard that Microsoft was planning to come out with it's own MP3 player that would rival the IPod so I waited. I bought the Zune the day it was released and I've loved it.

Admittedly it was primarily brand loyalty that made me get a Zune instead of an IPod, but I also really believed in the product. I think it's a better product and I think that it can be competitive.
That first generation Zune did have a couple features intended to put it ahead of the IPod. First of all it had a "community" function which, if turned on, would search for other Zunes within range and and allow you to send songs to them or receive songs from them. Also, it had a built in radio.

Both of those features were things that IPod didn't have at the time. Those two features alone might have been enough to put Zune ahead of IPod, if the Zune had come out a couple years earlier, but the first one only works if your friends also have Zunes and the second isn't enough in itself to give Zune the edge. The problem was that there were already so many IPods out there that you couldn't count on many of your friends switching to the (equally pricey) Zune when they'd already shelled out for an IPod. I knew plenty of people who already had IPods and didn't want to switch.

IPod was already in it's 3rd or 4th generation at least by the time Zune came out. It was time tested, popular, and well established, market leader. I've heard a lot of people talk about how they wanted to wait until the second generation of the Zune so they could be sure all the bugs would be worked out, but waiting is no fun and many went with the more established IPod rather than waiting for the 2nd generation Zune.

One of the great things about being an "early adopter" is that everyone asks you about the product. All my friends and family, my coworkers and classmates, and numerous strangers on the street have asked me about my Zune. I've told them it's a great product, better than IPod (a comparison I'm able to make despite having never owned an IPod because IPod is so ubiquitous I've had many opportunities to use all the versions of it except the Nano). I've tried to allay their fears about bugs in the first generation. In fact, I've really only noticed one problem: sometimes it plays a different song than the display says it's playing which isn't much of a bug if you ask me (I don't need the display to tell me what song I'm listening to). I've been able to convince several people to come over to my side. In fact I've been so convincing that I think Microsoft ought to be paying me a commission, or perhaps hire me to do marketing for the Zune, or at least give me a new 80G Zune (because my only complaint about my Zune is that 30G just isn't enough space).
The first generation of the Zune didn't exactly knock the IPod off the top of the MP3 player mountain, but I think the second generation could. At very least I think it will be a much tighter race from here on out.

Amazon is leading the charge away from DRM software (which you may remember ITunes came out in support of a while back). There's a pretty clear rivalry between ITunes and Amazon developing and the labels seem to be leaning towards Amazon and away from ITunes. Amazon allows the labels more flexibility, with a range of prices starting at $0.89 per track, where as ITunes sells all tracks for $0.99. With the labels moving support away from ITunes, the corresponding players (IPods) will likely take a hit giving Zune a leg up in the market. It might be wise for Zune to scrap its marketplace in favor of an alliance with Amazon (and I could still feel good about supporting the local economy in my home town).

Zune, by the way, plays the ITunes proprietary file format in addition to MP3 and WMA (at least the first generation one I have does) which means if you do decide to switch to Zune all those songs you ripped to your hard drive in ITunes will still be playable on you new Zune. So, what are you waiting for? It's time to make the switch to Zune.

Fatherhood

2008-01-12T23:15:00.000-08:00

I went to see Jersey Boys last weekend and this weekend I saw my dad's band play. What do the two have to do with each other?

Parents have to make difficult choices. In the play, and presumably in real life as well, Frankie Valli spent most of his time out on tour. He had to provide for his family and his voice was a better way to do that than breaking and entering.

My dad has an amazing voice. He may not have the range that Frankie Valli has (who does really), but he's a great singer. He sings 'Bring it On Home to Me' better than Sam Cooke. He's very talented and I believe he could have been a huge star.

My dad may be a great singer but that's nothing compared to how great he is at being a dad. He was always there for me. If I got sick at school and needed someone to pick me up my dad came. He took me to my dance lessons and doctor appointments. He was there, unlike Frankie Valli. All I ever had to do was call and he was there for me.

Of course, my dad had to be there because my mom was in law school and then an associate when I was young, so she worked really long hours. Of course she still made it to all my birthdays and dance recitals (she even made costumes when the occasion called for it) so it wasn't a gender bended Cat's in the Cradle situation, but she did sacrifice spending more time with her kids in order to provide for them.

Parents make sacrifices for their kids. Frankie Valli sacrificed time with his kids so that he could provide for them and so that when he did see them it wouldn't be with bullet proof glass between them.

I say that parents make sacrifices for their kids as though it's a given, but the truth is they choose the sacrifices they make. Many parents, too many, choose other things over their children's needs.

My parents divorced when I was too young to remember them ever having been married. For all of my childhood I had no idea that their divorce was anything but amicable. My brother probably saw the subtext under their friendly veneer because he was older, but I always thought they were good friends still. I don't know what it cost them to make me feel like, despite being a child of a "broken home" I was still part of a family who all loved each other (if not in the traditional ways). It amazes me now that I know the whole story, that they were able to give me that. They chose to be civil to each other which often times divorced parents can't manage to do.

I don't know if my dad was ever offered the opportunity to tour when I was a kid because I've never asked him for the specifics. I do know that he's a pretty successful musician locally and has toured a bit recently (since I've been an adult). As I said, I believe that if he had toured in his youth he could have been a big star. I don't know if even wanted that life, but I believe he could have had it and I know that at least part of the reason he didn't go that route (if not the sole reason) was so he could be there for his kids. Every time I hear him sing I feel so lucky that even with the talent he has he chose to be there for me.

Democratic primaries: Why don't they just draw straws

2008-01-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

When Hillary Clinton was first lady the thought crossed my mind that she might be positioning for a political career of her own. She was certainly very involved in her husband's presidency. I was a big fan of her universal health care plan so I was thrilled with the idea that she might make a run at the oval office one day. Even when she was running for senate I looked forward fondly to the day she'd be president. The problem I find now is that she's lost all the idealistic fighting spirit she once seemed to have. Now she goes along with the party line or the prevailing winds or whatever.

Those who know me are probably scratching their heads because they've heard me rail against idealism in politics and it's true; I've long said that one of the most important characteristics in a successful politician is the ability to compromise. The truth is that I believe it takes both and it's a delicate balance.

Bill Clinton's presidency is a great example. During his campaign he promised to reform health care. He appointed Hillary to that project and then when she came up with an overly ambitious proposal he passed on it. Could be that he just saw that there was no way it could pass or it could be that he traded it for political capital which he needed to broker bi-partisan deals in Congress and the Senate in order to balance the budget (which was another campaign promise of his). Either way he got the budget balanced and he didn't push the health care proposal which, as much as I love it, was never going to make it through.

Who knows? Maybe Bill came back and told the comittee (i.e. Hilllary) that they needed to scale back their proposal and Hillary stuck to her idealistic guns on that one. Maybe she was so disillusioned by the outcome that she lost her idealism all together. I can't say what went on in the back rooms and behind closed doors, but what I think is clear is that Bill Clinton had the right combination of idealism and pragmatism, he knew how to prioritize and when to compromise and how to get things accomplished. I consider that balanced budget the great legacy of the Clinton presidency and the prime example of the delicate balance it takes to get things done at the top level of legislature (or any level of legislature really). Hillary just doesn't have either of those qualities (idealism or pragmatism) now. I think she did once but not anymore.

So, if not Hillary, who do I support? Well I think it takes a lot of charisma to be president. A president has to be able to gain broad support from the general population of the country. Bill Clinton had that in spades as well. It also takes a different, and sort of opposite, kind of charisma. It takes an argumentative type of charisma. Congressman and senators either have that broad base garnering charisma or are at least familiar enough with it to be able to see through it easily. In order to broker deals with them a president has to be convincing not just to the public at large but to highly intelligent and inherently suspicious congressman and senators.

Obama certainly has the broad base appeal type of charisma. I think he may be a little too idealistic though. I doubt his ability to prioritize or maybe I just doubt what his priorities would be. He talks a lot about foreign policy which is definitely important but I wouldn't want to see domestic policy be pushed aside in favor of it.

It's possible that he just plays up the foreign policy angle to deflect the idea that many people seem to have that he's too inexperienced at foreign policy to run the country, especially with the international political climate the way it is right now. However, if that is the reason he talks so much foreign policy then that does more to convince me that he is too inexperienced than the opposite (or that he's too disingenuous). He does have the charisma though, which Edwards kind of lacks.

Edwards strikes me as better at the deal brokering side of politics (in other words the actual getting things done part of the job). He's won a lot of trials and that's a skill that I think will translate. That means he's good at convincing people, even people who are specifically looking for holes in his arguments.

I think I'd vote for an Edwards/Obama ticket in either order, but I'd prefer it in that order. If it were Clinton/Obama (or Obama/Clinton)...well I'd probably still vote for them, but if the opposing side were McCain/Hukabee I'd be very conflicted about it. Unfortunately I live in Washington and most elections are already decided long before my state turns blue (which it always does) on their little maps.

Even less real than reality television

2008-01-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

I don't date much, not that I dislike dating, but...okay, actually I dislike dating. A lot. It's just so artificial. The attempting to get to know someone while also trying to decide if you feel anything for them is, if possible, even less real than reality television.

You meet someone you think you might like and they ask you out (or you ask them, but I never do that). You go out and spend a couple hours, probably over dinner, asking each other a standard list of questions. Sometimes this process is very awkward as you learn you have nothing in common.

Even when it's not painfully awkward it can still be a failure. You sit there thinking this guy is fantastic...smart, funny, cute...you've got a lot in common, but not so much as to make conversation boring, but you feel nothing for them. You spend the entire night wondering why on earth you don't feel something, anything, for the guy. You wonder if you can make yourself feel something. Maybe you even try. You go out on a second, maybe even a third date, but it never works. Sometimes it goes the other way and they are the ones who feel nothing for you.

Usually that set of circumstances leads to the "lets just be friends" speech. I assume that people mean it when they say things like that, partly because I have a lot of faith in people, but mostly because I mean it when I say it.

If I had an amazing time with someone, loved hanging out with them, and want to keep doing it, just not as their girlfriend, I'll tell them I just want to be friends and I'll mean it. Of course, most of the time when that happens guys will keep hanging out with me for a little while thinking that somehow they'll change my mind and when they find that's not the case they stop returning my calls, or they automatically assume I didn't mean it and stop returning my calls.

