Written on a Post-it, signifying nothing

Year's List of Good and Great:

Rory O'Shea Was Here - finding my tattered old fleece in the closet - Thai omelette with scallions and Eric Lane - A History of Violence - the dreams I started remembering again after not remembering any for a year when I sleep in on days off - Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild - The 40-Year-Old Virgin - shrimp boil on restaurant porch in New Iberia, LA - the narcissus and paperwhites I bought at Target that grow right now, mitotically as I type - Batman Begins - learning how to calculate catecholamine and opiate intravenous drips - Walk the Line - hiking in Runyon Canyon and Griffith Park when it's fall and the light gets golden - Millions - wet burritos - discovery of great bras after many years of searching - U2 and dinner in April with Bonnie and Karen - Mysterious Skin - pulling up shrimp traps with Da off West Vancouver in November - Sinead O'Connor's reggae album - Junebug - kale with andouille in my kitchen - Ryan Adams x 2 - breakfast with Mom when it's grey outside - Breakfast on Pluto - Trader Joe's Hot and Sour Soup in glass jar - Everything is Illuminated - hearing a legally blind 70-year-old tell me how she helped steal a public bus to evacute her neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward - Brokeback Mountain - Sufjan Stevens' Illinois - Google maps - My Summer of Love - Russell Stover's sugar-free chocolate-covered toffee - The Constant Gardener - watching cooking shows ad nauseam with my sister - Grizzly Man - marcona almonds with rosemary and sea salt from Trader Joe's - Antony and the Johnsons I'm A Bird Now - retractable Sharpie markers - the Weatherman - the treadmill at steep incline for 20 minutes - No Direction Home - first time being a camp nurse - Thumbsucker - a striped scarf when the time is right - Beck's Que Onda Guero and Go It Alone - King Kong - the quad press at 130 lbs - exiting the Arclight, returning in the dark to your car parked on the roof, it's foggy and cold and to the north are at least 12 beams of light from Hollywood Blvd. roving back and forth across the fog - Cat Power and Handsome Boy Modeling School, I've Been Thinking - the Marcel Dzama drawings on the wall at 826LA and the sad ghost Dzama salt and pepper shakers I got at home - The Squid and the Whale - my Christmas tree and its ornaments - Smog, A River Ain't Too Much to Love - Halloween despite having to work the next day - Gustavo Santaolalla who did the music for North Country and Brokeback Mountain and the Motorcycle Diaries - walking to work when it's cold - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Lyre of Orpheus and Abbatoir Blues - camping with cousins and their cousins in Santa Barbara - Spoon, Gimme Fiction - Libby's Sense of Style - dinner club sundays - X & Y - Ron being pouty, Harry sitting out the dance, in Goblet of Fire - my neighborsm who carve pumpkins and have dinner with me, just whenever - my Nana, independent film lover, aged 90 - BJ Schwartz and Eric Lane when they are stand-upping it during Trivial Pursuit - the patient in the PICU who has been there for a year, making witches brew with dry ice on Halloween and having frozen grapes and pasta for the nurses and doctors to feel with their eyes closed - my sweet family in general, my sweet friends in general.


Bad and Awful:

Beta blockers - Elizabethtown - my car being dirty most of the time - hypertension - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Southern storms- Lord of War - empty half-a-bed-syndrome - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - writing personal statements for graduate school applications - skin hunger - wearing gowns at work when your patient is in isolation for infectious disease or immunosuppresive protocol and you take the gown off (there is much static) on your way out of the room and are given really bad shocks by cribs, door handles, water from the faucet and you can see the electric arc - missing family but not being able to tolerate The Vancouver Grey efficiently, therefore leaving one unable to find a compromise between Here and There - the part at the end of Crash where Ludicris chuckles to himself after letting free the Asian slaves and it starts to snow; oh, what a world indeed -the morgue sign-in book - myocardial infarctions - My Humps.

Got My Kong On, Jack Nasty

I wear a scarf and hat inside my bungalow while sitting here with you, dear reader(s).
What a lovely contrast to the many months of sitting in this very chair, sweating from the face without exerting any energy whatsoever, due to the combo of summer, inadequate air circulation and a general lack of fan(s).
This evening finds me sipping a chemical concoction - decaf, fat and sugar free instant Chai - with my first Personal Christmas (TM) tree ever in the background, a three foot noble fir sitting in sugar water, it's ankle draped with a paisleyed tablecloth, and the shittiest array of tree lighting this side of the Rio Grande. I neglected to purchase those delicate white mini lights, so I've substituted red and blue until such time as I aquire them.
Soundtrack for decorating:
Sam Roberts: Brother Down
Nick Cave: Carry Me
Some new Strokes song
Madonna: X-Static Process
T. Rex: Monolith
Johnny Cash: When the Man Comes Around
Spoon: all of Gimme Fiction
Ted Leo: Me and Mia
The Undertones: Teenage Kicks
(In truth I think the actual decorating only took the length of Van Morrison's Cleaning Windows)

My First Personal Christmas (TM) Glass Ornaments: a pomegranate, a pickle, a frog, a robin, a hen, an owl, a hedgehog, a fish of unknown genus and species, a salmon, a barracuda, a squirrel, a very wee bunny and three Chinese firelantern flowers. Apparently in Germany on Christmas morning families play "hide the pickle" which is akin to hide the matzoh only not Jewish and with a greater propensity to be misread as incestual impropriety. You find the pickle and "win" Christmas or something. Do you think IV catheters would make interesting ornaments? They come in different colors of plastic hub depending on size of needle. I could hang them like those glass icicle ornaments. I would take out the needle first of course. For two Christmases in a row, my mother has made a tree out of pussywillow twigs in a bottle like an empty Hornitos bottle. Five twigs or so, with some orange, white and blue lights adorning them. Classy. We're like that.

This is pretty silly. I'll be working both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but as it will be a coal-in-my-stocking, lonelyheart time of year, gimme pine needles.

Three people Who Made Me Emote to the Point of Tears This Week While Sitting in the Dark, by Sarah:
1) Ennis Del Mar/Heath Ledger. Waiting in lineup for a matinee of Brokeback Mountain yesterday, watched a parade of ancient gay couples flow out of the Grove theater, holding canes and hands and having red-rimmed eyes. Cardigan-sweater old. Goddamn to you, Loneliness - you make good art.

I now have three favorite man performances of the year: Cillian Murphy, Joaquin Phoenix and Heath. Heath is probably the best of those, ya?

2) Kong/Andy Serkis and Ann Darrow/ Naomi Watts. Now. Well. I went with Eric and Will-Jordan to see Kong at midnight last night in the Cineramadome. We were treated to the trailer for Miami Vice. Someone in our vicinity kept letting off air biscuits, barking spiders, what-have-you. Despite this, and the rising temperature of a sold out cineramadome, the spectacle of Kong was stellar. Yes, too long. Yes, OTT in all respects. Campy, corny a bit. However, um, beautiful? Yes. Yes Petey's a genius, but without Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens he would be maybe not so much.. In the OG Kong, Ann is passive, shrieking, and there are those rapey overtones, those Large Evil Black Man/Victimized Virginal White Woman issues. All of course alongside the nasty colonial/savage stuff. In this Kong, Ann is active and she is as much a victim of Carl Denham et al as she plausibly is of Kong (which she isnt anyway, but that's how the film crew sees it). It seems that the business of moviemaking is even worse. Look what happens White Man when you go where you should not. Heart of Darkness...the way Our Lovable Nerds comment on the racist platform of the first movie is brilliant but I'm not telling you how they do it. A lot of it felt like a silent movie, or rather, the most important parts did, aided immensely by the score (written in six weeks!)...but it's wierd to think there is an entirely different one sitting in Howard Shore's computer somewhere. And that face. That sweet sad face.
Jack Black is fucking great.
I cried, yes I did. I cried today even while hearing Ebert's review on podcast. Jordan made fun of me, but that is because he has a pingpong ball for a heart and mine is like a big wet sponge and it leaks sometimes, so what?


.

Welcome to the Hole!

Part I: Meaningless drivel (movies)
A) Oh Harry Potter the Fourth, you have finally come to be a real movie. How many double entendres did you count? How many Frodo-faces? He made a couple, or rather, the camera did.
And to my dissapointment, the kids don't make face with each other. Sigh.
The people next to me at the Vista wanted to share their popcorn, and so I felt like an orphan taken in from the alleyways of London. The row of gay men in front of me did a synchronized "hand dance" along with the "Enjoy a refreshing cola!" ad before the trailers. People always clap when the ad is over, whoop and holler. It makes me laugh when they do that. People do funny things at the Vista.
B) Joaquin and his not-a-cleft-palate, got-it-in-a-fight-with-my-brother-that-I-refuse-to-talk-about scar. I liked the nuzzling, the scene at the lunch counter, the peanuts, Reese WItherspoon's freckles, and absolutely everything else. Jerry Lee Lewis had some nasty lyrics.
C) I finally got around to seeing Monster too this weekend (and I started Into Thin Air as well, having finished book one of the naval novels). Not a new revelation, but man is Christina Ricci sucky. Fortunately, things tend to work themselves out and henceforth even though I had a hypothesis that maybe Charlize was being overpraised, I was wrong. I would also recommend the HBO documentary.
I am now about to try to watch The Notebook, but I don't think I'll be able to make it through.


