THE WORLD'S BEST HOSTESS!!!!

In this past Sunday SF Chronicle, there was a story in the "Home" section about some woman in Kenwood who is the Perfect Hostess. She lives in a 4,000 square foot house on more than 13 acres, with views all around.... for her overnight guests (of whom there are dozens) she loves to have ironed Frette sheets for them and personalized bathrobes and water bottles with fresh herb water by their bedside.

Oh just gag me.  She's a friggin millionaire.  It is not difficult to be a good hostess when you have slaves and tons of money.  The article was an insult to anyone who has guests this holiday (or any day) and is trying to make them feel at home without that pesky budget to get in the way.  So here is my letter to my overnight guests this Thanksgiving holiday:

Oh, lovely guests.  Thank you so much for sleeping over and not going out on the roads where you could be stopped by  the CHP at a sobriety check-point, which my money and influence wouldn't get you out of if you blow over the limit. Which you definitely would given how much wine you drank in the past 4 hours.  So I am happy you have chosen to sleep over.

I am also happy to say that you all get your own personal floor space!  No one needs to sleep on top of anyone else (unless they want to, heh, heh) and while only a few of you get a door to close your room off from the dogs and the kitchen, at least you all get a room with a window.  Natural light is so important to one's sleep cycle. If the dogs get up before you and if they try to lick you or hump you, just slap them on the nose and say "bad dog" and hope they don't care that you are sleeping in their space.

I cannot provide Frette sheets but I can assure you that each of you will get your own towel, and it will probably be a clean towel, too!  There is a stack of towels in the bathroom and only the two towels on the bottom of the stack have been used to dry the dogs!  But they have been washed as well, so no worries about ticks, or anything like that.  Still,  I would advise getting up early and using the best towels in the stack. Or feel free to share a towel with a friend! 

The sheets we have given you are nice, clean and have also been washed recently.  The pillows came from Salvation Army (bless them!) so I have nothing to say about them, but the pillow cases came from our linen closet, and we hope the smell of mold is now off of them, it has been a cold autumn and that linen closet just gets a bit of mildew now and then.  The green tinge is natural, don't worry about it.

I hope you don't mind sleeping on the floor and good for some of you for bringing a blow-up air mattress!  At least that will keep you off the rug where the dogs vomited a few days ago, not that you can still smell it or anything.  Plus, sleeping on a mattress also gives you that extra protection against any crawly creatures that might come out once the lights are turned off.  But once you turn the lights off you won't see them anyway, good news on that point!

Feel free to get up during the night and get a snack from the fridge. Great Thanksgiving leftovers are just waiting to be eaten, so help yourself. Don't mind the pit bull next to the fridge..... she's an angel, she's just guarding the food.  She won't bite, I promise. If she snaps at you just toss some turkey to the other side of the kitchen and when she runs to get it, grab what you want quickly and dash out of the kitchen and slam the door behind you.  But not too loud, you don't want to wake anyone else!

See you in the morning, or not. I will have coffee ready by 7:00 but you are all on your own for breakfast since I have to be at work by 7:30. Have fun.  Eat the eggs, make toast, drink the coffee, have some vodka or bourbon, and please clean up the kitchen before you leave.  I have left monogrammed sponges for each of you so you can all help washing last night's dishes.  All of them.  Fuck it, I cooked everything, the least you can do is clean up.  And I am so grateful for that!

Thanks for everything!!!!

The Perfect Hostess

Quick Movie Review: Mud

Oh, Matthew McConaughey, how we lusted after you in your early years, your ass in those tight jeans in "Time To Kill" and even before that in "Lone Star" when you were the not-good guy.  Then you had some small roles in good movies and then some big roles in bad movies.  We gave up on you, basically. But wait!  You were great in "Lincoln Lawyer"  and then it seemed you made a right turn and you are back making good movies.

"Mud" is one of those good movies.  Odd title, but hey, we can overlook that.  OK, moving back to third person, non general:  see this movie. I just watched it on DVD from the library and it's a good film.  It won't blow your socks off but 100% good.  The kids are reminiscent of kids like River Phoenix in "Stand By Me" and they are as good as River ever was.  Matthew Mc (his last name is too hard to keep typing) is so much a presence and at the same time so down-played as to make you almost forget he's there until he is there again.  But of course, that's just the first hour.  In the second half everything gets more intense and you can't walk away.  There are overlapping story lines about lies and truth and growing up and giving up and, bottom line, about life. 

Remember when we were all in our mid 30's, how great we looked (even if we don't remember, we see photos and think "fuck, if I had only known I was that cute, my life could/would have been so different")  and we have proof of that in Sam Shepard. One of my favorites, not just for his 30-year old face (can we say sexy?) but for his writing as well (can we say sexy?)  In this movie his role is small but he looks like all of us over 60 look:  much older.  Maybe in real life he looks a little less old, but maybe in real life we do, too.  Maybe not.  However, he is so fine in the small part he plays.

