Female experience, the follow-up

For those who give a rat's ass (and from the response to this morning's post on FB, not many do), here is the description of my distaff detour:

I was standing at our overcramped-with-dirty-dishes sink at 6:30 this morning, struggling with a load design which would allow all the offending dishware to be done in one, water-and-time-saving bunch...  As I did so, I felt distinctly female...

Before you unleash a salvo of commentary about my sexism, let me explain...  Women, especially women in marriages or other types of domestic partnerships, are often not the breadwinners...therefore they try their best to find other ways of being essential in the crewing of the ship of life....  They work overtime to play a supporting role, and to play it well...  They are the maids, they are the sex toys, they are the friendly ear, they are the oil for the pistons...

That was me, today, standing at that sink...

Lisa has been the breadwinner of our family for quite a while...my acting career is like those subterranean fires that burned for decades in Pennsylvania--yeah, there's still heat, but damn little flame...  I collect my S/S (early retirement) and my actor's union pension (meager at best), so I am able to contribute to the expenses of running the house, but...with over $800 bills for utilities, and the mortgage, and our prescription drug costs, and our pets, and, and, and...it falls upon my 20-years-my-junior wife to bring home the bacon...and she was disabled for a year and unemployed with nothing coming in for a couple of months thereafter...

Happily, she has found a position where her remarkable and very unique talents can shine, and she is enjoying helping a small-business owner build a successful insurance practice....but the rewards from this effort, aside from a minimal hourly wage, will take time to reap, so...

The point is, it is up to me to be the cheerleader, the physical trainer ("Hey, Champ, how's that shoulder today?...Did you get enough sleep last night?"  etc. etc.), the logistics and supply officer...the soccer mom driving the kids to the match...you get it....all those duties which fall, with regularity, to women...

Women, who are not only eminently better equipped emotionally and psychologically to the task, but who also are conditioned from birth to bear pain and frustration and feelings of inferiority with silence and grace...unlike the members of my sex.

Men are taught to bellow and bray.  We are taught that "men don't take that shit lying down"....we are taught that we are the kings of the universe, made in (male) God's image and worthy of (male) God's worship...

It is a brutal lesson--often fatal if not to body then to mind--receiving the memo that all the misogynist bullshit you learned about "male superiority" and male entitlement was a lie...and it is inevitable, even if only on the deathbed, that the memo will be delivered.

I, for one, am glad to experience this humiliation--essential to my growth--in increments while still aware enough to incorporate them into my daily life.

LALAland, up close and personal...

Wrapped a shoot for an ultra-low budget today...

As I sat in my self-provided canvas chair between takes, I took full advantage of our location--an "elite" little plant nursery next to Sherwood Magazines  (if you know LA, you know this place....if not, all the explanation in the world won't help).  I devised a little game where I would cast each passing person into a sitcom or "reality" show, past or present...  Lots of "Vanderpump Rules"--the 20-somethings who are oh so concerned with their looks...a few "Cheers", even a "That Girl"...a "Girls Gone Wild" segment with 7 or 8 vaguely Midwest-looking sorority sisters, all down-dressed in sweats, fast approaching La Cienega with plans to launch a meaningful Saturday Night assault on the local bars...

There was the mid-thirties fellow who talked to the plants as he passed by...he then actually came behind the gate and conversed with one of the exotics, then smiled and explained:  "My therapist!"  I smiled back and told him I approved of the choice...

But then came along a guy on an old, battered Honda scooter...he was shirtless, skinny as a rail, sunburned...he stopped his scooter in front of an apartment complex dumpster, opened the lids and started to rummage...his attempt at finding an honorable meal...

That brought me back from fantasyland to Murika 2014....with the simple thud of a dumpster lid...

God bless and help us all....

Bloomberg may have done some good things while in office as mayor of NYC, but the one thing he did which I find unforgivable is the feeding frenzy of the rich upon the poor which he encouraged while in office...

