Chandler A Zoo

THE LEFTOVERS--gone cold

2011-08-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

Review of THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta, read by Dennis Boutsikaris.

This is a book about a shared tragedy and the different takes on it…No.

This is about suburbia and the noble depths of average people…Not really. Maybe noble shallows.

This is an arch, ironical look at fundamentalist responses to the inexplicable…Naw. You do keep expecting a swipe at the Far Out Right. But, like many swipes and insights, it does not come.

This is a book about our times, uncertainty, human resilience...Maybe it was supposed to be.

I didn’t know what to make of this book, despite liking previous works by this author. The setup is that a Rapture-like event has happened—millions from all religions, not just Christianity, are “disappeared,” never to be seen again. Included are the pope and Greta Van Susteren.

So how do the “Leftovers” handle this? Truly, this is a before and after deal. “I was one way before and different after”—you know what I mean. Or was it? Maybe there is blah blah—WOW BIG EVENT—blah blah.

We focus on a couple of people in a burg called Mapleton. The mayor’s wife decamped to the largest post-Departure cult, the Guilty Remnant, where the people wear white, remain silent, take up smoking even if they didn’t before, and stare at the “Leftovers” to make them uncomfortable until the real fun starts with Judgment Day. Her son drops out of college and takes up with another cult, the Holy Waynes. You can read for yourself what they are into.

The mayor is at loose ends, what with no wife, never hearing from his son (a Holy Wayne, then a Barefooter), his daughter screwing up HS, and dealing with nutty people in town complaining about their newspaper delivery. He kind of dates a woman whose children were both scooped up in the Departure. She prides herself on being a good girlfriend—but isn’t.

A baby is being born—will it be you know, a Big Deal, Savior-Type Baby—or just the offspring of a polygamist wannabee?

My problem with this book is that it made people seem irritatingly bland even in the face of big events. Yes, we all cope in our own way…But style, people, have some style! Dennis Boutsikaris is one of my favorite readers—but his flat, soft acting makes most characters sound similar.

Incidentally, I listened to an interview with the author—and this was supposed to be a comedy. Completely did not see that one coming.

A comedy. Hmmm. Amazing.

I did learn one thing, though—from now on, in all books, there is a One-Cult Maximum. And next time, Greta Van Susteren gets to live to explain everything.

Welcome to Hell-o-Stone

2011-08-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Review of Back of Beyond, a thriller by C.J. Box, read by Holter Graham

First, I look for a character to follow or empathize with, then try to figure out what trouble he or she is in.

This book starts out with an ex-alkie, nicotine-jonesing cop named Cody Hoyt banging around the backwoods in Montana, plowing into an elk, and then getting to a rain-soaked, burned up cabin containing the crisped remains of his AA sponsor. Naturally, Hoyt sits in his car and slurps some booze he stole from a witness, which irks his partner Larry no end.

Hmmm, this is my protag? (He also helps himself to phones and equipment from the property room as if it were Walmart in there.)

With some alcohol-infused detection, he develops the notion that his teenage son and his wife’s intended second husband are on a pack trip into Yellowstone with the killer. Whoa—quite a leap there.

We cut to two teenage girls who are on the trip with their dear old Dad. One is a cheerleader type and the other is a commonsense, observant youngster, who soon notes that Dad might just have known a single woman named Rachel, who is also on the trip. Hey, they didn’t just meet, she deduces. Very good, Gracie!

Back to the crime, remember that? There is a school of red herrings coursing through the park. Everyone did it! There, I solved it.

But no…pretty soon, the unhappy campers start falling—their remains immediately set upon by ravening wolves or grizzlies. The wildlife is wild in this!

I can’t say much more without spoilers. Let’s just say screenwriters are only allowed one coincidence per script and this book grabbed several.

I did like some of the writing quite a bit—phrases like “sudsy stars” appearing. I have been to Yellowstone and the stars are so visible they look like foam. I am leery of woods, personally, and descriptions of wolves as 175-lb dogs with red bloody teeth hunched over a corpse tended to stick with me. The reader Holter Graham also had a pleasant tenor voice and didn’t ham it up.

Some scenes went on too long (hint, the peeping Tom scene at the latrine). And would Cody really frisk every corpse he found for cigs? Well, on that one—yes. He is quite the protag. I bet he also kept the satellite phone he “found” in the evidence room.

Run away to Alaska--think first

2011-03-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

The last frontier of relationships? A review of Caribou Island, by David Vann, read by Bronson Pinchot, and reviewed by Star Lawrence

In the interest of TMI, let me reveal that I spent a decade of my life with a man who was a “dreamer” with limited follow-though. I also tended to martyr out from time to time and still do.

Maybe this is why I can’t get David Vann’s Caribou Island out of my mind, but I tend to think it’s more because this is good story telling—if you define that as making the reader always wonder what comes next, what will happen, then what.

But by good story telling, I don’t mean easy to take. In loosely wandering between the stories of a couple who had settled into the icy wilds of Alaska decades before and now are picking at the remains of their relationship, along with their two grown children and two tourists—Caribou Island is a study in endurance, missed connections, stunted emotional growth, and escapism. And violence.

A friend once chided me for recommending a book in which animals suffered, so fair warning—the people do most of the suffering in this one, but there is mention of a starved dog and many, many salmon have a bad time of it.

Did I “enjoy” this book? I can’t get it out of my mind. Is that the same?

One more thing. I can’t read novels anymore and listened to Bronson Pinchot read this. He does a perfect job—perfect! You might want to take a flyer on audio with this one.

Star Lawrence owns two blogs— http://HEALTHSass.blogspot.com
and a recession site called http://HopeyCopey.blogspot.com. She is a long-time reporter.

THE GLASS RAINBOW

2010-08-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

Review of THE GLASS RAINBOW, Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell together forever? Written by James Lee Burke, read by Will Patton.

This is the 18th Robicheaux/Purcell caper—is it the last? I will get to that in a moment.

Dave, as the legions of fans know, is a mercurial cop-family man guy, who was tossed off the New Orleans cops and landed in the New Iberia, Louisiana, Sheriff’s Department. Clete is his bigger-than-life brawler of a pal, late of the NO cops, never at the Sheriff’s Department, and now sort of a freewheeling PI and world-class drinker.

These two are low-life Velcro. They find every reptilian, old-money, new-money, pimp and scoundrel rattling around Louisiana, In The Glass Rainbow, they are entangled with a creepy old oil man and his dilettante son, Kermit. Added to the mix are some young women tossed into landfills like trash and one of those celebrity criminals. You know, the kind celebrities lionize.

About then, Dave starts spotting the phantom steam paddlewheeler on his beloved Bayou Teche outside his house. And the guys in the black SUVs start to show up.

Amidst the trademark Burke nature lore, the bruised skies, the tink of raindrops, the great grand-daughter of New Orleans famed voodoo queen glances at Dave and remarks that he is “disappearin’, thinnin' out.”

Now, I don’t want to spoil this, but let’s say the ending is ambiguous. Dave boards the paddlewheeler, sees his long-dead parents, medics from Vietnam…Clete tries to pull him back down the gangplank.

Is this the end for our guys?

Star Lawrence owns two websites—one, HEALTHSass (http://healthsass.blogspot.com), contains interesting health tidbits and the other, Do the Hopey Copey (http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com) is for those seeking to stay alive in this economy.

Dark North Woods, dark history

2010-03-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

A review of Thunder Bay, audio book by William Kent Krueger, read by Buck Schirmer.

I first read about deliberate, thoughtful sheriff Corcoran O’Connor in Mercy Falls, and I see from Amazon, he has been treading those pineneedle-covered forest trails, running into the occasional degenerate murderer, for several books.

Thunder Bay is actually in Canada, but the story begins in Minnesota. O’Connor has resigned as sheriff of Tamarack County. His friend, an almost 100-year-old Ojibwa medicine man named Henry, is hospitalized and asks O’Connor to find his son, who would then be 73. Son? What son? O’Connor had known the old man all his life, no mention of a son.

He reluctantly agrees and at least googles the mother’s name, one of two clues the old man had. The other clue is a gold watch with a beautiful Latin woman’s picture in it. Of course, through the wonder of Inspector Google, he finds the connection right away. The son, a zillionaire industrialist, is a recluse a la Howard Hughes on an island near Thunder Bay.

Corc journeys to the place, bringing the watch. By then, he has learned the old man’s story, which we readers learn to the tune of half the book. I won’t go into it—but I cried and I am not usually a sappy mess.

The son is a wackypack, with long white hair and a closetful of clean bathrobes and surgical masks. Or is he?

I will leave it to you.

There is a second story line I won’t go into and all I can say is that the book nimbly dodges Nancy Drew World a few times, for which I was thankful.

Buck Schirmer? The reader? Wonderful base voice. My gosh, you could take a bath in his voice. I asked my daughter why I never meet anyone with a voice like that. She said it was because I never went anywhere.

Oh.

Star Lawrence owns a health website called HEALTH’Sass at http://healthsass.blogspot.com and a recession site at http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com.
She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Nate's Third Base and San Tan Brewery new experiments

2010-02-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

My sister, mother and I have eaten at Floridino’s Pizza and Pasta, Alma School and Galveston, every Saturday in human memory. Although we love the menu and have had almost everything on it, we decided to try some new places.

When Nate’s Third Base, Anderson Springs Mall on Ray, was called The Waterfront Grill we used to go and watch the ducks. We call it the duck bar. I love ponds, Mom loves ducks and ponds…well, the food was almost incidental.

Now it’s called Nate’s Third Base and in my opinion, the food is much improved—they even serve breakfast on Saturday. There also seems to be more ducks, which is a good thing. My sister does not like bars, though, and has decided she still does not like the food. (I also thought Nate was very nice—don’t worry, I will lobby to return.)

Next, we went to the San Tan Brewery. This time I did not like the food. It was a crowded bar, which is more or less my natural habitat, or used to be when I was younger. But the fries did not taste like potatoes, the beefy burger did not taste beef-like, and the calamari did not taste, you know, squiddy.

Squid should be squiddy, don’t you agree?

We didn't try the home brews at San Tan. My sister says alcohol makes me argumentative, meaning I disagree with her. Moi?

Stay tuned. We get hungry every Saturday. Count on it.

Nature tooth and claw--SWAN PEAK

2010-01-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

A review of the audio version of SWAN PEAK by James Lee Burke, read by Will Patton.

Let me stipulate: The Rockies are beautiful, the snow-kissed peaks, the gathering purple shadows, the sound of wind in the pines and larches, cut-throat trout slowly wheeling under lime Jell-O-clear water.…If you have read rhapsodic nature-worshipping James Lee Burke, you know where I am going with this.

Burke lives in Montana and in New Orleans and is apparently a rich man longing for the old America, where men went to war, killed or were maimed, came back and toughed it out in small towns, tramping along as cops or serial killers with their demons riding their backs and peculiar moral codes thumping in their chests.

Under the endlessly gorgeous descriptions of natural sights and sounds, Burke lets us know none too subtly, beats a black heart, men who look like other men but long to burn people alive and backhoe them into premature graves while they struggle to find oxygen amongst the richly fragrant humus being tossed on top of them.

Enter Clete Purcel, the wild-living former cop and rule-shattering PI of many Burke books, and his enigmatically explosive New Iberia, Louisiana, police pal Dave Robicheaux (this is their 16th outing) This time, the duo has traveled to visit a crusading professor (Burkean?) living in one of the most idyllic places on earth.

First, thing, mayhem-magnet Clete runs afoul of some trashy body guards for two local oil barons, who have the bad judgment to run over the Clete-ster’s fly rod. Uh-oh.

It’s on, babies.

I won’t drop spoilers, but dragged into the volatile mix is a sexually conflicted prison guard, an earnest C&W singer, a gold-digging gal with pipes of her own, a rather thoughtful woman with flowers tattooed all over her tatas, some hapless college kids, and a tacky preacher man.

Will Patton, a perennial favorite reader of Burke books, mutters on in his soft, Southern voice, peeling back the beauty of a sunset to reveal the bloody and bloody-minded human pollution that lies beneath it.

Do I sound cynical? I love Burke, but seriously? This is starting to freak me out. Maybe he spends all day thinking about the only geography that counts, according to him—the hole we will lie in. But I don’t. Sometimes I watch TV, even.

I am being cremated anyhow—and after I die, too.

All families have their quirks

2009-11-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

Review of THE WAY HOME, an unusual family portrait, written by George Pelecanos and read by Dion Graham.

Some nice, hard-working middle-class parents don’t end up with the stereotypical kids who take the stereotypical road to adulthood. I didn’t, for instance. So I can identify with George Pelecanos’ latest. Although it’s set in the Washington, DC area, a Pelecanos trademark, the protag, Chris Flynn, son of the owner of a successful carpet installation company, is not African-American, a departure of sorts for this author, who has also written for THE WIRE on HBO.

The story opens on Chris in juvie—having tested and broken his parents’ hearts several times with stupid adolescent decisions. Now he’s inside the system and they are outside, confused, angry, and hurt. Chris drops his verbs, adopts some street intonations and casually informs his dad at one point that he “knows how to jail.” His Dad corrects him each time. Personally, I hate the expression “where it’s at” and correct it every time!

As their paths diverge, parents and son, they also braid back together when Chris gets out. The young man even goes to work with Dad’s company and his Dad hires some of Chris’s pals from juvie. But don’t bring out the pleasing pastels for the family portrait just yet.

One day, after installing a carpet in an empty house, Chris and a friend from jail, Ben, discover a compartment under the floor with $50,000 in it. Uh-oh.

Chris remembers some movies (“A Simple Plan” comes to mind, but was not mentioned) in which keeping found money like this comes to no good. He talks Ben into putting it back.

But fate has spun the Big Wheel. Click, click, where will it stop?

I leave it to you to read or better yet, listen to his story, one of Pelecanos’ most involving, at least for me.

Dion Graham reads it and does not overdo the street gab. His voice is quite hypnotic in fact, and like someone who speaks in low tones, draws you in and makes you listen carefully.

You are not going to want to miss a word.

Back from hell, what's shakin'?

2009-10-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

Review of Audiobook
Sandman Slim written by Richard Kadrey, read by Macleod Andrews

Okay, here is the setup: A negative thinker named James Butler Stark is a naturally gifted magician in an LA group called the Sub Rosa. He ticks them off with his smart-alecky approach to magic and gets dragged into Hell, known as “Downtown,” for 11 years. Of course, being forced to fight supernatural beings in an arena in Hell for over a decade, he builds up some resentment and steals the key to everything, including Earth, and comes back for revenge.

With me so far?

Oh—and this is funny!

Stark lops off heads, makes the heads watch infomercials in a dark closet, and says when you have nothing left and are starting over on Earth, you really only care whether you own socks or not.

As he rages around looking for his old buddies, he runs afoul of Homeland Security, which is of course hooked up with angels (on the side of, get it?) and starts Stark raving about “angel hoo-doo”—he is not a fan.

None of his buds from Hell are here (only the boss Lucifer can get out), but there are angels…and some other in-between unsavories called “kissi.” Turns out these unworthies are the real bad guys—and the hellions are really just sports-minded scum. Who cares—they can’t get out anyhow.

So now Stark is after the kissi—the ones who really dragged him Downtown and killed his one-true-love Alice.

You can grab your weapon of choice and hear the rest. As Stark puts it—“This is a booty call to a massacre.” The narrator, Macleod Andrews, reads Stark as an ironic sort of hell cat, and I have to say, this audiobook is full-on groovy.

Silent type, spikey heiress--sound good?

2009-10-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Review of Audiobook:
The Watchman by Robert Crais, read by James Daniels

Does the concept of an ex-Marine, ex-cop dashing around LA trying to keep a hot heiress safe from South American hit men grab you? What if that Marine/ex-cop was your beloved Joe Pike of Elvis Cole./Joe Pike fame? Are you in?

Instead of his growly guest appearances in private detective Elvis Cole books, Pike takes this one over, bodyguarding the brash young Larkin Connor Barkley, who has happened into some weird action when blasting her Aston-Martin through empty LA streets at 4 am.

No matter what safe house Pike puts her in—or even finds for her himself—the scuzzies show up an hour later to blast Larkin into giblets. Someone is selling her out. Time is short to find out who the heck these people are and why they want her dead. All the people involved in the early dawn accident are already dead, except for Larkin.

Assisted by his wisecracking buddy Elvis Cole, Pike tries to second-guess everyone who knows him or Larkin—to no avail. In the front door of a safe house—and the bad guys are sneaking in the back door and are in need of some decimating.

James Daniels is the perfect reader for this, doing Pike in a slow, flat, reluctant voice—darn, I hate to use my vocal cords, how many times have I told you that? Elvis Cole comes off as the motor mouth, funny younger brother type. Larkin is no Paris Hilton, either—she is by turns scared, irritated, and a little enamored of her capable protector.

Apparently, when she is not on the run, her usual male companions don’t clean their guns every night, buy her vegan meals, or understand when she sneaks out to dance on a bar amidst shouting Armenians.

By the way—the title, The Watchman, makes no sense. Where do they get these titles sometimes?

Atmospherics cut with cruelty

2009-09-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

A review of the audio version of RAIN GODS by James Lee Burke, read by Will Patton, and reviewed by Star Lawrence.

Hackberry Holland is an old man, sheriff in a small South Texas town, but a former politician and womanizer. He lives on a little ranch with two frisky horses, overhung with sky, weather, and nature of every description. And you will get the descriptions, as any James Lee Burke fan knows. No tinted sunrise or bruised thunderhead leaping with lightning goes unnoticed.

But trouble has come to town and in the form of “Preacher” Jack Collins, a mercurial killer on a mission, and his mission at one point has involved machine-gunning nine Thai women brought to town for the purposes of prostitution. Hackberry dredges them up from their shallow rest behind an abandoned church and takes it personally.

The theme is “unlikely heroes,” which as the book unwinds, include a young Iraq vet, his singer girlfriend, a pudgy strip club owner, his wife, and of course, Holland himself. The irony is that even “Preacher” Collins does not behave as a depraved killer should.

Will Patton is the perfect reader for Burke books, with his sleepy, Southern voice and reassuring tone even in the midst of the most depraved scenes.

No country for old men? This is the perfect country for old men who have learned a thing or two and grown some principles. Young men, too. And the two women? They can take care of thesmelves, too.

Relentless is right!

2009-08-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

Review of Relentless, by Dean Koontz, read by Dan John Miller.

Dean Koontz is not a poor man’s Stephen King. He is his own kind of sweet, kind of overwritten, and kind of totally spellbinding self. Some people can get into that like a hot bath, others can’t stand it. I am a bather.

Relentless is one of his best yarns to date, in my humble. Yet, it is festooned with characteristic Koontz touches, which include a protag who is so grounded and loving he makes your eyelids slowly descend, only to snap open on such lines as, “We did not know then that by day’s end, one of us would be shot dead.”

Cubby is a novelist, a loving husband, the jokey father of a seriously smart kid (referred to by a bad guy as a “weird little Einstein”), and oh, yes, Cubby has a big secret in his past, the kind of horror you would never associate with anyone you would ever meet. You never would. Koontz would, though.

