Thank you to all the little people

I cannot tell a lie...from the tender age of whenever it was that I first watched the Academy Awards (my first solid memories of this begin around age 9), I've envisioned the golden man's sculpted ass cheeks cradled in my hands and the masses at the Kodak Theater and the world beyond watching my ascent to the podium. With bated breath, the world awaits my acceptance speech. The lights twinkle as I begin.

"I'd like to thank my mom and my dad and my nana and my papa and my grandma and my grandpa and my cousins and my bestest friends Sarah and Kimmy and..."

Well that was the glib poetry I had planned at first. To thank everyone, because everyone loves me! Even though I'm a fucking superstar, I don't forget the little peeps. But at my pubescent turning point, my speech evolved after much mental writing and rewriting.

"You love me! You really really love me!!!"

For I was feeling immense gratitude that Tinseltown could love a girl who still hadn't grown boobs. My words morphed further still as I embraced my pubescence and discovered boys.

"Thank you to the Academy and to everyone who believed in me. And to all the jackasses who have dumped me in my short dating life, look at me now, motherfuckers!"

And because by then the producers of the show had gotten smart enough to broadcast with a five-second delay, I could get away with that last bitter bit.

During my collegiate and grad school years, I buried my dreams of acting glory beneath real world ambitions like medical school (an idea that died on the floor of the OR after I fainted while observing surgery), psychology and journalism. But dreams never die. And once I joined the union and entered the industry, it creeped back into my conscious.

Like any real-world pursuit I'd undertaken, hard work was rewarded with advancement in one way or another. Studying for tests usually resulted in a better grade. Going the extra mile on a story usually got me more cred as a local journalist. Working overtime earns more money. So as I sat on set during the first day of my SAG life, I worked out the speech in my head.

"I started out as a grunt background actor, living on ramen noodles and sacrificing the sanity of consistent employment. I worked hard and today I can finally say it was worth every struggle. Thank you!"

It was meant to be inspirational, like the "feel-good movie of the year" in which I would subsequently star, still riding the wave of my triumph.

But after about a month of work, my speech changed again. Quite drastically, in fact.

"This whole fucking thing is a sham! You should all be ashamed of yourselves, you selfish prick superstars! You don't give a shit about anyone but yourselves, and you step on the people who do all the hard work that makes you a fucking sucess. I'm the only one here who gets that, so it's a real tribute to my acting skills that I fooled you into giving me this gilded piece of shit."

Paradoxical...hypocritical...whatever you want to call it, that's what I was feeling. There was a great conflict in me, brought on by the realization that a legitimate dream of mine had been a quest of the most selfish, shameless nature--which is entirely distinct from the morals rolling around inside of me. I had always wanted to believe that the most talented actors, those I looked up to, would be of the highest moral fiber. That they worked hard for their success and knew where they came from. It's not that all of them don't, but I was shocked at some of the horrid behavior I witnessed from particular superstars: hissy fits, screaming, insulting BG actors just because, the vanity and the self-righteousness. I was looking up to a lot of people whose success was the result of luck and privilege, two things that no matter how hard one works for, there is no guarantee of ever achieving them. And instead of humbling themselves to their fortunes and trying to inspire others, they bask in the tanning booth UV rays of their undeserved glories.

The six-month period of my life as a working actor had its ups and downs, roller coaster moments of delight in my success and of bitterness in failures that had nothing to do with me or my talent. In the end, I took a "he's just not that into you" approach--a way of liberating oneself from a psychologically abusive significant other, which in this case, was "the industry." In other words, I'll keep working when I have a day off from my very rewarding "real-world" job, but I won't hinge it all on a misguided dream.

So having brought the reader to the present, here's my most updated Oscar acceptance speech:

"Thank you for honoring me with this award. I accept it on behalf of everyone who worked on this film and for all of the nominees for the Academy's science and technology awards. The science behind movies makes the magic happen. I'm just a walking prop compared to the work they do to make movies come alive for the world. So thank you. And I want world peace."

Meats on sticks

I have no beef with the vegetarian lifestyle. Pun intended. I think it's a healthy way to go, so long as you supplement your diet with the nutritional requirements that chicken, beef or fish provide for the typical omnivorous diet. Verdure is as appetizing to me as anything else I can imagine, and the light, energized feeling I get from eating plant-based culinary concoctions cannot be duplicated in any way by eating animal tissue.

But I'm not about to jump on the "meat-is-murder" train. Living without meat ain't for me. That's because places like these exist in this crazy world.

Rodizio churrasco: which in my gringa Portuguese means, Brazilian steakhouse. Where as long as you give the green light, meats of every cut, flavor and style are brought before you for your consumption, skewered on a massive sword and dripping with carnivorous lust. Steaks and chicken and pork and lamb that all melt like butter in your mouth, inciting that instinct within the human race that feeds the circle of life.

