The Wordmistress

Lazy Self-Indulgence

Because jodi did it ...

Book
That changed my life: World According to Garp. I read this when I was in high school seven times in a row! I loved his prose, how he mixed bleak comedy and tragedy so masterfully. I was particularly touched by his account of how Garp used to put his hand on his sleeping child to make sure he was still breathing. Beautiful.
That I couldn't live without: Confederacy of Dunces. Because it taught me more about characterization than I had ever learned before.
That I could do without: Anything by Grisham.
Guilty pleasure: Me too. Chick lit. Can't help it. Don't want to.

Movie
That changed my life: Wings of Desire Because it is beautiful and simple and doesn't clomp you over the head with its messages of hope and heartache.
That I couldn't live without: Spinal Tap , Young Frankenstein and Waiting for Guffman. Duh!
That I could do without: Stuff with Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell and I'm sorry to say most of Russell Crowe.
Guilty pleasure: Teen flicks!

Event/Memory
That changed my life: Mia's birth
That I couldn't live without: Watching the gremlin get in trouble every day.
That I could do without: The untimely death of my brother.
Guilty pleasure: The weekly delivery of my People Magazine!

Music
That changed my life: The Beatles
That I couldn't live without: The Replacements and the rest of the 80s midwest swells.
That I could live without: Dave Matthews
Guilty pleasure: Elton John

Person
That changed my life: Mia's dad, Adrian.
That I couldn't live without: My friends who have been so fucking supportive of me through good and bad. I love 'em!
That I could do without: My landlord's electrician who is really mean to me.
Guilty pleasure: Flirting with the musician down the street and the married guy who owns a restaurant in Bucktown.

Extrication

Time to pull my head out of the holidays' butt. (Sorry for the visual and I sincerely hope there wasn't a visual.) I'm sure the maudlin tone of my posts since Thanksgiving have given adequate clues that I've been felled by melancholy this holiday season. I've written and erased many posts on grief and depression and sadness. Truth is I don't want to drag everyone down with me, and by everyone, I mean the 17 people a day who hit my website. Including others who are hurting hard this season as well.

And here's the thing about grief that is true and sucks and no one wants to really tell you. It never gets better. Life gets better. I mean, your life. The life that you are living. Because you have to live. But the sorrow never gets better, that gets worse. More time that passes is just that, more time. This year, this 2003 for me has been positively Dickensian: best of times, worst of times. I've seen my daughter grow into what appears to be a little girl. And I've said goodbye to a brilliant young man way before his time. No wonder I feel like I'm going to implode.

Thousands of people died this week in Iran, perished in an instant. The inexplicable keeps happening and we keep going on. Today, when I was telling someone about my holidays and how I was missing my brother, Mia put her hand on my hand as if to say it'll be all right mom. Although it didn't make any sense at her age, I'd never felt anything sweeter or more real.

So the good news is that 2003 is almost over. Scant hours remain. I'm feeling better, trying to stick my boot heels in and gear up for the next year. I mean, what is our alternative?

That's Mistah Jackson If You're Nasty

Dig, dig, dig that hole Michael.

Reading Between the Lines

I just saw Jesus' Son on IFC tonight, all the way through. I've seen it before, but since then I've seen all three of Denis Johnson's plays and met the guy several times. I liked the movie a lot the first time, but knowing what I know now, I like it so much more. Johnson is a great wordsmith, a jaded blaspheme who spins cautionary post-boomer tales. Billy Crudup, besides being a total babe, does an awe-inspiring job in the title role of a disaffected anti-hero. And death is portrayed quite matter-of-factly, which, in fact, it is. A matter of fact.

His literary take on death is so banal that I was touched by Johnson's actual sympathy and kindness during the most acute phase of my real-life experience with grief, which occurred smack dab during the staging of his second play in Chicago -- Shoppers Carried By Escalators into the Flames, a production for which I did press relations.

Suffice to say, this flick had a little more to offer than the last flick I saw.

Too Much Information

Remember the feeling you used to get when you weren’t sure if that guy called? Like, he could have called when you were out, right? Not these days. No chance. Caller ID or your cell phone would snare him in its technological trap. In fact, he has to call even if he doesn’t want to -- some time that he’s sure you won’t be accessible, not an easy feat.

Well us webloggers have an equivalent of caller ID, referrer logs and, er, referring to them is so obsessive. I check my referrer logs far more than I check my caller ID. And the other day someone hit my site using my first and last name and the word “weblog.” Now that’s a juicy one. So many scenarios. Theories. It was out East. Definitely a friend. Or a friend of a friend. Someone who has read before and didn’t have the site bookmarked. Or someone who was told by a mutual friend that I have a weblog. It’s kind of like that voyeur/exhibitionist thing. More like an ego thing. Definitely a I-should-be-doing-something-more-productive-with-my-time kind of thing.

