I'm Not Changing My Last Name, Though.

I have to get a little profound here for a second.

This past Monday marked the three year anniversary of the day I met my James.  I had been called into audition for a play, and the man reading opposite me was to play my husband in the performance.

Although I had no idea at the time, he would fulfill that role in my actual life as well.

This past Monday my James and I stood up in front of 15 of some of our dearest friends and family in our apartment in Astoria and vowed to love, honor and protect each other for our whole lives.

Yeah, we got married.

This was not a last minute or brash decision.  We've been engaged for two years and we always knew we wanted to have a small wedding.  James had proposed on a New Year and we figured it would be best to keep our anniversaries all bundled up in one place.

We were also a little sick of people asking when we were going to do it.

I didn't know if I would actually feel different when I said my vows and got that all important kiss.  We'd been living together for over two years, we've talked about the possibility of having children, we've worked on our credit together, we're in the midst of raising two trouble making cats - what could a ceremony do that would change anything?

Ceremony.  I don't think we understand the significance of that word anymore.  The notion of a ceremony, a ritual.  You understand why we do these things?  Why the Catholic church uses incense, Muslims face the sun to pray and Jews wear a yarmulke.  It has everything to do with us, as humans, honoring something too big for us to understand.  While we have our religious differences all over the world, honoring the unknown in any small way is a huge deal.

The idea of two people joining to live a life together is an aspect of religion that goes back many thousands of years.  Before Jesus walked on water (or just told his Disciples to tell people he did after he fell in cause he was all embarrassed), standing up in front of witnesses and your chosen deity and promising to live a life working together has been a basic tenant for time out of mind.

When I was standing in our living room with our friends around us, listening to our magnificent minister read our ceremony, I got a sense of that.  I was joining in a tradition that has been and is being practiced all over the world.  We didn't bring the Almighty into our situation as I have enough imaginary friends to begin with, but I couldn't help but feel a very powerful intention being created by my James and me.  This was different than lying in bed holding each other, extolling our love and promises for the future.  By standing in front of people and promising to be faithful and loving, I was suddenly not only responsible to James, but to everyone I loved who was watching us.

It was an odd, empowering feeling.

I can say without hesitation that I am very happily married.  That I cannot imagine hitching my life to anyone else's, but that wonderful man who had tears in his eyes as he clasped my hand and promised to worship me with his heart and soul, who laughed through his tears when I said my vows and who is just as beloved to me now as the cold February night I fought with him on that subway platform when I yelled at him that I was falling in love with him.

I wish everyone the opportunity to love someone to the extent that I do.  It's messy and complicated and uncomplicated and pure and deep and powerful and it hurts and it soothes and its comforting and confusing and funny and serious and everything and nothing and it always changes.  And just as soon as you've found a definition, just as soon as you've found a way to grasp it, you realize that, no, that's not quite it.

Marriage is an practice that needs to be protected and honored, and that has nothing to do with the genders of the people participating.  It has everything to do with making a promise.  A vow.  That's an important word.  Vow.  That is something you cannot break.  That is giving a piece of your soul away with no thought for it back.

I mean, if you have a spouse who is beating you nightly or is driving you to debt with a nasty coke habit, yeah, there are extenuating circumstances that allow for ending a marriage.

But if you've known each other for a week and a half, maybe give it a little more time before you decide to have and to hold.  Remember, anyone can have a wedding.  A marriage is different.

I'm no marriage expert, it hasn't even been a week since my wedding day.  But I know my James, and I know how to love him.  James knows me, and he knows how to make me laugh and how to make me feel precious and loved.  That is no small service for one person to give another.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled program.

NYC Subway Etiquette - Keep Yourself Alive

As the holiday season in New York City ends, you can feel the residents of this great city begin a careful, controlled sign of relief.  The winter holidays are a difficult time for us New Yorkers.  Its cold, yet we're expected to be festive.  Homeless people badger you a little more because its the "season of giving".  Everything your friends and family want can only be found at that one specific specialty shop and costs a fortune.

And more importantly, its tourist season.

