Okay. I've talked to several people today and read all the comments and I'm not going to change the title. I like it the way it is too. My favorite alternative came from my friend Julia J., which was: "Hello God? It's me, Julia." Which I thought was hilarious. But not worth all the hassle of changing it.

Wendy Wasserstien is dead.

I just am in shock. I didn't know her, but was a fan. I liked that she decided to have a baby by herself at age 48. That was an inspiration for me. That means her daughter is only seven or eight. I identified with her, for perhaps obvious reasons. Not that I think I'm as talented or funny, it's just...oh. Oh. Oh. She had a sibling die of cancer too. And...oh jeez. Sad. Sad. Worrying. Life is so short. Oh gawd. This can't derail my writing today. It just can't.

Another thing. The reason I'm posting right now.

There are those who think I should change the name of my show to something other than "Letting Go Of God." To something else. To something that does not give away where the show is headed. These people who think this...they are smart people with a lot of experience in show biz. I don't know. I just don't know. These people say, "This title turns away the very people who need to see this show." Hmmm... Hmmm...

Okay, it could be this: Letting Go Of God? Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.

This is a long title, and includes a question mark. But it makes me laugh.

Or there is this: The God Monologue.

This was my working title before I came up with Letting Go Of God. I usually would shy away from the word monologue in a title since it seems like a lecture: or boring. But since The Vagina Monolgues popularity, maybe it's okay.

The only reason this has to be addressed right now is that I am just about ready to put out the cd and I want everything to have the same title. So, if you are inclined to weigh in, I would love your thoughts.

My Personal TAM4 Report

The picture is of me, Daniel Dennet & Mulan with Eddie, her companion elephant.

I guess I'm breaking my own self-imposed rule about pictures of Mulan on my blog, but since so many people took pictures of her already this weekend, I was thinking it's sort of moot.

I had, just, the most wonderful weekend in Las Vegas at the TAM4 convention. I can’t decide what the biggest highlight was, there were so many great moments. Best of all, is that I’ve been to three TAMs in a row now and I have a group that I have become friends with and it’s really nice to be reunited. Hal, Phil, Ray – I see them during the year here and there, but it’s nice to hang at TAM together.

Hitchens had a good speech to start. The thing he said that’s stayed with me is the allowing the Creationists to call their theory Intelligent Design was a major win for them. Just the name is brilliant in itself. And I think he’s right. ID is hard not to cozy up to if you don’t understand science well.

Daniel Dennet was brilliant too. I can’t wait to dig into his book, “Breaking the Spell.” He’s thinking about religion in ways that I am wondering about – only he’s just a billion times smarter and farther ahead than I am. How awesome to hang out with him.

Murray Gell-Mann was fantastic too. Oh dear, I am going to end up using too many superlatives.

And I’m falling asleep. Drove back from Vegas today. Mulan watched, “Cheaper By The Dozen” on my computer as we drove back. Her tenth time watching it, I think.

I will try a stab at this tomorrow.

But I’ve decided (as far as I can decide anything) one thing that has caused my mind to really settle down. And that is, that I’m going to move to Spokane in three years. That means, when Mulan starts fourth grade. That may seem so abstract as to be not worth deciding, but you have no idea how that changes the hour to hour drama that occurs in my head daily.

I figure three years more allows me more time to make my career Spokane-friendly, it gives me time to make more money and save it, and it still means Mulan would essentially grow up in Spokane.

Also, while driving back, I decided that I just couldn’t send Mulan to the Catholic school in Spokane. I just…couldn’t.

All those things means that I am of a more happy and calm mind. And just how I contructed that last sentence shows me that I should be going to sleep right now.

Chris Penn is dead and I am sad about that. I didn’t know him, maybe I met him once or twice, I can’t remember. I just know that I was a fan; I thought he was amazing in Reservoir Dogs and Short Cuts. And I know Michael, his brother, and I just love him and I’m really sad about him losing his brother. That sucks. Oh, sad, sad, sad.

Had friends over for dinner last night, friends we see all the time, and Mulan acted bratty and awful, even though we spoke about her weird, defiant, horrible behavior around these same people, who we both care about a lot, before they arrived.

Sometimes it’s hard not to strangle your kid.

I used to think: how COULD someone ever hit a child? And now I think, how do people NOT hit their child? Not hitting your child takes enormous self-control. I feel I am a self-controlled person. I am amazed – mind-boggled - at the amount of control I have to exert over myself, not to use the fact that I am four times larger than this teeny kid to my physical advantage. Luckily, for me, Mulan is pretty great 90% of the time. But oh dear, that other 10% makes me NUTS. I turn into that awful controlled-rage mother, and I feel like veins are popping out of my forehead and my eyes are bugging out across the table while I try to carry on a conversation. And then, when I take her out of the room to have a talk about her behavior and the consequences it will bring if it continues, she gets this sly smile across her face: glee! Like, she's thinking, "I won already! You had to leave the room to talk to me personally! Yippity Yah! I mean, oh yes mother I won’t act like that anymore, you’ll see."

And she does act better, but somehow it doesn’t feel like I’ve won entirely – it feels like she has. And even just phrasing it this way sounds so bad – like it’s warfare rather than guidance. Oh parenting is so unlike what I thought it was before I was a parent.

Everyone should read Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values.” That man is amazing. He’s the guy all those Christians should be reading. He is the type of Christian that made me proud to be a Christian (way back when…) it blows my mind that he even was our President. The book is really well written, well reasoned, and it will scare the shit out of you. It should be filed under “Horror.”

I wrote my screenplay version of the play all day and ended up thinking I should just shoot it the same way I did God Said Ha! Which means I may have just spent thirty hours or so, this week, on something that is moot.

I am watching Jared Diamond’s PBS National Geographic special on “Guns, Germs & Steel.” I bought it when I heard his lecture on Sunday. It’s really pretty good. I have one more segment to watch. I also bought the Skeptic Society’s Diamond lecture on his book, “Why Sex Is Fun.” Sex? Fun? WHAAAAT?

Off to Vegas today with entourage -- five hours in the car. I will be listening to Rick Moranis' "Agoraphobic Cowboy," my current favorite cd.

Getting a lot done and taking a break.

This is unusual for me. I am actually getting a lot done on my screenplay version of “Letting Go Of God.” And also, I nearly finished with the work left to be done on the CD. I am working seven to nine hours a day in my office. I feel on a roll, as they say.

But yet, I am feeling low. Usually when I feel this low, I am unproductive. But this time, I am productive. I don’t know why exactly. I think it’s partly because I have made myself this really intense schedule where I finish the book by April 9th and where I finish the work on the cd and the screenplay by the end of the month. It’s intense actually. I will probably have to work until eight or eight thirty tonight to get to the place I need to be in the script for tomorrow’s push. And then on Thursday I go up to Las Vegas. Then I come back and have only two days to wrap everything up before the next set of self-imposed deadlines.

Why am I so low? I’m not sure. I’m just…low. I debate constantly whether I should move to Spokane. I just cannot seem to shut that debating voice in my head, even though, if I did decide anything there is nothing I can do about it. Until next year at the earliest.

I went to hear Jared Diamond on Sunday at Cal-Tech, at the Skeptic Society. He spoke about societies in crisis. Jared’s wife is a psychiatrist that worked at a crisis clinic for some time and wrote things about people in crisis, which is similar to societies in crisis. And while he was speaking I realized that I am in crisis. Well, let’s not overstate it. No one died (recently) and I’m not starving (in fact, the opposite) and I love what I’m doing for work (in general). So, what is it, exactly?

I dunno.

Will I turn out like the Japanese or the Greenland Norse?

I think one thing is that I’m not sure whether it’s going to all come together to do the show in New York. I only want to do six shows a week and this makes it very unattractive for investors. And doing eight shows a week – which I have done before when I was on Broadway with “God Said Ha!” almost made me lose my mind. And now I have a kid! Everyone understands, of course. But it changes EVERYTHING. And I wonder if I’m being wimpy.

And my editors at Holt want the advance back on my book, which is understandable since it’s been three years since we made the deal and at least two years since I got the money. In some ways, it might be better to be out of that contract because then I can shop the book around after it’s finished and find a possibly more appropriate publisher that is more interested in the history and science of it. On the other hand, I feel I just blew it. Totally blew it. I loved my editor – he’s probably the best editor I could possibly have ever gotten for a writer like me, and… Anyway, that's over.

Then I think: keep your nose to the grindstone, Sweeney. If I keep on my schedule that I’ve been on for the last week, I can probably make my personal deadlines.

And then, I miss Mulan. I mean – she’s here. We’re together. She’s at gymnastics right now. But with the babysitter. And, well…I want to be the babysitter. I want that job.

Why do I want to live in Spokane so much? Is it because I’m not in a relationship at the moment? Is it because I’m just so tired? Is it because I’m romanticizing my friendships there? And devaluing my friendships here? Is it because I’m really connected to the land there, or because I’m not connected to the land here in L.A. all that much? Is it because I miss my dad so much and want to just be around the buildings and parks that he spent his life in?

I have to admit, it’s a great comfort to me to be in places that my father, and my grandmother Henrietta, and my brother Mike, spent so much time in. It gives me this deep comfort. And when I look up in the sky in Spokane, it’s like nowhere else. It feels like home. When I pop into the Davenport Hotel, I feel so glad that my grandmother used to work there. That she went through those same doors. When I drive down N. Division, I have these memories, like I remember Mike in my car and us laughing and laughing about all the crappy looking Chinese restaurants along the way. Or running up Division late at night in high school. Or...y'know, like everyone has in their hometown I guess.

When Mulan and I were in Spokane over Christmas we went out to Holy Cross Cemetery and looked at all the graves. Mulan sat down on my dad’s gravestone (which is close to Mike’s gravestone) and said, “So, are you going to be next door to him when you die?” And I said, “Well, that's where Grandma's going to be. But, yeah, I'll be around here somewere, I suppose.” And Mulan looked into the middle distance and sighed, this deep, too-old-for-her-age kind of sigh.

I spent so much of my life wanting to just be in the biggest city, and now it feels like millions of strangers all packed together. Who are these people, I wonder? I used to feel so inspired by New York and L.A. and now it feels like there’s not enough calm and space to do the thinking and creating that I really want to be doing. People seem tense and competitive here and that's what I used to want be around and driven by so badly. And of course I am drastically over-generalizing. Now all I want to do is hike and read.

