SAG Awards and Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger (Posted on Flickr by Elywt)






I watched the SAG Awards last night. For my friends in foreign lands, that is the Screen Actors Guild Awards (the actors unions). It was great how they had many actors discuss the importance of unions. Karl Marx of course also discussed the importance of unions. Old Karl didn't want folks to be exploited in the work place and wanted their rights protected. Imagine that?

Anyway, I really wanted Hal Holbrook to win for his performance in into the wild. but Javier Bardem was also great in No Country for Old Men. Javi won. I was pleased to see that Ruby Dee won for american gangster. The scene they showed last night is the scene that was worthy of that award. Great film.

Hal Holbrook and Emile Hirsh, posted on Flickr by Nicolas Frederic



Lastly, I loved that Daniel Day Lewis won. He was great in the film There Will Be Blood. The last scene in the bowling alley I am sure got the religious folks wound up. I, of course, loved what Daniel Day Lewis made the preacher say. I could have lived without what Dan Day Lewis did in that scene.

Dan Day Lewis dedicated his award to Heath Ledger. I loved what he said about Ledger. I have got to tell you that news of Heath's death last week made me so very sad. Such a great young actor.

I love him for accepting the role in brokeback mountain. Such an important movie. Daniel Day Lewis commented on the scene at the end in the mobile home in front of the closet. I also thought that was one of the most powerful scenes you could see from an actor. I am sure most of you thought the same.. That scene gave me the shivers.

Day Lewis commented on Ledger's performance in Monster's Ball as well. Ledger was Billy Bob Thornton's son. He was the one who had a hooker come to his hotel room. That scene with the hooker was just so powerful. And I am not talking about the actual sex.

Another movie worthy of look is called Candy. I rented it after saw Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. It is a great film and an amazing performance.

I read in some obits that he is being compared to James Dean. Also read that his parents named him after Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. His sister was named after Catherine. I loved that book.

My Muy Caliente Rafael Nadal Fantasy

Photo of Rafael Nadal taken by Blurette

So let me share my fantasy of Rafa. I am a journalist and am trying to get the first interview after the match. I sneak into his locker room waiting for him to emerge from the shower. I am sitting next to his towel on a bench. When he walks out all wet and glisteny, I stand up and say, "is this what you are looking for?" I snap the towel open and hold it next to my side in a bullfighter like stance. I smile and say, "ole."

Open Letter to Doris Lessing

Photo of Doris Lessing taken by Chris Saunders

Dear Ms. Lessing,
Congratulations on a much deserved Nobel Prize. I would like to share what your book, The Golden Notebook, means to me.

I will begin with London. I am from the United States, however, I moved to London with my New Zealander boyfriend in 1987. We met while living in the greater Los Angeles area, Newport Beach to be exact.

Before we moved to London, I worked as a waitress at an elite restaurant, wore the latest fashions, drank expensive wines, drove a trendy car. However, even through my debauchery and shallow life, I continued to read literature.

While living in London, I read and loved The Guardian newspaper. The Guardian was so very different from the major newspapers in my country. I was also reading Dosteovsky, Gunter Grass, Isak Dineson, Vonnegut, et al. I would think about these books after I read them. One day, while wondering through Covent Garden, I stopped in the General Store and bought a little journal. I began to write little notes about the books in this journal. You see Ms. Lessing, I was pretending I was a literature major at university.

I worked at a cafe on High Holburn called, My Old Dutch, near the West End. At the cafe, I met the most amazing women I have ever encountered in my life to this day. One from Italy, one from Sardinia, and one had an English father and Spanish mother.

Agostina from Sardinia had just returned from a six month journey through South America. Carmen from Italy had many lovers a dozen years younger banging on her door at all hours of the night begging to be let in. The brilliant English/Spanish girl, Glamorous Janice, was working on her law degree and sleeping with a black man who read the tabloid called The Sun...or was it The Standard. It was the tabloid with the half naked woman on page three. Anyway...

All of these women were so strong and adventurous. We spent nearly every afternoon together when our lunch shift ended at 2pm until 6pm when we had to return for the dinner shift.

