My Life As a Liar

I was asked by the three people who read these posts what I thought of the final episode of Downton Abbey.   Now I know I said in my last post that I was done until the Christmas special but, as it turns out, in the U.K. the death of Matthew Crawley was the Christmas special.  So.

Matthew’s Death

How does a young, healthy, sober man get into a car accident on an empty road on a sunny day with a milk truck that I can beat in a foot race?  It isn’t as if Matthew was eating an eclair, then took a swig of coffee that spilled down the front of his impeccable shirt causing him to take his eyes of the road in order to gauge the magnitude of the stain, then decided that perhaps he could get it out with saliva, whereupon he began gnawing wetly on his own button placket, all the while fiddling with the radio trying to find a station that wasn’t playing  ”Hotel California” and failing that, propelled his Stutz Bearcat into the nearest available obstruction (milk truck) in an attempt to, dear god, make it stop.  

Instead, Matthew’s death reads like the work of ne’er-do-well, marginally embittered writers who were tired of Dan Stevens (Matthew) bursting into their office, interrupting  whatever time wasting activity in which they were involved in the name of “research,” demanding to know exactly when he would be available to pursue “other professional opportunities.”  Thus serving to remind the writers how lucky they were to have this opportunity because “marketing departments dictate the literary marketplace,” leaving them so few options in the book world, that their response was to write what can only be described as a “just fucking go already” scene.

Question:  Is Downton Abbey a scientific experiment in “life out of order”, or  the most impressive example of job security ever for older actors ever?  (Subset question:  Did they turn Downton Abbey into an officers’ military hospital to test the viewers’ willingness to accept Downton as a high end retirement home?)

Downton is a place of death.  Specifically, young, untimely death:  the randy Turkish fellow, the virginal footman who loved Daisy and died of something that I believe is called We’re Tired of Writing Dull Dialog For You disease; the beautiful Lady Sybil who channels her inner Chatterley by  taking up with the chauffeur; Miss Swire who was interchangeable with Lord Grantham’s dog, Isis, in terms of her dramatic impact, and, of course, Matthew. (Eighteen year-old Cousin Rose was at Downton for two days before she got shipped back to Scotland.  Let me just say, Whew!  Close one.)  

I don’t know quite how to say this so I will just say it:  The key to unexpected turns of events is to make them unexpected.  For example, if you predictably only kill off anyone under the age of thirty, you thereby establish what is known as “a pattern.”  A pattern could be considered  the opposite of the unexpected. Just something to think about during all that free time the Downton writers now have due to spending exactly three seconds coming up with Matthew Crawley’s death.

Question:  Why Don’t The Crawley’s Ever Go Anywhere?

They’re rich.  They’re retired.  They have great clothes, and no one needs to lose ten pounds before attending a social event, and yet the only place they ever venture is to the drawing room and the dining room in a house the size of the nearby village.  The last movie I saw that was historical and set in a mansion where no one ever left the premises, was The Others, with Nicole Kidman.  All I’m saying, Downton, is it’s been done.  

Just when it seemed that the Crawleys shared a genetic disposition to some sort of agoraphobia, they went to visit Rose’s parents in Scotland—no doubt with the intention of “inviting Rose back to Downton” once  they realized she had craftily escaped with her young life.  I can’t quite imagine how the Crawleys all came to be sitting around in the drawing room (or dining room), having a family meeting on where to take a week’s vacation as if they only have seven days of vacation left on their time cards, and no one suggests “Paris.”  Or “Cairo.” How does “Let’s go see Shrimpy and Lady Shrimpy (aka The Bickersons) in the desolate north in that forbidding manor with the DIY rifle-flower wall art and no central heating” win?  Did someone have a wager to settle? 

Question:  How old were the Shrimpys when they had Cousin Rose?  

Odd chronological familial relations is a kind of mini-staple in visual entertainment, to the extent that more than a few casting decisions look more like someone calling in a favor than actually paying attention to the reproductive cycle of the average human female.  How else to explain:

1.  Marian and Winthrop Paroo

In The Music Man we are introduced to Marian (The Librarian) who lives with her widowed mother and her younger brother, Winthrop.  Marian is old enough to be considered a spinster and looks about thirty years old.  Winthrop is maybe six years old.  I believe Mrs. Paroo’s heavy Irish brogue is a diversionary tactic to prevent us from “doing the math.”

2.  Mitch and Kathy Brenner  

Mitch Brenner frequently visits his widowed mother and younger sister, Kathy, in sleepy little Bodega Bay, soon to be a vacation spot for The Birds.  Ages run crazy all over the place.  Mitch looks to be pushing forty, so in 1960s years he’s probably more like thirty-two years old.  Kathy is twelve.  The Widow Brenner looks about fifty.  It’s possible for her to have had Mitch at eighteen and Kathy at thirty-eight, but who plans a family with an entire generational span between siblings and no one in between?  I mean, don’t they sort of cease to be siblings and become more like a guy and his mom and “that girl.”

3.  The Von Trapps

Nothing seems amiss, until Liesl ‘I-am-sixteen-going-on-forty” von Trapp shows up in the whistle line-up.  It’s a testament to Julie Andrew’s acting that when she’s introduced to the children, played by actors who all look age appropriate with the exception of the young matron, Liesl von Trapp, stomping out their names and ages, that she waits until the toad scene at the dinner table to accuse them of “pulling her leg.”

Question:  Why Do I Expect The Actors Playing The Servants Only To Leave Their Acting Job at Downton Abbey If Asked To? 

It is also a testament to the veracity of Downton Abbey that only the people upstairs seem to be able to leave the show; downstairs it seems they are lucky to have that job.  I mean, I have to remind myself that they aren’t really servants with prescribed lives but actors who are playing servants with prescribed lives.  Yet somehow I find myself reading about Matthew or Lady Sybil getting other acting opportunities and thinking, well, of course.  Yet I somehow know that if O’Brien suddenly showed up  as a Broadway lead, or Jimmy the Footman was the new regular on GIRLS I would find myself thinking, Really?  Who knew? Followed by a good for them!, as if they had, by sheer luck, escaped their sad little basement life.

Question:  Is Isis immortal?

Um, yes?  Either that or a Ripley’s entry.  

My prediction:  Jimmy and Thomas will fall in love, though Thomas will tire of him because all those cute little things that were once so endearing—monkeying with the lobster spoons, threatening to call the police—will soon become quite tiresome.  But I will leave that for another season.

In the meantime, I’d like to sort out the upstairs mysteries of Downton Abbey.

Money & the Lord

For me, Lord Grantham has been a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a dinner jacket, then wrapped in his old military uniform when he believed he was being called into service during the Great War, only be embarrassed back into the real world, and so returned to being rewrapped in a dinner jacket.  But I now think I may know what Lord Grantham is about:  He is lazy.  Not just lazy, but full-on, lard-ass move-it-mister lazy.  

He thinks his financial advisor/lawyer/whatever is some sort of pest and tells Matthew not to let this man “bother him,” as if he’s someone’s funny uncle that must be tolerated.  He spends like someone on a bender, What?  An investment in railroads?  Oh, because of the war and the destruction and the reality they will need to rebuild?  And, let me see if I understand, you want ALL my cash?  Canada?  Well, what can I say except put me down for one hundred percent of everything I own, in a country without a single battleground!  No, no.  All of it!  Baby needs new shoes!

Did he go into the study that he never leaves, inside the house that he never leaves, spin the globe near his desk and invest in the place where his finger landed? Lord Grantham didn’t even need to mention Charles Ponzi in the last episode for us to know that he is eighty years and one Internet friending from sending funds to a Nigerian prince.

Is it possible to be too lazy to even pick up a newspaper?  Just how indolent is indolent? 

Case in point:  Lord Grantham’s quasi-affair with the new housemaid last season.  He lives in a castle the size of a castle yet insists that she come to his room, the one separated from his wife’s by one of those connecting motel doors, because it would be asking too much that they meet in one of the other 425 chambers of Downton.  He would rather risk his marriage than walk down the hall or a flight of stairs.  One can only imagine who would be doing all the heavy lifting had that relationship ever progressed; I’m guessing it would be a lot more take and very little give, if you get my drift.

The servants of Downton are really like Lord Grantham’s sloth beard.  Bates dresses him, listens to him prattle on until he’s incarcerated (hey, maybe that’s why Bates was such a hair trigger in the gaol?), then Thomas takes over. Everyone else brings him food and information (unless it’s financial information and then even listening becomes too much work). There’s nothing like a phalanx of servants treating you like a veal to mask your lazy ass self.

He even has beard friends—Dr. Clarkson, the vicar, Tom Branson’s brother who, unfortunately, recalls nothing so much as a pedophile with anger issues—but no real friends because the effort required just to pick up the phone is simply too much.  In short, Lord Grantham is that guy who comes  to spend a weekend on your couch in San Francisco with no plans and an open plane ticket. 

His utter lack of ambition does explain his entire 3-point financial strategy of:

1.  Be born into wealth.

2.  Marry wealth.

3.  Accept gifts of wealth.

A program, I should say, I am totally down with.

The Trials of Lady Edith

The narrative of Lady Edith in Downton Abbey is eerily reminiscent of Zero Dark Thirty: the torture scenes.  My confusion here is, when they finally break her, what is it they want her to say?  Hey, thanks for making me the plain, resentful sister when being the plain sister would’ve been sufficient?  Are you not familiar with the term “overkill?”

