Translate

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Another White Girl Against Trump

Does #WhitesAgainstTrump have a website yet?  A tee-shirt?  Dues?  A flag?  More to the point, is there anything approximating a strategy?  Trending on Twitter is cool, y'all, but it ain't a strategy.

Is anyone out there?

Friday, November 6, 2015

"O Say Can You See?': Viggo Mortensen Speaks Out

Some actors are pretty.
Talented, even.  And then
there's Viggo Mortensen.
I have adored Viggo Mortensen for years.  Never mind that he's handsome and a fantastic actor.  I fell in love with him the first time I saw him wearing an AIM shirt to a poetry reading at the Midnight Special, my erstwhile favorite bookstore in LA.  Then I read his poetry, and loved him more, saw his photography and was blown away.  I purchased Twilight of Empire, the book he references in this interview, when it first came out and highly recommend it.  And then I heard him read from Bartolome de las Casas' devastating account of the brutality of the colonizers in the New World, and I've pretty much been a goner ever since.

Sometimes, I think he's too modest, too careful, too nice in how he speaks.  I read somewhere once that one of his greatest fears is to offend anyone, not because he's a coward, but because he's kind.  He never wants to hurt anyone's feelings.

But, as gracious, modest and unassuming as he still is, he pulls no punches in this interview, and for that I'm enormously grateful.  People who say artists shouldn't speak out are morons.  In almost every country of the world, except the U.S., poets are revered as critics of the government and the social order.  In many countries they become statesmen, and no one blinks.  I was recently in Ireland, where the bard was once more powerful that the king, and could destroy him with a word.  That reverence for the curiosity and clear-sightedness of the poet, the ear to the ground, listening to what's really going on and reflecting that back to those inside the walls of power, still remains very strong in Eire.  May it be ever so.

He's actually making the Palestinian
"revolution until victory" sign.
(I wish)
The point Viggo returns to again and again, so elegantly in this interview, is that, as Americans, we must try to see.  There are those who want to, and those who don't.  But if we consider the first words of the national anthem, and recognize that they are not just a question but a call to action in service of democracy, we should feel compelled, as a nation, to look and really see what is going on.

And then, of course, to act.  If that flag is still waving, it means we're still on duty, people.

I strongly recommend all four parts of the interview, in written or video form.  Make sure you listen to the last one, where Viggo reads his marvelous poem, "Back to Babylon." To purchase Twilight of Empire go here.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/5/actor_viggo_mortensen_warrior_king_in

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/5/you_have_to_speak_up_viggo

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/5/actor_viggo_mortensen_on_foreign_policy

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/5/acclaimed_actor_viggo_mortensen_on_the

As ever, thank you, Amy Goodman.

Perhaps more to the point,
what the hell is the question?



Sunday, October 18, 2015

Sleepy Hollow Season 3: Thoughts on the First Three Episodes

Full disclaimer: I am an unrepentant Sleepyhead. I LOVE the show. It's the show that made me want to write for television and film. You'd think this would mean that I would be willing to cut the show some slack, but at the moment, I think it actually means the exact opposite. I really worry that my thoughts, which follow, may be a bit too hard on the writers. And if that's the case, I do apologize. I love you guys, appreciate your hard work, and really am trying to be patient. But because I love this show, and know it intimately, I have some pretty strong opinions about things, rightly or wrongly.

I was thrilled to hear over the hiatus that the show was planning to get back to its old self, to the fun of Season 1. But when that was described as being “not so dark,” favoring episodic plots over season-long arcs, I worried, “did any of them ever WATCH Season 1?” Season 1 WAS fun—it was largely fantastic—but it was dark, and very serious at times, and very sad in places, and had some really cool arcs. It also had a lot of intense emotion from two characters struggling with interesting shit, and a fascinating blooming partnership of equals. And it had a terrifying villain with the most gorgeous, complex motivation.

Season 2, as we all know, had issues. I'm not going to reiterate them here. New showrunner Clifton Campbell, returning writers and new writers had their work cut out for them in trying to regain the magic of Season 1 and the trust of the fans, whilst coping with the canon handed to them by Season 2. They lost half their cast, they're on life-support in terms of ratings, Fox gave them a terrifically difficult new time slot and almost no promotion. They're rebuilding this season, and patience on the part of the fans is a kindness they deserve. I feel for them, and I really, really appreciate how much they seemed to hear and respond affirmatively to fan concerns and requests.

That said, there are some patterns emerging in this season that are really not working for me, including two in particular which carry over from Season 2. Because I do love this show, I must speak to them on the off-chance such reflection helps.  But first...

The Good Stuff
About damn time.
1. Girl(s) on Fire
Abbie Mills is back where she belongs, front and center. Jenny Mills is back where she belongs, front and right next to center.  Yes. 

2. We Are Together, Finally
Abbie and Crane are working together, their partnership anchoring the show as it always must. They've had some good scenes together, most notably their reunion in the ICE detention center, and their tender, soul-baring exchange on Abbie's porch.
Why ARE we sitting so far away from each other?

4. Killing Me Softly
Jesus, where did you find Shannyn Sossamon? I loved Pandora from the moment she said “pretty horse.”  (and I still miss Headless). Even when totally insane, she conveys a heartbreak that makes me want to know more.

5. Our House
Having Abbie and Crane move in together was a very interesting choice. I think I like this. Possibly a lot. There's a lot of good potential conflict and “feels” moments there, such as Ichabod's convalescence scene.

6. My Boyfriend's Back
I'm thrilled that y'all brought Joe Corbin back. Thank you for hearing us! Zach Appelman is a phenomenal actor. Can't wait for him to Actually Start Doing Shit.

7. Yesterday
Katrina and Henry are both still dead and no one really cares.

8. Oh, Daddy
Abbie found her pops and is wrestling with that. I can relate. 

9. Applause
With one exception, noted below, the acting of our regulars has been superb. I have to particularly commend Mison for his near-death and convalescence scenes. First-rate.

