In Twilight Regalia

….I was in a really quaint beautiful retro house of some girl friend who I thought (new acquantance) was very cool, and was touring her cool little retro house, noticing neat lamps, old fifties stuff. But then I stumbled by mistake into a room that was a retro kitchen gone wrong first (it looked like someone had pasted grapes and ketchup to all the seats of the vinyl diner chairs at the kitchen table yet in this very purposeful artsy way, and there was wierd green stuff draining down the sink. Something was not right in this house.

I then however, stumbled into her “pets” room by mistake and was instantly overcome by wierd things crawling all over me. Some I physically removed like this huge gross scorpion or centipede thing, and I stepped gingerly around some other crawling things, and the tarantulas I knew wouldn’t harm me, but then I realized I had small quarter-sized spiders all over my head around the temple area and started running out the door screaming for her to get them off me! –the worst part being that I didn’t want to destroy them because I knew they were her pets and hadn’t intended to hurt me and probably wouldn’t unless I did something stupid…

But then I thought, you know? I could die. So as she quietly rushed me past a huge box of antidote pills in the laundry room and was trying to remove them one by one and I started to actually feel them dig into my scalp and I PANICKED, I thought it would be easier to just

WAKE UP!!!! WAKE UP!, which I did.

SHIT!! Happy F!@*&%$#!! Halloween!!! I said to myself, panting on the side of my bed.

I don’t like Mondays.

At least I hope you got the same electric charge out of it I did. Ew.

People look through everything they see –
There’s so many other things to be.

—Rickie Lee Jones

Well it’s Halloween weekend, and I’ve made the dorkiest nerdiest costume that I’ve ever done, although I MUST say, it RAWKS! in its total accuracy. I had planned on being a gas pump, which was infinitely more scary in a real way this year, but couldn’t find a big box that I could encompass myself in and really look right. So I had to invent Professor Elderina Moonshnoggle, Hogwarts Instructor of Transmogrification (Ok you nerds, is transmogrification in there with some other named professor?, so sue me, she’s a substitute teacher.).

It’s the battered witch hat, cool ornamentation about the neck, brocade high necked shirt under the velvet robe I designed (?) myself, and hand-made wand. I’d not made a handsewn costume in a while, and it is truly as much of a pain as I remembered. I detest sewing unless I have a completely driven head of steam up and absolutely must see my inner vision become reality, which is a peculiar thing for a costumer to admit. But I really, really, am NOT a seamstress. My vision, however, pushes me through.

So I design the robe, I draw up the construction sketch (I don’t bother with patterns except my own, they make me crazy), measure and cut it out, I sew it, and I am finished in about 5 hours — and it’s suspiciously resembling my choir robes in high school–OH NO! I’ve reinvented the wheel for no reason!, I think to myself at first. But with the other garments in place with it, after I had a trial run today, I believe it is, how you say, Ffffffffabulous!. It really will be movie-screen perfect by tomorrow. I’ll probably wear it to the opening of Goblet of Fire too in November, because I DESERVE to have more occasions to be ridiculous, I get so few these days. I mean, if you’re going to have people assume you’re a nerd, you might as well be a rabid one, why not?.

One thing that’s very nice about getting older is that you cease to give a damn about what anyone else thinks of you. Since I tried to aspire to that even in youth, it is a sense of release to be rid of the last vestiges of that nagging twinge of embarrassment over such silly things as peer pressure when one gets to be of a certain age.

Halloween has always been my special holiday, my swan song, a treasured day of me-ness in my childhood. It was for me, the day I got to truly express what I would RATHER have been looking like on every day of the year, and even now remains close to that. In a perfect world, there would have been so many great things I wanted to do and be. A flight of fantasy that is healthy, releasing, and sometimes awe-inspiring. I think this a beneficial thought process in life: people should define themselves occasionally with costumes to spawn some new behaviours or at least thoughts. Why won’t people stand up and do Halloween justice? What’s wrong with looking extremely terrifying or ridiculous or gorgeous for a day or two? Why are there still scores of people that still have that wall up that they insist on as “moderation” where this holiday is concerned? Some insist it is a holiday strictly for children, and sadly it appears they have lost the ability to be inner-children anymore.

But please, think about this: in a world where Harry Potter books are selling out to adults almost before the release date, Star Wars still merchandizes off the charts, and aliens and the occult figure into most TV shows’ conversations or scenarios, not to mention the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cult (Hi Coop), I think most adults are merely closeted on this issue.

I think they need outing.

There is a hollow place inside them waiting, just waiting.

I ponder this empty zone each year at work when there is the inevitable office party that involves wearing (or more accurately, with 50% of the attendees NOT wearing) bad or very abbreviated costumes to a lunch or desert party while there is a palpable and excruciating rift in sentiment on this issue and the dorky tie-wearing guys and silly “Oh I couldn’t think of anything” women stand around and subtly try to passive-aggressively discipline the rest of the childish world by being literal stuffed shirts.

