At 9 A.M., it looks like sunset. Heavy, orange light streaming in through curtains that seldom look that color. I remember the skies looking like this, the air feeling like this, four years ago. You can look on news station web sites and see specific addresses of homes that have been completely destroyed. I remember looking at those lists last time around. Most of the homes were in Scripps Ranch. The street names sounded like they were supposed to be estates in the French countryside. I remember thinking that you get less sympathy from people when your house burns down and it's built on Moneybags Lane or Millionaire Drive.
My family's home burned down in 1998. Not as part of a big county-wide disaster. Just a house fire. So the governor didn't come bring us blankets, but I do know what it's like to not be able to believe that everything's gone. And also to look back on that experience nearly ten years later and know that it didn't kill us. Maybe it even made us stronger.
So far, my sisters and my parents are all safe. My little sister's neighborhood was evacuated yesterday. She's at my parents' house taking it easy, because school is closed all week. We talked yesterday about how we take it for granted that we live in the part of the country where these things happen. I told her how I had just been talking with our friend Geoffrey and that his brother and sister-in-law had moved to Florida. And while they're not on the Atlantic coast, I was saying that I have difficulty imagining I could ever move to Florida knowing how hurricane-ridden the area has been. And my little sister said, "Yeah, I know we've got fires and earthquakes, but I still say, fuck hurricanes." And that made me laugh.
I realize that this entry was written specifically in reference to another similar event four years ago, but I just referred back to the entry I wrote about THAT occurrence, and I realize that nothing I'm saying today is new. And that I may have said all of it better before. I must just be getting out of practice. All I write these days? Emails about work. Typing my address into online orders, if that counts. Clipped conversations in IM windows. I push the buttons on my phone a lot to play Bejeweled. And if someone was keeping track, the keystrokes might spell something out. It's not that I have less to say. Or maybe it is.
This used to be where I would write what I was thinking, only skeletally interrupted by what I was actually doing. My activities provided the scaffolding for all of the other often unrelated things going on in my head. But now, more often than not, I realize that I'm only prompted to write because I've done something or gone somewhere. And all I say is where I went or what I did. And as I rarely go anywhere or do anything anymore, the entries grow fewer and fewer.
I have been suppressing sentiment for some time now. I learn this lesson over and over. I keep it to myself when something tugs at me. And then at some point, I don't keep it to myself. I utter it aloud. I type it. And the absence of being met halfway is more apparent than the sentiment itself. There is no satisfaction in playing patty cake with the air. All of the satisfaction rests in the two hands coming together and making a clapping sound. The canceling out of equal and opposite forces. Force only has value when resistance measures it. (Note to NASA scientists: That's not an actual physics theorem. Please don't use this "law" when trying to get us to Mars.)
What's this? What's this? What...IS...THIS?
Friday night, I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D at the El Capitan Theater. I didn't know until the movie started that the 11:30 screening was a singalong. I can think of few things more horrifying than being in a movie theater filled with people talking and singing and vocalizing and not being within my rights to tell them to put a sock in it. And the songs in this movie are not all that easy to sing. And I think many people don't realize how few of the lyrics they actually know. And the soliloquys are sometimes speak-sung, so they can't really be sung along with. So SHUT UP, YOU AWFUL AWFUL GOTH PEOPLE! was all I could think for much of the movie. Although it's definitely a film that lends itself to 3-D-ification. And all of this just makes me want to go back to Disneyland. Where I've not been at all this calendar year, despite my ownership of an expensive premium pass.
All Animals Are Audrey
I watched a good bit of Animal Planet over the weekend. There was a Meerkat Manor marathon, during which I saw Flower sustain a fatal cobra bite to the head, and I saw her mate Zaphod have to leave the security of his family to go out on the rove. When Flower died, I thought, "Singalong Nightmare Before Christmas, and now THIS?" It was very sad. And although I realize they are not really very similar at all, meerkats make me think of Audrey. It's in the eyes. And the look of uncertainty always on their faces. Frankly, all animals make me think of Audrey in one way or another. All breeds of dog, certainly. But most other animals, too. I watched a show about a couple who adopted a baby hippo named Jessica, and Jessica's big wet eyeballs were Audrey all over the place to me. And then there was a show called Papa Bear, in which a guy in New Hampshire took in bear cubs who had been abandoned by their mothers and developed these amazing relationships with them and was able to study their behavior in ways that no other researchers ever had. The one bear named Yoda was remarkably affectionate and gentle. She would literally sit down in front of him and flop back on him like they were competing in the luge together. And he would scratch her and let her play with his watch band. It was the most amazing thing. And all of the close-ups on the little bear cubs' faces and later on the faces of the mothers just looked like Audrey to me. Hunters who shouldn't have been hunting in that part of the forest later shot and killed Yoda, and I felt tears sprout out of both of my eyes and thought that I agreed with the man on the show about Jessica the hippo. Viewing a photo of another wild hippo they had called Charlie who had been shot by neighboring farmers, he said that man is the worst animal god made. And I was inclined to agree with him.
When Beulah and I were talking about our love of animals and these shows I had watched, she understood what I was saying. And I told her about some people in the Cedar Fire of four years ago dying in the fire because they couldn't get their horses out, and Beulah scoffed, "Duh. You RIDE them to safety." She's very smart.
Audrey and I just got back in from a walk. There was a package at my door. Well, there were two. One was The Boatniks on DVD. The other was a black knit turtleneck sweater dress I ordered. I tried it on in the guest bedroom. It reminded me of a charcoal grey knit turtleneck sweater dress I bought and wore around this time of year eleven years ago. But the charcoal grey one fit better. The one that just arrived is probably going back.
Someone nearby is playing ABBA loud enough for me to recognize and sing along. Which reminds me that I just spent the weekend celebrating my older sister's nuptials to her lovely Swedish groom Paul. After the wedding, there were 15 or 20 Swedes (and two American crashers) in my hotel room, playing ABBA on my iTunes playlist and eventually getting security involved. And yesterday, there were as many Swedes lounging poolside at my parents' house, looking perfect in their bathing costumes and wondering if Encinitas is officially paradise.
I was so exhausted, I could barely keep my eyes open driving home from San Diego last night. Like I had to talk myself into not taking extra long blinks, even when I was only a mile or two away from my apartment. That fatigue has stretched on into today. I can barely tell what day of the week it is. Or what hour of the day. It's all chapped lips, sore neck, crooked posture, and indecisive eyeshadow today. I'm looking at this as the painful process required before renewal can begin. Digging in deep to peel off my dragon skin.
Oh. On Friday, I went to San Diego to change my hair again.
I let my stylist take pictures of my breasts for a collection of photographs he is going to be mounting in the salon to raise money for breast cancer research. At least I think that's what the story was. So if you walk into a hair salon in San Diego and see a bunch of boobs on the wall, two of them might be mine. Let's find a cure already. I'm eventually going to have too much self-respect and/or shame to continue this kind of activism.
I flipped off a poster of Optimus Prime the other day, and Rob wondered why. "Protect." "Destroy." I'm not sure the world is so binary. This comes from the Persians, you know. Ahura Mazda. Angra Mainyu. The Benevolent One. The Malevolent One. What about the other versions of the universe where bad guys and good guys coexist and are neither all good nor all evil. Where bad guys are sometimes good and good guys are sometimes bad, and there isn't one place that everyone of one kind goes. Like the Hindu gods. Or the Scandinavian gods. Or the Greeks and the Romans. The gods are just powerful. And sometimes they are reasonable. And sometimes they are right pricks. And sometimes they are playfully wicked. And sometimes they are deceptive and self-serving and cruel. Just like the rest of us. They just have the ability to appear to us as a bird and impregnate us if they want to.
This is one of the things that has often been unsatisfactory to me about comic book fiction and Star Wars and all of that. And maybe that's why most comic book heroes end up having an issue or two where they go bad. Maybe I'm not the only one who has trouble buying that the good guys are good because they have to be and therefore they can be nothing else. And maybe this is part of the reason I don't know whether I would be an Autobot or a Decepticon.
I haven't really been looking much forward to the new Transformers movie. I don't expect it to be any good, because of Michael Bay. And, also, I was never that much into Transformers, mostly because I was (and am) a girl. And I only really cared about a robot when at least part of it was being captained by a girl or -- even better -- a small child and when the girl or child and the robot all spoke Japanese. And even then, I only liked those shows because I lived in the Philippines, and we only got one English-speaking television station, and I would watch ANY cartoon that came on. Even Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.
So I haven't been counting down the days till transformation. Although, back in April, I was about to have dinner at Magnolia, and I took this picture of a Christo-esque wrap job promoting the Transformers movie on a building on Sunset.
And then, a day or two later, when it was windier than Los Angeles has any right to be, the entire business was in shreds, as documented by Rob's phone.
Special commendation for having a windshield that clean, Rob. My mom would be proud of you.
Anyway, I was in the gymnasium today, and I saw a commercial for the new Transformers movie, and I have to admit, a tiny, bitter, reluctant, unyielding part of me is mortified that I'm about to tell you that the commercial looked cool. But it did. And I am hopeful that it will be fun to look at it when I can hear people talking in the movie, too. Although I'm almost certain that will be the ruination part. Exciting visual effects shouldn't be enough to get people out of their houses. That shit is run of the mill at this point. You can see fabulous CGI in commercials for soft drinks these days. And wanting to recapture a piece of your youth shouldn't be reason enough, either. Because to be perfectly honest, with very few exceptions I prefer the cartoons I loved as cartoons. Even feature-length animated versions of those stories with the exact same character design and voice acting usually disappointed me. Can't we just love what we loved as it was and stop trying to put it on Burger King cups of the future?
That being said, I am about to embark on an attempt to adapt a novel (or two) from my adolescence into screen fodder. I never said I wasn't a hypocrite. I just said I don't like Michael Bay. And I stand by that.
A few weekends ago, I missed the Star Wars birthday. But I thought about it and watched a lot of zombies instead. And I began proving my hypothesis that bloody marys make time dilate on the weekends. As long as you drink them in the daytime, and as long as I'm the one who makes them.
I should have gone and bought those American flag cupcakes. They're always a hit.
The Jacaranda trees are in bloom, scattering their lavender blossoms over everything that lines the streets, leaving outlines where parked cars were, like crime scene chalk drawings. The value of negative space.
My father told me about how my mom used to admire our neighbor Pete's Jacaranda trees, and that Pete confided in him that they may be pretty, but they are a pain in the ass. We sold that house. And Pete moved back to the Midwest. And I notice that when you move away from a place, it disappears from the map for you. A great void where once a house was. Or a street. Or a town. That was the house I parked in front of when some kids went along smashing car windows (including mine) on prom night. And the house I parked in front of when I came back from failing my driving test and angrily yanked my hand brake so hard that my mom had to use a hammer to get it to release. I go back to the surrounding neighborhood because Beulah still lives around there, but I've stopped looking off in the direction of that house. The end of the earth drops off where my memories end.
That same weekend, I carried a camera the whole time, but never had much cause to use it. Except for the hours I spent at Tom Bergin's celebrating Tricia's birthday, half of which I spent wondering why my camera kept alerting me that my card was locked. And then I noticed that the card was in fact locked.
Jessie and I stopped for Damiano's after the party. Got the worst table service I've had in some time. But that didn't have the same quality of "it's so bad it's great" as the Taco Bell run we made the following weekend. When the drive-thru attendant handed me our food, the smell in the car was so atrocious, I asked whether one of us had accidentally ordered a Diaper Supreme. That didn't stop us from eating what we ordered. It just made us laugh a lot while we were doing it.
A month ago today, I took a bite of a nicely packaged blueberry nutrition bar my mom gave me, and I had to take a second look at it to make sure I hadn't actually bitten into a piece of shit. Looking at it wasn't all that convincing, either. It was a Blueberry Noni Think Green bar. I don't know what "noni" is, but in this bar's enthusiasm to deliver to me all the nutrition in my recommended daily serving of vegetables, it really missed the boat on being delicious or even palatable. I said to several people that day, "I'm pretty sure this bar has been digested at least once."
The up side is that my mom gets these things for free. So if you don't like something you found in her kitchen, you can probably just let it fall out of your mouth and into the trash can without even offending her. My mother represents gourmet food companies and has a handsome selection of wonderful -- and often dismayingly healthful -- products that she enthusiastically markets to upscale supermarkets all over the place. But she also goes to a lot of food-related trade shows, where she gets remarkable amounts of things for free which she then brings home and stores in the kitchen and the front bar area of her home, fully intending guests and family to help themselves to whatever random bounty is on the top of the pile. I ate something over there a few weeks ago, and I told her it was really gross, and she shrugged and said, "I don't care. It's not my line."
Of course, if she'd paid for the thing you just ate and didn't like, she would probably try to offer you a fix. A condiment or a stint in a fry pan -- whatever might make it suddenly delicious to you. Because it's only ever okay to spit something out if it was free.
Dexatrim Max2O (that 2 should be subscripted, but go jump in a lake, will you?) runs these spots on television encouraging you to sprinkle this stuff in your drinking water and thereby become thin and energetic and wonderful all around. "Gives me and my water a boost!" says one chipper young fellow before taking an enthusiastic draught from his water bottle. And the voiceover instructs you to "max out your water" with Dexatrim Max2O. It may be inappropriately old world of me, but this only makes me think of urine.
I vaguely remember an interview on, I think, This American Life but certainly an NPR program. It was a Jewish fellow who is famous for something now. I don't remember what. He may be a musician. He and his sister visited Israel when he was a boy, and their knowledge of Hebrew was sometimes jeered at because of how formal their diction was. He gave an example of excusing himself to use the restroom and saying something essentially to the effect of begging someone's leave so that he might go make water. I think. I really don't remember this memory well enough to recount it, I'm realizing.
Anyway, so I know of this phrase "to make water," and I know that it was once said to mean "to go pee pee." And as a result, hearing about your water or my water or even someone being described as "a comedienne of the first water" (as was just done on a page of Henry Miller I read last night) generally makes me cringe. I'm evolved enough to know that this is my problem and not Dexatrim's or Henry Miller's for that matter. But I'm self-centered enough to complain about it publicly. So there you go.
You and your water go do what you need to, but please don't do it near me. I have a thing about other people's pee.
When I first moved out on my own at the unfortunate age of 19, I was poor. I didn't live like I was especially poor, but that's what helped make me really poor. When I finally ran out of cash and ran out of credit and never managed to scare up the ingenuity to pull off a major heist, I often spent time flipping through pages of catalogs and marking the things I would in theory buy. For some reason, the mere act of choosing partially sated my desire to actually have. And in a way I could go around feeling as if I already owned these things. I had pointed at them. Circled them with a pen. They were mine.
I am downright grateful I didn't actually acquire the majority of things I once thought I wanted. I no longer have the mountains of mail-order literature stashed away, but I carried a lot of those rags around with me for years mostly as a result of bad filing. They would end up in a box that was filled primarily with magazines with some amount of keepsake value, and I would run into them some amount of time later and think, "Poo. Why would you want to wear that thing?" or "What an absurd upholstery choice." So allowing some time for incubation is probably the most critical factor in staving off bankruptcy for me even now.
Cut to yesterday afternoon when I received Anthropologie's new catalog in the post. It's called print, and it is now my nemesis. With the exception of a few of the furniture pieces and a dumb handbag, I literally want every single thing in this catalog. Maybe I'll outgrow the want. Maybe the colors will grow garish. Or the platform wedge sandals will seem clunky and dated*. Maybe I will join a militant political group and never wear anything but camouflage. But at this very moment, with my current opinions and my current tastes, this catalog is a lesson in the things I don't have. Happily, this retailer isn't a purveyor of more metaphysical items. Or I'd be able to carrot that sentence with the word "all."
I gave my mom a sheet of Sugar Ray Robinson stamps to give to my father. At first, she was livid. She thought I had made the stamps myself. The Christmas before last, I had some custom stamps made at Zazzle.com with a photograph of me and my two sisters, and I gave the stamps to my family members, and my mom was both grateful and angry, because it costs more than twice the face value of the stamp to have them made. And apparently, that's not worth it. So, she looked at this sheet of Sugar Ray Robinson stamps and was all prepared to disown me, until I explained that I bought these stamps at the U.S. Post Office and paid exactly what they say they cost. Then she was pretty nice about it. What's most amusing to me is the idea that I would have spent money to design and print a Sugar Ray Robinson stamp.
My father emailed me a couple of days ago thanking me for the stamps, and also said the following:
Ray Robinson was one of the greatest boxers and champions at a time when you had to be great to be a champion. I was watching ESPN's Sports Classic Channel last night and they showed a short clip of a knockout when Ray took back the championship from another classy champ who was more like Joe Frazer in his style. ESPN had interviewed him recently and he said after Sugar Ray knocked him down and he was counted out they carried him back to his corner. When he came to he heard everyone screaming and asked his trainer what round it was. He didn't even know he had been knocked out. My memory is bad so I can't remember his name but he was from Utah.
We also discussed the Mosley-Collazzo fight, which we both watched. My dad said, "Sugar Shane gave him a 'whoopin' as Mohammed Ali would describe it."
"Another classy champ." How great is that. My dad couldn't not be awesome if it was required by law. To not be awesome. Admittedly, this statement lacks clarity.
I don't cook as often as I used to. Sometimes I even convince myself that I don't really enjoy it as much as I used to. I've gotten lazy. My kitchen isn't very modern. I want for counter space. But this past week, I caught the bug.
I had chicken that had to be cooked to make room in my freezer. So I made this casserole that my mom used to make. A chicken and rice thing with cream of mushroom soup and Lipton Onion Soup Mix sprinkled on top. The other half of the chicken I fried in a pan. Both turned out great. I didn't really eat much of either. They are in my refrigerator.
Yesterday, I made linguine carbonara. A specialty of mine that really shouldn't be made very often as it is the most fattening possible dish one could hope to eat, short of a bowl of solid fat. And then today, I made meat sauce like my mother taught me, only I don't substitute turkey for the beef and pork (and veal when I can get it). And I had enough meat to also make a bolognese sauce that I haven't made in years. And that sauce calls for a Sicilian tomato sauce recipe that I also had to make. So that's three sauces simmering on my stove all day today. And then I made a tonnato sauce, because I saw the recipe, had all the ingredients, and managed to drop and break a jar of Italian tuna in olive oil -- enough so that it needed to be used but not so much that I'm worried about accidentally eating shards of glass.
I was on my feet in the kitchen all day. I used and washed numerous appliances and pots and pans and then reused and rewashed them. I kept very busy. The Incredible Mr. Limpet was playing on the television for some of the time. My upstairs neighbors were arguing up a storm. And then they weren't. And then they were again. I have a little kitchen timer in the shape of a pear. It was ticking all day. And then it would buzz like crazy. And then I would wind it up and it would begin ticking again. I picture the day going by like in those time lapse films where the sun rises and sets and rises and sets in a matter of seconds. Civilizations came and went. Wars were fought and won. Fashions were established, discarded, and then revived triumphantly. Music stayed mostly the same.