I have been listening to Mozart's Requiem all day while I work. Maybe this has contributed to my mood.

Last night Mulan made me watch “Cheaper By The Dozen” with her. She had seen it twice before. It was so funny, she would tell me about each moment coming up before it happened. “They don’t like their sister’s boyfriend, so they’re going to trip him. But don’t worry, he’ll be okay.” And then at the end, when the little boy is lost – and then found – she started to cry. Her eyes just filled up with tears. It broke my heart to see her cry at a movie, and I looked at her and she looked away, embarrassed. And then she said, while looking at the wall, her ear to me - “You know, sometimes you cry when you’re happy.” And I said, “Yeah, I know all about that.” And then I had to force my tears not to fall down my face.

This weekend I reread much of the New Testament. Mulan had a friend stay over night and at one point they came in while I was sprawled out on my bed with the Bible, and Mulan's friend said, "Reading the Bible?" And I have been laughing about that. Yes, me -- reading the Bible. AGAIN. I wanted to reread the Gospels since a reporter I did an interview with this week said she felt I had...well -- she didn't say it like this, but what she meant was -- that I had unfairly characterized Jesus in my show. So, I just wanted to read the Gospel narratives: Matthew, Mark & Luke and just remind myself how they read. And you know, I stand by my characterization. Yes, I leave out the Beatitudes and a lot of good stuff, but still, Jesus was a deeply erratic, impulsive, reactionary. So, I felt better about that comment after I reread it.

OHMYGOD this is the saddest blog entry. And now I have to get back to work, or I won’t meet my deadline. And I just have to get this done. It's pretty fun, actually, imagianing my show as a surrealistic tale on locations. This is the way it could possibly be done. It would be wild.

Oh -- I've been thinking about this. While I was listening to the Alito Senate hearings, he said, "No one is above or below the law." And I was musing on that phrase, no one being above or below the law. I hadn't heard that before. Then it dawned on me: fetuses! That's what he probably means. Unborn fetuses are below the law in his opinion. Oh -- that's a good one. The Anti-Choice Senators and politicians probably all wink-winked over that -- no more questions, sir! We know where you stand.

This is going to be it. This is going to the Supreme Court that will dominate law for the rest of my life. It's so depressing.

Brad Mehldau takes my breath away.

I went and saw Brad Mehldau at the El Ray tonight. Robert, who is producing the CD, came over and we worked on the mix until seven, and then we ran over to Wilshire to see the show. The line of people waiting for the concert was around the block. It was cold – seriously cold for L.A. The wind was really blowing hard. It was a shivery kind of nighttime weather, especially for a Hawaiian like Robert. They weren’t even letting people in until eight. We went to get coffee and watched the line from across the street. It barely moved. Finally, at eight thirty, I said, “Screw it, let’s leave. I’m already tired anyway.” Even though I love Brad Mehldau and I wanted to see him live, I was just too tired, too old to stand in that cold long line of people. I longed for a bed, for warmth, for a glass of wine.

We walked along Wilshire. The art deco buildings are gorgeous in mid-Wilshire. I forget how beautiful L.A. is. Then Robert said, “There’s a line of people that couldn’t get tickets that are waiting to see if they can get in, we should at least give them our tickets before we bale.” And it was true. On the other side of the long line of people who already had tickets, there was another long line of people hoping to just buy tickets and stand in the back. I guess the show was sold out and the theater was waiting to see how much room they really had. But the line of people with tickets was still hundreds of people long. In any case, we headed back to the theater.

We went right up to a security guard and I said, “Look, we aren’t going to stay for the show. We have tickets, but we don’t want to go in and..” And suddenly this security guard recognized me and she said, “I know who you are! Come on it, come on in.” So suddenly we were in the theatre. It was unfair, but welcome. Sometimes being recognizable is GREAT. I admit it.

By another stroke of luck, having nothing to do with someone recognizing me, we got amazing seats (it was open seating.) The show started at nine on the dot. The first song was astonishing, transporting, amazing, titillating. An improvisation on Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover.” There’s just Brad on piano and a bass player and a drummer. That’s it. I had a great bulls-eye view of Brad’s hands as they slid across the piano keys. I’ve never seen anyone play piano like that. I’ve never seen jazz musicians play off each other like that – seamless in unity, yet individual –sometimes it felt like they weren’t in the same room with each other, then in an instant they were tighter than any band I’ve seen before. Mehldau’s back sways and his hands are carried over the keys in this precise, off-handed, carefree way – totally both extremes at once. Disciplined and drunk, exacting and erratic. In some ways it didn’t even seem to occur to the musicians that we, the audience, were even there – that’s how little they were playing for the crowd. It felt like they were playing only for each other for minutes, tens of minutes on end – and then suddenly they’d realize we were all there watching and they’d shift their attention to us. We were privileged to watch such an intimate back and forth between them and it was something -- a tone, a reverie I’d never experienced before. I've never, ever, ever seen musicians in that kind of place -- that improvisation hallucination, but still tinkering on the edge of reality.

Robert and I walked down Wilshire afterwards, spent from the wonder: basking in the spectacle that is that trio. To think I almost missed it! And then the cold wasn’t so bad. The wind down Wilshire took the edge off, even – sobered us up. And it wasn't even all that late.

I love Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles.

This was dictated to me by Mulan. She insisted that I write down exactly what she said, nothing more, nothing less.

"My family has thirteen people. Of the Sweeney's. My Sweeney family is the best family ever. They are very helpful, and they have so much fun with me. It's really fun when I have some time alone with my real Sweeney family. It's very nice when I be really nice for my family. I love my family more than any other family. I love my cousins Megan and Kaitlyn and my other cousins Nick and Katie. And my grandma and Aunt Bonnie. And I love Jim and Tammy. And Bill. And Sandy, and Wanda. And Meg and Tsuyoshi. And that's my whole thirteen family. I want to have a family night at my house with thirteen people. My family gives me lots and lots and lots of care. I think I give so much, a million, and a kazillion pieces of love back to them. I love my whole family, so much. I just want to have so much time with my family. Do you think I love? I love my whole thirteen family. Nobody knew that we had thirteen people in our family.

Love,

Mulan"

A Writing Life that (at least for today) includes no writing.

The blog is working. The blog is working insofar as this: once I wrote in my blog about how painful it was to get rid of so many books, and how I buy so many books, well – somehow, just because I wrote about it maybe? -- Anyway, I was ready to really get rid of A LOT of books.

I am working on my own memoir and I am in the part where I’m at the Bible Study class. I haven’t decided exactly how to approach this part of the story yet. In any case, I was suddenly referring to several of my books on religion and the Bible and so forth and my books were so disorganized -- I haven't really organized them for over two years. I had been putting the new books I bought on top of the old books, all willy nilly. So, I couldn’t find a particular book I wanted to refer to. This caused me to stop all writing and begin the arduous process of organizing all my non-fiction. This is an enormous job. Then, I began to think about how – realistically – I wasn’t going to ever read several of the books I was organizing. The realistic part of me began to taunt the horder part of me, saying, “Seriously Sweeney, when are you going to get the time to read “Word On The Street – Debunking The Myth Of Pure Standard English” ??? Plus, I know the basics of the book since I heard McWhorter (the writer) lecture. Or I thought, “Do you really need to keep “Shrub” by Molly Ivans? I mean Bush already won the election, TWICE.” Or, do I need to keep “The Taliban” – which was written and read long before 9/11?? NO. The answer is NO. Also, why should I keep “Wired” by Bob Woodard? I mean, I read it a thousand years ago. And I saw Al Franken on TV talking about how much he hated that book and how inaccurate he felt it was. He said it was like Bob Woodard had recorded every time someone puked in high school and then written a history of high school including only those details. Not mentioning the Dostoyevsky that changed people’s lives, etc. So, why do I need to keep this book? The answer is, “I Do Not!”

So, first I organized the religion section and that led to philosophy and that led to science and then back to “current affairs” (or what I like to call the "We Are Fucked" secion) and that led me to ponder whether I was really, HONESTLY, ever going to read “The Coming Plague.” And how I ALREADY am totally expecting a plague. And this book was written ten years ago. Why do I keep it? I don’t need it! That’s what I thought. Then I had another heretical thought. And that was: “What if keeping all these books means that I am preventing someone ELSE from reading them?” And then it seemed churlish for me to keep them.

Now I have about three hundred books in the corner of the hallway, ready to be taken to the local library. I have all the religion I’m keeping separated by topic. I have the science separated by author and topic. The places of honor are: Daniel Dennet, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Diane Ackerman, Susan Blackmore, Steven Pinker. Oh Joy! Organization! It’s been so long!!1 The dust behind the books makes me sneeze and cough. Magazines from two – three years ago are wedged behind the books, a cradle of dust bunnies resting inside them.

It’s amazing how, in even a few years, the internet has changed my attitude about books in general. Encyclopedia type books are really no longer necessary – dictionaries, a lot of history seems easily accessible if I tried to find it.

I am worried this project is going to eat up my day tomorrow and it just, simply, cannot. But I am burnt out.

Today I went to NBC, to a pilot reading for the executives. Charles Durning was also in the pilot reading. We sat next to each other. I actually met him yesterday at the rehearsal. It was really a thrill to meet him. He told me today, as we waited to read, about growing up in New York, in Hell’s Kitchen. He said you had to join a gang or you were done for. He said he chose a bad gang – the Westerners – I think he called it. He said they started to hurt people, seriously hurt people – robbing them. He said they even started to kill people. He said he got scared. You couldn’t leave the gang or you would be dead. So he joined the army. That was the only way he could figure to get out of the gang.

What a thrill, to get to talk to Charles Durning.

Today Mulan said two adorable things. Stop reading if you can’t stomach this kind of stuff, I totally get it, if it’s nauseating. She said, “You are my favorite adult.” And I said “Adult?” And she said, “Well, you are my favorite Mom.” And I said, “But I’m the only Mom you have.” And she said, “But I know a lot of moms, and I think you’re the best.” Ha. I love how she’s done a survey and I get top marks. The other thing she said while we were watching “Good Eats” on TV tonight (we watched a rerun about “oats” while we ate dinner – I know, it’s bad to eat and watch TV, but we did and so…there…) and Mulan wanted me to rub her back. And I said “Where do you want me to rub?” And she said, “Along my vine.” And I said, “Your vine?” And she gestured towards her spine. And I said, “Your spine?” And she said, “No, isn’t it called a vine?” And then we talked about how similar spines and vines were. And I just – oh jeez. I love having a kid. Stuff like that. A vine. Yes – it’s a vine! I love that to Mulan, she’s built just like a plant.

