Puttin' Out - Thanks, Marx Brothers' Fire Safety Co.!</h1> <article> <h1>Puttin' Out - Thanks, Marx Brothers' Fire Safety Co.!</h1> <p>Maltese — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:15:54 GMT</p> <a href="http://people.tribe.net/440c259c-726c-4590-b7c4-b4eb153ec33e/blog/d5e2ea8c-b27d-4dbb-80ac-a0a96e4c3cf0"> </a> <div>Fires, that is....;) A huge thank-you to the fine team of people at the Marx Bros. Fire Safety Company for their continued generosity of spirit in fire safety education. Thanks to them and their awesome information-packed seminars over the years for so many of us, I've remembered to make sure that the car always has an extinguisher kept in it. Which came in handy for (almost) the first time when driving past the corner of Franklin and Vermont today, where the garbage can on the sidewalk was on fire. If you've never attended one of their fire safety seminars, well, it's a great and wonderful thing to do - regardless of whether or not you're a fire performer/safety. They arrive with data, hard copy, anecdotes...and several different models of extinguisher. The kicker comes at the end, when everyone takes a turn puttin' out a blazing inferno with the extinguisher of choice. And if you think spinning fire is fun...! So, just wanted to give a shout-out to Marx Bros., and urge people to, at some point, attend one of these in their lifetimes. To contact them for your troupe/Conclave/company/personal education and fun, go to www.marxbrosfire.com. Oh, and apparently, that was the second time this week that that corner was on fire. Has anyone else who lives/works in that area seen this?? - Anna </div> </article> <article> <h1>The men in my family are dying</h1> <p>Maltese — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:57:49 GMT</p> <div>This is not meant as a pity thing. This past year, I've had to face losing the three men who have had the most impact on my life growing up. First was my uncle, who I hung out with every day after school when I was a kid. Then my grandfather, who together with my grandmother raised me as his own daughter. (This is the most excruciating loss, and that is all I can say on the subject.) Now it's my estranged father - who I've not seen for twenty years. I've usually told people who ask that I can't remember my father's face, or much else about him. I'm writing this to apologize for having said that, because that was a lie. In fact, I remember his face very well. My clearest memory of his face, in fact, is from a forced visitation weekend when I was five - and it's from a vantage point above him, looking down the length of his arm as I'm dangling from his hand, which is holding me above his head by my neck. He had lost his temper and was shouting and choking me, because he had told me to do something and I had done it wrong. That was the only time in my memory that I can recall losing control of my bodily functions due to outright terror. I was too scared even to struggle to breathe. The second clearest memory of him is when he is shouting and hitting the walls and ceiling inside the car and swearing at his three-year-old son for spilling a Coke. When I was twelve, lawyers advised my mom that the courts would finally allow her to stop forcing me to go visit him. This was a relief to both of us. Over the years, my father would try to track me down. Sometimes he would succeed, other times not. I kept my phone # unlisted. Two weeks ago, he tracked me down and found me on tribe. He told me he was dying. I'd always assumed that this would happen later on in my life. Fifty-six is a young age at which to die, after all. And that, when it did, I'd hear about it afterward. And that I wouldn't care. And maybe I shouldn't. But now that I'm faced with it, the idea of him dying alone, with only his sixteen-year-old son who I've never met looking after him doesn't sit so well with me - even after the experiences of the forced visitation weekends. This is a conflicting thing. And it's coming at the worst time possible. Having experienced my grandfather's passing, which was eased by everyone in the family, could maybe help this be easier to deal with. But it's coming when I'm currently investing all my resources to help put together a huge event. I can't go see him, can't do anything about this, don't know if he's passed already. And I can't get away to find out. He hasn't sent anything else, and didn't leave his phone #. I don't know where he lives. So this is taking a toll, on top of having lost my grandfather. I'm writing this to apologize. For the lie of not remembering my biological father, but for something else as well. It's been hard to concentrate on anything else, and my nerves have been shot more than once these past two weeks. I've snapped at people who didn't deserve it, can't seem to follow organizational threads and discussions, and . I've been so distracted that last night, thinking about this while driving home to Valencia from Canoga Park, I made it all the way down the 405 to the 10 interchange before realizing that I'd gone the wrong way and had to turn back. Anyone who has felt let down, ignored, snapped at, or otherwise upset by me these past two weeks: I can only offer my reassurances that it wasn't personal, no harm was meant, I'll try harder to follow the conversation next time, and that any seeming reaction to whatever's going on is probably not to the situation you think it is. I usually don't like to broadcast personal shit, and even writing this makes me feel like I'm whining and making too much of an explanation for acting and thinking in ways that irritate and confuse me too...like in a "Why couldn't I have seen that **that** was what they were talking about?" kind of way. In closing, this is not meant to excuse any of my words and actions, confusion and irritation, distraction and withdrawal which may have confused or upset anyone. It is not meant to engender pity. It is not a plea for advice on what to do. I'm flying blind right now, but it's meant as an honest and sincere apology and reassurance, so if anything in this communication sounds clear, let it be that. Sincerely, Anna Maltese </div> </article> <article> <h1>My grandfather, Dewey Maltese. Born 2 February, 1921. Actor, writer, Marine, military tactician and historian, doting father. Passed from this world and into the next on 27 June, 2007.</h1> <p>Maltese — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:40:16 GMT</p> <a href="http://people.tribe.net/440c259c-726c-4590-b7c4-b4eb153ec33e/blog/07366d00-e77b-4c0e-b2c8-05a045f6a442"> </a> <div>Here at the frontier, There are falling leaves. Although my neighbors Are all barbarians, And you, you are one Thousand miles away, There are always two Cups at my table. - anonymous, Tang Dynasty, China The world is suddenly a much poorer place. - Anna Maltese</div> </article> <article> <h1>Tagged!