Okay, very limited time tonight as a migraine has set in and, in true Southern fashion, 'I am retiring to my chambers'.
The Mama Drama has temporarily halted itself, and any future moving won't be until February (as some sort of birthday reward for me, I surmise). Negotiations, bribery, and compromise apparently can win the day still...maybe we need to this show on the road from the Ozarks to the Middle East. Don't know how that twice a week vacuuming concession will work among the sand dunes, though. Mama is now warm, dry, and relatively happy driving the church bus once again. Amen.
Secondly, for those of you who have cable and watch USA Network, "Patch Adams" will be airing tomorrow (December 5 in the US, 9pm US EST). So for those of you who know of my adventures as an movie extra (which actually is pretty fun to sit on your ass, eat, and get paid maybe minimum wage), you can search me out again in The Graduation Scene (SPOILER: when Robin Williams moons everyone). I'm on the right, in a God-awful yellow and white polyester number that only fat female extras are given to wear. (But, on the positive, that hair on the blob was my own, and was that naturally curly...once.) I suppose I should be thankful that I was not credited or anything, or else I would be 'Yellow Polyester Blob'. Anyway, depending on how they cut it for broadcast, I'm either in there for about 3 seconds to none at all. That may be my 'contribution' to Hollywood, folks, especially as my Crowd Scene Member from "Kiss the Girls" is gone from all US broadcasts and disks (although I'm in the European/UK version for about 2 seconds!...little victories when you can get them, I say).
I still remember Robin Williams fondly from the limited shooting of "Patch" in Chapel Hill, on the UNC-Chapel Hill main campus and along Franklin Street. Actually, in between stealing a few bites of food from Hector's between takes and makeup towel pat-downs (we filmed in July, never a good time for a sweaty actor in NC), he struck me as quite shy...not quite the manic 'on' comedian we are all so used to seeing on the TV and late night talk shows. While I didn't feel the director of "Patch Adams", Tom Shadyac, had a good 'feel' for the film and the extras he was forever wrangling, in contrast Mr. Williams seemed genuinely humbled and adaptive to his environs...and was always imploring the onlookers to get back to studying, or doing laundry, or doing something other than fawn over him as he was just a 'regular guy'. He made jokes, yes, but he also gave a great deal of inspiration to some hopeful actors and writers who watched at 3am in awe. And he was nothing short of fantastic to the kids who came for an autograph. He never glamourized himself nor the job, though. And he made damn sure to come and talk to the extras and the assembled students and townspeople alike...in actions and not by ego, he came across as not above anybody else in attendance. Humility goes a long way, and even when he's in rehab or been in a film 'bomb', that humility is what I remember, and it's what makes me pull for him, too. I'd endure the polyester blob-suit in an heartbeat to experience that professionalism and compassion with him once more.
Well, maybe not in yellow the next time. And, with no disrespect to Mr. Williams, I've seen enough of his ass.
Showing posts with label Mama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mama. Show all posts
04 December 2006
01 December 2006
Nothing could be finer, than to be in...
...here, in Carolina, apparently.
It's been a very mild week here weatherwise (60Fs-70Fs), but I've found myself drifting over to view the Oz webcams with increasing regularity...wanting a quick return to the heady days of summer days in Sydney, I guess. And just two days ago I was complaining...while cursing the Bondi Beach cam not being consistently operational...how NC has been predicted to have a bad winter to come, which only further advances my longing. Giving up on Bondi, I did find an equally pleasant one to view on Manly Beach, and some slightly-drunken folks there even waved back at us voyeurs yesterday. Ahhh, Oz in the Summertime.
However, as Mother Nature reminded me and so many others here yesterday, it could be worse here in my specific neck of the woods. In fact, it could be much, much worse. I could still be 'back home' say.
Dear Mama (who faces her 'final consultation' with her landlord about her decision to stay or go from her apartment today...the Mama Drama continues) is digging out from a few inches of snow, but worse, several inches of ice underneath the fluffy stuff. And traveling on the curvy rural 'mountain' roads of Arkansas, that's bound to be fun. Especially since she still needs to haul some items off to storage and/or donation centers before that meeting. Even now, she's in command of an automatic all-wheel drive somewhere, with the local farm report blaring from the radio to 'calm her', I am sure. If nothing else, Mama lives to rise to a challenge. I'd feel better if Arkansas only believed in more guardrails.
Further west, our dear Friends of Blog (FOB), Amanda and Melanie, are probably in worse shape. (Moody to FOB...come in, FOB.) They still reside back in my old stomping grounds in the flatlands of Kansas and Oklahoma. They were dead-center in what The Weather Channel last night was calling "the Oklahoma blizzard" (which may be a first for those words to be put together in a single sentence ever). Today, I checked out the nearest TV station of any merit, Channel 8 (KTUL) of Tulsa, and the totals were daunting (see below). Tulsa, definitely an unheralded beautiful city of these United States, apparently got something close to 10 inches. And all of this snowfall comes on top of some earlier ice and heavy rains the region's been having before the snow came a-callin'.