My friend Phil Plaite is writing a book about the moon. I also talked to him today about this. I am all over the moon. I just watched a “Naked Science” all about the moon. I had no idea how important the moon was to our existence. Just no idea. DAMN. I lost half my life to ignorance! I didn’t even care about stuff like the moon before I was forty. I didn’t understand how the moon was formed, nothing. It’s embarrassing. Anyway, I reread in “Rare Earth” about how important the moon was. I even went outside tonight and looked at the nearly full moon. I practically howled in delight and appreciation.

Oh, I found, to my embarrassment, that I have bought some books twice. Like, "A Darwinian Left" by Peter Singer. Or "Moral Animal" by Robert Wright. What is wrong with me? How could I forget that I bought those books?

Next weekend I will be heading to the TAM conference in Las Vegas. I am SO excited to go. Mulan and the nanny, Frances, are coming too. A whole entourage.

Tomorrow I am making oatmeal the way I learned how on "Good Eats." Brown the steel cut oats in a little butter before cooking them. Add the salt after it's cooked. I'm excited to see if there is a difference.

This is a test. I am testing putting up a picture on blogger. This is me and Mulan at the Davenport Hotel on Christmas morning about five thirty a.m. We stayed at the hotel two nights. I picked this one because Mulan is hiding her face. It's probably not cool to put her picture on my blog. So, that makes this picture just perfect.

Truth and Memoir

Oh, I am so all over this James Frey story. I hate to gloat, but…

I guess I will. Okay, here’s my history with “A Million Little Pieces” and my recent history with Oprah and Dr. Phil and Dr. Phil’s Wife and My Mother.

Two and a half years ago – I think around that time – I was in Amagansett with a group of Sex & the City writers over Labor Day. We had been working in New York and we all went out of the city for the long weekend. While at a bookstore I saw that book, “Million Little Pieces” and I liked the cover and it looked interesting and I bought it. I also bought about five or six other books.

You see, I have a problem with books. And I’m not trying to brag that I’m such a big reader – although I do spend much of my free time reading. My problem is that when I’m in a bookstore I can’t control myself. I buy everything I’m remotely interested in. I was buying so many books on Amazon.com that my UPS driver actually called me on it one day. He said, “You can’t possibly read this many books.” And he was right. If I were suddenly stuck in my house for the rest of my life, I would probably not be able to read all the books that I currently have that I have not yet read. I’ve tried to do big reductions from time to time. Before Mulan arrived, I actually got rid of half of my books. I only kept what I hadn’t read and what I loved so much, I sincerely thought I might read again. But then I started to mourn the loss of the books I let go of. I wished I’d kept the Herman Hesse and the first copies I had of all the Jane Austen novels – all those books I read in high school and college. This sadness made me even more out-of-control in my buying of books. Like I was making up for what I lost.

I am telling you all this because I want to emphasize how many books I buy – many of which I don’t get the time to read – and how I don’t care so much about the money. It’s my addiction and as far as addictions go, I’m letting myself just have this one. I am also telling you this to make it clear that when I, the next day after purchasing “A Million Little Pieces” took it back for a refund – yes – I read ten pages and hated it so much and thought it was so full of shit that I couldn’t stand to own it and I didn’t want to own it and I wanted to make a point at the Amagansett book store about how much I hated it – what an anomaly that is. I can only remember returning two books in the last ten years. (The other was a Huston Smith book of essays that made me so depressed because although he knows so much about religion he knows nothing about what science is or how it works…) ANYWHO – I took “A Million Little Pieces” back. I TOOK IT BACK. And I remember that it was a hassle to go back there too, I think I made Cindy Chupak take me. Or maybe Amy -- anyway, you could say that book stuck out in my mind. I remember that weekend and returning that book.

Cut to: last Fall. My mother calls me. Oprah and Dr. Phil are her heroes. Every day she watches them and she LOVES them. When it is almost three o’clock in Spokane, wherever she is, she races her car home to watch her Dr. Phil and her Dr. Oprah. And so my mother tells me that there’s this fantastic new book that Oprah is endorsing and how she got it at CostCo very inexpensively and how she bought two copies. She planned to give one to my brother Bill who is a very troubled in many of the same ways that James Frey shows himself to be. (Not exactly in the lying part of it, but the alcoholic, drug, defiant, screwed up part of it) And she planned to read the other copy of the book. I told her my story and I actually said, “You know Mom, I guess I was wrong. I should have read that book further than only ten pages. I like Oprah and what she picks to read. It’s probably a great book.”

Then, almost every time my mother and I talked on the phone she mentioned the book and how Bill was reading it too and maybe it would help him and blah blah blah. Then, Mulan and I go home to Spokane for two whole weeks over Christmas. Many days we all race home and get ready to watch Dr. Phil and Oprah.

During one Dr. Phil show I said, “I hate to say this, Mom, but I just don’t trust Dr. Phil. And I don’t know anything about him. If I were watching his show with the sound on mute, I just would say I didn’t trust him. His facial expressions don’t seem sincere to me. I don’t like how he gets a light in his eye when he delivers a “zinger.” And when I do listen to what he says, he seems like he’s exaggerating everything. I hate how he tries to make complex problems simple, and how he emphasizes one small part of a problem, often inflating it over what it really is, and then acts like he’s solved it. And I feel uncomfortable with Dr. Phil’s wife watching him with such blank adoration. I don’t trust her either.”

Okay. I am embarrassed to have written that I said that. I am probably a difficult daughter to have for my mother. I probably shouldn’t have said that. Well, my mother -- it was as if I had said Jesus sodomized little boys the whole time he was preaching and I have proof – she said, “You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About. Dr. Phil!!!! His. Wife. Is. The, MOST. WONDERFUL. Woman. In. The. World.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” And on and on.

So, I capitulated. I said, “Okay. I don’t know anything about him. I just…don’t like his way, his way of…being. His mannerisms. I just don’t like it. But you know, I don’t know him.”

Then we watched Oprah and my mother was delighted because James Frey was on. They were rerunning the show with him and his parents. And I said, “You know…I have to say, I don’t trust that James Frey either. I don’t like the way he’s even sitting there. I get a bad vibe from him.” Once again my mother said, “No! He’s wonderful! You have to read the book! He’s gone through so much!!!!!”

And as if on cue, Oprah said on the show, “As I was reading I just couldn’t believe that this guy was actually still alive! I kept flipping to the back cover of the book to look at his picture, he’s alive! He really lived through this whole thing!”

My mother glared at me. I sunk down in the chair and put my hands in my pockets. I said, “Wow. I really should have read that whole book. I made a mistake taking it back to the bookstore.” My mother eagerly told me she would send me her copy as soon as she’d finished it.

So, you can imagine my joy when my friend Jim Emerson e-mailed me the link to the Smoking Gun story. I had told him this whole story with my mother and we had laughed about Dr. Phil and my mother’s energetic defense. I read every single word of the smoking gun article. And now I am gleefully watching this whole thing explode.

Because it is important if what he wrote was true or not. It does make a difference. Oprah is just trying to protect her choice by saying that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Because if it were a book labeled “fiction” she wouldn’t have bought it. And she herself said that what was so amazing to her was that this person who wrote this book was still alive. So it was important whether it was true.

So, I take away two things from this: One is that Mary Karr rocks. I love her so much. She wrote “The Liar’s Club” and “Cherry.” I LOVE both of those books. She is being very outspoken about this James Frey fabrication fiasco. She says it makes all memoirists look bad. That three months in jail is substantially different than a few hours in jail! This is not an exaggeration, this is a lie. I love that Mary Karr is saying this. I liked her before and now I like her even more.

The other thing I take away is – it’s important for me to be as truthful as I can in this memoir that I am writing at this very moment. And it’s very hard. For my show, “Letting Go Of God” I had to rearrange some details to make it more dramatic. Like, I adopt Mulan at a certain point in the show that is not exactly when I adopted her in real life – although adopting Mulan is really a very, very side note in my show and I spend very little time on that. And I debated for a long time whether I should have me explore Buddhism before I thought God was “nature” or after. Because the truth is not clear and linear in this case. But these are about ideas, not events. The other thing I do is make a composite character of Father Tom and I give him the comments that several priests made. But all in all, I feel good about my show and that it is true not just in spirit but in fact as well. Plus, I would have a disclaimer. So, I’m glad this happened to James Frey. It’s helpful for me to remember how important truth and honesty is.

I think he should say, “Yes. I fucked up. I made most of it up. And I hope that with my next work of clearly labeled fiction, I will prove to you that I am a good writer. I am embarrassed and humiliated. I may never live this down. I am so sorry.”

What about that?

Okay – on a completely different note – while on the general subject of Oprah and Dr. Phil and his wife – my mother said to me after I made those disparaging comments, “You don’t know how wonderful Dr. Phil really is. This is how he proposed to his wife: ‘I’ll make the living and you make my life worth living.’ Isn’t that the most romantic thing anyone could ever say?”

I’ll make the living and you make my life worth living.

I’ll make the living and you make my life worth living.

I can’t stop thinking about that. I just hate it so much. Or maybe I just wish someone had said that to me. But if they did, I think I would just have laughed at them. I mean, what does that mean???

“I am the focus and you are the support team and if you make things smooth for me, I will compensate you with my shared income.” Is that what that means? He said, straight out, that her part of the deal was to “make his life worth living.” That’s her job. That’s her side of the marriage, to make Dr. Phil’s life worth living.

I mean, I am all for a division of labor for efficiency. I would totally get it if someone said, “It’s more efficient for me to go have this big career and you to run support if we are going to have a family.” That – I totally get. But it’s the…make my life worth living. That part of it. Hmmm…

Also, I’ve been thinking that my bullshit reader/meter on James Frey seems to be pretty good! And I have no idea about Dr. Phil, I could be completely wrong on him. But then I was thinking how my bullshit meter is so wrong on people in real life. Not always, but often enough. And THEN I realized yesterday that when I am in a friendship with someone, or in some type of interaction where the person wants something from me – I can’t detect bullshit so much. I don’t get the distance and calm to do it, because I am all flummoxed and lit up over our interaction and what they want from me and what I want from them. It’s made me dead wrong on some people, and some boyfriends too. So, I guess I should see people on TV first and then try to be friends with them because the TV gives me the distance to judge them better. HAHAHAHA. Oh, this is going to make me laugh all day to myself.

