I woke up in the middle of the night, over each of the last two nights, and shuddered that I had written a blog entry that ranted about Mulan’s spelling requirements and then, misspelled Arachnid myself. This is why I should not be writing a blog. But yet, I still am! So nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

School. Yes. Schools. How to teach. How to learn. Yesterday I had moved into the “Acceptance” stage of my relationship with Mulan’s school. It’s our local public school. It’s public. It gets crazy high scores on it’s tests. There’s so much to love. But then, as I help Mulan with homework (we tried a new system where we sat at school and worked for an hour right in the school yard) I was just flooded again with how much I hated school. And how school just inoculated me against learning for so long. And all the mindless repetition and the purposeless convoluted questions. If I had my druthers, Mulan would be in gymnastics school for hours each day and then for one hour a day she would learn math and reading and science and that would be it. This kid really just wants to turn cartwheels and do somersaults and flip herself around bars.

Today is Mulan’s seventh birthday and I start my show – Letting Go of God - with a description of my seventh birthday. Wow. We are in the realm of her own memory of childhood now. Last night Mulan said, “Now I’ve reached the Age Of Reason and I’m capable of committing all sins against God and man.’ She was paraphrasing the line in my show that my own dad says to me on my own seventh birthday. And then she said, “And I don’t even know what that means!” And I laughed and said, “Nobody really knows what that means.”

And speaking of inoculating people against the very thing they are trying to connect to – a few days ago I read on Salon.com (my personal homepage) an interview with Camille Paglia where she says that, although she is an atheist, she has respect for religion because it’s the way most people connect with the Universe. And at first I thought I might agree with her. But then, as I’ve turned that over in my head the last few days, I think what religion actually does is the opposite. It prevents people from connecting or experiencing themselves in or with the universe. It placates their natural wonder with easy answers that are not only dead wrong but infantilizes them. And, I think, even prevents them from experiencing the world in the most human way, with the knowledge that we have won – won at hard cost, which shows us more accurately who we are and how teeny and vulnerable and fantastically lucky we are. My cat, Val, cannot possibly know that she is a mammal and all the amazing ways that mammals have come up with, or rather – evolved into – on this planet. There is great joy in understanding even that little thing. She cannot. And I can. And anyone, any human, can too - who is willing to look into it. And yet we, as a society, have chosen to lie to our children – in my mind, keep them animals of a different sort – keep them blind and looking only a few feet away instead of seeing even a little bit bigger picture.

I loved that one of my blog readers reminded me of that Seneca quote:

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. __-Lucius Annaeus Seneca,_(4BC – AD65)

I guess the thing for me is, I WANT to be one of the common people. (I shudder with a creepy feeling of elite-y-ness even using that word, but I am taking this from Seneca…) I don’t like that I am set apart or even seen as elitist (or... wise?) for having my views about religion. I think that’s possibly what many of my family and friends – especially from Spokane – think. And I am such a good “common person.” I don’t want to be different, I really don’t. And yet, it seems that I had to choose between, on one hand, my mind and on the other hand, my desire to not stand out and blend in and enjoy the culture that I was raised in. How frustrating. Truthfully, I really do want to move back to Spokane and send Mulan to St. Augustine’s. And I just may still.

Even though I know I am just in love with a memory of how it was, how it appears to me now. I am sure that this ideolized version of Spokane that I have in my head, is in reality filled with its own plusses and minuses. My yearning for Spokane is probably just a simple yearning for a lost childhood or nostalgia dressed up as a real choice, when in fact it isn’t.

O Seneca, you are so right. Religion is so useful for rulers, isn’t it? Gawd, how can those people on the religious right, who think that their leaders – the ones they helped elect – care a wit about them? They do not. It’s so transparent. And in the meantime, this same group of rulers – while pandering to their little causes (without really doing much about them) sends their children off to war to die. And still, they accept it! It’s like we are living in a pre-enlightenment world – the kings and the royalty aligning themselves The Church, and thereby with the peasants – then sending the peasants off to die, all so that the same system can be maintained. If Voltaire were alive today he would never stop throwing up. (To paraphrase Max Von Sydow in “Hannah and Her Sisters” talking about Jesus. Actually I’m not paraphrasing it, I’m mangling it -- )

I wish more than anything that the conservative religious electorate just knew that they are joining so many just like them in history -- that their alignments are just the same as it's been for eons -- religion, royalty, rulers, and those with the least opportunity for any advancement -- dancing this creepy dance. It's like the snotty head cheerleader hooking up with the ugliest girl at school because it makes her look so good and plus, she can boss her around, and yet the sad pathetic one feels so... lucky! Cause she thinks she's almost like... the head cheerleader!

I think it’s time for me to retire and become a grumbling lady barking at people outside the grocery store.

Well, I think, I THINK the new webpage is going up today and the 500 list are getting his or her notices, which – will unfortunately be only a day before anyone else. OH, I so didn’t want it to happen this way. We are hung up on only one small thing – and that is – I am offering (that’s so funny to say “offering” – it reminds me of an over-eager salesperson at the same time that it reminds me of the bread and wine at Mass – the “offering” - wait, it might be the money collected that's called the offering -- oh jeez, that is really creepy...) that if you buy five Cds you get one free. And that makes the shipping calculations wonky and we have to fix it. Oh dear, time to make some calls.

Dog & Cats & Homework & Websites

(I wrote part of this last night and then part of it this morning and that's why the time-line might seem jumbled.)

Today is a day of re-entry. We flew home last night, getting in around nine p.m. L.A. time. The reality of the fact that I’ve been gone for 12 days set in. Not only piles of mail, but Mulan has homework that hasn’t been done. Her teacher sent some homework off with us to do in New York. I would say we’ve completed… about half of it. And it’s really my fault that I hadn’t made her finish it.

That’s funny, me saying, “made her finish it.” Because homework these days, as any parent I know who has a child in public school can attest, homework isn’t about THEM doing it, it’s about sitting with your child for hours on end and talking them through it.

Mulan has about… oh, I would say a half an hour to forty five minutes of homework a night. She is in first grade. She is reluctant, however. And that makes homework take about an hour to an hour and a half. All I’m saying is that this homework thing is kicking my butt. I never had my parents help me with homework, unless I needed something big typed up when I was in sixth or seventh grade. Mulan is six and one of her spelling words this week is “anarchid.” ANARCHID.

Also, I put our dog, Arden, into this schmancy Kennel while we were in New York. And when we returned to Los Angeles, my old cat, Val, showed up. I have always had outdoor cats. I’ve always been a bit lackadaisical about my cats. Sometimes they didn’t come home for a day, or even two. And then they did. At one time I even had four cats. Three of them lived to be over 16 years old. And the three of them died within a month of each other about four years ago. But Val was left. And when Arden arrived on our doorstep (he was a stray) he chased Val off. I thought they would work it out, but Val is rather timid and didn’t stand her ground. Or maybe she was just smart, because Arden seriously hates cats. And squirrels. I have seen him tear a squirrel’s heart out in front of my eyes.

So Val went off and I imagined she found some other home. Because I would see her, once every two weeks or so. And she looked well fed, even chubby. And sometimes I would hear Arden chasing her out of the yard. Every so often I would give her a pet and wonder which neighbor was now Val’s owner. Or rather, her feeder. Who was getting Val’s little fluffy head rubs against their ankle?

This must make me seem so irresponsible.

In the meantime, Arden took over our life. He is active and needs at least an hour of rigorous exercise a day. He is overly protective of the house, in my opinion. Anyone who comes to the door is greeted by a crazed barking maniac of a dog that any reasonable person would think would kill them instantly. And that’s good. Except when it’s bad. Like children, he scares the bejeezus out of children. Also, I can never have the front door just open casually anymore, because I have to worry about Arden rushing out.

I came to really like Arden. Even love him. It IS irritating that every time I get up out of a chair, his claws scrape across the tile floor and he begins to hyperventilate in anticipation of a… possible… could it be?… walk! And mostly it’s just that I have to go to the bathroom, or answer the phone, or get a tissue. Okay, I’ll admit it, he’s seriously irritating.

I like lazy dogs. I like big, dopey dogs. I like dogs that lie about all day and drool in one spot and then look up out of their haze. I hate the subservience of dogs. Or rather the eagerness of dogs like Arden. I like, I’m temperamentally more appreciative of the aloofness of cats. I like that you have to work a little bit to get their attention. I like that you can ignore them and they can ignore you.

But still, I love Arden.

I really do.

Anyway, when we came home, Val was at the door. And we let her in. And she’s been hanging around. Sitting on the table while Mulan does her homework last night. Sitting on my lap while I chatted to my boyfriend last night. Purring sweetly in the chair next to me while I read. Rubbing against my legs while I give Mulan a bath.

