Towards the Memory of a Better Prom

I did not have one of those longstanding boyfriend-girlfriend things in high school. A lot of people I knew did. And at the time, I probably envied them. But through the filter of my more experienced recollection, I look back on those scenes and assume that I wasn't feeling especially left out. Even though they were 15 maybe 16 years-old, my classmates in relationships became like old married couples. The girls became practical, dour. And they expected things. The boys had to think ahead to bring a second jacket, in case girlfriend required first jacket over the shoulders of her cheer sweater. The boys had to be careful not to talk to other girls. Not to look at other girls. The girls had to be careful not to tell their blabber-prone friend the details of their various dissatisfactions. I remember seeing them talking to each other at their lockers, these coupled up ones. It never looked fun. It often looked angst-ridden. And at the time -- as I was listening to The Smiths and The Cure and David Sylvian -- maybe it was the angst I envied. But I think about it now, and I have to wrinkle my nose. I had my crushes to depress over. But I didn't have this boyfriend-girlfriend thing. This "let's hold hands even though neither of us seems to like doing that" thing. This "I'll just wait in your car while you're at football practice" thing. At the time, having someone expect you to be waiting outside for them at the end of the day seemed like something I would have wanted. Looking back, though, I'm relieved I never narrowed the field in that way. (At least not until the absolutely very end of my senior year. And at that point, half the time we weren't in school anyway.) I compare it in my brain to going exploring and stopping at the first place you see that seems different and just staying there. You don't know you're just steps away from the unattended entrance of the world's coolest abandoned amusement park. You don't know that you could walk five minutes and see an original Van Gogh. You don't know there are restaurants that don't have microwaves in them. How could you know? You've settled in right here. In this little alcove that inadvertently provides shelter in the event of rain but doesn't appear to have been designed for that purpose.

In some ways, I think growing up is just the act of revising your wants. All those things you thought you needed. All those things you knew you had to have. Looking back at them from years away almost demands the making of excuses. I don't know that many people who can talk about those tender, temerity-filled teenage years and say, "This is who/what I loved," without having to immediately offer, "Let me explain..." Life mostly ends up being the many ways you push yourself towards the things you convince yourself must happen. You rewrite the musts over and over. But the pushing itself is written in indelible ink.

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:38 AM | Back to Monoblog

Keeping Things Whole

A while back, I watched Waking the Baby Mammoth, in which paleontologists study the remains of the most perfectly preserved woolly mammoth ever found. And as I watched them take her apart, I realized that I hated watching them do it. It might be the same thing that makes it hard for me to cut up a book for a collage if the book is perfect or part of a set. I treasure the completeness and know that once you've started cutting, the wholeness can never be restored. "Whole" is an absolute. Once it is diminished, it is no longer. Once you've taken something away, "whole" requires an adverb.

I've spent a lot of/too much time in my life thinking about the irretrievable messing up of a perfect thing. Things that go on your permanent record. Things you do that make it so you can never say "never have I ever" anymore. (Drink.) It's misplaced concern, I'll grant you. But it is a thing I think. Sometimes it works better for me when something brand new or perfect gets marred in some way very soon after it comes to me. It takes the pressure off. Next time I buy a new car, I should knick the bumper on something right away. That way I can loathe its imperfection but no longer feel a prisoner of my desperate desire to prevent it.

Maybe second chances are folly. We like to pretend we can put things behind us or unfeel things we've felt. Maybe after a severe brain injury. But in the absence of that...I guess I don't know.

I forget very little. And frankly it's only a strength when it's valuable to remember something. But in a way, it's like paying for storage month after month for a thing that you'll only take out once or twice ever again. Just to look at it. Never to use it. Never to put it to work earning back all that rent you paid. I would forget many things, if I could. I would put a lot of things out of my mind and never give them an opportunity to transport me anywhere. Especially not back to a place of insecurity or hurt. I'd like it to be more like in Dickens. Where, having been transported, you can just stand off to the side and watch yourself objectively and maybe not actually BE in the moment all over again. Where's the fun in that. Those ghosts never take you back to any places you want to go. Scrooge doesn't proudly survey his favorite orgasm in any of the versions I've seen. And I feel like I've seen all of them.

The sun's back out. The sky is a solid crayon color of blue. Sometimes it feels like the world joins me in my desire to have something to look forward to.

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:10 PM | Back to Monoblog

Inert(ia)

I was looking back at the earliest of my blog entries. They go back to September of 2001, right before I got a new job and moved from San Diego to Los Angeles and told myself I was starting over, when really I was just starting.

From my corner office on the 6th floor of the City National Bank building on Wilshire and Fairfax, I had a pretty enviable view of Century City in one direction and the Hollywood Hills in the other. And whenever I thought, "I should write something," I'd usually just have to look through the glass to find something to say. Homeless guy this. The clouds that. A doubledecker bus filled with Austin Powers lookalikes. It wrote itself. I guess having an office with a window that looks out on the rest of the office instead of a bustling, piss-soaked sidewalk is as viable an excuse as any to explain away the dearth of inspiration I have been feeling.

I've had phases. Sometimes I would write about what I was doing and say nothing about how I felt. Then I would write about what I felt and say nothing about what I was doing. Maybe this is the phase where I'm doing nothing and feeling nothing and the obvious result is a reduced urgency to tip tap type it out. In the marketing and public relations world, there are various positions taken on what constitutes an announceable event. You don't want to overreport. You don't want to be one of those companies that issues a press release to say how much you love summer or to remind people that "lunch" is a fun word. But you also don't want to keep too quiet. Lest people forget you. Or assume you're working on something you're ashamed to talk about. It's hard to imagine what that could be in these modern times. Porn is utterly mainstream. Dropping out for a year to live on your disability settlement is like a generational rite of passage. Even prison has become commonplace and banal enough to not keep you from getting to second base with a lady if you meet her at a bar in Silverlake. It might even be a selling point. The shame of just not having anything interesting to say is on a separate scale. A more shameful scale. And a far less rebloggable one.

These days, I have my best ideas on the treadmill or in a movie theater or while driving. And I command myself to remember and write them down. At which time I often find I'm lacking a pen. That can be as literal or as figurative as you like. It's true in both directions.

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

It comes in waves.

I saw three white balloons drifting up into the nighttime. Past the moon. In front of the stars. I don't know who let them go, but I felt sorry for their goodbye.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:15 PM | Back to Monoblog

She said "yes."

I had a dream the other night, but enough nights ago that we can accurately say "the other year." I was in Culver City. I kept having the answers to geeky questions, and I kept not getting credit for it. And there was this pall of injustice and urgency hanging over it all. Everyone was getting something they wanted. I was just watching it happen. And despite my frustration and an overwhelming feeling of being left behind, I kept it all to myself and offered my congratulations. A bystander, making notes in a journal, saving the commentary for later, when -- after rigorous editing -- it might be palatable to judging eyes without revealing the subdermal layer of "it's not fair."

Say what you will about Jung and Freud, but some dreams are so easy to interpret, you might as well have read their transcript in a fortune cookie. And if anyone ends up turning two-line dream synopses into a fortune cookie's insides, I expect a healthy share of the profits.

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:13 PM | Back to Monoblog

Kisslock

The moon came down to meet me. Like the inside of a cooked egg. The part of the yolk, both yellow and grey. You have to be careful not to overcook eggs, you know. But I won't decline a cooked egg, under any circumstances. I'm very forgiving that way.

I looked at the moon the way I always look at the moon, when I see it. Expectantly. Hopefully. Once a great source of inspiration. It's so easy to write lyrical little turns of phrase about things that are persistently, prettily present. That's why thousands of years of writers have written about the moon. Many of them calling it "she." And why they write about stars and the sun and mountains that haven't yet come down. It's easy to treat them like gods. They're always there. But me? I wrinkle my nose at things that promise permanence. Even pens.

But I keep seeing the moon from the same angle, from the same point of the compass, from the same street. With the same dog leash in hand. Passing the same neighbors. The ones who always seem to be frying onions. The ones who have everything but curtains covering their windows. The ones who turned that little shoebox of a house into such an adorable little opposite-of-an-eyesore.

And now I look at the moon and it's all so very the same. A postulate. How I long to see something new. Even when I am looking at something that can't possibly be. It's all so very the same that I find I often don't even look anymore. I feel my poetic leanings crusting over, as if I'm one of those storybook work-a-days who tunes out the world and never realizes they're riding on a subway train made of gold. Oh, there's a fable to be written about me and my kind. Tin joints covered with that reddish, brittle coating that comes from the rain and the salt air and a terrific flood of weeping. Oil can. Oil can.

I lay my fingers across the keyboard, and there's this paralysis. Do I not know what to say? Do I not want to say what I'm thinking? Am I actually thinking anything? Maybe that's the primal arrogance of me. Believing I should have something to say, whether I seem to or not. And that was just the primal self-deprecation of me, in case you didn't notice. I'm very good at making sure no one thinks I really believe I'm worth listening to. Just in case.

I may actually be making a formal sport of saying nothing in five hundred words or less.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:29 PM | Back to Monoblog

Snip

I got a haircut a short while ago. I've got bangs and a blunt little bob.

As any woman will tell you, bangs are a big commitment. And I've never actually had them in my adult life. I guess it could have gone either way, but I'm reasonably happy with the outcome. But I've noticed that -- while I do get many compliments from friends and even strangers on the cut -- the bangs might be a complication. It might be one of those situations where there's something so ugly you can't help commenting on it, and the only way to be polite is to say you love it. Like a terrible sweater or a startling elective surgical procedure. I get a lot of "I could NEVER wear that look, but it looks good on YOU." My little sister said, "My face would look like a garlic with those bangs, but you're working it." My mom congratulated me on finding a way to cover up that unfortunate little bump on my forehead. A guy last night said, "I love your hair." And a few seconds later added, "Unless it's a wig."

Anyway, these aren't actually raves is my point. I'm fine with it. But I think it bears pointing out.

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:47 AM | Back to Monoblog

A Belt of Stars

The day never really began. It just lurched into a going state, and I went along.

The cold sneaks up on you. Next thing you know, you're sitting in a t-shirt, shivering, and you don't even have the good sense to reach for a sweater. You can be comfortably eased into discomfort. Like boiling a frog. And once you're there, there is always the risk that apathy will guide you to your own lazy end. You just sit still and wait for it, and eventually it comes. It's the most effortless thing in the world.

I began writing this entry almost a year ago. Jotted down a line from a song, because it meant something to me. Today it means something completely different, but it means something just the same. I take notes for a reason. Even if the reason doesn't reveal itself until you've long since given up. I tell myself I pay such close attention. I get lost in the details. And there is no honor in that.

You are my sweetest downfall.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:59 AM | Back to Monoblog

Thankspassing

For the past few years, owing to the unromantic reality of a crotchety and spam-suspicious mail server, I've not been able to send out what had become my customary Thanksgiving email. Well, I COULD have, but I've generally waited until there was too little time to properly create a mailing list or to figure out a back-up network solution or to come up with something to say, for that matter.

It gives the appearance of growing apart, but the appearance is unintended.

I took my younger sister to New York for four or five days just before the holiday. We did many things I've always intended to do when visiting there but haven't managed to do so far. It gave the month a different flavor. And a different perfume. Beulah, unfortunately, does not cherish the scent of chestnuts roasting on an open fire. She did however immensely enjoy the shop windows at Lord & Taylor. As did I. They were spectacular.

I'm in a familiar place in an unfamiliar time. I've been here before, but it was a younger me. A different me. And all the things I worried over were only the things that mattered then. And the things I worry over now seem trite. Even as they are paramount. Even as I know one day they will be as useless an investment as any financial choice I've made so far. It seems I need to worry. Without vexation, I have no idea what to do with my hands.

I'm sorry I missed the window, although I don't know that you should be. My Thanksgiving email would probably have been defiantly cheery and obsequiously glib. You didn't really miss anything. But I would have closed it with a slightly jarring moment of sincerity, I assume. I would have told you how thankful I am to share a bit of anything with you and that you have made my life richer in ways that only you could. If I had your correct email address.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:57 PM | Back to Monoblog

Chasing a Spurious Starlight

Everything is far too familiar. Perhaps if I remember less, I wouldn't greet every experience with a sense of wry knowing. I've put away the childish inclination to hope things turn out better this time. I just conveniently expect them to disappoint, and they reliably do. And someone out there reads that and thinks, "Maybe she's read The Secret." P.S. I haven't.

This all sounds very cold. There is a plainspoken practicality in it. A less feeling take on a more feeling memory.

I don't forget the lessons of history, but I seem doomed to repeat it just the same. It's a pattern. Irrevocable. It's in the script.

This isn't a nostalgic interlude you can share with me. Even if you were there. Even if you are here. My throat is beginning to close around it. This cooling trend promises diminished resistance.

Today reminds me of a different you. And a me that worried what you saw when you looked at me. The puffy eyes of an allergic fall. The desire for a sleek comfort that proved persistently elusive. The space is the same, but the time is different. Less light used to come through the windows. Mornings felt more private. More precious. For all my rearranging, I fish a black blouse out of a drawer and it smells like me. Like anything else I've worn. Even if the last time I wore it was seven years ago. There are certain kinds of chemistry you can't change.

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

The Opposite of a Secret

There was an old lady crossing the street in front of me on my way in to work today. She was wearing a crazy denim get-up, with crocheted pieces added to it. I'm assuming she made them herself. And a big floppy knit hat that looked like a modern re-envisioning of Whistler's mother's kerchief. And she was pumping one arm vigorously as she strode across the street. Her slouch implied a certain hippie joie de vivre. She had a water bottle holster slung over her shoulder and a big handbag syncopating bounces on her hip as she walked. I'm assuming she was headed to Pavilions. I'm assuming she had shopping to do. I'm assuming a lot of things.

Over the weekend, my dad said to me, "You love living in Los Angeles, don't you." And I thought (and said), "Yes, actually." It's one of those things that people who live here get asked. And they have to make the decision whether or not to follow the answer up with a bunch of explanations. "I know there are a lot of shallow people, but..." "I know it's dirty in places, but..." "I know it's hard to feel like you're somebody, but..."

I do love living in Los Angeles. Both in spite of and because of all its peculiarities. The only Los Angeleno instinct I continually strive to unlearn is assuming I can figure everything out in a glance. Summing people up is something I do, usually for the blithe amusement of my friends. But I'm also prone to look at a person -- say, an old lady crossing the street -- and think I could tell you everything about him or her with breathtaking accuracy. And, of course, like all such casual experts, I seldom ask how someone looking at me might similarly sum me up. I seldom even catch myself wondering it. Living in Los Angeles trains you to walk about knowing everyone is looking at you and ignoring you at the same time. When I enter a room, people turn and look right at me in a manner far more forward than you see happening anywhere else. Except maybe for Europe. They look at you and you can see them asking, "Is that someone?" And you just as quickly see them decide, "No. It isn't."

I have never craved fame. At least not the sort that involved visual recognition. Ironically, I only crave the kind of fame advertised in the lyrics of the theme to the movie and television show and then movie again Fame. I would be content to have people remember my name. But to have them see me walk into a room and feel the need to tell someone or to feel the need to approach me for any reason, no thank you. I'm instead working on very slowly earning my reputation through excessive tipping on a server by server basis.

You can live anywhere, and there are certain immutable parts of yourself that will persist. But it's just plain impossible to be so stubborn or so stalwart that you don't eventually let some of your surroundings seep in. You become a part of the place, and it becomes a part of you. It took me a number of years to actually realize that I live in Los Angeles. At first, I spent so much of my time back and forth to San Diego that it still felt like San Diego was my home. And if someone asked me where I live, I'd often accidentally say San Diego. But eventually, you've spent enough time in a place that you know how to get from here to there and you know where to get the best whatever it is, and you take that place in and it becomes yours. And you begin to belong to it as much as it begins to belong to you. And in the case of this city, you get the added benefit of very frequently getting to see it portrayed in film and television, if that matters at all to you.

I'm not suggesting you should move here if you're not already in the neighborhood, by the way. It's hard enough finding a decent apartment. I don't need to fight over it with you. I'm sure you're very happy in whatever place you live, and I don't in any way feel the need to challenge you on it. Please enjoy the rising and setting of the sun as it appears in [Your City], [Your State], and with my compliments.

I transcribed a poem a few years back. You can read it if you like. The bit I am thinking of today is in the voice of the city, and it goes:

Bring me your muscle and spirit and brain --
Here to my glory-strewn, ruin-strewn plain!

I don't always think of Los Angeles in an anthropomorphized fashion. But when I hear her voice, I don't try to drown it out. Sure as the spring is the food of the sea.

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:01 PM | Back to Monoblog

Exploring the Savage Mind

In my lack of desire to see if anything else was on, I sat through three re-airings of the same episode of Mad Men. It reminds me of the days when my parents' big old console record player would automatically kick back the needle at the end of a record and start playing it all over again. The intervals were shorter, and there was less of a sense of completeness, as you would only be listening to the same half of a thing again and again. I would usually leave a record playing when I was reading something with many pages or when I was trying to write something that mattered. When we lived in Guam, my father's big wooden desk -- the one where the writing surface folds up on a hinge to reveal a beautiful bas-relief of Japanese ladies carved in shiny, opalescent stones -- was set in his study, in front of a great window. Floor to ceiling as all the windows in that house were. This one looked out on the palm tree on our front lawn and the steep grassy slope at whose base our house sat. I would languish at that desk and gaze out that window without purpose for days on end. Particularly on those days during the summer when my older sister and my mother were traveling to the National Spelling Bee, and I was at home studying dictionaries in the hopes that the next year I would get to make the same trip. So I spent a lot of days in my dad's study, alone with the record player and the reel-to-reel. I mostly listened to showtunes (Grease and Fiddler on the Roof were the first records I ever bought), a collection of Jewish music called Spirit of a People, and a compilation of Telemann and Vivaldi called The Splendor of Brass.

I remember the heft of that desk. If I'd tried to move the whole thing, it would have reminded me of my impotence. But the writing surface was on a hinge, so that big slab of wood could easily be lifted by me. The only thing I feared was fully closing it, because I always worried that I would catch my fingers when it shut. I don't know what kind of wood it was, but I think of cedar when I remember its smell. And I don't know why I refer to it in the past tense, as it's sitting in my parents' formal dining room at this very moment.

I didn't learn every word in the dictionary during those summer days. And I didn't write anything important. And I didn't read as much as I could have. But I learned there were certain halves of albums that were my favorites, and I would play those with prejudice.

