Repetitive Motion Injury

Although it comes but once a year, it isn't lost on me that it comes every year, this Thanksgiving business. And that each new one I celebrate is piggybacked on all the rest that preceded it. And that maybe I'm getting tired of having all these milestones to mark my progress. Or regress. Or no-gress, as the case my be. Maybe it's just "gress" at that point.

Often with the hope of not being extremely redundant -- despite the fact that eating a turkey dinner every year at the same time seems prone to a redundancy that even Kurt Vonnegut couldn't dress up in disguise -- I end up reading over my previous writings on this subject. Now that I've been writing in this venue for over five years, there's more to pick through and more to tiptoe round. It wastes a bunch of time. And usually leaves me with the feeling that the thing I wrote last year or the year before was better than whatever I'm going to say now, and why didn't I ever get paid to write when I was saying clever things like that? And why doesn't it result in any palpable satisfaction to read something I've written and like it? Why isn't that ever ever enough? Anyway. I went back is my point.

I began my holiday on Wednesday, leaving town at precisely the stupidest possible time and having already been warned that there was some shitty-ass shit going on on the 405. But surprisingly, I really didn't suffer much. The big hubbub in El Segundo was still there, and many lanes were closed, but I probably had to slow down for ten or fifteen minutes, and then once I was through it, I was flying along at 75 the rest of the way. So I got to my parents' house with time to heft all my junk in the house, write my annual Thanksgiving email, feel very tired and contemplate not doing anything social, and then get myself into the car and on my way to Ono Sushi, where a typically super duper dinner was had. After sushi, I visited Nunu's, where I was treated like a princess -- as usual. I had hoped to stop by Jivewire at The Casbah, but the ranks of enthusiastic compatriots had thinned, and I guess I was tired enough that dancing would have done me in. So I'm glad that Nunu's was where we landed. My mom didn't even hassle me about not getting home until well after her Thanksgiving day preparations had begun. That's unprecedented.

Come to think of it, this year was different than previous years in a few ways. But it was also very much the same. Maybe with deliberation attached. Like my annual Thanksgiving nightcap at Nunu's. I've come to look forward to that, so I make a point of perpetuating it. This year, there were so many people there with me and other people there that I knew, it really did feel like it's own special holiday thing. And after a dinner of turkey and lobster -- yes, LOBSTER -- and more things than can be artfully put on a normal-sized plate at once without layering and overrun unless you serve your cranberry relish and yams and stuffing in tiny little tablespoonsful, like they might do at a chi chi restaurant. With like cilantro oil or a vanilla-infused truffle and balsamic vinegar reduction drizzled on the plate and a garnish of something like star fruit or caviar. That gives me an idea. Would anyone mind if I started calling poultry eggs caviar? I will serve turkey caviar at my next Thanksgiving dinner. And see if anyone notices. And if anyone wants to try and fit it on melba toast.

If I can recall properly, here was our menu:

Appetizers
Cheese Platter
- Aged Mimolette
- Huntsman (Stilton layered with Double Gloucester)
- Wensleydale
- one other one I didn't try
- every possible kind of cracker
Fresh Fruit
Marinated Mushrooms
Kalamata Olives
Picholine Olives
Wine: Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon

Dinner
Roast Turkey (specially brined and cooked to moist perfection)
Broiled Lobster Tails with Clarified Butter
Mashed Potatoes
Jansen's Temptation (a Swedish potato casserole, apparently secretly including herring -- yum)
Chestnut Stuffing
Mashed Yams with Apricots and Almonds (?), Topped with Bruléed Marshmallows and Coconut
Cranberry Relish (a special recipe that causes all others to be deemed inferior)
Green Beans (I almost called them Haricots Verts. And I can't remember if they were Amandine.)
Corn (It wasn't fancy, but it's still my favorite.)
Gravy (duh)
Wine: Stag's Leap Merlot and Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon

Dessert
Side by Side Pumpkin Pie and New York Cheesecake with Raspberries
Espresso/Cappuccino
Apéritif: Sambuca

I hope I've managed to make it sound fancy and perfectly planned and brilliantly executed. Because it was. And I noticed how proud and happy it made my mother to have everything go over so well. Big success. Big success.

Friday night, I went over to Beulah's, and we went shopping for groceries and treated ourselves to a variety of artery-clogging snacks. A lot of cheese and crackers and apples and pepperoni and stuff. But also Totino's Pizza Rolls. In case anyone was wondering if I've ever eaten poorly. Believe me. I have. And I do. We also watched The New World on pay-per-view. Essentially only because it's another flick Christian Bale is in, and Beulah is devoted as the day is long. We didn't like it. It was the slowest movie I've watched in a long time. Perhaps ever. Unbelievably slow. And the dialogue was so soft and so ickily poem-like that I often had to stop chewing and lean in to try and hear what was being said, only to find that what they were saying revealed nothing at all story-wise. The only way Beulah and I were able to enjoy it was in being so disappointed in it. We began to sarcastically wish it could just be slower. That Christian Bale and Pocahontas would just TAKE THEIR TIME. I once heard a comedian say that he was surprised that Finding Neverland had been nominated for Best Picture; he said the movie was so slow it should have been nominated for Best Photograph. I liked Finding Neverland, but I thought that joke was funny. Even funnier, however, was Beulah's exclamation during one of the sequences of inanimate objects being shot for long silent moments for no apparent reason: "This movie is a screensaver." It really is like a two-and-a-half hour poetry reading. And if you're into that, we probably shouldn't go to the movies together. Incidentally, Beulah's never seen Reign of Fire and was concerned that it, too, would suck. But I maintain that Reign of Fire is a terribly underrated film. As long as you let yourself buy into the whole dragons thing -- and as long as you can bear to watch Matthew McConaughey playing an insufferable wacko, which I further maintain is less insufferable than watching him play a love interest or a looker -- and if you allow that these kinds of grandiose fantasies might call for some grandiose acting, it's perfectly entertaining to watch. And it contains one of my more favorite Star Wars references. Which will do nothing to help Beulah want to watch it, I realize.

I performed in a couple of improv shows on Saturday night, spent the night at Beulah's place, then drove home to Los Angeles today, with not much traffic to grouse about, bookending a relatively painless travel experience. And while I was driving up today, I listened to nothing but Beatles music on the radio. First it was just Beatles Beatles Beatles, and then it was an hour-long tribute to George Harrison, the fifth anniversary of whose death is this Wednesday. Which made me sad, and made me marvel at how long it's been, because I distinctly remember when I heard he had passed. And the night it happened was an awful one for me, through no fault of George's. Golden Slumbers made me think of Tasha, which made me cry a bit. The rest of it made me think assorted things. I never give you my pillow. I only send you my invitation. And in the middle of the celebrations, I break down...Lying there and staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sleepy feeling...You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.....Everybody had a hard year. Everybody had a good time. Everybody had a wet dream. Everybody saw the sunshine...Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon her head. Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer made sure that she was dead...Will I wait a lonely lifetime? If you want me to, I will...Boy, you gotta carry that weight, carry that weight a long time.

Very little Guitar Hero was played. Very little sleep was had. There was an unfortunate -- and perhaps statistically unavoidable -- falling out with my mother. She was so happy with me for two straight days. That couldn't possibly have continued without somehow triggering the onset of Armageddon. I had a lot of work to do. I squeezed that in where possible. I edited and posted photos, despite drooping eyelids and flagging spirits. I didn't get to eat Thanksgiving leftovers even once. And I didn't bring any home, which is usually the case and an unfortunate one. I drove home wondering why I allow things to matter, particularly when I am doing it alone. And I felt thankful for a sense of history. Even though it's a sense of history that most often prevents me from ever having a sense of present.

Everybody had a hard year. Everybody had a good time. Everybody had a wet dream. Everybody saw the sunshine.>

Labels: Guitar Hero, Krissy, photos, Star Wars, Thanksgiving

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:10 PM | Back to Monoblog

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You know what I am thankful for? You, et cetera.

Reprinted from an actual email.

Dearest email recipient,

Please consider this my heartfelt request that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I guess you could choose to not have a wonderful holiday, and there's nothing saying that what I want is atop your list of priorities, but if saying so makes any difference, I'm pulling for you in the great battle of enjoyment of the holiday versus glaring at people who look to be happier than you.

So, let it not be left unsaid that you are awesome, and I applaud you for having the temerity to share your email address with me. I even applaud the apathy that has kept you from changing said email address or -- in the event that you really need to keep it -- creating an email filter just to weed out messages from me. No one would blame you. Even I know that.

But consider doing a few things for me this Thanksgiving, if you would.

1. When the "what are you thankful for" thing is making the rounds, think of Mary Forrest. Just for a second. You don't even have to say it out loud. In fact, it's perfectly acceptable for you to think, "What am I thankful for? Not Mary Forrest." As long as I'm on your mind.

2. Don't tell anyone about how bad the holiday traffic is or why the city you live in is better because it is not Los Angeles. (This means you, San Diego.)

3. Let someone else have a turn at Guitar Hero.

4. Tell the people you love that you love them, and make sure to point out that you're only saying it because it's expected of you.

5. If you have a dog, make him or her wear a humiliating outfit.

6. Don't get murdered. I ask this of you a few times a year, I know. But my stalwartness is unwaveringly vigilant. If you can do everything in your power to not be murdered this Thanksgiving, you will have given me yet another thing to be thankful for. Thank you in advance.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and know with great certainty that I am thankful for you. Even if you are receiving this email in error.

Mary Forrest, thanksgiver

Labels: Guitar Hero, Krissy, Thanksgiving

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:57 AM | Back to Monoblog

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I play my red guitar.

I don't often go on and on about how nice my weekend was. But this past weekend deserves laudatory distinction. On Friday, Beulah drove up to see me do stand-up at the Comedy Store. She was one of twelve friends who showed up, but she drove the furthest. I was not horrified at my performance, but I was sapped of energy by the time I got to go up, which was hours after I got there and the third to last spot in the line-up. And I never even got a drink in me. Never not one.

After the show, a handful of us went over to the Dresden and then to Fred 62. So I got drinks and breakfast in my gullet and cigarette smoke in my lungs, and I went home very late feeling very pleased. Because I have lovely friends and an extraordinary sister, and the stress of doing a show was well behind me.

In between snatches of sleep and the odd meal and Borat and running lines with Jessie for the sketch we're doing at Garage Comedy, I spent much of the weekend playing Guitar Hero II and watching the Star Wars Marathon on Cinemax. I do love a marathon. Especially the kind I can leave on all night. Even while I'm sleeping. When I turned on the television on Saturday morning, the end credits for The Empire Strikes Back were rolling, and I was disappointed, but then Return of the Jedi came on, and I was actually able to pique Beulah's rather geek-hating interest when I pointed out that Han Solo is very clearly modeled after Rhett Butler. We had just watched Gone with the Wind a week or two ago, and she ranks it among her favorites. So when I pointed out the similarities between Captains Solo and Butler, it pleased me that she seemed marginally swayed into believing maybe -- just maybe she might be able to enjoy Star Wars after all. Those similarities, by the way, are as follows:

smuggler:blockade runner
rogue:rogue
not loyal to either side:not loyal to either side
profiteer:profiteer
thinks Leia wants to kiss him:thinks Scarlett needs to be kissed (and often)
handsome man's man:handsome man's man
competing with girlish boy:competing with girlish man

Mark Hamill went to my high school. In Japan. I stole the copy of the yearbook with him in it. I have it somewhere. I think I had forgotten about it entirely, but Beulah was telling Kerstin that fact, and it reminded me. And I furrowed my brow and wondered how many other little stories worth a "wow" I've failed to keep from being sloughed away in the great brain cell holocaust that occurs whenever I'm at a bar. Lots probably. It's dismaying. Also dismaying is how different Mark Hamill looked after all that reconstructive sugery. Poor guy.

I'm kicking the ass of Guitar Hero II, by the way. I'm good at less and less, but this is one of the things at which I am goodest.

I didn't get to do a number of things I had planned to this weekend. I missed out on parties and plans that I'm sure would have been worth the effort. But in the end, I had a lovely time. I even got to make use of my fireplace for the first time this season. And I had an egg nog-flavored something at the Coffee Bean. These are a few of my favorite things.

Labels: comedy, Garage Comedy, Gone with the Wind, Guitar Hero, Jessie, Krissy, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:28 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Magic Is Gay

Friday night, I went to The Magic Castle to help my friends Kevin and Chris celebrate their birthdays. I am not a fan of magic. I find the melodrama and faggy hand gestures to be the height of overdoing it. I especially don't like the Vegas-y variety of comedy and magic that The Magic Castle seems to be famous for. (Incidentally, is it The Magic CASTLE or The MAGIC Castle?) The first time I ever went to The Magic Castle, I had only lived here for a month or two, and my office had our Christmas party there. I had dinner, and then left before the magic show. I had tickets to see Tenacious D, Naked Trucker, and Spinal Tap at the House of Blues that night. And that was far more magical a prospect.

