In My Epiphanarium

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

My husband teaches summer school during the month of July, about two miles from the beach. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to carpool with him which would: 1. Help him battle L.A. Traffic, and 2. Earn me an early morning run along the ocean.

Three weeks in, and I was in bliss. I dropped him off at school, drove to my parking lot and parked at the very end of the strand, where I was alone and peaceful. I ate my breakfast, listened to a little Stern, then jogged along the waves in the crisp air under the cool 7am marine layer. Heaven.

Wednesday of my third week, I was following the same schedule, and anticipating my beautiful quiet morning, when I turned into the parking lot. It was full. Hundreds of vehicles: large trailers, Star Wagons, Craft Services, eighteen wheelers, and at least 80 regular cars. They were in my spot. They were at MY beach. Those inconsiderate bastards.

From years of living in L.A., I immediately knew it was a film crew. From the sheer size of the crew, it was obviously a big budget film, which means a ton of security, cordoned “off limit” areas, etc.

I crept sheepishly along in my car looking for a parking spot. I knew not to get too close, but wanted to get near where I usually park. It was MY beach, after all.

As soon as I parked, security arrived on his bicycle, holding a bowl of melon, and asked if I was with the production. “No,” I said. (My only concern at that point was where they were filming. They so vulgarly took over my parking lot… why not just take the entire beach? Hmmmph…)

“Where are they filming?” I asked

“Moneyball,” he spit out, obviously way too excited to have his penis so close to a big star.

“Oh,” I said “That’s the name of the movie. Okay, well WHERE are they filming?” He assured me they were filming in a house on the hill and I would not be disturbed on the beach. I was pleased enough, and asked where I should park. “Thank you,” I said. “Who’s in it?” I added.

“Brad Pitt!” he yelled at me with all the enthusiasm of a 13 year old Twilighter.

“Is he on set today?” I pressed.

“YES! He’s right over there,” he said, regrettably.

“Eww,” I replied. My reaction along with the face I made seemed to pop his balloon. He rode off shortly after, hunched over, with his melon bowl; a little worse for wear.

My run went as usual, but part way through, King Brad decided to come out and get some air. (“What the fuck does he need air for?” I thought). But there he was. He walked, they ran. And of course, as security loomed, my freedoms slowly closed in on me.

Wherever he went, I couldn’t. When his gaze traveled over in my direction, I had to immediately drop to my knees and do a face plant in the sand (okay, not really, but he IS Brad Pitt *jazz hands*).

The rest of my time was spent half exercising, half watching that blonde monkey entourage around while my precious utopia was on lockdown.

In short, Brad Pitt, you ruined my day. Next time, send Angelina…

I was mentioned in my first blog, and had a nerdgasm all over my validation issues.

The Funniest Tweeters
DailySpecial on Jun 19, 2010

Why do we love Tiger Woods? Clean-cut, socially acceptable half-black man with a talent so incredible my octogenarian white parents took up the spectator sport of golf just to cheer for him. Is ethnicity and “over-coming odds” all? Of course not. But it was all a part of the charm which became the enigma of Tiger. Race, creed and age stopped being an issue years ago, but made the rags to golfer story much more coveted, and perfect for gulp-never-taste American pallets. We love, love, love a good all-American hero.

We all truly believed that Tiger went home after winning championships, cuddled his babies, kissed his wife and settled down for a steamy pot pie and nice bland American life. Reality, allegedly, was much different.

Michael Phelps. Our new grand champion, our new shiny American boy, caught, on film, smoking marijuana, could not hold it together long enough to retain endorsements, or be the apple of our eye.

So why are we shocked? Why do we expect our athletes, our men, when squeaky and flawless on the outside to be heroes?

Howard Stern. His name so notorious evokes “dirty” thoughts of the American anti-hero. Married twice, reportedly faithful to both women, but simply labeled “shock jock”, American shame, and dismissed as a disgrace. Why?, because he splatters truth, uncomfortable truth, truth about sex, about disabilities, about existence, despair, desire. He removes the veil and forces us to see the gritty reality. The reality we so “la la la, fingers in ears” refuse to acknowledge because we spend so much time with knees in the dirt rocking to the sickening silicone worship of Woods and Phelps.

