The Strawberry Blog

God bless Romance languages. They have had the good sense to retain proper pronouns regarding strangers, elders, and the unfamiliar. I challenge you to find a French-speaking server who would use the equivalent of “dude” or “guys” to a group of patrons at a table. But here? It’s practically ingrained. I have never been nor do I ever want to be a “guy.” I never want to be greeted as a “guy,” treated as a “dude,” or referred to as the male gender (by the same token, I’d also rather not be called a “broad”). But this over familiarity of the doomer noun by certain Americans fearful of the correct pronoun is rampant.

Just last week friends and colleagues from Houston and Mississippi were in Los Angeles working with us and a Mississippi-born actor. While the studio was a bastion of civility, Lord help us once we broke from the confines of its sound proofed walls. All week, when lunching from Beverly Hills to El Segundo (Kate Mandalini Restaurant excepted), it was “Welcome guys! What can I get you guys to drink?”

At which point I glanced at my chest, admittedly less obvious under a jacket but still there, still proud (and still mine). I looked down at my lap. I caught my reflection in the mirror and decided that shoulder length hair under a sun hat conspired with the former observations to conclude my female-ness. I looked over at my dining companion, the Executive Producer, who wore a shirt, pants, $400 tassled loafers and an easy smile. I gazed at my partner in crime, my closest colleague—and the most dedicated Casualite of the bunch—the Producer, Editor, all around WonderMan: he was wearing loose trousers and a button down shirt. The Associate Producer was also male, also semi-casual but not exactly brandishing a surfboard. And the Actor: male, safari-attired but definitely not wearing a dirty t-shirt with his drawers exposed. The picture was this: one female, four males from ages 30-something – 65 and none of them guys.

And yet…all week we battled the Guy phenomenon, at one point even congenially mentioning to a young waitress a lawsuit waged against Chili’s Restaurant because of their employees referring to women as “guys.” The plaintiff won. And Chili’s, smarting from the undisclosed sum paid to sensitive patron, now forbids its staff from using the overly familiar. At Chili’s you’ll find no “guys,” zero “dudes” (and certainly not me). Our waitress’ response: “Wow? Really?” And then, moments later: “So what can I get you guys to drink?”

I’m not demanding “Miss,” “Ms,” or “Ma’am.” “You” would suffice; there’s no need to add words. Less is more (though I’d like to point out that children of various socio-economic levels in my New Orleans neighborhood refer to all strangers as “Ma’am,” “Miss [insert first name] and “Sir”).

So how do we fix The Guy Problem? I’m afraid that if sheer sense isn’t working then didacticism—though not ideal—will have to cure the ailment. Not that I normally champion this (quite the contrary—most didactics are pretentious bores), but there doesn’t seem to be another effective way to eradicate the Guy Syndrome. Parents aren’t doing it. Restaurants are doing it only when litigious-minded patrons shrink their bottom line (and then restaurants make it policy). No, it’s going to take a nation of millions to start this revolution—politely, with charm and great humor—to jettison the Great Casual Undermining and abomination of greetings, to bring back a sense of decorum to our public sphere: to Demand that all Women and Non-Surfers NOT be referred to as “dude” or “guy.” Just think of the revolution it would cause if black men were once again referred to as “boy.”

Think of it as educating youth who have had the misfortune of never having the chance to compose a letter on 20 lb stock, replete with salutation, mailing it with a stamp and depositing it at a post office. Think of welcoming to society young men and women who hitherto have known only the email, texting, and MySpace barrage of the worse kind of short-hand imaginable…the kind of shorthand that they unwittingly carry over to speech. Think of it as your public duty as a citizen (or visitor) (or illegal alien) of the United States to educate our youth without the aid of the federal government (who haven’t exactly done a bang up job in the last few decades). Think of it as this: rent the movie Idiocracy and you’ll see what the Casual future holds.

I promise—unlike Jerry Bruckheimer—I’ll keep this brief. If Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was swashbuckler megabusting at its best, this latest in the naughty nauticals is more Pirates of the Caribbean: Another Day, Another Overblown Budget .

