Time Travel

At 9 A.M., it looks like sunset. Heavy, orange light streaming in through curtains that seldom look that color. I remember the skies looking like this, the air feeling like this, four years ago. You can look on news station web sites and see specific addresses of homes that have been completely destroyed. I remember looking at those lists last time around. Most of the homes were in Scripps Ranch. The street names sounded like they were supposed to be estates in the French countryside. I remember thinking that you get less sympathy from people when your house burns down and it's built on Moneybags Lane or Millionaire Drive.

My family's home burned down in 1998. Not as part of a big county-wide disaster. Just a house fire. So the governor didn't come bring us blankets, but I do know what it's like to not be able to believe that everything's gone. And also to look back on that experience nearly ten years later and know that it didn't kill us. Maybe it even made us stronger.

So far, my sisters and my parents are all safe. My little sister's neighborhood was evacuated yesterday. She's at my parents' house taking it easy, because school is closed all week. We talked yesterday about how we take it for granted that we live in the part of the country where these things happen. I told her how I had just been talking with our friend Geoffrey and that his brother and sister-in-law had moved to Florida. And while they're not on the Atlantic coast, I was saying that I have difficulty imagining I could ever move to Florida knowing how hurricane-ridden the area has been. And my little sister said, "Yeah, I know we've got fires and earthquakes, but I still say, fuck hurricanes." And that made me laugh.

I realize that this entry was written specifically in reference to another similar event four years ago, but I just referred back to the entry I wrote about THAT occurrence, and I realize that nothing I'm saying today is new. And that I may have said all of it better before. I must just be getting out of practice. All I write these days? Emails about work. Typing my address into online orders, if that counts. Clipped conversations in IM windows. I push the buttons on my phone a lot to play Bejeweled. And if someone was keeping track, the keystrokes might spell something out. It's not that I have less to say. Or maybe it is.

This used to be where I would write what I was thinking, only skeletally interrupted by what I was actually doing. My activities provided the scaffolding for all of the other often unrelated things going on in my head. But now, more often than not, I realize that I'm only prompted to write because I've done something or gone somewhere. And all I say is where I went or what I did. And as I rarely go anywhere or do anything anymore, the entries grow fewer and fewer.

I have been suppressing sentiment for some time now. I learn this lesson over and over. I keep it to myself when something tugs at me. And then at some point, I don't keep it to myself. I utter it aloud. I type it. And the absence of being met halfway is more apparent than the sentiment itself. There is no satisfaction in playing patty cake with the air. All of the satisfaction rests in the two hands coming together and making a clapping sound. The canceling out of equal and opposite forces. Force only has value when resistance measures it. (Note to NASA scientists: That's not an actual physics theorem. Please don't use this "law" when trying to get us to Mars.)

What's this? What's this? What...IS...THIS?

Friday night, I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D at the El Capitan Theater. I didn't know until the movie started that the 11:30 screening was a singalong. I can think of few things more horrifying than being in a movie theater filled with people talking and singing and vocalizing and not being within my rights to tell them to put a sock in it. And the songs in this movie are not all that easy to sing. And I think many people don't realize how few of the lyrics they actually know. And the soliloquys are sometimes speak-sung, so they can't really be sung along with. So SHUT UP, YOU AWFUL AWFUL GOTH PEOPLE! was all I could think for much of the movie. Although it's definitely a film that lends itself to 3-D-ification. And all of this just makes me want to go back to Disneyland. Where I've not been at all this calendar year, despite my ownership of an expensive premium pass.

All Animals Are Audrey

I watched a good bit of Animal Planet over the weekend. There was a Meerkat Manor marathon, during which I saw Flower sustain a fatal cobra bite to the head, and I saw her mate Zaphod have to leave the security of his family to go out on the rove. When Flower died, I thought, "Singalong Nightmare Before Christmas, and now THIS?" It was very sad. And although I realize they are not really very similar at all, meerkats make me think of Audrey. It's in the eyes. And the look of uncertainty always on their faces. Frankly, all animals make me think of Audrey in one way or another. All breeds of dog, certainly. But most other animals, too. I watched a show about a couple who adopted a baby hippo named Jessica, and Jessica's big wet eyeballs were Audrey all over the place to me. And then there was a show called Papa Bear, in which a guy in New Hampshire took in bear cubs who had been abandoned by their mothers and developed these amazing relationships with them and was able to study their behavior in ways that no other researchers ever had. The one bear named Yoda was remarkably affectionate and gentle. She would literally sit down in front of him and flop back on him like they were competing in the luge together. And he would scratch her and let her play with his watch band. It was the most amazing thing. And all of the close-ups on the little bear cubs' faces and later on the faces of the mothers just looked like Audrey to me. Hunters who shouldn't have been hunting in that part of the forest later shot and killed Yoda, and I felt tears sprout out of both of my eyes and thought that I agreed with the man on the show about Jessica the hippo. Viewing a photo of another wild hippo they had called Charlie who had been shot by neighboring farmers, he said that man is the worst animal god made. And I was inclined to agree with him.

When Beulah and I were talking about our love of animals and these shows I had watched, she understood what I was saying. And I told her about some people in the Cedar Fire of four years ago dying in the fire because they couldn't get their horses out, and Beulah scoffed, "Duh. You RIDE them to safety." She's very smart.

Labels: Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:06 PM | Back to Monoblog

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In the tiniest of nutshells

I have been sick since Wednesday.

Beulah, Yen, Laura, and I went to see Of Montreal on Saturday night at the Avalon. David Bowie was there. They covered a song of his in honor of that fact. It was too hot on the balcony. But downstairs was sublime. I wish I hadn't been so sick.

After the concert, we went to the Cat and the Fiddle. Everyone loved their dinners. I had a snakebite for dinner.

Before Beulah went home on Sunday, I made her a pasta sampler featuring four of my sauces and four different varieties of pasta. She entertained me with her food orgasm. (Simon, I'm sorry if the use of the word "orgasm" gets my site banned from your workplace network again. I don't think I've said "jihad," "sniper," or "how to make bombs from simple household supplies" in this entry, so hopefully "orgasm" will slip by.)

In discussing my eating disorder, Beulah said, "For a genius, you sure are stupid."

Beulah looks super pretty in my pictures from the concert.

I told Rob that The Dresden Files is just Charmed without the Brass Plum fashion sensibility. This made Rob laugh.

I had every intention of writing about the President's State of the Union address. The closest I got was to type snarky remarks about it over IM. I guess I could still write about it. I might.

I was too sick to go to an audition today.

Pat Healy is in every episode of every show I watch. Every single one. So is David Starzyk. Those two dudes should totally arm wrestle.

I went to CVS today to buy more cold medicine. Many brands are on sale. Many of the chutes were empty, and the line at the pharmacy was long. I have a feeling I'm not the only one coughing my eyeballs out and going about all feverish.

I would like a high-paying job, please.

The parking at my post office is all marked 20 minutes. But I don't think I've ever gone into that station and waited in line for less than 30. It occurred to me today that if I had a certain kind of autism, this might send me into an episode.

I don't have autism.

I had a dream this morning that Paget Brewster cast me in a play, but on opening night I was totally unprepared and realized we hadn't blocked my scene, I didn't have a costume, I wasn't off book, and my scene partner and I had never been to a dress rehearsal.

Maybe I do have autism.

I just saw a Hallmark commercial that said, "Love happens with the music of Josh Groban." I'm surprised that Hallmark's legal department didn't require some evidence supporting this claim. Also on the subject of commercials, have you seen this one? It actually increases my respect for Kevin Federline a weensy bit.

I just gave Audrey a bath. I'm going to put on a Josh Groban CD and see what happens. Oh, wait. I don't own a Josh Groban CD.

I've made a lot of progress in sorting out my office and its avalanche of paperwork. This is something to crow about.

I'm flat broke, but I don't care. I strut right by with my tail in the air.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:30 PM | Back to Monoblog

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La la la la la. Without a shirt. Without a shirt.

I didn't feel much like sleep the other night. I worked for a while, didn't work for a while, read for a while, poked around on the Internet, thought about burning my apartment to the ground, annoyed my dog. And then I watched The Great Gatsby until five a.m. I didn't really mean to. I put the sleep timer on, but -- as happens with certain films and television programs -- it didn't have the effect of lulling me to sleep, because I kept watching it. I haven't seen it in a long time. And I noticed that I watch it differently now. George Wilson now looks to me like a guy I used to work with. I notice Tom Buchanan's oafishness even more. Daisy seems more annoyingly affected than dreamy. Nick is more Jack McCoy than he could have been when I first saw the film, as he hadn't yet been Jack McCoy back then. I noticed the dancing lesbians more specifically. I paid closer attention to what the caterers were bringing in. I thought how much I almost never feel like champagne is a celebration. And I wondered what that poor dead gull must have smelled like. And I felt sad for it and didn't bother myself with any possible symbolism. Sometimes I watch a movie once and love it and then watch it later and despise it. Sometimes I watch a movie once and decry it to the masses and then watch it later and find myself carried away by it. And I think that every day that goes by I'm seeing things and meeting people and filing things into parts of my brain, and it changes me. And I am not the same person today that I would have been yesterday and certainly not the same person I must have been years ago. And it changes what I like and what I despise. So how can they award these Oscars when everyone watching every movie is seeing it from this very personal place? What about the guy who can't stop thinking how much Jack Nicholson looks like his dad? Or the girl who used to date a guy who used to smile just like Leonardo di Caprio? How do you not pay a different sort of attention when a film is set in your home town but is clearly shot in Vancouver?

And wonder seems to fade with stasis, I noticed. I walked my dog this morning. And that yellow apartment building with the red door didn't do anything for me. And I remember when I first started walking Audrey -- often in the middle of the night -- and I would pass that apartment building and look at that red door, and it would make me think of buildings in Italy, and I could see up into the big portrait window upstairs and the people who lived there had such a lot of empty space. Every time I would go for a walk, I would look at the apartments and think about the lives being lived in them and I would wonder and fascinate and wiggle my toes in my shoes. And I would get back home and want to write it down. But today, I noticed there was nothing. I was walking half-asleep, squinting even behind my sunglasses, waiting for Audrey to get her fill of the various lawns so I could go back home and get on with whatever it is I think I'm missing out on when I'm out walking her. I go out, and I come back in. And I go out and come back in. And nothing much changes. And few of the things I want to do get done. It's hard not to get sad about it. Or to at least not get embarrassed. I am so unproductive and lazy, I doubt I could mow a lawn. Even a small one. I dread appointments, but I also cherish them. For making me have to be somewhere. I hate having to be somewhere, but I can't bear having nowhere to be.

When my dog kisses me, she tilts her head to the side and gets all romantic.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:40 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Cold and hot feel exactly the same at first.

I began writing this in August. And even then, it was really just a transcription of the things I wrote in a plain, brown journal. Mostly notes taken while reading, occasionally ideas of my actual own. Potential titles for future journal entries. Potential kindling for future fires. None of this will mean anything. I promise.

I was dreaming and it was war and there was a monkey.

He's too singularly responsible for my current unhappiness.

It's an impossible amount of time. And yet, there it is.

What is and isn't important begins to blur together.

My body is sore from being told "no."

Apophenia. The spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things.

I am not such a nothing after all, I think. I am not such a nothing.

You have a lot of time on your hands.
Picasso had a lot of time on his hands.
Shut up.

No fair. You changed the outcome by measuring it.

Dream. At N's house for a party. Downloading photos but not talking to her. Then Audrey tried to eat a min pin puppy.

Flipped through a deck of cards and pulled out an Ace of Spades.

"Nothing in life has any business being perfect." King Henry, The Lion in Winter
"Departure is a simple out. You put the left foot down and then the right." Eleanor, The Lion in Winter

Schoziphrenia. Adler. So little personal ballast that he has to suck in an entire other human being to keep from disappearing or flying away. He asked the doctor quietly and with tears in his eyes, "You won't make me disappear, will you?"

The weight of days is dreadful. Which is Camus, I think.

Only angels know unrelieved joy -- or are able to stand it.

He was alive and empty, which is so close to Godhood that it was crazy.

An old woman was squeaking as she walked. Her companion answered a cell phone with the oldest-sounding "Hello" I have ever heard.

That's another thing that sucks about The Wizard of Oz.

A sophisticated and veiled form of rejection.

Thinking begets doubt.

Limitlessness is the cause of all evils.

A prayer is significant but neither true nor false.

The deliberate lie

A triangle laughs

Catching the shadow of shadows

leere Gedankendinge (empty thought things)

reason's need
reason's uncontested rulership in the household of the soul

the powerful sovereignty of the mind

the soundless dialogue of the I with itself

a deliberate withdrawal from appearances

things which are not yet and things which are no more

toward the understanding of things that are always absent, that cannot be remembered because they were never present to sense experience

In order for us to think about somebody, he must be removed from our presence; so long as we are with him we do not think either of him or about him; thinking always implies remembrance; every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.

At times I think, and at times I am.

Take on the color of the dead.

Mnemosyne, Memory, is the mother of the Muses.

Thinking annihilates temporal as well as spatial distances.

Remembrance versus anticipation

Orpheus and Eurydice

Every thought is an after-thought.

A word that signifies both fame and opinion

"You're more than popular. You're pure lowest common denominator."

forever solitary by reason of his excellence

to illuminate an experience which does not appear

This helps to explain, too, why the typical phallic narcissist, the Don Juan character, often takes any object -- ugly or beautiful -- that comes along, with the same unconcern. He does not really take account of it in its total personal qualities.

Dream of Taco Bell with D and M. Dinner with P and Beulah and E and J. Telling jokes and feeling like I was trying too hard. I said that if I had a baby born with a birth defect, I'd probably drown it. P said, scoldingly, "Mary Forrest, you wouldn't." And I said, "Well, I'd want to. But of course I wouldn't. And then thirty-five years later, I'd be sitting there with little Jib Jab." And then Beulah was teasing J, who grabbed her hand and began bending her fingers apart for fun but broke her little finger completely off. And I freaked out and went to get ice and take her to the ER. In the Taco Bell, they kept asking us to leave for a moment and making us stand in the rain. It was actually a Subway. And half my sandwich was empty.

I actually have to be up at A TIME.

"Three" is your answer to every question.

Vitamins stuck in my throat. I washed them down with whiskey.

You're not death. You're just a kid in a suit.

Wonder begets rainbow.

It's a streetlight. But it may as well be the moon.

Dream of Beulah and me. Flying around the world (like in Around the World in 80 Days). Paper fish balloon plane. Hotel in Japan. Flying over the ocean.

Going mad with eloquence

Bad people are not full of regrets.

Absence of the inner accusing dialogue. A lack of conscience.

Between Chuan Chen and a butterfly, there must be some destination.

That episode of Futurama where Fry finds his lost dog makes me so sad. That dog waited his whole life for Fry, and Fry never knew it. It's the saddest, saddest thing.

What is brought into being by action is that which could also be otherwise.

The future is nothing but a consequence of the past.

John Stuart Mill. Our internal conscioiusness tells us that we have a power which the whole outward experience of the human race tells us that we never use.

Rock, water -- would believe they moved of their own will. Spinoza surmised that we act in the illusion of free will because we are conscious of our actions and unconscious of the causes by which these actions are determined.

Descartes. Refuse then to be free, if freedom does not please you.

Every hope carries within itself a fear, and every fear cures itself by turning to the corresponding hope.

Leibniz. Everything that is, looked at from the viewpoint of the whole, is the best.

The futile attempt at willing backward which, if successful, could only end in the annihilation of everything that is.

A change of pajamas.

Nap dream. There was this leviathan. A fish snake. I had this dream before. I had to use a flute to escape it. I lost someone. The fish swallowed the flute. There was a ship. I was in the sea. I was going to die.

My first awareness of Adolf Hitler was by way of Family Feud.

We are your better selves.

I would totally have dated Ray Bolger.

It could have been a very different life for me.

How reckless human courage would be if experienced pain left no memory behind.

A self-evident theory, standing in need of no special reasoning

Augustine. In his youth he had turned to philosophy out of inner wretchedness, and as a man he turned to religion because philosophy had failed him.

"I have become a question for myself."

Anybody who says, "I'd rather not exist than be unhappy," cannot be trusted, since while he is saying it he is still alive.

It is in the nature of the will to be resisted.

The durability of love. Even able to coexist with revulsion.

Deepening of genius.

If I foresaw my future and it held devastation, I would go forward as planned. I have never been one to spare myself where suffering is concerned.

"Our whole life is nothing but a race toward death."

Would have defined us not as mortals but like the Greeks, "natals."

They say that all good things must end someday. There is no surprise in this.

When love loses its restlessness
Neither pursuing an end
Nor afraid of losing it
Doesn't it also lose its flavor altogether
Maybe feeling can only be translated
In the vibrations that radiate off of
Nervous tremblings and fear

He died too young. Too young for a philosopher.

Possession extinguishes desire and delight.

"The bird and the plane are nearly the same."
"Every shoulder has a highway you can cry on."

1st person personification of Oscar: "My Metal Self"

Quantum fissure. Alternate realities. Everything that can happen does.

"One of the first things a child has to do is to learn to abandon ecstasy, to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind."

Cary Grant takes the stairs two at a time.
Tall, dark, and Cary Grant.

Adler describes schizophrenia. So little personal BALLAST that he has to suck in an entire other human being to keep from disappearing or flying away.

the dispassionate quiet of the soul

No one who possesses the true faculty of thinking, and therefore the weakness of words, will ever risk framing thoughts in discourse, let alone fix them in so inflexible a form as that of written letters.

"The internal limit of all thinking...is that the thinker never can say what is most his own...because the spoken word receives its determination from the ineffable."

"The results of philosophy are the uncovering...of bumps that the intellect has got by running its head up against the limits of language.

"But, as I said before, I had no time to be bored; there were my old friends, Logos, Bucephalus, arras, lucubration and so on. Why play chess? Locked up like that for days and nights on end I began to realize that thinking, when it is not masturbative, is lenitive, healing, pleasurable. The thinking that gets you nowhere takes you everywhere; all other thinking is done on tracks and no matter how long the stretch, in the end there is always the depot of the roundhouse. In the end there is always a red lantern which says STOP!" (Miller)

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:40 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Catching Up with Mary and Her Mom

I was watching the election returns with my mother on Tuesday night, and I saw that Jerry Brown had won, and I said, "Yay! Jerry Brown! Yay!" (I wrote a blog decrying Chuck Poochigian's retarded campaign commercial, so I feel slightly responsible.) And my mom said, "Jerry Brown is a crook." And I said, "No, he isn't. What are you talking about? How is he a crook?" And she said, "I don't know. You'll have to come down to San Diego and ask your dad." Apparently, she had once said she thought Jerry Brown did a pretty good job in Oakland, and my dad said, "He's a crook." And she said, "Oh." So I said, "You know, just because you married him doesn't mean that you have to accept all of his political views as gospel." And she shrugged and wondered aloud when Dancing with the Stars would be on.

While we were watching Dancing with the Stars, a commercial for a Nivea body lotion aired. I wasn't even really paying attention and didn't look up at it (I was reading), but I gather that it features a girl smoothing lotion on her legs and a guy later showing up and making out with her. This is what I heard my mom say: "Hm. Her leg is ugly. Short and not good. And he looks kind of gay. He doesn't look good enough to kiss girls. I wouldn't buy the Nivea."

Later, we saw Diane Keaton doing a spot for Loreal skincare. My mom commented on how wrinkly she is, and I said, "She doesn't use that. I'm sure she uses La Prairie. Or some other $200 a jar cream." After a beat, my mom said, "She should use more cream."

No one is immune. This may give you some idea of what amplifies the voice in my head that is always telling me what's wrong with how I look.

Finally, I was sitting on the couch with my mom, and Audrey was between us, and my mom leaned forward to reach for something on the coffee table, and Audrey freaked out and barked and lunged at her. My mom threw both her hands up and said, "Sorry!" I grabbed and scolded Audrey. And I said, "Mom, she looked like she was going to bite your face. You don't need to apologize to her. You should protect yourself." And she said, "No. If she would have tried to bite my face, I would have picked her up and thrown her over the couch." Audrey is a little six-pound thing and would probably have broken two of her legs if thrown in that manner. So that's awesome. When I told Beulah this story, she laughed and laughed. But now that I'm writing it out, it seems less funny.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:51 AM | Back to Monoblog

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The dream is still alive.

This morning, after a late night of applauding comedy, performing comedy, and then drinking more than was necessary, I took Audrey for a walk, feeling still slightly drunk and glad for the cloud cover. When we got to the east end of my block, an adorable little girl who lives on the corner was peeking out her kitchen door. She was wearing what may have been pajamas. She's a little short-haired thing with lovely manners and a seemingly jocular disposition. I've seen her outside with her father or with her nanny. She is a doll. So today, as Audrey and I walked past, she said, "Is that your dog?" I said it was. And she said, "What's her name?" And I said it was Audrey. And she said, "And what's YOUR name?" And I said, "Mary." Then I asked, "And what's your name?" And she had to say it a couple of times before I understood she was telling me her name is Princess Leia. I said that was a lovely name and that I was pleased to meet her. And I was.

Now, I suppose it's possible that her parents actually named her Princess Leia, in which case, it is their persisting awesome I'm proclaiming. But I suspect her name is probably not Princess Leia, making it all the more wonderful that she would want it to be. She can't be more than four or five. That she already has the presence of mind to wish she was able to see Alderaan one last time -- well, I just think that's super. The only thing that might have trounced that would have been for her to say her name was Han Solo. Because, gender oppression aside, that's who everyone wishes they could be.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:44 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Identity theft is so Buddhist.*

So I posted to my MySpace blog last week, because it had been brought to my attention that there was someone calling herself Jessica in New Haven, Connecticut, using pictures of me on her profile and passing them off as her. So I guess it's more appearance theft than identity theft. But it's theft anyway. Ten out of her twleve profile pictures are photos of me. They were all taken in various parts of 2004, and they are all copyrighted. By me.

I wrote to MySpace requesting they get involved. (There hasn't been any response yet, by the way. I know we hear this argument all the time, but honestly, for the amount of money that was paid to purchase MySpace, you'd think by now they would have been able to staff up and start offering some actual customer service. But no.) The way you do that is to send them what's called a "salute." Basically, you have to take a picture of yourself holding a handwritten sign that reads MySpace.com and then your friend ID. You send that to them, and then you send them the URL of the profile that is attempting to pass itself off as you. And theoretically, they swoop in and fix everything.

In a show of passing but pitiable dumbness, I remember having a flash of concern that this Jessica could send them a picture and get them to shut down MY profile. It took me a second or two to realize, "Oh, wait. She can't do that, because she isn't me. So if she were to take a picture of herself holding up this sign, the picture would reveal that she isn't me. Because she isn't. Duh." I shared this lapse with Beulah, and she confessed to having thought the same thing. And she's a school teacher.