I miss her! But I can’t have both of them.

I called the Kennel and they are keeping Arden another week. This gives me time to think. Mulan wants Val to stay. I am shocked at my own lack of feeling about Arden. But maybe in a few days I will miss him too. Hmmm… what to do. What to do.

My new website is taking longer than expected. It should be up by Wednesday. But then, the merchant people who do the credit card processing for the CDs won’t be ready until Wednesday too. And then, Thursday, the list of 500 people who are on my pre-order list will be shown where to buy the CD. But then – Fresh Air said they will rerun the interview I did this weekend and have my website listed for people who want to buy the CD. So that means that the 500 people will probably only get a one or two day advance chance to buy them. Which wasn’t how I intended this to work. Agh. Also, I want to try to get as many people to buy the CD in the first two weeks as I can. Because, since it takes four weeks to order more CDs, I can accurately judge whether to order more CDs for Christmas. I have no idea what going on shows like The View (especially since I have no idea how that interview will go, whether it will be like – one minute or ten or fifteen minutes) will generate in terms of interest.

I got thousands of emails after the Fresh Air interview. Thousands. Frances, my assistant, is sorting through them. Some of the letters are so moving. I wish I could read them all. I intend to.

But first, I have to be (and thrilled about being) a chaperone with Mulan’s class today when they visit a nearby museum. And it’s Halloween.

Also, I can’t stop thinking about Bookboy’s comments on my last blog. Or the quote he posted. I wish I could stop my life and just muse over how we all frame our perceptions about reality and then seek to confirm our perceptions and at what point we change them based on what types of evidence. This area is super interesting to me.

After one of my shows this week, I had a moment when I was standing with -- not only a nun and a rabbinical student (they were not together, just standing together) but also with a small group of ex-rabbinical students who had stopped their intended religious trajectory (they were orthodox Jews) because they were gay and they had been forced to chose between their sexuality and their faith. I wasn’t sure if those people were atheists or just alienated by their particular religion.

In any case, that moment after that particular show is my take-away image from this trip to New York. The nun blessed me. Which was partially shocking to me because I had sort of made fun of a priest blessing me during my show. I think it’s what those type of people do when they don’t know what to say next. In any case, I liked this nun, nonetheless. I can’t help but like those fresh-faced beaming lit-from-within nuns. And she was one of them.

The rabbinical student argued with me that I had gotten the Jephtheh story wrong. In my show I tell a story about how in Judges a character named Jephtheh tells God that if he can win a certain battle (I think it’s against the Ammonites) he will kill whoever greets him when he returns home, as a burnt offering. And that the first person he ends up seeing is his daughter. And after he allows her to go off into the woods for two months to mourn her virginity, he kills her. By lighting her on fire.

The rabbinical student argued that Jephtheh didn’t promise he would kill a person. When he said whatever greeted him, he meant an animal. And that it was customary only to kill animals in sacrifice. And that he didn’t kill his daughter, he told her to run off into the woods and then he didn’t kill her.

I was beside myself. I thought I must have gotten the story wrong. I mean he was a rabbinical student and I was an actress and what if I had exaggerated this story that much? I apologized and promised to immediately look it up.

And I was right. Jephtheh does promise to kill “whoever” greets him. As far as I know, “who” is referring to a person. And he does kill his daughter. In the story, his daughter actually begs him to kill her, because he must keep his promise to God. I’m sure this is told this way to make it less sadistic.

How does someone sit and listen to their teachers rationalize and explain away and blur over the more difficult stories of their sacred texts? I don’t get it. But then, as my boyfriend pointed out, I was one of those people at one time. Why did I accept that? And my answer was that I wasn’t studying the Bible so closely, and then when I did as an adult, I did question and finally reject it. But I accepted it earlier because it seemed like the people teaching me about it were smart and kind. And I liked them. And I wanted it to be meaningful. And l looked for only that evidence that confirmed what I already wanted to believe.

Anyway, these are the kinds of encounters that makes me infinitely glad that I came to New York to do the show.

On of the gay ex-rabbinical students told me that when he went to his superior and told him he was gay and how could he deal with this – the rabbi told him that he should sacrifice his sexuality the way Abraham had to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And that after several years of trying to do this, the ex-rabbinical student said he felt the sacrifice was much to great. And that Abrahams test of his willingness to give up what mattered to him most – his son, was a one shot deal and then when he proved his loyalty he got to still have his son. But this person said he would be having to turn away from his very nature every single day for the rest of his life. And that was too much. And for what reason? Finally this man left his religion and has had no contact with his family for over ten years. What a sad, sad, unnecessary result.

Anyway, I tell this just to give you that image of me standing there with the current rabbinical student, the former rabbinical student and the nun. What great moments this show has afforded me. I was so happy, in spite of the tragic aspects to some of those people’s predicaments. Being “Pat” on Saturday Night Live did not give me moments like that.

WOW. All those comments. I can’t stand it, it’s so fantastic. I can't even begin to respond to them right now. But I read them all, including the long one from the depressed person. Lordy, lordy.

The Harvard show was really fun. I got to do my show in this amazing place: Sanders Theater. It was like doing the show in a Cathedral. The inside of the theater is all wood. It was really an honor to perform there.

The 500 Club will get their emails to be able to order on Tuesday. And then on Thursday or Friday, assuming everything is moving along, it will go up for the public. I am so excited!

I am still in New York. I have one show to do before I head home. I am really beat. Tomorrow morning I have an interview for that PBS show, “Religion & Ethics.” And that’s before I do the show at 11 a.m. Then head home.

Tired, tired, tired. I am so thrilled that the daylight savings time-change is tonight. That’s what is going to make tomorrow work.

And I love New York. Tonight I was at Grand Central Station and it’s just so gorgeous. I miss living here.

This morning Mulan and I are taking a train to Boston. She is still sleeping. I have been letting her stay up really late while we’re in New York – basically I’ve kept her on west coast time. Poor bug, I’ll have to drag her little body out of bed and into her clothes in a minute. She’s such a stage-baby. She likes to play in my green room while I’m on stage so she can see me during the intermission. And then she plays with her dolls while I’m doing interviews which just breaks my heart at the same time that I’m so glad she’s there and learning how to navigate herself through this world of such unpredictability and people. She’s having such a different childhood than I had.

Anyway, I did the Fresh Air interview yesterday. It was lots of fun for me, because I am a huge fan of Terry Gross. We spoke for over an hour. When I left the NPR offices over on 2nd & 43rd I walked back to the theater slowly and sipped my coffee and I was so happy. It was clear and the air was crisp and people were bustling about. Oh how I love New York. There is just no place like it.

By the time I got back to the theater-apartment, I had a call from Janet (my publicist) that Fresh Air was going to put the show on the air tomorrow! OH NO! The new web site isn’t up yet and people can’t order the CD yet!!!!! Oh gawd. I was so upset. I thought it would be on in the next couple of weeks or something.

I got Eric (my web guy) on the phone and he rushed up a preliminary Letting Go Of God site only. It has the release date as November 2nd. When I saw it up, I had all kinds of tweaks I wanted to make – the print is too small, it seems too girly, things like that. But in any case, the new site is up well, the part that has to do with Letting Go of God.

Yesterday Janet and Frances (my assistant) sent out over 60 CDs with letters to various magazines and TV shows. We will see what happens.

I am really excited to see Harvard today. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to see. I wish I could get a glimpse inside the Lampoon, but I don’t know if that will be possible. We had a mill of Lampoon writers coming through SNL. I have this image in my mind of some old building, with dark worn wood, cigar smoke all around. It’s probably not really like that, but it would be fun to get a real image to replace it.

On Sunday I’m going to do an interview with that PBS show Religion and Ethics. I cannot wait! Wow. That’s like a dream. I always would see those shows and want to be on. Now I’m going to get to!

I hope we are sold pretty well for Sanders Theater. I actually have no idea how many tickets have been sold. I do know that the Fresh Air that features me will air in Boston today, before the show. Maybe that'll help.

Well, the new website design goes up in the next few days. I am so excited to get that old design off! I really like the new design. We are already talking about further designs too – because now I want more sections in it, for example, I want a whole area where people can talk about their own loss-of-faith stories.

Things are going well here in New York. The house was packed last night for the show, just packed. I almost felt sorry for the people in the first row. They were so crammed in next to the stage, I could almost touch them. Really, they were like two feet away from me. There were even a lot of “Uh huhs!” “Mmmm hmmms” during my show, like it was a revival meeting or something. Wild. And really, really fun.

