January 2008 Archives

If you're having any trouble commenting, by all means go to http://makemarc.blogspot.com/. which I will update every day with exactly the same posts as you see here. I set that up a long time ago but didn't know how to transfer my archives, and I wanted all my readers to be reflected in one stats number, as it did my little ego good to see my numbers go up. (Turns out spambots checking out the website were artificially inflating them.)

But I'm much more concerned with facilitating conversation than imagining myself to be a new global blogging power, (even though I reserve the right to continue to indulge in that fantasy on a nightly basis.) 

I'm feeling some frustration figuring out how to tweak this software. If any readers uses Movable Type, I'd be gratified for some guidance on how to establish a blogroll. (My webguy has embarked on his round-the-world motorcycle trip, so a little hard to get a hold of.)

MCO 2008 

I've finally written and submitted an entry to This I Believe.  If you listen to NPR, occasionally you hear essays read.  There are thousands submitted, so it's an extremely thin chance that mine will be accepted, but I thought it couldn't hurt to give it a whirl.

I believe in picking up trash.

 

I've always hated litter, in fact I once walked out in the middle of a date because my companion threw a wrapper on the sidewalk.  In my opinion, it's the most preventable and stupid of the world's sins, and all the more infuriating because it has no advocates.  For example, though I am also anti-corporal punishment, there are people who would readily argue that it is a useful and necessary form of discipline.  On the other hand, no one ever defends littering, even its practitioners.

 

Yet I am no one to throw stones. For the first several years of this millennium, I was a drug addict who sold  crystal meth to support my habit. My buying and selling certainly contributed to a lot of toxic waste created by meth labs.  After 9 months of prison and a commitment to sobriety, I knew I had amends to make.

 

After moving to the enclave of Little Armenia in Los Angeles, as I walked my dog I would react to the trash-filled streets with a well-known prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." I thought the litter was something I just had to accept. After all, I thought to myself, what was I supposed to do?  Pick it up?

 

I can only describe the moment of deciding to do just that as a leap of faith.  I went down to Home Depot, got myself an E-Z Reacher, and just like that, every morning as I walked the dog, started plucking the empty cigarette packs, soda cans,  fast food packaging, coffee containers, newspapers,  styrofoam cups, potato chip bags and so on, placing each item into Ralph's plastic grocery bags.. For over two years now, except when I'm on vacation, every morning I fill up at least three bags, one for each block of my dog-walking route. Every afternoon I do the same in Griffith Park.

 

I believe in picking up trash because it's taught me that you can't assume to know the difference between the things you must accept and the things that you can change--you have to think about it.  It's taught me to question the premise of all sort of assumptions that I've made, from the idea that the only possible reaction to traffic is anger and frustration, to the belief that I was an atheist who couldn't possibly stay sober.

 

Every morning, picking up trash manifests the question: How can I be of service today? And every night, no matter how much the day didn't seem to go my way, I can fall asleep counting the bags of trash I've picked up, comforted that in this lifetime I've been able to find one thing to do that's unarguably, unambiguously good.

 

MCO 2008

If you're reading this, you've been redirected from www.marcolmsted.com/blog to www.marcolmsted.com/trashwhisperer, It's the same content, but finally I'll have all the bells and whistles with the Movable Type program. As I get familiar with it I'll add a blogroll, and I think you can get an RSS feed already.  And of course there will be widgets.  As soon as I can figure out what they are, there will be widgets.

This transformation is due to the work of my longterm webguy, Beau Gunderson, who is one my nephew's best friends and a character in his own right.  He has embarked on a great motorcycle journey across the world to raise money for all sorts of things, as well as to just be adventurous as 24-year old are wont to do.  May I recommend that you follow his progress at http://www.bylandandsea.org/

MCO 2008

This is a pic of the man I met Sunday night, who gave me permission to show him off.
I don't want to jinx it with expectations, (or full names, yet) but we should be seeing each other in February, as he can fly out here for work.
Ain't he hot?

MCO 2008

Click to see the pictures of my trip to Denver.

MCO 2008

My degree of commitment to keeping my corner of the world clean was really challenged this morning when I was confronted by a particularly unpleasant sight, right in the little garden in front of my building. I'll try not to be too graphic about it, but dogs aren't the only one to have to do their business. I could tell it was the product of a human being, because it was surrounded by napkins employed as toilet paper.
Go ahead, go "EEEWWWW." Just be grateful I didn't take a picture.
I could certainly have left it for the gardener who comes once a month. But I consider it a test of sorts when this happens. First off, it reminds me of the power of perception. It's really no more inherently disgusting than picking up after my dog, it's the IDEA of it that's so irksome. So I get over that, and just use the plastic bag just as I would with Gaza. And then I think if it's unpleasant for me, how much more unpleasant it must be for the homeless person who simply has no where else to go. Choosing the garden instead of between some parked cars is, in a way, a stab at dignity and privacy, even consideration.
And then I remember an interview I saw with an Auschwitz survivor who spoke of being assigned to the "Scheisskommando" - the detail whose task it was to clean out the latrines. Looking this up on the net just now, this is mentioned as a punishment detail, but I remember quite distinctly this woman saying that she considered herself lucky to have been assigned this task, I think because it was the winter and she actually had some protection from the cold. Or perhaps because the Germans did not supervise this chore with the same attentiveness as other work. For whatever reason, she found a way to perceive something awful as slightly less awful, and I have to believe this capacity had something to do with why she survived the unsurvivable.
I don't mention the concentration camps often, but there isn't a day that goes by when I don't think about them. Some people think this odd or morbid, but I don't understand how one could learn about them and not think about them at least once a day. I feel an affinity to the survivors of the Holocaust, not because AIDS, as awful as it's been, can compare to it (what's done by a virus can never compare to what's done by humans to other humans), but because a Jew in Europe in 1939 would probably have had as about as much chance, statistically, of being alive in 1945 as a person infected with HIV in 1982 has of being alive in 2008. (Add surviving drug addiction and prison, and I'm a friggin' miracle.)
When I come from that awareness of how extraordinary it is that I am even on this planet, somehow everything that I could make into a cause for grief or distress seems like a privilege instead, including shoveling the shit of a junkie who has sunk into an abyss of indignity.
If you are having trouble feeling grateful for your life, spend some time watching these testimonies: USC SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE.