Sometimes I come away from the experience with some great friends, but not often. In general, the whole dating experience is a waste of time. It's way better to get to know someone before you date them at which point it's not really "dating" so much as the evolution of friendship into something more. The risk exists that you may lose a good friend in a breakup but, in my experience, that's rare and avoidable, and even when it can't be avoided the risk would still have been worth it.

So, I don't date. I wonder if maybe I should, but the experience is so excruciating that I can't really bring myself to "put myself out there". You know what I mean, you have to do something, join a singles club of some kind, or start using match.com, or start hanging out in bars or worse yet "clubs" and that's just the precursor to the aforementioned painfully bad dating experience. Waste of time, right?

Bring it on home to me

2007-12-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

If you know me, or read my other blog, you probably know that I'm a big fan of music in general and rock music in particular. A couple months ago I found myself in a three sided debate with a couple friends about which band is the greatest rock band ever. For the most part we agreed on the top three, or two of the top three, but disagreed about the order. I said, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, one friend said The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and the other said Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Who. Of course then we over ruled her on the Dylan, saying that if she wanted to call him the best singer/song writer we'd have no objection but he didn't belong in this category. She was unconvinced but said even if we bumped Dylan she still wouldn't put the Stones in the top three. I don't think we ever got her to name which band she would put in the top three if not Dylan, but at least we all agreed on two bands, Led Zeppelin and the Who (I think she's crazy not to include the Stones, but that's her opinion and she's entitled to it).

I am only 29 years old, which, if you do the math means I was only 2 years old in 1980 when John Bonham died and, as Led Zeppelin hasn't toured since, have not seen them play live [note: I'm from Seattle and their last Seattle show was in 1977 so, again if you do the math you'll find they haven't played here since before I was born]. I have, however, seen the Who (twice) and it was seeing the Who that actually turned me into a real classic rock fan. Given that, and the fact that I also haven't seen the Rolling Stones live, I should, perhaps, withhold judgement on the greatest rock band issue. I do consider seeing it live to be the true test of music...or...the combination of good studio recordings and great live shows, which is to say that a truly great band can do both well. I just always seem to miss the Rolling Stones (or already have blown my concert budget on other shows) and I never thought Led Zeppelin would tour again so that level of comparison never really occurred to me in this case.

Unless you live under a rock you probably know that Led Zeppelin played a live show yesterday in London. It was a benefit show though, not the launching of a concert tour. Today's Seattle PI blog says that yesterday's concert has fans speculating about whether or not Led Zeppelin will tour again. It's true. I'm a fan. I'm speculating. As a person with a tendency towards logical arguments I have to lay out the evidence as I see it.

The current issue of Rolling Stone has an article about the return of Led Zeppelin in which Bonham's son (who filled in for his dad on drums at the London show) eludes to the possibility of future Zeppelin shows. Also, the launch of the official Led Zeppelin website is dated November 20th this year. What reason do you suppose they would have, after all this time the internet has been around, to launch an official site now? It seems to me the only reason they would launch an official site now is if they're going to have tour dates to post there in the near future.

I'd be thrilled to finally be able to make a comparison on their live show (versus the Who). If this review is anything to go by, it looks like they could steal the top spot.

My wonder years

2007-12-09T00:15:00.000-08:00

After I found my high school yearbook a couple months ago, and was bombarded by a high school storyline on Grey's Anatomy last month, there was yet another reminder of my wonder years. I was trying to finally finish unpacking the rest of my boxes at my new apartment (which I've been living in for two months). In one of the boxes I found a bunch of old letters and pictures from high school. Including the last school paper from my senior year. Our school printed "senior wills" in the last issue of the school paper each year.

Of course, being me, even cynical, angsty, high school me, I left my undying love and affection to several people. A guy I had an on/off sort of love/hate kind of relationship with in high school left me a quarter to buy a clue with in his senior will. I guess the price of a clue must be a bit higher than he thought because I'm pretty sure I still don't have one.

I don't know that I want to really. The thing is I have a lot of faith in people. I believe that people are basically good and that they mean the things they say. I'm not excessively naive, just naive enough. It's not like I don't know not to take any wooden nickels. It's not as if I think it's okay to take candy from strangers. It's not as though I don't know what a boy has on his mind when he calls at 1:00AM and asks you to come over.

It bothers me when I'm being genuine with someone and they assume some ulterior motive, or assume that I'm lying to them. You see, I'd rather go through life occasionally getting hurt because I'm too trusting, than to go through life always thinking of all the possible angles people could working, and the lies they could be telling, and they ways in which they could be out to get me. My naivete is a choice. Like any kind of faith, I choose to believe the best of people...until they prove me wrong.

Tales of a 9th thru 12th grade nothing

2007-12-05T23:08:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about high school lately. Reminders of it have been popping up everywhere. I was at my mom's house a couple months ago, sitting in the library, and I saw my senior yearbook on the shelf. Of course, I picked it up and started reading what people had to say about me when they signed the book. I was mess in high school, especially my last two years, or my junior year in particular. Partly it was starting my third school in as many years (my junior year), but mostly it was because I wasn't someone that fit in even with the groups of other people that don't fit in.

That year book though, from my senior year, is signed by a lot of people, nearly all of whom say they'll remember me as unique and kind which looking back on it is exactly how I'd want to be remembered. I know "unique" is polite code for "weird" and I'm fine with that, in fact I sort of consider it complimentary. I did some stupid stuff, in one case something stupid and hurtful to a very good friend (my best friend at the time), but it's nice to know that people thought of me as kind because that's the one thing I always want to be and always have wanted to be.

After finding the yearbook I already had high school on my mind and then, a few weeks ago, there was a whole high school themed episode of Grey's Anatomy in which a bunch of the doctors started reliving their high schools days and all sorts of assumptions were made about what they must have been like back then. It turned out Dr. McDreamy was a band geek in high school (as was Dr. Bailey), and Izzy was assumed to have been the prom queen type when in reality she was the "alternative school" type (that's what they call them in Seattle, the schools where they send delinquents and pregnant girls).

In the episode, a bus full of kids on college tours had crashed and they were all in the hospital. One of them was badly injured and he was an outsider, the kind of kid the other kids call "freak" all the time. This girl, his best friend, was pissed because her best friend was the one that was lapsing into a coma from which he would probably not wake and all these other kids were walking around crying when they hadn't even known him, or if they had it was only because they'd spent years teasing him.

First it brought me right back to 9th grade when I was starting my first new school. I didn't know anybody and though I was in the fall play I didn't really fit in the Drama club crowd, I was too shy, not enough of a ham for them. Luckily for me that fall play was a musical which meant practices with the orchestra. I made 3 friends at that school (all in the band) and one of them killed himself before the year was out. The band practiced every morning before school started and he came early, with one of his father's antique guns and shot himself on the walkway outside the band room. The school brought in crisis counselors and everyone walked around crying all the time. I think every kid in our class (and all of their parents) were at that funeral. I barely knew him. I mean, I'd only known him six months, but he'd been one of the only people at that school who even talked to me.

My next thought was, "what was I in high school?". That first year I might have been a drama geek. I was in both plays (fall and spring) that year and I thought that acting in plays was going to be my high school identity (possibly my identity continuing into adulthood as well). The following year though I tried to reinvent myself. Instead of trying out for the plays I joined DECA and was planning to run for national DECA president junior year except that junior year I transferred to another new school that didn't have DECA. I was all over the place in high school and that last school that I went to, the one I graduated from, the one where people said they'd remember me as unique and kind, that school didn't even seem to have cliques really.

I mean, I guess it did, it must have, but not really the traditional types. I couldn't begin to tell you which clique I was part of there. I hung out in the "smoking section" which was a small wooded area on one end of our campus where kids went to smoke, flouting both state law and school regulations, but the school couldn't seem to stop it. I'm told they tried to ban smoking on campus once but kids just went across the street and then the people who lived across the street started complaining about kids hanging out on their lawns, dropping cigarette butts and generally being obnoxious, but that would have been before I went to school there so as far as I know it's urban legend. You'd think that the smoking section would be where the delinquents would congregate, but that wasn't really the case. Sure our resident drug dealers and drug takers hung out there, but there was also members of the football team, swim team, band, drama club, cheerleaders, and pretty much any other cross section of high school society you can think of.

Seattle used to have mandatory busing (an effort to integrate the schools) but by my junior year it had been replaced by voluntary busing. I had a choice of schools, some near my home and some in other neighborhoods, and when I had to choose a school my junior year, I chose the high school I went to because I already knew a couple of guys that went there. One of them liked to call himself a "floater" because he believed that he was friends with everyone, he defied categorization. It's true that he moved easily from the honor society crowd, to the band geeks (he was in both the jazz band and the marching band), to the jocks, etc, but I think that had more to do with the fact that those labels didn't mean as much at our school as they might have elsewhere. Honestly, I went to my prom and I'm pretty sure we didn't even have a prom king and queen. I went back to drama at that school, since they didn't have DECA, and I suppose that did define me in some ways, but I never felt like it was exclusive, like I was a drama geek and nothing else.

It's not like I'm idealizing my high school experience into this happy time because we weren't confined by the usual cliques. My high school experience wasn't ideal by any means; given the suicide of one of my friends, the near brush with sexual assault, the threat of permanent blindness, and the pregnancy (and miscarriage), it could have been better, but at least when I look back on it (those last two years) I don't feel like I was stuck on the outside looking in at the popular people wishing I could be part of their world. I got to make choices and, yes, some of them were colossal mistakes but I feel like I had the freedom to be whatever kind of geek I wanted to be.

The city of my dreams

2007-11-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

"And I wish I was in New Orleans, 'cause I can see it in my dreams,
Arm-in-arm down Burgundy, a bottle and my friends and me
New Orleans, I'll be there" - Tom Waits

I have always wanted to go to New Orleans. My dad has a band that plays zydeco music and when I was a kid, listening to my dad play, I developed this idea that New Orleans was a magic town. When I learned about Mardi Gras I desperately wanted to go t0 New Orleans and see it first hand. Not the girls-gone-wild version of Mardi Gras, but the tradition, and the music and the magic. Eventually I started thinking, even if it wasn't for Mardi Gras, I had to go to New Orleans. It's a city that's always held a mystique for me.