And if you can look at an excerpt in place of the whole, you can see things worth cheering for without being burdened by the details. You can wish for less and thank for more. You can forgive and forget. You can grow nostalgic without inevitably falling into melancholy. And you can tell yourself it's better than looking at things more truthfully, because not all things must be examined truthfully and directly in order to be properly appreciated. In fact, looking at a solar eclipse without the aid of a camera-obscura will burn your retinas blind. And knowing everything about everything will hurt more than knowing nearly nothing about most things, because knowing carries with it the obligation of recognition and ignorance is more likely to make you popular.

I strive for symmetry even when I don't prefer the look of it. I hate running out of shampoo when there's plenty of conditioner left. I like hot dogs to fit the bun. But I was able to ignore the symmetrical imperative when playing records in my dad's study. I was able to distract myself with the demands of all the words I wanted to learn and read and write and say and all the blank notebook pages I expected to fill.

If I allow myself, I can identify which side of the Mad Men record I would rather play. But it would seem tawdry and for all the wrong reasons.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:01 AM | Back to Monoblog

Day for Night

I feel as if there has been a void in the part of my brain that used to scramble to write down the little bits of inspiration that every day held. I've faulted micro-blogging and social networking for that to some degree, and that seems reasonable. I distill my momentary impressions into brief little bursts and post them with such immediacy that the tangential expressions that used to come from writing down this or that never have a chance to flower. I've thrown a blanket over the creative halo.

And there's also room for the gingerly admission that when certain categories in my life flourish, the writing withers. It's not necessarily because I'm so productive or such a failure or because I'm so happy or so sad. There's just a specific little mix that occurs from time to time -- often for months or years at a time -- that quiets my fingers. I've never been so courageous or so brash that I didn't always worry how things might appear. I am careful not to tread on toes or the feelings that figuratively reside in them. I am careful not to undermine relationships or professional affiliations or perceptions that might be important in the looking back. And that means that the more I work and the more people I know, the fewer things I am free to say. At least in the prison of my own sense of propriety.

It taxes me. If only in my sense of having dropped the torch. What many fires might have been lit had I just worked on my upper arm strength a bit more. And how tired I grow of having to hide behind song lyrics.

When I was a little girl, I loved being inside a tent or a fort or a box big enough for a human of my size. I am a middle child, and I never had much time to myself or space of my own. And there was something precious about an assigned seat or bunk bed. I'm sure I'd have lain contentedly within the confines of a chalk outline if it had been drawn just for me.

There is a difference between reveling in a sweet secret and hiding from what has already been revealed. You can zip up the tent so no one will know you're in there. But that won't keep that family of raccoons from noisily helping themselves to the remainder of your Kettle Chips. They like that sort of thing. And what do you know about camping anyway. Come to think of it, this tent is air-conditioned and what a surprisingly beautiful shade of green marble surrounding the bath! Is that a Kohler tub? I knew it.

I'm tired of diamonds that turn out to be sand and emeralds that turn out to be glass. There's a third part to that statement, but I didn't write it down before I'd managed to forget it.

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:23 PM | Back to Monoblog

In-Flight Ramblings

Trapped in the center seat of the center aisle with a non-working audio jack on a flight from New York to San Diego, this afternoon was as good a time as any to break the silence. So here it is.

Comic-Con was a familiar yet unfamiliar revisitation of the places and (yes) pablum I make space for year over year. Rob and I even did an interview for ESPN late in the night of Comic-Con's final day. We both made numerous pithy observations about what makes Comic-Con quintessentially CON -- and what might conceivably be done to preserve and even revitalize what is in danger of being lost -- in an hour-and-a-half long phone conversation that yielded a threadbare clump of less-than-verbatim quotations in the final article, through no fault apparently of the reporter. But still. They didn't even use the photos of me in costume I spent an hour trying to send. Maybe that disappointment is precisely what Comic-Con yields for me today. For years, there was so little expectation associated with my annual trips to the San Diego Convention Center. But at some point -- perhaps when I began laying out serious coin to stay at the Marriott Marina and exerting considerable effort to rally the enthusiasm of my friends and family -- I began to feel this BURDEN. And if the experience was ever less than...well, I noted it. And for a few years now, it really has been. Even this year, it's hard not to glare accusingly at the marketing materials. I have literally adopted the position that if I am not actually ON a panel or the close friend of someone else on one, I don't even bother trying to get in. It's not that I'm uncommitted. It's that the whole business has become this clusterfuck of bad crowd management and an impossibly unsatisfactory user experience. Comic-Con needs to hire those Disney engineers that design and manage the line dynamics. Because for some reason, I resent that experience less. I get into line after having seen a full-disclosure estimate of the time it will take me to hop aboard a gondola, and there is an implicit understanding that this is an acceptable exchange of services. I'm willing to wait. But at Comic-Con, there is no estimate. No reasonable expectation of satisfaction. No promise of a repeat performance. No enchanting fantastical environment. No textured walls to run your hands over as you breeze past. No easter eggs.

There's literally no incentive to wait. (Ironically, a similar indictment could be made of me and my blogging dereliction.)

My favorite thing in the five days I was there was the dependable late night reunions in the lobby bar of the Marriott. Where we dissected our experiences and justified our disillusionment. Where we were well looked-after by a server named Cinnamon. Where we ordered our fill and always felt welcome. It was Steve Melching who astutely pointed out that the arrival of celebrities to the Comic-Con line-up was what seems to have ruined the whole thing. The people who queue up for these Hall H presentations aren't (to a one) excited to see the creators preview their offerings or to hear about the magic behind the mask. They're there hoping to catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson. Full disclosure, I just typed "catch a clap of Robert Pattinson" at first. I don't know what that means. I'm just saying.

And that's the seminal disconnect today. Comic-Con used to be the place where you would get to rub elbows a bit with your heroes and creative geniuses. And there was a noble appreciation of the actual creative arts. And a well-placed reverence for the men and women who write and draw and conceive the fantastical characters, environments, and scenarios that Hollywood has co-opted into the money-making machine of studio movie-making. Don't get me wrong. I'm so grateful that Warner Brothers exists. I'm so grateful that well-heeled, well-funded enterprises recognize and revere the value of science fiction, fantasy, and comic book superheroes. I'm so glad I can be transported to these worlds I have loved by purchasing a ticket to an Arclight screening. But at the same time, I wish there was some persistent recognition that the phenomenon of Comic-Con is more about the dedication of the fanbase than it is about the endorsement of the studios. And the teen girls that rally around an opportunity to see their heartthrob are all well and good. But they're missing the big picture. Those actors -- cute as they may be -- aren't, for the most part, responsible for the product they adore. It's writers and directors and musicians and visual effects people and the whole lot. Just seeing Gerard Butler last year at the RocknRolla panel brought that succinctly home. Gerard Butler was above it. An ACTOR looking out on a sea of weirdos. This wasn't an audience in whose bosom he wanted to find himself. Ever. This was, instead, a freaky, funky (in the olfactory sense), socially inept army who came across frightening if only for their numbers and like-mindedness. These were people he was clearly afraid would love him to death. He needn't fear me in that respect. I can assure you.

But he was wrong. Because, in my experience, the true Comic-Con faithful are the most respectful, most self-effacing, most personal space-respecting sort. They might come up and thank you for the entertainment you have provided. They might ask you to allow them to take a picture. They might blush. But these are not the paparazzi. And they won't ask you to sign the interior wall of their uteruses with a Sharpie they will happily provide. And they won't assume that once you lock eyes with them, the whole of the future will reorient itself to adjust to their personal fantasy, heretofore only ever lived out in the company of a lip-print-laden glossy poster hanging above their bed, coincidentally fashioned in the likeness of the Starship Enterprise. The NCC-1701A, since you asked. And if anyone in the world is more anxious to preserve the sanctity of fandom, it's the attendee badgeholders at Comic-Con. Who spend thousands of dollars to attend. Who endure thankless, sweaty discomfort wearing their various helmets and wings and body armor. It's those die-hard devotees who recognize the divide between the fan and the fawned-upon more than anyone. These are fans who aren't hoping that a short skirt or a willing twinkle in their eye will give them a pre-shame glimpse of the color of a celebrity's pants-lining. They're not hoping to be noticed or to be befriended. They're not expecting their lives to be changed. They're purely there to appreciate. And as their ranks have been infiltrated by the scoop-hungry bloggers and the scout-minded studio execs and the panty-less skanks, it seems the landscape has been blurred. Like one of Bert's sidewalk paintings in Mary Poppins after the rains came.

My iPod playlist of choice at the moment is a collection of film music based on a mixtape I once made. I've now gotten to the opening titles of The Reivers. It's a John Williams composition, and it's brilliant and uplifting. The first time I remember hearing it, it was John Williams conducting the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl with Ossie Davis narrating. And I made a note to myself to go buy that soundtrack. And I did it. And I can tell you that, as huge a fan as I am of John Williams, if I were to see him on the street, the chances that I would even disturb him are slight. Beyond that, the chances that I would hope to attract him or fantasize about a night in the future when we might share an intimate dinner (maybe Italian?) are basically nil. That isn't the kind of fantasy I entertain. There's no sexual urgency in my worship. If I love your work, I love your work. And I maintain the steadfast expectation that I might not necessarily like you so much. You don't have to be cute. You don't even have to be clean. Your work stands alone. This is the mindset of so many of the Comic-Con faithful, I find. And whether that comes from having grown up as ugly outcasts, I don't know. And I'm not setting myself apart in that comment, in case it was unclear. My fantasies generally never extend beyond hoping to strike up a stimulating e-mail penpalship with those I admire. And even that I treat as a pipe dream. On occasion, I have found myself in that state of benign disbelief that I am now friends with someone I once placed in an untouchable personal pantheon of genius. And that's definitely a dream. But that doesn't mean I've ever found myself being an out-and-out weirdo. Nor would I. Even if I was meeting Marc Shaiman.

So, Comic-Con this year was fun on many levels. Disappointing on many others. I learned that the thrill of being on the list for this party or that is misplaced. I don't care about the parties. Unless I'm going to run into my friends. And I could just as easily arrange to run into them at a convenient, comfortable place of our choosing. No amount of open bar is worth the harangue of skeevy people and their skeevier expectations and being made to feel that the actors of Stargate are more deserving of the edge of the concrete planter I've been sitting on than I am.

I was having a cigarette outside the hotel with Danforth, and we were talking about the lack of impetus to try and evangelize people about Star Trek. And a lanky long-haired young man in a cape came up and said, "I overheard you talking about Star Trek. Mind if I join in?" That, coupled with the moment on the elevator when a fox-headed Jedi subtly effected the Jedi mind trick before the opening elevator doors, represents the very essence of Comic-Con to me. A welcoming of the often unwelcome. A committed performance of dedicated fantasy. An assumption that the people in the elevator will get it when you say, "Hey. That Jedi just did this [pantomime Jedi mind trick] when the elevator doors opened." And they will. And they did.

I'm disappointed I didn't see or do more. As evidenced by my one panel reference above being from last year. The convention hall actually seemed less crowded for most of the show. The exception being Sunday, which also happened to be the day I was dressed in my U.F.O. Moonbase Operative costume. I managed to move about on the floor with very little panic for the most part. But I didn't even bother to plan to go to the panels I would have wanted to see. I went to see a couple of panels Rob was either moderating or participating in. And I attended the panel on which I was an actual panelist. But that's what allowed me to breeze in after everyone else was seated. And I have a faint recollection of Comic-Cons past when I could do that -- panelist or no -- at nearly every panel on the events schedule. I doubt that even relocating the Con to Los Angeles or Anaheim or Las Vegas will make that possible. All that will do is make the becostumed attendees that much funkier (again, we're talking about smell here). And wait till a couple of Bladerunner Replicants get mugged in Downtown Los Angeles. The end of the innocence has long since been marked. If the future of the comic arts is as bleak as the future of the biggest, most wonderful celebration of them, I can only hope the Y: The Last Man movie comes out before it all goes to shit.

I don't know if I'll ever be married. But if I'm ever on the receiving end of a wedding dance, I hope it will be Let Me Roll It by Paul McCartney.

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:18 PM | Back to Monoblog

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women

It's cold, and the streets are wet. My winter coat had barely been worn, and it already looks like the weather has had its way with it. Few things manage to remain new. Even things that are black. Maybe especially such things.

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you on a chair with a dead magazine

I had plans of pressing down with greater force in these waning days at the year's end. These are always days I fill with examination and plans. Mostly with little outcome. When the mornings smell of recent fireplaces, and there is never a perfect temperature. If my hands aren't cold, the rest of me is too warm. If the rest of me is cold, my hands are useless. Every hour feels like something I've set free. And as soon as it's gone, I regret the release and weigh it all as waste. This is an apathetic passage in an otherwise apathetic season.

There's a concert hall in Vienna where your mouth had a thousand reviews

I don't go looking for memories so much as I go feeling around in the dark, hoping I won't happen upon something sharp. And I keep everything in such disarray that it's a wonder I manage to stumble on things that are relevant. And yet I do. My fingers are nearly blue, barely visible at the ends of my coat sleeves. It's much safer to listen to songs in French. I both love and loathe the smell of artificial heat.

The hyacinth wild on my shoulder, my mouth on the dew of your thighs

There's so seldom time to reminisce about all the out-of-doors kisses and projects with no purpose and moments of irresistible inspiration. Nor time to act on reminiscences and the inspiration you find in them. I can go back to those places again and again. But they've changed. And I've changed. And I can't just put those clothes back on and have it be the same. I can't even wear my hair that way. I've long since discarded those tresses. I long ago decided there was no beauty there.

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there, and the moss

I was telling the story of how I slipped in my socks and fell down the stairs in our house in Japan and how the rest of the family heard me thudding, step after step, and laughed as soon as the falling stopped. They always had greater faith in my resilience than I did. But I managed to stand up and walk again, grudgingly proving them right. If I'd remained at the foot of the stairs, paralyzed forever, they'd eventually have come running to comfort me. Once the blame had been carefully placed.

And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross

I prefer it to be cold and sunny if I have to be outside. I've never been to Vienna. But I've listened to Leonard Cohen. A pretty song with a real violin and a synthesized trumpet. It isn't Vienna that I go to when I hear it. But it's a place where you can order schnitzel.

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

Collectibles

When I hear dates, I put myself in them. Meaningless markers that are part of the legitimacy of a television script. There is no radius that reaches out to me. But when I hear, "December 2, 2004," I go back to that date in my brain. There is a vague haze of what was going on at that time. If I look it up in the blog archives, I can see that I wrote something about SpongeBob watches at Burger King. (I did end up getting two of them.) But it's nothing so specific. It's just a color code. A flavor of marshmallow that envelops the era. It's a circa.

Time and distance refract all of it, reducing it to the most obvious details. This is what I was wearing. This is what my hair looked like. This is what I wore. This is where I lived. This is what I did for a living. And in the vicinity of these larger points are the more hovery details. A broad brush that paints those eras in one opaque tint. I remember measuring things in moments. And every wall was painted a different color. I remember time seeming both immovable and uncatchable. But now it's all just a field of green. Or blue. Or pink. Or angry, suffocating red.

I hear a date on a TV show, and I react as if the universe is trying to send me a message. The universe is opening a time capsule for me. And I can't help but wish I'd put more things in it. I can't help but wish there were more details and less marshmallow.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:38 PM | Back to Monoblog

A further criticism

What is it with all of these erectile dysfunction medication commercials using swing dancing as a metaphor for fucking? Guy gets urge, makes eyes at old lady, then the two of them suggestively engage in a lame living room tango. What's sexy about this? I know you can't show the actual act of coitus -- particularly because they're always old people -- but this just seems like a really archaic and uninspired way of saying, "These two geezers are about to get their bone on." And I frankly don't applaud the spontaneity that says the old lady should be up for it when grandpa comes over all hot and heavy while she's wearing her house sweater and lounge pants. If you're doing it that seldom, it seems like all the more reason to gussy up. Tell Daddy and his union suit to go make themselves comfortable while you put on something pretty. Seriously.

Labels: commercials

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:08 PM | Back to Monoblog

This took the language right out of my mouth.

I was looking for parking near my office today, and I saw a man hanging by the neck from a noose made of a green garden hose. He was moving. Flopping kind of like a fish, but not really moving his arms and legs. And his entire lower body, from the pelvis down, was on the ground. The noose was only a couple of feet above the ground, but his head was through the eye of it, and he was suspended by the neck to some degree. I could see him moving and twisting, and I couldn't really tell what I was looking it. When I see things I don't expect to see, especially here, it's my habit to look around and see if someone is filming or if it's part of some joke or perhaps some private activity that is none of my business. Because no one hangs themselves on a street corner at ten o'clock in the morning, right? I stopped my car and didn't know if I should call someone. I couldn't see the man's face. Only the back of his head. And because he was still moving around, I wondered if he was just trying something out. (I don't know what. There's no use asking me what I mean by that.) But it bothered me, and I felt like I should check and see if he was okay, and at the same time, I didn't want to embarrass him. And I was a little bit afraid. So I went into my office and told Jessie, and she called 911 for me and they said they would send officers to check it out.

The police called my office a short while later and spoke to me directly and asked me to tell them what I saw, and even at that point I wasn't sure if they had actually seen the man, or if they were just about to go over there or if they were documenting the report but maybe when they got to the scene there was no one there. That's what I was thinking. But the officer said, "Oh, no, no. We've already been over there. Another neighbor saw him and cut him down and he was taken to the hospital, but we don't know if he lived." And I was shocked and I felt sick. I still do. Mainly because I've never seen something like that. And I can't get that picture out of my head. Everything feels very delicate and brittle right now. Like if I move too quickly, it will all break apart. And my brain is stuck on it. I didn't make an affirming statement to myself or reconsider my own tenuous attachment to life. I don't even know what to say in the privacy of my own thoughts. I don't know who that man was, and I don't know what was happening in his life. But I felt very bad about it. And it really, really bothered me. Really. And other than being able to say that, I don't know what words to use.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:45 PM | Back to Monoblog

Blood-Brain Barrier

There was an episode of House. A little girl was dying of a number of things. Mostly cancer. Dr. House posited that her bravery was not admirable but a symptom. A symptom that could lead them to an answer that could enable them to prolong her life. At one point, they even surmised that she might be mature and manipulative at the hands of molestation. But eventually, they found the blood clot. It wasn't in the amigdala, rather it was in the hippocampus. Ergo, her courage was not a symptom. They fixed her up. She walked out of the hospital, and everyone clapped and cheered for her. And she went and hugged Dr. House and said something brave. And he looked uncomfortable. And I realized that I was quietly rooting for it to turn out that there was something wrong with her. That she was broken in some way. Because who can face death with such aplomb. Who can be so selfless as to choose to go on suffering to spare her mother the loss of her for as long as possible. All the while wearing the signature kerchief of the cancer girl.

