History & Music

Somehow over the last couple of years i have landed in the tribute video business. Not really sure how it started except it seems to satisfy the way my head works. If i think back, the first couple of videos i made were over a decade ago. old school video to video transfer. It's so much easier now. It might have been the connection to collages and other print work i have done for memorials for longer than that.

There is a deeper back story to this one though. I haven't posted in four years. A lot has changed, some things have stayed the same, in the best and worst of ways. In short it goes...divorce | intense love affair | move to my hometown | caregiver to  an elderly mother | hideous break up | elderly mother going through cancer treatment | the kids are alright & i am holding steady at the moment in this tour of duty.

It is hard to come home. i'm drowning in history, family stories, the pressure of being a single mom, caregiver & find time to make a living. The love/hate relationship i have with this funky little town in all it's nostalgia mixed with absolute arrested development and my family that is incredibly complex and damaged.

This is how my head works, because much of my family history is before i ever existed. The youngest only child, kept out of the fray for the most part and reliant on all the stories to piece it all together. Thankfully i come from a family of storytellers. they don't really know that, but they are. these stories have come out in outrageous laughter that is both hilarious and inappropriate, or in venomous anger but rarely anything in between. Two of my sisters are quite a bit older, and had a completely different life than i did. My mom was so young and so ill prepared for life, so was her husband, but they married with all the best intentions and i believe they absolutely love their daughters. Despite the heartbreaking violence & struggles in that era, my sisters are both wildly successful, highly creative and my other set of moms. My dad came into the picture immediately after they split. I didn't even know they were half sisters until i was 12. In my little kid head i thought when you grow up, you can call your Dad by first name. Couldn't wait to be able to call my dad, Dave. It is very much a dreamlike movie in my head. Small town lore, and the stories...oh, the stories.

My mom has just suffered a double edged loss. Her best-friend of 45 years passed away, and then her sister. Aunt Elsie was the last of her two siblings. Uncle Albert died of a heart attack years ago. She was so illusive and damn cool. i loved her. she had a certain quiet strength that i admired. Never questioned if she loved me. Married my dad's brother, Jimmy and they had Scott, my double cousin. Has the dubious honor of divorcing and marrying my other Uncle, Tom. what can i say? The Preciado/DeLano connection runs deep and they were beautiful people in a very small town. Scott came to live with us when i was very small. I thought he was my brother for a long time. He is my brother, actually.

No one asked for a tribute video. There were very few photos of my ever illusive aunt. I had just come across old 8MM i had digitized years ago. the quality isn't very good but it works. It's mostly footage of my mother, my sisters with (little) Scott, my grandmother, my uncle Albert and only two tiny clips of my Aunt (watch for her at the end). oh how much i absolutely love their style....especially so because i know most of the stories. Heard a beautiful piece of music when i was cleaning house, and the images came flooding in. i did this one for me. honestly, i don't think i will be able to share it with my family, in fear of any repercussions or misunderstanding. There is a part of me that did this for my mom. I have no idea what it feels like to feel that everyone close is slipping away to the point of being the last one standing. My only point of reference is how i feel in watching and helping my mom through it.

First Words

The boys are in Kindergarten. David is really anxious to write. He knows all the letters, how to form them and now he's sounding them out to do the job. His first three words? the first three he's written without any help at all?

poop
booger
google

There you have it people. I wonder what that third word is going to mean 10 or 20 or 100 years from now?

David Says

last two nights, we've been out driving. daylight savings is sort of fun for nighttime experiences because through the summer, they go to sleep right as the sun sets. it's been a crescent moon. David asked why and i went on to explain the phases of the moon. kid version. told them to watch the moon and see how it becomes slowly bigger and the full and the smaller and then disappears...yadda yadda. they were quiet. listening. then i stopped talking because i was sure they had checked out from the backseat and were no longer interested.

then david says, "i know why it does that. the darkness just takes a bite out of the moon."

i liked his explanation much better than mine.

Like i have time for this....

Tonight i'm doing wyatt's homework. he came home with a backpack with a stuffed lion named simba, simba's blankie and a journal detailing simbas adventures with the other little children in his class.

oh, and i'm so annoyed. why do they spring this crap on us parents??? why? why? i had no idea i was going to have to detail simba's day with us. so i'm going to be a complete smart ass and tell how simba got into the trash, jumped on the furniture, swung from the light fixture, antagonized the robots and ran with scissors. little fucker better not end up at our house again....

to be made to feel...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." — Maya Angelou

ashley just posted this quote and it so struck me that i have to repost...i have so much going on that i scarcely have the capacity to organize it into a post. but since i've long abandoned this blog...really, i found it rocking and banging in the corner again...i will find a way to expand on this theme in the next day or so.

one man's junk is another man's toys.....

