Tony, Tony, Tony....

The 65th Annual Tony Awards was held on Sunday. As usual, it continues to be the most amusing and best-written award show that the television viewing public is subjected to.

Like the Super Bowl, almost everyone watches the Oscars, even people who do not care for movies and haven't seen any of the Best Picture nominees.  People have parties to watch the Oscars.  I myself was at an Oscar party once where the snacks seemed the most interesting part of the evening for some of the party-goers. (I am pleased to say that I won the award for picking the most winners, including such categories as set design.  Anyone can pick Best Actress; it takes a real obsessive, or somebody seriously lucky, as I was, to win Best Set Design.  My prize was a DVD of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. I was called on to make a speech, which began with "first of all, I would like to thank all the good people at IMdB.....")

The Grammys and Emmys are not as popular as the Oscars, but people still talk about them some. The Golden Globes are rapidly becoming increasingly popular if for no other reason than to see how sober the stars are.

The Tonys, though, might seem to be of interest to only a small segment of the American population. Broadway shows are not seen by all that many people, and even regional and touring theater has much less an audience base than movie or television. Even for those of us in areas where Broadway shows tour, the shows are either on their way to Broadway or are certainly not in their first year there. So at the time that shows are awarded Tonys, they have been seen by a relatively few people compared to other media.  Not to mention how exorbitantly expensive tickets are: in the song "Great Big Stuff" from the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels a few years ago, a character, in addition to wanting "a mansion with a moat," exclaims "I can finally afford to see a Broadway show!"

But the American Theater Wing puts on the best awards show.  A lot of it is the musical numbers:  these are people who can really sing and dance.  At the same time.  And because they are prepared for a production other than an awards show, they have a coherence that the dance numbers at the Oscars totally lack. And the winners, from the writers and composers to the actors, give much more interesting acceptance speeches.   And the hosts, be it this year's Neil Patrick Harris or former host Hugh Jackman, are very funny, no doubt as a result an amazing writing staff.

So, herewith, are my probably uninteresting observations on a very pleasant evening watching show folks pat themselves on the back:

Oh. My. God. Neil Patrick Harris's opening number may be the most I've laughed while watching television in years.

Hey, Daniel Radcliffe can sing! Or, if recordings are to be trusted, at least as well as Robert Morse, who originated the role.  Glad to see he's making a career for himself after Harry Potter.  I think doing live theater was a smart choice -- he has the acting chops to carry it off.

The "How many Spiderman jokes can I fit into thirty seconds" was perfect.  The show is just too easy a target. It would have gotten dreary if that had been the main object of comedy through the night.  (True to his word, NPH didn't say one more Spidey joke the whole evening, although Robin Williams did.) This bit would be lost on casual viewers who do not follow pop culture news, which would have made an evening of Spiderman jokes all the drearier.

Catch Me If You Can looks good.  Even if it is a moviecal.  (Sorry, my feelings about musicals based on (nonmusical) movies is best saved for another day.) If the rest of the musical is like the number they perform, the music is pretty good, if nothing to write home about.  

 I am amused by how they got around the censorship issues for The MotherF***er with the Hat.  The Mother with the Hat just doesn't have the same zing, though.

I am rooting for the Book of Mormon for the same reason I wanted Trent Reznor to win that Oscar: the phrase "Tony award winners Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park..." has such a delicious ring to it.

I take that back.  I want The Scottsboro Boys to win -- it's the last Kander & Ebb show.  (Fred Ebb died in 2004.)   Although I have to stretch to see how the topic can be made the subject of a musical, if anyone can do it, they can.  I do confess I find the number a bit jarring -- it is a really upbeat, sunshiney song.  Although I can conceptually see where that might fit into the story they are telling, knowing the entirety of the dark episode in American history they wrote about makes it unsettling, which may be its purpose.

Maybe I don't take it back.  I have got to see the Book of Mormon when it makes its way to my neck of the woods.

The dueling hosts number was great.  It was fun to see how many musical references were in there. Of course, if you don't know anything about the history of musicals, maybe it wouldn't make much sense.

The Spiderman number was most emphatically not. If that boring, trite ballad is representative of the songs in this show, no wonder the critics savaged it.

What the heck is Frances McDormand wearing? It looks like a formal gown with a denim jacket over it.  Lady, this is not the night to let your freak flag fly.  Or, maybe it is.

Whoo hoo! A number from Company! I'm going to see it in two days.  Of course, it is only the film of the performance, but it's better than nothing.  

Sutton Foster is the cutest thing imaginable.  Her acceptance speech thanking her dresser was darling.

Okaaaaayyyyy.... what was Mark Rylance's acceptance speech about again?  Performance art, I guess.  I cannot imagine an Oscar winner spending his time onstage talking about walking through walls.  Was this a metaphor?

War Horse for Best Play, The Book Of Mormon for Best Musical.   Both predicted victories by many people. Although, had it not been a revival, The Normal Heart might have gotten it.  I think it is interesting the way that shows can be revived, and made fresh again, while most remakes of movies are disasters. One advantage to the medium, I guess.

And wow, that closing rap was terrific. Kudos to some talented writers.

I can hardly wait until next year, even if I have not been to the theater.  And I want the Oscar people to take note:  fire your staff, and hire the Tony writers and NPH for next year.

 

 

 

Heh.

This is serious.  These men clearly do not understand what they have done and how many people they have hurt.  How could they? They have appropriated the right to talk of an experience they have never and will never experience.  It is an example of white, male, straight privilege and complete cluelessness.

Still...

I can't help myself.  I keep giggling about the thought of two men flirting over the Internet, each thinking the other was a lesbian.

To boldly go? Or to go boldly?

Having had an exchange in FaceBook earlier with a friend about, of all things, professional basketball and splitting infinitives (don't worry, it made sense in context), I am having to resist the urge to either a) review my entire blog to see that there are no split infinitives, or b) edit my entire blog, splitting infinitives here and there willy-nilly, to show that I am not captive to the forces of conservative grammar.

I think maybe I should just put the computer down for a while until those urges go away.

Fallout

I am a progressive.  Right now, I am wincing.

The entire Anthony Weiner debacle just keeps spiraling out of control.  I feel a bit sorry for Jon Stewart, who has stated that Weiner is a friend, and discussed the difficulty of taking what would be the obvious juvenile route to mockery here, a route which I have no doubt he would have not hesitated to go down had it been someone else.  He has made fun of Weiner, but my hunch is the tone would have been a little different had it been a conservative Republican.*  (Not that it hasn't included its own juvenalia: the yelling penis on the "Cock-blocked Stories of The Week" was pretty humorous.)  (My favorite comment by Stewart, following Weiner's statement that he could not confirm that the picture was not of him, was along the lines "I may not know a lot of things, but I do know what my erect penis looks like.")

And I feel sorry for Weiner.  That the hell you're experiencing is of your own making does not make it less of a hell.  I feel very sorry for the young woman at the center of this firestorm. I feel especially sorry for Weiner's wife, who never asked for this and who, in addition to coming to grips with the fact that her husband has a serious problem, has to do so in the glare of the public spotlight.

But what I fear is that all the good Weiner has done in his time in Congress has gone completely down the drain.  The man in the forefront of health care reform, who showed intelligence, wit, a fighting spirit and, most of all, a willingness to take on the Republicans, has self-destructed.  And may be taking  a lot of progressives with him, politically speaking.

One of my favorite quotes is listed on the sidebar here: "An idea is not responsible for the people who believe it."  Don Marquis was a pretty insightful guy. After all, the fact that Karl Marx was all for mandatory public education for children does not make it a bad idea. That Richard Nixon signed the acts creating both the EPA and OSHA, not to mention the Clean Water Act and Title IX does not make those pieces of legislation suspect.

Clearly, we as a country feel far differently.  To listen to the emphasis on "character" and the focus on scandal** rather than actual substance in, for example, election campaigns says to me that as a society we have no desire to follow Marquis's advice. That applies not only to Weiner, but to Bill Clinton, and Newt Gingrich, and many other men (and a few women) in the public eye who have acted in a less than upright manner.  (As far as I am concerned, the reason to dislike and fear Gingrich is not how he may have treated his first wife, as despicable as that is purported to be, but that his proposed policies would be disastrous.)

I predict there will be political fallout from this affair for Democrats and progressives (recognizing that the two groups are not necessarily the same) for a long time to come.  Thank God it was not closer to the elections.



