Happy Birthday, Claire!

Today is your 29th birthday! I hope it is a great one. Your presents will hopefully arrive at your office tomorrow.

In May of 2006, you and I went to the Renaissance Faire. I came over to your Hollywood apartment early with the dresses, the jewelry (although you seem to be wearing your own necklace here) and the head wreaths. Isn't that watch ridiculous? What was I thinking? Anywho, we took this picture before we left so we could have a shot of us where we weren't covered in dust.

When we got there we met up with Sam and Brian, but eventually split off to go see:


Broon! We were so happy that strange, fire-breathing man was there. Just like when we'd gone to the Ren Faire with Jaimi and Alex and Paula. Huzzah!

After the show, we put some money in his hat (?) and asked if we could take a picture with him. We told him we'd seen him in high school, and I don't think he heard us right because he thought we went to high school with him (damn, did we age well in that case) or maybe just his high school at a different point in time. But we eventually sorted him out and we took fun picture.

Claire-Bear! I do hope today is super fun and that you hang out with friends and have drinks and enjoy yourself in the city of NY. You deserve it. :-D Love, Me

Smarts and Me

The other day, I was at a BBQ. This was the most racially diverse get-together I'd been to in years. It made me happy. There was a large contingent of Asain folk there, specifically Korean, as that was the race of the host. While hanging out near the bbq, I began conversating with a couple of Korean guys around my age or younger. The bf was also there. After discussing a variety of historical topics including the South Korean/North Korean whatnot, the Japanese/Korean conflicts, and Korean culture in general, one of the guys asked "Are you like, a professor? Or a history major?" I brushed it off with "I read a lot of Wikipedia" and we moved on, but secretly inside I was SO EXCITED! My real answer would have gone like this: "OH MY GOD! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT! DO I REALLY COME OFF AS PROFESSOR-ISH? THAT IS SO AWESOME! THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT! CAN I HUG YOU? AND THEN TEACH YOU SOME MORE?!"

Here are some other things happening in my brain recently:

I'm finding that as I get older words have less meaning for me. Two examples of this are: Evil and Slut. I don't think either of them means anything.

After the Summer of '07, or what I call my "annus horribilis" I slowly came upon the realization that there is no evil in this world (IMO). All my logic of evil had been crafted by Disney. Humans are the only creatures who are 'evil' and everything we do that is 'evil' is all explainable by lack of social skills, extenuating circumstances, and brain chemistry gone "wrong" (for more on this last one, I recommend the book I'm currently reading Incognito by David Eagleman, or this amazing example).

Also, a quick note. Isn't it interesting that we are slowly but surely explaining our bad guys, our incarnations of evil? Observe -

1900: The Wizard of Oz is published.
1995: Wicked is published, explaining that it was all a big misunderstanding, and the Wicked Witch is totally cool.

1977: Star Wars comes to life.
1999: Episode One arrives, explaining how Anakin Skywalker is just a scared child was removed from his mother and was a pawn of the force.

1997: Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone is published.
2005: Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince is published, explaining how Tom Riddle grew up and slowly turned into Lord Voldemort, mainly because no one loved him.

Why do you think as a society we are doing this?

As for 'Slut', it's a negative word for a woman who enjoys having sex, or has multiple partners. God forbid.

Umm ... I guess that's all I've got for the moment. Oh! Wait!

Okay, so I'm also reading this book called Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity. I'm not very far, but there's a really cool part about how primates grooming one another led to human language. Essentially, in a small group of primates, there's time for everybody to groom everyone. But once you get past a certain number, there's just not enough time in the day. So there's this thing called "vocal grooming" that primates do, where you call out to one another, staying 'in touch' with sounds instead of touch. This goes much quicker. And then the author points out that if we think about all the places gossip happens the most: bathhouses, barber shops, and spas, this connection is even more obvious. I just think that's really neat.

Also, at the BBQ, I said I wanted to just have books be edible, so I could just eat them page by page and it would go much quicker and I could retain the information. And a friend of mine, who's breastfeeding, said "Oh, good, I'd get to eat 500 more pages a day than everyone else." :-)

Sitcoms and Death and Me

Let's see, how did this start ...

