Cali-for-nyaah!

Two Minutes of Mean

2009-03-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

First: I want to be very clear that I have the deepest sympathy for people who were tricked or defrauded into taking on a mortgage they cannot afford, particularly veterans who would have qualified for stable, low-interest Federal loans and were instead funneled into sub-prime and/or adjustable rate mortgages. You were rooked, and I am sorry.

Second: Some people currently affected by the real estate market probably knew they were buying at the top of the market, and carried out their plan, thinking that it still made sense. Now some aspect of their lives have changed, they cannot make their payments, need to sell and cannot. That is a hard situation, and I am sorry.

But if you are basically fine, except for being somewhat underwater on your house: Shut up about it already.

Not just because there are people in much worse situations, although that is a good reason to shut up about it.

No, you should shut up about it because there is NOTHING SPECIAL about your situation. Pretty much everything there is in the whole world loses value as soon as you buy it.

Cars. Food. iPods. Furniture. Clothing. Jewelry with the exception of perhaps a dozen really major pieces, most of which are held by the British royal family or Elizabeth Taylor -- they all lose value as soon as you buy them. Which is to say, having bought a head of lettuce or an iPod Touch, you will not be able to find someone to buy it off of you for anything close to what you paid.

The reason for this is that anything for which there is more supply than demand will experience falling prices.

I know, real estate seemed like a special case, a situation in which demand would outstrip supply forever and ever.

That was wrong. Real estate was not a special case. And hearing people -- smart people, ethical people like Elizabeth Warren -- talk about being underwater on a mortgage as if it were akin to, say, losing your house completely... well, it's infuriating. Let's save our sympathy and our energy for the people who ARE in peril, who WILL lose their houses.

I know it is hard to look at a mortgage and see how many thousands of dollars you owe on a property that is not currently worth that amount. But try not to get too worked up about it.

Think of your home or your condo as a iPhone, which you bought on the first day Apple was selling them. Sure, lots of people paid 10-25% less for the same exact (or even nicer) device, but did they have the use of their iPhone for the last two years? NO! And you did! So you've paid a premium for that convenience -- isn't that one of the foundations of our modern world?

We live in a nation that worships market forces. We seem to think there's no problem in the known world that cannot be fixed by market forces. When GE bumps 200% in 5 years and someone sells his stock to buy a house in Bermuda, we're like: YES! Go market forces!

But these same market forces have dragged down real estate prices, behaving according to the exact same principles of supply and demand that pushed up GE in days of yore. So to stand around now, complaining that It's Not Fair and It's Not Right and I Should Be Able to Adjust My Mortgage Even Though I Can Make My Payments Just Fine?

Shut. Up.

Or failing that, take that head of lettuce back to Whole Foods and see if they'll give you back half the price because now that it's a couple days old, no one will pay you the $7 it originally cost.

It's like gravity. We love gravity when it pulls the basketball through the hoop on a free throw. We love gravity when it drops the club into the hand of the juggler. And you notice that we don't stand around complaining when gravity makes a basketball player hit the ground like a ton of bricks. We don't stand up and yell "Boo gravity! This is bullshit!"

It's the nature of market forces that some prices will rise, and some prices will fall. To get all worked up about the fact that right now, the market is doing what markets do, is like getting angry at gravity for making your pen fall off your desk.

This concludes this week's Two Minutes of Mean. Please return to your regularly scheduled civility and good manners.

Yet More Excerpts of Prose That I Like a Lot

2009-03-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Some good-humored ribbing of David Foster Wallace over at JohnAugust.com sent me on the hunt for a portion of "Infinite Jest" that has stayed with me from the day I read it.

I think I have explained this before, but my position on David Foster Wallace is: Thank God. As in, literally, thank you, God or what/whoever confluence of events and causalities brought him to fiction writing within my life time.

I suspect that my feelings about David Foster Wallace and "Infinite Jest" are roughly akin to cinephile's regard for Orson Welles and "Citizen Kane." Neither the man nor the work are without flaws, but in both cases, you have someone at the top of his game, swinging for the fences with every fiber of his being. Accusations of trying too hard, going too far, not accomplishing his goal -- these are the very things that haunt every artist, and for a brief moment, they both said "Fuck it, I'm going for it." If you love that art form (for me, fiction; for others, film), you are profoundly grateful for their bravery.

Okay, so now that I've bored everyone with my rambling, here is the excerpt, which explains how a tennis player came to join his college football team as a punter, despite a disasterously bad try-out moments earlier:

What metro Boston AAs are trite but correct about is that both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: (100) i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer. The destiny-grade event that happened to Orin Incandenza at this point was that just as he was passing glumly under the Home goalposts and entering the shadow of the south exit-tunnel's adit a loud and ominously orthopedic cracking sound, plus then shrieking, issued from somewhere on the field behind him. What had happened was that B.U.'s best defensive tackle -- a 180-kilo future pro who had no teeth and liked to color -- practicing Special Teams punt-rushes, not only blocked B.U.'s varsity punter's kick but committed a serious mental error and kept coming and crashed into the little padless guy while the punter's cleated foot was still up over his head, falling on him in a beefy heap and snapping everything from femur to tarsus in the punter's leg with a dreadful high-caliber snap. Two Pep majorettes and a waterboy fainted from the sound of the punter's screams alone. The blocked punt's ball caromed hard off the defensive tackle's helmet and bounced crazily and rolled untended all the way back to the shadow of the south tunnel, where Orin had turned to watch the punter writhe and the lineman rise with a finger in his mouth and guilty expression. The Defensive Line Coach disconnected his headset and dashed out and began blowing his whistle at the lineman at extremely close ranger, over and over, as the huge tackle started to cry and hit himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand.

This passage arrives at the bottom of p. 291 of the hardcover edition of IJ, and represents the moment when I fell wholly, completely in love with the book and its author. It is probably a mistake to post it here, stripped from the previous 290 pages which, in a variant of Stockholm Syndrome, softened me up like a clementine, until I fell apart at the gentlest touch. And I mean fall apart in several ways, including the vernacular phrase for losing control, as I put my head down on pages 292 and 293 and laughed until I almost could not breathe.

Then I went back and started from "What had happened..." and began to uncontrollably giggle at the phrases "beefy heap."

All the while, btw, my roommates at the time were in the next room, watching an especially farce-heavy "Frasier," a show I loved at the time, and were themselves laughing uproariously at some misunderstood confusion between Daphne and Niles, and still, though I could hear David Hyde Pierce's flawless comic timing wringing gales out of both my roommates and the studio audience, I remained totally absorbed in my book.

A guy named David Bordwell taught film studies when I was at Wisconsin, and as you might expect, he had a giant professor boner for Orson Welles and especially "Citizen Kane." He wrote a textbook that virtually every undergrad at Wisconsin bought or read at one point, myself included, and early on, there's a still from CK, one of those massive-depth-of-frame specials from the newsroom scene. Now, years later, I still understand the technical accomplishment of the shot, but for the life of me, I have no idea what Bordwell thought was so amazing.

I know many people feel that way about "Infinite Jest" -- they have no idea why anyone would think it was so amazing. They find the prose pointlessly abstruse, they think the critical adoration that rained down on DFW was undeserved. That's a perfectly valid reaction, and one I would never try to argue with, anymore that I would welcome a 30 minute lecture on how I'm a philistine because I only kind of like "Citizen Kane."

But if you can make it through the first 150 pages of "Infinite Jest," the pay off is there. Not in the ending, which is either 1150 pages ahead of you or 150 pages behind you, depending on you look at it, but in the reading itself, which is so rewarding that when you at last come to the true end of the story, you wish only that it would keep going for another 1300 pages.

Found Comedy

2009-03-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

I am profoundly grateful to Emily Yoffe's recent piece in Slate on narcissistic personality disorder, which is not only a ripping good read, but also drew my attention to perhaps the best two sentences to appear in the NYT in this or any other year:

[He] is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush. He calls the brush “the football,” an allusion to the “nuclear football,” or the bomb codes never to be out of reach of a president.

This sentence describes the beloved ex-governor of Illinois, but it is also a miracle of concise comic character development, of a caliber I have not seen outside of Dickens, or early Fellini.

We are told earlier in the article that this information comes from former employees, and for all that Blagojevich is held up for ridicule, this passage also has the tang of long-suffered humiliations finally redressed, of teary conversations in supply closets finally coming to a much deserved resolution, of panicky dawn nightmares finally put to rest. In short, like all comedy, it contains a seed of great pain.

Some of My Super Powers

2009-03-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

I know most super heroes like to keep their powers under wraps, so as not to alarm the populace.

However, there is little point in my trying to be all slick and Jane Not-S0-Special, because as you probably know, the word "Powers" is actually part of my name. Me = busted by my own birth certificate. Also, my dad who has that name, and my mom who took his name when she married him.

So in order to help the public feel a little more comfortable around super heroes, I've decided to pull back the curtain and reveal some of my not-secret-for-very-much-longer abilities:

1. Gravy - I've been pretty forthright about this, but let me clear up any lingering misconceptions: I make the finest G.D. gravy known to man. It can from a turkey, it can be from a standing rib roast, no matter. The resultant liquid will be so potent and flavorful that grown men will attempt to fill a syringe with it, the better to inject directly into their veins. Needless to say, my powers of gravy making come with tremendous responsibilities, and I have always been careful not expose small children or the mentally feeble to the full brunt of my abilities.

2. Advance Planning - I have executed post-college nine moves to date, three of them involving transitions across multiple states and/or time zones. Five were solo missions, one of which involved picking up a Budget rental truck in the Bronx and driving the length of Manhattan in order to reach the Williamsburg bridge. In order to move to Los Angeles, I planned a week-long cross country drive, tied to the one night in July when there was an available cabin at the Grand Canyon National Park. I have also planned a wedding for 130 guests, a handful of mindblowingly elaborate birthday & Christmas dinners, and my own application to and enrollment in graduate school.

I totally rock the check list, yo.

3. Predicting the Future - First thing this morning, I discovered that the charger outlet in my car had died. This was a minor problem, in as much as my iPod adapter needs live current to play through the radio. But a brief rummage through my glove box revealed: a) a small box of replacement fuses, and b) a fuse-puller. Why were these things in my glove box? Because I know me, and I know that I will want to replace a burnt fuse THE VERY SECOND I realize it has gone to the Fuse Shop in the Sky. I will not want to stop at an auto supply store and buy a fuse and fuse puller. And so, very cleverly, I stocked the very things I would need, in my glove box.

(Also in my glove box: a jar of Advil Gel Caplets, a thing of Secret Powder Fresh, nice stationary, a ball point pen, and a disposable camera -- in case I'm in an accident and need to document the scene.)

4. Solving - Simple math problems, of course. But also larger difficulties, like: Why doesn't this drawer open smoothly anymore? Why does this one chair make such an annoying squeak when anyone sits in it? Why doesn't my iPod adapter work? How can I make sure the cats have a satisfactory scratching post without buying them a new one every six weeks?

(MG says this last power is obviously something I get from my engineering-minded Dad, but I submit that my Nurse Practitioner Mom diagnoses 8-year-olds with a thermometer and a juice box, and treats homeless people with whatever medical supplies can fit in a large suitcase, so I think they both have to get credit.)

5. Ability to Identify A Movie from Less Than 1 Second of Footage - This is probably the most terrifying of all my powers, and something I know MG struggles to accept, because it's one of those things, like x-ray vision, that just doesn't seem possible. But in the past month alone, I have identified "Some Like It Hot" from a shot of the mafia banquet -- a frame that did not show either Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis, and "Jaws" from a shot of a sneakered foot climbing around the edge of the boat.

(MG, btw, should know better than to doubt me, since he can identify pretty much any jazz standard in under 10 seconds, no matter how unbelievably deconstructed/riffed upon the performance.)

6. Mastery of the Obscure Cocktail Recipe - When I recreated Brennan's Absinthe Frappe, I thought it was a one-time thing. Also, I was incredibly motivated, because I love Brennan's Absinthe Frappe, and when the hell am I ever going to get back to New Orleans? But I have now mastered the Queen Elizabeth, a recipe so complicated it calls for an eye dropper, and I think we have to face the very real possibility that this is yet another one of my super powers.

7. Seek, Locate, Obtain - I am descended from apparently the Queen Mother Champion Berry Gatherer of Northern Europe, because there's almost nothing I cannot track down, given sufficient resources and time. Sometimes I use this power for my own personal gain, as when I tracked down a replacement Burleigh Arden tea cup and saucer, to replace the set that broke some years ago. Sometimes I harness these abilities for the benefit of others, as when I found a vintage fertility pamphlet produced and distributed in 1963, as part of my research for a certain show set in the year 1963, in which certain characters were struggling with fertility issues.

An off-shoot of these powers is my mighty Research Fu, which is so relentless that I will get up at 6 a.m. in order to reach a volunteer docent at a Navy museum on the east coast in order to find out how WWII vets pronounce "keitan," the Japanese word for their one-man suicide subs. As with many of the martial arts, this one involves me entering an out-of-body state, in which I seem not to register pain or fatigue. You might also call it a kind of focused, berserker rage, a description born out by one witness's observation that I am "a fucking Viking" when I'm tracking down an answer.

And that, for now, will have to be the final power I reveal today. The first draft of this list was quite a bit longer, but the government redacted the remaining items as classified and not for public knowledge, so I'll have to content myself with this partial inventory.

However, in the spirit of encouraging public discourse, I invite you to post your own secret powers in the comments.

Embrace your awesomeness, Super Persons! You have nothing to lose but your cleverly disguised alter egos!

If I Were Still in Grad School

2009-02-23T18:30:00.000-08:00

I have the greatest fondness for the Critical Studies courses I took in film school, and especially for the insane papers I was given license to write for said classes.

For Prof. Drew Casper's Hitchcock course, I explored Hitch's use and subversion of Cary Grant's public persona. This was hugely enjoyable, not least because it allowed me to a) watch Notorious over and over and over again and b) rail at length against the fiasco that is Suspicion. God! Just saying the name of the movie makes me angry all over again. It's a perfectly good, even chilling piece of suspense -- it even has a haunting scene involving a staircase, as in Notorious -- but with one glaring flaw.

Someone convinced/bribed/forced Hitchcock to re-edit the end of the movie, on the grounds that the American public did not want to see Grant as a bad guy. Result: You waste two hours of your life watching a movie that STRONGLY IMPLIES that Grant intends to kill his wife, and then see the whole thing go pouring down the drain when it ends with heavily doctored scene of the two actors, apologising to each other for all the previous two hours of misunderstandings, and agreeing to go forward in marital bliss.

(I say "heavily doctored" because each actor delivers the crucial lines with the back of his/her head to the camera -- the better to conceal that whatever's being said, it isn't what actually came out of the actor's mouth when they shot the scene the first time.)

Almost as enjoyable, but utterly indefensible as a serious critical studies paper was my James Bond paper, exploring the motifs from Thunderball borrowed/misappropriated by the BBC production team behind the mid-60s seasons of Doctor Who. This involved multiple viewings of Thunderball and a grainy, US-format videotape of a DW episode entitled, I believe, The Silurians.

I realize that might sound insane, but the production team actually admitted they had, in fact, based the Third Doctor and his various toys on James Bond, so in many respects, this paper was far more factual and academically valid than my Grant paper.

Film school is far, far behind me now. (Er, by which I mean it's been about a year since I graduated. Whoo hoo! Fourteen months of MFAhood!) But I still feel the urge, now and then, to hole up with a pile of books and a couple of DVDs and whip off 12 pages on some intersection of high and popular culture. In recent weeks, the list of possible papers has been stacking up in my mind, so I'm making a blog post of them, the better to inspire topic-hungry scholars everywhere:

Dollhouse vs. A Doll's House - Joss Whedon a) is a graduate of Wesleyan, with b) well-documented feminist beliefs (see: Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and c) has eyes. Therefore, there is zero chance he has not read/studied the ur-feminist drama, Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. In this paper, we will explore the thematic commonalities between the two works, including the female protagonist who is underestimated by everyone in her world, the rigid institutions around both Echo and Nora that will not allow them to grow into full personhood, and the explicit debt each woman owes and is endeavoring to repay by "serving" in one or more roles within the existing power structure.

Becker vs. House - Two likeable comic actors, two surly misanthropic medical doctors. One is a monster hit, one is a little-respected sitcom now enjoying a belated popularity in syndication. What the hell?

From Fast Ball to Sleaze Ball: The Evolving Dramatic Personae of Ted Danson - The same guy that America scorned when he played a surly misanthropic doctor, now enjoying critical acclaim for his turn as an utterly corrupt pump-and-dump CEO on Damages. Is it the silver hair? What the hell?

Jack Lemmon: Stinking up the Joint Since 15 Seconds After Filming Wrapped on The Apartment - Yes, agreed. Jack Lemmon was amazing in his early films. And then he ossified in a horrific caricature of his earlier performances. So much so that I believe Mamet deliberately cast him in Glengarry Glen Ross because Lemmon's terrible, overly-mannered acting was the only way to show the audience exactly how rote his character's salesmanship had become.

Richard Dreyfus: The Anti-Jack Lemmon - Unlike Lemmon, I think Richard Dreyfus has delivered a lifetime of smart, unique performances. (Not counting his laugh, which is always the same, no matter what movie. But I can't hold that against him. A man's laugh is like his sex face -- it's not really the kind of thing he can change.)

(Mom, if you're reading my blog, now might be a good time to stop.)

But in 2009, there is an unthinking tsunami of critical admiration for Lemmon that he does not deserve, primarily because so many of his early films are considered classics. While Dreyfus, who has turned in marvelous performances in so-called fluff, such as Jaws, What About Bob? and Moon Over Parador, enjoys no such acclaim. I call bullshit -- it's high time we recognized Richard Dreyfus for the unique American talent that he is.

Quint's Indianapolis Monologue: A Critical Exploration - Yes, since you ask, I did see Jaws on HBO last week. So what? My larger point is still valid, i.e., as a piece of dramatic storytelling, Quint's monologue is without peer. It segues seamlessly between the drunken scar comparisons that come before, and the boisterous singing that comes after. It explains Quint's maniacal determination to bring down the shark, and it reminds the audience -- who hasn't seen anyone eaten for almost an hour at this point -- exactly what the worst case scenario is. And, of course, it sets up the dramatic irony that is cruising towards Quint in about 20 minutes time.

Getting High Off His Own Supply: Why You Never Want to See the Words "Written and Directed By" in the Opening Credits of Any Movie, But Especially If the Next Words Are "M. Night Shyamalan," "Paul Haggis" or "Charlie Kaufman" - I also saw The Lady in the Water on HBO last week. It was not a good experience. In the Valley of Elah made me so angry it gave me a headache.

And I cannot pronounce the world "synecdoche," so I'm throwing Charlie Kaufman in there for good measure.

I Made This! (NSFW!)

2009-02-20T15:45:00.001-08:00

If we're Facebook friends or you follow me on Twitter, or we otherwise know each other in one of the 9 million forms of acquaintance that exist in this modern age, then you already know about this, and I apologise for bringing it up again.

The AMC website calls this a "minisode." It's basically a 4 1/2 minute sketch, using the characters from the original dramatic series "Breaking Bad." I believe it is wholly, entirely awesome, but just to hit some of the essential points:

* From the very beginning, the show was determined to make these minisodes only if it would throw a little work and/or cash to the various aspiring writers/assistants on staff.

* I had given up all hope of getting to write one, and on the last day before we wrapped for the holidays, I got a call from a producer, telling me to bring in a finished draft when we started up again in January.

* I got a lot of great feedback on that script, and then the whole thing was thrown out because the cast, subject matter and setting needed to be "more edgy."

* So instead, we went with this, which is many things, but most especially, it is more edgy. If by edgy you mean dirty.

* The whole thing is covered by the WGA, which means that, thanks to last year's writers' strike, I now can tip my baby toe in the warm pool of milk and honey that is the Writers' Guild of America. But only my baby toe.

* One Saturday back in January, MG & I drove out to watch them film this, and I have probably never had more fun in my whole life. (Previous never-had-more-fun-in-my-whole-life: Staying up until 2:30 a.m., watching the final day of shooting on Season One of "Mad Men.") Our cast is so incredibly talented and they were so generous with their time and ability. They took a script written by a writers' PA and worked with the same focus and energy they bring to every episode. I am beyond grateful.

* There is one minor gaffe. If you watch it more than once, you'll probably spot it the second or third time through. I'm not just saying that to drive traffic. Although it would be awesome if these things got a bajillionty hits apiece. (And that goes for all of them -- the other four minisodes are written by my fellow assistants, and they are EVEN FUNNIER than this one, so go watch them on www.amctv.com now!)

J'adore

2009-02-13T13:24:00.000-08:00

In time for Valentine's Day, a brief list of things of which I am especially fond:

* Clementines. These things will be the death of me. Whose bright idea was it to sell them by the crate? Do you know how many of these bastards I can eat in a sitting? Do you know what that does to my digestive tract? You know what, forget I asked.

* Wasabi crackers 'n peanuts. Spectacularly addictive. The packaging insists that they're "baked not fried!", as if that somehow means they're not still junk food.

* Wasabi tuna poke from Bristol Farms. It is probably a leading cause of over-fishing, and I have to stop buying/eating it, but it dumbfounds me that that $8 buys you 6 oz of red, tender tuna tossed with sesame oil, wasabi and seaweed. I don't know how authentically Hawaiian it is, but if this is any indication of the food there, I am suddenly a lot more interested in visiting.

* Roaring 40's Blue Cheese. Grab a chair, Stilton. Put your feet up, Gorgonzola Piccante. I have found the domestic, artisanal blue cheese of my dreams.

* "30 Rock." You complete me, Liz Lemon. The Generalissimo plot line and the line "But first, I would like to admire picture of your grandchildren." The callback to Liz's Mexican cheese curls. Your scrappy determination to squeeze every last product-placement dollar out of America's advertisers, if it means hanging around long enough to become a certifiable hit.

* "Damages." The women on this show are so strong, I cannot help suspecting that they're written via the "Sex and the City" method, wherein all the female characters are actually men, but for a few details of names and pronouns. Even so, I do not care. Also, I do not want and will never own a Cadillac, but I freely admit that otherwise, this show could sell me anything. The gracious good taste of Patty's offices; the witty clothes; the gorgeous, gracefully-aging beauty of Glenn Close and Marcia Gay Harden. (Although I think someone went after MGM's with a syringe full of Botox late in the season, because from scene to scene, her brows alternate between normalcy and a yanked-up arch that says "I can't feel anything north of my nostrils.")

* Rye. This is what happens to you when you work on "Mad Men" for any length of time. The fumes coming off the various early-evening tumblers are so enticing, with notes of vanilla and cinnamon. Eventually, you have no choice but to buy your own bottle. And then you are in terrible, terrible trouble, because it is amazing. About a thousand times smoother than bourbon, and tragically, worth every penny of its insanely steep price.

* Timely car repairs. Even though I had to rent a car to accommodate the brake shop's lack of Saturday hours, it gave me tremendous pleasure to drop off the Honda this morning, and get the follow up call that all is well, and that I am in good time to have my brakes replaced. This comes as quite the relief, since the service guys at the dealership have been pushing to replace the front brake pads replaced for the last year 12 months, and I was *almost* positive that they were fishing for extra repairs, but then again, you don't want to rip up your rotors just to prove a point. It also gives me an extra jolt of pleasure to use a highly ethical local guy and not the boobs at Honda of Santa Monica, who charged me $105 to fix my driver's side window in such a way that it actually was far, far worse and would not shut at all.

* Michael. Between triking over to the brake shop to pick up my car key before they close (see: lack of Saturday hours) and keeping me stocked with espresso and milk for my morning fuel, he takes such amazing care of me, and I am so grateful to have him in my life. He is my Lemon Pepsi.

Miscellany

2008-12-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

Things have quieted down considerably on this end, but best not to rush into some bold new enterprise. Instead a few brief notes, by way of re-entry:

1. We recently decided to keep some cash on hand in the apartment, partly because I unexpectedly got some cash as a gift, and partly because neither of us could be bothered to take it to the bank. "Okay," I said, stowing the cash in a cunning-but-handy location, "this is the official hiding place of the Emergency Zombie Riot Fund."

