At 9 A.M., it looks like sunset. Heavy, orange light streaming in through curtains that seldom look that color. I remember the skies looking like this, the air feeling like this, four years ago. You can look on news station web sites and see specific addresses of homes that have been completely destroyed. I remember looking at those lists last time around. Most of the homes were in Scripps Ranch. The street names sounded like they were supposed to be estates in the French countryside. I remember thinking that you get less sympathy from people when your house burns down and it's built on Moneybags Lane or Millionaire Drive.
My family's home burned down in 1998. Not as part of a big county-wide disaster. Just a house fire. So the governor didn't come bring us blankets, but I do know what it's like to not be able to believe that everything's gone. And also to look back on that experience nearly ten years later and know that it didn't kill us. Maybe it even made us stronger.
So far, my sisters and my parents are all safe. My little sister's neighborhood was evacuated yesterday. She's at my parents' house taking it easy, because school is closed all week. We talked yesterday about how we take it for granted that we live in the part of the country where these things happen. I told her how I had just been talking with our friend Geoffrey and that his brother and sister-in-law had moved to Florida. And while they're not on the Atlantic coast, I was saying that I have difficulty imagining I could ever move to Florida knowing how hurricane-ridden the area has been. And my little sister said, "Yeah, I know we've got fires and earthquakes, but I still say, fuck hurricanes." And that made me laugh.
I realize that this entry was written specifically in reference to another similar event four years ago, but I just referred back to the entry I wrote about THAT occurrence, and I realize that nothing I'm saying today is new. And that I may have said all of it better before. I must just be getting out of practice. All I write these days? Emails about work. Typing my address into online orders, if that counts. Clipped conversations in IM windows. I push the buttons on my phone a lot to play Bejeweled. And if someone was keeping track, the keystrokes might spell something out. It's not that I have less to say. Or maybe it is.
This used to be where I would write what I was thinking, only skeletally interrupted by what I was actually doing. My activities provided the scaffolding for all of the other often unrelated things going on in my head. But now, more often than not, I realize that I'm only prompted to write because I've done something or gone somewhere. And all I say is where I went or what I did. And as I rarely go anywhere or do anything anymore, the entries grow fewer and fewer.
I have been suppressing sentiment for some time now. I learn this lesson over and over. I keep it to myself when something tugs at me. And then at some point, I don't keep it to myself. I utter it aloud. I type it. And the absence of being met halfway is more apparent than the sentiment itself. There is no satisfaction in playing patty cake with the air. All of the satisfaction rests in the two hands coming together and making a clapping sound. The canceling out of equal and opposite forces. Force only has value when resistance measures it. (Note to NASA scientists: That's not an actual physics theorem. Please don't use this "law" when trying to get us to Mars.)
What's this? What's this? What...IS...THIS?
Friday night, I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D at the El Capitan Theater. I didn't know until the movie started that the 11:30 screening was a singalong. I can think of few things more horrifying than being in a movie theater filled with people talking and singing and vocalizing and not being within my rights to tell them to put a sock in it. And the songs in this movie are not all that easy to sing. And I think many people don't realize how few of the lyrics they actually know. And the soliloquys are sometimes speak-sung, so they can't really be sung along with. So SHUT UP, YOU AWFUL AWFUL GOTH PEOPLE! was all I could think for much of the movie. Although it's definitely a film that lends itself to 3-D-ification. And all of this just makes me want to go back to Disneyland. Where I've not been at all this calendar year, despite my ownership of an expensive premium pass.
All Animals Are Audrey
I watched a good bit of Animal Planet over the weekend. There was a Meerkat Manor marathon, during which I saw Flower sustain a fatal cobra bite to the head, and I saw her mate Zaphod have to leave the security of his family to go out on the rove. When Flower died, I thought, "Singalong Nightmare Before Christmas, and now THIS?" It was very sad. And although I realize they are not really very similar at all, meerkats make me think of Audrey. It's in the eyes. And the look of uncertainty always on their faces. Frankly, all animals make me think of Audrey in one way or another. All breeds of dog, certainly. But most other animals, too. I watched a show about a couple who adopted a baby hippo named Jessica, and Jessica's big wet eyeballs were Audrey all over the place to me. And then there was a show called Papa Bear, in which a guy in New Hampshire took in bear cubs who had been abandoned by their mothers and developed these amazing relationships with them and was able to study their behavior in ways that no other researchers ever had. The one bear named Yoda was remarkably affectionate and gentle. She would literally sit down in front of him and flop back on him like they were competing in the luge together. And he would scratch her and let her play with his watch band. It was the most amazing thing. And all of the close-ups on the little bear cubs' faces and later on the faces of the mothers just looked like Audrey to me. Hunters who shouldn't have been hunting in that part of the forest later shot and killed Yoda, and I felt tears sprout out of both of my eyes and thought that I agreed with the man on the show about Jessica the hippo. Viewing a photo of another wild hippo they had called Charlie who had been shot by neighboring farmers, he said that man is the worst animal god made. And I was inclined to agree with him.
When Beulah and I were talking about our love of animals and these shows I had watched, she understood what I was saying. And I told her about some people in the Cedar Fire of four years ago dying in the fire because they couldn't get their horses out, and Beulah scoffed, "Duh. You RIDE them to safety." She's very smart.
Audrey and I just got back in from a walk. There was a package at my door. Well, there were two. One was The Boatniks on DVD. The other was a black knit turtleneck sweater dress I ordered. I tried it on in the guest bedroom. It reminded me of a charcoal grey knit turtleneck sweater dress I bought and wore around this time of year eleven years ago. But the charcoal grey one fit better. The one that just arrived is probably going back.
Someone nearby is playing ABBA loud enough for me to recognize and sing along. Which reminds me that I just spent the weekend celebrating my older sister's nuptials to her lovely Swedish groom Paul. After the wedding, there were 15 or 20 Swedes (and two American crashers) in my hotel room, playing ABBA on my iTunes playlist and eventually getting security involved. And yesterday, there were as many Swedes lounging poolside at my parents' house, looking perfect in their bathing costumes and wondering if Encinitas is officially paradise.
I was so exhausted, I could barely keep my eyes open driving home from San Diego last night. Like I had to talk myself into not taking extra long blinks, even when I was only a mile or two away from my apartment. That fatigue has stretched on into today. I can barely tell what day of the week it is. Or what hour of the day. It's all chapped lips, sore neck, crooked posture, and indecisive eyeshadow today. I'm looking at this as the painful process required before renewal can begin. Digging in deep to peel off my dragon skin.
Oh. On Friday, I went to San Diego to change my hair again.
I let my stylist take pictures of my breasts for a collection of photographs he is going to be mounting in the salon to raise money for breast cancer research. At least I think that's what the story was. So if you walk into a hair salon in San Diego and see a bunch of boobs on the wall, two of them might be mine. Let's find a cure already. I'm eventually going to have too much self-respect and/or shame to continue this kind of activism.
I flipped off a poster of Optimus Prime the other day, and Rob wondered why. "Protect." "Destroy." I'm not sure the world is so binary. This comes from the Persians, you know. Ahura Mazda. Angra Mainyu. The Benevolent One. The Malevolent One. What about the other versions of the universe where bad guys and good guys coexist and are neither all good nor all evil. Where bad guys are sometimes good and good guys are sometimes bad, and there isn't one place that everyone of one kind goes. Like the Hindu gods. Or the Scandinavian gods. Or the Greeks and the Romans. The gods are just powerful. And sometimes they are reasonable. And sometimes they are right pricks. And sometimes they are playfully wicked. And sometimes they are deceptive and self-serving and cruel. Just like the rest of us. They just have the ability to appear to us as a bird and impregnate us if they want to.
