Joining the Club
What has confounded me in blogging is that I can't figure how to get noticed. That's rather basic. I'm just stuck.
Now Google has gotten into my blogging business (however small). I love Google. Feel that they do smart things. Are a boon to the Web.
But I've spent a few hours just trying to sign in. I've been unknown. Someone else is me, so I can't sign in. I'm already known, so why am I trying to create an account?
These are some of the messages I received. And in the help section there is not one answer to my problem/question.
Obviously, after a few hours - and I just hate missing television - I somehow have logged on. Have no idea how or why.
This is all very embarrassing.
When I was 16, I worked at the same dairy as my father. I delivered milk to Jewish summer camps. The children came from Baltimore to Pennsylvania's Blue Ridge Mountains.
What was great about the job was two-fold: it got me in shape and it freed up my afternoons to sit at the Country Club pool and turn the darkest color of my life by roasting for hours every day. A day of rain rarely slowed me down. Lemon juice turned my hair surfer blond. I was quite a sight.
The Pool Club members were mostly actual members of the Country Club. You see, my parents did not belong, so I was really an outsider, permitted to join to help pay for the chlorine. The women and kids were all kind to me, but we all knew that I was not one of them.
Here we are again. Google is club that would welcome me, if I knew what I'm doing. (The metaphor is that I don't play golf.) So I have no idea how to get anyone to read a blog that I may write. Sometimes I really do have something to say. And say it rather well, I think. Well, I've been told.
I was invited by one of the owner's of a summer camp to serve up ice cream sundaes on one night. It was fun. The kids alternately devilish and adorable. This was an all girls camp.
The evening came to an end and one of the owner's, a Florida retiree type with teased red hair and an overly made-up, kind face approached me. She said they all wanted to thank you me for my entertaining presentation of the sundaes.
She said, "You may have a sundae."
It's not fun being on the outside looking in. Looking through the metal fence surrounding the pool. Being the Christian boy delivering milk for Jewish children. I just wasn't one of them. I felt, though, that in the city, they all may have felt like a minority, with all that it entails. They deserved six weeks in a spot that was theirs and where the milkman was an outsider.
Now I'm really standing on the outside of a chain fence looking inside at Google.
And I've tried to Google an answer to my problems to no avail.
Wouldn't it be a kick in the head, if ask.com has the answers?
But I won't swim in any other pool.
Shooting All The Wrong People
Today two of the idiots on Los Angeles' KFI radio dismissed the thought of gun control in relationship to the Virginia murder spree in the way one would brush away a gnat. Pesky issue, isn't it?
A president who makes gay marriage an issue, but ignores the real issue of gun control had no place in Virginia today. And a hell of a nerve to show up and say that life will return to normal. Tantamount to saying, "You'll get over it!"
The people at Virginia Tech and the people of the United States will never get over the administration of a twisted, stupid man who thinks that two men in a sexual relationship are more dangerous than a crazy person with a gun. The two guys in bed should have bought him off, too.
Sure Footing
Early May was my last post. I don't believe anyone has been dying for more, but here I am.
The months since May constituted my recovery time from serious foot surgery. Some people's hips go, some people's knees. My foot. And all those tiny bones and formerly shredded tendons take a long, long time to heal. My medical status is of so little interest to anyone except me that I'll say only that many months is a long time in bed.
Now I'm having physical therapy, but am not able to walk yet. I will, however.
In the meantime I did something rather terrible to a very kind friend the other day. I think I've grown bitter, because most people who know considerably less than I do about the creative arts are making big money. And I'm not. An oft told tale.
My friend, who was once a wonderful, one-of-a-kind boss at Disney, has had a difficult time replacing the job he once held there. Finally, he came up with a good match. Company creates modern sell ideas. Modern. See, that's good (also my definition of what the company does). Contemporary constitutes current ideas. Modern can jump ahead and that's the definition of good creative.
Anyhow, I congratulated my friend and, then, without skipping a beat, slammed the company's Web site. That's cold, man. Especially considering how long he has looked for this job. And what his life has been like since Disney. I did a terrible thing. Writing this I realize that I'm going to have to apologize. I can't expect my ill behavior easily to be forgotten. And only a letter will do. No email.
Oprah's journal page this month asks us about our youthful dreams. How did they turn out. Here comes the source of my bitterness. (No excuses.) I thought I would be a star. It was a given. Also I am a great actor, so the star - not the real point - would just come along with my talent.
Guess what? I became a copywriter, a whore. Ultimately, thanks to my friend at Disney, I wrote a few scripts. But Page 6. Well, you haven't seen my name there. Liza does not have my picture on her piano. No one does as far as I know.
Now my lack of money and the wealth of everyday problems that creates has made me, sadly, bitter. I'm trying to take enough anti-depressants - got off schedule while I've been confined; even told my shrink I thought I didn't need the medication anymore: I'm an idiot - but can't seem to get back on track. Maybe the track's gone. Possible. I'm going to write a letter now.
Dreams. If they get away, you become bitter and hurt the few people who don't care that you didn't become a star. I did without realizing it, 'til this week.