I have thought about this situation for the past week, as I've been waiting for MySpace to respond. I suppose there's room to be flattered that someone in need of a fake appearance would choose mine. The profile is not intended to use my image to satisfy anyone's chubby fetish. Jessica is not telling anyone that she -- wearing my face and body -- is some cock-hungry whore or multi-level marketer. I just took issue with the fact that this fake me would say that her musical likes are Enya and Buddhist chants. And that she would make all of the content of her profile about how much she's into Buddhism and helping others, especially children. I was discussing it with my brilliant friend Simon over IM last week, and he said, "You should write, 'Fuck you, Jessica,' on your hand and take a picture. Or how about writing something hurtful about the Dalai Lama on your body, take a nude picture, and email it to all her MySpace friends." I love the idea of getting back at this person by maligning the Dalai Lama. Not that I believe for a moment that she's really a Buddhist. Or that she's really a she for that matter. And what's the point of pretending to be so enthusiastic about Buddhism? I don't think a lot of hot girls are going to be sending nude pictures of themselves to Jessica with a rap like that. And I'm assuming that's the idea. But I'm no psychologist. Is there money to be made in Buddhist evangelism? I'm assuming there isn't, but I haven't really done my homework.

A number of my friends have written to Jessica, as have I. The gist of my message was just, who are you and why are you using pictures of me. My friends may have phrased their queries with more verve. MySpace lets you see when someone has read your message, and I've confirmed that "she" has read mine but just chose not to respond. She didn't accept any of their friend requests either, so no one has been able to post comments to her profile or photos. The one of me with my min pin Audrey that is captioned, "Me and my puppy Tina," is particularly irritating. As is the one of me at Coachella wearing a Duran Duran baseball cap and captioned, "Duran Duran is my band." The one that is captioned "Saturday night" was actually taken in the middle of the day on a Monday. I remember it distinctly, as I was on my way to LACMA to meet a guy for coffee, and it was my friend Angie's birthday. Beulah and I have taken to referring to Audrey as Tina now, just to amuse ourselves. But everyone knows "Tina" is a dumb name for a dog.

It seems that Jessica has not signed on since reading my message, so I assume that she -- like me -- is just waiting for MySpace to summarily pull the plug. I wish there was some hope that the mystery would actually be solved. But I doubt I'll ever find out if this was a prank or something more sinister, if it was executed by someone who actually knows me or just by someone who has been to my web site enough to have collected a few photos they liked. The photos were all pulled from my Roundup page but from a few different sets and from a few different time periods. So that has an element of creepiness to it. Generally, no one gets weirded out when they find out someone likes them. But when they like them enough to have done their homework...that's a horse of a different color.

So I'm in San Diego now. I played the late show and the midnight show at the comedy theater. I was exhausted, but the shows went all right. My eyes are burning, and I am filled with a form of disquiet about a number of things. Tina is curled up sleeping beside me, but when I got home, I realized that she had splattered a few of my parents' carpeted steps with liquid shit. So I spent a half hour or so cleaning that up, much to my dismay. I really do need the help of the Dog Whisperer. As cute as she is, she is a ridiculous handful. But I don't want to apply to be featured on the show, because I don't want the world to make fun of my cluttered apartment.

I've been uploading photos to my Flickr photostream for the past week or so. I have more than 21,000 photos uploaded so far. And there are many, many more to go. That verges on mindblowing. I have taken a gigantic lot of pictures in the past few years. A crazy, inexcusable lot. If only I could focus some of that energy on all the other things I still have to do.

Kerstin and I are trading writing projects. I've got a Channel 101 pilot idea that I think could fly. I've got a friend's screenplay to rewrite, and I've been sitting on that one for ages. I've got a thousand one- or two-sentence ideas that could easily be fleshed out if I would just stop destroying the muscles in my right arm moving pictures and photo sets around on the Flickr web site with my notebook touchpad. My right forearm is noticeably Popeye-ified. And that can't be good.

My plan tomorrow is to wake up at a reasonable hour, maybe go swimming a little bit, then go down to Mission Valley to take executive portraits of my clients, for whom I am designing a fundraising prospectus. Then I will drive back to Los Angeles and hopefully get back in time to perform in a show at Improv Olympic West with Lunch with the Girls. I played my first show with them last week. I don't know that I distinguished myself so terrifically, but I did get to play Teddy Ruxpin in one scene. I only wish I knew more of the phrases Teddy actually said.

Anyway, I'm extraordinarily tired. I even overslept this morning and didn't make it to San Diego in time to sing at a funeral I had agreed to sing at. I'm pretty sure that makes me an awful person. But then I've never tried to pass myself off as anyone else. So maybe it all balances out.

*Beulah Forrest

Labels: Audrey, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:42 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Nothing is awful. Nor is anything awesome.

After a week of sequestration and a night of mistrust, I drove to San Diego this morning to spend some time with my family. It was very family-ish and good. My dad gave me sincere hugs and said he loved me, and he smelled very nice like he always does. Beulah showed me the slide show she made in memory of Tasha, and we cried together over it. Sarah and Beulah and I went swimming, and Audrey came with us, and everyone delighted in what a funny little goofball she is. Especially when riding around on a kickboard. I experimented with my Canon 30D and took extraordinary pleasure in selective focus. And my mom seemed delighted to have her three girls all together in the same room. She taught us to make jiaozi (I'm pretty sure Sarah already knew how). And she congratulated us when the dumplings were pretty and Chinese-looking. And she clucked gently when they weren't. When we ate them, Beulah was in charge of the background music, and she decided to play a lot of Beach Boys songs. Somehow, the topic of my historically non-working digestive system came up. While we were eating. And Beulah delighted in making fun of me by replacing Beach Boys lyrics with words about poop wherever possible. I helped. I'm a good sport, and I know a lot of words. But I couldn't help but wonder why it's okay for us to talk about this at the dinner table when no one in the family seems to be able to stand a photograph of me with my dog's tongue touching my mouth. My mom also minds a great deal when I tease her about her garage sale and estate sale "findings." She showed me an impressive lambswool rug she bought for five dollars, and I said, "Someone probably died on it." And she boiled our handmade jiaozi tonight in a really huge Calphalon pot she got for forty dollars. I said, "I'll bet some old people used to boil their dentures in it. And they're dead now." Those little japes really get under her skin. But sing a Beach Boys song with the bass line replaced with repetition of the word "bowel," and I guess you're fine. Maybe she would have minded if company had been there. Or maybe she was just riding out the high of having been proud of us. I think it really meant something to her that her three daughters were helping her make dumplings. I heard her announcing it to her sister-in-law on the telephone as we were finishing up. And she mentioned wanting to make a tradition of this. I'm for it. I love jiaozi. And I love knowing how to make those perky little dumplings with my own two hands.

Labels: Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:33 AM | Back to Monoblog

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It was so hot today.

Eighty-five degrees in my apartment with all the windows open and both fans on. I am on my third shower.

And for those of you who were expecting something more along the lines of, "How hot was it?":

It was so hot, my dog exhibited considerable lethargy.
It was so hot, I had to mop my brow several times.
It was so hot, I almost turned my computer off and played very little Super Text Twist.

No, really, I've got a few. Real ones.

It was so hot, a cigarette extinguished on one's thigh felt like an ice cube down the pants.
It was so hot, ice cream trucks were all playing The Mexican Hat Dance.
It was so hot, Greek women waxed their bikini lines with candles.

It's snowing on the television right now, and that is making me want to put my hands on something small and defenseless and squeeze until it stops struggling. Fortunately for Audrey, I can't reach her from where I'm sitting.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:42 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Somnolence is not indicated.

An anomalous Saturday. I woke up early. Way early for me on a Saturday. Like seven thirty. At first, it was because I had my windows open, and the ill-mannered children next door were playing basketball. But I realized I wasn't really sleepy. So, I took Audrey for a walk, and it was already hot out. Way hot. I thought about taking her to the park, but I ended up getting dressed and being very, very productive, errand-wise. I went to the post office and to the pharmacy and to The Grove, where I returned things and bought things, and then to Whole Foods, where I was made to feel pretty in my pigtails, and then back to the pharmacy, and then back home, where I walked Audrey again and found that it was even hotter. I have a little bag to carry her around in, but she's not into it much. This morning, I put her in it and carried her around my apartment for a while, hoping she would get used to it. But she's too smart for me. There's always lots of dogs at The Grove, and I always wish I could bring her with me, but I know that as soon as I have a bag to carry, she will be too much to handle.

My prescriptions cost me hundreds of dollars. I expected it. But still. I wish I had health insurance. I wish it made more sense financially to pay for insurance than to just pay for my hospital visits out of pocket. I guess I might be a socialist after all. And it's misleading for me to say, "I guess," before that sentence, as I know I've been a socialist all along.

When I was at Whole Foods, I was asking for a piece of the sliced London Broil they had in the prepared foods case. The fellow who helped me is very patient with me, as I always seem to end up fussing over which piece is the rarest, that being the one I would want. A guy in a cyclist's helmet asked me what kind of meat that was. And I said, "London Broil." It occurred to me later he might have been asking what actual animal it was from. But I guess if you can't recognize beef when you see it, that's your cross to bear. I bought tofu, too, but not for the sake of the ecosystem or anything. I buy what I like. And it seems as if I have to kill at least one moth a day in my apartment. That's plenty cross for me.

No one I called today answered. That's just the way it is sometimes.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:59 PM | Back to Monoblog

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My dog will be the judge of your foley art.

Certain films and certain commercials have the sounds of doorbells ringing and people knocking on doors, and only certain ones fool Audrey into barking. I assume those are the ones that sound the realest. It usually startles me when it happens, and I end up resenting the program that started the ruckus. One of them is the Domino's ding dong audio logo, which plays repeatedly in every one of their commercials. It's easy to be angry with Domino's. Just now it was The Bank Dick on Turner Classic Movies. Duck Soup was on before that, and all that gunfire and shenanigans didn't rouse Audrey a smidge. But W.C. Fields knocking on a door sends her into hysterics. She has little to no opinion about science fiction sound effects or the sounds of someone being murdered. But if someone's at the door and politely notifying you of that fact, look out.

Curiously, both of these movies were playing in a multi-feature over at the New Beverly a year and a half or so ago only a week or two after I first adopted Audrey. Time is marked in mysterious and varied ways.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:24 PM | Back to Monoblog

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As Good As It Was

I drove to San Diego yesterday to perform in some comedy shows. I also stopped over at Sarah's for Paul's birthday party, where some fun was had. We even went to The Lamplighter because Sarah wanted me and Beulah to sing karaoke. And I ended up on the stage alone. I sang "Rosanna." Then I left. And I really think The Lamplighter is a shitty bar. I always have. I always will.

I had to rush over to the comedy theater to play the late show and our monthly midnight show, in which I am allowed to say words more representative of the words that actually come out of my mouth when talking than one might be able to tell from watching the regular PG-13 show. The midnight show is a fun excursion. We don't do the short-form games of which I grow so bored. We do long-formy stuff, and we get to be more creative with edits. And none of this is entertaining to talk about. I had a fun enough time, despite some disappointments. And I drove home in the rain in the wee hours, listening to a very old playlist on my iPod that sent me into a strange reverie. Strange and painless. I was almost trying to force myself to feel nostalgic and wistful. It's like I miss all that heartache. Like I don't know how to want things in the absence of being denied them. This all ended in getting into bed at the hateful hour of five a.m., where I was neither sad nor happy and where I was so tired I couldn't sleep. So I read a Star Trek novel for a while and then forced myself to turn off the light and be quiet and still.

Who cares.

Now, I'm working again. And As Good As It Gets is on the television, and Audrey is my little Verdell, and I can't believe Helen Hunt won an Oscar for this movie. The movie itself is still reasonably enjoyable to watch, but Helen Hunt's performance didn't wow me the first time I saw it, and none of the letters in "wow" are in my feelings about her performance today. I much prefer her in that educational film where she takes PCP and jumps out a window.

Labels: Audrey, NCT, Star Trek

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:45 PM | Back to Monoblog

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The Power of One Eye

My dad's vision is getting better. Prednisone is working on his condition, which was confirmed to be ocular myasthenia after months of Kaiser not scheduling him to see the various physicians he needed to see. I know people say socialized medicine doesn't work. But other than having a staff physician living on site at your family's compound, what does? I was furious every time I learned that my dad was being made to wait months at a time to see someone when one of his eyes wouldn't focus and eventually the other eye's lid began spontaneously shutting. Apparently, things are going so well that he doesn't even have to wear the eye patch anymore. Yeh um wo ha me. That's my homage to little P.K. The Power of One was on while I was getting dressed this morning, and that movie makes me think of my dad and the day we watched it in the living room of the house on Freeport Road while I baked homemade bread from a Paul Prudhomme recipe. I don't think he liked the bread I made, but he liked the movie plenty. And later that night we went to a show that I was playing violin in. I don't remember which one. Probably Crazy for You or The Fiddler on the Roof.

I should note that extended use of prednisone can have unpleasant adverse effects. The two conditions I will never forget the names of since hearing them relayed by a co-worker many years ago are Moon Face and Buffalo Hump. They are real medical conditions, and they are exactly what they sound like. Sometimes I think all maladies should be named in this fashion. Except when I have one of them, in which case the conditions should be named in unintelligible Greek and Latin terms or after flowers.

I've had to work the night through several times this week. So I'm allowing myself a later start than usual. Walking Audrey so close to noon is extra nice. It's gorgeous sunny out. A breeze that smells like the right time of year. Memories of cell phone pictures and unclaimed time stretching out ahead and not minding the sun in my eyes or the smell of the outdoors in my hair. It wasn't so long ago, but it feels so far away that I can't believe it ever happened. Only the pictures prove any of it. And these days, I've been taking so few pictures that there is no promise of future proof. I lack inspiration. And I am brutally aware of it.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:56 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Oh, Comedy

I did some more stand-up tonight. And that went all right.

Prior to that, I went over to Wayne Federman's place to take headshots for him. I sure hope they come out the way he wants them to.

After my show, Jeff and I went to my friend Evan's housewarming party, and once a bunch of other friends arrived, it was a swell time. Somehow, when Jeff was looking at my Disneyland petting zoo photos and Jessie was greeting him, my camera got dropped and the LCD cracked. This does not make me happy. But I suppose everything will work itself out. Even if I have to buy another camera. Again.

There was a weird Guatemalan fellow who crashed the party. He simply would not go away. And no amount of none of us understanding what he wanted helped. It was all very awkward and uncomfortable but makes for a nice enough story now that we are all home and not murdered.

I stayed too late. But I'm also glad I stayed as late as I did. There were people there I wanted to talk to and laugh with, so even after Jeff and Tim and Mindy and Jessie and a number of others had called it a night, I stuck around and tried not to spill anything.

Audrey greeted me with licky dog love, and I delighted in it. When I'm not with her, I miss kissing her smooth head. And when I am with her, I do almost nothing but make up for lost time.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:03 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Annals of the Ungood

I did go to Disneyland yesterday. And it was a good Disneyland day. Audrey was a yelpy, crying baby when I went to collect her at the end of the night. But everyone loves a little dog. There is no end to the cooing and the fawning and the small children pointing their chubby fingers. I adore it.

When I got home, tired and a bit dizzy and wanting nothing more than a hot bath and a book and a nightlong coma, I had work to do. I created copy and comp designs for a product my friend Julie is hoping to win business for. And I did that until five of the clock in the morning. And by the time it was okay for me to be sleeping, I was so exhausted that I couldn't relax. That has happened to me before. I am not a fan of it.

I signed up for a new gym membership on Tuesday, but I've yet to have a chance to go. I want to go right now, but I think I will be pressing myself for time. I have an article to rewrite, and I have workshop tonight.

And then twelve or thirteen hours passed, during which I tried to get down with some Dance Dance Revolution but ended up on a series of frustrating conference calls with one of my clients, showered, went to my workshop, went to a couple of shows after class, met Angie and Julie at Lola's, and then came home and wondered whether it is even possible to pick up where one left off. I think the answer is no. Even if you think you know where you were going.

If only all the movies that should never have been made were Lawrence of Arabia. I would go to the cinema with much greater frequency. Speaking of which, I have heard that the new Woody Allen film is good in the way that Crimes and Misdemeanors was good. If this is so, I will be happy in a way that would embarrass some people. I also have plans to go see the new Albert Brooks film, which I hear is not a work of art, but I've also heard that a goose egg laid by Albert Brooks is a far finer egg than one laid by someone else. Namely Michael Bay. I don't have a crazy awesome film release to look forward to at the moment. I miss the days when I yearned to see things on the nights they opened. The passage of time has taught me that I can see it when it's more convenient. And I hate it when I catch myself in a fit of pragmatism. It's so unbecoming.

If Big Momma's House 2 is the number one movie in America right now, I assume that means that there was an "incident," and there are no other movies playing. And the sad part is, my mom would probably really like that movie.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:19 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Sensory Explosion

Star Trek III and a hot pepper.
"How soon is now."
Pon farr. The seven year itch.
The needs of the many. The needs of the one.
When Kirk's voice catches in his throat as he delivers Spock's eulogy.

I did a bit of stand-up tonight. It was less time than I thought it would be, and it was over before I knew it, but it was not so very painful, and that is something.

I was in workshop in the Andy Dick Theatre at I.O. West the other night and Andy Dick walked in. With Dino Stamatopoulos and some other guy whose name I don't know. We were close to the end, but it was still a weird interruption. Andy offered to "work out" with us. Craig Cackowski maintained a placid silence during the brief but bizarre little episode. It was surreal and awesome.

Yen took me to see Of Montreal at the Ex Plex, and it was wonderful. Afterwards, at Chip Pope's dance party, I was waiting outside, because Yen and her pals were coming to meet me, and I know M Bar is hard to find if you haven't been there before, and Willie Garson -- the guy who played that guy on Sex and the City bummed a cigarette off me. He made a to do about the fancy type of cigarettes I had. They're Dunhill Lights.

Last night, I appeared with the Winchester Preparatory Sketch Academy at the UCB Theatre. I donned a short, dark wig and glasses and a school-girlish outfit to portray one of five Asian girls who were poisoned by lemonade and died in front of the stage in a dogpile. I'm pretty sure my skirt flipped up when I fell over dead. I hope the people in the front row didn't bother to notice my shame.

Bryn and Kerri gave me another box of porn for Christmas. Martín borrowed some of it for his "friend at work." I walked him home with Audrey tonight, and we went inside, because Audrey loves to run on his wall-to-wall carpet. And he put in a disc, which I think was Black on Black 7, and it started with an image of a flag waving in the wind and the words "In memory of 9/11/01" superimposed and then promptly went into the fucking. I laughed myself dizzy.

I like Thai food.

I'm going to play Pac-Man World 2 on my PS2 now. I keep dying in Canyon Country, or whatever it's called. I also like bases ball, Martín. But I think I got it right, and you got it wrong. We can fight it out Dance Dance Revolution-style.

Labels: Audrey, Star Trek

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:21 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Bung Bung Bung

I was making my mom laugh by mimicking a Vietnamese lady singing on the television. That's when I said, "Bung bung bung."

I worked all day. Made coffee to keep myself focused. Stuffed Audrey into my sweatshirt like a papoose to keep her still and to keep me warm. My mom brought me won ton soup.

I went to a birthday party at Tangiers (Happy Birthday, Ryan!) and then to the 101 Coffee Shop for food I didn't need. And on the way home, I saw two big fat raccoons trying to stuff themselves into a storm drain on Highland just north of Wilshire. What must that be like.

My head has felt all swimmy for some time now. At bedtime, it's easiest to blame the drinks I've had and the sleep I haven't. But it's been perpetual. I can't tell if it's the tail end of sick or the lingering of it or the beginning of a new sick or just the way it's going to feel to be me from now on. It's hard to know what normal is. Nothing about me is ever so consistent. And, yes, I drink plenty of water.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:06 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Just a perfect day.

I started the morning out by panicking and thinking I'd left my camera at The Standard. I hadn't. But I didn't confirm that until I'd called Sarah and the hotel and then found it in my car. I was going to charge my battery for a few minutes before Jeff arrived, but then my camera was not in my bag. Disaster. I can't imagine going to Disneyland without a camera. I can't imagine going without at least two. Luckily, I wasn't forced to find out what that would have been like. And truthfully, I have plenty of other cameras I could bring. I was more upset over the prospect of losing all the photos I took the night before and the night before that. And also at the prospect of having to admit that I lose one camera a year in a bar setting.

Jeff arrived with coffee for me, and we headed to Disneyland where the line at the tram pick-up was long, but it was misrepresentative of the population in the park. It's as if everyone who was there showed up at the parking lot at exactly the same time we did. But then no one else came. Making it perfect.

The weather was lovely. We easily got reservations at the Blue Bayou. We never required the use of a Fast Pass. The longest we had to wait for any attraction was twenty minutes for that new Monsters, Inc., thing (which was monumentally disappointing, by the way), and that's just because it was brand new. We just breezed in and out of the things we wanted to see and do. And it was gorgeous and sunny the whole time. And it was the best Disneyland sales pitch I've ever been able to give to someone considering upgrading the passport I just bought them to an annual pass. Well done, Disneyland. We make quite a team.

I bought the photo that was taken of us on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. For some reason, even though I've totally been on that ride before and knew what was coming and even took pictures of myself mid-fall the last time I was on it, I was really sent for a loop this time. I involuntarily screamed words like "shit" even with children nearby. And I found myself pounding on my knees in a weird way, like I was trying to keep myself from freaking out. I was sort of laughing as I was screaming. I wasn't having a panic attack. If anything, I was amused and completely disarmed by how bizarre and uncontrollable my reaction was. Anyway, the picture the Disney cameras took shows me with my hands covering my mouth and Jeff looking at me like we're having a normal conversation. Maybe I've just accidentally shared something that should have been secret. It's not the best thrill ride photo I've ever been in, but it was worth buying if only because it's completely different from any other that has been taken of me. Plus, I have a premium pass now and I get a discount. So the value is inarguable. Once I get my desktop problems squared away and can start conveniently playing with my scanner again, I will post it. But it won't be that big a deal.

While we were in line for that Monsters, Inc., thing, there was a little girl being held by her Spanish-speaking mother, crying in the onomatopoeitic, "Wah! Wah! Wah!" way. It was like she had learned crying from a cartoon made in the forties. She eventually shut up. But not because of anything her mother did. That girl was one of a few notable cases of children making noises as if reading them from the pages of a comic book in which the noises need to be written as words. I wonder what causes that.

