Great Demo Begins

Today is starts.

After months - even years of bemoaning my bathroom and making excuses that I'm too busy with other people's demolitions and designs--- today I took rubber mallet in hand and took charge.

In minutes, the world's ugliest bathroom is now the world's most busted up bathroom. The baseboards are off revealing mold that would choke a hazmat team, the oversized mirrors are down (who thought THAT was a good idea???) and the ceramic tile that has almost cost me life and limb (someone put the wrong tile in the bath -very dangerous!) is coming off too.

It feels great.

Next, I'll call the plumber and get the water secured and the burgandy marble of a tub and shower will be history.

Keep posted...I'll post the steps of the demo here as I can. With several other projects in line, it will be fun to comment on my own. Here's to a great project.

New album

Just got the new album from one of my favorite groups, Carbon Leaf (www.carbonleaf.com).
This album is good - though I'm still crushing on their first two. Still, I love the lyrics and the sounds that this band offers. It's the kind of music that I can crank on high while the top of my car is open (yeah, even when it is cold and rainy outside - the music is that good.) My favorite on this album -- "Under the Wire". A great mix of well written words and unbeatable music:

"I need to feel the breeze
Of new day's dawn
I need to be released
From the cold steel rail I'm on
Shake the love for a woman
Brake the emotioin overdrive
Take the train to oblivion
At the crossing of our lives"

I was also introduced this week to Jeff Buckley, another great musician. Mournful and full of angst, this is a great album to put on when I'm really mellow. I think he was only 27 when he died and his music has a lot of intensity to it.

I've been a bad blogger of late but I don't care. I've written volumes in my journal most of it is unrecognizable to anyone except myself. A writing friend of mine told me to write lists and it has worked great for me. So I have pages of lists, scraps of ideas for stories, ideas for work. Whatever "process" works for others - i don't know - but I work best in short, crystal phrases that help me stay on track with projects.

I started thinking today about the past year and the things I thought I might take with me into the new year. Here's a partial list - maybe I'll think more as I transition from 07 - 08:

1 - The creative life is worth working for - no matter what. Even the most difficult day is better than a day in corporate. One can always escape into color, texture, words or music.

2 - On that note, find time to marinate in other's creative jucies. A few weeks ago on a particularly bleary Sunday afternoon, I took a drive to the Frank Lloyd Wright museum in Bartlesville and spent the day with angles, lines and rhythm and emerged refreshed and comforted. I am becoming a firm believer in just how important art is to all of us and how it is important to make time for it. Nothing speaks to me like color and rhythm and texture - nothing lets me know that there is indeed a great Artistic Mind out there just waiting for us to connect with it.

3 - Nothing is better in the morning than a great cup of coffee.

4 - Find the now. I've stopped making goals and started closing my eyes during good - -and difficult - moments. I've started trying to find the way to stop a moment - at least in my mind - so that I can remember the texture, the sounds, the feel of the moment. Experience it, feel whatever emotion is there and then let it go. If this is what some people call "letting go" or "forgiveness" then great, whatever. All I know is that when I do that, life's curves seem more bearable. And it makes for great memories because I can remember the curve of my daughter's smile, the color of my son's eyes, the hue of the sun through my morning window.

5 - Great shoes - especially red shoes - can make any day better.

OK, there are 5 great lessons from 07. I'll find some more and post later.

Redeeming my Sunday Afternoons

As my usual Sunday routine, I purchased my New York Times. Yes, I had to explain to the pimply faced kid at the checkout that it really WAS $5 and that yes, it really WAS worth every penny.

This week is exceptional because this is the week that the new season's movies are detailed in the Time Entertainment section. It's been a long, rainy, horrible movie season for me. I cannot remember the last time I walked out of not only one but two movies that I paid full price to see. That happened this year with "No Reservations" and uhm, I can't remember the other one's name. Always disappointing to see even mediocre actors trapped in lifeless plots and dull dialogue.

So it is with great relief I read about upcoming films. Here's a list of what I'm going to head out to see...

"The Brave One" starring Jodie Foster. I love Foster because she selects gritty difficult roles and plays them with aplumb. Although lovely in character and face, she goes beyond the shallow roles and finds complex characters that we love even though we are faced with their dark sides. Her new movie is being compared a lot to what brought her to the forefront "Taxi Driver" and I'll be standing first in line when this one premieres.