By the time eight o'clock came around, I had finished cooking everything but had no real interest in eating any of it. I didn't even boil any noodles. I just made all the sauces and put them away. And then I cleaned up and went to a party where Ryan and James made me laugh and laugh. It was cold outside. But it was too warm inside to stay in. There was a ham rotting on the mantel. Festively. I photographed it. I didn't photograph much of anything else. Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf. A temporary one. Well, leaves are largely temporary anyway.
Amazon.com suggested that I get myself a Life Hammer with the following approach:
"Don't be trapped in your vehicle in case of accident--the Life Hammer is designed to help you escape by easily smashing your window and cutting your seatbelt."
Despite my upbringing, I'm not really the sort of person who expects misfortune to find me. But this is precisely the sort of marketing that ignites fantasies in my brain in which I have just driven off a bridge into an ice cold lake which also happens to be teeming with water spiders, anthropomorphized fecal matter, and murderers in diving gear.
My dad and I spent a few days hanging out after the new year began. I cooked dinner a few times, and we would watch movies. The Maltese Falcon. High Anxiety. His company delights me. It wasn't hard for me to stretch my misplaced Christmas out for days and days. And on the day I was finally determined to load my car up and head back to Los Angeles, we had a conversation that somehow led him to show me the CDs he had bought, which were essentially cruise books from when he was a Seabee in Vietnam that someone had scanned and packaged for sale.
My dad paged through the PDF and made comments as they occurred to him. This commanding officer was a real squared-away guy. This one...well, he wasn't one. This guy really had a tough job, because his men were the worst slackers and layabouts in the bunch. Look, the Seabees had a pet bear.
Well, I copied those PDFs and clipped out the images I found with my dad in them. This is him as a guy in his thirties. He sure was handsome and great.
I was going to crop out these images and write this post more than a week ago, but it -- like everything -- wriggled free of my volition for a while. And then I was watching a vintage featurette about The Dirty Dozen today, and the narrator kept referring to Lee Marvin and the other stars of the film as "action men." And I loved it. And decided to pay some small homage to a time when men were men of action, and Tim Allen was nowhere to be found.
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.>
I voted. Did you? If you did, (a) bravo, and (b) send me a photo of your "I Voted" sticker presented in some interesting fashion. I will do something with it. And maybe reward you with something for your participation. Maybe.
P.S. If you're the sort that expects access to private photos, you'll have to specify that. And I will take any such notification under advisement.
A few weeks ago, Sarah and Paul were in Anaheim and wanted to visit Disneyland, so I drove down to shepherd them around on a Saturday night. It would have been much more fun had it not been Gay Days. Not because we have any problem with gay people, make no mistake. But because I have never been to Disneyland that late at night and seen it that crowded. As a result, we didn't really get to do much but wait in line and elbow our way through red-shirted crowds. But we still had a good time. And while we were waiting in line for Space Mountain, Paul was teaching me some of the idioms that the Swedes have that approximate ours. For instance, where we would say "bite the bullet" to reference the act of enduring something painful or unpleasant, Swedes would say the equivalent of "bite the sour apple." And where we might call it "icing on the cake" when something great comes after something already very good, Swedes would call that the "cream on the mashed potatoes." I love this. And I loved the fact that, even after our somewhat stressful Disneyland visit, Paul sent me a lovely email and told me that I was in fact the cream on the mashed potatoes.
While I'm on this language instruction kick, here are some additional Swedish idioms you can use at your leisure or when you're hanging out with Paul.
"The important thing [here] is to get away alive." Det gäller att klara sig undan med livet i behåll. It shrieks to clear one self out of the road with the waist intact.
To totally abandon someone. Lämna någon vind för våg. Leave someone wind by wave.
A cheerful expression of surprise. Hej hopp i blåbärsskogen! Hello, jump in the blueberry forest!
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Bättre en fågel i handen än tio i skogen. Better a bird in your hand than ten in the woods.
"Don't count your chickens until they hatch." Ropa inte hej förräns du är över bäcken. Don't yell hi until you're over the stream.
A party that got out of hand. Det var ett riktigt sjoslag. It was a real sea-battle.
"You're in deep shit now." Nu är det kokta fläsket stekt. Now the boiled pork is fried.
"Run like hell." Lägga benen på ryggen. Put your legs on your back.
To make things worse Att lägga lök på laxen To put onion on the salmon
"Calm down." Kiss och gå lägg dig! Pee and go lie down!
"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Det är skönt med den goa värmen, sa kärringen när stugan brann. It is nice with the heat, said the old woman when the house was on fire.
"Now, you've done it!" Nu har du trampat i klaveret. Now you have stepped into the accordion!
To come into a lot of money Lägga rabarber på klöver. Lay down rhubarbs on clover.
Talking nonsense Han pratar i nattmössan. He is talking in his nighthat.
"Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades." Nära är bara bra med en atombomb. Close is only good with an A-bomb.
"Good gracious!" Milda makter! Mild forces!
"It doesn't work." Den är paj. It's pie.
"Fat chance!" Inte en sportmössa! Not a sportscap!
"You'r talking out of your ass." Nu är du ute och cyklar. Now you are out and cycling.
"Caught with his pants down" Med skägget i brevlådan With his beard in the mailbox
"No kidding!" Dra mig på en tallpinnevagn. Drag me on a pine-twig wagon.
"You've really made a fool of yourself." Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpet. Now you've shit in the blue cupboard.
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.
Last night, my friend Tim's short film Slideshow screened at Garage Comedy. I took all the photos featured in the film, and the film is very funny, so I felt especially proud when I saw my name come up in the credits. I remember the day we shot those photos. It was a long, long day and included me getting a little toy dog out of a coin-op machine. There were many characters to choose from. A variety of breeds. Even one named "Duchess" who was nursing pups, but you had to get the pups separately. But the one I wanted stood out.
His name was "Craps," and he's in a shitting position. Which I can't believe was ever mass-manufactured. But it only took me three tries and $1.50 to win him, and now no one can ever tell me he doesn't exist.
So that was a fun day, as I recall. And it was already long enough ago that one of us could have had a baby by now. The blasted passage of time. I guess I like getting past the awful things, but the good stuff just whizzes past, too. At least we have this to show for it.
So last night, I went to Garage Comedy. It was a little chilly out. Fall weather that scolds me in advance for the sweater I don't feel like carrying. I was tired and out of sorts all day. Too many cocktails and too little sleep. For days and days. I haven't been to El Cid for a while. Mondays have become problematic and vied for. I always end up saying no to at least two things. But good ol' Garage Comedy. I always see so many friends there. I am a fan of that.
That above photo is a link to the photo set from last night. If you are not my friend on Flickr, you won't be able to see them. If you would like to become my friend on Flickr, click this link and use your powers of instruction-following and deductive reasoning to make it come to pass.
El Cid kicked us all out before midnight, which was unexpected and unwelcome. The persistent partygoers among us went over to 4100 and continued doing what it is we do, just in more dimly lit surroundings and with more places to sit.
All in all, I drank too much. I smoked too much. I have limited my hopes today to becoming hydrated.
In my case, "Lane" carries too much of an air of quaintness and small-towny quiet. Memory Lane is a street in which kids can play ball without worrying for being run over. I guess because any cars that venture down that apple tree-lined stretch require a hand crank to start and may be delivering blocks of much-needed ice. Where my memories reside, there are four full lanes, a double yellow line (not for crossing), and room enough along the curbs to park and or ride a bicycle. And not one of those bicycles with the one really large wheel. Memory Lane, for me, is huge and heavily trafficked, and I've received many citations there, both for cruising and for loitering.
I am staying at my little sister's home in San Diego. She and her boyfriend recently moved into a very nice place in Carmel Mountain Ranch. I used to live in an apartment nearby, so this visit is filled with familiarity, right down to the smell of a September morning. It's cool out. The grass and shrubs are covered in beads of dew. In the shade, it feels like autumn. And in the sun it feels like spring.
I used to live here. I used to go running just down the road. I used to smell jasmine and eucalyptus in the shade, and I used to like it when the mist from the sprinklers caught me in the face. I used to wake up earlier than I intended and wonder how the days would go. I used to manufacture reasons to do just about anything for fear of sitting still.
Five years ago, when September 11 didn't yet have a name of its own, the air was a lot like this. The sun a lot like this. I fully believe in global warming, but you can't always feel climate change from one year to the next. It seems like this morning is just like the other September mornings that found me awake very early and heavy with the looking back. That was the last September 11 I lived in this city and in this neighborhood. Every subsequent anniversary, I have been elsewhere, except for one when I was here, but in the capacity of a visitor. I even went to a baseball game that time. And the Padres even won.
This is always the time of year I stumble back into old messes. There are milestones on previous calendar pages. Proximal moments with like elements. The spans between them converging as the point of looking back grows further from them and the idea of a beginning loses its meaning. I have always felt this way. I have never felt this way. I am assuming a brand of feeling that may never have been. Mostly, I just know that there are times when I have been unhappy and there are times when I have been reluctant to admit that I was not unhappy, and neither of them felt as foreign as the times when I was sure everything was wonderful, and unhappy was only worth understanding for the sake of its antonym.
Saturday night, I noticed people wearing sweaters, and I was thrilled. I celebrate the return of fall weather. And all the melancholy it brings. I have needed a break from the heat.
After a week of sequestration and a night of mistrust, I drove to San Diego this morning to spend some time with my family. It was very family-ish and good. My dad gave me sincere hugs and said he loved me, and he smelled very nice like he always does. Beulah showed me the slide show she made in memory of Tasha, and we cried together over it. Sarah and Beulah and I went swimming, and Audrey came with us, and everyone delighted in what a funny little goofball she is. Especially when riding around on a kickboard. I experimented with my Canon 30D and took extraordinary pleasure in selective focus. And my mom seemed delighted to have her three girls all together in the same room. She taught us to make jiaozi (I'm pretty sure Sarah already knew how). And she congratulated us when the dumplings were pretty and Chinese-looking. And she clucked gently when they weren't. When we ate them, Beulah was in charge of the background music, and she decided to play a lot of Beach Boys songs. Somehow, the topic of my historically non-working digestive system came up. While we were eating. And Beulah delighted in making fun of me by replacing Beach Boys lyrics with words about poop wherever possible. I helped. I'm a good sport, and I know a lot of words. But I couldn't help but wonder why it's okay for us to talk about this at the dinner table when no one in the family seems to be able to stand a photograph of me with my dog's tongue touching my mouth. My mom also minds a great deal when I tease her about her garage sale and estate sale "findings." She showed me an impressive lambswool rug she bought for five dollars, and I said, "Someone probably died on it." And she boiled our handmade jiaozi tonight in a really huge Calphalon pot she got for forty dollars. I said, "I'll bet some old people used to boil their dentures in it. And they're dead now." Those little japes really get under her skin. But sing a Beach Boys song with the bass line replaced with repetition of the word "bowel," and I guess you're fine. Maybe she would have minded if company had been there. Or maybe she was just riding out the high of having been proud of us. I think it really meant something to her that her three daughters were helping her make dumplings. I heard her announcing it to her sister-in-law on the telephone as we were finishing up. And she mentioned wanting to make a tradition of this. I'm for it. I love jiaozi. And I love knowing how to make those perky little dumplings with my own two hands.
Janice Dickinson has been famous for too long. I know she went into dormancy for a while in the middle, but if you add up the front end and back end of her career, you will suddenly find that you are ashamed that you even know who I am talking about. And she looks like a Spitting Image puppet. So does Dyan Cannon.
I promise I am not trying to remake my blog into some kind of Defamer, Jr. I just think things is all.
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?
I have this faint memory of a phone call and a sinking feeling. Of suspicion and fear. And impatience and resentment. I remember arguing about bottles of wine and who they belonged to. I remember not really being angry about the wine. The wine was a scapegoat. It lives out in the desert now. Never to return.
You come into a person's life where you come in. There's no changing it. You know them when you know them, where they are and when they are. You know what there is. And when more is added, and when more is stripped away, you continue to know the shadow of what was there. Paper doll fashions leave their silhouettes. You learn the absence of the image better than the presence of it. The absence persists.
Even longing begets focus. Even the kind that promotes flailing and frenzy. But this other thing. It's like a problem with my eyes. I can't seem to just look at one thing for even a second. I am everywhere and all over the place. And all the while, I'm nowhere. I ceased to exist some time ago. No matter how much space I take up.
Died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came.
When I was leaving work yesterday, there was caution tape cordoning off the pedestrian bridge between my office building and the parking garage. Apparently it was there because of a rash of bees that had been seen or reported. And I guess this is a fairly common occurrence at this address. To prove I really don't pay much attention to the world around me, I honestly can't tell you if the pedestrian bridge is lined with flowers or not. I think it is. But I may just be adding a fanciful skin to the monochromatic trek between parking space and cubicle. I can see rainbows in my head if I want to, too. I am very imaginative.
I was tempted to just walk under the caution tape and take the most efficient route to my car. I'm not afraid of bees. And from where I was standing, I couldn't see any bees. And I rationalize that the caution tape doesn't actually confine the bees to that space, so if there are a bunch of bloodthirsty, perhaps Africanized bees out there, they can sting me just as easily if I take the elevator down to the street and walk under the pedestrian bridge. Even moreso if I take the stairs. But I didn't want the lobby attendant to think I was being willful and obstinate, so I followed the extempore rules and secretly chided myself for having that momentary flash of panic when I first saw the caution tape and thought, "If I can't walk across that bridge, how will I get home. Or to the mall, for that matter." I wouldn't say I'm NOT strategically minded, but even I'm ashamed that my survival instincts didn't immediately remap the path across the street. It's not like I'm allergic to asphalt or anything.
Back when I was in high school and my mom didn't want to be asked to pay for my college education, she suggested that I join the Reserve Officers Training Corps. Now, that you have heard this story and can add to it the knowledge that I have never successfully done a pull-up nor scaled a wall with the aid of a rope, you will surely think me justified in having glared at her, turned away, and never revisited the topic again, except in storytelling in which the suggestion was positioned as absurd.
My arguments are few. (Click the photo for a higher-resolution version or whatever.)
And if you are too lazy to crop your photo strip out of the top photo, click here to get your own personal delivery, because you are very special and I have a huge amount of bandwidth:
Jessie and I are Quality Street. It is official. We put up a little performance piece at Garage Comedy tonight. And it seemed to go over all right. In addition to taking our pants off on stage, this is what I looked like after all was said and done.
There's still lipstick in my hair. Wish you could have been there.
I wish Beulah and Justin had been able to be with us. But in all other respects, this was a super duper Christmas. I think my dad got more gifts than I've ever seen him get in one sitting. He seemed genuinely dazzled. And my mom cried out in shock and delight upon opening several of her gifts. The kind of thrill and gratitude that transcend concern over cost and necessity. I got way more than I expected or deserved. And I gave a great deal, but it still didn't feel like enough. My mom prepared a delicious prime rib. A couple of nights ago, I had asked what her plans for dessert were, and it seemed she didn't think we needed any. For Christmas? I protested. She said, Fine. And then decided to make her famous Melt in Your Mouth, a chocolatey dessert that is Beulah's favorite. Christmas morning, after scolding me for taking the dog out without putting on a jacket ("You don't have any common sense!"), she burst into my bedroom, where I was still trying to sleep, and yelled, "I made the Melt in Your Mouth. But I don't know why we couldn't just have watermelon!" and then promptly left the room. In response to each of these announcements, I muttered deadpan, "Merry Christmas." In the end, I think everyone was happy she had made her special dessert, and I have a feeling she was happy, too. Although I am also certain she would have been just as content with watermelon.
We sat around the fireplace and amongst the shrapnel of the gift explosion, watching the DVDs my sisters and I arranged to have made of my father's old super 8 film footage. That was our flagship gift to my parents. We watched the film of their wedding and of our family in Italy and in Virginia and Northern California. I don't know if we made it to Guam, but that footage is in there, too. We also watched more of 'Allo 'Allo!, the British sitcom Beulah recently got my dad interested in via DVD gifting. I dozed off a bit, on pillows on the floor with Audrey curled up against me. But only for a split second.
I wrote and sent my Christmas email. I also made a mental note of how many holiday text messages I received this year. A surprising trend. Especially when I took note of the number of message-senders I heard from who had only just finally bought into cellular technology or only just learned how to read and send SMS messages during this calendar year. Big ups to those guys.
Martín and Katie and Francisca came by in the evening, driving all the way out from Valley Center, to exchange gifts and deliver the ham I'd forgotten. It is nice having friends who live really close to you and to have had the foresight to give them copies of your housekey. We sat around and talked for a good bit, and I made them look at Audrey in her adorably ridiculous sweater and bonnet from the day before. Audrey was a good sport about it. She didn't try and bite anyone today. My mom's can method has really worked miracles on her savage behavior. My mom retold the story of the glorious can discovery to our guests. It continues to be priceless as stories go.
Eventually, Audrey and I saw everyone off, and it's been very quiet since. I said good night to my parents, did some work, did some chatting, took a bath, got through a few chapters of the novel I'm reading, wrinkled my nose at how the James Bond marathon turned into a Three Stooges block, and all of a sudden it was four a.m. again.
I still think I despise the holiday season. The span of time and the hubbub that surround the actual holidays. But the holidays themselves are still really rather good. It's still possible that I will have a ghastly New Year's Eve. But I'll cross that rickety bridge when I'm forced to by a pack of sword-wielding Thuggee guards.
I sang O Holy Night at my parents' church tonight, as I do nearly every year. My mother was very proud. When I sat back down next to her, she gave me a very Bill Clinton-esque thumbs up and said, "You made it!"
Paul and I stopped off for egg nog on the way back to the house, and I added a little brandy to it and grated fresh nutmeg on it, and Paul and my dad and I drank it up. My mother was furious that we bought any to begin with. She cried out in dismay and said there was absolutely no room for it in the refrigerator. And I said, "What about the refrigerator under the bar?" And she said -- equally furiously -- "I forgot about that." I told her to relax and reminded her how much I love egg nog, and she said, "So much for that weight loss." Merry Christmas to all.
Paul and Sarah and my parents and I were watching Must Love Dogs, but we decided it was terrible. So we put in March of the Penguins, and my mom followed along with her typical commentary. She says the things that happen in your brain sometimes. You understand the logic, but you've never said these things aloud. She laughs because that penguin is so much taller than the rest. She reminds you about that email with the animation of the one penguin slapping the other. "He gets so fed up, and then he can't take it anymore, so he slaps him!" The wonder of childhood is not lost in her. It's pretty magical.