That Downton never stops torturing Poor Lady Edith is impressive. It’s like she’s a heroine in one of those Victorian novels that involves a kidnapping and a snuggery. First, she rats out her own sister (evidence of her bitterness, which is an admission of her lack of desirability and popularity, you know, in case we missed the point).  Then she’s helping out on some farm where she ends up kissing a farmer who, I’m pretty sure, has never been into anything dentally related.  Then she tells her ancient fiancé that not only does she want to take care of him, but that he will be her “life’s work” as if she’s suddenly Vincent Price, while he smiles wanly, his eyes darting around for a door as he happens to mention some recently widowed duchess that he dated back in the 19th century.

Let’s see, Lady Edith…the plain one (check); overlooked daughter (check); left at the altar (check); spinsterhood (check); no meals in bed (check)—What fresh hell is left?  What can possibly continue her pattern of humiliation, rejection and heartbreak? What profession (a word that makes her father retire to his study and imitate the vocalizations of a howler monkey) would provide all that and more?  Could it be…a writer?

A Final Musing

What is with that pathetic Grapes of Wrath farm Matthew and company keep visiting?  And why is it every time the conversation turns to the vast holdings of Downton and how to make them work efficiently enough to preserve the estate for future generations, all roads lead back to that sad little Dorothea Lange farm?  We’ve never seen a single person living there yet all Matthew talks about is raising the rent, which, if I’m not mistaken, requires renters to put into effect.  And why is it that when the Crawley’s are considering a place for Tom Branson and Baby Sybil to live the only thing they can come up with is that same sad little farm instead of, say, the swanky manse that the Crawleys keep empty in case they lose everything (again)?  Why can’t Tom and Baby Sybil live there?  Why are Tom’s choices the sad little Dust Bowl farm or his pedophile-with-anger-issues brother’s garage apartment?  And, if Tom does move into the sad little farm wouldn’t they be raising his rent?  As part of the family, wouldn’t they be paying him to pay them, thus creating the sort of lazy ass financial scheme that only Lord Grantham could love?

Till the Christmas special, Downton!

I recently came across one of those popular article inserts asking Who are you in Downton Abbey?   I’m sure everyone rushed to their local water cooler to declare themselves “a Mrs. Patmore” or that sweaty looking wanna-be valet with the bad comb over last seen working at Mrs. Crawley’s.  I’m having a t-shirt made right at this moment that reads “I’m an O’Brien,”  as I  pull back my hair, leaving only two tiny cocktail weenie curls, symmetrically located on my sour little face (Question:  Is it by accident or design that O’Brien and Jan Brady have the exact same forehead hair and sense of social injustice?  Discuss.)  Before I leave this paragraph entirely, I have no idea what the wanna-be valet actually does at Downton.  He isn’t a footman.  He isn’t a valet (as we know).  I’ve never seen him cooking or polishing silver…come to think of it, I only see him at mealtime, seated somewhere between Anna and Alfred, reminiscent of the groupies “eating all the steak” backstage in Almost Famous.

The Almost Famous valet is only one of the many characters that I no longer understand in this season’s Downton Abbey.  Let’s begin downstairs, shall we?

Daisy and The Footmen

While Daisy and the Footmen, sounds like a cross between a Victorian novel by Anonymous and an independent film produced in the San Fernando Valley, circa 1978, it’s really more of an historical Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.  To recap:  Daisy likes Alfred who is the first footman.  He likes the new rouge-wearing kitchen maid, who in turn has eyes for the second footman, Jimmy, who is appears to like Daisy, who likes Alfred, and so on.  But wait!  Is that the pizza delivery guy at the door, natty in his valet’s uniform, all roving eyes and hands, directing innuendos at the uncomfortable Jimmy?  Hullooo Thomas!

Hot Tramp, I Love You So, or Ethel

I realize that the comical value of any given name often depends upon one’s generation.  It doesn’t help that almost every single one hundred year old girl’s name has come back into style—except Ethel.  Ethel is pretty much the exact mathematical opposite of erotic (the other opposite of erotic at Downton is Lady Edith).  Or that the only Ethel many of us ever knew was Ethel Mertz, Lucy and Desi’s homebound tenant who had clearly married a man old enough to be her grandfather, thus establishing the accepted generational span for most Los Angeles marriages.  That Ethel Mertz traded her youth for a one bedroom apartment and a pair of landlords who were home often enough to constantly be on you to “turn the music down” is almost as sad as the story of Downton’s Ethel, a young women with what can only be described as a spectacular case of cooties.

Bates

Aurally, the Bate’s narrative is comparable to the difficulty of the accents in Trainspotting.  Though I couldn’t always catch what was being said in that film, I could at least hear them.  I am so taxed trying to understand Bates and his roommate and the prison guard and the friendly inmate that I now have a deep furrow between my eyebrows from squinting with effort.  Why?  Since my ears didn’t seem to be adequate to the task, I had to enlist the help of my eyes, as if all my senses are just some kind of massive power source of comprehension.  Worse, I’m filling in so much of the storyline that I am one professional contract and two postage stamps away from charging Julian Fellowes with my writing services.

Why is Bates being framed? Why, since he’s already convicted of murder, does anyone want to plant that large cigar in his bunk, the one that he hid between the bricks of his cell before transferring it to his cellmate’s bunk?  Who stands to gain from Bates remaining in prison? When did Bates become such an Important Person in the English prison system?  

All I know is that Bates has a cellmate who is in cahoots with a guard, and both of them are working overtime to make sure that Bates never gets out.   They remind me of the boy on the grade school playground who keeps harassing his female classmate because he “likes her.”  Downton, am I close?

Additionally, Bates keeps periodically grabbing his cellmate by the shirt and ramming him up against a wall:  In their shared cell, and in the prison passage way.  Last week Bates yanked him from their queue in the exercise yard, forcing him up against yet another wall in a secluded niche, this time with a small knife to the throat.  Let me see if I’m using the term correctly:  Is this what is meant by rough trade?

Just when I had comfortably settled into Dr. Clarkson’s portrayal as a country doctor who is really a serial killer, along comes some celebrity MD from London to make Dr. Clarkson look like he knows what he’s doing.  The tragedy is that even though this time Dr. Clarkson was one hundred percent correct in his medical diagnosis, the patient still died.  Well done, Downton!  Frankly, if the Crawleys aren’t careful no one is going to want to visit for a fortnight of shooting and cocktails.

I will say that I that I was impressed by Dr. Clarkson calmly hanging back from Lady Sybil when she was having seizures, since, as he said, “There is nothing to be done,” instead of racing over and pretending to “do something” in the same manner that certain mechanically-challenged motorists check under the hood when the car breaks down.

A high point of the episode was the London MD’s response to Dr. Clarkson’s observation of the very pregnant Lady Sybil that she seemed a “little off and her ankles were swollen.”  The London MD replies, as any concerned physician would when faced with a not-unusual pregnancy complication, “Maybe Lady Sybil just has fat ankles.”  Yes.  The assessment of cankles now passes as a second opinion. 

At which point I’m thinking, Did they even have medical schools in England, or just a grand tradition of surgeon-barbers?

I’m now loving this show more than ever.

Several months ago I read about this horrible, horrible disease.  So horrible that I dare not speak its impossible to pronounce name.  It features the emergence of small threads from under one’s skin, resembling the fibers of a cheap, plaid polyester sofa that someone’s rarely washed dog claimed ten years ago with no plans to surrender any time soon.  A theory has been advanced that this disease comes from outer space.  Is this possible?  I have to say Yes, because ‘possibility’ is pretty much the cornerstone of hypochondria; and while I’m not a world class hypochondriac but more of a talented amateur, I should know.  (This personal state of affairs is not helped by access to the Internet and possessing a novelist’s imagination.) 

Which brings me to Dr. Clarkson, M.D., the preferred physician of the family and staff of Downton Abbey, at which point I’d like to refer you to the photograph.  Take a good look, linger if you like, because when they eventually fall into the care of the esteemed Dr. Clarkson, you won’t be seeing their likes again.  Dr. Clarkson is the exact locus where Downton Abbey and Ten Little Indians (the 1960s film adaption of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None) meet.

In Ten Little Indians, ten people are invited to a mountain retreat by a mysterious host calling himself Mr. Owen, who never seems to arrive, exactly.  Unless he is the person picking off all the guests, one by one, their deaths punishment for having literally gotten away with murder themselves.  The whole thing is a basically a kind of low-budget, 1970s, New York City vigilante affair, if Charles Bronson were some sort of scold, greeting his guests with a taped voice that gets the accusatory tones of someone’s mother just right.  

Predictably, the actors playing the ten guests react to the information that they are all killers by acting as if they had just enrolled in a beginning Method class and were told to “access the time in sixth grade when you were caught red-handed pulling a classmate’s chair out from under him as he went to sit down after saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school assembly, landing hard on the floor.   And even though your little hand still gripped the back of the folding chair, you still vehemently denied your guilt, which no one believed.”  It may help, too, to know that three of the actors were Shirley Eaton, notable for her willingness to be naked in Goldfinger; Fabian, an American Idol contestant before American Idol existed  (such is the sadness of peaking before the wave, creatively speaking), and Hugh O’Brien, one of those handsome-ish TV actors who starred in a series about Wyatt Earp during the Golden Age of Television and who, I discovered on Wikipedia, married for the first time at age eighty-one to a women not much older than I, with Debbie Reynolds singing at their Crystal Cathedral wedding—all of which sounds like a Disneyland attraction located in the New Orleans section between Frontierland and Adventureland.  Spoiler Alert (if my memory serves):  Shirley “Goldfinger” Eaton survives; Fabian “I’ll Never Achieve Cinematic Legitimacy” does not.