MCO 2008

"Reconnaissance; R-E-C-O-N-N-A-I-S-S-A-N-C-E; Reconnaissance"

This word won me the Spelling Bee last night--no it wasn't a dream, it was the culmination of the game played as part of the festivities at the SIN party. I got a tiara, and tickets to the Patsy DeCline show! Ah delicious irony. I was able to gift the tickets to someone who'd played matchmaker with me but an hour before, but I should really rewind this story a little, shouldn't I?

Yesterday afternoon after brunch, Rod took Bryan and me to see the transformation of Denver radiating from LoDo (Lower Downtown) and across the Platte River. WOW. It was just what I needed to shake off the sense of deja vu that had been haunting me, this was not the Denver I left in 1995. After a tour (you'll get pictures tomorrow) we ended up at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, and saw some amazing installations I couldn't begin to describe. After that I went back to Lannie's to rest up for the big shindig.

it was very well attended, and I took my hosting duties very seriously. It really does fit my personality rather well. I know this will shock you, but I can talk a blue streak when required, I'd actually make a pretty good presidential candidate. I went from table to table, getting to know people, trying to make sure no one isolated or felt funny being there. HIV is yesterday's news for me personally, I've lived with it so long and in its epicenters, that I've forgotten what a big deal it is for so many people. Not that that's what the conversation was about, I was more like a dance hall girl in a 40s brothel-"You #1 GI!" KIDDING. (But of course it doesn't hurt for someone to feel just a tiny bit flirted with if that's what they needed. There was one guy who just moved me to tears. He was in remission from a very rare jaw cancer that had taken out all of his teeth but didn't allow for them to be replaced. It turned out he was a gifted artist, and I could even tell that he'd once turned heads. His acceptance and graciousness was very inspiring, but if I hadn't made it my purpose to make everyone comfortable, I probably wouldn't have met him. That would have been my loss.)

Anyway, as the evening's program started--a few introductory speeches by Rod and Bryan and then singing by Lannie, before the spelling bee--I found myself at the table of a very tall and very funny and complimentary blond, L, and his very shy and VERY handsome buddy, J. L. told me J. was finally emerging from the shell-shock of a mid-life HIV-diagnosis, and this was one of his first social sorties. I was quite taken by J., but as yet completely unaware that J. was quite taken by me as well. Though, between speeches, and after a lubricating cocktail of two for J., a few smiles were exchanged that were greatly encouraging. (K., my potential imaginary boyfriend, is not poz and did not come. Which was good, I may have been distracted and ended up sniffing around a tree with no branches to hold me.)

So Lannie signed me up for the Spelling Bee, under the moniker of "Tequila Mockingbird" and so I was able to trot out my heaviest Bogota accent and warm up the proceedings a little. And as the rounds wore on, gradually, through "facsimile," "obsequious" and "pharmaceutical" (you can imagine what I did with that one) it was just me and Portia Potty. (If there are any Denverites reading, you must go down to see the Demented Divas at Lannie's Clocktower Cabaret, Wednesdays.) Poor Portia might have stood a chance, but only one of us had not had a perpetually refilled martini in hand all night.

Who knew if you want to win someone's heart that all you have to do is win a spelling bee? Or maybe it was the hairy chest--however did that button become undone? Anyway, when I got back to the table, J. had become quite comfortable with getting his flirt on. At which point I discovered he was a flight attendant who can go back and forth to LA fairly often, not to mention buddy passes! Which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it's terribly sexy to know that the door is open logistically should you wish to walk through it.

There was an afterparty at a local bar, and I joined J there along with Rod and Bryan a fair sprinkling of those who had been at Lannies. J. and I continued to bond, to get to know each other. The particulars are less important than the immediate comfort level. We are the same age, we speak the same language. He likes the occasional cocktail but his job has blessedly kept him away from the same temptation that felled me. And I was particularly proud of our decision not to jump into bed, though we certainly could of. A few years ago, that would have been how I defined the end of a successful evening. Now, I have no agenda, no impatience. Some low whispering in the ear and few kisses are more than enough for the first night. If the fates smile upon us, there will be more in time.

What I needed last night was to 1) be of service 2) continue to break out of the social isolation I tend to fall into. I was just fortunate to find some very delicious icing on that cake.

I'm off to the airport.

MCO 2008

The last entry (below) is really long, and was one of the first times I've ever used the blog purely as self-therapy.

If you find the length daunting, by all means skip it. You won't miss anything crucial. But it was good for me--I needed to revisit an old relationship and put it to bed, i guess.

As for any new relationship, at brunch this morning, K. said he'd be delighted to be my imaginary Denver boyfriend. I am seriously considering starting another blog entirely devoted to the non-existent development of this relationship. He particularly liked the idea of summering in Tuscany. And the mind-blowing sex--though of course I will exercise discretion in detailing such goings on except in the broadest terms possible.

I like the idea of backing into a novel using the same technique that works so well in the blog--writing a little every day.

It would also be a great way to learn Word Press.

Will keep you posted.

MCO 2008

In 1995 I had been living in Los Angeles for several years with David (the ex I refer to often who comes over for dinner every night.) Our relationship, which was already a bizarre one, was coming to an end in that form. What that form constituted was precisely the problem. We lived together, ate together, cuddled and went out together, but we never had sex. We didn't even know what to refer to each other as--and you can imagine the confusion it caused those we tried to independently date. Just as we'd decided to split up and find separate apartments, my friend Glenn from New York suggested we meet in Palm Springs for the weekend. (David went on to find the love of his life, who died three years ago--allowing us to get close again as friends.)

That year had been dramatic in other ways. A viatical settlement from my life insurance--contingent on the assumption I had less that 24 months to live from AIDS, had transformed my lifestyle. This expectation of a limited time on the planet was also taking its toll in other bizarre ways. I had obtained my dead brother's license with my picture on it and had several credit cards in his name. I had no intention of not going out in style, and my nightly cocktails just fueled that fire of apocalyptic but self-serving thinking. (Plus 7 close friends died in a 2-year period--that just reinforced all of it.)

I had also been sent to Italy to work on rewrites of my script with Norman Rene, and the producers and I were distressed by MGM's refusal to approve him as director. Gay directors were being discriminated against then because their ability to get gay doctors to insure them for movies was considered suspect. In Norman's case they were correct. He died a year later. I didn't know he wore long-sleeved shirts because he had KS--but I think on some level I did know something. My certain dream that my movie would be made while I was around to see it was starting to feel like so much sand through my fingers. Everything felt like that, back then. Ah, the Gay 90s.

