Media Overload + Reviews

I am completely overwhelmed. I know that sounds silly. I'm not working (well, I'm volunteering a lot. I'm just not getting paid). What could I possibly have to overwhelm me?

Right now, it's media. There are several things I "should" watch, Letters to Iwo Jima, Into the Wild, Man on Wire, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and Season 2.5 of "Battlestar Gallactica" topping the list. This brings me to a weird thought: these things are designed to be entertainment. Why do I feel I NEED to watch this stuff as if it was part of my duty? I have lists of movies that I NEED to watch, or else I'm going to feel like a lesser human being.

So, let's start shifting through the detritus. I love your opinions on this and if it helps me prioritize, so much the better, so please share what you think. I've never done mid-read reviews before. I think it's a good idea.

BOOKS
Black Hole by Charles Burns. I started reading this right after my surgery, thinking that a graphic novel would be a good light choice. Uh... WRONG! Heavy and weird, man. There is some seriously messed up sh&t going on in this book. But I love it so far. Wow. 1/2 way through. Book so far: A

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (Pevear & Volokhonsky richer, meatier translation) Really good, but I'm having a hard time getting myself to actually read it. It just doesn't go with Percoset, and right now, I do. Anyway, I've heard it has a really sad ending and I am not looking forward to that. I'm trying to read it with Woody Allen's Love and Death in the back of my mind; that helps make it more amusing. Through Book 2. So far: A

Wonderful Tonight by Patty Boyd. Autobio of George Harrison and Eric Clapton's old lady. Began reading just before surgery because I thought it would be a light fun read. Didn't consider Boyd's unbelievably boring description of her childhood when I had that idea. It's starting to get better, though, because she finally met George. Through p. 69. So far: C+... actually, given that I keep reading it, it must be at least a B-

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I wanted to read this before I see the movie, and boy, oh, boy, is it a heavy, depressing ride into the depths of suburban hell. So far, I like Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park much better, when it comes to novels that tell us why suburbia is horrifying. p. 118 out of 463. So far B+

Courtesans & Fishcakes: the Consuming Passions of Classical Athens by James Davidson. Surprisingly accessible book about the ancient Greeks. Just started; can't grade yet.

The Algebraist by Iain Banks. I've been reluctant to read Banks due to an ex's great love for him. However, my neighbor talked me into it. So far, seems very good. Great quote: "Dear Reason, maybe none of us are safe anywhere." Another great quote: "It could choose to go with some elegance, or not, but it could not choose not to go. No-unchoosing death." Just started; can't grade yet.

Why Marriages Succeed or Fail... and how you can make yours last by John Gottman, Ph.D. Really great relationship book. Maybe the attempts to quantify love are offensive to some, but I need all the help I can get. Very helpful insights, and plus, lots of fun quizzes. 1/3 of way through. So far: A-

Magazines
Some of these are guilty pleasures. Ok, they're all guilty pleasures.

Bust I've been a reader and a subscriber for years. This magazine is like the grown-up version of Sassy. Feminist in a fun way, this rag never fails to lift my spirits and teach me something useless, like how to make a belt out of beer bottle caps or a kitschy pouch for my sanitary napkins out of vintage reproduction fabrics. Then it'll have Lily Allen as the cover girl and I'm really head-over-heels.

Good Housekeeping Yes, you read that right. This magazine has such good recipes, which also tell you calorie counts and how much the meal will cost approximately. I take out all the recipes and put them in a three-ring binder. This month, GH will teach me how to make a delicious healthy version of eggs Benedict, how to store asparagus, how to make leg of lamb with oregano & lemon, and Roman-Style Artichokes. Doncha wish your girlfriend - could - cook - like - me? Doncha? A wifely must. Is it terribly un-PC of me to say that. Does reading Bust cancel this last one out at all?

Real Simple - kinda like the previous entry, but a little more modern, and doesn't necessarily assume I have kids like GH does (which gets old). Great organizing and money tips in this good little magazine.

Fitness & Shape - I like to tear out the recipes and workouts from these and try the new workouts at the gym. What's fun is when my trainer comes up and yells "What in tarnation are you DOING??" in my face while I'm trying to do something called "good morning raise" or "pistol squat."

Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine- the magazine for pop surrealist art. This is great for releasing your brain from its logical left-side bondage and experiencing visual bliss.

Washington State Bar News - Let me be real here. The only things I read in this mag are Bob Cumbow's amusing reflections upon the misuse of grammar, and the disbarment notifications. Unfortunately I've seen a couple of names I know, but (fingers crossed!) not mine!

VFW Magazine - not just for old farts! I love this magazine's tales of wars, heroes, and veterans working to get the recognition and benefits they deserve. I've actually considered being a Ladies Auxiliary Member because I love this magazine so dearly.

Vanity Fair - this is where I get a lot of my information about current affairs, which is why I can talk to you about Anne Hathaway's failed romance at length, but don't completely understand what the "Dow Jones Industrial" whatever-it's-called is.

Assorted others, from time to time:
GX: the Guard Experience - the National Guard's magazine has great pieces about health and kickass pictures of our soldiers um, kicking ass.

Giant Robot - from time to time, I need a Japanese culture/art fix. This is it.

Newsweek - Alex subscribes to this and I read it from time to time so I learn about "news." I always wind up reading the articles about things like Barbie's 50th Birthday and Afghanistan. The economy, sadly, I still find boring, despite the fact that we are in desperate times. (It's bad. OK. I get it!)

The Believer - I like McSweeney's (collections of short fiction) a LOT more than The Believer. But Nick Hornby writes book reviews in it which are good, and my good friend, writer and games expert Brian Schneider, gave this subscription for me as a gift, which was really nice. (Sorry for the name dropping. But it's true, that's who gave it to me).

Martha Stewart Living and Better Homes & Gardens - These are basically more housewife porn. MS Living has lovely pictures and descriptions, but honestly, the recipes call for very expensive and ridiculous food and equipment, and aren't always "all that" when it comes down to it. BH & G is like GH but has fabulous pics of gardens, and homes, which are all much better than mine. (Couldn't resist).

National G, Conde Nast, Adventure - I don't buy travel magazines, but when they're around I love to read them and make collages of the pictures in them.

So that's most of it. What's shocking it's not all of it. I'm not bragging here. I think it's an illness. Hopefully all the stuff that I read and the bits of information I collect reach a critical mass and foment an amazing novel. I'm just going to keep reading and watching and listening and learning and writing and synthesizing and making it happen every single day until one day, it all makes sense and turns into something beautiful.

The Officers' Spouses' Club

Sixteen military wives
Thirty-two softly focused brightly colored eyes
(The Decemberists, 16 Military Wives)

When I married Alex, I jokingly asked if I should join the Officers’ Spouses’ Club, but I never thought I would actually do that. However, when I first moved to Tacoma, I had only two friends down here besides Alex. (Now I have roughly four friends – the number has doubled! Not bad.) Anyway, I needed to find a new doctor very quickly, and I had no one to ask for a reference. I remembered that there was the Officers’ Spouses’ Club, and I contacted the club president to see if she had a recommendation of doctors in the area. She didn’t, but suggested I start getting involved so I could talk to the other wives and get their opinions. She was so friendly and welcoming that I thought it was worth looking into joining.

Meanwhile, I’ve already found my own doctor, but I still wanted to see what the OSC was all about. I agreed to volunteer as a docent for today’s Tour of Homes. Once a year as a fundraiser, ten higher ranking officers open their homes and people tour through them to see what their homes are like and also for decorating ideas. This year it’s on Fort Lewis in the stately Broadmoor community. Since I’m pretty nosy, I knew I just had to get involved with that!

Last night, the OSC held a reception at the OSC president’s house for the volunteers who were opening their homes as well as the docents. Then we got a VIP tour of the houses ourselves; otherwise, we would only get to see the house that we were volunteering in.

I was surprisingly nervous getting ready. It felt like the first day of 7th grade all over again. Would they shun me? Maybe I don’t look officer-wifey enough (whatever that means)? Maybe the fact that my husband is full-time active duty National Guard, as opposed to regular Army stationed at Ft. Lewis, would be a barrier? And then I thought, so what if they don't like me? Will the world end?