Snowfall totals in NE Oklahoma from 'blizzard' that hit 11/30/06.
Image from KTUL-TV webpage.
Somebody get these people some shovels and a lot of warm cocoa.
It's been a very mild week here weatherwise (60Fs-70Fs), but I've found myself drifting over to view the Oz webcams with increasing regularity...wanting a quick return to the heady days of summer days in Sydney, I guess. And just two days ago I was complaining...while cursing the Bondi Beach cam not being consistently operational...how NC has been predicted to have a bad winter to come, which only further advances my longing. Giving up on Bondi, I did find an equally pleasant one to view on Manly Beach, and some slightly-drunken folks there even waved back at us voyeurs yesterday. Ahhh, Oz in the Summertime.
However, as Mother Nature reminded me and so many others here yesterday, it could be worse here in my specific neck of the woods. In fact, it could be much, much worse. I could still be 'back home' say.
Dear Mama (who faces her 'final consultation' with her landlord about her decision to stay or go from her apartment today...the Mama Drama continues) is digging out from a few inches of snow, but worse, several inches of ice underneath the fluffy stuff. And traveling on the curvy rural 'mountain' roads of Arkansas, that's bound to be fun. Especially since she still needs to haul some items off to storage and/or donation centers before that meeting. Even now, she's in command of an automatic all-wheel drive somewhere, with the local farm report blaring from the radio to 'calm her', I am sure. If nothing else, Mama lives to rise to a challenge. I'd feel better if Arkansas only believed in more guardrails.
Further west, our dear Friends of Blog (FOB), Amanda and Melanie, are probably in worse shape. (Moody to FOB...come in, FOB.) They still reside back in my old stomping grounds in the flatlands of Kansas and Oklahoma. They were dead-center in what The Weather Channel last night was calling "the Oklahoma blizzard" (which may be a first for those words to be put together in a single sentence ever). Today, I checked out the nearest TV station of any merit, Channel 8 (KTUL) of Tulsa, and the totals were daunting (see below). Tulsa, definitely an unheralded beautiful city of these United States, apparently got something close to 10 inches. And all of this snowfall comes on top of some earlier ice and heavy rains the region's been having before the snow came a-callin'.
Image from KTUL-TV webpage.
Somebody get these people some shovels and a lot of warm cocoa.
18 October 2006
The Mama Panic Attack
Okay, I fully am aware I have been slacking here. A few of you have went out of your way to email me privately, a few more to others asking if I had (a) went off to parts unknown without a map, (b) taken ill and retreated to some unfound hovel, or (c) finally won the lottery and just decided to bypass my previous humanitarian ways. It's true I have been working some on my online radio at Live 365, and also have been helping out some friends at their new website, The Tall Poppy Pub, so keeping up with 3 creative projects has been a struggle at best. But, sadly (and this will disappoint some and astonish fewer), it's none of these things. Oh no, it's a tad bit more extraordinary (well, for me, anyways). Instead, it's something and/or someone I've been trying to help since, it seems, like about age 10 (although it's been more the other way around most years LOL).
Welcome, dear readers, to the Continuing Chronicles of Mama.
My Mama...the truest of the true, the bravest of the brave, the angriest of the angry (when she gets so inspired)...has decided to move. With no warning. In the middle of an advancing winter. And it gets better...she doesn't know nor care where she's going. Just all she does know is that she wants to be someplace else than her current apartment by Christmas. And she tells me this by our regular Friday afternoon phone call...last Friday. So, at the proud age of 65, widowed, in fair health but with a overflowing heart, she has decided enough is enough and she's moving on. And, no, she doesn't need help, thank you. She just thought I'd like to know, in case I would be worried or in case "someone else told me first". She said it so matter-of-factly and in such hurried and breathless tones, I was taken aback for a minute or two and actually had to ask for a repeat of the information.
The devil's in the details, and that's the troubling part of this. So far, the status is 'everything's fine' and absolutely no details beyond that are forthcoming...very un-Mamalike. Mama, though known to be a wild hair in her teenage years (considering it was the 1950's and rural), is not known for her spontaneous decisions as of late (say the last 40+ years). She has, in fact, chastised me for my travels because they were 'too openly planned', my friends for 'being too diverse and unknown' (which the latter in my teenage years could be loosely interpreted as 'gay'), my ideas for being 'too impractical and unrealistic'. (Mama can be a real pick-me-upper at times; if she knew anything about their culture, she could go head to head with a Greek mother and probably win.) She's lived in small towns...for almost three decades...that's smaller in population than my current apartment community and its whopping eight, two-storey buildings. In the four calls we've had since the announcement, Mama's given up nothing and seems totally resigned to making a final decision only when she absolutely has to and not a moment before.