10. Please, Mr. Postman, Look and See  
Finally, I must thank the writers for their achingly sweet valentines to the fans, especially us Tom Mison crushees (crushers? crushed?).  
Of particular note: Crane Gets Dressed, Crane Sings Again, Dani Crushes on Crane, Betsy Ross Crushes on Crane, Zoe Corinth Crushes on Crane, Crane Dances the Minuet, Crane Has Great Hair Even If It's Still Too Short, Crane Takes the Jesus Route and It Nearly Kills Him, Crane Cleans Abbie's House, Crane Brings Abbie a Cup of Tea, Crane, Drugged on the Sofa, Confesses his Need for Abbie, you get the idea. 

(Do yourself a favor and take 9 seconds to watch this.  Go on, I'll wait.)

Other great valentines include Jenny doing pretty much anything, Colonial Times in its entirety (but especially "the corner goes in front! You're not a pirate!" GORGEOUS), Abbie and Crane finally perpetrating more delinquency together, stealing Betsy's satchel, and Abbie's terribly rare “you really got a hold on me” glances at Crane.

The Stuff I'm Waiting Patiently On
I'm not impressed with most of the new characters yet, or at least not their journeys. But I think that's mostly because they don't have any journeys yet. I trust that will change.

1. Betsy Ross
Like her sass, but the jury's still out.
I really liked Nikki Reed's (and Albert Kim's) Betsy Ross in the premiere. I'm thrilled to finally see a woman in a corset who can fight, but her skills, and her strength--given her size--do strain my suspension of disbelief. I found her voice and delivery wholly unconvincing, too modern, too young, and spell-breaking in episode 2, (though I did love her less-than-clothed exchange with Crane). I'm looking forward to her next appearance.

2. Daniel Reynolds
Lance Gross is some marvelous eye-candy, and he's every woman's fantasy male boss, encouraging Abbie and tells her how much he respects and believes in her, refusing to micromanage her. But beyond being ambitious, he isn't really a character yet. I'm looking forward to him becoming one. I don't understand why Nikki Reed has a title card and he doesn't.
"Of all the gin joints in all the world...."

3. Ms. Corinth
She's no Miss Caroline, but she's okay. For now.

4. Randall
What a handsome teddy bear. I'd love to see his character develop.

5. Sophie
Boy, do I dislike her. As in, good writing, good acting. I'm curious about her mysterious relationship to August Corbin, but not as curious as Sleepy Hollow seems to want me to be.
"Little Joey Corbin"?

6. Joe Corbin
Joe Corbin is not Opie. Please stop writing him that way. 


7. Pandora
The Emperor's New Body
Like Headless, Pandora needs a really great, complex human motivation, or she's just never going to be really scary. For now, though, Shannyn Sossamon is doing a great job being creepy, crazy, insanely hot, mysterious, and weird, particularly given that she's acting opposite CGI most of the time. I'm not really into all her cheesy poetry, but that's her MO and at least she's consistent. Oh, and she can sing, so my dreams of a Sleepy Hollow musical episode move that much closer to reality.

The Stuff Carrying Over From Season 2 That Upsets Me

1. Hi-Larious Ichabod and Invulnerable Abbie
Please, writers. I beg you. Go back and watch the baseball game scene from “The Sin-Eater.” Note it's tone, feel, quiet humor, charm. Note how, even though Ichabod makes an hysterical mistake, he doesn't look a fool, just an innocent. An adorable innocent. Even Abbie thinks so. It's sweet, tender, mature, real, believable, AND funny. THAT'S the Ichabod humor we need. Ichabod who is just a normal man struggling with a completely abnormal situation. Let his humor come from that. Please stop making him a clown (see The Speech from “Blood and Fear”).
Yes.


No.


Similarly, please go back and watch all of “The Sin-Eater” just for Nicole Beharie's performance of Abbie. God, I miss that woman. She's incredibly strong, AND allows herself to be extremely vulnerable, both where rational fear of the Headless Horseman is concerned, and in her grief and terror over Ichabod potetially dying. Strength does not require the absence of vulnerability.  If anything, it requires it.
Watch this scene from "The Sin-Eater" 
and then the "Pieta" scene from
"Blood and Fear."  The difference
is painful.

Now, I get it. Abbie is not the same woman she was. She's been to purgatory and back. She's been to the 18th century and back. She has faced some of her darkest fears and triumphed. I have no problem with her exuding gobs more confidence. But the strongest, most confident of people still noticeably exhibit fear, loneliness, sorrow, anger, grief, and love. At least, the likeable ones do.

I really do appreciate the profound subtlety of Nicole Beharie's acting. But given the narrative thus far in the season, I fear it may be too subtle, as much about the way she's relating to Ichabod makes no emotional sense to me. She loves Ichabod, in theory, I think? He's her partner, if not her soul mate, is he not?  They've literally been to (almost) hell and back together.  But Ichabod nearly died in the last episode, “Blood and Fear,” and, to quote my husband, Abbie's voice had about as much concern for him as if she'd dropped a paper clip. We could hardly see her face because a) it was too dark, and b) the director kept doing these lovely Pieta shots from far away. It actually sounded to me like what she was thinking was, “look, everyone knows you're going to pull through this, so stop being such a drama-queen, Crane, and get-up.” She then promptly went and had a drink with her boss while her partner was, presumably, in surgery!  Granger got more love and he wasn't even a character!

Jenny gets it.
In general Abbie's been surprisingly cold, almost angry it seems, towards Ichabod, without the necessary narrative explanation of “you abandoned me to save your wife, you abandoned us to save your son--look at where that got us--I risked my life to save you, and then you abandoned me to go on holiday to Scotland [on whose dime?] and couldn't so much as text me for 9 months? DUDE!” 