Mr. Owen Dr. Clarkson began the first season of “Downton Abbey” with a seriously ill young farmer in his care.  Isobel Crawley, new to Downton and someone who knows her way around a surgery by virtue of her husband (a London doctor) and her position as a physician’s assistant, tells Dr. Clarkson that the young man needn’t necessarily die due to the amazing success with a revolutionary treatment now being used in London.

Dr. Clarkson rejects her suggestion (and the medical wisdom of the MDs in London), explaining that, no, this young man is going to die and they should simply allow him to die.  The young man says, weakly, Uh, if I’m dying anyway, what’s the harm is giving it a go?  This is met with the doctor’s patented condescension due to the man’s social status and, an admonishment that death is death and that’s your final destination, pal.  Then his young wife, who is not at all taken with the prospect of being a destitute widow with children and the very real possibility that she’ll be selling herself on the street in no time thus shortening her own life span by about sixty years, also timidly asks if they might try it?

No, says Dr. Clarkson, sighing and vexed, as if to say, What part of I’m going to let this young fellow die are you not understanding?   Do you not know the meaning of the word “expendable?”  If you had gone to Oxford, you would, but instead you were born to a life of decided to muck stalls.  And now I must go dress for cocktails with Lord Grantham.

When Isobel Crawley cures the young farmer with the procedure she suggested is Dr. Clarkson relieved?  Is he grateful?  Does he say, I’ll be damned?  No.  He complains to Lord Grantham that “this sort of thing will not be tolerated in his surgery,” as if she had broken out the laudanum, then went for a joy ride in his brougham.

Next up in the Ten Little Downton Abbey:  Matthew Crawley.  Son of Isobel, hero of the first World War where he sustained a spine injury that left him unable to walk, and unable to “truly be a man.”  Unfortunately, Matthew is engaged to Miss Swire, a delicate girl with whom he has no discernible sexual chemistry so it could be argued that she may not take the bad “man” news as hard as the doctor thinks.

Months of Matthew in a wheelchair pass, until the day in drawing room when Miss Swire trips on a corner of carpet and Matthew leaps from his chair to catch her.  I’m no Doctor Clarkson but I can’t help wondering if there isn’t some physical stage between paraplegic and leaping?  Wouldn’t there be some small increments of change, some inkling of improvement that one would notice?

Is Dr. Clarkson relieved?  Is he grateful?  Does he say, I’ll be damned? No.  He tells Lord Grantham and the rest of clan who are questioning him in the drawing room that upon reading the x-ray it was his educated opinion that the spine was severed.  Severed, he explains, to the point where one will  no longer truly be a man.  However, a doctor in London (again with the London medical community) also read the x-ray at the same time as Dr. Clarkson and diagnosed a “bruised spine” meaning that recovery was possible.  Yet Dr. Clarkson felt it would be cruel to offer Matthew any shred of hope.  And, as you see, Dr. Clarkson finishes, It was, and it is, and what about those cocktails?  Carry on being a man, Matthew.

Unfortunately, the Spanish Flu is laying everyone to waste.  Lady Grantham gets sick.  Very sick and who do they call?  Dr. Clarkson tells the family that  She’ll probably expire in the night.  Unless, of course, she doesn’t.  But I really think she will.  Yes, look at her bent over the bed, sick and sweating and delirious.  Gather round, Granthams, because it isn’t like she should be quarantined or anything because it isn’t like this flu is contagious and killing a third of the planet’s population and—oh, by the way—could you get a couple of the servants in here, too?  If only because they eat in the kitchen, near the food.

Miss Swire takes ill at the same time but the doctor says she has just a touch, not even a cough and I’ll see you in the morning…when rigor mortis has set in.  

As he stands with Matthew and other family members, looking at Miss Swire’s sweet, lifeless form while the doomed Lady Grantham is recovering nicely down the hall, is Dr. Clarkson relieved?  Is he grateful?  Does he say, I’ll be damned?  No.  He says Ah, yes.  Tricky business flu.  Hard to predict.  Cocktails?

(At this point, one wonders why Bates didn’t refer his inconvenient and vindictive ex-wife to Dr. Clarkson for a check-up.) 

In the Season Three opener, when Mrs. Hughes discovers a lump in her breast and it’s off to the man who cannot tell the difference between a bruised spine and a severed spine.   As Mrs. Hughes sits in Dr. Clarkson’s office, Mrs. Patmore by her side getting increasingly agitated, Mrs. Hughes says, “Mrs. Patmore, please allow me to be the hysterical one.”  Now I believe that Mrs. Patmore was attempting the verbal equivalent of kicking a spouse under the table when dining with friends that you really don’t like because of their pretentious utterances, and backhanded compliments yet you can’t avoid them because, you keep claiming to be too busy for dinner, they finally say, Okay, then when can we have dinner? and replying Never is never an option.  There is Mrs. Patmore in Dr. Clarkson office, figuratively kicking Mrs. Hughes under the table, speaking with her foot, “Listen, Mrs. Hughes, remember when I was going blind in the first season and was trying to keep it a secret even though I was working all day with knives and  boiling water and open flames and no one really noticed I was going blind and making culinary mistakes because I was cooking English cuisine?  And when I was found out I said that I hid my condition because I was afraid I would lose my lucrative Downton Abbey kitchen job?  Well, really it was because I’m friends with the young farmer’s wife and she told me what happened in the surgery, her fears of destitution and descent into that kind of really unsanitary Edwardian Era prostitution.  Then there was the confab of overexposure in the sick room of someone with Spanish Flu.  And maybe I didn’t go to Oxford but even I know a severed spine when I see one.  After all, I work with joints of venison and butchered lambs and pheasant and it isn’t rocket science to see when something is severed.  And, by the way, you’ll notice that Lord Grantham sent me to LONDON, where I was treated by doctors in LONDON and now I don’t even need contacts.”

But Mrs. Hughes, not unlike a spouse who turns to you and says, “Why are you kicking me?” causing you to smile nervously at your hosts while secretly feeling astonished as such cluelessness, says to Dr. Clarkson, “When can we do the biopsy?”

He tells her now, and Mrs. Patmore exclaims, “Will it hurt?”—trying desperately to get her friend on board here.  Instead Mrs. Hughes replies, “It doesn’t matter.  Whether it hurts or not, it must be done,”  effectively releasing Dr. Clarkson from any pretense of medical competency.

Post-biopsy, Dr. Clarkson tells Mrs. Hughes that—big surprise—he can’t tell what’s what.    He uses the word “inconclusive” the way other people say, “who the fuck knows?”  He’s decided to send it on to London for a second opinion, which would be heartening except this is the same doctor who had a second opinion (from London) on the condition of Matthew’s spine.   So, it doesn’t matter what the other doctor says since Dr. Clarkson Owen will be drawing his own conclusions anyway.

It will be over two months before he hears anything—long enough for Mrs. Hughes to be untreated and well on her way to becoming part of the cast of Ten Little Indians.  His advice?  Take it easy and don’t work too hard, clearly ignoring the fact that all those cocktails don’t pour themselves, something he may want to consider once he’s done “treating” everyone.

(Downton Update:  As of last week Mrs Hughes has been given a death warrant clean bill of health by Dr. Clarkson.  Nice knowin’ ya, Mrs. H.)

It should be noted that I am refraining from all things cat-related even though Otis spent yesterday (and is spending to today) at the vet and returned to us wearing a red Ace bandage and a Cone of Shame.   I know on the surface I seem overly interested in my own cat, but that isn’t really what’s going on here—this is what’s going on:  For the money we have spent on him this year, John and I could’ve taken a vacation and then I would be writing about that.  So, when I write about Otis, I am really writing about two weeks in New York.

While Otis was spending all our hard-earned cash, we were at Costco where I was signing books for two hours.  The people were very nice and supplied me with nearly a dozen thin-tip black Sharpies, four more thin-tip colored Sharpies and, my favorite, an extensive rainbow of Sharpies with multiple shades of blues, pinks, oranges, greens, lavenders.  I was also given two bottles of water and a large bowl of chocolates that I was expected to share with other customers, most of whom came up to my waist.  They, it must be said, were not my readership which made sharing anything seem a tad unfair.  I was also across from a set of Motion Detection Lights that swiveled their blinding beams to and fro every time  someone walked by.  They were like the electric equivalent of the boyfriend of an old co-worker of mine who was a heroin addict/breast man.  The young employee who was helping me with the books made the mistake of walking over to the lights to see if they could be permanently turned from us, then looked directly into them as she tried to secure them herself, searing her retinas for several minutes.  Her nervous conversation bounced between “I’ll be okay” to “I really can’t see anything” and back to “I’m sure this will be fine,” while struggling to avoid walking into the table of books.  Blinded by her own merchandise—it really made me reconsider the hot dog I was thinking of eating when I was done at the book table.