Two things, no three things. Maybe four things.

1. My mother admonished me over Christmas because I had said some disparaging things about “Polar Express” to my brother while we were on the cruise. My brother, who has never seen Polar Express, said he was putting the DVD on for the girls to watch. The girls are my daughter and his two daughters.

I said, “I think that movie is one big advertisement for having blind faith and I really hate it.” Or something like that. In any case, the girls still watched the movie (or whatever it is that kids do when they are jumping up and down on a bed, talking to each other, and a movie is on in the background.)

Anyway, this conversation morphed itself into my mother saying over Christmas that I said, “I hate that movie because it has too much fantasy.” I would, of course, never say that. She told me that my brother felt “shut down” by me after that comment and that I am too judgmental. Or worse: I have too many “opinions.” Yes – what a horrible fate for me, to have turned into a woman who has opinions!

In any case, my mother and I got along splendidly over the holidays. And this little blip was not even a bump in the road. I actually had such a great time that I am openly considering moving back to Spokane before Mulan starts second grade. My real dilemma, if I move, is whether to put Mulan into a Catholic school. But that’s another blog for another time.

So, was thinking about Polar Express, and the whole “just believe” thing. Why couldn’t the boy in the movie been told to “just imagine”? Why did it have to be believe? I was reminded of this again when my adorable niece Katie showed me a Christmas present she received: some words to put on your wall – those cursive, wood-cut words. One of them was: believe. Believe!

I guess if you mean, “believe” in the sense of “have confidence in” – then I’m all for it. But I don’t think that is what most people think of when they see that word. I think it’s meant to be taken in the same way the boy learns it in Polar Express. Just…have faith.

2. The second thing I wanted to say is: being an at-home writer rocks. I love it. I am in my newly painted office in the backyard. And actually writing. Oh, my goodness, I hope I can actually finish this book and the screenplay and the cd.

3. The third thing is that I probably won’t have the cd done until after February. I feel really bad – that I probably won’t have this cd out until no one wants it anymore. But I am waiting to get the music rights and it’s taking longer than I thought. The rights for the background music is what I’m referring to. Oh dear, oh dear.

4. The fourth thing is that I booked more dates at the Groundlings to do my show, "Letting Go Of God." I have been selling out the Sunday morning shows, which is really great. This Sunday’s show is totally sold out. So, I just booked myself into the theater for nine more shows on sporadic Sunday mornings, Monday nights and Tuesday nights. If you are interested, please check the website (juliasweeney.com) to see the exact dates.

Back to work. Happy New Year!

p.s. Munich is so good. So is Brokeback Mountain. So is Wallace & Gromit. I want to go to the movies!

December 7, 2005

I am on the Grand Princess. I am doing my best to keep my sprits up. This is the type of place that makes me seriously worried that I suffer from depression. No matter how I explain what is awful about it and no matter how good my counter arguments are that rage in my head all day long about why it is pleasant and comfortable with even a smattering of great and lively moments, no matter how much I tell myself it’s not so bad, I can feel myself slipping down – almost into the ocean beneath me, into a paralyzing sadness. Even writing that sounds so extreme, I am already angry at my actrressy penchant for hyperbole, my lack of ability to calm myself and see the bigger picture, my snobby attitude towards everything about this trip. Then I rage again at myself – who am I and why can’t I just enjoy it – why must everything be such a big deal?

Okay, I’ll back up. My first thought, after spending a few hours on this ship, was that I had wandered happily into a Denny’s restaurant, when the doors suddenly slammed shut behind me. And my smile vanished and my eyes widened at the wave of realization: I couldn’t leave for seven days. The horror! The horror!

Maybe not Denny’s. Okay, this: a TGIF with a Doubletree hotel above it and a Circus Circus type gambling deck lodged into it’s side with a Bally’s gym in it too. And a band that is screeching day and night; songs like, “Margaritaville” and “We Built This City On Rock and Roll” too loud to allow for any conversation, not that you’d want to have any. Have I mentioned yet that the motto for the Princess line is, “Escape Completely”? Escape. Completely.

Oh, I am so snobby. Why can’t I relax? I want to jump into the ocean and swim away, away, away instead. Mulan is having the time of her life and so is my mother. And I enjoy my aunt so much – what a saving thing it is that she came on this boat too. And my brother and his wife and their kids. And my brother’s wife’s family – I really, really like all of them.

And yet, at night, I wonder how much money it would cost to be airlifted off the boat. What kind of malady I would have to conjure up? How long I would have to keep the lie going?

Eventually, some muscle relaxed and I just accepted my lot and got really lethargic and sad and I drunk up my books and couldn’t’ stop reading. And eating chocolate chip cookies. That don’t taste all that good. Neither does the lemon meringue pie. That didn’t stop me from finishing them, though. Oh no. Not me. I finish the bad food to be nice. To be nice to…the food. Because what if the food realized I didn’t like it? It would be sooooo hurt.

Not everyone on this boat is overweight. Not everyone. I, myself, am among those that could lose twenty – thirty pounds. I have found that I need a certain quality of food – fresh, well made, carefully prepared. That’s what makes me feel full. If I don’t have that kind of food, my body mistakes quantity for quality. I eat and eat and eat, trying to get some satisfaction, but none comes. I look at all the larger people on this boat and they actually seem to be starving to me. I want to kidnap them and take them home and make real food – let them feel truly sated for once! Then maybe we could all stop this grazing, compulsive, desperate, constant desire to eat and eat. Trying to fill something inside that is un-fillable.

Ugh.

By the way, I hate Ayn Rand too. Yes, it was completely unexpected. I imagined us to be wonderful friends – I so looked forward to the philosophy book I brought with me. But it too was a major disappointment. I hate when people write and ask me if I’m mad at God, or “what happened to me” to make me turn away from Jeeezhus. It always seems so beside the point and a reflexive jab on the part of a threatened reader. But honestly, I, myself, kept thinking, “what the fuck happened to Ayn Rand?” The exaltation of capitalism is disturbing. The deification of individualism seems naïve. It reads like she’s saying, “All you mediocre people out there are just standing in us geniuses way!” At then end of the chapter on capitalism, Piekoff writes: “Capitalism is practical, Capitalism is moral. Capitalism is true.” I dropped the book when I read that. Literally dropped the book on the floor. I waited a few seconds to pick it up again. I agree that it’s practical. I’m not sure if it’s moral. I am wary of anyone who uses the word “true” in this way. I’m not sure what “Capitalism is true” really means. That it exists?

I don’t get philosophy, I guess. It seems quaint and old fashioned to me – all those ‘isms’ this and ‘isms’ that. It doesn’t seem to reflect what we know about ourselves scientifically – that we are social animals who collectively create societies using strategies that range from altruism to selfishness. And the result is a successful survival of the species. It seems to me like Ayn Rand didn’t know a lot about biology and consciousness and how species survive. Rand doesn’t acknowledge the enormous efforts, the gigantic collective efforts that got her reared and educated and even in the U.S. with an ability to drive on roads and drink clean water and breath clean air. Unrestrained capitalism does not protect the common interests of individuals; it subjects them to the sociopathic greed of the marketplace, which values profit over long term sustainability. That seems so obvious to me.

Okay, don’t lecture me about Ayn Rand yet. I haven’t even really read her. I haven’t read the novels. I just read a PART of this survey of her philosophy. I know, I know, I shouldn’t say I “hate” her. That’s too extreme for someone I don’t really know. Or even have given a chance to.

There are some things that are great here on the boat. Guinness beer, for example. They have it in all the bars. It costs $5.50 a can, but it’s worth it. And then one night the pizza buffet had a garlic pizza with real big chunks of garlic and mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce and it was so good I nearly cried and ate three pieces and actually, for the first time, felt wholesomely full. I remembered the taste and lingered over it for hours afterwards. Garlic pizza. Mmmm…

Also, there’s a gym here. I walked an hour on the treadmill for two days in a row – it won’t let you go longer than sixty minutes. I suppose I could have started up the machine again, but I didn’t. And you watch the water go by as you walk because the machines look out the window on the upper deck and it’s pleasant. I fall asleep early -- I am sleeping so much, it’s indecent. I go to bed at eight thirty or nine or ten and sleep twelve hours. I think it takes a lot of energy for me to hate everything all day and then yell at myself for hating everything all day. Exhausting. But if I could stay awake at night I would go look at the stars. Everyone says how wonderful they are – more stars than they’ve ever seen before. I am so angry at myself for having missed it so many nights, but I can’t leave the cabin with Mulan asleep. We don’t have a view – well we have an obstructed view – there’s a life boat just outside our window – next time we’ll splurge for a balcony – wait what am I saying, next time? I suppose I could convince Mulan to go with me to the deck – sleep outside perhaps? Maybe I will try it tonight.

Today, right now, we are at Cozumel. It’s our last stop. Then two more days and we are back in Galvaston.

I won’t leave the ship again. I did for two outings, one in a place called Playa Maya and then in Belize. It was miserable. It took over a 90 minutes just to disembark the ship – there are two thousand six hundred passengers. We had signed up for tours and after getting off the boat we went into groups and stood in line for another hour before getting on busses and driving for another hour. In Playa Maya – a completely made up city by the way, in the last three years, by developers who cater to the cruising industry, I went to the ruins of Checkaban. I went alone, Mulan didn’t want to see it. Good thing too, the bus ride was long and there were no other children on the tour. Along the way there were lots of signs for the housing developments that they are building along the coast. The signs have pictures of kidney shaped swimming pools and women floating – blonde, white, American women of European descent. Clearly they are trying to woo more than the cruise ships here.

The ruins were moving to look at. I couldn’t help but think that their lost culture was so much more sophisticated than ours as we stood there looking at the pyramids overgrown and beautiful, us in our culottes and big t-shirts and pink sweaty faces and floppy hats, mouths agape, coca cola in hand, taking pictures of each other before we heard the guide even explain what we were looking at.

