I recently watched "Grave of the Fireflies," an animated film by Isao Takahata. Although the animated format suggests children's fare, this is a film for adults about children. It is the story of two orphaned siblings trying to survive in Japan during the fire-bombings and privations of World War II.

"Grave of the Fireflies" presents a gripping story, made more so by the fact that it is drawn from a semi-autobiographical novel and the tragedies it depicts are real. The film does an incredible job of conveying the emotions of the older brother, Seita, as he struggles to protect his young sister, Setsuko. It is the most subtle emotional portrayal I've seen in an animated film, and made me marvel at what can be accomplished by animation. Today's CGI animation often presents technical wonders, but this movie is a marvel of storytelling.

I have an interest in the subject of siblings, particularly sisters. There are many books dealing with the competitive relationship between siblings; there is less available on the positive aspects of the sibling bond. This quieter relationship that exists between siblings is what "Grave of the Fireflies" excels at showing.

Seita is 10 years older than Setsuko, so he falls easily into a parental role with his much younger sister. The love that that the two siblings have for each other is so sweetly evident betwen them, even when the strains of everyday life--lack of food, lack of shelter--threaten to overwhelm the characters. "Grave of the Fireflies" is simply a beautiful film and I highly recommend watching it.

The 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles insurrection is being observed this week in L.A., and to a lesser extent, elsewhere. I was living in another state when the insurrection occurred 20 years ago, but felt tied to the events through a relative living close to the action and through a sense of connection to my hometown. This week, I decided to relive the events by following @RealTimeLARiots on Twitter.

@RealTimeLARiots is published by the local NBC station in Los Angeles. According to the announcement on the NBC-LA page, "Each @RealTimeLARiots tweet corresponds to the actual date and time (sometimes down to the minute) of each major event as it unfolded back in 1992." This reminded me of a similar effort I noted a few weeks previous, the History channel's live-tweeting of the Titanic Voyage at @TitanicRealTime on the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking.

Both the History Channel and NBC-LA used the term "live-tweeting" to describe their efforts, but it's not really an accurate description of either account. What they're doing is more like a dramatic reconstruction in real-time. The spontaneity of a live event is missing, since the events on which individual tweets are based have already occurred.

Although missing the live component, the serial dramas presented in @RealTimeLARiots and @TitanicRealTime nonetheless have the power to spark new emotions as people on Twitter remember, learn about and share the events of the past. In the case of @TitanicRealTime, some younger Followers discovered for the first time that the story of the Titanic was real, rather than fictional. I haven't seen any confirmed instances of people confusing @RealTimeLARiots with the present-day, although that could emerge still.

To kick off @RealTimeLARiots, NBC-LA asked, "What if Twitter existed in 1992? How would social media help tell the story of Rodney King and the Los Angeles Riots?" Which gets it exactly wrong, because although @RealTimeLARiots can reconstruct the events of 20 years ago, the one thing it cannot do is tell the events of yesteryear as if Twitter existed back then. Reading the recreation of events presented on @RealTimeLARiots is in a way similar to watching an old movie on Blu-ray. The events are being remastered, not remade.

The news experience on Twitter is cacophonous, and never more so than when news is breaking. No one can say how Twitter's chorus of voices might have shaped the L.A. insurrection, even as it narrated its progress. Much has been written about how Twitter enables activism; it is also proving to be a capable tool during emergencies. The hashtag #SMEM, which stands for Social Media for Emergency Management, tracks some of the new uses of Twitter during emergency situations.

The L.A. insurrection might have unfolded differently, as participants shared information online; it also might have been managed differently, with citizens, first responders, law enforcement and military using Twitter to navigate the crisis.

Despite their limitations, @RealTimeLARiots and @TitanicRealTime are successful examples of new media serial entertainment or edutainment. Only time will tell if their popularity or the technology that supports them will last.

For George Washington's birthday, I thought I'd post some images from an old hardbound children's book in my collection called, "Molly The Drummer Boy." The book was written by Harriet T. Comstock with illustrations by Curtis Wager-Smith. Copyright is listed as 1900.


