Recently in Musing Category

Last night was Melanie's 30th birthday.  An all around magical event... complete with a magician.  And, of course... fabu cake.  As you can see in the previous post, it was an icing extravaganza made up to look like Mel singing on-stage in a judge's robes.  (Though I thought it looked a little singing nun-like for a second.)

So, come on, don't tell me you didn't think this too... Is the Mel edible?  Well.  Mageina decided to find out.


It started out innocently enough.  One good chocolatey lick.  But then, Mageina decided she needed to see if she could take a bite out of Mel...


Yeah.  Silly Mageina.  Don't you know?  Once you go black, you never go back.


In other words, the icing... uh... STAINED her face.  And her teeth.  And her hands.  She tried to wipe it off.  Only to smear it around.  It looked like she was a trampire gone made... eating dog poo.  Yum.


All I can say is... highlight of my evening.  Thanks for going first Mageina.  I was about to sample Mel too.  You saved me the trouble.

*All photos courtesy of Sasha Perl-Raver's awesome little camera.  :-)

So, I just got my test results from my most recent doctor visit... and my cholesterol is STILL high.  It's been about 6 months since my last test.  In that time, I've lost weight, increased exercise and changed my diet.

Sigh.

So I may need drugs.  BUT first, I'm going to try further altering my diet.  And one of the apparent culprits.  COFFEE.

Unfiltered coffee seems to boost cholesterol the most, although a handful of recent studies hint that filtered coffee may have an effect on cholesterol, too. In one study, researchers in Sweden found that people who normally drank filtered coffee experienced a small drop in cholesterol levels when they stopped drinking coffee for a few weeks. The results were "surprising," according to Dr. Elisabeth Strandhagen, of Sahlgrenska University Hospital(CK) in Goteborg, who led the study.
"Coffee & Cholesterol", MSNBC Article

The reason is apparently cause by "oils called terpenes".  According to the journal Molecular Endocrinology:

Cafestol, a compound found in coffee, elevates cholesterol by hijacking a receptor in an intestinal pathway critical to its regulation, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears in the July issue of the journal Molecular Endocrinology.
How Coffee Raises Cholesterol, Science Daily

So... the bottom line is.  No more pots of Joe for me.  It's Green Tea all the way -- until I find out that's bad for me too.  My father also suggested Niacin... a vitamin B complex.  The only possible bad side-affect... hot-flashes.  It's like I'm going through menopause.

Niacin or nicotinic acid, one of the water-soluble B vitamins, improves all lipoproteins when given in doses well above the vitamin requirement. Nicotinic acid lowers the total cholesterol, "bad" LDL-cholesterol, and triglyceride levels, while raising the "good" HDL-cholesterol level.

A common and troublesome side effect of nicotinic acid is flushing or hot flashes, which are the result of the widening of blood vessels. Most patients develop a tolerance to flushing, and in some patients, it can be decreased by taking the drug during or after meals or by the use of aspirin or other similar medications prescribed by your doctor.
Medicinenet.com

Today my grandmother, Rosemary Brown White, 88, was laid to rest at Crestwood Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky.  She passed away on Tuesday, June 10th in her home.

Though I couldn't be there for the services, my parents and brothers were present.   Rachel and I visited a few weeks ago, when we got word that her cancer had taken a turn for the worse.




It was a great day to visit her.  She was sharp as a tack and felt great.  Just the day prior, Nana wasn't feeling great.  The tumor she had raised her calcium levels and caused confusion.  Not that day though. 

Rachel and I visited her the next day to, and we greeted with stories from her past and an impressive array of historical photos showing our family's past as far back as the 1800's. 

Her last days were surrounded by family.  And, according to my Aunt, she was only uncomfortable the last two days.  Up until that point, she was being visited by everyone and seemed at peace. 

Nana was a strong woman with an indomitable spirit... and she made great sweet pickled to boot!  She will be missed by all of us.  And I, personally, am thankful for the time I got to spend with her.

Here's a picture Rachel snapped a few weeks ago of "our" cat Peaseblossom.

I say "our" cat because, well, she adopted Rachel first many years before I met her.  Though since we've moved in, Peaseblossom -- or Lady Peas -- has decided to claim me as well.