I have booked a couple of interviews that I’m really excited about. This morning I am doing an interview with Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air. To me this is just… just the most exciting thing. She interviewed me about eight years ago, after the release of “God Said Ha!” I am such a fan of hers and I listen to Fresh Air regularly. I'm not sure when the interview will air.

Then, on December 5th, I’m doing The View. It’s kind of funny to me because I mention the View in my show. I don’t know if they will realize that or not. But I don’t care, because I am so happy to get to be on that show too! (My mother will not know if she should be mortified or proud. I’m sure she will be vacillating back and forth.)

Well, today I got reviewed in the New York Times. It's a very nice review, but the picture. I want to throw myself in the Hudson over the picture. I look like I scream at people for two hours, "HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY BELIEVE IN GOD???!?!?!?" Wow.

But my friend Dan Karslake just called me as I was being driven back to the apartment I'm staying at (I had to do an interview for a special that NBC is doing about Saturday Night Live, the early nineties) and said, "You are the toast of the town! And yes, the picture is horrifying, but you look young and thin. Even if you look really, really, REALLY angry."

The anguished, angry atheist. That's the picture.

I promise not to obsess about the picture. Sometimes you just can't take the actress out of me.

Mulan and ma and I are off to the Natural History Museum today. Yesterday we toured Brooklyn from the second story of one of those busses. It was AWESOME. I lived in Brooklyn for two years and I learned all kinds of things I didn't know. I am so into these tours now. I'm going to take the ones in L.A. when I get back.

I am in New York doing my show, Letting Go of God. Tonight I’m doing something different: I'm at Joe’s Pub with Jill Sobule. My mother is in town with me, helping to babysit Mulan while I am on stage.

Yesterday I had a matinee and afterwards my mother and Mulan and I went on a tour of the city on one of those Grey Line tours where you sit on the second story of the bus. I really didn’t want to go. I have lived in New York for years at a time. But it was super, super fun. I mean I am SO into it now. Today I’m going to make Mulan take the Brooklyn tour.

The audiences in New York have been amazing. Saturday night, Massimo Pigliucci came to the show. I mention him in my show and quote him in his defense of evolution over intelligent design. It was great to see him again. I had met him before at a conference, but he had only heard other people telling him that he was mentioned in my show. Anyway, now he’s seen it. I was so glad.

There was a New York Times critic in the audience on Saturday. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

I think my CD ordering off my website to the general public is going to be delayed by one week. I will know more today. It’s just tricky coordinating all these things. I had no idea. But it’s all sooooooo close. I am so excited. The response I’ve been getting from the CD is really nice. And the book too. I am so happy I took a long time and made it just the way I wanted to.

My mother’s friend, Joy, came from Spokane just to see the show. She was also raised Catholic and after she began teaching Sunday school and had to teach the Old Testament, she left the church and she’s now an atheist! We got to have a spirited debate with my mother after Joy saw the show. My mother says she enjoys believing in God. And so that is that. And you know, I think that’s what most people think. I don’t feel any hostility towards my mother, in fact we are getting along better now than ever. But I keep mulling that over in my mind, enjoying believing in God. Yeah, I think I enjoyed it too. But I think you can only enjoy it if you don’t think about it too deeply or look at it too closely.

I am too tired to write a proper blog entry. I just want to say that I am so thrilled at the responses to my last blog entry!!! WOW. I am so honored to have people saying so much! Wilbur Owen, you know I love you. And you too, Sheldon. I was glad to see you in San Fran.

This week has been horrendously busy. I was at the Freedom From Religion Foundation conference over the weekend. I drove up to San Francisco with my daughter, stayed a night at Michael’s (boyfriend) brother’s (Joel’s) house (we all – Joel, me and Mulan went to the Exploratorium on Friday, it was AWESOME. The best museum ever) and then I performed my show -- Letting Go Of God -- on Saturday night at the conference for the first time in months.

On Sunday, me, Mulan & Michael went to a concert in Golden Gate park – there was a folk festival. We saw Elvis Costello do a duet of “San Francisco” – y’know - the song, flowers in her hair – yadda yadda -- with T. Bone Burnett! It was so great! Then Emmy Lou Harris came on and sang with both of them too! Then Richard Thompson came on afterwards. It was sunny and warm and beautiful and just the most unforgettable day.

I drove back to L.A., starting out from San Francisco on Sunday night, and it was really too late by the time we got out of town. I was supposed to be at a pitch meeting on Monday at NBC at nine a.m. and I got soooo tired that I pulled over at about 11 p.m., cancelled the meeting, and Mulan and I stayed in a Motel 6 for the night. The room was bare bones, not even a clock. $29.99,

But they did have a Bible!

Which got me to thinking, why not write “The Hotel Bible” ??? I would have it be the book that people really should be reading when they are in a hotel room, I suppose – distraught enough to reach for a Bible. Huh? Huh? I am very excited about it. It would be advice for coping from an expert… ME. A non-professional coper. But a good one, and one who doesn’t rely on things like the Bible to help me cope. I have been writing this in my head every moment since Sunday night at the Motel 6.

I got back to L.A. and then, on Tuesday night and Wednesday night I did shows with Jill Sobule at Largo. I have stayed up way past my bedtime for many nights this week. The show we did last night, on Wednesday, was our best. I think it’s finally coming together and we are finding our stride. Gruber – that’s David “Gruber” Allen, an actor and comedian and musician – joined me and Jill. He played piano. We had such a fantastic time. It was really a fun night. Gruber has a new show, The Naked Truckers, that is debuting on Comedy Central in January. They got the most amazing time slot – right after the Daily Show. He is so funny and talented. I really hope that show explodes and they do many more episodes.

I sold almost 200 copies of Letting Go Of God – the CD/book -- at the Freedom From Religion Foundation conference. WOW. I only sold four at Largo after I did my Jill & Julia show. Hmmm…

This whole CD world is wild. Tomorrow I have to negotiate with the CD manufacturer and the fulfillment house so the CDs get delivered to Salt Lake City early next week. This whole CD endeavor is worth a book, in an of itself. I feel there is some poetic justice in the fact that the fulfillment house, just outside of Salt Lake City, is run by Mormons.

Oh my god, people, I am so tired, I am delirious. But I just wanted to post something, anything, just to show that I was paying attention. I just want to go back and read, again, the responses to my last post.

Today I went to San Diego and did about half of my show, “God Said Ha!” for a medical convention. Then I raced back to L.A. and pitched my pilot to CBS. I love the ladies who run CBS. I just want to constantly hang with them. They are so cool and funny and smart. I know this sounds creepy and fawning, but it’s such a relief to walk into a room of women in television – women running television – women with some genuine power -- it fills me with genuine glee.

I am beat. I am so tired. I can’t see straight. I will write more. At a later time when I can think.

This is what I think.

I think a class in Ethics should be taught in public school. I hear the same thing over and over again from parents whom I talk to about schools. And that is that the reason they don’t send their kids to public school is because that they don’t teach "morality." I’m not sure this is true, frankly. I mean, I was taught about God wanting us to behave this way and that, and if we didn't... what would happen. And, it wasn't going to be pretty! I'm not sure that's ethics. I think that's more in the scaring children category.

But I do think that there should be a class called "Ethics" and it should be taught from first grade. There is a lot to teach about ethics without getting into religion: trustworthiness, responsibility, family, and lot of ambiguous and complicated situations that could be debated and talked about. There is enough shared agreement over certain behavior that this could be taught. When the public schools refuse to teach ethics, they reinforce the idea that morality and religiosity are synonymous. And that is untrue.

Here’s the other thing I think: Religion should also be taught from first grade on in public school. When people say they don’t want the Bible in schools, I say the opposite. The Bible should be in schools. Along with the Koran and all the other major religious texts. Children should learn about religion. Just look around us, religion is a major force in the world. It’s a mistake to think that ignoring it is the right way to go.

The instructor/teacher should teach about religion, not indoctrinate children. If the teacher is a member of a certain religion, he or she may spend ten percent more time on that particular religion. He or she must not speculate on the veracity of any one religion. They must simply teach about the different religious beliefs. (See? I can already make up rules!)

I know this all may seem statement-of-the-obvious, but to me this is fundamental knowledge that each child deserves to know about. Last night another parent told me that public school was no good for them because those schools don’t teach “how to be good.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but on my daily dog-walk today, I ranted in my head about it.

Today I got to interview a scientist at Caltech (see, I spelled it right this time!) who is working on the special glasses that allow some types of blind people see some objects and the future of that research. I spoke to him yesterday as well, but today it was much more in depth. I mostly just sat in the background and listened to him hold a model of an eyeball and talk about the retinal implants that are possible. It was really fun. It actually takes my breath away that these types of technology are being developed.

