On September 22nd, 1999 NBC premiered its new drama "The West Wing". The show centers around a fictional President Jed Bartlett (why oh why is he not real!!!) and his staff. In just 2 seasons the show developed into one of the highest rated dramas on television. According to some (myself included) this is television at its best. While people might think that observing the life of politicians and members of the White House can be dull and boring (and I am sure George W. would agree with me), the writers, directors and actors have managed to completely draw the viewer and provide top quality drama in each episode. Each episode follows the trials and tribulations of those who work behind the scenes in the White House. The writers do an excellent job in portraying the people doing their not-so-easy jobs, maintaining a level of sanity and having some sort of a personal life. Combining an equal mix of humor and dramatic tension, the show keeps you hooked and begging for more. Who can forget the first season's cliffhanger: "Who got shot?" As "The West Wing" prepares to enter its third season this September, it is experiencing some ups and downs. Recently "The West Wing" picked up 18 nominations for the Emmy Awards. Along with the Best Drama, Martin Sheen and Rob Lowe picked up the nominations for the Lead Actor. In my personal opinion, Rob Lowe's part (Sam Seaborne) should not be compared to the part played by Martin Sheen (President Bartlett). Bradley Whitford (Josh), John Spencer (Leo), Richard Schiff (Toby), Allison Janney (CJ) and Stockard Channing (Mrs. Bartlett) all picked up nominations for Best Supporting Actor/Actress. The Emmys will be presented on September 16th. On Saturday "The West Wing" took the Best Drama Series award at the 17th Annual Television Critics Association Awards. They shared that award with "The Sopranos". Just a few weeks ago there was a real threat of no 3rd season. Four actors, Allison Janney, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford, and Richard Schiff did not return to the set when the shooting began. The problem was salary. While Martin Sheen and Rob Lowe both make about $100,000 per episode, the other 4 actors make $30,000. Obviously, and rightly so, they weren't happy with their salaries. The actors have since returned to the set, and taping has continued without interruptions. But the actors are still negotiating, and they have a very good chance at getting what they want with their Emmy nominations. For more information on "The West Wing", please visit the official site: West Wing~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There’s no lookin’ at John Travolta Don’t make eye contact with John Travolta. That was the order that studio executives and publicists gave reporters visiting the set of Travolta’s recent movie, “Swordfish,” several sources say. “UPON ARRIVAL, we were told, ‘You can’t speak to him, you can’t take any photographs of him and quite frankly, I’d rather that you didn’t even look at him,” one source told the Scoop. This sort of no-eye-contact request is not unheard of in Hollywood. For example, during the filming of “Eyes Wide Shut,” both cast and crew were told not to look at Tom Cruise. To read more, visit Jeanette Walls-TheScoop ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does the name Gram Parsons ring a bell? Gram Parsons was a charter member of both the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He was the inspiration for the Rolling Stones' 'Wild Horses'. His style has influenced the Eagles, Fallen Angels, and Emmylou Harris, to more recent groups like Son Volt, The Jayhawks, The Lemonheads, Wilco and Dash Rip Rock.Park Memorial For Gram?
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Who are you? Never you mind who I am. I don't know who you are. Why should you know who I am? I'd just get in trouble for it, that's all, maybe the both of us, up against the wall, name and address. I'll explain later. If you want me to remain honest, then you can't know who I am. Got it? There could be an investigation. This is one of those reporter's privilege sort of things. I'm a journalist who is his own source and I'm not giving myself up. Who needs a government monolith like Welfare breathing down their back, itching to cut you off? Not me. I can't let them know I'm saying this because they're all I've got. Welfare is all that's keeping my family alive. Who's going to pay my rent and feed my kids? You? I can't rock the boat while I'm still on it. All I require is that you believe me, that's all. This is my confession. Though there isn't a stack of bibles in sight, picture one right now - a gigantic stack of bibles - and I'm swearing on it. Okay, okay, enough with the swearing. I believe you. I still want to know who you are. How do I know you're not just making this up? Just because I'm making it up doesn't mean it didn't happen. Look, I already admit I'm a welfare dad. There are millions like me. Isn't that enough? Do you really need me to humiliate myself further in public? Not likely. All I know is if someone like me could end up where I am, it could happen to anybody - a random bump in the night that turns into a lifetime of servitude to these rapidly growing little replicas of yourself. Now I understand why parents come in twos. There is no way to parent by yourself and have any time left to do anything else. I thought I could do it; be a parent and make a living, but the mom part of the job soon overwhelmed the dad part. I could