Category Blogging 101

The San Diego Zoo and Other Thoughts

Amy 8 Comments

imageAmerica swirls the drain. The world is run by criminals. I don’t know where I’m going creatively. Chipped nail polish. Age. Weight gain. Time pulls me to the grave. OK, that’s a drag of a thing to write. But I don’t know where I’m going creatively. I saw a monkey at the San Diego Zoo studying the feces on his hands. It fascinated him. Or he was pretending it fascinated him. He sat himself in front of the viewing glass, looked at all the people looking at him, and I swear to you, started playing with the feces on his hands to gross everyone out. He shared a habitat with the orangoutangs. The oldest one, the alpha. 42 years old. He looked like a sad version of Maurice from the Planet of the Apes movies. All of the animals in the zoo looked sad. Zoos are inhumane. The Reptile House was the saddest of them all. The reptiles lay tangled in small cages, pressed against the furthest corners or hiding altogether. Nobody likes to be watched for a living.

Except the penguins. They were having a ball. But they’ve only been there since June. Everything is new. They swam happily and played joyfully bumping up against the reinforced glass as children banged their little fists and adults dangled bracelets the penguins tried to catch. I wondered if they would tire and grow as jaded as the other animals.

In the Panda Exhibit the youngest panda went out of his way to defecate at the crowd. He came out from where he ate and sat on the closest branch with his back to the crowd, urinated and defecated, then returned to his place near his enclosure.

In spite of these things, there were a few magical moments. A male gazelle approached me where I stood and stared at me while he ate from a tree. It was strange and wonderful. Not many people watch the gazelles. But they seemed as smart as they were graceful, muscles on top of muscles moved over sinewy limbs. A baby was born only two hours prior. I couldn’t see it, but just knowing it was there was cool.

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It made me appreciate and respect my animals more. My cats aren’t human babies and I think I do them a great disservice when I treat them that way. Nevertheless, we’ve been together nearly 15 years. When I returned home they greeted me at the door and followed me from room to room. Chloe, my calico, waited at my feet until I picked her up. She’s always done that. When her head was bigger than her body I remember looking down at her little face when she was eight weeks old as she waited to be held. My husband read somewhere that domestic cats remain in a perpetual state of kitten-hood. As I sit Charlie, my orange male cat sleeps, paw stretched out pressed against my leg. He often sleeps that way. So, it’s hard not to think they’re not human. Or human-like. Or that they have achieved some kind of sentience through our relationship to them.

I don’t know. This is where it ends today. I don’t know where I’m going creatively. I’ve written a web series I will produce this fall. Stay tuned for that. I’m working on a feature, or a play. I’m not sure what it is yet. It seems to be a hybrid. I guess those are things. I just haven’t written in them in a week. And I have no way of knowing if they’ll ever see the light of day. But, build it and they will come, yeah? Yeah. Otherwise, there’s nothing.

I’m a depressive by nature. I can’t help but feel as if we’re all doomed. Aren’t we? Doesn’t it all prove out? I have to shake this off. Today I drive to the City of Industry for a gig where I have to look ten years younger and act even younger than that. Beauty and youth are commerce in my line of work. You never go looking how you feel. I’ve seen the girls who do that. There are a lot of them actually. I don’t know if they know that when they don’t wash their hair, or finish their makeup, or where clean black, they look like they feel. They look like I feel.

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Kitty in jail

Do you know where the City of Industry is? I’d never even heard of it. It sounds terrible. City of Industry, like a place for car dealerships and massive pharmaceutical complexes. Aren’t those the only industries that make legit money anymore? I used to work for a company that shot talking head videos for pharmaceutical companies. They were inner-office video memos and training videos. That was 15 years ago. That industry is dead. The professional video servicing industry. It got replaced by college students with a camera and Final Cut Pro. Cheaper, faster, less is more.

I don’t know where I’m going creatively, see. I have this web series. I need to finish it, but it’s a comedy and I’m not feeling funny anymore. Or right now. And it’s probably not funny anyway. And what am I doing writing screenplays anyway? Well, everything else is harder. I just know how to do it well. I teach it. Did you know that? Yeah. I’m good at teaching it. I just figured I should finally do what I say. I know what I’m talking about. I don’t know. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, or even to read this, but I’m good at writing stuff. Maybe not today. But in order to write anything you often have to lower your standards just to get past the first sentence.

 

At 30,000 Feet

Amy 2 Comments

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At 30,000 feet, after the pilot announces cruising altitude and turns off the seat belt sign, people change. It’s a small shift, a quiet adjustment, intangible even to them.