I walk into the boys room and see that Wyatt has just about emptied the toy box onto his bed. i point down to the pile.

"hey, what's all this junk!"

Wyatt quick as a flash yanks down his pants, grabs his nuts and says, "No mommy, this my junk. Those are my toys!"

and now ya know.

thanks....

For the thank you cards.....

Ostara is in the air....

[claps wildly at the empty room]
"okay parents, listen up"

....enough with the bags of little plastic crap from the 99 cent store and candy at every birthday party. they have a way of magically vanishing before we hit the door home.

just sayin'
and i'm still pissed at the mom that decided a ball point pen was a good idea for valentines day. my boys managed to open the bag in the car and uncapped that sucker with ninja precision. scribbled the seats and themselves silly...and yes, all in the three minutes it takes to get home.

we hosted our first friends party not too long ago. i decided to take action. set an example. fuck! it ended up being a three day project and i don't have that kind of time. still proud of it though. started with a dare. make something. make something biodegradable. make something biodegradable AND fun....and cute...and kidlike. bring it, momma.....

so i give you what was probably close to the original chia pet. i took some little seedling pots (20 at the 99 cent store) and painted little faces.

i bought a bag of bare spot grass seed. it's hardy stuff...grows quickly and is cheap. then i found little envelopes and Michaels. probably the most expensive thing on project. made a little drawing on the front with instructions on the back. we then took soil and wrapped it up in purple tissue paper, placing it in the pot. i also included some sunflower seeds in a packet as an added bonus. all were put in a brown paper bag decorated by my 73 year old mother. it was nice to sit around the table doing crafts with my mom....can't remember the last time we did that.


quick side story to this: My boys have school friends now, and they went to their first friend party before this project came to be. we live in a tiny house right up next to one of the wealthiest areas in CA. the party was in this palatial residence of a school friend on "the hill". the playhouse in the backyard was nicer than ours (so i asked the mom is she was interested in renting it) they hired a balloon animal person (is there a name for that person?), had a humongous bouncy house and if we had stayed more than the 45 minutes i was willing to endure, i'm quite certain lunch was catered. it was weird. intimidating.

our party was two days later....however, we threw down at a funny little conservatory called Wilderness Park. it's lovely and has several big ponds with ducks, turtles and a stream that shuts off at 10pm. plenty of campsites for rent either day use or overnight. the park ranger is well, functionally retarded but pleasant. because i'm so annoyed by the shear volume of primary colored plastic in my house, and i didn't want to spend money on more crap for other kids, we made these. i appointed my favorite lesbian to man the grill and we served hot dogs, pizza, apples and apple sauce, trail mix and juice/water...oh, and because the camp sites have power, we had kick ass coffee and water for cocoa or tea. i got some fish/duck food in bulk from barney fife and put it in little cups. okay, so want to know the greatest part? the kids had a blast. they ran all over the place, got filthy dirty, over fed the ducks to their delight, reeked of fish for the rest of the day and when the cake came out, they swarmed and they all stuck their grubby little fingers in it. i was tempted to scrap the forks altogether and let them have at it.....

back to this project....i need to include instructions because i didn't want sunflower seeds going into little pots and while it all made sense to me, it might not to someone else. given what i've just said, my best friend Cate says quick as a flash, "might want to put them in Spanish"...

it's late and i'm punchy....

boingboing had an interesting bit about photoshop f-ups that led me to bookmark this blog: photoshop disasters

this photo is horrendous but the caption is what makes it just so.



"By renormalizing the model's waistline, Maxim Mexico takes a bold socio-political stance in the ongoing battle of the politics of representation, clearly referencing the oppressive reification of male-gaze heteronormative modes of synthesis in a semiotic blancmange of post-structural teakettle barbecue hatstand fishmonger."

direct link

If You are Thinking About Having Kids.....

This landed in my email box this AM. i have no idea who the author is, but it's brilliant

Lesson 1
1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who
already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's
breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and
overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have
all the answers.