only be a dad, at my computer, making a living, when the babies were asleep. I admit it, I was wrong, I truly didn't appreciate how overwhelming the role of parent could be. I couldn't be a mom and a dad at the same time. I switched to mom full time because that's what was required to care for the children. I made a mistake and there's no doubt that Society is paying the price. You don't mind if I call you Society, do you? Go right ahead. I don't care what you think of me or who I am. I just want to know why I'm paying for your mistakes. You see, that's where you got me. Mistakes? I just can't seem to wrap my head around the idea of looking at my children as mistakes. When they're in front of me, they're not mistakes, they're children and I'm their daddy, ready to take care of them, to place all their interests ahead of mine. They're not mistakes, just miraculous little accidents grating to happen. So you think fathers should take responsibility for their children? No. I think fathers ARE responsible for their children. Responsibility isn't something you take. And you're the father of how many children? Five. Holy shit, how the hell did you end up with five kids? Boy, you get right to the point, don't you? What I want to tell you is what's happening now, but I guess you need a history lesson or it won't make sense. Picture a welfare mom with five kids and your first thought is Why couldn't she keep her legs closed? It conjures up the image of a weak young thing lounging about the house all day in a flowery dress who can't turn down the intimidating and violent hunk of a man who keeps showing up at her door demanding sex. Who is she to resist? It's an easy cliché that sounds a bit different with the sexes reversed. Here I was, a weak young thing lounging about the house all day in jeans and T-shirt who couldn't turn down the fabulous and ferocious woman who kept showing up at my door and demanding sex. Who was I to resist? It's not as though a lot of women have demanded sex of me. I'm not bad looking, a bit overweight, but still, no Warren Beatty. Until the woman we'll call Angie showed up in my life, sex always tended to be mutual or something to be pursued, never something to be fended off. Rock stars and fashion models may get to pick and choose and beat them away with a stick, but for the rest of us, sex tends to be a goal you've got to work at, and more than often, unattainable. But here I had a beautiful female fan, a dream come true, someone who loved all my songs, read all my writing, heaped endless praise upon my art and my photography, who dug me physically, couldn't get enough of me, thought I was the king of the universe, her idol, the love of her life, someone for whom the word fan veered dangerously towards fanatic, someone who wouldn't take no for an answer, someone who rejected birth control and would actually trick me into having unprotected sex, someone who seemed to get pregnant no matter what protection we used, someone who used her pregnancies as justifications for having even more and more unprotected sex during her first six months, after all, why not, there's no chance of getting pregnant when you're already pregnant, someone ready and willing to fulfill my wildest fantasies, someone who would show up at my door at odd hours in a trenchcoat, flinging it open to reveal spectacular lingerie, someone who appeared once with a beautiful young friend offering her to me if I'd just let her in too, someone who worshipped every inch of my body and would do anything for me, who got to know what I liked and provided it endlessly, a cornucopia of sexual fulfillment that was damn easy to misinterpret as love. If it sounds like I was her sex slave then you've got a dirty mind. So did I. After all, how often do you get to be a sex slave? Actually, I've got nothing bad to say about being a sex slave except when it's heterosexual and likely to produce offspring. Homosexual sex slave situations actually keep the population down and are therefore less a threat to society. Or was it love? Yes, there were times when it was the real thing, when we were a genuine couple. So much so that I asked her to marry me, but she turned me down with the strangest of excuses. She had heard that husbands had the ability to commit their wives and she didn't want me to have that control over her. She wanted control over me. She got it. In the end it got vicious and ridiculous. One time I wouldn't let her in and she showed up half an hour later with the police who offered to arrest me if I didn't let her in. They had fallen for her line that I had thrown her out of her own home. After all, who would throw out into the night this beautiful young thing in the sexy clothes? You'd have to be an idiot or a eunuch. With the law on her side, the relationship became a genuine battle ground. There was no way out. She would just start breaking things, daring me to stop her, purposely instigating physical fights I had no chance of winning. I quickly learned that "She started it" was not an acceptable excuse when the cops showed up. One time she came by with some newly acquired bruises saying if I didn't let her in, she'd tell the cops I did it. With our history, the ruse worked, the cops showed up and warned me to leave her alone and let her back in the house. I would try to explain that it was HER who showed up at MY door uninvited, and they would say "Well why didn't you call the cops if she was bothering you?" I quickly learned that the cops always