Maria Menozzi Blog

From Unemployed to Sabbatical

2009-06-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

Whew! Back after a harrowing 8 weeks, feels like 12 weeks, studying hard, taking a final exam and writing a term paper. In between, I was also trying to write songs and do a hundred other creative things that I am either in the middle of trying to finish or trying to start. Life should be so dang tough. It certainly is a time for reflection and catching up and just really focusing on my own self and healing. I am adamant about not working any job for the sake of a job. I will make my income happily and joyfully doing what I love, whatever that may be, whatever comes my way. I can’t believe I’m stating this intention now. How many times over the years have I tried to make that my goal? So why now?

I guess it’s about being unemployed. Don’t worry, I’m still lovin’ it. It’s a little hard to get your bearings some days, to find a focus. That sort of threw me. I’m used to trying to get everything in on a weekend: errands, fun, recreation, relaxation, cleaning, maintenance and all that. Now I can do laundry Monday thru Friday during the day, anytime. I can clean a little bit every day or once a week, or once a month all at once. Aw, who am I fooling? It’s not that I want or need a job, it’s that I just want to know that the future is still out there holding possibilities for me. I want to feel a purpose to getting up in the morning. I do, it’s just that my real purpose has never really took off for me in any validating way.

I have seen a lot of great television series that I didn’t get a chance to on cable. I’ve seen:
“Deadwood,” which was amazing and fantastic. I would love to have had a chance to write an episode for that.
I’ve been watching “In Treatment” which is very interesting and has amazing writing and acting as well.

And here’s the list of books I’ve read so far this year, ones I can remember:
(asterisks indicate favorites and this is not in any kind of order)
Intimacy by Osho*
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith*
Notes from Underground by Dostoyefsky
Persuasion**, Sense and Sensibility**, and Emma, all by Jane Austen
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros*
The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller**
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Monster by John Gregory Dunne
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion*
The White Album by Joan Didion*
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
Conversations With Woody Allen by Eric Lax*
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Paula by Isabel Allende*
Chosen by A Horse by Susan Richards*
Women in Science by Vivian Gornick
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
Where Angels Fear To Tread by E.M. Forster
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill*
Method or Madness by Robert Lewis*
Passion For Acting by Alan Miller**
A Dream of Passion by Lee Strasberg*
The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzberg
Man In Search of a Soul by Carl Jung*
Synchronicity by Carl Jung**
For Love of the World by Deborah Lubar**
At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard**
The Story of A Soul by St. Terese of Lisieux

Looking at it in writing seems like I’ve spent a lot of time reading but really it doesn’t take me that long to get through a book I love. And I’ve developed this little problem called insomnia which helps with the reading.

I’m bound and determined to get through all the Jane Austen novels by the end of the summer. I’m really enjoying them. It’s so wonderful to finally give myself the time to read all these wonderful literary works.

I believe this time off has turned into what one would call a sabbatical. And Lord knows I needed one of those. So let’s say we take this sabbatical for the rest of the year which gives me time to finish my creative project, write, read, make music, and study for my counseling certificate which is really rocking my world right now. Let’s say, I just give myself permission to do a job on my time, in my way, with purpose and enthusiasm and the joy that comes from the freedom of the unexpected opportunity to be right here, right now in this present moment moving towards wholeness. Let’s say, I do that. Good, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do now and in the future.

And for tonight, there’s always reruns of Sex And The City…and 3 books…

Where's Sue?

2009-04-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

It’s not often I’ve had to push the panic button with my 86 year old mother. (She would probably smack me for giving her age.) But not too long ago, I got a little scare. It was time to pull out my Worst Case Scenario book but I remembered, I didn’t have one. So I had to go to Plan B which was…??? See, I’ve never had to act on an emergency scenario so I didn’t quite know what to do. I digress.

It all started when I decided to call my mother at 7:00 p.m. one evening. There’s a three hour time difference so the call would have come in at 10:00 p.m. at her house. Now my mother is home in the evenings. She’s not social except during the day and it’s rare anyone would take her out in the evening because she would either feign fatigue or illness or say she had to get back to the house which she keeps at 86 degrees no matter what the weather is outside. I think the heat in the house goes up every year with her age. And she’s up at that time of the evening, in fact, she’s mostly up all night. She's usually watching some Dateline program, 20/20, CNN, local news, etc. The woman never leaves the five mile radius surrounding the house but has to continually watch the news. Then call me up and tell me what’s happening in my neighborhood. Is it any wonder I never watch the news? Mom has it covered. If there's an earthquake, I call her and say, what just happened? She knows.

So I call and there’s no answer. The machine kicks on but I wait because sometimes she picks up when the machine answers. She’s not a fragile 86 by any means but the news keeps her enraptured until the third ring at times. But this time the machine is running and no one is picking up. Strange. So I call her cell phone which she was told to keep with her at all times in case she falls and can’t get up. No answer. My mother is pretty good with a cell phone but only if it’s ringing or she’s dialing. After four years we finally got her to figure out her voicemail and how to retrieve messages. Her mailbox was full for two years with messages from people who assumed if they dialed her cell phone they’d be able to leave a message. She insisted she didn’t know how to retrieve her voicemail and resisted learning until I told her 20/20 left a message one day and she missed it. Pretty soon, she was working voicemail.

So I dial the house again a few minutes later, no answer. Dial cell phone, no answer. Hmmm. Did she tell me she was going out and if so, with whom? Her brother was dying and I thought maybe she’s at the hospital. So I try my cousin’s cell phone. I try Mom's cell phone again. Now, in addition to the voicemail, we had to train her to check to see if her ringer was even working. Sometimes it was in “off” mode, not even vibration mode. That was harrowing. But once again, I used the example, hey, what if Dateline called and you weren’t available because your ringer was turned off. That does it every time.

Then I try my sister and leave a message. Maybe Mom is with her or told her information. But I’m not panicking yet. I wait about twenty minutes then try again, both cell and home. No answer. Now I’m into emergency mode. I try to figure out the last names of my mother’s neighbors. My mother is blessed with two middle age single women on either side of her living alone in their homes. I figure out one woman’s name and give her a call. I leave a message, please see if there’s a light on in the house or my mother’s car is there. Give me a call. I’m 2000 miles away and feel very helpless right now. I may have fallen myself.

Then I call, finally, the local police department. I talk to a very nice woman and explain to her that I’m 2000 miles away, my elderly mother lives alone and I can’t get ahold of her. She’s usually home every evening and she’s not picking up the phone. I can’t seem to find anyone either who can check on her or tell me if she’s gone out. So the nice lady says she’ll send a squad car over to see what’s up. I tell them there’s a key in the garage, but I don’t know the code to the remote door opener. The nice lady tells me she’ll call me with details when the squad car gets there.

My sister calls and I tell her I’ve called the police. My sister who is usually only 25 miles away is taking a vacation in Florida and is also about 2000 miles away herself oddly enough. She tells me the remote door code. I say too late, they’ve probably already broken the glass in the garage window to get in and then tells me where the key is in the garage. She doesn’t know where Mom went to this evening either.

The nice lady from the police dispatch calls and tells me the police are in the house. The dog is barking in the background. I forgot about the dog. Poor Rebel is probably scared half out of its wits and it’s a nervous skinny retriever mix to begin with, skittish, I think is the operating description of this dog. The nice lady says the 200 pound or so police officer got in the house through an open window (What!!? The house has finally warped from the heat no doubt.), but they’re in the house and it’s dark and she’s not at home. Then the nice lady asks me if my mother is at the City Hall meeting and I say, oh my god, yes, she could be there. Was that tonight? Yes it was and she asks, does your mother have white hair and is she short? Yes, she does. Well, she’s speaking on TV right now at the meeting. The meeting is running long which is unusual because there’s a high turnout. Well, no doubt, because my mother showed up.

Oh brother. Okay, yes, that’s her. Grabbing the news spotlight whenever and wherever she can. Sigh. And her next door neighbor, the one I called, is there with her. So while my mother is over at the meeting, she making news in her local city because an APB has been put out for her by some 200 pound police officer who got a little more exercise than he bargained for on duty this evening. But he got to meet a nice dog. A nice, skittish dog.

One of the officers goes over to the meeting and tells my mother that her daughters are worried and have been looking for her. She checks her cell phone which she turned off (!!) because she was in the meeting. Another cell phone lesson for Mom: don’t turn off the phone, just turn the ringer off. Sigh.

So she’s a mix of humiliation and pride that her daughters actually cared enough to call the police to see if she was okay and humbled enough to realize that being the center of news attention isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. All this within the five mile radius that surrounds her house. “I’ll never do that again,” Mom says. "I have to remember to tell you where I'm going." Yes, thank you.

But, now, I know what to do in this worst case scenario. Next time, I told her to get pix and phone numbers of the police officers if they’re single. I think this is really the reason for a worst case scenario. And I'm on the phone to Dateline as we speak. Elderly parents out too late with turned off cell phones...

MM

DAY 84, 84, 86, 99, 105….OF UNEMPLOYMENT

2009-03-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’m still on my own here. Awaking everyday to find a closet full of clothes that I didn’t realize I only wear if I’m going to work. Geesh, the money I could’ve saved because, really, if I don’t get a job soon, all this stuff is either not going to fit me anymore or be out of style and I’ll have to give it away anyway. Sad. So what do I wear you ask? What do the unemployed wear when they’re not going to work? You may not be asking that at all. You may be asking yourself, why am I reading this blog? I could be reading the New York Times bloggers where they have Dick Cavett congratulating himself or Maureen Dowd, who is suddenly turning on Obama, instead of reading about this gal’s sorry-ass life. But I’m not really writing for you am I? So go piss up a rope and get off my blog. But if you are one of the interesting, fabulous, wonderful people who read my blog, I shall continue. In fact, what do I do all day? I have decided to take a little inventory of exactly what I have been doing since the big lay off occurred.

Let’s stick to a schedule shall we?
8:36 a.m. Roll over and look at the clock and think to self, gee, I should get up now and go for that walk and meditate and start my day. Roll over and go back to sleep. Must have slept throught my 8:00 alarm.

9:45 a.m. Roll over, look and the clock and think to self, oh my god, I feel asleep for an hour. I should get up.

9:46 a.m. Sleeping.

10:30 a.m. Look at clock, decide I need to pee, pee, come back to bed and think, just five more minutes then I’ll get up.

11:46 a.m. Roll over, look at clock and think, what happened to the five minutes? Get up finally. Very carefully, because I’m usually sore from my workout the day before.

12:00 p.m. Showered, hair is air-drying because I can do that, dressed in my yoga exercise pants, a long or short sleeve tee shirt depending on the weather, and a cardigan sweater and slippers. This is my unemployment uniform of the day.

12:05-12:25 p.m. My meditation. This is preceded by a reading of some spiritual item as "food for thought" during the meditation. The meditation usually goes like this: the spiritual thought, then thoughts about money, food, angst, people, people, more money, hey, I’m not supposed to think these thoughts, back to spiritual thought, then money, people, what’s on TV tonite, the glass of wine awaiting me later, writing, laundry, money, hey, I’m not supposed to be thinking this stuff, peeking at the clock, only 10 minutes, damn, oh not supposed to swear, back to spiritual thought….you get the idea. To say I’m a work-in-progress is a vast understatement.

12:30 p.m. Turning on the computer, making coffee, making breakfast, well, lunch really.

1:30 p.m. Computer finally comes up. (!)

3:30 p.m. Done reading email, looking for jobs (?), reading newspapers online. Think to self, geez, it’s 3:30! Where did the day go? And I am a dago. I should start writing, practicing guitar, go for a walk, do laundry, clean the house.

3:31 p.m. I go back to surfing online.
4:00 p.m. Waiting for response from emails, oh yeah, people have lives and so I better check later.

4:01 p.m. Still waiting.

4:02 p.m. Turn on TV for news and to see who’s on Ellen. She’s dancing, no one interesting, change channel to Bravo and that infernal Housewives of NYC reality show that I watch now.

5:00 p.m. Oh they have another episode at 5! I watch.

6:00 p.m. I’m getting hungry. But I go for a walk.

7:00 p.m. Check shoes for dog poop, enter house.

7:30 p.m. Clean and shiny again after shower, making dinner.

8:00 p.m. Eating dinner which consists of a piece of celery, an egg and a slice of cheese in front of TV watching some episode on any station at 8:00.

11:00 p.m. Turn off TV, think to self; gee, I should really go to bed. Pick up a book and read until…

2:00 a.m. Go to bed. Write post-it note of list of To-Do’s for tomorrow including laundry, guitar practice, novel writing, screenplay writing, yoga, walking, job search, playwriting, agent submissions and cleaning house. Realize I won’t do any of that so cross it out and stick a reminder up that Housewives of NYC is on at 4 and 5 p.m. on Bravo. Whatever I’m doing I need to stop and watch then.

Dream all night about weird shit and wake up and write it down to talk about with my therapist.

End of day.
End of blog.
By the way, this blog was on my list of things to do yesterday. Actually, more like two weeks ago but I am getting to it. And I pat myself on the back for that.

Someone said it’s St. Patrick’s Day and I never understood exactly what I was supposed to care about on this day. Drinking? Um, no, I’m in recovery. Shall I eat a baked potato? I don’t know. Shall I plant a kiss on the Guinness salesman? I will, if I can find one. Maybe I should just get on a plane to Ireland. That sounds more like it.

Day 65 of Unemployment

2009-02-15T15:47:00.000-08:00

I am finally catching up with the talk shows, she says rolling her eyes. I’ve never been a fan of talk shows. I don’t get it really. What does everybody have to talk about ? Just alot of actors promoting their TV shows or movies and they make this innocuous conversation about what they like to eat for breakfast. Who cares?! Please make this more exciting! When's the last time you had sex? Who with? What time of day? Do you smoke afterwards or fall asleep or eat? Or at the very least, dish! Dish about the set, who was a jerk and who didn't the make up people like? We don't want to hear it was a labor of love. Boring. We don't want to know you can do Al Pacino impersonations. What we want to know is, do you do these impersonations during sex. See? I should have my own talk show.

I turn on the TV in the afternoons while I’m writing sometimes, just gives me something to do when I take a pause and makes some noise in the background. I like it quiet when I write but sometimes it’s just too quiet all the time when you’re home all day long. Then you’re listening just to your thoughts and that’s scary. I turn on Oprah or Opree as my Dad liked to say. One day this week she had this young male architect on (I guess that’s who he was, I turned it on in the middle of program) who had redone a house for a woman and her husband (? Was this guy her husband, I don’t know, they just looked so mismatched.) who had a severely damaged, water-logged home due to Hurricane Katrina. The story took us through the house as it looked after the storm and then now as the architect had redone it with all these major renovations turning it into an almost storybook home. I felt kinda jealous, like, hey, someone do that for me. And hard as I tried not to cry, even Opree was crying, I did. It really was amazing.

I watch Ellen from time to time. She’s funny but I can do without that dancing stuff. It’s just silly. I love that she dresses in comfortable jeans and sweaters and sneakers. The game stuff she does with the guests or the audience is kinda interesting and the gals who went to the Superbowl were funny.

Dr. Phil sucks. I just hate all that pop psychology stuff anyway. I mean, really people, you don’t know you have a problem? Sorry, but life is hard, and you have to work at it which means really paying for therapy that can help you over the long term. Unless you’re a sociopath in which case not even Dr. Phil can help you but at least you’ll get some time on TV.

I watched Bonnie Hunt on her show this week. She had Chandra Wilson on in some too large dress that looked like a bath robe. Can’t these hosts say something gently to their guests about wardrobe? I realize not, probably, but all the same, do you own a mirror? The best thing was the pix of Chandra’s family, adorable. I love Bonnie and I’d love to love her show but didn’t she have a sitcom for awhile there about a talk show with her as the host? And isn’t she a damn good actress and sometime director and why is she doing this? Ugh, come on Hollywood, don’t you have anything for these women? Please replace Sally Fields on that awful Bro and Sis drama with Bonnie Hunt. Somebody, hello?