A couple years ago I was finally going to go. I had a couple days off work around Labor Day weekend and a friend of mine was going down there to reunite with some friends she hadn't seen in a long time. So, I decided to go with her. I bought a plane ticket and started planning out the trip. As you may remember though, two years ago, a few days before Labor Day, a pretty big hurricane hit New Orleans.

At first the airline was telling me that, by the weekend, the city would be fine and flights in would have resumed. It wasn't until the day my flight was supposed to go that they finally acknowledged that it was going to be a while before flights into New Orleans started back up and even longer before the city was "fine". In fact, even two years later, the city is still not really fine.

I'm still captivated by the magic of it though. It's seeping into the things I write, not here (aside from this), but the other things I write. Years ago I was first inspired to write by the music and the magic of New Orleans and the city featured prominently in that first piece I wrote. Now, as I'm starting to write again, it's finding its way back in. Only now, it's a different city than it was then. In my mind it's still just as magic, maybe even more so. Now it's a little like a rescued Atlantis, nearly swallowed by the sea, but not quite lost.

If I don't go and see it for myself it will be one of the great regrets of my life.

The "nature" of love

2007-11-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

There's an episode of Dawson's Creek, from season three, called "Cinderella Story", it's one of my favorites (and, by the way, the episode that includes the "billion dollar kiss"). In it, the college boy that Joey's been long distance dating has to read a short story he's written. They guy's oldest friend refers to it as his "nature of love piece" and the story starts by saying that, "the loudest sound in the world is love unspoken". Of course I agree with the sentiment, I might not say it's the loudest sound in the world and I might not refer to that idea as the nature of love, but, as they say in the legal world, I agree with the spirit of the quote if not the letter of it.

The premise that the "loudest sound in the world" idea is based on is that the college boy, AJ, is really in love with this girl who he's been friends with for a long time but he can't tell her because he's worried that it would ruin the friendship. Maybe he's worried that she doesn't feel the same, but even more than that he's worried that she does feel the same. They're young, but even if they weren't, so many relationships, especially these days, don't go the distance, that it's not such an unfounded fear that they might get together and then break up. He isn't willing to take either risk, and so he says nothing, but saying nothing changes everything. Incidentally, in that case she did feel the same and she said nothing either (out of the same fears).

You get so caught up in trying not to say anything, but when you're in love the impulse to shout it from the rooftops is so strong that the conflict between trying not to say anything when you really want to confess makes you crazy. You start acting like a completely different person. You know it's obvious that you're acting like an alien from planet crazy so you try to cover that up but that just makes it worse. Ultimately, it's better for your sanity, AND your friendship, if you just say what you're feeling. If the other person doesn't feel the same that doesn't mean an end to the friendship. If they do feel the same and you get together you just have to have faith that either you'll be the couple that beats the odds or you'll be able to remain friends if you do split up, and frankly you should be able to manage one or the other (Dawson and Joey did). While you never know what's going to happen, you do have some control over whether or not your relationship fails and you have absolute control over how you respond if it does.

While all of that is true, I would argue that the nature of love is that there is no nature of love. Each love is different. Even if you narrow it down to just romantic love (as opposed to familial or platonic love), it's still different each time, in fact even with one love it can change from day to day. It can be comfortable or passionate, or both, or anything in between along with a myriad of things that can't really be put in to words. Trying to write about the nature of love is...kind of impossible. Unless, when you do it, you realize that you're writing about the nature of a particular love, not love in general. I'll give you some examples...

I used to have pretty bad insomnia, in high school, I could only sleep if I'd had 10 or 20 cups of coffee right before going to bed. Otherwise I'd lie there thinking and I'd tell myself if I could just stop thinking, clear my mind, I'd fall asleep but I could never do it. I'd eventually fall asleep but I'd usually end up getting about 3 hours of sleep a night, maybe 4, which wasn't so bad, I could still function, but I love sleep and consider 6 hours really the minimum amount to keep me happy. When I went away to college my former remedy for insomnia, coffee, started making it worse (which I suppose just means it started working in its normal capacity). I quit drinking it and suffered through with less sleep for a month or so.

During that time I met a boy and fell fast and hard for him. We sort of dated for about a month. He was pulling away, I could tell, and I asked his roommate what the deal was, even though I knew already what the answer would be. He wasn't ready for a serious relationship. He was on the rebound when I started seeing him so it wasn't surprising. He went away for the weekend that week and I got really drunk with his roommates who were, aside from the boy himself, my best friends at school. When he came back on Sunday he told me himself, he wasn't ready to get serious, but he really liked hanging out with me and hoped we'd still be friends (I'm paraphrasing, but it's a pretty standard speech, I'm sure you're familiar with it).

That night I was lying in bed wishing I could fall asleep. I thought about him and I decided I could either take him at his word and continue hanging out with him (which I really liked doing regardless), or assume he didn't mean it (because no one ever really means it when they say, "we can still be friends", or so I thought at the time) and never really see him again. I realized that I didn't just have a crush on this boy, it wasn't lust, or infatuation, I loved him and I couldn't drop him from my life just because he didn't want to date me. I fell asleep and slept really well that night and pretty much every night since including the nights he came over to my dorm room to sleep with me because his roommates were having loud parties. You'd think that would keep me awake, having to try to sleep next to my, at that point, best friend, when I wanted so much more but all he wanted was a quite place to sleep. I think, if anything I slept better those nights. I always thought, that even if he never wanted more, not everyone is lucky enough to find someone that they feel completely and absolutely comfortable with. That was the nature of that love, it was comfortable, not that it didn't eventually become passionate too, and a million other things, but I think deep down, the nature of that one was always comfortable.

The next time I realized I'd really fallen for someone that I thought I just had a crush on I nearly dropped a full mug of tea on my best friends kitchen floor. There's very little that was comfortable about those feelings. First of all, I shouldn't be interested in this guy, not even at the crush level. Not that I've ever gone for the guys I should. The guys I want always seem to be too old, or taken, or gay, or too young, or out of my league. This guy is no exception, he's way out of my league (among other things).

A while back I talked about redefining perfection, but imagine if you met someone that lived up to your pre-existing definition of perfection and the more things you learned about them the more points they matched on your perfect guy checklist. Even so, I shouldn't have fallen for him, for starters he's never going to be interested in me, and I didn't even expect to see him again after the end of last year. I even asked him if he thought we'd ever see each other again and he said no. That was the kicker. I should have kept that question to myself because even though I fully expected we'd never see each other again, hearing him say it made me realize that the thought of not seeing him again made me sad.

If I'd just had a crush on him I could have let him drop right out of my life, nearly unnoticed. I'm bad enough at keeping in touch with the people I really care about that boys I have crushes on come and go almost without so much as an attempt at keeping in touch with them. That might have even happened in this case, because even though I was sad at the thought of never seeing him again, I still didn't think I'd really fallen for him. That realization came a few days later.

I was standing in my friends kitchen with a cup of very hot tea, waiting for it to cool, and apologizing for running a bit late (because I'd been discussing literature with the guy) and I realized that he, the guy, had really made me think, you know, really think. He'd challenged me. More than that I realized that it wasn't the first time he'd challenged me. I realized then that he'd challenged me in a lot of ways that I hadn't even noticed. He said something before I'd gotten to know him that flipped a switch in my head and made me recognize and discard this whole group of fears I'd been letting hold me back. I knew I'd abandoned those fears, and I knew what he'd said, and that it had struck me at the time because it was something I'd always believed, but the whole process of realizing that while I'd believed it I hadn't been living like I believed it was all subconscious so I didn't see the connection at first. Like I said, I nearly dropped the tea. And again I knew that I had to make an effort to keep this person in my life even though I'm interested in him and he'll probably never be more than a friend. It's just that not everyone is lucky enough to have friends in their life that challenge them like that.

Love means millions of different things, even if you can break it down into three major categories (familial, platonic, and romantic) each time you love someone it's different. I have great family, and great friends, and I have experienced great romantic love and I feel pretty confident in saying that there is no nature of love.

Enjoying the journey (not just the destination)

2007-10-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

I graduated from college this year which was a long time coming. You see, I did what I was supposed to do, I applied to colleges my senior year in high school and was accepted at every place I applied. I chose to go to Western Washington University for several reasons. It was a state school so I could almost afford it, it was small, it didn't have a Greek system, it was far enough away from home that I could get away from my parents but close enough that I could also come home on the weekends if I wanted to, it had a really great program in what I wanted to study, and most importantly it felt right, when I came to visit the campus I felt like that was where I was meant to be.

After two years there though, I'd changed my major three or four times and still hadn't settled what I wanted to do. I was aimless and in debt so I quit school and went to work full time. Everyone I knew would subtly or sometimes not so subtly ask me when I planned to finish, but I just didn't know what kind of degree I wanted to get or what purpose getting a degree in something just to have a degree would really serve. There was one person though who really wanted to see me back in school, not because she thought it was important for me to get a degree, but because she loved to learn and she could see that I did too.

She was like family to me. Actually that's not the best way to put it since her whole family was like family to me as I was dating and later living with her nephew (for over 7 years). She was more than just a surrogate aunt to me though. She was an inspiration.

I met her shortly before she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but the way she handled that wasn't the reason she inspired me so much, though she had more spark in her all through her fight with cancer than anyone else I've known before or since. What inspired me so much about her was the way she did things for the pure enjoyment they brought her, and it just so happened that two of the things she enjoyed were teaching and learning. She had multiple degrees (Bachelors, Masters in Education, JD) and she was certainly not using them all (in the practical sense).

One of the last times I saw her she was at the hospital, where I worked, for a chemo treatment and she came down and had lunch with me. At the time I was taking a real estate class, just for fun. She told me that she couldn't understand why I didn't go back to college. Here I was, the kind of person who would take a class just for fun (as I'd done with screenwriting, real estate, and visual basic at that point), but I wouldn't go back to school because I wasn't sure what I should major in that would make me better able to get ahead in life.

