DDoP: This Isn’t Treasure Island

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Tonight’s Dog Days of Podcasting post is a 100-word distilled moment written in August, 2009:

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems were constant friends in childhood, poems my grandmother and I would memorize and recite. I knew all about having a little shadow, and going up in a swing.

One poem that I never appreciated until this weekend, which has been spent largely in bed, was “The Land of Counterpane,” in which a sick child turned the hills and valleys of his comfortable bed into all manner of landscapes for his imagination.

I don’t imagine my quilt squares as separate countries, but I do still let imagination run wild.
Even days spent propped on pillows have magic.

You can listen to it HERE.

DDoP: Polyurethane

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Transcript of yesterday’s entry for The Dog Days of Podcasting. Transcript may not match final recording.

Listen to the episode at The Bathtub Mermaid.

PolyurethaneThe first time I heard the word “polyurethane” I was nine years old, and begging my mother for new roller-skates – the kind that have the smooth wheels like the rental skates at the rink. It must have been around my birthday, or maybe Christmas.

Shortly afterward, I received a pair of roller-skates with white leather booties sporting blue stripes, and happy reddish-pinkish polyurethane wheels.

Every day after school, every Saturday after the usual cartoon hour (which I never watched), I would walk sideways down the three floors from our condo to the ground, holding onto the rail so I wouldn’t roll off the edge of a step. My daring friends and I would skate in the local park, racing down the steep hill and across the low bridge over the creek, and then up the gentle slope on the other side.

We never missed the sharp turn onto the bridge, or went careening off the unprotected edge, but sometimes we almost did.

Sometimes I think we secretly wanted to.

The most recent occurrence of the word “polyurethane” in my life was earlier today, when our hired contractors sanded our kitchen cabinets and painted them with a coating of the stuff.

I’m convinced the fumes have made me slightly high.

I’m also convinced nothing was as awesome as being nine years old, and roller-skating down a steep hill and across a bridge.

Polyurethane…it’s everywhere.

The Truth About Sharks

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The Dog Days of Podcasting challenge began on Thursday. This is the text of my second episode, which you can hear at The BathtubMermaid

Truth About Sharks

“Shark week starts on Sunday,” I told my partner as we lounged among the smooshed pillows and rumbled sheets of our bed one hot July afternoon.

“How does a woman named ‘Desert Flower’ end up obsessed with sharks,” he asked, his long fingers idly stroking the skin of my arm.

“I don’t know…they’re sleek, they’re graceful, they’re elegant – ”

“They’re vicious – ”

“They aren’t, actually,” I corrected. “Anyway, I met one once.”

“You met a shark?”

I rolled over in bed, propping my chin on my hands and kicking my feet up behind me. “Mmhm. I was nine , and I was at the beach with my cousins.”

“Marina and Estella?”

“No. Nicky and Tony. Anyway, Tony had a raft – nothing fancy, just one of those inflatable pool toys – and the three of us were using it as a kickboard, not really paying attention to where we were, and suddenly we were almost at the ropes and buoys marking the channel.”

“Ropes and buoys?”

“You seriously need to visit the beach more.”

“We live in a landlocked state.”

“Details, details. Yes, ropes and buoys. You’re not supposed to swim past them. We’d drifted pretty far out – the tide was carrying us.”

“No one noticed?” He caught the end of one of my messy braids between two fingers and rolled it back and forth, tugging slightly.

“Oh, people noticed. The lifeguards were blowing their whistles and screaming for us to come in, and Aunt Nunzia was jumping up and down on the beach, a veritable poster child for the tern ‘conniption fit.'”

“So what happened?

“We turned around and started kicking and paddling for all we were worth – three little kids, sprawled across a single raft, in water so deep we couldn’t see the bottom, let alone touch it.”

“Obviously you made it back to shore.”

I pulled my head back, freeing my hair from his possession. “Obviously. Anyway, it felt like forever, but we finally got into shallower water, and the boys were able to touch bottom – they were taller than me – but I couldn’t quite. I held onto the raft and stretched my feet way down and I touched something…”

“Something…?”

