WTF 5

Liz Phair: I love you, but why do you persist in writing songs that you must sing at the bottom of your vocal range? It makes me want to clear my own throat.

Chrissie Hynde: You ripped off your vibrato from Ronnie Spector and Sandie Shaw, but you sound like a '74 Oldsmobile trying to start on a January Ohio morning. You also ripped off your hairstyle from Sandie in 1964, but you would have been better off copying Cousin It.

Courtney Love: No. Everything. No. Everything. No. No. No. No. No.

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VOICESCARRY

Truthfully? I totally agree with the dude.

OH GOD CAN'T YOU KEEEEEEP IT DOWWOWWWWWNNNNN!

more about "VOICESCARRY", posted with vodpod

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HOLLYWOOD 9

I'm waiting for my latte at the OOGCP, and there once again is Mr. Hollywood, getting a black plastic lid for his beverage over at the bar. Ooh!, I go to myself, and my eyes search for Mrs. Hollywood, for they are never seen separately.

She is Over There, sitting at the by the window on a tall stool, wearing a faded pink polyester suit with a wavy hem on the pants, and wearing tiny little white boots with many little holes in them. My eye moves up, expecting to see her looking over at Mr. Hollywood, me, or any of the other people in the bustling coffee shop. Instead, her gaze is fixed on nothing; she stares blankly in front of her. It is odd to me when everyone is so close, there is so much chatter and life and busyness all around, so many things to take in.

It is impossible to tell anything from her face. It has been so pulled and plumped and filled and pinched that it has that strange surgery cat look like Joan Rivers or Jocelyn Wildenstein: tiny slits for eyes, pretend cheekbones, and uneven, unreal lips. Nothing moves. Her face is set like a plaster mask in this expressionless void, in the quest of never having to leave what she once was.

Do you become your face? If you lose the ability to show your full range of feelings with expression, do you lose the feelings themselves after awhile? Is your inside tightened and pulled as well?

Mr. Hollywood returns to the window seat with his coffee, and sits next to her. They both stare out the window at the street, saying nothing. I nod and smile slightly at them as I briskly walk past, coffee in one hand, keys in the other, thinking.

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JOBS

I found this speech to be very moving, and I am passing it on to you, if you have not already been so privileged to read it.

This is the text of the Stanford University Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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LADIESANDGENTLEMEN...THETIME

On the drive home from school today:

MissSix: (to her brother) Do you know what time it is?

Mr11: Yup.

MissSix: (silence)

Mr11: (silence)

Me: (smiles)

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UNHEALTHY

I expected far more from the Baby Boomers.

I really thought as the first wave of them began to enter middle/old age and started to feel the effects, en masse, of the health problems that can go along with aging that they would get MAD. Like in mad-as-hell-and-I'm-not-gonna-take-it-anymore mad, with the gnashing of teeth and outraged facial expressions and indignant yelling rage. Mad as holy hell about every last stinking piece of the American health care system, and willing to stand up and do something about it. But that didn't happen. This powerful group of folks, the movers and shakers of the land, let the tsunami of bureaucratic managed care and obscenely-high costs wash over them, drowning them in frustration, domino effects of the fix-it-with-pills mentality, and crushing medical bills.

Maybe it was too much to expect, that even the most powerful big group of people could have the collective will to change something so massive. When your own health is threatened, not to mention whatever is going on with the extra-old parents you are also responsible for plus your own kids as well, fear sets in, and the fighting of injustice waits for some other time, or some other person. Each newly-sick person sets off in their own tiny pathetic little rowboat in an impossibly-navigable sea of medical options, specialists, treatments, opinions, and paperwork, and is expected to just figure it out even if they are bleeding from the eyeballs and their pancreas keeps starting on fire. Was it too much for me to hope that the rowboats could all find a way to link up somehow, find some rope to tie from boat to boat, to help each other?

Well, yes, it was. The whole issue of exactly why people won't demand better medical care is rather complex. Or rather simple, depending on your view of humanity and such.

