Yes, when Chief Nerd and Bottle Washer takes a day off, she engages chiefly in elective nerd activities. Yesterday’s project was a long put-off expansion and reorganization of communicatrix HQ—adding file cab #2 and getting the G5 back online at full operating power.

This is notable for two reasons:

First, nerds have unaccountable phobias like everyone else. Mine is change. When the G5 had a hard drive cramp way, way back in July of last year, my solution was to move everything onto my 12″ PowerBook and ignore the fact that it took me a third again as long to get the simplest task done. Why? Because I was too scared/lazy/stubborn to bring the G5 into the Apple store, which makes no sense because it was still under warranty/not that heavy/no comment. And then, even after it was abundantly clear that there was nothing wrong with the drive that a clean install couldn’t fix, I still resisted loading everything back on because…oh, well, because clearly, I am out of my mind.

Second, pulling everything—and I mean everything—apart meant that I was offline for the better part of 12 hours, also known as a nerd eternity.

I could post a photo of my spiffy new setup (or the heinous tangle of wires it seems I am cursed with until the lights go out), but this morning, when I got back online, I woke up to this wonderful photo of my newly 40-year-old sister posing in some parking lot with Robert Plant. It was so random, I had to run with it.

So happy belated birthday, my beautiful Elizabeth, and may this decade be your best 10 years yet.

xxx
c

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, celebrity, Nerd Love™, Robert Plant.

About five or six years ago, I found myself in severely reduced circumstances. The SAG commercial strike and ensuing fallout had eviscerated my bank account; for the first time in a long time, I found myself unable to scrape up the considerable cash required to get my usual cut and color (single-process, nothing fancy) at the high-falutin’ salon. (Well, it was that or booze, and you can pick the horse that’s gonna win that race.)

My boyfriend at the time, The Youngster, had found an unusual hair stylist in Hollywood. Tony’s initial allure was the 24-hour service he promised in his yellow pages ad, and The Youngster needed a 6am haircut or somesuch to make an 8am appointment.

It turned out that one needed to give Tony a bit of advance notice to book 16 of the 24, but not much. It also turned out that Tony, who had been Stylist to the Stars back in the day, charged a mere $20 for a ladies’ cut—$40 if you threw in a color and brought your own. Which I did, happily.

One day, The Youngster came back from a cut (no color) all a-fluffle. Tony had let slip the name of one of his more famous clients—hell, maybe his sole famous client: Anita O’Day.

If you are not a jazz fan, the name might not mean anything to you. Anita O’Day never got big-big like Ella or Billie or Dinah or Sarah or any of the one-name songstresses. No matter. A complete iconoclast in her phrasing, her dress, her very life, she was she-bop itself—jazz-cool from her head to her toes. As one of the talking heads in the docu of her life points out (trailer on YouTube), she was the first vocalist on the Verve label—the first—and what she lacked in vibrato she made up for in every other way. She had a way of bending a song to her will so that it was almost unrecognizable…and yet, once you heard it, you had a hard time imagining it sung any other way.

My personal favorite was her rendition of “Johnny One-Note,” an old showtune she grabbed hold of and forever blew the hokum from. The most famous example (caught on film, anyway) is probably her dazzling take on “Tea for Two.” (You can catch a clip of her famous performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival here on YouTube—and how exactly did we obsess over people before YouTube, anyway?)

Of course, I wasted no time blabbing my love for “Miss Anita” (Tony’s name for her), and Tony, ever cool, mentioned he might be able to arrange things so I could meet her. Sure enough, a month or so later, I got a call from him suggesting I hightail it over.

I tried to be cool when we were introduced and failed miserably; for her part, Miss Anita was as down to earth as you could want musical idol to be. Plus which she looked twenty times better than I did. Thirty. It was pouring rain, and she was getting ready to call a cab when Tony flashed me a look. I immediately offered myself up as chauffeur, and moments later, we were tooling over to her apartment in my Corolla, me and Miss Anita O’Day.

Me!!! Inches away from an 80-something star who had sung with Benny Goodman, who had beat heroin and hooch, who had gone from from the heights to the pits and back and was just as nice and normal as the day is long…except for that glow. Star wattage.

