Break a Vow, Change Denomination

As I road the elevator to my office floor, my eye could not help but wander, as always it does, to the Captivate media screen that inflicts headlines and other tidbits about the culture. There are no exceptions to the electronic intrusions, but that is another spoke on the blogging wheel not to be taken up today. What I saw in the brief moments before the doors opened made provided a dark chuckle.

Father Cutie, the handsome, entertainment savvy Catholic priest who got caught canoodling with a woman by the Enquirer and such other pillars of journalistic writing, announced today that he was becoming an Episcopalian so that he could be "with the woman he loved." One might think, initially, that this was a principled decision. In interviews, he has said he struggled with celibacy (folks, celibacy means not marrying; chastity means no sex) and that he had no intent to cause scandal to the Church, and his spiritual community. If I had read that he had made a choice to ask to be released from his vows, but remaining a Catholic, I wouldn't likely have been jarred. But given this particular solution, one wonders whether he would have continued being a Catholic priest pretending to maintain the vow of chastity, while actually not maintaining it, except for being caught by a telephoto lense. My cynical thoughts tend in that direction. Having BEEN caught, he wants, pardon the expression, to "have his cake and eat it too". He wants to stay a priest, and keep the woman. Vows schmows.

Now, I know a vow is hard to keep. And I have many a sin on my own conscience. But something about the ease with which Fr. Cutie has adjusted his theological loyalty rankles me. This purported model for the rank and file Catholic not merely disappoints, but is rather, at least from my admitted outside looking in (I cannot know the man's heart), cavalier about what one would have thought was his faith, notwithstanding the protestation of struggle. While the Catholic and Episcopal faiths are very close, they have meaningful differences, related to the idea of the fullness of truth, and where say a Cardinal Newman made the switch to Catholicism from the Anglican Church because of an article of dogma, the True Presence, young Fr. Cutie seems to have made the switch for convenience sake. Again, I don't know what is in the man's heart. But I am unaware that even the Episcopals allow their priests unmarried sex, so I assume he plans on taking another vow of "unto death do us part" with the woman and continuing with his entertainment presentations for the High Church. Good luck to them.

But I do finally wonder whether if some requirement of Fr. Cutie's new found faith conflicts with another need of his, what he will become then? It's a good thing that there's an assortment of other faiths and philosophies at his disposal.

The End is Near and other Dire Warnings

I guess there are no other dire warnings. I mean, the "end" is the THE END. It can't get worse than that. On the other hand, one might say, I might even say as a practicing Christian, that the end is something we look forward to. Mind you, we're not in a rush. But we understand what is the gift to be received at the end of the world, that is the Judgment of God, and hopefully, a "Well Done Good and Faithful Servant". No guarantees of course that this will be the result---unless I/we set our footsteps on that righteous path. I know I'm trying. Most people I know are trying.

What brings up this cheery-ish line of blogging? Well, last night I was with my cronies, Len Speaks and Mr. Anonymous of the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith Aparments seeing a really interesting movie called "The Boys", the story of Richard and Robert Sherman, the men behind pretty much every famous Disney song there ever was and a couple of others you'd be surprised about ("You're Sixteen" by Ringo Starr). It being about Disney guys, it was screened at the El Capitain, literally, in the heart of Hollywood. It is across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where we would learn in watching the film, these brothers screened a film or two back in the heyday. After the show, we walked a few blocks east toward another renovated movie house of days gone by, the Egyptian, and dined at the Pig and Whistle next door. The walk to and fro felt like it might be what running from Sodom and Gommorah might have been before God wreaked his destruction. A cacophany of sound and sights, the tourist, the streetwalker, the panhandler, the locals, the sleezy. Crowded. Loud. On the way back to our car, where Hollywood crosses Highland, outside the Guiness Book of World Records store (I don't know what else to call it), was a religious Don Quixote and his equally religious Sancho Panza, the man on the box reading from the Bible and suggesting in very strong terms that we, me, were not likely to be saved. As we stood on the corner waiting for the light to change, I found myself alternately angry at the chutzpah of these individuals to assume that I was not as religious as they were, as concerned for my soul, as they were, and wondering what the hey I was doing there in the middle of that babble, or was it babel? And maybe, just maybe, I needed to do a little more soul searching about the saving thereof.

