My Ode To 2012

In addition to my duties as a Features Reporter at the station where I work, I also book guest for the morning news show.   As a favor to my friend Lana Hughes, who’s also one of the anchors, I booked a  woman who at the height of her Hollywood career–at a time when her star was rising to an incredible apex–turned her back on fame and fortune and became a nun.   Mother Dolores, was once known as Dolores Hart, one of those beautiful cool blonde starlets (the kind Hitchcock  would have obsessed over).   She starred in the early 1960′s spring break epic, Where The Boys Are, one of Lana’s favorite movies.    She played Merritt, a beautiful, but brainy college Sophomore  from a northern university buried beneath early spring snow, who comes to Florida (where the boys are) for Spring Break.    Merritt was the one in the perpetual up do who wanted love and all its trappings, but demonstrated just enough sexual curiosity mixed with restraint to make this 1961 celluloid classic the moral imperative it was. 

She was pretty, wasn’t she?   

Smart, too and studio execs loved her as much as the cameras did.   She was called ‘the next Grace Kelly’.    She starred in ten movies and made more money every time she signed a movie deal.    She was in “Come Fly With Me” in which she played a stewardess (as they were referred to back then) and also gave Elvis is first on-screen kiss.

While in New York appearing on Broadway, a friend suggested a little weekend R&R at a convent in Bethlehem, Connecticut.  Born and raised a Catholic forced to endure a parochial education, a weekend with nuns (and relatively cloistered ones, at that) was the LAST thing this popular actress wanted, but  she agreed to go.   In her recent interview with Lana, Dolores Hart said she knew something was different the minute her foot touched the patrol grounds on which The Abbey of Regina Laudis called home.   In a matter of days, it became an urging;  a deep-seeded longing that  came over her quickly and went from a whisper to a scream in no time flat.  It beckoned her–confounded her conventional wisdom.  She was a successful actress; a career that had already beaten the odds.  Her heart was the last hold out.   At that point, her soul needed no convincing.

Dolores Hart not only heard God’s clarion call; she also answered it.  

Goodbye Hollywood.   So long, wealth and the adoration of  a million fans  and any man she wanted.   

But she chose God.

I am fascinated by this…this…’committment’ to devotion and avocation.  

I suppose I know something about it.    For example, my lifelong desire to become a  journalist.   It never hit me like a lightning bolt…it was something I always knew I wanted.   It was innate.     I was born with it.  And every other job I’ve had outside broadcasting or journalism left me bored and feeling unfulfilled.  Invariably, I  always came back to the microphone.    I will always come back to the keyboard.   Am I devoted to my craft?  Yes, but it was never to the extent of saying good-bye to my MAC cosmetics, Narciso Rodriguez perfume, my Hermes Berkin (that will someday own) and my abject attraction to the opposite sex.   I don’t think I could ever exercise temperance in any form or fashion–I am neither  that principled OR  disciplined and there are times God help me, when screaming “SHIT” and “ASSHOLE” at the top of my lungs feels completely remedial.

And wanting to get laid is essential.

Yet, at this stage of my life, I suppose one could say I practice a varied form of abstinence.   And right now, that’s okay and that’s also where I am.  I’m not at all elated with my life, but I am ihn a neccesary place that I am hopeful will eventually open up to more joy.   

I ahve as confession to make:  if I’ve ever used my blow to say that I was happy before or in a good place,  I was lying.   I’ve spent a great deal of time lying to myself about so many things.   The truth is,  I don’t have the energy to do that anymore.   It takes a great amount of exertion and time to keep up with the Joneses in my own head. Additionally, trying to convince myself I was all right when I clearly wasn’t, was such an exercise in futility.  It was like I was in this unending fire fight with a disconnected  part of myself and I had no idea this was an fight that could never be won.   

This is extremely frustrating—like being forced to go to a family reunion against your will and being threatened with being rounded for life if you don’t play with your bratty cousin, who you’ve never liked, but the fact that your just 18 months apart makes that a foregone conclusion.   The game of choice is Battle Ship and you know the little bastard is cheating; lying boldly to your face, saying “missed”, when you KNOW the number you’ve just called out has either hit a section or completely sunk his ship altogether.   

That’s one of the things…that frustration is something I’m making every effort to release in my life.

I read something recently that resonated with me. 

 It’s an awful thing to be at war with oneself. It’s an awful thing to keep fleeing and arriving at the same place, over and over and over again.  

It ain’t a walk in the park to come to terms with the amount of lies you’ve told yourself either.   When I read this (and yes, I HAVE to make an American Horror Story reference here) I was reminded of the scene when Violet realized she was dead and therefore confined to the House.  She’d run out the front door, only to immediately re-enter through the back door.   It didn’t matter when she tried to leave or how…it didn’t matter which door she chose to exit.  She left only to immediately return.   Why would anyone do that to themselves?  Yes, of  course, AHS is just a TV show and as a result, Violet was able to instantaneously enter and exit and exit and enter through the magic of digital editing.   Yet, people live like that all the time.    

