Overcome

Overcome with passion and so comfortable with one another

The Art of the Tease

I miss striptease.

oh...

Managed to find a good place to eat. Of course everyone else in the county found it too.

But!!!!

They seemed so...happy

Traffic

So I start off on my adventure. I get an early start to avoid rush hour traffic, have my route all mapped out, get on the Interstate, and sit. It took me an hour to get out of the county I live in. I sat in traffic, I read in traffic, I was thankful to be going 5 mph every now and then. I started adding up how long a 120 mile trip would take at that rate of 'speed'.

When the clog I was stuck in moved past the major accidents and minor fender benders that had snarled things so badly, I made good time. And then I ramped onto a road with about 18 lanes.

The only thing that kept me from turning around and racing home in sheer terror was the realization that traffic was heavier on the other side.

I called my loved ones and had them talk me through. I turned off talk radio (evidently Rush Limbaugh's voice alone can set off a panic attack) and sang with the radio, and finally the lanes started dwindling down to a reasonable number.

So now I'm hear, the only member of my group that's checked in (everyone else is due late tonight) and I'm in a room that hasn't been completely cleaned and the door doesn't shut. I'm starving and can't work up the energy to fix the door so the laptop will be safe. I want a shower before supper but the towels haven't arrived yet (and I don't want to flash the housekeepers if they arrive in mid-shower).

But, amazingly, I'm having a lot of fun.

Yum, yum

Since I'll be eating alone in a semi-strange town tonight, I review the places I have to choose from. Dominos, Mickey Ds, Arbys. A few chains. There is a local bakery that may have something nice at breakfast. I'm hoping there's a great local spot that the internet hasn't heard of.

The Wind Beneath My Wings

So I'm stressed out because I'm going out of town with a school group which means: I'm driving through Atlanta by myself twice (the alternative is riding in a van full of near strangers and being stranded at the mercy of everyone's else's timetable), staying away from home overnight with the near strangers, attending a conference with a bunch of total strangers, all in a vaguely familiar place (I lived there 30 years ago so it's not completely foreign but...). Before I leave I have to run errands that can't be put off and pack clothes, laptop, charged phone, camera, etc.

Even with all of that going on I was willing to make a window to spend time with Brick.

Brick was willing to pitch a hissy fit because I inconvenienced him by packing. And then was condescendingly contemptuous when I chose to take the time I would have spent with him to do the packing his hissy fit kept me from doing earlier. Sorry Babe. You don't get to be an asshole 24/7 and have people want to be around you.

Baby, Lie to Me

Women get mixed messages in our culture. Be sexy, seductive, good in bed, flirty and provocative....and do all that with no more than oh, three sexual partners. Ever.

Be overcome with lust and desire for the one you're with...but that can't have happened before with anyone else, ever.

Be honest, trustworthy, and reliable...but if the alternative is admitting you were...swept away...by anyone other than the latest love of your life, lie. Be open about who you are, but hide chunks of how you got that way.

No wonder hypocrisy gallops.

Cancelled

You would think professional models could manage to look like they loved one another.

Show gets cancelled..no longer any need for a marriage long rumored to be a beard arrangement.

Hope he keeps the commitment he made to the three children.

Role Model?

Only someone who would create a sculpture this tacky would consider Britney Spears a model of motherhood.

every word I say I mean it

every single day I feel it

but sometimes when you talk

its obvious you want to show it

so don't blow it

tell me what we got

tell me its alot

tell me its the real thing

tell me not to change

and always be the same

tell me that's a good thing, it's a good thing

tell me not to lie

tell me not to wait

tell me that you want the same things as me

tell me that it's fate, driving me insane

tell me its the real thing that keeps me hanging on

I can read the signs between us

I feel it inside when you come nearer

there's a stillness in the air

like no one else is there and every moment

stands in the moment

sometimes it hurts to watch you leave

it feels like you take a part of me with you

I never know how it'll be

I guess its just a mystery or is it the real thing

that keeps me hangin' on

(Bice)

Best Interests

When Bobby Brown looks like the safe, sane, and reasonable parent, you got problems.

I'm writing my last love letter

And for reasons now, i don't know where to start

Seems so many times i've written down "i love you"

Well i hope this time i can get that through your heart

And maybe i was wrong to ever think that you could love me

I was hoping you just couldn't find the time

Have my efforts been in vain with pen and paper?

Did you ever care, did i ever cross your mind?

Only fools will go on and keep talkin' to a wall

But i can't fool around forever

And if stone is the wall that you've built around your heart

Then i guess it's goodbye in this letter

Just Because

Just because something has lasted a long time people assume it must be good.

"You've been married 50 years? You must have such a good marriage!"

No, not necessarily. Maybe it was really bad. Maybe they stayed together out of fear, obligation, expectations, laziness. Maybe it was too much trouble to go through a divorce, tell the kids, give up the life they were accustomed to, figure out who kept (or was stuck with) the dog.

If I don't get....

what I want, I'm going to hold my breath till you give it to me.

Do you think you could get someone to promise?

Hey, Little Girl....

...want some candy?

A way to insure Zelda comes home for a visit? Bribe her with fresh pralines and taffy. Works every time.

Wisteria

You’ve never loved me

and I’ve never said

Those innocent words

You stir in my head

We have our moments

and you have your ways

Tangled around me

but you’ll never stay

Wisteria

Like April wind

You come to me and you’re gone again

You always get the best of me

then you leave

Oh, I’m wishing you were here

Wisteria

You bloom like a flower

your eyes violet blue

Each time you come back

the feelings are new

You never promise

More than you allow

You’ll wither away

Sure as I miss you now

I don’t know why I let you

Remind me I can’t forget you

Your soft touch upon my skin

and your scent always pulls me in

Speaking of Insanity....