I finally decided that I should go back to school, not to get a degree, but because I liked school, I liked learning, and I could go back and take classes in things I wanted to learn about and maybe those classes would make up a degree and maybe they wouldn't but I'd be doing something that I loved. Unfortunately, she passed away before she could see me back in school, before I could tell her that she's the reason I found my way back to something I've loved as long as I can remember.

There were a lot of people who supported me, and pressured me, and inspired me down my path to higher education, but none so much as Christine. The idea that not everything has to be a stepping stone, that some steps can be enjoyed just for what they are and not for where they lead, is so important to me and she's the one that taught me that. I got my degree in English and it's probably not going to help me get ahead in life, but I really loved getting it.

It's not my party but I'll still cry if I want to

2007-10-29T17:43:00.000-07:00

When George W. Bush was first elected president I was inconsolably sad and when, after 4 years of what I considered dismal job performance on his part, the American people didn't see fit to fire him, I swore I'd never vote for a republican (out of spite). I'm going to have to eat those words now.

A tragedy stuck King County a while back. Norm Maleng, King County's long time prosecutor passed away earlier this year. He was well liked and respected by all of his colleagues and employees, and by voters. He was a republican, but he was elected to the post almost 30 years ago and easily won re-election in the overwhelmingly democratic King County repeatedly, often running unopposed.

In the aftermath of Maleng's death an interim prosecutor was appointed. Dan Satterberg, also republican, was Maleng's chief of staff and has now been acting prosecutor for several months and is also very well liked and respected by his colleagues and employees (both democrat and republican alike).

I've never paid much attention to the elections for King County Prosecutor, primarily because by the time I was old enough to vote no one was running against Maleng anymore. So, I was kind of shocked to learn it was even a partisan race. I assumed that, like judges, prosecutors were nonpartisan.

My previous declaration would prohibit me from voting republican in this race, but my general rule with nonpartisan races is to learn as much as I can about the candidates to make an educated choice and my primary tool in doing that is to turn to people I know who know more about it than I do. If that were the case here, as with the elections for judges, I'd ask lawyers I know what they think, have they been up against the county prosecutors office, do they know people who work there, etc. If you know someone who works there that's ideal because you can just ask them who they would rather have as a boss. There's also always the voter pamphlet, but knowing someone who is familiar with the candidates and the race is preferable in a nonpartisan race.

This, however is not a nonpartisan race, a fact which the democratic candidate is eager to point out (see this article in the Seattle Times). If I hadn't sworn never to vote for a republican again (out of spite), this wouldn't be much of a problem for me. Satterberg is respected, as Maleng was, and he puts professionalism ahead of politics in the work place. Norm Maleng believed that the office of county prosecutor shouldn't be a partisan race, because partisan politics don't have any more place in the prosecutors office than they do on the judge's bench. I agree, and it seems like Satterberg agrees too, as he's pledged to lobby the legislature to make it a nonpartisan office (should he win the election).

I'm consoling myself for having to break my no voting for republicans pledge with the fact that this really isn't a partisan race, or shouldn't be, and it's the republican in this case that seems to be arguing that point. Sure, it's in his interest to argue that it should be nonpartisan (since he's a member of the minority party) but I don't think that's the only reason he's doing it and since it's an argument that I happen to agree with I'm not inclined to pick apart his motives for making it.

World Series subtext (or not)

2007-10-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

Well, two games in I suppose I should be talking about the Series, but there's not much to say that hasn't been said by every sports writer in the country already. Boston had to dominate in game one to knock the Rockies off the high from their 20 game winning streak, and they did. Colorado needed to get back some of that winning energy in game two but they didn't. It now looks like Boston is a near lock to win the series. I wish I had something to say about it that hasn't been said, but I'm drawing on all my BA in English BSing skills and I can't come up with anything.

Okay, I'm not drawing on all my BA in English skills. The primary thing that they teach you in university English classes is the ability to take one sentence or even one word from a text and speak volumes on the significance (real or imagined) of that word or phrase both within the text and in the world at large. I could probably do that with the the World Series as my "text", and believe me using a baseball game as the text would be, not just embraced, but likely rewarded in any college English department.

I could theorize for several pages about the significance of pitching, but even then it would still have all been said. Baseball is America's pastime and this is the championship series. I don't feel the same pull to talk about it that I do about, say, bike racing. Even when I talk about the Tour de France, arguably the most notable race and certainly the only one that Americans seem to care about, I feel like I can provide a somewhat unique view point or say things that, at very least, only a handful of sports commentators in this country are talking about.

It's not that I'm not interested, or not watching the games...oaky...I have worked late the past two days and only caught the end of the games so far, but I'm still committed. I even burnt myself because I was trying to cook dinner and watch the end of game one at the same time. Maybe, I'm just not as invested in this Series as I could be or have been in some years past.

I tend to appreciate baseball as much for its history as anything else which is to say I am more interested in teams with interesting histories that include scandals, or curses, or historic rivalries. I like the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Mets, the Phillies, the Pirates, the Reds, etc. I suppose I tend to be more interested in National League Teams. The fact that I'm from Seattle should make that fairly self explanatory. I mean, obviously the Mariners are my team, if I care about other teams I'd prefer them not to be rival teams, though I make a few exceptions.

So, the thing is, I care and I'm watching, and yes I'm a bit of a Red Sox fan so I'm a little bit invested in the outcome (i.e. I want the Sox to win). However, it's not exactly captivating this year. Now that the Red Sox have broken their historic curse they're less interesting, and the Rockies have only been around since 1993 (there's no interesting history there at all). It might be more interesting if this were the first time an expansion team were in the Series but the Diamondbacks did that (when they were only a 3 year old team). Okay, there's an inherent love of the game, or like of the game at least, but the things that make me care enough to analyze each pitch and call aren't there. It's not my home town team, it's not historic, it's also not especially complicated or interesting. If the Rockies make an astonishing come back and win the next three games in a row then there will be something to say (though even then it will have all been said by people who know more about the game than I do).

P.S. 40 days isn't that long

2007-10-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

I was watching 40 Days and 40 Nights earlier today. Actually it's the second time in a month I've watched it (or parts of it) because they keep re-running it on various cable outlets (and because I kind of love it). Today I actually started watching it because I'd read a review of another Josh Hartnet movie with numbers and days in the title (30 Days of Night) and the reviewer had said that Josh Hartnet didn't have what it takes to be a leading man. I thought it was a little odd. I mean normally when they say something like that about an actor it's in reference to a romantic comedy or serious drama not a crappy horror movie. Also, I think Josh Hartnet's just fine as a leading man (in the more traditional sense) not that I can speak to his performance in 30 Days of Night since I haven't seen it and don't plan to (in fact if I even see the commercial on TV again it's likely to drive me to drink). Anyhow, I saw that 40 Days and 40 Nights was on and thought I'd see if his acting was as decent as I remember it.

This is not about Josh Hartnet's acting skill (or lack of it) though. He is pretty good in that movie, but that's not what stood out for me this time I watched it. There's a scene where Hartnet's character is trying to explain to this new girl he met, that he really likes, why he's taken a 40 day vow of celibacy. It's all about his ex, he really loved her and when they broke up he subscribed to the theory that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone new, but it didn't work, he couldn't get over her that way. So, the new girl says she thinks she understands, she says that it's hard to tell the difference between physical attraction and a genuine connection sometimes, and he agrees.

I think you know where this is headed but let me spell it out anyway. That's absolutely not true. First of all, if it were true then Hartnet's character wouldn't have had trouble convincing himself that he had a connection with whatever girl he jumped in bed with to try to get over his ex because it would have been so easy to confuse those purely physical attractions with genuine connections. He wouldn't have decided to take the vow of celibacy because the casual sex would have worked and gotten him over his ex, but it hadn't worked. The entire premise of the movie is predicated on the fact that purely physical attractions don't even come close to comparing to genuine connections.

Anyone who's had sex for reasons other than a genuine connection (like physical attraction, or an attempt to get over someone, or an attempt to sublimate some other emotion, etc) and has also experienced a genuine connection knows that it is easy to tell the difference. It's not hard at all. In fact, it's hard to confuse a physical attraction with a genuine connection (unless you have both with the same person and then the line is kind of blurry but the need to distinguish the two is moot).

Maybe it's tempting when you get your heart broken to go out and find someone new right away even if it's only for a night. Maybe you think it will help you get over someone and when it doesn't work maybe you try again with someone else, but after that you know it's not a decent substitute for a genuine connection. If you do it more than twice you're just punishing yourself.

I used to have a theory about drinking until you puke. I don't like puking and I think most people would agree with me there. If you drink until you puke twice you should know better than to do it a third time. After the second time you should know your limits a little better and be able to recognize the signs that you're starting to reach them. The whole casual sex as treatment for a broken heart thing is kind of like drinking until you puke (in fact drinking until you puke is also often considered a good remedy for a broken heart but it doesn't work either). After the second time you should know better because it is most definitely not hard to tell the difference between a purely physical attraction and a genuine connection.

The Twinkie Principle

2007-10-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

I have never eaten a Twinkie. That's not a metaphor, I really haven't ever eaten a Twinkie, though after reading the rest of what I have to say it might start to sound like one.

When I was a kid my parents wouldn't let me eat Twinkies. Later, when I was old enough to buy my own food, It had stopped occurring to me to want Twinkies because I've always had a huge sweet tooth and had found plenty of other things to satisfy it. More recently it had become a point of pride for me. I'll tell people that I've never eaten a Twinkie and enjoy their shock.

So, recently, I'm starting to think that maybe I really am missing out on an experience that I ought to have had long ago. Kind of like the girl on Private Practice this week who'd never had sex. At first it was forbidden, then ultimately you just figure, I've gone this long without it why ruin my streak. The thing is though, that it's not like I've been waiting to eat a Twinkie, I had fully planned on never eating one until I started to think I might be missing out on something.

Okay, I'm getting a little too much into metaphor territory so let me address the metaphor more directly.

A lot of people make up lists of things they want to do in life (or by a certain age). Things like travel, get a college degree, learn a foreign language, go sky diving, etc. I've never made up a list like that (though certainly if I did it would have included all of the above and more). Lately it almost seems like I do have a list and have been on a crusade to cross as many things off as possible. In the last year I've crossed the first three items on that list off.

