NOTANOCTOPUS

Where am I?

2011-11-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

.
Somehow I need to knock my husband out. Chloroform? Where do you buy that? Can I order that off ebay? Maybe I can slip Benadryl into a batch of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Irresistible. Then when he's yawning and saying how tired he is, I'll say, "Why don't you hit the hay, honey. Get an early start tomorrow!" He's say that's a good idea and tuck himself in. This is nice because I'd hate to have to drag him across the house while he was sleeping. Dead weight really makes it difficult to pick somebody up!

Next, I'd bring in a well-hidden buttload of hospital equipment: monitors, saline bags, syringes, and tape to secure ubiquitous clear tubing. Now, all that's the easy part. The hard part would be to find a five year-old child resembling our six month-old baby. He'd have to be just a touch exotic, with large green eyes and dark hair. I'd find him, perhaps through a casting call! This is LA after all. Perfect!

With that in mind, we wait...till my husband wakes up--in bed in a hospital gown, tubes are attached to his arms, while the heart monitor beside his bed bleeps, bleeps, and while the Benadryl's still has him slightly discombobulated, the boy says his line:

"Dad, DAD! Mom! He's awake!"

This is where I would say, "Honey, welcome to 2016. You've been in a coma. The doctors told me to pull the plug, but I told them you were strong. You've come back to us!" This is where I'd hand him a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and say, "I made this everyday for 5 years. I figured you'd be hungry when you finally woke up." And if I was really awful..."By the way, the cat ran away..."

Sometime shortly after this of course, the child actor next to me would say, "April Fools!"
.

primo supremo el cheeso

2011-11-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

.
It's 11:11 pm and I'm still not used to the daylight saving's change imposed since last Saturday night. A large part of this is due to the fact that Felix, now 5 1/2 months old, couldn't care less that his usual 7 am awakening is now a new 6 am "let's play" morning party. It doesn't help that my 1 am bedtime is still 1 am, so somehow my nightly sleep consists of a sporadic 5 or so hours. This can't be good for me.

Imagine taking care of a helpless, beautiful and yet very needy miniature human for 12 hours or more, straight, every single day for a year. Longer. Two years, three--forever! I never imagined it'd be harder than going to a 9-5 type "job" but keep in mind, those are either mindless or repetitious, for the most part--with lunch breaks!

I'm not complaining, but I don't even have the energy to read at night anymore. To write. To doodle. All I ever want to do is: lie facedown on the couch, browse fashion and etsy online and read cheesy British tabloids. It's as if I've morphed into a 50's housewife, a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie baking, Sumatra bean grinding--2011 cliche!

It's not bad, but I will say when the most exciting part of my day is wearing my new Houndstooth apron for the first time, it could be a whole hell of a lot worse. Say, if I'd been more ambitious career-wise in my life I might've had to endure eternal guilt for "putting my family second" or on the other end, what if I'd worked my ass off to sculpt a career only to have to give it up to stay at home?

Feminism, right? More than ever women are working while the dads stay at home with their babies. I always thought this gave all the wanna-be musician and artist boytoy types hope to watch more Cartoon Network marathons. More like Yo Gabba Gabba reruns.

But really, seriously, it's nice to be able to take care of Felix myself, in spite of what I pretend to resist as far as being a full-time mommy goes. I'm lucky to have such a smart and hardworking husband. He's a primo babe, too. And we made a primo supremo baby. Plus, Houndstooth IS exciting. If you add a whisk, and a debutante akimbo stance.

went to a wedding in Portland

2011-08-30T00:39:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Portland. Ned's father's son got married; his cousin--a Vizzini. The ceremony was nice and quick and the reception was right after. Behind the bridesmaids I was the first person in line, which in hindsight is embarrassing, but someone was all: go, go, our table is first! So I went, grabbed a plate (my mother would've chastised me for this) and then one half Asian looking bridesmaid wearing fake green contacts said: um, wait for (such&such: a bridesmaid's name) before you go, please; then an elderly lady behind me said: why isn't this line moving?! And I was kind of in hell for a long single second, and when I sat down with the food, Ned ate it all, which was fine. He was holding Felix who was three months that day and spitting up formula all over the place. He'd mucked my dress pretty profusely, a brand new emerald green silk number from Barney's, and at first it was a catastrophe, standing there with this smootz running down a beautiful scalloped sleeve, but by the end of the day I'd been baptized by my baby's upchuck so much, being erped on was no longer an issue.

Flying with three month-old Felix was a breeze, aside from his shrill annoyance at being made to stay awake past his bedtime at the airport, but he slept a fine deep sleep on the plane both ways, and stayed asleep while we moved him from plane to escalator to car to bed.

It's hard to tell by way of nature, whose personality quirks he's going to have, if it's going to be all or nothing with Ned's neuroses, or my laid back whatever, but the givens will most likely be high levels of energy and curiosity, a good metabolism, and an obsession with testing and defying mortality.
.

outside the other night & the next day

2011-05-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

.
A few nights ago I was still wide awake around 4, lying in bed internet surfing when I heard sounds similar to cans being sifted from a trash can next door. I went to the window to see, and though I was a story up, standing in the dark, and peering through a screen, I was scared wondering what could see me back from the street.

As my eyes adjusted, I searched in the dark towards the source of the sound, and finally after about a minute I caught a glimpse of a dark figure in my neighbor's driveway digging through their trash as wheels and plastic scraped against inclined concrete.

I tried to make out the figure: raccoon, bear, something on two feet dragging--then a car approached, headlights blaring and turned in the driveway beside it. The figure retreated into the dark corners of unfenced bushes. Minutes later, after the driver was inside, it was back.

I put myself into the feet of a few perspectives: fear of the garbage sifting shadow, of the driver coming home from a) a tryst b) a late night get-together c) geez it was late--was the person even sober enough to notice? I went back to bed and fell asleep to the scraping and clanking noises of the unknown shadow in the street below my window.

The next day, as I walked with my husband to our car parked beside our trash cans, I swerved around a Mexican man in his forties going through our cans and plastics to fill an ever growing bag of cans that he was lugging around like Santa Clause on Christmas eve.

Residue of Southern grace, mixed with the sunshine had me almost say hello, or excuse me, but a second instinct said let him be, avoid eye contact and walk past, into the car; and I did. He's digging through our trash, I said. He's doing us a service, said my husband. Like a vulture, I said. And we drove away without another word about it.
.

love in your coffee is a sacred blend of silence & sweet, roasted, ground & boiled brown: a science

2011-05-22T03:45:00.000-07:00

.
I've never been so enticed to wrangle dust particles
as I do, for a constant witness to my competency.
This is how I define coupling on a neutered day.
With good days kissing the sun with my skin, when
a nice walk replaces the boozy wasted adrenaline
of battles against no one--to call it the world. As
of late, I cook to create, adjusting to taste; presented
with barely a taste myself. I have a desperate desire
to be useful, to relax, I've escaped the necessity of
self-imposed stress...for now anyway. Can words
have hidden price tags, for every defense of value
put upon us by those words? Everyone, everybody,
the world, all: for those who decimate responsibility,
but take credit for an ounce of praise or acceptance.
Pity for people who are sensitive to judgment, ridicule,
criticism or fawning. Pity to me and my nervous energy
to appease the sensibilities of those who share my home.
I suppose I learned this from my mother whose duty it
was to feed her brothers and father til the day they bled
her skin, she ran away and met my father. And pity to
him for dying so young of disease without a daughter
by his side, though who's to say what I would've done
if he had ever even called me. Even once in a decade.
.

the origami octopus has hiccups again

2011-05-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

.
I had a terrible dream the other day, about a man who broke into houses consecutively, a locksmith I assume from glimpses of his interacting with his victims earlier in the day in some sort of house maintenance attire, with assistants, a van, and I could swear he handed them all a new set of keys.

Then I heard him say: do me a favor, would you, and the homeowners would say...sure, almost instinctively. The man asked them to do something small, easily forgettable: turn a porch light on at seven, call a random number at six. When the time came, it seemed ridiculous to everyone to do. Why should I? How would he know?

But somehow he did know, like a supernatural psychopath psychic, and in the late, late evening, he'd let himself in, find his victim in the living room, in a robe with a glass of milk, say: one simple thing I asked you to do, then slice these people to bits, a living sliver at a time.

There's more, but I'm done remembering the details.

***
In other news, I have twelve days to go before I am officially a mother. The long anticipated shower was a success thanks to Ashley and Camille, incredible ladies, jesus, they worked hard to put everything together from the baby back ribs to baby quiches. I think the final headcount tallied forty, and I never stood still for a moment without loving attention and praise for looking beautiful.

Family and friends have been extremely generous. When I registered 70+ items on the Target website, I never imagined they would very thoroughly be purchased for us. In fact, Ned's family, bless their God loving souls, got us most of the big stuff: a crib, dresser, car seat; while the rest of the items: a tub, blankets, carriers, toys, and enough clothes to last a year's worth of growth, were all bought for us by friends.

I tried to get my family into it too, but my mom will not learn how to use the internet to save her life, and my aunt's in Korea with my two cousins having a huge bonding session over fresh kimchi. Ultimately, my mom got her new husband to buy the stroller we had listed, while he was on his work computer. She tried to come to LA on the day Felix is going to be born to stay with us for a couple weeks, but seriously...I don't want to dilute the initial experience of bonding with my baby.

What seems like an unselfish deed on her part, seems extremely selfish to me. It's been nine months and I know everybody wants to see him, but I really don't give a shit about feeding the curiosity of others. Topping off their quota of feeling like a helpful citizen. I have never seen a picture of my mother holding me as a baby.

As far as my body goes, I've been fairly svelte and agile up until this last month when my belly has finally decided to blow up like a watermelon. I can relate to ancestors who worked until they gave birth in a rice field somewhere, strapped the baby to their back and kept on working. And I'm not used to being so debilitated. Walking the equivalent of a mile and being exhausted.

My hands are arthritic. My feet are exposed lungs. All in month nine, and I have imbibed not a drop of alcohol. I've held my breath passing every cigarette waft that came near me. Please be healthy, baby, please. He's crumpled inside me now like an origami octopus. I feel his folded legs beside my ribs, his hiccups near my groin. I'm almost ready, he says, I'm almost ready to have you hold me.
.

Thor-a review

2011-05-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Branagh, what got into you? You go from being the exclusive representative for modern day Shakespeare, to Frankenstein, a boon of other here and there period pieces--to Thor. I guess I see the connection. For someone into the "classics" the story of Thor's older than weather.

Chris Hemsworth, I remember you from that terrific opening sequence from the beginning JJ Abrams' Star Trek. You were Jim Kirk's dad. You sacrificed yourself by steering the Kelvin on a collision course. That scene made me cry. Nice to see you again. I see you've been working out, too. Who cares about milk--got protein shakes? You blond hunk o beefcake, you.

Natalie Portman, playing a frigid ballerina is one thing, but a brilliant astrophysicist with a thing for Norse gods? I know you've got a pretty face and all, but exuding a hyper intelligent understanding of dynamic processes of celestial objects and phenomena? Come on!

When asked why she took the role, Portman replied, "I just thought it sounded like a weird idea because Kenneth Branagh's directing it, so I was just like, 'Kenneth Branagh doing Thor is super-weird, I've gotta do it."

Like you know?

For it to be even remotely feasible for Thor and Portman to have a believable romantic connection in this comic-based Blockbuster, I had to pretend Thor as a huge movie buff back on Asgard; that The Professional was one of his favorite movies of all time, so when the time came and Thor met Natalie on earth, he didn't care that she was a performing multiple acts of involuntary manslaughter on him with her jeep. He wanted to make out with the girl from Garden State.

And the Portman being used to this by now was all: guess what, you get to kiss me eventually. Aren't you stoked, Chet Hicklesworth, I mean Thor, I mean what-ever!

Less hard to believe and more enjoyable were the great supporting characters: Hopkins, so good, and the superstar who totally stole the heart-shaped pie had to be Heimdall (Idris Elba), gatekeeper of the Bifrost Bridge. Tom Hiddleston was also great as Thor's miserable milquetoast brother Loki.