We walked to Convent Garden/Neal's Yard to have lunch at Food for Thought, a cheap, but good vegetarian cafe.. We shared stories, discussed the cultural differences between our countries, and of course discussed our men.

These women had such amazing stories and lives. So well-traveled. They opened up a whole new world to me. I felt that my life thus far in the culturally vacuous wasteland of Los Angeles was meaningless.

Carmen had coincidentally moved to New Zealand with a boyfriend she met in London who was filthy rich, but tight with his money. She lasted less than a year in Wellington before running back to London. She shared with me countless horror stories of her time there.

My boyfriend also came from a wealthy family and was tight with his money. Carmen kept telling me how New Zealand was like stepping back in time in terms of how they viewed a woman's role. Carmen was a devout feminist and could not tolerate this sort of view.

As a matter of fact, when I began having trouble with my boyfriend, Carmen kept warning me not to go to New Zealand with him. We were planning to move to his home in New Zealand sometime in the fall.

I spent a four hour lunch with Carmen on the day I was to purchase the one way tickets to New Zealand. We consumed two bottles of Pinot Grigio while I listened to Carmen's list of reasons not to go to New Zealand.

At the end of this marathon lunch, I told Carmen that if I did not go, I may wonder the rest of my life if I made the right decision. I told her London may be why we were having problems since my boyfriend and I got along so well in California. Carmen and I walked... more like stumbled and staggered across the street to the travel agent's where I purchased non-refundable one way tickets to New Zealand.

We left London on yet another bone chilling cold and rainy November morning. I was happy to leave the weather behind, but so sad to leave my new friends who had become like sisters to me.

While in New Zealand I was feeling very much like I wanted more from my life than being a wife, country club memberships, tennis with the other wives, etc. I told my boyfriend that I wanted to go back to university. I was 29 at the time. He said I was too old.

To make a long story short, shortly after my boyfriend crushed my dream of a university education, I was home one afternoon escaping my mundane reality with the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. This book lifted me out of my house and flew me across oceans to the far away and exotic country of Colombia into the lives of the characters in the story.

I had all the french doors and windows open in our country house outside Wellington on this warm fall day.

I put a pot of potatoes on to boil for dinner in between chapters. I did not notice or smell that the water had burned down. The potatoes were on the verge of burning when my boyfriend came home. The cross breeze from the open windows and doors kept the smell from reaching me in the living room. He picked up the pot and threw it across the kitchen. He then stomped into the living room and yelled that he was tired of my reading books all the time.

I quickly ran out of the living room for the bedroom and locked the door. My hands were shaking while I called the wife of one of our friends. I asked her to come and get me. He continued banging on the bedroom door and berating me with his verbal insults.

I left New Zealand shortly after that, returned to the greater Los Angeles area, and enrolled in a community college. I had the summer to kill before classes began in the fall. I found a job as a waitress in a cheap diner, shopped at thrift stores, and rode a bicycle for transportation.

I ran across your book, The Golden Notebook, in a bookstore that summer. It was the most perfect book for me to read at this turning point in my life. I could not put it down. I read it every waking moment when I wasn't working until I finished it. Such powerful women characters and stories. I can't tell you how much I loved this book. It had the most profound impact on me.

There were moments, mostly in the evening when I was alone, that I questioned whether I had made a mistake by leaving my boyfriend. After reading your book, I knew I made the right decision. Your book helped me realize that there was more to life than country clubs and tolerating your husband's mistresses.

I graduated from UCLA with a degree in history in 1993. I have worked primarily as an educator in Arizona and California. Internationally, I have taught in Bogota, Colombia and Gumi, S. Korea.

There were many times while I was in Colombia that I thought of my little Sardinian friend Agostina who traveled on her own through South America for six months. Meeting Agostina and listening to her stories on rainy afternoons in London helped give me the courage to move to Colombia.

I have also dabbled in documentary filmmaking and made a film on human rights abuses in Colombia. It made some festival circuits, was nominated for an award, and is still shown nationwide at colleges through Amnesty International groups on campuses.