"Yes, good," MG replied. "Because orderly, law-abiding zombies are nothing to worry about."

2. Songs playing in our cats' heads at all times:

Anna - "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy
Fifi - "Girl from Ipanema," by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Willa - "The Banana Splits Theme Song" by The Banana Splits

Oddly, the last two are instrumentals, but for whatever reason, Anna hears lyrics. Maybe it's a side effect of her thyroid medication.

3. There's been a lot of irrational talk of buying an elliptical for the apartment in recent weeks, but I'm happy to say cooler heads have prevailed and instead we've gone with the far more rational alternative. Yes, we are getting a Wii.

Note to Santa and/or relatives: This was planned and executed late last week, before any intra-family discussion of Christmas began. There comes a point in one's life where, if one really wants to play Mario Kart for 12 hours straight, one should be adult enough to buy said game for oneself, without any parental cajoling or letters to generous, bearded residents of the North Pole. That time, for MG and myself, is now. Or more accurately, about 3 p.m. PT last Thursday.

That said, we don't yet have a copy of Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 2 bundle. I'm just saying.

La la laa! La la-la laa! La la la la-la la la laaa!

Jitters

2008-11-04T17:43:00.001-08:00

I remember 2004 with horrifying clarity -- the knot in my stomach during the debates, the depressing aftermath of election day, the week-long peppermint bark binge.

November, 2004 taught me to pay attention to the half of this country that doesn't think the way I do, and to respect the power of their dissent. That month, and for quite a while later, I listened carefully for whispers of just what, exactly, a second Bush Administration would mean, and mostly, what I heard made me sick.

Growing up in the last quarter of the 20th century, there was no shortage of young adult fiction to illustrate all the worst mistakes in our nation's history. I grew up reading about the idiotic death toll at Gettysburg, the senseless cruelty of the Japanese-American internment camps, the insistent refusal to see the truth behind Hitler's propaganda, and thinking: God, the shame of living through that time, of knowing that was going on and not being able to stop it.

Now, thanks to the miracle of the Guantanamo detainees, I now have some of that shame for my very own. My nephews, and perhaps my own children, can now ask me in years to come why my country did this horrific thing and why I did not try to stop it, and I will have exactly no answer. Well, other than: I was afraid of never being able to board a domestic or international flight without a full-cavity search.

Thank you, President George W. Bush, for making me a party to this utter fiasco and for illustrating, with greater clarity than I could have ever desired, the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton when he wrote "My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"

So, there's that.

Then, happily, there is Barack Obama. Sweet holy mother of all that is good, there is Barack Obama.

As it happens, I was living in Chicago when the state senator made his run for the Senate in 2004. I went to a fund raiser for him at the Chicago Historical Society, heard him speak and shook his hand. From that moment to this, I've known he was an extraordinarily gifted leader, and I've been more than a little afraid that we'd never be smart enough to let him rise to the limits of his abilities.

I won't even pretend that I have some rational defense for this position. Much has been made of how some Americans vote for the guy with whom they'd like to have a beer. You may take from my use of the phrase "with whom they'd like to have a beer" that my decision metrics are a little different.

I want to vote for a guy who could pick up the phone and through sheer implacable reason and legal wit, bully my insurance company into covering my migraines. I want to vote for a guy who can talk for ten minutes about the balance of power and religion in Iran without once mispronouncing a name or forgetting any of the major players. I want to vote for a guy who, if he showed up in a movie, you'd bristle in disbelief and think, "Nobody's that smart." I want to vote for a guy who makes President Bartlett seem like kind of a schmuck.

I want to vote for a guy who would do his job the way I do mine. If we need to send flowers to a funeral home in South Bend, IN, I do not call 800-Flowers. I do not go to FTD.com. No. I hunt through Notre Dame alumni websites until I find the nicest hotel in town, then call their concierge to recommend a florist. And that's the kind of President I want -- the kind who will do whatever it takes to do his job to the best of his abilities.

I would vote for that guy if his name were Theodore Roosevelt. I would vote for him if he were Dwight Eisenhower. I swear to god, I would vote for him if he were Gerald Ford. But the fact that he happens to be a Harvard-educated, former University of Chicago law professor with a Kenyan dad and a single mom and a grandmother who just died of cancer?

Done.

Oh, and at the same time I get to vote to re-affirm the right for gay couples to marry? Don't mind if I do.

So now all that remains is for me to sit here on the far left edge of the country, waiting for polls to close and states to flick over from white to red or white to blue, and see what happens. It's almost more than I can bear. I can't wait.

And yet I'm so terribly afraid that the waiting is going to be the best part of this or any year for many years to come.

Or... uh, not.

It's On

2008-10-13T19:55:00.000-07:00

So Joe Janes linked to me on his blog yesterday, thus throwing in to bold relief my total lack of posts for, oh, the last six months or so. Agh, the shame.

Okay, I can do this. How hard can it be? I just can't blog about work (hi, Genny!) or my personal life (hi, Michael!), or rag on any tv show that I kind of want to work on someday (hi, David Shore!)

Uh. Hmmm.

Oh! I went to Chicago this weekend and saw 84 members of my extended family, including my cousin Kelly who TOTALLY called me on my snark towards the filmed-in-Toronto-but-set-in-Chicago "Dresden Files." I stand corrected -- actual, dyed-in-the-wool Chicagoans will in fact ride in an open-top vehicle in the dead of winter between Chicago and South Bend, IN.

On that note, I scored a ride to Midway Airport in my dad's smokin' 1972 cherry red Oldsmobile Cutlass 442. Top down, scarf over my head, plexiglas safety goggles to keep the road grit out of my eyes -- it was like something from the Golden Age of Hollywood, if Ava Gardner's dad had kept a lot of industrial safety equipment in the back seat of his car. My dad has a CD he made with his own two hands, exclusively for playing on the CD player of the Cutlass. I distinctly remember "Love Shack" playing at one point, and although I got out before it came up, I know "You've Got a Friend in Me" is also on the playlist. That's pretty much my dad in a nutshell.

I also made time to see a little -- a very little -- Chicago theater over the weekend, including the excellent ten minute play "Cheddar Moon," by Joe Janes. Everything you've heard about it is true and then some -- it's just like every other one act love story between a bearded cafeteria lady and the ghost of the boy she loved some twenty years ago.

It is, in fact, hilarious and full of the kind of lines that make me pull out my notebook and start jotting things down so I don't forget them. I will just say this: Best stage fight with a soup ladle and bouquet of novelty pencils *ever.* Also, it kind of defies belief that the funny, adorable Mike Johnson can also play an oppressive and unlikable high school principal, but so it is.

Mainly though, I just walked around. As in, around the eight million tourists and smelly marathoners who were wandering the city in slow motion this weekend. I realize now that I am using Chicago to get my NYC fix, much the way heroin addicts will drink cold syrup and eat honey right out of the plastic bear. I log a couple miles every day, opting to walk every possible route instead of grabbing a cab or bus. It's not that I'm shopping or running errands. I'm soaking in it -- the reasonably coherent urban planning, the public transit that I never respected until I lived in a city that makes the CTA look like the Paris Metro, the historical architecture -- all the things that, honestly, are not readily available in Los Angeles.

In very little time, I began to miss Michael; waking up to a face full of sunlight; falling asleep in a soft, slightly salty breeze; the satisfaction of another miraculous piece of research delivered, but it was a nice change of pace, and in another two days, I might almost be caught up on my sleep.

I don't know much about what the coming years will bring. I think I can pretty much count on two weeks off between Christmas and New Years', even if it's my only vacation of the year. And it seems almost unavoidable that I'll be working through every summer as far as the eye can see. If a show starts in January, it works until August (and that's just for a 12 episode run.) If a show starts in May, it works until December (ditto.) I suppose somewhere there might be shows that staff up in September and wrap in May, but I haven't heard of one yet. Also, as supporting evidence, I notice a ton of industry people take their families to Hawaii for Christmas, which has the strong whiff of parents making it up to their kids for years of missed summer vacations.

But what I'm starting to realize is that I can squeeze a crap ton of vacation into a 48 hour bag, make a Sunday afternoon in Anaheim stand in for the week off that I really need, and enjoy the hell out of three days in Chicago.

She Looks Cold to Me. Does She Look Cold to You?

2008-04-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

This woman has balls. Not literally, of course. (And in fact, you can verify this by scrolling down her page -- she takes that URL very seriously.)

Her blog is a no-holds-barred, here's-what-happened extravaganza of relationship-pile-up post-mortem. And it's frickin' riveting. Man, you just never know what you're going to find in the NYT.

The only other blog that even comes close is probably the Constipation Chronicles on Dooce. Alas, mental health has descended on Heather Armstrong, depriving us all over her awesome, blow-by-blow accounts of her lower colon's complete and total inability to get in the game.

I have nothing even remotely that juicy to spill, but reading through NakedJen's blog, I realized I have never recounted the Delicious Tale of How My Fiance Dumped Me.

I continue to stick with that title, even though I have since acquired a second, sturdier Fiance who toughed it out and actually went and married me, thus becoming an actual Husband.

But I digress. As our scene opens, the Fiance (or F) and I have been engaged for almost a year and a half. Our wedding is scheduled for nine months hence. It is universally believed among my friends that F is kind of a douche. When I defend him, my friends point to the fact that I bought him a framed, vintage Soviet propaganda poster for Christmas -- because he loves all things communist -- while his gift to me was a computer printer, which was promptly set up in his office. At this point, I generally changed the subject because there is no reasoning with some people.

The curtain rises on an apartment on Ave. B in NYC's East Village. It is Friday, March 15, slightly after 7 p.m. Kate is home from work, and sitting in the living room in anticipation of "The X-Files", which will start in about 55 minutes.

F enters from stage right and takes a seat in the really nice Crate and Barrel side chair F and Kate had purchased a few weeks earlier. Actually, since his raise, F has been on quite the tear with spendy, spur-of-the-moment purchases. But then his job is incredibly demanding and stressful, so if it he wants to spend some of his paycheck on a taupe side chair, so be it.

F then proceeds to explain that their relationship, the relationship between F and Kate, is not going well. He's not happy. Ah. Would he consider couples' therapy? Yes, he would. But for now, he thinks it would be a good idea if they considered themselves broken up. He does? Yes, he does.

There is more to this conversation, but all too soon, an hour has passed. F looks at the clock and observes that it is almost time for "The X-Files," and really, what more is there to say?

At that moment, Kate realizes that F has timed this conversation with Swiss watch precision, so that he'd only have to discuss this unpleasantness with her for approximately 55 minutes. Because after that, of course, she'd want to watch "The X-Files."

And scene.

Needless to say, I no longer argued with my friends about whether F was a douche. I did not, in fact, watch that episode. To this day, I have never seen it, but I'm told I'm not missing much. (It was about the Mexican Goat-Sucker, which has another name I cannot spell.)

F's timing our break-up conversation in this manner has won a number of bets for me over the years and several informal who-has-the-shittiest-break-up-story competitions. Four months later, he took me out to dinner and tried unsuccessfully to re-start our relationship. I haven't seen him since.

A week later, I left for Ireland and spent almost the whole time making out with an adorable guy named Tom. And, as we know, I ended up marrying a hilarious Yalie with a passing resemblance to Ewan MacGregor. So it all worked out in the end.

Did I Mention The Co-Pay Is Very Reasonable?

2008-04-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, the whole world knows I had a birthday recently. (Not that I'm complaining -- I haven't gotten that many birthday wishes since the year my mom brought cupcakes in second grade.)

This is also the time of year when I check in with my doctor and fill up on prescriptions for the coming year, including the all-important Bay-Bee-No-Hav, aka, birth control.

Now, I realize that fertility is a growing challenge for women in their 30s, and there's apparently a really terrifying chart that looks like Wile E. Coyote taking a short trip off a tall cliff which represents what will happen to my reproductive system in another five or ten years. (Although I may be an exception, given that my grandmother seems to have produced kids into early menopause.)

But I think it is JUST POSSIBLE that my doctor is laying it on a little thick. She asked, as she always does, about the MG + KP Plan for World Domination. And, as I always do, I said that we were thinking of kicking things off in a few years.

"Oh," she said, blanching to the color of her labcoat.

"What? Is that... not a good answer?"

"It's just you don't want to wait too long."

I don't say so, but no, of course I'm not going to wait too long. C'mon, who wants to start popping babies out on their 40th birthday? But my doctor seems to think I'm waiting for her to say something, so she clears her throat and continues.

"You know what happens to a woman's ovaries as she enters her 30s?"

*Enters* her 30s? I think to myself.

She shakes her head sadly. "They age. Harden into shriveled up raisins."

My mouth goes curiously dry as I listen to this.

"I had a patient, she coughed during a pelvic exam. Her left ovary fell out, hit the floor and cracked in half like an M & M."

I struggle to find words. "That seems... odd."

"Not really, it's all drying up in there." She points at my navel with her pharmaceutical-company-branded pen. "Like one of those Salvador Dali paintings with a melting watch."

"Really? I thought it was more-"

"Last week, an OB-GYN friend of mine went into the delivery room with a patient -- she couldn't have been more than 34."

"The OB-GYN?"

"The patient. She got up on the table, had her epidural, did her breathing... gave birth to a pound and half of sand."

"What?"

"Swear to God. But you know, she and her husband wanted to wait."

Then she scribbled something on my chart, flipped it shut and gave me the same smile she probably uses when her small child stands bereft over his just-dropped ice cream cone.

"See you next year!"

Great Moments in American History

2008-04-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Written By came this week. The official magazine of the WGA, it features a ton of great interviews and useful articles. Maybe my favorite thing, however, are the "for your consideration" ads that run in advance of certain award seasons -- usually with an excerpt from the script, to help the Guild members remember why this project deserves their recognition.

With the Emmy noms just a month or two away, I noticed that HBO wasn't wasting any time building support for "John Adams." Although I suspect there was some confusion at the printer's. Seems to me like a different version of this scene ran in Sunday's broadcast, didn't it? I'll have to check my Tivo.

John continues to read from the London papers. Abigail sips her tea, pensive. Colonel Smith stands behind John, covertly reading another paper with visible disgust.

JOHN
The Morning Post and Daily
Advertiser... ah, they, very
helpfully inform their readers
that I was so pitifully embarrassed
as to be very nearly tongue-tied.

SMITH
You must pay them no mind sir.

John looks his shoulder. Smith quickly hides his paper. John can’t help himself -- he’s drawn back to the printed page.

JOHN
(bursts out laughing)
Here is someone calling for me
to be hanged! Post haste! Charming.
God, what a country.

ABIGAIL
Colonel Smith, remove these papers
at once.

Smith begins to clear the table.

JOHN
It is of no account. Let them say
what they will. Although...

John grabs the top most sheet of newsprint.

JOHN
I defy any man to tell me this page three
engraving is an accurate depiction of...
(reads)
Miss Mary Holden’s god-given anatomy.

ABIGAIL
(looks over)
She does rather
over-fill her corset.

JOHN
(studies the page)
Yes. She does.

Smith looks over John’s shoulder. His eyebrows go up in amazement.

Abigail clears her throat.

Both men jump. John quickly balls the page up and stuffs it into the fire.

Boulud Is Rockin' That Leather Blazer, Though

2008-04-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I love "Project Runway" and yet have so many problems with "Top Chef."

If anything, "Top Chef" has several marked advantages -- I do actually know about/like food, as opposed to clothing. (See: My several earlier posts w/r/t how I wear nothing but J. Crew.) Also, I'm from Chicago, and you can get me to watch ANYTHING -- including multiple seasons of "Early Edition" -- if there's some outside chance I'll be able to play "What's that neighborhood?" And if I were a gay man, I'd want to be Ted Allen. So there's that.

Sure, both shows have contestants with deeply questionable hat choices. (Trucker hats vs. novelty fedoras? Hmm. Might be a draw.) Oddball hairstyles. (Was there a workshop on using a whisk as a comb that I missed? Since when is "tufty" a look?) Cocky f***ing bastards. (Christian vs. Spike? I'd pay to see that any day. Winner takes Chef Molecule.)

One big, big problem: Tim Gunn vs. Padma. No. No. No. Not the same. One of these is a sage mentor, whose knowledge and wit is apparent in his entire person. One of these is an underweight bombshell who...

Yeah. Why do I care what this woman thinks? Honestly, I think I'd rather know what Michael Kors thinks of this food. She just does not convey food knowledge and experience at all. (Yeah, I know about the cookbooks. What. Ever.)

Then there's all the little things, like the way the contestants on TC are constantly being prodded into announcing the stage directions (time remaining, coaching people ou the door, whatever.) Notice that we never need that kind of false theater on PR -- we can see from the clock that it's late, that time is running down. Then Tim comes and tells us the designers have two hours to get their models to hair and make-up. Neat, economical, elegant. Why can't Padma do that? Oh yeah, because she's so annoying I zaa-zaa whenever she comes on screen.

Look, I'm in a tough spot. The writers' strike, the extra time on my hands -- God, I would give anything for PR to come back for a new season next week, but it's not going to happen. And "Battlestar Galactica" returning on Friday is actually going to make things worse. So I'll keep watching TC, and I'll zaa-zaa through the stuff I don't like.

But let's make one thing perfectly, perfectly clear:

Richard Roeper is NOT and HAS NEVER BEEN a "famed Chicago film critic."

Nothing against the man personally, but Chicago is not such a cow town that even Richard Roeper qualifies as famous. Well known? Okay, sure. Roger Ebert -- who won the first ever Pulitzer for film criticism in 1974 -- is a famed Chicago film critic. Ebert's late friend/sparring partner Gene Siskel is a famed Chicago film critic. Roeper is a guy who successfully navigated the rounds of auditions after Siskel's death to become the permanent fill-in on Siskel & Ebert's TV show. For that matter, Roeper would not get to set toe number one on TC, except that Ebert's continuing health issues have, for now, left him unable to speak.

(Now, is Posh Spice is an international style icon, as Die Klum informed us? That is for Mr. Blackwell to resolve.)

Almost As Good As the Zombie Invasion

2008-04-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't lived in Chicago for going on three years now, and when we moved, it had been some months since I'd done any improv. So why do I still check Chicago Improv Network every couple of days to see what's going on?

Because without CIN, I'd never have seen the work of Zack, who wonders...

What if they were Klingons?

For example:

Oh Man'dee, you cut my heart out with a bat'leth!

Rubber Ducky, you're the one, to be sent to Gre'Thor! Prepare to die!

The only candidate to trust with ending the Romulan War is the one who voted not to attack the Neutral Zone in the first place.

Well played, Zack. Well played.

Don't Make Me Laugh

2008-04-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

This is just a guess, but I think Benedict Carey is a guy.

You probably don't know Mr. (?) Carey, but he writes about health and medicine for the NYT, including today's piece on, oh boy!, pranks.

Here's the part that makes me think Carey is a mister:

“Being duped holds up this mirror to people,” Dr. Vohs said, “and may in fact show them where they are on the scale” — too trusting or too vigilant. Paranoia, too, has its costs, and it can sour relationships.

Running back the tape mentally, in this case meditating on how an embarrassing event might have turned out otherwise, is known to psychologists as counterfactual thinking. “The feeling of ‘I should have known better’ is the sort of counterfactual that serves to highlight your own shortcomings,” said Neal Roese, a psychologist at the University of Illinois. “A good deal of research has shown that these counterfactual insights can kick-start new behaviors, new self-exploration and, ultimately, self-improvement.”

Those observations may not leap to mind if you just showed up in go-go boots and an Elizabeth Taylor wig to a bogus 1970s cross-dressing party. Or if you fell for the e-mail message announcing you had won an award and should forward a draft of your acceptance speech to a supervisor.

But a good prank is, in the end, a simulation of a crisis and not the real thing. And it serves as a valuable reminder that not every precious box contains precisely the treasure you might expect.

What. The. Hell.

Here's a crazy, crazy thought: What if you just didn't pull any pranks? What then? OMG! Catastrophe! Disaster! People not being forced to discover they are too trusting!

Perhaps it's baldly sexist to say so, but I don't think most women pull pranks. Even among the institutions with the worst reputations, pranking is not the done thing. No, in our darker moments, my gender goes in for straight up, knife-in-the-back cruelty.

I've known women to do many, many shitty things to other women, but none of them fell under the casual veil of a prank. Stealing a boyfriend, us vs. them ostracizing, systematically humiliating a coworker -- this is the stuff of months, if not years in the making, not some one-day-a-year whimsy. It's far worse than cellophane over a toilet, and once it's discovered, the object knows well that the next step is to get far, far away from her tormentor.

As an Aries, I have a certain affection for all things April, with the strong exception of April Fool's Day. But upon reflection, I think my problem isn't that April Fool's is unnecessarily cruel. No, what I hate about April Fool's is that it's amateur hour, with short-lived pranks that suggest there's nothing worse lurking in the shadows. That, I think, really is foolish.

Edited to ad: No, wait. New theory. Women don't do pranks because we're really, really bad at it. This is just sad.

Interview with a Somewhat Attractive Blogger

2008-03-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

I think it may be that the human mind can only comprehend a certain amount of excellence. Perhaps our memory fades, or newer memories push older experiences aside. It may even be that our mania for top ten lists is, in some ways, a defense against our inability to hold even ten excellent things or people or moments in our minds for any length of time.

This would explain why every conversation about the "top ten (insert superlative here)" anything always generates contributions that some participants consider extreme long shots, and why such conversations often degenerate into bickering about the basis for judging whether something is or is not among the top ten (insert superlative here) X, Y or Z. We are, essentially, making it up as we go along.

I do not, therefore, have a list of my top ten favorite books. I have a reliable list of books that I buy/recommend/give, depending on the recipient. "Harriet the Spy" has been given to many ten-year-olds of my acquaintance. Several of my brothers and one boyfriend have all gotten copies of "The Things They Carried," and I have given so many copies of "The Blind Assassin", I should probably buy the things by the case.

Predictably, I am very fond of "Pride and Prejudice," although I am terminally over-exposed to all things Austen right now, and have a bit of a literary ice cream headache where she is concerned. I read "Bleak House" last year and readily admit that it is a triumph and then some.

However, there are just two books that have earned an unshakable place in my heart, both for the same reason: I find myself forgetting that they were books and not people I once met. The first is "Whites," a collection of short stories by Norman Rush. The second is "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace.

I know IJ is a tough slog. In a long series of "brilliant novels by new writers," it is a much harder read than Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" or Mark Leyner's "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist," much less the breakthrough works of Dave Eggers or Jonathan Safran Foer or Zadie Smith or... well, you get the idea.

I have stopped recommending it to people and I have abandoned all hope of MG ever getting past the first twenty pages. If you're thinking of giving it a shot, I will offer the following advice: Get through the first two hundred pages, then decide whether to give up or not.

Maybe I am the only person who, years after reading IJ, frequently forgets that she doesn't actually know six recovering addicts from a halfway house in Boston. But something about DFW's writing blurs the line between thinking and experiencing. I have never -- could never -- meet Don Gately, and yet I feel like I could recognize his Prince Valiant haircut from across a crowded room.

All this is preamble to this link, from a commencement speech given by DFW in the spring of 2005. (I found it through Jackie Danicki's blog, which is a comforting blend of travelogue, diary and beauty advice.)

Like his best fiction, DFW's address seems like something you're thinking yourself, except, of course, you're not. Here's my favorite part:

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship...

...Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

Agggh! Windmills! In My Mind!

2008-03-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

Halfway through last night's viewing of the 1968 version of "The Thomas Crown Affair," I realized with a pang it is the bizarro universe version of "Out of Sight."

I have seen the literal Thomas Crown remake -- made, by coincidence or not, a year after "Out of Sight" came out -- and remember liking it okay. But I'm startled to discover that everything that I love about "Out of Sight" -- the rhythmic editing, the syncopated graphic elements, the irresistible performances, the inescapable story logic -- has a joyless, dire twin within the original "The Thomas Crown Affair."

I don't think Elmore Leonard was consciously aware of the overlap when he was writing OoS, although if he was, I tip my hat to him. TTCA is such a shambling wreck of a movie, one fairly itches to take a crack at repairing its biggest flaws.

