incipit vita nova

My First LolCat

Here he is! Oliver the kitten, at 8 weeks of age. Oliver has taken one of Badger's squeaky toys. Now I know why Badger has been so out of sorts lately, and why Taz has been acting demoralized and depressed. Oliver likes to play everywhere and does not respond to any type of verbal command, loud clapping or finger snapping. This includes "shoo!" and "no!" Oliver likes to play EVERYWHERE. He will even play with Taz's tail, so that is going to be the next LolCat if I can get the camera quickly enough. There will also be a caption contest over at Book View Cafe - possibly ongoing, since "Nolly" won't quit any time soon.

Compulsive Hoarding . . . A Creative Impulse?

I first learned about hoarding with coming upon the rescue dogs from Lancaster. These dogs had been rescued by a kitten rescue, but they were in such sad shape that the kitten caretakers were willing to step in, help them recover, and find good homes for them.

Now, as an "overburdened" pet rescuer myself (Taz is showing signs of arthritis - "great"), maybe I need to downsize, which I did do when I moved from Redlands to Playa del Rey.  All my friends know about my clothing "problem."  However, when I moved and donated half to charity, I made a rule that if I bought something new, I would dispose of an old item of the same type.  

So, even more disturbing, our satellite TV has been out since Thursday.  When the guys finally fixed it this evening, the TV was stuck on the Hoarder show!  OMG.

So, I found out about pet hoarding, which can cost animals their lives, and now I watch this show about object hoarding.  After being appalled for a few minutes, I started looking into it.  Hoarding is associated with OCD, and also can be associated with depression.  Here is some web commentary about just one of these disturbing A & E shows.  The author suggests that slapping the hoarders in the face might make a better impression than the "kindly" helpers that the show sends to help them clean up.  I watched one scene where this poor gal was hanging onto a veritable Night of the Living Dead supermarket full of food.  "That's good tofu!" she declared.  It was reminiscent of the abandoned bison meat warehouse.

Most people have heard of the famous Cornell Brothers in NYC, and the Indiana Jones-like adventure retrieving the poor old gents after they expired in their object-stuffed house.  This article discusses them and more recent hoarders.

The best article I found was an essay called "Stuff" by Tyler Gore.  So what if Tyler got an honorable mention in the Year's Best Essays of 1998 for an essay that spells botulism as botchulism?  (Tyler could have used a copy editor, but don't get me started on the "passes" that some guys get in the literary world that most of us females would never even THINK of).  

I really can't think of anything better to understand what this problem is than to read Tyler's essay.  The most hurtful of all - he thinks his father's fatal illness, which caused him and his brother to go in and try to clean his hoard-filled house up (several layers of embedded trash had to be cleared to reach the actual "stuff" on the floor), was something that came from the dust, mold, grime, mites and other hazards created by the hoarding.

Voice, Voce, La Voiz, La Voz, Die Stimme, Skaz

Having recently completed "Mad, Bad Richard Dadd" for the Shadow Conspiracy anthology, I've been thinking about "voice."  I don't have to worry much about "voice" as a writer; with "Richard Dadd," I slipped into a state of being that was much more strongly voice-oriented than I had at all planned.  

I am only copying this picture of Poe from this brief article about voice, because it looks a bit like William Henry Harrison, I think, and was surely not drawn from life.

Weird, huh?  Like this Poe - I don't picture this disembodied, floating head and torso writing anything like, 

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne 

In a strange city lying alone 

Far down within the dim West, 

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best 

Have gone to their eternal rest.

I once had a writing instructor who derided Poe's voice - the relentless drumbeat voice - da-dum,da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da - as bad.  This guy's stuff was sufficiently horrible, tone-deaf, and reliably content-free, that it fit the category of what I've since come to recognize as an invariable behavior pattern:  those who suck always trash those who do not.  Otherwise known as "Those who cannot, revile those who can."

As a sci-fi writer (not always and evermore, OK?), I certainly experienced a number of years of cringe-worthy agony, watching totally tone-deaf literalists "praised" - in fact, this was another brutish experience until I realized that it was only a small number of people who were issuing these opinions.  In fact, I came to understand that these people were no one's best readers, and that their "praise" was something devoutly to be avoided.

