Yoink! Stolen from the email archives of CS Lewis in honor of her Birthday

I spent this morning and early afternoon at our local DMV.   Since I have been meaning to become a legal citizen of this metropolis for some time now, I thought that I would take advantage of this free time so generously mandated by puppet company for which I work and change my Virginia license to a New York one. Also, I sort of had to renew it, because technically my license expired 8 months ago.   As is normally the case whenever I go to well populated areas, chaos ensued.

I rolled into the DMV at what I thought was on the early side, 9:30am.  Clearly the rest of Manhattan had the same idea, because when I got off of the elevator, the line just to get in line was wrapped around the waiting room.  In fact, it took a full five minutes just to step out of the elevator, as the end of the line had wound itself over to us.  We all took turns holding the door open and cursing the banner which hung over our heads, mocking us with its slogan, “Don’t stand IN LINE!  Visit us ON LINE!”

Finally I get off of the elevator and stand patiently in line to get in line.  To set the scene, basically there is a line to get into the door, and through the door there is another line, where you tell the trusty DMV employees your situation.  They direct you to another line, where you get your picture taken and hand over your necessary paperwork.  And then yes, there is yet another line, and this one is the doozy; this is the line where they give you a number and lure you with the false promise of actually getting your laminated license in your hot little hand.  You don’t. They mail it to you in 10-15 business days.  I waited 2 hours just to hear that. Oh, and to be accused of having a warrant out for my arrest.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

And so I begin to wait.  My number, might you ask, was B308.  It did not bode well for me that they were on A60.  I notice a lady nearby who is having trouble with her written test.  She caught my eye and whispered, “Hey!  What do you do if your tires break down n’ shit?” I stared blankly at her, because I don’t know how a tire, per se, would break down.  So I asked her, “You mean, if it pops or something?”  At this point, the security guard notices our exchange and comes over.  I’m thinking in my head that I am going to DMV jail for aiding and abetting a cheater.  Turns out that he was a nice fellow and just wanted to clarify the question for her.  He ended up giving her the answer as well, thankfully allowing this clearly competent driver out on the streets.  Well done!  I wish I had a copy of that test, because I wondered on the way home what feasible multiple choice solutions there could have been to confuse her. A.) Keep driving?  B:) Paint your car?  C:) Go back in time to when you had a normal tire?  Anyway, her new nickname shall be Cheater McPumpkineater.

I’ll skip ahead through the next few hours, which I spent running up my cell phone bill by answering “Beetlejuice” whenever someone called.  I thought, perhaps, that after a second or two I could explain that I felt like Beetlejuice in that last scene of the movie when he is in the waiting room.  Unfortunately I confused my grandmother who, when hearing “Beetlejuice,” promptly said, “Oh, sorry, wrong number” and hung up the phone. That killed me.

Finally, the heavens opened up and B308 was called.  I ran over to the counter and handed over my paperwork and my passport. The employee entered in my info, asked me my middle name (it’s Susie*) and then began staring intently at the screen.  All of the sudden, she says dramatically to me, “You have a NDR!”  Now, I have no clue what an NDR is, but my stomach dropped as I thought about the unpaid parking tickets that are still sitting on my desk.  I also thought that perhaps my name ended up on some sort of watchdog list after the whole jewelry box/bomb fiasco, proving once again that I am persecuted for having impeccable taste.   She called over a fellow employee with a very professional, “Boo! Get yo’ ass ova’ here!”  Boo came over and began pounding on the Control key several times.  This highly technical maneuver revealed the following inflammatory information: C.S. Lewis has a warrant out for her arrest in Kentucky.

Now, I have been to Kentucky several times because I have family there, and to my recollection, I have never broken any law in my travels.  Sure, there was the time that I crashed my cousin’s dirt bike into the side of their barn after mowing down several rows of ripened corn.  But that was when I was eleven.  I have been a model citizen ever since then, at least in Kentucky.   So surely there had to be some sort of mistake that even the infallible Control key move might not catch.  We finally figured out that my middle name is “Susie,” and the other C.S.’s middle name is “Suzy.”  So C. Suzy Lewis of Kentucky is a badass.  I never did learn what poor CS II is wanted for, but hopefully she has learned that if you do the crime, you or someone else with relatively the same name as you will do the time.