Hollywood Boulevard on a Saturday night is a crucible of good and evil. The movie houses. The people taking pictures of the stars on the walk. The mothers taking pictures of their kid next to Mickey Mouse in front of the El Captain. The short man with the greasy hair smoking a cigarette and looking like he is stalking the resit of us. The gang bangers with their backward hats and falling trousers and bling kissing their girlfriends amid the mother F--- intonations for emphasis. And the three of us on the gum strewn gray brick road that is the illusion factory completely gone Quentin Tarantino.

And whether I am saved? I'll have to pray in the quiet of my backyard, amid the jasmine and the hummingbirds, where I can think, and beg for Grace. Maybe I'll pray for that annoying guy on the corner of Hollywood and Highland and is sidekick, even though he made me very mad with what seemed to be a smugness that seems to me to be a bigger danger than the obvious evil around us. We are all a second from falling into the fiery pit. Equally.

These are swizzle sticks. Actual ones, from actual places in New York and Montreal, Canada. The Cattleman, the Riverboat (used to be at the bottom of the Empire State Building), Ruby Foo's, Hthe one that looks like a branch in the appended photo., the Hotel Frontenac. I have something like 50 or more of them, these my parents actually acquired sipping various adult beverages when they were on the town. The Canadian trip, I am told, resulted in. . . .me, nine months down the road. Every time they'd show the photographs of that trip, I'd hear how I'd been conceived in French Montreal. Mais oui!

I have very specific memories of some New York restaurant hopping, as we kids, me, my and my cousins, were often brought along. We'd have cokes and peanuts and dinner, listen to violins, or guitars, and the hubbub of grownups at play. The Rainbow Room. Cave Henri IV. Top of the Sixes. Manhattan at my young feet. A particular memory is seeing Alan King leaving El Morrocco. I was the 14 year old sitting in a zebra themed booth. It was hard on my first boyfriend when he tried to impress me with the Rainbow Room. Been there I said, now a well travelled (gastronomically speaking) college kid. But one could not get enough of the Rainbow Room. I think about those days and marvel at my tolerance for things well beyond my emotional ken. No regrets, for it wasn't a typical part of the usual Bronx kid's growing experience. It not only did not hurt me, but it forms a fond memory for its uniqueness. My parents danced like Fred and Ginger, with an ease I have never acquired, but always admired. There was many a dance floor in these restaurants. And I heard the music of rumbas, cha-cha's, mambos, fox trots and swing from an early age, appreciating something old that just never gets old.

There was a bit of an incongruity that we lived in a one bedroom fifty dollar apartment but managed, fairly often, frequently with the largess of my uncle next door, to sample so many restaurants and, yes, bars. Interestingly, I never had the urge to drink and when I had my first one, I was of legal age, and at my high school prom (those days you could drink at 18), and it was, at the then still in existence, Riverboat, now long gone.

I like having those swizzle sticks. They touch a time and a place, and in a way I cannot quite explain, an innocence of my parents, then still young and full of possibility. They connect me to them.

Thoughts of Cross County Shopping Mall

I was driving home tonight from a friend's apartment. Maybe because it was a New York Transplant friend I happened suddenly, at the corner of Fairfax and Fountain in Los Angeles think of a Saturday sometime in 1980. I was 25, and still living at home, home being a nice two bedroom on the edge of Riverdale, but not in Riverdale, near the Jerome Avenue Reservoir. Fort Independence Hall the small complex was known as, on Giles Place. I had just graduated law school, and gotten my license. But not a job. And I was restless. A little embarrassed to be living at home, without a job, supported still by my father, truth be known, and realizing that if I were overprotected, it was my own darn fault! I had only recently learned to drive, and the opportunities to test my nominal skills were few. I got into a bit of a snit, and announced to my father, always concerned about the evils cast about by the fates, that I was taking a "drive". Big stuff. Djinn takes a drive. Into the car, a red Plymouth Volare, and off I went to directions as yet unknown. I couldn't think. I got on the Deegan, North, I think. I actually don't know the highways in New York, and did not then, because I never drove; I took trains or busses, or relied on the kindness of my friends' who did drive, and I found myself at the place pictured here (except without the construction vehicles), Cross County. I think that Macy's was then John Wanamaker's, but I can't be sure. What I do remember for certain was parking the car facing outward, toward the highway, and trying to decide, "What's next in my life". I was already well into a thought of moving to California, but was afraid of such a big change. I was not one for adventures, having lived and attended school in spitting distance of the Grand Concourse, or Pelham Parkway, with a wild foray to Queens for Law School. I remember thinking I was trapped, that I was a coward and I'd be driving back and forth from Giles Place to Cross County for the rest of my uneventful life.