When I was young, I wanted twelve children. I thought of names, drew plans for imaginary houses, complete with decorations, where there would be two children per room and a big library full of books where they could always have a safe place to read and dream. I guess I imagined a lot of kids equaled a happy family. Or I had ideas for decorating a lot of bedrooms and needed an excuse to use all of them.

And then I had a baby.

Suddenly, twelve didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. I started to realize maybe I'd never have enough patience, love, understanding, and money for one.

So what's with people who never have that realization? Are they more patient, loving, understanding, and wealthy than the rest of us? Or do they have such a different vision of parenting that those things aren't even a consideration?

I Hate You for Being You

People will tell you who they are. Why do some of us refuse to listen?

They give you all the necessary signs: I'm shallow, selfish, self-absorbed...pick your unpleasant character trait, if you look back honestly, you realize you could have known all along, you just didn't want to. You didn't want them to be the person they were. You wanted them to be the person you wanted or needed them to be.

Anything that pointed to the flaws in the image you created, you probably minimalized, told yourself 'Oh, he was kidding...didn't really mean that...must have been in a bad mood...was just trying to provoke a reaction.' Because that's preferable to the truth, to accepting that's who they really are. They're lacking in compassion, they're racist, ill-informed, cruel, or, worst of all, tacky.

I'd Rather Sleep Alone

You’ve always been my alter ego

I’ve always been your toy !

I always like to be where you go

But you’re a free-living boy

Ooh, you’re passing by

But I ain’t gonna cry !

I’d rather sleep alone

Than feel that there’s no one home

You tell me that I’m the best

But your heart beats with someone else

Your heart is with someone else

I’ve never wanted to possess you

You’ve never asked me to!

It’s just that I’ve been getting into

All of the things we do

Ooh, you’re passing by,

But I ain’t gonna cry

I’d rather sleep alone

The Definition of Insanity

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting (hoping for?) a different result

The Most Romantic Movie?

I recently heard someone say that The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was the most romantic movie ever because the characters never touched.

Excuse me?!

What does it say about a person that selects a guaranteed lack of physical intimacy as the height of romance?

We All Support the Troops

But we know what's going on over there better than they do because we can read newspapers and they're ignorant of the real truth because they're isolated.

Because when I need military advice, I'm going straight to Richard Belzer.

I'm sick of the "We support the troops. It's not their fault that they're too stupid to do anything else so they joined the military because it was the only job they could get" crowd. I'd prefer open hatred to that kind of patronizing contempt.

The Good Old Days

weren't that good.

In fact they were downright lousy if you were black, native American, asian, or even Italian. Discrimination was so commonplace it was accepted as normal. People marched in Klan regalia down their city streets without the hoods. In fact, in many communities, Klan membership was necessary to hold elected office.

Wasn't that great for women either. Women couldn't own property, vote, or decide how many children they wanted to have. I'm not talking abortion. I'm talking birth control. There was no effective form of birth control asserts the Great-Granddaughter of one woman with 11 children and two who had 13 each.

There were no antibiotics. Running water, electricity, and indoor plumbing were rare. Phone service was prohibitively expensive. If people moved away from their families, odds were they'd never see each other again. An orange for a present was considered a real Christmas treat.

Lord save me from the 'good old days'.

Passion's End

Isn't passion supposed to die down after awhile? Fade away? Lose it's intensity?

Marriage in Trouble?!!

Oh, please. Just because a wife complains her husband works all the time it doesn't mean the marriage is 'in trouble'. Wives complain. It's what we do.

Why if people divorced because one spouse works too much or leaves dirty socks on the floor the divorce rate would be...never mind.

Wild Man in the Closet

What can you say about men who are so afraid they are ordinary that they do something 'wild' to prove to themselves and others that they aren't? Posers? Maybe.

What can you say about a man who really does have a wild side but keeps it locked firmly away in his closet?

Best...

Hockey Movie EVER

(and yes, we actually wore our hair that way)

The Hardest Thing...

...to give up has been cheese.

I'm not eating that healthily right now. But now that I have started reading food labels I am stunned to realize just how unhealthily I was eating before.

Looking for an edible low fat cheese has become a big part of my grocery shopping experience. Yesterday I started doing some mental math on one of our old regular menus. We would have homemade macaroni and cheese, turnip greens with tomatoes and peppers, black-eyed peas, and cornbread about once a week. The kids loved it. It was comfort food, easy to fix, the ingredients didn't have to be thawed and would keep in the fridge and pantry.

The macaroni and cheese alone had more than 100% of the recommended amount of fat and saturated fat that an adult should eat each day. When you add in the pork seasoning in the greens and peas, and the fat in the cornbread and all the butter we'd eat on it, I'm amazed we didn't all keel over with heart attacks years ago.

And that was just supper. We probably had MacDonalds for lunch.

So I'm not depriving myself these days but I try to limit my splurges to once a day. And I think about what I'm eating instead of eating whatever I want.

Yesterday I had an incredibly good cheeseburger for lunch I'm not wasting my splurges on anything that doesn't taste great. If I'm in a rush and need to grab something fast I'll take an apple over a dried out burger that's been in a assembly line for a couple of hours. And since I ate 'bad' at lunch, I had a salad for supper.

So far, so good.

So what if....