Now, for those of you (especially the women) my age (mid-thirties) or younger, this is enough to cause one temporary panic. Or maybe not so temporary. One unspoken theory is that maybe she's wanting to come live with me, as she clearly adored it last year. And, while I love her dearly and would protect her to the death, the position of my mother moving in with me brings up a whole multitude of potential dilemmas, such as: (1) whose rules govern the household...my new ones or her established ones?; (2) how do I define 'my' space and limits versus hers?; (3) how do I establish myself as an adult in her eyes, especially someone like me who will 'always be her baby'?; and, here's the ringer of (4) how do I help her start over a new life for her, when I haven't even figured out the first one for myself?? Those of us from spoilt or only-children upbringings don't know anything other than having an undivided attention of our parents as children, but we are so adverse to anything remotely close to a role reversal hitting us twenty, thirty, or forty years (or more) on. While Mr. Right has not arrived on the scene yet and Mother Nature will not allow me to have my own child, I still have hopes of having my own family someday, someway, as happenstance as it may come about. Somehow I always had imagined Mama coming back into my everyday family scene later.
The eggheads in the media say if you've somehow made it out 'in the world' on your own, the 20s, the 30s, and the 40s (and maybe soon the 50s?) are your trailblazing years...what you do during this time sets what you'll be able to do later financially, physically, spiritually, mentally even. The years of taking care of ones' parents are supposed to be 'later on', whenever the hell 'later on' hits. But what happens to those parents who slaved over children and two jobs and sick relatives and poor credit...who didn't get to 'trailblaze'...do they automatically get shortchanged by default later on if they 'missed their window'?? Dear Mama has assured me that she's in as a good health as can be expected given her age and history, so that took an emotional load off my psyche. I'm not so sure what bothers me so about this: is it the feeling that she wants to come live near me and I selfishly think it will crimp my style, or is it the feeling that I am jealous of her decision...and, moreover, her determination and ability to do so...on a fixed budget? I've always been a fan of the "Papa Don't Preach" theory of life: solutions not sermons, who the hell cares the reasons why and how sometimes. I take inventory every so often of all the things I want to do still, and then days like Friday I realize she's less than 30 years my senior and certainly may have that same kind of list, too. It's amazing how I think I may still 'hit my stride' someday soon, but think hers is already over...and she's the one who has done so much more. Additionally, I want her to live by the same code I hate adhering to when answering her...the why, the what, the who, the where, the when, the endless Q&A monologue that I always flippantly blow off when she's asking the questions. Looking at it that way, one has to wonder just which of us treats the other most like an equal adult.
Maybe she just wants to move closer here for the warm weather, or maybe she wants to see some tall trees for a change. Maybe she wants to learn Spanish, a language that amazingily has not ambushed its way into her current local culture...yet.
Maybe she just wants to move to be closer to me, or the beach, or the mountains, or the nuclear power plant people are protesting against. Maybe she wants to find the voice she's lost in small towns across the Midwest, silenced all these years for fear of offending other townsfolk.
Maybe she just wants to get the fuck away from her older neighbours getting ill and dying around her, or wants to know she can still be lively and optimistic, or maybe she doesn't want to spend her time alternating between hospices, nursing homes, churches, bingo parlours, hospitals, and funeral homes.
Maybe she just wants a change while she still can, without having to explain it to anybody...and certainly not to me. Maybe she just wants to be someone else, or something else, before she dies...which she is certainly more than entitled to achieve. And certainly everything I would ever hope for her and her happiness.
Maybe I'm just worrying way too much about this change in her life and maybe everything is okay, even if I don't immediately believe that. Or, maybe, God forbid, I'm just turning into my Mama, as she gradually did in some small ways with hers.
We can only hope.
Welcome, dear readers, to the Continuing Chronicles of Mama.
My Mama...the truest of the true, the bravest of the brave, the angriest of the angry (when she gets so inspired)...has decided to move. With no warning. In the middle of an advancing winter. And it gets better...she doesn't know nor care where she's going. Just all she does know is that she wants to be someplace else than her current apartment by Christmas. And she tells me this by our regular Friday afternoon phone call...last Friday. So, at the proud age of 65, widowed, in fair health but with a overflowing heart, she has decided enough is enough and she's moving on. And, no, she doesn't need help, thank you. She just thought I'd like to know, in case I would be worried or in case "someone else told me first". She said it so matter-of-factly and in such hurried and breathless tones, I was taken aback for a minute or two and actually had to ask for a repeat of the information.
