Best Song

No question on this one. Someone Like You by Adele.

With lyrics like regrets and mistakes, they are memories made, there is nothing more to be said. The only issue with this song is that they [...]]]> It’s Best of time again, and here are my best of choices from this past year.

Best Song

No question on this one. Someone Like You by Adele.

With lyrics like regrets and mistakes, they are memories made, there is nothing more to be said. The only issue with this song is that they are playing it too much. They did that to Celine Dion’s song for Titanic and I wanted to shoot myself every time it came on the radio.

Chris Martin (the fabulous Gwenyth’s husband), said in a 60 Minutes interview that he is very competitive and strives to do new things always. He said he wished he’d written Someone Like You, and when he heard it for the first time, he stayed up all night trying to write something amazing.

Best Movie

I think I’m going with Win Win this year. Maybe I’m choosing it because no one else has picked it, and I think it’s being overlooked when it should be celebrated.

Opening dialog between mother and child.

“Mommy, where is Daddy?”

“He’s running.”

“From what?”

And, I love the vulnerability of the good and bad in our main character. I have been cheated by someone close, and I think this movie helped me to see that desperate people do desperate things that are not within the realm of who they are inside themselves. Great flick.

Best Quote

I am going to give you a few. The first is not substantial enough to carry the category, but I loved it.

“Rick Perry is a candidate for Republicans who thought that George W. Bush was too cerebral.”

Paul Begala, Democratic strategist, on Rick Perry’s potential entry into the 2012 presidential field.

“Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” 

The last words of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs were reported by his sister Mona Simpson in her eulogy.

And, last but not least,

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.”

2012 Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren

Best TV Show

I know, I know. I can hear you now. “Christine, you are showing your shallow side,” but I loved Pan Am. I fear they aren’t renewing it, but I loved it. I loved the strong women bucking systems that we girls (I was under ten years old back then) didn’t even know existed. I love the way they didn’t let the chauvinists enter their own psyche. I loved the glamour. Cuba. Italy. Come on. It was fabulous, and if you didn’t watch it, find it and watch it now.

Best Tweet

I’m so tired of Oprah already. The woman truly thinks she’s God! Today she’s at Barnes & Noble signing copies of the Bible.

Joan Rivers

Best Book

Catherine the Great, by Robert Massie. It’s a tantalizing portrait and I read it well into the night a number of nights in a row to not miss a word. Read it. I wish they would use books like this in history classes instead of teaching history in a war to war series. Note to history teachers.

That’s it for this year’s best of.

Happy New Year Freesia Lane readers. I hope all good things come your way this year.

I am in a screenwriter’s group. (Ok, although I’m in this group, I haven’t presented my screenplay yet. But writing it as if I were really ready to accept my Academy Award is [...]]]> I know. I never heard of it either, but not only is fragging a real thing, it’s a really awful thing.

I am in a screenwriter’s group. (Ok, although I’m in this group, I haven’t presented my screenplay yet. But writing it as if I were really ready to accept my Academy Award is tons of fun.) Last night, someone who had been in the military in Afghanistan was presenting his script and talking about how a new officer can come to a combat zone and be in charge of everyone, even though he has never been there before and knows nothing about the lay of the land or the people he is leading. It’s the way the military does it. Just one more reason I think we should approach things like Switzerland does, and not have a military. But we all know no one at the Pentagon cares what I think.

So I have to pipe up. “I don’t understand. Isn’t it dangerous to have someone lead people he doesn’t know in a situation they have been in and he hasn’t?”

One of the group, a man in his fifties, said, “Well, it’s really not a problem because there is always fragging to fix the problem, and officers know that, so they tread carefully.”

“What’s fragging?”

“In Vietnam, if you didn’t like the officer in charge, you made sure a grenade went off near him and the fragments killed him, getting rid of the problem. Fragging is short for fragments.”

“No, that can’t be true!”

“Yes it is true and it’s a good thing.”

Clearly he wasn’t an officer.

So I went home, looked it up, and sure enough, fragging even has a page on Wikipedia. I just thought you should know.

First, the man was the tallest man in the Middle East, tethered to a moving hospital, and it took us ten years to find him. The ‘greatest’ country in the world took ten years to find a man who was hiding in plain sight [...]]]> I get it. Ding dong, the witch is dead. Really?

First, the man was the tallest man in the Middle East, tethered to a moving hospital, and it took us ten years to find him. The ‘greatest’ country in the world took ten years to find a man who was hiding in plain sight in a country that was supposedly our friend in a town where many retired Pakistani military live. In contrast to the image we had of him running in fear, living in caves, worried about snakes and bugs, and trying to get the care he needed, he was right next to a golf course, where for all we know he played on a weekly basis with his retired army buddies from Pakistan. Really?