I was one of them.

And I no longer want that.  

So for Christmas,  I gave myself the gift of forgiveness.   Forgiving myself for infrations I’ve committed and the way I reacted to the sins commtited against me.  I’m also in the process of learning to make certain allowances–and be perfectly fine with them.  I am learning to allow myself permission not to be in control (actually, to even imply that I was ever in control is just another lie.  I’ve always allowed Life to control me….or rather, I just reacted to whatever it handed me and usually with counter-productive anger and resentment). I’m okay with not knowing all the answers and I’ve allowed myself the right to arrive at the three-pronged  fork in the road and just stand there for as long as I need in order to decide the right direction in which I need to go.

For New Year’s, I’m resolving to be kinder and gentler to someone who I’ve neglected—me.

Sorry to sound self-indulgent, but well, this blog is cheaper than therapy.  And I ask for  your indulgence because I can honestly say that I’m finally arriving at a groovy place.  Where’s that, you ask?   Well, let’s just say I’m hiking up to the  top of   Mt. Contentment.  Once I arrive, could I ever be that happy?  That fulfilled?   As selflessly joy’d up as  Mother Dolores (Hart)  underneath that wimple of hers??

No, but I understand my limits and I’m now perfectly willing to realistically operate within them.   And no more pretense.

Yeah, I’d love to say I love opera but I don’t.   I’d love to say I have the strength and single-mindedness to become a nun, but that’s something I could never do….not when I still have so much Laurie to perfect.   I’m not disputing the proverbial “call”, but its an undeniable fact that some women seek a monastic life because they’re running from something.  The reality is, that could be said for anything—from marrriage to a membership of a country club…to joining an Elk’s Lodge.    We all want and need a sense of belonging;  to be  a vital part that contributes to the whole.   I understand this, but right now, I’m a sisterhood of one and sue me;  no one else is allowed in.    This is one time when there isn’t safety in numbers.   This is one of those  times when my solitude becoems this hyperbaric chamber that promotes true healing.

I’m like a baker who has to work solo and fortunately, I’ve now assembled all the ingredients I need:   

• a cup of patience
• a dash of self restraint
•  a tbsp of pride   
• a smidge of self confidence
• a sprinkling of independence

In the past,  I didn’t get the chemistry involved in the creation of being emotionally self-aware.   Ingredients are the basis of a cake, but the applied heat is what brings it all together.  It’s what turns the batter into cake.  And that is a precise process:  46.9 minutes.  Removing it at 46.8 minutes would render it undercooked;   47 minutes would burn it.   

I just checked my timer:    I’m right at 44.3 minutes.   That little red plastic thing will pop out of my navel when I’m done.    Ain’t turkey roasting technology grand?  

In closing,  I admire Mother Dolores a great deal, but I’m far too self-centered to ever take a leap of faith like that.   Besides, a postulate sounds like something a dermatologist has to lance.     And not only that, I still want to wear jeans and eye liner and laugh at the raunchy ribaldry of Lisa Lampanelli.  Plus, I’ve only been able to deal with my own Catholicism in small doses.

The truth is, I unapologetically like wealth and the material things it can buy.   I enjoy my Michael Kors purses, my huge watches that are as big as trash can lids.   I want to take trips to places where hedonism is welcomed and encouraged and someday…SOMEDAY, I want to find a loving, adoring man who I will allow myself to love and adore.     Oh, how I want to call him my own.

Therefore, it would help tremendously if he were actually named, “My Own”.

Happy New Year. 

Welcome 2012.

Here’s to optimism.

It’s Wednesday: Now What Do I Do???

A baby has been a symbol of the new year for as long as I can remember.   It represents the newness of the year.  Nice symbol.    Cute and cuddly but silly.  It tends to make us think that time can actually be looked upon as a wall that we began building at midnight 1/1/11 and then finished, by putting the  final brick at 11:59 pm 12/31/11.  It would be lovely to think of the year you just lived as this solid mass….conveniently segmented  in its 365 day entirety.    And if we could see the past like that, would it make a difference???

If I look back on 2011, it consisted of the same old, same old…only with the last three months made more interesting, thanks to a little hour-long show on F/X.

For the past  12 Wednesday nights, I’d sit here at my desk;  a dying 32 inch  Panasonic TV assembled during the waning months of the Clinton administration blaring in front of me, teasing me with images from one of the most addictive TV shows I’ve ever encountered.  

American Horror Story was like visual crack for me.   I was hooked in the first few minutes–well before  the first bat wielding red-headed twin entered the evil basement of the  home  we’d soon affectionately know as “Murder House’.

I loved my Wednesday nights.    I’d watch Ghost Hunters on SyFy until  9 pm…then AHS…then at 10pm, I’d switch back to SyFy for a repeat of the Ghost Hunters or  “Fact or Faked” show that I missed at 9.   Or, if the AHS episode was particularly compelling and/or complex OR….my TV went dark at a relevant point or action, I’d watch the encore presentation.