Also, I spent some time talking to a person at the Paramount Theater in Seattle (where I did a show with Ira Glass last May) about doing “Letting Go Of God” on December 26th there. It seems possible. It might even be fun. It might even be successful! I will keep you posted…

I am bleary eyed. I am so tired. But I wanted to post something. I had an amazing day shooting for this PBS documentary. I got to interview a couple of scientists who are working on implanting electrodes in blind people to help them see along with these special cool glasses. I got to talk to a blind woman about what it was like to see things with those same glasses. It's wild, like the glasses are literally hooked into her brain. I also got to talk to another Cal Tech scientist who is doing a lot of work to change the whole paradigm of how cancer is treated, and the early clinical trials are promising. It's exciting. And I got to talk to this same scientist’s wife about her own battle with cancer. (From which she has recovered.) It was an awesome day. OH! And I got to eat lunch in the Atheneum at Cal Tech and the food was fantastic. And Mulan is about to lose her front tooth and it makes me simultaneously sad and excited, she is really growing up. Oh, oh, oh…

Of course the Pope can only bring himself to say he was sorry… that... people got SO UPSET by his remarks. I laughed so hard when I read his apology. It’s the classic non-apology, no? It’s the big fuck you apology.

“I’m sorry you are too stupid to be unable to interpret my real meaning.”

“I’m so sorry you’re not smart.”

“I’m so sorry you don’t agree with me.”

"I'm so sorry you don't see things the way I do."

That kind of apology. Where the person issuing it believes that merely using the word, “sorry” means that they have apologized. My experience with this type of apology is that later, when you let an exasperated expression graze your brow, the apologizer shouts, “What?!!? I apologized, didn’t I?” I don’t know how someone can even issue an apology like that one without laughing while they are doing it. It’s so embarrassing! It’s so transparent! It’s sooooo fake.

On the other hand, why shouldn’t the Pope make snotty remarks about the Muslims? My only complaint is that he didn’t quote the Bible too.

This is from the AP report of his initial speech:
"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"

How about, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword”? Jesus said that. Or how about when Jesus tells us a story about how he is like a King who wants those who are not willing to be subjected to his rule to be slaughtered before him while he watches? I would say that would qualify as violent and evil. In any case, it all amuses me. I am amazed that Ratzinger would accuse Mulsims of spreading their faith by the “sword” when that same means of spreading “faith” is a long and dear tradition of the Catholics, in particular.

WAIT a minute! Maybe that's what he was saying. We use the sword to make people convert and we did it before you Muslims did it, nah, nah, nah, nah!!!!

In the newspaper reports I read, the Pope said that his Cardinal Secretary Of State issued a statement explaining the true meaning of his words. I couldn’t find this statement anywhere. Also, the Pope said that his quotation did not reflect his personal thought. Then… why did he say it? There would be no reason to quote this unless it were his personal thoughts. The entire speech makes it clear that the quote parallels his personal thoughts.

For the record, I also enjoyed that the Pope stressed that the text he was quoting from was “medieval,” in his apology. Somehow suggesting that it was old and dusty and not modern. When the entire Catholic Church rests on texts that are old and dusty and even older than medieval! It read like he was saying, “That old quote? Why that’s OLD. I mean, come on. I don’t think that way, that’s not my personal thought.”

I actually am enjoying the stew he’s made of himself in this regard. I also love the Bush issued a statement saying he thought the Pope was "sincere." Ah... yeah. He sincerely wishes people wouldn't be offended by his remarks. Also, it's classic for me that Bush finds truth in "sincerity." Isn't that his whole way of divining what is real? By the sincerity of the speaker? Forget about actual truth, it's what someone feels that matters. It reminds me of when people email me and say, "People don't die for something that isn't true." As if the sincerity of the belief on the part of the dying person somehow makes it more true. AGH!!!!!!! All this makes me so angry and so giddy at the same time! Oh joy, how will this play out tomorrow I wonder. Did you notice that the Pope's "diary" showing he was not sympathetic with the Nazi's was released right... now? As if to say, "Jews, you still like me, right?"

Okay, for the record, I absolutely loved “The Girl With The Pearl Earring.” I was not surprised that women wrote the novel and screenplay. I was riveted. Many of my friends found it slow and unbearable. I would watch it again in a heartbeat.

Saturday night, Los Angeles. Mulan has her friend Coco over for a sleepover. This is what we’ve planned: Fish sticks, cauliflower, or as we call it, “Cauli-Pop” (roasted cauliflower that looks like popcorn) and just so we can learn to be sophisticated: berry juice in plastic wine glasses. For your information, the berry juice is Dole, 100% juice, berry blend, expiration: Oct. 15, 2006. A fine 100% juice berry blend if you ask me. Then, we are going to watch “The Sound Of Music” – Mulan and I just got the DVD at Rocket Video where I was told that I owed many, many dollars in late fees from several months ago when I rented “Shampoo.” It slipped behind the TV and I forgot about it. And then found it two months later. And dropped it in the drop-in box and never went in. Ooops. (Turns out that that showing of “Shampoo” cost me $40. Oh Netflix, here I come!) We also bought microwave popcorn at Rocket Video, so during the screening, actual popcorn will be served, not just the yucky must-be-eaten-or-no-movie cauliflower version. Mulan is interested in seeing this movie because I am always singing, “How do you solve a problem like Mulan?” and now, it’s source will be revealed. While we were at Rocket, we ran into my dear friend Lynn Stewart, who I met at the Groundlings a thousand years ago and who, every time I see her, feel deep gladness that I live in Los Angeles where the chances of running into her are infinitely greater than if I lived in Spokane. Lynn was Miss Yvonne on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, “the most beautiful woman in puppetland.” Lynn’s rewatching Sopranos episodes. But for us: “The Sound Of Music,” and “The Girl With The Pearl Earring.” I am kidding myself if I think I’ll have time to watch Girl With before the movies are due on Monday.

So, I sign off on the blue-line for my book on Monday and that means that the CD/book (my 102 page transcript of the show) will be in my hands by Oct. 6th, in time for me to drive to San Francisco for the Freedom From Religion Foundation conference. Why has this taken so long, you may ask? I’m not exactly sure. I just… took a long time. A long time deciding on which performance was right. A long time deciding whether to include a transcript and then what it should look like and then I made a lot of mistakes that had to be redone. And anyway… It’s finally basically finished. It may be finished just as the interest in it has abated. Or… not. We will see. If you want more information about the time of the release for the CD/book (yeah, that’s how I’m referring to it now) please visit my website and click on the balloon that says CD.

And speaking of balloons, they are going away! Yes, the whole website is being revamped in the next couple of weeks. To get ready for the official release date of the CD/book which, by the way is OCTOBER 25TH.

This weekend I am spending almost all my time getting ready for some shooting this week and next at Cal Tech and at JPL. I am sort of hosting (we hate the word “host” – we haven’t come up with anything better so far) this two-part show that is going to be on PBS (like, in a year at the earliest) about some of the scientists at Cal Tech and JPL and their amazing may-change-our-life-as-we-know-it work they are doing. And also scientists who are just doing interesting research and we don’t care if it changes our life. So, as you might imagine, this is really a dream job for me. This wonderful person, Mark Mananucci, who is directing and shaping this series, has been researching scientists at Cal Tech and at JPL for months and he is so knowledgeable at this point on what everyone is up to, that in my opinion – he should really be the host (or… whatever the name for that job is…) But for some fluky reason they are still having me be part of this, so I am reading and learning and watching research DVDs. I got to be part of some of the initial interviews and I’ve had such a great time. For example, I got to ride in a robotic car. As a passenger, it seemed like the computer brain had been drinking but was still functional (I’d say two glasses of wine.) In any case, the van (or car) is amazing and thrilling and I realized with a new level of profundity what kind of computations we are all constantly unconsciously making, just to drive a car down the street. And, this is the one thing I’ve learned so far about the life of a scientist: you spend a lot of time waiting for computers to reboot. I mean, like… a lot. Like seriously, you could become a tennis pro if you spent all that time waiting playing tennis. Or a professional cellist.

Which reminds me that I am going to try to play the cello for one teeny part of one song that Jill sings when we do our show together again Oct. 10th. It may be a bust. I have never played a cello. But I have contacted a cellist for instruction. Also, I am thinking about cellos and cellists.

And I am remembering a sketch that Christine Zander and I wrote while I was on SNL where I played a matron trying to seduce the pool boy and my seduction chat was all about Yo Yo Ma to the pool boy's great bewilderment. I think the pool boy was played by... I can't remember. I just remember saying the lines, "You know what a cello is, don't you Johnny? It's a womanly instrument that you straddle with your legs and if you stroke it in just the right way it makes the most beautiful sound." I know Phil Harman played my husband.

And since I'm free-associating I had a dream about Phil Hartman the other night. He was floating in water and so was I.

Sigh. Back to the chillins.

I am back in the game.

Because, you see -- my computer exploded three weeks ago. And now, I have a brand spanking new Mac and I have recovered most of my lost files. I am too tired to post anything. But I will report that I had a root canal today. It took three hours. My tooth has seven roots, which is apparently many more than the norm. A mutation! In my mouth! Even the Endodontist was amazed by the rootyness of my tooth. Assisatants were called in from other rooms just to look at it.

My cds are nearly ready. Everything that could go wrong, has. But let me tell you, it’s going to be so great! The book is 102 pages. It is the text of the whole show. There are two cds. I redid the slip cover and the book and it’s all taken very, very long. But I am truly excited to release this cd/book. I meet with my publicist tomorrow morning about forming a plan. I am really curious how this will do. I have low expectations and high hopes all at the same time.

Right now I am on Vicodin because of the root canal. So I shouldn’t write more. I will write more… tomorrow.

I am going to compile a list of 500 people who definitely want to buy the cd/book through my website and see how that all works in the system before I make it available to the general public. It’s sort of funny, maybe there aren’t 500 people out there who even want to buy it! But that’s what my business manager says I must do to make sure there are no cogs in the system. That’s probably a good idea. I looked at the galleys for the book today (after so many revisions for art, text placement, etc.) and I am so proud of it. I can’t wait for whoever is interested to see it too.

On the religion front: I reread the Epistles of Paul yesterday. I was debating whether I should add quotation marks in the text of my book to distinguish which epistle I was quoting from when I quote Paul. I decided that Paul says so many ridiculous, disgusting, sexist, delusional things that it really didn’t matter. As always, the Bible gets more coherent to me (in my recollection) when I haven’t read it for a while, and then I do and I am amazed again that anyone takes it seriously at all. I was reminded, almost poignantly, of Paul’s enthusiasm and commitment. But we all know lots of examples of enthusiasm and commitment that were dead wrong.

Speaking of dead wrong, I have been re-watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series on DVD with Mulan at night. It’s really so good. And then I was milling through a biography of Sagan’s last night and saw that before he died he made a list of all the scientific things he had gotten dead wrong. To me, it was all very hard to understand types of things, like how close to the speed of light a human could conceivably expect to go – things like that.

Imagine if a Pope did that, though. I mean, just imagine!

I’m thinking about Sheldon’s letter to me regarding celebrity or fame and being recognized which he wrote in response to my last post. I think I have finally come to terms with fame. And that sentence is hilarious because I have so little of it at the moment and it seems to disappear like running water – no, maybe like dripping water – each year. And the truth is, I was so uncomfortable for so long with anyone recognizing me. I was constantly mortified by it. I didn’t like the basic idea that someone knew me and I didn’t know him or her. And it wasn’t like I even did want to know them, it was just – it felt like an invasion of privacy, while at the same time unavoidably unfair.

Now I look back at it all so differently. I feel compassion for myself. I didn’t have the right psychological make up and the ambition and savvy to appreciate or use the fame I had when I had it. To me, the greatest value was humility. To be “proud” was sinful. My heroes were Catholic saints who did good works in secret. (Which had it’s own backfiring repercussions, but that’s another topic.) So to be publicly acknowledged all the time was just the worst. Plus, I never felt very good about how I looked. I always thought I was going to be judged by my inadequateness as a woman. And I think I was probably partially or even more than partially right. I have listened to all kinds of people now talk about female celebrities with such crudeness, with such a harsh critical tone, it startles me still - each time I overhear it, and I overhear it constantly. I don’t think I’m being paranoid to imagine that I was often on the receiving end of that kind of criticism.

Anyway, when I became famous I wasn’t a lithe, beautiful ingénue, so I felt I was failing in public all the time. (Which I now think is pretty silly, but this was then…) The last thing I wanted was for someone to recognize me. Or pay more attention to me. Even though I created a character that made me look as hideous as possible, as Pat, it still didn’t help me from feeling shame and embarrassment anytime someone recognized me.

In any case, I always marveled at the other actors at SNL and how they (really, the men) were so excited by their own fame. Again, I don’t judge this critically. Now I get it. The fame increased their status, their status gave them power, particularly over women. Fame is the greatest thing that could happen to a guy – especially a guy who was probably not getting the attention he thought he deserved or wanted deeply as a teenager. After the shows at SNL, beautiful models would swarm around the male comedians, while us gals just took the limo to the party and drank mostly with each other. (And we had a great time, by the way…) In any case, fame was so cruel then, it seemed. Even my little bit of it.

Later I met a few people who were really comfortable with fame. At this point, I just thought I wasn’t cut out for it. Some people were, some weren’t. I wasn’t. But then I got to hang out regularly with some people who were seriously famous. I mean, they couldn’t walk down the street without everyone noticing them or being constantly approached. To me, this would be the ultimate nightmare. But these two people who I am thinking of in particular handled it (at least when I was with them) with amazing grace and class. They took it in stride. They shook hands, took time to talk for a minute. They didn’t seem desperate, they just seemed to be dealing with an inevitable part of their life. And I really admired how they had grown into their situation with all its ups and downs. Because, what I finally realized is, it is nice to be recognized – especially if it’s for work that you’re proud of. And fame often brings power too, and that’s undeniably nice. And I learned the difference between people who admired you because you were famous and those who admired you because of something in particular, some specific piece of work. And then it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was pretty great! And then, just about the time that I didn’t shudder at the mere thought of being a famous person, it all began to dwindle away. Oh! Well, I guess that's how it goes.

But Sheldon, you were talking about people who were over-awed by fame. But it seems that we are hard-wired to recognize status. It’s such a deep part of our social and personal psychology. So to me, it’s perfectly understandable why people would – at first flinch – listen more closely to what a celebrity is saying even if it’s in a field in which they are not experts. Also, when it comes to politics, I don’t know if I trust a celebrity less than a politician who has some authority perhaps but also has a clear agenda. There are plenty of celebrities who risk their status by speaking out. I mean, someone like Janeane Garafalo could have continued a lucrative show-business career acting and writing, but she decided to do radio for 1/10 the money. I’m actually surprised at how few celebrities there are out there speaking out against this war.

Well, I just got home from doing the Uncabaret, this stand up like show at the M Bar here in Hollywood. Michael Patrick King, who is a dear old friend was there and he was absolutely hysterical. Also Taylor Negron was on and he was so damn funny. Beth is always great to see and I miss her and Greg so much. It was a really, really fun night. It makes me want to do more performing. I have a vague idea of trying to come up with a true stand-up show. I have never done that before but now I kind of get how I might be able to do that. If I gave myself a year and slowly built the material together. I think it would be fun to try to write solely for the laughs and forget about building the big story, like I’ve concentrated on in my last monologues. In a way, it’s sort of like going backwards. Most of the people I worked with at SNL were stand ups before they got on the show. I don’t know… something in me is telling me to try it.

I felt very proud of myself that after Beth did all this New Age material on stage, I didn’t comment on it. I don’t want to get into some thing where all I do is rag on people’s supernatural crazy-ass beliefs. Even though, it’s all so absurd.

Speaking of material. Here is my cute kid story. Mulan said, “When you do your quilting, you use material right?” And I said, “Yeah – fabric. Yeah, that’s material.” And she said, “Well, do you know there’s a song about that? I heard it on the radio with Frances (our nanny). It’s called Material Girl!”

When my friend Chris heard me say I think we have to have some sort of profiling for security for plane flights, and rate people on their likelihood of being an enemy or terrorist to us, he said, “Oh yes. That’s perfect. And you know who doesn’t have America’s best interest in mind? Democrats.” And he’s right. We can’t have profiling. I would be on the list. Dear God, I’m a democrat AND and atheist. So, I take it back.

But now I am too afraid to fly. I can’t stop thinking about how I can have a no-fly life. But I just bought tickets to New York on JetBlue for October 18th. Now, the terrorists, they don’t know about JetBlue, do they? I mean come on, they aren’t going to blow up a JetBlue flight, the-little-airline-that-could? Plus, as my friend Julia noted, you would have you watch yourself disintigrate on television as you watched yourself from the TV on the back of the seat in front of you. No, no, no. Weirdly, I feel safe on a JetBlue flight from Burbank to JFK. I wonder if I feel safe on Alaska Airlines? That’s what I fly to Spokane. Dear lord, if I have to take the train to Spokane. Well, we won’t be going all that often, that’s all I can say. Oh dear, oh dear. And now I have a boyfriend who like, flies all over the place. Damnit! He can’t stop it. Damn, now I have to worry about him! I probably can’t stop it either. I go around thinking I can just stop flying if things got scary, and the truth is, if I stopped flying it would seriously change my life.

And then I wonder if I will look back, or all of us will look back at these times and say, “We were still so optimistic about everything then. Even after 9/11. There were those five years where it hadn’t really sunk in yet.”

Wow. This whole thing is really throwing me for a loop.

I am going through this period where nothing is working. My Internet connection works only about an hour a day. I feel I am on the North Pole or something. I have called sbcglobal three times and it’s always arduous and time consuming and then it never really gets fixed. And then, after the brown outs happened and the electricity was off for a couple of days while we were in Hawaii, my cable connection to the television went out – as far as I can tell, completely. So, no TV and no Internet. Also, my air conditioning system is not working exactly right. Cool air comes through, but there is a big clicking sound that makes me feel it’s warning me of imminent demise. Anyway, the whole reason I go into this now is that because nothing is really working right, Mulan and I are enjoying watching DVDs when we would otherwise be watching television.

And tonight I decided her film education had to start. I mean, I’ve shown her Buster Keaton silent films. She sort of watched The Awful Truth (Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, 1937) when she was two and a half. But tonight, I figured I needed to really start explaining some things. So, we watched “Some Like It Hot” on DVD. She was very confused about the beginning and I had to even stop the DVD and explain about liquor being outlawed in the “olden days.” Which I don’t think she really got. But there were moments, like when Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe are in the top bunk on the train and then all the girls pile in for the “party” and Mulan started to laugh really hard and it made me so happy. I think she barely could follow the plot, but she sure got that two men were trying to act like two women. Wow, Marilyn Monroe. She could barely act, but she blows everyone off the screen. She’s so vulnerable, so unfiltered by the usual actor-y-ness. It almost seems like if you scratch her, she’d really bleed. And this time I watched it, all I could notice was how revealing her outfits were. She’s practically topless in two dresses that she wears. And of course, as I get older, it’s continually arresting that the actors are so young. They just get younger. Every year, those old actors get younger and younger. Tony Curtis seems like a teenager.

Today I went to my cd manufacturer and signed off on the artwork for the “In The Family Way” cds. It’s weird to think I’ll have two cds available within the month that represents three years of work, but it’s true. Wait, no – four years of work. I think they are going to let me sell the cds at the Hollywood Bowl when I perform there. I will sell both “Letting Go Of God” and “In The Family Way.” It’s funny to think of being in the monologue cd business, but here I am. In it.

I was going to have someone edit by blog entries for things that I’m bad at like, run on sentences, grammar, and general do-you-really-want-to-say-that-ness. But I decided to just put a disclaimer on my blog and go forward and blather like I used to do. Then I considered doing a thing where you have only pre-approved people who can look at your blog so I could talk about, I guess – sex or something PRIVATE and not have nieces and nephews reading it. But then – well, first of all I can’t at the moment think of something I wouldn’t want them to read, (I’m not going to talk about sex – and frankly I don’t think anyone wants me to) and second the whole thing started to seem like so much work all I could think of was,.. forget it. So, here I am.

Early this morning I called Michael who is in Brussels and found out from him about the terrorist scares. And how you couldn’t get on a plane unless all your valuables and identity cards were in a clear plastic bag and all I could think of was how glad I am I am not about to fly with a six-year-old who needs to take fifteen stuffed animals with her wherever she goes and then also have a movie to watch on a computer screen or ELSE. Or else… you are involved in a non-stop interaction-conversation-hug-reprimand extravaganza with a six-year-old for fifteen hours. I feel so sorry for all those people I saw trying to fly somewhere. What is going to happen to us? Eventually one of these plots is going to work for them and then… oh. Oh dear.

I calm myself down by imagining myself moving to Spokane and never going anywhere, ever. I mean, if the atmosphere heats up ten degrees in the next decade or two, Spokane is not such a bad idea.

I know, I always say that. And then, what if the super-volcano under Yellowstone goes? Spokane won’t be such a great place to be then, eh? The thing is, it seems like we all need a big dose of illusion about our safety to just live a regular life which includes cars and busses and cancer and bullets and heart attacks that to focus on possible terrorist attacks doesn’t seem very rational. But, still. Scary.

I was wondering, now that there are so many more people who’ve been killed by terrorists in the last ten years, does that make the chances of getting married after age forty go up? I think Newsweek needs to redo that prediction.

I watched the news from the stair master at the gym. People were putting their toothpaste into garbage cans. Toothpaste? I wonder if dentists are happy about this or sad. Worse breath, but more business. Dentists: the newest profession to find itself a war-profiteer. What is considered a gel, anyway? That is a question that has probably had many opinions expressed today. I was wondering about mascara? What about super-wet mascara? What about those lipsticks that you squirt on, and who is going to get all this loot? I think of all the millions of little stork-shaped-manicure scissors that have been confiscated in the last five years, and now the gels! Oh you devious terrorists! NOT OUR GELS!!!

I actually think I am now in favor of profiling. I know that is very not pc of me. But it's so much more efficient. We need security clearance cards based on probabilities of a person blowing up a plane. It doesn't have to be based on ethnicity or skin color. But honestly, spending billions of dollars so little old grandmothers can get searched is ludicrous. Plus, they need their gels! More than anyone else!

Last night I saw “Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles” – a Chinese film, made by Yimou Zhang http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437447/. I saw it at Sony, at the studios. I went with my friend Greg. I thought it was a little in-your-face melodramatic and had a horrible voice over that explained every emotion that the actors were perfectly capable of portraying on screen. But as of this morning, I think the film grew on me a little. Part of it was filmed in Li Jiang, a city I spent some time in, in China. It’s such a beautifully preserved old town near the Yangtzee. It all made me determined to take Mulan to China in the next couple of years. But how will we get on a plane when we are all quarantined from fear? The film was shot to avoid the expanse of ugly communist architecture that surrounds the “old town” of the Li Jiang. It is romantic to think of China looking like it did in this film. Unfortunately, I found little beautiful spots like that were always surrounded by stinky polluting manufacturing centers and diesel truck engines turned into open cars with as many people as you could cram in them.

Okay, this is what I’ve been thinking about in terms of religion lately. I think it’s all about culture transmission. So, it’s hard for me to get on the bandwagon and imagine a world without religion in it. Because religion provides too good a method for transmitting culture. It has rituals, music, codes of behavior. And culture matters, too. And I am thinking that those terrorists, while they may be hopped up on religious ferver, what they really care about is that their culture is not killed off. But big parts of their culture (and really, nearly all cultures) SUCK. Authoritarian, misogynistic, and – well, those are the first two words that come to mind. I may have written about this before. It’s just what I’ve been turning over in my head a lot recently. I haven’t worked out anything yet for myself, but that’s what I’m thinking about.

O jeez. I have to work. I’m goofing off. More, another time.

I am thinking about some things. They are:

1. If I blog again I will have to ask someone to proof read it and correct it for punctuation and that seems like a lot of work plus asking for a favor.

2. I miss my blog. I want to blog. I am going to blog again. I am blogging right now!

3. But I can barely say anything. I mean, my niece and nephew can read it for chrissake.

4. I am tired of being so “open.” I want to be more closed. No! Door 1/3 open.

5. I am trying to finish the book "My Beautiful Loss-Of Faith Story" or give up on it. Not sure which way it’s going at this point, but I’m headed towards a readable draft by the end of the month at which point others can tell me if it’s publishable.

6. My cd comes out soon. I know. It’s taken a bazillion times longer than I thought it would. Like a year longer. But I wanted to do it all myself and I made every mistake you could make. I didn’t like earlier recordings and finally got one I liked. I spent three months trying to clear the music rights for some of the back ground music and then my producer found a way to cut out the music that we needed clearance for. Then I decided I wanted to print a text of the show and that meant basically designing an 80-page cd sized book and that took forever. Then I hated the picture I was using and had new pictures and the whole thing redesigned because of that. BUT now it’s almost done. It comes off the presses on August 25th. In fact, I will have two cds at that time, “Letting Go Of God” (2 cds, I big booklet) and “In The Family Way.” (That one will be one cd and no booklet.) It will be available to be bought off my website after Sept. 15th.

7. I am hiring a publicist and everything for the cd! Like a real professional!!! I'm pretty stoked. This whole do-it-yourself thing is wild. I mean, I could have released the cd through a label, but I wanted to do it myself and… it’s pretty fun, even if I probably lost a lot of sales because of how long it’s taken me.

8. I am not taking the show to New York in the fall. I was going to. I planned on it. Producers planned on it. And then, I just couldn’t. The reality of it began to sink in. Eight shows a week. Moving Mulan to a new school or home-schooling her (eeek!) Bringing a nanny. Never seeing Mulan because I am up, wired after the show, every night. Getting my house in L.A. ready to sublet. And then, doing the show that much. Suddenly, I realized I just couldn’t do the show that much! I want to do about fifteen more performances of my show. I want to do them around the country in different theaters. I want to film my show (now scheduled for December.) And then, I will be ready to stop. So, that’s what I’m going to do.

9. I accepted an offer to perform my show at Harvard in October (the 26th). This will sort of be my test performance before booking other Universities. Which I won’t do until after I film my show in December. Also, I’m writing two television pilots and I will be overwhelmed with work anyway. Plus, I’m doing this really great show for PBS about scientists at Cal-Tech and I’m going to be interviewing professors at the end of September. Busy. But the good kind of busy. Unless my head implodes.

10. I really shouldn’t be writing all this in my blog, but instead posting it on my website. I think I’ll do that too. Wow. I’m already sort of disorganized.

11. I just went on two big trips this summer. First to Iceland where I performed my show in Reykjavik. Mulan went too and so did my boyfriend Michael (!!!#!). We toured around for a week afterwards with various other people from the convention and had a blast. When I got home I was a bit ill and got very little done and then we all (Michael, Mulan, Me) went on another trip, this time to Hawaii. Oahu and Maui. I was gone 11 days. Now I’m happy to be home. Ready to work. Oh yeah, but my mother is visiting until Sunday. However, the visit is going very well. I just need to meditate three times a day for ten minutes each. Or at least that’s what I tell myself will make me the serene, above-the-chaos, compassionate, focused person I want to be. But I don’t have time to meditate three times a day for even ten minutes. But I have learned to pretend that I’ve meditated and I actually get a little hit of calm just thinking about it and imagining that I had meditated. That takes only about a minute. Maybe I should be writing about that. Instead of the One Minute Manager, the One Minute Meditater. “Get the Serenity of the Dalai Lama in only 45 seconds GUARANTEED!”

12. I’m doing a show at The Hollywood Bowl, August 25 & 26. I’m performing twenty minutes of my second monologue, “In The Family Way” and it’s going to be orchestrated by the L.A. Philharmonic and conducted by Leonard Slatkin. I’m not sure why I am being given this most amazing honor. Anthony Marinelli wrote the score. It’s really beautiful. We worked together for a couple of weeks on and off and it’s just… what an experience this will be. Just the scoring of it has been an unforgettable experience. A couple of weeks ago I was at the Hollywood Bowl as a spectator and I got to go up onstage after the show was over and saw what the Bowl looked like from there. It gave me tingles.

13. Now I really am mad at myself for not writing this in various places on my website.

14. Oh yes! Jill Sobule and I are doing two more shows together at Largo. August 22 and 29th. We had even more fun doing shows together the last time we performed.

15. I’m doing the Uncab on Saturday August 12th at the M Bar. Michael Patrick King is also on the bill. Should be fun!

Well, last night I had one of my favorite performing experiences ever. Really. Like it’s got to be in the top ten. I had the most amazing time. I still feel giddy and shocked and blinking, did that happen?

I have been a fan of Jill Sobule for years. I love her. My friend Wendy turned me on to her music when we were writing a pilot for me to star in about ten years ago for Fox Television. Anyway, if the TV show went, we wanted Jill to do the music, maybe the opening song or something. I think representatives were even called. But the pilot wasn’t picked up and so it never happened. Later, after a terrible romantic break up, I listened to the song, “Now That I Don’t Have You” about a zillion times in my car.

Anyway, I met her at TED, which was a thrill in and of itself – just getting to meet her. Then, Jill invited me to perform with her at Largo. Largo is a club that I’ve performed at many, many times. It’s a small, intimate little club, nearby, that mostly hosts comedy and music. Jill and I got together on Monday for an afternoon of listening to songs and of talking about the topics and stories the songs brought up for me. It was great – having Jill in my own living room playing songs on her guitar! Awesome. (My nanny came in while we were talking and Jill was playing her guitar and later she said, “Was that JILL SOBULE!?!”)

So, last night we did our gig. Jill played songs and I told stories in between some of her songs. I was worried at first – I had never seen her live before and she is such a force, so commanding, so vulnerable, so funny – I didn’t want to horn in on her thang she had going on stage. I suddenly felt so unprepared and I was sure it wasn’t going to be good chemistry. But it turned out to really work, I think. The audience was so into it. I had a blast. It was really fun to be onstage with a band. Jill was great – what a wonderful night. I am still high from it. Jill thought it went really well too – we are already planning more nights. I am so thrilled. I think we should write a musical together!

The music did something. It was different than just doing straight comedy. I didn’t have to make it always so funny – sometimes it could just be sad, and then, it would be funny anyway. I think our sensibilities are really similar. I feel so good – to have met her, to get to have had this wonderful experience. Jill is so amazing to see live that I was shocked I was even a fan before I ever saw her on stage. She has such a way – such a strength and quirkiness. She’s mesmerizing to me.

Today I am wiped out, just wiped out. I don’t have much to give, even to this blog. I worked out and have been wandering around in a daze since then. I got my receipts done for the first three months of the year, that was my big accomplishment. I started to think I was getting sick. Mulan has been sickish for a few days. We stayed in tonight and I read her a kid’s book about electricity. I realized as I started it that I didn’t know a damn thing about electricity. Honestly, nothing. I would read a page out loud and then go into a deep silence, reading the next page. I actually had no idea how they would explain it. Mulan said several times, “Why aren’t you reading out loud?!? Are you reading to YOURSELF?!??? You are supposed to be reading it TO me.” But I was so shocked. I didn’t know that electrons formed a current and jumped out of their atoms and all that. We wandered around the house tonight before I put her to bed looking at all the things that required electricity. I am astonished, amazed. Dear GOD, my science education is ridiculously lacking. I have so much to learn. We learned about turbines and alternative ways to generate electricity. We just saw all the windmills in Palm Springs. Mulan said, “Yeah. Yeah. I knew that they made electricity.” But the thing is, I never knew exactly how they did it! I am dumbfounded at my lack of knowledge.

If I was the last living human and another species came and asked me how things were done, I would have almost nothing to say that was useful. I would be able to tell them the story of how I became the last living human and I might make them laugh, but other than that – nothing. How did our cars work? I dunno. How did we light our houses? I have no idea. How did we communicate between computers? Sorry, no clue. I know you have to have this and that happen in the first two pages of a sit-com. I know how to blur your eyes so you don’t see the camera in front of your face when you act. I know how to use Final Draft for scripts. I know how to tell a joke.

Wait, I don’t even know jokes.

I may be taking a blogging break. I just feel beat and I need to be working on my book. I won’t make any declarations, but I think I need to concentrate and force myself to write the big long thing that’s standing between me and peace of mind.

But before I close, I wanted to say that I have just read all the comments to my last blog. And yes, to me mediation has nothing to do with religion. It’s a technique for focusing the mind and blasting through the din of all those blabbery mouth concerns that compete for prominence in my head. I don’t see it as anything other than that. I certainly don’t think I’m connecting to the universe – except that I can appreciate the universe a whole lot more than I would if I weren’t meditating.

And I thought about the idea that I’m trying to convert others to atheism in my show. That’s a good question. I am certainly arguing my point. But then, it’s not like I care about winning someone over as much as I care about taking someone on a dramatic journey that I experienced. Did I write “God Said Ha!” to make people more sympathetic to those battling cancer and their families and me? Maybe. But mostly, I just wanted to tell this story that means a lot to me. So, it’s a mix, I suppose. When I first wrote it, one of the reasons I wanted to tell my story was just so my family understood where I was coming from. They thought I had lost my mind. They couldn’t understand how anyone could come to the conclusions I had. But I figured I had spent thousands of hours in church, listening to people on TV and on radio, telling me all about God. And I just wanted a couple of hours to tell them what I experienced.

O Sheldon, how I love your comments. And Dejan2, I will remember you if I need a meditation person in New York. And as far as the “Jesus has a really bad weekend for our sins” line – remember I didn’t write that line, I heard it. I tried to find out who said it, but I couldn’t find out. That’s why I say, “I heard someone say once…” But in any case: yes, I suppose I want to get a laugh out of that line. I mean, it’s not even a hilarious line. But I guess that for me, it was also meaningful. I had been raised to always think that Jesus suffered more than anyone else could have EVER suffered. I just accepted that automatically without stopping and questioning Jesus’ suffering. But then, it occurred to me that not only did Jesus not physically suffer more than a lot of people, but what difference did that make anyway? Adding more suffering to the experience of a person or even a God doesn’t seem to make any difference to anything besides adding more suffering to the big pot of suffering that has been experienced. I guess that was when I really stopped and thought about the fundamental idea of atonement – that suffering can make up for other suffering.

Oh, and yes. It wasn’t exactly snowing in Palm Springs proper. But it was snowing just up the hill from the hotel we were staying at, just up a few feet. We could touch it. And so, that meant snow to me.

In any case. I am beat and headed for sleep. Thanks everyone for writing, I really enjoy hearing people’s comments. If I don’t write a blog entry for a while, please understand!

P.S. for some reason, my blog wouldn't accept my latest entry last night. So, I am now trying to publish it. Top of the morning to you! Next year, I think I'm going to do a special St. Patrick's Day show at Largo, the club I just did the show with Jill Sobule at. Irish poetry, songs, and stories. I have been speaking to the owner of that club for years about doing something like this. Next year St. Patrick's Day is on a Saturday, so it could be pretty great.

It’s snowing in Palm Springs.

Yes, the weekend I am here, the first time in twenty years or maybe more, it snows in Palm Springs. And I love it! I get it! I get the whole Palm Springs thang! I thought Palm Springs was just older Republicans who liked to play golf on grass that has to be completely replaced twice a year since it’s the desert and they don’t care about that because they just need their golf and their Reagan and their vodka tonic and their conviction that the poor people just have to earn their own way, just like they did – cause they earned their own way, I mean, mostly, right?

People like that.

But, I’m wrong! I’m totally wrong.

Well, I’m probably not wrong about that. But there are so many OTHER people here too. And the mountains are gorgeous. They are covered in snow. It’s absolutely freezing. I brought all the wrong clothes. I have been shivering for two days.

I am at a hotel; it’s late at night, and all wired up from performing. I just did “Letting Go Of God” at the Annenberg Theater. It’s a beautiful theater of 500 seats at the Art Museum. I had a great time doing the show. I mean, mostly as you will soon understand. The audience seemed appreciative. It’s one of the first places I’ve done this show outside L.A. or New York and not at some science/skeptic type convention. I could feel it was different in that way too. When I talk about Jesus “having a really bad weekend for our sins” I didn’t get a big laugh. I got more of a gaspy type of silence. Not completely, just more than I’m used to.

The blog entry I posted yesterday I actually wrote on Thursday in Los Angeles. Blogger used to allow me to back date a blog entry, but not anymore as far as I can tell. In any case, here I am in Palm Springs.

My friend David Lee, who was instrumental in getting me here – like I think underwriting part of the show or maybe even all of the show – was kind enough to take me to lunch yesterday. I got to see his house, which is one of the most amazing houses I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It was Dinah Shore’s old Palm Springs house. It’s restored perfectly – he has impeccable, whimsical, sophisticated taste. His house is elegant and funny at the same time – just like he is! What a major, major treat. Wow. I am so lucky. We were laughing about Dinah Shore and Burt Reynolds – Jeez, remember that? I have not had that thought in my head since my mother whispered it to me when I was a kid – the scandal. Dinah with a man twenty years younger! At the time, Burt Reynolds and Dinah Shore looked to me like they were exactly the same age: adults. I couldn’t get it. And now, I think: wow. Right on, Dinah. Damn. That’s amazing.

I had a horrible moment during my show, however. I went up. (“Up meaning: I lost my place in the show and couldn’t figure out what to say next.) I never go up. And I went up. I haven’t gone up since I was first learning the show. And it was bad. It was really bad. It makes me wonder if I can even do this show in New York a bunch of times a week. Oh jeez. I got to the Deepak Chopra part and there was a sound in the theater. A weird sound. A zippppy zappppy ripppy sound. But I hear all kinds of odd things on stage and I just keep going. I have to endure coughing fits, older people saying to their companions, “What did she say?” I even had a guy have a heart attack during my show once and I just kept going. I did stop during one show at the Hudson Theater when a person with an oxygen machine was beeping so loud the entire audience couldn’t concentrate either. But this was different. It was horrifying. Scary. Freaks me out.

So, I hear this sound. I’m saying something about Deepak Chopra – we are all made from a universal consciousness or something. I hear the sound. This is what goes through my head:

“Wow. What a weird sound. I wonder what that was. Sounds like someone slipping out of a jumpsuit that is also in a wheelchair. Wow, that sound was distracting. Another, less professional performer than myself might be thrown by that sound. But I don’t get thrown. I just plow through. I’m so good at my job. My concentration is great. OH MY GOD I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I JUST SAID TO THE AUDIENCE.”

And then I stuttered and stammered and eventually, finally, after about five years, no twenty years – audience members left, had children, those children had children – finally after much “oh…ah…uh..ing,” and “I’m sorrying” I figured out where I was and moved forward. But it was highly embarrassing and really scary. That is truly like standing on the edge of a cliff. A cliff like the Grand Canyon. It is leaning over the roof at 30 Rockefeller Center. It is having one foot slip off the path in Bhutan on your way up to the steepest monastery and you look down and you can’t see the bottom. It took me a while to get the audience back with me. Oh how awful that was.

So, this is my new thought: meditation is going to help me from doing this again. You see, this happened before. Well, actually it didn’t happen before. It almost happened many times when I was in my Broadway run with “God Said Ha!” About two months into the run, when I was doing eight shows a week, and I knew the show upwards and backwards, I started to almost go up. All the time. I didn’t go up, but I almost went up in practically every show. And it was horrifying. I began to panic that I was going to go up. When would it happen? What would I do?

There were moments when I got a laugh, and I took a deep breath in, and it was as if I had been transported into myself from some other galaxy. I had no idea where in the show I was. I didn’t know what they were laughing at. I didn’t know if I was at the beginning of my show or the end of my show. I didn’t know if it was the Wednesday matinee or the Wednesday night show. It was a nightmare. Even though, never once, never ever one single time in New York, did the audience know – it was just a moment of panic that happened completely inside me and lasted, in reality, for less than a second.

But it was sooooooo scary – like the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced.

See, I got so good at doing the show while I thought about so many other things. And I was giving a good performance, it wasn’t that. I was not dialing it in or anything. Believe me, I’ve dialed it in before, but I wasn’t doing that. I was just able to think of too many other things. On a certain level, you have to be able think about all kinds of things while you are performing. You have to notice what’s happening to the light on stage, with certain audience members, you are aware of the tech people watching you and sometimes they are gesturing towards you. So there’s a lot going on besides just what you are saying and performing. Cues get missed, people walk out, people walk in, cell phones go off – the whole gamut. So you can think of a lot things while you are performing. But then – and this is when it gets scary – you can think more. You can see the lights and the techies and the audience and deal with them, and you can do your performance and you can muse over why a certain friend hasn’t called you back yet or if sushi is really worth it to learn how to make or that scene in that movie which is just like that other scene in that other movie.

And sometimes even this is not bad. I had a performance on Sunday where I was thinking vaguely about a personal situation I’m in with a friend and as I did my show – it’s like my show reminded me of who I was, why ethics were vitally important to me and how compassion for others is not an optional quality in my dearest friends. And it was healing for me. It’s like the show gave me a good talking to – to myself and I felt centered and grounded in myself afterwards. So, sometimes, thinking about other things makes the performance better, more unique – there’s more going on than just what you might think.

So, the game is not in learning not to ever think of other things. But it’s tricky. Cause really, what other things are okay to think about and what things aren’t? This just freaks me out. Because I don’t really know.

If I do the show in New York, I would hire a meditation teacher to come to me before each show and lead me in a meditation for forty-five minutes before each show. Maybe that would help. Or, in order to save a zillion dollars, I could listen to a meditation cd. It could be my personal ritual, something I absolutely must do before every show. And I would be focused and never worried I would go up. Because the worry creates this feedback loop, the worry makes it more likely to happen. OH MY GOD!

But then, maybe the meditation wouldn’t help, anyway. Sometimes when I meditate my mind is like a damn three ring circus and the meditation does not help, it actually makes it worse. The three-ring circus wants to do its show, but my regular life and obligations keep it from doing its thing. And then I meditate and the circus goes, “Yippity Yah, now is our moment.” And sometimes I meditate and I feel calmer and more focused and that circus is so far out of town, I can’t even remember what acts are in the show! Wow, this could be a true problem.

Let’s go back to how great Palm Springs is, shall we? Mulan and I had a great time together, we swam (even though it was so cold outside) and sat in a Jacuzzi and walked up and down the main drag and got a couple of stuffed animals and had Mexican food. It was really fun. I got to see Beth and Greg’s house – my friends who started and run the
Uncabaret and we got caught up. I stayed with them Thursday night, not arriving until late and we stayed up and it was great fun. I love their house. I want to remodel a house. I am jealous of their efforts. I am in the mood to build something.