Don’t laugh, but a famous book critic wants to wipe out Cubby, his wife, their weird little Einstein, and their little dog Lassie, too!

This may sound funny, but I assure you it’s suspenseful and warped as hell.

Of course, I won’t tell you what happens, but it involves a deus ex machina shaped like a crystal salt shaker. But you knew that, didn’t you?

Anyhow, even hard-core thriller lovers will get into this one. John Dan Miller has a pleasing tenor, rendering even the most banal inter-familial banter interesting and believable.

You’re just never ready for the odd line that jumps in. “I don’t think you’re ready for this, Dad, it’s not a salt shaker anymore.”

New spin on the word "spook"

2009-07-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

Review of the audio version of The Echelon Vendetta by Michael Stone (not his real name) and read by Firdous Bamji.

Micah Dalton is a “cleaner,” one of those useful CIA guys who drops into a situation and tidies up the mess. Messes are usually caused by trigger or knife-happy enemies, though, not ticked-off shamans. And usually, the cleaner liases with living people, you know, walking-around, everyone-can-see-them, living people.

So in pretty short order, we realize this title may sound like Jason Bourne will be hopping into a fast car or swinging on a rope, but this is a spy book with a difference. Supposedly “David Stone,” the author, knows his way around the alphabet agencies. But he also seems to know his hallucinogens and other interesting things.

Micah starts out in Europe, investigating his best friend in the agency’s murder, suicide, whaever—the man has clawed his own face off. Don’t you hate it when someone talks you into that?

Then he sees a pattern among some other deaths and starts hacking around in the mountains of the far West, trying to fit the puzzle pieces, while more gruesome deaths occur.

All the while, his friend from Venice, Porter, pops in every do often to lend advice, even though his face is clawed off.

When I last heard Firdous Bamji, he had an Indian accent. Now he is handily voicing a number of American dialects. He is quite the talker.

Will there be more Micah Dalton stories? When last seen, he had dropped off the grid at the end of this book. But you know grids—people, living or the opposite, can pop back on them. Apparently, there are three of these already.

Star Lawrence owns a recession-coping site called Do the Hopey Copey at http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Winner--not loser

2009-06-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

Review of the audiobook Loser’s Town by Daniel Depp, read by Don Leslie, reviewed by Star Lawrence.

New stuff in town. That town would be Hollywood, of course, where Robert Mitchum once said losers come to succeed. Daniel Depp is the author. Depp, Depp—yes, he’s Johnny Depp’s half-brother and a darn fun writer. His new series character is David Spandau, a stuntman turned mavericky employee of a staid bodyguard and security firm in Tinsel Town.

I absolutely fell in love with Don Leslie, this reader. He has a slowish, distinct, bass voice and sounds very wry and precise, perfect for describing this Pulp Fiction-like cast of characters, who ruminate or blab on as juicily as Royale with DOUBLE cheese. Elmore Leonard—do you feel Depp’s hot breath on your neck?

The plot is a little sketchy. Spandau is hired by an up-and-coming young actor named Bobby Dye, who is in the clutches of a mob punk named Richie Stella. Everyone smooches Dye’s butt except Spandau, who prefers to protect it instead. Something about a personal code of honor or something.

I particularly liked Spandau’s friend Terry, an Irishman short of stature but gifted in talk, lovemaking, and the martial arts. What more could a woman ask, really? Of course, he is a little bit of a loose Howitzer.

We want more Spandau! And be quick! Terry? Well…Terry. You’ll find out..

Star Lawrence owns a recession coping and humor site called Do the Hopey Copey, at http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Major woo-woo

2009-05-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

Review of Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber, where we revisit Santeria-afflicted detective Jimmy Paz, read by Nick Sullivan and reviewed by Star Lawrence

You are talking with a rawboned Florida woman found in a Miami hotel room where an Arab has just been thrown out of a window and her face changes for a split second, her blue eyes turning black, then back to normal. Did you see that—or not?

If you’re Jimmy Paz, a devil-make-care (my stars, what an expression) detective, whose restaurateur mother is regularly “ridden” by Santeria “saints” and who tangled with a hideous witch doctor in Tropic of Night, you know this might not be good.

Turns out Emmylou has a checkered background, starting with child abuse and murder and ending running a backwater war over Sudanese oil in her capacity as a nun. The woman had such a boring life, it’s a wonder it made it to a book. But it does—in the form of four confessional notebooks she writes out for Paz to keep the devil from making her blurt out wrong information. Yes, he will do that.

Taking the notebooks from Emmylou one by one is her therapist, Lorna, a focused woman who is a hypchondriac and can’t bear to wear a bathing suit because she is convinced she is fat. But Paz likes what he sees anyway and flirtation leads to more flirtation. Will Paz give up his University of Girls, the institution that seems to flourish between sheets, but which he credits for teaching him all the beguiling poetry he seems to know?

Lorna is not big on the University of Girls, but she is also busy trying to stay alive as “The G,” various mercenaries, a rich order of nuns, a former police partner of Paz’s who has found the Lord, a schizzy homeless person, and various other folks scamper around at the devil’s behest. Or is it God’s idea, all this? Emmylou thinks so.

How does it end? You know how to find out. But you may not look people in the eye for a while. You wouldn’t want to see anything weird, would you? And then not see it?

The Poisonwood Bible--whew, what a story

2009-04-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver evokes a emotions buried or never felt, as read by Dean Robertson and reviewed by Star Lawrence

Everyone has told me for years that I should read Barbara Kingsolver, so naturally I never had. Then, on a quick library run for disks and not liking female readers too much for reasons I have described elsewhere, I grabbed this book because it looked long and was read by Dean Robertson. Funny about that—Dean is a woman, and with her rapid, ironical and slightly twangy delivery, is the best thing about this book—except for the fantastic writing.

Even if you were not alive during the Congo uprisings in 1959 (I remember reading about this), The Poisonwood Bible will capture you into a family story so engrossing you won’t want to leave your characters…your friends, almost your own siblings. My own father was dominant, bossy, a little scary and always completely correct in everything he said or did. Just ask him—or he would tell you anyway. Nathan Price is a dogmatic preacher, who bustles his “whither-thou-goest” Georgia wife and four daughters off to Africa on a missionary trip that alters all their lives forevermore. He made me think of my father. His quiet wife, who provides only glimpses of her inner life and any regrets or signs of rebellion, made me wonder what my mother had been thinking all those years of our childhood.

But enough about me. You will thrill to the racing poetry of Kingsolver’s dry wit and descriptions of Africa and a small village in upheaval as forces of man and nature try to claim and reclaim the rampant lushness and bounty of that continent.

As the decades march on, the four daughters and their mother struggle to cope with a central tragedy. “Life marks you,” the mother murmurs, with typical understatement. They go their separate ways, two staying in Africa and two going back to the United States. Wait, someone is missing. Yes, someone is. Actually, two people, don’t forget the preacher.

If you like big “saga” type “listens,” this is the one for you. Sixteen hours well spent. Not counting the hours you will spend thinking about it afterward.

Life of Pi--why did I wait so long?

2009-03-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Life of Pi is weird form of mystery by Yann Martel, read by Jeff Woodman with Alexander Marshall.

Life of Pi is not a who-dunnit, but a did-it-happen. I am way behind the power curve on this one—people recommended it to me way back when I could read books with pages. Silly me, I judged by the cover—a folk art pix of a tiger in a rowboat. Maybe not, I kept thinking haughtily, eyes sliding to the next book on the shelf.

Finally, I got Life of Pi on CD—even then it sat alone on my dresser—all the other tapes came first.

Boy, was I a dope. Pi is not the mathematical constant, but a 16-year-old Indian lad’s first name (he’s named after a swimming pool, as he will tell you in the somewhat sleepy introduction to this adventure, bear with, it’s worth it). His dad is a zookeeper and the family moves from Pondicherry to Montreal, sailing with some animals that have been sold to zoos in Canada and America.

A storm arises, and Pi can’t sleep and goes on deck. What happens next—well, that’s the mystery. He ends up in a lifeboat with some of the animals, including a 450-lb Bengal tiger, a hyena, an orangutan, a rat, and a zebra.

No, this isn’t some cheesy Noah riff. The hyena attacks the zebra and tears off chunks. Pi is afraid of the tiger and suspends himself on an oar stickling out of the bow to stay safe. At this point, the ship gurgles beneath the ocean.

Pi is at sea with the tiger for seven months—or was he? How does he survive? Can he intimidate the beast enough to live? The finally come to a weirdly undulating island made of delicious algae and swarming with meerkats. But I will leave that part for your delectation.

In an Epilogue, officials of the Japanese shipping company approach Pi and ask what happened. He tells them what we already know. They don’t buy it. Okey-dokey. He tells them another story, weirdly paralleling the first. Is this the truth?

Or is a tiger roaming the jungles of Mexico?

Your call.

Mysterious place of water and tides

2009-03-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

Review of The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, read by Firdous Bamji.

The Sunderbans, on the border between India and Bangladesh, sounds like a half-mythical fairyland of goddesses, tigers and marvelous creatures or yore, but this story is set in both the present day and a generation before. Ghosh weaves together the two journeys of Nirmal, a Rilke-loving revolutionary wannabee, and Piya, an Indian-born American scientist studying fresh-water dolphins in this watery world.

The real star of the show is this archipelago of islands and rivers fed by the tides, rising and falling each day. The mangrove forests are home to huge tigers, who attack and kill several inhabitants each month. Giant crocs bask on the banks of the heaving rivers. And the Irrawaddy dolphins, friendly as piglets, poke their heads from the stream to regard their chronicler.

Nirmal’s story is one of an idealist married to a social activist. He finally retires from teaching and, half in love with a young widow with a son, gets involved in an illegal takeover of one of the islands by Bangledeshi refugees. The second story comes a generation later, when that single mother’s son, Fokir, also married to a no-nonsense, modern woman, meets Piya, the American cetologist studying dolphins. Common to both stories is Nirmal’s nephew, Kanai, a rich businessman and translator, who is also attracted to Piya.

The love stories tremble beneath the surface, barely rising visibly in the same way the rivers rise with the tides each day.

I am a 21st century woman sitting in the desert in Chandler, AZ, and this story gently tugged me in. I lived for a few days in a world where you can’t sleep untroubled on the deck of a boat anchored in the middle of a river. Tigers can swim for miles.

The reader, Firdous Bamji, is flatout fantastic—keeping the timbre and accents of each character separate, no mean feat.

As the residents of the Sunderbans learn to walk in calf-deep mud on the tidal beaches of their waterways, I learned to almost smell and taste the fires, the musky tiger fur, and the understated yearning of hearts trying to connect and never quite touching before being borne away on the tides.

Will the rich get ever and ever richer?

2009-02-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Review of The Appeal by John Grisham, as read on CD by Michael Beck.

With the economy crumbling around our poor little ears (have you priced the cost of going bankrupt lately? Trust me—you can’t afford to even go broke!), this David & Goliath story has magnetic charm. I could not wait to get back to it and click on the CD player, despite the slow Southern accents and occasionally blah-blah-blah Grisham style.

David is a Ma & Pa law firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, representing some downtrodden and dead cancer victims in a nearby “Cancer County” that had been drinking death water poisoned by an evil chemical company run by a Wall Street billionaire (natch).

OK, corny setup. But wait.

As the poor lawyers are continually harassed by mustache-twisting bankers wanting to call in their loans, the evil billionaire uses brute spending power to stack the deck in the state supreme court, which will be ruling on the huge verdict the Hattiesburg jury delivered in favor of the cancer victims. Why not just get a sympathetic justice elected and dump the woman who still had in interest in the “little guy”?

Of course, they find a family-first type who goes to church a few times a week and push him out there.

But what I wanted to know was—will the rich keep getting richer? See? I am a romantic!

I won’t tell you, although I did not love the deus ex machina Grisham came up with at the end. Ever feel like calling an author and yelling?

The reader Michael Beck is a favorite of mine and does the accents well without overplaying them into Foghorn T Leghorn territory.

Overall, this was a disk-flipper (my version of a page-turner). But my fists are still clenched. And you will see why.

Ordinary Heroes far from ordinary

2009-02-16T10:31:00.000-08:00

A review of Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow, read by Edward Herrmann, reviewed by Star Lawrence

My father served as a doctor on a destroyer off Iwo when the flag went up. My daughter’s father was in Laos and North Vietnam, not even South Vietnam, in the special forces in 1965. Both talked very little about it.

In Ordinary Heroes, Scott Turow tries to explore his own father’s experiences in World War II in a fictionalized form. His father, he says, in an interview afterward on disk, stopped talking about war when Turow entered his teen years—at that point, his father was talked out and had achieved whatever peace or compartmentalization or whatever he was trying to get or had given up on it. “What percent of what people tell us do we understand?” Turow says he once asked a professor. About 10%, they concluded.

The construct for this story is a son trying to find out why his father, a lawyer with the Judge Advocate General’s office in France, was almost executed in France for letting a dashing American OSS officer go when the latter was suspected of spying for the Russians at the end of World War II.

It is also a story of how Stewart Dubinsky’s father met his mother. The son had always been told, rather vaguely, that they met when his father entered a concentration camp, that she had been an inmate lucky enough to survive the horrors. But no.

This is a mystery, a love story, and a grim, horrid story of the ravages of war and madness.

Edward Herrmann handles the voices well, including the French/Polish accent of the beguiling resistance fighter Gita, who steals the book as Turow notes in his interview..

Not really “ordinary.” But heroes, yes. Maybe “Quiet Heroes,” would have been a better title.

Star Lawrence is a medical writer and reporter based in Chandler, AZ.

New Deal, Old Deal--how about THE BEST DEAL?

2009-02-11T06:36:00.000-08:00

This is getting ridiculous. Stimulus that isn’t or won’t be. People who can sure work the system, but can’t make the system work. Doom, gloom, scoldy lectures. At least reality crashed in fast—but not before we disappeared a trill.

Was it worth a trillion bucks (the whole gross domestic product is $13 billion, I think) to find out our dear electeds were heaving spaghetti at the wall in Grand Canyon-sized buckets?

Too late now.

Oh—and there may not be more where that came from in the event things get worse. Probably just as well. Having access to money just makes these people crazy.

But we aren’t that far gone, are we, American people? We know we need some money to live, that we have talents or merchandise sitting on the shelf. What the heck—let’s get busy and spend again. Let’s sell these assets to each other. Let’s deal—barter—get things we need at a satisfying bargain.

I call it The Best Deal.

…Did the snooty roof guy want $10K to replace your shingles? Call him again—offer $3000. See what happens. Hey-it’s only money and they are probably taking away our credit cards anyway.

…Let’s see some car dealers run ads that say--$28K if you can get credit, but only $12K if you bring over cash. Today! Drive off the lot! A car isn’t going to appreciate anyhow.

…Need a new furnace or heat pump? Look for the huge rebates. Ask for huge rebates.

…What about those goofy plasmas? If you really feel our politicians are worth that much money to watch in action, get one of those—but get a huge honking deal or walk out!

…People hurting in your neighborhood—get together and each cook two extra meals a night and pass them out. When it’s their turn—they can slap together the PB&Js. No J? OK—PB.

…When those food bank envelopes come—put in five bucks, more if you can. I have never had cash lost in the mail yet. Don’t believe everything “they” say.

…You can still go to the department store and get makeup. Just make it work harder—here’s a secret: Lipstick blends as a blusher and looks mahvelous. Also, you can find high-end makeup on Ebay.com.

….My Mexican neighbors like to cook prickly pear. I have tons—and they bring me a little dish of the salsa. Yummy! It also saves on my cactus chopping fees. But you better believe it—those guys who come around in the trucks to do your landscaping—they are dealing.

We can’t stop spending. Even the dreaded George Bush was more right than wrong when he said to keep shopping after 9/11. We don’t have an industry-based economy anymore—it’s based on consumption. If we stop consuming, people lose their jobs, then they can’t consume—and that’s when the pols get into it and screw it up.

But we are all going to have to settle for less. Those who get foreclosed feel horrible until they don’t have an obscene mortgage payment to make and one that isn’t building anything for them in life. Credit rating? Hey, we’re all ruined.

Don’t worry, it will be fine in the long run. And the beautiful part of getting out there and dealing is that everyone gets something and everyone feels like they got the best of it.

When is the last time you felt like you were getting The Best Deal? Could be today.

Star Lawrence is a graduate of The Elliott School of Public and International Affairs in Washington, a former lobbyist, and now a freelance writer based in Chandler, AZ.

Hollywood Crows--retro fun

2009-02-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Joseph Wambaugh is back...Hollywood Crows

Stephen King threw Hollywood Crows on his “best of” list in Entertainment Weekly. I thought, “Joseph Wambaugh, wow, pretty Hill Street.” Turns out the precursor to Crows, Hollywood Station, had been Wambaugh’s first book in a decade.

At first, I was sort of cringing when I heard corny lines like “Hollywood, where men are men and so are the women,” but within two disks, I was hooked. Crows—the pronunciation of CRO—Community Relations Officer—do the PR work, schmoozing people with unauthorized people parked across their driveways or noisy neighbors who suddenly go quiet (that one did not end nicely).

They also interact with the “regular” cops from the Hollywood Station, including my favorites, two surfer cops nicknamed Flotsam and Jetsam. Their blab is hilarious, so Valley-guy and jargon-frontloaded, their follow cops treat them almost as lovable mascots. Yet, their weird gut feelings (“That house is seriously bad juju, bro.”) edge the story forward in its leisurely pace.

Weaving the elements together as only a master can, Wambaugh brings the cops into contact with Ali Aziz, a Middle-Eastern strip club owner, and his gorgeous honey-haired wife Margo, who is not as sweet as her hair.

Christian Rummel is a slightly nasal reader, hilarious as F&J (see above).

I wouldn’t say this story is exactly plot-driven, but it does end up someplace. And the trip is worth the hours. What more could you ask? I mean, what more could you ask, dude?

"Rush" of a tale

2009-01-31T08:27:00.000-08:00

Review of audio version of Heyday, written by Kurt Anderson, read by Charles Leggett, and reviewed by Star Lawrence

You think 1968 was a memorable year? How about 1848? Heyday is a sprawling epic of 1848-1849, starting with revolutionary riots in the streets of Paris and finally zeroing in on four unlikely friends as they crash through interesting times.

Ben Knowles is a refined Englishman on holiday with a friend in Paris. He encounters a wild-eyed girl dashing through the streets in a mob and in the melee (which involves a stab with the beak of a taxidermied penguin he is carrying) he gets separated from his friend and later sees the man under a pile of bodies shot by the French soldiers.

Bereft, Ben journeys to America to make a new start and on his first night sees a bewitching blond actress (and part-time prostitute) dining in his hotel. They meet later, naturally, and he also becomes friends with her brother Duff, a tortured soul who has basically tossed his moral compass at 22 and amidst babbling his rosary over and over, commits all sorts of poorly thought-out crimes. The fourth friend is Timothy Skaggs, who is older, a newspaper reporter, photographer, astronomer, wit and raconteur.

Spoilers will ensue if I explain more, but eventually, the four set off across the American continent, eventually ending up as gold panners in the hills around Sutter’s Mill (1848—Gold Rush—remember from school?).