Part II: Small, potentially meaningful story from my daily life:
Today was my first day semi-quasi-hemi-solo in the PICU. I had two patients on my own, in the Hole. The Hole is one of our two quad rooms, e.g. there are 4 patients in a room. You might barely leave the Hole for all your 12 hours, except to go for breaks. Sometimes the Holes are vacant and quiet, half-full, and you go about your business. Sometimes you're alone in your hole with an unconscious/sedated patient, so every now and then a heard of medical residents, fellows and attending will meander into the Hole during rounds or someone outside the Hole will pop their head in and say "Come on out of the Hole for a sec". Today there were no vacancies. Four patients, three RNs and two nurse residents, plus assorted family members. Over in one corner was one of my patients, a 14 year old who had taken to yelling "Sarah can you please get my flema?" (phlegm in Spanish, quite endearing). He'd chase this ten minutes later with an expressive sentence en Espanol involving the word 'puta' or 'hija de puta', e.g., some take on "whore". He'd often include his dear mother in the insult. He can't help it. Yesterday he told me to - and I quote -"take it in the ass" when I asked if he wanted pain medicine. We use a universal pain scale with numbers and faces on it to help kids tell us how bad their pain is...I asked him to rate his pain and he said "What the FUCK is wrong with you goddamn people?". He says it with a slur to his speech of course.
I couldnt help but empathize in a way. If I was a teenager and I had a tube coming, say, straight out of the center of my brain and someone asked me to point at a face or a number to describe my pain - no matter how mindful the inquisitor was of not sounding patronizing - I might turn inside out like a sea cucumber after holding up my middle finger to delineate where I fit on the scale.

I was there when some good news about his prognosis came down the line, and there were tears and hugs, so it was a good day.

Using a laser at your place of work: A Primer

Today was neurology review day for my critical care orientation.
I like neurology.
I've decided.
Here's what we reviewed:
1) neuromuscular blocking agents (paralytics)
2) intracranial pressure monitoring and assessment
and then we were regaled with a bunch of horrific but notable stories involving children and their heads by our beloved mentor Fran, and so we will never forget some very important things.

In the PICU, I am becoming adept at manipulating cockstops (not cockblocks, though maybe that too?).
Would you like me to explain the physics of the pleural cavity? No problem! Whenever you're ready.
We use lasers and levels at the bedside. The laser is used to make sure that the drains we use to drain fluid from the brain are aligned against the proper anatomical reference point. If the drain is lower than the patient's head, too much fluid will drain off, equalling *collapse*. If it's too high, no fluid will drain and the pressure in the brain will increase, equalling *squish*.

After brain class, I went to the laundrymat, folded my clothes, read a chapter of my naval novel, then ate a frozen yogurt with my neighbor.

Yesterday I was at Trader Joe's and next to me in line was the guy who played the character/rugby player "Roy" in "Alive". You'll remember him as the freckled, whinging, anxious, consistently annoying survivor.

I don't know if I told you - and forgive me if I didnt - but I saw Keanu in the parking lot of Home Depot last week. He had just purchased a hot dog from the hot dog cart outside near the garden center.

I lost 3 hours of my life to Netflix last night what with its convoluted yet decidedly wonderful site compiling a massive queue filled with PBS documentaries, Return to Oz and Murderball.

Beat to Quarters!

Today my special nautical/historical/flauna-flora glossary arrived from Amazon. It is called "A Sea of Words" and it has been described [per back cover of said book] as "A godsend" by the Irish Times. This is because if you attempt to read what I have started reading without it, the harpies will descend to pluck at your eyelashes. Only a nautical savant could understand Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels (aka Master and Commander) unaided. And only a savant of a totally different variety would even pick such a book up, in this case a filmic-nursing-marine-oriented savant.

In essence:
I don't have to worry anymore - because now I know what a "cunt-splice" is! No more harried nights!

It's a "type of splice formed when two ropes are overlapped and joined in such a way as to form an EYE" (emphasis belonging to the text)
My friend said to me today: I didnt know you were into boats..
Hey, now! That's because I aren't.

In other news, my Saturday matinee of Jarhead was interrupted by the guy to my left who kept readjusting his package every time...well, every time you saw desert in a frame. Today I learned from NPR that Walter Murch doesnt like attending sets of the films he cuts, so if he has to go on set, he looks at the floor until he sees the director's shoes and then looks up to talk to director and then back to floor and he leaves. he doesnt want to see anything that the audience wont be seeing. How does he know a director by his shoes?

I would recommend Jarhead but only in a dispassionate way. Jake G doesnt make that developmentally delayed voice in this movie, in fact he's pretty good aside from the lobotomized way you feel for his character and everyone around him.

That Bob Dylan PBS thing is amazing. I only just saw it. I like it when he says things like: "It was rightly cold."

More importantly, I would like to recommend Danny Boyle's follow-up to 28 Days Later, which would be Millions, available on DVD.
It is amazing!

I had babka tonight
Exclamation point

This loser took the longest

Napoleon
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Mephisto

Mephisto
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Danielle in her wisdom chose to carve Mephisto last night, which isn't really Mephisto of the shoe company or the German film, but the Bono version of Mephisto circa 1993 when he would dress up like so and phone frmr. President HW Bush from a concert and leave strange messages on the machine.

Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?

Frank
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Why are you wearing that stupid man suit...

row o' gourd

The Pumpkin People
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Oh look at the little lighted items in our courtyard. It really lit up our little Gateway Ave kibbutz.

The Pumpkin People

Dracula Mr Burns
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

The annual tendinitis-inducing gourd-scoop out came and went.
They make an electric saw for carving pumpkins and I got one.
My neighbors and I carved through the night and some drank egg nog with rum and others ate mediocre chinese food and we had a few little Darth Vaders, an Obi Wan, two red Power Rangers and baby skunk (trick or treating in a stroller) and a boy dressed as a girl. Way to push cultural boundaries (machismo), brother.
So here we have Mr. Burns, a labor of love carved by Shelly.

"In the Christmas pageant, I was a ham."

Token objet d'inanimate, avec class
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

My experiences of Halloween as inanimate objects have been as:
1) a trash can
2) an Aquafresh toothpaste pump
3) a McDonald's milkshake.

Innes VII was a polaroid who did vodka shots, thereby truly blending the inanimate and the animate.
I am a lucky girl to have been in the company of so many great people for a night.

The 10

The 10
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

So then Robyn had to come and show us all up by being the 10! Being the Dreadfulest Freeway in Los Angeles, The 10 runs east-west from Pomona through Compton to Venice and Santa Monica. If you are driving back from Venice towards the Eastside at about 5 PM, you begin to stare at the veins in your wrist, contemplating an existentially realized death, wondering what your serum carbon monoxide levels are at this point in time. The 405 competes with the 10 for most hideously trafficky LA freeway.

Those four people as that digital clock: 10:34!

Those four people as that digital clock
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Were they brothers and sister? Were they a big giant "couple"? I forgot to ask. they were the best digital clock I've ever seen, and they had the best footwear (not pictured).

The Greatest Shame

The Greatest Shame
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

I had many favorite costumes on Saturday evening, however when Mo Twine showed up dressed like Santa, complete with gators (were they for snow or soot or hauling lobster traps?) on, I was sold. Then I looked to my left and saw a small man with a Mexican wrestler's mask on, wearing this World's Greatest Grandma sweatshirt. He was accompanied by a mule/donkey/mouse with a hat that looked to be bought in Cabo San Lucas at Papas & Beer, bearing gigantic balls, supposedly the result of elephantiasis. I am trying to remember the actual animal this man was supposed to be..it had a ridiculously cute name like the pica, but not the pica...if anyone remembers, lemme know. They sat on Mo's lap for a time as you can see here.

Now to cleanse the palate...

KatAlex
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

I give you - don't look! - a sexy pink elephant and her polyester, straight-out-of-a-bag prisoner-costumed gigolo, complete with glass of Bordeaux, Classy Hong Kong 1920's Moustache and Yalie eyewear!

The Valve

The Valve
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

I want you to know that I have 23 photographs of my pal Eric galavanting as Ignatius J. Reilly and that they will soon be available as a tastefully mounted montage of flannel and hotdogs. I arrived early and therefore began to drink early. I came from work in my scrubs, which made me feel very inadequate as Halloween is my most favorite thing and I had to work this weekend prior. Manta Ray! made no appearance, but she will return once again, headlights a'blazin at a 'ween of the future.
To Eric, I lift my glass.

Quick Film Club Retort Over Eggs and Chinese Broccoli

my miniature brother
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Alex: I hated Everything is Illuminated.

Sarah: I thought it was great.

Alex: It was the worst movie of the year. It was so boring. You only like it because of Frodo. That character was so passive.

Sarah: Yes he was passive, and might I add that your Baggins suggestion is off base.. Eugene Hutz is what is amazing about this movie. The Odessian character arcs are great. Hutz is like one giant Kindersurprise within the milky-chocolatey happy-sad shell of this movie. I also found myself strangely attracted to him. I feel vulnerable now about my movie opinions and am now hesitant to tell you what I really thought about Thumbsucker. God, what a breakfast Alex, thanks.