This is one of the things that has often been unsatisfactory to me about comic book fiction and Star Wars and all of that. And maybe that's why most comic book heroes end up having an issue or two where they go bad. Maybe I'm not the only one who has trouble buying that the good guys are good because they have to be and therefore they can be nothing else. And maybe this is part of the reason I don't know whether I would be an Autobot or a Decepticon.
I haven't really been looking much forward to the new Transformers movie. I don't expect it to be any good, because of Michael Bay. And, also, I was never that much into Transformers, mostly because I was (and am) a girl. And I only really cared about a robot when at least part of it was being captained by a girl or -- even better -- a small child and when the girl or child and the robot all spoke Japanese. And even then, I only liked those shows because I lived in the Philippines, and we only got one English-speaking television station, and I would watch ANY cartoon that came on. Even Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.
So I haven't been counting down the days till transformation. Although, back in April, I was about to have dinner at Magnolia, and I took this picture of a Christo-esque wrap job promoting the Transformers movie on a building on Sunset.
And then, a day or two later, when it was windier than Los Angeles has any right to be, the entire business was in shreds, as documented by Rob's phone.
Special commendation for having a windshield that clean, Rob. My mom would be proud of you.
Anyway, I was in the gymnasium today, and I saw a commercial for the new Transformers movie, and I have to admit, a tiny, bitter, reluctant, unyielding part of me is mortified that I'm about to tell you that the commercial looked cool. But it did. And I am hopeful that it will be fun to look at it when I can hear people talking in the movie, too. Although I'm almost certain that will be the ruination part. Exciting visual effects shouldn't be enough to get people out of their houses. That shit is run of the mill at this point. You can see fabulous CGI in commercials for soft drinks these days. And wanting to recapture a piece of your youth shouldn't be reason enough, either. Because to be perfectly honest, with very few exceptions I prefer the cartoons I loved as cartoons. Even feature-length animated versions of those stories with the exact same character design and voice acting usually disappointed me. Can't we just love what we loved as it was and stop trying to put it on Burger King cups of the future?
That being said, I am about to embark on an attempt to adapt a novel (or two) from my adolescence into screen fodder. I never said I wasn't a hypocrite. I just said I don't like Michael Bay. And I stand by that.
A few weekends ago, I missed the Star Wars birthday. But I thought about it and watched a lot of zombies instead. And I began proving my hypothesis that bloody marys make time dilate on the weekends. As long as you drink them in the daytime, and as long as I'm the one who makes them.
I should have gone and bought those American flag cupcakes. They're always a hit.
The Jacaranda trees are in bloom, scattering their lavender blossoms over everything that lines the streets, leaving outlines where parked cars were, like crime scene chalk drawings. The value of negative space.
My father told me about how my mom used to admire our neighbor Pete's Jacaranda trees, and that Pete confided in him that they may be pretty, but they are a pain in the ass. We sold that house. And Pete moved back to the Midwest. And I notice that when you move away from a place, it disappears from the map for you. A great void where once a house was. Or a street. Or a town. That was the house I parked in front of when some kids went along smashing car windows (including mine) on prom night. And the house I parked in front of when I came back from failing my driving test and angrily yanked my hand brake so hard that my mom had to use a hammer to get it to release. I go back to the surrounding neighborhood because Beulah still lives around there, but I've stopped looking off in the direction of that house. The end of the earth drops off where my memories end.
That same weekend, I carried a camera the whole time, but never had much cause to use it. Except for the hours I spent at Tom Bergin's celebrating Tricia's birthday, half of which I spent wondering why my camera kept alerting me that my card was locked. And then I noticed that the card was in fact locked.
Jessie and I stopped for Damiano's after the party. Got the worst table service I've had in some time. But that didn't have the same quality of "it's so bad it's great" as the Taco Bell run we made the following weekend. When the drive-thru attendant handed me our food, the smell in the car was so atrocious, I asked whether one of us had accidentally ordered a Diaper Supreme. That didn't stop us from eating what we ordered. It just made us laugh a lot while we were doing it.
A month ago today, I took a bite of a nicely packaged blueberry nutrition bar my mom gave me, and I had to take a second look at it to make sure I hadn't actually bitten into a piece of shit. Looking at it wasn't all that convincing, either. It was a Blueberry Noni Think Green bar. I don't know what "noni" is, but in this bar's enthusiasm to deliver to me all the nutrition in my recommended daily serving of vegetables, it really missed the boat on being delicious or even palatable. I said to several people that day, "I'm pretty sure this bar has been digested at least once."
The up side is that my mom gets these things for free. So if you don't like something you found in her kitchen, you can probably just let it fall out of your mouth and into the trash can without even offending her. My mother represents gourmet food companies and has a handsome selection of wonderful -- and often dismayingly healthful -- products that she enthusiastically markets to upscale supermarkets all over the place. But she also goes to a lot of food-related trade shows, where she gets remarkable amounts of things for free which she then brings home and stores in the kitchen and the front bar area of her home, fully intending guests and family to help themselves to whatever random bounty is on the top of the pile. I ate something over there a few weeks ago, and I told her it was really gross, and she shrugged and said, "I don't care. It's not my line."
Of course, if she'd paid for the thing you just ate and didn't like, she would probably try to offer you a fix. A condiment or a stint in a fry pan -- whatever might make it suddenly delicious to you. Because it's only ever okay to spit something out if it was free.
Dexatrim Max2O (that 2 should be subscripted, but go jump in a lake, will you?) runs these spots on television encouraging you to sprinkle this stuff in your drinking water and thereby become thin and energetic and wonderful all around. "Gives me and my water a boost!" says one chipper young fellow before taking an enthusiastic draught from his water bottle. And the voiceover instructs you to "max out your water" with Dexatrim Max2O. It may be inappropriately old world of me, but this only makes me think of urine.
I vaguely remember an interview on, I think, This American Life but certainly an NPR program. It was a Jewish fellow who is famous for something now. I don't remember what. He may be a musician. He and his sister visited Israel when he was a boy, and their knowledge of Hebrew was sometimes jeered at because of how formal their diction was. He gave an example of excusing himself to use the restroom and saying something essentially to the effect of begging someone's leave so that he might go make water. I think. I really don't remember this memory well enough to recount it, I'm realizing.
Anyway, so I know of this phrase "to make water," and I know that it was once said to mean "to go pee pee." And as a result, hearing about your water or my water or even someone being described as "a comedienne of the first water" (as was just done on a page of Henry Miller I read last night) generally makes me cringe. I'm evolved enough to know that this is my problem and not Dexatrim's or Henry Miller's for that matter. But I'm self-centered enough to complain about it publicly. So there you go.
You and your water go do what you need to, but please don't do it near me. I have a thing about other people's pee.
When I first moved out on my own at the unfortunate age of 19, I was poor. I didn't live like I was especially poor, but that's what helped make me really poor. When I finally ran out of cash and ran out of credit and never managed to scare up the ingenuity to pull off a major heist, I often spent time flipping through pages of catalogs and marking the things I would in theory buy. For some reason, the mere act of choosing partially sated my desire to actually have. And in a way I could go around feeling as if I already owned these things. I had pointed at them. Circled them with a pen. They were mine.
I am downright grateful I didn't actually acquire the majority of things I once thought I wanted. I no longer have the mountains of mail-order literature stashed away, but I carried a lot of those rags around with me for years mostly as a result of bad filing. They would end up in a box that was filled primarily with magazines with some amount of keepsake value, and I would run into them some amount of time later and think, "Poo. Why would you want to wear that thing?" or "What an absurd upholstery choice." So allowing some time for incubation is probably the most critical factor in staving off bankruptcy for me even now.