I liked that she gave him a restrained amount of shit about that in the premiere, but then she either needed to go deeper into that in the subsequent episodes, or warm up to him. 

People keep saying how great it is that Abbie and Ichabod act like an old, married couple. I disagree. They're not married. They've never even had the chance to date, let alone be lovers. There's heat in the repressed attraction and desire of two people who can't be together. There's humor, but no heat whatsoever, in The Honeymooners.

The New Stuff That's Really Pissing Me Off

1. The Collective, Catastrophic Brain Injuries of the People in Sleepy Hollow
The writers had a formidable task ahead of them trying to steer Sleepy Hollow away from the icebergs of Season 2, whilst still dealing with the fallout of that canon. But pretending it never happened is not cool, guys. You can reboot the series, but you can't reboot our brains. We were there.

In the premiere, Abbie tells Crane multiple times, in multiple ways, that the Witnesses' mission is over, the Apocalypse is over, the war is over, blah, blah, blah, it's time for them to get nice, normal careers and start climbing professional ladders. This whole story arc was written, acted and directed beautifully. It just had one problem: it made no sense whatsofuckingever in light of the very end of the episode which immediately preceded it

At the end of the Season 2 finale, Abbie says LITERALLY the exact opposite. Per ancestor Grace Dixon, whom she amazingly just met in 1781 and who saved everything (more Grace Dixon!), “this war is not over.” The toughest battles are yet to come, and we're all in this together (at least those of us who don't go on walkabout or get inexplicably fired from the show). 

“This is what we're here for.” I mean, really. Abbie could not have been more clear.

The reason for her attitudinal 180 has yet to be adequately addressed in the narrative this season. Her simply stating, with very little emotion, that when Crane left and the evil doings seemed to calm down, she decided she couldn't put her life on hold and so went back to Plan A, Quantico, the FBI, etc., is wholly inadequate. It made sense, had the season 2 finale never happened, and was perfectly acted by Beharie. But the season 2 finale DID happen, which means the emotions which fueled such a dramatic change, rather than the logic, needed to be explored in the writing for it to be believable.

Jenny spends the entirety of episode 2 trying to keep “Little Joey Corbin” safe from the Big Bad Mysterious World she, Abbie, and Crane inhabit, the one his father kind of, well, fathered. Joe spends the whole episode trying to convince her that he has a right to the only legacy his dad left him, to carry on the fight his dad began. Neither one of them ever, once, acknowledges the Armored Personnel Carrier in the room, namely that “Little Joey Corbin” is an Iraq vet with massive PTSD from having killed his entire unit while transformed by the Horseman of War into a wendigo, a possession which nearly killed him.  

HOW DOES THAT NOT COME UP?!?!?! 

This isn't some random, inconsequential fact from last season. It's a HUGE part of Joe Corbin's life experience and psyche, it's as dramatic a hazing ritual as someone joining the Scooby Squad could potentially survive, and it absolutely qualifies him for a place on the team.

2. Exposition, Exposition, Exposition
Exposition is the bane of every writer's existence, but there's nothing for it. Sometimes your characters simply have to explain things happening off screen that bear on the story. The trick is figuring out how to hide that in a scene so it just feels like good, interesting dialogue.

Not only has the writing so far this season largely failed abysmally in that regard, but the writers have added a new, irritating quirk (at least I think it's new; maybe it was just never so obvious to me before) of having Abbie and Ichabod consistently exposit for us the very things happening before our eyes. Or expositing what just happened in a previous scene, even when there's been no commercial break. A huge quantity of Abbie-Ichabod airtime is taken up with these unnecessary narration festivals, and they're not only not hidden, it's like someone took a highlighter and ran it over them. Even the actors seem bored, and who can blame them? Almost no character arc or journey is revealed in these information dumps, and in theory, at least, it could be (the one attempt in this regard that stands out, in ep. 2, when Ichabod gets irate about Marcus Collins coming back and then confesses his terrible “crime,” fell really flat, and was one of Mison's very rare inauthentic performances).

3. Meet Ichabod, Abbie's Pet Yorkshire Terrier
"I'm house-trained, and I do windows!"
Tom Mison is doing his (subtle) damnedest to demonstrate that he is in love with Abbie. Hell, he literally batted his doe eyes at her during the porch confab. Compared to Abbie, he's like a lovesick school boy hoping some day the popular girl might let him carry her books. 

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, his ardor in no way seems reciprocated, with the result being that Crane feels less like a lead, a hero, and more like Abbie's pet.

Crane is not Abbie's pet. He is her equal, yet the way the two characters interact it really doesn't feel that way. See, for example, the Ichabod Crane of “Necromancer,” a man of such strength, self-possession.  Instead of Abbie treating him like a strong, challenging equal, it feels like she sees him as a thing she has to take care of, and he's kinda, sorta acting like it ("I'll be your Yorkshire Terrier if I can just stay beside you, sit in your lap occasionally"). She's absentmindedly fond of him, he's part of the furniture of her life, but emotionally in no way central to it. And continuing on that note,

4. “The Opposite of Patriarchy is Not Matriarchy But Fraternity”
Germaine Greer got it right. As much as I appreciate you writing strong female characters and putting them in the lead, the men don't always have to—literally and figuratively—be in the background. What made Sleepy Hollow sexy from Day One was the partnership between Ichabod and Abbie. Yes, it's necessary and great to see that Ichabod et. al. are secure enough in their manhood to let the women handle it sometimes. But the men are also heroes and characters by whom we want to be inspired. The balancing act on this front seemed to be handled much better last season.  Kim's disabling of Jenny and Crane in "I, Witness" so that Abbie could be the hero felt clumsy and unbelievable.  However, Crane's self-sacrificing fight with Nelson Meyers, and the twist of him being so badly stabbed in "Blood and Fear," were a notable exception to this complaint.