I did actually like the Close-Up Room, where the show is more about sleight of hand, which I can truthfully appreciate very much. Our magician in the Close-Up Room was a lady named Suzanne, and she was really good. And not at all covered in glitter or self-tanner. I think sleight of hand and magic are very different things. Where one of them is a good and cool thing and the other is a thing that makes me want to punch my fist through a hat. And frankly, it really comes down more to the issue of whether or not you are really good at it or whether you have one of the two hairdos magicians are apparently allowed to have. The guy in the Parlor of Prestidigitation was not funny, not skillful, and not someone who is not a hunchback. I had had enough to drink that I was probably not a very gracious audience member. And a fat guy glared at me at one point because I was having a good time but not in synch with the rest of the group. I think we also annoyed the young lady whose bosom would have received a marriage proposal from Chris, had she not liked magic so much.

I also don't like being asked to participate in the show. I don't even like it when this happens at comedy shows. Or at restaurants with especially gregarious servers. I hate being put on the spot. And I'm always convinced I will do the wrong thing. So I was relieved to not be wrangled into doing anything to support the magic. I had warned Kevin before the event that there was no way I was going up on stage for anything. Especially not to be sawed in half. It also occurred to me that women are always more at risk at these events for the simple reason that women are considered less likely to be -- or worse to think they are -- funny. So you get a lady up on stage to hold your tablecloth, sprig of baby's breath, and bewitched hat stand and you can do your schtick uninterrupted. You get a dude up on stage, and there's a very good chance he will find himself a chance to do a one man interpretive scene from Top Gun. (Probably either the You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling part or the part where Goose dies.) So maybe I resent this tradition. Despite the fact that I freely admit women are less likely to be funny.

In the end, I had a nice enough time. A lot of whiskey helps. I also started out the evening with a Campari soda at dinner, and I haven't had one of those in years and years. It was nostalgic and good. And afterwards, Kevin and Chris and I went to the 101 Coffee Shop and argued about my Guitar Hero skills (though Chris has never played) and whether or not mac and cheese should be soupy. I'm a fan of the crispy/chewy variety. Chris prefers the soupy version. But everyone agreed on the onion rings. Although the boys ate theirs with mustard, while I ate mine with ranch. And I drove home quite certain I would never need to -- nor should I -- ever eat again.

Labels: Guitar Hero, Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:49 AM | Back to Monoblog

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I should be playing Guitar Hero.

I just saw an episode of Stargate Atlantis whose plot was nearly exactly the same as the plot of an episode of Stargate SG-1 I watched a few weeks ago. Is that the premise of Stargate Atlantis? It's the exact same show as Stargate SG-1, only they've rewritten all the scripts and replaced "SG-1" with the word "Atlantis" and MacGyver is played by a guy with darker hair? Knowing this now, I feel like a real bum that I haven't tried harder to pitch show ideas to the Sci-Fi Channel. I need the work. And I think there could really be a market for Battlesquare Universica.

Labels: Guitar Hero, Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:56 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Happy Birthday, Krissy!

I wish you were here.

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:16 AM | Back to Monoblog

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The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

When I was in high school in Japan, there were two girls who became inseparable best friends. Jo Ann and Natalie. They were a year behind me. I knew both of their sisters better than I knew them. They were pretty and popular and all the boys wished they could get as close to either of them as they were to each other. I envied them.

I remember towards the end of my junior year, Natalie was moving with her family. Back to the States I think (that's what you call America when you are in a military family overseas). They were in drama together. Either in a class or in the extracurricular activity. I can't remember. They were performing Paul Zindel's play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. I don't know if it was the whole play or just a scene from it. I assume they were playing Ruth and Matilda, but I never saw the performance. What I remember is hearing that they had a very emotional scene together and the reality of Natalie moving away and of this being their last performance together and perhaps one of the last times they would spend together reduced them both to very real tears on the stage, and everyone in the place was moved.

Krissy and Dorian are moving away next week. I am going to perform with them on Saturday night at the comedy theater. It will be their last show in San Diego and our last show together for what will certainly be a long time if not the longest of times. I've thought about this story of Jo Ann and Natalie a lot recently, wondering if I will find myself in a scene with Krissy and just not be able to handle it. Of course, doing improv is hardly the same as a play about adolescent angst. I'm less likely to have an emotional breakdown in a game of Forward Reverse. But still. I haven't been able to think of much else for the past few weeks. I don't know what it will be like. It isn't the same as when you live on separate continents. I said a great many of those sorts of goodbyes growing up. Everyone was always leaving. Someone was always moving away. And someone was always showing up in their place. And very few people kept in touch. We'll be better about that. We'll call and write. We'll instant message and e-mail. We will do better. But we won't be able to do many of the things we used to. And we won't be able to do anything at the drop of a hat. Anyway who wears hats anymore.

Gotta Get Up and Be Somebody

I went for a run this morning. I did some editing work. I met my friend Michael for lunch. I did not get a parking ticket. I dropped off some film. It hasn't been a bad day. But it hasn't felt like anything at all.

Titanic is on the television. It's been on a lot recently. Someone's residuals checks will get a nice bump this season. I remember going to watch this movie in the theater and crying like a total wiener. I took the day off work to see the movie, and then I went shopping at Tower Records and bought things I didn't need. And when I got home, Beulah was making fried chicken, and the whole place smelled like it. I went upstairs and took a nap and dreamed about Titanic and knew my eyes would be puffy on waking after all the crying I'd done. What a ninny I was. So crippled by delusions of romance. So jelly-like inside. So manipulable. I can understand being sad about all those people dying. It's awful awful awful. Especially because it's true. But it's still such a clunky movie. Heavyhanded and obvious. All that treacle and vinegar. Subtlety is a lost art, isn't it? People don't seem to like things unless they're easy. Especially people who think looking for fifteen minutes at one of those Magic Eye posters is a sign of deep intellectual exertion. Of course, those Magic Eye posters have gone away, too. Too many brain injuries, I'm sure.

Anyway, I have wasted a lot of time feeling bad about all the time I've wasted. I've wasted a lot of time feeling bad about a lot of things. I don't know how one gets wired that way. Damned Chinese ciruitry.

Labels: Krissy, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:37 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Long Goodbye

Loren got it started. The festivities were beginning to break up at Jonah's goodbye party, and Loren told me that reading the thread of posts between me and Krissy on the comedy theater listserv was what finally made it kick in for him.

She's leaving.

Tears started welling up in my eyes immediately. I was saying goodbye to Krissy for the night. But in a week or two, I will be saying goodbye to her altogether. She and Dorian are moving away. Starting a new and different life. Preparing for Baby Zoe. And Jonah is leaving for his new job and his new town and his new everything that same week. Smiling and happy. Excited about what comes next. As well he should be. My Jonah Bear. Leaving.

It's like everything is turning upside down at once.

Krissy and Becky and I went shopping today for Halloween supplies and costume ideas. It was so dismal and grey out. The sun never emerged. There was this blanket of gloom. A misty veil of sad autumn weather. Autumn is where the ending begins.

And I had this continual feeling of déjà vu. Mid-october. Goodbyes. I realized I was being taken back to the autumn of 2001, when I was leaving San Diego for Los Angeles and whatever the calendar pages held. My leaving was abrupt. My job offer came just as September 11 was happening. I had to move and start work all at the same time. I never had a goodbye party. I remember my last practice at the comedy theater. People didn't even stay after to have a drink with me. I left feeling sad and jilted. I went over to The Living Room and wrote in my journal and made friends with someone who thought I looked interesting.

Everything was so uncertain then. And I felt more alone than I ever have. Striking out on my own. But also being abandoned to it. With nearly no support system. Nearly no well-wishing. A motel room and a job waiting for me. And a notebook to write in in tiny pencil print.

We drove down drizzle-spattered streets that might as well have been those same 2001 streets. To the foot of Mount Helix. Through Clairemont. Down Sixth Avenue. Past Balboa Park. It was nighttime all day today. It was bleak and cruel and colorless. And looking forward felt like paying lipservice. Everything is ending.

So there I was at Jonah's party, drinking punch and catching up. And Loren mentioned that reading what Krissy and I wrote to each other on the listserv made it all hit home. And the tears started to come. And each time I tried to deny them, they welled up more insistently.

I love her so much. Krissy. I love that girl so much. Krissy and Dorian are family to me. I love them the way you love the ones you have to love. Only I don't have to love them, and I do anyway. Effortlessly. They are so special to me. I can't write a sentence that would do them justice.

As I was driving home, Wake Me Up When September Ends was playing on the radio, and tears began to sprout from my eyes. Spilling out onto my cheeks, despite my attempts to brush them away. My poor eyes have suffered so much this weekend. There is no hope that they will look pretty again before the new week begins. I wonder if they will ever look pretty again. Asian girls are ugly when they cry. It's a fact.

I always say this is my favorite time of year. The spate of months whose names end in "ber." The smell of fireplace aftermath. The seasonal goodwill. The preparation of turkey feasts. Days that get shorter. Nights that come sooner. Turtleneck weather. Long sleeve weather. Socks weather. Scarf weather. This used to be my favorite time of year. But it's almost as if its former favored status is its worst enemy. All the things that once made it sweet threaten to turn it bitter now. Memories of how such things ever became favorite. Spoiled. It gets so that looking back is distasteful. And how I used to glory in my nostalgia and melancholy. How less glorious when it all turns wry.

I have lived in Los Angeles for four years now. How can that be? Shouldn't I be graduating from something? Matriculating in some fashion? Shouldn't I have more signatures in my yearbook? For all my diligence in saving everything, I don't seem to have been able to save anything at all. It all washes away. Ebbs into the distance. Pulls out beyond reach. There are all these stars in the sky, and you can't catch a single one. Not if your arms were as long as the street you live on. There are no stars on your street. No matter how far you drive.

I have been utterly ineffectual. The rainforests. The ozone layer. Israel. Blame it all on me. I haven't done a goddamned thing.

Everything is always ending. That's how it was made.

There's a reason I have to skip ahead when Saying Goodbye from The Muppets Take Manhattan comes up in the music mix.

Labels: Krissy, NCT, The Muppets Take Manhattan

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:57 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Mary Loves Krissy

Forever.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:04 PM | Back to Monoblog

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bite lip. close eyes.

My beloved Krissy is the most unconditionally dedicated Green Day fan I know. (And when I said that over the weekend, Dorian was offended. For the record, he is the second biggest Green Day fan I know. He may be gayer about it than she is, but she married him because he looks kinda like Billie Joe. I think she wins. They both have Green Day tattoos. Their baby is destined to be either a total punk rocker or the world's biggest Republican.) She and Dorian have seen five Green Day shows in the past week or so. San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. I work for the company producing the extra-special Green Day show at The Wiltern tonight, so they're going to that, too. And I got Krissy to blog their concert road trip and to blog the show tonight. The Network is opening for the band, which I hope by now at least one or two people realize is Green Day in masks. When an opening act was being mentioned here in the office, the production people didn't know anything of the sort. Which is depressing. I like knowing secret things. But I also like working with people who know their shit. And know the shit out of it.

I'm listening to American Idiot right now, doing my track research and preparing the copy I have to write for the on-demand version of the show we will make available after the live stream is completed. Going from web site to web site, confirming discography information and band history. Encountering the boys and their eyeliner and their triptych style of studio pose. I remember when I first heard When I Come Around on 91-X. I remember wondering if Billie Joe was British. And I think I remember thinking that he would be cute if it weren't for his jacked up teeth. I bought Dookie and then the next four albums. But I buy albums like many people breathe air. And I get hooked into thinking I need the omnibus, so I buy everything a band releases and then never bother to listen to the songs. Explaining why so many of my thousands of CDs are still comfortably packaged in their native cellophane.

When I met Krissy and Dorian -- when they started playing with me at the comedy theater in San Diego -- that was who they were to me. That cute punk rock couple who loves Green Day. The young marrieds who change their hair color all the time and will love you for buying them many things you can find at Hot Topic. Today, of course, they are much more to me. But the Green Day part of that portrait never fades much.

So I'm listening to Green Day music and looking at Green Day pictures and sometimes getting a little misty over how much they mean to people who mean so much to me. And then going, "Why are there synthesized hand claps in She's a Rebel?" And then getting over that and getting misty again.

Punk breeds pop punk breeds pop punk rip-offs. Even if you hate Sum 41 and Good Charlotte (and you should), you should be able to give credit where credit was once due. I just love that there are still people whose passions are so pure they can experience uninterrupted joy at a rock concert. I applaud the uncomplicatedness of loving one thing completely. And I think they should name their baby Gunther.

take me away. paradise.

Labels: Krissy, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:03 PM | Back to Monoblog

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I'm not what I appear to be.