The city of Gershwin, the city which prompted the visual love poem photography of De Salignac or Bofinger, the early paintings of Georgia O'Keefe and the cinema of Woody Allen--none as vivid as the collage of images I carry in my mind and heart, taken through the camera of my child's eyes--has given way to a neon/steel/glass temple to the uberwealthy...

All of the "mom and pop" businesses have been pushed out by Starbucks and Gaps...all of the 4 and 5 story walk-ups have been torn down to make way for square-block monoliths, 30 to 40 stories high, blocking out the sun and driving out the working class which can no longer afford to pay $1000-$2000 per square foot prices to live there...

Union jobs, paying living wages and good benefits, are being squeezed out...even raw materials for construction projects--and the labor on those projects--is being purchased from China and India in lieu of local product...

Some say this is "progress"... 

I say it is collusion between the uberrich and the politicians who they have purchased wholesale; a pact to create a world where they and they alone can live in comfort, being served by an underclass which must commute to and from their compounds to wash their laundry and walk their dogs...

All this preoccupation over the "C" word...

No, I'm not speaking about Coulter, or the word used to describe her...and I don't mean "conservative" or "commentator"...

Coup...is the overthrow of Morsi in Egypt a coup, or isn't it a coup? That seems to be preoccupying the entire commentary on the situation in Egypt and our national reaction to it....

Of course it's a frigging coup...to the extent that, in the face of intransigence on the part of Morsi and his Theocratic, Iran-sympathizing thugs of the "Muslim Brotherhood" to yield to the people's demands for constitutional reforms, the army stepped in and made him step down. That's a coup...or a revolution backed by the indigenous armed forces. Take your pick.

What's the big deal? "People are dying in the streets"! Yes. In revolutions, people die in the streets. They did in Russia in 1905, and again in 1917, and for decades thereafter (not in the streets, but in gulags)...they did in France in 1787, and again in 1832...and then the French killed people in the streets of Algeria a century later... Name a revolution--and I am not even going to try to enumerate the incidents of revolutionaries dying in the streets, the mud puddles, the barrios of Africa or South America--name ONE revolution where people did not die, by the hundreds...men, women, children...and worst of all animals--who never asked to be part of this crap...

Wake the f*ck up, kiddies... Gandhi's revolution of peace gave way to what amounted to virtual genocide in India and Pakistan... Things get dirty and nasty when people revolt, and when the other side of the argument really gets pissed they start shooting. Then people shoot back. Hatfield and McCoy, times infinity.

Wanna really, and I mean REALLY have something to get your knickers in a twist about? Hmmm? It could happen here. Yep, right here in Mayberry, Opie...

When Theocrats raise their ugly heads above the water-line, and start to infiltrate the air with their putrid stench of intolerance and bigotry, and that stench starts to permeate the body politic, that's when things get ugly.... And things here in Mayberry are getting pretty pungent....

Theocracy is arsenic to Democracy. It is kryptonite to the superpower of the plurality. It's what brought down the French monarchy--in a staunchly Catholic nation...it brought down the Romanoffs--in a nation virtually ruled by the Russian Orthodox Church... The realization of the poisonous nature of Theocracy is what prompted our founding fathers--you know, the boys Bachmann and Palin are so fond of misquoting?--to make damned sure that Church and State would remain separate...

But now, all bets are off. Under the guise of a "democratic process", the Machiavellian Masters of Koch/ALEC have seen the light....they have infiltrated our legislatures with Right Wing Regressive pseudo-Christians, with an agenda devoted to creating an America carved in the image of the KKK, merged with a sprinkling of the Taliban...marching us inexorably towards a bible-thumping, woman-hating, race-baiting, serfdom where the Plutocrats will reign supreme...all hail the conquering, White Supremacist, misogynist Oligarchs...

Do you really think this will not lead to something very ugly here? Do you really think that "No Justice, No Peace" rallies will move them? Do you really, and I mean REALLY think that all the brutality they are starting to demonstrate to the peaceful opposition they are encountering in Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina or Florida is as far as they will go? And do you really think that those of us who have lived through the battlefields of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan...or the battlefields of the civil rights movement of the 1960s...are going to go quietly into that "good night"???