Overall, the atmospheric effects were fantastic, pacing was quick, the story had substance, and lines mixed with comic timing let the humor take way of the movie taking itself too seriously. Entertainment is where it's at with Thor, a very 2011 film with zeitgeist-saturated thunder strokes galore, and many premeditated sequels to follow.

at the end of preggo road

2011-05-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

.
The countdown begins. Today is May 2nd and Felix Vizzini will be born in 25 days. A Gemini. A Rabbit. And I will no longer be pregnant. I'll be a mom. And my mom will be a grandmother.

It's been a big year for her. Her only child got married in October, pregnant in September, then mom found the man of her dreams; they got married this past Easter, and now at the end of May, boom.

She called on Sunday. The first thing she said to me was: guess what, you have a new step-dad! He was beside her when she said it. Awkward... Later she handed him the phone to hash out the flight details of her coming to LA from Tennessee for a week after Felix is born, to cook for us and help us she said.

I'm going to have a c-section (I'm terrified of natural birth. I don't care how many women do it every day {and have since the beginning of time.}) so I know I'll be sore. Plus, family bonding is normal and healthy. This is why we got a place with a guest room. Below is a picture of my mom as a pretty Las Vegas bride on Easter:

my mom looking like a princess

This has been an easy pregnancy, I'd recommend it to my peers--if they really like somebody and get along with them and feel like taking a straight-forward commitment to a--great, big, giant level of commitment. But I also recommend financial stability first.

I'm lucky to say that my husband is a workaholic and has been for quite some time, and he's good with money, so we're in a good place.

I can also afford a little bit of independence with my savings which feels nice. The idea of buying gifts for my husband with his own money seems ridiculous, since he'd rather spend on anybody but himself, or save it all, if at all possible. He likes nice things, too. But who doesn't?

Besides, we're not kids anymore. We're both in our early 30's. So we've tasted our fair share of the party cakes. Heyo!

My check-ups are weekly now. Today's was simple: a cup of pee, blood pressure, measuring tape across the gut and a warm stethoscope to check Felix's heartbeat. My next check-up will be more intense: a measurement of my cervix. I told my doctor I'd shower for that, which made her chuckle.

My doctor says I'm lucky, I have "superior" genes, which means no stretch marks and good muscle tone, which gives me a more streamline appearance. I've gained 30lbs. On average women gain 40-50.

My skin is clear, my rings still fit, I haven't had any nausea or strange food cravings. The worst thing that's happened to me is heartburn, but chewing a few Extra Strength Tums takes care of that. Otherwise, I can bend and run and rest with no problems.

I might miss being pregnant when it's over, reaching for my phantom belly in my sleep, gas bubbles sending waves of nostalgia through me, or I'll just be glad to hold my living breathing creation. I can't fathom how that will feel. I suspect it will change me forever.
.

A Face in the Crowd--a review

2011-04-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

.
Comparisons to familiar subjects aren't always necessary, but A "Face in the Crowd" (1957) is a definite predecessor to 1976's "Network," directed by Sidney Lumet.

Kazan, post "Streetcar," post "East of Eden," in his fluid universe of method acting, introduces Andy Griffith, in this timeless film exploring the danger of media popularity and the subsequent power that comes from it. How in the wrong hands, or with a lack of humility to buffer it, life can spiral out of control for all parties involved.

Synopsis: An NPRlike lady radio producer doing fieldwork in a small town jailhouse comes upon a local blues boozing, guitar wielding hustler, whose charms win her over, landing him a daily spot on a radio show. Having free reign to display his everyman philosophies on air in favor of the working class, Lonesome Rhodes becomes an overnight sensation, and climbs the rungs of success all the way to the lavish life of a major celebrity living in New York.

When the swell of influence changes Rhodes into a vain, asshole megalomaniac, his comrades lose faith and mutiny one after another, seeing the walking trainwreck as he truly is--a flash in the pan con artist side show act, who's run hiss course in the show business world.

What stands out about this film is the feasibility of the next big thing swooning crowds like the plague. Reminiscent of Elvis and the fanfare he rippled in tidal waves with every sway of his hips, all the way to the sensationalism of Howard Stern or Limbaugh.

The average American craves the reincarnate messiah, the glittering Jesus shrine of accessible human sacrifice, a singing holiday card of tragic sentimentalities to open and close as we please. Knowing at the end of the day, it can all be blamed away on human nature.
.

Lust, Caution--a review

2011-04-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

.
For a fairly long film (2 hr. 38 min.); Lust, Caution had a way of not feeling like it given the fact that it wasn't completely predictable, and the storyline was intriguing, it felt historical without being stiff.

The main character/lovers were convincing, minus an excess of longing looks which might be expected and conveyed in this genre; but then again it's made to be more foreign thriller than romantic, emphasized in the title containing the term "lust" versus love.

For a woman lured by the danger of being a political spy there must be a certain thrill involved with being in the shoes of Mata Hari, the ultimate femme fetale, sleeping with the enemy, a murderer's mistress...until it gets emotional. And it always does, doesn't it? Especially if the person you're groping on the regular has power and won't let their guard down without a fight.

Regarding the NC-17 rating, there was no way around that; the sex scenes, a vividly comprised ten minutes of violent to tender lovemaking, was key to illustrating sexual chemistry between the two protagonists in three major scenes. The scenes were considered by Ang Lee to be critical to the story. They reportedly took 100 hours to shoot.

A beautiful film overall, with a great blending of score, charm, costumes, acting, scenery and ominous inevitability: Lust, Caution is a proud marriage of style and substance, raising the bar in the filmmaking world, resembling anything but trite attempt to exploit audiences, or to make a blockbuster buck for the sake of it alone.
.

privacy is the holy grail of now

2011-04-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

.
I should've known from the start what a bad idea it was to rent the top floor of a duplex apartment.

You'd think with having a property manager live on the property, things would be nice, say something breaks, or you get locked out. What you couldn't count on is the property manager being so territorial, lurking around every corner to say hello or goodbye whenever you leave. Telling you to park or move your car to a different spot day to day to day to get something done in a garage.

Yesterday, he rang the doorbell again, after I ignored it the first time, so he and his wife could look at the air conditioning unit on my wall, telling me to put the setting on auto--when it wasn't working regardless. Then they called at ten to tell me to shut the air off completely and open a window, as not to burn out the system.

Then half a dozen loud Asian repairmen came into my home today, leaving my front wide open tempting my cat to get out and run away. Friends of the property manager, obviously, they felt as home as well. Clinking beer bottles by my parked car after they finished the job of fixing the air, finally; it hadn't worked all week causing my pregnant body to swell and sway awake at night atop my covers from the heat.

The place we lived in before was small, too small for guests to stay, too small to give private space to two people and a cat, but it was cheap, and we (my husband and I) managed to get by, without too many fights caused by cabin fever, or the lack of doors to close for separation. We used headphones, ran errands, to give each other space.

And in that space, no one bothered us, even when the front door was ajar for most of the day to let the heat in. The cat could play all day and come in at night. There were no sounds, aside from sporadic geese honking by going north to south. When the tub was clogged, Javier from upstairs came down with his roto rooter in tow, then Javier would disappear, and only occasionally say hello.

But then we had to upgrade our space to make room for a baby, guests who would come to see him. We found a three bedroom place with marble bathrooms, ceiling fans, in a fenced in property. Privacy we thought. Roots. Even more than before. So far that hasn't been the case.

And now I'm missing New York for its respect for proxemics, aka personal space, one of the three P's, aside from pacing and pizza, which make that city so great. Even in cramped, hive-like apartments there with two roommates, no one bothers you because they don't want to be bothered. Everyone's too busy trying to organize their lives to make smalltalk there. Unlike this place where the couple who oversee the property, also feel as though this is their kingdom, which we are merely guests, abiding to their scrutiny.

The lease here is month to month and almost three times the cost of the place we lived in previously. We had to buy a refrigerator, already on the fritz, a washer and dryer, a bed and a few cheap dressers from Sweden. Already it's tempting to think about leaving, hauling all of our appliances and cramming them into a place surrounded by silence, in a neighborhood less nice, something smaller, anything...except the baby will be here soon, in 40 days, and the stress of moving again is the last thing either of us need.

Him with his neurotic leanings, and me being in over my head with a newborn I've never wanted until he was inside me, growing. Against my own nature, I have become a surly tenant, avoiding eye-contact whenever confronted for repairs even remotely necessary. It doesn't help things that the property manager always tells me I look tired when he sees me. Oh, you look so tired: he says.

I look tired because you've just ruined my life: I'd like to say. Who looks awake--furrowing from hatred? Not me or anyone else who wants to be left alone to incubate the remaining months needed to hatch this egg. I'm sensitive, and already lacked the patience for foolishness. The only way to take the edge off now is with an ax, and soon I regret to think I will gaze at one longingly for a way to escape.
.

skinny jeans & pillow talk

2011-04-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

.
I tweeted this today: If you can't pull off skinny jeans--you probably shouldn't write about sex either. Sex from the perspective of a sausage can be unappetizing.

I'm sure this offended people. Especially people who a) are insecure about their weight b) write about sex a lot c) hate hipsters or feel like outcasts from hipster society d) hate fashion trends or e) all of the above

From Vice

My statement wasn't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities as much as it was commentary on the idea that people go out of their way to write about sex to be subversive, to seem edgy, in the same way that people wrote about shooting up smack in the 60's.

At least 80% of readings I've been to in the last two years have been to showcase excerpts of sex scenes, fantasies, trysts in park bushes, panties in the back seat, I teased her with my cock, and so on and so forth. What is with this?

One night I go to a vermin on the Mount reading in Chinatown. Three girls read and a guy, and every one of these people had some kind of sex experience to share. They called it fiction, but it felt more like sitting around a campfire where everyone took turns reading the raunchiest confessions from their journals. Even an older woman who wrote mostly children's books had something to say about doing her husband in some "not normal" way. Talk about awkward.

Just last night I went to a reading at Skylight books; two young men read. The first read a horny guy masturbates to the thought of his crush story and I thought: Jesus. Another journal entry. At least this one felt edited to a tee, stylistically into a prose piece, but this guy didn't look to have much sexual experience; he was not incredibly attractive, though I wouldn't call him ugly...or tall, or physically fit.

The point I'm trying to make here is: unless you're Philip Roth, who is the king of sex jive in fiction, don't write stories and read stories to an audience about your sexual fantasies--unless you're really apt at writing about anything--including how to bake a cake, or you're super experienced at sex and have something to teach me that I wasn't trying to avoid on purpose, i.e., getting it on with a fumbling idiot who has nothing but desecration on his mind.

If I wanted to know second hand what that was like, I would've sure made more liberal choices in my love life. Otherwise, if you want your stories or skills in general to be an asset to anyone's time or existence, get good at something, whether it be naming wild birds or step by step instructions on how to give mind-blowing oral. But please, leave your masturbation fantasies under your pillow and leave the hard core to the pros.

Just because you've wanted it, and read about it, or tried it, it doesn't mean that you're good at writing about it. Like skinny jeans--they don't look good on everybody; they mainly look good on people who are slender with slender legs. Just because they're in the now, that doesn't mean they look good on stocky Reid who loves Panda Bear and PBR. Trends often have limitations. Know yours, is all I ask.
.

the Graduate--a review

2011-04-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

.
Have you ever hated something completely lauded by your peers as being brilliant? A band, a book...I'm taking about the opposite of guilty pleasures. How about a classic Oscar winning film? It's tough, isn't it, to go against the grain of a strong consensus. Peer pressure's one thing, but my confidence reaches a whole new level to say that I thought the Graduate was an absurd pile of crap.

Mike Nichols won a best director Oscar for the classic. Hoffman, then 30 playing a 20 year-old, won praise for his first major role as Ben the neurotic, naive, bourgeois-bored depressed and obsessed dumbass.

Anne Bancroft is a stunning, sexually desperate cougar, clad in enough animal prints to have invented the term used now for older seductresses saturating reality television and night time soaps. And Katharine Ross is confused and rebellious. Everybody else is an asshole, breeding assholes. In fact the film is a giant asshole smorgasbord; with a great soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel.