Unfortunately, the French policeman whose brother was shot in the wake of the penguin beak stabbing has a long memory and is a couple of thousand miles behind them, but coming up fast.

I will leave it there and you can fetch the 22 disks. The narrator Charles Leggett is very listenable, keeps the voices straight without weirding out, and makes Heyday as rousing an adventure as any TV show.

You just supply the pictures yourself. Simple.

Watch for the little clues

2009-01-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

A review of The Keys to the Street by Ruth Rendell, read by Simon Russell Beale, and reviewed by Star Lawrence

I guess Ruth Rendell is a pretty famous British mystery writer, but this is only my second “listen” by her. She has a way of sort of rambling, giving great descriptions you can lay out in your head, and tipping in neat little clues as she goes along. I am becoming a fan.

In this one, we follow a nice young woman and dog lover (big with me) named Mary Jago, who is homeless herself because she has left her overbearing boyfriend because, among other things, he was disparaging about her having donated bone marrow to a stranger. She doesn’t take to the streets, though, because for one thing she has a cool job (you’ll see) and for another, she has a long-term housesitting gig, complete with a wonderful little dog named (sounded like) Gooshi.

Gooshi leads to Bean, the dog walker and former amanuensis to an S-M freak (see how Rendell sneaks in interesting little things you’d hardly expect from a staid British writer?). Bean is quite the schemer and is always out and about in the lovingly described squares, parks, and private gardens around Mary’s new abode—and where a murderer lurks, impaling the homeless on the pointy fences that seem to surround every house. Nice/nasty….that’s how Rendell likes it.

Into this mix comes the recipient of the bone marrow Mary donated—a mysterious, pale, frail sort—and an oafish, crack-smoking thug named Hob.

Hey—wait—back up the CD…Hob knows the recipient? How can that be?

The reader, Simon Russell Beale, speaks in funny little bursts that suit the story.

Anyhow, you will have a fine time hanging out in these lush environs and trying to figure out how serial murder works in England.

I know I did.

Good-bye, cruel world, no, wait...

2009-01-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

Make up your own escape from crummy reality with Scarecrow by Matthew Reilly, read by Scott Sowers, and reviewed by Star Lawrence

Who can afford the movies? If you like big “whammies” (what moviefolk call explosions and crazy stunt gags) go to the library and get the CD version of Scarecrow, by Matthew Reilly. This is a series, I take it, though this was my first outing with this crazy Marine with scars vertically across both eyes making him look like a…Scarecrow.

The books starts out over-the-top so you know what you’re in for—and then amps it up and up and up, until I was jumping around my bed, scaring my animals, and yelling, ‘Nuh-uh!!” and “Go, go.”

In this one, Scarecrow is on a hit-list of people evil financiers (we can relate to that as the new enemy, right?) want taken out by some bounty hunters, one of whom is called The Black Knight. Turns out the Black Knight…well, I won’t spoil it for you…let’s just say, he’s quite a character, too.

Scarecrow and his merry crew get into totally, completely, and utterly unbelievable jams and zip out the other side. Let me just mention a few tantalizing buzzwords—missiles, sharks, guillotine, sinking super tanker, pistol versus fighter plane, afterburner as torture device, and my favorite--Jeep catapulted off an aircraft carrier. If the latter ever comes up in your life—here’s a hint—jump out before it hits the water.

Scott Sowers is a good, solid reader, nothing fancy, but he doesn’t get in the way of the action, either.

You may stop reading my reviews, but sue me, my tastes are eclectic. Some days, English comedy of manners, the next, Scarecrow! How come these guys can get shot, burned, bitten, shattered and can make do with a Tylenol?

You mean it’s just fiction?

Nuts.

Star Lawrence owns the health humor blog Health’s Ass, now available for Kindle. Go to http://healthsass.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Violent, funny--a financial bodice ripper

2009-01-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

The Whiskey Rebels, written by David Liss, read by Christopher Lane and reviewed by Star Lawrence

Ah, the women of circa 1789 are comely and the taverns inviting until someone asks you to pay the tab, but this is just the backdrop for a new nation trying to establish a financial system. The Whiskey Rebels casts Alexander Hamilton as a crafty man, weak in flesh and strong in financial manipulation, who eclipses saintly “progressive” Thomas Jefferson and the remote and sore-mouthed General Washington.

But the founding dads are not even the stars of the story. This rollicking tale is told in first-person sections by Captain Ethan Saunders, a spy for Washington during the revolution, now disgraced as a traitor, and Joan Maycott, a feisty housewife who is duped into going to the frontier (then Pittsburgh) and being set on a course of revenge aimed at wiping out our baby country’s financial system.

I won’t spoil it for you. You already know the financial system survived to be wiped out two months ago. I did like Captain Saunders, who is quite the ironical ne’er-do-well, who at one point is approached by a financier’s “ruffian” and advised that the financier “requests you ‘eff ‘ yourself.” So polite. This made me want my own ruffian. Know of anyone?

Christopher Lane is one of my favorite readers. He differentiates the voices without being overwrought.

I love hearing about olden times, accurate or not, so long as I don’t have to smell the people. Liss takes special pains to describe many combinations of body odor. For this we can be most grateful. I will insist my ruffian bathe.

Boy, girl, immigrant, American, who knew

2008-12-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, read by Kristoffer Tabori, and reviewed by Star Lawrence

Even though Oprah recommended this book and it won a Pulitzer Prize, I liked it.

Turns out, the narrator of this genderbender family epic, Calliope Stephanides, later to become Cal, knew a lot about his family. This even led me to ask my sister if she remembers much anyone told us about our grandparents—we only had snatches, not an epic journey that carried them from Greece, to Turkey, to Detroit, to destiny itself, like Desdemona and Lefty Stephanides.

But they carry a secret under the surface and one that was to wrench Calliope/Cal’s life in a new direction at age 16.

This book is sometimes in the third person, sometimes the first person, but Eugenides does it seamlessly. It rollicks along, by turns fascinating, funny, and horrifying, as read by Kristoffer Tabori, a grumbly, dignified sort who does not overact the accents.

I confess I liked the first half better than the second. The story of Desdemona and Lefty’s escape from Greece prior to World War I was glorious and weirdly romantic and touching (there’s that “secret” again).

The one thing hanging fire was why Cal’s brother is named Chapter Eleven, apparently not a nickname and never explained. People were plunging up and down in the Depression melting pot, but no businesses went under around the time of the tot’s birth. Just quirky to be quirky, I concluded. The title, too, Middlesex, is an arch pun—their house is named that, but it could also refer to…the not-so-secret secret.

Do you ever stop to think what chromosomes lurk in your innards and link you down the ages to those who came before? And which—don’t forget—you are blithely squirting into your own kids? I never gave it much thought, either, not that we can do much about it. But this book made me think…opa..and feel like dancing.

And I am not even Greek.

A funny thing happened on the way to the oracle

2008-12-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

Ancient Rome’s answer to Columbo takes a road trip to Greece in "See Delphi and Die" by Lindsey Davis, read by Christian Rodska

Sure, you would like to swan over to Greece and ruminate among the ruins, but did you know Romans a la 76 AD also joined organized tours and traipsed about ogling the sights that had already been created up to that date?

In this tongue-in-cheek detective yarn, one of a popular franchise, the snark-in-charge is Marcus Didius Falco, an emissary of the Emperor Vespasian. Falco gets involved in solving the murders of two young women who had taken Seven Sights Tour Company trips to Greece. He speaks a wry Cockney-tinged English, not Latin. He wears a cloak not a raincoat and is no loner, dragging along an entourage consisting of his diplomatic wife Helene and some nephews, a freed slave woman, and even his dog, who though of the nondiscriminating tastes typical of canines, does disdain some of the disgusting pits the tour company books them into. At the better places, Falco quips, the bedbugs went to charm school.

Falco is, by turns, very droll and then agog at the fabulous sights our ancients, his contemporaries, had already created. Man, the temples and oracles were lousy on the ground in those days! Playing good Roman/bad Roman with his wife, Falco tries to get the impressions of others on the tour with one of the young women. Instead, the tour participants give him an earful about the tour company’s arrangements, at one point the women outraged that they had to go to some poetry event. The poets “were thick as midges” and spouted bad odes, they grumped.

See Delphi and Die is funny. Humans are humans, I guess, no matter which millennium. There is one “tourist trap” where sick people can sleep in a town near some sacred site , while dogs and snakes circulate among the cots. If you dream of a dog or snake licking you, you get better. The man relating this tale said he went it one better and got bitten by one of the dogs--but a snake must have licked it, he notes, because it cleared up. They all laugh sheepishly. Won’t be seeing those drachmas again.

In this course of these travels and travails, of course, more people die, one falling off a cliff. The malefactor kicked Falco’s dog first, which caused me great consternation. Any book with a dog—I am in!

The narrator Christian Rodska does not pretend to be Italian or speak Latin, but his little mumbled asides are choice, along the lines of early versions of “Yeah, sure, I bet” or one I particularly liked: “Irony is so useful.”

Anyhow—listen to See Delphi and Die and if a snake licks you, you are going to “have a nice day.” Assuming you live to see it.

Call the Chandler Library today and get in line for this audio!
(480) 782-2803.

Star Lawrence owns the health humor site Health’s Ass at http://healthsass.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

No laughing allowed

2008-12-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

A Review of Polar Shift, by Clive Cussler (with Paul Kemprecos), read by Scott Brick.

Maybe you didn’t get up this morning and say, “You know, these elites are starting to bug me, and I think I will reverse the earth’s magnetic field and destroy the planet,” but apparently Clive Cussler and Co do think like that and thus this novel.

It is childishly simple to mock a Cussler novel with its square-jawed, blonde heroes (two this time, including a franchise Cussler character Kurt Austin) and “attractive” heroines (attractive, attractive why always that description?). So why should I resist? I am pretty childish. Let the mocking begin.

Polar Shift is like two or three book concepts smashed together. It leaps the shark more than a football player doing broken field drills. There are huge rogue waves, tiny woolly mammoths, an underground city complete with alleys, the obligatory Nazis, and enough pseudo-scientific jargon to choke everyone in Los Alamos (also in there).

So…be prepared. But on the positive side, this is a darn intense “listen,” with some memorable scenes that make the movie Titanic look as boring as Last Year at Marienbad (don’t remember that one? There’s a reason.)
.
Scott Brick, one of my favorite readers, has a sort of chewy, earnest voice and doesn’t overdo the accents or shoot the women into falsetto.

Should you check out Polar Shift? Ask yourself—How much do I hate electromagnetic fields?

[Photo by Brian Stansfield, http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Photos-from-the-West-(CA-WA-HI-AK-SK)/154552

Beautiful new store on San Marcos

2008-10-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

I needed a gift for my sister and ventured into Russian Oasis at No 8 San Marcos Place, around the corner from the hotel. What a lovely store. The owner is Russian, from Moscow. She has an array of amber and silver jewelry and other beautiful and exotic gifts. The ambers were of special interest to me because my grandfather (who died before I was born) brought his wife a burgundy-colored amber necklace of graduated size beads from Geneva (I think). I wear it now from time to time and always get compliments.

Amber is hardened tree sap and comes in so many shades, as you will see in this store. Honey-colored, syrup-colored, deep brown, pale yellow, even catseye green like my sister's eyes. I got a dainty pair of earrings in the green.

Check it out at http://russianoasis.com and then go for a browse.

Beauty whore or doctor?

2008-10-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

I have serious vision and eye problems and my eye doctor moved to Florida. After the usual soul-sapping rigmarole of checking for specialists with the American Academy of Ophthalmology, then with my health plan, then with the medical board to check for lawsuits, I selected a new doctor.

Then ensued the usual four calls to my primary care physician to get the referral, and the completion of the new doctor’s paperwork, which I returned to them by mail.

When I got a cab and got to the 8 AM appointment, the referral and paperwork were nowhere to be found. They looked and looked—yes, they remembered it because of what
I had written on it in note form. I said—this is pretty blurry for eye patients to try to read. They remembered THAT!

All the while, I was treated to the new doctor on a big screen TV touting some commercial eye lens and then Juvaderm and other face spackle that doctors take a little course to administer so they can get cash customers worried about their looks.

The spokesperson for the eye lens was Henry Winkler. Henry was spelled incorrectly.

Finally, the snippy office manager offered me the “opportunity” to fill out my paperwork again. Opportunity to correct her mistake!

I left. I am sure this physician was once a serious professional, but professionalism was not in evidence. I only have one eye left—come on, people!

Email me at jkellaw@aol.com if you are curious about who this doctor is.

Another winner from Chandler Libe--Tree of Smoke

2008-10-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

Nailing the ineffable about Vietnam in Tree of Smoke, written by Denis Johnson, read by Will Patton, and reviewed by Star Lawrence

Tree of Smoke, on 18 disks, is by turns elegiac, amped-up, circularly crazy like all wars, and mysterious, with as one character said it, reality pushed so far to the edge it becomes a dream.

Like Apocalypse Now in some ways, Tree of Smoke centers on a hard-drinking, philosophical Army colonel turned CIA man gone-native and his nephew Skip, also CIA, but a more gentle soul and linguist, who gets ensnared in the demonic logic of war and pays the price.

Two brothers from Phoenix are also featured, one who gets kicked out of the navy and almost straight into the Arizona penal system and the other who keeps re-upping in the Army and descends into the lawless hell of the bush and the tunnels.

The narrator is actor Will Patton, a favorite of mine, whose soft, Southern cadences and subtle dialects both lull and scratch insistently at the subconscious of the listener. I felt like writing him a fan letter after listening to Tree of Smoke.

The term by the way is from the Bible and is said to double as a name for an atomic explosion. But it also could be the wavering gray area where the exactitude of reality blends into the forest of nightmares.

This time--Desert Sam

2008-08-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

We read so much today about sick people and people with minor injuries flooding emergency rooms, as if they were trying to get in on some really cool deal. See if you think my 90-year-old mother milked the system. More like the opposite. She was worse when she came out the other side.

It began when she toppled over in her assisted care facility and sliced a bleedy little cut about an inch long in her forehead. The facility called my sister and me and we set out to go over. We called again on the way—they had called the paramedics, insisting they had to. Nuts! I insisted they wait until we got there.

When we arrived, the place was teeming with EMTs, Mom was strapped to a gurney, looking apologetic, and with a Band-Aid on her forehead. This is decision point number one. And who is making the decision—the lay person, the relative. Us, in other words. They said she might have a serious head injury, needed stitches, what did we want to do.

We asked could we take her to urgent care for stitches. They got the sad “if it were my mother” face. We know from experience, this will be followed by the “to be on the safe side” face.

We agreed to let her be taken. How I wish I could have that moment to live over.

At Banner Desert Samaritan, they took her off the gurney from the ambulance, put her in a wheelchair and wheeled her to the waiting room along with the other throngs. Her cut began to dribble from under the bandage. We got someone to find another bandage. It happened again. We found another bandage.

Finally, we went in back and immediately asked about those stitches—Oh, no, she needed a CT scan, EKG, blood work, a chest x-ray. Mom suffers from senile dementia and has for 20 years. She didn’t know what was going on. She kept asking for water. They would not even let her have an ice chip. No—they had no lip balm. No—no vaseline.

This woman was not getting surgery—even if she had a bleed in her head, she would not have. She wasn’t a big throwup risk. And what about throwing up anyhow—don’t people get in car wrecks right after lunch? Can’t they cope with this? Nope—no water, no ice.

Hours passed. This started around 1:30 PM. At about 5:30, she was moved to a 3-person bay where, it was rumored, doctors appeared. “I am so thirsty,” she croaked, her lips sticking to her teeth. Nope over here, too. Could they ASK the doctor? Nope. At one point, I asked what is your sense of how much longer it will be. The nurse said, “I have no sense.” Somehow I restrained myself. I am still rather proud of that.

At this point, my sister and I realized she was suffering from “Just a little old lady” syndrome—last in line.

Several hours later, a young man, the physician, breezed in—CT scan fine, but her heart rate was too slow, she would need to be admitted. Yes—it is too slow, this the result of her primary doctor loading her with BP meds, despite our objections and questions 72 hours before. (We had explained this repeatedly.)

Admitted? She only needs stitches—we will call her doctor about the heart rate. Sad face. “Well, it’s your decision—you can leave against medical advice.” What to do? Can she have water, we asked. “Water? Sure—how about a sandwich?” I could have killed at that point. Luckily, I paced myself.

We agreed to have her admitted because by then she was so shaky we weren’t sure the caregivers at her place could help her. She had to urinate about every 10 minutes, which was a huge operation with the wires and tubes.

By now, it was almost 11 PM. We told them she had been in there before and became wild and scared. They said, we have “sitters,” certified nurse assistants who can be assigned to the individual patient to call the nurse and help them on a one-to-one basis.

Really? That sounded reasonable—hopeful.

They moved her to a bed near the nurses’ desk in the ER, supposedly with a “sitter” watching four beds. When her room was available, we were assured, she would be moved upstairs with a sitter.

We left reluctantly, but were exhausted (we are in our sixties with our own health issues). First thing the next morning, I called to get her room number. She was still in the ER! Liars!

Sis and I rushed over. We were thrown out of her cubicle for complaining. A social worker appeared out of the air in a hot second to placate us and bring us coffee.

Mom was not herself, haggard, with two horrible black eyes from the fall, she looked awful. She was sort of babbling, not like the night before when she and I had been making jokes during the long wait.

They sent her for a test. She came back asleep. During a test? She loves to flirt with the transporters. Weird. Then they said they had a bed. I said this is Friday, she is not going to stay over the weekend, I don’t know if I want that bed. They said the doctor (the stranger called a hospitalist who takes care of you at your worst in the hospital because your own doctor can no longer get reimbursed enough) would only talk to me upstairs.

Great. She was still dead out. Immobile. We got upstairs along with the pleasant young woman who was to be her sitter, who, I was now curtly informed, was known as a companion, not a sitter.

The hospitalist eventually came in. We went over everything. The excessive BP meds—he discontinued some. Good! He also relieved himself of the opinion (twice,no less) that everyone was unhappy, not just us, but also the other relatives, the patients, the doctors because the insurance companies would not pay and the patients “smelled bad.” Thanks for sharing.

But why was she lying there all the while asleep? Oh, that was the Ativan they had given her in the ER and during the tests. She would sleep eight hours. Great—now we could not spring her. The companion or whatever she was, was there, so we reluctantly left because of our own household needs and health.

A few hours later, we called. Oh, the companion had been reassigned to someone else—we had never been told this could happen. Our mother cannot press a call button (she had a UTI now—from no water the day before? Who knows?).

Sis and I went back over—an hour and a half round trip. We were going to take her home, but although she was awake, she could not get to the bathroom without two people.

They offered us a list of nurse registries. My sister started calling. We found a lovely young woman to come over for the night, $24 an hour. Sold!

The next day, we took Mom home, weak, looking bashed in. Those stitches? The medical student who appeared in the ER about Hour Nine said Mom didn’t need them, but she was supposed to put in two. I let her—another decision point.

How do you say no!? Why can’t anyone run this mess?

