MARC ADEN GRAY'S BLOG!

MARC ADEN GRAY'S COLUMN HAS MOVED.

2010-11-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

Hi there. Thanks for visiting. You can now read my column at:

www.marcadengraysblog.wordpress.com

or just enter www.marcadengray.com

Thanks for reading!

A VIDEO STORE NAMED DESIRE

2010-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Video Store is dead.

Yes, you may still see them hanging around your local strip mall, or taking up space on a soon to be vacant lot, but it's only a matter of time. Blockbuster, Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday, and I don't think anyone is surprised. What's surprising is that these empty stores are still hanging on for dear life even as I write this column.

It's fascinating, when you think about it, akin to watching one of those old casinos in Vegas being demolished; you see the explosion at the base, hear the rumbling cacophony...

Except that in this case, the casino hasn't fallen. A Blockbuster is still standing somewhere in your neighbourhood, the perennial Blanche Dubois of video entertainment, telling itself that the glory days are still here and even more glorious days lie ahead.

But they don't. Why? To answer that question, it's time to offer this writer's personal history of his almost quarter-century old relationship with the beloved Video Store, which is now fast coming to an end. It's a tale of an elopement, a torrid affair, a loving marriage and finally, a slow and steady estrangement followed by the inevitable divorce. Oh, and death. Can't forget that.

It all started back in 1986. I was 13 years old, and already a film junkie. I lived with my mother in a loft downtown not far from the cinema and theater district. At least three times a week I would make the half-mile walk to the movies, purchase four to five pounds of chocolate and coke, and be swept away by the dreams of Hollywood. 1986? Let's see... we'll start with a few of the good: Aliens, The Color of Money, Hoosiers, Big Trouble In Little China. Then there was the celluloid offal: Cobra, Clan of the Cave Bear, King Kong Lives, Let's Get Harry (brilliant title, though).

But I loved 'em all. I couldn't get enough. Which is why, when I first heard about something called the video store, the drool pouring out of mouth hit the ground with an audible splash. What?? You can... what? Watch whatever movie you like AT HOME??!!! Oh, my.. I must join one... now.

The problem was, we basically lived in Chinatown. The only video store anywhere near us featured all the best new releases from Beijing. They did come with subtitles- in Cantonese. Just in case your Mandarin was a tad rusty. My hopes were sunk. My life seemed lost, hopeless; I would never be able to watch movies on my terms, fitted into my busy adolescent schedule of backyard cricket and relentless, rapid-fire bursts of desperate masturbation.

Then something strange and wondrous happened. We moved. Out of the downtown, away from the Yellow Peril, with its incomprehensible movies and delicious take-out, and into an actual suburb. Not a particularly nice one, mind you, but one featuring.... a Video Store.

Not just any Video Store. The biggest, and only, Video Store I'd ever seen. Two levels. A bathroom. And more movies than one could poke a stick at. The best part? After a brief discussion with the manager, it was made clear that I be able to rent anything I liked.

A quick disclaimer here, in defense of my mother. She knew that I loved all kinds of movies, ranging from fluffy teen stuff right through to adult drama. Back in those days, when Hollywood still made movies for adults, many of these were given the strictest- and most exciting- rating: R. No one under the age of 18 would pass through those gates. I had always managed to get in at the cinema and mum saw no reason why it should be different here. So, with one quick note left on the brand new coal-fired Apple 2c computer, the entire universe of film heaven was opened to me.

And a love affair began. New Releases was, in those days, the least exciting area of the store- I'd seen everything there was to see in the last few years, since I'd been old enough to go to the cinema by myself. It was the older movies that captivated, the really old ones, the ancient stuff- from, like, the early 80s, that I lusted after. That first night in the new house, my room consisting only of my creaky bed, a milk crate on which the beloved TV sat and, of course, our brand new Video Cassette Player, I inhaled the first three Rocky movies, having adored Rocky IV to the tune of five times at the cinema. I was shocked to discover that the first in the series was called Rocky, not Rocky One. Ah, well. Must be a misprint. Anyway, all three films went down the hatch that night, with hundreds more to follow within a few months.

Not all of which were, um... Hollywood films, in the strictest sense of the word. Having said that, many of them were probably made near Hollywood. Van Nuys, to be more specific. These European-style art films about the vagaries of love were to be found in an area at the rear end (couldn't resist) of the store under the heading, "Erotica". Erotica. Can you believe that? So quaint. Makes the eighties seem downright virginal. I don't recall seeing an erotica section in a Blockbuster store. Maybe if they'd included one, they'd be faring a little better right now.

I forgot to mention the small, dilapidated Beta section that I discovered soon after joining. Later transformed into the Laser Disc section. Last I heard it had become the Movies With Good Stories For Intelligent Adults Featuring Good Actors section. But no one rents any of those.

But back to our adventure through history. Things basically remained unchanged for the better part of twenty years. Yes, VHS and, shockingly, Beta disappeared and DVDs took their place. I lived in Manhattan now and my local Video Store was, indeed, a Blockbuster. Not that I missed the Erotica section- I actually went on the occasional date now and, even more surprisingly, managed to fool a few hapless women into becoming romantically involved with me. Failing that, there was also the rise of a much larger Erotica section, an Erotica section that was infinite in size and even larger in grandeur: the Internet. Of course, it didn't have the same allure. Nothing can match the excitement and triumph of being a thirteen year-old boy surviving the humiliation and embarrassment of renting a pornographic movie and making it home and into his bedroom, undiscovered. The Internet makes everything too easy.

Then, sometime in the mid-2000s, a perfect storm arrived, one that would forever sever my ties with the Video Store.

Three elements came into accordance.

1. I matured. Not much, but just enough to allow me to realize that most movies coming out of Hollywood were, in fact, crapola. As a result, amazingly, I stopped watching them.

2. I made the terrible life choice of getting cable, and I found to my amazement that I could rent movies whenever I damn well pleased. Without a note from my mother.

3. Sometime soon after that, Netflix arrived and, well... the rest is history, not only for me, but for most of you as well. I love getting my little red envelope in the mail. Cripes, I sound lame right now… and a little effete.

So that's it. Enjoy these dinosaurs while they still roam the earth. Pretty soon they'll be gone. Will we mourn them? Maybe not, but with each passing year it seems like there are less and less places where people go to browse for pieces of entertainment to take home with them. First the record store became extinct, then the small book store, after that the large-scale music store... and now this, with only the local library to follow.

There's nothing romantic about a Blockbuster, or any other type of Video Store.

But only the coldest of us don't sadden, even for a few moments, upon hearing of the loss of an old flame.

Goodbye, Video Store. I want to say you won’t be forgotten. But I'd be lying.

Pictures, from top: Sylvester Stallone in ROCKY IV, United Artists, 1985.

The VHS v BETA War Of The Early Eighties. VHS prevailed... for a time.

The kind of Video Store that caused me so much anguish as a kid.

The Magpie List

2010-09-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

A writer and friend of mine here in Los Angeles, Eve Sturges, has a lovely blog called The Magpie List. Worth a look- anyone can make a random, spontaneous list of some of their favourite books, music and movies (I added TV- couldn't resist putting Deadwood and Ricky Gervais down).

Not only is it fun, but the blog is an interesting resource for anyone seeking ideas for their next book, album or Netflix rental:

http://themagpielist.com/

THE AMERICAN MONARCHY

2010-09-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Victoria and I were driving through the super-trendy part of West Hollywood the other day and I found my attention being diverted by a large billboard advertising beer (by the way, anyone else find it strange that we can be ticketed for texting while driving yet companies are able to put billboards by the side of the road that are designed to distract us?). It was very simple: two extremely attractive modelly

types – hell, why don’t I just call them models – in hip clothing and wearing designer sunglasses are looking at each other. Between them a massive bottle of beer has been projected onto the picture. There was also a tag line; you know the type: “Budweiser… get shitfaced and homoerotic”, or “Stella Artois. Drink it and you’ll have boatloads of anonymous sex with unrealistically attractive people.”

Anyway, as I turned my eyes back to the road having driven blind for about seven seconds, a thought which many of you might find breathtakingly obvious struck me:

We are all obsessed with glamour.

Then the next thought hit:

We haven’t changed since medieval times. Since we all turned our faces up toward Kings and Queens.

America may have been founded on the basis of monarchic rejection, yet it seems we haven’t lost our fascination with and desire for lives filled with castles, jewels and the adoration of the great unwashed.

In fact, I would dare to say that the peoples of the region named the United Kingdom, with their flaccid yet wealthy monarchy still in place, are much less interested in their own royalty than we in the US are with our adopted “eminences”.

And who are some of these fortunate ones, these chosen few adorned with precious gems, riding in resplendent carriages, just out of the reach of the straining hordes who are so desperate for a glance, a brief touch, anything that they think might rub off on them, give them the slightest chance of rising up to that rarified class themselves sometime in the future?

Kim Kardashian.

Ashton Kutcher.

Snoop Dog (notice the correct spelling of the word).

Snookie.

Jessica Simpson

Yep folks, meet some of the American Monarchy, revered simply for the size of their bling. Okay, Snoop also has produced what some might call ‘music’, but if I’m not mistaken, his greater contribution has been the glorification of the degradation of women. I mean, golly, at least the members of nobility in other countries are educated, for pete’s sake. They can usually string a sentence or two together in tones resembling something other than monosyllabic grunts- Queen Elizabeth excluded.

But not only do we elevate anyone with enough cash to have their own reality show, we also seem to be willing to buy products because we see them in connection with complete strangers who only appear to be members of this fancied club. For all we know, that model wearing those four hundred-dollar jeans might be buried under a mountain of debt accrued from his cocaine habit, or maybe that Swiss watch ad in that fashion magazine was his first job, and he’s still living in a roach-infested hovel in Queens. But we don’t care. I’d be willing to say that we have become masters at the art of judging books by their covers, except for the fact that wait, we don’t even read books anymore.

But it is true that for most of us, the proverbial clothes do make the man. Allowing for many exceptions, we have become a nation of the peasantry and the ruling class. Mansions are built, cars with price tags better reserved for houses are bought, entire armies of servants disguised as ‘entourage’ are maintained, and individual kingdoms and empires are built as more of us become ‘incorporated’, which sounds like something out of Invasion of The Body Snatchers and, if you’ve seen many of these people interviewed, that analogy might be closer than you think.

I’m all for living well. But we have to have standards, people. We can all change how we look at the world, and more importantly what we value in it, in little ways. Let’s start by refusing to be too impressed by shiny objects that we will inevitably tire of all too quickly- and that includes humans. Who cares if Tiger Woods won a few rounds of golf- instead of hanging around a golf course and clapping while he lifted his heavy golden trophy and his heavier zillion-dollar check, we should have said to him 'a job well done mate, there’s an aluminium plaque waiting for you in a shed near the parking lot, we’re off to the pub.'

As Victoria once told me, a milk shake used to be considered a dessert, a treat; now we call it coffee and consume far more of it than is good for us. Let us consider the soap opera that is the affairs of dumb rich people who contribute nothing to our community in the same light- as a vice to engage in very occasionally. Maybe then we’ll be freer to pursue our own destinies, and realize that what any of us has to give might be shinier and worth more than all the jeans, sunglasses and bronzed muscle in Christendom.

Pictures, from top: The woman my father refers to as Sweaty Betty.

Snoop Dog... misogynistic imbecile.

LEAVING OURSELVES ALONE

2010-09-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

People often talk about living in a ‘state of grace’.

To me, on this day, that means loving what one does.

We all have things we love to do, those creative acts which bring us joy and fulfillment. For many of us, those passions have turned into career pursuits, carrying with them dreams, ambitions, goals. For others, these passions may never turn into lifelong professions, instead residing only in our private lives. Lastly, there are many, I suspect way too many, who simply yearn to do something but never take the first step.

The question is, outside of our everyday responsibilities which of course have to be met, why is it that we don’t always do what we love to do, engaging in those activities which consistently lift our spirit and give us the most joy? It is a given that at times our concentration and focus will become captured by other, more pressing concerns- if we are tackling issues of our very survival, for instance. But in the absence of obstacles to our self-expression and the practice of the rituals and tasks we love to do, why should we avoid them? Why should we resist their silent call to us? We all know that voice , that whispers crazy things to us, that urges us to expand, to express and propel our unique ideas, thoughts and feelings out into the world. This is the same voice that has inspired your greatest heroes in their respective fields to go out into society and make their singular contribution.

From what I can tell, the primary thing, aside from oppressive outside forces, that stops a human being from making that contribution is self-criticism and faulty paradigms around success and failure. When we have very specific ideas about what success means and how it must be manifested, anything not fitting that paradigm will cause discomfort, pessimism and even great degrees of shame. Many of us were taught at a young age that no meaning can be found in failure. On the contrary: failure can be of profound meaning, if we’re willing to look at it without judgement. Even better would be to experience it without judgement.

What a productive and joyous life we might lead were we to embrace the entirety of our journey, learning to love and be interested in our entire spectrum of experience as human beings. My most creative periods have occurred when I was willing to be non-judgmental about what I was producing. Not only that, my happiest days came when I made the choice to love what I was doing and everything that came with and from it.

I can already hear a doubting voice that might speak up and say, “that’s all wonderful, but what about when there are goals to be achieved, objectives to be fulfilled and deadlines to be met?”

The paradox is that those very same goals have the greatest chance of being attained in the most successful way when we are able to let go of resistance that comes in the form of self-criticism and judgment. By being unconditional with ourselves and the results which come from our creative work, we find a greater ability to be honest without being self-flagellatory, to be able to be constructively critical without condemning ourselves.

Small children can teach us. Their creative prolificity can be awe-inspiring. We've all seen the parent who shoves a piece of blank paper in front of their child with a stack of crayons, saying "they'll be happy for hours."

So can we. Next time you're feeling stuck while working on an especially meaningful project, I urge you to step back and love whatever work you've done up until that point. See the results of your labour as you would your own child's, and that will hopefully lead to passionate encouragement of yourself for more.

The aphorism holds true:

"When we love what we do, we invariably end up doing more of what we love."

THURSDAY STREET CLEANING

2010-09-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

Some interesting things going on in the world. Along with some boring things. Let's look at a sampling of both:

An interesting article on Mark Zuckerberg in this week's New Yorker, in anticipation of the film about him titled The Social Network. I'm expecting the movie to be decent, given it was written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame and directed by one of my favourite Hollywood guys, David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). The article paints a conflicting portrait of the man; depending on your perspective, he could seem a heartless, brilliant opportunist or just a brilliant... opportunist, which has no pejorative connotation for this writer- it simply means that Zuckerberg had the creative genius to take advantage of an enormous opportunity, something any creative person aspires to do.

A terrific piece by Michael Moore about the controversy surrounding the construction of the Islamic community center near the former World Trade Center site, also known as 'Ground Zero', an idiotic Hollywood name if there ever was one.

If you want a different perspective on the world and the different jobs in it, hop on the back of a transmission tower worker at 1,768 feet. My girlfriend Victoria can't watch this without breaking out in a sweat. I'm guessing we won't be going bungy jumping anytime soon.

A fascinating couple of weeks involving issues around religion's place in an increasingly secular society. First it was the French ban on the public adornment of traditional Islamic veils, better known as 'Burkas', which has triggered an outcry of Muslim indignation in that country. Then it was time for that wonderful enabler of child predators, the Pope, to visit England at huge cost, as public services in that country, as in the US, continue to be slashed. Read this wonderful op-ed in Tuesday's Guardian by the president of the British Humanist Associaton on secularism in today's UK and the religious backlash against it. An interesting side note: Australia's recently elected first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, risked losing that election when she came right out and called herself an atheist during the campaign, saying that she respected all religions and was ready to work with religious leaders and her political colleagues who were devoutly religious. I look forward to the day when politicians in the United States are allowed to be non-religious.

In my humble opinion, all of these events fall under the heading of 'interesting', yet I promised you some boring stuff as well. How about this... my neighbour is in a 'fantasy league'. Question: why is it that people who dress up in cloaks and hats and role-play as druids and sorcerers are called nerds, while idiots who dress up in colourful sporting paraphernalia and role-play as owners or coaches of sporting franchises consider themselves cool? College football and the NFL season have arrived, and the 'fantasy leagues' have begun... I call on all nerds to arm themselves with real swords and clubs, go down to their local sports bar, crack some heads and earn some well-deserved payback.

Tail-gating, fantasy leagues and American football. Now that's boring.

THE OTHER 9/11

2010-09-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

Many US citizens and others from around the world take this day, September 11, to remember the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

People will often say that days of remembrance like this are important so that we 'never forget' what happened in the effort to always be 'vigilant' and ensure that atrocities like the attacks of 9/11/01 'never happen again.'

I am in full agreement that not forgetting events of mass murder can be critical when attempting to permanently eradicate any possibility of their repetition. However, it is important to remind ourselves that it is how we remember, as citizens and as nations, that is one of the keys when it comes to avoiding future incidents of mass violence.

On September 11, 1973, the democratically elected socialist President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was removed from power in a military coup by his General Chief of Staff of the army, Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet went on to murder many of his political opponents and somewhere between 1,500-3,200 of his citizens by conservative estimates in addition to torturing around 30,000 men, women and children and interning around 80,000. 200,000 Chilean citizens have been said to have gone into exile. This violent, illegal military regime served up 17 years of misery to its people before finally coming to an end in 1990.

Why should this be relevant to all those who remember America's 9/11 on this day?

Pinochet was backed by none other than the USA. The CIA had given material assistance to an attempted coup in 1970 even before assisting in the successful coup in '73. Furthermore, it had also given aid to anti-socialist terrorist groups.

Would the coup have succeeded without US assistance? We'll never know. But we do know that the US was involved and directly supported, in secret, terrorist activities and a military takeover of an entire nation which resulted in the deaths of thousands and the suffering of tens of thousands more over almost two decades.

While there were no Chileans involved in the 9/11/01 attacks on New York and Washington, we must learn the lesson of the Chilean 9/11 when looking at other US acts of international interference since then which helped to create the kind of violent backlash which resulted in the thousands of dead being mourned today, whether it be the indiscriminate bombing and scorched-earth policy in Kosovo, to occupation of Saudi territory through to the murder and disenfranchisment of untold Palestinians through US backing of its client state in the region, Israel. I could cite many more examples (the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan should be self-evident by now) but the point is clear: as long as the United States continues to trample over the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens of foreign nations in an attempt to project its power in the name of 'US interests', future terrorist attacks are inevitable.

We have a chance to change course. While thinking of the dead and their families today, we might also, for a start, think about lowering our defense budget, retreating from the Middle East and Europe, shutting down military bases overseas and ceasing to talk about this country being 'the greatest in the world', a phrase which implies the collective inferiority of the other 190 nations surrounding us.

We all want to ensure there are no more terrible days like September 11, 1973 and 2001. We have the chance as a people, through our language but, much more importantly, through the policies we demand, to ensure that kind of lasting peace is a reality. For all nations.

UPDATE

2010-09-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

For those of you who read my blog entitled Redevelop This, you might be interested to read this article, another in the New York Times, this time from George Vecsey- really a sequel to the article whose link I posted in my column yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/sports/football/09vecsey.html?ref=sports

REDEVELOP THIS

2010-09-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've been having a nice little email get-to-know-you with a journalist at MLB.com, the online home of Major League Baseball. Yes, for those of you who don't know me, I am a rather large baseball fan- figuratively, that is. Because of this, I sometimes find myself reading inane articles in the wee hours about this hitter's thumb and that pitcher's stint on the disabled list due to heightened levels of anxiety (that actually is quite an interesting phenomenon- could be tomorrow's column). While none of this consumption of sports reporting moves me forward in my spiritual evolution as a human being, occasionally I happen on an article that is actually pertinent to issues that do have real meaning for me and many others in America today.

The article in question was not exactly of that ilk; its pertinence rested in its ignorance of some of those issues. The writer, a Mr.Barry Bloom, gushed over the new Minnesota ballpark, Target Field. He spoke of how it would be a boon for the community, of the pleasure it would give the fans. Clearly, in this man's eyes, everything had been gained and nothing lost: "thriving communities, thriving franchises, happy fans."

Not quite, Baz. I sent him an email asking for clarification on exactly who he was referring to when he used the term 'community'. Certainly not the thousands of poor and working class residents who were relocated, or more accurately kicked out, to make way for the new stadium. Nor was he probably referring to the millions of people who may have benefited from the new schools, parks, health clinics and community centers that could have been built with all that public money. In all likelihood, Barry was probably referring to the super-rich corporations that received those funds to build the stadium and the sports owners and private vendors who will fatten their already bloated pockets by feeding and entertaining the mostly well-off people who can manage to buy a ticket and a bag of peanuts at the glitzy new stadium without jeopardizing next month's rent payment.

It's always fascinating to me how when local governments and the corporate media talk of 'transforming' a depressed urban area, it almost always results not in transformation, but destruction. Historical buildings tumble, poor residents with roots in the neighbourhood going back generations are kicked out and a new, 'vibrant' neighbourhood springs up. If you're not sure what I mean, I'll give you some reliable indicators: fancy, boutique hotels for the 'public', costing 200 a night and up. Brand new chain restaurants in shining malls and along paved promenades, offering 'local' flavours. Hey, an Applebys Caesar Salad made in Minneapolis is kinda local, after all. Brand new cookie-cutter apartment buildings offering 'local' housing. I love that- if you throw the word 'housing' at the end of a headline announcing the construction of a new apartment block offering million-dollar condos as part of an urban 'redevelopment', most people will believe something good is happening for the community.

It is. For a tiny percentage of the community, if you believe that word covers the entire population, not just the wealthy. I read a different kind of article today. If you vote, and especially if you're a fan of your local sports team, I strongly recommend its reading. Especially you, Barry:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/sports/08stadium.html?_r=1&hp

These public-private projects do not help the community at large. There's no reason why people should have to spend enormous amounts of money on houses in prosperous neighbourhoods the moment they have kids, just so that child can go to a decent school. Enough with the insanity. Until we have good schools and hospitals in every neighbourhood, and health care for every person that doesn't bankrupt them, and decent public housing for people to live in and parks for children to play in, enough with the brand spanking new stadiums.

To borrow an old Arabic phrase, our priorities are ass-up and tits-backward. Vote for leaders who tell sports owners that if they want a new toy that prints loads of brand new money for themselves and their buddies, that's wonderful. But they can build it without our help.

Pictures, from top:

The new stadium for the Arizona Cardinals, 67% of which was publicly financed.

The old and the new. The new Giants-Jets stadium, being built on public land, replacing the old one, which
the people of New Jersey are still paying back, with $100 million dollars still owed.

FRIENDS

2010-09-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

In his book, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle talks about how ducks manage conflict. After two ducks have come together in a physical confrontation, he says, they both retreat to a safe distance, rise up in the water and shake their wings violently, thereby releasing all the residues of energy that have remained in their bodies as a result of the fight. Having done so, the ducks continue on as before, having regained their inner equilibrium.
If only the psychic and energetic upheavals caused by human conflict and confrontation could be surrendered as easily. Yet, with much work and a commitment to living without inner conflict (which means being willing to work through outer conflicts), they can be. Obviously it's harder for us- we are blessed and burdened with long memories, active imaginations and well-developed egos, which is all the more reason for us to find ways to move beyond the mostly petty disputes and judgements which crowd our thoughts and disturb our inner peace.
I have had the experience of driving and becoming irritated with another person on the road, blasting my horn and sounding off to myself, only to discover that the other driver was a friend of mine. How amusing it is to watch both of us go from a state of anger and bilious annoyance to laughter and joyful embarrassment upon recognizing our friend in the other car. This begs the question: how is it possible to be so ready to fight a war and then transform into gestures of love in the next instant? In moments like these it's very clear to me that our feelings about the people around us are a result of how we perceive them.
On a global scale, this is critical to understand for obvious reasons. But more personally, I have noticed in myself that I am less likely to venture out into the world with a sense of joy and freedom when I am perceiving that world as a hostile place, full of 'enemies' and dislikable people who are ready to judge me harshly. Yet those same people can seem lovable and approachable depending on my outlook and mood that day. As an actor I have experienced enormous anxiety and reluctance to go onstage one night and a hyperactive eagerness and giddy joy to step out in front of an audience the next. All that changed was my feelings about the people and the environment I was moving into.
We all have goals. We all need to move in the world and make contact with others, whether it be in a supermarket checkout line or in collaboration with others, working together on the most meaningful projects in our lives. When we find a way to wish others well and extend love to them in whatever minute forms that might take, we will surely begin to feel that others are doing the same for us. All of us know the joy of basking in the loving embrace of our friends, knowing that we can be who we are and be fully accepted. The more often we're able to project that feeling with no thought as to how it will be returned, the more our world will grow and the more its abundance will be able to flow in.

DIMINISHING RETURNS

2010-08-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

I happened to be in my car a little more than I care to last Friday, but it turned out to be a pleasing experience: I was able to listen to Film Week on KPCC, the Los Angeles arm of National Public Radio.
I'm not a film review enthusiast; sometimes I might glance at a New York Times review when conflicted over what to see. Most of the time I end up being in agreement with the majority of their critics. But usually I prefer to go my own way when it comes to sizing up the latest films on offer. Having said that, Film Week is an excellent movie review show, as humourous as it is insightful and sometimes veering off the beaten track to explore deeper issues outside of the quality of the films in question that particular week. I was on hand to hear one of those discussions, held by Wade Major and Tim Cogshell, two critics for KPCC among other media outlets and hosted by Larry Mantle, the excellent host of Air Talk, the daily program which features Film Week.

The entire show was once again entertaining enough (the link to the entire podcast is at the bottom of this column), but the part of the discussion that caught my attention began when one of the gentlemen said what I and, I'm confident, many others have been thinking and feeling since the mid-90s:

"They don't make movies for adults anymore."

What proceeded was a conversation centered on the current studio system, the lowering of the average moviegoer's IQ and the completely irrational and incongruous ways in which studios assess profitability in the film industry. It was an exchange that, for me, couldn't have been more timely.

Recently my partner Victoria and I sat down to watch Kramer vs Kramer again. Although we'd seen it before, these movies never seem to lose their dramatic suspense. As we sat there, watching Dustin Hoffmann take us to the edge of the psychological and emotional cliff in trying desperately to keep his life together and hold onto his son, it occurred to me to ask the question: what are the recent equivalents of this kind of film, that is to say a film made on a medium-sized budget, with star actors of the highest quality, that not only was superb cinema but also highly profitable? I remember going to the movies in the 80s and early 90s and going down the list under the heading, 'now showing': there would be the requisite big-budget action/adventure films of course, in addition to the obligatory small child/teen movies. But in between, the meat in the sandwich, would be several movies made for... you guessed it... adults. These films were not adult films by nature of their genre; they took many forms. They were adult in tone and substance. And their rating confirmed that. Ever noticed how rare it is to see an MA or R rating these days? The reason will be known to most of you: studio execs are playing it safe, wanting the beloved 13-to-25 demographic to be able to see as many of their movies as possible.

Although the people in that age group may consume the most stuff, they also, as a generality, have the shortest attention spans and the most superficial interest in the human condition. Movies used to tell us about that condition, but no longer in the vast majority of cases, which makes perfect sense: as we continue to focus more and more of our precious attention and resources on acquiring things, on the constant drowning out of our inner silence and feelings by the monotonous intellectual and spiritual junk food we now accept as 'entertainment', we find ourselves less empathetic, less fascinated by our and others' inner lives, and more interested in the superficiality of reality TV and the latest electronic toy which will give us that sense of self we lost somewhere along the way.

As a result, studios have to jump through more and more technological hoops to get these 13-to-25s, with their microscopic attention span, to the cinema. A vapid, paper-thin story containing loads of meaningless computer-generated images used to suffice. But, like all toys, the public grew weary of that. Now 3D has arrived and presto, every other big-budget movie can be 'enjoyed' through a pair of disposable plastic glasses.

Which seems just about spot on, given the disposable nature of most Hollywood films in 2010. And yet the numbers don't add up. As the gentlemen discussed on NPR last Friday, the average big-budget Hollywood film costs around 150 million dollars right now, and needs to make around 300 million to be able to call itself remotely profitable. Most of the movies which make a return of this amount are hailed as 'hits' by desperate, self-congratulatory studios in their press releases, while that rare species, the low budget movie that costs 1 million and makes back 5, is barely mentioned.

Which seems more sustainable? The so-called 'blockbusters' have gigantic marketing campaigns which make us believe that they are not only commercially successful but also relevant. Yet the reality is that many of them, proportionate to budget, are pathetic under-achievers and awful to boot, further alienating their core audience and guaranteeing that the rest of us will continue to spend our dollars elsewhere.

That truism is borne out in the numbers: this summer has been one of the worst for Hollywood in recent memory. Iron Man 2, Shrek 3, Sex & The City 2 (see a pattern here?), Robin Hood, Clash of The Titans and the embarrassing Prince of Persia all under-performed and, given their enormous budgets, will not make much money for their respective studios, most of whom passed on Slumdog Millionaire, a film made for 15 million dollars and is now into the many hundreds of millions in profits.

Clearly, not all films will succeed as Slumdog did. But what the people making movies in Hollywood need to understand is that they don't have to. Like many other elements in our global society today, Hollywood needs to downsize. The lust for movies that generate billion-dollar profits is creating a failed system for all concerned, evident in empty cinemas across the country. There are legions of us who love going to the movies and are ready to go tonight if films tailored to an adult mind and heart are made. It is an astonishing and sad indictment of our film industry that, for most people, the term 'adult film' only means pornography. I would suggest that the schlockfests mentioned in the preceding paragraph are much closer to pornography than their makers might care to admit- the pornography of glorified violence and token sex devoid of all authentic passion and/or tenderness.

