Phoebe Kate

“Now I am quietly waiting for/the catastrophe of my personality/to seem beautiful again/ and interesting and modern.” ~ Frank O’Hara

There comes a moment in people’s lives when they realize they’re a mess as a human being.  The list of failures, shortcomings and disappointments is very long.  Maybe it isn’t even all that long in reality, but it seems so when you look at it.  Maybe not everything on the list is your fault, but it sure as hell feels like it.  No matter what, the disillusionment is monumental.  

This moment can occur at any point in one’s life.  It’s always perfectly godawful whenever it happens.  Some people have it on their death bed – perhaps that’s why they linger on so long and seem so agitated.  Quite a few have it when they’re 40 or 50, and then it’s called a midlife crisis.  That momentarily makes you feel better, because your existential misery has a name – and maybe (hopefully) a cut-off point, too, very soon.

Then there are those who get it in their teens.  Everybody tells them it’s just adolescent angst or a phase that will pass.  It isn’t true.  Recognition of our own personal flawed human nature never goes away once we’ve grasped its reality.

We’re all a combination of genes we didn’t choose to have.  We’re the product of influences over which we had no control.  And even when we realize this, we still can’t seem to get a grip on ourselves and make things turn out differently for us.

I like O’Hara’s thought about “quietly waiting” for a change for the better.  Personalities don’t become a “catastrophe” and lives don’t become a mess overnight.  Reversing the damage will take time and patience with ourselves and others until we become what we hope to be — and until we believe that we truly are the person we now seem.  

– phoebe kate

And for everyone there is a season, too.  Although we’d rather not think about that.

In watching the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, it’s the universal reaction of the public that intrigues me most.  For some reason, we find it hard to believe that a 50-year-old person can suddenly die of cardiac arrest or anything else. A newscaster last night referred to the big five-oh as “such a youthful age.”  That’s very flattering to all of us of Michael Jackson’s generation, but who are we kidding here?  Fifty is just a stone’s very short throw away from senior citizenhood — and we all know the final destination awaiting us after that. 

Or do we?

We have a rather odd attitude toward death.  It seems we aren’t reconciled to it being an inevitable event at some point in time, sooner or later, from sickness or accident or disease or the ravages of advanced age, for us all.  When we’re young, we think we’re going to live forever.  When we’re old, we hope doctors have a way to keep us around longer.  We look upon death as a thief, an intruder, a spoilsport and a nasty problem that modern science can somehow defer indefinitely, if not eliminate entirely.      

I’ll never forget the reaction of a relative when his frail and elderly mother with a heart condition passed on.  “Why?  Why?  Why?” he kept asking for years after she died, as if the cosmos had broken a contract assuring his mother a certain number of years and he’d gotten cheated.     

That our physical bodies have an expiration date and come with no guarantees is a reality we’re reluctant to resign ourselves to.  It’s hard to admit that this biological machine we inhabit is unreliable, frail and faulty at best, and can fail us at any given moment in ways we haven’t anticipated.  

It’s understandably unsettling to see our heroes and idols and cultural icons, who have perhaps achieved a kind of immortality via their accomplishments, suffer what we think is an untimely death.  It seems unfair, cruel, wrong.  But the truth is that if you and I — or anybody, for that matter – can make it through today without a malfunction, breakdown of parts, casualty or mishap, it’s nothing short of a miracle.   

–phoebe kate

So, I was thinking this morning at 4:00 A.M. when I awoke and couldn’t go back to sleep: if Jon & Kate’s quotidian life merits a reality show on TV, why shouldn’t mine?

My husband and I are more personable, more entertaining and better-looking than the soon-to-be-ex Mr. and Mrs. Gosselin.  We have 3 highly amusing grown children and 2 hilarious cats.  We’re writers, zany creative types.  We live in a highly desirable and very photogenic resort area on the NC coast.  I have OCD, and we all know that obsessesive- compulsives are funny to watch and very “in” right now (imagine Monk as a blonde-haired, brown-eyed, well-endowed femme of cougar age.)  My husband is the original absent-minded professor.  They’re always good for a laugh. 

Sold you on the idea, eh?  Of course.

So, let’s see.  Here’s the synopsis for the debut show of Phoebe & Mate: Minus 3 and Doing Great.

Episode #1:  “Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow.” 

