Dead Man's Honda

"Swine flu?" D asked me tonight as I prattled the above sentence off via IM.

"What? What do dead birds and fish have to do with swine flu?" I typed back.

Nothing. It has nothing to do with swine flu. So I digress.

Last night when I came home, Tweak had cornered something near the far light. I thought he may have taken an extremely large dump, as it was dark, and round-ish and didn't move. I flipped the living room light on to see a small, fluffy sparrow sitting on the floor of my living room.

What the haeyl...I thought for a moment. I looked closer. Was it dead? Was it going to fly up and eat my face? I mean, this could be the beginning of that freaky movie the Birds, you know. I have watched Psycho near Hitchcock's grave. It could just be my turn. I dashed next door and interrupted Ray's date with Rick.

"Can you guys come see if this thing is alive or not? It's not moving."

Rick, having been in the army, bravely swept into my apartment, took one look at the little thing and declared it alive.

Fantastic. I don't know which is worse inside your house-- a dead bird or an alive one.

We tried coaxing it into my dog's cage to see if we could hold it and feed it until morning. It hopped its way right out. Then it went into the fireplace and stayed in the corner and wouldn't move. We couldn't get it out. So I left it.

And this morning it was dead.

I felt so horrible I cried. Over a bird. Seriously. I just left it in the corner and let it die.

But the day got worse. Rushing to work with a few students, I got in my car and realized the hives I had woken up with (yeah, lovely) had become somewhat dry. As in...itchy...as hives are prone to be. I didn't have any lotion in my car....

But I did have vitamins.

For whatever impulsive reason I thought that if I squirted a vitamin A and D caplet onto my face it would moisten the hives and maybe make them calm down a little.

Do you know what's in Vitamin A and D caplets?

FISH OIL.

From dead fish.

From fish that smell so bad you're never supposed to SMELL them. That's why they are in a CAPLET, L., I tell myself. You freaking MORON.

So for the next four and a half hours I smell like a fish that died underneath a shoe that walked over a dead person and was then tossed into a dumpster. For two years.

"Hey can you smell that fishy scent," I ask one of my ten-year old students.

"You wanna wash your face in the sink?" she responds.

I'll take that as a yes....

When I got home I immediately jumped into the shower. When I got out Buddy looked at me with a crinkled expression.

"Why did you take a shower so early? And why does your room smell like that?"

DANGIT. The room still smelled like fish crap. I still smelled like fish crap. My hair still smelled like it. I covered myself in scents. I covered myself in anything that smelled better than what was still lingering, persistently, somewhere deep inside my pores and hair follicles. I burnt my hand on a candle that I thought might absorb the smell.

"Smoke a cigar, that will help," D suggests. "Stick Vicks up your nose."

Then my boyfriend gets on the phone:

"Stick your face in a pan of milk."

"You are such a jerk," I tell him, "You are going to totally laugh at me when I do that, aren't you? Like a 'ha i can't believe you did that?'"

The bird has made me touchy.

So instead I made popcorn.

And burnt it.

After walking nine blocks back and forth along Lankershim in NoHo, sweat beading in between my shoulder blades from the hot evening, I finally found the gallery. A student's mother was debuting her play tonight, in a small gathering of critical artists from the area. And me. Not a critical artist.

While fixated on a painting above the stage of what appeared to be seven breasts on one woman with manly thighs coming directly out of the sternum, I failed to notice the fellow who sat down beside me.

"Hello. What is your name?" He said with an accent. "I am afraid of die girlz."

I smiled, shook his hand and told him my name.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"I am the Messiah."

Trying not the appear as though I was thinking 'what the haeyl', I glanced around at the gallery. It was filled with well-known actors, artists, people dressed up and sipping wine. And I was sitting next to Jesus. Who got his numbers wrong.

"See this? Jesus gave me his number-- 888 and so I am the Prince of Peace."

Of course you are. And Jesus writes with a Sharpie.

After texting my friend Adam (who burst out laughing and spilled his wine)in the front row that he was missing out on sitting next to the Messiah, the guy continued.

"I will probably get sent a nice jet instead of a fiery chariot. And you know I will be die mos' powerful man, as the Prince of Peace, and you could be die mos' powerful, richest woman if you wanted to get in on this."

Channeling Bernie Madoff.

"Well," I said, engaging a lunatic because that's what you should always do when they start rambling, "I believe the Prince of Peace has already come."

"Vel I am the MILLENNIUM Prince of Peace," he countered.