Alex: (punitively) Lebo, finish the bread and cheese. Eat all your lox! Don't drop any more of that triple cream brie onto the carpet. We just got rid of an infestation.

The Sportsman and the Lone Star and me

I am sorry to be so full of shit. I'm afraid your kindly offers of laxative tea won't help. I am FOS (which is a real clinical term, by the way, meaning Full of Stool) because I have been lax to regale you with tales of Louisiana and Texas. Maybe this hasnt even crossed your mind and you don't want to hear my stories.
I shall now attempt to do tell you -*despite that* - in point form in order to bring us up to current events.

BEGIN POINT FORM
- Houston is humid which was news to me, and I have a firm belief that it was designed by the same evil genius who engineered Calgary's grid-system-sprawl-hell. Requisite oppositional statement and truth: the people of course, were geniuinely awesome.

- The government put us up at a Ramada in the very south of Houston, almost in Sugarland. When I arrived at the airport, I had been given no info on where to go, who to call, who was meeting me etc..it was Comical!! I thought per chance that someone would be there to greet me, but alas, through some gutsy phone calling to Admirals and Captains, I got the name of the Ramada and sped there taxi-like lickety split.

- The Ramada had poor air circulation yet was conveniently located next to an Indian vegetarian restaurant serving delicacies in the Gujarati style, a Target and the MHMRA, also known in no uncertain terms as The MENTAL HEALTH and MENTAL RETARDATION AUTHORITY of Harris County.

- In Houston, and I'm assuming all of Texas, a sickeningly wealthy family of Greek immigrants, the Pappas, have birthed a series of hangar-type eating establishments. There is Pappas Seafood [300-seater designed to look like an old shrimp shack and/or Floridian highway seafood restaurant], Pappas Smokehouse BBQ [designed to look like an old BBQ hut with Big Jim out back, a'stirrin the sawse], Pappadeux [no identifiable Louisianan motif in the architecture, intense use of seasoned salt on its cajuny items, fried alligator], Papasito's Cantina, Pappas Burgers, Pappas Pizza and Pappas Brothers Steakhouse. I believe we went to 2/7 of their chains.

- I was sworn in by the oath of office by a commander from the US Deparment of Public Health. He was bedecked in the ubiquitous uni-beige uniform, complete with folded naval cap in belt. His name was Gene. I swore my oath and was nervous doing it. Thereafter I was a federalized, unpaid employee of the US Gov't. They never gave us any documentation, no badge announcing our titles, authority etc. In retrospect...WTF?

- I went to the G.R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on my first day. I did triage for the mindblowing medical unit that was set up there by the U of Texas and Scripps of San Diego. They had x-ray and lab capabilities (faster than most hospitals), two mental health trailers with big plastic signs on them that read MENTAL HEALTH (empty folding chairs in the waiting area), two Walgreens pharmacy trailers for filling the one-month free prescriptions that Katrina victims were entitled to.

- At the Brown Convention center, there were thousands of faith-based volunteers wearing bright yellow shirts that said Operation Compassion. If you were an evacuee (or not), you could ask them for directions, they could sit with you and hear your stories. They could sit with you and just hold your hand. The Brown center was brightly lit. There were three long tables lined with many bright red phones like the kind the president has, so that people could call anyone across country to locate lost relatives or arrange travel or just talk. There was an area designated to helping people find housing. There was an area for employment help, with lots of computers and pencils and pads of paper. Somewhere in the fold FEMA was registering people, but I didnt see them. Upstairs was a cafeteria run by volunteers. The sleeping area was the size of a high school football field dotted with neat rows of aerobeds. Volunteers were tucking in sheets and folding newly donated clothing. It was my fellow traveler Mr. Dr. Bill King of Tracy, California who pointed out the unique (and glaring) disparity between the Brown Convention center and the picture we saw in Louisiana. In Houston there was a dignity to that shelter...the spic and span-ness, the visible community of volunteers.

- The one comparable shelter in Louisiana we came across was the Cajundome in Lafayette, but we were denied entrance to it when we asked if we could take a look around to make an assessment of potential healthcare needs. The woman at the gateway wore a sad Red Cross vest, like the kind the Cards wear over the shoulder in Alice in Wonderland. She was a public health nurse from Orange County and she was more than ready to go home. She said she was doing "prison nursing with some mental health on the side". She was a long way from Newport. On the doors to the Cajundome were "no cameras, no photograph" signs. They had metal detectors and police dogs. Diabetics were not allowed to carry their own insulin needles but had to check them in with the Red Cross as if they were children or potential junkies. We saw a good number of military police outside of the Cajundome as well as a hefty Dept of Homeland Security trailer, antennae and satellite dishes pronging out into the night. There were barricades out in front, trash on the ground. There was a curfew. Orange sodium lights made everything that was slightly invisible seem suddenly dodgy, and the police presence didnt contradict such a feeling.

Next time on "Point Form"......The preacher's wife gets into a scrap!

intake and output

Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

My dad and I had a conversation about marine species this evening.

It is starting to rain.

Today was day two for me in the PICU. It is a different place from where I've been. Today my baby patient breathed helium and oxygen inside a plastic dome that looked like something belonging to a fancy person who happens to live in the Crab Nebula.
When he cried, everyone said it sounded like a person crying from five rooms away.
But no, there he would be, his head under the bell jar, right next to you.

The banana tree outside my bungalow sounds like a man in the bushes.

Don't worry, it really is a tree.

I'm not done telling you about Tx-La but I need to sleep.

Around the week of August 30, 2005

It feels somewhat deflating to write about this so late, but as I was in Texas and Louisiana last month, I'll tell you about it.

At the start of it all, many of my colleagues and I signed up to be volunteer medical assists with FEMA when the levees broke. They actually called our hospital to make such a list. However, we didn’t hear anything more.
That was the week we all saw the baby held by its mama on CNN, the baby with the floppy arms and pale hands and sunken raccoon eyes held in a chubby embrace outside the Superdome. Perhaps that was the day we saw that man softly place a patchwork blanket over somebody’s grandma who died sitting up in her patchwork wheelchair (duct tape around the armrests, cardboard wrapped around several spokes in the wheels), the man trying not to let out tears as he calmly yet angrily protested such a way to die, to absolutely no one. Everything was like a one-way valve that week. The people of New Orleans emoted outwardly towards us all through the glass of our TV screens, looking up from tar-papered garage roofs, pleading through the lenses of network cameras that were steamed up at the edges from the humidity (those cameras of course imbued with magic powers enabling them to make an appearance where our government could not), teenagers eloquently expounding the disgrace of Iraq in light of their current needs...Their holler was clear but our response was stifled and retarded in the true definition of such a word; our reactions flew back, hit the impermeable surface of the TV screen and rolled right on back into our laps wherein their extreme helplessness became ours (though ours was much less important because it was softened of course, privileged and air conditioned and hydrated with Vitamin Water and adorned with diplomas and iPods and toilets that flushed and lights that clicked on when requested). And so all Our Brilliant Solutions (so passionately discussed over so many lunch hours) and emphatic I-hear-yous and all that Red Cross money at this point was in a sense without horsepower. It’s like that mechanism inside of engines that transfers chemical energy into power and then into movement, it was stuck or malrotated or simply was never there to begin with. I think the people in the Ninth Ward came to know this was true before the floods. For some of them maybe it was an appalling reminder of something familiar they already understood; for us it was simply an apalling revelation.

I wrote an angry letter that night to Bush and to Cheney, that no one will ever read.

I wanted to tell them that my colleagues and I were willing to jump from copters, each bearing 50 liters of IV fluids on our backs, because it was something that would very cheaply and easily arm people against death. Why the fuck weren’t they using us?
I wanted someone to kick and punch.
Later that week Anderson Cooper cried on television twice, one time during a split-screen interview with Governor Blanco wherein he fiestily noted that rats were consuming a corpse to his left and that her thanksgiving to other politicians was an inhumane response to the situation. (Blanco, white.)
So Blanco prayed to lord baby Jesus, suggesting the state of Louisiana do the same and asked for nonspecific help from the federal government. Mayor Nagin decided to enact a mandatory evacuation 2 days late. Heckuva-job-Brownie told Paula Zahn that people at the Convention Center in N.O. were receiving two meals-ready-to-eat per day, and when our anchor denied his data and asked about the situation at the Superdome Mr. Brown, well, Heckuva-job- Brownie says he only that morning knew that those people didn’t have food or water. Our anchor rhetorically spanked him as best she could, which was still feeble but better than nothing (a theme for this whole scenario –some anchor on Fox news even lost his shit) - by asking if that meant the public had better intelligence than the federal government?
Then this past week I read that Brownie, under questioning, stated said the media had been creating “hype” and “fabricating stories of rape and violence” and generally presenting the situation incorrectly. Gee, Brownie, the stories I was told by both 8-year old girls and 82-year old men, I mean, talk about overly vivid and painful imaginative capabilities! And those grandmas – especially the legally blind ones with the acute senses of hearing – well they’re spinning some yarns, I suppose, Sir.
But then they’re like, well…yarns so dark they couldn’t possibly be yarns, y’know?
[I didn’t want to resort to angry sarcasm, but there it goes.]