To wit: although Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is a stone fox, his most likable quality is that his crimes are very, very nearly victimless (not counting the guy who takes a bullet to the calf.) Sure, the bank is out the cash, but if anyone has ever been able to make an audience root for and sympathize with a bank, I will give that person a dollar.

Meanwhile, Vicki the insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway) exploits a hapless bankrobber's marital discord, steals his car and kidnaps his boy. Crimes so full of victims they're practically a victim fruitcake. By the time Vicki is telling the robber that his boy is fine and he can have his car back, I was consumed with hate for her and desperate to see Thomas humiliate her utterly.

That's not good.

"Out of Sight" fixes all those problems. Jack Foley is loyal, resourceful and kind. Karen Sisco gets dragged into the story against her will, and her interactions with criminals show a moral compass -- she gives a scraggly loser a second (and third) chance, but beats the crap out of a threatening thug.

The later film takes chances that could have backfired disastrously, and yet they work where TTCA falls flat. First: "Windmills of Your Mind." OMG. Also: TTCA's grid-and-panel credit sequence, which made me think that Thomas Crown would end up stealing a Mondrian. Um, no.

And: Faye Dunaway's implausible glamour. Seriously. Is Faye Dunaway making nail extensions out of her plucked eyebrow hairs? Why do her brows get thinner and her nails get longer in every movie? By "Chinatown," she's like one of those neurotic birds that plucks itself bald.

I don't, actually, think the similarities are anything more than coincidence -- I mean, how many ways are there to tell a caper story? Although I will say that "Three Days of the Condor" conversation is just a little suspicious. Yes, Karen and Jack need some shared point of reference, and it's a nice touch that they talk about two characters who quickly fall in love. But it also happens to be a Faye Dunaway movie with a handsome blond costar.

Ear Python

2008-03-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

This has been going through my brain since an ill-advised tipsy viewing of "The Mikado."

(Which, btw, was wildly over-edited, with badly eroded vocal tracks -- granted, the print might be over 50 years old, but still. Hey, PBS! As soon as you're done with the Compleat Austen, let's get cracking on the Compleat Gilbert & Sullivan.)

Three little maids from school are we
Pert as a school-girl well can be
Filled to the brim with girlish glee
Three little maids from school

Everything is a source of fun
Nobody's safe, for we care for none
Life is a joke that's just begun
Three little maids from school

Three little maids who, all unwary
Come from a ladies' seminary
Freed from its genius tutelary
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school

One little maid is a bride, Yum-Yum
Two little maids in attendance come
Three little maids is the total sum
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school

From three little maids take one away
Two little maids remain, and they
Won't have to wait very long, they say
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school

Three little maids who, all unwary
Come from a ladies' seminary
Freed from its genius tutelary
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school

Smells Like Anhedonia

2008-03-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

I miss sushi. Yes, I realize, Los Angeles has sushi. But I miss *my* sushi. The spicy tuna roll made with chunks of tuna and just a little spicy mayo, not this pureed mush they sell all over the Southland. I miss the Green Turtle Roll, delicious treat topped with shrimps and a wasabi creme. (Yes, I said it: creme.) I miss sushi that was easily obtained on my way home, or with a short walk around the corner. Maybe most of all, I miss sushi restaurants that are nice and good and not ridiculously overpriced. You can get two out of three, tops, on this side of the 405, but that's it.

I miss anger. I know it's around here somewhere -- or else, why did that cat flyer bother me so much? But for the life of me, I cannot seem to get angry about things that deserve my anger. No, those things only make me very, very sad. The best I've done so far: Some irritation with people who insist on walking in the bike lane. That's not going to cut it!

I miss delight. I don't know where it went. Maybe it's hanging out with anger? But nothing seems to do it these days. The movies in theaters seem like well-marketed wallpaper. Chocolate frosting helps for about 30 seconds, and then... blech.

Yes, I can connect the dots. I've been to this neck of the woods before -- dissatisfaction with the available options, local factory belching out the oppressive smell of unhappiness? This is Depressionville, population: me. My brain chemistry is protecting me from something, some lingering realization that's slouching towards me with a wicked gleam in its yellow eyes. In the meantime, my lobes slosh around in a tepid chemical mix, devoid of highs and lows, just this exhausting constant non-anything.

And like the driver of a 1981 Dodge Horizon, puttering through Gary, Indiana at 53 mph, there's not much I can do but roll up the windows, put the A/C on recirc and study the horizon, waiting for the distant outline of my destination to slowly emerge from the haze.

Go Ask Alice

2008-03-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

The coffee shop around the corner has a flyer on its community board. The headline reads "I hate my life." Then there's a picture of a fluffy tabby cat.

Underneath the picture is this caption: "It was bad enough when my owners got a second cat. Then they got a dog! But to add insult to injury, they've started having kids -- two so far! Please take me away from this hellish existence. My name is Alice. I am seven years old and have been using a litter box since I was a kitten. If you adopt me before April 15, I will even help with your taxes."

Ha ha ha. So amusing. I am amused.

Also, incredibly, incredibly angry. Who are these fucking bastards with their humor and their droll attempts at covering up their total lack of decency? You love Alice enough to see her placed in a new, loving home AND YET not enough to say, slow down your rapid acquisition of non-Alice compatible lifeforms?

Understand that as I say this, underneath my chair is Anna, a napping jellical born in 1993. She's grumpy and stiff on cold mornings, has clumps of fur on her backside where she cannot lick herself anymore and when unhappy, tends to venge-poop 6 to 12 feet from the litterbox. But she's in my house, living with me. In fact, I adopted another cat some years later to keep Anna company, because I thought my long work days were making her lonely. Two years after that, MG moved in with his cat Fifi. Three cats in one apartment -- it can be done. It helps if you have a closet or a bathroom to hold the litterboxes, but it can be done.

Would we love to have a dog? Yes. Ideally a big, elegantly-nosed black lab along the lines of MG's beloved Lucy. But labs need space and we live in an apartment. With three cats. And in our weaker moments, we're not so much writers as shut-ins. So, no dog for us just now. And don't even get me started on why we're not hip deep in kids.

Really, it's the seven years that kills me. Anyone can decide that a kitten isn't working out after a week or two, and return the blameless animal in time to place it in a better home. But to hold onto an animal, leading her to trust you, and believe she has a home with you, and then cast her out because she's not as much fun as the rest of your menagerie? Because you like your bright-eyed Jack Russell terrier better? It's more fun to watch Spongebob Square Pants with your kids than clean Alice's litterbox, so what the hell, why not just toss Alice out on her tabby ear?

It strikes me as unforgivably mean, and it leads me to think that the flyer's author was righter than he or she will ever know: Alice does hate her life, or she soon will.

Oh, Malcolm Gladwell!

2008-03-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

How could you?

It was with great personal satisfaction that I rolled my eyes and clicked away from Jack Shafer's recent anti-Gladwell dissertation on Slate. Mr. Gladwell's great crime? He'd told a funny story in public, and then, allowed the funny story to be taped and broadcast on "This American Life." Like virtually every funny story since the dawn of time, this particular tale wandered some distance from the literal, historical truth.

Yes, I said it. Sometimes, in order to be funny, people will fudge the truth. Worse, many writers are unable to resist the temptation to be funny. Sweet Jehosaphat on toast! Can you imagine? A person so addicted to being amusing that they do not report their experiences with the cut and dried precision of an AP News brief! Someone call Dr. Drew.

In his better moments, Mr. Shafer is a impish avenging angel, swooping down on weasel words and wringing the breath from ill-researched trend stories. For these acts of righteous journalistic vengeance, I have nothing but gratitude. But for whatever reason, Mr. Shafer is drawn to the Personal Yarn as if it were the journalistic killing fields, site of all that is horrifying and unethical in the world. (Note, for example, that Stephen Glass is not known for his hilarious monologues.) But he is, inexorably, drawn back to this topic every few months. Not too long ago, he went off on David Sedaris, and, as I say, last week he took aim at Mr. Gladwell.

Why this seems such a slippery slope is beyond me. Yes, we want Mr. Gladwell to be scrupulously honest in his reporting, but I have no difficulty believing he's capable of such effort and still, say, crack a joke now and then. One would sooner confuse the veracity of a Sedaris article with a Susan Orlean feature.

Ah, well. That was my position, anyway. And then Portfolio ran an article about Mr. Gladwell's spotty fact-checking. Then, a few hours later, they pulled the post.

Thank you very fucking much, Portfolio. Now I feel like a boob for writing off Mr. Shafer as a journalistic bluenose. And, for bonus points, I feel certain we can expect weeks, if not months, of additional posts on this subject from my favorite journalistic bluenose.

Get the Honorable Gentleman from Virginia Some Oil of Cloves

2008-03-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

HBO's "John Adams" continues to alternate between thought- and giggle-provoking.

First and foremost, I would very much like some kind of primer on What Is The Deal with Wigs?

I can see, and even approve of the production designer's decision to keep George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in their own hair, at least through the second installment. (Likewise, Ben Franklin goes au natural, but then, how would you know he was Ben Franklin if he wasn't bald on top, with flowing gray locks?)

But the whole variety of wigs raises a lot of unanswered questions -- what does a man wear a wig in his natural hair color, even if he has no hair of his own underneath? When does a man decide to switch over to a gray wig? And what are the subtexts of the curly sheep's wool wig vs. the frizzy crown favored by South Carolina's Mr. Rutledge vs. the carefully styled option favored by everyone from the Quaker Mr. Dickinson to the Unitarian Mr. Adams?

Then, and this presses on me most fearfully, what is the deal with curious head bandage/unraveled turban worn by Dr. Franklin's fellow Pennsylvania delegate? I've been through Wikipedia, HBO and an interactive version of John Trumbull's painting, without finding any information. Really, it's most distracting.

And lastly, there is a kind of ludicrous grandeur to the entire proceedings. MG has issues with the dialogue, but that's not what bothers me. Rather, I wish we could have skipped scenes like the one in which an unknown delegate walks to Adams and regrets that they are not all on their way home already. Adams is like, "Uh, yeah, I guess." This aimless conversation continues for a few moments until, at last, Adams addresses the delegate as Mr. Jefferson. That mystery solved, Jefferson excuses himself, while the narrator explains "And that was the day that John Adams met Thomas Jefferson." Except, you know, not.

I'm still not clear on why Washington wore his military uniform to a civilian gathering, except that it, along with his perennial expression of "Cripes, my teeth are killing me", are his chief identifying qualities.

It seems I can expect no shortage of such moments, considering a later scene in which Franklin revises the Declaration of Independence, then compliments Jefferson on the excellence of his newly invented chair. The only thing missing was the moment where Franklin fishes out a key, ties it to a kite string and walks out into a pouring rainstorm.

Also the Final Season of "Blake's 7"

2008-03-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

Dear "Torchwood,"

I love you, but you are not a good show. Sorry, but it had to be said. That wedding episode was full on retarded, up to and including the final scene in which, OF COURSE, it turns out Captain Jack was once married. Jesus, what hasn't that guy done? Give birth by C-Section? (Note: That would have been a much better idea, btw. Not that you asked me. I'm just saying.)

Nothing personal, I am a fan of the not good (see also "Scarecrow and Mrs. King," "Wizards and Warriors," and long stretches of your older cousin, "Original Formula Doctor Who, Now With Even More Monsters Made From Garbage Bags.")

Your with great affection and not especially reliable taste where genre fiction is concerned,

Kate

On Insane Conversations

2008-03-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, all you can do is wait.  Wait for lunch to come so you can set it up for the
read through.  Wait for the call to come so you can transfer it to right line.  Wait for the
call to end so the writers can go back to breaking the episode.  Wait for the notes to
come in so you can make the necessary changes and publish the next draft.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

At times like this, I think of Kenneth Koch's poem "The Boiling Water."  It begins:

A serious moment for the water is when it boils
And though one usually regards it merely as a convenience
To have the boiling water available for bath or table
Occasionally there is someone around who understands
The importance of this moment for the water -- maybe a saint,
Maybe a poet, maybe a crazy man, or just someone temporarily disturbed
With his mind "floating," in a sense, away from his deepest
Personal concerns to more "unreal" things.  A lot of poetry
Can come from perceptions of this kind, as well as a lot of insane
   conversations.
Intense people can sometimes get stuck on topics like these
And keep you far into the night with them.  Still, it is true
That the water has just started to boil.  How important
For the water!  And now I see that the three is waving in the wind
(I assume it is the wind) -- at least, its branches are.  In order to see
Hidden meanings, one may have to ignore
The most exciting ones, those that are most directly appealing
And yet it is only these appealing ones that, often, one can trust
To makes one's art solid and true, just as it is sexual attraction
One has to trust, often, in love.  So the boiling water's seriousness
Is likely to go unobserved until the exact strange moment
(And what a temptation it is to end the poem here
With some secret thrust) when it involuntarily comes into the mind
And then one can write of it.  A serious moment for this poem will be
   when it ends,
It will be like the water's boiling, that for which we've waited
Without trying to think of it too much, since "a watched pot never boils,"
And a poem with its ending figured out is difficult to write.

That is not, rest assured, the end of the poem. Like water about to boil, what seems
to be the end turns out to be the start of something else.

Occupational Hazards

2008-03-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

I've been tortured lately by the spectacularly butter/vanilla aroma that wafts off even a very small amount of 21-year-old Black Maple Hill bourbon. Tortured because a) it smells AMAZINGLY GOOD and b) I'm not much for on-the-job drinking.

Add to this that 21-year-old Black Maple Hill bourbon is necessarily a limited edition item, and it's currently sold out throughout most of North America, and I have a real problem on my hands.

But thanks to the delightful gentlemen at Fireside Liquors, we are now the proud owners of 17-year-old Eagle Rare bourbon, which is maybe not EXACTLY as good as BMH, but still very, very good indeed. It's like taking little high octane sips of essence of a delicious, if slightly spicy creme brulee.

This leads to me to wonder how I can track down a bottle of the other whiskey I really like -- Bruichladdich, which some kind friends (hi, Kate & Jon!) were kind enough to bring for us when they went to Scotland some years ago. My memory fails me, but I think it was about 12 years old, and it bloomed like a rose with about three drops of water.

What Have We Learned So Far?

2008-03-20T22:47:00.001-07:00

1. It is almost impossible to work and blog and get 7 to 8 hours of sleep. Something has to give. And I come from a long line of Olympic-grade sleepers, so...

2. MG loves the Rutles. We went to a Rutles event earlier this week and--wait, wait. I realize some of you might wonder, who are the Rutles? To express it in SAT terms, Nightline: Daily Show:: Beatles: Rutles. Cool? Cool.

Okay, getting back to the topic at hand. MG loves him some Rutles. Here's what he said about our outing:

Rutles reunion? Some said it couldn’t happen. Most said it shouldn’t happen. All I know is, Kate and I were raring to go from the moment the evening was announced. But being non-celebrities in a celebrity-driven town, it was not as easy as all that. First, tickets sold out almost immediately; second, Kate had to promise not to run up to Jeff Lynne and kick him for overproducing the Threetles.

Dude, for real. Jeff Lynne has some shin kicks coming. Man needs to keep his hands OFF THE SYNTHESIZER, YO. Isn't it a danger sign when your music turns out to be the pitch-perfect soundtrack for a film about a rollerskating rink where 1980 versions of the Greek muses like to hang out and, uh, rollerskate?*

For the rest of the story, check out MG's post on what by my count is his nine millionth blog, this one mostly about the Beatles.

* Not there is anything wrong with rollerskating. Rollerskating is effing cool.

C U L8r

2008-02-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm aware. I've fallen off the blog train.

Sunday was spent, shockingly, with MG. I know that's terribly old school to spend the weekend with your spouse, but that's how it rolls in our particular hizzy.

Some recent highlights:

* Borrowed a screener of "There Will Be Blood." All possibility of buying tickets went out the window when the writers' room spoiled 70% of the plot last Tuesday. I'm all for supporting the arts and not abusing academy screeners, but no way am I buying $22 worth of tickets when I already know 70% of the story.

* Am in the middle of a three day long craving for these wee Fannie Mae mints. Not Mint Meltaways, but the tiny chocolate/mint/chocolate sandwiches they sell in little paper cups, usually in a box with paper cups of something they call Peppermint Ice. Lucky for me, Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and last time I checked, the Valentine's Fairy does most of her shopping at Fannie Mae.

* Woke up at 6 this morning in preparation for an early morning phone call with an expert. (And wouldn't you like to know what kind of expert? Well too bad, because I'm not telling. Hahahahahahahaha!) Then, dear readers, I drove to the dentist for an 8 a.m. filling, with complimentary dose of novacaine. Then I jumped in my car and drove in to work, did some light research, and then spent the next eight hours in The Room, taking notes. (With a short break for some WGA-award-celebrating bubbly.)

And now I'm going home, maybe watch some "Breaking Bad", and if yesterday is any indication, hit the sack by 10:15 p.m.

P.S. I've been forced to log into iChat from inside the writers' room, in order to communicate with the other assistants. But if you know me and see me on your chat service, for the love of God, please ignore me. Somebody might have the balls to IM their buddies when they're supposed to be typing notes, but that person is not me.

Thou Shalt Not Covet

2008-02-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

Except for when, uh, you do.

J. Crew's website doesn't mention list the version of this cardigan I'm most in love with -- a bright, spring green that almost burns the retinas. It has no pockets and only buttons from the sternum upwards, but it's adorable. And if it weren't $178 (!), I'd be all over it like white on rice.

I have not yet given into the temptation to call-and-drive. (You may remember earlier posts in which I admitted I cannot do any such thing without crashing my car.) And yet, I am smitten with the Jawbone. Truthfully, it is another case of my life-long desire to be a lady Han Solo rising to the surface. Even Slate admits that the Plantronic's Voyager 520 is the better earpiece. But look at the Jawbone! It's so cool and techno looking! Like a Borg headset!

If you're very, very, very quiet, you can just hear the faint whispering plea, coming from Century City. It's a pan of Craft sweetbreads, and they're calling my name. (Note, this is not a picture of sweetbreads. This looks like a piece of pan-roasted sea bass, dressed with lashings of butter and some thyme, and is probably also delish.) Seriously, I could really go for a pan of sweetbreads right now. Mmm...thymus.

Don't Even Ask About the Devil's Jello*

2008-02-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

My last 60 minutes of conscious free time this week was spent on the couch with an hour of "Project Runway" and a bag of Sea Salt and Vinegar potato chips.

(Eating carbs? What?)

Well, almost my last 60 minutes. Now I'm blogging and after that, bed awaits. But I digress. My larger point is that, hour by hour, minute by minute, I am working my ass off at the J.O.B., and holy Christ, is it nice to take an hour off to watch somebody else sweat it.

Nothing wins my heart faster than Chris March's marvelous blend of competence and humility. First, I love that leopard print shirt he wears to one challenge after another. Love as I have not loved something since Jay's use of olive green fatigues and shocking pink polos have I been more smitten. He's sweet, honest, forthright and laughs at himself for winning "the tackiest challenge," but then, of course, nails it to the frickin' wall. His outfit was Gaultieresque. Yum.

I know there is some violent anti-Christian sentiment out there. (Clarification: I'm speaking of a deep hatred of the diminutive Project Runway contestant with the inexplicable peacock's fan of hair coming off his scalp, not certain late Roman Empire lion feedings.) He doesn't trouble me, for some reason. He might be gifted -- honestly, I'm not qualified to judge -- but it's baldly apparent that he doesn't have the people skills of a loofah. He can't read a room, he doesn't understand the use and application of tact, and he's magically self-absorbed.

Okay, that I will admit. I don't know where Christian's egoism is coming from. I mean, duh, he obviously thinks he's great. But he's just a tiny pointy-boot wearing imp, and from what I understand of the laws of thermodynamics, something can't come from nothing. So from whence does he find the energy to be so relentlessly pro-Christian and still breathe, walk, and complete challenges/win arm wrestling contests.

I am not, however, a saint. I can be enraged, and people who know me will back me up on this. This week's biggest outrage, by a long, long, long shot? A piece of chocolate cake that, I swear to God, tasted exactly like a taxi's cherry vanilla air freshener. How is that even possible? I don't know. And I don't want to know.

But how is it possible for scientists to find a way for me to eat a bite of cake and feel like I've gargled a Checker Cab and yet every sponge I've ever owned smells like ass after seven days?

*I refer, of course, to raw sea urchin. Out, out, vile jelly!

The Pause that Refreshes

2008-02-07T22:06:00.000-08:00

Even though my work schedule has been, is and will continue to be completely nuts, I made a point of going to a newly-formed book group tonight, planned by one of my classmates. (Thanks, Theresa!)

It might sound crazy, given that I'm averaging two hours of free time between the end of work and hitting the sack, that I would voluntarily spend that time eating chips and gossiping. Believe it or not, when you're spending more and more of your time behind a desk or in a car, even short vacations from the routine are a fantastic break.

Woot!

2008-02-06T22:58:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to conceal the awesomeness of my fella, but the cat's out of the bag. Last week's Awesome Link of the Week, James Wolcott, excerpted quite a lot of Michael's post about the Beatles on friend Jon's Tiny Revolution.

Here's my favorite part:

So TM was good for The Beatles, and not just from a songwriting standpoint. Going to India was the last gasp of the group's legendary unanimity. (Mick Jagger used to refer to them jealously as "the four-headed monster.") This quality had always been The Fabs' secret weapon, but by late 1967, it was subtly, silently on the wane. Trooping off to Rishikesh probably delayed their eventual split by a handful of essential months, perhaps the time it took to make Abbey Road. The Beatles went to India in February '68 and returned in May--by February '69, the group was practically defunct. As went Lennon, so went The Beatles; in Rishikesh, Lennon was a "Child of Nature," but as soon as he returned to the West he became a "Jealous Guy."

More Crazy New Trends

2008-02-05T22:12:00.000-08:00

* Getting up at 7 a.m. to go for a walk around the neighborhood before voting. Because if I don't start getting more exercise, I think I might die.

* Planning my entire wardrobe for the week, down to socks and shoes on Sunday night. Because I can't think about that stuff in the morning.

* Going to bed at 10:30 or 11, in a desperate attempt to actually get enough sleep.

* Setting out a pill-keeper with 7 days worth of vitamins. See earlier remarks about not being about not being able to risk getting sick.

* Leaving work at 7 p.m. when I still have another hour of copying, because I won't be any use to anyone if I get burned out in the second week of my job.

* Not eating any more Krispy Kreme doughnuts, because I'd rather break a femur than go through a bad sugar crash.

Who is this strange woman walking around in my Danskos, answering to my name? It seems like should be me, but... I've never passed up a Krispy Kreme doughnut in my life.

P.S. My doppelganger and myself both voted for Obama, albeit just the once. So don't blame me if he doesn't carry the state. I did my very best, and that's saying something in a town that, after three elections, suddenly moved every single polling station in 90403 to a new location. WTF, Santa Monica? Way to confuse a crap ton of senior citizens.

The Writers' Room Twenty

2008-02-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

Today, I ate:

1 piece of bread with melted cheese (Mrs. Keen's Raw Cheddar -- highly recommended if you like/can eat cheese.)

1 16 oz nonfat latte

1/2 Roast beef and gruyere sandwich

2 cups salad with basalmic vinegrette

1 piece chocolate cake

2 Krispy Kremes

1 lamb chop

1/2 cup polenta and gorgonzola

Tomorrow, I am getting up early to go for a walk before work. Also, I'm not eating again until March.

I Also Enjoy a Nice White Russian

2008-02-03T11:46:00.000-08:00

It makes me crazy to dwell on things that are not as I would have them, yet which I am powerless to change. Exhibit A: AMPTP driving the WGA to strike one week after I started as a writers' assistant.

I must have had thirty or forty conversations about this between November and January. Most of them began with someone enthusiastically observing how great it is that I landed this job. Some of them (usually with striking writers) began with an expression of regret at the terrible timing.

In both cases, I would nod and agree, and say "I'm trying not to think about it, but I'm sure it will all work out." I tried not to despair, but I also tried not to fixate on some distant future point when all would be well. I tried to live by the principle expressed in "The Big Lebowski": The Dude abides.