So, who knew?  "Mud" is good, very good. Good story line, really good characters, not a bad beginning and not a bad ending.  What more can you want?   B+ from me.  A movie worth renting.  Do it and tell me what you think.

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Getting nervous

I can't tell if I am getting anxious about taking the long flight to S.E. Asia or if I am just anxious about stuff in general, but I can't sleep.  I can fall asleep easily enough, tucking into my nice bed with nice blankets and the dog next to me and the room nice and cold.  I fall asleep like rain falls from a cloud, silently and seriously.  But then awake I am for reasons not known to me.  (Not to become all Yoda on you.....)  Sometimes there are reasons for waking up, like to pee, and sometimes sleep comes quickly after that, but more often than not it doesn't.

Last night was a banner evening because Cooper had to get up 4 times to go out side and poop.  Well, I suppose he was pooping, I didn't actually track that scat down, but he was assuming the position so pooping seemed to be the activity.  At least it was quick but it still meant getting out of bed in the cold house and opening the back door and waiting.  And being awake.

But that has never happened before so I can't blame my wakefulness on him.  I actually emailed my doctor today and asked for some drugs to take on the trip, not only to help me sleep but for anxiety on the plane. I am worried about my claustrophobic tendencies as much as the not sleeping thing.  We'll see what she responds.

Ah, well, I am no doubt being a big baby about it all.  Sure, it's a 14 hour flight and sure, China Airlines is no doubt safe. Take a big breath and put on those big girl pants and suck it up....

Whew.  OK.  Will do.

Off to bed.  Where did I put that Valium????

ACK! Another movie!

I cannot believe I have seen four movies in the last four or five weeks.  It is so unlike me. But yes, after work yesterday Steve and I saw yet another movie, and at the end of this one I said "OK, the next movie we see must have something funny in it."

We saw "All Is Lost" with Robert Redford.  You have all no doubt read about it, there is no one in the film except him and absolutely no dialogue.  At the very beginning he reads a sort of farewell letter for about 20 seconds, but that's it.  Him and his boat and the open ocean and more bad luck and trauma than any one person ever deserves.  You get to where you say things to yourself like "... oh great, now we get sharks!"  And "..oh, sure, more dehydration and starvation!" And "....oh, great, another leak in the boat!"  It's like a Biblical parable, one bad thing after another.  (Although I am not well versed on the Bible, as we all know.  The movie is like the story of Job, more and more terrible things happening to one man.  But honestly, other than Job and the guy with the Ark and the story of Jesus turning tap water into zinfandel, there are few stories I remember.)  Oddly, there is little emotional connection in the film, which is another reason why it feels like a morality tale.  (Of course, morality tales to me are like those Bible stories that I have conveniently forgotten, since my moral compass is always skewed.) 

I can't say I liked "All Is Lost" but I did respect it. It is finely made, the relentlessness of the ocean is truly depicted, Redford is the perfect guy to play this role.  His craggy face, crusted with dried salt, speaks to us in a way that reaches into the depths of our souls and gives little meaning to the word hope and great meaning to the word fear.  I was glad when the movie ended (perfect ending, too, by the way) and I can't really recommend seeing it unless you love stories about being stranded at sea with no rescue in sight.  But again, it is so finely crafted that it almost deserves to be viewed just for that fact alone.

We also saw previews of some new movies, one by the Coen Brothers and one from Wes Anderson, both of which made us laugh out loud.  I promise the next film I see will not make me sad or exhausted.  

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Weakly, a week

It's been a week since I last posted anything here.  That's weak.  It's not that there isn't anything going on in my life, it's just that there is NOTHING going on in my life, nothing of merit, nothing to talk about, nothing really to say. (Other than really stupid stuff about work, which I will not succumb to telling.)   I could ramble on and it would be boring. I could tell stories that aren't really true and you would know.  You would say to yourself, as you read the untrue story, something like "...Hmmm, that just sounds make up. What's with this lame ass pretend blogger?"  And you wouldn't read anything I ever wrote again.

But honestly, how would I know?  I would keep on typing out these ....... whatevers, and I would never know if anyone read them or not.  And that's kind of the point, isn't it?  I can make shit up, or tell the truth, or write about something in the middle of that, something that could be true or could be a lie and no one would know.  Except me, and we all know that I have few morals, so it wouldn't bother me if I was telling tall tales and you all (you two or three) believed them to be the truth.

It's all rubbish, isn't it?  Truth, lies, stories, real or not.  It's all one person's perspective on that one person's vision.  But that's what all objective discourse is, in the end. One person's view.  And to put your mind at rest, I rarely lie, I rarely tell tall tales.  At least not here, on these pages.