So, please kiddies...wake the f*ck up and stop thinking that this is just some reality show, something that you can flip the channel and avoid...Big Brother or Survivor Raleigh...

It's real life...

and it's your asses on the line...

An Open Letter to the "Tea Party"...

I awoke this morning expecting to hear that all the obstructionist crap of the past few months had been put to rest...that we had, in fact, averted the dreaded "fiscal cliff" (OMG how I hate those words)...but instead was greeted by the same crawls and bullets on CNN and MSNBC...the same "no agreement reached" nonsense that I closed my eyes to over 6 hours ago...the same instransigence...the same doctrine-driven avoidance of reality...

I don't know how else to say this:  If you really think that you pay too much in taxes...that your country is too deeply in debt...that our society has gone too far from God and the Bible...then please get on a plane, or boat, and leave....or please kill yourselves...but please, above all, just sit down and shut up.

If you think that this world we have created and that we live in...this high-tech-300-channel-everything-on-demand-high-speed-Interstate-highway-cheap-six-pack-in-every-convenience-store-on-every-intersection-fresh-milk-every-day-flip-a-switch-and-lights-come-on-turn-a-faucet-and-something-other-than-mud-and-benzine-comes-out-of-the-tap world we live comes cheap, then you are just plain stupid or really, really, REALLY FUCKING NUTS!  So, unless you are Amish and don't avail yourself of all these things. sit down, shut up, open your wallet and pay your share.

If you want to be able to drive your Dodge Ram Turbo to the woods, pull out your Bushmaster and kill stuff, or tow your boat to the lake and go fishing and catch and THEN kill stuff...if you want to have electric lights so you can home school your toothless brood...or, especially, if you want to socialize them and send them to public school, in the hope they can then have the privilege of putting themselves and you in perpetual debt paying off their college tuition so that they can go out and get a job working for some asshole who will pay them less and less in proportion to the profits of the company they work for...if you want to have the ability to wave your "Don't Tread on Me" flags at rallies held on public property--parks, public squares, etc.--built, maintained and protected (by police and firemen), all paid from tax revenues...then sit down, shut up, open your wallet and pay your fucking share.

If you want to pretend that you are patriots and continue to pollute our world with your vitriol and diatribes, the right of which to do is guaranteed by our maintaining the largest military force in the world--a force populated by, for the most part, people from the lowest economic brackets of our society and who are being forced to go into 3rd, 4th and 5th deployments in combat zones, only to return damaged in body and soul and find themselves without adequate infrastructure supports to tend to their wounds--then sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and pay your motherfucking share.

Or leave.  Find someplace else where they will put up with your bullshit without hitting you in your empty heads with a baseball bat, then rape your wife and daughters.  Good luck with that.

If not, then PLEASE sit down, shut up, open your goddamned motherfucking wallet and pay your
share...and stop thinking that your "idealism" even vaguely resembles patriotism or concern for your country's future.  It doesn't.  Your ideas, your words, your ideology is crafted and broadcast by a cadre of plutocrats and oligarchs who could care less about you or your country.  They have their assets, and their asses, covertly covered in tax-shelters and offshore accounts.   They are multinational warlords, and they are laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts every time they see you march and scream and elect the flotsam and jetsam you send to Congress to further their interests.

Wake the fuck up.  Sit the fuck down.  Open your wallet...go to Walmart, and then pay your fucking share.

Just another compound tragedy...

I learned, this past weekend, about the death of the second of my partners at BAYLEY LEIGHTON & RYAN, the firm I left to my remaining senior partner Pat Bayley in 2005, when I relocated to LA to marry Lisa.

Pat died just before Christmas 2011, quickly and sadly years before her time...and this weekend I heard that Glenn Ryan, just turned 60, had been discovered inside his Staten Island apartment after being dead for more than 2 weeks...  Glenn had left the company in 2003 to pursue a teaching career.  He was a sweet, intelligent and caring man who loved animals and people, and who was a raging alcoholic.  I only mention this because it is what killed him.  He died alone, accompanied only by his 2 cats, Monty and Fergus, probably from total liver failure.