Those of you who live in sunny, beach-y destinations will understand what I am talking about.  I'm sure traffic gets all gnarl-y with the influx of people and ignorance abounds.  For example, many tourists who come to New York feel it is completely acceptable to stop in the middle of the sidewalk, four people across, look up and gawk at a building.

Let me be the first to tell you, this is not cool.  Yes, you may be on vacation, but some of the thousands of people on that very same sidewalk which you are blocking are trying to get to work, to class, to an audition.  Such idiotic behavior could cost someone a flippin' job.

My biggest issue, however, occurs when tourists attempt to ride the subway.

Oh, I get it.  You want the whole experience.  You want to see how the locals live, so you get on one of the most heavily trafficked public transit systems in the world.

Just for you adventurous morons, I have put together some unspoken rules about the subway.

And away we go . . .

We will begin very simply.  Let's just enter the subway.

1.  Not everyone in your 24 person family needs a subway card.

How often are you actually going to use the subway?  Maybe twice, before you go back to taking cabs?  Putting $5 on every individual card is unnecessary.  When you are dealing with cash cards and not unlimiteds, you can use a single card more than once.  Just put $25 on a single card and stop piling up in front of the card machines so those of us with perishable groceries can get a card and get home.

2.  Move aside, people!

In America, we drive on the right.  Those of you from other countries should learn this, and those of you actually from the states need to stop being idiots.  It goes to follow, that when using stairs or escalators that you need to move to the right.  Eight of you lined up across a stairway will only earn you the everlasting hate of New Yorkers who just missed that train that would have gotten them to the office on time.

3.  Subways are not elevators.

When those doors are closing, they are closing.  Sticking one hand in between the doors is only going to hurt, slow the train and piss off the people in that car.  Putting a bag, shoe or family member in the way of the doors will probably mean you will lose that item.  Slowing the trains also fucks things up for THOUSANDS of people.  Believe it or not, the trains are actually on a schedule.  Making a train stop and wait until you figure out if you need to go uptown or downtown is not a way to win friends.

4.  Move to the center of the car.

We know you're scared and this experience is wholly new and different.  The subway car will not eat you, and very few New Yorkers bite when unprovoked.  By huddling around the doors you are getting in the way.  You are not made of air, and the rushing inhabitants of the Big Apple cannot pass through you like a ghost.  We are not below shoving and pushing, however.  And use the poles.  Each time the train starts one of you falls over, often on a poor woman who is exhausted and just wants to get home.  You have not improved her day.

5.  Don't go to 11.

The cars are not huge.  Yes, they can be a little noisy, but that does not constitute the attempt to be the loudest person on that train.  You can slightly raise your voice and speak to your neighbor.  No need to scream across the car, disturbing (in some cases) the only peace a person has had all day.  Turn the volume down.  This is helpful to you as well.  Speaking loudly and with a dramatic Southern accents makes you a target for pickpockets and muggers.  Low profile, guys.

6.  Exiting.

Follow rule #2 when leaving the station, only now we are going to add a little choreography.  Once you have reached the top of the stairs/escalators/whatever, quickly step out of the way.  Congregating in the threshold of the station means that anyone in front of you trying to get in and behind you trying to leave, can't.  Hop, skip and a jump and you are out of the way.

Huh, just noticed that most of these rules can be summed up with "Get Out Of The Way."

I guess I could have just said that.

I Would Have Learned More In School If They'd Kept All The Nasty Details

I love history.

One of the greatest gifts I ever received was when my James got instant Netflix on our TV, because now I can watch all the documentaries I want.  And I watch a lot of documentaries about a lot of different things.

Last night I was watching a rather cheesy documentary on Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii.  For those of you who don't know, Mount Vesuvius is an active volcano in Italy.  It is very famous, because in AD 79 the volcano erupted and covered the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash, completely preserving the towns and the people in the exact positions they were in when they died.  It is one of the best examples of Roman life from that time period, or any time period. 

For god's sake, there is a little corner store that was unearthed with small change still on the counter, waiting for its owner to pick it up.

