Fragile Industries

Garfield Minus Garfield = Kafka

Accidental art at its finest: the depths of the human psyche are revealed, like a lost masterpiece emerging from under layers of graffiti, by removing that irritating non-cat Garfield from the panels of the daily comic bearing his name.  Garfield Minus Garfield is the art restoration in question, and though its creator is anonymous and leaves no email link, s/he has set forth the manifesto of the site with precision: 

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb."

I can relate.

Here's another treat from the G-G files: a telling portrait of the nature of complaint:

                                                                                                                  Thanks to Houston for passing on this gem.

Oscar '08: *yawn* and memorable years past

(Sorry for absence, I got that amusing flu that wasn't blocked by the flu shot.  Three weeks and an expensive course of antibiotics for the following bronchitis later, I'm about 90% functional, and can again operate a keyboard.  I have photos to illustrate the parties described below, but scanning the non digital pics is currently beyond me.  Give me a week.)

I'm kinda known as The Oscar Kid by people who have been around for a while.  On Sunday, I received several long-distance calls to note the occasion.  I only wish that this year, so different from years previous, had a shred of its former excitement.

In my former life, I gave an annual Oscar party.  This went on for about a dozen years and grew in complexity and lavishness.  The first was a simple potluck and phone invite to about a dozen friends, because I was amazed that San Francisco did not recognize what I, as a Hollywood native, knew: the Academy Awards Presentation was the most important day of the year.  It was a felony not to see the nominated films and hold strong opinions within the greater LA area on the nominations.  To my surprise, the Hollywood-phobic San Franciscans loved it and the party was a great success.

It soon became my signature, the Hollywood exile's tribute.  It was always an ironic event, I had enough distance from my upbringing to realize that all that glitz and self-congratulation and bad musical tributes were more fun to laugh at than take seriously.  True to the manic side of my bipolar nature, the party escalated over the next few years and residences and I reached ever higher levels of obsession and size, with about 40-60 guests a year.  There were certain constants to the party: a television in every room (including bathrooms) which required a lot of borrowing.  In the middle years in the loft, which was basically one huge room and a bathroom, I created smaller viewing areas, each with its own television.  One year, for the sake of togetherness, I reconfigured all furniture so the loft became one enormous theater and spent a fortune on the rental of The Largest TV Screen Ever Built (but the bathroom still had its own.  There was No Escape.)  Also constant were handmade invitations, a contest with Fabulous Prizes for guessing the winners (and eventually a series of prizes including the You'll Never Make It In Show Biz prize for least correct guesses), a comic voting ballot for the contest (sometimes I spent more time writing jokes for the ballot than the entire Writers' Guild, combined, did for the broadcast) a huge poster for guests to nominate the winners of the evening in categories of their own devising (e.g.: Worst Toupee, Most Obviously Intoxicated, Worst Dressed, Worst Acceptance Speech), and lots and lots and lots of food served on a groaning buffet with multiple courses, with a drinks outpost and scattered nibble stations.

One area was always for the Oscar Die-Hards, those who really gave a damn about who won and wore what and thanked whom and so on.  Silence was observed in this zone.  The rest of the party was giggly mayhem, especially during the musical numbers when we all shouted rude things.  As hostess, I had far too much fun to pay attention, so I always taped the show (remember video?) and found out what happened the next day.  It was never as exciting as the party, though the year Jack Palance did one-armed push-ups was probably a tie.  That was the Best Oscar Broadcast ever.  A good broadcast helps, but is not required, for the Best Oscar Party.

Food is about 75% of the reason to give a party, for me.  A good party should have about twice as much food as the number of guests can comfortably accommodate.  Occasionally, I'd invite people to bring either the hors' d'oeuvre or the desserts.  One year I got lazy and had it catered (the year of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the best dim sum place in town supplied everything but the sweets).  Usually, though, it was a solo affair in the kitchen.  I cooked for days ahead, usually did not sleep the night before and scheduled days off from work before and after.  (Fortunately, my boss was an Oscar nut, loved the party, and totally supported my truancy.)  I had tasting parties for select friends ahead of time while I tested recipes.