He had contacted his brother sometime in the mid-summer to tell him that he was having very dark "tea colored" urine.  When urged to go to the hospital, he refused because he was worried about who would take care of his cats during his absence.

The compound aspect of this tragedy is that Monty and Fergus have been doomed, despite Glenn's concerns, to a stunningly cruel and lingering death by starvation, thirst and broken hearts.

On Tuesday 11/6, shortly after Sandy hit SI, Glenn's neighbors were alerted by the yowling and howling of his cats.  When the police gained access to Glenn's apartment, they found his badly decomposed body--he had to be formally identified by dental and x-ray records.  Then the police, despite the fact that the cats had sounded the alarm, proceeded to seal the apartment WITH THE CATS STILL IN IT, and then simply drive away.  Animal Control was supposed to have picked up the cats, but they dropped the ball due to being overwhelmed by the storm and logistical problems.  Then, to complete this dark comedy, the police proceeded to LOSE THE KEYS TO THE APARTMENT so that Animal Control, once ready to pick up the animals, couldn't gain access to the apartment.  Furthermore, a court order would have to be filed to allow any access to the apartment, and this--in case you've forgotten--was a long weekend due to Veteran's Day...

So there are two loving animals, two souls, which are languishing--or have ceased to languish--suffering from starvation which has gone on for at least 3-4 weeks, thirst which can only be abated by drinking from a hopefully-accessible toilet bowl, and the broken hearts brought on by total abandonment.

I am very sad, and very very VERY ANGRY...at Glenn for his self-destructiveness...at the NYPD for its blatant stupidity--albeit they had an overload of issues to deal with, to not even note the presence of the animals in their incident report is beyond dereliction of duty--and at the long list of people...creatures with prescient brains, two hands and two legs, who have failed to come to the rescue of these helpless creatures.

Windows are made of glass...BREAK THE FUCKING THINGS...Supers have keys...GET THE FUCKING THINGS AND GO IN THE DOOR...  In other words, act!  I am 3500 miles away from the scene of this moral crime, or I would have done all of this myself by now.

To Monty and Fergus:  God bless you, and rest your souls.  I hope you found solace in each others' company at the end, and that you went simultaneously.  To have to linger alone after years of companionship would be too cruel to contemplate.

That's a fact, Jack...

To Rep. John Boehner:

Yes, it's true.  Despite the billions, with a capital "B", spent by your pals in the Right Wingnut underground, America has overwhelmingly rejected the message of hate, mistrust, misogyny and falsehood being puked out by you and your Republican brethren in the Tea-Party-cult...  You cannot hide behind the skirts of the well-paid pundits who have promised you that they would produce an electorate too stupid to care about truth, facts and common sense and allow you to continue down the path of obstructionist politics.  You and your grey-faced table-thumpers are exposed to be the bigoted, know-nothing, perversely anti-American fools that you all know you are, deep in the dark recesses of your narrow minds.

I suppose you can take small comfort that Michelle Bachmann squeezed out the smallest of victories in her attempt to return to the table...you can have coffee together during recess and lick each others wounds...

But take this to the bank, because it's a fact, Jack:  we are all going to be watching you over the next few months, and any attempt to pull the crap you foisted on this country for the 24 months prior to this election will result in a purge, with a capital "P", of your side of the aisle in the House of Representatives.  Just try having another 300+ filibusters, or voting down another Jobs for Veterans bill, and see how fast you are directed to the exit door.

Trust me.  We are watching, and waiting, and eager to fulfill the promise of ridding this country of politicians like you and your fellow Teabag Shaker-dancers who have been whirling like dervishes for the past two years, chanting your mantra of hatred and lies and pseudo-science and bad math.

Enjoy being the Mad Hatter at the party while you can, Speaker Boehner, because your days at the table are numbered.  That's a fact, Jack.