We hold these truths to be self evident

The city was completely closed off from 14th street and below. If your license didn't have an address that placed you below 14th Street, you were not passing the armed guards. To this day, I make sure my address on my drivers license is always up to date. There were people who were unable to get to pets they had left behind. Unable to go home.

The day they opened the city up to Canal Street, we felt compelled to walk from 14th down to Canal. When we arrived at Union Square, we discovered that most of Manhattan shared the urge.



The park became a shrine, a place for people to gather and be with one another.



There were candles and prayer cards, messages of hope, expressions of despair and the worst part: the faces of the missing - accompanied by the desperate pleas for help in finding them. Faces that would stare out at us for months afterwards, and become familiar to every stranger passing them.



It was impossible not to read every message.



A ream of paper had been unrolled along the walkways, there were markers provided and everyone was invited to express themselves. A line of people moved slowly past the scroll, each person reading every message, looking at every drawing, and once in a while, people would break out of the line and kneel on the ground to write something. I uncapped a marker and stared at the blank spot I had chosen. What do you say? What will tell the story of the impact this has had on your life, or express the way that you and every single stranger around you feels?

A friend of mine is a born again Christian. She was raised Catholic, but became born again when she was 18 years old. She told me that one time, in a hairy situation, she had instinctively thought "Hail Mary, full of grace..." "Boy!" she said, "The Catholic Church really instills it in you and keeps a grip, don't they?" Yes they do. Like making the sign of the cross when an ambulance passes, it's muscle memory.

So I honored the only thing that had been echoing in my head over and over every day since *that* Tuesday and wrote:

Kyrie Eleison
Christe Eleison
Kyrie Eleison


We moved on.

Made our way down to Canal Street and Broadway - Chinatown. There, lining the streets were makeshift tables with tee shirts and souvenirs on them. The kind that seem to just *appear* at certain times and *disappear* when the cops show up. Like the umbrella dudes that materialize out of nowhere when it starts raining, "UMbrullah! UMbrullah!", I swear they are made of powder that is scattered on the streets - just add water and up they spring. "UMbrullah! UMbrullah!" We looked at the tee shirts and for the most part they had American Flags, the Bald Eagle - all RahRah USA kind of stuff.

And then we saw one vendor selling tee shirts that had pictures of the towers on them.

They read: "I Can't Believe I Got Out!"

At first we were horrified. Completely gobsmacked. We just looked at each other, not knowing what to say or what to think, and then we just started laughing and couldn't stop. Because something about it was so very very good, so entrepreneurial, so very American and most especially, so very New York City. Everything was going to be okay. We would be normal again someday. If you think you can crush our spirit, then you, sirs, have not been to New York Fucking City.

Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Moment of Clarity

That same year, Aretha Franklin pulled out one of the greatest musical performances ever televised when she subbed for Luciano Pavarotti to sing "Nessun Dorma". Pavarotti, who was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award that night was too sick to attend.

That same year, I got a frantic call from a friend of mine who is a makeup artist. She was in charge of the make up crew at that year's Grammy awards, and neglected to hire an assistant for herself for the night. She said, "I need someone that isn't going to be *starstruck* around the celebs, and I thought of you right away. You are the quintessential blase New Yorker. Here's the catch - I don't have any money left in my budget, so I can't pay you, but I can give you all the M.A.C. makeup you desire, and we'll have a lot of fun."

"I'll do it because I bet I'll get great stories out of it."

She didn't lie. I got an huge bag of makeup, we had a great time, and I got a LOT of stories out of the experience.

Including this one:

If you are going to do someone a favor, I believe you should do it well, so I was busting my ass to give 100% if not more. At one point, one of the makeup artists' walkies went out, and they wanted to touch base with her to make sure she had everything she needed. She was located on the other side of the theatre, and I volunteered to run over there and check up on her. I took off through the backstage maze of Radio City Music Hall, and nearly knocked over Fiona Apple as I burst out of the Shakespeare doors into the house. (I barely missed her - Sting was not so lucky - later that evening, I crashed full stop into him at one point, looked up and said "Hi Sting!" and then took off again.)

As I made my way down a row of orchestra seats, the first strands of Nessun Dorma began, and there, standing a few feet in front of me on the stage was Luciano Pavarotti. It stopped me dead in my tracks, and a voice in my head, clear as a bell whispered, "Wait. Luciano Pavarotti is about to sing, and you are RIGHT HERE. When is something like this ever going to happen to you again? Nothing is more important than this." I took a deep breath, pushed every other thought aside, settled in a chair and let the aria wash over me. Recordings do not do him justice. Did not do him justice. Even now, when I hear him singing in my head, I tear up. It's a blood thing. Once again, Mom was right. As a child, my mother explained to me that I was Italian, and therefore *HAD* to like Opera. "It's in your blood", she said. It wasn't dictated, it was just a fact.

The aria ended, I applauded, jumped to my feet and picked up where I had left off - running, thinking, "She said she couldn't pay me, but she just did."