In the 90’s and early 2000’s, before the proliferation of personal media devices, airlines showed outdated movies and cancelled television shows. You purchased your headphones for two dollars and plugged into the armrest to watch on a screen overhead, or one embedded in the seat in front of you. Movies like Hope Floats, Forces of Nature, He Said, She Said, television shows like Who’s the Boss, Charles In Charge, Full House, and when you were lucky, early episodes of Seinfeld, or Will and Grace. Anything cheap. There were a lot of commercials.

Those programs had a strange effect on many passengers.  People, otherwise hardened by life, cynical by nature, non-criers, sobbed during movies that once made them scoff. They laughed hard at out of date humor. And no one was more shocked than they. I heard a woman tell her story, a New Yorker who flew from L.A. and back again frequently. She sobbed during Pretty Woman and even harder at Notting Hill. She could not explain the mutation. A friend of hers, a man, confessed the same happened to him. Was it altitude? Was it something in the water? Was it that she was alone and allowed to just feel her feelings. Sort of, something like that last one. A psychologists explained it this way: Untethered from her life, her career and her relationships, her subconscious crept to the surface and found a crack through which to escape. I never experienced this. I’m a crier. And I definitely feel my feelings.

When I step on a plane and I’m headed somewhere I want to go, I experience relief. Unbound from my anxiety and frustrating jobs, I relax and sleep for hours, dreaming nothing. Typically my dreams are more fraught than my thoughts even on my best days. Winding through a maze of emotional IED’s, my psyche drags up the most desperate sludge. When I wake, yesterday’s anxieties are replaced by new ones, or old ones, they’re all on a loop. The last one I remember today fused my former church life with my current writing ambitions. The theist to the atheist as represented by two specific men in love with one another and not with me. Obvious, right? Unable to penetrate a career in any carnation (I once wanted a career in the church) I nibble on its crumbs, volunteering for nothing, while I languish in humiliating jobs.

On Saturday I worked a retail makeup event. I received a complaint. The big boss woman, alpha woman, confronted me about it in front of her client, the current client in my chair, and my co-workers. The complaint: The client approached me, wanted her makeup done because her artist cancelled on her at the last minute and she was going to her sister’s wedding. I was affable, we chatted genially. At the end of the application she seemed fine. She could have asked me to fix the problems.

However, the nature of the complaint isn’t important. Complaints happen and when they occur the bosses act like it’s the apocalypse. No one ever asks the employee what happened. I see it all the time. However, in 13 years, I haven’t seen a boss confront the employee in front of everyone. As I stood in shock, she said of the new client, “I need to see her when she’s done. You need to clean up all this fall out here and blend this out. There shouldn’t be any harsh lines.” Her voice boomed.  I nearly burst into tears. I wasn’t even half-way through the application. My client was embarrassed for me.  I went to the back, pulled myself together and made it through the rest of the day. I’ve been simmering since.

The way this alpha woman treated me felt like rubbing alcohol on an open wound.  Insult to injury because the day prior I had worked on an article about Wonder Woman for 17 hours then submitted it to a handful of publications. I felt it was strong and timely, something I never have time to write. I thought it had a good, no a great chance of getting published. Hours later the terrorist attacks in London occurred. Perhaps my article got lost? But I think it’s more likely that it wasn’t good enough, clear enough…something. These pubs are still posting essays on Wonder Woman. It earned 103.1 million at the box office this weekend.

When I worked in restaurants I cried all the time. I received bad tips and complaints. I was a pretty bad server. But I’m a good makeup artist. I haven’t received a complaint in years. I’m new with this company, they don’t know that and they don’t care. Anyway, it’s a bad omen. And here’s the thing. I don’t think I can recover from it. I hold onto things and they get bigger. I sort of revel in not forgiving, letting the anger grow into rage and the rage into hate. It makes me move. Otherwise I get too comfortable in uncomfortable places. And I want to move.

 

 

 

She could sell swampland to a frog

Amy 3 Comments

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She sold $1000 worth of makeup and brushes on the regular. This meant she got more hours than other freelancers. Her bosses loved her. Charming, pretty, forceful, but with a smile, she could sell swampland to a frog.

Except her sales carried hefty returns. Buyer’s remorse hit her clients hard. No matter. As a freelancer she’d be gone by the time the products came back and smack the associate, who rang her up, in the paycheck  The freelancer’s hourly did not depend on her returns, but on her perceived overall sales. In that arena no one circled her stratosphere.