Now we're back at work and it is finally sinking in: I'm a writers' assistant. On frickin' "Mad Men."

Dear God. How did that happen?

How. Did. That. Happen?

If you're not me, or someone like me, my shock might be hard to understand. Let me try to explain.

In order to write for television, several things have to happen. First, you have to realize that writing for television is actually something that people do. I myself did not figure this out until 2001. (Yes, I am dumb.)

Second, you have to figure out that you, personally, want to write for television. This typically takes the form of compulsively writing spec scripts and entering them into contests. Some people win these contests and are instantly yanked into the industry through a training program or the like. (The biggest of these is the ABC/Disney Fellowship, which comes with generous year-long stipend and typically leads to an assignment on an actual show. It is hugely competitive, but it has launched a number of successful writers, including Jane Espenson.)

Most people, however, don't win anything with their spec scripts, except maybe credit card points at the copy shop. At this point, you have to figure out some way to not give up. This is harder than it sounds. Giving up is pretty easy. It doesn't cost anything, you can stay right where you are, and you never have to kill yourself meeting another deadline. Except for the part where it makes it impossible for you to ever write for television, giving up is awesome.

Not giving up sucks. It's expensive, time consuming and feels dangerously like wasting your life. It usually involves moving to Los Angeles (or New York, if you fancy yourself a comedy writer.) Worse, it usually means doing something which is not writing for television, in hopes that it somehow leads to writing for television. I managed to combine these two things by moving to Los Angeles to attend USC, but that's not an option for everyone.

Step three, not giving up, is terrible, but it's a walk in the park compared to the fourth thing that has to happen in order to write for television:

The Waiting.

Nobody is going to pluck you off the street and install you on a writing staff. You can work on your stuff and keep submitting your scripts and meet with your writing group, but mainly, you have to Wait. And it's not like Bay Cities Deli, where you take a number and you get called when your turn comes. You could Wait a week, you could Wait a year. There's no way to know.

Every day, you're working as a waiter or an office temp or a barista. In your spare time, you're writing. But mainly, you're Waiting. And the Waiting can kill you. It makes you move back home with your parents. It makes you take a well-paid day job which leaves no time for writing. It makes you consider business school.

And that is why my new job shocks me. Because working as a writers' assistant is the easiest Waiting there is. All day, you work with writers. You listen to them talk and write down their ideas. And you get paid to do it -- as if you wouldn't do it for free, or possibly, even pay them.

(It really is like paying a drug addict to attend an all-you-can-shoot heroin banquet.)

It feels to me like a bolt of good fortune that rocketed out of the heavens and into my front lawn without warning.

From the outside, I gather it looks a little bit less like random good fortune. I've heard more than one person observe that my willingness to work for free is shockingly rare among my peers. And, among people who will work for free, I'm told it is hard to find individuals who can do the same task over and over without additional instructions -- what one former consultant-turned-assistant called "retention of processes."

In any event, I continue to think that I owe this job to the generosity of my boss and the folks who recommended me, with just the lightest sprinkling of luck. And I am hugely, inexpressibly grateful for this chance to prove myself. I don't care what happens next, or if these leads to something else. I'm doing what I love, and that's all that matters.

Home Keys, Sweet Home Keys

2008-02-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

The theme of my first week on the job is:

Things I Would Have Done Differently, If I Had Known I Was Going to Be the Writers' Assistant

I interned with "Mad Men" last year from March to August, first just one day a week, then two, then staying late, them working on my off days, until I was in the office almost every day on the last week. I got lunch, made copies, checked the coffee and did research.

I worked hard, but I tried not to pry into the workings of the show, perhaps out of some believe that I wasn't supposed to see this wall chart or that outline. (And I probably wasn't.) But that I have to recreate some of those same documents, I wish I had at least paid attention to the shape of the wall chart, or the size of the type face used.

Soon we'll be in the writers' room and I'll be on white board duty, jotting stuff down with markers -- but I have no recollection of the way the writers' liked to brainstorm. (Except that I remember it being very different from "Smallville," which would completely cover a board with tiny handwriting, then take it off the wall for the writers' assistant to type up.)

Another, minor thing: All this week, we've been ordering in lunch -- except that I can't remember where the office used to order lunch from last year.

Anyway, it's a valuable lesson -- and one I wish I'd picked up sooner. Even though it's extremely unlikely that an internship will lead to a full time job, you never know when you're glimpsing some piece of information that might become extremely useful down the road.

Also: Thank god for that 8th grade typing class at Emerson Jr. High. I know learning to type is a drag and has the faintest whiff of defeat, as if you're setting yourself up for a career as a secretary. I can't even imagine trying to do do this job without the ability to type.

Personal Rules I've Recently Broken

2008-02-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

I hate highway usurpers -- those people who deliberately stay in a fast moving lane, knowing that they need to merge into the slower moving lane to their right or left, but put it off until the last second, then duck into a gap. (Or more likely, come to a complete halt while they wait for a gap, thus slowing even more traffic.)

I have become that person. The 10 is killing me. Wide open until La Brea, then an infuriating crawl into downtown. Sometimes I leave at 7:45 and it takes an hour to go the 17 miles to work. Downtown Los Angeles, a clump of skyscrapers on the horizon, taunts me like a smoggy Emerald City. Except today, I left at 7:45 and was at work in 35 minutes.

I'm also a remorseless maker of U-turns and three point turns -- another habit I used to loathe in other drivers. The only thing I can say in my defense is that Los Angeles streets are made for these kinds of maneuvers, with built-in designated left-hand lanes down the length of most major thoroughfares, unlike Chicago, which is at least partially constrained by a grid system designed for street cars and a light smattering of traffic.

Both of these failings way on me, although not so much I'll stop doing them. But nothing troubles me more than the ease with which I have accepted the primary requirement of my new job: To tell the unvarnished truth. Last week, if you'd asked me an awkward question, I would have answered with diplomatic tact, making sure I was not stepping on any toes. This week, no diplomacy, all Truth Bombs.

Going: home

2008-01-31T20:45:00.001-08:00

Coffee: made

Notes: typed

Agent's number: memorized

Teeth: cleaned

Lunch: eaten

Bookcase: stocked

DVDs: moved

Chart: typed

Mug: washed

Desk: changed

Work: done

Brave New World

2008-01-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

I'm having a great, but very strange week.

1. After six months of sitting on my counter, the Costco vats o' vitamins were finally cracked open last night, as I realized that I have to do everything in my power to stay healthy.

2. Forty-five minutes into my third morning commute, I started calculating exactly how early I'd have to go to bed in order to start for work @ 7 a.m. instead of 8. Yeah, I'm actually contemplating getting up earlier. (Man, I frickin' hate traffic.)

3. I am three for three with healthy, low fat, low carb lunches. (Today, salmon. Yesterday and Monday, salad with chicken.) I can't risk a blood sugar crash any more than a head cold. Also, I'm hoping the Omega-3s in the salmon will keep my neurons nice 'n speedy.

4. After months of car rides with Trashy Audio Books and bedtime solitaire, I am temporarily happy to ride in complete silence, to fall into bed without an iPod nano. Even in my traffic-y commute, I'm not bored or frustrated. Nor do I lie awake at night, unable to sleep. I am content.

Jeez oh pete. I'm happy.

So Tired...

2008-01-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

But so happy.

Two days down, 20 hours worked, 14 hours slept, two bagels eaten.

Eight months to go.

Awesome.

Sleep now.

There, I Said It!

2008-01-28T07:05:00.000-08:00

I don't like to waste this blog on pointless rants, but I gotta say something about Consumerist. Yeah, I'm referring to this post, submitted by Dave G:

Last week, I went into my local Gap to return a t-shirt I'd gotten as a birthday present. It was brand new, unworn, tags attached and I had the gift receipt. No problem, right?

I walked up to the cash register and indicated I wanted to make a return. Out of nowhere, the Sales Assistant takes out a machete and cuts my left arm at the shoulder. Blood everywhere, obviously. Also, it really hurt.

At this point, I asked to speak to the Manager so I could complete my return. While we waited for her, I realized my pants were going to need dry cleaning to remove the blood stains from my gushing wound. (Apparently there's a major artery in your shoulder, and it spurts like a mo-fo when cut. Who knew?)

So when the Manager finally shows up, I indicate that I'm trying to make a return, and point out that the Gap might want to compensate me for my dry cleaning, considering that the Sales Assistant created this whole problem when he cut my arm off.

The Manager looks over at the Sales Assistant (who, btw, is still holding the machete) and asks him "Is this true?"

That's when the Sales Assistant starts insisting I didn't have a receipt -- a total lie! So I reach over with my right arm, intending to fish the receipt out of my left pocket. Which would already be pretty awkward under the regular circumstances, never mind the part where I am completely covered in my own blood.

At this point, the Manager sees me go for the receipt, takes the machete from the Sales Assistant and stabs me in the eye, killing me instantly. Well, almost instantly. First it hurt like a son of a bitch. Then I died.

So, I'm writing this from heaven. My hope is that the Gap Corporation will see their way clear to letting my mom complete the return, even if the receipt is a little hard to read.

Pretty disturbing stuff, right? Okay, agreed. But here's the thing that really disturbs me -- check out the comments:

BY STINKINGBOB AT 02:22 PM What an asshole. Wah-wah-wah, I tried to make a return and paid for it with my life. What do you expect?

And this one:

BY KROVE AT 04:57 PM I think we should get the other side of this story. I mean, the Sales Assistant chopped off his arm for NO REASON? I don't buy it.

Okay, maybe he has a point. But then, read this:

BY RHYMESWIMOOD AT 07:13 AM Here's my question: Why the hell wasn't he wearing a chain mail tunic? I mean, c'mon, you're going to make a return without body armor? People like this piss me off -- one tiny thing goes wrong and it's the end of the world. And he still expects the Gap to accept his return. (What, like it's not as stained as these pants he won't shut up about?) Entitled dickweed. Some people never learn.

Seriously, Consumerist readers can blame the victim for almost anything -- a recent comment suggested that a deaf woman was a blatant troublemaker because she couldn't use a Steak 'n Shake drive-thru speaker. But this? This is going too far.

Yeah, I Really Like Ice Blendeds. So?

2008-01-27T10:21:00.000-08:00

My first day at USC, the writing division's assistant director stood up in front of the newly-minted class of 32 first year students and urged us in the strongest possible terms to Never, Never, Never Blog About School No Matter How Much We Might Want To.

This was excellent advice. In fact, we didn't know it then, but the class ahead of us had fallen into Harriet-the-Spy-type recriminations and hullabaloo precisely because of overly explicit blog coverage. And so I have drawn the curtain of discretion over my experiences at USC, with the unfortunate side effect that I posted about six entries the entire time I was in school.

However, I am serious about wanting this to be the kind the of blog I so desperately needed before I moved out here, so now that I am out of the program, I think it is time to answer the question...

Should I Go to Film School at USC?

Maybe.

First, I don't recommend the undergrad program. Mainly because I am secretly a 97-year-old biddy and don't like to see young people have fun. And because college should be a time of wandering, screw ups and false starts, none of which fits with locking yourself into a BFA program.

I went to the University of Wisconsin with every intention of getting a B.A. in journalism. This turned out to be a profoundly bad idea, and in time, I managed to figure out a better path. But if I had been trapped in the J-School from day one, it might have taken me much, much longer to pull the plug. Bottom line: I don't think anyone should be locked into the decisions they make at 18.

Also, in all honesty, very few people under 21 have the life experience -- and sufficient distance from said life experience -- to craft engaging stories. Instead, such writers (myself very much included) tend to delve into the fantastical and arch, which is fun to write, exhausting to read and impossible to produce. Better to bide your time, break up with your fiance, nurture unrequited crushes, throw up on the Bedford platform of the L, drive across the Rockies at 3 in the morning, smuggle a cat into a Best Western, buy and discard several apartments worth of Ikea, and then one day realize: You want to write for television.

That was my path. It doesn't work for everyone, but I'm pretty happy with how it worked out, so feel free to borrow it if you're so inclined. (Although, sometimes in the middle of the night, I wish I'd gone to Wesleyan, because every alum I've ever met is so smart and engaged and doing what they love. I don't know if it's something in the drinking water or what. But I digress.)

Second, I can't speak to the production MFA program. People seem to get a lot out of it and go onto successful careers in the industry, but I have no idea what it's actually like as a program.

Third, I don't know what it's like to go through the USC screenwriting program with the intention of writing for film. That was never my interest, and although I paid attention to those classes and did my best, my heart always belonged to hour long television. This may also explain why I got dinged at NYU, Columbia and UCLA, none of which have much in the way of a TV track. (I met a UCLA alum once who warmly described how much he enjoyed the TV class. The class. As in, one.)

All that said, if you want to write for television and you haven't been able to break in with a Disney fellowship or the like, then yes, I would definitely recommend USC's MFA screenwriting program.

Despite the Great Blog Incident of 2005, the program is full of great folks -- all gifted writers, generous classmates and good friends. Graduate school is not "The Real World." Everyone in the program managed to leap USC's various hurdles, i.e. assembling an application, and horrifyingly, taking the GRE. Eff! That's three months of my life I'll never get back. So there's a basic threshold of sanity/real life competence that is refreshingly different from the first week in the freshman dorm, when your roommate broke your turntable and then had sex with a UW running back WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the other candidates. It is a huge help to look around and realize that of the other 31 people in the program, not one of them writes the way or the kind of thing that you write. At that moment, it becomes very clear that you're not in competition with these people -- you're all on your own path. That's an important piece of information to absorb.

And then, of course, there's the actual education.

In two years, I took classes from successful sitcom and hour-long writers; sat through 15 weeks of visiting writers in Television Symposium; wrote a spec for "My Name is Earl" and "Grey's Anatomy," plus an original pilot; met a ton of working writers, from Josh Schwartz's visit to Industry Seminar to Ron Moore's appearance in hour-long drama and visited the set of "According to Jim" and "Ugly Betty."

I know, I know, big whoop, I got to visit the set. But both of those field trips taught me invaluable lessons about the industry. At "Ugly Betty," I learned the importance of keeping your head down and your eyes open -- both skills that served me well as an intern at "Mad Men." And at "According to Jim," I learned that producers sometimes hire Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf trucks to come in and make Ice Blendeds for the entire cast and crew (and any other folks who might be on set that day.)

I love good television and I love my job and I'm psyched to go back to work, but nothing, NOTHING has ever filled me with as much excitement for my chosen career as that free Ice Blended. In that moment, I knew I was on the right path.

The Aeron Chair Is the Social Worker's Jail Tatt

2008-01-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

Gah! James Wolcott linked to my "Breaking Bad" post -- specifically my overheated metaphor involving smoking hot Argentinians and Bryn Mawr sophomores.

For people who don't read Vanity Fair cover to cover and/or didn't obsessively track coverage of "Mad Men" last spring, this is like the Coen brothers spotting your vintage "La Dolce Vita" poster and knocking on your door to see if they can borrow it for their next film. On the one hand, it's hugely flattering, and on the other hand, you immediately realize -- as you shove that copy of "The Simpson's Movie" under an issue of Blueprint -- that everything else in your apartment betrays your complete lack of taste/discernment.

If you're coming from Mr. Wolcott's blog, welcome. Although you'll quickly discover exactly what a pointless backwater you've entered, let me spell it out: This is the blog I wish I could have read before moving out to L.A. -- what it's like to relocate from a very different urban environment (Chicago), the pros and cons of earning an MFA @ USC, the struggle to land an internship and, most recently, the brain-frying good fortune of being hired on as the "Mad Men" writers' assistant. Because I am a decent, if somewhat compulsive human being, there's no catty gossip and way, way too much metaphor-heavy ranting.

By curious coincidence, the remainder of this entry touches on the only other thing (besides my fervent hopes for a fair, timely settlement from the AMPTP) that gets me through the day: Celebrity Rehab. Jesus, that's the stuff. It takes us forever to get through a single episode, there's so much pausing the 'Vo to discuss this or that dysfunctional slight of hand.

My heart thrills to the sight of resident tech Shelly Sprague, coolly regarding the braggart Ricco Rodriguez over her glasses while he flounders for some glimmer of recognition or approval. Ms. Sprague is nowhere to be found on CR's IMDB page or the VH-1's website, yet she provides a vitally important and delicious counterpart to Dr. Drew's own centered calm. As Conway goes off the grid for what seems like the sixth time in three episodes, we cut to her in the next room, telling Dr. Drew "Jeff is being extremely... non-compliant." No drama, no overt judgment, just a measured appraisal of the situation.

I used to joke with some LCSW friends that I thought the government should staff up an elite squad of Navy Seal-grade social workers, to be deployed into stressful situations in order to take things down a notch. Not just to post-Katrina New Orleans or 9/11 NYC, but college dorms where things have taken a "Lord of the Flies" turn or dysfunctional offices where the employees actually think their workplace is a family.

But honestly, I don't think those assignments -- all good, valuable and necessary -- can approach the challenge of working with addicts. It's the mental health equivalent of the sauna fight in "Eastern Promises." High stakes, no holds barred, balls out conflict -- and it takes some kind of unkillable inner strength to get through it alive.

I couldn't do it. MG will tell you, I can't get through two minutes of the show without yelling at the young girls that they're being pulled into the codependent gravitational pull coming off Jeff Conway. He's like a dysfunctional Jupiter, attracting smaller, equally effed up moons from distant galaxies and/or suburbs of Los Angeles.

His addled girlfriend is so strung out on their relationship that she panicked at the prospect of killing two hours in Pasadena, waiting for the start of visiting hours. Hell, I know people who drive out to Pasadena just to walk around aimlessly for an entire day.

Apparently, dating Jeff Conway strips you of any interest in The Container Store. If there's a more horrific consequence to drug addiction, I don't want to know.

It begins...

2008-01-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

I start on Monday.

An interim deal has been signed, sealed in an airless canister and fired into space so it can never be rescinded or altered in anyway, until it accidentally collides with the imprisoned remains of General Zod in the Phantom Zone and he comes to the "Mad Men" writers' room to claim us as his loyal slaves.

I am almost consumed by the guilt of going back to work -- yes, legally, legitimately, and even possibly serving as yet another wedge to force the AMPTP to reach a deal -- while most of the WGA is still on strike.

Why yes, I have both Irish Catholic AND Eastern European grandparents. Why do you ask?

Even so, I am extremely, extremely, extremely excited.

P.S. Can I get you anything? Coffee? An extra fork for that salad?

This Just In

2008-01-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

Variety is reporting rumors of an interim WGA deal with Lionsgate.

As in, Lionsgate, the company that makes "Mad Men."

Will this happen? I don't know.

If it does happen, does it mean I'm going back to work? I don't know.

How do I feel about this? Excited and uncertain and torn.

Must not get my hopes up.

Ironically, am already allowing myself to feel guilty about going back to work before the strike is settled.

Because it's always a good time to suffer.

Get Up On, Vol. 1

2008-01-23T18:28:00.001-08:00

"Breaking Bad" on AMC. Holy crap, you are an awesome show. I can love you with the pure, untainted love of someone who has not seen your next seven episodes beaten out on white boards. "Breaking Bad" is like the smoking hot Argentinian who hooks up with your on-again-off-again Significant Other when the S.O. studies abroad for a semester. You'll get back together when the S.O. comes back next September, but in the meantime, it is very flattering to realize your Significant Other has such awesome taste -- and is also so personally attractive that the S.O. can attract the attention of smoking hot Argentinians.

(In this metaphor, "Breaking Bad" is the smoking hot Argentinian; "Mad Men" is the sophomore at Bryn Mawr; AMC is the junior at Yale you met last summer when you interned at HBO; I am the roommate who buys bottles of Ballatore with my older sister's ID and happily sits up all night discussing whether AMC looks more like Kyle McLaughlin or Scott Bakula.)

"The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on Fox. If I were a Titaness, I would eat this show to hide it from my angry Titan spouse until one day it will spring, full grown, from my brow and be the most beloved of all my children. Wait, I think I'm combining Athena and Zeus. Never mind. Two bad ass ladies! One kinda mom aged! One kinda teen aged! Both frickin' bad ass! Both brunette! Awesome! (Also, if you notice, really deft structuring of the show so that we always have at least two ongoing threads -- John in high school, Sarah investigating SkyNet, plus an overarching ethical question. Love!)

The New Orthotics in My Shoes. The old orthotics were pretty good. I haven't wracked up my knees since I got them. (Except for that two mile walk on a beach full of pebbles in Ireland, but no orthotic was going to protect me from that.) The new orthotics are like sex on my feet. I put them in my shoes and suddenly there is the most delicious support underneath my arches, like wee brownies are carrying me through my day's errands. Also, these orthotics are made from hard plastic with purple felt lining, and probably won't fall apart in two years like my previous vinyl 'n foam 'n fiberglass pair.

(Anyone who tells you that nobody walks in L.A. is a liar. Because I did not wear a pair of orthotics to shit in 29 months by sitting behind the wheel of a car. )

Taking the 10 to the 405 to Sunset. I am pretty embarrassed I did not think of this sooner. But thanks to an invite to some joint @ La Cienega and Sunset, I decided to mix it up, and what do you know? Fast, easy shortcut to the mid-west side. Huzzah.

Almost Being Done with "Eclipse." I don't know when I've been more bored by a young adult novel. As of this morning, I've skipped over three hours with no regrets. Most lame development ever: Irresistible Bella wants to get it on with her sexy vampire Edward, but he's holding out UNTIL THEY'RE MARRIED. And I'm not talking about the dark gift. I'm talking about the sweaty, moan-y gift. Although Edward is also hoarding the dark gift until after the Big Day. Basically, nothing awesome can happen until they're married. P.S. The author is a Mormon. Coincidence? I think not.

(P.P.S. I have nothing against Mormons, except that apparently they write horrifically tedious young adult novels. I feel like I bought a ticket to "Cloverfield" and got tricked into watching "Pilgrim's Progress." But then I feel the same way about C.S. Lewis, so there you go.)

(P.P.P.S. Sorry for the excessive metaphoring. I promise, my next post will be completely literal.)

And Now For Something Completely Tedious

2008-01-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

I know very little about either football or economics. Nonetheless, I root for USC every September, because I dropped a crapton of cash on tuition there, and because they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of burly 20-year-olds who can slip between looming tackles like a wet watermelon seed.

In economics, I am a fan of the theory that inadequate consumer income brought on the Great Depression. I first touched upon it here -- particularly the way in which the lower and middle classes overextended themselves on credit in order to maintain the fiction that their standard of living was keeping pace with the top 5%. (Because, of course, it totally wasn't keeping pace with the top 5%. Largely because said top 5% were redirecting all their free capital into further stock market speculation, rather than increased wages or the like.)

Like a belated Christmas present, the New York Times has introduced me to a recent study which found that from 1980 to 2005, the national economy more than doubled. (The dears, they even adjusted for inflation! I love it when people adjust for inflation. If there were a single economic skill I long for, it is the ability to adjust for inflation. Is there anything more annoying that movie studios that trumpet their film as the "biggest grossing picture of all time" without adjusting their gross for inflation? No, there is not. But I digress.)

In that same window of time, the average income for the bottom 90% of America has dropped like a stone. In 1973, the bottom 90% made an average of $33,001 (adjusted for inflation, natch.) Today, the average income is nearly $4000 less.

Less? Yes, less. In 34 years, the average American has since his or her income drop $4000.

But of course, nobody says to themselves, "Adjusted for inflation, I make almost $4000 less per year than my parents, so I'd better be a little thriftier with my dollar." People see that their parents could buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs, and assume (wrongly?) that they should be able to buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs.

And that's how you wedge our economy so far up the ass of the subprime crisis that our dollar bills are starting to smell like flopsweat. Yes, some people knowingly took on mortgages they couldn't afford. Yes, some people openly defrauded the system. But many, many, many people just thought they were following in their parents' footsteps, and their parents before them.

(Note to Oslo: Feel free to send my Nobel Prize for Economics to our place in Santa Monica. Better use Fed Ex; our building has really small mail slots.)

