Sweetheart #9

 Hello friends, this here is #9 of the zine I published in middle school and high school, published April 1996. 

are these reviews?

I have been incredibly depressed.  To put as blasé a spin on it as I can, since that seems the most apt tone for a blog no one reads, I’ll just say I’m going through a 1/3 life crisis (and/or I am between effective anti-depressants).   Accordingly, I have been treating myself with kid gloves, which primarily entails letting myself go balls-out in indulging my constant need for entertainment, even though this indulgence is inconvenient for a fulltime worker, attentive mother, and sometimes mean but always well-meaning wife like me.  Yet, I’ve somehow managed to squeeze in many, many plotlines these days.  

When I get a spare moment at work, since I take my lunch at my desk, I have been reading the novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, which I downloaded from the free ebooks (for classics) website Project Gutenberg.  This is really a great book.  I usually gravitate towards contemporary fiction, but since I discovered the Project Gutenberg site, I have gotten myself to read several classics, and it’s been comforting to step outside of time.  David Copperfield has a worthily famous opening; the first chapter is called “I Am Born” and starts: 

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

How great to start at the BEGINNING like that. 

For further proof that I have been keeping myself heavily distracted, here is the list of DVD’s I have watched in the past week: 

Brave (2012)

Bored to Death Season 3 Disc 1 (2011)

Mad Men Season 5 Disc 4 (2012)

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 7 Discs 1 & 2 (2011)

Ted (2012)

Ted and Brave are completely disposable, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hard to write about, because part of me doesn’t approve of this show.  Its sense of humor is very ugly and mean.  However, somehow the creators are able to convey the fact that they are not mean or spiritually ugly themselves, and though any snob could rightly call this show asinine, I think it’s so funny.  It has cute little absurdities in it, too, like my favorite character Charlie lie-bragging that he’s an expert in “bird law.”  People from my birthplace and current home of Los Angeles have asked me if people are really that bad in Philly, where I lived for 2 years, and I have to break it to them that nope … they are WORSE.  I have never let my bitch flag fly as much as in Philly, because I had so many unpleasant encounters there that I couldn’t even begin to spin to myself as an “oh well, I’ll never see this person again, best just to pick my battles and walk away from this one”-type pep talk.  One time in a Dick’s Sporting Goods (aptly named) I was treated so rudely that I made it to the cash register before creating a scene that started “This store is BULLSHIT!”  Oh boy did I exorcise a lot of swears in that fucking shit-hole of a city.  I am more direct since living there though, and I think that’s an asset.  There is a lot of hemming and hawing in California, and I try to cut to the chase more now.  Anyway, I watched both discs of season 7 in a row on a day when I was too depressed and with too strong of a migraine to go to work, and it sort of cured what ailed me, so I give it a good review. 

Bored to Death is a great show.  The concept of bromance is sort of played out, but when it’s examined in this show, it is still totally “aw…that’s so sweet”-inducing.  There is one scene where the 3 main characters, a young-ish unsuccessful-ish writer, his best friend and their older mentor/father figure, are all sharing a king size bed in matching pajamas, it’s a little slumber party, and it looks so nice, I bet there are a ton of men who wish they had a couple close friends like that that they could just truly be taken care of by and unravel with for a night – what a nice break that’d be from everyday life.  It also made me feel envious and wish I had a couple good friends I could be that comfortable around.  In general I think it’s harder for men to share their feelings and get close to other men, and I feel sorry for them for that, but I also think it’s just a bad side effect of being a grown up of either gender -- it gets hard to make friends.  It’s true that I’m able to be much more open about my feelings than most men I know, sort of without batting an eyelash, but that ability doesn’t necessarily lead to friendship.  Anyway, Bored to Death is a great show and you should all watch it.  It’s so funny and smart and its quirkiness isn’t obnoxious.

