Dear Masked Singer Panel

Dear Masked Singer Panel:

I don't know how you can not hear who some of these singers are.

How the bleep anyone can listen to the Flower and say, "Well, maybe NOT one of the Holy Women's Trinity of Soul?" is BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION. (Clue: one has already been on. The other is no longer with us.)

I get why you don't know Tree, because Tree is a tough one. I know. I'm certain of my guess on it because the clues all fit and I've heard that voice before. None of your guesses on Tree are even close to right, by the way.

But: Rottweiler? You guys don't hear that this man was already on a Fox competition show once? Ignore the package and listen to the voice. You'll be transported to a kinder, gentler time of the last decade where our biggest concern as a nation was making sure no one actually killed Simon Cowell--even though we all wanted to at one point.

Genuinely, Robin Thicke, I don't understand how you say you even have an ear if you don't know who Leopard is. I mean, turn in your credentials. NONE OF THE GUESSES ARE CLOSE.

As for the Fox? I don't understand how you all can't hear that voice. I mean, it's possible that sometime in the last 2 decades you didn't see him on that show he does that is on during the summers on the CW or in repeats from its time on ABC. But that voice. THAT VOICE. It's a voice that has been on Broadway. It's a voice that can convincingly mimic many other song styles.

I really hope he makes it to the final.

That final is going to be a beast. How do you pare down: a Queen of Soul, a platinum-selling Grammy-winning performer (male), a platinum-selling Grammy-winning performer (female), a performer with 20 #1 hits worldwide, an Emmy-winning star who has been on Broadway, the scion of heavy metal royalty who is a singer in her own right, a triple-threat whom the judges love every week, and Thingamajig?

Last season the clear winner, Gladys Knight, DID NOT WIN. I mean, she won as far as I'm concerned (and many others). You judges were sure she'd win. She was the best. Now, she had some decent competition--Fatone has a great voice still, and Donny Osmond really worked it, but this season? I mean, C'MON. And even with all that very tough competition, I still think a Queen of Soul is deserving.

Don't you?

Yes, Yes, Nanette

To note: I wrote this a few months back. I'm publishing it now because I think it's worthy of being read, even in its meandering and incomplete form.



So I've been trying to put more comedy back into my life, because given everything going on in the world--both in my little bit of the world and the world at large--we need a release valve, something that can give us a lift. Strangely, I chose Netflix as my source of this comedy (next time, I promise, I go back to HBO). So I hunkered down and watched Nanette, the new comedy special by Hannah Gadsby.

Well, I watched the first half (which was good in a subtle comedy way) over the weekend. And then I turned on Netflix today (normally I watch Colbert with dinner but he's off this week) and saw that Dave Chappelle has a new special on, which I immediately clicked on before realizing that the best part of the Dave Chappelle special is hearing Morgan Freeman do the teaser for it. This breaks my heart; his eponymous show brought some of the greatest comedy to the world, and I think it was as honest about race, gender, and ethnicity while still showing great comedy as we will ever see in my lifetime. (Don't believe me? Watch The Racial Draft–currently free and uncensored from Comedy Central on YouTube.)

I had to shut it off.

So I went back to my main screen, remembered Nanette, and thought, "Well at least her subtle comedy was comedy, and I chuckled at some of the bits." Yes, it was subtly delightful--right up to the point where Hannah Gadsby explains why she has to give up comedy.

I'm not going to tell you why.

And I'm not going to tell you what happened after.

All I'm going to tell you is that if you watch nothing else this year, go watch Nanette.

Come back to this space after you watch it, because we have much to talk about. I'll give some space for you to go do it.
















































Ok. Now:


If you did not cry during the last 20 minutes, or at least get slightly misty about the eyes, we have nothing else to say to each other. Ever. Because at some point, we have to talk about the broken bits. I've rarely seen such bravery as I saw in Hannah Gadsby in Nanette. But I think we need to talk about being brave in our everyday.

We need to talk about our broken.

We need to discuss the self-loathing in all of us.

And we need someone who is not me--NOT me, I'm the idea human, I'm the one who can figure out what needs to go into the plan and help make a brilliant plan, but then SOMEONE ELSE has to go execute it, because I am a thinker and not a doer. Anyone who has seen my housekeeping skills will testify to this. I'm great at thinking about housework, crap on the doing--we need someone else to go execute a plan on how to shift what is socially acceptable in our treatment of each other. We need a complete shift in language--there's a reason I try to shift the language around me, and not just because I'm an SLP.