Jane and Ted got a little freaky?

Good for them.

What's shameful about the whole situation is that a videotape they made in semi-privacy is being spread around.

People can gasp in shock and Tsk!Tsk! all they want but a lot of them are thinking "I better make a good show of how outraged I am so my friends won't suspect I'm doing the exact same thing."

Isn't Everything a Joke?

***You Should Be a Joke Writer***
You're totally hilarious, and you can find the humor in any situation.Whether you're spouting off zingers, comebacks, or jokes about life...You usually can keep a crowd laughing, and you have plenty of material.You have the makings of a great comedian - or comedic writer.
What Type of Writer Should You Be?http://www.blogthings.com/whattypeofwritershouldyoubequiz/

Why I Hate NASCAR....

...let me count the ways.

1. Race fans. It's not even personal with the race fans. It's that there are so darn many of them. When you take a small community and throw an additional 100,000 into the mix for a long weekend it gets ugly. Traffic is impossible, you can't go anywhere or do anything until 'They' go away.

2. Race fans. They are lousy tippers and they have bad taste in clothing. They also steal all of the paper products out of their motel rooms (okay, so they're paying 4 times the going rate and I would imagine finding toilet paper at the track would be difficult but it's still annoying to have to replenish a stripped room)

3. The noise. Even though I've never attended a race I've heard every one ofthem. Every. Single. Lap.

4. The smell. Gas fumes travel.

5. Priorities. I live in a community that has an empty expressway built solely for the purpose of getting fans to and from the race two race weekends a year. This same community had a jam-packed 2 lane bridge leading to the county hospital and emergency room for years where emergency vehicles would be stuck gridlocked with dying patients but the race road had to be completed first before that road project could get started.

Stop digging....

Someone tell the Hall County grandmother that when you’re losing a PR battle with a child molester, it’s time to shut up.

A Million Miles Away

Friday night I'd just got back

I had my eyes shut

Was dreaming about the past

I thought about you while the radio played

I should have got moving

For some reason I stayed

I started drifting to a different place

I realized I was falling off the face of your world

And there was nothing left to bring me back

I'm a million miles away

A million miles away

A million miles away

And there's nothing left to bring me back today

I took a ride, I went downtown

Streets were empty

There was no one around

All the faces that we used to know

Gone from the places that we used to go

I'm at the wrong end of the looking glass

Trying to hold on to the hands of the past and you

And there's nothing left to bring me back

(Plimsouls)

Taking a Date to a Funeral

Today I told Zelda that if I went first her Daddy would probably be bringing a date to the funeral.

It's not that he won't care. It's not that he won't miss me. It's that the man has no idea how to do anything alone. He won't be single for five minutes after I'm gone.

I told her not to be upset with him, I won't be (if I'm feeling anything one way or the other). Be nice to whatever poor woman he latches onto and always remember it's the new woman or he's going to want Zelda to move home and do everything with him.

When I saw the look of horror on her face at the thought of being Daddy's companion for life, I knew that she would understand.

Why?

Why lie?

When you date someone, especially a married someone, and it's not the person of your dreams, you've not known each other long, met a couple of times and it's just not clicking, why not just be honest? Say "You seem like a lovely person but you're not the one for me."

No harm. No foul. Odds are she wasn't feeling it either. You might even become friends.

Don't be such an idiot that you tell her you're overcome with guilt and want to rededicate yourself to your marriage and then keep looking for new women on the same dating service where you met her.

It's insulting. You're treating the woman like an idiot who can't figure it out, a child who's too immature to take the truth, or an irrational person who will boil your bunny out of unrequited love for you (Oh, please!)

If you want to play, man up and be honest. Or do you just want another woman to lie to? Like your wife.

A Voice Shouting in the Darkness

Is it inappropriate to say 'God bless' an atheist?

Today, I found a blog called Molly Saves the Day. And she, and people like her, just might.

Controversial, maybe misguided, but brave as all get out and evidently catching hell for being willing to say out loud some things that need saying.

I keep thinking of the lyrics to a Sondheim song "A little more feeling, a little less thinking, I'm just quoting Mama". Maybe for the truly important legal and ethical questions we need a little less feeling and a lot more thinking.

I Wish I Could Forget You...

I wish I could forget you

Erase you from my mind

But ever since I met you I find

I cannot leave the thought of you behind

That doesn't mean I love you

I wish that I could love you

I know that I've upset you

I know I've been unkind

I wanted you to vanish from sight

But now I see you in a different light

And though I cannot love you

I wish that I could love you

For now I'm seeing love

Like none I've ever known

A love as pure as breath

As permanent as death

Implacable as stone

A love that like a knife

Has cut into a life

I wanted left alone

A love I may regret

But one I can't forget

I don't know how I let you

So far inside my mind

But there you are

And there you will stay

How could I ever wish you away?

I see now I was blind

And should you die tomorrow

Another thing I see

Your love will live in me

(Sondheim)

Back?

Red lipstick is back. Did it ever really go away?

Even though most women have stopped wearing it, at least for every day, men never let it go. Ask a man of a certain age (40+)what his fantasy woman is wearing and you'll usually hear a variation of slim black skirt, sexy white blouse, heels, hose, and red lips.

Crisis Central Update

Merv popped up. The cat is pregnant. The laptop with all my schoolwork on it is broken and I have no idea when it can be fixed because the Geek Squad doesn't answer their phone.

But I did get the Chowder and Relleno, so life is not all bad.

The Best Defense....

