02/25/007 - Best Oscars Show !

I was sick for two weeks with a cough - that was draining. Goal for this past weekend was to sleep in and not talk, not cough. Time to think, and settle in to watch the Oscars from start to finish. Multi-tasking as usual. This year working on closing the books for '06 LTHA. And keeping a watchful eye on my sleeping sweet Baaboo, whose life has taken a tragic turn. I remember when I was 19 and my life was also altered by a tragic turn.

The show was great; Ellen was smashing! And the Oscar Website is not too shabby either.

I had heard about "seat fillers" a couple years ago but now I think it would be a hoot. I hear there is a process, just like the Red Carpet bleachers and SuperBowl tix. Know someone who knows someone...maybe next year or the year after that.

02/11/007 - Little Miss Sunflower

Payperview.
Sickkid.
Rainyday.
LittleMissSunshine. Great movie.
Especially the yellow VW bus. Just like dad's; just like the one I learned to drive.
Just like the red one, my first car, that I rolled. I was going to use it as a camper and drive to CANADA. Drive across CANADA. Then go to nursing school.
That did not happen.
In the movie, they stow a dead body in the luggage area in the far back; we used to call it the doggy seat.
The horn gets stuck. You know the weenie ahhhh sound VW's horn makes. Kinda like the way coneheads scream. Yes dear the VW horn did sound like that...still does.
There are still some hanging on in sunny California.

02/03/007 - Dream maze

Rising from beneath the sea of grass. Barely have a chance to suck in a quick breath. Then drop back down to the depths of dreams. My dreams, my life played out on the screen in a darkened theater. "Pan's Labyrinth" or more accurately, "'El Labirinto del Fauno" as this is a Spanish movie with English subtitles.

Seems Guillermo Del Toro knows something about my life. As many times as I've jokingly described myself as a changeling, this is the first time a parallel story line so echoed the fine insanity that has unraveled over the past 54 years of my life.

Observant, she sees the truth yet believes in magic: like magic chalk that can create a portal where no doors exists. She is alone and spends much of her time lost in her own imagination. She experiences terrible loss and violence. She tries to do the right thing. She fails but in the trying redeems herself.

That is a cheerful thought, maybe there is still hope. For me.

I've begged and stolen a handful of my Aunt Gerry's paintings. The illustration above is one of her's..unfinished. It is my favorite. Because this surreal perspective was a very real place; my grandparent's place in Woolcott NY.

Scene of many hours walking the elaborate above ground root system of the tree pictured above. Also scene of the first abuse I can remember. Upstairs in the front corner attic bedroom.