As I waited for Boo and company to process my paperwork, I saw Cheater McPumpkineater next to me, arguing with the DMV clerk over what type of credit card they take.  Apparently at that counter, they could only take the Discover Card.  So she yells at the clerk, “Who in the hell only takes Discover?  Is that that crazy one with the bald headed guy?”  The clerk and myself were baffled at this question, until I realized that she must be talking about The Diners Club card, which used to be pitched by the late, great Telly Savalas*.  The reason I think this is funny is not because she was confused about the names. I mean, in her defense, they do both start with “D.”  I just find it hilarious that she is referencing a commercial that has to be at least fifteen years old.

So, 4 hours later, I headed out of the DMV.  And in 10-15 business days, I shall have a license of my very own that I will undoubtedly misplace soon.

* Not really, but you know, keeps the pseudonym working…

**Who loves ya’, baby?

District 9 movie marketing- will the political/ cultural allegories resonate?*

I have many (mostly) male friends, nerdboys of the highest order.  Like me, they collect action figures, watch Star Wars on a regular basis, debating the merits of the chapters, characters, arc and colors of the light-sabres and generally revel in the outright fantasy without guilt or embarrassment.

And rightly so.  They are some of the smartest, most successful people I interact with and I’m proud to stand in line with them for hours to get in to see Iron Man’s first showing.  However, they tend not to know too much about international politics, or at least don’t discuss it.

So when one of them, JET, came to me and insisted I watch a preview for District 9, I was struck by the plot and setting.  Aliens have landed, neither to hurt nor to help, they are refugees and are being kept away from humans in tin roofed shacks in a contained area in Johannesburg.  I didn’t need to wait to see the credits, hear the accents or even the remaining 90 seconds of the trailer to know that I was looking at Soweto.  It kind of hit me in the stomach- I wasn’t expecting this from what is clearly a sci-fi/ action film aimed at young men.  But the setting was striking.

It’s not a coincidence, the title refers to the District 6 township in Cape Town.  I wonder if the “9″ is a nod to the ward in New Orleans.  The director is South African and the set design, terminology and visuals are striking to anyone who has even set foot in South Africa- during or after apartheid.  The psychic sucker punch were nearly identical images broadcast from the  Soweto riots of a year ago, where frustrated, unemployed black South Africans, afraid for what little they’ve been able to gain in the 13 years since Apartheid ended, began attacking the refugees from Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Nigeria… anyone who might take their potential jobs, or recognition they’d so long been denied.

I’m still unsure as to why this unsettles me so much or surprises me.  Comic books and science fiction have always been social and cultural mirrors disguised in fantastic situations and characters, but mainstream studios making the connections more obvious (think Iron Man, Stark Industries and Afghanistan) is intriguing.

I suppose there are several questions which I will chew over before and after seeing this film (I’ve never been accused of under-analyzing anything, including action movies).  The question I am mainly interested in opening for discussion is this:  are the studio execs putting their money where their mouths are in making some aspect of more mainstream movies politically relevant, are they not thinking about it, or do they think their audience won’t notice, or worse, won’t care?

Click here to see trailer.

