Saturday, February 28, 2004

"As soon as you've got it, you want something else/It's not the sale that you love, it's the sell..." -Chris Carrabba, So Beautiful

Thanks to all of you who heeded my February 9 call to vote for Brian's Dashboard Confessional "Rapid Hope Loss" music video...as a result of all the voting, it's been added to MTV's rotation. He's now got TWO hot videos airing (Lostprophets' "Last Train Home" has fast become a staple on MTV2). So far, the guy can still get his head through my door.

Now, since you've been so effective for my director friend, see what you can do for my presidential candidate.

Tuesday, March 2. Hint: Two Americas. Two words: John Edwards.

Monday, February 23, 2004

"Been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter/Because the flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter..." -Don Henley

It's a miracle; I don't miss him, not in the least. Not for almost a year, which is how long it's been since his final unconscionable behavior towards me. In fact, I don't think of him much at all, except when forced to by occasional circumstance. A relief to me, and to my treasured protective friends, without whom...

I don't want to have fond memories of him. But today my brain flashed back to one of his rare kindnesses -- sincere prayers offered on the day of my mother's leg amputation -- and I welled up in the middle of a Starbucks. He was at his best in that moment, at his least narcissistic. Where is that man now? Buried alive.

From the Shakespearean heartache I suffered during, and in the wake of, the ill-advised relationship, I have gratefully gleaned great lessons about who I really am and what I really want. The evolution is measurable, but the essence is immutable; I'm the same woman he fell in love with almost five years ago -- the same woman under whose tender touch he melted, with the same deep blue, adoring eyes he said he took away with him whenever we'd part. The same witty mind and passionate soul, the vibrant, open book of a heart. It was that last one he couldn't live with. Because he exists as a dusty, incomplete volume, full of others' scribblings and his own half-truths, doomed to remain unpublished.

I didn't go postal when he didn't choose me. I imploded. And I shared that searing pain with friends to vent the pressure, lest I completely disintegrate like a 60's Vegas casino on its last day in hell.

I could have manipulated him, could have made his life miserable, but that isn't my style, and would have been redundant -- others got there long before I did and handily accomplished those tasks. And he went along with their agenda, bleating on my shoulder about his woes like a 'nadless sheep. And I, willingly draped in the obscuring pink veil of love, allowed it.

I gave in to him every step of the way, until he resorted to emotional battery and terrifying threats at the end...because I believed the love and respect between us was real. But in his sad reality, I had to be relegated to fantasy. He'd encourage, even exhort, me to be myself, but he could never quite allow me my flesh and blood, my quirks, my process. After all, a fantasy can never be acknowledged as human.

I'm ready to lay down the last of the load I've been carrying about him. I know that my next step -- the final conscious step towards complete detachment -- is forgiveness. I'm about a block and a half away from the dump site.

Monday, February 16, 2004

"Food is a very handy tool for any writer interested in character." - Anne Tyler

Having read this quote in context (from an interview in today's New York Times) I know Ms. Tyler (she of "Accidental Tourist" and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" fame) was speaking of the culinary preferences she gives to her characters when she's designing their lives. But it's got me wondering what my current eating patterns tell me about my own character. Today, for instance, I've consumed a handful of raw pistachios, a handful of raw cashews, leftover stir-fried carrots and almonds, a bowl of frozen blueberries (slightly nuked), a glass of chocolate soymilk as a vitamin wash, several stone wheat crackers slathered with butter, and half a salted cucumber. I keep going back to the refrigerator with the thought that someone will have left me an actual meal (a little platter of sushi would be nice), but the same red peppers, broccoli, and tofu keep greeting me; and they know damn well I don't feel like cooking.

I'm now thinking of how to feed the heroine in the book I'm ghostwriting. She's not a vegetarian; if she's anything like me (and, yes, she is), she needs animal protein with her veggies. She's basically good to her body and consumes lots of salads. But perhaps she secretly craves the occasional slab of pork ribs ('though I myself steer clear of the pig items). A Sabrett's all-beef hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut on the days she longs to be back in her hometown of NYC. The comfort of chicken soup when life is being cruel. The rare sensual treat of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream. And she keeps a Trader Joe's thin crust cheese pizza in her freezer for emergencies...