FACT #1: Feeling crappy = not up to fighting a pervasive faceless giant; feeling good = not worrying about ever feeling crappy and having to fight a pervasive faceless giant. Basic human nature: "I'm OK, Screw The Rest of Ya." And, "Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen To Me," and "We All Gotta Go Sometime, And By 'We' I Mean You." Every so often you will hear stories of some poor ass patient, hairless and feisty, hacking away at the medical machine with a media machete, trying to make people hear, effect some change. But that's rare. And then they usually die, and people forget about them.

FACT #2: Americans are Individualists. What is great about this country, the opportunities and recognition of individual effort, also comes with a high cost. Succeed in life enough to have a fantastic support system, a job with really, really good medical insurance that won't fire you for getting ill, be white, and have a medical issue wherein a pharmaceutical company can profit from your treatment, your odds of good care are upped. Of course, if you are a poor single dumbass with a job that pays less than 100K a year, you can't save any money because the cost of everything is too high, your insurance, if you have it at all, pays for only major medical and quickly caps out, you have an unpopular disease, and your skin is some other color than white, just throw yourself in the gutter now and wait to expire. Being a rich white dude like Patrick Swayze isn't going to preclude you from getting cancer, but it is pretty damn likely you will live longer than you would've being Pedro The Gardener. Give me your tired, your poor...ah, never mind.

FACT #3: Americans are Lazy. They didn't used to be. Why, people here homesteaded and forded rivers and toiled in sweatshops and labs and think-tanks and EVEN in government buildings, because they were glad for the opportunity to escape some crappy king and/or terrible inedible ethnic food in their native lands. But the Consumer Age, the Age of Instant Gratification, has inured almost everyone to the basic realities about being a living being. No exercise + huge portions of garbage food + years of unrelieved stress + reliance on drugs/drink/smoke + exposure to toxic everything = ILLNESS. It will catch up with you, your doctor will throw handfuls of pills at you, which will probably cause secondary illnesses, and you will keep thinking you DESERVE to be made well, even when you refuse to take responsibility for your own care.

FACT #4: Conspiracy Theory. When the system is set up to profit from YOUR ILLNESS, there will be a whole bunch of people who work very hard to do just that. You can try to rationalize it all by saying well, look, the money goes back into research for life-saving drugs and other cutting-edge treatments. It's a business, and business fuels innovation and change. Well well well. There's some truth to that, of course. But the business model doesn't work so well when you have a 90-year-old great-grandma in hospice care whose morphine drip is limited by her HMO policy, does it? Or should we just go on thinking, well, that's not my mom, and it won't be me. Business knows we are lazy and disorganized and could give a crap. American Dream, Great-Grandma?

FACT #5: Preventative Care Model? HA HA. All logic and sense would and should go to the idea that the very best outcome is to AVOID GETTING SICK in the first place. Wellness education should be the focus of training in our medical schools, in our kids' schools, and should be the starting point of lasting change. But talk is not enough. Quit cutting physical education time in schools. Make opportunities for exercise available to all, whether at the workplace, community centers, make it easy for people to make moving their muscles part of their daily routine. Quit serving huge portions of food at restaurants until a regular portion looks normal to people again. Clean up the filthy planet. Convince people to find healthy ways to relive their stress and again, make real options available. Honor people enough as a society so they themselves believe they are worth taking care of. Make it normal and expected to make good health choices, and because this is America, let people know it's going to save them a whole lot of money and misery too.

I am well aware of the pitfalls of socialized medicine -- there are enough stories around of people waiting 2 years for an MRI or not having any choice of treatment, or just dying waiting for treatment. The rich have supplementary insurance and often go elsewhere for the best care, if they can. There isn't going to be a perfect solution, and there are going to have to be compromises. As it stands, everyone agrees the American health care system is a disgrace, and must change. That is FACT #6.

I hope President Obama has some mad-as-hell Baby Boomers in his administration ready to begin to tackle this demon, and I think he does. Let's just hope they stay healthy, huh?