Then I told my wussy butt that facing fear is the best way to make it go away, and I walked into a throng of about 30 beautifully dressed and coiffed ladies. A man in a red shirt and jeans slunk out quickly, sensing that this was not a place for men. Oh no. It was all about the ladies. It reminded me of my sorority from college except the women were for the most part nicer and much less drunk.

We ate amazing baklava and drank punch or wine and chatted.* I met a woman who worked in investments until she had her son, who is autistic and needs a lot of care. She was my age, pretty, smart, and hip. I also met a really nice lady who unfortunately tried to convince me to go to her church. She explained that even though I’m Catholic, God is God and it doesn’t matter which church you go to. While on one level I agree with her, I just simply couldn’t do that. Not just because her church is one of those Assembly of God things, but because I’m Catholic. I like my worship old school. Really old school. But I digress.

One of the most fun parts of the night was hopping in this lady Kathy’s SUV to go to the other houses with two other ladies. Kathy is a former military police officer (MP) who now works in public affairs. My favorite thing about her is that she had her satellite radio station tuned to Butt Rock and we were rocking out to Poison, Junkyard, Def Leppard, and other hair bands. That was hilarious.

So about the décor. Some of the homes were a little too robustly patriotic (think all-American red white and blue Christmas tree) for my taste. But most of these places served to make me feel deeply, irreparably inadequate in terms of how clean, organized, well decorated, and large my home is, for my homes is none of those things at present time. I gasp to think at the hours and hours of labor hanging all the greenery, putting up multiple Christmas trees, and installing a myriad of soft white lights must have taken. Not to mention the women who sew their own drapes, who hand make appliqués for the walls, who make adorable curtains out of ribbons and Christmas ornaments…. Wow.

But that feeling of inadequacy apparently is something we all share. Almost everyone said something about how they felt guilty at the state of their own homes. One of the women whose home was in the tour was fretting about how lame her house was compared to all the others. It wasn’t as big, she didn’t have as many Christmas decorations, she didn’t have handmade drapes. She only had one Christmas tree! Her home wasn’t nearly as clean, nearly as sophisticated, nearly as lovely as all the other homes, she lamented. I went there and it was full of beauty. She had the cabinet her grandfather made her that her husband refinished as a surprise. She had a painting her grandmother made. She had personal mementos all through her beautiful, clean, organized home. How dare she feel inadequate? She’s a freaking domestic goddess, and she works full time on top of that.

Maybe it’s too far to say these women are the real heroes of the Army, but really, it’s probably not that far from the truth. Rock on, officers’ wives. You all are pretty, you’re good moms, and your houses are great. And don’t let anybody, including yourselves, tell you any different.


*Diet tip: to avoid eating a lot, wear a skirt with a really tight waistband like I did. The discomfort literally prevents you from eating so much.

Movie Reviews: The Happening, Hancock, WALL-E

Tonight I thought I'd write some movie reviews interspersed, or even nestled, amongst some little tidbits about my personal life. Saving the best for last, we would of course start with the M. Night Shamalayan piece of shit that I was stupid enough to spend money and 90 minutes on... The Happening: Wow, it sucks. Not that I'm surprised. M. Night Shamalayan is the watchword for not-worth-watching, unless you're re-watching The Sixth Sense, which is permitted. So, The Happening should be called "When Trees Do Even Worse Things to You than Cause Hayfever, and It's Not So Much Scary as Really Annoying, and Even Mark Wahlberg Cannot Make the Insipid Dialogue Work."

Speaking of hayfever, I've got it bad. The 20-40 kleenex per hour (kph) kind, three kinds of allergy medecine at once, the kind where I have to breathe through my mouth for fear of upsetting my pathetic nostrils kind of hayfever. It's funny how it always coincides with the really hot weather. So it's 85 degrees and I don't have AC, and if I open the window it just lets in more filthy pollinated air which will kill me if I allow it to. If I were a magazine centerfold, perhaps my turn-ons list would be something like this: Hepa-filtered, anything hypoallergenic, air conditioning, non-drowsy antihistamines. Turn offs: Dextromethorphane, dust mites, grass, and picnics in the park.

Hancock: A run-of-the-mill Will Smith action movie. Which means that it was pretty good -- never terrible or amazing. It starts of very well and then just kind of ... meh? Charlize Theron plays a superhero too. What I don't get is why, when she goes into superhero mode, does that necessarily mean she has to wear so much additional eye shadow?