Then I’d sit here at my desk and write about it.

And you’d come here and read my drivel.

How I miss those days.  

I’m not sure I was ever a geek or dweeb in High School.  I was lucky (I guess)  to be just co-dependent enough to get along with everyone–the popular kids, the jocks, the  band nerds, the shit kickers/rednecks and the stoners and the strange, poet types who were caught in a no man’s land somewhere  between brilliance and revolt/arrogance and brazen but awkward self-consciousness. 

 But for 12 weeks from mid October to mid-December, I was the biggest nerd of all.   I sat here, on my throne…..my laptop served as  my scepter and I reigned supreme while  wearing a  thorny  crown of pocket protectors and horned rimmed glasses.

Now that it’s all over, I’m the Baroness of Boredom.

The period right after Christmas through late January is my least favorite time of the year.  It’s the doldrums.   When you work in news, it’s the WORST time because save for the murders at drunken New Year’s Eve parties…the post Christmas “Damn, my bills are through the roof” robberies and carjackings, nothing really happens.  At least, nothing newsworthy.

F/X picked a helluva time to end season one and as ridiculously as it ended.  I don’t care what anyone says, it was lame.   It reminded me of vacationing in Germany in my early teens.   Everywhere we went, there were stunning pastries.  Decorated with a precise beauty and symmetry.  Prettiest things I ever saw.

Worst things I ever tasted.   

Every bite from every dessert…from the North to Bavaria tasted like frosted cardboard.   Apparently Teutonic bakers are stingy with the sugar in everything that’s not strudel. 

I wanted more from AHS.  I wanted a far more complex psychological brain screw from Brad and Ryan.  I wanted to shake my head in DISbelief….not DISgust.

Anyway, crying about it now is spilled milk…and all that that implies.   I’ll get over the insulting ending..probably in February when the creators announce the new cast and location for Season 2.

Here’s what I pilfered from the Chicago Sun Times:

The second season will feature some new and returning faces, but the story of Ben (Dylan McDermott), Vivien (Connie Britton) and Violet Harmon (Taissa Farmiga) ­— who all perished and joined the legion of the undead in the house — has concluded.“Every season of the show will be a different haunting,” Murphy said. “What you saw in the finale was the end of the Harmon house, and the second season of the show will be a brand new home or building to haunt. Just like this year, every season of the show will have a beginning, middle and an end.” Murphy noted he would have the entire cast back in a heartbeat and that were they to return, they would not be playing the leads of the show. Murphy noted that he’s in negotiations with “a handful” of actors from the series to return for the sophomore season of the FX drama — but playing new characters.

If Jessica Lange wins the major awards for which she’ll no doubt nominated, you can bet you bottom “horror” she’ll be back.   Probably not as Constance, but let’s hope it’ll be a character equally as skewed and mean and prejudiced.   You have to admit, she made bigotry kind of cute in and an insular sort of way. 

We can also count on a theme change.  Season One was all about  infidelity.  If the writers are going to sift  through the seven deadlies, they’ve got six more equally engrossing sins from which they can choose and from which wonderful ghostly plotlines can be cobbled.    It’s also my understanding that there  supposedly plenty of ‘clues”  in the last three episodes that should indicate where the next haunted location will be.

Oh really??????     I’m still trying to figure out what in the hell the clues “cello” and “red cello” meant in the first season. 

This “broadcast one season,  then switch to something altogether different”  modus operandi the norm in the UK and also in Mexico.    In the country just south of our border, their soap operas end.  British programming has defined beginning, middles and ends, too.  The Brits kill off main characters all the time (yet somehow, Graham Norton is still alive???!!??)   Personally,  I don’t see anything wrong with American episodic TV resorting to this.   It’ll keep things fresh and any character from an Erika Kane existence.  

 Lastly, the new year is upon us…or will be in a matter of days.  I am, for the first time in a long time–maybe for the first time ever, rather nonchalant about the coming year.  I used to be hopeful…even optimistic about the opportunities it will bring.  

I’m not this time…and perhaps that just might be the best harbinger of good things…EVER.

I hope yours in safe and happy and rife with wonderful possibilities.

I hope your heart soars and your mind swells…and not in a encephalitic way.  

You know, with knowledge and curiosity.

I hope love finds you and you find it.

I wish you patience and tolerance.

I want joy for you and yours.

I hope you get to know a priest and exorcise more. 

I also hope the Mayas just ran out of room after December 21, 2012 on that rock calendar carving thing of theirs.

Happy New Year, ya’ll.      

And I bestow that wish upon you,  courtesy of Time.   As you can see, over the past year, Baby 2011 and has grown into a literate and artistic third grader with a love of chalk boards and comfy, turquoise Nike mules.

What a year it was…..and what a year it could have been.