red carpet feelings

We must hurry. There is much to discuss and darkness will fall soon. The cattle will have to be called home and the jam will have to be set for the winter. For the summer. Spring is next? Whatever, I'm not a farmer. Let us make haste and distribute compliments and ridicule.



Renee Zellweger! To start with you is a lesson in cognitive dissonance. You trouble me, Renee. Your face, which you can do nothing about, about which you are innocent, troubles me. Is it attractive or not? Which is it?! No one knows. As soon as we become certain one way, a photo surfaces that confirms the opposite. It's also important for you to know, Renee, that I saw a few minutes of Miss Potter. WHY? WHY SO...WHY WERE YOU LIKE THAT? But you can dress. I'll give you that. You always look great on the red carpet. This silver number is very the-name-on-everbody's-lips-is-gonna-be--ROXIE!...in a good way. Congratulations. Please go figure out if you're attractive and also whether you're a good actress or not. I will go and try to figure out the same thing for myself. Maybe we can be pen pals.



Keri Russell. I have no feelings about you. I only feel that it's important to wear colors that don't wash you out. You apparently feel differently.



Laura Linney, I like you. You're a fantastic actress. So I feel bad that I have to say bad things about your hair. Why so much volume at the crown? Why so much and also not enough? Why so neither here nor there regarding your volume at the crown? Also, it's time to not wear those sorts of necklaces on the red carpet any more for a few years. For a decade. In ten years it will be all right again. Much about this look is too stiff. But your face is purty and who can fault your dress? And the sides of your hair look very nice. When is your next movie? I'd like to see it.



Marion Cotillard! Vous etes completement la cutie patouttie! How adorable were you when you won, saying how Los Angeles really has angels in it?! Le super adorable. Your movie looks very good! And your dress is gorgeous and you look flawless. You are sans flaw! You are inflawABle!



I am happy for you, Nicole Kidman, that you are having a baby. I think that maybe I'm happy for you about how interesting your necklace is but I think I'm not happy about how it interacts with your dress, and I know I'm happy for you about the simple elegance of said dress but I'm also unhappy that your hem was not three inches longer. But I understand that it's very important you don't trip on it and smush the baby. Please continue inside to a comfortable seat. P.S. Little side bun = cute!



Penelope Cruz: Please see me after class. The drape in front of your dress is confusing and obscures your point. Also, I believe I had assigned no feathers at the top of your bodice. I want you and Laura Linney to get together and write a paper about the problems associated with looking too stiff on the red carpet. You're headed down a bad road. I want you to succeed.

Look, I don't want to talk smack about Sarah Larson. I imagine she's got to be a groovy person in the extreme to have caused love to erupt in the coolest motherfucker alive. And I want George Clooney to invite me to dinner with Barack Obama and Al Gore and Walter Cronkite at his house in Lake Como. So...I won't. I won't talk smack. Congratulations, lady. I mean it.



It's going to happen like this:

That industrial I just got cast in? Where I'm going to be playing a doctor? Someone is going to see that and see how good I am on film. This will lead to a significant role in a serious film where I play a doctor who does battle with internal and external forces of some sort, who succeeds or fails compellingly and Academy Award winningly or at least nominatedly. Then I will do a Jedi mind trick on everyone wherein they permanently forget that Helen Mirren wore this dress and then I will wear it.



And during the week leading up to MY Oscars, I will wake up at night in a tepid sweat after having dreamed I wore this dress that Hilary Swank is wearing, and that I wore my hair like that to the Oscars. Note that it's a tepid sweat. I realize that it's not THAT bad. It's not a cold sweat. But it's not what I want for myself in my moment of triumph. Uptight Grandma on the make. No!



Jennifer Garner, please talk to Laura Linney and Penelop Cruz about your assignment. And then go kiss your adorable baby and great husband! You know, your hair helps offset the stiffness. I'm not mad at you. I like you.

Katherine Heigl, please turn down the color on your set and then carry on. And don't let the turkeys get you down about how nervous you were presenting that one award! It was really sweet and sincere and made you very likeable! C'mere. Oh, my eyes. So bright. Yi yi. But so cute, this look.

In fact, Katherine Heigl, you could have just split the brightness difference with ol' Amy Adams here and you both would have looked like a million dollars. I like this look but the color is just a little bit dull, methinks. Amy Adams, your purse with nothing in it is weird and pretty.



