La Cote D’Azur
I am going to the Cannes Film Fest in the middle of May. This is terrifying news. I’m going to cover the films, the fest, the goings-on, the haps. It will be my first time ever covering a film festival, but something I’m going to be doing a lot more of if I plan on doing this job (“Hey dad! I think I can really do this job!” – Broadcast News).
It breaks my heart that I can’t bring my little kid traveling pal along but she has school and testing and all of that. This will be our first extended time apart since she was born. I remember after she was born I held her to my chest and I swear I didn’t let go for two solid weeks. She is almost taller than I am now so it’s hard to imagine her a tiny tot, but a tiny tot she once was. I think her birth was fairly traumatic for me, being that I’m an alarmist, a hypocondriac, a fatalist and an atheist all rolled in one – so you can imagine.
The worst was that they kept insisting upon bathing her before giving her to me. I took upon myself, 18 hours in, Memorial Day, 1998 to shout at the nurse, “humans are primates and primates have to bond with their young! I need you to bring her to me!” The nurses wanted her all cleaned up and ready to be held in that picture perfect way we’ve become accustomed to – I wanted her as is, uncut cord and all. I’ll spare you details of the ripping and the sewing back up.
Needless to say, that kid didn’t leave my arms for weeks. There is something very scary about knowing you are responsible for the life of another human being. I know this is partly due to being a single parent — I simply didn’t have the man around to make it all better. There were a few here and there but for the most part, it was me. The thing that really brought it home to me was putting that carseat in the car and dealing with the stroller.
Something about the mechanics and every-day aspect made me want to drop dead on the spot. Eventually it all becomes second nature. The first thing one has to do, though, is abandon those ideas about the perfect baby and the perfect life. There is a conspiracy of sorts in the media to make it seem like having a baby and raising a baby are easy. But they aren’t. Having a toddler who just wants to test the boundaries constantly will leave you in frothy panic day in and day out. That sweaty panic it pretty tough to take. We have a lot more to fear now than we did oh, say, 4 million years ago.
Anyway, off to the French Riviera I will go. I promise to take lots of pictures and report back. I told my sister that it’s going to be like, “okay should I see this movie I’ve never heard of or that movie I’ve never heard of?”
Why I Choose Life in Twenty
I came across this story from New Scientist about what makes life worth living if you take away religion. From a brain perspective, there ought to be a good reason why a person feels like bothering with this life. It ain’t easy. It ain’t pretty. And it feels like it goes on forever. Beyond that, there is much suffering in life. I thought briefly about what it would feel like to have a son travel to Iraq and die in some useless, futile IED explosion. How would I go on living? Moreover, a recent memorial of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing showed mothers who lost babies in that pseudo-patriotic, mind-numbingly senseless terrorist act.
As a sidenote, isn’t it ironic that we reacted to the terrorist bombings of 9/11 in quite a different way from Oklahoma City? Why didn’t our National Guard descend upon the psychos in America with their radical views of our government? Because we are a so-called free country. Free to bomb a Federal building for the very same reason our towers were bombed: to make a political statement. To take lives while doing so. And to either run and hide to continue fighting, or get caught and die by the state, as Timothy McVeigh pretended to foresee. In his taped confession he actually says to the victims’ families, “get over it.” He wouldn’t show fear when he was put to death by the state. He pretended he not only saw it coming but welcomed it: that was too easy of an out for that puny tyrant.
And then, last night, Frontline brings the report of the boys are used for sexual favors in Afghanistan. They are made to start when they are very young.
Twitter – Very Weird Where Celebs Are Concerned
Not all celebrities can do everything well. Some celebrities can Twitter, for instance, and others can’t. Having an online tete-a-tete with anyone is usually either successful, or a total disaster. Some people can be more easily squished into the online world, while others need the vibration of real life around them to be totally understood and absorbed.
I really think some people come off better online than others. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. I prefer my own online persona, for instance, than my in-person one. I think I’m nice and all, and I’m sure people like me (really really like me) better in the flesh. But me, I like me better in the non-flesh. I like me better with words and words only at my disposal.
The celebrities I think that come off better on Twitter than one could ever imagine have managed to use the medium to raise their careers are step higher. Those would be Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher – the two most commonly associated with Twitter. They’re fine on Twitter. Demi Moore is more than fine. She’s cute and gracious and non-overbearing. Just a lot of nicey nice with exclams.
And for some reason it makes me like her where before I maybe didn’t think much about her at all. Well, let’s just say the irritating Demi is long, long gone – the Disclosure/Indecent Proposal/Striptease Demi. In her place is this pocket rocket activist cougar.
So that’s the good.
A few others I’ve been following I really like more now than before BECAUSE of their Twitter. And those would include Errol Morris, David Lynch, Diablo Cody, Ben Stiller, Jason Reitman.
The bad is that I was crushed to discover complete and total despair over Jim Carrey’s Twitter. Here all of this time I thought he was a nicey nice guy with vast intelligence. But I’ve discovered him to be self-centered, self-absorbed and not that witty online. I think he must be surrounded by a lot of yes-men, yes-women who make him think he’s all that. And then there’s the money.
One of the disappointing things about him is that he only follows one person. With so many brilliant people out there saying brilliant things and pointing out links, not to open yourself up to that part of Twitter is to miss the whole thing.
I need to follow more celebrities on Twitter so that I can judge them bitterly from afar. And here is the perfect site to do just that.
So You Wanna Be a Blogger Part 2
After a very long, tiring and ultimately drab Part 1, I think I can streamline things for you in Part 2.
But let’s refresh our memory.
1. Think of a site name. Register it with a registrar site, not the hosting site which offers free domain registration – you will be stuck with them for a long time unless you go to the hassle of transferring. I use godaddy.com for all of my site registrations.
2. They will send you a confirmation. Then you must get hosting. Find a decent host that you like – pay around $20 per month, not less, not more. You can pay less if you want, but don’t pay more until you need to later on.
3. Once you get the hosting, they will send you instructions. In those instructions will be their DNS pointers. You need to know these in order to point your site name to your server. They will look something like:
ns1.nameofsite.com and ns2.nameofsite.com
O Tiny Houses. I Love You So.
I have a new weird obsession. Tiny houses. Did you know there was a whole movement of tiny house enthusiasts? They are even more than just enthusiasts – they are devoted followers. Most of them are environmentalists who believe it’s possible to live in a tiny house that has just the things one person would need to live. The key with the tiny houses is that they are small enough that they don’t need a permit to build them and so one can build them anywhere. Theoretically.
The Tiny House Blog, though, doesn’t highlight tiny houses (but it does have those) – it also has just cute little houses in unexpected places. Thing is, I love the little places. I’ve never been a person who craves a big house. I look at big houses and they look lonely to me.
I would make an exception for a chateau or a manor house — those are so cool it doesn’t matter how big they are. Maybe it’s because I grew up in California where there are so many giant homes with no real history to them.
Here is what the Tiny House Blog put up today — so damned cute:
Here are some more tiny houses I love:
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About Me
I spend way too much thinking about me.
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