...is a strong offense. It can be extremely effective. The problem is you have to use it sparingly. Play that card too many times and it loses it's power.

People who never admit they were at fault, always assert they were justified, the other person was asking for it, imagined it, misunderstood, must have mental problems, must be off their meds...after awhile that strong offense is just...offensive.

And unbelievable.

And the person making all that noise just keeps looking sadder and lonelier and you wonder if they even realize the room is emptying quickly and they've gone from a crowd to a gang of three with a few stragglers who have one foot out the door.

Excuses, Excuses

Excuses I have actually heard this week

Which reminds me of the old saying: Excuses are like assholes.

Everyone has one and they all stink.

"It was okay for me to track down and spam someone's website because they had a website. Someone would have done it if I hadn't. Just because I was the only one who did that's irrelevant. It would have happened eventually so my doing it is acceptable."

"I didn't pay my taxes because I was so busy with my duties as a Husband and Father that I didn't have time. That I was taking frequent trips out of town with my girlfriends had nothing to do with it. When you think about it, it's really the fault of my wife and children if I go to jail. If I hadn't spent that time giving attention to them, I'd have kept better tax records and none of this would have happened."

"It's not that I'm unattentive. I'm just incredibly busy. And it doesn't occur to me to use modern methods of communication like the Internet, cell phones, text messaging, and voice mail. That's not a sign that I don't care. Or that I'm an untrustworthy S.O.B."

"I had to divorce my wife. The pre-nup had an escalation clause next month. If I was ever going to do it, this was the time."

"That woman stole my husband. Sure there were some problems in the marriage. All marriages have problems. Just because we hadn't lived in the same house for months and we had both hired divorce attorneys doesn't give her the right to destroy my happy home."

"It was okay for me to arrange to have a friend inform my boyfriend's wife of our affair. It wasn't a betrayal. I needed to find a way to get out of the relationship."

"It wasn't I, Sue, that did that terrible thing. It was...Lou...yea that's right. It was my good friend Lou. Lou did it. Oh you never heard of Lou before? You looked and there is no Lou? .... That's her cat's name. I won't tell you her real name because you can't be trusted with that kind of information. But it was the woman who has a cat named Lou. You can trust my word on that."

"I can't be blamed for doing a lousy job and getting four people killed. It's my employer's fault because they allowed me to do a lousy job."

American Taliban

One more reason to never go to South Dakota.

I'm grown. I don't need the government to be my Nanny State. I have an IQ in the triple digits and I am capable of making decisions for myself.

Pregnancy is one of the most personal and private experiences a woman has. The last thing any woman needs is the weight of the government and its bureaucracy wading in and micro-managing her life.

So unless you have the will to strap 33% of the female population of this country to gurneys at gunpoint for nine months to insure full gestation you need to respect a woman's privacy and intelligence.

National Background and Context

Abortion is a common experience: At current rates, about one in three American women will have had an abortion by the time she reaches age 45. Moreover, a broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions. 56% of women having abortions are in their 20s; 61% have one or more children; 67% have never married; 57% are economically disadvantaged; 88% live in a metropolitan area; and 78% report a religious affiliation. No racial or ethnic group makes up a majority: 41% of women obtaining abortions are white non-Hispanic, 32% are black non-Hispanic, 20% are Hispanic and 7% are of other racial backgrounds.

Contraceptive use is a key predictor of women's recourse to abortion. The very small group of American women who are at risk of experiencing an unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives account for almost half of all abortions—46% in 2000. Many of these women did not think they would get pregnant or had concerns about contraceptive methods. The remainder of abortions occur among the much larger group of women who were using contraceptives in the month they became pregnant. Many of these women report difficulty using contraceptives consistently.

Abortion is one of the safest surgical procedures for women in the United States. Fewer than 0.5% of women obtaining abortions experience a complication, and the risk of death associated with abortion is about one-tenth that associated with childbirth.

In the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman, in consultation with her physician, has a constitutionally protected right to choose abortion in the early stages of pregnancy—that is, before viability. In 1992, the Court upheld the basic right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. However, it also expanded the ability of the states to enact all but the most extreme restrictions on women's access to abortion. The most common restrictions in effect are parental notification or consent requirements for minors, state-sponsored counseling and waiting periods, and limitations on public funding.

This Week

My case brief is as good as it's going to get unless I can figure out the page numbering/index features of OpenOffice.

I have mapped out the strategy, opening, closing, and direct and cross questions for the mock trial. I still need to draw up the contract and study for two finals and I have another major writing project to follow the case brief.

I feel a little more confident that I won't completely lose it at the mock trial. It helps that I already testified at the other one and didn't throw up (though I did almost break my fingers I was twisting them so tightly)

Brick is being an ass. Zelda caught a bouquet at a wedding. Zach is worrying me half to death. Merv is MIA. The dog is whining. The cat is complaining. The more I learn about the goals of the health program the more I realize I'll never attain them.

I want to clean my house, go on a road trip, have mindless endless meaningless sex for a couple of days, and not think about anything more serious than trashy novels and the possibility of polishing my toenails for a week. I want a bowl of Poblano Corn Chowder and a Anaheim Relleno from El Azteca.

The Needlers

Everyone knows one of those couples, the ones who should have divorced. They don't really stay together out of love, though they may feel love for one another. They don't stay together because of duty, though that may be part of it too. They stay together because divorce would be too easy. They're angry as hell and they aren't done making their partner pay.