I have no idea what we talked about during that ten-minute ride; I only know it ended too soon and cheered me for months afterward.

Despite Tony’s assurance that we’d someday take in a show, that day never materialized. She was ill or I was ill—it was a time of illness, I guess. But it’s almost better that the last real-life memory I have of Miss Anita is of her climbing out of my old car in the rain. I like my stars up close and in person, and sometimes, even a little damp…

xxx
c

Anita O’Day, 1919–2006
(official website | wikipedia)
Image of Anita O’Day at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival from the York University website.

TOPICS: Anita O'Day, celebrity, communicatrix, elegies, Los Angeles, stories, tributes.

My paternal grandparents, whose fireplace actress Bea Lillie is posed next to, led a very glamorous life pretty much from the time they hooked up. Gramps was a writer-producer in the Golden Age of Radio and (very much) enjoyed the attendent perks and privileges of such.

Me? I liked the stories. Like the one about Red Skelton passing out on the spare twin bed in my Dad’s room after a particularly wild night. Or the one about the time when Gramps got fired, pulled everything out of their bank account except a hundred bucks and took Gram on a cruise around the world. Or the one about Gramps finally introducing Gram to ‘Gingy’, the woman who finally, albeit briefly, caused Gram to send Gramps packing.

Oh, yes. I’ve got a lot more scanning to do…

xxx
c

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, celebrity, Scanning My #$@! Photos™.

That goddam Brandon has already done it better than I could ever dream of (and on demand, no less), but a promise is a promise.

And so I submit for your approval (or not) the poor little foundling post, dressed up and paraded before you like an awkward tween at the orphanage on Potential Parents’ Day…

As we both love the flexibility that self-employment allows, The BF and I spend most of our weekends in, working on various individual pixel-pushing projects*. (Frequent readers of communicatrix-dot-com will notice the reappearance of several post images and the blogroll, down right; very frequent and/or obsessive readers will notice the repair of numerous dead/broken links buried deep in the bowels of the blog.**)

To reward ourselves, [when time and work allow]*** we knock off at 8…9…10…and curl up in bed with adult beverages and a MacGuyvered viewing apparatus (The BF, unlike your well-cabled communicatrix, does not own an actual TV). On the menu a couple of weekends [several months] ago was Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) a juicy Ben Hecht-penned noir directed by Otto Preminger which has the added distinction of being the second pairing of Laura (1944) co-stars Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews****.

They’re pretty hot, those two. It doesn’t hurt that they’re lit and dressed and shot with the kind of care you only find in commercials these days (or from film directors who came up through commercials); the studios had an investment to protect in their stable of stars, and it shows. The actors also have an undeniable chemistry, which neither the studios nor anyone before or after has been able to manufacture.*****

But would they be stars today?

That was the question The BF posed, specifically about Andrews. Because when you take him apart, Dana Andrews, while pretty gosh-durn attractive, is not really all that good-looking. He’s rugged and manly and has some kind of presence, which always sells, but not the sort of good looks and/or magnetism and/or undeniable ability to let people ’see’ him that the highly-valued stars of today seem to have.

—end of stump post—

There’s a thing you learn early on if you’re an actor—or someone who has occasion to be around a lot of actors, like a casting director, producer, agent, director—and you pay attention. There are people who are mesmerizing until they act and people who are just the opposite. Kind of like real life, but you don’t ordinarily run across such a staggering quantity of good-looking people in real life, unless you live in Los Angeles and confine yourself to a handful of zip codes.

That attractiveness in an actor is what people call star quality, and people have it at all levels and in all forums of acting, from blockbuster movies to Equity-waiver stage productions to plain old scene study class. Common wisdom dictates it’s something that cannot be taught, but I believe you can learn yourself to be the most attractive motherfucker on the planet if you are willing to internalize one very simple, zen-koan of a lesson:

Need nothing.

Before you reject the notion as absurd, reflect a bit. It explains why we can find both a saint and an utter dickhead equally attractive. It even explains why we might find a saint less attractive, if the saint is not acting selflessly but out of some deep-seated need for regard and the dickhead is a true dickhead.