Later on, watching the live feed of the show in Kelsey Grammar's dressing room with Erykah Badu, her new baby and entourage (another story for later), I was very confused to see Aretha performing Nessun Dorma instead of Pavarotti during his slated time. There where whispers about the reasons that caused him to bow out at the last minute, and how amazed the producers were that Aretha was gracious enough to offer to step in and sing the aria in his place. Which, if you've ever seen this performance - she sung the hell out of.

And now, today, with tears in my eyes, I thank God for my moment of clarity. My private concert. A parenthesis around a brief and extraordinary experience in the story of my life.

This is somebody's job

I think most of you know that my husband is Supervising Producer of Attack of the Show! on the G4 network.

This is a transcript of an email that he received from Standards and Practices.

This, my friends, is someone's job. It's completely serious.

So. Awesome.

Read it out loud and hilarity ensues.


Untitled 38-BLEEP FUCKED & SHIT



Untitled 39-BLEEP FUCK, FUCK, BLUR MIDDLE FINGERS



Untitled 40- BLEEP SHIT & LOSE PART WHERE xxx is talking about the threesome in San Fran and the strap-on



Untitled 41- BLEEP SHIT & FUCKING



Untitled 42- Crybabies..I don't recall either of those videos..



Untitled 43- BLEEP DOUCHE



Untitled 44- BLEEP GODDAMN, FUCK



Untitled 45- OK



Untitled 46- BLEEP SHIT, SHIT, BALLS

Yayson

This has been making me laugh.

I've never watched the Jimmy Kimmel show, but I *have* seen The Bourne Ultimatum, which I really enjoyed. Apparently Kimmel has a running joke about always having to bump Matt Damon from his show for lack of time.




It's cute at first (ooh, death knell), but wait! It gets reaaaally funny later on. IMHO. Pathetically, my husband and I can't stop identifying ourselves as "Yayson" when we call each other, and we laugh as though it's the first time we've thought of doing it.

Will we be in our minds when the dawn breaks?

I know I've been pretty quiet around the intarwebz lately. There's a simple explanation. I had a major life event occur, and even though it's incredibly personal and not like me to discuss in a public place, somehow it feels wrong and odd to not mention it. Like we're all ignoring the elephant in the room - except in this case, I'm the only one who knows the elephant is there.

Whatever you might think about me, my blogs, and my blabbing, the truth is that I am a very private person. There are many things that I don't breathe a word about, good AND bad, because, frankly, they belong to me, not the world.

So let's just spit it out: I have good news that will be followed immediately by bad news. I was pregnant, but I had a miscarriage.

I am okay physically and emotionally. As devastating as it was, there were so many positive things to focus on, that V & I can't help but focus on them.

It's actually quite common. I know. I know. Amazing how people think it's comforting to tell you how common it is. In general, it is not women who have had miscarriages who tell you this fun fact. But it's true. It's very common -- and yet, nobody talks about it. Well, they do once you join the club. They come out of the woodwork when a new member joins the sisterhood to embrace and support you. I find no comfort in the numbers, but I *do* find comfort in discussing the shared feelings involved when such a *common* thing happens to YOU as opposed to an impersonal statistic of "one out of five".

I have hemmed and hawed at the idea of blogging about it. It is such an intensely personal thing to open up to public scrutiny. On the one hand, I thought it might be good for me to talk about it openly, and maybe it would be nice if anyone reading this wanted to comment (anonymously as an option too) and talk about their experience. In that way it could be an outlet. There are so many feelings involved, some crazy and some genuine, and they come and go. For instance, I think in some cases it's hard for people to talk about because it's like you've *failed* at something. Even though you had NOTHING to do with it! All three doctors looked me right in the eye and said to me, "This is NOT your fault, this is NOT because of something you did, and this is NOT fair." Oh sure, intellectually I can comprehend that it's not my fault, that it's nature and something out of my control, realm and league - but emotionally? Well, I personally found it so hard not to sob "I'm sorry" over and over to my husband. Does that make sense? No! It makes no sense! And THAT doesn't help matters - waaaah!!! I make no sense!

It doesn't help that you have buckets of hormones coursing through you. Hoooboy. To paraphrase Seth Rogan's character in 'Knocked Up', "I AM TALKING TO THE HORMONES, FUCK YOU HORMONES!!" It got so I could tell when I was crying because I was genuinely grieving, and when I was crying a hormonal cry. It's all in the trigger, baby.

Another cold comfort offered up by many well meaning folks: There was something wrong with the baby and this is nature's way of dealing with it. I got tests back. There was nothing wrong with the baby. Did I say baby? I meant babies. It was twins, one of them died early on and that threw everything out of whack for number two. Arguably, yes, there was still something wrong - not chromosomally, but still... Cold comfort. I prefer to look at it like this: Remember that Jane Seymour movie - It was called Dark Mirror and it was a terrible remake of an older movie with Olivia DeHaviland? She plays twins - one evil one good. That's what happened - only teeny teeny tiny. It just goes to show you. There's ALWAYS an evil twin.