Here she's exploring our night jasmine that was blown over by the recent Santa Ana winds that scoured Los Angeles.  The winds haven't returned of late, but allergy season has.  I went to work the other day with a searing headache only to discover everyone pretty much had one.

If you've lived in LA for over five years, you win a pair of allergies.  That's just how it works.  People that don't have allergies move here and... presto chango... they have allergies.  Frankly, I'm glad our air isn't as bad as China's.  It's not so much allergies there as something approaching radiation exposure.  At least here, we only have to wear a mask on Halloween.  Or when you're on the Red Carpet.

This is a true story about the one time I met Moses... and got trapped in his closet.  I've been telling this story for years, mostly at bars, but Heston's recent passing demands that we honor his memory... and the time he blocked me in his closet.

It happened in 2001, I was a pithy PA on an NBC Sitcom entitled Cursed.  Then retitled The Steven Weber Show.  Then canceled.  (Note to self: Never name my own show something that can so easily be mocked.)

Charlton Heston was on our big Christmas episode.  The plotline (in a sick sort of prescient manner), involved Charlton arriving in New York and being hit in the head, getting amnesia.  Absent of his memory and lacking a place to stay, Chris Elliot befriends him and brings him back to his apartment for "safe keeping".  It would be one year later that Heston would publicly disclose that he suffered from Alzheimer's. 

Incidentally, did you know he charged extra to say anything akin to, or make jokes about, the line "Get your hands off me you damn dirty ape!" 

SO... they said to me, "Kris, go to his house and pick up his wardrobe."  No big deal, I thought.  I'll probably chat with some random person and get whatevers needed and be in and out in ten seconds.  Nope.  Not I.

Charlton Heston opened the front door.  Not an assistant, but Moses himself.  "Welcome, I've been expecting you."  He's been expecting me?  I almost crapped my pants right then and there. 

Showing me into his house, we made small talk.  And let me just say here, that his place was amazing.  He told me the story of how he picked out this plot of land overlooking the Los Angeles valley and had his house built with one directive -- "I want this view".  The living room is a rotund space, with one entire side made of windows -- all so people can appreciate the view.  The accoutrement in the house was equally amazing.  Here there was a large bronze statue of Moses.  There was a hand-drawn piece of art depicting Ben Hur riding a chariot, whipped forever frozen half in the air.

The one thing I will say -- and this I've seen in other reporters' stories -- Heston strove to put me at ease.  He treated me as an equal and as a welcome guest.  He asked me questions, he offered to get me something to drink.  And he didn't shoot me.  (YES, that's what everyone wants to know about his home -- is there guns everywhere.  The answer, no.  If he wanted to kill you, a swift strike with the bronze statue would do the trick.  Or a call to the NRA.)
 
"Come, follow me."  We walked through the living room and into his bedroom.  I was starting to freak out now.  Where were the clothes I was supposed to be picking up?  "Well," he told me, "in the closet."  The next thing I know, I was in his huge walk-in closet staring at his long line of suits lit by nothing more than the feeble overhead bulb. 

"Take anything you want.  I trust your judgement."  Did he see what I was wearing?  One sock was blue.  The other... black?  I can't even tell.  My instinct was the channel Project Runway (pre-Project Runway, more accurately... the show wouldn't premiere for a few more years... dahlings.).  You know, get him to try on stuff and strut it for me.  Help him find the best suit ever.  But Charlton was old even then.  He looked like he'd break if bent the wrong way.  Who was I -- a lowly PA -- to ask him to try on clothes?  I freaked and grab the first thing I could.  "This looks good!"

When I got back to the office, the only good thing I brought with me was this story.  Just like my socks, the suit jacket was one color and the pants another.  It was dark in there, okay!?  And, like I said, the one-time voice of G-d was staring over me, telling me to pick something.  Let's put it this way, I can understand why Abraham would kill Isaac with a voice like that commanding him.

So I escaped unscathed.  Every time I drive over Coldwater Canyon, I'm tempted to stop by his house and ring the bell.  Would he be expecting me again?  Sadly, not anymore.  Despite everything about everything, we should still say... rest in peace.  You damn dirty ape.  (I can't help it... so bad...)

