Unused Creativity Becomes Toxic

So, my friend Rikki set me up with this lady by a few piercing quotes and I've been hooked ever since. This is a long interview, and far-reaching, but even if you have just ten minutes or so I say she's worth a gander. Groudbreaking points --- and not just one chick blathering, but the result of extensive research. It makes me thankful for the music teachers, hippies and counselors who cross(ed) my path.

Will return November 1

The neighbor's Lhasa Apso comes over like clockwork most nights at 10:30 p.m. My husband always lets him in.

Today our friend Jeff returned to the sacraments after forty years away. Confession. Holy Mass. He said it felt too easy. Isn't mercy, if we've hidden from it, often like that? I'm restored to grace, through none of my own power?

The best working definition of the nature of evil I've heard goes something like, "Evil is the voice that tells you before you do something, that it's no big deal --- but the instant you do it, Evil tells you that same thing is unforgivable." I wonder if there's a parallel to virtue ~ does not Satan himself imply that certain pursuits are overwhelming, and then convict our efforts as falling short or being futile, in the flip of an instant?

How does the New Age prompt go --- "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"

The good news is, all men have fallen short of the glory of God. We're in good company!

I'm tired. Gotta push Junior out the door to finish his rounds around the bluff. Stupid little dog. :)

bite-sized excellence

{{over here}}

 

"I live in a school-warehouse-junkyard" décor ~ hah.

 

I do love Fall! bring it.

Kandinsky -- a nice girl's answer to the occasional yearning for L-S-D.

 

She makes me want better hair, among other things

...And I find it telling that my husband isn't impressed by these. Her loyalty, her verve, the elegance in private (by all accounts); in public, her dismissal of pretension and pride, refusing to be tempted by false humility --- I told him it's because he's just like her in those regards. When we learned of her recent death, we stood in the kitchen out of earshot from the kids and whispered our favorite jokes of hers from the '90s. Here's an '80s treasure.  (**update, Breitbart link)



Reading this gave context to her anger, which I sometimes found off-putting. I always loved her voice, literally and figuratively. Whatever else it might be, this is the kind of writer I aspire to be -- voice ringing so clearly. Can't you just hear her?

+++

Joan Rivers: Why Johnny Carson Never Ever Spoke to Me Again -- taken from The Hollywood Reporter

When I started out, a pretty girl did not go into comedy. If you saw a pretty girl walk into a nightclub, she was automatically a singer. Comedy was all white, older men. It was Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Shelley Berman, Red Skelton ... even Amos and Andy were white men, which is hilarious if you think about it.

Phyllis Diller was happening right before me. But even Phyllis was a caricature, and I didn’t want to be a caricature. I was a college graduate; I wanted to get married.
I didn’t even want to be a comedian. Nobody wanted to be a comedian. Nowadays, everyone wants to be a comedian. You look at a Whitney Cummings, who is so beautiful -- she wanted to be a comedian! I wanted to be an actress. I was an office temp when one secretary said to me: “You’re very funny. You should go do stand-up, be a comedian. They make $6 a night some places.” And I said, “That’s more than I’m making as an office temp” -- I made eight, but I had to also pay for my Correcto-Type because I was a lousy speller -- so I thought, “Oh, I could do that and have days free to make the rounds.” And that’s why I became a comedian.

I had no idea what I was doing. The white men were doing “mother-in-law” and “my wife’s so fat …” jokes. It was all interchangeable. Bob Hope would walk into a town and say, “The traffic lights in this town are so slow that ...” and it could be any town. When I went onstage, that just didn’t feel right. So I just said, “Let me talk about my life.” It was at the moment when Woody Allen was saying, “Let me talk about my life,” and George Carlin was saying, “Maybe I'll talk about my life.” So I came in at the right moment.

My group was Woody and George and Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. Rodney Dangerfield. Dick Cavett. All the ones who were coming up at the same time. But I never was one of the guys. I was never asked to go hang out; I never thought about it until later. They would all go to the Stage Delicatessen afterward and talk. I never got to go uptown and have a sandwich with them. So, even though I was with them, I wasn’t with them.

Everybody broke through ahead of me. I was the last one in the group to break through, or to be allowed to break through. Looking back, I think it was because I was a woman. Because in those days, they would come down to the Village and look at you for Johnny Carson. I was the very last one of the group they put on the Carson show.