Anne Hathaway, you look almost as good as Kate Winslet looked in her great red number from a few years back. All in all, you get an "A" because we're not grading on a curve that includes looks from previous years. Please continue inside to your seat and enjoy the show.



Cameron Diaz, why are you here at the Oscars? Oh, I don't know what to do with you. I generally like how you dress. This color is sort of lame. And you could have ironed your gown, I guess. I don't know. Go inside.

Hi, Cate. Love you, love everything all the time, etc. See Jessica Alba underneath you? She's got a bun in the oven, too. And she's not afraid of tripping on her dress. Just a few inches longer is all I needed from you. I guess your maternal instincts were just too strong. I can respect that. The scarf-ish feeling at the neckline makes this dress feel a little on the casual side for the Oscars. I'm telling you, the longer hem would have helped. Ah, well. On the whole, I dig it.

Hi, Jessica Alba. I like this better on tv than I do in this photo. But I think you look nice. I like your braid-y, milkmaid-y hairdo. I even don't mind the feathers atop your bodice. You weren't given the same no-feathers dictate I'd given Penelope Cruz. The color of your dress is yummy, flattering and unusual. You're like a big, cascading, boysenberry waterfall. Kudos, mommy!

That's it. I can't go on. More people were there, but I just cannot talk about them all. I'm just one woman! Tilda Swinton, you run free. That's right. Run! Run away in your weird, one-sleeved gown and no makeup, with all of your indie integrity and huge, weird talent. Run, with your heavy Oscar that looks like your agent! I loved you in Michael Clayton, so you just run, now. There's a hole in that fence. You can sneak through it.

return of the night commuter

I'm thankful I didn't learn about this until the good news came in, and I'm sorry that I didn't learn about this beforehand, also.

Thousands and thousands of children in Uganda were leaving their beds at night to walk and walk and hide for fear of being abducted and forced to join a rebel army where they would be made to beat and kill civilians and abduct other children whom they would then have to beat or trample to death if they tried to escape. 30,000 children have been abducted since 1986.

40,000 empty beds any given night. 40,000 frightened, exhausted little wanderers.

Since 1986! For more than twenty years! How many nights is that? I was graduating from high school when it began. Barely more than a child myself.

How do you wrap your mind around these things?

I just learned about this tonight. I think of Finn sprawled on our bed with his beautiful toddler mouth hanging open, and then I picture him a few years older - or first I picture night, the absence of him, the bed and the sheets calling for him. Then I backtrack and see him at dusk, resigned, or not resigned, and getting ready to set out. What he'd be wearing for warmth. And then I make myself try and see him out on a road in the dark, away from me. I can't make myself see much. A bit of his imagined leg. The curve of his head next to the curve of some little unknown compatriot's head. I can't make myself look into his imagined heart out there, I can't make myself guess his feelings.

A permanent ceasefire has been called in Northern Uganda.

I don't know how to resolve all of the feelings I have. This is a sudden burst of grief and joy all at once. I wish I were there to get all of their beds ready.

oscar dress review delay

Because I tired. So tired. Hilary Swank, may I say you're lucky I'm not in the mood. And that's all I'll say about that. Except ARE YOU SEVENTY? Are you a seventy-year-old who feels she's looking spicy? I can't put my finger on it. It's just wrong.

Take comfort, Hilary Swank. I, too, have been given an unsolicited bad sartorial review. When I was working at a daycare back in my early 20's, I wore a big, baggy, purple ankle-length dress with a square neck to work one day. One of the Pre-K girls, Hannah, marched up to me and said, "You look ugly. That's a fat dress and I can see your neck." This from a girl wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, a miniskirt and pants. Know, Hilary Swank, that I know that I'm the girl in the skirt and pants as I'm armchair-quarterbacking your look. I wouldn't benefit from a surprise visit from the paparazzi tonight or any night...

...but your hair! It's like uptight Grandma hair! You're like an uptight Grandma halfway on the loose on a singles cruise.

I'm wearing my very cutest sweatpants as I type this.

All right. I have a bunch of Oscar frock pictures saved on the computer but I just can't do it tonight. They're there, though, ready. Tomorrow I do it.

In the meantime, behold this charming bit of Oscar-ness!