The women don't always have to be in charge. We just need to be equal partners.

5.  What Do I Want?
In Season 1, Ichabod Crane had a passionate, personal goal, quite apart from stopping the Apocalypse: rescue the wife from Purgatory.  Similarly, Abbie was propelled by a powerful aim: figure out her purpose in life, and convince herself she's not crazy (and maybe try to rebuild her family while she's at it). 

In Season 2, Abbie found out what her purpose was, made lots of progress on the family side of things, but by the end of the season didn't really have a personal goal besides keeping Crane alive (a good and powerful one).  Crane's personal goal seemed to be, uh, not piss off both the women in his life simultaneously?  

In Season 3, Abbie's goal seems to be "get out of the Witness business." To paraphrase Private Benjamin, she wants to be normal again.  Except she never was. Oh, and also her apparent goal this season is diametrically opposed to the woman she was at the end of last season.  It's also boring.

Crane's goal seems to be...to get citizenship?  Yawn.  To stop Abbie from hanging around with handsome, marriageable men? To get new curtains in the dining room?  

Where are our passionate, driven heroes from Season 1, and what do they want

6. The Same Thing Only Different
Why do so many of our old and new characters keep having the same conversations over and over again? Abbie and Reynolds have had the same conversation at least 4 times now (“Just cause I used to be your boyfriend and now I'm your boss doesn't mean things have to be awkward, especially if I bring it up every time I see you.”). 

Similarly, Joe and Jenny managed to have the same conversation at least 3 times in Ep. 2 (“I want to be part of the Scooby Gang.” “No, Joe. It's not what you're father would have wanted. It's too dangerous.” “But, Jenny, remember that time I was a wendigo?”). 

I'm pretty sure Crane and Ms. Corinth have had the same conversation a few times now (“I want you.” “Citizenship and preservation of the archives first, darling.”). It's getting boring.

7. Just Die Already
Sleepy Hollow has given us a lot of memorable, charming guest characters, even for day-players. Last season's notables included Caroline, the mother and son who hosted Henry at their hotel, even the store clerk from “Paradise Lost,” and the librarian and hardware salesman in “Awakenings.” Hell, all the characters written for day-players in “Awakenings” were great.

From Season 1, Arthur Bernard, Colonel Tarlton, and Rutledge in “The Sin-Eater” stand-out, Jenny's bartender friend was memorable, and the Hessians in both the “Lesser Key of Solomon” and “Necromancer” were great. The Roanoke colony folks we met seemed like actual humans, and the witches from Katrina's coven, in “The Golem,” while far from human, were fabulously creepy. I still love that old warlock, Rev. Knapp.

Miss you, Art.
This season's guest characters, on the other hand, have been largely non-existent. Most of those who get killed, from Paul Williams to Two Douchy Guys Shooting Cans in the National Park, have little to no time to help us know who they are, or why we should care about them at all, and tend to walk onto the screen with “Victim #Whatever” taped to their heads.

The lowest point for me this season, though, has to have been C. Thomas Howell as FBI Agent #427. The writing AND acting of that character were so atrocious I actually did a Snoopy happy dance when he died. Couldn't have happened to a more irritating non-character.

One notable exception to this pattern was the villain in “Blood and Fear.” Nelson Meyers was well-acted, and almost fleshed out.

8. “Mostly Harmless”
My biggest complaint about the show thus far can best be summed up in Ford Prefect's conclusion after fifteen years spent studying Earth:  it's mostly harmless. It feels like y'all are treading so carefully for fear of offending anyone that you feel stymied to break out and run with the story. I'm not making a case for Sleepy Hollow being offensive, but more risk-taking, more passion, please, --for the love of God--is essential.

One of my readers said to me today, “Sleepy Hollow is making me sleepy.”  That's more tragic to me than everything that was done to Katrina in 2 miserable years.


Monday, October 12, 2015

A Moment of Silence, by Emmanuel Ortiz

There are days one cannot let pass unremarked.  This is one of those days.

A Moment of Silence


by Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result

of a 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.

…And now, the drums of war beat again.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country

Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin, and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam­—a people, not a war—for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.

Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.

25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
Lalo Delgado, Russell Means, and Glenn Morris being arrested in Denver,
Colorado, for protesting the Columbus Day parade, in 2002.  More than 100
people were arrested that day for non-violently blocking this celebration
of genocide and slave-trading.  I am proud to say I was one of them.
Resistance is not futile.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no dna testing or dental records to identify their remains.

100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness…

From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.

A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.

…Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that cnn, bbc, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
So if you want a moment of silence

Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines, the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses
and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.

And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.


Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, The Word Is a Machete (self-published, 2003), and coeditor of Under What Bandera?: Anti-War Ofrendas from Minnesota y Califas (Calaca Press, 2004). He is a founding member of Palabristas: Latin@ Word Slingers, a collective of Latin@ poets in Minnesota. Emmanuel has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Oakland, California; and the Arizona/Mexico border. He currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” with his two dogs, Nogi and Cuca. In his spare time, he enjoys guacamole, soccer, and naps.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

The Wife and the Husband on Ichabod's New Hair

Ichabod Season 1
 The Wife

January, 2015: “Oh my God! The show's moving to Atlanta. Tom and Nicole are going to DIE in those wigs in the Atlanta heat and humidity! Oh, I hope they let them wear their natural hair. Maybe then Tom Mison will grow his own hair out!!!” Wife swoons just thinking about it.

Ichabod Season 2
March, 2015: Mison is spotted at a restaurant in England with...longer hair. “Is he growing it out? I think he's growing it out!” Mison proceeds to wear hats the next two days at the Birmingham Comic-Con, much to his fans' despair. “Oh, why must you cover your hair, Mr. M.? It's so lovely, even in 'the middle phase'!” Fans ask him if he's growing it out. He replies, “yes, not really.”