Robert Redford has directed his first feature in seven years with "Lions for Lambs". Redford's movies are always beautiful. Each frame looks like a portrait, carefully drawn by an artist. And they have another quality that is lacking often in most movies - characters that we can care about and a storyline that can succeed without animation or wild special effects. Even though he has Tom Cruise in this one, I'll go see it -- Meryl Streep's presence will surely balance the younger actors arrogance and cardboard character acting. (Streep is also in "Rendition" paired with Alan Arkin and you can bet I'll be there for that. Streep is Hollywood's diva - no one gets her characters more spot on, no one can make you hate or love so much. In my opinion, she has no match with her ability to transform on the screen into whomever she wants us to believe she is.)

Joaquin Phoenix fans can celebrate that he's returning to big screen in "We Own the Night" by director James Gray who also directed "The Yards" in 200. I'm not a big Gray fan, but Phoenix has the ability to play difficult characters with depth and charm. I'm in for this one in a big way.

I'm always hesitant to recommend a Billy Bob Thornton flick. Although I love this twisted guy, his pictures often leave me disappointed. He might have a winner with upcomoing "Mr. Woodcock" simply because Susan Sarandon has agreed to play it. Sarandon is my all around heroine simply because she's over 40, looks great, plays great parts and oh yeah, she's married to that Tim guy. Seriously, she's the best actress in Hollywood - -no matter what age you look in - and I'll go to anything she is in. She's smart, funny and can play characters that are tortured and twisted and still, we love them. Anybody can play beauty queens and make us love them, Sarandon plays menopausal forty-somethings and we all cheer.

And hooray, hooray! John Cusack is back in a film that I won't be afraid to see alone. He has selected a couple of duds (Must Love Dogs) and then that thriller thing that I couldn't see without my kids in tow or I'd have nightmares for weeks. This time, Cusack is in "Grace is Gone" a political treatise about the Iraq war. I'm skeptical about the theme - Hollywood seems to oversimplify difficult political ideas into shlock, but Cusack is a man that I love to watch. He has the ability to play main guy charm but often offers up characters that surprise and delight us, as he did in "Grifters" all those years ago. This one I can't wait to see.

I will, of course, go to see "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" if nothing else for the beautiful wardrobes. I also adore Cate Blanchett and thinks she often gets short shrift for her acting. She has an amazing tranquil beauty that both startles and illuminates the screen...I love her for the fact that she goes way, way beyond that and offers up characters that make us think and feel for.

Finally, I'm always up for a great cop flick and there are at least two that I will not miss:

"American Gangster" with Denzel (is there a better looking man on the planet??) and Russell Crowe (OK, maybe him.) And even though their good looks would get me into the theater, their acting ability - particularly Crowe's -- would even get me to splurge on popcorn and coke for a matinee. And yeah, anything with Ridley Scott and Brian Grazer in the credits has me hooked.

"Hunting Party" with Terrence Howard and Richard Gere should also offer up good acting chemistry along with good storytelling. Although this is less a cop flick than a comedy, I'm eager to see what these two can do. I have loved Howard in every film I've seen him in...he has that hang dog look that can make you swoon, make you believe he'll make good this time.

A word about my all time fave - Pacino. I will go see "Cruising" because of films like "Scent of a Woman" and a million others where I get to see him cinematic genius erupt. I think part of the fun of watching Pacino is to see when he will explode and where he goes with the blasst. But of late, I've been disappointed with his choices on films...they seem to mimic his ability of past successes and I hope this film will be better. No one loves Pacino more than me - no one, and no one wants to see him do what he does best - make us care about the underdog, the rebel or the fighter.

Looks like Sunday afternoons will be more than cleaning out closets.

Lost Garden

Each morning, I trudge out to my garden, garbage can in tow. I usually am mumbling something under my breath and am disgusted. But by the time I hit the edge of the pond, the late summer sun is warming my shoulder and I look up and I am soothed.

The truth is, I've been a very poor gardener of late. My enthusiasm for gardening was quenched late last year after months of drought-like conditions that left my garden parched and stale. "I'll fix in in the fall" I told myself -- and anyone else that asked me about it, but I was being a fickle lover. I knew that my love affair with my garden was waning, I just didn't know what to do about it.

But with spring, love returned and I began to have visions of my garden again. Yes, there was lots of reclamation to do, yes the paths were twisted and ugly, yes the perennials needed thinning. A few days of rain became weeks and then over a month of what we in the midwest call a "gully washer". For days, I'd watch my garden safely from my inside and I'd wonder, "how had we come to this?" Where was the love that had propelled me from my work and into the garden immediately upon coming home? Where was the love that had captured my vision during the day so that I could hardly wait to return home.

Like all loves, it withered and died with neglect. And so I stood inside my house, watching the rain pour, feeling the grief of a love lost.