This is from my dear old friend Kris's blog, Complain-O Peeps. Linus is Kris's three-year-old son and he is an extreme awesomehead:

The Oscars are a mystery

This is what watching the Oscars with Linus is like:

Linus: What's this?
Me: The Oscars, honey.
Linus: The what?
Me: The Oscars. The Academy Awards. It's an award show for movies.
Linus: For scary movies?!
Me: For all movies.
Linus: Who's that guy?
Me: That's John Stewart, he's the host.
Linus: The what?
Me: The host. Ummm. He's in charge of the show.
Linus: What's that?
Me: That's a clip from a movie. Uh, they're showing part of one of the movies.
Linus: A clip?
Me: Yeah.
Linus: What's that?
Me: That's a clip from another movie.
Linus: What's that?
Me: That's a cl - Honey, they're going to be showing clips from a lot of movies, so you don't need to ask every time, ok?
Linus: Is that a clip?
Me: Yes.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's the host.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's one of the people presenting an award.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's Javier Bardem, he just won an award.
Linus: Why are the people clapping?
Me: They're clapping for the guy who just won.
Linus: Who? Who just won?
Me: That guy, Javier Bardem.
Linus: Did he win a prize?
Me: Yes. An Oscar.
Linus: An Oscar?! Is that a good prize? Is it like a treat?
Me: Yes, I think he's happy he won this prize.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: Another presenter.
Linus: What's he talking about?
Me: About who might win the next prize.
Linus: What's that?
Me: More movie clips.
Linus: Is it a scary movie? Does it have bad parts I can't watch?
Me: No, not these clips. They're short.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's the host, honey, remember?
(I bleep bloop through some boring crap)
Linus: Why are you skipping?
Me: Because it's not interesting. Just a bunch more clips.
Linus: Is it bad stuff for me not to see??
Me: No, just not very interesting.
Linus: What are they doing?
Me: They're singing one of the songs that might get an award.
Linus: (Lifts up his hands mimicking the people on stage) Why are they doing that?
Me: I don't know. It's part of the performance.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's another presenter.
Linus: Is that another clip?
Me: Yep.
Linus: Is that another clip?
Me: Yes, please don't ask every time, ok?
Linus: Who's that guy?
Me: I think it's time for your bath.

there will be ratatouille, or, george clooney for best actress

Oh, Oscars. Why do you keep happening while I have a tiny child and see no movies? I am forced to root exclusively for Michael Clayton and Ratatouille.

Damn it. But tomorrow I will be here with my Oscar Lady Outfit Review.

P.S. to Ralph Nader: Listen, you big doughnut. If you're so aflame with desire to make third parties viable in this country, you might consider popping up during some off years and helping Green party candidates get elected at local levels. Like, you know, build a foundation. Instead of trying to suddenly erect a giant skyscraper atop a small pile of cookie dough every four years. Also, I'd love to hear what you imagine you'd accomplish if you were magically deposited into the Oval Office next January, what with your pockets simply overflowing with political capital like they are. Hello, young chap! You look bright-eyed! Fetch me the biggest goose in yon shop there and I'll give you twenty-five shiny pieces of political capital!* Because I'm in a good mood and I can!

*I just like saying political capital. I think it makes me sound smart.**

**And this makes me sound self-aware!***

***That goes double for this!

please everyone be right tonight because i need the sleep

This is why I am so tired, you see. (I tip the hat to Mike Daisey's blog, where I found this cartoon which explained it.)

the rally

Dave and I went to Key Arena for the Obama rally last Friday. It was the windup...the pitch...the baseball metaphor to the crazy exhilaration home run of the caucuses the next day. We're so glad we went, and we're so glad we didn't take Finn because the outing was long and it was cold and, weirdly enough, the rally was not geared for toddlers. W-e-i-r-d. He would have been out of his mind and we would have had to leave long before Barack Obama reached the stage. Probably during the "Fired Up, Ready To Go" video. Yeah. That would have been when.

But yes! We went, and we even experienced a little drama. Drama! Conflict! Man vs. Nature! Man vs. Man! Man vs. Too Many Men! Man vs. Door! Man vs. Personnel!

Man vs. Nature = I said it was cold out, already, right? It was. It was cold. Super cold. And windy. Wind chill. Cold, brrr, windy. (Everybody who's moving to St. Paul: Stop laughing.)

