Mulligan
i want a do-over.
now that i understand
all i did wrong,
a want a chance
to do it all right:
not be a geek;
make the right friends;
go to the better college;
love the girl who got away;
avoid the stupidest
of my lifetime's worth
of stupid mistakes.
i want the chance
to live the life
i know i should have lived
and not the one
i stumbled into.
i want to live
a better life, a happier life,
the life i used to dream of,
before i have
too many regrets.
march 17, 2008
Eva understands
I do very little celeb-watchng, but this picture stood out. Eva Longoria, whom I've never seen on tv (I've never watched "Desperate Housewives" and no intention to do so), is national spokeswoman for PADRES Contra El Cancer. The AP text tells that Eva "shares a moment with cancer survivor Emma Arroyo, 5, during a check presentation of $200,000 from AT&T to PADRES, Saturday, March 1, 2008 in Burbank, Calif. The donation to the non-profit organization committed to improving the quality of life for Latino children with cancer and their families, is the result of AT&T's second annual Answer Hope's Call campaign which raises money to support families coping with the devastating effects of childhood cancer. (AP Photo, AT&T, Susan Goldman).
Lots of celebrities do "good works", and some, like Angelina Jolie, are tremendously dedicated and, I hope, effective. What I love about this picture is that clearly Eva is doing something meaningful, not merely something good for her career. When an adult feels free to enter a kid's world, to replace his or her perspective with the kid's, then that's an adult who understands — who has not forgotten — what it's like to be a kid. When you are down with a kid like she is with this little girl, you can't be thinking about the cameras or how you look to others; you either focus on the kid entirely, or you're a fake. It's nice to see that whatever she may be in the rest of her life (and I have zero idea), in a place like that moment with this girl, a place that means so much, Eva Longoria is willing to give herself over entirely to this little girl. That's the sign of a good person in my book.
Dirty Little Town - Kieran Kane (w/ Lucinda & Emmylou)
i first heard this song five or six years ago on some internet radio station; it's catchy, the lyrics are good, and it's got Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris doing background vocals. who could ask for more?
Antonio's Song - Michael Franks (live)
i love Michael Franks' earlier albums, and the one this song is from, Sleeping Gypsy, is possibly my favorite. Franks is jazz, sometimes what you might call "light" jazz but at his best — as i said, the earlier albums — he has an energy that keeps the music from ever being easy-listening. just damn good.
(just saw this was recorded in 1991. 'splains the hair.)
Scrivener - a great writing tool
There are all kinds of tools for writing on a Mac. bbedit, from BareBones is the best thing going for doing coding, including html, but it's expensive and probably way more than needed by most users who just want a good text editor. BareBones also makes Text Wrangler, a free and very good text editor. TextEdit isn't a bad tool; it's part of OSX, too. A lot of people surrender to the dark side and purchase Office; I've been using the open source version, OpenOffice, and it's working great. You do have to install and set up X11, which is a nuisance for technophobes. I'm using the Aqua version, which doesn't need X11 but has some goofiness to it.
But I've found a great new tool, Scrivener. It's not free, but it's only about $40, and you get a month to test drive it. I'm still learning what it can do, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to spring for it.
It's not just a text editor; it's a way to both write and manage your writings. You develop your writing in logical pieces, and Scrivener provides a simple means for organizing and viewing those pieces. Each section of your piece — say a couple of paragraphs relating to Subject X — is not just a text document, it has an associated file card. The cards automatically group together and all can be seen, and moved around, on a "corkboard."
You also can place media items within the project: pdf's, images, videos, etc. These can be view separately or inserted into the document. Very useful if you are doing, for example, an article that has lots of supporting images or charts.
Best of all, it comes with a great tutorial. Second best of all, it comes with templates for things like scripts and comics. JJ Abrams has his entire writing team using it. It's a terrific tool, and the amazing thing: it was not written by a geek. The author is a writer who couldn't find the right tool for his novel so he learned how to code for Mac OSX and built Scrivener. And he got it right. Brilliant. Give it a try.
Only Time - Enya
ok, it's not cool to like Enya? thank the goddess i've never been cool. i do like Enya, and i love songs like this.
Oscar Peterson: 1925-2007
Oscar Peterson passed away today. He led a long life, made amazing music to share with the world, including the Christmas album I'm listening to now. He's one of those artists I've enjoyed but never gave enough time to. I'm just glad I do know his music, even if not in depth. That will change over time.
Christmas is not a time we associate with death, but people die on Christmas every year, of course, and not just old men with failing kidneys. For the natural world, it's just another day. For me, in many ways, it's become just another day. Granted, a day off with pay, and a day I especially miss my kids, but it no longer has religious meaning for me. So it really is just another day. I can't pretend there's something special about this day beyond whatever meaning I give it, and that makes it just another day. I have to give each day special meaning, or my life is meaningless. The meaning and the value of my life is not something that exists beyond me, and most certainly not in some religion. It's what I create, every single day.
Still, I know for Oscar's wife and daughter, this will be a bittersweet Christmas. For those who lose a loved one around this holiday, it will be tough for them to celebrate in the future. That's understandable; my mom died on the Fourth of July, which is not quite the same but it gives that celebration an unusual sadness for me. For those who do suffer loss on Christmas, I wish for them, as for everyone, peace. And if nothing else, they could do worse than listen to some Oscar Peterson to find it.
value
i did the math
and learned a very important
fact about myself:
i am 1,000 times less important
than Alex Rodriquez.
if you translated out net human value,
as measured in current dollars,
he would be over one mile tall
to my mere 5-foot-11-and-three-quarter
inches.
no wonder he cannot hit
in October
while i have no problem
doing my 1,000-times-less-meaningful job
well.
fragment: from this morning at the bus stop
In the grey morning of not-yet light and a low sky of clouds that hover seamlessly, motionless even in the chilly wind, in that unwoken dawn I feel as sleepy and apart as if I were still in bed. I wonder, in that part of my mind that sits off to the side and takes notes, makes comments, if I am awake or having one of those rare and wonderful dreams of vivid detail. But I honestly have never felt cold, nor heat, in my dreams, so I know that I am standing at the bus stop on my way to work and she is a real person.
In my dreams, here is what would happen:
She would turn around and look at me. She would not smile at me; she is too sad to smile anymore. Instead she would take the half-dozen or so steps to me and stand in front of me. Taking the ear buds from her own ears, she gently removes mine; the microscopic sound of our iPods buzzing together as they dangle on the cords she holds in her hand. Then, gently and carefully, she places her ear buds into my ears and mine into hers. And we stand there, close but not touching, each listening to the other's music. I don't recognize her music; it's something current, perhaps, pop and hiphop and intense. I like it; i want to ask her who the woman is that is singing. Perhaps it's a name I've read and just not heard the music. From my iPod, she is listening to Nanci Griffith, early Nanci from the 80s. I wonder if she knows Nanci and what she thinks of my music on this cold, dim autumn morning. She still is not smiling; I love Nanci's music, but I know there are times, and songs, that amplify my own sadness. This lovely woman is not smiling, standing so close to me, and we are listening to each other's music, and then she leans across to me and kisses me. Kisses me hard enough to tell me she means something important by it, but what that is, I don't know. And before I can ask her, she takes the earpiece from her own ears, hands then and her iPod to me, turns, and walks quickly away. I want to follow, but the bus has arrived and I have to go to work. I do go to work.
And I do go to work and wonder about the woman I did see at the bus stop, listening to the music on her iPod and shivering in the cold just as I was doing. One thing seemed to be true and not of my imagination: that she was sad. That she needed something, but we all need something. What I am longing for is that one day she, whoever she is, will need me.
Holly Hunter - Saving Grace: the easy way out
The idea of salvation seems to be one of the most prevalent in Western society. Here in America, salvation in one form or another dominates creative endeavors: the list of characters in movies who need to find salvation is huge, almost from the beginning of cinema. Chaplin's characters were looking for salvation from the pressure of being at the bottom of society. Bogart, in his first major role, The Petrified Forest, is as bad as they come but still finds a glimmer of hope to maybe end his life a bit better than he lived it. Pulp Fiction, with Butch the runaway boxer and Sugar the petty thief, presented two very different, and very odd, roads to personal salvation.
And on television, no character has been sent in search of saving grace more than the troubled cop. Hence the name of the new Holly Hunter vehicle, "Saving Grace". Anything with Holly Hunter is worth seeing, of course, and a weekly television show is just a promise of delight. The hope is that this tired old formula is given a fresh look by Hunter and creator Nancy Miller.
"Tired old formula" certainly sums up Hunter's Grace at the beginning: smoking, drinking, sleeping around, wild and careless, with her life and the lives of everyone around her. Until she kills a man while driving and drunk. Which is when the angel appears and offers her one last chance. The premise of the series, of course: Grace is given one last chance and fights against it as hard as she can, but the angel appears to be even more stubborn than she. That remains to be seen.
But the formula is old and well-used. We see it over and over again, the lost soul struggling to come to terms with life via God's grace. But it's always pretty much the same god, the Judeo-Christian (and to my mind, Muslim) "Father in Heaven" god, occassionally with a bit of Jesus thrown in (for most writers and directors, however, that seems to take things a bit too far). Given that the vast majority of Americans believe in that god to some extent, that's understandable. It's familiar, a storyline viewers love and watch. It's safe, too; even a tobacco-chewing angel is acceptable, because, after all, he's got a heart of pure gold.