I was so certain of my doom as I sat in that parking lot.

The years may not have brought wisdom, but they have brought perspective. And as I made my left from Fountain to Fairfax I thought, I really had come a longer way than I could have imagined on that Saturday long ago.

Live Long and Prosper, Again, Star Trek!

Ok Mr. Anonymous of the Barbara Judith Apartments and Mr. Len Speaks, I couldn't wait. I did it. I had to do it. And I don't regret it. And I still plan on this weekend, maybe, but for me, it will be a necessary second viewing of "Star Trek". And a new generation it REALLY is! Thursday. A packed house. The Arclight. I think this is going to go through the roof! And for some reason, despite the fact that I will not in any way benefit from the financial remuneration, I am delighted. Please don't be mad, boys. Lest I explain myself. Well, I'll try anyway.

Time warp back to circa 1965 with me. "Oh, no, not again!" you might say. Come on, let's go just for a few minutes. I think we were there last week, when I was having a summer flashback. And one more time! Everyone at Mount Saint Ursula was already watching it, what is now known as "TOS", the "Original Series". I hadn't yet, but I was deatermined to do it, and one night caught the show about half way through. The first face I saw was that of the apparently slightly jaundiced Mr. Spock, in love with Leila and trying to get Jim Kirk to stay on Omicron Ceti III and live the uncomplicated life. The man had pointed ears. I was intrigued. That was the episode "This Side of Paradise" Captain Kirk got back to the struggle, costing Mr. Spock the love of his life.

I was an only, and lonely, child, not unlike a million other kids no doubt and so the fact that I developed a fantasy life in which the family of Star Trek, Kirk, Spock and McCoy, was my center, is probably no big reveal. Mostly Spock, of course, the alien, the alienated, fitting no where and wanting to fit somewhere but not able to say so and always trying to prove himself.. And their comraderie was one of which I could become a part, without judgment.

I never went to any of the conventions, and I never bought a phaser replica--not that I am incapable of it--but I was a rational Trekker. But I harbored the desire to see the series revive and when it did in 1979, I was happy, though disappointed by the product, which tried to do Star Wars and forgot the relationships that made the show unique, the thing that gave me a sense of hope during dark-ish times. There were only a couple of the movies that really worked after that, Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, but mostly The Voyage home. But it didn't matter. They were back. And then more than a few died. First Gene Roddenberry in the early 90s, the Daddy of the enterprise and the Enterprise. Then Bones McCoy in the last of the 20th century. Then James Doohan, recently Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

Maybe that was part of the rush to go after work on a Thursday night. I need to know--would it be disappointment or a new lease on space fictional life? And I felt like maybe I'd be touching two parts of my life, the one from then, that little girl who had no idea where her life was going, and the one that is now, and merge them in some way, a way that made us both whole. I know. A little too existential over a sci-fi series. Maybe.

They had a task before them. Capturing a new audience that was not slightly intrigued by the cheesy inexpensive sets and camp from a decade they are a half a century beyond, and not alienating the boomers who took the canon to heart. It was unlikely they could do it.

But of course, idiot, there IS a way! I won't be a spoiler. And it allows them to use the canon and still change it with good reason, the best reason that there is! Deus ex machina it may be, but it allows for all new adventures, but with the relationships intact. With a bridge, a live bridge, between old and new, in Mr. Spock, Prime (the first Mr. Spock) who is definitely the wise, old Ambassador. Doesn't need the make up anymore. And, you can still have the modern explosions galore!