You know their type; they’re the ones who are kingpins of small powers in the business; won’t say a word until they get smashed at a company Christmas party and then you come to know what preposterous zeros they are in the creative thinking department. The button-down folks who bring you things that are “sensible”…. like suggesting that war will heal an economic deficit, for example…. I mean, this only brings to mind my most recently discovered favorite quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

I realize this Halloween balking is the symptom of something much larger indeed. I think we need to clean up this country! Perhaps this world! Have a giant costume bash to determine who should stay on this ark of a planet, and who should go! The stuffed shirts should GO. We’ll just have to do our own administrating and some accounting, but what the heck. The rest of the bad air would go out with them. Purge!

(Or maybe it’s just that they can’t figure out how to make a successful Dale Carnegie costume.?) Truly, sewing or not, the world needs more costumers, and if you’re not a costume-ee, think about the reason behind that this weekend. Get out a paper bag and scissors and your most clever line. Cross dress! Do SOMETHING.

Kick the cobwebs out of your mind and get them onto your doorway, where they belong.

OR… BECAUSE I SAID SO.

Tonight I watched this terrible terrible mistake of a movie, Silverhawk, with, of all people, Michele Yeoh, who I used to adore. The only true martial arts heroine that made it across the pond, until Zhang Zi-Yi appeared. Only thing is the whole movie had the actors speaking English, but the soundtrack didn’t quite match, so it felt dubbed, even though it wasn’t really. And you kept wondering where were the Chinese words under the dubbing? And then you looked at the mouths, and Oh yeah, they’re speaking English…. kinda….

The dialogue was Waaaaaay bad. Super awkward and drawn out. The fight scenes were laughable cartoon pow!-biff! stuff.

The most disturbing thing was I kept looking at this woman who my husband said was Michele from Crouching Tiger and I was like, wait, NO, what would Michele Yeoh be doing in this stupid flick? It’s just badly made… and this girl is a lot younger than Michele, isn’t she? I mean she looks like she could be Michele’s double, like a stand-in, but it’s not ….. Michele…………. is it?

I found out Michele produced it and did in fact star in it, it was in fact her. But MAN it was …. odd… I think she’s had work done. She’s definitely lost 10 years, but she’s also lost that Michele-ness in her steely gaze that had the depth of character that I loved. Where is my crouching-tiger sophisticated accomplished woman in a level-headed rage?

And who is this chick in white hot-pants????!?

The plot was comic-book fluff, and it gave Michele a chance to wear no less than four wigs, but that could still be ok if you were really scared by any of the villains, but of course you aren’t. The stunts were not well shot except for maybe two scenes, and there was a lot of slo-mo. I’d rather see a sped-up mock fight like Jackie Chan uses (or actually many others use as well). Stephen Chow uses slow motion techniques like this, but there’s always a comedic sight-gag in it when he directs it, so you just crack up and wince at the same time. Not so for poor Silverhawk. Credit where credit is due, however: Someone made her a very cool mask/headgear thing. Liked it. Beat the hell out of Batgirl or Catwoman.

Tomorrow, however, we watch the real deal, Thailand’s own Mr. Tony Jaa!! Oh yeah! I’ve seen a crappy cribbed version — that even in its raw camera-in-the-coat-pocket state with heads bobbing in front of the screen, absolutely made me tingle. I haven’t seen anyone like that since Bruce Lee. He’s AMAZING. See the man, please. Or you’re just stupid.

On another front, we saw some good dog fighting — in Wallace & Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit, that is. But I have to say if you already have seen all the Wallace and Gromit films, this one is simply another in the genre and will not surprise you in terms of plot, sight gags, or sheer “awwww isn’t it cute”-ness. What it will do is amaze you with its technical precision and artistic perfection. Nick Aardman is really like Der Niebelung’s Wagner. He is an extremist in a field of extremes. Anyone who gets into stop motion has to be anal-retentive crazifying to begin with. And these pictures are SOOOO complex, so lush, so gorgeous, and so quaintly mocking of old horror films as well, it is a feast that can’t be consumed in one viewing, even for a visual connoisseur. And then he throws in about a hundred baby bunnies just to make life more interesting (read: insane).

There are a small number of tormentingly talented overblown geniuses out there — Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Peter Greenaway, — but Nick is the one I see as driving his slave-devotee laborforce into the ground with sheer tedium of manufacture. I truly hope they love their work. Second runner up is of course Mr. Burton and his trained squirrels (who were quite worth every hour that poor trainer spent with them, I might add.).

How did I get from martial arts to squirrels?. Oh. Yes. Fighting with Art. Anyway, you should in fact see Wallace & Gromit regardless. Don’t wait for the video! This one needs a big screen. I’m seeing Corpse Bride this weekend and shall report. I hope the bad jokes don’t bother me, but I suspect they will. I didn’t like the trailer much. It better have much more to offer me.

On the further topic of high and quirky genius and the battle for artistic understanding, I read an article in a very typical popular mag which shall go unnamed because I’m ashamed it’s actually on subscription to my home, but — Steve Jobs was again put under a microscope, with his new wunderprodukt, the video iPod.