I do mean a COMPLETE shift, by the way. I've seen the new curricula (I live in California now, that's where a lot of the "crazy touchy-feely" stuff starts), and I've encountered versions of it in preschool and Kindergarten. And it's not enough.

It's not nearly enough.

These words, they dance around the ideas they mean to convey, because those who wrote the curriculum are so afraid of offending anyone, and we have to teach ourselves and our children the bare facts:

YOU'RE GOING TO BE OFFENDED.

Being offended and being wounded is NOT THE SAME THING. (Sorry for the shouting.)

Offended says that you think someone else is out of line in their ideas. Example: Much of what Dave Chappelle said in his current comedy special offended me. (I am offended mostly because I have two X chromosomes and think that there is no way to joke about pedophilia. It simply can't be done. Sorry, Dave, but totally not sorry because while I think you're brilliant, you're not using that noggin God gave you.)

Wounded means that the actions of another person have now affected the way you view yourself, other people, and the world. Example: Nothing in Dave Chappelle's current comedy special wounded me, because I understand that Dave is clearly not thinking with his noggin, and he didn't say anything that I thought was directed at me specifically.

THIS is what we need to be teaching our children. Not to say that using the words "Well, that was unexpected" when something "bad" happens isn't a good idea, teaching to roll with the punches...but that protects nobody and no one from the freaking human condition that we all carry within ourselves to be absolute jerks to each other.

We all can be jerks, we all have done it, and most of us experienced this within our own families of origin from those people we call siblings.

I know this is an uphill slog, because it's an uphill slog here in California--imagine trying to get the members of the Bluff Hill Rod and Gun Club to buy into a completely different way of thinking and speaking. (I think my father is still a member, by the way.)

But we have to start now. Up with People tried to start when I was a kid, and it was a completely failed idea because people are also those who wound. Trees and animals do not give self-hatred to us. The Ocean isn't known for making people be filled with utter self-loathing. Nope, that would be other freaking people.

We have to tell our kids the truth. Those of us with a Christian background, we heard this as kids: we all sin, and we all fall short of the glory of God. And instead of making it be about being bad, we need to teach our kids that we all have the capability of hurting each other. Which is, in my opinion, much worse than the attempt to cheat on the 6th grade spelling test.

If you look at the sins that we as people categorize as the "really bad ones", you'll note that all of them have to do with the imposition of one person's will upon another. Those are the kinds of wounds that may never heal. (Look, I'm not talking about parenting, because you're training another human being and teaching them right from wrong. You're also teaching them to learn to fly solo someday, if you're doing it right. It's about giving tools, not about imposition--and if it is, you might want to consider taking the entire family in for counseling immediately.)

Teaching our kids--heck, teaching ourselves--about personal responsibility and owning it when we hurt another person, be it through imposition of will or simply words aimed to cut another person, is the one of the most important works we can now hope to achieve.

And then we need to talk about shame resilience, and how to work through our own pain, and give our children the tools our parents never thought to give us, because life was far smaller and more controlled. I am in no way saying it was better.

I want Hannah Gadsby to sit down and do another Netflix special with Dr. Brené Brown. If you are new to Brené, I suggest you stop reading this and go watch her Netflix special. Nine years ago at this writing, Dr. Brown did a TED talk entitled "The Power of Vulnerability", which is a lot of what came out of her being a shame researcher.

It changed my life.

Because I try to live by these principles everyday, principles that I find to be far more Christian than whatever evangelicals are currently spouting. It starts with self-love. I've written about this before, in the Kate 2.0 and 3.0 Reasons Why entries. Self-love is so difficult. Modern American Evangelical Christianity pretty much says it's a sin. But RuPaul Charles is right: "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love anybody else? Can I get an Amen up in here?"

That's because when you give out of need instead of out of your overflow, you'll never ever find enough to fill your cup. (I remind myself of this frequently, Laurie Larsen. I am blessed that you were in my life.)

If self-love is crucial, then we must start the national conversation about shame that Dr. Brown has wanted to get to for 20 years, and we must do so immediately. Because the opposite of self-love is shame and fear.