Glenn was also battling AIDS--he was to die on my birthday in 1996 in fact. He also had a taste for coke and I was developing one for meth. So this sets the stage for where my head was at in Palm Springs that weekend.

Suddenly, across the bar I notice this tall version of a Jean-Luc Picard type staring at me. Don was 53, and had the body of a 25-year old. He wore his black t-shirt beautifully. When he strolled over to say hi, I made several assumptions. Older guy in Palm Springs for the weekend--must do it all the time. Comes over to say hi--must do it all the time. I assumed we'd be making out and back to one of our rooms within 20 miinutes--I did that all the time.

Don actually lived in a tiny little studio apartment in Denver. Long-term friends had convinced him to come out on his first vacation in years. He didn't drink, (had never even been drunk--once), didn't trick, had never even had a lover. He was so wholesome that it was a little weird, frankly. But of course, at the time, I found it delightfully refreshing. He was teaching himself how to play piano--how cool was that? The fact that he'd lost all the money he made owning Denver's first gay gym in pennystocks didn't bother me. He'd almost sold a script to Spielberg! (Well, not exactly. More like a reader of a two-bit wannabe agent had said he'd send it along but never quite did. The rambling, not-quite-a-script turned out to be utter dreck.)

The ensuing saga of Marc and Don is of one of the most mismatched couples in the world trying to make a go of it for six months. I decided he was my wholesome white knight, come to inspire me out of my evil ways. He was starting to think he'd never meet anyone, which made no sense for an ex-Mr. Denver Leather, thought i wasn't surprising for me after I got to know him. (Too bad he never wore his leather in the bedroom.)

If Lannie didn't live in Denver I don't think I would ever have come here with Don. It meant an instant social life, and I could continue to supply her comedy. If it didn't work out with Don, well it would be an adventure in the heartland before I got to sick to travel. I was born here, after all.

Don, it turned out, couldn't get past my HiV status, and I could not deal with a sex life without some heavy-duty making out. (You'd think we would have figured that out before we signed the lease on a 6-month sublet, wouldn't you?) He wore button-down collar shirts, which drove me crazy. He believed in the prophecies of the guy who was sure California was going to be underwater by 1998. He had the most boring friends on the planet. He thought he was a good cook and he made the blandest Midwest cuisine imaginable. He had an annoying Michigan accent.

Six months later, when our Denver sublet was over and Lannie was affirming that Don was indeed a very strange bird, I moved back to L.A. And even though he'd known very early on it wasn't going to work out, of course Don's heart was broken. (On our first date that weekend in Palm Springs, he'd read my palm and told me I wasn't long for this world. I guess he thought he'd take care of me until my death, I guess maybe I thought the same thing. Florence Nightingale meets Mr. Norman Maine.)

I was 33--a young'un really--on the rebound, warped from fear of death and incipient alcoholism and drug addiction (even though I largely behaved for those 6 months). And Don did enough bizarre things (he tried to invent a new pair of jeans after we broke up, which looked like a bad Project Runway design, and of course lost his shirt--again) to make me believe HE was the problem.

Having forgotten my neurontin this trip, (for neuropathy, but also a mood stabilizer), my sleep is a little off and my mood is a bit off-kilter. I recognize the streets of Denver from a remove of 12 years and the relative eternity of three years sobriety where I look constantly at my part in things. I am trying to figure out if I owe an amends to Don, if I should try to track him down, or whether my brain is just looking for a cause to my discomfort because it's without a pill it's used to.

Yesterday, I prepared gift bags for tonight's function with Rod and Bryan, and last night stayed in and had Thai food and watched TV. I'd sort of hoped to go to dinner with K, but we're meeting for brunch instead, in a group. According to Lannie, he was quite charmed by me but I get the distinct impression he is too sane to get involved with a poz man in recovery who lives half-way across the country. It only occurs to me as I type this that perhaps the reason I felt the need to regurgitate the Don story is as a reminder to me that if that's the cause of K.'s reluctance, he's a very smart young man.

MCO 2008

First of all, why the MTA doesn't publicize this I'll never know, but the train to the plane is marvelous. You take the red line to the blue line to the green line, and then a free shuttle bus, and though that sounds long and tedious, you can read all the way, zip past traffic even (especially) in a rainstorm, and all for $1.25.

And while I'm plugging modes of transport, Frontier Airlines sure has deluxe seats. Just thought you might want to know--I'm not getting any kickbacks.

Rod met Bryan and I --he'd just arrived from San Francisco, he's the founder of Strength in Numbers--at the airport and we drove into town where they dropped me off at Lannie's house. Lannie and I picked up like it hadn't been a decade since we'd last seen each other--such is the wonder of a certain kind of friendship. We went out to lunch, came back, napped, watched Celebrity Detox and just all-around hung out until it was time to go to the theater for her Patsy DeCline show.

Now I have to tell this story here because it just says so much about how life can be sheer magic. Right before I left New York for San Diego, in 1989, I had a very minor liaison (one night) with a little Brooklyn hottie who somehow got the idea that because he we had a wild time horizontally we had something in common vertically. He kept calling me, and evidently I was the only one who seemed aware that we had nothing to say to each other, as he announced he was visiting some friends in LA and wanted to see me in San Diego first.

The second he got off the plane I didn't have a clue what to do with him, so I suggested we go to a restaurant/cabaret called Tin Pan Alley to have dinner and see whatever show they had going. (Had it not been for his visit, I never would have been there.) Conversation was a disaster. All he wanted to do was talk about what club he went to with which friends and what D.J. was playing and how much ecstasy they did and who went into a K-hole, and I'm having a screwdriver or two and being terribly amusing and the zingers are flying--right over his head--and I'm very relieved when the announcer says: "Please put your hands together for Miss Lannie Garrett!" (Lannie had landed this gig quite accidentally herself--but that's another story.)

Out comes this GORGEOUS woman with long red hair in a glittery blue sequined gown, and not only can she sing like nobody's business, but her patter borders on stand-up, it's so good.

Now remember, I'd just come off a decade of working with Cheri, who I've discussed here before, and I never thought I'd find anyone who combined sterling vocals with razor-sharp humor again. The crucial difference is that Cheri did all of these wonderful characters I'd midwifed with her--Rhoda Dendron, Tequila Mockingbird, Coretta Scott Lynn, Leontyne Pricetag etc. But I could see clear as day that Lannie had the ability to impersonate, and by the end of the show I'm so in love with her that I just knew somehow we had to work together.