I want to thank you for writing The Golden Notebook. Your book gave me the strength to forge on through some difficult times and countless obstacles while I was at university.

On an end note, it will be twenty years in November that I left London. I am still in contact with Agostina and Janice. We lost track of Carmen a few years after she returned to Milan. The last time I saw Carmen was in Milan in 1989. She had an Italian boyfriend who was at least a dozen years younger.

Agostina has traveled every continent as a translator on cruise ships. She speaks five languages. Agostina is now building a small hotel on Sardinia. She lives with her boyfriend in London. Janice is a lawyer/solicitor. She works in what we call the DA's office here in the USA. Janice worked in sex crimes for a few years, but the child pornography got to her. She asked and was granted a transfer to homicide. She lives with her boyfriend, also a lawyer/solicitor in her office.

I have heard through the grapevine that my ex-boyfriend owns loads of commercial real estate, boats, jet skis, married a nurse/aerobic instructor, had two kids, and a very public affair with an Argentinian ex-beauty queen which ultimately caused his wife to ask for a divorce. She got a huge house out of the deal.

Again, congratulations on your much deserved Nobel Prize. I still have the copy of The Golden Notebook I bought 20 years ago on my shelf and plan to pull it down tonight to read again.

Respectfully,
Mary Cuevas
Los Angeles, California
USA

Abe and Twain

Lincoln Memorial (Posted by Stuck in Customs, Flickr)



Mark Twain (Posted by Kleopatrjones, Flickr)

These quotes were posted on a friend's myspace page and I just love them. I'm with abe and twain.

One last thing, I recently read that animals do not know of their own mortality. We are the only animal that does. Never thought about that before. Explains a lot don't you think?


"The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. - H.L. Mencken

"Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only
animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the only animal that
loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight.
He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven." - Mark Twain

"I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people
who believe it." - George Carlin

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion."
- Abraham Lincoln

Kurt Vonnegut Dies

All photos of Kurt Vonnegut (Posted by Lorac, Flickr)

Words cannot express my sorrow. As vonnegut wrote or said, "artists are like the canary in the coal mine. The canary keels over if there is a gas leak warning the miners to get out." Sort of an alarm system for the miners. We just lost a great alarm system, humanist, humorist, and very good man. Like he said in his novel, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, "Goddamnit! You'vegot to be kind." Lets remember that and him always.
His books changed my life. He was my greatest teacher. I look at the world and life differently because of his books. If you like my emails, and some of you have told me you do, you can thank Mr. Vonnegut. I stole his short sentence and short paragraph style from him. If you want to become kinder and gentler or view the world differently, and if you never read him, I highly recommend you do.












In his autobiography of sorts Palm Sunday, he gives a list of must read books. I read that book while living in London and started power housing through that list. A couple of years later, I was back in college after a ten year leave. He inspired me to finish my college education.

Kurt Vonnegut's drawing of an a**hole in Breakfast of the Champions (Posted by Andisheh on Flickr)




I still use an asterisk in front of names or after names of memos or notes I write to folks I don't like. Got that from his book Breakfast of Champions, he draws an asshole in that book that looks like an asterisk.

I miss him so. I left work early. I could not stop the water works. I compulsively read everything I could find on him on line. The best obit I read was the first I read in the L.A. Times by Elaine Woo. We just lost such a powerful and wonderful voice for our time. No one can replace him.

If you have not read him and are interested, here are some of my favorites:
Slapstick
Breakfast of Champions
Galapagos
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
Jailbird
Bluebeard
Palm Sunday
Slaughterhouse Five
Welcome to the Monkey House
Timequake
Mother Night



I really wanted to meet him one day. I did send a birthday email this past year to In These Times. I told him in that email that I used his asterisk. I thanked him for everything.






Photo of Kurt Vonnegut running on beach on left, with wife, Jill Krementz, on right

Jean Baudrillard Dies

Jean Baudrillard, Soho, London, Photo taken by Cromacom (Flickr)

Baudrillard quote from photo:

"The skyline lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert, and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them: the mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitice night."

