Phoebe Kate

The world has lost another funny man.  Dick Martin, the ever-urbane comedian famous for his zany stream-of-consciousness banter, died yesterday in Santa Monica of respiratory failure.  He is best remembered by Baby Boomers for the iconic comedy show of the early 70s ”Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” that pioneered a new style of television humor.

It’s a terrible thing to lose a funny man.  Not because we have a dearth of comics today –in fact, the problem is that there are far too many of them and very few understand anything about the fine art of standup comedy.  For the most part, what passes as humor today is nothing more than the self-indulgent spewings of misanthropic egomaniacs who seem to suffer from from a combination of Tourette’s Syndrome and a severe case of arrested social development.  If these guys think they’re the Lenny Bruce or George Carlin of the New Millenium, then we can add delusions of grandeur to the list of their psychological problems.  

Great humor relies on wit, charm, quirkiness and a keen but empathetic insight into the human condition that enables us to laugh at ourselves, not at a designated target.  Like everything else in society, comedy has been dumbed down to a level where no thinking is required and cheap laughs come at somebody’s or some group’s expense.

Farewell, Dick.  I’m sure you’ll keep ‘em rolling in aisles of the Great Beyond for all eternity.  

–phoebe kate                      

What do you call an Irishman that you keep outside all summer but take inside for the winter?

Paddy O’Furniture.

Okay, it’s dumb but it’s funny. 

(Don’t try to deny it.  I can hear you chuckling out there.)

–phoebe kate

So, apparently the hot news in entertainment today is that Britney Spears is having a comeback.  This is hot?  This is news?  You gotta be kidding.  And a “comeback”?  I thought that’s what everybody said she had a couple months ago, when she appeared in an episode of “How I Met Your Mother.”  There must be a statute of limitations somewhere that states performers can only have X number of comebacks within a certain time period.

And how, I ask you, can you technically ”have a comeback” if you’ve never been off the front page of the tabloids?  Doesn’t that statute of limitations also specify that comebacks are only for performers who have faded out of the public eye and into PR obscurity or retired from the biz?  If anything, Spears’s bad behavior has only served to increase her already over-bloated fame and assure her of non-stop coverage by the news media.  My God, we can’t away from this dreadful girl, no matter how hard we try.

It’s like aging rock bands who decide to retire and then have a “farewell tour” that lasts for ten years.  You just can’t get rid of them.  Isn’t there a section in that statute of limitations specifically limiting how long retiring performers can stage public goodbyes?  And we can’t forget (even if we try) Celine Dion, who’s made a big hoopla out of retiring how many times now, only to return a heartbeat later to some stage somewhere? 

All open-and-shut cases of gross celebsurdity, loosely defined as the act of performers behaving  like idiots while under the influence of (largely undeserved) fame.  Hey, isn’t there a statute declaring this a crime punishable by a minimum of one year in psychotherapy to help the offender regain his or her grip on reality? 

Well, if there isn’t, there should be.

–phoebe kate                

Earlier this week, CNN reported that Santa Barbara, CA is maintaining a special parking lot where homeless women can safely sleep in their cars at night.

Who are these female unfortunates?  Bag ladies?  Druggies?  Dipsomaniacs?  Deadbeats?Girls gone missing from the families?  Hookers down on their luck?

No, they’re middle class women like you and me, who have become the latest victims of our tanking economy and can no longer afford the high mortgages and rents in this cushy coastal haven catering to the rich and famous.  Many were laid off or downsized from their jobs and subsequently lost their homes.  Others are senior citizens whose nice little nest egg cracked from the weight of rising prices and runaway inflation.  Some, like a former member of the National Guard, are on lists for government housing but the projected waiting time is a year or more. 

The lot, one of 12 in the city set up by an outreach organization to cope with the skyrocketing number of middle-class homeless, opens daily at 7 p.m. and closes at 7 a.m.  Pets are permitted, and many of the women have their dogs and cats bunking with them in the backseat.  There are no bathrooms or shower facilities.  It’s a grim life in the heart of an uber-glam city — and certainly one that none of these once-solvent ladies ever foresaw happening to them. 

This news story hit me very hard.  Just thirteen years ago, my family and I faced the same situation when the unthinkable snuck up on us, too.  In his mid-50s, my husband was downsized from an administrative position he’d held for years.  Neither he nor I were able to find jobs in the economically depressed area of Oregon where we lived.  We sold most of our belongings and took up residence in an old RV which we drove from coast to coast looking for employment opportunities in more prosperous parts of the country.  I homeschooled our 3 children (ages 6, 8 and 14) and we lived in campgrounds for almost a year.  It was a very scary, stressful and depressing time – at least for the adults. Our daughter and two sons thought it was a blast, tooling around in a big old bus, having camp fires and S’mores every night and meeting new kids in every campground.         

Thank God, our circumstances improved and our existence returned to normal.  I hope and pray that this will be true for the women in that Santa Barbara parking lot, too.  But an experience like that permanently alters the way you look at life.  Security — financial, physical and psychological — is an illusion we cherish and cling to until the unimaginable happens and we realize just how frail and vulnerable we as individuals, our country and the world truly are. 

All we can do is be thankful for our blessings – and take a page from the Boy Scout manual: be prepared.  The unexpected is right around the corner and the problems America faces on both domestic and foreign fronts are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.              

–phoebe kate

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the increasing frequency of on-track equine casualties in Thoroughbred racing.  I mentioned that I’d run across Death Watch online, which maintains a record of the death toll on U.K. tracks, and I wondered why a similar site didn’t exist for the U.S. and other countries.

Well, it does.  I just discovered Scrolls of Equus     , an astoundingly comprehensive site that covers this growing problem on a worldwide scope.  You can look up the death statistics by country, race course, year, breed (Thoroughbred, Standardbred, Quarterhorse, etc.), age and gender of horse and type of event in which the fatality occurred. 

Even if you aren’t a racing fan, the numbers alone will break your heart and convince you that something is seriously wrong with the way this sport is being conducted, in our country and others as well.

Scrolls of Equus is a labor of love by an animal advocate in California.  It is a terrible thing that this is even necessary in a supposedly “civilized” society, but thank God someone’s doing the painful job to remind us that all creatures deserve respect and humane treatment.

–phoebe kate