You can’t be too honest in the retail cosmetics game. We’re all at war. War with one another, war with the client, war with our companies. The pressure to sell and sell hard creates a burden that stretches ethical boundaries. “Watch her and just do what she does,” my boss told me. I stood by the freelancer as she closed the sale. “Oh, no, no, no, you can’t just take one of these. You need them all if you want to look like this. Your husband will be amazed. You look 10 years younger.The brushes, the skin care, the makeup. It will last you a year. Two years. Here, I’ll give you gifts. It’ll be a great deal. If you come back and get them separately, you don’t get any gifts.” She spoke quickly without a breath and as the customer stood there in a daze, she threw as many free items into the bag as she could find and grabbed the client’s credit card.

Often, when the counter sold out of an item, she’d send the client out with a substitute just to make the sale. Tawny shadow gone? Sunny Blonde is close enough. Foundation number 32 sold out? 33 will do. Sub the Cola for Cocoa, New York Red for Moulin Rouge Red. She’ll never know the difference. The freelancer knew what we all know. If you’ve sold her hard on an item that’s perfect for her, it’s nearly impossible to swing her in another direction at the last minute.

It’s not the end of the world. It’s just makeup. So she doesn’t like it. So she decides it’s not right for her. So what it’s not exactly the right one. Maybe it will work out for her anyway.

Or maybe you’ve just lost her trust and her return business.

Don’t be naive, dear reader, corporations don’t care. All numbers and annual projections are based on perceived possibility. If this freelancer can sell $1000 in one sale, why can’t all of them do that? Who cares how. And so the pressure is on and the ones who figure out her secrets close in on her lead. Others who insist on honesty fall behind and eventually lose the race.

With online deals and internet beauty influencers cannibalizing sales, makeup corporations struggle to find their base. The ground shifts constantly. Anxiety flows downhill and picks up speed. By the time it reaches the makeup artists and sales associates it’s at a fever pitch. Sell, lie, lie, sell. Make the customer love you and it just doesn’t matter. I’ve been in this game a long time. There are times that you can do everything right and it just doesn’t play. Your bosses however will never believe it. A former boss stepped down and became a freelancer. She and I worked together one day. In confidence she said, “I’ve been sitting everybody down and people aren’t buying. I’m doing everything right!”

I shrugged. “Sometimes customers just don’t buy.” I wish all bosses would come down and work the floor.

More James Ellroy than La La Land

Amy 7 Comments

teacup-2325722_1280Everybody who lives in Los Angeles seems to love it. I have yet to meet an exception. Even my cynical friends confess their undying attachment to it. It’s their everlasting commitment to the Entertainment industry, that abusive boyfriend of careers. Good looking, arrogant, James Dean bad boy, aloof, yet occasionally interested, the Entertainment industry holds people in its spell. No matter how much it rejects them, they run back whenever it calls.

A town too small, yet too big. In love with itself yet too insecure to appreciate anything new borne from its womb. Unless an artist receives approval from New York or other competitors, she does not exist. Sounds like sour grapes, but it’s just an observation. Ask Mark Ruffalo. Nobody worked harder than he to get representation in this town, one man shows, dozens of mailings, tireless networking. Then he goes to New York, has one good show and L.A. clambers over itself to get to him. One agent asked him, “Where have you been? Why haven’t we heard of you?”

As any true narcissist, L.A. gazes upon itself in full loving adoration and calls anything the establishment does as good. The L.A. Times regularly bathes the L.A. Opera, the Mark Taper Forum, and The L.A. Philharmonic with glowing reviews. I often wonder if that dude even goes to see the shows. La La Land swept up awards not because it deserved to, but because it was a love letter to the industry.

Once, as I exited the freeway and stopped at the light I saw a young guy with long brown hair and a stoney expression. He held a sign that read, “Musician. Hate L.A. Trying to get out. Please help.” I don’t know how effective that was, but it was the only time I saw anyone openly admit to hating L.A..

I attended dozens of industry parties when I first arrived here nearly ten years ago. I found I had two things to offer, well one really, fucking. Gross, I know. But this is a gross city and I didn’t have a career or a body of work to offer anyone. Just a body. Once somebody assessed that I wasn’t important enough, sexy enough, or young enough to help them, they’d be on their way, eyes darting around the room, hunting.

I almost dated a gorgeous guy with a million dollar smile until I found out he lived in a bedroom in someone’s house so he could lease a brand new BMW and pay for acting and writing classes. He wasn’t even good.

That’s L.A..

Miranda Frum wrote a piece about how a hypnotist to the stars helped her quit smoking in The Daily Beast this week. She’s a model with a famous journalist father. Frum gets her opportunities the way most people in L.A. get them, nepotism and looks. Just read her pieces in The Beast and you’ll agree. It’s like Tom Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson. I read a piece of her’s in Vogue once and nearly fell asleep four sentences in. Writing isn’t easy folks. Take a course. Oh, but she did. I worked at a screenwriting training facility to the stars 12 years ago where she received private tutoring. Have you seen anything she’s written?