Oh. I was reading a 2008 Metromix interview with Justin Timberlake wherein he mentioned his stepfather. Interesting, I thought. It reminded me of Justin Bieber, who's dad left his mom when he was little and went and started a family with another woman. AND NOW JUSTIN'S A SUPER STAR! This is clearly why all you dads out there should stay with your families, because you never know who's going to be a big moneymaker.

Okay, so then I'm reading about Justin Timberlake on Wikpedia and it says that there was an NSNYC album in 2000 named "No Strings Attached"!!!

Get it?! Because that's the name of the movie that came out last year that's just like the movie that Justin's in that's coming out this year.

Okay, maybe that's not interesting but it's ... well, what's a word for less than interesting?

THEN I was reading the plot for No String Attached, because let's be serious, I'm not going to see that film. Then I noticed it was directed by Ivan Reitman (sad times). Then I was looking at Ivan Reitman's films, and I checked out "Father's Day" and was like was this just a movie version of My Two Dads? It turns out it was not. BUT...

That finally leads us to the real purpose of the post, wherein I started thinking about sitcoms and death.

My Two Dads starts because the mom dies, then says "hey, dudes, one you is the dad, raise my daughter".

Full House starts because ... Tony? What's his name? Bob Sagat's character ... Danny! Ha! I remembered it before the Wikipedia page loaded. Danny's wife dies, and so to help take care of the kids the wife's brother, Jesse, and Joey, their wacky friend, move in. The wife died because of a drunk driver. I'm not sure when they explained that for the first time, but it came up when DJ drank once. I think. I could be making that up.

Then there's the show The Hogan Family (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UumiZKltAPQ). I started watching the show after Valerie Harper had left, so I was under the impression that the show's impetus had been the mother's death. As it turns out, no. My idea that the mom had died in a fire was also incorrect-it was a car accident. (I'm not sure when I watched this show ... probably in syndication. I watched a lot of stuff in syndication) (Also, one of the only episodes I remember of this show, probably why I remember it at all, was that someone got some birth control, and the aunt found it. It was in a paper bag, and I was totally embarrassed but entirely curious WHAT THE HELL IS IN THAT PAPER BAG THAT MEANS YOU HAVE SEX?!) (Lastly, the theme song uses the words 'step by step' ... hmm).

Then there's John Ritter's death, which was extra complicated, because it meant two characters died. First his character on 8 Simple Rules and also his character as JD's dad on Scrubs. But this is a case where someone actually died and then they had to deal with it, not a character dying for plot or because of a dispute over money. But you can see the connection.

When I was little I used to watch Three's Company. As I recall, I liked it because Jack took prat falls, Chrissy was dumber than me (at the age of 6 or 8 or so) and Janetwas sarcastic. My mom forbid me from watching it because it had quite a few sexual innuendos. I told her I wouldn't watch it, but eventually I found it being run in a different time slot, and I figured that that was a loophole and so continued watching it. But what's really funny about all this is that I had NO IDEA that the gag on the show was that Jack was supposed to be gay, that's how he could live in the apartment. I didn't find it at all odd that Jack lived in an apartment with two women he didn't have a relationship with. Plus, it had the best opening sequence.

I also enjoy the Coach opening sequence, because I just like it when cameras scroll over items to tell you who the characters are. I'm sure there are other shows that did this. Sometimes, I would gather my most important things and arrange them on my desk and then stare at them and hum to myself.

Ah, the life of an only child.

Also strange, the show Aliens in the Family. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliens_in_the_Family For this reason: "Baby Bobut could talk, had a genius-level IQ, and was perpetually plotting a grisly fate for those around him". Family Guy anyone?

The other interesting thing is how all these shows got around certain societal ideals. Like, My Two Dads these days could, obviously, be gay. And both Full House and The Hogan Family, they could have just been divorced dads. I was under the impression that with Step by Step, the parents were just divorced, but its seems at least Suzanne Sommers was widowed ... they don't mention what Patrick Duffy's deal was. And on The Brady Bunch: "Producer Schwartz wanted Carol to have been a divorcée but the network objected to this. A compromise was reached whereby no mention was made of the circumstances in which Carol's first marriage ended."

Also, on Step by Step this happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_Opera_Rapid_Aging_Syndrome which I find only slightly more hilarious than the "kid who goes up the stairs never to come down again". Boy Meets World broke the 4th wall with this: "She [Morgan, the younger sister of Cory] disappears without mention in the middle of the 3rd season. When she returns, Cory responds "Long time no see!" to which she answers "that was the longest time out I've ever had!" " I know this happened elsewhere, but I can't think of where.

