Hardly Workin'...

I've been working on a blog today and that is just about it...and not even this one. I sort of spill a mess here so my back-channel people can be in the know, but I got a bit behind a couple of times this week. No matter. The sun still came out and I finished that blog entry and I threw away all of my expired health care products today, so something got done, regardless.

Tomorrow looks like an ambitious writing day--I have a lot to do before I just cut loose with a short story in Saturday's writing group.

This is the song that's been playing all afternoon on the iPod to push the words through and out of me. It's from Treme, of course, since I'm obsessed, and I know Steve Earle isn't always the most desirable, but I love this song. "Like a second line steppin' high, raising hell as we go along." Nice.

Write on...

An-tici-pa-tion...

It's a gloomy morning here in the Inner Sunset district of San Francisco, although God knows the sun is trying to burn through the fog. I am moving around the apartment, doing "knucklehead" stuff, as they would call certain tasks on "West Wing" that fell below the radar of POTUS. I got cleaned up, had my healthy breakfast, did one load of dishes (there were two loads in the sink, so I have more knucklehead stuff for this afternoon), paid bills, filed papers, and in a few minutes will get to the job search. I am doing knucklehead stuff for a couple of reasons: I do this garbage every Monday; and I am waiting for UPS to deliver a package. Last month I signed up for something called Lost Crates, where, once a month, the recipient gets a sampling of the latest and greatest in art and/or writing supplies, without knowing what they'll be. It's probably the last thing I can afford, but I was intrigued, just to see what it would be, to have the anticipation of looking forward to something akin to a care package, as though I was still young enough and still learning enough to get those.

It's been a couple of months like that, though...looking forward to Giants games, to the Treme tour concert, to the Woody Allen movie, all at discounts, and all unexpected. This package will be the last big event for a while, and then I'll have to create events of my own--maybe a new job in the traditional sense, maybe a story sold.

*****

For a long time I thought of Meetups as something formal, only operated by the truly sane and secure in themselves. The founder and original organizer of the Meetup series that I attend, "Shut Up and Write!" set the bar high. He's the perfect vision of manager/facilitator/mentor/motivator; when one of the group's members says, "Hey, why don't we have one in Berkeley?" his response is, "Yes, why don't YOU look into that?" This empowerment has created a spreading of the group throughout the Bay Area and continued it to New York City (with two groups there) and a new possibility now in Toronto. It's a great way to spread the word and the concept of the group geographically.

It's creating a bit of skirmish back here in the home turf, though.

Different organizers take different accountability for their groups, to be sure. The founder wants to make sure that every Shut Up and Write session is consistent, so that if you like Shut Up and Write you'll tell your friends, and either they'll come with you or go to a Shut Up and Write in their neighborhood. Keep in mind that the group has reached that level--this past week there were meetings in Berkeley, SoMA, the Mission, the Inner Richmond, and the Castro/Duboce Park area. I love that layout--I can finally go to Meetups close to me (for me, a Meetup that's close is one bus-line away from me), and I'm sure others find the locations that aren't close to me close to their homes or workplaces. It's a great idea. And so what if meetings fall on the same day as other meetings? It's still a great way to choose.

It's a great selection for everyone but one of the organizers, that is. Last week two of the organizers scheduled for the same time slot--one a long-established meeting in the Mission, one a first-time meeting in the Inner Richmond. Delightfully, the Inner Richmond is not only closer but in a library, so that I have a shorter commute AND I don't have to buy coffee and snacks to write. Surprisingly, the first-time meeting had more people sign up and actually show up than the long-established meeting, and I know from talking to that facilitator before that he was probably livid. He is a facilitator that does contract work, and he's in the middle of a project right now and doesn't come to his own meeting very often, but he hates it when other groups try to copy-cat or try to borrow the Shut Up and Write concept. I've always bit my tongue to keep from reminding him that we borrowed the concept from Natalie Goldberg.

I see this week, on Monday, that neither Wednesday group has scheduled. I can almost bet what has happened. Either neither one of the facilitators are scheduling, waiting to see if the other one will, or, they are both duking it out with the founder to see if this is ethical. Either way it seems a bit erratic--there's no Wednesday night meeting yet, and, if you want to grow your group, shouldn't you get a calendar up as soon as possible so that potential group members would want to make plans? Don't you at least want to LOOK stable?

All I could think of was Natalie Goldberg's final pages of "Long Quiet Highway," where she sat for peace in downtown Santa Fe every weekday from noon to twelve-thirty. She had been practicing Zen for years, and this wasn't a protest, it wasn't "partisan," it was just her way of dealing with the first Gulf War. I look at it this way--if I could write regardless, like Nat, then I'm grounded, I'm stable, and maybe others will join me. I'm thinking that they will be more likely to join me if I show up myself, but if not, well, that's their practice. Maybe it's time to establish a practice of my own, a Shut Up and Write of my own, to show up to regardless.

