A Grain of Salt

My political question:

Has anyone pointed out to the Obama campaign that the O in their campaign graphic looks like the logo for Mobil?

Obama '08: Your engine will thank you.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

I just got back from the gym and . . .

. . . while usually I really do enjoy my Tuesday afternoon "spin" class, I just want to say for the record:

I cannot sprint to Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work."

I don't think the rest of the class could, either.

Please switch back to Fergie.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Trapped

I cannot believe that I haven't yet written about the most exciting social event in recent history: The San Francisco Film Society's presentation of a sing-a-long version of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet." In case anyone is not yet aware of this "hip-hopera," let me just say that it is a 22-part music video series, created by -- and starring -- R. Kelly, that chronicles the intertwined adulterous affairs of a bunch of different people, including Omar from "The Wire," with a narration sung entirely by the RK himself. It's not really worth trying to describe the plot (for background, read this very funny article from the New York Times --which describes it as a tale of "violence, infidelity, and violent infidelity"). Suffice it to say, though, that it starts off with R. Kelly hiding in his lover's closet brandishing a Beretta, and eventually involves a midget.

Anyway, on a very rainy Friday night, a huge crowd of people gathered in a performance space in San Francisco to watch the entire 22-part series and, the theory went, sing along to it. (This is made easier by the fact that R. Kelly uses the same beat, background and melody for the entire 'hopera.) Personally, I wasn't sure what to expect -- my last singalong experience was a "Sound of Music" screening in the Castro theater, for which they gave out goodie bags containing plastic springs of Edelweiss, and people dressed up as toast and jam. It was one of the best nights of my life. At Trapped in the Closet, the goodie bags were replaced by special R. Kelly condoms, printed with the tagline "Oh my god, it's a rubber (rubber, rubber)" -- which, if you've seen chapter 2, is hysterical. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two experiences. (Though, if there are any creative types out there with time on their hands, I'd highly suggest that someone do a Trapped in the Closet/Sound of Music mashup in which Julie Andrews and R. Kelly switch places.)

The night got off to a great start when the emcee came out and welcomed the crowd by singing his own verse of trapped in the closet, complete with falsetto, and then invited audience members to come up on stage and sing about their own days in the manner of R. Kelly. Having not forseen this audience participation, I was unprepared and hovered in the back, next to a large speaker, as some guy named Matt got up on stage and, well, totally rocked it. He must have been a plant. But I digress. My point in this post is to say, first, that if you are offered a chance to go to an R. Kelly singalong, I highly, highly recommend that you take it. And secondly, some of the more useful aspects of going to an actual singalong, instead of watching the entire series on your computer, are as follows:

-if you watch it alone, you will get confused and bored
-there will be no one around to turn to and sing, "shit, think, shit, think" every time a decision needs to be made
-you won't get an R. Kelly rubber
-you won't get to listen to the commentary provided by the emcee, which was not only funny, but quite useful. Like, for example, when he pointed out that while things make relatively good sense up to chapter 6, after that some point -- for some reason never fully explained -- R. Kelly switches from using the first-person to the third, suddenly morphing into two separate characters: the ethereal, white suited R. Kelly narrator figure, and the plot's protagonist, who suddenly starts being referred to as "Sylvester"
-the night probably won't end with a dance party

In summary, I highly recommend singalongs of all types, especially those that include free gin tastings and mandatory mid-screening dance breaks to "Bump and Grind." Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

The hummingbirds your mother warned you about

I just spent the morning blogging for Broadsheet, but what I really wanted to be writing about was not feminism, but hummingbirds. See, because thanks to Peter's weekend efforts, we now have not one, not two, but (I think) four hummingbird feeders hanging on various eaves around the house. And I'm worried about our influence.

It took the hummingbirds a long time to find our first feeder -- they would flutter around the jasmine and lavender blossoms and ignore the the feeder hanging just several feet beyond their natural reach. In doing so, they were continuing their work as pollinators, stepping in to fill the role of those mysteriously disappearing bees and keeping nature's magical homeostasis in working order. But, the thing is, they were really hard to see.

So imagine our delight when we saw the first hummingbird at the kitchen feeder. At first it seemed to think its discovery was too good to be true -- it would hover, take a sip of the sweet, sweet sugar water, and flit off to real blossom to drink some actual nectar -- only to find itself inexplicably pulled back to those huge red plastic flowers that just tasted SO FUCKING GOOD. A few days later, we saw the same hummingbird -- except that instead of nervously flitting around the feeder and darting off, it was now sitting on the edge of the feeder, drinking. It didn't seem to care when I walked up to the sink and stared at it from three feet. Just kept sipping. I'm no ornithologist, but I didn't think hummingbirds were known for their abilities to chillaxinate.

Anyway, we just put a feeder up on the front porch this weekend and they've found it already. Something about this seemed wrong to me, but I tried my best to reframe: maybe our new feeder was essentially a franchise of a successful restaurant -- you know, like we've got Chez Panisse out back and this is the new Cafe. We had good reviews on Yelp. The people love us. What can you do?

But I watched another hummingbird out there this morning, and it seems a little less like we're running a restaurant and more like we've opened a crack house. There was a different bird out there, also sitting, taking big swigs of sugar water as if it were an alcoholic nursing a bottle. I counted as it took at least ten hits before another hummingbird flew up, attacked the guy drinking, and they both flew away, chirping angrily. I think it's the start of turf wars.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Meteorologists Gone Wild

It's a nasty day here in Oakland, with heavy rain predicted all the way through the weekend. I'm trying to ignore it, though, because I think that complaining about what is probably the 10th day of rain all year will be proof that I have gone west-coast soft. Oh, no! It's gloomy out for the SECOND DAY IN A ROW! This is bull shit!

I will say, though, that I've been checking weather.com a lot since I was supposed to go down to Big Sur this week and had to cancel because of rain. And I noticed, on my latest visit, that there are flood and wind advisories for both Oakland and Big Sur right now. I read them through, partially out of curiosity and partially because I probably should be doing something else, and noticed that both of the warnings end with rather dramatic statements. "BE SURE TO SECURE ANY LOOSE OBJECTS AROUND YOUR HOUSE TO PREVENT THEM FROM BECOMING FLYING PROJECTILES," says the wind one (they're written in all capital letters, which gives them an additional sense of urgency). The flood advisory has an even better kicker: "MOST FLOOD DEATHS OCCUR IN AUTOMOBILES. BE ESPECIALLY CAREFUL AT NIGHT AND NEVER DRIVE INTO FLOODED ROADWAYS," it says. "TURN AROUND DONT DROWN."

Yikes. So now I'm torn: Do I keep playing it off like a little rain is nothing and allow my garbage cans to sit on the sidewalk untethered? Or do I buy into the advisories, lock down in the house, and bolt down the iron bench on the front porch, lest it come crashing through the window?

Part of me wonders whether this sort of weather is the stuff of meteorologists' dreams: I mean, you spend most of your days getting to say things like, "Mostly cloudy, with a chance of showers." It's not all that often that something juicy comes up, like a flood warning -- and if I were a weather writer, I'd want to milk it. "AFTERNOON RAIN LIKELY. IF OUTSIDE, CLOTHING ALMOST GUARANTEED TO GET WET. TO ALL YOU FELLAS, GRAB AN UMBRELLA."

Maybe that last line was more Rihanna than Storm Field, but you get the point.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Why I Hate Partner Yoga

I'm happy to report that I've got a piece today on Salon called Why I Hate Partner Yoga -- and, even better, my yoga teachers don't seem to hate me for it. In a weird choice (though one that I appreciated) it even had a moment as the cover story -- which meant that readers clicking on the site in hopes of updates on the economy or the presidential race were instead greeted with a large illustration of a sweaty downward facing dog.

Anyway, it seems like a bit of a one-two-punch to then dedicate this blog post to a recent experience I had in a Berkeley meditation class, but I figure I might as well go for broke -- because, as I hope is clear when I write about such things, the problem isn't the people doing the partner yoga, or the ridiculous characters who attend free meditation classes. It's me.

What I'm referring to is a six-week beginners meditation class in Berkeley that Peter and I decided to check out. I already know that I'm not a particularly good meditator -- I usually spend the whole time thinking things like, "Wouldn't it be more efficient if I went running?" Or, alternatively, I get existential -- having achieved a brief moment of calm, I'll think to myself "Is this what death is like?" And then I'll think, "No, Catherine, because death is infinite nothingness. You can't feel anything when you're dead." And then I start to have a panic attack. Point being, my previous attempts at meditation have not been very successful.

But I was -- and am -- still excited about this class. Maybe this man, this James Baraz fellow who's been teaching meditation since 1974, could help me. So on a rainy Monday night, we trekked up to the Northbrae Community Church. I realized, as soon as I looked at the other people in the room, that this was going to be difficult.

I'd forgotten that when you offer free classes/talks/discussions on anything in Berkeley, you invite the crazies. There was a woman directly in front of me who had forgone the auditorium's folding chairs in favor of her own yoga mat -- no, actually, two yoga mats -- on the floor, complete with pillow, so that she could lie on the ground during the lecture. But as if that wasn't enough, she had also brought a meditation pillow to prop herself up on when she didn't feel like lying down, and an even larger pillow to put the meditation pillow on top of, to protect her knees.

There was a teacher at the journalism school who used to do things like that -- he conducted all his office meetings while lying on a couch, and used to lie down on the floor in the middle of class. It was unnerving until you realized that during one of his previous reporting gigs, he'd been beaten so severely by Chinese cops that he'd permanently injured his back and could no longer sit still for more than a few minutes without being in pain.

I don't think that was what was happening with this woman, though -- instead, she just seemed restless. As the teacher (who was quite good, by the way) talked, she kept hopping from cushion to yoga mat, yoga mat to cushion, like a nervous bird -- an image made even stronger when she pulled out a muffin in a plastic bag and started to sniff it, like a chickadee examining a bread crumb. (In her defense, I think she was just trying to "experience" the muffin -- but still.) Occasionally she would hop up to her feet and just stand there, smiling. When the teacher started talking about something called "bare awareness," she responded by putting her hands in a prayer position in front of her chest and giving a little bow.

As is probably obvious from that extended description, I was having difficulty keeping my focus on the class itself. I kept thinking mean thoughts, like, "Who the fuck brings their yoga mats to a lecture?" and "Why are you sniffing that muffin?"

I'm hoping that for the rest of the class, I'm able to ignore the woman and her cushioned brethren (seriously -- there were a lot of people with props) and focus on what the teacher's actually trying to say -- since I'm pretty sure that the four principles of bare awareness did not have to do with judging strangers, even those who have a Bring-Your-Own-Yoga-Mat approach to meditation. We'll see how that one goes.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Will there be blood? Or just a two and a half hour waste of time?

Just when I was worried that my nascent career as a movie critic might be dying, due to the fact that I don't go to many movies and tend to hate most of the ones I see, I found something else to write about: There Will Be Blood.

It is, as most people know, the much hyped movie based on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil," starring the creepy-as-ever Daniel Day Lewis as an oil tycoon gone wild. And it is, in my often disputed opinion, really fucking boring.

Yes, I know what you're saying. I should never write movie reviews; I don't "get" genius; I have horrible taste, etc. That all may be true, but when I walked out of the movie theater last night, I promised myself I'd write something -- mostly to justify that use of two and a half hours of my Saturday night.

Because despite the movie's provocative title -- not to mention the jarring, stressful soundtrack, written by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood -- it's surprisingly dull. The movie stretches about thirty years, from the 1890s to late 1920s -- a span of time that you definitely feel, once you've entered the movie's interminable second hour. And yet despite its length, I, at least, never felt any real connection to the characters. Daniel Day Lewis wants oil? Fine. Give it to him. Don't really care. Crazy preacher character wants him to become baptised and accept Jesus as his savior? Fair enough. Take your little straw cross, make some profits, bash in some heads, and wrap things up already. The most compelling character in the story to me was Day Lewis's "son," orphaned early in the film during a mining accident. Only problem is, he doesn't talk much -- and then goes deaf halfway through the film (oops! Spoiler alert!), which means he spends the second half of the movie even quieter than he'd been in the first. That's about it for characters. (This is not to say, by the way, that Day Lewis is bad. I actually think he should get an Oscar for his performance. I'm just not interested in the character he was playing.)

Also, as anyone who knows me is very, very aware, I hate violent movies. So it might be strange to hear me say that, after the title of the movie, I was a little let down. Hardly any blood, people. I'd suggest turning your head, as I did, during the shooting and head-bashing scenes, but other than that? No blood.  I mention that not because I was craving more head bashing/shooting scenes (if I'd wanted that, I'd have seen No Country for Old Men), but because I wanted dramatic tension, some conflict, something to care about. Instead, no one really challenged Day Lewis's character in his quest for oil; he didn't appear to have any aspirations other than money and a pipeline and a whole lot of whiskey. Which, if you couldn't figure it out on your own, is not a good recipe for a well-balanced life.

Anyway, point being, this movie didn't particularly bother me, but it didn't entertain me either. And it was long. And I was in the middle of the row. And, more than anything, I do not understand why people are calling it an epic, let alone something that goes to the "depths of the human psyche." Really? Is it because of its set design? Or Day Lewis's moustache? I guess it's a good thing most other films don't attempt to examine our psyche's depths, since apparently they're really fucking boring.

Lest it sound like I am just entirely a contrarian hater, though, I should point out that I also recently saw Juno and loved it. Loved it, loved it. Couldn't have asked for more. Would watch it again. But as for There Will Be Blood? Consider me your cautionary whale.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Happy New Year!

Hello, my salty friends. 2008 is upon us and my review of Into the Wild is still inciting rage from fans of Alex Supertramp. Amazing! I should write about movies more often.

The most recent addition are several angry rants by someone going by the name "Warnie" (though his comments show up as being posted by "Joe" ) who wrote three comments to the entry and then sent me a personal email that began with the greeting, "You are an idiot." To which I say, right back at you!

Feel free to check out his diatribe if you'd like, but I gather from his response that he thinks that my "dislike of nature is evident" and that if I can't deal with a protagonist dying at the end, I should "clean out my diaper" and turn on my favorite disney movie because my "conservative nature is not fit to be reviewing movies." Also, I apparently like, totally missed the deliberate parallel between Alex's "king of the world/top of the mountain" pose and Titanic -- movies which both "showed the relationship between the two rebellious, adventurous youngsters looking for a new life, and both of them being the protagonist die knowing their life has been a success." Silly me, not realizing the emotional impact Sean Penn was going for by making a reference to a movie best remembered for a hit song from Celine Dion.

Anyway, I don't really see what the fuss is about me hating a movie that, in my opinion, sucked donkey balls. That's fine. Buy yourself the director's cut DVD and spend another three hours of your life with a self-absorbed whiney brat. For the record, I should point out that I also hated Pulp Fiction and the Big Lebowski, which I understand, from many friends' outraged responses, is not a majority opinion.  I could tell you why I thought they were dreadful, except I've got to clean out my rifle and go shoot some helpless baby deer.

Thanks, Wernie!

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Orchid Killer

I was reading through some old blog posts from the winter of 2004 the other day and had a moment of nostalgia for my former self, living in a shag-carpeted Berkeley apartment with a termite infestation in the bathroom. These days I'm living in a lovely place in Oakland, where I actually am able to see from where I'm sitting two, count them, two bouquets of flowers. (And while I could suggest improvements over the bathroom's linoleum, there are no termites yet.) Granted, said flower bouquets were impulsive New Year's purchases and are unlikely to indicate a fresh flower trend, but for the moment, they're lovely.

Anyway, point being that I was trying to figure out what inconsequential domestic anxiety could take the place of another 2004 issue: a large spider dangling outside of my bedroom window. I think I've figured it out. It's the orchids.

A couple months ago, Peter's parents were visiting the west coast. We took a walk around the lake, and stumbled upon an orchid show. It didn't take long before what started as a casual curiosity about an orchid display morphed into a capitalistic desire to take some of the orchids home. They were so pretty. I wanted all of them.

So we ended up with two orchids, a stereotypical white and pink one that's sitting in a tree-stump-turned-orchid-pot in the living room, and another orchid sprig attached to a cork wedge that's dangling off the kitchen window. I am relatively sure that both are going to die. But I don't know what to do about it -- the bigger orchid's potting chips don't hold water, so every time I try to give it some moisture the water just leaks out the bottom. And the one in the kitchen keeps developing yellow leaves that fall off when I touch them (this wouldn't be such a big deal except that the plant only had like, six leaves to begin with). I know what you're saying: Water it! But the thing is, the kind man who sold it to me (who admitted to having over 300 orchid clippings growing on his apartment walls) said that yellow leaves were a sign of too MUCH water. How this can be reconciled with the fact that I rarely remember to water it is unclear. All I know is that I think its days are numbered, and I just hope it manages to pop out a flower before I do it in.

The termites were so much easier.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Martha Rocha Cares About My Anaconda

Now that I've moved away from Berkeley, spam subject headers appear to be taking the place of bumper stickers as objects of my obsession (I no longer have to deal with quite as many exhortations to "Visualize Whirled Peas). I was just emptying out my junk mail folder and got one that might actually beat the "kiss of the womb" messages referenced earlier in this blog. Apparently "Martha Rocha" felt the need to invite me to "Grow an anaconda out of [my] trouser snake."

I especially like this one because it seems like it could be a gardening tip. Perhaps Martha works at Ace Garden Supplies and knows that I try to grow herbs. Could a "trouser snake" be a reference to a modern-day Chia pet, preseeded with tarragon? Is an "anaconda" an exotic new fruit?

Alas, her anaconda is less herbs-de-provence, and more Sir Mix-a-Lot. But still. It never hurts to dream.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.