COME TO THE MASQUERADE

By Lynn Ruth Miller

People are so busy dreaming the American dream,

Fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be,

that they’re all asleep at the switch.

Florence King

Back in the dark ages when I was a child, I wanted to be a fairy princess.  I wanted to sprinkle everyone I met with fairy dust and create a golden paradise.  As I grew older, I wanted to become a beautiful dancer, a brilliant student, a sugar plum.

Little boys had fiercer dreams.  They wanted to be cowboys and bare-chested Indians with feathers trailing down their backs.  They wanted to shoot guns, kick puppies and punch each other. That was what little boys were supposed to do.

Those were the days when we all believed our streets were paved with gold and hard work could earn you a rainbow. We believed love and marriage was a right.  Every future needed lots of babies, a cute puppy and two cars in every garage.   That was the American way.

Attitudes have certainly changed, haven’t they?  These days, little girls want to be witches, vampires and black swans; little boys dream about pirates and fierce aliens. No one believes in miracles or magic.  We want power, money and lots of bling.

Little girls realize that to sprinkle themselves with fairy dust reduces them to sex objects.    Little boys know that muscles only get them jealous looks at the gym.  Healthy bank accounts, gas guzzling cars and a hot tattoo are in.  After all,  Galahads can’t pay the mortgage; and maidens don’t want to be saved.  It demeans them.

When you visit America, what do you see?  You see overweight human beings guzzling MacDonald’s hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken while they listen to music on their I-pods, texting on their cell phones. You see huge shopping centers, clogged streets and no children playing on the streets. We put our children on school buses and worry that they will be kidnapped if they walk home from school. And no wonder.  2,185 children disappear every day in this country.

Americans awake before dawn to drive on packed freeways for hours to a job that pays too little and demands too much.  They battle traffic jams to get home too late to say good night to their children, turn on TV with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. There is no time to admire the daisy that bloomed in the garden or the pink dragon their child made in school.  I see women dropping off their children at day care so they can go to an office, work until five, pick up the children, do the grocery shopping, clean the house and make dinner with no time to enjoy the money they have earned or get to know the children they have created. I see families buying gadgets they don’t need, wearing clothes that turn them into carbon copies of everyone else and I wonder if they know what they are missing.

There is a lot of good in the American way, of course.  I love that women have choices and men do the dishes. I love that, in California at least, you can be gay or straight, black, white or yellow and still have a shot at grabbing the gold ring.  I love that little girls play football and little boys are allowed to cry.

Not long ago, I was visiting a family in Edinburgh and when I opened the front door, their little girl was sitting in the hall singing to her dolls.  The first thing that occurred to me as I watched that child so wrapped up in her fantasy she didn’t know anyone else existed, was ”This could never happen in America.”

Just last month, I lost my way on a Brighton street and a woman I did not know walked me several blocks to my destination.  If you are lost in my town, it is your bad luck..  People here have deadlines.  They do not have time for compassion.

I wonder if California dreaming is fun anymore.  We make headlines every day. You can’t beat us for glitter, but something awful has happened to the gold.

We must stop talking about the American dream

And start listening to the dreams of Americans.

Max Beerbohm

LOVING MY IMAGE

There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful,

Than a woman being unapologetically herself;

Comfortable in her perfect imperfection.”

Steve Maraboli

I became conscious of my body when I was 16 and I hated it.  This was 1946 when the image was a flat tummy and big breasts.  The goal was the “sweater girl” look:  a slender, pegged skirt with a slit so you could walk and a filled tight sweater.  I was flat- chested, with tiny hips and a bloated tummy that made my shape look more like a Shmoo than Marilyn Monroe.

Through the years, as fashions changed and my body modified, I never seemed able to diet it down or corset it into the shape I saw in magazine centerfolds.  I knew instinctively that if I wanted to catch a man (and in those days, we all wanted to do that) I would have to look tempting enough to excite him.  No man with a decent level of testosterone would look twice at a woman shaped like a tube with over-sized feet that turned out when she walked.   I was convinced that my poor social life was the result of high intelligence and a lousy figure.

It never occurred to me that the first step to becoming a beauty is to love who you are.  I saw homely, dumpy, fashion-less girls snap up all the eligible men and I never understood how they did it.  Even I, with my sallow coloring and wispy hair looked better than they did.  Besides I didn’t wear glasses and my complexion was clear.