In Belize we signed up for a bird sanctuary tour. The guide kept making the most awful jokes, it was excruciating. “We have the biggest stork here, do you Belize me?” Ha ha ha ha ha. The “sanctuary” took two hours to get to and was swampy and hot and with lots of little sad houses here and there, garbage strewn along the streets, old closed up stores, and rusting ancient cars…and hardly any birds. My aunt Bonnie and I and Mulan stayed on the bus with a few others while the larger group trampled around and all looked at this and that bird who was always flying away and out of site and unremarkable and depressing.

I realized something too, I buy things to just make people stop selling them to me. This is a new insight into myself. I realized it here on this ship. In one of the “nice” dining rooms the waiter kept trying to get me to buy this box of three bottles of wine that they were selling for passengers to take home. He kept telling me what an amazing value it was. It cost something like $140.00 I have no idea if it’s a good value or not. It could be lime vodka in the bottles for all I know. But I find it so deeply uncomfortable, people trying to sell me things. I am embarrassed for them – like I’m seeing them naked, like I’m looking at their dirty underwear or something and I just want them to stop it. And so I buy the damn thing they are selling to me, just to make them go away. I am sure I have spent thousands of dollars on things this way. So, I bought the wine.

Last night, without planning it, several of the members of our party met together in one of the bars. People were drinking and happy and suddenly, without expecting it, I was happy too. I had some Chianti Reserve and potato chips – the only “appetizer” they were serving in the bar. I could feel my cheeks get red and hot and that lovely lilt and my sister in law, Tammy, was being very sincere and sweet and we were talking about how our children all adored each other (the kids were off together in this Kids Club day/night care thing they have). We began to talk about when Tammy got pregnant and before she knew she was having twins. And we had all gone on to a cabin on the beach for my dad’s seventieth birthday. And how Tammy had this enormous appetite. And how my dad teased her about it and bought her this long extending fork because she was eating everything in site. And we were laughing and remembering my dad. And I suddenly was reminded how much my dad loved Tammy. I think he was really proud of his son for marrying Tammy. And then I glanced in the mirror at my gray hair and glasses and had this acute feeling of being so old – that even my father would be struck with how I’ve aged. How un-young I’ve become. And how alone I feel. And then it was almost time to go get the girls and I volunteered to go get them and take them back to my room and wait while the other adults stayed at the bar and continued partying. And part of me thought I was so sad I might die. The ocean beneath us was how sad I was and the only thing that kept me from being engulfed into it was this thin little piece of ship wandering around the Caribbean.

I think I’ll go get on a treadmill now. My brother has taken Mulan into Cozumel with Tammy and the twins. After they left I laid on my bed for hours dozing and thinking and reading a bit here and there. I think people are beginning to drift back onto the ship because I’m seeing those enormous terry-cloth cover ups with appliqués on them and “Cozumel” written out across the front. I always wondered who bought those things and now I know. There are four or five other ships as big as ours in the water right now. Very big destination for the cruise industry. There’s all these fake Christmas trees all over the ship – not that I’m putting down fake Christmas trees, to me it’s the only way to have one. But it’s so incongruous—the spruce’s with the pine cones and just past them the harbor at Cozumel. In Belize, at the bird sanctuary, there were plastic santa clauses nailed onto the roofs of a few of the houses. It was so hot that the Santa’s were melting onto themselves. I wondered if the Santas were made in China, I bet they were. I wanted to find out. I’m not sure why. As if that would mean something.

I can’t stop hearing couples yelling at each other. I walk behind them and they bicker and snort at each other. Not a big advertisement for marriage, this place. Or maybe I’m hyper aware of it, something that makes me feel better about being single. I’m not sure. But it feels like everyone had this euphoria as the trip began: Here we are! Adventurous! Trip-taking! And then… now… four, five days into it, they are reminded that they are in fact married to each other and they hated each other just the same here as they did back home. It’s so hard to be with another person all the time. And yet, it’s all you want to do. I myself get sick of being with Mulan, all I want is some relief, and then when she is gone, I feel blue and empty and I miss her laughing, ringing, ebullient voice. I wish she were with me now, it feels a year since I’ve seen her and it’s only been a few hours. Where is she? Is she going in the ocean?

This morning at breakfast Mulan said that in “real” families people look like each other. Like how the twins look exactly like Tammy. I mean, the twins look precisely, almost freakishly like Tammy. They are identical triplets, only one of them is thirty years older than the other two. It makes you wonder if any spec of Sweeney is even in those girls, these identical replicas of their mother: blonde, full lipped, hazel eyed, long faced little Tammys. And luckily Tammy is gorgeous.

But anyway, Mulan said, “my real family is in China, but I guess they couldn’t take care of me.” I said, “We are your real family. Your real family is the family that raises you. But yes, you have parents in China, biological parents, who couldn’t take care of you.” She said, “But our hair is so different. And our skin is different. And the twins look just like their mom because they came out of their mom’s stomach.” “Yes.” I said. What more can I say to her? She has to deal with her situation. I tell her how loved she is everyday. She knows it too, but still. I think about her biological mother all the time. How beautiful she must be. Was, or is, she sensual the way Mulan is? Hyperactive too? Flexible, laughing, crafty, defiant, loving? What did she do today? Is she even alive? We’ll never know.

Well, I suppose I’m cruisin into a new world. There’s lots to tell. It’s seven a.m. and I still have to pack for a family reunion trip and we gotta be out of here by ten. I’m not sure why I’m shoving into my limited time writing my blog – but I feel like it, and so here goes…

So. I left my job. Yes, I quit. No more Desperate Housewives. I completed thirteen episodes and will not consult on the last ten. But it’s not because I didn’t love the job, LOVE the people, and the show. It’s because…well – I went to New York and did ten shows of Letting Go Of God. And it was really stupendous. I had the best time. I missed doing the show and the audiences were so fantastic. I felt, with every fiber of my being, that I just had to go to New York with the show in a bigger way – to a real off-Broadway theater and do a proper run of the show. It feels so right. The time seems right. Things have changed so much, even since I opened the show a year and a half ago. For example, when I opened my show here in Los Angeles, and I got to the part where I talk about Intelligent Design, I felt that about 30% of the audience knew what I was talking about. But now, EVERYONE knows what I’m talking about. Absolutely everyone. It seems like the topic of religion is exploding right now, all over the place. And I really, really, really want to be doing my show.

Also, I had an epiphany while I was in New York about my book. I was having all kinds of trouble finishing the book. I couldn’t get the tone right, I couldn’t figure out how to write about my Bible Study class for example and not infuse that part with everything that I now know about the Bible, how it was put together, who decided what books were where, how the translations were done. But I didn’t know that when I was taking the Bible study class. I was just reading it for face value. Anyway, this has been a stumbling block for me. And it’s caused all kinds of havoc. My publisher is giving up on the book and basically so was I.

But then – I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York looking at this Prague exhibit (I love Prague, oh how I miss Prague – even though I spent just about a week there five years ago or so) and I picked up a book by a writer that I didn’t know. His name is John Banville and he wrote a short little book about Prague called, “Prague Pictures: Portrait of a City,” I’d never heard of him. He’s an Irish writer. I am now completely shocked that I hadn’t read him! Anyway, I was absolutely and completely seduced by his writing. I could never write as well as he does, but I suddenly felt, while reading this little book, that I could write my book. He had the key. His book goes in and out of history of the Czech Republic and his personal story about Prague and art and people and oh! Oh! Oh!

Then, I was at the airport heading back to Los Angeles (I went back and forth for three weekends in a row – working in L.A. at Desperate Housewives and then doing shows over the weekend in New York – it wasn’t so bad actually, I thought I’d be more exhausted) and I was in the airport bookstore and I looked over a table of books for sale of wonderful writers, many of whom are even friends of mine: David Sedaris, David Rakoff, Al Franken – and I was caught up in a sudden unexpected surge of ambition! I want my book to be there! I can write this book! I can! I can!

And I knew right then and there that I had to go back to L.A. and quit and spend the next four months (or more) finishing this book.

So that’s what I did. And that’s what I’m going to do. Then I want to shoot this movie and then take the show to New York for a Fall opening. Of course, I have no idea if I’m going to be able to swing all this, but I feel I am on a mission. And I’m so excited about it. I can’t wait to get started.

But I’ll have to wait a little bit. Because Mulan and I are headed out this morning to go on a Celebrity Cruise around the Western Caribbean (as far as I can tell we are touring the Hurricane Rita path starting in Galveston) with our family – my brother, his wife and kids, my aunt, my mother and my brother’s wife’s family. We return in a week and then I’m repainting my office, getting everything in order, and then starting full time on the book in January. My last day at Desperate was on Wednesday and they were all so cool about my decision. Most of them have seen my show and are really supportive about it. And even though it’s scary – like I’ve woken up three nights in a row at two a.m. in paralyzing fear about money – I also feel absolutely confident that somehow it’s all going to work out well. I am dedicating all of 2006 to Letting Go Of God – I must make this movie this year and open the show in New York. And the CD will be ready soon, I met with Robert (my producer of the CD) last night and everything is going according to plan. The big time-taker on the CD front could be getting the rights to the music I use in the show, but it’s all in the process of being handled.

So, now I gotta pack. And I know this blog is all blurting and blathering and repeating. But I have no time to edit! But I will tell you what I’m bringing on the trip to read:
1.) John Banville “The Shroud” (I immediately went on Amazon and ordered every single thing John Banville has ever written. And his last book won the Booker prize – something with “Sea” in it. I will probably receive that book in the mail while I’m gone. And now I keep mentioning him to people and they know about him. How did I not know about him!?! He’s my literary muse now. He’s absolutely the most hypnotic writer, his sentences take my breath away, it’s like music. I often have to put the book down and swoon after a passage.
2.) “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand” by Leonard Peikoff. It’s terrible and astonishing that I have not read any Ayn Rand. I think I was put off by her maniacal (it seems to me – in my ignorance) free market solutions to all problems. But I am ready to give her a try and so many people have come to my show and mentioned her – it’s really a sin that I haven’t read her yet.
3.) “Swann’s Way – In Search Of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust. Well – of course I want to read that! I mean, duh. I just got a new translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terrence Kilmartin revised by D.J. Enright – the whole six volumes. I am going to try to read one hour a day of Swann’s Way, and then head into other things.
4.) “The Ape In The Corner Office” by Richard Conniff. I am actually almost done with this book and I want to reread part so of it and then give it to my brother. It’s hilarious and interesting and it’s fun to read. I recommend it highly.

Mulan is in heaven because her two cousins (my brother’s children who are identical twins, turning five while we are out at sea) are going to be at her side every single minute.