So it's time to vote for change. Boycott movies that you know offer nothing. Don't be seduced into thinking that you 'have' to go see the next blockbuster because it's a 'big-screen' movie. There's only one criterion to satisfy in order to be called a big-screen movie: that it's good. That it affords us a communal experience that makes us more alive, not more listless and indifferent to the world. We all need to make a concerted effort to see good American films when they emerge, like the lovely Mother and Child, starring a radiant Annette Bening, wrinkles and all. This beautiful, engaging film cost 7 million dollars and so far has made half its budget back worldwide. Not much to inspire the creation of more films of its type and yet consider the untold hordes of moviegoers who were completely unaware of its existence and gifts; it is both sad and encouraging to know that if only a tiny fraction of this enormous group had seen a film like Mother & Child, it would have been a highly profitable commercial and artistic venture.

So vote with your abstinence and your engagement and never be afraid to be the party pooper who says in a loud voice, amidst all the gush and hyperbole, that the latest cinematic Emperor is, in point of fact, stark naked.

Peter Finch said it best: "I'm mad as hell! And I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Network.

A hugely profitable film for adults. In brilliant 2-D. Go figure.

http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2010/08/20/filmweek-the-switch-lottery-ticket-nanny-mcphee-re/

Pictures, from top: Kramer vs Kramer, Columbia Pictures, 1979.
Annette Bening in Mother & Child, Sony Pictures Classics, 2009.
Peter Finch in Network, MGM Pictures, 1976.

THE CASE FOR GRILLED HAM & CHEESE

2010-08-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

Despite the constant upward surge of inflation and the continuing devaluation of the mighty dollar, there is still a lot one can do with ninety three clams these days.

Like almost filling up your gas tank, for starters. Or buying two grapefruits and a box of rice crackers at Whole Foods. Even better, you could make a donation to Meg Whitman's gubernatorial campaign: she's spent a hundred million so far and is still in a dead heat with a guy who's spent... about ninety three clams, but she has to save the three billion she's got left in her savings account for her failed presidential run in 2012, so you'd really be helping the dame out.

Just a few examples. But there are other ways to blow ninety three bucks and last night, cloaked by a soothing Pacific breeze, with hope in our hearts and a rumblin' in our tummies, Victoria and I walked through the doors of Planet Raw, a supposedly trendy, all-vegan "eatery" (all who use that word in the absence of jest should be publicly flogged in the town square) in Santa Monica, a beachside neighbourhood here in LA.

I must preface what is to come with a qualification: we weren't expecting miracles. Years ago, I happened upon the perfect approach to maximize one's enjoyment (if that's possible) of this kind of culinary fare:

Keep your expectations very low.

How low? Well, it's surprisingly simple: expect that everything will taste like perfectly seasoned dirt, and work your way up from there. You'd be shocked by how pleasant vegan food can be when you don't assume it will be in any way satisfying. Heavens to betsy, last time Victoria and I ate at a vegan restaurant, we found some of the food to be almost decent. A stunner in anyone's book.

So it was in this state of passive acceptance together with girded loins and bored, pessimistic taste buds that we were seated at a table at Planet Raw, a strange moniker which could also have served as the name of a bondage club, which I think is perfectly appropriate, given the sadomasochism inherent in eating this kind of food on a regular basis.

The menu began with a full-page dissertation on the benefits of eating raw, organic food, the positive environmental effects, the geo-political and sociological ramifications and other facts and proclamations of global import. I understood the strategy; it was as if the owners were saying hey, the food you are about to consume may end up on the pavement outside at the end of the evening, but at least you'll be saving the world. It felt like the culinary equivalent of telling your friend that the blind date you're setting them up with has a great personality.

With sinking hopes, we surveyed the menu. It promised the world: gluten-free spaghetti and 'meat' balls, warm lasagna (warmth seems to be a huge draw in the raw world) and my favourite, a bacon western double burger. Who needs meat, dairy and flour when you have these treats? Hope returned; my taste buds stood on tiptoes; Victoria and I looked across the table at one another and afforded ourselves a smile, the leering grin of diners anticipating dizzying, euphoric satiety.

After what seemed like an hour (although the waiters here didn't offer cow, they seemed to enjoy moving like them), our young aspiring model showed up, asking us if we were ready. You bet we were. I ordered the spaghetti and meatballs with a straight face, while Victoria went for the cheezy kelp noodles, after an appetizer of guacamole and chips.

We waited. Wheezing, dessicated homo sapiens surrounded us, proudly devouring their morally superior food, casting suspicious glances at us between wooden forkfuls of high-priced, designer roughage. They can smell our meat breath, I told Victoria. Nevertheless, we felt safe; these people could barely lift a water glass to their pallid faces without fainting.

Tectonic plates heaved. Continents shifted. Finally our guacamole arrived with what this establishment so cavalierly referred to as 'chips'. These small bricklets came in two varieties: one was a seeded cracker of some sort, which passed as edible. The other? No amount of hypnotherapy could have prepared me for this waking nightmare. The last time I had seen objects like this was when I tried to dig through the wall of a Tijuana jail cell- I'm sure these moistureless nuggets now gracing my plate had the same properties as those I had hidden from the guards on my way out to jettison them in the exercise yard. Concrete is vegan, as far as I know. I never escaped from that Mexican prison. I won't digress any further, except to say that forced sodomy on a grand scale was looking pretty good right now when faced with inserting one of these things into my gob.

But I did. Victoria stared, seemingly entranced by the horror show playing out on my sheet-white face. This was not taste; this was anti-taste, all the evil in the world pumped into one mortifying bite. I calmly placed the rest of the thing down on the plate, slowly took a sip of water and exhaled, a tiny sob escaping my offended lips. Victoria, having dodged a bullet, instead reached for the seeded crackers which, once buried under guacamole, were mildly acceptable.

Appetizer attempted, we sat back in our seats, already exhausted. We were like the boxer who returns to his corner after a bruising first round, his former feeling of invincibility suddenly transformed into doubt, introspection and, worst of all, fear. Heaven knew what awaited us.

Finally, the main course emerged. As soon as the plates hit the table, we knew that this meal could only have been constructed in Hell. My 'spaghetti in marinara sauce', as described on the soapbox disguised as a menu, was a sham, the greatest of hoaxes. Forget Nazi propaganda, forget Mao's 'Cultural Revolution', forget "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", forget even "mission accomplished"... this was The Greatest Lie, trying to pass itself off as dinner. I imagined a bunch of wise guys from The Sopranos showing up here, ignorant of the kind of restaurant they were walking into, and ordering the spaghetti and meatballs. Tony would take one bite, calmly put his fork down, politely pay the check and tell the guys that they were leaving. An hour later they would return to the scene, baseball bats in hand, and the next day Planet Raw would be a steak house.

Victoria wasn't doing much better. Her 'cheesy kelp noodles' were a modern disaster, right up there with the Greek economy and Kelsey Grammar's Macbeth. Victoria's face reminded me of my father's when we went to see A Night At The Museum. This was disassociation in its purest form, taught to young federal agents to prepare them for torture and interrogation. Victoria had disappeared, only her body remaining, shovelling the food into her mouth as her mind thought of puppies, tropical paradises and harems containing attractive men who cooked and cleaned.

I snapped my fingers, startling her back to our miserable shared reality. It was time to get the hell out of here, and based on the evening's experience I knew we had to start Project Runway on preparing our check now if we hoped to get out anytime soon. I hailed him and told him we were done. He asked if we wanted to box anything up to take with us. We told him we'd love to but were going to a party. He said he understood completely. I gave him my card and he left, saying he'd be right back.

That of course was 'right back' in vegan language, which we now knew meant at least ten minutes, during which time Victoria and I were able to each go to the bathroom and weep quietly, all the while nursing an ever-increasing hunger that would not quit. I dreamt of rare steaks topped with melted cheese and then layered on top with more steak, which was lovingly covered with steak-flavoured cheese. Not to be.

I returned to our table and there the total lay, winking at me: $93.20. We had spent ninety three American greenbacks on this fiasco. I saw the manager standing by the door, ready to bid us good night. Rage boiled inside me, courtesy of this con merchant and the people who employed him. It was time to burst the bubble, to pull the curtain back on this operation and say what most of this customers had to be thinking, that this was highway robbery and it had to stop. Now.

We headed for the door. He shook my mind, gave me a winning smile and asked how everything had been for us that evening.

I looked him right in the eye.

Stared deep into his burning soul.

"Delicious."

Picture: A standard entree at Planet Raw.

THE YAWNING VOID

2010-08-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

Yes folks, I'm back. Kind of.

My self-imposed sabbatical at an end, it's time to once again put my proverbial ear to the ground that is this American life; time to check the country's pulse; time to jettison asinine, redundant cliches.

What an introduction. My own writing suddenly reminds me of all those hack comedians who, stupefied upon entering the stage to a lukewarm, indifferent audience, revert to that most tired refrain, "anyone here from outta town?"

The comparison is apt, people. For I truly am, in this moment, the archetype reborn, remade: I am the writer with nothing to say.

How did I reach this point? Shouldn't all of your encouragements, your compliments, your positive feedback have driven me on to even greater heights? Did I not bound out of bed this morning and head for this computer like a vulture might swoop in on a carcass, ready to resume my role as literary watchman for the unwashed masses (for those of you who do occasionally wash, let that go by; for my English readers, don't even think of trying to protest)?

Sadly, the only carcass left in the room is me. It's extremely hard to write scathing political comment, brilliantly witty satire or profound, insightful thoughts on the self and its development when your mind's a blank.

But the problem's causes, its roots, must be investigated. How did this happen? How did I turn into the blog-o-sphere's (new term- feel free to co-opt it) version of Jimmy Fallon? How did I become such a blimbo?

Is it possible that my loved one, my Lady, the jewel in my crown, Queen Victoria, has so entrenched herself in my consciousness as my Muse that, in her recent absence, I have lost all creative facility? The woman left town a week ago; my blog went untouched for the entire time. This has to be the answer, an answer that exposes me for the fool that I am. She returns tonight; if I had only waited until this evening to reconnect with the globe via this column, I could have written something masterful, a bronzed edifice for our time. I see it now: Victoria spots me waiting at the security exit; she leaps into my arms; I drive her home and bring in her nine bags; she flops on the couch, turns on her favourite sitcom (whatever tired, dated comedic retread which happens to be on in that moment) and demands food and liquid refreshment; I hurriedly acquiesce, terrified of her disapproval; she eats dinner, tosses the gnarled bones at me and orders me to carry her to bed. My hopes rise, but alas, she is asleep before I've put her down. I am deliciously close to violating her in her slumber when the possibility strikes me of being asked to cook more food if she wakes; I leave her be and rush to my computer, filled with the creative impulse and the desire to write. Art ensues.

That is how it could, and would, have gone if I'd waited. But no. I had to show up this morning and admit my incompetence to all of you.

Which is why I'm thinking of retiring. I can't be dependent on the whims of a rapacious, salacious Muse who demands three 5-star meals each day. I'm going for the scorched earth policy; if I can't do this on my own, I'm not going to do it at all. Let's see how long this world keeps on turning without the likes of me. Where are you going to turn for your daily intellectual nourishment, huh? Not the newspaper; no one reads those anymore. Books? Useless, anachronistic piles of papyrus, waiting to be murdered by the digital age. And speaking of that age, maybe you think you'll just move seamlessly, effortlessly to another blog? Don't kid yourself- you're way too loyal to ever go behind my retired back. Let's face it: you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.

So I suppose I'll keep going. Victoria will disembark and everything will return to normal. Ideas will find their way back to my addled brain. Once again, I'll be able to attempt the creation of graceful sentences, with middling results. Politicians, Christopher Nolan and the creators of Dancing With The Stars will once again cower, seeking shelter. Universal equanimity will return.

But not for me. Victoria just called. I made the mistake of asking her if she'd be hungry after her flight this evening. The response was savagely immediate:

"Cornish game hen, freshly captured and roasted, ladled with a garlic and rosemary au jus, and served with sauteed baby carrots, potatoes au gratin and freshly picked spring greens tossed in a red wine and raspberry vinaigrette."

A few problems here. I haven't seen any Cornish hens in the gardens of my apartment building for weeks. I don't have a ladle. And it ain't spring. Not to mention the au jus and au gratin portions of the request. Anytime Victoria italicizes words like that over the phone, I know I'm in trouble. It means, "buddy, make this happen or else." Eerie.

So there it is. If you see another post in a couple of days, it means the hens were found, slaughtered and given the thumbs up by my Muse.

If another post doesn't show up, what can I tell you. Go buy a newspaper.

Victoria's dinner in pictures, from top:
                                              Baby carrots.
                                     The Hen, of the Cornish variety.
   Patooties Gratin.
                                             What the...? Oh for frick's sake, I said "jus"...

DESPERATE TIMES

2010-08-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Obama Administration's Labor Department has been releasing unemployment numbers that have been consistently troubling and considered poor news for the US economy: according to the most recent data, the official unemployment rate released by the Department stands at 9.6%, which is its way of saying that 9.6% of the 'labour force' is currently out of work.

Somewhere along the line, someone decided we needed another team of superheroes to root for, so they coined the term labour force. I imagine millions of people, resumes at the ready, eager to charge out into the world and get employed!, briefcases, tool kits and aprons being their weapons of choice.

The reality is just a tad more prosaic. If we all want to practice a little more integrity and intellectual honesty in thinking about and dealing with the unemployment crisis that is going on right now all over this supposedly First World nation, then we have to survey the landscape without blinders and accept the situation as it is.

The labour 'force' is not really a force at all. It's something more akin to a large, inert mass. The only reason that Mr.Obama and his administration can bandy about numbers like '9.6 percent' is because that number does not include the vast, slumbering army of human beings who are no longer looking for work. If those people were included in the great Force, what would the national unemployment rate look like?

The National Jobs For All Coalition has published research showing that if those who have ceased to search for work were included in the unemployment figures, in addition to those who only work part time because they are unable to find full time work, the official unemployment rate would be 18.2 percent, almost double the current figure. To put it another way, instead of saying that 14.6 million people are unable to find gainful employment, we would have to raise that number to 29.1 million.

Those extra millions that are not usually included in the official numbers fall into a relatively new category: 'hidden unemployment'. It is astonishing to consider that, even with the uncounted now being counted, we are still not taking into account the millions of people who have full time work yet are not paid a living wage, have no job benefits and work in horrible conditions. But that is for another day. The number of real unemployed is disastrous enough.

So why are these people not included in job statistics? Why does President Obama not address the situation, compassionate as he is, preferring instead to talk of an 'improving economy' that is slowly 'adding jobs'?

The obvious, and clearly correct, answer is political considerations. Of course the President has to paint as rosy a picture as possible in order to stay in power. But to truly see the scope of the problem, one must see the pattern that has emerged in the rhetoric and focus of all political leaders for many decades now. The issue of poverty in the United States has not and will not be spoken of, not in any kind of authentic, meaningful way. The main cause of that poverty, the ability to find consistent work paying a living wage, would therefore also be off the table.

Economists like John Maynard Keynes, together with FDR among others, believed in the idea of Full Employment, a term we never hear anymore, either from our political leaders or the corporate media that currently monopolizes our air waves. Although full employment was never close to being achieved, it was a unifying idea that had support for a time, and policies were enacted in an attempt to bring the American society, so devastated by unemployment during the Depression, closer to that reality. That idea has long since been eradicated from all political consciousness and what we have left is an acceptance of a society where tens of millions and counting will never find meaningful work with a wage that gives them the opportunity for an improving quality of life through decent living conditions and a high quality education for them or their children.

We now hear politicians talk of the problems within the job market being 'cyclical'. The cynical ignorance inherent in this kind of thinking and rhetoric is breathtaking. Anybody who has witnessed the massive, systematic laying off of our blue collar workforce over the last thirty years by hugely profitable companies knows of the great lie being told to us. Anyone who was watching closely while politicians, bought by multinational corporations, allowed for the exploitation of foreign workers and the termination of local ones in the name of 'free trade agreements' would also be aware of the reality. Finally, any citizen who wanders through the streets of US cities, witnessing the staggering number of the homeless and indolent in addition to the vast wastelands of Third World neighbourhoods would also have trouble believing that high unemployment was 'cyclical'.

It's time to accept the fact that large scale poverty and unemployment here in the US is not cyclical, it is structural. What do we do with the millions of under-educated people who want to work? Can we educate and 'retrain' them all? Of course not. How do we replace the gigantic portion of manufacturing, agricultural and other blue collar jobs that are never coming back? Will we continue to be content to allow that mass of 'insignificants' to remain hidden? Simply ignore the problem until it is pushing against our back gate, clamouring to get in?

We need new ideas and a new political consciousness that tells the true story of this country in this moment. It will require a massive downgrading of our defense spending. It will require a huge tax hike on the stock market, with buyers and sellers paying a tax on every transaction. It will mean that polluters will pay for every molecule of carbon they pump into our atmosphere, as well as all of us paying into the public fund every time we fill up our cars, until we get so sick and tired of paying for gas that we start to vote for improved public transportation systems, systems that will hire hundreds of thousands of people. It will mean that our governments federal, state and local start to think about ways to hire people that improve the conditions on this planet, from environmental cleanup and protection to being paid an effective wage in order to effectively teach more of our children and adults.

But let's begin with seeing the problem as it is. Realism does not have to mean pessimism. Write to your local congressperson, senator, city council. If you believe that your political leaders need to make a good faith attempt to solve these problems, or at least raise consciousness about them, tell them so.

I believe Barack Obama to be a compassionate force for good. But he also needs to know that he can't take my support for granted. We need to be on the lookout for political leaders who don't accept a band-aid, an aspirin and a good lie down as solutions to chronic social problems that have this country and a large part of its populace on its knees.

Picture: Cutbacks on essential infrastructure, such as street lights. Read this sad and disturbing article in
today's New York Times.

A TIMELY ACCIDENT

2010-08-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Victoria crashed her bicycle on Sunday. I could bore you with the moment-to-moment details of the event, but other than being painful and traumatic for her and extremely upsetting to me upon hearing her scream and then seeing her bleeding from several places while sprawled out on the street, the accident itself was simply the catalyst for the profound experience which followed.

I have many strong opinions and feelings around organized religion, few of which I will expound on in this post today, other than to state that I have always believed that people should be free to do whatever they please, as long as they are not harming others or themselves in the process, a belief that has placed me in direct opposition to the teachings of all religions, as far as I can tell. I, like most people, have been approached countless times by people working for their local church, bearing a great many pamphlets and brochures, asking me if I've found Jesus or simply wanting to start a dialogue, presumably in the hope of awakening some kind of curiosity in me about their particular religious practice. The question I always respond with in turn has not changed over the years; it is the ultimate litmus test for me and so far has produced unanimously similar results: "I have friends and family, whom I adore, who happen to be gay. Where does your church/religion stand on homosexuality?" Initially most will try to dodge the question, pontificating on the abstract. Upon further pressing, they usually end up talking about how "we are all sinners" and that they're taught to "love the sinner, not the sin" or some such avoidance of the direct question that was posed to them. At that point, I usually tell them that when their church is ready to stop practicing bigotry and discrimination and is ready to embrace all people, I'll be ready to listen.

That may or may not sound severe. Sometimes my mood might not be so militant and in those moments I wish those people well and simply move on without comment. But my position does not change: I have always felt passionately about the harm that has been done to so many over the centuries, and especially our gay brothers and sisters in recent times, in the name of religion, 'morality' and 'righteousness'. Any time I educe even the slightest scent of bigotry, of separateness, of someone saying that they are in any way superior to someone else based on some mode of behaviour that they choose to follow, I am ready to oppose and denounce. I am not saying that this aggressive stance is always or even usually productive; it certainly does not allow for much conversation to occur, a result which has produced unfortunate moments in the past. But that has been my inner reality upon coming into contact with most manifestations of religion and its practice.

Victoria and I were on our way to brunch with friends last Sunday morning when the accident occurred. We were on Franklin St, a busy neighbourhood street here in Los Angeles, and she lost control of the bike and hit the pavement right across the street from the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles. I've noticed this church before in my travels; it is clearly an 'alternative' place of worship- one would only have to see the congregation gathered out front after a service to know that this is a place where everybody would be accepted. In retrospect, it certainly shines a light on my own heated sense of judgment and bigotry to note that prior to Sunday, I would never have felt any positivity for the place or the people who frequented it. If anything, I might have thought them fools for supporting and worshipping a god whose writings so clearly denounced them. But, as with anything, it's all in the interpretation.

As I raced to Victoria to lift her bicycle off of her, I noticed that we were surrounded with people. My initial impulse was to repel them, so that I could tend to my girlfriend myself. But as I examined the many cuts that she'd sustained, I heard a voice say, "I work at the church across the street. Do you want to come inside and sit down?"

We didn't hesitate. Of course we would like to come inside. Inside sounded comforting at that moment; the street no longer seems a friendly place when it's just come into contact with multiple body parts, including your chin. Without hesitation, someone agreed to watch the bikes as we were escorted across the street and into the church.

There was a lot of activity going on. It was Sunday, so of course there were services. It was around 1030 and we later found out that there was an eleven o'clock service, a little more "upbeat" as was explained to us and evidenced by the band that I saw setting up as we were headed to a quiet room with a couch that they'd allotted us. All around us were the same people you'd see anywhere in Los Angeles, ranging from straight to gay to transgender, from white to black and all colours and ethnicities in between. Coffee and snacks were on offer as people did what they always do in groups: mingled, laughed, teased and flirted.

But in the immediate circle that surrounded Victoria and I, there were only three human qualities that made themselves strongly felt: kindness, generosity and concern.

I highlight 'concern' because to me that quality, when freely expressed toward us, is so keenly felt. We all remember those who have cared about us deeply, who have taken the strongest possible interest in our lives and trajectories, who have put their arms around us and have told us that no matter what, they will be there in our time of vulnerability and hurt. These are the people we call first with our triumphs and who want to be first to our door in times of need.

But what is it to feel that from strangers? To see people so genuinely concerned for our wellbeing, so ready to forget themselves and attend to any need? We sat and watched as one person would come in with water, another with a kind word, yet another with a caring touch or glance. Then there was the man who had a medical background who brought a first aid kit and tended to Victoria's bleeding toe. "Stay as long as you like", they said. "Don't worry about your bicycles, they've been brought in", we were told and I was stunned to see that our bikes were sitting in the welcome room, taking up space as people were preparing to head into the church hall. The bicycles had been brought in, just as we had been brought in, into a circle of kindness and loving concern that, looking back, feels all too rare in this society.

None of this should be exceptional...

But it is. It throws into relief just how rare this kind of pure kindness is. I don't see it very often out in the world. I don't feel it often enough myself. People like Donald Trump are revered for their achievements, their ability to "get ahead". I even heard a fellow in the gym recently say that "you have to tip your cap" to people like Bernie Madoff, because they were able to exploit people's ignorance, even if what they did was wrong. This is a large part of the world we live in, where avarice, ambition and climbing the ladder are traits that are valued most highly, even when their expression might be to the detriment of our ability as human beings to extend kindness, generosity and compassion to others.

But not at the church on Franklin St that day. I felt what it was to be enveloped by those warm, human expressions of what is, ultimately, pure love. Am I now a believer? Not in someone's God.

Yet I am, as a result of that experience, simply a more powerful believer in the transformative power of our greatest renewable human resources: concern and caring for others and acts of kindness and selfless generosity. When I think of how overwhelming it was to receive those gifts, I was inspired to know how often I have the power to give them.

After an hour or so, we decided it was time to leave. I was compelled to embrace Bill, one of the people who had looked after us. I could barely speak as I tried to express my gratitude and amazement at the attention we'd received. He simply said, "that's what we do."

In that moment, I would have given anything for every person who has condemned homosexuality as a sin to have been able to walk in my shoes for the preceding hour. I am confident that, having had the same experience as I, they would no longer be so opposed to gays and lesbians having a presence in their church, or at their altars in marriage.

Romeo said it best:

"My love is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite."

Victoria and I felt the glow of that infinite, shining power on a chance Sunday morning. May it be exercised and felt by every one of us whenever we get the chance.

TERRIFIC OP-ED ON BOREDOM

2010-07-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot to say in the past about boredom and what passes for 'entertainment' in our society. This Op-ed in The Guardian today is a must read, especially for people who are so ready to embrace Attention Deficit Disorder as a common 'condition' among children:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/30/bored-children-boredom-parents

PROJECTION

2010-07-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

We take such liberties with those we love. Why is it that, at a random point in our relationship, we suddenly decide that our way of doing things and our choices must be those of our partner? Maybe, for some of us, that perspective, that we must know best at all times, was always present- dormant, simmering, ready to spring to life as soon as we decided that we'd achieved a deep enough level of intimacy with another person to be able to start influencing their lives on a regular basis.
The reasons for this egoic projection onto the ones we love are usually important in order to cease its continuance but whether or not we ever understand why we project our fears and desires onto others, the unavoidable, sometimes unpalatable truth is this:

We don't know what's best for someone else.

That can be a tough one for some of us, this writer included. How about this doozy:

No one's path is the same as ours, nor is their way of walking it.

Would we want it any other way? Would we want someone telling us how to live our lives, judging and criticizing us for doing things our own unique way?

Of course we can have good ideas and suggestions for others that may help them to make optimal choices related to the expansion and richness of their lives, but ultimately anything we can tell someone else has to be personalized by them, for it to be of functional use. We all potentially have wisdom to share that may be of benefit to someone else, but even in the event of their receiving it, they still must internalize, personalize it and make it their own and therefore will apply it in their own way which by necessity will make its external manifestation different to ours.

This is the miracle of individualization. The miracle of life manifesting itself in untold, infinite ways. No drop of water will flow in exactly the same way, given the freedom to move in any direction. When we live from this perspective, fascination can flower within us and judgment swiftly ceases to be an exercise worth indulging in; instead, we open our minds and hearts to the reality as it is of others, not as we think it is supposed to be.

I took surfing lessons a year ago and two moments, repeated over and over again out on the water, stood out to me. The first is how patient the other surfers were, sitting out there on their boards. Having caught a wave, they would then return to their spot and wait. Just wait. I marvelled at all of these people, quietly and contentedly looking out to the horizon, their faces soft and peaceful. It seemed to me that they had accessed that inner state of acceptance. No amount of inner argument or screaming at the gods would bring them catchable swells any sooner. I asked myself, "how many of these people will get in their cars and start blasting their horns at other drivers? Exhale in frustration at amber lights turning red? Stew in dissatisfaction over something concerning their partners, friends, family?" What would it mean, I wondered, to take this easy respect and acceptance of the moment into their daily lives?

The other phenomenon that occurred, was a high degree of fascination. This, to me, is one of the most valuable and rich states of being that we can achieve and, sadly, is most often lost as children move into adolescence and adulthood. A heightened state of aliveness arising from a fascination of and excitement about the living moment, the reality occurring all around us right now that is wholly unique. For the surfers, each wave would bring its own challenges and opportunities. They could and did not want to take any moment for granted; no wave would be exactly the same, and they wanted to experience the journey of each uncommon ride fully. This may sound obvious but what would it be like to live more of our day to day lives in this state? To embrace the notion, which just happens to be absolutely true, that no moment is like any other. No person is unlike any other. No choice the same. No perspective.

We rise to these heights occasionally- in moments that we perceive to be of great import, either due to events that we find desirous or dangerous. But it is the moments in between that may matter more: really hearing our lover when they express who they are in each moment, seeing our friend as if for the first time, taking every possible opportunity to let go of all the noise and be sensually mindful no matter where we find ourselves. A greater practice of this art will allow us to feel more alive and to sense the immense potentiality of every moment that is given to us. It is the paramount antidote to 'same shit, different day.'

Acceptance. Fascination. Wonder. May we all be as curious and non-judgmental now as we were when we were children. We live in a world that has swung in the direction of defensiveness, cynicism and an all too frequently jaded view of life. But the joyous, spontaneous, fascinated part of us that is always ready to dance is always present, even when seemingly buried. It is present in us all right now, no matter how many 'cares and responsibilites' we may think we own, or whatever reputation we think we need to protect.

Cynicism grown from life's challenging, difficult lessons transforms into wisdom and vulnerability and openness from something perceived as weakness into great assets, allowing us to have richer, more meaningful inner lives.

We need only make the choice.

I'VE BEEN INCEPTED

2010-07-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

I had a disturbing dream last night.

I was sitting at a table with two strangers, discussing the plot of a movie. I can't remember its name but I do know that things were getting pretty heated as the two people sitting with me tried to convince me of the film's deeper meanings as I, dizzy, attempted to appear enthusiastic and interested in the discussion.

No, wait. That wasn't a dream. I know it wasn't, because I had my totem with me. It's a stun gun, and when I jam it up my toosh and press the button, one of two things happen. If I I jump three feet in the air and howl with pain, I know I'm dreaming. If I wake up in my bed in an intense state of arousal, I'm probably awake.

Damn. I shouldn't have said 'probably'. Now we're back to square one.

Why do people fall into the trap of thinking that there are hidden meanings and little treasures encoded into films like Inception? They did it with The Matrix, they did it with Star Wars and of course we all remember the ghost in the background in that scene from Three Men & A Baby (don't try to act all cool by feigning ignorance). People, get with the program: Christopher Nolan is laughing at us. He didn't re-invent the wheel here; anyone see the final episode of Dallas? For my early-20s readers, many apologies- you can probably order it on Netflix. Laugh if you must, but I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that the finale of Dallas will tell you everything you need to know about Inception. It also explains why Larry Hagman played the lead in the film. They're getting really good with makeup these days- I was wondering why Leo looked so jowly.

There is no deeper meaning to Inception. Heck, even Christopher Nolan doesn't know what the hell is going on here. Nor does he need to. In this era, 'cool' trumps anything else. If you don't believe me, just ask all the chumps who stood in line for the Iphone 4. In that example, cool even trumped having a phone that friggin' works. They're actually making a movie about a guy ( Larry Hagman has signed on to play the role) who buys a cool new Apple phone that takes him to another dimension from which he can't return because the phone crashes. It's called Reception.