believe whoever calls first. I got a restraining order, but call me co-dependent, I just couldn't bring myself to call the cops on the mother of my children, even as it got progressively more difficult to explain to them why mommy was sleeping in the driveway. One time she actually succeeded in getting me arrested. She ran in front of the car while I was driving away which mysteriously turned into Assault with a Deadly Weapon by the time I reached my mother's house. The kids begged the cops to leave them with daddy. They knew mommy was nuts, but it made no difference. She ended up with the kids and promptly took them out of the state; I spent close to a week in L.A. County Jail on a crowded holiday weekend where I was never out of physical contact with less than two other prisoners. Delightful. The charges were dropped when she didn't show up to testify against me, but the warning was clear. She wanted to prove she had this power over me, that I had to do what she said, no matter what, no matter how much sex, no matter how many children. It wasn't until we reached five kids in five years that I finally got up the gumption to really say no and mean it. Do your worst. I will not, under any circumstances, no matter how great you look and how horny I am, have sex with you. She said "I'll just go have it with someone else." I said fine. That wasn't the end of that. After much wrangling between myself and Angie and her mother and the state, my three girls ended up with their maternal grandmother in Arizona and I ended up with the two boys in Coachella Valley, far from the physical presence of Angie, who has degenerated into a street person hitchhiking about the country. Since they knew each other, I think separating my children was a horrible thing to do, but the court had no faith that I would be able to care for all five by myself while battling away Angie. Even I couldn't say that the relationship was stable, so I can't say I disagree, but my sons would sure like to see their sisters. They can't because the grandmother has been completely obstructionist, delivering false testimony against me that the courts have believed, completely denying visitation. I can raise my boys. I can't even see my girls. There, does that explain it? Not really but thanks for sharing. The facts are that you messed up your personal life pretty good. I've got something else to confess. Shut up. I'm the one asking the questions here. Why do you think I'm in a different typeface? But there's something you have to know, something you haven't asked about, and it's important. It explains a lot of things. You agreed to hear my confession and I've got something to confess. I don't see where YOU get do decide what I confess. All right already, Geez are you pain in the ass. Go ahead. Confess. How can you possibly understand my relationship with my children without understanding my relationship with my parents. Get this. My parents were Ben and Charlotte who had my sister Sandy for 16 years before they had me. By the time I was old enough to know I had a sister, she had already been thrown out of the house. My father died when I was nine and Sandy moved right back in, so for a while I was raised by my sister and my mother. Then my sister moved out, I moved out, twenty years went by, my sister died, and my mother died. People talked to me at the funerals and suddenly it all made sense, why my father hated me, why he threw my sister out of the house, why there are no pictures of my mother pregnant or with my sister in 1951, why the fingerprints of the mother on my birth certificate are smudged, why my sister had such a hard time acknowledging the existence of my children. Classic case. Put all the pieces together. My sister got pregnant in high school and my mother agreed to raise the baby, though my father was so angry he threw her out of the house. As soon as he was dead, my mother, really my grandmother, let my sister, actually my mother, move back in. There's no way I can ever know without having them all exhumed. Like most conspiracy theories, it's the deliberate LACK of evidence that proves the case. All I can tell you is it FEELS true because it completely explains my family's attitudes towards me. So here's my typical American childhood. Nine years being raised by a rich Jewish couple whom I called mommy and daddy but who were actually gramma and grandpa, Five years being raised by my mother and sister, actually my mother and grandmother, and five more years with just mother, actually grandmother. When my sister/mother died, her kids thought they were my nephews but were actually my half-brothers. Please don't ask me to explain what the relationship would be between my kids and their kids. The point is I never had a father other than my grandfather who wasn't much help. There's literally no way to find out who my real father is because everyone who knows is dead. But I didn't find out any of this until I already had my children. When I fought for their right to be raised by their daddy, it was something inside me refusing to let happen to my children what had happened to me, even though I didn't know it yet. My childhood reached out and bit me on the ass, coercing me to maintain that bond, to fight for it, that your own kids are worth knowing. How come so many men give that up? That's a question I'd like to ask you. Even if I knew the answer, I wouldn't tell you. These are, after all, YOUR confessions, as you've so eloquently pointed out. So basically