Mortals cannot resist

Does Halloween make you think of things beyond the imagination? Like ghouls, goblins, monsters, vampires, witches, werewolves, and ghosts? For many it's a time to decorate the house with pumpkins, put up lights, hang animated props, listen to Monster Mash and tap into your childlike “spirit” by dressing up in costume, or living vicariously through the neighborhood kids while you hand them treats.

It's one of my all time favorite holidays. What could be better than costumes, playing a character, candy, kids and spooking each other out? A highlight of the year, especially when it's foggy. Since Halloween is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, where bonfires were lite and costumes worn to ward off roaming ghosts, befitting the tradition I spent Halloween or Samhain, once in England. In London, I visited one of the most haunting cemeteries: London's Highgate Cemetery, dug into a hillside overlooking London, with an imposing Victorian-era archway overgrown with shrubbery, it leads into a stone tunnel lined with catacombs. The darkness eventually gives way to a circle of sunlit vaults staged around a 300-year-old cedar. It's both spooky and Poesque eerie.

Highgate Cemetery has been the backdrop for numerous horror films, including Taste the Blood of Dracula and From Beyond the Grave, and it's accessible only by tours, which includes a visit to the newer graveyard sites, a maze of decaying tombstones covered in dense greenery and topped by oversize statues ranging from the carved-stone grand piano above one musician's grave to the gigantic bust of Karl Marx adorning his own resting place. For not being a proponent of materialism he was given quite a bourgeois tombstone! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkMBVbEUd7o 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Like most, I sit in front of my television and watch the Senate campaign advertisements come on the air. It seems that the back room deals required to obtain the nomination, the dollars required to run a campaign and the use of slander and/or other acts to embarrass a political rival has made politics a corrupt game.

The current state of Nevada is in such bad shape that comparisons to the Great Depression are justified. It has the highest foreclosure rate, the highest bankruptcy rate, the highest unemployment rate in the country and proportionally the highest state budget deficit.

Every time my door bell rings it's a kid fund-raising (three came to my door last week) asking for money to help their public school. I recognized the neighborhood kids and gave them some cash, but by the third round I said to the child who sold me flower bulbs last spring, “Sorry, but I pay my taxes.” Today's collectors are between the ages of 6-8, they don't give you a receipt and don't accept checks. I don't doubt that the funds are going to the school, but I refuse to keep opening my wallet to support bad judgment. When I was growing up, only Catholic school kids fund-raised; but at least you got an excellent chocolate bar filled with almonds in return.

In Las Vegas, everywhere you look you see schools that were built literally back to back. The Clark County school district borrowed money in the form of a bond issue and now they're panicking. You also see empty buildings, abandoned construction sites with mounds of dirt, unkempt houses with for sale signs, and apartment deals offering spectacular move-in deals. The office vacancy is twenty-four percent. The construction industry has nearly disappeared and there are sixty thousand housing units are on the market.

Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee is short in stature and short in experience. She calls for abolishing the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, privatizing Medicare, Social Security and the Veterans Administration. She's plain, and toothy, but her politics come across as extremist and unpolished. She's an amateur with a folksy, batty manner similar to Sarah Palin. She said that she would have voted against Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, as Obama's appointees to the Supreme Court, because neither of them understand the Constitution.  I said she was batty.

Her opponent, the incumbent and Democratic candidate, Harry Reid, has a bonafide political career. He's a bland man, and looks like he came straight out of the woods. And his speech reflects it; he praised Obama for not speaking in negro dialect. He also said he didn't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican. Reid reacted to the bust by extending employment benefits, gave aid to schools and secured money for alternative energy projects in the desert. But like Obama, he was in office when the State's depression arrived and is blamed for the current economic cycle.

What happened in Nevada is a reflection of what happened to America; the bonds of society loosened, a casino mentality took over where credit flowed far too easily, as if inebriated everyone lost their wits, got into debt and when the growth stopped, everything crashed.