Cut to yesterday afternoon when I received Anthropologie's new catalog in the post. It's called print, and it is now my nemesis. With the exception of a few of the furniture pieces and a dumb handbag, I literally want every single thing in this catalog. Maybe I'll outgrow the want. Maybe the colors will grow garish. Or the platform wedge sandals will seem clunky and dated*. Maybe I will join a militant political group and never wear anything but camouflage. But at this very moment, with my current opinions and my current tastes, this catalog is a lesson in the things I don't have. Happily, this retailer isn't a purveyor of more metaphysical items. Or I'd be able to carrot that sentence with the word "all."
I gave my mom a sheet of Sugar Ray Robinson stamps to give to my father. At first, she was livid. She thought I had made the stamps myself. The Christmas before last, I had some custom stamps made at Zazzle.com with a photograph of me and my two sisters, and I gave the stamps to my family members, and my mom was both grateful and angry, because it costs more than twice the face value of the stamp to have them made. And apparently, that's not worth it. So, she looked at this sheet of Sugar Ray Robinson stamps and was all prepared to disown me, until I explained that I bought these stamps at the U.S. Post Office and paid exactly what they say they cost. Then she was pretty nice about it. What's most amusing to me is the idea that I would have spent money to design and print a Sugar Ray Robinson stamp.
My father emailed me a couple of days ago thanking me for the stamps, and also said the following:
Ray Robinson was one of the greatest boxers and champions at a time when you had to be great to be a champion. I was watching ESPN's Sports Classic Channel last night and they showed a short clip of a knockout when Ray took back the championship from another classy champ who was more like Joe Frazer in his style. ESPN had interviewed him recently and he said after Sugar Ray knocked him down and he was counted out they carried him back to his corner. When he came to he heard everyone screaming and asked his trainer what round it was. He didn't even know he had been knocked out. My memory is bad so I can't remember his name but he was from Utah.
We also discussed the Mosley-Collazzo fight, which we both watched. My dad said, "Sugar Shane gave him a 'whoopin' as Mohammed Ali would describe it."
"Another classy champ." How great is that. My dad couldn't not be awesome if it was required by law. To not be awesome. Admittedly, this statement lacks clarity.
I don't cook as often as I used to. Sometimes I even convince myself that I don't really enjoy it as much as I used to. I've gotten lazy. My kitchen isn't very modern. I want for counter space. But this past week, I caught the bug.
I had chicken that had to be cooked to make room in my freezer. So I made this casserole that my mom used to make. A chicken and rice thing with cream of mushroom soup and Lipton Onion Soup Mix sprinkled on top. The other half of the chicken I fried in a pan. Both turned out great. I didn't really eat much of either. They are in my refrigerator.
Yesterday, I made linguine carbonara. A specialty of mine that really shouldn't be made very often as it is the most fattening possible dish one could hope to eat, short of a bowl of solid fat. And then today, I made meat sauce like my mother taught me, only I don't substitute turkey for the beef and pork (and veal when I can get it). And I had enough meat to also make a bolognese sauce that I haven't made in years. And that sauce calls for a Sicilian tomato sauce recipe that I also had to make. So that's three sauces simmering on my stove all day today. And then I made a tonnato sauce, because I saw the recipe, had all the ingredients, and managed to drop and break a jar of Italian tuna in olive oil -- enough so that it needed to be used but not so much that I'm worried about accidentally eating shards of glass.
I was on my feet in the kitchen all day. I used and washed numerous appliances and pots and pans and then reused and rewashed them. I kept very busy. The Incredible Mr. Limpet was playing on the television for some of the time. My upstairs neighbors were arguing up a storm. And then they weren't. And then they were again. I have a little kitchen timer in the shape of a pear. It was ticking all day. And then it would buzz like crazy. And then I would wind it up and it would begin ticking again. I picture the day going by like in those time lapse films where the sun rises and sets and rises and sets in a matter of seconds. Civilizations came and went. Wars were fought and won. Fashions were established, discarded, and then revived triumphantly. Music stayed mostly the same.
By the time eight o'clock came around, I had finished cooking everything but had no real interest in eating any of it. I didn't even boil any noodles. I just made all the sauces and put them away. And then I cleaned up and went to a party where Ryan and James made me laugh and laugh. It was cold outside. But it was too warm inside to stay in. There was a ham rotting on the mantel. Festively. I photographed it. I didn't photograph much of anything else. Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf. A temporary one. Well, leaves are largely temporary anyway.
Amazon.com suggested that I get myself a Life Hammer with the following approach:
"Don't be trapped in your vehicle in case of accident--the Life Hammer is designed to help you escape by easily smashing your window and cutting your seatbelt."
Despite my upbringing, I'm not really the sort of person who expects misfortune to find me. But this is precisely the sort of marketing that ignites fantasies in my brain in which I have just driven off a bridge into an ice cold lake which also happens to be teeming with water spiders, anthropomorphized fecal matter, and murderers in diving gear.
My dad and I spent a few days hanging out after the new year began. I cooked dinner a few times, and we would watch movies. The Maltese Falcon. High Anxiety. His company delights me. It wasn't hard for me to stretch my misplaced Christmas out for days and days. And on the day I was finally determined to load my car up and head back to Los Angeles, we had a conversation that somehow led him to show me the CDs he had bought, which were essentially cruise books from when he was a Seabee in Vietnam that someone had scanned and packaged for sale.
My dad paged through the PDF and made comments as they occurred to him. This commanding officer was a real squared-away guy. This one...well, he wasn't one. This guy really had a tough job, because his men were the worst slackers and layabouts in the bunch. Look, the Seabees had a pet bear.
Well, I copied those PDFs and clipped out the images I found with my dad in them. This is him as a guy in his thirties. He sure was handsome and great.
I was going to crop out these images and write this post more than a week ago, but it -- like everything -- wriggled free of my volition for a while. And then I was watching a vintage featurette about The Dirty Dozen today, and the narrator kept referring to Lee Marvin and the other stars of the film as "action men." And I loved it. And decided to pay some small homage to a time when men were men of action, and Tim Allen was nowhere to be found.
Although it comes but once a year, it isn't lost on me that it comes every year, this Thanksgiving business. And that each new one I celebrate is piggybacked on all the rest that preceded it. And that maybe I'm getting tired of having all these milestones to mark my progress. Or regress. Or no-gress, as the case my be. Maybe it's just "gress" at that point.
Often with the hope of not being extremely redundant -- despite the fact that eating a turkey dinner every year at the same time seems prone to a redundancy that even Kurt Vonnegut couldn't dress up in disguise -- I end up reading over my previous writings on this subject. Now that I've been writing in this venue for over five years, there's more to pick through and more to tiptoe round. It wastes a bunch of time. And usually leaves me with the feeling that the thing I wrote last year or the year before was better than whatever I'm going to say now, and why didn't I ever get paid to write when I was saying clever things like that? And why doesn't it result in any palpable satisfaction to read something I've written and like it? Why isn't that ever ever enough? Anyway. I went back is my point.
I began my holiday on Wednesday, leaving town at precisely the stupidest possible time and having already been warned that there was some shitty-ass shit going on on the 405. But surprisingly, I really didn't suffer much. The big hubbub in El Segundo was still there, and many lanes were closed, but I probably had to slow down for ten or fifteen minutes, and then once I was through it, I was flying along at 75 the rest of the way. So I got to my parents' house with time to heft all my junk in the house, write my annual Thanksgiving email, feel very tired and contemplate not doing anything social, and then get myself into the car and on my way to Ono Sushi, where a typically super duper dinner was had. After sushi, I visited Nunu's, where I was treated like a princess -- as usual. I had hoped to stop by Jivewire at The Casbah, but the ranks of enthusiastic compatriots had thinned, and I guess I was tired enough that dancing would have done me in. So I'm glad that Nunu's was where we landed. My mom didn't even hassle me about not getting home until well after her Thanksgiving day preparations had begun. That's unprecedented.