One of the most amazing finds in this site is a cellar where a number of individuals sought shelter.  The ash and lava encased the town and the cellar, entombing them where they lay.  The bodies that were out in the open were not as well preserved as the people in the cellar.  This is particularly notable, because most Romans at this time cremated their dead, and thus we have very few humans remains from this time period.

Ok, hang on, I am slowly getting to the point.

This documentary I was watching described the people in the cellar.  They appear to have separated themselves into two groups - the wealthy and the poor, possibly even slaves.  The skeleton of a man lies between the two groups.  A large bag of gold was found by his remains, and this documentary surmised that the cellar belonged to this man, and that he had brought the gold with him when he retreated into the cellar with the other people.

This is where I take issue.

This man didn't just bring a bag of gold into the cellar with him and usher passing wealthy citizens into his cellar out of the goodness of his heart.  Think about this.  He was charging people for the use of his shelter.  Charging.  That's why the cellar wasn't overflowing with bodies.  If he was just kindly inviting everyone in there would be bones stacked upon bones.  He wasn't.  He was making a profit off of a tragedy.

Question.  What is more interesting?  A man who opens the door to his home to everyone, or one who charges whatever a person has on them for their lives? 

I want to know more about the greedy man.  Because I could totally buy that a man like that existed.  I have met that man before.  If there is one mistake people make in teaching history it is the notion that the people that came before us were all the different from us now.  Human beings are emotional, greedy, despicable, incredible creatures.  They were just as bad and just as good as we are now.  So many times we are misled into thinking that the people who had a hand in making the world what it is today were somehow better, more noble than people are today.  Yes, there were very noble, honorable people who shaped the world, but many of the movers and shakers were just as nasty, petty and driven by greed and sex as anyone is today.

How much more interesting is history to learn if historical figures were actually people?  John Adams was a jerk!  Abe Lincoln was reluctant!  Edward Hyde (New York, New Jersey governor in the 1700s) was a cross dresser!  Alexander the Great was gay! 

Real life is better than history any day.

Homemade Cat Food. Seriously.

I've promised it for a while, and finally, here it is.

My recipe for homemade cat food.

My cousin, Jane, is a veterinary surgeon.  She's super awesome when it comes to natural solutions to animal problems, and even performs acupuncture on animals.  I knew that when I got my cats, I would be talking to her when it came to their food.

Honestly, I wasn't surprised when she told me that most store bought cat food is pure crap.  Its just a lot of crude protein and carbs and it makes cat poop and pee really stinky.  It can also be responsible for the mythical "smelly cat" syndrome.

So, with help from Jane and the amazing people at Whiskers Holistic Pet Products, I have devised this recipe.

Let's begin.  This recipe will make enough food for three cats for about 2 weeks.

Ingredients:

3.5 lbs. of ground turkey
6 eggs
Two medium sized sweet potatoes
1 bunch of parsley

Let's begin with the smaller bits and pieces.

The eggs and sweet potatoes need to be boiled.  To save space on the stove, I boil them both together in the same pot.

I put the eggs in water first:

Then peel and chop the sweet potatoes:

Then put them all together in boiling water:

I find the time of cooking the sweet potatoes to get them soft is a good measure of time for cooking the eggs.
While that is going on, cook the meat.

Once everything is cooked, its time to combine.  Basically you just use a food processor and make everything into a slurry, but I'll show you how I do everything.

I like to combine the eggs, parsley and sweet potatoes first.

As for the parsley, you want to use a lot of it.  More than you think.  I'm posting a picture below of my hand with the parsley to give it some scale, but its a whole bunch from the grocery store.

You just cut the stems off:

And plop that in the processor:

 

Its easier to chop all this up before you put anything else in there, and you add some good-for-the-feline stuff.

 

You want to use 1/2 a cup of the cat oil supplement.  It has all kinds of fish oils and vitamins and stuff.  If you have cats that  like to chew plastic bags, its because they aren't getting enough of this stuff.

You can also use olive oil if you want, but its not as good as this stuff.

