Jew Eat Yet?

Nazis and Cigarettes

I hate to jump on any media bandwagon and reprint photos that are already zooming all over the Internet, but WHAT THE HELL was Prince Harry thinking? He attended a costume party this week wearing a Nazi uniform complete with swastika armband. Just the kind of press the Royal Family needs, especially as plans are underway to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this month. The Royals haven’t suffered such a PR blow since Harry’s great uncle, the Duke of Windsor, met with Hitler in 1937 and declared him no threat to world peace. But unlike the former King, who gave up the throne for his American wife who some say had a fondness for Nazis, I don’t think for a second that Harry is a Nazi sympathizer, he’s just guilty of a colossal error in judgment. I can only imagine what Diana would have said. Harry has already publicly apologized for any “offense he caused,” but Diana probably would have had him on the first plane to Poland to tour the remains of the death camp. Then he’d do a volunteer stint at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. And am I crazy for being just as shocked by the cigarette in his 20-year-old hand as I am by the Nazi uniform? Why on earth would someone that young start smoking in this day and age, much less if that person were second in line to the English throne? Oh wait, make that third in line—his daddy still hasn’t had his shot. Poor Charles. Will he ever get to be King, or will Liz still be holding on to that damn sceptre when she’s 110? He just may have to pry it out of her arthritic hands.

I once shook Prince Charles’ hand. It was late 1970s and he was opening a new exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. I stood in line for hours, God help me, just to be able to say I shook the hand of the future King of England. We didn’t know then that his mother would hold onto the job like a royal pit bull. Not that I begrudge her the crown, I think she should stay in that post until she drops dead if that’s what she wants. I can understand why she won’t abdicate—the last one in her family to do so didn’t fare so well. I remember when the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret was visiting Chicago and infuriated the huge Irish community when she was overheard at an official party saying “The Irish—they’re pigs.” Called on the carpet, she tried to make us believe that what she really said was “The Irish—they do jigs.” Right.

I always felt for poor Margaret, though. Her parents wouldn’t let her marry her true love, Peter Townsend, just because he was divorced. They forced her into a marriage with Anthony Armstrong-Jones which, ironically but not surprisingly, ended in divorce. Did no one remind Margaret’s royal parents that the sole reason the Church of England was founded was so that Henry VIII could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn? (And then have her head chopped off a few years later…oh well, so much for true love.)

Name Dropper

I hear myself telling people from time to time how glad I am that I’m not famous. It’s true that I would detest the part of fame that would cause people to notice me in public, watch me eating in a restaurant, accost me at an airport, or stare at me in a movie theatre, not to mention the inaccurate articles that might be written about my marriage or career or the time I didn’t stop and talk to someone who recognized me. I am supremely grateful for the anonymity with which I move through this world. On the other hand, even contemplating gratitude for my lack of fame suggests that I do indeed think about it more than the average person (who, like me, is not on any kind of life path where fame is a likely outcome). So what’s with me and fame?

Sometimes I cringe at the amount of times I find myself dropping famous names in conversation. I barely notice it when I’m in Los Angeles where statements like “I saw Annette Bening at the dry cleaners” seem part of the standard response to “How was your day?" But when I speak to my family and friends outside of California, I wonder at my motivation for placing myself inside this whirl of celebrity references. Does it come from the same gloating tendency that has me working in comments like  “man, is it hot here today!” when I’m talking to someone braving subzero wind chills? Does it reveal some basic insecurity about my life and my need to prop myself up on the shoulders of the rich and famous? Or is it just part of my shtick and a benign form of entertainment?

I am especially aware of this when I’m meeting with my colleagues at my company’s headquarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Portsmouth is a gorgeous 17th century seacoast town that could not be more removed from Los Angeles, though to me it’s so quaint I often feel like I’m walking through a movie set. It is so refreshing to be among people who could care less about what’s going on in Hollywood and for whom the word “industry” refers to publishing and not the latest reality show ratings or SAG contract negotiations. And yet, 10 minutes in this delightfully L.A.-free zone and names are dropping faster than Anna Nicole Smith’s credit line. Over company dinners we often end up playing a kind of “Name Your Celebrity Encounter” parlor game, instigated by me, where we go around the room and try to best each other with our most wild associations with the famous. I always win, and usually end up feeling like one of those former high school friends living vicariously off of some second-tier celebrity. So then I vow to never utter a famous name again, and I don’t…for five minutes.