What I can’t understand is how the interviewers, who predictably plan on cracking the magic of the Apple mind and dissecting it, can get away with this same slant time after time in print. They still gawk at how Steve Jobs is such a cool dude but holds such powerful control. They talk about Apple employees like they all must be on some kind of happy drug, and wonder if they ever go home to anyone in the social outside world. They still puzzle over how good design can sway entire countries into investment of their hard-earned cash to Apple when Bill Gates is making moola hand over fist by not doing anything of the kind. They talk about money, timing of a product’s release, being covert and hording control over systems as well as hardware, etc. etc. etc. They still have no idea why a truly artistic statement is so appealing. They all have about as much natural born creativity as a knot in an IBM necktie, and they’re reporting once again that it makes no sense why Apple is doing so well. They cannot fathom the power of an aesthetic purity.

The whole article is basically through binoculars: My GAWD, GeneralSir, Them boys’ve DONE IT AGIN!!

I am only religious anymore at such times, and praise Allah or whoever else, I am GRATEFUL that I went to art school.

I leave you with the lyrics from ART SNOB SOLUTIONS, by Of Montreal, which is a very catchy poppy tune, you should pick it up.

ART SNOB SOLUTIONS

What’s up directors? Grab your knives!
It’s time to take all, all of the lives
Of the people who cannot see
the somnolent genius of Tarkovsky

Come on authors, grab your guns!
It’s time to murder everyone
who has never heard of Apollinaire
Send them all to hell it’s only fair

Cast them all into the flames
if they don’t know any names
Of the principles of Arte Povera
Or are unfamiliar with le serpent mascara
That’s right mascara snake!!!

Come on painters alive or dead!
Give all the cretins a boot to the head!
If they don’t extoll convincingly
Tempered Elan era Kandinsky

Throw them all into a well
if they cannot tell
An Arto Parv feast of repetition
from a Schoenburg 12-tone composition

Come on artists the day is here
And your mission is very clear–
Put an end to the bourgeoisie
And death to everyone who’s never heard of me!

I was searching out fares to go to visit my father in hometownland of middle America with my husband. I thought Thanksgiving would be a neat time for my foreign born spouse, an Americana experience where he could see true family feuds instead of on TV.

I have discovered it would now cost more for the two of us to go there than my car is presently worth at bluebook value. Thanks to the wonderful oil industry and a hurricane, I am now less able than last year to do what I had planned initially, which was have us spend a holiday together before Dad gets senile (hope that never happens of course). I’ve saved more, but my savings are worth less. I can fly us to Tokyo more economically than I can send us to the Heartland. I can’t go, again, this year. When will I be able? should I try? or is the price of it too dear in the long run? Some people would say family is worth any price, but historically my own family has made it evidently clear to me that the rewards are not equivalent to my monetary efforts. I’m still paying on debts that should have been gone long ago.

I just have this chronic feeling of dangerous erosion regarding global life and particularly American life, in general, these days. I’m sure my parents had it previously, and my grandparents as well, I’m sure it’s not unique to my generation. They probably all have felt we were going to hell in a handbasket when women began to work and left kids at home, and customers began to pump their own gas. But after we grow away from our naiive youth, why DOES it always seem as if life’s quality just degrades??

I honestly think we are reverting to the times of the robber barons. Symptoms: They are talking about cutting a number of scarily necessary long-range benefits and labor unions are way out of favor these days. They specialize in beating the system’s checks and balances these days with iron-clad loopholes, and when the loopholes are discovered and bannished, they simply employ specialists to devise new, even more stealthy and conviluted ones, from the ranks of our best and brightest, who go right along with it. Enron was a cavallier tip of the iceberg.

It is almost impossible to be an ethical Abe Lincoln or even a progressive John F. Kennedy type these days (and I’m certainly not sure of his hands’ cleanliness). There is no one who seems to be able to infiltrate the upper ranks of wealth in this country who hold such political sway. Michael Moore makes speculations about it and everyone immediately attacks him for it, calling it “Gonzo journalism.” The man never CLAIMED to be a journalist of any kind. He’s made a MOVIE that SPECULATES and QUESTIONS. When did we decide that was a bad thing in a free country?

They even attacked Linda Ronstadt for calling Michael a “true patriot”. In a move that was chillingly reminiscent of something from the 1930s (whether it be incipient Nazi hatred or Bible-belt bigotry), the Vegas owners literally threw her out of her hotel room. For an act of free speech that had tainted what appears to be the sacred cow of our political dynasty.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the biggest joke in political manipulation since Pat Paulsen, is actually erroding what little we had here in California as well. I suppose that California is seen as far too wealthy, democratic, unholy and irreverent for its own good. We’re just a bunch of loose cannons. They’ll just have to fix that, those Good Ole Boys.