“The something I was touching moved past me in the water, and scraped against my skin – it was like swimming past sandpaper.”

“That’s it? That’s your shark encounter? Did you even see the thing?”

“Well, no.”

“Then how do you know it was a shark?”

“Because that stretch of water is a nursery for white sharks.”

“That proves nothing.”

“And because I just know.”

“You do?” He was skeptical.

“Women always know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, it’s true. For example, I know that if I kiss you, you always smile.” I did, and he did. “And I know that given half a chance you’ll spend the entire day sleeping, and then complain you got nothing done.”

“That might be true.”

“It is true.”

“It still doesn’t answer the question,” he claimed. “Not really.”

It was also true that when I straddled him and began to kiss him again, he completely forgot whatever question he thought he’d been asking.

Her Name is Jane

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Jane Honda

The Dog Days of Podcasting challenge began on Thursday. This is the text of my first episode, which you can hear at The BathtubMermaid

Her Name is Jane

We took her home on Tuesday evening, after a morning of testing, a discussion over a lunch of comfort food, and even using our “phone a friend’ option.

I said, “We should flip a coin.”

He said, “You know if we did that I’d insist that we flip it several times in a row, and then graph the responses.”

I said, “Three times is enough.”

We called our regular mechanic.

The manager said, “I like Subarus; they run forever. Get the 2015 Forester.”

The lead technician said, “I like Hondas; they run forever. Get the 2014 CR-V.”

After we hung up, he admitted that the manager’s first response was actually, “Buy whichever car the missus likes better.”
Smart man, that garage manager.

We called the dealer of the car we’d chosen, only to find that someone else was doing paperwork on it. “We have another one that meets all your specs,” he said, “but it’s got a navigational system, which means it’s $1,400 more expensive.”

He’d already tried to get us to consider a less expensive model than what we were considering, after listening to our needs and wants.
We bought the more expensive version.

Her name is Jane.

Jane Honda.

Sunday Brunch: That 70’s Summer

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Slumber Party

My latest Sunday Brunch piece is up at All Things Girl. We’re filling the blog, while we continue to rebuild the rest of our site since it was hacked – badly – in June.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

If the “slumber party” was small – me and just one or two friends – we’d set up camp in my bedroom. If the group was larger, we’d take over the den or the living room. I’m sure we watched movies, but since VCRs were not yet commonplace, and DVDs hadn’t even been invented, but what I remember are the games and stories.

Slumber party games when I was seven, eight, and nine, were still pretty innocent, and the favorite thing to play was “Light as a Feather; Stiff as a Board.” There are many versions of it, and many explanations for why it becomes possible for four girls to lift a fifth using just two fingers each, but the reality is that as much as, as children, we wanted to pretend it was magic, the chant just helps to unify everyone, and the rest is basic physics.

The rest of the piece can be found HERE.

Image Copyright: creatista / 123RF Stock Photo

Dormant

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reading in bed

It’s just over a month til my birthday (5 weeks from Sunday, actually) and I’ve entered the period of the year when I’m sort of creatively dormant. I think, I plan, I read, and lift weights, and play in the kitchen, but my writing slows down to the bare minimum.

Once the calendar page flips to August, however – once it turns to MY month – my creativity always comes surging back like a huge wave breaking over a jetty.

Cool, ferocious, blue-green creativity.

For now though, I have a pot of pasta that will soon become a bowl of aglia e olio, and a chilled wine that’s light and neither too sweet nor too dry, and a beachy novel to read.

Dormant? Maybe.

But it’s just part of my personal cycle.

KeithandVeronica

Sunday Brunch: Screen Dads

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KeithandVeronica

 

It’s Fathers’ Day, which means the internet is swarming with ads for power tools and sporting equipment, all of which share space with pithy articles talking about the greatest fathers in media.

I’ve noticed, though, that most of the memes which list great screen dads tend to stick with the stuff that’s so old it doesn’t even play on Nick at Night, or even TV Land any more. Not that I’m knocking Mike Brady, but I wasn’t even born when The Brady Bunch began, and not yet four when the final episode aired.