The title is also strange to me. The definition of 'inception' in my trusty online dictionary reads: 'the act of graduating or earning a university degree, usually a master's or doctor's degree, especially at Cambridge University.'

....huh? Can't be right. I must be dreaming. Where's my totem? Shit. Victoria's not here. She's my other totem. Here's how it works. When I'm about to drop down into the very exciting, dangerous third level, I always have her present. When I need to know if I'm dreaming or not, I simply find a chair and sit down right next to her. I then proceed to rise. If she stays silent, I know I'm still dreaming. If she asks me to get her something from the kitchen, I know I'm wide awake and irritated all at the same time.

But back to our friendly writer/director and his choice of title for the film. There might be more to this after all. I just did some research and bingo. The man actually went to University College (fishy name, for starters) in London. Clearly resentful of not ever having gone to Cambridge University all those years ago. Furious, in fact.

So furious that the entire film is a f--- you to Cambridge's most famous graduate, Sir Isaac Newton.

Remember Newton's First Law of Motion?

"Every body will persist in its state of REST (creepy).... unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it."

In the words of Homer, wow. How petty is this guy Nolan. Can't even obey the laws of gravity and simple physics. Has to disrespect someone just because they went to a better university, while trying to sell us on a completely false definition of a word.

But for the sake of all you fans of the film, let's go along with the idea that 'inception' refers to the act of implanting an idea in dream state in order for it to take hold in reality upon waking. Here's some real world evidence of inception. I have even discovered the actual phrases that were suggested to these people in their dream life:

Lindsay Lohan: I mustn't drink and drive. I must drink before I leave the party.
Barack Obama: I can work with Republicans.
Le Bron James: South beach, roller blades, hairless, latin men in thongs.
Tom Cruise: I'm straight.
Tom Cruise: Katie's smirk is not annoying.
Tom Cruise: I'm five feet ten.
Tom Cruise: I'm straight.

Just a few to tease you with. There are countless examples. Feel free to leave comments with your own if you've managed to decipher them. It's time to pull the rug back.

Victoria just asked me to get her more coffee, and I haven't even gotten up yet.

This is getting ridiculous.

Pictures, from top:

Larry Hagman as JR, in Dallas, and brilliant as Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception.
Isaac Newton: Dissed.

NEUTRALITY

2010-07-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's a well-worn maxim that every difficulty in our lives is also a lesson, an opportunity to grow and expand as human beings. That has certainly been true for this writer over the last two weeks.

Around two and a half years ago, I moved into a lovely apartment in the Hollywood/Los Feliz area. The rent was cheap, the apartment spacious, the people friendly and, for the most part, quiet. One of the most luxuriant aspects of the place is the pool and central area, also called the 'patio' by our curmudgeony building manager, a flowery turn of phrase for a guy such as he. My girlfriend Victoria moved in a year ago and our apartment, on the ground floor, looks out onto the pool, the trees, the modest yet well-tended desert gardens, some ancient, moribund beach chairs and, most importantly, a table under an umbrella surrounded by four chairs.

I point your attention to the table and chairs because they happen to sit directly outside our bedroom window. As a result, any conversation had by people making themselves comfortable there is heard by my girlfriend and I, in the finest detail.

For as long as I've lived there it hasn't been an issue. People in the building like to use the pool intermittently; often the two children from a studio upstairs will use the area as their playground, which is fine by us- they don't fight very often and collapse into hysterics even less frequently. With most of the tenants in the building being working people who seemed to enjoy coming home to a quiet living environment, harmony and relative tranquility was generally the rule.

That all changed a couple of weeks ago. It was as if some unconscious mechanism inside me could sense that a steep learning curve had presented itself. Two young women who I didn't recognize were sunning themselves on the patio. Two others were seated at the table, drinking beers and kicking back. In an instant my apartment building morphed from living space to resort. In my eyes, anyway.

Before too long I was out there, standing over the two women, lying on beach towels. I asked them if they lived here and who they knew in the building, all the while acutely aware of how I must appear to them: stern, humourless, paranoid. We've all known someone like that; I never imagined I'd ever seem to be that person in anyone's eyes. But my protective instincts had been aroused. My sense of peace was being threatened.

In halting English adorned with a thick Russian accent, they told me they were staying with a woman in the building, a woman that I knew. I retreated, unsatisfied. I felt like Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings, when he discovers the presence of the Ring. Dark forces were mounting, and I was powerless to stop them from bursting through my living and bedroom windows.

Finances must have been scarce for these people, for I discovered that the woman they knew, Nadia, was allowing them to stay with her in her studio. Further evidence of their limited resources came in the form of their never seeming to leave the building: morning, noon and night they could be found lazing on the patio, much to my growing distress.

I could continue with this tail of woe, relating to you every little vexation that proceeded to occur, from late nights of loud conversation well past the allotted patio curfew to strangers showing up from other buildings with pizza, beer and static-spewing radios which conspired to familiarize me with the latest Russian chart toppers, but that would turn this column into a tedious, glorified vent and that, dear readers, is not the subject of this post today.

What is at issue, and what has been my challenging opportunity for growth, is once again experiencing how easy it is to deeply personalize a neutral event, and how much suffering that can cause.

For it is clear that, at a guess, most people in my building have not had the same response to the presence of these three young ladies on vacation from Russia. The reasons for that will be varied: possibly (or probably) many of my fellow tenants don't possess the same sensitivity to noise or desire, however unrealistic, for a more or less constant state of peace and quiet in the common areas of the building. Possibly some of them feel as I do, yet do not feel the need or are not prepared to confront the problem directly. Others, I am sure, are simply wholly indifferent to the situation.

So, as the days went by, days containing discussions with the people in question and demands for them to respect the peace of the building and the rent-paying tenants in it, I came to the fundamental question: what if these people were not going to return to Russia in two months, nor change their behaviour beyond tiny concessions on the fringes? What if despite the alerting of management, the raising of voices and the summoning of the police, I would continue to find them outside my window upon waking in the morning and resting my head on my pillow at night? How might I ever reclaim a state of inner peace?

Once I began to focus on that question, the answer made itself available. I would have to change what this event, which was beginning to consume my thoughts and feelings on a daily basis, represented to me. Once again I had returned to a truth that may not seem satisfactory to us in the heat of the emotional, irrational moment, but nonetheless always sets us free:

None of this was personal.

These people were not sent here from Russia to disturb my peace and torment me. Their actions were not designed to disrespect me. Nothing could be further from the truth. The worst one could say is that they were entirely, blissfully oblivious to me. Their intent was to spend two months of fun and frivolity by the pool in Los Angeles. I, on the other hand, interpreted every laugh, every word, every splash and buzz emitted from their radio as a slight against me. That somehow these people were taking something from me and me alone and the only way to peace was to eradicate them, annihilate them, make them wrong, change their reality by making them disappear. I needed to win. For peace. For self-respect. To end the pain.

Sound familiar? If you are lucky enough not to have been caught in that web of inner conflict, you surely can recognize it in the world around us, in the dynamic between lovers and ex-lovers, co-workers, competitors in business or politics and most evidently in masses of people represented through organized religious sects, communities and nations. One person's reality is taken personally by another and the conflict begins and here was I, beginning my own little war in my tiny corner of the globe.

Some believe that the reason for the continuance of most large scale conflicts and many smaller ones stems from an appetite and desire for victory, revenge and ultimately validation and vindication which outweighs the desire to end the suffering that these conflicts create. I don't believe this to be true. The problem lies in the misguided notion, taught to us in so many unspoken and, unfortunately, spoken ways, that inner peace resides in vanquishing that which we believe to have caused us grief in the first place. But the event itself is always outside us, impersonal, a projection emanating from a neutral person who is acting from inside their own deeply personal, subjective prism. It is only when we choose to believe that their actions say something true and valid about us, that we feel and engage in conflict. Therefore, nothing from without is personal unless we make it so, whether it comes from a stranger who knows nothing of who we are or a loved one (or hated one) who we feel understands us deeply.

This is not to say that behaviour should not be challenged. Nowhere am I advocating the passive acceptance of all conditions and actions. Far from it. We all must decide in each moment what will bring the most inner peace. Sometimes it will mean asking somebody in the firmest possible way to keep the noise down. In other moments it may require more drastic action. But in many moments it will also mean reminding ourselves that what others do says absolutely nothing about us and proceeding from that place always with a view to what will be the most harmonious action in the long term that will most allow us to accept the situation facing us in that moment.

This is a lesson I am engaged in even at the very writing of this today. As I type these words I hear, as on every other day, the laughter and conversation of these young women probably visiting these shores for the first time. They have been made fully aware of my feelings, as has the manager of the building. My sense of peace today will be contingent on my ability not to block them out, but rather to accept their presence as a benign entity, saying absolutely nothing about who I am. The struggle is no longer with a force without, but within.

The good news is that it is now a conflict that is completely within my power to end.

NUANCE-FREE - JUST ADD WATER

2010-07-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Democrats are doomed in November.

A recent poll found that over half the country thinks President Obama is a socialist.

Over half.

The President and his administration can take a lot of the responsibility for this collective malaria on the part of a large portion of the US electorate.

But before we get to that, let's first aim our guns at the pollsters. Because remember, these polling companies are businesses, and as such, they need to constantly be coming up with juicy stuff that will attract headlines, just like the one I'm discussing today.

When are the pollsters going to show some integrity? I have news for you- whoever took this poll was in on a dirty little secret that no one in the media ever talks about when speaking of the President and the public's perception of him as a 'socialist'; it's a secret that would threaten to make the whole subject a little less sexy. Would you like to know what the secret is? No? Tough. I'm going to tell you.

Most of the general public don't even know what the word 'socialist' means.

That's the twist here. I think Barack Obama would be quite content to be called a socialist, even to use the word himself in his political discourse if he felt the word was being used appropriately.

But of course, it isn't. 'Socialism' is now on the same polemical scrapheap as 'liberal', or the words 'gun' and 'control' when joined together. The right wingers have done a marvellous job; just as they managed to equate liberal with weak, wasteful, naive and even gay, they have long since made socialism absolutely synonymous with communism. I hear that in Texan schools the two words even come right after eachother in the dictionaries provided for the students.

So let's look at the two, shall we?

A summary of The Oxford Revised Second Edition definition of communism reads this way: 'a political theory... advocating a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person is paid and works according to his or her needs and abilities.'

Hmm. And socialism? Let's take a gander at that: 'a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be regulated or owned by the community as a whole... socialism has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state Communism and social democracy.'

Ain't that the truth, Oxford. That's exactly what Fox & Friends (many, many friends) have been doing- brainwashing people into believing that a social democracy- exactly what the United States has always been, similar to every other Western industrialized democracy in the entire world- must mean people standing in lines for bread and the great, unwashed proletariat coming to tear down your mansion and behead your entire family as well as all of your servants.

But socialism, as defined by the dear Oxford, sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Something any sane person could get behind, right? The community owning certain enterprises better left untouched by private profiteering and regulating the rest for the greater good? A very good formula for peace and prosperity for a large share of the population.

And guess what? When most Americans are asked questions with a tad more nuance related to these issues, they usually feel the same way. So instead of asking powder-keg, tabloid-style questions designed to produce results that will be talked about by the models and actors posing as news anchors on cable and network news, pollsters could actually be of assistance in illuminating the political landscape of this country and giving all of us a better reflection of exactly who we are and what we stand for. Here are some questions that might produce a slightly different impression of the average American voter:

Do you believe every American child should have access to a decent public education?
Are you in favour of the very richest in this country paying a lower rate of tax than yourself?
Do you think the nation's air, water and soil should be clean?
Do you think corporate lobbyists should have greater access to Congress and the Administration than the general public?
Should a citizen have to bankrupt themselves and possibly lose their house if they get sick?
Should every American citizen, including you, have a fair chance at having a job with decent conditions, a genuine living wage and the chance to send their children to a good university at an affordable price?

Should the general public have access to intelligent, impartial news broadcasting entities that are free of heavy corporate influence?

I am convinced that if people chose to answer honestly, they would probably give answers that would lead us all to the conclusion that wait, most US citizens believe in a social democracy, a blending of private enterprise with public regulation and State providence in the areas of education, environmental and economic protection and health care, to name a few.

But we won't see that. Because it requires nuance- on the part of the 'news' and polling organizations who are less interested in the truth than they are in making a profit for their shareholders. But we can't put all of the blame on them. It also falls on us, the citizen. Most of us are conditioned from a young age not to probe beneath the surface, to challenge edicts, decrees and perspectives that are supposed to be accepted as fact. Somewhere along the way we all decided that capitalism and socialism had to be mutually exclusive. Many others have known better, from the Founding Fathers through to FDR and, I suspect, Barack Obama.

So where to go from here? The Democrats, most of whom have long since been bought many times over by Wall Street, refuse to call the Republicans by their true name: Rich fatcats serving the needs of fantastically wealthy corporations at the expense of the poor and middle class in this country who, nuance-challenged as they are, just want to kick out whoever's in office and get someone else, even if it means a return to the policies that broke this country in the first place. And while President Obama remains well spoken and polite, little will change before November.

So here's what you do, Mr.President. You take a leaf out of Alan Grayson's book. Remember him, the Congressman from Florida? During the healthcare debate he went onto the floor of the House with a presentation that declared that the Republicans' answer to the healthcare problem was for poor people to "die faster". No, it wasn't pretty nor was it particularly fair but the spirit of it was right: in effect, what Mr. Grayson was saying in flashing neon lights was: "THESE GUYS DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU."

That's the tone you and all of your representatives must take, Mr. President. It's time for the fireside address to come back- except it won't be by a fire. It'll be at the homes of people who can't afford to have their illnesses treated due to the lack of an affordable public coverage option. It'll be in hospitals where people are dying of emphysema due to pollution in their cities, pollution that is allowed to remain thanks to Republican opposition to clean energy bills and stronger environmental protection legislation. It'll be at unemployment lines where people spend fruitless hours looking for decent blue collar jobs that have long since disappeared overseas due to the 'free' market and a lack of government oversight and regulation that would work to keep industry alive in the US, the kind of regulation that Republicans and corporate-bought, right-leaning Democrats kill before it even has a chance to breathe.
You, Mr. President, with your persuasive intelligence, mellifluous voice and quiet strength, would rail at these senators and congresspeople every single night, putting their pictures up on the screen, listing their campaign contributors and focusing on the thousands of votes they have cast in their political careers protecting the rights of Big Business at the expense of the rest of us.

Would it work? I have no idea. But at least you and your party would be going down swinging, in addition to finally calling out these people for what they are.

But, in the spirit of Colombo, I have one more question, Mr.President:

If you do ever decide to go on that kind of attack, what are you going to do about your campaign contributors?

Maybe it's time to have coffee with the folks at Goldman Sachs and the rest of the bad guys who are keeping the campaign coffers full and tell them you want to break up. Move on. It's not them, it's you.

Because I think you yearn to be free, Barack. You're like Jack Nicholson's character Nathan Jessop in A Few Good Men. You want to tell the truth. And in spite of what the pollsters might be telling you...

we can handle it.

Pictures, from top:   Alan Grayson- the right idea.
   Jack Nicholson as Nathan Jessop, A Few Good Men,
                                 Columbia Tri-Star Pictures, 1992.

BOYS WITH TOYS

2010-07-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Russians are in custody.

Don't be scared.

You can let your child leave the house again. Even send them back to school.

The bad guys are behind titanium bars.

We got 'em.

What were these evil superspies doing, I hear you ask?

What an inane question.

They were spying, people. That's not cool. Actually, they're pleading guilty to "conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent." That is so, way uncool. Don't these Ruskies know anything? Any actor who's played a KGB villain in a James Bond movie can tell you that if you want to act as a foreign agent- in fact, if you're not ready to play the part but are still only just in the conspiring stage (leafing through the dailies, practicing in front of the mirror, putting on a feeble Soviet brogue in restaurants), you have to register. Guys, come on. Get with it.

But let's say for argument's sake that these strapping fellows are actually spies. That they meant to do us morally upright US citizens (and residents, in my case) harm. I guess that's possible. Well, then guys... you still have to let us know! Please, by all means, be an agent, be foreign, but goddamn it, fess up!

Here's how it's supposed to go. It's not complicated. Work with me here. You board the Aeroflot airbus at Domodedovo, cyanide pills and microscopic camera safely stored where the sun rarely shines, and we're not talking Siberia. A quick hop across Europe and the Atlantic, involving the standard spy-on-a-plane fare:

29 vodkas on the rocks, with no drunkenness or subsequent hangover thanks to a special pill designed by the Russian equivalent of Q. His name is Ӛ. Nice guy from what I hear.
The mandatory faceless sex with a steward in the bathroom. No orgasm, though- she accidentally hit the flush lever. You know that flush in the airplane bathroom. It sounds like the end of the world. Farewell, erection.
Having settled back into your seat in coach (it hasn't been the same since the KGB disbanded- the new Foreign Intelligence Service doesn't even have half & half in the office fridge), the friendly, morbidly obese American tourist forces you to casually snap his neck and pull his Minnesota Twins baseball cap down over his face after talking too much hockey and saying you bear an uncanny resemblance to Howie Mandell.
After sneaking into business class to avoid the soggy gases now escaping from the Minnesota Twin's doughy, decomposing corpse, you recline in your seat to enjoy the assorted Latest Hits! movies available on every Aeroflot flight.
Having been thoroughly moved by The Bridges of Madison County, thrilled by Mission Impossible 2 and amused by the latest, pathetic actor playing James Bond (you make a mental note to Google this Pierce Brosnan guy when you land), you recline in your seat and fall into a deep sleep.
A loud commotion back in coach wakes you with a start. As the flight crew races past, you hear something about the smell of death and horrific, noxious gases. Breakfast has just been served.

The rest of the flight proceeds uneventfully, aside from finishing things up with the steward, sans flush. She gives you her number and tells you to meet her in the hotel bar. You smile, say your goodbye and silently wish for a time when gay spies didn't have to keep up appearances. Not that it would help during a flight- male, gay flight stewards don't come along every day.

So here is the moment of truth. You have landed. You have disembarked. Now you are waiting in line at customs. As you near the front, you see your man: buzz cut above a chiselled jaw and thick, military neck. Photos of he and his marine core sweetheart on the desk. American flag lapel. Mikhail Gorbachev dart board on the glass partition behind him. A Minnesota Twins coffee cup next to him. Damn.

But wait. You're not going to lie. You're going to follow the Pentagon's rules; play by the book, for Marx's sake. You're going to tell the truth this time, and do something never before attempted in the entire history of US-Russian espionage, something that will create sudden, irreversible change in how things are done:

You're going to register.

You're next. You head to the counter, and here's what happens:

"Good day, sir. Passport, please."
"Certainly. Go Twins."

Pause. Blank stare.

"What's your business in the USA?"
"Spying."
"How long will you be here?"
"As long as it takes to get my hands on critical military and state secrets."
"How long does that usually take? Ballpark."
"Hmm... how does a month sound?"
"Your tourist visa's valid for 3 months, so that'll work fine. "
"Cool. Maybe I'll have time to get to Vegas. Us spy types are mean poker players. You ever play Petrozavodsk Hold'em? Scintillating stuff."
"Never had the pleasure. Where will you be staying while you're here."
"All over West Hollywood."
"Excuse me?"
"Ah.. Los Angeles. I don't have an address yet. I'm a spy. We improvise."
"Got it. Well, this all checks out. Good luck with the state secret thing."
" 'Preciate it. You have a beautiful country. Really glad we got with the whole capitalist thing and can work together."
"Me too."

You start to walk away with a light skip, awash in contentment. His voice stops you. Uh oh. You turn, fearing the worst.

"One last thing. Has anybody ever told you that you look exactly like Howie Mandell?"

RUN OUT OF BIG BEAR

2010-07-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

Ever since I arrived in Los Angeles, I have been scolded, berated and chastised by friends and strangers alike over my negligence in not taking a trip up to Big Bear, a mountain region 90 minutes northeast of LA. Most popular as a skiing destination in winter, Big Bear also features mountain lakes for boating, trails for hiking and of course a multitude of scenic areas for camping.

So it was with a healthy dose of excitement that Victoria and I decided to spend our Saturday in that part of the world. It was Independence Day Weekend and a patriotic feeling was swelling our hearts; we wanted to explore this great land, wrested from the smelly British and taken from the Native Americans and the Mexicans by force. With that backdrop of adventure, heroism and manifest destiny seamlessly blended with cultural genocide and mass land theft, we set off.

The journey to Big Bear allowed me to view some suburban areas heretofore unseen by the writer and, in retrospect, better off left alone. The San Bernardino Valley is a wonderful place to raise your children if you like choking smog, endless cookie-cutter houses that line up like identical pieces of beige lego and a smorgasboard of strip malls to choose from, which is critical because Subways and Jamba Juices do vary enormously from one store to another. All of this is set in front of an incredible backdrop of mountains- I say incredible because although they lie only a few miles to the north of what amounts to a huge suburban concentration camp, they cannot be seen due to the pollution.

Having passed through that nightmare, our spirits lifted as we began our ascent toward Big Bear. The weather was refreshingly mild as we finally put the windows down to take in the fresh-ish air, bidding farewell to the dull, heavy layer of airborne filth covering the valley below. Victoria decided to bring a little bit of Los Angeles with her, blasting all and sundry with her horn as she passed slow-moving drivers trundling around the winding road, set amongst sheer cliffs promising certain death to anyone plunging into the abyss below. "Put your teeth back in, old timer!" She bellowed at an elderly man, whose smiling face melted into sadness as his ego and weekend were simultaneously crushed. "Learn how to drive, humanoid!" She screamed at an acne-ravaged teenager, driving with what appeared to be his girlfriend, a young girl now suddenly looking to greener romantic pastures in the face of her now former boyfriend being so effortlessly humiliated on the open road.

So it was with some relief that we headed into Big Bear Lake, one of the bigger towns in the area, ready to take in the sights, fraternise with the locals and enjoy some lunch. American flags abounded as we cruised down the main drag. I felt vindicated- the location on the plane ticket said 'United States'; but one could never be sure these days. Thank heavens for these wonderfully orienting flags, confirming that yes, I was indeed in the US of A. Having experienced the drive out, I was beginning to suspect that I was in fact living in war-torn Beirut.

Our first sighting of the lake was downright disturbing. Upon its shores was the same horrific slice of suburbia that I thought I'd left behind in San Bernardino. Soulless houses lined with the token wood siding, packed against eachother, ruining what would have been a tranquil shoreline, usually so inviting to a visitor. What is the point of a lake if one cannot have access to it? Of course, later there would be many places where one could walk down to the lake (and venture out onto it), but once again private development of formerly pristine natural areas had succeeded in adding to their beauty its own unique brand of ugliness. This was where people so desired to visit? Big Bear was off to a bad start.

Further along, we came to the town center, an assortment of shops and bars, many of them draped with a Wild West motif, which seemed appropriate, given the demographic amidst which we were walking. I casually hid my Star of David necklace, fearing a mountain-high pogrom as I put a protective arm around Victoria, who in turn slid a protective arm around me- she had recently seen Deliverance and, noting the average length of the beards, thickness of the beerguts and fullness of glaze in the eyes, had decided that the person in danger of deflowerment was me.

Having hidden any sign of my Jewry and removed my shirt from my pants to cover up my firm, shapely derriere in order to make myself more resistible to the local orthodontically-challenged male population, we decided to venture into the Cowboy Express Steakhouse for some lunch. Victoria's mouth began to water at the sight of all kinds of black and white photographs on the log-cabin walls depicting the glorious slaughter of peaceful herbivores for her imminent dining pleasure. Any salivation was duly halted, however, by the sight of stoic, moustachioed men with large guns standing in front of old saloons, men who looked frighteningly similar to those that we passed on our way to this fine culinary establishment. Dryness of mouth reigned.

The first sign of danger came on the heels of our drink order. We were happily seated under a large, shade-bearing confederate flag (I immediately felt cozy- my comforter cover bears the same symbol) when the waitress came over to take our drink order. I sensed I'd made a mistake as soon as the words, "I'll have a Cosmo, heavy on the cranberry" came out of my mouth. Victoria's shoulders slumped as we watched the waitress give me a second look before heading over to a barrel-chested, woolly gentleman wearing overalls and a flannel shirt who sat watching by the jukebox. As the waitress whispered in his ear, pointing me out on the patio, I felt like a fugitive seated at a bar whose image comes on the television, being forced to watch as recognition dawns on each of his fellow patrons' faces. My ensuing response was also in line: run. But Victoria was next to me; no man can afford to be a coward in front of his girlfriend. That can come later, when she's not around.

So I sat tight, under the glare of this beast from another age. I snuck another glance and by this time he had put a toothpick in his mouth, sending it on vertical loops between his lips. I felt myself being hypnotized. Luckily the spell was broken by the waitress returning with our drinks to take our order. My beloved Cosmo, however, was nowhere to be seen. In its place, next to Victoria's beer, was a tumbler of translucent brown fluid. This was dumped in front of me with the words, "Jedediah thought you'd do better with this." I stared, mouth agape as the glass landed on the table. Victoria took a sheepish sip of her beer, awaiting my response which she knew would undoubtedly involve the overturning of tables and a maniacal, raised voice.

"Thank you, ma'am."

Not the time or the place. Jedediah would get his. In the meantime, it was time to order. Victoria ordered a burger while I hesitated, perusing the menu.

"Do you have any vegan meals?"

The waitress took a quick look at Jedediah. Then back to me.

"Uh... we could put extra lettuce and tomato on the burger."

I looked up and into her bored, vacant eyes. Was she playing with me? Because I could have dealt with that, even appreciated some good old urban, downtown sarcasm at a moment like this, a little sprinkle of Letterman thrown into my Davy Crockett experience. But no. She was trying to help a lost cause. Trying to rescue me. But I was too deep into a state of shock to grab the lifeline.

"I'll have a burger, medium, meat on a separate plate, please, no bun, salad instead of fries, no dressing, oil and vinegar on the side."

What?? I asked Victoria after the dumbfounded waitress had walked away. My reasoning was clear: she could have the meat tomorrow. Why waste it? But my love wasn't appeased. I had let her down. This was my chance to channel John Wayne, and instead I'd summoned early Woody Allen. This was a mess. To add to my vexation, Jedediah was once again receiving an eyewitness news update on the happenings at our table. An almost toothless sneer was beginning to form on his cracked, tobacco-slimed lips. I was starting to think about everything unfinished in my life when Victoria nudged me.

"Let's get the hell out of here," she whispered. My head whipped around with a faint crack.

"What?" I asked. "But we just ordered!"
"I don't care. This isn't gonna (her anunciation is perfect, but 'gonna' works better for action sequences) end well. Let's just leave a 50 on the table and blow this popstand."

She didn't really say popstand. And I didn't have a fifty. With a wearied sigh, Victoria pulled a 50 dollar bill from her wallet and stuck it under the mouldy ketchup bottle. "Let's get outta here!" She hissed. Jed was still sitting near the jukebox, which was too close to the exit. The patio was too high to leap off. I needed a distraction. Life can be strange: all day my wits were absent. Meatless burgers and cranberry-heavy Cosmos had abounded. But in this moment, genius finally arrived. I stood up, pointed to the street below and shouted:

"LOOK! A PERSON OF NON-CAUCASIAN ETHNICITY DRIVING A HIGH FUEL ECONOMY VEHICLE WITH A RALPH NADER BUMPER STICKER!"

Chaos ensued. A primal, vengeful scream emanated from Jedediah as he jumped off his bar stool and sped out into the street, along with the rest of the staff and some patrons wielding deer carcasses. Victoria and I filed out with them, sprinting away from the place, only stopping once we'd reached the corner. We chanced a look back, to find Jedediah throwing his arms in the air in frustration, his grimy overalls billowing in the wind. To this day I am convinced I caught his stench on the breeze as we retreated to our car. That smell is keeping me awake at nights. But that's for another day. Victoria and I, heading out of town, had escaped with our lives. Big Bear had opened its arms to us and we had come eerily close to being another picture on its walls. Victoria had also managed to snag back the fifty clams from under the ketchup bottle as we bolted out of there.

As we passed through San Bernardino on our way home, its confines suddenly seemed a little friendlier to the eye. With the accent on little.

Don't get me wrong. Big Bear is a pretty place. But Red Neck might be a better name.

THURSDAY MARINE LAYER

2010-07-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

I wish I could tell you, dear readers, that there is some compelling, mysterious, sexy reason for my absence. I've felt your pining- just as one proton simultaneously responds to its sister proton's oscillations, I also cannot help but be affected by your collective emotional state. I feel your longing. It's time to return to public life.

Enough nonsense. Let's debrief.

It's been a busy week. Where to start? How about nowhere in particular?

The Retirement Of Larry King.

Finally. This man is one of the most over-rated television 'personalities' to ever foul up the airwaves. Talk about wasting a public platform. Just another reason I adore Rachel Maddow- her arrival on MSNBC assisted in accelerating the decline of Larry's already dismal ratings. There is only room for one old, decrepit Jewish man on television- me in 30 years. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What will CNN do with the 9pm timeslot? As it stands, their current team of anchors (Fareed Zakaria excepted- his show GPS is one of the smartest and most understated in cable news) makes Fox's people look like Nobel laureates. I have some ideas:

To Catch A Predator 6 featuring Larry King - MSNBC and CNN team up to follow Larry as he looks for his next wife.
CNN Smackdown! - Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Campbell Brown, John King and the rest of the drones have to wrestle for the right to stay at the network. In a janitorial position.
Diff'rent Strokes Reunion Hour - The guy who played Willis performs monologs for 60 minutes.

Queer Eye For The Straight Guy - Anderson Cooper moves in with Wolf Blitzer, gives him a shave and a wax, plies him with Cosmos and E and eventually turns him. Ratings soar, Anderson is excommunicated from the gay community and Wolf lands the lead in a Broadway revival of Gypsy.