John Lennon would have been 65 this weekend. When I was leaving the I.O. tonight, I heard his voice on NPR. It was him talking and then bits of music and then more of him talking. Tragic prescience. Tragic candle-snuffing. Tragic something.

I was feeling good and tragic when I heard it. Sadder and more distraught than I have felt in as long as I can remember. Exhausted by it. Tired of feeling it. Brittle and barklike. Made of stone and yet extraordinarily fragile. Overly sensitive. Unwisely hopeful. Typically reticent. Angst-ridden. I'm surprised I didn't burst into tears right there in my car. I almost did.

I've never had skin thick enough for the beating it takes. Nor has there been enough down on my back.

I finally unpacked some of my purchases from Comic-Con. They've been sitting in shopping bags for months now. Everything has been coursing by at such a rate that I haven't had a chance to just sit down and sift through my treasures. A thing I used to love to do after a Con or a shopping trip. Or whatever. Now I just acquire. And then the acquisitions sit. And eventually they become an eyesore. And I am tempted to chuck them. And it all amounts to a great lot of waste. Wasted time. Wasted money. Wasted space. Wasted plans and ideas on which nothing substantive was ever built.

My life has been reduced to pile-making.

Dorian and Krissy are watching my Firefly DVDs. I wish I could just sit at home and watch them with them and not ever have to be anywhere else again. Sometimes even the blasted sunshine is too much to bear.

Although I laugh and I act like a clown
Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown

No big surprises here.

Every Beatles song is sad to me now. And not just because of John Lennon.

I know what it is to be sad. And it's making me feel like I've never been born.

Labels: Comic-Con, Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:02 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Born two hundred years too late and two hundred years too soon.

You know, I didn't want to be disappointed in Space Mountain when I rode it on Sunday, at long last. After two years of it being closed and promises of improvements and upgrades and returns to innocence being disseminated by polite cast members, patiently attending the disappointing sign at the mouth of the inert beast. It felt faster than before. And perhaps more turbulent than before. But I honestly don't remember in enough detail to measure. The one thing I did recognize was that the new soundtrack is gay as all get out. It's hard to fear for your safety when the disco's a-playin'. And it's even harder to remember what it felt like to wait in those lines -- before Fast Pass, before California Adventure -- back when you had to plan your day around the two-hour torments each of the mountains begot. Three and a half hours when Splash Mountain first opened. Today, if you're clever and not dead set on riding everything, you barely have to wait at all. You can even afford to sit out a turn because you are particular about which row you sit in. What luxury.

I am by turns haltingly nostalgic and dazzlingly cavalier. You never know which one you'll get. I hack away at the vines of memory because they slow me down. But then sometimes, it seems the world isn't moving so fast. And I don't need to be in such a rush. Sometimes, it seems like remembering things is just a way of not getting on with it. And then sometimes, it seems like remembering things is eclipsingly better than experiencing them. I've had this thought before.

I miss things about my various past lives. And I sometimes wonder how those lives ever happened. I look back fondly on certain episodes and then can't quite figure out how they turned into the years that followed. Sometimes it seems that life is just what happens when you're too lazy or inattentive to do something else. History is what you sit through. How did I sit at my dining room table in that other apartment I once lived in? Wasn't I needed elsewhere? How did I ever watch a show? How did I find hobbies? Or take up collecting doll collecting magazines (and, no, that is not a syntax error)? How did I ever get a lick of work done? And then it was all just a tangle of all that was. And no matter how much happened, and no matter how much was accomplished, nothing was able to matter for long enough for the use of the word "matter" to make sense.

"Cut to the Jurassic Period."

I did a character yesterday that was inspired by Brendon Small's Captain Mustache's version of Fat Albert. (Twice removed.) I became a fat kid who couldn't understand why his mom would urge the bus driver to make him run for it. "I tried to catch it, but I had to pull my lunch wagon." It was not a loud character, but it required massive aspiration. I was lightheaded in no time. And people seemed to like it. I'm always pleased when that is the case. But this time I was also pleased because I liked it myself. I spent most of my stage time committing to not caring how I looked or sounded. I am terribly self-conscious much of the time. Not being so is a bigger deal than might be apparent. But last night, despite my perilously low energy and my searing headache and stinging eyeballs and generally downtrodden spirit, I played with big energy. And I was glad of it.

Then I came home and worked until four a.m. And that is a festival of ball-sucking.

Pigtails. Pigtails is a winner.

I have a great many photos to sort through. Quite a few from Disneyland. Again. And since I wore my hair in pigtails again, many of them will look exactly like the ones I took the weekend before. Except that Mindy and Tim will be in them. Instead of Tom and Tom and Krissy and Jessie.

It was a very sweet moment when we were walking up to the castle, looking for swans, and Mindy had cause to exclaim, "Prince Charming wished me a happy birthday!" Dreams do come true.

a new route to the same place

Is it possible that I miss these things I think I miss? Do you ever come to terms with the inability to ever go back? Does forward turn into backward? And is that ever good? Will Serenity be as good as I'm hoping?

Did you forget this fucking singer so soon? And did you forget my song?

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:57 PM | Back to Monoblog

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When you were a young and a callow fellow

Yesterday was hot. One of those days so hot that it's literally all anyone can talk about. Heat apparently saps our imaginations. It crowds our brains until even the sight of something truly odd has no purchase. All you can say is how hot you are and how little relief you got from the various remedies you tried. "It was so hot today that I snuck into Ralph's and spent the day in the freezer, sitting on a pallet of ice cream." "I sat in my car and ran the air conditioner until it ran out of gas." "I drank hot tea." (That's what Chinese people do.)

Extremes of weather are peculiar in that way. I guess people are relieved about it. Having something to talk about. When there's a world incident or a noteworthy weather change, all of a sudden, you don't have to sit there in silence, wondering whether the person sitting across from you speaks English anymore. And yet who really cares about current events or the weather or how your family is doing. It's a shame that people don't just say what they're really thinking. Although, if I were to do that, I'd probably have far fewer friends. My brain comes up with monstrous things only I can enjoy.

I forgot that my workshop was over yesterday, so I drove to the building on Santa Monica and opened the door to the room to find another group of people in it. Two of them on stage, clearly offput by my very quiet entrance. I excused myself and stood there in the hallway for a few seconds, processing my error. Then I went to the Smart and Final on Wilshire to buy Red Bull and other things in large quantities. Then I went home to my hot apartment where my dog was in love with me and the sweating became second nature. I've been experiencing the nag of a cold all week. A dry cough and some congestion. I was thoroughly exhausted by late afternoon, so I tried to take a nap. But it was just a series of feverish wakings and discussions with myself about whether I should just lie still or get up and see what's on TV.

In the evening, I picked up my friend Kevin, and we went and got a drink at The Dresden before catching Ron Lynch's new show "The Tomorrow Show" at the Steve Allen Theater. We ran into the impeccably-attired and always-gracious Poubelle Twins, who were attending the same performance, so we all made our way over together when it was appropriate to do so. Then we watched the show. And then it was too late to go anywhere for a drink. The problem with a midnight show. So Kevin and I raced two a.m. to get to Von's and buy booze. We did. But it was no longer of interest to anyone else to share it, so we took it back to his house and sat outside drinking and smoking until nearly five a.m. I told him stories of work. We talked about a sketch he is writing. I offered some suggestions and thought as I was doing so, "Hey, Mary, I guess you DO know a thing or two about writing." And then I was immediately ashamed that I was not writing my own sketch instead of just helping someone else with his. Always an editor, never a bride.

This past week was one of the most taxing ever. My consulting job. My freelance work. My health. My wishes. I ended the escapade feeling bruised and battered. Canceling my plans to go to San Diego to perform. Knowing I wouldn't survive it. Wanting the opportunity to sit still. Knowing that I never take that opportunity when it presents itself. I want to be so much that I'm not. Some of that wanting is so lackluster and unambitious as to be content just going back to what I recently was. I'm not greedy. I could never get away with it.

Try to remember. Try to remember. It's not the right month for it, if you go by the song lyrics. It's never the right month. It's never the right day. It's never the right time. It's never the same for you as it is for me. It's never what I thought it would be or what I keep trying to make it. I'm just scrambling eggs over here. I prefer them over easy, but I'll eat them any way they are served.

Today's not so much cooler than yesterday. It's cloudy out, but still hot and humid. Tornado weather, if we lived in a tornado state, as I said to Krissy a while earlier. Krissy, who recently learned that she is the oven for a little baby bun. I am fearful of change. It has seldom been my ally. Except in extreme retrospect, when you adopt that worldview wherein everything that ever happened to you helped you get to where you are. And that only works when where you are isn't some place you hate. Or some place too hot to stand.

Loren Bouchard was kind enough to send me some photos he took at one of the after-closing hotel room parties we both attended during Comic-Con week. I am not the star of this photo, but I love what I'm saying in it.

Labels: Comic-Con, Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:31 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Memories of Comic-Con

I had what I would consider to be a largely triumphant experience at Comic-Con last week. It's unfortunate that the aftermath of it was total work swamp, the onset of a cold, and general inability to get anywhere near the business of blogging. All I can really offer is a pastiche of memory spurts. Sorry. I'll try harder next time.

Firstly, I decided this year that I would not allow myself to endure the misery of parking woes and traffic bullshit and the laziness that happens when you are staying with friends or family. So I booked a room at the Marriott and stayed luxuriously and conveniently close to all the hot nerd action for five days and four nights. That was the right choice. I will make that same choice repeatedly in the future. Because it led to me actually fully experiencing Comic-Con perhaps for the first time. In past years, the Con has always been a series of day trips, ending before sundown in exhaustion and sometimes performance obligations. If you go home after a day walking the dealer floor, and "home" is more than a mile from Downtown San Diego, chances are you're not going to go back out in the evening. That has been my experience in every previous year. But this time, tired as I may have been every single day, it was not at all difficult to drag myself out of my room and hit the town. And that is a blessing.

Beulah came down and visited with me on Wednesday night. We went out for sushi and drinks and shit talk, and then she spent the night in my hotel room. And when Martín arrived the next morning, we went down to the hotel coffee shop, where Beulah had breakfast, Martín had lunch, and I had four bloody marys -- all served with flair by our waitress Blanche. Before Beulah arrived downstairs, I phoned to alert her that I had just walked past Mark Ryden on the stairs. That was the first of perhaps thirty times I would see him in and around the hotel and the convention center. I realize that we were staying in the same building and attending the same event, but there was still an uncanny frequency to our proximity. I would literally see him enter the convention center and then see him ninety seconds later as I rounded the corner of an aisle. He was everywhere that I was. With nearly cosmic significance. And I know him to be awfully nice and sort of shy, so I didn't bother him at all. Which is to my credit, I hope.

Martín and I rounded out day one of the Con with drinks in my room (I brought a full compliment of liquor with me, of course), countless martinis at the hotel bar, a photo-taking stroll to Embarcadero Marina Park at what I call "golden hour," and then dinner at Morton's, where I ordered us an expensive bottle of wine that we drank nearly none of but then took with us to watch the screening of the special edition of Free Enterprise, during which we traded slugs of a fine meritage like hobos. Wealthy, wealthy hobos. Towards the end of the film, we snuck out onto the terrace for a smoke. And then, for some reason, we ended up venturing out into the Gaslamp to look for smaller bottles of whiskey to carry around during the next day's show. But we didn't find a liquor store. All we found was foot pain. We went from exclaiming, "Best Con ever!" between joyous bursts of laughter to whimpering, "Worst Con ever!" betwixt groans of agony. Then Martín spent the night in my room. And I think we were both grateful that that convenience was available to us.

Friday morning, Mindy arrived. And the three of us hit the Con together. It was sort of magical to be taking a Con newbie around. Especially a hot one with a passion for Star Wars and anime chicks. It's what I imagine it's like for parents whose love of Christmas is renewed by the wonder in the eyes of their children. Beulah and Yen came down that day, too, and -- as I always do for my friends -- I went to the registration area and picked up badges for them, so they wouldn't have to wait in that ridiculous line. I look at the people in that long-ass line, and I think, "Is it possible that none of you guys knows ANYONE who can hook you up?" None of my friends ever has to wait for a badge. It's part of my Con evangelism.

Jessie came to the show on Friday, too. So did Richard. We lost him when we were staking out a spot for the Adult Swim panel, which was great and also less than. My friends Tim and Eric were my heroes, but the question-askers were stupid and gay, and Cartoon Network didn't give away anything at the panel, which was a change from years past and the yearning for which is proof of my geekness. So many people to see. I have never had such a meeting-rich Con. It was grand-ish. Jessie and her friend Josh and I met at the hotel bar for a few drinks. And then I went back to the room to collect Mindy (after we caught some awesome fireworks off our awesome bay view balcony) and whisk her off to the Adult Swim party at the Wonder Bread Factory in Golden Hill. Eric had put me on the list. And that made me feel super extra special. And Mindy came as my guest. And we happened to find Jeff walking on the street towards the party when we were walking from our cab. So we all arrived together and made respective beelines for the restrooms and then the food tables. I guess it was The Prado catering the event, and there were these little Angus beef sliders that were unbelievably yummy and also tiny little deep dish pizzas that I later hated myself for not eating a hundred of.