*In spite of Stewart's protestations,  he does serve as a journalist of sorts.  This demonstrates something that is problematic for all journalists, that of being friends with the people they may be covering.  He has at least been upfront about the issue, which one suspects most members of the news corps -- pundits and reporters alike -- would not be.  On the other hand, it had already reported, so it may have been damage control.  It's not like I'm cynical.  Not at all.  After all, Stewart is today's Walter Cronkite -- if you can't trust him to make fun of everyone who deserves it, whom can you trust?

**Of course I am all for prosecuting politicians who have broken the law, regardless of their ideologies.  To the extent that Weiner has done that, if he has, then he should be prosecuted the same as anyone else.  I felt that way about Mark Foley, too.

Addendum

Another sign you may be a lawyer: when you are tempted to post the entire lyric to a song which seems to apply to your life, and you feel that it would exceed fair use.  And you actually care.*  So you don't.

*Although it should be pointed out that you cared a lot less before you knew any IP attorneys.

Note to self:

If you are looking for something upbeat to improve a pretty crappy day, the Next to Normal soundtrack ain't it.

The entire Anthony Weiner affair saddens me.  The man clearly has a problem.  And in so many ways, he has been such a stalwart defender of us little guys that to see that those feet of clay are so very fragile is almost painful.

There is always the question of whether his apologies are sincere, whether he truly regrets his actions or if he simply regrets being caught.  That is the case with any politician, any celebrity -- any person, really -- in such a situation.

It has gotten me examining my responses to conservatives who have been the subject of such scandals.  My general feeling is one of complete schadenfreude.  Of course, in many cases, these have been people trumpeting the need for "traditional values," so their fall from grace involves not merely immorality but hypocrisy into the bargain. It is especially galling when those calls for traditional values are also calls for taking rights away -- such as abortion -- or refusing to grant them in the first place -- same-sex marriage.

Yet...

Perhaps they are as deserving of my pity as Anthony Weiner.  It can't be easy to have to come to grips with the worst aspects of your psyche.  Not to mention their families, caught up in the glare of scandal.  And it does make one wonder:  is there something about being an elected official which encourages one to at out?  Not that all of them do, of course, but I would argue that the percentage of political figures caught up in scandal exceed that of the general public.

Is it because they have power? Or people telling them how wonderful they are?  Certainly they are discovered more readily because -- especially in the case of such a visible progressive as Anthony Weiner -- they have a metaphorical bull's-eye on their back.  (And one worries in the case of liberal politicians that one of these days, some of those bull's-eyes may become more than symbolic.  The Gabby Giffords shooting was very scary.)

Maybe it is incumbent upon me, when the next conservative gets caught with his pants down -- metaphorically or literally -- to pause in my sardonic chuckling to give a thought to the real human pain that is occurring.

Food for thought, anyway.

In the remote case that anyone is interested: more on my Sondheim obsession

What's on my "Sondheim CD" playlist:

The Advantages of Floating In the Middle of the Sea, Pacific Overtures
The Ballad of Booth,  Assassins
Buddy's Blues, Follies
Chromolume #7/Putting It Together, Sunday in the Park with George
Comedy Tonight, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum
Could I Leave You?, Follies
Everything's Coming Up Roses, Gypsy
Gee, Officer Krupke, West Side Story
I'm Still Here,  Follies
The Ladies Who Lunch,  Company
A Little Priest, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
The Little Things You Do Together, Company
Maria, West Side Story
Move On, Sunday in the Park with George
Send in the Clowns, A Little Night Music
A Weekend in the Country, A Little Night Music

And that does not include music from Into the Woods.  Both original and revival casts are included here. Performers include Ethel Merman, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Angela Lansbury,  Zero Mostel, Elaine Stritch,  B.D. Wong and Neil Patrick Harris.

The great things is one could make Sondheim CDs with music to cover all sort of emotional situations; I know, I've done it.  Well, most unhappy situations: as I said, his work does not lend itself to "fun."

When I have been struggling with life decisions and regrets, I play "Move On."  When I struggle with relationships, I sing along to "Send in the Clowns." (Or, depending upon my level of fury,  "The Little Things You Do Together" and "Could I Leave You?") When I am trying to get up the courage to follow my heart, I listen to "Putting It Together" (probably not the best choice).  When I am feeling bleak and cynical, I listen to "Ladies Who Lunch" and "A Little Priest."  When I am in an amused mode, "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "Buddy's Blues." And from Into the Woods, "Agony (Reprise)."  When I am having one of those "kitten on a limb" days (remember that poster?), there is "I'm Still Here." And "Everything's Coming Up Roses."

My current Sondheim wish list is the entire Assassins soundtrack, as well as those from the ones I don't have yet:  Do You Hear A Waltz (music by Richard Rogers), Merrily We Roll Along, Anyone Can Whistle, Passion, and Bounce.  [EDITED TO ADD:  and the revival of Gypsy from either 2003 (with Bernadette Peters) or 2008 (with Patti Lupone), and, for completeness' sake, the 1997 production of Saturday Night.] As well as Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Wafflings, Diversions and Anecdotes.   Unfortunately, that last item does not come out until November 2011. (Note to people who buy me Christmas presents: This. Is. What. I. Want.)


I can hardly wait.

(Non)Judgment Day?

I am currently taking a class which includes work on learning "mindfulness."

Mindfulness is a useful concept: according to one of its most well-known proponents, John Kabat-Zinn, “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

That "nonjudgmentally" can be the most important and difficult area:  learning to say, for example, "when Anthony Weiner sent that picture of his crotch to that woman, he acted with a seeming disregard for the consequences and with a lack of judgment and awareness of how his action would be perceived" rather than "what a freaking idiot." Being nonjudgmental makes one far more prolix and long-winded, it would seem.

All well and good.  I am working on this -- especially in traffic.  I am trying to learn to say "that was not a safe maneuver," rather than "you bastard -- cut me off, will you?" If nothing else, it may reduce the chances of ending up on the wrong end of a road rage incident.

But there are also cases which are far more problematic: if saying "that is immoral" is a judgment, what about rape? Or murder? Or child abuse?  Can we somehow refrain from saying "that is an evil act"? More to the point, should we?

To be completely nonjudgmental is to imply that there are no evil acts in the world.  "That was incredibly hurtful to the victim" simply fails to capture the horror and revulsion which most people feel rightfully towards such acts. (And yes, that "rightfully" was judgmental.)  We need to have words, judgmental or not, which capture our pain and rage as individuals and as a society.

The difficulty, as I see it, is expanding that concept of evil acts to encompass individuals.  To say "they are evil" rather than "they did an evil act" is to eliminate all hope of redemption.  I have a great many problems with that.  People do evil acts for all sorts of reasons: drunkenness, bad judgment, rage, anger, not learning any better.  One of my favorite characters on television once said "I think we are all capable of atrocities under the right circumstances." And there are ways in which society - especially in the case of rape -- aids and abets those actions.

There are people who seem beyond redemption: the Adolf Hitlers, and on a far lesser scale, the Fred Phelpses of the world seem to be too far gone in the love of their own horrible actions to ever let go of them, let alone try for atonement.  And yes, there are sociopaths and psychopaths, who view the rest of the world as their own private hunting ground. (I myself viewed Osama Bin Laden as one of those irredeemable individuals.)

But today there is far too much labeling of people as evil. The level of harsh judgment which occurs in public and political discourse is breathtaking. (No, that breathtaking is not a judgment.)  It closes discourse: who would agree to debate anyone whom you define as perverted or traitorous? Over anything?

Moreover, some criminals are not seen as the perpetrators of evil acts, but as human monsters.  Defining someone as "monstrous" means that, once they are convicted or even in some cases suspected of a crime, nothing that happens matters to them --  not torture by authorities to gain information, not rape in prison, not death -- whether at the hands of fellow inmates or in the execution chamber.

Defining someone as "monstrous" might make it all that much harder to believe -- and more painful for victims to accept -- evidence which shows that they were, in fact, innocent.  If miscarriages of justice are seen, in their own way, as being "evil," then such judging may lead to its own evil.

I am not sure exactly where I am going with this, other than to observe that refusing to pass judgment is far more difficult that it can seem at first blush.  And that the more I think about it, the more the tendency of our society to refrain from doing that, the more I am troubled by it.

Maybe I'm learning this "nonjudgmentally" business after all.

Sondheim.

Having gotten all my music back, the next task is recreating playlists. First and foremost was the "Broadway" playlist. Followed by not one but three Sondheim lists: "Sondheim," and from that "Sondheim Favorites," and from that a "Sondheim CD."

The hardest part was choosing only enough that fit on a CD.

Yes, I know that they lose something by being removed from their context in the whole of the work – even if the only place I have heard that work is on soundtrack. Musicals, especially Sondheim's, have a musical and dramatic arc which can be heard even in the songs without staging. I know that in some sense I am doing violence to the depth of the music by taking it from its natural environment.