Man vs. Man = So we parked our car, and then we walked to the Seattle Center to find the line, and found that we might as well have just stood outside of our car and waited for the line to come to us. We had to weave around and chase the end of the line because, as Dave noted, it was getting longer so very fast that it was like dominoes falling. That quickly. Vwoooooooooozh. This section should actually be called Man vs. Line. But that wasn't going to sound good up there after Nature.

But here's a new category!

Man vs. Time = See, all of this was taking place at about 10:45. The door was going to open at 11:00. We should have been there at 8:00.

Man vs. Too Many Men = The line started moving and we got very close to the Key Arena and then an announcement came over a loudspeaker that the event was at capacity. No more us go in.

NO! NO!

Tears truly came to my eyes. You may have noticed that I'm an Obama supporter. But also Dave and I got out of the house without Finn and it took a lot of doing to do it and this was going to be kind of a great date for us. We'd be getting to enjoy the event in carefree style, out of toddler managment mode. A big deal. And Dave's very much in favor of Obama himself. So we were bummed out in the extreme.

Man vs. Door = We just couldn't leave yet. We hovered around one the doors to Key Arena with a largish group of people who also couldn't quite give up the dream. We had our noses to the glass. A disappointed lady from the King County Council was lurking around in our vicinity. She had Obama's astrological chart in her pocket. We had nothing in our pocket for Barack Obama but love*. Everyone near the door was trying to figure out some kind of angle to get in. Nobody had anything.

*Perhaps a banana. Perhaps we were happy to see him.

Man vs. Personnel: A put-upon looking older security fella from Key Arena cracked open the door and squashed our hopes. Go away, people. No dice. You can listen to the speech on a loudspeaker outside**. Hope squasher! You are anathema to the whole Obama campaign, don't you realize it?! You have worked at Key Arena so long that the hope has been boiled out of you. That's it, isn't it? That's it. You're a Key Arena insider, all inside it, while we're not.

**See Man vs. Nature.

You may notice that I'm all out of Man Versuses. This is because the tides were soon to turn! Dave and I wandered away from the Door of Futility and remembered that Obama often comes out and greets the people who couldn't make it in to his events. We tried to figure out where we thought that might be. There were some people bunched up on a line across from where we were, down and then up some stairs. We headed down the stairs EVEN THOUGH WE COULD SEE THAT THERE WAS A METAL BARRICADE BETWEEN US AND THE PEOPLE OVER THERE. It was as though somebody had suddenly set us on 'random'. Hey, there are some people over there! Let's, uh, go into this bush and then try to, uh, jump up on the roof from across the street. And then we'll...we'll...tie our shoes!

But do you know who set us on random? It was angels. Angels set us on random. Or our dead fathers. Dave's dad and my dad. We decided we wanted to give them credit for this. And I'm getting chills as I type this! All right. That's it. The dead fathers are totally getting all the credit for this. Everybody who's like, Tina, dead people are dead and they don't get you into Obama rallies can sit and spin for a minute.

Down at the bottom of the stairs there were a couple of young dudes trying to jimmy a door open. It wasn't working. Dave and I turned to each other to try and figure out our next move when we looked over at the guys again and, instead of them, we saw a girl inside the arena holding the door open for us and giving us the hurry-wave in. Come on, come on!

Woohoo!! We were in! Dave yelled, "Yes, we can!" and we ran inside laughing.

We were just mouths agape at the good fortune. And it was so much cooler than if we'd just strolled in in the first place because we were so exhilarated. Man, I felt like Marcia Brady sneaking into Davy Jones's hotel room in a room service outfit. We ran to the closest, least crowded-looking aisle and headed in. We found a great spot just to the side of the top of the stairs, where we could totally see the stage below us. The stage was facing away from us, but we knew we'd be fine because he always turns around and talks to everyone at these rallies.

Man vs. Nothing! Man vs. Motherflipping Nothing!

We had to be the happiest people at Key Arena. And then, for the sweet little cherry on top, a girl waved up to us and pointed out a couple of empty seats in front of her. Her sister and a couple of friends didn't make it in, so there was no point in saving their seats anymore.

Beneficiaries vs. Further Awesomeness!

Here is where we were.

This, I have determined, is us there in that red circle that doesn't have Obama in it. It just has to be, and is. Tall person next to short person in white shirts standing in the right aisle at the right level in the right area.

