About Me
I spend way too much thinking about me.
This is the blank space where that paragraph should be. Activities and Shiteous Kids
I didn’t realize that mean kids really do sprout early. My daughter attends school at a very small enclave in the Hollywood Hills where the tiny school is divided into a “gifted” magnet and a “home school.” The magnet was put in to service kids in the poor parts of LA back in the day, before charter schools and at a time when this school didn’t have enough kids. The magnet, twenty years later, draws many kids from all over LA, many of them not disadvantaged in the least. It also draws from its own pool in the Hollywood Hills, a neighborhood that is supposed to have a good home school. The savvy parents “get their kids into the magnet” and those who don’t take their chances. Most of the teachers at this school are exceptional. But there are some who aren’t. And thus, it can be risky. At least in the magnet the lessons are for “advanced” students. It’s quite disgusting when the big picture is revealed — and my kid is as smart, if not smarter, than many of the kids in the magnet (though some are really really bright) and yet isn’t getting the advantages of the other kids because there are no checks and balances in the “home school.” At. all. I could go on but I won’t. I started this merely to say that the most difficult thing to stomach at this is school is the attitude by some of the less evolved children to act as though they are somehow better because they were “selected” for the magnet. In truth, it is a matter of points, mainly.
So, my daughter acted in this school’s first school play. And she was one of the only “home school” kids who auditioned and stayed in it. Well, yesterday they had their cast party; some of the kids referred to it as the wrap party! That’s Hollywood for you. And they were like, “4th grade magnet at this table! Only 4th grade magnet!!” And that was most of the cast. They were signing sons and acting otherwise elitist and smug. The others sat around looking sort of sick and sad. So, being the unstoppable busy body that I refrained from smooshing a pizza slice in their smug faces but I did say that what they were doing was mostly wrong and that they were hurting the other kids’ feelings. Believe me, I could have said more but I might have gotten tossed off campus. I will eagerly await the moment they leave this ridiculous school and go to one where the playing field is leveled. Rude awakening coming atcha!
Embittered today but only slightly.
Beautiful Vehicle…
You know Emma’s my daughter because she has somehow altered the words of Van Morrison’s Beautiful Vision into a jingle, “beautiful vehicle, velvety passenger’s seat…”
It’s funny. Well, I thought it was funny.
Maybe Van doesn’t think it’s so funny:
Everything Happens for a Reason
You know what? That’s just bullshit. The opposite in true, in fact. Just bringing you some more bad news from the front lines of life. Most things happen arbitrarily and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Go with it.
On ‘Storm Over Everest’
After a very long week, at long last Storm Over Everest aired on Frontline last night. I must say, as excited as I was about this particular Frontline (though I do love the series) I had mixed feelings about the Breashears doc. It was an interesting and perhaps untold account of the tragic day on the mountain in 1996, especially since a couple of the participants spoke of the events for the first time, most notably, Sandy Pittman. It looked like Breashears was telling what Jon Krakauer didn’t with his magnificent Into Thin Air. The problem with that, though, is that the doc didn’t do what Frontline does best – it didn’t investigate what went wrong but rather told how scary and frightening it was. We needed that tell-tale Frontline narrator asking key questions about what went wrong.
Also, I don’t know why they didn’t talk about Rob Hall’s famous final words to his wife. Was it because most people interested in the story have already heard what Hall said? Or was Breashears more interested in the participants’ experience of the events than the events themselves? Either way, he made a stunning film, one I will probably watch again very soon.
The choice to re-create the high winds on the mountain that night was truly the best thing about Storm Over Everest. Who hasn’t imagined what it must have been like, how bad it must have been to grind the climbers to a halt. Breashears did a great job of showing, rather than telling. I suppose I felt that with the appearance of Sandy Hill and all I expected more of the controversies to be discussed and they were just sort of left out. It was, perhaps, a kind decision by the filmmaker but it came at a cost.
The website is a wealth of Everest resources. You can also watch the entire film online.
My Two Favorite People
Dawkins on evolution, what is “natural”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU884Q2iUmE&watch_response[/youtube]
Mother’s Day
This is my mom at 14. Queen of the drag race. A hot number by anybody’s standards. And only 14. We make a big deal out of the Miley Cyrus’ and the Jamie Lynn Spears’ but just look at my mom at 14. My mother is mostly strong but like the rest of us, occasionally breaks. She has a gift for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time but mostly, she means well. She can’t handle a crisis and often loses it with intense dramatic flair. She is foul-mouthed most of the time anyway but during a crisis the cursing reaches a fever pitch — “cocksucker” and “asshole” were used quite frequently during my childhood.
What I admire most about my mom is how she turned her life – a pregnant teen high school drop-out – into what she’s become today – a smart business woman and property owner. She can’t spell to save her life, knows next to nothing about history, math or science; her education has come from living, struggling and watching a lot of TV. Self-educating sometimes builds more interesting people. My mom is one of a kind – no one who knows her would dispute that. It was a hard life for us. Four kids to a single mother back in the ’60s in Topanga – one creepy boyfriend after the next – no money, no new clothes – but somehow we’re all here anyway. My mother ain’t perfect. No mother is. And like most will tell you, once I became a mother I understood how difficult it must have been for her, with four of us. She screamed and yelled, threw things, smacked us around – and now I see how, no matter what your hopes and dreams are, despite everything you wanted to do somehow being a mom feels like complete failure from Day One.
So Happy Mother’s Day to my mother, my crazy, imperfect, unique, mess of a mother – in truth, I’m happy I had one at all.