There was a large poster with my author photo propped up on the table next to me.  A man asked me if “that was my daughter.”  Granted, I don’t think English was his first language, but being bilingual doesn’t make you blind (unlike Motion Detection lights).  I said, “Excuse me?”  I again heard the word “daughter.”  Then, when I said, “No.  That’s me,” he smiled the smile of linguistic confusion where he believes that only one of us isn’t getting it, and that one is the one who looks like her own mother.

Maybe it was the Santa hat, which I do realize can read “mature” but my photo is recent and not really touched just so I can avoid this sort of awkward misunderstanding.   Really, between this and being mistaken for an Ewok at a Halloween party last month (I was a cat), along with being the only person over the age of 34 at a recent Moth StorySlam (another story and one that ended in tears), I’m beginning to understand the siren call of the plastic surgeon, which could be possible if sea monkeys  Otis didn’t have all my money.

You’ve seen this scene in almost every crime movie:   The hero is walking down the street when he passes a parked car with a crooked cop and his muscled sidekick and they invite the hero to “Go for a ride” so “We can talk to you.”  Then, after traumatizing him with threats while circling several city blocks, the crooked cop and his muscled sidekick drop off the hero in the exact same spot where they picked him up.  

One very hot summer day, John and I were walking through our neighborhood on our way to lunch when we passed a utility pole stapled with the usual Lost Pet flyer.  I did what I always do which is to stop, study the picture, learn the lost pet’s name and characteristics (“Cuzco is very skittish and may scratch”  ”Lily is excessively shy and may bolt” “Buttons is deaf in one ear” “Arnold takes anxiety medication”).   The personality portion of the flyer always begs a few questions:  Maybe Arnold needs medication because he doesn’t exactly enjoy your company?  Is Cuzco “skittish” or trying to claw his way to freedom?  And why, seriously, do you want this pet back when the whole relationship just sounds like a 1950s prison movie with Susan Hayward?

It turns out that this Lost Pet was non-neurotic young tabby who was simply new to the neighborhood and somehow slipped through the door.

Later that same day, my teenage son and I were driving about a dozen blocks from the posted flyer when we came upon a group of young girls on a sidewalk, playing with a young tabby that was the exact image of the Lost Pet Cat.  I say ‘playing’, but the scene more accurately resembled a dinner party of dissolute French aristocrats months before their unfortunate introduction to the guillotine, as they sat around ridiculing someone who had just left the room to use the chamber pot.  That is to say, they weren’t handling the little cat as much as they were carrying on a kind of running commentary.  I’m guessing that some think tank is studying this tendency of Children in the Computer Age right now.

Now I’m disinclined to involve with seemingly unaffiliated animals because of the possibility of the encounter turning into something like an adult version of Hot Potato at the moment when the music stops.  I dread an adorable cat following me down the street, or making eye contact with some friendly dog on the loose.  For some reason, ‘acting like you don’t care’ is kind of a cross-species turn-on; nothing says pursue me like pretending to check the gum on the bottom of your shoe.

It was with great resignation to the vagaries of life and loss that I leaned out my window (but compromised by keeping the engine running) to ask about the little cat.  I am no expert when it comes to nine year old girls, but their excitement at being asked about the cat was pretty impressive.  They all spoke at once.  They didn’t know who it belonged to; it just showed up.  Why did I want to know?  Where was the pet flyer?  What was it’s name?  What was my name?  Where did I live?  Did I have any cats?  They liked Persians.  Didn’t I think it should have a collar?  A diamond one, in purple.  They told me their ages and pointed out their houses. This cat had a home. Was I looking to steal this cat?  Someone used to have a cat. Could this be their cat?  Could they have the phone number on the flyer?  It was an exchange that made little sense, offered no concrete information, was frequently contradictory and was full of more than a little informational one-upmanship.  

In short, they so exhausted me that when they offered to return the cat, I said, good and started to leave.  Wait!  They cried. Where was the flyer?  Trying to follow their conversation was nothing next to trying to give them directions to the flyer.  It was like talking to aliens.  (“Walk up the street two blocks.”  ”What street?”  ”This street.”  ”This street?”  ”Yes.”  ”What about that street?”  ”That street is the wrong direction.”  ”But I live on that street.”  ”But the flyer isn’t in that direction.”  ’Which direction is it?”  ”Up that street.”  ”Can I go down that street?”  And so on, culminating with my favorite comment, “What’s a flyer?”)

Their final remark to me, as I tried to pull away from the curb was that they wanted me to return the cat for them.  Actually, they were quite emphatic about it.  In popular parlance I believe this is known as “acting like the boss of someone.”

My son retrieved the young tabby, bringing him back to the car, where I had rolled up all the windows despite the blistering hot day.  We had just begun our search for the flyer when the cat, docile up until now, let out a yowl and leapt from my kid’s hands while demonstrating a claw dexterity on par with Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York.  All I could think was please, not the eyes.

If you have never been in an enclosed car on a very hot summer day with a really angry cat, then you really haven’t experienced the dual discomfort of cat pinball as all its hair is now being transferred to your sweaty self.  And, as with most highly charged moments involving two or more human beings, someone is yelling directives  (“Hold on to it!”  ”Keep it away from the accelerator!!”  ”I said, hold on to it!”) while the other is saying, “I’m trying” but really thinking, Don’t you think I would IF I could, if only to smack you with it.  You have like, twenty seconds before everything devolves into petty criticisms that have nothing to do with the current situation.   

We found the flyer.  I got out to read the phone number, leaving my son in the car.  Okay, before you judge, hear my reasoning:  He’s young.  He’ll heal faster.

No one answered. 

The end of the story is that I brought the cat back to the place where I snatched it.  A neighbor, who also knows me, explained that the little cat belonged to her neighbor and why was it in my car?  This was when I realized that the answer was, Taking it for a ride.  

All I could think about was the little cat telling its other cat friends, “Yeah, I was hanging around, you know how I like to do my business at the green house,  when this blue car pulled up.  I didn’t think anything of it, until this kid picked me up and there I was—in the car!!”

“No way!” said the other cats.

“I was cool with it until the car started moving.” 

“Where did they take you?”  Then one cat’s voice drops to a whisper,  ”Was it the vet?”

“No.  They drove to a far street corner.”  

The cats said nothing.

“Then brought me back here.”

“Wait, I don’t understand,” said one of the cats.  ”They took you for a car ride?  On a ninety-three degree day?”

“Yes.”

“How far?”

“Up by Cuzco’s house.”

“Then brought you back to where they picked you up?”

Then there is more discussion of what it all meant, with one cat saying that he hoped you released more hair than normal, and what a drag it is being domesticated, and how they don’t find people as amusing as people finds cats entertaining, which led to the obvious theories of evolution and wondering what’s for dinner. 

Today’s cat story, “The Asshole With a Dead Bird In It’s Mouth,” was related to me—breathlessly, I might add—by John.

It seems that John and our friend, Camille, were on one of their usual afternoon dog walks with Gomez (Cairn Terrier) and Doug the Dog (Pit Bull mix), when they noticed a nicely groomed white cat, with a dead bird clamped between it’s (satanic) little teeth, as it stood on the porch of a neighborhood house.  Camille asked John to hold Doug’s leash so she could take a picture of the white cat and it’s lunch, using her iPhone.  One picture.  One.  

No sooner did she turn her back, post-photo, holding out her hand for Doug’s leash, when the white cat dropped the bird on the Welcome mat in the same manner that certain scrappy  girls at my high school would remove their hoop earrings before pummeling someone, then taking off after the four of them like it was go-time.  When John said taking off he meant that the thing was moving like a Concorde leaving London Heathrow because the white cat was racing toward them, its front legs flailing wildly, claws out, in a full-on furious one-cat elevator fight.  He said it looked like Steven Segal doing his best spastic faux martial arts moves, so much so that John fully expected the cat to snarl, “That’s right!  You want some of this?”

John also said that he didn’t know a house cat could “run on two feet.”  And, that “this must be how the paparazzi feel when they try to photograph Alec Baldwin.”  Of course, he was thinking all this as he tried to protect himself and Gomez using the patented Single Leg Kick While Also Trying To Not To Turn His Back On The Attacker And Watch Out For On Coming Traffic maneuver since he, Gomez and the white cat were all in the middle of the street.  As he turned to run he was thinking What sort of cat abandons its kill to pursue a grown man, a grown woman, a terrier who specializes in killing rats, and a pit bull?  Wondering if the white cat had some sort of on switch activated by the appearance of an iPhone?   

Further down the street, he said that the white cat was still chasing them on it’s two skinny legs, still ripping at the air with it’s front legs.  Not only was it still in hot pursuit, it seemed that running away from the cat had the effect of pissing it off more, something it illustrated by delivering a claw-bitch slap across Gomez’s surprised face when it caught up to them.  Camille and Doug were already across the street and halfway down the block.

It finally gave up quite a distance from the porch and the dead bird.  John said he was going to go back the next day and see if it was there, like he was suddenly Riff in the original Broadway cast of West Side Story , itching for a turf war.  Gomez, on the other hand, was more like the little Jewish candy store owner lecturing the Jets about violence after they pulled off Anita’s shawl (so we’ll know she’s Puerto Rican) and started tossing her around (so we’ll buy into the possibility that all those dancing Jets are going to violate her).