And you're just about nine years off....

"So...are you a part of the theater group?" I asked, wondering if the whole place was going to descend into some sort of religious cult schizophrenia-induced nonsense.

"No I just came in off of the street."

"I hear an accent. Where are you from originally?" I asked.

"Syria," he responded with his eyes sorta rolling back in his head. (I am sure he was looking for something back there.)

And just as he said that the play began to start and I shut up....wondering how I always end up with a little crazy to keep me company.

I just finished perusing the puppy posts of this chick's website. My sister (yeah her blog is still blocked for some unknown reason-- I can't even read it) introduced me to her, and though I am certain she's a vapid narcissist-- she's kinduv addicting. The thing is, when I read/see/hear/watch other people with their dogs-- particularly their little dogs, I have a slight desire to kill myself.

Before I explain, Tweak is the love of my life and honestly the only reason I survived 2008. He's adorable. Misleadingly so. And yes, I did name him after a street narcotic. (Initially I thought I was naming him after a character on Southpark, not at all aware of why that character had that name or of all the uber naughtiness that occurs on the show.) Meaning, most parents do not, or should not, let their small children watch that show. So when I explain my dog's name to random people with small children I have to either explain a) the drug or b) the show or c) pretend like I just said some sound-effect quirky word and hope the parents are oblivious to the other, already stated, meanings.

Back to my point: Most people have dogs who listen to them. Who can be brushed. Most people do not receive emergency phone calls from the groomer because the groomer has been attacked by their six pound puppy. More. Than. Once. Two weeks ago he had an altercation with the vet. When the assistant handed him back to me she nervously laughed and quipped,

"He's a little six-pound terrorist, isn't he?"

Thank you, George W., for making that such an accessible term for everyone.

Most people laugh and smile and love my dog because he jumps and plays and loves, loves, loves, people. And they love him, so long as he doesn't bite their face off or nibble their child's toes down to a stump. He's not always being mean-- he's just...mouthy.

And I'm a crappy owner.

My boyfriend thinks I have trained him terribly (I have). My sister won't go near him for fear that he'll bite her (he will). I can't take him to any other groomers- I've tried all of them and no one can get him to calm down. He barks vehemently at everything. I tried a lemon-oil anti-bark spray collar....but he's so tiny that it hung like a doorbell around his neck and only went off if he barked deep, growl-y barks. So now he's been conditioned to yip at excruciatingly high decibels. He went to training classes with German Shepherd dogs and professionals and they couldn't get him to do anything because he doesn't like treats.

And the saddest part of it all? It's my fault. He's just being a dog. With a mental problem. Who jumped out of my arms as a puppy and landed on his head and...I'm wondering if that might play a part in this....

Believe me, I've read the books. I've tried the classes. I've washed him every week since he came to me at 1 pound straight off of the internet and he still bites and scratches and tries to claw his way out of the tub. He's got so much energy I can't even run or walk him enough to wear him out. I am a 5'4" adult who is athletic in a non-cardio-sorta-way and I can't run/walk enough to wear out my pup. A treadmill onto which I will tie him is in order, I think.

I adore this dog. But when clearly cracked-out, totally jacked-up-out-of-their-minds homeless people walk up to me when I'm with Tweak (they laugh and pet him), and tell me, "Wow, that is one CARAAAZY dog!!", I know I've got a problem.

Just not sure how to fix it....

She is mind-bogglingly adorable and annoying. I want to play with her and slap her at the same time. I can't stop laughing with her, at times, and yet in the next minute I wonder why her parents haven't put her up for adoption.

The curse of the cute, dumb, child.

I am not the type to think anyone is "dumb" really. I'm just being impolite in that sentence up there. I think all children have potential and we have to tap into it and work with it and draw it out. Intelligence is relative, I say. Relative to how much your parents beat it out of you. Or how much nobody gives a crap whether or not you perform well, but relative, nonetheless.

In this case, I think intelligence is relative to a gregarious girl who doesn't need it. Who needs smarts when you're cute and funny and full of life?

"Please....for the love of all that is good...simplify...this....fraction..." I entreat her. I know that it will be difficult. We've done fourteen of these problems already and after two she forgets (entirely) what it is we are doing. It's like working with someone with amnesia.

She begins scribbling on the page and I wait with bated breath.

Maybe this time she'll remember...

She holds up the paper. No answer next to the fraction. Just some scribbling around it.

"You didn't put an answer down," I say glumly; half tempted to fall on the floor and throw a fit. "Again."