All I can say is enter the health care system at your own risk. You have about as much control as if you had been put in the legal system. At least in the legal system, you can hire a lawyer. All we could do was pay our own nurse.

Standup teen finds himself in Finding Caruso

2008-07-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

Review of Finding Caruso by Kim Barnes, read on CD by Scott Shina and available in the Chandler Library.

As an animal lover, I almost didn’t review this because of the horrific opening scenes. So be warned. The images will haunt, but with her seamless, beautiful writing, Barnes will pull it together. Trust.

I don’t always love coming of age stories, but this one is special. Buddy and Lee Hope are brothers, seven years apart in age. They grew up on a hardscrabble farm in Oklahoma in the 1940s-50s, and when their mean-drunk father and long-suffering mother die in a car accident, they set off for Idaho and settle in Snake Junction. They live in The Stables, a bar where brother Lee sings in a band.

At 17, Buddy is sort of kicking around, not going to school, jabbering with Harvey, the bartender, and generally not going anywhere. Then Irene, a mysterious redhead twice his age, walks into the joint…and… Let’s just say, Mrs Robinson had nothing on this gal.

The Caruso in the title is Enrico Caruso, a horse, not the famous singer. But the operatic reference evokes the wider world Buddy only begins to glimpse. I was almost in tears a couple of times over Buddy’s intelligence and how exposed he is to the horrors of the world. Even when you “come of age,” I guess those still come as a shock every time.

Finding Caruso is read by Scott Shina, a reader I have not heard before. He does the intonations and Oklahoma and then Idaho twangs perfectly. Often, it sounds like a “cast” is talking with each other.

This book reminded me of Hud, one of my favorite movies. Older brother Lee is a cynical womanizer like Hud, and Buddy is confused and tender like Hud’s brother.

But there are differences. Like in that movie (originally a Larry McMurtry book called Horseman, Pass By) Lee and Buddy eventually part ways, but it’s more like an inevitable drift to different agendas than a big moral lesson on “how to be” or “how to be a real man.”

Buddy figures that out for himself.

Mother, what happened?

2008-07-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

A review of Purple Cane Road by James Lee Burke, read by Nick Sullivan.

Are you a Dave Robicheaux fan? Dave is one of those rugged (but tortured, of course) ex-alcoholic cops so beloved in fiction—but in the hands of master storyteller James Lee Burke he always takes on an edge that surpasses his imitators.

In Purple Cane Road, Dave, a detective in New Iberia, Louisiana, after washing out of the New Orleans Police Department along with his sidekick Clete Purcell, is still living on the bayou with his wife Bootsy and adopted kid Alafair. As he sorts among the skells and lowlifes, he unearths several threads—twin sisters who might have been abused by and then murdered the state’s executioner, a politician who used to date his wife Bootsy, a black prostitute named Little Face, and of course (wait for it), a soft-spoken psycho hit man. The threads twine into skeins, the skeins into knots.

At the heart of this tangle is Dave’s late mother, casually described by a black pimp as a whore, which sets Dave off on the trail of who murdered her by drowning her in a mud puddle.

As always with Burke novels, the locale (Louisiana) in this case, is at least the equal of any of the characters. Burke lovingly describes every sight and smell of nature down to the molecular level—the scent of fish spawning, cane fields laid parted like hair by wind and strobing in lightning strikes, the smell of testosterone on the sweat-crusted work clothes of men he meets.

Although many Burkes are read by Will Patton in a soft southern purr, this one is narrated by veteran reader Nick Sullivan, who does a pretty fine job also, especially with Purcell’s raspy growl and the lilting Cajun cadences them.

If I had one criticism it would be the psycho killer hooking up with the daughter Alafair. Burke has played this card before. Leave the poor girl alone to go to the library in peace.

Get the hell out of Europe

2008-07-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

A review of Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy, as read by Stephen Hoye.

The “Get the hell off of my plane” president Jack Ryan’s son Jack Jr. has appeared in the pantheon of Tom Clancy heroes—then Clancy wrote this book that is not about him, really.

Clancy can be quite a kidder. You know those Eastern Shore former insurance agents.

In the interests of disclosure, I once ran into Clancy on the internet—and asked his advice about a screenplay another gal and I were writing on Fred T. Jane, the naval artist who started Jane’s Fighting Ships and that whole publishing dynasty. Ironically, Clancy sent us a ton of downloads from Jane’s about dreadnoughts—and we countered many of his crinks with our research. He signed off saying, “Well, I never said ladies couldn’t write about warships.”

I got sort of sick of Clancy novels in print when great gobs of Jane’s seemed to have regurgitated into them. Now, though, I listen—and found the blabby discursiveness more agreeable. And at least in this one, he avoids an icky romance, and God forbid, flirty talk, which is not the forte of any male techno-novelists that I know of.

As for the plot, you’ve heard of 9/11, right? And how shadowy, internet-wielding bad guys are ceaselessly scheming to wipe out American women and children? In this version, a think-tanky place run by a former senator hires a set of twins, one an Afghanistan-toughened Marine and the other a bend-justice FBI agent to scoot around Europe in a rented Porsche and “eliminate” terrorist couriers, bag men, and annoying Saudi rich boys. The Carusos, Brian and Domenic, have some moral qualms at first, but another attack on America (the malls!) quickly quiets those and off they go.

Oh—and their cousin, Jack Ryan, Jr, is also an analyst at the same quasi-think tanky place. He sorts through terrorist missives and targets evil doers.

Eventually, of course, the three cousins tag up and Jack even has a little adventure of his own in the terrorist discouragement department.

The reader, Stephen Hoye, is a little nasal and can get sing-songy, but generally does a listenable, patient job of unfurling the story. The US is the tiger, the twins are the teeth, and I only have one question. What will Jack Ryan Senior say when he finds out his scion has become an assassin, however accidentally?

Take care of your own kids, for heaven's sakes

2008-06-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Edythe Jensen (AZ Republic, June 19, 2008), says Chandler resident Mark Luke is after our craven, easily led council to get the library to censor what kids can check out.

His kid is just a baby, but can’t be too careful—the little tot might be trying to score Hell’s Half Acre or Peyton Place in no time!

Library manager Brenda Brown says this is a family matter. She doesn’t feel like being some literary Sheriff Joe.

Plus parents can already go on line and see what their kids are checking out. Try, it, Mark…I mean when your kid gets older and learns to read and all.

Also, they have software to take all the explicit stuff--so-called--out of movies and so on. You will love it. The World According to Mark.

If the City Council considers this guy’s “complaint” as anything but a ridiculous nuisance, shame on them.

Now, let’s discuss why this warranted three stories in the paper. Slow news month?

Better Business Bureau--better than WHAT?

2008-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

I reported on a bad experience with Alaskan Home Services--guy took my $33 for well...how do I put this...doing jack in the way of tuning up my air conditioner for the summer. Instead, he presented me with an estimate of hundreds of bucks of stuff I could have him to do to my a/c so he could tune it up. http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com/2008/05/tuned-up-and-hating-it.html

To me, this is a tuneup of another nature.

I complained to the Better Business Bureau (http://bbb.org, if you still believe in fairies) and got no reply. I asked again. Finally, they responded saying my complaint was sent over to the company as an "FYI." Not a complaint, just a heads-up
--this gal is not happy.

Obviously, these Alaskan people were devastated to hear it.

I guess we can give up on the Better Business Bureau. I know of another company that has an "unsatisfactory" rating (Alaskan had 70 dings on its record but was in good standing). The unsatisfactory company advertises that it enjoys great customer satisfaction.

Angie or To Fix It Should kick some fanny here! Where's the blond with the phone book when we need her?

Book on CD: Enough to give terrorism a bad name

2008-06-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille, as read by Scott Brick, is a disk-flipper.
Fast listen, in other words. The setup is classic:

You know those wacky millionaires, always using their ill-gotten (in this case, oil-gotten) gains to wipe out the world, just when you’d think they’d want to be ordering another Hummer or something. Let’s see, where can we find a wisecracking ex-New York cop turned terrorism expert and his long-suffering FBI agent wife to unravel the shenanigans? Why, in this very book, Wild Fire by best-selling, page-turnng, or in this case, disk flipping, Nelson DeMille.

When last visited, the duo of John Corey and the purry Spec Agent Kate Mayfield were just running over to the World Trade Center for breakfast…and that didn’t turn out well.

In Wild Fire, their buddy Harry Muller has disappeared from the lavish Adirondack estate of the aforementioned millionaire—and they drive up from the terrorism task force office in New York City for a look-see.

Corey is worried about those woods up there—are there bears? He even had me laughing out loud as he belabored this point over and over. DeMille can be quite amusing, although Corey is only half as wise-ass as he thinks he is. Maybe the second half.

Anyhow, a trip to the morgue does result in an unusual clue I have never read before—and that is saying something!

Wild Fire is read by my personal favorite reader Scott Brick, who is snarky and wry and manages to keep the voices apart pretty well.

Did the world end? You’re reading this aren’t you? Now ask me do they see a bear. Wasn’t that actually the point?

Call Chandler Public Linrary--(480) 782-2803--to put this CD on hold.

A tale of Chandler Regional Hospital

2008-05-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

The other morning, I was feeding the pets when I lurched over to the right and could not walk without trending rightward. What the…?

As any overweight, 64-year-old knows from incessant reading and writing of health info, this means it’s your last day on earth.

No problem. I have insurance. I have the kind grudgingly provided by the state for so-called small businesses. It’s $600 a month, with a $3,000 deductible. A trip to the ER is $300 on top of my $7,200 a year.

I cry. I don’t want to pay all this money (at the moment, about 10% of my net worth in life). But the weirdness is not going away. Finally, my kid and I go.

It’s early. They are fresh, nice, and waive the usual 13-hour ER wait typical in Arizona hospitals. They give me an EKG, CT scan, chest x-ray, and blood and urine tests. The doctor watches me walk. One little sidestep to the right.

Clearly, I am told, I need a neurologist. But hey, it’s a holiday. So they are admitting me to the hospital ($800 plus 20% of the bill) overnight so the neurologist, who is contracted and should be on call, can finish his festivities and come by the next day.

I said, if the CT scan is OK, why do I need an MRI? The part of my brain affecting gait, I am told, is hard to see on a CT scan. Well, could I get it now and if it shows anything, get a neurologist on my plan?

No! Their medical advice is to spend the night and if I refuse their advice, I have to pay full price for all the tests I had. In other words, since it’s my right to refuse a procedure, that is fine and good, but if I do, I will be punished with a major walletectomy.

Ironically, my leaving would save the insurance company money, but they will charge me more if I do it.

Genius, right?

I agree to stay. Then I learn that my primary care doctor no longer takes care of his patients in the hospital and I will be admitted by a hospitalist group that I know (from past bad encounters) has been sued. Hospitalists, if you have not met these people yet (lucky you), are doctors who work only in the hospital and like to order tests and look at the results and prescribe things, but I have never been too impressed with their expertise.

What if I was having a stroke? Could this guy take care of me? Would I be lying there, gasping the letters, “tPA”? I lacked confidence, shall we say. (Hold the emails, hospitalists, or I will tell all.)

So unless I agree to pay an even larger overnight bill and stay to meet some neurologist I can never see again because he is not on my plan, I have to pay thousands for the “care” I already got. I called my insurance company, which through some miracle of management, had a live person there on a holiday, and asked about this. No, I was assured, I would only owe the $300.

I left. Then I checked again the next day (still alive, but now with stomach flu). Nope, that was wrong. I will owe the whole amount.

Let me tell you a story. I once had a friend who’s a sound expert who works for rock bands. A restaurant once consulted him about their acoustics. They had metal ducts all over the ceiling painted like flowers. He looked up there. They asked, “What do you suggest?”

“A grenade,” he said. And walked out.

That’s how I feel about the health care system as it stands. It’s enough to give you a stroke and then not cure it.

The best we have? Really?

2008-05-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

The esteemed AZ Republic has cranked out a little tab on “Best of the Southeast Valley.” Of course, it’s an ad vehicle, but that’s to be expected. But does it contain the Bestest of the Best?

They say readers voted, although I can’t see an explanation of the process in here. Were hanging chads involved?

First, best furniture store: Ikea. Seriously? I am from back East, where we have a long history with our Swedish Friends of Faux Mid-Century Modern. I can’t tell you how many weirdly named bookcases I have owned that turned to kindling.

Club Tattoo is a reader favorite for the body art. I have two units myself and often ask when I see good work. This place has never been mentioned. Small sample, granted. I am saving up for a Chris Garver unit in Miami.

Best grocery market—Sprouts. Eww, it smells funny in there.

Best breakfast—Crackers & Co. Now, that sounded pretty tasty—did the spiky haired guy on HGTV feature it?

Best Place to Drink While the Kids Play? Rustler’s Rooste. I have to say—great category. I laughed. Kids sure do create the alcoholics, don’t they? No argument there. (I miss drinking, but there are too many sports bars out here.)

Which reminds me of a story. I was trying to get my own (old) kid to get a job as a bartender since she doesn’t seem to recognize daylight. The Heart Attack Grill was advertising for Nurse/Bartenders. If you really wanted a shot at this job, the ad said, come in person and ask for Dr. Jon. "Oh, Dr. Jon…"

Now that was the best!

Braying with laughter over Covance

2008-05-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

There is nothing I like to see more than hand-in-glove elected officials laughing their heads off with corporate fatcats over a coup such as letting an animal experimentation lab into Chandler (Chandler Republic, May 16, 2008). Really warms the old cockles, doesn’t it?

Aw, that’s not fair. Covance got them to go along, fair and square. We are not sure of the details, but I am sure it was all kosher, right? Something about the company switching to the Airpark tract because it was already zoned for them…And something else about the company’s track record in containing dangerous viruses…you know, stuff.

After all, an assistant attorney general of the whole state said he found no evidence that the members of the Chandler City Council held improper meetings to discuss the rezoning to let these well-intentioned folks in.

The city attorney said she “had always known” there was no violation of the open meetings law, but was glad to have the state confirm it. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine--the chief Covance foe if you don’t count a lot of Chandler citizens, was disappointed--of course.

But not surprised? Probably not. How many pictures do we see of smug “leaders” laughing amongst themselves. This isn’t new. Maybe Covance can develop a forget-about-it drug to help the rest of us.

Star's latest audiobook report

2008-05-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

Richard K. Morgan, I learned from Amazon, is an award-winning sci-fi guy (‘Altered Carbon,’ ‘Broken Angels’). My only claim to sci-fi knowledge comes from being acquainted with Bucky Fuller in The Wayback and from telling Paul Krassner about the word “grok” in ‘Stranger in a Strange Land,’ so that the word then entered polite conversation. So you will soon see I know nothing to speak of about the genre. Of course, ignorance never stops me, so let’s proceed.

'Thirteen" takes place at the end of this century. The listener/reader gradually figures out that the UN has gained in stature, the American south has seceded again and is called Jesusland, and the Pac Rim countries are sort of a separate territory with lots of clout. Of course, shadowy corporations run everything (that’s not new) and some cars called Teardrops can drive themselves.

The anti-hero is Carl Marsalis, a Thirteen, which is a genetically altered human short on sympatico and long on belligerence. He’s also black and English. One of the shadowy corporations gets him out of jail in Jesusland to hunt down another Thirteen who is killing people the corporation doesn’t want killed.

Carl hooks up with a tasty former NYPD detective named Sevgi Ertekin and they have some smokin’ sex and then set off looking for the rogue Thirteen. As they flit around the world in their space-age fiber duds, a number of subplots start to tumble out and roll around. Many are kind of abandoned, so you have to make of them what you will.

Needless to say Carl gets a little more sympatico where Sevgi is concerned and it gets “personal.” So, look out, bad Thirteens!

The reader Simon Vance has a light voice and an English accent. Vance sort of trips along a little too fast at first, but then settles in and does the various voices well without sounding like a blithering schizo.

This puppy is 18 disks, so pace yourself. Maybe for a cross-country trip in the car this summer, assuming you are not going to “the Rim.” Just be sure to bring some “Sin,” which as far as I could tell was some really cool, legal speed.

Feral foreclosures in Chandler

2008-05-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

I co-own another blog written by a dog. Scribbles is not even three-dimensional. He’s a purebred clipart. We told him to fetch, but he insisted on blogging.

You can read his musings (I believe he knows Paul Newman’s mutt, something like that) at: http://scribblesthedog.wordpress.com.

Any-old-how, Scribbs was pretty upset recently with idiots he heard about who move out of their foreclosed homes and leave their pets behind to leave calling cards for the bank. And of course—DIE!

It’s getting bad here in Chandler. One animal rescue group said they had to put a freeze on taking new animals. “This is a terrifying trend,” one woman said.

On June 8th, you can go to Tapino Kitchen & Wine Bar in S’dale and for $150, stuff your face and save some animals, all in a few forkfuls.

In the meantime, check with Paw Placement (www.pawplacement.org) and AZ Rescue (www.azrescue.org) for other things you can do. AZ Rescue sends me emails about animals that are available.

No one is hurting a banker by ditching their animals. Bankers don’t even know about it in most cases. You are hurting a four-legger who has no idea at all why this is happening to him or her. They are scared, thirsty, and soon will roast to death.

Scribbles sez: What goes around comes around. So get ready.

Tuned up and hating it

2008-05-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

As a woman and a blond to boot, I must wear a sign that says: “Contractor, Please Relieve Me of All My Money and Make Me Like It.”

They often don’t even bother to make me like it.

Latest? The yearly heat pump “tuneup.” Last year, the company that sold me the heat pump 10 years ago, Sun Energy, suddenly found $600 worth of stuff “burned up” in it. I asked for the replaced parts—they didn’t look burned. Hmmm, well, I am a woman, maybe I don’t know what burned looks like.

I checked (belatedly) their Better Business Bureau (bbb.org) rating. Gosh. Unsatisfactory.

Drat.

This year, I called a company, Alaskan (sounded cold, I am an idiot, I admit it) advertising a $29.95 “tuneup.”

Alaskan arrived and the tech sat at my table writing and writing. He had not even been on the roof. He opened the hatch where the filter goes. “In wrong,” he commented. He went up top. Came back in five minutes. “Here is an estimate of everything you need ($600ish). Again! I said, last year it was $600. He looked at the list from last year—“I hate other companies’ invoices. This is for the heat part, not the air conditioning.”

He wrote some numbers on scratch paper…circling three. “Capacitors,” he explained. “This one might not last the summer.” I tried to take the paper and he said, “This is going back in my pocket.”

Well, what about the tuneup part? “I am not allowed to add refrigerant until you are up to spec.”

I think spec is the stuff on the paper he took back.

I called the BBB—Alaskan is a member. Seventy complaints! Why do they have a satisfactory rating, I wondered (and why was I such a total moron I checked after not before). She said she would check on it.

I also checked with the Registry of Contractors (www.azroc.gov) or you can call 602- 542-1525. No complaints for good old Alaskan.

I called SRP at 602-274-6808—they have a list of contractors they stand by. A nice man called Russ called me. They also have a $29.95 special on.

Tune me up. I mean, beam me up.