Does the film's much-barbed commentary on generation gaps, the alienation of youth, and mid-life complacency define the 60's Zeitgeist, making it thought-provoking and hilarious? Maybe to some people who lived it and want to look back reminiscing the good old days of hippies and dumb love and all that. But how am I supposed to believe Hoffman's character Ben had enough mojo to get seduced by a beautiful older lady, friend of the family type, and also fall for that lady's daughter after one date to the burger shack?

Not only that, but Ben becomes obsessed and stalks the daughter!, at her school, following her around like some lost psycho, professing his desire to marry her over and over again, while she can have her pick of the campus being one of the most beautiful girls there. The Graduate's entire premise, though I do see what sacred attempts it made to preserve a mess of controversial issues in 60's society, was utterly obnoxious.

On a lighter note: If I ever meet someone who can eloquently defend their love for the film, without time-capsule cliches, with any explanation aside from saying "it's a classic!" or "It's Hoffman at his best!" I will be more than interested to hear what they have to say.
.

poor creatures tonight & mine

2011-03-23T03:00:00.000-07:00

.
Tonight's been a creepy night. Extra quiet. And nothing but traffic and that seems very far away. Earlier I heard an animal squalling in agony outside. Worse than a fighting cat, or a growling coon or anything similarly natural, it was a squall like a pleading of some lesser ranked creature being torn to bits by a quiet master or authority. As if it was taking its punishment, or surprised and petrified, and whatever sounds of pain came from it were muffled as if it wasn't making them intentionally. And then it stopped. The automatic porch lights came on. It was quiet. The lights flicked off and it was me and the glow of my computer. Then my cat began to whimper in his sleep, mew like a helpless kitten. I called to him and stroked his face. He gave a grateful gesture of purring and rubbing his cheeks against my hand. We got up and had some milk in the light of the kitchen. Now we will sleep.
.

self-defense in young America

2011-03-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

.
Casey the Punisher, an Australian kid who finally defended himself from bullies is the latest viral phenomenon since Katy Perry's make-up free twitter picture posted by fellow clown car cohabitant Russell Brand.

In the torture-porn style, handheld video captured by a fellow bully's camera phone, viewers see a chihuahua-size terror punching Casey in the face, until Casey bodyslams the bully and walks away.

From what little I've been following of this phenomenon, the most interesting thing to come from it seems to be the "sheltered pacifist" versus "self-defense is okay" debate.

On one side we have the people who are appalled by a big kid throwing a little kid on the ground. They say things like, "He could've broken the kid's neck! He should've told a teacher instead of throwing the kid on concrete! He should've avoided the situation all together! Two wrongs don't make a right! Child experts say to tell a parent or teacher about the bullies and stay out of those situations entirely!

What a load of soggy Apple Jacks horseshit.

On the other side of the field are people who have actually been bullied sometime in their lives, who say: Way to go! Those kids will leave him alone now. He acted in self defense!

This is the side I'm on.

Stay away from danger...really. Have you ever seen a wounded gazelle in the Serengeti? The lions, they chase the gazelle slowly and attack it in leisure. They drain the gazelle, rendering its limbs unwalkable. Hide injured gazelle, hide! Avoid the lions, tell a bigger gazelle to make the lions leave you alone.

Child experts say...buy our books, please and you will learn by reading them that violence is not our friend, but a gateway to more violence. Communication is the answer. Communicate.

In the 2008 Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, twelve-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is the constant target of bullies in a small Swedish village, until his new and only friend, Eli, helps Oskar find the courage to stand up to his tormenters.

I don't know how anyone who's seen the film could not, at one point, ask themselves why Oskar doesn't tell a teacher about these bullies picking on him every-single-excruciating day in an effort to make the abuse stop. Until we're forced to realize that the stigma of being a snitch turns a kid into a pariah among his peers faster than a bad haircut and a speech impediment put together.

Shoulds and shouldn'ts aside, which are very easy to point and shoot as an outsider, most people lack the experience to fully understand how the world works with children when they invent rules of how to play. Ghetto, playground, fraternity hazing--it's all relative to the region, and thrives in being evasive to figures of authority.

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a group of British schoolboys are stuck on a deserted island and try to govern themselves with disastrous results.

The exercises in autonomy among young boys who feel like nothing less than indentured servants subjected to the whims of tyrannical overcrowded school systems are stealth and prolific. Saying things like: tell an adult, is being a traitor to the small government formed as practice for independent assertion.

Telling a child to keep away from danger and be a good little citizen is like telling a soldier not to shoot back when the enemy is firing heavy artillery upon them and an effort to kill or inflict tremendous pain.

Two wrongs don't make a right? Give me a break. This cross-stitch pillow phase in no way buffers terror, or pain of being attacked by an enemy. And how malicious it is to have a friend record the violent scene for the sake posterity?

It's ridiculous, these liberal pacifists and their heal the world mentality. There is a time and place for that when we're not flipping off bad drivers or helping a tripped neighbor off the ground, but when it comes to being beaten to a pulp by a well-established terror, I'd say Casey the Punisher did the right thing by bringing out the well-warranted Judo.
.

An art form. Like sculpture.

2011-03-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

.
I spoke to my mother on the telephone today without getting angry once. She was making pasta primavera while her fiancee mowed her one acre yard filled with fruit trees.

He's good at a lot of things, she said, everything, except dancing. So instead of go to do ballroom dancing (that come free with her gym membership) we've been going to play golf. I did okay until I reach one of those watery places, she said, then I couldn't get past it. I kept hitting and hitting and the ball go nowhere.

I told her she should get Tiger Woods golf because she was good at video games and it would be fun to play on her giant television.

Remember when you reached the highest possible score on Pac-Man when I was four and we were living in Korea, I said. You got mad because the game was over at 9,999,999 something. No I don't remember that, she said. The Atari's still in your house somewhere, I said. Oh, okay, that's nice. How are you?

Fine, we're moving into a three bedroom/three bath place where the groundskeeper is installing a cat door in our bedroom window so the bugs won't get in while the cat goes in and out.

**I don't know if I'm too attached to my cat, but that means a lot to me, even though the utilities are included in the duplex and I know this is really to conserve energy more than anything.

(That was my biggest news. I can't tell if that's good or bad. I suppose it's better than having lots of/or any bad news, or complaining about poverty or marriage or boredom.)

Then she told me about my 20-year-old cousin, her sister's younger daughter, who stopped going to her community college classes without telling anyone, without withdrawing, AWOL, Fs across the board to replace Fs earned the same way at a previous University. This means no refund, again. The crappiest GPA in the world. And a darker shade of gaining even temporary direction into Academic enlightenment.

She says she wants to do hair, said my mother. Hair?

My mind instantly went into judgement mode. I tried to rationalize positive projections into the future of a budding stylist. I thought about stylists in LA, the ones who do hair for runway shows in New York, New York hair stylists in general, and how people from every demographic made a big deal about having good hair. It's a big market if you think about it. An art form. Like sculpture.

I'm conflicted with my opinions about this whole ordeal. I know for a fact that my drop-out cousin is bright, and does not give a crap about anything. She works at American Eagle Outfitters in the mall making seven-plus an hour folding sweaters and her mom's a millionaire who earned every penny of her fortune by working her ass off.

I signed up for college because I had nothing better to do with my mornings than sleep. And went to college for seven years counting semester breaks and summers. Do I do anything with my degrees now? Nope. Have I? Oh yes. I learned a lot from the books I had to memorize, too. But I can see why my cousin feels the ways she feels about school being pointless. Even though she's nowhere near close to paying her dues. She's never read a book. Her only hobby is getting crunk.

Is my cousin a part of a slacker of all slackers generation derivative of my own? Does she see people like me wasting my degrees and think what's the point? Live life, right? Or is it fair to put her in a category at all? What if college really isn't for everyone? Or worse: what if she's dyslexic? If so, then I guess hair school won't care about that.
.

dating stereotypes: the hottie bro & his sponsor

2011-03-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

.
I called a lady about renting our rental today, to give her some details about ambiance and area space. The lady I knew her as a great tipper from the Hollywood wine shop days where I worked for half a year to clear up problems with the IRS. We were known to exchange complaints about our men from time to time. But this time, on the phone, after we decided the house wasn't for her, it was her turn to vent about a guy who wanted "to hang low with his bros."

I separated from my guy friend, she said. We're like not serious, you know, but we do everything together. He told me one of his friends was coming into town and bought them tickets to the game. And then I saw he posted an update on his facebook asking if anyone else was going to the game, that he had extra tickets, so I asked him if he had an extra ticket for me and he said he didn't think so.

Maybe he wanted a boy's night out, I said.

Yeah, she said, but he wanted to hang out before the game, but not after, and I told him I wanted to hang out after the game, and he said he didn't want to feel like his mother was around watching his every move and I didn't like that. He shouldn't have said that to me. That's when I told him it was over.

All I could say was: Well, just give him a couple days to chill out without you and let him buy you some nice jewelry and take you out to dinner after you let him miss you a little bit.

Rated R alert! He doesn't have any money, she said. I pay for a lot of his stuff. He pays for his own food and sometimes mine, but he does cocaine and drinks a lot and last time we went out with his friends he got drunk and put his hands all over these women's asses on the dance floor in front of me and I know he's gonna do that again and get his dick sucked by girls in the hotel dance club and fuck them in a room upstairs with his friends after doing cocaine and I can't deal with that.

All I could say was: If you broke up with him, then stay apart because breaking up with someone before a big night out with his friends will only make him a glutton for revenge and he'll probably end up doing things he wouldn't do if he was taken. Like meaningless post-break-up whore sex. To try to win.

Oh, I didn't think about that, she said.

I'm picturing the guy to look like someone from the Jersey Shore. Someone much younger than the lady I spoke to. Aside from having low self-esteem issues (obvious from all the work she's had on her body), why else would she put herself through this kind of torture? The guy has no money, apparently craves attention like a starved, weening whelp and squanders what little money he does have on cocaine, booze and pot. Maybe it's the challenge. Or maybe the guy's just really good at telling ladies what they want to hear.
.

City of Lost Children--a review

2011-03-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

.
20 minutes into this movie I excused my husband who was sighing loudly while watching it with me, as if the film itself were slowly extracting his teeth with no anesthetic. I asked him what the problem was. "Nothing's happening!" he said, "This artsy movie is incredibly pretentious and I can't figure out what's going on." This is when, in so many words, I called him a fast food Philistine monkey, started the film over from the start and watched it alone, which I mostly prefer to do these days anyway. Though I do see his point.

Jeunet/Caro's film is pretty straight-forward if you process it and compartmentalize the surreal events that take place with a healthy dose of belief suspension topped with a heaping appreciation for the absurd. First off, there's a childlike strong man, One (played by the prolific Ron Perlman), whose voracious little brother has been kidnapped by a clan of one-eyed, robotic Naziesque henchman called Cyclops.

While he's searching for his brother, Perlman stumbles across an exploited-orphan thug racket trained by a pair of evil Siamese twins to pickpocket and pillage the town surrounding them dry. Eventually the evil twins need assistance when their main thief, Miette (played by nymphet Judith Vittet), goes awol with the lovelorn strongman puppy-dogging by her side, and forcefully commissions the aide of their former circus ringleader to employ his well-trained fleas to inject a mind-warping serum into the brains of their opponants, turning them into murderous zombies, killing anyone within arms reach.

While of of this is happening a skynest of six cloned mad scientists and their bald dreamless brother, along with their miniscule mother and uncle who's a brain floating in formaldehyde, are kidnapping children for their dreams, so that the dreamless brother can steal their dreams and dismantle his own premature aging, which is due to his stunted imagination from the lack of dreaming.

The sets built for this film are absolutely breathtaking. The atmosphere eerie and dreamlike. The characters are hopeless and well-buffered to the surviving in a dystopian world. Creating a universe like that from scratch deserves much praise for the courage and gumption involved to make a vision, such as City of Lost Children glow, amid dark-green, phosphorescent seas and steel-gray docklands.
.