Sleepwalking Through

It is so easy to sleepwalk through life. You always think there's going to be more time: to be with loved ones, make amends, go see the Grand Canyon. I'll get around to that after: I complete this project, I get through this month, the bills are paid, the kids are grown.

I lost a friend this week. He was lucky. He was told he had eight weeks. He had some notice that there was no more time, if there was something truly important he had to get it done because there was no more 'one day'.

This week is also the anniversary of losing another friend. That friend had no idea. He was young enough, healthy enough, everything was ahead of him, another thirty years, and then a stranger with a gun walked up and ended it in seconds.

I sleepwalk. Never do today what you can put off for as long as possible. I hope I get a death sentence one day because if I don't I'll have a long list of things I never got around to.

Just because you're paranoid...

doesn't mean anyone gives a damn about you.

Or maybe it's just 'Guilty dog barks'

What is it with people who no matter what the conversation is always think it's about them? Is it paranoia or egotism? Both?

Hear an absurdly funny segment on the radio and share it with a group of people, it's not that it was funny, illuminating about human behavior in general, related to a previous conversation that they hadn't been included in, or any or a million other possible explainations, it was about them, all about them, in some sort of secret code, maybe one we got from the aliens, why it was the strawberries! They said the messboys ate them but he knew better.....

With some people all you can do is pass the tin foil and hope they use it.

Drop It

Why does a person repeatedly hit themselves in the head with a hammer?

Because it feels so good when they stop.

Sometimes I'm like a person who is still wearing 1980s Mall Hair. It may have looked and felt good at some point but it doesn't anymore. It doesn't suit my life, it's not what I want, it's not good for me, but I seem to think that getting rid of it means that it was always a mistake.

Ok, so Mall Hair was probably always a mistake, much like the Mullet I saw walking down the street today...full out Billy Ray Cyrus Mullet, but some things did fit at one point. They had value and meaning and were good. Walking away doesn't negate what once was just because I don't want it anymore.

And it feels so good to stop.

I'd Love to Testify but.....

...I want assurances that the Prosecutor will only ask me questions on cross-examination that I'm willing to be asked.

Well don't we all.

So it is an invasion in the private life of a person accused of taking bribes to ask "Mr. Mayor, you had mistresses who have testified that you paid for everything, in cash. They have testified that you frequently gambled, with cash. There are no records of any of your own funds going to pay for these trips, dinners, activities. Where did the cash come from?"

Sounds like a reasonable question to me.

Or "Mr. Mayor, you lied to your wife over and over and over again. Why should we believe anything you say?"

But Bill Campbell is special. If he isn't given assurances no other defendant is ever going to get in a criminal trial, he's being mistreated and his rights are being harmed.

And he's only concerned about his family's well-being.

Now.

Oscar Roundup

I love movies so I actually saw a lot of what was nominated this year.

I'm so glad Gustavo Santaolalla won for Best Score. That was one of the few times where the music was an important part of the movie experience and how many times does John Williams need to win?

And speaking of music; 'It's Hard Out Here to be a Pimp'?! What do you want to bet a lot of voters giggled at the idea of voting for a song with the word 'Pimp' in the title never thinking it would actually win because they were the only ones clever enough to get the joke?

Glad the Penguins won.

Glad McMurtry won. Any McMurtry fan should go see Archer City, Texas sometime. It explains a lot about the man and his work. (And a trip on up to Childress explains a lot about the life of Jack Twist)

I think Jake Gyllenhaal was wonderful in Brokeback Mountain, he was the heart of the movie for me and it's a shame he didn't win.

Reese Witherspoon looks a lot like Zelda so she's always a favorite with me and Felicity Huffman's role just seemed like Oscar bait: ShineMyLeftFootOnMyBrilliantMindForrest. No thanks. Thought it was so appropriate that Witherspoon, who has been wearing short dresses for most of award season put on a long gown for the Big night. She looked gorgeous.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman did a great job, especially in creating an illusion of a character that was a foot shorter and about 80 pounds lighter. He was the Truman I remember from my childhood. And his acceptance speech was an illustration of the theory that actors can be incredibly shy when they don't have a character to hide behind. He and Robert DeNiro must have been a barrel of laughs on set.

I liked Crash. But Capote and Brokeback Mountain are the movies I still remember, that I still think of as I go about my day and I don't think Crash coming out last summer has anything to do with that. I think the idea of Capote and Perry Smith being esentially alike, that they both really liked someone right up till the moment where they cut their throat will stay with me. I know I won't forget those shirts, one hidden inside the other, as if always in their hearts.

I wanted a reaction shot of Jennifer Aniston to the Anjelina Jolie joke.

Was there a Jennifer not in attendance?

Did Jennifers Lopez and Gardner run into one another backstage? (and they both looked great)

Does Jack Nicholson have a seat that belongs to him every year?

Heath Ledger was so tender and sweet with Michelle Williams windblown dress on the red carpet. Would have loved to hear the conversation between Gyllenhall and Ledger after Ledger's 'Clooney should win' statement.

Jon Stewart did a good job.

Joan Rivers didn't look as scary as she did at the Golden Globes.

Am I really supposed to believe that Ryan Seacrest has the hots for Jessica Alba?

Salma Hayek's boobs looked smushed.

No big bows!

Loved that a lot of the gowns had pockets.

Is there a standard dress for heavily pregnant nominees? Didn't Catherine Zeta Jones wear Rachel Weiss's dress the year she won (pregnant) for Chicago?

And I've heard some complaints about all the clips. I love them. Maybe it's because I've usually seen the movies but clip montages inevitably have me thinking 'I need to get out that tape/DVD and watch it again.'