I also really loved Mama's Family when I was kid. And Saved by the Bell and Out of this World and Punky Brewster. That's apropos of nothing.

Hrm, that's probably enough sitcom discussion for one afternoon.

Or, maybe I have one more thing. When TGIF was on and it was Perfect Strangers, Balky was on an add thing for the programming and he called it "Two Goats in Fresno" which I found utterly hilarious and amazing, as I lived not far from Fresno.

The Future and Me

My friend sent me this post.

And then said she should try it. So my logic is, if I do it first, maybe I can get her to do it too.

There was never a time where I didn't think I would go to college. I knew I didn't have to, but both my parents had attended college. It made sense. When I was a nanny (after college) I worked with a kid who didn't know that college was optional. Sad.

The thing was, for years I thought I would be going to Stanford. It was where my mom went, it was nearby where I lived, and we visited the campus often for concerts and the like.

When I was in elementary school, I had it all worked out. I would go to ... I think it was called Union? for middle school, then Leigh High School (which is where I went swimming every day during the summer), and then up the peninsula for college. But then I went to high school across the street from it, so it lost some of its glitter. And I felt I needed to stretch my wings, not go someplace where I could return home on weekends and hang out with the old gang.

I had this big plan to be a computer programmer, even though I knew very little about what that actually entailed. My dad was a computer consultant/engineer as I was growing up, and I knew I liked being on the computer, so this made sense to me.

Of course, if I ever stopped to think what I liked doing on the computer, I could have saved myself a year of low grades in college. That is, I liked to type stories (and play Loadrunner, but who didn't?).

I also spent a ton of time 'playing' with my Barbies by myself. I saw 'playing' because it mostly involved staring into the huge dollhouse my dad made me when I was five and making up stories in my head. You'd think I'd pay more attention to my own interests, but as it turns out I'm just stubborn and inattentive.

As a little gal I would sometimes dress up in my fanciest dress (a slinky long thing) and my faux fur coat and go wait outside near the curb. When my mom inquired what I was up to I told her "waiting for my date to pick me up." I guess I've always been confident that I would meet a decent man, even though there were large stretches of time where it seemed no man (boy) was interested in me.

I have forever been wary about too much schoolin'. This was why when all my friends were declaring their intentions to become vetranarians, I was like "yeah, whatevs". The day I graduated high school I had a very clear thought in my head, which was "I can put up with about four more years of this, but that's it." It's also not exactly worth it to get an MA in Creative Writing. It does work out for some people, but it's definitely not necessary, and not really a way to get noticed.

As an only child, I did spend a lot of time alone. This led to some odd inside-my-own-brain rationing. Like, I needed to have a backpack of canned food, clothing, and books ready to go in case I needed to run away from home. I never encountered any issues at home that would make me want to leave it - I guess I was just well prepared ... although thinking about it now, we probably only owned one can opener, and I'm sure I didn't have that packed away. I also hid books under my mattress in case my parents went nuts on me and grounded me and took away all my books. I was grounded once, and they didn't take anything from me, just wouldn't let me play with my friends on a school day off.

I never had too many celebrity crushes ... maybe Jordan Knight as a little kid, and Harrison Ford and Conan as a teenager, although, like I said before, it's weird when you have a crush on someone mostly 'cause you actually want to be that person.

OMG, I saw the new Conan film yesterday and it's the funniest thing I've seen all year. That man is just unbelievably amazing. Not always the nicest guy, but you know what? He's funny enough so that I don't care. Which I think is part of the problem for him. But enough Conan psychosis.

And I've never had any goals to save the world. I'd like to help, but I'm not really one for delusions of grandeur.

I never really had a problem with the places I grew up in. Palo Alto was little silly for my tastes, and I sometimes felt like an outsider, but overall, it's a nice town. It's hard to feel isolated when you know you can get on a train and go to one of the gay capitals of the world.

I've always assumed I'll have kids. Kind of like I always knew I'd go to college. Having them doesn't scare me too much. Us idiots have been doing it for quite a long time, I'm sure I'll figure it out as I go along.

Um, so yes. There you go. My disjointed thoughts about how I thought about the future. Thoughts.