Is there such a thing as a "voice-driven" story?  Well, judging by Faulkner; yes.  "A Rose for Emily," so voice-driven that one may read it, and not realize that one is reading a piece of classic Southern Gothicism.  It is a horror story, with the traditional hideous, chilling punchline -  

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

There have been characters into whose heads I've gotten that I will never forget.  "Mel," in "To Kiss the Star" is one of these.  Gary Gill is another.

The evolution of "Richard Dadd" is yet another, and though I feel a curious distance from the story that I seldom feel after completion of work, I was in his head in a way that I've never experienced before.  As I described on the Book View Cafe blog, I had written the first two segments of the story before reading William Powell Frith's account of Dadd's onset of madness, and the long letter written to Frith by Dadd from the Levant.  Both are accessible on Google Books.

This is Richard, writing to his friend William Powell Frith from the Levant -

If it is night when you arrive, the effects of light and shadow are something only to be painted, not described; for if I tell you that their dresses are picturesque and bright in colour - if I tell you that their faces are handsome and full of expression, that the old men look like patriarchs, that the young have almost feminine beauty, that the pipes are bubbling and the smoke wreathing about in fanciful curls, and on this the fire throwing a ruddy glare, you may indeed form a general notion, but you will certainly want the exquisite individuality of all around . . . .

This is me, written before I read Dadd's letters and Frith's book.

One grizzled fellow sitting in the shadows of the Taverna, far older than the others, had a nose as crooked as a shepherd’s staff, a long and gnarled object jutting below dark, glowing coals of eyes that barely escaped meeting up with his prickled gray chin.  This wretched creature fixed his lemurian eyes upon me and would not look aside.

“Dicky,” he said, leaning across the table as he waved at the waiter to pour us more coffee.  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!”

I laughed, though even to my own ears, this was a false and hollow sound.

“No,” I said.  “That fellow will not stop staring at me.”

Sir Thomas, never very quick to imagine a slight, looked about at every figure in the shadowed Taverna, winking at a buxom and dusky young woman, until I finally managed to draw his attention to my elderly inquisitor, who had by this time scooted his withered old loins nearly to the edge of his rustic stool and begun to point at me with a long, crooked finger terminating in a cracked and yellow nail.

“Ekino,” he said in a tremulous, accusatory tone.  “Ekino!”

“I say,” said Sir Thomas.  “Perhaps he’s gone senile.”

Yes, perhaps the old man had gone senile.  And there is no way to know what the horrible old fellow saw that was of such concern to him.  For it was later that night, awakened from a numinous sleep, that Richard first met the Great God Osiris, and was instantly embroiled in horror by a touch of . . .

Well, I'll let Richard say it:

Then his long dark fingers reached out for mine.  He took my hand and raised the palm to his cheek and made my fingers to stroke across the smooth dark skin.

His flesh was unlike any flesh I had ever felt before.  It was cool and vaguely moist to my touch.  There was not a pore to be seen.  Imperceptibly except to my fingers, the face was ever-moving – ever changing.  I looked into his eyes, and it seemed as though they were made of glass, not flesh, and in them was a gaslamp flicker, yet nothing of life. 

How very, very seductive, that voice.  How very, very mad.

Elizabeth Taylor and Being Non-Blonde

I I had one of the most remarkable experiences of my life when, probably about 2-3 years before Meredith was born, I decided to go to the Redlands Bowl Associates gala as Elizabeth Taylor. I had noticed that I had a few facial similarities to her, and studied her Cleopatra makeup carefully and did my best to duplicate it. The eyebrows took forever.

Like all those who grew up in my time, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were "the" couple.  I knew the shocking story of how she stole Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, whom everybody loved.  Who would know that years later, Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Debbie and Eddie, would become another film icon?

Regardless of her extremely stormy personal life, I always had respect for Liz - she always married the guy!  She said she truly loved Mike Todd, but lost him in a terrible plane crash.  Then came the dreadful upset with Eddie Fisher, and then Richard Burton.  News has come out that while married to Eddie, whom she got by cheating, Liz began cheating with Richard Burton, and he dropped her -- then, she took sleeping pills and nearly died.

This seemed to have worked, because she got Richard Burton to return, and they were in each others' orbits for the rest of their lives.  

What did I learn as a personal and shocking lesson by my "dress up as Liz" adventure?

Blondes do have more "fun," if fun means light-hearted, non-threatening attention.  People treat girls with dark hair horrifically.  First, I had done such a good job that no one recognized me, except a couple of my friends.  One of them actually went as Cleopatra, where I didn't go full-on Cleo.  I just wore a dark wig and a purple halter dress.  This dress was one of my $15 specials and I had it for quite a long time - the wig, too.  When I realized that people truly weren't recognizing me, I decided to play along, and didn't open my mouth for most of the whole evening.  They weren't going to recognize me, I reasoned, as long as they didn't recognize my voice or my distinctive laugh.  

Not just one, but several of my friends' husbands acted completely differently from any way they ever had before.  They knew I was married, the same as they were.  We were all in the same age group, and these folks all had great families, and before that night, I'd thought they were the nicest, most respectful family men ever. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were interested in only one thing, and it didn't matter that I wasn't speaking.  The black wig had turned them all into - what's the technical term? - randy horndogs.  I have never lacked for gentlemanly attention, but this was a new experience.  Genuine "sex object" - nothing else whatsoever.  After about 3 hours, I'd had enough.  I took off the wig and they were all very embarrassed, apologetic, and of course I looked like hell because I'd slicked down my blonde hair to put the infernal wig smoothly over it.

Why did this pop into my head?  The National Enquirer is covering a new book about Elizabeth Taylor that alleges she tried to commit suicide when Richard Burton broke things off with her early-on.

The story includes the trailer from the 1965 "epic" The Sandpiper.  This was a movie version capitalizing on the real-life spectacular romance of Taylor and Burton.  I've only seen parts of it on TV, because it truly is horrible.  

The trailer is mercifully short, but Liz makes a heartfelt plea to Richard Burton along the lines of "I've been passed along from man to man all my life.  I don't think a man can ever truly love a woman like me. . ."

Now, Walter Chow (see above) is right that The Sandpiper is a pretty awful movie, made even more awful by its attempt to portray Liz as a "hippie" in total designer "hippie" clothing, while Richard Burton as a stuffy Episcopal priest is just ridiculous, plus - as Walter points up - WTF was the guy doing cheating on Eva Marie-Saint in the first place?  Well.  Eva Marie-Saint was a lovely blonde lady.  La Liz?  "I've been passed along from man to man . . . "

Just look today at beautiful Rihanna - how Chris Brown treated her!  It's not skin color, it's hair and probably eye color (my eyes aren't purple like Liz Taylor's, but they are an unusual shade of blue and probably looked really dark with all that Cleopatra makeup).

If you love La Liz and Richard Burton as I do, here's a great rundown of the DVD collection of all their movies, from the sublime (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) to the ridiculous (The Sandpiper) and the mind-boggling (Cleopatra).  Blondes do have more fun.  Just not the way that people think.

Most Cool and Oldschool LA-area Eateries

I hesitatingly ventured into restaurant discussion (let's not say "review" - I'm not enough of a competitive eater to get into that) with my memories of Musso & Frank and Pernell Roberts.

As a child, I shared some of the same fond experiences of my generation, which was that eating out was a real special occasion, real restaurants were dimly-lit (some might say "dark") and always had red leather booths and beautifully-dressed waiters.

What fits all of those categories?  The wonderful dining experience that is the Buggy Whip in Westchester.  

This is Buggy Whip owner and chef Paul Darricarrere, who has been in charge of this awesome place since 1977.  In a world where our food tastes and ideas of restaurants are dominated by Gordon Ramsay, or . . . dare I say . . . the Food Network (Galia Melon, pork loin and Matzo crackers, anyone?), an actual, real restaurant serving real, edible food with a few specialties one seldom sees, such as freshly-made Green Goddess dressing - is a gift from heaven!

Is there a historical type of L.A. food? Look no further than Los Angeles' Historical Restaurants.

The Buggy Whip is a special place, great for a lovely, relaxing and delicious night out, especially when the jazz pianist Peter Wagner is playing.  According to the many reviews and stories about the Buggy Whip, Peter has played there for 15 years, and he is fantastic.