She smiles and flings her arms toward me, shaking her little fingers in "jazz hand" excitement while singing her response in falsetto:

"But I did put a smiley face around it!"

I think I'm going to just start that doing in life in general.

"My child did not get an A on that exam you helped her with."

Me: "But I did put a smiley face around it!"

"Where's the report on the ICC I've been waiting for, for an entire week?!"

Me: "Who the hell knows. But wherever it is-- I put a smiley face around it!"

"You didn't sign this rent check."

Me: you get the idea....

I think life might be a lot more pleasant this way, no?

Yesterday I sat down with a new student in a beautiful little garden office in San Marino. She has blonde hair, a gorgeous face, and speaks with a sweet, soft voice. She could play the part of INNOCENT WHITE GIRL in any film.

At one point I asked her how she felt about English as a subject.

"I don't really like it. Well, I like it if it isn't too structured. I like it if we get to pick our own topics. I like it if the teacher gives us time to do our projects on what we want. I like murder."

Uh.

"What?!" My eyes widened and I spoke so quickly a pretzel stuck to the back of my throat.

"I mean. I like murder mysteries."

Okkkaaaaaayyyy....

I tried not to feel awkward about it until I asked her to write three sentences using the words they, there, to, too, their, they're, as prescribed by her assignment.

They all had to do with death. Dying.

Possibly murder.

"Is that the sand pit where they buried the boy who was killed?"

"The people went to the empire state building and they jumped off of it."

"She was too suffocated to breathe anymore."

At which point I felt a strong urge to run screaming from the home.

Another student....another....crazy.

In the shadowy early morning I sat down in a vacant coffee shop and began working on a new project. I waited for a woman I'd never met. An hour and a half later, I would have just experienced drive-by crazy.

Drive-by crazy is when someone has such blatant pathologies that it gives you whiplash.

When she started talking about the competitiveness of law school admissions, I nodded and mentioned that my ex-boyfriend(a genius with a perfect LSAT score, who graduated top of his class from an ivy league) did not get in to Yale or Stanford Law (he chose Harvard), her eyes popped out of her head.

"Is he white?"

Uh...come again?

"Being a white male in America today is the hardest, hardest, most difficult, demographic to be in that there is..." she said, tisking with her tongue and teeth while she shook her blonde head.

Coffee went up my noise.

"Well, um...yes, he is white. And Jewish, which makes it harder, I think." I meant that a lot of Jewish males apply to law school.

"Oh Jewish? Well that's different....I mean....white males have it really hard."

Ohmygawd, are you a representative of Desperate Housewives of the Klu Klux Klan?

I was just about to pull out my best Central Valley vernacular and ask her if she was shitting me, but I couldn't even get that out before she prattled off a litany of secrets she would like me to keep.

"Are you confidential?" Without waiting for my answer she went on:

"Now my daughter has this issue...but when you work with her, don't let her know, that you know, that she had this issue. Now you need to get her to ask me, to do things for her but she won't ask me unless you can get her to think that it's her idea...."

I wanted to ask her if she was raised by an alcoholic.

"And don't let my kids know that you might be staying with us in June....and don't let my husband know that you might be doing that as well because I just want him to think that I'm still just looking..."

Continuing on after we left the coffee shop she noticed a ticket on her car window.

"Ohhhhh shi--," she said striking her fist into the palm of her opposite hand. "I'm going to have to go get a money order to pay for this because you know, there are a few times when I don't want to be married and this is one of them. I've got to go get the money order and pay for it so that my husband doesn't find out!!"

Did I just get dropped off in an FLDS enclave of Utah without my knowing it? What kind of parallel universe does this woman live in where everything must be kept secret, (even useless information)and where white males are in the "worst" demographic there is and where being Jewish and being white were different things?!

...you're a very bad person Mr. Demjanjuk.

Or Ivan the Terrible.

Or that guy. From that camp.

50 some years ago.

We think.

Again.

I just read this article about a man accused by the German government, of being a former Nazi guard at the Sobibar death camp. This isn't the first time Mr. Demjanjuk has been accused of being a Nazi death camp monster, however:

A native of Ukraine, Demjanjuk emigrated to the U.S. in 1952 and gained citizenship in 1958.

In denying involvement in war crimes, he has said he served in the Soviet army and became a prisoner of war when he was captured by Germany in 1942.

Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986, when the U.S. Justice Department believed he was the sadistic Nazi guard known as Ivan the Terrible from the Treblinka death camp.