Watching A Little TV
The Alamo is the only movie he can find to watch, because it's nearly 3am. For some time now he has been on the Judy Garland schedule: Still up (for anything) at 4am, but incoherent until afternoon. General Hospital is the beginning of his day. Jason and Sam(antha) are hope for him. Unless the writers cannot bear that little happiness anymore.
Gloria Monty, who saved the show from cancellation when she was brought back as producer after a hiatus, died shorty before the Daytime Emmys were presented in prime time this year. Tears fell from his eyes at the announcement of her death even though he knew what a ballbuster she must have been. He knew she must have had cancer before he read her obit in Variety. All that pent up anger. But she made it to 87, shaking her hand at God, he imagined.
He is very sick, keeping that information to a few, but allowing more in. It may be all the medication he takes every day that keeps him awake for most hours of a day and night.
He is undergoing surgery only next week, with a dread that the anesthesiologist won't be able to knock him out without stopping his heart. Death by torn tendon and bone graft. The surgery is in part the result of wearing Italian driving shoes ($400 Tod's) that have absolutely no support. Still, without those shoes he totalled his Corvette and smashed the BMW that followed twice - all in one year. This all is what's known as a conundrum, huh? Great shoes. Smashed up cars. Oh, well.
Santa Ana is testing the strength of the Americans in the Alamo, sure that the massive troops he has assembled will destroy, will kill all the men, women, and children waiting for Sam Houston to arrive. A salvation that will not come. Sam Houston is a Texas hero, though. Wouldn't you know? Well, he didn't save Jim Bowie and Davey Crocket. Actual, real heroes.
He thinks that is the way of it. Death comes to those who wait, he thinks, tonight. Who have time to think back. And pray. And drink some whiskey, waiting for Sam Houston.
He watches his dog, asleep because this night is just too long. And he waits for something or someone who probably will not come. Unless the writers change their minds.
Recovery
My shrink is the smartest person I know.
My twenty-some years as his patient does not indicate that he couldn't "cure" me; rather he has managed to keep straw in a scarecrow to prevent his going up in flames.
I digress. He and I talk about the horror of high school for me and the end of Western civilization. There is nothing we miss. At least this week.
Speaking of...while I have stumbled around with the tussle of Mexican immigration, he led me to a single solution that seems to be the beginning and the end. (I told you.)
Who are the most culpable in the morass and who could end the flow of these troubled immigrants tomorrow? I'll ask one more questioin before hitting the answer dead center. Why are Mexicans willing to chance their lives to get across that damn border? Jobs. The little money they earn here and send back home is the only solution to their plight available to them. If they could not get jobs, the fracas would be all over.
The people who should be arrested and punished in such a way as to lose their way of life are the people who grab illegals in order to pay slave wages. If there were no jobs, everything is solved in a minute.
These employers, however, belong to a club that allows them to act and move without consequence. Unless you consider a Bentley a consequence.
For a moment I stupidly thought the INS should work its way through the rallies, putting on buses everyone without a passport or any of the other proofs that say we belong to or in (who knows?) America.
Wrong.
The INS needs to go up and down Rodeo Drive and Camden and Beverly, the flats are a good place you know, and pull onto buses the women who have already been pulled, who have in their kitchens undocumented aliens. And, too, the factory owners. And the restauranteurs. Well, you know who you are!!! And throw away the key. And the fines. Oh, the fines would be outlandish. Ruin them. The INS can become the biggest and most frightening agency in government. Suddenly, it would not be Mexicans jumping out of windows. It would be powdered and fragranced matrons. Can you see Betsy Bloomingdale diving from the second floor? Oh, my Goodness, this is effective and worth a reality show.
In a few weeks I will check into Santa Monica Hospital to have a ligament in my leg, a ligament that is torn in four places, repaired. Soft tissue takes an inordinate amount of time to heal and I will be confined, as they say, for three to six months. Crutches. Probably won't be able to use them. I'm somewhat scared, I'll tell you. But perhaps, little by little, I'll make it back, never to go running again, however. Well, that was one of the factors that got me into this mess.
So there's a lot to consider. A lot of possible problems. My friend Jeannine will think I should heal faster, because her hip did. It's hard to separate apples and oranges for people sometimes.
Of course, a Mexican could to that for me, huh? But I promise you this: he will be documented.
My ligament and the immigration nightmare still have a chance for a happy ending. But that will take the best doctors (legislators), patience, adherence to rules, and, as I say, three to six months.
Plus a shrink who knows everything.
I'm Comin', I Hope and Pray I'm Not too Late...
If you're planning to come to the United States illegally, I certainly hope you're way to late, terrorism and Southern California's maid service withstanding.
Our cities are bursting with citizens living below the poverty line whom we can't or won't help. The thought of adding more people to the rolls of those receiving medical care, food stamps, disability benefits, schooling for children whose parents pay no income or property taxes is terrifying.
If I hear one more person say what hard workers Mexicans and Central American Latins are, I'm joining the border patrol and hope that the government arms me.
