Creature Comforts

There's an adorable show on CBS called Creature Comforts. It uses stop-motion claymation and the voices are provided from interviews with real people. It's a UK import from the makers of Wallace and Gromit.


I watched an episode about beauty and appearance. People answered questions about how satisfied they were with their appearance, what their best feature was, what they would change about themselves, etc, but their answers caem through the mouths of bees, goats, ducks, giraffes, cats, owls and dogs.

I laughed out loud within the first few minutes.

The episode featured:

An anteater talking about how she loves her nose.


A street dog saying he wishes hair didn't grow under his armpits.


A weasel musing about how he wants to understand quantum physics.


A donkey saying, "I could use one of those Jay Leno jaws. I mean, I feel like I need a jaw" and then making a crazy jaw-sticking out face.

The funniest parts ocur when one animal is talking and the other is reacting to what they hear their friend saying: An owl is asked what she likes best about her partner and she says, "His eyes." As she continues to talk about his appearance and hers, he crosses his eyes and makes faces.

Simple but charming.

I LoVermont

I needed a vacation!

Vermont's slow pace felt good. No TV, Internet or phone; just friends, food and whiffleball.

VICTORY!!

"In Massachusetts today, the freedom to marry is secure," said Gov. Deval Patrick.

Amy Hempel

I found her the way I wish I could find more writers:
I read the recent Chuck Palahnuik book Rant: An Oral Biography. (I enjoyed it more than his last few works of fiction.) Rant made me remember how much I enjoyed Chuck's early books: Survivor, Fight Club, and Choke.

I looked Chuck up online. I found a website that listed his favorite books and favorite writers. Every author should have these lists available to their fans. His list of favorite writers included Bret Easton Ellis, who I've read. I tried one of the titles on his list of favorite books, but the novel didn't take with me.

Then I got an Amy Hempel short story collection from the library. It wasn't even the one he recommended most, but it was inspiring. And I usually don't go for short stories.

I can see where Chuck got his flare for unusual events and bizarre descriptions. He took her style and made it more grotesque, and her stories are already disturbing.

Here is an example of Amy's weird detail style: "It was the year I started saying vahz instead of vase..."

Ear Freckles

I was almost to my stop last week. The train had emptied out enough that I wasn't hip to hip with the person beside me. A man older than my dad walked past me down the aisle and then suddenly his head was back, and it was right next to my face.

"Do you know you have several freckles on the back of your ear?"

In my head, I was all, "Ummm... huh.... whaaa..." but I said, "Yes."

"They appear to be pre-cancerous sun-exposure freckles," he said. "People always forget to put sunscreen on their earlobes. You should have them looked at."

"I have," I said, lying.

How did he even see the back of my ear lobe when he'd been walking towards me? Creepy. I guess the freckles, which I was in fact aware of, are that noticeable.

I like my ear freckles because they are weird. I am not a freckled person. I have a few teeny ones on my arms, one on my knee. Three itsy bitsy faint ones like Orion's belt on my chest. That's about it. But my left ear lobe is almost covered by four large freckles.

"Good," he said, relieved that I was on top of my potential for melanoma. He said, "Keep an eye on them."

"Okay," I said, feeling very invaded.

What is with people? I would never interrogate a stranger about their ear freckles. Although I want to warn this one woman about the damage she's doing to her ears by listening to her iPod so loud that I can hear it from three seats up. But the sound of her music is invasive to me, which sort of opens an invitation to make a comment whereas ear freckles are minding their own business and hidden.

Was he someone who has lost a loved one to skin cancer and is now trying to save others, or was he just a dermatologist trying to drum up business?

Crossword Puzzle Guys

Seven of the last nine commuter mornings, I've boarded the train and sat on the bench seat along the wall, just inside the door. Each morning, I take a seat between two 30-something men in suits. They bookend me, usually doing crossword puzzles from The Metro or clacking keys on their laptops, and I imagine I'm a queen flanked by 9-5 guardians.

The one on my left is balding and has a goatee. The one of my right is good-looking in a generic way. Good-looking enough to be entertainment when I'm bored of reading.

These two men are either friends, or they work together. This morning, the one on my left wordlessly handed The Metro across me so the one on my right could look at it. Right-side guy reviewed left-side guy's work for a minute, then handed it back. All without words.

One day last week, right-side guy was working on his laptop and leaned across me (sigh) to show left-side guy an email he'd drafted. "Does this sound okay?" right-side guy asked. Left-side reviewed, nodded and went back to his crossword.

I can't tell exactly what they are to each other because they never have conversation. And, you'd think that since they are obviously somehow linked, they might scoot over to sit next to each other rather than letting me take the empty space between them.