In response to those emails I sent to Bush and Cheney, I received a rote email requesting patience from the citizenry and reassurance that all arms of government had been activated in response to this national disaster.

I thought of Doc Octagon, because that sentence made me think of “arms”. I thought of how the ground shook in response when he thonked all around Peter Parker’s city, how the bricks sounded when he scrounched down on them. An active sound.

Returning, the heat dives down.

In Opelousas, Maggie
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Started heading home two days ago, leaving the cut-it-it's-so-thick heat of New Iberia, Opelousas and Lafayette, Louisiana for the pressin-down-upon-thee heat of Houston to the smack-you-dry heat of Phoenix (en route to Los Angeles) to the hold-me-its-so-comfortable 76 degrees of L.A. at night, falling asleep sitting up in the Super Shuttle as it wove its way to my street down from others.

I'll return later today to start some entries about my journey to the soft, vulnerable underbelly of America.

Fall Film Roll Call

Look what I did for you! You're welcome!
Here are links to the trailers of some juicy fil-ims to come this year, picked personally by your favorite ellipitical machining-Registered Nurse.
And yes, some will be poop. Let's be honest, there could also be corn. Or peanuts.
But for now let's use our PMA - that's right, our Positive Mental Attitude - and tightly cross our legs in excitement.

Please feel free to respond in list form with your most eagerly anticipated of this lot (and others). Commentaries, addendums and insults are also acceptable.

JUST ADDED:

Jarhead
Mendes, Gyllenhaal, Saarsgard, Foxx. Gee-zus walks.

Shopgirl
Martin, Danes, Schwartzman

A clip from Green Street Hooligans...curious..may even work.

Get Rich or Die Tryin
Jim Sheridan! Fitty.

Revolver
Guy Ritchie, Liotta, Statham, Andre 3000

Zathura
Jon Favreau....Explorers, Goonies, Space Camp......

Stay
Marc Forster w/ Ryan Gosling, The Return of BD Wong, Naomi "bulimic cheeks pt. 2" Watts (guess who's pt. 1?), and Ewan McMember.

Lord of War
Gattaca/Truman Show's Andrew Niccol w/Nic Cage, Ethan Hawke, Jared "30 Seconds to Mars" Leto, Bridget Moynahan. I once read an interview with Elijah Wood in which he was asked, "Well, since you're so obsessed with music, will you ever start your own band?" to which he responded, "Jesus Christ, no! Have you seen 30 Seconds to Mars? I have seen what actors can do to music. I love music too much to ever hurt it like that" and from then on our imaginary friendship took off (he is reportedly starting up a label soon).

Proof
John Madden w/ Gwynies, Jake G., Hope Davis, A. Hopkins. I really do like her freckles so much, even if she wears repulsively cheesy tank tops that say "Mrs. Martin" as described in that NY Times interview this week.

A History of Violence
David Cronenberg w/ Viggo, Maria Bello, Ed Harris. There might not be anybody with spine-plug sockets or f-able scars in this one, but it looks juicy.

Everything Is Illuminated
Liev Schreiber w/ El Wood, Eugene Hutz. The trailer recovers itself at the end.

Green Street Hooligans
Lexi Alexander w/ El Wood, Charlie Hunnam and Catface McGillicuddy. American goes to England, falls in with soccer hooligans. Laughable concept, yes. Especially laughable in light of casting choices? Certainly.
Any good? Reportedly, very much so.

The New World
Terence Malick w/ the Hirsute Irishman, Batman and others. First trailer was better.

Waiting
Jeremy this one's for you...it might make you want to slam your forehead against the piano keys in aggravation though. Alanis' wife and Anna Faris and that kid from Freaks and Geeks.

Roll Bounce Like a Japanese cowboy, like a brother on skates. And how. Looks v. v. fun but might have corn in it.

Walk the Line
James Mangold w/ Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon. What's that smell?

The Brothers Grimm
T. Gilly, Maaat Daaaamon.

Grizzly Man Werner Herzog, so far makes me teary. But we all know that might not signify anything.

Thumbsucker
Mike Mills w/ Vince Vaughn and some kid named Lou Pucci and shit. Lou Pucci is also in Chumscrubber (wherein Jamie Bell stars, it looks bad), which also has three syllables, and which is another movie about existentially tormented adolescent males in the suburbs, which shouldnt be confused either with Brick, which is supposedly the same idea but noir-y and with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (no trailer yet), and why are you wearing that stupid human suit?

Dear Wendy
Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) w/ The Suddenly Omnipresent Jamie Bell and Mark Webber.

Elizabethtown
Cameron Crowe and the Elf. Smelllll Baaaaaad. But I could be wrong, I mean, the trailer for Vanilla Sky was awful, right, and that didnt turn out half-....er....

good night, wisconsin.

I sometimes want one of these to come home to.

Monchichi I Can Play Atari
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

My Titi monkey would give me a very thorough massage after a long day of pushing, poking, pressing, extracting, teaching, and writing things down.
It could serve me americanos from my (fictional) Francis! Francis! espresso machine on rainy nights in Los Angeles.
It could hide in the closet and come out and say "surprise!" while waving a little white flag and doing a dance.

So, yeah, I saw Bill of Bill and Ted at Trader Joe's on Sunday. What do you got to say about it?

Have you ever eaten quail? I tried to. The articulation of the joints was too human and I couldnt follow through. Little crossed ankles, etc.

Today I was at work, by the elevators coming back from the blood bank, and I was holding a bag of platelets and some patient's dad asked what I was holding and I told him:"Oh, platelets".
Man: "Wow, it looks like gravy. Looks like something you'd eat".
Nurse L: "Yeah, kind of looks like mango juice to me".
And you'd think that was it for comparing blood products to food! But you'd be wrong!
Man (continuing): "Yeah, a sauce for meat. Or maybe clarified butter, like in Indian food. Crazy! You put that into somebody? Does blood look kind of like a sauce-thing?"

And....scene.

Amor Vincit Omnia

Amor Vincit Omnia
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Ok, I dont want to lay a trip on you but it's getting hot in here. I've had to take off almost all my clothes. When cometing the bathtub, a piece of sweat fell twain my eyes and another right up in one. Whilst swiffering the kitchen floor in the halfassed way only the Swiffer is capable of doing, my *upper arm* began to perspire. My insecurities related to wearing sleeveless shirts have had to be chucked today.I am consuming high grade sticky icky New Zealand Artisan water from Trader Joe's, so don't worry, if you were about to start. My couch is filled with down, and is covered with fancy wool fabric. My chairs are similarly dressed. Where do I sit?

On the Soundock, a soundtrack to sweating:
The Ballad of Judas Priest and Frankie Lee: b. Dylan
No Cars Go: Arcade Fire
Something Queeny by Keane
Nautical Disaster: Tragically Hip
Auf Auchse: Franz Ferdinand

For your juxapositioning pleasure: A moment of silence for the Wonka that was.

Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Lemme get tutorial here for a moment....I wanna talk Wonka. I saw it last night. I've gone to Slate and the Times and Ebert and on and on. I don't understand how reviewers of the Burton film tend to repeatedly point out that his version is more sinister than Stuart's. Herein I have read the 1971 film described as mellow, even - holy crabcakes, Batman! - dinner-theater-esque.

Ok, so how is such a reading possible, I ask. Here's my take: Wilder's Wonka is more overt in his disdain for the brats. He knows what tools their parents are (Depp's does too but he's so distanced from everyone that it's almost a nonissue). Wilder's Wonka is clearly eccentric but you can tell he's anchored somewhere. Wonka's gravitas is so expertly revealed in the third act in his Half-of-Everything Office with the Gobstopper Theft/Slugworth subplot, wherein we see The Unveiling of Charlie Bucket's Integrity.
Then there is Depp's Wonka. Essentially he seems to cringe and then snap; his velveted man is all over the place and therefore, nowhere in particular. Please note that I do, however, love the braces headgear and Saruman wringing his latex gloves in a moment of angst..

Additionally, Wonka's Wilder drifted off into poetic reverie and when he did so, he was creepy because he seemed omniscient. Depp's Wonka relied on a generic sense of oddity combined with mood imbalance as the source material for "creepy". I think that's a bit cheap. His Wonka is inconsistent and I dont think he ever reveals himself to be someone that Charlie would admire. Weak, but that's just me.

Not everything demands comparison. This I know. In some instances, a work of art requires no contrast in order to make it relevant or revelatory. However, in this case I cannot hold back.
Let us just review some of the juicy wonder that littered Mel Stuart's less-in-accordance-with-the-source-material film of 1971, shall we?

Wonka: "Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?" (Shakespeare + candy = jazz hands! Merchant of Venice)

Veruca Salt: "Snozzberry? Who's ever heard of a snozzberry? "
Wonka: "We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." (Irish poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy)

Tinker: "Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we dare not go a'hunting, for fear of little men. Nobody every goes in, and nobody ever goes out." (Irish Poets Represent! William Allingham of Ballyshannon, Co. Sligo)

Wonka: "The suspense is terrible... I hope it will last." (Irish Trifecta! Wilde, Importance of..)

Wonka: "Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing?"

Wonka: "So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."