Years passed and my body parts reshaped themselves with each decade, but no matter what happened to them, I hated the look I had.  For as long as I can remember, I have either worn baggy pants and extra large  shirts, or long loose dresses, starting with the waist-less shifts in the fifties to the loose flowing gowns I have adopted since I came to California in the eighties.  I have always been thankful for clothes that conceal and it never occurred to me to lower my turtle neck to anything décolleté.

About 6 years ago, I added a mock strip tease to my comedy act and for the first time in my life, I exposed my legs and my collar bone.  The costume I wore was hardly salacious (I had given that up years ago) but it certainly revealed a lot more of me than had ever been exposed before.  I pranced and posed through the next few years, never exposing more, but adding new and more daring costumes until bit by bit, I devised the blinking tit routine which flashed as I sang and was disconcerting, funny and not very provocative at all.

And then two years ago, I started doing my songs in real burlesque shows.  I would go into the dressing room and watch women of every size and shape get themselves into gorgeous and revealing costumes and instead of dressing behind a screen (as I had done for a minimum of seventy years) I was undressing in a room filled with naked men and women…..(boys do burlesque too) and no one looked askance at me or at each other.  In fact, we all helped one another hook, pin and embellish our costumes ready for the stage.

I noticed that the women who were the best performers did not necessarily conform to any “look” but they all shared a wonderfully confident attitude and it was then I realized what those homely girls in the forties had that I didn’t have.  They loved who they were.  They never thought twice about the circumference of their waists or the size of their brassiere.  Their concern was how to show off what they had…and how to put it to the best and most pleasurable use.

I think that is wonderful.  I am past worrying about pleasurable use but I am certainly interested in using what I have to the best advantage.  I LIKE being saucy and even sexy…..no I LOVE it….and I love the body I have to do it with.  Both hips are mine, the knees bend, the boobs are saggy but they can twirl….sort of.  But who cares?  I am the only me I can be and I am unique. That is plenty good enough for me.

You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed.

And you are beautiful.

Amy Bloom

WHO IS WATCHING YOU ?

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like
asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
John Perry Barlow

You decide to buy a book about surfing and find just want you want on bargains.com.  You type in your credit card details and send them off to the company which has assured you that your information is safe with them and goes nowhere but to their secure site. You have every right to believe that the only one who is aware of that number (which is a direct link to your checking account) is an impersonal machine that automatically checks to see if your card is valid.  Two months later, you order something else from the site and discover your card is on file.  How did that happen? What right have they to save it?  Worse: can someone who works there use your details for their own purposes?

Ah, but the real surprise is that your card details are not only on file with Bargain.com but with several hundred other sites with ads on Google.  AND when you send an e mail mentioning surfing, you get twenty ads alongside your e mail telling you that they have spiffy surfboards at half the price you paid at bargain.com.  As you look down the list of vendors, you also find new places to surf, hotels to stay at and places to eat especially for surfers.  How did Google know you surfed?  You haven’t even discussed it with your mother.

You go to another site to look up books on calligraphy and when you start to type in your contact details to purchase the book you want, you discover that somehow, this omniscient site recognizes you as soon as you type the first letter of your name.  How did that happen?  You were never interested in calligraphy until an hour ago.

“There are hundreds of web-based email services that appear to offer anonymity. Few really do. These include names such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Excite and many more that could be listed. In each of these cases, the user is allowed to create a personal username that he uses for his messages. Unfortunately, through sign-up procedures and logging, it is amazingly simple to determine your ISP, and even your true identity, when you use these services,” says A. Brown on www.e/cheat.com.

At first, all this seems to heighten the convenience of shopping or searching on line.  We tend to forget that ordinary people are entitled to privacy. Refusing to reveal the amount of money we have, where it is deposited and the special interests we have unpublished does not make us terrorists.  (Although the way this information is bandied about certainly does make us terrorized.)

Mike Butcher explains this practice of real time web disclosure:  “The idea behind a real-time Web is to create technology that doesn’t require an Internet user to actively seek out something they’re interested in. That could mean anything from getting pinged when an article about your favourite sports team is posted to an alert when you’re mentioned in someone’s blog.”

There is something decidedly uncomfortable about the world knowing you like surfing or are interested in pursuing calligraphy…but it is a lot MORE disturbing if your partner finds out you have just joined e harmony to see if someone more exciting awaits or that you like to watch porn while he is selling computers at Frye’s. That is all YOUR business,…or is it?