April, 2015: Mison appears at the Las Vegas Comic-Con...with another hat. “Aaarrrggggh! Why won't he let us see his HAIR?!” The next day Mison appears sans hat. The Wife swoons.

July 2015: First photos of Mison on set are released. “He's wearing his natural hair! Oh my God, it's SO BEAUTIFUL!! Look how thick! And curly! And his natural color is amazing!”

September 2015: Mison appears at the Atlanta Dragon-Con, sans hat. The audience goes berserk. He insists “I'm more than a haircut.” The Wife takes to Twitter to wax poetic about his hair.

October 2015: Watching the season premiere: “I have to say, that style is really growing on me. I actually think I like it as much as his long hair now.”
Ichabod Season 3

The Husband

October 2015: Watching the season premiere: “I don't like Abbie's new haircut. Crane looks exactly the same.”   

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

#SleepyHollowDeservesBetter

I just don't understand Fox TV.
Abbie Mills & Ichabod Crane, aka, The Reason People Watch The Show

They renewed Sleepy Hollow for a third season. Cool, awesome, thanks so much, guys! So why does it seem like they want it to fail abysmally? Two weeks out from the show's season premiere, and Fox has yet to air even one commercial promoting the show.

I cannot believe that a studio and/or network would put so much money, talent and time into a show, and then deliberately set it up to fail. Nevertheless, there is a part of me that feels like Sleepy Hollow was put opposite Scandal to do just that. It feels like, rather than risk a darling show in such a deadly time slot, they chose to sacrifice the red-headed step-child.

Thursday is the premiere night on network TV, thus, one should see Fox's movement of Sleepy Hollow to Thursday night as a good thing, a gesture of faith in the show's strength and capacity. They're giving it a lead-in from war horse Bones, and have shot a crossover with the more popular show to air early in the season, doubtless to increase Sleepy Hollow's viewership and make the overall lineup stronger.

And they're going to need a very strong lineup to go up against the freight train that is Shondaland Productions, with all three of Ms. Rhimes hugely successfully shows--Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder—taking over ABC on Thursday nights.

Speaking of which, has anyone seen all the Entertainment Weekly press that Shonda Rhimes has secured for her projects? In the past month, Scandal has been featured in a cover article, HTGAWM, Scandal and GA were given a gorgeous spread in their double issue in advance of the new season, and the stunning leads of all three shows also graced a full-page ad.

Sleepy Hollow, during that same time period, has gotten almost nothing--less than a quarter of a page of mention, and not a single print ad. Who fails to advertise their show in the season premiere issue of a widely-circulated entertainment tabloid?

But then, who puts on 10,000 commercials for Gotham—a show that did very well in the ratings last year—while making no attempt to promote a show that really struggled last year?

In fairness to Fox and K/O Paper Products, there were a few sincere attempts to spark interest over the summer. The first was the announcement of the addition of Nikki Reed to the cast as Betsy Ross, founding mother and former love interest of Ichabod's. Adding an accomplished, attractive actress with a huge fan base to the show should be a win-win, right?

Right. Except it was handled disastrously. Ms. Reed's casting should not have been the first announced after the show lost half its cast over the hiatus--including, notably and inexplicably, fan favorite and social media star Orlando Jones.  As for the how of her introduction to the Sleepy family, it was done with a remarkable lack of sensitivity for the wounds of last season.  Judging from how many outlets printed the same story verbatim, one could safely discern what the press release said. And the release itself wasn't bad.  Co-creator Len Wiseman's quotation was not bad taken in context. But Fox's own Facebook page for the show was hugely unhelpful, introducing Ms. Reed with the words “heating up the hollow," thereby implying that the Hollow was in need of heating, that the two gorgeous black female actors and their fabulous chemistry with the white male co-lead didn't already make it hot enough.  Unfortunately, most articles followed Fox's lead.

If there was one thing Sleepy Hollow fans did not want to see after the missteps of Season 2 it was Ichabod romancing yet another corset-clad white woman. Weren't you guys listening? The focus on Katrina's and Ichabod's (non)romance last year not only doomed the show's ratings, it infuriated—and in many cases permanently alienated—much of the show's fan base. It gave birth to the hashtag #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter, because it seemed painfully clear that the show was reducing not only Abbie's importance in Ichabod's life and the world of Sleepy Hollow, but Nicole Beharie's role as full co-star of the show.

I get the logic: sex sells, and Ms. Reed is quite a dish. But Abbie was unconscionably sidelined last year to make room for the (pretty awful) story of a white woman, and one doesn't improve fan trust that she will take her rightful place front and center by making your first huge casting fuss over a new, white female cast member/possible love interest.

The fan reaction to this announcement was so terrible that Fox announced their next three casting choices—Shannyn Sossamon as another beautiful white woman/mysterious character named Pandora; Lance Gross as Abbie's extremely handsome new boss in the FBI; and Zach Appelman returning as Joe Corbin—with decreasing flair, volume and visibility.  With the exception of Ms. Sossamon, this was unfortunate.

Here's how the new cast members could have, and in my opinion, should have been announced:
  1. Lance Gross, with lots of fanfare. He has a big TV fan base, and given that all of the other new cast members are white, it would have been respectful to those of us who fear that racism adversely influenced last season's episodes to have introduced the one new actor of color joining the show first.
  2. Fan favorite Zach Appelman, with a modest amount of fanfare. Across the board, fans have been clamoring for the wildly talented Shakespearean actor to resume his marvelous portrayal of Joe Corbin, son of Abbie's and Jenny's slain mentor. This would have told the fans, “we heard you, we're listening, we're responding.”
  3. Nikki Reed, with a modest amount of fanfare, as an actress playing Betsy Ross in a recurring role, her love affair with Crane left out of the publicity. Loyal fans know the relationship is canon; by focusing on it, you are once again telling your fan base--unintentionally, I'm sure--that Ichabod Crane can't be with a black woman; his love interests have to be white.  Besides, Ms. Reed has a huge fan base. They could have taken it from there. And finally
  4. Shannyn Sossamon as a recurring guest star Pandora. Period.
Instead, Fox buried the lead, and the news that fans were actually excited about got released in a hush.

