A Restoration of Faith...

I just finished breakfast and was thinking about last night. For those who are not familiar, I work for a small car service in Los Angeles as a driver and though we don't do much in the way of "industry" business, we do some directly and via "farm outs" from other companies, going to the Spirit Awards.

Yesterday, I spent the day on one such farm out. I went to one of the Hotels on West Hollywood to pick up someone I had never heard of, a "Suzanne Davis" (not really, but it was something similar, we must protect the innocent). I called up to let them know that I was downstairs and waiting, to which I was told they were running a bit behind and would be down in about 30 minutes. Something about that voice sounded familiar, hmmm.....

About 30 minutes later, a young couple came down and came over to my car, God, they sure looked familiar. I asked, "Ms. Davis?" and she smiled and said "yes" and they got into my car. As they got in, Ms Davis said "Hi, my name is Neve and this is my brother Christian."


We drove to Santa Monica Beach where a collection of large white tents had been set up and I dropped them off and found a parking spot a short distance away. As I got out of the car, I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a few years as well as received an invite to lunch from one of our other drivers at the event.

I'm not going to go into exhaustive details on the day and everything that happened, but after the end of the show and the after party at the Shutters Hotel, we were joined by Alan Cumming and his partner Grant Shaffer. Alan had helped produce and acted in "Sweet Land", which won the Best First Feature award.

When we left the party, we went back to the hotel in West Hollywood so Neve could get something a little warmer to wear. They decided to grab some dinner in the restaurant and Christian came out to move his car, a good idea in West Hollywood with the "Parking Nazis".

While he was out, we chatted for a bit and I just knew that I knew him from somewhere. I mean, he's an actor, so I'm sure I've seen him before but this was something more, either it's on a personal level or something he was in that I truly loved. I had felt familiar since I picked them up and it was REALLY starting to get under my skin and bug me.

I called a friend and asked her to help me since she had a computer handy with an Internet connection. It didn't take long for me to feel like a complete ass. It turns out that Christian was in one of my favorite gay films of all time, "Trick".

It's the story of a young musical theatre writer who meets a gogo-boy and spends the rest of the night looking for a place to trick (catch a quickie). Needless to say, they don't have an easy time of it, between bitchy drag queens, broken hearted piano bar singers and a best friend who is completely clueless and self absorbed (played beautifully by Tori Spelling). Definitely worth seeing in my personal opinion.

I really wish I had gotten an opportunity to tell Christian just how much that film has meant to me over the years and that it will always hold a special place in my heart.

As a driver in Los Angeles, you meet a lot of people, some rich and famous and some just regular people who need to get somewhere. Most are decent people who couldn't care less. Of those who are famous or quite wealthy, they tend to be a bit wrapped up in their own little worlds and a bit dismissive of those they perceive to be their inferiors, like anyone not worth what they are or outside their circle of "special People". It's not just actors in this town, but it kind of like high school with all it's little cliques and such.

The funny thing is it kind of reminds me of when I lived in Long Beach many years ago. A friend and I would go to this club full of snotty, ego-centric pretty boys who wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire in the parking lot. The funny part was that when we would go to the bath-house and I would run into the same little stinkers who would practically drag me into their rooms to make out, fun if slightly bewildering, it was the early 80's.

When I have found myself past the guard gates, people assume that you belong there and accept you as an equal. If they only knew...

This was not an issue of any kind for me yesterday with the Campbells and Mr. Cumming and his partner, they were all so very nice and pleasant and made me feel glad to be spending the evening with them. If I were to try to describe the situation from a movie, I would guess that "54" would have the right scene, in the New Jersey coffee house on Christmas day, watch it and see what I mean.

After seeing so much of the vile and nasty behavior that many people do toward each other in the name of greed, selfishness and ego, it was an amazing breath of fresh air to spend an evening with such nice, real and authentic people that it truly helped to restore my faith that under all our silly nastiness as people, we can still be civil human beings and some of the best can still be famous at the same time.

A Response to My Dad.... Pt 2

OK, I admit to being surprised, my Dad actually wrote back shortly after that last message, about 4 hours later, according to the timestamps.

Instead of writing them separately, like I did in the previous entry, I am going to just put my second response. I accidentally lost the first one and had to write it out a second time. I liked the first version better, but didn't get a chance to spend enough time to replace it in its entirety.

This was mailed on February 4th, I have yet to get any comments...

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Dear Robert,
I am not sure exactly what your reply has to do with my email.