The fairest thing I can muster is that Number Three clocked in about one hour over time and that Keith Richards is both the best and the most disappointing thing in it. But despite this third, regrettable voyage, Johnny Depp’s Captain Sparrow is utterly delicious. Sparrow is so beautifully modeled in part on Keith Richards’ guitar-wielding swagger that it was sheer genius to cast Richards as his father. But on screen the Rolling Stone as actor is neither swagger nor…Keith Richards. Instead of letting Richards be Richards—rock star of legendary excess who’s worn a skull ring on his finger since the 1970s—they made him menacing, ominous; less like Richards than Depp’s assured variation on a theme. Sure, they stuck a string instrument in his hand, teasing those of us who fleetingly hoped he’d strum a few chords of “You Got The Silver,” but ultimately it was a missed opportunity to capture in the real, well-worn flesh what Depp so assiduously applied to his character.

And for the love of Neptune, how is it that despite shrinking leisure time, summer blockbusters have the audacity to fill in three mediocre hours what would have made two solid ones? While the 180 minutes passed like a gallstone in a maelstrom, I re-wrote many lines while mumbling quietly to myself. Here is one example:

BILL “BOOTSTRAP” TURNER: What was my promise to you, son?

WILL TURNER (my new line): That you wouldn’t make Number Four?

The spirits may have called me to New Orleans but it was this nation’s capital that birthed me (quasi-poetic apologies to my mother) and I can’t help myself…when spring time comes, all a native Washingtonian longs for during the crucial week between frost and humidity is a peek at the cherry blossom orgy. So I caught a plane to the District and rolled into Union Station where My Brother The Harried Nursing Student met me. My birthday plans? Spy the international blooms, hang out with my brother, eat first rate Ethiopian food. My research was important but played second fiddle to the redheaded sibling I adore.

For six days I desperately sought the sunny side of the street because, while this was mid-April, climatically it was more like early March. I found myself asking everyone from subway electricians to library archivists, “Hey, when you find April would you kindly let me know?”

Despite the weather it was a bumper birthday week filled with low-key, contiguous fêting and the marvelous sight of stalwart tulips. Despite the wind, the dogwoods barked, bit and otherwise stood their ground. Despite the rain, the city shone; despite the chill, the streets were active. Despite the Wizards’ defeat, the Redskins were in training. Despite wearing mittens to and fro, I gloried in the city of my birth, greeting monuments—Reeve’s Restaurant, 12th & F Street, U Street—with a nod to the parents who made it so and an audible exhalation for the city that is both Capitol and capital, Kennedy Center and Creme Lounge, Lincoln monument and neighborhood testimony.

And as for the cherry blossom orgy? Well, let’s just say that their weaker constitution initiated grounds for an earlier close this season. The [ahem] doors of colorful, Asiatic ill repute slammed shut for Occidental Mother Nature.

And with that jumble of metaphoric, unintentional punning, I bid you a farewell from overcast Los Angeles. Stephen Colbert: I challenge you to a Metaphor Face-Off!

We did it—on Sunday we successfully completed 30 Bikram classes in 30 days. L.A. Marathon runners passed us, limping every which way downtown, while we were nearly high from tendon stretching and throat compression, fire breathing and backbends. And while I can’t say that this practice will heal my broken bones or ankle synovial impingement (I never expected it to do all that, come on!), I can point to some interesting changes and observations. Apart from muscle toning and tightening and a little overall weight loss, the nail on my baby toe fell right off last week. It was kind of thick, I guess, and I don’t miss it (my pedicurist will be happier, too). And my Bikram companion showed me a curious benefit: after three weeks of Bikram the little wart on his leg disappeared—just up and left the room. Maybe it was too hot to stay attached any longer; perhaps the improved circulation encouraged its detachment. The unfortunate news is that, while you sweat an unholy amount ( I recommend adding electrolytes to your water in class), from what I can tell, you don’t sweat any less the longer you do it. To drip is to gain health, I s’pose. Now, without sounding like a crazy new cult adherent, I strongly recommend Bikram Yoga for anyone—injured, athletic, sedentary, weightlifting, unfocussed (dig The New Yorker spelling), and any age. With one admonishment: try Bikram unless you really hate the heat, in which case stay as far away from it as you can. Go take my place on the slopes instead.