The beloved continuing members of Sleepy Hollow's cast and crew were scheduled to appear at Comic-Con in July, possibly the single best way to boost their audience numbers and regain fans' trust and support. For reasons never fully explained (“shooting schedule conflicts” doesn't work as an excuse when everyone knows you haven't started shooting yet), they all bailed at the last minute, leaving fans bereft and confused.

Jones and Greenwood, hard at work, promoting the show.
Instead—and I'm sure the irony is lost on no one—erstwhile Captain Frank Irving, Orlando Jones, together with Lyndie Greenwood, organized and hosted a very sweet breakfast for the fans at a cafe near by. This love for Sleepy Hollow's fans does not go unnoticed, and will pay dividends, not only for Ms. Greenwood and Mr. Jones, but for the show.

Meanwhile, as Fox's American Horror Story: Hotel got huge, splashy spreads in magazines like EW, Sleepy Hollow went almost unmentioned; that is, until word of the Bones crossover surfaced.

Now, I've never seen Bones, so I have no idea whether, from a story perspective, this makes any sense at all. But I don't care, because from the perspective of trying to regain an audience for Sleepy Hollow, it was a brilliant move on Fox's part. Originally scheduled for 2016, the crossover was very wisely moved up to early in the new fall season, where it can have maximum impact on expanding the audiences of both shows. Major kudos to Fox for this one.  That was a step in the right direction!

We love you guys.  Hang in there!
Also, once the show had started filming again, the writers advocated with the network to release occasional set photos which delighted our hungry souls. Consistently the writers, and K/O exec Aaron Baiers, have engaged respectfully with the fans. This builds copious amounts of good will.

Thus, by late summer, things seemed to be looking up. Tom Mison, Nicole Beharie, Corey Castellano, and even—God love him—a pinch-hitting John Noble spent their Labor Day weekend at Dragon-Con in Atlanta, charming and attracting many new fans to the show. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that meant that Mison, at least, went straight from shooting all week, to performing all weekend at the Con, and back to shooting, without a day's break in between. Hard core. Props to you, Mr. M.

Witnesses most decidedly represent.
But then we find ourselves in September, with TV Guide and EW and everyone else writing big spreads about new and returning shows, and Sleepy Hollow still largely ignored. Even on TV, it's own medium, not ONE commercial has aired for a show premiering in EIGHT DAYS. Last night, no mention was made of the show during the Emmys, except by—thank you and brava—the fabulous Viola Davis, when she gave props to Nicole Beharie.  It's a sad day on network television when the Emmy-award-winning star of a competing network's show gives more buzz to your show than you do.  Further, no one from Sleepy Hollow was invited to serve as presenters, and no ads for Sleepy Hollow ran during the show, despite its huge audience share. It boggles the mind, defies all logic, and really dispirits this fan.

I can't know what the folks at Fox are thinking, and it's in my nature to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, assume the best of them, etc. I just wish I understood their strategy. Or lack thereof.

The fans really put our hearts into getting this show back for a third season, and we've been told by people close to the show that—rightly or wrongly—our love and advocacy was a major factor in its renewal.

This neglect on Fox's part is an incomprehensible payback to the fans for that loyalty and love, not to mention profoundly disrespectful to everyone who works on the show.  The veteran actors are promoting the show.  The new actors are promoting the show.  Hell, even the former actors, including one whose departure from the show was not his choice, are promoting the show.  The make-up guru's promoting the show, the cast of Bones is promoting the show, Tom Mison Fans, the Sleepy Sisters, Sleepyheads and many other devoted fans are tirelessly promoting the show. Is it really asking so much for its studio and network to step up? 

Meanwhile, a group of extraordinarily talented artists are working hard together, sweating their hearts out in Greater Atlanta and Burbank, to produce quality television for the show's fans, new and old. They deserve our loyalty, support, and audience share.  If nothing else, we the fans—like the amazingly dedicated Joyce Williams—can promote and “sell” the show, to our friends, family and networks. Fox may not love Sleepy Hollow, but we do, and we need to do everything in our power to show that, network promotion or no, it will succeed.






Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Driving With Death, or How I Spent My Summer

I only look sweet and innocent
If April showers bring May flowers, what do May showers bring? In Southern Colorado, apparently, staggering quantities of rodentia and lagomorpha.1 We don't usually get much in the way of May showers, and we definitely don't get June showers. Until this year. Thanks to El Nino, or so the weather prognosticators claim,2 we've been blessed with more moisture falling on our parched little patch of earth by June than we usually see in an entire year. I'm not complaining. When you're one inch shy of a desert, water in any form is ALWAYS a blessing,

But there have been consequences to this blessing I did not foresee.  Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the orders rodentia and lagomorpha as much as the next nature lover. (For those of you who've already forgotten that Latin you slept through in first period biology, these would be your rabbits, rats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, beavers, and, my personal favorite, pocket gophers).

We've come to appreciate the beavers. It took a while. We used to fight them. This was so moronic of us I must recount it for your edification if not entertainment.

A few years ago, when the beavers first returned to our section of the river, they began doing what beavers do so magnificently: building dams. They created lovely ponds in the river for hunting fish (and swimming). They created pretty sounding waterfalls. And in doing all this they effectively flooded the path on which we took our hungry goats to pasture.

Goats do not like water. I mean they really don't like water. So pasturing them became, temporarily, impossible.