A Brown has more to say on the subject: “There are more reasons to want to protect your privacy than can be named. The important principal is that you have a right to privacy as long as that right is used within the bounds of the law.  Seeking privacy should not make you feel guilty. Privacy should be expected, and demanded. The reasons might be as simple as preserving your right to express unpopular opinions without being subjected to persecution, or as serious as communicating sensitive business information, revealing credit card numbers, legal discussions with your accountant, or hiding your true identity from a secret government. Regardless of your reasons, privacy is your right. Contrary to what some governing bodies might want the public to believe, not all those concerned with security and privacy are hackers or terrorists.”

The fact that A Brown is just another computer user who has made these observations on a non-technical site is even more unsettling.  The “experts” in computer technology probably know how to find out your eating habits, your sex addictions and your regularity….Why do they care?  Perhaps it is to use the information to tempt you to buy a product.  It could be to garner statistics on the potential success of a new product.  Or it could be to harass you and accuse you of something they think you might do…such as drug dealing or behaviour that “disturbs the peace.”

Facebook says, ‘Privacy is theft,’ because they’re selling
your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day
Jaron Lanier

SMILE! YOU’RE ON CAMERA

Chapter one:  I am born

David Copperfield

The “in” thing these days is to turn baby’s birth into a photo shoot.  I cannot think of anything more horrifying for the mother, more humiliating for the baby and more American for the revenue it creates.

Americans just love money.  If we can charge for it, we are there.  It all began with dog walking…why take out someone’s puppy for fun when you can get them to pay for it?  If Fido (who frankly doesn’t give a tinker’s damn if you are in the room as long as he has his food and a place to poop) might get lonesome while you are out earning his kibble, why not pay five times as much as his daily scoop to have some idiot who cannot earn a living in an office drag the pooch to the park.

Then there are the cat hotels.  Why should your cat who obviously has good taste…he hasn’t run away from you, has he?… suffer in an empty house without you?  So to ease your conscience, and keep him from scratching the furniture or chewing the baby, you decide to pay more per diem for Fluuffy to get stroked, fed and pampered than you paid for the flight and hotel package.

Ah, but that is not all.  What about the people who charge you for petrol because you are sitting in their automobile going to the same place they are?  Or the ones who make you pay a rental for a sweater you wanted to borrow for the dance?   They have figured out how to make capitalism pay and every one of us buy into it.

Now we have the photographers who figured out how a random picture can catapult them into the big bucks.  What with cell phone cameras and Polaroid’s, instant photography is at our fingertips.  Nothing is sacred.  Look at face book…pictures of a doll that was mutilated, a sunset in a place you would never go, a wounded toe…all there to share with your friends who couldn’t care less about your toe, your doll or your sunset.

I simply cannot imagine having a photographer I barely know staring at body parts that heretofore I had kept concealed in my underwear, watching me heave moan, writhe and suffer through one of the most painful though gratifying human acts.  I simply cannot fathom wanting a shot of my kid pushing his way out of my vagina covered with slime and afterbirth looking like he should be recycled.  Once that picture is taken it is frozen in time.  Why get a photographer to record a moment that you want to end as fast as possible so you can get on with life?

Imagine how your little boy will feel when he introduces you to the love of his life and you whip out a picture of him wrinkled, wet and covered with blood and say, ”That’s how he looked when he was born!” followed by  the inevitable, ”Wasn’t he precious?”

For my part, I want the kid cleaned up before I look at him. I want my forehead cooled, my stitches done and a good mop up job before I smile and say “cheese.”  I may be in denial but if I am going to record a birth, I want it to look gorgeous.  I want to remember the life I created, not its cost.  The good news is that I never WILL have to make that choice. That is one of the true joys of aging.

Being born is like being kidnapped

Then sold into slavery.

William Shakespeare

BGT AND ME

Let the path be open to talent.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Every now and then, opportunity knocks on your door in strange and mysterious ways.  The trick is to distinguish which is nonsense and which is your personal road to nirvana.  Sadly, I have never had that knack.  If you ask me to do just about anything that won’t put me in traction or murder an innocent bystander, I’ll give it a go.

I was cracking rude one-liners in Edinburgh for my one woman show last August when a young, unbelievably enthusiastic girl named Louise smiled at me and said, “How would you like to try out for Britain’s Got Talent?”