The party was over too soon, and -- after a long curbside deliberation -- we all went over to the Top of the Hyatt for more drinks. Jeff and Mindy and I went downstairs for a smoke and ended up not being able to get back up to the club, as the elevators apparently respect last call more than most enthusiastic drinkers do. And we ended up bringing a whole gaggle of people back to my hotel room to continue with the drinking and the smoking and the general revelry. I ordered room service in the wee hours, and we ate pizza and hamburger and fries and shot craps in a drawer from my armoire and eventually had to encourage Jay and Tommy to make their way home, because the sun was coming up and we had a Con to get something from. Jeff ended up staying with me and Mindy. And he drew a picture of a giant frog. And I looked at it the next morning and said, "Oh, look, there's a little boy on his back," and Jeff said, "Look closer," and then I said, "Oh! It's me!" And it was. I could tell because of the rank insignia on the sleeve of my sweater. I'm a colonel or something when I wear that sweater that says "Destroy" on the front. You'd best watch yourself.

By Saturday, I had turned my ankle somehow. Probably the night before in some drunken situation. So every step I took on the convention floor was a bit ouchy. I had to rush in at the top of the day and get a pass for Jeff. And then I did the same for Krissy and her sister later in the afternoon. And when we went outside to find them, a guy with two ninja swords approached me and asked if he could take a picture of me. And I said, "Sure. But I'm not dressed as anyone." And I wasn't. He seemed convinced that I was. But really. I was just wearing my own clothes. Which is telling, I suppose. Later in the afternoon. Martín, Jeff, Mindy, and I were sitting out on the steps behind the convention center, and we decided to head down to that little sandwich shack down by the fishing pier, and as I stood up to leave, an older fellow with a disturbingly emotionless gaze said, "You look nice today." It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me. When I did, I said, "Thank you." And then I tugged my skirt down further and hurried on with my friends. We jeered the musketeers and bellydancer on the terrace. We're better than them and we know it. We ordered lunch, and I had the best nachos ever. And a hamburger that I so did not need after having eaten the best nachos ever.

By the late afternoon, we were plum tuckered out. And -- foolishly opting to miss the Tenacious D panel -- we headed back to the hotel, where we complained about our various pains and took brief naps and showers. Then we went out into the Gaslamp to find what turned out to be the worst Mexican food ever at La Fiesta on Fifth. After which, we met up with friends at Star Bar and drank cheaply until closing. At which time we headed over to the Westgate and continued on with our evening in resplendent Con fashion. Tim and Brendon performed an hilarious prank call for all of us, and I literally had tears rolling off the end of my nose. I'll never stop laughing about it. If I'm at a funeral and think of Tom Pickle, someone will surely think me rude. The same can be said for Tommy's thoughts on progressive cat math. And Jay's conviction that Mindy's sheets were made of orchestras.

By the end of the night. Mindy and Jeff and I piled into a cab with Tommy and the Poubelle Twins and made our way back to our various places of lodging. And I performed a dramatic reading from my email for Jeff and Mindy, and Mindy laughed a lot.

On our final day, we mostly just had breakfast, shopped, and went our separate ways. I took one of my favorite pictures ever of Mindy in front of a Han Solo poster. I also took a picture of Mindy with Caveman Robot, who seems to now recognize me as a friend and always wants a hug when our paths cross. When he hugs me, he grunts, "Woman. Urnh. Urnh." And I am charmed by it. One of his handlers gave me a free pin.

So that's about it, right? I yelled at the people at the bell desk. I attended one last panel. Then I got my car and my bags and drove to my parents' house to collect my dog and head home. Many pictures were taken. Many memories were made. Many opportunities were missed. I only wish it could be Comic-Con every week. I love it more than anything else in the world.

Labels: Comic-Con, Krissy, photos, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:10 AM | 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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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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The weight of days is dreadful.

I made a collage. I like it. That is usually a sign of something. In this case, restlessness and disappointment. In many cases, the cocktail is the same.

I knew there would not be much sleeping in this weekend. Out-of-town visitors. Plans. Concert tickets. In being social, I sat down to more meals than I would have preferred. I wish the ritual was less filling. I don't really enjoy eating the way I pretend I used to. It's not that I don't like it. It's that I am not willing to look forward to it. Or to look back on it with any sense of congratulation. I am doing my best to not always be talking about this when I'm sharing a meal with someone. Because it is decidedly a drag.

Krissy and Pamela and I went to the Bounty on Friday night. There was a carnival looming on the other side of the street. It made parking such a game of cat and mouse. I remember going to a carnival last year with Kevin and being talked into getting on the Zipper and only wanting to die for several hours afterwards. I just wanted to go in and take pictures with my Lomo. Instead, I told myself that a ride wouldn't hurt. But then after being shaken around like so many dry beans inside a rattle -- having the contents of my handbag rained down on me as our doomed cage spun and rotated on far too many geometric axes -- we came to a stop, and I have never wanted more fervently to throw up. Coins and salt packets littered the inside of our gondola (I don't know what else to call it, but that's not what it was), and my mother, in the retelling, was angry at me for not having picked them all up.

We did not go to the carnival on Friday night.

After the bar closed, we went back to my place and had more drinks. The whiskeys I drank didn't seem particularly stiff to me. These days, I only seem to notice their potency when I have a cut on my lip or something that will alert me that that stinging sensation is because I am drinking something that has disinfectant properties. Krissy did not finish the martini I made her. Pamela did not finish her beer. But I drank two whiskeys and stayed up several hours past them. And when I was sitting in bed, finishing a chapter of my latest book challenge, I noticed that the vitamins I had just taken -- in an effort to stave off a relapse of under the weather -- seemed to still be lodged in my throat. And it was when I was washing them down with the last few sips of my whiskey that I wondered if this might be a portrait of "a problem." But since I talk about it, I assume that makes it okay. People who have a problem keep it under wraps. At least that's the rule I made up to keep me in the safe column.

I only slept for a couple of hours -- and by "couple" I mean two -- before getting up and showering and taking my guests to Nick's for the earliest weekend breakfast I have ever had there. The owner was awfully nice to me for some reason. He told me I was his favorite girl that day. I told him I would write that in my diary. He asked if I still keep one of those. I said, "Of course." And I refrained from adding that, these days, it's called a "blog." Because that would have been obnoxious. The use of punctuation and emphatic typeface on the Nick's menu leads me to believe that no one who works there is on the Internet. This is not based on science. But I have a hunch.

After breakfast, we went back to my place and watched Fathom and made fun of it, and then I had to go to workshop, which was godawful too warm and not as beneficial as in previous sessions. Then I changed out of my jeans and into a skirt (in my car) and met Dean at The Echo, for he had bought tickets for us to see Deerhoof there weeks and weeks ago. Which is a mercy, because the line of hopeful last-minute ticket purchasers was daunting, and we had the luxury of not having to wait in it.

We walked over to The Brite Spot to have eggs and coffee, ran into a friend of Dean's whom I met at that pirate-themed birthday party of a few months back but who was apparently too far gone on that night to have remembered me, then we walked to a gas station, because I was out of gum and also Red Bull. And I was glad it was finally dark, as we walked back to the club. Though it was windy and a bit too cool out, and the several suggestive entrées made from passing cars and trucks only made me more aware of the length of my skirt. I was surprised by the turnout at the show. Bands have a way of blowing up these days. I wish them well and am happy for their success, but I can't help but feel resentful of all the trendy fashion plates, skulking around in their miasma of unconcern. This is particularly the case at an all ages show in Echo Park. What a study in hairdos and cropped denim. It was like high school dances at the teen center when I lived in Japan. Only back then, we were dressing like it was the '80s because it actually was the '80s, albeit the very last part of them. And we had much more access to booze.



Dean was ever so gracious, given the dampening of my mood that happened by way of my friends. There are certain friends of mine -- I wonder why they would ever want to spend time with me when it seems that so many of our outings involve me not being myself. Or me apologizing for how tired I am or for how unenthusiastic I seem. There are certainly the Martíns of the world, who have seen me at every point on the spectrum and can be expected to remember that I am not always morose or exhausted or underwhelming. But the friends who see so much less of me -- well, I worry that I provide them with much less statistical proof that I am any fun at all. I have been called "intriguing" three or four times in recent weeks. I'm beginning to wonder if it means what I think it means.

I was so frustrated on my drive home that I was sure I was about to cry. And I wanted to slap myself in the face and scold myself for being so stupid and fragile. But it all felt a bit too Catherine Deneuve. Or Annette Bening in American Beauty. I have my excuses. I've been working so hard. And the aftermath of my car accident is perpetually stressful. And my father found a lump on his collarbone a couple of weeks ago, and how can I not be thinking about that and how it felt to be in junior high school and finding out my dad had cancer and that they did not expect him to live to see me graduate. Of course, he did live to see me graduate. And well on into excess of the five years they had projected his remaining lifespan to be. But I think I am always thinking about that feeling I had when we went to kiss my dad goodnight before his surgery and my mom reminded us that people don't always wake up from surgery. Even minor surgery. (Thanks, mom.) And my dad laughed like we were silly when he saw all his girls were crying.

Jessie called me while I was driving. The plans we had made had fallen through, too. And by "fallen through," I mean that she never called me. And when I called her, she was already on her way to calling it a night. Maybe she felt bad about that. I don't know. She called me back and suggested we go to a dive bar. But the songs in my head made me sad. And that is reason enough for me to have returned home and pitched myself headlong into an art project. Yet another instance when my life looks to have been written for the Scholastic Book Order.

I've come to learn that the only way to avoid disappointment is to purge yourself of expectation. But it's really hard to set your clock by that. Only angels know unrelieved joy -- or are able to stand it. And my belief in angels is specious, at best.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:34 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Fancy Cigarettes

I got dragged around all day, by work pressures and deadlines and errands and a dog. But, in what may have been the most frustrating in-town traffic I have recently experienced, I eventually made my way up to Hollywood for my long-form workshop. I'm enjoying the pants off it. And that is a mercy. Usually, when I sign up for things -- obligate myself to things -- I habitually dread them. Maybe some form of rebellion. Resistance to authority. Even if "the man" is really just my calendar, I shake my fist at him. I like to have plans. But I hate to HAVE to have them. Know what I mean?

Afterwards, I brought Jessie with me to Star Shoes to go to my friend Rick Royale's record release gig. We had a few free beers, made a few knowing faces, and whispered loudly in each other's ears a lot. I stopped in the w.c. (for girls) before we left, and I had to write down a conversation I was rudely overhearing. It went like this:

Girl: We should hang out with my Austrian intern. He's hot. His name is Dietmar.

Other Girl: His name is Dietmar?

Girl: Yeah. He's from Vienna. *beat* I like your hair.

Other Girl: Yeah, I was looking super Jew for a while, but I had them thin it out at the top. Now, I'm perpetuating the me-and-Elijah-Wood-only hair.

I was recounting this exchange to Jessie and Josh (whom we both know from San Diego and were stunned to find having a smoke on Hollywood Boulevard out front of Star Shoes as if he LIVED here or something -- which apparently he does now), when I noticed that Elijah Wood hair was standing right behind us. I pointed her out to Jessie and Josh, and they were like, "Yeah, that really is Elijah Wood hair. Or like Thriller-era Michael Jackson." And I hoped she hadn't overheard me reenacting her conversation. I would much rather she hear it and have a moment of scary deja vu when it happens in a movie I someday write. Let's hope she doesn't hit up Google with boolean searches of everything she talks about. Otherwise it will kill the surprise.

Last week, I was in the restroom at Canter's, and I overheard two South Asian women talking about when a girl can get pregnant. It was both informative and disconcertingly frank. And I was surprised that one of the girls knew so little about the mechanism of the period. I didn't write that one down, but I'm beginning to think I should start planting recording devices in bathrooms around town. You really hear the darnedest things. But then, Krissy and I were stunned and delighted to hear the lovely Mishna Wolff saying the following the other night at Tom's party: "How much would a fat suit cost if I wanted to buy one?" And that wasn't in a bathroom at all.

I carry a notebook and a pen with me everywhere, and I love the shit people say.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:43 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Wet Weather

Last night, I went to my friend Tom's birthday party in the torrential downpour that was Los Feliz. My shoes were so wet by the time I got there that I had to go into the restroom and dry my shoes and feet with paper towels so as not to be squishing all night. But for a rainy night, there was certainly a nice turnout. The Los Angeles comedy scene rallies for aging, apparently. And I'm glad of it. Krissy and I had a grand time, drinking our drinks and being surprised by how late it suddenly was and huddling under our umbrellas and trying to not step in puddles that were so deep they might have swallowed us. We made it home all right, junk food in hand. But I got nearly no sleep on account of wretched sinus pain and a hangover. So I just spent a lot of time laying still in my bed, thinking through the events of the night before and wondering if I made too magnificent a fool of myself. Fortunately, I don't think such things really matter for very long. Even when you're being unforgettable, there's an expiration date on it. Right?