Let us consider the foot. It bears the weight of your anatomy—and, arguably, the weight of your world. It is home to numerous tiny bones, roughly 25% of the body’s total, all of which are as strong as tiny ballerinas and just about as fragile. Strangely enough, the sesamoid bone—the ball of your foot—bears little resemblance to an actual bone, couched as it is in a joint and tendon. It’s an awfully susceptible little thing.

So much pressure, so little support.

In missives last year—the ones not entirely focused on New Orleans—I confessed that I finally had to get serious about my sesamoid—my utterly shattered, broken, fractured, forlorn right sesamoid—whose levee is breached, whose balance is compromised. So serious that I have committed myself to various forms of torture, such as Chinese herbs that smell rank and taste like the dirt upon which swine foul themselves; acupuncture, which is of course needles inserted into various parts of your person but when inserted into your foot are no longer happy, Zen like moments of bliss; and finally, I had to give up learning to tap dance last year. Mr. Sesamoid put an end to that. Thus, I am not dancing much these days; that’s the worst part of a broken sesamoid. That and less fabulous footgear.

And yet, the universe provides if you are living in Los Angeles, have an injury and fifteen bucks for a class. Despite succumbing to Southern California’s premiere sesamoid specialist and seeing the scary pictures he took of my sad little foot, I am determined to do whatever I can to avoid surgery. Because surgery scares me (I might have walked 5 miles in heels with Mr. Broken Sesamoid last Mardi Gras but I’m not crazy). Which is why, as of this Saturday, I am committing to thirty 90-minute classes in 30 days in a 110 degree room in order to heal myself, Pilgrim.

Or die trying.

I used to loathe yoga. Yoga was for people who couldn’t dance. Yoga was for uptight people who didn’t like contact sports. Yoga never thrilled me or engaged me in anything but an inner whine. It never—how you say?—did it for me. But! Put yoga in a hot room with a drill instructor/midwife and—though most beginners vomit or pass out their first class—not this Aries! In my element, my fire was on! I was rooted, I was warm, I was sweating. I stripped off that 2(x)ist tank top like it was a fur coat with rabies, stretching joyfully in a boy shorts bikini, and breeeaathed. ‘Bout time. Compared to Bikrum, all other yoga pales (and freezes) by comparison.

(I know—it sounds like a cult; it is not).

Inside this fitness wonderland of injured dancers, suffering athletes, and downtown office workers I have faith that I’ll find my foot salvation. I will one day be able to take tap. I will not have surgery and, instead, spend that $3000 on something vastly more interesting like…tap dancing lessons and high leather boots. I will heal this sorrowful, aching ball and be able to leap again.

And one day I might just get licensed to teach it and set up shop in New Orleans. Outside. Anywhere, really so long as it’s April through October. Just think of the studio fees you’ll save.

I have been asked recently, “Why the hiatus? Have you given up the web essay form?” You might be pleased to know (or depressed to learn) that I have not. Simply put, I was playing for two months—playing both an 11-year old tomboy and an octogenarian male penguin. And few other activities consume one’s life more than being in a play.

Especially an original play.

It doesn’t matter that fewer people saw it than read my blog per week; it was a fine play. It was dealt a poor publicity hand. It was undermined one week by Bayou Classic and another by the convoluted Times-Picayune review which made a little sense some of the time but failed to incite public interest. Nonetheless, even though fewer than a quarter of my local friends came out to support it, it was loads of fun—especially when three friends from the east and west coasts surprised me closing weekend. One evening a four-year old ran up and hugged my knees, which negated everything that the review did (except elicit greater ticket sales). All of this…and I got to return home to do it.

There is a saying: “Sometimes you can’t go home.”

But I was there. Landed at musty Armstrong Airport in October. Had lunch at Lil’ Dizzy’s with Bob. Caught Nicholas Payton’s midnight set at Snug—twice. Housesat my own house—once. Ran into Kevin on Royal Street. Ate at Delachaise late. Received packages—one from Santa. Saw the Pie Lady. Listened to ‘OZ without streaming it. Voted in person. Lunched at Bayona. Frequented Matassa’s. Walked past Troy’s apartment 8,000 times. Drank espresso at Envie and ran my lines. Ran my lines. Ran my lines ranmylines.

All of this and more. In Technicolor. Black and white. In high definition, drizzly gray day atmospheric Jackson Square…I was there.