“But I’m not British.  I am from San Francisco,” I said.

Her enthusiasm did not diminish.  She positively bounced with delight when she said, “That doesn’t make any difference to us.”

“When do you want me?” I said.

It was that devil-may-care attitude that took me back to the Edinburgh Conference Center in Edinburgh for the first round of try-outs in October.  I was not a novice at this “I’ve Got Talent” business.  Four years ago, I managed to get to the third day in Las Vegas before America’s Got Talent told me I was hopeless. That was why I had a bit more perspective on the whole procedure for BGT last October.  I realized that the process was a bit of a soap opera and the purpose was to create a balanced TV show with a pre-decided proportion of singers, dancers, novelty acts and several “tear your heart out” stories.   I understood that even though the viewers blamed Peers Morgan in America and Simon Cowell in London for their unsympathetic and arbitrary dismissal of the candidates, both men were actually doing what they were told by faceless producers who had decided well before we tried out the second time who was in and who was rubbish.  I also figured out that being on the program would in no way “make my career.”  In America, a touchingly hopeful man named Paul impersonated Frank Sinatra right down to the skinny tie and blue contact lenses. “This is going to catapult me into the big time, darling,“ he said and I believed him.

I have never heard or seen him since.

That said, the initial weeding out process is not done by the stars we see pushing buzzers on our TV screen. The film crew create two minute clips to give to the producers who are designing the show.  It is these people who spend several months deciding who they want for each sequence of the show.   That first audition  is a heady experience.  Every hopeful believes that he is a cut above the rest and not afraid to prove it.  In Edinburgh, I met a business man who insisted he was destined for Glyndebourne.  He hummed arias to prove it not quite under his breath as we stood in endless lines waiting to be processed for the filming to come.   There was a lad of 13 whose mother swore he was the best country singer this side of the universe.  She never stopped coaching him while we waited our turns.  She stood outside the door when he went into the filming room, certain she had mothered an international star soon to pay her way into early retirement.  Neither the man or the boy made the grade.

I found Britain’s Got Talent far more humane and caring than America’s.  That exciting day in Edinburgh, I was treated like I was already a star by the delightful group of young people who make it all happen.  They check applications, organize the thousands of applicants with undiminished graciousness, escort each performer to a comfortable waiting area until they are filmed and assign the more interesting applicants to the camera crew for extra filming.  That day, I was taken to the station and filmed as if I had arrived on the bus even though I had taken the overnight train from London.  It is all part of the pretence that this is a reality show instead of the staged, pre-arranged event it has become.

The film crew who do the initial screening are endlessly patient and very sensitive to the talent performing their hearts out for the two minutes they are allowed to strut their stuff.  The best part is that no one knows that day if they made the grade.  That way, the decision comes on your computer where you can absorb it in your own way.  In America they loved to film you dissolved in tears, distraught because you lost your chance to be a star.

It is not so for the second phase.  I found out in late January that I had made the first cut and was asked to return to Edinburgh February 11 for an exceptionally long day at he Festival theatre to meet the judges.  In that session, only water is provided for a day that lasts well into the evening.  We were allowed to bring 4 friends to cheer us on and give away as many tickets as we liked for our performance before a live audience. I am from another country and of a certain age.  The few friends I have here are in their dotage and do not have the stamina for a 10-12 hour day.  I do have a smattering of young ones who can endure and one brought me a sandwich to sustain me.  Her reward was Simon Cowell’s autograph  when he entered the building about 3 pm that afternoon.

This phase of the elimination process is filled with electric anticipation.  We meet the people whom the producers think might make the grade.  This group of  performers are whittled down to the top 20 or so in each city where the try-outs took place.  My day at The Festival Theatre was filled with endless conversation and networking.  I hobnobbed with a band of Glaswegians in kilts with brilliant red, green and blue hair and a fantastic attitude, three girls who thought they were the second millennium version of The Andrew Sisters and Stuart Crout who invented a combination ukulele, guitar, piano and banjo all in one and had practiced his craft on the streets of Edinburgh since he was 11 years old.  We were all filmed talking to one another, waiting, drinking, fidgeting and hoping.  The highlight of the afternoon for me was meeting Stephen Mulhern.  We bantered back and forth and I agreed to be his gran. We decided if I actually won I would buy him a house and you know?  I would have done it.  He is charming.  I never felt judged or scrutinized (although all of us were) when I spoke with him.  I didn’t feel that I was performing either even though I knew I was being filmed.