We went to one such slice of heaven last night in Tribeca. It was a posh, medium-sized joint, one of two in a chain on this frigid isle of Manhattan. We had spent the day walking around, showing my out-of-town cousin and his friend various points of interest. For RM and I, it had been a quest to confirm all we had read in one of Pete Hamill's masterpieces, Forever. Either way, we ended up walking what seemed like about seven miles, stopping for a whiskey or a cosmo at certain points to reinforce our tolerance of the below freezing temperatures outside. By the time we'd reached the restaurant that night (after about three miles of walking to find the place), we were empty shells of a human being, having doled out all of our vitamin and energy reserves to the hard streets of the City.

So I can happily say that I ate two tons of meat and exotic salad bar (another fabulous feature of rodizio churrasco) and didn't feel any dietary remorse. The ordeal of dragging ourselves back to the subway (conveniently across the street from the restaurant) and back to our respective beds was agony, but the protein-induced sleep was terrific.

I've had similar experiences at Brazilian steakhouses--walking miles to a place in Salt Lake City and a place in Chicago (FOGO!!!!), eating like I've haven't eaten in months, schlepping back and feeling that I am a creature meant to eat meat.

My two cents on books, part I

If there is one thing my long-ass daily train commute is good for, it's catching up on my lapsed reading. I have an extremely short and superficial attention span (which might explain my career choices in the news business) that doesn't lend itself well to books that aren't riveting to me from the first page--nay---the first word. When I only had time to crack a book during the drowsy moments before bedtime or during red lights in traffic, reading wasn't exactly an attractive pursuit. My imagination and my grip of the English language (and perhaps my saftey on the roads) suffered greatly, to my immense regret.

But, I find that on a train, where there is little else to do than scowl at the self-righteous suburban prick commuters who think their bags merit a seat more than their fellow man, I find my senses focused inward and my attention primed for the written word. Thusly, this is how I came into my fervor for Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials.



This science-fiction fantasy masterpiece was recently given a publicity boost upon the release of the bijillion-dollar blockbuster, "The Golden Compass." It's unfortunate that the movie was the impetus for me to read the series, rather than at my young cousin's urging several years before Hollywood took to bastardizing and completely missing the point of that installment of the series.

On the surface, the series is about a young girl's unwitting journey to save the universe. She comes from a world where a person's soul is a conscious and disparate being that walks beside him or her in the form of an animal. Together with the help of her soul (referred to as a daemon), witches, polar bears and a magical substance called "Dust," this little girl discovers that the universe is not just one world, but thousands of parallel worlds that have grown up on top of each other, and that to save them all means growing up herself. Throughout the stories, she faces fears that leap off the pages into the reader's reality.

Looking deeper in to the story, one can see that it is a powerful criticism of the Catholic Church and its influence on society. It is blatant and unrelenting toward the climax of the series, much to the dismay of its heaviest critics--including the Church. But Pullman's intentions in that respect don't oversaturate the story, as perhaps in other literature (I can think of Ayn Rand as an example of a story over-saturated with philosophy).

Pullman's intentions aside, I found his narrative to be clever and real, despite the fantastical subject matter. It presented itself as a tale of self-actualization and realization that no matter how alone we may feel at times in our world, that by changing our perspectives (as by looking through an "Amber Spyglass" in the third book of the trilogy) we can see we are never alone within ourselves. The little voice inside your head, the parts of you that you would consider your spirit and your soul, are always there beside you to catch you when you fall. And to try and separate yourself from them is the most heinous brand of self-mutilation.

To say that I would recommend this trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) to anyone with an open mind should be implicit. I adored these books, and would like to discuss them with others.

My next adventures in reading-land are going to be Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father and to finish Truman Capote's In Cold Blood...which I never finished because it made for some disturbing dreams when read just before falling asleep at night.

The art of displacement

Does anyone remember that old Nickelodeon classic, "Double Dare"? You know, the show with the delicious denouement: a romp through an obstacle course laden with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. I used to fantasize that someday when I reached the appropriate maturity level, I would get to slip and slide my way through that gooey "physical challenge."

Minus the desserts, cette parcour d'ostacles is my newest fantasy:



The world is your obstacle course! Apparently, this "sport," whose origins lie in France, is now massively popular in European urban centers. It's starting to seep into action films in Hollywood too. ("Casino Royale," "Live Free or Die Hard," etc.)It'sbeautiful to watch, really. I'd like to see more of it whenever possible.

I know for a fact that if I tried this at home, I'd break myself. The art of manipulating momentum purposefully is not in my marketable skill-set. (I know this because I'm the one who broke the bed by jumping on it. Little known fact.) However, there don't seem to be a lot of women jumping around. But I know there are traceusses (female parkour-ers as opposed to male traceurs) out there. I'm inclined to think that the types of maneuvers women can pull off would be distinctly different, though no less impressive, because of obvious anatomical differences. Women have their centers of balance in the hips, whereas men have them in the shoulders. Like how women can pick up a chair against a wall with their arms or how men can balance horizontally on a pole. I didn't pay any attention in physics class, so I can't say much more with any authority.

