The Colour Of Money

The title of a rather well known movie starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, it is also a metaphor for many things.  The first cousin of the expression ’the colour of money’ is its more outspoken and controversial family member ‘the colour of my money’.  A metaphor for the reason gift giving sometimes gets weird?  Maybe so.

Why it is that gift giving can at times be so completely and utterly confusing?  Why is there no handbook for this kind of thing?  Frankly, I’m t h i s close to giving up on the whole spirit of giving shtick.  Of course I don’t really mean that, what with me deriving giddy pleasure from causing people’s faces to light up at my occasionally off the wall but always heartfelt thoughtfulness.  Giving is a drug, and in this realm I’m a junkie who can’t relinquish something that feels good. But gosh darn it, I’m cross.  That’s right – c r o s s.

We need rules around gifting, don’t we?  Good, clean, straight-up rules.  Like “How To Give,” for one, and perhaps a concurrent publication “How To Get”.  In my mind, that should fix everything, so should there be sufficient interest, I shall set about writing them but in the interim here are potential excerpts from both of the as yet unwritten masterpieces:

From The Code:  How To Give

Ø  A gift must come from the heart (if it comes from your foot, it loses its sentimental value very quickly).  The more perceptive among us will spot a gift given from the foot, so pick wisely.  Hint:  It needs to emanate from the gooiest, softest place that you have inside of you… that awesome place where no matter what else is going on in the world, it can all be perfect for one moment when heartfelt generosity is passed from you to somebody you care about.

Ø  A gift must be offered only when the joy of giving it exceeds the combined magnitude and power of all other emotions in the universe.  Period.  Simple.  Please don’t mess this up by thinking to yourself, “But… but…”, because “But… but…” is how all the great wars have started and we don’t need any more of those now, do we?

Ø  A gift must be given with no expectations attached.  As an example, surprising your partner with a new Lagostina Teflon frying pan on your anniversary is only a good idea if he or she gives a damn that your Sunday over easies, by his or her hand, routinely turn into a craptacular scramble that requires some sort of power tool to retract it from the pan.   As they say in business circles, know your market.  Caveat:  On a case by case basis, it might be forgivable to have certain expectations of personal happiness around the giving of a gift that you both - both! - have a vested interest in.  But that’s a whole other book (The Code:  Reasonable Expectations) which yes, I will write just as soon as I’m done crafting all my other literary masterpieces.  I’m v e r y busy (she laments, dabbing sweat off her brow in a manner that would make Blanche DuBois, well, blanch).

Ø  A gift must be given with no strings attached.  Once you give it, it is no longer yours.  Nor can you take it back, no matter how much you might want to.  I know this will put a lot of lawyers out of business and I feel badly about that (I have lawyer friends and they are good people), but I won’t budge on this one.  Once you give a gift, it’s gone.  But if you’ve done your homework you should be able to reap the benefits of the joy the receiver gets out of being in possession of your gift.  Do your homework, givers.  Don’t run amok giving gifts with a spirit that goes against code.  It throws the earth of its axis for those who give gifts with the purest of motives: the unabashed joy of both the giver and the getter. 

From The Code:  How To Get

Ø  A gift must be received with genuine grace and heartfelt gratitude (immediately).  If either of those two things are missing, or if the gift giver is noble in spirit but the acceptance of the gift is not, the gift must be refused… no matter how shiny and pretty it may be.

There.  Done and done.  As these excerpts clearly demonstrate, we will soon have structure around what was once a painfully ambiguous process.  I feel good about this.  I shall now sit on my duff and await my Nobel Peace Prize, which by the way is a gift – a gift that I shall refuse on the grounds that my reasons for accepting it would be against code.   Why?  Well because the clarification of protocol around giving stuff and getting stuff is not ground breaking erm, stuff.  We all know what constitutes grace, gratitude, and good judgment… but sometimes it’s just nice to have a little refresher.

Getting Grounded

It's my thinking that sometimes we all get just a little bit too wrapped up in our own stuff to recognize how we look to those who know us best.  By way of example, I do believe I've just been grounded.

I've been going a hundred miles an hour for a bit too long, and am delighted to report that that I have come plummeting back to earth.  You see, I'm no cook.  Not at all.  But I am getting a bit more courageous and find myself, on occasion, cooking without a safety net.  Recently I've been absorbed in trying to make the perfect beef stir fry.  Well... perfect to me.  I digress.  I tried a few prepackaged stir fry sauces and while very good, I thought it was high time I made some from scratch.  We're not just talking about any sauce here, but a Szechuan Pepper sauce. 