*or am I imagining all of this?

shout out to ms savory and taunjon

thanks for executing the prisoner and disposing of the remains while i squealed and fidgeted and generally freaked out in the dining room.

and especially for not making fun of me for it.

if all the world were a stage

i’d be totally frenched.  see, i hate theatre.  well, not theatre, musicals.  and not just in theatres.  in the movies, too.  although i know that the venues in which movies are played are called theatres as well.  and the soundtracks.  everything.  EVERYTHING about it. 

even my generational imperative for love of nostalgia, real, manufactured and otherwise, has begun to fail the wizard of oz, grease and the sound of music.  those are the musicals i grew up on and so loved as part of my childhood.  at some point in the last ten years, i realized i may love them for what they meant to me at 6, 4, 8, i don’t actually like them.  i don’t want to see them. ever.  again. 

i was chuffed to play jan in PS 21s magnificent stage production of grease.  i LOVED, LOVED LOVED the Sound of Music Tour i went on during my first european backpacking tour.  it was spectacular.  you get to see all of salzburg- an astoundingly beautiful and friendly city, but you also go into the alps, have lunch in the village of st. gilgen, which contains the church from the movie, motzart’s familial roots and a mountain lake of the most incredible blue I have ever seen.  on the way back, you can even give an alpine slide a shot.  you sing the songs on the bus- ineveitably filled with australian, american, canadian and japanese tourists.  everyone knows how absurd the experience is-

oh, to experience the sublime while being completely aware of it…

who do we call at the OED to get “adult” updated?

For numerous reasons over numerous years, I have often stopped and thought:

“whoa.  i’m an adult.” 

Clearly anyone meeting me would wonder what it is causing me to wonder.  I’ve got a serious job and a serious title, have been taking care of myself since I was 15 (and had the honors of watching out for a few others over the years), pay my bills, wear suits to work….

here are the things I have taken care of- planning and execution, without consulting a single other human being for advice:

so many questions, and ones to which i actually DON’T want answers.

Read in this week’s The Week:

A Tasmanian man has avoided jail after being caught with hard-core octopus pornography.

Rodney McLagan, 48, had a collection of some 31,000 images and video clips, most of which depicted humans engaging in sex acts with snakes, tigers, and octopi. The judge suspended his sentence, citing a psychologist’s finding that McLagan suffers from clinically low self-esteem and that “you are particularly self-conscious about your teeth.”

So many questions, none of which I really want answered:

What is the attraction?  Is the slimy, fleshy consistency of octopi (precisely why I can’t eat them) and ew, I’m already making this worse than it is.

The suckers?  (stop it, now).

The blurb mentions hard-core octopus porn.  Does that mean there is soft-core octopus porn?  Doesn’t the fact that you’re looking at invertebrate smut qualify you as hard-core, just, right there?

Is hard-core snake and tiger porn so mundane it barely merits mention?  Those seem inherently more newsworthy, if only because these animals can actually kill you?  Maybe they went with the octopus angle to catch the halo effect of shark week buzz?

and the obligatory (bad) teeth joke:

Does this mean that millions of Englishmen are hiding illustrated Jules Verne novels under their mattresses?

ba-dum-dum!

 

Postscript:

I cannot wait to see how many new hits this blog gets from people searching for “invertebrate smut.”

 

So juicy.

the other kind of social disease

The Meriam Webster Dictionary defines the term “social disease” as the following:

Main Entry:  social disease

Function: noun

Date: 1891

1: venereal disease.

I’d like to respectfully submit a second meaning:

2:any disease or condition that significantly impacts ones social life, friendships, relationships, and general interaction with society…

I was recently diagnosed with CFIDS or Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome.  I have seen doctor after doctor after doctor.  I take medication for anxiety disorder and an inability to manufacture enough GABA (the stuff your brain makes that allows you to physically relax) and have for more than ten years.  These are realities I’ve come to deal with and are, for me, not terribly debilitating.  Sure, I don’t sleep well, but I’m I don’t have agoraphobia or claustrophobia or any other phobia that keeps me from fully enjoying my life- having several large circles of friends, enjoying the blessing of living in NYC and all that it brings, traveling the world over for business and pleasure, finding absolute nirvana being a stranger in a strange land.

I have been sick and tired over the years, suffering bouts of exhaustion and increased pain that left me cranky, sleepless and with an intense desire to hibernate.  Some attributed this to a latent depression or the aftermath of being hit by a van whilst crossing the street almost 20 years ago.  The accident did a good bit of damage to my body, the effects of which are felt more intensely and impact my life more acutely at times.  Spoken or not, most people assume the former, not having been in my life for the accident and all that followed. 