Okay, anyone who's not a blogger and hasn't dealt with internet hosts, tune out.  Come back on another entry... cause this ain't for you.  This geeky complain is about why I left the web hosting company iPower...

 

The short answer:

Their SQL servers weren't working fast enough.  The lag time between the SQL server and my webpage was causing hang-up after hangup. 

Basically, Movable Type makes a database entry every time you write a blog or reupdate your pages.  And the slow response time from the server with that database -- the SQL server -- was causing it to time out. 

So not only couldn't I post entries, I couldn't even login to Movable Type.  And, unforgivably, users couldn't post comments.  When they did, they'd appear multiple times.

The second reason I left: Tech support...

Or lack thereof.  Because iPower is "transitioning" to a new backend software program, the hold times for anyone from sales to tech support is now 45 minutes plus (online or on the phone). 

When you do get through, you'd better be a web expert and already know exactly what the problme is.  Because they're not much help otherwise.  My website was slow/down for over two months before I got a staight answer on what was wrong.  And that's after 5 plus calls/emails/chat sessions with tech support.  Each of those times, I was on hold, yep... 45+ minutes.

The first layer of icing on the cake: Once we identified the problem, iPower informed me:

Unfortunately, we do not have an exact time frame allotted for the MySQL server issue to be resolved. The issue will be resolved by a short period of time. We are trying to add more machines to control MySQL server which will improve the performance of the MySQL server tremendously. Hence, this is the reason; the Web sites which are fetching the data from the MySQL server are taking time to load. However, our customers will not be experiencing any slowness issue in future.

In other words... they don't know when the problem will be fixed.  It could be moments.  It could be months.

I don't have time for that...

THEN, the icing on the cake.  I just transferred my hosting to dot5hosting.com.  But, because I'd been with iPower for over four years, I wanted to leave the domains registered with them... in case I ever want to come back.  Because, you know, I understand tech hiccups.  It's not like they were bad to me.

Until they cancelled everything. 

They were supposed to leave up a login so I could manage the domains through their control panel.  Nope.  They deleted it all.

Specifically, they didn't cancel my hosting plan when I asked them to.  I had to call back again to get them to release the domain names so I could smoothly transfer over to my new hosts, dot5hosting.com.  That was 45 minutes of wasted time on hold with billing.

Then, when I discovered they canceled everything... the hosting plan, my login to manage my domains with them... everything.  Well... that was the final straw.

So I had to once again get on hold with tech suppot.  (You don't get on the phone... you get on hold.)  And this time, I got all the info I needed to transfer the domains over to dot5hosting.com.

Needless to say... I'm sorry iPower... but you made it a bad break up.  We could have been friends.  But you wanted to screw me one last time.

 

 

After four years of working in the ABC Riverside building, I've learned a few things about our elevators.  

The first, but not oddest, is that we have a strange gentlemen's code enforced here... the women get off the elevator first.  I don't care if your right there crammed next to the doors.  You somehow and someway move aside and let everyone off.  Is it condescending?  Or is this just another example of the strange modern dichotomy of the "equality" of the sexes?

The second is... always take the second elevator.  (Fitting that this is number two on the list, eh?).  Standing in the elevator bank on the first floor in the morning is a crap shoot.  How many people will get on your elevator and, more importantly, how many floors will you have to endure before you get to your destination.  I work on the eighth floor... so the seven-stop tour is the worst.  

The key to getting around this is to wait for those elusive second elevators.  Here's how it works.  One elevator door opens.  And everyone and their mother rushes for it.  Then, the damn elevator sits there open for another three minutes - while even more people pile on.  

MEANWHILE, a second elevator door will open... but only for the briefest of seconds.  For some odd reason, it closes mere seconds after opening. Almost as if the system were like, "crap, we already have an elevator open down here!  Let's send it to the top floor and screw everyone!"  If you can get on this, the unicorn of elevators, it will be a speedy trip to your destination.  Unless a second-floor worker gets on...

Which brings me to my next gripe.  If you work on the first three floors of the building, or you're moving from one floor to the next... take the damn steps.  The worst is when someone makes the elevator stop on two just to get off on three.  Lug that sorry bum up the stairs.  It's good for you.

Plus, the second floor is another nexus point.  People from the Disney lot pour over the bridge and congregate on the second floor waiting for elevators.  SO even if you did catch that elusive second-floor elevator, you just got screwed.