It's true that recently I've been pushing my limits but the question here is where do those limits come from? Are there things I haven't done that I'm missing out on simply because it never occurred to me to do them? Or worse things that it has occurred to me that I want to do but have been refraining from out of fear. Have I been sheltering myself? Is one Twinkie going to kill me?

Boys and Girls: Make a connection

2007-10-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

I have a best friend who is like a sister to me and through her I've met a bunch of really great women who've become good friends but it wasn't always that way for me. I wasn't always one of the girls, gabbing about boys, and shoes and chocolate. For much of my life I was one of the guys.

My devotion to Dawson's Creek is well documented as is my belief that it holds many profound bits of wisdom. So, it's time I talked about the maxim that has been one of the defining principles of my life and, like many things, it was eloquently voiced (by Jen) on Dawson's Creek. She was in therapy, discussing her inability to trust boys when the subject came up of whether or not she trusts girls and she says, "Girls suck. I mean, it's like they get a lobotomy the day they hit puberty. I mean, one day you're all milling around FAO Schwartz in the Rainbow Brite section, next day somebody gets breasts and after that it's all about getting boys to like you and whoever does first wins." This bit of little lost girl wisdom was, or is, something I've believed absolutely for most of my life.

Women are duplicitous, manipulative, illogical, competitive, evil meanies. I am a woman and, of course, consider myself an exception to this rule, though not entirely, because part of the evil that is inherent in the female of our species is that, when they get together in groups, they can infect each other, even those usually immune, with this toxic competitive urge. I'm not saying that competition is, in general, bad, or that men don't compete as much, if not more. However, men compete over things with concrete outcomes, things that can be measured...faster, bigger, louder, etc. Women, as you might expect, being ruled more by emotion than logic, compete over emotional things, primarily, though not exclusively, who is more loved (and how the hell do you measure that, really?). It's as though they think there is a finite amount of love, or sympathy, or whatever, in every room and they aren't happy unless they leave the room with more of it than anyone else.

Most of my life I've been more likely to make friends with guys because women are too complicated and you can never really trust that they mean what they say. Now, some people out there subscribe to the Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally) view of male/female relationships, that men and women can't be friends because sex always gets in the way. This is patently ridiculous. Theoretically I can't comment on the purported basis for this theory from the film. Maybe it's true that men want to sleep with every woman they find attractive and even the one's they find unattractive (how would I know, right?), but my experience having primarily men as friends would seem to contradict that premise.

It might be true that when men and women are friends, assuming heterosexuality on both parts, often one of them will develop more than friendly feelings. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that as often as not it's the women who want more and the men that want to be just friends. In fact that's not such a risky statement for me to make because in my personal experience, I've been on the receiving end of unwanted advances from my guy friends as often as I've been the one making unwanted advances. I'm not going to claim that it never ruins a friendship but I will say that it doesn't often.

That's predicated on logic though, which, granted, women aren't often well versed in. For example, if I'm friends with someone and I enjoy his company and he lets it be known that he's interested in more than friendship but I don't feel the same, I'm going to tell him that and hope that he can still be my friend which works most of the time. On the other hand, if I develop fuzzy feelings for a friend and I tell him but he's not interested and says he just wants to be friends, I'm not going to abandon a perfectly good friendship because of unrequited love. That would be such a waste.

Years ago I was madly in love with a guy who was not in the least interested in me but we became friends, over time we became best friends because we hung out a lot together. People were constantly telling me that I was wasting my time because he was never going to feel the same way about me that I felt about him. That's a position that I think completely defies logic. If I enjoy spending time with someone that time isn't wasted. The time would be wasted if I spent it alone, pining for someone who wasn't interested, rather that out in the world hanging out with a friend and having a good time. To burrow a term from the business world, you have to decide whether or not the time your spending talking to or hanging out with someone is "value added" or not and really, if you like someone that much then their friendship is obviously going to add value to your life. Why abandon someone, if you have a connection with them, just because one of you wants more than friendship.

That brings me back to my no female friends rule. If you meet someone, who you really connect with, writing them off, deciding that you can't be friends with them because of their gender (whether, like me, you have a bias against one gender or like Harry you're afraid sex would get in the way) is ridiculous. Genuine connections with people are special and you owe it to yourself to foster them.

Home

2007-09-16T23:32:00.000-07:00

I just got home from...well...home. There's one place in the world where I have felt truly and completely at home and it's odd since I really only lived there for one year before going off to college.

When my mom and step-dad got married and decided she'd move into to city rather than him moving out to the country I was pretty upset to be leaving the comfort zone of my childhood. That happened when I was 12 years old, but my step-dad's house was only one bedroom so we had to rent a house while his was demolished and a new one built that was big enough for the whole family.

He really wanted it to be a dream house, not just for himself but for us as well. He designed most of it himself and we all helped with the demolition and construction. He put in a dark room where he taught me to develop my own pictures. He and my mother and I helped salvage a lot of the hardwood floors in his old house for use in the new house. He taught me about wiring and he and I helped string the wiring in the new house together. I picked out the carpet (burgundy to go with the forest green I picked out for my bedroom wall color). I picked out everything from the tile, to the fixtures, to the shower curtain for, what I still think of as, my bathroom.

After all the design, and demolition, and construction, we finally moved into our dream house just days before I started my senior year in high school. I lived there for one year and then came back for two summers during college before moving to my own apartment. Even though I only lived there for a short time, it was home to me in a way no other house I'd lived in had been. I've lived in my current apartment for almost five years, much longer than I lived anywhere else (besides my childhood home), but it's still just my apartment while my mom's house is still my home. Tonight, sitting in the window seat in my favorite room in the house (the library), I wondered if I will ever think of anywhere else as home.

Elusive talent

2007-09-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

Did you ever feel like there was something you should be doing, but you could quite put your finger on what it was? Lately I feel that way all the time. I guess it's a more pervasive thing, like there's something I should be doing in general, with my life, and I don't know what it is.

There's been one thing in life that I felt like I was really good at, that came naturally to me. I went to college with every intention to major in it but it didn't feel right and I'm a person who generally follows those instincts. That college that I went to, sure they had a really good program in what I wanted to study but I went there because when I first came to visit the campus I felt like that was where I should be and that was enough for me.

I know I'm being unconscionably vague here, and I'm not sure why. As open as I am about most things, as I actually pride myself on being, I don't tell very many people what it is that I consider my one talent. It's not like it's embarrassing, I mean if it's something you can major in at university it couldn't be, but it's just personal, something I keep close. Also, it's not like I don't talk about it at all. If you know me for long you could easily put it together. I think I've even mentioned it here once. I just don't often tell people that it's the one thing I've felt I was really good at.

There are other things that I can do relatively well. I'm good at arguing, giving advise, buying the perfect gift, cooking. I'd like to think I'm okay at writing. It's just that all of those things require a lot of effort...well...maybe not buying perfect gifts, but that's not really skill. In general though, the other things I'm good at all require a great deal of effort for me. I feel like there is something else out there that I should be doing, that will come naturally to me, be easy, and I'll be good at it. Or maybe it shouldn't be easy, maybe I should be doing something that doesn't come naturally. Maybe it should be hard. I don't know.

Reserve Duty

2007-09-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

My brother and I haven't always gotten along as well as we do now. In fact, when we were kids we hated each other. More accurately, I worshiped him in that extra annoying way that only little sisters can, and he hated me in that awful way that only big brothers can. I used to ask him when our mother would be home and he would say, "never, she's dead".

The age difference didn't help. He's 4 1/2 years older than me which helped me pick things up earlier than some kids (like reading, and algebra), but it didn't help us develop that tight sibling relationship that some brothers and sisters have.

Whatever the reasons though, we did eventually start getting along when he was 18 and I was 14. We'd grown up in the country and the previous year had moved in to the big city which he loved and I hated. He took the opportunity to take me under his wing and teach me the things that he loved about the city. Public Transportation. Live Music. 24 hour diners. He told me how easy it would be to sneak out of our house (which he was dead wrong about because my step-dad was a really light sleeper).

Then, one day, shortly after I started high school, he took me out to the movies. I thought we were bonding, but he was really just trying to soften me up to tell me that he'd joined the army. I was so angry. Just when we were starting to get along he was leaving. I'd barely scratched the surface of the brotherly advice I needed to get through high school. I didn't have any other siblings, and I'll admit that my first reaction was disbelief that he could leave me alone like that.

That was early in 1993 and he left for basic training in the spring that year. It wasn't war time then, but serving in the military isn't the safest job even during peace time. I missed him. I worried about him a lot. I felt bad for him that he had to spend his twenty first birthday in the field doing training exercises, sleeping on the ground, probably in the rain.

My brother was only in for four years so he came home in the spring of my freshman year in college. What you need to know though, if you don't already, is that there's an eight year minimum for the army (in the US), which means even if you only sign up for four years, you're on reserve for four more after that. My brothers duty officially began in March 1993 which means his reserve duty ended in March 2001.

I don't usually think much about the fact that my brother just barely missed getting called up. Maybe I'm thinking about my brother now because his birthday is coming up, and maybe it's just the general nostalgia that seems to have taken hold of me lately. I can't tell you though how thankful I am that my brother missed getting called up and sent to Afghanistan by just a few months. I know other people who are currently serving in various branches of the armed services, and I care about them a lot, and worry about them too, but I still can't stop myself from thinking, occasionally, thank God it's not my brother.

Baseball and...chocolate chip cookies?

2007-09-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

There are things that I used to love to do. When I was a kid, and until a few years ago, there were things that I did and I loved them. It's not that these things stopped appealing to me, or became painful reminders of something I'd lost, or anything like that. It's just that these were things I used to do with people, for people, and lately no one has asked me to.

When I was a small child my dad used to take me to baseball games sometimes, often for my birthday. I have a difficult time really getting into it on television, but I love going to games. My senior year in high school, the Mariners (my home town team) made it to the playoffs and I got the chance to take my dad to one of the playoff games.