This is a varying degree thing—there are many arenas of need and many levels of need within them. There is also the truth that most of us bring some kind of need to every relationship or encounter, and as a friend of mine says, when you find someone with that matching luggage, you’re off to the races. (Actually, my friend doesn’t mix her metaphors, but I digress.)

The best advice I ever got about acting (and I’ve gotten a lot of great advice) was to note the people your eyes are drawn to onstage, and reflect upon why. In Sidewalk, there’s something very present and truthful about Tierney and Andrews compared to a lot of the actors, many of whom (if I recall correctly) deliver their lines in the style of the day (read: varying levels of technical skill, not much “truth”). I think it’s what makes them compelling—what makes most people compelling—versus not so much. They’re relaxed and secure (read: not needy) enough to let it hang out there, in a way that other people aren’t.******

Long after I’d recovered from my severe Crohn’s onset and but before I was able to understand how it had changed me, I had many people tell me how much more attractive I was post-onset than pre-, and not just in comparison to the ashen and skeletal me that was released from the hospital, but to the young and dewy me of my 20’s and 30’s. Mostly, I just thanked them (genuinely—it was flattering and also very, very touching to me for some reason). But my closest friend and writing partner and I discussed it at length, over a period of time. And what it came down to was this: I was easier to be around now; I was more relaxed and playful and fun more of the time.

When I thought about it, it made a lot of sense. While I’m no ogress, I’m no beauty, either, and it was always the funny/goofy/smartypants me that seemed to draw people in. And, conversely, it was the neediness that kept them away. Ironically, my biggest need was to be loved for who I really was, and of course I knew that someone was inherently revolting. Once I’d been to the dark well…well, I lightened the fuck up. Gave myself a little credit. Stopped taking myself so seriously. And realized that I need nothing—nothing nothing nothing—so much as I needed to accept the truth every minute of every day.

I used to wonder who would love me when I was old and ugly, or if I got smashed up in a car accident or carved up in one of the many knife fights I like to engage in. Now I don’t wonder anymore. I will love me, totally and completely, good-looking or bad: me. Everything else I trust to come from there. It vanquishes surprising amounts of fear.

And that, I hear, is very, very attractive…

xxx
c

Photo © Fack to Bront via Flickr.

*And having sex. Lots and lots of sex.

**I originally thought to rewrite this or even excise it, but the desire for carbon-dating won out. Besides, I was hurt and wanted you all to feel BAD for not even noticing all the work I put into setting things right on this blog. Which is still rife with busted-ass links. For the record.

***I’m sort of digging on this whole “here’s how it was, here’s how it’s gonna be” re-jiggering, so I’m going to bracket changes until I get to the totally new stuff and leave everything else as is. IT’S LIKE WATCHING HISTORY IN ACTION, PEOPLE!!!

****Do you know, I barely remember this now? It’s a little-known fact that I have a mind like a steel sieve. So I make a great audience for old jokes, but don’t ever, ever ask me to remember the combination to that locker we stowed the $50 million in.

*****Believe you me—first person who can orchestrate chemistry makes a million-bajillion dollars.

******Another great example of this is the difference between megawatt contemporaries Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Both are very adept at the histrionics, but there’s always something about Davis that’s magnificently compelling, as opposed to Crawford, whose best performances (I’m thinking of Mildred Pierce and Autumn Leaves) can’t touch Davis’s (All About Eve, The Little Foxes, Jezebel, etc.). Aside from the obvious havoc it wreaks with truth-telling, control freak-dom always has the stink of need on it.

TOPICS: celebrity.

After my recent stumping for the sisterhood, this is going to sound like a reversalist smackdown, but a story in this Sunday’s LA Times (I know, I know, but I like the ritual of fresh comics in bed) set me off. Big time. And I tried to ignore it—really, I did—but here I am, a day later, still cheesed off.

It was more than a story: the Times devoted their entire Sunday magazine to the issue of aging and its attendant hoo-hah in modern society—how we try to stop it, how we try to look like we’re stopping it, how we succeed (or fail) at both. Not a lot of insight or exploration into why we chase the dragon, but hey—this is L.A., it’s the Times, and that’s probably a given, right? Because it’s better to be young, dumbass!