I heard yesterday on my little radio in my office on NPR that Baudrillard died. He is famous for his book Simulacra and Simulation. The film, The Matrix, makes many references to this book.

Baudrillard believed, "we live in a world saturated by imagery, infused with media, sound and advertising. This simulacra of the real surpasses the real world and thus becomes hyperreal, a world that is more real than real." Scary business.

Here is one paragraph from an obituary I found in a newspaper:

Jean Baudrillard, Posted by Radio Nacional, Colombia (Flickr)











"Baudrillard argued that mass media and modern consumerist society had built up such a complex structure of symbols and simulated experience that it was no longer possible to comprehend reality as it might actually exist."

Martin Luther King, Mood Swings, and Autism

Martin Luther King, Pan-African News Wire (Flickr)

I hope everyone is enjoying their Martin Luther King holiday. I just want to share what my 2nd graders told me about MLK this week. For those local Long Beach folks, I was at Horace Mann Elementary three days this past week over on Third and Orizaba.

I could walk there, but am always running late, so I drive. I love this school. It is small, only 400 students. I pretty much know them all.

I feel the love when I go there and try to go there as much as possible because there is nothing like being mobbed when you walk onto a campus with hugs by a bunch of 7 year old children to make your day.

For the teachers out there, as you know we are to start our lessons with the anticipatory set. For the non-teachers out there, this means we ask the kids what they know about MLK first. Man these 2nd graders knew so much about MLK and Rosa Parks. I loved it.

They told me about the separate bathrooms, schools, drinking fountains, restaurants, and how black folks had to sit on the back of the bus before Rosa took a stand.
Martin Luther King, Pan-African News Wire (Flickr)

I always bring my Mood Swings CD with me the week of MLK's birthday. They played it on KCRW about 8-10 years ago and I bought it. KCRW still plays it every MLK day. It has Chrissie Hyndes of The Pretenders singing on it and the voice of MLK giving his I Have a Dream speech. It is very moving.

I read a story for the kids about MLK, discussed it, then had them sequence it (what happened first, then, next, last). They draw a picture above each sequence. While they are doing this I play the Mood Swings CD. It never fails how silent the classroom falls as soon as MLK's voice comes on.

This classroom I was in has an autistic boy named Lucas. He loves me now, but was so scared the first time I came to this class. Autistic children have extreme difficulty with any change in their routines. He is a high functioning autistic boy like Dustin Hoffman in the film, rain man.

Lucas always sits next to me when I read stories on the rug. He rubs the end of my jeans between his fingers. After our discussion of MLK and his assassination, Lucas asked about the shooter. He wanted to know all about him.

It was the first time I have been asked by a student to see a photo of the killer of MLK. A little girl, Sage, said she had a book at home that had his photo and would bring it in for Lucas.

This 2nd grade classroom is made up of black, white, brown and Asian kids from Vietnam and Cambodia. We always discuss how that wouldn't be if it wasn't for MLK. So happy birthday MLK. And thanks for everything.

Living in a Tipi

Photo of Bear Lodge Tipis taken by WY Man (Flickr)




I met a man at our Thanksgiving dinner party who lives in a tipi up on this mountain above Lake Elsinore. He used to live in Long Beach. Small world.

Anyway, he was telling me about his life in a tipi and other various things he does. For example, building straw hay bale houses. It got dark before we had a chance to get over there to look at his tipi and the bale houses. So we are going back up this weekend for a tour of his home and the other various things he does.

He is planning to go to Arizona, the four corners area to teach the Navajo how to build the straw bale houses. I will get the details this weekend.

This man made me think about how little we really need to survive. I am telling you this man was about as real as real can get. I asked him if he got cold in the winter. He said, "I've got a little fireplace I keep going inside my tipi."


Photo of Woodstove Bricks taken by Shea Gunther (Flickr)




I am not saying I could live in a tipi, but it just made me think about the world we live in and how we are raping it everyday. Capitalism is the root of all evil as Marx said way back when. It has just made us destroy the planet and ourselves.