Frum loves L.A.. In the article she writes about cerulean skies and perfect cloudless days. The hypnotist charges $800 for an in person session. There’s the option to stream him online for $9.99. She chose the $9.99 option for obvious reasons, right? Because she doesn’t have $800 to spend on a single session, right? No, she chose it because she didn’t want to drive the 45 minutes from Hollywood to Santa Monica. In the end, however, she makes the drive and visits the dude and is now living a charmed smoke free life writing on her glorious balcony and drinking her Ayurvedic tea.

That’s L.A.

My L.A. is more James Ellroy than La La Land. “You hate it so much, why don’t you leave?” You ask. What’s the alternative, New York? I don’t know the answer. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. No, that’s not true. I want to be a writer. I just don’t know how to be it.

Satan, God, and a club called Medusa’s

Amy 16 Comments
Former site of Medusa's after it burnt down.

Following the fire, Medusa’s was no longer. In its place, an office building.

Unfinished business gets in your DNA. Like that guy from high school I almost loved, but feared. He symbolizes much of what I didn’t do and now regret. He’s in my dreams from time to time. Because I don’t do what it is I want to do. His ghost lingers over all I’ve let drift.

If I could go back I’d change…but what would I change? When would I change it? How far back do you go? Because you could go all the way back to childhood but you’d just end up accumulating different regrets. I’m obsessed with high school. I wasn’t popular, but I wore that like a badge. I knew it meant I was better, more artistic, smarter than the cheerleading uniforms bouncing through the hallways on a Friday afternoon before the pep rally. Pep rallies. A time my outcast friends and I used to troll for older boys and pass private notes like they were Pentagon secrets.

Until Satan and God and a club called Medusa’s. Before midnight on Saturdays it was a juice bar. After midnight, bouncers kicked underagers like me out. They kind of did. It really depended on whether they thought you were cute. Anyway, I didn’t like to drink. I just wanted to dance, and do things my parents feared. But my overactive guilt complex required absolution. I told my mother about the upside down crucifixes, gargoyles, and twisted angels hanging from the walls while The Sound of Music played ironically on a 20 foot screen overlooking the main dance floor. My mother grounded me for life. No, I’m serious. She grounded me until the age of 18 or until college, whichever came first. No phone. No television. No activities of any kind. Her one stipulation. Go to church. And as long as I did stuff with church kids, she’d allow me day passes.  She picked me up. She dropped me off. Until it became too inconvenient, then she let me drive myself. And by that time, I’d stepped fully into Stockholm Syndrome. Church became my life. Church kids. Church writing. Church membership. It lay the groundwork for my life. Every decision I made until the age of 29 shot out from the center of a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible.

I killed myself. Not to be overdramatic, but I think there’s a certain truth to it. I killed my potential. The person I almost became. The one Mr. Banacheck identified in our Cinema Studies class when I was a Sophomore. He wanted to mentor me. He saw that I had promise as a writer.  He was Jewish and secular. Two things my mother could not abide.

And now, more than 10 years after I shed the shackles of my faith I still feel too guilty to write freely. I went in the wrong direction, forged the wrong neural pathways. The ones I need do not exist. Writing in my voice feels much like learning a new language. In youth your brain moves freely to find its truth, like an amoeba shifting between poles. I sense my truth, but I can’t access it. What if it’s too weird? Too gross? Too overtly sexual? What if that makes me too broken? What if people see it and know my worst secrets? And judge me. What if it costs me work? When you’re young you don’t fear because you don’t know what to fear.

I dreamt about that boy last night. He lives in my basement and he loves me, desperately. I’m dating someone else. A safe boy. A church boy named Jim. He actually existed. Jim was Tracy’s boyfriend for four years. We thought they’d marry. They were the most popular couple in the group. Athletic. Good looking. Fun. In my dream I am Tracy. I mean I’m me, but I play Tracy. I long for this other boy living in my parent’s basement. My mother refuses to let me see him. Until I tell her she cannot stop me because I am a grown woman. She realizes I am 18 and her spell breaks. I descend the stairs and say to the boy, “I love you. I will always love you. I’m breaking up with Jim, just give me time.”

“You’re so confusing,” he says. “You East Coast girls are so confusing to us on the West Coast.” This is a dream statement. He and I both lived in the Midwest. We spend the rest of the dream in a push-me pull-you state. Much like the actual dynamic in our high school days. I did love him. As much as a kid can love another when she barely knows herself. But knowing myself now I know that I never loved any other until I met my husband. This particular boy haunts my dreams because he was the last significant contact I had with my authentic self before I got lost in the forest of faith.