I was brought up seven times to the Carson show -- interviewed and auditioned seven times by seven different people, and they rejected me, each time, over a period of three years. Then Bill Cosby was filling in, and the comedian that night bombed. Bill said to the booking producer, Shelly Schultz: “Joan Rivers couldn’t be any worse than this guy. Why don’t you use her?” And that’s when they put me on the show. But they didn’t bring me on as a stand-up comic. They brought me on as a funny girl writer. I’m the only stand-up that never did a stand-up routine on the Carson show.

Carson, give him credit, said on air in 1965, “You’re gonna be a star.” Right smack on the air.
I adored Johnny. In the ’70s, I did opening monologues, I was hosting. The turning point was when I left the show. Everybody left the show to go to do their own shows. Bill Cosby. David Brenner. George Carlin. Everybody. I stuck around for 18 years. And they finally offered me my own late-night show.

The first person I called was Johnny, and he hung up on me -- and never, ever spoke to me again. And then denied that I called him. I couldn’t figure it out. I would see him in a restaurant and go over and say hello. He wouldn’t talk to me.
I kept saying, “I don’t understand, why is he mad?” He was not angry at anybody else. I think he really felt because I was a woman that I just was his. That I wouldn’t leave him. I know this sounds very warped. But I don’t understand otherwise what was going on. For years, I thought that maybe he liked me better than the others. But I think it was a question of, “I found you, and you’re my property.” He didn’t like that as a woman, I went up against him.

And I was put up against him. In the press, he said, “She didn’t call me, and she was so terrible.” When you’ve told the truth and you read a lie, there’s nothing you can do about it. To this day, I’m very angry about that. Don’t f---in’ lie. You’re making, what, $300 million a year? What are you talking about? And I was going on Fox. Fox didn’t even have call letters at that point. Fox wasn’t Fox. Fox was six stupid little stations.

Looking back, and I never like to say it, the Carson breakup hurt me a lot, without realizing it. Even now, with our reality show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? or Fashion Police, when I say, “No, this is wrong,” people say: “See? She is a bitch. She is a c---.” If I were a man, they’d say: “So brilliant. He’s tough, but he’s right.” Nobody ever says to me, “You’re right.”
I have a friend. She was a producer at NBC and so brilliant. And they fired her because she was very abrasive. Lorne Michaels has a reputation of being a tough nut. But they all say, “That Lorne, he’s mean, but he’s brilliant.”

This woman, they said, “Oh, she’s too nasty.” But she pulled in the numbers.

It’s very tough in the business. My act consists of my gown that I carry and two spotlights and a microphone. I’ll do my sound check, and sometimes they’re not happy when I say, “The sound isn’t right,” or “Can we try other lights?” Because they’re men at the board. And lighting is very key for a woman, especially. I’ve been in the business almost 50 years -- I know my f---ing lighting. And there is always pushback from the lighting people. They just don’t want to hear it from a woman. They just don’t want to give you that cookie.

I don’t want to hear that male comics want someone to match wits with. No, they don’t. They want someone to sit there and gaze at them adoringly. That’s still what they want. The upside is, they don’t get to wear the pretty clothes. They don’t get to have the pretty dressing room. Women comedians get the private bathroom first.

During women’s lib, which was at its height in the ’70s, you had to say: “F--- the men. I could do better.” I think women did themselves a disservice because they wouldn’t talk about reality. Nobody wanted to say, “I had a lousy date” or “He left me.” But if that’s your life, that’s what they wanna hear. If you look around, very few women comics came out of the ’70s. It really started again in the ’90s, when they realized, it’s all right to say you wanna get married. It’s all right to say I wanna be pretty. That’s also part of your life. Thank God. Because now you know, we’ve got Whitney. I love Whitney. I think what she does is so smart. Sarah Silverman, oh my God. You just look at them and go: Good girls.

I love stand-up -- the connection with an audience is awesome. I just played Royal Albert Hall, which is 4,500 people, probably not a lot for some. But for me, it was amazing. The energy! From the beginning, and to this day, I would never tell a lie onstage. So now I walk out, I go, “I’m so happy to see you,” and I really truly am so happy to see them. The one thing I brought to this business is speaking the absolute truth. Say only what you really feel about the subject. And that’s too bad if they don’t like it. That’s what comedy is. It’s you telling the truth as you see it.

