Hmm, David Bowie's Low over the Clash's London Calling as the best album of the seventies? I love Low (my favorite Bowie next to Hunky Dory), but someone I don't think the decade was characterized by "Sound and Vision" or "Always Crashing the Same Car." Come on, guys, give Joe Strummer his due. South Park did the other night on "Chef Aid."

I was at the bookstore this weekend browsing through the for sale racks when I came upon a volume of two S.E. Hinton novels, The Oustiders and That Was Then, This Is Now. Any relf-respecting teenager in the early eighties read all of Hinton's novels 10 or 12 times. Well, at least I did. Never mind that the narratives were the viewpoints of 15-year-old boys. I could identify with their angst, those parentless white teens growing up in the heartland before crystal meth, in quite the same way I would identify with Robert Smith's vaguely annoying musical screeds. I think I wanted to date the SE Hinton boys (so long as they really looked like Matt Dillon) and, of course, I secretly wanted to be them, no matter how dead-end their lives would eventually be. Of the four novels, Tex was the strongest and Rumblefish the weakest (what was Coppola thinking when he adapted this so-so novel into an art-house gem?).

Anyway, I did have a point, and it wasn't about SE Hinton. I really wanted to read these books again--sit out by the pool on Sunday morning and whip through them in an hour and a half or whatever--but I couldn't convince myself to cough up eight dollars for the damn book. I'll get it from the library, I told myself, placing it on the list of hundreds of other books I've promised myself that I'd check out of the library and never have. Why am I so cheap? I could make a hundred grand a year and budget like I make twenty. I don't think it's all the result of growing up in a single-parent home, however. For instance, I don't mind dropping money on my family or friends. I just have a hard time spending money on myself. Is it because I'm cheap? I think it's because I hate stuff. I hate clutter. I hate feeling tied down, overwhelmed, bloated with stuff that will keep me trapped.

Hmm, maybe those books on Buddhism are having an effect on me.

In Fetu

We have always known that there were two, even as they all thought we were only one, even as you listen incredulously and think, no, there is only one, one voice, one story. Although it is true that sometimes it is one voice or the other or one story or the other, please be clear: this is our story.

But perhaps it is easier to start at the beginning.

We were born as one, to our parents, and placed on the single trajectory that we would call our lives. It was innocent enough, the mistake of it all, the oneness, for there was no evidence of twoness: one egg, one heart, one mind, one name. Just as we have always known that there were two, it was thus only natural to us that there were two. It could be no other way, and all the complications that came with the inconceivability of two were, for us, merely the nominal struggles of life.

Yet when our mother heard us playing in our room, she would find it strange that we would argue over which clothes to put on the doll, whether to paint or whether to build blocks, or whether to eat the snack cookies now or save them for later, when we were really hungry.

“No need to struggle, Julia,” she would comfort us, and we thought she understood also, understood the inherent struggle between us who were both Julia but were not one Julia. “You do whatever you’d like, okay? No need to beat yourself up over it, dear heart. Don’t fuss so.”

But she did not understand, nor did our father. Although they used the words conflicted, struggle, torn often enough in describing us to our grandparents, friends, pediatricians, it was as if they were eclipsing the tip of the iceberg. They talked in figurative, metaphorical times when in reality the situation was much more literal than they could ever expect.

The cusp of the problem began to dawn on us when we learned to speak and comprehend others. We did not understand why they thought of us as one when there was so obviously two of us that communicated, albeit at different times. There was no rhyme or reason as to who spoke; rather, it was who could get their thoughts out the loudest, the fastest:

“Mother, I don’t want to wear the green dress. I hate green dresses!”
“Mother, it’s really all right; you know I think the green dress is lovely.”
“Mother, I shall tear a hole in the dress if you put it over my head!”

Although we drove mother to tears with our bickering, she began to think of it as a game, calming her in a sense but infuriating us.
“Which Julia has come to play?” She would muse when we’d join her on the porch. “Naughty or nice?”
“Momma, why is there only one name when there is two of us?”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“We are as different as night and day and yet you speak to us as one person. How come you never address her only or speak to me?”
“Because you are still my Julia, sugar or spice.” Mother would envelop us in her arms and we could smell the honeysuckle of her perfume.
“Which one of us, Mommy, is sugar and which one is spice?”
“Who, dear Julia, who?”

Misc lyrics in my head II:

there's x's in place of your eyes/and no heat to your touch/and now i can't remember why/i needed your sovereign gaze so fucking much

Mommie Dearest, or Joan Crawford Has Risen From the Grave

Although it's pretty common knowledge that Anne Sexton was sexually abused as a child, as an adult she was a pedophile. She used to sexually molest her daughter Linda (although not her younger daughter Joy). I find this fascinating, although I don't know why. Fascinating enough to dream that I was Linda and that Anne (played by Joan Crawford, egads!) was molesting me in a TV movie. I am fascinated by sexuality: when it begins (I remember thinking about boy's winkies in the first grade), when it crosses over (I began thinking about girls much later than that), the effects of inappropriate intimacy (was Anne just trying to recreate, with Linda, the security she felt in her earlier life with her molester [her aunt], with whom she was very close?) Does our first sexual fantasy always replay itself in our subsequent relationships? Do we always marry our mother or father? Why are we so fucked up?