But I can't help it. I am not the ony one who has found his music interesting: according to Wikipedia, some 900 versions of “Send In The Clowns” have been recorded and it has become a "jazz standard." Add to that the versions of “Children Will Listen,” and “Move On,” and you have a clear love of his music. Although that is in some sense surprising, since as classic as his musicals are, all of them have been by conventional wisdom flops on Broadway.

Which means that people don't get his music taken as a whole. The fact of the matter is that with some exceptions, all of his songs are either so closely tied to the play in which they reside that they make little sense outside that context, or alternatively are simply impossible to sing. My all-time favorite Sondheim number, “The Advantages of Floating in the Sea,” from Pacific Overtures, is both of those. (I love it because it may be the best example of world-building with a song that I've heard, although the "Ballad of Sweeney Todd" comes close.)

I am sad that I have not had a chance to see his work live, merely through CDs and in some cases DVDs (Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods). (I understand that there is a DVD version of Passion, and I have yet to see the movie version of A Little Night Music.) I have seen a junior high school production of  Into the Woods, Jr. a version developed for children to perform, which drops the second act entirely. Which makes sense, since I don't think twelve-year-olds could pull off an act which deals with topics such as infidelity and death. A little dark, don't you think?

I am looking forward a couple of weeks to seeing the film of the performance of Company starring Neil Patrick Harris, Patti Lupone and Stephen Colbert (?). It's only a film, but it will be a great fun. Well, not fun exactly: aside From a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, none of Sondheim's work can described as “fun.” Not that he does not occasionally have fun lyrics: “Gee Officer Krupke,” from West Side Story, and “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd. My very favorite pun of all times comes in “Agony (Reprise)” in the second act of Into the Woods: When the princes sing “As they sleep there for years/ and we cry on their biers.” Even Company contains wonderfully amusing but terribly cynical “The Little Things You Do Together.”

I wish I could tell Sondheim just how much his music and lyrics have enriched my life. I do not normally mourn the passing of public figures, but I will weep when he dies.

Where you are.

The weather has improved. It is a sunny and clear day here in Northern California. And I am pondering how this place has become, in some sense, home.

Not completely. Home is the Gulf Coast of Florida. Yet, if I look at things objectively, that is simply nostalgia. I would not be happy if I moved back. The weather is too hot, the politics too conservative. My brother who lives there gets frustrated with the political climate that he finds himself in.

I have lived in the Bay Area for 23 years, longer than I have lived anywhere else. (It would have been 24, but we spent a year in Northern Virginia.) I have friends here, ties of memory – joy and pain. My children were born here, and are Californians through and through. I will probably die here.

So, if people's voices don't have quite the slow softness I was accustomed to in the South, they still have interesting things to say. So the beaches are not sugar-white sand.  They still have waves cresting upon them.  It is a matter of finding and enjoying where you are. Whatever led me to this area – fate, destiny, Stanford – I could have ended up somewhere much, much worse.

So, here's to you, Bay Area. Thanks for the wonderful weather and the progressive politics. Thanks for really wonderful Asian and Mexican food (and I know good barbecue and Caribbean joints).  Thank you for the wild Pacific Ocean that lies a mere hour away, its glorious waves crashing along picture postcard shores.

You're not Florida, but that is probably a good thing.

Follow up...

The last line of my "Lessons Learned from Law School" bit in the Stanford Lawyer is "I have learned that learning law irretrievably warps how you view the world."

I need to write another piece: "How To Tell You're Still a Lawyer Even Though You Haven't Practiced in Many, Many Years (Aside From the Nicely Framed Piece of Vellum Hanging on Your Wall)."

Also known as: "You may be a lawyer if..."

If the first words you say after tripping over a badly laid floor is "That's a tort waiting to happen."

If your son asks at dinner what the criminal culpability of the characters in Romeo and Juliet would be, and you find yourself wracking your brain to remember your first year criminal law so you can give him an accurate answer.*

If you watch cop shows to count the Fourth Amendment violations, and on the rare occasions when the characters do agonize about not having a warrant (which only seems to happen when someone is in danger) you find yourself screaming "Exigent circumstances, you morons!"

If one of the reasons you most like the Prop. 8 suit is that  you can discuss standing without your friends' eyes glazing over.

If SCOTUSblog is the one non-social networking site you read most frequently, even if you tend to skip over the corporate and intellectual property law cases as being uninteresting.**

If you see your sons' old abandoned Winnie the Pooh books, and you idly wonder how many years are left on the copyright protections.

If you worry about whether the Wilfrid Owen poem that gets more hits than anything else in the five year history of your blog is in the public domain. (It is.  I checked.)

If one of the most enjoyable things about talking with a lawyer is that you can discuss your interest in capital punishment and not have to define any terms.

If you actually care what Circuit federal appellate decisions come out of. (My own particular Circuits of interests are the Fifth, Ninth and Eleventh, mostly because either I or people I care about live in them.)

If you are grateful to the Westboro Baptist Church for anything.

If you find yourself writing about a legal decision "Aside from the outcome, I really liked this opinion."

If the incident report you file on a work-related accident includes any one sentence with more than three four-syllable words in it. Make that two.

And lastly, if you live in fear that some of the people you most disliked and least respected in law school will end up on the bench somewhere someday.

See? As I said, law school changes you forever.

*The one thing we agreed on was that the apothecary was probably guilty of assisted suicide.  The Red-Headed Menace suggested that it was Romeo's fault, but I pointed out that since he was dead he couldn't be tried.  We then discussed whether Friar Lawrence should have known what would happen and was guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but then also discussed whether he was guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I was greatly disappointed to find out that it was a school assignment, and that he was simply trying to pump me for information.


**Although if anyone can discuss the Costco case with me, I would appreciate it. Primarily because I shop a lot at Costco.

Because I like to keep you guys apprised of these things...

A small thing, but mine own.

Letters I should send...

Dear Diamond Match Company:

Those "strike anywhere" matches?  Aren't.

**************

Dear Ben and Jerry's:

I have loved your flavor names before, but "Clusterfluff" just takes the proverbial cake.  Too bad it's peanut butter -- I never have liked peanut butter ice cream.

PS.  I had my first Phish Food today -- it is now my favorite flavor, eclipsing even Neapolitan Dynamite and New York Super Fudge Chunk.

**************

Dear John Edwards:

I not only voted for you, I persuaded others to do likewise.  I cannot express how angry, disappointed and yes, cheated I feel.

**************

And speaking of politicians I admired...

Dear Anthony Weiner:

What the hell were you thinking?  Did you honestly believe you wouldn't be found out? Aside from the impropriety of that tweet to begin with, lying about it was just plain stupid.

You should have known everyone on the far right was going to be scrutinizing your every move after you made such a splash during the health care debate. 

Progressives have enough problems without our stalwarts pulling silly stunts like this.

*******************

Dear boss-for-whom-I-would-walk-over-hot-coals:

Thank you for having faith in me.  More than I have in myself, usually.

******************

Dear well-meaning idiot:

Do not EVER tell anyone that losing a loved one is "God's will."  Chances they are mad enough at God already.*

*****************

And, finally...

Dear Mr. Sondheim:

You are a national treasure and have made my life immeasurably richer by your words and music.  God bless you and keep you, sir.

Even if I do have to hear "Send in the Clowns" in my head for hours on end.  At least it's not the Judy Collins version.


*I have not lost anyone, but someone I talked with today, had, and gotten this response from one of their friends.

Went that well, did it?

Me:  What are your plans for the rest of the day?
Red-Headed Menace:  Rant about how much the SAT Subject tests suck?

I am NOT that kind. Really.

Yesterday, the Rocket Scientist and I were  discussing the evening we had gone to dinner with the Resident Shrink and her friend from the East Coast.  The evening when I had the "Corpse Reviver" at the British Banker's Club, and... yeah.

"You were really flirting with Max," The Rocket Scientist said, amusedly.

"Me? I never flirt.  And people never flirt with me."

"Of course you were flirting.  And he was flirting right back.  It was really cute."*

Hmmph.

I am not flirtatious. I am not "cute."  Not even remotely.

I am dark.  And mysterious.  And pissed-off.

So there.

*He later observed that, given how much I had had to drink, I may not be the best judge of my own behavior.  I remember everything that happened, and I am pretty sure I was NOT flirting.

It occurs to me...

I am thoroughly spoiled.  Like all Northern Californians, I feel it appropriate to whine about what may be, year-round, the most temperate and gentle climate in the country.  Except for a few weeks in late summer/early autumn, when the heat can be brutal, it really is quite pleasant here.