A Day That Will Live in Annoyance

2008-01-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

Annoying Piece of News The First: Some asshat smuggled a camera into a screening of "Cloverfield" and posted it on the Internet. No, I won't give you the link. Yes, I'm pretty sure Bad Robot is on the case.

Did I turn 63 over night or are people attaining all new levels of assholish behavior?

This isn't like pirating "Cloverfield" to sell black market DVDs. Although obviously illegal, at least there's a rational incentive: profit.

And it's not like torrenting "Cloverfield," which has a time/irritation threshold that would drive almost anyone to the theater and/or DVD store. (Full disclosure: I torrented the first two seasons of "Dr. Who," but only because I could not wait the 9 or more months until the Sci Fi Channel acquired and aired the BBC series. I subsequently bought both seasons on DVD, and watched season three when it aired, just a few weeks after it had finished running on the BBC.)

But to put up an hour and thirteen minutes of a pirated movie on a click-and-play website? That's just bald I-broke-the-law-and-no-one-can-stop-me vandalism. And it makes me want to punch someone.

Annoying Piece of News the Second: My beloved Kerastase Elasto-Curl Rinse Out Conditioner ($31 for 6.8 oz) has been discontinued. Near as I can figure, it has been replaced with another product that costs $58 and does not even have the word "curl" in the name.

This is grievous news indeed.

You may judge me harshly for spending $31 on a 6.8 oz tube of conditioner. But the curly-headed individual lives in a wretched no man's land of very few grooming choices. Many, many, many women with curly hair will actually blow dry it straight rather than bother with the hassle. (Every time you see a photo of Sarah Jessica Parker, hair hanging pin-straight down her back -- that's a professionally administered blow out.)

I think it's a giant waste of time. The one time I let someone do it, the resulting hair was disturbingly unKatelike, as if I had traded hair with Barbie's brown-haired best friend Midge. Alas, I am in the minority. The purchase and maintenance of blow-outs in sundry high end salons is a frequent topic in every glossy ladies magazine, and there is seemingly always some new tool or trick to discuss, like ionic hair dryers or ceramic flat-irons.

Getting back to my original point: Having curly hair is like having profound lactose intolerance of the scalp. You are constantly ignoring or inverting conventional wisdom. For example: I haven't brushed my hair since 1989. I don't even own a brush. (My last brush was awesome, with an olive wood handle that smelled fantastic. But from my 13th birthday onwards, every time I used it, the result was, ah, horrific.)

I don't own a comb either, but I get a thorough combing every time I get my haircut. Oddly, there are never any world-class snarls or tangles, although as a child, I used to acquire both on an almost hourly basis.

If I could get away with it, I would wash my hair once a week. It never looks worse than when it's perfectly clean. But even though every shampoo-less day makes my hair curlier and curlier, eventually it gets to be more than I can handle, with crazy spirally tufts sticking out in all directions. And that's when I have to show my hair who's boss, usually three days after my last shampoo.

Anyway, the point is, I am okay with spending $31 on conditioner, because at the rate I use it, a tube can last me almost a year. And because I only do three things to my hair (wash it, condition it, and fingercomb some goop through it), I need each of those things to work EXTREMELY WELL.

There are no second chances with curly hair. If it all goes to hell, I am utterly boned. I can't comb it out, I can't blow dry it straight. I can't even wash it again and start over, because washing my hair twice in one day makes it frizzy and ridiculous, no matter how much conditioner I use.

Finally, after years of searching, I had the trifecta: a shampoo, a conditioner and a goop that all worked perfectly. Then Kerastase goes and discontinues the lynch pin of my whole system. Bastards.

Oh, God. Just the thought of wandering out into the wilds of various salons and Walgreens, looking for a replacement for my Elasto-Curl weighs on me... scrutinizing the label, trying to decide if this stuff has too much silicone or not enough, worrying that I'll hate the smell, wondering if it's worth the price. It's like my hair is about to be audited by the IRS.

Miscellany

2008-01-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

Pernod, the French anise-flavored liquor, is a fantastic addition to any kind of mussel/shrimp/scallop dish. I've already steamed up some mussels with good results, and I have high hopes for its next use. However, I have yet to find a way to consume the stuff in a glass without wanting to shave my tongue afterwards. My first taste was, hmm, very reminiscent of Triaminic brand children's cough syrup.

And now, a long overdue follow up on my conversations with various relatives w/r/t to what exactly is the deal with this writers' strike.

In these conversations, I have frequently explained the concept of force majeure. Said principle allows one or both parties in a contractual agreement to withdraw from said agreement without financial penalty. Among the various act of god clauses in the standard deal contract, most industry contracts also specifically mention that a strike of eight to ten weeks will also trigger force majeure.

You have to understand is that virtually everyone and everything more important than a stapler has a studio deal. I worked for a company in Santa Monica that was funded completely by a deal with Disney (21 miles away in Burbank.) The next office over belonged to David Duchovny and Tea Leoni's production company -- a small organization that was, most likely, entirely funded by a deal with one of the big studios. Once upon a time, the film industry ran on the studio system; now it runs on deals. And all the deals, ultimately, go back to one of the big studios. (Disney, Sony, Time Warner, NBC/Universal, Fox and Viacom. That's six right? I think that's all of them.)

At this point in the story, I tend to use Mr. Cuba Gooding Jr. as a hypothetical individual with a hypothetical deal which perhaps his studio would like to terminate, rather than continue to pay him millions of dollars for such films as "Snow Dogs." I mean no offense to Mr. Gooding Jr. I'm sure his contract is in good standing and no one has any interest in releasing him from his deal.

And now, at long last, the relevant information. Futon Critic has a list here of Very Nearly All the TV Deals There Are. It doesn't even scratch the surface of the various film deals. From what I can see, 50 deals were canceled in the last week -- and that's just on the TV side.

Quite a lot of the details are fuzzy, but for example, Liz Astrof, who worked on "Welcome to the Captain" in some capacity, is rumored to have had a two year, seven figure deal. That means, minimum, she was going to make a million bucks a year. But not anymore, because her deal has been canceled.

Now, multiply those savings times the other 49 canceled deals on the list and that, dear friends, is why the AMPTP wasn't in any hurry to wrap up the strike. A month of "House" reruns is a drag, but it's nothing compared to saving several hundred million bucks in contractual payments.

We can only hope that, having thinned the ranks somewhat, the studios are now in the mood to actually make a deal.

You Learn Something New Every Day

2008-01-19T10:38:00.000-08:00

If I haven't mentioned it before, one of my most beloved guilty pleasures is the Trashy Audio Book.

Originally, I tried listening to audiobooks at the gym, as an incentive to work out, but I was forever switching over to NPR, or in the evenings, opting for the TV band on my radio/Discman. (This works better in the midwest, where network television starts at 7 p.m. and the really good stuff hits the air around 8, perfect for walking home from work or putting in some time on the elliptical. When you're on the west coast and have to wait until 9, it doesn't work nearly so well.)

Then I became ensnared in a protracted bout of insomnia -- brought on by a combination of too much coffee, not enough exercise, and a ton of anxiety about school and career prospects. One night, I grabbed my iPod and listened to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Practically Everything, " determined not to care how long it took me to fall asleep. I was out like a light inside of 20 minutes.

So that's how it started. Once I branched out into novels, I discovered that some books would hold my attention so well that I could actually bribe myself into going for a walk if it meant listening to the next installment. But whether I listen to it as I fall asleep or walk around the neighborhood, it has to be a ripping yarn.

I have tried, repeatedly, to go the classy route, with mixed results. Dickens works out pretty well, because he's a master story teller. "The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud was praised high and low when it came out last year, but it was a dreadful slog. Similarly, I don't think I'll ever get past the second chapter of "The Time Traveler's Wife," although I am cautiously optimistic about my chances with "Bel Canto."

But in the end, the best options are distinctly, hmm, populist. Elmore Leonard is great; Carl Hiassen even better, if that's possible. (Hiassen seems to keep a closer eye on the karmic scale, with the result that fewer people die through misadventure than in Leonard.) I've cut a giant swath through the backlist of Lois McMaster Bujold, a science fiction/fantasy writer of tremendous gifts but absolutely no intellectual cachet. (I wish it were otherwise. If Octavia Butler can score a MacArthur for her work, than Bujold should at least be in the running for her smart, shockingly well-observed fiction.)

In my last visit with Bujold, I realized with some pleasure that she was clearly an enormous fan of Jane Austen and, bestill my heart, Dorothy L. Sayers. The vogue for Austen is seemingly unkillable, and every month bring some new, close-but-no-cigar attempt at continuing her legacy. But Dorothy L. Sayers enjoys no such continual reuse, alas, and once you read through her books, you are at an end, until you forget the plots sufficiently to go back and re-read them. (There are two attempted sequels, based on notes found among her papers, but I cannot recommend them.)

Sayers was a mystery novelist, working through the 1920s and into the 30s, before becoming considerably more theological in her interests and switching over to writing religious dramas for the stage. Her chief protagonist was the younger son of a peer, one Lord Peter Wimsey -- a self-styled upper-class twit, with plenty of money and free time. Her novels have all had their moment in the Masterpiece Theater spotlight, although I don't think the definitive Peter Wimsey has been captured on film. If you could get Hugh Grant to completely immerse himself in the slick-haired, monocle-wearing fashions of 1920, you might be in the neighborhood.

Anyway, it was with great pleasure that I realized Bujold was borrowing subtly from both Austen AND Sayers in her Miles Vorkosigan series. Going back to the start of the book, I noticed that the dedication mentioned Jane, Dorothy and a third name that meant nothing to me: Georgette.

That, it turns out, was a reference to Georgette Heyer, a contemporary of Sayers who seems to have single-handedly invented Regency romance. It's a genre for which I have very little respect, having spent many hours as an Oak Park library aide putting to rights the endless inventory of paperback romances, all with interchangeable titles like "As My Lord Would Have It" and "A Decidedly Awkward Affair," illustrated with girls in empire gowns touching their fans to their chins with an air of elegant bewilderment.

But to begin with, Heyer set the bar very, very high. She was a thorough student of the Regency era, accumulating vast quantities of research materials on everything from slang to snuffboxes, and knew her history cold. Her work, like Bujold's, is not openly derivative of Austen -- it has a tone and a style all its own, and is likewise satisfying on its own terms, whether you get all the references or not.

The best illustration I can give of the inherent differences between Austen and Heyer: I am currently halfway through "A Civil Contract," which follows the struggles of a destitute young lord, attempting to repair his late father's decades of fiscal idiocy. A man, in other words, in much the same predicament as Elizabeth Bennett or the sisters from "Sense and Sensibility," in that he has nothing but his good name and a desire to protect his family from dishonor. Except that Austen could never have written this book. Unmarried to the last, I don't think she was ever able to know a man well enough to write entirely from his point of view.

(Or, alternatively, she thought it was her duty to tell the more-neglected female side of the story, and I can't say she was wrong. Happily, a hundred years later, Heyer was willing to give it a shot. An electrifying thought: What would Margaret Atwood make of a Regency novel?)

Anyway, I am greatly encouraged by this new find. I have no idea what the rest of Heyer's bibliography is like -- and she is reportedly an extraordinarily trite mystery novelist -- but I am really looking forward to investigating her other stuff.

P.S. The excellent Jane Espenson often finds a way to tie a seemingly unrelated tidbit of information back to her governing theme of Writing the Best Spec Script You Possibly Can. I think we all know that if I chose, I could tie this post into my current mania for Advice on Moving to Los Angeles, but we're all adults here, so I'm going to let you make that connection for yourself.

Yet More Not-Terribly-Original Advice

2008-01-18T12:23:00.000-08:00

I've just eaten 16 Milk Duds. They were delicious, but that is Too Many Milk Duds. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself just I'm finishing Milk Dud 3 or 4, or even 11. Now my taste buds are numbed out from the sugar/confectionery wax combo and I have 200 worthless calories rattling around inside me.

From the little-discussed-downsides of Too Many Milk Duds, let's transition to the little-discussed-downsides of Los Angeles -- things that every newcomer will discover in time, but by the time you see the pattern, you'll be so over it that you never mention it when people ask you what Los Angeles is like.

1. Terrible desserts. This town does not get sugar at all. A handful of places get it right -- Vanilla Bakery, thank God, and Mozza -- but most of the time, you're going to be confronted with some kind of roasted fruit tart and/or too-dry cake-type item. And forget about ever eating a decent tiramisu or cannoli again. Outside of one or two small Italian-American community, neither can be found for love or money.

2. Inadequate Clothing Inventories. Cute non-chain stores don't seem to carry anything above a 6. Thinking through this logically, I suspect that, in fact, boutiques order clothing in the larger sizes, but these sell out faster than the 2s and 4s, which is why it seems like there's never anything else in stock.

2a. Also, clothing for the non-19-year-old is generally thin on the ground. Around the corner at the Third Street Promenade, there's not a single clothing store for the Rational Adult Man or Woman until you get to Macy's at the end of the block. It's half a mile of PacSun and Pink Ice and the like.

3. Second-Class Status Dining. In our two-year-and-counting, the stories of places with Great Service for Celebrities, Terrible Service for Ordinary People just keep racking up. I can't think how this is a viable business model -- there can't be more than 1000 A-, B-, C- and D-List celebrities in all of Los Angeles, and they can't be everywhere at once. Surely you have to build word of mouth among the regular folks. And yet from Chowhound to Citysearch to Yelp to, sadly, our own experience at Melisse, the disappointments keep coming.

3a. Also, way too many restaurants are straight up terrible, and yet continue to survive on buzz and/or location. Nowhere is this condition worse than in our own Santa Monica, which supports both Boa, maybe the most worthless steak house in existence, and Ivy at the Shore, which is basically Sarabeth's with insane prices.

4. Many, many, many aspiring actors. I wish them all the best and hope for good things for all of them, but it wears you out after a while.

5. Insufficient stock of condominiums. Santa Monica is especially hamstrung because any building with enough charm to survive a conversion to condominiums will also have enough rent-controlled-tenants that no such conversion could ever go through. (That's the case in our building, for example.) Since rent control does not apply to new construction, I can see the attraction of putting up whole buildings worth of units that can rent for thousands of dollars a month. But at the same time, all of Los Angeles seems fiercely attached to the dream of owning a single family home -- surely the least efficient use of the area's scarce land and scarcer resources. And I'm not just saying that because I want to buy a condo.

6. Hard-to-Find Everything. After years of listening to my parents rattle off Chicago addresses in accordance with that city's carved-in-stone numerical grid, I admit: Los Angeles street-level geography is a nightmare. People who've lived here for 15 years still end up using a GPS unit to find their way around. In truth, I think there is some kind of grid, but since the numbers are not clearly marked on either buildings or street signs, it's almost impossible to track.

6b. Many, many stores like to create a significant street presence by building right up to the sidewalk, and then tucking the parking behind or underneath. I agree, that probably makes for a better streetscape, but the first three or four times I visit any major retailer, I inevitably end up driving in half-mile-circuits, trying to locate the tastefully concealed entrance to the garage. I only figured out how to park at Walgreen's this October. No, really.

6c. God help you if you have any kind of claustrophobia issues and you've parked in an underground garage. When they work well, they're the perfect solution to L.A.'s abundance of cars -- and I'm always happy to pay for parking. But if something goes wrong or traffic spikes, it's hell three stories under ground. See also: Whole Foods on New Year's Eve; Beverly Hills Municipal Parking at lunchtime.

7. Isolation. The obvious solution is to have friends already living out here, but that's not always so easy to arrange. A good second choice would be some kind of pre-existing job or school. USC picked up the slack for me, and then some, in a way that made the ridiculous tuition almost worthwhile. Since I started working, my various internships have gone a long way to fleshing out the rest of my social life in a very promising fashion. Meanwhile, MG has picked up some like-minded individuals (hi, Dirk!) and he's got various old friends here and a short phone call away. But if we didn't have these support structures in place, I don't know if we could have lasted a month, much less a year.

I'm 100% Positive the Strike Will Go Until June*

2008-01-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, I was wrong about last night's "Project Runway." I was positive that this week's challenge would be a return of the popular make-an-outfit-from-the-stuff-in-your-apartment. I was way, way off.

But I've never been happier to be wrong. For one thing, it reminded me that I can't predict the future, and proved that "Project Runway" can still surprised and delight me. (Oh, brother, can it! Between the Sweet P/Rami show down and the Kit/Ricky debacle? Delicious!) Ricky, btw, doesn't really bother me, but I admit, I have no idea why he's still on the show. I think it has to be a question of story arc. This wasn't his week. There wasn't a moment or a dramatic reversal that would justify taking down the Moistest Designer.

In a similar vein, rumor has it that the DGA has negotiated a deal with the AMPTP, and is now in talks with the WGA to see if they can be brought on board. My first thought is that this will never work, but again, I would be delighted to be wrong.

Which brings me to today's piece of Advice for the Aspiring Whatsit** Who's Thinking of Moving to L.A.:

Let Los Angeles surprise you.

When you start talking about moving to L.A., you'll hear a lot of conventional wisdom on the subject. My beloved Chicago Improv Network routinely bursts into brief storms of Why-Los-Angeles-Sucks-Balls-and-I-Would-Never-Move-There. Traffic, heat, smog, blah blah blah.

The city has some drawbacks. Every city does. But every city has its perks, if you let yourself see them. If you don't, you'll never be able to think of that place as home. (It's the same principle by which we fall in love with vacation spots. That pang of regret as you're leaving, and the brief, crazy thought of moving back there permanently? Both signs that you've noticed a few of that place's unique perks.)

Hands down, my favorite thing about L.A. is the light. It's the light of Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings, hot, bright and shadowless for four to six hours every day. It makes whites shout, blues glow, oranges burn. It forces me to wear sunscreen, sunglasses and sometimes even a hat, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I'm also fond of the utterly unmidwestern plant life here, including a weird, spirally bush we call Gilliam Shrubs because they look like something out of Monty Python, and the wonderfully car-friendly terrain. After a month out here, the streets of Chicago look like the narrow alleys of a medieval Italian mountain town.

But in the end, you have to find your own favorite things -- but at the same time, you'll find your own way of thinking of Los Angeles as your home.

* I'm hoping glaringly wrong predictions comes in threes. Or at least twos.
** I came out as a screenwriter, but I can't think why this advice wouldn't help an actor, director or whathaveyou.

Step One: Visit Honda of Lisle. Ask for Manny.

2008-01-16T19:09:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled onto the blog of a couple of Midwesterners who came out to L.A. last summer, hoping to jump start their careers. The last entry, dated a week or two ago, announces that they're headed back to their hometown.

The goals that brought them out to L.A. no longer any appeal, and plainly put, they're both more than a little homesick.

MG & I have friends -- folks we like and respect -- who came out here before us, and headed back to Chicago before we'd signed our lease. Their reasons for going out, and coming back, were rational and considered, and we know a dozen more people just like them.

I admire them all for their bravery. Moving to a new city to try something out, and knowing when it's time to retreat are both remarkable feats, like finding the courage to go to college far from home, or breaking up with your impressive boyfriend when you realize he's a jackass.

We pulled off the first half so far -- two years, five months and counting. The second half? If the time comes, I trust we'll figure it out.

In the meantime, we can't go through our lives, waiting for the sudden realization that this was all a terrible mistake. We've had to build a life here, even if it's not going to work out in the long run.

My Irish grandmother would not approve. She was a world-class Preparer for Disaster, with a six-by-four foot cupboard stocked with emergency supplies of generic butter cookies and peanut butter. And she always kept an eye peeled for ill tidings. She used to listen to a police scanner radio in the evenings, ears pricked for any word of misdoings in our corner of Oak Park. If a squirrel so much as farted in the night, she'd be on the phone to our house -- just five blocks away -- to warn us to be careful when we went to put the car in the garage.

When we first thought of moving to L.A., I searched high and low for blogs or websites that might prepare us for the change, and came up woefully short. I found Franklin Avenue, which isn't quite the Welcome to Los Angeles gateway I needed, but it proved that sane people live in this city and have ordinary lives, almost entirely free of crack addiction and prostitutes. (Even if it didn't offer me a cookie and a glass of milk, Franklin Avenue is smart, well-written blog and highly entertaining. I recommend it whole-heartedly.)

Add to this that of late, I've started to think this blog could use a little bit more direction. Not a lot more. God forbid. If I can't ramble on my blog, the top of my head might well blow right off. But I'm thinking it might be time for me to start putting up the kind of posts I would have killed for when we were trying to make this decision.

The first, and most essential piece of information I can possible provide someone thinking of moving to L.A.:

Buy a car.

Even if your move is months or years away, buy a car. A good car, well-maintained, with excellent gas mileage and a fully-functioning air conditioner. We bought a 2001 Certified Used Honda Civic in 2004, almost 18 months before we ultimately moved to L.A. For one thing, it spread out the expense of the move over a longer window of time. For another, it let me establish a good driving record in the marginally less-insane city of Chicago before moving to Los Angeles.

More importantly, buying the car started to prepare me for a mindset that has proven invaluable since we moved here. There are driving days and walking days. The point is, condense all your car-centric errands into as few days as possible. Hit Costco on your way home from work, schedule lunches with your Mid-Wilshire friends for the same day as your haircut in West Hollywood. At the same time, try to bundle together local errands into a single neighborhood walk.

You can't spend your whole life in the car. It will drive you insane. At the same time, you can't not have a car in Los Angeles. Maybe someday, when at last there's a light rail line all the way to the sea, but right now: No.

So you have to make a point of balancing the two extremes. During the semester, every class day is a driving day, so I've tried to make the rest of the week as pedestrian as possible. With the spectre of employment looming, I will probably be reduced to pedestrian weekends, but even that's something. I already take pedestrian weekends pretty seriously, riding public transit to haircut appointments just because I can.

If you work it right, eventually it's a treat to be in the car, because you're not on foot. And it's a treat to be on foot, because you're not in the car. Or put it another way: Eventually you get sick of both. Uh, yeah.

Tomorrow: More advice of dubious value

Rejection

2008-01-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the world does not need another meticulous dramatic English language adaptation of "Persuasion."

I am very sorry to put it so plainly, but really! I cannot see that this newest arrival has any advantages over the 1997 installment. Indeed, I find Anthony Stewart Head the most agreeable performer, and generally speaking, I do enjoy Miss Austen's works.

But to cast aside the earlier version with Mr. Ciaran Hinds? It is not to be borne! And to what end? It is a truth universally acknowledged among readers of "Persuasion" that Captain Wentworth is a sailor, a profession that cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly. Just so! Mr. Hinds is the very picture of a seafaring fellow, his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree. (All this quite aside from the gentleman's efforts in the theatrical vein, which are a delight to behold.)

As if it did not give offense enough to cast aside the earlier work, with its many advantages, the newer version casts Rupert Penry-Jones as Captain Wentworth. A man of such pleasant countenance as might have never known a single spray of salt nor an hour's bright sun!

Good heavens! I cannot think what the world is coming to. It puts me quite out of heart.

Like Air Leaking Out of a Tiny Balloon

2008-01-14T18:10:00.000-08:00

The internet is a wonderland, full of nooks and crannies of buttery goodness.

And also some websites that I have put on month- and year-long timeouts. They're still on the internet and whatnot, I just can't go look at them. Because then I will observe the words/actions represented on said blogs, and have a little World Wide Web Rage Blackout. Which usually ends with me slowly regaining consciousness in a darkened room, my hands clenched around my PowerBook and one or more empty bags of Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips scattered around me.

I may as well say this now, as I cruise past the halfway mark in my third month of daily blogging. Most people cannot post every day to their blog, or worse, post multiple times a day to their own blog, without some portion of mental illness. In my case, I think there's just a smidge of compulsion afoot, but nothing much worse than that. Many, many, many blogs, however, are nothing but a running list of People Who Piss The Blogger Off and Why They Should Be Shot.

(I don't need to name names. You know there are blogs like this. You know you've read them. Don't lie to me. I can smell the Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips on your breath. It's okay. Don't be ashamed. You're among friends.)