So how did I feel being Linda? I don't remember much of it. I remember seeing Mom (Anne) in that crisp white dress she's always wearing in the pictures. She's tall and gangly and strong and not chubby and weird-faced after the thorazine treatment. I remember thinking she was strong, powerful, yet thrilled that I was her Achilles Heel, her weakness.

And maybe that's sex in a nutshell: power.

Today's random lyric stuck in my head:
"There's a loud/stereo/and it plays the soundtrack/to your clothes..."

Still grappling with the metaphorical implications (and points of view--most difficult to do without having the story devolve into backstory and little action) for my story on fetus in fetu. For your pleasure in the meantime, exhibits a and b for your curious perusal.

Ah, months of bickering, breakup/reunion, and what-ifs can desensitize the softest of hearts. And if you're truly sick of having your heart broken by the human species, well, don't cancel your registry just yet.

I thought this was an interesting tidbit in a chapter I'm editing about Alzheimer's disease: 50% of the people afflicted with dementia live in Asia. Isn't that strange? The effects of Asian diets, which are low in fat and high in cardioprotective chemicals like omega-3 fatty acids, have been linked to lower rates of heart disease, but is something ELSE in these diets responsible for dementia?

I had another long dream last night about being in an episode of 90210 (maybe it was a made-for-TV movie). The guys were drag racing across the country (I found it rather strange that Steve, the rich kid of the show, was driving a beat-up black Nissan). The plotline of the show revolved around people they knew being kidnapped. My role in the episode was not fully explained except that I was on the varsity softball team at high school (a recurring dream) and that I damaged a nerve in my hand and could not play anymore. I also had a very nice blue Saab (much newer than my old one, but not brand new--I wonder whether this is symbolic of things starting over in my life?). Anyway, so somehow I/we got to the area where the missing people where (it involved a trip to Wal-Mart or something). All these people were sitting in the bleachers as if watching a sporting event, except they were turned the opposite way. One sister yelled to her younger sister, "I'd die if you were any more pathetic; thank god you can't be" or something like that, which I found very amusing. I noticed my cat Sasha (who's dead) taking a bath in the mud by the bleachers. She really liked getting in up to her head, which is odd, because she hated baths while living. I kept trying to pull her out, but she would just sit on the grass for a bit and then get back in. I wondered if I were in the land of the dead. I've actually visited this place before in dreams, except that the bleachers were inside, in my grandmother's basement. I decided to leave. I took Sasha with me, but as I got further away I noticed that she had turned into our current geriatic, our Boston Terrier Maggie. (Is Maggie going to die soon?)

This dream occurred pretty late in the morning (between 4 and 7); they usually do. I think my insomnia is throwing everything off. I wish things were cleared, happier in my life for everyone. I feel terribly at fault and never meant to do anything wrong. On a brighter note, maybe something needed to happen so that all could move forward, I don't know. I'm always the deluded optimist; maybe that's the problem. Maybe I need to dig my hands down in the dirt, arch my head up, and wail, "life sucks!"

I just hope I don't find Sasha down there in the dirt.

My short story, Slipping Through, got accepted for publication at FictionWarehouse. It's my second acceptance in as many weeks (Comfort Foods got accepted in the Swamp). And to think, I didn't care a few hours ago if I never wrote another word again, much less got anything published. Is the war over yet? There is a quiet peace, a surrender on both sides, a display of goodwill, an effort not to dwell on the bitter battles, the soldiers lost, the destroyed infrasctructure. Right now there is only soft, quiet peace in the dawn and a hope that the sun will rise again.

The life of a heel: worn out from being used but still capable of stepping on toes.

I dreamt something really exciting last night. I wish I could remember what it was. It was between hours of half-wakefulness. After a month or so of nocturnal bliss, my insomnia has come back. Sometimes I feel like I will never be comfortable again, that the muscles will never loosen and fully want to relax. Somniphobia? No, I like my dark places. They just don't seem to like me these days.