I paid attention this morning: when they leave the train, they do not wait for each other, they do not speak and they seem to go their separate ways. Are they just train-friends? Have they occupied these seats long enough that they are comfortable asking each other for work and crossword advice?

The Neverending Con Con - Updated

Woo hoo, Guvnah!

Gov. Deval Patrick today became the first sitting governor to march in Boston's gay pride parade.

Strolling alongside Mayor Thomas Menino, Patrick waved to the crowd amid cheers as the parade made its way through Boston's South End.

------------

Latest news:

Gov. Deval Patrick said he'll ask lawmakers to postpone next week's scheduled vote on a proposed constitutional amendment barring gay marriage if he doesn't think there are enough votes to kill the measure.

"We want a vote that goes the right way, that keeps us off the ballot," Patrick said Thursday after attending an evening fundraiser for MassEquality, an advocacy group that opposes the amendment. "If we need more time, we'll ask for more time."

It still boggles my mind that a politician, and one as far up as governor, is actually fighting for my rights. And did he really say "us" or am I just imagining that? Pardon me while I get a little misty.

Commuting Haikus

Sit up straight, wear pearls,
wear headband and nice shoes:
corporate costume



Riding ghetto train
Only one level, blue seats.
Move over, you jerk.



Hate people on train.
Hear about their boring lives...
Get off your damn phone.

Commuter Diary #5

This morning, someone had a heart attack on my commuter train, in a car a few back from where I was sitting.



If I was less stable, this would have freaked me out. Imagine your life ending on your commute to your 9-5. Could there be anything worse that feeling your last minutes were wasted in this way? Or reflecting on how many minutes you've wasted riding the train back and forth?



It made me want to take the train back my stop, go straight to the airport and head to Botswana and spend the rest of my life sleeping in a yurt.

Charlotte's Web

Last night, we watched the new Charlotte's Web, starring Dakota Fanning as Fern and Julia Roberts as the voice of Charlotte.

Animated movies create a simplicity that allows the essence of a story to come through clearly. I worried that beauty of the story would be lost in the remake, but I was wrong. I felt the same peace and bizarre combination of sadness and joy that I have felt from watching the animated version ever since I was six.

Julia Roberts' voice was perfect as Charlotte, who I realized is a very interesting character with her combination of wisdom, determination, loyalty and tough love. The remake added a layer to her story by making all the barn animals either afraid or disgusted by her at first. They eventually learned to look past her off-putting spider exterior. A lesson for the kids.

I wasn't wild about Dakota Fanning as Fern. The character was as stubborn as the original Fern, but the actress made Fern feel more modern than she is in the book and original movie. I guess better Dakota Fanning than someone with less talent. To Fern's story, they added a boy. I vaguely remember there being a boy who Fern rode the ferris wheel with, but the boy played a bigger part in the remake.

The one big thing missing was the songs. Maybe that's for the best, leave the songs to the original. But their absence made me realize that they constituted the best parts of the animated movie. Some were very fun and others were nothing short of poetry:

How very special are we
For just a moment to be
Part of life's eternal rhyme
How very special are we
To have on our family tree
Mother Earth and Father Time

He turns the seasons around
And so she changes her gown
But they always look in their prime
They go on dancing their dance
Of everlasting romance
Mother Earth and Father Time

The summer larks return to sing
Oh, what a gift they give
Then autumn days grow short and cold
Oh, what a joy to live

How very special are we
For just a moment to be
Part of life's eternal rhyme
How very special are we
To have on our family tree
Mother Earth and Father Time

Smell Memory

The cafeteria of my office has a smell today that immediately flashed me back to my elementary school cafeteria: a smell I haven't encountered in over a decade. Yet I immediately recognized it and remembered what it felt like to sit at the table with my friends eating from our beloved lunchboxes and drink milk out of cardboard containers.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

I recommend this documentary, which I watched last night. It's about John Lennon's involvement in the Vietnam War protests, and Richard Nixon's repeated attempts to have Lennon deported.

Until I saw this my only experience with John Lennon was that he was a member of the Beatles. And still I can't say, from watching a 90 minutes of clips with an agenda, that I know much about him. But one thing that struck me was how he looked at Yoko Ono with the kind of love you almost never see come out of anyone. (Personally I don't get the attraction, since Yoko didn't seem to do much other than stare into the middle distance from behind a bushel of hair, but that's beside the point.) And, in general, John Lennon seemed almost bursting with love and compassion.

Then, of course, he gets murdered.

I wonder why it's always the good, peaceful people who get assassinated. It's always Lincoln and Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon who get assassinated, while Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot are allowed to go on.