Jeff and I even rode the Disneyland Railroad, which I seldom bother to do. That's what's nice about going to Disneyland with someone who doesn't go very often. Even the boring stuff has awesomeness in it. And, of course, I made Jeff go on everything that I love the most. Including my beloved Winnie the Pooh ride. And Soarin' Over California and California Screamin' (I don't remember if they use those apostrophes or not, but it seems like every attraction in Disney's California Adventure is trying to be folksy in that way). It's a Small World was closed, which is a disappointment I don't care for. But that was the only misfire. We got lollipops at the candy store in Critter Country. Jeff learned how good those chocolate-covered pretzels are. I still didn't have any ice cream. And I didn't even look for turkey legs. And in the end, well-placed coffee purchases kept our spirits from flagging. And I never even required the support of the whiskey I was carrying in my purse. I guess not having to wait in line makes it a much less tiring day.

We drove back up to The Standard to meet Sarah and Paul and Arnold. Then we left almost immediately to go to Magnolia, which used to be Bar 66. I went to a party at Bar 66 back in late 2003. I think it was the birthday of my friend Hillary's friend Anna. Or maybe it was Hugo's birthday. I can't remember. I just remember that it was a party, and Hillary was wearing the pink Jem wig she had worn to the Halloween party we had gone to only a week or two earlier. It seemed like a hard rock kind of bar with a hardcore kind of crowd. And there was a patio in the back that people smoked on. A rickety wooden landing atop some uncertain looking stairs. When Sarah gave me the address, I realized I had been there, but I never would have recognized it. Now it's a very fancy-looking bar and restaurant with an outside dining area back there and nearly no evidence of leather pants or studded belts. The food was good and the service was friendly. And Sarah and Paul shared the Mint Chip Ice Cream Sandwich after dinner, and that was something to behold. They wanted to go to Shelter, and I absolutely did not. So we went next door to The Bowery and had a drink, and then we went our separate ways, and Jeff drove me home, where Audrey and I continued our love affair and where I had work to do.

My throat was feeling scratchy, so I heated up some chicken broth. Then I read a few chapters of a Star Trek novel with On Her Majesty's Secret Service on at very low volume. The fact that James Bond falls in love and gets married in that one makes it seem somehow more sad and sentimental to me. It doesn't take much.

I sometimes feel as if I no longer have beautiful things to say. It pains and frustrates me. There was a time when my words might surprise me. There was a time when I might be pleased with the places my typing might take me. But I fall into these phases of list-making and traveloguing, and I wonder what the point of writing is if all one writes is where one goes on a night of the week. I want to write something lovely. Or something clever. Or something funny. But it isn't always as easy as that. I long for the times when it's precisely that easy. But I am in a state of longing for things more often than not.

In the end, I didn't take very many pictures at Disneyland. So many of the pictures I would have taken are pictures I've taken before. I was looking for something different. Something magical. And for a moment, I felt like congratulating myself for exercising standards from time to time. Quality. Quantity. They almost sound the same. And yet.

Oh, it's such a perfect day. I'm glad I spent it with you.

Labels: Audrey, Star Trek

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:50 AM | Back to Monoblog

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In the Pot

Yesterday, before getting gussied up for my New Year's Eve celebrating, I made a large-ish pot of oxtail soup. A favorite in my family and something I find I never get around to making, even when I plan to. My mother makes it from time to time, but whenever I'm around and that happens, I invariably end up eating most of my meals out in commerce, and I never get any of the good stuff. This Christmas, my mom included a pot full of beef tendons, which I love. Make all the faces you want. I eat things some people think are gross. But I'll never ask you to eat them, so unless you plan on having your next meal out of my stomach, you should probably be all right.

Today, after not being able to sleep more than two hours or so on account of a really unbearable sore throat, I watched some television (did you know that How to Draw a Bunny is playing on the Sundance Channel? -- watch it and get inspired, won't you?), cuddled my dog, answered the phone, tried to add photos to a MySpace group with neither success nor satisfaction, and then I decided to heat up the oxtail soup I made and have a bowl of it. My first of the batch. While I was in the kitchen, I remembered that I had also bought some short ribs to add to the soup, but there wasn't room in the pot, so I needed to figure out what to do with them. I essentially made up my own recipe. I pan-seared the short ribs with a little bit of Star bouillon, added them to a sauteuse where I had softened onions and garlic in olive oil, and then made a veal demiglace, combined it with the pan drippings (which I had deglazed with a nice montepulciano d'abruzzo), and covered the whole deal in the sauce, and it is now simmering away on my freshly cleaned stove. I washed all my dishes, finally heated my bowl of soup for the fourth time (I kept heating it and then getting distracted by my kitchen chores and letting it get tepid), and ate it. It was possibly the best I've made. When I tasted the sauce I created for the short ribs, I thought a similar thing. I said to Audrey, "Oh, Audrey. Mommy just made something yummy." She just looked up at me and wiggled around in her pink velour hoody. The only thing she understands is the stuff I put in her mouth.

Thursday night, I had gone to Ralph's with plans to get all the things I needed for several dishes I planned to make, including the oxtail soup. While I was there, I received a mysterious text message asking if I'd brought my club card. But the number that sent me the text was not apparently in my phone list, because I did not know who it was. When I told Martín and Jeff about it on the way to the New Year's Eve party, Jeff suggested that could easily be the beginnings of a plot of a horror movie. When I ran into J. Keith van Straaten, it turned out it had been him. I was just relieved that he hadn't seen what was in my cart. I bought way too much stuff for a lady of my size and roommate situation, and there were chicken gizzards and stuff. So now I will write a horror movie wherein J. Keith van Straaten sends a spooky text message to someone at a Ralph's. Of course, he will have to end up murdering them, otherwise where would be the horror in that? Sorry, J. Keith.

When I got home from the supermarket, I cooked a pan of collard greens with hot links. Then I made Japanese sticky rice with red beans. Then I went to I.O. with Jordon and watched Hong Hong Ding Dong starring my former teacher Marion Oberle (brilliant) and the Main Stage Cage Match, where my pal Evan's group Panties in a Bunch took the honors. By the time I went to bed, I had a bit of a sore throat. By now, I may already be dead.

The party last night was great fun. I got parking free and easy. I stole many kisses. I danced the night away. I took a million photographs. I took a sip of my whiskey when Martín handed it to me, as Jeff cried out to stop me but too late, because it had a cigarette butt in it. Gross. And at the end of it all, Martín, Mindy, and I went to Denny's and waited too long and ordered too much and made fun of the people around us (they so deserved it), and as we were leaving, Mindy and I sat down for a brief interlude with Joe Wagner, who looked to be enjoying a newspaper or a menu. Something flat with words on it. I don't really remember.

I came home to an anxious and loving Audrey and went to bed shortly after arriving, at about five. My sore throat wouldn't let me sleep. I laid there in bed feeling frustrated and miserable and wanted to cry. But now that my throat is not quite as sore, thanks to Tylenol Sore Throat, I can barely remember it and I feel very tough about it. And that's what I hope 2006 holds for me. Only the shortest bout with pain and an even shorter memory of it. And of course also brilliant career success and the trappings of popularity.

With all the cooking and cleaning I've done, I must be avoiding something.

For copies of any of the recipes mentioned today, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Mary Forrest and don't be terribly surprised if it never comes back.

Labels: Audrey, cooking

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:00 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Depth Perception

I wish Beulah and Justin had been able to be with us. But in all other respects, this was a super duper Christmas. I think my dad got more gifts than I've ever seen him get in one sitting. He seemed genuinely dazzled. And my mom cried out in shock and delight upon opening several of her gifts. The kind of thrill and gratitude that transcend concern over cost and necessity. I got way more than I expected or deserved. And I gave a great deal, but it still didn't feel like enough. My mom prepared a delicious prime rib. A couple of nights ago, I had asked what her plans for dessert were, and it seemed she didn't think we needed any. For Christmas? I protested. She said, Fine. And then decided to make her famous Melt in Your Mouth, a chocolatey dessert that is Beulah's favorite. Christmas morning, after scolding me for taking the dog out without putting on a jacket ("You don't have any common sense!"), she burst into my bedroom, where I was still trying to sleep, and yelled, "I made the Melt in Your Mouth. But I don't know why we couldn't just have watermelon!" and then promptly left the room. In response to each of these announcements, I muttered deadpan, "Merry Christmas." In the end, I think everyone was happy she had made her special dessert, and I have a feeling she was happy, too. Although I am also certain she would have been just as content with watermelon.

We sat around the fireplace and amongst the shrapnel of the gift explosion, watching the DVDs my sisters and I arranged to have made of my father's old super 8 film footage. That was our flagship gift to my parents. We watched the film of their wedding and of our family in Italy and in Virginia and Northern California. I don't know if we made it to Guam, but that footage is in there, too. We also watched more of 'Allo 'Allo!, the British sitcom Beulah recently got my dad interested in via DVD gifting. I dozed off a bit, on pillows on the floor with Audrey curled up against me. But only for a split second.

I wrote and sent my Christmas email. I also made a mental note of how many holiday text messages I received this year. A surprising trend. Especially when I took note of the number of message-senders I heard from who had only just finally bought into cellular technology or only just learned how to read and send SMS messages during this calendar year. Big ups to those guys.

Martín and Katie and Francisca came by in the evening, driving all the way out from Valley Center, to exchange gifts and deliver the ham I'd forgotten. It is nice having friends who live really close to you and to have had the foresight to give them copies of your housekey. We sat around and talked for a good bit, and I made them look at Audrey in her adorably ridiculous sweater and bonnet from the day before. Audrey was a good sport about it. She didn't try and bite anyone today. My mom's can method has really worked miracles on her savage behavior. My mom retold the story of the glorious can discovery to our guests. It continues to be priceless as stories go.

Eventually, Audrey and I saw everyone off, and it's been very quiet since. I said good night to my parents, did some work, did some chatting, took a bath, got through a few chapters of the novel I'm reading, wrinkled my nose at how the James Bond marathon turned into a Three Stooges block, and all of a sudden it was four a.m. again.

I still think I despise the holiday season. The span of time and the hubbub that surround the actual holidays. But the holidays themselves are still really rather good. It's still possible that I will have a ghastly New Year's Eve. But I'll cross that rickety bridge when I'm forced to by a pack of sword-wielding Thuggee guards.

Labels: Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:15 AM | Back to Monoblog

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For Boris and Mindy

a chill pill

For Raveonettes and Depeche Mode enthusiasts

a telephoto lens

For the Forrests

excellent lighting

For Beulah

unlimited blackjack

For the Pilgrims

mud in your musket

For Audrey

lap time

For Martín

bottomless mint juleps

For Tim

ha ha ha

For Jeff

art time

For Erin and Jessie

documentation

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:33 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Thank Tank

It was a lovely dinner and a fine day. We watched movies and drank wine and drank bourbon and drank more wine and then dozed on the couch. And it was all very nice. My mother made the finest turkey you have ever seen. And I felt loutish for sitting still and watching her make it. I had Thanksgiving dinner at my home a few years ago. And back when my parents lived in Italy, I used to prepare Thanksgiving on my own nearly every year. I enjoyed it and hated it equally. I think the cleaning up was what I loathed. Especially when I was doing it on my own at 10 P.M. and everyone else was napping elsewher. My mother managed to have everything cleaned up and leftovers in containers well before sundown, however. She is a miracle.

My mother found a method on the radio that seems to be working wonders in quelling Audrey's vicious outbursts. It involves putting twenty pennies in an empty soda pop can and taping the opening closed and then shaking that can whenever the doggie erupts into her barking cacophony. Amazingly, in just one day, Audrey is not barking at everyone who approaches me. Nor is she any longer puncturing parts of my family's hands and feet with sudden toothy lunges. My mother was ecstatic. She said, "I can't believe it. What good advice. It makes me think it's worth it to buy the radio." I love that. That is exactly how my mother's science works, and I love it.

We watched After the Fox, and Beulah and I probably annoyed everyone by saying every important line along in unison. Perhaps I should mount a stage production of that film with a Greek chorus made up of me and Beulah.

After people went home, my dad and I watched Farewell, My Concubine. It is one of his favorite movies. His favorite movies often seem to be epic Chinese tragedies. And I only think that is partly a ploy to charm my mother. He really gets down with the dark shit. I admire that about him. He is half slapstick and half Brecht. And he can watch movies that don't have a word of English in them and still enjoy them. Even when there aren't any subtitles. When we lived in Japan, he looked forward to the New Year's twenty-four-hour broadcast of samurai movies. We recorded them one year. Tape after tape after tape. And there wasn't any translation, nor were there subtitles. But he loved to watch those movies. And I love things that bring pleasure to those I love. It makes things easy for me.

My father has a problem with his eye. For the past few weeks, he has been wearing a black eye patch a la buccaneer. He was experiencing double vision and was only able to see clearly -- albeit without proper depth -- when he covered his left eye. We did not know what could cause such a thing. I shuddered when our amateur diagnostics turned up words like "stroke." But it doesn't appear to have been a stroke. They think it is ocular myasthenia. Not that autoimmune diseases are anything to feel particularly relieved about. The patch doesn't seem to be hindering him much. I sang in church last weekend, and it made my dad cry. Eye patch and all. And then a little old lady came up to me after the service to thank me for singing and she mentioned that she had told my dad the patch was sexy. Her words.

I felt good and tipsy by evening, this Thanksgiving. Beulah and I had just gotten back from a luxurious visit to Las Vegas where I never got a buzz on once. (A tragedy for me.) Nor did I do nearly as well in my gambling pursuits as I did the last time I visited. Nor did I have much in the way of cash to play with. There's always next time, I suppose.

We were about to go around the table and say something we were thankful for. My mother started by saying she was thankful for my dad. Everyone acted as if she was being sarcastic. And then somehow we got sidetracked. Because we never resumed the recitations. I don't even know what I would have said, had it ever come to my turn. This year has been extraordinarily challenging and disappointing for me. So much so that it's difficult to even rely on old adages about looking forward. Year after year, I keep finding myself wishing I had just not bothered. But I can find things to be thankful for if I just narrow the spread of my vision a little. It wasn't the best year ever. But there were nice things. New friends I adore. A lovely little dog who might not bite my friends anymore. Parties I will remember with great fondness. Performances I don't hate. My super family. And I am thankful for how good things are in the lives of others I love. And I am thankful that there is a James Bond marathon on. It's the little things in the end.

Labels: Audrey, Thanksgiving

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:37 AM | Back to Monoblog

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So you think you can love me and leave me to die.

It's midnight and there is a fog on my street that makes it look like my imagined version of Merry Old England. I've been working from the moment I woke up. I haven't even had time to have a shower. Or to go running as I'd planned. I took a short break to make some chicken curry and some peas. And then I got back to work. And I ignored the phone calls from Jessie that would have told me she was coming over to check on me because she was worried about me. Lord love her for caring enough about me to not allow me to self-destruct the way I am prone to. She knocked on my door, and I momentarily considered not answering it. But that's only because I didn't know it was her and didn't fancy a visit from the creepy guy across the street who intends to marry me despite the fact that he will have to kill me first. Fortunately, I took a chance and opened the door, and Jessie came in and sat with me for a while, and listened to me talk (and cry just a little bit) and blow things out of proportion and trivialize them in the same breath. And never once did she let on that she is tired of me or my mountain range of bullshit. And then I heated up a bite-size portion of chicken curry and rice for her, and she said "yum."

So Jessie just left, and I took Audrey out for a walk, and that's when I noticed the fog. It's nearly white outside. And bright. It's the middle of the night, but it looks like early morning. It looks like daytime. Everything is wrong about it.

Yesterday, Sarah and Paul took me to see Robert Wells at the Civic Theatre in San Diego. I would have stayed in San Diego a smidge longer, but I had so much work to do, and switching computers has left me occasionally up the storied waters of Shit Creek. I end up far from home realizing I don't have the software I need or the files I thought were on the hard drive. Without fail. It's hard to plan for things. It's hard to pack for trips. It's hard to be prepared for everything that happens. I, for one, nearly never feel prepared, though I'm certain I give the impression that I've always got it together. And I certainly carry most of the right things in my handbag. But to be truthful, much of the time -- most of the time -- I am at a loss. I feel out of place and uncertain. Nervous, awkward. When Martín and I were at Disneyland last week, I heard it in my voice. The sound of that silly little girl in my voice. The one with nerves all a-jangle. Maybe I don't let my voice take on that cast as often anymore. Maybe it's because I am so seldom in the comfortable bosom of enduring friendship. Instead, I'm so often playing at being this version of me that even I've gotten used to. And I detest playing the role so much that I think I've shut down. And maybe that's why I never want to answer my phone anymore. Maybe that's why I don't know what to say.

In addition to a fine rendition of the beloved Bohemian Rhapsody, the musicians at the Robert Wells concert (who included Ruben Studdard, and he didn't appear to have lost any weight, but he sang like an angel -- a big fat angel) also came out for an encore that was a medley of ABBA hits. Of course, I sang along. The man to my left was wearing a tuxedo. He did not sing along. And he also did not seem to be able to remember to clap on the twos and fours.

I worked all day, through episode after episode of Little House on the Prairie and then Star Treks Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation. They were all episodes I remembered. Even the Little House ones. And I haven't watched that show since childhood. It was the two episodes with Jason Bateman when he and his sister lose their parents and then end up being adopted by the Ingalls family after being temporarily adopted by a really mean family and then by a bear trap. Deep Space Nine is in the season seven portion of its rotation. One of the episodes today was the one where Sobor is disgusted by Kai Winn's carrying on with Anjohl (who is actually Dukat in disguise). Kai Winn sends him away one morning, and he asks what she will be doing, and she says something that isn't "making out with Anjohl," and then Anjohl comes in, ever the lothario, and Sobor says wryly, "I see." I remember how much it made me laugh when I first saw this episode back in its original airing. I laughed again today. And then I thought (wryly) how disappointing it is to have to find all of my pleasure in the memory of it. Among the three Next Generation episodes today was The Inner Light, one of my favorites and the origin of that pretty pretty flute melody that I used to listen to on this CD when I worked at Protein Polymer Technologies. I listened to it over and over. Mostly to that flute theme and then to the music from The Trouble with Tribbles. The days seemed endless back then. I listened to this CD a lot during those days, too. So pretty. All those variations on La Folia. Something I like to play on my violin a lot. I played one of Corelli's variations at the Governor's Mansion in Guam. Later, that governor killed himself. Like a few years later. Not "later that night." I don't think it was my fault, but you never know. Everything seems to find its way back to everything else. At one point I eventually started listening to this CD. Which serves to remind me that there was once a time when I only had a CD player that could play a single disc at a time. And now I have in iPod. And my control of the music I listen to is much more masterful, but all the music I listen to still seems to mean the same thing it used to.

And yet it doesn't. Driving home from San Diego, I played songs that mean certain things to me. Songs that have meant 2002 or that trip to San Francisco or updating my web site in the winter. And I could barely pay attention to them long enough to remember how they used to make me feel. I remember what they used to remind me of. I remember being made to feel things by listening to them. But now, for some reason...well, it all just seems blank now. I seem to have cauterized all of my nerve-endings. I just can't feel a thing.

Cold and hot. Something tingly? Everything is...strange. My measurement devices don't seem to work. I'm even tired of taking pictures.

Nothing really matters. Nothing really matters to me.

Labels: Audrey, Star Trek

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:52 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Old Tricks

I bought McDonald's lunch for my dad. We ate hamburger sandwiches and french fries and shared the ketchup packets and swapped horror stories of our working lives. Audrey dozed on his lap. Sweet snuggly lump. She was a good girl. Then she and I drove back home. I took her walking, unloaded the car, applied the mascara I hadn't yet bothered with, and fussed with my hair a little before going to Room 5 with Martín. The show was much fun. I saw many people I like, and I showed them the face my mom made when she saw my hair color. I met Mindy and Tim at Swingers and dipped my french fries in fried eggs. Then I came home and caught up and began sorting through photographs and responding to IMs, and all of a sudden it was four o'clock in the morning. And then I read through old things I've written, and suddenly it was five. Technicolor five a.m.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:56 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Sometimes headaches aren't hangovers.

I put out a fire in my kitchen yesterday with a fire extinguisher. Such excitement. It started like this.

I wanted to scan some photos. And my scanner bed seemed a bit dusty and smudgy, so I went looking for my Windex, and in the process discovered that a bottle of Clorox in my utility closet was leaking. I had to clean that mess up and dispose of all of the bottles of cleansing products that had been corroded. And that got me on a clean-everything-up kick. So I was in the kitchen washing dishes, and I heard a loud bang and turned around to find that there were flames shooting out from under my stove. I cursed for a bit, and then realized there was no point in talking about it. I needed to put it out. I have a fire extinguisher that my landlord provided when I first moved in. But it's in a cardboard box, and when I went and opened that box, I realized I had to screw on the hose and release the valve lock, and all the while, my stove was on fire. With one little squirt from the fire extinguisher, the fire was out. But I had to put on a surgical mask to clean up the mess. The fumes and particulates in the air were acrid and sour.

I cleaned everything up and went to wash my hands. The bottle of antibacterial hand wash I squeezed cracked in half right in my hands and squirted all over the coffee maker and the counter. It's old. I had it when I moved here. The plastic is brittle. So that was another mess for me to clean up.

I had to do that script reading for Bryn, and when I came home, I could smell the funk of the fire and what smelled like gas, but I wasn't sure if that's what it was. I -- brilliantly -- went into the kitchen and lit things to see if there was a gas leak. I'm a genius.

This morning, when I woke up, the gas smell was very pronounced. So I called the gas company and had a technician come out. I guess the fire extinguisher had put out a couple of the pilots, and they were just leaking gas all night. He fixed everything up and put my mind at ease. And now at least I have an explanation for why I have such a lousy headache and sore, red eyes.

It's been cold and rainy these past few days. It reminds me of this time last year. It's hard to believe it's been a year. Hard to believe I've had Audrey this long. That I've begun jobs and ended them. That I've changed my hair so many times. That I've gotten a different car, another computer, another camera. I just feel like it all happens so fast, and I pay so little attention to any of it. And yet, look at me -- I pay more attention than anyone. What must it be like for other people? Do they even know it's 2005? And that it's almost over? What's the point anyway. I guess I could have been blown up last night. There was enough gas to be concerned. And then there would just be the shards of all these unfinished projects and all these unfleshed-out ideas. All these unscanned photographs.

Well, that's something I can correct.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:57 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Secret Whiskey

I was at the office until almost eleven tonight. We were making sure the Bon Jovi concert went off all right. I was writing copy, watching video feeds, researching setlist entries. I was trying to keep Audrey from snarling at people. Taking cigarette breaks. Waiting around. I was wishing I was elsewhere. Wanting to listen to my own music. Wanting to be wearing something different. Tired of how long the days have gotten.