I was so distracted and good-time-having that I nearly lost my camera. I left it on a chair on the smoking patio for who knows how long. And it wasn't till I wanted to take a picture that I noticed it was gone. So I went outside and found it. Still sitting on the chair, surrounded by lots of people and none the worse for wear. I'm fortunate that my absentmindedness hasn't yet perfectly coincided with anyone else's urge to petty larceny. I guess I'm lucky in lots of ways.

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:08 PM | Back to Monoblog

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Consistently Good

Jon Stewart continues to be my hero. The Daily Show tonight was fucking spot on. Everything I thought to myself while watching the coverage of the tsunami this past weekend -- and I was at my parents' house, so we were watching Fox News -- was properly voiced in his top segment. And thank god. I was feeling very oppressed in my lonely assertion that Jeb Bush had no business being sent to observe the situation. But I haven't been entirely alone. My compatriot Krissy made a canny observation about the jawdropping priority malfunction happening in the news. Her blog on Monday read, "I'm sure you heard that there was a giant tidal wave 50 feet high. The headline on Netscape is 'GIANT WAVE KILLS HUNDREDS OF TOURISTS.' But I might like to point out that it killed 23,000 Indian and Asian people, too. That's twenty-three THOUSAND. Way to keep your priorities straight, Netscape."

Of course, at this point, that number has cranked itself up to a stunning 160,000. And still, Fox News paid special attention -- in the form of an entire news segment -- to how "supermodel" Petra Nemcova is faring, with her injuries and the apparent loss of her boyfriend. Greta Van Susteren actually interviewed Petra's agent. Her agent. I'm sure that's an important insight into this harrowing situation. Not what the local people are experiencing. People who in some cases have lost their entire (and, let's face it, huge) families and their homes and their futures and don't have a supermodel's bankroll to start building new ones. But then, South and Southeast Asia are crammed full of people that speak English horribly if at all. So you can see the logic. Petra Nemcova may not speak English well, either. I have no idea. She didn't say anything. But her agent, who I'm sure has gotten a keen portrait of the corridor via telephone, was tres articulate. And that's what matters.

Jon Stewart's opening lines tonight also reminded me of a question that's been forming in my head recently: What's with all the talk in comedy circles about murdering hobos? It's like the new vogue. I'm not against it. It's very amusing. I'm just wondering if suspicious hobo deaths are up statistically these days. Or something.

Anyway, I wish Jon Stewart belonged to me. I'm not talking about marriage or some stupid relationship. I've realized that my wants are far more childish. I just want to own him and sit him on my bookshelf so that he makes that cute little smirky face only for me.

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:36 PM | Back to Monoblog

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I dare you to make less sense.

I don't think I get a prize for not getting any sleep for days on end. But I can wave it around like some glorious flag, can't I? I have gotten so little sleep in the past three or four days, I could be a Navy SEAL. Except for the skillfully murdering people part. I wouldn't rule in that contest. I really shouldn't be trusted with any sort of fancy weapons. I will invariably accidentally slice off a few of my fingers before my mark gets what's coming to him. I'm one clumsy fucker.

So, yeah. Lots going on. Lots to do. Shows shows shows. Work work work. Favors favors favors. Everything in triplicate, apparently. I've been busy and distracted and overwhelmed. I dread the ringing of my phone. I can barely bring myself to look at my calendar. I cover my face with my hands and peek at it with one eye through carelessly loosened fingers. This doesn't work, by the way. I employ the same technique at scary movies, and I've found that -- if you actually see the carnage with one slightly squinted eye -- you've still seen it. It's not like you get a reprieve for seeing it blurrily or without the proper depth of field.

So, I'm done with my orchestra obligations. At least there's that. My parents came to the show tonight, and they really seemed to enjoy themselves. My dad (for whom the proclamation "well, it didn't kill me" can be considered a rave) said it was the best one yet. He said it was "excellent." That's a popular word with him these days. But not so popular that he uses it with anything that might be called liberty.

Krissy and I met up at Nunu's after her show and my show had both ended. We talked about party-planning and team stuff. And it all got me thinking about a lot of things that made my foggy drive home more cramped than usual. I didn't want to go home. I drove to that park where I took swingset pictures this past summer and I had every intention of creating some sort of interesting photoplay, but my camera's battery was low, and an end was put to my inspiration. I resent it when creative urges get squelched for circumstantial reasons. I also resent it when I have nowhere to put my excess energy.

I have no business having excess energy, of course. I have had no rest and no relaxation. I haven't yet had time to do any serious Christmas shopping. I even had to take my car back in when it began overheating again in a frightful eruption of embarrassing steam. It's always something. But I've got the energy just the same. I know I should go to bed, but I feel like reading. Or jotting a painting into my litle art notebook. I feel like sitting in a hot bath and making up songs. I feel like cooking something with eggs. I feel like going somewhere.

But I have shows to do tomorrow and the day after. And I don't have any reservations made. And lord knows that's a misery -- impromptu travel during the holiday season. Only a fool would attempt it and not expect to be made miserable. That being said, I think I'm going to go to Las Vegas right after Christmas. I have free hotel nights to spend and an itchy slot machine finger. And the last time I was there was super great.

I'm watching television in the wee hours, and there's a commercial for this Andy Griffith CD. It's songs "and stories" performed by Andy himself. And the commercial plays clips of Andy, for instance, singing "Silent Night," and he sings exactly the way you would expect an old man with no real skill for singing to sound. You know. Like when you're at some church party, and everyone goads that one old guy in the choir to get up and sing his special song, and he relents, and you listen and realize that he sings the vowels wrong because of his dentures. And you wonder if the clapping that everyone does after he finishes is what faith is all about. Anyway, don't buy this CD. But if you happen to get it for Christmas -- even as a joke -- by all means rip it and send a few tracks to me. I like to make fun of people whose careers are all but over. Say, when is Robert Wuhl making a Christmas CD?

I have some ambitions to contend with. I will write more about that in time. You'll see. I'm good for it. If I'm anything, it's good for it.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:09 AM | 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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Good Dog

Krissy and I went to see Lesley and Matt's play. We had to pick up Gordo at UCLA. Then we ate yakitori and drank beers and waited for Pam and Tom. Then we went to the play. Then I drove Gordo home and met my pals at Liquid Kitty, where a very forward guy asked if he could buy me a drink. I let him, but I shouldn't have. He kept putting his hand on the small of my back and paying me the following compliments: (1) "I like your height." (2) "You have a great body." (3) "I like your turtleneck." Yeesh. He and his friend found their way over to where my friends and I were congregated, and I kept being certain that the other guy was going to suddenly shiv Tom in the gut or something. I just knew we were all going to end up murdered and in a ditch somewhere.

But I was wrong. We just got a few free drinks out of the deal. And had to spend far too much of our evening making nice with two guys who bored the shit out of us in an overly familiar way. In the end, I don't think those drinks were free. Lesson learned.

Tom and Pam and Krissy came back to my place, and we ordered pizza and watched the Ali G. movie and drank a few more beers. And if it weren't for people and their annoying work obligations, I'm sure it would have turned into the finest of pajama parties.

I was tired most of the time. Ready to call it a night long before the night had even begun. But that's the way it goes. In the end, I'm always glad I persevered. In the end, I'm nearly always glad I chose this rather than that.

The coming nights are full, too. I like having so much to look forward to. And yet I find myself shrinking from the idea of it all. I shouldn't give myself so much time for second-guessing. The second guess is always the wrong one.

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posted by Mary Forrest at 3:34 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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Word Scramble

I had to go to traffic court today. I got a fix-it ticket for a headlight that was out back in February. With all the added fees and nonsense, I had to pay $135 (not including parking) to get the story put to bed. Los Angeles sure is a ritzy town. Ten dollars here just FEELS like so much more...

The new issue of The Believer contains a copy of Army Man #1. So awesome. My dog trainer was having me stand outside for a few minutes, and I found it in my mail. I started reading it and didn't want to go back inside. Dog training isn't really very funny at all, while Army Man -- by contrast -- is. I started a zine last summer. I should finish it. I have some ideas. And plenty of glue stick.

The other night after The Pixies, some guy hawking tee shirts told me I had pretty legs. Then later, when Krissy and I were further into the parking lot, he crossed our path again and said, "You still have pretty legs." And then he called me "mama." And then he said, "What's your name?" And I said, "Mama." And he asked for my hand, and I reluctantly gave it to him. He kissed it and then wiped the kiss spot off with one of his Pixies tee shirts. And then he thanked me for letting him kiss my hand and not scratching his eyes out. And those are exactly the words he used. I like a compliment as much as the next girl. Maybe more. No. There's no maybe. I like a compliment as much as a Christian girl likes Jesus. That being said, there are few things flattering to me about being called "mama." I realize that he was saying it in that Woodstockian way that just means "girl," but I still prickle a little. Krissy laughed about it and started calling me "mama" right off. Only she said it like she was a little baby and that weirded me out.

I spent my entire time in traffic court playing Bejeweled on my cell phone. It's the only way I could keep from punching someone in the heart during the Q&A session before the judge came out. People are retarded. Bailiffs are power-mad. And English is not spoken by many with any great aplomb. If that one guy had raised his hand and made another inane, time-wasting query, I would have shown him how well my retractable pen fit in his eye. Fortunately, he didn't ask. And I got a huge high score. When I was leaving, a fellow in a wheelchair said something lewd to me. He was smiling and I'm sure he intended it as a compliment. Maybe I should have said something nice about his chair.

After my day in court, I went to The Grove where I saw Steven Weber playing with two kids on the grass. I passed him and was treated like a princess at Nordstrom. I saw at least three other minor celebrities at Anthropologie, Barnes and Noble, and just in and around the trolley tracks. The Grove is peculiar that way. Los Angeles is peculiar that way. I like secretly recognizing people. I don't get starstruck. I just keep track. Before I lived here, I would just be able to point out some ordinary, unfamous schmo and tell you what celebrity he or she looked like. But in this town, my work is cut in half.

Then, at Whole Foods, I saw Nestor Carbonell and his brood walking in. He is very handsome. And I remember him as Batmanuel on The Tick more than as that Luis guy on Suddenly Susan. This is important to me. Steven Weber was also very handsome. I don't want his feelings to be hurt or anything. In case he Googles himself and finds this entry.

It was such a gorgeous day today. I wish I could have wrapped it up in paper and put it in my pocket.

"I heart you" is only one consonant away from being "I hate you."

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:36 PM | Back to Monoblog

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So few things stand the test of time.

I drove down to San Diego to see The Pixies last night. That drive. It gets so...samey. But it was a lovely day. Cooler than today. Sunny and super. And I arrived in time to not feel anxious about the evening. Krissy and I got to the arena early enough to save seats for the rest of our compatriots. And in time to see The Thrills. Who were less than I would have hoped. And not at all The Distillers, who managed to not open for The Pixies this time. Meriting a cry of, "Shucks!" from me.

I loved The Pixies at Coachella. And I loved them last night. They are like a genius machine. Everything they do. How they do it. So nonchalant in being absolutely unsurpassed. Kim Deal is a darling. And she makes smoking look cooler than anyone else I have ever seen. Joey Santiago makes noises with his guitar that tempt me to go buy a heap of effects pedals and see what guitars sound like when you play them with kitchen utensils. He, too, makes cigarettes look awesome. Especially when you hold them with your guitar strings until you are in want of a drag. I couldn't really see David Lovering because of the amps, but I did notice that he keeps very busy. And Frank Black makes my heart pound. Makes me want to jump up and down. And he has no need of me. And that makes him irresistible. I would totally have sex with all of them.

I felt really good. I sang and danced and loved it to death. And I wished I could one day do something that would send a roomful of people home sweaty. And I don't mean opening a bikram yoga studio.

Sitting here wishing on a cement floor
Just wishing that I had just something you wore

I put it on when I grow lonely
Will you take off your dress and send it to me?

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:39 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Relief and Sighing

Tonight was the final show in the run of Guys and Dolls. I was so drained all day today. It's been such an oddly stressful few days. I have felt exhausted in every waking moment. Except for those in which I was too tired to take stock. I haven't been what I would call miserable. Not by any stretch. I've just been taxed. And I've had persistent headaches. And I have felt tired and listless. And I have noted that it sucks when you're not at least hungry. Because at least when you're hungry, you can eat something, and it's like you solved a problem. There's no solving feeling curiously not right.