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WRITER 3

I'm stubborn. I like to think of it as "steadfast," but stubborn is probably more accurate. I don't like to change:

-- how to load the dishwasher

-- how to put the toilet paper on the roll

-- in what order to read a newspaper

-- how and when to change lanes and use directionals while driving

-- my resistance to instruction of almost any sort

Yes, I see that last one there. Yes, I know that's a very stubborn trait. Yes, I know it's silly. But there are some benefits.

I got to thinking about this today, in a very roundabout way, when I saw that someone I am acquainted with is writing his first screenplay. He knows enough about writing to know that it probably won't be great, or even close to great, but it is something, and something, a start, is a good thing. I think when you are attempting to write in a new format, you may not at all know what you have until you are finished with it and hand it over to someone else to look over. Were you able to tell your story? Were you able to get what was in your head and make it come to life? Were you able to make something that will be compelling and interesting?

This is far harder than you would imagine. The connection process, vital to the success of any creative project, often breaks down between the vivid imagination and earnest heart of its creator and the intended audience. You can be bright, competent, with good ideas, yet not know exactly how to make it translate. So how do you accomplish this? The typical route is through the very lengthy process of revision, revision, revision. You read books about how to write, attend schools to learn how to write, have as many eyes on your work as possible to give criticism and encouragement, notice the work of others you admire. This is all very smart, and reasonable, and if you have any kind of natural talent at all, should work at the very least of improving your work.

My natural instinct is to run like hell from all of it. I would go so far as to say I feel almost repelled, physically. What is that about???

It is certainly not at all a fear of criticism. I am a big girl, quite solidly imperfect, and accept that there is not one piece of writing that cannot be improved upon. I have strongly profited in the past by listening to feedback from others about things I have written. Sometimes it was as small as changing a word or two; sometimes, perhaps a whole passage was unclear to the reader and needed to be restructured. I have sometimes let pieces sit, sometimes for years, then come back and fix them, wondering how I could have thought it was ever OK. Sometimes I change nothing. Sometimes I bag the whole thing. If someone else can find something I missed, that's nothing but good, and I am very appreciative.

My fear is getting lost forever in the Land Of The Endless Revision. It is a real problem I think for many writers, as when you know and accept that your words can never be perfect, you also have to know and accept that you have to let go at some point to an imperfect work and let it go public, and some cannot do it. They hang on, thinking and wondering and rewriting and reviewing and reading and and and and. If they ever had something, they rework it to death, where anything original, spontaneous, or unique is hammered out of it, until it is safe and acceptable and properly Englished to those people Who Say So.

These days, the typical way for a creative writer to get any notice whatsoever is to get published in the top literary journals and to have been through one of the top MFA programs. Take the same classes, read the same books, write the same papers, use the same constructs, meet the right (write?) people, jump through the same hoops.

I. Can't. Do. It. I can't. I just can't. Whatever it is that is me, good or bad, I want to keep it, even at a cost, even at not progressing as much as I could or missing out on some valuable information. I don't trust the insiders, and I don't want what they have. Sigh. I would rather just keep writing, try to stretch out the boundaries once in awhile, have a few people I know and respect and trust give me dead honest feedback, and most critically, that I keep open and observant to the world around me. The more I see and feel and do, the more I am able to find the best words to color all that, the better my writing will become, seen or unseen by anyone else. That is a great challenge, and very exciting to me.

There are people who sit down to write the Great American Novel, spend thousands of dollars in instruction, who toil over it for years and years, and it still might be a total piece of swill. There are people who can bang out their first screenplay with almost no doctoring, and win an Oscar. There's no set way to go about it all. Perhaps any effort is worthy, if you enjoy the process and do your best. If you like it, well good for you. Just don't whine if no one else does, though -- there's nothing more tedious than a precious writer. Really.

Good luck to all you writers out there. I'll be here, being stubborn.

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HOLLYWOOD 8

Oh, the deliciousness of sitting and drinking a wonderful rich latte outside of the OOGCP when Mrs. Hollywood walks by me today, in 4" see-through resin heels.

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HOLLYWOOD 7

It took me most of the day to get over the dulling effects of two glasses of white wine last night. I rarely drink, partially because of this. It just takes up too much bandwidth. But the wine was good and fun -- I just can't imagine regularly using a central nervous system depressant of any kind of regular basis. Shit gets old.