Stern is by all accounts a faithful man, tremendous father, animal rescuer, humanitarian and philanthropist, but not only will never be accepted as a role model, has been overlooked for numerous accolades in a field which he has obviously dominated and won. Why? He’s not marketable. Not to children, not to cereal boxes, not to America as we know it.

So I submit three men for hero worship: All tremendous at their crafts, all famous, all American men, but one has a personal life which reflects what America demands in a hero. Not Woods, not Phelps, but Stern.

The hypocrisy burns like acrid rain on the flawless reality we hope to see, and the strong reality we refuse to accept. Woods is a great golfer, Phelps is a great Olympian, and as hard as it is to swallow, America, Stern, by all accounts, is a great man.

So wake up, and choose your heroes with a little more research, demand a hell of a lot more credibility, and vet these mannequins before we pass them onto our children as the “chosen ones.” Athletic ability and millions in endorsements, obviously, does not a great man make.

We were waiting for tires, restless, when the Mad Lib iPhone app was revealed. Still classic, still phenomenal, still makes my belly hurt from laughing.

Break Up Letter

To my stabby pickle Jermaine Jackson,

The last 8.75 hours have been extremely punk ass! I can remember when we used to electric slide down the street in from of your mom’s brothel. Or last Tuesday when you sweated my Snooki until it was nothing but a purple dinosaur. Oh, those were the days. But since I found out that you pooped with my best friend (which by the way he now has eczema because of) my heart has sunk into my butt hole. As much as I want to be with such a moist person like you, I just can’t. So, with that said, I am breaking up with you. Just know that you will always have a place in my second sphincter! Thank you for being the most obscure person I have ever known….for a time.

Written with the utmost love and respect, the vulva of your life.

My life is dedicated to service: animals, seniors, annoying freakish people who no one else wants. Basically, life consists of stress, gray hairs, stress, exasperation, etc. Sometimes – okay, most times – the rewards are above any happiness one could experience. Such is what happened with my wolf.

Wolfgang or Wolfy for short, is an actual Wolf hybrid. My dear friend Theresa found him jauntily running down the street. After months of exhaustingly shuffling him from home to home and not wanting to give up on his sweet face, she “temporarily” placed him with me. Two months later we were in love. He’s been with us now for 6 years.

Wolf hybrids are very different creatures. They do not understand commands or the ‘yes/no’ reward system. They are very hard to train…if at all, and this one happens to be cross-eyed and helmet special. But, he is pure, pure love. He literally has no other emotion. In addition, he has this strange trap-door stomach. When he begins to eat, he can eat, it seems, almost unlimited amounts of food. When he stops, he will not eat again for long periods. But, if unmonitored, he could eat himself sick.

At the time, we kept kibble in small Ziploc bags in groups of 20-30; one serving per bag. They were kept in a box with a loose lid; safe, but not secure.

One morning, around 7:00 a.m., Wolfy came downstairs to a dark, quiet house. It was strange, he thought, that no one was up and no one had fed him yet. He was hungry, he knew where the food was, he would help himself.

Two hours later, I woke up and went downstairs. When I descended the last step, I noticed a ripped open Ziploc bag next to water slopped out onto the floor from the water bowl. As I turned the corner, my heart skipped. I thought of all the plastic he accidentally ingested, the amount of kibble he must have eaten, and anticipated the mess that I would have to sleepily clean up. As the room fully came into view, there was nothing else, no carnage… nothing.

I frantically searched the rest of the house, garage, yard, and there was nothing. I sat down, still holding the lacerated bag, and realized what had happened. Every morning, he saw me open one bag and put the contents in his bowl, then open another and put the contents in his sister’s bowl. He knew that only one serving was his. This 120lb wild giant poked his nose in a box of 20 something servings, pulled out one, opened it, ate it, had some water and then went back upstairs to bed.