In the meantime I can't help but feel left behind by my culture and my religion. There are people who have said, "Maybe next time you might want to wait before you tell people..." Really? Well why don't you tell ME - why is it that I have to be quiet about the best news of my life? In case I have a miscarriage? So I can suffer my loss in silence and grieve alone? Are we as a culture so disturbed by death and pain that we ask our women (and men too, let's not forget them) to keep their sorrow to themselves? Especially a sorrow, as, again, others were quick to point out, that is quite common? Does anyone else agree that it seems backwards to deny ourselves the support and love of the people who have walked the same path?

I began to read about Mizuko Kuyo, a purely Japanese ritual created by women. Mizuko means "water child" or "deceased infant/foetus," and kuyo means "memorial service." Mizuko are miscarried, stillborn and aborted foetuses. There is a dark and controversial side to the Mizuko Kuyo, as there are many who feel that it preys on women who have had abortions by scaring them into forking over money for a ceremony in the hopes that the angry spirit of the aborted foetus won't plague them in the material world. But in terms of closure for a miscarriage, I once again found myself echoing the theme of my last trip to Tokyo: "What is this? ... Wait... Why don't we have this?"

Why don't we have this? The place that I am in right now... I would like nothing more than to offer up a message of Yasuraka ni nemutte kudasai . Please sleep peacefully. Despite the fact that I did not have an abortion, I am still overwhelmed with the feeling of Gomen ne. Please forgive me.



I am choosing to leave the comments open on this. But please, I hope you understand that I really don't want to delete or block someone because they lack social graces, or reading comprehension skills, and choose to comment "You know, this kind of thing is really common and it's not your fault." I know that people say dumb things all the time that they don't mean. People get misunderstood. I've been there. I have tasted foot. But I think we all understand that when someone is grieving - things change, attitudes shift. I have not really been myself lately, but slowly but surely I am returning.

If you are the kind of person who "just doesn't know what to say", then by all means, don't say a thing. It's totally cool with me. This is your written dispensation, that you should not even feel the need to give me silly internet {{{hugs}}}.

Thankfully, I have been able to laugh throughout the darkest days. Mostly because of Vinny, who makes me laugh every day. Even those black ones. It really helps to have a sick sense of humor and to be not quite right in the head.

Okay now that THAT's out of the way, can we get to the IMPORTANT things like who watched the HORRIBLE Victoria Beckham:Coming to America Special, what do we all think of the Watchmen cast announcement, and how many people have seen Pan's Labyrinth? I saw it this week and it rocked my world.

SCHOOL'D IN SPECIFICITY

When Vinny and I were living in New York, as is the custom there for the most part, we ordered a lot of take out. We had our budget pizza place, our fancy pizza place, our Thai place, our Malaysian place, our Mexican place, our bbq place, and of course, our Chinese place.

Standing in the doorway, looking into our apartment, which was the delivery person's view, the most prominent thing was a big scroll with Chinese calligraphy hanging on the opposite wall. Whenever we ordered Chinese food, our delivery person's eyes would light up when we opened the door. They would always bow and point to the scroll over and over and glow.

Occidental friends liked it too and would ask what the characters meant, and I would always go right up to it in mock seriousness (as I am wont to do) and point to each character and say deliberately "Death to You Capatalistic Pigs!"

One day we decided that we really should find out what it meant, and so, the next time we ordered Chinese food, when the delivery man came, we asked "Do you read Chinese?" He got very excited. "Yes! Yes! I read Chinese!!" - so we invited him inside to look at the scroll.

He removed his shoes, came inside, stood in front of the scroll, and with a sense of gravity, pronounced each character in Chinese. When he was done, he stepped back, proudly, and beamed at us. We all stood there for a second, and then Vinny and I exclaimed at the same time, "Thank you!! Thank you!!" and gave him an extra 5$ on top of his tip.

Conflicted

Last night I decided to treat myself to the new freddo over at Peet's Coffee. A lot of women in L.A. use these supah sweet ice cream-ish coffee drinks as meal substitutes. Not me. They aren't my first choice as far as ice coffee goes ( I like it simple - ice latte no sugar, no I do not want skim milk) and clearly I am busy substituting my meals with other meals.

It was blistering hot yesterday, and hmrpita had IM'd me to say that she and TO:NY had both enjoyed a freddo that afternoon, and declared it quite good - so I left a little early to swing by the Peet's on Larchmont to grab one.

I drove around and around and around looking for a stupid parking space - in the blistering hot weather, in my supermassive black hole of a car, and suddenly, instead of a nice treat, something so simple as "grabbing an ice coffee" turned into a frustrating sisyphean venture, with me circling the same block over and over again while yelling, "THIS SUCKS!!! I HATE L.A.!!!!!"

Just as I was about to give up, someone left a parking space, so I yoinked it and checked the meter (woo! there was an hour on it), started to walk down the street towards Peet's - and passed a boy. We made eye contact, and clocked each other and I thought - Oh! I know him because he looks like he is going to say hi. Then I realized that I knew HIM but he didn't know me. It was Wentworth Miller and HOLY SHIT IS HE HOT IN PERSON. I wish I had the wherewithal to stop him and say "Aw, man, dude, thanks a lot, now I have to spend the next hour calling ALL OF MY FRIENDS to tell them how CUTE you are in person..."

But I walked past him and got my ice coffee and thought, giddily, " I LOVE L.A.!!!"