There are aspects of fame that scare the bejeesus out of me. My sister sent me pictures of the crowds at Madison Square Garden who were there to see her husband on New Year’s Eve. Jeff’s celebrity status is growing by the minute and while we all think he deserves every bit of it, it’s still quite surreal to see such enormous crowds mouthing his lyrics and gazing up at him reverentially. Instead of being awed by the huge turnout, my first question to my sister who was up on the stage with him at midnight, was “but weren’t you just waiting to be riddled with bullets at any moment?” God, I’d be a horrible celebrity. I’d start by getting too involved with my fans, have a few bad experiences, and end up as a recluse with long yellow fingernails who pees into empty milk bottles.

Kendall and I do know a fair number of well known people thanks to her family’s show business roots and a few other connections, but I’m taking great pains not to mention them here, despite all my other name dropping, for fear that they’ll see this blog one day and think that I’m exploiting them or making fun of them or betraying confidences.

Oy, I clearly have a lot more to work out with this issue of celebrity and I’m sure it’s one I’ll be revisiting often. The second compilation of my essays I’d like to publish is all  about this fixation. Here’s the Table of Contents for  that book (seven of these are already written):

Stalker
Notes from the Outskirts of Celebrity

The Family Hour
Pining away for my long-lost kinfolk—the Waltons of Virginia

Mary Tyler Motherhood
From Laura Petrie to Mary Richards: my mother has a feminist awakening (and barely survives)

False Fronts
Touring the underside of Los Angeles with my pornographer uncle and Jayne Mansfield’s ghost

Off with Her Head
The six wives of Henry VIII help me through my parents’ divorce

Falling Stars
Tabitha Stevens and munchkins on life support—forgotten celebrities exact their revenge

Schmoozing with the Von Trapps
Uncovering Julie Andrews’ secret identity

Stalker
How I sent a popular TV actress to the loony bin

Do You Still Act?
A guide for what not to say to the formerly rich and famous

Sing Out, Louise!
My daughter’s foray into children’s theatre transforms me into Mama Rose

Guest List
My brother-in-law is a rock star and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

Born Again

Kendall and I just saw the haunting, semi-disturbing film “Birth” in which Nicole Kidman thinks a 10-year-old boy is her reincarnated husband. The movie is best known for the controversy regarding the bathtub scene between Kidman and the boy. I’ve even heard some people say that it’s child pornography which is just ludicrous. I’m not even sure I’d say the film is about reincarnation as much as it is about the tortured psychology of these characters. Nicole Kidman is great (as are the boy and Lauren Bacall), and I have to admire her desire to keep taking difficult roles in non-Hollywood movies. I wonder if she does the big budget films like “The Stepford Wives” just so that she can make smaller, offbeat films like “Birth.” I couldn’t even sit through last year’s “Dogville” but I admire her giving it a go instead of staying on a safe track. I bet she’s given her agent an ulcer ten times over for all her unusual choices. Not that I’m dissing her mainstream roles—I thought “To Die For” was superb and I can’t wait for the upcoming “Bewitched” remake with Kidman as Samantha and Shirley MacLaine as Endora.

I have to admit that I always enjoy movies that touch on reincarnation and “Birth” is one of the most interesting of the lot. Most of those films are either exploitative and spooky such as “The Reincarnation of Peter Proud” (which does not stand up to the test of time), or sappy like “Made in Heaven” with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis (and an unbilled cameo by Hutton’s then-wife Debra Winger as God), or utterly hilarious like “Defending Your Life” starring Albert Brooks as a crazy neurotic Jewish character named DANNY MILLER and Meryl Streep as the most perfect dead shiksa ever to fall in love with a dead Jew. One of my all-time favorite reincarnation flicks (cue the gay search engines) is “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” with Barbra Streisand’s klutzy New York chain smoker Daisy Gamble suddenly realizing she was once a regal 18th century mystic named Melinda Tentrees. It was Vincente Minnelli’s last Big Musical and included a young Jack Nicholson as Barbra’s swingin’ half brother Tad who was in love with her. Oy.

I may as well out myself further and say that I do believe in reincarnation. I’ve just had too many strong gut feelings about it to discount even though I obviously can’t prove it to anyone and have no desire to try. I sure don’t believe I was anyone famous like Napoleon or Ulysses Grant—if anything, I’m sure most of us were peasants spending our days in some God-forsaken field threshing wheat. I did have a trance channeller tell me long ago that I was the son of Crazy Horse and then a writer named Louis Spence. And more recently someone told me about several past-life connections to the 1909 house we now live in. Who knows. I’m not as interested as I used to be in knowing more about possible past lives. What’s the point? Maneuvering through this lifetime is hard enough.