Le Bron James' Free Agency Adventure

I have an idea. It may not be legal, but at this point I don't give a hoot. It's called collusion. Why don't we collectively decide, as a society, to do something better with our money than giving gobs of it to monosyllabic, egomaniacal, misogynistic young men whose greatest contribution to our community is throwing a large rubber sphere through a steel rim attached to a frilly little white net?
Enough already. NBA owners: take the hundreds of millions you're going to throw at all these free agents and spend it on funding for arts schools in poor and working class neighbourhoods. Maybe we can start affirming that poor black kids are good for something other than enriching sporting teams. As for the rest of us, let's leave the stadiums empty and the TV off for a year and seek other forms of entertainment. More lovemaking will occur, novels will be written, museums will fill up again and just maybe the oil will get cleaned up.

General McChrystal Got Fired

Aaah... very original, Mr.President. David Petraeus. Never saw that one coming. Of course McChrystal had to be fired. Reminds me of the time the woman I was seeing told all our friends that I was a lousy lay. Too fast, she said. Okay, number one: in the words of Christopher Durang, wanting sex to take a long time is sick. Second, as I explained to every single friend, once I'd hunted down all 472 that my then girlfriend called, in matters of sex I am not "fast"- I am efficient. If my lovers need more time to get their work done, that's not my problem.
But I divagate. The point here is that this guy slagged off his boss in a public forum and had to go. As far as his replacement... why is it that we hire generals to oversee these campaigns? If Obama really wants to end matters over there, shouldn't he put someone in charge who doesn't have a strong vested interest in seeing it continued? It is simple logic which suggests that military folk, especially those who have been entrenched in that arena for decades, have little interest in a genuine, lasting peace. Wouldn't that mean they'd all be out of a job?

For a coherent analysis of the actual situation confronting us in Afghanistan, read Bob Herbert's op-ed this week in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&ref=bobherbert

As the old Vietnam anti-war slogan goes:

"Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity."

Amen.

Tea Partiers Are Idiots

Yes, I know that title is reductive, it's judgemental, it's simplistic and it's absolutely spot on.

Having said that, early members of an emerging Nazi Party may have been called similar names by the very people they ended up carting away in trains, so we should treat this sub-sector of our society with a little care. I don't believe for a second that this fringe element has increased markedly in number- the real problem here is that it has found a way to legitimize itself and therefore has a heightened capability to attract the lesser-educated and bigoted among us who, in spite of their limitations (limitations often placed on them due to conditioning by parents and their immediate environment), would otherwise have made more rational political choices. It's up to the media in addition to all of us to correct lies and false propaganda when we come into contact with it; unfortunately, most of the corporate media is all too ready to embrace the neanderthalic grunting of Tea Party candidates as educated discourse. Luckily, ladies and gentleman, enter Chris Matthews, of Hardball fame:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/01/chris-matthews-grills-ric_n_632139.html

Enjoy.

The World Cup

I have had it with the dives. These fellows, when lightly tapped by an opponent, behave as if there is well-aimed sniper fire coming from the stands, finding a home in the middle of their rippled torsos. I haven't seen this much useless, shameful, shambolic diving since BP last tried to fix the leak. It must stop. I suggest a new colour coding system: the Pink Card. If these fellows like falling to the ground in hysterical tears so much, upon receiving the Pink Card they will be suspended, bound and gagged and forced to watch Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias over and over again, without sleep, until they see the error of their ways. Problem solved.

Trust me. I know all about falling to the ground, overcome with deep, convulsing sobs.

My team is Australia.

Enough said.

Pictures, from top: Larry King, public menace.
                          Petraeus... awful hair.
   A gargantuan tea cup rocket that will carry away all bigots and oil company executives.
                               Another soccer player shot in the back. Tragic.

NO BURGER WEEK

2010-06-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

I'm about to spoil your day.

Can you imagine a society in which we stopped making burgers from cows and started to make them out of, say... kittens? Or puppies? Or, dare I say... babies? Let us imagine for a moment that legislation was passed enabling all restaurants to sell these exciting new burgers legally. Let us also imagine that the meat tastes and looks exactly the same.

Have no fear; this will not be a post tearfully exhorting you to consider the feelings of our bovine friends. The puppy/kitten/baby strategem was an idea borne of desperation: what will it take to rein in our obsession with the Burger, to get us to resist its insidious charms, to move on to (literally) greener pastures that await us on that menu or at the supemarket? Although I am all for the compassionate treatment of all living creatures, that's another post for another day. This essay, dear readers, concerns our health.

There are a multitude of enormous, teeming cities in the world today dealing with traffic problems that have become almost too big to even tackle. The reason for these problems lies in the paradigm of more requires more. I see it in the city that I currently inhabit, Los Angeles. Many decades ago the local government, presumably stocked up with loads of campaign cash delivered in Trader Joe's cardboard bags by the burgeoning automobile industry, decided to do away with the light rail system that not only was tremendously efficient in carrying large numbers of Angelenos (an insipid term, I know) all over the city at an affordable price but also added to the character, beauty and connectedness of the town, in favour of building many more roads through developing neighbourhoods. As the population (and the pollution) increased, the government saw the most obvious answer that would have been self-evident to all but the most unhinged... or far-sighted: build more roads to accomodate the ever-expanding car fleet. As more people and therefore more cars filled the city, the government continued to build more roads, all the while neglecting the health concerns of the city's people and the environmental and social degradation that occurs when neighbourhoods are literally passed over by massive construction. More Cars Means More Roads Means More Cars and so on.

It would seem that this same phenomenon is occuring around burger consumption.

It's a sneaky little critter, our burger. The old-fashioned Steak still seems to occupy rarified air. Restaurants charge more for it and we don't seem as cavalier in our consumption of it. McDonald's has not released the McSteak. It's as if we're all aware of the excess that might be inherent in devouring a steak four times a week. But the friendly burger? Ah, what the hell. Pick one up at the drive through on the way home. Order it at the diner. Order it at the three-star restaurant that is fleecing you with its 'gourmet' burger. Throw a frozen patty in the oven. No big deal. It's just a sandwich, right?

Burger King, McDonalds' stinky little brother who forgets to wipe his nose occasionally, currently has 8,700 'restaurants'. There were 756 new Burger King franchises opened last year and the corporation plans to open another 1,000 throughout 2010. The wonderful Wendy's franchise has around 4,900 locations and has opened some 470 more in the last year. As for McDonald's, they've moved into the direct-delivery arena. They're currently laying a pipeline that will stretch to your home, with a nozzle for each home; just stick the nozzle into your mouth (it's shaped like a snorkel- just bite down) and the good folks at Maccas will simply pump the product directly into your gullet.

Despite greater awareness and more media attention being placed on the consequences of over-consumption of artificial, fatty, salty and sugary food than at any other time in history, not to mention an abundance of evidence proving how problematic a diet high in red meat can be, we continue to munch away on them cows.

I remember back in Australia in the early nineties when McDonalds had its first ever closure due to lack of business. I remember how excited I was to announce "the beginning of the end" for the fast food industry, that people were finally "getting it" and renouncing their idolatry of the hamburger.

I was dead wrong. The burger has become fashionable. I can't remember how many times I've heard someone declare in their best shrill voice, "I just went to --- (fill in the blank here with your favourite overpriced, pretentious eatery- oh, wait... "eatery" is itself a pretentious term.. damn), they have a GREAT burger."

Really? A particular establishment's burger is that much better than another's? Has ordering a burger become akin to getting a massage? Can we really be that discerning over a piece of grilled red meat? Even if there is a discernible difference between hamburgers, maybe it's time we raised our sights a tad; if we're really that keen to be discerning in our food choices, let's shoot for foods that involve a little more preparation and care than a hunk of ground beef being rolled into a puck like a piece of playdough.

Americans eat on average around 67 pounds of red meat every year. While no one can agree on just how much may be too much (and levels have come down from the all-time high in the mid-70s due to something called the 'national beef herd liquidation'- I don't think the words 'beef' and 'liquid' should ever be that closely associated), I think we can all agree that we're probably eating way too much- one only has to look at the levels of heart disease, colon cancer and digestive problems that are currently being experienced and attributed by much of the medical community to a diet too heavily laden with red meat.

But that won't stop us. Oh no. Just as we've come to accept The Soda as being the natural accompaniment to every meal, we also have been brainwashed into thinking 8 ounces of red meat paired with a bunch of fried potatoes devoid of all nutrition is just fine as a daily meal.

It ain't, folks. Let's start voting for fresher food with our wallets. Us men have a lot to answer for- somewhere along the way some construction worker spread the word that 'real' men eat steaks and burgers; the classic old Aussie farmer breakfast is steak and eggs. Steak for breakfast. Every goddamned day. Terrific.

Guys, eating a lot of red meat doesn't mean you're tough. It means you haven't built a good log cabin in about a decade and your meat breath in the morning is melting the paint off the walls. Enough is enough. Real men, tough men, strong men eat salad and cry when watching Titanic... for the third time.

Some fun facts from a report done by LEAD, which is the Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative, supported by the Food and Agriculture Administration of the UN:

- Meat production by 2050 will double what it was in 1990
- Livestock currently provides a third of human protein intake
- Grazing lands take up 26% of the ice-free land on this planet
- Feedcrop production is 33% of all arable land on Earth
- 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is taken up by pasture
- Livestock account for 9% of all human activity related carbon dioxide emissions
- Livestock are responsible for 37% of all human activity related methane emissions, and methane has 23 times more global warming potential compared to carbon dioxide
- Livestock account for nearly two thirds of human related ammonia emissions
- In the USA, Livestock are responsible for over half of the country's erosion and sediment issues.

The answer? Very simple. If you want to live longer, be healthier and feel better, do what nature intended you to do as a human being: eat more green plants.

It's time for No Burger Week. Take 'em off menus, out of the freezers at supermarkets and out of the display window at the local butchery.

It could be one glorious week for our bodies: salads piled high, bunches of fresh fruit and healthy grains and legumes by the sackload. With the occasional kitten thrown in for some protein.

Sorry, folks. I'm a dog guy.

BOREDOM

2010-06-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

I visited my local Target store today, located in the friendly confines of Hollywood. The idea struck me on our way out of the place- why not hand out free razor blades with which to off myself? It would save me the trouble of finding the means with which to end my life and the misery I felt after strolling down the antiseptic lanes, stuffed with useless detritus that people are talked into believing they need or want.

The mall culture, invented by America, is one its most insidious global exports. There are many sad things to behold in our world today- starving children, environmental decay, the most recent winner of American Idol; but the most depressing thing my senses have had the misfortune of coming into contact with is this verbal interaction between two people:

"So what are you doing today?"
"Going to the mall."
"Oh, what are you planning on buying?"
"Nothing. We're just going to go there and walk around."

Boredom is pervasive in our society. Most of us never have the privilege of having jobs that are stimulating, the kind of jobs that have us bouncing out of bed in the morning to get to. We also are not encouraged to create dynamic, fluid and daringly honest relationships with friends and family. Many couples live an entire life together and never really discover the true self lying next to them every night. For that matter, many of us never do the introspective work that can lead to profound personal growth and a more stimulating, vital life.

Instead, we go to the mall. People used to worship religious gods on sunday; now they worship the god of stuff. I witnessed people with flaccid, impassive expressions on their faces heading to the checkout holding onto large cardboard boxes. Were there objects to be found inside those boxes? Possibly. I don't think for the most part it really matters. What is essential is that we buy something, that we obtain a bright and shiny new object that we will inevitably tire of tomorrow. But no matter; we will have found something else to purchase by then.

I had a wonderful, austere, ascetic teacher who used to say, "boredom is a defense."

Her postulation was that wherever we are, if we are truly present and possessing a quiet mind, we can find anything fascinating with which we come into contact and if we feel bored it is only due to a resistance on our part to opening up to the immediacy of the moment. While I find those words ultimately incontestable, there are difficulties we all face in arriving at that quiet mind, that state of sensual curiosity. Somewhere along the way our society decided that 'shock and awe' qualified as entertainment. We have become spoonfed, our tastes and likes decided for us by corporations. We stand mute before so many bright lights and deafening sound, murmuring 'wow' to ourselves, all the while being anaesthetized to such an extent that we forget to check in with our feelings in time to discover that in fact, the 'entertainment' we shelled out our hard earned money for actually made us feel bad. 'Bad' in this case could mean emotionally shut down, depressed, frightened or even angry. There is a reason for certain restrictions being introduced to prevent some 'entertainment' being experienced by children. The effects of extreme violence and sensory overload is usually clearly visible in infants, but we have made the mistake of assuming greater maturity and life experience renders that same stuff harmless to adults.

It isn't. The more in touch we are with our feelings, impulses and urges for creativity and greater self-care, the more dissatisfaction we may discover with movies that deaden us, food that constipates and fattens us and possessions that do not fulfill us. They may briefly quell the needs of our all-consuming ego but they do not go close to even touching the unconscious mind, the one that dreams and the voice inside us that seeks creativity and self-expression.

We have accepted boredom as a common state, something to be tolerated and assuaged by external salves that only leave us with a more profound sense of that same boredom. Many people, when asked how they are, will respond with the murderous cliche, "same shit, different day".

The bar must be lifted. It is never the same day, never the same shit. The mall will usually leave most of us drained, tired, lighter in the wallet and just a little more cluttered at home, yet we are all surrounded by nature, which is free, renewable and usually leaves us feeling better, more at peace and with a renewed sense of kinship with the people who are sharing the experience with us. The same could be said of authentic interactions with other people that transcend small talk or creative enterprise that doesn't necessarily involve the outlay of large amounts of money.

For make no mistake: there are countless corporations who are actively seeking, on a daily basis, to ensure that we do not find more authentic, vital and nourishing forms of entertainment and fulfillment. They do not want our minds to become quiet; human beings tend to like feeling good, and it is only our ignorance of those states of greater peace, joy, stimulation and aliveness that prevents us from seeking out places and ways of being in which to experience them more regularly.

Nancy Reagan said Just Say No in the 1980s, even as her husband said Yes to the greater corporate dominance of our society's politics and culture through massive deregulation and disempowerment of the citizen by divers means, including media monopolization.

Illicit drug abuse is a problem, but there are more universally accepted drugs which are far more harmful to the general population.

Let's starting saying No more often to empty forms of 'entertainment': too much TV, violent and hyperactive movies, the consumption of useless toys and awful, chemical food that is killing us.

What do we say Yes to in order to replace those activities?

I guess we'll have to start getting creative.

Post script: In the interests of full disclosure, I bought a packet of tank tops, 2 t-shirts, a soccer ball and an air pump. I had no intention of buying any of those items upon entering the store. I suggested to my girlfriend Victoria that we get some people together and play soccer. Let us hope I turn that idea into a reality.

THE DEFINITIVE POLITICALLY INCORRECT WORLD CUP BRACKET

2010-06-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

No messing about. Let's get to your winners and losers in this year's World Cup, brought to you by myself and my local soccer expert, Victoria. Don't mind her mood- her beloved Austrians just missed out on qualification for the tournament, which is kind of like saying BP's deep drilling in the Gulf almost went off without a hitch.

THE POOLS

Group A

The South Africans almost beat Mexico in game 1. The problem is, due to the low value of a goal in soccer (1 point in case you usually watch entertaining sports), everybody almost wins. I don't see the home team getting through to Round 2 which is fantastic because those horns the home fans blow are a disgrace. I haven't heard so much useless noise since Lindsay Lohan said she'd stop drinking. Although I resent Uruguay as a nation because its name is difficult to pronounce, I see them getting through with the Frogs.

Group B

Greece has been doing it tough lately. The team had to hitchhike to the tournament. That's a long way. Whoever happens to be on the bench during a game has to sell hot dogs. Very embarrassing. But due to the adversity the Greeks are facing, I see them making it to Round 2, along with the Argentinians, who continue to try to stop Diego Maradona from eating those Greek hot dogs. It's not working.

Group C

I don't know exactly who or where Algeria is. North Africa? I believe so. Wasn't an Algerian woman mentioned in a Michael Jackson ballad? Yes, I suspect so. Which is why they're getting into the second round. Joining them will be the poorly educated, unwashed English team. England may be a third world, second rate nation now but they still can play a bit. As for the Americans, playing soccer for these leaden-footed but very patriotic fellows is kind of like having universal healthcare. Nice idea, ain't gonna happen.

Group D

Tough group, with only one clear standout: the majestic Australian team, nicknamed the Socceroos. This team has it all: tight bums, sexy accents and rampant alcoholism. They also almost win a ton. They're going through to Round 2. Joining them will be the Krauts, who I have going down to the beer guzzlers in the first game. But Germany will bounce back. The energy they save from avoiding all kinds of humour, spontaneity and laughter will serve them well.

GROUP E

Aaah.. and we come to the group featuring the eventual winners of the whole shebang. No, not Japan, who I'm sure are a charming bunch of chaps- they'd better be, since their football stinks like a five day old spicy tuna roll. I'm talking about the NetherRegions, also called Holland, whose people we call Dutch. About as confounding as their footballing skills, which will leave the rest of the group in a daze. The lovely Cameroonians will join them in Round 2.

GROUP F

I am sick of these greasy Italians winning all the time. Maybe they should play less soccer and have more sex to kick start their population. In the meantime, they're getting through, along with... the Paraguayans. Paraguay is also known to South Americans as Corazon de America- the Heart of America, due to its location on the continent. I think it's between Kentucky and Ohio. Missing out, much to my glee, will be the extremely untalented, strangely accented, sheep-deflowering Kiwi team. Their football team is one of the great comedy acts in the world today. You can catch them performing at the Mandalay Bay in a double act with Andrew Dice Clay next month.

GROUP G

This is the easiest. The players from North Korea are a little rusty, having just been released from a work camp where they've spent the last eight months after the team's captain was caught on tape making fun of Kim Jong Il's pyjamas. You can't question their desire, though- if they get to Round 2 they've been promised a brand new 1983 Datsun to share between the entire squad. Cassette player included. Alas, they play about as well as the New Zealanders so forget it. The hated Brazilians, with their beautiful, talented players who get my girlfriend all hot and steamy are through, as are the Portugese, allowing the North Koreans to return to their cells.

GROUP H

I know how Australia can win this thing- make the Arizona Immigration Bill the template for qualification. No team who speaks Spanish can come. That will knock out the two best teams in this group- Spain and Chile. Oh, wait. And Honduras. So that just leaves the dull Swiss. I cut myself on one of their useless, overly-complicated knives when I was a kid. Who the hell needs tweezers in the wilderness, anyway? Screw it. They're out. Spain and Chile are through.

Okay, I'll make the rest quick. Greece's dream run ends in the their Semi Final against the Dutch. But many hot dogs sold in the meantime, allowing them to jump a cargo ship back to the motherland. Argentina shocks the men in the red checkered table cloths. The Nether Parts defeat Argentina in a fantastic final during which Victoria has to wake me four times.

The following day, the Free Pot and Prostitution Act of 2010 is written in celebration by the Dutch Prime Minister.

It passes both houses unanimously.

Eliot Spitzer jumps on a plane.

The US team are given a parade. Just because.

We all get on with our lives.

Picture: Don't get ahead of yourself, Nelson.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

2010-06-10T12:11:00.001-07:00

As I was sitting here at my desk pondering the possible subjects of this column today, I heard the wardrobe door perform its little slide on its wheels. It could only be one thing, of course; Victoria, preparing to head out for an appointment, choosing her costume for the day, perusing the exuberance of colours and styles to be found in the clothing on display inside her cabinet. I imagine her scanning the different possibilities with that sharp, expert female eye, much like a choreographer scrutinizes a row of dancers as she attempts to whittle down the contenders. As I imagine these things I find myself enjoying the simple realities and their resultant actions and behaviours that manifest in us as human beings. It occurred to me that a rich life can be led when we can occupy that realm in which small children move.

It is a realm where everything around us is accepted without judgement and where very few intellectual decisions have been made. Inherent in this state is an allowal for the many responses we will have to that flow of stimulai being given permission to enter us. The consequent effect of this steady intake and expression is one of extreme aliveness, something which is usually nullified and repressed in most of us by the time we reach adolescence.

While some judgments are necessary for our very functionality and survival as human beings, many serve to simply shut down the mental and imaginative faculty which sets us apart as living creatures.

That of curiosity.

One of the most salient features of one who is emotionally, spiritually and imaginatively shut down is a lack of curiosity in the world around them. We all know this state: it manifests itself in us when we find ourselves in an argument with our loved ones; often we will discover ourselves in the middle of a verbal battle, defending a point of view that we suspect to be false or faulty, completely ignoring what is being said to us, a condition that is ubiquitous in our political dialogue today: we no longer have any interest in arriving at a constructive truth, whether that be a subjective truth that will serve our growth and allow for greater openness and connection with others, or a truth that can be shared by the parties involved and assist in forward movement.

In those moments, as in so many others, we are what my brother, who works in the field of conflict resolution, calls non-curious.

Yet it is gratifying and potentially exciting to know that we can actually work on our mental and spiritual states of being, that mindfulness is something we can practice. It’s possible to take a simple enjoyment from seemingly mundane tasks if we are fully present and are able to enjoy our own presence and grace in the execution of our daily callings. All that is required is an appreciation of the moment and the sensual wonderment that is always on hand and can be most frequently witnessed in the behaviour of children, who have not yet burdened themselves with decisions that often end up shackling their inner lives and their beauty, which of course is to be found in the magic of their feelings, imagination and spirit and those qualities’ expression.

Take a chance today. Question a judgment or decision you may have made long ago about yourself, someone you love or a person about whom you may be harbouring indifference or more painful feelings.

In the surrendering of judgment, lying just beyond its hard walls, we may rediscover the bounteous gifts of curiosity which, if we’re not careful, may lead to fascination which, if we continue to be reckless, might just cause another sensation, renewable and absolutely free: that of joy, a sensation which can just as often be expressed in a quiet contentment as much as in whooping and hollering.

It can sometimes be found in the exploration of the seemingly plain box that houses the expensive gift,

or in the opening of a wardrobe.

The wonderful poet Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."

In a refound curiosity about and fascination in the things which hitherto have bored, scared or wounded us, there are riches to be found which may manifest in a new and more frequently experienced kind of peace, happiness and possibility.

It can begin now.

THE SCAM THAT IS FENG SHUI

2010-06-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

I’m burning up with resentment, an emotional response that is ignited anytime I can see that some other lucky bum has a talent that I do not possess. When those familiar feelings and thoughts of inferiority hit, I have one stock response: to denunciate everything related to that particular skill and the person who possesses it. In this case, that person is my partner, Victoria. Let’s begin.

I asked my darling for the definition of ‘Feng Shui’. I didn’t need perfect Mandarin pronunciation; just a simple elucidation on the exact meaning of two accursed words that have haunted me my entire life. Loyal readers, it is not hyperbolic on my part to say that the nightmare that is the paranormal phenomenon called ‘Feng Shui’ has been nothing less than the bane of my existence.

It all started on the day of my birth. The doc gave my fogies the all clear to take me home. My father was in a mood because my hair was red and there hadn’t been a ginger in his family since his great great uncle Marty Sekl back in Poland. Marty spent his last days in a Russian gulag in the late nineteenth century after being caught soliciting for sex in a public toilet in Warsaw. The problem was, two days after checking in to the gulag he was caught soliciting for sex in the bathroom there as well (apparently the local convicts had a thing for red ringlets- I forgot to mention there was an Hasidic branch of my Polish tree), so Marty spent his last days separated from General Population. I only have to say the word ‘Marty’ and my father collapses in a disturbed cocktail of despair and embarrassment. Suffice to say, when my father saw the first signs of red hair on my softened dome, he went into a tailspin, neglecting the task my mother had assigned him, which was to go straight home after my birth and get my room ready.

As a result, the first room that would ever be called my own was a shambles. Old, dilapidated pieces of furniture lay scattered about, as if upset by a tornado. My older brother’s seamy collection of Hustler magazines were piled high in a corner, favourite editions marked by little squares of paper stuck on the top of the cover, on which was written the reason for his liking for that particular issue. He never used sticky tape to attach those little pieces of paper… I’m not prepared to speculate on how they were affixed but he did go on to invent the Post It in later years. God bless him. Also clogging up my future sleeping area was my father’s 24 volume Oxford Dictionary set. The word set, by the by, has the longest definition in that dictionary, running over 20 pages of tiny text in length. It is Saxonal in origin, dating back to…

My father lost his virginity at 44. Which explains his moodiness at the sight of my red locks and, more importantly, his concomitant suspicion and sulking upon the revelation of my mother's two pregnancies. But the story of our local milkman is for another day.

Let us return to the arrangement of my room. My mother, horrified at the sight of the rubble which confronted her when she got back to our house, began to scream at my father, telling him there was no way I could sleep in there. When my father pointed out that my cot, randomly placed in the centre of the chaos, was ready for use, and that my idiot 1-day old brain would not notice what was around it, my mother’s rage only intensified. It was then that I, and my father, were first exposed to the phrase: “it’s all wrong ENERGETICALLY!”

Energetically. My father rejected the concept outright, silently scorning the idea as he begrudgingly cleared out my room, hurriedly tucking the Hustler omnibus into a secret compartment under the spiral staircase that was unknown to my mother. We moved across town a couple of years later, my father having completely forgotten about his little cache. It’s comforting to know that my brother’s rich inner life will be known to generations centuries from now. Some things must not be lost.

My mother had never heard the term Feng Shui. She doesn’t even use chopsticks. But instinctively she had a feel for an art in which my girlfriend now owns a third degree Black Belt, a belt with which she never fails to slap the hell out of me. The first time we went back to my place, in the throes of passion, clothes coming off at a dizzying pace, Victoria suddenly declared that “there would be absolutely no salami hiding” on my bed (okay, the salami part is my invention- she mentioned something about “lovemaking”, a concept she later explained to me) as long as it stayed the way it was. I asked her what the flock she was talking about. “What?? Don’t you know that a bed should never be behind the door?!” After indulging in a blank stare for a few moments, we set about moving the bed away from the door, during which time I accidentally farted and threw my back out.

No “love making” occurred that night. My victimization at the hands of Feng Shui and its most evil practitioner, Victoria, had begun.

Since then, I’ve been forced to take down photos of my family in the bedroom – “hey moron, don’t you know that it’s bad to have people watching you while you sleep?” – I’ve lowered the pictures hanging on my walls – “you frigging idiot, they’re hanging too high, it makes your ceiling look too low” – I’ve shifted the bed (and threw my back out a second time, all the while controlling my flatulence) to face the door – “you drooling troglodyte, you need to be able to see if someone comes in” – all with the desire to please my disdainful soul mate.

But she’s never pleased. On the contrary, as time goes on, her contempt for my lack of spacial and energetic awareness only deepens in intensity. This woman would make Eskimos cry in their igloos (“that’s an AWFUL place for that mound of stored polar bear fat, you nose-pressing dolts”). I live in a constant state of terror, all due to two seemingly harmless Chinese words.

Six thousand years ago, people in the area we now know as China began to build dwellings with a focus on their place in and relationship to the Universe, using as a reference the stars, bodies of water and the directions later defined by the magnetic compass, a device actually invented for the application of Feng Shui. As I write these words, I realize that my goal of denunciating this black magic and the woman I love who practices it has not been attained. In fact, I've once again fallen pathetically short- it's not easy making a mockery of someone who continues a tradition rooted in, amongst other things, the invention of the freakin' compass.

You know what? Screw the compass. I'm not a member of the Scouts. I can do without knowing which way is north.

If I can just, pretty please, have my life back.

Rest in peace, Marty.

AGING

2010-06-04T12:12:00.001-07:00

I was deeply affected by the film The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button. I could barely move nor speak as the lights in the cinema began to rise. I saw the film, which details the life of a man born old who proceeds to get younger as the years progress until he finishes his life as a baby, at a particularly vulnerable moment in my life, a time during which I spent many hours contemplating the reality of getting older, of being keenly aware of the fact that we can never go back in our lives; moments come, moments go and once past us, they move inexorably further and further away in the rearview mirror of our experience. They cannot be retrieved except in our memories and even then will always be tainted with our views, so often having grown pessimistic, of the present.

A well-worn cliché that people often use is, “you’re only as old as you feel.” While trite, the grain of truth in that statement is evident. However, as I watch myself move into a different stage of life, I see that feeling “old” has much less to do with one’s feelings and more to do with one’s perspective, for our feelings and emotions will always obey the mind- that is, they are causal in nature: how we perceive our world, its happenings and our place amongst them will dictate how we will feel about those events and the person who lives at the centre of our own little corner of the world, namely us.

The person who goes to bed mourning the loss of joy, love or adventure in his life must be the same soul who no longer believes in the possibility of their emergence in his present and future. This person awakes to a new day with no sense of hope, only dread, for to fill a day that holds no foreseeable chance for any dream, desire or ambition to be fulfilled or satisfied is to climb a mountain with no peak. The

earliest incarnation of Humanity found in each day a set of tasks to be fulfilled and whether or not they were aware of it, completion of those tasks assuredly resulted in a sense of satisfaction, purpose and meaning. Equally probable is that, in the failure to complete those same tasks, there would result an added urgency and meaning in rising at the dawn of the new day to set about their completion.

We now live in a world where urgent, life-sustaining goals are not built in to our existences. Indeed, we are told from an early age that the goal in life is to arrive at a place where we have no urgent need that cannot be easily met. Even the poorly paid bus driver can return to a decent living environment (at least when compared to the same kind of worker who lived in earlier times), eat a plentitude of food (albeit, in all probability, little of it healthy) and find ready-made, spoonfed ‘entertainment’ emanating from their large television which now would cost them no more than a week’s pay and of course it is no different for the wealthy citizen; the only discernible difference is the size and grandeur of their material possessions. Even the one remaining commonality that should bind all of us, that is being part of a family and/or broader community in which we are able to feel nourished through acts of giving and receiving love and nurturance, has been eroded; so many people have created walled-off existences for themselves, feeling a sense of disconnection from their families and their own inner lives.