I use just enough of this to make a parsley/cat oil pesto-esque mixture.

Then, add the cooked sweet potatoes.

Then, the eggs.  Now, you only need to use the egg yolks, the yellow part of the egg.

 

Now, combine it all, and you should get a mixture that looks like this:

 

Now, for the meat.

When cooking this, do everything you can to preserve all the turkey juices.  You can use all of the juices to help reconstitute it all and grind it up better.  If you need to add some water to make it more juice-y, go for it.

 Then, you mix it all up together.  It'll look something like this:

Now, on to actually serving the stuff.  You don't need much.  Our cats get fed twice a day.  For breakfast, they get one tablespoon each, and two tablespoons for dinner.  I'll show you how we serve the single tablespoon serving.

 

They get extra vitamins with their food.  I use this:

Specially suggested by the fine folks at Whiskers Holistic Pet Products, this stuff has everything you need for healthy and happy cats.  They get one teaspoon per meal.

Reconstitute the cat food with a little water and mix it till it looks like this:

Then put it on the floor, till it looks like this:

The big black guy is our boy Wee Thomas, the little beige beauty is our lady Jezebel.  The pretty little tabby in the middle, is a new addition to our house, Lola.  Our new roommate, Sam, brought Lola with her, and wanted to try out our food with her.  Amazing things have happened.  In just a couple weeks she has lost weight, she's much more active than she ever was and, according to Sam, she's lost her stink.

Apparently, she used to be a MAJOR stinky cat, with major stinky bowel movements.  Now, she doesn't have either one of those problems.

For the vitamins and oil used, if you are in NYC, Whiskers the is best place to go.  If you head toward to back right of the store there is a huge selection of vitamins and whatnot, and the guys who work there are incredibly knowledgeable.  They have two locations, one in Queens and one on East 9th street.  Check out their website.

Warning, they have a ton of awesome stuff - you are going to want to buy a lot of things there.

So, there you have it.  Let me know how your kitties enjoy!

I Can't Think Of A Snappy Title, So This One's About Horror Movies.

Last night I was home alone with my sewing and what did I decide to do on a dark evening all by myself with the cats rummaging around in the background?

Of course I decided to watch a couple of scary movies.

Very specific things scare me.  As I have established in earlier posts, I am not a fan of alien abduction movies because when they are done properly, when the protagonist is sufficiently trapped, devoid of hope and forced into a shadowy version of their former selves, they really get under my skin.

Demon/demon possession movies also scare me.

I am a big fan of horror films that rely on the imagination of the viewer to bring the evil into focus.  Your CGI ghost/alien/monster and your special effects blood/gore will never match an imagination running rampant of what something could be.

I think the best example of this in recent years have been the Paranormal Activity movies.  Not only do the filmmakers trust the audience's imagination to fill in the gaps, they are masters at building tension, layering anxiety and the all important scare tactic, timing.

There is one excellent moment in Paranormal Activity 2 (SPOILER) when the mother (played by Sprague Grayden) is sitting alone in the kitchen.  She is the only one home, and very much alone even though its the middle of the day.  She feels more than hears a presence behind her, and she turns, looking for what has triggered that instinctual feeling we all have when someone or something is standing close to you.  Seeing nothing, she relaxes slightly, and turns back.  Just at the moment, all the cupboards burst open explosively and scare the poop out of Grayden and anyone watching.

This was an expertly executed moment.  First off, she's home alone.  The audience knows SOMETHING has to happen, so our eyes are already darting here and there on the screen to see what's going to move, where a shadow might appear, etc.  Already, the tension is building.  We feel that presence along with Grayden, and when she turns, our hackles are up right along with her's, we are so ready for something to happen and so ready to be scared.  But nothing happens.  As she relaxes slightly, so do we.  Just as we are all feeling slightly relieved that nothing happened, hell breaks loose.