It didn't end there, every possible party-giving aspect was manic. The custom invitations (at least 50 or so) were designed to a point of complexity that sometimes each cost several dollars in postage to send.  I dangled ornamentation from the ceiling (an advantage of loft living) to rival the balloons of the Macy's parade.  I bought out the Saturday wholesale flower mart for massive floral arrangements.  I ordered miniature chocolate, golden Oscars from the SF chocolatier who made them for the Academy's official post-Oscar party itself (he wasn't supposed to sell them retail, but I worked on it).  Costumes appeared frequently worn -- I appeared as Titanic one year complete with model steamship capsizing on my head (if you've ever seen Beach Blanket Babylon, it was on that scale, and my neck ached for days) and an ocean-print dress made from a shower curtain, covered with sewn-on plastic 3-D fish and icebergs.  The year Braveheart was nominated (the year of the Big Theater in the loft), Houston wore a full kilt get-up as tribute, and wore it well.  Houston never misses an opportunity to wear a skirt in public.  The only problem was that he sat at the edge of the "balcony" (my loft railing, which has no "modesty shield") facing downstairs, and, well, he sat like a guy.  Now we know what the Scotsman wears under the kilt! 

At first, my theme was simply Hollywood Excess (my party motto: take a theme and beat it to death) until one year where the excess and my obsession for control exceeded Martha Stewart's and my long suffering husband of that particular time frame threatened divorce (about 1996, I think).  So I focused my themes from then on, cut back in some areas, enlisted hubby's creative strain and the best ever was the Casablanca Oscars of 2002.  Casablanca is my Favorite Movie Of All Time and has its own blog post, and so that year was extra special.  The Oscar Parties staggered on for a year or two after, but the Casablanca party totally had the pops. 

We went Moroccan with a vengeance for the food and decor.  It was both delicious and beautiful.  Moroccan food is not difficult to cook, is perfect for large quantities, and its unique, vibrant and abundant flavor rivals any other nation's, including, dare I say, perennial favorites French and Italian.  I slavishly followed the bible of Moroccan cooking (over 30 years old and still in print, highly recommended) for multiple courses and multiple dishes for each course.  I bought every brass item available in thrift stores for weeks in advance so that all serving pieces and knick-knacks appeared North African.

By this time, we lived in a real house with rooms, and most of the rooms were tented in apricot silk (waiting for a drapery project that never happened) and other Moroccan-style prints and beads for a casbah feel. My father, whose history as a Bogie look-alike has been noted in previous posts, collected Bogart memorabilia, so I raided his stash and erected Casablanca posters and stills everywhere.   Elsewhere, I printed out poster sized renditions of great lines from the movie, (and there are a million, "Here's looking at you, kid,"  "This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," "I'm shocked, shocked!" etc.)  All the rooms had large placards naming them as memorable locations from the film. The drinks area was christened "The Blue Parrot" (Sidney Greenstreet's bar in the movie) and we created a turquoise-hued punch of the same name involving vodka, blue curacao, and champagne that tasted so innocuous and packed such a wallop that many taxis were called late in the evening.

The centerpiece of the decor, taking pride of place on the niche over the mantle, was an authentic Warner's production shooting script of Casablanca, courtesy of my dad, old and dog-eared and I wish I knew who it originally belonged to.  Next to my photo albums and cats, it's what I'd most regret losing in a house fire. For that desert ambiance in floral arrangement, I went with acres of dried and decorative grasses instead of flowers.  My future ex-husband became dreamy-eyed on a trip to the floral supply store and made several car-loads of purchases of big pots, palm branches, rocks, dried moss and enormous bamboo stalks with which he retreated into his workshop.  Mysterious power-tool noises were heard for hours, and he emerged with 7-foot tall and 4-foot wide potted palm trees.  They were scattered through the house along with 10 televisions, perhaps a record. 

The invitation of course had Bogie and Bergman on the cover and invited Casablanca-themed costumes. As a result, our guests represented nearly the entire cast, with two Inspector Renaults and men and women from 60 to 16 years old sporting Rick's white dinner jacket.  One friend, a highly skilled juggler, arrived as the juggler that appears for three seconds in the opening scene in the marketplace, and he juggled on demand for the entertainment of other guests (I'm not making this up.  Check "juggling in movies" list here.  Said guest is creator of the juggling site.)  I wore an absolutely spectacular caftan embroidered in gold.  My future ex, of course, wore his immaculate tux.  He was born to wear a tux.

