Displaced

Seriously, holy cow. This is Senator Ted Stevens (R – Alaska) explaining how the internet is a “series of tubes.” This is the same coot who brought us the bridge to nowhere.

Some days I seriously think rip-and-replace is the only way to get this republic back on track.

Come to think of it, that’s most days. How could we possibly expect to be moving in the right direction with these people in charge??

I noticed the other day that the Aquafresh on our sink is labeled as “Maximum Strength Sensitive.”

This reminds me of the conversation I had with my physical therapist about my inability to slow down my training to take care of my injured ribs.

Him: You could just ease up for a while.
Me: I’m really competitive.
Him: Maybe you could be really competitive about taking it the most easy.

Everything is closed on Sundays unless you get up at the crack of dawn and go to the farmer’s market before it shuts down in the late morning. If you miss the market, you are screwed: there will be no more activities available for the rest of the day. You can console yourself with an Orangina at a cafe until about 2PM but then you’re done for the day. Go home. Give it up. You won’t be able to get groceries or anything else until tomorrow, or, if you’re in the middle of nowhere, Tuesday.

A word to the wise: get your vacationing ass out of bed on Saturday and take care of everything you’ll need for the next couple of days. Gas up your car, collect your baguettes and go buy that handbag today ’cause tomorrow you’ll be out of luck. Oh – also make sure that your boat/yourself are parked someplace pleasant to enjoy the closure of the entire country, preferrably by the water with bikes and books.

(Or you can go to Versailles. In the rain. You and everyone else who’s been left with no plans for Sunday. I knew there was a reason I’d never gone to Versailles on previous trips.)

*Note: I fully approve of a 5-6-day workweek, especially for the working classes. We’re just used to something different here, so plan to adjust accordingly.

Hooray!! Success!!

We leave tomorrow.

We leave in two days. Aside from the packing, which is sure to be its usual unmitigated disaster, the iris are my primary concern. They are about to bloom and I’m afraid we’ll be gone for the mini rainbow I hope will follow. I love iris – they are my favorite flower – and getting them to bloom at all has been a long, long road, so I’m not thrilled about being away when it finally happens.

We had bearded iris in the front garden when I was growing up. They held on for a month and required only minor maintenance which left me with the mistaken impression that profusion was easily achievable. I am not a completely incompetent gardener, but I have been singularly unsuccessful in getting anything to bloom, which is a key point in bothering with flowering plants in the first place.

I started several years ago with pansies, which, being low to the ground, I assumed would be an easy place to start. This is the equivalent of saying that you would like to learn how to take care of a person and starting with a baby without ever having been pregnant, read a manual or discussed it with your mother or a doctor. Needless to say, the pansies foundered and died under a plague of low-lying insects. I moved up the chain to azaleas, another favorite. Every year, I bought plant after plant and every year they looked up at me greenly with nary a bloom. Most of them then died, probably because I neglected them subconsciously after their failure to be pretty. God help my children, if I ever have them. They had better all be gorgeous overachievers.

Now that I think about it, I ought to stop working out the kinks on plants I like. It is so much more depressing to kill a plant you like. Much better to start with a plant you would not be sorry to see perish. Like, say, a cactus. Which unfortunately never die, no matter how much you neglect them. Same for those ugly succulents. Too bad and so much for that theory.

Perhaps this is a truth of nature, that we are destined to love the blooms which require the most particular attention and defy consistent expectation. This would explain why most of the men I crushed after in college liked mean, fickle, annoying girls who were deeply concerned with their hair and denied their suitors even the most basic peace of mind. Le Petit Prince had a manipulative flower like that. Like orchids, they appeal only to a particular type of person (myself not among them), require constant attention, a controlled climate and are not adaptable to anything. The owner must build his life around them. This is too picky for me, as I have plans of my own. Care must not require a lifestyle adjustment. I must be able to come to an understanding with my plant that is not entirely an accommodation of either of us.

So I’ve kept trying with the azaleas and iris. I have corrected my habits of neglect which were based on a faulty theory that I could forego regular minor care in favor of irregular bursts of excessive affection and overindulgence in water and fertilizers. I have read a few web sites on plant care and the sheet of instructions that came with the iris. I have calmed down and mastered the basic art of horticultural patience. Tend them and wait. There’s no point in questioning your acquisition: if you want the flowers, you give the plant what it needs and see what happens. You can’t hang on forever but, for these flowers, a year or two is not too much to ask. Or so I understand.

Do we love the new site? I do. All credit goes to R. who used his entire Memorial Day weekend to re-design, re-tool and re-publish every last little thing on the site. He has been promoted accordingly.
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While R. was looking forward, I was looking back. To be precise, looking back through a huge stack of videotapes that have moved from New York to San Francisco, several times around the city since, including in and out of paid storage spaces, most recently from storage to the upstairs landing and thence to the living room floor last month when the insurance inspectors were en route to tell us what a fire hazard blocking access to the roof is, especially with a box made of wood and filled with flammable plastics. Never mind that the roof is a vast expanse of tar paper and has no railings. Anyway, I mentioned the paid thing about our storage space because I firmly believe that things you pay for should have some value. Hmm. We’ll see.