So I just went in to wake Rachel after four hours of sleep... and she grumbled, "I don't want to wake up."  I say, that's your right and your power if you so choose.  It's her birthday, after all.

But, then again, we did call a party/picnic together for 11am in Griffith Park.  Hopefully, we'll have some fun pictures from that later.  We did buy an official Frisbeeâ„¢ Frisbee, as well as some shuttlecocks for badmitton.  (Who comes up with the names of these devices?  I know, let's call this little birdie looking thing a shuttlecock.  I mean, it has the word cock in it!)

Oh... and Rachel bought a bubble-gun.  It shoots bubbles.  All over the house.  Hopefully it'll shoot 'em all over the park too.

So I've been thinking a lot about screenwriting competitions of late.  The deadline is today for one particular competition - Scriptapalooza.  I've entered it several years running and last year - yay me - my screenplay, The Guide, was a semi-finalist.

But the question perplexes me... as it does all artists... when will I "make it"?  If no one reads your scripts, are you a writer?  If no one looks at a piece of "art", was it ever created?  And if my manager never answers my call, do I have one?

The self-reflexivity of art is the curse of its nature.  We need an I-Thou relationship for it to be made real.  And, for our egos to feel satisfied... to know that we brought laughter, tears or outright derision to an audience.

But what happens if your work is never appreciated?  When do you give up the ghost and focus on other things in life?  Do you need to?

As you can see, it must be the fifth of the Month - doubting day.  But this is a question I've long contemplated only because, I want to have a family and a stable life.  I can't stand around forever beating on a door no one answers.  It's very Kafka-esque, you know?

This life, this country, this time demands we make a nut to support our butt.  That's right, I'm a rhyming poet too.  Jew.  Bottom line, can I work a day job, write scripts on the nights and weekends AND raise a family?  In my mind, they don't all seem to fit.  And I don't want to be the guy telling his kid I can't wipe his ass because I'm in the middle of a scene.  

(That's right, another reference... this one to The King of Kong... an awesome documentary.  Check it out.  Which brings up another topic, why didn't it get nominated for an Oscar?  All the frickin' Oscars, which not that many people saw by my recollection, were serious.  But great docs don't have to be about war.  They can be about obsessive people vying for control of a very small sandbox.  See Fast Cheap and Out of Control.)

So I've formed a list of screenwriting competitions.  And I'm going to submit my newly minted script to each one of them.  And in the meantime, I'm going to keep writing.  It's all I can do.  Even if it's not my "job".  Stupid artistic inclinations.

Those competitions, btw, are:
Scriptapalooza
Nicholls Fellowship
PAGE International
Austin Film Festival

Dude, I'm all for a free and open election... but with Democrats like these, we don't need Republicans.

John McCain's camp is sitting idly by while Hillary pulls out all the knives on Obama.  And what's unfortunate is that because of her boost last night (not win... a 50/50 split ain't winning... that's, at best, a tie), she will think that the negative campaigning worked. 

So expect more kitchen sinks.  Expect more calls at three A.M.  And, if this continues, expect the Republicans to win.  Because, I don't know about you, but this back-biting amongst the Dems pisses me off.  Uhm, anyone remember the term, "divide and conquer?"

So yesterday... I had a HUGE headache.  One that starts off small and climbs your spine like a slippery serpent, finally roosting in my head with a throbbing "hello".  The reason: I tried to cut caffeine cold turkey.

Yeah.  I'm not doing that again. 

So I'm driving home, holding my head perfectly still.  My car is absolute silence -- no radio, no phone calls.  I'm just massaging away the headache.  And it's almost gone.  I feel somewhat human again... when... I hear someone YELLING at me.

I lower my window and hear the schmuck behind me yelling, "PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF G-D, MOVE YOUR CAR FORWARD ONE INCH!"  Normally, this wouldn't be a problem.  The impatient man obviously wants to go right, traffic be damed.

The problem is: There's construction going on in the left lane.  It had the whole area roped off, except the cross-walk.  And, being the corner of La Brea and Hollywood, this was a busy intersection.  So not only are cars flying down Hollywood, but people -- lots of people -- are genuinely using the cross-walk.