So after the show, I make my way to her dressing room (the kitchen of this place--now Hamburger Mary's) and I take her by the hands and I say: "I used to write patter and characters with a cabaret entertainer in New York for 10 years. I really would love to work with you." And she says, without skipping a beat, "I've been looking for you all over the country." I kid you not.

When it turned out she was there from Denver--my birthplace--well that just sealed the deal. We agree to meet for lunch the next day.

That night Mr. Gayfella--he'd served his purpose in the great scheme of things--tells me he's thinking of going up to LA "early." You've never seen a hastier ride to the train station. I meet Lannie for lunch and we go up to La Jolla and over white wine and a beachfront view, trade life stories.

Now, insert parentheses, in New York, I had a close set of friends and we would all meet for brunch as gays are wont to do, and over bloody marys we'd come up with draq queen names. (With Cheri they'd often double as character ideas --like the Nazi acting teacher Uta Haagen-Daz--you get the idea.) One of my inventions had so stuck we actually used it as a moniker for my dear friend Patrick. As Lannie is telling me about the backburner idea she had about a character with very big hair and a daddy who worked in the coal mines ("He was actually a caterer--but he worked in the coal mines") I offered up this very simple name: "Patsy DeCline."

I could write about 12 more paragraphs describing the extraordinary intersections of our lives since then, including how Lannie introduced me to her best friend in LA, Molly, who became my link to all my screenwriting connections and profoundly influenced my life to this day. But this story is about Patsy and me, so suffice to say that that very fall, Lannie got a wig and started telling yarns about her 14 husbands and 72 albums and creating a show that is the one of the most entertaining two hours on God's green earth you have ever seen.

And at the end of this sidesplitting show last night, Lannie tells a rather truncated version of this "how we met" story and introduces me to the audience as the man who allowed her to buy a house. Talk about a pebble rolling down a hill until it snowballs into a mountain. It was quite a moment for me.

And that's not all. I asked Lannie to keep her eyes out for my next husband and she did. After the show I hung out with Lannie and some of the staff and her costume designer, K., who is one talented, bashful, handsome, blue-eyed angel. I have no idea if his heart was beating as fast as mine was--at the very least he laughed at my jokes, and I have a new friend in Denver. if the feeling was mutual (sobriety has removed the "pounce" factor that might have pushed things years ago) then, well, it should be an interesting Sunday (I invited him to our shindig). Lannie sings his praises to the moon, and clearly, she has excellent taste in gay men. And wouldn't it be the coolest way ever to meet your new husband through a little accidentally-on-purpose matchmaking? It would for me. Was this what the flutter of premonition was about yesterday? I hope so.

Today a meeting, helping Rod out with preparations for Sunday's party, and tonight, ????.

MCO 2008

A friend sent me this photo of a "pointless family portrait" -- I added the Barbie doll body chador designs, (inspired by those tuxedo t-shirts popular back in the day.)

It's STILL raining. I have to brave the downpour and get to the airport. Denver awaits! I am going because Rod inviting me to a Strength in Numbers party on Sunday (for the positive of HIV) and it's being held at Lannie's Cabaret. She's one of my oldest and dearest friends, for whom I came up with the idea of Patsy De Cline, years ago. We'll be seeing Patsy's latest show tonight, and I'll be staying with her.

I also feel this funny flutter of anticipation, romance-wise. Is that hope or premonition? We shall see.

MCO 2008

You won't be surprised to hear that it rained all night, and I woke up with this poem dancing in my brain.

It's not enough for me to blog, and comment on blogs, even to create Hy-Art. I need to write, and I need to be much more disciplined about it than I am. I don't know why I procrastinate so much, but it doesn't really matter. I need to exert some self-discipline. Period.

This poem was a gift...it just spilled out, almost fully formed. The other writing, the rewriting, the slog when I'm not in the mood, that's the writing that separates the dillettante from the professional.

Of course, today I have the dentist, and tomorrow I'm off to Denver for three days, so I don't know why I'm getting all declaratory about my intentions when logistics are going to make fulfilling them very difficult. I suppose I want credit for the guilt.

MCO 2008

I'm not one to mourn the passing of a well-known actor as if I knew them. The death of Heath Ledger is inherently no more or less deserving of attention than any of the 28-year olds killed in Iraq or in a car accident for that matter. But apart from the illusion of intimacy we have with celebrities, I cannot divorce Heath from his performance in "Brokeback Mountain," which was a cultural earthquake for gay men. We knew Ennis del Mar because we knew his feelings of yearning and torment in a way no one who never for a moment had to fear being shunned or beaten for his sexual orientation could know. Heath's performance was a deeply emotional experience for most of us--certainly for me.

He also seemed to me very generous actor who helped his co-stars shine by disappearing into the role. Hence, this Hy-Art via Millais and Degas. I didn't know Heath Ledger the man, but I do mourn Heath Ledger the artist.

MCO 2008

P.S. I've appended Parts III and IV to yesterday's video. Scroll down to see them.

This was one big-ass nine minute video, but about 1/3 of the way through, it started skipping frames, and became practically unintelligible if somewhat comic. I already speak a bit fast and swallow my share of words, add in the jump cuts and it's like I'm channeling the Three Gay Stooges.

But figuring out the solution was to break it into three parts took most of my friend Michael's Martin Luther King Day. (Part III is on the way, but I couldn't wait, after cooling my heels all yesterday.)

What I say in Part II that's a little hard to understand is something I think I've blogged about. That is how I found picking up trash to be an excellent embodiment of the Serenity Prayer: I had to accept something I could not change: that people littered; discovered that I could indeed do something about it: pick up the litter; and the wisdom to know the difference is whether I do it for 20 minutes or for an hour a day. And as an extension of that, I started to question what I may have been misfiling under "Things I cannot change" and "Things I Can." It's a great way to do a daily inventory.

An apologia about the production quality: I was trying to get through my route in less than 10 minutes, so my friend with the camera was practically running after me; and the bright California sun made it hard as hell to even SEE me.

Anyway, here's a sparkling cider non-alcoholic toast to the first viral video of 2008, because I expect you to tell all your friends and for an army of dog-walking trash pickers to be beautifying the country by this time a year from now, when I will be asked to sit three rows behind President Clintbama during his/her inaguration and Gaza is made the official National Mascot.