I should stress that these tapes are not the same tapes as the ones in another box (still in storage) that are meticulously labeled with their contents. Those tapes were made in college when I had a television addiction and two VCRs. I recorded Saturday Night Live and David Letterman and Due South and Friends and Lois & Clark. Then I would re-record it onto a clean tape, cutting out the commercials and skipping the skits and segments that sucked. This enormous investment of time made sense to me then, as I had a lot of school work to avoid and not much money for videotapes. (You might well ask why I didn’t spend all that work-avoidance time at a job that would have netted me an income and boxes of videotapes. Good question.)

My manual Tivo’ing yielded a priceless set of compilation tapes, each with its own index card describing the contents. Perhaps that’s why they’re called index cards, come to think of it. Those tapes are a separate issue. I’d like to put them on DVDs but it would cost me a huge drawer of cash. (Any suggestions on how to bypass that would be welcome. I think I heard a rumor about being able to transfer videotape to Tivo to computer to DVD but that sounds like another three-day weekend of work.) No way I’m throwing them out. One of them has Letterman interviewing a clearly high as a kite Phil Hartman. How could I give that up?

Back to this weekend though. I fast forwarded through about twenty-five tapes and am holding onto two of them so far. One is a BBC documentary on Steve Martin which I didn’t even know I had and which was very interesting. The other is Princess Diana’s funeral. I’m not completely clear why I can’t seem to throw it away, but I think it has something to do with not having kept the historically significant Star Wars figures in their packages back when I was a greedy six-year-old. I could retire on those now if I’d held onto them. Similarly, the logic goes, someone will be looking for a tape of Princess Di’s funeral someday and I’ll have it. Just me and every single television network in the world.

Given the ratio of time to retention rate, I should have just tossed the whole pile of tapes, but that’s what you get for a.) being a compilation-tape-making optimist, and b.) not having accidentally burned or flooded or otherwise lost or destroyed your material possessions every once in a while.

I am fed up with television. My parents would be so proud. They raised me on a strict diet of poor reception. We watched Julia Child and Monty Python and Sesame Street and the original Flash Gordon (or maybe that was just static) and that was it.

As a result, when I got my first television in college, I spent hours, days, months catching up on all the shows I had missed. I watched Mad About You and Lois & Clark and saw the first episode of Friends, back when it had good writers and the buddies weren’t tanned and taut with riches. I became conversant in the language of television. I had watched The Simpsons and Northern Exposure and I Love Lucy and I knew the names of all the actors on the new shows.

I slowed down for a few years before the advent of Tivo. Only The West Wing got my religious attention, but when Aaron Sorkin left, watching my pals in Washington became like talking to that friend who married that awful girl that turned him into a different person and then you finally stopped inviting him out to dinner because he kept saying “no” or he came and it just wasn’t the same. I tried to get attached to Alias, but I was just faking it: I was only watching for Michael Vartan. He should have been my French boyfriend who spoke perfect English and beat people up.

Then came Lost.

Lost is like Survivor: Bizarro Island. There are so many characters that if one starts to get on your nerves, you know they’ll focus on a different one next week. The same is true of the multiple plot lines. There’s always some revelation waiting in a flashback or via the introduction of some new character who’s been running around on that beach, nameless for two whole seasons. After a second season, Lost is still the most suspenseful thing on television.

Several characters were killed off this season, most of them suddenly and preceded by much internet speculation. I don’t miss most of them, but I wish they’d get around to Michael (Harold Perrineu), the excitable non-custodial parent of Walt, the boy who was kidnapped by the natives at the end of last season. Harold Perrineu has proved himself to be an awful, awful actor. His switch is set on high, come hell or high water (or both, on this island): there is no line too small that it doesn’t require Michael to get hysterical and shout. Harold and his one really angry red crayon. “Angry” is a cheap acting choice and its inappropriate application – say, when he’s trying to be persuasive or sneaky – makes the character seem deranged and the role of the concerned father entirely unsympathetic. To keep myself entertained while he’s on-screen – well, really to prevent myself from doing bodily harm to the television – I imagine a competent actor saying Michael’s lines right after he says them. Usually, I imagine Naveen Andrews, who plays Sayeed, the local Iraqi torturer. Even a torturer is sexy when he plays things close to the chest.