The story is about a girl named Debby who disguises herself as a boy, renames herself Molly and joins the Revolutionary army as a drummer. The author claims the story is based on historical fact, but Comstock doesn't mention where she first encountered records of the story.


The caption to this illustration reads, "For a moment Washington eyed the boy."

The first time I encountered the idea of the multiverse was reading a Flash comic book. I was a kid in school and a recent graduate to superhero comics, which were more challenging reading than the Harvey and Archie comics that I was used to. It was also my first step away from the Batman and Superman comic books I was already reading, which were easier to read because they featured characters that were familiar to me from television.

I had been attracted to this particular Flash comic by it dramatic cover, featuring contrasting suits worn by the Flash and the Reverse-Flash, also known as Professor Zoom. Although people often look down on comics as simple reading material, they do not always make for easy reading. In this case, I had jumped into a serial story in progress, with characters I was not familiar with and a complex plot dealing with time-travel.

Although aspects of The Flash were difficult for me to comprehend, I stuck with the comic series because the characters were compelling, especially the villainous Professor Zoom. The art added a tremendous amount to my understanding of the plot. In fact, at that age I'm not sure I would have grasped the idea of parallel worlds or branching realities without illustrations of Earth-One and Earth-Two. Editorial asides filled me in on back story that I had missed. The comics format also allowed me to flip comfortably back and forth through pages and issues, which helped me keep track of the story as it wove through time and across worlds.

Skip ahead to the present day, where I'm following a story of multiple worlds on the television show, Fringe. I want to say that it's the most complicated multiverse story I've been exposed to, but that's probably not true--I think DC's Infinite Crisis and the year-long 52 saga probably take that title. Fringe is, nonetheless, an extremely intricate story of multiple worlds. (In the season two finale, Fringe acknowledged a debt to DC comics and its multiverse mythos.)

This season, several of the main actors on Fringe, including Anna Torv, John Noble and Jasika Nicole, play as many as four different versions of themselves. Although there are sometimes visual indicators to distinguish among versions--for example, one Olivia is blonde while another is redhead--the burden is on the actors to show their characters' differences. The cast does an incredible job making us believe in their characters' lives across multiple worlds.

Unfortunately, the broadcast television format is not always supportive of Fringe's complex storyline. Long season and mid-season breaks make it difficult to keep track of past and present in the show's multiple universes. While earlier seasons were light on commercials, more commercials in the current season mean less time to explain the action and flesh out story arcs. In an interview, series creator J.J. Abrams claims Fringe was intended to be a serialized show, but that "we were instructed by the network, at the beginning of Season 3, to stop that." (Note: Corrected based on commenter input.)

While part of creating a successfully TV series involves working within the commercial demands of the medium, I can't help but feel that the power of "Fringe's" multiverse storytelling is being lost to narrow programming requirements. I hope Fringe gets renewed for a fifth season, but I hope it also receives license to develop the serialized storytelling that it's multiverse drama needs, and which have made the show such a standout in past seasons.

There is a right way to have a cold. In the U.S., we are encouraged to think the best way to be sick is to keep on working. As a result of this indoctrination, I'd forgotten how to be sick correctly until just yesterday, when the need to take a second round of antibiotics provoked me to get some rest.

So it was that on a gloomy, rainy day--the closest approximation to winter that we have in L.A.--I sat down in a comfy chair, in the middle of the day, wearing my flannel pajamas and watched Masterpiece Theater Classic on PBS video. If you have to be sick (and apparently I did), this is the right way to do it.

I'm a longtime fan of Masterpiece Theater, so no one had to convince me to watch the current series, Downton Abbey, the second seaons of which is now showing in the U.S. I fit the profile of the bookish, tea-drinking Anglophile that I imagine constitutes the Masterpiece Theater Classic's typical audience. I'd read, however, that "Downton Abbey" was attracting a wider and much younger audience than is usual for the PBS series.

In fact, this Downton Abbey mania has prompted some cultural critics to speculate about why the show is appealing to younger Americans. Some say Americans have latched on to the series because they are mesmerized by its depiction of extreme wealth. Others claim Downton Abbey offers a vision of a more stable class structure that is reassuring to Americans in these uncertain economic times.