Mrs. Gloop: "My son. He'll be made into marshmallows in five seconds!"
Willy Wonka: "Impossible, my dear lady. That's absurd. Unthinkable."
Mrs. Gloop: "Why?"
Willy Wonka: "Because that pipe doesn't go to the marshmallow room. It goes to the fudge room."

Wonka: "Wrong, sir. Wrong. Under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy - "I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained," et cetera, et cetera..."Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum," et cetera, et cetera..."Nemo bis punitor delicatum". It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. You stole fizzy lifting drinks. You bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you get nothing. You lose. Good day sir."

Wonka: "All I ask is for a tall ship and a star to sail her by. All aboard everybody." (Irish Poet Tetrafecta?! John Masefield )

Charlie Bucket: "Mr. Wonka, they won't really be burned in the furnace, will they?"
Willy Wonka: "Well, I think that furnace is only lit every other day, so they have a good sporting chance, haven't they?"

Mrs. Gloop: "Don't just stand there - do something!"
Wonka: "Help. Police. Murder."

Mike Teevee: "Look at me. I'm gonna be the first person in the world to be sent by television."
Mrs. Teevee: "Mike, get away from that thing."
Willy Wonka: "Stop. Don't. Come back."

Mrs. Gloop: "Aye. Mr. Wonka help I'm getting squooshed!"
Wonka: "Is it my soul that calls me by my name?" (ShakeySpeare: Romeo & Juliet)

Wonka: "For some moments in life there are no words."

Wonka: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." (Keats, Endymion)

Wonka: "Around the world and home again, that's the sailors way." (William Allingham, second prop)

Wonka: "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker" (Ogden Nash)

Wonka: "Bubbles, bubbles everywhere but not a drop to drink." (nod to S. Taylor Coleridge)

Mrs. Gloop: 'You boiled him up, I know it"
Wonka: "Nil desperandum, my dear lady. Across the desert lies the promised land."

Wonka: "So shines a good deed in a weary world." (Merchant of Venice)

And now we have:

Chewing gum is really gross. Chewing gum I hate the most.

Let's boogie.

Ha ha ha ha. You're really weird.

Everything here is eatable. I'm eatable, but that my children is called cannibalism and it is frowned upon in most societies.

Mumbler! (this one is acceptable))

Here we have the Puppet Hospital and Burn Center! (also ok)

"It's suicide for diverticulitis"

- overheard two seats in front of me at the 18:45 showing of Batman Begins at the Vista Theater, in reference to popcorn.

I feel a little TC-manic right now. But...
That movie.
Is fucking.
awesome. great.

He's all: "I'm not going to kill you, but I don't have to save you"

So pure, so good! (I don't trust myself when I start using exclamation points).
That is my kind of superhero. One who attempts to define himself by the most arduous of all human traits: the ability to keep an even keel.

And, not to brag, but I saw Nelly Furtado standing on the sidewalk outside of Malo on my walk home. So, I'm not sweating it either.
And I just read in Entertainment Weekly that Joseph Gordon-Levitt next project is a thriller wherein he - and I quote - "plays the shady pediatrician lover of ex-Parker's star Mo'Nique". Sigh.

Now, it's 21:25, so that means - that's right - I'm off to the gym.

Byrne in the Fire

Byrne dances with the fire
Originally uploaded by senorbunch.

Sunday I was bumming, kinda hard.
But then I went last minute to see David Byrne and the Arcade Fire at the Hollywood Bowl with olde friende Karen and my neurotransmitters perked back up again.
(Nota bene to T. Cruise, re: the reality of imbalance of chemicals in the human body...sounds like someone didnt finish tenth grade human biology what with the learning about the homeostasis...ahem, excuse me).

So for those who havent been to the Bowl, it is a little piece of the Lord in Los Angeles. A little bit of Over the Pond, back in the Pond. Some Spain in America. All by which I mean to say you can bring bottles of wine or 24 packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon and drink them openly, in public, beside your Trader Joe's picnic of hummous and rough bread and fancypants cheese of many varieties all while watching the people pass by you. Also, the hills that compose your view look a bit like the dry hills of Mallorca, hence the Spain reference.

The teenagers were going apeshit behind us, requesting Arcade Fire songs from a 1/2 mile away from the stage. Perhaps they are Latin students and have studied the physics of ampitheaters, I dont know, but I do know that they threw peanut M&Ms at me, or in my general direction anyway. What is it with the teenagers? Because I'm not so sure we were so rad. The girl in front of me practically threw down when David Byrne whipped out I Zimbra. Really.
There was a man dancing feverishly on the stairs, he, Mr. The Focus of All Comedic Attention and digital photography-taking.
As my mom says, no one moves like David Byrne.
He wore a pink suit, as you can see. He had the Tosca Strings with him as well as a one man drum section. Those amazing kids from Montreal came out for Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place) and somewhere in the stadium a nurse was beaming.

But the nurse did not beam so much as she did when the DB called out the Extra Action marching band, which is a full marching band complete with flag girls - only the flag girls are also burlesque dancers - and they paraded through the crowd (the 35 dollar seats) and onto the stage where they assembled. Henceforth the horns began to play the refrain from :

Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" and I think you can imagine how DB would sound singin Whoa-oh-uh-oh-uhohuhoh and it was amazing I'll never see anything like that agin.

I would highly recommend that you go sit in the corner and meditate upon that, and try to conjure that very image and sound.

Stop. Think. Tylenol, or Popsicle of Love

Which of the above will be your summer slogan?
I choose Popsicle of Love, though it's suggestiveness falls dead on my doorstep. (My neighbor is talk-yelling.)

The people at my gym read scripts, or audition sheets on the ellipticals and they talk on phones and some of them have been seen sipping Americanos in between reps. They don't so much actively read the scripts as have them lay about with highlighted lines on the machines. There is one old black man who wears one of those garbage-bag sweating-suits and he is on the bike for about an hour, making notes with a pencil and reading while cycling at a rep rate of about 5 a minute. I worry about him and hyperthermia and once I was looking down upon him from the elliptical behind (in between watching Britney and Kevin: Chaotic, subtitled as though for the hearing impaired) and saw he was writing down engineering stuff. Drawing figures and doing math. (My neighbor is yelling). Britney and Kevin is no shocker. It's vile but not as vile as MTV's "Prom Night" "docs" which nauseate me. Who (that wasnt this kind of person herself) ever asked to have a glimpse into the goings on of the richest, most tan and popular girl's life leading up to the prom? The show is filled with dimwitted adolescent females saying shit like "This is my night. He's not going to ruin my night. He's wearing the white tux" or "I love this spa, I think this is just so important..it's so relaxing because everything else is like, so stressful". Maybe we're supposed to harbor animosity here, because I sure wanted to.
Lately I've been toting my Pediatric Advanced Life Support textbook to the gym. Last week I went through a review on treating shock. Then the chapter on resuscitation drugs. Then the chapter on interpreting cardiac rhythms. I can reliably tell you what to do in case of certain rhythms now. Can be confident of the dose of the shock that is to be given and type of shock.

What do the people at your gyms do?

Bono's been laying down props to my people on this here tour. He gave a shout out in London last night, dedicating something to “the doctors, scientists and nurses who help to keep us alive… especially the nurses”. It's sad that it means so much for a public figure to make such a statement, considering how long my profession has been around and considering that RNs outnumber MDs by some number reminiscent of data from Roman times (slaves:slaveowners = rebellion). You'd think we were obscure or something considering our general lack of mention. But nurses don't do it for recognition, that's why we're nurses. But that has to change. We can't be invisibly going about our days and nights, our skill, our knowledge unseen by the public.
We have to be more concerned with power, more like MDs in that way. Not in a way that alters our aim, not to be greedy or focused on monetary gain, but any power/recognition we obtain will only serve the patient and community. I think nursing might be one of the only places where "trickle down" could work.

I need some laughing, etc.

Yer pal and token RN,
Sarah

mash-up vol. 1

I'm having problems with ideas this year. The problem is that I have a lot of them that I halfassedly initiate or at least ponder before falling asleep. Then when I have a day off, I go to the gym, shower, clean up a bit and then god knows where the rest of the day goes. I find myself attending to unnecessary organizational activities like restructuring my iPod, then my iTunes library, then moving my only bookshelf from one side of the room to the other. And if I'm scheduled to do some time at 826, you can just write off my entire night with the drive back from Venice. I must say however that traffic on the 10, when at its worst, offers me the ability to practice singing along to traditional ten-minute ballads. This has an awkward consequence though because from it another idea is born,: maybe one day I'll get a 4-track, or garageband, and record my version of said 10 minute ballad. In turn, this then reminds me of a previously abandoned idea wherein I started to outline a workshop I would teach at 826 wherein we would explore the format of the epic poem by writing a Rock Odyssey as a group. I abandoned this idea because I thought it was ultimately stupid and only curious to me.

This week I started to make poster boards for my unit on "Lab Values: a Review" and another one on "Systemic Lupus Erythematosus". I stopped because I didnt have vellum to make the boards aesthetically pleasing.

Oh and then there's that novel, or something like that. I feel nuts on occasion.
(End topic).

Oh my days off. It is enjoyed time but it is almost missing time, especially if season 5 of the Sopranos arrives in my mailbox, or when I watch the three original Star Wars like I did this week, borrowed from my lovely neighbors to the north.