Books speak to me

2008-05-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

After four failed surgeries on my right eye, I listen to novels now on CD. The Chandler Library has a nice selection. I once said to someone that the library is the only government institution that has ever done squat for me and I stand by that. You can even get volunteers to bring things to you if you can't get there--email me for details.

But for now...to help you in your selection...a review.

Compulsion is the 22nd novel featuring urbane, koi-loving child psychologist Alex Delaware and his sidekick, Milo Sturgis, the loner, gay cop who never enters a restaurant without ordering. Delaware books are like Milo’s favorite snack food—irresistible to me. I throw them down like bon-bons—or make that in one ear and out the other.

This one is the usual knot of interweaving cases and themes, opening with the perennial favorite: woman in jep, as we used to say in the screenwriting game. Spaghetti straps askew, this one is hammered, mincing across a parking lot in the dark, alone, drops her keys, pats the ground around the car…eeek. Oh, she found them. Okay, false alarm. Now she drives off and takes a secluded shortcut in the Hollywood Hills…and runs out of gas. Really runs out of it. But a shiny black Bentley appears, and the driver is a woman. Saved!

Don’t count on it. The theme is shiny black cars.

You will have to read or listen to see how this plays out. But Kellerman rhapsodizes about his new baby koi, the jumbled symphony of life that is New York City (he travels, but we aren’t too jealous because the LAPD puts him in a crappy hotel), and detailed descriptions of what everyone is wearing when he meets them. Has anyone seen this author and Michael Kors the same room?

The CDs are read by John Rubenstein, an actor I have seen on TV several times. He does a marvelous job not chewing up the distinctive accents and speech patterns of the various characters. He is one of the best. I especially liked his reading of an eccentric old lady in a tiny California town remarking on the hairstyles of her fellow residents. “Some these gals have hair that looks like roadkill,” she cackles.

I have been to that beauty parlor.

This is not the best Kellerman ever—but it won’t disappoint if you like Dr Rationality. At least his instrument carving GF Robin (yes, they are back together—he could use his own psychologist) has a minor role. They do have a new bulldog, though—Blanche.

Oh, and I was never sure what the “compulsion” was. Kink, maybe.

What mashes on your hot button?

2008-05-04T12:39:00.001-07:00

Ah, life in Chandler. Certainly something irks the stuffing out of you. Let me know and get your own custom rant. Or maybe you found a great new restaurant and don't mind it getting overcrowded (you are a prince). Are the politicians stonewalling? I can ask them questions for ya. Trouble getting action on something from a local business? Maybe we can shake things up. Well, at least loosen things up. What do you say? Talk to me.

Wading in where angels pick up their robes

2008-05-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

I do not really want to plunge into the Covance mess above shoe level, but I will observe that one person they had supporting them was obnoxious to me outside the library because I would not sign his petition ("Hope you don't die of a heart attack," he cheerily yelled at me, which I of course took to mean he hoped I would). And second, I lived in the DC area when there was questionable handling of animals, as outlined in the book Demon in the Freezer (Amazon).

It would be fun as an irresponsible blogger to invite you to picture Ebola-blood- squirting monkeys gibbering through the Fashion Center, but I doubt that will happen. Still, here these people are in our midst and the other day, the bigwigs were all standing around in hard hats getting their tour of their scientific "get."

Mayor Dunn pointed out that science was vital to Chandler. Isn't that a straw man, though? Of course it is important to attract rich companies that will employ us. But can't we be more critical? As I recall, without diving into this, some people were pretty vocal about raising doubts about this sort of research here in a bedroom community.

And why was the tour so top secret? Industrial espionage of proprietary data? Fear of activists butting in or figuring out how to butt in later? I don't know--it seemed kinda funny (those hard hats) and also unsettling.

"We are the world leader in pre-clinical safety testing," Covance chairman Joe Herring was quoted as saying. Are we going to know pre-clinical testing of what--and on what animals?

Don't make me put on a hard hat to find out! It's not a good look for me.

Welcome to the new Chandler blog

2008-05-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Did you know your council members are TV stars? I inadvertently (sticky remote buttons) went to the Chandler City Council meeting coverage (Ch 11 on Quest cable) and got interested in a discussion of residential care homes. My mother is in one in Chandler--4 residents with memory issues and two full-time caregivers. The supplicant before the Council was asking to have 10 residents in a newly formed home and Mayor Dunn seemed sympathetic to this and started to say he knew something about this from his family situation, though he decided not to go into it.

A neighbor was worried that children would see body bags being removed from the home, an eventuality which seemed possible to me, but unduly alarmist and more than a little creepy. Another council member, Jeff Weninger, eventually moved that the man's request be amended to fewer residents (shooting down his business plan, I would say), then it was voted on, then seemed to be rescinded to be reconsidered, maybe even in a closed session. I wasn't clear on whether this was setting some precedent that might affect my mother's situation and wrote to the Mayor's office. A council member Bob Caccamo did answer me, as did Trinity Donovan and a staff member. So that was good. I learned that the discussion affected only the man involved, not my mother's situation, also good.

But--just the other day someone asked me why they no longer saw my columns (which used to appear in the local rag on a freelance basis), so I figure there is still some interest in what your gadfly has to say. Thus--this blog. Clap if you love government!

Ticks have homeowner ticked to the max!

2007-11-17T08:33:00.001-08:00

I used to live in DC, where roaches were our normal roommates, but nothing prepared me for brown dog ticks.

It all started about six weeks ago. I was lying in bed when I felt footsteps on my arm. Groggily, I brushed my arm and went back to sleep.

That was the last time I slept without care.

The next night, same thing. This time I flipped on the light—my new dog Jimmy, found in a 7-Eleven parking lot, according to his Craigs-advertising savior, was lying asleep at the foot of the bed, encased in his pelt of 2-inch wiry fur. On top, a dark, leggy creature crawled.

My daughter and I flew into action, going to Wal-Mart at Warner & Alma for flea and tick dip and various sprays. Twenty-five bucks we will never see again.

When we got the dog in the shower, he was studded with gray, bloated ticks under his lamby fur. I scraped hysterically, blood running (they inject a thinner), and got as much as I could. Jimmy was shaking and freaking out. He had nothing on moi!

We have three cats—the vet said the next day that dog ticks (duh) don’t much like cat blood, but we could put Frontline on them anyhow, just in case. Fifty bucks. The dog, however, could not be Frontlined because he had had flea shampoo. Something about nerve damage.

The vet also recommended a pet-safe exterminator, Alpha Ecological.

First, we took poor Jimmy to Petsmart at Warner and Alma to be shaved. Another fifty bucks almost. He was loaded with ticks, still, they said—alive and dead.

He also had to go to the vet to see if there were ticks in his ears—another hundred bucks. Some live ticks were still on him, even post-shaving!

Alpha Ecological had sprayed once. They came back two weeks later to try to get the eggs, “seed ticks” and nymphs, nice names for a creepy intermediate tick stages that also love your bluuud.

Oh, and did I mention, that ticks may not like cat blood, but they don’t mind human blood—and I pulled them off me several times?

What ticks are besides disgusting

Ticks have eight legs like spiders, but are mites. My science writer colleagues helpfully informed me that they can spread diseases. We don’t have the deer ticks here in Phoenix that spread Lyme’s disease, but you and your pet can get bad diseases from them that rot your brain or something (I more or less quit reading internet info at that point).

They can hide out on your house, in the walls, in cracks in the baseboards, in popcorn ceilings, and tiny crevices for three years waiting for a dog to suck on. They like to climb high, onto ceilings and behind pictures.

Maybe that is where they were headed when they climbed my bedroom walls every night. For two nights, I laid at the end of the bed with a spray bottle watching them advance out of the baseboards, slowly, plunging through the carpet and up the walls like “Night of the Living Tick.” Zap! Die!

I sleep with a night light now for impromptu middle-of-the-night inspections. Alpha Ecological has been out three times—the third time, the guy hooked up a hose to 25 gallons of spray and doused front and back.

After he left, I found a tick on my leg in the family room.

All you can do, according to anguished emails on the Maricopa Agricultural Extension website (cals.arizona.edu/extension/), is keep pestering the dog with inspections (between the toes and in their doggy armpits, especially) and keep grass and weeds short. And spray with stuff. I have learned that this is like getting proper medical treatment—are you or aren’t you? Hard to tell. I heard the pet-safe stuff doesn’t work very well, that you can’t use diatomaceous earth with Frontline, and that bombs are not the answer. Truth? Fiction? No idea.

I guess others take it in stride. I read about one dog owner that keeps a jar of vodka by the back door to drop the ticks in when the dogs come inside. I can think of better uses for that vodka.

My advice? Don’t lose that night light. They may be slowly advancing on your bed.

At least they are slow. You can go get a piece of tissue and saunter back and the little bugger is waiting for his trip to the commode. That’s something, anyhow. And you can see them—they are not microscopic like MRSA or bird flu.

Why don’t you check right now? If you can stop twitching and shuddering.

Star Lawrence is a health writer for WebMD, CBS HealthWatch, and her own health humor site: http://healthsass.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Please, please, don't help us any more

2007-02-23T08:22:00.000-08:00

I turned on my AOL this week and some blah, cluttered, flabbery mess of a “welcome screen” greeted me. It didn’t even say how many emails I had. Everything was teensy and light blue. Gee, there is an easy-to-read color.

I asked for the old screen back and some nice youngster in India informed me that was impossible. What does she know, as she pounds in the chutney, about what I want out here in Sonoran Desert USA?

Over the years, I can assure my friends on the subcontinent that I did not need a new version of the AOL software every three months. Mine was fine. Leave me alone, thanks.

I don’t need new Windows updates. Unlike the more informed members of our electronic society, I am willing to concede that you did it semi-OK the first time, Bill Gates, so forget your afterthoughts. I wish MS Word would hold a font, but everyone has an impossible dream…ooops, that slipped into Courier, that last part.

I should be nicer. Some geeky company is always trying to help me. The Wall Street Journal tried that last week, with a huge style change. The Letters to the Editor were gone entirely or banished to some weird page. I never nailed down which because I canceled my subscription of many years. Oh, and WSJ? Your new type style belongs on the side of a circus wagon.

About a month ago, I went blind in one eye and have been undergoing all sorts of weird procedures. In the process, I learned that I didn’t need to know a lot of things I used to know. This could be bad news for info companies.

I didn’t need to read four papers a day or go to a dozen blogs (as well we write three of my own). I didn’t do it for two weeks—and nothing bad happened.

Wow, that was weird. I would have thought something would have happened.

I can’t read library books now, at least for a while. I got those taped books from the Chandler Library. The CD player skips. It can’t remember overnight where I was when I dozed off the night before. Most of the readers on these CDs are ludicrous, the men trying to do women’s quotes in falsetto or the women trying to speak gruffly and spew swear words like an effeminate sailor on speed.

See? Here I needed some help! But no geeks appeared.

So what have I learned? Well, let’s see. My world is the opposite of what I thought. That was kind of big. I don’t need to know a huge amount of stuff. The geeks are not here to help but to earn. Look at Steve Jobs pushing what was it, oh, yes, a phone! What a concept! iCanHardlyStandIt.

Vista is coming to the PC world. More chances for Bill to serve a warrantless check on my software to see if I paid full price for it. More firewalls it will interfere with or vice-versa.

And inevitably, more help. Help, help, always with the help and the tiny changes only a teen on Red Bull in Silicon Valley would notice and appreciate. Leave us alone! Any more help and we will scream.

It won’t be pretty.

Loss upon loss

2007-01-06T12:08:00.000-08:00

Star Lawrence

Here are some expressions I don’t use anymore. “I would rather stick needles in my eye than ___.” “Keep an eye out for.” “Keep your eyes peeled.”

Five weeks ago, I was sitting in our favorite eatery, when I went blind in one eye. First came some maroon-colored floaters, then lava-lamping swishes of blood. By the time I got to the ER, I could not see the nurse, much less how many fingers she was holding up.

Here was not much they could do for me except tell me it could take months to clear, if it did.

So, I climbed the doc ladder, from my primary, to an in-person ophthalmologist, to the retinal specialist. My retina was not detached, so I waited a couple of weeks to see if the blood would process out.

On the third visit, though, disaster! My retina had totally sloughed off the back of my eyeball and was bobbing around in the blood. I had to have emergency surgery, which was long (3 hrs). I was awake for it. I do not recommend this as entertainment, but I am sure glad some doctors have chosen to master it.

After that came 12 days of facedown recovery. Reattaching the retina, which is like lasering wet tissue paper to Jell-O, is tricky. To keep it in place, they sometimes put an air or gas bubble in there to press against it as it heals. The problem is, to make it press on the right place, you need to keep your face parallel to the floor 24 hours a day, even while sleeping.

This sounded completely impossible to me at first, but it’s not. I even invented some ways to do it—and posted them. You can check them out at http://facedownrecoveryfromretinalsurgery.blogspot.com.

Those 12 days went slowly, and I missed my dog Spencer like fire. A friend of eight years had taken him so he wouldn’t bound over and knock me down or anything. When I said I thought I could take him back, there was silence from my friend.

And more silence. When he spoke, he said my dog had run away. I frantically, went to websites, posted lost dog notices, tried to do a flier.

Then, when pressed, my friend said my dog had been killed by a car.

Well, which is it? I am tortured now by nightmares—he is lost, he needs me, he suffered.

Do you know people who think up lies even when the truth will do? I have known other people like this. They should stop doing this.

Will I get sight back in that eye? I can see a little silver color from my ring when I hold my hand out.

I go back to my doctor’s office in a few days. But I will never see my dog in this life again.

Now I need a heart transplant.

Good looking-out, restaurant inspectors

2006-09-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

I once started dating a guy and couple weeks later, he showed me my stove and walked me through its features. It had a light over it!

I eat out a lot.

Therefore, I read with interest the weekly “Restaurant Inspections” page in this section (Arizona Republic--Chandler Republic section).

Have you ever been in a restaurant and gotten a funky feeling? Maybe the server’s tattoos are still scabbing. Or what if you have sent everything you ever got there back to be “nuked”?

These could be signs of trouble, says Ken Conklin, program supervisor of the Quality Assurance and Quality Control Staff Training and Chain Food Program in Maricopa County.

The county has about 20,000 eateries, counting mobile lunch wagons. Sixty-eight field inspectors fan out daily to poke, sniff, observe behavior, and rate.

The write-up in the paper refers to “major violations,” but Conklin calls them “critical violations.”

What they call Risk 4 establishments are full-scale restaurants with four or more menu items. Risk 5 refers to kitchens with susceptible diners—such as those in a hospital or nursing home.

Risks 4 and 5 places get surprise inspections four times a year.

You can read the write-up in the paper to find the delightful things that constitute Critical Violations: Numerous live roaches throughout, cooked ham in same container as raw sausage, rotten oranges in the cooler, food not date-marked, raw chicken over the ice in the cooler, excessive debris in the microwave, and bloody cutting boards.

Basically, hot food must be heated enough, cool food kept cool enough, and icky juices and germs kept off all food. Sanitizing solutions must be used to clean everything.

When the inspectors show up, Conklin says, they also observe the behavior of the employees. “If a cook coughs into his hand and does not immediately wash,” Conklin says, “this is noted.”

Places scoring in the top 25 percent receive a Gold Certificate to put out front. The middle 50 percent get a Silver Award. If you see the sign, but no sparkly awards—bring your own Pepto.

So what happens to the real dirtballs? First, Conklin says, the inspector demands immediate action. If a bottle not labeled, label it then and there. If it’s something horrible like leaking sewage, the place may be closed down. Usually, restaurants get up to 10 days to correct problems—but the reinspection can uncover more.

Actually losing the right to operate can take a long time and involves several steps. “We give due process,” Conklin says.

If you see something amiss the next time you dine out, you can call (602) 506-6616 or hop on the computer and lodge a complaint at www.maricopa.gov/envsvc/.

If the complaint is about something that would be a violation if true, it will be investigated. You can find out what happened by going back on that website.

“You might have gotten sick after eating someplace,” he says, “but that doesn’t prove it came from that restaurant.”

Talk about too much knowledge being an unappetizing thing! Does he eat out? Conklin says he still considers it a treat.

Star Lawrence is a reporter, copywriter, screenwriter and health blogger (http://healthsass.blogspot.com). She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

We are not all sheeple in Chander, AZ

2006-08-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

The centuries are clashing willy-nilly. We hear the word “warlord” almost daily. The terrorists (whatever that tired mess of a term means anymore) have thousands of websites.

Rockets are setting off car alarms, computerized phone systems are calling and telling people to get out of the way. Then, the same old horrible bombs and shrapnel of yore are being hurled back and forth.

Pretty soon, I expect to see a catapult with a payload of burning tar being rolled out, followed by a computerized smart bomb.

The world has gone not only retro, but feral.

Wait, I can’t write about this for the Chandler Republic because it’s not about Chandler.

But, it is! It’s about us. Our souls, our children’s future. When the war in Iraq started, the minute the first explosions boomed on TV, I said, “We are going to hell for this.”

Well, good for me. Now we are in hell. Now what?

I watch MSNBC every night (and yes, some Fox, too, don’t jump out of your chair). I feel it’s my duty to know, to be a witness, to keep this at the forefront of my mind. Early in the Iraq fighting, I was reading the list of the dead and the name Christopher Kilpatrick stuck in my mind. I think of Christopher and his family every day.

I also think of an Iraqi woman interviewed at the start of the war. Her teenage daughters were giggling and saying the American soldiers were “cute.” Is she OK now? Can her daughters go into the streets? Are they in school (Iraqis had a higher literacy level than the US, though now many youngsters may not be getting regular schooling). Has their husband and father been yanked out of a bus and shot?

That is a Chandler thought. How is that mother doing? How are the girls?

I heard about some elderly Russian émigrés stuffed into the basement of their apartment building in Israel. They can only run upstairs for a few minutes at a time to get food or a quick shower.

On the other side, a building full of kids and women was just obliterated. They probably didn’t “get” this, either.

It’s as hot in the Middle East as it is in Chandler. No air. Think of how we feel when ours goes on the fritz and we have no air—for one night!

Sometimes I think the newscasters think of us in the “flyover states” as the sheeple, chewing grass and eagerly buying into their spinning and blabbering.

We have brains! We are college grads. Our kids think soldiers are cute, too! We are mothers, scared to death. We are fathers, afraid we cannot defend our own.

This is about Chandler. Quite frankly, some American citizens here in little Chandler, Arizona, USA, don’t think this is keeping any extremists from blowing things up in the United States.

What will end it? Will it end?

As Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show: “One of these days one of those Korean rockets will make it over and we will go out of this bitch in style.”

Much as I like you, I hope you are wrong on this one, Jon. I hope it’s a “fake” prediction.

But I am not 100% sure.

I am in AZ, but Freecycle serves a lot of places

2006-04-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

Freecycle.org may be a national organization, but for Chandler users, it’s all about Chandler. You join the local chapter and get daily emails from people in Chandler or nearby burgs seeking items for free—or offering them to you for pickup. Again, for free, zip, nada.

Strangely, this organization seems so right, so obvious, that several people said they couldn’t remember where they heard about it—that it had just come into their lives. Probably read it someplace, couldn’t recall. To be honest, I can’t remember, either, but I like it.