I admit I had been puzzled as to why "Downton Abbey" would strike a chord with a youthful American audience, and I wasn't convinced by any of the explanations being given. But when I cozied up in my arm chair, tissue box to one side, to watch my old favorite, Masterpiece Theater, it hit me. There's nothing particularly different or distinguished about "Downton Abbey"; "Masterpiece Theater" is the same as ever. It's the change in the American people's interests and attitudes that have made "Masterpiece Theater Classic" popular again.

"Masterpiece Theater" is, at heart, one story, one long series playing on a handful of themes: the charms and constraints of village life, the difficulty of maintaining human relationships during wartime, and--centrally--the drama of inheritance. This is why I found turning to "Masterpiece Theater" during my cold so reassuring. Once the familiar theme song plays, I know that despite varying settings, periods and manners, I will be treated to the theatrics of primogeniture run amok.

From "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" to "I, Claudius" to today's "Downton Abbey," the core drama is about who inherits. Many of "Masterpiece Theater's" series are drawn from English literature, in which the inheritance plot is a standard storyline. Though there are variations, the inheritance plot usually revolves around an older and younger brother vying to inherit, often leading to violence. In "Downton Abbey", the male heir goes missing in the first episode, throwing the household into a state of anxiety from which it has--to date, at least--not recovered.

There are stock characters in an inheritance plot, which we see in "Downton Abbey." Often there is a schemer, who tries to arrange the inheritance to his or her liking. The Lady Dowager Countess of Grantham fulfills this role nicely, though it rotates to others both upstairs and downstairs. Visting the family are cash-poor relatives who may be eligable to inherit, represented by Matthew Crawley and his mother, Isobel. Finally, we have sympathetic characters who appear ineligible to inherit, which includes all three Grantham daughters, but primarily Lady Mary.

Now many years into a financial depression, the American viewing audience is in a prime position to emphathize with the disinherited. There is growing intergenerational conflict, stemming from disparities in income and expectations for the future, as well as from pressures brought on by multigenerational living arrangements. Americans old and young--but especially young--are concerned about what one generation will leave to another.

The Downton Abbey household presents Americans with a mirror of their own pressing anxieties about inheritance. The winner-take-all dynamics of the American economy are perfectly reflected in the family's struggle to determine who inherits Downton Abbey and all that goes with it. Of course, the show is also a pleasing distraction from the present. I know I'd much rather worry about whether the estate will wind up with Lady Mary than worry about whether there will be any potable water for the next generation of Americans to drink.

Over the last several months I've been playing a lot of role-playing games on my Nintendo DS. For those who don't play video games, a role-playing game usually involves going on an adventure with a party of other people. Often, the game allows you to name those people in your party, or partially name them. You're given a prefix--"Chrono," for example--which you can then personalize by typing a name. Your party would then be filled with people with names like ChronoTeresa, ChronoSybil or ChronoJoe.

From what I've learned talking to other players, it's common to name members of your party after friends and family. The same names wind up being used over and over, with different characters in different video games. It's what I do when I play.

Earlier this year, I was playing an older role-playing game called Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis and I had named a flying hawk man character after my friend Joe. Hawk man Joe was very powerful in battle situations, and as I was playing, I found myself pausing for a moment to think fondly and gratefully about my time spent gaming with hawk man Joe. Then I began to think about all the other "Joe" characters I'd adventured with in video games. All different, yet tied together by their namesake, my real friend, Joe.

It seemed really cool to me that there were these different Joes running around in a digital multiverse. I enjoyed all these layers of memories of times I'd spent with the game version Joes, which were in turn layered on to my feelings of friendship for the real Joe. I felt suffused with positive emotions and camaraderie until I considered a potential downside.

I've known a few people who have fought with friends in dreams and then held a grudge against those same friends in real life. I always thought that behavior was downright crazy. Was I doing something similarly dangerous with the gaming Joes and real Joe?