I forgot about the scene in Empire where Han cuts open the guts of the Muk-Muk, or Hua-Hua or Yub-Yub, or whatever that Harryhausen-animatic beast is called, and puts Luke inside to warm him up. Those guts were foul. They really burst forth from the cavity, huh?

I have a new plant on my porch. It is plastic, I got it at Ikea. I think it looks classy but my mother is embarrassed from 2000 miles away.

The new Coldplay is lovely. Why do they get all the guff from people like us when Ryan Adams is equally soundalikey but also very good at it? Also, what is it like to channel the spirits of musicians in the studio when those musicians are still alive? Let's listen in:

[in final playback]
Chris: Johnny, I dont know, don't you think it sounds a bit too, you know, like Mr. The Edge, mate?
Johnny: Yeah, I s'pose. But I really like the harmonic there...
Chris: Well if we just up the wall of sound, maybe it won't be so obvious. I love the way the organ builds, and the jangly bits come in..it's all done out of adoration really, it isnt intentional.
Johnny: Fuck. Reminds me of Where The -
Chris: Homage, ok? Homage. "White Shadows" is like, a prayer to "Boy".
Johnny: Then what are we going to do about "Low"? The bass makes it sound like Eno was at the boards and Lanois has his headscarf on and we're up in the Castle, like it's 1984 and hey there's Bono with his fishmullet. It's just going to be so awkward at the G8 you know? They'll give us hugs but we both know what the subtext is, why they smile when they see us.
Chris: Come on, we're going to be the 34th best band in the world. Give the people yearning and they'll be happy. Listen, I've got to get be at dinner with Apps and Gwyns at Versace's in Portofino by sundown, so let's send it off to print. Fair trade, y'all.


[Ok, so that was shit. apologies].

A light in dark places when all other lights go out.

A crossbeam has come undone.
The house will still hold but it will shake a little more in the wind.

That is what I feel about the disappearance of Trajan Martin from this green earth.
I cannot claim to have known him for as long or in as much detail as others,
but I nevertheless am able to appreciate the great vacuum that trails behind him, that brushes up against us now.

Here is a glimpse, here you can look in through the window of that house, and just imagine.

Up,up,up we goes

You're a jackass now, brother.
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

I may have already revealed the following information to you, but here it is, possibly again:
1) Lili Taylor does radio ads for Tylenol.
2) The voice of Mastercard? Billy Crudup. But maybe you already saw him in the *priceless* gas station ad.
For reals, I think I already told you this stuff.

I can't wait for Sinead O'Connor's new reggae album. She went to live with Burning Spear for many months. It will either be Jupiter-Genius or Pitiful-Sucky.

I was listening to KROQ on the drive back from the OC today in my 1989 U-Haul ten-footer and it's a Nineties weekend folks. That means Soul Asylum, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Foo Fighters, Gin Blossoms, Prodigy - sorry, THE Prodigy -Veruca Salt, Radiohead, Weezer, and the Presidents of the USA. Wow, I could barely type out that last band it's name is so god-awful embarrassing.
When I was driving from Seattle to Vancouver earlier this month, KNDD was having some President of the USA emesis contest. They played a rockblock, and it was somewhat revelatory to know that this could be done with a band like that. It was akin to listening to "Peaches" in 25-minute form, only the chant of "Supersonics" mixed in occasionally.
Folks, the 73, the 405, the 605, the 5 and the 101 shook with the joy of smeary 90's rock as I barrelled side to side back up into the city. Thank you KROQ for putting away your Linkin Park and assorted shit-rock for the afternoon so's I could breathe it all in.

I've been Netflixing season 3 of Six Feet Under. I dont know how they do it. They have so many different directors in a season but they are able to maintain the potency. The roots lie in the writing of course. My favorite character currently is Olivier. I would love to play Olivier, if ever I was asked to play a French-Moroccan male prick art teacher.

Compare with:
The L Word. Firstly, in contrast to Six Feet Under, let's look at title sequences. Where Six Feet has crows and roots of trees, the L Word has a title sequence worth torching. Here you will find a bad song, matched with a collage of gluttonous L.A. Gear images (palm trees, convertibles, sunsets over a downtown skyline, swimming pools, sunglasses, must I go on...).
In the L Word, you will find lots of bad bad bad music, but then you will find an episode with an awkward cameo by Peaches. It will involve dialogue such as: "You guys! Peaches!"
In the L Word there will be acting of a horrifically terrible calibre but then - poof - there is Ossie Davis (playing, notably - uncomfortably - a dying man). Who then dies. The best episode thus far was written by AM Homes.
The press has been asking me which character I would be most likely to want to kiss if forced to under social circumstances. The answer is simple! The guy that lives in the garage.
Fine, ok, that wasnt the answer that was looked for.
Sigh, I would have to pick Shane, and maybe this is because she looks the most like a boy, and she has a tough voice and an angular jaw. She is Gwyneth Paltrow's cousin, per Libby. Shane had a period of very bad hair for some time.
The character I most want to kick to the curb is Jenny, but everyone wants to do that. Mia Kirshner, your dialogue is awful, your dream sequences and literary imaginings make me fast forward on TiVo.
I would recommend a summer of the L Word on DVD for those who might be fans of such fare as America's Next Top Model, What Not to Wear, and Alton Brown's food network shows. Have it for dessert!

Everybody do the merkin!

Everybody do the merkin!
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Today I abandoned work in order to have my right eye examined for it has taken to being red and disturbing and in public places I become self conscious of my eye. Hath been plagued. Me.
So in the Kaiser Permanente waiting room, where I am seated next to an old black lady with a lace hat on who looks and breathes like a fish, they have Oprah on for everyone to be entertained by while waiting for their name to be hollered by the "Yes, a
Man or No, not a man"-receptionist. People can be so confusing what with the sizes of their jaws in proportion to their brows, cant they...

Tom Cruise is the guest, and what I and millions of others witnessed made me wither inside. I withered because of the reaction created by the audience in response to TC's presence and to his ensuing behavior.
I withered because I was stunned by my own powers of perception which allowed me to have a vision in which I could see the two contracts hovering in gold leaf over TC's and Oprah's heads. There was the one that was written between TC and Katie Holmes, wherein she agrees to perform merkin-service for a price and he agrees to fawn shamelessly as only an overcompensating closeted gay man can ("I love women. I love the way they smell. I want to treat my women the way they deserve to be treated. I love my woman"), and the one written between he and Oprah wherein she agrees to vomit forth only sycophantic mummenshantz in her interview, propositioning him with queries about forthcoming marriage proposals.
I wish you could have seen them as I did. In that moment I communed with both Van Morrison and William Blake.
And yet I cannot describe, you must only look
here.

As a palate cleanser, I would suggest you prance over here to see the so-adorable-it's-orgasmic Blur video referenced above.

A Word On Sith:
1) I held back from shouting: "Cast it into the fire!" during the last sequence
2) Why are all the Storm Troopers Maori? Was it always so?
3) Kiss me like you once did on the lake in Naboo!
4) Padme's Paradoxical Pandora's Box: a uterus the size of a woman in her 5th month, bearing full term twins!
5) Why can't it be like it was on the lake in Naboo?
6) Hayden is cut. Dewy. Skranky greasy hair. I bet he can throw down. Mm.
7) Noooooooo! (arches back in anguish). Cut to Vader. Skywalker now Dark.

Traumatic Brain Injury....and you!

I just got home into hazy nighttime Vancouver from Washington state following a two day sojourn at the Seattle Sheraton for "Brain Injuries: The Conference". I added on the colon, it was just called "Brain Injuries". This was my first conference experience. I spent the first five minutes glaring at the back of one fake-n-bake peroxide blonde in high heels and a booby bib in the front row whose name tag denoted her affiliation to be as RN. I was mortified.
Today in one session on managing challenging behaviors in brain injury patients, the lecturer played us a video of a man going apeshit during physical therapy and calling the RNs and PTs bitches and quentes and his head looked like someone had pushed in on one side with a very large thumb.
There was a knowing laugh that spread amongst the people. How odd that I belong to this community now. I drew pictures of stick people banging on drum kits during most of this session, then I had two episodes of tinnitus (in which I heard someone sigh in my ear, no joke, as well as ringing) so I imbibed a Perrier and was healed.

People with traumatic brain injury have been known to speak in tongues.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN LEBRON JAMES!
LAKERS!
KOBEEE BRYANT!
CHIPS AHOY!

(the above is an outburst witnessed at my workplace. This was then immediately followed by the screamer falling into a deep sleep.)

This is a somewhat hyper post. I have edited it as I have annoyed myself with myself.
FYI to JEB: there is a saying amongst RNs and Physicians in trauma/code scenarios:
"Less than 8, intubate!" which means, if someone has a Glasgow Coma Scale rating of 8 or less, the hour has come for deep intervention.
I would like you all to know that.
S

And it was all Coachella

I have:
a red nose and scalp from the sun
a sock and watch tan.

I wish:
I had remembered to bring my camera though I know the pictures that would result could only be disappointing. Crowd pictures can be lame. However I could have done a photo essay only on tshirts.
"Would you mind if I touched your butt?"
"More cowbell"
"I'm with Steve/John/Freddy/Chris"
"Me love cookies"
"Slap me some skin"
And on, and on.
I wish I brought my green sunhat.