Yesterday, I went to Disneyland. AGAIN. This time with Mindy and Tim. It was Mindy's birthday last week, and we being annual passholders and all -- the timing seemed right. It was a lovely day for it. I came home and didn't bother to watch the Emmys. Instead, I watched Rome, whose opening titles I detest but whose story and subject matter are growing on me.

The night before, I went to the Edendale Grill for the birthday celebrations of Blaine Capatch and the lovely Poubelle Twins. Blaine and Vera also announced their recent Vegas wedding, and that was a grand and lovely surprise. I'm awfully happy for them.

And the night before was Mindy's proper birthday party, a karaoke extravaganza at the Orchid Lounge, where the drinks are too expensive and the playlist too light on my singalong favorites, but where the company was just super and my camera was put to great use.

I would track back through all the days of the preceding week, but I am beginning to forget the things I did and the places I went. I know I went to dinner at Katana with Sarah and her charming new beau. And I know I made small talk with a guy at the bar at the Sunset Marquis and wondered why people ever make small talk. In my case, it was because I accidentally left my phone in my car when I delivered it into the care of the valet, and that meant I couldn't sit there and play Bejeweled. Much of the rest is a swimming mess of work malaise. The kind that bealeaguers the spirit and causes one to take stock of all the deadlines one has let slip past.

Tonight, driving home, rain sprinkled against my windshield, and when I took Audrey out, there was that smell of asphalt just barely wet. I wondered momentarily if any of this will persist in my memory. Or if any of it will matter.

And then I walked inside and wanted to write.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:14 PM | Back to Monoblog

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In the hopes I can spell out my name

I was running early Friday morning. Listening to my usual line-up of hip hop classics with the occasional Wham! song mixed in. My running mixes always get me thinking. Usually reminiscing. Often wishing I was carrying something to write with. But I would hate to save sweaty swatches of paper for future transcription. Because I'd never be able to throw them away.

So it was occurring to me as I was listening to the Notorious B.I.G. laying down gangsta truths that language evolves now as a means of evading censorship. And maybe because of science to some degree. Whereas it used to evolve through poetry and metaphor. And maybe because of more advanced respiratory health. Words get made up now to make it possible to say things you aren't actually allowed to say. And there is a bit of beauty to that. The stealth of language. Secret messages. Hushed whispers. Under the radar. It's nearly as intriguing to wonder if what you're saying is even being heard. A message in a bottle takes on a fantasy life. Whether it is ever retrieved. Whether it is smashed to bits, committing its glass parts back to the sand.

And then I saw what looked like a guy walking a rat.

But it was just an aptly shaped piece of paper floating along the sidewalk in front of him. Many many tricks of the eye when running. Even when it's not hot out. You see things in passing. In a car, you don't see them at all. But on foot, you see just enough to get a misguided impression of them. And, if you're at all committed to getting where you're going, you're still unable to stop and figure it out.

On Memorial Day Weekend a few years ago, I took a couple of my cameras with me and walked the route I usually run. I wanted to photograph the many things I thought of photographing when I was running. Every now and then, you have to make a concerted effort to solve these little problems you create for yourself. It mixes things up a little. And I like to think that is the way to not die right away.

I used to think of all sorts of things to write while running. And before I started this most recent employment adventure, I would come back and make the time to sit down and type them down, sweaty fingers and all. Not so anymore. I'm lucky if I remember to make a note to myself before dashing into the shower and rushing off to work. The writing gets away from me. And it's a shame. Because it's one of the staples of my toleration. Its absence is an ulcer waiting to happen.

The week before last, we celebrated my sister and my dad's birthdays, as well as Justin's, Tasha's, and Audrey's. I don't know when Audrey was actually born, but August 19 is the anniversary of her coming to me. And I commemorate that gladly. Especially when I'm getting my daily dose of sleepy dog love. We were having a lovely lunch out by the pool. I was not feeling so super great. I sang in church in the morning and was tired. I took Audrey for a walk around the pool, and I heard my mom say, "Mary looks like a postcard." In my party dress with my little dog and my black heart. I'm sure I looked like a postcard of some kind.

Stan Lee was in our offices a few days back. I didn't say hello. I peered up over the cube tops, but I didn't make a spectacle of myself. I wouldn't really have known what to say anyway. I'm weird that way.

I bought heirloom tomatoes. They were pretty enough to eat.

Everyone loves wasabi peanuts. It's a good thing I have so many of them.

I made so many things for you. For the you that is no more. The you that never was. The idea of you. How do you give a gift to an idea. You don't. You save it. You put it away. You hope you don't have to look at it that often. Otherwise it reminds you that you fall in love with ideas. And you're too smart to be so stupid. I made so many things about you. And when I started making them about me instead, I found that the themes were all things I despised. I'm no good for me.

I like running. Until I don't anymore.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:59 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Don't wait for the translation.

So, my mom finally browbeat me into letting her try out that dog translator device she bought. We were sitting by the pool, after a delightful lunch of barbecued meats and fancy cupcakes on Father's Day, and she was talking about how obnoxious Audrey becomes when I'm around. It's true. She spent two weeks with my parents while I was in New York and starting my new job, and she was apparently quite nice to them. And then I come around, and she turns into a little monster again. So Sarah and my mom put the batteries in the thing, and I attached it to Audrey's collar. The device transmits to a handheld walkie-talkie-looking receiver that is supposed to tell you what your dog is "really" saying. And when my mom first pitched it to me, I rolled my eyes and assured her that it would not reveal any of the nuance she was probably aspiring to. On the outer packaging, the word "Bow-lingual" appears. So you see.

Now, I have to be honest. When Sarah started programming the thing, it wanted to know Audrey's name and what breed of dog she is and a number of other details that made me wonder if maybe this thing might actually be legit. But then my mom began antagonizing Audrey in an attempt to get her to start barking, and when Audrey barked -- viciously -- the receiver said, "I want to see the world!" And a little smiley dog face appeared. Then, when Audrey got so violent in her barking that she unintentionally bit my arm (P.S. It hurt like a son of a gun.), Sarah laughed and announced that it said, "I'm happy!" Touché, pet marketing industry. Touché.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:10 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Up. And also at them.

So that's it then. Two weeks of having to be up for morning meetings and apparently I get up early on my own.

I drove down to San Diego last night, tired when I began the drive and anticipating more of the same. I ducked into a liquor store before stopping by the comedy theater, so I was armed with sugar-free Red Bull and the small (but not the smallest) bottle of Bushmill's. I watched the second half of the second show and then went to C.J.'s with Krissy and Dorian and David and Janet, and we stood outside, smoking and talking until the bartender came to the window nearest me and asked me wanly to let everyone outside know it was last call. I did. And a discussion ensued with a guy who was probably trying to be clever. There were a lot of moments when I was spinning yarns and I noticed that strangers standing near us had positioned themselves as if they were in our party. Peripheral vision powered up, I could see their facial expressions registering the appropriate amusement or horror or curiosity or disbelief, but I wondered if it felt weird for them to be standing there listening to me talk about my mom without ever knowing who I was or why any of it mattered. No one really tried to make friends. Rather they stood there and acted as if they already had. Only skipping that important step of actually doing it.

I stayed out last night until C.J.'s was nearly closed. Then I drove the twenty-some miles back to my parents' house and reunited with Audrey, after having not seen her for two weeks. It was sweet to say the least. I got ready for bed and found that I couldn't get onto my parents' wireless network, so I turned in a bit earlier than blogging and messaging might normally have had me do. But still. I was not drifting off until at least three or so. And there I was, up before eight. Surprised to see that my parents hadn't yet left for church. For the many weekends I have come to visit here and stayed out till all hours with my compatriots, I have never been voluntarily awake before they left for church. Unless I had not yet gone to sleep. I'm a little disappointed. I don't like it when things fuck with my clock. I always assume I should be out of the reach of such things.

It's a beautiful day in San Diego. A beautiful day to be the daughter of my father.

Labels: Audrey, Krissy, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:07 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Delirium

It's hot outside. Beautiful and sunny and hot. I was walking Audrey and thinking about the heat and thinking about how a mirage is really just what happens when it's so hot that light reflected off the sand in the desert looks as if it might be a bit of water. It can happen on asphalt, too. Anything that glints a bit. It happens when I drive to Las Vegas. It happens on the streets of Los Angeles. But for anyone who grew up watching Looney Tunes, a mirage is the illusion of an actual oasis in the middle of the desert. An hallucination brought on by the heat and dehydration and the need for something to be humorous in the cartoon. In a Looney Tunes mirage, there are lush, verdant groves of un-Saharan tropical fruit trees and ladies in sarongs and waiters in fezzes and grand pools of cool water which, when the protagonist goes for a dip, become apparent to us to be just sand, and there our hero sits, splashing around in sand and looking the fool.

I don't think I actually came to understand the real meaning of the word "mirage" until I was a teenager. And habitually, I still sort of imagine the palm-fronded oasis when I hear it said. It's the place you would go if you could at that moment. The place that has everything you most want, even if it clashes with the latitude you are actually in. It's a glimpse of the heaven you would fashion for yourself, because some part of you knows you are about to succumb to the elements, and you might as well go out happy. I can already picture what my mirage would look like. I know what faces I would see there. It would be like that scene in Titanic when Rose finally snuffs it and she returns to the ship to see everyone in their undrowned finery. All the faces you love are there. All the people you've lost. The ones who have fallen away for whatever reason. Everything that is out of reach. And I suppose if I was dying because of the heat, I might also want a great swimming pool. Because I love the way it feels to be in the water. Even though I am delicate enough that I sometimes get seasick on a kickboard. I love fireplaces, too, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was one of those. And probably some kind of steak dinner. And a book of all my photographs. And a bed with thousand thread count sheets on it. And music that everyone likes and no one thinks is gay. My mirage is beginning to sound a good deal like my actual apartment. Only less cluttered.

The heat troubles me. It makes it hard for me to sleep and hard for me to rouse. It makes my head heavy. I dream a lot. Or I lie still and think a lot. I watch the clock. I get restless. Something about the way the world smells when it's warm out reminds me of other summers. Only the ones I've spent here, though. It's a very specific recall. My skin. The hot street. The thirsty grass. Maybe a hint of that Cuban place down the street. I walked in this before. And returning home to the shade was always a relief.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:27 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Threading the Spindle

For some reason, my journal entries have felt somewhat chore-like this past week or so. I let so many things slip through the cracks. Stories I don't bother to tell. I hear myself speaking them to the people I know and run into on a regular basis, and I lose my zest for making them permanent.

For instance, last week, I drove to Claremont to see a dinner theater matinee performance of A Chorus Line with my dad, who had bought tickets for himself and my mother only to later find that my mother was going to be out of town. So I drove fifty miles and joined him and this church group of older folks. They call themselves "55 Plus," but, let's face it, I'm closer to 55 than most of these people. "55 Plus Thirty" might be a better name. Anyway, when my father said it was going to be a church group and also that it was going to be A Chorus Line, I said, "Are you sure? Because you know there are some mature themes in that show." And he sort of shrugged it off. But sure enough, long before the number "Tits and Ass" even came up in the program, the pastor had excused himself out to the courtyard and apparently had no intention of coming back for the rest of the show. The fellow who organized this affair came back at intermission and told everyone that they were going to leave. And I was surprised to see my dad decide to leave with all of them, ditching me there, fifty miles from home and only halfway through a show I didn't really want to see so urgently in the first place. The people I told this story to heard me say things like, "Christians can be so immature," and make my case about the strange elitism they use to condemn all things secular. I talked about the idea of their being fishers of men, but apparently only of men who never talk about the unwanted erections they used to get in high school. My father is a right grown-up, and I don't think he would have left had he not been pressured to by all those cranky old skinbags. He even leaned over at one point and told me that one of the women on stage was really good. Clearly he can handle a little language, which is all there really was. I got into a frustrating debate with my Uncle Virgil about the content of the show. He threw around generalities that implied that the creators of this show put smut in it to make more money. And I had to object that I can't imagine paying a premium to hear the word "bullshit" said in a crowded room. I mean, if they put some horsefucking up there or something, then maybe. But mention of gonorrhea is no great shakes in my book. And he started telling me about how a show like this would never be done in a town called Branson. And it only got more inane from there. My dad even chimed in and supported me at one point when I was trying to say that the language and content are in there because of a desire to faithfully represent the community in which this show is taking place. Much like one might expect a play about the Navy -- and not Anchors Aweigh -- to have some language in it. And possibly horsefucking, as well.

I think I was going to call the blog entry I planned to write One Singular Sensation: Outrage. But I never got around to writing it. Anyway, bad as I felt about the cast coming back for Act Two and seeing this one table right down front empty of its former thirty occupants, I ended up leaving at intermission, too, because I decided I might as well beat the traffic back to Los Angeles, whence I immediately left for San Diego to drop Audrey off before my birthday weekend. Then I went and had some drinks, and I ended up driving back to Los Angeles at about three a.m. All told, I put about 350 miles on the car I am borrowing from my parents in one day. And I think I am still a bit tired from it.

That same day, I made a note that I've never been kicked in the yarbles, but I have fallen hard on the cross bar of a ten speed. I don't remember why I wanted to remember that fact. But I remember that it happened when I was in grade school and that there was actually some bruising.

I also went to see House of Wax last week, believe it or not. And it was really far less good than I could have ever imagined. Less good than House of a Thousand Corpses. Seriously, less good than that. And Paris Hilton gave an infuriatingly bad performance. Not that anyone else in the movie was particularly convincing or likeable. But Paris Hilton can't even convince you that something smells bad. And I'm not joking about that at all.

Tonight, I went to see Revenge of the Sith at The Arclight with Wayne Federman and Derek Hughes and Martín. I actually had a great time. I laughed at parts of the movie that were not meant to be funny. And I would look over at Martín from time to time as if to say, "What the...?" And he would nod in concurrence. He had already seen it twice before tonight. Which I appreciated, because there were a couple of times when I needed someone to tell me what had just happened that I couldn't discern with my logical brain. I don't want to write a lengthy review about it. I was made uncomfortable by the repeated use of the word "younglings." I was ever so disappointed in the Wookiee "battle" scenes, which had been far overhyped in geek discussion circles when the teasers first came out. And -- this will sound really awful of me -- but Peter Mayhew is too fat to play Chewbacca anymore. Unless we are to believe that twenty years later his metabolism finally hits its stride. There were a lot of battle scenes that reminded me perhaps too much of Starship Troopers. Or droids that reminded me of the Mondoshawan. Or of Captain Eo. And I tire of the trend in action films today for the combat to be so fast-paced that you can't see a single move distinctly from anything else that is happening. The lightsaber fighting looked like colorful windmills or maybe some sort of glowstick nunchaku thing at Burning Man. The art and elegance of swordfighting is utterly lost in them. When I was at the bar before the movie started, a greasy-haired youngling with one of those plastic, retractable lightsabers said this to his father, "Dad, I have a question. Do you think those lightsabers are real?" He was referring to something he had seen someone wielding outside the theater. And I found it both sweet and sad to overhear him ask, because it's great that children want so much to believe but he was clearly too advanced in years to be that naive.

But, really, in the gestalt, I enjoyed watching the movie. It was fun. And I didn't have anything at all riding on it being more than that. And my most stalwart advice for enjoying the movie in a zen sort of way is (a) have a cocktail or two before and/or during the screening and (b) don't let your brain start thinking about how good it could have been. I think the biggest letdown in all three of these films has been how obvious it seems to nearly any eye that the problems could so easily have been fixed. And if you don't lose yourself in the frustration of that idea, you can still watch it and be okay and not busy your brain with cutting dialogue from scene to scene or reworking premises when they make no kind of human sense. That's the way to play it, if you ask me. There is forgiveness in forgetting and forgetting in forgiving. And Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor both have a surprising number of growths on their faces.

Martín and I agreed that the moments when foreshadowing of continuity showed up were the greatest pay-offs for us personally. It satisfies something of the geek in you (read: "me") to hear names or scenarios mentioned that you know will be coming into play in the following episodes or to see the two suns of Tattoine and that weird little igloo house. And I am still a great fan of the music. That callback to "The Duel of the Fates" was pretty nice. I remember hearing John Williams conducting the L.A. Philharmonic in a performance of that at the Hollywood Bowl back in 1999. It's hard to believe this second trilogy is already that time-spanning. My, but how easy it is to throw a huge chunk of your life away on stories and stuff.

I haven't been feeling so hot this week. My vim is at a record low. Anxiety begets anxiety. Staying up all night makes it hard to sleep. I went to a few comedy shows early in the week and fulfilled my typical food to drink ratio for a night out, meaning I ate nothing at all and drank a bit more than that. I went to the Joe Jackson/Todd Rundgren concert in San Diego and stayed out until dawn playing cards and drinking and generally disregarding the fact that I had to drive back to L.A. the next morning. Sometimes, I expect to wake up in the morning and see that I've suddenly aged a huge number of years. Like the dude who chooses poorly in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I should take some vitamins. I don't have any desire to see what the bones under my facemeat look like.

Labels: Audrey, NCT, photos, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:58 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Human nature. Canine corollary.

Audrey was so happy to see me when I arrived at my parents' house on Wednesday. She was jumping up in the air and wiggling around and wiggling while jumping in the air. She reminded me of the heyday of David Lee Roth. I took her out for a walk, and she just kept jumping up and wanting to be held and yipping and yelping and lolling her little tongue. She sure is nuts about me all of a sudden. This is the longest she's been without me since I got her last summer, and she loves me more than ever apparently. Maybe she had to fear losing me to realize I was so awfully great. Maybe she had to live in the absence of me for a week or so, eventually coming to believe that I might never be coming back, before she realized how awesomely well I treat her. Maybe. If so, she's practically a person. And that's something I've suspected all along.

I know it's sort of old hat theory-wise, but it's really true. No one ever seems to like you very much when they can see you every day and have access to your attention and affection. Even when they really, really like you, they can't help but take you for granted when they get everything they want from you and all the time. This really jostles any notions I might have had about how real and meaningful relationships can ever be sustained. I guess at some point you have to matriculate out of one thing into another. But then maybe you just both have to keep mum about the fact that anything has changed. You both have to pretend it's just as fancy and excellent as maybe you thought it was when it first kicked off. And you have to block it out of your mind that things settling into normalcy is, by design, less exciting than the fever pitch of the early giddy stages of crush and blush and fluster. You have to tell yourself it's better because it's more grown-up. More evolved. What separates us from the beasts. And you have to outwardly look down on other people who think being single is so great. Perhaps. But let's not forget that this is all emanating from an observation I made about my dog.

Yeah, yeah. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. You only want what you can't have. Don't know what you've got until it's gone (that's a Cinderella reference, yo). Popular culture makes my case for me. And if all of this is true, I suppose it only makes sense that you can only really be deeply in love with anyone when you're sitting there in a room by yourself tearfully reviewing the pictures you have of that one barbecue you went to together that weekend before it all turned to shit. For all intents and purposes, Valentine's Day should be a night of quiet, solo reflection and contemplations of suicide. And I guess, for a lot of people, that's exactly what it is. Wow, the more I think about this, the more it sounds like science!

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:06 PM | Back to Monoblog

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The Eve of the End

A lot of my friends with various industry connections have already seen Episode III. Cast and crew screenings and the like, filling their lucky calendars while I gather up the scraps of IM and text message they send, assuring me that I will be leveled by Palpatine (which I fully expect to be the case) and that I will be able to love the movie, even though there are parts of it that are shit. I was supposed to go see a midnight screening at the IMAX theater in Valencia tomorrow night, but I am holding off. I bought tickets a while back to one of the Arclight's Friday screenings, and I have learnt the hard way on a number of occasions that I might not actually want to see a movie twice in the same week and will end up either resenting or wasting the tickets I've already got. Also, I am being taken to see Joe Jackson on Wednesday night by my bartender friend Jeff, and that might be a good time. Piggybacked on the necessity of driving down to San Diego to pick up Audrey, who has been living with my parents for five days now and will probably be fat as a tick when I get her back. We've never been apart for this long. And I have to admit that I miss her enormously but that I also cherish the ability to wake up and not immediately have to leave the house to walk her and pick up her leavings with a little plastic bag. Plus, there's a guy that lives across the street from me who always manages to pop out his front door and accost me with overly familiar questions as soon as I leave the house. He's assured me that he's perfect for me and that my parents would be proud to have him as a son-in-law. But I'm pretty sure he's wrong about both of these things. He makes me wish I could be invisible from time to time.

Anyway, so Star Wars, right? Many of my friends will be watching midnight screenings tomorrow, and I envy them in a way. When the special edition re-releases came out, I queued up hours in advance for each of them and watched them on the big screen for the first time ever. And when Episode I finally occurred, I waited in line for twelve hours in a shopping mall with friends, taking turns to go shopping and get refreshments. And by the time midnight came around, we were tired but excited. I was just talking with Martín this weekend about how disrespectful some of the cinema-goers were at the screening of A New Hope, and he agreed and countered with his recollection of how comparatively respectful the audience at The Phantom Menace was. I hypothesized it might have been that they were too exhausted by the weight of their costumery to make much noise.

I don't know what to expect from this week's screenings. Will people be reverent? Wry? Hopeful? Cynical? Will someone yell out a sarcastic exclamation during a moment of relative quiet? Frankly, the product marketing that goes along with this film's release doesn't do much to encourage me about the respect people will have for the franchise. Darth Dew-flavored Slurpees? M&Ms insisting they won't go to "the Dark Side" and then changing their minds and agreeing to be made of dark chocolate before following in Captain Needa's well-asphyxiated footsteps. And what about that creepy face-off between Darth Vader and the Burger King mask? These commercial spots hardly present an attitude of reverence. I lived overseas and wasn't able to watch a lot of television when the original films were being released, so I don't know. Maybe the product tie-ins were just as weenie back then, too. I know they made C-3POs (the breakfast cereal) and stuff. It's not like they were treating it like a religion. Maybe it just seems weirder and more blasphemous now because so much of the character marketing centers around Vader, and maybe before he was the black hat, so kids were more inclined to buy things that were promoted on more lovable faces. I don't know. This is pure conjecture.

