Whiskers on Kittens

It's no raindrops on roses or brown paper packages tied up with string, but here's a list of my current favorite things.

The salty scent of the ocean fog brank rolling in. I've lived along the coast for so long that I'm immune to the daily sea breezes. i don't notice the salty air unless I've been inland for six months or the fog comes in. A few other scents I love: LA in spring, when the rain washes away the smog and the citrus trees bloom; chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven; split pea soup; woodsmoke. I actually like the scent of forest fires. I haven't been threatened by a fire yet, so that last one may change.

Steve Lopez. Points West. LA Times. This is why we have a free press. The man may not actually be a genius or a virtuoso, or even a saint. But he's a muckraker, a populist, and he doesn't accept easy answers or platitudes. I love a man who can spring a scale on the insurance commisioner candidate running on a weight loss ticket, live for a week on Skid Rowe, or battle raccoons in Silver Lake, and live to write entertaining and thought-provoking accounts of it all. My impossible dream? The T.R. Roosevelt / Steve Lopez no holds barred interview. Steve writes about life in Los Angeles, but his columns have implications for us all.

Lemon Cream Pie Ice Cream. Cruncy sweet pie crust; puckery lemon zest; creamy ice cream. A scoop of summertime. I don't buy the "seasonal flavors" excuse. A certain ice cream store who shall remain nameless hasn't mixed up a batch of lemon cream pie ice cream in 7 months solely to spite me. Or maybe the employees are hoarding it for their own enjoyment in the backroom.

Arts and Craft Stores. You thought I was a shopoholic with an unhealthy craving for shoes and purses? Hah! Maybe so. But I don't make special trips to the shoe or purse stores. (We don't actually have a stored devoted solely to purses and handbags here, do we? Somebody get on that, please.) I do, however, make speci9fic trips to the craft stores, and I can spend hours wandering the aisles. The paper and paper and more paper. The doodads and snarfblatts that glued onto all that paper. The paint. The ink. The cute llittle stamps. The shiny beads. The scented candles. The little boxes begging to be decoupaged. the fuzzy yarns and gazillions of shades of embroidery thread. And the books upon books of inspiration. Yeah. Craft stores are definitely among my favorite things. This must be how men feel about automotive and hardware stores.

Cats. I'm a cat person. One cute and furry little whiskered animal is just as good as the next, right? Wrong. Rodents are cute. Dogs are good for a run on the beach, but all that doggy enthusiasm and pack animal mentality get wearying after awhile. Cats cuddle when they want to cuddle, and swipe at you when they want to be alone. I get that- it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

PBS. From string theory to Mystery, and little old ladies lugging around antiquies from the garage sale down the road, I love it all. Heck, PBS even makes the Hindenberg entertaining and educational. Frontline is yet another reason we have a free press. Do I really want to watch 21 scantily clad young ladies battle it out for the hand of one uncomfortable looking quasi-noble? Only if that battle is set against the intrigues of 15th Century Italy or the court of Catherine the Great.

Carpeted flooring. I'd been wanting hardwood floors for a decade, and then I got them. What a pain. I thought, "never again." And then I lived without even the hardwood floor. My landlord finally put in carpeting three weeks after we moved in. I now have a carpet and a door. I am satisfied. I will never complain about substandard housing again. Cross my heart and my fingers.

Bewitched by Benjelle -- originally published 8/06

I'm a horrible person, you know. Shallow and flaky with a taste for instant gratification and limited will power. I've done terrible things, things I would have disdained, ten years ago:
°I've subscribed to US Magazine, and Cosmo.
° I've bought and read romance novels voraciously, and condemned my sorority sisters to the same addiction. (although I like to think my standards have risen in recent years.)
°I joined a sorority.
°I bought a "name" handbag.
°I wear makeup, and color my hair.
°The only thing standing between me and a bi-weekly manicure is the necessity of paying the water bill. Oh, and groceries.

Yes, I balance upon the slippery sloap to total ruin. Two things have saved me, I believed. I still bargain hunt in thrift stores, and I've never been bewitched by a reality tv show.
I've obsessed over characters on The X Files and Daria, and over the writing in a few movies. Survivor, Amazing Race, Fear Factor, Bachelor ... they all passed me by. I was a little cocky, I admit. I had no interest in The Real World. Nick and Jessica who? (The historical reality shows on PBS were a trip, but I never watched religiously.) The Simple Life was fascinating in a horrific train-wreck way, but I only caught a few episodes in passing. American Idol? I may be the only person on the continent bored by Simon Cowell.

So, I'm a horrible person - a flake, a source of pained bewilderment to my parents, a traitor to my youthful ideals. But I never was swept up into a reality show craze.

Until this summer. Yes, you know it's coming. I've fallen completely into the pop culture trap. I'm obsessed with Donny and Benjy, Benjelle. I caught the last of the auditions, and the hip hop booty rocky was hot.

But the Cha-Cha. Oh, the Cha-Cha. And cynic that I am, I thought wow! great acting. And then the Pop Jazz number, with the neck nuzzle at the end. And Goddess, did you see that waltz? Doneylle and Benjy let us all watch as a wonderful magic was born.

Are they? Aren't they? Well of course not, Benjy will stay a virgin til he's married. But they're in love, they have to be! No, they just figured out how to play the game. Who the hell is Tahir?