MCO 2008

Part III

The last part is a little hard to understand: What I say is that I have a rather rocky relationship with the Armenians because of the trash--I don't understand why they litter and they don't understand why I pick it up. But there was one touching moment when a lovely babushka, all in black, not a day under 90, told me: "You are doing God's Work."

Part IV (If you're not bored to death)

MCO 2008

Well, yesterday, we did it. Filmed my gay ass picking up trash and talking about it. Unfortunately, the videographer, my good friend Michael, is having some trouble downloading it to his computer, but these things usually work themselves out, especially when I go over there with a baseball bat to help focus his mind. I expect to post it soon.

Meanwhile, I'd like to elaborate on what you will see. Halfway through, I find one of those notes that I haven't found for a while. In this case, it's a letter from someone's ex-neighbor explaining that he lost his number but wanted to catch him up on his goings on since he moved. It reads, in part:

\\Meaghan and I are divorced. It started ugly but we've reconciled and get along pretty well. We realize we both need to be there for Joaquin. We're still toying with giving it one more chance.

Oh, the stories I could tell you. I've had a helluva ride. It's definitely not over, but I have gained control of the wheel. Whereas I was just spinning in circles for a while. But I won't get too in depth until I reach you for sure.\\

I find his confessional tone fascinating. I would bet he definitely has a drug problem, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he had a bit of an attraction to his ex-neighbor. The note is undated, so I have no idea if it is of recent vintage, but of course its "found" quality lends it a voyeuristic frisson, n'est-ce pas?

About three-quarters of the way through the video can be heard music. I had earlier passed an Armenian wedding celebration going on in front of a building whose grounds are on my route and had snapped the above. It's rather a better shot than the unfocussed mishegoss you see in the video.

After the filming, I felt Gaza needed a bit more of a walk, but I wasn't in the mood to do the park thing, so just took him for a non-trashpicking spin. On the corner of Hollywood and Garfield, I spied a sidewalk sale going on, and I heard the boots pictured above calling out to me. I approached, to see upclose the footwear I have been looking for since time immemorial. Comfortable, broken in, easy on and easy off, ready to go anywhere and BUTCH. (Which you'll understand how badly I need when you see the video, in which I am so much gayer than I think I am in my head.)

I asked him how much. FIVE DOLLARS. They fit like a dream. They have not left my feet except to sleep, and even then, just barely.

As far as the gay thing, I have blessedly achieved a degree of self-acceptance that I just can't be bothered by it like I would have been at 19, 29, or 39. It's not queeniness, per se, but I do seem to make much use of varied vocal intonation in the service of humor, and it's hard to do that without deviating from the norms of traditional masculinity.

But trust me, future lover, I won't embarass you at Thanksgiving or at your office party, and you will laugh more with me than your ex who left you for that airhead with the inflated pecs that practically needed a wonderbra.

Plus, I had so much fun. I'll show that Sam Harris.

MCO 2008

Something about this handsome French devil rendered by Ingres invoked for me the possiblity that his interior imaginings had him frolicking with these nubile Tahitian beauties via Gaugin. I think his early 19th century garb is so attractive, I can think of no period in history where the men look so dashing in their high collars and shiny boots, and the women (think Jane Austen heroines) look so dowdy in their featureless Regency gowns and bonnet-like hats. I guess aristocrats were on the fashion down-low after the excesses of the French revolution. Oh lord, another topic I can get lost in for hours researching on the net.

Boundless intellectual curiosity is a very time-consuming hobby. I was actually one of those kids who used to sit down and read the encyclopedia for hours at a time. Remember those articles on the states of the Union in the World Book? I felt it somehow my duty to at least take note of the major agricultural products of South Dakota, the state bird of Indiana, and what year Lousiana joined the Union. With my brother, I memorized both the Presidents and the state capitals without being asked.

The result of this kind of very curious, A.D.D-mind is that I know a little about a lot, but not a lot about a little. I can't imagine one Wikipedia article I would be qualified to write without doing way more research than I am willing to do. I'm efficient, but not thorough. Macro, not micro. See the forest more than the trees.

Ah, A.D.D. As I type this, I'm listening to "This American Life" on the radio, and keeping one eye on French soccer with the sound off. I could add a phone call in the mix at any moment. I consider this a normal state of affairs, and don't even think of it as a problem except when I try to do one thing at a time and find myself uncomfortable. Not to turn on the radio or TV? Are you nuts? Just listen in an AA meeting and not rehearse my impending share or replay the one I just gave? Very difficult. I can't even pee without reading the placenames on the map I have on the wall backwards. (Kasakhstan is equally Natshkasak to me. I've been doing this all my life, I couldn't believe when I saw someone doing it on David Letterman. I used to be write backwards too--in script. Used to drive my teachers crazy when I handed in a spelling quiz in a mirror form.)

I could view this a curse, considering it probably had something to do with my addiction to meth--at least my doctor said so when he wrote to the judge. I just try to make it work for me--with sobriety, I can see the blessing in everything. When you're used to breaking up everything, looking at it at weird angles, backwards and forwards---anything to stave off boredom--it has some definite upsides. I think I'm funnier than most people because of it, as I detect a lof of irony and quirk. I think it's excellent for creativity--would I even have come up with the Hy-Art if I wasn't so used to tinkering with everything in my head?

I'm even tempted to redefine Attention Deficit Disorder as never getting enough of it. I think we ALL suffer from that one, eh?

MCO 2008

Dave issued a photo challenge on the subject of cemeteries, which happen to be my favorite places in the world. In fact, when I last visited Tony in Tennessee, I made a point of making the Nashville City Cemetery one of the places I perused.

MCO 2008

Checking out my uncle's website, I decided to combine one of his other works with pictures of mine from my New Mexico trip, with a dash of Magritte and Bonnard.

Today I get to work on the draft of a Math primer with my sister, who teaches the subject in Albuquerque. I had taken the file back with me on the train, done a lot of work on it, and been absolutely unable to find it last night. I searched for a hour, through every file I had, at least three times. I found all sorts of other files I needed, but finally gave up in frustration and watched Project Runway.

I came back to my desk, ready to email my sister that I had lost the file, and it was there, right on top, in front of the computer.