It's Good to be King

This postcard (courtesy of PostSecret) reminded me of a theory that's been kicking around my head.

Oppressed people usually manage to get revenge even if it's only in little ways. Women are often oppressed people. Every home a castle, every man a King. The King may want to consider hiring a food taster.

I don't think it's random that most poisoners are women. It's the perfect, passive-aggressive, sneaky method. And women usually prepare the food.

Even if it doesn't reach the level of arsenic or antifreeze, what woman hasn't, in a fit of conniption, failed to rinse the soap out of a husband's favorite glass or dropped his toothbrush on the floor and given a maniacal Dr. Evil cackle? Or, if poisoning isn't their thing, maybe she just manages to place a sharply angled knee or elbow in a sensitive part of a husband's body in the wee hours of the morning to disturb his blissful slumber? Overdrawn the checking account? Forgot to fill the gas tank? Turned his undershirts pink?

It is said that slave owners in the South were often miserable and paranoid, surrounded by people they 'owned', convinced they would be murdered in their sleep when the inevitable uprising occurred.

Oppression leads to resentment leads to fear of reprisal leads to greater oppression leads to greater resentment.....it never ends.

I Meant What I Said.....

"I meant what I said and I said what I meant; an elephant's faithful, 100 percent"

I have little patience with broken promises. Horton was a hero of mine when I was a kid. Someone who would say "I meant what I said and I said what I meant" was a novel concept and I responded to it. I decided Horton would be one of my role models.

My decision to never make a promise I wasn't sure I could keep can irritate my family to no end. When Brick and I talked about getting married, I wouldn't promise monogamy and I wouldn't accept that promise from him.

I don't know why he didn't walk away from a woman who wouldn't promise that he would be the last man in her life. Maybe he realized that my refusal meant that if I did make him a promise, it would be kept. I promised to love him, respect him, and that I'd never look him in the eye and lie to him unless it concerned something like a birthday present. And somehow that works for us.

Musings on Lonely Saturday

I think I know why real writers are such raging alcoholics. I've had writer's block for a couple of weeks, one good stiff drink and suddenly the words are just flowing out, ironically on the subject of Dram Shop laws. I can see how it could become a crutch to someone who had to deal with writing deadlines all the time.

My current in-between hair has a name: the McVinci. It's not making me any fonder of it or making the thought of chopping it all off at 2 a.m. any less attractive. Right now the fact that I can finally put it up again doesn't seem to matter much anymore.

When you have a Jack Russell Terrorist watching a movie about a dog isn't a good idea. Unless you want to watch your dog freak out and bark at the TV for a couple of hours.

Speaking of writing, why do I have ideas for about five good erotic stories now that I have no time to write any of them? Contracts and trial notebooks: blocked. Steamy tales: the ideas just flow. Which is ironic considering....

I'm considering celibacy again. Of course I am...it's goddamn tax season....

Which is when I have my 'And why do I want him anyway?!' moments where I try to figure out if he has no idea how much he hurts me when he makes plans he doesn't keep or if that's the intent. After all, every once in awhile you have to show who's the boss.

And that's a game I don't care to play.

An Affair to Remember

Review of the film from the New York Review of Books.

An Affair to Remember
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Brokeback Mountain
a film directed by Ang Lee, based on the story by E. Annie Proulx

Brokeback Mountain-the highly praised new movie as well as the short story by Annie Proulx on which the picture is faithfully based-is a tale about two homosexual men. Two gay men. To some people it will seem strange to say this; to some other people, it will seem strange to have to say it. Strange to say it, because the story is, as everyone now knows, about two young Wyoming ranch hands who fall in love as teenagers in 1963 and continue their tortured affair, furtively, over the next twenty years. And as everyone also knows, when most people hear the words "two homosexual men" or "gay," the image that comes to mind is not likely to be one of rugged young cowboys who shoot elk and ride broncos for fun.

Two homosexual men: it is strange to have to say it just now because the distinct emphasis of so much that has been said about the movie-in commercial advertising as well as in the adulatory reviews-has been that the story told in Brokeback Mountain is not,in fact, a gay story, but a sweeping romantic epic with "universal" appeal. The lengths to which reviewers from all over the country, representing publications of various ideological shadings, have gone in order to diminish the specifically gay element is striking, as a random sampling of the reviews collected on the film's official Web site makes clear. The Wall Street Journal's critic asserted that "love stories come and go, but this one stays with you-not because both lovers are men, but because their story is so full of life and longing, and true romance." The Los Angeles Times declared the film to be a deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart just as so many mainstream films have before it. The two lovers here just happen to be men.

Indeed, a month after the movie's release most of the reviews were resisting, indignantly, the popular tendency to refer to it as "the gay cowboy movie." "It is much more than that glib description implies," the critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune sniffed. "This is a human story." This particular rhetorical emphasis figures prominently in the advertising for the film, which in quoting such passages reflects the producer's understandable desire that Brokeback Mountain not be seen as something for a "niche" market but as a story with broad appeal, whatever the particulars of its time, place, and personalities. (The words "gay" and "homosexual" are never used of the film's two main characters in the forty-nine-page press kit distributed by the filmmakers to critics.) "One movie is connecting with the heart of America," one of the current print ad campaigns declares; the ad shows the star Heath Ledger, without his costar, grinning in a cowboy hat. A television ad that ran immediately after the Golden Globe awards a few weeks ago showed clips of the male leads embracing their wives, but not each other.

