Stinkin' Up the Joint

Like moths to a flame, they came. From near and from far.  They waited for hours, sometimes until the middle of the night, to experience it.  You would have thought that John and George had come back from the dead so that the Beatles could perform together again.

Actually, though, the source of all the excitement was a bloomin' Corpse Plant at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. Indigenous to Indonesia, the Corpse Plant takes an average of 7 to 10 years to bloom and then the bloom only lasts for 24 to 48 hours.  It is so named because while it is in bloom it stinks to high heaven and smells like hell, and the smell has been likened to rotting flesh.

As you can imagine, all this had Phipps' curator of horticulture Ben Dunigan pretty excited.  He described himself as being like a father waiting for the baby to be born and the blooming of the Corpse plant as being the Super Bowl of the plant world.  They named the plant Romero after George Romero, the director of Night of the Living Dead  which of course was filmed in Pittsburgh (Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/corpse-flower-romero-blooms-at-phipps-700083/#ixzz2cydjqe4N)

This may have been a dream for the botanists, but it could have been a nightmare for the good folks working in marketing and public relations at the Phipps.  I mean, would this awful-smelling plant keep folks away from the place during some peak summer hours?  

But it's all about the spin.  Like a modern day P.T. Barnum or Tom Sawyer getting the town's boys to line up to whitewash the fence, Phipp's marketing department promoted the living daylights out of this unlikely attraction.  The blooming of Romero was heralded with ads telling you that this was your once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and smell this plant.  They threw a big party and stayed open late, and even had the foresight to save some of the smelly nectar for people to smell so as to extend the fun for a few days after the bloom had faded.  And the people came, hundreds at them at a time.  Grow it and they will come.

Despite my admiration for this stellar public relations effort, I never once considered joining the hordes to visit the plant.  For one thing, the bizarre-looking Titan Arum (its real name) looked vaguely familiar to me.  I realized that I had seen its cousin playing Audrey 2, the man-eating plant in a few productions of Little Shop of Horrors.  Lending to this illusion is the spadix that leaps from the leafy structure (http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/stink-plant-stink.htm) which one visitor compared to a ballerina's leg, but at first glance resembled another anatomical appendage to me.  

But mostly it's the smell that kept me away.  Although some of my senses (such as vision and hearing) have started to fade with age, my sense of smell has remained as ever-sharp and particularly acute as it's always been.  I can smell a smell a mile away.  I am surprised I didn't smell Romero from my house in the North Hills.

I spend a fair portion of my time trying to avoid the noxious smells all around me. I buy products to clear the air in the bathroom.  We do laundry to remove smells from our clothes.  We're constantly in the kitchen wondering where that smell is coming from so that we may remove it.  Is it the garbage, or something in the trash disposal, or what? Mice sometimes like to die in the walls of the building where I work.  I have smelled every bad odor used to describe the stench emitted by the Corpse Plant, so why would I make a special trip to stand in line to smell this plant? 

My friend Mamie, who was kind enough to allow me to use her photos here, waited in line for three hours to see Romero, with her baby (who is just a few months old and who loved the sights and sounds of the Conservatory but slept through the actual viewing and smelling) in tow.  She assures me that it was worth every minute, and that is the general consensus among those who made the pilgrimage.

I wondered why the plant smells so bad.  It turns out that the stench attracts insects which is necessary for pollination, given its very short blooming period (Ibid).   It seems the stench also inexplicably attracts people, too! Either that or the marketing professionals at Phipps deserve a bonus.  

Recreating the Error

The mechanics at Firestone were very sorry that my car was working just fine.  They assured me that they saw the problem I described when I brought it in when they pulled it into the garage, so I definitely wasn't crazy.  Nonetheless they couldn't determine the cause of the problem even after the extensive diagnostics because they couldn't get the error to recreate.

The error in question was an occasional hesitation between when I put my foot on the gas and when the car started to move.  The latest lull started when I tried to pull out of the parking lot at work and lasted several seconds leaving me temporarily stranded blocking the entrance to someone's business.  When I got the car to move, I drove it directly to Firestone, my friendly neighborhood mechanic.

I have trust issues when it comes to mechanics.  Although I hate to say it, some mechanics I have patronized in the past have taken advantage of my ignorance of car mechanics  and have performed procedures on my cars that were not necessary.  Hard to believe I know, but not terribly unusual.