So next week, I’m going to try to watch The View since I’ve seen it maybe once and it was before all the brouhaha with O’Donnell. In fact, when I saw it, they had on the original members and I tuned in once and thought, how insulting to women everywhere. Why does everything feminine have to call itself out? Like female comedy night? I refused to do those shows because I’m not just a female comedian. I’m a stand up comedian who happens to be female. I don’t write comedy just geared towards women or the feminine perspective and a few subjects. In fact, I’ve never been married or had children so that would leave out quite a few subjects. And while I understand the need for a hook in this business if I see advertised one more week at a comedy club with the Comedy Moms headlining or the Mommy Comic or whatever, I’m going to singlehandedly force a protest march on the club. I mean are audiences really yammering that bad for subject matter pertaining to kids and moms and husbands and marriage? Aren’t your lives a little fuller than that?

What else? I’m reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem—finally—by Didion. I picked it up in high school in my library years ago and didn’t get it. Now I get it in spades. The essay on Self-Respect alone is the reason you should read this tome. I’m so happy to have discovered her work at this late stage. Sometimes you’re ready when you’re ready and that’s all.

I’m reading a book on reading books, Shakespeare Wrote For Money. Nick Hornsby wrote this column about books he’d read and then compiled them, the columns that is, in one little tome. It’s interesting. I got through one column last night about his discovery of Young Adult literature. I thought to myself, what took you so long? I have read YA novels for years now. Some of them rival the best fiction out there in less vocabulary but no less literate story-telling and less pages. They’re spellbinding. What reading this reminded me of was that I have to take a break from all this heavy reading I’m doing to take in a few or more than a few of those novels soon.

I made an historic decision this past week. I am going to become a full time UCLA student. I am going to get certified in counseling, something I wanted to do for years actually going way back to my NYU days in SEHNAP, a school which doesn’t exist anymore, and my music psychotherapy days. I just can’t stomach going to back to find a perm job in the legal business. I need flexibility and time to write and create. I’m too old to not do what I want with my life anymore. And I’m enjoying immensely the writing class I’m already taking there and how it has set me on the path to other things that I could be doing as well. In some ways, this unemployment has been a really good thing for me, for once. As David Byrne says on his new CD, “Life is long when you give it away.” And that has been true for me. I’m not giving it away anymore. It’s mine and I’m living it for me. And me only.

And I must say what a wonderful Valentine’s Day I had going out with a wonderful friend last night to see a solo show and then aperitifs. That is what Valentine’s Day is all about, doing what you want to do and sharing it with people you care about. It’s not about sex, and dinner, and lingerie and roses and chocolate and balloons. Oh those stupid balloons. If you need to give someone an “I love you” on a balloon, you need help. You’re only announcing how badly you want it for yourself, not for them. I am so happy not to have had to deal with any of that obligatory Valentine’s Day stuff. It’s like New Year’s Eve. Everyone’s afraid to not have something to do but it’s all overpriced and overrated anyway. Yes, you could say I’m bitter, but I’m really not, I’m happy and relieved that I don’t need to prove anything to anyone anymore and that I finally get to do what I want to do without any guilt. So the next wonderful man that comes along will match my strength, my groundedness and, thank you, Joan, my self-respect. That’s all it is. AMEN!

Day 60 of Unemployment

2009-02-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

Already two months, no work. Well, I’m working, I’m just not being paid for it…yet. I get all this time to write, hooray. I don’t have anyone who wants the work…boo. Here’s another little glitch. Every time I fill out one of those EDD forms to get paid, they schedule a phone call. What the…???!!! Just send the damn checks! It’s been two months and I’ve only gotten two checks totaling $810.00. Thank God, I don’t need to pay my rent or anything. Thank God I’m independently wealthy. Unbelievable. Why bother even applying for unemployment if they’re always trying to catch you in something? I don’t know why they scheduled a call this time. Maybe they just want to chat. Maybe they found out I’m going to pole dancing school for middle aged women who have been laid off and instead of taking crap during the day from men, they learn how to take it at night scantily clad. Oh wait, that’s my personal life. But at least I’ll make some money. I don’t know. I only know THAT IT WOULD BE NICE IF I GOT A CHECK!! A FEW CHECKS!!

Excuse me. So what do I do all day? First of all, can I say how much I love my place? It is wonderful. I don’t feel boxed in like I did in the old place and I can sit here and write all day. I have done more writing in the last two months that I have in ten years. I’m finishing my spec script and starting on another one, working on a pilot and writing songs for my solo play that got derailed last year. I can do things in the evening without feeling exhausted from being at work all day. I can make a 6 p.m. yoga class once a week, twice a week if I want. I can enjoy the sunshine during the day taking my walks during writing breaks. I am playing the piano again, changed my guitar strings, playing guitar everyday and sleeping in later and staying up later which is more of my normal schedule. My house is really clean too. It always was clean but now I can get to it in short rather than long order. All this and more, I just can’t afford to eat. Or use the phone or turn on the lights. But those things are overrated if you ask me.

And, I bake cookies, cakes, baby-sit dogs, help the elderly cross the street, direct traffic and planted a garden. I volunteer for the local nonprofits and make sure I’m on time for afternoon prayer with all the other sisters if I’m not lost in thought dreaming on Mt. Salzburg. Then I take in foster children and we go out during the day and sing songs with me on guitar and the children marching and dancing behind me singing along. Sometimes we climb trees and I make them clothes, because I’ve learned how to sew now, and I make them from the curtains that used to hang in my bedroom. It’s adorable. Then when it thunders they all run in my room at night and we sing some more. Ah, isn’t being unemployed fun??? I renamed myself Maria Von Trapp and I’m going to take the children out and enter festivals as a singing group. Where’s my Captain though? We’re missing the captain.

Goodness, I must go now and prepare for our farewell song to all the guests I’ve invited to my apartment to dance to Austrian waltzes this Saturday night. We’re going to sing and the children are going to use the steps leading up to my front door for the show. Later on, we’ll sing about a mountain flower that doesn’t grow in California and that no one cares about here because you can’t smoke it. Sigh.

Yeah, okay, I need to get back to work soon. Stay tuned next week when I move in with my sister and her husband after I’ve been kicked out of my motel for nonpayment and out of my teaching job for sleeping with all the men in the county. I get to wear chiffon dresses, talk like a Southern gentile peach, and get taken away in a straitjacket. That should be fun.

Captain, where are you?

Thoughts: Rev Road, Bruce, and Oscar

2009-02-01T18:52:00.000-08:00

I just watched Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band play Halftime at the SuperBowl. I have been a fan for years now ever since Rachel O’Leary introduced me to The River double album back in college. Along with Billy Joel and Elton John, I don’t think there is a performer alive that matches this guy’s absolute talent and genius for live rock ‘n roll. It is just music that makes you feel alive and after dancing the whole set, I am now a bucket of sweat. Might have been the two cups of coffee I had before that, but I don’t think so. There isn’t anything more joyous than dancing to any music that guy makes. I must go see him in concert again somewhere. And he’s 59!!! for cryin’ out loud. All you lightweight contemporary, hip-hop, alternative, whatever bands out there, learn something. There’s nothing like that blue collar rock ‘n roll. But I give myself away as an unrepentant middle-class, Detroit girl. Los Angeles lacks the rock ‘n roll edge. I mean, really, Sheryl Crow? God bless her but it doesn’t translate.

Last night I saw a phenomenal film. In every aspect, this film was amazing, from direction, acting and writing to cinematography. Revolutionary Road just rocked my world. Okay, I get a little emphatic but isn’t that what the art of cinema is supposed to do? What a tragic, beautiful story of lost hopes and interrupted dreams and mistaken ideals of love and life. Kate Winslet is a genius. That’s all there is to it. I’ve always enjoyed her work but after seeing both The Reader and this, I have to admit that this gal has a long wonderful career ahead of her if she doesn’t go the Annette Bening route of giving everything up for “a family.” Really, you can do it all, just try. A gift is meant to be used not given up for your husband who’s 20 years older than you. What’s up with that? I digress. Back to the flick. Sam Mendes did a terrific job and Haythe wrote a fine adaptation. Not a false move in the piece and Shannon is so good as the voice of truth. I could pick apart this flick in oh so many ways but I’ll spare you just to say that every flick that Mendes does he gets better and better and every film has more heart. American Beauty was a fine debut but it lacked heart and emotion and I still haven’t forgiven the Academy for giving it Best Pix over The Green Mile. Road to Perdition was terrific storytelling and heartbreaking. And this one, Rev Road, is just as fine and wonderful and I may have to forgive Mendes for his Oscar for direction over Frank Darabount. I still am rooting for you Frank.

So now, the Academy Awards: Leo DiCaprio was robbed of a nomination for Rev Road, that’s all I’m going to say. I haven’t seen Ben Button because I can’t stand Fincher films, no heart or soul, all technical, pretentious filmmaking crap. But, I still need to see it yet, I know. That said, I still don’t think I would have given Pitt a nomination. He almost never knocks me out with anything he does. What I think he should have been nominated for: Burn After Reading, in a supporting role. He was hysterical in that and terrific. I honestly think he’s a better character actor than leading actor and I wish he would get that. He would rock. I don’t know what the Academy has against Leo but I wish they’d get over it already. Titanic, Ti-schmanic.

Kate Winslet should have been nommed for Rev Road in leading actress, not The Reader. She actually has a character arc in Rev Road and in Reader she is really a supporting role and doesn’t really learn anything. Reader is a terrific film too. The only beef I have in this category is Jolie who like her counterpart, Pitt, never knocks me out in anything she does. I’m too busy looking at her lips. In fact, I think she was nommed for this role because of her thick, raging red lipstick she wears in Changeling. I don’t get it, here’s a woman whose son was kidnapped and she finds the time to put gobs of makeup on her eyes and lips every day when she goes to work as a lowly telephone operator manager whatever and to see the police and to the grocery store. She’s supposed to be this unassuming, single mom in 1930-something Los Angeles and she’s made up like a movie star/hooker every day to go to work? When I’m depressed and stressed, the last thing I’m thinking of is hey, I better look pretty today. Or, for that matter, when a member of my family has been kidnapped!! And the other telephone operators look like regular women with almost no make-up? Can you say, hey, I’m the star and I need to stand out and be made up? That was the only element of that film, which was otherwise disturbing, yet well-made, that I didn’t believe and thought both Jolie and Eastwood should have known better. So maybe Spike Lee does have a point, eh, Clint?

Rourke is the whole movie of The Wrestler, love Tomei in anything, but the film itself is not that great of a story. Good for Rourke and the hearing aid, great “Method actor prop.” Hey, Darren, pay attention, we’re not all looking at your fancy film-school camera shots. It’s called, the story! So get over yourself already.

Slumdog is it. I don’t care what anyone says, I really enjoyed this film and it’s one of three films I saw this year that I could see again and walked out of the theater feeling really good. The other two were Rachel Getting Married and Frozen River. They didn’t give the slum kids money, they did, whatever. Really, these are movie-making Hollywood liberals even if they are from England. Do you really think they’re not going to pay these kids and take care of them? C’mon, get a clue. Anyway, India needs to get a clue. If that’s how millions of their people live, I’m horrified, and a few filmmakers aren’t going to really change anything are they? Aren’t you putting the blame in the wrong place?

I gotta say I’m making great creative use of my time off here and am in no hurry to start back at the job grind. Talk to me in a couple weeks though when my bills are due.

Finally, I’m hittin’ Thunder Road because I’m Workin’ On A Dream to resurrect my Glory Days when I was Born To Run….

I tell ya, next relationship I have, the big test: he’s gotta love Bruce otherwise….Niagra Falls.

How Many CEO's Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?

2009-01-16T00:35:00.000-08:00

Well. What a waste of a day. I hate wasting days, hours, minutes, words. To me, that kind of a day is insufferable. And I have them rarely. It started when I couldn’t go to sleep last night even though I had to get up early for an interview for a job. A job that I don’t want, didn’t want and would never want but I go because, hey, it might be THEE job right? And the economy’s bad and I’m out of work and these people were offered up by my former employers, blah blah blah. In short, all the wrong reasons to get out of bed at all as far as I’m concerned. No wrong side of the bed crap here. I get out on the right side all the time. In fact, I should probably try the other side just for fun to see if my luck changes in any way at all. Then after the interview I have to go see a recruiter agency to update my files. Sigh. I get up too late to do my morning Ohm’s and run out the door as my new car is bucking, why, I don’t know. Maybe because, oh yeah, it’s a Ford product, it’s an American car, and 13 months is about par for the lifetime of an American car. Yeah, yeah, come and get me, I’m from Detroit, so I know, so just shut up about it. So when I take it back to the dealership because I’m still under my 30 second warranty, they say, well, we test drove it and it didn’t do anything for us. Okay, okay. Gimme it back. I’m the hysterical woman who just doesn’t know how to accelerate after 30 years of driving. In fact, on second thought, give me back my ’98 Ford Escort. Might as well.

Hey, I’m just warming up here. Stay with me. I get to this interview in Brentwood of all places that I never am and find the visitor parking spot in the building next door where cars are shoved in spaces like sardines one on top of the other. After I get over my initial panic attack at another car parked behind me, I head for the offices of the place I’m interviewing. The woman who I talked to over the phone about the job greets me and she’s nice enough. In fact, she’s very pleasant and I find myself able to actually converse without any trace of animosity, irritation, annoyance, frustration or smoke coming out my ears at having to be there and repeat for the umpteenth time in my life what I’ve been doing for the last ten years or twenty years or whatever or where I’m from la dee dah, blah blah blah.

As she explains the job which is basically babysitting a grown man, which all these jobs ever are, how he wants his paper in the morning, me to be at my desk at 8 a.m. sharp, to remember every little item of his home, office, family and friends such as who was the plumber they got last year, what kind of light bulbs do they use on their chandeliers, you know, all really important stuff like that that makes me want to get up on the wrong side of the bed in the mornings, as she explains the job (can you say long run on sentence because I’m emotionally overwrought), I’m thinking how can I make a run for it. How can I actually beat it out of there before I have to meet this overgrown baby who’s known nothing but a silver spoon up his ass for as long as he’s been living and wouldn’t know how to wipe his own ass if it weren’t for some woman next to him telling him what to do.

But wait, there’s more. Stay with me. This gal I’m talking to then tells me that this CEO wants to hire someone who’s going to be there forever. Because when he retires, his son will take over for him and by the way, I’m working for the son as well. So I see, I should profess to want to be here for THE REST OF MY LIFE???!!!! WHAT??!! Right. Let me just rethink those plans to own my own company, be President of the United States, a vacation, that novel I want to write, oh and anything else exciting I wanted to do with my life because I am in this position forever.

Then she proceeds to tell me that he likes things just so every day and he doesn’t use a computer and will need me to tell him when he has a hair appt., keep his calendar, and so on and so on. Okay, two minutes into this job, I’d be teaching this guy how to use Microsoft Outlook calendar and email and how to listen to his own voicemails with the edict not to bother me unless he’s on fire, underpants, France and all, because I’ll be on the Internet and reading his paper. You gotta be kidding me.

Oh and the woman that’s in the position now is moving back to the East Coast and she might be going in two weeks or six weeks but he doesn’t like all the “not-knowing.” I see, he doesn’t like that she’s a human being with all the ups and downs, inconsistencies, unpredictabilities and the like of the human condition and her silly little life is interrupting his plans for haircuts and light bulb information. Riight. Sounds like a great job to me. All for the discounted price of 50 or 60k. Not even enough to save a decent amount of money for my silly little retirement but then again I’m supposed to calcify there in my chair and not retire at all.

But wait, there’s more. Between thinking of hightailing it out of there and how I could demonstrate a Section 8, this gal tells me that if I don’t have any questions, I can meet the man himself. Oh boy, I’ll bet this is going to be good. I do have a question: um, how big of a jerk is he really? Here’s another question: if I took a poll of all the people in the office, how many would say they’d like him as their dad? Oh, wait another question: what does his ex-wife say about him?