Neuroses = Love

My father is so worried about the safety of his family I think he’d love it if we all wore those ankle bracelets they give to prisoners under house arrest. Then he could track our whereabouts at all times and make sure we’re safe from all physical, spiritual, or emotional threats to our well-being. He’s been calling all week from Chicago with panic rising in his voice because of the incessant rainstorms we’ve been having. If I don’t return his call within a few minutes, he calls my brother and sister in Chicago to see if they heard from me before I drowned in the raging flood waters. It’s true that it’s a pretty unusual situation over here. Less than two weeks into January and we’ve already had way more rain than we usually get in an entire year. Following the pattern set in childhood, the more worried my father gets, the more nonchalant I try to appear. “It’s just a little rain, what’s the big deal?” I say in monotone, while inside I’m thinking Armageddon has arrived and maybe the fundamentalist Christians were right all along and Los Angeles is being punished for being a 21st century Sodom. As I run around the house in a tizzy, trying to survey all the leaks dripping yucky yellow water onto our gorgeous wood floors, I think of tsunami-ravaged Asia and I get some perspective slammed back into me.

I don’t remember a time when my father didn’t think we were a hair’s breath away from death. If I was cutting a sandwich in half I was obviously going to slip and accidentally plunge the knife into my carotid artery. If I answered the door when the bell rang I was, of course, going to be attacked by a band of vicious crack addicts running rampant in the neighborhood. If I was taking the subway past five o’clock in the afternoon, I clearly had a death wish. Wherever I was headed, my father always had the latest figures on how many people were assaulted or maimed in that vicinity in the last 30 days. I remember being with him on Mulholland Drive once and he was so panicked about the lack of guard rails that I felt like there was a little black cloud following my car and I practically did veer off the road!

Of course at the root of my father’s hysteria is a profound love for his children and we’re always aware of that. Whenever my siblings and I get frustrated by my dad’s fear-based view of the world (which he would call “being realistic”), we’re also painfully aware of how much we’ll miss it when he’s gone, just as we miss my mother’s palette of neuroses. Driving your loved ones insane is definitely an expression of caring in my family’s repertoire and no one will ever worry about the catastrophes that could overtake us at any moment with the same zeal as my dad. When I’m not downplaying some event to avoid his frothing at the mouth, I sometimes find that I need a “fix” and I’ll purposely bait him. I don’t think he actually believes, for example, that Kendall and I are thinking of taking Leah to Baghdad over spring break but it still manages to get a rise!

Then I worry, with good reason, that in some ways I’m just as nuts with my own daughter. I start to feel like Adam Trask in “East of Eden” when he’s panicking about the kind of man he’s turning into and when he asks his crazy mother Cathy why he’s becoming that way, she growls, “Because you have me in you!” Oh well, at least I keep the most insane worries to myself such as the one I mentioned that the Earth might decide at any moment to fling itself out of its axis. I’ll always worry about Leah, but I learned early on, as I hid in the bushes at her school crying because some kid was being mean to her on the playground, that we can’t and shouldn’t prevent our kids from experiencing all of life’s painful moments.

Is Writing in a Blog “Real” Writing?

I’ve been surprised by some of the reactions I’ve received to this blog in the few weeks that I’ve been writing in here. Both from the people I never thought would give it the time of day who are very interested in this form and from the people who have no interest at all and seem very puzzled that I am expending any writing energy in this way. One friend made the comment that one of the differences between “real writing” and writing in a blog is that there is not a concern about “craft” in a blog. Hmmm, is that true? I don’t think so. I agree that it’s a different kind of writing—much more immediate, less “worked on.” But I can’t agree that it’s devoid of craft, especially after reading some of the blogs I’ve discovered in the past few weeks. I think there’s also baggage among some writers about the concept of “giving your writing away” by posting it online for anyone to see. Like it’s some kind of “vanity publishing” that takes away its credibility or worth. But I think that’s a case of holding up a new form against an old paradigm. 

I’m still trying to figure out what writing in a blog means to me and why I enjoy doing it. Of course, as I said when I started, my fear is that it’s a giant exercise in unbridled narcissism, but then, using that measuring stick, isn’t ALL writing? My friend Tamar responded that self-expression is not the same thing as narcissism, and I think that’s true. I know that I’m just as interested in other people’s blogs as I am my own but I can see how it’s a foreign, uncomfortable concept to many. I certainly never thought I’d keep an online journal but I don’t really think that blogs are the equivalent of journals. And I know the main benefit of keeping this blog is that it has me writing every day—something I’ve been trying to get back to for years, even though this is obviously not “for money.”