Eventually, I shaped up and headed outside on a very pretty day with the kiddies and the dog for a stop at the OOGCP, the rock haircut place, and a local beach. All easy and pleasant. But what did I get the most excited about? Right as we were walking back to the car after getting all wet, smelly, and sandy at the beach, who is seen walking into the OOGCP? MR. AND MRS. HOLLYWOOD!!! OH, YAY!!!! I really thought they had gone away for good, but BY GOD, there they were! And OH YES, Mrs. Hollywood was wearing her signature Pucci jumpsuit, strappy stilettos, and flippy ash blonde wig, and Mr. was rocking the bright blue track suit with a leather coat over it. I must have looked like a complete nut, walking a huge wet black dog, trailing two kids with fresh haircuts and brown dirty wet sand all over them, and smiling this giddy grin at two flamboyantly-dressed elderly people going to get an afternoon coffee.

I like it. I like it more than three glasses of wine.

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TEA

Before she left for school this morning, MissSix reminded me that the Mother’s Day Tea was this afternoon. All scrubby in my pajamas, I assured her that yes, of course I would be there, 2:30PM sharp. She smiled, waved, and went out the door. I went back to bed and scored another couple hours sleep.

I’ve been to a lot of Mother’s Day Teas now. I’ve been a mother for almost 18 years. Through the three spawn, there’s been a whole lot of juice and cookies served, flowers given, art projects lovingly made with water paints, glue, and glitter, lots of little eyes staring upwards at mine, seeing if I am pleased. I look down and I smile, smooth their flyaway hair, and hug them and tell them every time that it is wonderful. They smile back, satisfied, and go on to eat up the rest of the cookies and run around the room with their pals, while all the moms stand around with this sweet, fixed smile. It is the same, every year, every school, and I imagine it has been like this forever, and will continue on long past the time when I am ashes swirling around some grocery dumpster.

My mother called and asked about this year’s Tea, and she sounded a bit sad. She is 2000 miles away, and has not been able to see MissSix very much over her little lifetime. Couch Teen and Mr11 benefited strongly from Grandma’s presence in years past, but things changed, and we are not able to come together very often now.

Mom: I got it all so wrong. I swore I would never be like my mother, but that’s what I did. I spent all that time you were growing up cooking and cleaning and growing the garden and ironing sheets. It didn’t mean anything. I didn’t do anything with you, did I.

Me: Not really. I don’t remember being sad about it when I was little. It’s just the way things were. You guys were busy.

Mom: But all children want is time with their parents, and I didn’t give that to you. I regret it.

Me: Ah, Mom. It was all so long ago. There were good things about being alone, and figuring how to amuse myself. There really were.

Mom: I just wish I would have done it all so differently.

Me: You were a really good mom. Nobody gets it all right.

Mom: I just don’t know why it took me so long to realize these things. All my life!

Me: Well, those days were not so child-centered like they were now. All the kids were running around on their own.

Mom: I just thought I was doing the right thing, what I was supposed to do.

Me: I know.

She wasn’t looking for absolution; there was nothing to absolve, anyway. She was a good mother, and I never doubted her love for me for a single second. As she nears the last years of her life, she has nothing but time to think about what it all meant, what it was for her. I think she wishes she had more memories of Tea Parties and softball games and sidewalk chalk drawing and reading together in the big chair, rather than remembering me reading in the big chair by myself or her weeding the garden or peeling potatoes or darning socks while I did something…else. Our family was a collection of four very, very different people, with four very different agendas, and it is completely to my mom’s credit that it worked at all. There would have been nothing without her.

I wish I could give her the peace of mind that I know she would like, but it is her own life to process, and I respect her heart and intellect enough to believe that she will come away with truth, and the grounding that comes with it. It’s the whole point to being here. Figure out the truth, for you, even if it brings you things that are hard to accept.

MissSix came home from school, and immediately sat down and began to draw. A few moments later, she shoved a stack of white papers at me. “Can you send these to Grandma?”

