111°

That’s what my car’s outdoor temperature gauge claims, and it’s dark, 8 in the evening. It feels like a Palm Springs night here in L.A. It’s stiflingly hot and windy and there is a strange menace in the air, a threatening heaviness. Earthquake weather, maybe. Fire weather. Four or five years ago at this time, the Santa Ana winds blew Southern California wildfires out of control for weeks. Damn, just when I thought the summer heat was finally behind us. We’ve had a few of the cool, foggy mornings that bring joy to my soul (me an East Coast/England transplant who loves rain and wearing layers). I’ve been sitting here in front of the AC, but when I got up to get the nectarine sorbet out of the freezer, the heat in the kitchen surrounded me like a blanket. We need a thunderstorm, a real gully-washer, to dissipate this tension, but there are no clouds in the sky.

Vote Yes on Prop. 2

It’s a cartoon, but it’s still horrifying. If we treated human beings like this – confining them in cages so small they can’t even turn around – we would call it torture.

It is torture, plain and simple. Pigs are as smart as dogs or human toddlers, and it is well-known that they are highly emotionally sensitive. Those cages don’t bear thinking about, but we must think about them. The barbarism of factory farming practices is an enormous karmic stain on humanity.

Even more horrifying than the video above is the one shot undercover by PETA at a factory farm in Iowa exposing unspeakable abuse of hogs and piglets. Why did this story receive so little national attention when it broke two weeks ago? Most of the coverage was from local midwestern papers, though here's an excellent piece from The Huffington Post. It’s enough to – quite rightly – put people off bacon for life. Don’t these atrocities deserve to be front-page news?

Here in California, Prop. 2 would ensure that veal calves, pregnant pigs and egg-laying hens have enough room to turn around or stretch their limbs. The proposition is supported by the Humane Society of the United States; the California Veterinary Medical Association; family farmers; numerous environmental, food safety and religious organizations – and us! People are going to keep eating meat, so we have a responsibility to make sure that animals raised to be eaten live and die in humane conditions (how’s that for an absurdity to make your head spin?).

My fellow Californians, please vote yes on Prop. 2 when you vote in November – you are voting, right? And tell your friends and family to vote yes on Prop. 2 to reduce animal suffering.

Zelda update

Here’s Zelda standing guard over her egg sac. Isn’t it a bizarre alien thing, with its circlet of spiky knobs? (Click the photo for optimum effect.) A few days ago I watched as she crouched motionless with her head to its surface, as if listening for tiny rustlings, for any news from within. I doubt she’s eaten a thing since her vigil began. I think it’ll be another week or so before they hatch, god and gardeners willing.

And…action.

Took a fantastic directing seminar this weekend that ran more or less from 6 pm on Friday non-stop until 7 pm on Sunday. (Then had to put out fires at work today.) Am totally bone-tired exhausted but exhilarated with everything I have learned, all afire to direct my first short next month (not counting the short I directed this weekend). Yeehaw!

One of the fun facts I learned is that sometimes when directors hire beautiful models who can't act, and they want their stars to convey the impression of thinking on camera, they instruct them to count backward (silently!) from 100 by threes while the other actors are speaking. And you thought Denise Richards was reacting to Pierce Brosnan's irresistible charisma.

I will leave you with something Jean Renoir said (according to my instructor this weekend): "We have not to be perfect but to be great."

Words to live by. Going to bed now.

Owls in Griffith Park

Tonight, walking with my Lawless Hound through Griffith Park, I heard the hoo-hooing of two owls in the woods by the golf course. I’ve been hearing the owls for the past few weeks on my twilight hikes, and have seen them two or three times: dark silhouettes, one slightly larger than the other, limned against the pink sunset on high bare branches, swooping across the road or arrowing down for some small scared thing on the ground.

I heard them before I saw them this evening, the low burbling call of the first and the second’s reply, a minor third higher. Hoo-hoo-hoo hoo hoooo. Hoo-hoo-hoo hoo hoooo. And another answering hoot from far away. The only other sounds were the insistent chirruping of crickets, the wind in the trees and shrilly yapping coyotes venturing out for a night of play and plunder. This is why I love Los Angeles.