Last night, I decided not to stick around for the strike party. I sort of wish I had worked up the willingness to stay. And not so much for the Italian food. Although, when I heard there were giant meatballs, I felt sad and deprived. I love meatballs. And I'm not trying to be cute. I really do love meatballs. And the really large ones are especially luxurious. In addition, I found out today that I missed being presented with the "Golden Note" Award, the orchestra recognition trophy that gets presented to one musician in each show this stage company does. I was so pleased to have received it. I wish I could have been there to hear what was said about me, but in a way I'm fine to have missed it. I might have been dashed if the conductor had said, "We're giving this thing to Mary in recognition of how far she had to drive to do the show." That's not quite the same compliment as, oh, say, "She played the fiddle real purdy." I'm happy about it, though. Either way. Because it's nice when people think enough of you to give you a trophy. No matter what it's for.

Plus, in the old days, I always used to prepare little song parodies and similar such cutenesses that made cast members say, "Yay! Orchestra strikes!" And this time, I didn't really have any wry wit to apply. The bugs weren't too bad. The climate was pretty consistent. We didn't get jacked out of parking. A pony didn't almost come careening into the pit. Not much fell on us. And nothing very important ever got screwed up. Which makes for pretty uninspiring parody fodder. But I may just be tapdancing around the fact that I spent the first two weeks of the production sick with a cold and this last week of it sick with ill-at-ease. And in the downtime, I began and finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and found myself wishing I had made the book last longer. I then started into David Sedaris' latest release. And -- while EVERYONE surely knows by now how much I adore David Sedaris -- I was longing for a sustained narrative. And that's exactly what David Sedaris is the opposite of in the habit of writing. Also, humor suffers when you have to pick the book up and put it down at the whim of the dialogue. I just read when the lulls in score are long enough to allow it. And tonight being closing night, I decided not to bother. I wanted to soak in the show a bit. And my eyes were tired and sore. Anyway, I didn't have any strikes this time. So the absence of having something to contribute to the party made me less eager to hang around. All the same, I'm sorry I missed it. And I wish I had stuck around long enough to say goodbye to cast members I like but rarely get to see.

I went to the cinema today to see Anchorman. And I scribbled notes down while the previews played. This is what they looked like:

[About Cat Woman] Do you smell something? Oh, it's that new Cat Woman movie. Pee-yew.

[About Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle] Is this court-mandated multi-ethnicity? Neil Patrick Harris has hair plugs. This is just another in a string of films on that new theme of the ultra-mundane quest. Hm.

[About Taxi] It's Jimmy Fallon, but it should so be Will Smith. It's really just Jimmy Fallon doing a thin impression of Will Smith. And if it was Will Smith, I would even more fervently not go to see it.

[About Wimbledon] I love Paul Bettany. But I don't love Kirsten Dunst. And the two of them as a couple -- it's just too...blonde. They make me feel like I want to go put on some sunscreen. But then I don't want to bother, because they also make me feel like I already have skin cancer. But it is about time they made a big TENNIS movie.

[About Collateral] Jamie Foxx turned serious actor? Tom Cruise turned old?

I took some notes during Anchorman, too, but I didn't want to not pay attention. I just remember seeing the scene of Ron Burgundy's home with the brown Pontiac (I think) out front, and it made me think of all of those automobile ads I've torn out of Look Magazine. And it made me want to drink amber-colored liquor from a highball glass. With ice. And I also remember thinking that I heart Steve Carell in the way that makes it appropriate for me to use "heart" as a verb.

Anchorman was very funny. I could criticize the story, but I won't. I saw Christina Applegate on The Daily Show yesterday, and I made some snarky comment about how her trying to be funny was comedically cockblocking Jon Stewart, and Krissy said, "You hate women." And I thought, "Do I?" It can't be. It shouldn't be. I would be ashamed if that turned out to be true. But then today, during the movie, I realized that, by and large, I do hate women. And it's not very winning of me. But there are precious few of them who don't stick in my throat like so much alum. The ones I approve of get front-of-line privileges to be sure. But the rest of the lot make me cringe and wish I had been born a boy. And Brick was right. Their periods DO attract bears. If I ever amount to anything, it will always remain that I was pretty good FOR A GIRL. And that makes me want to open a can of something bad for me and eat the whole thing.

I had ten friends in the audience at tonight's show. I suppose that makes up somewhat for the number of nights when no one I knew showed up at all. Some people say they just love to play and that they don't care if anyone sees or hears it. Those people are liars. Playing "for yourself" is a crock invented by unpopular people. Anything you do that's good needs a witness. Preferably two. Otherwise, with no one to corroborate your claim that you knocked it out of the park, you become that guy who toots his own horn and mixes band and baseball metaphors.

Am I just TRYING to make this post long?

I want someone to offer to buy me a drink and to have it be for at least one of the right reasons. If it's for all of them, even better. But if it happens while I am at Comic-Con, it will be creepy, and I will pretend I never wanted it in the first place.

I never got anything particularly delicious or satisfying to eat today. I hate that. I wish someone would buy me a burrito. And I wish it would have extra sour cream in it. And also magic.

Labels: Comic-Con, Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:38 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Blood is yuck.

I hurt myself today. Pretty badly. I shaved off a piece of my finger. And when I say "shaved," I mean as in "with a razor." The kind meant for smoothening the gams of lovely ladies. Curiously, they are as deft at removing a piece of knuckle as they are at decimating leg hair. I was in a hurry and rifling through my overnight bag for my toothbrush, and I forced my hand downward too quickly and found the triple-blade of my Venus shaver. Of course, I began cursing immediately. And then I began to panic. I was in a hurry because my orchestra call time was 6:30, and now all of a sudden I'm wrapping wads of toilet paper around a throbbing wound that won't stop welling up red. Krissy made a wad of paper towel into a sort of absorbent doughnut around my finger and taped it in place with scotch tape. And then I drove to the theater, where I could be seen squatting down beside the first aid kit, fumbling with the bandages and antiseptic wipes and making those sharp sucking in "s" sounds you make when something really stings. Because it did.

It was my bow hand, so it wasn't as painful as it could have been to play tonight. But it sure did get cold out, and that didn't make things any better. My bandage is soaked through and my finger is sore to the touch. Who am I kidding. It's sore to the thought. And all I keep doing is running the scenario through my head and thinking of all the ways I could have avoided the injury in the first place. It's a thing I do. When I told my friend Joe about it, he said that habit was very Run, Lola, Run of me. I liked that.

I stole a few bandages from the first aid kit. Krissy doesn't keep them. That's why the paper towel doughnut. In my house, all the bandages have pictures on them. Hello Kitty. Star Wars. Disney Princesses. I'm glad that the bandage manufacturers of the world recognized this opportunity to make wounds more fun. I know, at least for my part, that stopping the bleeding with Jar Jar Binks is better than stopping it with plain. The only case where I don't think a character version is better is with pancakes. If you get suckered into ordering the Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes, just realize that the places where his ears and face have to be defined are the places where you got robbed of pancake. In terms of value, round is the only way to go. With pancakes anyway.

I used to prefer plain wound dressing. Particularly that time I woke up in the fourth grade with a neck so stiff that I couldn't raise my ear from my shoulder. My mom took me to the infirmary, and the doctor put one of those spongy beige neck braces on me. The kind that fits with velcro. And -- as a favor to me -- he didn't send me back to school before using a black magic marker to draw a bow tie on the cloth, right where an actual bow tie would have been, had I been wearing one. Well let me just tell you, that was one of the worst days in my fourth grade life. Not only did I not get any sympathy for my troubles when I got back to school, at lunch, this one bullyish older boy named Bill Roberts (a very pale-headed blond fellow who liked to wear an orange windbreaker and talk a lot of shit) ridiculed me relentlessly. He wasn't so clever as to link my look to Vaudeville or anything, but his audience wasn't so very discerning. I was just lucky it was super taco day in the lunch room, or my shame might have held their attention for more than twelve or thirteen seconds. When I got home, my mother and I figured out that the brace was reversible, and I was spared the shame of having to wear the clumsy trompe l'oeil a second time, but the damage was done. We never did find out what was wrong with my neck. But it went away, so we forgot about it.

No one made fun of my finger tonight. But I didn't draw a picture on the bandage, so who knows.

Anyway, ouch. And good night.

Labels: Krissy, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:57 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Ghost of Birthdays Yet to Come

It was nigh on a week till my actual birthday, but I was favored with a surprise party tonight. The first ever for me. The party was not a surprise. But that it was for me caught me entirely unawares. I was pretty in pink and tipping into the eighties chic, and I was given gifts that bore a spanking theme. I tried yet another something new with my hair tonight, and Tom said at one point to Krissy, "Every time I see her, her hair looks completely different." And I took that as a fine compliment. I always wanted to be one of those girls who was constantly reinventing herself. I have an appointment at the hair salon in a bit. Who knows what madness will ensue.

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:05 AM | Back to Monoblog

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The Exaggeration of Ecstasy

I did not die in the desert. And, though my body returned with some amount of promptness, the rest of me did not. This week has flown out from me like a whisper or a raft of soapy bubbles blown through a hoop. I am alive -- not that you were worried. And I am in the throes. And I am on the verge. And I am ready.

I am also taking notes, so you needn't fear that the details will be left for the scavengers to find. I have lots of things to write and less time than I'd like to write them. I also have more pictures than I could possibly ever want to look at. And all of that will come in time. My voice is husky from an artfully avoided almost-cold. Krissy suggested I record all of my voicemail messages again on account of its sexiness. But I don't have so very many outgoing messages to record in the first place, and I never know what to say.

My birthday is coming, and nary an idea of what to do about that lurks anywhere in my sunburnt brain.

You can find me and my freckles in the swimming pool. We like it there.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:45 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Frame Rate Fake-Out

I didn't realize that I was going to be on a chat show tonight, but then all of a sudden I was signing a model release and letting people assign me a model (read: "porn star") name on my friend (don't click the link if you're going to give me a bunch of crap about it being a porn site) Kylie Ireland's show on KSEX Radio. Resorting to the old rule about your first pet's name and the street where you grew up, I was known to the faceless airwaves as...well...someone else. It's a cheat, because I didn't really grow up on that street, having lived all over the place during the formative stages, but it is the street I lived on the longest. And that really was my first pet's name. And that's something.

I'm no pro. I kept getting distracted by the flicker of the monitors with their four-way camera split. I looked foreign. To me. The slow blink of an animatronic. The occasional frozen expression of pursed lips or eyes less wide. I was told later that the webcast is actually at 30 frames per second, so I guess it was a waste of concern. Still, I'm not good at playing it cool when I'm out of my own pond. And live sex chat is a pond to which I am somewhat less accustomed than other frogs. I didn't let them coerce me into any fleshy revelations, but I was almost tempted to. There's something about being in that little room that makes you forget that there are people in other rooms watching. Danger danger.

We were supposed to go to a strip club for a series of reasons, including visiting with Julie Night, but plans went awry like they do. And we ended up trying to talk to each other over the loudness of the Dresden for a bit until it was time to move our nocturne elsewhere. I felt good and nice. A little square. Outdone by all the little things that make me a nervous, tittering child when I should be vain and glorious. The chat room audience said nice things about me. But I never knew what to do with myself.

Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

I put diamonds in my pocket to make sure that I never have need of change. A headache is a high of sorts. There are very few french fries so appallingly bad that they aren't worth eating. Who decides if I am gamine or grave? When you tell stories to people who aren't listening, you can tell them again without fear of repeating yourself. Every time I go to the museum, I feel it belonging to me more.

This was written at a previous 3 A.M., but I can't remember what day it was. Tuesday, maybe?

More Shadowy Bits

I still haven't the time to flesh it all out. And I don't want to just drop names. But after greedy museum consumption, I played violin on a recording today in Manhattan Beach. Like a pro. Kevin noticed that I have a very small waist. I forced him to order a marshmallow malt. I stood on the street corner with my violin slung over my shoulder, and I met a man with a dog named Lulu. I never got to hear any of the songs we picked at the Snake Pit.

This was written at 9:30 A.M., after facing off with the night and never being forced to fold.

I'm never nothing.

I can see the aftermath of everything, and it glistens.

Though the impulse only hit me intermittently, when it hit me, it struck hard and I was bruised by it. Whatever that means.

The Anya of the previous post is Anya Marina, and she is the niftiest. We worked together at MP3.com many moons ago. I only wish I had known then how much of a genius she is, for I would surely have tricked her into going off with me somewhere secluded where I could kill her in secret and rid the world of the single greatest threat to my rise to stardom. But seriously. She's splendid. And I do wish I had done her in when I had the chance. I can't wait for her new CD to be released. And I exhort you to carpet the road before her with flower petals and adulation and the crumbs of your own teeth, which you had previously ground into a powder for the sake of an offering to her. She's so wonderful that I want to mash her into a ball and carry her around in my pants pocket. Don't let the references to jealousy, insecurity, and murder disconcert you. I love this girl. And she makes music so lovely that the very birds slit their own wrists in abject surrender and tribute. Don't point out that birds don't have wrists, (a) because you're missing the point, and (b) because maybe you don't know all there is to know about ornithology, Professor Know-Everything*.

*not a real doctor

I made Kevin go with me to a carnival on Santa Monica and Cahuenga. It was the dirtiest, depressingest carnival ever. But I thought it might favor my Lomo. Kevin talked me into taking a ride on "The Zipper." And after being shaken and tossed with such violence that we were literally being pelted in the face with quarters and salt packets as they fell out of the outside pocket of my handbag as the vicious cage we were locked into tumbled against gravity and my objections, I emerged from the capsule a broken woman. Nauseous. Woozy. Hoping for the relief of an upchuck that never came. When I told this story to my mother, she was angry that I didn't go back to collect the quarters. Truth.

We salvaged our dignity with dinner at The Kitchen. And french fries and fri-chi (my adorable nickname for fried chicken) distracted me from my churning guts. Kevin and Mary stayed up too late that night. But who are they to question the clock.

Josh and I were going to go to see Amy Goodman and applaud her, but it was another calendar item that didn't fully materialize. Instead, Krissy and I met Pamela at Canter's, and I felt embarrassingly hyperactive. Caffeinated and Thomas Dolby-ized. I hoped I wasn't woefully trying. I hate it when I can hear myself spinning out of control. I tell all these stories, and I can barely catch my breath. And there are better reasons for breathlessness, I've learned.

I also interviewed a woman for an article I'm about to write. And if you throw in the stints of picture-taking and the career-related phone calls and meetings and the little time I set aside to bathe and to nourish and to sleep, I packed a horseload into the cat-sized spaces this past week. And I never asked for mercy or for pity. I never felt it getting the best of me. Even now, weary as I have every right to be, I'm only concerned for my typing accuracy. As an eager, shirtless, one-armed push-up-doing serviceman told me as he tried to convince me not to leave the Thanksgiving party, I can sleep when I'm dead. But you have to say it in a creepy loud whisper to get the full effect.

Season Two of The Office is wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because it is brilliant and real and true but also impossibly, retardedly implausible. Terrible because I can't believe they only made two seasons. And because failure -- as it is portrayed in Slough -- is so heartbreaking. I'm sad they only made two seasons (and short BBC seasons, to boot), but when I contrast that against the tragedy of Friends still being on the air, I accept it with humble gratitude. I don't like Friends much. And I don't think it's just me rebelling against NBC's authority. Tell a girl like me, "You MUST SEE this," and I guarantee you, I will try to close my eyes. But for nearly everyone else, it seems, the "Must See TV" label (and you are correct if you, like me, are bothered by the absence of the hyphen between "must" and "see") is as effective as the Ludovico Technique. In my head, I sometimes shuffle the words around and it becomes can't not watch. But that's when I am most ashamed of the ways I waste my think junk.

I played violin at an engagement party in San Diego this past weekend. My friend Elizabeth and I play violin duets for weddings all the time, but this time we were asked to play for three hours at a sort of garden party, and we were adventurous with our fare. After we had exhausted all of our wedding stock and had begun to fear that the weddingy nature of the selections might give the bride- or groom-to-be foot chills, not only did we play a two-violin arrangement of Meet the Flintstones, but we also played Hot Hot Hot, New York, New York, Tequila, Your Momma Don't Dance, Doo Wah Diddy Diddy, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow, and many other unlikely tunes. Elizabeth drew the line at Mony Mony. We were already laughing like fools when we figured out what The Merry Go Round Broke Down was about eight bars in. Anything more would just have been unprofessional.

After the party, Sarah and I went for cocktails at Charlie's. There was a street fair in Encinitas that Sarah wished we had gone to. I did not share her wish. I am not a fan of street fairs. I can buy incense and kettle corn at Costco. But the ocean was lovely, and we let the wind toss our hair around before I made my northbound exodus. And when I got back home, Kevin and I had beef at the Whisper Lounge (him: Kobe beef in hamburger sandwich form; me: New York strip steak) and hot drinks at the Coffee Bean, and the night thinned out, and he went to bed, and I worked until morning. That next day, we went to see the last in the University of Judaism lecture series for which I had tickets. It was Tom Brokaw with Ari Fleischer and Dee Dee Myers. I despised Ari Fleischer (and, no, I don't mean that I disagreed with his rhetoric or his views -- I mean I hated him as a person). And I found that I liked Dee Dee Myers more than I had expected to. I don't know why I had it in for her before I went to the event. She was the cat's whiskers.

Afterwards, we had dinner and drinks at El Compadre. I don't think our server could have disliked us more. But whatever amount of retaliatory body fluid he may have put into my carnitas plate, it was still yummy. That night, after talking and laughing at DVDs and fabricating every other possible time-wasting device I could muster, I spent the wee hours working yet again.

I'm telling this all out of order. I got two hours of sleep last "night." I always wonder if it shows.

I guess I don't mind working the night through. Even back when I held an office job, I never minded giving dawn the finger if something magical could be had in place of sleep. I like the way it feels to sleep. I like the sheets on my bed. I like the warm and the cool. I like the press of the fluff. I like the descent. I like the way I smell in my pajamas. But I would chuck it all for a chance at immortality. I would toss the sleep if more of my waking hours didn't already feel like somnambulance. But, as in the election of 2000, I know that my vote doesn't count, and immortality gets squashed every time. By Republicans.

But this was all yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Today is just a scar. Today is beginning for some. Ending for some (me). Today is another wasted outfit. Today is another chance I didn't take. Today is as uneasy as the tickling itch on the roof of your mouth you try to scratch with your tongue, but it only makes it intolerably worse. Today is a lost cause. And denial is a river in Africa. I've always hated that joke.

Please don't make me redundant.

Labels: Krissy, Thanksgiving

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:17 AM | Back to Monoblog

Till my trophies at last I lay down.

I went to see The Passion of the Christ this afternoon. It was emotionally exhausting. Relentlessly emotional and heartwrenching. But that may be my gravest criticism of it. That, from the moment the film commences in Gethsemane until it ends in the vacant tomb, the intensity and melodrama never flags. Is there a way to pronounce melodrama so that it sounds ridiculously inappropriate? I wish I knew what portion of the film was shot in slow motion. Or how many frames of film centered on Jim Caviezel's gasping open mouth. It was just agonizingly drawn out. To the point where I found it alienating.

And yet, it recalled to me an experience from my youth.

When I was a young girl on the island of Guam, my family attended a missionary church whose services were broadcast on the radio. The pastor at the time was called Tom Larmore, and I appreciated him very much. Never moreso than on that one Sunday when he preached a sermon about the punishment and crucifixion of Jesus, based on something that had been published, I think, in the New England Journal of Mediciine or some similarly prestigious title. That Sunday, he gave a harrowing and clinically detailed account of what those last days were like, including descriptions of the scourge and explanations of the mechanism of execution that crucifixion employed. That a crucified man died -- after a time -- of suffocation, once he was so exhausted that he was no longer able to counteract the hanging forces with the resistance of his legs and feet. Things like that. On a different Sunday, Pastor Larmore gave a similarly studious depiction of all that befell Jonah in the belly of that great fish. And I remember that these messages appealed to the academic in me. The intellect that was being steadily alienated by spiritual fluff and the absence of salient answers. This film -- Mel Gibson's film -- was a depiction of this same horrific tale. And I did catch myself feeling a weighty grief. An empathy for Mary in particular. I found myself blinking back tears and admitting silently that this is a story I was taught to believe -- to know intimately -- from the time I was the very smallest child. When my daddy used to read Bible stories to me and my sister in our beds and I used to raise my hand at the end and hope that he would let me answer the questions, because I knew the answers so well. Those days seem a far-off memory. A shade of what remains.

The mischiefmonger in me admits that there was a moment depicting the three crosses at Golgotha when I thought how much barer would be the metaphoric lexicon had it not been for this event. And how ever would we rid ourselves of vampires?

I called my dad after I saw the film. He hasn't seen it yet, and I am interested to hear what he thinks of it. I know he can be a stickler about biblical accuracy. Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth is one of the few cinematic Bible stories of which he approves, and even that has its moments. But I also told him that we saw Elijah Wood outside the theater, discussing the film with a group of friends and citing what he knew of the biblical account. He sounded surprised. And maybe a little impressed. And when I said it, I said "Frodo Baggins" instead of "Elijah Wood." That way he would know. And he did.

I am not always certain what I believe. But at the center of it, I know that I am a big softy, and that it doesn't take much to make me cry. I feel things easily. Almost with a cruel ease. I am vulnerable. Fragile. And I experience nearly everything with empathy. I wish I didn't cry so much. But it can't be helped. And maybe someday this mushy center part of me will be of value to some other firmer soul. As a means of providing ballast.

With the rain and the gloom, I almost didn't want to go back out, but Krissy and I eventually got good and gussied up and went to the Young Hollywood for John Kerry event at the Luxe Hotel. Billy Baldwin was handsome and charming, and I wished I had gone up and told him so, but I feared that I would end up confessing that I really just wanted him to act as liaison and to give a message to Alec that I think he's the bee's knees. Donal Logue also spoke at the affair. And my friend Murad, who I haven't seen since the one time we ever saw each other -- a sultry night in 2002 -- introduced us around a bit. And I drank cocktails, broke the lever on my Lomo, and fussed over my skirt, which was dangerously short. And I realized at the end of it all, as I have a dozen -- no, a million times before, that it's always better to go and see.

Krissy decided that she will begin exclaiming "Jim Caviezel!" in place of "Jesus Christ!" And I have already adopted this protocol. I can't speak for the rest of mankind, but this makes Krissy and me laugh like fools.

The rain continues to fill the cracks and crevices. I can hear the water spilling from the gutters, splashing down onto earth and concrete. Beading up on windowpanes. It's wet out there. And I am cold and longing to be cozy.

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:55 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Don't you just love me all to crazy?

I took Tom and Krissy to see Paul F. Tompkins at Largo tonight. He was recording stand-up for an upcoming CD, and he was in rare form. But then, he's always in rare form, so how rare can that be. If all goes to plan, I will be heard on this CD, choking on my amusement, yukking it up to his every line. To the point where you might think I'm a shill. I am in the sense that Paul F. Tompkins can do no wrong by me, but he's not actually paying me for my services. Quite the contrary. I pay to see him regularly. Like visiting your analyst. Only with great joy. Like visiting your most beloved prostitute friend.

I'm still saddened by the fact that Paul F. Tompkins and I are not the best of pals. But I'm not loony enough to do anything about it. Krissy suggested I flash him some boob. I demurred. I've been to enough of his performances at this point that if he isn't already dying to know who I am, it's probably because he isn't into Asian chicks. And I guess I can respect that. Listen for my laughter anyway. There is a good chance you will hear it. That's no basis for a restraining order, right? I am content to lurk. Innocently. Asianly. In an intentionally non-threatening manner. I have a crush and a giant set of very sharp knives, but these two facts are entirely unrelated. The crush stands alone. The knives are just for show. And for slicing soft tomatoes with ease.

Tom and I stayed up talking long after Krissy had gone to sleep and for some time after The Muppet Musicians of Bremen had played itself out. I suspect he will regret that, because he has to work in the morning. If only no one had to wake up in the morning. The night owl in me would rejoice for days. I've still got miles to go before I sleep. Miles and miles and a bit of bathtime.

Labels: comedy, Krissy, Paul F. Tompkins

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:16 AM | Back to Monoblog

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The Tempest

I did not have a good day. I went and picked up seven rolls of Lomos, and that was fine. I scanned a sizeable stack in and will post soon enough. But there is something absent in it. I don't know what. I just feel it missing.

I finally got to speak to my father on the phone, but he sounded sort of disoriented and mushy, and I was sorry for having awakened him but glad to hear his voice.

Then the money issues with my mom tipped me over entirely. The stress of holiday overspending. There's no one to blame but me, but, still, just once it would be nice to not have my head lopped off every time I pick up the phone.

I couldn't get settled. Couldn't start the projects I wanted to. Couldn't bring myself to reach out to anyone. I just sat at my desk and scanned and wondered why I felt like crying.

Krissy arrived late in the evening, and we watched The Satanic Rites of Dracula, but it was really just too laughably unscary to be finished. Even though it pairs Grand Moff Tarkin and Christopher Lee on screen. I love those old Hammer Collection flicks and have a handful on laserdisc. But it's hard to share them with others. It's embarrassing.