The timing on the actual scare is just perfect.  Not to mention Grayden's reaction - I often wonder, watching that scene if the directors even told her what was going to happen.  It seems plausible that they could have said to her, "Ok, go sit in the kitchen - something's going to happen, but don't worry, just act naturally."  Which is mean, but makes for a great reaction from both her and the audience who needs to put on new underwear.

More traditional, religious possession movies are pretty terrifying as well.  What I find scary about this situation doesn't have as much to do with the demon - although that does give me the jibblies.  What is more frightening about that is if you are possessed by a demon, you have to rely  upon the faith of another person to save you.  The person performing an exorcism must have such strong, intense faith that the demon inside of you cannot stand to be in that person's presence.  That is not an easy thing to find, even among priests and reverend's.  An exorcist must also be very smart, very clever because he/she must force and trick the demon into revealing his true name in order to gain power over him.

There was a movie made a couple years ago called 'The Last Exorcism'.  It begins in a relatively predictable way, centered on a preacher in the south who has been an exorcist for years and is convinced that demon possession lies in the mind of the victim and by preforming exorcisms he is providing a service.  If you think you've been exorcised, then you have been.  He takes a documentary film crew with him on his "last exorcism" to prove to them and the world the fraudulent nature of this work.

Of course, things are not always what they seem.

The moments where the girl in this movie (Ashley Bell) is possessed are actually very harrowing, and very uncomfortable to watch.  Bell is quite adept at being supremely creepy.

Unfortunately, the film makers ruin the movie.

At the end, (SPOILER) the have the documentary crew and reverend come upon a ritual out in the woods, where the girl is on an alter surrounded by Satan worshipers with a great blazing fire behind her.  She's being held down and it looks like an invisible force is raping her.  Then, a large creepy looking lady pulls something out of her, and when the evil priest-y guy holds it up and you can see that its a demon-baby.

Completely ruins the movie.  I was all on board until they pulled the demon baby out of her.  I was all into this sweet girl being possessed by the devil himself, and then it turned out to just be some other random raping/abortion demon and a cult thing thrown in for good measure?  When will people learn to leave well enough alone?

If this had been a story about a man finding his true faith through unimaginable evil, I would have been totally on board.  The girl could have even died in it.  That would have worked.  Nevertheless, by trying to pull the ol' switcheroo on us and putting a twist in the end, it completely cheapened the story.

So for all you filmmakers out there - trust your audience.  We aren't all idiots.  And making a story simple doesn't make it bad.  Even in 'The Sixth Sense' the twist at the end wasn't complicated.  It aided and added to the story, it didn't detract from it.

So . . . yeah.  Scare me properly, people.

People Bring Me Closer To Disappearing Into The Bush of Australia

The more and more I see, the more and more I despair for the future of this planet.

"Oh, Ashley, why do you say that?" You may query.  "Are you speaking of the state of the American government as it currently stands?  Do you refer to the economic crisis that worsens by the day, or our enemies that grow by the hour?  Are you planning on joining the protesters on Wall Street?"

My friends, the answer to these questions is an honest, emphatic and resounding NO.

...

I don't have to look the far away from my own experience to know that we're all fucked.

The future of this country, and the world as we know it lies in, as it may imply, the future.  And the custodianship of the future belongs to the young, the kids who are in school now, who are developing their own dreams.

The little fuckers who write insulting things on the internet.

Ok, I admit, I have a difficult time dealing with little shits who write nasty comments on videos or posts.  They do it because it's a safe environment, because they don't have to actually speak to someone, they get to be anonymous and they aren't in danger of being punched in the face.

As a performer, I have one or two things on YouTube.  And I know that I get way too emotionally involved in people being assholes, so I have the comments set up so if you want to comment, it must first be approved by yours truly.

One of my videos recently got a comment.  I am always interested in constructive criticism.  I really do welcome it.  Do you have something to tell me that will help me improve my craft and become better at what I do?  You took time out of your day to aid in my crusade to be part of the top tier of performers?  That is incredibly selfless.  I could cry.  Honestly, I have tears in my eyes as I type this.  How on this plain or any plain of existence can I possible thank you for that?

Or are you just being a little shit.