The reluctance to be explicit about the film's themes and content was evident at the Golden Globes, where the film took the major awards-for best movie drama, best director, and best screenplay. When a short montage of clips from the film was screened, it was described as "a story of monumental conflict"; later, the actor reading the names of nominees for best actor in a movie drama described Heath Ledger's character as "a cowboy caught up in a complicated love." After Ang Lee received the award he was quoted as saying, "This is a universal story. I just wanted to make a love story."

Because I am as admiring as almost everyone else of the film's many excellences, it seems to me necessary to counter this special emphasis in the way the film is being promoted and received. For to see Brokeback Mountain as a love story, or even as a film about universal human emotions, is to misconstrue it very seriously-and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement.

Both narratively and visually, Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy about the specifically gay phenomenon of the "closet"-about the disastrous emotional and moral consequences of erotic self-repression and of the social intolerance that first causes and then exacerbates it. What love story there is occurs early on in the film, and briefly: a summer's idyll herding sheep on a Wyoming mountain, during which two lonely youths, taciturn Ennis and high-spirited Jack, fall into bed, and then in love, with each other. The sole visual representation of their happiness in love is a single brief shot of the two shirtless youths horsing around in the grass. That shot is eerily-and significantly-silent, voiceless: it turns out that what we are seeing is what the boys' boss is seeing through his binoculars as he spies on them.

After that-because their love for each other can't be fitted into the lives they think they must lead-misery pursues and finally destroys the two men and everyone with whom they come in contact with the relentless thoroughness you associate with Greek tragedy. By the end of the drama, indeed, whole families have been laid waste. Ennis's marriage to a conventional, sweet-natured girl disintegrates, savaging her simple illusions and spoiling the home life of his two daughters; Jack's nervy young wife, Lureen, devolves into a brittle shrew, her increasingly elaborate and artificial hairstyles serving as a visual marker ofthe ever-growing mendacity that underlies the couple's relationship. Even an appealing young waitress, with whom Ennis after his divorce has a flirtation (an episode much amplified from a bare mention in the original story), is made miserable by her brief contact with a man who is as enigmatic to himself as he is to her. If Jack and Ennis are tainted, it's not because they're gay, but because they pretend not to be; it's the lie that poisons everyone they touch.

As for Jack and Ennis themselves, the brief and infrequent vacations that they are able to take together as the years pass-"fishing trips" on which, as Ennis's wife points out, still choking on her bitterness years after their marriage fails, no fish were ever caught- are haunted, increasingly, by the specter of the happier life they might have had, had they been able to live together. Their final vacation together (before Jack is beaten to death in what is clearly represented, in a flashback, as a roadside gay-bashing incident) is poisoned by mutual recriminations. "I wish I knew how to quit you," the now nearly middle-aged Jack tearfully cries out, humiliated by years of having to seek sexual solace in the arms of Mexican hustlers. "It's because of you that I'm like this-nothing, nobody," the dirt-poor Ennis sobs as he collapses in the dust. What Ennis means, of course, is that he's "nothing" because loving Jack has forced him to be aware of real passion that has no outlet, aware of a sexual nature that he cannot ignore but which neither his background nor his circumstances have equipped him to make part of his life. Again and again over the years, he rebuffs Jack's offers to try living together and running "a little cow and calf operation" somewhere, hobbled by his inability even to imagine what a life of happiness might look like.

One reason he can't bring himself to envision such a life with his lover is a grisly childhood memory, presented in flashback, of being taken at the age of eight by his father to see the body of a gay rancher who'd been tortured and beaten to death-a scene that prefigures the scene of Jack's death. This explicit reference to childhood trauma suggests another, quite powerful, reason why Brokeback must be seen as a specifically gay tragedy. In another review that decried the use of the term "gay cowboy movie" ("a cruel simplification"), the Chicago Sun-Times's critic, Roger Ebert, wrote with ostensible compassion about the dilemma of Jack and Ennis, declaring that "their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups-any 'forbidden' love." This is well-meaning but seriously misguided. The tragedy of heterosexual lovers from different religious or ethnic groups is, essentially, a social tragedy; as we watch it unfold, we are meant to be outraged by the irrationality of social strictures that prevent the two from loving each other, strictures that the lovers themselves may legitimately rail against and despise.

But those lovers, however star-crossed, never despise themselves. As Brokeback makes so eloquently clear, the tragedy of gay lovers like Ennis and Jack is only secondarily a social tragedy. Their tragedy, which starts well before the lovers ever meet, is primarilya psychological tragedy, a tragedy of psyches scarred from the very first stirrings of an erotic desire which the world around them-beginning in earliest childhood, in the bosom of their families, as Ennis's grim flashback is meant to remind us-represents as unhealthy, hateful, and deadly. Romeo and Juliet (and we) may hate the outside world, the Capulets and Montagues, may hate Verona; but because they learn to hate homosexuality so early on, young people with homosexual impulses more often than not grow up hating themselves: they believe that there's something wrong with themselves long before they can understand that there's something wrong with society. This is the truth that Heath Ledger, who plays Ennis, clearly understands-"Fear was instilled in him at an early age, and so the way he loved disgusted him," the actor has said-and that is so brilliantly conveyed by his deservedly acclaimed performance. On screen, Ennis's self-repression and self-loathing are given startling physical form: the awkward, almost hobbled quality of his gait, the constricted gestures, the way in which he barely opens his mouth when he talks all speak eloquently of a man who is tormented simply by being in his own body-by being himself.