Then I saw it – a dark owl shape at the very top of a tall pine, bobbing as it hooted. I stood for long moments, watching and listening, and then it flapped its enormous wings and took flight, and craning my neck, amazed, I watched it sail directly over me to the top of another pine. Suddenly I realized it was totally dark, and I took off under the tunnel of pines with Lawless Hound at my heels.

Meet Zelda.

I first noticed this astonishing translucent green spider with her dramatic red and white markings a month or two ago. (Go ahead – click the photo. Freak yourself out.) Check out the head-to-head mortal combat. The bee didn’t stand a chance.

Fascinated with this gorgeous creature who stared boldly back at me, I went online and typed in “green red spider,” and there she was – or rather, there were her many cousins. Turns out Zelda is a green lynx spider. Identified by their charming surprised eyes, exotic markings and spiny legs, lynx spiders jump great distances onto their prey, and some claim their bite is toxic to humans. Beautiful and dangerous…but so much more appealing than the black widow, that spinner of nightmares. Scientists have studied the possibility of deploying green lynx spiders as agricultural agents of “green” farming (pun reluctantly acknowledged), because of their penchant for devouring harmful pests. It’s too bad about the bees, though.

Zelda’s rose hangs at the end of a long thorny stem that flops over the neighbor’s fence. Like an anxious aunt, I started to worry that some over-zealous and under-observant gardener might dead-head the rose, not noticing its gaudy occupant – or worse, noticing, and dispatching her anyway.

One day I saw a smaller green spider hanging out cautiously nearby, no doubt drawn to the regal Zelda, yet perhaps dimly aware of his peril. The next day the hapless suitor was gone. As the weeks progressed Zelda grew fat and glossy. She was eating well – I figured she must be eating for two. Two hundred, that is. Sure enough, last week I noticed that Zelda was looking downright skinny, even a little peaked. And she was hovering protectively over a large, round, spiky, dusty grey object. Nice work, Zelda! I was reminded of Charlotte’s Web and the reverence we all learned to feel for Charlotte’s beloved eggs – how protective Wilbur was until all those tiny baby spiders with their tiny soprano voices drifted safely away on their silken filaments.

I am Zelda’s Wilbur. Twice a day, walking my dog, I peer at Zelda’s withered rose, first relieved to see it’s still there, then admiring (not without a certain creepy shiver) the strange unlovely egg sac she guards so jealously. I hope no oblivious gardener interferes. I hope I’m there to see those dozens and hundreds of tiny Zeldas work their way out of their cocoon, to spread their weird beauty far and wide. In a world poisoned by pesticides, heavy metals and artificial hormones, where extinction threatens everything from honeybees to polar bears – a planet so polluted that we routinely sicken along with our air and water and soil – each fragile creature’s survival is a tiny victory.

Small Wonder.

Barbara Kingsolver’s book of essays is making me cry in my car (see audiobook tribute below). It is a searing love letter to wilderness, an indictment of unbridled consumerism and war, an earnest argument that our love for our lives and each other is the only thing that might redeem us. With her inimitable mix of compassion and steel, she exposes the hypocrisy and hubris of American imperialism, gently but resolutely skewering the greed and blindness of our bloated erstwhile democracy. Kingsolver captures the grief we feel for the country we love – for what it used to be, and the pale shadow of its founding ideals it parades on the world stage today.

Small Wonder, published in 2002, was written largely in response to the September 11 attacks, in an attempt to make sense of the unfathomable. In it, Kingsolver tells us that according to the United Nations, it would only take an extra $13 billion above and beyond then-current expenditures to provide every person in the world with basic healthcare and nutrition.

