Wildlife update: Put up a bird feeder for the finches (those things know how to sing!) and got some kind of small bird of prey as well. I think it was a peregrine falcon (common in the city) but my brother swears there's no chance. Also, earlier this week while I was watering, I flushed out an alligator lizard friend! Missing a tail, this one was, and I think he might have been the one who was around last year, although I could have sworn I found that one's skeleton under the sage last winter. Maybe it this is that one's interdimensional twin, who has traveled back through time and space? Suffice to say, delighted to have him, vendetta and all...

Garden photos! Took advantage of today's beautiful weather to snap a few digital-camera shots of the garden and posted my very first Flickr stream. Check it out!

You know what I'm doing right now? I am FREAKING out. Why?! I found a salamander in my yard. EEEEEEEeeee! This is coolest thing since the mouse and the lizard before that. I really do have to start marking these things down. Googling reveals it is a garden slender salamander, and it probably likes the brush pile and all this rain we're having, not to mention my many slugs. I am so happy. Sigh. This is such a wonderful reinforcement of all the stuff you read in books about how if you don't eff with the environment too much it will balance itself out. I've been reading about natural slug control lately, and I keep sighing deeply when I get to the part where it says if you don't run them off "lizards and salamanders and frogs" will eat them. And I'm always like, "Where am I going to get a frog?!" Whoda thunk I could find a salamander in Culver City. Anyway, this is making me so damn excited. Off to kill more slugs now, but not too many. Gotta leave some for my new friend Rusty...

Today I realized that Jack from Lost is actually Duck Dodgers in the 24-1/2th century.

The cops love my corner of the universe. We live at the intersection of the 405 and the 90, so I'm always hearing cops on their loudspeakers telling speeders to pull onto the shoulder. There's something about that turn onto the 90 West that makes it a great speed trap. And slightly more alarmingly, about once every two months, one of those police helicopters, equipped with a blinding NightSun (30 million candlepower) floodlight, circles my neighborhood for about half an hour. I'm never sure why. Maybe we need keeping an eye on, maybe it's because the only "projects" in West L.A. are down the street, who knows, but it's always at half-past midnight and it's always noisy as hell. I like cops on general principle, but could they please keep it down?!

TO: United States Postal Service
RE: Columbus Day

Some Spanish dude's violation of the Prime Directive is not a good enough reason for me to not get my magazines.

Thanks.

Love,
~j

I have one of these beauties living on my parsley right now. I'm as proud as if I gave birth to her myself! She's a Black Swallowtail and she's going to be beautiful when she grows up!

Two excitements in the garden today: A yellow swallowtail, which Wikipedia tells me is one of the largest butterflies on Earth (fo sho), and, of all things, a peregrine falcon! Got up for breakfast (okay, it was noon, bear with me) and it was just sitting on the lawn next to the melon patch. Spotted me instantly and flew away a second after that (smarter than your average sparrow apparently), but almost as astonishing as finding a bobcat in the backyard. No idea what it was doing there. I half expected to see a partially gnawed prey carcass left behind, but there was nothing. I've seen the neighborhood and cheered them on--they upset the crows terribly, but this was an unexpected gift.

Completely kick-ass thing I did today:

Climbed a chain link fence (slight setback when almost ripped my finger off when my rings got caught on the top of the fence, but unhitched myself in time and escaped with just a few scrapes) and gathered wild (technically feral, but let's say wild) peachy-looking apricots from a tree that grows in one of those miserable public-managed nooks by the side of the road. This one is immediately to the south of the 90 freeway as it comes off of the 405. And let's just split the difference and call them peachcots, as they seem a bit small for peaches and they tasted particularly apricoty, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

The fruit were absolutely filthy from growing up down by the roadside, with no one to spray them down and with cars driving by all the time, but the tree was laden with lovely yellow...peachcots, and it seemed a terrible shame to leave them all there just looking pretty. So, I collected a bag full of them, and then felt silly when I discovered all that cool fence-jumping was unnecessary, as there's a hill and concrete wall that offer a much safer path for entrance and egress. Jumping up there next time will be the only (small) challenge--might need a stepstool, but 100 times easier than fence climbing.

Took home my bag of fruit, scrubbed them all fiercely with soap, water and love, cut the sketchy parts off of the more suspect peachcots and chopped up the rest. Then put them all in my beloved Griswold cast-iron skillet (.99 at Salvation Army thank you very much), combined the fruit with melted butter, white sugar and brown sugar, covered it up with a quick cobbler topping from Mark Bittman's invaluable How to Cook Everything, put it in the oven for 30 minutes with a final five under the broiler for browning, and actually convinced my very finicky, cobbler-hating husband to eat fruit I found by the side of the road and declare the whole thing "really good!"

Anyway, yay. The Fallen Fruit folks have another satisfied customer.

Damn. Hungry again. Off to cobble...