Lesson 3
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living
room from 5PM-10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12
pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound)
playing loudly.
2. Eat cold food with one hand for dinner
3. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and
go to sleep.
4. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
5. Set the alarm for 3AM.
6. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM, make a drink and
watch an infomercial.
7. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
8. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
9. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
10. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work
hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful
and together.

Lesson 4
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons.

How does that look?

Lesson 5
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave
it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look
like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the
back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with
your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can
find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent
choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely
take more than one goat.

1. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight.
2. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8
1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the
swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney,
Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but
PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know,
you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly.
(Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy';
occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required).
Play this tape in your car everywhereyou go for the next four years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else
continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while
playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is
a child in the room

search strings

Have you ever paid attention to the dropdown list of search strings when typing something into Google? it's slightly entertaining and a sad commentary on life as we surf it.

arts & crafts....

We have been sick for the entirety of winter so far. that is the price we pay for attending pre-school. they say by kindergarten, they will have super immunity. right now, it just sucks.

the best thing about pre-school in my book is teaching my wee boys how to sit around a table and do arts & crafts. i could not master this alone before (my boys have my dreadfully short attention span, you see).

Days like today when the rain is falling and they have exhausted every single disney DVD over the course of this winter-O-sickness, we sit around the table with stacks of construction paper, crayons, paints, stickers and sometimes homemade playdoh. i am the mom that plasters her fridge with all these fabulous works of art. The creativity spills out to other things as well. the power of observation...so amazing in these wee beans. today wyatt was playing with is Mr. Potato Head collection (there is mr. carrot, yam and corn too).

He says, "Hey mommy, look. it's Nana!"

Happy MLK Jr. Day

right back at cha...

ring back tones need to be outlawed....if i have to listen to another distorted, tinny, jacked up, piece of crap song when simply placing a call, i'm going to be forced to sing really loudly and off key (like there is any other way i sing) for two minutes solid into the ear of the owner of said ring back tone.

i think it's only fair.

if only this were true

Maybe it's my proximity to Manhattan Beach...maybe it's my lack of sleep this week but oh....did i laugh myself silly over this one.

Happy New Year....

My New Years resolution is to dedicate more time updating this blog.....

starting tomorrow.

and now for our next number....

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Happy Thanksgiving

Proposition 8

So in the five minutes it took me to pick up my boys from preschool, someone took it upon themselves to relieve me of my NO on prop 8 lawn sign. i can assume that these individual feel it necessary to deny me both the right to marry and my first amendment rights as well.

the sad part is i'm quite certain it's a neighbor.

why, that's downright constitutional!

**It wasn’t too long ago that interracial marriage was prohibited and a court (not the people) found that it was unconstitutional to deny these individuals of their fundamental right to marry. On January 6, 1959, in Loving v. Virginia, the Lovings pleaded guilty to interracial marriage and were sentenced to one year in prison. As part of its ruling, the trial court said that:


“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.” (right, i know....sounds profoundly retarded, doesn't it?)


Thankfully they appealed the decision. They found the statute prohibiting interracial marriage violated the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. **

I can't help but feel the sting of the Yes on Prop 8 stickers as i drop my boys off at preschool. the parent/kid phone list came out and the columns read, "mother/father" with sylvie listed under father. this has cause some of the moms to stop speaking with me or even make eye contact during drop off and pick up. this also "came out" two days before the mommy-play-date were we were all invited to spend a day at school with our kids. needless to say, there were some tense moments. my lovely mate couldn't make it so it was just me.....alot of uncomfortable silence in moments that otherwise would have been filled with small talk. however, i will say this....there were a couple of moms that made an extra special effort to reach out to me. asked me what my "partner" did for a living and what not....[sigh]. david and wyatt have made several friends. some they have asked to have over. i made the very frightening realization that my boys might very well be rejected by their peers based on the beliefs of their parents and what i can only state as what is regarded as MY choice....that the rejection will be solidly pinned on me. that's a bitter pill. when i spoke with the administration about my fears (and they are a lovely bunch of coconuts at the preschool) they told me they have already been approached by a handful of parents asking if they will be 'teaching about marriage'. fortunately, they didn't take that bait, and simply replied that they teach the kids about families....ALL families....


today's graphic is perhaps the best representation of how i feel about Mrs. Palin. Please feel free to download a copy and paste wherever spirit moves you to do so.

**directly plagiarized courtesy Devon M. Lyon's scathing letter to a so-called-friend defending prop 8. however i did add the parenthetical 'sounds retarded' remark.