He spent seven years in custody before the Israeli high court freed him after receiving evidence that another Ukrainian was that Nazi guard.

The guy is 88 years old. He already spent seven years in custody for a crime he did not commit. Does Munich really think that they can obtain accurate justice for this man now? After all this time? When most of the witnesses are dead? After the prosecution has decided to give him an excessive sentence (responsible for 29,000 deaths), and any record of his being in the Soviet forces is probably very unlikely?

I am not against holding genocidaires accountable for their actions. I applaud the efforts of the current tribunal in Cambodia. I do not, however, think that it is possible to do justice in this instance. If the United States has any gumption at all, it will stand by its citizen if only for the fact that if this man is guilty of the 29,000 precious lives lost in Sobibar , so too is the very country accusing him. And no one is putting the populace of Germany on trial for standing by while their fellow citizens were snatched by the State to a brutal, vile, end.

I am more passionate about this because I lived with a former Luftwaffe pilot. There are competing stories about where his father, a commander in the SS ground units, was exactly during and after the war. The man I took care of swore his father was in custody of the Russians from whom he eventually escaped. I, however, have found evidence suggesting otherwise.

The problem is though, the evidence I found says that his father was tried at a tribunal set up by the U.S. and sentenced to death.

I read the court transcripts-- the proceedings are ridiculous as most military tribunals are.

The curious thing, though, is that when I finally found the picture of the defendant with the same name as my friend's father.....

It wasn't him.

Same name. Same rank. Same country. Same time period.

Wrong face.

Did the US have the wrong guy? Do I have the wrong story? Or is my friend's story about his father escaping the Russian forces, stealing a plane and hitchhiking back to Germany the real story?

After so many years and with so little evidence, I may never know what really happened or who it was the United States tried in that case at Dachau in 1947.

I wish justice for those 29,000 people could be found. I just don't think it's really possible to do justice after all of these years by dragging an old man from his own country in the hopes that this time they have the right guy.

Forget it. I planned to do a vibrant update to bring DeadMansHonda into 2009, but it doesn't come out right. Ever.

A few months ago I sat with friends I hadn't seen in ages but whom I really love and enjoy. They are those rare souls who energize you with their very presence. Who pick you up right where you left off and leave you in a better place than you were when you started.

"So," they asked, "What's new with you? What's been going on?"

"Oohhh...." I fumbled around, rapping my fingers on the table. I looked around the ornate Thai restaurant. "Not..not much."

"Well how is the studio?" they asked me, knowing where I had worked before.

"I don't work there anymore," I said, dreadfully aware of the fact that I would need to explain.

"How did you even end up there in the first place? It never seemed like you," said S, shaking his head. Yeah. It wasn't like me. I may live near Hollywood, but I am not the type to care about it in the least.

"The job fell into my lap right after grad school. Then I tried getting a job with the government," I scrunched my face before trying to couch the next bit in the most normal sounding way, "and that turned out really weird." Kabloom. My "couching" just made me sound like a thirteen year old describing pop rocks. "But I left the studio to go work as a manager at That Company, and well, my boss..."

S and N kept watching with polite, open eyes.

"Was breaking lots of....laws. Big ones. So I'm no longer there." I said as clumsily as I had relayed everything else.

"What happened to that guy you were dating?" I tried to think of who they meant. Oh.

"Yeah, he came back from living abroad and proposed marriage but...in a very factual...manner...he...went to a library, read about inter-faith marriages, and changed his mind a week later. He wasn't comfortable with my faith," I flashed a half-annoyed smile. "But I'm dating another guy-- he's fantastic. Although I haven't met his parents yet. They aren't keen on the fact that I'm...white."

"Really?" they asked.

Yeah. Really. Fun.

"How is that little girl you brought up with you to camp?" N asked me, her gorgeous face sweet and eager to listen.

"Her mother and her mother's girlfriend took her up north in February and wouldn't tell me where they were going...Little D called me on mother's day, and we chat on email occasionally, but otherwise I don't know where she is and haven't been able to find her."

S and N looked sad.

"That's too bad...you were so close..."

I nodded. Losing her was probably the most painful, to be honest. But I didn't mention that.

"Ok, well how are your parents?" S asked me.

"Uumm...my mom left my dad over the summer. And took most of the furniture with her-- you should see the place. We're thinking of putting in a bowling alley." My attempt at humor didn't seem to work. S's mouth dropped open.