I can also offer some strong-ish opinions about the disappointment so many have felt in the continuation of the Star Wars legacy. I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as fanboy overenthusiasm that landed wrong. It's true that people were sorely disappointed in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones because they had banked so many youth-spanning hopes on the revival of this story arc and the promise of it somehow reconnecting them with a hero's journey that had once packed their boyhood minds with dreams of valor and redemption. But I don't think it's fair to say that people were bummed only because the pedestal was too high. Truly, those first two prequels were pretty awful. I maintain that if you just sit and listen to the dialogue in Attack of the Clones, not bothering to look up at the breathtaking digital landscapes, you won't be able to bear it for long. You'll beg for a chance to reread Silas Marner instead. It's bad. Empirically. Badly written. Badly acted in places. Implausible and plodding. The redeeming factors in both of those movies is that Star Wars films still have some of the best music ever, and George Lucas sure knows how to make fake stuff look real. And that's not nothing. But I don't think you can -- even with the addition of time and perspective -- assess these films and say that the world overreacted when they gave them the raspberries. They're just not nearly as fun to watch as the other films, even if you only want jaunty entertainment out of them and not an elevated sense of the importance and meaning of the universe. I think I can speak to this with candor and accuracy. When The Phantom Menace came out, I didn't have that much riding on it. I loved Star Wars, but I really hadn't gotten to see the whole trilogy until long after it came out. I saw A New Hope for the first time on network television in Guam, with commercial interruptions and everything. And back then, television programming in Guam came from The Mainland via postal service on VHS tapes. It was hardly the finest cinematic reproduction. But we taped it on our Betamax and watched it again and again. Even my dad liked it. Or maybe he was just tired of how many times we had already watched The Wizard of Oz and Quarterback Princess. My point is I never had a Star Wars lunchbox. I never had an R2-D2 trashcan or hamper. I did not know Admiral Akbar's name until I was already able to get into bars legally. And even I was disappointed in the first two prequels. Genuinely disappointed in them as movies. Not as Star Wars movies or as a religious experience but as actual movies. So I don't buy this philosophy that it's only bad because of how much people wanted it to be good. It took some of my other die-hard friends as much as a week to come around and admit that The Phantom Menace was kind of crap. Some as much as a year. Some never did come around, but I secretly believe they never saw it.

All the same, I sincerely want Revenge of the Sith to be awesome. I will not die if it isn't. I am not expecting or demanding transcendence. But I totally do look forward to hearing that music again. And hearing the crowd cheer when the words start scrolling off into the vacuum of space. And maybe I'll even get weepy when the theme plays in the end credits. Maybe.

Looking back on it, that screening of the special edition of A New Hope was among the first two or three times I ever even saw Martín. He came from work, wearing a blue dress shirt, suspenders, and his Tigger tie. He had just recently (and fortunately) cut his hair. I was already in line, having eaten dinner at Taco Bell. And I was wearing a skirt too short for sitting on the ground, but I sat just the same. Now, all these years later, he and I still talk about droids and alien species and ships and blasters. We still argue about whether Return of the Jedi is better than The Empire Strikes Back (note: it isn't). We still feel pity when we pass the Uncle Owen autograph-signing booth at Comic-Con. And I guess I can trace all of that back to San Diego and Noel Coward and hot tub parties and road trips and special edition re-releases. It's not the basis of our friendship, but it certainly poses as underpinning in places. What a long time ago that was.

Labels: Audrey, Comic-Con, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:48 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Skirt-Pulling

My parents' home is near a school. It appears some child lost one of those red four-square balls in the wasteland near their property. It's been out in the sun so long, its faded, misshapen, once-spherical form now looks dimpled and cratered and dull where it once shined, like a stray planetoid, poking up out of the dirt. There are snakes out there in that dusty, brushy open space. I just know it.



Last week, I drove down with Beulah and Justin to pick up the car I will be borrowing from my parents until my insurance business is settled. I was tired. Stressed. Maybe a little sad. The whole weekend had felt that way to me. A lingering sense of endings. Anticlimax. The doldrums. And I had a smidgen of headache. Exacerbated by a number of the hair band choices in Beulah's playlist that day. But somewhere along the way, I changed my mind about my mood, and we sang along to power ballads that require the stretching and straining of vocal limits. Night Ranger. Extreme. Steelheart. Sheriff. G N' R. It was hoarse goodness. Poor Justin. I'm sure he hated every minute of it. We sing like banshees, Beulah and I.



I hate to sound like a complete gayrod, but music sure is magical. And it's really just recently that I've recognized that I don't always have to be so vulnerable to it. Certain songs evoke memories and feelings and pangs of things. But many of them have been around long enough in my life's radio that there are layers upon layers of these memories. And it doesn't take much excavation to unearth a memory beneath whichever one you first encounter. Especially if that one makes you want to cry or call someone you shouldn't or buy something you can't afford. I was listening to Aimee Mann and Elvis Costello harmonizing in The Other End (of the Telescope), and at first it made me sad. I thought about putting this song on many of my mixtapes. Hearing it in the car with this guy or that one. Thinking things about the lyrics and wondering if what I was thinking showed. Or hearing it more recently and having the memory of remembering it and feeling sad for all that has and has not happened in the interim. But clicking back a few iterations to the earlier memories -- the not-sucking one -- has its charms. I was running the other day, and I got bored of my usual running playlist and started playing road trip mixes from ages ago. And it was perfect gorgeous outside and the running was super difficult but also wonderful. And I hearkened back to a much, much earlier listening of this song, riding a Greyhound bus from Ithaca, on my way to go visit my high school sweetheart. It was snowing and grey outside for most of the trip. I leaned my head against the window. The glass was cold and damp. I was poor. A college student. And I never did get a warm enough pair of shoes in the time I lived there. And there were flecks of melancholy in that story, too, but it did not hurt to think of them. One day, I expect the layers will mount, and I will be similarly unmoved by the stories that now abrade. They will be buried by everything else. More important things. The hierarchy of recentness. Everything will be forgotten. And as I forget, I cringe a little, knowing that I am also being forgotten. A great Etch-a-Sketch being shaken, if slowly. But you can't erase just one part of it. No matter how careful you are. Eventually the whole thing goes blank, and you start over. And wonder why there isn't more color in the world.



I have been in San Diego for a couple of days. Friday night, my family and I went to Tip Top Meats and ate meaty German food and the many cabbage dishes that come with it. Afterwards, I met friends at Cane's to see Tainted Love, an '80s cover band that helps you gauge how many of the lyrics you know to songs you were sure you used to hate.



We drank and danced and got sweatier than I usually care to. Then we went to Nunu's, and I got an earful from those who knew me about my new hairdo. I've noticed that a lot more people talk to me -- and for disconcertingly longer stretches of time -- than when my hair was not quite so fair. It is requiring me to be more brusque than I normally would ever be. It makes me want to dye my hair brown with grey streaks and wear nothing but sackcloth.



After Nunu's closed up shop, I took Krissy and Mike to that Mexican place near their house, and then we went back to their house and watched Blade Trinity with the housemates. For clarity's sake, I watched it. Everyone else slept, two of them actually sleeping on me in some fashion. I drove home at dawn.



On Saturday (yesterday), I went for a swim. A perfect swim in a perfect pool that made me reluctantly thankful for the sunshine and all the damage it is doing to my skinsuit. Beulah and I met up for some Mother's Day shopping. I had to leave before I wanted to. I had shows to do at the comedy theater. I did them. I had to sit on my hands a lot. But I did play the part of an infertile woman again and got to end a sentence with "unless your uterus looks like a raisin." And a little girl in the front row asked me after the show if I'm really barren, and it was such a precious little moment. The girl who sat next to her then told me that her brother isn't very nice because he sometimes kicks her "in the private." And that was precious, too, but for altogether different reasons.



After the show -- and another encounter with a persistent stranger named Bertrand who thought my hair and shoes were reason enough that we should be the very best of friends -- I ended up at the Lenz house again. I made a pretty good Chewbacca sound for the first time ever. This time I got home by five or so. But still.



Today, we celebrated Mother's Day by having a gigantic barbecue of assorted meats. I spent more time in the pool. I am a temporary frecklepuss. I practiced juggling with balls that are too light and too large for my small, imprecise hands. Beulah and I played games in the water. Audrey swam with me and rode me around the pool like a raft. And then all of a sudden it was now. And there was nothing much more to say about that. Except that I am coming home soon. And I am glad of it.

Labels: Audrey, Krissy, NCT, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:28 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Everybody Loves Lipitor

Tuesday night, Jessie went with me to the Comedy Death Ray at M Bar. While we were driving over, my mom called me and laid on me the most amazing, outlandish, cocakamamy anti-smoking rap I have ever heard. I'm pretty sure it's going in my stand-up act. If only I had it on tape.

Jessie and I had some time to kill before the show, and I suggested a few places we could go to get something to eat. For some reason, it was Winchell's that lit Jessie's fire. So we walked over, and -- because you really can't go to a doughnut joint and buy just one doughnut apparently -- Jessie ended up buying a dozen. This was the inventory:

4 glazed raised
2 cinnamon rolls (twenty-five cents extra)
1 glazed with sprinkles
1 crumb
1 old-fashioned
1 chocolate raised
1 chocolate bar
2 chocolate frosted cake with sprinkles
1 glazed twist

I only ate one doughnut. And even that was more than I wanted. Jessie felt buyer's remorse almost immediately. There's something embarrassing about carrying around a box of doughnuts. There's no arguing that.

The clientele in the Winchell's all had some form of dried paint on them. And a rag of some sort tucked into their utility belts or waistbands. One big guy saw us sitting down and said, "Are you guys going to eat all those?" Defiantly, I said, "Maybe." And he smilingly said, "That's not very healthy." And I placed a hash mark in my mental tally of incidents that prove how absolutely devoid of game most dudes are. I guess I can't have expected more. We were in a Winchell's after all.

I ran into plenty of friends at the show. And because it was about to be Tammy's birthday, I invited her and Jeff to go to Canter's with me so I could buy her something. Which turned out to be carrot cake. Jessie had to go home, so I drove her back to her car before meeting Tammy and Jeff. And I was not terribly surprised when I got home and went to walk Audrey to find that Jessie had left a naked glazed raised doughnut (pretty much the only kind I eat) sitting on top of the empty Arrowhead bottle at my front door. What's even more amazing is that I ate it. In my defense, I knew how long it had been sitting there (not very), and it wasn't visibly marked with any sort of fecal matter, but still. What state of mind could I have possibly been in? Mary Forrest does not eat food found on the street. I didn't eat the whole thing. But if you ever wanted to poison me, apparently all you'd have to do is leave something I like on my doorstep and make sure I find it when I've still got a little bit of a buzz on.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:52 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Do not go gently. And do not take Melrose.

So, I almost died is the thing.

I was driving home from the Arclight, where I was seeing The Aviator with my friend Dean, and I took Melrose further west than I normally would. I don't know why. It looked clear enough. And it was late. And I hate waiting for that turn on La Brea. But my second-guessing gene will remind me of this fateful decision for some time to come, I'm sure. Because I was hit by a guy driving head-on into my lane at high speed. I swerved to get out of his way, but I wasn't able to avoid a collision. He then hit two other cars, stopping his car by driving it head-on into a parked car on the opposite side of the street. After two hours of waiting for the police to arrive in the misty rain and then talking to them once they got there, I watched the driver of the Cadillac that hit me get arrested for driving under the influence. And I drove home, with my wheel well dragging against my tire, to let poor little Audrey out for her first pee in eleven hours.

I was hit by a drunk driver. My first Los Angeles driving cliché.

One of the guys at the scene (the brother of one of the drivers) said I looked familiar, and we decided it might be because we are both on MySpace. And he is a musician. And I am a musician. And the girl whose Subaru was creamed was coming back from a gig at the Sunset Room, and she's a musician, too. We should totally start a band.

I was planning to come home tonight and catch up on all the things I haven't written about. But I feel my heart pounding in my head, and I want to plunge it into water. Or stuff it full of cotton. Or just turn the music up really loud. I am dizzy and fidgety and nervous and wide-awake. And I am fully aware of -- and completely not being overdramatic about -- the fact that I could easily have been killed -- to death -- just a couple of hours ago.

When I went to see Ira Glass in San Diego a few weeks ago, he referenced a story he did where he interviewed a bunch of people who had all been struck by lightning. And he said that they all had the exact same story to tell. They all described the sensation the same way, and they all believed that it was a sign that God had a purpose for them or was trying to send them a message.

I do not think that any message was being sent to me. But I do get what it's like to suddenly go, "Oh, shit. Life is short as fuck."

The night is pressing in on the sides of my head like a warm vise. Like a great hand that was recently inside a glove that was on fire. I want to go sit in my closet and smoke a hundred cigarettes. I want to sit in a tub full of hot marmalade. I want to have all of my senses shut down or distracted or somehow repurposed.

I want to go for a long drive. But my car is all fucked.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:14 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Here's where I would be invincible.

Beulah maintains that I could trump everyone on Fear Factor in the contests involving having to eat gross things. On account of because I don't think most of them as gross. I mean, I'm not into the bugs or the rotten cheese, but any of the challenges involving organs are upsetting to me, because I would actually like to eat those things out of both curiosity and hunger. My mom was telling me about an episode she was recently watching where the contestants were opening fortune cookies that told them which "gross" part of the pig they would have to eat. And apparently, nearly no one could do it. And my mom was naming the things that they couldn't eat. Heart. Tongue. Snout. And I was like, "Yum...yum...acceptable." My mom and I both agree that it would be better if they would let us have some salt or soy sauce, but there's no way we would be stymied by that buffet.

I wonder if that's what my mom was watching before we went out to dinner tonight for our private little Chinese New Year celebration. I was doing my hair in the bathroom and I heard her laughing raucously and saying the following to my dog: "Audrey, it's so funny, isn't it? He can't do it!" Followed by more laughter. She's pretty cute and awesome, my mom. And when we went to her favorite Chinese restaurant, we ordered -- among other things -- the pig knuckles. They were on the special holiday menu. Of course. I don't care that people wonder about me in this respect. Although, I have a feeling that it wouldn't be hard to make me feel incredibly ashamed with very little effort. It never is.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:30 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Insomniac Transference

I think I have made my dog as much of a night owl as me. I guess that happens. She goes to bed when I do. We take walks in the middle of the night. As a rule. I have a friend staying over tonight, so I tried to take Audrey to bed earlier than usual and even tried to get some sleep myself beginning at around three a.m., but she was so unruly. Fussing for hours. I finally relented and took her for a groggy stroll a little after five, and that did the trick. She's ready for sleep, and I am irritable as all get out and stuffing down the desire for something salty the way you might shove the trash down further into the can to make more room for your refuse.

I am not feeling restful or rested. I am not feeling forgiving. I have been edgy and antsy and unsettled all day, and I am not in sight of relief. When I am nervous, my fingertips go to my collarbone, poking and pinching at the bones and skin near my throat. It's a habit I've only just noticed. I've had many of them over the years. Persistent buttoning and unbuttoning of whatever buttoned shirt I was wearing. Lip biting. Wrinkling of the nose. Scratching at things with dull fingers. Folding and unfolding of the arms. I don't know what to do with myself much of the time. I live in a skin that doesn't always fit. I am almost always and nearly never hungry. I am not typically satisfied.

Is any of this Audrey's fault really?

I have no idea what I could have been. But I often daydream that it would have been more than this.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:40 AM | Back to Monoblog

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I always wanted to be a child prodigy.

It's talk of Neil Patrick Harris that brings such things to mind. Starship Troopers has been on the pay channels a bit this past week. I have caught parts of it. And I remember going to see it in the theater and being stunned by how violent it was but not feeling any rankling because of that. There's corny stuff in it, sure. Like when the Roughnecks win a big battle and the Lieutenant breaks out the beer and the "entertainment," which consisted of some futuristic nerf football and an electric violin, which Gary Busey's son picks up and starts playing while the rest of the squad dances. Ga-hay. But the music is super great, and the creature effects and macabre meat-rending rule. And it's so romantic and sad when Dizzy dies in Rico's arms and says, "It's okay. Because I got to have you." All the more reason for me to wish Denise Richards had gotten her brains sucked out in the end, too. Not just that Melrose Place guy. Although he totally had it coming.

I loved Doogie Howser, M.D. I wished I was Doogie Howser. I've seen Neil Patrick Harris around town before, but I've never like run up to him and told him how great he was or anything. I don't do that. Never would. And I'm sure it must be all the more annoying to have to carry your celebrity from childhood. I'm sure it must suck to have people say, "You were great in Clara's Heart." Or to ask what it was like working with Whoopi Goldberg. 'Cause you know that's the question on everyone's lips.

You like that? You like that? You like that? You want a little more? Come on! You like that? You like that? You like that? You want a little more?

This movie makes me want to go join the army. Or nuke me some bugs. Or spray ant poison on my window sill. Or just sit here and procrastinate more.

P.S. Jake Busey is a terrible actor.

Golden Hour

I might have gotten there later than I planned, but I did make it to the park at LACMA today. I took Audrey for a pleasant romp. Numerous people we passed admired her t-shirt and her gait. Little children cried out, "Doggie!" And the sun began to go down behind the buildings, and the lamps came on as we passed a pair of girls juggling pins just like in the circus. We also passed two very old ladies walking side by side, one of whom actually squeaked. I don't know if it was her body or some apparatus I could not see. But she was squeaking with each meager step. Then I heard her answer her cell phone with the oldest sounding "hello" ever uttered. I kind of wanted to hug her for it.

I came home and finished up some more thankless design work and the weight of night was heavy on me. I have been feeling that a lot. It has turned my skip to a trudge. The picture I have of myself in my brain is a disappointing one.

Labels: Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:12 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Random House

I don't like to watch award shows. But I often watch them anyway. I caught the last bit of the Golden Globes tonight. Just in time to see Diane Keaton wearing an outfit that really is only a parody of her look at this point, to see Jamie Foxx tear up at the podium and to hope that he was sincere -- a cynicism planted in my brain by Halle Berry and her ridiculousness, and to see Robin Williams receive his "special" award.

Okay. For the record. I can't stand Robin Williams. I'm not saying he was never funny or that he didn't make a proper name for himself or that he doesn't have a sprawling body of work. I just find him annoying and unsurprising and never ever ever never funny. Now.

I like Popeye. I'll go on record with that. But I like it because of its production design and because it's the first PG movie I ever went to see without my parents and I broke a filling on an ancient apple Now and Later I got at the concession stand while my friend Sharon's mom (who had brought us to the theater) was watching Raging Bull. I also like the music. And Shelley Duvall. And Burgess Meredith. And the idea that someone might be considered marriageable on account of being large.

But that's not enough for a special award. Even the movies of his that I've liked haven't rung true because of the fact that EVERY character eventually breaks down and does a few minutes of "material," and that's not what film acting is about. It happens in Dead Poets' Society, it happens in (fucking) Patch Adams, it even happens in Jack, and he's playing a kid in that. I think the only film I can think of where he doesn't do that (unless I just missed it) is Awakenings, which is still a pretty good flick. But again. No statue there.

His more recent dramatic roles have not had the funny man character in them, but that gives you cause to notice that -- when he's not pretending to be a sassy Black woman from Mississippi or a flaming queer or some other overused caricature -- he's really very, very creepy.

But this isn't about me or what I think of his work. I really just mean to comment on the fact that I think these award shows seem to be hard-pressed to find someone worthy to recognize. And that his acceptance speech was endemically insincere and performed and, frankly, impolite in its self-importance. Even his attempts to be magnanimous came across as braggart. And when they played a clip from Mork and Mindy, I really had to ask myself if that show was ever funny. Except for the parts with Jonathan Winters in them. And even that's a maybe.

Before the award was issued, a friend reminded me of the lawsuit that is Mr. Williams' reason for being so frequently cited on gotherpes.com. And then that's all I thought about while he gave his acceptance speech, which was little more than a pandering stand-up act to an entirely industry audience. Thank god he was followed by Orlando Bloom, who cleanses the palate so beautifully. Pretty pretty. I could look at him and listen to him talk for what would amount to a very long time.

I was IM'ing a friend about all this James Bond that I've been watching. I basically said that watching all this James Bond has changed my mind about the more recent issuances. They ALL sucked. They were ALL corny. So I no longer hold it against Pierce Brosnan that the gadgetry is outlandish, the puns are unbearable, and the martinis are still ordered shaken as if any bartended in the world STIRS them. EVER. And Die Another Day had a lot of much more gritty military type action in it. Real warfare-y looking. Far less murdering people with sharks. Or piranha. I think Halle Berry is a putz, but it wasn't a bad film I now conclude. I just take note of how brash and unreasonable and boob-like Americans tend to look in these films. I guess it must mean that that's the way we like to see ourselves. Because we're the ones these movies are being sold to, aren't we? Are we missing something here?

A short list of things I've learned from the various James Bond marathons I've watched in the past month or so would be as follows:

Thunderball and Never Say Never Again (the only non-Albert Broccoli production) have the same plot and the same character names. They even have the same plot summary on imdb.com. But I've never heard Never Say Never Again referred to as a remake. I just remember going to see it in the theater with my mom and being uncomfortable and embarrassed when Barbara Carrera was water-skiing in a one-piece bathing suit with a thong back. How did I ever manage to cease being such a prude?

James Bond had a wife and she died. George Lazenby married Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and then she gets shot by Blofeld at the very end of the movie. And it's the only time you ever see James Bond really seem to lose it over a chick. In a way, it's one of the best moments in the series. He turns into such a shadow of a person after that. Maybe because of that. Huh? Huh? How do you like that little twist there? Anyway, later, in The Spy Who Loved Me (I think -- or was it Octopussy? They all begin to run together.), Roger Moore prickles when he is reminded of it. When a female agent recites his dossier to him and says he was once married. It AFFECTS him. Again. Rare human moment for James.

And lastly, you nearly never see Dr. No anymore. And yet I really like it. In truth, the book is one of my favorites. And the movie was a smash disappointment for me, because of how much of the riveting action from the book was just not done at all. I guess I assumed it was because of the fact that cinema was still fairly primitive, but it sure would have been nice to see that book made into a proper flick. Maybe someday it will be remade again using all that modern cinematic technology has to offer. Although, by the time that happens, James Bond will probably be played by Seth Green or something. Surely, by then it will be his turn.

Okay, well, it's officially Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so I suppose I should tell my one MLK anecdote, which goes like this:

When I was in high school in Japan, each year we would have a Black History Month speech contest, sponsored by some rotary-type club that was for the Black people. (I don't mean to sound ignorant or insensitive; I just don't remember what it was called.) Anyway, I used to enter this speech contest every year, and every year I won. I was sort of the speech and essay contest phenom in high school. I actually made more money winning speech and essay contests than I made in all of my summer jobs. So each year I would enter the Black History Month speech contest, and I would write a speech about Black history, and I would give the speech, and I would win. And then I would be invited to the dinner of this club with all the other winners, and we would sit at the honored table and have dinner before being invited to give our speeches to the club membership. We would sit there on the dais -- me and two or three Black kids. And I would get the biggest prize every year. Even I thought that was sort of weird and unfair. But that's the way it happened.

Gosh golly, it was gorgeous out today. I'm slightly furious with myself for not spending more time out in it. For not taking one of my straw mats over to LACMA and bivouacking out on the lawn with a book and a bottle of something cool to drink. I should have done that. Maybe I will do that tomorrow. If it's as sunny and warm as it was today, I surely should.