There is a reason we can build totally impractical houses with outer walls that are mostly glass.  Those things (and I have one, I should know) are a bear to heat and even worse to attempt to cool.  They are an environmental nightmare, leaking climate control from almost every pore. (This is contrast to the  thick walls of the adobe that Indians and Spanish used in building, which is in fact pretty energy efficient.) Because, as everyone will tell you, this is the Bay Area!! You don't need air conditioning.  Of course, this is usually said ironically on a September day when it is 103 degrees in downtown San Jose.

Now that real estate values have dropped somewhat, and the Giants have won a World Series, the weather is the last thing we have to bitch about.  That and the state of the tech industry.

And the massive unemployment, of course, but everywhere in the country is feeling that particular pinch.

Just another rainy Saturday morning in June.... Wait, WHAT?

I am sitting in yet another ubiquitous Starbucks, waiting for the Red Headed Menace to finish his SAT Subject test.  (His teacher suggested, rather sensibly, that the time to take the subject test was right after he had taken the subject in school, hence he is taking one of his SATs as a freshman.  It makes RHM feel important, I think.)

I am looking out the window on another chilly, gray, rainy morning...

Excuse me?  It is JUNE,  for crying out loud.  In the San Francisco Bay Area.  This is not supposed to happen.  The rain should have stopped at least a month ago.  What happened to our God-given right to warmth?

Years ago, on the first day of Civil Procedure, the professor joked that "this is California -- if it rains before November, they have to give you your money back."  He never said anything about when it needed to stop raining, but really.

It's not even like it is proper rain.*  Or a thunderstorm, which I would welcome. Sheesh.

I want my money back.

*Years ago, when the family was visiting relatives in North Carolina, it rained one morning.  The Not So Little Drummer Boy stood outside with water streaming down his face.  When we made cracks about him not having the intelligence to come in out of the rain, he replied "But this is different... this is warm rain."  Only then did it occur to me that yes, he had never experienced a warm rain -- when it was a decent temperature at home, it was always sunny.

What do Les Miserables, Godspell, Grease,  Miss Saigon, Tommy and even Chess have in common, other than being musicals?  They -- along with others -- provide the music  for Star Wars: The Musical.


Words cannot describe how much I love this.

Memorial Day

 I come from a line  of soldiers, sailors and Marines.

I am the daughter of a Marine.  And the niece of a career Marine.  I am the granddaughter of a Navy seaman turned Navy aviator. (Granddad Greene became an aviator in 1920, after his service in World War I.)  All three of them served honorably in the Pacific theater in World War II.  My uncle's service continued on through Korea and Vietnam; my Dad's through the Marine involvement in China in the post-war period.

My ancestors fought in the Civil War (mostly for the Confederacy, alas) and, on my mother's side, the Revolutionary War.

I have the utmost respect for men and women in uniform.

I was from the start opposed to the war in Iraq.  I have come to oppose the war in Afghanistan.  People who hold mine and similar views were frequently (and still are) accused of "not supporting the troops."

Wrong.

I support the troops.  I think they should be paid a decent wage and their families back home cared for during their service and after they return home (or more sadly in cases where they don't).  They should be given the equipment best suited to keeping them safe in the field. Care of returning injured veterans, whether they have physical or psychological wounds, should be a top national priority.

They should never be sent to places we have no business being in to begin with.  We should never squander their lives or health to fight for any but the gravest reasons, by which standard neither of the current wars qualify.*

The analysis of that is for another day.

Today, I wish to salute and honor those who did what their country, rightly or wrongly, demanded that they do, and paid the ultimate price.  May God grant peace to their souls and their families.

*Peacekeeping missions with NATO and the UN are complicated issues; I have still not figured out where I stand on those.

Oh, for Pete's sake...

After careful review, I have decided that the iTunes genre designations are almost but not quite completely random.  How else to explain labeling the Beatles White Album as "pop" and Abbey Road as "rock"?  Or Billy Joel as "pop" and Great Big Sea (including The Hard and the Easy, which is comprised exclusively of traditional Newfoundland roots music) and Jimmy Buffet as "rock"?

And John Denver?!?  John Denver is many things, but a rock singer he is not.  He won Entertainer of the Year  from the Country Music Association for 1975, after all.

All of this is faintly reminiscent of Jethro Tull winning the first Grammy for Best Metal Album.

Sheesh.

In Defense of Starbucks

I have to take medicines for a medical condition.  I have to take them with food -- specifically carbohydrates. On the rare occasions  I wait too long, or forget, I get dizzy spells.  I can work, or write, or use a computer; I just can't drive (or even walk steadily) until it goes away. That can be anywhere between thirty minutes and three hours.

The moment I feel one is imminent (they give me a few minutes warning), I know exactly what to do.  I find the nearest Starbucks and sit down, and proceed to snarf decaf and carbs until I feel fine again.  Why Starbucks?  Because they are ubiquitous.  And on the rare occasion I don't see one immediately, I stop at the next food establishment I see, or pull to the side of the road and call someone to come get me.

Which is why today I am sitting in the Starbucks on University Avenue in Palo Alto (where I was heading when it hit -- University Ave, not the Starbucks -- I was a block away), downing Skinny Decaf Carmel Macchiatos and madeleines.

People like me like Starbucks because it is familiar.  I would never go to one in a foreign country, where the opportunity to experience new and different things is right before one's eyes (and where there is likely to be much better coffee),  but at home, I know exactly what I am getting, and I find that oddly comforting.  (I also patronize local coffee shops when I am downtown in my hometown, but there are other options there that I am familiar with.)  There are other reasons to patronize the Starbucks near my house:  it is the only real neighborhood meeting place, and it pretty much kept the local strip shopping mall from going derelict.

I know many people view Starbucks as a menace, as a soulless corporation driving the local mom-and-pop coffee shops out of business.  And I know that is to some extent true.  Still, in an age where all of us are constantly on the move, finding something you can count on (even if the coffee is less than stellar) can make all the difference.

Especially to me.

Yesterday I mentioned that the last ten seconds of the bridge from "Polythene Pam" to "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" on Abbey Road were my favorite ten seconds in all of rock and roll.

Ttoday, I decided to list some of my other favorite moments:

The opening to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" (used to wonderful effect in Shrek the Third.)

The first line of Prince's "Little Red Corvette."

Roger Daltrey's in tune scream near the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again."

The bass parts in Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed-Girl" and Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." (Not to mention the lyric about "the angels in the architecture.")

The opening guitar riff on the Beach Boys "Fun, Fun, Fun" which they blatantly stole from Chuck Berry.

Not to mention Roger McGuin's wonderful riff at the opening of "Mr. Tambourine Man."

And of course, you can't mention guitars without talking about  the opening to "Layla."  The original version, by Derek and the Dominoes.

The opening to the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What  You Want." The choirboys kill me.

Last but certainly not least, Michael Shrieve's insane drum solo during Santana's Woodstock version of "Soul Sacrifice." Have you ever seen the Hermitage version of the Marc Chagall painting "The Dance"? This is what the people were dancing to, albeit 59 years before the fact. And Shrieve was nineteen (nineteen?!?!?!) at the time.

Content? We don't need no stinkin' content!

Ah, yes.  I am having trouble finding things to say these days.  I'm not sure why -- I actually have proto-posts written down in a notebook (an artifact of the time when I was computerless), but a combination of being out of the habit and mood and being preoccupied (make that obsessed) with other things has led me to be relatively silent these days. I also have writing I have done about things which are personal enough that placing them on a public blog (because, after all, the Internet is forever) would not be a good idea.

I find myself writing more on Facebook because, let's face it, FB is mostly brainless.  A lot of space on my friend's list is comprised of links people find interesting.  A few people actually use it to let others know about their lives, but even then it is a shallow medium at best.  Not quite as bad as Twitter, but at roughly 400 characters, not much better. And lately when I am writing here, I find myself writing short odds and ends, rather than longer analytical pieces.

So...  things.

Georgia is lovely, shiny and new.  She is still clean, mainly because I get annoyed at anyone other than me eating or drinking within five feet of her, and I semi-religiously blow dust off her keyboard.  I need to get a cloth to clean her lovely, high graphic screen. The hardest part to get used to is her sensitive trackpad.  With Jan, I became used to resting one thumb on the pad while I scrolled with the other, the better to open things with, except with Georgia when I do that it opens a lot of things I do not want, or otherwise acts the way the new fancy trackpads are supposed to act but which I am totally not used to.