Come to think of it, this year was different than previous years in a few ways. But it was also very much the same. Maybe with deliberation attached. Like my annual Thanksgiving nightcap at Nunu's. I've come to look forward to that, so I make a point of perpetuating it. This year, there were so many people there with me and other people there that I knew, it really did feel like it's own special holiday thing. And after a dinner of turkey and lobster -- yes, LOBSTER -- and more things than can be artfully put on a normal-sized plate at once without layering and overrun unless you serve your cranberry relish and yams and stuffing in tiny little tablespoonsful, like they might do at a chi chi restaurant. With like cilantro oil or a vanilla-infused truffle and balsamic vinegar reduction drizzled on the plate and a garnish of something like star fruit or caviar. That gives me an idea. Would anyone mind if I started calling poultry eggs caviar? I will serve turkey caviar at my next Thanksgiving dinner. And see if anyone notices. And if anyone wants to try and fit it on melba toast.
If I can recall properly, here was our menu:
Appetizers Cheese Platter - Aged Mimolette - Huntsman (Stilton layered with Double Gloucester) - Wensleydale - one other one I didn't try - every possible kind of cracker Fresh Fruit Marinated Mushrooms Kalamata Olives Picholine Olives Wine: Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
Dinner Roast Turkey (specially brined and cooked to moist perfection) Broiled Lobster Tails with Clarified Butter Mashed Potatoes Jansen's Temptation (a Swedish potato casserole, apparently secretly including herring -- yum) Chestnut Stuffing Mashed Yams with Apricots and Almonds (?), Topped with Bruléed Marshmallows and Coconut Cranberry Relish (a special recipe that causes all others to be deemed inferior) Green Beans (I almost called them Haricots Verts. And I can't remember if they were Amandine.) Corn (It wasn't fancy, but it's still my favorite.) Gravy (duh) Wine: Stag's Leap Merlot and Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
Dessert Side by Side Pumpkin Pie and New York Cheesecake with Raspberries Espresso/Cappuccino Apéritif: Sambuca
I hope I've managed to make it sound fancy and perfectly planned and brilliantly executed. Because it was. And I noticed how proud and happy it made my mother to have everything go over so well. Big success. Big success.
Friday night, I went over to Beulah's, and we went shopping for groceries and treated ourselves to a variety of artery-clogging snacks. A lot of cheese and crackers and apples and pepperoni and stuff. But also Totino's Pizza Rolls. In case anyone was wondering if I've ever eaten poorly. Believe me. I have. And I do. We also watched The New World on pay-per-view. Essentially only because it's another flick Christian Bale is in, and Beulah is devoted as the day is long. We didn't like it. It was the slowest movie I've watched in a long time. Perhaps ever. Unbelievably slow. And the dialogue was so soft and so ickily poem-like that I often had to stop chewing and lean in to try and hear what was being said, only to find that what they were saying revealed nothing at all story-wise. The only way Beulah and I were able to enjoy it was in being so disappointed in it. We began to sarcastically wish it could just be slower. That Christian Bale and Pocahontas would just TAKE THEIR TIME. I once heard a comedian say that he was surprised that Finding Neverland had been nominated for Best Picture; he said the movie was so slow it should have been nominated for Best Photograph. I liked Finding Neverland, but I thought that joke was funny. Even funnier, however, was Beulah's exclamation during one of the sequences of inanimate objects being shot for long silent moments for no apparent reason: "This movie is a screensaver." It really is like a two-and-a-half hour poetry reading. And if you're into that, we probably shouldn't go to the movies together. Incidentally, Beulah's never seen Reign of Fire and was concerned that it, too, would suck. But I maintain that Reign of Fire is a terribly underrated film. As long as you let yourself buy into the whole dragons thing -- and as long as you can bear to watch Matthew McConaughey playing an insufferable wacko, which I further maintain is less insufferable than watching him play a love interest or a looker -- and if you allow that these kinds of grandiose fantasies might call for some grandiose acting, it's perfectly entertaining to watch. And it contains one of my more favorite Star Wars references. Which will do nothing to help Beulah want to watch it, I realize.
I performed in a couple of improv shows on Saturday night, spent the night at Beulah's place, then drove home to Los Angeles today, with not much traffic to grouse about, bookending a relatively painless travel experience. And while I was driving up today, I listened to nothing but Beatles music on the radio. First it was just Beatles Beatles Beatles, and then it was an hour-long tribute to George Harrison, the fifth anniversary of whose death is this Wednesday. Which made me sad, and made me marvel at how long it's been, because I distinctly remember when I heard he had passed. And the night it happened was an awful one for me, through no fault of George's. Golden Slumbers made me think of Tasha, which made me cry a bit. The rest of it made me think assorted things. I never give you my pillow. I only send you my invitation. And in the middle of the celebrations, I break down...Lying there and staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sleepy feeling...You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.....Everybody had a hard year. Everybody had a good time. Everybody had a wet dream. Everybody saw the sunshine...Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon her head. Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer made sure that she was dead...Will I wait a lonely lifetime? If you want me to, I will...Boy, you gotta carry that weight, carry that weight a long time.
Very little Guitar Hero was played. Very little sleep was had. There was an unfortunate -- and perhaps statistically unavoidable -- falling out with my mother. She was so happy with me for two straight days. That couldn't possibly have continued without somehow triggering the onset of Armageddon. I had a lot of work to do. I squeezed that in where possible. I edited and posted photos, despite drooping eyelids and flagging spirits. I didn't get to eat Thanksgiving leftovers even once. And I didn't bring any home, which is usually the case and an unfortunate one. I drove home wondering why I allow things to matter, particularly when I am doing it alone. And I felt thankful for a sense of history. Even though it's a sense of history that most often prevents me from ever having a sense of present.
Everybody had a hard year. Everybody had a good time. Everybody had a wet dream. Everybody saw the sunshine.>
I voted. Did you? If you did, (a) bravo, and (b) send me a photo of your "I Voted" sticker presented in some interesting fashion. I will do something with it. And maybe reward you with something for your participation. Maybe.
P.S. If you're the sort that expects access to private photos, you'll have to specify that. And I will take any such notification under advisement.
A few weeks ago, Sarah and Paul were in Anaheim and wanted to visit Disneyland, so I drove down to shepherd them around on a Saturday night. It would have been much more fun had it not been Gay Days. Not because we have any problem with gay people, make no mistake. But because I have never been to Disneyland that late at night and seen it that crowded. As a result, we didn't really get to do much but wait in line and elbow our way through red-shirted crowds. But we still had a good time. And while we were waiting in line for Space Mountain, Paul was teaching me some of the idioms that the Swedes have that approximate ours. For instance, where we would say "bite the bullet" to reference the act of enduring something painful or unpleasant, Swedes would say the equivalent of "bite the sour apple." And where we might call it "icing on the cake" when something great comes after something already very good, Swedes would call that the "cream on the mashed potatoes." I love this. And I loved the fact that, even after our somewhat stressful Disneyland visit, Paul sent me a lovely email and told me that I was in fact the cream on the mashed potatoes.
While I'm on this language instruction kick, here are some additional Swedish idioms you can use at your leisure or when you're hanging out with Paul.