Our identities are shaped by the people we love. Entire selves emerge from the fires of our deepest connections. The people I loved, the men I knew all had to do with a false self, a supposed self, a self created for safety’s sake.

Most of the time I don’t think about this boy. Actually, I don’t think of him at all in my waking hours. But in sleep he visits to find resolution and I wake aware that resolution never comes.

Ruminations on the Why of It

Amy 6 Comments

TCRiggs wrote a response to my last post I thought worth sharing. A personal essayist struggling to find her voice might find the following interesting. The essential question, “How much time does one give a thing before it’s safe to write about it?” 20 years? Perhaps. She also suggests perhaps turning to fiction. She keeps a level of anonymity on her blog.

But what if it’s too late for that? What if the damage is done? I mean essential damage? That’s what I’ve done. I’m really good at tearing down the foundation of a thing. Exceptional at destruction. Here’s my response to her:

Anonymity is good. Fiction even better. But I’m working on a brand and it conflicts with every area of my working life. I write to a small subset and write myself out of others. I’ve struggled with this and for decades I haven’t written at all, working for little to no money in other industries and profoundly frustrated. Unable to construct a sentence. I’m unsure of the connection between them, why must one exist to the exclusion of the other?

But it was when I started to write those things closest to me that I found words again. Much to the detriment of many things. I don’t want to. I don’t try to. But when I stop, then I stop writing.

My heroes are the rebels and the cynics. I’ve always felt that cynicism is thinly veiled hope. A cynic sees the world for what it is, but knows its potential for more. A glutton for punishment, she never stops hoping even when things are at their worst.

When I read Hunter Thompson’s, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, it unfastened a latch within me. I recognized something in his writing, a thing that felt like me. Not in the subject, not in the content, but in the how of it. In the rage of it. And in the self-awareness of it. There’s beauty in his disgust and self-knowledge. In the last sentence of that essay he recognizes that he and his subjects are one. They disgust him as he disgusts himself. He never judged himself for it. I judge myself for everything. So on the page, I fight for his courage.

There are others who inspire me now, but it was Hunter Thompson who taught me to trust my voice. I’m somewhat transgender in my writing. My voice sounds like a man’s. A friend once told me that, and he didn’t mean it to flatter. But I don’t mind anymore. Except that the world still wants girls to sound like girls.

There is always luck in success and Thompson was the writer for his time.  I’ve been mining the depths of my life and I cannot find it. That thing that makes me unique. That thing that people want.

As for making money in the meantime, there are many things I’m good at, but one thing I want to do more. And when it’s in opposition to those other things, it creates constant tension. I’m looking for work, I’m not writing. I’m writing, I’m not able to find work because of what I’m writing. Now it’s all out there. It was unwise. It was unrealistic. It was perhaps, wishful thinking to imagine I could give the finger to the man and expect the man to give me a paycheck.

Since this exists on the internet, I have to find sympathetic employers who can see what I do and value it, not fear it. Whether or not I meant to, I created this. The secret will is a powerful thing. And so is the Internet. I’m deep into it now.

One Potent Mash Up

Amy 8 Comments

Go for the jugular or don’t go at all. If you don’t write from the gut, then what’s the point? Losing friends, family members, jobs, means you’re on the correct path. But you better be right, even when you make mistakes. It better be true. If it’s not. If it’s made up. If it’s cruel for cruelty’s sake or to make yourself look good, then you don’t deserve the title of writer.

But I’m not a journalist. I don’t have the stomach for it. My facts are subjective, therefore opinions. Listen, I don’t write to smear. My observations are just that, conclusions strung together on a clothesline  of experiences.

You should deduce from that that I’m a coward. I don’t fact check or interview sources. I vomit my positions onto the page and press,”publish,” without a second thought. Until about 24 hours later when, like Colonel Nicholson in Bridge Over the River Kwai, I think, What have I done? I had to remove another post. This time it was a judgement call and not a corporate directive. Social media is a bit like walking into an interview and spilling your guts to a future employer about everything you hated about your last job.

I don’t know. I don’t know why I had to do it. To write that. To lash out with my words. Because they’re good words when they’re close words, yes? The closer they are, the bloodier they flow. Because no one cares about bloodless words. They want a murder scene, carnage. They want assassinations carried out by the person who cares the most. The one who will stab 27 times. Overkill.