Which isn’t to say that I’ve calmed all my guilt and shame about my own writing. I love my job as a book editor but every time I hold a two-inch thick manuscript in my hand I experience the silent scream, “WHY ISN’T THIS MY NOVEL?” and I hate myself for not finding the time to work on my own stuff.

Not that I even want to write a novel. What I’ve been kicking around for a long time is a thematic collection of some of the personal essays I’ve written over the years. I’ve compiled a Table of Contents for two such books. One would contain all my essays that relate to my experience with pop culture and growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and 70s. The other one would include many of my Jewish-themed essays. Here’s my working Table of Contents for that book:

Praying in Technicolor
Memoir of a Jewish Childhood

Ritual Crime
Old and New Worlds collide as my circumcision is filmed for posterity

There Are Starving Children in Europe
A guide for creating eating disorders in Jewish children

Jews for Jesus
What happens when Jewish students are forced to welcome the Christ child in song

Praying in Technicolor
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland help me while away the hours at an orthodox synagogue

Frankophile
An obsession with Anne Frank leads to vandalism and self-discovery

The Talmud According to Cecil B. De Mille
How an anti-Semitic film director helped to define my Jewish identity

Kosher Bedlam
Friday night dinners provide insight into the nature of Jewish law and family angst

Chopped Liver Ferris Wheel
My Bar Mitzvah collapses under the weight of overcooked food and my parents’ divorce

Schlepping Over the Rainbow
Was Dorothy Gale Jewish? A new interpretation of The Wizard of Oz

Meshugenah
Contemplating the legacy of mental illness in my family

I Heart Amy Carter

Maybe it’s the talk about Rosemary Kennedy or the fact that I thought I saw Patti Davis walking out of a Starbucks this morning but I’ve had presidential offspring on my mind today. At least the ones that have been around in my lifetime. I have to say my all-time favorite First Kid was Amy Carter. She always seemed so refreshingly normal. My favorite Amy Carter moment was when a reporter asked her if she had any message for the children of America. She thought for a moment and gave this brilliant reply:

“No.”

Remember in 1980, during his only debate with Reagan, when Jimmy Carter summed up an exchange on arms control by saying:

“I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said the control of nuclear arms.”

Amy was only 13 at the time and Carter was endlessly ridiculed for getting policy advice from a grade-schooler. But who’s to say she wasn’t right? And what other child of a President got to be played by Lorraine Newman every week on “Saturday Night Live!”

Like her dad, Amy went on to have an even better post-White House life. She works for the Carter Center now on human rights issues and is married with a young child. I remember seeing Jimmy Carter tear up when talking about Amy’s wedding in 1996. She was barefoot at her ceremony—gotta love that kid!

My next favorite presidential spawn: Ron Reagan Jr. and his sister, Patti Davis. Who would’ve thunk it? The kids of such a couple coming out so great? Ron speaking at the Democratic Convention this summer was fantastic, as were his writings about Bush and how he tried to appropriate Reagan’s funeral for his own vile causes. (And Ron really was very good when he hosted "Saturday Night Live.") Patti now regrets a lot of her rebellious activities during her dad’s presidency but she still speaks her own mind and is the only Republican First Daughter I can think of who doesn’t seem like a Stepford Wife. I even admire Nancy Reagan these days for telling the Republicans where to stick it following their appalling stance on stem-cell research.

Of course Caroline and John Kennedy have always had a special place in my psyche, especially since my very first memory was watching Kennedy’s funeral on TV with my sobbing mother and seeing John-John (who was almost my exact age) waving good-bye to his dead father. John died just a month after my mother died in 1999. Never in a million years would I have imagined that their deaths would be that close. My mom’s boss when she died was Chris Kennedy, RFK’s look-alike son, and she used to always drag Leah into his office, interrupting important meetings, to show him Leah’s “Kennedy Irish” red hair! And when we had a hard time switching my mother to a better hospital when she was struggling with her cancer, William Kennedy Smith intervened, for which we will always be grateful.

My least favorite First Children? Anyone with the last name of Bush. (Do I really need to explain?) And the Ford kids strike me as particularly uninspiring. Remember when Susan Ford was caught having Secret Service men doing her homework? I really shouldn’t judge the Fords, I have no idea what they’re up to, and besides, who am I to judge any of these people? (Well, I think I'll hold onto my judgments of the Bush family for now...)