The actors work, at least to me. By the end, I was satisfied that this was the Enterprise crew, no less than their TV predecessors. And the Spock boys, what a good selection for a successor in every physical way. Even some of the deviations (let's just say Spock II has a better love life this time around) did not jar me. I heard a guy behind me while I was getting my parking paid, about my age, with two younger 30 somethings in tow, say that it was ridiculous that a 17 year old Russian (Mr. Checkov, adorably played by Anton Yelchin) was at the helm of the massive ship, and a guy just out of Star Fleet was being named the captain. But then, we do have 18 year olds in Iraq commanding battalions and saving at least a small part of the world. The movie presents the most heroic of their ilk, no? Myth always presents as bigger than our real lives. That's what attracts us so to it.

There were things at the beginning that tested my faithfulness, but then, as it moved along, I saw that the new had combined with the old and produced a Hollywood child.

Why did I have to have to see it alone, for the first time? I don't know in any certain way. I wanted to have the experience, good or bad, in my own world, my old one, my current one, without influence or contradiction from anyone I knew. And I wanted to like it, so I did not want to hear, just now, that they did not, if that were to be the case. Maybe I was going back to those old days, frequently alone with my own thoughts, and hopes, and dreams for something big and interesting, and heroic, and warm in a way that was just not possible in the Bronx in the 1960s, no matter how hard anyone tried. The audience was into it, and I liked being part of it, without judgment. Joy at the first "Fascinating" from Spock or the first furious objection of Montgomery Scott at being asked to give more of the Enterprise than could possibly be given, but he did it anyway. Or the first, "I'm a doctor, not a ____" (name the job) from Bones McCoy.

I hope I like it as much on the second go round I am eager to have, even if my friends feel it is not up to their respective standards. Maybe because it was a kind of lifeline to me back then, and an old friend now, that seems very familiar and comforting. They are my crew now, when I want to feel safe and full of possibility.

Earthquake and Fire Weather

The wind is blowing in a way that I have always identified with winter weather, except it is like 80 degrees at 10 p.m. in Los Angeles. You can hear the furious whirring that can splinter 100 year old trees. I sat outside a little while ago, while it was still light, and I enjoyed the wild waftings and the blowing leaves. It did occur to me that given the sudden shift from cool and dreary to sunny, warm and swirling swoops of air, it is indeed "earthquake weather". I have a big, too heavy, bag behind some drapes in the living room, with likely out of date supplies. That's all I have. And a fear of having to leave my pets behind if the room starts to rumble. But that is just superstition, the idea of sudden warm weather meaning an apocalypse. Right? Darn well hope so.

I hear the wind chimes and danger doesn't seem close. Then "breaking news" that a fire burns in Santa Barbara, again, spurred on by the winds. I have a friend who has parents living there. I think mom is with her for an early celebration of a major birthday with her sisters. I am guessing Dad is still there. Is it in their neighborhood, backed against a beautiful but tree filled hill? I can only pray not. I'll call her in the morning and leave a message on her cell. It's not likely it is her family. But it's someones. Twenty houses already lost and no chance of reprieve as long as the weather holds, which it is expected to do through the weekend. Early summer in LA is a contradiction. A joy for the prospective beachgoer. A tragedy for fireman and home owners.

It's quieter now. Still, even. Ominous? Or a goodly sign?

I just checked on the cat inhabitants of my backyard, two owned by my neighbor upstairs, one, Elwood, inherited by me when he ran away from my next door neighbor and took up residence under the house. I seem to be the only one who can actually pick him up. The little crew just begged crackers from me. They don't seem to be acting as if there is danger in the land. They say that animals can tell if an earthquake is coming. Well, these little creatures could only tell that food was coming their way when I came outside. That calms me. They calm me. I may sit outside again for a while and let the wind, which has kicked up again, whip about me reminding me of the power of nature. Despite the destruction that can be wreaked, there is also the feeling of awe at He who is behind the natural world, with its caresses and its blows. "The world" said Gerard Manley Hopkins, "is charged with the Grandeur of God." The world of Los Angeles is certainly well charged tonight!