We came up with two brilliant ideas to cope with this. The first involved destroying the beavers' handiwork. Every night. I actually did none of this. My strong, determined husband did.

And every morning we would find the dams beautifully, perfectly reconstructed right where they were the day before. Beavers are nothing if not survivors. Our beavers apparently grew up in Gaza.

The second brilliant idea was that we would haul wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt to the place where the path had flooded in order to build the earth up enough that our aquaphobic goats would be willing to brave walking on it. It was a good idea (my husband's, naturally), just exhausting.  Our work usually lasted a day or two, before the beavers' enterprise would flood it again.

It took us about a month of hard, mostly futile labor, and our interns threatening to build a guillotine, before we finally surrendered. Smartest thing we ever did. Trust me on this, please: you cannot win against a beaver. You will not win. More to the point, you should not win because it turns out they're incredibly important and beneficial to healthy riparian ecosystems. So we stopped giving our interns a daily reason to revolt and learned to live with the beavers and love them.

We grew to love and appreciate them so much so that when they started mysteriously showing up dead on the land this spring—and, weirder still, not getting eaten by other critters--we called the Department of Wildlife out to investigate.

Boy, was that worthless. The DOW guy was lovely, but his news for us was pretty damned disappointing. On the upside, he didn't think the beavers had been poisoned since they're weren't a bunch of dead carrion birds and other Critters Who Eat Dead Things lying around the corpse. He wasn't sure what had killed the beavers, but he didn't think the river was toxic, and he said not to worry. The bodies would decompose eventually.

On the down side he informed us that our upriver neighbors—all of them—are completely within their legal rights to kill a beaver if they consider it a threat to their lives of property. In a county and state where ranching is king, this covers a pretty broad definition of beaver “crimes.” Even we, in our desperation, never stooped to killing the critters.  Stupid Human Laws 1, Beavers Nil.

Really sorry about the misunderstanding, buddy.
Can I get you a lemonade?
Nevertheless the beavers are thriving, so much so that we now have two rivers on the land, but because they're engineering geniuses who decided to reward us for no longer being assholes and destroying all their hard work, they've managed to do this in such a way that we have a dry path for our caprine ladies to traverse to pasture.

You stay classy, Beavers.

Unfortunately, this year, we've had myriad other members of the two orders to cope with.

Rabbits, for instance. Now, I think we can safely all agree rabbits are friggin' adorable. They're cute and cuddly and we all sided with Peter Rabbit as kids when he went up against mean ole Mr. McGregor, the gardener whose food Peter kept stealing.

But that was then and this is now, and no matter how fucking adorable they are, I am entirely clear that Mr. McGregor was the hero and aggrieved party in that story. In the past 2 months I've gone from “Oh, hey, little buddy! Aren't you cute? Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you,” to “Get OUT of my garden or SO HELP ME, GOD, I WILL EAT YOU!”

With lots of help from the squirrels, who previously just excelled in eating the tiny bit of fruit our trees produced, the rabbits have managed to decimate our chard, cut a toothy swath through our beets, unearth and decapitate impressive quantities of carrots, nip the leaves off our bean plants (you know, those things necessary for photosynthesis, i.e. the growth of green beans, a.k.a. the entire reason we planted them in the first place, but never mind). They were chowing a Sherman-esque swath across our lettuce beds when my brilliant husband realized if we didn't cover everything we'd have no crops left to sell or eat.
It wasn't me. 

So we covered the most vulnerable plants with agricultural ribbon. And this deterred the rabbits not one iota. Smart critters, they know a good all-you-can-eat buffet when they see one.

Then there are the mice, and their brawny cousins, the rats.

Ben, one of our young farmers from England, decided--with an acceptance of reality to wow the Buddha--to befriend the inevitable mice with whom one must share a tipi (tipis, unlike tents, do not seal). He named his mice Jeffrey, and would joke, in a charming Ricky Gervais-ish London accent, about what an inconsiderate roommate Jeffrey could be at times, bringing home women at all hours, leaving his stuff everywhere, etc. Jeffrey truly found a friend in Ben.

Not so, Jeffrey's rat cousin, Joffrey, who took up residence in our house one night when an unusual wind blew our front door open while we were all sleeping.4 Joffrey made the mistake of trying to befriend me. I was having a hard summer already. A rat taking up residence in my house, in my bedroom no less—even a healthy field rat with a good diet—was enough to send me over the edge.

Aside from the obvious health concerns—rat pee and rat poo not being exactly sanitary or pleasant smelling additions to one's sleeping space, living room, etc—Joffrey, like his mice relatives, was nocturnal, and our bedroom was a rat's paradise. Given that it's the coolest room in the house, it doubles as our pantry, our seed storage unit, my writing office, and the place where piles and piles of laundry—washed, unwashed, neither?--live, waiting for farmers to deal with them mid-summer. This means that there is an almost endless supply of things for Joffrey to eat, places for Joffrey to hide, things on which Joffrey can poop, things with which Joffrey can noisily drive us insane by denying us sleep, and ultimately use to make a nest.

And make a nest Joffrey did, as evidenced by the baby rats who appeared before our traps, poison, and de-rat-paradisification could persuade Joffrey to leave5

At this point I kinda started freaking out. For one thing, we'd hardly slept for a week, since every time I would fall asleep my poor, exhausted husband (who could hear someone rattling a piece of paper in the next county) would wake me up to help him deal with the Thing Making So Goddamned Much Noise.

Ultimately, we decided to just wait for the poison to work and turned a fan on to drown out the noise. We scoured our room, took everything out of it that could possibly, theoretically, appeal to anyone in the rodentia order, thoroughly sanitized the floors, walls, etc., and then slept like the dead. We left for a much-needed four-day break, and when we returned, our young farmer interns informed us that Joffrey was indeed dead. Oh, and fucking huge, by the way.