That’s the homefront. Add to this the general atmosphere of hatred I am now feeling palpably from just about every country on the planet. Let’s review:

1) The entire Middle East seriously wants to kill us and thinks we are evil incarnate.
2) Even Israel is pissed that we made them give back Gaza.
3) Africa wants to extort as much as possible from us whether it’s internet scams or dearly needed supplies to live on.
4) France and Japan could care less what we say or request, they do what they please no matter what it does to the rest of the planet.
5) The rest of Europe thinks we’re a rude dangerous pain in the ass and they think Bush is a two-faced hick.
6) Even our staunch friend England published their disbelief at Bush’s election.
7) Switzerland disapproves. Quietly. Russia doesn’t care who they get into bed with as long as they bring in some money, and NOW.
9) China fully intends to do the same while their human rights policies go ignored and the textile deals go through.
10) North Korea is thumbing its nose at everyone on the planet, threatening us with nuclear doom while starving their people with old Stalinist methodry.
11) South America wants money money money, cut it down, we can’t afford to care.
12) The U.N. claims we’re usurping too much power and not adhering to the initial principals it was founded on, twisting them to suit our own ends.

(We retort that Kofi Annan’s son has been buying big luxury automobiles with money meant for U.N. spending. Nyaaaah!!!!)

In short, my country, which was once a fresh faced rocking-out pre-teenager of youthful zeal and reform, has become a dangerous nihilistic narcissistic spoiled brat. I’m really sick of its behaviour and I’m damn worried that it will rise up and get me killed through its heinous disregard for the rest of the lives on this planet.

What kind of reform school do you send whole countries to? Military school? ehhh no.

Is this just a stage? Maybe.

For this we have to look at history again. All the great countries have gone through their high-horse periods, and all of them were brought down a peg by something. Or many pegs.

Our proposed futures based on historic frameworks:

1) Ancient Greece, a very sad story we can only hope does not recur. In today’s military arena, not as likely.
2) Ancient Rome, well maybe this IS us. Makes me nervous to think about that. Demise by self-contamination and overexpansion.
3) Ancient China, it’s possible. Just stop growing, stay out here doing whatever we please, making our own stuff, putting up better walls. We could do that. But I think we like our cars (oil again) and communications too much to end up that way. We also like our fame too much.
4) Spain, 1400s. They just spent themselves silly out of money and ships by going to faraway new places, and then England polished off their Armada. Quite possible.
5) England, 1900s. They ended up being supplanted by larger others, like us, after a prolonged and depleting double-war period. And they pissed off their colonies. (China’s damn big, innit?, hmm) (Do you think Hawaii could secede? How about “Kalifornia”, Mr. Terminator?)
6) Russia, 1900. Political overthrow and dynastic wipe-out. Interesting, but it will take a long while before our people are starving so badly that they’ll revolt. The 1960s hippies just couldn’t do revolution right, they were all too high.
7) Japan 1940s, a humiliatingly fitting end to unchecked macho dominance. We might well deserve the same. Can you imagine us forbidden to have an army, all citizens without firearms, and all our national police carrying just nightsticks? I kind of like that idea. But our social structure just doesn’t know the meaning of the word humble. We’d die first. Nor would the planet be any better off with a decimated New York or D.C. Germany, 1940s. Demise by ignorance and lessez-faire of citizens toward a single-minded and deadly regime. A lot like Rome in terms of results.
9) France, 1700s, see Russia, 1900.
10) Norse Vikings, 1400s. Here’s an interesting one: No one is quite certain, but they suspect it is probably MORE THAN ONE of the following factors (and multiple is the key) :
a) Insurgency by neighboring cultures (I doubt Mexico or Canada is much of threat, but the world is smaller now by far and vulnerabilities are in bank accounts, chemical or medical warfare, any number of other breaches in security besides the obvious and uncreative suicide-bomb choice)
b) Self-imposed environmental degradation (preferring to raise cattle or tear up forest woods or deplete water supplies, etc.)
c) Social stubborness ( preferring to maintain diets that are no longer feasible or appropriate for health). We could be maintaining sustainable crops for all, but we like what we like. Add in death by tobacco or obesity or carcinogenic chemical production.
d) Loss of trade with neighbors — Oil embargos anyone? They’re buying fruit from CHINA?
e) Climatic change (acute or chronic) — Such as hurricanes, tsunamis, global warming.

So take your pick of futures…. I suspect we most resemble the Vikings in Greenland, with a multithreat situation.

Unless we can get this kid of a country to clean its room, metaphorically. Suggestions from Nanny 911 welcome.

And if the age shifts and things get a lot colder, I guess we’ll just have to worry what’s in our wallet. I’m already there.

I bought a printer-scanner and it turns out I have to be physically connected to it to use it after we shopped for something I could use remotely. It is a large ugly thing, but had the most practical number of bells and whistles. Why do they always seduce me?

