Hello!

It’s snowing. I do not approve of this snow situation.

What have I been up to lately? Well, I’m excited to say that I’ve been masterminding a redesign of Not Shallow. Within a week I should have the new site up and I’m going to have ALL NEW CONTENT as well. It will be Not Shallow 2.0, “the upgrade you never knew you wanted but now desperately crave.” I’ve been working on it this week and let’s just say that it involves a drawing of a prawn.

Like the rest of America, I’ve been watching the Charlie Sheen implosion with great interest. Yes, I’ve been treating it as if I bought a ticket to see the sideshow. Each morning I eagerly tune in to the morning news to see what fascinating videos/podcasts/interviews he crafted overnight.

Now there is a movement to stop gaping at Sheen. Craig Ferguson and the ladies on The View both said in recent broadcasts that this is certainly not a sideshow, it is a person with a major illness and we should not be watching from the bleachers. To a large extent, I agree with them, if for no other reason than there are kids involved. Kids who have a dad who went down into the well and doesn’t seem to be planning to resurface anytime soon and a mom who is doing daytime rehab.

But it pains me to agree with the ladies on The View.

And it seems impossible, this being America, for us to just ignore Sheen, what with the machete waving and “tiger blood” drinking (probably some kind of acai berry drink spiked with vodka). But I think the comedian Marc Maron has it exactly right when he said on a recent WTF podcast that Charlie Sheen is like Icarus – he’s in a manic state now and feels invincible but he’s going to fly too close to the sun and those wings are going to burn off. I mean, you can smell singed feathers, can’t you?
Besides, even when Charlie Sheen is sober (or at least managing his demons) he’s not someone who comes across as easy-going. He’s not going to envelope you in a bear hug – there is no Softer Side of Sheen. He’s someone who likes a hooker, a drink, a smoke and some dirty jokes. He’s the guy you play poker with who tries to get you to go out to Sheik’s or Beansnappers on Saturday night to see some tits. He’s the dad who doesn’t show up for the school play. He’s the husband who comes home with more than just lipstick on his collar. He’s a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. He was on a terrible sitcom. Some people say mediocre, I say terrible.

Sheen’s firing may spell its demise. Jon Cryer will have to find another place to wear Dad Jeans. I’m sure he’ll turn up somewhere else very soon, just like David Spade manages to turn up on a new sitcom every other year, always with that same, strange hairstyle.

Reading – Me: Stories of My Life by Katharine Hepburn. When Hepburn was 14 she discovered her 16-year-old brother hanging from a bed sheet in his room. There was speculation that it was an attempt at a joke or a prank gone awry but it was probably suicide. It made me think about Mark Madoff because I’d just read the recent article about Bernie Madoff in New York Magazine. Mark Madoff was the oldest son and he committed suicide last year. There has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Bernie’s two sons knew anything about what their father was doing, especially since they worked with him in the business. It seemed impossible for them not to have known and yet the article makes a clear and concise case that they did not. There is so much pain in the article that I found myself wincing as I read it. It made me wish that the article had been written a year ago, before the suicide, so that the public could have heard more about what the ordeal was like for the sons and maybe in some way exonerated them.

Watching- The Fabulous Baker Boys;  more Dallas. Kind of in a viewing hole right now. The last episode of Dallas we watched was about Lucy being taken “hostage” by a wild guy who drove around Texas in a van robbing restaurants and stores for no reason other than he was cra-a-zy. Keith said there seemed to be a time in the 1970s and 80s when it was accepted practice to have narratives driven by unmotivated villains.

Would like to watch How To Make It In America Season 1 and Childrens Hospital. Greatly anticipating the release of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska, later this month.

Doing: Besides the blog redo, I need to gear up for a turn at the second draft of my screenplay. Not feeling motivated right now because of the enormity of the task. My mandate seems to be “Now make it good,” which is a lot of pressure to put on oneself.

Also working on sewing a scarf that I’ve been working on, off-and-on, for a year. More about the scarf soon, as it’s almost finished, but suffice it to say I had decided that hand-sewing it was the way to go after reading a book about hand-sewing. What the book failed to mention was that hand-sewing is especially great if you have nothing else to do in life and also don’t mind at all if you produce one thing per six months due to the fact that you are a slow, methodical hand-sewer. Yesterday I broke down and got out the sewing machine.

Eating – The veggie burger and chips at Anchor Fish & Chips in Northeast Minneapolis. I know, who goes there for the veggie burger? I saw the pieces of enormous slabs of fried fish over  chips before I ordered and it just seemed like too much at the time. Don’t get me wrong, this gal ain’t against fried food, just wasn’t in the Fried Food Mood. Anyway, excellent veggie (bean) burger. A++, would eat again!