OK, this is all to say that there hasn't been a lot to say this week but there will be more tomorrow.  I will make sure of it.  As Scoop Nisker says:  "if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."  And so I might.

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Vietnam and the typhoon

While we watch the destruction in the Philippines and we hear about the incredible loss of life from the fierce power of typhoon Haiyan, it makes us and our small problems here at home seem trivial.  We are alive. Our friends are alive. Our lives are intact.  Not much else really matters.

Unless, of course, you are me and being selfish about my travel plans. What is this going to mean to me?  Will the hotels I have already paid for going to be standing in three weeks?  Will everything be covered with a layer of dirt and goo from the huge storm and its surge?  Will the airport even be operational?  Will flights (mine, especially) be cancelled?  Will train tracks be destroyed?

All those questions are rolling around in my small brain, even while I know that the answer to all of them is the same:  wait and see.  It will undoubtedly all be fine.

There is something so awkward and disconcerting about viewing a huge tragedy like this raging storm and yet trivializing it into a small, tiny problem for oneself.  Maybe it's the human condition, or maybe it's just me, but it still bugs me.

However, I have decided that if the airports are open, I am still going, no matter what.  If there is damage in the places I intend to visit, perhaps there is a chance I can help.  I know how to bag rice, how to sort clothes, how to clean up debris.  The odds are strong that it won't be necessary, but if it is, then that's what my vacation will be about.

But for now, I am just keeping watch on what happens to Ha Long Bay, Hanoi, Hoi An, Danang and the other cities on my route.  Wait and see.

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Captain Tom Hanks

A day off, and a movie!  Went to see "Captain Phillips" and once again I wish Tom Hanks lived next door to me.  I want to have dinner with him, grill some steaks, have a mediocre bottle of wine, talk about things.  He is, for my generation, what Jimmy Stewart must have been for my parents' generation.  (I will confer with my 93 year old mother and confirm this, of course.)  Just a regular guy who happens to be a movie star.

"Captain Phillips" is a very good movie. Extremely tense; if you are prone to fainting from stress, don't see it. It's exhausting, actually.  Somali pirates, a container ship, a merchant marine captain and a crew who are just doing a job: the confluence of these factors creates a situation you don't always encounter in today's movies.  You are not invested in any character except the Captain, and then only after he is taken hostage, but slowly you almost have Stockholm syndrome for the pirates (what an awful life they lived) and you become completely focused on the fate of Captain Phillips.  Of course you hope he lives but you think he might not. You don't want some of the pirates to die but you think they might.

The music feeds the tension. I often hate movie music for the simple fact that it manipulates the audience. This time it totally does that but it was fine.  We (the audience) needed to have the tension ramped up and the music provided that emotional hype.  It worked.

Whew!  Good movie.  Great Tom Hanks.  The ending scene is enough to break you down into a  blubbering, shell-shocked trauma victim.  Check it out. 

While in Vietnam......

It is difficult to decide what to do in a country that is so foreign to me. Do I go north or south? Do I hike or bike or float on boat?  The opportunity of new experiences is quite intimidating and that fact is really settling in. What if I miss what might be the best thing about that part of the world?  Or is there a "best thing?"  That's probably like saying "what if I miss the best thing about Paris?"  It won't happen because that best thing is only the best thing to that person who thinks it so. 

Other than the night on the boat in Halong Bay, I have tickets on the train to Danang.  It's an overnight train, in a car with 4 sleeping berths.  Getting to sleep with three strangers already seems a little odd, but it's the way it works.  The train runs all the way to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) but I am not going that far.  From Danang I will take a short taxi to Hoi An, a French provincial city near the middle of Vietnam, close to the coast.  Supposedly it's worth the trip, quaint, picturesque, easy to spend a couple of days in.  My hotel looks very sweet from the photos. 
 

 

 

 

 

Highly recommended on Tripadvisor, which is where most people get their travel information these days.  Hoi An is also where you can have clothes made very expertly and yet inexpensively.  So I will hang out around Hoi An for a couple of days, ride a bike to the beach, enjoy their hospitality and then take another overnight train back to Hanoi.

 

A few people have recommended I visit a small town in Laos, Luang Prabang.  It would mean juggling the trip to Halong Bay a bit, and I might see if that can be arranged.  It's also something I can book while in Hanoi, decide at the last minute, so I may go that route.  Still uncertain on this option.

 

So many choices, so little time.   All these options are rolling around in my brain, running into each other like cars dashing through an intersection.  I have to keep reminding myself that it's a vacation, not a mad frenzy through the country.  I could have gone the easy route, I suppose, and just booked a general tour, where someone else would have done all the work.  Maybe next time.

 

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