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Comedy And Tragedy

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robin-williams_1Robin Williams’ suicide brought attention to the depression that often strikes entertainers, but sadly, he wasn’t the first comedic genius to take his own life. Freddie Prinz died at the age of 22, and Richard Jeni died right before his 50th birthday, both from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Evidently, comedy can serve as an outlet for severe depression and psychosis, but the danger lies in the fact that making others people laugh can hide a dangerous secret.

I worked for Richard Jeni for over four years as his personal assistant, and as always blown away by his wit and his brilliance. Being a personal assistant required me to wear many hats, and it was not an easy job, especially when Rich was in one of his moods. He lived in a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills which I had to maintain, and which, despite all of its creature comforts, always felt very empty. I helped Rich with everything from household related issues, to assistance with booking gigs and organizing travel, serving as his personal stylist, organizing recordings of sitcoms he studied, and traveling with him for Caroline’s Comedy Hour and one of his cable specials.

Rich never married and had no children, and I honestly couldn’t imagine him with a wife and kids because, he was frequently out of town on gigs, and HAD to have everything his own way. There were numerous times that I would find myself greeting a new girlfriend who suddenly was one of the fixtures in the house, only to see Rich’s outlook on life darken when the girlfriend eventually became the ex. I knew that though Rich was incredibly funny, and kept me in stitches when he would dictate his bits for me to transcribe, he was never happy. I knew so much about him, where he was born and raised, how he left law school to become a comic, what foods he wanted in his fridge at all times, what interior design aesthetic he preferred, where and how he wanted his clean laundry distributed, what wardrobe items he wanted me to scout out, etc., but I never knew the depths of his loneliness.

Though I quit working for Rich to embark on my medical education, we stayed in touch from time to time and in this way continued our friendship. The last time I had seen him was in 2005 when his cable special, “A Big Steaming Pile Of Me” premiered. He was paranoid and disjointed during the premiere, and exhibited bizarre behavior which turned out to be the early stages of paranoid schizophrenia.

I still remember seeing the headline on AOL News on March 11, 2007, which announced that Richard Jeni had shot himself in the face and was dead. It stunned me. It was also extremely strange to find out via the Internet, but with Rich’s modest celebrity status, it was appropriate. I still can’t fathom how he had come to the point where he took the gun and pointed the barrel at himself, but I also cannot understand how a family man like Robin Williams chose to wrap a belt around his neck and cut off his own life breath. Both deaths were tragic, unnecessary, and highlighted an insidious mental disease which lurks among people from all walks of life. No amount of money, success, or fame can ever guarantee the happiness of a human being.

In honor of Richard Jeni and Robin Williams, both of whom were brilliant comics, I am posting these videos for you to enjoy:

Pumas And Cougars, Oh My!

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I am the kind of woman who could to some extent be labeled a cougar, but I cringe at the negative connotations which this slang term has accumulated. Shows like Cougar Town certainly don’t help with the sexual overtones which this term suggest either. Here is the definition of COUGAR from Wikipedia:

Cougar is a slang term that refers to a woman who seeks sexual relations with considerably younger men. It typically refers to women aged 30–40 years old.[1][2] ABC News states that these women pursue sexual relations with people more than eight years younger than they are,[1] while The New York Times states that the women are over the age of 40 and aggressively pursue sexual relations with men in their twenties or thirties.[2] However, the term can also refer to any female who has a male partner much younger than herself, regardless of age or age difference.[3][4]

I have a major issue with societal conventions which expect the man to be older than the woman. With only a couple of exceptions, I have always dated men who were younger than me, yet never sought them out. It always boiled down to common interests and mutual attraction, and the age of a man never concerned me. My first younger man was eight months my junior, and we met while we were in our teens. Some of you may think I had some strange influence which pushed me to have an attraction to younger men, but that was never the case. I believe a major factor, though, is the fact that I look, feel, and act much younger than my chronological age would suggest. Besides, the concept of an older woman with a younger man is not a new one, as films such as The Graduate prove. Before you start thinking that this particular film may have colored my view, it was released in movie theaters when I was a year old.