And it would be something to look forward to, without any doubt at all.

Remote Control

Something that one has to model in our day of technological advances is agility. And with that, I have to be agile enough to now give up television.

My roommate has a device called a Slingbox. If you don't know what a Slingbox is, I'll wait while you check it out on Wikipedia. I'm sure it's a wonderful device if you have access to it and are bored in mass transit somewhere, but I don't have access to ours and I'm not sure I would watch it if I did--what if someone else is already watching the tv and I change the channel?

I experienced the other end of this possibility yesterday when I was watching a movie and the channel changed. My assumption was that my roommate was on vacation to Mexico, and if I were on vacation in Mexico I think the last need on my mind would be "The Family Guy," but I have to give this situation the benefit of the doubt. Since I do pay for half the cable bill I switched the channel back, but then powered off the tv after that movie was done. About an hour after I did that the channel changed again. So I need to rethink my television habits.

At first, admittedly, I was annoyed. I pay half of a bill so that I can't watch? But it is a wake-up call too...where are my priorities, exactly? About the only thing that I'm really devoted to on television at this time is baseball--everything else is just noise to unwind with, and couldn't I unwind with noise that is a little more productive, like the 26 podcasts I'm still trying to whittle down? And baseball can be listened to on the radio, or I could go to a game, or go to a bar and watch a game (usually Pacific Catch plays them in my neighborhood). It's frustrating about the baseball thing, but for everything else, isn't it a lifesaver? I have so much that I want to do and just end up rotting in front of the tv most of the time to combat it--wouldn't it be better to combat it with working toward my goals of reading, writing, and fitness?

So change the channel to your heart's content, Family Guy. Read/write/run on, dear reader.

Shutes and Ladders

While the rest of the world watches saints and colts, I watch an extraordinary personae walk through shutes and ladders.

On Friday the NPR radio program "Fresh Air" did a tribute to animal husbandry scientist Temple Grandin. They were honoring her work because HBO was debuting this weekend with a movie about Temple. I have to admit, the idea of the movie didn't light me on fire--Temple is a difficult woman to listen to, and after "Beautiful Mind" and "Awakenings" a person starts to feel a little tapped out on overcoming the mind movies. But it's SuperBowl weekend, I have the remote, and I was treating myself to a good meal with ingredients from the farmers' market anyway, so why not? What else was I going to watch? Football? Netflix? What's to gain, really, there? The movie was new and the "Fresh Air" broadcast was interesting in that I thoroughly enjoy anyone who offers a fresh approach to understanding animals and our relationship to them.

The movie was stunning not just for the ideas, but the presentation--like a really good stew presented in a four-star restaurant style. Like the movie "A Beautiful Mind," "Temple Grandin" portrayed her life as she would have seen it. In "A Beautiful Mind" we see how Nash's mind works, and we see the same special effects in "Temple Grandin." The one thing that continually struck me was how little so many people tried to understand her--it didn't surprise me, just struck me. The indifference and the ridicule from most of the world served to make the characters who did wait to take in the patience with her more significant--folks like her mother, her caretakers, her science teacher, her later bosses, and so on.

The viewer also forgets that she watched Claire Danes several times too--I kept thinking I was watching Temple in real life. The ideas explored made sense--want to save time? Then make everyone in the process calmer. I imagine this was difficult for Grandin to convey, since she isn't known for her calm demeanor. Nonetheless, there's a lot to be said for human behavior by studying animals.

And now, for the Netflix.

But We're Not The Same

I have seen four different HBO series in complete or partial episodes so far on Netflix: Deadwood, Big Love, The Sopranos, and Rome, and each seems to be a complete entity all in itself, until you see a whole cluster of them at once.

Then all of the credits start to look alike, the careful placement of music starts to look alike, and, it looks like a formula has been found for HBO dramas. Mind you, the dramas work—I’m hooked—but it’s like figuring out how the rabbit gets in the hat. I’ve figured out HBO. I guess in a college class that means that I would then have the tools to write for them, but I don’t have time to write much of anything these days.

Not going to stop watching HBO, though, via Netflix.

Commentary

Watching the next disk of "Big Love," I am struck by two things:

• The character of Margene looks like the grown-up version of someone that I new in Missouri. She is the granddaughter of P from my old blog. This woman looks like what Grace will look like when she grows up, if she dyes her hair dark brown.
• Bill Paxton is actually intelligent.

I love a garden that smells of compost, I love a kitchen that smells of garlic, and I love a mind that smells of use. When I first saw Paxton in a couple of movies, I don't know why, but he seemed all braun and no brains at all (let's face it, though; in "Twister" that was mostly the unbelievable bad dialogue by the writers. "Apollo 13" gave less room for slacking). But in this disk Paxton and his "first" leading lady Jeanne Tripplehorn comment on the 5th episode, where they have an affair outside the rules of the family. Paxton is chock FULL of literary references and television history for what we are watching. The last time I enjoyed a commentary this much was Ron Howard for "A Beautiful Mind."

