Christine Lahti & the Lap Dance of Inertia

Two things.

Let's start with Christine Lahti. She's so hot. I was watching "Studio 60" last night, and there was this scene in which she plays a journalist interviewing all these people who work on the SNL-like comedy show.

That hot blonde woman -- sorry I don't know the actress' name -- asks the Christine Lahti character, "Don't you need to write this down?" To which Lahti replies, "No."

That was one of the best things I've seen on television in a long time.

Here's one of my dirty little secrets: When I worked as a journalist, I always took notes while interviewing people. But they were rarely legible. I mainly "took notes" to inspire confidence among my subjects. The truth is, I just remembered what they said.

Under the best (or worst) or circumstances, while writing, I'd flip through my notes to trigger my memory. I'd see some string that *maybe* looked like, "t dn fe" and remember the conversation and know it meant, "I looked through the window there, and I could see there was something on fire in the microwave. That gave me the legal justification I needed to enter the home. So I went in and opened the microwave, and that's when I saw there was a donut on fire. I did what I could to save it, but it was too far gone." (Honestly, this *is* a story I wrote once: Some cops tried to "save" a donut that was on fire and caught some theives in the process. Or vice versa. Didn't really matter because it was a funny story. Cops having their relationships with donuts and all....)

But I digress.

A scene in which a journalist claims not to need to take notes was rather thrilling to me. Of course, when the interview is over, she's running around looking for a pen because she wants to record her memory before she forgets the *precise* quote. But it was cool nonetheless.

Not too long ago, Dr. M made a comment about my "eidetic memory." There is some dispute about whether such a thing exists or not, but my recollection for conversations and my ability to see, in great detail, areas through which I've passed only once or twice is apparently an uncommon trait. Certainly, I seem to recall with great clarity the things people say to me, much more so than do the people who spoke the words themselves.

I don't get questioned much, so I think I must be rather accurate. In 10 years of reporting, I only got busted twice for screwing up something. And in both cases, it was the spelling of the person's name.

The first time this happened was with a women I named "Joyce Slakes." She was particularly annoying to me, because we were talking on the phone and she said to me, "It's (S)lakes, as in corn flakes, frosted flakes, but with an 's'." I repeated it to her over the phone, So it's s-l-a-k-e-s. She said, "Yes, that's right. Like corn flakes or frosted flakes, but with an 'S.'"

Turns out, as she noted in a *vicious* letter to the editor published a week later, her name was Flakes. I felt like calling that woman and saying, Listen you flakey bitch. Learn how to explain the spelling of your name. What the fuck was that "but it's with an 'S' about? ... But I didn't do that. I took my lumps and learned to use military spelling and a lot of repeating to get the spelling right.

The second time it happened, it was just my own freaky mind at play. I was writing about a couple named Tim and Patsy, so I had to refer to them by first names to keep it straight on accounts my paper did not use courtesy titles. Throughout the entire story, I referred to him as "Tom."

The way I overcame this error was a sign of my ability to establish good relationships with strangers. Even though I totally and repeatedly screwed up this guy's name, he accepted my apology and invited me to be with him and his family as he underwent a pioneering brain surgery. The story I wrote about that earned me a Pulitzer Prize nomination. I felt a little bit like the come-back kid.

But, other than those two nasty, embarrasing errors, I rarely screwed up anything, despite my weird and nearly useless note-taking habit. So I was tickled by seeing Christine Lahti, who is terribly hot for a woman of her age and who I've had a serious crush on since Chicago Hope, play a journalist like me. One who remembers conversations with uncanny accuracy. It *is* a special skill.

And, heaven help me, it may be the one saving grace I have as a therapist. Until I get Alzheimer's or something, I'm going to remember what my clients tell me. As I learned from a particular therapist I had once upon a time, it really sucks when they don't. So I shouldn't be letting my clients down on that level. More likey to be the part where I don't work up any real sense of empathy for their issues.

So, onto the topic of inertia, YogaGirl called me this evening, and as seems common for us, we got into a long conversation about all sorts of shit. Once upon a time, she worked for Planned Parenthood in a significant position. These days, she's a classmate of mine.

Once upon a time, we were both people who were very hooked in, very involved, very interested in what was happening in the world and very prone to doing something about it. Now, both of us have been overtaken by some nasty inertia that we've decided is the result of a vast conspiracy by the Powers That Be.

I have to refer to them as the Powers That Be because, as YogaGirl and I discussed, the people who are *really* running this country are probably not who most of us think they are. We probably don't even know them. They could be chowing down on Chin's thai food downstairs, and I wouldn't even know it. They're probably members of some super-small, super-secret clan who we'll never know.

Talking of the parallels between the current state of American Democracy and the fall of the Roman Empire, YogaGirl compared this possible secret society to those who had access to the innner circle at Palazzo Ducale in Venice. She mentioned how gruesome she'd found Bosch's paintings there in the inner most sanctum -- the place where deicions were made by the De Medicis and others. "It makes me wonder how sick and twisted that inner sanctum of American leadership is," she said.

Ditto that from your UCM.

We also discussed our difficulty putting our fingers on any single, specific thing that is going to hell in a handbasket. But that's only because it feels like *everything* is. This country is heading in the wrong direction, and no one can manage to mobilize a decent rally or protest about it because our concerns are fractured and we're all a little distracted.

This is exactly what the cabal that's controlling the Republicans wants. Make an assault on *everything* from education to the economy to civil rights to abortion, and people will be fixated so much on their pet cause that they won't get activated to really display the deep discontent so many are feeling.

I suggested we create a massive rally: The Conglomerated Prostest Against Faceless Conglomerations and Capitalist Swine. Something like that.

YogaGirl liked the idea. But then, in recognizing the inertia that is at play here, we decided it was unlikely that anyone would attend. Not even us. Even though we're organizing it. Because the chances are she and I would just be two freaks on the sidewalk, yelling about something. Back in the day, she said, she used to throw on a couple of black bandanas, make herself look like a Wild West bank robber, and march in front of a Swedish restaurant on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, yelling, "Free the goats! Free the goats!" just because the place had a little herd of goats grazing (rather precariously -- one died in a fall) on its roof.

But now ... what, exactly, would we be protesting?

I don't know, I said, but I feel like doing something really radical. Something to help me get over the electric jolt that put me on this path. Something just really out there.

YogaGirl thought for a moment, suggested we daydream a little about it and then said, "Well, we could always just go to a strip club."

And that, my friends, is how a lap dance can bring down an empire.