Then we watched the Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" episode of X-Files, and that was that. I then spent the next four or five hours finishing my scanning and feeling lousy about everything. I just can't get the hang of feeling so dreadfully unhappy.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:07 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Housekeeping

I did so much tidying and moving around and reorganizing and cleaning yesterday. The day was a blur of it. I'm making much better use of my garage now and have completely cleaned up areas that have been abandoned to clutter for ages. It was one of those huge tasks that starts to look bigger than you'd imagined when you're halfway through. Taking it all apart just to put it back together again. When it's all strewn over the floor and you can't make your way out of the room without stepping on something that doesn't want to be stepped on, it's disheartening. But then, little by little, it starts coming back together. I filled a few of the trash receptacles out back with my piles. I can't fathom the way my apartment accumulates paper. Throwing it away feels good. And shocking. It was raining this morning when I woke up, so I imagine those trash bins will be leaden with the cement-like mush of months of waterlogged mail. Thank goodness it isn't my job to do anything about that.

To work at a fever pitch is a nice distraction. But cleaning house -- for me -- bears a great risk of nostalgic comtemplation. Fortunately, I was not sorting through things with any great attention paid. It would have wasted so much time. And I had to be finished tidying in time to be showered and dressed when Dorian and Krissy arrived to go with me to the big holiday party at Bryn and Kerri's place, artfully dubbed "The Middlemass Orgy." I was bathed and prettied before they arrived and with time enough to go through seven or eight different changes of clothes before settling on my final get-up. I'm glad I ran out of time. I might have been there, standing in the doorway of my bedroom closet with a dissatisfied look on my face for the whole of the night.

I was more forgetful last night than ever I usually am. I left home with candles still burning and my phone and camera still charging. I left without my little cosmetic bag, and I forgot to stop off to get drinks until we were Downtown, which caused us to go on a bit of a wild goose chase looking for a purveyor of beer and spirits at 9 P.M. on a Saturday night. I wouldn't have thought that would pose any difficulty. But I was wrong.

By the time we got home at nearly five o'clock, I was happily surprised to be reminded how much work I'd gotten done. Everything was still clean and neat. I was proud of my achievement. And stunned a little, actually, with how much I had in fact achieved. I went to sleep thoroughly exhausted and was really not pleased to awaken only two hours later, parched and unable to breathe but trying desperately to. I actually tried to fall asleep, impaired breathing and all, for another two hours but finally gave up and took some Claritin and then lapsed into slumber with the sound of the rain going outside my window and thoughts of how heavy the trash bins would eventually be dancing in my head. In the end, I didn't get as much sleep as I would have wanted, and I'm feeling the brunt of it today. But in a way, there's reward in feeling so spent when it's because you've earned that feeling. A day of hard work. A night of hard play. It's no shame to feel a little logy the next day. It's sort of a badge of merit.

Krissy and Dorian have gone home. I've got the day to myself again. But it's drizzling and cold. And I'm thinking about putting a fire on, but I wonder if I wouldn't just sleep through it, and I do so hate to waste the Duraflame. I don't know why. For some reason, when I start a fire, I feel as if I can only get my money's worth if I sit in front of it and watch the flames dance for a good bit of its burning life. I don't want to abandon it to burn out on its lonely own. Maybe I take this abandonment ethic too far.

You might get a song in your head, and it might spark a reverie. That's been known to happen to me. When it does, that's usually a good time to go and make a painting. When I was cold and I pulled the turtleneck of my sweater up over my nose and mouth, it smelled like my skin, and I liked it. Every day is like Sunday. Every day is silent and grey.

Labels: Krissy, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:50 PM | Back to Monoblog

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The Bad Pocket

Josh took me to a somewhat secret, last-minute R.E.M. concert at the Avalon tonight. It's a very little theater (that used to be the Hollywood Palace), and it was a rare-ish opportunity to see the band in such intimate quarters. We got there early, and had to stand on the floor -- staking out our spots -- for a good two hours before the band came on. That had its taxing moments. But we also had no idea we would be sandwiched between a pair of rude, middle-aged jerks in front of us (both of whom were taller than us and one of whom was wearing a Dickensian top hat [and, no, he wasn't Tim Burton, so I can hardly think of a reason for such fashion buffoonery] that he overheard us expressing concern over and snidely told us he would take off when the show started, as opposed to standing there, teaching some of us what it might be like to listen to Michael Stipe singing from behind a statue of Abraham Lincoln -- P.S. He never took off the hat) and a pair of overdrunk, overgrown former frat boys behind us who sang at the top of their lungs, knew the words to nearly all of the songs, and when they didn't know the words, yelled "Woo!" at piercing levels. And when I say they were former frat boys, I just mean they probably sell pagers for a living now. One thing interesting to note about the two singers was that -- gorillas though they were -- even they seemed to grasp that the refrain of a song comes around again. So, when the band played a song they couldn't possibly know the words to yet (owing to the fact that it was written yesterday in some cases), they still managed to catch on to the refrain and sing along at those parts, too. And they sang loudly. As if they were in a church choir singing R.E.M. songs for Jesus. I say this because, in many church choirs, singing badly is seldom frowned on as long as you're doing it for the man upstairs. Then, the more you suck, the more moved people are. They claim that you're "filled with the spirit" as opposed to "lousy" or "cursed with a foul throatbox" or "tone deaf." These guys were actually not singing off-key, but they sang so loudly and so persistently that it wasn't until more than an hour into the show, when intolerable back pain prodded me to go to the back of the room and sit on the edge of a raised booth (where Catherine Keener was sitting -- her hair looked very over-processed, but she was playing air drums in her lap) for the last few encore songs, that I could actually hear Michael Stipe's voice at all. They even belted out the ballads. And when they weren't belting, they were crying out their "Woo!"s and triumphantly announcing to each other that the worldwide radio listening audience just heard them. How sad that is. That any pleasure could be gained from standing out on a radio simulcast as that asshole who yelled just there. During the quiet part of the song. When everyone else was remembering a break-up or where they were in 1991. Or when Michael Stipe was taking a breath. When the band played Losing My Religion and Peter Buck's mandolin solo arrived, the two dudes let out long gasping "Woo!"s that made it impossible to hear what he was playing. And seeing me put my fingers in my ears at the end of every song in preparation for the ensuing "Woo!"s did not deter them. The short, fat one even yelled out "Go Pete!" at one point. As if Peter Buck was competing in a swim meet.

Josh and I had earlier exchanged dubious glances when we realized that there were "winners" there from the local Star! radio station. We wondered if we are actually very uncool to want to go to a concert that Star! would be enthusiastic about. I rationalized that Star! plays all "popular" music. Even some good stuff. So we braved on. But it's clear that the people we were standing next to would have been just as at home in Margaritaville as they were in our company. I even whispered to Josh wryly, "They must think they're at a Jimmy Buffett concert." It seemed possible. Has Jimmy Buffett by any chance ever covered all of R.E.M.'s songs? I wouldn't be surprised.

I guess the other culprit for the overall sense of fizzle was the sound at the Avalon. I just don't think it was powerful enough. Had it been louder, I might not have been able to hear the karaoke twins' renditions. And when I call them twins, I should let you know that I don't think they were related at all -- they were more like the two guys in the cartoon who get stranded on a desert island and one thinks the tall, thin one is a hot dog and the other thinks the short, fat one is a hamburger. I would still have been able to feel the tall one's breath on my scalp every time he aspirated a lyric beginning with "b" or "p." Gross. I feel like I need to wash my head. But, yeah, it could have been much, much louder without having done any harm. Josh and I both noted that the mix was sort of dull and flat. The instruments were non-distinct and the vocals could have stood at least two or three more servings of juice.

Years ago, like in the early '90s, my sister was dating a fellow who woke up one day in a panic having dreamed that R.E.M. had all died. Their tour bus had been in an accident or something like that. And it took some convincing to get him to believe that he had dreamed it and that they were all still alive and well. For weeks and months afterwards. He wasn't completely sure. I sometimes think of that story, which became the stuff of an inside joke for all of us for years to come, when R.E.M. is the subject of conversation or when a song of theirs is playing. It's strange how things like that hang on. And then there are the other things that are true that you sometimes become convinced you only dreamed. All very confusing.

So, the band not being dead after all, it's a shame that this event wasn't more of a coup. Josh got our tickets from some special phone number published by the R.E.M. Fan Club and by the time I called back to try to get an extra ticket for Krissy, the number had been changed to an unpublished number. I understand people were selling these very hard-to-get tickets for huge sums on eBay. I don't wish I hadn't gone, but it's just a shame it wasn't a more majestic evening. I thought about the first time I heard R.E.M., which was nearly 20 years ago, when a cool girl I met at the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., named Pauline Chiou told me they were her favorite band, so I looked for them. I think I saw them perform on Late Night with David Letterman before I actually bought their record. Pauline also introduced me to Joan Armatrading by sending me a cassette copy of the wonderful album The Key. So double points for her. She was a bona fide savant in the hip music department. Which reminds me, I was at the gym today, reading the closed captioning on VH-1's I Love the 80s Strikes Back (WHILE I was on the elliptical trainer -- not just sitting there reading), and David Lee Roth was talking about that strange period when KISS took off their make-up. You know, when Lick It Up came out and we all got to see that Gene Simmons was (as was pointed out on the same VH-1 program by that guy who played Johnny Bluejeans on that show Viva Variety!) just a very, very ugly Jewish man. David Lee Roth said that they removed the make-up to "bonafy" themselves. And even though I place this word in quotes, because it's what he said, I assure you that it is not a word. It's David Lee's clumsy verb-ification of the phrase bona fide, as if it was really the past tense of something. He followed this comment by making a bad pun using the word "veil." I don't think this is important for you to know or remember, but I do think it's a good idea to point out mistakes made by David Lee Roth whenever they present themselves. It will limit his influence and protect our youth. So I am vigilant. Wait, though, this paragraph started in an attempt to acknowledge that this band has been making music for over 20 years. That's stunning to me. Imagine getting to do the thing you love and being paid heaps for it and being followed by throngs of devoted fans -- albeit some of them intolerable boobs -- and having it go on and on and on like that. Lucky bastards.

But you're probably still stuck on the fact that I competed in the National Spelling Bee as a child. Well, believe it. It's true. I was the contestant from Guam. And, after I'd been eliminated, when I was in our room at the Capitol Hilton by myself, I tried to watch little snatches of a rated "R" movie -- I think it was Spring Break or Hot Dog -- so that I could see nudity but not have it show up on the room bill. If my mom was ever the wiser, she never let on.

Labels: Krissy

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:54 AM | Back to Monoblog

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Eine Kleine Salmonella

A very satisfying round of shows at the comedy theater tonight. I can't really think of that many moments of my personal brilliance. Rather, it was a very balanced, excellent ensemble night with everyone shining and making everyone else look good. My throat is raw from yelling whether in triumph or antagonism or gruff, middle-aged character voice or grating, horrifyingly racist Chinese woman voice. It's not at all good for the singing career I'm not pursuing.

The guys who went and performed for the troops overseas brought back trinkets for us. I got a little silver anklet from Turkey. I've never had an anklet before. I was very pleased and immediately put it on. I just had this really positive feeling about the whole night. Every person at the theater seemed to be happy to be there. There is even an unusual warmth towards the door staff and sound guys, who often get the short end of the stick, either because they are trapped behind the scenes or because they are unignorably creepy. We're kind of in the zone, at the moment, it seems. I'm digging that.

And after the show, we went out for late night Chinese and got bad service but reasonably good food, except Krissy, who received a plate of chicken fried rice filled with raw chicken. And I'm not exaggerating. Say nothing else of Chinese restaurateurs, but they can be frighteningly grudging about being asked to take a potentially poisonous entree off the bill. Our waitress seemed to want to charge Krissy half price. I guess because she had eaten some amount of the dish before realizing that all of the chicken was what one might call "seared" but essentially completely raw on the inside. Maybe a micrometer's worth of cooked white part. The rest: pink, clear and bleeding. I made some off-color analogy about finding a turd in your soup but being asked to pay -- obviously not for the turd, which you didn't eat -- but certainly for the soup. I was getting ready to lay down the law with our waitress, but when she brought the bill, she had not charged us for the bacteria-filled rice dish. However, poor Krissy looked dismal. She had picked the restuarant and was obviously jonesing for the fried rice. In the end, I think the free fraction of rice and nearly-living bird meat she ingested were but a paltry substitute for what she had intended and hoped for.

We talked about Eddie Izzard's show and I compared voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger to voting for a bear in a three-piece suit. Well, it really wasn't a direct comparison, and it was more about voters in California possibly being willing to accept any number of disastrous replacements -- circus animals not excluded, and it included an exclamation of, "Well, he CAN ride a unicicyle." But that's neither here nor there.

I can't really point to anything great that I did tonight. I can only announce that I'm glad I had tonight at all. I seek out the sweet-scented, bosomy embrace of an appreciative audience. Which means I'm as needy and whorish as every other performer. I guess that's a truth that needs facing up to.

Labels: Krissy, NCT

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:10 AM | Back to Monoblog

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