Then our President goes on TV and acts like this is a great accomplishment, and a time of celebration for our country. It reminded me of a cat we had who did the same thing with a field mouse she caught. She dropped it on the doorstep and acted like we should all stand around and coo at her brilliance. It’s the first time I’ve heard Obama use the word ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ in reference to the accomplishments of the military. Going in the dead of night in two helicopters and shooting men and a woman whom they were using as a shield, and then racing out of there is the stuff movies are made of, not the way decent people are supposed to behave.

Look, I get that he needed to be killed. I get that. Kill him. Then put out a release and say that he has been killed and the body has been put out to sea, and that this is a sad day for some, and a day of reflection for the United States, and perhaps a time of hope that we can all come together, his people and ours, and work as members of a global community to make a better world built on mutual understanding rather than terrorism and retaliation. End of story. This is a time of reflection on how to move forward, not a time of celebration. That is, unless we are a country that celebrates murder and vengeance. The celebrations reminded me of the celebrations in the streets of Paris at the end of WWII. The Parisians had something to celebrate. The war was over. When this war is over, I will celebrate in the streets. Not now.

So, he’s dead. Martyred at our hands and dumped off a warship in the middle of the ocean. Now the big question is to determine how to show proof of death with a body whose left eye is missing. Really? This should do wonders for our image in the community he called his own. The same community that will use our celebration this day to recruit young men to join a cause whose foundation we planted in their oil-rich soil.

Look, we supported Saddam Hussein. He was hung without a blindfold, standing straight and tall, and the video of it shows the ridiculous, Lord of the Flies manner in which the Iraquis carried out his execution. Who won that round? And now we have an eyeless corpse that we apparently must show the world. And we planted him, too. Who really wins this round? Or any of these rounds?

No one is who wins. No one. We are all a community of people. Of Facebook’s 400,000,000+ users, more than half are outside our country. We are now a global community. Let our country lead the way forward with friendship—real friendship—rather than “let me take all your oil for my masses,” which results in hatred, bitterness, and bankruptcy for our nation.

Now we will wait and see what retaliation comes. I’m told that Al-Quaida promised they would retaliate. We have provided our foes with additional ammunition, and I for one, am not dancing in the streets. I have a friend who is as afraid of flying as I am. I talked to her yesterday afternoon before her flight this morning, and she was feeling good, excited to go to New York from LA and get some work done. She canceled her flight last night after a warning from our government that travel should be curbed if possible.

A time of celebration? Not so much. Bin Laden may be dead, but he’s not gone. He will live forever in the hearts of those who would do us harm. But to the Navy Seals and other men and women from the military: job well done. Very, very well done. A grateful nation thanks you.

We all know his famous orations, in which he spoke of climbing mountains [...]]]> Forty-three years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated. The way he lived was so much more interesting than the way he died, and in these early morning hours I find myself walking down memory lane, listening to his speeches.

We all know his famous orations, in which he spoke of climbing mountains and hoping his children would be judged by the content of their character, but one interview stands out for me.

He was asked about violence, and he took the physical out of it. He said that the violence of poverty, the violence of slums, and the violence of inferior education were all acts of violence that attacked the spirit and the psyche, and that he thought these forms of violence were more far-reaching and dangerous than the physical violence of the times. That was one of his greatest moments. I have always believed that when physical wounds heal, you can see them clearly, and they can no longer hurt you. The scar reminds you of the injury, but the pain is gone. But verbal attacks, which leave no physical evidence, don’t heal in a way that puts them in the past. They stay with you just under the surface, and sometimes you can’t see where they lurk.

King’s death also led to one of Robert Kennedy’s finest moments. RFK was due to speak in Detroit (I think), and they told him not to go on. They told him it was too dangerous, and that the crowd could turn violent. He ignored them, went up there and spoke his truth extemporaneously. He was brilliant, and he had the right to speak of letting hatred go—he had lost his brother to violence. Listen to it.

So, on this anniversary date, we can all look back and see how far we have come, and how far we have to go. What an amazing man, to have left such a mark on us all. I wish there were more like him around today. We could use them.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask [...]]]> I was in the sixth grade fifty years ago when President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I remember our teacher wrote it on the blackboard in a bunch of ways.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

“Ask not what your family can do for you, ask what you can do for your family.”

“Ask not what your friends can do for you, ask what you can do for your friends.”

To be honest, I think what came to mind was that I never asked anyone to do anything for me. And I was also confused about what my country could do for me. We were a self-sufficient family and country, taking care of ourselves and our immediate family and friends, and not really in the habit of asking big-picture others to do things for us.

Favors were asked by and for family and friends.

“Can you watch my kids while I run to the store? Can I get you anything while I’m there?”

“Can you drive my husband to the train? I have to get the kids to school and he missed the earlier train.”

And now we have a totally different mind-set, an expectation that we are all owed something just because we want it, and the things our neighbors do for us are not favors at all. We are entitled to lower taxes, a blue ribbon, or an A grade, whether earned or not. Even in a restaurant, the menu is never really the menu. Remember in When Harry Met Sally, the way she ordered off the menu? “I like it the way I like it.” “I’d like your pasta dish, but please do not use the cream sauce and just use a little olive oil…” So much for the chef showcasing his work.

Now, we don’t really ask friends to help us with day to day things we can do ourselves, but we ask strangers, companies, and country to do things that seem odd at best, and entitled at worst.

You can now call a credit card company and say, “I know this is your written interest rate, but I have been a customer for X years, and I want a better one.” And you may get it. You agreed to the interest rate when you got the card and now they should change it because you don’t like it anymore?

You can now print out pricing from six different dealers when you go to buy a car, and you’re entitled to a price that is lower than low. Didn’t it used to be that you bought your cars from a neighbor and you had a relationship with that person that you could count on? They took care of you and your car, and they told you what the car was going to cost, and that was that.

Everything is a negotiation now, and I think we are none the better for it. We spend way too much time thinking about what we can get for ourselves and our kids, what we can negotiate, and where it is cheaper, and not enough time valuing where it came from, what someone does to make it work, and what its core value is.

I also think it isolates us. There is no pleasure in buying, no sense of worth in the things that are delivered in brown boxes to our doorstep. Gone are the car dealer-friends, the pharmacists who knew your health history, the butchers who saved you something for the dog (whose name they remembered), and the doctors whose home numbers were written on a pad next to the phone. Gone are neighbors taking care of neighbors.

Favors and professional gifts are a thing of the past, and what is owed to us is at the forefront of our minds.

I think we should go back to the old way of neighborhood favors and government as an abstract thing that really doesn’t affect us much. I think my doctor should not have to worry I’m going to sue him should he make a mistake. I think my car dealer should be someone whose name I remember six months after I buy the car. And I think he should call me and check in to see how I like that car.

It’s time. We need to return to being dependent on each other for things that make us all more connected and intertwined. I’m going to go look for a butcher today and tell him that my dog’s name is Luke.

I cried all the way through Secretariat. What is it about horses? What is it about [...]]]> I have to review these two movies together because they are both about women in the seventies who stood out among women, bucked the conventional roles of women, and made us all better for it in the end.

I cried all the way through Secretariat. What is it about horses? What is it about the way they stride forth that makes me want to do the same thing? To be extraordinary. Isn’t that the point for each of us? To find what is extraordinary about our individual selves and then just find a way to do it? Diane Lane is lovely, but she’s not strong enough for the role. I have now watched a lot of interviews with the real Penny Chenery, and she was tougher than Lane. It should have been Glenn Close or someone with a little hardness. Diane Lane always looks a little like a deer in headlights, and Secretariat’s owner had no deer-in-headlights quality about her. That notwithstanding, the role is so rich, it makes no difference.

Could a woman in the seventies far surpass her husband’s greatness? Not so much. Could she raise children and run a horse farm from half a country away? I’m sure these responsibilities took a toll, but the end result had to be worth it: her daughters saw her rise above the housewife norm. Would that I could have a moment when my daughter watches something I’m doing with the pride of Kate Chenery.

Then there is the fabulous woman in Made in Dagenham. She is, of course, a more admirable heroine; she brought the Ford Motor Company to its knees demanding equal pay for women. The portrayal of the men in this film makes you want to bury them all at Wounded Knee—and wound their knees on the way to the burial. It was a long time ago, and much has changed since then, but those women who stood up to men when it was so very costly to do so need to have monuments erected for them, like the Greeks used to do for their gods.

Forty years ago women had no business voice and didn’t do blue-collar work, and the two women in the movie stepped forward in their different ways and paved the way for my generation to move toward equality in business. I thank them. Take your daughters to these movies. Buy them for the family library, along with Pretty Women and You’ve Got Mail. There is room for both of them.

The fantasy of a woman finding a man, coupled with the reality of knowing you needn’t have one to be something special, has a place in all our favorite films.

Thanks to you Penney Chenery and Rose Boland, for paving the way. And, thanks to Secretariat, the greatest horse that ever lived, even if he was a boy.