However, I cannot say enough nice things about Firestone and its crackerjack team of mechanics, who are the epitome of ethical professionalism.   They do an excellent job  They explain everything to me in detail, and they never do anything that doesn't need to be done without my permission. So I have nothing but appreciation for these fine and trustworthy gentlemen who explained  that there could several causes for such a problem - some simple and inexpensive, others more serious and potentially very expensive - but until and unless they could get the error to recreate, they couldn't determine what needed to be fixed.  

They assured me that they took it on several test drives trying to get it to screw up, but the car just kept working.  Furthermore, the car didn't need anything to pass inspection, but there were a couple of minor things that could be fixed, if we chose.  I chose to have them done, just in case one of these repairs fixed the problem, which these ever-truthful mechanics assured me that they would not.  The car has worked fine since I drove it away that day.

I hate it when the professional you finally consult can't recreate the error that has been causing you so much trouble.   Like when the web site administrator can't recreate the error that has kept you from updating the web page for the past week or when the symptoms that have been plaguing you and stumping your family doctors for six weeks mysteriously disappear the second you are finally being examined by the specialist.

Now, as the car runs smoothly every day, I am on edge just waiting for the car to malfunction again.  It's like the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.  Well, I have a plan.  Just the minute the error recreates, I'm having AAA tow it right to Firestone without even trying to get it there myself.  

But you and I know that the car won't recreate its error until I'm on the highway in the pouring rain in the middle of night. 

A Mountain on Maui

According to an article in Parade magazine last week, when Oprah Winfrey was asked why the film Lee Daniels' The Butler brought her back to acting she responded, "Lee was relentless.  I remember being on my mountain in Maui where I go to restore myself.  And he called..." (http://www.parade.com/58556/katherineheintzelman/oprah-winfrey-forest-whitaker-talk-lee-daniels-the-butler-racism-and-the-n-word/comment-page-1/#comments)

 

Seriously, Oprah?  Your mountain in Maui?  And how is this apropos of why you accepted this role in the film? 

You know, this is why I think that Oprah has lost touch with the common folk.  I'm guessing that most of us don't have a mountain in Maui for rest and relaxation. I can't speak for everyone but to me it just feels like bragging.  Oprah really wants us to know about her mountain in Maui.

I shared this information with my Friends, some of whom decided to share where they go to restore themselves.

Tom likes to restore himself on his back patio with a cup of hazelnut coffee.

Janette likes to go to coffee shops or little diners to be an anonymous person with her journal or sketchbook and hide in plain sight with a cup of coffee or a good breakfast.  Just to clarify, I asked her if any of said coffee shops or little diners were in Maui, but she confessed that they were mostly here in Pittsburgh or in Michigan, where she was born and raised and where many of her family members still live. I thought Michigan and Maui were similar because they start with the letter "M" and are both out of state. Janette assured me that even if they were that she owned neither a mountain nor a coffee shop, for that matter.

Mary always said that she went to her old claw-foot tub to restore herself. I reminded her that she and I often went to the Highpointe restaurant, which was near California University of Pennsylvania where we met as students, where we restored ourselves after class with crab legs, which were not listed on the menu (you just had to know they had them).  I thought that the Highpointe and a mountain were almost the same thing because they were both, you know, high.

Then Debbie said that she used to restore herself at the Village Dairy, a sandwich shop and favorite dining spot in our hometown of Swissvale.  Just the mention of the Village Dairy filled me with that kind of fond nostalgia that is restorative.  Nancy, another Swissvale classmate, also remembers the Village Dairy, but now goes to her back porch or patio to restore herself.

As for me, the place I go to restore myself is to my side of the love seat in my living room with a cup of Zen tea and Mr. Rip by my side.  It's not on a mountain and it's not in Maui, but it is our only home.  Thank goodness, because flying to Maui is probably so stressful and expensive that if I didn't need to be restored when I left, I surely would need to when I got there.   

Playing the Game

It was one of those oh-so-rare lazy Saturday afternoons  at home with nowhere to go and a clean-enough house.   I pounced on the opportunity to catch up on some much needed organization of my computer apps and files while watching mindless television.

The mindless television pickings were especially slim.  Then I found a whole day worth of Family Feud scheduled on the Game Show Network.  I have always liked watching game shows involving words or trivia, so I have enjoyed many an episode of the Feud over the years, with all five hosts. Yes, this would do for mindless background television.

As I watched, I remembered that for a time Family Feud was my online game of choice. It was hard at first because the game involves thinking like other people, which has never exactly been my forte.  I mean, seriously, where DO they find some of these “100 people surveyed?”  Slowly, I caught onto what answers the masses would come up with, which was in some ways more disturbing to me than getting the wrong answers.