I saw:
a)The Raveonettes, who are from Denmark, and are capable of speaking perfect English sans accent. They rocked very intensely and cleverly and were clean and well styled.

b) Snow Patrol,who are from Belfast and have been sainted by a reference from the OC, like many others. They suffered initially from sound issues and the lead singer's flat, vanilla voice but they came together towards the end. I forgive the lad his weak rocking abilities simply because he did what most people do not when on stage in that he smiled and laughed persistently throughout.
There was a guy in the crowd wearing the most unforgiveable of all Irish tourist items available for purchase: the tricolor viking hat plus flag as cape.

c) Keane, from "small town in England", were great. My friend Steve remarked that the pianist and the drummer looked like the Bobsy Twins. To me they were just two men flopping up and down in unison at their respective instruments, but the flopping was comedic like the singer's cute slapfaced cheeks. Nice to see a band with a instrument-less singer, a la Mick and Van and Bono.

d) Wilco, at sunset. That was nice. I'm not a huge Wilconian, but it was enjoyable. Tweedy has an unfortunate face but he is crafty at his craft. And the guy on keys looked like Nigel from Spinal Tap.

e)Weezer...what can I say? Weezer is for kids. It's true. I have never felt so old as I did yesterday as I fled out of the crowd after Keane only to have to push against what I will term The Incoming Tide of Utter Tools...alt frat kids, their tow-along girlfriends and high schoolers. Not only did I feel old but I also felt such a bitch. Rivers bowed to the crowd and said "this is fun" so I think he rather enjoyed himself even though he was off key. I used the bathroom at this juncture. I do not say this to point out how cool I am because I didnt want to see Weezer, but voiding felt more important and it won by a long shot as far as priorities go.
f) Bauhaus: Unbelievable. Like an Opera. The only band to have platforms to use for climbing onto simply for dramatic emphasis. First, all we heard was low bass rumbling, tones shifting up and then down again. But from my angle in the front, we could see that off stage right, a man was hanging upside down from a guy wire. For four minutes only we could see this, he just hung there, not moving. Then smoke was sent out and the man was pulled to mid-stage upside down, and he proceeded to arch his back slightly and bring his hand up into little claws like a bat and then he sang the opening number completely upside down. He liked to vamp at the camera like the dramatic German he is.
g) Coldplay. Where Weezer had The Tide of Tools, Coldplay's crowd (in my area) seemed to be mostly clean cut Asian American kids who said things like "Wow, I am smelling a *lot* of pot around here", and who were very cheery with their friends, snapping photos, baseball caps and buttonup shirts, lots of love going around. Coldplay did in fact blow me away, I will say that right now. I did not expect this, and I wouldnt buy a ticket to see Coldplay, but they seem to have learned a few things about live performance and engaging the audience (from, ahem, I wonder who) that works well. They have a formula, and they are very good at it, so much so that I was reminded of the fact that Yellow is one of the best pop songs ever written after hearing it live under a big desert sky. But something about Chris Martin remains unsettling. What is it? I get a wierd vibe off him. He goes to be with Gywneth Paltrow! So wierd, and so cute. He was visibly happy and grateful to be there too and he openly dissed the show they played in Vegas last night and then introduced a Johnny Cash song, or one he wrote for Johnny Cash, or something like that. And lept off the stage like a fool.

There were some other people there: Bloc Party, Spoon, Chemical Brothers, Buck 65, Rilo Kiley but I did not see them. Today is Arcade Fire, Aesop Rock, Gang of Four, Black Star, and a million others.
Next year, there shall be on-site camping and a two-day pass for me.


This has been Sarah Lebo, with a synopsis and a wrap-up.

rush, blood, head

my little buttercup
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

here is my house
my bed is my furniture.
my floor is my shelf! there are bags everywhere of unimportant things like party lights and votive candles (we had a party last week)
the picture does not accurately complement the real courtyard mileu. And you cant see the spiders or hornets from here.

I now live in an area that could be mapped out by Beck's "Que Onda". I am between the Vista Theater and Rudy's Barbershop; or, between El Gran Burrito and Tang's Donuts ("I saw a puppet at Tang's with a mullet and a popsicle"); or between Cap N' Cork ("Let's go to Cap N' Cork, I hear they have the new Yanni cassette") and Griffith Park ("Vamos al Griffith Park").
Viva Michael Bolton!

I have a mystery itchy patchy rash on periphery of my face. I feel like Eric Stoltz in M.A.S.K.

This week I was able to tolerate hard contacts for an evening out at the Smog Cutter (1/2 mile from my house) for Alex's birthday. It felt so wierd to have my face exposed to the elements sans glasses.

The topic of hierarchy within the hospital is taking up too much mind-time in my practice of late... I found myself at the bedside the other day admitting a patient, and the medical resident came over from the neighboring unit to do his assessment. I mentioned a strange rash I had noticed on the kid's chest, and this resident - though emanating the rich stink of being in a rush with his quick mannerisms and speedy speech - actually took the time to brush off my observation....he said "All it takes is one sharp fingernail to make all those scratches", and see, he said this after I had already passed along that this child has absent fingernails - no nailbeds. Of course, two minutes later, he has a revelation: This child doesnt have any nails, how interesting!.
The point here is not that I felt my assessment was being ignored because with some physicians that is just true. Nor was I just peeved by his brief patronization during what I had interpreted as an interdisciplinary bedside moment.
No, the point is, at work I keep noticing that I get wrapped up in *their* rush, and it physically makes me want to scream. Both at myself for speeding along beside them, and therefore enrobing myself in the manner of one subserviant, but also at them for their obvious disrespect.
You could say - and they would say - they are very busy, they have many patients to see. This is true, but my colleagues and I also have patients to see, medications to give, parents to talk to, teaching to do, discharges and admissions coming and going, dressings to change, other phone calls to make to other physicians, documentation to make, the bathroom to go to...and yet we RNs make an effort to accomodate that particular kind of stress related to time management on their end.

So now I will resist even more, and I say this to us all: I will not engage in passive aggression, but when I feel the rush coming up inside of me, I will halt and remind myself that it is not I who must meet them but us who must meet each other. If they don't slow down to listen, I will call them on it outside the patient's room.

I have to sleep in my furniture now. Tomorrow Coachella.

In some movies, Adam Sandler makes me cry.
Like Spanglish, which is not that good, but still.

grown

smoggiest day since I moved here yet
earthquake this a.m. that no one but me noticed
have a new bed. big and for adults. i am an adult now.
moved into apartment shaped like a house
had a love affair with Target and bought magnolia-scented dish soap,
wooden hangers (further proof of being an adult)
made a list with Libby of details for our Great Spring Festival
of this coming week

will seal the deal tomorrow by buying my first proper non
cross-strapped bag. some call it a purse.
dont call it a comeback

Yes, I go to church.

ellipse
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Who told you I didn't? People are forever saying the damnedest things about me.
I don't go regularly; I go every 2-4 years. The city varies but the spiritual root always emanates from the same place.
Because you know, I think it is true that there are some who are holy who walk amongst us.
These individuals are human beings, yes, but are they are able to spread a rare kind of power in alternating forms of joy, integrity and passion.

So the choir numbers roughly in the 10-18,000s. It's that kind of choir.
Last night, my pew partners were the original two, which was the sweetest thing of all (Karen "Malkmus" Ma and Bonnie "Mullen Jr" Harrison).
Our two hour worship was fierce and loving, bedecked in bright lights and red wine.
Our beloved Stocky Irishman in Black, eloquent as per usual, used his lingual talents to devote the energy in the room to the sick of the world. A tear here.
At another juncture, he tried to bottle the energy in the room so that he could peddle it to the world's rich in such a way as to help the world's poor.
He said he had gifted the Pope with a pair of fly shades one summer. The Pope put them on and cocked his head sideways. Seemingly, the weight of the sunglasses pulled his head earthwards.
There was:
Electric Co.. And the Ocean! - The Ocean! I've never heard it live before: "picture in grey, Dorian Grey, just me, by the sea" - I think it's one of the simplest and therefore most efficient songs to lock down the anomie of adolescence. Sunday Bloody Sunday in the old school style: No more! (sing) No More! Wipe your tears away...
There was a grade A ho who jumped onto the catwalk when the Man was dancing with a girl from the audience. Bono grabbed his chosen girl's hand and began to run with her away from Ho, looking back every few seconds to check on Ho's progress. Security tried to take her down but Bono said (and it fit perfectly into the song structure) "It's alright, it's alright" and Ho then got on all fours and turned herself rumpwards. You could actually hear the audience stop singing outloud when her breasts appeared on stage. Only in Los Angeles, we said. And he said.
They closed with "40" and each man put his tool aside one by one (voice, bass, guitar) until only Larry (anointed with partial mullet, unaged, unchanged, pomade liberally applied, still loves Elvis) remained.
Then he was gone too and we went out into the night.
It sticks to you, nights like those. So good.
When I am a rich registered nurse, I am going to take one and all for an evening of singing out loud and love.

Be this riddle or real?

I know there are whack postings to be found on Craigslist. I know there are ca-razy "Missed Connections" postings.
But this gem was nuzzled in amongst the normal:
one bedroom, Los Feliz.