Maybe I rush into things because I don’t want to stand in Frye’s electronics anymore. It’s bad enough going to any crowded store — I get really queasy in malls. There is a place for us in hell, me and my electronics: I actually feel guilty about getting so into my electronic toys these days. It’s my space bubble, my world of my own, and since I get claustrophobia in the narrow warehouse aisles packed with nerdy fat guys and families trailing screaming children, I long for it. They’re all most often shorter than me, and they pack themselves into my personal space without noticing, even stepping on me like I’m just a lamppost or something. Ok, I’m not all THAT tall…. but rather than retaliate, I want to grab my iPod or my phonegames or something…just some distraction…so I don’t kill someone… with a ray gun…. like that one over there!

Our Frye’s is particularly creepy, as it is set up to look like we’re in the middle of being invaded by ALIENS…. which are actually little green headed squished looking 1950s movie creatures made of fiberglass looking like they’re running around the front of the store, wearing goldfish bowls with little antennae on their heads. There are also a bunch of full-sized U.S. Army mannequins in stripped down U.S. Army jeeps and they’re pointing machine guns at them in fending off the attack (suddenly I feel a bit green myself), while over in that aisle TOBOR has stolen some Faye Wray-like woman and is marching along with her in his arms. It’s rather disconcerting to hear something CRASH in such a location (actually it was some clumsy customer knocking over a floor lamp they were selling and the glass lampshade smashed on the floor). I don’t LIKE passing a mannequin pointing a gun at me, even a fake, and hearing SMASSSSHHHH!!!!!.

“!!@$%#!!!!!”

I really should have had my iPod in, I wouldn’t have jumped so. Frye’s jitters make me want to go home to my computer RIGHT NOW.

There is something wonderfully comforting about my iBook at home, having my files where I want them, in a beautiful iBook package, and my keyboard actually does beckon me. (My keys all sound like Alice in the Brady Bunch: “Hello hunnnnny, had a rough day?? Come tell us! “) And the people that I can talk to on AIM only pad that feeling out - they’re waiting for me! I must answer!. My movies and my songs and my stuff to read. Hmmm scroll scroll let’s play… that one. I want to go to…. hmmm, let’s Google up Prague. YEAH now THAT’s a place to visit, oooh lookit that castle, I’m so there!…

Everywhere else my iPod looks after me. It actually helps in getting me well when I’m sick, I listen when I’m in the resting/sick room for my 20 minute power naps at work, a calming effect, pouring into my brain like mystical balm, my quiet-song list.

When I’m stuck in traffic and my mind is racing, but my car can’t, my up-list or my new stuff-list full of bashing rock take me somewhere that I can actually go, instead of having racing bloodpressure.

And now I’m going to HAVE to get the new iPod with video ultimately…. it’s just a matter of when…. eeeeek I’m getting addicted. If they add in a phone that’s better looking, which they will in a matter of months, I’m sure, I won’t have to go home ever again and my husband will sit blinking in disbelief on the couch…

I first realized my geekdom in the 90s when I was on AOHell as we used to call it, and I had friends who came to drag me out of the house and I realized I wanted to stay home and talk to my Instant Message friends rather than go out with my There In the Flesh friends. That was a disturbing discovery, and in four months or so I was back to sharing in Real Time life. But I could see how someone might never leave the electronic world.

Had I been a less attractive or less well adjusted person, I might still be there in my workroom, typing away all day, unemployed, piles of newspapers pinned randomly to all the walls, expecting the end of the world any day now, having not eaten or slept in several days. It’s just that you wouldn’t want to miss anything, you know? It was back then I realized I was morphing into a nerd when I started my day by hopping out of my warm bed and thudding across the room in my t-shirt, immediately checking my e-mail, and I realized…. I was FREEZING and I’d been sitting there for 20 minutes without noticing.

Even now I sometimes shoot through dinnertime without noticing if I’m really into what I’m responding to or reading online (I check the moment I set down my purse and kick off my shoes). This is quite something for a low blood sugar carboholic like myself. My husband says politely from his desk, “Honey, aren’t you hungry?” and I realize HE’S STARVING and I’ve been here way too long.

Even my pets tried to tell me. My pet rat Irina was actually coming up and sitting on my wrist for a reason, I realized, after I’d moved her twice. She was doing that old kitty trick: If mom is spending too much time on that machine instead of with me, I’ll just go sit on her so she can’t. I had another rat years ago who, although never peeing a drop outside the confines of her cage before, actually dotted my computer mouse with pee. I realized with amusement that she was marking her territory: I was HERS! ! and that plastic thing had better get that straight!.

How ardent are the people here at Frye’s about their electronics? Are they so emotionally invested?
I view the Saturday morning crowd. The testosterone level is pretty high, but it’s a varied horde. Looking around you see the place swarming with young males of various ages (all in the worst possible clothing)…

… a few new students and their families making serious monetary investments funded by the Bank of Dad…

… couples picking out sound systems and cameras, framing each other and laughing…

… and one lady was returning the most laughable boombox I have ever seen. (It was HUGE… It was ORANGE!! Anyone who knows me well will know at the mention of that word that I’m cringing.) Funnier still, she dressed just like it…

I tour around the aisles looking for my husband who has headed off in search of the wireless device that will make peace between our equipment families. We have a Mac and a PC which always becomes an issue. I look frequently for a white waving banner of truce on that subject, but here two guys are at it even now in the laptop aisle. You’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it — it’s another pointless debate. I watch my guy friends have long drawn out battles (yup, it is ALWAYS the guys) in the Mac v. PC Gladiator Arena. Man, am I sick of that. For heavens’ sakes, they serve different purposes. But the guys are fully suited up and ready to stand and deliver at the mention of megahertz. ( I hope they don’t try to steal a ray gun from that fibreglass Martian, I think that really used to BE something electronic… it looks like a cattle prod…)

PROPOSED SOLUTION: I am waiting for Linux to turn a bunch of hungry penguins loose on them both, but it seems unlikely.