“Dare Grandmoi, I riley wot a toy That is a jeleyfish so can you hrey to find me wan. Ples rit back I love you!”

Seven more papers followed, all of hearts, smiling jellyfish, and “I love you”’s with many, many exclamation points.

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MINNEAPOLIS

I guess I am realizing about now that I walk around the world in somewhat of a naïve way. Not like a turkey drowning in the rain or anything, but I never seem to get how many damaged people are out there. I remain Anne Frank-ish, that despite everything I still persist in thinking that the world is good, and maybe it is. But I am always so disappointed and shocked still by creeps and weirdos. It must be the Wisconsin in me, or more accurately, my Wisconsin mother in me, who still has trouble comprehending that she shouldn’t open the front door to a smiling stranger. I never felt like I had to be fearful, and I still don’t, despite some disturbing experiences. I don’t know if that is good or bad, and I don’t know if at this point it is changeable. Maybe I just have to hope for good luck, or that I make my own good luck.

Sometimes luck is not with you, though. Sometimes bad things collide, and something happens that you could not really have anticipated nor prepared for, and you are just on your own with figuring how to deal with it. I can think of an incident while visiting the lovely town of Minneapolis many years ago. When you think of Minneapolis, it is pretty much Mary Tyler Moore, Midwest friendliness, Prince, lakes, A Prairie Home Companion, and cold – nothing too sinister, right? I was with a close female pal, and we were out and about on a nice afternoon exploring, walking the downtown area close to the First Avenue club, where we were seeing a show later on that night. There were lots of people around, it wasn’t a terrible part of town, the sun was shining, all was well.

The only thing I can think of that made me a target, out of all those people, was that I was dressed in my rock gear of the time: miniskirt and boots, leather jacket, bleached out hair. Nothing too sleazy, just typical punky/new wave/mod crap. And of course I was still ME, with the glasses and rounded features and dairy-air to me, kind of silly. So why me? Why not my friend? Why not any number of other women walking around? Did I look weak?

As we walked down the sidewalk, suddenly a tall thin black man grabbed me, hard, and threw me up against the rough brown bricks of the old building he had been leaning against. My head fell back with a bang on the wall as he dragged me off the sidewalk a few feet into an alley. Now, despite my generally pleasant outward demeanor, I am a fighter, and I do not take well at all to people messing with me, much less doing something as serious as this. But I looked up at him, into his face, and everything in my gut said, “Don’t fight. Think.”

“BITCH! I WANT TO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS! TELL ME THE FUCKING TIME!” He smiled an ugly cold grin at me as he kept yelling and held me to the wall. “DID YOU HEAR ME, MOTHERFUCKER!! TELL ME THE TIME NOW!” He was very agitated and jittery, with watery bulgy eyes. He was either high or out of his mind or both. He kept repeating that he wanted me to tell him the time, and I heard laughter and voices at the end of alley. When I turned my head to look, I saw a group of men, his friends it seemed, smiling and waiting, amid the dumpsters and garbage. Waiting. Ready. Moving towards us, slowly.

Trouble. Bad bad bad trouble. My friend was frozen in fear, and no one stopped to help. What a bad day for me not to be wearing a watch. Ha.

Anyone who has had to deal with someone who is like this knows that the potential for disaster is huge. It’s not like you can reason with them, you have no idea of what kind of violence they are capable of, if they have weapons, if they will back down, nothing. There is no right answer for what to do. You have a split-second to make a decision, and you have to hope like hell you made the right choice. He was squeezing my neck with his arm, tighter and tighter, and becoming more and more infuriated.

“Let me go find a clock.” I said it as calmly as I could, even though I was terrified. “There’s a restaurant with a big clock in it right over there. I can get the time there.” The diner I had breakfast at earlier was a few doors down, and it did indeed have a huge old school clock in it. If I could get there, I would be OK.

He backed off, but grabbed my arm as I started to move back towards the street. “YOU GONNA COME RIGHT BACK HERE! YOU GET THE TIME AND COME BACK OR I’M GONNA KILL YOU, BITCH.”