Is it really, though? Maybe for hot chicks—briefly, anyway. After that, it’s my understanding that things get a hell of a lot worse, and faster, and geometrically so. Farther to fall and frequently, less to fall back on. And I understand about the age bias permeating all aspects of Hollywood culture: there are male TV director friends of mine and hotshot screenwriter friends of mine that lie about their age as much as women.

But it is worse for women, by an order of magnitude; it must be, for all women lie about their age, everywhere. I did it myself for several years while trying to get into bars, albeit the other way around. I routinely do it commercially, by passing for a full decade younger than I am chronologically: as long as they want to hire me to play a 35-year-old mom, (neither of which I am, by the way) I’ll play one on TV.

Here’s the thing, though: I never actually lie. Two examples. First, when some bonehead in the casting room asks me if I have kids—because you know, as an actor, it is necessary to actually have the condition to play like you do—I say “no.” Not “no, but I loooooove them!” Not “no, but my boyfriend does and I looooove them!” Just “no”. I mean, you’re hiring me to play a mom for thirty seconds; do you really think I’m such a fucking idiot that, during a big, important take, I’ll forget how to pass a kid a bowl of Cheerios or something?

Second, in actor-land, there’s a little checkbox on the sign-in sheet that says “40+”. I check it, and have been for almost five years now. Yes, yes—I wavered in the beginning. After all, I didn’t look 40; why should I check 40?

I knew why, which is why I didn’t want to check it at first: because it’s a lie. Which is exactly why I do check it now. Because if lie, I buy into everything that goes into that lie: that aging is a liability instead of a point of fact; that women have a shelf life with accompanying expiration date; and that a woman becomes somehow less-than instead of greater-than with time.

Which brings me back to why I’m so cheesed off. Now, despite what those commercial auditioners might think, I’m really not an asshole. I have some understanding of the world we live in and the necessity of learning to get along in it. I understand that sometimes, sharing certain truths—like your age or your sexual orientation or your political affiliation, if you’re liberal and trying to live in Indiana—might be unadvisable. Sadly, the truth is still an unaffordable luxury for many people in this great country of ourn.

But for the love of all that’s holy, when you are trying to pass, do it quietly, and for your own reasons—don’t scream it from the rooftops, and definitely don’t do it in the context of a magazine story about aging. Irony aside, it’s just fucking rude. Insulting, even. And stupid—let’s not forget stupid. Do you really think all those kids you were in the third and fourth and fifth grade with are dead now? Or that it’s that hard to locate a copy of your birth certificate online?

Bottom line: if you want to stay in the closet, fine. It’s your business, frankly. Me, I think the air and light is much finer on the outside, but I don’t know how comfortably your closet is furnished or how inclement the weather where your closet is located.

And really, what are you doing save staving off the inevitable? Isn’t it better to plant the flag in the ground now and have people say, No! How old? Damn, you look good, girl!

For the record, you do look good, girl, and not for manmade reasons. You’ve got it going on, and in more ways than one. There’s one way, though, that I’ve got you beat: I’m almost 45, and you’re not. You’re afraid to say it and I’m not. Well, sometimes I am, but I do, anyway. For the greater good, but mostly, for my own sanity. Let’s face it: I have no audience; I could ‘out’ you right now and only 75 people would know. And most of them wouldn’t care. Your secret stays safe regardless of whether I choose to spill it.

But that’s exactly why you should spill it yourself—because you doing it would make the difference. It’s kind of like during the SAG commercial strike: no one cared if the rank & file turned down the shit jobs; it’s when the high-profile members of the community stood up and told the producers where they could stick it that things turned around. You can use your powers for good, or you can use them to serve The Man.

Here: we’ll even go first. In the comments. Come on, everyone—I’ll go first:

Forty-five. 45. XLV!!!

Who’s with me?

xxx
c

TAGS: aging, ageism

Photo by Esther G via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: celebrity, Feminism, Rants, truth.