Very, very odd indeed. But not a completely inappropriate illustration of a spiritual concept that came into my head the other day listening to a share in a meeting: "You don't need to understand God to recognize Grace."

I have a good friend who's been struggling with the God-thing in early recovery. Something seemed to "click" when I took a back door to explain spirituality. I told him he was looking for a noun when he needed to look for a verb. God was much more easily grasped as context than content, as a journey than a destination (same as sobriety.)

You may not understand what God looks like or quite how God operates to recognize there is so much in life that is both wonderful and inexplicable. From the way for every accident there are billions of miles travelled without incident, to the way in the midst of the death of millions due to war and disease, more people are born than die every day, there is an inexhaustible evidence of grace around us at all times.

And whether you are fighting off doom and gloom, stressed out at work, or simply feeling gray, you can always manage to practice kindness today. Be nice to someone who is irritating you. Give money to a stranger. Call your Mom and tell her you love her. Smile at someone who cuts you off instead of giving them the finger. Leave a supportive comment on your blog. Don't yell at your kid. Talk to a newcomer. Write a check to a charity.

Whether or not you believe in God is one of the least important decisions you'll ever have to make. Acting from love is available to anybody, all the time, and all that counts.

MCO 2008

Please feel free to check out the work of my uncle Tristan Clais.

One of my fondest memories of my days in New York was the dinner parties--a dying artform if there ever was one. There was no more pleasant an evening than when the food, guests, and conversation flowed together effortlessly, (yes certainly lubricated by cocktails and wine.)

The key, however, was the mix of people. You needed men and women, gay and straight, multi-cultured and multi-colored, with at least one unexpected or exotic stranger--a flight attendant from Scotland, a Panamanian intellectual, a percussionist from the Bronx--you get the idea.

If and when conversation would lag, it was always a good idea for the host or hostess to have an interesting topic to throw out. For example:

You are stuck on a deserted island. You spend most of your time putting up your hut and getting food, but conditions are lush and invariably, you have much free time. What would you prefer to have miraculously wash up on shore? A case of books by your favorite authors; or, a CD player, (with batteries for a year) with your favorite music?

I came up with this question in response to some music loving posts by Rod and Aussie Paul. They are confirmed audiophiles, and I of course, am the equally confirmed bibliophile. Yes, that means books, hands down. Even though I love music (who doesn't?) I would feel like I wasn't DOING anything just listening to it.

(Maybe THIS will get me some comments. I swear to God, I give you people some of my best material, and I get one, maybe two comments. And then I visit other blogs, and "I had a headache a few years ago" gets an outpouring! Okay, I'm exaggerating, but here's a simple A or B question. It's MY dinner party and I wanna hear what my guests have to say!)

MCO 2008

I have a blogami who is writing me about some strange goings on with one of his former blogrollees who has turned out to be an outrageous dissembler. (A blog I read maybe once or twice, but I’m not giving addresses because I don’t want to fuel the bloggernecking.) A reader who evidently feels betrayed has embarked on a crusade, setting up two separate anti-blogs dedicated to exposing the blogger’s lies. My blogami is fascinated, “unable to turn away,” curious about the psychology of it all.

I’m actually surprised it doesn’t happen in the blogosphere more than it does, and I’m sure it happens more than we think, without us realizing it. Had I been more aware of blogs back in my using days (it seems impossible to believe now that I’d never read one—I was spending too much time on M4M sites, I guess), I might have very well set up one anonymously. I imagine I would have attempted to legitimize my life as a poet/purveyor, pushing the narrative of myself as a consenting adult facilitating the adult choices of other consenting adults, spiced up with liberal accounts of everything consenting adults do, of course.

I could have told nothing but the truth and painted a rather colorful portrait, but the forced anonymity would have grated—infamy without fame. And invariably I would have become paranoid that the police would track me down anyway. I can absolutely imagine I would have then spun the complete fantasy that I was getting out of the business and had started working a legitimate job, confining my drug use to weekends or even claiming sobriety. Then, deprived of sharing the stories of a life I was pretending to no longer lead, I very well may have used my HIV to foment the impression of my impending death as a way to end the blog as dramatically and attention-gettingly as possible. (This is actually very close to what I tried in reality, with a forged death certificate.)

Don’t go looking up “Here's the Deal” – I never created such a blog. But had I, it would have been my attempt to seek a way out. Either by creating an exit scenario in the hope it would then materialize, or, subconsciously, as a way to attract the police to shut me down. In any event, it would have entirely been a reflection of my addiction, and in no way to be taken personally by the reader. When someone lies to you, it’s not about you, it’s about the liar.

When you do drugs, or have a form of mental illness that works on your brain as drugs do, by definition, you reject reality. You live in fantasy, created by your perception. If you can get others to perceive that fantasy as reality, there is an unquestionable rush of power. When you sense that you are in fact powerless (see Step 1) feeling powerful is what your disease most craves. It’s more than happy to feed the marionette’s illusion that it has no strings.

So I understand the lying blogger. What I find rather harder to fathom is the commitment of the blograker to expose the liar, under the guise of “intervention.” All he needed do is to stop reading him, or to stop commenting. To invest the amount of time he has in not one, but two different blogs to expose the various falsehoods seems to be rather an overreaction, to put it mildly. (I would imagine this person was lied to a lot as a child, and is actually trying to settle some deep interior scores.)

This Hy-Art is the product of Vermeer and Max Ernst. In my version, this woman is being harassed by her disease—or perhaps she is tormented by her conscience. Whatever your interpretation, the woman is not real, neither are the demons. I have taken one representation, added another, creating yet a third. There are three fictions up there, and yet no mendacity.

Art is the only thing I can think of that renders truth from lies. Rather more gratifying than the other way around.

MCO 2008

I love the surrealists, and I am going to have to do some more Hy-Arts using them. The snake-like candles are via Magritte, and he left this lovely open water for me to lay over this lady with a Japan fetish of Whistler's. You can't exactly make a surrealist more surreal, can you?

I think I'm attracted to the surrealists in part because I'm such a dreamer. I mean real, nighttime dreaming. I dream veritable mini-series, unfortunately almost always winding up with a sense of unpleasant urgency, because invariably I'm channeling a very full bladder into the dream. It's such a drag. I have perhaps five times in my entire life made it through the night without having to get up. I am astonished by the people I see awaken, have some coffee, and then leisurely meander over to the bathroom to pee, never for a moment in the previous 8 hours having felt the slightest urge. I guess the upside for me is that I remember my dreams far more than those freakazoids. I've dreamt entire screenplays and written them down as they just turn over again, oblivious.