Guffaw

Take two funny, funny guys and what do you get? A rare chuckle outta me these days. Check out Will Farrell and Jack Black's spoof on Liza and David in this week's Entertainment Weekly, which is funnier than you might think.

At the Window

Tonight I went to put some of our discarded toys in a charity box down the block while my parents hung out at my house. These long weekends feel very long, my folks and Mia and I all squeezed into my small 2-bedroom apartment. I've lived alone most of my adult life, and like the life. Right after Ross died I felt a very strong need to be with my parents, but I'm feeling, er, smothered right now. As I was leaving, my folks said take your time and my dad said, yeah, maybe you'll get those keys made, referring to a key errand I planned for tomorrow. As I left, I thought, yes! I will get those keys made. And off to Home Depot I went.

But something got lost in the translation ...

Not 45 minutes later I returned to the insanity patrol. Mother pacing at the window. Father standing guard at the door. They couldn't reach me on my cell phone and thought I had just gone down to the corner. What could possibly have taken so long? After the hysteria died down they explained to me that given our circumstances, perhaps they were more sensitive than other parents might be. I had to say to them, as I have so many times before, that I took something different from our experience: to live life, not to fear death. I guess with Mia I feel like I don't have a choice.

This is the kind of conversation that people like us have on a Saturday night. Normal, tortured and coping.

The Oracle

Sometimes little kids can act as barometers, yardsticks as to whether a person is good or evil. Mia is a great judge of character, she does not suffer fools lightly. Take Santa for instance. I was all geared up about taking her to visit Old St. Nick and she just wasn't having it. This is a chick who gives high fives to the homeless and pinches waitress's butts. She is a downtown girl who loves to party and I really thought she'd dig the celebratory vibe, but she was very skeptical. My mom and I took her to the Loop and treated her to a grown-up lunch at Marshall Field's Walnut Room where Mom spent her days as an ingenue modeling. We found Santa in a village-y house and Mia tentatively walked in, mentally drinking in the entire scene with awed interest.

She didn't cry, but she was not amused. Santa seemed kind enough, he possibly even had an Irish accent. I thought the elf was way cute. Mia gave out smiles to Grandma, smiles to me, smiles to the sales people and the other folks we saw in the street. Even if she hasn't had a nap and is hungry, she'll try to be friendly to the mailman, even the nurse who's giving her a shot! But Santa got no love. Big old jerk with a stupid hat. :(

Name Game

Band names I'd like to see:

Happy Fun Ball
Bitchbag
Vainglorious
Semaphore
Tapshoe
Sugarfix
LoveHandle

I'm a veritable band name generator.

Pumped-Up Stumpin'

Bush is so proud, I thought his chest might burst and a million tiny blackbirds would come zinging out. Capturing Adolf Hitler and putting him up for trial is no small feat. Please, do not get me wrong. I think Saddam Hussein is a very, very bad man. I just don't like to go cleaning up other people's houses when mine is dirty. And mine is filthy.

His press conference this morning was nothing short of a "vote for me" speech. He was way prideful and isn't that a sin? He was smug and preening and I think, think mind you, that I saw him pull out a peacock feather and then stick it back into his derriere.

He started his speech talking about how Saddam had spent less than $1 per person in Iraq on health care. Hello!!!!! And how much have you spent per person on health care in America, Mr. Bush? Nothing. Nada. Saddam, Lucifer, Adolf, whatever you want to call him actually has spent more per person than you have.

Then he enumerated his "good works" of this year. Dude, I don't need it, don't want it. Just want a job. Can you help me? Or are you too busy on the phone with another country? That's what I thought. Or with your campaign manager? Okay. I'll wait. I've been waiting a long time anyway.

Please America. Don't get seduced by the propaganda. There's going to be a trial and it will be riveting. A very bad man will be hung. And Georgie will be known as the cowboy who wrangled the sucker. And if they get Bin Laden the momentum will be hard to stop.

America's Monroe Doctrine used to bar such unwieldy entanglement with other countries until Theodore Roosevelt issued a vague corollary (Roosevelt Corollary) allowing the whimsical allowance of US intervention whenever the country deemed it necessary. What a can of worms old Teddy opened on US policy with that one.

In the meantime, let's try to keep a lid on it all and focus on the election. And keeping our own house clean.