you're telling me you had no role model as a father. Exactly. So when I raised my kids, I became my grandmother. Why couldn't you support yourself? How did you end up in the Coachella Valley on welfare? I had a pretty good career going as a journalist and film critic. Most of my work, writing, was done at home, so I figured and could take care of the kids while writing. I switched my specialty to video so I wouldn't even have to go out for screenings. I could stay home, watch tapes, and write about them, while child-sitting. This scheme worked pretty well for a while. I became the film critic for Parenting Magazine, along with a weekly video column in Billboard and a monthly video column in Movieline. Got voted into the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Got my first few national and international assignments. My career as a journalist was on the rise. Things were looking good. Then the grandmother, who was willing to say or do anything to get custody of my girls, gave the state a video I had made of my son running around the backyard naked on his first birthday. Sony had lent me a video camera and a new-fangled video editor to write an article about for Movieline. The article got printed and everyone on earth agreed the video was pretty cute except the state who charged me with being a child pornographer. After a long battle during which Charles Champlin and Leonard Maltin testified in my behalf, the charges were dropped, but not before my girls were shipped out of state and my career destroyed. Nobody came right out and said why they were firing me, but I've got to admit that if I were the editor of Parenting Magazine, even I wouldn't want a film critic who had been charged with being a child pornographer. I switched to screenwriting, selling a version of my custody battle to CBS who turned it into a hit MOW starring a handsome movie star as me. Well there you go right there. Won't the movie star help you? You'd think so, wouldn't you? If the real Erin Brockovitch was somehow in dire straits, wouldn't Julia Roberts give her a hand? Not my guy. All personal inquiries have gone unanswered. All I needed was birthday presents for the kids. So what else went wrong? I was well into writing a sequel when the judge in my case found out about the MOW, once again through the grandmother, and he charged me with contempt of court. My court appointed attorney threw up their hands, saying they had no idea how to defend me, so what little money I had left was spent on hiring a new attorney to defend myself against contempt. Try explaining the ins and outs of Hollywood dealmaking to a fascist judge in custody court (now the superior judge in custody court), who sees absolutely everything as a legal ploy in a custody battle. He saw my first produced script not as a successful leap forward in my profession life, the proceeds of which would only help my children, but as an evil degradation of his sacred court. How dare I turn his rulings into amusement for the masses! Never mind that everything in the script was based upon rulings by other judges. Never mind that all the names were changed so that a viewer would have to hire a private detective to determine the source of the story. He found it contemptuous that I simply kept a diary, much less got something published and produced. He looked me in the face and told me that I clearly didn't love my children, that I was just exploiting them, and that he was going to put an end to it. I was effectively forbidden to write about the only thing I felt like writing about, my own life, specifically my children and how the courts ripped my family apart. Instead I'm left with a ruling in which I could easily be found in contempt again - simply for writing this article. That's one reason why my name isn't on it. Blah blah blah. It went on and on. I could fill pages and pages of the insanity that went on in that courtroom, false charges I couldn't possibly disprove because they went to motive. How could I legally prove that everything I did was in the service of my love for my children? Eventually he found me not guilty of contempt but it was too late, my money was gone, and the six months I spent developing the sequel went down the drain, along with all my other work. I declared bankruptcy. Interesting thing about bankruptcy that they don't tell you. If you're living somewhere and you continue paying rent, everything is fine. But if you find yourself looking for a place to live, you're out of luck. As soon as you fill out a form for a new residence and the landlord does a credit check, you will automatically be turned down. No problem until El Nino came and destroyed the roof of my rental house in Los Angeles. I had to put everything in storage, and my two kids and I moved to someone's living room, which definitely didn't work out. We moved to a hotel while I tried to find us a place to live. No luck. Automatic turndowns everywhere. I discovered that people who declare bankruptcy usually end up staying in hotels, who have to accept you without a credit check. So we ended up living in a seedy dive on Vine with a lovely sign up front saying "No prostitutes or drugs allowed in rooms." No problem. There wasn't much left in my budget for prostitutes or drugs. We lived there for two months while I struggled mightily to get us out. Agents wouldn't see me. Query letters became rejection slips. You know the drill. I HAD to get the kids out of that horrible environment. Then, a strange piece of