The capper to the evening for the hardy 20 or so who stayed after the broadcast ended was a screening of the film Casablanca itself, complete with hookah and ample floor pillows.  We all shouted out dialog. Everyone cried at the end, even if we'd all seen it dozens of times before. 

All of this is by way of saying, the Academy Awards used to be a big deal for me.  It's funny, the things that come and go.  I used to also be a shoe nut, Sex In The City had nothing on me, I owned at least 150 pair, from Come Fuck Me Pumps to thigh-high dominatrix boots to vintage 40's boudoir slippers.  And not a single pair of athletic shoes, a point of pride.  I'm totally over it.  I own maybe 10 pair of shoes now, heavy in flip-flops, clogs and Converse hi-tops, and one single emergency pair of pumps.  And, I'm sad to say, I'm over the Oscars. I live several hundred miles closer to the Kodak Theater than I used to, but the vibe doesn't reach me.  The phone calls were sweet and well-intentioned but a reminder of things past.

I didn't even remember it was Oscar Sunday (formerly more holy than Easter Sunday) until the phone calls started.  OK, I was still half bronchial and groggy, but that's no excuse.   I ended up watching, drooling over red carpet fashions (very good this year) and then The Most Uneventful Oscars In History unfolded.  Not the most awful or awkward.  Sometimes that is a good thing, as horrible overlong thank you speeches given by people who speak Latvian are always amusing, or when the producers unroll dancing salutes to ___________ (fill in the blank for something really dumb), you can laugh at the dreadfulness of it.  In fact, there was a brief bit where they did joke montages of bad dreams, but it wasn't as funny because they were on to the joke.  That's no good, if they start playing irony.  That's my job.  I want to laugh at stuffy, self-important, self-referential Hollywood at its worst and most over the top. No, this was simply bland cubed, this was an Oscars with all the liveliness of CSPAN.  I might as well have been watching the public access coverage of the Bakersfield Zoning Board.  Obviously, I care more about the medium than the message.  I am pretty sure that this year, for the most part, the Academy voters got this right.  That has nothing to do with the entertainment factor in bestowing those honors.

I am hoping that this year's blandness is due to the writer's strike ending so close to the awards date.  The producers and participants didn't have time to be overwrought and unintentionally hilarious, they just had enough time to Broadcast The Fucker.  Feh.  Glad I wasn't hosting a party this year, I would have had to spike the punch with LSD and No-Doz to have had any fun at all.

Good Charlotte

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.  These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

"The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Preface, 2nd edition (21 December 1847).

Recently finished my second reading of Jane Eyre.  It is not the book I read as a teenager, looking for a slurpy Gothic.  I didn't realize its seminal place in fiction, seeing only the hackneyed trope of governess-falls-in-love-with-master-with-dark-secrets.  I didn't appreciate the rich splendor of the language, seeing only a lot of very small print taking a lot of space to do what could have been done with fewer and shorter words.  I didn't, most importantly, admire or even perceive the bravery of the author and her heroine and the choices they both made, as I was seeing with a 1970's teenager's eyes with no idea of the suffocatingly stilted life of a middle-class, isolated Englishwoman in the mid-19th Century.  I thought Jane "sappy" and wished Rochester were better looking.  I wanted them to stop the endless verbal fencing and tear off a piece.  I had probably just finished reading Valley of the Dolls.

This time, of course it was completely different.  The most heart-stopping passage for me is not in the text, but the Preface, quoted above.  Bronte was responding to her contemporary critics who found the work "coarse," especially if, as was rumored, the pseudononymous author "Currer Bell" was a woman.  If I thought that Bush, the folks at Fixed Noise, and all the fundamentalist Right could understand the big words, I'd send it out as a big spam mailing, because it says so perfectly what needs to be said, and said often.

Right on, sistah.

Brave New Worlds, Presidentially Speaking

OK, I'm trying to beat the instant news at its own game.  Here it is, Super Tuesday, and here I am, on a cranky new computer.  Every news agency in the world would like to beat me to a prediction, to a news flash, to a scoop.  I'm just trying to beat my new computer brain (thank you, Dell Inspiron Skinny Mode) to it's latest decision that I'm not using the right program.  I'm also fighting a nasty virus which seems to think that just because it can make me puke because I'm coughing so hard that I'm calling uncle.  Fuck you, virus.  I voted by absentee ballot (good thing or there would be an interesting CDC cluster of pulmonary virusus in mid-Coast California) and I'm running on a dynamite combo of Robitussun and Tylenol and Sutter Home Merlot.  Ha. 