Rango--a review

2011-03-09T13:02:00.000-08:00

Rango is a great homage to Westerns, and to great films in general, but it is not a movie for kids. If I were a Deadhead I'd say the movie's for people gourd geeked on psilocybin--the hallucinatory agent in magical mushrooms. But as a former/non-stoner the hyper surreal elements playing off the very realistic desert atmosphere are still a mind blizzard to be reckoned with. (Be sure to have a bottle of water on hand.)

The talking desert creatures for instance: they are not cute; they're horrendously dried-out, jaundice-eyed, dusty and hostile townsfolk critters. The title character's no better; he's a bug-eyed, thin-limbed reptile with a bent neck and slapstick case of the wobble-de-woes.

During few scenes I couldn't help but think that the childhood version of me would've been terrified with nightmares from the handful of monstrous villains scattered about, bullying propositions of death onto a ghost town's hapless citizens with sharpened fangs dripping venom, miniature firearms at inklings of threat. The vigilante army was anything but reticent.

Maybe kids are tougher than they used to be. The Santa Barbara matinee where I watched Rango was filled with tiny children brought by their parents to see what the fuss was all about for this Johnny Depp movie about a funny lizard in the desert getting into trouble. The kids were more than vocal throughout the scariest moments, but for the most part they seemed entertained, though most of the laughter came from adults, aimed at the absurdity of fecal humor and pyrogenic bar violence.

What really makes the movie great are its amazing visuals. The animation is crisp and spectacular, a proud marker of CGI advancement in 2011.

Compared to last year's "Illusionist" which resembled a geriatric flip book Lolita minus the Viagra fantasy, Rango came, conquered and destroyed any pre-assembled techniques even relatively below par--with substance to boot, minus 3D embellishments that most animated films are superimposing these days, as reliant decoys for insubstantial flash and bling bling dollar sign mass marketing hijinks. Overall, it's pure, absurd entertainment.
.

a rant about my library & the experimental process

2011-03-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

.
A huge library walking distance away, hoarding books has become a past time of mine. It's kind of like shopping, except I'm borrowing, for a series of stacks around the living/bed room. There are four stacks on a sorry excuse for a couch, and one stack beside me on a makeshift table filled with things to pot plants with: a Christmas gift from the generous in-laws.

Most of these books are books I've been meaning to read, some are books I should read because they're famous or have won awards: usually both. I make an effort to pick up titles written by women, but the ones I've actually heard of are scarce, though there are always three copies of Willa Cather's My Antonia scattered around; I'm scared of that book now.

I checked out Bukowski's Women today, thinking that might count for something, but in reality I should get negative lady writer points for that. It's one I've been meaning to read and after Ham on Rye I'll be done with Bukowski, bucket list crossed.

I made an attempt to check out Ordinary People by Judith Guest, too, but the damn thing wouldn't scan, so I left it at the dock thinking the material's probably dated anyway. Still, it's not very long. Perhaps next time.

The stack beside me is dense. I don't know how many will actually make it into my head any time soon. From the bottom up are DFW's Oblivion and Girl with Curious Hair, Middlesex, the Vintage Bradbury, Junky by Burroughs, A Book of Common Prayer by Didion, the Crying of Lot 49 (hard to get into) the Remains of the Day and Lorrie Moore's Self-Help.

These have nothing to do with the books I've bought and have on hand, which are stacked around the tv. It's a shame to feel a burden for the time it takes to put all of these into my head; it's a journey more than it is entertainment; and the more books I read, the more I lose my patience with things which seem written with less effort, but win mass acclaim due to the popularity of the author who penned them.

One book which pissed me off recently was the Body Artist by Don Delillo. Making it through White Noise felt like a conquest, the Body Artist, on the other hand, made me feel patronized. It's one thing in trying to be experimental to work in the realm of some new nuance--extracting narrative, stark minimalism, ignoring punctuation, condensed chronology, atmospheric prose and throwing voices for dialogue, it's another thing all together to warble some stream of consciousness gibberish which only makes sense to no one and present the vomit as high art.

Who cares if you were possessed by the demon essence of a woman who once lived in your sick drawer? If you're not going to even attempt to showcase language, when narrative is ignored, then what are you doing?

I'm losing my patience with fiction. It used to be fiction was good for a means of escape; nowadays what I'm coming across is an Academic contest of who can make it seem most a treacherous chore to behold and take apart.

This is in no way progress, or a way of preserving the value of words. It's a way to build avarice if anything. Sure, play with language as if it's an instrument for sound, but remember--music still exists for that. Why try to merge to the two, when clearly the effort is making a strain on the actual meaning incubated in good prose. Style, even in experimental writing is a concoctive process, not a cop-out meandering of scattered parts.

Back to the bit about the library, since I got lost in a tangent, I'm sure my habit of hoarding books isn't too big of a problem since I won't always live very close to a hopping place like the Silverlake branch, so I'll keep doing what I'm doing, and hopefully some of these books will serve as more than reasons to contemplate osmosis.
.

Manhattan Murder Mystery--a premature review

2011-03-03T00:59:00.000-08:00

.
"Save a little craziness for menopause!"

This is what Woody Allen says to Diane Keaton around the 34th minute of Manhattan Murder Mystery. I'd say their characters say it, but it's hard to imagine they're playing anyone but modestly amplified versions of themselves in this one. The film also seems more improvised than Allen's others, which have more focus on the depth of character relations in ways which they intertwine with a complicated wit.

I have to admit that most of this analysis is a defensive attempt at trying to appreciate a movie that has been annoying from the get-go. I'm struggling to get through it. It's taking me back to the time when I came upon some similar later day Woody Allen movie, before I'd watched a few of the better films: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Deconstructing Harry, Hannah and her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors.

I can't remember what it was, but I remember finding Allen's stuttering nervousness shtick revolting. It's adorable now, in the context of a compelling picture, and maybe when he even tones it down a bit, but so far in MMM, it's just too over the top.

Diane's Keaton is dressed in tremendously oversized clothes, as well, and she looks like shit. These issues combined are so distracting, I can't focus on caring if there's been a murder enough to sympathize with Keaton tripping out because she has nothing better to do.

It makes me feel like a terrible human not to care in a plot if a man next door has killed his wife versus her just having a heart attack. It was probably personal if he did, so he wouldn't be a danger to anyone else. So what's the sense of taking justice into your own hands, if a situation's got nothing to do with you?

Now I'm hoping he murdered his wife, so I haven't wasted 34 minutes so far watching Diane Keaton flip out over nothing but some stupid paranoid flaw in her personality. I know this could be the catalyst for an affair with Anjelica Huston's character, who was just introduced as being the cool opposite of Keaton's frazzled quirky lady shtick, since affairs are a common theme in Allen's pictures, but hell oh hell there better be a murder, or something that makes the next hour and thirteen minutes worthwhile, otherwise I'm going to be hostile.
.

An honest woman in the land of sin

2011-02-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

.
I'm a terrible daughter. I must be, but I know my mother forgives me for it, which makes it okay, and worse. My one New Year's resolution this year was to call her every Sunday, and for the fist few Sundays I did, and every time I did you'd think I'd published a new essay in the New Yorker or something, I was so proud. She liked it, too, even though we soon ran out of things to talk about towards the end of January.

So I went to Italy for my birthday around that time, and since I didn't want to pay for a long distance call, skipped the Sunday I was there, and a few more Sundays, five in fact, until she finally called me today on the last day of February to tell me it was her fiancee's birthday. He told me he didn't want a gift she said, so I'm taking him to Red Lobster and I said I'M PAYING tonight, and he said fine.

I told her she should get him a shirt. She said I buy him shirts when it's not his birthday. Fine, I said, do whatever you want, you know that man and I don't, but when most people say they don't want anything for their birthday they're usually lying. We all know this.

This is when my mother apologized for sending me nothing but a text message for my birthday, saying I hate it when people give me things I don't need and I didn't want to do that to you. I thought: a card would've been nice, but said Italy was enough, that I had a good trip and lots of good food.

Then I asked about the details of the marriage plans, if there were any, when, how, soon, later. We're doing it on Easter she said, because it represents rebirth! Where I said, in a church? Las Vegas, she said, we're going to go for a week, we'll take a bus tour when we're there, go to all the casinos, but I won't take too much money to gamble with, maybe a couple hundred.

Vegas on Easter I said, isn't that a bit of a paradox? It's the land of sin! Rebirth she said, you know like eggs hatching, and our anniversary won't be hard to remember. I suggested my mother skip the bus tour since there was nothing much to see but a bunch of light bulbs affixed to buildings. But the bus tour we took in Los Angeles was nice, she said.

Vegas is a little different, mom. I would know, I got married in an Elvis chapel there a few months ago after you recommended it would be more romantic than going to the Beverly Hills court house. And wasn't it nice she said. I guess so, I said. And my anniversary's Friday the 13th, so that's not hard to remember either. Don't worry, said my mother, in Korea Friday the 13th doesn't exist, it's just another day. I'll keep that in mind I said. And congratulations.
.

the screaming child who molests my life is a cyst

2011-02-23T16:57:00.000-08:00

.
I'm home alone and the child next door is screaming at the top of his lungs again to be let out of a room. He yells phrases like: LET MEEE OUUUUT, I WANNA TAAALK TO YOOU, I'M SOOORRY, LET ME OUT in between screaming bloody murder. Screaming his guts into the air, through the walls which surround him, outside, through a wall in the kitchen, into the room where I sit and type this.

I've decided this happens at least once a day, around 4pm, and around 4pm when this happens I find it very hard to concentrate on anything, but what the child is screaming about. In the beginning I was alarmed for the health of the child, though now I've begun to sympathize with the parents, who lock the delinquent child in a room as some kind of punishment, or time-out imposed for a junior lunatic fringe.

It is obvious the child is not beaten for his bad behavior or for screaming through the walls, he is only placed into temporary isolation until he either settles down or is released for screaming and potentially upsetting the neighbors enough to calls the authorities. Is there a law saying you can't lock a child in his or her room for small periods of time? I know there are laws for noise violation and domestic disturbances and physical abuse and neglect and such, but I don't see how the authorities could help in this case.

I fantasized today about going next door, knocking on the door, entering the home, asking if I could see the child and as they opened the door to let me, I would enter his room, see that he'd shredded, broken everything in sight, he would see me and try to run past to find something to destroy in the living room, to pull plugs, knock over photo frames, throw his dinner plates around demanding ice cream for every meal, but I would catch him by the arm, put him over my knee and demonstrate real discipline.

I would say: Look, I am trying to concentrate next door, and if you do not stop screaming and start listening to your parents, I am going to call the FBI and they will take you to China and make you work in a factory and you will never have dessert again and your mommy and daddy will make new babies to replace you who not scream and misbehave and they will be very happy that you are not in their lives anymore. Is this what you want?

I fantasized about this instead of doing what I wanted to be doing today because I was distracted. If anything has ever been distracting like ticking through a wall, drips in drains, crickets in the floor, even a neurotic thought loop revolving around the way someone said yes, no or maybe, there is nothing worse than a child screaming at the top of his lungs through the walls of your house, unless he is punching you in the face over and over again for no reason but to be a pain in the ass.
.

Jules and Jim--a review

2011-02-13T19:30:00.000-08:00

I have mixed feelings about Jules and Jim. On one hand it's stylistically profound, of another world, a mile marker in the great journey of filmmaking content and technique; on the other hand it's about an insane muse that makes every man who comes into her life fall madly in love with her, including two best friends who revolve their entire lives around her capricious cries, calls and random disappearances to sleep with other men.

I can't quite put my finger on what irks me overall about this film, whether it's of knowing actual women like that in real life who gave harm to my friends, not being enchanted by Jeanne Moreau, the weakness of both men, perhaps all of it. Perhaps the film makes me recognize and hate a selfish part of myself that I've left behind...that's another story.

I imagine if this film were made today, Kate Hudson, or someone equally attractive, would play the role, while two helpless shmucks whined around her slapstick suicide attempts, eating sandwiches together, while on the side--eating whatever shit she doled out, depending on her boredom.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Margot in the Royal Tenenbaums got it right at least with her cold sincerity and regal demeanor, but she was a misunderstood genius, not a cataclysmic mess for the sake of being cataclysmic.