If you live in Southern Cal and have had the tree in your front yard trimmed, your roof repaired, or your living room painted, you know this: the illegal immigrants in question may be less hard working than other groups, simply because they have not been trained to do their jobs properly and so slack off out of frustration. Employers who use illegal immigrants in the hope of paying immoral wages to build a business on the backs of people whom no one else will hire should be told to leave the country, too. They certainly are not displaying any of the values a naturalized alien learns on his way to becoming an American citizen. "Do it cheap, do it on the fly, do it under the radar, and don't do it well" are hardly part of any American ethic I've come across.
Of all the ridiculous reasons I've heard for allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the United States, the following is the most absurd, galling me that anyone would be stupid enough to make it. When confronted with the question of Mexico's economy, which can't support its people, the answer comes flying back that it would take twenty years to create a robust economy in Mexico. Putting aside that Mexico has not created a working economy in the past two hundred years, would not the most junior of economists suggest that Mexico begin that twenty year climb to self-sufficiency this very day? Otherwise, in twenty years, it will take twenty years to build the Mexican economy. Could that debate be more specious? Or maddening?
In a second I will be labeled a bigot for two crude suppositions too broad to be taken entirely seriously. To that I can only say, "Bite me!"
Under autocracy, monarchy, communism and, now to some extent free enterprise Russians have been able to create only peasant and landed (full of money) classes. It appears, so it will always be. So Russians, hearty and hardened by their past, come to America and see that we are a bunch of fools ripe for the picking. And so, the Russian Mafia. More violent and souless than anything Don Corleone would have imagined. A hit here or there. Prostitution. Drugs. But, generally speaking, the Italian Mafia doesn't blow up district attorneys or little children who may have witnessed one of their bloody crimes. These Russians don't even attempt an honest life. The other is just too simple.
And for the Mexicans it is just too simple to cross the border illegally, strip this country as they may, ruin the lemon tree in your front yard, and send money home - hardly a boon to our economy.
More than any argument, though, is this honest one: there are Mexicans who enter this country legally and take every step to citizenship, including mastering the English language. (In Southern California someone raises the question of a bilingual education system daily. Why for God's sake? Ah, to school [notice I did not use the word educate] the children of illegal aliens.) We cannot slap the faces of those people who have worked to become Americans and done so legally. That would be, in a word, immoral. Returning people who have done everything possible to undermine the processes of naturalization and citizenship is not. Is not. Period. Exclamation point!
The next time you see a photograph of a Mexican child with big brown eyes that warm your heart, hope that his parents or grandparents came to this country legally to make him part of the American fabric.
Crippled
In a few days I will enter the medical center at UCLA, so that my surgeon can repair a tendon torn in four places by a lifetime of stress. I will not be able to walk for at least five months. I am not looking forward to this.
I, of course, am now forced to think about crippled minds and you know where that will take me. It seems that George Bush doesn't like the man elected in his democratic election in Iraq. While the concept of democracy in Iraq is itself the thinking of a jackass, he sems now to have lost his mind completely by decrying the results of the elections.
Perhaps he thinks the elections were rigged, since they were guided by Republicans. Of course, the Iraqis had only voting machines to rig. They do not have a Supreme Court to uphold their clear deceptions.
I give Al Gore a lot of credit. He slipped out of public life quietly, when he witnessed the death of democracy. He knew all was lost. Why make a fool of himself as John Kerry has? I believe that screwball envisions himself as a viable candidate for the presidency. One more jackass.
I opened up tonight for one reason only. The obvious. The immutable. The most important point to be made of our presence in Iraq. I am probably mistaken in thinking that no one makes this point - at least not every day as it should be made - but it is so simple and I do not hear it. For 5,000 years (jump in here to correct me, archeologists) the part of the world that is now Iraq has known two forms of government. And only two. Autocrcracy and Theocracy. Rule by one man (this is the land of Muhammad) or by religion (ditto).
Enter George Bush. The reformed drunk who has lost more brain cells than he could afford is going to bring democracy to Iraq and to the world. The hubris of his thinking and actions is beneath contempt. With one stroke he felt he could change 5,000 years of history.
I always knew that the second we leave Iraq there would be Civil War - to create an autocracy or a theocracy. I must admit I was surprised that civil war erupted right in front of our faces. Bush, however, sees this only as a blip on his screen toward democracy.
So we have a president who killed a few centuries of democracy in this country, thinks he can change 5,000 years of history in Iraq, and is simply killing Americans and Iraqis each day in his mad belief and deception.
If there were any justice he would be held up for war crimes.
Finally, I'll take this opportunity to mention that the president's rant that Congress gave him the OK to go to war is a lie, pure and simple. Congress told him that, if it became necesaary to attack Iraq, it would provide the money in order to protect American interests and American lives. Skip one beat. George Bush attacks Iraq, saying that Congress - even Democrats - have voted to go to war. How long will you allow him this lie?
Today the president announced a new Chief of Staff. Oh, for God's sake!
I'm going to leave - put on your coats - with an unrelated thought. Quelle Suprise! (Correct my French, if necessary. I am not above being made the fool.) The immigration law coming out of Congress now must include that anyone who employs an illegal alien - don't you dare use the word immigrant - automatically goes to jail for two years. No public sevice, no early parole - two years. I suggest that you Beverly Hills matrons phone your hairdresser on his new phone cell right away.