Must it be that an inevitable result of the aging process is a gradual loss of joy, of possibility? That we must , on a more regular basis, live in our memories of the past as a way to medicate away the pain of a lifeless, dull present? Certainly the society in which we live hints at that: we are told in so many ways, overt and subliminal, that we must stay young, that to grow older is a negative phemonenon that must be kept at bay for as long as possible, that marriage, family and “settling down” must also mean the cessation of self-exploration, of the passions, of adventure.

Certainly some processes do slow down. But others within us have the potential to grow in power. I have always believed that we should become freer as we mature, more expressive, more spontaneous and passionate about the meaningful things in our lives because we can free ourselves of the self-consciousness and judgement of earlier years when we were more tightly bound by our egos. Our power of focus and concentration can improve, which then can have the result of enhanced focus on the tasks and productive habits which have real meaning for us and a greater ability to mentally forego those which no longer serve us.

Maybe it is just part of our humanity to glorify the past, a trap into which people young and old can fall. But we must always endeavour to come back to the massive potentiality of the present. The adventure we long for is right here; it lives in the strange impulses and feelings always bubbling below our conscious minds; it resides in the interactions we have with those around us, whether they be filled with love, fear or indifference; it bursts forth in our desires and libidos, which can be expressed and channeled in so many powerful, exciting and productive ways and above all it stems from the irrefutable fact that our better days are a collection of the day we live today, holding in our mind the possibility of tomorrow.

I wasn’t aware of that reality when I saw The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button, which may explain why its story made me so sad. But I’m a year older now. And freer, wiser and more alive to boot.

SUNDAY TOP KILL

2010-05-30T15:23:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's time to review the week that was, to bring you, my blissfully ignorant readers, up to date on the happenings that made us laugh, cry and stare blankly into space over the last seven days.

The "Top Kill" didn't work. No big surprise there- I'm not in favour of solutions to environmental disasters sounding like bad reality shows on Spike. This thing is going to go on and on and none of the talking heads who represent BP or the Administration seem to care all that much. Yes, the President is saying all the right things and presumably doing everything he can short of strapping on a snorkel (is that what they use for deep dives? I think so) and getting down there himself, but nowhere do I see the urgency and outrage witnessed in the aftermath of Katrina. Have we all become so myopic and short-sighted that we cannot see disaster until it has arrived, had its moment and left us helpless in its wake? Must we see flooded cities and people stranded on rooftops in order to be sufficiently galvanised to act? Just as we wanted to know, in the wake of Katrina, why levees that were known to be inadequate in the face of a massive storm were not improved to meet the needs of the city they were designed to protect, we also must discover how it came to pass that a company like BP could be allowed to conduct a deep water drilling process while having no proven way of safely halting the process if something went awry. A parent doesn't toss a child into the water before that child has learnt to swim; there should have been regulation and testing in place that guaranteed nothing like this unstoppable leak could occur. If that guarantee was impossible to make, then sorry, BP, you don't get to endanger the natural world as a way of making your billions.

Gary Coleman is dead. Lindsay Lohan is in court, flashing her boobs and a horribly puffy face due, I'm sure, to one or several kinds of substance abuse. Money doesn't make you happy, folks, and clearly neither does fame. But money and fame do allow for easier access to pills, hooch and lawyers. Mr. Coleman died a seemingly troubled person- he must have been, for pete's sake: he lived and died in Utah. Utah reminds me of Ms.Lohan in her better moments: nice place to look at, but you wouldn't want to live there. She now has to wear a band on her lower leg that can detect alcohol use. Sounds like a handy invention; I could use one for any of my vices: watching UFC, eating vast swathes of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey (the best), watching UFC... it's a vicious cycle, as you can see.

The salient thought that leaps to my mind when watching these sad soapies unfold is what a waste. These people may not have possessed the most profound talent in the world but I speak not of that; it is the throwing away of the opportunities and resources available to them that is the great shame, opportunities that many people would be ecstatic to obtain. Mr. Coleman and Ms.Lohan had a platform from which to contribute, in whatever form a contribution to one's community, society and world might take. The latter still has ample time and, amazingly, occasion in which to do it.

I must admit I watched my share of the NBA Conference Finals this week. Exciting stuff, wholly unlike the soporific effects that most sane people feel from the stupefying monotony of the endless regular season, with the accent heavily on 'regular', as in stone dead boring. I've always said that a basketball game should be five minutes in length- as long as it's the last five. These last few playoffs, however, have been played with a skill and, more importantly, an intensity that has been magnetic. Kobe Bryant may be an errant jerk or worse, but his passion and talent are pretty special to behold when on show in the games that matter.

Nicole Scherzinger, AKA Satan, AKA Evil Incarnate, won Dancing With The Stars this week. My outrage has not dimmed. Who's on next year, Mikhail Baryshnikov? While I'm certainly not comparing Ms. Scherzinger to any of the great dancers who have graced us with their presence, the fact remains that this chick is a professional singer and stage performer who trained as a dancer. This was an absolute sham. The show must be renamed A Bunch of Dancers Who Dance A Lot. Now, don't get me wrong. Am I saying Buzz Aldrin, Kate Gosselin and that himbo from The Bachelor got a raw deal? Um... no. As dancers, they all have a tremendous future in industrial plumbing. But isn't the whole point of the show to bring on celebrities who aren't dancers? I'm furious, as you surely can tell. Please show up to all future Pussycat Dolls gigs armed with plastic bags stuffed with human feces.

Last, but in no possible way least...

Fergie. Wow. And I thought I was broke. She's since apologised for trying to sell Andrew's secrets, citing an "error in judgement". Oh, I see. Kind of like taking a left one street too early on your way to the mall. Or putting a little too much cayenne in your jambalaya. Right. Got it. I'm glad she's taking full responsibility and is feeling the requisite amount of remorse over this whole production. It's always funny how these celebrities, be it Fergie, or A-Rod, or Kobe, or Eliot Spitzer always talk about "mistakes" and "screwing up" and "errors in judgement". I guess that's what otherwise perfect people are really doing when we all think they're lying, cheating, stealing and hurting. Just making tiny little boo- boos. Whoops. Sorry, folks. Won't happen again. Hey honey, would you mind sitting next to me at the press conference? It'll make me look a tad more human while I'm swimming in all that denial.

I know. My tone's a little harsh this week. Any chance of plugging that leak with the producers of Dancing With The Stars? Nicole, be a darling and give them a hand, won't you?

Pictures, from top: The Leak, Lohan getting lit, Kobe,
Buzz in his prime and poor Fergie.

RESPECT THEM

2010-05-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

As the asinine immigration debate continues to swirl around us here in the US, my thoughts turned to Mexicans of a far older epoque upon venturing to the Getty Villa recently to view The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire, the Villa's Aztec exhibit designed to coincide with the bicentennial of Mexican independence.

I have been fortunate enough to witness the generosity, humour and work ethic of Mexican immigrants up close through many years of working in restaurants. These are who Noam Chomsky terms, empathetically, the "insignificants", the people whose existence many Americans would prefer to deny or at the very least denigrate. We, as a society, have little patience for these people who in general are shorter, poorer, less articulate (in our language) and, yes, browner than us. We joke about them crossing rivers, sneaking through holes in fences and huddling in the back of minivans, packed together like cheap produce. We choose to ignore them as they clean our tables, toilets, floors and every other surface or space we manage to sully. As a waiter coming from a nation with much greater regulatory respect for labour, I was initially shocked to discover the paucity of their earnings combined with the scope of their vulnerability. Nobody was, or is, looking out for these people as they attempt to earn a living wage and play by the rules. Worse, there are millions of them being discounted and disrespected every day of their lives that they spend as an illegal immigrant here in the United States.

How do I know? Because I experienced it every time I would put on my apron and work with them. When a manager said to Carlos, a married man in his mid-40s with three children, "now you be a good boy while I'm gone." When we decide that all these people are our personal butlers and treat them accordingly. When they're told in so many unspoken yet direct ways that they're better seen and not heard and when managers, owners and even the waiters who are supposed to be in the trenches with them rip them off by paying slave wages for an honest, grinding day's work, knowing they have very little recourse.

As I walked through the exhibit, I was once again struck by and reminded of the powerful culture that thrived for centuries in these parts and the rest of the area we now know as Mexico. How much are our children educated in the history of the Aztec people, for example? How much would the average Arizona resident be able to tell you about how the land that is now labelled Arizona came to end up in American hands? The same could be said of California or New Mexico. Or Texas. Would they be able to tell you (or their friends who rage against the "threat" posed by Mexicans crossing our borders) about the incredible architecture, mythology, religion and way of life that was established by the ancestors of these same people who we now adorn with a sombrero and a ridiculous accent and ridicule or worse, persecute?

It is easy to forget, in the words of the wonderful evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, "how hard it is to become an ancestor." That we are not the only ones to come from 'grand traditions' and that, upon closer inspection, maybe some of those traditions may not shine so radiantly after all. Exactly what 'culture' are the bigots who wish to keep everyone out trying to protect? Flag waving and tail-gating? It seems possible to me that many American whites, in a fashion similar to anti-brown-or-black-immigrant Australian whites, may secretly harbour an inferiority complex; is all of their vitriol and violent rhetoric about the erosion of their 'culture' and 'values' a reaction to a gnawing inner anxiety over their own lack of true cultural tradition? Bill O'Reilly on Fox rails against the 'war on Christmas' yet what has Christmas become for many of us, beyond some kind of mandated consumeristic frenzy? Maybe in what seems like the darkest hour for those who wish to preserve the traditional 'American' (read white) heritage, there is a growing awareness that as white Americans move further away from their own heritage as the sons and daughters of mostly European immigrants, they are feeling the effects of trading in the beauty, magic and psychic fulfillment that comes with ancient ritual and true ethnic culture for the more immediate thrills of non stop acquisition and consumption and, sadly, the same can also be said for many citizens of other nations around the world today.

The Mexicans who arrive here daily, with little skill for English and no formal education that we would recognize, nonetheless come from an ancestry no less noble, proud or beautiful than any other line of peoples. They may not even be cognizant of their own histories but it resides in them, in their spirit: their foremothers and fathers' quest for survival and expansion, their wars, their love for eachother, their wanderings and wonderings, their hard lessons and majestic discoveries. Most of these people, with their grand ancestry, wish to play by the rules, give and gain respect and prosper.

We all have a chance to begin a magnificent new heritage by embracing them.

Pictures, from top: An Aztec pyramid and Coyolxhauqui, an Aztec moon Goddess.

MY CHILDISH WAYS

2010-05-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

Ladies and germs, I've been keeping a big, dark secret from you these past few weeks.

I abandoned my PC in favour of a Mac.

And I'm not worthy. I'll admit it. Victoria is furious, and justifiably so. She is someone with the knowledge, savvy and patience to actually take advantage of the technology on offer inside that elegant little machine that sits obediently in my lap as I write this essay today. I, on the other hand, am a talentless buffoon when it comes to computers.

Damn it. The 'return' key won't work when I use my pinky! How dumb is that ?!?

Did I just write that out loud? Apologies. But there, in that one inane statement, if you read between the lines (or line), lie the problematic psychological underpinnings of my battle with computers- all computers, everywhere. I'm not picky, folks. If there's a computer out there that thinks it has the stuff to make me happy, I'm prepared to try it. Guaranteed I'll be ready to take to it with a director's chair within half an hour. I don't discriminate in my tech-rage. My incompetence will not be defeated.

Yet my overwhelming lack of talent is not really the issue here. I have to be honest with myself, never an easy thing for my pathetically fragile ego.

The big obstacle to overcome is my infantile lack of patience and my desperate, salivating need to make it the machine's fault.

This spiritual transformation that must occur in order to prevent annihilation at the hands of my girlfiend (the frigging 'r' button doesn't work properly) or my firebombing of the nearest Apple store (Glendale Galleria- easy access, multiple exits) will be challenging. Probably impossible. But I must try.

The first step in this painful growth process will be to open my mind to new, shocking ideas. Could it be true that the folks who design these machines actually know what they're doing? Does that mean that, by extension, the cause of any given problem may stem from me??

Highly doubtful. People, you're reading an essay written by a man who used to set up his VCR to tape his favourite TV shows when he wasn't even home. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Apple.

Wait. I just used the word 'tape'. Way to undo all my good work. Just lucky for me you people don't know what's on those gorgeous VHS cannisters clogging up three quarters of my storage space. Alright, I'll tell you. 34 episodes of The Greatest American Hero and 4 seasons of Family Ties - The Early Years. What? Yes, I know that's not the name of the show. I used to have all 8 seasons and I liked to differentiate between them. The last 4 seasons were called Family Ties - The Kids Are Starting To Look Super Fug Years. They were swept away in a flood.

There I go again, in complete denial, trying to convince myself that I know best. Yes, I was close to genius level with that VCR but I have to accept that I'm living in different times. For god's sake, my girlfriend can track the orbit of the planets and the age of a star with her phone. Is that really necessary? My thinking is, if on the off chance Victoria finds herself in a space suit, way out in deep space, cut off from Sigourney Weaver and the rest of her crew, just kinda floatin along (this post was ghost-written by Sarah Palin), will the Star Walk app really help that much? I'd be more inclined to play World Championship Table Tennis. Now there's an app I'd want to asphyxiate to.

There's no way around it- I must move with the times. I used to rail at my father for not having a cell phone, but I'm not that different. I sit here, blaming this inanimate piece of electrical circuitry for not anticipating my every thought and whim while steadfastly refusing to actually educate myself. This behaviour has to stop. What will I do when Victoria isn't around to save me? Unless I change my ways, I'll continue to do what I've always done: sob until my brain hurts and then binge-eat while watching reruns of Judge Judy. Granted, I'm now a small claims court legal juggernaut, but my computer skills and home life are a mess.

It's time to grow up. Victoria's going to be astonished. One more flaw I can cross off the list. Pretty soon she's not going to be able to complain about anything.

I'm getting ahead of myself. She tells me I've started to snore. Screw the Star Walk. People of Apple, create an app that solves snoring and I'm sold.

A STAINED-YELLOW LIE

2010-05-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial candidate Richard E. Blumenthal, currently that great state's attorney general, is taking "full responsiblity" for stating that he had "served in Vietnam" when it turns out he actually never went there to fight for his country against the rising tide of the Yellow Peril. Mr.Blumenthal received deferments between 1965 and 1970, worked in the Nixon White House and 'served' in the Marine Corps Reserve.

I love the way that word is used: 'served'. You can get away with almost anything by saying you 'served'. John McCain likes to say he's 'served' as the senator for Arizona all these years. I suspect the more gratifying part of the job for people like him is that they get served- expensive, juicy filet mignons at top flight hotels all across this fine land. Is being in service to others really the reason for these politicans' constant battle for re-election? Call me crazy, but... might there be a little thirst for power and status thrown in there too? Another group that 'serves' a lot is the police force. Really?? I had no idea. While helping people does make most of us feel good, I'm thinking that gun and the shiny badge might be an attraction for people too. After all, if all these guys are so desperate to serve the rest of us, they could easily have become soup kitchen workers. Or volunteer garbage men. Or.. waiters! Yes, waiters! After all, by jove, they really do serve! For a living, as well!

Which brings me back to our friendly Pennsylvania attorney general. If he had been a little lighter on his feet, he would have sent out a press release stating something close to this:

"People of Pennsylvania. It has come to my attention that some people think I lied about serving in Vietnam. I must correct the record: I did say I served in Nam. I just didn't say when or how. I actually answered an ad in the newspaper one spring day in 1982. They were looking for fit, handsome American waiters for a new fast food restaurant opening up in downtown Ho Chi Minh by the name of Gi Ruk Du, which means Cheap, Shitty, Western Imperialist Cardboard That Makes You Fat And Sad in Vietnamese. It was a wonderful experience- we opened up a whole new vista for the Vietnamese, turning many of the little critters bald and flabby with a vast selection of chemically processed cow manure we called Hamburgers. I did a tour of eight months there before returning home a hero. I hope this settles the matter."

If only Blumey had called me. I could have ended this thing. Now it's likely he's finished. You can talk a lot of baloney to the American electorate but one area that is absolutely untouchable is the subject of military service. John McCain could be photographed with his pants down in an elementary school toilet wacking off to an Archie comic but don't you dare call him a bad man... the man is a war hero, dammit! So he likes graphic novels and the innocent, pristine feel of a children's bathroom. Big deal.

This story reminds me of the many times in my life that I've fabricated, embellished, hyperbolised, prevaricated, fudged, misrepresented....

okay. Lied.

We've all been guilty of it, at least those of us with an ego, which I think is anyone over the age of 2 (Ted Koppel excluded- no one with an ego would ever leave the house with that hair). How many times have I knowingly added little nuggets to my stories to make myself look funnier, more successful, better in bed, sexier? Every goddamn day, people. Don't believe a thing I say- or, more accurately, believe what I say and then reduce it by about half. Alright, maybe I'm being a little harsh, but you get the gist. I'm certain you do, because you do it too. This blog comes out of Los Angeles, so you won't be surprised when I tell you that I meet a lot of famous actors who I've never heard of that end up being the guy that does my dry cleaning. Wait a sec- that was me. After all, although we all have pumped a little extra juice into our stories from time to time in order to impress, there is a spectrum here, and some of us poor souls just run right off the edge.

They're easy to spot. And even easier to rob. Why? Well, just ask them to meet for coffee to "catch up". Those two words are the first sign for them that they're going to have the opportunity to talk about themselves and just possibly walk away from the rendez vous feeling just a smidge better about themselves and twice as important. A dictionary definition of the word conversation that I found is: "an oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions or ideas."

There's the rub. This brand of person missed the "exchange" part of it. Their definition would probably be something closer to:

"I talk without breathing for ninety minutes, setting a new world record, checking my IPhone once every three minutes. At the end of said time period, I say I have to get to 'a meeting' and leave by way of a bro-hug."

Ladies, insert whatever fake, physically frigid farewell you might indulge in. I haven't done the requisite research. But to the point: if you're especially masochistic, you can stretch that ninety minutes into three hours, without any mention from your 'friend' about a meeting at all. How? Just continue to ask them questions about their lives. Yes, I know, for most of us, an endless stream of questions would make us begin to feel that the conversation was getting a little one-sided. Most of us regular folks actually take an interest in the lives of others. But you won't have to worry about that with our hero- just keep him talking about himself and you can very calmly gimmy open his door with your favorite Amex card and just clean the joint out. Leave him his headshots and demo reels. He won't even notice anything else is missing.

Why is it so easy to fall back into the trap of self-aggrandisement? In what grade do we learn all about that at school? How is it that we so sneakily tranform from naked toddlers who are perfectly happy to play in a warm, urine-filled portable swimming pool to slick shysters who aren't content unless we're peddling our cheap wares at cocktail parties? Since when was it a crime to just be ourselves, with no attributes, achievements or associations anywhere in sight?

Luckily, for all of us, freedom awaits. The pain and humiliation of having our pants pulled down can only occur when we've lied about what's in those pants to begin with. In the act of selling ourselves we are actually setting ourselves up for suffering. Better to just let who we are and what we do speak for itself. Some of us spend many anxious years being terrified that the rest of the world will discover that we're an 'impostor'. When you want people to think you're a war hero when the most dangerous weapon you've used in your life is a squirt gun, and then you go ahead and lie about it, you're probably headed for trouble.

I'm going back to basics. Tell the truth. And get back in the pool.

Picture: Richard Blumenthal... toast.

MOVIN OUT

2010-05-15T14:56:00.001-07:00

We’re in the middle of moving out of my girlfriend Victoria’s apartment and into mine; we live in the same building but it’s time to save some money so we’re in the process of abandoning what we affectionately call the West Wing of the building to move into the East.

Victoria’s currently scraping the purple paint off the wall in the kitchen so that we can repaint it off white to satisfy management. Trying to get one’s security back when one is leaving an apartment is like trying to leave the Mob. I bear the emotional scars to prove it. I still bear rage toward the first landlord who ever laid down a test for me to pass in order to retrieve my ‘bond’, as they call it in Australia. ‘Bond’ seems to me to be a more accurate term, for one often feels like the guilty party as the landlord or building manager does their inspection. This is what immigrants must have felt like at Ellis Island: filled with terror that they wouldn’t get their brass ring. In both cases that ring means the same thing: freedom. Just give me my goddamn money and let me go! I scream to self in silence as said prick slowly, agonizingly peruses his apartment that he so generously allowed me to inhabit for a little time.

But back to my first experience in these matters. I had shared a beachside apartment in Sydney with two friends. We were all in our early twenties; young, dumb and full of… yeah. When the day arrived for the inspection, my two buddies were strangely nowhere to be seen. I was left there, alone, with a balding man sporting a large, red nose and fluffy, receding hair, similar to Doc Brown in the Back To The Future movies. Unlike Christopher Lloyd, this man didn’t seem happy with the hand of genes he’d been dealt. He was out for blood. The trouble is, I didn’t know it because he was also studied in the art of softening a potential victim up. He walked in and began peppering me with friendly questions about myself, my life and the reasons for my existence in this beautiful world. My shoulders relaxed and my breathing deepened as I realized that hang on, this man was absolutely lovely! A real swell! I did what I still do best: I discussed me, all the sparkly facets of me, in sensual detail and my sense of wellbeing continued to swell as I saw that he was slowly falling in love with me. Or maybe not so slowly. I saw him handing over my money, all of it, with a beatific smile spread across his unfortunate face. I saw us leaving the apartment hand in hand, eloping, lying under frescoed umbrellas on a Mediterranean beach. Romance was imminent.

We continued to chat for a couple of minutes and then very casually he segued into the subject of the apartment. How did I like it? Had it served my friends and I well? As he started to move through the place I told him that we’d all had a swimmingly good time. In retrospect, I should have seen the first danger sign: he had asked the questions but was no longer listening to the answers.

I could go through the litany of problems he found with his beloved apartment that day, but it would only result in you sending cards and flowers. I don’t need sympathy- I only need to do something with all this rage I still feel toward that evil tyrant (as opposed to the wonderful, altruistic tyrants that are out there). This post today isn’t exorcising the demons; if anything it’s only serving to re-animate them.

I paid that day. Dearly. For the curtains that he said we’d taken, only to later find out from my mates that his wife had picked them up days earlier. For the carpet that we’d steam cleaned that was spotless yet filthy in his eyes. For the fact that he hadn’t been able to get into the place to paint while we were still living there (illegal). For my Judaism (okay, nothing to prove this one but come on, all ye Goyim who read this: look into your hearts- you hate us). I watched in horror as the money I and my two friends had invested in the bond went down the drain- or, more accurately, into this monster’s fat pocket. To this day I curse myself for not standing my ground and storming out of there without signing off on the pittance he agreed to return us. I often think about this low-level scrooge; I wonder to what fate he has succumbed. We actually knew where he and his lecherous family lived- sometimes we would drop the rent check off at their house. Many times I fantasized about breaking into their home and dropping a large coiler in the middle of their living room. But when it comes down to it, people, I am craven, so I assume his crimes have gone unpunished. Having said that, many people have assured me that ‘what goes around comes around’…..

Does karma truly exist? Has he really gotten his in the ensuing years? If so, what form did the universal retribution take? The immediate hope is that he was killed violently: hit by a bus, eaten by a shark, forced to watch back-to-back seasons of Two and A Half Men in one sitting… that kind of thing. But a little more reflection tells me it might be better if it were death by a thousand cuts: the DVD from the video store doesn’t work, the dental floss keeps breaking, his beers are poorly poured (no head)… I’m confident that a couple of years of this kind of stuff on a regular basis would land him in the loony bin.

Alas… I don’t buy it. I think this character has led a wonderful existence. He sleeps like a tranquilised baby. His family loves him dearly and has gone on to even greater wealth and success. Worst of all, he has expanded his real estate empire, allowing the fleecing of hapless young punks like myself on an almost daily basis. His heart warms as he sees them crumble before his eyes, watching their cash dissolve like so many tattered dreams. He returns home to count his money, perfecting his James Bond villainesque chuckle as he goes.

And on the rare occasions that he finds himself in a sombre mood, he cheers himself up by immersing himself in the memory of a naïve young redhead with knocking knees, moist eyes and empty pockets.

LAYING DOWN OUR SWORDS

2010-05-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

I had intended to include a quote here today from Swann's Way, the first installment of Marcel Proust's master work, A Remembrance of Things Past but alas, I now cannot find it. No matter. I will relate it to you in much more urbane language. The excerpt comes from a section of the book in which he speaks of the character Charles Swann and his obsession with a woman, an obsession that takes over his life and the love that he felt for this person soon turns to utter hate and contempt as he sinks further and further into mental and emotional chaos, his thoughts entirely consumed by her. Proust talks about how it is that we can love someone so passionately and affectionately and then in turn can resent the same person so completely and in reading this passage I was once again reminded of how important it is to simply accept all of the parts of the people we love for, to be sure, we cannot pick and choose their many facets; in loving someone and embracing them as meaningful parts of our own lives, we will almost certainly be inviting in the parts of that person that trigger uncomfortable sensations as well as the obvious things about them that stir our warmer feelings. The problem for myself and I suspect many others is that in judging, disliking and attempting to reject those aspects in the ones we love, we harden ourselves. Why is it that we can be in the presence of someone that we know we love deeply and yet can feel so little? Why do some of us habitually seek to find fault in our loved ones? We sometimes look for any excuse to push them away.

I have experienced strange anger at being touched by the ones closest to me; there are moments when I want to shout and scream and push them away and it is only the awareness that they surely must have touched something sensitive inside me that allows me to stay with the discomfort and accept their love, which is indeed precious. We must never forget that love for one another is truly the most valuable exchange that can take place in our world. There are so many of us that only know loneliness and are not surrounded by loving friends and family who regularly seek to connect with us, support us and remind us that we are not alone. We must be vigilant in our awareness of that part of us that would prefer to shut down, to disconnect, to find any distraction that will enable us to avoid our deeper feelings. While enjoying one's space and time alone is vital, connecting with others in a meaningful way on a regular basis is the touchstone to which most of us wish to return, if we are in contact with our more primal needs. We live in a world that teaches us to compete with others, to find our emotional nourishment in material items and manifold forms of 'entertainment' which turn out to be so much noise and artificial light. We cannot be fooled by these placeba; they will never replace our connection with nature, ourselves and the people we love.

For all of us, at some point, have loved deeply. Even the orphaned child knows what it is to love; the pain and loss of emotional and psychic footing that often resides in children of this sort is testament to their unconscious knowledge of what has been taken from them. I have known many people who have assured me that they 'don't need anybody' and barge their way through their life, building a seemingly impenetrable emotional fort. For most, that castle eventually falls and when it does these people often find themselves out of practice in being comfortable with reaching out and accepting what comes in return.

It is always healthy to affirm our love and those to whom we give it, or wish to give it. My partner Victoria will often say of someone, "they are just love". We seem happy so much of the time to ascribe this quality to our pets yet find it challenging to see other people that way but, make no mistake, underneath all of the issues and harmful conditioning that most of us carry around, we also are indeed love.

So why can that love and good intention so often be hidden from the world? It is amazing to think that all of us have good intentions, even if that positive intent is narrowed down to simple self preservation. Behind every monstrous action is a need which had the potential at some point to be met in a positive, life-affirming way. Letting go of our judgement of others not only requires us to see past the outer manifestations of someone's fear, anger or pain, it also requires that we do not allow our own commensurate feelings to be triggered in those moments. This is extremely challenging but the rewards can be handsome. The sad fact is that intent often does not equal impact. Sometimes a person's belief that they need to protect themselves and the resultant action that springs from that impulse will be received by others in massively alienating ways. Our work with each other must include an exploration of the deeper emotional causes and effects that lie behind our actions toward one another. This is not taught much in schools; it needs to be. We seem to produce a lot of clever people who could use a lot more education in the understanding, acceptance and loving of other people.

I have been someone who has been contemptuous of others' love for their pets; I have complained about the anthropomorphising of animals, of people's obsession with their dogs and cats. Yet it is this need to love, this need to express affection for the living beings closest to us that brings fulfillment and well-being. Every effort must be made to remove the resistances and emotional walling that many of us have built up over the longest time that prevents us from reaching out to those who are so close to us in distance and yet can be so far removed from our good graces, through no fault of their own.

The time is now. Those things about that person that bug us, annoy us, cause our egos to spin are a trifle; the irony is that they usually find reflection in us. We will only ever love a very few that deeply... for most of us, protecting ourselves from that love is the most foolish action we can ever take.

*Image courtesy of IStockPhoto.com

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

2010-05-02T16:24:00.000-07:00

With most of you snorting your prozac off the kitchen counter in anticipation of a return to work tomorrow, a quick recap of the week's events, in no particular order.

The oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, while awful for the wildlife, ecology and people of that state, may be the best thing to happen to the clean-energy movement in years. It's time everyone realized something when thinking about issues of energy production as we head further into the twenty first century: just as one can't be half-pregnant, one also can never be half-clean. The coal industry has long been in love with "clean" coal and "sequestering" carbon omissions. Does this make sense? Oh, quick guys, let's grab that carbon dioxide before it escapes and shove it underground! What do they put all that gas in? Ziplock bags? To quote Biff Tannin, that sounds like a screen door on a submarine to me. The other energy source that I heard described as clean just this morning by Florida Governor Charlie Crist is nuclear energy. Hmm... yeah, I guess I see what he means. Once you lug all of that radioactive waste and used up plutonium out the back of the plant and then fill ten thousand rusty barrels full of the gunk and then dump those barrels into the deepest part of the ocean (or maybe fling it into outer space the way Superman did in Superman IV- The Quest For Peace... yep, I saw it) I guess nuclear energy actually is pretty clean, especially since that kind of stuff never leaks or... spills. It's time to only vote for politicians who are ready to raise their clean-energy IQ and get serious about this stuff. Of course there will be a transition period where we're using multiple sources to generate energy but I have no doubt that if all of our scientific and technological acumen were to be concentrated on this issue, we could solve it. Let's not let our political leaders (or the environmental holocaust deniers that we run into every day) get away with pathetic excuses and half measures. Spill, baby, spill.