</h1> <p>Maltese — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:13:57 GMT</p> <div> So, that magnificent ninja bastard, Cade, has tagged me and I now am compelled to write down eight things that I think people don't know about me but somehow should. 'Course, with all that spare time I've got, it's only taken a month or three to finally get around to doing this. As luck would have it, the cold bug got ahold of me and has forced me to take the weekend off. So, here goes. Enjoy, my friends! 1) I hate blogging. Did it twice, and hated it both times. It just feels uncomfortable to start more than one sentence in a message with the word "I." Most blogs out there are either (a) badly written, (b) written by someone obviously infatuated with the sound of their own voice, (c) about the same old New-Age-y 'personal, spiritual awakenings' that are written by seemingly everyone else or (d) all of the above. If you're a chronic blogger and the aforementioned sounds a bit harsh, don't take it personally. I said 'most' blogs. Chances are that you feel your blog is one of the few that pass the test of tedium, and chances are, you're right. ;) But honestly, do my friends need me to inflict every single political and/or spiritual insight I've had since this morning's daily little chai-and-NY-Times-ritual on them? These days, talking seems to take the place of doing, which pisses me off. As someone who once wasted several hours (which I will never be able to get back!) reading "Atlas Shrugged" by that neocon twat Ayn Rand (God, I hope she's rotting in hell) what seems more important is to live one's life instead of just fucking talking about how other people should live it. In that spirit, I'll try to keep the rest of these as brief as possible. 2) I love to crochet. Love IT. My great-aunt only taught me one stitch and she was left-handed so I can only make one running, left-handed stitch. It's relaxing, gives me time to unwind and think, and it's really cool to watch a blanket take shape under your fingers. Aside from practicing straight sword, it's just about the most meditative thing there is to do. 3) I procrastinate. Like no one else you'll ever meet. I'm incredibly lazy. I use the excuse of having no free time as the reason things don't get done, and to an extent that's true. But there are just some things that I will procrastinate on for months and even years. This blog, for instance. It's been in my inbox for months and I haven't touched it 'til now. 4) Six years ago, I spent eight days in jail. The reason? Technically, because I failed to pay a ticket for driving without my current proof of registration. Real reason? I procrastinated on paying the ticket (out of sight, out of mind) until a warrant was issued. Why was I dirving without current proof of registration? Because I procrastinated on taking it out of the envelope and putting it into the glove compartment that month. Note to readers: don't do that. Jail is so not-fun! The inmates were really cool to me, and one made me this really cool soap sculpture that I still have. But there are other, better "character-building" experiences to have. Have them. 5) When I was eight years old, I designed a hoverbike. It worked via a series of magnets running along the bottom which would send out a magnetic pulse that would be coordinated via satellite with the earth's magnetic field on the same polarity, and produce the repelling force necessary to create a suspensor field. You could control the height from a throttle that would increase or decrease the magnetic force expended, and accelerate forward with another throttle which would send the pulse streaking from the first magnet to the last, kind of like a superconductor. You could reverse by switching the order. When I was ten, I designed a way to enable people to breathe underwater. I studied the way fish breathe via their gills, and came up with an idea to make it work for humans involving implanting a second set of lungs. Also thought of surgically enhancing the lenses in people's eyes in order to allow them to be able to see underwater. Also, I wanted to fly, so I designed a way to transplant wings onto people. (And connect the required neurons to the new nerve bunches and thread the tendons and muscles up through the sternum and scapulas.) 'Course, I didn't know the first thing about the physics that would be involved in these little medical adventures. I was just a stupid kid. 6) I once had a crush on Ben Stein. (You know...of Ferris Bueller fame as the teacher who famously intoned "Bueller...? Bueller?") As in, the mega-brainiac star of "Win Ben Stein's Money" and a former Nixon speechwriter? Yeah, *that* guy. Of course, that was just as my 12 - year crush on Dennis Miller was ending due to his becoming a shill for M&M's, and just before my crush on Jon Stewart, though running concurrent to my ongoing crush on the late, great Bill Hicks. Nearly all of my crushes have been on stand-up comedians. Why? Because they're the sexiest people alive, that's why! Nothing gets me going more than an expressive set of eyebrows and quick-draw rhetoric. Mmm...rhetoric.... 7) The smell of freshly-cut grass makes me nauseated. It actually makes my stomach revolt. Not sure why, though it might have something to do with the fact that most lawnmowers are gas-powered and the fumes are still bad for you, even if you can't smell them. 8) Theodore Roosevelt is my all-time hero. I could talk about him for hours. You just can't engage in a conversation about Teddy Roosevelt and not wax poetic. The man was a total god. He had his faults, to be sure (imperial dreams for America and taking political attacks as personal ones are among them) but overall, he was the baddest ass the Oval Office ever was graced by. He was the only police commissioner to still go out on a nightly beat (and he even busted up some crime rings while doing so!), was *the* driving force in the overthrow of the Spanish forces in Cuba during the Battle of Santiago, where he ran uphill into enemy fire at the front of his Rough Riders, and as President oversaw the formation of the National Parks System. A true warrior-poet, he was, in the words of one historian, "the only man that could go on a three-day safari in Africa, bag five wildebeest by day, and finish 'Anna Karenina' by the end of those three nights." For a really good read on the man who was responsible for trust-busting, the Square Deal, and this country's Navy, I recommend "T.R.: The Last Romantic" by H.W. Brands. It's bully! :) So, that's that. The six people I'm tagging are: David Silverman Lou Genise Joel Lederman Stefan Broadley Lisa Bruner... and the mighty Quin! So there! HAH!</div> </article> </main></body></html>