And it's been two nights in a row that I've taken Audrey out for one of our obscene late-night walks (yesterday it was at five a.m.) and noticed that the stars were out in force and that I could see Betelgeus, clear as a punch in the face. There are many nights when I can't see the stars at all on my block. Los Angeles with its street lighting and billboards and that persistent haze that makes even the darkness feel like just-after-dusk. If there's even a wisp of haze in the air, the night is cottony black and starless. Bleak and coldly unfamiliar. But these past few nights, as happens at this time of the year and whenever the rains come, the stars are like brilliant pinpricks in a big velvet sheet with a studio-quality lamp behind them. I've lived in Hollywood for long enough now that even the wonders of nature conjure analogies of cinema fakery.

This is the fourth January for me here in Los Angeles. And I have said many times that January and February in Los Angeles make for one of my favorite times of year. When it's cold and crisp but sunny. And the skies are clear. Not the muddy haze of the summertime. Not the humid swelter of an unwelcome Indian summer. Januaries and Februaries have been typically melancholy for me. For some reason. They have always been gloriously beautiful. But sad. If it's not one thing, it's everything. I am glad for a break in the rain. I want to sit on grass that is unmuddied. I look forward to picnicky afternoons. And ham sandwiches. I'm always ready with something excellent to read. And the straw mats are always in the trunk of my car. With a blanket I don't mind getting dirty. I've had too few daytime outings recently. I notice it in my picture-taking. There's nothing so bad about taking lots of pictures at night. But I need a little sunshine and cirrhus clouds in my eyes to mix it up.

Later this week, I'm heading for San Diego to ref a minor league runthrough and play a few shows at the comedy theater. I'm thinking it's going to be awesome. I've been wanting to ref for ages. And I get to have a whistle and a stopwatch and everything. Bomb ass. So I'll be in town (or out of town, depending on your zip code) for a few days, and I intend to make a scene. I left a bottle of Bushmill's at John Meeks' apartment as a "housewarming gift." But I hold my liquor a lot better than he does. It's a fine line between housewarming gift and safekeeping. Bottoms up.

Labels: Adam, Audrey, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:24 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Why does the fat one always have to be so mean to the skinny one?

Martín and Francisca came over to borrow a space heater. Peter Pan was ending on the television. And the next thing we knew, there was a movie on with some sort of ancient Egyptian prologue. It was obivously about mummies, but it wasn't THE Mummy or its sequel. Clearly. I hit the info button on my remote and found that it was a film I never even knew got made. The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy: For Love or Mummy. And it was made in 1998. And Bronson Pinchot was playing Stan Laurel, and it only gets more abysmal from there.

Now, let me begin by saying that the words "the all new adventures" are a terrible omen for me. Any time someone has decided that I needed to go along with some heroes of mine on an all-new set of adventures, there was usually bullshit afoot and disappointment on its way. But this particular revival made so little sense to me. Laurel and Hardy are not exactly part of the contemporary lexicon anymore. Francisca had never heard of them. And she's not alone. I know who they were, and not just because I'm old, thank you. My father is good and old and he introduced his daughters to a lot of truly old stuff. And I remember enjoying watching them as a little girl when their movies would come on television on Sunday afternoons. But even I know that the kind of humor they represent can only really be appreciated retrospectively.

Well, we stuck around through the ludicrous opening titles, depicting Stan and Ollie as hieroglyphs on the walls of some nicely-lit tomb. And the opening scene alone was enough to tell me all I needed to know. As I said, Stan is played by Bronson Pinchot, who isn't really physically right for the part, and Ollie is played by some fat guy, who is. They are presented to us in the same sort of costumes you would have seen them wearing in their films of the '30s. But the first scene of the film shows them working a copy machine in a library, and angering the librarian by leaving an I.O.U. in the cash box instead of properly paying. I don't even understand the anachronism. Why leave them in those outfits and set the film in present day? It's as if these remakes envision the characters as a cartoon strip rather than a whole performance. The CHARACTERS of Laurel and Hardy could easily be translated into a modern setting. Or the film could easily have been set in the '30s. But the anachronism makes no sense to me. And I really didn't stick around for much longer, as everything I was seeing was so painfully unfunny that I feared I might no longer want to own the Perfect Strangers DVD box set when it becomes available, and I didn't want to spoil that party for myself.

F. Murray Abraham is in it, too, but he didn't come on-screen early enough in the film for me to see him. I would much rather watch anything else. Even reruns of sports.

Sadly, I'm sort of drained today and can't even muster the creative juice to make this post entertainingly cranky.

On a few occasions, when kissing my dog's face, I have accidentally gotten some of her eyeball juice on my lips. And it has made me exclaim, "Ooh! -- I just got some of her eyeball juice in my mouth." I coined the phrase "eyeball juice," and Martín can't bear to hear it. Sometimes I say it just to see him gag a little. Don't get me wrong. I don't like it. I don't WANT that stuff on my face. I don't WANT to ingest it. I'm just saying, it's funny that he probably would have nearly no reaction at all if I would just say, "I just got one of her tears on my tongue." It might even sound sweet.

Martín was also grossed out when I kissed Audrey and said, "Oops. I just got her whisker in my mouth." He made a face and a sound that I have never seen him make before. And it was very amusing. I told him that I don't like whisker, either, and that one time, one of Audrey's whiskers was sitting, loose, on my forearm, and "--and you ate it!" he continued. But of course that's not true. Really. It's not. And I'm done talking about canine scatology.

Labels: Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:14 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Fragile I am not. Affection is a pressure I can bear.

This morning, I got up very early and took Audrey for a walk in some welcome sunshine. When we got back inside, I plopped her back on the bed and went to my computer for a while. Maybe an hour or so. When I got up to return to the living room, I noticed it was unusually bright. Not just for a sunny morning, but for any morning. Upon closer inspection, I realized the front door was wide open. When the weather is wet like this, the wood in the door swells and makes it hard to close properly. Even harder to open with a key. But I thought I had been careful about closing it. Apparently I hadn't been. So I went through a flash of panic. What if Audrey had left me alone for all this time because she trotted out the front door an hour ago? What if she was long gone? I walked into the bedroom to find her perched, sphinx-like, on top of the comforter, just looking at me. And I loved her so much and was so grateful that she wasn't gone again. The other night, I was walking her late and talking on the phone with a pal, and I accidentally lost hold of her leash. And the more I tried to catch up to her, the further ahead of me she got. But finally, when I knelt down and called to her, she pranced back to me, and I picked up the leash, and nothing more was said on the topic. She loves me. At last.

Don't misunderstand. She's still a complete pain in the ass whenever people come over. But when it's just the two of us, she's an angel. And she never tires of my company. Even when I wish she would.

I'm working on a couple of new spec scripts. One with my friend Zach. We got together again tonight to sift through our brainstorm notes and get down to brass tacks, brass tacks being what outlines are chiefly made of. I'm tempted to sign up for a workshop again. The deadlines really forced me along last year, when I was writing my first. But I'm wary of creating too many obligations for myself. I've so much to do right now. So many things I want to follow through with. So many expectations to fulfill. And also bills to pay. Many, many bills. A friend gave me a generous and hefty tuition to a course I will eventually take, but -- even that -- not now.

I've been having a series of involved and thoughtful discussions with a captivatingly and dauntingly brainy friend, and it has been responsible for the composition of a number of paragraphs I'm tempted to cut and paste onto these pages. I'm slightly discouraged by how opportunistic that will seem to my friend, but I know he reads this, and I also know he is fully aware of how limited my actual inspiration is. So, perhaps he will understand. Mostly, we've been talking about human nature and the dread of mortality and occasionally movies. So, if I suddenly tip into wordy assessments of the desire to live forever or the plague of the fear of failure or a story about my mother and Mount Fuji, you'll know you're getting the afterbirth of another discourse. Apologies in advance.

If you stay up late enough, you can watch The Kids in the Hall on Comedy Central like me. And if you stay up even later than that, you can find yourself -- like me -- angrily turning off the television because a Tempur-Pedic infomercial came on. I had intended to go to sleep hours ago. I'm disappointed that I failed to.

Labels: Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:05 AM | Back to Monoblog

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You see a doll on a music box that's wound by a key.

I usually enjoy watching CNN while I'm on the treadmill at my gym. I crank up the iPod and read the closed captioning and shake my head at the typographical errors. Today, all CNN was talking about was the tsunami. Or I suppose it can rightly be called The Tsunami now. Proper name. No mistaking it. It made me feel bad. Running in place in my expensive gym with my expensive MP3 player and my expensive shoes. And watching that horrific footage of all that brown water sweeping over a bridge, swarmed over with people running like ants. Ants who were suddenly not there anymore. But just as I felt my humanity catch in my throat, I was brought back to my crabby senses. The monitor with CNN on it did not have closed captioning, so I could only read the ticker and the main captions, which were for some reason all alliterative. "Turning the Tide." "Walking the Walk." I was becoming annoyed. Who is writing these? And why do they think a catastrophic international natural disaster is the time to break out the Hallmark card-writing skills? Ooh, and that first one has a bit of a pun in it, too. How cleverly inappropriate. What cheek. I started making up my own in my head. "Harbingers of Hope." "Doctors of Disaster." "Healing the Heartbroken." "Mopping Up the Mess." Well, those writers at CNN get my goat, but they are clearly better at this than I am.

My mom told me that my aunt, who is from Taiwan, once gave this advice: If you see the tide draw out very far -- much further than it normally does -- and you see the fish jumping on the sand, this means something is wrong. Don't go and pick up all the fish. Run. I guess this is some longstanding Taiwanese wisdom about knowing when a tidal wave is approaching. And I guess there is some risk that Chinese people will always choose poorly and opt to get all the free fish.

On another monitor, Jane Pauley's show was featuring a family whose toddler daughter had fallen in the swimming pool when unsupervised. And everyone panicked in the saving effort. The 7-month pregnant mother went into early labor. The grandfather had a heart attack. They must have been monopolizing every EMT vehicle in their county. And I was really upset that this was going to be my running fare. A bunch of images and sentiments to choke me up and make me feel grateful to be alive. But then it turned out that everyone was okay. The fat parents were seated on the stage, and the grandpa came out carrying the two young children, the near-drowned girl being very healthy and normal except for the fact that she doesn't speak yet. Once I knew they were all okay, I felt free to resent them again.

I should also note that the president of Doctors without Borders, a Rowan Somebody-or-Other, was being interviewed on CNN, and I couldn't help but notice how handsome he was. Also, the doctor the CNN cameras were trailing in Indonesia was in admirably good shape and rather handsome. And I wondered if it helps to be cute when you're a doctor. I suppose it does. It seems to help in virtually every other profession. Except maybe begging. I guess I'd be less likely to go under the knife of some Quasimodo-ish fellow. Much as his Harvard diploma might look authentic. And I wonder if that's smart. I think, in general, ugly people have a rougher time of it. Whereas good-looking people get cut a great deal of slack. Slack that may mean your cute doctor might not have really done so well on his medical boards. He just dazzled the proctor with his all-American smile and thick head of hair. Your ugly doctor, on the other hand, well, he probably had to work extra hard. He probably got picked on in class. If there was a John Houseman-esque instructor in his college, he probably got called out all the time and had to be extra prepared, because no one really wanted him to succeed, least of all the former ugly duckling professor who saw too much of himself in the uncomely lad. Anyway, I think some research should be done into this. I'm not planning any major medical procedures, but when I'm due for one, I'd like to know if I should sign up with Doctor Kildare or Doctor Moonface.

I sound glib, but the tragedy in South and Southeast Asia really breaks my heart. I get upset that U.S. news agencies are telling so little of the local story. I talked with Adam last night and agreed that the coverage was slow to make it to air because of how far down the pigment ladder those brown-skinned people are. And that's really shameful. My mother is Chinese and my father is Russian Jewish, and if something happened to me, I'd like for it to have been newsworthy BEFORE the wires picked up that my dad is from Philadelphia and therefore a bona fide American. And if nothing newsworthy ever happens to me, I'd like to be summarily executed and buried at sea. Preferably while I'm still somewhere in the neighborhood of my prime.

Beulah called me early this morning -- early like seven a.m. early -- to ask me questions about debate format. (I was once on my way to becoming CEDA royalty.) I told her what I remembered and then tried to go back to sleep, as I had been up reading until nearly four. But shortly after I walked my dog and got back under the covers, I heard the smack of auto on auto followed by a very long and uninterrupted horn honk. Another accident on La Cienega. There was no chance I would be getting back to sleep. So I snuck out of bed with Audrey uninformed and under the covers, and I got into my gym outfit and headed out. I saw the mess of the accident right up my street. There was an ambulance there. And police officers. And a lot of traffic bottlenecked around the scene. But it wasn't in my path, so I resolved not to be a lookieloo, because people who delay me with their curiosity when passing roadside atrocities make me wish I had Plasticman's arms and the ability to reach into their vehicles and just snap their necks. It was unusually early for me to be out. For some reason, I'm always extra proud of myself when I'm up early. It might be a sign that there's far too little to be proud of in my actual life. But I'm going to see about making today more productive than it might otherwise be. I'm preemptively certain that I will find myself, six or seven hours from now, shaking my head and wishing I hadn't set myself up for failure. But goalsetting is the first step towards not rotting away in your chair.

P.S. I burned nearly a thousand calories on that treadmill. Isn't that just tits?

Yearning. Yearning. While I'm turning around and around.

Labels: Adam, Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:43 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Trepanation of an Holiday

Christmas Eve Eve

I drove down to San Diego late late late after packing a heap of gifts and clothes and travel essentials and my dog into my car. No complications were wrought by my garage door this time. It turns out the last time that happened, it was my neighbor Paul, who lives in the apartment behind me, thinking he was doing me a favor. I am told he is very very sorry. And it's lucky for him that he's so cute. Which he is. I'm just channeling my rage towards my very unattractive upstairs neighbors.

Christmas Eve

I sang "O Holy Night" in my parents' church with a cough drop in my mouth, and it went better than I was afraid it might. Then I had dinner with my family. I drank a single glass of wine with dinner and was laughing and my mom said -- as if I wasn't sitting right there -- "Look at her. She's drunk." And it's not like I was sitting laughing in a room by myself. I was laughing at a story Beulah was telling, and it was funny. But apparently merriment of any kind is a sure sign of intoxication. Frankly, in my house that may be true. Which might explain why I try to drink when I'm there. Later, I went and met friends at The Casbah, where their annual Rolling Stone-a-rama (not its official name) was going off. I had to sneak out after everyone went to sleep, because my mother so strongly objected to my having any semblance of fun. I ran into so many people I know, it was super swell. I felt like a soldier who just got back from The Great War. Only I was wearing my pink and white houndstooth check coat and had all my limbs.

Christmas

We had a big yummy breakfast and then opened presents with the Lakers game on, because Sarah and Justin wanted to watch it. No one actually paid any attention to it. It was just annoyingly on the whole time. Both the doggies got a bunch of crazy cute little outfits. Audrey is wearing a little t-shirt that looks like that Chanel suit that Marge Simpson kept wearing in that one episode from that season from before. It's adorable. I was sipping Knob Creek bourbon in the afternoon, and my mom and my sister began making uninspired jokes about my need to begin attending "meetings." I was beginning to think that the company at those meetings might be preferable to the gallery of judgment I kept finding myself sitting in, but I kept that to myself. Later, I played two fun shows at the comedy theater and then met my friends (the ones who had come to the late show) at Nunu's for a Christmas nightcap. It was too warm, but everyone was so very friendly and cheery, I was really glad to be there. I ran into my friend Anya, who kissed my hand, which I will never ever wash now.

And then

I was invited to go to Disneyland, but my cold had ratcheted itself up a bit, and I didn't think I could enjoy it much, nor could I keep from contaminating my friends' respiratory systems. So I stayed in town. I played the most embarrassingly poor games of billiards ever at Gaslamp Billiards and drank way too much for someone who hadn't eaten a thing all day. That came back to haunt me later in the night. I stayed in bed later than I had planned this morning. And I roused with a smile when I heard the Ms. Pac-Man intro blasting on the television downstairs. Beulah bought my dad one of those joysticks you plug into the t.v. for Christmas, and he's been playing the shit out of it ever since. When we lived in Guam, my dad used to come home from work and destress by sitting down in front of our Atari and playing Ms. Pac-Man. When he played it on Christmas morning, he said, "This reminds me of my melanoma." Which is both hilarious and horrible, but so typically Samuel Forrest. I'm sure this toy was his favorite gift this year. Followed closely by the Mr. T in Your Pocket that Beulah also gave him. Who knew that Urban Outfitters was so the store to shop for my dad. There are photos on my Roundup page of him modeling the Jesus wig and moustache-beard combo that Beulah also gave him. He is a good sport.

And now I'm off to Vegas. Later than I had planned, but there is no time in Vegas. So it doesn't make a difference.

So, that's what's inside. I am dismayed by the news of all the disastrous carnage in South and Southeast Asia. But I don't want that to be what I write about.

Labels: Audrey, NCT, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:22 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Night Watch

I am in the habit of taking Audrey for a walk before going to bed. Just so she won't wake me up any earlier than is absolutely necessary. Which means I was walking my dog at five a.m., wondering if anyone on my street was up yet. And then, when I ran into a slew of pesky postscript errors, I ended up continuing to be up, which is the state I am in right now. I've got the local news on. Cartoon Network came up out of Adult Swim and plunged right into edifying children's fare, and boo for that. The plot of the episode of whatever the show was that I passively heard was chock full of information about how farm subsidies work and about the environmental impacts of some of the governmental meddling that takes place in the agricultural industry. It's a superhero type show. The team of empowered youngsters were battling a "Villain" who had sinister agricultural plans. It was hard not to be amused by that. I remember seeing a vintage issue of a Popeye comic at a booth at Comic-Con a couple of years back, and the entire book was about the environment. Popeye was really just a spokesperson for some very green message. And it was all very boring and educational. And I still almost bought it. You know. Just because.

Local news really annoys me, though. Like today, there is frequent coverage of the progress in the investigation of a murder that happened on Friday. Some poor kid in Whittier got shot working in a Subway sandwich shop. He gave the robbers the money, and they shot him anyway. And now he's dead. And every time this somber story was covered, it was followed -- without a beat -- by the cheery-but-bumbling correspondence of the lady reporter covering the announcements of the Golden Globe nominations. I realize it's just one guy and life goes on and all of that, and I further realize that newscasters truly are soulless automatons who can't feel anything that isn't typed in brackets on the teleprompter, but it just seems all too plain that human life is cheap cheap cheap when compared with the money that gets made by the picture show. Seven marines from San Diego died in Iraq today, too. But I'm sure their families would much rather know whether Leonardo di Caprio has a shot at Best Actor. I know I would.

I'm so tired. This past few days have been a vortex of performances and county-to-county commuting and having to ante up in order to make plans. I have the marks of violin playing on my fingertips and my neck. And I have a few more comedy shows under my figurative belt (I really don't wear them that much). And Jessie and I went and signed up for an improv workshop today. And I'm really glad about that. In addition, as we were leaving the theater, we saw a homeless man kneeling Mecca-style, with his forehead down on a star on the Walk of Fame. He was praying to it. And I was especially curious to know which star he might be praying to. As we passed, I nearly burst a blood vessel in my eye with the ridiculous thrill I got from learning he was praying to Lassie. I think that rules all over the place. And I'm not kidding. I don't think that scenario could have been more quintessentially ironic if he had been praying to an anthropomorphized can of fruit.

There's no real reason for my saying so, but I'm really surprised Elizabeth Taylor isn't dead yet.

I took Josh to "A John Waters Christmas" at Royce Hall last week. It was pretty great. At least it was when it stopped being the opening performances of Vaginal Davis (who wasn't as clever as drag queens are expected to be), Phranc (who wasn't bad but only did one number), and Marga Gomez (who wasn't funny for nearly her entire set). John Waters himself is peerless in his ability to inspire me to aspire to the horrible and base. I took a few notes down during the show with the intention of writing it all up. But my weekend and I got into a tiff. Off the top of my head, I can recount that he charged the audience in the following fashion: If you know someone who doesn't want books as gifts, don't fuck them. And if your significant other doesn't have books and doesn't want them and won't get them for you, don't fuck them, either. He followed that with the list of books he would like to receive for Xmas, and the list alone was enormously entertaining. Josh recognized Mink Stole sitting right in front of us. We didn't do anything about it. I wouldn't have recognized her on my own. I'm not as well-versed in the seminal works of John Waters as nearly anyone else in the world. But I sure do think he's clever. And I'm jealous of everyone who gets invited to his annual Xmas party. He told us where he receives his fan mail, and I was tempted to send him dirty pictures, but I've since forgotten the name of the bookstore, and I'm almost sure there's nothing I could photograph that would really pique his interest.

My eyes are burning, and I have an appointment in a few hours, so I'm going to shut my PowerBook and tuck my dog in and see what happens when I hit the sheets. When I resurface, I will likely apologize for the lack of inspiration in everything I have just written. I'm tempted to do it now and get it out of the way. But I'm afraid I won't have anything to say later on if I don't reserve that. Which is truly disheartening.

Labels: Audrey, Comic-Con, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:55 AM | Back to Monoblog

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An Illustration of the Human Nose

Maybe I'm allergic to tidy. Because the closer I get to putting everything in its proper place, the more sneezy and itchy and miserable my entire face is. (Note: Please do not post a comment explaining to me how dust gets kicked up when you're cleaning house and that that is probably the reason for my allergies -- I know that. I'm pretending not to know it, but it's just a character.) But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I told Audrey only moments ago, "We can sleep in our bed again, baby!" Because by the time I'm ready to turn in tonight, I will indeed be able to sleep in my proper bed, no longer displaced by the unbelievable mountainous terrain of clothing heaps that was once on it. And the closet in my guest room is so neat and tidy that I want to throw a party in it. Only one of you can come, though.

Last night, Jessy and I went to Jones, which is much as I remembered it. Drinks not strong. Clientele not unpretentious. We were getting ready to leave when I recognized my friend Judd, and we talked with him for a bit. Mostly about MySpace and Friendster and the online social phenomenon. When we were leaving, two Mediterranean fellows objected and said they had ordered me a pizza and that I looked like I needed it. I laughed (before leaving). The very idea that some swarthy dude wants to fatten me up.

I'm on my way out, and my dog (who won that photo of the week contest on Neighborhoodies.com, by the way -- and thank you very much) hates it. We've been spending lots of quality time together, and I think it only makes her more cranky when I sneak out for a few hours. But she had a bath today, and I will cuddle her to pieces when I return. She's like Wonder bread to me. I'm always tempted to mash her into the tiniest possible ball. And then just eat her up. But that's for later.

