It's official: Obama loves America more.

One of the things that makes Obama so refreshing is his calling out of political tactics and rhetorical games. When the McCain people try to depict him as somehow foreign, alien or elitist, when the discourse devolves into a game of gotcha', Obama calls attention to the game - just as John Stuart exposes lazy media tropes and Bush administration doublespeak. And true to form, Obama denounced these tactics again in his acceptance speech for the democratic nomination. He asked that the goofy non-issue of who's more patriotic be shelved so the candidates can focus on more important matters like health care, the war or the recession. He proclaimed "I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first."

Would that it were true. But McCain does not put his country first. Mr. Three Melanomas' contingency plan in the event of his croaking is to leave us in the capable hands of Sarah Pallin. Who will try her darnedest, cute little overachiever that she is, but has way too much catching up to do. This is grotesquely irresponsible.

What else have we learned about John McCain as a result of this left field VP pick? That he is one of those densoid old white guys who has NEVER been able to relate to a woman as an equal, or outside the prism of sex. I worked with an office full of them in Cleveland. They can't believe you have a political opinion and their manual states that they must compliment you on some item of your attire every time they want you to work late. Obviously, McCain doesn't intend to work with this woman. He thinks she's going to help him get elected and that's it. And to the degree that this choice may have been a trawl for embittered Hillary supporters, Dude, do you know WHY a lot of these women support Hillary? Because her position on the issues is the antithesis of yours. Do you really think women are going to come together in some sort of girl power epiphany and support Sarah? Would you vote for Dennis Kucinich just because the two of you can go into the same public restroom?

Surely, we come away from this with a better idea of Mr. McCain's judgement, and his evident respect for both the offices of President and Vice President. El Maverick's judgement is so good, he made his pick after a single meeting. Reassuring that we can have such rapid fire decision making in an office that presides over matters of war and peace.

Now lets talk about that Maverick thing, which I suspect is somehow entwined with John McCain's mojo. Apparently, in the Bizzaro World known as Red State America, Sarah Pallen is famous and beloved. It seems this VP selection is a huge pander to the religious right. Not the Maverick choice Lieberman really would have been, but a woman the base considers a heroine for not aborting her Down's Syndrome child. So I would say the Maverick is back in church.

As for Obama, he went on to say that we ALL love America, and we all put America first. Which was rather big of him.

It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

The economy sucks. The job market sucks. Headhunters, online job sites, HR people; they all suck. Like a fifteen year old giving his girlfriend a hicky. Like a remora on a great white. Like medicinal leeches on Henry the VII's hindquarters. If you're getting the idea that my job search is turning into a giant suck-athon, I'd say you're pretty perceptive. In fact, I am about at the point where I'm starting to believe I suck too.

I have been jobless in a new market before. I trolled LA agencies with a spec book and eventually found freelance. I got jobs in Cleveland and Washington DC through old fashioned networking. I've never used a headhunter in my life. Now, I'm in San Francisco, and I can't get arrested. (Then again, it is hard to get arrested in San Francisco. I could run down Market Street starkers yelling "Dick Cheney ate my bubby", in a flawless Australian accent and the cops wouldn't even blink).

So, headhunters. Far's I can tell there are two types: the ones who can't wait to meet you in person, present themselves as your new best friend, promise you the moon and deliver nothing and the ones who communicate over the phone through a flunky, vet you as carefully as a prospective vice presidential candidate, claim they're sending out your resume and disappear without ever giving you feedback. My favorite was the jerk who sent me a whole page of questions before finally submitting me for a job for which I am actually overqualified. This is the question that put me over the edge: "What year did you graduate from college?" Why don't you just come out and ask me how old I am and I'll tell you where to stash your blackberry?

Online job sites make the process a lot more convenient - for the headhunters. Most of the job postings just take you right back to some recruiter. Sometimes, you can't apply on line unless you take a little quiz which determines whether you should even be considered for the position. If you're rejected, you have no way of finding out why, much less applying for the G D job. This is especially perplexing when, based on the job description, it's stuff you can do in your sleep.

I recently met a freelance art director who came to this market 4 years ago and also had a helluva time breaking in. His analysis is that people have become too lazy to do their own vetting. Nobody wants to meet you in person. There is no way to convey how well-spoken, charming, funny and fast on your feet you are. When they determine there's not enough interactive in your portfolio, you're not there to tell them the two extensive, complex websites you wrote are no longer online and provide a link to an archive. When they see that you're low on financial experience, you can't point out that you basically learned pharma overnight and have worked with some of the most uptight regulatory teams on the planet. You're held up against the checklist and found wanting.