One day, while I was walking our dog with Camille and Doug, one of the kazillion urban chickens that lives in our urban neighborhood, was out of it’s yard and hanging around the sidewalk as they are wont to do, unnerving Camille who has a slight case of Pet PTSD.  I wanted to remind her that we casually eat their kind, which I believe is a pretty effective form of domination, and, besides, it’s not like the kazillion crows that lurk around our streets, clearly bored out of their minds and looking, I’m fairly sure, for the opportunity to peck out the soft jelly of one’s eyes, but I know we all have our fears.  

Later she sent me a copy of the iPhone Photo That Was Taken And All Hell Followed.  She said of the picture, “Here’s the asshole with the dead bird In it’s mouth”—which now offer to you.

Here is what I wrote in an earlier blog about our former Manx, JB:

…[she had] an alarming, rather creative anal issue that would’ve been funny had it been happening to someone else’s cat.  We were told it was a “Manx thing” but I really must call bullshit because I’ve since had another Manx and there was no alarming anal business with him.

All true—until yesterday when it seems the gods were screwing around at their desks, halfheartedly checking out bad plastic surgery on the Internet, while lamenting the inability to “discover anything new online” (a fundamental flaw with being all-knowing), that they stumbled across the above statement in my blog.  Hmm, they said, perking up a bit, Doesn’t she have another Manx?  And isn’t that Manx in possession of an anus?  Then someone called out for martinis and tacos and the next thing I knew, I was headed back to the vet with our little Manx, Otis.

Now here I must digress.  I’m currently in the second month of a Self-Improvement Program where, among other things, I’m trying not to mix-and-match my waking and sleeping wardrobe, while make an effort to get out more.  I happen to be one of those people who gives the impression of being more social than I am because I’m cheerful and chatty and tend to enthuse over the prospect of “getting together.”  I am sincere about wanting to see people; I’m just equally sincere about wanting to stay home.  Socializing is one of those things where the more you do it, the better you do it, and the less you do it, the more you gaffe, which makes you not want to go out very often, which makes you more gaffe-prone when you do go out.  In short, you become your own social problem.  

For example, a couple of months ago some friends of ours, who live in a large and lovely Victorian that had once belonged to something like the richest guy on the block, invited us to a dinner party.  Their house is a nice blend of a couple of centuries:  The structural elements of their beautifully remodeled kitchen includes 19th century wooden columns salvaged from a razed school house, and a gorgeous, repurposed wooden beam rescued from an early 20th century barn, alongside shiny restaurant-style appliances. They also removed the wall between the dining room and kitchen, playing with the whole formal/casual thing, then added a pair of French doors opening onto a deck, secluded by landscaping that looks untouched by a human hand.  The entire effect is actually transporting. 

The main floor bathroom, located at the end of its own small, dedicated hallway is in keeping with the elegant-modern Victorian vibe.  The vintage wooden door is inset with a large sheet of glass.  A bathroom door.  Sheet of glass.  My first thought was This is kind of crazy.  Then I considered the close attention paid to the rest of the decor and thought, Or is it crazy like a hip, happening decorator?   Here I must digress from my digression for a minute—I had been in a very groovy downtown restaurant a few years ago and the one-room restrooms had sliding glass doors that, when the light came on, blocked the interior view from the people waiting outside.  I could see them but they couldn’t see me.  It was like peeing while observing a police procedural at HQ.

So here’s the inherent problem with a bathroom that resembles something in a design magazine:  I’m not quite sure what is meant to be admired and what is meant to be used.  Which brings me to the fancy drapes, held back on either side of the door by what I believe are called “holdbacks”, and pooling artfully on the floor.  I stood inside the bathroom, examining the drapes as if I were one of the 2001:  A Space Odyssey apes puzzling over the monolith.  If my hosts wanted to obscure the view, why didn’t they use textured or frosted glass?  And wouldn’t some sort of window shade indicate its purpose in a way that a pair of heavy, perfectly arranged floor-length drapes using holdbacks, do not?

Then it occurred to me that this wasn’t glass glass but trick glass; a kind of wink and a nod within all this Victoriana.  After all, it wasn’t as if the toilet was tucked discreetly behind a set of thick Turkish towels on a heated rack, or a refurbished locker from a colonial men’s club that now served as a linen closet.  The drapes were merely the frame for the cool window.

I should add that the only illumination in the bathroom came from strategically placed lit candles, lending the interior a soft, romantica glow.  Having decided that the glass was the sort of trick glass that was activated by flooding the room with light, I knew the candles were inadequate for the task and flipped on all the lights.

There I was, using the facilities—attempting to use the facilities—panicking a little over a sudden attack of pee-shyness brought on by the sense of being on display when a male guest, who I had yet to be introduced to, came to the door.  I didn’t panic because I was in a well-lit bathroom and I knew, per the groovy restaurant restrooms, that I was invisible to the exterior.  When the guest reached for the no-lock doorknob I called out, “Someone’s in here!” not wanting, of course, to be walked in upon.

His response was to make eye contact before offering me a little “didn’t mean to disturb you” wave as he disappeared down the hallway.  

When I quickly returned to the party (if I was absent any longer Mr. Nameless Bathroom Guy may have thought he interrupted a far more involved activity—forget that I didn’t even get to do what I originally had gone in there to do so I still had to pee but didn’t feel comfortable excusing myself again when I had only just joined everyone), all the guests were at the table.  I took the one empty chair to find myself next to Mr. Nameless Bathroom Guy; yes, sitting next to Mr. NBG who had last seen me…sitting.

Though we talked all evening I have no idea what was said because all I could think about was that he had seen me where he had seen me, all the lights on, while I was acting as if I were invisible—I had called out to him when he was staring right at me, like a Mistress Obvious of Indoor Plumbing—and that for all I knew he thought I was some kind of golden shower aficionado  who opted not to use the very conspicuous and copious drapes that were clearly to insure privacy, and that maybe he played into my little Dinner Party Toilet Fantasy that I like to indulge in during social occasions with strangers because he had never met me before and so had no way to judge my behavior.

Back to the cat.  Last week, the Cat OD prevented us from going to a barbecue that we had been looking forward to attending.

This week we had to miss out on another party for a friend of ours who had been living in New York for the past six months—all due to yet another, serious Cat Problem that I won’t elaborate upon here except to say that it was creepy, unusual, serious, and involved an anus, as was previously mentioned.  And it cost $400, which I’m beginning to think is the exact cost of some recreational activity someone at the vet enjoys.

Well, at least someone is getting out.

On Sunday, I was reading the paper when our dog, Milo went into the backyard to enjoy the dusty dirt pit that she excavated for herself two summers ago.  It’s shaded by the bay of a bay window with a depth that leaves her head at ground level.  Even when you know it’s there, it’s still a little disconcerting to walk past a dog’s head, especially when the eyes are open.  I’m tempted to blame the album cover of  ”Goat’s Head Soup.”  

Milo is a shortish, pleasingly rotund dog who looks a little like something assembled from the leftovers of other breeds, though she is actually an Australian Cattle Dog/miniature Australian Shepherd mix.  Her mother, the Australian Shepherd, was a show dog while her father was the caddish opportunist belonging to the neighbors who commenced his brief romance with the show dog after the owner asked her TV watching teenage son, in what can only be described as an epic moment of optimism, to “watch Bunny while I take a shower.” 

Milo is adorable, with her loaf-like body on short, slender legs, causing strangers to constantly say things like “Someone needs to put the food bowl down” and “Whoa, someone never misses a meal” and the ever classic “Hey, Fat Dog.” ( A woman even once said to me repeatedly, as Milo sat patiently outside a store, “Your dog looks like a pig!”)  For the record, Milo has been on more diets and calorie-restricted food than a supermodel; the only things missing are the Marlboros and bulimia.  Additionally, she has led an unbelievably active life that has included day hikes, camping trips, vacations at the lake, walks around the neighborhood, and two extended trips to the park every day.   In short, she is like her own part-time job.  But I have a theory about this:  Dogs are like the Internet.  People say all kinds of shit on the internet because there is no personal consequence.  Insulting a dog is the same rude, cowardly behavior.  I say this so you’ll know exactly what I’m thinking if you see me with Milo in the park and mistake insults for conversation.

Milo, being fourteen years old and on medication, decided to skip breakfast (as supermodels do) which I didn’t bother to pick up (as negligent pet owners do), thus providing the ideal opportunity for our seventeen year old cat, Otis, to grab a quick bite before racing out the front door as if being pursued by jackals.

But here’s the thing about Otis:  along with his many idiosyncrasies is the one  that I call Bowl Recognition.  Bowl Recognition means that Otis will only eat, or drink, out of one of three bowls.  To wit, no matter how enticing the food, if it is in an unfamiliar bowl Otis develops a food paranoia on the level of a double agent at the height of the Cold War.  He’ll stare at the food, then stare at you, then back to the food.  Except on Sunday when, he decided to dine out and ended up eating Milo’s codeine.

This was the moment where, for some inexplicable reason, I suddenly turned into Joan Collins, who when asked about the  thirty-two year difference between herself and her significantly younger husband, said, “If he dies, he dies,” because I found myself considering handling the situation on a “see what happens basis”—even though my much-loved seven pound cat just ingested the amount of codeine calibrated for a forty-two pound dog.  Incredulous  almost—though not quite—covered John’s reaction, voiced with “You’d let him die?”  (Side note:  Seeing how your loved one handles the care and treatment of other living things is only a short leap to see how they will treat you, the biggest living thing their lives, so John’s distress may, or may not, have been limited to Otis).  I immediately answered, “Of course not,” now switching it up as if John were the one to cavalierly suggest the Let’s Get On With Our Day And See What Happens School of Pet Care.