If you're lucky, real love gives way from the loosey goosey feelings and what emerges in its place is a kind of hard committment, the kind that says, "I've worked too damn hard for this thing, I'm not letting it go.." And so each morning I trudge out with my garden shoes and garbage bags and I begin to reclaim my garden.

It is a type of prayer, really, to crouch and see one's mistakes. To see how the places where I planted sunny perennials should have been reserved for shade loving hostas. It is a form of meditation to reach out and pull the parched shrub and lay it in the trash, knowing that it was once beautiful and perfect. And that what can go in its place can be beautitful, too, if only in the right time.

I give myself permission to cry at times for the plans I had...the plans that were good but not great. I see that now, how the garden's curves can be so much more and that it took my first, sophomoric attempts to get to the place where a sturdier beauty can become real. I only wish I could say my enthusiasm was better. It is not. I dread those early morning walks to the edge of my sad little garden and I sigh as take my place, crouching among the dead stalks, determined to make this lovely once again.

Short Stories

I've always been intrigued by the short story and author's ability to write so much with so little. I think the short story is all about economy and finding the perfect word. A few weeks ago, I despaired at not being able to attend a workshop that I had set my heart on attending. It was in CA and I had hoped to take in a day of sailing while there, but the gods conspired and voila - I am in T-town instead.

So I did what any self-respecting girl does - I went shoe shopping, caught a matinee and then found a book. I picked up "Inventing the Abbots" by Sue Miller and have been mezmerized ever since. Here is a passage that brought me up short when I read it:

"....For a moment, as she walked silently across the kitchen, she worried about leaving the house, about what seemed like an abandonment of Greg, of them all. But she had no power anymore -- had never had the power, although at one time she thought she did -- to stave off ruin, to guard her son against his share of pain. And for herself, right now, she wanted Joe. She wanted, just as Greg did, the illusion of wholeness, or repair, the broken parts fitting..."

P 125, "Leaving Home".

This is the kind of writing that cut right through my academic "let's figure out the short story.." obsession and took me right where good writing takes any reader - quick to the emotions with a salute to the structure. I don't feel manipulated when I read this passage because the story is so well crafted that I am there with the character completely. This kind of writing hits poignancy bypassing sentimentalism.

The shoes were OK, too.

Kathie Griffin: Why we love her

After strategically securing tickets to her sold out Tulsa venue, I successfully arrived at the Brady Theater intent upon seeing Kathie Griffin. When I visit the Brady - and other "landmark" locations in T-town, I am again reminded that the arts are still not a priority for our town and therefore all the talk in the world about downtown revitalization are just that -- talk - and until we treat our performers with the respect they deserve, I doubt we'll garnish the attention we think our town deserves. Despite the bawdy crowd (no security anywhere) , the lack of air conditioning (July in OK is never cool and a packed hall can get rather stuffy) and challenges with sound system (she had to stop twice because of audio blowback), Griffin performed her pointed and withering comedy with the kind of finesse that one expects from even an "A"-list celebrity.

I think the reason Griffin appeals to such a large variety of people is because she successfully unveils American pop culture and lays it bare. Even iconic celebrity fixtures (Oprah, Barabara Walters) are held up, scrutinized and made oh so human so we can do what we are suppose to do to pop cultures (or any other golden calf that we may have): make fun of them and see them for the farce that they are.

While I may not always agree with her politics, I am completely in sync with her ability to take shots at the entitlement, cultish behaviour of pop stars to which we continue to bow. And while I enjoy the ability to see through the smoke and mirror of American celebrity-dom, I wonder why we have the need to deitize our celebrities and then watch them fall when they have feet of clay.

I probably over think it, as I do most things. What is true is that A,B,C or D - whatever list she is on, Kathie Griffin is on mine. Thanks for having the guts to take aim, fire and shoot.

Really bad movie makes squillions

After a too busy weekend, I agreed to go with my son and a friend to "Chuck and Larry". I figured, "What could it hurt?" And I'm a huge fan of Kevin James (even before the sitcom). And Adam Sandler's career has always intrigued me, although I can't say I'm a fan. More of a bemused interest, I think.

What I want to say to the creators of such shlock? First, don't misuse great comic talent - -and there are several veteran stand-ups in the movie - to pander to your sterotypes. I think the movie is so pooly edited that I almost thought I'd hear the director say, "cut!" during one of the way-too-long scenes. And while I can go with most forms of low-brow humor (thank you, Mr. Sandler) I found myself literally squirming with the ridiculous -- and predictable - gags that this fare offered. What most offended me was the cliche ways in which it presented different lifestyles and how badly it represented them.

And amazingly, it scored big at the box office - #1 this weekend.

Tonight, I'm watching TNT and new premiers...I'll try to post tomorrow on those.