It was hard to fathom. I sat there motionless, smiling…beaming actually, noting the incredible nature of this silent communication and respective understanding between “man and beast.”

This one simple act highlighted the years of love and respect, the years of kindness over cruelty, and I realized then that while we were revering him, he was exalting us. He understood the rules, and he respected and remained proudly in his place. I’ve never been able to properly thank him or praise him for this one event, but the gift I received as a human and as a caretaker is indescribably profound.

I cry now as I type this, because the complexities of animals, their emotions, their service, their beauty and their absolute purity of spirit shapes me more as a person than other humans do, but millions are still tortured, left outside, neglected, beaten, or even simply misunderstood.

Their nobility is too often a scream into the void, but will never be lost on me.

“My best heroes and teachers don’t live on pedestals. They lead complex, messy lives, offering me reflections of myself and standing with me against the gawkers.”

Kurt Vonnegut

I am bored with mediocrity. I want to live in an odd shaped house with odd shaped furniture; bright colors everywhere. Where a man with suspenders on stilts would occasionally walk through and gently nod, and women in white-faced courtesan make-up wearing bustles would serve me tea and leave in a diagonal processionals through automatic exits. Music would play continuously like Tango De Roxanne from Moulin Rouge, but the trance-like cacophony would make all appear surreal and quiet. The dogs would wear formal fur and the parrot would live in an actual house forest. There would be increasingly smaller doors where increasingly smaller cleaning staff would walk in and out, tidying without unlocking step, and I would have radiant cobalt blue skin.

I have a lot of wonderful ideas which never come to fruition, and my organic garden is sadly one. It was a great concept; above ground container gardening, organic soil, 15 different organic vegetables and a dangerous plan of attack. I was going to save the world one local piece of produce at a time. What I didn’t take into consideration was the care of my sick father, bouts of self-indulgent depression and my pale, Swedish “burn never tan” skin.

One year later; my organic garden is a bed of weeds and a large pile of dirt. Tired of the constant reminder of another great idea gone to rot, I decided to till the plot and seed for grass.

A few days before the funerary tilling, we had an effing psychotic infestation of ants. Living in Southern California, ants always appear when the weather turns warm. They crowd kitchens, restrooms looking for food and water; very typical, part of the season.  But this was an all out ant-offensive by a much stronger, cracked out American solider in the Vietnam War style ant army. They blanketed the carpet, bungeed from the ceiling, swarmed unapologetically, rudely invaded all animal food and water, gingerly climbed any mammal and bit ferociously. This was unprecedented. We were scared.

When will the next wave come and in what numbers, we thought? Locust and Apocalypse were quietly bandied about. I blamed global warming.

But the reason was not global warming; the reason lay in a much simpler Ockamian explanation.

Yes, my dirt pile.

I had unwittingly built a Dubai caliber resort for ants. One shovel full into the dirt pile; they declared jihad. I shoveled, they ran…up the shovel, up my legs. I persisted. I’m a human I thought, I built this la la land and I can destroy it! Muhahahaa!

They fought bravely. My ankles bare the bites. Midway through the skirmish, a large cricket flew out of the pile – escape pod for the queen I thought…ingenious.

I have so many things to accomplish, places to see, be, effect. But, my living is contingent on the death of the dearest constant in my life. How do you reconcile something like that? How do you stop vacillating between gratitude and desire and find one emotional position?

No doubt this wanderlust comes not from frustration but fear. I fear to not have my father’s affection and warmth, I fear not having a person who constantly reassures me and is unconditional in his promotion and acceptance of me. What I ultimately fear is the transition from daddy’s girl to functional adult woman who does not use sex and need as a basis for relationships with men.

I am afraid to come home at night after a difficult day and not have the reassurance of a father who literally thinks I am the most important person on the planet. Will I sink slowly into insecurity without the worship I have been gifted or possibly cursed with? Will I succeed? Will I always have this vacant space inside me I reserved for only him, and will he, as he has always said, “surround me like an umbrella full of sunshine”.

I.am.not.ready.to.let.go, but he is. God I’m selfish.