Susan's Scribblings the Blog

During the past week, a Philadelphia area woman apparently cooked up an elaborate scheme to get away from her financial problems:  one of them appears to be that she is suspected of being in possession of large sums of money which may not be legitimately hers.  She allegedly called 911 and told dispatchers she and her young daughter had been put in the trunk of her stolen vehicle by two black men.  The vehicle turned up in the middle of Philadelphia with a ticket on its windshield, and security cameras later caught her with her child at the airport; the mother borrowed a friend’s ID to get the plane ticket.  Ultimately both were picked up at Disney World and brought home.  The daughter was placed in the custody of her biological father, while the current spouse is stuck at home with their other children (including a new baby) and a lot of unanswered questions.

Meanwhile, we have  Susan Boyle, the Rocky Balboa of our time, an aesthetically average underdog challenging all of Britain in their (original) version of “(Insert Country Name Here)’s Got Talent.”  In the weeks following her spectacular debut she has been unduly pressured to upgrade her look and not mind tons of overly-enthusiastic publicity seekers bothering her constantly:  recently she supposedly had a fit of bad temper, cussing and wondering if her quest was really worth the price.

In both cases we have women who have  gotten themselves into unusual situations, and outside forces are playing dodgeball with their minds.  Whether their actions are criminal or just a quest for recognition, validation or a different life, we are fascinated by the process as the onlookers in these events.  Has anybody told Susan Boyle, “Don’t sing unless you want people to start expecting you to become famous,” or have the Philly mom’s friends said, “We won’t respect you unless you have a lot of money” and compelled her to live beyond her means?

Why is is that we always destroy the things we cherish most?  When our bedrock documents mentioned such concepts as the pursuit of happiness, it didn’t mean we should construct roadblocks in such a way that one cannot achieve those goals.  It also didn’t mean that pursuing happiness involves money, fame or status.  However, we embrace these ideals and are dissapointed by the means to achieve these ends.

With happiness comes much responsibility.  Whether you achieve it justly or unjustly, you are ultimately accountable for how you got there, and those around us share the burden of whatever roadblocks we place in the way of others while we pursue our own happiness.  We are all players in the pursuit game, and stories like these are good reasons to reflect on how our actions with others fuel the things that put us down.

I wish Susan Boyle all the best as a person and a singer.  I hope the Philly mom gets everything straightened out.  Let’s look forward to seeing the right people step in and help them reach the goals best suited to them so they may find happiness.

ABC really depressed me last night.  I just wanted to catch up on some shows I had missed, and wound up in the middle of a mixed up collection of people on television who did not in any way lift my spirits.

It started with Wife Swap, which always has featured two families who may not necessarily inspire the world but can at least help each other see the error of their ways when it comes to their daily lives.  One family was obsessed with activities and aesthetics, while the other was blended and more laid back.  I couldn’t identify with either of them.  I may not be the perfect human body, but I don’t let it all go to pot either.  The mother of the perfectionist family had skin that, in the words of the swap family’s husband, looked like saddle leather for all the tanning she did.  She used her experience with counseling to overburden her kids and keep them overprotected by making them ride in booster seats in the car simply because they hadn’t made the car safety watchdogs’ minimum weight requirement for not needing them anymore.  So the measurement of being “grown up” is also a weight as well as a state of being?  Or is safety based on adding an accessory to a vehicle instead of making the seat belts match the various requirements of their riders?

Then came Supernanny, which featured a family in which the mother had lost her husband to terminal cancer two weeks prior to taping.  The neighborhood came out to support her in raising her infant son and young daughter.  It was depressing that cancer is still so rampant in our world.  It was depressing that so many neighborhoods are not like the one depicted in the story (many suburban areas’ residents don’t even know who lives next door).

Finally came the segment on children with Tourette’s Syndrome going to a summer camp customized for them.  Watching so many afflicted yet resillient children caught up in the noises, gestures and other anomalies manifested by the disease was not helping me wind down prior to bedtime.  The one thing that made me feel better was that I didn’t mind that any of these people existed in the same world with me, but frequently in my life I have been accused of being an inconvenience just by existing, and I don’t have over-tanned skin, Tourette’s or a need for intervention.

I kept the program on to see if anybody would explain the reasons behind the human condition.  ABC and the other networks never dig into that.  They should.

You won’t find the title of this post in a dictionary, but when life is handing you nothing but a stale room reeking of fresh intestinal gas, or when the human beings around you are acting more like neanderthals, when you’re ready to throw in the towel or let off a little steam, it’s the word for you.

Take a moment and say it slowly.

Has it gotten to you yet?  Yes?  Good!  No?  Well then, what must you do to install lightbulbs?

Now that we’re clear, I’d like to encourage people to adapt this simple phrase and apply it liberally whenever necessary.  When other countries pick on us because we don’t do things the same way as they?  Scroom!  When you leave a voice message and don’t get a callback?  Scroom!  When your friends think your new pair of shoes are, like, so yesterday?  Scroom!

Really, how much value do we put on the wrong things, like other people’s opinions?  If you’re doing the best with what you have and somebody else doesn’t like it, the heck with them.  You did your part, and it’s now their problem.

Jot down “scroom” on a sticky note and keep it with you.  Stick it on your computer monitor, or print it on a shirt.  If you’re not doing anything illegal or immoral, and somebody else has a problem with it, don’t give in:  just think to yourself, “Scroom!”

May is a bummer.  This May in particular has not started out well.  My last college class was the previous Monday, but I still had the burden of a final paper which I had to plough through this past week; on top of that, I had a half dozen new work projects, my two writer’s group projects, weekly and monthly reports (and one of them was somebody else’s) and I found out that I had to try to work in a request for time off to match my doctor’s shrinking schedule which is already booked through July.

Many of the television series I either watch or tape decided not to save their season ending episodes for May sweeps, and ended them the week before.  The movies on cable are second-rate yawn inducing time wasters.  Now that I’ve sat through four of the past five Saturdays at the opera, and the season is ending tonight (fittingly, with the final ever performance of the current interpretation of  Gotterdammerung), entertainment has become a drag.

Add the week of intense rain we’ve had, and May is coming in like a rhino and is likely to go out like a sloth.

Some people run marathons; I sit through long operas.  I finally finished my fourth opera in five weeks.  Wagner’s Ring cycle is not for those of a short attention span, restless legs syndrome or little gluteal tissue.  Each opera in the four-part saga runs progressively longer; I was inside the (blessedly) cool interior of the Metropolitan Opera from 12 noon until six in the evening, with two intermissions to stretch my legs and obtain a swish of water in a paper cone cup from a watering station dedicated to the late great singer Ezio Pinza (I offer up one for him every time I grab a sip).

Sitting (as I mentioned before) in the peanut gallery high above the stage, I and a packed house of Wagnerites (at least one of whom wore a horned helmet for the occasion) enjoyed one of the last performances of the Ring in a romantic/magical theme as the composer originally imagined it.  The retirement of this version, a staple at the Met for 20 years, is a sad event.  The performers were all first rate, the Brunhilde strong and brave, Siegfried a bold and rash hero for the ages, the sets all eye-catching and the orchestration under the master, James Levine, tear worthy in its sweeping grandeur.  I enjoyed every minute of it.

At my age, though, it’s tough to hoof from the Port Authority bus station and back again, it’s expensive for a cab (hard to get one, too), and the body just doesn’t like being cramped up in a darkened theatre for hours at a stretch anymore.  I think I’ll attend shorter operas in the future and relegate my Ring fixes to DVD.

So when are you going to start serving your 1/3 lb. Angus burgers to the rest of the civilized world?  It’s way too expensive to go to New York City for the privilege of downing one of your new delectable Mushroom/Swiss burgers, or the Deluxe, or the chipotle version I intend to try next.

Yes they are a bit high in calories (820, along with 46 grams of fat and 60 grams of carbs in a 10.9 oz. burger), but if I leave out breakfast and dinner it’ll fit into my meal plan just fine alongside my cup of tea.  Besides, I walk exclusively when I get to New York, so I’m sure to burn some of it off (along with a hole in my shoes).

When you have a good product, don’t hide it in a few exclusive places:  let the world enjoy it.

Yours truly.

Yesterday I took a trip to New York to see Das Rheingold at the Metropolitan Opera.  Since I had seen it before, I decided not to spend top dollar for orchestra seats this time (the recession also had something to do with my choice).  I went for the other extreme in the ticket pricing ladder and bought (cue your best Steve Martin impression) the cheap seats.  How cheap were they?  I was three rows from the back of the house and could touch the ceiling.  If I wanted to get a workout and jog up stadium steps indoors, jogging at the Met would ensure a nosebleed.  My knees embraced the seat back in front of me.  You get the picture.

I can now reveal the full experience of sitting in the cheap seats from the perspective of somebody who has watched the back of conductor James Levine’s hair waft in the breeze  from the comfort of the orchestra.

For the uninitiated, Das Rheingold is one of four pieces of a work best described as the operatic version of a televised mini-series called Der Ring das Nibelungen (The Nibelung’s Ring), called The Ring for short.  The four operas composing the full performance cycle have undergone various staging interpretations since the 1870s when they were first performed, and the Met’s interpretation has been hailed as a brilliant traditional rendering which is in its last performances in 2009 after thrilling audiences for 20 years.  Fans of the Ring, sad to see it go, are enjoying the last few live events before a new interpretation comes in 2010, which is also why I was not going to miss it at any cost.

One of the great special effects of Richard Wagner’s lengthy (about 15 hours total) but enthralling masterwork is the appearance of Valhalla, the newly built home of the gods which appears as a brilliantly rendered redoubt placed high in the backstage scenery.  From the cheap seats we couldn’t see it because it was obscured by the proscenium.  We also saw only a portion of the rainbow bridge which appeared for the gods to reach the new fortress.

The performers’ voices are strong enough to reach us brave souls in the upper reaches of the peanut gallery, but sometimes the full effect of the orchestration as encouraged by Maestro Levine’s skilled baton managed to drown them out.  They also looked like diorama figures from so far away.

Once seated, movement of any kind can be difficult.  A late arrival just before curtain time caused me to scrunch into my seat with my coat shoved between my hip and the seat and my purse in my lap.  It wasn’t one of my most comfortable experiences.  The subsequent performances will find me in the same seat, so I guess I’ll have to dress for survival mode and take along a good pair of binoculars.  Anything I can’t see from on high I’ll just have to conjure up from my memories of Rings gone by.

My writer’s group decided to celebrate our tenth anniversary by self publishing an anthology.  It is a long and complicated process to get nine people together along with nine manuscripts and figure out what to do with it all.

We started seven months ago with first drafts, then moved on to corrections, emails, more corrections, copies to everybody, paper in and paper out.   We will have an editor look at at all anyway, but like nine fastidious cats we are determined to clean it thoroughly first.  I think we’re all a bit nervous about letting a total stranger see the finished product until we micromanage it a bit, like cleaning the house before the housekeeper comes.

Once the manuscripts are cleaned up, we have to decide on an order of presentation.  I confess to having the longest submission, so I’m happy to fit into any crevice they choose for me as long as it’s not last.  I think the last piece should be a strong one, of course (mine is), but also one that will leave a pleasant feeling in the reader before the book is closed and sent off to the local hair salon for ladies to peruse while under the dryers.  We haven’t finalized the order yet, but I think I’ll be in the middle somewhere.

We also have to write introductory notes for our works, and our biographies.  This has been tough for most of us, because we don’t like to talk about ourselves that way (blogging  is just above the comfort zone line for me as it is), but we’ve made progress.

We picked our group name at last.  We have been meeting for ten years and we never came up with one, but for identifying purposes we felt compelled.  Three of us also decided to use pen names for our work.  I don’t think we’re worried about becoming celebrities like Stephen King, but maybe it’s good to start establishing the writer identity crisis early in our careers.

The goal is to have the manuscript ready and off to the publisher in May.  I have a feeling that April is going to be longer than normal this year.