In the United States, women who are in their 30’s who like younger men are referred to as pumas. In stark contrast, Linda Lowen states that the term puma is used quite differently in the UK:

http://womensissues.about.com/od/cougarwomen/f/What-Is-A-Puma-Definition-Of-Puma-Woman.htm
020-cougar

I began to dig deeper, and found this scale:

Age 0-12: Housecat
Age 13-17: Bobcat
Age 18-21: Wildcat
Age 22-29: Lynx
Age 30-39: Puma
Age 40-49: Cougar
Age 50-59: Jaguar
Age 60-68: Panther
Age 69: Pussycat
Age 70-79: Cheetah
Age 80-89: Leopard
Age 90-99: Tiger
Age 100+: Lion

(from urbandictionary.com)

I find this hilarious. Hopefully you will too. Who knows? Maybe I will make it to lion. 🙂

The Nose Knows

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I have never had rhinoplasty or any other form of facial surgery, yet I am asked frequently if I had anything surgically “done” to my face. Apparently if someone is born with a nice nose or other nice facial features, no one wants to believe that Mother Nature was responsible. A couple of people have actually called me a liar when I informed them that a scalpel never touched my face. On a more positive note, I have had a number of patients tell me that they intend to show their rhinoplasty surgeons a photo of me so that they can get a nose like mine via surgery. I find that incredibly flattering.

For those of you who don’t believe that my nose is free of any surgical intervention, look at photos of my face from the time I was very little. Don’t be thrown off by the ample facial fullness I once had, because we lose that over time. I hope this clears up any doubts.

Age 2-1/2

Age 2-1/2

me at 17

me at 17

25 years old here

25 years old here

Age 45

Age 45

Education Is VERY Expensive!

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My mother struggled to send me to excellent schools because she wanted me to have the best education possible. I know that she borrowed money from her family to send me through my senior year of high school, which back in those days was pretty expensive at around $4,200. Had she opted to pull me from the school I had been at from fourth grade on and put me in public school during my senior year, I probably would have been really screwed up from the shift, so I am very grateful to her for what she did.

It has been 31 years since I graduated from high school. I figured the cost of an education at my alma mater had risen, but when I checked out the school website to see what tuition was these days, I got the shock of my life. Here is the current tuition schedule, not including books and other fees, for the 2014-2015 school year:

TUITION 2014-2015
Elementary School (K-6) $27,690
Secondary School (7-12) $32,690

How does anyone begin to afford such an expensive education?

For those of you who are curious about my alma mater, you can click on the link here:

http://www.campbellhall.org/index.aspx

Ditching Chapel

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Many of you don’t know that I attended an Episcopalian school for nine years, from fourth through twelfth grade, and that part of my daily school experience included attending chapel. During chapel, we would sing hymns, recite the Lord’s Prayer (just hearing “Our Father, who art in heaven…” triggers the rest of the prayer in my well programmed brain) and listen to a daily sermon from our dean. Every year during the school’s Homecoming, we would visit St. John’s Cathedral, and though I enjoyed the beauty and majesty of the church, it was all sort of lost on me because at my core, I wasn’t an Episcopalian. Every year we observed Lent, and I agreed to give up something during that period that could be considered a vice for a child.

By the time I reached high school, I was fed up with being force fed a religion I did not practice outside of school, so I gradually began to rebel. When we were in chapel, I would refuse to sing the hymns or recite the Lord’s Prayer. By the time I was a junior, I had fallen into the occasional habit of completely ditching chapel and taking that 45 minute period to hang out in a quiet spot on campus with my best friend Diane or with my friend Shari. Though there were a couple of occasions in which we nearly got caught and spent a few tense minutes standing on toilet seats in the bathroom stalls and stifling nervous giggles, we never got caught. Diane was my best friend, soul sister, bad influence (according to her mom and mine), partner in crime and fellow bad Christian, whereas Shari was a defiant Jewish girl forced to attend a strongly Christian school. Between these two girls, I had rationalized the chapel-skipping behavior quite convincingly.

Looking back at the nine years of chapel which helped to shape me, I am actually grateful for the experience. I may not be a religious person, and I may not attend chapel or go to church, but I truly believe that the Christian environment I was exposed to gave me structure and discipline and helped me to find my way spiritually. Even when I dodged chapel, I learned a great deal about friendship. Teenagers need to challenge constraints every once in a while to help them find their own way.

Loose Change

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Image-quarters-on-a-table

A few days after my dear friend and meditation teacher Rob died, several people told me that those who have recently departed will often leave loose change as a way of communicating. I thought it was interesting but didn’t give it much attention, partly because I was too busy grieving and reflecting, and partly because I had never experienced such a thing. My heart was heavy over Rob’s passing, and I was trying to adjust to the emptiness I felt, knowing I would never see Rob as a living being again.

About two weeks after that, I came downstairs to the garage, and when I grabbed my handbag from the office, I noticed 3 quarters sitting near the edge of my desk. I am not the type of person who ever leaves change lying around, so when I saw the quarters, I chuckled and said Rob’s name. A couple of days later, I came home from the gym, went upstairs to my bedroom, and saw 3 quarters at the foot of my neatly made bed, in a deliberate triangular configuration. Again, I chuckled and said Rob’s name.