I watched the previous two movies with Alex in Aruba. So I was in an amazing place with my husband and we went to see two mediocre at best movies, but it was good because it was so nice just to relax and not have to worry about a thing. The one I watched today, WALL-E, was with Marcus at Pacific Place cinemas. We went to the movie theater just so I could escape the disgusting plant sex and microscopic dust mites that are plaguing me. And I wound up inadvertantly seeing a very good movie.

WALL-E: This movie is really great. It's got the dystopian nightmare scenario that I love, AND Robot Romance. It's one of the very, very few really interesting movies I've seen lately. Go Pixar!!

Alex is in Yakima for his job, which is prepping 3500 National Guardsmen for deployment to Iraq. He's a JAG lawyer, which means that sometimes he's doing desk work like a regular lawyer, but other times he's out shooting bad guys with machine guns and rescuing people from hostile territory by helicopter and infiltrating terrorist hotspots, where he wears a wire to collect evidence to get those terrorists! It's awesome. And then the rest of the time, he just really helps out these poor dudes who have to go to Iraq by getting them wills and helping them sort out their child custody/divorce issues, and other uber important stuff. So, I'm supposed to go to Yakima for a few days this week for my birthday. "Happy Birthday" and "Yakima" don't really seem to go together, but what can you do?

So, July. Really important month for me. Alex is in Yakima for the rest of the month, which is terrible. My biggest plans for July are to deal with all the wedding stuff, all the thank you cards, name change documentation, moving from Marcus's place, putting stuff in storage, and prepping to rent Alex's condo, and looking for a new place for us to move --all of this On My Own. I hate it. Newlyweds should not have to do this alone. But, me having things the way I want them isn't always good for me is it?

Besides dealing with the above stuff, I have a couple of other projects going on. I'm helping Ben & Libbe with their wedding, and I'm considering auditioning for some plays and movies, and I'm getting back into working out. I signed up for a half marathon for Labor Day weekend. Things are just humming along. It's basically the usual. Except I'm married now. It's
different, it really is, but I'm not sure why.

More will be revealed.

Travel to Long Beach, Washington

I wrote this over President’s Day weekend, but never posted. Hope you enjoy hearing about my little trip.

Writing from Long Beach, Washington: It’s a beautiful night. I’m out on the balcony of my 3rd floor room at the Chataqua Lodge Hotel, watching at the sun set into the surf of the Pacific. The frogs sing a jubilant chorus to the setting sun as its afterglow sends gold, peach, fuschia, flamingo pink, daffodil yellow streamers into the cold dome of sky. And to the north and south, mauve, lavender, slate bleed like watercolors into the deeper blue sea.

First – Bases:
Yesterday morning we began our journey. The night before, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was ready to go much, much earlier than my body. I don’t know why I was so excited. I’m a traveler, right? Why so excited about a three hour road trip? Well, whatever the reason, I was, and I made Alex wake up way too early too. The sun had barely risen when we headed south through White Center and Burien and down I-5. We turned west at Camp Murray, and I got to see where he does his JAG thing. I only saw it from the outside – a tiny, unassuming building, but the fact that I didn’t have to walk over any empty meth baggies or broken crack pipes on the sidewalk to get there make it seem luxe compared to my office. We stopped across the street at Gallopin’ Gerties – an old-school diner with a heart of gold. Our waitress was the kindhearted sort of diner waitress that you can’t help but call a "gal." She reminded me of a great photo-essay in a recent issue of Bust which featured diner waitresses. I have a whole new respect for the ladies who can serve coffee and real good food for twenty plus years, always with a smile. She even took my fussy egg-white and veggie omelette order with only an indulgent smile and an "o.k., sweetie."