ACTUAL DENOUEMENT: Like broadsworders of the Society for Creative Anachronism, they bash away until they’re tired, nothing resolved once more. They both take up each of their sentences with, “But dude, look at THIS!, ….”

A girl is pacing, prattling away in Arabic on her cell phone amid the cacaphony. She’s definitely in her own space. She sounds frustrated. I think it’s her mother she’s talking to. She’s not safe from a Mom invasion anywhere she goes, I guess. The bubble has backfired for her — phones have made electronics actually change relationships by accessibility (or interruptability if you will) nowadays. I now have friends (who shall remain unnamed, ::cough::), who refuse to respond to anyone who can’t send them a text message on their phone. Such a busy voicemail box I wish I had. I give up and e-mail most often, but writing is just… different.

Here’s the danger to that besides just wearing out your thumbs on your Sidekick or phone: We all write differently. All of us emphasize or think about certain parts of electronic information differently. You as a reader might remember a statement in an e-mail as imperative which I as writer added as an afterthought. Putting things into print creates illusions: Was that post a core dumping of someone’s thoughts to make them a public lash-out? or was it a belabored, calculated publishing of a treatise?

I watch a 12 year old boy click through a few web pages on a new iMac G5, hardly looking, click, click. We all read differently as well: Do we read for poetic completion and style? or scan for content? How busy are we? How awake? How bored? Are most of us so accustomed now to weeding through the piles of information on websites such that we presume much of it is just garbage we can ignore? And if so, what parts? How do we edit? Who says we should? Where do we end our searches where there is so much that it is exhaustive? Are we getting the whole picture? Do we need to? It’s as if our own bubbles of electronic reality are creating unique understanding levels among groups of us (sometimes age groups, sometimes other reasons). There are agreed-upon comprehension levels. I have some younger friends, for example, who won’t read more than a paragraph in an e-mail. They stop after that much text and call me to ask what I’ve said. They really don’t want to go through it all. It’s like cryptography to them.

Worse, just how much of what we look at has been fact-checked or made reliable? I was looking up lyrics the other day and found that none of the sites I visited seem to have anything completely verifiably correct. Is it a giant game of “telephone” with each site cribbing from others? Does it crib only parts? What parts? And there’s the who-can-steal-what-or-use-what issue, another huge topic to fight multibilliondollar battles over. All this informational change and shift and squabbling, apart from even the mechanics of the toys and what they do for and to us….

Me, I’m just runing from the battles. I don’t want the alien green guys and the Marines to shoot me as I’m ducking over by the headsets. I want to be able to be in my civillian Happyhouse of sound and creation, and walk out of here with something else I can hide in — as soon as I can figure out what’s compatible. Where’s my husband? I’ll call him up.

This weekend John Lennon would have been sixy-five, had he not been shot and killed in 1980. I saw a cartoon drawing by an artist in a fan mag once — what would the Beatles all look like at age 64? it fathomed, and it had shown a proposed aging of each of the Beatles, all grey haired or pouchy. When John was killed I thought (after all the grief was gone), Now I’ll never get to see if he came out like the cartoon…

I get to thinking about the sheer magnitude of his impact on the world and I realize how confusing it would seem to explain his importance to someone from, say, another planet.

Was he born remarkable in some way, they would ask? Royalty? No. He was just an average kid who goofed off and got in trouble, just a normal person.

Then he must have been an exceptional musician; they might say. Yes, in someways yes — but many other musicians have had much more effect on history, and his isn’t tested quite yet. He’s not been gone long enough to know. His musicianship was far less than those that stuck from the past. To serious musicians, his work might seem facile over the long stretch.

Then he must have been a great leader, like that Ghandi fellow? Well, he never really planned on it. He wanted to change things, it’s true, but he’d not trained for it. His wit and street-smart ways were more of a boy jabbing at a teacher on occasion. He spent as much time laughing at the world and being frustrated at it as he did actually changing it. Sometimes the working class hero just got stoned. If there had been a choice, he might just have wanted to live quietly with his wife and child.

Perhaps he was a great thinker of yours? Well. He liked to write, and he liked to speak. But he’d never formed a coherent theory of some grand philosophy. He argued a lot, but he’d never debated in any formal way. He didn’t claim to be a genius, ever. He just wrote songs, and some poems and small writings.