I found my answer in The Daily Mail, which all reasonable people uphold as a benchmark of normalcy. As reported in this riveting story, researchers have identified something called Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP), which occurs when gamers transfer their "screen experiences into the real world."

The researchers mentioned in the article are mainly concerned with the type of behavior that results from GTP, which in some cases appears to be violent. I was more interested in gamers' attempts to access menus in real-life situations, or other bizarre effects:

Almost all the participants had experienced some type of involuntary thoughts in relation to video games. They thought in the same way as when they were gaming, with half of participants often looking to use something from a video game to resolve a real-life issue. In some cases these thoughts were accompanied by reflexes - such as reaching to click a button on the controller when it wasn't in their hands - while on other occasions gamers visualized their thoughts in the form of game menus.

I have wished for power-ups in my daily life but I don't think I've ever searched for a button to click while walking around town. Now that I think about it, though, I'd be happy to see game menu options such as "Mine Gold," "Flatter," "Throw Fruit" or "Mount Dragon" appear in my daily life.

In September of 2009 I blogged here about a letter I wrote to the President and my Senators about prescription drug costs. That post, called My Big Fat $7,575.00 Annual Prescription Bill, received a good amount of traffic, so I thought I would do a follow up.

When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in March of 2010, it provided some relief for my immediate problem, which was the cost of my prescriptions. This post will look at how the act addressed my problem from a practical perspective, rather than a political perspective. There are many articles that address the politics of the Affordable Care Act, if you want to read about that. I'm focusing on practical issues because, as a patient who depends on drugs every day, that was what I needed to deal with regardless of whether I agreed with the politics behind the act.

As background, my situation as a patient in March 2010 was this: I was self-employed, had two pre-existing conditions that required daily medication, and I could not buy private health insurance at any price. I was paying full price for prescriptions inside the U.S. at an annual cost of $7,575.00 (for more detail on this, see my previous blog post). In addition to my prescriptions, I was paying whatever rate I could get for office visits to see my physicians (I usually received a 10% discount as an uninsured patient).

The Affordable Care Act established the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), a for-pay program that provides insurance to people like myself who have been refused individual private health insurance. The PCIP program is administered either at the state or federal level; it varies by state. California missed the established deadline for implementation of its PCIP program and several months passed before it was up and running. When California finally announced that applications to the program were available, I downloaded the paperwork and filed my application on the first day they were being accepted. Within a month, I had PCIP insurance.

Once my insurance card arrived, I used the information packet that came with it to add up how much I might expect to spend in the coming year on prescription drugs and health care services. Refreshingly, it was a simple matter to tally my drug costs under the PCIP program. There was a $100.00 deductible for brand name drugs, which I would breeze through in the first month with just one prescription. After meeting the deductible, brand drugs had a co-pay of $5.00. All generic drugs also had a co-pay of $5.00.

I was glad the PCIP program offered flat fee co-pays instead of percentage-of-price co-pays for drugs. It is much easier to budget with a flat fee co-pay. It means I don't have to keep track of the retail price of all my drugs, which may increase in price more than once over the course of a year. It also means I don't have to call pharmacies to track down the lowest price available for multiple drugs. Although PCIP does have a $100.00 deductible for brand drugs, I was pleased to see they did not create a higher co-pay for brand drugs.

To find the true cost of my prescriptions, I also had to add the cost of the insurance premiums that bought me that discount. The California PCIP program's insurance rates are based on age and locale. I found my age and location in the rate table and discovered my premium was $371.00 a month. Then I guessed at the services I would need in a year: two specialist visits, a physical, a pap smear, a mammogram and a flu shot. Plus I added in an extra doctor's visit and drug co-pay in case I came down with an infection. Most visits had flat fee co-pays and several fell under the category of preventative care, so there would be no co-pay.

When I added up the year's costs for prescriptions, co-pays on office visits, and premiums, the total was roughly $20.00 less than my previous year's drug costs. Comparing my previous year prescription costs to current year prescription costs plus premiums, my costs were a few hundred dollars lower under the PCIP program.