luck. A hotel owner in Desert Hot Springs happened to see my website and liked it. He would trade me a free room in exchange for doing some work on HIS website. We moved to a beautiful stucco and red tile roof bungalow courtyard in the desert. There was a large storage area where I put all my stuff, and a small office where I set up my computer. For nine months, we lived a pretty nice life, swimming every day, lounging under the palm trees, admiring the cactus flowers, while I labored on trying to create a site that would draw people to the town and the resort. I also got some work at The Desert Sun, the biggest newspaper out here, doing cover stories for the Weekend section which paid a big $50. It was barely worth it but at least I was working as a writer. Then my computer was stolen. A lovely lady and her lovely kid had moved into the bungalow next to mine. She was a front for a motorcycle gang. The next day, six bikers were living next to me. It was clear they were the thieves. They were seen. They all carried knives and had sawed off baseball bats strapped to their bikes, none of which had mufflers. I told all this to the local police. The LAPD would have been up their ass in a nanosecond, but the chickenshit cops in this pissant lowlife shithole of a country town did nothing. Nothing. Didn't question them. Didn't search their room. Didn't stop them for their obvious vehicle violations. Nothing. The owner of the hotel, my employer, did nothing either, and he was the head of the town's police commission. He let this gang of thieves continue living in his hotel, and they continued ripping me off, breaking into the office and my room numerous times. When they were done, they had gotten not just my computer but all my backup disks, hundreds of CDs, all my recording and photography equipment, all my musical instruments, my master tapes and home video footage of my kids birthdays, my son's bike, his stamp collection, and all his comic books. Did the owner throw them out? No. Did he file an insurance claim to help me get my equipment back? No. He let them hang out and party for a week, never causing them the slightest concern, showing them a good time, then bid them a fond farewell when they moved out on their own. But since I no longer had the equipment I needed to work for him (or for anyone else for that matter), he evicted me. I fought the eviction but it only postponed the inevitable. Without a computer, I couldn't even try to get assignments from the Desert Sun. I tried to find an apartment but was faced with the same old problem of the bankruptcy. Everybody turned me down. The only possibility was a hotel, but they were all at least $400 a week since this is a resort town. I applied for welfare and started checking out shelters. One day while waiting to pick up my youngest son from school, I started talking to a mom who was waiting for her daughter in the same class. She mentioned that her ex-husband who lived in Idaho owned a deserted house in the middle of the desert. Maybe he'd rent it to me. I sent him a letter. Two days before the kids and I were to be thrown out in the street, he flew into town, I gave him my welfare check, and he gave me the key to the house. We moved in. Saved. The good news. Up a dirt road in the middle of the Sonoran desert there's a nice two-bedroom house surrounded by cactus and creosote with a 360 degree view of the entire Coachella Valley. From the snow capped peaks of Mt. San Jacinto to the windmills in the desert dunes, clear past Palm Springs to the Salton Sea, north to the San Andreas Fault and Joshua Tree, I'm looking at them right now through the window behind my new computer, a gift from a friend. I swear to God, one of the finest views in the United States. Miles from civilization, I can let the kids wander from the house without fear of traffic or drive-bys, just roadrunners, quail, rabbits, coyote, red-tail hawks, chipmunks, kangaroo rats, and the occasional snake. The bad news. There's no water or gas, which have to be brought in by truck. No cable or satellite TV or garbage pickup. I'm only connected to the world through electricity and phone and Internet. The ultimate writer's retreat. And my car has broken down so we're literally stuck here. Thank God the school buses come out or the kids would miss school. The buses come to the end of the dirt road, which is about a mile away. The kids will get to tell their grandchildren that they had to walk a mile through the desert to get to school. Now that school is out for summer, all three of us are stuck here, alone, 24/7. It's too hot to leave the house so we don't, which means the air conditioning is on a lot. When I'm on the computer, the kids watch broadcast TV, only three channels, ABC, NBC, and Fox. When I watch TV, the kids use the computer. That's all we do. The nearest bus stop is six miles away, so even if we wanted to go somewhere, we couldn't. We all need new clothes. When I watch The Simpsons, I used to identify with Homer. Now I identify with Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. I've become poor white trash. It's like a desert version of The Shining. Thank God I can write more than one sentence over and over or it would be time to hide the ax. Jesus, that's terrible. How do you eat? When's the last time you spent $10 on a meal? All the time, right? Hard to go out to eat and spend any less than $10 on yourself, usually more, perfectly ordinary, to be expected, part of the day to day marvel of living