Because I can now access iTunes, I can catch up with all the episodes of Criminal Minds that I have  missed this year (which is quite a lot, let me tell you).  It also means that I can go back and read Elizabeth Bear's quite amusing liveblogs of the episodes.  I probably could do an entire post on CM, and how appearances can be deceiving, and that one of the most annoying things about this season is how it seems to be devolving (a good, BAU-type term) into a standard cop show, albeit with more explicit pictures of dismembered bodies.

I have also got all my music back.  At last.  At lot of things were bought from iTunes during the period before you could get things DRM-free, so when your computer dies, you have to unauthorize and reauthorize everything.  This is impossible if you cannot access the iTunes store.  And I was very good: I resisted the temptation to rip all the music on the computer I was borrowing (which was a great deal more than mine) onto my backup drive.

For Mother's Day, I got the "betting version" of Trivial Pursuit.  It's in many ways a different game, but in many ways a better one, because it still allows for smarty-pantses to show off (not like anyone I know) but also allows other people to be involved in the action rather than leaving them to wander over to the fridge to scope out what types of soda we have. It also can provide incentives for people to throw questions, which makes it all the more amusing.

I have been listening to the Beatles today.  I have about ninety songs, including five from the Help! soundtrack I bought off of iTunes last night.  The bridge from "Polythene Pam" to "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" in the song-cycle on Abbey Road is absolutely freaking brilliant, and the end of it is my favorite ten seconds in all of rock and roll.  It goes on my list of "better-than-sex music".*

"And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

Another observation about the Beatles.  George Martin is an unspoken hero of the revolution, so to speak, and a large part of the reason they were as awesome as they were. (Compare Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album or Abbey Road, which he produced, to Let It Be, which he did not.)  One of his most wonderful creations is Love, which was originally developed for a Cirque du Soleil show, if I remember correctly.  It takes Beatles tracks and transforms them into... something even more wonderful than they were before.  "Revolution," for example, has fuzzed out guitars, and is even more raw and primal than it was in the first place.  My favorite, though, is the heart-achingly beautiful "While My Guitar Gently Weeps,"  with George Harrison on acoustic guitar, with strings coming later.  It includes a verse not found on the Abbey Road version: "I look from the wings at the play that you're staging/ while my guitar gently weeps/ as I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging/ still my guitar gently weeps."  Maybe it is the place I am in in my life, but that just resonates.



School is nearly out for the summer.  The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy was on the ball after he returned home, and actually has a good summer job before June starts.  His first job was as a "sign dancer,"  one of those people who stand on street corners advertising for, in this case, a Mexican restaurant.  For the week he did it, he was extremely good -- he had people honking at him, and several groups of people coming in the restaurant commended him to his manager.  In fact, he had been terribly excited about getting the job, not particularly surprising for a kid who told me once that he viewed his entire life as performance art.  His stated goal, at least as he told me, was to be such an outrageously good sign dancer that he got onto the local news.  He sadly had to relinquish that goal when he got a job that a) paid a dollar more per hour, b) was full rather than part time and c) would actually give him skills he could put on his resume.  Nothing in life is perfect.

He also ran at least part of the way in the Bay-to-Breakers.  Afterwards, he commented "whenever there is an outdoor event in San Francisco with more than fifty people, at least one of them will be naked."  He was exasperated when both his father and I separately asked if he was one of them.

Last weekend was the Pokemon Regional Tournament.  I attended, mainly because Railfan was participating and wanted someone there for moral support.  The contestants in the Masters division (people over twelve) were 95 percent male (not an exaggeration, I actually counted) and ranged in age from the aforementioned teenagers to men who looked to be close to forty.  I can't imagine being that interested in a handheld video game at the age of thirty-five, but then I can't imagine being completely obsessed with Pokemon at any age.  Failure of imagination, I suppose.

Summer is here, and I am trying not to be overwhelmed.  I have something akin to Seasonal Affective Disorder, only it hits during the summer rather than the winter.  Something about all the light, and the lengths of the days, feels disorienting and crushing, rather than exhilarating, as it is for most people. And the kids will be out of school after next week, with all that entails.  At least this summer they have set goals for themselves: the NLDB has a job (and, finally, a driver's license so he can get himself to said job), Railfan is looking for one, and the Red-Headed Menace wants to take classes so that he can get in shape for next school year. Not to mention doing summer track, and training for the cross-country team he wants to join in the fall.

In a couple of months, the Rocket Scientist will again leave for the Arctic, and I will spend two-and-a-half weeks obsessing about the weather in Nunavit, and worrying about polar bears. And the statistics for crashes among small planes.  And ATV rollovers.

Maybe before than I will find other things to distract me.

Like actually writing.

*Depending upon how good the sex is, of course.

Happy...

Today, fans of Terry Pratchett are remembering the Glorious Revolution of the 25th of May.  And wearing lilac.

Fans of Douglas Adams are commemorating Towel Day.  And carrying towels.

Celebrate accordingly.  Perhaps by carrying a lilac colored towel.

Welcome...

Hello folks, I would  like to introduce you to .... Georgia.  As in O'Keefe.

She is a lovely, brand new (as in picked up last night) MacBook Pro with a Intel Core i5 and running Snow Leopard.*  Her graphics are crisp, her keyboard action is lovely, and she is (in the words of the Sydney seagulls in Finding Nemo) mine..mine...mine...

Who knew that getting rear-ended could have such a pleasant fallout?  Not that I would recommend it as a matter of course...

I have been having some connectivity problems which may or may not continue.  I still have to get everything set up correctly.  All of this means:

Hopefully more writing.
I can finish setting up my spreadsheet which will allow me to set prices on the jewelry I hope to sell on Etsy before too long (I figure with ten necklaces and the same number of bracelets I have enough stock to at least get started).
Job searching should be easier.
I can return to hanging out at Starbucks, which, believe it or not, I find more productive than working at home.  (I do buy stuff, I promise.  I do not simply freeload.)

I currently have no access to the latest edition of MS Office, which means that I will need to download Open Office or some other open source software, or resort to using Google Docs.

Woohoo!


*What the heck is Apple going to do when they run out of large cat names?

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past two weeks, I expect you know this.  Actually, make that under a rock in a remote cave.

Certainly nowhere in the United States.

As Jon Stewart said, I suppose I should be ambivalent about the killing of another human being...

But as Jon Stewart also said, uh, no.

Yes, I rejoice in the death of this man, the same way I would have rejoiced in the death of Adolf Hitler had I been alive in 1945.  There are just some people who deserve to die.*

 However, it was not, contrary to what the President said on that Sunday night, justice.  Was it necessary?  Possibly.  Was it completely justifiable?  Damn straight.  That does not make it justice, except in perhaps the most abstract and universally karmic way.  In the casually metaphorical way we speak of people getting what's coming to them.

Thomas Nachbar wrote an excellent article for Slate which dissects the difference between an act of justice and a military action.  He does a better job of analyzing this issue than I ever could.  It is an important article and I encourage you to read it. Even more than that, I would urge you to read what Terry Karney has to say on the subject: he points out what we have lost by not allowing justice to be done. 

For me, I am most concerned about the role that torture may have played in the operation.  Apparently, some of the information was obtained through the use of "harsh interrogation techniques."  USA Today, in rosy-eyed view of the American public, stated "It's a safe bet that most people would accept torture if it were the only option for catching the most hunted villain in U.S. history. Indiscriminate use of torture is another matter entirely."

They're absolutely wrong. If they thought it would give them a small amount of security, the American public would be more than willing to torture just about anyone. Because who's to say that the next terrorist we stop through use of torture is not a Bin Laden in the making? Or worse?

But how many terrorists will we be making through torture?  And what damage are we doing to our own psyche, both as a nation and as individuals?  Do we have a right to ask people to become what they must to be able to torture another human being?

And there is a glaring question that needs to be answered.  Was there a way to get this information through other means?  According to USA Today, one of the ways that the CIA was able to confirm the importance of a Bin Laden courier was because other high ranking Al Qaeda figures lied about him after being waterboarded. The question is, if they had enough information to know that the people were lying, why did they need to torture?  For confirmation?  Am I the only person that is bothered by that? Anyone? 

There are roads you don't walk down because  they may prove so enticing that it will be impossible to come back.  Way leads on to way, as Robert Frost noted, and it is possible to lose your identity -- personal or national -- so much that you can never reclaim who you were.  Yes, Virginia, there really are slippery slopes.  Torture is one of them.

I once said that there are fates worse than death, that I would rather risk dying as a free and ethical woman than support torture to make myself more secure.  That the rule of law and due process and the moral requirements for how human beings treat each other matter more to me than whatever I might gain in exchange for throwing them away.