The Chandler chapter has about 1,900 members and is moderated by Kim Riley, mother of a clothes-outgrowing 14-year-old.

“I could have a constant yard sale,” she laughs. “I post items myself three to four times a month.”

Riley has taken up her fellow Chandlerites on their offers of a free 8’x12’ rug, copper kitchen utensils, and clothes for her son (which she posts back the second his arms begin to stick out of the sleeves too far).

She also got a cat. And the cat gave her “cat scratch fever.” Hey, no one said this wasn’t an adventure.

This is not substitute for Goodwill or any other charities. Most Freecycle people still give to those. Some items still go to the landfill, too, although Riley says the earth’s overtaxed storage capacity is lessened somewhat by passing items—even wood scraps in her case—on to people who can use them, rather than dumping them.

Of course, there are some rules of the road when using Freecycle. After you sign up, you must post an OFFER (this is stated in the headline of your email) before you can start asking for things. When an item is picked up, you need to post again, saying TAKEN.

You must hand over the item free and clear—no under- the-table arrangements or barter.

“No sob stories,” emphasizes Riley. “I have learned that 90% of those are not true anyway. Ask for what you want and don’t try to guilt people into offering it.”

A representative set of listings, for example, offered such disparate items as a double stroller, Kincade plate, 3 Huggies swim diapers, a “really used loveseat” (I am trying not to think about that one too much), a breadmaker, and 4 king-size waterbed sheets. Another user begged for a drill and router, saying his honey-do list was growing. He sounded a little scared.

I gave away my bengal cat on Freecycle, after corresponding at length with the would-be owner. I also got takers (lots of them) for some unopened cans of paint and a carton of Priority Mail boxes.

My fellow Freecyclers came within hours to collect their prizes.

You never know what you will see on your emailed lists. What was the weirdest thing Riley ever saw listed? “Half a stick of deodorant,” she ventures. Ewww. And—get this—when the offerer had no takers, she listed it again! Man, can’t throw away that deodorant.

Which reminds me—you will meet the most interesting people when you use Freecycle.

To sign up, go to http://www.freecycle.org/ and then to the proper chapter location.

Whatcha got?

Hey, doc, remember me, your patient?

2006-02-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

My father was a doctor and after encountering some health problems, was persuaded by my mother to end his private practice, move to California, and take a state hospital job.

He hated it. He wasn’t “anyone’s doctor,” he said.

Do they teach that in medical school—that a bond may develop between doctor and patient, a mysterious working relationship based on life and death, even though it’s a bond that may only be invoked once a year or if the patient has a problem?

Not from what I have seen.

I am sure there are many compassionate, interested physicians in Chandler (I think I just signed up with one). But I changed primaries twice in 2005 and am now firing my cardiologist.

I hear everyday how we have a shortage of doctors; to expect long, agonizing waits in doctor’s offices (not to mention extreme and unhealthy endurance contests at the local Emergency Rooms); that managed care reimbursements force docs to see so many people they can’t possibly remember you.

The other day, a friend of mine observed that he never saw such waits in the Philippines. (You were saying about “Third World”?) A survey I saw recently put our health care system at 37th. Know which country was first? Hold onto your knee-jerks, Bill O’Reilly, but it was France!

Cases in point:

The last time my doctor sent me to the ER (yes, they do that), I waited 17 hours for a bed and was told by some out-of-the-blue doctor called a hospitalist, who didn’t know me and wanted me to do what he said without even talking to me, that I might never get a bed and would have to stay in the ER all night. I said I was leaving and he said, “You will be back and then you will have to wait all over again.” He also asked me if I thought my insurance would pay him.

The doctor who sent me to the ER, pardon, make that his so-called triage nurse, never even followed up or had her follow up to see what happened to the poor patient who was bleeding (on blood thinners he prescribed and was monitoring).

My veterinarians call—in person—after a day or two to see how my animals are!

I had a procedure done that involved human blood products and anesthetic. The physician joked that she would tell me all about it, but I probably wouldn’t remember what she said. I thought she was joking, anyway. She did that! It took five weeks to get the report mailed from the hospital to find out about my test. She did not call me.

Should I get tested for HIV and Hep C down the road from those blood products. No one can say. I guess it’s a vanishingly small chance.

When I tried to discuss this with my cardiologist, we waited 40 minutes to learn he wasn’t even in the building. We left. He is nice in person, seems competent, yet he did not follow up on the ER advice his nurse gave. And, when I got to thinking about it, he only showed up for two of the four appointments I made with him over two years.

What am I, chopped liver?

Pretend you know who we are, doctors! Act like we count! Vets call—why can’t you?

Yes, managed care swooped down and ruined your business model and earning potential. But remember this—studies show patients tend to get better faster on advised treatments—and sue less—if they like their doctor and feel like he or she gives a damn about them.

The Mark of the Squirrel

2005-09-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

When I was about eight years old, a Squirrel bit me hard.

I don’t have a scar. It wasn’t even a real squirrel. It was Squirrel Lake outside Minocqua, Wisconsin.

How my parents learned of this lake is lost in the mists of time. All I knew was instead of the chaotic three-week car trips we had taken so many times in the 1950s, we were going to a “lodge.” Jantzen’s Squirrel Lake Lodge, to be exact.

The little town of Minocqua, a knotty-pine, Native American strip mall, crept by the car windows and we soon wended into a piney woods. The large log lodge and half a dozen cabins nestled in a sea of pine needles and mossy rocks.

Beyond, down a hill, was Squirrel Lake, a large, undeveloped lake with only a few cabins, funneling into a water lily-clogged river leading to a dam. Actually, I believe the whole lake was a widened river of some sort and went on and on off to the right. You could hardly row a boat at our end because of the rubbery, cable-like lily stems.

Mrs. Jantzen wore a bib apron and cooked the most incredible meals imaginable on a wood stove. Her husband had come from Norway, given her two sons and then had died, leaving her to forage. She called in some workmen, built the lodge and cabins, and started her business.

The lightly breaded fish, the garden-ripened tomato sandwiches, the teetering chocolate cakes, the fried chicken, the cloud-like mashed potatoes with good old Wisconsin butter. Three meals a day waited for the clang of the outdoor dinner bell to call the fishermen to the table.

Muskies were the draw at Squirrel Lake, that huge, mean customer with an underslung jaw and bad attitude. Muskelunge were also the sole topic of conversation. My father and brothers reveled.

You had, by law, to throw this monster of the depths back if it was less than 36 inches. This was a fish, babies! In 15 years, my father never caught a keeper. But, somehow, this was beside the point.

For us kids Squirrel also yielded up a rainbow of bluegills, sunnies, and perch. I remember Dad catching a Northern pike, which bit him and drew blood even though it was “dead.”

The days passed slowly, filled with the lake-smell, the gentle lapping, the buzzy insects, and the scorchy sunlight filtering through the pines. I curled in the lodge under the glare of stuffed deer and bears and devoured the novels in the bookcase. It was my sex education.

At night, the slightly damp sheets felt cold and as heavy as a lead X-ray protector and we snuggled down deep.

Squirrel bit me hard.

We went every summer for years. Then, we began to leave home for college and marriage and did not go back for more than a decade. I had a baby at age 38, and her father and I took my brother and his new wife to Jantzen’s for their wedding present.

They say you can never go home again. I have always taken this as a warning—Don’t try it, you might lose your memories.

I called the number and Mrs. Jantzen answered. We went.

Everything lay as if in a time warp, as if it were sealed in a snow globe, minus the snow. There were no more cabins on the lake than before. It smelled the same. The sunlight. The whispery waves. The meals were just as toothsome, even impressing my gourmet-cook partner. The same books were even in the bookshelves of the lodge.

My partner wanted to catch a muskie, he, a New York boy from 112th Street. He tried day after day, then one day, down below the dam, he did a doubletake as a duckling snapped underwater as if on a rubber band. Muskie! With the thing trapped in the pool, he fished and fished. Finally, he called in a helper from the bait store and they got the monster out of the water and unrolled the measuring tape. Aw—33 inches.

Mrs. Jantzen is dead now. I don’t know if the lodge remains. I would never try going home again. One lucky shot was my limit. I don’t take big important emotional risks like that.

Anyway, I have my own Squirrel Lake, out back in the Arizona desert. A large fishpond with lilies.

My daughter, now 23, wanted to get the water clearer, but I kept resisting.

Squirrel Lake, I realized one day, was not a crystal pool. It was greenish, grayish, kind of impenetrable and aloof, concealing decades of memories and mysteries in its depths.

And maybe a big scary fish or two.

You are never too old to write a book report

2005-08-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

Despite being read to as a perverse little ankle-biter, my 23-year-old daughter is not a reader.

All summer I have been trying to get her to crack George Pelecanos’ book, Drama City, a cross between “Animal Cops” and “The Wire.” She likes hip-hop, the book is about inner city life. She likes animals, so does the protag. We even knew George back in D.C.

I keep renewing and renewing Drama City at the library. Finally, tearing hair, I almost begged her to at least give it 10 pages. That’s when she made in amazing statement. She said, “Mom, I have so many problems, I feel like I would be ignoring real life if I read a novel.”

Oh, my dear, where have I gone wrong as a mom?

Reading makes real life thinkable, possible, doable! So here are “Hot Picks” for your beachy pleasure.

First, my sister and I liked: Citizen Vince by Jess Walter, a hard-boiled gangster novel with a soft, chewy center set amidst, of all things, the presidential campaign of 1980. Parolee Vince keeps getting “pulled back in,” which is interfering with his desire to vote (and his longevity).

Interestingly, sis and I have noticed that as the boomers age, some normally macho detectives and private eyes are becoming impaired. They can’t chase people over rooftops anymore or in some cases, remember what they had for lunch. Check out Oblivion by Peter Abrahams, a procedural interrupted by the private detective’s slewing around chaotically and losing great chunks of time. When he finally cannot read his own coded notes, he must figure out what he was trying to figure out before it gets him first.

Jack Reacher, though, is still intact and living the fantasy life of (some) males, which consists of buying new clothes every three days instead of doing laundry and freelancing around the country besting clever criminals and bedding athletic women for a day or two. Check out The Enemy or The Killing Floor by Lee Child. Jack is a big favorite of ours, sort of a former Army MP version of Travis McGee.

Sis and I also were taken by Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire, a very “real” telling of the Cinderella story set during the tulip speculation scandals of the 17th Century. This is no airy fairy tale.

Anbolyn Potter, a librarian at the Hamilton branch, who has a pretty historical first name herself, recommends Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, about a thoughtful private eye named Jackson Brodie, who suddenly is destined to relive his own past while untangling a bludgeoning, child disappearance, and other assorted derring-do.

Everyone also seems to be reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling. This came recommended by a friend of mine named Marie Woertz of Chandler, who also liked The Summerhouse by Jude Devereaux, about three friends who celebrate their 40th birthday together in Maine. She has read it three times!

Another “Hot Pick” from Marie? Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts. Martha Washington used to travel to where the army was and sew them clothes.

Incidentally, for those long car trips, library assistant Chris Koeth recommends Harry Potter on CD. She says the CDs are better than the movies!

Lisa Gragg, another friend, is wild about Harry, but also recommends Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich, the new book in the bounty hunter Stephanie Plum series. Can we ever get enough of New Joisy Steph and her hot honeys? Or what would it be like to ditch everything and open a beanery in the Caribbean? Check out A Trip to the Beach by Melinda and Robert Blanchard.

For the politically minded, Tiah Foster of Sun Lakes recommends Imperial Hubris by Anonymous (who is a spy of the as yet un-outed variety). “The Koran” by Karen Armstrong also won the Foster seal of approval.

If any of this sound good, roam the stacks or call (480) 872-2803 and put them on hold for a pickup. The library website, www.chandlerlibrary.org, also has reviews and book lists.

My daughter once called me a bookworm. I prefer reader, thank you. And I will go as far as to say flipping a few pages wouldn’t kill you either, daughter dear. Ever heard of a book called Drama City?

Long day's journey to the ER

2005-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

On a Friday morning, my sister could not get into her doctor’s and her chronic back pain had turned hideous. She was giving it 8s and 10s, even on painkillers. What if there were an infection? It felt different. She could hardly touch the skin on her leg.

We decided she could not get through the “Black Hole of Health Care,” otherwise known as the weekend. This meant a trip to the ER (not Urgent Care this time, because we felt they did not have the x-ray machines or other devices to diagnose).

I am usually the one who has had to—reluctantly—select this usually last-ditch option. As a medical writer, though, I know ERs count on insured patients for some of their revenue and do not really consider this an abuse of the system.

We got our affairs in order, did the marketing—Sis was limping agonizingly--took the groceries home, ate lunch.

At noon, we pulled into the lot at Desert Sam. Or tried to. It was slammed. Not one space. Bad sign.

We exited and went to Chandler Regional. It was noon. Two or three people sat in the waiting room. Two or three people? Could this be? Was there another waiting room we didn’t know about, some anteroom to hell?

Sis filled in the paperwork, or some of it, got her bracelet. “Is this your first rodeo?” joked the admissions clerk.

In the waiting room, one woman was swathed in blankets and looked flushed.

A young man was wheeled into the waiting area, head in a basin, hunched over, looking utterly miserable.

We all waited. Eventually Sis was called to fill in more forms.

We went back to our chairs and a second round of “Family Feud” on the TV. “Which presidents have had the most jokes made about them?” “Eisenhower?” ventured one family. “Survey says….oh, I’m sorry.”

A man came in with one leg swollen to twice the size of the other and red as hamburger. The vomiting man was still hunched.

The flushed girl was called. Eventually, another pretty zippy looking young man who had been tapping on a laptop pretty happily was called.

It was now 2:30 pm. Vomiting man still there.

Probably, we reasoned, ambulances full of gunshot or heart attack victims were pulling up in back. Surely they were taking precedence and were surrounded by frantic teams of life savers like on “Trauma, Life in the ER.”

Half an hour later, the poor vomiting man was called and waved his arm from his hunched position to signal that he was ready.

About an hour later, the magic moment. Sis was taken to the “little room,” as comedian Larry David calls the inner sanctum of doctors’ offices.

A nurse breezed in, said she’d be Sis’s nurse, then left, without doing any nursing things. Eventually a med student came in and asked questions. Her taking of the history was quite impressive. Smart! We brightened.

Eventually, over the next hours, sis saw a very on-the-ball young physician. He had some new ideas about her situation. We added him to the brain trust.

He ordered an x-ray. A sign on the wall said x-rays could take one to four hours. It was not nearly that long.

In all, we spent six hours on this doctor visit. We left at 6 p.m. Two five-minute doctor consultations and an x-ray. No one in back was running around like on “ER.” At one point, I stepped out of the room to see why the prescription-writing was taking half an hour. “They get distracted,” one aide said.

Am I complaining? Well, am I or not? I cannot decide.

America ranks 37th in world health care (“Survey says”…), Sis had been allowed to get to this point by the system, this was screechingly slow, but on the plus side: We did have this perfectly decent facility to go to, it wasn’t a blood-pooled abattoir like the ones we see on the news in Iraq, and the doctor did seem sharp and had new inputs.

And as the nurse pointed out: “Desert Sam would have been 11 hours.” Why does this not make me feel totally better?

Elderly and disabled require “The Right Space”

2005-06-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

Right now, many of us boomers are still sandwiched between kids and parents. Our knees may not be what they used to be, but not to worry. We can still ferry the kids to soccer and maneuver Grandma’s wheelchair into the newly expanded church bathroom.

As time continues its inexorable drip-drip-drip, though, soon we will be more concerned with getting into our own front doors and turning a wheelchair around in our own bathrooms.

Let’s face it, we’re not getting any younger, assisted care is not getting any cheaper, and according to studies, more than nine out of 10 of us over 65 would prefer to stay in our own homes.

Do you plan to uproot yourself when you can no longer reach the faucets from your wheelchair or feel safe getting into your tub or shower? In this housing market? Right when your house is paid off? I don’t think so.

So how about some simple modifications to the old homestead, a few grab bars, maybe, a no-step entrance or wider doors?

It all sounds so easy. Almost fun!

Albert M. Ayala, a licensed contractor in Chandler, looked into the federal government’s regulations (www.access-board.gov) when he considered having his mother live with him and his wife.

Easy was not the word he would use to describe the spew of governmentese that greeted him on that Web site!

“The guidelines are very complete,” he says, “but there is no residential section, per se. The individual maximum and minimum distances are also described only once. After that they are referred to by section numbers. For those without a photographic memory, this soon becomes confusing.”

Ayala had a better idea. Over a period of several years, he wrote The Right Space: A Wheelchair Accessibility Guide for Single-Family Homes.

He could not believe such a book did not already exist.

Ayala walks the builder or remodeler through the house logically, from the sidewalk, to hall, to bathroom, to kitchen. He provides crisp, three-dimensional drawings of turning radii, height, and widths—concentrating on the spaces and relationships between accessible fixtures. Dimensions and distances appear on most drawings, no photographic memory needed.

“The idea is to get the wheelchair-bound person into each room, allow them to do what they need to do there, and then allow them to turn around and leave,” Ayala says.

The Right Space is designed to help homeowners ask real estate and building professionals the right questions. You will know what works and what will trap you in the toilet enclosure tangled in your walker.

While the Americans with Disabilities regulations are a starting point, Ayala reminds remodelers that local building standards are king. You may need to consult a contractor on those.

Will making such improvements increase the value of your home? It will increase the value to you, that is for sure. Even if you are not old (yet), imagine the value of being able to wheel a baby carriage through a front door with no step-up.

Or, if you are older or disabled, what is the value of being able to use the bathroom independently and transfer to the toilet from your wheelchair?

How about being able to pull up directly in front of the cooktop to cook a meal? Or in front of a bathroom counter to put on makeup?

How about light switches you can reach? Doorknobs at chair-height? A shower you can use by yourself in the bathroom?

These are huge pluses if your present home is “The Right Space” for you!

For more information on The Right Space, go to www.trspace.com. The book also is available from Amazon.

Wali marti new form of uber feng shui

2005-04-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

I never like to talk about fads, no matter how temptingly overexposed and cliched, until they have run their course.

I think I am safe now on the Chinese art of placement, although I have been interested in this massive and largely unnoticed undercurrent of influences since it was called geomancy.

We are so deeply half-informed on the science/art/amusement of feng shui in our family that when a discussion recently emerged in these pages about the vacancy rates in some Chandler malls, my sister said knowingly, “Son side of the street.”

In this set of sort of bossy rules, which is still quite hot in Chinese restaurants (the red walls, the tassels, the aquariums), business people are urged to observe a potential new site and watch pedestrian traffic.

The most traveled side of the street is the “mother” side, the least, the “son side.”

Put another way—at every four-mall corner, there is a loser mall. We all know that.

In one example from a feng shui manual, being located near a movie theatre might be good—if theatre customers were able to pass by an ATM on their way to the theatre and the new store.

The height of surrounding buildings can also swamp a new store, throwing it into shadow and potential (but now fleeing) customers into atavistic terror.