Anyway, I have very few really unshakable addictions, but for sure, Blogs of the Mentally Disordered is one of them. So much so that I have to quarantine the links in a folder, label the folder "No! Kate! No!" and then bury it in a subdirectory in my bookmark file. Yes, yes, of course I could just delete the link, but that might lead to googling the blog to find it again. This way, I know right where the blog is, I'm just not reading it.

This is all 100% true, btw. I have such a folder, hidden in a subdirectory. No, I still won't tell you which blogs are on the list. Oh, all right, I'll give you one clue, but that's it. Ready? Tucker Max.

Most such blogs take a tone of deliberate confrontation, if they're not openly striving to produce outrage. At first, I find myself unconsciously forming counter arguments to disprove this or that half-assed observation. Then I start to compose a possible comment for posting. Once I realize what I'm doing, I quickly click away, only to spend the next hour or two still disturbed by what I've read.

In time, and with sufficient immersion in the New York Times, the memory fades, but only until the next time I'm bored and looking for something to pass the time, and next thing you know, I'm reading some lady's description of how she shivved a 16-year-old boy for talking on his cell phone in the Kinko's.

Look, I get my knickers in a twist in just this way, almost daily. For example, I don't believe in holding a table before I've ordered my food -- it's an official rule at some L.A. coffee houses, actually.

When I stroll back towards an open seat, only to see that someone has just snagged said seat while their friend (six people back from me in line) orders for them, I get fucking pissed. Yes, I said fucking pissed. I'm sorry, I know that's a swear, but it really roasts my beans.

But then I let it go, do my thing and get on with my life. I don't frickin' post about every single instance, every day, for my entire life. (Uh, wait, did I post about that Williams-Sonoma thing? I did, didn't I? Okay, but that's still just twice in the entire month of January. And I'm not posting pictures of erstwhile asshats on my website.)

Let's just take a minute to savor the rich irony of how this blog post, which started out being about blogs that are so relentlessly negative and fault-finding that I can't read them, has now turned into a relentlessly negative and fault-finding post about said blogs.

A more cautious or careful blogger would probably delete this entry and start over, but that's not how I roll. In fact, this is the only way I can keep posting every single day: By opening Blogger and typing for half an hour until once again, I seem to have produced a post. It's a daily exercise in dumping out my mental junk drawer, and helps me practice letting go of this non-helpful belief that everything I write has to be awesome.

And on that note: My cat Willa just farted in her sleep.

Good night! You've been a fantastic audience! We'll be here all week! Try the veal!

Huh

2008-01-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

As part of the Anniversary 2008 festivities, we went to a matinee of "Walk Hard" this afternoon. Very, very funny. Very, very enjoyable.

And yet...

John C. Reilly nails it. Yeah, this is a guy who could play either role in "True West" seven nights a week for two months running and not even break a sweat. He's a treasure.

The music is spectacular. From a "Fresh Air" interview, I know that the writer/producers had something like six to ten teams of songwriters working on each assignment, with a brief on the tone, meaning and significance of each song. No wonder, with hundreds of options to choose from, that every song in the movie is a jewel. I am a particular fan of the song that plays over the credits, "Hey! Did You Hear the News? (Dewey Cox Died)" -- which appears to be written and sung by Dewey Cox himself.

So you've got half the movie buffed to a high, perfect gloss. And then you cast Jack Black as Paul McCartney.

Look, maybe I'm not the biggest fan of Paul McCartney, but you are hamstringing yourself and any/all Beatles-derived comedy if you start by casting Jack Black as Paul McCartney. And put him next to three much-closer stand ins for John, George and Ringo.

It's not just that, but that's the biggest non-spoiler I can find to illustrate my point. Reilly kills himself to sell the reality of his character. The songwriters clearly went all out to nail the musical numbers. And then some combination of Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow sold them down the river by cutting the reality out from underneath the film.

If you've seen the film, you're probably thinking by now of two or three other things that, "Naked Gun" like, strip out any pretense of realism. At the time, they are huge, gut-deep laughs.

But I'm not sure they're worth keeping in the film. At some point, maybe about a third in, I stopped caring about the story and started waiting for the next song parody and/or cameo to show up. Nothing else held my interest. Even poor Tim Meadows, who has some great lines, couldn't keep me from thinking "C'mon, c'mon, let's get on with it already."

My two favorite moments in "Knocked Up" are the Vegas 'shroom trip and the final delivery scene -- both as utterly grounded, utterly real and believable as anything I've ever seen. The realism there doesn't prevent the movie from still having some huge, huge laughs, and gave me good reason to watch it again if I get the chance.

So I know Apatow understands the importance of keeping comedy grounded, but for some reason, that sense eluded him here. I have to think there was a way to tell this story, still be hilarious, and, you know, not hit that weirdly cartoonish note.

God, I hope so.

Nnnn Cha Nnnn Cha Nnnn Cha

2008-01-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

I love Late Night Writers' Strike TV.

I've been watching David Letterman with the kind of devout attention I usually reserve for "Battlestar Galactica." Largely it's because I know his writers are back, and as such, his show is a possible venue for the odd strike-related joke.

For example: A fake commercial from the AMPTP, complaining that the WGA expects writers to be paid 2 1/2 cents per iTunes download -- a complaint illustrated with a picture of 2 and 1/2 pennies. But the WGA hasn't thought this through. "How are we supposed to cut a penny in half?" the piece lamented. "With magic penny scissors?"

Also, I really enjoy any segment which dances in the general direction of making Dave squirm a little. Chris Elliot rubbing himself all over Dave's desk was good; Howard Stern asking Dave about his love life was event better.

But my real addiction, and I say it with some shame, is the nightly spectacle of Conan and Colbert soft-shoeing through 30 to 60 minutes of airtime armed with nothing but their wits and an honorable determination to not write one single syllable of content before show time.

The interviews are hit or miss. It's hard to really hate the Nobel Prize winning economist who appears on Colbert to discuss microloans -- I mean, yes, he crossed the picket line, but on the other hand, better him than, say Wolf Blitzer. Or Huckabee. Again. God, does that man do nothing but appear on talk shows and produce folksy aphorisms about pigs, butter, barns and weather vanes?

Conan has the bigger problem -- his guests are limited almost entirely to talent all-but-forced to appear as a promotion for NBC/Universal content (Hulk Hogan for "American Gladiators," Howie Mandel for "Deal or No Deal") while Dave has racked up Stern, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman and Tom Brokaw. (Yes, I'm aware that technically, Dave goes up against another NBC late night show, but for some reason, I can never remember to tune in. Huh, go figure.)

But the raw found comedy in between the interviews is... delightful. Conan riding a little girl's bicycle. Colbert's off-the-cuff riffing on New Hampshire. Turning the Late Night set into a German discotheque, complete with Conan yelling in a German accent, "How do you like my light show, ja?"

At the end of a segment introducing viewers to a Late Night associate producer who enjoys protein shakes, cracking a bullwhip and the music of Rush, Conan shook his head woefully at the depths to which he had sunk. "I've never hated the writers' strike more."

Oddly, I've never loved it more.

MG Dances on the Knife's Edge

2008-01-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

MG may well be banned from all handling or physical contact with our television and/or its various remote controls.

Why?

Because he's watching a show in which a man drank the moisture...

...from an elephant turd.

Yes, believe it. It happened. We saw it and nothing, no nothing, can make us unsee it.

I Am Kate's Brain

2008-01-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

Even though it's the kind of delicious tidbit that inspires many a bumper sticker and novelty t-shirt, it is, alas, a myth that human beings only use 10% of our brains.

I'm surprised this didn't get debunked much, much sooner. On every medical drama, when a doctor checks out a CT scan or an MRI of the brain, the screen is always lit up like a Christmas tree. If we were only using 10% of our brains, the screen should look like the terrain outside a jet window when you fly over Utah.

(Note to readers who may be actual doctors: Okay, maybe the CT or the MRI doesn't track brain activity, but one of those things does, because I saw this documentary on addiction, and they were totally looking at a picture of a guy's brain as he thought about doing crack. And it was lit up like a Christmas tree. So even former crack addicts use more than 10% of their brains.)

Anyway, I knew this already because my brain works even when I don't want it to. This start years ago, during a family viewing of an Agatha Christie mystery. Half way through, I proposed that the murderer was a female character who killed her victim for giving her TB (I think. Or maybe cholera) and causing her to miscarry her one and only child. I was, I think, twelve or thirteen at the time.

I was right.

Since then, it's been the rare hour of television that can completely stump me. My best hope is to have a small drink before turning on the TV, so that I'm working at a disadvantage. After that, there's surfing-and-watching, which distracts me just enough that I don't pick up all the clues. Then, too, there are the people who can bring it every single week. My first day as an intern on "Mad Men," I walked around the room reading the white boards, with my jaw hanging open in disbelief.

(That's right. I knew in March that Peggy was pregnant. And did I say anything? To anyone? I did not. I didn't even tell my MOM. Because I don't believe in spoilers. And also because I signed a confidentiality agreement.)

Sadly, the strike has stripped me of all my usual favorites, and I am reduced to obsessively watching "Project Runway." It used to be that I would never see the challenges coming. It used to be that I delighted in the surprise reversals and unexpected rivalries. Now, unfortunately, my brain has too much time on its hands. Even as the trailer is running for the following week, I know what's coming.

I knew last week would be a candy story challenge. I actually thought it would be Dylan's Candy Bar, but that's because I forgot that Project Runway doesn't deal with one-shot stores owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter. Rookie mistake.

This week, I knew it would be prom dresses. I knew. And I knew the models would be teenage girls.

And alas, I know what next week's challenge will be as well. I wasn't even trying to figure it out, and it snapped into my head. Stupid brain! This is one of my few remaining pleasures and you had to ruin it for me! That's it. We're going straight to the bathroom to do a couple shots of Nyquil until you learn your place around here.

I won't spoil it for anyone else, but just for posterity, I will "inviso-text" it below. So if you want to see my guess, or come back next week and see if I'm right (which I'm hoping I'm not), highlight it with your cursor.

SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER!

Next week's challenge: Making an outfit from materials found/taken from the contestant's apartment.

Why I Own So Many Cardigans

2008-01-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

A true, and somewhat embarrassing fact:

When I buy clothes, I have to leave the dressing room and find the most cutely attired sales lady, preferably around my own age or a little younger.

I show her what I'm wearing and then I ask: "Do I look like a 65-year-old librarian?"

Okay, no, wait. There is NOTHING WRONG with being a 65-year-old librarian. One of my favorite people in the whole world was a librarian, and honestly, it would be an enormous accomplishment to resemble her in anyway.

But that said, I am not 65, nor a librarian, and should not dress like one. And also one of the most surprising things about My Favorite Librarian was the extent to which she bucked one's expectations of librarians and their ways. So what I am really asking the sales person is: Picture the most stereotypical image of a tragically fuddy-duddyish person at their most ridiculous. Do I look like that?

The answer, btw, is almost always yes. And I am then required, almost always, to swap out one or more pieces of clothing until the overall look more closely resembles something a person of my age, gender and professional background would wear.

(Note: A process which more exhausting than ever, now that I work in an industry that considers a blazer-with-jeans appropriate wear for everything up to and including weddings and, depending on the deceased, some funerals.)

All of this is a long way of saying that even though I know it is wrong, even though I know I must not give in, nonetheless, I am drawn, like a moth to the flame, to this beauty:

God, it's awful. I know that. It's a half purse, with a wallet sort of fused onto the back. And yet, it has a siren's hold on my heart.

In part, it's the little pockets. Oh Jesus, how I love little pockets. Remember those commercials for that purse that allowed bedraggled career gals to stuff a metric ton of possessions into one easy-to-tote purse? (Available in black, brown and, fascinatingly, bone. Always bone. I don't know if I've ever seen a woman with an off-white leather handbag even once in my entire life.)

If I can think of an appropriate Google string, I might look for a copy of the commercial online. I remember a few of the things that fit inside the bag: A hook for keys, a slot for a wallet, and I think, a pocket for a small umbrella. And yet I remember there were at least a dozen specific pockets. And all this well before the era of cell phones, PDAS or even Walkman radios.

The madness will pass in time, preferably before Levenger sells out of the bag and I am reduced to eBay stalking. (Have I no shame? Apparently not.) Until then, I will pine for this wildly age-inappropriate item like a wolf, yearning for a poured-concrete zoo habitat even as she takes for granted the freedom of her native scrub-covered plains.

Not A Serious Problem

2008-01-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

The last time I went to the Funky Gourmet Food Shoppe (tm), I bought a bottle of something called Blood Orange Bitters.

I had some vague notion that Blood Orange Bitters is an ingredient in champagne cocktails, and it occurred to me that once my cold cleared up, we might finally bust open that long-neglected flagon of New Year's Eve ambrosia. I also thought this might be a way to perk up the stuff the day after it's opened.

(Between MG and myself, we can put away about 8 oz. of wine per 24 hour window. It helps that we have an elaborate pump/cork system which really does a pretty good job, but it's not perfect, especially when sparkling wine is involved. And who likes to throw out champagne? Answer: Not me.)

It turns out, yes, a sugar cube soaked in Blood Orange Bitters is the main ingredient in champagne cocktails. And also that champagne cocktails are AWESOME.

So now I'm really boned, because my new favorite drink only comes in $35 bottles that must be consumed in the next 48 hours, or those wee splits, which are $10 less, but, to quote the ancient Roman philosopher, have hardly any booze in them.

Must Not Google My Lunch

2008-01-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

In the early days of the internet, I had a frightening moment of clarity.

I could not find my keys anywhere, although I had already ransacked my apartment for 20 minutes. Finally, I stood in the middle of the room, and stared at the walls. It took a few moments, but eventually I realized what I was doing, and why it would not help me find my keys:

I had been looking for my apartment's search engine.

From that moment on, I've been acutely aware of the ways in which my brain has adapted to this new internet age. I am even more of a research freak than ever, and more than happy to pay for access to a valuable database. (Except when said access is ridiculously overpriced -- yeah, I'm looking at you, Hollywood Creative Directory.)

But I didn't see the newest wrinkle in my brain coming: I am addicted to online reviews.

This is so much more than a compulsive need to check consumerreports.org before buying my cell phone. (Although, of course, I did that too.) At first, I'd read the Amazon.com reviews before taking a leap on a new book. Then I'd occasionally check in with makeupalley.com, if I was thinking of switching moisturizers.

But over Christmas, I started checking the recipe reviews on Epicurious, and now I have a real problem on my hands. I tried to buy a tub of pesto yesterday, but couldn't -- because there was an outside chance that it wasn't any good. Later, I drove past a cute sandwich shop and thought about stopping in for a bite, but held off because I wanted to get home and Chowhound it.

Basically, I need to Google everything I eat. This is not good. Then again, I don't really have anything to worry about -- at least, until I hold off on breathing until Consumer Reports publishes their annual 2008 Oxygen Overview.

Formal Announcement

2008-01-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

I like "The Wire." Every episode or portion of an episode I've ever seen has been astonishing. But at this point, I've seen, at best, 2% of all the episodes ever made.

Also, despite my frequent attempts to catch up on the show, every video store in a ten mile radius has had every single DVD, from every single season, rented out since late November.

Therefore, I am formally announcing that I will be Tivo'ing "The Wire," with every intention of watching the entire final run once I've managed to see the earlier four seasons. Any conversations you may need to have with me about the "The Wire" and how great it is will have to wait until then.

Thank you for your patience in this difficult time.

History Will Judge Us by Our Chorus Lines

2008-01-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

I had some pistachio gelato earlier this week that had so much dairy fat, it actually crossed into butter territory. It wasn't like eating a stick o' Land o' Lakes, but it was more like that than a bowl of ice cream.

Anyway, it's at times like this that I think it's important to remember that the best rules are there to help us make good decisions.

I just saw "Enchanted," and I think it's time we instituted a law requiring musicals to feature equal opportunity bands of merry dancers. Maybe it's because just last night I saw "Ferris Bueller," with its now archaic "black people getting down" sequence. You're in downtown Chicago, people of all races and creeds are attending this parade, listening to Ferris/Lennon belt out "Shake It (Now Baby)", but for some reason, the entire crowd of synchronized dancers is made up of black people. Who are dressed like extras from "Good Times," even though all the white people are in suits.

Point being, I couldn't help noticing that in "Enchanted"'s Central Park sequence, the adorable, "my gracious! I'm not a bad dancer for an octogenarian!" elderly people were all white, and boogie-ers were all dark-skinned. Also, I call a moratorium on angry, sassy black women in various civil service positions, i.e. bus drivers and postal workers. I remain, as ever, fine with angry, sassy black female Supreme Court Justices and brain surgeons. Although I fail to see why, in all the world, only Shonda Rhimes ever steps up to this particular plate. (I'd like to give partial credit to Aaron Sorkin for casting Edward James Olmos as the Supreme Court nominee pulled over for drunk driving in that one episode of "West Wing," but then he kinda slid hopelessly into "Aren't white guys, like, the best?" with "Studio 60" and "Farnsworth's Whatchamagig.")

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to lie on the couch and nurse my cold.

For Whom the Nose Drips

2008-01-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

Some of my really prize-winner colds snuck in under the cover of other problems. Like the time in NYC when a cold slowly edged into a full-on fever, but I didn't realize I was getting chills, not just the normal coldness of someone in a loft with no heat.

Also, I'm extremely good at accommodating symptoms. I had a rash of bad ear infections sophomore year in high school, but since my Am Lit class had just hit post-WWI writers, I dug into a pile of Hemingway and stayed there through the month of April.

For reals, if you ever have a splitting earache, I recommend all the early Ernie. It's spare, clean prose without a lot of subtext. In fact, EH took such good care of me that I insisted on going back to school, only to have the girl across from me lean over in the middle of class and whisper "I think your ear is bleeding."

Seldom has blood leaking out of an ear ever given a 15-year-old more pleasure. She was from the school of teenage girl who lives for the moment when she glimpses a tiny flash of white through a four-millimeter gap in the back pocket of your Eddie Bauer backpack, and can loudly hiss in disgust "Is that a maxipad?" But I digress. On this occasion, all I could say was, "Oh, thanks. I'm getting over a bit of an ear infection," and then wiped off the micro-trickle with a Kleenex.

I know I didn't exhibit nearly enough shame or regret for the Girl Who Sees Everything, alas. I wonder if she still goes through life looking for embarrassing slip-ups or stains she can point out. And if so, what on Earth she gets out of it. I mean, when was the last time you checked everyone in the room to see if anyone was bleeding from the ear?

Anyway, this all a rambling way of saying that either I really am getting a cold, or it's just unseasonably chilly in Santa Monica and there's nothing wrong with me that an extra sweater and some shut windows won't fix.

The Duh Files

2008-01-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

The NYTimes is reporting that talking on your cell phone makes you drive more slowly.

First, I will say it if no one else will: This is a good thing.

Nobody wants you to race along the 10 with a Samsung stuck to your ear, going 75 miles an hour. If you're going to do it, by all means, drop down to 60 and head over to the right lanes.

But we all know that cell phone users don't want to go slower. That is not why you answer the phone while driving 75 miles an hour. It's because you want to know who's calling you right now and you don't want to wait to find out until you're off the road.

I know, I sound smug and judgmental. That's because I am special.

I am completely incapable of driving and talking on the phone.

I can't do it. Either I go spontaneously deaf and cannot hear what is being said, or I go momentarily blind and can't see what's going on in front of me. It is this same personal failing that forces me to not talk -- at all -- when parking or unparking or navigating an airport. (I was so happy to see a recent houseguest that I drove right past the airport exit and then opted for the southbound Sepulveda Blvd., even though Santa Monica is, in fact, several miles north.)

It's not just my problem. It affects the people around me. After we got a car, I so seldom answered my cell phone that, upon moving to L.A., I gave up mine and used MG's. Now, of course, I most definitely have my own cell phone, and still it is hard to reach me. I turned off the ringer for the drive to the airport yesterday and sure enough, missed a call several hours later because I never turned it back on.

Make no mistake: This makes me a very annoying person to know/try to contact. I'm aware of this and I'm sorry about it. If I could change it, I would.

But consider, if you will, the possibility that this flaw of mine is actually an evolutionary advantage. Because I *cannot* talk on the phone and drive, I know better than to try. As a result, I get where I'm going more quickly, and mayhaps, in one piece.

From the Desk of Kate the Irascible

2008-01-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

My beloved olive green J. Crew stretch city fit chinos are starting to return to their basic molecular structure. It was bound to happen -- since the first season of "Project Runway," and Jay McCarroll's habit of wearing bright pink oxfords with fatigues, they've been in very heavy rotation.

The problem is that for the last year, J. Crew stretch city fit chinos haven't had decent pockets. Just useless little divots sewn into the waistband, not even big enough for a building pass. (And if you try to wedge a building pass in there, it will pop out the first time you bend at the waist.) Pffft. I should know, I own a pair, and every time I wear them it's a living hell. Worse, they do not sell any other stretch chinos, in olive or any other color.

Yes, yes, I know there are other stores that sell pants. But these fit my non-16-year-old body, unlike pants sold by a certain company that rhymes with Blaberboney and Ditch. And they're well priced, unlike my lovely but hugely expensive pants from, shall we say, Mince. And they hold up pretty well despite repeat washings -- yeah, I'm looking at you, Ranana Bepublic.

So, at long last, I gave into my greatest weakness, my deepest, most intractable addiction: My fondness for writing the cranky letter. To wit:

Dear J. Crew,

I have been waiting for the pocket-hate to end, but as your spring line shows no signs of improvement, I had to write.

I have been a loyal J. Crew customer for the last ten years or more -- I coveted your sweaters when I was a freshman in Madison, WI; I bought your career separates when I started my first job in NYC. Literally, your products make up close to 75% of my wardrobe.

That will change in the near future if you do not stop selling pants without functional pockets. No, wait, let me clarify: I'm not buying any more city fit stretch chinos until you give them decent pockets. Those tiny coin pockets in the waistband do not work at all. To be blunt, they suck.

I like your city fit trousers, but to be honest, I would buy any pair of machine washable pants with a little bit of stretch to them. But for some reason, month after month, your only stretch chinos are these city fit trousers with, frankly, shitty pockets.

Just to give you some background, I work as an assistant in Los Angeles. It's an incredibly demanding job, with work weeks that range from 60 to 80 hours. I have to crawl on the floor to plug in laptops. I have to eat lunch out of a carton while taking notes at a meeting. And I need to do all this and more while looking like a presentable, trustworthy human being.

In short, it's the kind of job that many, many of your customers take as they leave school. And all of us need good looking, machine washable pants that stretch when we move -- and we need them to have pockets that can hold car keys, a pen, even just a security badge without said item popping out onto our laps when we sit down.

I notice that you do not sell men's pants with such useless pockets -- very likely because no man would ever buy them. Women, wanting to look presentable, will occasionally buy something that isn't perfect because it's better than nothing. But no more. Until you fix this pocket situation, I am spending my money in the Vince department at Saks. True, I will only be able to buy one pair of Vince pants for the price of three pairs of J.Crew pants, but at least they'll have frickin' pockets.

Yours in irritation,

Me

Will this turn J. Crew around on the whole pocket situation? Will I be forced to keep my word and switch over to the appallingly expensive Vince sneaker pants? Stay tuned!

The Best Things About 2007

2008-01-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

I am addicted to the iPod Nike +. I bought it on Black Friday 2006, and December 2006 was such a blur, it barely got any use. But since then, I've become obsessed with keeping the little sensor strapped to whatever pair of shoes I'm wearing at the time. So much so that I actually exhausted the battery on the sensor in just over a year of use and had to buy a replacement.

I tip my hat to the U.S. Postal Service and its $4.60 Priority Mail. Something like a dozen or more packages left Santa Monica for points east this month, and thanks to Priority Mail, they all arrived in a timely fashion for not a lot of cash. It almost makes up for the fact that 90% of my Christmas stamps are now 2 cents short of official postage, thanks to recent rate hikes.

My Treo 755p. Totally exceeded all my expectations. And thanks to Google Maps and its traffic feature, I now no longer need or want a GPS unit. As the young people say, WOOT!

Bobbi Brown Tinted Lip Balm in Pink Raspberry. Bought one, lost it, and promptly stocked up on three more tubes so I'd never be without it again. Like a classy black tube of Chapstick, with just enough color to keep me from looking washed out. If BB discontinues this item, I cannot vouch for her personal safety.

