Monthly Archives: March 2008

Is this a test?

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It’s going to be the death of me.

And my show.

Lately, every morning at 5 (sometimes earlier), I come downstairs and check the weather. More times than I’d like to think, I’ve seen something like this:

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This is not a winter storm warning. This is a test – from God. Title of test: Mounting a Musical Theater Production with as Little Rehearsal as Possible.

Of course, I don’t have it as bad as my friends in Concord, New Hampshire over the last few weeks, but hey – anything’s possible. And with the way my cast and I have been scoring in the luck department, it’ll probably happen.

Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a cholera epidemic. Or the school will lose power for a week.

Or maybe all our tails’ll fall off…

Signed,

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© The Walt Disney Company

Rousseau

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One of the coolest things about our dogs is that really, they’re the only living beings who are *always* happy to see us. Isn’t that comforting?

Truly, we could learn a lot from a dog:

  • how to give unconditional love
  • how to maintain unquestionable loyalty
  • how to completely enjoy the simplest pleasures in life, like a small treat or a ride in the car on a warm, breezy day
  • how to listen without comment or judgment

But especially, dogs remind us how to be good. I mean really good people, who delight in the most lovely and rewarding of human traits and potential:

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~

Beau chien, Rousseau. Je t’aime.

The lie that ate Manhattan

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jones1.jpgSo, say you write a book – your autobiography, detailing your triumph over gang membership, physical abuse, drugs, and basically a future with no hope. Then the book hits the New York Times Bestseller List. Your literary agent secures a national tour. Sales go through the roof. You’re on your way to achieving what many people (including Yours Truly) only dream about: being viewed as a truly fine writer.

Then the wheels fall off when your sister tells your publisher that your entire story was a hoax. Made up. Fabricated. You were not a half-Native American, half-Caucasian waif, unmercifully abused and forced to sell drugs at 10 years old. Rather, you were an upper-middle-class princess, raised by her parents in Sherman Oaks.

Then there’s James Frey, whose A Million Little Pieces, an autobiographical tale of escaping a vicious world of crime and drugs, became so popular that Oprah Winfrey recommended it to all her viewers – only to find out later that, yep, you guessed it: it was all a big fat lie.

What causes people to do this? I mean…do they not think for a minute that folks might check their stories? Do they think they won’t be found out when they include their mugshot photos in the book, complete with police department booking numbers?

That’s what Frey did – and some cop saw it. And checked. Then the house of cards came tumbling down.

misha1.jpgAnd worst – WORST – of all: There’s a 71-year-old lady in Massachusetts named Misha who told a huge lie about living with wolves as a 5-year-old Holocaust survivor on the run. And what did she do when Jane Daniel, her publisher, got suspicious and tried to back out after the book went to press and sold a million copies?

The old gal sued Daniel for $23 million……and won.

And the drama ain’t over yet. Daniel is now challenging the court’s ruling, claiming that the lawsuit was bogus because everything the publishing company did was predicated on Misha’s story being true.

So, what’s the lesson in this? I have to quote my mother here. “If you always tell the truth, you’ll never have to keep track of what you say, and you’ll never have to apologize for lying.”

Yeah – especially to the national media.

You went and got me started.

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(Thanks, Mave, for getting me all riled up.)

Some things just ain’t fair. Take, for instance, our government. Constitution? Feh! Check this, homey…

  1. The US government allows the open and unrestricted sale of alcohol (to anybody over the age of 21), despite the fact that in 2007, likkered up drivers caused more fatal accidents in cars than ever before.
  2. The Kennedy-Kyl Bill prohibits internet gambling in one’s own household. Here’s a great essay on it from 1998.
  3. Pornography -proven to have psychological effects that have led men to violent acts against women AND children, not to mention consistently exploiting women for 100 years – is openly displayed in “news stands” all over the country.

How can this happen in America?, you ask. We’re all the Land of the Whatever & Such. Well, friend, that may be the $640,000 question (I know there’s an extra zero – inflation).

I could go on a day-long rant about numbers 1 and 3. There’s all kinds of research on it out there. And although I have no personal issue with booze, alcohol has ruined the lives of many of my family, and consistently makes others act like fools – some of whom need little help doing so as it is.

It’s the Kyl bill that smokes my tobaccy. There are NO laws against drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes in one’s own home – behaviors that have repeatedly proven to cause death – as in, people stop breathing and die and kill other people with their cars – yet, I can’t play internet poker for real money in my own home because it’s against the law and it might harm me. Tell me that makes sense. Triple-dog-dare ya. Well, you can’t, because it don’t. Er, doesn’t.

The real reason, as we all know, is the overarching, suffocating power of the political lobby. In other words: money makes the world go around. In still other words: let people kill themselves by smoking and drinking themselves to death, or by polluting their pathetic psyches with porn, because those are personal choices. But boyo – don’t go touching the banks. People who spend their credit card balances on gambling – now there’s a problem, folks. That’s a choice we are going to control. Because, you know, gambling kills more children than anything else in the world, and we must save the children from their parents.

Puh. Leez.

Either let the gander do what’s good for the goose, or leave everyone alone.

Fink out (because I gotta get ready for school now).

Do NOT go here…

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…unless you want to be late for work or school, or kept from what you’re supposed to be doing for the next 3 hours.

I’m not kidding. You’ll read and read and read until you’ve lost track of time as you know it.

Ok…but don’t say I didn’t warn you.*jeni.jpg

Did you know Richard Jeni was dead?? Coulda knocked me over with a feather. Remember him, from The Mask with Jim Carrey? As the story goes, one minute he’s talking with his wife about breakfast, the next….dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Wow.

And hey, fellow ’70s TV hounds…

duel.jpgRemember the western series Alias Smith and Jones? Which one – Smith or Jones – did you love more? (Hands down Smith for me.) And remember Pete Duel, the guy who played Joshua Smith? Did you know he committed suicide too? I knew he died years ago, but never knew it was with a .38 caliber…

*I hereby disclaim the strong language found in articles on findadeath.com‘s site, and state forthwith that the opinions expressed therein are not necessarily those of Yours Truly. (Gimme a break – my students read this blog, ok?)