Last night was one of those monthly convergences where several different people, in person or over the phone, turned to me in a moment of psychological need, if not crisis. This is interesting to me. Not being turned to for counsel, but how it tends to bunch up. This happened a month ago, and will probably happen again in a month. It's enough to make you believe in some astrological factor at play.

None of the three are in AA, though two of them are nominally Alanoners (pursuant to my suggestion to go). At a meeting a week each for six months, the understanding of the principles of recovery comes slowly indeed. It's rather harder when you don't have the immediate threat to your wellbeing that one more drink or drug can entail. I end up supplying a lot of information on the application side of the 12 Steps. Taking responsibility for your part in things. Cleaning your side of the street (but not their's.) Owning your expectations. Turning fear into faith.

I found this great quote. God grant that I may heed its message:

Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily. -Jean Toomer, poet and novelist (1894-1967)

MCO 2008

P.S. Great meeting about the radio piece. Plus I'm planning to videotape my trashpicking this weekend for upload on You Tube.

This Hy-Art is via Oustromova, Caravaggio and Aivazovsky. (There are a lot of Russian painters at "Olga's Gallery" where I get my art).

This is also a self-portrait. Sunday stretched long and lonely into the evening last night. It was one the rare Sundays where the roommate didn't come over, he had a hot date. Suddenly my perpetual singledom felt stark and underlined, and yet I couldn't escape the reality that I am willing to do very little to change things. I want it to just happen, without the meeting and dating process. I don't want to go to a bar, I don't want to cruise on line. I want a hot smart man to sit next to me in a meeting and three weeks later I want to be half-living with him in his big house in the Hills, where the dog can stay over too. So I can't really blame anyone for this situation but myself--when I do put myself "out there" I do just fine.

And then "Persuasion" was on Masterpiece Theater and I fell in love with Rupert Penry-Jones. I love Austen men. They're gorgeous, tormented, taciturn--you can project whatever personality you want onto them. They're complete fantasies, basically, which tells you a lot about me. Good luck out there in the real world, Mary. (Though I guess I have a lot of company, being as Austen remains so popular).

I have a meeting this morning about doing a radio piece about my picking up trash. I'll show them gorgeous--I've got a great face for radio. (No, that's not my line, I think it's from Jack Benny or Don Rickles, but it's a good one, ain't it?)

MCO 2007

I chose his blog title because Kathy Griffin has famously claimed "strong black woman" as a descriptor, along with "inner gay boy" and a host of other adjectives as it suits her. I can't imagine anyone not being delighted being appropriated by such a comic genius, she had us laughing till our cheeks hurt for two hours straight with nary a glance at her notes. Of course I sat next to one of the only straight men there, (except for his buddy, both dragged by their wives.) So much for my white knight, but there sure was plenty of eyecandy.

Anyway, I took advantage of being in the Kodak Theatre to pose at the photo of Hattie McDaniel receiving her Oscar, and it occurred to me how very much she looked like a more zaftig version of my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson. With the current election talk of a woman versus an African-American for President, and the citing of the legacy of Dr. King, I thought it would be a good moment to recount my first encounter with a strong black woman apart from our cleaning ladies, Mary and Nancy,

I was raised in the most liberal household on the planet, but it being Maryland in the early 60s, it was still an all-white neighborhood, so I didn't actually have any black authorities figures in my life. But my French mother cried watching Bull Connor turn the hoses on Civil Rights protesters in 1963, and I was at her knee. I not only hated the horrible white southerners, but I idealized black people. When a classmate pointed out "Niger" on a map in the first grade and then looked at the one of my black classmates--this shy, sweet kid named Richard, I think--I said, "That's NI-GER! He's a NE-GRO!" I wish I'd decked the insulter, but I was a tiny kid and completely non-violent.

Anyway, Mrs. Johnson was my first black teacher, in 1966-67, when I was in third grade. In retrospect, it might well have been her first year teaching in an integrated school. She was about 35, and her style was to start out stern and then mellow out as the year went on, and I didn't know that yet.

That very first day we launched into a new stage of arithmetic, in which x and y replaced the box you filled in a the end of the equation. For some reason, I couldn't understand that x was simply a stand-in for a number, that if 3+4 equalled x, that x just stood for 7. I thought she was trying to teach us algebra, which my older brother warned was going to be the bane of my existence in about 5 years. The more she tried to explain, the more I freaked out. I was not used to not understanding something, I got very upset. And she got very impatient, because my dunderheadedness was eating up class time.

Finally, it was time to go home, and I remember bursting into tears the second I hugged my Mom. (I was quite the Mama's boy, for sure). "What wrong" she asked? "I have a new teacher, and her name is Mrs. Johnson and she said x is just like a box so why doesn't she use a box and she got mad at me and Mom---she's a negro." It was really a question. I wanted to know if the only bad day I ever had at school could possibly have something to do with the fact that there was something different about this one teacher. What if all my illusions about the innate superiority of black people proved untrue?

It didn't take long for me to understand that X could equal anything, and for Mrs. Johnson to reveal herself to be one of the kindest and best teachers I ever had. The next year we had Mrs. Manclark, and that was the year Martin Luther King was shot. We all filed into Mrs. Johnson's room, where there was a TV, to watch the funeral coverage. I don't think this was the case all over school, I think it was Mrs. Johnson who convinced Mrs. Manclark this was living history, and we should witness it. I can only imagine what King's death was like for her. She would have grown up in the 40s, Dr. King represented a degree of fundamental change that makes present-day uses of the word seem almost trivial. I know his death meant much more to me because of her.

What Mrs. Johnson taught me was that they were people you liked and people you didn't, good teachers and bad teachers, and race didn't have much to do with either likability or competence. I liked her because she was kind and smart, not because she was black. That made no more sense than had I disliked her for it. It was a valuable lesson at a young age. I'm not as colorblind as I hope to be, but I do aim to form an opinion about someone based on the content of their character, just as Dr. King exhorted us too.

So here's to you, Mrs. Johnson, Hattie McDaniel, Kathy Griffin and at all the strong black women--whether literally or figuratively-out there.