Arizona is the gift that keeps on giving. While people all over the country continue to be outraged about the new anti-immigrant legislation, I can't help thinking that the right is making the same mistake it's always made: overshooting. Despite what many on the right often say, America is actually a center-left country with deep socialistic roots (think unions, social security, freedom of speech, women's rights, an advance in gay rights, protection of public lands etc), as much as corporations continue to try to dig them up. People may talk a big game, but ultimately most of the citizens in the US feel much more comfortable when the fascistic, fanatical right wing of this country stays where it is: on the margin and the fringe. That was the genius of Karl Rove's 'compassionate conservative' strategy in 2000- make the voters believe your guy actually cares about something other than the continued enrichment of the super-enriched. Just as Barack Obama needed eight years of Cheney/Bush to further his cause, the fair treatment of immigrants in this country, illegal or not, may now actually become a live issue that will be tabled thanks to a policy right out of Nazi Germany.

Conan O'Brien speaks on 60 Minutes tonight. I have to admit I'm a sucker for late night drama. I've taken an interest in the machinations of this stuff since Letterman was overlooked for The Tonight Show. It's a grand soap opera that never dies. Conan has always been my favorite. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses: Letterman can be brilliant but a little cold for my taste; Leno's likable and unthreatening but can also be too likable and unthreatening; Conan strikes the right balance for me of wackiness, likability and a real curiosity about his guests. What's more, the man is actually funny. It'll be interesting to see if he brings in any innovation on his new show.

Interesting article on the Huffington Post this week about dairy consumption, written by Dr Mark Hyman. I've long suspected this stuff can't be very good for us. Ninety-five percent of the human population loses the necessary enzymes to effectively process milk after the age of eight. We're conditioned to believe that we must get calcium from this animal product that our bodies dislike, when we could have those same needs met by eating many green plant foods and receive many other kinds of nutrition (fibrous carbohydrates and vitamins to name two) in the process. Definitely worth a look.

Lastly, by now you've probably all heard about the car bomb that malfunctioned, sparing the lives of possibly hundreds of people in the Times Square district of New York city. It's obviously a relief that the thing did not go off but it begs the question: just how many people are actually trying to detonate bombs in major US cities? Is it that hard to build a car bomb and if it isn't, what does that tell us about the actual danger that is clear and present to the citizens of this country? If so many people out there hate us, why aren't bombs going off all the time? If so many of these supposed fanatics are willing to give up their lives in order to kill us, why aren't we seeing people blowing themselves up in cafes and public gathering places the way they do in other parts of the world? Is it a case of our borders being so impenetrable that they leave thousands of would-be attackers pushing at the gates, clamoring to get in and hurt us? Or is it that our 'enemy' isn't as organized, well-funded and determined as we thought? I don't have an answer to these questions but there does seem to be an incongruity existent in the amount of blood and treasure spent on fighting terrorism and the actual threat posed to us as Westerners.The perpetrators of this attempted attack have yet to be identified but we can be sure the 'threat levels' will be elevated to the appropriate splashy colour as a result. It's an unfortunate event that will further undermine other civic issues in dire need of attention.

So there are all the talking points you'll need for your local water cooler. Go forth and provoke.

THROW AWAY THE KEY

2010-05-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Lindsay Lohan's going to jail.

Or 'gaol', depending on which country you're in. I guess someone changed the spelling to simplify things. I think I'm going to start spelling everything in olde (I've started) English. Example: I gotte in my carr the otther dday and... wait a sec, that's not olde English, I'm just randomly adding consonants. Screweth it.

But back to gaol. The whole phenomenon of prisons/forced confinement has always fascinated me. My father has a saying: "there's no such thing as a bad prison movie." He also uses it for Westerns. Has there ever been a Western set in a prison? He'd be in heaven.

We've come up with a lot of funky expressions for the Big House (there's one right there). The Clink. The Stoney Lonesome. Con College. Joint. Mainline Joint. Skinner Joint (new Joints opening all the time- I'll keep you posted). Hoosegow. The Brig. The Gladiator Academy.

You get the picture. What's more, there's a whole lexicon in use behind those grey walls. The most obvious one that comes to mind is a 'shiv'. Why does a handmade knife mystically turn into a shiv once you get inside? You hear ex-cons give themselves away all the time in regular conversation on the outside:

"She was sleeping with another man. When I found out it was like a shiv in my back."

"Excuse me, waiter, my shiv is dirty. May I have another?"
"I can't wait for karaoke tonight. My favorite song to sing is Mac The Shiv."
"She's pretty but not the sharpest shiv in the drawer."

And so on. There are also an incredible amount of unspoken rules to follow. We all know of a couple: number one, never ask a "greenass"* (term for a new inmate) what they did to land them inside. Big mistake. It's the outside equivalent of asking a woman her age. The result will be the same: a slap in the face. The only difference is what extremity you get slapped with. Number two, another wellknown edict: never drop the soap. Do they still use those mouldy, festering bars of soap in prison showers? Probably not- I'm sure they go for the mass-produced dispensaries that you find in gym showers now. How would soap possibly drop if that were the case? This could be a problem for all those who like to drop the soap intentionally. Kind of ruins the romance and flirtatiousness of the gesture if you have to spend five minutes ripping the thing off the wall. I'm sure they've figured out some other way to send signals of romantic interest.

I just realized this post today is very male-centric. Of course there are women's prisons too. My first contact with prison life was through a women's prison. It was the Australian soap opera Prisoner. The show ran for eight years and was a cult hit in Britain, where it was called the more seductive Cell Block H. I learned my first bit of big house parlance back then: Top Dog. Usually played by an actress who stood around six feet and who had what may euphemestically be called a 'charactery' face- or as my mother used to say about certain people when I was growing up, an 'unfortunate' face. Prisoner was the best; looking back now it appears horribly dated of course- back then the worst word they could use was 'bitch', so of course it was flung about like rice at a wedding. The laundry room was the most favoured location because the show's producers couldn't afford to shoot outdoors. But that only increased the claustrophobia for the viewers. I positively felt transported when I watched that show. The actresses were almost lifelike. The cardboard brick walls would just close in on you.

But back to my area of expertise: men's prisons. I've educated myself by watching countless prison films. All of these movies are, I'm certain, completely accurate; I mean, after all, they hire consultants, right? So here's a few more survival tips if you ever find yourself in 'general population' in maximum security:

If you find yourself threatened by a large man wanting to give you flowers, always seek out the older actor who has made a career playing nice supporting roles. He'll be doing life and revelling in playing his first tough guy.
Never bench press. You'll be pushing on the bar and suddenly there'll be three guys standing above you asking you to "take a walk".
Never take a walk. I love walks- usually a chance to take in the scenery, clear your head, maybe see a bird or two, pluck a wild flower. Not so much in this context. It's going to end badly. I never understand why the guy always does agree to take the walk. First thing I tell everyone when I first arrive in prison is how much I hate walking. Despise the walk. Detest the walk. Don't even bother asking me.
Always take sunglasses to The Hole. Don't these guys ever learn? Ever notice how pitiful these guys are when that door swings open to let them out and the sun streams in? They cover their eyes and shrink back like little girls. Let's get one thing straight: if I'm winning brownie points (another menacing prison term) by sitting in The Hole for two months, I'm cruising out of there like Arthur Fonzerelli when it's over, not stumbling around like a blind idiot for an hour. You gotta be organized.
If you're going to try to escape, never invite the skinny Jewish actor on his first film set. Too jittery. Always complaining about the food. Usually has a mouse. The guy's annoying in the trailer and hopeless going over the wall.
Get sick. A lot. They've got this model working in the infirmary. Why are the infirmaries always so luxurious? They look better than most US hospitals. And the woman there is usually very obliging- she's trying to forge a career as an actress after years of travelling Europe as a model. While you're recovering from the forced sodomy with the ex-NFL star moonlighting as an action hero wannabe, just tell her you're exec producing a big movie next summer and she'll give you sponge baths till the cows come home.
Always work in the library. You get to go around and meet all the day players- they're very entertaining and make you feel a little more confident that you'll make it. In Hollywood. You'll also get to meet the scary but quiet older black gentleman that the white guys fear. He'll look frightening but have a turn of the century aristocratic name: Marvin, maybe, or Howard, maybe Thurston. He'll end up helping you out in manifold ways, all the while complaining about that asshole Poitier who took all of his work.

So there you are. A few tips to assist you in a bind. But the best advice I can give you is to not go to the slammer in the first place: stay clean, play by the rules, pay your taxes and you won't have a problem. Unless you're in Arizona. As for Lindsay, I hope she's reading this today. There are plenty of mediocre, washed up actors in prison movies. Now some actual prison out there is getting a real live one all for itself.

*Actually, Victoria made up 'greenass' but it sounded authentic.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

2010-04-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

A couple of evenings ago Victoria and I finally sat down, girded our loins and put in the DVD of Food Inc.

I had the nauseating pleasure of reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (co-producer of the film and featured throughout) a few years ago. It told me what my stomach and central nervous system already knew: that most of the packaged, industrialized food we eat is really just a bunch of rearranged chemicals. Then it proceeded to educate me on subjects I knew very little about, such as how most of our food reaches our plate.

The interesting thing is that the book didn't change my behaviour. The jury is out on whether the film will. This is not a criticism of either- they are both outstanding pieces of work and couldn't have done more or pitched a better tone to achieve their goal, namely to raise consciousness. The reasons behind my lack of action in changing my eating habits have everything to do with me. I suspect it all comes back to denial. Ernest Becker, an American cultural anthropologist, wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book called The Denial Of Death, where he postulated that all civilizations were basically a buffet against a deeper awareness of our own mortality. Certainly in our western society we see it in the way we treat our elderly and an all-conquering lust to stay 'young'. We can all fall victim to the idea that we'll do whatever the hell we want today and deal with the wreckage tomorrow- that mentality is the very dynamic that allows us to pollute our planet and endanger future generations.

In the case of our eating habits, that denial is also very much in effect. The more obvious manifestation of it is seen every day: grossly unhealthy people continuing to indulge in everyday habits that later on in life will threaten their existence. These people, although terribly unwell on an internal level, will not change their habits until that internal sickness makes itself known to them in a catastrophic way, with doctors warning them of imminent and mortal danger if they don't alter their diet.

The less spoken of denial, one that is just as important on a daily basis, is the denial of our emotional and spiritual wellbeing that takes place when we constantly put toxic materials into our bodies. The problem here is that the denial of our own feelings will probably take place before we eat junk food, because if we were in contact with those feelings as we made a decision on which foods to eat, we might consistently go in another direction. I have experienced in my own life the sensation of rushing to eat junk food; it's as if I knew that if I stopped, cleared my mind and considered the choice, I'd probably turn away from it.

Just as a key to not overeating is to have a sensual awareness of how we feel when we eat in order to know when our stomachs are telling us we've had enough, the decisions we make long before the food is on our plate or heading to our mouths must come from a more heightened state of awareness. Ignorance is no longer an excuse, unless we were claiming ignorance of the physical symptoms that arise every single time we eat chemical garbage. I won't go into what some of those symptoms can be; they will be obvious to anyone checking in with their bodies after they gorge on processed food.

This is something that I've needed to practice more in my own life. Although no one would ever diagnose me with an eating disorder, that doesn't change the fact that I am indeed a binge eater and that binging habit is directly connected to how I feel. When I find myself feeling too much discomfort, sadness, fear or anger over a certain issue, I will often turn to food to assist me in burying those feelings. Food (almost always combined with television) has been a way for me to become unconscious. I have often said facetiously that I wished I had a sexier addiction, for make no mistake: food has been (and still is, on occasion) my way of 'blissing out', of getting high- immersing myself in what a former therapist called 'the feelgoods'. As I recline on my couch, turn on the television on and surround myself with pizza, soda, chips, ice cream and anything else I can fit on the coffee table, it is clear that I am drugging myself into oblivion with food. And considering the fact that they are filled with chemicals, 'drugging' (although a clumsy word) may be more appropriate than we know.

The other problem is that even when we do manage to turn to supposedly healthy food, it may no longer contain the enzymes, vitamins and other essential nutrition that it should. I have noticed, especially here in the US where farming regulations on pesticides and soil erosion have been gutted in the last 30 years, that no matter where I eat, whether it be at a high-priced gourmet restaurant or my local cafe, that everything tastes the same. Or more accurately, it tastes of very little at all. Only when I buy from farmers markets or organic purveyors do I rediscover the satisfying flavours and aromas that can be found in fresh, healthy foods. Growing up in Australia my father would always throw a carrot at my brother or me to eat and we were happy. I've tried eating carrots from the supermarket here. I guess carrots are no longer meant to be sweet.

But enough about carrots. Food Inc is a terrific documentary, taking its cues from An Inconvenient Truth in its clever, creative use of graphics and its tonal balance: the movie introduces just enough horror to hopefully spur the viewer into action after it's over but not too much to lose its audience halfway through. Just as I've long believed citizens need to have greater involvement in and awareness of how their garbage is disposed of and that disposal's ramifications for the environment, I also think it's time for people to know exactly where their food came from, how it was delivered to their area and what the hell was put in it or on it. Maybe we wouldn't be so quick to eat that strip of bacon if we knew how the formerly alive animal it came from, with intelligence superior to our dog, was killed. We should also be better informed of the practices related to chemical processing that take place in our frozen food. The frozen 'food' section of our local supermarket becomes a terrifying place with a little information in our back pocket.

I urge all of us to read Fast Food Nation. To watch Food Inc. To go to the website. To pay just a little more for organic food. To eat a little slower and be a little more mindful of how different foods (and their quantities) make us feel and maybe to redefine what we consider to be a 'treat'.

Your dietary choices in the supermarket and in restaurants are a vote. Let's kick the junk food merchants out of office.

2010-04-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Remember what excites you. Think of these things, those friends, and the adventures that can be yours. Focus. Care. Fantasize. Imagine. It's all so near. Speak as if you're ready. Paste new pictures in your scrapbook, on your vision board, and around your home and office. Physically prepare for the changes that you wish to experience in your life. You've done this before. You know it works. You're due for an encore. It's time to amaze. That's why you're there."

- this was a note I received today from this website. It's a new age, inspirational/self development site that offers to send daily messages 'from the universe'. Sometimes silly, sometimes right on point and exactly what I need to hear on a given day.

THE EMPEROR'S NEW BASEBALL UNIFORM

2010-04-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

I want to conduct an experiment.

Let's continue playing baseball games in large stadiums, with just a few amendments.

First and foremost: no extraneous noise. That's right- no drums, no thumping, no techno or meringue music blaring at inopportune (or opportune) moments. No ground announcers spewing out useless drivel, no sexy music chosen by hitters as they come up to bat.

Nothing.

Just quiet. Stillness. Because let's face it, most of the time that's what we're all witnessing on the field.

It's remarkable how so many of us are conditioned to throw large amounts of our money away on what we're told is 'entertainment'.

I'm not going to even pretend to be objective here. I understand that one person's idea of fun could be someone else's worst nightmare. Having said that, I will still propose that this game that so many in the US, Latin America and Japan seem to love may actually be something of a bore.

Yesterday we drove out to the horrifying area that is Anaheim, California to watch the Angels play the Yankees. We were a trifle late, arriving sometime during the second inning. We plopped ourselves down in our cramped seats, put our oxygen masks on and attempted to find the field from the gaudy heights of section 518, all for the terrifically reasonable sum of thirty five clams per seat. Once settled in, a familiar feeling started to rise within me as I stared down at a field on which several men stood, lifeless, waiting for something to happen. It was all something akin to a quiet work day at a construction site- the only difference being these fellows were being paid gazillions to do their standing around. This feeling, as hard as I tried to ignore it, wouldn't quit. Finally I had to accept its presence and attempt to understand its essence.

It wasn't difficult. I was feeling embarassment. The kind of embarrassment one might feel six minutes into A Night At The Museum. It's the shameful sense that this is all a little silly, and not in a fun way. I'm all for guilty pleasures but please, let that which is indeed guilty include the pleasure part as well. As I winced from the loud noises, the vastly overpriced, horrific food, the latent monosyllabic aggression that seemed to be oozing from the (mostly) men surrounding us, I sought in vain for the actual reason for enduring all of this. Surely there must be some kind of physical poetry occurring on the field before us, a pulsing, oscillating contest on display which would mitigate all the pollution being flung at me.

Nope. Just a bunch of millionaires mostly standing around, with the occasional flurry of short-lived activity. Similar to watching squirrels in a tree. And I can do that at home, for free, in silence.

The reason why so many bells and whistles need to be attached to these events is obvious: they're not really that fun or exciting. Actually, they're boring. So my initial proposal stands: take away the noise pollution, only serve health food, get rid of the glorifying narrative that attempts to turn overgrown children who hit and throw a ball into 'warriors' and 'heroes' and find out just how interesting the sport really is.

Imagine all that could be done with the money combined with the emotional and mental energy spent on this stuff. We could feed the hungry. Educate the ignorant. Replant the deserts.

Such change can't happen all at once, but maybe we could consider channelling just a portion of all those resources elsewhere. Just a teeny bit to start with.

Because as of now, we're getting scammed. Royally. And staying bloated and mute in the process.

SATURDAY GARAGE SALE

2010-04-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

What a week. Put on your leotards and let's get going.

The widow of TV magnate Aaron Spelling has decided to sell her 56,500 square foot home outside Los Angeles. She wants it to go fast so she knocked down the price: 150 million dollars- the most expensive home in the world currently for sale. Candy, as she likes to call herself, has decided the house is 'too big for just me'. Such a shame daughter Tori left. No more conversations like this when her friends would show up:

"Is Tori around?"
"Absolutely, dear. You'll find her smoking crack in bathroom no.23 in the Southeast wing. Take this GPS Navigator and call me if you get lost."

You do have to respect her desire to downsize. Twenty-seven bathrooms seems a little superfluous. Let's see if she can knock it down to 30,000 square feet and 12 bathrooms.

Surgeons in Barcelona completed the first ever full facial transplant this week, muscles and all. Remember the Nicolas Cage/John Travolta movie Face Off? Well, it's done. Exciting. The only problem is the only face they've been able to recreate successfully is Alan Greenspan's. With a Castilian lisp. Horrifying.

In China they're using 'deodorant cannons' to fight the stench of landfills. This is a brilliant solution- reminds me of the Baroque aristocracy who never washed; they simply continued to cover themselves with more and more powder to cover up the pong. The ultimate smelly head in the sand. How does the deodorant cannon work? Roller or spray? The organic kind that works for about five minutes or the super powerful chemical variety that leaves you with that nice, sterile, cancerous smell? It might be time to rethink the bottomless landfill idea.

A beach in North Carolina has banned thongs. Bravo. The beach is no place for exposed flesh.

A 12-year old boy saved someone's life using the Heimlich maneouvre that he learnt from watching Spongebob Squarepants. The person was having some kind of fit from watching too much Spongebob Squarepants. Tip your waiter, try the veal. Just don't choke on it in my presence. I don't watch that hyperactive junk - and neither will my kids.

Now for some of the news that enraged me. Lang Lang, one of the world's greatest pianists (I had the pleasure of seeing him live this year- dazzling) 'amused' the crowd by playing a piece on an IPad. You can be as disgusted as I am by watching it here. If you find yourselves giggling in wonder while watching him as most of the audience was in the auditorium, shame on you. The whole thing reminds me of this wonderful Leunig picture:

You know what's more thrilling than playing piano on an IPad? Playing a fricking PIANO.

Arizona has passed their new immigration legislation, called the Arizona Nazi Germany Klu Klux Immigration Reform Act. This will open the door for police officers (not immigration officials- but have no fear; these cops have been renamed "peace officials" by the racist, fascist governor Jan Brewer) to enter the home of anyone that they may suspect is 'illegal'. They can also stop one of these 'suspects' anywhere and ask them for documentation. Sound familiar? North Korean travel agents are now advertising Arizona vacations and they're going fast- the slogan is catchy: "Come to sunny Arizona. Oppression without the Bad Weather."
Racial profiling has always been here. But now it's official policy, folks.

I drove around for about six hours yesterday trying to find the address of a recycling center in the middle of an industrial Angeleno suburb to drop off my recyclable material that had been accumulating for the last couple of weeks. I'd been reduced to this because my apartment building doesn't have recycling bins. I've called the city and asked them to speak to the manager- no dice. The man's too busy smoking 2 packs of Marlboro reds a day at an age north of 60. I guess the fate of the world isn't foremost on his mind. You know what happens to garbage that isn't recycled?

It ends up smelling like Degree Arctic Fresh.

Pictures, from top: Candy's home: offensively absurd.
Michael Leunig's "TV Sunrise".
A Chinese landfill.

CALL TO POST

2010-04-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

Recently I finally became a whole person.

This act of spiritual confirmation occurred the moment I entered the gates of the famous Santa Anita raceway on a stunning saturday afternoon in the cultural heart of the northern hemisphere known as Arcadia, Southern California.

Yep, folks. I went to The Track. The Santa Anita Race Track, to be specific. One of the shrines of horse racing in North America.

Did I leave with pockets stuffed with cashola, arms raised in giddy triumph? Let's forget about winning and losing for the moment. Nobody goes to the races to win money anyway. Maybe you didn't get the memo, but gambling ain't for winning. It's for frivolous fun and judging by the people I saw on show that day, it can be the kind of frivolity that takes your house and most of your socially acceptable clothing.

There were some characters on display that day, that's for sure. As someone who can not currently call himself an ex-con, I felt out of place.

A quick digression here to discuss some of the better horseracing movies that have been made. If you want to get a feel for the kind of human being that seems to proliferate at the Santa Anita, you might want to give
Let It Ride a try. Richard Dreyfuss captures that particular blend of charm, sleaze and manic despair that I experienced perfectly. You can positively smell him through the screen. What else? Well, for a slightly more idyllic version of the event, Seabiscuit comes to mind. Love that movie. Rocky on four legs. Then there's The Black Stallion, a movie about a boy who is shipwrecked and saved from drowning by a horse. What a premise- how did the writer come up with that? Wouldn't a dolphin have been a more sensible choice? Can horses even swim? Anyway, the film has the obligatory climactic race at the end (I won't ruin the suspense by telling you who wins). A note of warning: if you're planning to run to the nearest DVD website after reading this post to order the movie, make sure you don't order the, uh... other Black Stallion. The easy way to differentiate between the two movies is to view the posters: the horse has the smaller appendage. If you like the movie (the one with the horse), you can always have more of the same joy by watching The Black Stallion Returns. What a film. Who said sequels couldn't be wonderful? In this one, the horse is retired and overweight, drinking and carousing every night, over the hill. The boy talks him into coming out of retirement one more time to fight a Russian and against all conceivable odds he- hang on. I'm getting my actors mixed up. Forget it.

Australia has also had its share of equine heroes. Phar Lap (also immortalized in a movie of the same name) was our version of Seabiscuit. The horse was so unbeatable it was thought to have been fatally poisoned by rival trainers. It won 37 of 51 races and in 1931 set the track record while winning the Agua Caliente Handicap, at the time the race with the largest purse in North American racing history. While the autopsy conducted soon after his mysterious death was inconclusive, the coroner did make an unexpected discovery: Phar Lap's heart was abnormally large, allowing the horse to sprint at its top speed throughout an entire race, explaining how he was able to continuously mow down his opposition from seemingly impossible positions, well back in the group heading into the final turn. He was not speeding up; the other horses were simply slowing down. The heart now sits on display at the Australian National Museum.

But enough of the education. Let's get back to the Santa Anita, a lovely old racetrack with its own long history, none of which interested me or my friends as we swept through the gates and headed to the betting area. We had bought our form guides on the way in and now it was time to study and I had no doubts, based on my perusal of the different histories and form of the horses in Race 1, that I would win a motza (Australian for "a lot").

Just to be sure, however, we then went to view the horses. They do a little parade outside so that the punters have a chance to get a little "inside" info on the horses and/or jockeys. Wait a minute... does Hasty Trend look a little morose today? Cross him off. No Cream Or Sugar just gave his jockey some attitude... they're finished. I came away from the viewing with absolute certainty of my winner for Race 1.

His name was Warren's Operator. I liked the way he strolled around the paradey-concoursey-viewing thingy area. He was sleek; muscular legs holding up a toned and ripped torso, veins bulging... I started to fantastize about Warren's Operator and I going parking... but sexual fantasy aside, I was positive this horse would win. I checked the odds: 30-1. Hmm. The guide said he "appears an outsider". Well, darn it- haven't we all surprised the world at some time in our life? Weren't outsiders dangerous? Didn't they sometimes sweep in and take the whole pot? Warren's Operator winked at me as he walked back to the stables to meditate and limber up. We were connected now by fate; nothing would get in the way of our triumph.

The short version of this story is, of course, that Warren's Operator....

sucked.

Ferociously.

As his flaccid, sloppy body and its four left feet drooped across the finish line, I joined the long list of crushed souls who had thrown their ticket down in outrageous disbelief. This horse had conned me. That surreptitious wink that he'd thrown my way didn't promise romance and boundless treasure; it was an evil horse's inside joke, only known to him and Satan: they had found another sucker.

I wanted to bury my head in Victoria's arms and sob. This was only Race 1. Nine more to go. As the day went forward, I watched my hard-earned tumble down the gurgler. Junkies, deadbeats, fat and smelly losers and drifters with no talent or initiative surrounded me. Ladies and germs, these were not my fellow gamblers.

They were the horses I bet on.

Pocatello Wild Kat, Sweet Patricia, Yankee Frankie, Screamin Express.

Movable dog food, the lot of em. This was false advertising at its finest. "Screamin Express" should have been renamed Broken Down Piece of Crap That Stops at Every Station. Hard to call during the race, I know, but at least it would have been truthful.

Horse racing is not a sport, people. I'm convinced of this. It's a leisure activity, kind of like poker with circus animals. Actually, I would put it more in the professional wrestling category. I'm sure all the jockeys and trainers are out the back laughing at us. "Go ahead Joe (everyone involved in horse racing has to be called Joe, Frank or Tommy to get into the union), you win today. My nag needs a rest anyway. Just leave the suitcase in the trunk of my Cadillac on your way out."

Bums, morons and gangsters, the lot of them. The wiser among us want to ban horse racing, citing cruelty to animals.

You bet it's cruel. For the animal writing this essay today, once was enough.

Pictures: from top, Santa Anita racetrack, 1908. Richard Dreyfuss
in "Let it Ride", Paramount Pictures, 1989.
Bottom: Phar Lap's heart, Australian National Museum display.

CHOOSING YOUR BATTLES

2010-04-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

My father is coming into town in a couple of weeks. I booked three tickets for the Angels-Yankees game in the wastelands of Anaheim. But something strange is occurring inside me: I'm feeling fear.

Let me take you back to where the motivation for this essay begins. My brother and I went to see the great film score composer John Williams conduct an orchestra that promised to play all of our favorite old time classics: Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET...you get the idea. I love those old blockbusters. Unfortunately it seems the folks who made Harry Potter got to John before I could, because none of the aforementioned movies were played until the very end; in the meantime we had to sit through a whole sackload of pieces from all 22 Potter films plus a few others about which nobody cares. I'm sure the trumpet players were of the highest quality, but spare me another tune from Catch Me If You Can.

But I digress. It may not have mattered what Mr.Williams chose to play that night. By the time the actual music began to play my brother and I were not in a mood to listen.

Picture this: we're sitting there in the Hollywood Bowl with eighteen thousand other enthusiastic movie geeks, under the stars on a balmy evening, waiting to be swept back to our childhoods by the genius of John Williams, when we're asked to rise for the national anthem.

Something important to understand here is that even when I'm in my home country of Australia I rarely rise for the national anthem. While I'm certainly capable of feeling pride in my country (mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with me: the beaches, the food, our cricket team) I am not a believer in any kind of 'patriotism'. Whether or not most citizens of affluent nations are ready to admit it, we are living in a truly global community- unfortunately we're not yet at the point where we're prepared to actually take care of eachother as a global community. But that's a post for another day. To return to the issue at hand, I have little time for standing up to pay respect to a song that glorifies the theft of land and the genocide of entire cultures.

As a result, while not begrudging others' desire to stand for an anthem and putting their hands on their heart, I have sometimes decided to stay put in my seat. Not always; on some days I don't feel like offending people, which invariably happens, especially in the US, where ideas of patriotism and its more insidious stablemate, nationalism, are more prevalent. On that evening in the Hollywood Bowl, as repugnant as I found the notion of playing the anthem at an artistic and cultural event, I chose to stand. One would assume that would be enough.

It wasn't. I was wearing a cap and a gentleman, separated from me and my brother by his partner, told me to take my cap off. I gave my slightly ironic stock response: "it's a free country". I turned back to the orchestra and suddenly was stunned to feel a hand grab at my head and rip my cap off. I turned to see the gentleman staring forward, singing along to the anthem, my cap scrunched in his hand, out of my reach.

My response to this act of aggression and my feelings about that response are irrelevant. The important act, for the purposes of the theme of this post today, had occurred- I had practiced my right to respond to the playing of the national anthem in my own fashion and someone else had decided I should not be free to do so. By forcibly removing my cap from my head, this fellow had demonstrated a failure to see the latent irony and hypocrisy involved in behaving like someone from nazi Germany or communist China while singing a song about 'freedom'. I, on the other hand, had felt that hypocrisy acutely; it began an inner dialogue and internal conflict that continues to this day and is especially triggered by an impending visit to a sporting event and the inevitable question that will arise when the stadium announcer will once again make this dreaded announcement:

"Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the singing of our national anthem."

The question is this: to rise or not to rise?