I am addressing this to youtube user manaranam.

This person (gender unknown) watched a snippet of a live edit of myself and another very fine actor performing Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.  This play is full of very complicated themes, dramatic and funny.  It is as visceral as it gets, dealing with two people far down the road to despair who find each other, and through their own tragedies, save each other.

To which manaranam commented - "this is stooped"

I didn't clean that up at all.  

Lower case lettering.

No punctuation.

And really, not making any sense at all.

I am assuming that what manaranam meant to say was - "This is stupid."  I don't see how he could have actually meant "stooped".  The dictionary defines the word "stooped" as "to bend the head and shoulders, or the body generally, forward and downward from an erect position; to carry the head and shoulders habitually bowed forward."  

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe manaranam is concerned about us.  Maybe he/she saw something in the film that made them think that we need to see a doctor, maybe somethings' wrong with our back, maybe this was his/her way to reaching out to us to let us know we need to get something checked out.

Hey, perhaps that's the reason there was no punctuation!  User manaranam was in such a rush to get us this information, they couldn't even bother with proper grammar!  They were all, "Fuck it, these people need to know about the stooping!"

Unfortunately, I have a strong feeling this is not the case.  

Come back when you learn how to spell the word "stupid", dipshit.

This, dear reader, is why I despair for the future.

Don't Dedicate Your Life To Something Stupid

So, we were talking about aliens once.

Now, I am not ashamed to say that when it comes to aliens, they freak me the fuck out.  I have a hard time believing that adorable, life-loving, humor-inducing aliens a la "E.T." and "Close Encounters" will get to us before the terrifying, unintelligible, human-hating/consuming aliens of, well, "Alien", "Signs" or "Little Shop of Horrors". 

Don't feed the plants!

I do think there must be something out there in the vast expanse of the galaxy.  Honestly, I would feel really bad if it was just us.  Come on, out of infinite possibilities in the infinite infinity of space, it's just us?

Seems wasteful.

Anyway, so I think there must be other civilizations out there somewhere, and I can even consider the claims that these otherworldly beings have already visited our lonely blue planet.

But I gotta tell ya, the people who are often pro-UFO are making that really really difficult for me.

For example, remember the post about Ancient Aliens?  Don't answer that, of course you do, you read everything I write and every day you don't see a new post is a day without sunshine.

Well, on this program not only do they make the most outrageous claims, but they have the most outrageous people making them.

One of the primary contributors to this show is Giorgio Tsoukalos.

He looks like this.

Ok, that's not a fair picture.  Here's a better one.

Honest.  That's a better picture.

This guys comes up with some of the dumbest theories of all time.  I honestly don't understand how he can't hear himself talk and not say, "Man, I am completely full of shit."

For example, "Mary (of Bible fame) was visited by an alien, which she mistook for an angel, impregnated her and Jesus was actually half alien."

Even my cats roll their eyes when they hear this shit.

See, that's something else these guys need to work on.  When regular, every day, respected scientist talk about science-y stuff, its basically boring.  Even stuff they are wildly passionate about comes out like a bad math teacher trying to teach you fractions.

When they get all tense and excited about the whole alien thing, they just sound super crazy.  Honestly, its hard to say things like, "King Tut was probably an alien hybrid," without sounding like you forgot to take your meds, but if you say it seriously and calmly and not jumping up and down and explaining it like you were talking to a five year old, you might get a little further.

Not much, but a little.

Oh, and then they say things like, "Everybody wants to meet an alien."

Not true, "scientist"!

I don't.  Not until they've been thoroughly vetted and investigated to make sure they aren't gonna suck my lung out through my nostrils.  More to the point, I don't know what I would say to an alien.  I'd probably say something really inappropriate, like, "So, why are all you guys so slime-y?", "What's the deal with anal probing?", "Did you really have crazy alien sex with ancient Greek maidens and tell them you were Zeus?" - that's another claim by these "scientists".

They just said the words "death ray" in a serious context.  YOU CAN'T CALL IT A DEATH RAY. 

I can't deal with this shit.