I think it was Cosby who also said to me, “If only 2 percent of the world thinks you’re funny, you’ll still fill stadiums for the rest of your life.”

My advice to women comedians is: First of all, don’t worry about the money. Love the process. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen. Louis C.K. started hitting in his 40s; he’d been doing it for 20 years. And don’t settle. I don’t want to ever hear, “It’s good enough.” Then it’s not good enough. Don’t ever underestimate your audience. They can tell when it isn’t true. Also: Ignore your competition. A Mafia guy in Vegas gave me this advice: “Run your own race, put on your blinders.” Don’t worry about how others are doing. Something better will come.

Ignore aging: Comedy is the one place it doesn’t matter. It matters in singing because the voice goes. It matters certainly in acting because you’re no longer the sexpot. But in comedy, if you can tell a joke, they will gather around your deathbed. If you’re funny, you’re funny. Isn’t that wonderful?
If there is a secret to being a comedian, it’s just loving what you do. It is my drug of choice. I don’t need real drugs. I don’t need liquor. It’s the joy that I get performing. That is my rush. I get it nowhere else.

What pleasure you feel when you’ve kept people happy for an hour and a half. They’ve forgotten their troubles. It’s great. There’s nothing like it in the world. When everybody’s laughing, it’s a party. And then you get a check at the end. That’s very nice.

+ + +

May God rest Joan's unrepeatable soul.

the mouthy and the merciful

Mrs. Obama and her daughters

By some mystery, my browser homepage was changed to MSNBC recently, so rather than learn how to fix it I've been indulging in their glossy spin. It's fun to read news from an entirely different source than I would normally.

This blog post came through my email today, and it's gorgeous and convicting as usual. Pope Francis recently used the term 'a bitter zeal' in a homily, which apparently belongs to the ancient St. James. God save me from having a pretentious faith, because aside from the obvious blindness and harm to my own soul, that's no way to attract anyone to the Gospel. My dad always told me essentially this when I got flustered about interpersonal stuff --- it takes all different kinds of people to make the world go 'round. My father-in-law once said something similar to a friend of ours who was a new recruit for the APD (he himself being a veteran of LAPD), "Just put your head down and do your part". I had never heard that phrasing and was puzzled ~ didn't he mean hold your head high and go be a big bad cop? All good advice from men who have weathered four or five decades of getting stuff done in groups of fallible humans.

Speaking of the police, I met a guy last night who has been camped out in his car at the local grocery store. He ran out of meth a few days ago. He said he just hunkered down in a damp sleeping bag and kept passing out whenever he tried to read the Bible. Nearing desperation, he chased down a pair of cops who had previously tried to wake him up in the Carrs parking lot. He ran after them on foot, claiming he had drugs and that they had forgotten to search him. The officers were incredulous, but one took him under his wing, helped him toss his pipe, drove him to a late-night 12-step meeting, and has even employed him with odd jobs for the past few days. No paperwork was filed or charges pressed. I hope he keeps coming back. Father Martin gives a rousing ode to the prayers of a scared addict --- "Don't ever discount the prayers you said when you were drunk. A hurting heart is closest to God than any other. Those were the best prayers you ever prayed." That policeman has done something grand, humane, and risky. Soli deo Gloria.


Hoda & the lil' Giff taking breathalyzers

I can't even believe Dwija is considering moving. I wonder if the people who buy her house will be weirded out that there's an entire blog dedicated to their house? Funny quirk of living in the Internet age, you never quite know when you step on documented ground. Real estate sales involve those tiresome disclosure forms, about lead paint, crimes or malfunctions on the property. Sellers even have to disclose paranormal activity like suspected hauntings. I imagine those concerns will soon grow to include potential privacy violations or previous media exposure.

And I don't care much for the First Lady's chosen dress at her chef's wedding, PS! (although I liked how she and her girls were coordinated.)

Reading MSNBC reminds me of one winter when Anthony and I found ourselves in the habit of watching the Today Show every morning as we stared slack-jawed over coffee mugs at the frigid yard outside. The show's cacophony was warm, sedating and a little hedonistic ("...is Kathi Lee drinking Tanqueray at 6 a.m.? well, this is fun.") My husband sighed, "it's the dead of February and I feel like I'm trapped in a dentist's office, with old issues of People magazine come to life. Part of me is humiliated, and part of me never wants this to end." :)

But, look ~ here! Life can be simple, even when pierced by great evil.

