Amo el Dia de los Muertos

My girlfriend and I went to the Day of the Dead celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Saturday. It's the coolest cultural event in Los Angeles, if you ask me. I love the clouds of copal incense drifting through the darkness, the tall skinny palm trees leaning in rows below the half-moon, the festive live music, the tacos and margaritas, the hipsters and kids and regular folks in amazing costumes, and most of all the phenomenal altars. People invest so much effort and creativity in these memorials with their sugar skulls, loaves of bread, marigolds, flickering candles, photos and personal effects. They're beautiful, fantastical, sobering. What's not to love about grinning skeletons dressed as brides and grooms, friendly skeleton dogs, cats and even fish? Everyone's having a gay old time, treating death with humor as well as reverence. Yet there were angry political monuments too, shrines to the dead in Iraq, the murdered, and Mexico's desaparecidos – the disappeared. Who knew an appreciation of death could be so life-affirming? And who knew making out in a crypt could be so hot?

I finally did it: I got up the gumption to bang the door-knocker on the giant tomb in the middle of the lake. Then hightailed it across the bridge to safety. Better safe than clutched by ghostly, skeletal hands.

Newsflash!

"Sexualized images in media may harm girls, young women"

This is one of those headlines, trumpeted all over the media today, that merits a resounding "Duh!" The American Psychological Association has released a study decrying our culture’s overt sexual fetishization of females, pointing out that sexualization occurs when "a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics" and when "a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making." Look for earnest coverage next week in Time and Newsweek (always on journalism’s receding edge).

I mean, really. A full generation after the women’s movement? Three and a half decades since feminists started calling our attention to the effects of sexual objectification on tender female psyches? Even Reviving Ophelia came out, like, ten years ago, people!

This is on a par with other "duh!" news headlines like "Study Indicates Smoking is Bad For You" and "Everybody Loves Money." (Come to think of it, I'm as guilty of sexualizing money as the next guy – I mean, gal.)

Still, I’m grateful that we’re having the conversation. The APA study lists some “Positive Alternatives to the Sexualization of Girls,” and blogging is applauded as a means of girl empowerment. Kewl!

Overall, I’m glad that this exceptionally self-evident concept is being hammered home to a new generation. I guess if you’re not a girl, or a parent, friend, husband, teacher, coach, or brother of girls, you might actually not have been aware.

Turncoat!

So now John McCain thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned?

I always find it entertaining when men make sweeping declarations about whether women should be permitted to make decisions about their own bodies. I say, when men start rushing out en masse to buy pregnancy tests, enduring morning sickness and third-degree tears, and thrusting their cracked nipples into screaming infant mouths (while risking their lives, their promotions and their college scholarships), that’s when they can opine about abortion. Till then, they should shut their traps.

It’s really a shame. McCain until now represented that rarity, a quasi-cool Republican (I know, I know, a contradiction in terms) thanks to his "maverick" views and semi-Libertarian leanings (though his support for the Iraq debacle pretty much landed him in the enemy camp). Now, on the campaign trail, this grizzled vet has decided, late in the game, that the moment has finally come to pander to our great nation's illest common denominator: the charming folks who, gosh darn it, honestly don’t believe women deserve equal rights, agency, and full citizenship. All while fervently believing that if abortions are illegal, women will Just Stop Having Them! Hey, give ‘em a break – they’re probably too young or too drunk to remember back alleys, wire hangers, and dead sorority sisters.

It's the same kooky wingnut logic, willfully blind to human nature, that insists that withholding condoms and sex education will stop kids from getting it on and contracting HIV, and that Just Saying No will prevent kids from experimenting with pot. It ignores the fundamental fact that People Are Gonna Do It Anyway. As soon as you leave the room.

Wasn’t the GOP supposed to be all about individual liberties? But hey, this is the party that colluded with the right-leaning Supreme Court to appoint the current White House resident, in defiance of the popular vote. Hey, yeah, remember that, my fellow Americans? (Not to distract you from your nonstop Anna Nicole Smith-fest – may she strut her stuff in peace.)

Well, Senator McCain. Not that you were going to get my vote anyway, but I’m ashamed of you.

BFF!

I am loving Katherine Heigl, a member of the dizzyingly large, Golden Globe-winning cast of Grey's Anatomy, who is very publicly throwing down in defense of her gay best friend. As everyone with the slightest celebrity obsession (or a TV, or an internet connection) knows, the cuddly T.R. Knight, another member of said cast, was the target of not one, but two homophobic slurs from Isaiah Washington, yet another member of said cast. To wit (and I paraphrase): "I'm not a faggot like T.R." (off camera) and then (at the Golden Globes, no less) "Hell, no, I didn't call that faggot a faggot."

I'm so proud of how fiercely and courageously Katherine is defending her best friend, who has since come out (i.e., made the best of being outed). (Props to you, too, T.R.) "I will beat you up," Katherine vowed, if you mess with her boy. Not many people would go out on a limb, risking disapproval from her bosses and her network for publicly calling Washington out on his homophobia, when they would surely have preferred to just sweep everything under the red carpet. We all know how outraged Mr. Washington – and everyone else – would be if someone had used the "N" word disparagingly about him.

You go, Katherine. You're putting the fabulous back in f*g hag.

Me & Angelina, sittin' in a tree.