I love the show. I relate to the character. I balance my judgmental dissatisfaction against the wry membrane of disinterest. I don't excuse it. Or me. I should be doing more. I should be more valuable. I should be mattering. I should be making the difference that supersedes my lack of interest in making a difference. I should be transmuting what I lack. Defying alchemic laws. I should be taking fearless journeys. Or cloaking my various fears with opaque bravado. Even though, if you ask me, I will say I detest being inspired.

I will say this. There's too much Dave Matthews Band in House.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:55 PM | Back to Monoblog

It's not that I can't bear suspense.

But I'm on page 438 of Carter Beats the Devil, and it's a highly suspense-charged scene, and as I cross over the gutter, the syntax doesn't seem quite right. One minute, I'm in the middle of a sentence being spoken by a magician, and the next minute, there's something about what the newspaper reporters printed and the excitation of atoms. Three seconds and two glances later, I realize my softcover copy of this book (paid for at full retail price) skips from page 438 to page 455. Just like that. There is no poetry in how much dissatisfaction I feel tonight.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:03 AM | Back to Monoblog

I may be a little late to the fundraising party.

But if you go here http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/maryforrest you can join me in supporting Barack Obama by putting your money where your mouth is. I just gave on my friend Adam's page. Please give on mine. Or create your own. This is no time to be shy. I'm buying ponies for all of you to celebrate the Obama-Biden victory. But if McCain and Palin win, I'll have all of these ponies and nowhere to put them. Please think of me for once in your life. And those precious, innocent ponies who never hurt anyone.

Labels: Barack Obama, politics

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:02 PM | Back to Monoblog

This began as a response to a comment thread on one of my friend Steve's Facebook notes.

I'm tired of all the talk about the importance of values as if they trump all other decision-making factors. Ultimately, the job of President is a job. And the qualifications and experience one has, including past job experience and past life experience, are relevant in the job interview process. You don't go to a job interview and expect to get hired just because you go to the same church as your boss or just because you both like the Mets. That might help pave the way to the conversation beginning, but eventually, you're going to be asked what you bring to the table. You'll be expected to have real accomplishments under your belt. And you'll also be expected to be able to balance whatever's going on in your life in such a way that nothing personal ever seeps into your job performance. That's what millions of working people contend with. Some of them even contend with drug tests and background checks and credit history reports. Because what you've done and where you've been matters in certain jobs. And here we are, examining applicants for the highest executive office in the country. And suddenly, we're not supposed to care what the candidate's actual skills and experience are? We're supposed to applaud her because she believes in this, but we're not supposed to care that she believes in that?

What I don't like about this discussion is that -- in my experience (and my parents watch nothing in their home but Fox News and Dancing with the Stars) -- many conservatives exhibit a sense of triumph when they can ferret out the personal failings and scandals of liberal candidates, but conservative candidates with the same personal failings and scandals are applauded. I suspect there are plenty of conservatives who share Sarah Palin's moral values but who are still disappointed to learn about her daughter's choices. The conservatives I know email me every time they find a blog that says Obama is a Muslim. But not a one of them has emailed me to talk about whether Sarah Palin is a good choice. It's like we're not allowed to openly discuss our opinions about these people despite the fact that one day, two of them are going to lead ALL OF US. I have just as much right to want John McCain to pick a qualified VP, because if he ends up President, I still have to live in the country the two of them run. It's relevant for us to talk about it. It's reasonable for us to ask questions. ALL OF US. Wouldn't it be beautiful if we could all actually talk about it without the iron curtain of partisanship dividing us? I would think every American would hope that both candidates would pick a great running mate, no matter who they personally support. We don't always get to choose our bosses at work, and when you find out your boss has hired some other person to exercise authority over you, it certainly helps the relationship if that person merits your respect and can wield your loyalty in a positive way. Why would this be any less true for the running of the country?

Sometimes, I think the values issue is exactly what gunks up the debate. I think it's possible for a person to be against abortion but to not actively try and legislate against it. In the same way that it is possible for a person to be against pre-marital sex without insisting that it be made illegal. Your personal values shouldn't influence every choice you make as a public servant. Our shared value -- the protection of the Constitution -- is the one value that should supersede all others. You may not like the idea of gays getting married. You might even believe it's morally wrong. But that doesn't mean the Constitution doesn't attempt to offer all Americans the same protections and the same rights. You may be someone who once believed that Blacks and Whites should not marry either. At this point, I hope you know you were wrong to believe that. And if you don't, I hope you aren't serving in public office. And if you are, I hope you at least realize that you are able to believe that your bathtub is the Oracle of Delphi as long as you don't bring it to work with you. I don't want to know about your religion. I don't want to know what brand of greeting card you buy. I don't want to know your favorite color or whether you like Thai food late at night. I don't care about that. At least not at the time of the job interview or at the periodic subsequent performance reviews. At the job interview, I just want to know what kind of worker you are and whether you are willing and able to do the job you are interviewing for. Once you're hired, we can go out to a micro-brewery and you can tell me all about what you believe and whether you own a cat and what your dining room window looks out on and whether you were able to get a Wii. There's always the risk at this point that you will refuse my invitation to go to a micro-brewery because you frown on the consumption of alcoholic beverages, at which time I will make a mental note to never invite you anywhere ever again. And that will significantly hamper our ability to be best friends. But we'll still work together fine. I mean, it's work, right?

And that is the most important lesson of all. We shouldn't be trying to elect the guy who is most like us or who shares our personal philosophies. We're not going to be best friends with him. If you want a best friend, sign up for a social network. Facebook is open to everyone now. Or join a community sports league. Or hang out at Borders and talk to strangers in the section of books that most interests you. This is the time you should be looking to hire the best man for the job. And, believe it or not, the job you are hiring for isn't "best friend." You're not hiring a guy to be your neighbor or to try new restaurants with you every Thursday. You'll probably never even see this guy once he gets started. What you should care about is whether he knows how to do what he needs to do. And whether he is resourceful enough to solve the problems you weren't able to anticipate in the interview process. And in the event he has to step down, you want to make sure that his understudy will be able to step in smoothly and finish the work he started. So the two of them should definitely have a lot of similar qualifications. You might even want to pick the runner-up for the job, since they were already almost good enough. Or you could focus on that guy's religious beliefs, get spooked by them, and pick someone by drawing up a game of M.A.S.H. Be careful, though. That's how you end up living in a shack, driving an ice cream truck to your job as a mailman. Also, you have eight kids and a pet hamster. Sorry.

Anyway, as a woman, I wish I could be encouraged by the selection of a woman on the GOP ticket. But the fact that Sarah Palin is a woman who doesn't support my reproductive rights is a problem for me. I don't mind that she doesn't believe I should have them. But I do mind that she would actively seek to take them away. That makes it hard for me to think of her as "one of us." I would never blindly vote for a woman just because of her gender. That's as foolish as not voting for one just because of her gender. I'm also bemused by the double standard. Conservatives who disliked Hillary Clinton were often unable to simply not like her politics. Some of them shouted things out like "make me a sandwich," and pundits in the media even offered that one of her barriers to acceptance might be that the shrillness of her voice would remind men of the nagging wives they'd sooner forget. Are we meant to believe that these gender-specific barriers wouldn't apply to Sarah Palin just because she's prettier* than Hillary Clinton? That's about the most sexist and ignorant possibility of all. Are we really suggesting that the glass ceiling is being broken by John McCain? If there are truly millions of cracks in the glass ceiling, I suspect it's because the fat cats dancing on it have been eating more fried foods.

Incidentally, I'm voting for Obama and Biden.

*Prettier? Maybe. But does anyone dislike polar fleece as much as I do?

Labels: Bill Clinton, politics

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:58 PM | Back to Monoblog

Cry Baby

I was on the treadmill at the gym yesterday, and CNN was playing a story about the gorillas murdered in the Congo. I had heard the story on NPR last week, but I saw the pictures of the gorillas with the leaves and grass stuffed in their mouths and noses to suffocate them and the murderers triumphantly carrying a dead gorilla on a stretcher, and I just started crying. Right there on the treadmill. Tears sprouting out of my stupid eyes while I ran to George Michael singing Freedom! '90. That story just breaks my heart and infuriates me.

Later on, I was watching The Paradine Case, and a commercial for the ASPCA came on. It's that one with Sarah McLachlan singing Angel and showing all those cute, needy pets, and I totally started crying again. Later in the night, I signed up to donate to the ASPCA. And you should, too.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:22 PM | Back to Monoblog

Last night, the moon was full and low.

It was hot all day and warm all night. Tepid and still. Frustratingly still. In the absence of a breeze, everything feels like waiting.

I have gotten used to nighttime walks on my street. Maybe even bored of them. When I first got Audrey, every walk was an adventure. Another door I'd not really looked at. Another sound or smell coming from a building I'd driven past but not really noticed. Indian pop music or the TiVo prompt. Garlic or onions or both. An interesting light fixture. A curious mirror on the ceiling. A boy washing dishes. There was no end of things to notice and no end of my wanting to catalog them. Now, I make the rounds perfunctorily. Confident that nothing will have changed. Occasionally noticing when a For Rent sign goes up. A tiny part of me envying those who are moving. If only for the change of scenery.

Everything I throw away leaves room for everything I'd forgotten I have. Discovering. Rediscovering. Putting everything away. Spreading order with an iron fist. An iron fist clenched around a paper towel damp with Windex.

I've never given points for sitting still. Especially not to myself. Once I've done with cleaning it all up and putting it all away, I fully expect the onslaught of the old wanderlust. It's just that there are so few places with garages these days.

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:01 PM | Back to Monoblog

Disenfranchisellusionment

I keep singing "Why Bother" by Weezer to myself. But it's not about relationship angst. It's about the election. I'm an avid and outspoken Democrat, but something happened to me in the 2000 elections. Recently watching Recount brought it all flooding back. That sickening sense of helpless frustration. It's funny. When you watch a movie about the election debacle, you know how it all turned out and you know it isn't going to turn out differently, but for a spell, you can allow yourself to get caught up in the drama of the story and hope that things won't go awry, as you know them historically to have gone awry. It's peculiar and irrational. And it's how my mother watches movies. Movies about Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde make her so angry. She just wants the protagonists to get away. And history be damned. When I was watching Recount the other day, that habit of hers suddenly made so much sense.

I was rooting for John Edwards. And then he dropped out. So I was rooting for Hillary Clinton, and now that's over. I completely support Barack Obama and will vote for him come November, and I'm not at all unhappy that he is going to be the candidate. But for some reason I don't have the stomach for any of the debate. I'm even reluctant to write about it here, because I know if someone posts a comment that rubs my Democrat nose in anything, I'll probably burst into tears.

Why so fragile? I have no idea. I was almost disenfranchised when I went to vote a few weeks ago. My polling station had changed, and I didn't realize it. So I strode into the old folks home around the corner and presented my drivers license and was promptly turned away. I asked the volunteers if they knew where I was supposed to go, and they pointed to a number on a map, but didn't know the actual street address. And they were very pissy about it. In the end, I had to walk back to my car, drive home and get my voter's pamphlet, drive to another location (which I would never have found just based on the area they were pointing at on the map), park, wander around looking for a sign that would indicate where I should go, and then wait several minutes while a volunteer with absurdly long and curved fingernails tried time and time again to prize a single ballot from the stack. In the end, I got my "I Voted" sticker. But it just didn't feel like it mattered anymore. And that saddens me. I have many impassioned opinions about the electoral process, but I no longer have the fortitude to assemble them and say them aloud. This seems like something to be ashamed of. The up side is that I no longer have to vote at that old folks home. It's much closer to my apartment, but it always smells like a roast beef dinner in there. Causing me to note that old folks homes always smell like roast beef dinner. No matter what time of the day you go and no matter what anyone is actually eating. And if you know me and food smells, you know I am willing to go a few extra blocks to not smell like anyone's dinner. Ever.

Labels: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, politics

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:50 PM | Back to Monoblog

"A body has to move gentle and speak low when wild things is about."

My upstairs neighbor seems to be listening to a Barry Manilow greatest hits album. There's something oddly nice about that to me. At very least, there's one person in this town who won't try and outband you when you tell them what the last concert you saw was. One person, at least, who doesn't only know a song after it's been covered by the Walkmen or the Wrens. Or Scarlett Johansson.

I turned on HDNet and watched The Searchers and then The Bridge on the River Kwai and then The Outlaw Josey Wales and then Dirty Harry. I guess I'm officially a man, now.

This hardly seems worth having written it.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:33 PM | Back to Monoblog

Palindrome

The weather sure has been apocalyptic-seeming. Two days ago, it was hot out but windy. I could taste Hollywood in my grit-filled mouth. And it tasted like something I should spit out. Little eddies of filth and debris swirled up above gutters running alongside my route home. What would have been a welcome breeze filled my eyes and mouth and imagination with the soot of Sunset Boulevard and the indigents who shit there.

Yesterday I heard there was hail. And a tornado.

This morning, it's plaster grey out. And cold. If there were withered wintry trees on the horizon, I would call it a fitting tableau for burying our old friend Indiana Jones, who died last night. At least for me. And not just because he said the word "nucular."

I'm not sure if I'm going to actually spoil anything for you with what I'm about to say about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but if you're worried that I will, consider yourself forewarned and by all means look away. And if you feel that knowing that Indiana Jones says the word "nucular" was already too much unannounced spoilage for your standards, I apologize and accept that we may never be the friends I once hoped we'd be.

I won't be able to read the temperamental phrases I scrawled while inside the darkened, goon-filled theater. I only had a red pen, and the light from the screen didn't do much to illuminate my rantings. But, if memory serves, it seems the once limitless expanses of the mind and its inventions are now only able to live in front of a green screen. And not like a fancy one where things look super real. But a crap one where everything looks fake and the only thing you can fixate on is everyone's flaws.

I only remember feeling like anything was kind of awesome at two points in the movie. And I'm not talking about seeing the little corner of the Ark of the Covenant, because that was a totally lame throwaway, despite the thrill it provided to the mouth-breather sitting behind me. The only rewarding moments for me were these two: When Indy mentioned Quechua, I thought, "That's what Greedo's speech was," and I felt self-importantly victorious for getting a reference that was clearly meant for me to get, albeit what seemed like hours into the film. And when Indy sees Marion and he seems boyishly delighted, I was tickled. But it faded immediately when it became clear that the previous chemistry born of her girlish-boyish disappointment and longing would now be replaced by the archetypal barbs of a radio age fishwife.

The chemistry is out the window. For everyone. For Indy and Marion, it might just be that we're looking at a guy we hoped wouldn't look too old for this role but clearly does planting kisses on the mouth of a woman who was never conventionally pretty but now looks pretty solidly daft.
You know, I never thought Harrison Ford was all that handsome, but there was a knowledge in his eyes. An impatience. A demanding intensity. He was the perfect gentleman scoundrel. Now all I can see is hos old his teeth look.

The vast majority of the movie, I was so bored and so confused and so not at all interested in what happened to anyone or why. National Treasure shamelessly co-opts the style of caper that made the old Indy films fun by shamefully having Nicholas Cage pretend to not be bald and also be able to solve centuries-unsolved riddles by simply talking the problems through and then confidently arriving at a hypothesis that always turns out to be correct. I remember laughing at its buffoonery and thinking that all the production value in the world can't make an Indiana Jones movie unless you've got the key ingredients, the first of which being Indiana Jones.

But Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even armed with Indy himself actually in the film and wearing the hat and everything, couldn't hide from its key weakness: a really stupid script. But I am incredulous that the film had no qualms at all about posing as National Treasure. And The Fountain. And The Mummy. And The Mummy Returns. And the X-Files movie. And a Thomas Kinkade painting. And various episodes of the Keystone Cops. And a Barbara Walters special. But with none of the artful choreography, whip-smart banter, or quotability of the previous films. And Sallah has been replaced by the far less adorable Mac, who calls Indy "Jonesey" instead of "Indy" and refers to adventures I have difficulty believing they ever had together.

If you loved Raiders of the Lost Ark -- and I did -- you should just watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. This latest installment cribs from its progenitor so blatantly at times that I expected Indy to say, "Don't look at it!" And I expected Cate Blanchett to say, "It's beautiful!" And they basically did. Just not exactly in those words. But the visual effects might as well have been exactly the same. So much so that it makes me wonder if the field of visual effects actually just involves a lot of cut and paste. I always thought it was really complicated, but what do I know.

I don't think Indiana Jones ever was, nor should it have become, a science fiction franchise. There was plenty of mystical hooey, sure, but it was largely mystical hooey that traded on mythology that was familiar to the audience on some level. I recently half watched a show on The History Channel about crystal skulls, but if I hadn't seen it, I don't think I would have had any reference base for crystal skulls or what they're supposed to be able to do. I don't really feel any better-informed now, but that's mainly because this movie had no idea what it wanted me to know about crystal skulls, except that (a) they are highly magnetic and (b) their powerful magnetic field can be interrupted by placing a Mexican blanket over them.

I wasn't even thrilled with the music, and that's usually a given. In each of the other three Indy features, you've got the Raiders March, you've got the love theme, but you've also got a few themes that really capture the specific story in the film. It's Hindi Indy. Or it's Camelot Indy. But this one. I think they should have been talking about Incans instead of Mayans, for one thing, unless I'm misremembering that. El Dorado. Peru. That's Inca territory, right? Well, whichever, I don't remember any sweeping musical references to ancient civilizations. Even when the indigenous peoples who apparently cocoon themselves in the walls of their various pyramids and cliffs in case a trespasser dares show his face pop out and wave their spears around. I don't remember any particularly Peruvian sounding music at that point. But I do remember thinking, "When do those guys eat and go to the bathroom and stuff?"

Martín didn't hate it, but I told him to sleep on it. He didn't think The Phantom Menace was a tragic disappointment at first either. And I distinctly recall him thinking I was an asshole for saying that it wasn't any good. But I can confidently say that -- while I don't really care if it's WORSE than The Phantom Menace -- I can say that it's terrible for many of the same reasons that The Phantom Menace was terrible. And with just about the same amount of Burger King.

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:22 AM | Back to Monoblog

I was dreaming about dog catchers.

I was a bit out of sorts today. Angry and hurt, a little bit heartsick over things that aren't actually beyond my control. But that's kind of the devil's bargain for today. I once told my mother I had been horrifically mistreated by someone, and, while she agreed that I had been done a very bad turn, she then said, "You know, the important thing is to put up with it." Oh, you women of the second half of last century. How wise you are. How unironically, abysmally wise.