Next we went to Ft. Lewis, which has always held some strange fascination for me. Maybe I like watching the Army guys going about their business in their green uniforms and bad haircuts. I like going through the gate, the whole feeling like it’s a border crossing. But most importantly, I love to go to the PX, which for most civilians probably either doesn’t ring any bells or if it does, it’s probably a "who cares" reaction. But the PX is amazing. It’s like a huge Target, but there’s no tax on anything. Because of this, I decided to buy a Zune 80 gig mp3 player (I’m still waiting to find out if that was a mistake). Anyway, the most notable thing besides not paying tax was that there was a huge line of people waiting to see some ultimate fighting champion dude named Iceman or something like that. A HUGE line. People we lined up all around the PX, which is like a mall, so it was a mass of people, mostly young enlisted guys. And they waited patiently for this white trash on ’roids looking guy to sign his cheesy-looking book on which he is pictured topless. (You know, for an organization that is not exactly pro-homo, there’s a lot of homoerotic stuff going on with some of these military guys… )

Something else you may not know about the military: not all branches are created equally. For instance, we had to go to McChord AFB because Ft. Lewis was out of the 80 gig Zune but McChord had it. So when we went to the McChord PX, Alex and I ran into this jail guard from King County Jail. He’s a retired Marine guy, wearing his Semper Fi hat. Ass. I fucked with him when I saw him, saying, "Oh, I didn’t know you were retired Air Force." Boy did he get pissed. He then gave Alex crap about being in the Army National Guard. This guy has the IQ of a slow iguana (and the looks of one as well), but was still all prideful about being a Marine. I think that’s my least favorite branch. They seem the most brutish and possibly evil of the branches of the military. But what the hell do I know?
I never thought I’d be an Army wife. But it’s different, right? My guy's an officer, an Army JAG, for gawd’s sake. Not some jarhead. Does that make sense? It’s still weird that I’m marrying into the military, after all those years trying to escape my dad’s military career. (It’s not Freudian, either. Alex has dark hair and my dad is blonde. And Navy, not Army. Seriously.)

Long Beach:
Long Beach is cheesy and touristy, like most seaside towns. It’s better than Ocean Shores – it just seems to have a friendlier vibe. One thing I noticed is that there were a lot of gay tourists out – and gay tourists would seem to have better taste, wouldn’t they? I should probably know better than to speak in such generalities. In any case, it’s pretty nice.

The first night we got there, we realized that we’d forgotten to eat lunch, so we were hungry at about 5:00 p.m. This worked out well for us because we wanted to check out the 42nd St. Café, which was packed with people having late Valentine’s celebrations. We got in right at the time another party had cancelled. For dinner, we ordered the Valentine’s meal, which was a special menu and came with a free pearl choker for me. We started with the fried green tomatoes, which the friendly and fey waiter correctly advised us "they did exceptionally well." Next we had deliciously fresh wild green salads, with exquisite dressings. I particularly liked my dill and feta dressing. For the entrée, Alex had the duck, which was outrageously good. My only fault was the rockfish with pineapple. It was flavorless and weird tasting – the worst rockfish I ever had. I had to ask the waiter to bring me some more of the dill and feta salad dressing to make it edible. Yes, I poured freaking salad dressing on my fish. All was forgiven after I ate dessert. We had the warm blackberry crisp with ice cream, and it was scrumptious.

The Chautauqua Lodge was one of those somewhat run-down, unfashionable beach places. It was clean and the desk help seemed a little white-trashy. I left my favorite sweatpants there, which really upsets me because they were from REI and were so comfy and fuzzy. Sucks. Anyway, the place was so-so – rough sheets, uncomfortable bed, blah décor – but fabulous in how close to the beach it was. Very conducive to daytime adventures and moonlit hikes.

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse & North Head Lighthouse:
These lighthouses at the south end of Long Beach Peninsula are beautiful and very scenic. Cape Disappointment has the distinction of being the oldest functioning lighthouse on the Pacific. However, I didn’t do the tours of them because I’ve already been on a number of lighthouse tours (Heceta Head, Westport, others) but there are excellent hikes around the area that we did and which I highly recommend.

One cool thing about the lighthouses is that there are two of them, because Cape Disappointment is so dangerous that the sea offshore is known as the "Graveyard of the Pacific." Mariners still need a special certification in order to navigate the waters into the mouth of the Columbia River. http://www.funbeach.com/attractions/lighthouse.html

Leadbetter Point Bird Sanctuary:
This beautiful bird sanctuary at the north end of the peninsula is full of amazing views and hikes, and lots of birds. However, it was incredibly muddy and some areas were completely flooded. Unfortunately Alex and I didn’t have our hip waders along with us, so we had to cut our hike short. Which gave us time to go ride horsies on the beach!
Horsies on the Beach!:

There are pics in my photo album. Check it out. So fun.