Nothing that happened to Osama Bin Laden changes one damn bit of that.  And any regret or sadness I may feel over the death of one of the most justly reviled men in history would be that it will be a continuing justification for those who will continue to do evil in my -- and my country's --name.

*Given my unalloyed opposition to capital punishment, for me this is a very small group indeed.

Our recurring cast of characters...

Recent readers of this blog may or may have not become acquainted with the diverse group of inmates in my insane asylum. Unlike the CIA agent and little girl that followed John Nash around "A Beautiful Mind," these alleged people really do exist.

First off, there is the Rocket Scientist, my husband of 28 years.  There is a reason that his ring-tone on my phone is the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark.  He can't go to space, so he makes up for it by going everywhere on earth he can. As an aeronautics engineer, geologist, arctic explorer and generally all around smart guy, he can go a lot of places.  He was recently disappointed that a project he wanted to do didn't get funded, because, among other things it meant he would not get to spend next May in the Atacama desert. (The main reason, of course, was that it was an interesting and important project, and he really likes his job.)  That means he will have to postpone picking up his sixth (and seventh) continents until next November, when he goes to the Antarctic.

He is the only person in my personal life, as far as I know, that has his own IMDb page. (Not to mention a Kevin Bacon number of 3.) When I discussed on Facebook whether or not I should write a bogus biography for him, several friends chimed in to say that would be totally unnecessary -- his actual life is pretty interesting on its own.  He spends time every summer in the Canadian Arctic, and is one of only three people that I know personally who have had training to ward off polar bears. He is also a smart ass, although he disapproves of snarkiness and sarcasm on general principle.  (In that regard, he is a nicer person than I am.)

Once, during a very contentious project he was heading up in Spain, he walked into a meeting he was leading with a flogger.  He slapped it down on the table, and said in a quiet but menacing voice, "The beatings will commence until morale improves." The entire group went completely silent (except for me and a couple of friends, who were desperately trying not to snicker).  It worked, though: people piped down and stopped fighting with each other.

There is my eldest son, the Not-So-Little-Drummer Boy.  How much does this kid love music? Years ago, the first weekend he had his drum set he played it so much that the neighbors called the cops.   He has the largest music collection of anyone in my immediate circle, much of it by artists I have never heard of.  I can't figure out whether I am happier or more worried that he may well end up working in music or art:  on the one hand, he would be really good at it, and he really should follow his heart; on the other, it's hard to make a living doing that.

On the surface, he is almost too cool for words. Underneath, he is a big goofy puppy.  He likes doing crazy things -- he was looking forward to college so that he would be able to do stuff and his friends wouldn't act like he was completely insane.  He's a sophomore now, and it both freaks me out and breaks my heart that in a couple of years, he will be mostly gone from my day to day life.

Then we have Railfan.  I have a lot of sympathy for my middle child:  he is a solid, smart kid, who most families would be a standout, but in ours is sandwiched between two peacocks.  He doesn't show up in this blog as much as his brothers, because he is less likely than they are to say outrageous things.  He is the nicest person of the three, and the one most likely to ask how my day has gone.  He has struggled with Asperger's Syndrome, and still has issues with social cues, but is at heart a really really sweet boy who has come a very long way.

Railfan is the one of my children I would most want with me on a desert island. He's also the one that I am least worried about being able to cope with the logistics of the real world once he leaves home.  He'll be the one that has his checkbook balanced (better than me) and will pay his bills on time.  I am terrible at providing structure -- he has learned how to create some for himself, and I fully expect him to be fine on his own.  He is also, of the three of them, the one I am least worried about being in a car with him behind the wheel.

And then we have the Red-Headed Menace.  Last weekend, when he complained that I always blogged/Facebooked the things he said, I informed him "That's why we keep you around, comic relief.  Otherwise we would have sold you to the gypsies long ago."  A flamboyant, brilliant child, with a tendency to melodrama as strong as the current in the Colorado River, he is far more likely to want to have a discussion about the fall of the Soviet Union than, say, baseball or movies.  What can you say about a child who on the way to school one day asks you what your favorite subatomic particle is? (My answer, for the record, is charmed quarks, simply because of the name.  His was the Higgs boson -- I don't remember why.) Or who exclaims, on Valentine's Day, "I suck at relationships" with a huge dramatic sigh?  (I was very good.  I did not give my first response, which was "my, we're being a drama queen today" or even my second, which was "you might have better luck if you did not develop crushes on girls with boyfriends" or even what a friend of mine said, which was "of course he does, he's fourteen! What does he expect?"  Instead, I very gently stated that he was still very young, and that things would get better when he got older. And spent the afternoon snickering about it.)  I have discovered that the secret to dealing with RHM when he is in full Oscar-worthy mode is a poker face and the oft repeated phrase "that's nice, dear," said in the blandest voice possible.

He also hates hates hates to lose arguments.  When he is discussing something, he will increase the outrageousness of his hypotheticals until the other side gives up in disgust, and you find yourself saying "Fine, if the sun goes supernova tomorrow, you do not have to mow the lawn on Sunday.  In the meantime...." He's the one I am most likely to tell "Because I said so" simply because arguing with him can be exhausting.  Amusing, often, but exhausting. (That is why reducing him to speechlessness during the lawyer discussion was so very satisfying.)  I have explained to him that he really does need to become a lawyer, but he is having none of it.  (He keeps changing what he does want, though, which given that he is fourteen, is entirely predictable.  A couple of months ago, he wanted to be a physicist.  On Sunday, he stated he wanted to be a genetics engineer.  He has also expressed a desire to be a philosopher, preferably one of Plato's philosopher kings.  Good luck with that one, I tell him.)

We also have a housemate, the Resident Shrink.  We forgive her for being a New Yorker, and she forgives us for insisting that there is actually reasonable pizza outside of the five boroughs. (I'm willing to concede that there are no decent bagels other than in New York, however.) She's a vegetarian, and we go around and around about our own dogmatic views on food: she has the aforementioned pizza/bagel issue, and I keep trying to make her see that neither proper red beans and rice nor proper pea soup are vegetarian. (Neither is proper onion soup -- it's made with beef broth -- but I have kept a discreet silence on that one.) Proper chili is not vegetarian (nor does it have beans in it), but I am willing to concede that vegetarian "chili" is mighty tasty and I am very willing to eat it provided a) it does not have fake meat products in it and b) it is not really called chili.

So that's the household.  If I seem bemused by them all, it is because I generally am.  In many ways, I am the least interesting of the bunch. I have no idea if that is a good thing or not.

*rimshot*

Me:  You really need to become a lawyer, Red Headed Menace.
RHM:  I don't want to be a lawyer, I want to be a genetic engineer.
Rocket Scientist:  Then you can create giant mutant cockroaches!
Me: Or giant mutant lawyers.
Railfan: There's a difference?

Because we're THAT sort of family

I just received a Mother's Day card with the greeting on the envelope written in hex.  

I have interesting children.

Miscellanea

I will be getting a new laptop soon, probably within the next week.  I will hopefully be posting more then.

******

The laptop is courtesy of the insurance company of the elderly man who ran into me in February.  They offered me (in addition to paying all my medicals bills) $1000, basically as a "We're so sorry you're hurt, please don't sue us" gesture.  I resisted the temptation to tell them to talk to my counsel, since I had absolutely no intention of suing anyone, provided they paid my medical bills.  Suing people is a pain in the backside, and I had had no real "pain and suffering" (which is what this is compensation for) except for a mighty uncomfortable three hours in the Stanford ER and several days stoned out of my gourd on Vicodin. I didn't tell the insurance company that, of course, but simply took the grand.  I think if I had pushed I might have gotten two, but that seemed unethical to me.  Contrast this with my insurance company, who is being aggressive with the people who I hit in March (it's been a bad year for cars in my household), even though it was the same sort of injury (soft tissue damage, whiplash).

The litigious nature of American society is also why I have certificate for three days stay at a resort hotel in Hawaii, as another "We're so sorry you fell getting off the poorly designed tram, we're very glad you weren't seriously hurt, please don't sue us" plea. 

******

The Apple Store in Palo Alto California employs some seriously pretty geek-boys, such as the one today who explained to me the difference between flash or solid state memory and traditional hard drives.  Cute, enthusiastic, and didn't condescend to me when it became clear that I was a reasonably intelligent person -- actually, not even before then.  And he did not even steer me towards the most expensive option!  (Well, he did suggest I consider a Macbook Pro, when I told him I keep computers until they die, since it had the most recent Intel processors, but I had already decided to do that anyway.) I realize that in some sense this is objectifying this lad, so I lose some feminist street cred here.  Oh, well.