I went to the gym. I didn't, like, hit a heavy bag or anything. It wasn't some cliché fitness montage from an '80s movie about sisters doing it for themselves. I just went to the gym. Because I feel better about myself when I go to the gym. And because I would rather run for a long time than hit something. I have a bad elbow and can't risk losing my trackball hand. I bought a new pair of Nike+ Shox, and I was ever-so-pleased to wear them today. The other pair of Nike+ shoes I have been wearing have been giving me blisters. This pair was heaven. But I forgot to put the Nike+ sensor in the insole, so when I got on the treadmill, I realized I was going to run these four miles and not get any credit for them. I don't publicize my Nike+ profile, and no one buys me a pie when I run a certain number of miles at a certain pace. But once I started using the device, I immediately became obsessive about getting credit for all the running I do and not accidentally recording my pace when I'm just slowly walking around. I don't know why I care. I was so sorry about missing this day's run (and the run I did the first time I used the device when I just plain used it wrong) that I started devising a plan to make Jessie wear it for me for two workouts, so I could just take credit for her exercise, even though she doesn't do the same exercise routine that I do. Because I can't ever make up the difference. Any exercise I do from now on needs to be tracked as its actual self. I realized as I was planning this caper that this must be the Mary Forrest version of an endorphin high. Which makes sense. Other people feel euphoria. I experience a temporary personality disorder.

But I do know that this mechanism is effective with me. Now that I'm getting this fictitious credit for my running, I am anxious to go in and get what's coming to me. It's crazy that this would have any impact on my behavior. I make a sport of finding ways to disassemble persuasive tactics being used on me by people and marketing campaigns. Ho ho, you're not going to get one past me, buddy. But then all of a sudden, I'm looking forward to running. That's just absurd. I hate running. Everyone does. I only do it because it's one of the few fitness activities I know how to do and which doesn't require a partner. Because I'm also largely anti-social when it comes to fitness. I'm too self-conscious to take a class, because I can't help but look like a fool. And I also don't like to be "motivated" by the shame I feel when someone is better at something than I am. Sucking at tennis won't make me want to learn to play tennis better. Sucking at tennis will make me want to do something else. Like go for a gelato. I really (and sort of uncannily) enjoy movies about sports, but I would make a terrible sports movie. Unless you like the idea of a sports movie about an unsuccessful would-be athlete who just gives up. I know you're thinking this story was already told in the film Ice Castles, but in that movie, that girl was actually a good skater at first, and then she went blind. So it's not just your typical tale of a quitter. Plus, I think in the end, she skates again. Which makes no sense at all. As she is blind at that point. And there's nothing better to do when blind than high-speed dance maneuvers on a surface with dramatically reduced friction.

To refer back to my earlier comment about being anti-social when it comes to fitness, I should clarify. I'm largely anti-social when it comes to everything. I know it doesn't seem like it. But I told Rob today that I watch a movie like I Am Legend and a part of me goes, "Yeah! Finally! They're all gone!" Because much of the time, I don't like people. I like specific people, sure. I mean, I'd like the earth to be emptied of its denizens except for the fifty or sixty -- wait, let's up that to eighty or a hundred, my birthday is coming up and I want there to be more than fifty people there, so my math must be off -- ones I love. I'm even willing to throw in a handful of people I don't like, because there's nothing terribly entertaining about spending eternity with a bunch of people you like. There has to be some drama to keep things interesting. And a good portion of my friends like me specifically for my aptitude for pointing out what should be disliked about other people. It's a gift.

The only sad part about this admission is that it's probably not really true. I am good at pointing out what should be frowned upon in other people. But I think for the most part, I'm pretty generally nice to nearly everyone. I even give money to homeless people. And not just because they have "insulted" me with a lewd overture. And I feel bad when I hear that something unpleasant has happened to someone. Even if it's an awful person. Because I am detrimentally empathetic, and I always imagine what it would feel like to be in someone else's shoes. And sometimes that means wondering what it feels like to wear a very old pair of Sperry Top-Siders that should obviously have been discarded years ago. The one exception to the empathy thing is Howard Glenn, my former Farmers Insurance agent. About whom I have repeatedly said I think he may be dead now and I hope that he is. I guess if I actually learned he was dead or if a member of his family who had not been mistreated by him the way I was read this, it would make me feel bad, but in terms of my own personal experience with him, I hope he is dead, and I hope it was not a clean exit. I'm sorry to have to say that, but he really was horrible. I insure with State Farm now. And even though my first agent Kimyee Ross was a horrible human being (who I also hope is dead now), my current agent (whose name I forget) is actually a lovely person, and I welcome his computer-generated birthday and holiday cards each time they arrive.

I have a big glass of whiskey sitting to my left. The heat from the computer will probably help the ice to melt. I need the ice to melt a little before I can truly enjoy it. I have been suffering from a half-cold the past week or so. It's mostly a very constricted throat, swollen glands, and an occasional cough. And the throat constriction seems to limit itself to mornings and nighttime. So you wake up feeling like utter crap and you stay home from work, but then by mid-day you think, what a waste, I'm actually okay. And then by evening, when you're thinking you deserve a night out, your throat starts to swell up again. Perhaps this is a new strain of virus intended to get you fired and end your relationship. P.S. There's no need to post a bunch of comments telling me to take this or that or to look up the symptoms of strep throat or what-have-you. I'm one of those people who likes to list all of her problems but has no real interest in actually solving them. You would hate me if you knew me.

It's been gloomy and all-of-a-sudden cold these past few days. The weekend before last was hot enough to provoke news stories about it. And two weekends before that, we celebrated Beulah's birthday with a bang-up weekend at Disneyland and the Disneyland Hotel, and it was literally over one hundred degrees. I don't know why I feel the need to say "literally." I guess I assume you will think I'm lying. I'm not prone to exaggerate, though. You should give me the benefit of the doubt. My point is just that only a week or so ago, I was wearing summer clothes to work because it was unbearably hot. And people noticed I'd gotten sun over the weekend, because my shoulders were completely bare. Which wouldn't happen in an office setting with me, except that the office where I work is not outfitted with any modern temperature control system, and sometimes Hollywood is about as hot as a motherfucker. Anyway, it's been a lot of up and down. And it's been hard to be prudent about what to wear and how many covers to throw off when sleeping. And the result is what seems like a summer cold but whose symptoms seem to linger in the throat part more than usual. I'm supposed to sing in church for Mother's Day, and I think I might legitimately have an out this time. I will not, however, be making any excuses to get out of the pricey brunch I've planned for my family. Swanky living does not prerequire health. Plenty of swanky people are about to keel over dead. Healthy living, by contrast, is generally not swanky at all. On account of the wheat grass juice and kinesis classes.

At the end of April, I was beginning to feel that rush to post something. To make the month less bare. I obviously place too much stock in keeping things even. The older I get, the more I wish I had started watching Monk when it first aired.

But I missed the rush. And suddenly it was May. And May carries birthdays and holidays and excuses for raising a glass. I don't hate May. I would say May is generally kind to me. November has long been my favorite, but it has no business to be. November has frequently been peppered with tragedy for me, but somehow the smell of fireplaces trumps that. I don't pretend to make sense. I just know I pay for web hosting, so I am allowed to say all of this here.

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:00 PM | Back to Monoblog

Absence of Altitude

I didn't do anything for St. Patrick's Day this year. I was working. I planned to go to San Diego for Cinco de Mayo today. But work interfered again. I had a nice enough time. But it wasn't any of the traditional merrymaking. And I think what I notice I miss the most is the unfailing sense of expectation that these various co-opted celebrations would hold some amount of epiphany for me. It's the equation that enables one to look forward. Maybe something will happen. Maybe I will experience something new. Maybe I will re-experience something I once thought wonderful. Trite as it seems, some of the time it's as basic as thinking, maybe this time I'll get a really good drunk on. It's been a long time since I've had one of those.

Tonight, Stacey asked me if I like poetry. I made light of it. But inside, I was thinking, I remember when I felt like I was made of poetry. Now, I'm just made of sentences. Many of which have been said before.

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:22 PM | Back to Monoblog

Rabbit's Foot

It's hard to be impressed with the acting of someone you know. You've seen them making fun of other people. You know what foods they like and whether they eat popcorn in a theater like a decent civilized person or like a starving fiend with a vacuum throat. You know they would make fun of you if you were trying to recite Shakespeare in front of them and take it all seriously, and you would return the favor. That's what friends do. Not respect one another's creative efforts. Right?

I started a blog a while ago about how hard it is to believe in the performances of people you know when you see them on television or in movies. Now that I live in the fictitious city of Hollywood (and technically I live a smidge outside of Hollywood proper, so even here I'm being fraudulent), I know all sorts of people who act for a living. And I see them in movies and in commercials and in television shows. And as generous as I try to be, I often find myself looking at my friends and thinking I can see through them in some way. Not all of them. But some of them. Particularly those who are called upon to convince me that they are eating something really delicious or that they are surprised by something.

I met Tom Cruise last weekend. (P.S. He's as nice as you like and not at all gay-seeming. And Katie Holmes and little Suri are also delightful and lovely) And maybe it's because I've never hung out with him properly -- because I haven't seen him get super REAL on me -- but I'm watching Mission Impossible III now and I have to say, the rule doesn't really apply to him. I believe he's Ethan Hunt, and I believe he's very upset all the time. And I'll bet if he was trying to convince me that a sandwich was really good, I'd think about buying it. As long as it didn't have a lot of onions on it.

Caveat: I've neither met nor hung out with Ving Rhames, but I can totally tell he's faking.

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:45 PM | Back to Monoblog

Redefining Edible

Jessie told me about a class she took where she and her fellow students would try and come up with the grossest possible combinations of food only to have their instructor taste their concoctions and say, "Ooh, I really like this." I asked Jessie for an example of "gross." She said they made, for instance, a "dessert soup" that was mostly melted orange sherbet. I said, "That doesn't sound GOOD, but it doesn't sound gross." And it made me realize that whenever someone starts telling a story involving purportedly gross food, I feel as if I'm being challenged. What will they think if they learn that I eat animal innards all the time. That I have sweetbreads and pork brains in my freezer AT THIS VERY MOMENT. I'm not trying to win a trophy. But I have very few powers left, and this is one I feel I will carry with me to my grave.

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:31 PM | Back to Monoblog

This time it was a song on t.v., and I couldn't make out the words.

It's almost always going to be a music cue or a scent or a particular appearance of the moon that makes me decide I have to hurry up and write what I'm thinking. But more often than not recently, I convince myself before even approaching the page that whatever I'm about to write I've already written. I'm losing confidence that I'm capable of original thought. If only because I've plumbed the depths so thoroughly in past compositions.

Speaking of plumbing, perhaps I can answer a question publicly that I was asked privately. My friend Kristen Herman, upon the decision to get married recently, was Googling images with the terms "60s wedding hair," and the very first image to pop up was one of me. A photo called wedding_hair.jpg that I took before my sister's wedding last October, because I had just gotten a haircut and desired to show it off. Weird, yes. And only one of many cases where someone writes to me and says something like, "I was googling plumb bobs for my old cast iron tub and you were one of the sites that returned." That's a real one. See for yourself.

05.18.2007 Michael N.
I was googling plumb bobs for my old cast iron tub and you were one of
the sites that returned. Plumb bobs. Now I'm reading your archive
about Disneyland after the election, the fragility of life and fruity
pebbles. Go figure.

7.5.2007 Mark S.
This is to let you know that I landed on your archive page via a Google search for something entirely unrelated, and hung around enough to find
I enjoy the hell out of your writing. I was all disappointed that it
ended in early 2005, then followed the URL back to its root and found
you were still around. Yay!

05.31.2007 Jon T.
I ran across your home page while googling stuff for
work... its very interesting... not a big photography
buff, but I enjoy it from time to time....

My question is, how come you have a few of those
picture sites blocked?

04.11.2007 John
Stumbled onto your "double bird at disneyland" photo after a google
search for something waaay different. Sweet! That's the standard
greeting at *************.net. People with attitude are more
interesting! Anyway, nice photo!

02.01.2007 Ray A.
Hi,
Obviously you don't know me, but I was originally going to try and sign your
guest book after I accidentally ran into your web page- I was doing a search
on Ketel One images and your picture was in the bunch so I looked- and I
just wanted to compliment you on your page and how fascinating it...you are.
I don't know how up-to-date it is, but regardless, you seem like a very
interesting and colorful person...like you needed a stranger to tell you
that. Thanks for taking the time to read this and again, very nice
webpage...and you're pretty cute too. Take care.


01.17.2007 Megan E.
More! I want more True Life Adventures. Your writing seems to have
changed a little since you last wrote in that link, (have you become
more melancholy because of the season or maturity?) but I'd still like
to read them and laugh.

Your fan,
A girl/woman/lady?/person in Nashville who happened upon your page when
Googling for quotable lines from Audrey Hepburn

06.30.2006 Jerry D.
Hi Mary:
I'm a new fan of Mary Forrest. I'm not generally an internet time wasting kind of guy. I don't seek out blogs, I don't "IM" unless it's business. I did all that back in '96 when I worked for an Internet start-up (that never did). I am a professional cartoonist (5 strips), illustrator, commercial artist type guy and father of three...so I don't have lots of time to spend online doing diversionary stuff. Heck, I don't even have time to write this letter! But I wanted to write and say thanks. I was searching for an architect font (sure you're not surprised) and accidentally fell into a nice comfy limbo called maryforrest.com for the past forty five minutes reading and getting to know (in a very shallow sense) you from what you've written. What I got from it is that you're a funny, talented, insightful, caring, cultured, real kind of person...if someone who I didn't know thought nice stuff like that about me I'd like to hear it...so there you are. Thanks!

02.28.2006 An Amazon Marketplace Purchase
Hi Mary, Thanks for reponding so quickly. After sending the previous email, I noticed that you have a website, so I checked it out for the hell of it. Not at all what I expected. Very cool. For the record, Don Knotts was one of my favs as well, bless his heart. Perhaps we can contact him via Count Von Delecky. Easily my favorite Andy Griffith episode of all time. Anyway, thanks, Keith

04.26.2005 Will S.
Hello Mary Forrest!
I decided to update my fonts when I came across your website and haven't
been able to leave. I should be working, but I just had to drop you a line
or 2.

First of all, I'm very impressed with your writing skills, do you write
for a living or just for whacky entertainment?

Secondly, your eloquence of the written word is surpassed only by your
beauty. I don't think I've met your parents, but they should get some kind
of trophy or something for having such a good-looking daughter. I once had
a pet rabbit that was cute, but not really good- looking and I have a
stapler that's good-looking, but certainly not cute. Yet, you have
accomplished both!

Thirdly, well I'm not sure if you can even have a thirdly, let alone a
fourthly or fifthly.

Wow, a bird just flew over my head and bonked into the window...and I'm
indoors! Good thing I have a hat on.

05.11.2005 Sean S.
Hi. I just stumbled onto your blog via a vaguely embarrassing Google
search. I haven't had the chance to delve deeply, but the blog is full
of interesting keywords. Plus you're not too hard to look at,
especially with the new do. So I thought I'd say hi.

Sean

06.19.2007 Richard T.
Just wanted to say that I "stumbled" across your site whilst looking for
something else - as things happen web-wise - there's something very
fascinating and compelling about you. Currently enjoying my way through
your pictures and "what we can do for you". Wash your car ? Why not.
Thanks, Richard.

12.16.2007 Nathan D.
Hello,
You don't know me, but I wanted to say hi. The internet search engine is a strange and wondrous tool, it can bring you the most relevant information to your fingertips, or it can lead you down a twisty, curvy path to things you never expected. Earlier today I was googling for information on old 1950s Air Force fighter jets (that's my current research project) and for some inexplicable reason it popped up a picture of some woman giving the double-bird to the camera. For some equally unexplainable reason, I clicked on that picture and it eventually led me to maryforrest.com.

Now, you'd think that as soon as I realized that your website did not, in fact, contain any references to the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak all-weather interceptor fighter jet, I would have clicked off and gone about my merry way. But, instead, I started looking around your site, and before long, an hour had passed... (a lot more stuff was said, but there's no need to reprint all of it)

PS. You don't happen to have a list of serial numbers for F-84F ADC units serving with the 116th Fighter Squadron based at Larson AFB between 1952 and 1958, do you? :)

02.22.2008 Anders P.
Hello.
My name is Anders and I live in Norway. It's 8 am and I've been awake all night and thought about why I don't always get the most out of life and why I have trouble doing things. I am lazy. I googled this. I googled "I am lazy". Your blog post on laziness came up on the google results so I clicked it. Now, I don't have a full time job as of now, I am currently unemployed at the old old age of 23, but I have an obligation in my capoeira group. It's a brazilian martial art. They seem to dump more and more responsibility on me that I'm not supposed to take on and I feel bad if I say no. I'm going to try that next time. Say no instead of having to teach five 2 hour long capoeira classes a week because I don't want to. Thank you for opening my eyes. I've been aware of it for a while, but this time I've pretty much had it.

I tried to be short and to the point because this might not be the most interesting thing you'll read this week. I just wanted you to know that your bhlawging has been read and appreciated.

03.15.2008 Mark B.
Mary,
not long ago i had a dream and the only part of it that stuck with me was the phrase "a lonely refrigerator in winter". anyway for what ever reason (perhaps hoping that i had found the key to a societal subconscious) i google imaged the phrase.... and stumbled onto your photo thus discovering your blog. at a glance i noticed that it went back many moons, at which point i decided to see the rest of what proved to be a very interesting web site. so i started to peruse and then i felt.... i dunno, i cant find the word for it.

There are lots of others. Over the years, it's mostly been, "I was looking for fonts, and then I found you." Or something to that effect. When I cruise my site analytics, I see unusual search terms from time to time. I wrote about some of them in a blog that appears somewhere on this page. Those included:

"pork mary forrest"
"36-25-36 filipino"
"red light district"
"eternal punishment"
"a poem of the mahabharata"

I guess the answer is there's no real science or logic to it. Every now and then, someone will get an inexplicable urge to Google "a sort of buttery beige" or "Tri-Ominos is a funny reference," and Google will return links to old blogs of mine. And that person may or may not read what I wrote. And they may or may not scratch their head over the number of photos there are of me to look at. And they may or may not write to me and tell me about it. And the fact that any of it happens is a curious wonder to me, and I have no feelings of shame. Even when the people who do write to me offer diagnoses about what's wrong with me or what causes me to expose my brain (and occasionally other parts of me) like so many breasts and buttocks immortalized in marble in the fountains of the Roman piazzas. Piazza Navona is my favorite, but I only saw it at night. We were on our way to eat at the one Chinese restaurant we could find. It was owned and operated by native Chinese people who had immigrated from China, so we were dismayed to find that all the food still tasted like cacciatore. And what's weird -- and perhaps a tidy way of getting back to what I was saying in paragraph one -- is that I'm pretty certain I've already written about that event. If I didn't already write about it, I must have talked about it so much that it feels like old news. I don't even have ideas anymore. And I'm pretty sure I've written that sentence before, too.