Anyway, last Thursday, I knew I was feeling sickly and filled out my Absentee Ballot.  Now I'm watching MNSBC, half drugged, half drunk, and cheering for Obama.   I'm coughing up half a lung and I don't care.  I want the Democrat to win in November.  Don't care who.  My mother, the life-long Republican, has already alerted the FBI and the Secret Service when, in cranky mode, she admitted to the Republican Women's Voter Poll who dared a telephone call, that she wishes someone would assasinate both Bush and Cheney.  As much as I applauded her late-life spunky reserve, I let her know that our inoffensive beachfront community was now home to mysterious black vans with great big satellite feeds.  Still, we voted the same candidate among several Non-Republican and that makes me cry for gratitude.

While I ignore the Flowers By Irene and Sunset Services vans near our house, I am excited by today.

It excites me, on an historical level, that I voted for an African American candidate for president without the sense of symbolic failure of those who voted for Jesse Jackson in 2000 and later years.  It floors me that my mother, who at 76, still tells stories about her jury duty obligation in the '90's by explaining each vote by racial./cultural demogaphic, can tell me unapologetically that she voted for Obama.   He is the candicate for hope, for change, for anything but Bush and the current regime.  My mother, whom on these pages I have railed against for her old-school classist attitudes, and for whom I have cheered on these pages for her fundamental sense of justice, a lifelong Republican, knows that the most important watchword is CHANGE.  And she voted for Obama, and out loud wishes her conservative parents, rolling in the grave, were here to tell them why.  My grandmother, bless her innocent heart, wanted to know late in life, if it was OK to still call the dark-complected "coons."  Mom's come a long way.

This is a big deal.

At the same time, I have to ask myself, am I a traitor to my gender?  Is my mother (to whom female solidarity only matters if the man paying your spousal support has been a cheating asshole) somehow defying her gender?  For my mother, this is less important and could prompt numerous anthropological studies because she disapproves of women who are not, in some sense "charming."   She's offended by Hillary's ability to piss people off, and a nice lady doesn't do that.   After a number of political discussions, I'm afraid that Mom and I are on the same page, but for different (if only by PC degrees)  reasons.Here's where we agree:

1. A Democrat HAS to win in 2008.  Me, I'm a yellow-dog Democat, as Molly Ivins would say.  I vote Democrat no matter if an old yaller dog is running.  (I have to note how significant this is for Dorothy, Mom, the lifelong Republican. She believes in all the old-school Republican mottos, such as low taxes, the best government is that which governs least, etc.  She is offended by Bush and everything he stand for, and the fact that Republicans have fallen in line with him on the basis of partisan politics.  She's what I'd call a Good Republican -- sorta Like the Good German -- the Republicans failed her and she hates the war and most of all she hates the fact that if she travels overseas she is hated just for being American.  There's something to be said for the argument that regardless of party, we've made ourselves a worldwide puddle of shit. To a classist Republican, this is offensive.  So she voted Democrat.  But for Obama and not Hillary, and this is kinda predictable, because Hillary is not a make-nice lady.)

2. Ya gotta agree that the Iraq war is idiotic. Our young, boys and girls, are dying because of a lie going in (WMD) and the obvious gains to Republican-based lies for the lack of an exit strategy (profits to Halliburton et al.)   Even Mom gets this.

3. To Mom, McCain, but for the Iraq question, would be a Nice guy.  Lacking that, he doesn't deserve our consideration.  Hawk in Iraq = Idiot.  Me too.

4. We both, from different ends of the political spectrum, don't trust Hillary to get us Out Right Now.  I have other axes to grind, but we both believe Obama will do everything possible from the Executive Office to get us out of the proto-Vietnam of Iraq.

That's where we agree and this is huge.  It spells death for any Republican candidate period.  We both agree that the Republican party has been a sham and a hidy-hole for hypocrites for years.  We agree that no matter who the candidate, we are voting Democrat for president in November.