“OK, OK, just let me go get the time. It’s right there.” I could hear my voice shaking, and I hoped he didn't. He dropped my arm, and followed my friend and I to the diner. He stood outside as she and I pushed our way into and through the very crowded front seating area as fast as we could. I glanced up at the big clock. 2:02PM. I could hear him pounding on the front window glass as we ran to the back of the restaurant, found an exit door, and never stopped running until we got to our hotel, nervously laughing, scanning faces the whole way. We went to the show that night, had a good scary story to tell, probably drank too many beers to calm the still-rattled nerves.

I was 21 years old.

I still like Minneapolis, I still think there is more good than bad, and I think I am really glad I listened to my gut that day.

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STILTED

On the way to the 5th grade play, we were having a discussion about a friend's upcoming surgery. MissSix interjected.

MissSix: Oh, your talking about surgery reminds me of something.

Me: What's that?

MissSix: A kindergarten girl almost had surgery.

Me: What happened?

MissSix: Her dad, he dropped the knife he used to cut the hair off his arms and it fell on her leg and she had stitches, inside and out! But she didn't need stilts or a wheelchair or anything.

Me: WHAT??

MissSix: She's OK.

Me: No, what? Could you explain that?

MissSix: Her dad. Dropped the knife he used to cut the hair off his arms. It fell on her leg and cut her.

Me: And she didn't need stilts, huh?

MissSix: Nope.

Me: You mean crutches?

MissSix: She didn't need those either.

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AI-EEEE

I stopped watching television some time ago. This seems to put me into a rather tiny segment of the population, which also consists of media snobs, Idaho survivalist psychos, religious noodleheads, and the deceased. I am none of these things, and do not expect to become any of them in the future except dead, and I don’t even really believe that. But there is definitely something wrong with me, because I choose, choose!, to watch two shows a year, and they are of the same shameful ilk and from the same evil production company: American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. My confession here is brave and I hope you appreciate the strength it took to admit this in a public forum.

I first must tell you flat out that I am not a 14-year-old girl. I was, but that was when television was even worse. Laverne & Shirley, my fucking god. Anyway, no, I am a grown woman, and I watch this crap. I also will tell you that I do not at all enjoy the music on American Idol. Nothing that any of the contestants have ever done has been anything that I would ever listen to again nor purchase. Actually, I am actively offended at almost every moment of each broadcast and roll my eyes and laugh derisively and curse and wish to throw things at my otherwise nice television. Do I enjoy hearing the tired format of quietsing-quietsing-builditup-THENGOFORTHEBIGNOTEYEAH!!!! No, no, I do not. Do I enjoy hearing screeching thin high notes and pitch misery and the utter PAIN of ANYTHING that comes out of the tiny brains of the industry whore judges? Nope, it hurts me. Do I think in any way this is some kind of real competition? Give me a break. Do I come away feeling better for having watched this crap again? Never.

WHY do I watch it? WHY? WHY? Out of all the shows, including a few that might actually be well-written and something I would like, WHY do I only watch THIS? At least the dance show has some appreciable and obvious physical talent, not to mention damn hot bodies to ogle. But AI? Aw, man. Man.

I think I know why I watch. That show represents the end of the old-style music business to me, all in one shiny awful package. It’s the last bastion of big sales and artist/audience manipulation. It is not at all about getting unheard talent out there – most of the contestants have been working pros in one way or the other. It is all about MONEY and how to wrest the last remaining bucks out of a public who will buy what is shoved in their faces most. I watch because it is part of this long history of music industry opportunism, which riles me. I watch to know what it is and where it is coming from now. Know your enemy, maybe. I ain’t got no stake in the game, but you can bet I am going to keep an eye on it.

I also enjoy laughing at voices cracking on live television and people falling down. That shit never gets old, HA HA, yessssssss!

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WOMANS

On the drive home from school this morning:

MissSix: Mom, there have never been any womans presidents.

Me: That’s true.

MissSix: Why?

Me: (sighing) That’s a hard question. Women didn’t even have the right to vote in this country until the year my dad was born. Women have been discriminated against…well, forever.

MissSix: Why?

Me: (larger sigh) It doesn’t make any sense, does it.