But the key to the Szechuan Pepper Sauce is this little ingredient called Szechuan peppercorns (go figure).  These are elusive little fellas.  I've been to three supermarkets with large ethnic food sections and got the same blank stare when I asked if they carried the spice. So being the resourceful woman I am, I googled the heck out of every variation on the name that I could and still came up empty.  I turned to facebook and got a few great suggestions today that I will follow up on tomorrow.  But in the interim I'm over at Akimbo Alogo's house for our now somewhat occasionally weekly installment of Blogatola Tuesday, and so as I was pontificating on all the things I tend pontificate on, I mentioned that I'm on the hunt for Szechuan peppercorns.  She looks up from her laptop, which she was furiously pounding away on (not blogging, I might add), and offers this beaut:

"Sorry, what?  Szechuan peppercorns?  Is that a band or something?"

From InsideToronto.com: Celebrity Musing - Liz and Dick and Lindsay and Rosie

I had a lot of fun writing the May installment of Celebrity Musing - and I guess it showed.  A discerning scribe or two caught onto the fact that I appeared to be enjoying myself and told me as much.  Perhaps you will enjoy it as well.  Well here's hoping, anyhow.  You can link directly to the InsideToronto.com article, or if you're a bit fatigued by all that clicking, here's the plain old text for ya:

Liz and Dick and Lindsay and Rosie

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (please forgive the inevitable cliche) were star-crossed lovers whose turbulent entanglement put them right up there with the top dog of tragic love stories: Romeo and Juliet.

Liz floated onto the set of the 1963 epic 'Cleopatra' while married to Eddie Fisher, and Dick swaggered in as the husband of actress Sybil Williams. Just as Antony and Cleopatra, the actors fell deeply in love. They each left and subsequently divorced their spouses, and married and divorced each other twice. In doing so they loved big and hurt bigger.

Although they didn't have the backing numbers of the quarrelling Montagues and Capulets, the Taylor-Burtons are said to have lived, loved and lost with such an enormous depth of passion for one another that there was no need - or room - for large supporting casts on either side.

While their ability to be healthy in their relationship spiked and plummeted over the years, the intensity of their connection never waned. The strength of their bond was so powerful that one could theorize that (ironically) it was the bond itself which prevented them from being compatible.

Their love needed to somehow be more anomalous than it was, but a marriage of two perfectly matched hearts and dispositions? They didn't stand a chance at the life they chose for themselves: a day to day ordinary existence as husband and wife.

Not only could the Taylor-Burtons not find their happily ever after, but unto herself, Elizabeth Taylor struggled mightily to find and retain happiness. In addition to the unyielding publicity that surrounded her career and her truculent personal life, she also faced a litany of life-threatening illnesses.

Yet despite it all, she never seemed to lose faith. In perpetuity and in her own good time, she took her lumps, picked herself up, dusted herself off and moved on as we all watched with mildly morbid fascination.

So, given all of this, why is Rosie O'Donnell so irked that Lindsay Lohan has been signed to portray Elizabeth Taylor in the upcoming Lifetime production of Liz and Dick? Well, O'Donnell says Lohan's personal life is a disaster and as a result she's not right for the job. Further, when suggested by fellow Today panelist Donny Deutch that Lindsay Lohan might be our generation's Elizabeth Taylor, O'Donnell responded by saying he was out of his mind. And as if to fortify her attack, she added the strong backing argument that Deutch "is a crackhead". Sigh...

Although wary of the ongoing coverage of Lohan's personal failings, my first reaction to hearing she will portray Elizabeth Taylor was actually, she rather looks like the screen icon and maybe she'll do a good job.

I'm no expert, but I'm intrigued by Lifetime's choice and don't mind saying I might even watch the movie. I guess I want to think Lindsay Lohan might be a clever, funny gal with some talent.  Perhaps I want to think that because this is all just an O'Donnell-Lohan publicity stunt, what with both of them in need of a career boost. But I digress.

Lohan is going to have to overcome some heady personal stuff to earn back the respect of her peers and her public, but that's not impossible.

Others have done it: Elizabeth Taylor for instance and more than once.

As for O'Donnell, she subsequently stated she went on the offensive about Lohan out of concern for the young star. In comparing her to the late Whitney Houston, O'Donnell's after-the-fact implied message is we need to do a better job of looking after each other.

I couldn't agree more, but if this is how O'Donnell looks after Lohan, I'm not sure she's right for the job.

From InsideToronto.com: Celebrity Musing - Whitney's Burden

I've been meaning to respost a few of my columns but hey, things have been a bit hectic lately.  In the spirit of better late than never I shall post the April Celebrity Musing offering, which asks the question of whether or not Whitney Houston was overwhelmed by the enormity of the vocal gift she was given.  Feel free to comment but please be gentle...  I'm a delicate flower.