We ended up racing out to a far off animal emergency hospital where they told us that they would have to keep him on an IV for at least 8 hours, along with “giving him something to make him throw up.”  Fun fact:  It’s not that easy to make a cat barf.  I wanted to suggest placing something of value nearby like a cashmere sweater or something in silk as an incentive.  Failing that, they could always drive him down to the gas station bathroom I had to use one night December before last in the middle of nowhere in Southern Oregon.

In the end, Otis was fine.  On the upside, his very terrible day of nausea medicine, constant IVs, and living in a hospital cage pretty much played into his near constant belief that we are but abusers waiting to gleefully abuse him.  For all I know, this validation was a kind of gift for him.  For $406.00.  Happy Birthday, Oats.

(The List of Cats I Have Live With in My Life continued)

7.  Kali Mountain:  She was a two-year old snowshoe, rescued from the SPCA in San Francisco by John. She was also the hippest cat I’ll ever know.  A party cat, a shoulder-riding cat, an engaged audience who looked as if she cared when someone was trying on all the clothes in her closet and complaining about the body that she now, many years later, wishes she still had because, frankly, it would’ve been bathing suit season all year long.  Kali was also smart and beautiful and excellent company.  She’s the cat I’ll never quite get over.

8.  JB:  Also from the San Francisco SPCA.  We got her at six weeks.  She was a little white Manx, totally tailless, with one blue eye and one green eye and a permanent expression of worry on her little cat face.  

We nicknamed her Investment Kitty because of the sixteen years of vet bills. Her list of ailments were:  Ring worm, loss of tiny patches of hair due to a flea allergy even though she seldom had fleas;  a brief, youthful flirtation with worms, and an alarming, rather creative anal issue that would’ve been funny had it been happening to someone else’s cat.  We were told it was a “Manx thing” but I really must call bullshit because I’ve since had another Manx and there was no alarming anal business with him.

JB was shy and skittish; to wit, you couldn’t read in the same room with her or she would react to the turning of the page as if you were trying to staple her to the wall.  Bolting From a Room was her primary form of exercise.  She didn’t know how to play so if you dangled a cat toy in front of her, she was both fixated and terrified, as if she thought, “It begins with the dangled cat toy then progresses immediately to animal vivisection.”  

She adhered to her own personal seasons.  Winter found her sleeping behind a specific chair in the living room.  In Spring she made her way into the upper cupboards in the kitchen in order to curl up on the stack of dinner plates.  Summer, her peak season of inexplicable behavior, had her refusing to come inside the house to eat; she would mournfully meow through the open door while looking longingly inside, as if there our  bungalow apartment had become a space pod with an  invisible forcefield that prevented her from entering.  Her days were spent sleeping under cars parked out on the baking California street, their warm oil dripping all over her snow white fur, creating a kind of  furry Surrealist ice cream sundae effect.  Thank god for Fall when her preferred sleeping spots were the wheel wells of trucks, alternating with getting trapped in various neighbors’ garages.

For all her time spent outside, she still needed a cat box since she only liked to use her own bathroom. We could’ve gotten rid of the box, but that wouldn’t have meant that she would take the hint and go outside.  Bascially, the cat box was like an extortion payment for being urine, etc. hostages.

One final note about JB:  Being tailless she hopped like a rabbit, instead of running like a normal cat, causing people to ask us if she was a “cabbit.”  A cabbit.   Related, I believe, to the jackalope.   That many people believed our pet was the spawn of a rabbit and a cat eventually offered a a great deal of unwanted insight into some of the voting preferences in this country.

9.  Pooh:  Pooh was my roommate’s cat.  He was an excellent cat until he went after my roommate’s parakeet, Pinot.  She was out of town when the attack occurred (witnessed by Kali and JB who chose to act like urban crime witnesses who “didn’t want to get involved”).  I rushed Pinot to the vet who assured me that, a few missing feathers aside, he would be “fine.”   The vet should have added “for the next few hours.”  When I checked on him after work, just before my roommate was due back, Pinot was as far from “fine” as a bird can get.   While he was a good parakeet as parakeets go, I’m ashamed to confess that I wished he had decided to be not “fine” before I spent the time cleaning in and around his cage.  

10.  Otis:  Our current cat. Another Manx because seemingly John and I are slow learners.  Otis is a small, handsome cat with tiny Scottish Fold ears and beautiful striped markings.   Though he is nearly seventeen years old, he looks remarkably young.  He’s like Dorian Gray young.  And like Dorian Gray, it appears that he traded his moral center for perpetual youth.  The guy was a killer.  Until he was thirteen, he treated our yard like private game reserve. John bagged so many tiny bodies he stopped even mentioning it; our property was a combination dog poop (we have a pair of dogs) and corpses.  

Like JB, Otis is very hard to live with because he acts like a barely survived some particularly dreadful and ongoing abuse, always cringing and bolting and completely incapable of approaching an open door as anything other than a well-timed escape.  (If he were abused, we would have to be the abusers since we’ve had him since he was eight weeks old and frankly, John and I are too easily bored to torture a cat.  It isn’t exactly a challenge.)  There is the terror of cat toys, and the inability of eating like a regular cat.  First, he meows to be fed; then, after you’ve filled his bowl, you have to catch him to get him near his bowl (which we keep elevated because of our two dogs), even though he wants to eat.  Petting poses another challenge in that he wants your attention but cannot tolerate your attention.  So when he gets really desperate, he hunkers down and digs his  nails into the rug to prevent himself from bolting.  I’ll wait while you reread that phrase.

Also like JB, he has a seasonal schedule where he likes to begin his summer day at 3:30 am.  (The winter schedule is 5:00 am.)  He meows downstairs until he wakes one of us.  Then, as one of us stumbles down the stairs, he briefly emerges from the shadows of the dining room, through the living room as if he is beelining it for the front door.  BUT his fear of the open front door kicks in just in time for him to recede back into the shadows of the living room.  So, you try sweet talk, then cursing, then chasing.  The chase includes circling through the kitchen, dining room and living room—all of which open into each other.  This must be done three times.  Then one must hold the front screen open while standing as far from it as possible, while Otis keeps eyeing you with fear and suspicion.  Suddenly, he will race out the door.  All of this.  At. 3 o’clock.  In the morning.  Every morning.  Except in Winter, when it happens at 5 o’clock.  In the morning.

The guy is a jerk.  But you know how it is—he’s our jerk.

Cats I have Lived With in My Entire Life

1.  Kitty:  Kitty was a tuxedo cat with a pair of black spots beneath her pink nose, whom my parents called “Kitty.”  About a year later, Kitty had kittens and my parents renamed her “Mama Cat,” as if they were correcting a former misunderstanding (“Oh, she’s not a plain cat, but a parental cat”).  These two names are clearly the sweat pants of nomenclature.   Nothing says I Cannot Be Bothered.  No, Really.  Seriously, Don’t Ask Me Again like naming a cat Cat.   

2.  Kitty’s short-lived predessor, Chickie:  Chickie, was also a tuxedo cat but one with a Charlie Chaplin mustache.  I’ve since discovered that these cats are sometimes known as “Kitlers.”  I’m not a fan of this description.  Chickie, Kitty’s sibling, had a fatal accident  two weeks after we got him, which is how we came to get Kitty, the future Mama Cat.  The importance of Chickie’s name is that my parents did name her for an animal, even if it wasn’t a cat.  The only thing I can imagine is that “Chickie” was a name-test run for “Kitty” where they somehow liked the idea of animals named for animals, but weren’t quite ready to be so minimalist. In this regard, “Chickie” can be considered part of their Baroque Period.

3.  Squeaky:  Here is a brief test to see if you can follow the naming logic of my parents.

Squeaky was so named because he:

A)  Looked like a squeak 

B)  Acted like a squeak.

C)  Sounded like a squeak.

I’ll help you:  A) & B) make no sense.

Squeaky was a beautiful cat who was never allowed inside the house because he wasn’t neutered.  If I wanted him, I had to track him down and love him outside in his urban habitat.  As a kid, it was thrilling to see him up in the eucalyptus tree, or lounging around the driveway, or picking his way through the ferns or the ice plants.  Days could pass without a sighting, then, suddenly, there he’d be!   (As a child I had no way of knowing that this dynamic would impact my later dating life.)  I thought he was the coolest cat ever, the way he lived outside and answered to no one.  You’d think that given my family’s cavalier attitude toward him coupled with his banishment from our home, he find another family.  Instead, he stayed and made a career of marking our house, our front door, our back door, every plant in our landscaping, the river stones in the landscaping, and the occasional, decorative boulders, every tree, the garage door, the car if it was parked in the driveway; if the garage door was left open, then he sprayed the washer and dryer, the milk bottles left by the milkman, my dad’s tool bench, and the interior walls.  I once thought that he did this because he loved us so much that he didn’t want to share us with any other cat, but now I believe it was some kind of cat code, warning other cats to save themselves.     

4.  Mai Tai:  When my parents divorced and my mother remarried, she and her new husband, in the long tradition of childless couples, got a pet—seal point Siamese, whom they named Mai Tai.  Not that either of them were exactly childless, but this was the late sixties when parents were only marginally interested in their own children, and kids lived fairly unsupervised lives—you just had to be home when the streetlights came on.   In those days parents were these weird sort of roommates who exploited your labor while explaining the financial realities of electricity.  For example, my parents “did not own stock in the electric company.”  This unasked for information would have been more helpful if I knew what “stock” was or “the electric company.”