The Big Novel, HBO-Style

There are only two songs that I like by the Beach Boys: "Sloop John B"--which, listening to the lyrics, is a bit on the rough side--and "God Only Knows." A taste for those living under a rock and not familiar with the lyrics:
I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
Ill make you so sure about it...
"God Only Knows" is the song played behind the opening credits for the HBO series "Big Love," which I have taken up watching on my Netflix rentals. I started the series this week, late as usual to the craze if there is one (I didn't come to the table for West Wing until season 5, but was addicted within about 2 episodes). I have watched a few episodes from other HBO series, such as "Deadwood" (GREAT writing, but enough verbal profanity to dull the senses), and "Rome" (which I will probably rent after "Big Love;" what I saw of it and the writing made me think of the glories of Shakespeare, or, at least, Tom Stoppard speaking for Shakespeare). I never saw the other popular ones, like "The Sopranos" or "Entourage," but they don't really draw me.

"Big Love" drew me for the association of it--to see a set of believable characters grapple with an odd relationship in marriage(s).

I sort of felt like I could relate to someone.

If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me...

The lyrics play on the opening characters as they ice-skate on a precarious surface, and they balance on one in the show as well. Bill Henrickson, who is played by Bill Paxton (this is the second time that I have seen him play a character with his same first name--see also, "Twister"--and I have to wonder with actors if they ask the writer, "Hey, can we use my first name so I am on top of my cues?"), is a polygamist in Salt Lake City. He is not a Latter Day Saint, at least, not an "active" one, as he and his three wives and their seven children do not go to church, but he does love God with all of his heart. He prays simple and yearning prayers alone in his GMC truck from the curb in front of his three houses, he guides his children through the love of Christ, but he is uncomfortable with organized religion due to past experiences with a Mormon "clan" in the Juniper Compound where he was raised (if you could call it that--his parents are a couple of children in the first two episodes, and I don't mean children in the physical sense but the emotional sense). He is a business owner who is trying to provide for three wives of VERY different temperament, and he loves them all. I don't know why he loves the middle one--haven't learned much about her yet except that she is incredibly manipulative--but he loves them all.

Bill is not a saint, but he tries to do well, even when the hope and striving of doing well provide him with more trouble than walking away. In the pilot episode Bill is experiencing performance issues for the first time with two of his wives, and by the third wife's turn for him rolls around--perhaps I should backtrack a little. The wives rotate Bill through their households, with certain nights designated as family nights where everyone sits down to dinner together. Then Bill follows a wife upstairs--whosever turn it is to spend the evening with him. All three women have pretty healthy libidos, fueled by the fact that each woman only knows him in the Biblical sense about 30% of the time, and Bill is additionally stressed out about his business and his drive to expand it. So we see him frustratingly impotent with the first two wives, and by the time the script gets to the third wife's turn he is dressed in a full set of pj's. "Since when did you start wearing pyjamas?" she says sardonically, and the pressure is on.

In the second episode Bill has procured Viagra, but that is creating a problem in the opposite side of the spectrum--he now can't control his libido very well, even though he is performing great. Conflicts arise when some of the wives are finessed during the day of when other wives are supposed to have a turn. It's not an orgy, but women in this situation are very defensive of what little territory they have, and when Bill sleeps with one wife in another wife's bed, the relationships are strained all around. Bill apologizes, but doesn't come clean on the Viagra, which he is taking without their knowledge, and ze plot thickens...

Keep in mind that I don't have a particular wish to be Mormon, and I haven't read enough to objectively decide what to believe about the LDS. (Although, after watching scenes from the Juniper Compound in "Big Love" and reading Martha Beck's "Leaving the Saints," I have a pretty negative image of the faith.) "Big Love" does a wonderful job of showing the complexities and dedication behind any culture that sits outside a larger "norm," however, and I can relate to the characters in the fact that they have relationships that are generally misunderstood and that generally don't follow the same experience as what is even relatable by people in their own community. We see Sarah, the oldest daughter, struggling with her parents as polygamists on her own and when facing her friends. We see Bill using care to depart from the same house every day regardless of where he sleeps so that the neighbors and authorities won't suspect. And yet, despite all the secrets and wrestling of conscience, we see a family of integrity. My goal is to have that much integrity and dedication in my quest for the life-long relationship, even though I feel I am getting too old and jaded to meet my life partner, wherever he is.

At least for now. ;) Something may come up, and knowing HBO, a scandal has to floor someone somewhere.

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

I used to think Beach Boys's songs were empty, sunny, silly, unloaded and light.

Then I watched the beginnings of "Big Love."

God only knows
God only knows how I feel about you...

I am having so much fun and relief finding out.