Vanilla Bakery macaroons. At this exact second, we are still well stocked on cookies of all kinds, but when this era of sugar largess passes, I know Vanilla will be there for me, with their excellent coffee and pistachio cookies.

And the very best thing about 2007, for the eighth year running: MG, who continues to shatter all previously held records for Awesomeness in the Field of Husbandly Arts. This year's secret weapon: Horn rim glasses that make him look like the illegitimate son of Ewan McGregor and Marcello Mastroianni's disturbingly handsome sister.

Is It Still 2008 Without Fennel Pollen?

2007-12-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

I love Whole Foods. When we began planning the move to Los Angeles, the first thing I did was map the location of every Whole Foods in the metropolitan area and draw a two-mile-wide circle around each scribbled "WF."

Partly that's because MG has a raft of food allergies that are much easier to deal with if you shop at a store that is fanatical about labeling every single ingredient in every single food item, down to the microns of solubized wheat protein in the dash of Worcestershire sauce mixed in with the yolks of their deviled eggs. (Which are, actually, from hell. Don't waste your money -- not nearly enough mayo, way way way too much yolk.)

Partly it's because we used to live in a neighborhood where the closest store WAS a Whole Foods, and we kinda fell in the habit of shopping there.

Partly it's because I have quite the budding addiction to charcuterie, particularly various terrines made with the livers of fattened water fowl.

Okay, look, let's not delve into questions who's-addicted-to-what. The point is, I am solidly pro-Whole Foods.

And yet.

When the two story underground garage is filled to capacity and backed up onto 23rd St., maybe things have gotten out of hand.

When traffic backed up on Wilshire because 23rd St. is jammed all the way into the intersection, maybe we need to reconsider our options.

When the line to get out of the store starts 30 feet inside the front door? Yeah, I think you get the picture.

Everyone was on their best behavior. I got a free piece of pizza for being such a patient customer, and thank god, the lines had been switched into one line/many registers, so you were directed to the next available cashier pretty quickly. But yes, it got a teeny tiny bit hairy there for a second.

One poor daffy lady, her hair in those giant volumizing curlers you always see J Lo wearing in the "behind the scenes" photos in magazines, wandered into the admirably uncrowded stretch open space in front of the registers, and made for cashier until an employee discreetly indicated the line of sixty seven customers stretching to the back of the store and then some.

She blanched, as well she might, for a few seconds later she would have been ripped limb from limb if the employee had not saved her from a life-ending gaffe. Free pizza can calm an unruly crowd, but it's powerless to slow an enraged mob.

Down the Rabbit Hole of Awesome

2007-12-30T11:07:00.000-08:00

We saw Jack Gerber off to Joshua Tree yesterday morning, and then spent several hours flopped in a heap. It was fantastic to have Jack stay with us for the holidays, but we'd been in such complete host mode that we hadn't given any thought to what we'd do he left. After some laundry was put away and some Rice Krispie treats were made, I put one of our last Xmas movie rentals in and sat down with a gin and tonic to watch "The Last King of Scotland."

About an hour into it, MG announces that "Ball of Fire" is showing at the Aero at 7:30, in a double bill with "Twentieth Century." Good bye cozy night at home, hello brisk-if-somewhat-drunk walk to the Aero.

Over two years ago, I had a professor rave about "Ball of Fire," and I've been trying to see it ever since. There's a reason why it was hard to track down -- it came out on DVD this May, but before that, the last release was a VHS tape in 1998. And now that I've seen it, I can see why it is so fondly remembered.

Billy Wilder screenplay, Howard Hawks directs, Barbara Stanwyck shows some leg, Gary Cooper learns fisticuffs, Gene Krupa whips off two drum solos and a slew of old Hollwood contract players fill out the cast. (Henry Travers, the bulbous-nosed angel Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life;"Oskar Homolka, the shifty husband from "Sabotage;" S.Z. Sakall, the plump, white-haired head waiter Carl from "Casablanca," as well as Leonid Kinskey, who was Sacha the bartender. And those are just the ones I recognized.)

The script itself is a model of hilarious elegance -- surprisingly so, considering it wasn't originally a stage play. The gold standard in this category would be "His Girl Friday," which clocks around with the efficiency of a Swiss watch. But my God, "Ball of Fire" takes this principle to an entirely new level, right down to the perfectly timed return of the garbage man. It has to be seen to be believed -- which is easily done, considering Amazon now has it on DVD for $14.99.

Less elegant but possibly even funnier (God, is that possible? Sure the fabric of space/time cannot contain more funniness?) was the second feature, "Twentieth Century." Are you sitting down? Okay. Howard Hawks directs; screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (as in "His Girl Friday") with uncredited punch up from Preston Sturges and Gene Fowler. Carole Lombard is hilarious and essentially topless for all but the first scene (the film opened in 1934, i.e., before the Hayes Code drained the filth and gratuitous nipple shots out of movies.) And? And? You want more? Yes, you do. And very wise you are, at that.

John Barrymore knocking it Out. Off. The. Park. It's a role that walks the razor's edge of self-parody, but Barrymore locks into character and does not come out for so much as a nanosecond of the entire film. Everything that hasn't worked in the last four Jim Carrey movies, the last eight Robin Williams movies, plus miscellaneous seconds of Adam Sandler and Billy Crystal's careers? Look ye to John Barrymore in "Twentieth Century" to find the solution.

How can a mortal man narrow his eyes and hiss "You... ameoba!" without imploding at the contained hilarity? I don't know. How can one human being deliver the line "The iron door is closed!" four times in one script and yet, somehow, make you laugh harder every time? The mind boggles.

The script, in all honesty, is more ramshackle than "Ball of Fire," but I don't mind, and I don't think you will either. It's another must own, and yes, Amazon.com has "Twentieth Century" too, for $12.99.

The WGA is still on strike, so I will point out that, of course, none of the guys I mentioned above -- Hecht, MacArthur, Sturges or Wilder -- gets dime one from these DVDs. But then, neither does any other writer whose work was produced before 1960. The WGA members sacrificed those payments in order to get the studios to pay residuals on all future projects. That's almost more astonishing that John Barrymore's performance in "Twentieth Century." Thousands of writers (and actors, and directors) giving up all right to compensation for past work, so other people could get paid in the future.

I Like That Throw Pillow, Dave

2007-12-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

We got our very first Brocade Home catalog recently. In the new year, I will be embarking on a burnt-Earth mass mailing cancellation campaign, in which I will contact various companies and insist they take our names off their mailing lists.

(Hey, I don't make snide remarks about the way you spend the writers' strike, okay?)

Anyway, I am really glad Brocade Home managed to reach us before Catalog LockDown 2008 starts, because it seems to be the first home furnishings company dedicated to helping consumers decorate their home like the inside of the monolith from "2001."

You remember: Dave Bowman dies, or something, and then suddenly he's in this super weird hotel-room-like space? Ah, yeah, it's the part of the movie that looks like this:

It's All About Perspective

2007-12-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

I watched an early third season "Grey's Anatomy" last night. (I think. Unless this is their fourth season. Which, if true, boggles the imagination.)

I'd like to think that my "Grey's" spec captures some of the energy and lightness of touch of the original, but I'm guessing not, considering I'm 0 for 5 in the big TV spec contests this year. (Disney, thoughtful folks, sent me my ding letter the week before Christmas.) And I don't have it in me to go back and give it another polish, so there's some sadness to the realization that the ship has sailed.

Anyway, my point is, I never thought I'd watch another episode of "Grey's." Last season, with the canceled wedding and this season's arrival of Lexi Grey broke me. I couldn't take any more.

But as it turns out, I am weak. And as it becomes clear that I will not see any new television until, MAYBE, mid-June, I'm starting to make accommodations. Like watching shows I previously considered unwatchable. And, very likely, catching up on "The Wire" before it's January premiere.

It's the same principle by which I put off doing laundry all day yesterday, only to despair at 5 p.m. when the power went out. Not just in my apartment, or my building, but the whole block. (A question I still haven't answered: If the power goes out and my car's in the garage, how do I get it out? And in the event of nuclear attack, does that mean we're gonna die of radiation poisoning because we can't get out of town? Confidential to gloomy protagonists: Don't bother leaving a comment about all the ways we'll die before getting a car out of the garage becomes an issue. Just... don't.)

I started to make various back up plants to accommodate our newly blacked-out condition, and then just as I was about to leave for the movies... the power came back on. I tell you, I did that laundry like it was one big soapy holiday.

Also, That Frostbite Gag Went a Little Too Far into Gag Territory

2007-12-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

I met a writer @ the Barham Gate picket last week who's working on some stuff for "The Red Star" comic book. I had never heard of "The Red Star," but the phrase "industrial magic" had me intrigued.

I got the first volume, issues 1-9, for Christmas, and bought the first half of volume 2 yesterday. And it is very, very good. It's a re-imagining of the 20th century if sorcery had been part of the industrial revolution. (I'm guessing that's the back story. I don't really know.)

It opens with a beautiful young Soviet officer (a Sorceress Major) named Maya, riding the cemetery train out to visit the grave of her husband Marcus, who died nine years ago in the state's crushing defeat in Al'istaan. It's Russia, and Afghanistan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, only utterly different. And utterly delicious.

If I have one complaint, it's that the first installment opens with one brilliant wow idea, and then fails to really deliver on the promise of that idea. But it's still extremely inventive and awesome. Just not as awesome as the first 10 pages would have you believe.

Speaking of things that are not as awesome as the first 10 pages would have you believe: "Pirates of the Caribbean" is dead to me. I don't watch movies so I can walk out wondering how it will all end up. I watch moves so I KNOW how it all ends up. Suspense and cliffhangers are for television and the second installments of trilogies, dudes.

Boo to that. And also boo to picking Orlando Bloom over Johnny Depp. Although about an hour in, I did think "Orlando Bloom is the Cary Elwes of 2007" and by the third act, he showed up in full on Dread Pirate Roberts gear, down to the black head scarf.

(There are also a handful of dreadful anti-feminist implications in the final half hour of "Pirates of the Caribbean 3," which I will not touch with a ten foot pole. If you manage to write Keira Knightly into some kind of bad ass pirate queen role, and then leave her half naked in a dress on a beach, anything I might say on the subject would be wasted on you.)

Happy Boxing Day

2007-12-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

I meant to mention this before, but the holidays have a way of distracting one from such things. My once-and-future boss has an awesome piece in last Sunday's NYT Style section, here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/fashion/23weiner.html?ref=fashion. Very honest and very funny, all at once.

In a nice trifecta of surprises, "Mad Men" showed up on both the Times' TV critics best-of-2007 lists AND got a name check in Bill Carter's piece about how HBO has messed up royally. As in, if HBO had developed "Mad Men" last year instead of wasting their time with "John From Cincinnati,"maybe HBO's reputation wouldn't be in the crapper now.

As for Christmas in Santa Monica: Good times. I think standing rib roast may be the go-to meal for festive occasions in #403 for quite some time. I've just about got the hang of it now, and even managed to simul-cook gravy, popovers and two side dishes in the last 20 minutes. (Kudos to my excellent support staff, Michael and Jack, who chopped, cleaned and prepped their hearts out.)

And today: Leftovers and third wave baking for a few folks who were out of town on Christmas proper.

Interpretive Dance and Healing Little Girls

2007-12-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

Who is more cool than the nurses working in the stem cell unit @ Children's Memorial in Chicago? Answer: Nobody.

The most awesome video I've ever seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZlgrdIeDoo

P.S. Merry Christmas, Donna's marrow! Go you!

Juno What? Jit Wasn't Bad.

2007-12-24T10:10:00.002-08:00

I read the "Juno" screenplay before seeing the movie, and full disclosure, it made me eat my own heart with a grapefruit spoon. Funny, smart, original, on paper "Juno" is everything I've ever aspired to be as a screenwriter.

I was prepared to see the movie, and much like the first time I saw "Finding Nemo" or "O Brother Where Art Thou?", realize that someone already had the career of my dreams and despair that I would ever find my own spot in the sunlight. (Television very rarely fills me with such hopelessness, maybe because I realize that with so many hours of original television per year, there's always another shot at greatness. Movies are far dicier -- they take so much time and money, it seems there's just a finite number of chances to get it right.)

I liked "Juno" a lot. I probably shouldn't have read the screenplay before hand, but I couldn't help myself. A number of references went right over my head, but the ones I got ("Thundercats are go!") made me laugh. Even so, probably my favorite thing in the whole film is Paulie Bleeker's mumbled reply to Juno's claim that he's really cool and he doesn't even try. "I try really hard, actually."

Being me, I had problems with the film even so. (You may remember that the thing that dumbfounded me about "No Country for Old Men" was my complete inability to see something I would have changed or tweaked. I didn't like the ending, but I have no idea how to do it differently.)

Mainly, I didn't know what I was hoping for. Or, more precisely, I didn't know what I feared would happen. Juno is so capable, so steady, nothing seems to shake her. Even when (to avoid spoilers) the fates turn against her, it's hard to see what the problem is. She comes from a stable family, her stepmom already has maternal feelings towards the unborn child, and in her small Minnesota town, she's earned exactly one dirty look, one snide remark and a wide berth from her classmates. She reports that everyone makes fun of her behind her back, but we never see it, or the impact of that mocking on her ego. She's bulletproof.

Somehow in the course of making a movie about how a plucky heroine gets herself in a jam and manages to triumph, the writer and director managed to soften all the hard corners and rough spots of the jam, so it no longer seems like such a big deal.

Which, to check in for a minute with reality, is nuts. Teenage, out of wedlock, still a junior in high school pregnancy, is an extremely big deal.

I was, for all intents and purposes, vacuum sealed like a can of Hills Bros. coffee from birth until well into college. And I mean, well into college. But even so, the spectre of unplanned pregnancy loomed large through all four years of high school. What if this innocent flirtation blossomed into actual dating? And what if dating blossomed into necking? And what if... And right about then, I'd start working through exactly how screwed I would be if I got pregnant.

The disappointment of my teachers, the judgment of my peers, the awkward moments in health class. How would I take gym? What about the PSATs? The ACT? The SAT? The AP Exams? The upcoming production of "The Foreigner" that I was supposed to stage manage?

And that was just in the time it would take me to carry the trash from the back door to the alley.

So what I'm wondering is, how do you spend six months writing a screenplay, and a couple years making the resulting movie, and never touch on any of this? No one Juno likes and/or respects ever judges, criticizes or rejects her for the decision she makes. In other words, no one ever *tests* that incredible resolve and fortitude -- in fact, considering the comfy snuggly world she moves in, I'm not sure where that resolve and fortitude comes from. (Note, by the way, that even though her biological mom has ditched out on her, she's welcome and loved in her dad's new family -- and not spending her life traveling between the two households.)

Look, it was a sweet movie and I enjoyed it. All I'm saying is: If you're going to tell a story that, frankly, many millions of teenage girls have lived first hand, you might honor their suffering and experience by at least touching on some of the crap they had to deal with and yes, overcome. Otherwise, it's like opening "Saving Private Ryan" with shots of twenty soldiers skipping off a troop transport and up a garden path through a rose garden to have a little tea party before heading in country.

Eff You, Frank Capra...

2007-12-23T23:32:00.000-08:00

Just saw "It's a Wonderful Life" with MG... and cried through almost 40% of the film, starting with the tearful scene of revelation with Mr. Gower and lingering through the walk to the car.

Okay, WHAT did Capra do? I don't get it. How can you put together a two-hour, by-the-numbers black and white classic and wring me out like a dishrag? How?

I don't get it, I don't like it, and if I ever meet Capra in the great beyond, he and me are gonna have words.

And Don't Even Get Me Started on Hoagy Carmichael

2007-12-22T22:40:00.000-08:00

I've seen "To Have or Have Not," hmmm, a dozen times. Maybe more. There's not a single good thing in the whole movie -- it's just a chaotic shambles. Ernest Hemingway hams it up in the source material, William Faulkner drinks his ass off as he wrote the script, Howard Hawks cribs major swaths of "Casablanca." And yet I love it so.

I love 19-year-old Lauren Bacall. Slim isn't the word. She's a size 0 by 2007 standards, and since it's 1943, she comes across the tallest drink of water to ever wear heels. I don't think any 19-year-old has ever been so glamorous or knowing before or sense.

Humphrey Bogart's earning his paycheck and checking out Ms. Bacall's rack whenever he thinks the camera isn't looking.

Walter Brennan is nailing what, conservatively, might be his 900th rummy role. He's got this crazy jittery walk and insists on asking people "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?"

But above all, I love the dialogue. Rich, campy, over the top and wonderful.

"You know how to whistle, doncha Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

"A dead bee can sting ya just as bad as a live one, 'specially if he was mad when he died."

"Sometimes I know just what you're thinking. And sometimes... sometimes you're just a stinker."

Bleh

2007-12-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

Yet another one of these "men vs. ladies, who's funnier?" stories, here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7153584.stm.

I could give a shit about the methodology here, or whether a unicycle rider is, in fact, the idea test of humor.

Let's cut to the chase: Men are funnier. Period, end of story. Ask Christopher Hitchens if you don't believe me.

love,

Kate

P.S. I've given this a lot of thought, and at this date, have decided would *much* rather be the gender considered comedy deficient -- makes it much, much easier to crack people up when they don't see it coming. Poor men, y'all got Robin Williams blowing your cover. First time in my life I actually have something for which to thank Ann Coulter.

P.P.S. When are the surly 13 and 14-year-olds of the world going to rise up and give Hitchens the beat down of all time? He's totally stolen their gig -- saying half-assed shit, then refusing to admit there might be another perspective. That's been the entire raison d'etre of young teenagers for at least 50 years, and now Hitchens has razed all the usual topics to rubble. Mother Teresa wasn't so great; Hanukkah is a shitty holiday; we should scrap our government and start over. Not to mention the ballpoint pen tattoo of the Van Halen logo on his left hand. Jesus, dude, hurry up and die of alcohol poisoning before you ruin being a teenager forever.

Sesame! It's Sesame!

2007-12-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

Blogger has added a new filter for comments, which is a mercy because I really dislike having to personally moderate comments. Blargh, no thanks. So as of now, if you have a Gmail, LiveJournal, AOL, TypeKey or WordPress account, you can log in and comment with abandon. Have at it!

I only turned comment moderation on because I got spammed (no kidding) by a Norwegian male enhancement website. It was all Gs and those funny looking Os and the word "Viagra."

But it could be worse. Slate.com has a piece up this week, offering a wrap up of all the questions sent to Explainer which weren't answered in the last 12 months.

I used to get questions like this when I worked at iVillage and assembled reader queries for our team of experts. At times, you can scarcely believe the sender was actually able to turn on their computer, much less find your website.

These are Slate's questions, but like the requests I used to get, they fall under six basic categories:

Why Do You Ask? Actually, Never Mind. I Don't Want to Know.

• I haven't seen this in the news, but perhaps you could explain it anyway. Why do people feel like destroying things when angry?

• Why does having a foreign accent make a person seem more attractive?

• Is it possible in any way to prove that someone was on crack cocaine nine to 10 years ago?

• Which is the best hearing aid? Why are there so many different ones, and are the ones that allow you to hear others' conversations across the room legal?

• When a man lies to his lawyer to obtain a divorce from a wife of 47 years when she is ill and does not even know and cannot defend herself, is this legal, or perjury?

• If an unscrupulous bar owner was to mix diethylene to, say, whiskey, what would the effect be on the consumer?

When Stoned People Go Online

• Could you play sports in space, if you had a spacesuit?

• In Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, he says that Jason Bourne can pack with great economy of space, allowing him to pack much more in a small bag than it would seem. How would one do this, and is it even a real thing?

• Can a baby get drunk off of nonalcoholic beer?

• Why are some cats softer to the touch than others? Is it possible I have the softest cat in the world?

• Why do men almost never win on ABC's Wheel of Fortune?

• Why don't we drop medical waste and nuclear waste into active volcanoes, the "ultimate high-temperature incinerators"?

• Can dogs be mentally retarded?
• When a fly lands on a ceiling, does it execute a barrel roll or an inside loop?

• If I drank a bunch of orange juice, which caused me to get heartburn, then ate a bunch of antacids, would it neutralize the vitamin C, thus providing no benefits from the ingested vitamin? If so, if you ate antacids continually, would you get scurvy?

I Can't Help You with Your Screenplay.

• What infections do viruses and microorganisms suffer from? My guess is none. They only suffer from random mutations and suffering caused (mostly by humans) by chemicals.

• What do the SWAT teams do to keep their fitness? Like, do they run for half an hour, or do five pressups?

• What would happen to the rest of the planets and the sun if Jupiter were to explode, or somehow leave our galaxy altogether?

Would it be possible to "shoot" someone with "lightning"? Like, a Taser with no electrodes.

Do Your Grandchildren Know You're Online?

• I have been looking for an old movie from about the late '60s. I was born in 1960 and watched it as a little kid. It was a Santa movie and it had the Devil in it. It was like the Devil was trying to stop Christmas. I remember the Devil was wearing red PJs. Santa has a magic powder that would make people sleep. It was a cute movie. Please help.

• Why don't long-haired football players, many of them of Polynesian descent, get their tresses tugged during their gridiron clash?

• Why do most reptiles go to sleep when you rub their bellies? I have done it myself with everything from domestic water dragons to wild alligators, but I heard recently that it is bad for them—and they only appear to be sleeping, when in fact they are having trouble breathing. Is this true?

• Mitt Romney is running for president. His father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan, ran for president in 1968. Is "Mitt" named for the mitten-shape of Michigan?

• Why do male ice skaters have routines that are so feminine in execution? After all these years, there should be some kind of movements on ice that would be more masculine-looking. The gymnastics shows have them.

• There was the most beautiful sunset here in Indiana last evening. Would the California fires have anything to do with that?

• Why don't they build into cars a secret button for police to use, and when these people are trying to get away from police down the freeway and city streets at 100 mph, the following police car could push the button, making the engine on the speeding car stop? Surely there must be some smart person who could make this.

• I've been looking for information on how the word "dick" became an insult, especially since people still go by the name Dick. Why would anyone choose that name, when it has other meanings?!?!

Really, That's What You Want to Know?

• Very rare to find a hotel room with a light on the ceiling, they're usually floor lamps or desk lamps. Is there some structural reason for that??

On the Internet, No One Knows You're Dumb

• How do surface-dwelling fish survive monster sea storms?

• How often are presidents born, and how often do they die? Do they die in bunches, or on average every four years?

• Is there such a thing as "crazy eyes," where the whites go all the way around the corneas and makes the person look psycho, such as those of runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks and wife-dismemberer Stephen Grant?

• I've always wanted to know why bald heads shine!!!

• If mountains are measured from sea level, then the 12,000-foot peaks in Colorado are only about 7,000 feet above Denver since they lie on a 5,000-foot-high plain. That being so, a one-foot rock lying on the ground becomes a 5,001-foot-high mountain. Do we need to address this differently, if it really matters at all?

• This may be a dumb question. Most people spell their names as first name, middle initial, and last name. But some people spell their name as initial, given name, and then last name. Is the initial before the given name their first name, and they go by their middle name? Or is the initial before the given name their middle initial? If it is their middle initial, why would you put it before your first name, because then it is not in the middle anymore? It seems like conservatives or Republicans are more likely to list their name starting with an initial.

• Is it "open sees me" or "open says me"?

No One Talks About the Icy Speculum of the Marketplace

2007-12-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

I am totally fascinated by the recent wave of bloggers and columnists scratching their heads and wondering what it means that two different 2007 movies feature pregnant ladies who decide not to have an abortion.

What's happening to this country? Does this mean it's cool to get knocked up by accident? Can we expect a spike in unplanned teenage pregnancies? Etc.

Yes, yes, all fascinating. Except for one thing: If you want to make a movie about people dealing with the fallout of pregnancy, you need someone to be pregnant.

And that's why the protagonists in "Knocked Up" and "Juno" don't have abortions. The characters justify their decisions in various ways, but that's really the bottom line. The same principle obtains in "Nine Months," but I don't recommend watching it to verify my claim. Just take my word for it.