The bad news was that, overall, my health care costs were going to remain extremely high. The good news was that I was getting a lot more for my money. I now had insurance coverage and could take care of basic medical visits, get recommended preventative care and fill my prescriptions for the cost of what I paid during the previous year for drugs alone.

I worry a lot less now because I have insurance coverage. With insurance, I feel free to attempt to change or lessen my use of a specific medication under a doctor's care. Before, when I had no insurance, I was fearful of trying to switch to a less expensive or different drug in case a bad reaction put me into the emergency room, with costs I would have to bear myself. Less worry and less stress equals more health.

On August 1, the California PCIP implemented a premium rate reduction. My premiums went down from $371 a month to $306 a month. I am very happy the program has been made more affordable, because affordability is a continuing problem with health care, as is the overall fragility of the health care system. But as long as I am still eligible and have the money for premiums, I expect to continue with PCIP.

Over the weekend, the Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend and I went to a car show on the east side of L.A. This particular show was highlighting hot rods, but there were other types of cars on display as well. In particular, we saw a number of classic cars from the 30s. While we walked around the cordoned off streets where the cars were on display, a car-themed soundtrack played over loudspeakers.

I'm not an automobile enthusiast, but I feel connected to car culture from having been brought up in Los Angeles. I've toyed with the idea of buying a vintage car before, but never taken it past the fantasy stage. Practicality tends to win out with me when it comes to transportation. Nonetheless, I admire the way car customizers rebuild and remake vehicles according to their personal vision.

The Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend said to me as we walked around, "There's so much love that goes into these cars." I know it sounds kind of hippy-dippy to say so, but I did feel like I could feel the affection the owners had for their cars and for their community of fellow car lovers. Like many other enthusiast communities, the car customizers appeared to have adopted several causes and were trying to raise money for them while they enjoyed themselves at the show.

Earlier this year, I moved from the west side of Los Angeles to the east side. My intention was to move someplace where I wouldn't have to drive as much. I was tired of dealing with the gridlock on the west side, and rising gas prices also factored into my thinking. Using Walk Score, I was able to evaluate neighborhoods to determine which ones would enable me to walk more and drive less.

Since moving, I have cut down on driving a great deal, and it's improved my quality of life tremendously. This change in my daily habits was on my mind as I viewed the cars on exhibit. And it's not just me that has made a change. Slowly, Los Angeles is developing a public transportation backbone. It's inadequate, yes. But it's far enough along that one can begin to imagine the city as something other than car-dependent.

It's strange to feel nostalgic for something--a car, a lifestyle, a time in history--and at the same time recognize that thing's faults. It's odd to feel love for something you know will never come back. I have great attachment to certain stretches of highway in Los Angeles. Trajectories of speed and scenery that can only be experienced by car. Time and traffic have rewritten those roads, and slowness has erased their magic. I'm choosing to look forward to whatever comes to take their place.

I was perusing the t-shirt offerings over at The Mountain awhile back when I ran across an image that made me pause. It was an image of a werewolf in a typical pose, at the moment of turning. The creature's head was that of a wolf, while the body remained a man's body--though a hairy one. The creature's shirt was in tatters, a sign that the animal self was ascendent.

I wanted a shirt with that image on it, but I wanted the creature to be female. And I realized I'd never seen a female werewolf posed like that, so I did the obvious thing: an image search. The results didn't provide me with exactly what I wanted. The images I found tended to look too much like a woman or too much like a wolf. I was looking for the hybrid state.

While I was clicking around the web, I ran across an article on female werewolves on the website Jezebel. The article mentions an issue I'd considered myself: why weren't there any female Lycans in the Underworld movies? Apparently the female star of the Underworld series, Kate Beckinsale, had answered this question during an interview with MTV.

"Because that could be really horrifying," Beckinsale explained. "Hairy, thuggish women." Well, yes, that's exactly the point. That's why I want to see them.

The Jezebel article also turned me on to Elizabeth M. Clark's college thesis, Hairy, Thuggish Women: Female Werewolves, Gender, and the Hoped-for Monster, a large part of which I read online. Clark analyses monster films with female werewolves, which she calls examples of "the masculine-female-grotesque."