Now here's the irony. Based on what I've seen in over 20 years in the workforce, I have become the ideal employee, a middle aged woman. Think about it: we came up right after the first wave of feminism. We don't feel entitled to our jobs - we're grateful for them. We're used to working harder than the men we've been competing with, and resigned to getting paid less for the privilege. Those of us who've raised teenagers know better than anyone how to negotiate, debate, placate or motivate. We're not going to get pregnant, or screw our way up the ladder. We basically invented multitasking. It doesn't make a lot of sense to put the work horse out to pasture.

Memo to an Obama supporter

Re: Your bumper stickers

It's time to do a little editing. Obama '08 cannot coexist on your bumper with "Goddess Bless" and "I love trees".

I'm rather partial to trees myself, and I think the Deity should be whatever gender works for you. But once you drive past the Berkeley city limits, you enter the land of the electorally undecided. Obama needs their votes and your bumper stickers associate him with what they perceive as the loony left. So keep supporting Obama, and keep your other passions private, please. And next time you pray to the Goddess, put in a good word for Barack.

Our new neighbors

Above our rental house is a steep, narrow untended triangle of land covered with tall, dry weeds. It is there, hidden and secure in the overgrowth, that a doe recently gave birth to twin fawns. When we first met them, they were dainty, spotted, awkward little wonders and looked to be just a few days old. They're almost as big as their mom now, and their spots are fading. Whoever owns that neglected strip of land hired someone to come cut down the brush, but the lack of ground cover has not kept the twins and their mother from coming back. Sometimes, they are joined by a young buck with a stubby, two-pronged rack. The whole family sleeps there at night when they're not right outside the house, making an evening meal of our landlord's bushes.

We do our best to be good neighbors to the deer next door. (I tried to feed them once but the carrots I put out remained untouched). We drive slowly up and down the street for fear one of the bamblets should leap out from behind the bushes. If we park in front of their turf, they maintain their serene insouciance as we drive in and out, slam car doors, unload groceries and catch up on the day. I haven't tried honking, which wouldn't be very nice, but I suspect no one in the deer family would flinch. Once in a while, our yorkie Winston remembers he's supposed to bark at deer, which doesn't phase them anymore than we do.

When you live in close proximity to a walking smorgasbord of venison, it's hard not to give an occasional paranoid thought to mountain lions. Just last week, one was sighted in someone's yard ten blocks from us. I flash on that when I'm walking Winston on a moonless night. Sometimes I hear rustling in the bushes or catch a glimpse of a dark silhouette. I keep telling myself it's only our deer friends.

PS I took the deer pix but the mountain lion is from google images. If I ran into this fellow on one of my walks, I wouldn't stop for a photo op and ask him to smile and say "Bambi".

Welcome to Nut Hill

As everyone on the East Coast knows, Midwesterners are narrow minded, gun-loving, pathologically patriotic, hyper-religious rubes. Of course, any midwesterner can give you the low down on those elitist, Godless, ivy-leaguing, goat cheese eating East Coast snobs. But if there's one thing the midwest and the East coast actually agree about, it's Californians. They're wierdos. A bunch of loopy, spacy, new-ageified, crystal-worshiping, airhead wack jobs. When we moved to Cleveland from California years ago, we'd tell people where we were coming from and they'd visibly recoil. Sometimes they would recover and make a lame joke. But you knew that they would forever suspect you of sacrificing goats in your basement.

Now, I live in the alleged vortex of West Coast wierdness, Berkeley California, where Code Pink is locked in endless combat with the local marine recruiting station and the sign on the bike rental place reads "pedal now or paddle later". I know this flavor of free speech doesn't play well in Columbus Ohio but who would want to live there anyway? To my mind, the people here in Berkeley are remarkably sane, politically and environmentally. They are tolerant of everyone, revel in diversity, and believe that war is obsolete. They brake for pedestrians, fret over their carbon footprints, let their wrinkles show and try their darndest to eat locally grown food. They are also often unapologetically eccentric.

Our little corner of the mountain is called Nut Hill, possibly after the Boyntons, a family of graecophiles who once lived up the street from us in the Temple of the Winds. The childhood best friend of Isadora Duncan, Florence Treadwell Boynton shared her famous friend's passion for dance and ancient Greece. While Isadora eventually packed up her veils and scarves and moved to Europe, Florence married and became a beloved "modern" dance instructor to two generations of Berkeley girls. When Florence and Charles Boynton hired renowned Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck to design their home, they requested plans that "reflected a Hellenic lifestyle".

The Boyntons didn't just love the ancient Greek lifestyle: they lived it. Like every successful San Francisco attorney, Charles Boynton left for work each day in his three piece suit, briefcase in hand. But as soon as he came home, he threw off his flannel shackles and slipped into a toga. The family folie-a-dix required that the Boyntons and their eight kids wear grecian robes year-round. They must have been a hardy lot: the original temple, eventually destroyed by fire and then rebuilt, was completely open, like its ancient Greek counterparts. That's open, as in no doors or windows. Open to whatever the winds blew in - leaves, bugs, fog and wintry weather with temperatures in the thirties.

The house was green when green was just a color - garbage was composted, water came from a natural spring, and the space was heated in winter by a central fire pit and hot water pipes in the floor. The outhouse was discretely tucked away behind the Eucalyptus trees, next to the grape arbor where Florence Treadwell Boynton gave birth to all of her kids. The Temple of the Winds had no kitchen: Raw foodists and vegans before either term was even coined, the Boyntons subsisted on fruits, honey and, yes, nuts. Whether Nut hill was named for the Boynton diet or the Boyntons themselves remains a subject of academic debate in Berkeley to this day.

All that remains of the original Temple of the Winds are its Corinthian columns, long since incorporated into an imposing stucco house whose inhabitants appear distressingly normal. But you don't have to go far to run into some quirky folk. Wandering through the farmer's market, you spot the Tiger Man, his bike upholstered with orange and black synthetic tiger fur, punctuated by a long tiger tail that flaps from his bicycle seat. Or you find yourself waiting for the bus with the Prophet, a Rastafarian in biblical Burlap robes and a straw coolie hat. Perhaps you live down the street from Sir Legs, who wears skirts year-round - in the Winter, something flannel and kiltish, in the summer, a colorful sarong. You hit the local coffee house and line up behind the Pajama Lady, well into her 70s, with her white mohawk and signature pastel flannel pjs. Or you're at the local Whole Foods, shopping next to a stunning young woman. In her long skirt and flowered hat, she's dressed like Mary Poppins, but she's no nanny. The baby she's holding is obviously hers, because she's obviously breast feeding and both her boobs are, well, obviously exposed, right there in the produce section in close, poetic proximity to the tuscan melons.

And then there's my pilates instructor, who is studying to be a Mayan Shaman - never mind that there are not enough Mayans in the Bay Area to provide her with a customer base. So how can we explain all this different drumming ? Could it be a lack of animal protein in the diet? Perhaps a mysterious cellular response to shifting tectonic plates? A secret plot to keep the rest of the country so weirded out that that they won't move to California and spoil it for the rest of us?

Just chalk it up to tolerance. Out here, nobody cares if you wear a toga to the grocery store, grow your own weed or practice the didgeridoo in the nude. The scenery's gorgeous and the weather's fine. Just like the rest of us, the eccentrics get to come out and play. And the rest of us don't mind a bit.

John McCain, Technoturd

I have always been technologically challenged. Never met a xerox machine I could operate on my first try. Faced with an unfamiliar vacuum cleaner, I need at least five minutes to figure out how to turn it on. (My husband, who did not marry me for my housekeeping skills, would say ALL vacuum cleaners are unfamiliar to me). Since we got Tivo, I've given up watching television if Mike isn't home. It's just too confusing to deal with two remotes. As for the i-phone I got for Christmas, it still intimidates the hell out of me, but I've made my peace with the thing. At least it's easier than a Blackberry.

As you might imagine, I don't have a natural affinity for computers. I am a technotard - maybe even, as a friend of mine likes to put it, a technoturd. Being a writer, I use my macintosh all the time. This means I have a working knowledge of word and I can bungle my way through powerpoint. I have never, thank goodness, had to learn Quark, or Photoshop, or Excel or, for that matter, any other programs. But boy, do I spend a lot of time on the Internet. Perusing job sites. Looking up the difference between a turtle and a tortoise. Keeping up with Salon or the Huffington Post. Comparing banana bread recipes. Reading the actual text of Obama's historic speech on race. Researching medical conditions for a pharmaceutical writing assignment. And of course, following the latest developments in our presidential race.

Which brings me to John McCain. A man who, when asked whether he was a Mac or a PC guy, answered as follows:
"Neither, I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get." Despite the fact that he once flew fighter planes, the Republican presidential nominee may be more of a technoturd than I am.

I find this profoundly disturbing. For one thing, I'd like to believe the President of the United States is smarter than me. When Bush was preparing to invade Iraq, I kept thinking dumb idea, dumb idea. It turned out to be a really dumb idea, and our commander in chief has proven himself to be a really dumb guy.

I understand only too well that it is possible to be creatively, or interpersonally, or cut-through-the-bullshit smart yet somewhat computer-challenged. But in this day and age, not consulting the internet is the mark of a singularly incurious mind. After 8 years of incurious George, we need a leader who asks questions, seeks facts, studies opinions other than his own and knows how to google. John McCain would do well to remember how Obama beat Clinton: with an incredibly sophisticated data base, a killer website and record breaking online fundraising. It's the internet, stupid.


To read about Obama's "super marketing machine", visit the link below.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/16/obama_data/?source=newsletter

Tatoo

I had my Diane Arbus moment. Actually, I had about 75 of them. I went to the Tatoo Expo with my husband and son, and hell yes, I brought my camera. My son is fascinated with tatoos, draws realistic portraits of eskimos on his forearm, and is more than likely trying to find a way around the 18 year legal age requirement for body art. We did not take him to the Tatoo Expo to encourage him, but to show him that identifying yourself visually with the body art scene might limit your prospects. There are some breaks you won't get if you go through life looking like a walking comic book. You may also prefer not to be associated with the gang element of tatoo culture, of which there was enough at this expo to warrant a no guns sign at the gate.

We weren't the only voyeurs on the scene - understated attire and an unmarked epidermis immediately outed you as a bourgeois looky-loo. But the overwhelming majority of the attendees were on a mission to get marked. The exhibit hall had literally been turned into a giant tatoo parlor. Clients winced, clenched their teeth or looked stoically away as the body artists manned their little drills. It was a fast food crowd - not a lot of money there - and most of the bodies being inked were lumpy and untoned. Vendors hawked goth jewelry, leather corsets and t-shirts touting "My first murder," in letters that dripped blood.

On a small stage in the back of the hall, a biker-MC in cat-in-the-hat headgear was attempting to banter with the crowd. Smiling broadly, he straffed us with F-bombs. It was an F-ing great exhibit, with some F-ing great artists, he's seen some F-ing great tatoos and now, for your entertainment, check out these F-ing great belly dancers.

Four plus-sized Sheherazades undulated onto the stage, finger-cymbals tinkling. Their dancing clothes had the makeshift quality of last minute halloween costumes. Ornate tatoos disappeared into their back fat. A handful of bystanders applauded good-naturedly but the real action was on the exhibition floor.

I admit it, I don't like tatoos. When my son asked what I would choose if I absolutely HAD to get one on pain of death, I told him I wanted a black dot so I could pass it off as a birth mark. I think the sight of beautiful Angelina Jolie in an evening gown with her dye-injected arms is just sad. I understand that sometimes life events cause such deep shifts and revelations in people's lives, they feel they must commemorate them. I know that there's something sexy to getting your first tatoo - I've got you under my skin, baby, and all that jazz. But whatever causes you to take the plunge, there is an element of self-destructiveness to tatooing and I think it can be addictive. After a while, some people have so many tats, they reach the dangerous point of WTF and do something irreversible, perhaps inking their faces like a Maori tribesman.

While dermatologists are probably already reaping the benefits of tattoo addiction, popular culture has yet to acknowledge the phenomenon, second cousin to compulsive plastic surgery, body dysmorphia and self-cutting. The body art movement has made big strides into the mainstream, and it would appear judgmental to suggest that there are folks who just don't know when to stop. It's going to take some remorseful people going public, crying to Oprah about the cost of having their markings removed and how the color green is forever. Once the self-proclaimed victims start coming forward, it will be safe from a politically correct standpoint to acknowledge the existence of tatoo addiction. In the meantime, boys and girls, think before you ink.

Tatoo Too

Arf, Arf! Art, Art!

Remember the elephant seals from our trip to Cambria? My daughter and her boyfriend went down to see them in mid-January. They got the same show we did (See my blog entry entitled Glittering Soirees and Bestial Orgies), with the added attraction of witnessing the actual birth of a pup. (This was followed by a seagull feeding frenzy over the placenta. Unlike Pamela Anderson, seals don't believe in burying theirs.) Anyway, my daughter was so inspired, she chose to do her painting thesis project based on the photographs she took. The thesis committee gave the paintings their "seal of approval"! Arf Arf! I'm so proud, it's making me blubber. So clap your flippers and give her a big round of applause.

And Now, Live Off-Stage...

I'm not too old to rock, but I just may be getting too cranky for concerts.

Let's see. Sting and Natalie Merchant. Chattering yahoos behind us who refuse to shut up. Ever.

Tom Petty. Great show. Surprise appearance by Stevie Nicks. An outdoor venue that sells beer to underage young men who don't give a sample about Tom Petty and are so full of Heineken, the line at the men's room is longer - yes, girls, this is a seismic event in the history of mankind - longer than the line for the ladies' room. Some boys are soooo bursting with beer, they just cut to the chase in the bathroom sink.

And then there was our fourth and probably last Bob Dylan concert. My friend had scored four second row tickets. Having just met each other's spouses for the first time, we were chatting away, waiting for the concert to start, when the pack descended. Five tall, husky guys and one big, loud lady, all in their forties and fifties. Pathological Dylan fans who will go anywhere within a 500 mile radius to see him and spend anything to wangle first row seats. Which they don't need because they stand, the entire bloody time.

The pack blocked our view with astonishing effectiveness. I am a woman of average height and my friend's wife is petite. On the off chance that she might actually catch a glimpse of Dylan in his negative space, the obstructionist in front of her wore a broad brimmed black cowboy hat. If we wanted to see, our only option was to get up, thus passing down the inconvenience to the row behind us. We were all too polite to do so. Our mothers raised us right.

Now, I've gotten up and boogied at a concert from time to time, when the song is iconic and the beat irresistible and the whole crowd is on its feet. But these jerks even stood during the ballads. They simply stopped shaking their great hulks, swaying solemnly instead. At one point, the guy in front of Mike got tired and actually took his seat. Not surprising since he was pushing fifty, built like a refrigerator, and had just downed three or more stadium beers. So he plopped down, threw his arm over the chair and leaned his neck back until his head was practically in Mike's lap. Sensing the discontent behind her, the lady Dylan fanatic turned to me sympathetically and explained that this is what one does in the front row. Maybe, she helpfully suggested, we should sit on the side next time.

My husband was reminding me of our recent concert history as we sat in the IMAX theater, waiting for Shine a Light, Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film, to begin. The current concert experience costs big bucks and sucks to such an extent, Mike remarked, movies like this are a better option. I was thinking he had a point when The Free Spirit sashayed up the aisle.

She was about forty, with butt-length, raven curls and a well kept figure. The kind of woman who can't outgrow the twenty year old girl's need to flash flesh regardless of the outside temperature, she wore black leather pants, a tall Russian fur hat and a white corset. Her hips swung like a pendulum as she walked, her straight-laced, whitebread boyfriend following right behind. They settled in three seats past me. Between us sat a lone Indian gentleman in a suit and tie.

The lights went down and the movie started. (Let me just say that in this film, the Stones are definitely larger than life. Cavernous closeups of Mick's mouth in IMAX make one feel like Jonah right before the whale gulped him down. The legendary Jagger tongue is the size of a three year old child. The stage lights shine through his front teeth when he sings and you can tell exactly which of his choppers have benefitted from the art of modern dentistry. Somebody please tell me why this is necessary.)

The movie introduces the Stones, pre-concert, photo-opping for Bill and Hillary Clinton and some of their relatives. Meanwhile, Scorsese is running around looking crazed because the song selection is not final and he needs to work out the camera placement (not suspenseful - you know he'll pull it together - he's Scorsese). Soon enough, the concert is on. And The Free Spirit is on too.

Shooting up from her seat like a trick snake from its fake nut tin, she begins to dance. She waves her arms in the air, whooping and yelling "Yeah, Mick!". She claps her palms raw after every song. When the Stones play an obscure cover tune, The Free Spirit bops around enthusiastically. When they tear into the opening riff of Sympathy for the Devil, she doesn't recognize it and stops gyrating to adjust her corset. She ooohs and squeals constantly, like the soundtrack from some lost sex tape of Marilyn doing both Kennedy brothers at the same time. Nobody else in the theater is acting like this.

The Indian gentleman stares in open disbelief. The Free Spirit's date remains silent and impassive, perhaps wondering whether the ensuing lay will be worth the current embarrassment. Mike puts his elbow up by his face and hangs his sweater on it as a blinder to keep The Free Spirit out of his peripheral vision. In desperation, I call out "You don't have to shout. They can't hear you. It's a MOVIE." No reaction. From the first song to the final encore, every number is marred by The Free Spirit's exhibitionistic whooping. I keep wishing she would hold up her lighter and get ushered out by the fire marshall.

So much for being spared the indignities of the live concert experience. I hold my tongue as I walk out past The Free Spirit, still carrying on as the credits roll. I'm dying to ask why she didn't throw her panties at the screen.