The very, very bottom line is that film is a visual medium, and a lady doesn't get babylicious until the fourth month. Your best visual gags will take place between months six and nine -- when you are way, way past the point of no-return, abortionwise, both medically and culturally. Bump=baby.

I know I'm teetering on the edge of becoming an insufferable old bore. Two and a half years of film school has turned me into the narrative equivalent of the irritating economics major I worked with in New York, who insisted that taxes restrain economic activity. I hated his smug ass then -- and still retain a lingering hatred for Princeton alums as a result -- but I concede, he had a point. Not one worth extrapolating into the WSJ's stated policy of No Taxes Ever For Anyone, but a point nonetheless.

But just as reduced income will limit spending, it is also true that if you want characters to deal with a situation, you have to put them, irrevocably, in that situation, whether it's pregnancy or an office tower being held hostage by terrorists or a plane full of snakes. You have to deal with all the possible exits, and block them off, one by one.

And that, really, is the only reason why no one has an abortion in a movie about pregnancy.

Today, It Came!

2007-12-18T23:23:00.000-08:00

I am a born wine steward. Someone should hire me to acquire young vintages for their cellar, or possibly, assemble a small inventory of cheeses, to be aged right up to the threshold of perfection.

Because I am very good at waiting.

How good? A brief survey of the internet reveals that Palm-branded smartphones have been around since 2002. I've wanted one since the very first Treo 180 came into existence. I subsequently wanted, in order, a Tungsten W, a Treo 600, a Treo 650, a Treo 700 and a Treo 750.

But there is no reasoning with Kate's Ability to Wait. For wait she can, as long as necessary, for the Device of Her Dreams.

I've limped along with basic cellphones -- whatever model you can get for free when you sign a two year contract. For a while there, MG and I shared one phone, licking our wounds after a savage termination fee debacle when we moved to Los Angeles. In the same window of time, I've had two PDAs, a Palm IIIc and a Tungsten C. And I love that little Tungsten C, but oh my God, a fully-functional wifi device it is NOT. And yet I hung in there.

Back in June, with the dawn of the iPhone, I was sorely tempted. I hate AT&T's network and their customer service. I hated that the iPhone worked with the much slower EDGE network. And I wasn't a huge fan of the touchscreen keyboard. And still, I was tempted. But no.

No, I waited until yesterday, when the waters parted and Verizon released the Treo 755p -- designed to work on the lightning-fast EVDO network. Thoroughly QA'd to work out the bugs that filled page after page of angry forum comments all over the internet. And most importantly, not hooked up to the fearfully spotty Sprint.

I hesitated for a moment, then remembered that the next generation iPhone won't be out until this time next year, which really means the soonest I could possibly want it would be late 2009. Reader, I bought the phone.

Verizon, god bless them, piled on so many rebates and discounts that it knocked the $570 price down to $250. Even so, I had several long, miserable hours, when I discovered that the phone would not be black or silver, but a shade called "azure green."

I know it sounds ridiculous, but when you've waited FIVE YEARS to buy a smartphone, you'd like it to be a non-stupid color.

Happily, azure green is basically greenish grey, kind of a scarab-shell color, which I can live with. The internet access is wicked fast, the voice quality excellent. J'adore.

It was worth the wait. And now, happily, the future stretches ahead of me, unoccupied by ambitions or expectations.

For now.

Get Thee Behind Me, Mushroom Pizza!

2007-12-17T15:55:00.001-08:00

Writing on deadline will break you of bad habits faster than a mean nun with a ruler.

I still love sugar and chocolate and, especially, crusty bread. But every single one of these things makes me crash like a dosed-up heroin addict, and so I had to give them up in order to get my work done.

Now that the dust has settled, I'm having trouble going back to my old ways. I remember the crushing energy drop, the hours of lethargy, waiting for my blood sugar to normalize, and I just can't do it. For this reason, as much as any other, I have given up Peppermint Bark. Yes, you heard me. Me and the PBark, we're quitsville. Look, it's still minty delicious, and I still enjoy a small piece when I walk past a Williams-Sonoma. But that's it.

In a similar vein, I've shattered yet another barrier to the wheat-free life: Mac and cheese. In my version (stolen from here, and apparently, she stole it from Nigella), I roast a butternut squash then toss it with blue cheese and toasted pecans. I think it might be proof of God's existence.

Like With Milk, Only To Chin Dimples

2007-12-16T11:21:00.001-08:00

I am ridiculously loyal. It takes enormous, even catastrophic events to make me reconsider my allegiances.

Without realizing it, my loyalties have apparently transferred to "Mad Men," even though I was on the job for little more than a week, and physically in the office even less than that. The first sign was the great satisfaction I felt when the show racked up two Golden Globe nominations and three WGA nominations. It wasn't a personal satisfaction -- interns don't have that kind of influence on final cuts of episodes. But it gives me so much pleasure to see so much hard work rewarded.

Almost as good, the TV critic for my hometown paper, Maureen Ryan, put the show at the top of her list of Top Ten TV Shows of 2007. That's awesome. If I ever meet Ms. Ryan, I may have to kiss her on the mouth. I hope she doesn't mind.

On the other hand, I wish I had a wet, icy snowball, perfect aim and a spot outside the offices of New York magazine, so I could bean John Leonard in the ear for inexplicably labeling this same heavily-praised show one of the "Best Ideas that Went South." This from the same guy who thinks Anna Friel* is the best thing on television and "Women's Murder Club" as the best new show of the year.

In a month or two, the strike will end and I will no longer be an out of work assistant, nursing petty grudges. I will have to rise above all that and be mature and not post on the Television Without Pity boards about how Don Draper is not Jewish. Not that I ever did that. And I definitely didn't post any comments about the show's research and the meticulous attention to detail w/r/t the pronunciation of "keitan," the little-known Japanese suicide sub used in WWII.

But right now, I owe Mr. Leonard cold, hard one to the left ear.

*I am Friel-intolerant. It is embarrassing to me, but she makes me nuts. I came to the fall 2007 season expecting to love "Pushing Daisies," and tragically, discovered in the pilot that I cannot look at Anna Friel or hear her voice for more than 5 second together. She's the strobe light and I'm the epileptic. It's not fair or right, but it's how I feel.

I Know, Global Warming!

2007-12-15T17:41:00.001-08:00

I have angered Kate's Stomach. This is not good.

I don't know if it was the month and a half of remorseless focus on my thesis or if some internal chemical imbalance has righted itself. But those brief flashes of hunger I felt last weekend when MG's folks were here are back with a vengeance.

I got so hungry at 2 p.m. I had to actually stop and eat. That never happens. Then, having eaten, I got hungry again three hours later. WHAT THE HELL? It's almost like I'm alive or something.

It's possible, I suppose, that my anxiety about school was artificially suppressing my appetite. But then why am I now EXTRA hungry?

Clearly I need to think up something to worry about asap.

No Wants!

2007-12-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I could lie and say, I don't even know what a lolcat is, my mom sent me this and I thought it was funny. But that's not how I roll.

Yes, I have a lolcat problem. I routinely check icanhascheezburger.com for fresh, newly hilarious lolcat humor. I also quite enjoy LOLTHULHU, although it helps if you're somewhat familiar with H.P. Lovecraft. (MG wrote a hilarious H.P. Lovecraft/P.G. Wodehouse smashup about ten years ago, the best line of which involved some bluff colonel observing "I say, I think this Cthulu blighter wants to eat our soul, what." (Or words to that effect. I've begged MG to dig up this piece but he swears it's lost forever, so that means I get to make up whatever I want and claim he wrote it. Mwhwhahahahaha!)

The gradual unclenching of my brain continues apace. This morning I woke up without praying that I could sleep for several more years. That's a good sign.

I've also had some thoughts in the general vein of "You know what might be fun?" and the answer wasn't: "Hide in my closet until the end of the semester." MG and I are going to get a Christmas tree later today, and possibly take in a screening of "Juno," as well.

Also slowly drifting back to life is the part of my brain that looks to the future and thinks of things that might be nice to own in the not to distant future. You wouldn't guess that this is something your brain could stop doing, but mine can. My very sweet mother-in-law had an uphill battle last weekend, trying to figure out what I might like for Christmas, when all I could do was stare at sweaters as if they were a French verb I'd never seen before.

"I don't.... can you... is it something you *wear* or something you *eat*?"

Speaking of eating, that's a whole other category of fun. I was so unplugged from my appetite that all last weekend, I would grudgingly agree to go some where for a meal, even though I wasn't hungry. Then the second I sat down, I would be ravenously hungry. As in, starving.

That is also slowly improving, as I am realizing that I need to eat, then preparing and consuming food accordingly.

Anyway, the universe in its gracious way is helping me out. Just as I am starting to have some interest in Christmas presents, Cole Haan has marked down my favorite ballet flats and miracle of miracles, I think Verizon is actually going to release the Treo 755p in the next week.

And so the cycle of life continues. I think of things I want, and lo! they are available for purchase.

NBC Hates Me

2007-12-13T21:34:00.000-08:00

I love "30 Rock." It is, hands down, my favorite show on tv. (Sticklers for accuracy may want to note that three or four other shows are not even on the air right now.)

So why why why is so hard for NBC and my Tivo to get together, and you know, make sweet, sweet DVR love to each other?

Once again, a new episode of "30 Rock" has aired and I don't have it on my Tivo. And that sucks.

Still Can't Stop Blogging

2007-12-12T13:45:00.000-08:00

Celebrated the conclusion of two years and four months of graduate school with the World's Strongest Gin and Tonic and a viewing of the long-anticipated "Battlestar Galactica: Razor," which had been waiting on my Tivo for just this moment.

BSG has been on hiatus for six months or more at this point, and I guess maybe that's why I had forgotten that the show Does Not Eff Around.

Holy Crap. I was literally putting it on pause every couple of minutes, just to brace myself for the next wave of hot hell.

After that, MG came out and we started to watch "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." I will say, the film has some obstacles to overcome. For one, we know there's treasure, so the long first act leading up to the moment when Ol' Man Prospector does his ridiculous scampering dance of We Done Found Us Some Gold! was hard to get through.

Then, like the world's slowest moving reality show, the prosperity starts to change Hardened Tough Guy Played by Humphrey Bogart, as he becomes suspicious and cold-hearted. Or possibly he suffered a concussion in that mine collapse. But then how to explain his strange return to sanity when it comes time to leave?

We hit pause and went to bed at the 1 hour, 20 minute mark, with still 55 minutes of "Sierra Madre" left. I, for one, am not looking forward to the almost-hour-long denouement. I have seen enough episodes of "The Twilight Zone" to know that when three guys strike it rich in the Mexican desert, with almost an hour to go until credits, they're gonna learn that Money Can't Save Your Life When You Do Battle with the Elements.

And that's not even getting into the non-logic of the total stranger who insists they let him mine with them, or the Bandito who, thanks to some racist characterization, was dumb enough to think the miners would sell THEIR ONLY WEAPONS to guys who would clearly SHOOT THEM and TAKE BACK THE MONEY right after the sale.

Aye Carumba indeed, my portly racist stereotype.

Christmas Miracles

2007-12-11T18:34:00.001-08:00

1. My long lost scarf arrived from Ireland. Technically not the lost scarf, but a replacement, yet I feared that it had been eaten by Customs and would never arrive. But no, it came yesterday afternoon.

2. With six hours of sleep, three caffeinated beverages, some sea salt and vinegar potato chips and the final hour of "The Winslow Boy," I managed to finish a draft of my rewrite homework.

3. Somehow, I am still awake and able to function well enough to do laundry. Which is a godsend, because I am down to my last pair of clean knickers.

4. MG has taken fantastic care of me through these last arduous weeks. This is not so much a miracle, as he is the best partner a girl could hope for, but in the spirit of being grateful for all the little things, he definitely belongs on the list.

5. I had two dollars discretionary money on my student ID and the film school's coffee stand was a) open, b) equipped with a working espresso machine and c) stocked with skim milk, so I could purchase what might be my very last medium non-fat latte for some years to come. It will be three years this February that MG and I sat on a bench outside Lucas, waiting for the school tour to start, when I decided to see if I could find a bathroom and discovered the Lucas Coffee Cart. Never in my life have I felt such a powerful desire to enroll in a school, as I felt at that moment.

6. Barring complete disaster, I have in fact finished my MFA. Only thing left is to get the fancy document in the mail.

Oh Dear God...

2007-12-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

Pages written today: Zero.

Number of carb-craving vampires living in my stomach, whispering dark suggestions about an idiotically ill-advised trip to Pizzeria Mozza for a fungi misto special: One.

Hours remaining until I must stop writing, print the script and drive to campus: Twenty-two.

Number of remaining hours I will undoubtedly end up sleeping: Eight.

Therefore, remaining hours to work on this script: Fourteen.

How fucked I am right now: Very.

One Woman Dares to Ask...

2007-12-09T21:20:00.000-08:00

Can you write an act and a half of a screenplay -- say, 50 pages or so -- in twenty-four hours?

Watch this space for the answer!

Countdown

2007-12-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

T-Minus 90 minutes to Sweetbread Consumption.

Gonna be good. Can barely wait.

Yum.

Drunk on Carbs

2007-12-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, yes, I've cut back on bread 'n pasta and whatnot. And maybe I'm not as used to the White Stuff as I once was.

But I ate three piece of pizza this afternoon, and you would have thought I'd taken up smoking opium, I was so disoriented and tired.

Some smart person who knows about nutrition could probably explain how something like that happens, but the hell with it. I'm back on the no-bread bandwagon.

Well, except for that leftover slice in the fridge.

Don't Tell Her I Said So

2007-12-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

Willa the calico is having an attack of the high spirits known in our apartment as the Skirballs. (This is the name of a performing arts center in Los Angeles, but for some reason suggests not so much culture as frantic cat hijinks.)

She has already ripped around the apartment a half dozen times, always going at such a clip that she's almost horizontal when she corners, the centrifugal force pulling her over as she goes. She's also jumped six inches at the sound of a New Yorker page being turned and leapt sidewise from a crouch into a full on run for the food bowl.

Speaking of the New Yorker, Louis Menand wrote a piece this week about diaries, which presents, as always, the temptation of spilling my guts via blog. So far, I've only gotten as far as being brutally honest about my cat's borderline psychosis.

You stumble upon blogs that allude to circumstances -- and you might even be able to guess those circumstances if you know the writer a little. But that's not the same thing as spelling out the gory details.

(I happened upon the blog of an ex-boyfriend once and discovered that he'd had an especially brutal break up in recent years. But he was so opaque about it, I have no way of knowing if I'm the heartless bint who effed him up or not. If so, I doubt my apology would do any good. If not, how egotistical of me to write him out of the blue with the assumption that I'd crushed him like a grape beneath my Dansko. Being me, I decided I probably was the heartless bint, and privately repented of my carelessness.)

There is a horrific scene in "Harriet the Spy," in which all her careful observations are laid bare when her classmates discover her notebook. I wonder what lesson other people took from that moment? Perhaps to keep one's notebooks carefully concealed from prying eyes? For me, I took it as an object lesson in never writing down things you don't want read by other people. And I've taken that lesson pretty seriously, although I did drink 'n diary in college, with predictably nightmarish results. (God, what would we do without shitty college roommates?)

In years past, I've searched the internet with a fine tooth comb for any and all accounts of aspiring television writers and their efforts to break in. The best of these -- a blog by a guy who landed an ABC/Disney Fellowship -- ended with the fellowship, then went behind a password-protected wall, and has now vanished from the face of the Web. There are enough aspiring writers out there that you would think at least one of them would have a tell-all blog.

But then I find myself not-quite-spelling-out where I intern, or who I interviewed with and for what job, and I see the real problem. It's not that I don't want other people to see what I'm up to, it's that I'm afraid to say it out loud, for fear it will all turn out to have been a lovely dream.

This Can't End Well

2007-12-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

I'm only ten minutes into this week's episode of "Project Runway," but this three trends/three person teams concept?

OMFG.

Can You Vote Like a Fifth Grader?

2007-12-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

The WSJ has an article this week about some homeowners' feeling that the subprime bail out is "unfair." As in, if you got locked into an ARM and couldn't afford the reset, then you deserve whatever happens to you.

Although the wall between the editorial page and the newsroom is pretty solid at WSJ (and thank God, since I'm pretty sure the desiccated remains of Adam Smith are displayed, relic style, in the former), it's possible that this article represents the rare breach.

After all, the WSJ editorial page feels VERY STRONGLY that there should be NO TAXES EVER, but ESPECIALLY NOT ON RICH PEOPLE. (Their caps. I know, it's weird. And it's only those three phrases, but they allcap 'em every time.) And nothing triggers tax hikes like the government spending money to slow a runaway train aimed right at many thousands of middle class homeowners.

I will, for the moment, ignore the growing evidence that for months, if not not years, unethical mortgage brokers steered customers to subprime mortgages even when the customers qualified for regular loans, or better still, FHA loans, because it was more lucrative for the broker to do so. Let's just skip that part.

Let's go to the part where the government shouldn't help someone else out because it's unfair to you, because you made sure you weren't financially boned.

Since when did being a bratty oldest child become a legitimate political position? And I say that AS a bratty oldest child.

Is this a thing now? Are there going to be political positions based on all our darkest childhood moments? Will presidential candidates scuffle at the debates until a moderator tells them to knock it off -- and even then, maybe Edwards takes one last parting swing at Clinton?

In the same vein, I caught six seconds of an NPR piece which featured a woman saying "I don't want to pay to feed someone else's child breakfast at school every morning."

Right. No, good. Because that free breakfast is the equivalent of the free Clinique gift with purchase -- every kid for miles around is angling wildly for their bowl of Mini Wheats. And who wouldn't? Let's just have kids from low-income homes starve through seven hours of school. Screw lunch. If we're not serving breakfast, why not go whole hog. Fantastic. No absolutely, why feed other people's kids? Let'em starve.

Or better yet, let them drop out in the sixth grade when the frustration of trying to learn on an empty stomach finally becomes too much. Because packs of middle school drop outs roaming neighborhoods does wonders for property values. They're also great for not having your car stolen out of the garage in the middle of the night.

If we're all voting on what we consider fair, then I vote that I shouldn't have to pay for military-dictatorship levels of policing, just because some withered old bag doesn't want her tax dollars to be spent on Cheerios.

Can. Not. Stop. Blogging.

2007-12-03T20:02:00.001-08:00

I know it's no longer November, and therefore, I no longer have to post every single day, but I kinda can't stop. It's addictive, forcing myself to completely shut down any/all self-censorship and just frickin' post.

I also cannot stop looking at Lolcats. I do not know what is worse -- that they make me laugh or that I can go through 20 pages of photos in the space of 15 minutes.

If James Joyce were alive today, his next book would be written in Lolcat. Iz funn to think lik kitteh.

Strangely, the rules of Lolcat are consistent enough that even a minor violation (a caption that says "pwease" instead of "pleez") sticks out like a sore thumb. Cats may have terrible spelling and in their eagerness, they may cut grammatical corners, but they don't lisp and they don't drop consonants.

In a related vein, I am haunted by the Chik-Fil-A commercial with parachuting cows. It's not just that the cows learned to parachute ... I mean, how did they get the parachute rigs on in the first place? Or find rigs that would fit them? And despite the absence of thumbs, they were also able to write the words "Eat Mor Chikin" on the parachutes.

And yet, through all of this, the cows never learned how to spell the words "More" and "Chicken"? Doesn't it seem like either of those things would have come up? You go to all the trouble to parachute into a football game and you don't even bother to spellcheck your parachute?

Maybe that's why your kind ends up in Happy Meals. Ever think of that, Bessie?

Drink the Kool-Aid

2007-12-02T12:49:00.001-08:00

When all else fails, I write in front of the television.

On the couch, coffee at hand, laptop fired up, TV on. I need all four things -- the TV on when I'm at my desk just makes me turn around in my chair. On the couch with no TV and I surf the internet for hours. No coffee means I have to go get coffee. Laptop, obviously, because Final Draft doesn't work with a legal pad.

I'm not proud of this. I know better than to work in front of the TV. But no kidding, it works. I should stop fighting the idea that it's wrong and just give in -- maybe I'd be closer to 90 pages now.

But it also has to be a very specific kind of television. It has to be something I actually want to watch, which unfortunately for MG rules out football and UFO documentaries. Entertaining but not especially good movies on HBO are best. I did three pages watching "The Departed" and seven pages watching "Live Free or Die Hard."

(You may be saying to yourself, ten pages in four hours of movies? That sucks. And my grown-up brain agrees with you. It's not great. But its a fuckload better than zero pages in four hours of sitting at my desk, which is my grown-up brain's idea of a good work space. So I'm gonna go with my nine-year-old brain's idea of a work space for now.)

Some television I refuse to watch while writing -- "30 Rock," "House," "Reaper." Shows that I intend to watch with complete focus. And some shows, even though I don't like to admit it, are a little too terrifying/enjoyable to keep me company at the laptop.

Specifically, "Project Runway." I must have mentioned this before, that Tim Gunn is like the boiled down concentrate of every departmental chair, every professor emeritus of every MFA program in the nation. He's serene but interested, wise but fallible. (I read in the NYT, shortly after Liz Claibourne hired him as creative director, that the job enabled him to finally move out of a typical small NY apartment, which fits as well.)

The writers... I mean, designers, break my heart. They have such hopes for the future; they know what they do well; they know what they love. And they do the best they can to meet the challenges, never knowing if they've succeeded until the moment of truth.

Virtually every designer smiles and nods at his/her model on the catwalk, momentarily in love with their work all over again. The smile doesn't slip away until that horrifying moment when Michael Kors looks you in the eye and asks what you were thinking with the six foot long train.

Still more horrifying are the interviews with the designers who are OBLIVIOUS to the giant mistake directly in their path. Their colleagues see it. Tim Gunn sees it. But the smitten designer is so in love, so consumed with their plans, that they're blind to any and all possible problems.

Those moments send me reaching me for the Tivo remote, because in my frail state, I can't really take too much of what, bluntly, is full-on Kool-Aid Drinking. In fact, all creative endeavors contain hours and hours of Kool-Aid Drinking, but you don't know it at the time. And for all we know, it will turn out to be delicious, tasty Kool-Aid that will make us the envy of all our friends.

But, alas for reality television, you can't make an hour-long show out of nothing but calculated gambles that pay off brilliantly. Somebody has to fall on their face. And what every creative person fears, as they sit on their couch, typing away; or stand in their studio, studying the canvas; or strum a few chords and look at the scribbled lyrics they've got so far --- what we all fear is that this is the time we fall on our face. Yet if anything is gonna get done, we've got to set that fear aside and do the next thing. And the thing after that. And the thing after that.

New Page Count

2007-12-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

Forty one.

Nobody's saying they're good. Nobody's saying they're readable.

But there's forty one pages with stuff written on 'em, and I say: Thank frickin' God.

Design Flaw

2007-11-30T13:20:00.001-08:00

As a Special Treat, I went up to the Trifecta of Starbucks around the corner from #403. (No joke -- two Starbucks and a 'Bucksian counter inside a grocery store, all on a single city block.) Ordered my usual grande non-fat latte, set to work.

A little while later, a young miss comes by with wee shots of something she calls "Eggnog Frappucinos." A delightful little cup of frothy goodness, with a tiny straw, a whiff of whipped cream and a dash of nutmeg. Lovely!

Yesterday, seeking to give myself another Special Treat, I went to another Starbucks (not in the Trifecta, but one of two on the Third Street Promenade, three if you count the Hear Music store, four if you count the Seattle's Best inside the Borders.) I purchased a tall eggnog frappucino. First sip: Yum. Second sip: Mmm, noggy. Third sip: Maybe needs a little nutmeg.

Then: An inescapable chemical tang filled my mouth. That was the end of the eggnog frappucino.

My mind is blown. I ordered a drink that, conservatively, packs around 400 calories into a 12 oz serving. You'd think all that fat and sugary goodness would, at minimum, hide any repellent aftertaste. Best case scenario: You wouldn't need to add anything that might produce such an aftertaste. But no. You would be wrong.