Working long hours and feeling like you have to buy things you don't need like big houses and big cars make people drink more or take pills.

Look at the French and their 35 hour week. They live longer lives despite all the cheese, wine and fatty foods. They live good lives for the most part and enjoy themselves is what I think. My two cents...not that you asked for it.

Greetings From Korea

Photo of Korean woman near the DMZ taken by Kevin McNulty (Flickr)

I arrived late Tuesday after crossing the an international dateline. The countryside on my bus ride down to to Daegu was quite spectacular. Very green and hilly.

I met some international teachers at a couple of bars Friday night. More on that later. I bring it up now because my accommodations, from what the other internationl teachers tell me, are not the norm. The owner of my school has put me up on the 16th floor of an 18 floor high rise. He bought the place for his son and new wife who are in japan for a year.

I am in a Korean yuppie apartment. Absolutely gorgeous. Three bedrooms, hardwood floors, tan leather couch and chair I am afraid to sit on, TV and DVD player, huge kitchen with a laundry room. No dryer. I have to dry clothes on my enclosed terrace overlooking a few other high rises and hills in the background. My kitchen is huge. All the modern facilities a yuppie kitchen would have. My window has a view of some typical Korean houses with the slanting tile roofs and curl at the end. Also if I look to my left I have a view toward downtown full of more high rises and loads of neon lights. My apartment has loads of light which I love. Big windows in the living area.

Photo of Daegu, Korea taken by Kevin McNulty (Flickr)




So Graham, this gorgeous Scottish man I met Friday night from Glasgow, told me he lives in a tiny place and has forgotten what a couch looks like. This is what I expected my living accommodations to be like. The owner of the school is a very rich business man. He is very kind and generous. When he was young, he went to America and the people were kind to him, therefore he wants to be kind to me. And he is.

The people have been so very polite. The children i meet on the street are so sweet. They are fascinated with me. Probably never saw such a tall western woman like me before. I learned my first Korean word. Thank you is pronounced like this phonetically: come-saw ha-me-daw. I don't know how to write in Korean, but I hear it is easy to learn. This computer I am writing on has the symbols on it. I am sitting in an internet cafe downtown. My DSL service should be connected some time this week.

I was sitting in this little sidewalk cafe on Friday trying to figure out what bus to take to get to my school for a sort of orientation. My apartment is a 15 minute bus ride from my school. Anyway, these two gorgeous little girls came up and started trying to speak to me in English. They mostly giggled. Their mom came up eventually and I asked her how to get to my school. While she was giving me some instructions, along came this hip looking young Korean man, with a shock of orange hair running down the middle of his mod haircut. He asked if I needed help.

Long story short, Jay, mod boy's English name, speaks with an English accent because he is learning English at the London school in downtown Daegu. Jay lives a high rise one or two down from me. He told me the bus to take to my school.

Photo taken of Downtown Daegu by Kevin McNulty (Flickr)




Mod boy took me downtown that night to the bars where the international teachers hang. It was a blast. I met Graham who I already told you about. It was Graham's birthday. Graham and I had a conversation about the great music coming out of Scotland and Manchester, England. Graham has been in Daegu four years now. I also met folks from London, Australia, and the USA.

One guy from Chicago was very cool. He studied philosophy and theology at a small liberal arts college south of Chicago. His name is Chris, but I am going to call him Jesus since he looks like the Jesus depicted in all the famous paintings. Long light hair, beard, and beautiful light eyes. I personally think Jesus was probably dark with brown eyes and hair.

Anyway, this Chris (a.k.a Jesus) is tall and lanky. Looks like he may have not eaten in forty days and forty nights. Jesus recommended we head over to this bar a few blocks over called the Commune. When I walked down the narrow stairway leading down, I turned the corner and saw on a big screen Jim Morrison. The owner of this tiny dive bar with wood tables and a musty smell of stale cigs and beer was showing footage of Morrison I had never seen before. Jesus told the owner that I was amazed at this footage of Jim Morrison live. So the owner burned a copy and gave it to me. It was the Doors live in Europe 1968. Jesus is just alright with me. Those who grew up in the 70s might remember that Doobie Brothers song.