Later that night, we went back to our hotel room, where my parents and Beulah each slept in tiny twin beds, and I slept on an arm chair that folded out into a very uncomfortable cot. The walls had plush paper on them. The bathroom had a showerhead right above the toilet and a drain in the floor beneath. After everyone had bathed, the entire room was dripping wet. So when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, my socks met with a cold puddle and it couldn't have been more than a fraction of a second later that my face squinched up the way it does when something is awful or unpleasant.

I guess the trick is to just sit down and write something. Even if I'm just writing about how I have nothing to write about. I'm not saying this is a great blog. I'm just saying it's not the same as a blank page.

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:02 PM | Back to Monoblog

O dreaded expectoration

I came back from Seattle with a bit of a sore throat. It started in the airport where Rob and I almost casually missed our flight home because the time on his iPhone was wrong. By the time I went to sleep last night, cold medicine coursing through my body in whatever way cold medicine does that, my throat felt like it had closed up completely, and the discomfort of feeling gunk in it caused me to spend the better part of the night making sounds that might mean something in Kinitawowi. I am not a fan of mouth noises. Nor throat noises. Nor nose noises. Even -- or perhaps especially -- when they are coming from me. I beg the universe's forgiveness, in case it was listening.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:11 PM | Back to Monoblog

Revivalist

Something about that night made me think of you. Of me thinking of you on some other similar night. A similar amount of rain and cold and wind in the seams of a house not built to keep things like wind out. I thought I should go get my notebook and write down a reminder that I had thought that very thing. But I had just gotten back from Hawaii, and my notebook was still packed in a suitcase, and I trusted myself to remember. Typically, when I trust myself to remember a thing I meant to write down, I lose it almost immediately. But not so completely as to not be plagued periodically with that nagging sense that there's something I can't quite remember and I will never be able to get it right. For some reason, this time, that sentence kept reappearing in my mind. Enough times to even survive the spell when I convinced myself it was no longer worth writing. Surviving into the gentler welcome of my recommitment to its truth. "Something about that night made me think of you." Even remembering the sentence reminded me of the cold and the rain and the absence of the nightlight.

I always had a nightlight on back then. The bulbs all seem to burn out now, though. Even when I replace them. None of it works anymore. So the room is dark. Instead of murky with shadows. Light and shadow pointing up the places where the plaster has been patched. Parts of the ceiling I once planned to dress up with fancy fabrics and unusual light fixtures. But I was never able to buy a step ladder that was tall enough to help me reach the ceiling but not so tall that I couldn't fit it in my car. I guess I've since gotten one. But I no longer have that red fabric inspiration. Or the certainty that I will be here for very long. I bought moisturizer on eBay because it's no longer available retail. A specific moisturizer that I used a while ago. A smell I liked right off. A smell that makes memories of mornings and making up. The face. Not the other kind. I used it sparingly. I have so many choices on my dressing table that I seldom use anything up very quickly. And by the time it was all gone, they didn't make it anymore. And I was sad about it and kept the bottle because there were dregs in it, and it still smelled the way it smells. Now I buy it discontinued on the internet, but I can't make new memories with it. I can only remember thinking how nice it smelled when everything else was different. Sometimes I can remember some of what happened around that thought. "Oh, what a lovely scent. Is it really St. Patrick's Day already?" "Mm, I like the way my face smells. Two tickets for Minority Report, please." It's like a mild cohesive force. The thing that makes the meniscus in a graduated cylinder. This memory stuck to this other one. Just when I was pulling away. Just a bit of it.

I kept a bar of soap that smelled perfectly like chamomile tea. It was long since discontinued when I realized how much I liked it. And then I spent years -- literally, years -- buying every kind of chamomile-scented soap hoping to find that scent again. I never have. I did the same thing with my memory of the scent of the shampoo we got when we stayed at the New Sanno Hotel in Tokyo. I loved the way that shampoo smelled. And I loved the time I had when its smell was in my hair.

I still have the mostly-melted bar of soap. I don't know why I keep it. It's part of how I catch threads of things and hope to keep them going for longer than they can. Trying to sustain things. Wishing things would never end. Wishing the sun wouldn't come up or go down. Wishing for long stretches of uninterruptedness wherein there is something worth keeping alive afoot. I take pictures as a means of being able to go back. Writing things down is the same. Buying extra copies of things just in case one runs out. Stocking up for the day when my memory starts to go.

The things that used to be automatically precious don't seem to be anymore. My standards have changed. I don't even feel guilt about not helping prepare Thanksgiving dinner. I sit still and let someone else do things sometimes. I sit very still sometimes. And not just when someone comes to the door.

I'm weary of always saying the same things.

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

Hangover F. Tompkins

I don't actually have a hangover. But I probably should. I sure drank a lot last night at the renaissance of The Paul F. Tompkins Show at Largo. It was cold and wet outside, so it was easy to seek comfort in glass after glass of Irish whiskey. I don't need excuses. I don't know why I should pretend to operate within the coolness of the shade they provide.

I was so (selfishly) glad to hear that Paul was bringing the show back. It was Martín's and my standing date the last Monday of every month for years. And then it ended in late 2006. After a period during which I had had to miss many of the shows anyway. So there has been a dearth of this tradition, and I'm terribly pleased to revive it. I've gotten to know so many people who work on and come to the show that it's like a reunion every time. And this one was all the more rewarding, as I've not seen many of these people since October of 2006. The most missed of which was Paul himself.

Have you ever had that feeling when you can't laugh hard enough? There is that scene in Scarface when the guy is about to get chopped up with a chainsaw, and his mouth is taped up, and you can see that behind the duct-taped silence, he's screaming as loud as he can. I don't know where that instinct comes from, but I do think that horrible things are altogether more horrible if you are robbed of your ability to let everyone nearby know it. That happens to me in dreams sometime. Also the thing where you can't run fast enough and you actually try and make yourself go faster by pulling on the edges of buildings. Like swimming. Anyway, my point is, sometimes I feel that way when something is so very funny, that I can't seem to get the relief(?) that laughing typically provides by merely laughing. This happens a lot at The Paul F. Tompkins Show.

Oh, my god. I almost accidentally watched Norbit. Crisis averted. Relief. Empire Strikes Back is halfway over but still. How are the whites of Yoda's eyes so white? No amount of Visine affords me that luxury for very long. It's dusk in Cloud City. What was I saying? Oh, right.

Sometimes Paul is so funny that I'm appalled at my inadequate ability to express amusement. Having expelled all the air in my lungs and heartily slapped my knees, having made eye contact with friends and established visually that we both think that was a good one -- it almost seems cruel for someone to be so funny that I'm left to evaluate my own impotence. But maybe this is more my problem than his.

Sometimes I think I like traditions. And sometimes I think I don't. Sometimes having a standing appointment with a good time feels like an oppressive obligation. And sometimes, saying such things makes a person sound like a sociopath. I remember having a standing appointment with The Paul F. Tompkins Show. And I'm glad it's back on the calendar. No matter how many Largo entrées I have to pretend I've eaten.

Labels: comedy, Paul F. Tompkins, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:41 PM | Back to Monoblog

Hello. I'm going to bed now.

This may seem luxurious, but it's actually not. I've been working for twenty-four hours straight. And, yes, it's part of my Navy Seals training.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:50 AM | Back to Monoblog

For the World Is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky.

Another night when I'm up for the duration. Last night, I was working until 7:30 in the morning. It was in the wee hours of that stretch that I watched the Star Trek episode whose title I have poached.

I'm up all night tonight again. And I'm even further behind than I was last night. The price of leaving town and never being willing to say, "That deadline is impossible, sir. How dare you."

A year came and went. I had far less to say about it than in previous years. I did much more of my talking out loud. Or in my head. And less with my fingers. But it's not like I don't think things when I'm not typing them. For instance, I wonder if we can credit the writers' strike with the end of Stephen Colbert's bid for the presidency. And how will it eventually effect the elections to not have had live and/or timely satire on television every night reminding us not to let politicians get away with things they shouldn't get away with and hopefully shaming us into not doing anything stupid. I don't care much for awards shows, but I suppose we'll be missing out on at least a few celebrity social admonitions. I also wonder about how much chlorine there is in my tap water, because it sure smells of it. And I wonder what the value of a DVD collection is when all I do is watch whatever is on. And at these shoulder-stooping hours, there's very little on that's worth the electricity. Or that I haven't already seen.

I kept hearing a few people say they couldn't believe that it was 2008. And I have to categorically disagree. Because 2007 felt like a very long year. Not necessarily full. But long. And I hope it isn't a trend that my age will perpetuate. Because I would like 2008 to be somewhat less of a grind. But I'm very willing to admit that I'm no little ray of sunshine. And I seldom look back on a year and think, "Hey, wow! Now, that was something, wasn't it?" Mostly, I just look forward to the new stamps.

I never got a chance to send out holiday cards this season. And I bought some really nice ones, too. I guess you shouldn't be surprised if you end up getting a nice holiday card sometime in March. I'm not strict about things like that.

I like the winter months in Los Angeles. My first year in Los Angeles began in the fall. And it was in the early months after the calendar had turned when I finally realized I lived here and that it was okay to put nails in the walls. In the winter months, you can walk down a city street for lunch or coffee and not feel the grit accumulating on your ever-moistening brow. In the winter months, there's probably still plenty of grit, but you can't really feel it as much.

The rains have come, and the skies are clear. And you can see forever if you want to. Or you can close your eyes and see everything else.

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:01 AM | Back to Monoblog

From the annals of bad product naming

I just heard a commercial for an acid reflux medication called AcipHex. I realize it contains part of the word "acid" and all of the initials "pH," but basically, in the human ear, it sounds like "ass effects." And the commercial ends with a web address and the exhortation to find out if "ass effects is right for you." Notwithstanding the inappropriate singular predicate one must excuse in order to join me in my juvenile tittering, I was amused.

And, yes, I used "annals" in the title and "tittering" in the previous sentence. But that's just coincidence. I don't make puns. I just make fun of homophones. And, yes, I know I just said "homophones"...

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:08 PM | Back to Monoblog

Overheard at A Very Forrest Thanksgiving

The following is my annual Thanksgiving email message, which I sent on Thanksgiving Day but which encountered so many server-based complications that I can't be sure if you received four copies of it or if you received it at all.

"I don't care if you have Down's Syndrome. If you're rude, you're rude." I'm not lying. Someone actually said this. And, yes, he was talking about Corky from "Life Goes On."

Anyway.

Dear ones,

I almost didn't manage to get a Thanksgiving message out this year, if that can be believed. I'm visiting in San Diego and staying in my parents' grandly-appointed guest house which is truly grandly-appointed except in the sense that the wireless internet connection is almost impossible for me to pick up. So for the past couple of days, I have been unable to check my mail, unable to make any moves on Scrabulous, and apparently unwilling to carry my Powerbook over to the main house and use the internet connection I am using now.

Don't worry. I don't think you spend the remaining 364 days each year waiting to hear whatsarcastic gratitude I will offer you on this day (or technically the day before on most occasions). I don't have that kind of ego. I don't even think you're still reading now. I should have said more about how important you are to me in the first paragraph. Or maybe in the
subject line.

In any case, I hope your Thanksgiving was gravy-laden and wonder-filled. And if you ate too much, I hope you didn't spend the rest of the day telling everyone that you did. It's not important. Give yourself a break.

Here is my traditional list of demands. This year's list may be slightly less thank-themed. Mainly because I've already eaten the bird.

1. Look sharp. It's worth it.

2. Give something a chance. Peace. A TV show. A nap. You might be surprised how things turn out.

3. Get over the early appearance of Christmas decorations. It is officially okay for there to be snowmen and Santas on drug store windows. Let it go.

4. Mind your manners. Even if you're with your family.

5. I'm not going to ask you to not get murdered this year. If you can't do this without my reminding you, maybe you just don't want it enough.

My family said grace while I was away from the table trying to catch my errant dog. And we didn't do the traditional "What I'm thankful for" confessional this year, for some reason. So in an attempt to salvage some of the solemnity of a huge meal for Pocahontas' birthday, let me just say that I am thankful for you. And I hope I'm reaching you at the correct address.

Mary Forrest, thanks you

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:38 AM | Back to Monoblog

Accidental Beer

I didn't mean to have a beer. I was getting Audrey's food out of the refrigerator, and I knocked over an Asahi, and it tumbled to the floor and began spitting out fizz. So I opened it and poured its remaining contents into a glass. And even though I was up working until 5:30 a.m., and I'm very tired and not in any way in need of a beer, I'm watching "By Any Other Name" and thinking about drinking anyway, and it's not as if I could WASTE it.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:42 PM | Back to Monoblog

"Jam a bastard in it, you crap!"

Friday nights are bad for me and my serial crime dramas. USA is playing National Treasure. TNT is playing Titanic. I won't lie to you. I ended up watching National Treasure.

You know, I can't even get the vintage icebox door in my kitchen to close fully, it's been painted over so many times and has a crusty old gasket that no longer offers any give. Am I really meant to believe that all of these secret mechanisms built hundreds of years ago still work? You push a button and a secret stone door just pries itself free of the years of decrepit build-up. You stick a pipe in a hole and -- Bob's your uncle -- another stone door swings free. Plus, there's plenty of lamp oil.

One of the perks offered by this broadcast is an opportunity to view exclusive scenes from the soon-to-be-released sequel to this movie. Trust me. It's not as big a prize as you might hope. And Nicholas Cage's hair is really looking absurd. Weirdly overdark and no sideburns at all. Sort of floppy on top like an old-fashioned monk. But I guess there are only so many ways to dress a head.

This movie August Rush looks pretty stupid, too.

I used to detest the idea of weekend warriordom. So I shouldn't be upset when Friday isn't ever the end of my work week. I'd love a weekend to just fuck off and not do anything that was DUE. But I seldom get that. The worst part is how bad Friday night television is. Mainly television knows that only lame-o's and shut-ins are home on Fridays, so why program anything but garbage for them? They won't make a fuss. But now Garth Marenghi's "Darkplace" is on Adult Swim. I have nothing more to say in the voice of complaint.

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:09 PM | Back to Monoblog

Swell

The moon looks a lot like Mac Tonight tonight. I noticed it when I went out with Audrey. In the five o'clock hour, it's already night time, and I like that.

Last night, I went to see No Country for Old Men (loved it). Last week, I saw The Mist (hated it) and American Gangster (loved it). So far, I'm winning. I was supposed to go see Star Trek "The Menagerie" Parts 1 and 2 tonight in a fancy HD screening, but I've barely been off the phone or away from my computer today and couldn't get ready in time. Maybe it's a draw.

Do I dare to fry an egg?

I made a sandwich and grilled it in a pan. And now I smell like a sandwich. My aversion to smelling like food is largely responsible for my not cooking as much at home anymore. My kitchen has no real ventilation. I made lamb chops the other night, and the house smelled of lamb chops for two days. I sat in a Popeye's Chicken last night for a half hour or so and didn't actually touch any food, but I went home smelling of fried chicken. I walk into a diner where the grill is right out in the middle of the place, and I cringe knowing that I'm going to smell like breakfast until I scrub it from my skin and rinse it from my hair. I wonder if anyone else in the world is as sensitive to this as I am. And I wonder why I care about this so much. My family enjoys lavish meals prepared by my mother, and the house is deluged in delicious smells. And I love to cook. I even love to barbecue. But don't try and get me to go out after I've doused the coals or closed the gas valves. I can't go out into the world knowing someone might smell me passing and wrinkle their nose. I also don't like smelling like the beach. Or the outdoors in general. Maybe I'm afraid I will be mistaken for homeless.

Do I dare to eat a peach? Yes. As long as the peach isn't deep-fried, and as long as I can eat it in a venue where no cooking is being done. And if that means eating it al fresco, then I will have to eat it quickly enough to not end up smelling like the air in which I dine.

P.S. I'm not that big a fan of peaches, either.

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:41 PM | Back to Monoblog

Neverending Stories

I have kept my working self company these past few days with movie after movie after movie. A visit to the theater to be disappointed by Eric Idle's writing but impressed with his friends' performances. Then more movies. And then some syndicated crime dramas.

Marie Antoinette - I disliked it so much, I stopped watching a short time after the coronation. The storytelling is just so juvenile. And Jason Schwartzman's performance is absurd.

Glory Road - For a non-sports nut like myself, it's surprising how easily I get sucked in by these true-life stories of underdogs going the distance. But I still wonder why Jon Voight has turned into Lon Chaney like he has. He must really like having prosthetics made for his nose and ears. It's fascinating.

Blood Diamond - I didn't like it all that much. It wasn't TERRIBLE, but it wasn't all that great. And it definitely felt like a movie with all the conveniences of storytelling timing. Like the gun-toting boy soldiers arriving in truck caravans every single time Leonardo di Caprio and/or Djimon Hounsou are found standing on a road somewhere and shooting the town to bits.

The Last King of Scotland - I'm surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. I actually tend not to want to go to see movies where everyone looks sweaty and miserable or incredibly dirty. Hideous Kinky may be a fine performance from Kate Winslet, but there are few things less appealing to me than watching voluntarily dirty people get their freak on. That sex scene in Enemy at the Gates gets a pass from me, because I'm sure they would rather have been clean. And frankly that scene turns me on, despite my many unreasonable rules. So anyway movies set in Africa are a hard sell no matter what. But I really liked this one. And it looks like James McAvoy is on a roll, right? There's also a fairly hot sex scene in this one, but the aftermath is rather grisly.

Hideous Kinky - See above.

Because I Said So - Oh, my god, this movie is inexcusable. No one in it deserves to find love or happiness. It makes me wonder if aliens have infiltrated our world and are going to systematically kill off our species by crippling us completely in the rites of courtship. Sure, it's the long way round, but maybe turning us into red jelly is too messy for them.

The Shawshank Redemption - After spending the past few days gnashing my teeth about how bad The Mist was, I guess I had to remind myself why Frank Darabont ever got into my good books. I watch this movie a lot. And you know me. The more I look at something, the more justification I find for picking it apart. I've already become critical of the scene in the library when Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins talk to each other through the bookshelves in this plainly choreographed dance. This time, I got a little picky about the scene when Gil Bellows is telling Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman about his former cellmate, and he's straddling a chair backwards as Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman stand in front of him, arms folded, looking on. Fake fake fake. But whatever. It suspended my disbelief for many years. That's no small feat.

The Wizard of Oz - I used to wait for this to come on TV every year. And now you can see it four times a day on TNT. I was telling Rob the other day about the cinematic loss of innocence I experienced when -- finally able to watch The Wizard of Oz recorded on Betamax from its television broadcast -- I watched it over and over and over again one summer. And one day, all of a sudden, I noticed the seam of the backdrop that Dorothy and friends would obviously skip right into if the camera kept rolling. It was a watershed moment.