There are two easy answers, depending upon your point of view. The first will come from all those who may believe to be themselves patriotic citizens and who therefore will almost certainly demand that anyone present at the singing of the anthem must rise (and take off their cap). Lumped into that first group will also be the people who simply follow the rules and norms of the society in which they were raised, not challenging any of that society's rituals or behaviours. Those people will probably fall into two sub-categories: those that simply lack any awareness that they are being conditioned to behave in a certain way. Then there is what I suspect to be the larger subset: those who may have certain disagreements with some of the decora and edicts that surround them yet are too afraid of the consequences that may result if they were to practice non-cooperation.

The second answer will be just as clear for the opposing side who, like our patriotic first group, hold a passionate belief which might be articulated similarly to what I initially expressed in this post. These people have decided that their protesting opinion will find expression at every opportunity; they will never rise for the anthem under any circumstances. They will make their voice heard in every conversation, believing that any idea of "appropriateness" is simply an excuse to avoid conflict and ramification; they will meet the myopia and jingoism of our society with a matching passion and vigilance that will not rest.

Those are the easy answers.

Then there is the answer that is harder to find... that of the middle.

I know an extremely intelligent woman who lives her life by the rule of always thinking for herself, of never embracing an idea without first challenging it and deciding whether or not she agrees with it. One could never accuse this woman or being afraid to speak her mind or not acting independently. Yet this same woman, who happens to be vegetarian, will eat meat if she finds herself offered it at a dinner party. Her reasoning is simple: she has been invited to the event, has agreed to come and therefore will accept what comes with that experience.

This is not to advocate blind acceptance or the consumption of food that one may find offensive, for whatever reason. It is simply to raise awareness of the possibility of choice.

Are there times when those of us who protest everything to the point of obsession could abstain? Almost certainly. Is it also true that the rituals, norms and behaviours that come with a given society or group should always be open to challenge and protest? Absolutely.

The pendulum at this point in time has swung wildly too far in favour of slavish adherence. It is only with this thoughtless compliance that governments are able to pursue violent and selfish policies which destroy the lives and cultures of others who do not share the same values and beliefs. In those circumstances we find must voice and challenge the status quo. It is our duty not only as citizens but as compassionate human beings.

Having said that, the colours in other less urgent circumstances will have greyer shades. While practicing compassion can be a wonderful reason to protest, challenge and not cooperate, that same compassion can be accessed and expressed when we find ourselves with another awareness: that sometimes our protest is for us and us alone, done for an inner satisfaction with ourselves, and sometimes at the expense of others' joy or comfort.

It is at these crossroads where I have often found myself. We need not always scream from the rooftops; we also need not always follow custom. Maybe the only true independence that we will find for ourselves is an embracing of the capriciousness of swimming in the middle, of being truly in the moment when it comes to making those decisions. Sometimes we will stand and never surrender in our expression of our beliefs; sometimes we will gracefully allow ourselves to move with the current in order to preserve harmony, either on compassionate grounds or even for self-interest or preservation. The person who ends up being in a position to influence millions would be short changing the world if they had given up that opportunity due to an egoistic need to be heard by whoever happened to be present in a given moment. A broader perpective is sometimes necessary.

All of those among us, whether they be Gandhi, Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela, or you and I, have felt and expressed every aspect of our humanity in different contexts, from acts of cowering fear and hopeless timidity to moments, however lasting they may be, of surging empowerment and enormous courage. Anyone who says they haven't been cowardly or brave in their lives is either being fraudulent or self-oblivious.

But a greater internal and external harmony may be achieved by understanding that the expression of opinion does not always equate to bravery- sometimes it equates to egoism and self-indulgence. Additionally, our decision to keep our feelings to ourselves does not always equate to cowardice: sometimes it may equate to a compassionate choice to preserve the contentment of others about who we care and the overall peace and tranquility of the immediate environment that surrounds us.

It is a dance, involving all issues around integrity, care for others and our sense of justice and what is or isn't a force for good.

A dance that I hope will be performed by more and more of us with each passing moment.

WONDER

2010-04-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

There are so many fields of endeavour in the world we live in today in which we can take part.

Most of us have a clear path in this society: find a career, calling or vocation that we're passionate about and strive to be as successful as possible in that chosen field. Usually the most obvious material reward for this success is money but there are other benefits: public recognition/adoration/adulation (also known as fame) and a sense of being 'established' in our community with all the perks that come with that level of status. Beyond all that of course is being able to do a job we enjoy at a high level with other dynamic, vibrant people which brings
its own satisfaction.

So we strive. We seek to excel, to impress others, to have them offer us positions of power in our careers where we can make choices and in effect do whatever we like- work with our favourite people, have prominent positions on 'important' projects that excite us and so on.

All of these things are, of course, pleasurable to us. Who doesn't want to be universally recognised as being eminent in their field? Who doesn't want to have so much money that they never have to be burdened by financial concerns and instead can see the world and live in great comfort and luxury? Who doesn't want to be involved in the most vital, exciting affairs of the day in their chosen careers?

This daily striving, dreaming, thinking and taking action is a positive force. Human beings, like any other organism, have an inbuilt purpose. We may have moved away from strictly primal drives and reasons for being but make no mistake, those very drives are at the heart of why we go out into the world to stake our claim and in the absence of those goals, many of us would feel purposeless and sink into morosity. These activities give our lives meaning.

And isn't that the issue at the heart of all of our searching and movement? To find meaning?

I have had a busy week in my own career life. I have spent a full week offering my work to others, seeking to be taken on board their projects. During that very busy week, I was on a high. My work was of good quality and well received. I found myself walking out of meetings grateful for the time I had put in and with a huge sense of satisfaction and fulfillment arising from the fact that I had been true to myself, put the time in and managed to contribute something worthy to the discussion.

However, as soon as the work was done, that joy began to be eroded in the absence of any response. The people that had viewed my work had taken another direction. They had not called to congratulate me, to affirm me, to offer me a position and as the time passed my eyes continued to stare even harder down that long railroad track, peering for a train to emerge in the distance, on its way to take me to golden fields.

The particular train I was seeking never showed. I continued to look backward, now reminiscing over past successes, anything to fill the empty space where the silence was.

It didn't work. That niggling feeling of despair and meaninglessness grew. I began to wonder why I didn't feel good anymore and why I wasn't working. All I wanted to do was stare at the television.

How had I gone from being so creative, proactive, positive and driven to such a state of inertness? This wasn't an issue of not getting the job. It was beyond that.

Yesterday I said enough. It was time to first examine the problem and then change my perspective and behaviour in order to rediscover the spirit I had felt in the previous week.

The answer I found was not new. It is the same truth I have never been able to dodge, as much as my ego has tried.

All of the things I mentioned at the beginning of this post today are indeed wonderful. Accomplishment and achievement in our world is important, because we live in that world with others and expansion is necessary and part of what does give our life meaning.

But deeper than that is the daily practice of our lives that reinvigorates the spirit. That does not have to be a massive, monastic undertaking. It simply means that we have things in our own lives, independent of the forces of the outside world, that we return to which give us meaning. It is tending our garden, whatever that garden may be: our relationships with our family and friends; a meditative practice, either mental or physical; creative acts that satisfy us in quiet ways, such as taking care of our home or maybe personal creative projects which may end up bringing us broader outside success but are not reliant on others' involvement in order to exist and to grow. These projects, of which we are the creator, are the very things we to which we can return our attention and concentration when we sense that we are falling into the cycle of 'waiting'.

Ultimately, we discover that all the commercial success and recognition we could ever have will never replace the meaning of a daily devotion to something that has meaning to us, regardless of how others may perceive us. The paradox is, of course, that when we have fully connected to our own sense of spirit and meaning in our lives on a daily basis, the very success we so desperately seek does arrive; the form of that success, however, is unknowable in a given moment. We just have to trust that its shape and quality is absolutely appropriate for us at that point of our journey.

I spent a week in full joy, enthusiasm and, maybe most importantly, wonder. Those feelings left me for a while as I began to anticipate the things that would result from all those good feelings.

Back to the drawing board. Pass me the crayons. Who doesn't like drawing?

THE SARCASTIC UNIVERSE

2010-04-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

It's a bad start to the week.

The Universe gave me attitude today.

I was going through my normal Monday routine: get out of bed with a Ben and Jerry's hangover from our regular Sunday night movie screening (2012... sensational stuff), make some coffee and inject it into Victoria's veins to avoid total chaos breaking out in our household and then sit down in front of my aging, wheezing laptop (high time for the people at Apple to begin sponsoring this blog) to check my email and read about the Mets' latest defeat.

No surprises on the Mets side of things. But when I checked my inbox, I saw my daily message from the Universe and it went something like this:

The recession is now over, Marc.

Good one.

You can take the rest of the week off.

.....huh? At first I didn't know what to make of this. Was the Universe really telling me to unfold the beach chair, pop open the coconut tanning oil and blend up my best batch of pina colada, umbrella included? Surely not... that couldn't be it. One thing I do know about the Universe is that it works hard. What with the constant expansion, the dark matter, black holes, dying stars giving birth to new ones, the whole Tonight Show fiasco, I mean jesus.... to speak in the vernacular of a former waiter, the Universe is in the weeds. It couldn't possibly be encouraging me to revert back to my lazy, sport-watching, ice cream-inhaling, sloth-impersonating self, could it?

The short answer to that, upon review of its missive to me, is no. Upon reading the note a second time, I began to suspect that I was being toyed with. An acerbic tone was making itself apparent to me. I felt vulnerable, exposed. Had the Universe been watching these past few days? How could it, with its massive work schedule, possibly have known that I'd indeed been resting on my laurels, congratulating myself for my recent successes (if you haven't heard about those, you soon will- trust me) and leaving my daily to-do list comfortably blank and untouched as it sat on the one tiny shelf that Victoria has allotted me in the apartment that she occasionally allows me to share with her?

I have no answer to that, except to say: it did know. Worse than that, it was now chastising me for my indolence. Of course the recession isn't over. The Universe definitely keeps up with the news (a big Rachel Maddow fan from what I hear) and knows what an enormous economic shambles we're all in. It would never be so presumptuous as to view the tiniest bit of upward movement on the stock market combined with a few jobs gained as an opportunity to revert back to irresponsibility and start partying... that's Wall Street's job.

Then there was the "good one". Good one??? Isn't that what we say to someone in sardonic fashion after they've behaved like an absolute twit at a dinner gathering, or ruined your surprise party, or inadvertently soiled themselves next to us during a screening of Saw 6? Was the Universe really going there?

Absolutely.

Folks, I've just been scolded and I must tell you, it stings. I haven't felt this castigated since Anoushka Thompson berated me in 3rd grade for

not letting the rest of the class win during our daily Mathematical Shootout right after recess as I stood triumphantly over the corpses of arithmetically inept youngsters who lay scattered about the classroom. She had pinpricked the balloon of my inflated ego and, as my many therapists (in addition to my girlfriend) will tell you, I've never recovered.

And now this.

Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. Maybe I needed a good kick in the cods. We all get complacent from time to time.

So, my lovely readership, I'm going to finish writing this essay and put my dang computer down. I'm going to stand up, go over to the aforementioned tiny, cramped shelf (better known in our household as "your area") and I'm going to blow the dust off the top of my pad that serves as my to-do list. I will look at the supermarket that is my life and walk down its many aisles, scanning the shelves for places that need restocking (you too can use dazzling metaphors- I do private coaching). I will flush the rest of that Cherry Garcia right down the drain whether Victoria likes it or not- she only likes the chocolate chunks anyway.

Then I will get to work. I will show the Universe what happens when it gets sassy with me.

And I will prevail over the sarcastic old fart.

(Picture: The Universe.... weisenheimer)

FRIDAY FANDANGLES

2010-04-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sensing an exhaustion among my readership- too many hilarious, passionate, brilliantly conceived and executed essays on the state of humanity and the primordial ooze from whence it all began. So instead, dear readers, some fluffy odds and ends to usher you into your weekend.

But before we get to said fluff, a recommendation for you on the subject of the state of humanity and the planet it depends on, sans ooze. If you don't know who Annie Leonard is, it's time to find out. She has written a book about consumerism and its effect on our planet called The Story of Stuff. I was introduced to this extremely intelligent, dynamic and engaging woman through an interview on Tavis Smiley last night and am now planning on reading the book; in the
meantime, I urge you to visit the website where you'll find all relevant info plus videos of some of her recent interviews. The woman is omnipresent at the moment. May her audience continue to grow.

Glenn Beck made 52 million dollars last year. Yep, I said million. Manny Ramirez is going to make 25 million dollars for (occasionally if he's lucky) hitting a ball with a piece of wood. Who's paying their wages? We are, by showing up to watch them every day. We live in a mysterious neck of the universe.

I heard a nice quote for all those who are striving to realize a dream and may sometimes experience doubt around its eventual fulfillment:

"Invariably, when big dreams come true, and I mean BIG, there is a total metamorphosis of a person's life. Their thoughts change, their words change, decisions are made differently, gratitude is tossed about like rice at a wedding, priorities are rearranged, and optimism soars.... Yeah, they're almost annoying.

You could have guessed all that, huh?

Would you have guessed that these changes, invariably, come before, not after, their dream's manifestation?"

I'm not sure who said that, but I do know this: it wasn't Manny Ramirez or Glenn Beck.

Dancing With The Stars is a farce this year. Buzz Aldrin is 132, Kate Gosselin has some kind of low-level physical retardation (the mental side of things speaks for itself) and I want to waterboard Nicole Scherzinger, the brazen hussey from the Pussycat Dolls who reminds me of the guy who shows up at a friendly whiffleball game, proceeds to beat the living daylights out of everyone while never making an out and then casually mentions as he's leaving that he played in the minor leagues for ten years. Gee, I wonder who's going to get higher scores: the singer/dancer from a successful pop band or the aging astronaut who just snorted four lines of Cialis out the back to try to get in the groove? Please. After last week's episode I lit a candle, ate some gelfite fish and put an ancient Jewish curse on Miss Pussycat. If she happens to come down with some kind of noxious, spotty rash during the week you know who to thank.

(Above: Nicole Scherzinger... evil.)

As I write this post today I'm sitting on a patio in front of a lovely back yard. Huge lemons hang auspiciously from the lemon tree to my right and blazing maroon bougainvillea surround me on my left. Birds chirp, no clouds beckon to me from a serene blue sky and the faintest breeze causes only the slightest stir. I'm housesitting, deep in the peaceful, irrelevant utopia that is the Valley. There is an eight foot hoop not twenty paces away and at some stage I plan to completely demoralize my girlfriend at a sweaty, erotic game of b-ball which reminds me of a wonderful quote by the late, great Detective Frank Drebbin, Police Squad:

"I like my sex like I like my basketball- one on one, and with as little dribbling as possible."

Amen.

EXPANDING HORIZONS

2010-04-07T15:54:00.000-07:00

During my travels today I was fortunate to run into an Australian actor I met a couple of years back, Josh Adamson.
After exchanging the usual pleasantries that flow between ex-pat Aussies I asked him how he'd been getting on and he told me of a wonderful development in his artistic life and career.

Josh leaves Los Angeles periodically to act in theatrical productions, both in New York and elsewhere from what I could glean. Sometime last year, sitting in his temporary theatre housing, Josh decided to get a canvas and paint. This isn't uncommon; once rehearsal for a show is over and the production is playing every evening actors who are away from home usually find themselves with little to do during the day and it's at this point that they usually turn to creative outlets beyond acting: music, writing or in this case, painting.

That was around a year ago. After finishing several canvases, Josh started to post them online and get them out into the world and the response was immediate. Galleries started to show interest and before long Josh's work had been seen in exhibitions. Then, recently, he told me he'd been contacted by a gallery in Vera Cruz, Mexico. An area known for high-end art buyers, Josh's work would take up the entire top floor for a month, gaining exposure to lovers of the kind of vibrant work that Josh was creating. They were asking for 30 paintings; Josh had, up until that point, painted 14.

So now it's down to work. It seems that his success as a painter may be about to shoot upward.

But this post today isn't about commercial, financial or even artistic success in the way it's usually defined.

It's about following your impulses wherever they may lead. Listening to that soft voice, whispering to us when we're receptive enough to hear it, that suggests a new direction. It's about rejecting internal and external notions around who we are, what we're capable of and what's possible in the world.

Hearing Josh's good news and seeing his expansion into an area that up until a year ago had been foreign to him tells me that personal, artistic and financial/commercial expansion can occur in a multitude of ways if we have the courage, joy and open mind to pursue our desires - however illogical, surprising or 'unrealistic' they may seem.

After all, we live in a fluid, dynamic society where a single voice is now able to make itself heard in ways unimaginable before. Just a click and one can see the works of artists all over the world not to mention work from people in every other field of endeavour.

Stories like Josh's remind us that any thoughts of too late, not good enough or not possible are just resistance and stagnation. It's our job to blow them up through taking action and feeling joy for what we can do now and what we may do tomorrow.

I've left a link to Josh's website below. I hope you dig his work. Others clearly do.

But what's more important is that he did it.

www.joshadamsongallery.com

Picture: "Another Workday in the City", 30" x 40" acrylic on canvas.

WHY MY GIRLFRIEND SLEPT WITH THE APPLE GUY

2010-04-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

No, not the man who comes around every weekend to our apartment building to sell apples*. I'm talking about the charming, strange-looking fellow who works at the Apple store at our friendly neighbourhood mall.

We were there a couple of weeks back to make a purchase at our favorite boutique, a trendy, on-the-cusp-of-the-latest fashions clothing store from Scandinavia by the name of Gap (correct pronunciation is jop). They sell a type of boxer short there that drives Victoria wild when she imagines them on a guy she saw on General Hospital. Anyhoozle, we made our purchase and were returning to our car when I felt a gravitational pull exert its effect on my gal from the direction of the Apple store.

A short timeout for some back story here. At one point in time Victoria and I had, by my standards anyway, a pretty healthy relationship. I cooked, she ate. I cleaned, she re-messed. She itched, I scratched. You're getting the picture, I trust. True symbiosis. Co-dependence at its finest, similar to the kind of relationships dictatorships have with their spiritually crushed, yet desperately needy populations in certain Central African republics. Victoria needed me, you see, and the feeling of being wanted for my services allowed me a degree of enfeebled self-worth.

That all came crashing down the day she bought her Iphone.

Now- most of you, dear readers, could probably make a solid guess at what my opinions are concerning people's consumeristic obsession with the latest, useless technological toys that overwhelm dinner conversations across this great continent. Let's leave that aside for the moment. I was prepared to participate this time. To share in her joy over her newest acquisition which would, undoubtedly, make her (and by proxy me) a more spiritually whole and, more importantly, cooler person. Maybe if I could master the art of operating this little wizard-in-your-pocket Victoria might let me sleep indoors on the odd night. It certainly couldn't hurt.

The first sign of trouble came when I absent-mindedly went to touch it as Victoria stared at the screen, hypnotised, having just taken the thing out of its box back at our apartment. My fingers were two centimetres from its shiny chrome casing when Victoria's head whipped around and I heard a snarl emanate from her frothy lips that could only have come from the deepest recesses of her primal innards. Her eyes flashed in territorial rage, and for a moment I was back on the African savannah, a small innocent rodent attempting to steal an egg from the eagle's nest. Victoria had disappeared- all humanity shredded as she protected her prized bundle. This was the lizard brain in all its terrifying glory.

I did what all smart males do when threatened by their mate. I retreated, blinking back heavy tears. The pecking order had been established: the Iphone would receive the food, shelter and loving attention. I would get the crumbs.

Then, a couple of months back, we were watching our favorite show/aphrodisiac, So You Think You Can Dance, when a commercial for the IPad came on. Victoria watched, transfixed and the next day she told me she had to go out for a while. Out of curiosity I asked her where she was headed and the response shot back:

"None of your bees wax."

Now, dear readers, all of you must know that when bees wax is mentioned in a relationship, danger is imminent. I decided to follow my love. Our very union was under threat, and I knew where she was going.

We arrived at the mall. Her erratic driving, viewed from three cars back, told me she was in the grip of a familiar ecstasy. She pulled into a parking spot and dove out of the car, on the run. I followed close behind and watched her head into the Apple store. What followed was ten minutes of furious conversation with a skinny, pallid young Apple employee whose dripping lust for my girlfriend flashed to me, on the other side of the promenade, in neon lights. His acne seemed to be flaring a deep, sexualised red and Victoria was playing him for all he was worth.

She left soon after and I followed her home. Time passed, life returned to normal.

Until yesterday. The day the Ipad finally became available to the public. You may have seen the news reports, showing hordes of people waiting in line for hours, shrieking excitedly as they left the store with this digital demon in their possession. I had assumed in the days leading up to the big event that it would only be a matter of time until I also saw Victoria on the television, elbowing old ladies out of the way to push in line.

Except that I didn't. Early yesterday morning, before the shops had even opened, I awoke to hear Victoria having a hushed conversation with someone at the door. It was a man's voice, albeit high, squeaky, almost pre-pubescent. The door closed and she waltzed into the bedroom, brand new IPad in hand. Something was amiss. Victoria had her hands back on the strings and was yanking with all her might.

As I write this post, a pair of Gap boxer shorts lie by my side. Readers, they are not clean and worse, they are not mine. I read Victoria's journal today while she was out. Is that wrong? People, we live in an amoral world. Victoria has made her sullied bed. I copied this phrase down from the fluffy pink journal found in the back of her shoe drawer:

"As Lenny heaved and grunted above me, I adopted a phrase used by British colonial wives, far from home and forced to have intimate relations with their new husbands: 'close your eyes and think of England'. Except in this case I thought of you, dear Machine, light of my life..."

The woman had gone mad. She had indeed shtupped Lenny and now had her prize.

How do I proceed? Clearly adults have come to worship toys to an extent far beyond anything a child could be capable of and it is people like me that become the victims of this idolatry. Left behind. Neglected.

Let this be a lesson, dear readers. The moral of this story is clear.

Get a job at an Apple store.

*I WISH someone would come to my door selling apples. Wouldn't that be great??

GIVE HER A RAISE

2010-04-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

Nobody in this country who is prepared to work hard, live with integrity and play by the rules should ever have to worry about a roof over their head, food on the table or the health of themselves or their children.

Last night Victoria and I ordered pizza from our local joint. After waiting for what seemed like too long we finally received a call from a lady who was outside. She was helping out the delivery guy, she told me, and was outside in her car, having been unable to find our address, which sometimes is difficult to locate.

In a mild state of annoyance I ventured out to find an older, hispanic lady sitting in a double-parked SUV. Upon seeing me, she became very apologetic at having made me leave my apartment. My countenance softened immediately, which usually occurs when I see an older person who has probably endured challenges in even getting to this country, now probably working long hours for not much money. She gave me the pizza and the coke I had ordered and I parked them on the bonnet of the car while she was trying to find a pen for me with which to sign the credit card slip. As I sometimes do when pizza takes a long time, I checked the pizza to see if it was hot and was not surprised to find it barely lukewarm. At this point some irritation returned and I asked the lady if the pizza had been brought back to the restaurant because the delivery guy couldn't find my address, something that has happened before. She said no and asked me why. I explained that the pizza wasn't hot and she once again apologised, not however volunteering to return with a hot pizza, a decision which she may not have had the power to make at that point. I told her it wasn't her fault but turned to leave not particularly satisfied with the whole process. As I reached for the pizza, I knocked the soda onto the ground where the styrofoam cup burst. The soda was gone and so was I, thanking the lady and cutting my losses.

Except that the lady wouldn't let me leave. She became even more apologetic and as I tried to tell her that my waistline would be better off without the soda, the whole exchange suddenly became about something else.

This woman suddenly had tears in her eyes and she was begging me to allow her to bring me another soda. I stopped, stunned by her plaintive voice whispering, "please sir, I will lose my job.". Shocked, I tried to calm her down by putting my hand on her shoulder, but that only encouraged her to plead more intently; she, in turn, grabbed my arm and looked deep into my eyes, as if I were somehow the deciding voice in whether or not she would go home to her family with her job secure.

"Okay." I said, the sadness of the situation starting to take hold. "If you need to bring me another soda, that's fine."

She thanked me, saying muchas gracias over and over as she got into her car and drove away. I stumbled back to the apartment with cold pizza, no soda and a heavy heart.

Is this the best we can do as a society, a community? Can someone who is prepared to give full effort and be an honest employee with a good attitude really have so little job security? Are employers so happy to so grossly underpay immigrant employees and have them in such fear for their underpaid job just because these employees were unlucky enough to be born somewhere else?

I don't like to dwell on the circumstances of people like the kind lady who delivered my pizza last night - it creates too much internal despair. Outside of solving the political, economic and sociological problems that create the aforementioned mistreatment of people and the resultant fear and despair that exploitation produces, my greatest wish is that every single person on this planet, whether disenfranchised or not, understands that they carry an inherent value simply by the virtue of being human beings.

No one should have to beg anyone for their job, least of all a stranger to whom they have been more than kind. Of course not all people can perform all jobs but given a much fairer distribution of wealth, both here in the US and abroad, there should be a job for every adult who is ready to work. Nobody should ever be made to feel as if they are incredibly lucky because they are gainfully employed, let alone ungainfully.

How can this happen? We must stop affirming the fallacy of hyper-capitalism which says that we will be happiest when we have more than the next person. In actual fact, as human beings we are communal creatures and as such we achieve far greater fulfillment when we are part of a healthy, generally more equal whole. Although very wealthy individuals in a capitalist society may apparently feel happy and secure in their riches, they will eventually have to confront the murkier aspects of the very society that enabled them to attain that wealth. It is a mathematical truism that there is only a certain amount of wealth at any one time to go around, and if huge hoarding of wealth is taking place at the top of the pyramid, simple cause and effect will tell you there must be equally massive scarcity occurring on the other end.

Only when those who possess the wealth and therefore the political power are willing to share more of it can we hope to begin creating a healthier, more compassionate and equal society.

If you are a citizen of an industrialized Western nation who has a job, is reasonably educated and doesn't worry about where your next meal or dollar is coming from, that probably means you.

LEAF BLOWER MONDAY

2010-03-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's time for your regular (this is the first edition, actually, but I'm looking forward) Monday lucky dip of random thoughts and cutting-room floor nonsense to start the week.

Had dinner with friends at Miceli's italian restaurant on saturday night; certainly known as one of the hipper spots to be found in LA on a weekend. We entered the place exhausted, having had to push through the mob of paparazzi waiting outside for possible celebrities to come out. What I can tell you is that if there were any celebrities exiting the joint, they were probably looking ahead to a night of intense flatulation and indigestion, judging from the fare that was served up at our table. I had a lasagna that seemed to have been made by untalented children. The pizza was ordinary and the only thing throbbing more fearfully than my stomach when it was all over was my head, thanks to the Grammy-nominated performances (think Taylor Swift) being handed out nonstop by the gallant waitstaff. The only problem was that for all his singing, we barely saw our man at our table. He seemed a charming waiter when we arrived, only to then be completely disinterested in the job of waiting. A drab experience all round. I suppose that's what you get when you go to the hottest, trendiest places- the thrill of being there trumps the food and service. I definitely felt an enhanced sense of celebrity as I left. Victoria even let me sleep in the bed that night.

I can hear the gentleman with his gasoline-powered leafblower outside as I write my essay today. For heaven's sake, really?? Have leaves become so intransigent, so immovable and pugilistically resistant to outside forces that we are now forced to build a machine in order to move them clear of our walking thoroughfares? I'm sure the gentleman wielding this deadly foliage-clearing instrument is a lovely fellow, but every time that metallic whine starts up my own whining kicks in: haven't his employers heard of a broom? We don't need more noise/air pollution, especially in the City of Wheezing Angels. Enough.

Aidell's sausages. I don't normally give plugs on this post, unless of course I'm being paid to do it, but if any of you are sausage lovers like myself - links, patties, I don't give a hoot - you must go to your local crappy supermarket (we have a Ralphs close by) and pick up any of the flavors on offer. I don't know what kind of love Mr.Aidell is making with these swine but they taste superb.

If any of you have missed this video of George Bush jr wiping his and on Bill Clinton's shirt after shaking a local Haitian's hand, you're in for a treat. Mr.Bush likes to talk about how he's a 'regular guy', albeit one with an upcoming billion dollar inheritance who has never worked a day in his life (that assessment includes his time in the White House) but on this occasion his unconscious reflex action gives him away. It very well may be that the hand he just shook was dirty, but any person with reasonable intelligence and sensitivity would at least try to wipe their hand discreetly, and maybe not on the shirt of the guy standing next to you, who happened to be President at one point. Alas, Georgey never did possess great mastery over his own latent, tone-deaf social retardation and as a result we have a wonderful piece of footage for future generations to enjoy.

Speaking of the news (I guess we weren't), wonderful to see the Republican Party start to do what they've always done best in recent times: self-destruct. Michael Steele, RNC president, has been frequenting strip clubs. Sarah Palin is front and center again (always good news for Democrats), trying to keep the line-towing, sycophantic, right wing automaton-but-still-a-Maverick John McCain in the Senate, and every other Republican is doing their best John McEnroe impression ("you cannot be serious! The Bill was out! You are the pits of the Earth!") without the humor, charisma and quality net play. Added to that, their current best hope for a reasonable election result in 2012 rests with Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney has spent a year bashing a healthcare bill that is almost identical to the one he supported and signed off on in Massachusetts and is now backtracking furiously. He is another sham, a corporation posing as a human being who, thanks to his predilection for adopting whatever ideology will get him elected, will probably not even make it through the Republican presidential primaries. Who's next? Sarah Palin? Mike Huckabee? It's a veritable smorgasboard of mediocrity.

But back to Miceli's for a moment. Over dinner the discussion, as always happens when friends gather over a meal, turned to whether or not it's true that black men are more generously dangled than their white counterparts (I won't even include Asian men here, although I think that comment will land me in hot- or in this case very cold- water). Not only did the research done on Iphones at the time conclude that yes, they do tend to be larger but that there is also a specific reason behind the phenomenon.

It turns out that a man's penis is also a conduit for the release of body heat! Given that African males have lived for the longest in hot climates, their.... heat-releasers, if you will, are the biggest!