"The important thing [here] is to get away alive." Det gäller att klara sig undan med livet i behåll. It shrieks to clear one self out of the road with the waist intact.
To totally abandon someone. Lämna någon vind för våg. Leave someone wind by wave.
A cheerful expression of surprise. Hej hopp i blåbärsskogen! Hello, jump in the blueberry forest!
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Bättre en fågel i handen än tio i skogen. Better a bird in your hand than ten in the woods.
"Don't count your chickens until they hatch." Ropa inte hej förräns du är över bäcken. Don't yell hi until you're over the stream.
A party that got out of hand. Det var ett riktigt sjoslag. It was a real sea-battle.
"You're in deep shit now." Nu är det kokta fläsket stekt. Now the boiled pork is fried.
"Run like hell." Lägga benen på ryggen. Put your legs on your back.
To make things worse Att lägga lök på laxen To put onion on the salmon
"Calm down." Kiss och gå lägg dig! Pee and go lie down!
"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Det är skönt med den goa värmen, sa kärringen när stugan brann. It is nice with the heat, said the old woman when the house was on fire.
"Now, you've done it!" Nu har du trampat i klaveret. Now you have stepped into the accordion!
To come into a lot of money Lägga rabarber på klöver. Lay down rhubarbs on clover.
Talking nonsense Han pratar i nattmössan. He is talking in his nighthat.
"Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades." Nära är bara bra med en atombomb. Close is only good with an A-bomb.
"Good gracious!" Milda makter! Mild forces!
"It doesn't work." Den är paj. It's pie.
"Fat chance!" Inte en sportmössa! Not a sportscap!
"You'r talking out of your ass." Nu är du ute och cyklar. Now you are out and cycling.
"Caught with his pants down" Med skägget i brevlådan With his beard in the mailbox
"No kidding!" Dra mig på en tallpinnevagn. Drag me on a pine-twig wagon.
"You've really made a fool of yourself." Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpet. Now you've shit in the blue cupboard.
Friday night, I went to The Magic Castle to help my friends Kevin and Chris celebrate their birthdays. I am not a fan of magic. I find the melodrama and faggy hand gestures to be the height of overdoing it. I especially don't like the Vegas-y variety of comedy and magic that The Magic Castle seems to be famous for. (Incidentally, is it The Magic CASTLE or The MAGIC Castle?) The first time I ever went to The Magic Castle, I had only lived here for a month or two, and my office had our Christmas party there. I had dinner, and then left before the magic show. I had tickets to see Tenacious D, Naked Trucker, and Spinal Tap at the House of Blues that night. And that was far more magical a prospect.
I did actually like the Close-Up Room, where the show is more about sleight of hand, which I can truthfully appreciate very much. Our magician in the Close-Up Room was a lady named Suzanne, and she was really good. And not at all covered in glitter or self-tanner. I think sleight of hand and magic are very different things. Where one of them is a good and cool thing and the other is a thing that makes me want to punch my fist through a hat. And frankly, it really comes down more to the issue of whether or not you are really good at it or whether you have one of the two hairdos magicians are apparently allowed to have. The guy in the Parlor of Prestidigitation was not funny, not skillful, and not someone who is not a hunchback. I had had enough to drink that I was probably not a very gracious audience member. And a fat guy glared at me at one point because I was having a good time but not in synch with the rest of the group. I think we also annoyed the young lady whose bosom would have received a marriage proposal from Chris, had she not liked magic so much.
I also don't like being asked to participate in the show. I don't even like it when this happens at comedy shows. Or at restaurants with especially gregarious servers. I hate being put on the spot. And I'm always convinced I will do the wrong thing. So I was relieved to not be wrangled into doing anything to support the magic. I had warned Kevin before the event that there was no way I was going up on stage for anything. Especially not to be sawed in half. It also occurred to me that women are always more at risk at these events for the simple reason that women are considered less likely to be -- or worse to think they are -- funny. So you get a lady up on stage to hold your tablecloth, sprig of baby's breath, and bewitched hat stand and you can do your schtick uninterrupted. You get a dude up on stage, and there's a very good chance he will find himself a chance to do a one man interpretive scene from Top Gun. (Probably either the You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling part or the part where Goose dies.) So maybe I resent this tradition. Despite the fact that I freely admit women are less likely to be funny.
In the end, I had a nice enough time. A lot of whiskey helps. I also started out the evening with a Campari soda at dinner, and I haven't had one of those in years and years. It was nostalgic and good. And afterwards, Kevin and Chris and I went to the 101 Coffee Shop and argued about my Guitar Hero skills (though Chris has never played) and whether or not mac and cheese should be soupy. I'm a fan of the crispy/chewy variety. Chris prefers the soupy version. But everyone agreed on the onion rings. Although the boys ate theirs with mustard, while I ate mine with ranch. And I drove home quite certain I would never need to -- nor should I -- ever eat again.
Last night, my friend Tim's short film Slideshow screened at Garage Comedy. I took all the photos featured in the film, and the film is very funny, so I felt especially proud when I saw my name come up in the credits. I remember the day we shot those photos. It was a long, long day and included me getting a little toy dog out of a coin-op machine. There were many characters to choose from. A variety of breeds. Even one named "Duchess" who was nursing pups, but you had to get the pups separately. But the one I wanted stood out.
His name was "Craps," and he's in a shitting position. Which I can't believe was ever mass-manufactured. But it only took me three tries and $1.50 to win him, and now no one can ever tell me he doesn't exist.
So that was a fun day, as I recall. And it was already long enough ago that one of us could have had a baby by now. The blasted passage of time. I guess I like getting past the awful things, but the good stuff just whizzes past, too. At least we have this to show for it.
So last night, I went to Garage Comedy. It was a little chilly out. Fall weather that scolds me in advance for the sweater I don't feel like carrying. I was tired and out of sorts all day. Too many cocktails and too little sleep. For days and days. I haven't been to El Cid for a while. Mondays have become problematic and vied for. I always end up saying no to at least two things. But good ol' Garage Comedy. I always see so many friends there. I am a fan of that.
That above photo is a link to the photo set from last night. If you are not my friend on Flickr, you won't be able to see them. If you would like to become my friend on Flickr, click this link and use your powers of instruction-following and deductive reasoning to make it come to pass.
El Cid kicked us all out before midnight, which was unexpected and unwelcome. The persistent partygoers among us went over to 4100 and continued doing what it is we do, just in more dimly lit surroundings and with more places to sit.
All in all, I drank too much. I smoked too much. I have limited my hopes today to becoming hydrated.
In my case, "Lane" carries too much of an air of quaintness and small-towny quiet. Memory Lane is a street in which kids can play ball without worrying for being run over. I guess because any cars that venture down that apple tree-lined stretch require a hand crank to start and may be delivering blocks of much-needed ice. Where my memories reside, there are four full lanes, a double yellow line (not for crossing), and room enough along the curbs to park and or ride a bicycle. And not one of those bicycles with the one really large wheel. Memory Lane, for me, is huge and heavily trafficked, and I've received many citations there, both for cruising and for loitering.
I am staying at my little sister's home in San Diego. She and her boyfriend recently moved into a very nice place in Carmel Mountain Ranch. I used to live in an apartment nearby, so this visit is filled with familiarity, right down to the smell of a September morning. It's cool out. The grass and shrubs are covered in beads of dew. In the shade, it feels like autumn. And in the sun it feels like spring.
I used to live here. I used to go running just down the road. I used to smell jasmine and eucalyptus in the shade, and I used to like it when the mist from the sprinklers caught me in the face. I used to wake up earlier than I intended and wonder how the days would go. I used to manufacture reasons to do just about anything for fear of sitting still.