 

from the church bulletin

Older people are a special presence of God

among us. This is so, not only because old age

 

brings wisdom (it does not always do so), but

because the twilight of life is a time of extreme

refinement. The spirit becomes humble. There are

fewer idols. False illusions and false promises crumble and

this enables older people to become more perceptive. Old age

can be a very dark hour, but for this very reason, it can also be

the eve that ushers in life's Eternal Dawn.

Do Whatever He Tells You: rinse & repeat, mea culpa, happy summer, grateful heart, contented mind

I just can't stop watching this ~ and on all other matters I must withhold comment.

"I have no reason to be ungrateful" ~ Chelsa P at the 9:30

 <3 <3 <3 (is that hip? no? I'm pressed for time.)



For Your Marriage, or anywhere else

My stomach lurched --- the opening scene grieved me in a special way. 
Did he really do that? Boys are just so troublesome.

Lub is patient

I see that Fr. Barron has a new series in production! His life is such gift to the Church.

The Way We Get By

Where I come from, we meet planes. This is something different ~ but based in the same kind of love.

http://www.thewaywegetbymovie.com/  (UPDATE -- entire movie here)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/onscripture/2014/05/stand-by-me-memorial-day-and-the-healing-of-souls/

"We are a pack of fornicators...."

Anthony Esolen gets jiggy

Will return in May

Catherina of Siena

I'm not blogging during Lent (it's been pointed out that I should share that information. I'm of two minds on that idea, but there ya go ... ) We're traveling soon, my heart is filled with awe and gratitude at the way God pulls us toward His graces.

The Catholic Church is the best "thing" that ever happened to me. This much I know.

It's like Tori Amos came to a different conclusion...

Audrey Assad (who's fairly new to me, but a welcome surprise!)

So, while I have a moment to write ~ this past week has been amazing in weather & busy-ness, and I've tried to keep a stable if random pattern of posting. I no longer find blogging cathartic, but am committed to a few other projects and like breaking the pace a little. Even just snippets are fun ... thanks for continuing to read. I've read a half dozen or so 'new' bloggers, and that's been enjoyable.

It's tricky for me to look around and believe that the shift of seasons will bring a lighter schedule, although Spring tends to do just that. Many tender spots lately have reinforced God's omnipotence, and our family looks toward Lent with immense gratitude. I stand by the first piece of poetry I ever taught a child to recite. That would be teensy Viva, teetering up the cathedral steps to the newly ordained priests with, "TOWANTISTOSUFFER//ITSATENETOFBUDDHISM". I think she also drew me a picture of Boo Dzim, like she figured it was a guy.  : )

I shall not want.

Norwegian Robert Sorlie's Return, 2014 Iditarod

Read more here, Team Elkonor is formidable this year!  Allen Moore described visiting these guys in Norway in the past year, and named them among the 20-22 teams he & Aliy see as contenders.

Ten Things I've Learned in the Past Month

10. Where I used to cluck sadly at bedraggled parents with their toddler on a leash, I now ponder the legitimate use of a (very small) Taser for getting mine in formation. Or at least into their carseats.

9. If you casually mock Axe body spray over the years, you will accidentally buy scented oils labeled Lavender & SomethingSomething, but they'll just smell like Axe body spray.

8. The most polished etiquette cannot replace manners. When you meet darkness in its most civilized forms, run. When warmth and light come in the distressing disguise of the poor or suffering, embrace. This takes practice.

7. I can no longer tolerate Kandinsky.

6. Conjunto is REAL.

5. Packing sack lunches and dispatching children for activities means the dishwasher can take three days (!) to fill up, which feels like being on vacation.

4. There is some redeemable value in Christian rock music. That might be the most embarrassing sentence I've ever written.

3. Polish people and Minnesotans have a lot in common -- the good stuff.

2. GoPro videos taken by children are funny. But they do seem like pointless "home movies" --- since the child is nowhere to be seen. Tree climbing is predictable and needs no narration. And I don't know why ice fishing needs to be re-enacted at all. Give me a stranger's clichéd travel slideshow any day.

1. Typing resumes for friends is gratifying, for selfish and unselfish reasons. I love to type and hear life stories, linger over design (all the best fonts are named for composers, have you noticed that?) and see the final product bring happiness to the person it describes.