I left to go meet friends at Nunu's, and my mother wished out loud that my friends would all find that it was too late and not want to meet up after all. Ridiculous. I do feel a bit guilty, though. I didn't come home until about four, and she had apparently begun to worry herself that the worst possible things had happened to me. I didn't mean to worry her. It just didn't occur to me that she wouldn't remember how I stay out until the wee hours all the time.
It's been a hectic visit. I did a lot shopping and a lot of driving and a lot of celebrating and a lot of not getting a lot done. And in the end, it's well after four in the morning on Christmas day, and I have presents to wrap and winks to catch and I'll never get it all done. And by the time we're ready to play at Santa, I will be exhausted and cranky and wish I had made better use of tonight. It's my fault. I know it. But what am I to do. There's fog everywhere and not a car in sight and good friends and hyperbole. Who could resist such a cocktail.
And now I'm home watching the A Christmas Story marathon on TBS. They were playing it at Nunu's on one television. The James Bond marathon was playing on another. It was like my dream command central. Forget trans-continental surveillance. I just want to know how much red cabbage Ralphie eats and how surprised James is to meet his bride with the face like a pig. And I don't want to have to switch back and forth.
I wish you a lovely Christmas, and I wouldn't have minded being wished the same by you.
When I got back to my car today, parked at a meter in front of the Whole Foods in Westwood Village, there was a flyer on the windhsield. I didn't notice it until I was already driving home. And I had to read it in reverse to figure out what it said. And I read it several times to be certain it said what I thought it said, which was:
Rectum Pad!
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The Rectum Pad is specially designed for the Rectum: Anal discharge can be an embarrassing and uncomfortable condition.
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The whole way home, I just kept hoping the wind would keep blowing the flyer over so that pedestrians and other drivers wouldn't think I was making money advertising for this product on my own.
Boris is the one person who (a) loves to have his picture taken by me, (b) complains about every photo I take of him, and (c) always makes a point of asking if I want my picture taken, too. He clearly understands the woes of the shutterbug. The undocumented life. The amount of my self I can't photograph on account of the unsatisfactory length of my arms.
So I ran into Boris the other night at The Tomorrow Show, and he went to his car and fetched a little present for me. See below.
Thank you, kind sir, for caring enough to capture my enjoyment of the nightlife.
Only angels know unrelieved joy -- or are able to stand it.
I needed a headshot. Jessie rallied. Then we went to Disneyland. I should always remember that I would rather have the turkey leg than the corndog. I only ever seem to remember this after having had the corndog.
These are my temporary solution, until such time as I can be lovely again and can afford to pay someone to document it for the split second that it is true.
Yesterday was the eighth of August. On past eighths of August, I have generally made mention of what a lucky day that is for the Chinese. I won't belabor the point.
I have been working altogether too much. My eyes are sore all day. Caffeine seems to have none of its usual potency. Every moment is a catalogue of ache. Even my beloved boozes are less appealing to me. I know they will make me sleepy and that I will lack the vigor to benefit from any of their more rewarding repercussions. It is a suckfest.
I was in New York for a few days last week. I stayed at the Dream Hotel. I would describe it, but I'm lazy and the spark is gone. I will post photos at some point. If I can find a free moment. The most noteworthy image I recall was riding up on the elevator and watching the doors open on floor after floor to display some artsy, impressionistic photo mural in cool blue hues and then arriving on the eighth floor to be greeted by a giant photo of a nude man running after himself. There were oranges on the pillows. But I had a room without a bath tub. So in order to try and get my mom's idea of my money's worth, I ate the oranges. Peeled 'em with my own hands and everything. It sounds crazy even to me.
It was so dreadfully hot and humid. Coming home to a hot and humid Los Angeles, I realize that I will probably never feel the need to complain about the heat here again. Even when it is its most uncomfortable. Even in my un-air-conditioned home. As hot and as humid as it ever gets, it's never like it was in New York these last two times I visited. Nights that never cool down. Air that smells of innards cooking in the bodies living about them. That filmy feeling on your skin and hair and teeth. All day long. I'm glad to be home. And if I ever end up living in New York, I will invest a great deal of money in air conditioning.
This is the third time I've been at a swanky hotel in Manhattan (and San Diego) when I was sent on a hotel blow dryer hunt. In each case I had to call down to the front desk to have them help me figure out where the blow dryer was stowed. At the W, it was in a little cloth sack in the closet. At the Marriott in San Diego, it was in a little cloth sack in the armoire. At the Dream Hotel, it was in a little cloth sack hanging from the back of the bathroom door. I even checked in the closet, hoping I'd discovered the new trend in blow dryer placement. But no. I had to call the front desk. They were nice enough. But I felt stupid just the same.
My teeth ache. I think I have been gritting them all day at work. And after an exhausting week of meetings and travel and work work work, I had to drive down to San Diego to perform, collect my dog, drive back up to Los Angeles to perform again, and then start the work week all over again with no greater an average of sleeping hours to my credit than before. I'll be dead by Christmas. I've been saying it for weeks. I have a lot of awesome belongings. I hope you get some of them, if that is your wish.
I don't know what else. My head hurts so much right now. Do we really need to be roasting Pamela Anderson? And if so, do we also need to be exploiting the ailing Kirk Douglas? He will always be Spartacus to me. And that sailor with a whale of a tale to tell. I don't want to see him working out his issues with his son on camera. This seems the height of vulgarity. Where's Steve Allen to object to things when you need him to?
I hate moths. And I keep having to prove it to them by murdering them and smearing their gross, powdery carcasses all over my walls. Why doesn't anyone ever take me at my word?
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.
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.
For some reason, my journal entries have felt somewhat chore-like this past week or so. I let so many things slip through the cracks. Stories I don't bother to tell. I hear myself speaking them to the people I know and run into on a regular basis, and I lose my zest for making them permanent.
For instance, last week, I drove to Claremont to see a dinner theater matinee performance of A Chorus Line with my dad, who had bought tickets for himself and my mother only to later find that my mother was going to be out of town. So I drove fifty miles and joined him and this church group of older folks. They call themselves "55 Plus," but, let's face it, I'm closer to 55 than most of these people. "55 Plus Thirty" might be a better name. Anyway, when my father said it was going to be a church group and also that it was going to be A Chorus Line, I said, "Are you sure? Because you know there are some mature themes in that show." And he sort of shrugged it off. But sure enough, long before the number "Tits and Ass" even came up in the program, the pastor had excused himself out to the courtyard and apparently had no intention of coming back for the rest of the show. The fellow who organized this affair came back at intermission and told everyone that they were going to leave. And I was surprised to see my dad decide to leave with all of them, ditching me there, fifty miles from home and only halfway through a show I didn't really want to see so urgently in the first place. The people I told this story to heard me say things like, "Christians can be so immature," and make my case about the strange elitism they use to condemn all things secular. I talked about the idea of their being fishers of men, but apparently only of men who never talk about the unwanted erections they used to get in high school. My father is a right grown-up, and I don't think he would have left had he not been pressured to by all those cranky old skinbags. He even leaned over at one point and told me that one of the women on stage was really good. Clearly he can handle a little language, which is all there really was. I got into a frustrating debate with my Uncle Virgil about the content of the show. He threw around generalities that implied that the creators of this show put smut in it to make more money. And I had to object that I can't imagine paying a premium to hear the word "bullshit" said in a crowded room. I mean, if they put some horsefucking up there or something, then maybe. But mention of gonorrhea is no great shakes in my book. And he started telling me about how a show like this would never be done in a town called Branson. And it only got more inane from there. My dad even chimed in and supported me at one point when I was trying to say that the language and content are in there because of a desire to faithfully represent the community in which this show is taking place. Much like one might expect a play about the Navy -- and not Anchors Aweigh -- to have some language in it. And possibly horsefucking, as well.
I think I was going to call the blog entry I planned to write One Singular Sensation: Outrage. But I never got around to writing it. Anyway, bad as I felt about the cast coming back for Act Two and seeing this one table right down front empty of its former thirty occupants, I ended up leaving at intermission, too, because I decided I might as well beat the traffic back to Los Angeles, whence I immediately left for San Diego to drop Audrey off before my birthday weekend. Then I went and had some drinks, and I ended up driving back to Los Angeles at about three a.m. All told, I put about 350 miles on the car I am borrowing from my parents in one day. And I think I am still a bit tired from it.
That same day, I made a note that I've never been kicked in the yarbles, but I have fallen hard on the cross bar of a ten speed. I don't remember why I wanted to remember that fact. But I remember that it happened when I was in grade school and that there was actually some bruising.
I also went to see House of Wax last week, believe it or not. And it was really far less good than I could have ever imagined. Less good than House of a Thousand Corpses. Seriously, less good than that. And Paris Hilton gave an infuriatingly bad performance. Not that anyone else in the movie was particularly convincing or likeable. But Paris Hilton can't even convince you that something smells bad. And I'm not joking about that at all.
Tonight, I went to see Revenge of the Sith at The Arclight with Wayne Federman and Derek Hughes and Martín. I actually had a great time. I laughed at parts of the movie that were not meant to be funny. And I would look over at Martín from time to time as if to say, "What the...?" And he would nod in concurrence. He had already seen it twice before tonight. Which I appreciated, because there were a couple of times when I needed someone to tell me what had just happened that I couldn't discern with my logical brain. I don't want to write a lengthy review about it. I was made uncomfortable by the repeated use of the word "younglings." I was ever so disappointed in the Wookiee "battle" scenes, which had been far overhyped in geek discussion circles when the teasers first came out. And -- this will sound really awful of me -- but Peter Mayhew is too fat to play Chewbacca anymore. Unless we are to believe that twenty years later his metabolism finally hits its stride. There were a lot of battle scenes that reminded me perhaps too much of Starship Troopers. Or droids that reminded me of the Mondoshawan. Or of Captain Eo. And I tire of the trend in action films today for the combat to be so fast-paced that you can't see a single move distinctly from anything else that is happening. The lightsaber fighting looked like colorful windmills or maybe some sort of glowstick nunchaku thing at Burning Man. The art and elegance of swordfighting is utterly lost in them. When I was at the bar before the movie started, a greasy-haired youngling with one of those plastic, retractable lightsabers said this to his father, "Dad, I have a question. Do you think those lightsabers are real?" He was referring to something he had seen someone wielding outside the theater. And I found it both sweet and sad to overhear him ask, because it's great that children want so much to believe but he was clearly too advanced in years to be that naive.
But, really, in the gestalt, I enjoyed watching the movie. It was fun. And I didn't have anything at all riding on it being more than that. And my most stalwart advice for enjoying the movie in a zen sort of way is (a) have a cocktail or two before and/or during the screening and (b) don't let your brain start thinking about how good it could have been. I think the biggest letdown in all three of these films has been how obvious it seems to nearly any eye that the problems could so easily have been fixed. And if you don't lose yourself in the frustration of that idea, you can still watch it and be okay and not busy your brain with cutting dialogue from scene to scene or reworking premises when they make no kind of human sense. That's the way to play it, if you ask me. There is forgiveness in forgetting and forgetting in forgiving. And Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor both have a surprising number of growths on their faces.
Martín and I agreed that the moments when foreshadowing of continuity showed up were the greatest pay-offs for us personally. It satisfies something of the geek in you (read: "me") to hear names or scenarios mentioned that you know will be coming into play in the following episodes or to see the two suns of Tattoine and that weird little igloo house. And I am still a great fan of the music. That callback to "The Duel of the Fates" was pretty nice. I remember hearing John Williams conducting the L.A. Philharmonic in a performance of that at the Hollywood Bowl back in 1999. It's hard to believe this second trilogy is already that time-spanning. My, but how easy it is to throw a huge chunk of your life away on stories and stuff.
I haven't been feeling so hot this week. My vim is at a record low. Anxiety begets anxiety. Staying up all night makes it hard to sleep. I went to a few comedy shows early in the week and fulfilled my typical food to drink ratio for a night out, meaning I ate nothing at all and drank a bit more than that. I went to the Joe Jackson/Todd Rundgren concert in San Diego and stayed out until dawn playing cards and drinking and generally disregarding the fact that I had to drive back to L.A. the next morning. Sometimes, I expect to wake up in the morning and see that I've suddenly aged a huge number of years. Like the dude who chooses poorly in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I should take some vitamins. I don't have any desire to see what the bones under my facemeat look like.
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.
My father used to call my sister Sarah and me the Bigmouth Singers. It was a joint reference to this toy we had -- which was a piano that had keys connected to these fliptop-headed characters whose mouths would flip open when you struck the corresponding note -- and to us being noisy pains in the neck. I wrote all over that toy with a ballpoint pen.
I was given a Mrs. Beasley doll for Christmas when I was just a toddler. Mrs. Beasley from the hit television show A Family Affair. Here is a photo of me wearing the little plastic specs that came with the doll on Christmas morning in Naples, Italy. It has appeared in my blog before, but that was years ago.
Even then, my head looked huge. I loved that doll and used to carry it around with me all the time. Then I wrote on its face with a ballpoint pen.
I had a lot of Fisher-Price paraphernalia. The schoolbus with the little peg people. The farm with the silo and the barn door that mooed when you swung it open. The schoolhouse that doubled as a desk and chalkboard with magnetic letters in a little cubby. I wrote on every single one of those items with a ballpoint pen.
I had a baby doll that cried with real tears and even wet and soiled its diaper with water and "food" you fed it through a little hole in its puckered lips. I gave it the measles one day. With a ballpoint pen.
I miss Weebles. I miss the pirate ship and the desert island and the treehouse. I used to play the shit out of those toys. And then I made the mistake of bringing them in the pool with me, and the little paper inserts that are the Weeble dudes' faces and outfits started to pucker and crinkle and fade. I don't think I defaced them with pens at all, but it was probably just an oversight.
Sarah had that bust of Barbie you were supposed to use for making up and hair-styling. I wrote on its face with a pen. And I think I also cut most of its hair off. And Sarah also got that My Size Barbie that walks when you pump the arm. I totally wrote all over that thing's creepy smiling face. Even the teeth.
My mom bought me a plush Mickey Mouse at Disneyland the first time we ever went there, and I stained its face pretending to feed it a chocolate chip cookie. No pen marks, but that chocolate stain never went away.
I have felt sorry for every toy of mine (and Sarah's) I lovingly destroyed. Sorry for the disrespect and sorry for the loss of mint condition merchandise to appraise on auction sites. But I note in the retelling of these shameful tales that I always told my mother I wanted to be a writer, and she always corrected me with the word "lawyer." There might be a metaphor in there. I never became a lawyer. And much of what I do with my pens these days could still be considered defacement. And, these days, I take awfully good care of my toys.
I don't think I am here right now. I don't even know what that means. I wish there were treasure maps hidden behind old paintings and secret doors behind bookcases. I wish there were places to go when wherever you are starts to feel like the only place you've ever been. I wish I had more to offer and less to gain. I wish I had an answer for every question. I like the idea of finding things of value in boxes of breakfast cereal. And winning something at the carnival that's worth having. Not a stuffed Noid for instance.
My birthday approaches. I'm short for ideas. Last year was the best and the worst birthday ever. This year, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just middling. Better than a bran muffin. Not quite as good as peanut butter. I've just been to Disneyland. Maybe that's why everything seems so pale.
Martín (who was kind enough to want to better my evening) and I went to Al Gelato last night, and I had a capuccino and once again wondered why I have never had any actual food there. It always smells really good. But I've only ever had gelato. Or coffee. When we got out of the car, it smelled of fireplaces on Robertson. "It's April and it smells like October." I started a post a few weeks ago that had the phrase "joyless autumn days" in it, but it was not seasonally appropriate. I love the smell of autumn. And I already have an idea for a Halloween costume.
I get goosebumps when it's cold. No surprise there.
I received an email with the subject line: "Man vs Monkey, who will win MARY." And inside, there is an illustration that looks like this:
I really have no idea what this email is selling, but I find the artwork and the messaging just appallingly, hilariously awful. The monkey's head is clearly just clip-art, and the "man" looks like Michael Jackson in the Dirty Diana days with some weird deltoid deformation happening. But I'm glad the monkey is properly attired in his karate robe. At least he's respectful enough to play along.
Jessie and I went to Birds after workshop yesterday again. It was the last of our Saturday classes, and we get done early enough that we find excellent parking easily in that very popular Franklin hive. We have made friends with the bar staff there, and that pays off like you wouldn't believe. I was drinking Jameson on the rocks, and I'm sure by the time we left, I'd had half a bottle of it. What a man I am.
Yesterday was not my favorite day. On my way to Hollywood in the afternoon, a phone conversation left me with tears streaming down my face and no tissues in my car or handbag. There's me, walking quickly to class and wiping tears away and hoping I'm not also wiping blue eyeshadow all over my face, and it's a good thing it's Hollywood, because no one takes an interest when scenes of sorrow and anguish play themselves out on the sidewalks here. I did not look as much a mess as I felt. And class went all right. And when we went to Birds, this fellow called Peter invited us out for a smoke and told us that some other guy he had just met at the bar told him that I had "caught his eye." And I guess that was by way of warning us that a chat-up was imminent. That guy did then suddenly join us outside and tried to make conversation with me. But I have to say, he didn't give it much juice. I'm not a snob. I will talk to a guy. Even if I have no agenda. I try to be a friendly conversationalist. But this was just one of those interludes that wanted for more effort on his part. He accused us of not being regulars, because I guess he's there all the time and has never seen us. So I explained that we take a class and we sometimes drop by afterwards, and he took immediate interest in the comedy tip, and made that one demand that cannot be tolerated. He asked me what my "style" is, and I couldn't really answer that, as I do improv and that's just whatever. But I said that I talk about my mother a lot and that I've been known to use a lot of smart words. And he said, "Like Dennis Miller?" And I said, "Well, I'm not a fan." And he said, "Really? I think he's really good." And I said," I don't care for his politics." And then I added, "And I find his rants to be sort of masturbatory." And he said, "Masturbatory? You mean he's doing it to amuse himself and it's not intended to inform people?" And I said, "Right. He's beating off." And he laughed. And I added that I suppose my style is also sort of vulgar. And then he said, "Can I hear a sample?" And this is the death knell for a conversation of this sort. Invariably, if someone finds out I do comedy and they say, "Say something funny," whatever I say next will fall flat. I'm always hoping that they're paying enough attention while talking to me that they might find me funny just sort of organically and on the sly. But if that isn't the case, and someone asks me to amuse them, I usually just say, "No." I didn't shut this guy down so abruptly, but I did sort of find a way to work myself back into the conversation Jessie and Peter were having, and the other guy pretty quickly excused himself and went back inside. Peter later relayed to us that he asked the fellow how it had gone, and he had said, "Not well. I don't think we hit it off." And then Peter tried to invite himself back to my place.