I was working for Ticketmaster at the time, which you'd think would give me a discount on tickets but it didn't. Ticketmaster was very careful not to give the impression that they gave any kind of preference to their employees, and promoters of events didn't allow them to discount tickets for employees. So, they held back some tickets to every event, for employees, but they were never the best seats, good seats but not the best, and you still had to pay full price for them. If you wanted the best seats you had to call in or wait in line like everyone else.

I had to work the day the playoff tickets went on sale so I got employee tickets, 200 level in the old King dome on the first base line. I was so excited to take my dad to that game. My dad didn't just take me to ball games when I was a kid, he was the one that was always there for me. I'm not always the best at telling people how I feel about them, I'm better at gestures, and gifts. So, taking my dad to that game was my way of telling him how much he meant to me. The Mariners even won that game (though they lost most of the rest of those playoff games). It was one of those perfect nights you get sometimes in life.

Another thing I used to love was cooking. In truth I thought I didn't actually like cooking that much, I just enjoyed the reaction I got when I cooked for people. The first, and for a long time only, thing I could cook was chocolate chip cookies. I've got a much larger culinary repertoire now but the cookies are still a specialty of mine and they're indicative of why I don't cook much anymore unless I have people to cook for. I made a batch of cookies last weekend and realized for the first time in a long time that one batch of cookies is three dozen. What am I supposed to do with three dozen cookies? Eat them all and gain 400lbs?

I made them anyway though because I only recently remembered that there are these things that I used to love to do that I haven't done in years. I've been to a couple baseball games this summer also and I'm starting to realize that I've let some things slip out of my life because the person I used to do them with (or for) isn't in my life anymore. Part of the reason that I was so happy about being on my own (i.e. single) is because it was giving me the opportunity to (or actually forcing me to) finally decide who I really am. I know that sounds remarkably like the cliche "finding myself" but you should be used to my love of cliches by now, if you're a regular reader (and if you're not you should become one). It kind of defeats that ideal, though, if I refrain from doing things I love. I like the things I like and there are actually a lot of people in the world who like cookies, especially free, home baked cookies. I haven't seemed to have any trouble finding people to go to concerts with either. Also, it turns out that there are lots of people who like baseball and I even know some of them already, some of them are even friends of mine, members of my family even.

My favorite season

2007-08-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

September is my favorite month and it's almost here. I live in the Northwest and I love rain and hate extreme temperatures on either end of the spectrum so it's not surprising that I like the Fall. I like Spring too, again not surprisingly, I enjoy the smell of lilacs and I, usually, am happy when my birthday comes around (in May), but Fall is my favorite time of year.

I think it had a lot to do with school at first. Not that I was so into school, from an academic standpoint. At least not until recently and by the time I developed a deeper academic interest I was in classes year-round anyway. It's just that school gave me something to do all day.

I grew up in the country and my closest friend (by closest I mean geographically closest) wasn't really within walking distance, maybe within biking distance, which I did sometimes, but not walking distance. I didn't live on a farm or have any major responsibilities in the summertime. Summers were boring. My brother was too much older than me for us to really hang out together so I was left to my own devices a lot.

I'm not saying I couldn't entertain myself. I had an active imagination and I was active in general, so tree climbing and building forts in the woods were always top items on the agenda. I also loved television so that helped. If all else failed and I was just bored I'd bake cookies, and once an ill-advised pie from the cherries on the tree in our yard. So, it's not like there was nothing to do, but I appreciated the interaction with kids my own age that came with the start of school each year.

Given my status as somewhat of an outsider with the kids at school one might think that summer would offer a welcome reprieve from the constant effort to fit in. That's not really how I saw it though. The constant effort to fit in, while usually a resounding failure, was at least a challenge, something to do to fill the days.

Now that I'm an adult, filling my days isn't an issue. I have a job that fills eight hours a day, well actually nine hours most days and four on Wednesdays, more if you count the commute. Right now I'm also in the process of looking for a new apartment so that takes up a lot of my time as well. Now, when I turn to baking, as I did this past weekend, it's more out of avoidance than boredom.

I still love Fall though and I'm not sure if it's just the cooler temperatures and increased rainfall that make it so appealing. Sure there's the look and smell of falling leaves. There's the cocoa and apple cider. Pumpkins. Baseball playoffs. A new television season. It becomes much more accepted to stay inside with a good book rather than going out to play. There's something else though, something intangible, something specific to the month of September. I'm not quite sure why it is exactly that I love September so much, but I do, I love it and it's almost here.

Redefining perfection

2007-08-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

A lot of the stuff I write here are the things I would write about if someone gave me my own newspaper column (sports, politics, television, etc.) and I think a lot of blogs out there are like that. However, sometimes I think a blog is really just like a diary or journal except it's not at all private because it's posted on the internet for anyone to read. Certainly I've also posted plenty of bizarre personal details up here in addition to the bits about sports, politics, television and literature. Right now though, I'm going to take a turn for the girly with the thinking-of-my-blog-as-a-diary thing.

I picked up a Nora Roberts novel at the grocery store yesterday. I know, I know, I read romance novels, I'm a girl, get used to it. This entry isn't going to be peppered with high brow references to Beckett or Cervantes or talk about political events ripped from the headlines of the New York Times, or even my flowery new age metaphysical philosophizing. It's going to be about romance.

This romance novel has a line in it that I really liked, that put me back in touch with my inner girly-girl. The guy in this story had noticed an older couple and been struck by how in love they still seemed after 30 years together, he didn't get it really, but of course this is a romance novel so by the end of the story he's figured it out. It says, "He knew now what caused a man to fall so deeply in love that it never ended. It was finding the unique woman, and what knowing her could do to your heart". The unique woman. Not the beautiful, or smart, or funny, or sexy, or exciting, or any-other-more-specific-adjective woman, but the unique woman.

That's the fantasy right there. At least it's the one that I buy into. Somewhere out there is a guy who will find my very specific and bizarre grouping of personality traits perfect for him. Somewhere out there is a guy who describes the perfect girl as someone with an argumentative streak who likes classic rock AND bubblegum pop, who loves logic but is also a hopeless romantic with a ridiculous amount of faith, who likes baseball but refuses to watch it on television (except when her home town team makes it to the playoffs, but that hardly ever happens), who eats Skittles one color at a time, who loves to do NY Times crossword puzzles even though she sucks at it and can't get past Wednesdays, who sometimes sings under her breath (wildly off key) when she's writing or cooking or doing the dishes, who likes Bruce Willis actions movies, who loves to travel, who would think a punk rock show was a romantic date but would also be happy to stay home and watch TV and bake cookies, who likes to eat the limes that come with her gin and tonics, who likes to read classic works of literature but also Harry Potter books and romance novels, etc. Somewhere out there is a guy who's perfect woman is me, couldn't possibly be anyone else given the unique and specific definition he has of the perfect woman.

I have my unique and specific definition of the perfect guy. I've always said that what I really want is a guy who'd be happy at a baseball game or the theater, at a rock and roll concert or staying home and reading a good book or watching TV. The broad strokes stay the same - smart, funny, classic rock, baseball, optimism, books - but it gets more specific when applied to specific guys.

In the books, the romance novels, it's not like the guy has this definition of the uniquely perfect woman already in mind and the girl happens to fit it. He meets the girl and falls in love with her and in the process of doing so comes up with the definition of the perfect woman based on her. It's like another one of my favorite lines, delivered with that complete romantic sincerity that's quintessentially Matthew Perry, in the movie Fools Rush In. He says to the girl, "You're everything I never knew I always wanted".

Of course in the fantasy it's a two way street. You're redefining in your head what the perfect guy is, and it's him, while he's redefining in his head what the perfect girl is, an it's you. For some reason whenever I meet a guy who thinks I redefine perfection he doesn't redefine it for me or when I meet the guy who redefines perfection for me I don't do it for him. I'm sure though (see above regarding my inner hopeless romantic) that somewhere is a guy who will think my penchant for exaggeration and overuse of the words "basically" and "essentially" is cute and I'll find his flaws adorable as well.

Tell me a story

2007-08-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

There's a concept in story telling called "suspension of disbelief" that enables the normally rational human mind to accept the often wildly irrational twists and turns of a story, be it in literature, film or television. Some people have a problem with it. Some people are constantly saying, "that could never really happen". I've never been part of that camp, I think maybe that I have no disbelief to suspend. I get caught up in stories and in moments. I love them. All types, but in recent years my favorite have been the ones on television.

I've had a life long love affair with television starting with Sesame Street. I've always held the opinion that the common view of television, that it's the "idiot box", couldn't be more wrong. Maybe some people do turn off their minds when they turn on the television but it's not television's fault it's their choice and if not TV they'd find some other method to disengage. I've never turned off my mind when I turned on the television. That statement may seem at odds with my previous one about not having a problem with suspending my disbelief but it's really not. When other people say that something in a story is unrealistic I would always ask why and do my best to argue the point. If anything television is responsible for my precocious nature. If anything it turned on my mind.

In high school I abandoned television for a brief fling with film. Part of the shift was the fact that we didn't have a TV in our house when I was in high school (except the small black and white one I kept hidden in my closet so I wouldn't have to miss the last season of The Wonder Years). During those years my dad used to take me out to the movies every week and I loved them. I wrote my college admissions essay about the first movie I ever saw (Yellow Submarine) and, while my love for stories of all types still flared, I started to feel a little let down by television. I still watched some things...Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You...but the love was gone.

Two things happened that renewed my love of television in 1998. Dawson's Creek and Sports Night. I get caught up in stories, it's true, and those two shows gave me moments that made me positively giddy. Moments that made me want to cry tears of joy for the beauty and perfection of great storytelling that I hadn't seen anywhere else in a long time.

When The West Wing came out in 1999 I started to realize that a lot of the film and television that I loved so much was connected through its writers. I don't know why it never occurred to me before that those moments I get so lost in may have been created by actors but they were conceived by writers. I became a devout Sorkin fan, of course, and I started noticing the connections other places as well. Having finally realized that my favorite stories seem all to be told by the same writers I should have realized that two of my favorite shows ever would have a writer in common.