"Are you serious? What the? You've gotta be kidding me...L, are you ok?" He asked me with the most genuine concern. I was touched.

"Yeah..." offered N, who had been through quite a lot of junk herself over the last few years. "That's awful."

I laughed. "Well not as bad as the fact that before that..."

I was about to relay more information, but I decided that was just going to make the situation more and more and awkward so I finally shut my mouth. These friends are funny and smart, and faithful, so I didn't want to miss out on what they had to share. And I was not disappointed.

When I left hanging out with them my stomach hurt from laughing-- their stories are hilarious beyond belief. But I also hurt a little realizing I am so different from the kid S met when we were in high school. And the friend N met when we were just in our second year of college.

When I got home I accidentally used nail polish remover (thinking it was astringent) on my face and couldn't figure out why it was burning so.

And then I realized:

Maybe my life is just different. I'm as nuts as ever.

I was thankful to get off of the plane. My head was buzzing from the insane woman who had gabbed all the way from Frankfurt to Istanbul about how she could heal herself. And other people too. With her fingers.

Don’t. Even. Try. To. Touch. Me. I kept thinking to myself, during the flight. I became so overwhelmingly exhausted by her chatter that I started throwing books at her. My own, precious books, mind you.

“Please read this, you’ll LOVE it,” I said. “It’s about Lesch-Nyan syndrome—males who eat themselves like cannibals because of a genetic disease. Maybe you could heal them with your fingers.” I offered. I forced the book on to her lap and closed my eyes. She read for about half of a page and then began chatting again about her diet and how much she knew about the body and how she could be a doctor if only she had gone to school.

If only.

When I finally got off of the plane I dashed to get away from the woman and her equally strange family and found myself alone in a predominantly Muslim country.

It took me a long time to get through customs as I seemed to do everything wrong. By the time I was outside, in front of women under large black drapes and soldiers carrying machine guns, the sun was slanting toward the horizon. I looked at a map on the wall, saw where I knew my hostel was generally located; heard someone say something similar in reference to a bus; stood with those people and then paid my fare and climbed on to the bus.

My plan was this: I would be staying near Sultanameht, the Blue Mosque—the most notorious landmark in the entire city. No problem. I would simply look for its distinctive minarets and then get my bus or whatever to drop me off nearby. From there I had a scribbled Google Map to follow I had copied a few days earlier. I would be fine.

What surprised me more than all of the soldiers all over the place, holding large, imposing guns, and the stark, strange gun towers scattered behind barbed wire fences near the airport, was the sheer number of minarets in the city. Millions of them.

Crap. I thought. There goes my plan. The only map I had on me was a complimentary one they gave out near the visa station which had every high fashion knock-off store highlighted on top of the cartoon streets and landmarks of the city.

After about a forty five minute drive through the city and up a very steep hill, and after passing several mosques that looked just like the tour guide pictures of the Blue Mosque, I finally asked for assistance. I saw a man reading a book in English on the bus, so I leaned over and asked,

“Excuse me,” I said “Do you know where this bus is going?”

His face relayed near-repulsion at my question. It was as if I was the most absurd woman he had ever met. He haltingly told me where we were. I then asked him if he knew where the Blue Mosque was. He did. It was on the opposite side of the city.

“Right,” I said, nodding. “Thank you. Oh, and do you have the time?”

I had arrived in the city without a watch, a map, or a travel guide. I had forgotten them.

The strange thing is, in that case I was not very concerned. Sure, when it became dark and I was still lost and wandering around aimlessly on buses and facing hostile-looking strangers I became slightly alarmed. Eventually, though, I arrived at my destination unscathed.

In my “real” life, however, I am not so confident or cavalier (or stupid?) about being lost and confused and totally out of my element. I am remarkably more anxious about day to day occurrences in my safe, normal environment, than I am in situations of grave insecurity and danger.

Why is that?

Eventually I will do an update, but first-- This is just incredible and is, in fact, for real:


LanguagePool asked me if I am "back". This reminds me of returning to public school after many years away and people asking me if I had been in Hollywood or if I were a belly dancer.

"I think you mean, BALLET dancer," I would say back to them. To which they would generally just shrug with glazed over, drugged-out eyes.

Technically yes, I'm back. Most likely I will not blog as extensively as I did before, and I've deleted any posts referring to my name. So if you know me, please don't mention my real name on here for internet search and employment reasons. Give me a better name. Something like Zandar or Amelia or Fabiana. Be creative.

When good intentions would just scare the crap out of two little girls: