Give up the plastic bag!

I've fallen out of writing again (again!) but maybe have another good excuse. The project I was hired to manage, the job I moved for, is “on ice” which basically means it’s been killed. It’s technically on hold but who knows for how long and in January the woman I’m filling in for could come back or the head count could get cut, which means I don’t have a job anyway.

Once again, I find myself reevaluating my self, my work, my life. Life is definitely more difficult when everything goes topsy turvy every few months. Last year I planned to move to Santa Monica to be closer to a boyfriend who I then ended things with because he was breaking my heart. I had already quit acting so I decided to move to Santa Monica anyway to ease my dislike of LA and the questioning began. Then this year, I started another relationship, ended that relationship, quit my job, started a new job, got laid off, was unemployed for three months, got another job, then got hired away by this one, and then moved to San Francisco.

You might think I’m just indecisive but I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m searching for something and I’m just processing my experiences a lot faster than I did when I was younger. Where I would have stayed in a job or relationship for two or three years, I now only need a few months to know if it’s right or wrong. And I value my time so much more. Every weekend I feel like I cram as much fun time as I can into my two days.

This weekend I bought green zebra striped tomatoes, the last of the heirloom crop for the year, at the farmer's market. I went with a friend to Golden Gate Park and climbed to the top of the tower in the de Young art museum for the most amazing views of the park, the city, and the bay. We went to a craft fair and bought a postcard from a woman inside her self-made "postcard machine," and then headed to the Conservatory of Flowers to see lowland and highland tropical plants and orchids. I went to a charming holiday party and socialized with my co-workers. And the next day met another friend downtown to see the latest exhibits at SF MOMA and then to the Ferry Building for a beer and some chowder (I ate animals!).


But tomorrow morning I'll be back on the bus and back in my (for now) routine. I always sit if I can on the side of the bus that faces west. After we leave the city, with the morning sun glinting off the buildings with a honey glow, and past the airport where I once saw a plane fly silently towards me as if in slow motion from a huge cloud so that it looked like a shark swimming out from behind a coral reef, I love to watch the fog fingering its way through the mountain ridges above the reservoir where these little white birds are migrating. It makes me so happy to see animals, like a little deer leaping or a snowy egret landing near the road, a small herd of cows chomping grass or a horse shaking his mane, but what I see way too many of are plastic bags.

Of the debris along the road, almost all of it is those flimsy plastic bags that every store wants to put your items in when you buy something. They're caught in tree branches, wrapped around sign posts, twisted into long grasses, or shredded and flapping in the wind from a fence. There's literally one every 10 feet all the way down the highway. If they're here, it's not difficult to imagine them in the ocean, choking birds and suffocating fish and elsewhere in the wild mucking things up.

I stopped using plastic bags, for the most part, years ago. I take my Trader Joe’s totes to the farmer’s market, a canvas bag to the mail box when I retrieve my mail or will ball up a small plastic bag if I’m going on a walk but stopping by the store somewhere along the way. This was one of the first “reduce, reuse, recycle” actions I took so it seems so basic to me. I still get looks sometimes but what I think is even more ridiculous are the people who will let one tiny item get thrown in to a bag. It doesn’t even occur to them to say, “I don’t need a bag”?

Some cities are banning Styrofoam as a takeout package because of the havoc it wreaks in nature and plastic bags are next. A letter to the editor in Wired from a Dutch guy suggests charging five cents for each bag, but it's hard to imagine that working on Americans. If you need a New Year’s resolution that’s fun and easy, I suggest this one: give up the plastic bag!

"What does technology want?"

Another one of my favorite Pop!Tech lectures asks the question, “What does technology want?” Kevin Kelly doesn’t give technology a sentient voice, but he examines the behavior of what man creates and makes some startling conclusions. Technology “doesn’t want to be prohibited,” it wants to “increase its efficiency,” it wants to “replicate easily and without restraint,” it wants “to become more complex,” “wants diversity,” and “alters it’s environment to suit itself.” But, he says, it’s not that technology wants to take over the planet, we can live with technology in cities and still have nature coming up to the border of that city. He ends the lecture with a summation that technologies are like children, there are no inherently bad technologies, just bad applications. And it’s our responsibility as the creators of technology to discover the best application for it.

Then I read an article in Wired about the Internet in China and there’s a great illustration where a river is rushing towards The Great Wall and then right over it. I remember someone wrote me an email about China, asking my opinion about censorship and I said that I thought restricted information was better than no information. It seems to me that having the Internet available, filtered through the Chinese government, is better than no Internet at all. (You'll notice that there are no red dots in the giant land mass of China on my ClustrMap.) But this lecture beautifully illustrates how the Internet, as technology, has an agenda of its own and enables people, as this article says, to subvert the sensors and get access to restricted information. Technology wants to be replicated and doesn’t want to be prohibited.

I love this idea of technology, not as something with consciousness but as an organism with it’s own method of evolution and survival. We might give birth to it but it doesn’t mean we know why or how it exists.

A question about Israel

I spent some time with a friend of mine over Thanksgiving who is a quarter Native-American. He visits his Inupiaq relatives in Alaska every year. He towers over them at over six feet tall, a trait inherited from his Dutch grandfather, and at home in L.A. is often mistaken for Hispanic or if he lets his beard grow, Middle Eastern. Once, in a traffic skirmish, a guy yelled out his window for my friend to "go back to your own country," to which he retorted, "I'm Native fucking American, asshole!"

We were having drinks with a couple of girlfriends of mine and he told us that his family justifies celebrating the holiday of the white man who stole their lands and slaughtered its people by purchasing everything with the federal funds they receive each year as compensation for the aforementioned atrocities. Then my Eskimo friend disparaged the expenditure of federal funds to maintain a Jewish state thousands of miles away. I said jokingly that I didn’t understand the need for it since we already have New York and he added that an Israeli friend of his says the same thing about Beverly Hills. But I thought he had an interesting point when he asked why it should be different for the Jews. One woman at the table started rattling off the standard diatribe about Jews being kicked all over the globe as if anyone present honestly didn’t know. Yes, he countered, but what about Native Americans? Why not create a state for them? There are countless numbers of persecuted tribes in the world who don’t enjoy the same protection, many who have suffered genocide at the hands of those who displace them.

In a fantastic Pop!Tech lecture, Richard Dawkins questions the special significance allowed to religions. Why is it, he asks, that we consider it rude to challenge a person’s religion but acceptable to challenge just about everything else related to lifestyle? Who we have sex with, what kind of parents we make, what sports team we root for, our political views, our aesthetic taste, what food we eat, etc. What makes religion so special? He counters religion's attacks on science by showing that science is a study built on critique and sharing of information. Science is a discipline that has evolved by its members proving each other wrong and changing the public’s beliefs 180 degrees, over and over again. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s that religion cannot withstand critique so those organizations have protected themselves though a fabricated sense of reverence that tell us not to question.

I'm certainly no expert on the Israeli conflict but it made me think about the role of religion in how nation states are created.

"Guilt-free affluence"

I was listening to one of my Pop!Tech lectures on the bus the other morning and this guy Alex Steffen was saying what I've been saying. That environmental change will require a change in perception and a change in our model of economy. The world is merely one possible perspective but our current awareness will change the way we look at things, the earth and each other. "Things" will no longer be something to own, but something to use.

None of us, he says, wants to contribute to the denigration of the earth but we do all want "guilt-free affluence." The moment in time that we're in, while a "gigantic challenge," is also an immense opportunity to make this change. All of our challenges are political. The technology to solve all of our problems exists, but will we use it? Will we be able to change the system to adopt our new needs and desires? Watch the lecture, it's fantastic!

Poachers!

I got a call from an executive recruiter today. Last week I got a message from this guy rattling off his name and company with the line "just catching up with you," like I knew him. I looked him up online and found out it was a recruiter. Today I answered the phone by accident and he sounded very surprised to reach me. Immediately he launched into his "catching up" bit and said that I wasn't in the company directory and could I give him my direct line. "Well how did you get to me if I'm not listed?" I asked. He said he'd asked the operator to find me and this time asked me for my email. To which I replied, "I don't know who you are." Does this guy think I'm stupid?

Several times a week I get emails from recruiters but they're never offering me a job, they want me to send them names of people. This guy said he had some jobs available and was wondering if I'd give him some recommendations. "I don't have any," I said. It was kind of fun, I have to admit. He stammered a bit and said maybe he could send me an email and I'd think of some people. No, I said, "I don't feel like doing your job for you." Last time I sent a name over to a company, my friend got the job (but isn't happy there), the recruiter got their fee and what do I get? Nothing. It's not like they're offering me a referral fee, they just want to waste my time and make money off of me.

I continued to tell Mark, the recruiter, that I get emails every week from people wanting me to send them people and frankly, I don't have time. I added that most of the people I know work for themselves and aren't interested in a job, which got a little chuckle out of him. I continued, making a joke about I don't know why people think I've got all the connections. But then this was the weird part, he said "it must be because you're a famous actress." Uck, see, this is why I hate all these online profiles. Now I know that he found me on LinkedIn, probably just by doing a search of the big companies, and because he's read my profile, thinks he knows me. I'm going to put a note on my profile that says "Will make referrals for a $1,000 referral fee" and see how many call me then!

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I just watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room," which is just a remarkable story of a group of guys that we're all supposed to want to be like - charming, smart, ambitious and fun - who, in the pursuit of success, blew up a company like a balloon and when it popped took 20,000 employees and their futures with them. The consequent folding of Arthur Andersen, the financial company that destroyed accounting evidence of the Enron dealings, folded and took with it the jobs of 85,000 more people!

My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.

The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.

It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.

The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.

Getting screwed in Hollywood (it's true!)

About a week ago I got an email from the writer of a short film I produced and directed. His first feature had been accepted into Sundance and he was so excited. I’d heard about this project since the inception, it was something he would have loved for me to direct but it would have been a difficult sell: a novice director managing a 5-10 million dollar movie written by a first-time writer. (When a writer’s first feature is produced, she/he is called a “first-time” writer because it’s their first time being produced - not writing as the term implies).

In hindsight, had I been more aggressive, I could have probably secured a meeting with the producers and they may even have liked me. I helped the writer with a couple drafts of the script and I had a certain passion and vision for it. Ultimately, though, the job of directing went to a husband-wife team that had the connections to cast the film with people you’ve heard of and in Hollywood, casting is everything. I got frequent updates from Ross. He had a feeling from the beginning that he was going to get screwed in some way. The dynamic duo fancied themselves writers and took turns ruining his script. They turned a totally interesting character, for example, a Mexican-American descended from migrant workers who secretly produces a great wine while working for another vintner, into a petty thief. The stories made me ill but all along, his feeling was give a little, get a lot. His first feature was being produced after all and he was thrilled!

A few days after the email about Sundance, I was on the phone with him and found out that the Writer’s Guild had just arbitrated against him and he’d lost writing credit on his own script! He was absolutely outraged. Years of work, completely erased. His friend who produced the project sided with the directors because he was afraid of retribution even though all along, his script was preferred by the producers but they apparently felt powerless against the people with the connections. His producers were independent money folks and not seasoned industry producers but my friend is an attorney and comes from an industry family! His father is the creator of several classic sitcoms and the writer of hundreds of TV shows.

How is it possible for a guy with that kind of background to get screwed? I think it’s because he was willing to be screwed a little. You give an inch and they’ll take a mile. He didn’t fight because he wanted his movie made, and his instincts were right. It’s not easy to get a movie made and not uncommon for writers to be taken advantage of, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the credit. Credits lead to bigger and better projects. Without a writing credit, it’s like it never happened. If you get another chance, you’ll still be a “first-time” writer. This is why you hear stories of people suing a studio, becoming a drug addict or going into hiding after an experience in Hollywood. Let's hope he sticks it out, live and learn my friend!

A different kind of animal lover

This friend of mine wanted to set me up with a guy she thought I might like. A cute Midwesterner with a great sense of a humor and a sweet “aw shucks” demeanor but, she stalled; there’s something else. She laughed nervously and a slew of dreadful attributes ran through my brain: he used to date men, he’s terrible in the sack, or he has a psycho ex-wife and two kids. “He’s a hunter,” she said, waiting for the vegetarian’s horrified reaction. “Oh!” I said, “I have no problem with hunters.”

I actually, weirdly, have a lot of respect for them. The main reason that I’m vegetarian is as a protest against factory farming and the cruelty and disgusting toxicity associated with the commercial raising of animals, the over fishing of the oceans and reckless destruction of nature in pursuit of profits. The second reason is because I love animals and think that anyone who eats meat should be able to raise it, kill it and prepare it. I couldn’t. With our level of technological development, we have the ability to eat better than any generation prior. I am vegetarian because I have a choice.

I surprise even myself sometimes with my seemingly contradictory beliefs. I’m part of what's referred to in Applebee’s America as the Tipping Tribe because I hold mixed beliefs. Take the quiz for yourself! But I had this conversation years ago with a guy who bow-hunted elk. He described to me how difficult it is to do, and the passion for hunting required to do it successfully impressed me. While these hunters might mount the head of their kill on their wall, they also eat nearly the entire animal. They’re connected at the purest level to the value of the animal’s life, experiencing where food comes from more than other meat eaters. They are aware of the seasons and our affect on nature and the populations of the animals they hunt. Compare that to the person eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger for lunch everyday because it’s cheap and easy, with no awareness of the low quality of meat they’re eating and of the kind of life that animal had before becoming their meal.

Of course there are people who shoot animals for fun or kill animals in cruel ways for sport, but I think of a hunter as someone closer to nature than most of the population, someone with the discipline to track an animal for days at a time and with a love of animals that while different from mine, is no less strong. In this month’s National Geographic, an article describes how the conservation of public land is in jeopardy partly because of the lack of the new generation's interest in and appreciation for hunting. You see, hunters contribute billions of dollars, to ensure the preservation of natural lands and help maintain a balance in species when other human factors cause them to go out of whack.

I knew that Theodore Roosevelt dedicated millions of acres of land in his presidency as National Parks but didn't know he was inspired by a hunting trip to Yellowstone. He believed it was critical to ensure the future of the magnificent animals he liked to hunt. Today, Yellowstone is still home to bison, grizzlies, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, bobcats and moose and hunters have always played a role in maintaining the balance of these populations. Now how could I have a problem with that? It goes back to the fact that I tend to look at things as a whole and the world is messy, it isn't black and white. It's like my views on PETA. Someone needs to have the laser focus they have in protecting animals because that's how things get done, but it's the sum of the parts that makes the world go round.