We settled into our seats and waited. It was Good Mood Central at Key Arena! Everybody looked so happy, everyone smiling at everyone else. People kept doing the Wave. I love humanity's commitment to the Wave, even when it's minimal. You have to do the Wave, we all seem to agree. You don't have to do it well. You just have to get your arms up there. You can bring it if you feel like it. You can phone it in. Whatever. But very few people reject an incoming Wave out of hand. It'd be like not calling 911 at the scene of an accident, or not doing CPR when you know how when someone needs it*.

*It's not like that at all.

We checked out the crowd. Down on the floor in front of the stage...I saw...a hat on a head. A fuzzy, colorful, familiar hat...on a familiar head...our friend Morgan was down there! With our friend Deb! We stood up and started waving, and she saw us and was as surprised as we were and we laughed and mouthed things to each other and waved and blew kisses and made surprised and happy faces and "call me" phone ear hand things.

Tina, for God's sake, how was Obama! Come on! Shut up! This whole mise-en-scene business is so vastly more interesting to you than it is to us! What else did you do? Take off your coats? Have a sip of water? Shut up! Go on! Tell the part we care about.

Once Obama came out, which was four million years and three trips to the bathroom after we came in, I have to say that I was already sort of sugar-crashing from the exhilaration. He was good. I was tired. I was happy to be there. It was loud. I couldn't hear everything he said over the cheering. There were a lot of flash bulbs going off all over the arena. It was a stump speech that I'd heard most of already, sort of word for word. But it was cool to see the man in person. And there was a girl sitting next to us who was 17 and who'd skipped school with her parents' permission to be there, and she was saying she was going to call in sick to work the next day so she could caucus, since she'd be 18 by November. She didn't seem like some kind of politically active student-body-president type. She just seemed like a regular cool kid who cared. There were young people like that everywhere, and it made me really happy.

The whole day, just being with 21,000 (18,000 inside, 3,000 outside) other people all united for the same thing, felt magical and historical and cool.

i'm eating these guys for dinner

You have probably already seen this. But you know you want to see it again.

self portrait with dysfunctional mouse: pregnant with better self

My pictures keep coming out smaller than I want. C'mon, man.

Note: This is not an announcement of an actual pregnancy. I am just carrying a metaphor at the moment.

anniversary

Three years ago today my dad died. We're not having a bad anniversary. We're doing fine over here, all of us. We're having a much better day today than we did on this day in 2005, and we're appreciating that.

They have these cheap Valentine's cakes in the stores these days, single-layer cakes in plastic heart-shaped trays. I bought one of them in a stupor on the day my dad died, and stabbed at it halfheartedly with a fork right out of its tray. You can buy and eat anything you like however you like on the day somebody dies, with no shame. It's a small perk. I saw one of those cakes today but I didn't need to buy one.

Going through my folder of stuff for my show, I found this. I want to post it today even if I still use it:

When my father died, right afterwards, like in the following two or three days, I was tearing my hair out at night trying to figure out where he was. Where is he? Where is he?

I was angry that I didn't know. I was angry that we hadn't been given this information. Just for two or three days I felt this caged rage, like I had to do something, see somebody about this - not here, like a therapist, but you know, Up There. The Management.

Like, some customer service here, motherfuckers.

And I felt at night,
those two or three nights, in bed,
like a child. Like a real child.
How you don't know how it works.
How amazing it is that your mother or father can drive a car.
How they know how to get somewhere that's half an hour away.
How they know where to go on the freeway, when I can't even see all the way out of the side window of the back seat. I'm too short.
How they can get the car all the way to the airport with me in the back seat lying down looking up at the perforations in the leather on the roof the car. The ceiling of the car.
They didn't need anything from me, I had nothing to give,
no knowledge was required of me.
Squired from point A to point B.

I felt that way when my father died, in my bed those nights,
like I had just been squired from point A to point B
but this time I didn't know who was driving
or what point B was other than backwards to where I didn't know anything at all.

I could see the ceiling of my room, and the red walls leading up to the ceiling, and the white moulding along the length of the ceiling, and then it was just ceiling and all I knew was that my father was somewhere on the other side of the ceiling.
But on which side? To the left or to the right?
When I address him, which way should I look?
Up, right? But up and over?
Straight up? Up and to the left?
How many feet? A hundred feet? Four feet?
Fifteen feet up and four feet to the left, but just out of this world?

And after those two or three days passed I was an adult again and I wasn't interested in where he was. Just how he was.