The principles that Brené Brown has made a career about all came out of her researching shame. She found those that were "shame resilient" were the ones that she called "whole-hearted". In her expanded, 6-hour talk The Power of Vulnerability, and then further in her seminal work Daring Greatly, she talks about the 10 Guideposts for Whole-Hearted Living:

BRENE BROWN’S 10 GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING

1. Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think
2. Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism
3. Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for
Certainty
6. Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison
7. Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and
Productivity as Self-Worth
8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
9. Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To”
10. Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control”

I think Dr. Brown's 10 Guideposts are a good place to start for trying to live a life in which self-love is key, shame is minimized, and pain is therefore lessened.

All of that to say this: Hannah Gadsby was brilliant in sharing why she has to "give up" comedy. (Side note: I did peg her on the spectrum 1/3 of the way through the show. She has since come out as ASD.) All of us need to start getting on the page that creation of the "other" that we fear has to stop, has to end, and it will only end when people are willing to give up their goddamn superiority dance and get on with loving themselves so they can love others honestly.

Because if you can't get on with this?

Please get off our boat. I don't mean off yourself, but perhaps I can interest you in a lovely ranch in the middle of nowhere in Montana where you can sort yourself.  Maybe you can exchange Pony Express letters with Kanye in Wyoming.

Self-love is the answer. Honest, radical self-love. Not self-superiority. Not "I must tear you down to feel good" or, God forbid, "I must beat up this woman because she is different from me because I fear that which I do not understand."

No one deserves what Hannah Gadsby has survived.

I'm Really Sorry, Democrats

Before I start this post, I'd like to make a few things abundantly clear:
1. This is not a partisan post.
2. This is not a partisan post.
3. This is not a partisan post.

Listen. The two guys that I would like to see run for President in 2020 aren't going to. Charlie Baker is too smart to run. And Adam Schiff knows he can't win and got out early. So quite literally, I don't have a dog in the fight as it were.

The following consists of observations made over the last two days regarding the Democratic Debates on CNN.

As I wrote to Stephen Colbert last night (offering him this opening joke for tonight's monologue): The Democrats are attacking Joe Biden so much that the Republicans are considering running him in 2020.

I am convinced at this moment that the Democratic Party does not want to win the Presidency in 2020. No, I'm serious. I know they say they want to win, and many of them actually do want to win, I think, but as a whole they can't possibly actually really want to win because it means not winning on their personal terms. 

If they REALLY wanted to win, they would not be attacking and breaking down their only hope of defeating Donald Trump like he's the Berlin Wall in 1989.

They would be sacrificing their current placement in important ways, falling on their own swords to ensure that the only candidate who statistically has a chance of winning this thing gets the chance to do so. I'm sorry, children, I really am. If  you come at me and say "Well, the statistics will change"--I'm sorry. I am.

America likes to vote in Old White Guys.

They've deviated from Old White Guy only a handful of times. Once, obviously, was Obama. They also voted in JFK and Clinton, who were not Old in the sense that they were not over 50 when they took office (43 and 46, respectively). Particularly in the modern era, voters like them old, male, and WASP-y. It's hard to think of Jimmy Carter when he took office (52) or W (54) as old, but they're not exactly Mayor Pete (37).

Maybe Americans as a whole think that age confers wisdom.

And no, I'm really sorry, but America is not going to vote in their hard-nosed, fact-finding 10th Grade English teacher who made her entire class rewrite that one paper on Nathaniel Hawthorne three times because they just weren't making the grade in her book; she followed this with making them research what feminism really stands for and then doing class presentations on it that the whole school has to come listen to. I like Elizabeth Warren on the whole, and she comes across as smart, focused, and exactly like that 10th Grade English teacher. I'm guessing that most Americans are a little scared of her (myself included), and I do honestly think that entire sets of white men would worry that as President she'd find their porn stash and would send them to their room without dinner.

Listen, I'm not saying I want an old white guy necessarily, but I'm seeing just how hard the Red parts of the country are entrenching into conservatism, meaning to not change the status quo. Status quo=Old White Dude. I'm sorry that people aren't ready for an African-American female with Native roots who is also a speed touch-typist (with all apologies to Berke Breathed).