A Night at the Museum - I wasn't going to watch this movie. Ever. But when it started, the Alan Silvestri score was good. So I decided to leave it on. Movies are mostly for listening anyway, when I'm working. It's a pretty stupid movie. But I don't think anyone is surprised by that.

Midnight Run - For some reason, I have no problem watching this movie again and again. It's charming to me in some way. The nitpickier me would poke many a hole in the tactics used to keep the dramatic plates spinning, but I guess if you can get away with fashioning an entire score from riffing on a single Oingo Boingo song and still make it work, I have to tip my hat.

And now Neil Patrick Harris is on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, playing a guy who lobotomizes girls by drilling holes in their skulls and pouring hot water on their brains so he can cuddle with them. What a weekend! And I only wish "weekend" began with an "n," so I could say that line the way Ray Bolger says, "Beautiful! What a n-echo!" when he raps on the chest of the Tin Man.

I still have so much work to do. I have no business telling you any of this.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:30 PM | Back to Monoblog

Do not go Elizabeth Taylor-ly into that good night.

Has Marlo Thomas had a stroke? She's on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit at the moment, and her face looks a mess. Tom Skerritt and Barry Bostwick have aged remarkably well in comparison. (They're both in this episode, too. I'm not just pulling their faces out of my brain for no reason.) Oh, men. How easy you have it. With the exception perhaps of Peter O'Toole and Sylvester Stallone, I don't see all that many dudes trying to pull off the plastic nightmare. Men get to balden their pates and leather their faces, and unless they get terribly fat (and that's key), no one of either gender seems to mind. In Tom Skerritt's case, I think aging was the best choice he could have made. As a young man, he always looked like a greasy dirtbag to me. But by Picket Fences, he could have taken me to any prom of his choosing.

But women. Poor women.

Incidentally, if Marlo Thomas has in fact had a stroke, I am an ass.

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:24 PM | Back to Monoblog

Temple of the Bleeding Hands

I keep noticing cuts on my hands. Bloody fingers brushing up against light-colored clothing. Curses ensuing. I think it's happening because I broke a glass in my sink last week and it's possible some of the glass remained in the sink, and maybe when I cleaned the sink with the sponge I use to wash dishes, the little pieces of glass found their way into the sponge, so that when I washed dishes again, I would end up with sneaky little slices on my thumbs and fingers, only ever outing themselves sometime after I'd finished the washing up and couldn't distinguish the wet of water from the wet of blood. Since I don't plunge my hands into a vat of salt after I clean the kitchen, I had no way of knowing.

I don't like pain, but I'm not generally a baby about it. Sometimes I appreciate a good cut. It reminds me what's in my veins. And it reinforces how much I prefer the absence of hurting.

It's like being sad. The longer you're without it, the paler the contrast between a smile and a tear. Sometimes it feels like the only sadness left is the loss of all the sadness there once was. And its absence makes everything seem less meaningful. Now that it doesn't hurt, it doesn't exist. When I don't hurt, do I?

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:39 PM | Back to Monoblog

Time Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Animals Are Audrey

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

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

Labels: Audrey, photos

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

Knowing Me, Knowing You

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.

Labels: commercials, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:34 PM | Back to Monoblog

Oh, my aching everything.

I don't mind working all day and all night. But when I know I have to be up early, and when I know I will be packing in a frenzy, and when I know that I will forget something important...

This Sunday is my sister Sarah's wedding, and it's important that I shouldn't forget anything. And it's important that I shouldn't get stuck in L.A. later than planned. And it's important that I get to the other side, because somewhere over there is the hope of my finding myself again.

It's easy to put off everything you want to do in favor of everything you tell yourself you have to do. I just wish it was so easy to tell yourself you have to do the things you want to do. You have to do them, or when you're all finished you will have pleased everyone but you. Or even fewer people than that.

Anyway, I've been working a great deal this week. And I'm sore all over just from slouching before my two notebooks all day and from holding a phone to my ear for hours at a time. It would be nice if I was sore because of a long bike ride or an embarrassing game of softball.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:02 AM | Back to Monoblog

Socialite

I work from home much of the time. And lately, I work so much that I feel as if I'm under house arrest. I nearly never get to go anywhere. I nearly never see anyone. My dog and I can't tell what time it is. I no longer have an array of different things I wore during the week by which to differentiate the days in my memory.

I watch a lot of TNT during the day. Law and Order and ER, I particularly enjoy. But I've noticed that whenever there's been an especially rough day or an especially great day, someone asks their co-workers if they want to go out for a drink. And they always say no. It drives me nuts. I remember when I was a regular office-goer, and I remember occasionally suggesting people go out after work for whatever reason. And when people shoot you down, you hate them for it. Oh, you have a wife? So what? I have a dog. Don't we both have responsibilities? I frown on the word "no."

This happens occasionally after a comedy show or after a rehearsal or after some sort of thing that brings me into the company of people I know and don't dislike so much I wouldn't be able to swallow alcohol in the same room with them. You put yourself out there. You say, "So. Anyone want to get a drink?" Or you say, "Anyone hungry?" Or you say, "Do you guys even like me at all?" And the awkward declinations resound. And you (I) get in your (my) car and lament having done your (my) hair and only seen four people. I guess I've said no to people in this situation before, but it's only ever if I have some place I'd actually rather be. Or if the person posing the invite is someone whom I dislike so much that it affects my ability to swallow. If I dislike you so much that my throat closes up, there's really nothing entertaining we can do together that doesn't involve me throwing a rock at you. And that's only entertaining for a few seconds. And it's nowhere nearly as refreshing as a cocktail.

Jessie called tonight right in the middle of the Top Chef finale. I can't believe that _________ won. I was so hoping it would be ________. Jessie is probably the person I turn down the most and also the person who turns me down the most. To be fair, I generally turn her down because she invites me to be somewhere without giving me time to shower and get dressed. And she generally turns me down because she has other friends she likes better than me. So at least we understand each other.

I used to have a lot of profoundish thoughts when I would take Audrey out for walks late at night. Something about the moon. Or the temperature. Or the smell of the street. I still think some of those things. But I'm beginning to realize that I'm just thinking things I've already thought before. Ad that's not worth writing about. Even writing about how I've already written about things is a tactic I've used up. Maybe it's time for a change. Lease is up in January. Who knows what awaits me.

I've got to get out of this place.

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:56 AM | Back to Monoblog

Comedy Central is unusually loud on my television.

But I'm still going to watch South Park now, and then the new Sarah Silverman Program, featuring my pal Steve Agee, whose web site I recently almost finished. You should watch, too. Because any time I finish watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and don't accidentally end up watching the cold opening of Mind of Mencia is a victory in my book.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:01 AM | Back to Monoblog

Carbonara isn't just a bacon thing.

This Quizno's Chicken Carbonara Sub commercial is offensive to me. There is nothing carbonara about this sandwich. It even has mushrooms on it. Will people just eat anything if you give it a name that sounds like it comes from a restaurant you've never been to? And on the other side of that, will anyone ever really buy these Cafe Express Steamers and not be afraid to eat what's in them?

P.S. Yes. This is my first actual post in quite some time. I can only imagine your disappointment.

Labels: commercials

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:55 PM | Back to Monoblog

Oh! My God! I Miss You.

I have been away for so long. And I have so much to say! These two ends must meet eventually.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:45 PM | Back to Monoblog

Frowning into the Dazzle

Begun at 4:16 P.M. Finished at 9:51 P.M. And not entirely typed in order.

What perfect pain. Reflected in a perfect white sky. A daytime sky without the glow of sun on it. Bright. Unbearably bright. But without warmth. Unpainted and unfulfilled.

I am reading a novel that has taken a turn into love story. Lying in bed with the window open and a breeze about. The sheets are cool, the covers light. I took off my clothes to shower, but I got distracted and ended up there in bed with a book. Undressed and unaffected. And all the while the day went on. On my street, one of the apartment buildings has no cars at all in its front parking lot. I don't know that that has ever happened. What merriment people must have planned.

The night sky here is too bright to see even the halo of a firework. I can hear them popping and cracking off in the distance, but I don't know where they are. And when I walk to the end of my street, they seem discernibly nearer. But that hardly seems possible, as I can see none of it. I remember going to a pool party at my friend Julie's home for the 4th of July in 2004. Matt and I went up to the roof of the building to look at fireworks with some of the other partygoers. You could see them off in the distance. Probably closer to Koreatown and Downtown. But we were in West Hollywood, and the appearance of those little amorphous blossoms, those sprinkles of colors of light off in the faraway lower right, with the surrounding sky so grey and undarkened -- well, it was an anticlimax of sorts. I have seldom gone anywhere to see the fireworks up close. I don't generally ooh and aah very much. But I do often catch myself wondering if the incendiary specialists who design the fireworks programs are happy with how things have gone. When you watch an ice skater, the commentators seem to know the planned routine and will tell you if the skater opted to skip a jump or to turn three lutzes into two. But with fireworks, there's no libretto to follow. You just look up and suddenly the sky blooms red. You don't know if this one happened when it was supposed to or if those two were supposed to be symmetrical. Fireworks don't generally follow any discernible theatrics. People are just so easily pleased.

I remember being restless. It's a faint trace now. Sleep comes easily much of the time. And even the fears that persist have revealed themselves to have bearable consequences. Everything happens as it happens. No matter how one clenches one's fists and sets one's teeth against it. And in realizing this -- the pointlessness of it -- I can't decide if the struggle loses its beauty altogether or becomes somehow more beautiful. Season after season and year after year. I can count back the days. Lay them over one another. Last year I was in San Diego and drank beers in the pool. We ate hot dogs and hamburgers, and my mom chastised me for liking them too much.

A jazz record is playing. Something with a trumpet. Muted. Muted trumpet always sounds to me like my imagination of the '60s. When everyone knew how to snap.

The thing I love about talking is that sometimes one of us might end up saying something beautiful or wise. And that never happens in an argument.

Los Angeles always smells the same.

Labels: 4th of July

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:16 PM | Back to Monoblog

"I came to believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life."

Dana Scully and I have the same middle name. Well, she spells it with a "C" and I with a "K." But who doesn't think homophones are fun?

I'm pulling another all-nighter, and Law and Order has become episodes of The X-Files, and I'm dismayed to be stuck with the series finale, which really ranks up there with series finales I despise. Not because the show was ending, but because the finale made the show look like it must have been a piece of crap made by people who are pieces of crap. And truthfully, it mostly wasn't. So that's a shame. And they made Spender look like Odo. With the hair and eyebrows of a Sears model. How do you burn your face beyond recognition and then have eyebrows bushier than when you began? This episode is about as skillfully made as a filmstrip. Remember filmstrips? Remember occasionally being the kid in the class who got to sit and advance the film strip along with the audio cues by turning that black ridged plastic knob? No? Are you sure? How old are you? Oh, that's why.

I really don't want to keep working, do I.

Labels: X-Files

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:48 AM | Back to Monoblog

Anticipation in Disguise

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.

Labels: movies, mythology, photos, Star Wars, Transformers

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:50 PM | Back to Monoblog

Time Waits for No Man

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.

This went over well the other day.

Labels: photos, Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:31 PM | Back to Monoblog

I'm a pepper.

My friend Steve sent me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers for my birthday. It's sitting on my coffee table, and I was just sitting on my couch wondering why I could almost taste Dr. Pepper and really, REALLY wanted one. And then I realized it was the flowers. I guess one of the flowers in the arrangement is a Dr. Pepper blossom. My new favorite. Edging out the tulip.

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:34 PM | Back to Monoblog

O Birthday, How Annually You Befall Me!

It's my birthday, and I already got to park at a failed meter. Hooray!

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:07 PM | Back to Monoblog

Nerds won't stand for it.

The only notes I took at my first Saturn Awards were about Jon Ottman giving his acceptance speech and being corrected on his pronunciation of George Takei's name by someone yelling out from the audience.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:13 PM | Back to Monoblog

At some point, an "R" Rating is going to mean that the movie was made by Jews or Atheists.

I was driving to work and listening to Air Talk's coverage of this new MPAA rating proposal which will assign an "R" Rating to films with people smoking in them. It's still okay to show people drinking alcohol, going to war, falling in love, reading, driving a car, driving a motorcycle, spraying hairspray behind a lighter thereby creating a makeshift blowtorch, becoming a cop, breakdancing, drinking from glass stemware, boarding an airplane, singing showtunes, eating red meat, applying for loans, believing in Santa Claus, writing with indelible markers, petting a horse, eating an apple, befriending a tiger, playing an electrified guitar, swimming in icy waters, hitchhiking, opening jars, eating with a knife and fork, reciting poetry, shucking oysters, flipping the bird, having unprotected sex, experiencing rage, opening for a country and western band, wearing a Mets cap in Brooklyn, and shopping at Dean & DeLuca's.

I'm glad the movies care about me and my children.

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

"This is some gay shit right here." A response to Spider-Man 3

Jessie and I went to see Spider-Man 3 on a whim. I was fully prepared to not like it. I'm not a big fan of the franchise in the first place. I don't care for Kirsten Dunst at all. My sister Sarah makes a face if you mention her and says, "You can tell she smells bad." I guess that sums it up. I do, however, like the music in all three movies, if that counts for anything.

So, I wasn't expecting to love the movie, but I was also not expecting it to be so inexcusably bad. Sam Raimi's at the helm, and it's the most expensive movie ever made. Shouldn't it not suck? Well, clearly, there's no science to these things. Because it suh-ucked. And the places where Sam Raimi might have been attempting to make it funny seemed absurd. And the places where he wanted us to listen to Kirsten Dunst sing were like being made to pay for crimes against humanity we didn't commit. When we see her singing for the third time at the end of the film, I muttered, "Oh, great. Bonus." And I didn't mean that I thought it was a bonus. In addition, nearly every time an older person spoke, the acting was so poor, I wondered if Sam Raimi was just trying to get SAG cards for every one of his relatives. Stan Lee falls outside this theory, but his acting was no less notably bad.

And then Tobey Maguire started dancing.

This film's take on the legacy of Venom is that it is the mysterious alien substance that turned Garth Brooks into Chris Gaines. Flubber pops out of meteorite whose arrival has been noticed by no one and attaches itself to motor scooter, later to give Peter Parker an emo hairdo and black eyeliner. Also, when one's darkside is being stoked, disco takes a hold of you and you can't not dance. And the ladies love you, because you are in the city and you are dancing. Ladies always love that. Some of them even faint, don't they? But this causes any potentially suspended disbelief you are experiencing to snap right back. Because Tobey Maguire is not hot. Not in the face anyway. Boyish? Okay. Homely? For sure. But not hot. And no amount of hair product will change that.

I am notoriously nitpicky about things that don't matter to anyone but me, but I also made a note about it when James Franco's butter starts burning, and then he just throws the eggs in and makes a pretty yellow omelet. No way. That omelet would have been brown. Period. And did you notice that whenever a piano player was accompanying a singer and someone walked in, requiring a melodramatic cessation of the song, the piano player stopped playing before the singer stopped singing? Who knew the band was full of psychics and/or drama queens. When my hair caught fire in the orchestra pit for Guys and Dolls, we all kept playing, and the singers kept singing. I put out the flames, brushed the fried crumbs of my once-lovely hair from the body of my violin and went right back to it. You don't halt that manhole dance just because someone put a citronella candle where they shouldn't.

And the action looked about as convincing as a video game. Did they really spend the most money ever spent on a movie just to make a "live action" film that looks like a cartoon? I melodramatically checked my ticket to see if I hadn't actually come to see Shrek.

I am very tired of that trademark carousel shot, too.

So the black gunk turns Tobey Maguire into Chris Gaines and it turns Topher Grace into Adam Carolla. Weird. And I used to think Thomas Haden Church was cute. What a fish mouth he's turned into.

And if you're going to spend THAT MUCH money, shouldn't the scar on James Franco's face look like it wasn't made with Sculpy?

I really did still enjoy the score, though. Really.

And at the gym, I saw the local news covering the fires in Los Feliz and doing a little human interest piece on gas masks for pets. Apparently, you can just stick the gas masks on dogs, and they're cool with it. But cats -- being mistrustful and ungrateful -- have to be immobilized in a little cat duffel bag and then thrown in the river. Oh, wait. I mean and then fitted with a gas mask and carried lovingly to safety.

Labels: Adam, movies

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:02 AM | Back to Monoblog

Moonandback

When I was in the fourth grade and a student at Mountain View Elementary School in Concord, California, I entered an essay and drawing contest with the theme "How a Moon House Would Be Different from an Earth House." The winners of the contest were awarded a $25 U.S. savings bond and got to meet Astronaut Wally Schirra. I was one of those winners. My two drawings on construction paper depicting a normal house on Earth and a house on the Moon, with its Airstream-like solar panel exterior, accompanied a handwritten essay whose contents I no longer recall and apparently wowed the judges enough to earn me a spot in the photo opportunity. When my mom brought me to the place where the newspaper photographer was going to capture our honor on film, I learned that there were a total of six winners of the contest: three from regular schools and three from the school for mentally retarded kids. So my photo in the paper was of me and five other kids and Astronaut Wally Schirra. And three of the kids had Down's syndrome, and I am half Chinese, and I can't remember which of the women in my family has this on her birth certificate, but one of our birth certificates has "Mongolian" in the field marked "Race." And even in the fourth grade, I recognized this to be a situation of some irony. I remember Astronaut Wally Schirra as having a ready smile and a friendly demeanor. I remember him being very tall. But then, I was eight.

When I was in high school in Japan, the Home Economics teacher Mrs. Sattre (whose first name was Solveig) was famous for two things. One, she had driven her car into the side of the school one day. And, two, she had once dated Astronaut Buzz Aldrin. I heard they were both known to be hotsy-totsy on the social scene at one point. But I don't know whether that means she ever met Astronaut Wally Schirra. This anecdote is less important to the story than the one that preceded it.

I heard on the radio this morning that Astronaut Wally Schirra died today of a heart attack at Scripps Green Hospital of La Jolla. That's the hospital I went to when a wood plank flew off a moving truck and into my windshield on the 805, spraying my retina with glass. It's considered one of the finest hospitals in San Diego, and it's in a lovely location. I'm glad Astronaut Wally Schirra was being well cared for, and I'm glad that our paths crossed back when I was eight years-old. And I remember being thrilled by the idea of going into space, and that is thanks to astronauts like Wally Schirra. In doing some cursory research today, I learned that he snuck a corned beef sandwich onto a space mission, was the first person to perform music in space, was the first astronaut to swear over an open microphone, and was (according to his offical web site) a 33 Mason. Our worlds were always converging, it seems.

Labels: NASA, Wally Schirra

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:06 PM | Back to Monoblog

Incubatrix

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.

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:35 PM | Back to Monoblog

"We're done."