Last night I dreamed that I was Angelina Jolie's girlfriend. Sadly, in real life her mother just passed away. Evidently they were very close. In my dream, though, her mother was alive and delightful, and I played my violin for her. It occurred to me that I'd better get ready for an onslaught of paparazzi photos because I was going to be plastered all over Us magazine like Jenny Shimizu (only taller). Wow, maybe I should lose ten pounds, I thought, and get my hair done.

It was fun being Angelina's girlfriend. She seemed warm, smart and down-to-earth, and we would've made quite an entrance on the red carpet. Of course, I have an actual girlfriend who is Angelina's equal in every way, except for the paparazzi photos, and so I was not terribly disappointed when I woke up. I'm sure Brad and the kids were relieved.

Speaking of Charming Girlfriend, I am disconcerted to find out that her porn name (an amalgam of your first pet's name and your first street) is Tawny Blossom. How apt! Mine, however, is Tom Tom Wicopee.

That is just not fair.

Bye-bye, Tivo.

When I moved to my new hood, I decided to cancel my Tivo service. Don't get me wrong, I assured the customer service rep who was desperately trying to change my mind, I love my Tivo! I'm one of those freaky-ass Tivo-philes who gushes about my Tivo-love with my Tivo-having friends. But an upstart competitor who shall remain nameless* was offering me a FREE 100-hour DVR, with the ability to record two shows at once (always a bone of contention with my old-skool 40-hour Tivo box), plus FREE service for a year, and only $5.99 a month after that instead of Tivo's $12.95, plus $10 off my bill for 15 months, PLUS a free portable DVD player. In the battle between brand loyalty and the bottom line, filthy lucre won out.

So what am I recording on my shiny new DVR? What merits a season pass? What counts as no-appointment-necessary television?

Rome: I am totally hooked. Titus Pullo, Lucius Vorenus, Servilia, Brutus, Octavia and Octavian: these people and their world are utterly real and compelling to me. Someone said this second season will be the last. Please, say it ain't so!
House and Bones: old, good friends.
the L word: I talk back to my TV more during this show than any other. I jeer, I groan, I roll my eyes – and then there's a hilarious, hot, scandalous and gorgeously shot episode like this week's, which redeems it all.
Heroes: don't tell me, don't tell me – I haven't seen this week's episode yet.
American Idol: they're back and better than ever.
The Closer and Saved: when they come back, they'll be at the top of the list.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of Brothers & Sisters, a show I really want to love. I'm checking out Rescue Me and Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy and Medium, and a little Everybody Hates Chris because one of my new neighbors is on it.

To my shock and horror, for the first time in umpteen years I missed the Golden Globes – even after telling my dad how it's the best awards show because everyone's totally wasted – but the glorious Kyra Sedgwick won for The Closer, so all is (briefly, politics and global warming aside) right with the world.

*Unless you need me to hook you up, in which case I'll tell you.

I love Los Feliz.

Today I went home at lunch and lay on our new brown and cream zebra-striped rug, with its new woolly smell, in fat stripes of sunlight. I love being on the second floor with its views of sky, trees and rooftops, nothing to block the light streaming through the windows. The neighborhood was silent. Silent! No screaming, no horns playing La Cuca-fucking-racha. Only birds and breezes. My dog sighed and settled down beside me, and my cat rolled on her back and stretched in the sun on the porch outside the open door.

New year, new apartment.

Mere minutes after arriving home from my vacation, I resumed a frantic box-packing marathon that lasted late into the next night (despite all my pre-holiday efforts – dang!), and then for a few more hours the following morning before I absolutely had to go pick up my U-Haul truck or lose my reservation. Last time I moved, I hired three guys, day workers, to help with the heavy lifting, and my plan was to do the same this time around. I’d had a heinous experience with a professional moving company the time before that (they’d held my piano hostage in the pelting rain while extorting more money out of me; I later looked them up in the Better Business Bureau and found that they had a long history of consumer complaints. Lesson learned.)

So on my way to pick up the truck, I thought I’d swing by Home Depot, where I’d heard the day laborers were to be found. A block away, I noticed dozens of guys, who surged toward me in a body as soon as they noticed – almost before I noticed – that I was slowing down. They swarmed around my car, yanking the doors open and sliding in before I could even think. Here I’d thought it would be a sane, measured procedure: I’d find out who knew how to drive, who was experienced at moving. But there they were, three grinning guys in my car and more struggling to squeeze in, knocking on my window with pleading faces. I held up three fingers and shrugged helplessly: Solamente tres.

Hours of delays, frustration, and back-breaking labor ensued (though there were also a couple of angels who swooped in to help in my hour of panic). I valiantly resisted shrill screams of utter desperation. Sweat flew freely, especially when all three Guatemalan guys – and me – wrestled my giant sofabed up a steep, narrow flight of steps, almost toppling it over the railing to the pavement below.

Today I’m bone-tired and I ache in every muscle, including my hands and feet, and I have hundreds of boxes to unpack. But when I opened my door this morning in my beautiful new Los Feliz neighborhood, I heard birdsong and smelled the delicate fragance of the flowers that twine up that very same railing.

Moving takes forever. I went back to the old place at lunch to clean and deal with all the leftover stuff: framed pictures, curtains, curtain rods, all the random detritus that we abandoned yesterday when the truck got full. I’ll be back there tonight loading my car and doing one last, nostalgic load of laundry in my trusty old washer and dryer. (There’s nowhere to put them at the new place. Hello, laundromat.)

P.S. The water pressure in my new shower is amazing.