But sometimes—they’re right—you can’t go home. An Irishman said that. Or someone who loves and lives for the music of his native ground and the wisdom its history imposes on infants. Or someone who loved home so much that she had to cut the umbilical of its very nature to pursue again what she has lived in self-imposed six-year exile from.

There is a time for home. This past Fall/Winter in New Orleans proved in more ways than I care to recall that, though it is home, it is not home right now. Not for me. And it is not only for the crime reported—and the one degree of separation from the violently dead; and it is not because for four blocks in November I might see three people—none of whom I know; and it is not because I seem to have fallen out of grace from radars of close acquaintance. Despite the lure of the sweet olive tree and the heady divinity of night blooming jasmine, New Orleans is in a strange state of flux that I care not to live in right now. It is as if the Revolution has begun but the Guard has only rearranged the court furniture.

But…Los Angeles?

There is a saying: “Home is where you hang your hat.”

I buy my hats at Meyer on St. Charles, but for now, I’ll hang my heart where my home needs to be.

God bless the DGA, that bastion of GOB (Good Old Boys), for hosting populist screenings. Tonight’s post-Saints win: ALL THE KING’S MEN. Though, before I proceed, I must confess: there is something, a specific faux pas occasionally committed in the theatrical and cinematic arts…a thing so unnerving as to shake my organic rafters, or even worse—prevent my entertainment or edification.

It is none other than a WRA, or Wildly Roaming Accent (also known as FLK: Feral Linguistic Kitty), accents from an otherwise real region of the world—let’s say for argument’s sake, some wet Creole city in Louisiana—that actors never actually get right. I’m not gonna lie. The New Orleans Y’AT accent is a bugger; but it ain’t a bugger from somewhere between the Bronx and north Georgia, Mr. Gandolfini. I chose to accept that Tiny’s (Gandolfini’s) authentic accent was really just trapped somewhere between Frenchmen and Bienville at 4:00 AM. And it’s probably still there.

My friend Edana—a splendid actress and writer—had warned me that I will wonder why the British are here. She was right. But before you get your drawers heaped in a bureau of indignation or think I’m some kind of provincial snob, this is neither to say that I think Americans can’t play Shakespeare nor that Brits can’t play anything but Brits. However,—and this is where the rubber meets the road, where the ghetto meets the academy, and where my shit meets your fan—I’d rather hear no accent at all (thank you, Mr. Hopkins, thank you) than to hear one meandering down the road like a frat boy on Bourbon Street.

Let’s look to Jude Law for a moment. His old money accent was on anything but, as it strolled through the pastures of Sussex to Savannah, teasing us with a bon mot a la Donaldsonville then catching the train back to…somewhere between Lewisham and North Carolina. Good thing he’s an otherwise fine actor with good comedic timing and boyishly handsome enough to want to kiss every quadrant of his face whilst lodging your tongue in the cleft of his chin. Good thing. Because that accent I wanted to put over my lap and give the kind of whoopin’ fit for a bad public school boy (that’s English public school boy).

My rant complete, the only thing left to say is: Light is everything. Lumens is the real king here. And Pawel Edelman, who knows a thing or two about period and light (credits include Ray and The Pianist) also knows Louisiana light, a luster all its own—at one point bathing the French Quarter in a Tuscan glow, the many colors and shades of Stark, Stanton, and sugar plantation skin burnished with love.

You can forgive when the particulate matter in the caving-in mansion seems a little too produced, too production designed to be true. Because it isn’t. Anyone can tell you. That’s what happens to falling-in places, to the old brick and mortar mistresses of the river road. That’s what happens when the summer linens have covered the parlor furniture for a decade. Call it love of the sport, Mr. Edelman and director Zallian are in love with Louisiana light. And flora. And fauna. Though I wasn’t sure whether to take the black cat as an American omen or British one (black cats in Britain are very good omens, especially on one’s wedding day).

Sean Penn’s “King” (Willie Stark) starts out as a teetotaling hick and ends up just as drunk as the old mansion boys with their secrets and oil, and the city boys in pinstripes. Stark goes from anti-politician to a kind of freewheelin’, poetry spoutin’ good ole boy crowing from the marble steps. Which gave me pause: Does politics encourage the sober and taciturn to…teeter a bit? To swagger in the power? And another thing: what is it about the Louisiana governor’s office that encourages those otherwise serving the public…to sing? Trust me. These characters bear burnished contemporaries.