By people, I mean my friends and acquaintances.

I’m not going to lie.  I found this to be frustrating.  I have seen internists, orthopedists, physiatrists, therapists (physical and emotional), psychiatrists, neurologists, accupuncturists, every kind of “-ist” one can think of.  I’m very proactive about my health.  I don’t despair.  I have rare moments of sadness over the some of the tougher aspects of my childhood/ young adulthood.  I always pull through and I’m always OK. 

The last six months, however, have been out of control.  I was out of work for months, for what I thought was some crazy-mutant evil sinus infection.  I’ve had surgery, taken steroids, exhausted supplies of anti-biotics, changed my diet, everything.  I just couldn’t get better.  And I didn’t know what to do.  Staying home all the time because I was too tired or dizzy or fuzzy to go out didn’t leave me with much to talk about other than what was wrong with me.   Naturally, this affected my relationships with people.  I mean, how many times can a person listen to someone complain about the awful smell or electric mucus or fatigue or headaches, or whatever.  It’s a drag. 

You see, just because you’re anxious or tired doesn’t mean you’re depressed.  And even if one IS depressed, it doesn’t mean you’re not physically ill.  My affect has always been positive, regardless of my circumstances, and I’ve yet to meet any one of the “ists” that felt differently.

thank god for espn.com

just a little shout out for espn360.com.

with all the storms and freaky weather, cable here in NYC has been spotty at best- pixelated, intermittent, especially on HD channels.

they had the spain- italy quarter final streaming online for free.

thank you sports gods for saving me from missing even a second of the game.

oh, and vaya espana!!! ole ole ole ole… ole… ole…

Big B, little b: LOST’s flawed parentage

Sunny d came to spend the evening with me, which is always a pleasant treat.  Not just because she’s one of the nicest, most amazing people on earth, but also because there has never been a better TV partner, nor, I suspect, will there be.  Ever.

One of our most favoritest things to watch and discuss is LOST, which is not easy from across state lines.  So, when I see her, we catch up on all of our outstanding theories, questions, issues, discussions, etc.  We had many, many after last weeks season finale, but we returned to one item that has been nagging at me for weeks.

John Locke was born to a red-headed 16 year old girl named Emily (by a man “twice her age”) in 1956.  Because of her age and her mother’s strictness, John’s placed in foster care.

Ben Linus is born prematurely while his parents are hiking in the woods outside Portland.  It’s the early sixties, she’s in her early to mid-twenties, with red and was named… Emily.  She died giving birth to Ben on the side of the highway.

I find that to be a little too much of a coincidence.  Perhaps the reason Richard doesn’t take over leadership when Ben is banished is because he’s not part of the family.  We have no evidence that Swoosie Kurtz (adult Emily, who helps con Locke into giving real Sawyer/Locke’s dad his kidney) is the same woman- she could be anyone.  Locke would certainly not know her since he’s never seen her and we all know Sawyer is not above lying.

Ben and Locke’s possible relation caused me to notice their ages relative to one another and that they both have blue eyes.

That got me thinking.  Other people with bright blue eyes?  Christian Shephard, and his daughter Claire Littleton.  Not with blue eyes, bright or otherwise?  Jack Shephard.  So I went back and looked up Margo, Jack’s mom.  Guess what?  Those blue eyes again.

brass tacks

With all that’s been happening lately with the DNC, the delegates, the debates, the endless op-eds and platitudes, I wanted to bring up something of which, apparently, many of my peers are unaware.

4 amendments and 50 years separate the right for women’s suffrage and that of all men, regardless of race, to vote.

The fourteenth amendment was ratified by congress on 3rd February, 1870.

The nineteenth amendment was ratified by congress on 18th August, 1920.

One reads:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation 

 

the other:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

 

In between those two came the amendment to allow direct election of two senators from each state, unapportioned federal taxes on income (non-discriminatory), and prohibition.