<<@#$ 2.15.00, 11:00 p.m.

It's so sick. Have I already said this? I was folding and stapling zines this afternoon as Maury Povich shook his cashmere-clad moneymaker in the only other kind of show he ever does (his other option being "guess their gender" drag episodes): "please send my out-of-control child to boot camp!" And today the "troubled children" were all pre-teens, as young as nine or ten, given to smoking cigarettes, taking back, and a little petty theft. (As a former pre-teen, I say with an annoyed shrug, big deal.) As usual Maury played "good father" in his pressed pants and turtlenecks, feigning concern and stern compassion, while the massive drill sargeants are too obviously "bad father," mercilessly forcing the children to endure extreme physical and emotional exhaustion. Inevitably, the mothers (and it's always mothers) are weeping on stage, sad, desperate, and begging Maury for aid. Once upon a time, angry audience members would inquire on cue and with rage and righteousness, "Where's the father?" (As if fathers solve all problems.) In this new version of the "bad teen" resolution, the rule of the Father is firmly re-established by talk-show and boot-camp proxy, to the gratification of all (adults) involved.

But do you really "fix" a child or that child's low self-esteem by teaching them blind obedience to brute authority? In a day? Reinforced with (outlandish) threats of imprisonment and punishment?! Not hardly. That's fear, not growth process.

These shows infuriate me, make me sick at heart and gut. I find myself muttering under my breath, shaking my fist at the television screen.

And what makes Povich, the parents, think that these ten year-old children aren't going to remember this (televised) abuse with seething resentment? What child wouldn't?

"Tough love," corporeal punishment, "spare the rod and spoil the child," are all recycled here, iron fists in the velvet gloves of twisted talk-show therapy-speak. You'd think Reagan was still in office, Oliver North still a "national hero," and Rambo still the spokesman of American pop culture.

 

<<$^& 2.15.00, 12:56 a.m.

Melanie put me to work chopping apples and roasted red bell peppers while she sent Sean forth in search of oil-soaked olives, which he found hidden on a store shelf, covered in a thin layer of dust. It was a full house tonight; Lance, Tom, and Jeff wandered in and out of the kitchen/office between record reviews while Arwen filled out forms for a nicotine addiction clinic, a fat packet of multiple-choice questions and scan-tron evaluations of her moods ("Do you feel like you need a cigarette right now? What cigarette will be hardest for you to give up? The one you have in the morning? After meals? During stressful situations?"). Melanie buzzed around the kitchen, cooking pasta in three inadequate pots and despairing of Maximum's one metal fork. Multiple conversations shifted around the room --about zines, about advertising, about punk rock, about politics-- and we dished gossip and theories about record collectors and creeps along with the food.

We ate with plastic utensils, which were carefully washed afterward, and played a speed-game of Trivial Pursuit. We were ashamed of Sean when he missed the Anne Frank question, and awed by Arwen's ability to draw every possible question about fish and sea creatures. We decided to cheat on the Sports & Leisure category since no one could really expect a bunch of punks, geeks and art students to know who was MVP of the NBA in 1984.

"Who knows that stuff?" We said with disgust. "Let's make it a wild card category."

Squatting against the wall in the BART station, I read Tourism and Sustainability: New Tourism in the Third World, popped candy hearts in my mouth and waited for the 10:55 train. Later, walking the three blocks home, I passed a darkened house. A front porch window was lined with gold tin foil and a giant red crepe-paper heart hung suspended among white Christmas lights. I stood transfixed on the sidewalk across the street: it seemed as if the house, all black and angular against the night sky, had been cut open to reveal its warm, carnival interior, the bright gay heart of a home.

 

<<#@! 2.14.00, 4:37 p.m.

As I topped the stairs coming out of the subway station I noticed a hand-scrawled sign hanging in the attendant's glass booth: "NO VALIDATION TODAY." I think I must have grinned goofily at no one as I pictured the booth as a one-stop therapy shop on days when validation was normally offered. The neatly outfitted attendant listening patiently through the speaker, reaching out to touch the glass with a kind murmur, "I hear and understand your pain, and want you to know that your feelings are completely valid. You should do whatever you have to in order to fulfill your needs. The Fremont train arrives in five."

I smiled at old ladies today and received a letter and a package at the post office downtown. In a great big priority box beneath balls of wadded newspaper, Thomas had bought me a metal Bettie Page lunch box with two bags of conversation candy hearts insides. She poses in a leopard-print bikini on an anonymous beach somewhere, smiling wickedly: what better way to win and then break hearts? (Uh oh, what will Thomas say when he sees that I've hacked off huge hanks of hair for two pert pigtails and dyed the rest flamingo pink?) The letter was sent from somewhere in Florida, where Mark started the tour with Discount, and gave me rollercoaster thrills. Between toy robots in flames and gas station coffee, Mark sends his love from small-town punk clubs and wide, vast highways.