I’ve been optimistic that they’d kill Michael for some time now and spent most of this season pleased that he was off looking for Walt and, more imporantly, keeping his mouth shut. Any Wednesday night without Michael is a good Wednesday. Then he came back. Rats. Then I got my hopes up all over again when he shot Anna Lucia (Michele Rodriguez, she of the multiple drunk driving arrests). For some time before her demise, I’d been hoping her similarly one-note acting would be eliminated and presto! Gone with a single gunshot to the stomach. Maybe wishing does make it so and Michael would be next. I thought maybe I was magic.

No such luck. After last night’s finale, it’s clear he’ll be here into next season. And instead of just being annoying, he’s become weak, unprincipled and homicidal. Great. Now everyone can hate him. I guess the writers figured that since he’s already unwatchable, they might as well make him evil. Evil in that really weak, sniveling rat bastard kind of way, not in the “that’s almost impressive how good he is at being evil” way. Like Joe Pesci get-off-my-screen evil, not Gene Hackman/Ian McKellen hammy excellent evil.

What gets me is that they have the means. It’s not a sitcom. They’re on an island. They kill people all the time. No one cares. Take the law into your own hands. It’s TV carte blanche to eliminate the characters no one likes. Even better, why not kill off Michael at the end of every season? Here’s where the freaky magnetic island is your friend. Just bring him back and nail him again next year. It’d be a huge crowd pleaser. I would have been delighted if he’d been taken out last May and I promise I would have watched again this year if they’d taken him down again.

Anyway, I’m fed up with TV. I’ve deleted most of my Season Passes on Tivo. (Except for Supernanny, which is a reminder to me that maybe, with some British assistance and a high school education and a house not entirely devoid of furnishings or standards, I could be a parent someday.) I’m signing off for the summer. I’ll be back in the fall to see if they finally get around to killing Michael.

I am not in any way permanently handicapped. I am neither in a wheelchair nor a cast. I am upright. I am mobile. I am still trapeze-operational.

It has come to my attention that my post below – “The Pain” – has caused concern and alarm in the reading ranks. I am damaged but not daunted. “The trapeze eez not for girls. Eez for the hard b*tch.” That’s from my Russian trainer. I don’t know if the statement is causal or descriptive, but it’s certainly true. I’m fine. Bruised and battered but standing and strong.

Life is different now. Every day I get up and consider my options. Wait. First, the getting up.

I unfolded, testing my weight. Today, I could not raise myself by resting and pushing on my right arm because last night I ran the full weight of my body into a metal pole with my elbow. Sitting up, I twisted to place my feet on the floor. The pain in my lower back made me careful. As I stood, I shifted my weight to my left foot because the largest toe on my right foot will not bear weight, having been slammed into a steel bar yesterday morning. As I ease out of my pajamas, I take mental note of the bruises scattered across both legs – random across the thighs, concentrated behind the knees and down the lower calves – and my abdomen just above my pelvic bone and across my hip bones. I raise my arms to ease off my tank top and the wing of my left shoulder aches and then sends out a stab of pain over the top of the shoulder, through my chest and down my arm. I wince as the spandex scrapes lightly along the swollen scrapes on both forearms.

When I get dressed, I have two alternatives: jeans and a T-shirt or another day in a leotard and trainers. I take a breath, trying to infuse my muscles with some enthusiasm for what’s ahead. They flip me off and I pull on the gentler leotard. Jeans means belts and belts mean pressure on the bruises on my stomach. I wash my face and don’t shower. There’s no point. Within an hour, I’ll need another one. I pull my hair back into a ponytail.

As with most sports, you’re shooting for grace and smooth execution on the trapeze. The cost of that is hours and hours of conditioning and mornings like this one. I sprained my toe kicking up over a static trapeze yesterday morning. Last night, swinging back to land on the platform from the flying trapeze, I was late sweeping my shoulder around and drove my elbow into the support pole of the platform. My back still hurts from compressing my lower spine last week on the trampoline when I landed flat on my face. Twice. I have a tear in the palm of my right hand the size of a dime that I didn’t notice when I did it because my palms are so calloused that the rips only take off the top layer of skin and I don’t bleed.

Last night was no different than most nights. I soaked my hands in ice water and hot water alternately to reduce the swelling. I iced my shoulder. After about an hour, my body relaxed and was shocked to discover that it had been damaged. My skin went cold, my hands started to throb, the open wound on my hand whimpered at the touch of its bandage, my back stiffened and my chest and shoulder pounded. I put on warm clothes and lay down on the couch where I couldn’t find a position that didn’t hurt. In bed, I couldn’t lie on my stomach because rotating a shoulder northward to place an arm under my pillow was too painful. I couldn’t lie on my back because it flattens the arch in my spine and irritates the injury. I lay on my side, the least injured right side, compressing the hurt elbow into a fixed position where it could rest.

“I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I’m the decider, and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.” – President George W. Bush

Robin Williams, wearing a T-shirt reading “The Decider” was a guest on the Daily Show (video here) on Thursday. In discussing the gift of another Bushism, Williams offered, “A simple town. One man. No choices.”