Here's my personal slant.  I am jazzed to vote for Obama on any number of levels.  The strongest, I have to admit, is the moment when, in 1968, at 12 years old, I remember my white male Presbyterian minister's sermon on Palm Sunday, the first Sunday after Martin Luther King's assasination.  He delivered the "I have a dream" sermon verbatim to his nearly all-white congregation and received, for the first time in my memory, a standing, cheering, ovation.  This was in a Presbyterian church, where applause was declasse, where we waited, in a stupor, for the choir and our blessing before standing and leaving, without bringing palm to palm.  Old and young, we rose as a single worshipper, with tears, and roared our approval that Sunday.  I had just come from my Membership/Baptismal class.  It happened that I had decided to join the church from the junior/Sunday School class, and nothing could have excited my decision to follow Christ more than that message.  I went and did and had my permed curls dampened by holy water the next Sunday (Easter!) as I was admitted to membership into Hollywood First Presbyterian.  But the Sunday before, I said to everyone within hearing distance that I had heard Christ's message.  It happened to be delivered most perfectly by a black martyr that day.

It was 30 years before I heard it again.  In a very different construct.  Not relevant here, except to say that I again heard Christ's message -- which to me matters in how it accurately is delivered to the downtrodden, to the outsider, to the least of these, and then and only then it matters.  Jesus was an outside agitator.  He cared about and primarily about, the overlooked.  The spat upon.  The "camels thru the needle's eye"?  go home.  Anyway, through the African-American construct, it has some import.  More than I'll go into here.  And after receiving the joy of Christ's resurrection as a gift to the downtrodden, to those looking for someone besides the moneychangers to take up their burden, I will vote for Obama.  For that reason and many others.

It brings tears to the eyes of this white girl, this daughter of the Pharisees.

OK.  Outside of the Christian construct, then, and my knee-jerk white liberal guilt, why would I vote for a man over a woman?  I respect anyone voting for Hillary for any reason.  I want, more than anything, for a Democrat in the White House.  If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for her gladly.

But I voted for Obama, and it still stings as a bisexual, womens-lib, huge fan of Clinton, any Clinton: I think she's the norm.  I think she's bought out.  I think she'd choose the expedient over the right.  I loved Bill and I'd vote for him over Obama.  But Hillary was just too quick to choose to join the Christian (and this from a Christian!) prayer breakfasts.  Hillary voted too often for the status quo in Iraq.  Hillary may be a woman and god bless her, I have the same genital equipment, has had her eye on the prize to the point where I don't trust her.  It has nothing to do with standing by Bill in the face of infidelity.  If that were my ex-husband's only fault, it might have worked out.  As mad as I was.  (My ex's fault had to do with not being a partner, and Bill wins on that front, and so, OK bully for her.)  I don't trust her and I trust Obama's idealism. 

Idealism and lack of experience has often been cited in the anti-Obama crusade.  Let's look at JFK.  He had as little, less in fact, national experience than Barak.  But JFK had the smarts and idealism and humility to call on REALLY SMART PEOPLE to advise him.  The I think Obama has the same.  Were it not for those Best and the Brightest, the Cuban Missle Crisis could have turned out so differently we'd all be either dead or nursing radiation-poisoned children.  Hillary?  Would she have the same humility?  Would she call on some politically "safe" group of counselors?

I also trust Obama's ability to work in a bipartisan environment.  I think the Republicans WANT a Clinton again for nominee, even for president, so that the ugliness of Bill's last years can again strangle government.  Sad but true: the worst thing to happen to our country is not Bush (much as I want to blame him) but the incredible and counter-productive polarization of our country's governance at all levels along party lines.  Hillary is a lightning rod on that basis, simply because of Bill, not gender.  The Anti-Hillary bias is far more entrenched than a party or gender bias.  I think (is this an idealistic hope?) that our country is far enough along that racism alone will not divide the electorate.  Most people have rejected the negative Black=Muslim=Terrorist lies propogated by the e-mail lies.  But then, I'm probably idealistically wrong about that too.  But I do have hope for Barak Obama.

This pisses me off.  I was in my first year of law school when Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman on the Supreme Court and was thrilled to my last hormone.  Not long afterwards, as a woman and an Italian-American, I was in tears when Geraldine Ferraro mounted the stage as VP candidate.  I WANT to vote for a woman for president, and soon enough, I'll probably have my chance.

And she will probably win.  But I see a future of more partisan politics and ugliness.  Bill Orally and Faux News will have far too much fun on Hillary's behalf.  I don't see an easy cure in '08 with a Democrat victory of any kind.

Damn it, I voted for someone I admire.  I gotta run back to the TV and see who agrees.