I can take my computer on the cruise, so maybe I’ll find time to blog from there. Oh my god, I have to pack. And there’s so much to do!

Lego Of God

This is my first blog that I’m writing directly onto Blogger. So, mostly this is a test to see if it will work.

The weekend consisted of: Going to Lego Land with Mulan. My friend Robert joined us. Robert is a musician friend who is producing the Letting Go Of God CD, which we talked about -- a lot -- during the day. More on that later.

Robert sang Hank Williams songs and played guitar all the way to Lego Land. We got there just after it opened on Saturday. It was overcast and almost drizzling with rain. It wasn’t even all that crowed. PERFECT. And Mulan had a blast. I learned something about her, something I probably should have known before. She loves roller coasters. This girl loves to go FAST. We went on two different ones over and over again. She could have gone on them for the whole day. The kids I’ve been around in the past were afraid of roller coasters at this age. But Mulan was sooo into it. She kept saying, "One more time!" Even before we got done with the ride. Robert and I kept laughing because that is the first three words Mulan ever said. I can see her already in the back of a convertible, sitting on the back like a beauty queen in a parade, her arms in the air and some boys in the front seat, and Mulan yelling, "One more time, boys!"

Jeez. Do I need to move to a remote island? Rejoin the Catholic Church and send her to the convent? Or just hold my breath and see what happens?

My favorite part of Lego Land was mini-town. We left around three and went to eat at a restaurant that Robert knew about. He used to live right by there in Carlsbad. Then we drove home and Mulan slept the whole way. I promised to take her to Magic Mountain next. I cannot wait.

So, I’m doing my darndest to get the CD out by December 1st. I already have over four thousand people who’ve e-mailed me and said they wanted it. I’m going to do a four cd package: the live version and the spoken word version together. I want it to cost less than $20, or maybe just $20. I couldn’t decide between the live version and the spoken word and so this is how I’m going to do it. I’m recording the spoken word version on Thursday and Robert is editing the live performances. I am getting my picture taken on Monday for the cover. I am so late getting this together.

Things are going to start going crazy in the next week or so and stay that way until Christmas. The shows at the Groundlings, then to New York for three weeks, then on the family reunion cruise, then back and Christmas will be here. All the while, squeezing in three days a week at Desperate Housewives.

On the way home from Lego Land, Robert and I taught Mulan “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Sometimes I think there are songs that just have to be filed in your head for inevitable moments that will crop up. I already taught Mulan, “I Want To Be Around.”

“I wanna be around, to pick up the pieces, when somebody breaks your heart. Some somebody twice as smart as me. A somebody who will swear to be true, just like you used to do with me. Who’ll leave you to learn that misery loves company! Wait and see!”

Oh that’s a great one. Maybe not a song that every five year old needs to know, but certainly every adult!

I spent the rest of the weekend making my big vegetable soup and reading Peter Singer’s “In Defense Of Animals.” It’s a collection of essays that Singer edits. It’s really good.

I keep getting lots of letters about hearing my show excerpt on This American Life. That is so cool. I can’t wait until the CD is done…

Charlie Rocket is dead

Oh I am so sad. I am at work at Universal Studios, and it's a rainy day. And I'm very depressed. Because Charlie Rocket is dead. I just heard today that he killed himself on Oct. 7th. He was a fellow actor in It's Pat and he became a friend.

I would see him a few times a year, he'd come to parties at my house. I always loved to be around him. I am so shocked and sad. I was thinking about the last time I saw him. I think it was coming out of some Hollywood party and we were both waiting for our cars fromthe valet. Was it at Kathy Griffin's house? A year ago? It must have been two years ago. Oh dear, how time flies.

We gave each other big hugs and stood (if I remember correctly) in the rain, (just like today) waiting. I liked how tall he was, he could engulf you in a hug. He was wearing a tweed overcoat and he looked British -- a chimney sweep -- a Dick Van Dyke with a sinister side.

He always seemed so happy. His wife, Beth, was always warm and conversational, a real glow by his side. I can hardly concentrate on work, I'm just so depressed about this. And it makes me think that maybe I didn't know him all that well, that he could have killed himself. And it makes me wish I'd spent more time around him.

We had this one big scene in the Pat movie, where his character, Kyle, tries to seduce Pat with wine and music. We laughed so hard that day, we could hardly shoot the scene. He was so hilarious in that scene, and every take he had something new and it would take me by surprise. I remember thinking it was the most enjoyable day I had ever spent on a set -- and that movie had plenty of great, memorable, funny days -- Dave Foley playing Chris and Kathy Griffin playing Pat's neighbor. Julie Hayden, a friend of mine, played Charlie Rocket's wife in the movie and they were just great together. Later, Julie got cancer at the exact same time as me. When I went for radiation, she was getting chemo and we would sit together. Once we called Charlie up from the hospital to just chat.

And now both of them are dead. Come to think of it, my brother Mike and my Dad were also in the Pat movie. For some reason this all makes me want to move back to Spokane. Like that's going to slow down time for some reason. Or that Spokane will allow me to just digest everything. Or something.

Anyway, I can't imagine what pain Charlie Rocket's family must be in at this time. I just remember laughing around him, always laughing. He was so clever and dark and his voice was soothing and disturbing at the same time. He always looked so dashing. He always seemed so genuinely happy to see me. And I always lit up around him.

There's another moment in the "It's Pat" movie where Charlie's character, Kyle, hacks the code to Pat's secret computer diary. He's so happy, he grabs a Pat doll he has in his room and kisses it on the lips saying, "We're in! We're In! We're in" as his voice gets deeper and more sexual. And then he tosses the Pat doll behind him and starts to read the diary. And it was so funny to me, his take on that. And whenever I hear those words, "I'm in, I'm in" - I think of him. And I laugh again.

Anyway... It's still pouring rain. I wish I were home. I wish I were making cookies. I want to be quilting and a fire in the fireplace. I heard around the office that the electricity was out in my neighborhood, but I just called home and they have power. But still, I feel like fleeing home, rushing in the door and just grabbing Mulan, like it's a natural disaster. Like -- yeah, she's alive. It's so weird how this is effecting me. Or maybe typical or appropriate.

Another thing about Charlie. I loved how he talked about his wife. Beth is an artist and he always spoke about her with such admiration. And they had been married for a long, long time. And I just loved that about Charlie. How much he loved his family. How he would tell funny stories about his son, Zane, and things that happened in his house with such enthusiasm. The mundane twists of everyday life were so amusing to him. Oh. I am just so sad. I've got to just go home.

My dear friend Jim Emerson, who co-wrote "It's Pat - The Movie" with me, wrote something about him for RogerEbert.com that I will reprint here.

Charles Rocket, R.I.P.

Jim Emerson / October 17, 2005
Actor, comedian and musician Charles Rocket had roles in such films as Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning "Dances With Wolves" and the Farrelly Brothers' hit "Dumb and Dumber."

But the Associated Press article about his death (he apparently cut his own throat and was found October 7 in a field near his home in Connecticut) began: "Actor and comedian Charles Rocket, who had roles in a variety of movies and TV series and briefly gained notoriety for uttering an obscenity on 'Saturday Night Live,' committed suicide, the state medical examiner ruled."

AP devoted nine paragraphs to Rocket, and four of them referred to "the incident." The first line of his IMDb entry is: "Once uttered the "F" word live on "Saturday Night Live" (1975)." In some way, I think he must have known that would be the stupid piece of trivia that followed him to his grave.

It's so strange and unpredictable the way a person's "public life" can be encapsulated for mass consumption. I worked with Rocket briefly on a little "SNL" spin-off movie ("It's Pat," 1994), and he was a genuinely funny guy. (He played Kyle, the obnoxious neighbor so obsessed with the bizarre sexual "mystery" of Pat that he fell in love, not knowing or caring if Pat was a him or a her; the not-knowing both fed Kyle's fantasies and drove him crazy.)

There's a surfeit of "down time" for the actors on a set, even a low-budget, tight-scheduled studio picture like this one, and I remember one afternoon in particular that could have been dull if it hadn't been for Charlie Rocket. He kept a group of us (Julia Sweeney, Dave Foley, Kathy Griffin, among others) laughing with his stories -- including, eventually, his definitive account of the notorious "f-word" incident. He didn't do it on purpose, and didn't even remember saying it; they had to show him the playback before he was absolutely sure he'd said it. And, the record will show, he was neither the first nor the last "SNL" cast member to have made this particular mistake -- but because he was on the show in 1980-81 (with Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Gilbert Gottfried), just after the now-legendary original cast had left, the profanity struck many as a deliberate, desperate act on an unfunny, dying show. Charlie Rocket, who died at age 56, deserves better than that.

An obit in _Variety did feature a few interesting tidbits:

Rocket appeared in feature films including "Earth Girls are Easy," "Dances with Wolves," "It's Pat" and "Dumb and Dumber." His last film role was in the 2003 Sylvester StalloneSylvester Stallone film "Shade." On TV, he appeared on shows including "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Cybill," "Touched by an Angel" and "thirtysomething."

Rocket played accordion in many bands, performing (with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie) on a tribute album to Fellini composer Nino Rota. And I was happy to find a personal appreciation in the Providence Phoenix. It mentions the "f-word incident" only in passing -- but it does note that the group he co-founded, the Fabulous Motels, was virtually the house band at the influential Road Island School of Design for a time in the 1970s: A news anchor job lured him to Colorado Springs, and when he later moved to Nashville, the network affiliate insisted Claverie [his real surname] was too weird a name. Picking from a number of suggested monikers, he chose "Charles Kennedy."

Then came what we all hoped would be the big break. Charlie was selected to star on Saturday Night Live for the 1980-81 season. He would anchor "Weekend Update." He would finally get the type of audience that his talent demanded and deserved. But this was the year that Lorne Michaels left in a disagreement with NBC. Jean Doumanian took over and hired some very bad writers. Charlie was stuck in the middle, trying to do his best in an increasingly untenable situation. Those who knew Charlie were not surprised to find that his best SNL moments were the "Rocket Reports," filmed skits of his own design. Before the season ended, he blurted out the f-word and was tossed off the show.

Moving to Los Angeles, Charlie appeared in dozens of films in supporting and starring roles, and
more than 50 episodes of different TV shows.