Another week or so passed with no change lying around. Then one day when I had been in the house most of the morning, I walked into the garage, got into my car, and noticed two quarters and a dime on the passenger’s seat. No one had sat in the passenger’s seat for over a week, and my food bag was the only “occupant” of that seat since then. Yet the coins sat on the seat in plain sight, not wedged in the crevice but squarely on the seat. If you ask me now whether I believe in the idea that those who have died visit us and leave signs such as loose change, I will emphatically say that I do.

While writing this blog I did a search to see what other people had written on this subject, and came across this incredible post. Please read it if you want to read a remarkable story of one woman’s experience with finding dimes.

http://www.thedailyawe.com/2011/09/spiritual-significance-of-dimes/

My Purple Bag

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After seven years of carrying around the same dark brown leather Sigrid Olsen handbag as my main bag, I decided to purchase a new one. Though I don’t usually make larger purchases for myself that often, my birthday was approaching, and since it is a yearly ritual for me to buy a birthday gift for myself, I began searching for the perfect bag. At one point I had seen a bag that was a fun, bright yellow, and it was well outside my usual understated color range, so I bought it, only to be disappointed. When the yellow bag arrived, I discovered that it was cheaply made, the leather was very coarse and of questionable origin, the pockets were too shallow, the bag didn’t close completely, and the main strap was so uncomfortable that I developed an abrasion from where it chafed the skin on my shoulder. I returned it and resumed my search for the perfect bag.

I cannot stand shopping in stores, so I had to use my imagination when looking at options online. Then one day I clicked on a design I really liked, a red Cole Haan handbag. I watched the video posted on 6pm.com (which, by the way, is a GREAT company with a large selection of shoes, clothing and bags, with discount prices) and loved the design of the bag even more. Then when I clicked on color options, I noticed that the red option was sold out, leaving “purple reign” as the only color option. I couldn’t believe my luck in finding the perfect bag, and in my favorite color to boot!

The conservative part of my brain hesitated somewhat, because I had always gotten a dark neutral color (usually black) for my main handbag, but I fought against that tendency and placed the order. When the bag arrived, I could tell I had made the right decision. I have now had the bag for over two months and love everything about it: the pockets, the closure, the styling, the size, the designer. I have to admit that I also love the unexpected pop of purple leather, which goes surprisingly well with most of my wardrobe.

You ladies out there can understand what I am talking about when I say this is the perfect bag for me, but I may have lost some of you men. Since most women carry handbags daily, they begin to identify with a bag that is used often. Similar to the awareness of one’s car which develops over time, the same familiarity forms with handbags. Like remembering what you have in the glove box, or how the steering wheel feels, I know what I keep in my inside zippered pocket, how my sunglass case fits best next to my wallet, etc. My new purple handbag is now as comfortable as a broken-in pair of shoes.

Princess And The Pea

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FairyTales-PrincessAndThePea
I have a bit of the princess and the pea in me, in which I notice small granules in my socks, sharp edges on clothing tags, and strands of hair hanging from my workout shorts. Repetitive noises or hums may grate on my nerves, and I can pick up on back beats in songs that many people are unaware of until I point them out. I also have a keen sense of smell and can detect odors when many others cannot. It seems sort of odd that I am built this way, because I am a very low maintenance person, but my senses of touch, sound and smell are amplified, the most heightened of which is touch.

My mom told me that when I was a baby, I could not stand the feeling of dirt, asphalt or sand on my bare feet, and would refuse to tread on those surfaces. I got over my displeasure over the sensation when walking on sand, but I am still bothered by walking barefoot on soil or asphalt and avoid doing so as much as possible. When I return home from photo shoots in which I have to climb on rocks or stand barefoot, I will usually wash my feet in the sink before stepping into the shower, because the combination of dirty feet and standing in a shower stall with the grit compressed from weight bearing is very uncomfortable for me.

I usually avoid tight waistbands because I cannot stand the feeling of elastic around my waist or hips. I was thrilled when low rise bottoms and yoga pants became popular, because they eliminated the issue of elastic constricting my midsection. What is strange is that I can tolerate the extremely compressive effects of corsets and waist trimmer belts, but I think this is mostly the result of my willingness to suffer for the sake of whittling my waistline.

My skin is very sensitive to anything sticky or which leaves a film, so I avoid any creams, lotions, gels or serums that leave a tacky consistency. Since I often try new skincare products, I am frequently exposed to formulations which are sticky and which I must remove from my skin immediately. Even one dot of product can bother me if it is sticky or if it dries and has a pulling effect on my skin. It’s like Chinese water torture for me.

As long as I make my adjustments quietly, I see no issue with being so sensitive to tactile insults. If there is an issue with dirty feet, sticky skin or a granule in my shoe, I try to take care of it before it riles me up.