Pelicano’s:
We heard great things about a restaurant called The Ark, but it apparently closed, so went to new restaurant called Pelicano’s in Ilwaco. Located in the south end of the peninsula, Ilwaco is less touristy and more upscale, featuring a quaint harbor and a relaxed pace of life – kind of like Wallingford crossed with Shilshole. The food was wonderful and reasonably priced considering the quality. Plus, they had one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten, which was an ice cream "sandwich" made out of baked meringue cookies with pomegranate ice cream in the middle. Yummy yummy yum.

Only downside? The snooty waitress (yeah, waitress. Not server) was of the "aren’t you so lucky that you get to eat here?… you so don’t deserve to be here" type. A side note: we stopped after dinner at this beautiful lake just as we were leaving Ilwaco. The moonlight shining on it was just unreal. So still and perfect and peaceful, with frogs and bugs singing to the moon. I want to leave Seattle and go home, and this could be it.

Long Beach at Night:
First night, we walked along the dunes and up to the ocean, except the ocean looked so huge and alien that I was literally terrified that it was going to turn into a tsunami. I kept a wary eye on it as we made our way along the shore. We saw a fire burning and thought how cool it would be to hang out at the bonfire. We joked that we should just crash the people’s party and just go on up to the bonfire, but as we got closer to the fire, we could see that indeed, there was no one there. We went up to the fire and confirmed the builders of the fire had recently left. We both were uneasy. It felt strange, like an ambush was possible. Why would people build a fire and then just leave? After a time, we found that hanging out at the fire was less pleasant that it originally looked. If we were upwind of the fire, it was cold; downwind was smoky. There was nowhere you could sit comfortably and be close enough to enjoy the warmth of the fire. Plus there was a distinct feeling that we were being watched. We left the mystery fire and went back to the artificial but dependable warmth of our semi-shabby hotel room at the Chautauqua.

The last night in Long Beach, we went for a long, late, moonlit walk on the beach. It was surprisingly mild outside, walking amongst the silvered grass of the dunes, and down to the water. We wandered the beach, trying to figure out what everything was from afar. We had a terrifying moment when we couldn’t figure out what this weird-looking apparition floating out above the water was. Alex said it looked like one of the creatures from War of the Worlds. And to me, suddenly, it was. He was braver than I and went closer to the alien invader to investigate and possibly counterattack. However, the alien suddenly disguised itself very cleverly as a big sign up on a pole. (Why are there signs in the ocean? Who puts signs in the ocean??)

Fort Columbia:
I love how when you fall in love, you find out these wonderful things about your partner, things that they might not have been sure you would be o.k. with but then you wind up loving it. My guy likes, of all things, old forts and battlefields. I am into haunted spaces and forgotten corners, which actually works pretty well with his thing. At all these old sites, there’s enough creepy abandoned stuff to keep my imagination engaged and to make me happy too.

Fort Columbia features abandoned bunkers and observation decks out over the meeting-place of the Pacific and the mighty Columbia, some well-kept and oft-visited by tourists, some overgrown and isolated, even dangerous. We trekked up and down trails, which were actually listed as unpassable. We had to climb over fallen trees. We probably hiked for three hours. It made me want to hike like crazy. Alex makes me want to do everything more. More hiking, more horseback riding, more movies, more symphonies. I want to do it all, with him, over and over again. (I can’t believe I get to marry this guy!)

So now we’ve been to a few of these old military sites. The Civil War trenches at the Shirley plantation on the James River, Virgnina. Fort Worden up in Port Townsend. Friday Harbor British Camp and American Camp (site of the great Pig War – started because a British soldier allegedly shot an American pig. Seriously.) And when I was recently in Hawaii, I went to Pearl Harbor and the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii. I guess he’s rubbing off on me.

Driving Stick:
Only really notable thing about the ride home is that Alex took us to an abandoned part of Ft. Lewis and gave me a lesson driving stick shift on his Mustang. And that just shows that love makes you do some crazy shit: go to abandoned bunkers, trust your fiancé to drive your sportscar, even really outlandish behavior, like inviting someone to spend your whole life together. Ain’t love grand?