If some of these elements are missing or the building comes to a point aimed at the heart of the entering consumer, the new business owner can slap up some hexagonal mirrors in strategic spots. Mirrors are the aspirin of feng shui. Whirlagigs and wind chimes can also redirect the good energy into your cash register.

Being across the street from a funeral home is not recommended. You don’t need to read a book to figure this one out. Mourners and pizza birthday parties just sort of don’t mix.

But what about countering the evil force of wali marti? This is feng shui’s greatest challenge. The Chinese feng shui masters had no idea what they were up against until the nice Americans came to buy them out.

The shamans of the Wal-Mart chain have now mastered the dark art of overpowering not only the son side, but the mother side, the daughter side, and the second-cousin-once-removed side of the street.

Back east, I read, to get around some square footage limitations that some buzzkill politician dreamed up, a Wal-Mart may be built in two parts, like a splitting death star. Presumably there will be a tunnel between the two or at least an exciting pneumatic tube ride.

How can a humble women’s clothing store or family-owned dry cleaner counter wali marti of this strength and devilish ingenuity?

Feng shui balances the elements of earth, air, wind, fire and water.

Holy gravity! Wali marti has the earth advantage, witness its Boeing hangar-sized selling floors.

Wind is out except during the monsoon. This is one still state.

Fire is illegal (again, thank the buzzkill politicians) and dangerous.

So that leaves water and air.

I mean, that leaves water. All the air has been sucked up by you know whom.

Quick, flood the parking lot. Every day. Leave the hose on, the sound of dribbling water attracts money. The koi are optional.

After that, as a Wal-Mart neighbor, you will have to rely on your wits. (I know, bum up.)

First, your new store must open a funeral subsidiary or at least a modestly appointed crematorium. Talk about Martinizing, even if your name isn’t Martin (see the word “marti” in there, verrrry interesting).

Second, if the Wal-Mart is taller than your store, add a generous helping of Mardi Gras beads across your store’s roof line. The cheap inner glow of plastic reflects tacky back like nothing else. Or, it may bring you new clientele, who knows.

Put an ATM in your own store. Preferably in your molybdenum credit card sector (platinum is so over).

And, as a last resort, three words. Pink plastic flamingoes. It won’t be pretty, I grant you, but you know what you have to do.

Don't let the Fog of Duh get you

2005-03-17T10:56:00.000-08:00

Try to learn something new everyday. Boy, has that idea lumbered into oblivion with the dinosaurs, at least in some circles.

Nowadays some people seem afraid of knowledge, defensive about learning something new—like it’s a damning admission that they didn’t know the thing before they learned it.

Case in point. I was in the store the other day and wanted to use my debit card. I said, “Just make it forty dollars even.”

The clerk, who was new, or at least I had not seen her before, said, “You have to subtract $6.91 from forty and enter that on the screen.”

I know that isn’t true.

I said, “You can do it from your side. Could you ask someone?”

She said no, she couldn’t. She said she didn’t need to know this.

How about finding out about this just for the heck of it? To learn something new? Even something that would help her customers? Nope. Not interested.

The bland look my sister and I call “The Fog of Duh” descended over her otherwise attractive features.

Her willfully ignorant mind had snapped shut with an almost audible click!

Contrast this with a story about the 40 Arizona schools that competed in the Academic Decathalon—and with a show that used to be on when I was younger, “College Bowl.”

These kids lashed into categories such as economics, language, literature, social science, art, music, math and other areas that used to be considered the hallmarks of an educated person.

Like “Jeopardy” contestants on 20 cups of coffee, the limber-brained high schoolers were excited about learning. Not about test-taking (AIMS, the new SAT), but about learning and showing what they learned. They reveled in the sublime pleasure of scratching the itch of curiosity.

These kids will never consider their education to be in the past. You don’t GET an education. You are always getting one.

I heard an interview on NPR the other day with a London taxi driver who reads half a dozen books a week—of every stripe. He spoke excitedly about what he was learning. He had developed the habit of knowledge acquisition.

Like any habit, this one takes about three weeks to develop, psychologists say. Hit the library. Take a course at junior college. Learn a new craft. Go back for a degree. Or just read, read, read.

And for heaven’s sakes, if someone lets you in on something you could learn for your own good or to do your job better, don’t get stubborn.

I keep thinking of a phrase from a weird poem I read once by Russell Edson. “Do I know, do I want to know?”

The answer, almost always, is yes.

Now, where did I put that CD with the Spanish lessons on it? Time for a glug of my own medicine.

Not up to a public weigh-in? Take it easy

2005-02-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

I didn’t even make any New Year’s resolutions, but I feel like a greasespot on the sidewalk of life, anyway.

The publicist for Discovery Health Channel’s National Body Challenge asked me to tell you about their highly public, boot-campy assault on pudge. On their website, you can find approaches that will work for your age group, as well as directions to the nearest public weigh-in.

Wait a hot second. Public weigh-ins? Have these people been tapping into my worst nightmares like some nutty sci-fi movie?

Maybe what I am doing--which is at least keeping me from gaining--is better than nothing.

A friend of mine recently shared her daily intake. Be a food voyeur for a moment. It’s fun. Here is what Nancy recorded.

Breakfast

¾ cup raisin bran with skim milk
1 peach
1 cup decaf with “smidge” of fat-free coffee creamer

Lunch

Seafood salad (1 cup seafood, 2 cups greens)
Lemon vinaigrette dressing (already on, too late!)
White roll, pat of butter
Cappuccino with sweetener

Dinner

Takeout at a neighbor’s—horrible! Would never get it again.

2 oz sliced fakey turkey, yuk
¾ cup mashed potatoes
¼ cup gravy
1 cup canned peas
1 v. small choc chip cookie

Evening Snack

Fat-free chocolate pudding, spritz of canned whipped cream

Molly Kimball, a nutritionist at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, took a look at Nancy’s day and had this to say:

This is 1,450 calories, 190 grams of carbs (52%), 90 grams of protein, and 37 grams of fat.

Nancy could go lower on the calories, maybe to 1,250, if she wants to lose weight (depends on size and age).

She also needs more protein at breakfast. She could try some protein powder in 1% milk on the cereal. Or an egg or slice of Canadian bacon. A splash of real half & half would also be okay.

Lunch was perfect, except for the roll, but sometimes options are limited in restaurants.

Nancy says she sometimes snacks on almonds and pretzels in the afternoon. Almonds are good. Pretzels might as well be white bread. A whole-grain cracker with a slice of cheese would be better.

For dinner, slash the carbs. You don’t need energy that late in the day.

For a snack, why not have real chocolate instead of ersatz pudding? Examples would be 12 peanut M&Ms, a fun-size candy bar, or a square of dark chocolate with a teaspoon of peanut butter.

Real half & half? Chocolate? Butter? Dietitians are not necessarily big meanies!

If you want to shoot for not gaining (and you may even drop a few), concentrate on a few of these:

· Eat what you feel hungry for instead of grazing. See how Nancy’s bad turkey failed her?

· Look at the portion and almost always put half away for another meal. Exception: Veggies.

· Seriously, why not think about trying for five fruits or veggies a day? That new recommendation of Nine-a-Day is just for showoffs.

· Eat oatmeal for breakfast. It really does help lower cholesterol.

· Eat real butter if you want to, though not sticks at a sitting. You’ll dodge those skanky transfats.

· Eat peanut butter. There is evidence it lowers risk of developing diabetes.

· Walk an hour a day. Give your dog a break!

· Or buy a pedometer and try for 5,000 steps a day. The recommended 10,000 steps is almost five miles, which makes me tired thinking of it.

Oh, and toss the scale. Did you know a “size” for women is under 10 lbs? If you go down a size, you’ll know at least you are not gaining.

Not getting diabetes is also a plus.

You are getting a goat for Christmas, well, not you, exactly...

2004-12-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who raises Tennessee fainting goats. When one of these critters gets startled or excited, it falls over. After a few minutes, the creature then scrambles to its feet and ambles off, shooting a “What are you lookin’ at?” glare over its shoulder.

At any rate, this woman got me started down a goatward path.

So when I received a slick catalog from outfit called Heifer International, I was curious enough ignore that blabby “West Wing” guy Bradley Whitford on the cover and read it anyway.

This crew lets you “send” a live animal to someone in another country. No matter how broke you are, someone is always worse off.

The movie stars—those heartless destroyers of public morals—were all over every page of this thing, cuddling baby chicks, smooching up to llamas.

Could it be legit, or would my pittance fall into the hands of some scowling potentate?

My goat friend checked it out with actual agricultural (as opposed to cultural) icons. Yup, Heifer International was on the up and up. In fact, sometimes they send people to teach the recipients of the animals how to raise them. Good group.

I had been feeling for a while that the United States was putting a lot of negativity and violence out in the world. Maybe just one little scrap of niceness would ping into this ocean of gloom.

I decided on a goat, naturally (heifers, rabbits, chickens, llamas, sheep, and other bucolic goodies are also available).

I figure giving a woman in Uganda a goat would be like giving me, a writer, a computer. In other words—pretty neat.

To tell my friends and family they were “getting” a goat share—that a goat was being sent partly in their name
--was tricky.

“Are we still getting a present?” seemed to be the usual response. The gift of improved national karma? (So far this is not flying.)

Anyway, I needed some sort of card. I went to a number of clip art sites on the Internet. Whoa—goats are getting a bad name. Santeria. The devil. What the?

But there also were some cute little guys and a few magnificent horned beauties standing astride mountain tops. Maybe a goat in a Nativity scene? No luck.

In my Internet travels, I also dropped by a site that claims everything on earth is a goat. I really need to drink more.

Finally, I chopped some pictures out of the catalog and called it a card. Hey, I never claimed to be a graphic designer!

I had to write a message. I had to keep it non-political. Should I mention “My Pet Goat”? How the American sheeple were made the goat a few weeks ago? Probably not.

In the end, I basically said part of a goat headed for Africa is in your name.

Let’s hope my friends and family still like me. I may have to head for the department store after all.

If you want to send a flock of chickens to someone who will get good use of them, check out www.heifer.org.

Tell them Goat Girl sent you. Then you are allowed to faint.

I am sick of U&D stories!

2004-11-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

Really? Is being overweight bad for you in some way? The national nannies seem to have discovered that a lot of Americans are fat. Sixty-three percent! Those U&D stories are on the news almost every day. U&D stands for “ugly and doomed.”

Such stories about how we are digging our graves with a fork, though hardly news, are usually illustrated with blobbly shots of overweight people, with no heads, walking down the street.

Some reporters, undoubtedly 25 and lean as whippets, are pretty snarky about it. A USA Today story on the latest weight loss drug started out, “Another antidote to healthy eating has been found…” I would have liked to take that guy and force-feed him some killer Twinkies until he popped like a French goose!

The weight loss industry is raking in billions because they can offer only quick fixes and we have to go back to them for more.

A popular diet tells you to eliminate the largest food group—carbs. Naturally with so many fewer foods to choose from, you lose weight for a while. But when you stop losing, are those pints of heavy cream and marbled steaks really going to be your friend?

The newest fix is surgery, but this is dangerous and you only lose 75% of the amount you are overweight in some cases. Hanging skin can require drastic plastic surgery. You can also “eat through” the surgery, which means gain, even with a stomach the size of a thumb.

Doctors are also urged to tell overweight people to go on a diet. Doctors can become a problem for an overweight person. We are accustomed to “the look” from doctors. This is the look that says, “Well, what do you expect? You’re fat. Whatever is wrong with you, you brought it on yourself.”

I refuse to get weighed in the doctor's office. It irritates the doctor’s staff no end. But do they ever ask me why? Do they ever ask me how obsessed I have gotten with weight? Did they ever ask me if I ever weighed myself excessive numbers of times a day, say 25? Did they ever ask me if gaining a pound had sent me into tears of depression for an entire day? Or whether I had ever spent three hours in the middle of the night doing toe-touches? Did you they once stop to think what a purifying miracle it has been to throw out that scale?

No! Instead I've had doctors x-ray me so they can look at the x-ray a year later and see if I am smaller.

Another doctor threatened not to treat me unless I would get on the scale, even if I had to do it facing away from the numbers (it's amazingly hard to get on a scale that way, even if you don't count the humiliation).

One doctor named my stomach with a cute little name: "You need to get rid of Charley here."

One doctor asked me why I had never been married, was I too fat?

Another wrote a diagnosis of "obesity" when I had urinary infection.

Overweight people know more about how to diet than you ever will, doctor. I have lost more than 50 pounds three times.

One doctor, though openly fat-hostile, told me to walk one hour a day. That was almost 10 years ago. I couldn't think of a good reason not to, so I have done it five days a week since. I didn't lose any weight, but I might be larger without the walks. And I really enjoy them! That doctor did me a favor.

Surprisingly, the best doctor I ever had didn't ignore the situation, either. I liked him and responded to him because he understood the “problem” and struggled with it himself. He understood that most overweight people have something different going on than thin people.

We would never “forget to eat” like they do; our brain invariably reminds us.

We never feel full until the food is gone. We have no little tickler that says "stop eating," like the one that signals you don't need another sip of water.

We don't dodge or give up on exercise programs because we are stupid or lazy. It's because our bodies are telling us, "You are too heavy to exercise."

We crave more food because we have more mass to sustain.

When thin people get depressed or sad (serotonin in flux), the weight falls off them. Have you noticed that? They joke about their "divorce diets."

When overweight people face a life crisis, the impulse is to eat. There is something different going on biochemically.

Which brings me to a couple of little questions I have. First, I wrote an article for CBS HealthWatch once on a virus that might be causing obesity. Could it be we are catching it?

And secondly, if exercise is so healthy for the heart because it strains it, how come overweight people are at more risk for heart disease—we are straining our hearts the whole time.

All I know is to lose weight, I need to eat 700 calories a day and no more. My body laughs at totals higher than 700. “Can I keep you fat on this amount? Watch me!”

My body is such a bitch.

Is the customer always wrong these days?

2004-10-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

Didn’t someone once ask of baseball, “Can anyone here play this game?” That’s how I feel about sales clerks, call center people, and doctors’ office nurses who flunked out of customer service school.

Let me state this simply (like the kindergartner I am often treated as). Your job in dealing with customers is to get them to give you money. People who feel awkward or abused don’t want to give your company money.

Stern lecturing of the customer (“Ma’am, ma’am…”), dropping of calls (dee-dee-dee, the number you have dialed), the absolute refusal to learn a new thing, honor a valid coupon, or even smile once in awhile may keep people from giving you money. See? Those are bad!

Item: I am seeking a refill on a house brand of cologne sold only at Walgreens. The assistant manager goes to check in back and is almost gleeful about informing me that it was discontinued. She has a huge, mean grin—“Sorry, can’t help ya.” Then I ask to redeem a full-price coupon ($20). She turns to a young man she is training and says, “Now we check her driver’s license. She may have stolen this from someone’s mailbox.” I said, “I am not giving you my license.” With a slow-motion weariness that is terrible to see in a young person, she signs the coupon herself. When I complain to the manager the next day, he is puzzled. “It’s not her money,” he remarks.

Item: Big lines at Target. I mention it. The clerk behind the customer service desk says, “I can take care of you over here.” You go over there, then the clerk says, “Wait—that line on the end has only two people, go there.” Or how about this? I leave the item on the counter and go to a whole different store.

Item: We bring a coupon good for $10 off two entrees to a nearby joint. Ooops—sandwiches are not entrees. Well, only one of us wanted a sandwich, a sandwich is not an appetizer or side dish, so I am thinking it’s an entrée. Nope. We leave—taking with us the additional $30 they probably would have gotten. (We also complained to the Better Business Bureau, which came back for a bunch of information that should have been requested at the outset. They even asked us to retype our complaint. Why, oh why?)

Item: My mother had a medical test and I was told the specimen was lost. When it came time to bill me, miraculously, they had found it. This is more than a month later. I never got results—so I am not paying. Their solution? “Oh, just send it to the insurance company—you won’t have to pay.” I think not. No results, no money.

Item: Clerks at Fry’s Food Store have been told to ask us whether we have anything on the bottom of the cart that we intend to take without paying. Sorry, I am not planning to steal from you today--and thanks for asking. We have taken this to the top management in the area. We were surprised to learn that this accusation is for our convenience. I guess it will keep us from the inconvenience of being arrested.

Item: Health insurance rates are going up—but what will the new rate be? I call the number for additional information. The office listed on the brochure, interestingly, has nothing to do with the rates and didn’t even know about the mailing. I try another number on the flyer—she gives me an 800 number that is disconnected. I get out the handbook and start dialing again. An hour and six minutes later, I learn the increase will be $8. Cost in terms of my blood pressure—probably 30 days of life.

I know I sound like a big rhymes-with-witch, but I have my own business and people I have to please. When I go out to purchase an item, eat a meal or consult a physician, I don’t want to see what my sister and I call the “Fog of Duh” descend over your face when I ask something.

I just want to see a smile and your hand taking my money. Or hear your computer keys rattling madly to solve my problem.

How private are your medical records--really?

2004-10-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

We’ve all experienced the waiting room stress test. We go to the doctor and the first thing the nurse does is hand us the dreaded clipboard. In addition to the scary medical questionnaire is the sheaf of HIPAA privacy promises. There is even a short piece of paper to show you got the long piece of paper. You need to sign both.

It all seems so airtight and official, but you know what I think every time I get this wad of dead trees? I think, “Oh, yeah? If this is so great, how come Kobe Bryant’s antagonist has had her psychiatric and gynecological records splattered all over the known universe? How come I saw an entire show about Michael Jackson’s nose operations? In that one, his surgeon’s partner was quite the Chatty Cathy.

HIPAA, in charming Washingtonese, stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It started out to allow people to carry over insurance when they lost their jobs. This was the portability part.

Soon, though, HIPAA morphed into a special interest vehicle for insurers and providers, not humble little insureds like us. The first stop of these hearties in Congress was to try to get the hundreds of different forms standardized to help doctors, hospitals, labs, and pharmacies get their money more easily. Basically, Congress said, “Okay, we will let you use the web to get payment, but if you are going to be putting people’s medical information on the web, you need to protect their privacy better.”

In April of last year, the new rules went into effect for health plans and providers, with the smaller ones getting an extra year to comply. As of this last April, they, too, are subject. Thus--the clipboard containing the “Notice of Privacy Practices.”

You can’t call a hospital anymore and find out how someone is; they are not allowed to say. Doctors are not supposed to leave my chart lying around the office with my name on it and a note saying, “Star’s HIV test results came.”

Most doctors are pretty careful because the law provides both civil and criminal penalties. I recently called to change my mother’s primary physician and had to fax all my powers of attorney before they would do it (eight years ago, they took my word for it).

When the regulations first went into effect, some pharmacists started issuing numbers to prevent having to say, “Star Lawrence, your pills are ready.” Anyone in the vicinity would know who that woman sitting there waiting was. One customer said, “If I have to take a number, this better be a bakery and I better be getting doughnuts.” This approach was abandoned. Many pharmacists, though, have private rooms set aside for consultation.

Doctors can no longer sell a list of people with a certain diagnosis to drug companies (a friend of mine was besieged from the second she got her diagnosis of breast cancer—she felt like changing her name to get away from companies, well meaning and otherwise). However, doctors can still accept money from drug companies to write to you themselves and recommend certain treatments.