That’s me. That’s what I do. That’s what I want. To hurt. I think. Because I hurt. And you hurt me. And don’t you deserve it for being cruel and stupid? I’m smarter. That’s my weapon. And I hold a grudge. Until I don’t. And then I toss  your body into the river. I won’t even watch you go.

And for what? For who? I don’t know what I serve. Because I’m not serving myself. Jesus, let it go, Amy. Because I can’t. I just can’t. Not until I write it and not until someone reads it. And honestly, I don’t want the subjects of my ire to read it. I don’t want anyone who misunderstands the point to read it. The point that it’s about the writing less so the subject. Don’t listen to what I say, but how I say it. It’s the words that matter. Yes, the subject. Of course the subject. But we all say the same things. We just don’t say it in the same ways. And it’s the ways of saying things that matter to me. That’s the skill. That’s the craft of writing.

I wrote something and I lost a family member. Snip, in one essay, snap. That was a clean break. It’s one I think of nearly everyday. Turn it over, study it. Wonder if it was worth it. Ask myself again and again, Why? Why did I write something like that? Couldn’t I have left some things out. Just at the beginning. Just those few sentences. Everything would be so different.

That’s right. Everything.

But if you’re going to tell the truth, even when you make a mistake, you better be right. And I was right. But do you want to be right, or do you want a normal life with family and friends and frustrating jobs filled with secrets and shadows and unspoken wounds. Why not? It’s what everyone else has. Social constructs hang in the balance. Why would anyone in their right mind rip that apart? No really?

The written word is not the spoken word and the Internet is forever….But I gotta tell you, full disclosure, I’m glad that it is. It is my fail safe against my own remorse because my biggest regrets are when I must hide behind an anonymous curtain. I wrote several pieces for Salon that had to be published anonymously. The editors and lawyers decided it was best. No one wants to be a Rolling Stone. I don’t want to be a Jackie. But I’m not a Jackie. I tell the truth.

I want to write about it. I am never as good a writer as when I am spitting with rage. And when I write something I know is particularly imprudent, I want to keep it up.

But we live in a society for a reason. There are rules. And my rage along with this blog, a potent mash up for sure, could be my undoing. So best to keep it all under raps. And so here I go, back underwater. Perhaps an Ophelia, or just dumb doll, I’ll ride the tides and I may not emerge.

Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t you dare.

 

 

La La Land and The Slaves Who Drank to Forget

Amy 9 Comments

Meryl Streep bared her soul while excoriating Donald Trump at the Golden Globes Sunday, January 8th when she received a lifetime achievement award. La La Land, the musical film starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling won seven Golden Globes that night, the most of any film in the history of the Golden Globes.

Streep represents why I came to L.A.: to make a difference, to tell stories that convey something, to find meaning in my work. I soon found out that anyone who’s making art is funding it themselves. Art is poverty. La La Land is business: massive, gorgeous, fun, and thin.

But even as Streep nearly wept for the country from her place on stage, The Globes, as all awards shows, speak for themselves.  Hollywood values entertainment more than truth. La La Land, a love letter to L.A. celebrates, as the L.A. Times observed, “the one thing Hollywood loves, itself.”  Hollywood blusters and preens. It spends sums of money that rival the GDP of most countries on films about nothing. It’s a business that serves, quite self-consciously, as an opioid to the masses, which the masses consume with vigor.

And on the sixth day the slave drank to forget

Slave owners gave their slaves one day off a week. On that day the owner supplied the slave all the alcohol he wanted. In this way, the owner correctly concluded, the slave imprisoned himself. If a slave didn’t have time to think about his plight, he might not develop the imagination to escape it.

I always think about the slave owner and the slave whenever I see billboards advertising movies like La La Land. Inoculate the masses so they don’t develop the imagination to demand movies that feature real life heroes, people who truly inspire the working class to believe in themselves and take back the houses, jobs, and savings they’ve lost. Manchester By The Sea stars a troubled Casey Affleck who’s lost everything. I loved this film. It won one award: Best Actor.

Andy Cohen, architect of the Housewive’s franchise and arguably the father of reality television, told the New York Times he didn’t make people want what he produced, he just gave them what they wanted before they knew they wanted it. He predicted Donald Trump’s win. He understood what Donald Trump knows, entertain the people and they enslave themselves to your programming.

Deep Talk and Shallow Tales

A large portion of the country feels movies and journalism are connected. They feel both enterprises engage in a dance to hypnotize and deceive the country. And that’s not not true. Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen are on tour right now. A mere 330 bucks gets you front and center for,  “AC2: An Intimate Evening with Anderson Cooper & Andy Cohen—Deep Talk and Shallow Tales.” What’s more, when news anchors, like Cooper, get paid tens of millions a year, they’re no longer journalists. They’ve sold their souls to the same gods who employ men like Cohen.

I see a different connection between Hollywood and journalism: both have the opportunity to tell the truth, one with facts, one with art.

Journalism began as a way to reveal to voters what politicians did behind closed doors. It’s why politicians hate them and work tirelessly to turn the population against them. Beware of the politicians who rail against journalists the loudest. They’ve got the most to hide. Republicans have been campaigning since Nixon to get the population to turn on journalists. They’ve won. And here we are, with a president who promises to undo journalism itself.

No one is listening. People barely care. They’d rather not think. Because if they did they’d have to turn off The Real Housewives to read things, understand that not all politicians lie, facts are not biased, and there are journalists, Senators, and brave Congressmen and women who want to lead this country, who have a vision to restore it. But they can do nothing without us. They cannot stand against the tidal wave of corruption, naked power, and obscene wealth sitting in highest seats of power. We are facing the final blow to democracy, rule by oligarchy. And we just voted our favorite reality TV star into office.

Fiction Friday- Kiss The Kitties Episode II, William The Orange

Amy 4 Comments

Welcome back to Fiction Friday. Each Friday I’ll be releasing another short episode introducing each of the characters. Once you’ve met each cast member, the story will unfold…

If you want to catch up, here’s the first episode: Kiss The Kitties Episode I

Tough, orange, and angry William roamed the Los Angeles city streets and ate out of dumpsters. He had his pick of the best. The dumpster behind In n’ Out burger on 3rd offered a five star feast. Humans swarmed In N’ Out, but its dumpster sat behind a tall, heavy, brown fence with spikes, so William was free to roam among the steaming meat patties piled high without the interference of human eyes. The Southern California sun kept the meat hot and fragrant throughout the night as he gorged himself by the glow of the red and yellow neon sign. Roaches didn’t bother him, but other tomcats did. When they came sniffing, he’d scratch their damn eyes out. Those fights were bloody. He lost his own eye in one, but you shoulda the other guy. Anyway, it was worth it. Every night he brought a new date and it was cool if she had some friends. He partied hard and slept all day. He ruled.

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But that all changed a few nights ago when a big white windowless van rolled up and stopped right in front of the dumpster.  Humans jumped out and caught the girls. William escaped, but only narrowly. Since then white vans patrolled the neighborhoods and dumpsters were traps. Whoever was in charge of this operation was more focused and better adept at catching cats than any human he’d ever seen. William wondered if maybe they were cats, bigger, faster, human cats. A whole battalion of them.  He’d heard of that, but everyone thought it was just legend.

He partied hard and slept all day. He ruled.

A week passed. William was starving. He hadn’t eaten much beyond what bugs he caught. One of the girls he used to hang with once told him there were some humans who fed the wanderers and freedom fighters (that’s what they called themselves on account of being free) in an apartment building nearby. He hated humans, hated their food, hated their big hands and their teeth. They looked like aliens with their round eyes and furless arms. What was that about? But his stomach groaned and his ribs jutted out like razors from his flanks. He’d just slink over to that there apartment complex and see what was up. Maybe, if there was some food around, he could grab some when no one was looking. Get in, get out. That was always his motto. He was the king of slink, which is why he hadn’t been caught, or poisoned. Oh yeah, that’s right. His hunger clouded his reason. Humans poisoned cats. He’d seen that horror more than once. He didn’t care for most cats, but it’s terrifying to come across corpses scattered within a 20 foot radius of human dwellings.

He’d have to hunt, a disgusting last resort. Rats carried diseases and tasted like butt. Nevertheless, as I said, he was starving. A horde of rats lived below the city and carried out their complex business pursuits in the subways. There were the Orange, Yellow, Red, and Blue lines that criss crossed the city, not with any kind of efficiency, mind you, but that was a human problem. The Orange line was a good place to start. As night fell, William descended the stained and dusty pavement steps that led down into the raging tunnels. The rush of the trains terrified him. His nerves were on edge. He trembled. But hunger drove him forward. Remember, king of slink. He told himself. You’re invisible.  But to who and to what exactly William did not know, and that was the problem. These walls had eyes. And fangs.

Rats carried diseases and tasted like butt.