In the garden this week:
* A yellow crab spider lying in wait on one of the blanket flowers. Apparently crab spiders can change color to blend in with their surroundings--all the better to surprise prey with, my dear. Crab spiders are so called because hold their four front legs (two on each side) apart so they look just like crabs.
* Two tiny bees, also on the blanket flower. I think they may be alfalfa bees, but I've come to doubt that identification a little. I usually only see one at a time so I was proud to have gathered two.
* My first halictid bee--they have lovely iridescent green backs. Speaking of iridescent green, I'm truly in love with green fruit beetles. They're huge, they're slow, they sound like B-12 bombers. They're about the size of my thumb, if not bigger, and they're always a pleasure to see or hear. Apparently they're attracted to rotting fruit (their food source), so they're common around compost piles.
* The regular bees have been doing good work pollinating the watermelon vines. Closed up shop on most of the other vegetables, just because everything was so overgrown and messy. Will get raised beds going soon and restart.
* The comfrey I planted was mowed down in today's sprinkler-related garden cleanup. We'll see if it's really as sturdy as it's said to be or if it dies back.
* Have to remember to order another raspberry vine. Realized I've had the blackberry vines going for almost a year, so we're coming up upon the year of fruit. Very exciting. The raspberries have been a rousing success; eat them out of hand just standing there in the yard--a great pleasure.
* Going to plant fruit trees in the front yard, and maybe an orange tree in the backyard. I love the motto of SurviveLA...if it needs water, you better be able to eat it. The wildflowers I've planted are all pretty water-wise, and everything else is more or less edible, so I'm feeling good about the garden.
* Crazy front yard plan of the moment is to turn the whole thing into a lavender field (plus fruit trees) (and maybe sage). Again, I just worry about the spot under the damn carob tree. Hmmm...I wonder if I good landscape architect could figure out what to do with that. Maybe it just needs to be a fountain or a sitting area or something...
* We need new side gates. Aiming for wood in hopes that it's tasteful, more opaque and less ghetto fabulous than our current metal monstrosities.
* Bought three all-purpose five-gallon buckets at Home Depot. If I have time I will drop them off at the local Peet's Coffee to collect their leftover grounds. Among other things, lifting five gallon buckets of coffee grounds is a good resistance training exercise. Also, lots of compostable material resulted from today's cleanup, and the coffee grounds always get the earthworms doing their part. Might actually need more browns for once...
* For honey bees, African blue basil flowers appear to be the functional equivalent of crack.

POST #1


> Okay ladies...I am looking for a rockstar AGENT ASSISTANT/TRAINEE for
> an opening at our company in MP Talent Dept. The catch? I need a
> GUY, or a girl who literally acts like one. I know, right?
>
> Seriously...if you know of a GUY at another agency or management
> firm, or currently looking for an assistant position, please refer
> him to me after they've reviewed the following job responsibilities:
>
> College Degree Required
> Long Hours
> Willing to perform minimal Personal Errands
> LOTS of Scheduling
> Skilled Microsoft Office, Outlook, Adobe, Final Draft, Windows
> EXCELLENT Communication, Grammar, and Writing Abilities (NO ROOM FOR
> ERROR)
> MUST be discrete and confidential
> Ability to perform WELL shadowing & under pressure
> Wants & has what it takes to become an Agent
>
> ***AND MOST IMPORTANT***
> This is not for the career-assistant; it is NOT about completing a
> series of daily tasks. The right person needs to be able to
> understand the BIGGER PICTURE of representation.
>
> I NEED RESUMES ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> Thanks for your help!
> ~Kristen
>


POST #2

That certainly promotes female leadership within the entertainment industry.
(What does "literally act like a guy" mean? Piss standing up?)

I know you're following a specific mandate, but it's a fascinating
specification, especially for a network of ladies working hard to make
their gender a non-issue.




POST #3 (me)


Memo from the Desk of Agent Bob:

To be my assistant you must be a guy because...

1. You must never, ever cry when I screech at you hysterically.

2. You must not blink at my coarse language, and chicks blink sometimes, and I like to say stuff like "If you think I'm going to bend over and let you fuck me up the ass with a two-by-four, you're wrong (asshole)." It makes me feel like I'm a barbarian, and barbarians are universally understood to be strong and in control.

3. You must not have any pre-existing self-esteem issues, because I manipulate your self-doubt and insecurities to get what I want from you and others. If you're already half-gone on self-regard and you come work for me, you're gonna be suicidal inside a week, and assistants throwing themselves off the roof is bad for business. When in distress, chicks hurt themselves, guys hurt others. I only understand the latter.
You must know to never exhibit empathy, sympathy or compassion, because those are all terrible weaknesses in this, our business of telling stories about the human condition.

4. You must not be built like Jessica Rabbit, Jennifer Lopez or even Jill in business affairs, because I can't afford another sexual-harassment settlement. Hot chicks make my dick come out of my boxers all by itself. What can I say, I can't help it...

5. You must remind me of me. (Chicks remind me of my three ex-wives and my mother, none of whom like me very much.)

Pathologically yours,
Bobby

This is my girl.

THANK YOU! I mean, for Christ's sake, all you citified spoiled brats act like tap water is raw sewage. Man up and drink it! It's free, clean and perfectly genteel. Don't make me smack a bitch up.