But that’s just the "Hollywood career" stuff. To his thousands of friends and fans here in Rhode Island, Charlie was the kindest and most generous type of person. We loved him without reservation, and he gave us that love back. He was a towering figure in the underground arts scene in the Providence of the 1970s. He heavily influenced Talking Heads, the Young Adults, and dozens of other bands. Those who were active then will tell you that Charles Rocket, in many ways, helped create the template for the underground/hipster/bohemian art scene here and elsewhere. We love you, Charlie. Our hearts are with Beth and Zane, and the rest of Charlie’s family and family of friends. He was our hero.

To Charlie.

Moving my blog to blogger

Well, I'm moving my blog to blogger.com. This was all started by a person who wrote me about all that was wrong with my blog and site -- too small of print, no way to respond in the way you can on other blogs, etc. And I realized he was right! So I have been consulting with my website people and I'm changing my site -- new home page, etc. Also, I'm going to have it link to blogger.com because they clearly have the best set up as far as I can see. It will all be much better. So, in the meantime, I'm not really blogging. Waiting for the remodel, you know.

I did my first of my Sunday morning shows on Sunday and it seemed to go well. I leave for Spokane on Wednesday to do the benefit and then I have two more performances of In The Family Way before I start Letting Go Of God again. If I can get an audience, I'll continue the Sunday thing between February and May -- then the goal is to shoot the film then.

I saw a sneak of the movie In Her Shoes this weekend. I sobbed the entire movie. Like... the whole movie. I couldn't stop crying. It's a formula chick flick that completely works and is engrossing and stylish and funny and ah... a tearjerker.

More when I am on blogger.com...

Like everyone I know, I cannot stop reading, watching and listening to news about the flood. It’s just so depressing. That’s an understatement. Even the understatement is understating it. Having just read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” and having just finished (at midnight last night) “Tomorrow Now” by Bruce Sterling and having just read (Bill McKibbon's article) in Grist Magazine, I just…I’m so terrified and disillusioned and resigned and sad about the future of everything. I didn’t realize until I was over forty what a precious and fragile thing CIVILIZATION is. Civilization: I’ve taken it for granted for my whole life. I’m fairly pessimistic about the future of us humans, but I think I was hoping that I would live through the last vestiges of the beginning of the end – I wouldn’t personally see it start to totally unravel. I know it may seem like I’m overreacting. I know that people had the same feelings in the 50s with the bomb and at the beginning of the industrial revolution and probably at the dawn of every new age time and again. I know that I may reread this in the future and sneer at my hysterical negative self. But still, it’s three forty-five in the morning and I cannot sleep. And it’s because I feel so sad about the future of our planet, the future that my daughter will navigate. There’s so many bad signs: a terrible government who wages senseless, needless wars, a government who uses religion to scare people and simultaneously make them more complacent, a government who actively tries to mislead or keep quality education from the masses, environmental disasters, poor planning for the future. We are Easter Island, carving oversized statues – making war with the tribes nearby and cutting down our last tree. What’s next? The Avian flu – some pandemic of some sort? The San Andreas fault ruptures? Oceans rising, millions displaced?

Yesterday, I went to Space.com and watched the little movie taken by the (space probe) headed to Mercury. Watching it was comforting and troubling. We are so small, such a little small blip. We are so teeny and vulnerable. And we aren’t that smart and we’re really violent. I mean, we are creative and lovable and joyous and mad. But oh jeez, calm planning is not our strong suit. Oh god, this all sounds so portentous – I must stop writing this. All these grand “we’s” and “our’s.” What am I, WHO am I to be -- generalizing and philosophizing on such a grand scale? With enough arrogance and authority to actually type it?

But still, this is what I’m thinking about all the time. This is why I cannot sleep tonight.
I am funneling all my anxiety into quilting these days. My friend Julia got me into it. She bought all these old quilts on E-bay and restored some of them. She gave us one that is now on Mulan’s bed. Its all hand stitched, made from feed sacks, and made in the thirties or forties. It’s gorgeous. Then Julia organized this quilting class that I’m taking at the Sewing Arts Center.

Now, our teacher, Russell is a major part of my life. There are three of us women in the class, Val, Maria, Julia and I. We are all nearly the same age, three of us are single, two of us have children. All of us are finding new meaning in life through quilting. (Maria’s not all the way there in her commitment, but I have faith in her.)

I made a small quilt for Mulan’s favorite stuffed animal: a blue-green elephant named Eddie. I am almost done with it. I machine stitched the two-inch blocks and then am hand stitching the quilting. The batting is rather thick and stiff and I have to jab-sew the stitches which makes them awkward and uneven and it’s a chore. But still. I want to do almost nothing else.
In the meantime, I lost my mind and bought almost fifteen quilts on E-bay! I spent over a thousand dollars on quilts and quilt tops. Most were about a hundred dollars apiece. I couldn’t stop myself, I was obsessed. I should have been giving that money to victims. I mean, I DID give money to the International Medical Corps Hurricane Katrina fund, even…almost the same amount that I spent on quilts, but I should have given more. I admit my petty personal obsessions, my lack of total generosity. It seems like the more bad news I hear, the more fearful books I read, the more I need to… to…own handmade quilts made in the thirties! Depression quilts. I like to run my fingers over the hand stitches and imagine the woman who made them. I’ve learned all the names of the patterns: Old Maid’s Puzzle, Grandma’s Flower Garden, Pinwheels, Nine Patch, Irish Chain, Drunkard’s Path, Flying Geese, Bowties, Courtyard Crosses. I dream of buying a nice sewing machine.

Then Julia got a quilt top, an unfinished quilt top that she is finishing for her son: Will. That means that the fabrics were pieced together and sewed, but it has no batting or backing. I kept imagining the woman who made the quilt top – long dead – and now, fifty or sixty years later her quilt top is getting lovingly finished by my friend, Julia. I was so moved by this act. Julia said, “It’s sort of like Mulan, in a way – you’ll never know who her mother was, it’s this unknown person who created this wonderful thing, but you are finishing it.” Maybe this is true, but I find this completing-quilts-started-by-others oddly and yet deeply spiritual. Wow, getting quilt tops and then finishing them! I never knew. I never knew that was even a thing to DO! What was the quilt maker thinking while she stitched? Did her daughters or sons help? How did she decide on this fabric here and that fabric there? Was it even a woman who did it? Was the fabric from dresses that meant something? Or feed sacks long saved? You start to see how some people have an eye for color and fabric combinations and others just don’t.

So, anyway, I now have bought about eight or nine quilt tops! I have two years of quilting to do before I’m done and I have only three beds in my house! What am I doing? I’ve gone batty! Worse, in the end, now that I have eight quilts in my living room and seven or maybe eight more to come, I think I should have just spent that amount of money on two really fantastic quilts. Still, I feel I’ve rescued the quilts I did buy somehow. Some seem like they weren’t appreciated – one has a rip that makes me think it was on a pullout bed and it got caught in the hinges. I will repair it and make it nice. I will make that long dead grandma proud. It’s impossible not to imagine her smiling down on me.
I listen to NPR while I quilt. I broke into tears the other day when I heard about the nursing home – why do I say “the” – I think there were several…where a woman was dead, clutching a piece of paper where she’d written the phone numbers of her next of kin. I couldn’t stop thinking about her – what were her joys in life, what did she create, what did she cook, when did she laugh so hard she couldn’t stop, when did she climb into bed with her parents after a bad dream? Was she a quilter????

Oh jeez, I sound so melodramatic. But I can’t help it. I can’t stop getting teary and even crying when I hear the stories. What a horrible way to die – waters rising, hope receding, a lifetime of thought drowning in mucky, oily, bacteria-filled water. Dogs and cats dying, scratching and whimpering, gulping and gasping, letting it go, stopping the fight for life. The kids trapped in attics. It’s just too much. One guy who drove a helicopter said over half of the three hundred people he participated in rescuing were children. He said that even though he feels he did help save these kids, he knows there were many more times that number out there who didn’t get saved. Who just waited and waited. He described flying by one house and seeing a little hand, a teeny little hand waving from an attic vent. Oh my god, now I am crying again. Jeez. What a disaster! And a gutted Fema run by a republican crony who used to raise Arabian horses and all our manpower trying to secure our rights to oil in the Middle East. And then…it’s oil here too that’s the problem. Those vast streaks of oil. It’s like the oil is our dark side, and now it’s seeping out all over the place. It’s like the old bottle of bourbon hid in the toilet and it broke and now everyone’s just staring at it and it’s all out there in the open and mixed up with our regular old poop. And Bush thinks this is a good time for another tax cut! He wants to make the estate tax permanently gone – a tax that benefits only the rich. We’re making all the classic mistakes. We are not unique – other great powers have descended into dark ages. The way to descend has earmarks: heightened religiosity, greater divisions between rich and poor, it’s a formula and we’re right there on that path. Oh, it’s time to just listen to some music and look at the stars and try to calm down.

Now it’s five a.m. I am going to go watch the Jon Stewart’s I have on TIVO and quilt until Mulan wakes up. Only now I feel almost...tired after writing this. I think maybe I could go back to sleep. I think I am relaxing. Good night. I mean, good morning.
Saturday…

I just listened to This American Life – the flood episode. It’s so sad. We lost total control. And it was totally our fault. There was no big plan. There was no real plan at all. I have absolutely no confidence that our government would protect anybody from and through a big disaster.

Anthropomorphizing Demons and Ideas

It’s early Saturday morning. Last night I went to a party where I met this guy who wrote The Science Behind The Science of Star Trek. Andre…something. I can’t remember his last name. We only talked ten minutes, maybe even less, but it was awesome. I was energized by the whole conversation. We talked about how astronomers really do their work off computers now – it’s not like they are outside at night with a telescope. Like at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, mostly the astronomers sit in rooms a few thousand feet below the actual telescope and they can operate the telescopes from their room. They see the images on the computer. I wanted to go visit Keck. I still do, but after learning that, my interest was diminished a bit. If its just images on a computer screen, why not look at the DVDs from the Hubble missions? Which of course, I have. But then those images are enhanced in certain ways – colors, contrasts and so forth. Which makes you think, well – what are we looking out at anyway? Our eyes only can see a certain spectrum of light and color. Why not manipulate that light and color – it’s just adjusting our personal filter of that image. The adjustment might even cause us to understand the image better. But there’s something lost. There’s something that starts to feel all made up about the whole endeavor.

I still have a dream of traveling the world and visiting the great Observatories.