Now I come to one of the best things I have seen in a long time, and that is disc 4 of season 5 of Mad Men.  HOLY SHIT.  Matthew Weiner really outdid himself this time.  It’s funny because Disc 3 isn’t currently available from Netflix so we have skipped several episodes of this season, since we went straight from Disc 2 to Disc 4, but even with that hiccup, I was wholly engrossed in every episode, and I really can’t describe how well done these episodes are, and really haunting.  I wonder what Weiner’s influences are (not aesthetically ---- everyone knows the show has a great Danish Modern etc aesthetic, but that’s beside the point), but creatively.  Episode 12, “Commissions and Fees” has a plotline with Sally Draper that feels very Salinger-inspired.   

xoxo robin

Musical Therapy

in 2004 i had open heart surgery. in the long run it was a success, but in the immediate post-op aftermath, my cardiologist, Dr. Dumbfuck (which in English translates to Fatally Incompetent), didn't actually look at any of the echocardiograms he had me wait hours to take, 3 days in a row, and so nobody knew my heart sac was filling up with blood, until my heart almost stopped working one day, and this time when i went back into the hospital, i guess the insurance company weighed the risks of making me leave again asap, and this time they took care of me until my heart was healed. i lived.

in 2005 i had a nervous breakdown, but i'm too sarcastic to ever go fully crazy, so while i was a bit incapable of taking care of myself, i wasn't fully incapable, and therefore i was a day-patient (I didn't have to live at the facility, i could go home at night, not that i wanted to) for 3 weeks at a rehab/mental health facility. the famous one wc fields went to.

we had music therapy on fridays. the woman who facilitated the class looked like a ballerina and was nice and calming. she let people play songs that they related to, as a form of therapy. my closest friend at the institution was, unless he was bullshitting, raised by his grandpa in a cult, had been in Desert Storm, and was an ex-cop. he was on twice the normal dosage of whatever it was he was on, and the side effect was that he basically had amnesia. even though he looked like a jock and i always try to look like a sloppy ne'er do well, he seemed to be sweet on me, he'd get me soda refills at lunch and stuff like that. but he forgot me and got reacquainted with me every day, liking me more on some days than others. One Music Therapy class, the facilitator let him put on one of his songs, and it was Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People." Here are some of the lyrics:

The beautiful people, the beautiful people
It's all relative to the size of your steeple
You can't see the forest for the trees
You can't smell your own shit on your knees

There's no time to discriminate,
Hate every motherfucker
That's in your way

Oh god, it was so funny to see the pretty ballerina smile and close her eyes and nod her head along with the music. "Okay, that was really interesting, very expressive," she said, when the song was over. A middle aged women who was normally really quiet said "I liked it. It reminded me of the rock music we used to listen to when I was younger."

Every song that played during these sessions yielded such fascinating reactions. The Eagles "Desperado" made a lot of us cry. it's really a beautiful song, tacky as it is. I love these lines:

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table.
But you only want the ones
That you can't get.

Desperado,
Ohhhh you aint getting no younger.
Your pain and your hunger,
They're driving you home.

When it was finally my turn to play a song, I chose Elliot Smith's No Name #3. I love the chorus:

a good old fashioned fight
so come on night
everyone is gone
home to oblivion
home to oblivion
home to oblivion

But my friend with the amnesia and the history of falling victim to brutal institutions (a christian cult, the army, the police force), he put on the wrong song. He put on No Name #4, which goes like this:

For a change she got out before he hurt her bad
Took her records and clothes
And pictures of her boy
It really made her sad
Packed it up and didn't look back
I'm okay lets just forget about him
The car was cold and it smelled like old cigarettes and pine
In her bag I saw things she drew when she was mine
Like this one here
Her alone nobody near
What a shame lets just not talk about it
No it doesn't look like you
But you did wear cowboy boots
That's your fame
There's no question about it
Once we got back inside
With one ear to the ground
I was ready to hide
'cos I don't know who's around
and you look scared
it's our secret do not tell okay?
Let's just not talk about it
Don't tell okay?
Let's just forget all about it.

This song sounds to me, obviously, like it's about an abusive relationship. "That was a very pretty song, Robin," the ballerina said, "Are the lyrics significant to you in any way? do they remind you of something that's happened in your own life?" The empathetic therapist thought I'd been in an abusive relationship, and i didn't want to embarrass anyone by admitting that it was the wrong song. I told her, "uh, i've never really listened to the lyrics. i just like how it sounds."

the music therapy class would never hear my own real song choice, the song about going home to oblivion.

it was a strange 3 weeks. most of the people in my group therapy sessions were on the make. we were in a nice, warm waiting room of our real lives, but recovering from psychic incapacitation takes too long and is too sad.