So, because of the people and the construction workers, I yell out my window... "No.  There's a crosswalk."  He KEEPS yelling.  So I firmly say, "NO.  THERE'S A CROSSWALK."  Obviously, I had to yell -- cause either he didn't understand English, or, you know, he never shuts up to listen.

At this point, the construction workers in the middle take notice.  And they're like, "right on."  They start nodding their head.  The guy keeps yelling.  "COME ON.  YOU'RE ALLOWED!"  Which is when I simply told him.  "F#@K YOU."

Bottom line... I didn't move for safety, the law and finally on principle.  Come on, what's waiting at a light one minute going to do to you?

However, it was all the fuel my frickin' headache needed.  My adrenaline, late as usual, kicked in as I pulled through the intersection and my heading started pounding like a speaker at a rave.

Like I said, I'm not cutting out coffee.  Not if this is the price.

The only good thing to come out of it was Rachel's matzah-ball soup.  It was awesome.  And it almost fully-restored me to health.  The cup of joe I had this morning helped seal that deal.

Quick post here... I just found out this weekend that while one set of friends got engaged, another set broke.

Meghan, an ex, just discovered that her (now) ex-bf was cheating on her for 3 months.  The real tragedy of this, from my perspective, is that his actions and mind games have essentially tainted 4 years of memories for her.  When wasn't he lying?  What were the good times?

The one silver lining, she found out just before she was leaving for a three month drive-a-thon trip.  So at least she's free.

To learn more of her story... and her new journey into freedom... click here.

Back in late 2002, my friend Marqui Jackson had a dream.  At the time, we were Production Assistants on a UPN sitcom called "Half And Half".  It was coming up on the holidays and we wanted to give the cast, crew and writers a unique gift that would make them laugh and maybe, just maybe, show off our skills as writers too.  Thus the brilliant idea hit us... what if we created a comic book about a group of P.A.'s (that look like us) and had super powers?!

The comic book subsequently got us fired.

The idea came quickly and easily.  A freak explosion by a copy machine (which we were ALWAYS around and working with) would grant each of us a power endemic and complementary to our jobs as P.A.s.  In other words, one of us could manipulate brads swiftly and with our mind.  Another of us could, like Iceman, shoot out white-out from our hands and thus be able to correct mistakes in the script (or make really cool white-out slides... again, ala Iceman).  Etc.



The goal of the Super P.A.'s?  To help other Production Assistants in need anytime, anywhere... oh, and battle the growing threat from a conglomerated union of Reality Shows threatening to finish off scripted TV once and for all.  One of their chief minions?  The Brad-bot (or whatever we called it).

Put simply, the comic was a loving send-up that ultimately, we felt, embraced our love for the job while still pointing out the trials and tribulations we -- and all -- production assistants out there face. 

So why were we fired?  Well, first, we technically weren't fired.  We just weren't invited back for season two.  Which actually was a blessing in disguise.  It set us off on different and disparate paths.  It forced us to grow beyond the experience of being a production assistant.  In other words, we weren't about to do any of that again.  No tabula rasa for us.

We never found out exactly what our bosses (or a certain boss) felt about the comic at the time.  Perhaps they thought we were ungrateful.  Or perhaps they saw us as slackers.  Though I can tell you, drawing a comic book between putting in twelve hour days at the office -- not easy.  I spend many an ink-stained night putting that bad-boy together. 

Our theory is this, the only time people saw us in the office was literally between jobs or errands -- those brief five minute respites you get before being sent out into the traffic hell that is and was Los Angeles.  So if the only time you see someone is when they're doing, well, nothing... that's the kind of general impression you get of the person.  This is, again, a theory.  No one ever told us if anyone was pissed off or displeased by the venture.  And, we were never officially not invited back expressly because of the comic.  It just probably didn't help.

The truth is, as I sketched around above, we were a little burnt out by the job.  It's not easy being a happy PA on a sitcom.  And, for myself, it was my third time starting over as a PA.  The previous shows I'd been on were canned or never made it.  So it was a tabula rasa -- again.  And again.  It was time for me to move on.  And not being invited back was the kick I needed to do it.

So... long post short.  Here's a copy of the comic book.  You be the judge and let me know if it's funny or offensive.