But . . . sometimes you're not into a fine dining experience.  Sometimes it's all about quantity, quality, great price and sawdust on the floor.

Which would be the Bear Pit, located in the north San Fernando Valley in Mission Hills, on Sepulveda near the intersection of the 210 and the 405.  

OK.  So, the Bear Pit looks like this most of the time.  Small, old-fashioned, plenty of outdoor seating that you aren't going to want to take advantage of on those "special" San Fernando Valley nights.

I didn't notice that the sign said "Missouri Style" barb-b-q until the second time I went, where I was drawn irresistibly back to the memory of my best friend Cathy sharing "how they ate in Missouri," after her time living there.  Now, the Bear Pit does NOT offer gravy with your fries (as apparently they offer with all food in Missouri).  But there are some hefty folks who look to be regulars here.  The prices are great and the food is beyond plentiful.  The beef ribs are the thing to get - meaty, crispy, just the right amount of sauce, and one of these bad boys will do for just about any normal eater.  Two - you'll be taking one home and the puppy will be happy later.  The Bear Pit is always insanely busy, and the wait staff are as sweet as they come.  Yes, there's sawdust on the floor.

And then, for beachside dining, a place where I would sometimes go while hiking in the Santa Monicas - The Net, formally known as "Neptune's Net".  I don't surf, but you can definitely bodysurf at most of the beaches along Malibu and on up the coast, and I have seen dolphins three times at Pt. Mugu State Beach. Neptune's Net is right past the county line on Highway 1 at Yerba Buena Road, after you go through Malibu and Zuma.  It is basically a daytime place, closing at 7 or 8 each evening.  Surfers, the proverbial "beach bums," odd hiking individuals, locals, really weird couples as you only see in L.A., and the Harley crowd (real and fake) go to the Net.  You should GET YOUR DRINKS FIRST and take advantage of the awesome beer selection if you are over 21.  The seafood is super crispy, perfectly cooked, only a little greasy, and the fries have that magic grease crust.  They also offer steamed crabs, clams, lobster and other non-fried food on the one side.  You order, pay, pick up your food and hopefully get a good spot on the patio.  The other good one is Malibu Seafood.  People disagree about these two but they are both good, and both have great views.  The diff?  Neptune's Net is more kickback, has a greatly-better beer and soft drink selection (and water and "new age drinks").  The fried fish at Neptune's Net is coated in a panko-cornmeal type crust, which is thin and crispy.  The fish at Malibu Seafood has more of a beer batter crust.  Also, people in scary exotic vehicles are seen at Malibu Seafood, I have seen several cosmetic surgery victims there, and have never seen such at Neptune's Net, which is farther out and I don't think the uber-wealthy want to mix with bikers.  Who are totally cool at Neptune's Net.

Another place that bikers go to, but which is very friendly and cool, is the Rock Store on Mulholland Highway just east off Kanan Road.  It says they are in "Cornell, California," which I cannot figure is a town, but there are other businesses and things there.  If you ride, you know about the Rock Store.  It is good when hiking, thirsty, dusty and hungry.  People do see Jay Leno there and other celebs, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger before he became the Governator.

It's all in a day's ride in SoCal - or for me, ride 'n hike.

I'd Crochet an Oscar for Robert Downey, Jr. Too - If I Could!

Don't ask me by which horrific inter-route I found this wonderful news and information.  I can't tell you; I have no clue.  All I know is that one minute, I was trying to figure out how crafters around the world were "swapping" things, and cogitating on that they were saying they were either pet-free or smoke-free homes, and then I saw this that Robert Downey, Jr. responded personally to a gift of a crocheted Oscar.

You know how I always KNEW Robert Downey, Jr. was great?  I mean - like a really great, super guy with his heart in the right place?  Well - a crafter made this crocheted Academy Award (amazing!!), sent it to him, and he took not just this picture, but numerous others, and sent them back to her.  So, nutsaboutcrochet13 makes just about ANYTHING anybody could ever imagine with crochet.  This is just one of the numerous adorable patterns she offers for very reasonable prices.

Crafting is dead.  Nobody crafts any more.  People are the most creative imaginable!!!  There are hundreds of thousands of members on the Craftster web site.  It's . . . amazing.