MCO 2008

I've been trying to figure out what to do with Caravaggio's "Narcissus" for a while now, so was happy to find this very shiny ballroom floor from Tissot, in which the celebutantes also seem to be gossiping about someone. "Oh, that Comte de Narcisse," I can imagine them saying, "he's very comely but he has eyes for no one but himself."

So this is what has been decided with my nephew. I am continuing on with the script I wrote, but to be pitched and shopped around to other directors as a low-budget indie with a gay, HIV+, sober angle. Meanwhile we are going to come up with an entirely different plot for a second movie for him to direct, a much more mainstream film with that will appeal to a wider audience.

What we discovered in this process was not to mess with what works. In his previous projects, I have always helped shape his work and make it better in rewrites. This works quite well. The inverse--in which I write and he shapes--not so much. He has listed for me an entire range of locations we could set a film in, he has the sort of connections that could make a low-budget film look much more expensive. I'm going to finish my current script first, but now that I know that if I concentrate, I can indeed plow through a draft of something in a short period of time, the idea of juggling a few projects doesn't seem so daunting. (As long I can take the train to that Writer's Colony "Chez Ma Soeur" in New Mexico!)

Last night I went to see WordTheatre, TheWomeninvite and sat next to a professional writing teacher/script doctor with whom I bonded immediately-I think I will hire her when I get to that point of not knowing where to go with the script but still knowing it could be better. On my other side sat an actress named Christine from Williamstown, Mass. This would be unremarkable, except one of the main characters in my script is an actress named Christine on her way to Williamstown. I definitely took this as a sign to keep the character.

It was a wonderful, stimulating evening. And tonight I'm going to see Kathy Griffin. Three nights in a row out of the house! I think it's time I meet a man on one of these sorties, don't you?

MCO 2007

Note: A theatrical review is a little rare for the blog, but it's a form a writing I enjoy and not only do I want to promote this show, I probably should build a portfolio. Diversity is a smart thing for any writer to cultivate.

If you don't live in L.A., you can skip it unless you love everything I write, no matter what [insert smiley face]. If you do live in L.A. and like the theater, read the review and buy a ticket.

There are a lot of little theaters in Los Angeles where actors hoping to land a film or TV role build their resume by appearing in plays with wannabe writers and directors in the same boat: the result can be some truly dreadful half-nights at the theater, if you can even wait until intermission to leave.

Then there are writers who really understand how dialogue works, directors who understand theatricality and timing, and actors who genuinely seem to lose themselves in their roles, who seem to forget there's even an audience.

Last night my good friend Heather King—an accomplished writer herself--brought me to see Big Baby, a very dark but very funny comedy she co-produced, written by her good friend Joe Keyes, who also plays the title role. His character, Kile, is a man on a very well-earned mental disability for excruciating amounts of anxiety, exacerbated if not caused by a controlling, manipulative, hyper-Catholic martyr of a mother, embodied exquisitely by Danielle Kennedy. They are locked in a pathological love/hate relationship in which every day is virtually indistinguishable from the day before—No Exit meets Groundhog Day. This dynamic is irrevocably altered by a new neighbor, played by Chloe Taylor—a young woman with quite a past and an even more interesting present.

I don’t know whether Joe Keyes is a better actor or playwright, it’s a tough call. His ear for dialogue is hallucinatory, some of the best I have ever heard in the theater, bar none. This is hugely abetted by the drumtight pacing, no doubt due to the hand of director Matt Roth—the actors never miss a beat. The perpetual passive/aggressive battle royale between the nerve-wracked and nerve-wracking son, and the mother from hell who is convinced she’s God’s favorite servant, is harrowing, hypnotic and hysterical. I might have cast someone a little more Kirsten Johnston than Cameron Diaz for the neighbor, Nancy, as she wears the fairly fragile recovering addict persona rather more authentically than the budding dominatrix, but I quibble. Some violinists may be a little stronger in a string quartet, but it’s really about the music, and this music is pitch perfect.

And, finally, someone who understands that longer is not better. One hour and twenty minutes is just right for a three person play in a small theater—you should always leave wanting more, and never having looked at your watch. Bravo, all involved.

MCO 2007

The mother of a dear friend died recently. Her name was Siv Cedering, and she was a very accomplished poet, among myriad other talents including sculpting, painting and illustrating children's books. She was also a wonderful mother.

I only met her once, but she really embodied the word "presence." And I read a book of her poetry all the way through, which I very rarely do. It was never a chore, I kept wanting to read the next one.

As a modest tribute, here's one that seems particularly appropriate, as it speaks of memory, loss, and transformation.

Hands

When I fall asleep

my hands leave me.

They pick up pens

and draw creatures

with five feathers

on each wing.

The creatures multiply.

They say: "We are large

like your father's

hands."

They say: "We have

your mother's

knuckles."

I speak to them:

"If you are hands,

why don't you

touch?"

And the wings beat

the air, clapping.

They fly

high above elbows

and wrists.

They open windows

and leave

rooms.

They perch in treetops

and hide under bushes

biting

their nails. "Hands,"

I call them.

But it is fall

and all creatures

with wings

prepare to fly

South.

Siv Cedering

MCO 2007

The woman reading in her sunny, comfortable studio is by a Russian painter Nikolay Gay and the water and the boat is via Winslow Homer. Ergo, Gay Homer, which is completely appropriate, considering Winslow's adoration of sinewy-torsoed young men.

It's really a self-portrait. My little comfy studio is as sweet to me as any Parisian atelier, and though not quite as seductive as some alcove in Provence or Tuscany, rather more convenient when I want to step off my island and interact in the flesh with the denizens of Sobrietyland, or the trash of Hollywood. (I bet the French countryside is terribly clean, I'd probably have to drive beaucoup de kilometres to find litter, cancelling out the carbonic benefit entirely.)

The sea, by the way, represents uncertainty. My disease hates uncertainty, although I surmise this is probably as human a trait as it is an alcoholic one. Our egos do not like powerlessness, they crave control. They teach us to believe that if you do the "right" things, ergo A,B, and C; D will result. The problem is we define "D". Reality, Other People, Happenstance are always D, E, and F, and G (God of course) is always the result. We're always surprised. "But, but, but..." And yet we get right back on the sailboat sure we're actually on a train.

I have learned to relinquish the illusion that I can control the results of my actions. I have learned to factor in the great "I don't know" --which I consider a pretty good definition of God. And I definitely know I can't control other people, (dammit!). Ironicall