But now I am actually pretty good at the game. In one game in this mini-marathon I kept yelling "sporting events" at the contestants who were trying to come up with an occasion when people scream when they're having fun.  Not only did I have the right answer (which none of the contestants  ever did get), I also had the right terminology.  I would never say "sporting event" in everyday conversation.

Despite this, I would probably never go on the show.  First of all, one of the family leaders on the episodes I watched kept introducing his one family member as "my wacky Aunt Sharon."  This gave me pause, as I, too, could be described like this in front of a national television audience.  Not to mention what a nightmare it would be to coordinate our outfits.

I have no idea how the families pick which two family members play the fast money round, but I just think it's a lot of pressure. Not only might you lose the game for the whole family, but you could be like the woman who answered, "crab fishing" when asked "What is a dirty job that someone has to do?"   

Of course, no one in the survey said that.  Then, to make it even worse, the host said "I'm not touching that one!" As the studio audience erupted in laughter,  the other connotation of her answer dawned on me.

Although I'd like to think that my answer would never be that crazily inane, I could inadvertently say something with another meaning because double entendres are often lost on me.  They just sail right over my head.  I still think “Cream”, my favorite Prince song, is about coffee, or maybe about realizing your potential, even though many a more knowing soul have scoffed at my naiveté, suggesting that it might be about sex.  Well, if they say so.  All I know is that it had a beat and you could dance to it.

I just envision the family reminiscing about that stupid answer at every holiday get-together for the rest of her life.  

Mostly, though, I hesitate because now the Feud gives the winning family a car, presumably to split five ways.  Even Solomon might have trouble figuring that one out. 

Rip Doesn't Live There Anymore

Today I finally saw the Tony Award winning musical Avenue Q, and I don't know who was having more fun - the audience or the performers.   As good a time as I had at the show, the thing I liked the best about Avenue Q is that I don't live there anymore.  

I vaguely remember those days.  Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away I too was a recent college graduate with a degree in Sociology, trying to find my way in life.  I wouldn't go back there for all the money in the world.

First of all, it really doesn't suck to be me anymore.  I'm a  very lucky and happy lady who fully recognizes and appreciates all my blessings.  It's actually pretty great to be me.

I no longer wonder if that seemingly nice guy I kind of like likes me back.  Mr. Rip, who is a very nice guy, loves me just as much as I love him.  There's nothing better, because unrequited love really is a bore.

It's been years since a gay friend realized he or she was gay, or came out of the closet or confessed his homosexuality to me.  My gay friends know they're gay, and so do I. In my circle of friends it's so okay to be gay that we don't even have to talk about it.

As for those Bad Idea Bears, they never write, they never call, and they never visit anymore.  I sure don't miss those little scamps even though I have to admit that they were deceptively cute and cuddly.  Believe it or not life can be even more fulfilling, exciting and fun when you make good choices.

I moved out of my last rental property in1988. I made a few stops along the way but found my place in the world when Mr. Rip and I bought our condo in the suburbs, using our mini-van to haul our stuff there.

The moral of Avenue Q was that maybe you're not so special and not all lives have purpose, but it's okay and besides all the bad stuff going on won't last forever.  That's actually a pretty good philosophy in getting on with your life after college but there's more to it than that.   

All kinds of crazy adventures happen in life: some good, some bad, some planned, and some a total surprise.   You learn a few things along the way, like you need to keep an open mind because you never know what you are going to find in some totally unexpected places.  As a bonus, you find out that you are never going to be too old to explore new possibilities.  

Sometimes you will want to fire the writers who wrote the script for the soap opera that your life's become, and other times you will want to drop to your knees to thank them as things have turned out so much better than anything you could have planned or imagined.  In the end it all turns out the way it's supposed to, if you let it, and it can pretty great to be you, too.

"The View" It Is A-Changing

It was all so sudden.  One day Elizabeth Hasselbeck was on The View; the next day she was gone.  Just like that.  We heard the rumors, but a little notice might have been nice.  Sadly, our local ABC affiliate preempted the portion of the show where the announcement was made for severe weather coverage.  It was like Pittsburgh itself was weeping uncontrollably at the news, causing flash floods and closed roads throughout our area.   For me, this means after 10 years together, it was like she never even said goodbye.  The next day the show went on with Hasselbeck's photo still in the opening montage.  