Mai Tai was named Mai Tai because my mom and stepfather were in advertising and part of the cocktail culture and because Kitty/Mama Cat was taken and Singapore Sling was a mouthful. 

5.  Tai Tai:  Poor Mai Tai.  He was a sickly fellow who passed away within a few months.  Enter Tai Tai, also a seal point Siamese.  It was quickly apparent that my stepfather, along with his swinging Rusty Nail vibe, had a whole different set of pet issues:  Instead of the lazy Calling a Spade a Spade approach of my parents, my stepfather was an aficionado of Repetition (Siamese) and Pattern.  The naming of our consecutive Siamese cats resembled an SAT logic problem (“There are six gymnasts—Helga, Suli, Grete, Heidi, Katrina, Hanna, and Susan” then it goes on to give you limited information about their performance order, then asks you to predict the next gymnast): If Siamese One is called Mai Tai, and Siamese Two is called Tai Tai, what will Siamese Three be named?

6.  Tai:   Here’s your answer.  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a blog (tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, that thing where you share photos on your phone with strangers)  will inevitably turn to cats.  This is because the internet is pretty much cats and porn—with the occasional detour to Google Maps for directions on how best to extend the length of your journey while shortening the length of your marriage.  I wonder if those twin interests define us as a culture—I mean, if we can’t have literature, ethics, critical thinking, wit, philosophy, art, music, compassion and a life of the mind, then at least we can have cats.  The porn I cannot explain; I just accept it.

My friend, Padraig, warned me that once I began writing online it would only be a matter of time before I would turn to cats.  I tried to fight it as long as I could (in this case, three weeks), but now I think it best to just get it over with.  So Padriag, wherever you are—these next blogs are for you. 

As I ponder and fret over my next post, I’ll offer an anecdote so that my blog won’t begin to resemble our first apartment in San Francisco:  A nearly empty studio (apologies to our roommates, the cockroaches—I didn’t mean to imply that your teaming hordes didn’t qualify as Something Taking Up Space)  in what can only be described as a tenement, located on Lombard Street.  Not the beautifully landscaped, hairpin-turns tourist Lombard Street, but the stretch of motels, cheap eateries and assorted small businesses that line the last mile or so before Golden Gate Bridge; a stretch that is also the link for the U.S.101 as it passes straight through San Francisco.

Our apartment building was a shabby three-story structure whose ground level studios had large unwashed windows with the requisite ratty curtains, and wedged between a dry cleaners and a Philippine restaurant that periodically opened long enough to allow all the tables, chairs, and heavy appliances to be moved out the front door and into a van.  Two days later, all the tables, chairs and heavy appliances would be moved back inside. The same furniture and equipment.  It was Ground Hog Day with lumpia.

Mostly, it was the kind of building that you would drive by and think My god, who lives there?  What sort of life misstep lands you in such a place?

(Imagine my surprise when I learned the answer to the first question.)

But you know what they say, ‘One man’s ceiling is another man’s cautionary tale.’  Nothing says thank your lucky stars this isn’t you like sharing a modest apartment house with three generations of gypsies who liked to park their gutted Cadillac (complete with a wooden crate hammered to the floor for the driver) while shoehorning themselves into one of the storefront studios.  We had a veritable food court of fellow tenants in addition to the gypsies:  Mae La Sorta, the violent schizophrenic who liked to pour her urine out her windows and knew her way around a cane that doubled as a cudgel.  She was like the ordinary late-middle-aged woman who invites you into her home for tea and you wake up three days later knowing that the chances of ending up in someone’s digestive tract are pretty good if you don’t leave, and soon.  

The biker couple with the toddler parked their 1958 Harley Panhead in the middle of their street-level flat, enjoyed the occasional motorcycle “run” that included such friendly competitive events as “sausage sucking.”  The wife once asked John if he thought that our neighbor—a New Wave/punk aficionado who dealt heroin from his apartment—would be interested in buying a dog collar, a costume from her former job.  There was a woman who lay dead for several days before she was discovered, and a fellow with green teeth who John and I imaginatively nicknamed Green Teeth.  And the quiet, bookish woman who liked her boyfriend to slap her around and lived above the two young women who insisted they were “sisters”  even though they looked nothing alike and were clearly having sex with each other.  They were like an incest koan.

We even had an arsonist.  The clue to that guy should’ve been the time he knocked on our neighbor’s door (not the heroin dealer, or the masochist, or the “sisters” or the dead woman—she was the only other person much like ourselves, that is to say, obviously locked in some kind of karmic rental misunderstanding) looking for his sister ( one half of the Harley couple, who were also the apartment managers) convinced that she and her husband had met with “foul play” on the evidence of an old, petrified dishrag that had been clinging to life on the clothesline just outside their door.  This fellow wanted to know if my neighbor had heard “anything unusual” before gazing over her shoulder into her studio apartment and making the casual observation “This looks like an extinguishing room.”

The problem with living in a place like this, is that your inner Maybe I Should Pay Attention compass no longer recognizes true north.  Everything is true north:  The gypsies and their weird music and weirder car that always found a parking space.  In San Francisco. Where they haven’t had parking spaces since 1979.  The “sisters.”  Mrs. La Sorta and her bi-weekly golden shower.  So when our neighbor (who was also our friend) mentioned it, we all shrugged, bid the roaches good-night and blissfully went to sleep, only to be awakened by the pounding fists of our New Wave/punk neighbor telling us there was a fire and we needed to Get out!  NOW!

Instead, I rolled over to go back to sleep.  Sure the building was a slum held together by wood, uncollected garbage in the basement (or what the arsonist liked to call “tinder’), and we lacked any kind of reliable fire escape, but I had to be at work by 6:30 in the morning.  We didn’t live on a freeway for free.

Evacuating the premises presented another problem.  Along with the roaches, we lived with a dog and two cats in a no-pet building. I believe the reasoning of our slumlord was that anything incapable of securing it’s own dinner or spreading illness, was not allowed.  There were any number of housing and health violations, but you just knew that having an indoor cat would be the one to get you evicted.  And saying that the cat helped keep the mice at bay, regardless of the truth of that statement, only made you sound like you had OCD.

John and my Leave-or-Stay Summit went on long enough for the firemen to locate the source of the smoke (smoldering garbage spread and lit beneath the wooden stairs leading to the basement), that we never had to gather up the pets and parade them outside where, I’m pretty sure they would’ve run off, having made the quick observation that living in the street looked like a better bet than our apartment; dooming them to a life of wondering why we didn’t choose the street too.  I imagined them whispering to each other, “It’s like we don’t even know them at all, ” believing as they did that our animal pack was all in this survival business together.

About six weeks later, the sound of the sirens brought everyone in our apartment house back out into the parking area.  Pedestrians walking by also came to the carport behind our building, joined  by a couple of the employees from the Philippine restaurant taking, I’m guessing, a well-deserved break from relocating the furniture and kitchen appliances.  Quite a crowd of onlookers had gathered.  Including a pair of naked men who peered down from their darkened room to see what all the fuss was about, only to be hit by the firemen with a blinding spotlight.  It was bad enough to be coitally interrupted, but to be on public display was a bridge too far.  They  dropped to the floor, then peeked over the window ledge like twin Kilroys, everyone’s eyes upon them confirming  that yes, tonight it is all about you.

It seems that “someone” had called the fire department, because “someone” thought she “smelled smoke” coming from the building with the two naked men.  She was also “someone” who sometimes smoked enough weed to have “heightened senses”, like that of hunger and humor and, it seems, olfaction.  Our friend, since the night of the arson, had turned into a Phantom Smoke Smeller.     

It was around this time that the neighbors made plain their irritation, and the firemen started wondering if they were the victims of a prank, that our friend made a subtle retreat on the pretext of “hearing a noise.”  

I’ll try to think of something to write next time.

erquinton:

TWITTER:

I have five Twitter followers.

I know three of them in real life.

One of them is my boss.

I am extremely happy with these statistics.

FACEBOOK:

I have 447 friends.

I consider 11% of them to be my friends.

14 are family.

I check my facebook once every 1-2 days.

75% of my messages are people asking me why I haven’t responded to them on Facebook.

100% of these people are not part of the 11% of people I consider to be my friends.

I am happy with these statistics.

As much as I would love to be Miss Kinski on the floor wearing only a snake, I’m really more like the bespectacled woman on the couch with the floor-to-ceiling wool dress and brown support hose.   Are those a pair of toy dogs on the back of the sofa, or ‘birth control’ because nothing says Come get me like stuffed animals in the home of a grown woman.  

Now of course, I heard enough rumors about her during her jumbotron snake/Tess of the D’Urberville years to know that, beauty aside, there were some impressively Freudian issues—and I still wanted to be Miss Kinski.  I like to think of this impulse as Tapping Into My Male Side.  To put it another way, many years ago I had a friend who had a friend who was dating a seriously stunning girl who also happened to be seriously schizophrenic.  My friend asked him how he could keep seeing this woman and he said, “Because she’s just so beautiful.”

Who else have I wanted to be over the years?