PS This week's doddery (mine) brought to you by Her Excellence Jen, at Conversion Diary.

Seven Somethings

1. Since I'm participating in this link-up, I'm giving homage to Jen Fulwiler and doing it 7 Quick Takes Style. Which is mixing memes, or something.

2. Genealogy is my favorite winter sport, and lately I've given some time to researching specific family events for my husband's grandparents who emigrated as teenagers from Portugal in 1920. They were of the same island in the Azores but first met in California -- what a story. It's always neat for our daughters to look at photos of their great grandmother and ponder shipping off in just a few years. For all of my bravado at 15 years old (I knew everything! It was great), I can't imagine that kind of stoicism. She was beautiful and I wear her ring.

3. Sometimes I think I'm the recipient of the most numerous individual kindnesses from relative strangers. People are cool.

4. We have a border crossing in our future, and have decided to go freestyle without passports for most of our kids. This is on the authority of some of the above-mentioned random strangers. They had Russian accents, so it must be legit.

5. This is the question driving me today: How does my treatment of my vocation look to my children? Am I giving them a positive perception of being a wife & mother?

6. This is the story currently on repeat anytime we need unfocused downtime. The author even has a Tedx Talk; her physical appearance reminds me of a friend of mine, to a startling degree. Also a writer. More of a poet. Anyway, her stories make us laugh out loud and she seems to capture childhood voraciously.

7. Um ... so yah.

Everyone under 35 uses Tumblr

I'm just seeing the possibilities ~ Alaskans get a 14-month grace period on all trends, digital and otherwise. Although our tone deaf ways often become a point of pride themselves. You knew that, right?

Cool, Cooler, Coolest.

UPDATE: I think that by capitalizing the T on 'tumblr', I have also marked myself as aging & unreachable.

there is no war on drugs

Peter Hitchens breaks it down. (this links to an argument which is long, but unique. After watching Mr. Hitchens go toe-to-toe with Dan Savage, I'm quite taken --- as the Brits would say --- by his brain and his verve).

mwahahaha

Cute stuff, FYI

99654

K i s k a I s l a n d

I've been wanting to write a blog post about how contented we are to return to rural Alaska --- the little things: daily life on a smaller scale, Alaska on a larger one, and the specific blessings of the Mat-Su Valley. Wasilla is a great fit for us. Add to that the accessibility of Anchorage (church, Costco, the quiet thrill of feeling like a complete yokel, standing in Snow City Café in an ankle-length skirt while my husband's pickup truck idles in a no-parking zone...) and it's even better.

Wasilla doesn't ring 'rural' Alaska to the casual glance: the commercial real estate is charmless, the streets stretch beyond view in every direction, coupled for an effect that's much the definition of unchecked urban sprawl. Those who know say it looks like Anaheim, California in the 1970s, development-wise. I don't think we have a zoning board. And I'm pretty sure we collectively don't want one.

It's not utopia --- franchise businesses are outpacing mom & pop shingles, and we're touched by every kind of depravity you'd find in a larger town. So while the aesthetics might belie the quality of life available, I have so much happiness (happiness is different than pleasure, correct?) at a gut level about being here. We loved our five years in Anchorage, to be sure, but the wideness of the sky and the smallness of the human community here is a joy.

It's little things, mostly personal and petty, but these offer a sense of permanence. Alaska can be a transient place to live (I'm often in the minority for being native to the place), so finding pockets of generational grooves means something, socially and spiritually. This past Memorial Day, a friend with roots here whispered as we watched a huge group gather around their family graves. She ticked off the businesses owned by them, collectively. It felt like being slipped the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All of that exists in any city, of course, but you can't be from nowhere and wander into it as easily. I am from nowhere, compared to this population hub of AK (Wasilla, Palmer + surrounding areas comprise the fastest growing section of Alaska, by quite a margin) and my husband is from Orange County (truly Nowhere, culturally, hahaha), yet we've wandered into a close-knit, ever-expanding circle of friends who are like extended family to us. I trust that one hundred years from now, God willing, our babies will know their babies.

A big source of Alaska's revolving population is the military. Today we honor their inexhaustible bravery and sacrifice. And, while on the topic of the Valley, a link to today's newspaper front page. Did you know that my state has the highest per capita population of veterans? I've met so many aging vets who say they were stationed here long ago, and returned with their families as soon as possible, upon retirement. We're thankful !

{One more link}