The other night, I had a dream that began in Disneyland. Or a less engaging version of it, with some kind of bumper car flume ride where half the gondolas were stuck facing sideways, and the people aboard them didn't realize until the ride got going that they were only going to watch everyone else having the time of their lives. I remember walking in the roundabout at the end of Main Street and noticing that there weren't very many people. It was night, and the walkways were wet. It was cold. Dewy. I think I had an argument with someone under a lamppost.

At some point in the dream, I was then on a plane flying back from San Francisco over the water at night. Something was wrong. I could see the people around me beginning to panic. When I looked out the window, I could see the ocean and a few far-off lights. And I could tell with suddenness that the plane was beginning to go into a nosedive. There was less noise than I expected. One of the people on the plane was talking, and he said with a calm that surprised me: "We're done." And I knew he was right as we hit the water. I expected to watch myself die. I even wondered if I would be able to see the moment of impact or if it would be so powerful that this moment of conscious thought would just fold seamlessly into the blackness. But when we hit the water, the fuselage didn't buckle, and none of us were thrown from our seats. I knew we we were going to go down into the water, and I reached for my phone and began sending a text message with the flight number and the fact that we had crashed into the sea to several people in my phone book. I wondered if they would know what to do.

Last night, I was awake all night. Tired and listless but unable to sleep. I'd spent the day shooting behind the scenes video and stills on two different productions, and the day was long as a result. I made very few notes. I remember wanting to write down that an SUV in front of me had a mason's bumper sticker on it, and I wondered what masons are really like and if I might actually know one but just not be aware of it. But most of the day was waiting. And waiting really takes it out of me.

I didn't fall asleep until well after 6 a.m. And the dream I recall took place in something like a large hotel, where there were a lot of people that I knew doing the things that people do in hotels, and I was trying to look like I was doing them, too, even though I was preoccupied with one person and whether we were going to run into each other or find ourselves in a situation that made having a conversation not seem like a surrender. I saw him eating in a restaurant, and I was trying to finish breaking the pieces of flatbread in front of me in time to run into him before he left without looking like I was in a hurry. He was wearing a blue shirt, and I didn't like having to rush.

While trying to sleep, I made a lot of effort to comfort my dog. She was fast asleep, and I realize it was projection.

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:48 AM | Back to Monoblog

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I fell into a pit of distraction. And then I stayed in it. Because getting out of it required an explanation, and I was very, very busy.

More 3rd Street than Hollywood.

The day I took Kerstin to the airport to return her to England, we were on our way to lunch and we crossed Robertson and 3rd right in front of Samuel L. Jackson in a slick Mercedes . I later joked that I should have taken his license plate number and accused him of having hit us. Soon after, we lamented not having pitched him the idea we had about a remake of Scarface starring him.

Last week, Jessie and I went to Canter's late in the night, and Fairuza Balk strode in. And last night at the Arclight, Everybody Loves Raymond's mother was having dinner a table or two away. Samuel L. Jackson wins this round.

"I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge."

I saw the Grindhouse double feature a couple of weeks ago. I didn't think Death Proof was very good. Planet Terror was pretty entertaining, but -- having just seen Hot Fuzz last night -- I conclude that if you're going to effect a genre homage, Hot Fuzz is the way to do it. Grindhouse is not. Add to that how ineffectually Grindhouse was marketed and I'm not terribly surprised it's been doing so poorly. Although you should see it just for the parody trailers. Especially the one by the guys who made Hot Fuzz.

I really need an Aeron chair.

Work has been pulling all-nighters out of me multiple times a week for weeks on end. I take secret pleasure in the fact that I can still do it. But that doesn't ameliorate the actual stressful effects. Knowing you have to be up for one night is one thing. Knowing you have to be up for three nights straight is somewhat more defeating. But a paycheck is a paycheck, and it's welcome, and it has made a number of new outfits possible. So I shake hands with the devil and agree to his terms, knowing full well he doesn't exist. I win!

You can't out-Forrest the Forrest.

I take notes when I'm at the movies. I take notes when I'm at comedy shows. I take notes when I'm in the middle of an actual conversation with a live person and I'm the one talking. I write a lot of shit down, but I don't do as much with it as I plan to. And I dont' always remember what I meant by what I wrote down in reading it later. I also write in the dark a lot and am often unable to decipher my penmanship. Moleskine notebooks are expensive. I waste them a lot.

I know the little jingles to certain commercials, because I watch the same network nearly all the time, and I hear the same commercials again and again. Activia. Caduet. 21st Century Insurance. Some commercial for gastric bypass surgery. Some commercial for anti-depressants. The NBA. I wonder sometimes about all that brain space and what other things it could be used for. And I just learned that Connecticut is the nutmeg state. I wonder when that will come in handy, knowing full well that it eventually will.

There is a lot of art I'm not making.

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Labels: commercials

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:47 AM | Back to Monoblog

Oh, you and your ever-present camera.

Yes, I always have my camera with me, and I should have insisted we stop the other day when driving past the Wilshire Theatre, where the marquee read, "JAMES TAYLOR SOLD OUT." I read it out loud and laughed. But I missed the photo opportunity. And then, at the Oscar party on Sunday, when James Taylor and Randy Newman were playing Randy Newman's song, I said, "James Taylor sold out!" And Valerie said indignantly, "How did he sell out?" And I told them all about the sign, and everyone laughed. I love The Oscars.

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:43 PM | Back to Monoblog

2007. It's all about me.

It's the Year of the Pig. Let's hope I get what's coming to me.

Sarah and I were watching The Night We Never Met the other night, and she said, "Hey. There's that fat, angry comic." And sure enough, it was Lewis Black.

Rob and I watched Little Miss Sunshine last night. I hated it. I wasn't entertained once that I can remember. It was National Lampoon's Vacation being retold by a guy pretending to be Wes Anderson, and I didn't buy it for a second. What did everyone love so much about this movie? The big yellow poster?

Which reminds me that I was recently talking about Morgan Freeman and thought, when's the Easy Reader movie coming out? It's time.

Don't read Henry Miller. And if you do, have someone tell you the page numbers of the dirty passages. He talks about his prick so much that even when he uses the word erection to mean a building, you immediately assume you're reading something you shouldn't. Now, I say this, because I assume you -- like most people -- think that Henry Miller books are full of sex and smut. Which is why you shouldn't waste your time, unless you get someone to make up a little crib sheet for you so you don't get bogged down in all of the other things he has to say while you're trying to romance your lap.

I learn from Henry Miller that employability may be inversely correlated to a sense of being better than everyone around you. If this applies to me at all, this is probably my biggest failing and also my greatest triumph. (I'm not better than everyone, but I've worked for a few superlatively unfortunate douchebags.) Miller couldn't keep a job. Bukowski kept a post office position for years and years. Interesting juxtaposition.

I don't know why I wrote down the phrase "porkchops of marriage." I remember how I used to write song lyrics in my journal in high school. I wanted so much to be writing. But it was just moving of the pen. I couldn't find words of my own. Instead, I found the right words in other people's mouths and usurped them.

I remember the days when the anger hadn't yet turned to sadness. But I can't tell if I miss them.

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:25 PM | Back to Monoblog

Bone Sincere

Sally Field is pimping Boniva, an osteoporosis-prevention medicine that positions itself as being better than other similar medicines because you only have to take it once a month. Sally was just saying that her girlfriend told her that she has to set aside time once every day to take her osteoporosis medication, so when she learned about the once-monthly regimen of Boniva, she was like, "I can handle that."

I hate being lied to. Especially by people who are being paid to try and trick me into thinking they're sincere and real. Nothing about Sally's story rings true. Her "friend" never seems to have a name. And frankly, how does Sally tolerate a whiner who thinks taking a pill once a day is too time-consuming to be endured? How about the time this friend wastes talking about how much time it takes? It's not a very powerful marketing message. Not being a hunchback is much more compelling than having thirty extra seconds every day. And I'm also assuming that if you're old enough to be worried about being a hunchback, you're probably taking other pills every day, too. You know, the pills that keep your heart from stopping willy nilly. And the pills to keep your sciatica from flaring up. And the pills to keep your trick knee from going tricky. So just throw your osteoporosis pill in with all the others. Amortizing the pill-taking time across all of these other medications makes it virtually negligible. Unless osteoporosis medication comes in a really complicated bottle. In which case, I suggest to the makers of Boniva that designing a bottle that's more like a Zip-Loc bag might also be a nice way to go, product development-wise.

Sally Field, don't drink coffee into the camera and tell me you care about your friends and their bones. I don't buy it for a minute. And I'm pretty sure that's not your kitchen either.

Labels: commercials

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

You and Your Water

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.

Labels: commercials, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:24 PM | Back to Monoblog

Dog-Eared Pages and Missing Zeroes

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."

This will be the death of me.

*No way. That shit never goes out of style.

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:29 PM | Back to Monoblog

Syntax Error

I was sorting through my email inbox. There's mail in there from 2004 gunking the place up. It's hopeless. But I found this, and it made me want to show it off:

im the guy who from malaysia want to know u..i like style of take photo.. hope to see ur picture as long as i still alive...

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:30 AM | Back to Monoblog

Philately

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.

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:29 PM | Back to Monoblog

I've never liked the word "morsel."

This man and I were on a bridge
He told me he'd never been to Rome
We both jumped
But the ocean was never the ocean
And we landed instead in a field
There were flowers everywhere
And children with kites
And I wondered how one ever gets a kite to go
As I have never managed to

Is it wrong to want what dreams promise?

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

Wraith Pinned to Commercial Success

I am a fan of Of Montreal, but I was so disappointed when -- a few months back -- I heard their song Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games in an Outback Steakhouse commercial. Not only did they license the song to that awful restaurant, they even recorded an original version of the song with new Outback Steakhouse lyrics. Leaving me to seethe. The only positive spin I can put on it is that in the original song, the lyrics "Let's go Outback tonight" are supplanted by the lyrics "Let's pretend we don't exist," which may be a comment of its own.

Obviously, I've forgiven them. I went to see them last week, and I didn't boo or anything. They're still one of the feel-goodiest bands there is, and their outfits rule. I just hate that hearing that groovy little bass line should ever make me think of a Bloomin' Onion instead of an acid trip.

Labels: commercials

posted by Mary Forrest at 8:25 PM | Back to Monoblog

"Usted nunca encontrará una colmena más desgraciada de la espuma y de la villanía."

I turned on the TV this morning, like you do. And I flipped to the programming guide and saw that Star Wars was on again. So I tuned to that. It was the cantina scene. I was about five minutes in when I realized I was watching the Spanish language broadcast. Like I had the movie playing for a good three or four minutes with Han and Luke and Obiwan dubbed in Spanish, and I didn't notice it at all. Weird.

Mayo la fuerza esté con usted.

Labels: Star Wars

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:11 PM | Back to Monoblog

Dakota Fanning is the creepiest thing ever born from a human womb.

My friend Michael forwarded me a link last week wherein Dakota Fanning said that she hoped people weren't let down by her rape scene in Hounddog, which was apparently less bombastic than fans of childhood rape might have been hoping. She told EW the day after the Sundance premiere, ''I think people were expecting something more controversial, and it's like, 'Oh, that's it?'''

Judging from the reviews and the lack of announcement of a distribution deal, I guess it's possible I will have to rely on my imagination to inform my fantasies as to how big of a deal Dakota's non-consensual debut might have been. And that's not all bad. Because in my imagination, she endures a modest raping, delivers an unbearably precocious monologue through her mostly missing baby teeth, and then Tom Cruise throws peanut butter sandwiches against the kitchen window. And how can you blame him. Baby teeth are hideous to look at. Jagged calcium deposits in a field of misshapen gum matter. Gross. If rape is the only way to prevent a follow-up monologue, I say rape on, independent film world. Rape on.

Labels: Dakota Fanning

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:35 AM | Back to Monoblog

I'll be goddamned if I know.

I love Walter Matthau so much that watching Plaza Suite is too painful and disappointing to bear. While he's Sam, anyway. And then when he becomes Mr. Kiplinger and he says "9" in that duosyllabic way, I guess I can bear it after all.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:42 AM | Back to Monoblog

In the tiniest of nutshells

I have been sick since Wednesday.

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

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

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

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

Beulah looks super pretty in my pictures from the concert.

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

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

I was too sick to go to an audition today.

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

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

I would like a high-paying job, please.

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

I don't have autism.

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

Maybe I do have autism.

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

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

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

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

Labels: Audrey

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

Y'aren't ever going to get out of that tub, Blanche.

I like a bath so hot that it makes you curse as you force yourself into it. I like it scalding and steamy and on the verge of unbearable. I take a book into the bath with me, but it's usually so hot that I can only stand to stay in for a chapter or two.

I like it cold, too. I like the water in general. I envied Johnny's healing tank in Starship Troopers. And I've jumped into swimming pools that were unadvisably chilly because I guess I think it's better to be cold and wet than to be dry and dull.

I think I feel a sick coming on. That's why the bath. Now I'm for tea and down and flannel pajama pants. And hopefully that's all it will take.

posted by Mary Forrest at 10:02 PM | Back to Monoblog

My target demographic

I've always done well with the homeless. Travel back in time and ask me in any year you like. I'll always say this is true. Sometimes I've thought it's because I have a friendly face. Sometimes I've thought it's because homeless people must dig Asian chicks. But who am I kidding. Most of the homeless people I meet are men, and men like what Playtex strives to hide.

As I was walking to my show at I.O. West on Monday night, I got a particularly positive response from the various urban outdoorsmen whose paths I crossed. Further proving my hypothesis that the homeless are the only people left who aren't swayed by the Hollywood ideal. Even on Hollywood Boulevard, the fatter I am, the more those dudes appreciate the at-times bulging appearance of my curvaceous fecundity. If the species is going to be perpetuated on the basis of rote instinct, there's a good chance future generations will only be parented by derelicts and fat chicks.

posted by Mary Forrest at 4:21 PM | Back to Monoblog

"You gave Jenny the huggies?"

I just saw a heartbreaking commercial for Pedigree dog food. The visual is of dogs behind fences in a shelter. The voiceover is in the first person. A dog saying, "I know how to sit, how to fetch, and how to roll over. What I don't know is how I ended up in here. But I know that I am a good dog. And I just want to go home." These sweet dog faces with their big wet eyes. Of course I just want to bring them all home and put them in my bed. Then what was the dog's voice says, "When you buy Pedigree we make a donation to help shelter dogs find loving homes. The Pedigree adoption drive. Help us help dogs." And there's this bleak, one-note-at-a-time guitar music being plucked in the background. It sure made me want to run out the door with paper currency fanned out of my fist and find all of those dogs and put shirts on them and hug them and hug them and hug them. I can picture myself slow dancing with one of the bigger ones. You know how you can put their paws on your shoulders and...well, I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't have a fistful of money. I don't have a yard. And I haven't done my hair yet. How could I possibly leave the house.

And then Jenny from The Muppets Take Manhattan was playing a bitchy mom in a courtroom scene on Judging Amy. Long gone are the baseball t-shirts and the early '80s running shorts. Replaced by a smart bobbed hairdo and what looks like pink bouclé. Long gone. I know that I am a good dog. And I just want to go home.

Labels: commercials, The Muppets Take Manhattan

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:17 PM | Back to Monoblog

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

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

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

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

Labels: Audrey

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

A phase is a phase is a phase.

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.

Labels: cooking, photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 3:29 AM | Back to Monoblog

"Save a Life -- Yours."

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.

The Life Hammer comes in several colors.

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 5:58 PM | Back to Monoblog

Wrongful Deaths

I was working pretty much all day yesterday, and Turner Classic Movies kept me company for much of the time. The pay channels for some of the time. I watched The Dirty Dozen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Player, The Aviator, Quiz Show, and I eventually watched Diva in bed in the wee hours before finally going to sleep. These are all movies I've seen before. And I watched them in the way that I often do -- not necessarily looking at the screen the whole time but hearing every bit. And I remember thinking at one point that it sure makes for compelling drama when someone kills the wrong man or when the bad guy gets his comeuppance but not from the guy he did wrong or when the adulterers don't get caught or when the cuckolded spouse gets yelled at for no reason or when the murderer gets away with it or when hardened criminals become heroes or when heroes become criminals or when French people bootleg opera music but purely for the love of the art. I remember thinking that real drama is fueled by a sense of injustice. Or by the certainty of preventable tragedy. That you can't hang on the edge of your seat if you know not to worry about anyone not wearing a red tunic. That your heart beats less quickly when everything wraps up nicely in the end. Which explains so much about my feelings about Hollywood filmmaking.

Randomly? I used to think Lee Marvin was scary. And that he had a pig nose. Nik Kershaw helped me love Humphrey Bogart. There was a time when I couldn't watch Hannah and Her Sisters because it hurt too much. Watching The Player now that I live in Los Angeles is really, really different. I read Diva before I watched the movie. Sarah and I were in high school, and I got it from the public library's paperback trade-in on the Naval base on Guam. I loved it. And when we rented the movie, I was slightly disappointed. No one was as beautiful as I had imagined them to be. Well, Jules maybe. But I was glad to finally hear La Wally and not have to make it up in my head. Years later, when I made mix tapes of soundtrack music, La Wally was on my downbeat mix. I would like to recreate that mix. If only to recapture the feeling of driving around in a car I no longer have in a city I no longer live in with ideas in my head that have long since come to seem foolheaded. La Wally was one of only three tracks with lyrics. The other two being When You're Alone from Hook, and Victory Celebration/End Titles from The Return of the Jedi Special Edition. Yeah, that last one only goes, "Ya ya ya ya ya." But I guess I think of those as words. And it still used to make me feel my heart in my throat some of the time.

To sum up: I am kind of a nerd.

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:35 AM | Back to Monoblog

Record Lows

It was so cold and dry this morning that I had a nosebleed. First one in at least ten years. I think the last time I had one, I was sitting at my desk at Protein Polymer Technologies, and I saw drops of blood splashing onto my computer keyboard. I was wearing a lavender silk blazer, and I was dismayed that I got blood on it. Before that, the last real memory I had of a surprise public nosebleed was in fourth grade. I wrote about it already, so I won't belabor the point. As a little girl, I used to get nosebleeds with some frequency. I would have to climb out of the top bunk of the bunkbed I shared with my sister Sarah and go trouble my parents with my hand to my nose and a bloodstained nightgown. Many of my pillowcases had blood stains on them, now that I think of it. I had a fish pillowcase I liked very much. And a very soft blanket with pale green teddy bears on it. The fish pillowcase definitely had blood on it. I think the teddy bear blanket survived unmarred. Though I don't know what's become of either of them. And it's occasionally a source of dismay. If only I could recapture all of my childhood fancies by way of Amazon.com Marketplace.