Over a few short weeks the Power Couple was forged, and from my seat it looks rock solid. Romantically involved or not, Donny and Benji appear to have found a supportive, loving relationship that most of us would pine to have.

And the beauty of it? These two were the oddballs out. The geek and the too old wrong body type. They were supposed to tear each other to shreds for America's brief amusement. Instead, they build to each other's strengths, and shore up each other's weaknesses. Instead, they've captivated me.

I lurk on the boards, I review those magic moments on stage and in the studio, I scrutinize the background shenanigans accidentally caught on film. It's too easy to forget that these are real people, however staged the "reality show" is, and that they have a right to their privacy.

Cornerstones

My younger sister had a fight on her hands as a college freshman trying to declare a music education major. Pippi loves music, but she hates to be confined to one instrument. She has, over the past ten years, played eight different instruments, including glass bottles filled with water for a wind symphany. Our parents weren't happy about her plans. "What will you do besides teach? Focus on one instrument, or better yet, major in math."

When she finally won the argument and declared her major, I teased her about becoming a kind of Mr. Opus. "You'll inspire a student to new heights of musical talent and fame. You'll end up being interviewed by Rolling Stone. They'll ask you what your musical influence was as a child."

Pippi didn't laugh. She was quiet, tilting her head to one side as she seriously pondered my question. Finally, she shook her head. "Church music and the Beatles."

Church music and the Beatles. Pippi is a musician. Music is a part of her personal makeup. So Church music and the Beatles were a profound influence on more than just her music. They formed a cornerstone of her life.

I got to thinking about my own profound influences. What are my cornerstones? I’m a writer. Pippi has musical notes, I have words. Writers are my cornerstones. More specifically: "humor writers." Florence King and Erma Bombeck have both been relegated to the class of humor writer but they are much, much more. Classic American humor, yes. But also, thought provoking essayists who forced us to look at ourselves and shake our heads at the ridiculousness and lack of common sense.

I value the hippy and church music, just as Pippi does. I grew up in the same church, in the same home. The music itself was Pippi's cornerstone. But the lyrics meant more to me. I'm a social historian. They were a link to the social past. Moreover, I learned my politics from our parents' old albums.

We were raised in a liberal but sheltered home. My father subscribed to Ms. in the Seventies, until my mother claimed it was merely an excuse for upper class white advertisers exploiting middle class white women too busy proclaiming their independence to notice. My father is a minister of a liberal, inclusive Christian church. I learned feminism at my mother's knee. I was taught to serve others. I was taught to uplift people, to tear down barriers, and to always, always be polite.

I gloried in all this, accepting goodness and idealism as the only possible way to live, let alone behave...

And then I hit freshman year of high school and discovered Florence King and MTV's Daria almost simultaneously. Anyone who has ever picked up CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED SOUTHERN LADY will find something to laugh over, and something to cry over.

In her introduction to CONFESSIONS, Florence explains "The sweetening process that feminists call 'socialization' is simply a less intense version of what goes on in every Southern family. We call it 'rearing.' If the rearing is successful, it results in that perfection of femininity known as a lady. I was reared."

Never mind that I was the product of a liberal, 1970s era, third generation Californian marriage. Never mind that my father played at being a feminist, and my mother was feminist. I was socialized. My parents had socialized me. The realization struck me at fourteen. Why did it take so long? I honestly didn't know any better. For all their vaunted liberal teachings, my parents never introduced an opposing view. And I was too young and naive to expect one.

I felt an unbelievable sense of betrayal, which is ridiculous, of course. I was never abused or neglected. And my parents had done a good job. I was a fairly good, sunny, fairly responsible little girl. Was I lying to my parents? Did I experiment with pot or alcohol? Steal a car? No.

High school is supposed to be a time of growth and rebellion, anyway. I was torn between my deeply rooted idealism and a growing sense of cynicism. Like a pendulum, I swung between outraged feminist temper and bitter, conservative bile. I read everything I could get my hands on, forgoing the middle ground for anything radical or reactionary. I scorned any opposition as 'close minded and simple', without deep thought, merely on a whim and political feeling of the day.

But I forgot an important aspect of Florence King. For all her outrageousness and conservative bile, she’s a damn good writer. She knows how to tell a story, how to hook and resonate with her reader. She recognizes that humor humanizes both the subject and the narrator, and she uses humor to hammer home her point.

I didn’t get it. I laughed, sure, but all too often I laughed for the wrong reasons. I laughed with disdain. I laughed to see other people deconstructed or dismissed. I read so much, in an effort to broaden my outlook, telling myself I was seeing in shades of gray. But I was reacting with anger and scorn.

It took Erma Bombeck to explain: "If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it." Erma poked fun at the world while playing the universal wife and mother. She rubbed our shoulders when we cried, guilt tripped us when we forgot to pick up our socks, and jabbed us in the ribs when we were too full of hot air. She laughed at herself, her marriage, her home, her world. She slipped in the thought provoking tidbit like green peas in the casserole.

While laughing at the funny bits and tearing up at the sober parts with Erma, I rediscovered humanity.

I'm learning to balance. I'm learning to hope for the best from people, but to expect the worst. And I'm learning to laugh at the absurdities, where once I would become sick at heart. I've learned to keep quiet during political and philosophical arguments; to sit back and study the situation before running off at the mouth. I attend history classes now and shake my head in wonder. Can anyone really be that simplistic? Well, yes. I was, once. It might be more fun to see only in shades of black and white. But I'd miss the nuances without the gray.