Sorry about that, I get so many of these pseudo-patriotic e-mails that I may have unloaded my irritation and frustration onto you. Sorry about that.

I understand from it why you would like to change our leadership. However, your reply does give me reason to ask two questions.

Putting politics aside:

Do you believe that Radical Islam is any threat to the world or us?

Radical Islam unto itself, No. Al-Qaeda is a different subject, they have been a threat in the past and if we don't finish the mission in Afghanistan, they will likely be again. That war I am in complete agreement with and just wish the Administration would put a bit more attention to.

In my opinion, radical Islam is no more a threat than radical Zionists in Israel or radical Hindus in India. Personally, as far as this country goes, I am more concerned with radical Christians like the "Army of God" who have no qualms with committing murder, fire bombings and arson in their crusades to purge America of what they disagree with, in this case abortion and the doctors who perform them.

I am personally more concerned about the sect of Christians who believe that they can hurry the second coming by destroying the world around us. Talk about an arrogant state of being. Some have accused the administration to be part of or pandering to this group, I doubt it, I think it's just greed and power lust myself, always looks good until you project it into the future.

Strange that in a nation that prides itself on its freedoms and finds theocracies to be such terrible things (personally I agree completely with the last), we are trying to create a Christian theocracy in this nation. We call it "family values" or some other nice name, but look into history and see how people like Hitler used the common belief and fears of the people to get them to do what they never would have if brought out directly. If there is one thing that can be learned during the Third Reich, it's that it only takes a small percentage of people to manipulate the masses into allowing horrible acts in the name of power, tradition and/or purity.

If so, what efforts would you like to see our government implement to defeat that threat............in other words, what should be our strategy?

I think a re-evaluation of our foreign policy's tendency to bully people should be looked at as it seems to be detrimental to our stated goals. I have felt for the longest time that our tendency to act as if we are the only country who knows what's going on and to strong arm everyone into playing by our rules, no matter what the consequences doesn't help us, it makes us look like thugs on the world stage. Like it or not, our usual practice is still very much a colonialism technique that has become reviled outside our nation since many nations have been on the wrong end of that in the past.

It's about time we started talking with, not at, other nations, started taking into account that other cultures are valid and may need to be addressed when trying to work together and most of all, have respect for those who are different.

What would happen if we actually started following our proclaimed Christian values and treated others as we would want to be treated? Some people are not particularly honest in how they deal with things, but why should they feel like it is in their own best interest when we don't always present the truth ourselves?

I'm sure you think that nations would take advantage of any trusts that were put before them and I'll be the first to admit that there is difficulty, especially initially. But we are the sole big boy on the block, if we set a bad example, what's to make anyone want to trust us? We need to treat the rest of the world as younger siblings who need guidance, not threats and beatings, so that they may grow.

For example on the current world stage: Iran. The majority of people in Iran are fairly moderate and progressive and was working its way clear of the rule of the Ayatollahs until we scared the daylights out of them in Iraq and they voted Ahmadinejad into office to balance what they saw in the world (all my Iranian friend claim it was our country's policies and actions that got him elected). I have worked with and for many from Iran and other than feeling that we had meddled in their country with the Shah, basically like us a lot. They have become an Islamic Theocracy, but are surprisingly open to ideas. From our perspective, their President has been quite inflammatory, but from their perspective, he's actually been fairly tame. We can continue on our current path, to ignore their culture and government, making our demands and playing by our rule-book, and it will probably amount to nothing going forward. What if we were to sit down with all the involved parties and try to work out a solution that would address our concerns while at the same time be something presentable to the people he has to answer to back home in Tehran?

If I know you, you think this is quite simplistic and naive. Maybe. But I will tell you this, I am a firm believer that world is what we make of it, if we don't like what we have made, redo it. It takes work but nothing is impossible. The fact is that the world has gotten too small for squabbling children who would rather beat each other up than share their toys.

As far as on the domestic front, quit with the playing to fear and paranoia of the masses, it's counterproductive. The big problem with playing the fear card is that after awhile the people are afraid of everything, including the ones playing the card, it truly is a two edged sword.

I could go on and on, but I think I will stop here. The facts are not always clear and the dangers are great, but to change nothing and continue down our current path doesn't seem to bode well either. As to your quote from Blair, if we keep outsourcing all the manufacturing and industrial jobs to where the labor is substantially cheaper and replace those jobs with Starbucks, how long will more people want in than out?