But they're not. Obama got in for the same reason that Dwight D. Eisenhower did: people had had enough of one party and picked the other. It was a good thing for America to show that she's grown, but now the needle has swung the other way. I'm sorry about that. But people who felt shamed and silenced by Social Justice Warriors during Obama's tenure (not unlike the above 10th Grade English teacher) are finding a voice in a man with all the progressive stance of Anti-Tom literature.

So, if the Democrats really wanted to win this thing, they'd be putting the two Old White Guys in the same debate and letting the American people see, head to head, which one they'd prefer in the driver's seat. (To note: America is a country of moderates.) I'm not saying that I necessarily want either of the two oldest candidates, but I do know that one of them has what it takes to defeat Donald Trump, a man I know way too much about and wish I didn't, a man who was very tight with Jeffrey Epstein (look it up), a man who should be in prison for things that have nothing to do with America as a whole (and quite a few things that do).

I also know that the candidate who can defeat Trump has issues. I'm not blind, and I'm from Syracuse (Biden attended Syracuse University for his law degree, and we pretty much co-opt anyone who attends SU as being Syracusan; Carmelo Anthony is considered a saint in that town). I know quite a bit about Biden, because he has always had a little extra coverage in the news cycle in Syracuse. Not everything I know is good. Do I think he's fit to be President? Yes, I do.

So, my question to the myriad of Democrats who are still in this race is this: are you patriots? Are you willing to put country over party and over your personal ideals for the good of the whole?

Then get out of the way.

#BidenHarris2020

PS: Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian plant. Yes, really.

Wine

So some of you reading this will know that I do not drink, and yet I am a wine snot. A "wine snob" suggests that I have the money for the really, really expensive stuff, which I clearly do not, so I am instead a "wine snot"--a baby in the field who can spend a little of my disposable income on interesting wines that are not available at Target (for my New York friends: you can buy wine in Grocery Stores, Target, Walmart...it's insane in Cali).

For the 2 of you reading this who don't know, I match people with wine based upon my nose, mostly. I've learned how to taste wine without drinking it (I'm the spitter with my spit cup), and I don't do that frequently. I also can stripe my tongue with the smallest of tastes. And I'm pretty good at matching people with wine they love.

I've seen the "take the online quiz and we'll match you with your best wines!" deals, and I just tried one, called Bright Cellars. They give you taste choices (far too few of them, by the way) and then match you with your "best wines".

Well.

I need to open up a competing business, pronto, because their responses were...poop.

According to them, I am a Pinot Noir and Riesling lover who also would go for some Fume Blanc.

If you've ever been to one of my wine parties, you know that:
1. I never serve Riesling.
2. I keep Pinot Noir on hand for those who like it, but I do not spend my evening with my nose stuffed in a Pinot Noir glass. You may also have heard me refer to the smell of all Pinot Noir as "Chicka-cherry cola", because they all smell like flat Cherry Coke to me. To note: not a big fan of cherry cola.
3. I'm not a huge fan of Fume Blanc, although I think it's ok.

Now, I do throw wine parties, where I pair the wines with food and people. My Cali friends tend to like whites, and it saddens me that these people will never know the joy of Syrah. I am a Syrah fiend. It's the most interesting wine to smell of them all, really it is, and you can see me occasionally at Turkovich Wines in Winters with my nose stuffed into a wine glass with just a tiny bit of their Syrah at the bottom, swirling, smelling, smiling. I love it so. Yes, I've also tasted it, and I assure you, it's wonderful on the palate, too.

So if I were to have gotten a proper read from the Bright Cellars people, I would have gotten:
1. Syrah
2. Pinot Blanc/Pinot Gris (a wholly different animal from Pinot Noir, I assure you)
3. Sauvignon Blanc
4. Malbec
5. Merlot
6. The Watermelon Rosé

So now I wonder...how could you make an online test be accurate? I like sweet candy (one of their taste tests) but I do not like sweet wine, because the sweet doesn't make it to the nose of the wine, and quite honestly, if I wanted to drink something sweet and fruity, I'd make Kool-Aid (which is how some of this wine tastes). I also am not a fan of my wine smelling of Petrol (see Riesling, above).

I am interested in learning about lesser-known varietals, but how can I do this if their initial read is so off? (In fairness, I took the quiz again with different answers, and they paired me with Malbec and Fiano, which is much closer to reality.)

I think I'll compose my own online quiz, and call it Renegade Sniffers. Go different! Go bold! Go...sniffing?

People will think I'm into glue.

Alas.