and eating, appearing in public with your friends at establishments with menus where they actually bring the food right to you. Yeah, I was like you. Then suddenly I had to prepare three meals a day to one adult and two children on $300 in food stamps per month. Yep, $10 a day, one of my old meals divided by nine, a little more than $1 per person per meal per day and you know what? I can do it. I've got it all figured out. Here's all you have to do. Know someone with a car, preferably your landlord's wife who has to come out to pick up the rent once a month anyway. Turn it into a day in the town where you get to cash your check, get your food stamps, and do some shopping. Your entire month's salary is $614. $400 goes to rent, $100 goes to Edison, $50 for water, $25 for phone, $19.95 for Internet access, leaving about $20 for a spending spree. You should have at least $15-20 of food stamps left after buying an entire month's supplies. Spend it all. You won't be back in town for a month and you won't need any money while you're home. $40 should get you milk, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, some kind of meat depending upon what's on sale, aha, this week, beef back ribs $1.00 a pound, pester the meat man till he finds one that's exactly three pounds because everything you buy is going to be divided by three, perfect, two ribs apiece plus some of those potatoes equals a meal at a bit more than a buck apiece. Buy two gallons of real milk and five pounds of powdered milk which, strangely enough, once mixed, ends up costing almost exact the same as the fresh stuff. This is not a way to save money. If you get to the store more than once a month, you should just stick to fresh, but if you're in the middle of nowhere, after you've used a half of a gallon container, add three cups of powdered milk and water to the rest, filling it back up all the way. Turns each gallon into a gallon and a half and no one will notice the difference. All food stamps for the entire Coachella Valley, from Whitewater to Indio, are given out at one single check cashing place on 111, which means if you live in Desert Hot Springs, you have to drive 40 miles every month to get your stamps, spending approximately $5 in gas. So order to save 34 cents in postage, the state makes the poorest people in the county come up with an extra $5. Where does that $5 come from? The state of course, from the money we're being paid to cover our rent and utilities. But every penny of that has already gone to rent and utilities, right? So how to do people in Desert Hot Springs get their food stamps? Beats me. I've found someone willing to drive all the way in from Los Angeles to give me ride if no one else will. Since food stamps only cover food items, how do you get other household items like soap and toilet paper and shampoo and bug spray and napkins and Kleenex and cat food? Glad you asked. Ever notice that all those items you just mentioned are the ones that give away the most coupons in the Sunday paper? I have and so has everyone else on Welfare. If every penny counts, you don't buy something if it's on sale and you don't buy something if you've got a coupon, you only buy something if it's on sale AND you've got a coupon. Let's say you need toilet paper. You have no way of knowing which toilet paper is going to be on sale but there's always at least one, so you have to cut out every single toilet paper coupon from the paper, go to the store to see which one's on sale, then go through your coupons and hope you've got a coupon for that brand. If it's on sale for $2.25 and you've got a $1 off coupon which the store doubles, the toilet paper ends up costing only a quarter. A strange thing happens to food stamps when they're used in a store that doubles coupons. The manufacturer pays the stated savings, say $1, which is subtracted from your total, and the store matches it with their own $1, which is also subtracted from your total as cash. Buy a $1 bottle of shampoo at the same time you use a $1 coupon and the cash back somehow covers the cost of the shampoo with the food stamps. Thus, once a month I go to a store and use at least $20 worth of coupons, which buys my $20 worth of non-food items with food stamps. Sound complicated? It is. When you're got nothing, you spend half your time fighting to somehow make do with what you've got, then you do nothing during the month since everything there is to do costs money and you don't have any. Poverty is hard work. So now here you are, unemployed with two kids that the state is paying you to raise. How are you going to get out of this predicament so that it's not my tax dollars that are paying your rent? I'm doing the best I can do with what I've got. In the past year, I've written a novel, several treatments for movies or TV shows, and at least 50 articles distributed on the Net. Many of the articles have been printed in The Desert Post Weekly, a local freebie but, surprise surprise, they don't pay. The state, of course, has their much vaunted Welfare-to-Work program called GAIN. GAIN gets people off the dole by educating them, dressing them, teaching them how to impress employers, then sending them out to look for work. Their goal, their only goal, is to find you a 9-5 that pays a decent hourly wage. A noble goal that works for a great many people I never graduated high school so, at 50, they want me to get a diploma, despite the fact that in my line of work I've never been asked for one. They ask me what the