I suppose there's kindling for the self-esteem fire in there. This happens to me from time to time. And at bars -- and when I'm with Jessie -- more often than in other scenarios. It's flattering to have someone take an interest in me, but so often I really just want to be left to talk to the person I'm with, and all that attention is just an intrusion. Again, I'm not stuck-up. I just really like my friends, and I never feel as if I get enough of them. And when I'm out in the world, like on Friday night -- when I stopped in at a liquor store to buy some purse-sized whiskey to take over to Cranes because Kevin had mentioned that they don't have a full bar there and I'm certainly not going to spent the night trying to get hopped up on soju -- the guy buffing the floors said, "You look sexy tonight." And I said, "Thank you," but I didn't really go away feeling awesome because of it. That guy has never seen me before, so the comparative nature of his compliment was suspect. And he was the guy buffing the floors. The Korean guy behind the counter was not terribly flirtatious at all. He was friendly, but he wasn't trying to take me home or anything. And I wondered if it's because I can only catch the eye of the ones who aren't management material. Later, when I was walking up El Centro to the bar, a guy pulled over and asked me if I needed a ride. I declined politely. But that's an odd thing. It wasn't like I looked as if I was limping back to civilization after a harrowing brush with crime. I was walking with a great sense of purpose from my parking spot to a bar. And he was driving in the opposite direction. I suppose I could have gotten him to drive me the block and a half to the bar, but that might have turned out to be a block and a half of saved walking in exchange for being chopped up with an axe in the trunk of his Altima. I'm doing the scales with my hands right now.
On Friday night, I wasn't going to go to the Comedy District, but Mindy gave me a little push, and I relented. I have seen a few shows at that room in the back of San Gennaro, and it's really far less of an epiphany than, say, seeing the blood of San Gennaro recoagulate every year at that festival in Naples. It's a miserable room, and the last time I saw a show there, I was surprised that they weren't also selling timeshares. Jason Nash was hosting the show, and I leaned over to Paul (F. Tompkins) and said that Jason's hair is so long now that he looks like Dragonball Z. (And, of course, by that I meant Goku when he is in the Super Saiyan level and goes blonde. But no one would have found that funny. Too much detail. Too much geek truth. I'm not even a fan of Dragonball Z. I just know these things.) Jason didn't even know what Dragonball Z is, so no connection there. But other people did, so when Paul mentioned it during his set, it wasn't a dud and I was relieved and flattered. Howard Kremer was so great, and his coining of the term "cram hole" was my favorite thing in some time. Paul was also super awesome. There was a lot of gold in both his and Howard's sets that was specific to the odd awkwardness of that room. In a way, it's a shame, because that alone can't be reason enough to see or do a show there. And if you're ever able to get someone to bring you a drink in that room, you must be sitting under the halo of heaven and appear to be very special and important.
Two last things. If you happen to get seated next to a parent with a small child on a ride like Soaring Over California the next time you're at one of the Disney theme parks, you might notice as I did that the world is suddenly reduced down to a Richard Scarry book. The lady to my right spent the entire ride just captioning every object she saw for her youngster. And I distinctly noticed the absence of rat families, cat policemen, and whatever the foxes generally were. And here's a bit of conversation Jessie and I had last night that I thought was perfect.
Martín and I went to Disneyland yesterday. I bought us annual passes when we went for his birthday last November, and we haven't made use of them at all, which is a travesty in terms of value. So, I suggested we go on April 20th, and not just because it's Hitler's birthday. Also, because of Columbine.
That's not true.
Anyway, we went to Disneyland, and I took a customary lot of pictures, and as I was sorting through them late last night, I found this one that appears below, which I took while waiting for Martín to purchase a beverage. They were painting the Mark Twain riverboat to my right. Just a bunch of guys in painting attire painting the boat. I entitled that tableau "Cessation of the Suspension of Disbelief." It was one of quite a few incidents that befell us that made Martín cringe. They're supposed to paint the boats at night, according to Martín. And if they're going to do that sort of maintenance work out in the opening, shouldn't the painters all be dressed like Mark Twain or something?
There were also an alarming number of customer service inconveniences perpetrated on us. So much so that I wondered if it was "Let a Retard Work at Disneyland for a Day" Day. I'm glad I didn't make that comment to Martín when I was taking this picture, because, as you will see, the background of my photo is entirely populated by retards. And one of them is wearing a crown. One of them is also extending his huge tongue, but that was just serendipity.
So, yeah. I got a haircut. A long-awaited haircut. And you might notice that my hair is blonde. Very, very blonde. There are pictures from each day. Want proof?
Wednesday
This is day one of the latest version of me. I went to The Improv that night. And then to Jerry's. And then to a parking spot on Melrose where politics were discussed at length.
Thursday
I met my friend Mark for lunch at the Farmer's Market, and then we went to see Kung Fu Hustle (I don't recommend it, but I will go into further detail later). I went to The Improv Thursday night, too. And that's plenty.
Friday
I met my friend Steve for coffee before he headed back home to San Diego. We worked together in biotech ages ago. I sucked down an iced coffee and felt my head swimming over the fact that we've known each other for thirteen years. I find it hard to believe I've known anything for thirteen years.
Later, after a drink at H.M.S. Bounty, I went to The Wiltern to see the live staged reading of an episode of The Family Guy. I have some complaints about that experience.
Saturday
After workshop, Jessie and I went to Birds and had a few drinks and a few onion rings, and we made a few friends whose names we will surely never recall.
Sunday
Alex is in town. I picked him up at his hotel, and we had a coffee that I wish could have lasted forever. But he has a busy rock and roll life to live. And I don't. After I dropped him off, I went for a walk with Martín that ended in a visit to 7-11. Then I went for a run. Then I went and visited Bryn. Then we went to Fred 62. Then I came home. And I can hear that it's late enough to be the beginning of someone's day. And I sort of feel sorry for that someone.
Sunday afternoon, I drove down to San Diego to celebrate Beulah's birthday (which is officially April the twelfth) with my family. We had dinner at Rei do Gado, and I ate very little, which angered my mom, who doesn't believe in paying for all-you-can-eat meals when you don't intend to eat all you can. I gave Beulah a Louis Vuitton handbag. The style with the Murakami cherry blossoms in the print. She was in love with me. Which was my plan.
I also took some pictures before I got there. No one is surprised by this, I am assuming.
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.
Tonight, Tammy had her birthday party at El Conquistador in Silverlake. I showed up late and apologetic, but dinner hadn't even been ordered yet, so I suppose no harm was done. Jeff, whose finger was injured yesterday in an incident whose description is impossible not to grimace through, was not complaining at all, which is amazing. I remember getting stitches in my fingers a few years back, and I was leveled by it. I don't think he was even on painkillers. What a stud.
Blaine and Vera were fine company. We talked about Bukowski and Carrot Top and reggae music and how fat Robert Smith didn't used to be and how Vera is in an Ima Robot video and how I'm a gigantic fan of Ima Robot.
Tammy was green and glistening in a fancy sequined top. Fancy like mermaid scales. And if she hadn't had to work in the morning, I suppose she'd have been amenable to having more drinks bought for her. But weekend birthdays only happen every seven or so years. In my favor is the fact that, this year, I'm having one. Happy birthday, Tammy. When it's my birthday, you will have no excuse not to get plastered. And as we were born in the same year, I suggest that Tammy continues to celebrate her birthday until mine comes around. I am an avid supporter of the birthday s-t-r-e-t-c-h.
When I was driving down to San Diego on Easter Sunday on an hour's sleep with a constant cough drop in my mouth and a constant churchly song in my throat, I observed a car in the high-occupancy vehicle lane with a lady in coke-can rollers and bathrobe in the passenger seat doing her make-up while the gent I assumed to be her husband drove them both on to Easter. She was applying an eyelash curler to her lashes and making that stretched down face that ladies make when such things are in the works. I just recently watched How to Murder Your Wife -- a DVD selection I made when working on my latest bid because I like Jack Lemmon and Terry-Thomas and the woman in that movie (Virna Lisi) is very pretty -- and there is the archetypal representation of the disillusionment that sets in when a man sees the disparity between the sexpot he fell in love with and the houseclothed frump sleeping in his post-matrimonial bed. Anyway, I thought of the guy driving that car in the H.O.V. lane when I was watching the movie. I figured he might have had a touch of that same disillusionment when his wife shuffled into the car with her big pink bathrobe on and her make-up bag in her lap. This is a role I have never ever played. I have never left the house in that state. And I can't imagine a scenario in which I would. It is my hope that I will keep the world fooled at all times. And all of it. Those who ever see me in my most natural state are generally part of a unique inner circle. It takes some doing to get in. And it's really no prize to do so. I encourage you to remain on the periphery, from whose vantagepoint my lipstick is nearly always perfect. I believe in the illusion. I serve it. And if you are none the wiser, I have earned my keep.
things which are not yet and things which are no more
The music in The Shawshank Redemption makes me want to cry. Make an ill-advised phone call. Travel back in time. Sit somewhere in the past for longer than time ever took. I am vulnerable to reminders. I am an easy lock for picking.
I don't know what it is that's so appealing about looking back. Ruminations on the loss of innocence. A desire for a simpler time. A simpler self. It all sounds like so much chit chat in a retirement home. I never called it a "horseless carriage." There isn't so much of my history to miss. But then my card catalog seems larger because I file things without abbreviating. I hang onto stunning amounts of detail. I record to stultifying levels. People pretend to admire it. But I'm sure -- when they go off and have their day -- they shake their heads and wonder how a girl manages to have so much time on her hands and motor in her fingers. I am not like other people. In certain very specific ways. My teeth are buzzing with meaning.
I made excuses for my dramatic entrance. And my lateness. I put a smile on it. I was nervous. Not myself. I wanted these secrets and kept them close. Even now, I stop myself from speaking them. As long as I'm not speaking, I can hear my footsteps. I can hear the grit in the sidewalk. I can keep from stammering out of breath and feeling suddenly foolish. I can save myself the memory of shame.
When I go places we've gone together, I kiss the ghosts of kisses there.
Beulah came and visited last weekend. She is a teacher, so "spring break" actually means something to her. It was the first instance in as long as I can remember that we got to spend that much time together, just the two of us. We did all sorts of things. Shopped*. Sang. Mixed cocktails**. Made paintings and collages. Ate a swanky dinner at The Dresden***. Cruised the rain-spattered streets of Los Angeles rocking the iPod in the wee hours, from Los Feliz to Santa Monica to Downtown and back home again****. Went on a picnic***** and took a bazillion pictures. It was on our picnic that Beulah and I made special note of our special brand of Gay®. It's ours alone, and no one can touch it.
Hyperlinks and photos may mysteriously append this and other recent posts.
*It was raining at The Grove, and I forgot to bring an umbrella, so I bought us one. One of those push-button ones. And I nearly took Beulah's eye out a few times. But she was a good sport. They did not have my Fekkai texturizing balm at Nordstrom, so we were good little girls and did not buy a single pair of shoes. We shared a sandwich at the Farmer's Market and noticed a cute boy working at the toffee shop. We may have looked over in his direction a few too many times. Conspicuous. No game. But in the end, we had to face the fact that, as cute as he was, he works in a toffee shop. He was quickly forgotten.
**I made Beulah an apple martini. In a shaker and for real and everything. It was Jameson for me. A few of them. In a fancy crystal glass. Because I am pretty fancy when you come right down to it.
***Beulah doesn't like just standing in a crowded bar. Who does? I will do it, but I agree that a nice unjostled place to sit beats all. And I'd never eaten at the Dresden, so we decided to have dinner. A pair of fine steaks it was. And a good-looking Hispanic waiter whose name we never got. I defaulted to Jose. Beulah defaulted to Elian. And Tom showed up somewhere mid-steak, in time to help us with dessert and to say hello to a leaving Craig Anton. Beulah and I saw Jeff Small walking somewhere with what appeared to be take-away something or other. I didn't call out to him, but I mentioned it to him last night at the Bounty, and Brendon (his brother) made merciless fun of him. And I laughed and was grateful to have a sister of my own who would easily have made the same sort of fun of me, given half the chance.
****I can't tell you how much we laughed. But I can tell you about the time we were stopped at a traffic light and a bookish fellow to our right was making friendly eyes at us as Beulah jammed to Bitch Betta Have My Money. She encouraged me to wave at him. You know. Make his day. She then said he looked like an Ira. She was right. When we hit Downtown, I took us through that awesome 2nd Street tunnel and all over the place. Through Chinatown and Little Tokyo. We reminisced about visiting the New Otani Hotel on a Saturday many years ago, after driving up from San Diego to see a Francis Bacon/Helen Frankenthaler exhibit at LACMA. We had no idea back then. No idea whatever.
*****We packed lovely sandwiches and quesadillas and pickles and Pocky and soda pop and beer and potato chips and grape tomatoes, and we ate in the sunshine like kings. We were taking pictures of ourselves lying down on a straw mat when I felt a nuzzling in the back of my hair. It was a cute little four month-old corgi puppy named Buttercup. We made instant best friends and took her picture. And I'm sure we would have stolen her at gunpoint if (a) we had had a gun in our picnic duffel bag and (b) her mommy hadn't been so awfully nice, too. It was the best picnic in the history of picnics. And it could only have been made gayer if we had gone on a three-legged race with just the two of us. We ate so well there was certainly no room for the sundae and malted we had at Mel's later that night. But who's counting.
I went to the beauty supply on my way home and the nice Persian lady behid the counter said to me the following:
"You are so beautiful. With the dimples and the hair and the sexy."
Then she went back to what she was doing as I said, "Thank you," and felt my face flush and got all embarrassed. I guess it's uncomfortable having your day made.
Martín and I walked over to Nick's for breakfast, dodging marathoners as we crossed La Cienega. It wasn't as busy as usual on account of the marathon and the streets being closed. We still managed to take an hour to get seated and served and out of there, but Sunday mornings aren't meant for hustle. Even church is mostly just sitting still.
The guy who sat at the counter next to us was very chatty. One of those guys. The ones who make "friends" with all the wait staff and like to pretend they are in tight with everyone. One of the regulars. The owner, Alan (and I'm not saying his name because I'm a regular -- I just heard other people call him that and I don't want my pronouns to become confusing), was encouraging some customers to watch the marathon on the television, and the guy I'm talking about piped up in a plenty loud voice, "The guy who won this year is an African. Go figure." Then, after a beat, he added, "They should have a race just for Africans. Give everyone else a chance." He went on for a bit and was clearly looking for a response, eventually turning to me. And I said, "A segregated marathon? That will probably go over well." And the guy was like, "Well, they win a Honda car. It's not like it's some Los Angeles thing. It's a Japanese car." I didn't understand this premise, but I decided that the winners of the African part of the marathon should maybe get something different. "A slave ship?" Martín added, "And a bus pass." "Right. A Spanish galleon and a bus pass." But I think we'd already lost the guy's attention. He was still going on about how women get a fifteen minute handicap. I took out my little notebook to jot down the framework of this conversation, and he leaned in, "You're writing down my idea, aren't you?" And I admitted that I was. And I think he really began to wonder if it was an idea that had legs. And I was reluctant to type "that had legs" just there, because I didn't want to tempt anyone to think to themselves, "No pun intended." If you know me, you know how much I despise "no pun intended." If I intend a pun, you will know it, and I won't have to point it out to you. And for the record, this seldom happens, as I do not generally care for puns. In all other cases, I won't have intended it, so it will defy the boundaries of necessity to have you remind me that I didn't.
Martín and I walked home past big signs encouraging particular groups of runners. "Go Cleveland Marathoners!" "Go L.A.P.D. Explorers!" And I wondered how well it would go over if there were signs encouraging just the African runners to really buckle down. Mightn't the appearance of a big banner reading "Go Africans!" or "Run, Africans, Run!" have the risk of connoting an invitation to return to the Dark Continent or to dance while bullets are being fired at one's feet? They also apparently have premade signs that you can fill out or add a photo to so that you can hold them up to encourage the specific runner you are there to cheer for. These have a way of looking like milk carton photos to me. Martín noticed one where the person who filled out the sign, wanting to encourage a Vera, had used a marker to write Vera with big quotation marks around it, but they were placed so high that they looked to have been written around the word "Go." As in "'Go,' Vera." As in a sarcastic sign implying that Vera is not likely to be going anywhere. It's possible that I drank too much coffee.
Anyway, the point is, if you're going to sit at a coffee shop counter, bring a paper or pretend to be deaf. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a conversation with a racist.
"I do not attempt to explore the depths of the oriental mind."
Well, that's not true, actually. That's a quotation from a John Wayne movie. I, in fact, do attempt to explore the depths of the oriental mind and often. Seriously. And I have no problem with people saying "oriental."
I forgot to cover some things. Wednesday night, Jesse and I went to The Hotel Cafe to see my lovely friend Anya. That part I covered. It was raining out, and I was in a blue mood, so Jessie brought me flowers, and I took a picture of them next to my leg. After our visit to The Velvet Margarita, we were walking back across wet streets to Jessie's car, and a cab with Tom Green in the front passenger seat nearly ran us down. Tom Green looked at us and said, "Hi." But that was hardly an apology.
It's brilliant sunny out, but the skies are black. It's raining in places but not everywhere and not all the time.
Last Friday night was the Duran Duran concert. I have finally posted the pictures of the band (and it should come as no surprise that this is really just more than two hundred photos of mostly only John Taylor) and of Beulah and me.
Saturday night, Yen and I shared a cherry after my show at the comedy theater.
Monday night, I realized how long my hair has gotten. The answer? Too long.
I guess that's the whole story up until this point.
The King Ten performance I caught last night was absolutely top notch. And my performance in workshop just beforehand was the polar opposite. I want very much to be brilliant. And I fear that, if ever given the chance, I will be many, many shades less bright.
But that's the thing about watching other people do what you do or what you want to do. It's hard to sit still. It's hard not to empathically be in their shoes. It's hard not to want to jump in and join them. I feel this way at orchestra performances, too. And at karaoke bars. I was recounting recently how my grade school teachers would sometimes criticize me on my report cards for always having my hand up in the air when a question was asked, writing comments like, "Mary needs to learn to give others a chance." I wonder how much truth in that persists into adulthood. I have long since stopped raising my hand. But that hardly means I have taken my seat. I think I give plenty of people all the chances in the world. But it's an oversight.
Eric Idle is performing again. I had tickets to see him in December of 2003, but I didn't go. One of many events I have bought tickets to and just plain ignored. Sometimes, I forget. Sometimes, I am apathetic. Sometimes, I am sad and don't want to leave the house. It's a gigantic waste of a lot of money, and if I tallied it all up, I would be so ashamed, I would have to set myself on fire.