Female characters feasting on the souls of pathetic men is not compelling, unless the genre is horror, thriller or comedy, none of which was Jules and Jim--a "quirky, romantic, cerebral" drama? Undoubtedly cerebral, yes, but romantic, I couldn't say, unless romance is declared synonymous with terminal illness. But ask most poets; they'll say yes to that one in a snap.

But many people love this film, especially because of the director and the directing, because it's French and quirky in that dark, French manner of dysfunction being real and hilarious and charming women who are crazy drive men mad with desire versus boring beautiful women with every their predictable mannerism just sitting there with nothing to say--yes, yes, yes, I see the attraction and the fodder for conversation this film would bring, the debates of what is what defines art and New Wave greatness.

Jules and Jim is a walloping time capsule of style preserving culture, attitudes, an homage to joie de vivre and the struggles in love which make even the strongest of humans vulnerable in its pursuit. Hence, its infamy, and its ever growing list of admirers placing it on the pedestal of greatness.

I myself wouldn't watch it again unless I got in a time machine, went 12 years back into my reckless, carefree lifestyle and turned it on to watch after downing half a bottle of wine with a malleable male admirer, or two. Ah, but then it would all make sense.

dream about a bear claw

2011-02-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

.
I had a dream that I was going to be a recurring character on a reality show featuring bookish babes mixed with famous rap stars doing Fear Factor stunts like bungee jumping into vats of jello.

I must've been hungry when I had this dream because at some point I invoked a bear claw bigger than my head and was eating it in a coffee shop somewhere close to the house where they had cameras following us around 24/7.

I also met others who were being cast as roommates for the cramped rooms we were supposed to share and create drama in, so the producers brought in an ex of someone I was seeing, just to supposedly sabotage the popularity I received from becoming a star from the first season on to the season we were about to tape which was the fourth where I was set to sky dive naked after a dare.

When I met the ex, I was standing on a porch, looked down and there she was all of three feet tall. The thoughts in my head were, she's an actual "doll" and omigod how is she not considered a midget?

Then another ex of mine, and not the one who I'd known she dated, came outside and said hello to the short woman. It was obvious that they'd dated before too by the way she cruelly bossed him around from the start and he did everything she told him to.

I was confused. How did this three foot tall, doll of a person pull so much of my ass? I thought about the correlation of little girl fetishes, and me, and felt morbidly confused.

Then she crawled up and into a chair on the porch and asked me to sit on the steps and talk to her for a few minutes about our roles on the show. As we sat eye-to-eye, she didn't look short anymore; she had a pretty face and her demeanor was that of a queen.

That's when I knew season four of the show was going to probably be my last. Then the rappers invited her to ice cream, and I was alone.
.

literature's androgynous name game, sci-fi & media

2011-02-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

I feel like such an idiot. Ever since I was tagged in a post asking me to name fifteen of my favorite authors, and felt like shit because they were all virtually white and male, I've been trying to get more lady writers in my head for the new year.

I've been going to the library and checking out stacks of books penned by women: Grace Paley, Ann Beattie, even to go so far as including: A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, which I have to admit I'm a little bit intimidated by. So then why am I an idiot? I checked out the Loved One by Evelin Waugh--is why, thinking he was a woman.

I'm so embarrassed for myself I don't even know what to do now. This is worse than the time I flabbergastedly found out Harper Lee was a woman, and felt shame for my shock.

I tried reading the book anyway; I thought: it's short, why not? Waugh's a prolific writer; he penned Brideshead Revisited, Love Among the Ruins. Sadly, after the first few pages I had to put it down.

Not only am I avoiding white, male writing, but I'm also avoiding thoroughly unmodern, or inapplicable writing to boot. Talks about knitted bow-ties and quick-change artists of vaudeville, in that sense don't do anything for me. If I was a burlesque dancer into antiques who felt as though she was born forty years too late...maybe.

But I'm not. I'm more of a sci-fi chick who feels like the world around me is more dated-looking than it should be. I was one of those kids in the eighties, who thought for sure by the 2010's we'd be driving floating cars in silver rompers.

Now, at this rate, it looks like that'll never happen; our cars still resemble rubber and aluminum artifacts from forever ago, while people roll around moaning at any changes they have to make to accommodate progress, comfortable to see things as their parents saw them, spoonfed and anesthetized by the pulp trash we call news media.

Tangents aside, I should walk to the library and get a new stack of books while the sun is out and the air is warm. It's early February in Los Angeles, and I'm not taking for granted the fact that it's 60 degrees and sunny when the rest of the country is worried about snow.
.

a complex & skeptical system

2011-01-18T01:05:00.000-08:00

.
I'm losing my edge. I especially noticed this today while having coffee with an ex co-worker from the Brooklyn flea market days when I sold fish tacos in DUMBO by Grimaldi's.

This guy, we'll call him Jake, was a good eight years younger than me, studying psychoanalysis in Manhattan when I met him; he was one of those effeminate types who always talked about his girlfriend.

We got along, him being into Asians, and me being into that passionate attention that gets lavished upon you when you're exactly the type someone's looking for to love. Doting, puppy-eyed worship. It's virtually irresistible when projected by an attractive person.

Anyway, Jake is a fox, so I was happy to meet him when he messaged me saying he'd moved to San Francisco and was going to be in LA for the afternoon. His girlfriend, in town for whatever, would be dropping him off at Intelligentsia at 2:30 to see me.

When I got to the coffee place, I was a few minutes early, so I ducked into a boutique next door and splurged on a handmade cardigan by a local designer, who superimposed N'Sync members onto the bodies of Transformers underneath a bio hazard symbol.

By the time I made it to Intelligentsia, Jake was standing outside, smoking a cigarette by a meter, with his phone in hand to text me and let me know he had just gotten there.

When he saw me, he gave me a nice squeeze, a few kisses on the cheek, and asked me what I'd been up to. I showed him my cardigan. He said it looked expensive and asked me if I had a job. No, I said, then told him about my marriage, physical condition--expecting new life in June. What a way to spring a surprise on me, he said, woah!

When we saw that the coffee shop had a line that went out to the street, we went to Casbah Cafe, which almost always has a place to sit without having to sift through skinny kids in thick framed glasses vogueing and talking about music; although they are often adorable.

I ordered a Yerba Mate latte, a few baked things to pick and taste, and Jake got an Americano; we commenced to catching up.

The scoop on the flea market scene after I left for LA, which apparently became aggressively incestuous before self-destructing, was a joy to imbibe second-hand; drugs, sex, stealing, it was all there. My story on the other hand, was very tame.

How is it anything other than pathetic to hear that an independent forerunner for strong-minded and ambitious women in America has settled down, become domesticated, cooks for and takes care of her husband as one half of a co-dependent partnership, is expecting a baby, and is looking for a new home to build a quiet life in?

A year ago, before all this I was living in Williamsburg, jogging in McCarran Park, having a delicious affair with a skilled and sophisticated Casanova, eating daily Chinese from around the corner, carousing with beautiful gay men to beaches, to clubs...

(it sounds ridiculous and anything but romantic now, but the major difference is I was free and convinced I would never be a representative of convention. I scoffed at moms with their power strollers and organic meal plans. It felt revolutionary to fight the clock, to counter-mimic ideas of stability imposed upon any woman in her lifetime.

For one, I felt it was impossible to find one partner who I wouldn't find completely aggravating after a a few years of spending too much time together. And two, if I did ever find that guy, there would be no guarantee that he'd want me back.

What a complicated system: coupling; it's half based on smell and the rest has to do with timing and a willingness to settle for some semblance of a prize.)

As I spoke to Jake, I saw the look in his eyes change from a shy, flirtatious curiosity to looking nervous and betrayed, as if I went from being "me" to one of "them." Them being of people who have completely unregistered in the department of availability, as a muse, a mentor, fantasy love object, whatever--for his age range anyway.

Who knows, his clock could shift into family mode one day, too; and only then will I make a comeback as the ideal mother/partner figure.

Ideas of revolution fade. Of wanting to feel special, different, or finding one's rich sense of purpose in a realm of antiestablishment ennui. Now baby pictures shroud the family mantle as a contemporary shrine of la tabula rasa; as the organized rebirth of one's own calamitous identity.

I used to fantasize about living alone on a lighthouse with no connections to the outside world. I see now I was only preparing myself for the worst. Trying not to be blindsided by potential shitty hands being dealt at any given moment. I was bracing myself for tragedy.

It's nice to be able to relax; I've certainly paid my dues. And if this makes me boring and old and conventional, then I embrace all of it, as long as my husband embraces me whenever I need him to.
.

when minimal mode is bling

2011-01-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that the only thing standing between "spoiled" and "soiled" is "p"? I didn't until today, and what a decadent day it was. I hope something ominous isn't looming on the horizon. Considering nothing in life is free and things are often too good to be true, it seems life is calm for the moment, and curiously generous. *knocks on wood

My toenails, for instance, good god they were in a funk, chipped since before Thanksgiving, last year. I finally made my way to that special place on Hyperion with all the People magazines and massage chairs today, right before the sun went down. I walked there and (carefully) back in flip flops for exercise. They charge $15 and I always leave $5, and they always act surprised and grateful, as if they usually get nothing extra. I think they all speak Vietnamese, hardly a lick of English. The red I chose today is called "High Maintenance." I thought that was cute.

I also have a new leather handbag by LA designer Clare Vivier from the Mohawk General Store on W Sunset. Ned had surprised me with a smaller bag by the same designer at Christmas, but the clasp broke on the way to the post office in Atwater Village, so I had store credit. The new bag is a roomier hobo, I absolutely love it, even though it reeks of death in a way. It's also unlined, so my new Grace Paley is becoming tinged with orange pages before I can even open it and devour the stories inside.

Sure, I'll get over it, but you'd think, for a $380 bag, Vivier might've at least sewn a swatch of silk inside, making it less rustic, and a touch more...upholstered? Regardless, it's mine now.

If it's not obvious by the photo I also started Thomas Pynchon's V today. Oddly enough, I've lost interest in graphic novels and now I'm veering more towards long, modern novels.

So far I've made it all the way through to chapter one, something about sailors and beer and a girl and the New York subway. I can tell this isn't going to be easy; it's very masc-centric, dense, loopy and complicatedly book about nothing in particular but a man named Profane just kind of being a likable bastard.

The way the sentences twist and twirl around sometimes is what makes it special. It's not as complicated as White Noise or Blood Meridian or anything, but it's definitely in the same club of jargon-based word art. I'm going to try to get to 100 pages by the end of the night, then I'll only have 400+ and maybe I can finish the whole thing in less than a week.

My old Gateway is at the Apple store in the mall tonight, too, along with my new Macbook Air. The genius squad is transferring my photos and word documents over to a hip, lightweight piece of techno-inevitability. Dependabilitywise, the look on my face had to be of shock when they told me they'd have to keep both computers overnight until six the next day.

I said to the genius Mac guy, "What the hell am I supposed to do without a computer at home, use my phone?" and then I remembered I had a Dell netbook at the house that I've barely used. I bought the thing thinking I'd take it to coffee shop and write some great novel on it one day. Heh! Eh...ugh.

I have three computers and a miniature computer phone. Is that normal? Depends on who you ask I suppose. My handbag's expensive according to most minimum wagers, but cheap compared to those who will settle for nothing less than a 2-grand plus Gucci, Prada or Alexander Wang bag.

And walking down the street today, I wondered if I was wearing one two many rings with my flip flops and new leather handbag; as hybrids, SUVs and Mercedes flew past the sidewalk I trekked to get a pedicure. Then an attractive black teen in a prep school uniform asked me for a dollar in exchange for a smile.

Perhaps this is just Los Angeles, and to adapt to Los Angeles, the minimal mode is bling. I'm not complaining, trust me; I've never had a better excuse to play materialistic.

yellow cake & chocolate icing

2011-01-12T16:12:00.000-08:00

.
I caught on a person's status update a few days ago that her newest cravings involved fried oysters with black beer, and yellow cake with milk chocolate icing. The first one, the oysters and beer sounded edgy and romantic, sure; it was the second one that got me.