The devil's in the details, and that's the troubling part of this. So far, the status is 'everything's fine' and absolutely no details beyond that are forthcoming...very un-Mamalike. Mama, though known to be a wild hair in her teenage years (considering it was the 1950's and rural), is not known for her spontaneous decisions as of late (say the last 40+ years). She has, in fact, chastised me for my travels because they were 'too openly planned', my friends for 'being too diverse and unknown' (which the latter in my teenage years could be loosely interpreted as 'gay'), my ideas for being 'too impractical and unrealistic'. (Mama can be a real pick-me-upper at times; if she knew anything about their culture, she could go head to head with a Greek mother and probably win.) She's lived in small towns...for almost three decades...that's smaller in population than my current apartment community and its whopping eight, two-storey buildings. In the four calls we've had since the announcement, Mama's given up nothing and seems totally resigned to making a final decision only when she absolutely has to and not a moment before.
Now, for those of you (especially the women) my age (mid-thirties) or younger, this is enough to cause one temporary panic. Or maybe not so temporary. One unspoken theory is that maybe she's wanting to come live with me, as she clearly adored it last year. And, while I love her dearly and would protect her to the death, the position of my mother moving in with me brings up a whole multitude of potential dilemmas, such as: (1) whose rules govern the household...my new ones or her established ones?; (2) how do I define 'my' space and limits versus hers?; (3) how do I establish myself as an adult in her eyes, especially someone like me who will 'always be her baby'?; and, here's the ringer of (4) how do I help her start over a new life for her, when I haven't even figured out the first one for myself?? Those of us from spoilt or only-children upbringings don't know anything other than having an undivided attention of our parents as children, but we are so adverse to anything remotely close to a role reversal hitting us twenty, thirty, or forty years (or more) on. While Mr. Right has not arrived on the scene yet and Mother Nature will not allow me to have my own child, I still have hopes of having my own family someday, someway, as happenstance as it may come about. Somehow I always had imagined Mama coming back into my everyday family scene later.
The eggheads in the media say if you've somehow made it out 'in the world' on your own, the 20s, the 30s, and the 40s (and maybe soon the 50s?) are your trailblazing years...what you do during this time sets what you'll be able to do later financially, physically, spiritually, mentally even. The years of taking care of ones' parents are supposed to be 'later on', whenever the hell 'later on' hits. But what happens to those parents who slaved over children and two jobs and sick relatives and poor credit...who didn't get to 'trailblaze'...do they automatically get shortchanged by default later on if they 'missed their window'?? Dear Mama has assured me that she's in as a good health as can be expected given her age and history, so that took an emotional load off my psyche. I'm not so sure what bothers me so about this: is it the feeling that she wants to come live near me and I selfishly think it will crimp my style, or is it the feeling that I am jealous of her decision...and, moreover, her determination and ability to do so...on a fixed budget? I've always been a fan of the "Papa Don't Preach" theory of life: solutions not sermons, who the hell cares the reasons why and how sometimes. I take inventory every so often of all the things I want to do still, and then days like Friday I realize she's less than 30 years my senior and certainly may have that same kind of list, too. It's amazing how I think I may still 'hit my stride' someday soon, but think hers is already over...and she's the one who has done so much more. Additionally, I want her to live by the same code I hate adhering to when answering her...the why, the what, the who, the where, the when, the endless Q&A monologue that I always flippantly blow off when she's asking the questions. Looking at it that way, one has to wonder just which of us treats the other most like an equal adult.
Maybe she just wants to move closer here for the warm weather, or maybe she wants to see some tall trees for a change. Maybe she wants to learn Spanish, a language that amazingily has not ambushed its way into her current local culture...yet.
Maybe she just wants to move to be closer to me, or the beach, or the mountains, or the nuclear power plant people are protesting against. Maybe she wants to find the voice she's lost in small towns across the Midwest, silenced all these years for fear of offending other townsfolk.
Maybe she just wants to get the fuck away from her older neighbours getting ill and dying around her, or wants to know she can still be lively and optimistic, or maybe she doesn't want to spend her time alternating between hospices, nursing homes, churches, bingo parlours, hospitals, and funeral homes.
Maybe she just wants a change while she still can, without having to explain it to anybody...and certainly not to me. Maybe she just wants to be someone else, or something else, before she dies...which she is certainly more than entitled to achieve. And certainly everything I would ever hope for her and her happiness.
Maybe I'm just worrying way too much about this change in her life and maybe everything is okay, even if I don't immediately believe that. Or, maybe, God forbid, I'm just turning into my Mama, as she gradually did in some small ways with hers.
We can only hope.
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