The time has come for the chickies to fly the coop – and that means the house is Chaos Central, because the three kids are all moving out at the same time!  #1 Son is off to do something in The Big City.  #2 Son will be working with a D.C. lobbyist who wants to protect the God-given right of every red-blooded American to own an assault weapon.  The Little Princess is leaving to find True Love in North Dakota. 

Phoebe’s in a dither, making long lists for the three of them so they don’t forget anything and washing 37 loads of their dirty laundry so they can finish packing.  The washing machine goes wonky and overflows.  As she mops up a flood of suds and waits for the repairman, she worries if her children will find happiness in their new lives.  Her husband, The Prof, is busy, too.  He’s either holed up in his study, writing an article about gnosticism, or in the kitchen cooking up enormous vats of his homegrown collard greens. 

Finally, The Big Day arrives!  As the kids are walking out the door with their belongings, Phoebe gets an anxiety attack and hyperventilates.  The Prof hands her a paper bag to breathe into and announces, “Children, I have something very important to tell you before you go.”  Then, in great detail, he imparts to them the history and ancient secrets of the hermetic tradition. 

But’s that not the only surprise old Dad has up his sleeve.  He has a very special going-away present for them – giant freezer bags of his collard greens!  

Stay tuned for episode #2.  There’s more fun and excitement with Phoebe & Mate coming your way!

–phoebe kate

For weeks, I’ve been noticing headlines on news websites about two people named Jon and Kate.  I didn’t read the stories.  Since I’d never heard of them before, I assumed they were Generation Y actors whose movies appeal to the 25-and-under crowd. 

I vaguely wondered why the press hadn’t concocted a cute name for them, like Brangelina and Tomkat.  Admittedly, there’s not much you can do with one-syllable names, but they could be KaJon.  But perhaps they weren’t famous enough for that, I concluded.

It’s just as well nobody bothered to combine their names, because now the headlines tell us these two are getting divorced — and the whole world apparently cares a very great deal about it.  It reminds me of the hoopla that went on when Liz Taylor and Richard Burton had an affair, ditched their current spouses and got married and divorced not once but twice back in the 70s. 

Anyway, today I finally decided to find out who Kate and Jon are and why they merit this moment-to-moment coverage of their lives.  After all, maybe these are people I should care about, too.

Not.

I confess to being utterly bewildered by the whole thing.  What is noteworthy or even remotely interesting about the daily lives of a couple with eight small children?  Making meals, taking the puppy to the vet, going to the dentist and the doctor, having a yard sale, moving to a new house, doing backyard camp-outs and birthday parties, potty-training toddlers — this is a tiresome to-do list and an Excedrin headache, not entertainment.    

Who’s watching this show?  Childless people who grew up in an orphanage and have no friends with children?  Aliens from planets very different than ours who want to learn about Terran culture before they abduct us?  I only hope they’ll take the Gosselin family very soon and save the world from the upcoming episodes of “Kate & 8 Minus 1.” 

–phoebe kate

Ed McMahon died today, as you probably already know — how could anybody not know? It’s a major news story, right along with Sarah Jessica Parker’s and Matthew Broderick’s twin girls being born to a surrogate in Ohio. 

Of course, these Hollywood headlines rate the same journalistic attention as the political horror in Iran and North Korea’s plan to launch a ballistic missile at Hawaii. This doesn’t say much for the news media’s sense of priorities – or for us, the target audience, either.

What did McMahon do to have such clout and merit such importance? 

Well, in reality, not very much.  He played second fiddle to Johnny Carson for 30 years on late night TV.  He was adept at that, to be sure.  He sat around and made Johnny look good and seem even funnier.  He occasionally delivered a few zingers of his own, but who knows whether his witticisms originated with him or the show’s writers.       

Besides that, he’s best known for being the ”spokesperson” of the magazine sweepstakes where he and his crew bring a giant check to your door if you’re the winner.  He also co-hosted the Jerry Lewis annual telethon, where he played second fiddle to yet another very large personality.

I mean no disrespect to the late Mr. McMahon.  He seemed like a nice enough guy and he made the most out of his opportunities.  He played his rather limited hand of cards to full advantage and you can’t fault a guy for doing that.  He did it better than many others.  And that’s a considerable personal achievement.

It’s curious how people become famous these days.  Have 8 babies and you get your own reality show.  Bask in the limelight of a bigger star, be the hawker for a national contest and you get memorialized on the news as if you actually did something significant or made an important contribution to society.

Go figure.

–phoebe kate