2:47 pm - Thurs 9/1/05
Things That Used To Confuse Me...And Things That Still Do

Mon 8/29/05 (8:04 a.m.)

Some things that used to confuse me:

I used to confuse actors Ron Leibman, Ron Rifkin, and Ron Silver (My Three Rons�One of my favorite shows of the late 60's). But now I can tell you Ron L. played �Mr Green� (Rachel�s dad) on Friends, Ron R. is �Sloane� on Alias, and Ron S. played the kind-of-slimy campaign consultant, whose character name I�ve forgotten, on West Wing. But for a time, I could never get their three names straight.

I used to confuse Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend�s Wedding, About Schmidt)
and Dylan McDermott (The Practice).

When I was very much younger, I used to call Jack Nicholson �Jack Nicklaus� (I�m pretty sure I�ve seen Jack Nicholson golf, but I don�t know if Jack Nicklaus has ever acted).

I used to sometimes call Saturday Night Live (The TV show) Saturday Night Fever (The movie), and vice-versa.

I�ve often confused Upton Sinclair (author of The Jungle) with Sinclair Lewis (author of Elmer Gantry, Babbit, etc). And sometimes I�ve even gotten John Updike in there, I guess from confusing Lewis�s Babbit with the �Rabbit� character in a number of Updike novels.

When Finding Nemo first came out, I had a hard time not calling it Little Nemo.

(Don�t know why I needed to �share� all that with you. But here we are.)

12:46 p.m.

It�s �old news� by now, but I�m still thinking about Pat Robertson suggesting the U.S. �take out� the President of Venezuela (Did I spell that right...?).

The democratically-elected President of Venezuela.

When the heat came down on him, Robertson denied he�d said what he said (Did you forget you were on tape, Pat?). He suggested he�d been �misinterpreted�, as if what he really meant was �The U.S. should take the President of Venezuela out...for dinner and a movie�.

I�m not a Christian myself, so I don�t know why it makes me so angry, but these right wing, hypocritical, phony-baloney Christian wack-jobs really infuriate me, more than just about any other nutty group of hatemongers.I can think of.

I�m not a Christian, but I have a pretty clear idea of what a Christian should be, and this guy sure as shit ain�t it: I know people who are Christians, and they�re not going around suggesting names to go on a U.S. government �hit list�.

Yet this nutbag has a forum where he influences millions of brain dead followers, and people who think very much like this idiot are running the country (I�ll bet you anything that while distancing themselves publicly from Robertson, there were people in the White House saying, in private, �You know, he has a point...�).

Weds 8/31/05 (9:57 p.m.)

Just made a small Red Cross donation to their �Disaster Relief Fund�, for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It�s a �drop in the bucket� (That�s all I can really afford)...but that�s better than not dropping anything in the bucket at all, I guess.

I wrote this earlier today:

Hurricane Katrina...for some reason, the detail that�s sticking with me is that emergency/rescue workers are so overworked dealing with saving survivors that no one�s been able to take care of the people who have died, so all these corpses are just...lying around (Or I guess �floating around�), until someone can attend to them.

I don�t know why that grisly detail is effecting me more than the terrible plight of the living, but it is (Actually, that �grisly detail� is adding to �the terrible plight of the living�, since cholera and other diseases become an issue when you have any number of dead bodies around).

I�ve never been in the middle of, or even adjacent to, a full-on �natural disaster�, so it�s hard for me to grasp, no matter how much I read or how many pictures I see, the sheer enormity of the destruction. People have said �It�s like a Third World country�, and I understand what they mean intellectually, but I doubt I can possibly understand what it feels like, to have your life upended that way.

I actually thought yesterday that, in one sense, I'd be better equipped to deal with a situation like this than many people--With no family, no spouse or children, no home, no business, etc and so forth, there wouldn't be that much for me to lose in a natural disaster, excepting my own life.

This situation reminds me how, years ago, I heard a story on NPR about just how vulnerable New Orleans would be in this sort of scenario.

Looks like that guy wasn�t kidding.

For whatever reason, it took me awhile before I followed the link, and that�s when I realized �Hey, I know these people...!�; Tim was my best friend for a number of years �back in the day� (From junior high through early high school), and Cate is on that long list of women in my life I was attracted to who didn�t return that interest.

(I think it tells you something that I�m �estranged� from both individuals, while Carrie is close friends with Cate, and far as I know, is on at least cordial speaking terms with Tim.)

Anyway, I read over the site, and listened to all the music samples, and you know what? I think they�re really good. Really good as in �I don�t see why they couldn�t be a big success� (Beyond the fact that they�re middle-aged, from the Midwest, and too eclectic in their material to be easily categorized. None of which is exactly their fault).

And I�d like to be past being jealous of other people�s creative success, but it turns out I�m not�As I listened to each song sample, I just kept thinking �They�re really good...and how�d they manage to do all this creative work and have a life, while I�ve never managed to get anything going on either front?�.

I think I�d be happier for them if I were able to look down magnanimously from my lofty perch of fame and fortune, or even my small platform of moderate success in life, but as things stand, I�ll have to just say �They�re really good, and you should buy their stuff and support them�, while eating my heart out from the lonely, impoverished sidelines.

I was thinking about it earlier�this is an example where there are two ways you can look at the situation, only one of which does you much good...

One way is to think �This doesn�t solve my problems. This just slows the fall�; the $367 and change won�t pay off a single credit card bill (It doesn�t even �catch me up� in terms of all the workshops I�ve done over the past couple months, at $25 a pop). It�s hard not to wish I�d been a bit luckier, and booked a �Jack� commercial that had had a longer run, cause I could really use the extra money.

The other way to think is �How cool is this-- One fairly pleasant 8-hour day, last year, and I am still getting money from it�. And I�m under contract for the spot for another full year, which means that even if it never runs again, I�ll still get close to another $1500 before all�s said and done (And who knows? It doesn�t seem likely now, but there�s no reason they couldn�t take the commercial out of mothballs the next time they want to push the Chicken Caesar salad--or whatever it was we were selling--and then "the money train" would start rolling once more).

Actually, as I read those last two paragraphs, what I find myself thinking is not �I should see things this way, and not the other way�, but instead, �You know what? It�s all true�; It is cool that I did this thing that keeps paying dividends, and at the same time, it sucks that those �dividends� are still not big enough to do much but �slow the fall�.
(END)

Just renewed a couple of credit cards, and the Norton Antivirus protection on my computer...

It didn't cost me anything to renew the credit cards, of course, but the $30 bucks to renew my antivirus protection just made me think of how there's just always money draining away, and so little coming in...

but I promised myself I wouldn't cry about money in here for awhile, so that's enough of that.

Man, I have so much I'd like to write about in here, but I think I'm going to shut this entry down, get some laundry going, and maybe sneak in a new entry after that.

See ya in a bit...

 

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