Tracy Field, M.S., J.D., a lawyer with Annall Golden Gregory, LLP, in Atlanta, says even though she is covered by lawyer-client privilege, she has to sign a special form to even look at a chart to help a hospital get payment that was denied by a health plan.

Sound kind of like ‘crats on ‘roids? Well, the new system does have one advantage. The new regulations allow you to request to see your own records. You can see if your doctor has labeled you a PITA (hint: not the bread) or see what could be wrong with you that no one has told you.

Doctors or hospitals can charge a reasonable copying or postage fee but cannot tack on a nuisance fee of any kind. You can also request the record be changed.

Also on the good news side, if you are allergic to clipboards, you don’t have to sign. The doctor can still see you, although he or she does not have to.

Despite all this, what if the doctor gossips on the golf course about whether you are healthy enough to be on the city council or your doctor’s nurse tells someone at your child’s school that you have cancer? Even those with mystical HIPAA powers cannot reverse human nature. This can still happen. The difference now, according to Field, is that you can file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in Washington. “There are remedies now that were not present before,” she says. State laws can also provide even greater protections.

What can you do if rumors of your pregnancy, STD, or demise start to emanate from the inner sanctum of your doctor’s office? I guess you could tell all your friends: “Dr. X’s office leaks like the State Department during a hurricane.” Michael Jackson may be able to afford a civil suit, but most of us must do what we can.

Sssh—don’t tell.

If you have a parent in assisted care, heads up!

2004-10-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

Part 1:

“Assisted Living” sounds so soothing

Mom or Dad forgets to pay the bills or pays them twice. The fender-benders become a monthly event. The fire department screams up to your parents’ to douse burners left on. These can be signs that an aging parent needs more attention.

In our family, the wakeup call was that our widowed Mom out in Leisure World was opening charge accounts for a cabdriver and paying for his gold chains and watches.

The urge on the part of the child is to protect the parent’s privacy and independence, yet there may come a time when this is no longer a responsible option. If your parent is physically healthy, you may decide on “assisted living,” a relatively new form of senior housing that supposedly allows the residents to live with their own furniture in familiar surroundings and be relieved of cooking or keeping track of medications.

This is not an apartment, not a nursing home. It’s a hybrid. Like many hybrids, assisted care can take on some weird characteristics—such as suddenly obeying the wishes of the very person who has been judged incapable of providing guidance or going the other direction and becoming a locked-down jail where the resident has zero say. The latter is especially true of Alzheimer’s units (the charmingly euphemistic “memory units”), where the residents apparently put up little resistance and provide their relatives scant feedback.

It’s up to you, the relative, to obtain that feedback for yourself.

First, you read the brochures. What the assisted care facility will do, they say, is provide meals, housekeeping, and control and administration of medications. A whole day of gentle diversions, such as ice-cream socials, bingo, and chair exercises can also be a selling point.

Make no mistake (like we did). Assisted living is promising medical care and supervision, not just fun and games. The problem, according to Jim Clark, president of East Valley Fiduciary Services (480-985-0936), who often provides guardianship for older people, is that many of these facilities do not pay off on this promise.

“I see assisted care centers,” he says, “as more a retirement home with minimal services for people with more needs. They are for people who sell their houses and want someone else to cook meals and take them to the shopping center. These places promise to monitor every few hours, but don’t always do that.”

No joke. In the first center Mom was in, she laid on the floor for at least 90 minutes before someone summoned help. Then, because the staff was poorly trained and supervised, someone told the paramedics Mom was unconscious. Apparently, she never had been unconscious. Nevertheless, when my sister and I met her in the ER, we pushed hard for her to be hospitalized to find the cause of her “unconsciousness.” This led to four days of catherized hell for this uncomprehending, 86-year-old woman, culminating in her being put in restraints to keep her from pulling out the uncomfortable tubes.

When we got her back to the center, apparently the “assistance” they were providing did not include canceling prescriptions her doctor discontinued—or administering her the new ones he did want her to have. One medication was mislabeled with another person’s name and Mom never got it.

Apparently, the minute a medical problem presents itself, some of these centers revert to being nifty hobby or soda shops.

Time to go! But where should we take her? She did not want to live with us—she wanted her own space and her own life.

Clark recommends asking friends for recommendations. I still think this is a good idea, but in our case, the recommendation of two trusted friends was a disaster. The center we selected was another horror show.

In part two, I will tell you what happened and how you can evaluate an assisted care center and keep it honest.

Part 2:

Scary experience teaches lessons on selecting assisted care

In part one of this two-parter, I talked about how my mother’s assisted care center of six years’ standing let her down when she actually needed medical help. This set my sister and me on a quest for new digs for Mom.

Jim Clark, president of East Valley Fiduciary Services, has advice on evaluating such centers. These are not nursing homes, remember. Although they are state and nationally accredited, they are held to less strict standards than nursing homes and thus bear more intensive scrutiny. That scrutiny has to come from you!

As I said in part one of this column, we solicited recommendations from friends; two touted the second place we selected. I have to say in retrospect, though, that we should have shopped more.

You need to walk in and get a feel. Clark recommends the sniff test for your first visit. “If the place smells, don’t waste your time.” He also puts great stock in the atmosphere. “Are the residents talking to the staff? Does the staff talk to the residents, and maybe put an arm around them from time to time? Do they call the residents by name?”

Clark also says if the staff members are obese, his decades in long-term care have taught him they will not jump up and help or check people as readily. To this atmosphere check, I would add this: Do you hear anyone laughing? Even one giggle or guffaw?

At Mom’s second place, we did the requisite question-asking. “Find out what services they provide,” Clark says. “Housekeeping, laundry, meal service, hairdresser.” Sometimes, he says, the care is tiered—if your parent needs more frequent medication or blood pressure checks or help dressing or toileting, it costs more (others are flat rate). Sometimes, a doctor comes into the center—you may have to change your loved one’s care plan to accommodate this.

Ask for a copy of the state report on the center; discuss any deficiencies with the director of the center (not the marketing flak). You will be asked to have the resident’s doctor fill out a form—ask whether the staff will be contacting the doctor without your knowledge (your relative could end up getting medications or treatments you know nothing about). What is the staff-to-resident ratio? “Both night and day,” cautions Clark. “Sometimes these places go dead after 7:00 p.m.” (Two staffers to 16 residents seems pretty standard, at least in daytime.)

Oh, and you can find out about recreational activities, although these are usually the first thing they mention—and the last thing that counts in an emergency.

You can also ask for references. We thought we had them. But the reality was quite different from the buildup. We visited daily. Mom was often in the same clothes from the day before. The bed would be unmade at 11:00 a.m. She may not have taken a shower in two weeks—we realized she didn’t know how to work it. We also learned Mom had been allowed to wander outside in the heat (this was a locked unit). Residents often came up to us in the hall and asked us to get them help.

But most disturbing—an agitated man, also suffering from some form of dementia, wandered in and out of Mom’s room and used her bathroom, even while we were visiting. We asked repeatedly that he be kept out. In return we got sullen resistance. They offered, instead, to lock our mother in her room. For some reason, this guy’s money was talking and hers wasn’t.

The kicker was the day we found her confused with blood on her robe and sheets. Had she been “interfered with”? We thought it was a possibility. We reported it to Adult Protective Services (877-767-2385) and they reported it to the Health Department (602-364-2639). The man is still there. Mom is not.

We visited some more places. One was dark and uninviting (although “women only,” which was by then a selling point). A second was lively and fun—but a single room was $2,000 more a month than she was paying. (These places normally cost about $3,000 a month.)

Eventually, we decided the big institutions weren’t cutting it and hired a referral service (Safe Choices, 602-222-9888) to show us some private group homes for the demented. Mom is now in a very nice single-family home, with a spacious room and two hovering caregivers. Eventually, four residents will share the sumptuous digs. They spoil her! With regular nutrition, she is perky and even seems less forgetful. What a godsend.

We still visit almost daily. Mom is going to get sick of us! But this can’t be a bad thing.

If you have a parent in assisted care, much less a nursing home, you need to visit, to question, to advocate! Run over there today. So what if you are unpopular? So what if the staff hates to see you coming? They are safeguarding something so precious almost any steps you take or things you say are justified. You don’t have to be abrasive about it. I call it using my “HMO voice.” Calm, insistent, and yes, entitled. You are entitled to services they promise—and to the best for your parent.

If we're gaming the system, is health care fun?

2004-10-07T13:45:00.000-07:00

When I was about 15, my father, a neurologist and psychiatrist in St. Louis, went to London for a month to study “the evils of socialized medicine.” That’s what they called single payer health care in those days (and Sean Hannity probably still does). I don’t remember much about Dad’s trip except that he said he saw a strange red marking up the back of people he examined—from backing up to heaters, he learned. This was more of a comment on the evils of not having central heating, than the evils of socialized medicine. But I remember—he was afraid, afraid the government would move in and tell him how to practice. Eventually, of course, that happened.

Jump ahead 45 years. My friend Tim, husband, father of a toddler, is cleaning guns after target shooting with a pal, and the unthinkable happens. His friend’s .357 discharges blasting the outside of Tim’s left hand and breaking at least two bones. Well, breaking. . .sort of disintegrating them. I saw the x-rays—two bones are nowhere near meeting and look to be about half an inch apart. There is a white space.

At the Emergency Department, they call for a hand surgeon. He takes a peek and says to Tim: “Do you have $30,000?”

Despite any visions of Hippocrates you may have dancing through your head, hospitals do not really have to treat you much if you don’t have insurance or a suitcase of green. For a mere $1,800, they stitch the bullet hole over the broken bones and send Tim on his way.

After a painful weekend in which the pain meds begin to lose their grip, Tim goes to the hand surgeon’s office. The guy says, “Oh, did I say $30,000? It should be $80,000. Come back when you can get on welfare.”

Tim doesn’t want to get fired and get on welfare, which out here in Arizona is called AHCCCS (access, get the joke?). He wants to cut a payment plan for the amount the doctor will actually get from AHCCCS—maybe $10,000? (You really get hosed if you buy surgery retail, as the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out in an excellent series.) He even offers to do a whole new kitchen for the doctor—that is what Tim does, custom construction, which is quite difficult to perform one-handed.

Of course, a payment plan or doing a kitchen is a laughable suggestion.

Now, Tim sits home, no income, waiting for his date with the bureaucrats some three weeks hence. His hand hurts. He can’t work. Will he be able to stay in his house?

On the other hand (sorry), should this physician go out of his way for this guy? He can’t get paid retroactively when AHCCCS cuts in. He may not need a new kitchen and he wouldn’t want to set a precedent.

This is our health care system as the new century opens. The then-brilliant idea of recruiting labor after World War II by offering health insurance has seen its day. People don’t work for IBM for 40 years anymore. They move. They change jobs. They have kids with asthma and leukemia and other chronic health problems. The insurance company CEO’s think they are worth millions a year for their valuable services. And the government lets the companies (see why the CEO’s are brilliant?) turn people down for coverage if they have been sick or look like they might have a problem in the future. Kaiser recently did a study in which companies nixed a guy who had had knee surgery years before. Knee surgery! Cancer or diabetes—forget it.

We (not Iraq, though it would be nice for them, too) need single payer. Not the maddeningly complex thing Hillary Clinton dreamed up with buying cooperatives or whatever it was, but an administration that keeps records and pays a negotiated sum to doctors and hospitals for services. Despite horror stories you hear about Canadians waiting six months for elective surgery, they overwhelmingly say “Hell, no!” when asked if they’d like to trade systems.

Estimates run as high as 35% for administrative services under the present “system,” if you can even call it that. More than 43 million Americans are not even participating, by choice, necessity, or caveat. Our politicians are barely aware of some aspects. (In one forum, Joe Lieberman asked what catastrophic coverage was. He probably thought it was health insurance you could use after an earthquake or tornado—but it means a barebones policy to cover part of a catastrophic illness or hospitalization, but not routine care.)

If you have health insurance through your job, you probably think going to the doctor costs $20. You may never give it another thought. But if you lose that job, the government mandated, 18-month continuation of your coverage called COBRA may magically become $900 a month and there is nothing you can do about it. Take it or leave it.

Tim’s little son is covered (the ‘crats have done that much, though not all parents know kids are covered). He was not—as a construction worker getting a percentage of the kitchens he did, he couldn’t handle the nut.

Joe Lieberman says, “The biggest problem with insurance is young people gaming the system and not buying insurance hoping they won’t get sick.”. Yeah, gaming the system. If this is a game, it’s not much fun—and everyone is losing.

Copyright 2003 Star Lawrence

Time Zone Babies

2004-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

Time Zone Babies

Sometimes I go to bed when it's still light out. All my shows are over by 10 p.m. I moved from Washington, DC to Phoenix eight years ago. But little did I know I also regressed in the family known as this country and became a teenager again.

People on the East Coast are the grown-ups. They get to stay up late. They drink dry martinis. They wear suits and look sharp like Stone Phillips or John Roberts. They talk politics and play bridge. They go to private clubs based on the university they attended. They drive Lexi and Mercedeses. They have old boy and girl networks. They can play the stock market in real time. They have Harvard, the Federal Reserve, and Congress in their zone. East Coast people understand irony and eat caviar.

Midwestern people are the energetic 20-somethings of the national family. Only an hour out of the loop, they are can-do and optimistic. They like beer, but will sip a Cosmo on occasion. Or eat a corn dog. They make things and grow things. They like to dance. They will wear a suit if the occasion calls for it, but it won't be
from Brooks. They take cruises. They drive American cars from the Land of Studebaker and are proud of it. They like to laugh and go ahead and do it, instead of saying, "Now that's funny."

People in the Mountain Time Zone are the teens, two hours away from parental control from the East Coast. They are either electronic geniuses or jocks. They like to throw Frisbees, get tans, hike, and drive around ceaselessly in thyroid-case trucks heaving with hydros. They play video games and pound in the beer. The women attend cookware parties and gossip on the phone about who likes whom. Mountain Zone people hang outside a lot and wear jeans, even to church. They could survive in a mall for a week.

The West Coast. Now we're talking three hours away from ye old parents. Yet, these are the babies of the family. In fact, they call each other "babe." Disneyland? The beach? The movie biz? Inline skates? Thongs? Zima? If George Will were near enough to wield effective parental authority, would these things exist? West Coast people wear tiny little outfits. By the time they are getting dressed in the morning, everyone else is at work -- there is no one to make them wear socks, so they don't. They drive toys like Porsches and dune buggies and cruise freeways laid out like an awesome video game. They refuse to go to bed on time and therefore became dotcom bazillionaires. Now they just stay up late staring at their vaulted ceilings.

But when something goes wrong, a terrorist attack, a hurricane, a tornado, a spree killing, a bomb, where do the kids turn? Why, to a grown-up, of course. Who else do you ask for comfort, protection, and money? And like any faintly condescending, but indulgent parent, the East Coast deigns to assist. But there is always that slight smile and that irritating little head wag. You kids. What will you come up with next?

Copyright 2001 Star Lawrence

The household Axis of Evil

2004-10-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

Agreed, murder is bad, but I hope we can amend the circles of hell or at least set aside a little alcove for the inventor of the string trimmer. What is THIS all about? Invent the springiest cord possible, though it will sublime into its basic molecules in seconds. Wrap it around a tacky little spool, snap it into a tight fitting case, even though the cord will still splay everywhere. Then, go outside in 110-degree heat, insert the powercord for the first of 50 or so insertions as it will slip out on every other pass. Then turn the thing on and slash through a couple of weeds before hearing a banshee-like scream and sniffing burning brimstone as the cord wraps around underneath the capsule (helpfully notched so you can’t get it out).

This had to be invented by a guy. Women would have used a laser and worn goggles.

Here’s another charming scenario. You’re doubled over with stomach pains and grab for an Imodium. It has been cunningly reduced to the size of a grain of rice and encased in the toughest plastic imaginable, left over no doubt from the missile silos of yore. This is called flexible packaging. I once wrote the annual report for the Flexible Packaging Association and when we started throwing around ideas for design of the cover, I said, “How about a woman chewing her way into a package?” No one smiled.

This is anti-diarrhea medicine, not cyanide. And it isn’t being stored in a daycare center. A bottle, people!

Speaking of packaging: twist-ties. One of the best scenes in “Mad About You” was Jamie carefully extracting an English muffin and then retwisting the tie, twirling the bag slowly and thoughtfully to make sure she got it right. Then Paul comes in and rips open the plastic and grabs out a muffin. I substitute a snapper clothespin for every twist tie. It has probably added 10 years to my life (though look how I am spending it, eyeroll).

Now this seemed like a good idea: a mobile vet. I don’t drive and it was too hot to take my sick cat to the walking-distance vet. The man showed up in his doc smock. So far so good. Then in addition to tending to my cat, he got on the subject of my unruly dog. “Do you want him to stop jumping on people?” he asked—peering into my eyes to make sure I wasn’t some neurotic nut who scorned Stepford animals. “Uh, I guess,” was my tentative reply. “Get some Binaca and spray it in his face,” he suggested. But wouldn’t that hurt his eyes? “He won’t jump up anymore,” he said firmly. I won’t even tell you what he recommended for my dog’s barking. Suffice it to say, I would have to move.

As he left, the traveling vet said, “I can see you’re soft-hearted.” Yes, and my stomach hurts, too, my weeds are in charge, I never eat English muffins anymore, and my dog jumps up on everyone.

But it’s all good, as they say. I hate that expression. It’s not all good. Iraq, for starters.

Will your product's name smell as sweet?

2004-10-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

I wish I had been around in the Days of the Caves, because so many more things needed naming then than now. "Tree," "Rock," "Aieee, Sabertooth!" Many cultures believe that by learning or speaking the name of an item you can both impart power to it and rob it of its essence. Isn't your name an important aspect of you? Well, that's no less true of the products you are selling.

The Internet has really changed the Name Game. Every word in the dictionary has been claimed and purchased. To use a name, you need to buy it from someone. But you also could coin one. Flooz.com. Or take one that's completely unlikely to be used for a serious purpose: Yahoo.com.

I name for a major branding company in New York. They give me a creative brief before I start. Go ahead, write one for your company or product. If it's a company name, they describe the mission, all the divisions, the customer. And, most importantly, the "culture." Serious, old-line, conservative? Happening, zany, light-hearted?

If it's a product, they will provide a few notes on the uses, how it differs from competitors, the major features. And, again most importantly, they will provide a list of words describing the customer or feeling the product should engender in the buyer: "very cool," "icebergs, "rushing water," "cleansing." Can you guess? Toothpaste.

I take it from there. I won't reveal my secret techniques, but most of them involve the standard creative process--input project into brain and wait for output. I carry a pad everywhere for a few days, free associate, and then look through source material (say a computer magazine for a software name) and toss around memes (life is not long enough to describe those here) and concept fragments. A name goes on the list, I roll it around on tongue and brain, and sometimes--"Oh, ick"--I hit the delete key.

I do a list of about 300 names or 150 taglines. The client chooses. They never like the ones I do. And that's the name of that tune.