So I walk across the carpeted path with secs in cubes on one side and glass-walled offices on the other to this man’s office. I guess in their offices they like to know what you’re thinking, saying, and doing at all times which is what's up with all the glass walls or no walls. I notice how quiet it is in the area. You could hear a pin drop on the carpeting is how quiet it is. I walk in the office and see a short, gray haired, nice-looking guy who is probably not more than a decade older than I am, maybe 12 years at the most and shorter than me. Napolean, heal thyself. He motions for me to sit down in a chair at one end of his office and he then proceeds to sit in a chair all the way across the other side of his office. I mean, we were not close. I thought that maybe I would have to get out my megaphone to talk. Maybe he thought I had cooties. Maybe I do and don’t know it. That’s probably why I don’t get direct-hired a lot. That and my cranky attitude towards CEO’s who don’t know how to work computers and need me to remember plumbers and light bulbs. Okay, I digress.

So I sit down and he proceeds to grill me on every aspect of my resume wanting me to fill in the blanks of every year that I have on there from the time I graduated college. Oh and what college did I go to? “Never heard of it.” I don’t give a shit whether you heard of it or not, that’s where I went to school and so did my aunts and if it was good enough for them, it was for me. What did I do between 1994 and 1996? Slept. What do you think? I married Rip Van Winkle and slept.

Now the gal had prepped me for this next line of questioning by telling me that he likes to get to know his personnel and if it bothers me to answer anything, to just tell him. Okay. He asks me what my father does? I said my father died two years ago. His response was not, hey, I’m sorry to hear that, but (with a wave of his hand), "What did he do?" Okay. Excuse me, my father was everything to me and if you’re going to diss my family then you can take this job and shove it up your lily-white, silver-spooned fanny (said with a heavy ghetto accent and a jive shake of the head, remember, I am from Detroit).

Then he wants to know do I have brothers and sisters? A sister. “Oh is she married? (huh?) What does she do?” She teaches. What does your mother do? She’s a nurse anesthetist. “Oh she’s a nurse.” No, she’s a nurse anesthetist and then he laughs and says, “So you are teachers and your mother is a nurse.” Yeah, so??? Give me back my resume you piece of shit. Ugh. All this for the price of a job. Like I’m what? A piece of meat you can poke around and see if it’s FDA approved? I wouldn’t work for you if this was the last job on earth and believe me it will be the last job, coocheez. Keep up the line of questioning. Oh yeah, and here’s a question for ya: What’s my name? And how do you pronounce it? That’s my test.

No, no, I’m not going through this again. It is criminal what I have had to contend with just to get a lousy, stinkin’ secretarial position. Like your bestowing a crown of jewels on me. It’s not. It’s a paycheck I felt like saying so I can bust out of this place and do what I want to do. But you know, it’s time I just busted out and did what I want to do anyway. The thought of giving another piece of my precious soul to some stupid man who can’t figure out how to tie his shoes, makes me want to commit hari kari…on him.

I’m not married, I don’t have children and people ask me why. I’ll tell you why, because I have had to take care of men all day long for the last 15 years and I am tired of raising my hand to go to the bathroom. Ladies, I hate to break the news to you but the glass ceiling is still there, there is no liberation in case you hadn’t noticed. We’re not any further along really then we were 40 years ago. Shame on you that continue to let yourselves be afraid of people like him. You have a choice, you always do. So do I. And my choice these days is going to be to perfect that game of chess I’ve been wanting to for years now. That and trying to sleep on the other side of the bed. And Opree's on at 3:00. Let’s change it up!!

Question: How many CEO’s does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One secretary.

HAPPY UNEMPLOYED NEW YEAR!!

2009-01-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

First blog of the new year! So much for that counting down the 12 days of Christmas thing blog. Yeah, that didn’t happen. But so much otherwise has! Let me tell you what hasn’t first, so you don’t get too excited. I didn’t get married, I didn’t buy a house, I haven’t gotten a leading role in a Clint Eastwood film (although my Detroit connections might help now that he filmed “Gran Torino” in Detroit, good fer him!), nor did I book any TV shows, commercials or other writing jobs. Well then you say what did happen that was good if none of that did. Well, are you sitting down? I got laid off from work. YIPPEEEE!! No, really. I have been sitting around (well, barring errands, walking, running and yoga everyday and classes) and studying my creative work, writing, making strides on my solo play and others, reading, reading, reading and going to see a lot of wonderful films. Oh and spending way too much money for someone who doesn’t have any good day job prospects in front of her. WAY too much money. I don’t mean designer clothes stuff but books, CDs and the lone top, blouse, t-shirt, too good to pass up deals at Christmas stuff.

This is not new for me losing a job. It’s just that I’m so used to it that now at my age, I see it as an opportunity to improve my lot rather than a nail in a coffin. The work will always be there in one form or another. At some point, the offers will come in again and I actually have an interview on Thursday this week, and I will have my pick of where I want to be. It’s just that this time, I really felt as if I was getting very complacent in my day job. In fact, I just wanted to write and not be bothered with anything other than keeping my bills paid and food and shelter available. I had goals I was working towards like this solo play and classes I was taking at UCLA in writing and feeling good about that. But as soon as I was let go, which I knew was inevitable from day one oddly enough, I felt like this lid had come off this very large pot (not my belly which is getting smaller and tauter every day thank you). All of a sudden, it hit me. I could do theater. I could audition for stuff again. I could take acting classes…DURING THE DAY! I could do lots of things now…DURING THE DAY. Including my writing. The fact that I wasn’t getting paid for any of this really didn’t strike me as a problem. It still doesn’t. As if to encourage me, I got a call from some guy at some theater company to come in and read and sing for a part in his upcoming January production. I still don’t know how this guy even got my pix or number. Sing!?? Ugh. But what the hell, I did it. And I was great! It was such a fun audition and they were so nice. I played not one but three songs and even brought my guitar which ended up being a conversation piece. I think I would have had the part if I wasn’t going away for a week back to Detroit at the end of December. Nevertheless, when I got back I learned a new monologue my new acting coach had given me and applied it to an Equity audition on Monday. If I had been working, I never would have considered auditioning. Wrong, so wrong! I did really well, so well, I got a callback. These are encouraging signs to me.

Most importantly, I feel like I have to get back to my original goals and that I can tackle them again with courage, faith and no small amount of confidence and no trace of anger or bitterness. I feel renewed. This is what I needed in these past two years of desert that I’ve been traversing and trying to cross. It really doesn’t matter where you are in your life, the opportunity for renewal is always present. It may take some time to cross the desert but the journey is worth it. No matter what happens with any of these projects, I know that I’ve set my goals again and have the ability, talent and will to see them through. The best thing: I don’t care anymore what anyone says, what anyone thinks or who the critics are, I’m living my life the way I want to and I fought for and that is what’s great about this new year, another chance to do just that.

Read some great books in the week I was home (yes, I read three books in one week):

Don’t Look Now, selected stories by Daphne du Maurier. Chilling is all I can say. Very Twilight Zone-ish but that’s almost insulting, these stories are so much better. I remember seeing the film of the book’s title years ago and shall revisit it again. The story is much better though.

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida. I picked this book up in a little bookstore I frequent in Studio City and what intrigued me was it took place in Finland/Lapland and involved a setting in an ice hotel, no lie. I read this in one day, it was so good. I’m all for stories about main characters searching for their fathers, since my father was such a peach and I still miss him every day. This story didn’t disappoint. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story where the mother was such a brutal character and even then it’s hard to judge.

The Shack, by William P. Young. Okay, I know this one is like saying hey read Conversations With God, Part 16, but it is much different. It’s told in the vein of a memoir and could be true or not true but it’s heartbreaking and hopeful and enlightening and wise and beautiful and horrific all at the same time. I read it in one sitting on the plane coming home to LA. Aw, I call this place home now, finally. Anyway, I was amazed at how the insights in the book correspond to my spiritual studies now in contemplative living. Why, it’s just like Fr. Keating says it is, go figure. Those mystical monks are really onto something. I also was drawn in by the horrific incident that starts the main character on his spiritual journey since I still find unrest in the unanswered evil in the world. Go ahead, pick it up, you don’t have to tell anyone or blog about it.

I so thoroughly enjoyed visiting with my nephews and family this holiday season. My mother came to stay with me out here for six weeks and through the holidays and we went back together for the last week of the year. It was a restful time and reflective time and I had so much good food that I went and gave away hundreds of dollars to those who really need it this time since our country is in such turmoil and upheaval and I feel still very lucky for what I have. I shall leave off with my explanation of this lovely picture at top of my sister and I taken on New Year’s Eve or actually just after the new year began. It’s inspiration comes from my older nephew Adam, 15 now, whew, who advises that when you take a picture you should “look away.” So we did. I took it a little farther than intended and added the flare of the nostrils part, but I do believe but I’m working on it. Try it next time someone points a camera at you. It’s adds a little something or other.

Twelve Lords A-Leaping

2008-12-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Blog of Lists

I have decided that I will write a blog every day during the month of December. I have not blogged since JULY!!! What is up with that? I have stopped and started 18 different blogs and not finished a one. And an historic election came and went and me, political baby, didn’t even blog about that!! What is up, sister. Maybe it’s my UCLA class that’s keeping me busy writing and that it is I can tell ya but I’ve only been taking it since mid-October so that’s still no excuse. In any event, this will be my first blog for December and then until Christmas and then after Christmas and then until New Year’s Eve and then after that and then….well.

Everyone does their end-of-the-year favorite things/lists/bedtime stories/positions, et al., ad nauseum so I think I’ll give my two cents.

Terrific films I’ve seen this year so far:

Tell No One
I’ve Loved You So Long
Rachel Getting Married
Frozen River

Yes, it’s a short list but so far means that I haven’t yet seen any films coming out in this month yet and I can’t wait for Valkyrie (not). These films really stayed with me after I left the theater. They are terrific stories about character, redemption and human resilience and survival. They tell a story. Hooray for these original stories and terrific writing and acting. And hooray for independent film. Finally, hooray for the French. Those people can really make the flicks. Who’d’ve thought considering the whole Jerry Lewis thing. The first two films are French with subtitles.

Terrific books I’ve read this year:

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.

Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson

Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert

I did quite a lot of reading this year. I was bound and determined to read more classics that I have not gotten around to in the last twenty years. I was also bound and determined to buy one book at a time and read it, then buy another one instead of buying five books and reading two. Oddly enough, the first four novels were about main characters in solitude or leading solitary lives or travels. Another common theme was grief and learning to assimilate heartbreak, loss and change. These were not to be read at a quick pace. No page turning for plot here. Yet, I couldn’t put them down. They’re themes and stories that resonated and stayed with me long after I put the book down.

Terrific music I’ve listened to and bought this year:
Another Country, Tift Merritt
Raising Sand, Alison Krause and Robert Plant
Children Running Through, Patty Griffin
Live, Karla Bonoff

I have to admit this is a very limited category for me. I tend toward the female singer/songwriters. But, hey, if it’s good, it’s good. These are the crème de la crème, terrific female songwriters who thru the years have written and sung quality stuff.

Terrific Theater I saw this year:
Tosca

The first time I’ve been to the opera in 20 years. Now I see what all the fuss is about. And to think I used to learn whole operas in voice training. I loved the music but couldn’t put two and two together about how to appreciate it. It’s amazing and this particular opera was astounding and heartbreaking.

I was working on my solo show this year and that prevented from seeing a lot of theater. Never again. In 2009, I shall be doing show after show.

Mediocre books I read this year:
Skylight Confessions, Alice Hoffman
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

I love Alice Hoffman but the greatest last book I read by her was Blue Diary which was terrific. This one just had one too many angels, wings, symbolic stuff coming off every page. I get it, we get it, angels, wings, symbolism, suicide by leaping off a building, whatever, and now back to our story. I always wanted to read Ann Patchett fiction after I read Truth & Beauty which was Ann Patchett non-fiction and pretty good, I finally bought this novel. The ending was a little too happy and contrived and I saw it coming which is odd for me since everything gets by me and I wouldn't know contrived from contrite. Well, now I do.

Mediocre films I saw this year:

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull thing. I’m sorry, aliens? This is what we waited 15 years for? Another alien story? The ONLY thing great about this flick besides anything Harrison Ford was KAREN ALLEN. Yay, for the filmmakers. It’s about time. No more female du jour. They are so boring.

Sex and the City. Did I say this flick? And I’m a huge fan. I enjoyed this film immensely but it’s all a bit too much with the clothes and outings and Park Avenue digs and all that. Are these babes really making all that much money? I make a good dollar doing what I do but I shop for sales and still look great. Well, I think so anyway. In my jeans. In my pajamas. In the end, I’m a sucker for happy endings and that was one good thing about this flick. That and all the husbands, boyfriends who were so underused as to be insulting.

That’s it so far. Until tomorrow….

ALICE’S BOOKSTORE (and Patty’s and Anne’s and Maria’s)

2008-07-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

I truly believe that all my life is about waiting until I can have time to read. I wait all day, all week, all month, all year. I wait for breaks, lunch times, bus times, train times, little pockets to steal on a weekend afternoon and even when exhausted, just before I close my eyes, in bed. I even buy furniture so that it is conducive to an afternoon of curling up in the nooks and crannies of fabric to immerse myself in story.

So it is when I go on a vacation or have to travel anywhere that the first and foremost item to pack is always a book. I can finish a book on an airplane in one sitting. So depending on how long the trip is, it will certainly entail buying another book during the course of the time spent anywhere. In fact, the search for an appropriate bookstore is always a part of my itinerary of any travel plan.

That being said, I do go through dry periods, periods where I can’t pick up a book and need to clean the palette so to speak. I also don’t want to live my life from the jacket of a book cover. I need to enjoy life in all its fullness as well. Sometimes for all the books that are out there, there just isn’t anything I’m drawn to, to read. Often the reason I pick up a book is because I read a good review or that the name or author comes up in different things I’ve overheard or read in other places. If I start hearing a name or title over and over again at random, then my intuitive side kicks in and says, hey, maybe you should pick up that book.

I’m not very well read even though I do read. There’s many classics I’ve yet to pick up. I always thought I should have been an English Lit major in college. I was a minor instead. I should have studied writing. I should have done a lot of things. In any event, I notice that my bookshelves are filled with memoirs, biographies and certain fiction. I really enjoy science fiction but I don’t read enough of it. Same with mysteries. I don’t read enough of those even though I enjoy a good whodunit.

When I was growing up, I spent lots of time at my local library and it was a pretty good one I might add. I read F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie, Rona Jaffe, Philip Roth, Sidney Sheldon, and my personal favorites, Woody Allen and Bennett Cerf. I read much of the 70’s fiction at the time. And I especially enjoyed the annual Best Plays series. It was sort of the Readers Digest of condensed plays. In my little Detroit town, that was about all I could get. I followed all the shows in New York and on Broadway. I knew who was acting in what parts. I used to write plays all the time growing up in school. I don’t know why I didn’t figure out I should have been a playwright or gone into theater in some way.

I didn’t really get into memoir until much later when I lived in New York. New York opened my eyes to a wide variety of culture. There was The Strand bookstore, very big and used and new and you could get lost in there for a whole day. This was back when they had Mom-and-Pop-owned bookstores and you would find your favorites in different neighborhoods and who would carry what. You would find those paperback books from different press houses, not the big guns, that had those generic looking covers with white borders and great titles or something that caught your eye about what the story would be about. It was like buying the independent films of books or something like that.

I then realized that I started to unconsciously read and be drawn to female writers. And oddly enough, female writers with “A” names, like Alice and Anne, and Madeleine. Okay, that’s not an “A” name but it rhymes…sort of. I bought Anne Tyler, Alice McDermott, Alice Hoffman, later on Anne LaMott, Alice Munro, Anne Sexton. Not unlike my musical tastes which also run toward female singer/songwriters with the same names, like Patty Larkin, Patty Griffin, Patty Smythe, Nancy Griffith (again, not a Patty but it rhymes…sort of).

So there are a number of things I’m trying to say here. One, that I’m obviously OCD but also that I don’t just read everything because I like to read. It takes me awhile now to buy a book just because I might go into a bookstore. I can’t buy more than two either. I used to come out with four or five at a time. Then I looked at my bookshelf one day and realized I was buying a wish list but not actually books I was going to read. Some of them are still sitting there with my good intentions still intact. There was a period a few years back where after I finished going through receipts for my tax return, I realized most of what I owed on my credit card were book purchases and most of those I hadn’t read. Now I frequent libraries more and I keep only those books that I feel I will read again and some of them I have read again and over and over and I get more out of them the second or third reading. Anyway, it’s the same rule that happens when you buy three CDs or more. Only two of them will be any good, the rest you won’t like. It’s a law, I swear. Always happens to me. I think that’s because you buy something you’re either not ready to hear yet and think because everyone has it you should too or it’s good intentions and wishful thinking because you want to really like jazz and want to expand your repetoire but hey, I gotta hear some Patty Griffin. And so you play it once while you’re reading the Sunday paper, never really listening to it and then it goes into the CD file never to be heard again. Until you move, then as you pack, you say, what’s this? I bought this?

Another thing is that I’m a firm believer in quality over quantity which means that just like going to see a movie, I want to read a book because I want to have that life changing experience where I have to get through it and can’t put it down. I don’t go see many films at all for that reason. I can’t come out of the cinema with an “okay” feeling. I have to be totally moved and enlightened or still laughing my ass off in flashbacks. That doesn’t happen often. I had a friend who constantly went to the movies and read books. And she was MARRIED!! She thought because I enjoyed to read too and was an actor and writer that I also loved going to the movies. Yes, I do but not every weekend. I do not read a book a week anymore. I live my life. Life is where the stories are which is why waiting to read or see something wonderful just enhances life and enriches it. That’s what I would love to be able to create if I could. In fact, I stopped hanging around her because it was boring. Geesh, let’s go jump out of plane lady. Get your head out of the book!

So it is with great pleasure that I offer up a book I’m in the middle of reading that is just that, enriching and life-enhancing. And her name is Anne! No lie. I swear I don’t look for these things. Anne Enright wrote "The Gathering" which recently won the Mann Booker prize, or vice versa, last year. I picked it up at a Borders in Chicago where I was traveling and bought furniture this past weekend. On my way to the O’Hare airport, we stopped in the Borders and I bought two! books only, the third being for my host (on a coupon). I had finished the one I brought with me and started in with Anne’s book. And from page one, I couldn’t put it down. I can’t really explain it either because the premise is so simple and it’s not a page turner in terms of plot and I sort of already figured out what the surprise was half way through but getting there was a joy to read. Her prose is marvelous. (And mine, well, trying to describe this book…sigh.)

Now this always happens to me too these coincidences if I’m reading or renting films. By the way, you can only watch two films at a time as well because the third will be a stinker. Okay, so anyway, I just finished reading an Alice Hoffman book about a boy and his sister and the sister is the survivor who loves and tries to save her brother and then I bought Anne’s "The Gathering" and within the first chapter, I discover that the story is told in the voice of the sister who’s trying to save her brother who has also died and committed suicide!!! Is that weird or what?

[As an aside: when I used to rent at the video store, I’d pick out the best double features and there was always some coincidence to them like the time I rented “The Mirror Has Two Faces” and “Michael” and both of the pictures ended with the main characters dancing down the street…in New York no less. And a great double feature I might add.]

One time, I was going to Chicago, same weekend, I go for my birthday a lot, and I happened to pick up "The Secret Life of Bees" for the plane ride there and I was traveling on my birthday. I started to read it on the plane and couldn’t put it down. About halfway through the book, the narrator, a female of about 13 I think if I remember, talks about her birthday being today, July 4. Okay, what’s going on?

Now another strange thing happened to me one day as I was looking through my bookshelves. That was the time I noticed I had a lot of Anne’s and Alice’s as favorite authors. What started me on the path of story and reading, was an aunt who was a schoolteacher who I didn’t get to know for very long, only 11 years of my life. When my sister and I were younger, my dad’s older sister, my Aunt Alice and her husband, Uncle Lawrence, used to visit us and bring a box of books, all new and inscribed by our Aunt. “To Maria, Love, Aunt Alice and Uncle Lawrence” in her perfect teacher script. I thought she had given me gold. I loved all the books, A.A. Milne and fairy tales and all kinds of other novels. All hardcover too. My Aunt Alice was a very well loved teacher who taught elementary, sixth grade. I remember her students at the end of the year which was her retirement year, gave her an autograph book signed by all of them telling her how much they enjoyed having her. I was always very proud of that. I remember she would write me letters on pink tissue-like stationary in her beautiful handwriting. She talked about taking communion and school and they were long letters and very beautifully written. I wish I could have appreciated that more then but I was so young. She died at 67 from a long illness which she fought hard to recover from. I remember my parents telling me that she had only two-thirds of her stomach left because of the ravage of that disease. But she left such an imprint on me and a legacy that to this day I now understand. And I looked at my bookshelf that day and said out loud, gee, that’s funny I have all these authors named Alice and Anne. Why is that? And some voice from somewhere said to me, because of her, because you’re a writer.

I see, said the blind woman. And that’s why I read. I read to enrich, enjoy, entertain and enlighten myself. But, mostly, I read because I write. I am a writer.

Thanks, Auntie Al. xo

I Really Am Too Old For This Sh*t!

2008-07-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

I am going to be 46 in two days. (Yes, it’s the Fourth of July: insert your patriotic, holiday joke here. And yes, I am quite the firecracker and proud of that.) Yeah, yeah, it’s just a number; I’m still young; I don’t look 46 at all; I’m healthy, strong, beautiful. All of that, yes, I know. And of course, I’m going on my 6th 39th year, a record somewhere.

As a woman, I’m not supposed to tell my age. As a woman in the entertainment industry, I’m really not supposed to let anyone know my age. But I always tell people anyway. In part, because I like to see the look on their faces because I don’t look anywhere near 40 much less 46 and because I have to say it out loud once in awhile to remind myself. I don’t feel like 46 although I don’t know what 46 feels like. If it feels like this then I’m doing okay. I can still dance, yoga, run, walk, hike and all that stuff. One of the young office employees here said to me last week, “I have to tell you, you are in great shape.” I nearly fell over. Really? I am at least 10 pounds heavier than I’d like to be and have been doing my daily regimen in hopes of keeping myself toned and my stamina high. My daily dose of yoga, walking and a two mile run is also to keep me mentally and emotionally fit. I can’t tell you what going without yoga for two days does to my peace of mind or whatever little of it I’ve cultivated over the years. Nevertheless, I was very pleased she commented on my fitness. It also forced me to maybe admit even though I’m not my perfect petite size 2 anymore, I’m still quite fetching and I’m doing something right. In fact, I don’t know what size I am anymore. I have to factor in water retention days when I try on jeans which I seem to buy every other week. I know of no other clothing item that is so ridiculously uneven in size depending what designer you’re trying on or whatever other cheap brand happens to be out there. Sometimes I’m a size 6 and sometimes an 8. Sometimes the size 6’s get smaller in the wash. Add to that, that I would live in jeans if I could and wear them to bed and at the same time, being in a 6 or an 8 makes me feel fat, I could just throw up my hands to the whole deal and surrender to the fact that deep within middle age I may not ever enjoy wearing a pair of jeans again. Please say it isn’t so.

But this is what I really enjoy because now I can say it and know I’ve earned it. I say all the time, “I’m too old for that shit.” It’s great! It’s so great to be too old to give a crap about keeping up with everything and everyone. I don’t even care anymore. I stopped caring when I turned 40 I think. I looked around one day and realized that some things that were goals in my life I either wasn’t going to achieve ever or that I didn’t care about it anymore. And it was quite the relief. It’s not that I’m not up for adventure or that I don’t have goals still I’d like to achieve but I just don’t want to work so hard anymore. I felt like all I ever did was strive strive strive to get somewhere in my life. Most of time it’s felt like I was running in place or banging my head against a wall. At this point in my life, I don’t have anything to prove anymore. I already know all the talents I have and all the good things about myself and all the ways I’ve succeeded and failed in my life. The only thing left is just to be happy. Enjoy the journey I guess and take it one day at a time. So that’s what that means. The platitudes kick in at this time with a ferociousness.

I read a book review of a computer technician who has a bestseller, a work of fiction, his first ever novel being published and he’s 49. Then they listed all the major authors who really didn’t publish until they were in their late 40’s. So I see there’s time for me to do what I need to do creatively and maybe this is the best time for it. All I know is the kings are gonna come to me now because by golly I’m not spending one more dime and one more precious minute of my life chasing after them. Forget it. I’m too old for that shit. See? Comes in handy!

I always hoped I’d age gracefully. I never wanted to be one of those people who botoxed, surgeried or starved myself. I wanted to be one of those people who at 50 or 60 could look back on their lives and see how far they’ve come and felt confidence with themselves and in their lives and looked forward to an adventurous old age filled with companionship, family and travel. I always thought I’d feel okay about turning 40 or 45 or whatever. Today I find that I’m not so much yearning for my youth because it wasn’t that great. It was mostly troubled and anxious and filled with grief, loneliness and lots of unanswered questions. No, it’s not the old days I yearn for, but I yearn for the chance to live it over and embrace all the uncertainty and feel that boldness of risk again. I wish I could take the opportunities I’d missed years ago and try them again with the knowledge I have now. The knowledge that I’m smart and good and beautiful and good enough. The confidence and respect for oneself that comes with age, comes with living through personal tragedy and despair and having to pick yourself up many times and try again often times in the face of great humiliation and discouragement.

I think the greatest thing I can say about myself now is that despite everything, I have grown in self-love which is most important. I have compassion and forgiveness for myself that I couldn’t find years ago. Because without these things, you can’t really move forward. I’ve also earned the right to confidence and self-respect because I have worked hard and still do to try to have enough self-awareness about myself and my actions and thoughts to change what doesn’t work, what has brought me trouble and what I’ve attracted both personal and material. If I am responsible, then let me live the rest of my life in responsibility for what I still can become and let me honor the years lived and the years to come. So what is the point of lying or not giving account of my years any more to anyone? I’m too old for that shit.

So if you call on my birthday and I don’t answer right away, give me some time because I’m probably trying to pull on my size 6 jeans.

Will The Real Strawberry Thief Please Stand Up?!

2008-06-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hell hath no fury than an Italian scorned of her food. Here’s the story: I went in the main kitchen where I work to take a short break to cut up, wash and fix in a small bowl some strawberries I bought at the farmers’ market at lunchtime. Just a little snack to keep me from spending money on some candy or other sweet bread to pass the time on a long afternoon of hard work trying to win my 815th game of solitaire out of 1,246 games so far this day. (Isn’t that a record for something somewhere? I’ll have to look into that, of course, here at work.) So I put a cover over the paper dish and set it next to a fork and my newly cleaned tupperware bowl and leave the kitchen to use the ladies’ room. I leave the items there on the kitchen counter because who wants to drag tupperware and strawberries in the bathroom with them, however briefly? The association would ruin any pleasure I would derive from future storage or present sating. And hey, I’m coming back, it’s obvious the items are there for pick up by the person who left them there so why not just leave and come back?

Why not my lily white strawberry fanny, indeed! I return not two minutes later to find my covered paper bowl of strawberries GONE!! Whoosh! Outta there! The tupperware and the fork are still there but no paper bowl of fruit. And I am livid. I run out to see if I can find the culprit still walking back to his desk with the bowl. I search in the front lobby, I make the rounds of the floor, I search every open door and closed door (although I will not go into the mens’ room)--nothing and no one! No one slurping down juicy sweet strawberries from a paper bowl anywhere. I am still livid. I resurrect my plight to everyone within radius and everyone not within radius. I call The Times, I call O.J.’s attorney, the FBI, the CIA and the KGB (do they still exist?) and report missing produce. Have they found Bin Laden? Maybe he and his cohorts have been in a kitchen of an office building seventeen stories up in Los Angeles. I send out an email to the Staff of the office stating that I have a missing bowl of berries somewhere and the culprit better ‘fess up or die. Well, something to that effect although in a law firm threatening death to anyone is not a good thing. I get many replies of compassion, sympathy and a couple marriage proposals but no leads. I am still fit to be tied. A couple people offer by way of possible explanation the fact that since extra food from meetings and office lunches go into the kitchen for public consumption that maybe someone thought it was okay to take them for that reason. Uh, yeah, nice try but no cigar. See, food brought in is usually on large trays that look as if they were made up for a large quantity of people not small single paper bowls of strawberries for one. Thanks for trying to make me feel better but I’ll still pulverize the person when I find them and you are now basically an idiot in my book.

People who work in offices have nothing better to do than eat. The work is so boring, tedious and repetitious that the diversion of any type of mutton, whether stewed, french fried or candied, brings them out of the fabricated woodwork to stuff their faces. And stuff they do, leaving not one crumb for Cindy Lou Who or that mouse. Nada, niente, nyetaskavaya! And these are people who turn a good dime working in legal offices. These people pay well, no lie! I, myself, can afford more magazine subscriptions because of it and I’m the better off for it because spending my extra cash for more articles on how to live well, how to be happy and how to meet the man of my dreams is certainly money well spent to…that better life of bigger fruit bowls. So, my question is, why do these people act like food is such a finite, endangered article? Are they all so much in debt that they sacrifice groceries in their budget for cable? Do they have cable? Do they live in cardboard boxes under freeway overpasses and come to work, the rest of us none the wiser as to their fragrance? Really what is it and the draw for free food all the time? Mind you, this is food that has been breathed on, spit on, picked over and been sitting out for over two hours already. Where is the appetite for that?

I guess it’s the same idea as buffets. If you go to Las Vegas or any Midwestern po-dunk town in the country, you’ll find at least one eating establishment that caters to the fascination Americans have with “ALL YOU CAN EAT.” What does that mean exactly? All you can eat. Are you supposed to sit down and eat until you drop? Are you supposed to store up for a few days and eat dish after dish right there? Are you part squirrel, part chipmunk, part bear and hibernate for a few months and therefore need to eat as much as you can? Are you running an eight day marathon and need to shovel it in all at once? I don’t get the concept of “all you can eat” at all. All I can eat is a little bit of this, a little bit of that and a slice of this with a side salad. I really can’t do much more than that especially if a glass of wine and dessert are involved. And especially if I don’t want to roll home, if I want to fit into my car and get behind the wheel instead of on top of it. I don’t want to spend four hours at the restaurant so I can shovel one helping of everything in and then wait an hour and shovel another helping. I got places to see, things to do, I can’t be spending my time in all you can eat restaurants for several hours just to get my $12.95 or $30.95 or $100.34 dollars worth! And how do I know no other customers haven't sneezed, coughed or fingered the food before I put it on my plate? I can’t even believe with all the ebola-ecoli-e-i-e-i-oh going around that we even HAVE buffets anymore. Shouldn’t they be outlawed or something? Why are we spending so much time on gay marriage issues when basic food issues still exist in this country? I don’t get it. (I’m for the marriages by the way, so there, all you ridiculous people who oppose it.)

Anyway, after putting the workplace, well, at least the lower levels of the office in a tizzy, someone came up to me and asked me if I checked the fridge, which I already did. Apparently, the person who swiped the berries put them in the fridge in the back of a pull out tray where I would have never even looked. So they were obviously saving it for later. Hmmph! I threw it out. I mean who knows if they touched it, breathed on it or just plain salivated all over them? So I made myself another dish. Next time I’m leaving a bowl of strawberries unattended in this kitchen I’m going to spit in it just for fun. Although I know two things for sure even though I don’t know who took the berries: I’ll bet it was a man and probably an attorney! And he probably frequents buffets. Don’t worry I’m on the lookout and standing in line at an Old Country Buffet as we speak. I’ll get ‘em.

The Glasswing Butterfly

2008-06-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

“A butterfly with transparent wings is rare and beautiful. As delicate as finely blown glass, the presence of this rare tropical gem is used by rain forest ecologists as an indication of high habitat quality and its demise alerts them of ecological change. Rivaling the refined beauty of a stained glass window, the translucent wings of the Glasswing butterfly shimmer in the sunlight like polished panes of turquoise, orange, green, and red.

"All things beautiful do not have to be full of color to be noticed; in life, that which is unnoticed, has the most power.”

April 29, 2008

I received one of those pass-around-forward-upside-down emails complete with full color pictures of the glass wing butterfly. I don’t know what it is about butterflies but I get full of hope, joy and inspiration when I see one or a dozen. I don’t see that many at all anymore. Life in the big city I guess. The new place where I moved has a nice landscape so that I see hummingbirds every once in awhile. I love hummingbirds too. They remind me there’s beauty in the world and it’s such a gift to see it in motion.

In Indian Medicine cards, the Hummingbird signifies joy while the Butterfly signifies transformation. Both cards can be read upright and reversed, meaning, depending how the card ends up in the totem card spread, it carries a different message. A reversed Butterfly card means you are resisting your transformation into a new life or from your cocoon to a new “birth.” The Hummingbird reversed card means that you have been seeing life through joyless eyes. That deep within “your sadness is your joy upside down.” Now that is something to reflect on. Your joy can also be your sadness or in your sadness is your joy. Or pain can be good or suffering is almost hedonistic. Okay, I think that’s getting a little masochistic and not the real meaning. But I think I was onto something. All I know is when I weep, I weep. And sometimes it feels like the tears will never stop. Then there is a little light somewhere that somehow seeps through and in the middle of it all there’s the eye of the hurricane where all is peaceful and calm and you feel everything will be all right.

That’s sort of what I feel like now. I feel like I’m in the eye of the storm. I’ve made so many transformations in my life that I definitely feel as if I’m resisting this one. But this is the big one. This is the big hurricane. I can’t tell if it’s male or female. I’ll call it iahklu'. Hurricane iahklu'. Which means…I don’t know but I finished this book last night that turned on a bit of that light and in the middle of the main character’s understanding of his dilemma, there was that word and with it, a sense of peace about what was to come.

The main character had a problem where he would dream during sleep and then wake up to find reality changed the way he had dreamed it while sleeping. Only it was an involuntary change. So he was afraid to go to sleep. Then he met a man, a psychiatrist, who tried to use the main character's gift for his own purposes. So the main character has to find a way to control his dreams as well as stop the doctor from trying to make use of his dreams for the doctor's egomaniacal pursuits.

Oddly enough, this is sort of my life right now at the moment. You could insert for the doctor character any number of people I’ve met through the years in my life who have tried to take advantage of my gifts for their own use and my good nature. Because as sarcastic, aloof and callow as I may seem, underneath I’ve got a very big beautiful Italian heart. I may let you in but you’d better be careful how you use my heart and my good nature because once, twice, thrice burned I will cut you off. For good.

So in the end, the man realizes that these benevolent Aliens he dreamed that now inhabit the earth gave him the advice and wisdom and the “word” above that he is the ultimate creator of his reality. His dreams are but another world, another illusion he created and he can choose to look at his reality in a different light. He can choose to look through his pain to find the joy. It took him a little while to figure it out but when he did he lived the flip side. He transformed, he released himself from the cocoon. And on the other side of the dream, he found a new reality. That’s what he learned to dream.

It made so much sense to me. I feel like that’s what I’m looking for right now. The flip side of the dream, the release from the cocoon. Much of it is releasing people and things that don’t serve me anymore. I need to dream a better reality, find the flip side.

So iahklu'! everyone! Whatever it means. Look within. Find the joy. Transform. Change your reality. Dream a better dream. Then sup a little nectar and fly.

“All things beautiful do not have to be full of color to be noticed…”

“…in life, that which is unnoticed, has the most power.”

The Sixties are OVER, People!! Snap Out Of It!

2008-05-12T19:17:00.001-07:00

I don’t know if it’s a California thing or what, or a musician thing or a hippie wannabee thing but let’s get this straight okay? The Sixties are over, gone, kaput. In fact, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s going on almost 50 years ago since the 60’s. I am so sick of all you people in your 50’s and even 60’s!! talking about it and identifying yourselves with it. In no other era, not even the Depression, do I hear people talk about a time with such proclivity. Okay, I get it, free love, drugs, rock ‘n roll, pookah beads, whatever. Fine, it was your youth, you had a good time, but really, do you need to constantly identify yourself with that era in every conversation, in every breath, in every action you take NOW?

I came of age in the 70’s. Do you hear me talkin’ about the 70’s? No. And there’s quite a lot I could identify myself with, such as: The Partridge Family. They were one of the pinnacle bands of the 70’s. The Beatles had nothing on these guys. I mean, there wasn’t one David Cassidy in the bunch. Or Donny Osmond, or HR Puffenstuff…I could go on. Then there was Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. I spent my life and a goodly amount of dinero buying concert tickets and records of those guys. Yes, I said records, the vinyl, the large round discs you had to play on a record player, a turntable, not for scratching, with a diamond head needle that had nothing to do with Hawaii. Do I listen to these guys now? Not really. I still enjoy listening to them and infrequently I’ll buy a CD if something new comes out that I think I might enjoy but do I dedicate shrines to them? Do I stop traffic if I see a mural in a shop window or some other silly thing, like a dish or a halter top or a key chain? Do I assume everyone I’m with will have the same enthusiasm I will for these people? No! I consider them part of the landscape of my youth and I have fond memories of seeing them through binoculars through much of my adolescence and raising my fist in the air four balconies up while caulking my nosebleed with a Kleenex but nevertheless they are just that, fond memories. I don’t need to drag them around with me and pull out wallet size photos to show everyone. I haven’t bought an Elton John album since Blue Moves and if you can remember that two record album then (a) you were a true Elton John fan and (b) you’ll know why you stopped buying his albums after that. That and the fact that he turned out to be gay. Not that I’m against it, and not that we didn’t all know anyway, with the crazy costumes and all, but dang if he didn’t rock out with the best of the heterosexual rock and roll men out there. And he was kinda cute on some of those album covers. Although my heart did really go out for Bernie Taupin but I was rather mercurial in my youth anyway. One week Bernie, next week Redford, week after that…Paul Michael Glaser…I was a pop culture crush slut in my day.

Hell, the 70’s were about those concept albums and lyrics and liner notes. Record albums were a work of art. Shelling out almost $12 for a two disc set was an investment. That’s what I remember of the 70’s. I remember my older cousin working for Sony at one point or was it Magnavox, anyway, he brought out a compact disc and had us listen to it over my Uncle’s house one day. He said, these are the wave of the future. No more records. And I covered my ears!! I refused to believe him! No more records??!!! No way. Where was the artistry in a CD cover, where do you put the lyrics? How can I lift up the needle to skip around to a song I like? Stuff like that. But, hey, now all I have are CDs. You don’t see me running around with a bunch of vinyl records, pullin’ one out and accosting everyone with it so as to relive the 70’s every day, do you? NO! Because it was 30 YEARS AGO!!

So please stop with the Beatles, Woodstock, beads, “I’m just an old hippie” crap. And cut your hair for godssakes! You’re 55, what, 60, maybe already? I hate to break the news to ya, but you don’t look like a hippie. You look like a homeless guy or a guy stuck in the 60’s who needs a bath. Stop replaying old Zappa tapes and throwing your fist in the air. We get it already you had a good time, you got high, zonked, laid, whatever. It’s called your youth, your adolescence, maybe your 20’s but it’s back then, not NOW!! Get over it because we’re bored with you. We don’t get it, we weren’t there and any attempts to relive it with us will make us roll our eyes is exasperation, disgust and annoyance. And anyway, aren’t most of those people dead, from drug overdoses? This is what you called fun?!! This is what you look back on with fond remembrance? Take a bath! And hey, half of the Beatles are dead and one of them just got taken by a blond half his age who looked like his first wife, rest her soul. Maybe if he hadn’t been living in the past and found someone his own age with gray or brunette hair, he would have fared better. So see, get up, dust yourself off and realize the good times are now, today, in the 21st century.

Now let me just take this plastic comb with a handle out of my backpocket and give my feather-cut a comb through. My hair stylist keeps telling me to get a different style but no way, I want to look like my high school graduation picture. I was really cute then. I wonder if you can get CDs of The Partridge Family?

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND -- EXCEPT MAYBE MARLON BRANDO

2008-04-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

Marlon Brando lived on an island. In fact, I believe he actually owned the island. It was in Tahiti or maybe it was Tahiti itself. I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is that he lived on an island. At what point did he just decide he needed an island to inhabit? Do you just want to check out from civilization? Do you want to create your own civilization? Or do you harbor illusions that you really are Jalel, Superman’s father? I don’t know. Maybe forty years ago you could get away better on an island of your own. Today I think unless you really didn’t want to be contacted, you’d have some internet source somewhere on the island. Does AT&T make house calls to Tahiti? And do they tell you that you’ll have to pay $125 for a working outlet when it’s their fault you’re not getting a dial tone? Does anyone know what they’re talking about when you call service there? I digress.

Would the island have cable hook ups? Would they have both cable and satellite or just one or the other? Would the island allow dogs? Or would they only allow cats? Would the island change its mind as soon as you want to sign up to live there reneging suddenly on both the dog and cable issue knowing you gave notice not 20 days before at the current address? Oh and would you have any neighboring islands and would their drumming keep you up at night? Or some lonesome bugle at 4:30 a.m. from some band of new mothers to awaken them for a feeding whose sounds float across to your island where you’re sleeping and wakens you too even though you’re not feeding anyone but yourself? Or do the natives have rough sex every night after guzzling or passing around the saturated native blend coconut cocktails and keep you up as well?

I’m just wondering what his life was like on that island because lately myself I’ve been thinking of finding a nice island to live. Maybe I could rent a piece of grass somewhere and set up house. Not have to bother with any locals, not have to bother with anyone quite frankly. Then I could actually get a good night’s sleep in peace and not have to be awakened constantly by these little irritants. It is my “blessing” to be a light sleeper. When that started I don’t know. But they tell me hormones play a part in insomnia as you get older. In the last two years, I have found it almost impossible living in Los Angeles to get a good night’s sleep. It totally baffles me. This is not New York. I had better luck in New York, no lie. I lived in six different places in six years in New York City, all different neighborhoods and not once did I ever have to knock on a neighbor’s door at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 10 a.m. or 4 a.m. to say, hey, could you stop throwing each other around the house at this early hour to the beat music?

I moved to a new apartment hoping against hope that it would be a peaceful, happy place to live. Alas, it has turned out be a big pain in dukah. From the ridiculous parking space I have to practically use up my steering fluid to get in and out of every day, to the key that doesn’t work on the outside gates, to the people next door whose alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m. every week day morning whose windows face mine, to the people downstairs who think it’s okay to booze and carouse and play music at 4:00 a.m. and no one will notice, to the windows that either don’t close at all or are just plain useless because of improper fitting so that there’s so much of a draft that you don’t even need to open the window, to the bathroom door that doesn’t shut, to the sink that doesn’t plug, to the fancy light fixtures with the fancy halogen bulbs that burn out the day after you move in, to the light and breeze I don’t get, to the sofa and desk I don’t have, to the closet space that is nonexistent, to the overpriced rent I’m paying because it’s “one block south of Ventura” like la-dee-dah, to the property management guy who changed all the rules on me and the reasons why I wanted to move in in the first place the day I came to sign the lease, like no dogs, only Direct TV cable, and telling me I’d have to pay $20 for water and trash more in rent. And the list goes on.

Only to find that it took AT&T three weeks and four guys to finally fix my DSL and phone line so that they would work together without interruption and not have static when talking on my phone to then having my cell phone go out on me six months before I could get another one for free. And moving from basically a cheap apartment to supposedly this really nice one to pay almost $600 more in rent and have less sleep than I was getting in the old place with some rude, stupid guy jumping around on the ceiling above me at all hours of the night.

Like what is going on? This is really confounding me. I’ve always prided myself on making good decisions and I weigh things very carefully but it would seem I sure made a mistake here. One good thing is I found a storage space outside on the patio and put a lot of stuff in there that I wouldn’t have been able to find a place for in the apartment. I hate junk all around. I like a clean, well lighted space and space is what I like to see. I tell ya, if this had taught me anything it’s that looks aren’t everything. The minute I walked in the place, I wanted it. It hit me in the gut. I’d looked at so many places and this one just hit me the moment I walked in. The last place I lived in did the same thing and the one before that, so I trusted my gut if you will. And the kitchen. What a big kitchen, nice cupboards, lots of space, all the better to cook in and eat well. See? That’s what threw me, the kitchen. We Italians can get so bowled over by a kitchen. Nothing as important as a good home cooked meal. And I’m a damn good cook too. The next important thing: a place to sleep peacefully. I missed that one in this place. The windows are too small even though I get some in every room except the bathroom which I wanted as well.

So, I wrote the note. Tried to keep it light, positive, self-effacing and taped it to the door. I hate doing that but what was I going to do? I don’t want to talk to people face to face anymore. I don’t want to knock on strange doors. I just want to come home to my little box of an island and do what I need to do after a day of working at a job I hate and get some good rest so I can get up the next morning and go to work again at the job I hate a little more rested, a little more pleasant than the day before (which isn’t saying much). And then save my energy for all the things that bring me joy that I like to do when I’m not working the job I hate. Have I gotten that across yet, how I feel about my job?

Of course, since I’m such a student of quantum physics, energy, new age, self-help, spiritual and religious teachings, all this trouble might be due to my imperfect thoughts. Of course it is but which ones? I have so many and they all crowd for space and attention. Actually, I’ve been feeling pretty positive lately so all this nickel and dime stuff, all this pissy ant trouble is a bit of a surprise. So who knows what’s working here? Maybe I pissed off the Sleep Gods somewhere and They’re making me pay. Maybe I should heed the aberrant 4:30 a.m. wake up call and get out of bed to write or make waffles or whip up a layer cake. Who knows? Maybe I can tap dance and piss off more neighbors. I’ve ruffled enough feathers already, so what’s a little tap dancing?

I just don’t know. And I certainly don’t know what it’s like on an island in Tahiti either. I do know I’d be far away from any tap dance classes and that might be a detriment. There certainly are a lot of really good things happening in my life right now that living on an island would preclude from happening. Maybe all I need is just a little vacation anyway. But some days, taking a long break on a secluded island sure sounds like the thing for what’s ailing my world.

Then again in a pinch, without the island, there’s always tap dancing.

REWARDS ARE MISSING THE POINTS

2008-03-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

Every major retail store has either a credit card or some rewards card and they all want you to sign up. Just try to go in and buy something like a bottle of water or a cup of coffee in under 30 minutes. You’ll never get out of there. I was third in line inside a Border’s bookstore at a Seattle’s Best coffee outlet to buy a bottle of water. I never really buy bottles of water anymore because I keep a crate of them in the back of my car. I just happened to take a lunchtime stroll to the mall and forgot my water and for some reason was unusually thirsty. Perhaps it was the 200 lb. bag of closet organizational items that I just purchased from the Container Store I was dragging around with me in the 72 degree heat, I don’t know, but I needed that bottle of water even if I was going to pay too much for what I already had in the back of my car.

I find a bottle in an open display cooler underneath the yummy looking but when purchased, disappointing, pastries in the coffee shop. I get in line behind two women, of whom has already ordered and is in the middle, or so I think, of paying. The counter clerk/cashier/barrista/super employee is asking her if she has a Borders Rewards card. The woman does but doesn’t have it with her. So she gives the super-duper/cashier her phone number to look it up. A display comes up of different people, none of whom is this woman. So then the Miss America/cashier asks her for a different phone number which she looks up and then after asking her if she’s this person or that person, turns her cashier display toward the woman to look at the names, none of which are hers. Now, how you can give two phone numbers and get a display of names, none of which are you? This is slightly disturbing and baffling. Who else would have your same phone number? One time I gave my phone number, which I don’t do anymore, I give my email address instead, only to discover I had a relative I didn’t know about. Really, there are no Menozzi’s in the whole of North America that I don’t know about or am not related to, so I was really surprised and, understandably, frightened. It’s 10 minutes and I’m thinking, hey gal, JUST PAY FOR THE DAMN CUP OF COFFEE. Get your rewards next time! The woman in front of me turns around and gives me a slightly exasperated look. Then it’s her turn. She orders some latte thing and the everything/cashier/bionic-woman asks her if she has a Borders rewards card. Then offers to look it up for her if she doesn’t have it. Then we start the schpiel all over again, with myself looking at no one being exasperated and deciding that since I am already dying of thirst, I might as well die anyway now that I have wasted 20 minutes of my lunch hour.

This happens everywhere I go now where everything/cashiers/managers/intern-stockbrokers ask me if I have the CVS card, the Rite Aid card, the Barnes and Noble card, the Banana Republic card, the Target card, the Shell/Mobil/Exxon/Valdez card, the VoteForObama card (no way), and so on and so on. Exactly how many cards am I supposed to carry on me on a daily basis and how much am I really saving anyway? I don’t shop at these places everyday. In order to get any satisfaction out of these things you’d having to be spending money everyday just to get a $5 gift certificate. Where’s the savings in that? And hey, if I’m going to get 10% off, why don’t you just take it off the price to begin with? I already have a SAG card, an Equity card, car insurance card, library cards (two), a Ralph’s grocery store card, AAA membership card, drivers license, debit card and emergency credit card in my wallet, plus three laminated prayer cards of saints. I believe I have those in my purse just so I won’t spend money I don’t need to spend. I think they ward off me getting more cards.

Not to mention that if you sign up for one of these cards you get three of them, two for your keychains and one big one for your wallet. Right. One on my keychain, like I’m a walking janitor of plastic magnetic get-out-of-jail-free cards for all of retail. I have four keys on my keychain and I know what every one of them opens. Okay, I only know what three of them are for but I figure the fourth one will reveal itself. Maybe I have to wait to find some magical portal that will transport me to some other worldly place where there is no plastic available and no such thing as discounts because everything is priced reasonably as it should be and there is enough for everyone and we all have as much abundance as we need.

Sigh. I survived the thirst and knocked back my bottle of water at my desk when I got back from lunch, happy I saved that $2.50 which with my Borders Rewards card would have been only $2.453679. I hate to think of myself as the type of person that throws away money but time is money too and I try to save as much as I can there.

My Belated Valentine

2008-02-17T20:07:00.000-08:00

This was written on Valentine's Day and I didn't have the courage to publish it until I read it again. And now, I do and I think it's great.

February 14, 2008

I haven’t blogged in awhile so I guess today would be a good day to start again, Valentine’s Day. I am so happy today I have been jumping around all day in and out of my skin. Which makes it seem more like Halloween than Valentine’s for those around me. I have felt more love today than I ever have in previous years. Am I seeing a special someone right now? No. Am I dating this evening with a potential special someone? No. Am I sorry about that? A really big, resounding NO. My joy and happiness are a product of many years of effort, experience, persistence and patience to finally find that peace within, that acceptance borne of so many trials and tribulations, that you finally realize in the biggest “aha!” moment what all those self-help and inspirational books are saying: You are what matters. Loving yourself is all there is.

Valentine’s Day has always been what New Year’s Eve is to me, a big waste of time and money with unreal expectations for an evening that usually turns out to be less than climactic, in so many ways, literal and figurative. All those years of thinking of something to buy, something to do, what to wear, and that obligatory sex and lingerie routine, ugh! It’s not even fun. While I understand this may sound like sour grapes, it isn’t. It’s such a wondrous relief not to be bothered with dread and disappointment of an upcoming holiday. It makes no difference to me whether I’m available or not available.

In the last several years I remember two Valentine’s Days that sort of sum it up for me. One, was a relationship that I’d just begun a few months before and was still ambivalent about. He asked me what was my favorite song and I said, “Your Song by Elton John” not thinking anything about it. The next day, being a musician, he came to where I worked, a law office, and proceeded with the help of a friend, to serenade me with guitars, singing, “Your Song.” It was embarrassing and bold at the same time. As it turned out, this boyfriend was so full of himself he prided himself on always giving the perfect gift, either writing a song for you or writing some clever little booklet, whatever. It was always more of a gift for him so that you ‘d think he was just the greatest person in the world for writing you a song, serenading you or writing some book about you so that you’d have to agree what a great guy he was. Don’t get me wrong these are all nice things until you realize he’s showing everyone else what he did for you and they all think he’s great. In other words, you can’t argue with him, you can’t think of him as less than perfect, and you have to agree that he’s such an artistic genius, more so than you, that when the day comes and you think, why am I in this relationship, everyone thinks there must be something wrong with you. I didn’t have the heart to tell this guy that I’d been serenaded before with the same song, by a college boyfriend, who so far has been the only one to truly have stolen my heart. He had a friend wheel an upright piano to my dormitory door one evening while I was studying and a friend of ours accompanied him while he sang in a nervous, but not bad voice, “Your Song” to a stunned and wondrous dormitory outside my door. It was all the more wonderful a gift because he wasn’t a musician, just a guy putting himself on the line to try to tell me how much I meant to him. No one has made me feel more loved before or since.

The last Valentine’s day I had was a little more than a few years ago with another guy I’d been seeing for a few months and really didn’t want to see anymore. I didn’t have the heart to break up with him before Valentine’s Day but lessons are learned and I should have. He was the epitome of narcissism and disrespect. I abhorred the fact that I was even dating this guy although I knew he was transitional to begin with and somehow it escalated into something way out of control. He asked me what I wanted for Valentine’s Day. I said that dinner and a movie would be nice but nothing big or fancy. Instead I got a large vase and bouquet with a large balloon stating “I love you” delivered to me at a law office I just started working. It was the largest, most ostentatious bouquet I’ve ever seen and HEAVY! All he kept asking me was what did everyone say at work about it. He was more enamored with what others thought of his gift for me than the idea of giving it to me. If he really thought about me, he would have understood what an embarrassment it was to get that at work, a place where I pride myself on my private life being private, and how heavy it would be for me to carry that thing to my car, get it in the car and drive home with it without spilling the water or ruining the flowers. I never did get the dinner and a movie and all he did all weekend long was expect me to put out for him because he’d spent so much on the bouquet.

A few years ago, months after the painful break up with the aforementioned bouquet giver who didn’t even qualify to be considered a serious candidate for marriage much less a relationship, I asked myself an important question. What if I never had another relationship? What if, now, in the middle of my life, I never marry or even again have a long term relationship? Asking myself that question fifteen years before, I broke out in inconsolable tears, unable to even think or consider such a thing would happen. And praying it wouldn’t. I have gone through long periods in my life alone, without partnership, some of it by choice and some of it not by choice. In fact, I really thought I’d have been married by now for a few years, with a family and happily pursuing my career of choice. Well, disappointment after disappointment and none of those things have come to pass…as yet. I’ve also stopped wondering and thinking about it anymore. And those few years ago when I asked myself that question again, I realized the answer finally. I would be okay. My life is not worth any less, it’s not any less valid because I’m not part of a couple or I don’t have children. And no, I don’t have cats or dogs in my life taking the place of anyone or anything. I have me. The joyousness of realizing that is so gratifying to me right now. That’s where the joy comes from, the real singing and dancing. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want and never again, whether I choose to be in a relationship or alone, will I ever feel like I have to do something I don’t want to do, be with someone who doesn’t respect and appreciate me, or have to suffer another over-hyped marketing holiday spending time and money I don’t have. Now that is a true celebration of love.

Sunday Bonny Sunday

2008-02-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

February 17, 2008

Sometimes when I’m just home reading and watching movies all day long, I’ll put on red lipstick. No other make up, just the red lipstick. It makes me feel good even though I’m in my tee shirt and lounging pants. And my hair is pulled back nicely with an updo. Just a little lift for a lazy day.

And a lazy day it’s been. Let’s see we had Valentine’s Day and now this holiday Presidents’ weekend with tomorrow off work. I should be doing 100 other things but all I wanted to do is enjoy a day where I had no obligations to do anything but eat and shower and exercise. I haven’t had one of those weekends in a long time. And a Sunday at that, a nice sunny Sunday where I could sit at my kitchen table and read in the sunlight and watch the outside activity. I’ll miss this place just for that, for the peace that comes with a quiet Sunday full of sunlight and open windows for ruminating and reading and drinking lots of hot tea.

And watching movies. I hate to say it but that’s what I missed most about my expanded cable, was to find that movie I hadn’t seen in years but really enjoyed. Like “A River Runs Through It.” It’s such a good film. It’s so poetic. There was another film I saw this year that reminded me of poetry. It was “Away From Her.” Every frame a piece of poetry and every bit of dialogue chosen with care and purpose. Telling a story, some wonderful human story of ordinary heroes and the marks that they leave on our lives and how we affect each other, that is an achievement. I, of course, can’t write like that and I may never in my lifetime but I’d sure like to keep trying.

I’ll be moving soon out of this dwelling. I feel excited about it and where I’m moving to is a wonderful new place, at least I hope so. I feel very good about it anyway. I hope I’ve given a lot of love to this space and I hope I leave with the love I’ve tried to put into it. And I hope my new place is filled with love and that it will serve me just as well as this one has. It is time for change though in my life, radical change, from this limited way of thinking to a more expansive way of thinking. Even if it’s just adding cable channels, it’s all about opening up a greater world for my self, my life, and one that’s been long overdue. And I just want to embrace that and find in this day some sense of peace about it all and that in spite of what I think may be lacking in my life or how unsatisfied I’ve always been with myself, this peace tells me I did something right, that I did more right than I thought I have, in fact, I did good.

MOM CAN CUT A RUG!

2008-01-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

But I already knew that. My mother came to visit me for the holidays. She spent 10 relaxing days in a one bedroom apartment and froze to death. “It’s so cold here,” she exclaimed. “I thought I’d be taking a swim in your pool.” Well, no, Mom. It’s California but it’s winter here as well and we don’t go swimming in December. That would be the 50th state, Hawaii, where that might be true. Sorry. Put away the swimsuit now. And there’s more chocolate in the ‘fridge.

My mother hasn’t been out to see me since I moved to Los Angeles eight years ago. The place looks vastly different than when she first saw it. It was empty when she saw it and now there’s furniture all around the three rooms of the place. I even bought some new furniture just for her arrival. See, I don’t fix the place up really until someone comes to stay. Then I have to look around and think like a normal person and figure out how do normal people live as opposed to me who only needs ”…this ashtray, this remote control, this chair and this ping pong paddle…and that’s all.” Or something like that. If you know that reference I have a prize behind Door No. 1 for you. (And if you know that reference about the door then I have another prize behind Door No. 2 for you. But if there’s too many of you forget it because it’ll be too expensive.) So I had to actually buy two chairs and a dining table that doesn’t really fit in my nonexistent dining area space as we swung around to avoid puncturing a lung to sit and have dinner. And some fine dinners they were too. Both at home and venturing out to dine. It was the perfect addition too because in our family getting together to have a meal is important time to enjoy good food and talk and just sit and relax. You can’t really do that when you live alone. Seems you have to dine with the television. It might be entertaining but it doesn’t really aid in digestion. And it smacks of living in trailers and burping after beer. Stuff like that. Not that people who live in trailers dine while watching television or burp after drinking beer. I’m sure sometimes they play Billy Ray Cyrus and have all night burping contests, so not to generalize or anything. Just making a point is all.

I even talked the woman, my mother that is, into attending a party at my acting coach’s house one evening. I planned to stay only an hour if she got tired, just long enough to say hello to everyone, drink wine and stick my finger doused in tabasco sauce into some food item and then watch to see who would eat it and scream. Things like that. We arrived at 8 p.m. and left at MIDNIGHT! And only because I got tired. Geesh, the woman is a dynamo! After a while she told the DJ that he needed to start playing some dance music because everyone was falling asleep. Pretty soon, the buffet table had been pushed over to make a dance floor and we were dancing. Then after awhile Mom says to the DJ, “You have to give them a rest now.” And then the slow dancing began. Who says an 85 year old doesn’t know her stuff? Ha! She was moving along with the best of them.

We went to see a bunch of flicks. Our favorite was “Enchanted” where Cinderella was even in the audience the night we went to see it. No, not the animated Cinderella either. You want to hear the story? Well, pull up a chair and sit down. And now…
Once upon a time, an 85 year old woman traveled 2,000 miles to visit her daughter who lived far away. They decided to go to the movies one night. The old woman said to the daughter, I will grant you three wishes. The daughter said, I want a car, a house and a man. The woman said, I will grant you one wish because that’s a lot and I don’t have that kind of money or leverage. The daughter said, okay, the car. And she got the car. Back to the movies. The woman and the daughter stood at the concessions counter to get their bottled water and cup of coffee amid dirty looks from the staff when the two looked over and spotted a man and a woman dressed casually, one resembling George Lucas and the other a well known actress. The man, they didn’t know, but the other woman looked familiar. The old woman said, that’s a movie star. The daughter said, I know and ran away so she wouldn’t be associated with the old woman when she decided to talk to the actress/movie star and embarrass her. Sure enough, before she could spirit her mother away, the daughter saw her 4 foot 10 inch tall mother tap the 5 foot 9 inch tall woman on the shoulder. The old woman said, I love your acting. The movie star said, giggling, oh thank you. And the daughter let out a sigh of relief. But she knew who the movie star was. She was Cinderella on TV years ago (not too many so as not to offend Cinderella) and oddly enough, Cinderella was going to see the film, “Enchanted” as they were. They all sat together and shared popcorn and wishes and traded scripts to read. And they lived happily ever after.

Actually, we sat at the top and they sat in the lower rows but it seemed serendipitous nevertheless because I loved the TV version of Cinderella growing up. It’s the best music and so beautifully told in the television version of the Broadway musical. And it was Lesley Anne Warren we saw at the movies who played Cinderella on TV. Some people have even mentioned over the years that I look like her although that’s flattering but not an accurate assessment. Anyway, it was exciting for Mom even though she couldn’t remember the movie star’s name. And everyone I’ve told this story to doesn’t either except me. Sorry, Lesley dahlink. But I knew dammit.

Well, the new year came in and it feels good to look forward to a new year filled with possibilities and hope. I think this is going to be a great big year for me in many ways. It was sure nice to be able to play hostess to my mother who’s still here to enjoy the holidays with me. We missed the other family members terribly but I had to take my turn at the work desk this year. I look forward this year to hosting many friends and family members out to visit because after all that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Cinderella and a good DJ notwithstanding…

Love, Maria

12 Days of Christmas, Part Deux

2007-12-24T00:16:00.000-08:00

I SHOULD HAVE STARTED IN PORNO, MAYBE THEN I’D BE A WORKING WRITER NOW

All over the entertainment news are stories about “Juno,” the movie, penned by the screenwriter flavor of the month who has quite a back-story of her own. She was discovered on a porno internet blog detailing her exploits as a stripper/peep show artist, wrote a book about her exploits, then wrote a screenplay not about her exploits but about the adventures of a 16 year old girl, not about porn. It’s a good movie, I enjoyed it. It’s a wonderful script. But geez, couldn’t you have struggled a little more like the rest of us? Actually, I don’t know what I would have to be envious of because if I would actually finish all these projects I’m working on and writing then maybe someone would take notice. Well, I have, sort of, I’m just holding onto it until it’s ready. And when will that be? Hmmmm…

Seriously, though, it gives one pause after reading about this woman. I mean here I’ve been struggling to get a hand up (no pun intended) as an actor and writer and really all I had to do was stay in Detroit and create a porn blog. Only here’s the problem with that for me, I’m too square. I wouldn’t have had the most salacious exploits to concoct and then rehash for the viewing internet readers. Of course, I was in my late twenties’ and early thirties’ when I lived in Detroit and pretty good lookin’ too. I was a nice petite size 2. I just didn’t live a party life. I pretty much gave that up after New York. I got bored with it to be honest. And I gave up drinking because in Detroit they don’t have subways and taxis and buses to get you home like New York. You have to drive and I wasn’t going to drive drunk.