There's no getting around it, the only way to reduce the State deficit is to impose a tax on businesses. Whichever way this election unfolds let's hope it gets Nevada on track doing what the Senate is suppose to do; to take responsibility, fund education, transportation, medicaid, medicare and the Children's health insurance program, reduce the debt and enforce a national message to stop squandering money and lives on war!

Taming the beast within

Yesterday as I was in the car looking for a space to park at the gym, I saw two men screaming at one another. Their hurling insults were so loud I threw out the possibility of a car bump. No one could get this angry over such a minor infraction. I wondered if this was a staged video, but the graphic looks of surprise and horror on their faces of attack would have challenged even the most brilliant Hollywood movie studio. They looked like soldiers engaged in battle. Camera mobile phones were out, a crowd had gathered, so I parked as far as possible, nonchalantly getting out of my car and headed to my class.

Zumba class takes place several doors down from the gym, it has large windows and feels open- it's one of the reasons why I enjoy being there, I can look out, unlike in the gym which is gray and dark and doesn't have any windows at all; like a dungeon.

While warming-up I felt I was watching a film, because the men (whoever they were) wanted the world to see them in a fist fight! And a video was serving its purpose, making its rounds. The class continued and I figured eventually these two after a broken nose or tooth would end the brawl, get back into their vehicles and drive away. I tried to put this incident out of my mind reminding myself that I live in a civilized country, with layers of moral conduct.

Then I saw the Internet recap from the television show The View. I watched and heard Bill O'Reilly offensively remark about the proposed Mosque near Ground Zero in a way to further fuel an irrational fear of Islam, and watched hosts, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walk off the set. However, since Barbara Walters was present, and can keep her head, she said we should be able to discuss differences without screaming, demeaning or wiping our hands clean of one another.

The day was thick with savagery oozing out, with some coated only a smidgeon more with layers of civilized and socialized behavior than others.

We have become a nation of ill-behaved, rude and angry people.

There is far too much violence on television. We need to be aware of not only what we watch but how it affects us and band together to establish broadcaster guidelines. I believe TV and movie producers would like to tone down the violence, but they don't want to be the first to do so. National standards would be able to achieve what individuals would not do by themselves in a competitive market.

And we need to go back to teaching character education in the school system like we had in the 1930's. Programs that focused on teaching honesty, fairness, citizenship and other virtues, like respect and concern for others. We need to re-learn the basics of civility, and combat fear to tame the beast within. 

Respect Yourself

Living In a Big Way

There will always be class taste and mass taste. Ligne Roset and IKEA. Where the privileged few are liberated from practical considerations. Why worry about furnishings or household goods when they could be bought time and again? Very rich means never having to be careful. At least that’s what I believed looking at old films. Where the lives of the extremely wealthy came across with an unbridled fancy that made everything possible.

Fast forward to when I was a set decorator, my goal was create film noir, but it was becoming an outcast. Rather than design, I spent the bulk of my time shopping. I hunted for furnishings and visited prop houses mostly for accessories and had to keep in mind themes; and I had to maneuver in mood. Did the script call for romantic dining? Was the couple married or was it a clandestine affair? What meal and what food were being served? Would I need a ceramic egg holder, corn-cob knobs, or a soup tureen? Food was never fake, and would be purchased in quantities replaced every two hours. Although the show centered around a family with a fashion based business, I did not get to reinvent the rich lifestyle, I had to follow existing trends.

I wanted to design in the taste of “old money,” not the traditional distinctive baronial look such as an all wood dark library, but to sink my eye and hands into creating a visual fantasy. To create a look for conventional sophisticates, like Nick and Nora the fictional characters created by writer Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man, that would blend contemporary with antiques, primitive and ethnic. And I could live vicariously in their opulence and extravagance.

Although the budget was more than adequate and no one ever blinked an eye on the vast amounts that were spent, the focus was on time and soaps began to create another look altogether, a trend in modernism. Both daytime and evening television were creating artificial landscapes on sound-stages, since going on location would require too much time and permits. The new locations took place outdoors– a back alley, a carnival, a rain-soaked street.

But only in Hollywood could there be the opportunity to illustrate both classic and modern styles, where make-believe leaves an imprint of an imagination.