...hey, wait! So do I! Please excuse me; dinner is served.

Monday, February 09, 2004

It's not like I'm asking you to vote for the clubbing of baby seals...

...no, I'm only beseeching you to go to the following URL and vote for Brian W's Dashboard Confessional video...multiple times. It's a very cool piece of music video art...it deserves airtime. LOTS of airtime. So much that people will get sick of it, like I'm sick to pieces of "Hey Ya," but look where it took Outkast...right to the "toppermost of the poppermost" (to quote a young John Lennon).

Even though you haven't met Brian, you'd like him and want to vote for him of your own accord; I promise. Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong before? Okay, maybe that one time. But I was probably sick or drunk or something.

Rock the vote!

http://www.mtv.com/music/viewers_pick/

Saturday, February 07, 2004

"Do you suppose Stanley Kubrick ever gets depressed?" -Joe Gideon, All That Jazz

If I didn't have to think about the business aspect of my various creative endeavors, I'd be even happier than I already am. If there were no contracts to read and sign, or demographics to acknowledge and accommodate, or dollars to count and spend, if I could just write and produce and have people enjoy my work and compense me accordingly, that would fit my definition of career heaven.

Clearly, my right brain prefers not to know what my left brain is doing. And my left brain would just as soon take a nice long nap. Alas...

I admit, my current problem is one worth having. I asked the Universe for the task at hand, and it delivered. So it's time to shut up and put out...as it were.

Various herbs, elixirs and the unconditional love and understanding support of my friends and family are all I need, while I go off to write that which now has a looming deadline. Back soon...

Thursday, February 05, 2004

If you're on the fence about John Kerry and need a little downhome chowder for thought...

...enjoy this piece I found in today's edition of ABCNews.com's The Note; I've copied it into the blog, as I can't seem to create a link to the webpage. Read this juicy eye-opener while I consult with the Mother Blog...and if you can find a comparable expose about my man Edwards, feel free to share.

THE REAL KERRY

By HOWIE CARR
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 5, 2004 -- BOSTON

ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress.

Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the city of Boston at his behest.

The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside "cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they imported porta-toilets onto the front lawn so the donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms. (They later claimed the decision was made on septic, not social, considerations).

It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He sails Nantucket Sound in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a similar boat; the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000. Sen. Kerry bought it new, for cash.

Every Tuesday night, the local politicians here that Kerry elbowed out of his way on his march to the top watch, fascinated, as he claims victory in more primaries and denounces the special interests, the "millionaires" and "the overprivileged."

"His initials are JFK," longtime state Senate President William M. Bulger used to muse on St. Patrick's Day, "Just for Kerry. He's only Irish every sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish at all.

But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he was never really seen as Irish, even when he was claiming to be (although now, of course, he says that any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).

Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter was marrying down.

At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.

Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater.

Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."

For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.

In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."

Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.

The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."

John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.

Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist and syndicated talk-radio host, has been covering John Kerry for 25 years.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

"If you fill the empty spaces of your heart with compromise, there won't be enough room for your heart's desire." -Brian L.

I cannot expound on the truth of that statement right now. But it's quite perfect , isn't it?

Monday, February 02, 2004

"I am sorry if anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance at the Super Bowl..." -Justin Timberlake

Three words: It was staged.

Does my cynicism reveal that I've been in show business all my life? As a stage performer, one becomes intimately familiar with one's costume prior to live performance, especially if it is going to take a choreographed beating in front of zillions of rabid fans. But most telling is that she had installed on the nipple of the exposed breast a metal pasty that looked for all the world like a weapon designed by Q for 007! PUH-LEEZE. There was no reason for her to have decorated her nip if she wasn't preparing to show off the rest of her precious mammary gland.

Wardrobe malfunction, my ass...which you will not be seeing bared on national television anytime soon.