One last thing about this bar the Commune. The owner has a wall full of vinyl albums. So cool. He has all the old stuff from the 70s. Jesus told me that the owner is a big fan of the Doors and the Velvet Underground. After the Doors DVD ended, the owner put on some Sonic Youth. He played the song, Teenage Riot. The place just kicks some righteous ass. Jesus says he is there all the time. No doubt.

Photo of Daeugu market taken by Kevin McNulty (Flickr)






About my neighborhood: I have some cool little shops and open markets to buy fruits and vegetbles. The fruit is shockingly expensive. Jay, my mod neighbor said it it because all the fruit is imported. I paid six bucks for a cantoloupe type melon. Yikes! There are two great bakeries. I have been sitting at the cheap plastic table and chairs at one place nearly everyday. Just watching the people go by. I have a ham and cheese croissant and grape soda.

About the food: I am in heaven. The owner of my school took me out with his wife and his friends Wednesday night. The food was so good. Hot and lots of garlic. We had a chicken soup with about 15 side dishes. one side dish was a plate/dish of whole cloves of garlic drenched in a red spicy sauce. So yummy.

About the architecture: Lots of modern high rises. Lots of neon downtown. Downtown is full of narrow streets. I love the downtown area. It is very different than Bogota. I will say I think I like the architecture in Bogota better. The red brick and especially the area known as La Candelaria near downtown. I loved the old colonial architecture and the narrow streets, and the arepas of course. The lady who sold them on the street made the best ones ever. So yummy.

That is all I can think of to tell you all at the moment. I did join a gym. Jay took me there yesterday. It is a Gold's Gym and a block or two from my apartment.

Photo of colorful Daegu Street taken by Kevin McNulty (Flickr)



I'm off to find some cheap, good, spicy Korean food.

Oh and one last thing, the Koreans have some pretty strict laws about recycling that I think we should implement in our consumer society.

Addendum: I have noticed that I am getting hits to this post from google with folks looking for information on teaching in Korea. The above was the first email I sent from Korea. However, after I wrote that email, I ran into racism, ageism, and a boss who would not pay. I would be remiss in not sharing this with the readers of this post.

My job in Daegu was abruptly ended when a co-owner of the school saw that I was in my 40s and had brown skin. He is not the man who let me stay in his son's apartment. Anyway, this man kept asking, while staring at my brown arm, what my bakcground was. I knew what he was asking, but responded with my education and credentials in teaching. Nevertheless, I was told to leave. I had not even been there 2 weeks.

The director of the school felt horrible about this and so found me a position in a much smaller town, Gumi.

When I arrived in Gumi, I was taken to an apartment that was filthy, and the bed, a mat on the floor, smelled like piss. There was rotting meat left on the counter covered in maggots. I was up all night trying to clean and then I had to wait for the mat I washed out by hand to dry. It was horrible.

There was a bar I frequented while in Gumi. When I told the two white South African owners about my experience with racsim, one of them told me that after he arrived, he told a friend who was black to come to Korea. She arrived at her school with suitcases in hand and was told to get out. These are true stories. You will not see many brown or black people in Korea. They like young blondes.

My school in Gumi did not pay me. The American teacher that was there before me and who left me the filthy apartment did not get paid for some 4 months. I fought for my pay and threatened to go to the labor board. So this boss paid me. We should never have to ask for our pay. Ever.

Please check with the U.S. Embassy before heading to Korea if you are a U.S cirtizen. They have a warning up about schools not paying foreign teachers. Or be sure to find out from teachers currently at the school where you are applying on whether the boss pays. You can request to talk to a current teacher on the telephone.

I do not mean to sound negative, because there are good schools in Korea. Just be sure to do your research. The hours listed on the job site can sometimes be extended when you arrive. Be careful about that as well.

Good luck. Any questions or if you want further information, send me a comment.