It gets boring bar hopping after awhile. You’re in the first bar and the night is young and everyone looks all fresh and smells nice and then you’re onto the next place and every one is looking a little blurry and still okay but a mite crumpled, someone falls off the bar stool but he’s up again, you’re eating more, then you’re onto the next and the next place and you trip over the guy who’s on the floor in front of you, you have food stains on your shirt, skirt, whatever, the heel of your shoes falls off and who are you? Did I come in with you? And where can you get a pastrami on rye at 3 a.m.? Not to mention all the money you blow in one evening and the time I actually left a night of tips in a taxi cab. Lot of quarters to be sure and lots of singles but they add up! After that, I quit drinking and swore off just hanging out in bars. It’s not that fun really and I end up bumping my head quite a bit on nice floors but enough of that.

As to the whole salacious thing, I wouldn’t know where to begin. Not that I’m a goody two shoes or anything but like I said I’m kinda square. I don’t get into the food thing because whip cream and all that makes me gag and I’m lactose intolerant to boot. I’m not into the dominatrix or S & M stuff because that just hurts and it looks like a lot of work. I’m not into role playing or any of that because unless it’s some Chekhovian play, I’m not into being a nurse for your entertainment pleasure and hey, shouldn’t I be making tips anyway? I’m anti-social so I don’t care for threesomes, foursomes and large parties of orgiastic sex not to mention I’m also a clean freak, obsessive-compulsive and slightly autistic so anything weird bugs me out and turns me off and please don’t try to touch me. Please don’t do that whole sexy whispery talk thing because having to reply, “What?” “Pardon?” “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Can you speak up?” is a turn off and it just makes me laugh. Stand up comedians can’t do a lot of this stuff without thinking up punchlines so if you’re comin’ off as Mr. Lovah, Mr. Don Juano Beano, I’m just gonna make a crack and then you’re gonna get pissed.

In fact, most sex to me is a lot of work and I’d rather be watching a movie or reading a book. This is why I prefer slightly kinky sex where I can be tied up. That way, I can just lie there. If I can get him to blindfold me, I can take a short nap. And I hate it when they ask, what’s your fantasy? Hell, my fantasy, is to never have to work again a day in my life. Or that I could buy a $200 dress and not feel guilty about it. Or eat a hot fudge cream puff sundae without gaining weight or how about not gaining weight at all ever. Here’s a fantasy: world peace, food for the hungry and a new car for me. Here’s another one: a beautiful home so I wouldn’t have to live in these dump apartments the rest of my life. You know, this is where I’m at fantasy-wise.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, finding fame and fortune thru a porno blog. See that’s not gonna happen for me. Maybe someone will want my adventures as a legal secretary: “These revisions to the Limited Partnership Agreement were voluminous and curiously erotic.” I don’t think so. More like curiously NEURotic, rather than erotic. Or how about retail sales: “One day a man came in the store and he came right up to me and asked, ‘Where might I find Jockey brand tube socks?’ And I knew right then it was love.” See? Not good.

So I guess some of us are going to have to settle for some other way to the path of discovery of fame and fortune. Maybe midgets. Maybe I can talk about my life with midgets. Yeah, I don’t have a life with midgets but I can always make one up if need be. Okay, back to my book. It’s good, it’s called “What Color is Your Prophylactic?”

12 Days of Christmas

2007-12-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

DECEMBER 19, 2007

I’m done with my Christmas shopping. Hooray! And Monday I packaged, wrapped and mailed off all the gifts I needed to so they’ll arrive in time for Christmas. Hooray! Well, now, who died and made me the perfect, reliable sister, daughter, aunt, in-law, friend ever! Usually it seems I do less and less every year. I’m allergic to crowds, people in general, so I opt out for the gift certificate and on-line shopping over the more caring, intimate personal touch of in-store, in-person purchases. After all, life is short right? Why spend it waiting in line at any time of the year?

This year I made a discovery; not unlike the one I realized when I wanted to start an anonymous blog and then realized that if I had it on my website, it wouldn’t be anonymous. No, not like that. I discovered those two credit cards that I hadn’t activated. The emergency ones. The cards you’re only supposed to keep in time of total financial ruin and breakdown. Well, this is the time. Quite frankly, it’s most of the time but now is as good as ever. I got so excited that I made a list of everything I wanted to buy anyone I was going to buy a gift for this holiday season. Then I made a list of everything I wanted to buy myself. Because during the holiday season, my shopping goes something like this, “One for you, two for me, three for me, one for that guy, a card for this gal, wait, no, she’s kinda on my funky list, then one for me…” Just like that. I decided I had a lot of fun shopping in person this year.

Until January….sigh.

December 20, 2007

I bought an expensive dress today. Not really, really expensive but expensive for me which means in terms of food. How many groceries could I buy for the month for the price of this dress? How long am I going to think that way though? It’s so annoying to constantly say no to myself on the most menial things. I bought a dining table Friday and picked it up yesterday. Now, you say, what’s the big deal? But ever since I moved to Los Angeles eight years ago, I can count on one hand the number of furniture items I’ve bought. I would need 18 hands to count the number of acting classes, business items of that ilk, promo items, postage, mailings, office supplies that I’ve bought instead. In fact, I didn’t get a couch for a year and a half after moving here until a boyfriend bought me one for Christmas.

A couple years ago and even more recently last year, I remember being out of work and looking around at my dump of an apartment and thinking why haven’t I bought any furniture, why haven’t I lived in this place? I had a friend visit one day a few years back (friends only visit once every three years…if that) and she looked around my living room and remarked, “Maria, why don’t you have anything on your walls?” Hmmm, I looked around and she was right. Not one framed cheap print of some famous painting that described some exhibit at some cosmopolitan city museum, not a lot of framed pictures of family and friends (I take pix of them when they come to visit so I’ll have proof that I actually do have friends. And I frame them even though they usually have a deer in the headlights look because of the sudden shock. I digress.), no cheap paintings of boats and cafes, nothing. Not even a mirror (no wonder there is a look of shock on my friends’ faces.). It was unsettling to say the least but the answer for that is that I never really moved in. I always thought the space was temporary. It’s so easy to get comfortable somewhere even if it’s miserable. Comfortable misery. That’s what the shamanic astrologer told me what it would be like if I didn’t move to L.A. but stayed in Detroit. He said, it would be okay but it would be like a “comfortable prison.” Well, I think that’s just what I did to myself here in L.A., I created a comfortable prison for myself. And it’s really not that comfortable because I can’t sit anywhere but at my desk or on the bed or in the rocker (that would be not a person with spiky hair wearing black leather but the chair kind). Much of the time I wasn’t home though either, out every night trying to perform, rehearsals, classes, work and oh yeah, another comfortable prison: the garage, the preferred living arrangement of a former boyfriend. A garage. No wonder I thought my apartment was okay.

My whole point is that next year is about being comfortable with abundance. It’s about finding a new place to live, buying a new car and buying a once in a lifetime dress because I feel like it and not feeling bad about it. It’s about putting stuff up on the walls and finding new ways to enjoy life, to enjoy every day. Yes, it can be about goals and dreams and their achievement but it can’t be about striving anymore. It can’t be about relentless sacrifice and striving all the time without giving back to myself. So next year will be about striking a balance between work and play, effort and fun, business and pleasure, and buying and spending. Okay, that one is kinda the same but I’ll figure it out. So for now, I’m enjoying the dress even if it is in a closet on a hanger. It’s just nice to have it. Although I should try and wear it soon, otherwise, after the holidays, it may not fit. Sigh.

Getting Pretty Potty

2007-10-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

I have a plant in my house. No, it isn’t a man-eating one although it would be nice if it were a man-finding one. It’s the only other living and breathing thing besides myself. This is a big step for me. At times, I don’t even water myself much less have another live object to tend to and keep alive for godsakes.

I never had plants because I traveled so much doing stand up comedy, it didn’t make any sense. I suppose I could have taken them with me on the road but then maybe there are hotel restrictions, I don’t know. Plants can be demanding so maybe hotels got sick and tired of all the fuss with ficah trees or Japanese boot trees or those ivy something or others. This is probably what happens when you’re a plant ordering room service expressing outrage about the leafy green food items offered on the menu as opposed to a plant standing in the lobby providing shade and a good cover for the FBI. A lesson for us all, no doubt.

I didn’t buy the plant. It was given to me as a gift after a performance. Instead of the usual dozen beheaded roses, I got the mini rose plant with its body intact. I guess the gift was supposed to keep on giving. I went to put the gift in water when I realized it already had a little pot and some dirt. Odd. A friend who is a gardener gave it to me. Maybe that’s her way of giving, taking the dirt and all to give instead of a nice innocuous arrangement of already cut flowers. So while I was pleasantly surprised, I also thought, hey, I gotta take care of this now. Like handing me a newborn baby. I mean isn’t it like planticide if you enjoy the roses until they die and then never water it. I certainly don’t want that on my conscience. But that soon changed as I found myself with a renewed sense of responsibility for caring for this plant. I thought, now I have something to care about, to give life to, to keep living. Now, I have a REASON TO LIVE! (Me, on top of a building with my pants rumbling in the wind, arms outstretched towards the heavens. Yes, my life is rather boring, so bear with me, little things give me a boost.)

Luckily the thing came with one of those name cards. My name is Rosetta Aleucia Plantaloscious and I need water, medium light and fresh soil. And a steak, medium rare, on occasion. Fine. I hope it can reproduce itself because there isn’t too much of the reproduction thing going on in my house, if you know what I mean. This was a test, I knew it. To see if I could take care of something besides myself, to prove to myself that I could move on to taking care of greater things. Like a rose bush. I take care of my car pretty well and even though it’s not living, it sure needs a lot of attention just like something living if you ask me. Tales of Route 66 every night at 10 p.m. before it sleeps can get kinda tiring but I want my car to be happy for me.

I even bought a plant manual. I water the plant when the soil starts to feel slightly dry and then not too much water. It grew so much in the first three months that I had to buy a larger ceramic pot. I had to go into one of those nursery places. It amazes me how many kinds of soil there are to choose. One with these minerals, one with those minerals, one that’s lemony, one that’s wormy, one that sparkles, one with little bits of sirloin. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I decided, dirt is dirt and soil is soil so I bought the bag that said Just Dirt.

For the next few months after repotting, I watched the plant bloom in different places and the original roses dry up and die. I didn’t know what to do about the dried up dead flowers so I cut them off. I think it’s still a baby plant so I have to watch my language. I try not to walk around naked for fear of offending it. Although I’ve seen droopy stems before so that’s no surprise. I say hello and talk about how the sun is doing today and if it needs more light to let me know. I put it by the kitchen window where it can watch the cars go by and I went about my life. I would speak Italian to it and I’d let my mother talk to it over the phone unbeknownst to her actually. I could pretty much drop the phone for an hour while talking to mom, come back and pick off where I left the conversation. This plant is all filled in on the gossip, now if I can figure out how to get it to talk back. I stopped doing that though when I did the slow motion photography on the plant and it came back with a grimace. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, plant. I try to talk about other plants, like, “hey, that rose bush on the side of that house is crappy compared to you and it’s gotta stay outside all day” or “So, tell me, do roses mate for life and how do you meet another rose?” Stuff like that.

Soon winter came and I forgot to water it for a couple days. The leaves were turning brown and drying up. I thought, this is it. It’s dying. I’ve killed another plant. This is the part where I give up. I had to go away for the holidays and left it with a friend praying it would be okay when I got back. It was okay but still bare. Do I need to replant it? Does it need more dirt? Does it need more water, less water? Do those dirt nutrients need something? Like vitamins? Do plants take vitamins? Ah, the concern I felt.

Then one day I noticed a little shoot sprouting up from one of the long stems. It was a little baby shoot and the leaf was red. I cleaned out the dry fallen leaves from the bottom of the pot and saw more little shoots starting to sprout from different stems. In the next few days, the shoots would begin to grow longer and sprout more little off-shoots. Beautiful healthy red leaves came out in contrast to the brown dried ones.

Then I weeded out the decayed leaves and branches. Underneath the decay was a beautiful new plant, still thriving, still growing but being reborn. Pretty soon little buds starting showing up on the branches. I’m going to be a mother again!

Taking care of this damn plant brings me joy. I am so happy I didn’t give up on it. I give up a lot in my life, maybe it’s all only just long breaks but I find that I give up mostly on myself and then on others. I don’t give myself or others a chance to re-bloom. I suppose I’m in a cycle of decay mode right now letting things that don’t serve me anymore drop away or fall off. Sometimes I hang onto these things and people too long instead of letting them go. I hang onto what is not growing. It’s easy to get caught up on limitations and no options. It’s hard to keep starting over but how am I going to find the new buds if I don’t? I have to allow the decay and let go and keep watering my activities, my goals, the people I love and keep finding a way to water myself with love and attention.

I would give up if it weren’t for that damn plant. If it can rebirth itself then I can too. I am responsible. I helped it grow.

Now I’m getting potty with all this philosophy. I gotta find me a tulip.

Tea With Milk and Anchovies

2007-09-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

You know what bugs me? Finicky people, particular people, perfectionist people. These are the people that stand at a little counter in a Starbuck’s after getting their decaf, half caf, cafe latte lotta and then start pampering it for 18 minutes while you’re standing behind them waiting to just put a little whole milk in your tea and be off. They have to open one packet very carefully then put it in the coffee mixture a little at a time and then stir and oops, they’ve spilt a little out on the counter, well, we have to clean it up, then go back and start over with the sugar but then this time add a little low-fat milk and then a little half-and-half, just a spot because then we have to stir and then we have to put a little more sugar, oops, some crystals on the counter, wipe, wipe, then stir, then a spot of milk and oh, can I get another cup and then they mix and stir some more, wipe…ad nauseum, ad linoleum. Hey I’m really happy you want a perfect cup of whatever java you have there but the rest of us just want to get on with our lives. While I’m standing there waiting for you to free up space so I can just put some milk in my tea, the stock market just crashed. In fact, World War V just started and ended believe it or not, and we’re still in Iraq, so go figure that one. Where’s Truman when you need him?

These are the same people that when you can actually find a retail sales person in a department store who is available and can ring up the overpriced blouse you decided to buy, will stand at the counter and ask a million questions about the blouse they’re buying causing a line to form where there once was just you, the next person, in line, then making the salesperson pick up the phone to have to call China to ask if the blouse is available in another color. Or they may have to make that call to the accounting department to see if this person has any money left to spend on a credit card and we all know how long that takes. Then this same person, while the salesperson is on the phone for them for the umpteenth time, will turn around, look at the blouse on the hanger in your hands and say, oh that’s nice, where did you get that? Then have the audacity to handle it in front of you like it’s theirs to fondle because after all you're just there to entertain them. Yeah, lady, don’t touch my blouse that I haven’t bought yet because I actually have good credit and can pay for it and I don’t need to call China to speak personally to some overworked, enslaved seamstress working for the new socialist communist regime flavor of the month. And I especially looked long and hard at the rack to try to find a blouse that looked like it hadn’t been touched by other greasy human hands or tried on by some other sweaty person who isn’t Paris Hilton and I picked this one precisely because it gives me the illusion that I won’t have to fumigate it before I wear it for the first time. Hey, this isn’t let’s all get chatty and friendly in line because we’re excited about shopping. Sorry, talk to the woman behind me because I’M NEXT!!