On the other hand, I can't think of anything more mother fucking dangerous. The sport seems like it could be the poster child for the cliched regret, "it seemed like a good idea at the time!" How many broken skulls does the average traceur accumulate in a lifetime? An article written in the Portland Mercury, I think, captures it best:

Although the "sport" is extremely low-maintenance (it can be done in almost any locale—urban or rural—and the only requirement is sturdy sneakers), preparation is crucial for the budding traceur. Otherwise, loss of limb is likely.

Vive le parkour!

Poopy-head

This makes me think.

Really, really really hard.

Dog poop is a blight upon any fair city, especially when it ends up beneath my shoe. Usually the offending dog's owner wouldn't bristle at threats against their misdeeds, but once Jesus gets involved, all bets are off.

Cooking from the planet Mars

"Next up on the Food Network, what not to do when you're trying to cook an edible meal!"

Well, that's essentially the premise of a cooking show starring me. The more eye-catching, viewer-nabber would probably be:

"Did You Leave the Oven On?"

And then I'd bust through a fake door into a fake kitchen with singed walls and counter-tops. I'd be wearing a level-4 virus, flame-retardant suit, much like this:

The course of the show would feature me committing all of the most dangerous kitchen mistakes while cooking, including reliving my famous biscuit-baking-tablecloth-melting experiment. (True story, folks!) At the end the kitchen would always explode, resulting in an impressive pyrotechnic display capped off by the movie voice-over guy saying, "Join us next week...in a world...where cooks have singed off all their body hair..."

For real though, the biscuit thing happened...my mother kicked me out of her kitchen for life at age 13, after I set a searing hot baking pan of fresh-from-the-oven biscuits on her plastic spring tablecloth. I melted the shit out of it. But since that life-scarring experience, I've returned to a new kitchen--MY kitchen. Where there are no plastic tablecloths, the stove runs on noble gas and raw chicken can hang out on the counter if it wants to.

I AM CHEF!!!!! HEAR ME PAN-FRY!!!!!

Anyway, my point is that I've been a little more domestically inclined these days, driven by the desire to cook for a man who would have otherwise only made himself some easy mac n' cheese with just cheese mix and water, because the milk we bought last week is starting to turn green. (No offense, baby...)

I come from a family of amazing cooks. Until recently, I'd started to think that I was the runty gal of the bunch, unable to do much more than burn my Rice Krispie treats. (I have a vivid memory of lying on the floor in the fetal position, bawling my eyes out, after burning them in an effort to make a birthday treat for someone.) But very recently, it was like I hit cooking puberty, or I discovered the cooking "force." All I had to do was let go of my inhibitions and fears, and the meals started cooking themselves. Meat-loaf, chicken-rice casserole, strawberry cream souffle!!! All to the delight of myself and those fortunate enough to eat at my table. I learned from my foibles and got control over my appliances.

As of a few months ago, I started to collect recipes here and there. I'd nab something from a magazine, or pick up some pamphlets from the gym. I'd put my own spin on them and then stash them in some nook or cranny. After a while, they added up, and started cluttering up my sacred kitchen. I needed an outlet for my culinary creativity!!!

So I found this nifty We Gotta Eat site. It's like the MySpace of the cooking world. It lets you catalog all of your favorite recipes, make friends, share recipes, discuss the latest super-foods, etc. I heartily endorse it, if you're into cooking, want to be into cooking, or have trouble keeping the kitchen appliances from burning the house to the ground.

Anyway, I think I have to run back to the kitchen, because now that I think about it, I totally left the oven on.

Vote early and often

I didn't vote today. That makes me feel sick. Almost as sick as this made me feel last night at the movie theater.

At the same time, both circumstances motivate me to be a better camera-person.

It does give me confidence however, to note that many "people" are actually thinking about this year's big election. And that in my esteem, the candidates are putting up a good fight. Do you want to know why I think so? Because of a well-spoken young lady on the streets of New York, who was interviewed as part of CBS2's live election coverage.

"It's not about whether the candidate is black or is a woman. It's about what they will do for the country."

Someone had to say it. Stereotypes and classifications make it easier for the human brain to wrap itself around such a contentious haze as an election can be. But our very humanness works against us, instead clouding the importance of a good message and sturdy platform.

Of course I've been glued to the news outlets, salivating for the steady flow of Super Tuesday returns. I've done so for every election for which I've had an interest. Rock the vote, bitches.

Arresting my development

How many people would watch an Arrested Development movie?

You can count me in, gen'ral. I'm all for putting my favorite television shows on the silver screen. Not to single out a particular network, because they're all at fault here, but eschewing the types of programs that make people think about their lives and the world in a meaningful way in favor of programs that make people think about their lives and the world in a trivial way is not good television.

But it is good business.

Hollywood, I leave it to you.