Then he was perhaps most important because you all think You are like him, says the alien. (Those aliens are catching on fast– maybe they are dangerous?. Hmm) There they might have us. That we did. That school kid who played pranks and rebelled and grew his hair too long and stuck his tongue out at the governments and their wars. He told them all off with what we would have said, in our voice, with a great sense of righteous indignation. And he put it where we could sing it, so easily. So memorably.

Perhaps it was just his contradictions that made his impression on us so strong? His joy toward life was tinged with bitterness about the way the world was actually going, to the point where he would seem to withdraw from us for periods of time. His impish jabbing at those in power, whether it was government or just the recording company, was hilarious. It urged the simplest of love at the most lawless and radical time in history. And on the human front, he had appeared to be a man who chose love above all things, particularly his love for his wife above all. That seemed both complex and noble to us. Actually when you come right down to it, his whole intended point on all fronts, was always love.

It’s rather hard NOT to like someone who truly believes in love.

I had a firsthand look at his love one day, a few years after he had left us.

I was wordprocessing that day in a Silicon Valley law firm, being “the human scanner” as I called myself in the days before optical character readers and .pdfs and other such wonders. I was working on some nasty prospectus, when my attorney popped his head in the door. It was late, I was already late going home, and so burnt out. The office was empty but for us. He had stayed late for a meeting with a client.

But there the head came round the door again (It usually bode ill for me when he popped his head in at that late a time) and he said in an excited voice:

“Pssssst! You want to see something really cool?” He’d never said THAT before.

Curious, I said sure. He beckoned me into our conference room with the giant walnut table. On it was a large black portfolio, the old kind that art students used to carry around, made of pressed-paperboard, trying hard to look like leather. He went over to the table, and opened the portfolio.

Some plain manilla sheets were underneath. “You have to be extremely careful, touch just the edges, he said. “It’s John Lennon’s drawings.”

My jaw fell to the floor. “You’re KIDDING ME!!.” I was in the presence of the greatest possible fame of my whole life???

“NO!!!”, he said gleefully. “This guy just asked me to hold them as collateral on that deal we’re working on. They’re called ‘Bag One.’ ”

So solemnly, in silence and an occasional whisper, the two of us gingerly lifted page after page, and took a look at the inside of John’s head, on a day when he was just doodling, having a good time. There were sketches of things around him. There were doodles that looked like they characatured people or things around him. There were just plain doodles, that looked like they belonged on high school notebooks. Some were very small in corners, (wondered if he’d been on the phone at the time?) while others were large and ugly and dashed off in a hurry. Pictures of himself in a cap, or with beard. But the one subject we saw over and over and over again was Yoko.

Picture after picture of Yoko. Yoko looking blithe and goddess. Yoko the Japanese Spirit Figure. Yoko looking sideways. Yoko the sex symbol with rosey breasts. Yoko the pretty face. Yoko the almost Simian - ok that one wasn’t very good perhaps — and the one I shall always remember:

The best of them and most telling was a drawing that used almost the whole page. It was the two of them in bed together, with a tiny, huddled John laid down on the left, almost hiding or cowering, being surrounded and sheltered by an enORmous flowing-haired Yoko supergoddess on the right, or rather, almost the whole page. It was Yoko as Protectoress of John the Meek, the humble, the almost worthless, by comparison. Yoko as icon. Yoko as holy.

I felt a pain when I saw it. It spoke volumes about the man. Yes, this was one who believed in love.

When people talk nowadays about Yoko’s distorted view of John, and how she meddles in his legacy, making his life whitewashed, I always think of that drawing. I know why she does what she does. Anyone who saw that drawing would know, they had something everyone in the world dreams of, or perhaps much more than most can dream.

I think that’s why John was so famous, I tell my alien guest. Perhaps most people just can’t dream of that kind of love. Perhaps they go their ways daily and love in a way that’s conscious and functional and packaged into certain quality times. They have wives and kids and cars and dogs and cell phones and their world goes on, in dinnertimes and alarm clocks and freeways.

Then might hear his song on their radio, though, and pause in their little lives, and hear LOVE.

I don’t like to watch Hollywood movies anymore; they do weird things to my head.

I wake from a nightmare where my husband has taken me to a factory and we’re looking around at huge bandsaws and chopsaws….. and then I see the suitcase. The very LARGE suitcase, and I realize that it’s me that will be going inside the suitcase, in parts…. and I look up sadly at him because I KNOW…

::wake up with severe sweats and stomach flailing::

DAMN!! It’s those Hollywood movies. And they’re just recycling everything I didn’t want to watch as a kid anyway these days. The predictable creature in the fog, the perverted serial killer torturer, the ghosts pouring down walls of ill-fated apartments and houses, the girl possessed by an exorcisable demon, the sharks in the water (everybody SCREAM ok?), the bugs and aliens are attacking, blah blah blah blah.

It’s harder to get a truly original script produced in Hollywood these days than to get Kim Jong Il to hand over a nuclear stockpile. Which might in fact make a much better movie, now that I think of it….