Driving back, BBC (Bastion of British Culture) radio reported on Chelsea football club making their Bollywood (India) film début and, much to my delight (and probably a first in their broadcast history) also said that “...back home in their Superdrone [sic] tonight, New Orleans’ Saints football team won against the Atlanta Falcons in a 23-3 match.”

The British have come.

Last week I attended a Jewish Sabbath dinner on Friday (a seder) and went to my first Los Angeles church service on Sunday.

At The Forum.

That’s right—the arena where the Lakers used to play; where Madonna rehearses for world tours.

I was a little skeptical about The Forum: how would the music fare at this non-denominational church-arena? How could it compare to New Orleans? Would there be brass? How could there not be brass? If Glenn David isn’t singing, then do I really want to be there? I had a litany of questions for my poor friend. I was such a pain in the ass about it, anyone else would have said, “You’re so concerned about the music? Stay home with Johnny Coltrane then.” But Nicole is a patient friend—a virtue with which I am unfamiliar. Spiritual and fairly regular about her bible study, she’s far too kind to let a little music snobbery get in the way of soothing my soul.

In the same way that my Jewish friends would never serve sweet traditional wine at their sabbath dinner because (A) They’d be celebrating alone, which means that B) in effect, it would get in the way of the communal spirit. My lovely friend, who actually hates chicken but felt compelled by tradition to make her maiden cooking foray into that pedestrian bird, blessed the garlic-spiked fowl in Hebrew—a language almost as unmusical as Kevin Federline. An unfortunate mix of spitting, choking, and complaining, it is jarring to the senses seeing a beautiful woman speaking such gutteral words. Like using expletives in the nave. At least German is…funny. I always laugh at the thought of myself barking German orders to my late (incredibly German) Shepherd. But Hebrew isn’t funny. It’s depressing. The seder—which was only religious in the sense that the chicken was baptized, kosherized and otherwise sanitized—was beautifully scored with iPod shuffled spirituals including The Harmonizing Four’s “Motherless Child,” a rendition that remains unparallelled. It’s like a world record in dulcet harmony, The Guinness Book for bass. How low does he go? How can he go that low and still sound like God?

Doesn’t matter; at least it offset the Hebrew. There was all kinds of good music that night while we downed Spanish and California bottles and tore the flesh of figs. As I marveled at their rice, I wondered too—perhaps to the point of blaspheme—how Christ got his word across if he was speaking Aramaic? It’s not exactly Italian. The rest of dinner was Hebrew-free, free-range fowl and free-flowing bottles and conversation, while my beloved wowed them with a limited but impressive Yiddish vocabulary. Impressive because his people hail from Acadiana. South Louisiana. Essentially from Spain.

How could the Forum on Sunday beat the seder score?

Forty minutes of song and praise lifted my eyes to the rafters where sodium lights threatened to make me squint, so I blocked them with my hands—which made it look as if I were prematurely raising the roof instead of protecting my vision. And high in the stands were flag draped liturgical dancers, little boys and girls, grandmothers with bellowed fabric. Sure, the music was amplified, I didn’t recognize a soul, and I couldn’t make out the faces except when I looked at the giant screens, but the gospel was good, the people were lively, the spirit manifest. After a chorus or two, in good spirituals style, you picked it up and carried it along… with the 5,000 other churchgoers. L’Chaim!

In one week I have been socially thwarted by a Puerto Rican banker, inadverdently dissed by Quincy Jones, and chatted to, by, and with former United States Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky.

Pinsky and collaborator pal Michael Mazur were speaking as part of the University of Southern California’s “Visions and Voices” series (Quincy Jones will be there next month). As my professor friend and I tardily approached the lecture hall Thursday evening, we were stopped by a woman outside.

“The lecture has already started,” she said in a stage whisper and horrible skirt, “so please be quiet when entering the hall.”

Please be quiet? We took our seats and, as Pinsky and Mazur discussed collaboration on Dante’s Inferno, I stewed. Quiet? As in refrain from alerting the press, cueing the trumpets, and striking up the fanfare? Did she mean that kind of quiet? As the discussion carried on colorfully on stage I continued to ruminate on the meaning of this poorly outfitted, presumptuous nitwit, wondering why I didn’t fire back with something like “Perhaps you’ve mistaken me for an ill bred undergrad?” or “Gee thanks, I know I look like Lindsay Lohan but I promise I’ll behave myself in the auditorium.”

After these fantasized fair to middling retorts, I promptly got down to the business of listening. Listening and scribbling, which is what I do when I’m in lecture halls with brilliant minds and the palpable energy of enlightened people.
People who are in The Dante Club, as Mazur calls it, the unspoken guild to which one is automatically assigned when working on a translation or illustration of Inferno—a collaboration with every other artist in history who has ever worked on Dante.

It’s been a long time since I sat down with Dante’s Inferno and curiously, I had forgotten how, in Canto V, “Carnal Desire,” those fixated on sexual thought walk in a perpetual hurricane. And it gave me pause: what, then, might be the punishment for Gross Negligence in Engineering?

What would Dante do?

Might the punishment entail a perpetual state of coitus interruptus? Or prostatic congestion? Or would it involve drinking enough toxic concoction to make one sick—but not mortally injure? He might condemn the Army Corps of Engineers to be ignored in perpetuity. Or, confine them to a state of hopeless struggle, forever building a levee that is never strong enough—one never good enough for the people who commission it. That seems fair enough in hell, don’t it?

Dante ends the Inferno with this:
“Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears,
Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.”

The other Pinsky, Dr. Drew, the M.D. better known for his radio show Love Line, in his recently published study cited that stars—or, more precisely, celebrities—are more narcissistic than the rest of us. No shit, Dante! The star of our evening, Robert Pinsky, very un-egotistically inscribed my book thus: “Best Wishes.”

So, maybe—just maybe—there are stars at the end of hell.

If they’re Dr. Drew types and not the celestial ones, you’ll find me sipping a cocktail in Dante’s Fifth Ward—waiting for the lust filled to come in out of the hurricane

Last week my friend Nicole and I were at Koi in West Hollywood, sipping at the bar with Beautiful People Who Don’t Say Much, waiting for our table. I hadn’t realized just how incredibly, indelibly hot this little spot was until Nicole said in a monotone over her sweet drink, “Hey, Quincy Jones sighting. Guess we’ve arrived.”

Well…arrived is not how I’d put it. You see, Nicole is simply too Negro and I’m just plain not blond enough—in fact, I might even be too Negro for Mr. Jones. Clearly, we were far from his mode de femme. She’s a classic beauty from the east coast who came to the west coast to discover that “the brothers don’t like booty here.” Now she’s even considering exploring the White Man as a potential mate and I say get thy safari gear on, my sister! (I like to speak in the Elizabethan vernacular so she’ll be ready in case she lands an Anglophile or—crikey!—a real Anglo straight outtah Brixton).

Frank discussions of jungle fever, molé migraines, and the soysauce vapors happen often between us girls. She’s right about the special kind of west coast fever out here. As opposed to my former colleague in Louisiana who said that he always sought “the browner-haired, more Italian white women,” Nicole surmises that west coast fever often takes on a decidedly brash, blinding…trashier edge. Lots of superlatively peroxided, fake titted little things from suburban Indiana hanging from the swarthy young arms of men with gold teeth and a rap cd forthcoming. Can’t you hear a 40 Acres And A Mule production coming on? “JF:2…West Coast Fling.” (For Nicole’s witty rants and old school lyric resurrection, click here.

Now, I am not star struck but I am gregarious and I wanted to say hello to Mr. Jones—quickly, a peremptory little “well, hello sir, how good to see you…again” as we sashayed to our table. That’s all. Just a garden variety greeting of the public order. When I was blocked by a Puerto Rican banker who, after musing on my eyes “profundo,” took his giant ego over to Mr. Jones to introduce us. But after some time I turned around to find that Jones & Co. were escorted to the segregated area, to the inner sanctum of blondes at the back of this Japanese-Californian fusion bus.

While Nicole and I were left living together in perfect harmony/Side by side on my piano keyboard/Oh Lord, why can’t weeeeee?”

Next week: my friend Sylvana on big white guys and little Asian women. She has a few words about that combination….