minimum wages are that I'm willing to accept. I tell them I usually get $1.00 a word but I've accepted as little as ten cents a word. They look at me like I'm from Mars. They only know how to deal with people who get paid by the hour. I've never gotten paid by the hour. People who get paid on commission or by the individual job are totally beyond their understanding, and once again, they actually penalize you if you don't fit their narrow criteria. Let's say I'm lucky enough to get a $5,000 advance on a book which took me a year to write. Making $5,000 in a year comes out to barely $100 a week, poverty any way you look at it but not the way Welfare looks at it. They count that $5,000 as though it were a "job," not a "sale." They put you in the system as someone now making $5,000 a week and they drop your assistance accordingly. I'd risk losing all my assistance, food stamps, and medical coverage if I were to report such an "enormous" check. If I were able to keep the money on top of my assistance, like I would if it had been paid a week at a time, I could end up with a car. some clothes and toys, maybe a microwave, a zip drive for my computer or other household necessities. But if the money has to REPLACE my assistance, I'd be broke again in another few months and right back on the dole. The GAIN Program is threatening to fine me I don't look for work, which I can't do without transportation. I tell them that if they hear of any jobs where they'll give you a car, or they're willing to come get you, drop your kids off at daycare, bring you to work, and then take you back again, I'm definitely interested. GAIN ain't net savvy. Sending an e-mail query to a publisher or producer isn't considered looking for work. To them, looking for work means showing up at their office at 8AM in a suit. Literally the only thing they count as looking for work is physically handing a job application to someone with a job posting in one of the books in their office. Monsterboard.com or any sort of e-mail or FAX application doesn't count. Well, what do you expect Welfare to do? It's such a strange way of thinking. They find out the bare minimum you need to survive, then they give you a little bit less than that, knowing full well you have to do SOMETHING to make up the difference, then they penalize you if you don't report the source of any extra income, and they penalize you if you DO report the source of any extra income. It's like they're daring you to commit fraud. What do you see when you picture a welfare fraud? A huge black woman with 14 children who collects a check from two different counties and spends it all on crack? Maybe such monstrosities actually exist, but here's news. It's impossible to be on Welfare without committing fraud. There's no way to survive on what they give you. Let's say you make a quick $100, you're an artist, you sell a painting, you need the extra $100 to pay your electric bills this summer, fine and dandy, spend it. But if you report it, they won't believe you unless you show them a receipt. Show them a receipt and they subtract about half of it from your next month's allotment of food stamps, which you have to make up for with cash, which has to come out of your $100, which is now $50. They penalize you for making money. If you want to convince someone to make money, doesn't it make more sense to match funds? Tell someone you'll put up $1 for every $1 they make and you actually encourage them to make money. Tell someone you'll take away half of everything they make and you actually encourage them to sit around the house and do nothing. So what's the solution? Are you going to be on Welfare forever, or until they cut you off? Boy, I sure hope not. My son's birthday is coming up and he's getting nothing. Nothing. Back when I was a journalist in L.A., I wrote a piece for the Times about the homeless situation in Santa Monica, little knowing that someday I'd find myself in a similar predicament. Santa Monica put up beautiful little ceramic dolphin sculptures around the city, instructing people that if they REALLY wanted to help the homeless, they would put money in the dolphins instead of in the hands of beggars in the street. The actual homeless thought of such people as "limousine liberals," people who felt charitable but didn't want to get their hands dirty, people who actually preferred feeding the hungry by giving money to a ceramic dolphin instead of the actual hungry people standing around the dolphin. One movie star was the exact opposite. Once a week he'd gather gourmet food from a bunch of his favorite Beverly Hills restaurants, take a truckload of food to Santa Monica, and personally distribute it to the homeless in an alley. There were no photographers or publicists along. He didn't do it to look good. He just preferred his charity one-on-one. So anybody out there got a car they're not using? http://I.am/MichaelDare There is no way to unsubscribe to Darenet other than repeating HIS name 1,000 times and praying for the worst. Sure, you can send a blank email to "Darenet-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com" but HE'LL know and you'll pay someday. Your only choice is to sneak behind his back and go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/darenet, log on, and remove yourself. You're three clicks away from going to a special hell reserved for all those who Dare unsubscribe. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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