When our big moment arrived, we sat in a long, airless hall behind the stage and waited to meet the judges.  We heard one performer after another buzzed off the stage and I realized how the people in Paris during their revolution felt as they waited in line at the guillotine.  The buzzer is incredibly loud and my big worry was that I would be so started if it sounded that I would faint or scream.  We were told that no matter how many times we were buzzed we should continue as if nothing had happened.  If that doesn’t test your endurance, nothing will.   The three girls I had met earlier went on stage and were buzzed off immediately. I could hear the audience cheering them and adoring them and then a pause.  The judges decided to let them try once more.  All of us in the back room smiled and started breathing again but alas!  Within seconds they were buzzed again by all four judges.

I thought, “I will never get through this.  Why on earth did I set myself up for this kind of public rejection?”

I was ushered into the area just behind the curtain and I met Anthony of Ant and Deck.  He showed me how I was to enter the stage and explained where I must stand.  And then I was on stage and the four judges were smiling at me. I did my two minutes and to my amazement, no one buzzed me. However,  Simon Cowell told me in no uncertain terms that I bored him and I told him I was very sorry I did.  Was he acting?  Did he mean it?  I will never know. The others were uncommonly kind and Alesha Dickson pointed out that it was unusual to have a performer my age on the program. That she said was working in my favour.  The three, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dickson and David Walliams voted for me and I got through!!!

I literally floated through the labyrinth of hallways to the vestibule, and was filmed saying I how amazed I was and then ushered back to see Stephen Mulhern to tell him he was one step closer to having a home of his own.

When I returned for some extra filming I met one of the young ladies in the group who had performed before me and she was awash in tears.  That was when I realized the inhumanity of the procedure.  Here she was convinced she was a failure even though the audience had clapped, stomped and cheered her group without reservation.

Stuart didn’t get into the next phase either, even though the staff had found him on You Tube and invited him to the second phase without enduring that first weeding out at The Conference Center. No one helps these hopeful, optimistic and very sensitive performers to understand that getting on this program neither makes or breaks them and that life offers endless opportunities.  This was just one.

The next phase took place at the end of February in London and the day began at 7:30 in the morning.  This is the phase where Britain’s Got Talent pays all your expenses and everyone you meet is certain they are stars.  There were about 100 acts from all over the country, the top winners from all the previous try-outs.  I absolutely adored everyone I met.  There was a singer who had been rejected in another reality program and mustered the courage to try again.  There was a group of middle aged guys from Manchester totally out of shape and bursting with hope.  There was a tranny named James who took me under his/her wing.  We all chatted and traded stories all day while we waited to see if we would go on to the next phase.  While I was there I saw a group of the oldest human beings I have ever seen still breathing and I asked them where they were from.  One of them managed to gasp, “London.”

And that was when I knew I had not gotten in.  Alesha Dickson had said BGT didn’t have a good representation of people my age and here was my competition.  They were older and they were really British.  I didn’t have a chance.   At 5:30 that day, I was ushered into a room with the four judges and Amanda Holden told us we were eliminated.  She was very gracious and kind but for the other two in that room with me she could have just as well thrust a knife into their hearts.  The effect was the same.    The young girl with me was devastated and sobbed for the next hour as we waited to be processed and dismissed.  I tried to console her but there was no way to stop those tears.  I looked at this child barely 17 years old who labelled herself as a failure and I knew then that despite the entertainment value of the program, its cost was far too high to those who lose and even higher for those who make it to the top only to realize that the top goes nowhere.

I left London and retuned home, ready to get on with my life and my comedy career.  The experience was wonderful and the people I met unforgettable.  For me, the adventure was over.  But I was wrong.  April 14, while I was dancing my heart out at the Texas Burlesque Festival I received a barrage of e mails.  BGT had shown my segment on television and all the world got to see me!!! It was a heady experience…but since I knew the outcome, I knew the thrill was momentary.

Wrong again.  I am in Brighton now and I cannot count the number of people who have stopped me on the street to ask, “Are you the lady I saw on Britain’s Got Talent.”  The truth is that I am wallowing in even more fame than I expected without getting anywhere near the top.  What can be better than that?

Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.
John Wooden