A homeless human groaned out his sorrows. He hit is paws on a big black box with white teeth. It made such an awful howl he didn’t see the massive black Rottweiler sitting next to the man. The dog jumped up and barked wildly at William, his fangs dripped with starvation’s saliva. William leapt in the opposite direction without looking and flew down a tunnel. It brought him directly on top of a rat’s nest. Pandamonium. Screaming. Rat apocalypse. William scrambled to catch and grab. Rats ran and screeched. The babies. Go for the babies. They’re clean fresh and easy to carry.  He snatched up several at lightning speed, some died, some didn’t and as he turned to carry the bloody squirming mess out of the subway, he realized to his horror, he had no idea where to go. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, but no whiff of fresh air, no scent from the outside came to greet his nostrils. The place smelled of rat feces and human filth.

tunnel-22198_1280And now he could hear the swarm. Legions upon legions of rats formed a wall behind him. Idiot. Amateur. His dumpster diving made him soft. He’d forgotten how to hunt. You don’t attack a rat on his territory. You hunt, identify your prey, stalk it and when it’s away from the group, you spring. He was surrounded. The rats hissed. They planned to tear him to shreds. He dropped his booty of dead and near dead babies and looked up, the only way out. Rats cannot jump. They could climb. Could he make it in time?  How high was that man hole grate? The rats advanced. He heard a drum beat in the distance, smelled wrath on their hot breath. He took what few feet he had left and sprang into he air just as the rats closed in. He strained toward the grate with every last molecule of his little being. There! Success, but barely. His claws saved him. Razor sharp and long he clung just by their strength. William hoisted his whole body up, but he couldn’t fit through the spaces in the grate. Despite how thin he was, it wasn’t enough. The rats streamed up the sides of the wall.

Just then, a voice. “Ah ha!” A white, hairless human arm yanked up the grate and pulled William by the scruff of the neck. “Got you! I’ve been looking for you for weeks, you little dumpster scum. Yeah, you. You used to eat from the In N’ Out over there on 3rd street. You didn’t think I’d forget you, did I?” The arm belonged to a massive human male with bulging eyes and bald head. His breath smelled like rancid fish (incidentally William hated fish.) “You’ve gotten skinny. Thought you mighta died out here.” He spit a gray splat of mucous on the ground. “Sure glad ya didn’t. I got plans for you, tough guy.” Then he laughed a wicked, joyless laugh and threw William into a cage in the back of his white van and slammed the door.

 

 

 

 

For cosmetics workers, of one retailer, there will be no Merry in Christmas this year

Amy 9 Comments

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Hundreds of cosmetics employees, of one high-end retailer, arrived at work today and discovered they couldn’t afford Christmas for their families this year. Their hours had been cut by 25 percent. They were not given a reason.

According to one source, management reported that all cosmetic retailers nationwide were slashing hours. Maybe.  But maybe this retailer wants to ensure employees don’t jump ship to a competitor during the busyiest time of year.

Exactly. So why cut hours? Doesn’t it make more sense to have all hands on deck? Why reduce at a time when it inevitably means customers will receive poor service?

But those aren’t the questions corporations ask.  There’s no room for human beings here. Not customers. Not employees. Instead, it’s about corporate greed. Or as this corporation might like to think of it, cutting overhead.  Employees are your highest overhead. Cut your overhead, increase your assets. It’s as old as slavery and as new as overseas outsourcing.

If single mothers, of this retailer, planned to buy those light up kicks Tommy wants or the Hatchimals Egg Jenny desires, they’re now worrying how to keep the heat on for Christmas.

There are very few benefits to working in retail, particularly in retail cosmetics. The customers are demanding, entitled, impatient and even  abusive. Fellow co-workers are petty, back-biting, bitter and mean. The period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s brings some reprieve. While customers can be more difficult this time of year, longer hours means larger sales, leading to beefy commission checks. Instead, this year, employees of this luxe retailer must piece together their paid time off just to keep their health insurance.

While customers binge on bespoke lipstick collections encased in leather, employees scrape out the balances on their credit cards to pay rent. “How do people survive working here?” One asked. “My credit card has a bigger balance than my bank account and I don’t buy anything.” She’s still relatively new to retail. As one who has worked for major retailers on and off for thirteen years now, I’ve never known anything else. “People don’t survive,” I said. “They get other jobs.”

Corporations make money when employees make less. Because this retailer can’t move its stores to Mexico, they do the next best thing. Cut hours. Each year they’ve been cutting more. Employees hired at full time now work part-time when they don’t make their goals for the week. “When you make your goals, you’ll get your hours back.” Management says. Employees were notified, in a recent email, that health benefits are earned not given.

So when you go to get your makeup at a department store, have a little patience. Imagine how the girls behind the counter feel. A little empathy will go a long way this Christmas. Oh, and if they do your makeup for your holiday parties, tip them. Even if they say no. Tip them. Shove it under the mirror next to your seat. Stuff it in their hands when no one’s looking. They’re not supposed to accept it, but my guess is, they will now. It may mean they can pay for lunch that day.