Five years ago, when September 11 didn't yet have a name of its own, the air was a lot like this. The sun a lot like this. I fully believe in global warming, but you can't always feel climate change from one year to the next. It seems like this morning is just like the other September mornings that found me awake very early and heavy with the looking back. That was the last September 11 I lived in this city and in this neighborhood. Every subsequent anniversary, I have been elsewhere, except for one when I was here, but in the capacity of a visitor. I even went to a baseball game that time. And the Padres even won.
This is always the time of year I stumble back into old messes. There are milestones on previous calendar pages. Proximal moments with like elements. The spans between them converging as the point of looking back grows further from them and the idea of a beginning loses its meaning. I have always felt this way. I have never felt this way. I am assuming a brand of feeling that may never have been. Mostly, I just know that there are times when I have been unhappy and there are times when I have been reluctant to admit that I was not unhappy, and neither of them felt as foreign as the times when I was sure everything was wonderful, and unhappy was only worth understanding for the sake of its antonym.
Saturday night, I noticed people wearing sweaters, and I was thrilled. I celebrate the return of fall weather. And all the melancholy it brings. I have needed a break from the heat.
After a week of sequestration and a night of mistrust, I drove to San Diego this morning to spend some time with my family. It was very family-ish and good. My dad gave me sincere hugs and said he loved me, and he smelled very nice like he always does. Beulah showed me the slide show she made in memory of Tasha, and we cried together over it. Sarah and Beulah and I went swimming, and Audrey came with us, and everyone delighted in what a funny little goofball she is. Especially when riding around on a kickboard. I experimented with my Canon 30D and took extraordinary pleasure in selective focus. And my mom seemed delighted to have her three girls all together in the same room. She taught us to make jiaozi (I'm pretty sure Sarah already knew how). And she congratulated us when the dumplings were pretty and Chinese-looking. And she clucked gently when they weren't. When we ate them, Beulah was in charge of the background music, and she decided to play a lot of Beach Boys songs. Somehow, the topic of my historically non-working digestive system came up. While we were eating. And Beulah delighted in making fun of me by replacing Beach Boys lyrics with words about poop wherever possible. I helped. I'm a good sport, and I know a lot of words. But I couldn't help but wonder why it's okay for us to talk about this at the dinner table when no one in the family seems to be able to stand a photograph of me with my dog's tongue touching my mouth. My mom also minds a great deal when I tease her about her garage sale and estate sale "findings." She showed me an impressive lambswool rug she bought for five dollars, and I said, "Someone probably died on it." And she boiled our handmade jiaozi tonight in a really huge Calphalon pot she got for forty dollars. I said, "I'll bet some old people used to boil their dentures in it. And they're dead now." Those little japes really get under her skin. But sing a Beach Boys song with the bass line replaced with repetition of the word "bowel," and I guess you're fine. Maybe she would have minded if company had been there. Or maybe she was just riding out the high of having been proud of us. I think it really meant something to her that her three daughters were helping her make dumplings. I heard her announcing it to her sister-in-law on the telephone as we were finishing up. And she mentioned wanting to make a tradition of this. I'm for it. I love jiaozi. And I love knowing how to make those perky little dumplings with my own two hands.
Janice Dickinson has been famous for too long. I know she went into dormancy for a while in the middle, but if you add up the front end and back end of her career, you will suddenly find that you are ashamed that you even know who I am talking about. And she looks like a Spitting Image puppet. So does Dyan Cannon.
I promise I am not trying to remake my blog into some kind of Defamer, Jr. I just think things is all.
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?
I have this faint memory of a phone call and a sinking feeling. Of suspicion and fear. And impatience and resentment. I remember arguing about bottles of wine and who they belonged to. I remember not really being angry about the wine. The wine was a scapegoat. It lives out in the desert now. Never to return.
You come into a person's life where you come in. There's no changing it. You know them when you know them, where they are and when they are. You know what there is. And when more is added, and when more is stripped away, you continue to know the shadow of what was there. Paper doll fashions leave their silhouettes. You learn the absence of the image better than the presence of it. The absence persists.
Even longing begets focus. Even the kind that promotes flailing and frenzy. But this other thing. It's like a problem with my eyes. I can't seem to just look at one thing for even a second. I am everywhere and all over the place. And all the while, I'm nowhere. I ceased to exist some time ago. No matter how much space I take up.
Died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came.
When I was leaving work yesterday, there was caution tape cordoning off the pedestrian bridge between my office building and the parking garage. Apparently it was there because of a rash of bees that had been seen or reported. And I guess this is a fairly common occurrence at this address. To prove I really don't pay much attention to the world around me, I honestly can't tell you if the pedestrian bridge is lined with flowers or not. I think it is. But I may just be adding a fanciful skin to the monochromatic trek between parking space and cubicle. I can see rainbows in my head if I want to, too. I am very imaginative.
I was tempted to just walk under the caution tape and take the most efficient route to my car. I'm not afraid of bees. And from where I was standing, I couldn't see any bees. And I rationalize that the caution tape doesn't actually confine the bees to that space, so if there are a bunch of bloodthirsty, perhaps Africanized bees out there, they can sting me just as easily if I take the elevator down to the street and walk under the pedestrian bridge. Even moreso if I take the stairs. But I didn't want the lobby attendant to think I was being willful and obstinate, so I followed the extempore rules and secretly chided myself for having that momentary flash of panic when I first saw the caution tape and thought, "If I can't walk across that bridge, how will I get home. Or to the mall, for that matter." I wouldn't say I'm NOT strategically minded, but even I'm ashamed that my survival instincts didn't immediately remap the path across the street. It's not like I'm allergic to asphalt or anything.
Back when I was in high school and my mom didn't want to be asked to pay for my college education, she suggested that I join the Reserve Officers Training Corps. Now, that you have heard this story and can add to it the knowledge that I have never successfully done a pull-up nor scaled a wall with the aid of a rope, you will surely think me justified in having glared at her, turned away, and never revisited the topic again, except in storytelling in which the suggestion was positioned as absurd.
My arguments are few. (Click the photo for a higher-resolution version or whatever.)
And if you are too lazy to crop your photo strip out of the top photo, click here to get your own personal delivery, because you are very special and I have a huge amount of bandwidth:
Jessie and I are Quality Street. It is official. We put up a little performance piece at Garage Comedy tonight. And it seemed to go over all right. In addition to taking our pants off on stage, this is what I looked like after all was said and done.
There's still lipstick in my hair. Wish you could have been there.
I wish Beulah and Justin had been able to be with us. But in all other respects, this was a super duper Christmas. I think my dad got more gifts than I've ever seen him get in one sitting. He seemed genuinely dazzled. And my mom cried out in shock and delight upon opening several of her gifts. The kind of thrill and gratitude that transcend concern over cost and necessity. I got way more than I expected or deserved. And I gave a great deal, but it still didn't feel like enough. My mom prepared a delicious prime rib. A couple of nights ago, I had asked what her plans for dessert were, and it seemed she didn't think we needed any. For Christmas? I protested. She said, Fine. And then decided to make her famous Melt in Your Mouth, a chocolatey dessert that is Beulah's favorite. Christmas morning, after scolding me for taking the dog out without putting on a jacket ("You don't have any common sense!"), she burst into my bedroom, where I was still trying to sleep, and yelled, "I made the Melt in Your Mouth. But I don't know why we couldn't just have watermelon!" and then promptly left the room. In response to each of these announcements, I muttered deadpan, "Merry Christmas." In the end, I think everyone was happy she had made her special dessert, and I have a feeling she was happy, too. Although I am also certain she would have been just as content with watermelon.