I'm high on Claritin D. The last time I took it was when Adam was coming to visit last fall. I thought I was having an anxiety attack. I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so wiggy. And then I was talking about it on the phone with the guy I was seeing at the time and I realized it was the Claritin. The D part of the Claritin. So I never took it again. But today, my allergies were pegging at intolerable, so I decided to give it a whirl again. And I'm not having an anxiety attack, but I do sort of feel like I'm not quite here. Medicine is weird.

Labels: Adam, Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:42 PM | Back to Monoblog

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coelacanth

I'm wearing fishnet stockings with tube socks. My mom eyed my legwear and said, "Fishnets? Are they back in again?" I scoffed. As if fishnets have ever not been in. If there's one thing that can be said about fashion, it likes women to wear things that may someday help them catch a meal. Just the way Jesus did it. This is a perennial truth.

I buy a lot of clothes and stuff at Anthropologie. If you're familiar with that store, then you know that this means I really don't like money at all and am frequently looking for preposterous ways to throw it away.

Beulah and I agree that that fake Tiny House show that's in the Geico commercial would actually be a really great show to watch. I'm no fan of reality television. No, sirree. But I might enjoy watching that couple live a year in that house. For kicks.

So, maybe it's obvious that I'm stalling, but I'm afraid of getting started on what may turn out to either be a heap of crap or a very longwinded escapade, neither with a shred of brilliance. But I suppose there's only one way to find out. Fasten your safety belt. It's not going to be a bumpy ride or anything, but I like saying things that imply I can control you.

Last weekend, I came down to San Diego to get my car fixed and to sing in church. My mom has been acting as my manager since she and my dad began attending a new church in their new neighborhood. She has been calling periodically and trying to get me to schedule a date and sing. It has taken months. I even picked a date in October, but they had scheduled someone else. I was beginning to feel like one of the members of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Just not Crosby. One of the other guys. That no one knows. I felt like Stills and/or Nash trying to book a gig at a hole in the wall as a favor to a friend and getting bumped because Dan Fogelberg came to town. When my mom finally booked me, she called to say the pastor was giving me ten minutes to do whatever I wanted. I could sing two songs. Maybe lead the congregation in something, my mom suggested. I don't do this, just so you know. I'm not some traveling troubadour. What was she expecting? That I would tote in my guitar and teach them all that "Doe a Deer" song? Not happening. I don't even have a guitar.

On Friday, my car got a new radiator, after which Sarah and I went down to the Gaslamp to watch the new Bridget Jones movie, which was largely a disappointment to me. If it wasn't for Colin Firth (and Hugh Grant to a lesser degree), I can't imagine it would have been watchable. If it's possible for Renee Zellweger to look any uglier, it might have to involve surgery and a series of blows to the face with a two by four. The kind with a few rusty nails in the end of it. It was actually painful to watch her. And not at all believable that there would be men battling for her affection. Unless those men like rosacea and girls who walk like their joints have been splinted. I once knew a girl in grade school who always walked like that. Kind of on her tippy toes all the time and with knees that looked like they didn't bend. And I can assure you, no one liked her. I think she also had a weird tuft of blonde hair under her chin, but that's neither here nor there.

After the movie, we strolled a few blocks, reaffirming for me that I despise the scene down there. The Gaslamp on a Friday night is such a drab display of ick. It's not as flip-flopped and t-shirted as Pacific Beach. But it's the same gross clientele with the same natty pick-up lines and the same bullshit posturing. I detest it.



I wonder if the psychic whose sign this is had any foreknowledge of how much the misspelling of the word "psychic" might depress business.

We almost went to Airport, but I insist that there is nothing particularly cool about going to a club where everyone inside is a friend of the door staff. Not only do I revile the currency of bouncer worship, but I can't imagine that anyone who is willing to be friendly with these power-mad, near-minimum wage-earners and their orthopedic shoes and flashlights and earpieces and bad haircuts is someone I want to be standing next to when I'm pouring booze down my throat. I maintain a modicum of standards where I can.

We went instead to Nunu's, my reliable home base. There was a line out front, so we went to the back and were let in by the door guy who regarded us as regulars. We were greeted with aplomb and almost immediately invited by my bartender friend Jeff to a party after closing. Two French guys -- both chefs -- were annoyingly all over us. I said something about us being gourmands, and one of them started running his hands down my midsection from behind and saying, "I don't think so." I assume that was him saying that I'm not fat enough to be a food-lover, so maybe that was compliment enough for me to tolerate the intrusion. My standards here might be questionable.

Sarah and I did go to the party. It was someone's birthday. I don't remember whose. We met a number of nice people, drank a number of stiff drinks, entered into a few minor contests, and left in time for me to just barely make it to bed before sunrise.

The following night, I had plans to go out with Krissy and Dorian and Pam. Our friend Becky works at Club Rio, so we stopped by there early enough to be embarrassed by the male strippers doing their thing. We played a little shoddy pool and then took Becky with us to Nunu's, where we didn't stay long enough for my taste. Then we went back to Dorian and Krissy's place and ate late-night Mexican and played strip poker until it was late enough for me to be concerned about my singing obligation. Not to mention the fact that I was playing strip poker only hours before I was going to be sitting in church having to think about the fact that I was playing strip poker only a few hours ago. Which is in fact what I was thinking about, when I was sitting in church, waiting for it to be time for me to sing.

I sang.

Apparently there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Even my sister Sarah, who was good enough to drive up to watch me, said she was welling up a wee bit. I'm pleased that people liked my singing, but this sort of thing always makes me feel guilty and hypocritical. Because once I finished singing, I sat in the pew and wrote jokes for the rest of the service. And that's the cruel truth. And one of them was pretty good. And one of them was about the pastor.

Later that day, I found a John Deere tractor just sitting there, waiting to have its photo taken with me. And you know how I am about things like that.



Monday night, Martín and I went to the Paul F. Tompkins Show, the show's namesake having returned from England at last. We had a fine time. Laughed it up good. Ordered the halibut, both of us, which is the only new thing on the Largo menu these days. But they served carrots instead of peas, and that's a fair cop. I hate cooked carrots. And I adore peas. And it's hard enough working up the juice to look forward to something you've ordered at Largo, only to have your hopes dashed by substandard vegetable replacements. Cooked carrots. Plegh. It's almost a fruit. Not at all pleasing. The show, by contrast, was very pleasing, ending in a rendition of How Soon Is Now? with the Watkins Family adding violins where once there were synthesizers. I've been planning to cover Every Day Is Like Sunday with Josh for some time now. And I was going to replace synths with violin, too. But now I just feel like a copycat.

We had a few drinks at The Dime after the show with our friend Tom and his friend Marcia (whose name might be spelled "Marsha" -- I've not yet seen it written). And then I went home, feeling a smidge badly for keeping Martín out so late. But not really. Corrupting my friends is a favorite pastime of mine.

Tuesday night, I had dinner at A.O.C. with my mathematician friend Paul. I will gladly go again. And I will order the brussels sprouts. Because they were magnificent. I adore brussels sprouts. And I don't care how much of your nose you wish to wrinkle when I say it. They are grand. And they make me feel like a giant. Eating entire heads of cabbage like popcorn. It's fun. After I eat them, I go and make my magic harp sing for me. She's a bitch and will betray me at the drop of a hat, but the songs are pretty for now. And I believe in living in the moment.

That's not actually true. I don't believe in living in the moment at all. For the record. I've noticed that I tend to not do it almost as a rule. But that's a matter for another entry. One with many, many commas in it. And time set aside for a potty break. Perhaps in the form of a musical interlude.

Once I got home, I picked up Audrey and took her with me to Steve and Chris's place to help them with some Mac issues. If that was at all ambiguous, I meant that Audrey came with me so that I could provide the computer help. Audrey doesn't exactly perform Mac troubleshooting. She's remarkable, but she's not magical. And, for the record, that's me showing up in Studio City after midnight to provide IT assistance. I can't imagine anything less sexy. And then Audrey peed on the carpet.

Wednesday, after sending out my annual Thanksgiving email message, I drove down to San Diego through a number of hours of what might have been horrific traffic, but I had my iPod playing and my dog in my lap, and I was happy as a clam. And come to that, I love the phrase "happy as a clam." I don't know why. Maybe it's the notion that bivalves know something the rest of us don't. So, yeah. I was fine with the delays, but a little tired when I got to town. I went to Jivewire at the Casbah with Yen and Beulah and Jantzen, and we drank a lot and danced a little. I was finally able to spend a few moments of face time with the lovely Kate and her handsome companions. I can never stop saying how pretty she is. She's just the prettiest pretty pretty thing there is. And she's smart and stylish and fun. I totally want to kidnap her and take her with me everywhere, just so I can show her to people and say, "Look at my pretty friend. Isn't she just super pretty?"

Then it was Thanksgiving. Sarah invited her friends Linda and Jim over to spend the holiday with our family. I brought down several bottles of a merlot I really like, and I kept offering it to everyone but found no takers. I was beginning to wonder if everyone had become recent Jehovah's Witnesses and if I was making a jerk of myself trying to force my booze on them. I still don't know what the story was there. But I drank nearly the whole bottle myself. Dad helped a bit. He's a sport. And Justin may have had a splash, too. But mostly it was me. And nary a buzz to show for it.

Dinner was extravagant, as usual. My mother is some kind of kitchen sorceress. You can't believe how good everything she makes is. But it is. And why fight it. Everyone ate to busting. Then Beulah told a series of hilarious stories. Then we all watched (and intermittently dozed in front of) Elf. That was enough nap for me. After the movie, I went and picked up Yen and brought her to Nunu's for what is becoming a traditional holiday nightcap. We ran into friends we knew, met people we didn't know, and drank many drinks which we did not have to pay for. When I was leaving the house, my mother was disapproving. "You go out every night. It's not normal." I didn't argue. First of all, I don't go out every night. And secondly, I'm not especially interested in being normal. Particularly if it means going to bed at a reasonable hour. That's just not for me.

Tonight, I went out and met one of my former bandmates, again at Nunu's, somehow the default locale for all my liquored-up chit chat. We had not seen or spoken to each other in well over a year. And it was nice to not be bothered by any of that nonsense anymore. A few hours into it, Krissy came and joined us, and we stayed for a bit, until it was time to get Krissy something in a food way. My outfit, which was not fancy or anything, provoked approving comment from a bartender or two. I don't know why that makes a difference, but it absolutely does. Without fail.

When I was driving home a short while ago, the fog sat above the Del Mar valley like a translucent ribbon, sheer enough to give away the locations of the McDonald's and the supermarket. I had my iPod on shuffle, and I kept hearing songs I've never heard and wondering if I would remember them if I ever heard them again. Nostalgia is great. Repetition is powerful. But there is something to be said for feeling something for the very first time ever and having nothing else at all to connect it to. There is something nice about getting a chance to write a proper history. One that isn't bogged down with footnotes and a backstory that takes up more space on the page than the story itself. This was my Thanksgiving. It wasn't particularly eventful or remarkable. It wasn't somehow an offshoot of a previous experience. It wasn't a reminder of last year's Thanksgiving. Or a retelling of the one the year before that. Or an echo of the one the year before that. It was just a day I spent with friends and family. And it probably won't have nearly as much staying power as some of the previous ones have had. Next year won't likely transport me back to this one in a way that will catch in my throat. I'll remember it, sure. I remember nearly everything. But I won't be crippled by the memory. Nor will I likely be able to get high on the fumes of it for years to come. And perhaps that's as it should be.

So, there you have it. I don't generally prefer to do my catching up in bulk like this. Surely I've missed something. Surely I've skipped over an opportunity to tie things up with a clever quote. Surely I could have held your attention better by saying these things in smaller spurts. I seem to have even forgotten to bother telling you why this entry is called coelacanth. But that's the way it goes. You can't eat a sugar cookie without losing a few crumbs. Even if you have a gigantic mouth. Just try it.

That's it for me. For now.

Mary Forrest, an incurable romantic whose immune system is kicking in

Labels: Audrey, comedy, Krissy, Paul F. Tompkins, photos, Thanksgiving

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:22 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Audrey-D2 Gets Her Fifteen Minutes

My dog's picture is in the running for Neighborhoodie of the Week. Vote for her, or those two girls with their underwear showing will receive a much undeserved boost to their collective self-esteem. Audrey's picture is the one in the middle. Easy to find. It's the only one of a dog.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:34 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Worm-getting

In terms of journal entries -- the rote kind -- I went to see Brendon Small's showcase on Wednesday and enjoyed the bejeezus out of that. And last night, I went to Largo to see more comedy before packing up my stuff and trundling Audrey and myself down to San Diego. I arrived a little after 3 A.M. and had to get up to bring my car in when the place opened, so I've had about forty-five minutes of sleep. In case you were wondering. This is one of the few times when an early morning entry of mine isn't the result of still being up. It's a new day. And I predict it will be a bleary-eyed one.

I hadn't intended to come down here so early. I have performance obligations over the weekend, but I was going to cut it much closer. My car had other ideas, though. And rather than risk having it blow up on me while I'm idling on Olympic Boulevard, I decided to be reactive in a way that was slightly closer to being proactive. Good for me. That proves that I am both a grown-up and that I have a certain amount of available credit on my credit card.

I was hoping that by starting to write, I would maybe stumble onto a thread that would be worth writing about, but I'm coming up bone dry here. I'm tempted to go digging through my IM logs and crib from recent conversations. And that would be like panning for gold in my bathtub. (Note to any eager prospectors: There is no gold in my bathtub. By making this analogy, I am trying to convey that there isn't much of value in my IM logs. I am not trying to get you to come over to my house with your sluice.)

I was shopping in Westwood the other day, and I bought a number of things that caused the store security alert to sound. After trying to correct the problem three times, the sales clerk and the manager had to take all of my purchases back to the register bay and de-thieverize them. When the manager returned contritely, he asked me if these were for a studio. I guess I was buying enough of whatever I bought that it looked abnormal, and he was wondering if I was shopping for a photo shoot, and maybe that was cool to him, so he wanted to know what awesome person I might be. I said no and ended up sort of babbling through a bunch of nonsense about gifts and not being able to get certain things in San Diego, and I could see that he had long since lost interest. I'm going to try and make it my policy, when asked a simple question to which the answer is no, to just say, "No," and smile. I'm sure this will assist in my coming off as mysterious and perhaps even elite -- instead of inferior and apologetic. I realized it's not a very good story. I'm just making a note of this so that I will remember not to be such a moron all the time.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:06 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Nobody knows the wreck of the soul the way you do.

I'm all for quiet days and for nights in. Especially in this latest speck of life-time. It's been a murderous few days of work stress and time pressures and still making time to be fond and out there and hopefully stringing together the sentences in a less than ordinary way. But it feels as if it has been more than a few days. I've been in the aging chamber. For now, the pressures have eased. My bid has been submitted, and I'm in a state of benignly optimistic relief. Especially because my client did not yell at me for getting it in so late.

I worked last night until it was today. Some time well after midnight, I could be found driving to Koreatown to deliver a DVD of images to Josh. I had Audrey on my lap, and every 7-11 I passed looked like Mecca to me. When I came home, I took Audrey for our usual spin around the block, and there was a scary, loud fellow yelling obscenities, mad at the world, as he mopped off his windshield with a t-shirt and made ready to drive away. He was excitable enough that I got my keys out and had my cell phone at the ready. Maybe my mind was dulled by overuse, but I began having morbid fantasies of my assault and ensuing death. It never came to pass, but it was good in terms of waking me up and getting my blood going so I could go back home and work the rest of the night. Which I did.

Today, I worked all day. From the moment I tumbled out of bed. I had a catalog deadline to meet and a bid to submit, and that amounts to a lot of PDF-making. I make so many of them these days. And yet I can recall a time when there was no such thing. Just as I can recall a time when there had never yet been a psychotic postal worker showing up to blow away his supervisor at the depot, so the phrase "going postal" made no sense at all. And as if I wasn't already feeling a bit on the old side, I went to Amazon.com with the intention of shopping for an Xbox so I can play Halo 2 with Steve and Chris, and my page was headed by a promo for the Phillips Heart Start Home Defibrillator. I'm totally putting that on my wish list. Not the Xbox. I'll buy that myself, because you can't be counted on to get me what I want on my schedule. But the person who buys me my own defibrillator will go down in history as a total freak. And one with $1500 to spare apparently. Good for you, future freak. You must have managed your spending properly. My mom would really like you and tell me to watch you carefully so I might learn something.

They died in the drink.

The other night, the ants were out again. I left a glass of water on my bedside table, and they had found their way into it. And drowned there. I did not pity them. I went and got my can of Raid and made sure to take care of as many of them as I could see. When the climate changes or when the exterminator visits or in certain other non-scientific scenarios, they come into my bedroom, and I wake up feeling one or two crawling on my arm or on my face, and it gives me the willies. My grandmother died of a stroke when I was just a child, and when the tale was retold to me, I remember my mom saying that, before she died, her mother was complaining that she felt as if there were ants crawling on her forehead. That has stuck with me.

And maybe because of the proximity of my bed to the windows in my bedroom, I always seem to find out I have ants by finding them on me, and I hate that. I have been thinking of redecorating. For some time now. Maybe I will face my bed the other way. The Chinese believe it's bad luck to have the foot of your bed facing the door anyway. Apparently, Death can come in at night and snatch you away by your feet. Apparently, Death isn't one for snatching people away by the head, arms, or shoulders.

Ironically, as much as I knit my hands together and laugh with glee when I exterminate entire races of ants, please, HBO, please please PLEASE stop showing documentaries and investigative reports about dogs being treated cruelly or disposed of or abandoned. I simply cannot bear it. My little sister and I cried our eyes out when we watched Shelter Dogs. And now, there are promos for an episode of Real Sports about what happens to greyhounds after they are done with their racing careers. And I know better than to watch it, if I want to keep my mascara intact. Horrible horrible. My little Audrey, curled up on my lap right now, came from a rescue, and -- although she has her share of behavioral problems -- I can't bear to think of what would have happened to her if she hadn't found a home. With me or elsewhere. She's my sweet little angel. You couldn't help but love her. Even though she will try to bite your face off when she first meets you. And every time she sees you after that. No matter how many treats you give her. Her tiny little skull is so smooth and round, you just want to bite it in two.

How could you believe me when I said I love you when you know I've been a liar all my life?

Jane Powell sings so pretty. I'm watching her in Holiday in Mexico, and I'm remembering that great number she did with Fred Astaire in Royal Family. And thinking of Fred Astaire makes me think of The Barkleys of Broadway and that splendid dress Ginger Rogers wears -- the one I once said I would like my wedding dress to emulate. And watching That's Entertainment! on television with my dad and having him play docent to the golden age of cinema. Movies were such an offshoot of Vaudeville back then. Jose Iturbi got to be in all those movies just because he was a piano virtuoso. Good old Vaudeville. I miss movies with big musical numbers in the middle of them. I miss men in funny pants. I miss slapstick.

But I also wish I could live in deep space. On a space station. Where the light was always sort of blue and the buildings always sounded as if they were breathing. I'm always in the wrong time. Now. Then. Yet to come. I'm the girl on the train platform and you're the boy on the opposite side of the tracks. And we run down the stairs to meet each other and end up on opposite platforms again, laughing like fools. But -- unlike in Cousins and whatever other list of movies that happens in -- we never end up on the same side. You give up and get on the train going one way, and I get on the train going the other. And we both find newspapers that someone is finished reading, and we get lost in current events and department store extravaganzas. And before we know it, none of it ever happened. Do you ever get that feeling?

Labels: Audrey, dogs, Feng Shui, movies

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:25 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Absence and What It Makes

I went to the Brendon Small Show tonight. It was great great. I can't wait to put up a sketch show I can really get excited about. Well, when I say I can't wait, I'm being somewhat extravagant. Sure I can wait. And I will. As with everything. I live my life on a train station platform, bags in hand.

This is a photo of my little one. Martín called her "Audrey-D2." Her shirt says, "Star Wars." (I had it made for her at Neighborhoodies.com. Let's be honest; I had a few things made there.) Even my dog has to subscribe to my geek chic. Poor thing. Anyway, it's the cutest thing in the world, seeing her in it. And it's soft and cuddly and keeps her from getting quite so much fur on my clothes. Plus, if she's embarrassed, it doesn't show. She's a cooperative little angel.

I was thinking about how we say we are missing something or someone. How it sounds materially as if the something or someone has been excised, amputated, cut out. That it must have been an actual part of you in order for it to be missing from you. So that explains the tenderness. The soreness. The hurt. Even when they cut your leg off, you keep feeling it ache. And it throws things off kilter when you expect there to be more people in the picture than actually show up for the shot. You can't leave room for the no-shows. The picture would be full of holes.

I say I am missing things all the time. Whether it's a pair of sunglasses or a dear friend. I'm always noticing the holes. I'm always counting the empties. I'm always taking stock of the inventory that never made it to the shelf. I wonder how huge and enormous I would be if I had everything with me that has fallen away over the years. Maybe that's why certain handbag animals molt.

I don't think absence makes the heart grow at all. I think it makes it shrink and shrivel like an unattended piece of meat. But I'm no scientist.

The world is full of phantoms.

Labels: Audrey, photos, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:47 AM | Back to Monoblog

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For those of you who bought squares in the office pool

My temperature was down to 97.5 this morning, and now it's up to 102.0. The pain is pretty impressive. And I'm in bed with a ski hat on my head and a bunch of warm layers on. All black. I think it's just a sinus infection, but my friends keep saying the word "meningitis." And me without health insurance. If you love me, you'll vote Democrat. And I mean that.

My mom is coming sometime later today to take me to some doctor. I wonder if I should shower.

Audrey is gnawing on the zipper on my warm-up jacket, and I find it strangely comforting. Which means I'm nutters. Because I really like that warm-up jacket, and she shouldn't be getting her stinky breath all over it.

I'm taking my temperature...right...now...and the verdict is...102.2. Great. Hello, brain damage, here I come. I'm going to go get an ice pack. You should start composing something to say at my service.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:23 AM | Back to Monoblog

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They say, to play the blues, you've gotta understand pain.*

I hate it when I fall behind. And it's something I've been doing a lot of. Things I never said but meant to. Like when I was going to talk about having gone to see We Don't Live Here Anymore with Arthur and thinking to myself, "This movie needs a shave." That was ages ago. The first week of August. Practically dinosaur times. I hate that.

So now it's just about the week and what I've missed and what I hope won't get swept under the rug and what I want to emblazon on something. It'll end up coming out all staccato now. And that's a shame. My thoughts have a pleasanter rhythm when I'm first having them. But the things that stick out will stick out no matter what.