$13 billion. Even though today it would doubtless be more, it’s still a tiny fraction of the $700 billion the Treasury Secretary has demanded that we, the American taxpayers, hand over, double quick, no questions asked, to bail out Wall Street – with no oversight, no help for homeowners and no equity stake for us investors. $700 billion is roughly the same amount that has been spent on the catastrophically wrong-headed Iraq war – the war that has bankrupted our defense coffers and crippled our standing in the world. The entire bailout proposal, pushed with such breathless urgency by President Paulson and Co., is so outrageous as to beggar belief. Fortunately it’s getting some push-back from both sides of the aisle – Democratics and Republicans alike are nixing the blank check idea – but chances are Congress will pass it in some form. What an inheritance for our children and grandchildren. The U.S. was already staggering under a record burden of debt, but now, unbelievably, future generations will suffer even more for the unbridled corruption and greed of a relative few.

The idea that the entire world’s hunger and illness could be alleviated for an almost negligible portion of the bailout money is both sobering and infuriating. Says Kingsolver, “We have the resources to behave more generously than we do.” Extolling our amber waves of grain and our purple mountain majesties, she contends, “We could crown this good with brotherhood…what a vast inheritance for our children that would be…if we were to become a nation humble before our rich birthright, whose graciousness makes us beloved.”

If, indeed.

Swoon, part 2.

Remember those thousand points of light? Brad Pitt is one of them.









Back in 2006 Brangelina announced that they would not marry until their queer sisters and brothers had that right. This week Brad donated $100,000* to fight Proposition 8, the right-wing-supported ballot initiative that would overturn the legal right, enshrined in California's constitution earlier this year, of same-sex couples to marry.

For our part, Charming Girlfriend and I volunteered this year with Equality for All. We accosted people coming out of supermarkets (CG thrives on this kind of confrontation, but I do not), gathering signatures, donations and allies. A lot of people were surprisingly nice (it's true that you can't judge by appearances) but we also had to deal with a lot of sneers and turned backs. During Pride weekend it was easier – pretty much everyone was gay, but then again they were sweaty and drunk. We learned that the folks behind the ballot initiative (Grinches, Slytherins – take your pick) were bringing in paid signature gatherers from out of state – presumably because they couldn’t find enough volunteers for their nefarious work in California.

Marriage used to be about property (see: land ownership, women and children as chattel). These days people like to think it’s about love, and plenty claim it’s about religion. But in our supposedly secular society, marriage is fundamentally about civil rights. When you deny two consenting, tax-paying adults the right to commit legally to each other – and benefit thereby in a thousand federally sanctioned ways – you are denying them full citizenship.

Californians, talk to your friends, family and co-workers. Stand up for your fellow citizens and your constitution. Vote No on Prop. 8.

*Just to show you the difference between me and Charming Girlfriend: when I told her about this, she said "$100,000? That's it?"

The crush-worthy Rachel Maddow.

You say you are overwhelmed by the calumny and viciousness of the Pain – McPain campaign? Struggling in the throes of despair at the decline of Western civilization perpetrated by the Shrub/Cheney imperial administration, aka the Fall of Rome v.2? Choked with grief at the destruction of our oceans, polar bears, wolves and old-growth forests? Outraged by the evils perpetrated on rape victims, pregnant women and queers who just want an ecru wedding?

My fellow Americans, I give you Rachel Maddow.










Oh Rachel, you who have burst upon the media landscape (scoring top ratings on MSNBC in your few days on the air, no less) in the nick of time to reach out a lifesaving hand, a sympathetic grimace, a knowing smirk! (Yes, I realize I'm jumping on the Rachel wagon late in the game – she's had a show on Air America for quite some time – but radio is not television.)

It is on television that we can appreciate the expressive eyebrows, the subtle butch makeup, the twinkle. Yes, she has a twinkle!

Rhodes Scholar Rachel, with her poli sci PhD, her direct, articulate manner and her sly and trenchant commentary exposing the hypocrisy, lies and sheer ridiculousness of the Republicans.

Sure, we've had the inimitable Jon Stewart, the dryly fabulous Keith Olbermann, the indispensable Bill Maher (to wit: "the underlying problem we have in this country is that the people are too stupid to be governed. The public is like a dog...it can’t understand any sort of rational argument").

But Rachel is way hotter – and she is an out lesbian. Yeehaw! Rachel, this is an open invitation: bring the wife and I'll bring the cocktails.