Not even if you learn to cook as well
as the guy in "Ratatouille"
Joffrey's offspring appear to have found their way outside, thank God, but not before stinking up our bedroom again one last time for good measure.6

Ben eventually got tired of Jeffrey's antics and asked him to leave.7 Unfortunately, Jeffrey then moved into our 2003 Mazda, our trusted farm car. Jeffrey was really only the latest in a long line of mice to try to live in our car. This is not unique to this year. One of the first things our neighbors taught us when we moved here was the importance of putting dryer sheets and mothballs throughout one's car, including one's engine, to discourage the critters from making their homes there.  Supposedly the smell puts them off.  This used to work, at least somewhat. We've had to fix battery wires that were eaten through, and clean lots and lots and lots of half eaten tissues out of the car, but for the most part, this kept them at bay. Mousetraps baited with peanut butter also usually proved effective (Ben was surprised to hear that American mice differ from their English cousins in terms of preferred Last Suppers).

Not this year.

This year, the mousetraps which inspired the saying “try to build a better mousetrap ['cause you can't, 'cause it's fucking impossible]” don't even work. The mice just kind of look at them, say, “oh how nice! The humans left us some more peanut butter!” before wandering off with their bellies full and the traps still set.

Out running errands one day, we decided to vacuum out the car to get rid of the new, unbearable smells that indicated the presence of a living mouse. While we did, a mouse escaped, doubtless terrified of the sound. Cool, we thought. Mouse gone. Yea!

When we got to our next stop I opened the back door and screamed. Now, I really hate the fact that I screamed, because I'm not one of those women who does that. But for some reason I still wasn't expecting something to be moving in the back of my car. Lo and behold, Jeffrey was also a female, and left two babies behind in her effort to escape The Vacuum.

My husband managed to grab one of the babies and toss him/her out of the car. He didn't mean to hurt it, he just didn't want it in the car. It flew a short distance and landed hard on the pavement. Hard enough to render it's rear legs unusable, but not enough to kill it, and—seemingly still blind—it did its best to crawl back towards the car, doubtless in search of its mother. I should have killed it. I couldn't. It was trying so damned hard to live.

I can't express how terrible this was, how sorry we were to be a human.

The other baby was still somewhere in the car. We didn't know where, we couldn't find it, we never saw it again, but after a few days we began to smell it. It was hot then, and the poor thing probably died of heat stroke or dehydration, locked in the car. When we opened the car again, the smell of its decay-in-process nearly overwhelmed us.

Driving with death, in the form of Eau de Rotting Mouse Corpse, is another one of those things which demonstrates I have enough of my mother in me that my sanity begins to fray around the edges.

But drive with it I did, for more than a week, because we couldn't find the body. We opened every window, turned the fan on high, and it kinda worked. I even overpaid a Jiffy Lube mechanic to replace our air filter in the hope that the corpse was in there. It wasn't.

Interesting thing about a decaying mouse corpse. It eventually stops smelling. Do not think about why that is. Do not, do not, do not.

In the interim my husband managed to catch another two mice in the (now miraculously working) traps (you'd think the smell of one of their kin dead would have clued the poor suckers in that maybe this wasn't a good neighborhood, but no).

A few days later as we opened the hood on our farm truck, Dora-the-Explorer, to refill the oil (it has an unfixable leak, naturally), we saw a lovely, huge rat nesting in a corner of the engine. She was intrepid; she was actually using the dryer sheets as part of her nest. My husband chased her around the engine for a few minutes, and then I grabbed her by the tail and threw her away from the truck, unwittingly in the direction of my sister-in-law's boyfriend who grew up in New York and is therefore not fond of rats. He recovered quickly, and, happily, so did she.

A few days after that I found another rat outside--missing part of her tail--nesting in the box which houses the batteries for our garden pumps (charged by a small solar panel). I told her, “you know what, honey? That's just fine. You stay right here and make your little nest and I'll leave you be. No need to shake so hard.”

It felt like a tiny victory in the direction of decency toward another of the creatures with whom I share this Earth. Finally I could let one of them live, build a home, procreate, etc. Imagine my disappointment when my husband found the rat, and worse, learned that I knew she was there and had done nothing to get rid of her. “Remember the chewed-up wiring I had to fix on the batteries last week? It is NOT okay for her to stay in the battery box!” Duhhhhh!

Meanwhile, the bunnies keep multiplying like...I'm sorry, truly...rabbits.  And, for months now we've not seen or heard sign of coyote, which probably means some genius in the neighborhood decided it would be a brilliant idea to shoot them, thus depopulating the landscape of one of rodents' primary predators. Times like this I really think everyone should have to study differential equations (jokes that only a biologist could love).

So, I've started researching online the most effective way to trap a rabbit, the most humane way to kill it, the most efficient way to skin and eviscerate the creature. Things I Never Knew I Needed To Know. I reiterate: bunnies are cute as hell. But they have 75 acres of God-given food they could be eating, and instead they insist on eating the half-acre of human food we labor to produce. I feed them, they feed me. That's how it works.
C'mon.  Be honest.  Could you do it?

But since I'm a coward and a hopeless softie, I'm probably never going to trap a rabbit, at least not 'till after the apocalypse.  So I'm off to the hardware store to find chicken wire with which we hope to rabbit-proof our fence. I'll open the windows, of course, and turn on the fan, to get out the stench of the living or dead mouse or rat currently sharing the car with me.

Sigh.  Is it winter yet?

1 So now you know why it's never become a saying.
2 They don't know! 
3 References available upon request.
4 We never lock it. We live in the country, and we're poor. Burglary is literally the least of our concerns.
5 Attempts to rename Joffrey “Cersei” failed abysmally.
6 And I wonder why I take anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds.
7 Politely, of course. He is English after all.