I still like to go where I think I will find something amazing. That's what keeps me going anywhere at all. But that hardly excuses all the wasting I've done to date.
A number of people have taken time out of their days to wish me a happy "VD," and -- aside from the other more unpleasant condition that acronym typically connotes -- it makes me wonder if anyone can really so ardently wish for my happiness on a day whose name they are unable to type out in longhand.
Friday night, Martín and I went to Good Luck Bar. Chinese New Year is one of those events that has a comet-like tail, trailing on for a week or two after the actual date. Maybe because it's on the lunar calendar and most Western folk can't get a bead on when it is until they see a Chinese restaurant with something festive out front, and by that time, it's crept right up and passed them. And honestly, what Chinese restaurant doesn't have something festive out front at any given time of the year? Unless it's one of those Chinese places that has lost touch with its kitschy roots and models its decor after the interior of any Doubletree Hotel.
Good Luck Bar was still celebrating, as were the rain-splattered folk in Los Feliz. We sat in that living room area for a while, but there was an obnoxious group in our corner whose numbers were growing and whose obnoxiousness was proportionately following suit. So we got a little table in the main bar area and drank a few drinks and told a few stories and laughed a lot. Like we do. The hems of my jeans were wet from walking through puddles and the little rivers that form on the pedestrian crossings. The water runs in diamonds, crossing back against itself with every little bump in the asphalt. It's pretty. But no matter how high my heels are, I can't seem to keep my pants -- or my toes -- dry.
We stopped by Fatburger on the way home, and the jukebox started playing Beat It, and we both agreed that the Thriller album alone absolves Michael Jackson of any wrongdoing. And frankly, it's the parents of those kids who have something to answer for, if you ask me. Even if nothing untoward had ever happened, sending their young children to go sleep over at a grown man's house unsupervised is hardly the essence of good parenting. Bears wouldn't do it. This is one in what may end up being a string of examples of why I think we should look to bears for life lessons. But I'm not sure yet.
Jessie and I had breakfast at Nick's on Saturday morning before going to Hollywood to sign up for our next workshop. We talked about starting a band. We make each other laugh, and we rock out in the car when we're driving. (We sing the loudest to Peter Cetera.) The MP3 CD I had playing has a few different versions of that song Tonight, You Belong to Me on it. A Lawrence Welk-y one came on, and I reminded Jessie that she had heard this song in The Jerk, and then she quoted something from The Jerk, and so I skipped ahead a hundred songs or so to the version with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters singing. I love pretty harmonies. And when Bernadette starts playing the cornet, it's my favorite part.
I do that. I collect songs. If there are a number of different cover versions of a song that is precious to me, I like to have them all. Or at least hear them all. These days, there are cover versions of songs that came out within the calendar year, so it's hard to keep up. But there are certain songs that I love to hear, no matter who is singing them. Try to Remember is one of them. And Alone Again Or. And of course the one I was just talking about. I think there are three different renditions of that song just on that one MP3 mix.
Anyway, I was sorry I had to rush, but I had to get to San Diego, and looming commitments take all the fun out of a Saturday.
I was invited to go to a Valentine's banquet at my parents' church. I had originally been asked to sing, but I had to be at UCSD by 8 p.m., and I haven't really entirely gotten my voice back since the cold I had around the holidays. I'm beginning to wonder if I will keep the scratchy break in my upper register for the rest of my days. It makes it difficult to sing ABBA songs. Which is something I do with great frequency. So Beulah and I ducked out of the dinner early and headed out in the rain, tiptoeing through slick grass and treacherous mud to get to the Price Center Ballroom to see Ira Glass, who was wonderful, as you would expect him to be.
There were sign language interpreters on stage with him, as a courtesy to a deaf person in the audience, who happened to be sitting directly in front of us. Sign language is really cool to watch, but I am sort of curious about the facial expressions and words that get mouthed by all the performers of this elaborate dance that I have ever seen. They really take expression to the next level. You can kind of understand it contextually strictly on the basis of the faces they make. Which are often comical.
To illustrate the value of empathy in a story, Ira Glass played a clip about a guy who mistook a midget for a little girl in a particularly embarrassing way. It is right up there in league with the "I Hear a Robot" story that Beulah tells (and that I retell to nearly everyone I meet). Ira Glass' clip included a crab walk. Beulah's story does not. But they are both gold on the universal stock market of saying the wrong thing.
I drove Beulah home, then I went back out into the rain to pick up Yen and meet John Meeks at Nunu's. As soon as we walked in the door, a cheerful girl admired my skirt and told me I was so cute that she had to have a hug. So I hugged her. And then Yen and I picked a bunch of songs on the jukebox but never got to hear them. That is my least favorite thing. Our table was crazy wet with the drippings of the myriad drinks that had been drunk (and spilled) there. And I was wearing very fancy shoes.
I had a Chinese New Year-observant dim sum lunch with my family on Sunday before driving back home to Los Angeles. My mother gave us red bags. I did a tiny bit of laundry. I smoked a cigarette in the hope that it might keep me from falling asleep during my drive. But that wasn't the best plan. I was very tired. I am on the road a lot. I may die on it one day. Just by way of statistics. I may also die on horseback, but this is much less likely. As I am allergic to (and a little bit afraid of) horses and haven't been on the back of one since a very early stage of girlhood. I'm no prophet, though. For all I know, I will die in a gum factory. I remember seeing a film about one on Sesame Street many years ago. And it looked fascinating and peril-ridden. I can think of a handful of ways I might meet my doom if ever I was to wander into one.
I can't quite put my finger on anything at the moment. Poor aim. Poor depth perception. Blurred vision. Flagging stamina. The days were long. The secrets were easier to tell than to keep. The rain was thin but misty. The sort of rain that falls...up. Hairspray was useless to me. The moon is a sliver. Like a fingernail clipping. The skies are dark. My shoes are wet. But I haven't been wearing them.
I bought some extra time. And that is currency well spent.
So, it's Chinese New Year today. I wish I was being asked to drive out east and eat some ridiculous banquet with my Chinese relatives, but I'm not being asked to, and I have a workshop tonight, so that's that. A few years ago, my friend Julie and I went to the Twin Dragon on Chinese New Year and ate some shrimp and wrote our resolutions down on little pieces of paper. We were going to do the same tonight, but she's traveling. It's hard to create a tradition when everyone in the world is so busy. Me included. I wish I had a fancy Chinese dress on and pictures of it. But I'm underinspired. Gong xi fa cai, anyway. And if you don't already know what that means, my mom breaks it down like this: "Gong xi means I wish you happiness, and fa cai means a lot of money." Word. Oh, and I don't know about the romanization of those words. I always thought it was gong xi fa tsai, but I don't really care that much. Spell it how you want.
Adam wrote to me a while back and mentioned having seen a promo for ImaginAsian TV. I meant to write about it then. And in the past week I saw the promo myself. And I meant to write about it then. But I did not. So now I am. I am not excited about ImaginAsian TV. I like Asian things. And I like being Asian. But I have to say that most Asian programming is lame and low-quality. And I also know that the broad Asian brush most people paint with includes all sorts of things that I don't even consider to be Asian. So my imperious bigotry gets in the way. Clearly, ImaginAsian TV is not being marketed to me. I think, quite obviously, it's being marketed to that yellow fever-having segment of the white male population. I don't just mean guys who think Asian girls are pretty. I mean those guys who learn to speak Japanese and Chinese and can perform the tea ceremony and refer to their girlfriends' parents by using the reverent, native language names that family members should use, never knowing how much those parents think they're total jerk-offs for doing it. I've known a lot of these guys over the years. And I have always fantasized about throwing rocks at them.
Yesterday, I was getting ready to go out, and St. Elmo's Fire was on the television. I haven't seen it for a few years. The first time I saw it, I was in high school in Japan, and I remember all my friends finding someone in the film to relate to. And all the dudes quoting lines from the movie with self-congratulatory intonation. That's something I hated about high school. I really don't miss how ready everyone was to adopt some new vocabulary every time a movie was released. And I'd like to think I didn't do that. But then I did date the guys who did that, so I'm no innocent. Oh! The word innocent just reminded me of a message I got on Friendster yesterday. It was an invitation to a friendship and contained these enchanting verses:
Hope u r fine as I m here now. while surfing I
find you and as I like u, I could not prevent
myself to propose you for long term friendship. I
would really love a sober friendship.
About me ; I am 36 never married catholic male
from India working in Indias largest food product
company. As far as education qualification is
concerned, I am bachelor of arts, bachelor of
laws, diploma in secretaryship plus some
certificate courses. I am a loving, caring,
innocent and god fearing person and believe in
honesty to each other.
I found this hilarious and endearing. Anyway, I was benignly surprised to discover that St. Elmo's Fire is such a false film. Who talks like that? Who has friends like that? Who believes Andrew McCarthy isn't gay? I mean, very few films from that era and genre really hold up for me, so it's no great eye-opening revelation. But it's always sort of something for me to be epiphanized about something I used to think was cool and realize that it was totally the opposite. Even the music. What in the world made me ever love it? Shame on me.
And speaking of movies that I have negative things to say about, I think The Matrix Reloaded would have been better if they had just left it as Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I wonder what it is about the future that makes us enjoy drum circles.
Persistence of Crush
It's like the Dali painting. Only it's about something else entirely. And it brings to mind tingling and uncertainty and happy aftermath and important moments. There's the crush that gets you to work on time or to school early or to the county jail during "exercise hour." You know the crush I mean. The inspirer. The motivator. The no-need-for-sleep-maker. The reason you keep gum on you at all times. The reason you use perfume and Visine. The reason you buy new pants. It doesn't even have to be about a guy. Or a girl. It can be about a job interview. Or an audition. Or a concert you have tickets to. It's just something to look forward to. And I like having that going on whenever I can manage to.
To be honest, I wrote the phrase "persistence of crush" in my notebook, but I don't remember why or what I was going to say about it. But I can springboard, can't I?
I went to an open house at the Sony Design Center in Santa Monica tonight. It was a bit steamy in there. With fancy free sushi being served and fancy free drinks and sake and coffee and hobnobbing. I caught myself envying the corporate workspace for half a moment. I don't miss having to go into an office every day, but I do miss being able to go to work in a place that seems creative and energetic and collaborative and inspiring. I must find my inspiration where I can. And that is often not as easy a task as one might think. Even with ready access to the Internet.
It's been years since I've had an office or a cubicle where paychecks would come find me. Years now that I've been working mostly on my sofa, mostly in the middle of the night, and mostly without any human contact whatever. I appreciate my independence. But sometimes I miss going to lunch. And putting my handbag in a drawer and getting a cup of coffee and starting my day. I am proud of being self-sufficient. I am glad I survived the series of blitzes that were run on my professional life. But reminiscing reminds me of all the twists and turns my career has made and makes me wonder, customarily, what might have been. It's a fantasy world, there in my brain. A weird place where nothing is pinned down with any permanence. Corkboard and staples and thumbtacks and pushpins. Temporary. I am writing my masterpiece on post-it notes.
Among the post-its that would have been written on this past weekend, I went to LACMA with Beulah and Justin on Saturday, and we took pictures with both our cameras and visited our favorite pieces. And then we went to Melrose and shopped with verve. I have a new favorite store there, the name of which I can't quite remember but whose storefront I would surely recognize. We ate dinner at I Love Sushi. Which was great. I'm not always excited to try new sushi places. It's so easy to be disappointed. But I enjoyed it very much, and I can picture us visiting it again and again when Beulah and Justin come to town. Beulah wasn't feeling very well, but I'm glad we got to enjoy more than the inside of my living room during her visit. She is my favorite.
That evening, I went to Farrah's birthday party at All Star Lanes in Eagle Rock. Attendees were asked to come in pirate attire. I complied. A strange, enthusiastic fellow at the bar started talking to me like a pirate and asked what vessel I was on. I had just gotten there and didn't want to come across as an ungenerous jerk, so I didn't roll my eyes and walk away. I made something up about not being able to read. Or about being kidnapped. My birthday is not until May, but I'm already wondering if it will be possible to celebrate it more excellently than I did last year. It's a dangerous thing when you've had the best time ever. You can't NOT try to top it. But the spectre of failure is unpleasant and looming. I did not attach any great value to my birthday last year. I just wrote an evite and sent it around to people, and I was surprised and delighted that so many people showed up and that I had such a thrilling night. But this year, I will have that memory, and I will hope for even more, and there is every chance that I will not get it. I like to do spectacular things. And I like to know that they are spectacular as they are transpiring. I do not always get my way.
I took Beulah and Justin to the Griddle Cafe on Sunday morning, where we were seated in the "VIP room" and where we ate fabulously well and were joined a bit later by Tina and Mig. Then we got victuals at Trader Joe's and went back to my place to watch what little of the Super Bowl was left with Jessie and Stacey. It was an impromptu choice, as I had no intention of watching the game this year. And in truth, I really didn't. I spent the bulk of the time preparing food and fussing over things and drinking a lot of beer and thinking about the exclamation of "Go, Eagles!" from The Hudsucker Proxy. My dad's from Philadelphia, but I'd bet he didn't watch the game. It's only the Super Bowl of boxing that interests him. And my mom likes to watch pairs figure skating and ice dancing. I think we got settled just in time to see the half-time business. I heard Paul McCartney singing his popular repertoire from the sink in the kitchen. I understand it was a good game. Stacey and Justin both care enough to have told me so. And I trust them. In years past, I have managed to watch nearly none of this Super Bowl business. I have always found other (better) things to do. I don't mind a Super Bowl party. A party is a party. But to just watch the game is not appealing to me at all. Watching sporting events just feels like waiting to me. Waiting for calls to be made. Waiting for the clock to run out. Waiting for the commercial breaks so you can talk without disturbing people who actually care what the referee is saying. I'm really just sitting there waiting for it to be over from the moment it begins. And that does not speak highly of my attachment to the experience.
I stopped by Von's on the way back from Santa Monica, and I bought some soda. I was offered assistance by a guy in line who, after I declined his help, explained to his friend that Diet Dr. Pepper is heavy. I was offered help out to my car by three different employees, too. I wonder if I look terribly anemic today or something. I can carry my own groceries. Really. I won't buy it if I can't lift it.
And I had a nice little chat with Tom, whose birthday it was today (2/7) but who did not get to celebrate it in the way that I would have insisted. I like the month of February, but I'm almost afraid to admit it. I don't care about Valentine's Day. And I have quite a few friends whose birthdays must be acknowledged. And it's colder than I'd like sometimes. And it's riddled with inconvenient government holidays. But it's a pretty time of year, and I have done plenty of nice things in Februaries past. Once, I went to Tokyo Disneyland on a rainy day in February. I was cold and miserable and physically uncomfortable the entire day. But I remember it fondly and can remember it as if it happened only moments ago. That may not be because it was February, but it was February, and that's the part I remember.
Happy birthday, February babies. I will be enjoying my Dove milk chocolate hearts long into March. And if anyone gives me Red Hots, you can have them. I hate those things.
And I need to get my hair cut, because I'm tired of having to put it in pigtails for lack of anything more manageable. Plus, it's time for something new. I love that, these days, it always seems to be time for something new.
Scotty is such a curmudgeon in the Relics episode of STTNG. But when he says, "NCC-1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D," I feel kinship with him. And I wish life was like television, and that some studio was storing the sets of all the scenes I've lived so that I could go back to them and walk around and feel nostalgic, even if they were always empty and dusty-smelling. If there was a Ghost of Christmas Past that could just take me around on days other than Christmas and let me look at the rooms I once lived in without having some huge moralistic agenda, I would totally be up for being dragged out of bed to take that trip. If only I had a storage unit large enough to save everything that has ever happened to me. I want a Smithsonian dedicated solely to cataloguing my life. But I don't want anyone else to be able to visit it, because most of my life has been godawful embarrassing.
This episode is full of bald-faced metaphor, and I am amused that people might ever speak to each other in that fashion and not be called a name. For instance, Scotty's line, "Ah, it's like the first time you fall in love. You don't ever love a woman quite like that again," if it had been said to me, would have been met with the response, "You, sir, are a gayrod." And then he would say, "There comes a time when a man finds that he can't fall in love again. He knows that it's time to stop." And I would roll my eyes and fight the urge to explain to him what I mean when I say "gayrod" and how it relates to clumsy use of metaphor. And Captain Picard would pull me aside sotto voce and ask me to stick around, because he was a little weirded out by Scotty and didn't want to find himself the recipient of an awkward kiss attempt. And I would tell him to pawn Scott off on Geordi, and he would totally do it.
Wednesday, I drove myself and Jessie down to San Diego for the comedy theater "awards" banquet. Afterwards, we went to Dorian and Krissy's place and then headed back to Los Angeles. I was home by about 2:30, in bed by 4. Then up at 6:20 so I could drive back down to San Diego for a day of client meetings, followed by my referee debut at the comedy theater. A drink at Shakespeare's preceded my drive home again. And I am very tired of the inside of my car.
I had a rough audience tonight. Rowdy, drunk folks and hecklers. Hardly the ideal proving ground for a first-timer. But I think it went all right, all in all. And I hope I wasn't too mean to anyone. The jerks who kept interrupting the show were very kind when they were leaving, congratulating me as if to say they respected me for having survived their hazing. I guess they had a good time. And I guess they had no idea how much I would have liked to dowse them in gasoline.
I was surprised to see my old friend Lee at the theater. He is apparently a pal of Matthew, the token British guy. It was lovely to see happy faces that might have once been considered long lost. I'm glad I didn't discover until after the show that anyone I knew was in the house. Such things tend to make me perform closer to poorly. And I was running on fumes as it was.
I didn't do everything right, and Dorian gave me a series of helpful notes. But the only one I will remember is, "Stop being so hot." At my worst, I glow in the face of a kindness.
I think reffing will be fun. Once I get the hang of the whole whistle and stopwatch and notepad ballet. And once I get myself a ref jersey that fits and doesn't smell so...human. It's weird to hear myself say, "The game of schoolyard insults works like this..." Or any number of other things I have heard said by others hundreds of times over. I look forward to looking back on this sensation when it has all become old hat.
I have a number of pictures I'd like to post, but no real narrative in which to embed them. I am working at being less limited by my own dagblasted protocol. It's not like anyone told me I had to write anything here. I just haven't been writing much as a rule. And it's not for lack of anything to say. It's falling behind and being distracted and opting instead to write to people who matter on a more personal level and with more swear words.
I once made fun of myself to my friend Tom, who suggested that I might be giving him the silent treatment. I said, "And, honestly, Tom. Me? Give anyone the silent treatment? Don't you picture me at home talking into a paper bag just to keep the stories coming? Of course you do." Indeed. Paper bags, closed at the top, and shelved away for later.
It's true. I never run out of stories or things to say or comments to make on stories I've already told and things I've already said. But I do run out of time. And that keeps me from saying everything I mean to. Even on the most relaxed of days. Of which today is not one.
I have been waiting for Anya Marina's CD Miss Halfway to come out for ages. And it's finally out. And you should totally buy it.
This is me at Lou's Records being what Beulah labeled "a dork." Not that she doesn't support Anya. She just thinks posing next to a record store chalkboard for a picture of you with a CD is totally lame. And I am always looking for new and interesting ways to disappoint her.
Too much play time. If there is such a thing. Too much late-nighting it. Too much no-sleeping it. Too much buying coffee in the wee hours on my way home and reheating it later in the evening so it can maybe pep me up in time for the night I have planned. Too much bad pool-playing.
I had a pretty great few days. I did my reffing runthrough. I had a spirited political discussion. I ate eggs benedict. I asked myself if I am perhaps misremembering all I learned from Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land. I bought my little sister pretty green martinis. I made new friends. I was a good friend. I skipped a lot of meals. But not enough. I want to have skipped at least twice as many. And I saw the sun come up time after time after time. Which is something I don't always get to -- or want to -- do.
On Friday night, bartender Jeff announced that whoever had put that Gomez song on the jukebox was going to do a shot with him. I jumped up and exclaimed, "It was meeeeeee!" And there has never been a prouder spaz. I sing counterpoint to songs I know when no one is around to hear. And I often wish I wrote some of it down for later.
There's a rock in my pocket, and I am also happy to see you.
You can glory in days like today. Even if you make the mistake I did of trying to go swimming in a fifty-eight degree (Fahrenheit) pool. I felt as if I was being stabbed by a thousand icy daggers, and moving my limbs only made it worse. That whole Titanic disaster makes so much more sense to me now. For the longest time, I shook my head at all who died because I was certain they just didn't want it bad enough. "It" being survival. But, yeah, cold water is no picnic. And a picnic in cold water would also be much less a picnic, if you ask me.
I've been staying out too late. Night after night of coming home at seven a.m. is cranking up the volume on my mother's disapproval-colored concern. And I was sitting in the bath today and had the ironic thought, "I never sleep, AND YET I'm always tired." Existence is riddled with contrast. And some people don't know which conjunctions to use and when.
I went to Lou's today to pick up Mig's fancy schmancy Serge Gainsbourg boxed set. The dudes behind the counter clearly ascribed Mig's coolness to me, even when I let them know that I'm just the girl who is picking the thing up and then opening it and ripping all the tracks from it (with Mig's permission, of course). It's been a long time since I've shopped in a record store with people "cool" enough to take an interest in what I'm purchasing. I have unusual musical proclivities. If I had hung around and shopped any longer, I could very well have been asked out by one of those guys. Or at least offered a sedan chair ride around the store. I bought a way expensive Agnetha Faltskog boxed set on a whim, and that's one of those things that's so dangerously lame as to be cool. I have to be careful not to rack up too many of those points. Dangerously lame eventually tips the scales in its own favor.
I finally got to see Beulah and look at her pictures from her fabulous East Coast trip. I will put some of them up in my own photo pages, because I like them so much, and because she does not (yet) have a web site. And I am also possibly going to be visiting New York in early March for nine or ten days, in which case, I will take all the exact same pictures, only with me in them instead of her.
This is going to be the year I set something on fire and discover that, by doing so, I have released its secret magic. I can't be held responsible if a lot of unmagical burned things litter my wake in the meantime. I'm going to burn it all to the ground. I can feel it.
When you've been running for a few miles, and all you can smell is the exhaust and the dirt and the sweat on your face, a breath of grass-scented sprinkler mist is like being smashed in the face with your favorite flavor of ice cream. Heaven. And if heaven is, in fact, your favorite flavor of ice cream, I mean to ask you what angels taste like. And if anyone could avoid getting tired of the taste of milk and honey after, oh, say, twelve or thirteen spoonfuls. I don't like milk and honey on a good day. An eternity of it seems excessive. If there is a heaven for me, and it is food-based, I will have prime rib for every meal. And if there is an ironic hell in which I am forced to eat prime rib at every meal, thereby destroying the joy I once got from it, I say bring it on. The devil himself has no idea how much prime rib it would take to make me tire of it.
I went running today on the stretch of Olympic that I always used to take. A five-mile round trip I measured with my car and confirmed with the assistance of Mapquest. It's been a long time since I've taken that route. I stopped running out of doors when it got too hot in mid-2003. I went and got myself a gym membership and never made enough use of it. It's just so much easier to throw on your shoes and support clothing and stumble out the door. I hate having to remember to get parking validation when I'm on the treadmill.
It was beginning to sprinkle when I was at my halfway mark, but I never got caught in any sort of downpour. Except for the risk to my iPod, I wouldn't have minded. A run in the rain sounds lovely. But a run past an array of sprinklers, showering a patch of green green grass, was sweet to say the least. If it had been hotter out, I might have stood there and let the shower get me. But it would only have refreshed me up to my knees. If it had been hotter, I would have wanted to run through a fountain in a city square. And not in that whimsical way the cast of Friends did. Just in an illegal and carefree way that leads to no actual municipal consequences. A good percentage of the joy in anything is not getting caught.
It's talk of Neil Patrick Harris that brings such things to mind. Starship Troopers has been on the pay channels a bit this past week. I have caught parts of it. And I remember going to see it in the theater and being stunned by how violent it was but not feeling any rankling because of that. There's corny stuff in it, sure. Like when the Roughnecks win a big battle and the Lieutenant breaks out the beer and the "entertainment," which consisted of some futuristic nerf football and an electric violin, which Gary Busey's son picks up and starts playing while the rest of the squad dances. Ga-hay. But the music is super great, and the creature effects and macabre meat-rending rule. And it's so romantic and sad when Dizzy dies in Rico's arms and says, "It's okay. Because I got to have you." All the more reason for me to wish Denise Richards had gotten her brains sucked out in the end, too. Not just that Melrose Place guy. Although he totally had it coming.
I loved Doogie Howser, M.D. I wished I was Doogie Howser. I've seen Neil Patrick Harris around town before, but I've never like run up to him and told him how great he was or anything. I don't do that. Never would. And I'm sure it must be all the more annoying to have to carry your celebrity from childhood. I'm sure it must suck to have people say, "You were great in Clara's Heart." Or to ask what it was like working with Whoopi Goldberg. 'Cause you know that's the question on everyone's lips.
You like that? You like that? You like that? You want a little more? Come on! You like that? You like that? You like that? You want a little more?
This movie makes me want to go join the army. Or nuke me some bugs. Or spray ant poison on my window sill. Or just sit here and procrastinate more.
P.S. Jake Busey is a terrible actor.
Golden Hour
I might have gotten there later than I planned, but I did make it to the park at LACMA today. I took Audrey for a pleasant romp. Numerous people we passed admired her t-shirt and her gait. Little children cried out, "Doggie!" And the sun began to go down behind the buildings, and the lamps came on as we passed a pair of girls juggling pins just like in the circus. We also passed two very old ladies walking side by side, one of whom actually squeaked. I don't know if it was her body or some apparatus I could not see. But she was squeaking with each meager step. Then I heard her answer her cell phone with the oldest sounding "hello" ever uttered. I kind of wanted to hug her for it.
I came home and finished up some more thankless design work and the weight of night was heavy on me. I have been feeling that a lot. It has turned my skip to a trudge. The picture I have of myself in my brain is a disappointing one.
Among the things I didn't do is a list that would break a human heart. Among the things I did do are making an interim new main page for my web site, adding a few new pieces to my Expo page, finishing the image editing for the mail art pieces I have been planning to post (although they haven't yet been posted -- probably going to require a new page altogether), adding some more pictures to the Roundup* page, finishing the CD cover and web site I designed for Toni Childs (the site materials I created are not up yet, so please don't go looking for them), collecting materials for a much-needed portfolio update, updating my blog layout (which I technically did in the wee hours before going to bed last "night"), finishing a book, starting another, and spending a cumulative several hours in a state of abject self-loathing. So, I'd say today was actually achievement-rich, despite my overall sense of dissatisfaction at ever having woken up alive to begin with. Especially now that I am apparently the kind of girl who is still drinking scotch at five o'clock in the morning.
I would like to build a rocket ship in my backyard and fly to a faraway planet. A planet where no one pays rent.
Why does the fat one always have to be so mean to the skinny one?
Martín and Francisca came over to borrow a space heater. Peter Pan was ending on the television. And the next thing we knew, there was a movie on with some sort of ancient Egyptian prologue. It was obivously about mummies, but it wasn't THE Mummy or its sequel. Clearly. I hit the info button on my remote and found that it was a film I never even knew got made. The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy: For Love or Mummy. And it was made in 1998. And Bronson Pinchot was playing Stan Laurel, and it only gets more abysmal from there.
Now, let me begin by saying that the words "the all new adventures" are a terrible omen for me. Any time someone has decided that I needed to go along with some heroes of mine on an all-new set of adventures, there was usually bullshit afoot and disappointment on its way. But this particular revival made so little sense to me. Laurel and Hardy are not exactly part of the contemporary lexicon anymore. Francisca had never heard of them. And she's not alone. I know who they were, and not just because I'm old, thank you. My father is good and old and he introduced his daughters to a lot of truly old stuff. And I remember enjoying watching them as a little girl when their movies would come on television on Sunday afternoons. But even I know that the kind of humor they represent can only really be appreciated retrospectively.
Well, we stuck around through the ludicrous opening titles, depicting Stan and Ollie as hieroglyphs on the walls of some nicely-lit tomb. And the opening scene alone was enough to tell me all I needed to know. As I said, Stan is played by Bronson Pinchot, who isn't really physically right for the part, and Ollie is played by some fat guy, who is. They are presented to us in the same sort of costumes you would have seen them wearing in their films of the '30s. But the first scene of the film shows them working a copy machine in a library, and angering the librarian by leaving an I.O.U. in the cash box instead of properly paying. I don't even understand the anachronism. Why leave them in those outfits and set the film in present day? It's as if these remakes envision the characters as a cartoon strip rather than a whole performance. The CHARACTERS of Laurel and Hardy could easily be translated into a modern setting. Or the film could easily have been set in the '30s. But the anachronism makes no sense to me. And I really didn't stick around for much longer, as everything I was seeing was so painfully unfunny that I feared I might no longer want to own the Perfect Strangers DVD box set when it becomes available, and I didn't want to spoil that party for myself.
F. Murray Abraham is in it, too, but he didn't come on-screen early enough in the film for me to see him. I would much rather watch anything else. Even reruns of sports.
Sadly, I'm sort of drained today and can't even muster the creative juice to make this post entertainingly cranky.
On a few occasions, when kissing my dog's face, I have accidentally gotten some of her eyeball juice on my lips. And it has made me exclaim, "Ooh! -- I just got some of her eyeball juice in my mouth." I coined the phrase "eyeball juice," and Martín can't bear to hear it. Sometimes I say it just to see him gag a little. Don't get me wrong. I don't like it. I don't WANT that stuff on my face. I don't WANT to ingest it. I'm just saying, it's funny that he probably would have nearly no reaction at all if I would just say, "I just got one of her tears on my tongue." It might even sound sweet.
Martín was also grossed out when I kissed Audrey and said, "Oops. I just got her whisker in my mouth." He made a face and a sound that I have never seen him make before. And it was very amusing. I told him that I don't like whisker, either, and that one time, one of Audrey's whiskers was sitting, loose, on my forearm, and "--and you ate it!" he continued. But of course that's not true. Really. It's not. And I'm done talking about canine scatology.
Martín and I went to The Improv tonight to catch Paul F. Tompkins and Andy Kindler and David Cross and surprising bits of coolness from Jonah Ray and Eddie Pepitone. Martín was under the weather, and I was sort of similarly, but when we commit to a night of comedy, it's written in stone.
Martín has finished moving in, and in case you didn't hear it from me personally, his new apartment is quite literally a block away from mine. Even on the same street, no less. It's the nearest we've ever lived to one another since the commencement of our friendship, more than eight years ago. I predict that we will be going to countless shows around town from now on. And that he will overprotectively demand to drive my car home while I pretend to be drunker than I actually am. Score. I also predict that we will grow to despise each other some time within the next three to six months. The price of proximity.
I have nothing important to say. Except that listening to movies in Japanese makes me feel closer to myself than listening to movies in any other language. I was watching that movie -- I think it's called Escaped Convict Baby -- with Skeet Ulrich and Gary Oldman in it before it was time to go out tonight, and I realized that the loop of The Sea Is Watching, even when I couldn't really look at the subtitles or remember how to translate the dialogue, was a much better film. If only because it reminded me what good nigiri tastes like and what wonderful liqueurs you can buy at Japanese 7-11s. How I do miss my Violet Fizz. And my Cobra- and News-brand whiskeys. Cheap cheap cheap and with a reasonable likeness of Dick Tracy on the label of at least one of those. Mild Seven cigarettes. Popeye magazine. Everything seems so ridiculous when you actually write it down. How I do reminisce about the year when I was fifteen. I guess I would rather hear people talking in Japanese through an accidental party line than watch a movie with lame American dialogue in it. Baby Boom was on the other night. I didn't watch it at all. But if I did, I would have scoffed at Diane Keaton's belted suits, and then I would have wished she was talking in Nihongo. I miss my sweet Yokosuka. I really do. Pay for me to spend an afternoon in the train station outside the Naval base, and I will be your friend for life. Seriously. I will provide a string quartet for your wedding. I will cook exotic meals for you. I will go to Melrose with you and truthfully tell you what you should and shouldn't buy. This is an investment in your future. Jessie went to Paul's web site recently and found her way to the links list, where she stumbled onto http://www.engrish.com, an Internet destination that has been among my favorites since at least early 1998 or 1999. Just saying that makes me feel like an old woman in a wheelchair. The fact that I was using the Internet back when it was new and many people did not understand it is just further proof that I have no business buying the new Franz Ferdinand CD. I shouldn't be allowed to buy any music that postdates Linda Ronstadt (who is dead now, right?). It's not a question of age. It's a question of prolonged sentience. And I have been technologically aware for far too long. Anyway, that web site also makes me want to go back to that special place where everyone spits on the ground and an apple costs like ten bucks. Ah, me -- the magic of my youth.
There's a C2 (that's the new bullshit Coca-cola lower-carb soda) commercial with Queen's I Want to Break Free acting as soundtrack. This reminds me of Beulah's tutelage that Germany uses Queen songs as advertising soundtrack for everything. Apparently, the song needn't even have any narrative relationship to the commercial. Germans just feel like spending money when Queen songs are involved. I guess I feel the same way. But I won't spend any money on C2. I'd rather buy a fancy vodka.
Beulah leaves tomorrow for her expansive East Coast trip. She's all stressed out because she has to accompany a busload of eighth-graders to various important educational spots, including the presidental inauguration. I'm sure it will be awesome, and she will be awesome. And if you are a mutual friend of ours living in the D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, or other major historical U.S. city area and you know Beulah's cell phone number, by all means, start punching those numbers. She's coming to town, and there isn't a moment to lose! If you don't have her cell phone number, you probably feel like a huge jerk right now. And rightfully so. Hint: It's not (888) 2-GOOD-4U, but it might as well be.
I'm always hoping I'll be brilliant when I start writing. But I'm often disappointed. And tonight, I'm going to play a few PlayStation2 games to cleanse my palate of that sensation. You're already sleeping. So what difference does it make?
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.
Fragile I am not. Affection is a pressure I can bear.
This morning, I got up very early and took Audrey for a walk in some welcome sunshine. When we got back inside, I plopped her back on the bed and went to my computer for a while. Maybe an hour or so. When I got up to return to the living room, I noticed it was unusually bright. Not just for a sunny morning, but for any morning. Upon closer inspection, I realized the front door was wide open. When the weather is wet like this, the wood in the door swells and makes it hard to close properly. Even harder to open with a key. But I thought I had been careful about closing it. Apparently I hadn't been. So I went through a flash of panic. What if Audrey had left me alone for all this time because she trotted out the front door an hour ago? What if she was long gone? I walked into the bedroom to find her perched, sphinx-like, on top of the comforter, just looking at me. And I loved her so much and was so grateful that she wasn't gone again. The other night, I was walking her late and talking on the phone with a pal, and I accidentally lost hold of her leash. And the more I tried to catch up to her, the further ahead of me she got. But finally, when I knelt down and called to her, she pranced back to me, and I picked up the leash, and nothing more was said on the topic. She loves me. At last.
Don't misunderstand. She's still a complete pain in the ass whenever people come over. But when it's just the two of us, she's an angel. And she never tires of my company. Even when I wish she would.
I'm working on a couple of new spec scripts. One with my friend Zach. We got together again tonight to sift through our brainstorm notes and get down to brass tacks, brass tacks being what outlines are chiefly made of. I'm tempted to sign up for a workshop again. The deadlines really forced me along last year, when I was writing my first. But I'm wary of creating too many obligations for myself. I've so much to do right now. So many things I want to follow through with. So many expectations to fulfill. And also bills to pay. Many, many bills. A friend gave me a generous and hefty tuition to a course I will eventually take, but -- even that -- not now.
I've been having a series of involved and thoughtful discussions with a captivatingly and dauntingly brainy friend, and it has been responsible for the composition of a number of paragraphs I'm tempted to cut and paste onto these pages. I'm slightly discouraged by how opportunistic that will seem to my friend, but I know he reads this, and I also know he is fully aware of how limited my actual inspiration is. So, perhaps he will understand. Mostly, we've been talking about human nature and the dread of mortality and occasionally movies. So, if I suddenly tip into wordy assessments of the desire to live forever or the plague of the fear of failure or a story about my mother and Mount Fuji, you'll know you're getting the afterbirth of another discourse. Apologies in advance.
If you stay up late enough, you can watch The Kids in the Hall on Comedy Central like me. And if you stay up even later than that, you can find yourself -- like me -- angrily turning off the television because a Tempur-Pedic infomercial came on. I had intended to go to sleep hours ago. I'm disappointed that I failed to.
I have been writing in this blog for a number of years now. Well over three, if you're counting. And I'm plainly running out of lines to crib from Auld Lang Syne. So when it comes to the contemplation of all the themes that the ending of one year and the beginning of another conjure, I suppose I am left to make it all up from scratch.