I have still been thinking about that passage in Mark that I “mangled” in my San Francisco Chronicle interview. Why did I get that wrong? Maybe because, in that story, the character(s) that seem the most alive are the demons. A man comes up to Jesus and says he is possessed by demons. The conversation Jesus has is with the demons that describe themselves as of great number. I think that’s where I got the “people” part – not “person.” And then they ask to get put into a herd of two thousand pigs, which Jesus does. In my mind, that’s images of demons and pigs together. Then they run off a cliff. I think one of my problems is that I can’t think of “demons” as anything other than “people.” I anthropomorphize demons. In my mind, they have goatees and black turtlenecks and maybe even capes, and wings, and long crooked noses: witches, warlocks, but in the end…people. People dressed up to look like demons. I guess you could say: actors. Because all my images of demons come from movies where they are played by people. And when their spirits go into the pigs and the pigs kill themselves, it’s people and pigs killing themselves. When the demon(s) go out of the man, he seems to have lost his personality. I lose interest in his character after he doesn’t have demons. He seems to become a zombie, devoid of personality. It’s like Jesus strips him of his personality and then sends him off to spread the “message” of Jesus’ power.

Not that I am excusing myself for my lapse. It’s just…I’ve been musing about why I made that error. Why did I remember that passage that way?

My friend Kevin Gun, who is in seminary school to become an Episcopal priest, wrote and said that his class is studying this very passage at school, Mark 5: 10-20, and that his teacher starts the year with that passage because it’s so bizarre and unsettling. Here is a nice analysis of this Bible passage that I found: (Mark 5 analysis by Austin Cline)

I woke up thinking about these things. I haven’t come to any conclusions exactly yet. But this is what I woke up thinking about:

So many Christians who write to me feel persecuted and in a minority. They feel they are the underdogs. They also often describe the mainstream culture as hedonistic or without morality: society gone out of control. And they think that a return to the laws of God (their particular god) will make society much better and more loving and more pure.

Then I thought this: Christians don’t want evolution taught in the schools. Not only that, they can’t let themselves even consider that evolution is the means through which we people came to be. Probably because it’s too cold and haphazard and accidental. To think we feeling people came from such an unfeeling universe, a universe that doesn’t even have the consciousness to care about us humans is intolerable. Well, that’s understandable. It is very difficult to accept that, because we humans feel so much love for each other. We are deeply, emotionally connected to each to other. It’s almost impossible to think that the universe doesn’t have those same feelings.

These Christians think of evolution as a survival of the fittest method of arriving at dominance. But it is precisely this formula that they advocate economically. (That is, if they are Republican right-wing Christians.) They don’t want government regulation when it comes to business. They want the strongest to have full reign to dominate over the weak. They don’t want government programs that help the poor, they want those poor people to “work” hard and compete for their wages. Their social outlook isn’t one of taking care of others, it’s very much a marketplace, survival-of-the-fittest attitude.

It’s so ironic, to me that Christian Republican conservatives advocate survival of the fittest when it comes to the harsh realities of the marketplace, but they don’t want children to be taught this harsh method of how humans came to exist.

And yet, they get evolution so wrong! Survival of the fittest isn’t even accurate. It’s survival of the most adaptable, survival of the lucky, survival of the most cooperative. That’s what evolution really is. One of the big reasons our species has done so well is because we love each other. And why do we love each other? Because we survive much better in numbers than we do individually. When we cooperate our children are raised with a greater likelihood of succeeding. If these Christians would just learn a little bit about evolution they might be inspired to look out for their fellow human beings a little more. But they want to keep evolution unknown – they want to just think of it as a hash unacceptable theory. And in the meantime, they want to allow huge businesses to roll over common people, unfairly taking enormous profits and paying the top executives absurd bonuses and salaries.

Jesus talks a lot about the love of the Father, God, the Universe. And while Jesus does tell people over and over again to give all their money to the poor, he also encourages people to dissociate themselves from their families—not to care about father and mother, to live without the cares of the world.

But we know that the Universe doesn’t love us. But our families, at least in theory, do. And the religious, at least many of the ones who write to me, seem to feel that this world is not of our concern, that this world is bad and hedonistic, and that there is another world where God is where there is perfect harmony and caring. And this secular world is bad, and this world of God is good.

I guess to me, I think it’s exactly the opposite. I think the Universe is a cold abyss. A fascinating, profoundly awe-inspiring, majestic, beautiful, terrible, heartless, unfathomable, large abyss. And I think that this world, where I live amongst people I care about deeply, to be lovely and small and sweet and painful and poignant.

And I think we’ve got to always be vigilant against our deep impulses to behave in ways that are like that cold, stark, exploitive, life-giving universe – we have to steel ourselves against greed, for example. We have to watch ourselves not to exploit or unduly harm others – to make life fair as much as we can. That, to me, is our most difficult task. We are products of evolution, be we don’t have to behave in the uncaring ways that evolution often does. (See, it’s almost impossible not to anthropomorphize evolution itself! It’s like my demons, how they are really people – it’s just so hard not to think of IDEAS like they are people!)

All right. So, this is what I’m thinking about.

Yesterday I spent much of the day getting my picture taken for People Magazine. My house was overrun with make up and hair people, a stylist, photographers and assistants. Actually – to be honest, the make up and hair person was only one person. I guess People is doing a Desperate Housewives issue and I am going to be in it as one of the writers. Which is so WRONG. Because I hardly do anything for that show. The other writers do so much, I’m just a fly on the wall. Even though I hope to not just be that – over time. But jeez, I felt guilty about it. On the other hand, it was really fun. Often photographers and stylists make me feel so bad and awkward – but these people were great. It seemed effortless. Of course I wished I was 30 pounds thinner, but other than that, I actually felt…well, pretty. For a moment.

Today I’m making vegetable soup and organizing the house. It’s sort of overcast here today, which is perfect weather for this sort of thing.

Dawn's Demons

Today I was pointed to a blog, by Dawn Eden (dawneden.com). In her August 16, 2005 entry she comments on my San Francisco Chronicle interview.

In the interview (which you can read on this site) I make a mistake when I recount the story from Mark where Jesus send the evil spirits into the pigs and they run off the mountain. I said he sent the people too. That was incorrect.

She writes:

“Further proof that Christians need to continually remind the mainstream media of the most basic facts concerning their faith: San Francisco Chronicle religion writer David Ian Miller's failure to correct Julia Sweeney as she utterly mangles a story from the Gospels.”

And then,

“Apparently, it is too much to expect a San Francisco Chronicle religion writer to have the Bible knowledge of a 7-year-old Sunday-school student.”

This is what I wrote back to her today:

Dear Dawn,

Yes. I misrepresented the Jesus-commands-evil spirits-to-go-into-pigs-and-run-them-off-a-cliff story in the bible. I suggested that that Jesus caused the people & pigs to run off the cliff. He didn’t. He just caused a COUPLE OF THOUSAND PIGS to run off the cliff.

The point I was trying to make is that Jesus does several things that aren't particularly charitable or compassionate or even logical. I mean, if Jesus is capable of anything, why doesn't he just kill the evil spirits right there? Why does he have to kill two thousand innocent pigs to do that? Regardless of the fact that Jews of the period thought that pigs were unclean, we know that this is not true. So if we know this, why didn't Jesus? Why would that action be acceptable to him?

Plus, evil spirits? COME ON. Are we to believe that there are "evil spirits" that can infect a person and then be driven out of a person? And then driven into an…animal?

You say my mistake is the reason that Christians have to remind the mainstream media of the most basic facts concerning their religion. I completely agree. I think you should remind everyone in the mainstream culture (which is predominantly Christian) that their God is someone who sends evil spirits into pigs and drives them off mountains. (Pigs owned by people, by the way. Even if the mainstream culture you are trying to remind the “most basic facts” to isn’t moved by the specter of two thousand pigs hurling themselves off a cliff by Jesus’ direction, they might be upset – in this most commercial & profits driven culture -- that those pigs were owned by someone. Even by today’s standards, two thousand lost pigs have to be counted as an economic loss.)

So yes. Jesus didn’t send some people and pigs off a cliff. He sent the “evil spirits” into two thousand pigs and they ran off a cliff. Is that so much better? Is this the story that you say any seven-year-old Church student knows?

Personally, I would find that defending Jesus’ killing off of a couple of thousand pigs after he infected them with evil spirits a “basic fact” of your faith not worth defending. But that’s just me.

Good luck to you. I hope your mother gets well.

Julia Sweeney


This is the Gospel story: Mark 5:1-20 (New American Standard Bible)

Mark 5

The Gerasene Demoniac
1They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes.
2 When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him,
3 and he had his dwelling among the tombs. And no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain;
4 because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him.
5 Constantly, night and day, he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, and gashing himself with stones.
6 Seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before Him;
7 and shouting with a loud voice, he said, "What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God, do not torment me!"
8 For He had been saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"
9 And He was asking him, "What is your name?" And he said to Him, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
10 And he began to implore Him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
11 Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain.
12 The demons implored Him, saying, "Send us into the swine so that we may enter them."
13 Jesus gave them permission. And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about two thousand of them; and they were drowned in the sea.
14 Their herdsmen ran away and reported it in the city and in the country. And the people came to see what it was that had happened.
15 They came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the "legion"; and they became frightened.
16 Those who had seen it described to them how it had happened to the demon-possessed man, and all about the swine.
17 And they began to implore Him to leave their region.
18 As He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed was imploring Him that he might accompany Him.
19 And He did not let him, but He said to him, "Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you."
20 And he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.

More thoughts on this story:

Rereading this story, I find it even more upsetting. We know that people who behave in the way this man is behaving are psychologically traumatized and need help, maybe even medical help. If Jesus is the Son of an all-knowing God and they are also One, why wouldn’t Jesus know this? Why wouldn’t he prescribe a medication for the man, or offer to hear the man’s story and try to help him with some Talk-therapy? Clearly Jesus doesn’t know about these things. Clearly this was written in a time when no one knew about these things. Jesus was responding to this poor crazy man in a way that was consistent with the scientific information they had. They believed that mentally disabled people were possessed. And they believed that pigs were bad.

I mean, isn’t this obviously a story that would have wowed people two thousand years ago and isn’t relevant to us today? Why does anyone cling to these stories for spiritual sustenance? Why do they look at this story and find it meaningful? I don’t get it.