Besides, aside from a period when I wanted Scotty from Star Trek to be my father, the TV fathers (and father figures) I responded to were hardly cookie-cutter parents. The TV dads I grew up with included Charles Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie),  Steven Keaton (Family Ties) and Bill Cosby (The Cosby Show) but lately, I’ve come to realize that there are some great screen fathers (and father figures) from this century.

Who are they? Well, here are five of my favorites:

Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen – The West Wing)

In addition to being the father of Ellie, Lizzie, and Zoey, Jed Bartlet also had this little job as President of the United States. It’s true that two of his three daughters were living independent lives, but he still had to balance country and family, with scales that were just a bit more particular than those measuring other fathers.

As well, Zoey was going to school at Georgetown University for part of the series, and living in the White House a good chunk of the time as well, which meant a lot more hands-on parenting, as in the scene where the president explains to his daughter why she’s got to have extra security:

“My getting killed would be bad enough, but that is not the nightmare scenario. The nightmare scenario, sweetheart, is you getting kidnapped. You go out to a bar or a party in some club and you get up to go to the restroom and somebody comes from behind and puts their hand across your mouth and whisks you out the back door. You’re so petrified you don’t even notice the bodies of a few Secret Service agents lying on the ground with bullet holes in their heads. Then you’re whisked away in a car. It’s a big party with lots of noise and lots of people coming and going, and it’s a half hour before someone says, “Hey, where’s Zoey?” Another fifteen minutes before the first phone call. It’s another hour and a half before anyone even *thinks* to shut down all the airports. Now we’re off to the races. You’re tied to a chair in a cargo shack somewhere in the middle of Uganda and I am told that I have 72 hours to get Israel to free 460 terrorist prisoners. So I’m on the phone pleading with Be Yabin and he’s saying: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but Israel simply does not negotiate with terrorists, period. It’s the only way we can survive.” So now we got a new problem because this country no longer has a Commander-in-chief, it has a father who’s out of his mind because his little girl is in a shack somewhere in Uganda with a gun to her head. Do you get it?”

Lucas “Luke” Danes (played by Scott Patterson – Gilmore Girls)

Luke isn’t actually Rory Gilmore’s father. In fact, during the course of the show, he never officially becomes her stepfather. Nevertheless, he is the reigning father figure in Rory’s life, attending family parties and events (like her high school graduation) even before he and her mother, Lorelai tried dating.

Later, of course, he essentially raises his nephew Jess, and then he finds out he has a daughter of his own, April, but when it comes to parenting, Rory was really Luke’s ‘first’ child…and he even goes up against Rory’s biological father, Christopher, to demonstrate it:

“Oh, really? Well, where the hell where you when she had the chicken pox and would only eat mashed potatoes for a week? Or when she graduated high school and started college, huh? Where the hell were you when I was moving her mattress into her dorm and out of her dorm and back into her dorm?”

 

Burt Hummel (played by Mike O’Malley – Glee)

I knew from the start that Burt was a pretty special guy, raising Kurt alone, and supporting his son’s interests even when he didn’t understand them, but what sold me – and most of the viewing public – on Burt is this quotation from the episode “Theatricality,” where he busts his soon-to-be stepson, Finn, on the latter’s use of the word ‘faggy.’

“I know what you meant! What, you think I didn’t use that word when I was your age? You know, some kid gets clocked in practice we tell him to stop being such a fag, shake it off. We meant it exactly the way you meant it. That being gay is wrong. That’s some kind of punishable offense. I really thought you were different, Finn. You know, I thought that being in Glee Club, and being raised by your mom, meant that you were some, you know, new generation of dude who saw things differently. Who just kinda, you know, came into the world knowing what it’s taken me years of struggling to figure out. I guess I was wrong. I’m sorry Finn, but you can’t, you can’t stay here.”

Jonathan Kent (played by John Schneider – Smallville)

It can’t be easy, being the adoptive father of a future superhero, but it was always clear that Jonathan was parenting Clark and that the eventual Superman was the mask – a flip of the conventional version of the story. As Clark aged and began developing his powers, Jonathan’s life got a lot more difficult, but he still tried his best to answer every challenge with grace and wisdom, as in this quotation:

“Look, Clark, I’m your father. I’m supposed to have all the answers. It kills me that I don’t, but you gotta have faith that we’ll figure this thing out together.”

Keith Mars (played by Enrico Colantoni – Veronica Mars)

Another single father, Keith Mars is a bit grittier than the average television dad, but there’s never a doubt that he’s Veronica’s greatest ally, even when he has to choose being a parent over being a friend. Personally, I think their relationship is one of the best father-daughter relationships ever put on screen. Moreover, it’s obvious that Veronica shares his sense of humor, as well as his detective skills, as seen in this exchange from the second season.

Keith: So, senior year. How was your first day at school honey?

Veronica: Great! I beat up a freshman, stole his lunch money and then skipped out after lunch.

Keith: What, no pre-marital sex?

Veronica: Oh, yea… yes. But don’t worry dad, I swear you’re gonna like these guys.

Keith: That’s my girl.

Veronica: I missed you.

Keith: [While they hug] I missed you too. Now, where is my turkey pot-pie, woman?

 

These are just a few of my favorite “screen dads,” and while they’re no longer entirely contemporary, I think all of them are, at least, more relatable to modern audiences than the fathers in those older shows – even if we (well, I) still watch them when I’m flipping channels and they happen to be on.

 

Note: This piece originally appeared in the e-zine All Things Girl on 15 June 2014, but the original link is referenced but not archived at the internet archive.

NathanFillion

Sunday Brunch: The Best Advice Nathan Fillion Never Gave Me

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NathanFillion

 

Two weeks ago, I was sitting in a darkened room at the Dallas Convention Center with about 4,499 of my closest friends. Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement. Not the number of people, but that they’re my closest friends. Really, I knew maybe five people in that room.

It didn’t matter, of course. Why? Because it was Dallas Comic-Con. Because once you enter the doors, it doesn’t matter if you’re a DC girl in love with a Marvel boy, or a woman who thinks Star Trek is better than Star Wars, married to a man who thinks the opposite is true. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a major fan of A Nightmare on Elm Street (the original, with Robert Englund) while your husband prefers the grittier, somewhat more reality based (and I use that concept very, very loosely) world of The Walking Dead. Once you enter Comic-Con – and this is especially true in Dallas, I think – everyone is a friend; you just haven’t necessarily met them yet.

In any case, two weeks ago, on Saturday evening, I was sitting in Hall D, 4th row center, waiting with those 4,499 other people for a special solo Q&A from Nathan Fillion. You might know him as Richard Castle.  You might know him as Captain Hammer (from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog) or Captain Tightpants (aka Malcolm Reynolds, from Firefly and Serenity). You might know him as Caleb, the evil priest from the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you’re old enough to have watched more than just cartoons in the late 1980s, you may even remember that he was one of Murphy Brown’s many, many receptionists, which was my first experience with his work.

The Q&A started later than its originally-scheduled 6:00 pm, because Mr. Fillion is a truly nice person. He could have had his handlers stop his autograph line so he could get to the hall on time. He chose to stay, make eye-contact with each of them, and keep signing ’til the line was done. It also didn’t end on time, at 7:00, because he also chose to ensure that those 4500 people in Hall D got their full hour with him. Sure, Twitter would have exploded with nastiness if he hadn’t made those choices, but if you follow his Twitter feed at all, you’ll know that even there, he’s a pretty nice guy.

It’s rare, at conventions, for anything substantive to be asked in Q&As. It’s not that there aren’t people with really good questions; it’s that those people are usually not the first to line up behind the microphones. Most of the questions, then, tend to come from admittedly-adorable small children who ask things like, “What’s your favorite animal?” (For the record, Fillion prefers cats. I forgive him for this.)

But two weeks ago, in Dallas, a young man stood up at one of the microphones, and shared that he’d just been cast in his first television pilot. He asked Nathan (I can call him Nathan after being alone in a dark room with him, and a moderator, and 4,499 of my closest friends, right?) two things: one, to demonstrate his “soap opera long take” technique; and two, give some actorly advice.