The thesis contains many photos from the films discussed, along with Clark's analysis of those physical aspects of the female werewolf shown on screen. For the most part, the films avoid showing "hairy, thuggish women" either through their shot choices or by showing only creatures that have been fully transformed into wolves. The exceptions Clark notes are worth reading about, though.

Werewolves came to mind again recently while I was reading Wayne Koestenbaum's new book, Humiliation. The book has received mixed reviews but I bought it on the stength of an endorsement from John Waters, which goes a long way in my book. I just started reading it but based on how frequently Liza Minnelli's name has come up in the first chapter I'm prepared to say I like the book.

Koestenbaum writes, "Humiliation--as experience--resembles a fold.[...] The self-abased soul undergoes an inner contortion.[...] Through the action of folding, the outer and inner realms change places.[...] This fold (the self become a seam) is the structure of revulsion."

This description of humiliation as a fold, a contortion, a pulling of the inside outside, made me think of the werewolf's transformation. What Koestenbaum calls "the self become a seam" is that hybrid state where human turns into wolf. This scene of humiliation is also the scene of horror and revulsion we know from so many movies.

In some recent werewolf stories, lycanthropy is equated with disgrace or humilation. In the Harry Potter series for instance, Professor Lupin, a werewolf, feels shame regarding his condition. And in the Underworld series, the Vampires keep the Lycans enslaved for centuries.

How interesting that women, the sex so intimately connected with the state of humiliation, should be held back from being seen as lycanthropes. It would be, I suppose, "really horrifying," to use Beckinsale's words, to see this most debased creature.

Do you know that scene in Westerns where the bridge has given out, but somehow the wagon train must get across the river before nightfall? There's Indians trailing, or bad weather coming, or a doctor on the other side that's needed.

Then someone rides forward on a trusty horse that picks its way across the treacherous river bottom, water rising up to its chest. Others follow and everyone manages to get across the river in time.

I relived that scene in my car at an intersection during the recent Los Angeles rains. My steed made it across.

I have been through two floods. Both times, I was not in Los Angles but in the Hill Country area of Texas, near the banks of the Guadalupe River. The rains were relentless and heavy.

I was a kid back then and, having grown up in Los Angeles, I didn't have much experience with severe weather. My one reference point for flooding was the story of Noah's Ark. After several days of constant downpour, I began to understand how rain could be interpreted as a punishment.

At nighttime, I slept in the top of a bunkbed in a room with a low ceiling. The pounding of the rain sounded both loud and smothering, like thousands of dictionaries being dropped in rapid succession. The noise kept me up at night, staring at the ceiling, worrying about the rising river and imagining water moccasins swimming towards me, mouths open. As the night wore on, the same thought would go through my head again and again, "When will it end?"

While driving in the rain the other day, I saw my first dog-assisted dumpster diver.

In my neighborhood, the alleys are populated with a steady stream of people competing to go through trash dumpsters. I used to think it was kind of cool, like a built-in recycling community. I'd use something, trash it, then someone else would come along and use it.

Sometimes I'd feel bad about the possibility that these dumpster divers might be homeless. But I also knew they could be freegans, or excessively frugal, or simply pursue dumpster diving as a pastime.

Over time, I've come to see dumpster diving as yet another privacy issue. I feel like I can't take a crap these days without ten people combing through it looking for scrap metal. And in Los Angeles, it's clear to me that dumpster diving has become a saturated field. If you are an Angelino that has avoided homelessness thus far, pray you continue, because all the best dumpster spots are taken.

Given this competitive scavenging environment, using a dog to assist in dumpster diving makes perfect sense. The dog I saw the other day was on a leash, except the collar it was attached to was wrapped around the dog's middle like a belt. Dark green trash bags were tucked into the belt in an overlapping manner, forming a skirt that trailed behind the dog prettily. When the dog's owner needed a trash bag to collect stuff in, he would peel one off the dog's skirt.

I watched them for a moment working in the rain together, man and dog huddled under a single umbrella. I hope they found what they were looking for.