But here are some other phobias I'm considering discussing with my doctor:

Asymmetriphobia- Fear of asymmetrical things
Bibliophobia- Fear of books
Chronomentrophobia- Fear of clocks
Nomatophobia- Fear of names
Nostophobia- Fear of returning home
Phronemophobia- Fear of thinking
Russophobia- Fear of Russians
Scriptophobia- Fear of writing in public
Spacephobia- Fear of outer space
Venustraphobia- Fear of beautiful women
Vestiphobia- Fear of clothing

I was the recent recipient of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? The Complete First and Second Seasons for my birthday (May 18th, for all you belated well wishers). The nostalgia juiced through my senses as I popped in the first DVD to experience this Hanna-Barbara masterpiece (second for them, of course, to the Flinstones). As I began to watch, although entertaining, I began to wonder: what exactly was the appeal of the Scooby Doo myseries?

Were they an ego stroke for the seven- to nine-year-old aspiring gumshoe? For children accustomed to Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew (not to mention her knock-off Trixie Beldon), the Scooby Doo mysteries were too simplistic. For instance, if the gang meets one townsperson who lives near the swamp, and this person is the only non-haunted being they meet in the entire episode, or if there are two townspeople and two villians, well, it's not hard to figure out that Ned and Zeb are the swamp witch and her counterpart the zombie.

And the motive was always the same—to scare law-abiding citizens from or off valuable property so that the no-goodinks could have it all to themselves. (The modern-day possibilities are endless for this plotline—the ghost junkie of the housing project created by hustlers to scare police away, the ghost of the corrupt energy company invented by the CEO to scare away regulators or book snoopers.)

Perhaps the appeal lay in the second-tier superstars (many of whom didn't show up until the mid-seventies, after the original two seasons had run its course). The Harlem Globetrotters I could stomach, but who the hell was Jerry Reed, and what purpose did he serve, other than to have me tunelessly hum "Pretty Mary Sunlight" while in the grocery line? In order to line up the same caliber of stars for a Scooby Doo mysteries reunion would call for some serious animation of Bob Saget and Michael Bolton or some other washed-up star reduced to voiceover work, doncha think?

And for goodness sake, to have a television series that is successful, one has to have a charismatic superstar. I'm sorry; does anyone really like Scooby Doo? I didn't like him when I was eight, and I sure as hell don't like him now. The only time I did like him was when the brains at Hanna Barbara decided to trot out his third-rate cousins, Scooby Dee and Scooby Dumb. The sexual tension that Scooby Dee brought into the mix was understandable (and a tad incestuous, being that they were cousins), but Scooby Dumb? Isn't Scooby Dumb just Scooby Doo with an even more watered-down set of genes?

Seriously, Scooby was dumb. He was the Maxwell Smart of cartoons. And for a kid accustomed to never outsmarting Encyclopedia Brown, for Scooby to continually luck into solving a mystery was just, well, cheap. And to admit that admits that the whole Hanna-Barbara empire—from their animation to their inbred-looking characters to their book-corner animation—was the Microsoft of the industry. It was the Bazooka of the confection business—pure crack. And we all know crack does the job it's supposed to do.

And so did the Scooby Doo mysteries, I suppose. After all, they were so successful for Hanna Barbara that they created numerous bastardizations of them during the seventies—Jabberjaw (Scooby Doo in water), Dune Buggy (Scooby Doo at the beach with a nice transmission), the weird genie Babu (which was more of a I Dream of Genie/Scooby Doo hybrid), and so on. Yet none of these were as popular as Scooby Doo. There was something about the comaraderie of a bunch of clue-finding stereotypes—the jock, the beauty queen, the brain, the stoner and, well, whatever Scooby was—that captured our imagination like no other show did, made us want to be part of the fun. They were like the Breakfast Club without eighties music. They represented freedom, but a wholesome freedom. They represented the other, dark world that sends many of us on our way to wicca, divination/Tarot, etc.

And they did make us laugh every once and awhile, a good dose of happiness, kind of the way the pet rock and the chia pet and the knockers and the sex bracelets (hmm, wrong decade) did. And unlike those, the gang still has a place in our hearts. I just wish I had a better understanding of their power over us.

And I think I have it: the subliminal message department at Hanna Barbara.

Hello 101st post! (I know; sane people would celebrate at 100).
Speaking of sane, looks like there are a few musical gems here.

Graffiti on a building at Huntingdon and 28th street:

The Hard Times Are the Best Times

I unwrapped the bar of sandalwood soap and smelled it. It smell so beautiful and exotic, reminding me of last summer when we discovered this particular soap, although I could not remember anything about the summer related to the soap. It puzzled me, the smell, as it comforted me, signaling something general and yet nothing specific, just a memory that is me, like a dimple or a scar.

You know it's not often I throw my weight behind causes (snicker). Our cause of the month at JMB? Why, flip off a Hummer, of course.

Rejection of the Day

Jen -

Thank you for submitting your story, "XXXX" to XXXX.com. We read it and enjoyed it; but our interest in your story waned the more of it we read. As such, we’ve decided not to take it on. Thus, Jen, we can only thank you for submitting once again, and wish you the best.

Sincerely,
The Editors

I'm not sure whether this is supposed to make me happy or sad.