*******

Quote of the week comes from the Red-Headed Menace.  After reading about a third of Romeo and Juliet (you could tell he was reading it, too, because he yells at the characters in books the way other people yell at characters in television shows -- in this case, "Romeo, you wuss.  What is this about Rosaline?  Get over her, man!), he came into the kitchen and asked "Mom, I realize this is purely hypothetical, but do you think a romance between me and Juliet would work out?"

No, son.  It wouldn't.  Her family would definitely disapprove.  On top of that, she's a fictional character.  From the sixteenth century. Who had a boyfriend/husband. Who committed suicide. So I think you're pretty much out of luck on this one. Things not going too well with the crush object, are they?

******

In the toy store today, while buying a butterfly net for Railfan for his Bio project, I noticed that there are two new versions of  Trivial Pursuit out.  The Trivial Pursuit Master Edition seems to be nothing more than a standard game with a timer added.  I can just swipe the timer from the game of Pictionary gathering dust in the hall closet and save myself $45.

Trivial Pursuit -- Bet You Know It!, however, seems to involve betting on who will get what right.  Hehehehe.  I see the possibility for an entire new income stream. Of course, I'd mainly be winning stuff off of the people in my household, so in the end it wouldn't matter, but still....

******

I have discovered that the Rocket Scientist has his own IMDb page, due to having appeared as "himself" in two episodes of the documentary series, Mars Rising.  (He does not, alas, have his own Wikipedia page.)  Also, by virtue of Mars Rising having been narrated by William Shatner, he has a Bacon number of three, and an Erdos-Bacon number of 6, the same as Natalie Portman.  I'm not sure what to make of all this, other than to find it terribly amusing. [Edited to add:  The Rocket Scientist says that James Cameron was also onscreen in Mars Rising, so he has two different routes to get his Bacon number of three.  He also says that when he was introduced to Cameron, he had no idea who he was, since he had not seen Titanic and it was before Avatar.  *facepalm*  To say that popular culture is not his forte would be an understatement.]

I have thus far resisted the temptation to create an entirely bogus biography of him.  It's taken a lot of willpower, but I am being good.

******

A friend introduced me to Straight No Chaser.  Oh. My. God.  I think I may have a new obsession in the making.  I especially love their version of Tainted Love, and am thinking of trying to find a version to use as a ringtone on my phone. 

Of course, I do love having the Superchicken Theme as my default ringtone. I have come a long way since I had Pachelbel's Canon in D Major as my ring tone mainly so as to not bother other people.  Maybe, having turned fifty, I just don't care anymore.  The Superchicken theme is so much in keeping with my personality, anyway.  Really.

******

When I was considering law schools, I made the mistake of visiting Stanford on a day almost exactly like this one.  The sky was this amazingly intense cornflower blue, it was neither too hot nor too cold, and the hills were still green  and lush.  I fell in love.  Who knows, had I visited during a heat wave in August, when all the hills have turned brown, I might have ended up in DC.  Or Austin.

This is not to say that Stanford was not very very good to and for me, and I still have a great deal of fondness for both the place and the people associated with it.  It's just that I need to remember and treasure days like today, because all too soon everything will dry up.

It is also an object lesson in doing your homework.  Had I actually checked it out, I would have found out that the the area around Stanford has an average annual rainfall of roughly 18 inches a year, as opposed to over 50 for the Tampa Bay area (where I grew up), or Atlanta (where I moved from).  There are (sob) NO summer thunderstorms.  Oops.  What can I say?  I was young and stupid(er).

It all worked out in the end, though.  I do wonder, sometimes, what I would have been like had I gone to Georgetown, UT, or even Berkeley.

******

Mother's Day is Sunday.  I suppose that it would mark me as a bad mother to say that I really would like to go out drinking.  I think that I should emulate the example of my mother.

My mom loves Disney World.  My father hated it, primarily because his knees had gotten bad enough that walking around/standing were uncomfortable for him, and he would have had to be completely immobile before he would consent to something like a scooter.  (True story about my Dad: I showed him the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche when it came out.  Dad growled "Real men eat whatever they damn well please."  He paused, then asked, "What's a quiche?") So Mom only got to Disney World when the grandkids were in town.

After my dad died, one of the first things Mom did, after her first initial mourning period, was buy a season pass to Disney World.  "I love him, but he's gone, and I want to go to Disney World.  I'm too old to worry about what people will think."

You go, Mom.  I never said this when I was growing up, what I have decided you're the person I want to be when I grow old.

I hope you got my phone message last week.  If not, then here's wishing you (again) a belated Happy 84th Birthday.  You'll outlive us all, I expect.  At least I hope so.  I'm going to miss you when you go.

And a Very Happy Mother's Day, Mom.  And to all the other mothers I know out there, regardless of age, race, creed, sexual orientation, or birth/adoption status: you guys rock.

Here's hoping the people around you tell you so.

Question of the day

Me: I'm losing my mind.
Rocket Scientist: Where was it the last time you saw it?

I am, in the popular argot, a cheap drunk.  A Really. Cheap. Drunk.

At Wellesley, every year the juniors put on a show.  My freshman year, the Junior Show included the line "It takes more than two drinks to change a Wellesley woman's mind."

Not in my case.  All it takes is two drinks.  Unless...

One of those drinks is the "Corpse Reviver " at the British Banker's Club in Menlo Park, California. In that case, it only takes one.

I was at the BBC this evening meeting a friend of my housemate, the Resident Shrink. I was planning to order at the most two drinks.  The time before this, when I had gone out drinking, I had had two rum and cokes and had barely noticed them.  (Which could be why I lost the game of Trivial Pursuit that evening (lack of enough alcohol) but that's another story...)  So I figured I would be okay, right?

I ordered the Corpse Reviver because it looked interesting and had absinthe in it.  How can you resist a drink with absinthe in it?

I drank it down.  It was easy to drink, tasting faintly like lemon and licorice.  (I know that sounds like an awful combination, but work with me here.)  It was decent, but on the second round I ordered my standard Mai Tai.

I had taken barely a sip of Mai Tai when I knew I was in serious trouble.  As in, "I am slurring my words and I have only had one drink" trouble. I excused myself and headed to the bathroom, staggering a bit and definitely holding onto the rail on the way up the stairs.

But then, I had this Mai Tai.  What to do? I did what anyone half drunk would do.  I finished that one, too.  At this point, I was having trouble walking, period, let alone up or down the stairs.

The Rocket Scientist and the Resident Shrink showed up.  Fortunately, the restaurant where we were having dinner was within easy walking distance, and the Rocket Scientist held my arm the whole way.  I refused sangria, even though the sangria at Iberia Restaurant in Menlo Park is very good.  I settled for a coke.

I managed to make it through dinner. At the end, I succumbed to temptation and had a glass of sangria because, hey it was there and we needed to finish off the pitcher and the Rocket Scientist couldn't have any more because somebody had to drive us home and it sure as hell wasn't going to be me.

I have been assured that I was in fact charming and not at all embarrassing, which is good.  I am sitting here dreading what I will feel like in the morning.  All of which means...

Next time, avoid ordering any drinks with really scary names.

I visited my neurologist yesterday.  I have to be evaluated every six months for migraines and to make sure that my tremors are benign and that I do not in fact have Parkinson's.  They have been determined to be "essential tremors."

I asked my neurologist "What does that mean, 'essential'?"  He answered, "It means that essentially we have no idea what causes them."

Nothing like having doctors with a sense of humor.

Because planning for emergencies is so important

Quote of the day, from the Red Headed Menace. who is vegetarian: "the velociraptors should eat me, I'm grain-fed. I taste better."*


Yes, we were discussing what to do in case of velociraptor attack.  That's just the sort of family we are. Next up, how to prepare for the coming zombie apocalypse.


My kids are already thinking along those lines: last Christmas, the Red-Headed Menace asked for a laser. For his birthday this year, Railfan asked for a girlfriend and C-4, both of which are helpful in warding off brain-eating monsters.**


*He then remarked that "Actually, the velociraptors should eat vegans.  They're practically grass-fed."
**We had to sadly explain that the girlfriend was something he needed to take of himself, and as it would be illegal for us to own C-4 ourselves, buying it for him was pretty much a moot point.  Besides, we figured he would just use it to blow up his brother.

Thoughts for Earth Day (most of them pretty obvious) ...

Believe it or not, I was a member of the Environmental Law Society at Stanford.  (More than that, I was managing editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal.*)

I was, in many ways, an odd duck to end up in the basement offices of ELS.  I had little interest in saving the wilderness or endangered species.  My dedication for natural resources law was, to say the least, not remotely awe-inspiring. Not that I am not glad that there are people who are devoted to those, mind you -- I think that is very worthwhile, nay vital.  It's just not my thing.