You know when you have a craving for something, whether it's the crispy wings of a rotisserie chicken or raw cookie dough ice cream, it's hard to shake. Is this a woman thing having to do with hormones, or a simple hard-headed mildly obsessive complex?

The main story in a waiting room Reader's Digest once told me to trust my food cravings, no matter how sugary or off-the-wall, saying if you're intuitive enough to listen to your body communicating, it will tell you when your vitamin levels are deficient.

Moderation is the key, stressed the article. So if you're craving beef or red wine, your body's low on iron, dairy means calcium, so on.

Being four months along, I've yet to notice a substantial change in my appetite. I have been craving more than a modest level of carbohydrates: bread and butter, English muffins, fried food, and thought this was under control, until I saw the status update involving the yellow cake and milk chocolate icing. In my mind, there are carbs, and then there are sweet carbs, which are nothing but trouble.

Ask someone who lost a massive amount of weight what they had to give up in order to lose 100+ pounds and they'll tell you: muffins, cookies, doughnuts, cupcakes, chocolate ice cream is a big one, but let's stay on course here. Flour + sugar + butter = the devil.

I went to the grocery yesterday, bought a box of yellow cake mix, a small bottle of vegetable oil, a vat of milk chocolate icing and went to town when I got home. I already had three large eggs to add the the batter and butter versus shortening to smear all over the baking trays.

Wearing my right arm out without an electric mixer, I then placed the mostly lump-free raw mix in two baking trays, and inserted them into a preheated oven at 350. I set the egg timer.

One hour later I had two golden cakes ready to stack and ice with milk chocolate frosting. An hour after that, half the cake was gone. Poor me.

What exactly was so deficient in my body that I couldn't thwart off the guilt I experienced after gorging myself like a pig? Was my blood's unnecessary junk meter at an all-time low?

The only thing I can imagine happening to me is that my body wants to put on weight, but that'll make it so hard to do anything. I'll be incapacitated if I gain ten more pounds above what I already weigh at 5'7" and 145 pounds. That's ten more pounds than my normal weight. And I'm supposed to gain fifteen more!

I know people do it all the time in America, become overweight, but isn't it gradual? It seems like what my body is trying to do to me is drastic.

Yesterday I could barely bend over and sweep hair off the bathroom floor because of my condition, and I can only expect it to get worse until June, when I purge a new human into the world.

In the meantime, I'm trying to decide whether or not to throw the other half of that cake I baked last night away. If I don't, I fear I'll eat the rest of it by the end of the night; it's like I'm possessed by a zombie mind control megaphone craving sweet comfort foods.

I rode 1.5 miles on the stationary bike today so far, then heaved myself onto the bed in a sweaty mess with my hand on my heart, deathly afraid of my pulse exceeding 140 beats per minute.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt another 1.5 miles in a few minutes. I figure it's better than nothing. And self-control is the key to being healthy, I suppose. I'm going to try to focus on that when it comes to all of this. Hopefully, everything will come out alright in the end.
.

cheddar pretzel combos are gross

2011-01-11T01:50:00.000-08:00

.
Craving something savory, I found an unopened bag of cheddar cheese pretzel Combos in the kitchen cupboard, sitting next to ancient pinata candy and a tube of Quaker oatmeal. The Combos were part of a care package, which also contained a few packs of mint Orbit gum.

The first Combo was delicious, the second, third, very good. Around combo number five, I began to eat the pretzel outside of the inner cheese consistency. At combo seven I abruptly stopped.

I had wandered into thoughts of synthetic substances rendered to look like food. Perhaps it was the taste, or texture. I wondered what my body would see the ingredients as being: polyester, plastic. Eating a handful of dirt would contain minerals at least.

A co-worker studying nutrition to become a personal trainer once told me that Cheetos, Doritos, Skittles and Pop-Tarts all contained ingredients which would accumulate in certain areas of the body as indigestibles, and eventually form tumors.

Who knows, moderation says: do whatever you want as long as it's not a large-scale gross-out feast of fried Twinkies or strudel. This is why I keep the diet sodas down to one can a day. Sometimes two.

Combos, on the other hand, should only be eaten by people in black magic cults who are protected by the gracious spirits of digestion.
.

screenplays: the new novel for the evasive drone

2011-01-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

.
19 weeks today, he's the size of an heirloom tomato.

Downloaded a trial version of final draft into my Mac, since the real thing costs a fortune ($249) and I've had no training in writing screenplays. I have two ideas that seem reasonable. Original ideas.

They're both about injured people, or people becoming injured emotionally from their quests for love. One is about furries, the other is an incredibly ironic, chronologically condensed heart-breaker; it almost perfectly coincides with more chaotic aspects of my life...

(with names changed, of course. The furry story is set in NY. The second story is happening now in LA.)

This last year I've watched movies like crazy, studied them, analyzed them, to figure out a basic formula. Watching romantic comedies are the biggest pain-in-the-ass. If I want to watch crap that never happens in real life, surrealist-type movies, mind benders, are far more enjoyable; Naked Lunch for example, but I don't have it in me to take the risk to create something that complicated. Not right now.

Cronenberg, the name alone makes me tense. But also, most surrealist-styled stories revolve around either dreams in sleep, insanity, or junkie meltdowns, and I don't feel like going into any of those places.

Maybe ten years ago when I still popped pills at parties, and guzzled nightcaps hours before bedtime, but ten years ago, those pills were everywhere, and bedtime...was a joke.

I haven't established myself. I'm no one. An incredible, inspiring no one. At least my cat likes me, as long as I keep feeding him on time.

I have a blog, sometimes I write fiction, I never submit my stories to publications. I've never completed a large body of work. It's only lately that I've begun to read longer novels vigorously, like/dislike buttons flaring up like semaphores in a buzz of analysis.

But what are books going to do for me now? Who didn't get some sort of electronic reader in their Christmas stocking this year? Bah, I going to shut up and memorize this before bed.
.

long lost friends

2011-01-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

.
Janie had just woken from a round of bad dreams, she'd had a huge fight with her husband before bed regarding a woman in a picture from the New Year's Eve party he attended without her.

Earlier that day they'd had a fight about something different but equally induced by boredom. In the incriminating picture, a mid-thirties brunette with frizzy hair was pulling Janie's husband in for a kiss, as he smiled sheepishly, half-heartedly pulling away. This was on the night Janie spent New Year's Eve alone, for the first time in her life.

Janie reached for her laptop to check for mail in her inbox. Aside from one chain mail joke about a fairy placing a curse on a man who wished for his wife to be younger, there wasn't much to see. A girl she knew from high school, but never really liked had sent a friend request on facebook. Why not, thought Janie, I'll just add her to the pile.

Janie signed into facebook, she accepted the friend request of the girl she hadn't talked to and never really liked in the first place. She went to the girl's page and looked through her pictures. 53 mutual friends, married, three kids, fat, boring. Nothing new. When Janie was finished lurking her decade ago non friend's pictures, she went back to sift through the friend requests she had ignored for a while.

The first was a broke boozer musician she'd dated briefly in Houston, until they had an argument one night, she told him to leave and went to bed disgusted. That night the rocker type took a rare bottle of chocolate orange liqueur she'd been saving, from her nightstand, cracked the seal and drank the whole thing, even to complain about the taste.

When she woke up with livid complaints, he made the case that she was too concerned with material things to be a decent human being, to get over herself, then commenced to degrading her character to her Oxycontin addled roommate, who for months she had been estranged.

Janie had to move out a month later. The rocker moved on to a fat moneybags, who supported him for years after that incident, in exchange for his services of making daily love to a human marshmallow. But soon enough, he had transformed a marshmallow, too. Cheese sticks, had someone said about it once. For all I cared, he could've shoved them in her ass with his guitar.

The other friend request was from a woman she had never even heard of. One mutual friend. She clicked to see who it was. Then called her husband who was on his laptop in the kitchen.

Honey?

Yess?

Do you know a Sophie Toren?

Wha? Sophie?
I dated a girl about six years ago named Sophie.
Why?

She friend requested me on facebook.

Let me see the picture.
Oh, yeah, that's her.
We went on three dates about six years ago,
but then we stopped seeing each other.

Why?

Oh, I don't know.
I guess it didn't work out.

So you don't remember?
Really?

Do you really want to know?
Promise you won't get angry at me?

Yes.

Okay. Well, Sophie and I went out three times
and then we had sex on a couch in an office.
Only once.

Did you not like it?

Her nipples were weird.
She had no aureoles.

So you stopped seeing her after that?

Yeah, does that make me a bad person?

No, I don't think so, it means you have preferences.

Sophie was tempted to tell her husband about the time that she took a very handsome, foreign stranger home from the bar, how he filled up her gas tank with premium, how they smoked a few joints together in bed, before they started to fool around, how he pulled out his penis resembling a one inch nub with a button mushroom attached, how he begged her to let him put it inside, and she said maybe next time. Sophie held her tongue and let him have the floor with his weird nipple story.

So why do you think this chick's sending me a friend request?
Is she a stalker?

Sophie clicked on the woman's page. From what she could see, she had listed Sophie's husband's movie projects as her favorite movies.

No, she seemed like a nice girl. She was a yoga instructor.
I don't think she's obsessed with me.

Then what is all this about?

Sophie pointed to the woman's profile pics of her lying half nude on a bed with her wet lips parted.

Woah, she got some professional pictures made!
That doesn't even look like her!

So let's say that I'm not going to say yes to this friend request, so this woman can lurk me and see who took her lover from her.

Would you like me to delete her from my friends?

I don't care. I'm just glad you like my nipples.

I do, they're always excited to see me, and that's a huge compliment.

Sophie's husband returned to the kitchen to finish his work, as she grazed her hand on her rounded belly. Well, baby, it looks like we have our hands full with this one, don't we? She closed her laptop, carefully got out of bed, straightened the pillows and sheets, and sat back down.
.

internet hijackers & Freddy Mercury ramen

2011-01-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

.
My friend Sam recently had his hotmail jacked by hijackers, who contacted everyone on his contacts list, to say he was traveling, lost all his money, to send money, so he could get home. This was the note:

Hello
Hope you get this on time,sorry I didn't inform you about my trip in UK for a Christmas program, I'm presently in now and am having some difficulties here because i lost my small bag, right now i don't have anything with me,all cash,credit card and cell phone are gone on my way to the hotel where i stay,have already gotten 1,500 pounds from a friend,I want you to assist me with a loan of 2,600 pounds to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home.

I have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively,I will appreciate whatever you can afford to assist me with,I'll Refund the money back to you as soon as i return, let me know if you can be of any help. I don't have a phone where i can be reached. Please let me know immediately
--
Sam

The first thing that tipped me off immediately, that this was a scam, was the fact that Sam graduated with a degree in creative writing. This means the no-space-after-the-comma bit is totally out of line. Who does that? Someone who obviously never passed an English class. It irritates me to look at it. Eugh, take it away. Second clue is the email came from his hotmail. Who uses hotmail anymore? Sure, sure, plenty of people, and some I know still use AOL, those freaks.

Who actually makes money from these hacks? Does it happen, or is this phenomena some self-proclaimed hacker's field day? Is it the government census bureau experiment?

Remember when myspace rotted away because of hackers, phantom's impersonating porn stars offering web cam services to lonely masturbators with credit cards? Now the same thing is happening to facebook, I've noticed: click here to see what so and so said about you! And twitter; sometimes I sign in and immediately get whooshed off to the myspace sign in page. As if I'll say, oh, myspace, this is where I meant to really go, let me sign in now and come back to all of this, myspace is probably better than ever! Such Bullshit.

I wonder about these seedy companies behind all this. For one thing: I know they're not Japanese. The Japanese know how to sell their products and make money. Even if they pay top dollar for top quality celebrities to sell cup ramen. At least it's honest, and doesn't take advantage of people. And who doesn't love ramen?

oranges are nothing touching the fresh meat of wild

2011-01-03T01:04:00.000-08:00

.
Barnabas just woke up long enough to watch me peel and eat an orange with the same distain I would display if he pealed and ate a squirrel right in front of me. Psh. What do cats know about vitamin C...