Then, faster than you could say "token conservative panelist," the announcement was made that Jenny McCarthy would be joining The View.  Oh, I was afraid something like this might happen.  Jenny had been guest co-hosting a lot lately.

I think the producers are rushing into things.  What ever happened to trying out a lot of different co-hosts before making an announcement?  What about all the (admittedly unsubstantiated) reports I'd been reading that the show wanted to get rid of Joy and Elizabeth because they were "polarizing?"  Don't they know anything about Jenny at all?  I suspect that Jenny may make Joy and Elizabeth look positively mainstream once she's a regular on the show.

Being opinionated is one thing; presenting questionable or blatantly incorrect health-related information as fact is another.  Jenny is guilty of the latter in her crusade against childhood vaccinations because of her unwavering stance that vaccinations caused her son's autism, despite no medical evidence to support such claims.  I am not the only person who is concerned that giving her such a widespread platform for such an erroneous and potentially dangerous position is not a good idea.

Let me digress for just a moment to make a public service announcement to the young impressionable mothers out there in America who watch daytime television. You cannot trust everything you hear from a TV talk show host.  I learned this the hard way when I chose to buy a novel because Oprah recommended it in her Book Club.  I don't remember the name of the book because I tend to block out traumatic life events, but suffice it to say it was full of desperate, despondent people struggling to make it through everyday life who made for one of the unhappiest reading experiences of my life.  After that, I used Oprah's Book Club to determine what books to avoid.

What books to read or clothes to wear are one thing, but, if you never listen to another thing I say, please listen to this:  do not under any circumstances make potentially life-and-death decisions about your family's health and well-being based upon what Jenny McCarthy tells you.  Jenny is a college dropout who rose to fame by posing nude for Playboy.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it does not qualify her to dispense medical advice.

You might think I'm just bitter because The View never answered my open letter about giving me a chance as a guest host, but I'm more of a Joy Behar type, so it's not too late.  Of course, I'd have to sit on the same panel as Jenny McCarthy, but that would give the show some of those spirited debates they like so much.  

The Music in My Head

A couple of days ago Facebook asked me what was on my mind, and I immediately typed my reply into my status:

If you hit the dust 

Let me raise you up

If your bubble busts

Let me raise you up

If your glitter rusts

Let me raise you up

And up!

Yes, right now the shiny new original Broadway cast recording of Kinky Boots is in my head, and I couldn't be happier to have it there.  

To remind you, in an example of sublime serendipity, Mr. Rip and I saw Kinky Boots in previews on Broadway this past March.  Well, we were smitten with it right away, and I predicted then that it was going to be a smash hit.

We preordered the original cast recording so that it would arrive at our home just the minute it was available.  Now I am happily singing the songs and the praises of composer-lyricist Cyndi Lauper, who won the Tony for her achievement.  I love every single song in the show, with a particular soft spot for The History of Wrong Guys which could have been the anthem of my youth.  Even when I am not listening to the CD, which I often am, I am hearing the songs in my head.  

It does not always work out so well, though.  Not all the good songs are catchy and not all the catchy songs are good. My mind is like Pandora on shuffle, but I don't get to pick the artists.

For instance, Kopit and Yeston's Phantom is a good musical full of very beautiful songs that serve the story and the characters particularly well.  A couple of them moved me to tears.   

So, why is it that I had no memory of those songs literally the millisecond I left the theater?  Did I just dream that I saw Phantom at the Pittsburgh CLO?  Because that's what happens when I dream.  No matter how vivid, or good or bad a dream of mine might be, moments after waking I couldn't begin to tell you what it was about.

Mind you, not all the catchy songs that stay in my head are welcome there.  

The day after I saw Phantom  I watched the documentary ANNIE: It's the Hard Knock Life - from Stage to Screen on PBS.  Now, let me assure you that I admire the musical Annie very much. Why else would I watch this documentary?  Yes it is as cute as can be and a true crowd pleaser just chock full of adorable precious songs that will drone on in my head for hours - sometimes even days or weeks.  Sometimes in desperation I change the words to amuse myself (I'll stop hearing this song...TOMORROW...).

So now It's a Hard Knock Life (no one cares for you a smidge, when you're in an orphanage) was stuck in my head.  Oh, how I yearned for any one of those beautiful but obviously forgettable Phantom songs to replace it!

Now if I could just get the 15th movement of Rachmaninoff's Vespers to stick in my head.  No one goes around humming a high quality classical tune like that.