I was passionate (and stilll am, all these many years later, although my environmental interests have broadened, pretty much due to my involvement with ELS) about historic and architectural preservation.**  I was living and working in Atlanta in the early eighties, a time when, according to the papers,  there were arguments about saving Margaret Mitchell's house*** which centered primarily on whether the house was sound enough structurally to be worth saving, but where many people thought it would be okay to run the Jimmy Carter Presidential Parkway through the Sweet Auburn neighborhood, which was crucial in the struggle for civil rights.  Or where an architecturally important building could be demolished to make way for a MARTA station, although they were careful to save the facade statues, isolated and removed from their original setting for the enjoyment of riders.

So what's so different about the the desire to protect nature and the desire to protect historic sites? In many cases, the tactics are similar, and in some cases the ends coincide (in the case of Native American sites that are also environmentally sensitive, for example).  I think the underlying question is one of emphasis.

Historic preservation is about people.  Saving places that tie people to their past, to  their sense of who they are, as individuals and as a culture or society, is paramount.****  It is about not forgetting, the good or the bad.  It is about remembering the heritage which we justly take pride in, and the past which we would rather forget but which is dangerous for us to do so.

Environmentalism, in the larger sense, is not necessarily about people.  For many environmentalists it is, but I also know environmentalists who view humans as a blight upon the planet, who tend to be disdainful or dimissive of those who stand in their way.  One friend -- and she was a friend, in spite of our differences -- once described herself unapologetically as an "environmental Nazi."  She had no problem with whatever regulatory and legal tactics were necessary to protect resources, wilderness and wildlife.  People were in many ways an impediment, and dangerous to the earth.

It comes down, to me, a question of "Why save the planet?"  .

One can say that the planet needs to be saved for its own sake.  That wilderness and resources and endangered species provide their own justification, and need none from us.

But for me, we need to save the planet because there are people living on it. Yes, you need to save the whole planet -- not just the parts where there are people living -- because it is a complex system and it is impossible to say what will matter in the future.  And far too many environmental decisions made by individuals, governments and societies are disastrous for people in both the short term and in the long run.

I also believe that people need wilderness, need the idea of wilderness.   We have to have whales, regardless of any practical use they may have, because we are creatures with a capacity for wonder and curiosity, and we require objects for that wonder.  If you doubt the need for whales, go on a whale-watching trip with a group of elementary school kids to see just how vital they are.

All of this influences how you see the struggle, and what problems you become interested in.  Given the choice, I would  much rather focus on the short-sighted repeal of the Williamson Act, and what this means for municipalities and farmers, than on saving the Amazon rainforest.  Again, it's not that I do not view this as important, but that I can only retain focus on a limited set of problems at one time.  Water resource issues, and the tension between agricultural use and municipal use, interest me more than the problems with traffic congestion (and its attendant air-quality concerns) in Yosemite. The former is much more central to how people live their lives on a daily basis.

The lead singer of Great Big Sea, Alan Doyle, once caustically commented on celebrities who went out to the ice to protest the baby seal hunt.  Where were they the rest of the year, he asked, when people were trying to feed their families and get by without having to leave where they have lived for generations?  Whatever you think of the seal fur trade, he has a very good point. Telling people that they are evil for killing fur seals, or for logging in endangered species (such as spotted owl) habitat, may well get the response "Screw you, I need to feed my kids."

All of which means you have to enlist individuals in the fight.  Give people living in the rainforest incentive to save it themselves (which has happened in a lot of areas) and you will be more effective than imposing outside regulation.  Giving farmers financial incentives to conserve through water marketing is going to work better in the long run than imposing quotas on water use. Outside regulation is only needed to keep the all-too-powerful forces of the (alleged) free-market system from overpowering people acting in the best interests of themselves and their families. Or where the problems -- such as air and water pollution -- are larger than can be addressed locally.  Or where what is threatened is one of those areas we need for the health of the people living on the planet even though no people currently live there.  (E.g., the Everglades) .

This is a change for me from twenty years ago when I was in law school. I no longer see regulation (as very important as that may be) as always the best way to solve environmental problems.  Outside regulation is a fragile reed:  that which is given under an environmentally sensitive administration can be taken away by one who is held captive by industrial interests. 

And maybe I have come to have more understanding of, and sympathy for, people who really are just trying to get by. Because they live on this planet, too.

*One of the more thankless things I have ever done.  That I got through the year without strangling anyone -- including myself -- never ceases to amaze me.  One contributor in particular... never mind.  I'm pretty sure I did not do a good -- or even an adequate -- job.  I like to think of it as a clear example of the Peter Principle in operation.

**The difference between the two (although they are sometimes used interchangeably) is that a building can be historically important and completely nondescript:  the elementary schools at the heart of Brown v. Board of Education, are historically important, but pretty unimpressive to look at.  On the other hand, both Fallingwater and the Robie House, residential structures from two different points in Frank Lloyd Wright's career, are aesthetically pleasing and architecturally important, but aside from that have very little historic significance. 

***Don't get me started on Gone With the Wind.  Any book which glorifies the slave-holding culture of the antebellum South is a very bad thing in my estimation.

****Saving not-so-historic places, because people have attachments to them, matters too. See my rant about Kelo v. City of  New London.

As a result of Jan finally having completely bit the dust, I have no access to my music.  Damn.

So I have been listening to a lot of Pandora, especially on the Droid.  The Mazda's sound system has likewise gone the way of the dodo, so it is a convenient way to listen to music while driving (absolutely necessary for me).

I keep hearing new music I love, and music I used to listen to that I forgot how much I love.  One of my channels is "Mary Chapin Carpenter Radio",  so I find myself listening to a lot of women songwriters in country and folk genres.

So far I have found one song I love love love that I had never heard before: "Let the Wind Chase You," by Trisha Yearwood, which led me via YouTube to Sally Barris's original.*  And I have rediscovered a song I adored when I went through my country music phase about eight years ago: the cover of Nanci Griffith's "Outbound Plane" by Suzy Bogguss.**

It's wonderful.  I can hardly wait until I get Jan's replacement (probably a month or so down the road, tentatively named either Eduoard (Manet), Claude (Monet), Chuck (Close) or Marc (Chagall)) so I can buy them for my iTunes.


*The best song I have ever heard for people suffering from unrequited love.  Even better than Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me."  Not that I have any experience with this.  Not, not at all.


**Yes, I know.  Griffith's voice is rawer, and a lot of people like that, in the same way that a lot of people (myself included) prefer John Hiatt's version of "Drive South" over of Bogguss's.  But I just love Suzy's voice.

What a long, strange trip it's been....

I turned fifty yesterday.

That number feels odd.  Unlike forty, where I relished the idea that I did not have to worry about whether people liked me or not anymore, fifty is disturbing.  I am not sure what its significance is, other than people seem to feel that it is significant.

The Red Headed Menace tells me that my life is half over; he seems to believe I will live to be a hundred.  Lovely child.

I know better.  Part of the reason fifty feels so unsettling is that, without being overly melodramatic, there were times when it was a question as to whether I would live to see forty.  It's a full decade past that, and I'm not sure what to do with myself.

There is the "WTF have I done with my life?", usual for birthdays and New Year's Eve. And the answer is, as always, elusive.  I have made my peace, I think, with the fact that I am not going to be anyone whose name the world at large will ever hear.  I am not going to change the world:  the best that I will be able to do is to enable others to do so.  Since I believe firmly that no one does anything on their own, that we are all connected, I recognize that in itself to be an important task.  Still, given the tools that I was blessed to have, in education and ability, it feels like I have wasted far more opportunities than any one person should have the right to.

There is a different sadness this year.  For various reasons in my personal life, I have become acutely aware of all the people that I have lost track of.  I think of them often; I wonder where they are and how they are doing.  And I wonder if I will find the strength to find them and apologize for ever having let them go.

Maybe that's the task for my next half-century.

Not dead yet...

I am still alive. Really. I am not spending all my time playing Angry Birds, either. 

I am writing.  What I am writing -  and thinking through in preparation - for writing is very personal, and not really for public consumption.

There is a possibility of me having writing published. Not a lot, and it is by no means a sure thing, so I don't want to talk about it, yet. But I am excited.

Life is.

I have drunk the Kool-Aid*

I am typing this from my new Droid phone.*

*And just how annoyed do you think the makers of Kool-Ade get about this saying? In Jonestown, Jim Jones used Flavor-Ade. At least "going postal" refers to an actual incident involving a disgruntled fired postal worker.