The soap opera bit was hilarious, but the advice…the advice was amazing. And while it was meant as advice to a young actor, I found it to be as universally applicable as Natalie Goldberg’s Rules for Writing (and I’ve written about those before).

Here’s what he said:

“Just remember:  You’re there because they want you there.  You already have the job. Do your job.  You are good enough to get the job.  You’re good enough to do your job. Don’t get stressed about things that aren’t in your control.  Control what’s in your control.      Know your lines.  Be pleasant.  Do good work.”

Let’s take a closer look at those points, shall we?

Don’t get stressed about things that aren’t in your control. Even the best of us can only control our own behavior, our own attitudes, our own reactions. Sure, it’s easy to get upset about things in the world – war, crime, various social issues we feel passionate about – but we can’t fix those things. We can, and should, become informed, but freaking out over things we can’t control doesn’t help us, and it doesn’t help others, either.

Control what’s in your control. It seems obvious, right? If you can control something, you should. Either Tim Gunn or one of the former Project Runway designers who appeared on one of his shows phrased it this way: “We cannot control how we are perceived; we can only control how we are presented.” I can’t control your reaction, but I can control my attitude, and my delivery, and any number of other things. I can’t fix every social issue that I care about, but I can put my money, my vote, and my voice behind who can.

Know your lines. While this would seem to be specific to actors, I think it applies to almost everything, if you use a loose interpretation of ‘lines.’ The part of me that does improv and voice-acting doesn’t have to worry about memorizing lines, but when I’m meeting new people, I know that I have to be positive and outgoing – that meeting people’s eyes and engaging with them is a version of “knowing my lines.” It also means knowing that I can’t be as bawdy with my friend who is a priest as I can be with my friend who is a comedian. (Well, actually, the priests I know are pretty bawdy, but you get the point.) It also includes basic manners. Some of the lines we’re expected to know, are things like using ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ offering assistance without being asked, and standing back when assistance isn’t needed.

Be pleasant. As I recently wrote to a friend who asked for the best piece of advice each of his friends had to offer, “When all else fails, try good manners.” Even the toughest day or the hardest task becomes more manageable when you have a pleasant attitude. If that means getting up early so you’re well-caffeinated before you have to deal with people, then do so (that would be part of ‘know your lines’ and ‘control what you can control,’ as well). There’s a reason that saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar has lasted for ages.

Do good work. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody is ever expected to be perfect. That doesn’t mean we have the right to be lazy, to turn in shoddy work, or to half-ass projects because we don’t feel like pushing ourselves. I’m not saying we have to over-extend ourselves all the time either – far from it. Just give the best that you can at any given moment, and know that sometimes giving your best means asking for help or saying no.

I wasn’t expecting to hear an actor whose work I admire offer life-lessons in the middle of a Comic-Con Q&A. I know, from the reactions in the room at the time, and from the comments on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere on the ‘net, that other people were as surprised by both the eloquence and the simplicity of Nathan’s advice to that young actor, and by its relevance to people in general.

I’m still going to grumble, from time-to-time, about the lack of substantive questions in Q&A’s, or about how moderators should control the lines better (I gave feedback – extremely polite, but detailed feedback – about this to the Dallas Comic-Con organizers). But thanks to that young actor whose name I don’t know, and thanks to Nathan Fillion, and thanks to the 4,499 friends who sat in that darkened room with me, I’ve been reminded that sometimes amazing advice comes from the most unusual places.

Also? Nathan Fillion is a genuinely nice guy.

Note: This piece originally appeared in the e-zine All Things Girl on 1 June 2014, but the original link is referenced but not archived at the internet archive.

HIMYM

Sunday Brunch: Life Lessons from HIMYM

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HIMYM

It’s been three weeks since the series finale of the long-running situation comedy How I Met Your Mother. Whatever your feelings were about that last episode, I think we can all agree that for any show, a nine-season run is pretty impressive, a combination of great writing, a cast that clicks, and not a little bit of luck and magic.