We sat around the fireplace and amongst the shrapnel of the gift explosion, watching the DVDs my sisters and I arranged to have made of my father's old super 8 film footage. That was our flagship gift to my parents. We watched the film of their wedding and of our family in Italy and in Virginia and Northern California. I don't know if we made it to Guam, but that footage is in there, too. We also watched more of 'Allo 'Allo!, the British sitcom Beulah recently got my dad interested in via DVD gifting. I dozed off a bit, on pillows on the floor with Audrey curled up against me. But only for a split second.
I wrote and sent my Christmas email. I also made a mental note of how many holiday text messages I received this year. A surprising trend. Especially when I took note of the number of message-senders I heard from who had only just finally bought into cellular technology or only just learned how to read and send SMS messages during this calendar year. Big ups to those guys.
Martín and Katie and Francisca came by in the evening, driving all the way out from Valley Center, to exchange gifts and deliver the ham I'd forgotten. It is nice having friends who live really close to you and to have had the foresight to give them copies of your housekey. We sat around and talked for a good bit, and I made them look at Audrey in her adorably ridiculous sweater and bonnet from the day before. Audrey was a good sport about it. She didn't try and bite anyone today. My mom's can method has really worked miracles on her savage behavior. My mom retold the story of the glorious can discovery to our guests. It continues to be priceless as stories go.
Eventually, Audrey and I saw everyone off, and it's been very quiet since. I said good night to my parents, did some work, did some chatting, took a bath, got through a few chapters of the novel I'm reading, wrinkled my nose at how the James Bond marathon turned into a Three Stooges block, and all of a sudden it was four a.m. again.
I still think I despise the holiday season. The span of time and the hubbub that surround the actual holidays. But the holidays themselves are still really rather good. It's still possible that I will have a ghastly New Year's Eve. But I'll cross that rickety bridge when I'm forced to by a pack of sword-wielding Thuggee guards.
I sang O Holy Night at my parents' church tonight, as I do nearly every year. My mother was very proud. When I sat back down next to her, she gave me a very Bill Clinton-esque thumbs up and said, "You made it!"
Paul and I stopped off for egg nog on the way back to the house, and I added a little brandy to it and grated fresh nutmeg on it, and Paul and my dad and I drank it up. My mother was furious that we bought any to begin with. She cried out in dismay and said there was absolutely no room for it in the refrigerator. And I said, "What about the refrigerator under the bar?" And she said -- equally furiously -- "I forgot about that." I told her to relax and reminded her how much I love egg nog, and she said, "So much for that weight loss." Merry Christmas to all.
Paul and Sarah and my parents and I were watching Must Love Dogs, but we decided it was terrible. So we put in March of the Penguins, and my mom followed along with her typical commentary. She says the things that happen in your brain sometimes. You understand the logic, but you've never said these things aloud. She laughs because that penguin is so much taller than the rest. She reminds you about that email with the animation of the one penguin slapping the other. "He gets so fed up, and then he can't take it anymore, so he slaps him!" The wonder of childhood is not lost in her. It's pretty magical.
I left to go meet friends at Nunu's, and my mother wished out loud that my friends would all find that it was too late and not want to meet up after all. Ridiculous. I do feel a bit guilty, though. I didn't come home until about four, and she had apparently begun to worry herself that the worst possible things had happened to me. I didn't mean to worry her. It just didn't occur to me that she wouldn't remember how I stay out until the wee hours all the time.
It's been a hectic visit. I did a lot shopping and a lot of driving and a lot of celebrating and a lot of not getting a lot done. And in the end, it's well after four in the morning on Christmas day, and I have presents to wrap and winks to catch and I'll never get it all done. And by the time we're ready to play at Santa, I will be exhausted and cranky and wish I had made better use of tonight. It's my fault. I know it. But what am I to do. There's fog everywhere and not a car in sight and good friends and hyperbole. Who could resist such a cocktail.
And now I'm home watching the A Christmas Story marathon on TBS. They were playing it at Nunu's on one television. The James Bond marathon was playing on another. It was like my dream command central. Forget trans-continental surveillance. I just want to know how much red cabbage Ralphie eats and how surprised James is to meet his bride with the face like a pig. And I don't want to have to switch back and forth.
I wish you a lovely Christmas, and I wouldn't have minded being wished the same by you.
When I got back to my car today, parked at a meter in front of the Whole Foods in Westwood Village, there was a flyer on the windhsield. I didn't notice it until I was already driving home. And I had to read it in reverse to figure out what it said. And I read it several times to be certain it said what I thought it said, which was:
Rectum Pad!
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The Rectum Pad is specially designed for the Rectum: Anal discharge can be an embarrassing and uncomfortable condition.
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The whole way home, I just kept hoping the wind would keep blowing the flyer over so that pedestrians and other drivers wouldn't think I was making money advertising for this product on my own.
Boris is the one person who (a) loves to have his picture taken by me, (b) complains about every photo I take of him, and (c) always makes a point of asking if I want my picture taken, too. He clearly understands the woes of the shutterbug. The undocumented life. The amount of my self I can't photograph on account of the unsatisfactory length of my arms.
So I ran into Boris the other night at The Tomorrow Show, and he went to his car and fetched a little present for me. See below.
Thank you, kind sir, for caring enough to capture my enjoyment of the nightlife.
Only angels know unrelieved joy -- or are able to stand it.
I needed a headshot. Jessie rallied. Then we went to Disneyland. I should always remember that I would rather have the turkey leg than the corndog. I only ever seem to remember this after having had the corndog.
These are my temporary solution, until such time as I can be lovely again and can afford to pay someone to document it for the split second that it is true.
Yesterday was the eighth of August. On past eighths of August, I have generally made mention of what a lucky day that is for the Chinese. I won't belabor the point.
I have been working altogether too much. My eyes are sore all day. Caffeine seems to have none of its usual potency. Every moment is a catalogue of ache. Even my beloved boozes are less appealing to me. I know they will make me sleepy and that I will lack the vigor to benefit from any of their more rewarding repercussions. It is a suckfest.
I was in New York for a few days last week. I stayed at the Dream Hotel. I would describe it, but I'm lazy and the spark is gone. I will post photos at some point. If I can find a free moment. The most noteworthy image I recall was riding up on the elevator and watching the doors open on floor after floor to display some artsy, impressionistic photo mural in cool blue hues and then arriving on the eighth floor to be greeted by a giant photo of a nude man running after himself. There were oranges on the pillows. But I had a room without a bath tub. So in order to try and get my mom's idea of my money's worth, I ate the oranges. Peeled 'em with my own hands and everything. It sounds crazy even to me.
It was so dreadfully hot and humid. Coming home to a hot and humid Los Angeles, I realize that I will probably never feel the need to complain about the heat here again. Even when it is its most uncomfortable. Even in my un-air-conditioned home. As hot and as humid as it ever gets, it's never like it was in New York these last two times I visited. Nights that never cool down. Air that smells of innards cooking in the bodies living about them. That filmy feeling on your skin and hair and teeth. All day long. I'm glad to be home. And if I ever end up living in New York, I will invest a great deal of money in air conditioning.
This is the third time I've been at a swanky hotel in Manhattan (and San Diego) when I was sent on a hotel blow dryer hunt. In each case I had to call down to the front desk to have them help me figure out where the blow dryer was stowed. At the W, it was in a little cloth sack in the closet. At the Marriott in San Diego, it was in a little cloth sack in the armoire. At the Dream Hotel, it was in a little cloth sack hanging from the back of the bathroom door. I even checked in the closet, hoping I'd discovered the new trend in blow dryer placement. But no. I had to call the front desk. They were nice enough. But I felt stupid just the same.