Arthur and I tried to see a screening of Beyond the Sea. When that didn't pan out, we went to Casa Vega and quizzed each other on our various desert island necessities. The last time I went there, I had just moved here, and it didn't seem real to be on Ventura Boulevard. It didn't seem like it was where it should be in my mental map. I was still staying in a motel back then, and getting there and eating there with a bunch of people who knew their way around was actually quite uplifting. The salsa is just as good as I remember it. And then Sarah came over. And Audrey bit her. I found myself a therapist at long last and met with her for the first time. I went to the Sunset Marquis, where Sarah was staying, and had drinks and was told that Jessica and Nick had just walked in, but I didn't care enough to turn my head and look. Who cares about them. I worked all night. Several times. Bryn and I caught up. I don't know if it was the food from Versailles or some other happenstance, but I was sick for a good long while from the middle of the night on into the next day. I almost didn't leave the house, but then at the last minute, Matt and I met at Cinespace for the debate-watching party there. I had a pretty obstructed view, but it was nice to see the spectacle in the company of compatriots. Tommy Davidson was standing next to me the whole time. I had to move because I was getting jostled a lot. I ended up in a corner where both the debaters' faces were usually blocked by light fixtures. It was just like radio. Afterwards, Matt took me to the Casting Office to celebrate Gretchen's birthday, and I had too much to drink. But that is always made better by a trip to Lucy's, so we made one. The dog trainer lost hold of Audrey's leash when they were outside alone, and I almost had a heart attack watching from the window. But Audrey ran to the door and wanted to come inside, and she probably has no idea how close she came to another mad race across busy streets. I like to think it's because she loves me now, but I still don't trust that she wouldn't bolt if the opportunity came. It's what min pins do. My Uncle Virgil is in the hospital awaiting some pretty hardcore surgery intended to prevent his having a stroke. Apparently, he had a minor stroke-like event just a week or two ago, and it brought attention to the need for him to have what amounts to bypass surgery on both the major arteries in his neck. He is my dad's best friend, and I hope he will be all right. I drove down to San Diego to perform at the comedy theater. We went to Fred's in Old Town for drinks and food. I wore white pants, thinking I loved them, but I saw my reflection and realized I couldn't possibly wear them, so I made a mad dash to the department store, where I bought several other pairs of pants to try on at Krissy's place before going to the wedding at which I was to be her surrogate date. The reception was in Rancho Santa Fe at the inn where I once played for someone else's wedding on a weekend in October three years ago. I saw some people I knew. And I drank the free booze. And then Krissy and I went to the theater to catch the last half of the last show before going out for more drinks at Shakespeare's. We ran into David and Janet, because it was about to be David's birthday. The entire team has a crush on David, so that was a treat. And when I speak for the team, I really just mean me. Yen invited me out to see Transfer, but I didn't get the message until late. I bought a Happy Meal on the way home and was not happy with my fries. My mom crocheted a little lavender sweater for Audrey, so she's been wearing that around. Her barking and viciousness towards everyone but me are wearing on my nerves. And an unmentionable part of her required expressing today. If you know what that means, you feel immensely sorry for me, as well you should. I thought about seeing some comedy but didn't. Passed on seeing I Heart Huckabees. Passed on drinks. Drove home later than I planned. And I'm beginning to worry that I have a tumor in my neck. Seriously. It's like it's god's way of helping me choose between the HMO and the PPO I was about to sign up for. Considering how much I'm going to have to pay for the coverage, I almost hope I've got something that will kill me sooner than later. My mom would be upset at me for saying that. I had some sketch and short film ideas this week. And I actually wrote them down.

My neck really hurts. And there is a weird little bump in it. I hope it's nothing that will require me to wear a wig. Wigging is only fun when it's voluntary.

Nothing super out of the ordinary happened when it became October, and I think I was a little surprised by that. I expect the apocalypse even more ardently when November spins up. It's the changing, the dying, the drying up, the falling off. It's the grey of cloudy sunshine and the chill of dusk. That whole "I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A." bit isn't entirely true, you know. It gets cold here, too. Things die here, too. People here dream of being elsewhere, too. I know I do.

*Ironically, this comes from a commercial for diabetic testing supplies, but you get the gist.

Labels: Audrey, Krissy, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:18 AM | Back to Monoblog

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I do believe in spooks. I do I do I do I do I do.

It's not even October yet, and I'm seeing my share of inadvertent creepiness. The L.A. Philharmonic is advertising Placido Domingo in their season, and his face is set against a black background on these banners that hang from the lampposts. When you're driving at night, you just see this large face floating in the black, and it takes a moment for you to resolve that it is Placido Domingo. And then you see another one. And another one. And maybe Placido Domingo isn't traditionally considered to be creepy, but any stern face floating in the sky is bad news in my book.

And when I was walking Audrey in the late late night, I tugged her to the right to avoid more spiderwebbery. But the only reason I knew a web was there is because there was a single leaf twisting in the air, suspended about a meter above the ground. Nothing visibly holding it there. It's a shame I'm not superstitious. I find superstitions amusing. And there isn't enough merriment in my world.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:44 AM | Back to Monoblog

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The pound is sinking.

I took Audrey for a walk. Beulah and Justin live in my old neighborhood. Near where my last apartment in San Diego was. Near where my parents' house was. Near all the things I always used to drive past. And the weather today is cool. Almost chilly. Back-to-school weather. Fall weather. Leaf-peeping weather. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I would come back to San Diego on the weekends and stay in this neighborhood with my parents. And it was fall. And I would go running in weather like this. And every song on my MP3 mix would make my guts churn. Even the stupid techno crap. Everything had significance. Everything tugged at overused heartstrings. Everything kept my mind racing and my heart pounding and my legs pumping. Who knew nostalgia could be so cardiovascular.

But that was three years ago. And my parents don't live in that house anymore. And I don't come back every weekend. And I don't always go running. And I almost never listen to that MP3 player anymore. Its battery doesn't like to hold its juice. Everything has changed. But when it's cool like this, something about it betrays a constant. The smell of the air. The grey of the sky. A little bit too brisk a breeze. A week ago, the summer was murdering me. And all of a sudden, it's time for a sweater and lip balm. You won't catch me complaining, though. I love both sweaters and lip balm.

Everything changes. I'm about to head back up to L.A. That familiar drive. So often done as Sunday was winding down. Yesterday, when we were on the road, we found ourselves navigating streets I used to drive all the time. Corridors that used to be welcoming. Second nature. I remembered them. If only to be able to identify all that is no longer the same. When I first moved to L.A., and I had to drive past these freeway exits late on Sunday nights as I was returning to my work week, they used to make me feel small and sad and insignificant and powerless. And I remember thinking to myself that someday they would represent something else. Someday, different buttons would be pushed and for different reasons. Someday, my re-wiring would be complete and I could get back to being the person I used to think I wanted to be. Even that has changed.

I am free of much that was once weighty and worrisome. I don't get stuck in that sentimental bog so much. My balloon has fewer sandbags in the basket. But even that weighs on me. Worries me. With all this weight falling away, will I just drift off into the sky and never find my way back down? Won't I? There has been an urgency in me. It has been pointed out to me before. It has been a fuel for my fire. An impetus to carry cameras or to buy paints or to sharpen my pencil or to type madly in the wee hours. I worry when things upset that balance. That I will stop doing anything because my creative urge is intentionally antibiotic, wiping out any nagging fear or doubt or angst that persists. I worry that I might find myself an organism in stasis if my slate ever gets wiped that clean.

But I don't suppose I have so much to worry about. Obviously, a drop in temperature and a short walk with my dog are enough to send me into a drippy reverie. I can't be that far ahead of the game.

Last night, there were many moments when I found myself stuck. Stuck on a word or a thought or a memory or a promise. It happens most when I'm in unfamiliar places. When I have nothing to hold onto. No view of the horizon. I have been to a number of big rock shows in the past few years. Maybe I'm just tracking through where they all fell on my timeline. Whether I wore a hat. Whether I forgot to bring sunscreen. Whether I stopped to write things down. Last night was nothing like the night before it. How many more times will I be able to say that?

Everything changes. Everything has changed. Everything is exactly the same.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:59 PM | Back to Monoblog

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What you don't know

So, I never really got around to telling the tale, but I suppose now is as good a time as any. A few weeks ago, I adopted a two year-old miniature pinscher. I call her Audrey. She was rescued from a puppy mill, where she had really only ever interacted with other dogs. So, she was terrified of me. And any other human being, particularly if there were no other dogs around. I brought her home and spent a very stressful lot of time with her trying to put her at ease and get her to trust me. It was like having a new baby, but one with all sorts of problems. She wouldn't eat. She wouldn't drink. She wouldn't go to the bathroom when I took her out. She just huddled over in the corner in my bedroom, shaking. She likes to sit in front of my full-length mirror. I think it makes her feel like there is another dog in the room.

She made so much progress that first week. I could see her warming up and settling down. She still ran away from me when I reached for her, but she was also very cuddly once she made it to my lap. And let me tell you, I was never prouder of a turd than when she made her first in the back yard. Getting her to go on the leash was a big triumph. It proved she trusted me enough to be that special sort of vulnerable with me only a few feet away. I was ecstatic. Anyway, before my first week with her was up, I was preparing for my evening, and I saw that she was sitting by the back door, so I applauded her for what I assumed was her way of letting me know she wanted to go out. I threw on a skirt and a tank top and slippers and took her out into the back yard, where she promptly did her business. And I cheered her for it.

When I was taking her into the house, up the four steps to my back door, she jumped off the side of the steps, and -- the leash being short -- I leaned forward to make sure she had enough slack to not hang herself, at which point she yanked a bit and caused me to lose my balance. I fell. Flat on my face. Onto concrete. Somehow managing to badly cut the bottom of my foot, skin my knee, my elbow, my palm, and my knuckle, all of which were bleeding. And just as I took stock of all this, I noticed that I was no longer holding the leash, and Audrey bolted. Right out across a very busy street and far out of my reach. I kicked off my slippers and went running after her, barefoot and bleeding. I called her name. Drivers called out to me and told me where they had seen her go. I ran for blocks. A fellow in an SUV of some sort with a young lad in the front seat with him rolled down his passenger side window and told me he would circle the block in the direction he thought he saw her go. When he returned, he had lost the trail. He said he would keep an eye out and asked for my number to call me in case he found her. I gave it to him. He offered me a ride home, and -- as was the case on the one other desperation-filled time that I accepted a ride from a stranger -- I reasoned that he wasn't going to murder me with that boy in the car, so I climbed in and let him drive me home. And when I got out, I felt bad, noticing that I had gotten some elbow blood on his door. He gave me his card and asked me to call him if I found her so that he would know to stop looking. I thanked him and went into the house and began making calls. The micro-chip place where she was registered. The L.A. animal control place (where no one ever answered the phone). The people I had adopted her from, because her tags and micro-chip were still in their name. And Beulah. And by the time I spoke to Beulah, I was crying my eyes out.

The woman from the min pin rescue tried to calm me down. Told me what I should do. Make some signs. Go out and drive around slowly. Bring a friend. Do you have someone you can call? Someone who can come be with you right now? In case you get hysterical? Someone who can drive around with you so you have two pairs of eyes? Bring a blanket, because Audrey will probably be cold. It all began to blur together. I think the needle in my brain got stuck on the part of the record where she asked if I had a friend I could call and I thought to myself, "No, I don't." Not that I don't have any friends. I just couldn't think of anyone I would call at this moment, when I'm terribly upset, when it's an inconvenient working hour, when they would have to drop everything to come to my aid. It made me feel so sad and alone to think that the answer to that question was no. Even if it wasn't. At that moment, it felt like it was.

In the short time after I got home, I had already told myself I probably wouldn't get her back. She's so small and so unfamiliar with cars and the road. She's scared. She will get run over. Or eaten. Or trapped somewhere. I was in quite a state. Beulah and Adam both reassured me that she would be found. People will see she is on a leash and they will know she got away from someone, and they will try and help.

I couldn't decide if I should call and cancel my plans for the evening. I didn't want to. But I wondered what sort of company I would be or what sort of person I would look like if I didn't say that this was more important. But within about two hours, I got a phone call. Someone had found her. She was at the West L.A. animal shelter. I could go collect her in the morning. The rescue people would have to come, too, since the micro-chip was still in this woman Jeanine's name. I would meet them. They would call me. It would all work out. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, just before I was leaving my house, I got a phone call from the woman I had adopted Audrey from, Sharon. Sharon let me know that Kim, the coordinator for the rescue society, was going to be calling me. They had some concerns. Apparently Audrey came right up to the guy who found her in the street. And everyone at the shelter said she was being very friendly and allowing people to pet her. Maybe she just didn't like me, Sharon was saying. Maybe they weren't going to give her back to me. This all sounded so ludicrous to me. I went out, but in a strange mood.

And the next morning, when they called my house, I wasn't home to answer it, but they never tried my cell phone, which was the phone they had been using to contact me all along. So when I got their message, I learned that Audrey had already been picked up and taken back to Sunland, to the home I had adopted her from, and some things needed to be decided. I was upset and frustrated and angry and confused. And I placed several calls in the hopes of resolving things quickly. But they didn't end up caling me back for seven hours. Seven excruciating hours, during which -- much like the afternoon before -- I had nearly convinced myself that I wasn't going to get her back. But in the end, I drove back out to Sunland and collected her. And she was frightened and skittish. Moreso than before. And it took another week of trying to work back up to where we had been. And I certainly had to sort through my own anxieties about taking her on walks and feeling that sense of panic that I was going to somehow lose her again. We spent a lot of time with Beulah and Justin, because Audrey really comes alive when she's with Tasha. Even though Tasha looks annoyed most of the time. And it's been a few weeks, and she is fine now. Sitting on my lap, as a matter of fact. When I type at my computer, she likes to sit here, with her chin resting on my left forearm, so that her head bobs around as I type. Martín says it makes her look like an animatronic dog. I believe him. Sometimes, things scare her, and I fear that she will revert back to that earlier state. But she still curls up against my lap when I sit down. And she licks my hands when I put lotion on them. And she's been eating her dinner -- even the dry food -- and doing her "business," and I see her tail wagging, and I know she's happy. Even though she still runs away when I reach for her. She comes to me when I'm sitting here at my desk. And I'm sitting here a lot.

I'm just summing the tale up, because I said something about the fact that I was bleeding (and in truth when I typed it, I got blood all over my trackball and my wrist rest), and people who read this speculated in a number of wrong directions. Believe me, if I was going to write about my period, I would totally just come out and say it. Check the archives. I'm not lying.

So the guy who gave me a ride home ended up calling me the next day to see if I had "found my dog." I didn't catch the phone call, but it's just as well. The same thing happened when I got a ride home from an off-duty police officer in San Diego many years ago. It amuses me that someone would look at a girl running down the street, barefoot and bleeding and not dressed in her Sunday finest, hair not yet styled, lipstick not yet on, and go: hot. But that's apparently what happened. I love that there are good samaritans out there. But I worry for them socially.

Labels: Adam, Audrey, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:21 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Rage of the Sinuses

I am an allergic mess today. And every time I sneeze, it startles my little Audrey. Every time I blow my nose, she glares at me, before reverting to her curled up position on my lap. I am allergic to dogs, but I attribute this to the weather. After all Audrey and I have been through in the past two and half weeks, I am unwilling to consider the possibility that we are clinically destined to be apart. I'd rather drive a PT Cruiser.

I'm off to a pool party in the mid-day swelter. I hope no one there minds the sniffles. More than likely, they will assume I'm hopped up on cocaine. Let 'em. I've nothing to prove.

If this is what is meant by "bikini weather," I'll take "parka weather," "galoshes weather," or "full body cast weather" any day of the week.

Beulah calls Ashley Olsen "the fat one." That makes me laugh.

Labels: Audrey

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:38 PM | Back to Monoblog

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The louder I say I'm happy, the more I believe it's so.

Saturday night, an anomalous Paul F. Tompkins Show found me at Largo. Paul F. Tompkins, who was so bearded and mustachioed as to make us think at first that his evil twin from the alternate universe had somehow found his way onstage, turned out to not be evil at all but in fact hilarious. It seems pointless to even offer superlative assessment, as each show seems to top the preceding one, and you start to ask yourself if you were even paying attention before because how could it possibly keep getting to be so wonderful. Surely, you just missed part of it before. Because you thought it was damn fine back then, too, and when are you ever wrong. I'm not following my own logic here. Anyway, it ruled. In my notebook, I nearly illegibly wrote, "Paul F. Tompkins, maverick hypnotist," and, "A fun word for the color yellow; 'Rocket Red' is too scientific." You don't know why that's funny, but it is, and you can trust me. Uncannily, Pee-wee Herman was introducing his hypnosis doll Dr. Mongo on t.v. just as I began to type the maverick hypnotist thing. And maybe that isn't exactly uncanny, but I know that very few of you will bother to look it up to make sure.

So, Paul F. Tompkins, right? Give this man his own television show, or I will strap sticks of dynamite to my bodice and blow my womanliness to smithereens. What do I have to do? Seriously. Just don't make it a show that requires him to stop doing his shows at Largo, for that would make me truly and ironically furious.

My pals and I went to Canter's after the show, and I ordered blintzes, but I wanted vodka.

And there's more.

I got a doggy last week. Her name is Audrey. And she runs away from me whenever I reach for her, but I'm sure that will change. Eventually. I also cut and colored my hair again. And celebrated my sister's and my father's birthday. And my friend Jessica was visiting for most of the week, which was lovely. But for some reason, I was tireder than I've ever been last week. I felt like I was falling asleep all day long. I could barely keep my eyes open for the shortest of drives. And I wanted naps again and again. And I didn't get them nearly that often.

The week before last, I went to Las Vegas at the drop of a hat and lived it up at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, where I spent hours at the heavenly man-made beach they have there, swam with my sunglasses on, and liked the fact that you can walk through the lobby dripping wet and in your bathing costume and share an elevator with a woman in a bridal gown -- and look down on her for how gauche she is.

I spent a lot of money gambling, but it didn't hurt at all. I was totally up for losing it. That's a nice feeling. If you can go to Vegas and feel that way, do.

I had all sorts of ideas while I was driving up. I scribbled a lot of them down on a parking stub while I was on the road. Which I shouldn't be proud of, as I covered the 280 mile distance in about three hours and forty-five minutes, including the trafficky part getting out of L.A. I don't think it's recommended that you write while you drive at any speed, but that's just ridiculous. I even had a highway patrolman pull up behind me when I was going 95. I looked in my rearview and saw that scary, cockroach-like silhouette that those cars cut with their coloring and their antennae. I pulled to the right and assumed I was going to get a ticket. After all, my tags are expired, and even though I had an extension in my windshield, this cop couldn't have seen that. But to my surprise and delight, he passed me and pulled up behind the red Acura in front of me. They did not get over right away. And when they did, he pulled in behind them, sirens a-blazing, and I experienced the schadenfreude high that I nearly always feel when someone is getting a ticket and it isn't me. I don't know why I didn't get a ticket, but I took it as a sign and parlayed my good luck at the roulette table, where I did in fact win.

My journey from the angels to the stars was inspirational, to be sure. I spent a lot of money and had a lot of fun and wrote a lot down and learned to use my new camera. Well, one of them. The Sony is still gathering dust. But my new Canon goes with me everywhere. The road to Las Vegas is a tire tread graveyard. Ruined carcasses of shredded black rubber. I empathetically pitied the travelers who must have had to pull off to the dusty shoulder and work a jack in the 110 degree heat. They're long gone now, but the pieces of tire linger. It feels like the Old West, only less old. All the abandoned gas stations and ramshackle diners. Towns with no one in them. Quivering heat fanning off the sandy valley floor. It was stormy on my drive home. Rain and thunder and lightning in the desert. A pale grey sky. Majestic, in a way. I drove straight through to San Diego -- stopping once at Minneola Road to pee and take a picture of an old sign -- and performed at the comedy theater, where I was happy to have done so. I no longer remember what I did on stage on Friday and/or Saturday that might have been worth mentioning. But I remember having a good time and being told by a weird fellow leaving the theater (as he touched his eyebrow to mine) that I was the best one. I would ordinarily not have allowed such an invasion of my personal space, but it came as such a surprise and afterwards I just shrugged it off and told myself he was probably autistic.

Miss Yvonne sure was buxom. She plays old ladies in commercials now. I feel sad for that. But I feel happy when Kap'n Karl says, "Miss Yvonne, may I LIKE you?" Because that is a very funny thing to say. Paul Reubens is a genius. I give him a special dispensation to do whatever perverted and illegal thing he wants to. He'll always be great to me. And our society is too uptight anyway.

Oh, when I was in Vegas, I took my crew to the Star Trek Experience, for I am a nerd of gargantuan proportions. And nothing was funnier to me than when Justin thought that the signature Borg phrase ("Resistance is futile.") was, "You are not suitable." I wish that's what the Borg would say. It's much better. Did you know that when you go to the Borg attraction at the Star Trek Experience, they poke you in the ass? It's true. Vicious pointy things prod you through your seat and make you wonder what might have happened if you had been sitting only two inches further to the left. It's similar to those 4-D attractions at Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. That "A Bug's Life" show touches you all over the place. And that's all right in the context of the show. But in the Borg thing, getting poked in the ass makes no sense based on what's happening on the screen and around you. It's completely out of touch with the narrative. It was just rude. The Borg Queen is talking to you and the Doctor is yelling and a hole gets blown in the overhead part of the bay you're in, but nothing really explains the ass-poking. I wonder who designed that part. Maybe it's an artifact left over from the previous attraction, Date Rape 4-D, starring Leslie Nielsen.

Yesterday, I was driving south past La Jolla, and I saw a scruffy couple walking on the freeway with their two dogs. They were dragging an amply loaded cart up a steep grade. I don't really remember whether they looked destitute, but in my imaginary memory they were shirtless and poor. I was listening to Bill Collins reading his poetry on A Prairie Home Companion at the time, and I wanted to write something amusing about them, but I didn't.

The Muppets Take Manhattan has been playing on cable like crazy. It's one of my favorite movies in all the world. And all the songs remind me of our living room in Guam, where I watched our VHS copy of it again and again and again. I wonder sometimes if the fact that such a great lot of my sentimental ooze is unleashed by shows that feature puppets and cartoon characters says something distasteful about my brain development. My tears get jerked by lots of things. But that Saying Goodbye song in this movie is like getting sprayed in the face with mace.

Life is a lot like that drive to Vegas, you know. Like a two-lane highway where everyone around you seems to be content to go sixty. This is an ineffective analogy. But I am always in a hurry. And I seldom get what I want.

When I ramble on like this, I am often at a loss for a way to let go and end it, so in closing, here is an excerpt from a conversation in a coffee shop where pictures were being drawn on placemats:

J: See my Luxor sign?

B: Yeah. I hate it.

J: Well, I hate your house.

M: You guys are like six year-olds.

J: You make me six years-old.

M: Poached eggs are not supposed to be completely cooked through in the yolk.

Labels: Audrey, comedy, NCT, Paul F. Tompkins, Star Trek, The Muppets Take Manhattan

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:18 AM | Back to Monoblog

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