Holiday seasons are prone to leaving me in a contemplative state. But this year, the thing I feel most pointedly is a sense of relief that -- come tomorrow -- stores will return to their normal business hours. I do so long for everything to just be normal again. That may sound unusually coarse for me. And I'm not trying to be obtuse. I just notice -- quite honestly -- that I'm not feeling terribly sentimental. And I'm grandly inconvenienced by holiday hours. Soon, it will be a normal working week, and shops won't lock themselves up early and restaurants won't decide to not serve and holiday lights will only persist in the most gauche of settings. Soon, everything will be as it was. And we will be well on our way to warmer weather and a whole new slew of top 40 hits. I don't always want to urge things forward in this way. I'd like for time to pace itself. I'd like for the days to roll on at precisely the rate that days should roll. I don't want it to go by any faster than usual. Nor any slower. I just want it to be a day again. And I want to be able to face it without worrying that something significant did or didn't happen.
I am home now from my New Year's Eve festivities. It was a fun time, and drinking was my strong suit. But the weather was not friendly to my hairdo. I have bookended this post in phone photos of the coiffured Mary before the veil of mist and rain robbed me of my look. It was nice while it lasted.
I do hope that you had a fine evening. I hope that your celebrations were memorable and not held at The Olive Garden. I hope that you enjoyed your party favors and that you looked your best. I hope that you made the most of your night and that you are looking forward to tomorrow. And I hope that 2005 is the start of a great many wonderful things. For you and for me.
Vegas is my bitch. I ruled the place. And came home with more "large" bills in my wallet than have ever been in there at any one time. Officially the best visit ever.
Jessica, who now lives in that glittery gulch, was good enough to spend a few days with me, and that was excellent. The Mandalay Bay put me up for free and gave me money for food and beverages, so we just lived it up. Room service. Crazy gratuities. The works. And by the end of my stint there, I had racked up enough player points that they gave me $110 cash just for my troubles. I made most of my winnings on a few slot machines. Roulette was not good to me this time around. But Red Square was. Jessica and I had a dandy of a time drinking fancy Russian vodka and being treated extra nicely by the various bartenders whose names all began with M.
Come to think of it, I don't know what the deal in Vegas is, but Jessica and I got more attention in these past couple of days than I can logically explain. Seriously. Everywhere we went. It was like we were movie stars or something. I found it puzzling. And wonderful. And stupid. All at once. My only regret is that I didn't get a doggy bag for the omelet I didn't finish. It would have been so good right now.
Some lady came up to me in the casino and asked me if I had the time, but she had this very intense look on her face. I told her the time and she asked me where I was from. I told her Los Angeles and she said she was from Hawaii. Then she said she works at the MGM and is a psychic. I groaned inside. She asked if I had ever been to a psychic before, and I was looking at the machine I had just sat down in front of when I began to say, "Yeah, but it's not really for me," and when I turned back to her, she was already walking away from me. Mid-sentence. What a whore, huh? There was also some dude who came up to me and apologized if he had been making me feel uncomfortable, and I had never even seen him before, but apparently, he had been watching me play blackjack, and security came over and made him go away. I guess he was just standing behind me watching me for some time. And he was upset that they told him to move along. I told him it was cool and that he hadn't disturbed me at all. But if he had tried to tell me one additional boring detail of that story, I would totally have had to flag security down and ask them to remove him again. I needed to watch the slot machine and see whether that clown face was going to come up again. Some people have no sense of appropriateness or timing.
It was raining and cold and dark most of the time I was in town. I have never seen skies so strangely black. And then with patches of brilliant blue and sunlight breaking through in places. My room had what would have been a gorgeous view of the pool and beach area. I fondly remembered soaking up the rays at the beach there in August. The wave pool is my favorite thing with water in it. I could have floated out there for days. I was with friends, and we swam with drinks in our hands and sunglasses on. And we tanned ourselves while laying in a shallow part of the lagoon where we were always a few inches deep in cool, clear water. Which was so great, given the intolerable heat. I can't believe it's been more than four months since that visit. And I can't believe how badly I need a haircut.
Well, I didn't win a car. And I was sort of hoping I would. But in all other respects, I had the time of my life. And I am looking forward to my next visit. I have already been invited back to be the guest of the Mandalay Bay sometime in the next two months. I shall gladly oblige them. And I will take them for every penny I have. If you know what I mean.
I drove down to San Diego late late late after packing a heap of gifts and clothes and travel essentials and my dog into my car. No complications were wrought by my garage door this time. It turns out the last time that happened, it was my neighbor Paul, who lives in the apartment behind me, thinking he was doing me a favor. I am told he is very very sorry. And it's lucky for him that he's so cute. Which he is. I'm just channeling my rage towards my very unattractive upstairs neighbors.
Christmas Eve
I sang "O Holy Night" in my parents' church with a cough drop in my mouth, and it went better than I was afraid it might. Then I had dinner with my family. I drank a single glass of wine with dinner and was laughing and my mom said -- as if I wasn't sitting right there -- "Look at her. She's drunk." And it's not like I was sitting laughing in a room by myself. I was laughing at a story Beulah was telling, and it was funny. But apparently merriment of any kind is a sure sign of intoxication. Frankly, in my house that may be true. Which might explain why I try to drink when I'm there. Later, I went and met friends at The Casbah, where their annual Rolling Stone-a-rama (not its official name) was going off. I had to sneak out after everyone went to sleep, because my mother so strongly objected to my having any semblance of fun. I ran into so many people I know, it was super swell. I felt like a soldier who just got back from The Great War. Only I was wearing my pink and white houndstooth check coat and had all my limbs.
Christmas
We had a big yummy breakfast and then opened presents with the Lakers game on, because Sarah and Justin wanted to watch it. No one actually paid any attention to it. It was just annoyingly on the whole time. Both the doggies got a bunch of crazy cute little outfits. Audrey is wearing a little t-shirt that looks like that Chanel suit that Marge Simpson kept wearing in that one episode from that season from before. It's adorable. I was sipping Knob Creek bourbon in the afternoon, and my mom and my sister began making uninspired jokes about my need to begin attending "meetings." I was beginning to think that the company at those meetings might be preferable to the gallery of judgment I kept finding myself sitting in, but I kept that to myself. Later, I played two fun shows at the comedy theater and then met my friends (the ones who had come to the late show) at Nunu's for a Christmas nightcap. It was too warm, but everyone was so very friendly and cheery, I was really glad to be there. I ran into my friend Anya, who kissed my hand, which I will never ever wash now.
And then
I was invited to go to Disneyland, but my cold had ratcheted itself up a bit, and I didn't think I could enjoy it much, nor could I keep from contaminating my friends' respiratory systems. So I stayed in town. I played the most embarrassingly poor games of billiards ever at Gaslamp Billiards and drank way too much for someone who hadn't eaten a thing all day. That came back to haunt me later in the night. I stayed in bed later than I had planned this morning. And I roused with a smile when I heard the Ms. Pac-Man intro blasting on the television downstairs. Beulah bought my dad one of those joysticks you plug into the t.v. for Christmas, and he's been playing the shit out of it ever since. When we lived in Guam, my dad used to come home from work and destress by sitting down in front of our Atari and playing Ms. Pac-Man. When he played it on Christmas morning, he said, "This reminds me of my melanoma." Which is both hilarious and horrible, but so typically Samuel Forrest. I'm sure this toy was his favorite gift this year. Followed closely by the Mr. T in Your Pocket that Beulah also gave him. Who knew that Urban Outfitters was so the store to shop for my dad. There are photos on my Roundup page of him modeling the Jesus wig and moustache-beard combo that Beulah also gave him. He is a good sport.
And now I'm off to Vegas. Later than I had planned, but there is no time in Vegas. So it doesn't make a difference.
So, that's what's inside. I am dismayed by the news of all the disastrous carnage in South and Southeast Asia. But I don't want that to be what I write about.
Mice, men, and the pronunciation of the word "awry."
I'm disappointed. I'm discouraged. I'm disenchanted. I'm any number of words beginning with the prefix "dis." I thought for a day or two I might actually be looking forward to the holidays, and maybe I will be by tomorrow. But today, I really despise this part of the calendar and all the tradition of which it smacks. Maybe if I take the time to tell the stories I have skipped, I will forget the desire to have better stories to tell.
Last week, a jogger passed me on the sidewalk and called back over his shoulder, "Paris?" I said, "Yes." And he smiled and waved and said, "Hi." And I felt good. That's my perfume. Paris. By Yves Saint Laurent. I've been wearing it since I was fifteen years-old. Once, in high school, I strayed from my usual scent and tried Opium, also by Yves Saint Laurent. And my chemistry teacher sniffed the air and said, "Who smells like bug spray?" I kept silent, but I knew not to make that mistake again. I think Opium is a very pretty scent, too, and I like it on other people. But I think I was traumatized by that comment. He also said I should never cut my hair short again because it made my head look like a bowling ball. I think I have transcended that part at least. Because when I look at pictures of me with my long hair now, I screw up my face and think, "Gross. How in the world could I have worn it like that for so long?" I mean, I guess it wasn't super ugly. But I get bored just thinking about it. I'm happy to have shorter hair. And I'm happy to not always have to exist in the superlative.
There are many people in the world who know me by my scent now. Friends from high school used to say they knew I'd been in the hallway before they passed through because that Paris scent lingered. People who may still have a shirt or a pillowcase or a barrette that never managed to rid itself of my fancy residue. People who haven't even known me for so very long but know what to expect in their noses when I show up. I never really tried to make it my signature. But there you have it. The signature I put on my checks and tax forms is a weird scrawl of nearly unintelligible peaks and squiggles, and I don't know how that came about either.
Fish, for instance
I'm in the habit of commenting on the movie trailers more than on the movies. Today, I will try to do both.
When I went to see The Life Aquatic last week, I saw a teaser for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I felt all giddy. I actually inhaled sharply and clapped my hands over my gaping mouth. And I was surprised that I was the only one. In that theater filled with hipsters who were cool enough to be seeing a Wes Anderson film before nearly everyone else, you'd think the words "Don't Panic" would have more of an audible effect. I miss my old Infocom game. I miss my youth. I miss the certainty of immortality that infuses the cellular structure of a fifteen year-old whose bra size is not yet fixed. Maybe we start dying as soon as we figure out what size jeans we will wear. For the rest of our lives.
Then there was a trailer for a new movie with Lawrence Fishburne and Ethan Hawke, playing some version of the roles played by Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in the previous movie by the same filmmaker. From the bits pulled from the movie, my guess is it's just Con-Air in a building. And Gabriel Byrne is too short to be scary. Ethan even gets to wear the same costume as he did in Training Day. Which is good, because he always looked to me like a guy who preferred to wear his clothes until they rotted off his body. Like the Mongols did.
"Oh, good. There's a movie with Will Smith AND Kevin James in it. And there will be a chance for Kevin James to try to dance in some form of hiphoppery, and Will Smith will correct him." That's what I thought to myself when I saw the trailer for Hitch. And then I thought, "Oh, please." And I wished I could have thought something more vitriolic, but that's the best I could muster. I'm sure many lessons in love will be learned in that movie. And I'm sure white people will feel very good about how accessible Will Smith is to them. And that everyone will forget that slavery ever happened. Because we're all friends now.
"Oh, good. John Travolta is back. And as Chili Palmer, no less. What a relief." That's what I thought to myself when the trailer for Be Cool began. But I was being sarcastic. I don't like John Travolta anymore. However, Vince Vaughn looks like he might be amusing in it. He hasn't quite Ben Stillered yet. I can still tolerate the one note he plays. But then there's Cedric the Entertainer. And then Uma Thurman. And then The Rock. And then James Woods. And then Danny DeVito. It's like a roller coaster of disappointment interrupted by the occasional Oscar nominee. Anyway, I probably won't see it until it happens to be on and I'm too lazy to reach for the remote.
SEA WATER ANALYSIS
Without spoiling any of the movie for you, I can give you a cryptic synopsis of what I thought of The Life Aquatic.
There is a certain cynicism with regard to love in Wes Anderson movies. It is hollow and sad, but it appeals to me for some reason. And this film was more of everything the other films were. The relationships were tenser. The emotions were falser. The colors garisher. And there were so many beautiful, bizarre little moments. Little secrets happening in the background. Labels I wanted to write down. I was even touched to see them using one of those retractable multi-color ballpoint pens I remember from my youth. I didn't really love the animated sea creatures all that much, although they did have a certain Harryhausen appeal to them. And I didn't really like Cate Blanchett's elocution choices. But you can forgive Owen Wilson's shoddy southern drawl without much ado, because he's thoroughly likable in so many other respects.
Visions of Italy are lovely. I used to drink Campari sodas all the time. This movie made me want to order them again. I won't. But I remember what it was like to down that sweet, bitter fizziness. And I remember how pretty it looked in a glass.
There were a lot of wonderful lines that I wanted to write down and remember. I scribbled some of them in my notebook. Some of what I scribbled is illegible to me now. "How could you lay that slick faggot?" is not. I was able to make that out perfectly. "Please don't make fun of me. I just want to flirt with you," was also quite easy to read.
There is an admirable amount of branding in the film. And that typical self-awareness that the characters always have in Wes Anderson pictures. That calm straightforwardness. That imperviousness to shame or awkwardness. The poker face. Maybe you assume it masks some fragile vulnerability, but you really don't see it. Even the vulnerability is only ever verbalized. Maybe this is part of what I like about Wes Anderson's style. I never really mastered the "show don't tell" approach. I've always been better at saying it. And in his movies, everything that is experienced is announced. No matter the level of sincerity. The dialogue captions everything that is implied. I can't decide whether that elevates subtext or shamelessly outs it. But I know that it feels different than watching anything with the Wayans Brothers in it. And I'm grateful for that.
Maybe I'm going to write you a letter right now.
I was just thinking about that song with the line about blue skies smiling at me. There's a line in it. Nothing but blue skies from now on. That line bothers me. I guess the idea of the song is that I've met this special someone and now everything will be wonderful and perfect forever. And I'm not opposed to that idea, but I think if the sky was never anything but blue, I would murder someone. I really enjoy a good bit of rain every now and then. And an ominous cloud or two. And you really can't overestimate the beauty of the diffuse light that happens on an overcast day. Take black and white pictures in that haze and you'll wish the sun would never again show its smug face. Well, I'm using the word "never" where I shouldn't. The whole point is that nothing is so great if it's always the same. Who wants to live in a wax museum? Well, me, but only for like a month. Then I would get bored and want to live in an apple cider factory.
So, I've been in San Diego all week. I've been performing in Christmas pageants and comedy shows. I've been doing my Christmas shopping and catching a cold. I've been settling for TBS and Spike TV. And I've been going out for drinks and good times as often as my less enthusiastic friends will humor me. And I've been feeling a little bright and a little bleary. I've been feeling a little soft and sentimental. I don't know what it is to feel Minnesota, but maybe I've been feeling that, too. I'm going home later tonight. That will either alleviate or exacerbate my sense of displacement. There isn't enough time to do all the things I have to do. Certainly not enough time to do all the things I want to. And there's no surety in any of my plan-making. I'm up in the air. And, much as I like that weightless feeling, I fear the inevitable thud that will happen when the ground comes looking for me.
At the beginning of the year, when I was sad and adrift and had no work and no money, I started sending mail art to people whose addresses I happened to have. I have a great deal of stationery and clippings and half-done projects and the benign desire to put them out into the continuum. I have letters I still mean to write. And plenty that I've written but never sent. All in my customarily tiny print. There is a sort of romance attached to the notion that someday, long after my tragic death, some interested party will carefully pore over them and weep for all the unsaid words. I might worry a bit that they would mistake my "h"s for "n"s, but not so much that I would be motivated to type out a companion manual. Where's the romance in that.
I would send more letters. I just wish they didn't have to mean so much. And at the same time, I am saddened that they wouldn't mean more. Don't you get tired of how I turn things over like that? It's not like a conundrum is a kind of cookie or something.
The year is coming to a close. Another year. Another series of ups and downs. More things are different than ever before. And that's a better thing than I would have expected it to be.
Looking at happiness, keeping my flavor fresh. Nobody knows, I guess, how far I'll go.
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.
I've been reading a lot of psychology, and I hear exclamation points popping in my head. "I agree!" "I disagree!" "I must remember this!" "No way!" How narcissistic I am. That my excitement in a book or a film or a song surges when it seems to be addressing something unique to my existence. I underline the words in books that mean the most to me, and then I laugh and think, "How foolish am I, that I only thrill to the art when it seems as if it was made expressly for my peculiar circumstances." In that statement lies the profound irony that the things I consume -- the public things, meant for many eyes, sung for many ears -- these things only exist because of their...broadness? Because of their relatability to the "peculiar" circumstances of nearly all who confront them. If I was the only person who could gain some message from a book or a film or a painting, certainly that thing would never have been made. Unless it truly had been made expressly for me, and those items in the world are rare. And among my favorites.
Whoops. Look at me typing words and meaning them.
Here's something I noticed. Pain does not seem to exist. At least not for very long. It's there. And then it immediately becomes the memory of the pain. Or even the written account of the memory of the pain. That's how women explain the desire to give birth after experiencing the excruciation of a first birth. They say you forget the pain. And then apparently you actually want it again. Survival mechanism? Or naive glitch that will be rubbed out in future evolutionary phases of us? I wonder.
I bring it up because I noticed that I write about what I feel almost as soon as I feel it, never really giving myself a chance to feel it properly. When I hit my knee on a table edge and hop up and down and contemplate the bruise that will come, I am almost immediately transported to the way I'm going to phrase it when I write it down. And by the time I get the journal out or the page up, I'm too busy trying to remember the way the phrasing sounded best to me to even notice that blood is still rushing to the wound. And, yes, there's room for a metaphor here. I'm just saying that I remember the suffering longer than I ever feel it. And maybe in my memory I do more than dignify the actual hurt. Maybe I embellish it and dress it up and put whipped cream on top. Maybe I make more of it than need be made.
In any case, there are a lot of sensory experiences that I can remember acutely. But when it comes to pain, I find that I can only remember the response I had. The measures I took. The fever pitch of my complaining. The pain itself is a wraith. Easier to let go than you would ever think. Even when there's blood.
This next non sequitur is like a musical montage about getting the gym ready for the prom in a movie about the Louisiana Purchase.
There are a number of pictures of you that I love. I don't know how to look at them. I don't know how to like what I see and not feel foolish doing so. There is the challenge of balancing out the desire to prevail over my weaker self and the desire to sink freely into the indulgence of my weakness. There are things that were given to me that I don't throw away. Instead I put them in a box that I never open. And then I put something heavy on top of it.
I feel as if I get it. Finally. Maybe. You would object, if I scoffed at your simple wants. If I assigned them simple values. You would shake your fist and insist that I don't know what I'm talking about. And maybe you would be right. Maybe you had the answer all along. Maybe I was the foolish one believing in anything. Goodness. Symbiosis. String theory. Maybe it perpetuates because you express the things I am ashamed to admit lurk within me. The same ego -- the same narcissism -- impels me. The same fears limit me. The same desire to keep what little I have close in and safe from the grasping hands of greedy frailty and hungry decay -- it lives in me. I see it. I know it. I can almost laugh about it when I see it now. I can almost breathe a sigh of relief and shake my head and wonder how I ever let any of that get me down.
There that's over with.
Maybe it's because I was once a copywriter, but when I see Wine.com's email entitled, "Perfect gifts for everyone on your list," I'm inclined to shake my head. What about my friends in a 12-step program? What about the Mormons I know? Or the severely judgmental fun-haters? What about the surprising number of people in my circle of friends who just plain don't like the magic that comes from boozing it up? What makes Wine.com think they can just phone this one in? Marketing is an important part of our culture. If you get careless, suddenly marketing becomes just plain lying. And suddenly my professional resume looks specious.
The Lion in Winter was apparently Anthony Hopkins' first film. How do you like that? So many stars these days got their start in Slim Fast commercials or Leprechaun 4 or some embarrassing movie about the dangers of huffing. And there's SIR Anthony Hopkins, getting his start in an Academy Award-winning classic (that bandies innuendo about sodomy with far more regularity than I recall, having watched it as a young girl). I guess it would be hard to try and embarrass him with that. Fortunately, he also made Magic.
It warms my heart when I see my dog sniffing the wildflowers on our walk. I try to put it out of my head that what she's really smelling is the remnant pee of a dog who was tall enough to drizzle it all over those flowers before we passed by. Sometimes you have to look for ways to be inspired. And sometimes you have to keep one eye closed and the other sort of squinted when you do it.
I met Tom at Good Luck Bar last night. I was talking on the phone with Jessica as I arrived, and I realized that the last time I had been there was with her, when she came to visit in late July or early August. We have lots of catching up to do. And whenever we speak, it's in those compressed moments when we are each on our way to somewhere else, and there is never enough time to say everything that wants to be said. I miss her. And I wish she would move to Los Angeles.
I awoke this morning with the realization that I had had some pretty fucked up dreams, but I had to laugh at how obvious some of the imagery was. That girl was there, but she always had her back to me. That guy was there, but he kept denying that he lived in the building. He kept telling the door man that it was my apartment, when it clearly wasn't. They were performing their show on the front stoop of the apartment building when I drove up, carrying the television I was going to lend them. And then he got into my car and started trying to make out with me and I felt the need to drink some water. Obvious obvious. Well, to me anyway.
I dream a lot these days. I assume it's because I'm only ever half-asleep, so I wake up in that cloudy, slightly unaware, slightly aware state, and I can feel the tendrils of the dreams still touching me. Like wading through a bed of kelp. It gets confusing. I try and reach over to my journal and jot down little notes about what I was thinking, if only to provide some basis for realizing what is and isn't true. I dreamed a few weeks ago that David Bowie was dead. And it was only the lack of media coverage of it that convinced me that it hadn't actually happened. The strange thing lately is that, even when I'm dreaming something I don't like, I sort of don't want to wake up. I want to see where it goes and what ends up happening. It's like a sort of voyeuristic escapade. Or movies in my head. Except that I'm in them. And there is something involuntary and removed about that. Like I can watch this girl go through some weird day and not have to feel responsible for anything that happens to her or anything she does. And maybe I like the idea of seeing me in the movies. Maybe just a teeny bit.
When I awoke this morning, my dog was sleeping with her head on the pillow next to me and the rest of her little body under the covers. Just like a little person. She's also never really fully asleep. When I look over at her, she's generally just blinking VERY SLOWLY. And if she sees me looking at her, she looks right back at me. I do wonder what she's thinking. But not enough to indulge my mom, who bought some wacko novelty bark collar that supposedly interprets what your dog is saying when they bark and plays some human language statement for your amusement. She's really wanting to try it out. But I keep trying to explain to her that it's just a joke. And that it will say things like, "Feed me." Or, "I like walks." Or, "Cats suck." It's not going to say, "Lili Forrest, the reason I keep barking at you is that your voice is shrill, and it scares me when you speak." And it's not going to say, "Thanks, Mom, for that cool green sweater. It's a little tight in the shoulders, but I really like the way it makes my hips look." I can almost guarantee that it won't say these things. And of course if I'm wrong, I'll eat my coffee table.
I'm adrift today. A bit. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure I ever wake up. But I swear, if I'm actually in a coma somewhere or soaking in the jelly-like innards of a matrix pod, I should be slapped for having chosen such an uneventful fake life to live. But then, I guess we can't all be Adolf Hitler.
Maybe I'm allergic to tidy. Because the closer I get to putting everything in its proper place, the more sneezy and itchy and miserable my entire face is. (Note: Please do not post a comment explaining to me how dust gets kicked up when you're cleaning house and that that is probably the reason for my allergies -- I know that. I'm pretending not to know it, but it's just a character.) But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I told Audrey only moments ago, "We can sleep in our bed again, baby!" Because by the time I'm ready to turn in tonight, I will indeed be able to sleep in my proper bed, no longer displaced by the unbelievable mountainous terrain of clothing heaps that was once on it. And the closet in my guest room is so neat and tidy that I want to throw a party in it. Only one of you can come, though.
Last night, Jessy and I went to Jones, which is much as I remembered it. Drinks not strong. Clientele not unpretentious. We were getting ready to leave when I recognized my friend Judd, and we talked with him for a bit. Mostly about MySpace and Friendster and the online social phenomenon. When we were leaving, two Mediterranean fellows objected and said they had ordered me a pizza and that I looked like I needed it. I laughed (before leaving). The very idea that some swarthy dude wants to fatten me up.
I'm on my way out, and my dog (who won that photo of the week contest on Neighborhoodies.com, by the way -- and thank you very much) hates it. We've been spending lots of quality time together, and I think it only makes her more cranky when I sneak out for a few hours. But she had a bath today, and I will cuddle her to pieces when I return. She's like Wonder bread to me. I'm always tempted to mash her into the tiniest possible ball. And then just eat her up. But that's for later.
I'm high on Claritin D. The last time I took it was when Adam was coming to visit last fall. I thought I was having an anxiety attack. I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so wiggy. And then I was talking about it on the phone with the guy I was seeing at the time and I realized it was the Claritin. The D part of the Claritin. So I never took it again. But today, my allergies were pegging at intolerable, so I decided to give it a whirl again. And I'm not having an anxiety attack, but I do sort of feel like I'm not quite here. Medicine is weird.
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
I've been working a lot. And I'm very nervous about how things are going to turn out. In a lot of ways. But that's no way to be.
Despite everything, there is a color that is always in my head and in my pictures and in my eyes. There is a sort of out-of-controlness about it all. And the more I become aware of how much that distresses and unsettles me, the more apparent it becomes that you can't just turn those things off and on. I don't know if it's as lonely as it looks. Or as lovely. I don't know if it makes people jealous or anxious or proud. I don't know what it is or what it does. I don't even know what I'm talking about. I just know that sometimes, I feel exactly the way I look to the world. And sometimes I don't. And I love to watch French movies.
I saw Julie an unprecedented twice this past week. Tuesday night, we had dinner at Beacon. And Friday night, we went to the Whiskey Bar and drank a lot and spent too much of our time talking to people other than each other, but we made up for lost time by driving through Lucy's and eating our guilty late night fare at my dining table and in front of my cameras. On the way home, I demanded that we stop and take pictures of the Trashy Lingerie windows. I stop there as often as I remember to, which is not as often as I ever plan to. One of these days, when I get around to uploading the stacks and stacks of pending Lomos I have, you'll see if that makes sense or is true at all. (It is.)
Saturday night -- after nearly no sleep the night before and working the whole day with Josh -- despite the onset of a continuing and debilitating exhaustion, I got dressed, got going, got parked, got change for the meter, and got to see my genius friend Anya at the Cat Club. As I was leaving, a burly fellow outside the Whisky a Go Go stopped me with the following announcement: "Ma'am, we have live bands inside. Ten dollars." I tried not to laugh, but I may have spit a little before saying, "Really?" I didn't mean to sound bitchy, but who cares. I crossed the street, got back in my car, noticed that a number of calls were not being returned, made my way towards Hollywood, found parking (for free), drank a room temperature Red Bull I found in my car's backseat, then headed to the Burgundy Room, where I did not find what I was looking for, and then crossed the street. On my way from the car, a homeless-looking guy told me I looked wonderful, and I was impressed at his enunciation, given his lack of a full set of teeth. Crossing Cahuenga, I was intoxicated by the smell given off by those vile hot dog/bacon/onion carts that are never outside when I'm alone and won't be judged for buying up their entire inventory. I continued on my way. I looked at the open sign outside Huston's and felt sadly sure that it wouldn't still be lit by the time I was interested in it. The scary door guy at the Burgundy Room always seems to have had a nearly-nauseatingly perfumed plate of Huston's barbecue in his hands each time I have begged admittance. Enough so that when I see him making his way through the bar, placing his large and sinewy hands on the shoulders of the rest of the clientele, I wrinkle my nose and think, "His hands probably have barbecue sauce on them. And knowing how people eat barbecue, they probably also have spit all over them from having had the recent barbecue sauce licked clean." It only takes a moment for a thought like this to cross my brain. It surprises even me. [I don't have a problem with spit. I mean, I don't want it landing on me randomly and from unidentified sources, but I'm okay with spit. Despite the fact that Parris Harris (true), when we were in the fourth grade together and paired up for square dancing, used to lick his palms before we began and grin at me with sinister and willful glee.] Later in the night, I glanced over at the darkened interior of Huston's and experienced the unrewarding reward of being right about my own impending disappointment.
I stood outside the Beauty Bar, talking on the phone with Chris and essentially telling him how much I don't really like the Beauty Bar. I don't think the door staff overheard me, but I felt loftily better than them for my brashness. They let me in without any scuffle. And I met Mig and Farrah and their numerous friends. I took a lot of pictures of them. Well, us, because obviously I was in most of the pictures, but you don't have to be obnoxious about it. So I like to take pictures -- who does it hurt? Farrah and I were dressed in similar stripes by sheer happenstance. We will call ourselves Jailbait from now on.
Farrah and I were delighted to see a photo booth, but when we huddled into it, we found that it was not plugged in. And despite the fact that unstoppable Farrah found and applied the plug, it never seemed to want to take our picture. So I took pictures on my own. Many, many pictures.
All in all, when the night was over, I liked this photo of Farrah best. She is like a porcelain-skinned, more-exoticized Dorothy Lamour. And I think that really rears its head in this photograph.
I made my way through the crowd a couple of times for various reasons. And I laughed at the unifying factor of Journey's Don't Stop Believing hitting the turntable. Do these people really like this song? Did they have a poster of Steve Perry on their locker in junior high like that one tough girl in my school. I think her name was Nola. She had written "fox" on the poster, and I crossed it out and wrote something like "gross" or "gay" instead, and I felt pretty proud and strong, until she started asking us all who had done it and threatening that someone's ass was going to get kicked. I looked her squarely in the eyes and said I didn't know who had done it. And then I took a shame-filled coward's shower, washing my hair with Finesse shampoo. But seriously, I'm guilty of this myself, but I am amused by the thrill that runs through a crowd when an old, familar song comes on. It doesn't have to be something you liked. In fact, it's often better if it's something you didn't like. But when you hear those first few recognizable chords, you start moving to the beat and widening your eyes and singing along like a fool. And you can't possibly feel like a fool, because everyone else is doing it, too. And it's just the law of averages that not EVERYONE can be the town idiot. Right?
We had a last hurrah at the Burgundy Room, where the singalong trend continued. Joan Jett has a way of bringing out the singer in all of us.
I really was tempted to have one of those hot dogs. That's what it's like at the end of the night. Farrah made it her task to save me from myself. And I guess I'm grateful. We headed over to the 101 Coffee Shop, where we were treated like homeless people, made to wait at a table for a half hour, after which we were told that the kitchen was closed. I have never seen such a thing. I wanted to punch someone. Or bend a spoon and leave it on the table for them to find. Ha.
So, after all the parking challenges of that neighborhood, Farrah suggested Swingers instead, and we raced their four o'clock closing time to get our burgers and onion rings and ranch dressing and whatever else. By that point, our party of eight had dwindled to just Farrah, Mig, Chris, and me, but we all got what we ordered, and I made it home to relieve my dog and congratulate her on her good girlness. I didn't find the place where she peed on my carpet until this morning.
And now, with deadlines pressing in on me like the walls of the garbage compactor on the Death Star, I'm looking for something with leverage. My addled brain is saying, "Cheeseburger? No, no, no. That's wrong." At least I'm not so far gone that I can't tell when I'm just being a retard.
Jessy and I went to Hollywood last night to be in a (sexy little) photo shoot for our friend Nico and his new project. The fabulous Apollo Starr was behind the camera, and we were at his ultra awesome studio. I wore a trampy black outfit and took plenty of my own pictures while we weren't shooting. We drank vodka tonics out of plastic cups and I showed the boys how to give a proper spanking. And I sat on a bench that wasn't bolted down, and it fell over, and I looked like a complete idiot. We met Perry and Amber and Kelsey, and I debated whether I should follow them to Star Shoes after we were done, but I've got work things to attend to. I'm bidding on a big project that I would really like to land, and it's putting a lot of pressure on me. And tonight, I'm meeting with one of my mysterious benefactors to see about that career I've been wanting. And I've been writing a lot of things down, and I think it might actually amount to something. I have a few goals to see to. It always makes me feel like a jerk to think of how long I've been planning to do so many things. But I'm hoping some of that jerkness will abate if I ever actually get any of it done. I just feel like I'm talking to myself right now. Which is something I do more often than anyone would believe.
Musicals are risky. Sometimes the songs are good, but the singers aren't. Sometimes the singers are good, but the songs aren't. Sometimes none of it's good, but everyone in the world loves it anyway. Sometimes it's Andrew Lloyd Webber. I was watching the musical Tom Sawyer yesterday while I was getting dressed. I think it's the formermost case that applies.
After that, I took Martín to the Griddle Cafe for more stretching on of his birthday celebrating. I like to celebrate people's birthdays until they tire of hearing me wish them well. I like overdoing it. Last week, I took him to Disneyland. Our annual birthday tradition as of last year. It was the best possible way to spend the day after Election Day. I was grim and disillusioned, and I didn't want to even accidentally hear what the pundits had to say. There are no newspapers to worry about in Disneyland. At my most vitriolic, I took a picture in congratulations of the Republican victory.
That's about as partisan as I get.
I have been asked by a number of people why I haven't written anything about the election results yet. And I don't really have an answer. I had a lot to say on the listserv for my comedy group. And I've certainly waxed on in conversations with friends. But I've been reluctant to seal the capsule. I don't know if I really know what I think. And very little comes of announcing how I feel. It was a difficult day. I drove a lot, waited a lot, worked a lot, sighed a lot. I felt the world coming up around me as if I was sitting still on a spot that became the epicenter of a sink hole. I felt like I was in the shadows. And I ate McDonald's.
"I don't think I can enjoy candy. Not after what's happened in my life."
So it's been a spot of dismal on an otherwise shimmery terrain, I suppose. If I'm honest and fair about things. I have nothing to complain about. But there are plenty of things I'd like to fix. And there are plenty of things that still make me feel itchy or sad or vulnerable or stupid. As much as there are things that make me feel dopey or sheepish or sparkly or breathless. I got the variety pack this time around. It's always been my preference.
On the side of industry, I've finally sorted through photos that are owing. There are documents of my Halloween weekend, my day at the races, my inspection of Disneyland, and my Saturday. And there is a little story with me as a blossom of snow in it. I am welcoming winter. Everything dies. And the cold makes my cheeks pink. If you ride a roller coaster on a cold, windy day, it will make tears come to your eyes. No matter how happy you are.
"And to think I let you kiss the air next to my cheek."
My note-taking is fragmented. Dreams I've been having with people in them I don't actually know. Things I notice that make me ashamed. Meanness. I think about how easy it has always been, picking up where we left off. And then I notice how we have this habit of leaving off in the nastiest of places. I favor a change of venue. Affectionate messages. Affectionate and undeserved. Affectionate messages from all the people you don't deserve. And I waste my time passing judgment in the dark. In complete ignorance. I waste more of my time than anyone would ever believe.
I have a very short memory for good feelings. There's this greediness. As soon as the curtain falls on one act, I forget that it happened. I look for the next one to begin. I'm rushing toward it at all times. Having something to look forward to is my fuel. My only fuel. I have abandoned sleep and food and sustenance of all kinds. It's only anticipation that makes me go. And that's the sort of go that never gets you anywhere. It's all carrot-chasing. Despite my preference for hot dogs.
"Forgive me. I am new to sarcasm."
My dad's blood type changed in the middle of his life. One day he was one type. And he was giving blood all the time. And then one other day, he went to give blood to a friend who was having surgery, and they told him they couldn't use his blood because it wasn't the right type. Just like that. When he was in his 40s. He gives a supernatural and spiritual explanation for it. I don't have anything to counter that.
Cinema-style plates of spaghetti and meatballs look uncannily appealing to me. Even though I would never order such a plate from any actual restaurant. Maybe because of my certainty that I would only ever be disappointed. How could such a thing live up to my expectations? And frankly, I prefer the short varieties of pasta. Spaghetti swings around and splashes sauce on your clothing. And nothing makes you look like more of a fatso than spots of marinara sauce on your turtleneck. Except maybe spots of chocolate milk.
Still beautiful after all these years.
Isabella Rossellini is so pretty. I used to tear pictures of her out of fashion magazines, when I was in junior high school and preparing to cut my very long hair into a short 'do. I would look at her face and envy it. And when I saw her in movies, I would swoon a little bit. Especially in Cousins, when she shows up wearing the spitefully-bought hat and says, "Hi," in the cutest possible way. The theme song from that movie (Angelo Badalamenti) makes me feel like it's summertime. I will avoid listening to it until I've had a chance to soak up more of the wintry feeling I'm soaking in. But when I listen to it again, I'm sure I will be capable of flying.
I fall behind all the time. But I like to catch up all at once. Sometimes it seems sort of spectacular. Sometimes it just seems like a lot of puff. Either way, it lets me get back out in front of the train, where I must run very fast.
Apparently, even my dog occasionally tires of my incessant shutterbugging. My friends may hate the frequency of my snapping, too, but they're usually less overt. In some ways, you have to envy animals, don't you?
Note: My dog was just sitting there when this photo was taken. She does not have the ability to flip the bird. If you are a novelty act talent scout, please do not contact me. But isn't the depth of field cool? If you are a photography talent scout, please contact me immediately.
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