My teeth ache. I think I have been gritting them all day at work. And after an exhausting week of meetings and travel and work work work, I had to drive down to San Diego to perform, collect my dog, drive back up to Los Angeles to perform again, and then start the work week all over again with no greater an average of sleeping hours to my credit than before. I'll be dead by Christmas. I've been saying it for weeks. I have a lot of awesome belongings. I hope you get some of them, if that is your wish.
I don't know what else. My head hurts so much right now. Do we really need to be roasting Pamela Anderson? And if so, do we also need to be exploiting the ailing Kirk Douglas? He will always be Spartacus to me. And that sailor with a whale of a tale to tell. I don't want to see him working out his issues with his son on camera. This seems the height of vulgarity. Where's Steve Allen to object to things when you need him to?
I hate moths. And I keep having to prove it to them by murdering them and smearing their gross, powdery carcasses all over my walls. Why doesn't anyone ever take me at my word?
Yesterday was hot. One of those days so hot that it's literally all anyone can talk about. Heat apparently saps our imaginations. It crowds our brains until even the sight of something truly odd has no purchase. All you can say is how hot you are and how little relief you got from the various remedies you tried. "It was so hot today that I snuck into Ralph's and spent the day in the freezer, sitting on a pallet of ice cream." "I sat in my car and ran the air conditioner until it ran out of gas." "I drank hot tea." (That's what Chinese people do.)
Extremes of weather are peculiar in that way. I guess people are relieved about it. Having something to talk about. When there's a world incident or a noteworthy weather change, all of a sudden, you don't have to sit there in silence, wondering whether the person sitting across from you speaks English anymore. And yet who really cares about current events or the weather or how your family is doing. It's a shame that people don't just say what they're really thinking. Although, if I were to do that, I'd probably have far fewer friends. My brain comes up with monstrous things only I can enjoy.
I forgot that my workshop was over yesterday, so I drove to the building on Santa Monica and opened the door to the room to find another group of people in it. Two of them on stage, clearly offput by my very quiet entrance. I excused myself and stood there in the hallway for a few seconds, processing my error. Then I went to the Smart and Final on Wilshire to buy Red Bull and other things in large quantities. Then I went home to my hot apartment where my dog was in love with me and the sweating became second nature. I've been experiencing the nag of a cold all week. A dry cough and some congestion. I was thoroughly exhausted by late afternoon, so I tried to take a nap. But it was just a series of feverish wakings and discussions with myself about whether I should just lie still or get up and see what's on TV.
In the evening, I picked up my friend Kevin, and we went and got a drink at The Dresden before catching Ron Lynch's new show "The Tomorrow Show" at the Steve Allen Theater. We ran into the impeccably-attired and always-gracious Poubelle Twins, who were attending the same performance, so we all made our way over together when it was appropriate to do so. Then we watched the show. And then it was too late to go anywhere for a drink. The problem with a midnight show. So Kevin and I raced two a.m. to get to Von's and buy booze. We did. But it was no longer of interest to anyone else to share it, so we took it back to his house and sat outside drinking and smoking until nearly five a.m. I told him stories of work. We talked about a sketch he is writing. I offered some suggestions and thought as I was doing so, "Hey, Mary, I guess you DO know a thing or two about writing." And then I was immediately ashamed that I was not writing my own sketch instead of just helping someone else with his. Always an editor, never a bride.
This past week was one of the most taxing ever. My consulting job. My freelance work. My health. My wishes. I ended the escapade feeling bruised and battered. Canceling my plans to go to San Diego to perform. Knowing I wouldn't survive it. Wanting the opportunity to sit still. Knowing that I never take that opportunity when it presents itself. I want to be so much that I'm not. Some of that wanting is so lackluster and unambitious as to be content just going back to what I recently was. I'm not greedy. I could never get away with it.
Try to remember. Try to remember. It's not the right month for it, if you go by the song lyrics. It's never the right month. It's never the right day. It's never the right time. It's never the same for you as it is for me. It's never what I thought it would be or what I keep trying to make it. I'm just scrambling eggs over here. I prefer them over easy, but I'll eat them any way they are served.
Today's not so much cooler than yesterday. It's cloudy out, but still hot and humid. Tornado weather, if we lived in a tornado state, as I said to Krissy a while earlier. Krissy, who recently learned that she is the oven for a little baby bun. I am fearful of change. It has seldom been my ally. Except in extreme retrospect, when you adopt that worldview wherein everything that ever happened to you helped you get to where you are. And that only works when where you are isn't some place you hate. Or some place too hot to stand.
Loren Bouchard was kind enough to send me some photos he took at one of the after-closing hotel room parties we both attended during Comic-Con week. I am not the star of this photo, but I love what I'm saying in it.
I had what I would consider to be a largely triumphant experience at Comic-Con last week. It's unfortunate that the aftermath of it was total work swamp, the onset of a cold, and general inability to get anywhere near the business of blogging. All I can really offer is a pastiche of memory spurts. Sorry. I'll try harder next time.
Firstly, I decided this year that I would not allow myself to endure the misery of parking woes and traffic bullshit and the laziness that happens when you are staying with friends or family. So I booked a room at the Marriott and stayed luxuriously and conveniently close to all the hot nerd action for five days and four nights. That was the right choice. I will make that same choice repeatedly in the future. Because it led to me actually fully experiencing Comic-Con perhaps for the first time. In past years, the Con has always been a series of day trips, ending before sundown in exhaustion and sometimes performance obligations. If you go home after a day walking the dealer floor, and "home" is more than a mile from Downtown San Diego, chances are you're not going to go back out in the evening. That has been my experience in every previous year. But this time, tired as I may have been every single day, it was not at all difficult to drag myself out of my room and hit the town. And that is a blessing.
Beulah came down and visited with me on Wednesday night. We went out for sushi and drinks and shit talk, and then she spent the night in my hotel room. And when Martín arrived the next morning, we went down to the hotel coffee shop, where Beulah had breakfast, Martín had lunch, and I had four bloody marys -- all served with flair by our waitress Blanche. Before Beulah arrived downstairs, I phoned to alert her that I had just walked past Mark Ryden on the stairs. That was the first of perhaps thirty times I would see him in and around the hotel and the convention center. I realize that we were staying in the same building and attending the same event, but there was still an uncanny frequency to our proximity. I would literally see him enter the convention center and then see him ninety seconds later as I rounded the corner of an aisle. He was everywhere that I was. With nearly cosmic significance. And I know him to be awfully nice and sort of shy, so I didn't bother him at all. Which is to my credit, I hope.
Martín and I rounded out day one of the Con with drinks in my room (I brought a full compliment of liquor with me, of course), countless martinis at the hotel bar, a photo-taking stroll to Embarcadero Marina Park at what I call "golden hour," and then dinner at Morton's, where I ordered us an expensive bottle of wine that we drank nearly none of but then took with us to watch the screening of the special edition of Free Enterprise, during which we traded slugs of a fine meritage like hobos. Wealthy, wealthy hobos. Towards the end of the film, we snuck out onto the terrace for a smoke. And then, for some reason, we ended up venturing out into the Gaslamp to look for smaller bottles of whiskey to carry around during the next day's show. But we didn't find a liquor store. All we found was foot pain. We went from exclaiming, "Best Con ever!" between joyous bursts of laughter to whimpering, "Worst Con ever!" betwixt groans of agony. Then Martín spent the night in my room. And I think we were both grateful that that convenience was available to us.
Friday morning, Mindy arrived. And the three of us hit the Con together. It was sort of magical to be taking a Con newbie around. Especially a hot
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