I went to Barnes and Noble to buy some Dawson's Creek DVDs so I could relive some of those perfect moments whenever I wanted. The guy behind the counter told me about a book, called "Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing" by Jeffrey Stepakoff, one of the former writers on Dawson's Creek. The book details the stories behind the scenes of some of those perfect moments, that make me giddy, like when Pacey watches Joey sleeping at the end of "Weekend in the Country". It details Stepakoff's career in television writing. I've long since stopped being surprised by the writing connections between my favorite shows, but somehow I was surprised to find that Stepakoff, in addition to being behind some of those bits of television gold on Dawson's Creek, was also a writer on The Wonder Years.

I can't wait to see what his next project will be. Given his previous work, from The Wonder Years to Dawson's Creek to his book, I'm sure it will be great.

Youthful exuberance

2007-07-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Six of the top ten riders in this years Tour de France were Spanish (and thirteen of the top twenty-five). The winner of the Yellow Jersey is also the winner of the White Jersey (i.e. he's under 25). The winner of the polka dot jersey, and the most aggressive rider are also both under under 25. In fact when they had all the jersey winners up on the podium the only one over 25 was Boonen (who's 26). The face of the tour is changing. Spanish riders have always been among the best of the best. In fact the record Lance Armstrong broke (for Tour wins) was previously held by a Spaniard (Miguel Indurain), but the young guys at the top is new.

Lance Armstrong was 27 when he won his first Tour and 34 when he retired and that's a pretty good indicator of the average age. Presumably they have the under 25 competition because no one under 25 (usually) wins the overall competition. There's talk, even in the NY Times (my favorite periodical), that the baby faces on the podium is an indicator of the sport getting cleaner.

In the 90s (and probably before) doping was ubiquitous. Everyone knows about the 1998 Festina scandal that decimated the Tour that year and precipitated the current focus on cleaning up the sport. It was difficult at the time though. If they caught one or two top riders doping (or even an entire team as was the case with Festina that year) there was still dozens, maybe hundreds, of other riders doping and when you came up to the pro circuit you had to compete with all of them. So, it's been a gradual process.

Now though, young riders coming up aren't willing to risk their lives or their careers to possibly get ahead, and team managers won't put up with dirty riders, and the UCI and race organizers cracking down. In sports there's always going to be people who, through doping or winning the genetic lottery, can't be beaten, but it no longer seems to be the case that it leads to a downward spiral where everyone has to cheat, not to win, just to stay in the game. As more people who are used to the old way, where doping was the only way to get ahead, retire (or get caught and banned) the young riders can now face a clean field.

This years Tour was wide open. No Lance Armstrong, no Ivan Basso, no Jan Ulrich. The giants of the sport who couldn't be beaten have retired. It was great watching Lance Armstrong dominate the Tour year after year, but after a few years it started to become sort of routine, not as exciting. There may still be a long way to go to eliminate doping, for that matter, the seemingly clean youngsters rising to the top these days might not be, but it sure is fun to watch the race and not feel like the outcome is a forgone conclusion.

The wURLd according to me

2007-07-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

I'm what I guess you'd call agnostic. I like to believe in a higher power, especially since the world is full of things I can't explain, but I'm just not sure. I've said, and it's true, that the one thing I really believe in is love and I suppose that is a higher power in a sense. It's an odd thing, being in love. It makes people do things that they never thought they would or things they never thought they could. In English we say we are in love "with" someone but as often as not you're in it all by yourself. Some people say that love hurts, that it always does, that it has to, but that's not true. Love, in it's purest form doesn't hurt at all, it's only when you start placing conditions on it and you're afraid that those conditions won't be met that it starts to hurt. Most commonly, you love someone but it's unrequited, and that hurts. Trust me, I know this, if you love someone, whether they're in it with you or not, it shouldn't hurt, it doesn't hurt, just the opposite really.

That was a side note sort of but it's important and I'll get back to it. For now it's important to note that it is a faith I have, in love and the fact that it doesn't hurt. I have no empirical evidence that love even exists, much less that it doesn't hurt. You can't see it, touch it, hear it, taste it or smell it. I say "touch" in defining empirical evidence as opposed to "feel" because the immediate response some people would have is that you can feel love. You can definitely feel it, but not in the empirical sense, not in the way that I, say, feel this keyboard under my fingers. So, the faith that I have in love is a lot like the faith that some people have in God (and in truth I can't say that I don't have a bit of that faith too). I can't prove that God exists, but I can say that I have a feeling that He does (to use the common monotheist parlance).

Mormons call this "feeling the spirit", because Mormons, like many Christian sects, believe in a holy trinity (Father, Son, Holy spirit). It's the main reason I became Mormon, and also the main reason I'm not Mormon anymore.

When I was a kid I only went to church with my friends families. My father wasn't religious, my mother was raised Catholic and then found out shortly before I was born that she was partly Jewish (the part that counts according to some) but she wasn't really religious either. So, I went to church with my friends families and most of them were Mormon. When I went to church I got a feeling that I can't really describe and because the Mormon church was the only one I'd really been to I bought in to their explanation about "feeling the spirit".

My mother wouldn't let me get baptised though, she said when I was 18 I could decide for myself. I might not have ever gotten baptised at all because between the ages of 14 and 18 I sort of...lost faith, I guess you'd say. I found it again because I had that same feeling, like being in church, when I met my ex. With all that faith back and no outlet for it (because the boy just didn't feel the same way about me that I felt about him...yet), and because two of my roommates at the time were Mormon I came back to church and started taking conversion classes.

Then, the day I got baptised, my previously unrequited love was revealed to be requited after all. Some people in the church wanted me to choose between the church and the boy and at first I just couldn't do that. How do you chose between two such similar feelings? He wasn't asking me to choose though (despite having been ingrained with a fairly large prejudice against Mormons), so I chose him both because he never would have asked me to choose and because having that feeling for him, that was so similar to how I felt in church, made me question the idea that there was only one right and true faith, and questioning that makes the entire foundation of religion a little shaky since they all claim to be the one and only right and true faith (except Buddhism and Judaism).

I thought, at the time, this feeling is the only proof I have and I'd be willing to bet that other people who belong to other religions have had this feeling too, in their places of worship or even about things other than religion (I had), so how can I say they are all wrong, their souls damned to eternal torment because they don't believe this one thing. That seemed absurd to me. I've since had the same feeling in Catholic and Episcopal churches and one night walking through St Jakob's Platz in Munich and in all sorts of other places having nothing to do with religious worship. The closest thing I can compare it to is love and I've had that feeling since too. Which just confirms my belief that there isn't any one true religion.

I recently said, sort of off hand, to someone, another agnostic, that maybe, instead of all religions being wrong, they were all right. I argued that maybe the differences (even between monotheistic and polytheistic religions) stem from the inability of man to describe this higher power. The only way we can think of to describe it is to make it an entity, like a person, or an animal, or several of either, or several of both, or an energy (like Chi), but perhaps none of those really hit the mark. My best stab at describing it is basically to say something akin to "God is love", but maybe that's off the mark as well. Perhaps it defies description.

Of course, things that defy description are difficult to understand, and we're all aware of the human tendency to fear those things we can't understand. Out of that fear is born the need to describe It and the variation in descriptions would have the tendency to lead back to something we can't understand, which, again, causes fear, unless you choose to believe your description is the right one and everyone else is wrong.

If you're a loyal reader (say hello to each other, there can't be more than two of you), then you may have read bits of this philosophy before and you likely know where I'm headed with this. You may also have noticed the change in my URL which so far just reflects my general philosophy but ultimately is going to have both this blog and my other one (this one being fear and the other faith) side by side as soon as I figure out the code that will publish both to the same URL(HTML isn't my specialty). If you've never read this blog though, you won't feel that sense of deja vu when I say that love, essentially, is faith (and logically, hate basically is fear).

That brings me back to the, rejected, idea that love hurts. I figured that out (that love doesn't hurt) because I was in love, at first unrequited but ultimately returned and it didn't hurt, not until the break up of the (7+ year) relationship and then only briefly and only because I was afraid, for about a minute, that breaking up meant losing him, and therefore that feeling, completely and forever. Of course it didn't mean either of those things, he's still a good friend and I've had that feeling for at least one other person since, but fear isn't always well founded. The minute that I decided, and make no mistake it was a choice, to let go of that fear and believe that it was for the best it didn't hurt anymore. It was the fear that hurt, not the love, and I was right, it was all for the best, so there was nothing to fear anyway.

Someone I know, put into words this philosophy of mine way better than I ever could, he said that true faith conquers fear. That same guy is fond of saying that faith is a choice and he's absolutely right. It is a choice and when you have a choice that means you have options. What I believe is that when you choose not to be afraid you are choosing faith. Maybe you are putting that faith in God, or maybe in Karma, or maybe just in yourself, but it's faith none the less. I have lots of faith. I'm not always entirely sure what to put my faith in, but it's better than the alternative.

Tour Magic: Injuries and Alliances

2007-07-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

The crashes in this years Tour are out of control. Every year there are a couple of crashes but this year is insane. On stage one Cavendish collided with a spectator, on Stage two there was a gigantic pileup including the race leader Cancellara, on stage three Steegmans crashed, Noval, McEwen, Kloden and Vinokourov are all racing with injuries. I don't think I've ever seen a tour with this many crashes. The race goes on though.

And yesterday Boonen finally won a stage. I have to explain a bit about what I love about Boonen and cycling in general. For starters, unlike a lot of top riders, especially sprinters, he's really laid back and humble about it all. In an interview with Versus he said that you have to love riding for it's own sake, it can't be all about winning. He said that if he thinks back to when he was a kid and first picked up a bike he didn't do it because he wanted to be a professional and win races and make money off it, he just liked to ride. I think that goes a long way towards explaining his attitude. Win or lose he always just seems really happy to be doing something he loves which makes me happy to be watching someone doing something they love so much. He's just so cool. Of course, I also have to acknowledge my, already well documented, opinion that Boonen is also nice to look at in those tight bike shorts. Seriously, if Boonen had been alive in the time of Michelangelo we'd have a statue of him instead of the David. He's pretty.