I do remember waking up early to watch Tricia Nixon Cox’s White House wedding on TV. What was I thinking? What were they thinking? And Julie Nixon Eisenhower deserves a door prize for getting two presidential families into her kids’ bloodlines.

Hmmm, I haven't even mentioned Chelsea Clinton. Born in 1980, she was the first presidential child that was young enough to be my own daughter. Yikes!

My favorite would-be/should-be First Children are Kristin Gore and Karenna Gore Schiff. So smart and articulate. The Bush twins should voluntarily give them their room at the White House.

Schadenfreude

Leah got accepted into her Junior Master acting class. Tomorrow she begins rehearsals for “Footloose.” Why is my life suddenly a round of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?” I’m still reeling from Bacon's performance as a child molester in “The Woodsman,” my brother-in-law is appearing on David Letterman with him tonight, my sister was nearly trampled by his paparazzi when they were entering David Letterman’s studio, and now my daughter is playing the Kevin Bacon part in “Footloose!” Well, actually, she wants the Chris Penn part but we don’t know which she’ll get. She often plays boys at her female-dominated drama school: Officer Krupke, Danny Zuko, Prince Charming’s father, Bill Sikes, Otto Frank. It will be interesting to see how they address the fundamentalist Christian content of “Footloose.” I don’t think I’ve seen it since the film opened in 1984. Whatever happened to Lori Singer? Wasn’t she supposed to be the Next Big Thing?

I hate myself for knowing this or having a reaction to it, but Kendall and I both gasped tonight when we heard that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston announced their separation today. WHY do we get invested in the lives of total strangers and feel somehow betrayed when they can’t make it work? What a burden it must be on them to be perceived as the Golden Couple. And then after the shock people seem to feel better when folks who they think have it all experience pain in their lives. How odd that Leah and I were JUST listening to the song “Schadenfreude” from “Avenue Q” on the way home:

Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy
And when I see how sad you are it sort of makes me...happy!
It’s just human nature—nothing I can do!
It's...Schadenfreude!
Making me feel glad that I'm not you.

I really need to take those “Avenue Q” songs off of my iPod!

I was sad to hear that Rosemary Kennedy died today at the age of 86. Although to be honest, I didn’t even realize she was still alive. God knows the Kennedys have been the recipients of shadenfreude for generations. Rosemary was the retarded Kennedy sister whose condition was made way worse when her parents freaked out and forced her to have one of the first lobotomies ever back in the day when that amounted to sticking an ice pick behind your eye and wiggling it around, hoping for the best. Eunice and Ted Kennedy were at her bedside when she died this morning. Rosemary inspired the Special Olympics which Eunice and Sargent Shriver started. I met Eunice a few times when she visited the Merchandise Mart in Chicago (owned by the Kennedys for over 50 years) where my mom was the beloved receptionist. I remember that the Kennedys never carried cash with them so the doorman had to pay Eunice’s cab fare. Rumor had it that Eunice’s wedding gown was lost somewhere in the Mart (she married Sargent Shriver when he was the General Manager there). I don’t want to tell you what Kennedy memorabilia I did find when I worked in the mailroom…

Sing Out, Louise!

Leah had her first real audition yesterday. It was to get into the “Master Class” at her theatre school. She was nervous about it but nailed “The Wizard and I” from the Broadway show “Wicked” and also performed a monologue from the point of view of Cinderella’s stepsister. She talks more and more these days about wanting to be an actress. I wonder how I’d feel if she really decides to go for that when she gets older. We know so many incredibly talented people who struggle like hell in the often insane world of show business that seems to chew people up and spit them out on a daily basis. But we’ll see—of course if Leah really decides to pursue that later on I will support her decision. I wonder how much of Leah’s love of musical theatre was implanted into her brain as a baby when I used to sing to her endlessly and then worry about the hideous messages I was imparting. “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” was a favorite of mine back then. When I think of the words I was singing into her ear every night I want to arrest myself for child abuse:

You wait, little girl, on an empty stage
For fate to turn the light on.
Your life, little girl, is an empty page
That men will want to write on.

Oy. I surrender, officer. I just like Rodgers & Hammerstein, I didn’t think I was doing irreparable damage to my daughter’s psyche. On the other hand, the Leah I know today is NOT thinking of her life as empty page that men will want to write on so I guess she cleared that one. There’s probably way more damage being created with her two favorite musicals of the moment, “A Chorus Line” in which she just appeared and which includes the lyrics every parent of a ten-year-old dreams of hearing:

Tits and ass, bought myself a fancy pair
Tightened up the derriere
Did the nose with it
All that goes with it…

Okay, the director did change “tits and ass” to “this and that” but left all the other words the same so it was still rather creepy!