MissSix: No.

She then went off topic into a discussion of how old Grandpa would be now, and what if people lived until 200 years old, and if they would just sit in a chair for 100 of those years anyway.

This is the awful thing about having a daughter. There are so many extra things, sad and stupid and difficult, that she has to hear from me, her inheritance for being female. How does one explain just why women have been discriminated against, victimized, disrespected, oppressed, abused, and often with the full pardon of law and society? How am I supposed to look at her face and tell her that? How on earth do I explain to her just how much more vulnerable in the world she is than her two older brothers? How do I protect her without making her feel like she is less? How do I inform her without making her angry at the world?

It sucks.

I want her to be proud to be who she is, of everything about herself, and to feel like she is unlimited in what she can achieve and accomplish. I want to be able to deliver that message and believe it, myself. Part of me sincerely does believe that; women all over the world continue to make great strides and every year achieve more of a balanced voice on the planet. But part of me knows that actual, real equality might be impossible for people to construct. They just aren’t all that evolved, when it comes down to it. Those who can exploit to gain power, will most often do so, whether it is physical, emotional, or political. Women, because of their basic biological differences, may never be able to walk in the world unafraid of the ignorant and predatory, no matter what. And this is not a diatribe against men either – other women are just as active in anti-female sentiment and what seems to be to me, counter-intuitive actions.

Cheery.

I told her later that I was very very confident that she would see a female U.S. President in her lifetime, and probably several of them. She told me that she could be the President, but would rather be an artist. I guess that has to be some progress. When I was little, I never could imagine that womans could be anything more than a smiling and waving First Lady, silent and stored away most of the time.

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POPJUSTICE

I have been thinking more about whom President Obama should nominate to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice David Souter. A lot of people are thinking about this, including Professor Sherrilyn Ifill, who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Law. She wrote this article that appeared on CNN.com today, and I am in complete agreement with her:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/04/ifill.court/index.html

The gist of the article is that for the last 20 years, all appointed Supreme Court judges have come from appellate courts, and Professor Ifill would like to see lawyers from other areas of practice be considered as well. Of course she is right. When you limit the kind and type of experience you bring to a court in this way, you limit the depth of the Court’s view. There are gifted legal scholars that have chosen not to serve on the nation’s appellate courts, and they could serve the Court just as well or possibly better. You cannot know if you cut them out because recent precedent has gone a certain way. The best possible person for the position should always be sought out. It’s the SUPREME COURT, after all, not the “Appellate Court Finishing School.” SUPREME, I say!

As a matter of fact, there are no set qualifications for becoming a United States Supreme Court Justice. You don’t even have to be a lawyer, although all of them have been…to date.

HMM.

If I were President, me, I know who I would nominate: The Right Honorable James Newell Osterberg, Jr. You may be more familiar with his musician’s moniker of IGGY POP. Yes, I would wish to appoint Mr. Osterberg to the highest court of the land, and I will tell you why:

-- Iggy is one smart dude. Don’t let all that shirtless and reckless rock n’ roll excess fool you; underneath that punkish and abused exterior is the heart of an intellectual. Don’t believe me? Hey, the guy, when not working with David Bowie or the Teddybears or The Stooges or the Boss Martians or scads of other musicians, actors, filmmakers, and artists, might be writing an article for a scholarly journal, as he did in 1995 in Classics Ireland.

-- He brings the outsiders’ view to an insular place…way way way outsider, like former drug addict, physically-challenged person (he has one leg markedly-shorter than the other), and once played both a vacuum and a blender onstage. Take that, Clarence Thomas!

-- He’s old enough to know stuff and young enough to shake things up.

I have total faith that Mr. Osterberg would surround himself with the finest and coolest legal clerks available, that he would study and consider each case to the best of his ability, and would be removed from the bench after one term for calling out the other judges or standing on tables.

I will never be President, and Iggy Pop will never sit on the Supreme Court. But maybe it is indeed a good thing to think outside of the box a bit for our next judge, even if one of the progenitors of modern punk/hard rock music could never make it through the confirmation process. I’d even take someone who liked the Stooges.

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