So much, at any rate, for the movie being a love story like any other, even a tragic one. To their great credit, the makers of Brokeback Mountain-the writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, the director Ang Lee-seem, despite the official rhetoric, to have beenaware that they were making a movie specifically about the closet. The themes of repression, containment, the emptiness of unrealized lives-all ending in the "nothingness" to which Ennis achingly refers-are consistently expressed in the film, appropriately enough, by the use of space; given the film's homoerotic themes, this device is particularly meaningful. The two lovers are only happy in the wide, unfenced outdoors, where exuberant shots of enormous skies and vast landscapes suggest, tellingly, that what the men feel for each other is "natural." By contrast, whenever we see Jack and Ennis indoors, in the scenes that show the failure of their domestic and social lives, they look cramped and claustrophobic. (Ennis in particular is often seen in reflection, invarious mirrors: a figure confined in a tiny frame.) There's a sequence in which we see Ennis in Wyoming, and then Jack in Texas, anxiously preparing for one of their "fishing trips," and both men, as they pack for their trip-Ennis nearly leaves behind his fishingtackle, the unused and increasingly unpersuasive prop for the fiction he tells his wife each time he goes away with Jack- pace back and forth in their respective houses like caged animals.

The climax of these visual contrasts is also the emotional climax of the film, which takes place in two consecutive scenes, both of which prominently feature closets-literal closets. In the first, a grief-stricken Ennis, now in his late thirties, visits Jack's childhood home, where in the tiny closet of Jack's almost bare room he discovers two shirts-his and Jack's, the clothes they'd worn during their summer on Brokeback Mountain-one of which Jack has sentimentally encased in the other. (At the end of that summer, Ennis had thought he'd lost the shirt; only now do we realize that Jack had stolen it for this purpose.) The image -which is taken directly from Proulx's story-of the two shirts hidden in the closet,preserved in an embrace which the men who wore them could never fully enjoy, stands as the poignant visual symbol of the story's tragedy. Made aware too late of how greatly he was loved, of the extent of his loss, Ennis stands in the tiny windowless space, caressingthe shirts and weeping wordlessly.

In the scene that follows, another misplaced piece of clothing leads to a similar scene of tragic realization. Now middle-aged and living alone in a battered, sparsely furnished trailer (a setting with which Proulx's story begins, the tale itself unfolding as a long flashback), Ennis receives a visit from his grown daughter, who announces that she's engaged to bemarried. "Does he love you?" the blighted father protectively demands, as if realizing too late that this is all that matters. After the girl leaves, Ennis realizes she's left her sweater behind, and when he opens his little closet door to store it there, we see that he's hung the two shirts from their first summer, one still wearing the other, on the inside of thecloset door, below a tattered postcard of Brokeback Mountain. Just as we see this, the camera pulls back to allow us a slightly wider view, which reveals a little window next to the closet, a rectangular frame that affords a glimpse of a field of yellow flowers and the mountains and sky. The juxtaposition of the two spaces-the cramped and airless closet, the window with its unlimited vistas beyond-efficiently but wrenchingly suggests the man's tragedy: the life he has lived, the life that might have been. His eyes filling with tears, Ennis looks at his closet and says, "Jack, I swear..."; but he never completes his sentence, as he never completed his life.

One of the most tortured, but by no means untypical, attempts to suggest that the tragic heroes of Brokeback Mountain aren't "really" gay appeared in, of all places, the San Francisco Chronicle, where the critic Mick LaSalle argued that the film is about two men who are in love, and it makes no sense. It makes no sense in terms of who they are, where they are, how they live and how they see themselves. It makes no sense in terms of what they do for a living or how they would probably vote in a national election....

The situation carries a lot of emotional power, largely because it's so specific and yet undefined. The two guys-cowboys-are in love with each other, but we don't ever quite know if they're in love with each other because they're gay, or if they're gay because they're in love with each other.

It's possible that if these fellows had never met, one or both would have gone through life straight.

The statement suggests what's wrong with so much of the criticism of the film, however well-meaning it is. It seems clear by now that Brokeback has received the attention it's been getting, from critics and audiences alike, partly because it seems on its surface to make normal what many people think of as gay experience- bringing it into the familiar "heart of America." (Had this been the story of, say, the love between two closeted interior decorators living in New York City in the 1970s, you suspect that there wouldn't be full-page ads in the major papers trumpeting its "universal" themes.) But the fact that this film's main characters look like cowboys doesn't make them, or their story, any less gay. Criticisms like LaSalle's, and those of the many other critics trying to persuade you that Brokeback isn't "really" gay, that Jack and Ennis's love "makes no sense" because they're Wyoming ranch hands who are likely to vote Republican, only work if you believe that being gay means having a certain look, or lifestyle (urban, say), or politics; that it's anything other than the bare fact of being erotically attached primarily to members of your own sex.

Indeed, the point that gay people have been trying to make for years-a point that Brokeback could be making now, if so many of its vocal admirers would listen to what it's saying-is that there's no such thing as a typical gay person, a strangely different-seeming person with whom Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar have nothing in common-thankfully, you can't help feeling, in the eyes of many commentators. (It is surely significant that the film's only major departure from Proulx's story are two scenes clearly meant to underscore Jack's and Ennis's bona fides as macho American men: one in which Jack successfullychallenges his boorish father-in-law at a Thanksgiving celebration, and another in which Ennis punches a couple of biker goons at a July Fourth picnic-a scene that culminates with the image of Ennis standing tall against a skyscape of exploding fireworks.)

The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they're not really homosexual-that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people"-you're pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed.