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.

My Week with Marilyn is a must-see. [...]]]> Well, hello Michelle Williams. Wow. Kudos to you for sure, for you are totally mesmerizing as Marilyn Monroe—or frankly, as anyone at all. No one can take their eyes off you when you are on the screen. You are more bewitching than Marilyn was by many percentage points.

My Week with Marilyn is a must-see. It’s a one-week snippet of Marilyn’s life, and it shows us her genius at manipulation and her vulnerability as a woman whose soul others can’t see through her beauty. Lastly, it shows us how three extremely powerful players were all at the mercy of one very unstable Marilyn.

At one point, the young Colin Clark says to Marilyn, “The trouble is that Laurence [Olivier] is a respected stage actor who wants to be a star and you are a star who wants to be a respected actor, and somehow you are getting in each other’s way.” I thought that was oh-so-true. Being both is almost an oxymoron for a stage actor, by virtue of the fact that there is an intellectual approach to stage acting, and to aspire to the ‘sell-out’ of stardom that means you are anything but a serious actor.

Everyone is brilliant in the film. The filming is brilliant. It’s all done with such effortless genius that you do not realize until after you have left how many layers there were to the plot. Marilyn’s brand-new marriage to Arthur Miller was already on the rocks. Marilyn was a struggling actress, unable to see the world’s admiration for her talent as anything other than adoration of her physical beauty. Laurence struggles to be taken seriously as a director and fails due to his inability to motivate and control Marilyn. Vivien Leigh’s adjustment to old age is an issue that women in film still face.

But mostly it’s about Marilyn and her young man, whom she lures into her web with no real intention for their affair to be anything other than an interlude. Colin doesn’t tell us about the rest of his life, but I fear he was never any good for any other woman after falling for Marilyn, who was only toying with him.

I have thought a lot about how she studied method acting during the filming of a movie about a showgirl who falls in love with a young prince. “Hmmm,” said I to myself. “That makes total sense. She could practice her acting with poor, unsuspecting Colin and get it right in front of the camera later.” In other words, the Colin and Marilyn story parrots the story Marilyn was filming on the screen.

I think she used everyone around her. She was smarter than a fox, and her stupid “poor me” routine littered both sides of the Atlantic the bodies of her victims.

Michelle, this is the role of your lifetime, and we are all grateful that they saw it in you and brought you in to do it. It would not have been such a powerful movie without you.

Oprah went global two months after my fabulous daughter was born. I’m not sure when I started watching, but I’m pretty sure it was close to the beginning. At that time there was no such thing [...]]]> Today is Oprah’s last show, and I hope you will all watch it, because Oprah is my friend.

Oprah went global two months after my fabulous daughter was born. I’m not sure when I started watching, but I’m pretty sure it was close to the beginning. At that time there was no such thing as TIVO, so I didn’t tape it. Let’s say I watched five times a month. I don’t remember any of those shows, but I do remember she was a part of my life as far back as the birth of my fabulous daughter. I also remember that I never discussed watching her with anyone. It wasn’t until the last few years that I came out of the Oprah-Watcher Closet and demanded that those I care about take a look at some of her shows. Many of them looked at me like I was nuts, but I didn’t care.

I’m not alone. Some of Oprah’s stats boggle the mind. Oprah’s audience is predominantly female, white, and over the age of 55. Nationally, 7.4 million people watch Oprah daily—about 2.6 percent of American households. Four percent of American women (about 5.7 million) watch her daily, compared with 1.2 percent of men (1.7 million people). Overall, 2 percent of Americans age 18 to 49 watch Oprah—more than 5 billion people over the last twenty-five years.

She has sold millions of books, propelling unknown first-time authors to the New York Times Best Seller List and bringing some of literature’s classics to those of us who would never have read them. As a kid, I was a voracious reader, but somewhere along the path to adulthood I’d forgotten to pack books, and she reminded me that they needed to be a part of my everyday life. I remember the summer she said, “Let’s all read War and Peace together.” Here is what she said about it. “War and Peace is not so much difficult as it is long. Dig in, though, and you’ll quickly see why Tolstoy’s exuberant opus—set in the years just before, during, and after Napoleon’s invasion of Russia—is arguably the greatest novel of all time. Within these pages, you’ll find family drama, trenchant social observation, military history, brilliant discourse on the question of free will, and a love story for the ages.” I loved that summer, and War and Peace was one of the reasons why.

She has dealt with politically hot issues, including race, incest, bullying, and pretty much anything that has more than one passionate point of view. If topics like these hurt the heart too much, I sometimes have to look away, but she always does it with compassion, humor, and intelligence; and I can honestly say, I have never looked away or turned off an Oprah show. That’s a testament to her greatness right there.

I have watched some Oprah shows with Ms. Sarah, daughter extraordinaire. And, while Sarah sometimes rolled her eyes when I asked her to watch with me, generally she was transfixed after the first few minutes. She and I sent contributions after some shows. We laughed at Oprah and Gayle’s cross country drive, and at least I was imagining Sarah and me making the same trip as they lovingly bickered their way cross-country. I am closer to Sarah because of Oprah. Thanks, Oprah.

Oprah was born poor and black, deep in the south. Her mother left her with her grandmother when she was a baby. When she was around five, she was sent back to her mother. She was darker skinned than her sister, and when she arrived at the house her mother lived in, the owner of the house made her sleep alone on the porch outside because she didn’t want her in the house. Oprah was terrified out there. Alone and frightened, she invited an imaginary angel to sleep with her to keep her company and to keep her safe.

Her mother was on welfare, and one Christmas she said there would be no Christmas presents because there was no money. Oprah was saddened by this, mostly because she didn’t want to have to go to school and say they didn’t get gifts because there was no money. Nuns arrived on Christmas Eve and brought gifts, and Oprah received a doll. She was relieved because she could now go to school with a present to share. But, she also says that what was truly extraordinary was that she mattered to someone. She said she felt as if she was really somebody who was worth something to someone, or why would the nuns have brought her a gift?

Ok, last story, I promise. Her grandmother was hanging clothes to dry in the backyard of their house and she told Oprah that she wanted her to learn how to do it well so she could get a good job with a nice family when she grew up. Oprah was four. She remembers thinking, even then, that she was destined for something better and that she was not going to be hanging anyone else’s clothes on any clothesline.

I think Oprah’s pain and her experiences are what her shows relevant to her viewers. Been there, done that, and lived to share it with you, audience, if you just hang in there with me. And, isn’t that true for all of us and our friendships? Our shared experiences of our different lives are important to our friends, and sharing those experiences bring us closer.

There are Oprah-isms that have stayed with me through the years. Let me share a few of them.

Aha Moments. I have a lot of them, but not until she taught me to stop for a moment and notice them did I realize their value. I write them down now, and pass them on to my child and my friends. I like aha moments. They enrich my life.

God has a bigger dream for you than you have for yourself. While I don’t believe in the traditional God, Oprah and I have found our own God-voice over our years together, and I often go to that place that says I can do more than I dreamed. And while the journey to that end is slow indeed, I’m still striving toward it because I believe it.

You are enough the way you are. This is the hardest one of all. It’s hard to remember to view yourself through your personal mirror rather than out the window that shows your reflection through the eyes of others. It still eludes me, but it was brought to my attention by my good friend Oprah, and I thank her.

I should point out that I am not actually Oprah’s friend. She doesn’t know I exist, and that’s ok with me. Oprah is my friend. Her secrets are mine. Her glass, which seems always to be half-full, is my glass. When I am going through a difficult time I often think of her and remind myself that each of our journeys are a part of someone else’s journey, and that I need to remember that. So, I don’t really care if Oprah goes off the air. I have a lifetime’s lessons from her already inside me, and my friendship with her has nothing to do with seeing her every day, but rather with our mutual experience and attitudes over the past quarter-century. So, I bid you a fond farewell, old friend. It’s been a pleasure.

And as for the housekeeper/assistant—you couldn’t resign when you got pregnant? You had to stay in the household for ten more years? You had to provide Maria and the children with memories of yourself as an integral part of their personal lives, and all the while you were the mother [...]]]> Arnold, Arnold, Arnold. Really?

And as for the housekeeper/assistant—you couldn’t resign when you got pregnant? You had to stay in the household for ten more years? You had to provide Maria and the children with memories of yourself as an integral part of their personal lives, and all the while you were the mother to their husband’s/father’s child? Really?

This story is not a new one. In other countries, it’s not a deal-breaker the way it is in the US of A. Since time immemorial men have been fathering children out of wedlock. France’s president was not brought down when he introduced his out-of-wedlock daughter. It made the news, but not the way it would have here. What is different about the European and American points of view on these things?

I was having lunch yesterday with two smart men with whom I consult. One of them is from Central America, and he joked that it’s clearly Maria’s fault for having hired someone who could catch her husband’s eye. If he weren’t joking, he would be the cad that Arnold is, and that would be unacceptable. And then he told an extraordinary story. He said his mother had always said she only wanted to know the children of her daughters, because those were the only grandchildren that she knew to be hers. I asked if she really said that, and he said yes. Extraordinary. He asked me why it was that women who cheat on their husbands never seem to get pregnant, but the women married men sleep with do. I asked him if he felt it to be the man’s responsibility to make sure he is protected, and he said yes, but I think he meant no.

Arnold has always been more of a man’s man than a woman’s man. And he’s been very smart. He’s made a fortune and hasn’t allowed his image to be affected by his womanizing, or worse, by his mistreatment of women. And he never lost anything because of it. Is this where we start talking about taking responsibility? He said yesterday that he takes responsibility for his actions; will someone please explain to me what that actually means? The phrase, “I take responsibility for my actions” is bandied about as if there are always consequences for taking responsibility. Not so much.

He signed a three-movie contract last week, just before this story broke. He could take responsibility by saying he realizes he has no business being an action “hero” to the youth of this country and is pulling out of the deal. Or the studio could help him take responsibility by canceling the contract. Will men go to his movies because they love his Terminator persona as well as to join a secret society, one that is never public, that says a guy really wants to spread his “wealth” around? Go Arnold? If I gave a lie detector test to 100 really decent guys and asked if they thought he was a terrible person, they would answer, “Yes, of course!” Would they be lying? I’m not sure. And please don’t condescend to me by attributing my opinion to my being jaded by my own divorce, because I’m not. And fellow peeps without dicks, please don’t go to his movies anymore. And please don’t let your sons go. And please encourage your guy friends and your family not to go. Let’s retire this ridiculous, ego-driven human being to obscurity—which, as we know from OJ’s history, is a fate worse than being a lying, cheating cad (at least to a lying, cheating cad).

Who is worse, Arnold or the love-child’s mother, Mildred Baena?  Turns out her son is almost 14. Arnold and Maria’s youngest is 13, which means that at one point, Mildred and Maria were both pregnant in the same house together. Cozy. This is the type of thing from which one does not easily recover. When Maria saw the baby, did she know? And Mildred, who are you? Ever heard of sisterhood? Maria is one of the strongest supporters of women in the country, and she spends a good portion of her time on helping women build their self-esteem. Nice payback, girlfriend.

Ok, Christine, what is your point? I have no idea. I have no bloody idea what the point of this is. But one thing I know for sure is that it’s none of my business. Their personal life is none of my business. But I do want to know what the makeup of his DNA is; what made him do it? Is it a total F-you to women? Was it the steroids he must have taken in his youth? Was it a mistake, and Mildred then blackmailed him?

I would also like to say that I never liked him. When I moved to California I often told people that it was hard to live in a state whose Governor was not able to properly pronounce its name. Enough said.