There is an unfortunate flip side to this, however.....

The same study concluded that, as a result, SCANDINAVIAN men are the most likely among the caucasian races to have small penises! I found that unbelievable, seeing how large and strapping most Scandinavian men are, but... that's what the research showed. The Asian story is unclear- there are extremely hot and cold conditions across the Asian continent. I'll leave that for another day. Feel free, dear readers, to leave your comments on this story. I've only slept with one Scandinavian man. His name was Carl, he was from Sweden, and he was hung like the proverbial rogue elephant.

But there are always exceptions. Ladies, next time you meet a tall, handsome Norwegian man who triggers virile fantasies of Viking conquest, remember this post...

HAND ME THAT SHUTTLECOCK

2010-03-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

Last night Victoria, myself and two friends undertook a trek into the wilds of the San Gabriel Valley, to
share in a tradition that has been ongoing there for... well... a while.

Badminton.

That's right. You're allowed to gasp. Badminton. Also known as 'Shuttlecock' in Australia- a far superior name in my opinion. I mean, jeez, the game is goddamned sexy, and as such it should have a hot, sweaty name. Either way, the rules remain the same: two or four players stand on a court a little smaller than the sort used for volleyball, with a net raised to just under six feet. Why the hell is he telling us what we already know?? I hear you all ask. Well, this blog aims not only to make you laugh and cry, it also is supposed to leave you all just a little bit more informed having read it. So... to make a long and dreadfully boring story short, it's first to 21 with a margin of 2 and only the server can score, a la squash. Bang.

But this post today is about the venue for our war with our two (formerly) good friends.

Recently Victoria, terribly bored with our relationship (she ain't seen nothing- baseball season is about to start), decided to look for another shared activity we could engage in besides daily conversations like this:

"Darling, did you read my blog?"
"Yes."
"Did you like it?"
"Yes."
"My mother really liked it."
"I know."
"I mean, alot."
"Yup."

And so on. During her cyber travels, she found a strange place, which seemed to be open 24 hours in the middle of an industrial park by the name of the San Gabriel Valley Badminton Club. This island of athletic endeavour called out to us, like those baseball ghosts talking to Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams.

So we went. Of course, I got completely lost and we found ourselves driving past low-rise, deserted office blocks with asian signs out the front, Victoria screaming racial epithets - Jewish, not asian - at me as my humiliated tears slid down the steering wheel. But we found the joint eventually- there was a large sign in what may have been Indonesian lettering that had tiny English instructions underneath:

SGVBC CLUB. PARK IN BACK.

The place looked like an abandoned slaughterhouse. Although I saw the presence of many cars, we didn't see a soul. It was a saturday night, around 1030 pm. I regretted not bringing that bag of heroin stashed in my closet to bargain with. This didn't feel right. Victoria's hand gripped mine as I eased my menacing Honda Accord 2007 manual transmission (the '06 and 08 models suck) into the parking spot that was waiting for me.

"Are they expecting us?" I asked tremulously. Victoria's glare told me it was probably just a vacant parking space.

We walked around the building toward the entrance. Finally, we saw some humans, walking to their car. They were carrying racquets of some sort (possibly badminton but I can't be sure), sticking out of nylon bags, the contents of which were unknown to us. The adrenalin was surging through me as we went through the front door. A kindly portly gentleman greeted us. Despite being under suspicion of having devoured one too many of the sour cherry snacks on offer behind the counter, his photo was on the wall and I guessed that we may be in the presence of Badminton royalty.

"Um- hello sir. We have a ping pong table reserved?"

....... Okay. I guess at this point a confession needs to be made. I had noticed on the website that although the club was devoted to the art of the shuttlecock, it also had a table tennis room. And... yeah, I'll admit it. The shuttlecock intimidated me. My god, the thing had feathers! How did it make its way through the air, and how on earth was I supposed to hit it? It was all too much for my sensitive, frail psyche; I had talked Victoria into first beating me at table tennis before she ploughed me like the dirt I am on the Badminton court.

It turned out that the club was merely tolerating the presence of ping pong, or table tennis as I reverently called it at the time. They had banished some old tables to a back room, jammed in there under faulty, buzzing fluorescent lights. We played our hearts out as a couple of very old men with very short shorts heaved and sweated it out next to us. Victoria and I slugged it out. Who won, I hear you ask? Uh- not important.

We enjoyed ourselves. Stepping into this place was like stepping into a different country. As I made my way through the facility, I spotted people reading Indonesian books and comics, drinking foreign beverages and having conversations containing not one lick of English. I realized that this was a social event as much as an athletic one, with entire families coming to play together. Teens were on dates. Parents sat with children and chatted.

Yet surrounding all of this was, without any doubt, a hardcore gym devoted to the violent, bloodthirsty gladiator sport that is Badminton. Banners abounded, trophies were everywhere and I found myself intimidated by the photos of past champions, staring grimly back at me. The courts were calling to me, and suddenly ping pong felt like a game for children. I felt my spine straightening, ready to evolve from ape to man, from paddle to racquet.

I returned to our ping pong table and threw my pathetic, pock-marked paddle on the floor. The room went silent, like an old saloon in the Wild West when a stranger comes to town. "We're done with this game." I announced to a breathless Victoria. "There's a whole world out there!", I screamed, pointing to the green pastures of the courts in the gym that lay waiting in the next room. Then Victoria and I strode out of there, past the stunned faces of the poor, hapless souls who were doomed to spend the rest of their neanderthalic lives hitting a ridiculous, featherless sphere over a table. Tables are for dinner, my friends.

So we returned last night, with our two friends, and went to war. In the interests of fairness to our out of shape, hopelessly uncoordinated mates, the score shall remain secret. Of greater importance was the fact that Victoria and I are now part of something larger than ourselves and at any time of the day or night you may find us in an old warehouse in a desolate industrial park in a distant Los Angeles suburb, surrounded by Indonesians, kneeling at the altar of the Shuttlecock.

http://www.sgvbc.net/

TV STUFF

2010-03-25T00:06:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts on the state of television today, gleaned from the bits and pieces Victoria and I sampled tonight as we ate my superb veggie pasta which actually turned out to be horribly mediocre.

First up: Idol. I have always detested these kinds of shows, which I define as Glorified Karaoke. Yes, some of the performers are talented but please let's not fool ourselves into thinking these people are the cream of the crop. The cream, ladies and germs, is out there working. Victoria has had some inside experience with the making of these shows and she informed me that they are basically a soap opera; the producers decide what kind of people and stories they want to create on the show and they go out and get them. I watched maybe three minutes and that was enough; my stomach can only take so much corporate, slick, dream-factory guff. As soon as I sensed the slight nausea building in my tummy I changed the channel.

To, of all things, Cougartown, with the siliconed, botoxed piece of immovable plastic formerly known as Courtney Cox. Ms.Cox is charming enough but this show is everything that leaves me frigid about Hollywood today. Pop-culture references abound as artifical characters have artificial discussions about absolutely f&*%-all, as our Vice President would say. I have had it with this kind of 'comedy'... when was it decided that an intimate knowledge of pop culture made us smart, or writers' work funny? This show couldn't raise a smirk to my lips. My face, I hate to say, was as stoic and marblesque as Courtney's. For different reasons of course.

Added to those two shows were snippets of Victoria' cuddly blanket, Friends, starring a scarily lifelike Courtney Cox, my cuddly blanket the Major League Baseball Network (many more laughs than Cougartown) and every straight girl's secret cuddly blanket, Rachel Maddow (Victoria, like the rest of you randy, curious women denies this).

Finally, to wrap the evening up, we watched the sixth episode of Breaking Bad, starring the superb Bryan Cranston. We're motoring through it thanks to Netflix and yet even at that speed, this show allows itself to move slowly, which is a lovely novelty. It's taut and gruesome and Cranston and the excellent Anna Gunn lead a strong and quirky cast. Having said all that, this show is very masculine and for that reason it doesn't have me as fully in its clutches as other shows that touch around the heart more than the head. But that's a personal preference; this show has achieved everything it set out to do and is what it is, which is an excellent bit of TV.

So there you are, absolutely everything you need to know about television
circa spring, 2010.

Read a book.

STILL WAITING FOR EARTH'S HEALTHCARE BILL

2010-03-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

So we have a healthcare bill. For those who really want to put a smile on their dial, read former Bush speechwriter and staunch conservative David Frum's pessimistic thoughts on his own party's future on his blog today. Reading him talk about the GOP's impending doom was like fine cognac, drunk from a crystal snifter, coursing through my veins.

But as much as I hate to rain on anyone's parade - unless it's neo-con corporate-bought evangelical politicians - the condition of health care in the US and beyond is not the biggest issue we will face during Barack Obama's presidency, or anyone else's for that matter.

Not even close.

Because the quality and cost of your health care and mine will become a blip on our radar if we continue to ignore the number one issue we all face- and I mean you, me and about six and a half billion other people.

That is the issue of this planet's environment.

I don't say 'climate' because that is too reductive. Yes, more carbon equals more heat which equals all manner of problems, but we also have to face the fact that there will be catastrophic water shortages not only in third world, desert-based nations but also RIGHT HERE in the US. Add to that the continuing deforestation happening as I write this, the consequences of which are to a major extent frighteningly unknowable at this time, as well as the polluting of much of the world's fresh water and all kinds of food crises that will emerge over the next fifty years as the population booms and you see a mess that will require DOZENS of bills to be enacted by governments across the globe that will be much more controversial and require much more dramatic changes of corporate and civil behaviour than this bill ever could.

Not only that, but these bills will have to be globally ratified. They will also demand change that will require the kind of distant-horizon thinking that is antithetical to the greedy, short-term lust for endless profit that pervades almost every corporation now in existence.

The challenge, suffice to say, is monumental, and can only be met through just as massive a determination by the peoples of the world and the politicians they elect.

It will also mean the mobilization of our armed forces for work other than warfare with other nations. I have long believed in an 'Environmental Army'. My idea is that the government should re-allocate a gigantic portion of the defense budget into a program that would pay any adult citizen, able and willing, a decent wage and full benefits to do two things: 1, clean up our waterways and public lands while replanting vast swaths of deforested areas and 2, assist in the building of green infrastructure and police our companies to ensure that they are in line with new regulations outlawing the continuing pollution of our air, water and soil.

This will kill two birds (an unfortunate metaphor considering the subject of this essay). It will help to solve unemployment by offering a financially and spiritually rewarding line of work for anyone prepared to do it and it will also keep corporations and citizens environmentally honest. We cannot assume old behaviours will vanish because they are suddenly out of bounds. Follow-through is needed.

But to do all of that we will need to devote a lot of time and treasure to changing our entire industrial paradigm, which will of course also require each citizen's personal involvement in the process- we must be willing to drive cars that move a little slower, take showers that are a little shorter, use cleaning products that require a little more scrubbing and, more importantly than those petty examples, pay taxes that might, for a time, be a little higher. If our governments can actually spend those dollars on making the world a better place, instead of fattening the pockets of defense contractors, that won't seem
so bad.

So start looking for the people running for office who actually are promoting these ideas. A lot of us laugh at Dennis Kucinich because he said he saw a UFO, but he's one of the few people ready to make legislation to solve a lot of these problems.

This is truly the Big One. There are so many ways to get in the fight. Universal healthcare is only a good thing if we have a universe to live in to begin with.

For another example of the kind of destructive consumeristic cycle we need to detach from that results in massive pollution and environmental destruction, read this amazing and disturbing report on the bottled water industry.

Can we fix this? Yes We Can. The more important question is: will we?

WHERE DO WE GO?

2010-03-20T00:47:00.000-07:00

It is becoming clear to me, as I get older, why we remember loved ones with a moment of silence.
Because, fellow citizens of the planet, silence is becoming a more valuable commodity in our society with each noisy, passing second.

I go to the movies and find people cavalierly chatting at normal voice. When I ask them politely to be quiet they look at me with astonishment. As if they are thinking what could possibly be bothering him??. I ask the people in th courtyard who are making themselves known to every single person in the apartment complex to keep it down because it's late and there's not a jot of understanding. But then I remind myself: if a person is under 25 (and please don't think me to be too much beyond that, even though this blog is already in danger of sounding like it was written by a fogie), they have lived most of their conscious life with a cellphone to check, an email to send, a song to download and listen to anywhere anytime, or any number of televisions and 'background' music blaring in almost any public space.

We are losing touch with the healing, empowering connection to silence. As a child, I remember long road trips with my family during which we'd find ourselves driving through wilderness at night. I would stare blissfully out at all that blackness, feeling an urge similar to what many people feel standing at a cliff's edge: the impulse to throw oneself with abandon into the silent, infinite abyss. As I would lean my head against the damp, cool car window, a large industrial facility would come into view, lit as if by ten thousand fluorescent lights, destroying the engulfing tranquility that had been present just a moment before. In those moments to this day, I wonder if there is really anywhere one could go to find freedom our artificial noise and machinery anymore. I suspect not.

Which brings me to the only solution for us: reconnect with our own silence. Listen more than we speak, as spiritual teacher Anique Radiant Heart said to me recently. Never be afraid to explore the void (and opportunity) that lies between our literal, verbal exchanges.

Maybe if we can become more aware of the silence within, we'd more often seek the silence without. To discover that, we'd need to de-industrialize, deconstruct and detach from the machine of consumerism and the fallacy of economic 'growth' and all the frenetic, chaotic and violent activity that all too often comes with it. Luckily, we can begin to effect this change on our own personal stage. The manifest ways to go about it are for each one of us to creatively discover.

Finally, it means detachment from the noisiest part of our consciousness: our ego. We don't always have to respond, have to retort, have to retaliate. We don't need to always advertise to people that we're here; nor do we need to reassure ourselves that we are alive by spinning our mind into a frenzy with drama and a learned obsession to 'prove ourselves' to the rest of the world.

Maybe tomorrow those people outside my apartment window will rediscover the meaning and value of silence and lower their voices. Maybe the guy in the movie will accidentally fall quiet and realize he could actually be in a position to be affected by the film he's watching. Maybe I'll stop indiscriminately blasting people on the road with my horn every time I make the judgement that they're not driving well enough.

That's the greatest thing about being alive: as long as your mind and heart are open and receptive, you always have the chance to grow.

WORD TO THE UNWISE

2010-03-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

People of Los Angeles: when telling friends you cannot catch up with them at a certain point during your week due to other arrangements, let me make one thing clear:

You're not BOOKED.

You have plans. That is different to being hired for a professional engagement. If I am friends with a wedding singer, or a massage therapist, or a caterer, or even the goddamn President for pete's sake, then I will understand if they tell me they cannot meet for coffee or drinks because they are 'booked'. Otherwise, let's all start talking again like human beings, take off those freaking Bluetooths (or Blueteeth for my english teacher in high school) and start the journey back to being normal, functional people.

Which brings me to the next commandment for the day:

YOU'RE NOT THAT BUSY.

Don't give me that twenty minute slot first thing in the morning or between drinks with your 'manager' and dinner with your 'publicist'. I've had it with people building a shrine to their Blackberries, all the while saying how 'busy' they are and wondering 'how they lived without an IPhone all those years!'.

There's only one person I can think of who may truly not be able to live without an IPhone.

And that's God. And if I had to bet, I'd say she still uses a filofax. Because God, my friends, if she's even up there, is Old School. No, no that inane two-minute SNL sketch that was turned into a piece of celluloid offal with Will Ferrell. I mean the genuine article. God, if that's even her real name, likes libraries. And vinyl. And movies from the 70s.

And making time to see her friends in ways that don't resemble pitch meetings.

You're really not that busy, people. Ever notice how rare it is to go to the cinema and not have some clown talking like they're in their apartment, or another humanoid flip open (oh wait- flip-phones are so, like, 03) his cell so he can text some profound thought to his buddy?

We have become so enamoured of our own business, popularity and packed schedules that we've lost the knack of being silent. Of being people, without the need for accomplishment and the attainment and advertisement of our possessions.

I guess that's it, for those of you who stayed for the end.

Before I forget... a disclaimer concerning God: although she does spurn all things modern that do not advance humankind, she absolutely loves my blog. Spread the word.

AN UNSPEAKABLE TRUTH

2010-03-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

It looks like we are going to get 'Health' Insurance Re-Form.

You may have noticed the particular way in which I stated those three words. Allow me to explain.

The quotes wrapped around 'health' are there to remind all of us that this bill ceased long ago to be about the health of anyone, including the health of the bill itself, which has been getting eaten from the inside out for over a year by a form of corporate-controlled, Republican-stonewalling, Democratic-wimposity cancer.

As for the italicizing of 'Insurance', I think at this point we all need to accept that this bill isn't about providing health care; it is primarily concerned with changing (superficially from what I can tell) how our insurance business is done. As long as we're only dealing with for-profit corporations in covering our healthcare costs, few issues of actual care can be looked at. We will always be shackled by the insurance cartels' lust for the juicy bottom line, at any cost.

The decision to hyphenate 'reform'? There's not much real reform here, but there is plenty of re-forming of how people will buy overpriced insurance from corporations. A lot of it comes from a mandate to push more people into the darkly lit barns of corporate health insurance coverage. Exactly what incentive does one give a greedy bully to change his ways if one increases his leverage over and access to the weak and vulnerable?

So there it is. Just as we must re-examine terms like Free Trade Agreements (backroom deals cut between the powerful elite that are rarely free, publicly agreed upon or even about genuine trade), we must also not let people put up banners and dance down the street congratulating themselves with false parlance like 'Health Care Reform'.

But, considering the fact that it's here and it ain't goin nowhere.....

Should we, and therefore our elected representatives, vote for it?

This has been an argument that has been boiling between myself and friends (and some sworn enemies) for over a year now.

There are two primary arguments that I've seen, for and against. The people that would support it say it is, in the words of one, a 'beach head'. That most civil rights bills (and make no mistake, this is a civil rights issue) have been weak in retrospect, having had to be watered down to begin with to have any chance of passing and coming into being but that with time and growing public recognition of their worth, have been strengthened to where they stand today. Think the Voting Rights Act, Social Security, Civil Rights, Medicare. These people claim that this bill is the same, paving the way for more aggressive and progressive action in the future. Without it, they say, the status quo will remain and may even further concretize.

Not a bad argument. Now let me speak for those against.

They would say that this bill strengthens and further validates the corporate hold on health coverage, ushering in even more people to the private framework. It doesn't offer real cost controls, leaves no possibility for any government involvement beyond what already exists for the young, poor and elderly and, if passed, will succeed in silencing any talk of real reform for a generation, giving every politician from now til doomsday the excuse that 'we got something done in '10 at great political cost and it's too soon to try again.' That this is an extremely rare moment in the history of this country to actually open the door to eventual universal healthcare through a public option and if we miss the chance this time, it won't come again for a long, long time. Now is the moment for the Democratic Party to truly show the people who it stands for, the public or the private. If the Democrats water themselves down along with this bill, they may never be able to reclaim higher moral ground than the Republicans on this issue. They were voted in with a massive majority that is about to be eroded. It's Now Or Never.

Hmm. This is a hard one.

Michael Moore was interviewed last night and was asked whether or not if he were a sitting Congressman right now, would he support this bill, a bill he has savagely criticized. I think he found the right balance, saying he would support it reluctantly if the President, while trumpeting the pathetically few positives in the bill for working people, would also admit to the fact that this bill was a boon for corporations and overall did not advance the cause of the vast majority of American citizens in relation to their ability to have quality, affordable healthcare (I'm paraphrasing).

I'd also support Mr.Obama if he were straight with us in this fashion. Alas, I am dreaming and he does need to gain some sort of political victory out of all this so get ready for the confetti.

Oh, and the same impossibly high premiums and mediocre care.

Remind everyone you know when the healthcare crisis comes up in conversation:

As long as for-profit corporations are in charge of our health coverage, there is NO chance for quality, affordable care in this country.

Reminder to self upon waking every morning: give thanks for being healthy.

ODDS & ENDS UPON RETURNING HOME

2010-03-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

After sleeping about 34 hours in an attempt to recover some sort of equanimity (why is the jetlag always so bad coming back from Australia? Victoria tells me it's the same when going to Paris- something to do with West to East?), I ventured out in my car and turned on NPR, where I heard a story about teachers and testing. It seems that across the US, the solution to the education crisis is always to evaluate teachers by their students' test scores.

This is patently nonsense.

Until teachers are paid a wage appropriate to their enormous importance in the development of our next generation, we cannot hope to improve their efficacy. While we're at it, let's also give them schools that do not resemble prisons, equipment that was built sometime after Jimmy Carter was in office and a humane amount of kids in each class to deal with.

Of course, in order for all that to happen we'd need to do two things: divert tax revenues away from useless defense spending and also tax the rich in a way that might actually suggest that we live in a civilized, fair society. By the way, doing these two things would also give us a chance to solve healthcare, create a green infrastructure and give every single person in this country the chance for a decent, fulfilling life.

Food for thought. If anyone's still thinking.

The baseball season is beginning and for some reason it's striking me in a different way this time round. As I ponder how many hours could be spent sitting in front of the idiot box watching oversized men with undersized personal development throw a ball to more of the same waiting with a strangely shaped, lacquered piece of wood I must question the value of it all. Maybe if we stopped watching they'd stop getting paid those heinous amounts of dollars.

Now a small list of the things I could be by now if I'd replaced all the time I've spent watching sport with other potentially more fruitful activities:

Pianist.
Novellist.
Classical guitarist.
Person who can recite the entire Shakespeare canon by heart.
Letter writer extraordinaire.
Multi-faceted intellectual dynamo.
All of the above and, therefore, a friendless virgin.

Okay, the last was only possibly true but you get the point.

I attended a party on saturday night and at one point went up to the roof of the apartment building where it was held. It was there that I realized that Los Angeles reminded me of the classic aging starlet that it has chewed up and spat out: it looks best in the dark.

This essay today sounds a little maudlin, doesn't it? Any good news to report, I hear you ask?

I started reading the new Dan Brown book. Oh no, wait a second. I don't like it.

Stay tuned for brighter news in the next episode.

GETTING THE HOOKS OUT

2010-03-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

As our trip to Australia nears an end, I'm once again surprised to find myself with a new and hopefully broader perspective on my dealings with my family.

The Universe may have it's borders, may not be infinite, as hard as that is to fathom and yet I suspect that for all of us as human beings, there may not be a bottom to the psychic well that is our feelings around our parents, siblings and the loved ones with whom we've grown up and shared so much emotional intimacy.

I've had my 'buttons pushed' several times over the last week and a half in ways that I thought were done with. In the past that would have spurred me to seek distance, to shut off and become an emotional island. As I get older I realise that ultimately those islands end up being more painful than the alternative: allowing oneself to feel those uncomfortable sensations that occur when old wounds are momentarily jabbed and actually finding a way to move through them to find what may lie on the other side, instead of backing away from the entire dynamic and allowing it to remain static.

This doesn't mean confrontation. After all, at some point in this process, when we've hopefully done some meaningful personal work on these relationships, we understand that the person doing the jabbing on those wounds ends up being us. The painful agreements that we've worked so hard to break continue to function, long after they are even still objectively in effect.

No, this isn't about proving anything to the other person. It's about finding a way to have an open, clear relationship with them, and that means no expectations of multitudes of warm and fuzzy moments with them. An inspirational teacher in my life uses the term 'getting our hooks' out of other people. These hooks represent our need for their approval, our fear of their judgement and our own judgements and expectations of them, among other things. As long as those hooks are attached, it's very difficult (maybe impossible) to have a meaningful, loving relationship. Walking away from those hooks is equally impossible for two reasons; one, because they will be there when we come back and two, they will then take shape in the new relationships that we form because this internal emotional dynamic started so early and therefore has become a psychic habit that manifests itself wherever we go.

So what's left to do? One word has raised itself above all others through my dealings with family in the last 10 days.

Acceptance. Yes, I know I'm not inventing the wheel here. We've all heard that phrase before. But only now am I ready to actually commit to practicing what it means on a more fulltime basis. Because I see what's possible.

Kahlil Gibran said, when referring to relationships and marriage, that the 'pillars of the temple must stand apart'. That makes perfect sense to me now. Only through surrendering judgement, through giving up our desperate need to change others in order to nurse old wounds can we find the appropriate distance to really see who those people actually are. Once that is done, we will be able to choose to love them for whoever they turn out to be and, make no mistake, there are enormous reservoirs of love inside most of us for our family once we clear away the dead wood and get those hooks out.

This doesn't mean we'll agree with them. But it also means we won't have to argue every point or fight every battle. Just the ones that get in the way of that clarity. What a relief to know that while our relationships with family don't have to be beds of adoring roses 24/7, they also don't have to be scorched earth either.

Having said all that... I don't know where these relationships are headed. I only want them to be alive, not dull reruns of past behaviours. I have the power to initiate that every time I engage from that healthy, 'unhooked' space between us. A fluid space that allows me to draw them into a deep embrace and also stand back far enough to see them clearly and not in soft focus.

Acceptance. I just wanted to say it again. I may need to be reminded of it from time to time.

TWO DAYS AND TWO NIGHTS

2010-03-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to exhale deeply?

Shoal Bay.

Bahamian turqoise water.

Tranquil inlet. Whitewater washing up against distant cliffs.

Too small for development, save for the local pizza shop.

Aussie accents so thick I could have sworn they were actors.

Five minutes away, dunes rise to touch stormy clouds.

Bluebottles lined a nearby beach, much to Victoria's horror.

A horde of teenagers interrupted our lunch in the cafe. They were quiet and polite.

Passionfruit ice cream and caramel milk shakes.

Potato wedges with chili dip and sour cream. Poured all over. I hate sour cream. It usually comes on the side. A deep disappointment.

A pelican, so cavalier, floats by not twenty feet away on crystal water.

Vegemite on toast at the breakfast buffet.

A balmy, insistent breeze greets us on our balcony in the morning, as we drink in that view.

A punt on the pokies at the local club. We're visitors so they allow us in.

Cloudy without rain. We wouldn't have changed a thing.

FORGOTTEN YET REMEMBERED : GRANDMAMA'S 90TH

2010-02-28T20:45:00.000-08:00

So the day has come and gone.

My mother Anique created an entire day for my Grandmama akin to an old Aussie television show called This Is Your Life. In that show, someone heading into their twilight years would be honoured by having many of their old friends and colleagues brought out for a reunion. Although that show had its poignant moments, it would pale in comparison to what occurred yesterday in a house in Sydney's west.

Anique had set up a power point presentation, tracing Aimee's life from the time of her childhood in Egypt, from her boat ride to Australia to escape the anti-semitic sentiment that swept over that country, ousting the Jews, through to the early days in Australia when a young woman was forced to learn a new language, take care of three small children and a depressed husband in a tiny house that was more like a glorified shed, and then also find work in a new land, work that would have been unthinkable to her family in their former life in North Africa, when servants and money abounded. My Grandmother scrubbed floors, scrubbed her children and cooked food that was almost certainly more rudimentary than the delicious fare I became used to as a child making the trek to what became their larger house next door to the aforementioned shed that then became known to us as "the little place".

So yesterday, on the woman I now know as Aimee's 90th birthday, we all congregated to celebrate that long life, which continues today. My Grandmother has dementia, and I was riveted to her face almost the entire length of the presentation, as Mum commented on each photo for the people present who were less familiar with the events.

I didn't look at the photos that much. My grandmama's face told me the story of a life lived. There was no doubt that for her at this point, many of the young faces in the photos were strangers, maybe even those of herself. But it was the moments of recognition, of longing and sadness, joy and surprise, and even simply the childlike innocence of one who has forgotten that touched me so deeply. My Grandmother sat with her former best friend and elder sister Sara, clutching hands is if to retain a lifelong connection that at some point will be inevitably severed by the receding tide that is her memory. They shared excited shrieks, spontaneous hushed gasps and hollowed sighs.

You may have noticed I said 'former' when speaking of Sara as a best friend to Aimee. That is because the gigantic oak tree that my Grandmother now rests against is my mother. To see the way my Grandmother looks to her daughter 'Annie' for guidance, support and loving reassurance is to see a child reach her hands high for her mother's arms, breathing a sigh of relief as she is scooped up in the warmest embrace. Many times Aimee has said to me in that gentle French lilt, "where would I be without her?". Where indeed. If only every person could be assured of the kind of loving home (what Aimee calls her "little paradise") that will nourish my Grandmama until the end, which at this point may be some time away, judging by her health and good spirits. And why not? The woman has an HD television in her room for pete's sake! Usually set to the Spice channel. Hey, she's earned it.

So speeches were made, songs were sung and everyone paid their respects.

Half an hour after everyone had left I asked my Grandmother if she enjoyed all those old photos projected onto the screen.

Her eyes, in response, told me she'd forgotten already.

But that's okay. One of the gifts she will have from here until her final days is that she gets to live completely in the moment. The joy she gained from her 90th birthday will rest in her heart and in the recesses of her soul, to be reawakened by chance, miraculously, by a photo or a card from that day. It is in those moments of recognition that we see a rich inner life, free of its former cares, worries and resentments. When my Grandmother looks at me and my beautiful partner Victoria, I see recognition. I see a loving warmth. And I understand that it is immaterial whether or not those embers will still be burning tomorrow. Her heart, like mine, like yours, burns for today.

A story was read at the end of the ceremony:

"A 92 year-old petite, legally blind, well-poised and proud lady was fully dressed this morning by eight o'clock. Her hair was fashionably coiffed and her makeup perfectly applied. She was moving to a nursing home today. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready.
As she manoeuvred her walker to the elevator, she was provided with a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been draped on her window.
"I love it", she stated, with the enthusiasm of an 8-year old who had just been presented with a new puppy.
"Mrs Ellison, you haven't seen the room yet, just wait!"
"That doesn't have anything to do with it", she replied. "Happiness is something you decide ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged. ... it's how I arrange my mind. I had already decided to love it. It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up."

My Grandmother continues to make a lot of us happy, and I suspect that goes both ways.

Happy Birthday, Aimee.