Now you could say, hey, get some patience, get some kindness, just wait your turn but no, it’s not about that at all. I am patient, I am kind, I do wait my turn but it gets a little ridiculous when you have people who are trying your patience and naturally predisposed kindness with their self-absorbed, time-consuming, little gyrations that don’t take into consideration that it’s a public place, meaning other people will also need to purchase, get service, be served or just generally need to move ahead, on and up and out.

Then there are those people who don’t eat anything and need to make adjustments to whatever it is they do eat. Please for the love of God, stay home and eat, forever. It’s just food. I don’t care what your religious, dietary, horrendous experience in a past life or bad childhood memory is of having whatever dish, meat, vegetable or mayo product there is on the menu. Pretty much you will die sooner in a car crash than eating 1000 more calories or be forcefed mushrooms or cilantro. Those people who have allergies to everything on the planet, carry apples with you please or some other sort of fruit that doesn’t make you break out in hives at the mention of some sauce or oil product that might get into your food.

Being Italian, I just can’t stomach these people. Italians pretty much eat anything and I enjoy even a good dish of anchovies and Italian bread once in awhile. I even like anchovies on pizza. I mean, bring it on, all of it. Life is a glorious adventure in food as far as I’m concerned and those people who barely dip their feet in their water with lemon can kiss my fanny.

I’m not even gonna talk about my days as a waitress except to say that outside of brazen laziness, one of the main reasons I picked restaurants with limited menus was the fact that none of these finicky people could mess with anything. What you saw was what you got: fajitas, burrito, steak. That’s it. Nothing fancy involved. And if you asked for a little adjustment, I gave you my best smile at the table and then cussed you under my breath as I rolled my eyes to go get your water with lemon. Yeah, bring your own lemons, eh? Bring your own bottle of lemon flavored seltzer. What do you think this is -- the Riviera?

Listen, I’m all for personal preferences. It’s not like I don’t have any myself but that’s why the world made home computers. And those numbered selections on business call lines. And Tuesdays.

All I ask is if you see me coming, make a little space so I can put milk in my tea and go on about my Tuesday or Wednesday. I may need to get to the store for more lemons.

ETUDE FOR ALBERT FILLMORE

2007-09-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

I played the piano last night. I have three guitars, a piano, numerous songbooks and sheet music and I sing and I almost never make music anymore. I sing all the time but only to CDs or accapella around the house or car or office or shower. I plan every night and every weekend to start playing again but it seems I’d rather nap. Now, I have a play that I’m trying to put up and finish writing and workshopping and a lot of the second half is me dancing and singing and playing guitar and piano. Surprise, surprise, how did all that get in there? So I’m, in an indirect way, trying to psyche myself out to play again. Hey, I was a music major in college. Why would it be that hard?

I started playing piano when I was nine years old. My parents bought me a piano. I guess they could have taken a vacation but I got a piano. A nice upright from Story & Clark. I still have it. I dragged it across the country with me when I moved to California. It needs to be tuned desperately, poor thing. I took my first lessons with a woman who was infamous in the suburban area where I grew up for giving group lessons on 10 or more pianos with students doubled up on them and then giving these magnificent recitals with all these pianos playing at one time. It really was grand, pardon the pun, but she didn’t teach anything. I played the piano once for my voice teacher and she said, “Oh you’re a good faker.” I was self conscious about my playing ever since then. I, of course, played for family gatherings and I could play Christmas carols and pluck out the melodies and then play chords with my left hand but I couldn’t sight read, I never memorized anything and I didn’t know one rhythm from another. In short, I really was a pretty good faker. I only accompanied myself to practice my singing.

Then I got to college and declared a vocal performance major. Then the brilliant department head (literally, because he was bald on top) suggested I “have something to fall back on” and I declared a music education major in addition to vocal music which meant I had to learn how to play the piano. Great. So I had a host of further ridiculous piano teachers, one a nun, who kept me in the elementary books until I was so bored I threatened to lock us in the room and play all the stupid songs from the book until she acquiesced to teach me the intermediate modules. Okay, I didn’t do that and I’d probably be living a different life as an ex-parolee, but you sense my frustration. Those books are meant for children! I mean, where do they get these titles? “The Blue Guitar”, “Out In The Meadow”, “Sammy’s Left Hand”, “JuJuBees Rock”, “Girl With A Pearl Earring,” “Making A Left Turn In A Thunderbird,” you know, stuff like that. These little ditties all sounded the same. And they were not singable at all! No hooky melodies, nothing. Then in my senior year, the new department head (not bald at all but gray) decided she was going to take me on herself. So I learned how to “LLLLift! my wrist and take it down on the key! LLLifft and down.” What? I’m not playing Carnegie Hall lady, I need to learn the notes. No amount of fancy wrist strokes is going to make up for the fact I can’t sight read and I can’t play two hands at the same time. Ugh! What a waste of my parents’ hard earned dollars. At that point, I had been blacklisted in the music department anyway for deigning to study with a voice teacher that the music department hated personally and was jealous of professionally only because this voice teacher was the authentic article. Her students learned how to sing. This was two hands singing, this was sight reading, this was advanced study, professional work, not this crap I was being taught on piano. I knew a good thing when I saw it and I was ambitious (not like I am now, ready to drop everything to read a book at a moment’s notice). I want to study with her, I said. I graduated magna cum laude anyway with or without the blacklisting. Knuckleheads. Lift my wrists eh? If I saw ya today, I’d lift my fists.

All this is leading me to the plum, the golden egg, the piano teacher who made a difference and showed me everything about how to play the piano. Because of that, I grew in self-confidence personally and professionally. Up until I studied with this man, I lived in mortal fear of being asked to play the piano, especially in my elementary and junior high music classes. I couldn’t play the different harmony parts. I couldn’t sight read unless I was playing chords in the left hand. I could play the piano and it sounded good and I could still teach the music parts and vocal parts but I lived in fear of being found out as a “fake” as my long ago voice teacher said. Of course, I wasn’t a fake. I loved music, I knew it with my heart and soul. I knew things you couldn’t teach in college or in a classroom and that’s what I conveyed to my students. I even taught them how to dance! Music is movement isn’t it as well? It’s not just hey, this is 2/4 time and play that beat on the drum. Ugh, how boring! Curriculums! Who makes this stuff up? Do they actually teach it after they come up with it?! Sure, here’s 2/4 time and now let me show you what you can do with it!! That’s how you teach it!

So four or five years after graduation and a couple of music teacher jobs later, I decided to become an authentic piano student and I took private lessons at the Center for Creative Studies in downtown Detroit. His name was Albert Fillmore and he was a composer and musician as well as a teacher and he was well into his 70’s or even early 80’s back then, about 15 years ago. With Albert, I learned how to really play the piano and enjoy and love it. He didn’t use any of those silly graded books. He had me buy the pieces themselves, Mozart Sonatas, Bach Cantatas and Fugues, Debussy, Satie, Two-Part Inventions, Chopin! Oh I was playing Chopin Etudes! And I was using both hands and MEMORIZING the pieces. In fact, I had to memorize them as soon as I learned them, if not before. I had to work with a metronome practicing scales every day. The pieces themselves were advanced levels if not the original pieces written as they were meant to be played. For Christmas one year, he gave me a card he made himself with a composition for a verse. I had to play it for him. I still have it on my piano. That man taught me more about myself in 18 months than all those teachers put together in the history of my playing. He taught me that I had the talent and intelligence, the skills and the confidence to play like a pro. He encouraged me to perform for the weekly recitals after our lessons on Saturdays. I wish I would have performed more. He played the Two Part Invention with me one Saturday, god bless him. I was still very scared of playing in public for fear of my hands. Much of my lack of confidence and reticence to play in public was because my hands sweat profusely when I played the piano. I had to keep a little towel available. I would get perspiration drops on my clothes when I played from the dripping from my hands onto my pant legs. If only I could have had the presence of mind and self-possession I have now to understand I could have overcome the problem. In any event, studying with Albert helped me at a time in my life when I sorely needed someone or something to help me find my self-esteem and this man provided the way through music.

After I had to quit taking lessons, I wrote him a letter telling him how important his teaching was to me and how grateful I was for his care and instruction. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life. It was time for me to move on though. I was trying to make my life a “do over”. I was trying to make right all the wrongs that had happened years before but I had to finally settle for what the truth was in my life. I wasn’t going to be a singer and I wasn’t going to teach music for very long. My life was taking a different direction. Life isn’t a do over, sometimes it’s just making lemonade. Sometimes it’s good enough you can just sight-read. That’s all we do in life anyway isn’t it? We just try to keep playing as we go along. Sometimes we make stuff up too.

Every time I think I should start playing the piano again I think of Albert and it pleases me that I still have all the music I learned with him and some that I’ve yet to learn. Once in awhile I take them out and sight-read them because I can. It’s not very fast and it’s not as good as it was and I certainly don’t have it memorized but it makes me happy…because I know I can.

IN MEMORIAM -- My Father's Passing

2007-08-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

Adam Eugene Menozzi (December 3, 1916 -- July 16, 2006)

I’m a little late with this one. I thought I’d have a memoriam page all set on this site but a little over a year since my father died, I’m still cleaning up, picking up, tossing out, making do, fixing up, clearing out, and winding down. I feel like I’d been preparing for this imminent death all my life. He just wasn’t supposed to live as long as he did and after a certain point I think I got comfortable in his seeming immortality. Now I understand that you can never prepare for the loss of someone you love, even if imminent. There’s nothing that can prepare you for the void that happens when it’s over.

Dad, or Pops! as I called him, died at the ripe old age of 89. As far as we’re concerned, he died way too soon. He was healthy up until the last couple of years when the mind starts to go and a routine examination reveals a polyp that eventually turns out to be what you think it could be and then reveals that it has taken root in other areas and has been with him longer than anyone could have imagined. You see, the fact that my father lived until he was 89, was nothing short of a miracle. A true blue miracle. When you hear the phrase love conquers all, well, it certainly did in this case. My father’s life expectancy according to his family history by all accounts and purposes should have ended decades before it did. He was the last surviving member of his parents, three sisters and two brothers; he was the fifth oldest. His father passed at 67, his mother in her 60’s, two sisters in their 60’s, one in her 50’s, one brother at 28 and another from heartbreak at 70. Almost all of them died from cancer or complications from cancer. He watched his father die a horrible death from spinal cancer when he was 17 and his brother followed a few years later leaving behind two young sons and a wife. My father talked about his family all the time. His memories and stories about his family and their exploits, his childhood, his adolescence, his struggle for work as a young adult and his ache to live his dreams in baseball, were prolific and entertaining. The glimpses of history in his life and meeting such greats as Babe Ruth and Joe Louis, helping run his father’s restaurant in Detroit, the Depression and its aftermath, are far better than any PBS documentary.

He was a courageous man in the true sense of the word. His family was wealthy before the Depression. His father sold stoves and then owned his own famous restaurant, open 24 hours, well known for its homey atmosphere and fine cuisine, in downtown Detroit in the early part of the 20th century. As a kid he would get change out of his father’s pockets to ride the trolley to see the shows in the theaters downtown. He had three older sisters who all went to college. His sister Alice, was a beloved teacher. Another sister, Mary, became a nurse. Norma, the oldest, married and worked various odd jobs. She was a top salesperson at an upscale department store in tony Grosse Pointe. She is famous for going to work in her housecoats and bluntly telling customers they could get the same item cheaper somewhere else. They loved her for it and came back to buy from her again and again. They were a rather raucous family and enjoyed get-togethers, dancing, great food. My father always spoke well of his mother. He thought the world of his father. The boys, Adam, Joe and Filbert, were the younger half of the family and after the Depression, they weren’t able to send them off to college. My grandfather lost his beloved restaurant. And four years later, my father watched his father wither away from a robust man of 240 pounds to a man of 90 skeletal pounds and hair so long it ran down his back because it hurt too much to cut it.

Dad played semi-professional baseball and softball with the famed minor leagues of the day. He had tryouts with the Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers. He played a year with the Batavia minor league in 1939, played shortstop and second base, with a .300 batting average, .397 on-base average and .320 slugging average, before deciding to quit baseball due to muscle injuries in both of his legs that left him unable to walk without the aid of a cane. He recovered but moved back home to help his mother save the house which she eventually had to sell.

He married a waitress named Flo and raised her son for 15 years before divorcing her. When he married my mother, their honeymoon was money down on a three bedroom bungalow in a new suburb about 10 miles outside of Detroit. One evening early in their first year, the stepson came back to visit my father with his new wife. He thanked my father for staying to raise him.

Dad eventually got his apprentice card and became a skilled tool and die maker. One time he cut off his thumb in the shaper and had to have it reattached. He retired on disability because of a major heart attack that turned into a lifelong heart condition. The doctor told him he’d have to quit smoking and change his diet or he would die and he did, cold turkey. Never saw him with another cigarette again and as hard as it was to change some of his eating habits, he did it. Not even so much as a beer with dinner in his beloved steins.

Never saw a man so happy to have a family. He adored us, both my sister and I, and he adored his wife even more. My father always said he was nothing without my mother. He always said she was a good woman, hard working and smart and he respected and appreciated that she had a profession, that she enjoyed it immensely and contributed much to the financial success of the household.

Even though he had his dreams cut short, he was never bitter about it. He took it in stride as part of life and he moved along. He could surprise me with his deeper understanding of human nature and his astuteness about people’s personalities. He never thought anyone I went out with was good enough for me and he was right. It unnerved him no end when people, especially men, were not responsible with money. This from a guy who loved to play the horses. But he knew when to stop and he knew the meaning of responsibility. I remember the first boyfriend I had, after I broke up with him, my father told me what he really thought. He said, “I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his pointed shoes.” I knew what he meant. The guy ultimately enjoyed his own self more than me.

He was generous to a fault, kind and always had a good word to say to make someone feel better. Always kidding around with people trying to make them laugh. Always had a joke, even if they were stolen from Henny Youngman much of time. He hurt when he heard things on the news about children, animals or the elderly or even those in other countries at war. He couldn’t understand men who went hunting. He’d see a deer and say, “Now look at that. How can you kill that?” Prejudice was foreign to him. He played ball with Joe Louis and his Brown Bombers back in the days when African Americans couldn’t play professional baseball. He and Joe used to rib each other about the games.

He loved music. He loved a song “with a good orchestration.” I grew up to all the best jazz music and crooners. It’s why I love to sing and dance. Vicki Carr, Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, Al Hirt, Bert Kempaert and even B.J. Thomas ‘cause Dad loved that song, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”

He paid for voice lessons, dance lessons, piano lessons and all those years in college to become a teacher, like his sister. It was my turn to take change out of his pocket for those things and he always trusted me. He was always so proud of me. Didn’t matter what I did. He would say I was his “secketary.” I didn’t have to work to make him proud. He knew I was class and poise and grace and he would have been too humble to admit it but I got it from him.

He didn’t understand stupidity or people trying to be something they weren’t. He didn’t believe in kissin’ ass or compromising values for a piece of anything. Dignity, integrity, character, those were things you mustn’t lose. Stand up for what’s right even if it isn’t the popular thing. Remember the little guy. And be thankful for what you have always. And don't hang out with "no rubby dubs."

He went to mass every week because that’s the way he knew to give thanks for everything in his life. He wasn’t there to be a good Catholic. He could have cared less about that although he and a number of priests enjoyed a good night at the racetrack now and then. He had faith. And that is courage. And that is what I hardly ever see in any one I meet anymore. And it’s why I loved my father so much and why I miss him and why I will always miss him. None of this, of course, does him justice and only makes a dent in the true spirit of the man, but I feel so honored to have known him.

I’m just happy I realized these things before he passed away and I’m glad in the last years I was able to tell him so much of what I’ve written here.

Play ball, Pops.