1.  Sigourney Weaver in the first two Alien movies.  In the first film, you can’t help admiring her extreme cool and courage as she outwits a rather scary alien—and she does it while tracking down the ship’s cat and stuffing it into its cat carrier.  While the rest of the crew is being torn asunder and/or being hole-punched like an end-of-the-quarter financial report, Sigourney’s character is pulling out the carrier and not even caring if the cat sees it.  With the ship’s computer counting down to total annihilation, she grabs the cat and pops it into its kennel like it doesn’t have claws or a mind of its own, throws it in the car and takes off.    First of all, if I were on the Nostromo, I would have to locate a slice of turkey, which I would then have to elaborately pretend to be eating and relishing, followed by chasing my cat several times around the living room.  By the time I would let him out on the escape shuttle, everything would be coated in a cloud of released cat hair.  

2.  Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  She looks great and is wonderfully winning and makes being a quasi-prostitute seem like just one crazy madcap adventure.  I know that Capote said she wasn’t a prostitute, but if your sole income is asking for money from men that you are, uh, ‘entertaining,’ and are not dating, even though what you’re doing looks like dating, but it isn’t dating, then, I don’t think you are, as Capote says, “an American geisha.”  Unless by geisha you mean prostitute.

3.  God.  Fred Astaire.  For an hour.  On the ceiling.

4.  Grace Kelly in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.  Not High Society, and definitely not The Country Girl.   

5.  Meryl Streep in Out of Africa.  I do not care that Karen Blixen was part of the systematic oppression of the native peoples of eastern Africa, her wardrobe was everything I’ve ever wanted in a wardrobe.  Ditto on her house which I realize must have been situated on property stolen from the local tribes.  But this is why I can never be trusted to be a revolutionary.  If someone offers me a pale pink dress the weight of a moth, and a hip length cashmere sweater to take off the chill when evening falls, and a pair of perfectly made pink silk roses for my chignon, I will be selling someone out, comrades.  

6.  Julie Christie.  If you need an explanation, I really can’t help you.   

Now that you know who I would like to be (Natassja “The Polanski Years” Kinski), let me reveal who I am (Sofa Woman in Thick Brown Stockings).  

The Coffee Shop Expert

In the first half of Hitchcock’s The Birds, Tippi Hedren is injured by a seagull, then sparrows flood Jessica Tandy’s house via the chimney.  A children’s birthday party turns terrifying by another orchestrated seagull assault.  Crows mass on playground equipment at a school.  A neighbor is killed, his eyes pecked out.  It is around this time that a man in the town’s coffee shop announces to the other customers that the birds are gearing up for a kind of end-of-days slaughter of humans.  An older woman in a sensible English tweed suit accessorized with sensible shoes, takes a pedantic puff on her cigarette and sets about “educating” the other customers.  Oh, sure, despite the instances of the local populace being cut, blinded, menaced and murdered, she says (because she’s a self-proclaimed ornithologist) “Birds do not attack people.”  That’s right.  Three thousand sparrows can invade your living room, but the Woman in the Tweed is here to tell you that you are interpreting these events all wrong.  She even wears a  jaunty beret and smokes, as if she is some sort of elderly Jean-Paul Sartre by way of little Bodega Bay.  Crows chasing children with evil intent.  Overreacting.  Killed in your own home with eyes removed?  Please.  

Until all hell breaks loose as birds assault, kill, and cause a spectacular explosion in a gas station just outside the coffee shop while the diners look on in horror.  Does the Woman in Tweed say to her fellow coffee shop refugees, Uh, my bad?  No.  She faces the wall, then turns to look over her shoulder at her fellow coffee shop refugees with an expression that resembles my dog Gomez when you give him dog food for dinner instead of the prime rib that he remembers ordering.

The Hysteric

In Aliens, I am not Sigourney Weaver.  I am Hudson, the marine who is hoping for some “Arturian poon and pliable colonist daughters” on the alien planet that he and his fellow marines (and the wonderful Sigourney) are assigned to invade.  He’s a lot of talk and swagger, until the marines have their first alien encounter.  As Sigourney and the marines reconvene in an abandoned lab to strategize, Hudson’s “contributions” to the calm adult discussion of how to save themselves is to cry out things like “I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked!!” Or, “Game over!!!  We’re fucked!! We’re all gonna die!!”  These useless, disruptive statements are offered in a voice loud and hysterical enough for the aliens on the next planet over to zero in on the survivors.  He is like the anti-grace-under-pressure-Hemingway soldier.  He has to be taken out fairly early in the film because the audience will never believe that someone, anyone, wouldn’t finally silence him with a little ‘friendly fire.’   

The Scorekeeper

To those who know me well, it’s no secret that I am so non-confrontational that my response to people who I want to confront end up on my “list,” after I privately vow that “you will never be my friend”—as if anyone mistreating you even gives a shit about being your friend.  That’s right, guy at the post office who boxed in my car, then refused to move it, even when I was very polite.  On my list.  I’m looking at you, post office worker who gave me a hard time when I was in the correct line to buy stamps instead of the guy in front of me with the ratty briefcase wanted you to search for every single stamp you had because he was a “collector” and ended up buying none of them, followed by the woman who wanted you to process her passport, along with taking her passport photo.  On the list.  And pretty much everyone who refuses to use their blinker when making a left turn.  All of you are on my list.  

Enter Jack Lemmon in the Out of Towners.  He and his wife, Sandy Dennis, are in NYC for his job interview, when everything goes wrong.  From the first small setback he whips out a note pad and begins to take names and write offenses.  He is going to “report” whomever the guilt party is.  The movie reaches a semi-climax when he and Sandy are wandering Central Park, broke and hungry and a dog materializes to steal their only morsel of food.  The dog ends up on Jack’s list.  The fact that nothing ever comes of these lists seems besides the point, since the mere action sort of defines you anyway.

The Opinionated Aunt

Next time you happen upon Woody Allen’s Crime and Misdemeanors, pay close attention to the scene where Judah the opthamologist, who is wrestling with the guilt of having just had his discarded mistress murdered, “visits the past” in the home in which he grew up.  The scene is Passover and his family is pondering morality and God and justice.  As they discuss spiritual matters, you will hear the knowing, amused sound of Judah’s middle-aged aunt—again, in a sensible tweed suit, now known as My Style—making a case for an amoral or, perhaps immoral, universe.  She can’t quite believe that these people (also known as her family) at the table believe in God.  As she smokes (again, the marker that it is I), she plays her how-can-you-believe-in-God trump card which is to bring up the Nazis.  Once she introduces them into the debate, you can tell it’s over for her.  There is nothing that anyone can say that will sway her, because there is no adequate answer for existence of Nazis and she knows it.  She’s a bit cynical, an eye roller, has little patience, and a teacher.  Though it isn’t stated in the film, I’m guessing unmarried.  And definitely me.

The Secretary with the Crossword and Attitude

You’ll find her working for Don Draper in Season 4 of Mad Men.  Youll recognize her as me from her dislike for her desk job, desire to enforce rules, her love of crosswords (which she does on the job), and, of course, the wool suit.

The Dime Store Moralist

Frances McDormand in Friends With Money has a wonderful life.  A perfect life.  Yet this does not  prevent her from injecting a Moral Lesson in nearly every ordinary moment in her daily life to anyone who will listen.  She can’t quite accept that people don’t behave as she thinks they should.  I like to think of her as the Socrates (that Greek gadfly that harangued the local citizenry until they slipped him a hemlock latte) of West L.A.  This unsuccessful attempt to “educate” her fellow human beings finally results in an argument about the next person in line at Old Navy. Predictably, this gets her thrown out of the store, angering her even more.  In a fit of pique she plows into the store’s non-automatic glass door, breaking her nose.  (This fight is reminiscent of one that I had with a woman in Baby Gap on the Upper Westside during the late 1990s, though I did not break my nose.  However, like Frances, I lost.  The other mother was just a bigger bully and incredibly immune to concepts like waiting one’s turn, or the selfishness of dumping all your purchases on the counter, regardless of those in line, while she continued shopping, or me letting her know that it was people like her that ruin the world.  As I tried to take the moral high ground, and pay for a a pair of baby overalls and a t-shirt.  With cash.  It was my turn.  She told me to “fuck off.”  And that’s pretty much what I ended up doing—even though I wanted to strike her I hesitated because she looked like a hair puller.)

Cut to later that night when Frances sits in a chair in her gorgeous mid-century modern home, bandaged nose, while her adoring (and patient) husband and their adorable five year-old son trim the Christmas tree.  She hands them ornaments as she carries on a running lecture—to the five year-old—about how people that “cut in line” and “take parking places” make the world a worse place then it needs to be, and that he should never do any of those things, or anything even approaching those things, because he doesn’t want to be responsible for the moral turpitude of the entire world.  Did I mention that her son is five years old?

Movie Extra, circa 1976

Okay.  Rent the movie Carrie.  The one with Sissy Spacek.  In the opening scene, all the high school girls are taking a shower in the sort of party shower that you only find in prison movies or porn gyms, then scan the extras.  There you will see a small, dark-haired girl with a modified Dorothy Hamill hair cut.  That is pretty much exactly what I looked like the year that movie came out.  I refer to it because it really is one of the only pictures of me during that time.  You will see me a second time when Carrie (Spacek) goes insane at the sight of her first period.  All the girls ridicule her and laugh at her reaction, except the little dark-haired extra who is clearly thinking, “I hear you, sister.”