No more! (wipe your tears away)

The idea of writing another post for my blog makes me cringe. I do believe I am approaching the point of diminishing returns as regards my tolerance for this medium. Me, me me me me. Blah blah blah. My mother and I are forming a unified front on this.
Some people might initiate an antiblog-blog at this point.
Questions? Comments?

I made a list (revised)

I have been asked over whiskeys and at other junctures what my favorite recent movies are, etc. I am never able to deliver the goods. I ramble and get distracted and cannot make thorough recall.
Now I have made a list, inspired by a post on Majikthise, which prods us to list the best films so far of the Oughts, the '00s, because Lindsay was prodded to do so by some other blog.
Really these are not in any order per se. I picked 12 as tops.

1. Fellowship of the Ring, Return of the King , then Two Towers in that order and this counts as one (1) film indeed. I am referring to the Extended versions here of course.
2. Donnie Darko - definitely not the Director's Cut. Ouch. Please, no.Sucked.
3. Wonder Boys
4. Waking the Dead
5. Jesus' Son
6. Almost Famous
7. An Everlasting Piece
8. Sexy Beast
9. Master and Commander: Far Side of the World (creaking! biology! water!)
10. Bloody Sunday
11. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
12. Whale Rider


Special Mentions: Billy Elliot, Atanarjuat,Requiem for a Dream, Tape, Last Orders, The Believer, Dancer In The Dark, Spy Kids, About A Boy, Pieces of April, The Anniversary Party, Fahrenheit 9-11,13 Conversations About One Thing,A.I. (not including the last hour which belongs in a separate category - sorry Alex), In America, Before Sunset, Sky Captain and The, Hedwig and the Angry Inch,I Heart Huckabees, School of Rock, All the Real Girls, Punch Drunk Love, The Slaughter Rule, Rabbit Proof Fence, Laurel Canyon,Adaptation,Liam, the Good Girl, Moonlight Mile, and Barbarian Invasions.

Extra Special Mention, Existentially Questionable Filmmaking Award: Reign of Fire.

Bill Murray's Polonius was good.

The Great Loud Beast of Large-scale-yet-stunningly-intimate Concerts Has Passed Me By

If I were to be my eighth grade self today, my eighth-grade self would be stunned at my out-of-touchness.
My eighth grade self would never have imagined that there could or would be a day wherein I would not know that U2 tickets were going on sale, and she would have probably not believed me if I told her I failed to know the proper time to assume position in a long line to obtain tickets to one of five (5) shows.
My eighth grade self would have pointed to the moulding of my old bedroom as evidence of my once-hearty involvement in all things EastSideDublin-based. The moulding went around the ceiling of my old room, and onto it, in Sharpie-marker faerie-font, I wrote out the words from The Unforgettable Fire's "Bad":
Desperation.
Dislocation.
Separation.
Condemnation.
Revelation.
In temptation.
Isolation.
Desolation.

And then my eighth-grade self continued the tradition in Sharpie marker, all around the place:
Emancipation.
Elevation.
Disintegration.
Violation.
Masturbation.
Injection.
Prognostication.
Oration.

She was so devoted, that girl.
Robyn told me a story the other day about this friend of ours who once was staying in a hotel where it turned out the band was also staying. This friend heard singing and she stood in the doorway of the ballroom and saw Bono rehearsing for a show that night, a small man expressing sound in an echoey room, and this friend said she understood what she previously had not about U2 in that moment.

When I heard this story, the eighth-grade version of my self leapt up into my throat and tried to climb out of my mouth so that it could yip about in jealousy and jump up and down; thus my current self couldnt get obtain words to provide Robyn with a reaction to that story.

I can't speak to you of the holy feeling I get when the white lights go on in all our faces at a certain point in their shows. It isn't ludicrous, it isn't an exaggeration. It is simply very true.

music-makers, dreamers of dreams

Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

I was on the unit last Saturday when I met two fellows.
They were in my patient's room, standing over her bed. She - 6 years old but looking 3 - just stared up at them while they bent over her making bizarre giggling noises and doofus sounds. She, with her left arm swollen for unknown reasons to four times it's normal size, looked up at them, and then looked down to attend to her coloring book.
The two men were not deflated by her lack of enthusiasm. Instead they signed two pieces of paper and tucked them under her pillow and said goodbye.
I heard them giggling and doofusing on down the hall to the next room. I looked under her pillow to discover two autographed pictures of Spongebob and Patrick. Those people were Spongebob and Patrick!
Patrick was tall and looked like Patrick and Songebob was small with a halfway Buddy Holly haircut, smallness being reminiscent of Spongebob. The woman who does the voice of Bobby from King of the Hill was there too along with a Simpson's artist. I got me a Wiggum from him. Chief. I felt like a whore, really really whore-like, for doing this afterwards because those people were there for the kids and not the staff. But I didnt reallly ask for one. I just asked if he did Wiggum portraiture, and bam, there it was.

Last night I heard some excellent people read some excellent things at our 826LA benefit: Aimee Bender read a short story about the Devil and a Skeleton who work for the International Red Cross rowing dead families across a river in Hades; there was a short excerpt about Teddy Roosevelt hunting 'squatch from an upcoming book on Yeti/Sasquatch by Joshua Bearman; a story about a cook working for a famous celebrity, referred to in the story only as 'Monster' and the celebrity's house only as "the Lair" by Jervey Tervalon; a brief display of drawings of "hand signs particular to El Monte flower-picking gangs now facing extinction" from one Salvador Plascencia; and a hot sticky one from Rachel Resnick who is the kind of person who emanates toughness, even through a fitted blazer.
The new site for 826LA is up, so go peek at it.
We are proud.

But this week I learned that I will never again attempt large-volume handsewing projects at the tail end of a very busy week of shifts and pediatric advanced life support certification courses. I watched Gattaca, some TiVoed Survivor and 24, the most recent U2 concert at Slane castle, and heard the director/writer commentary of Return of the King all while trying to finish pillowcases by hand. It went on into the night. It was a moment of futility defined.
In the morning I went to the Pasadena Sewing and Vacuum Supply Store with my sack, my five yards of pathetically handstitched, unfinished and incorrectly sized corduroy and dealt with a strange woman who helped me out in a manner that demonstrated that she didnt really want to help me but since I would probably start crying at any moment, she decided she would.

In other news, there isn't any.

Yer pal,
Lebo

Return the Map,

robinhood
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Return
What
You Have
Stolen From Me......Most Fabulous Object In the World...Your Money Or Your Life...
Don't Touch It, It's Evil.

Dream of the Grey Floods

I sleep with my window open. We need well circulated air. I believe in this.
In Calgary, -35 with wind chill, the window over my bed was open a crack, still.
The thunder has been waking me up lately but the sound of rain hitting the wide pool that has replaced the backyard lawn is what goes into my ears and then into my dreams.
I only remember my dreams on days off, when my sleep is not halted at 0515 in the a.m.
I used to also believe that I most vividly recalled morning dreams when it was raining, because my ears were attendant to the sounds of real outside, thereby keeping my deep dream state only waist deep in unconsciousness. The brain can't do everything at once, though we try to make it.
It's the kind of day where you might watch Gattaca.
Water has nothing to do with taxes, but they are done.

A Big Shout-Out to Hallmark

suckday
Originally uploaded by Sarah Lebo.

Dear Hallmark Cards Inc. ,
Thanks for the complex! What a gift! It is such an over-the-top thing to bestow on a person! I don't deserve it! I thought I would be blind to the title that Monday bore, and yet, your present still arrived at my door and now it is managing to make me feel bad! And I'm strong!
No, really, I don't want it.
I don't deserve it.
None of us do.

Love,
Sarah

And also...

I wish to strongly encourage you to read something rare and sweet. It is a eulogy by my mom for Cyrus. It's short and it makes a stain.
It makes me want to delete my posting and start over, to write something better, but it would be futile.

I will not say do not weep - for not all tears are an evil.

I want to say something about Cyrus that would make you twist with tears.
Our regal brother...

I am remembering the night I lay on the floor with Cyrus Lebo for the first time. He had already been a Lebo for many years.
I was slow to love him...this is a sin...today such delay in my appreciation of Cyrus feels like an evil.
For many years I cringed at the thought of touching his belly.

I was lucky you see because in a language without words, Cyrus is also called Cyrus The Forgiving. That night on the floor he embraced me
when he heard I was near, and crying.
Overhead of us, credits were rolling.I had just seen Waking the Dead, and the house was empty except for us.
When I say he held me, I mean he literally
embraced me right there, there down on the floor.
My face was on the berber and he looked at me.

For this I will always be grateful.

Cyrus met you at the door when you came back from being away and he would talk to you. Again, he forgave you and your absence. He would ask you about your travels. Say, what was your favorite beer? Who did you meet. Will you be going away again, tell me the answer is no.
When I say he spoke, I really mean that he did, with intonations and syllables and subtle gesticulations of his mouth and eyes.

Yesterday, mom and dad and sister encircled him, and I was not there but they were with him on the floor, all together. He was on a blanket and he looked at them, he gave and he got love, and then his travelling shoes were laced in a double knot. He boarded the great grey ship and underneath that fur, he became cold.

His like will not be there again.