E! Online Clip Reel:

• WWK: Polygamist Copycatting Exposed! Big Love Totally Rips Off Girls Next Door!
  
• 
  WWK: Just the Facts, Ma'am: The Truth About the Rumors Concerning the Sopranos Finale
  
• WWK: Is Studio 60 Really Over? Bradley Whitford Breaks the "News"
  
• WWK: Your Summer TV Bible: What to Watch—and What to Avoid Like the Plague (w/KG&KV)
  
• WWK: Will CBS Rebuild Jericho? Get the Scoop on the Fan Fave's Future!
  
• 
  The Hum: Vive la Résistance!
  

Tonight in the garden: Baby crickets! Adorable, no larger than ants, doing figure eights on the back porch, waggling their antlers--no, antennae--to and fro.

Also, the first real snail in a several weeks. And the first tawny slug I've seen in a while, perched atop the hay-covered compost pile in the open yard. Both were doing important work: The snail was devouring a dying nasturium, and the slug would have contributed to the decomposition process, but I can't count on them to stay with these assignments. Tomorrow night they'd discover the beanlings, or the basil, or the Swiss chard which is due to sprout any minute now. So into the deadly vinegar bath.

I hope that if/when I get chickens (to be named Ruby and Hallah, and addressed collectively as chookchooks), that they enjoy the taste of pickled mollusks. Good protein all around, and good calcium in the shells, if they can stand the taste of the vinegar...In the meantime, they get poured onto the weeds embedded the concrete porch.

God I love my garden in the summer. Things I learned this weekend:

1. Bags of steer manure are only .88 at Home Depot.
2. Earthworms don't like steer manure very much. Coffee grounds it is.
3. The Peet's near my house segregates the coffee grounds into tear-proof bags and puts them in an easily accessibly dumpster. I can reach inside said dumpster if I start with the stepstool I keep in my car.
4. Determinate tomatoes are annoying.
5. Indeterminate tomato vines need more support than they get from wussy galvanized metal tomato cages from Home Depot.
6. I can make salsa entirely from my garden except for the onions.
7. Roasted peppers and tomatoes and onions smell like fajitas.
8. Roasted basil, tomatoes and parm is really good.
9. Raspberries turn red waaaay too slow.
10. The ground below where the compost bin used to be really is magical. The beans I've planted elsewhere in the garden either don't sprout, or get eaten by cutworms and slugs before they're two inches tall. The beans I planted where the compost bin used to be grew two inches tall almost overnight, and they don't have so much as a bite taken out of them. They are superbeans! Thank you compost.
11. I think I can make "firewood" out of dried bird of paradise cuttings.

"War is young men killing other young men they do not know on the orders of old men who know one another too well."

My Take on Lost's "Exposé"

I'm usually easy for this show like a drunk college girl with low self-esteem, but I'm a little baffled about why we were shown this hour of story about life on the Island. Unfamiliar in many ways, "Exposé" felt more an episode of Cold Case than Lost.

I've always liked Nikki and Paolo, but why the heck were we told their story in this episode? What's the "moral" of the story, and why did we break from the running narrative to tell it?

Unlike "The Other 48 Days," when we saw the story of the tailies, which was another story of the Island that we didn't see the first time around, this could not be experienced as a gripping tale of horror. (If anything, "Exposé" was a story of suspense, like a Hitchcock movie—the one-word title even evokes Hitchcock's movie titles a bit.)

And unlike "S.O.S.," the Rose and Bernard flashback episode, it didn't show that the redemptive powers of the Island reach down event to the supporting characters. In fact, it seemed to illustrate the opposite—that the Island can be squandered. It can be the tabula rasa, a blank slate, a second chance, but that's apparently optional. Redemption and batteries are not included.

Usually on Lost, we see character experiencing similar emotional experiences on and off the Island, and they either make a better choice the second time around or screw it up again, depending on who they are and where they are in their lives. This time we saw things that seemed to explain why and how Nikki and Paolo literally came to suffocate on their own greed, lies and hostility. (Shudder.)

What's the lesson? Why are we seeing this? The wages of sin are death? Nikki and Paolo were surely sinners, but that's all these people: Sinners 'R' Us. That's the case in the real world, too, so big whoop.

If it's an "Exposé" of the life of your typical redshirt, are we to believe that the reason we focus on our main characters is because the main characters are the only ones with a chance of winning against the Island, while all the superhot extras are so uniquely selfish and conniving that they're doomed? Does the Island demand their sacrifice? (Am I completely taking this too seriously?)

We now know what our past glimpses of "Pikki" add up to, but what do our new glimpses of the past 80-some days on the Island add up to?

In short: Why God why? Why did you bury them alive? Why do we have to believe the Island is special if it's so damn idiosyncratic?! Is this like when God asked Isaac to sacrifice Abraham? If so, it's still true 5,000 years later: Faith is a bitch. (And not just the character Faith from Buffy, but her too.)

This is a visual summary of how I feel when working on StyleNetwork.com:

I made a Bones-nanza. [Tee-hee!]