So, that's why I love Boonen, now how is Boonen an example of what I love about cycling in general (aside from looking good in spandex)? Two days ago Boonen lost the green jersey (the one for sprint points) to Erik Zabel (a German rider who I also love). Yesterday, Boonen, understandably wanted to win the jersey back and he went after it. There was a one man breakaway (British rider Bradley Wiggins who was, at one point, 17 minutes ahead of the field), but Boonen sprinted for, and won, the 2nd place sprint points at some of the sprint points out on the course to the point that he pulled even with Zabel in points. Zabel rode up next to him and asked him not to try for the points at the next sprint, to save it for the end of the stage so they could compete straight up against each other in that final sprint for the stage win and the green jersey points. Boonen agreed and they both held back until the finish. He took the stage win and the green jersey. Those kind of deals struck between riders out on the course fascinate me.

Only one guy can win each stage, each points jersey, and only one guy can win the overall classification, but out on the course riders work together (both within their teams and across team lines) or they agree not to work, it's all very strategic. There will be a breakaway of 5 or 6 guys, all from different teams, but they will agree to work together so they can stay away, until the end when it becomes every man for himself. Or if the teams who have great sprinters want to bring it back together for a big sprint finish then they will agree to work together across team lines to bring the breakaway back.

There's a code among riders of the peleton. If one of your main competitors crashes, or has a mechanical problem, or has to stop to pee, you slow up a bit to give him a chance to get back into the race in earnest. It happened a couple years ago in the Tour. Ulrich crashed and Armstrong didn't take that opportunity to attack, he slowed up until Ulrich was back in it. There's a tacit agreement.

That gentleman's agreement doesn't really cover the situation with Boonen and Zabel yesterday. Boonen wasn't obligated, even by tradition or politeness, to agree to hold off on going for the points out on the course, but he did it anyway, both because he's a really great guy, but also because the win would mean that much more if hinged on one sprint rather than the strategic accumulation of points throughout the race.

It's that complicated balance between sportsmanship, strategy and straight up competition that makes me love cycling and keeps me captivated throughout the month of July. Plus Boonen's nice to look at.

Beautiful

2007-07-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

Fabian Cacellara said, of his teammate Dave Zabriskie, that on a time trial bike he is beautiful to watch and I can't put it much better than that. It's a sort of man/machine fusion. Everyone says he's the most aerodynamic man in the peleton. Zabriskie, often nicknamed ZMan, is a rising star in cycling (and an American) and, as previously noted, beautiful on a time trial bike (not to mention beautiful in general), all of which are reasons I am particularly interested in following his career. Then there's his dramatic entrance on the Tour scene in 2005 when he won the prologue and wore the yellow jersey for several days only to lose it when he crashed in the Team Time Trial (just barely outside the 2 kilometer safety zone). Of course there's also funny interviews he used to post on his blog, though unfortunately he's quit blogging. Apparently, the ZMan found internet connections hard to come by in Europe (a problem I'm now well acquainted with myself).

Zabriskie is a time trial specialist, and the reigning US time trial champion, but he didn't win the prologue in this years' Tour. His teammate, and the reigning World time trial champion, Fabian Cancellara took the prologue. I know I've talked about the CSC team before but the team is so spectacular that they warrant more mentions.

You may know that I had the good fortune to attend the Paris-Roubaix a couple months ago, a race won this year by another CSC rider, Stuart O'grady, and last year by none other than current Tour de France leader, and CSC teammate, Fabian Cancellara. I am an unabashed fan of this team and the doping scandal (with Basso, and Riis, and Jaksche) has done nothing to diminish that.

I think Riis' statement makes it pretty clear, without actually pointing fingers at any other riders, that doping was rampant in cycling in the 90s. He says that he did what he had to do to compete at the top level. Of course that's the catch 22 of doping, if everyone is doing it then you can't compete without doing it, so you do, but then you're responsible for perpetuating it because you've become part of the "everyone" who is doing it for the next generation of riders to try to compete with. Luckily for the sport of cycling, for the current generation and the next, the organizers of the sport have decided they are serious about cleaning up the image of their sport. Do I have faith that my favorite team, despite the admission of their director and the accusations of one of their former riders, is riding clean? Yes. Again I have to question though whether or not I really care if they're clean or not. The sport is exciting, it's entertaining, and that isn't diminished for me by thinking the riders might be enhanced.

The thing about doping is that it's dangerous. EPO and blood doping dramatically increase risk of heart attack and stroke. Other more traditional drugs (like steroids and amphetamines) have well documented health risks, also including risk of heart attack and stroke. So, when athletes use these procedures or substances to enhance their performance they're risking their lives. That's fine by me. If they want to risk their lives for my entertainment (and their own profit) that's okay with me. If I had a kid though, and he told me that his greatest dream in life was to one day win the Tour de France, I might change my tune, but maybe not. After all, even a totally clean rider can crash at 35 mph over the side of an Alpine (or Pyreneean) cliff and crack his head open (RIP Fabio Casartelli) so just getting on a bike and competing at all is a risk.

Since I doubt I'll really come to a conclusion on the doping front I'll just enjoy watching the Tour and the beautiful CSC team.

Bunnies

2007-07-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Not far from my apartment there are two huge parks, two of the biggest in Seattle. One, called Greenlake park, is skirted (on it's West side) buy Aurora Ave (Hwy 99) and is largely occupied, as those with literal minds might imagine, by a large (green) lake. The other, called Woodland Park, is bisected by Aurora Ave (Hwy 99); its East half is mostly wooded (as predicted, again, by the literal minded among you) and its West half is home to Seattle's Zoo. Woodland Park is part of, in fact most of, Phinney Ridge, which is to say that the whole park is pretty much all up hill. Where Aurora Ave starts it's incline is the beginning of the park (on it's North end) and if you turned off Aurora onto 50th you'd continue uphill for several blocks along the South end of the park.

These two parks are like a map of my childhood, or adolescence at least. My 8th grade class had our end of year picnic at Woodland Park. When I was 14 and 15 I rowed crew at Greenlake in the summers. In fact I had a run in with an overly friendly frat boy who helped out coaching our crew team there. Near the Bathhouse Theater I went skinny dipping for the first time when I was 16. I spent a lot of time at that spot, by the Bathhouse, my Junior and Senior years in High School. Friendships were forged and others were broken there. To this day, I always go there when my life seems out of control. Things never seem any clearer there but it reminds me of a time when my life was quite a bit more out of control and that helps.

There's a small strip of grass surrounded by trees right where the two parks meet, at Aurora Ave, that used to have dozens (possibly hundreds) of bunnies in it. They made their burrows under the highway and, I hear, in some cases even burrowed all the way under the highway and up into some of the animal cages at the zoo. I loved these bunnies. That section of the park is a tiny triangle of grass bordered on the South by N 63rd St, on the East by W Greenlake Way, and on the West by Aurora Ave N. It was on my way home from my parents house (among other things) and every time I drove by and saw all the bunnies I smiled.

Then I started to hear talk a couple years ago about how the city wanted to eliminate the bunny problem. Though apparently there had been talk for many years, decades possibly. You see the bunnies weren't wild to begin with, they were pet bunnies that people abandoned there. So it wasn't a natural bunny habitat, so to speak, which wasn't good for the bunnies or the habitat. Over the years people had tried to adopt the bunnies or relocate them but those efforts couldn't keep up with the expanding bunny population (bunnies being bunnies after all). Apparently, in recent years, the bunny burrows under the Zoo had become so numerous that they were a hazard to the more valuable zoo animals by making the ground unstable. There was a fear that one of the African Savanna animals, a zebra or giraffe or something, would accidentally step in one of the burrows and twist an ankle thereby having to be put down...or something like that. I understand that, and the much more logical argument about the burrows potentially making the highway unstable and prone to sink holes, all of which are threats to the bunnies as well anyway. So, I understood the need to do something about the bunny population, but I felt like eliminating it all together seemed extreme, and, of course, it made me sad because, you know, bunnies are cute and stuff.

There was much talk about possibly killing the bunnies, just like there had been with the geese a few years back, but bunnies are cute and geese are not so I think the impetus to come up with a more humane solution was higher. In the end a more humane solution was found. There's actually a bunny sanctuary in Redmond, specifically designed to house all those abandoned Easter gifts that people foolishly buy for their kids (which were the source of the Greenlake/Woodland Park bunny problem to begin with). They relocated the bunnies this past winter. It was actually hard to tell. There was a big storm this year that knocked down a lot of trees including a large one in the bunny zone (as I used to call it). This huge tree lay there for about 3 or 4 months, all winter basically, when all the other debris from the storm had already been cleared. With the tree there, taking up a majority of that tiny strip of park, the bunnies weren't as visible, but a couple months ago, when they finally cleared the tree from the park I realized the bunnies were gone.

I know the parks are better off and the bunnies are better off but I kind of miss them.

It's that time of year again.

2007-07-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

If you follow my writing here, as I'm fairly certain pretty much no one does but there may be a few of you out there, you're probably asking yourself, "What the hell, July is almost half over and she hasn't said word one about the Tour de France?". To be fair, it was kind of a later start this year than usual. It's true though that I haven't been following cycling as much in the last couple months as I normally do. I got much more excited about the Classics this year than the Tours mostly because I was in Europe in the springtime and actually got to go to one of the best of the Spring Classics, the Paris-Roubaix. I didn't even watch the Giro (though I hear my favorite, Zabriskie, rode well even in the mountains which makes me happy). I am watching the Tour, of course, and I am excited about it, maybe even more than usual, or at least in different ways than usual.

If you watch the Tour in the US you probably watch it on Versus (formerly the Outdoor Life Network). They made a big deal, in their opening coverage, of the fact that there isn't a single former Tour winner in this year's pelleton. Landis is, of course, still awaiting the results of his doping case and therefore can't compete. Basso and Ulrich are both out voluntarily (retired) though under suspicion of doping. Last year, being the first post-Armstrong year, it was said that the field was wide open and anything could happen. I think that might, if possible, be even more true this year. Anything can happen.

What I love about the grand Tours is the drama. All sports are dramatic, of course because sporting events have built in conflict. Cycling though is especially dramatic and the cameras catch it all. In the Tours that drama is drawn out for three weeks, every day. You get to see partnerships made and broken and rivalries played out. I'll likely have more to say about the race itself when it gets into the mountains, but for now I'll just say that you really should watch the Tour de France. It's a good show.