Can’t we do more than create plots by spinning Wheel of Fortune’s 20 or so choice elements from yesteryear? I mean they’re doing it like it was magnetic refrigerator poetry:

* * * * * * * * * *

SHARKS
attack
NAGGING GIRL
and
COMIC RELIEF GUY
with
MOBSTER
in
LABORATORY
near
ALIEN CHAMBER
around
LARGE SUM OF MONEY

(That sounds like those LAND SHARKS, Morty, try somethin else.)

Ok,

CHAINSAW HACKER
confronts
COMIC RELIEF GUY
and
HOT PORN BABE
in
SUNKEN WRECK
near
ZOMBIES
in
LABORATORY
attack
NAGGING GIRL
with
CONTAGIOUS DEATH PLAGUE

(Hey, Sid, ya gatta like that one, huh? No?) (Nah.)

COMIC RELIEF GUY
confronts
SCREAMING GIRL
with
HAUNTED HOUSE
from
LARGE SUM OF MONEY
in
SPEEDING BUS

(Nah.) (You sure??) (Yeh.)

ZOMBIES
eat
CHAINSAW HACKER
chasing
NAGGING GIRL
and
HOT PORN BABE
with
LARGE SUM OF MONEY
in
SPEEDING BUS
to
ALIEN CHAMBER
on
DESERTED ISLAND
with
CONTAGIOUS DEATH PLAGUE

(DAT’s it, now you’re tawkin, call up Phil!)

* * * * * * * *

As bad as things have been going, what with Mr. Burton in a possible slump (even the squirrels couldn’t save that Wonka film), 3 or four boxing films all badgering each other for first place, two wraith and ghoul films, Mr. Gilliam belabored with scenery, yet another Exorcist knockoff, and all the rest of what was purportedly alternative that failed this year, I began to look around me at our population and wonder what they found inspiring.

What would actually recharge this failing economy and our flagging creative American genius? There must be some brave new Dancing with Indie Films way to go, I thought naiively. But as I’ve said, I always get my come uppance, and to get it, I had to go to ….. well…. I have to admit it …. Disneyland.

(Yes I finally got dragged to the trappiest place on earth.)
Upon looking around I thought:

I should just give up.

There was nothing but a vast expanse of America at its lowest beer-bellyiest, pink-est, glitter-iest common denominator. I could not have imagined that many ugly people in one place, but there they actually were, all overweight, queued like sheep, all visored and golden-eared, wearing the same ugly T-shirts and shoes and buzzed hair and

…. I can’t really be FROM this place can I?. I suddenly turned French inside, ashamed of this whole country…all the while looking every bit as bad as they did. But I know they aren’t going to get it.

Morty and Sid are right!

I am now convinced that if you just took all the pieces of all the hit box office films from the past 30 years, spliced them in pieces and sold them in a way where people can actually splice them together themselves, say in their own editors, and make them fit into their own DVD-able choices, you’d have a home movie craze that would keep us all entertained right through to the next natural disaster and NO ONE WOULD HAVE TO PITCH ANOTHER FILM. Just make it really small, to be edited and played with say…. PSP size or smaller, even iPod small, and start selling all the bits of film under Coca Cola caps… And no one would have to pitch a movie again.

It’s coming. Mark my words, and someone, somewhere, will make an awards ceremony for them too. Patchwork velvet will be de rigeur.

And I’ll go work for the new foreign film underground.
Gotta get rid of these shoes first.

A List of Coolest Things I’ve Seen In My Life, in no particular order.

1. A milkweed pod
2. The crown on the Good Witch of the North
3. Elaine coming down the stairs covered in bridal shower ribbons
4. Mikey jumping over a mailbox in a tux jacket and taped shoes
5. My horse and mule onstage at the beginning of La Mancha
6. Orlando when it first came out
7. Dave the bartender in 197?.
8. Mie Preckler’s exhibits
9. S. all dressed up when I first met him, and a beautiful mauseleum
10. That photograph of the girl with the red beads
11. The nutcracker when I was 10, with my sister all happy beside me
12. The Imperial costumes in The Last Emperor
13. An ice storm
14. Seeing the northern lights with Maribeth from a car-hood
15. The view from the tram in Hong Kong up the mountain
16. Chushingura Kabuki performance in Chicago when I was 10
17. Sabu in The Jungle Book
18. Rebecca Horn’s machinery
19. Palmprints made of Elmer’s glue
20. Steve A. asleep with spring wind shadows of branches dancing on him
21. Nathe in the window in the rain in 1973
22. Chinatown in SF at night at new year’s in the rain
23. Eating outside in Hong Kong the first night we got there
24. The smell of my ice skates when I was 9
25. The little fairy grove of trees on the way to the pond
26. Finishing my windchimes and dancing to Milton Nascimento’s Cravo e Canela
27. Dancing to Mosaic on the quad in U of I
28. Having candy and tea prepared and set in front of us in Kyoto at their showroom
29. Mel’s laugh
30. A sunset, and the roses by my little house in Oakland