If you feel so inclined, you can link to the InsideToronto.com column directly.  If not, here it is:

Was Whitney Houston predisposed to a burden too great to bear?

It's been conveyed to me that some people crash headlong into the world loaded down with more than any one person is meant to endure. Is it possible that some of us have to carry a load in excess of what one person can sustain, and if so, is the ensuing fall inevitable?

I have a friend who believes with every fibre of his being that his heart loves well in excess of the love that one heart is meant process. At first I scoffed at this, but through self examination realized this was a plausible affliction. To that end, when I heard the news of Whitney Houston's death, my initial reaction was to extrapolate the theory.

Was it was written in the stars before her birth she was going to have too much put upon her for one soul to manage effectively? The question loomed larger several weeks later as the results of the toxicology reports on her body were made public.

Her voice literally had to explode (albeit a beautiful, otherworldly explosion) in order for it to leave her body.  That voice - her voice - might have been too much for one person to handle. In that her soul could not bear up under the weight of an unprecedented gift, her heart tried to pick up the slack, but paid a huge price, and it would appear that eventually her body, spread too thin after years of coping, could not tolerate one last grievance and gave up.

This is not an attempt to gloss over what has been documented as a troubled existence, nor justify anyone's insatiable appetite for a destructive lifestyle.  It was her life to live and on the surface it would appear she lived it by her own design. But some people are inherently weak. Conversely, some are strong, but not strong enough when given too much to manage.

Houston, like many before her, appears to have been given too much to manage. Her musical legacy will be sterling in perpetuity despite recent falls from grace at the hands of a failing voice and erratic public behavior. But her personal legacy will now be given over to a sad, never-ending debate: Was she weak or was she reckless?

It no longer matters. It's fair to say that a voice so strong that it resonated on some level with virtually everyone hid the presumably weak will of a nice, exuberant kid who didn't stand a chance against the goodness she chose to defy in relentlessly pursuing her perhaps ill-conceived, bad-ass self-image.
As the shock of her death subsides, the media will continue to pay tribute to her musical legacy while speculating she died as a result of not being strong enough to beat down her demons. But are any of us that strong? A simple analysis reveals we're surviving, but is it because we're strong or because we aren't faced with intensely public-private legacies?

I wonder if any of us knows how resilient we truly are? Houston woke up every day of her adult life and faced relentless scrutiny related specifically to the size of her heart and the depth of her soul - and she handled it her way.

I don't own any Houston recordings, but I'm familiar enough with her music that when I hear it I can see a 25 year old with a huge smile, a youthful exuberance and an overburdened soul letting go of a load so huge that one person alone could not sustain it.

Rosie O'Donnell Reminds Us That We Need To Look After Each Other...

... by kicking the crap out of people (in absentia, no less) on network television.

I'm not qualified to say how we do a better job of looking after each other if in fact we're looking for scientific facts or medical precedent.  All I know is that at some point most of us are guilty of succumbing to the pressures of day to day life (most of which we heap on ourselves in self-mutilating fashion) and we then externalize our stress by lashing out when the load becomes too great.

But I really don't know what to make of Rosie O'Donnell's latest public joust.  Is it just me, or is she angry (about l o t s of stuff)?

In the aftermath of yet another outburst against a fellow celebrity, Rosie now insists that she trashed Lindsay Lohan personally and professionally on the Today Show last week because she's uh, well, worried about the young star.  Indeed, Rosie has capitulated and now says that Lindsay is a bit out of sorts and needs time away from the entertainment industry in order to recover properly before taking on any more acting roles.  She also states that as she watched Whitney Houston's funeral that she wondered why somebody didn't try to save the singer before it was too late, and in building on this thought is now concerned that Lohan will meet the same tragic fate as the singer.  I can't fault her for having this thought as I wondered the same thing in my April column for InsideToronto.com.  Of course I didn't paste anyone on a nationally syndicated morning show the day before I pondered whether or not Whitney could have been spared.  Just sayin.

Where I struggle with O'Donnell's current stance on all of this is that at no time in her appearance on the Today Show did anyone seem to think she was even remotely worried about Lindsay Lohan.  In angrily declaring that Lohan's life is "...still a disaster" and that ergo she is a terrible choice to play Elizabeth Taylor in the upcoming biopic on the screen legend and her tumultuous relationship with Richard Burton, I didn't really get that Rosie was worried about Lindsay... not at all actually.

But yes, Rosie, I agree wholeheartedly that we need to do a better job of looking after one another.  In this instance I'm just not sure that you're right for the job.