And now she’s really into “Avenue Q” and loves the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” with lines like:

The Jews have all the money
And the whites have all the power.
And I'm always in taxi-cab
With driver who no shower!

Yikes. Better keep Child Services on speed dial.

Hmmm, if all these showtunes weren’t enough to get my online ramblings listed in a gay directory, does posting a photo of Idina Menzel in “Wicked” automatically generate a rainbow flag onto my blog's banner? Reading my sister’s comment about how gay my blog sounded, my colleague Lisa Barnett (Heinemann drama editor extraordinaire and co-author of several fantasy/mystery books) pronounced it “queerer than queer, my dear.” Why am I surprised? Kendall and I got married in May at BCC, the coolest (and oldest) gay and lesbian synagogue in town. We are one of the few straight couples there and yet I can't say we bring any kind of “straight sensibility,” if such a thing exists, to the congregation. The Friday before our wedding we had our aufruf at which Kendall and I had to each interpret the weekly Torah portion. I told our rabbi Lisa Edwards that my interpretation of that week's portion (which was all about adultery) was going to be the gayest thing that has ever been uttered in that synagogue. (I think I mentioned Hedy Lamarr three times in my speech.) And at our ceremony Kendall walked down the aisle to Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera” sung by BCC’s cantor Fran Chalin.

Oh well, I’m comfortable enough with my sexuality to admit that when we saw Idina Menzel in “Wicked” and she hit that sustained high note during “Defying Gravity” at the end of Act I, it moved me so much that I burst into tears.

Sad Jessica Lange

I heard Jessica Lange being interviewed by Charlie Rose a few years ago and was amazed during their discussion when Jessica said, “I consider myself a sad person.” She said this with a smile on her face and added that she also felt much happiness and joy in her life, but that a big part of her basic nature included feeling sad a lot of the time and that she accepted this truth about herself. Wow. For some reason that has always stayed with me and I think about it all the time. I remember being struck by the unabashed freedom in this point of view. You mean, we don’t have to be happy every minute of the day? It's not a school assignment that we'll get in trouble for if we don't do it really well? Sadly, being happy to me often feels like an obligation, and I go through so much guilt when I’m coming from other places which is a lot of the time. And then, if I even let it slip to the world that I’m not feeling deliriously happy at that second (not that I’m ever really fooling anybody when I’m not), I have to quickly add all the asterisks about how I really AM happy but I’m just in a weird space and I’m so sorry so just give me a moment and I’ll try to get back to happy…wait, it’s not working, what’s wrong with me…no, I promise I’ll be happy in a minute, hold on…yes, I realize how lucky I am and how much I have to be thankful for and that’s why I know I really am happy, damn it, so just give me a second here. **Cue guilt/shame spiral.** I’m now learning that I can have a happy, fulfilling life and still acknowledge my feelings of pain and sadness without feeling ashamed or spoiled or self-indulgent. If anything, it’s only by allowing my feelings of sadness to see the light of day that enables them to run their natural course and dissipate. When I force them underground with all my guilt that I’m doing something wrong, they get stuck there and hang on for dear life since they’re so afraid of being attacked again. And then at those times when I'm feeling so emotionally constipated I think of what Jessica Lange said in that interview and it’s like a mantra to me. And I know that I can only be happy if I stop trying to be happy or thinking I must be happy.

Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Go

There’s something vaguely obscene about seeing Christmas decorations this late in the post-holiday season. I was walking past the Grove shopping center last night and had to avert my eyes when I came to the giant Christmas trees and rows of candy cane lights. It reminds me of what the people in the occupied countries of Europe must have felt after the war ended but there were still swastika flags and other Nazi regalia everywhere they looked. C’mon people, THE WAR IS OVER, time to get rid of the vestiges of our month-long Occupation! Maybe we should topple the huge shopping center trees with the same zeal that the Russians had when they knocked down all those statues of Lenin after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Just as bad are the dead Christmas trees strewn all over the streets even though the city of Los Angeles has set up many drop-off points and has begged people not to throw them out with their regular garbage. Most still contain sad wisps of tinsel and remnants of Grandma’s broken ornaments. I guess it’s appropriate that the refuse of Christmas matches many of our bleak emotional states this time of year.