I tried reading George Saunders' CivilWarLand in bad decline in one sitting before I got too distracted by his loopy sentence structure in the first story to get anywhere past it. I decided to sprint through, to get to the end anyway, hoping to absorb and catch what it was all about, by scanning the words with my technical translator mindset. When I got to the finish, I reread with a slower pace from the beginning, and had slightly less trouble trying to understand exactly what was going on.

Most of what's really going on is obvious in its title, I came to realize, with other things, like sentences, thrown in for the sake of the spirit having a body apart from just a head. I read and loved Pastoralia. Saunders seems to have a preoccupation with old-time theme parks.

Braved the rain to watch the Warrior's Way at a $3 theater after simmering a giant pot of spicy golden curry with pork tenderloin, potatoes, onion, peas, carrots, a few fat slivers of jalapeno pepper, and steamed sticky white rice to give the savory concoction a place to sit, steam and look glorious. It's safe to say I've come close to perfecting both green and gold curry. Mother would be proud.

Speaking of mom, I called her today after making the New Year's resolution to call her every Sunday. Last year I must've called her less than ten times total, though I know she called me less times than that.

She's Korean...I don't know. Anyway, I thanked her for the titanium non-stick cook wear she graciously gifted the household for Christmas, as she went into details of how oven safe the pans are, the lightweight convenience of Titanium, and how not to scour any of it with metal scouring pads. I told her I'd take it easy. Then she told me about her great New Year's Eve, while I told her about mine, which was the worst I've ever experienced in my entire life. She gave me a special recipe for champagne in the summer which is a blend of beer and 7-UP. Not Sprite, she said, 7-UP has a bite to it; it's better. I told her I'd try it.
.

people, places, art i loved in 2010

2011-01-02T18:26:00.000-08:00

.
Ned Vizzini, LA, In Watermelon Sugar, Barnabas the cat, Ken Baumann, the Oaks Gourmet, Netflix, Fables, 10-second rabbits, Trader Joe's, Skylight Books, neon toilet, Toronto, driving the Shark, Waverly Dr, New Beverly Cinema, writing reviews, James Hall, Camille Navarro, Donte Scott, Man vs Food, Cake Boss, Pawn Stars, palm fronds, Silverlake, cooking for two, eating for two, pedicures at Hyperion, 140 characters, Goodreads, Pandora radio, meeting Lauren Kate Stanley, Sam Cooney, hiking in the Hollywood Hills, Chateau Marmont, all-you-can-eat Korean Barbecue, Troika Moonshine 300, iPhone, Satyricon, saving, spending, fruit stands, Anthuriums, Sephora, Glendale Galleria, sunshine, flip-flops, fresh basil, beaches, Asterio's Polyp, el Tepeyac, Bloomingdale's with Rio, Birds, boutiques, coffee beans, meeting Leo Tolkin, Matt Polley, Thom Yorke, David Lynch at Book Soup, Thurston Moore, Colin Ferrell, Kathleen Turner, Robert Redford, Ryan Adams & Mandy Moore, tip basket cash, Ralph's, public libraries, Atwater Village, Pastoralia, San Francisco, Salsalito, Big Sur, Arclight Cinema, Angry Birds, Ren Faire, Medieval Times, Shin ramen, carbohydrates, Thai food, pears, the Tilleys, pumpkin lattes, NARS blush, Cha Cha Lounge, meeting Tommy Pickles

safety pins & spikes

2011-01-02T00:53:00.000-08:00

.
Ned was invited on facebook to attend a goth party at a venue in Hollywood tonight. He, joking heartily, said, "Wanna go to a goth party?" Whereas I replied, "You know what? I you should. It would be good for you. For an essay or scene or something. I'll do your make-up."

After the unexpected positivity, he was absolutely enthusiastic.

"Yes, I am going to go to this," he said, and when he texted his writing partner, Nick about it, sharing the fact that a mutual friend was hosting the event, Nick responded with a text saying: Ugh, I remember that girl, the worst fuck I've ever had in my life.

I told Ned not to mention Nick's name at the door.

Inspiration for Ned's goth look, I found from an old cache of pics from a 90's party I went to in 2007 with my good friend, Eric Todd.

Eric, a singer-songwriter Indie type, went as a goth creeper with hair gel, spiked sleeves and safety pins secured to the front of his black top that spelled out "kill yourself." He was inspired by the Crow.

Eric plays a mean "King of Carrot Flowers" on guitar 2010

This was before the safety pins that spelled out "kill yourself" '07

I went as a Seattle grunger '07

So Ned removed his glasses, his usual jeans and tee, donned black pants, a black top, a studded belt, and a gray scarf. I applied the same Shiseido mascara I was wearing, thick, a heavy dab of eyeliner, bright red lipstick from Benefit called "flirt alert," a few puffs of pale, white powder; I even arched and darkened his eyebrows, and by the time he was out the door, I have to admit, he looked like a sexy Transylvanian Count. I was impressed with my handy work.

Ned as his goth alter ego "Edison Price" 1/1/11

I stayed at home as not to distract from the project. It's now closing in on 1 am; he left the house before ten, so I can only assume he's having the time of his life. And I can't wait to hear about it.
.

exquisite corpse--between four

2010-12-31T19:51:00.000-08:00

.
Cubes transparent in a transparent glass with lime squeezed, patience pulped, juice to sip in my dreams before morning, a.m. breakfast, black coffee and boiled eggs without the yolks for a lean machine. Beat yourself and the twinks will follow. Call the doctor, he'll give you a financial reach around so severe you'll feel it in the afternoon -- forget the morning. Live in the now, like a skunk who loves his own smell and frolics about town with confidence, with vigor and love, he can do this. I amazing, I am a rock, I am the eternal fly on the peach, I am licking the fuzz and getting pricked by the wily thorn poison-tipped and lapping me back to the chicken versus egg debate. The thing is, the chicken was cloned and so am I.

During happy hour, it is an injustice to your social realm to lock the bathroom door. There are two urinals and one very sad midget wondering if he is going to have to piss himself or go home because he just can't reach that pinnacle exploring the difference between latex and novocaine. The dentist always hated my guts. She gave me flavored fluoride in unspeakable fact-diet combinations of carob and bubble gum. The castle that stares back at you has welcoming eyes which cab be easily interpreted as evil and uninviting, but evil is inviting, it is up to you to deny its invitation. Are you strong enough?

Being here is beautiful. I have not done this in ages. A drink, a pen, a creative mind...we will see. A red room not unlike a David Lynch movie. Where is this lady from a dream or the voice screeching beside me with gin breath, hot like dragon spit which is why it's important to have a CVS card, to lick your elbow and count to ten and sniff. If it smells putrid, kick the person closest to you in the stomach and run to the corner store for a malt liquor. I am a big fan of malt liquor, but maybe it is not a big fan of me. I assume you are a big fan of me and my belly dancing smoke and mirrors dance, my human cannonball, my clown car charade, and All in the Family was the worst.

I was early for a date which I knew was a bad sign. Every time I've ever been early for anything, I've been punished. I've been depleted, a battle lost, a war waiting a hero. Next time I step to the bar I'll accept the challenge and deny mediocre nature. I am a god, I am a force of nature. I am the ruler of all space, time and dimension the goblin of infinity enjoyed the occasional game of solitaire, backgammon, and strip poker most of all. But the highest compliment I received was the praise of the free whale on its last legs. How will the whale dance now? Take it up the blowhole?
.

Penned by Camille Navarro, Dave Silberman, Sabra Embury & Ned Vizzini at Birds in 2010

the Fighter--a review

2010-12-31T18:16:00.000-08:00

.
Upon watching the Fighter, I expected from the start, an all out machismo fest embellished with a revisitation of Mark Wahlberg's ripped body from his days modeling Calvin Klein underwear. I was almost all wrong.

I should've anticipated as much, but the acting all around was spot-on; especially by Christian Bale, whose gaunt crackhead has-been brother boxer act was impenetrable.

As far as I've seen this is his third reprise of an emaciated savior character that he's perfected, including his haunting portrayal as an insomniac factory worker losing his mind in the Machinist, and German-American, live snake-eating pilot Dieter Dengler in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn.

Amy Adams also shined in her role as the trashy, but classy college drop-out, bartender girlfriend of Mickey Ward, and out of nowhere Melissa Leo scores big points with her performance as the overbearing mother of the Ward brothers and their seven incredible sisters.

The entire movie in itself was not tense, but there were a few heart-palpatating moments that made me, and the audience around me, swoon with an all-out, muttering anxiousness.

There were also parallel scenes that were not for the faint-hearted, easily grossed-out citizen. As well as a few cringing moments where a diversion of eyes was necessary to avoid watching the splatterings of pain being inflicted on the sweet protagonist.

And how could the conflict surrounding a beloved family member's drug addiction tearing his loved ones apart, not make an impact on the psyche? The answer is: BOOM.

All of these factors are what make the Fighter a romantic and compelling film, about a boxer trying to make a name for himself, outside of his brother's shadow, and his mother's bad management.
.

this function is only available in player mode

2010-12-31T15:13:00.000-08:00

.
Samantha woke to the sounds of her husband, Alexander shuffling around at his desk by the window.

"Hey."
"Oh hi, you're awake."
"Mmhm..."
"I'm just looking over the hits I've gotten on my eating cereal video on youtube. It's up to a thousand. One comment here says, chocolate milk is gross with off-brand Captain Crunch, haha."
"I have a video that's been getting a lot of comments lately. It's called cute albino kitty."
"Oh cool, let's watch it! I wanna watch Maru again, too. I wanna watch him jump into a box!"

Watches Maru.

"Is he Japanese, Korean, Chinese? What's that writing say?"
"Are you stoned?"
"No."
"You got stoned while you were out this morning?"
"No."
"So now you're like one of those fat chick sugar junkies with a secret stash of chocolate doughnuts. Where'd you get the pot?"
"...from Brian, Lester's friend, when I was in Hollywood last week."
"You showered right away when you got home so I wouldn't smell it."
"Yes, I guess so."
"This is why you've been acting strange. I thought you said you'd quit pot for good."
"I've been smoking it consistently since I was fifteen."
"You're just another stupid junkie. You can't even act right on it. You act like a dope head."
"Do you want to talk about it."
"No, I want you to leave. I can't stand you. I don't want to be around junkies while I'm pregnant."
"For how long?"
"Go away."

Alexander walks outside onto the porch and sits in a fold-out chair with his laptop. He's too stoned to go anywhere or do anything. Samantha gets out of bed and walks outside.

"I want you to leave the house."
"No, why, where should I go?"
"Leave."

Samantha, who was wide awake before, is too depressed to function. She shuts down and goes back to sleep. When she wakes up Alexander is in the kitchen on his laptop. It's New Year's eve, and they've been married for five months. Samantha's four months pregnant. And now she's contemplating divorce.

****
Not that she didn't have her fair share of smoking pot when she was experimenting with various psychedelic substances in high school. Samantha used to hang with a bad crowd, until she got serious for college. They'd take hits of acid before concerts, try powders and pills, and smoke pot every chance they got, sometimes ten times a day.

Then Samantha had to move on. The drugs and pot were paving the way for harder drugs, namely Oxycontin, and her friends were either dying off, going to jail, becoming dealers, losing their jobs, stealing from their friends and families, and collectively becoming ghosts of their former selves. They only had one priority and that was getting high. Samantha decided then to leave druggie lifestyle alone and move on; she found friends in a straight edge crowd, who imbibed the occasional beer at the bar during social gatherings.

As she watched from afar, her old friends, emaciated in their pale blue skin, disappeared one by one, some legends, the coolest kids around; others anonymous, falling--they all fell, and now Samantha had a warranted hatred for people with any semblance of a substance abuse problem. Addicts, junkies, they would never change, through their apologies, excuses, lies; it was a condition they wouldn't avoid, until it was too late, and they'd lost everything and had no choice but to start all over again, broken and pathetic, nostalgic for the golden years of naive immortality in youth.