So it was a recordbreaking cold day. Lows have been in the 30s. I heard on NPR this morning that today's low broke a record set in the 1930s. There were sheets of ice on the 405. I had a fire in the fireplace and soaked my ice cold feet in scalding bathwater at least five times today to restore some amount of circulation to them. It was cold enough to make my nose bleed and cold enough to keep the blood from ever reaching my extremities. Cold enough to wear mittens and stamp one's feet when standing still outside. Cold enough to make the obligatory conversations about how cold it is seem slightly less jejune. Just last week, it was hot as summertime. I only narrowly escaped falling prey to seasonal illness. It's the ups and downs that get you. The getting caught out after nightfall in a t-shirt and jeans when suddenly you could keep meat and dairy products on your doorstep with no fear of them going to spoil.

It is going to continue to be cold for the next few days, according to the weather services. I don't like to turn the heat on in my apartment. It smells a certain way. Dries my whole head out in a certain way. But when it's 55 degrees inside, I sometimes give in. And when I do, I'm reminded of all of my previous winters in this place. That smell. That nauseating cushion of artificial coziness that is so much more present in my bedroom than anywhere else in the place. I don't like the way it feels. But I like remembering how it felt before. If that makes any sense.

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

"A real squared-away guy."

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.

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 1:18 PM | Back to Monoblog

Having a Crush and More

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 12:17 PM | Back to Monoblog

It's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas.

Well, if you asked Santa for less of my prattling on and on, I hope you've taken a moment to thank him. It's not that I haven't been up to anything or that I haven't been noticing the same frequency of bullshit and/or bliss-inducing goings on. I've jotted plenty in my notebook. But for some reason, the longer I stay away, the easier it becomes to stay away. The harder it seems to approach the task of catching up. It happens with friends sometimes. You wait so long to say hello that you almost feel ashamed to try and say it at all. But when the friendships are real, you can always just pick right back up. That's been my experience. You have to ask if you've told this one before. And you have to give a little backstory before getting into the meat of things, but your voices don't change that much. And you probably laugh at the same things you used to. And at some point, you have a sigh and say aloud that it's good to be back in touch. And you mean it.

This is not me trying to personify my blog. This is just me using another ragged metaphor to offset my delinquency. Maybe you've missed me. Maybe you haven't. I can forgive either case.

I spent my Christmas in Hawaii and my New Year's Eve in Christmas. And all of a sudden it's 2007, and I don't entirely buy it. I never really ran through the Christmas gauntlet. Although I did manage to feel my share of shopping pressures and the unmatched anxiety that comes from having to pack up all my gifts and their wrappings and then go about the actual wrapping of the gifts. I felt all of that. And I did leave the A Christmas Story marathon on in the hotel room all night long on Christmas Eve, so there were some traditions left un-upended. But I noticed that I didn't feel so irrevocably attached to my traditions. Surprisingly. It was sort of freeing. To be away from home and unable to fulfill expectations and out of touch with all of the things left incomplete. Surprisingly freeing.

Well, I'm sorry I missed the things I missed. I'm sorry I didn't get to ring in the New Year with my many festive friends. I'm sorry I didn't get to eat my mother's Christmas prime rib. I'm sorry I didn't sing in church on Christmas Eve. I'm sorry I still haven't had ice cream at Disneyland. But being sorry is its own tradition. And some things never change.

I bought my parents a firepit, but I haven't put it together yet. In my own way, I'm just making Christmas last.

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

Glad Tidings

My lovely sister Sarah and her lovely beau Paul got engaged tonight. And I couldn't be happier.

Labels: photos

posted by Mary Forrest at 11:59 PM | Back to Monoblog

Cold and hot feel exactly the same at first.

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

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

He's too singularly responsible for my current unhappiness.

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

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

My body is sore from being told "no."

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

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

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

No fair. You changed the outcome by measuring it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sophisticated and veiled form of rejection.

Thinking begets doubt.

Limitlessness is the cause of all evils.

A prayer is significant but neither true nor false.

The deliberate lie

A triangle laughs

Catching the shadow of shadows

leere Gedankendinge (empty thought things)

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

the powerful sovereignty of the mind

the soundless dialogue of the I with itself

a deliberate withdrawal from appearances

things which are not yet and things which are no more

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

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

At times I think, and at times I am.

Take on the color of the dead.

Mnemosyne, Memory, is the mother of the Muses.

Thinking annihilates temporal as well as spatial distances.

Remembrance versus anticipation

Orpheus and Eurydice

Every thought is an after-thought.

A word that signifies both fame and opinion

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

forever solitary by reason of his excellence

to illuminate an experience which does not appear

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

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

I actually have to be up at A TIME.

"Three" is your answer to every question.

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

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

Wonder begets rainbow.

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

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

Going mad with eloquence

Bad people are not full of regrets.

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

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

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

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

The future is nothing but a consequence of the past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A change of pajamas.

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

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

We are your better selves.

I would totally have dated Ray Bolger.

It could have been a very different life for me.

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

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

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

"I have become a question for myself."

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

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

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

Deepening of genius.

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

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

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

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

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

He died too young. Too young for a philosopher.

Possession extinguishes desire and delight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

the dispassionate quiet of the soul

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

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

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

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

Labels: Audrey

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

Sinus Relief. Delousing. Tomayto. Tomahto.

If you ever decide to try SudaCare Shower Soothers, I hope you will look on the box and check to make certain the active ingredient isn't listed as Zyklon B or prussic cyanide gas. Because there is nothing about the way these things are being marketed that doesn't look like a way to conveniently turn a shower into your very own home gas chamber.

posted by Mary Forrest at 9:09 PM | Back to Monoblog

The center cannot hold.

Dog on my lap. Sun in the glass. Cloudy, non-specific sense of urgency somewhere in my chest or throat. Nothing out of the ordinary. I am guilty of not counting days when they are beautiful. Of waiting for the streets to be wet with rain before I appreciate them for not having been.

This is my favorite weather. Even on the days when it rains. This time of year is the one that makes a year seem like a year. When my hands need pockets for warmth. When indoor climates are more unpredictable than outdoor ones. No matter how cold it gets, there is nothing more unpleasant than overheat. I've never been burned by acid or bitten by a wolf or drowned or electrocuted or stabbed much. But I'm pretty sure there is nothing worse than sitting indoors in a place where the heat is on too high. The stuffy injustice of everyone around you flushed and sweating in cashmere and too many layers of t-shirt. I prefer the cold to lead me to warm drinks and fireplaces and maybe an outdoor heat lamp. But let the heat be localized. Please oh please let the heat be localized.

This year, I haven't been to Vegas. I haven't had a car accident. I haven't gotten a parking ticket. I haven't gotten my camera fixed. I haven't learned a new language. I haven't baked a cake. I haven't sent a handwritten letter. I haven't left the door wide open, even when it was unbearably hot. I never said these were things I wanted or needed to do. But I notice their presence on an imaginary checklist. And I notice the absence of checkmarks.

I went to the art supply store near my apartment today. I hadn't been all year. They've moved everything around. It's easy enough to figure out where things are, but none of it is where it was. The aisles with the pads of paper and notebooks are marked by shelves that seem taller than the others. When you walk amongst them, it's like being in a forest. Some secret place. And when the guy with the two piercings coming out of the corners of his mouth asks if you need help, it startles you. Because it felt like you were the only one in the world in need of paper for drawing.

After a bath, I put lotion on my arms that I haven't used since 1996 or 1997. The fragrance is aggressively familiar. I remember putting on this lotion in my bedroom in the house that later burned down. I remember listening to CDs while I got dressed. I remember looking in that vast mirror and wishing there was more light. I remember sitting in the corner at a small drawing desk I no longer have and writing something rhymey by the light of a clip-on lamp. I remember seeing the moon through beige blinds above a grove of eucalyptus trees. And finding ways to write about it without saying the actual words. Sometimes, I sit in the bath with a book and lament the eventual loss of the bubbles and the heat and the perfect sultry stillness. Sometimes, I sit there and just wait for the bath to be over. As if it's something to endure. Bored, but unwilling to let all that hot water go to waste.

My mother says, when you're staying in a hotel, to take lots of hot baths. That's what you're paying for.

It's well into December and I'm nowhere near ready for it.

posted by Mary Forrest at 2:26 PM | Back to Monoblog

Repetitive Motion Injury

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

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

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

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

If I can recall properly, here was our menu:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted from an actual email.

Dearest email recipient,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mary Forrest, thanksgiver

Labels: Guitar Hero, Krissy, Thanksgiving

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

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

I drove down to San Diego early yesterday morning to sing in church, as I had promised my parents I would. I learned the song I was going to sing as I was driving, and I was not optimistic that I would perform it well, as the service went on much longer than I expected. The Spanish-speaking congregation was joining the regular congregation and the entire service was being done bilingually, which means in any language: TWICE AS LONG. I was playing hangman and madlibs with Sarah. By the time the pastor was beckoning me to come forward, I suddenly realized I no longer knew the words to the song.

Fortunately, that's when my performance auto-pilot kicks in.

My dad cried a great deal, apparently. And at the potluck after the service, some old guy said to me, "Mary, I think you're losing your touch. Your dad didn't look to me like he was crying." I relayed this to my dad, who cried out vehemently, "I was weeping! I was weeping!" And then he had Dolores tell me about how, while I was singing, she was shaking and felt as if God put his arms around her and made her feel warm. And another woman in my father's Bible study told me that when she saw my father in the morning, she had teased him. "I told him,'I know what you're going to be doing later, Sam. CRYING.'" But then she said she felt bad because she ended up crying, too. And one member of the congregation paid me this compliment: "I loved your song. It was so beautiful. If you are around when I die, I would like you to sing it at my funeral." It was all very nice and very embarrassing. And I was glad to get back to my parents' house and have a nap.

Best moment of the day. We were singing the hymn Count Your Blessings, and there is a verse that essentially admonishes you not to count your riches on earth, because you will have riches in heaven that are greater, including a house and land. And my mom leaned over to me while we were singing and said mirthfully, "I don't think so."

Amen.

posted by Mary Forrest at 6:45 PM | Back to Monoblog

I don't have it in me to write this with the flair I would wish.

I went to see Stranger than Fiction last night. Here are the things that occurred to me to write down in my little Moleskine notebook, presented in a less than fully fleshed-out manner.

"Wednesday" has a "d" in it.

If Amélie had been an American film, it might have sounded a lot like this film at first. I loved Amélie. So this observation makes me angry.

There's that Fractured Fairy Tales sort of vector animation again.

And there's that guy from the Sonic commercials.

By simply not getting any more or less attractive, Linda Hunt has now surpassed Tom Hulce in attractiveness. Which is thoroughly dismaying.

The fat people sitting to my right laugh at all the most obvious and disappointing places. I'm sure they go to Ren Faire. I'm sure of it.

They cast Will Ferrell to play alongside every short actor in Hollywood, it seems.

"It's been a very revealing ten seconds."

Who would sit on the buckle of the bus?

Spoon soundtrack. Yay!

"Aren't you relieved to know you aren't a golem?"

Smoking in the rain gives the appearance of ruling.

Hey, look. A Moleskine notebook.

"Who in their right mind, when given a choice between pancakes and living, chooses pancakes?" Me, probably.

And then it went and got life-affirming. I hate that.

The apple on the ground reminded me of The Great Orange Adventure.

Why does my dad love Queen Latifah? I hate her.

Sue Grafton in plastic.

What would have killed me is reading that manuscript on a moving bus.

Heart-shaped cookie provokes "awwwww" from Ren Faire folk. *Shakes fist.*

What do you want to bet this ending was a compromise?

"Even if you avoid this death, another will find you...It's the nature of all tragedies."

Labels: movies, Stranger Than Fiction

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:56 PM | Back to Monoblog

Memory Makes Mincemeat

Today makes ten years. Tomorrow makes six.

We get to decide what is and isn't meaningful. If everything I remembered was worth remembering, the rest of the world would be at a considerable deficit. As it is, recall is just a habit for me. A valueless, hindrance-prone habit. And a constant reminder that one recollection is not as powerful as two.

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:51 PM | Back to Monoblog

Elusive Villainy

Note: I'm not going to assume I need to provide a spoiler alert. I read Casino Royale when I was in grade school, so I already knew a lot of what was going to happen. But if you are fearful that you will not be able to be authentically mystified if you have read any plot points before seeing the film, I encourage you to read this entry later. Cool? Cool.

I got to see the press screening of Casino Royale on Tuesday, which should have resulted in a review of some kind, but I forewent promptness for truly skillful procastination. Partially because I was supposed to go see it a second time on Friday and partially because I am unreliable.

I think I shared some misgivings with Bond fans the world over that Daniel Craig was too thuggish to play the smooth operator with the casual aplomb that made the previous good Bonds good and the previous less than good Bonds less than. But with just the prologue and the opening titles and a few minutes of the first scene behind me, I had already decided. Daniel Craig is no Sean Connery, but he's no slouch. And David Arnold is almost John Barry, and that's saying a goddamn mouthful.

I was really entertained by the opening titles. Even though I am being made to feel a little antsy by the sudden fashionability of vector animation in live action features. Maybe it started with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Or with a commercial for a breakfast cereal. I don't know. The fact that it seemed derivative kind of rankled me at first glance, but then I decided to lighten up and appreciate the witty image transitions. At one point, I thought, "Spirograph?" But the rest of it went down pretty smoothly. Especially at the climax. By the end of the opening titles, I bought Daniel Craig as Bond. Blue-eyed thuggery and all. And then that first action sequence. An ambitiously choreographed chase/fight scene that was so action-packed, so intense, and so mostly free of Bond witticisms that you wouldn't know you were watching a Bond film were it not for the David Arnold score, which reminds you that music in action films is seldom as good as it could be, especially when you weigh the impact of techno music against a full orchestra. And in this first scene, Daniel Craig is so tough and so sure. So rough and tumble. In a way, it felt like a deliberate attempt to unseat the notion that this is a guy who cares about his shirts. His pursuit of his quarry is so comparatively unballetic, it recalls that moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy stops that Cairo swordsman with his pistol instead of his whip. Just a lot of "to hell with this." This Bond is deliberately rugged, deliberately more of a bleeder, and deliberately less wry. And for my part, I like it.

Some of the shots through the latticework of the cranes and the construction site reminded me of a documentary I once saw about William Wyler, who noted I think it was William Wellman and his habit of shooting action and dialogue through deliberate visual obstructions. I doubt it was any sort of homage. But it proved that I am never not thinking about everything else I've ever seen or heard. Annoying.

There are times the film feels like an outright Sony commercial, with VAIO, Sony Ericsson, and Cyber-shot product placement that receives better framing than some of the featured actors. The second movie -- the one that begins right when the movie should have ended -- is where this is most prominent. There are times when I wish my comfort with technology didn't make it so difficult to sell me on fictitious application interfaces or make it so hard for me to ignore the preposterous notion that MI6 computers actually sport military intelligence wallpaper. But I'm learning to be less of a pain in the neck in this respect. I can't, however, be less of a pain in the neck when it comes to wardrobe. While Daniel Craig looked really good, -- and granted he is European -- his apparel was in some cases just so clearly made for a gay man. And don't get me started on the women's wardrobe. I have never seen uglier dresses in a Bond film. Not even in Live and Let Die. Just plain abominable. So, in addition to the fact that I didn't find either of the Bond girls especially attractive or compelling, every time they came on screen, I scowled at their low-budget couture and -- in Eva Green's case -- the low-budget way they wore it.

The Body Worlds exhibit is prominently featured early on in the film. I chuckled to myself, remembering the time Beulah and Justin and I visited the exhibit during its visit to Los Angeles. I remembered all the installations that prompted Beulah to snicker and say, "Look at the anus."

Daniel Craig doesn't walk well. There is something overly erect about his posture. Something forced and unnatural. It's not a deal breaker. But I can't not notice. Especially when the hallmark of 007 is his appearance of being at ease in even the most harrowing situations. He's got an unmistakably excellent physique. But it's a shame he can't appear a little more relaxed in it. Also, you can totally see his package in every outfit they put him in.

A Photoshop reference? *Shakes head.*

I have two big complaints about this movie. One is the clumsy narrative exposition that kept making me want to cry out, "I get it! Stop telling me what's going on. I'm on top of it. Seriously. Shut up. Honestly. Christ." I just think that if you constantly have to provide a play-by-play, maybe you're not doing your job directorially. It's like being made to read the libretto before going to see an opera if you've any hope of knowing what's going on. In movies, everything you need to know is supposed to be right there. If you're constantly having to be reminded what to notice and what to pay attention to, the cinematic storytelling is failing. And the filmmaker thinks you're probably a low-scorer on your various standardized tests. "I'll stake you. And by that I mean that I will put up the money for you to play. And by that I mean that I will transfer money into your name so that you can stay in the game. Get it? No? Okay, let's try some other synonyms. P.S. Guess what. I'm with the CIA."

The second complaint is the overly sentimental and inexplicable affair between James Bond and Vesper Lynd. I never bought this for a minute. She is obnoxious and unappealing from the outset, and she never does a thing to redeem herself or to win him over. So the fact that they fall in love at all is implausible. And the way they fall in love -- essentially all verbally and without the slightest shred of real sexual combustion -- is just plain nauseating.

Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Le Chiffre, was pretty great, if you ask me. And I noticed that, now that my sister is dating a Swede, I can spot those Scandinavian accents right off. And it occurs to me that this is what the sum of your life experience gets you. There are things you know and things you don't. And there are things you will know because of things you just found out. And you should never wish you could go back to some other time in your life, because -- if nothing else -- you wouldn't have been as quick to notice when a guy probably speaks fluent Swedish.

Ultimately, I think the movie was twenty minutes too long, and the clarity of the story was irreparably fractured by the unfortunate abandonment of the original story line when it neatly wraps itself up, leaving ample (and awful) opportunity for the exploration of a pasty, wooden love affair between two people who have no reason to smile at each other. I also think that the movie spends too much time trying to analyze James Bond as a man, providing unnecessary and in some cases illogical back story to his character. I don't want to know why he is cold or why he is suddenly no longer cold. I don't want to know what makes him tick. And I certainly don't want to see M mothering him over the telephone. I want to see the mission. Period. That is the directive I would give if I were making this movie at my imaginary high-budget film studio. Show me the mission. And that is not a reference to Jerry Maguire.

So, yes. As was foretold, this film takes a much less refined and much more sober view of the work of the secret agent. The pugilism is more brutal, the victories more costly. This is not the James Bond you fell in love with, if you fell in love with any of the others that came before. But it is James Bond, in the end. It's a movie about a secret agent, and that was always all that mattered to me.

posted by Mary Forrest at 7:24 PM | Back to Monoblog

I play my red guitar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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