For me, HIMYM was never appointment-viewing, but whenever I caught an episode I was usually entertained for half an hour, and sometimes I laughed out loud (I am not an ‘easy room.’) In anticipation of the finale, then, I binge-watched every episode (thank you Netflix and Roku Streaming Stick), and as I did, I realized that in addition to being funny, smart, and well-crafted (seriously, there were jokes from season one that had callbacks in season nine), the show was also surprisingly relevant, even to people like me who are a bit older than most of the cast, and a good portion of the target-demographic.

This, then, is a list of five things I learned from How I Met Your Mother:

Being Awesome is a Choice.

“When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead… True story.” – Barney Stinson

None of us can control the way we are perceived, but we can control the way we present ourselves, and that means choosing to be awesome. You can define ‘awesome’ any way you want, but, for me, it involves confidence mixed with a little bit of audacity and just a hint of risk. As an improviser (because in my life everything comes back to improve) choosing to be awesome is just one more way of saying, “Yes, and…” to the universe.

Big Decisions Should Never be Made in the Middle of the Night

“Nothing good happens after 2 A.M.” – Ted Mosby (quoting his mother).

It doesn’t matter if you’re choosing whether or not to sleep with someone, whether or not to take a new job, or any other life-changing choice. The middle of the night is not the time for heavy reflection. Your mind is foggy and your body is tired, neither of which leaves you in optimal decision-making mode. Sure, you may be nocturnal (I am) but even so, the best thing you can do is drink some water, jot down a note to yourself (on paper or on the electronic device of your choice), flip your pillow to the cool side, and go back to sleep. You’ll make wiser choices in the morning, with a clearer head.

It’s Okay to Make Mistakes

“There are certain things in life where you know it’s a mistake but you don’t really know it’s a mistake because the only way to know that it really is a mistake is to make that mistake and go, ‘Yup, that was a mistake.’ So really, the bigger mistake would be to not make the mistake because then you’ll go about your whole life not knowing whether it was a mistake or not.” – Lily Aldrin

Sometimes the only way you can tell if you like something is to try it. This applies to food, hobbies, careers, friendships, and fashion. It probably applies to a lot of other things as well. If we don’t try new things, we stagnate, but not everything we try is going to be successful. Whether it’s a “shitty first draft,” (to use Anne Lamott’s phrase), or that bubble skirt we were in love with back in college, we have to give ourselves permission to be wrong. Besides, sometimes a mistake isn’t so much an error, or a failure, but a nudge toward a different direction.

Sometimes You Have to Just Suck it Up and Deal

“The best I can give you is a fake smile and dead eyes.” –  Robin Scherbatsky

We all have those moments when we’d rather not see people. Maybe we don’t like funerals, or maybe we can’t stomach the notion of one more baby shower when we’ve never managed to carry a child to term. Sometimes, even when we feel empty, we have to just go through the motions – just show up, and get through it – especially if our presence is important to someone we love. We may begin an event wearing a fake smile, but chance are, there will be a bit of real warmth in it by the end of the afternoon or evening or weekend or…whatever. And if there isn’t? Well, we can always go home and hide under the covers afterward.

It Really IS About the Journey

“That’s life, you know, we never end up where you thought you wanted to be.” – Marshall Ericksen

For most of us, the life we eventually have isn’t the live we dreamed of. When I was nine, I wanted to be a jockey or a marine biologist. When I was fifteen, I wanted to be the next Jacqueline DuPres, and until I was twenty I swore I would never get married, and if I did, we’d have separate apartments (I’m still not convinced that last part is a bad idea.) The point is, it isn’t where we end up that makes us who we are, it’s all the things that happen on the way. Sometimes we choose the well-traveled route; other times we opt for the whole “road less traveled” thing, but either way, life isn’t a result; it’s a process.

As for the finale if How I Met Your Mother, I’m one of the few people in my circle of friends who thought it was appropriate and perfect, especially since the signs were there, all the way through the series. Will there be another series that captures the attention and imagination of so many? Of course there will. Does the fact that television is a transitory medium meant first to entertain make these lessons any less relevant? Absolutely not. The beauty of the human condition is that we learn from every experience, even the ones that we only watch on TV.

Note: This piece originally appeared in the e-zine All Things Girl on 1 June 2014, but the original link is referenced but not archived at the internet archive.