They listened to the same songs, wore the same clothes, though they looked older now, weathered, puffy, talking about the good old days. These were the well-dressed rock stars in deluxe thrift store couture. And now they were stocking groceries at Kroger, selling cell phones, raising children without mothers or fathers.

Samantha had explained this a number of times to Alexander. How the events related to drugs had broken her heart over and over, how it relentlessly haunted her memories and hurt her. How she'd left a serious boyfriend in Austin because he'd gotten into pot too hard with his filmmaker friends, that he threw his career away as an acclaimed an oil painter, to pursue making sci fi videos for youtube with Legos.

Before the pot became a regular thing, it had only been occasional, it was a part of the editing process they said, it was to relax. But then it was there all the time, five times a night, and editing was replaced by reruns of Seinfeld.

This happened for a straight year before Samantha decided it was time to leave. After a young stoned girl named Tabatha asked her one night, "So why don't you like getting stoned like the rest of us? You're reeeally missing out." On top of everything else: peer pressure from a teen with no intention of going to college and a boyfriend trying to establish himself as a dealer in Austin, Texas?

Samantha moved to New York a month later with money she'd saved from looking after a brain injured man in Round Rock. It was in New York on Friday the 13th that she met Alexander, a seemingly nice guy who wrote books about video games for depressed teenagers. They met at a party in November and a month later he was driving her to Louisiana to meet her family for Christmas.

In February she moved out of her apartment in Williamburg. Two weeks later they were in LA, renting a house. He wanted to pursue his dream of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. She came along because he asked her to. They knew a long distance relationship would be hard to manage, and after their first kiss in New York, they didn't have the willpower to be apart.

In August they were married in Vegas. An Elvis impersonator walked her down the aisle. One month later on their honeymoon in Montreal, on September 11th, they conceived a child. Since they were both the oldest children of their broods, their parents were thrilled.

This helped them fight the feeling of being terrified, though it was natural, inevitable being that they were both still young, they hadn't even been together a year, and now they were expecting a baby in June, a lifetime connection, and who knew if they barely got along aside from the initial chemistry that brought them together in the first place. It was too soon to know for sure. It was all too soon.
.

oysters, apes & palm fronds in 2010

2010-12-30T22:47:00.000-08:00

.
I had a nice brunch, then watched the Fighter with Lauren Kate Stanley today. This is a big deal because I met Lauren about six years ago, on the internet; she's lived in Melbourne all her life, and right before Thanksgiving she showed up in LA to explore the US, meet me, spend some money and find adventures.

Six years on the internet, that's a lot of time to build a relationship with another person, if you stay head-to-head on networking sites, keep up with random updates, blogs, hotmail IMs, gmail IMs, letters, letters, letters, video chats, gifts for holidays, you get the picture.

Lauren and I have been through more than a few phases together, and a gauntlet of boyfriends. If the crazy snow allows it, she's off tomorrow to New York, just in time for the new year.

With a dirty santa at the Glendale Galleria 2010

Coincidentally, the place where's she'll be staying only be a block away from the Williamsburg apartment I lived in for all of 2009. Or maybe it's not that much of a coincidence; she's stylish, young, well-read, has great taste in music; in other words: Williamsburg is an oyster calling for its pearl, and if Lauren's not an exquisite gem of a human, I don't know who is. I can't explain what the hell I was doing there.

And now I'm in Silverlake with my long-legged husband and cat, Barnabas, writing this blog after a fun day starting with a "Six Shooter Breakfast" at the Astro Diner, followed by NY winter coat shopping at Nordstrom, to the movie in Glendale and ultimately the Loz Feliz hotel where Lauren and her new boyfriend from San Francisco will spend their last night in LA for a while.

Currently, I'm in bed, trying to keep from freezing to death, a space heater's beside me, Ned's reading Congo, complaining about the fact that he'll never get to meet Michael Crichton because he's dead, and we're discussing the probabilities of apes stealing babies and eating them versus cats smothering them to death in their sleep.

Bon Iver's on Pandora radio. There's a new Entertainment Weekly at my feet with James Franco on the cover, grinning at his chances for an Oscar worthy performance for his role in 127 Hours.

The tomato bisque and cheese puff pastries from Trader Joe's were great, fronds are scattered in the lawn after a few violent gusts of Santa Ana breezes. I need to brush my teeth, crawl a mile on the stationary bike in less than seven minutes, check the room for earwigs, seduce my husband, and finally...go to bed, and prepare for the new year.

I can honestly say I'm ready for 2011. Milan in January, a new home in February(hopefully), a baby in June...it's going to be an adventure.
.

Murakami & his gratuitous love sauce landscaping

2010-12-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

.
I'm plowing through Murakami's 467 page Kafka on the Shore, a book I received for my birthday, January of 2010, by a great friend, who's trustworthy for his good taste...aside for his unyielding love of jam bands. The fact is: I feel as though I didn't read enough this year.

The first 70 pages I got through in three sitting at various times of the day at home between things and things, but today I made a mad sprint from 70-300, on my sunny doorstep, at a Silverlake coffee shop, and now in bed, I take this breather before a final sprint, 167 pages towards the finish line before midnight.

I'm not reading particularly fast or slow, but it's a pace that's honest enough to catch all the details without memorizing. I could ace a test on this book anytime within two weeks of tomorrow, but after two weeks the memories: names, events, will atrophy and recede to make room for new information, especially if it's practical or rehashed repeatedly.

The book itself is good enough for the effort, though a bit more verbose with dialog and details than necessary. The dialogue's pretty candid with vivid descriptions of male genitalia being washed and such, too, but I see now it's to emphasize the deficiencies of a vagina-bearing hermaphrodite, who plays an important role in the story later.

This is my second Murakami after Norwegian Wood, which was also a gift, housewarming, from almost exactly a year before in New York. What I remember most about Norwegian Wood was that it had a lot of sex in it, and longing, or more specifically--flowery prose about sex and longing, and going the distance.

Kafka on the Shore has a few gratuitous sex scenes in it, too, though the prose is much less flowery for the most part. This makes me wonder about Murakami as a person. Does he get laid? Is he impotent? Does he think these explicit sex scenes are necessary for the viscosity of the story? Is it a gimmick to make the story more interesting?

For such straightforward and ethically driven characters with hearts of gold, it's surprising how Murakami's sex scenes have a left-field sense of embellishment. But maybe that's the point.

It's 10:40, I'd better get back to it if I'm going to finish by midnight. So far the 15-year-old protagonist thinks he might've murdered his father in a subconscious, ghostlike state, indignant for a curse which makes it impossible to resist seducing his could-be 50+year-old mother/boss in a foreign city. And the hermaphrodite? Probably his long-lost sister.
.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms--a review

2010-12-27T20:24:00.000-08:00

.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb received a $4 million advance to write this book of aphorisms as a follow-up to the Black Swan.

Some of my favorites:

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing.

I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

If you know in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead--the more precision, the more dead you are.

There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.

Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.

They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status--but rarely for your wisdom.

Many of these aphorisms are interesting. A lot of them are specific and esoteric; a retaliation against critics in Academia, economics, the working class and anyone who might think they're smart for getting good grades or scoring high on an IQ test. Taleb's aphorisms are anti-technology, anti-nerd and anti-making a living with a job that draws a salary. The dependence is what he's against, the repetition, an unstimulated life filled with monotonous patterns, notions of false humility, false models, and sports.

Under a section titled ETHICS, Taleb says: Avoid calling heroes those who had no other choice. Some will call him "harsh" for a statement like that; especially firemen, moms who save children from burning buildings, guys who fix flats on the sides of roads for a smile and thank you, and especially Bruce Willis because he's terrible in romantic comedies. Others will say: maybe he's talking about himself and is trying to be humble without seeming humble because he thinks he's saving the world with his intelligence. Those people have too much time, and empathy, on their hands.

Whatever Taleb is trying to say, and whoever he's trying to say it to, we might never officially know. What we do know is that he has the last laugh receiving $4 million to have a few hundred twitter posts published into a hardcover book of philosophical and political aphorisms. It's a best seller, too. A best seller which I bought, read, and am now writing a review about. Call me a sucker, or call me curious, just please don't call me a hero.
.

Black Swan--a review

2010-12-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

Black Swan is tense, gripping, macabre and precious. It's about what happens to a stressed-out, perfectionist ballerina, Nina (Portman), when she receives the opportunity of a lifetime to dance as the lead Swan in a highly anticipated New York production of Swan Lake.

Nina's coddled by her mother, a former ballerina: think the tragedy of the wannabe beauty queen mom/career beauty pageant daughter. Nina is perfect for the role as the white swan, but lacks the darkness an passion needed for the role of the black swan. The artistic director (Cassel) is relentless with his criticism, imposing and retracting his sexuality onto the frigid Nina, who wants nothing more than to please him.

Soon, Nina begins to experience psychosomatic fantasies, which blur with reality. She is haunted by a doppelganger who glances hateful stares back from mirrors. Her fingernails crack and bleed, her rash quickens, seeping blood through patches on her shoulder. And as an inconsummate foible, Nina's wary attempts to taper her sexual desires with orgasms, are forbidden, a mockery in her life, along with anything else which might lessen the strain of Black Swan's delusion-laced train wreck narrative.

Though tendencies are ubiquitous to judge Portman's acting as trite or shallow, as the charming, pretty pixie muse or whatnot, her performance as frigid, driven Nina is spot-on in Black Swan, as if driven by an seamless fury or provocation. Hershey is also wonderful as a nurturing mother with he soul of a scorn succubus. Cassel is also very believable in his role as the ball-busting artistic director working to make a perfect ballet production.
.

Enter the Void--a review

2010-12-18T15:52:00.000-08:00

I watched this movie in at the new Beverly Theater, at an almost sold out show. This means strangers, film LA buffs more specifically, were squirming arm and arm even as the film began with the credits.

Then the neon lights of Tokyo shone and maintained the glowing consistency throughout the perspective of Oscar, an early twentyish drug dealer obsessed with death and a drug (DMT) that simulates it with hallucinogenic side-effects.

Soon Oscar gets in over his head with the Tokyo police and gets shot through a bathroom door during a drug raid set-up. It's at this moment that his spirit exits his body and floats in a trippy-voyeur perspective, following his stripper sister, through her trysts with her nightclub manager boyfriend, flashing back to childhood before the children became estranged from their parents after a brutal car accident, right back to the shallow past when the two became reacquainted in Tokyo, into the present again. Oscar's essence is now in an emotionless limbo, reflecting, retracing, trying to find his way to solidify the pact he made to his sister: to protect her always, even through death.

Though the narrative presents itself as being justified, the film has a life of its own without it. The narrative is trivial. More importantly, the film is a showcase of mind-blowing camera angles, jolts of violence surrounded by detonating implants of TNT for the psyche. Light tunnels shrink pupils of the viewer sporadically in scenes demonstrating the lure of "the light" and a spirit's attempted resistance to it to carry on in the physical realm.

Gratuitous sex scenes are dispersed generously, and especially at the end before a graphic coital scene illustrating procreation from within, the detailed process of creating life, where the climax, is an actual climax.

In one respect, when the film was over, I couldn't help but overhear frazzled movie-goers complain about Noe's arrogance as a filmmaker. This made me sympathize with the director. Sure, the film was incredibly masturbatory, employing such visceral techniques must obviously have a way of of stimulating the artist, more than it's meant to cater to any of many subjective viewers, but that doesn't necessitate the regard of Noe showing off, as much as his exercising his right to make high art, as his will intends, edited with the precise outcome with which he intended.

Noe has exercised tedious techniques involving psychological explosions of detail, and creative manipulation into a one-of-a-kind vessel, which can be compared to any hyper-visual, hyper-sexual, druggie themed, neo-realistic, human hatefest which has ever existed, true. But he's also made his mark as a filmmaker with Enter the Void, and if infamy is what what he's after, then he's one step closer with this film, to make infamy anything but moot.
.

fictional fish cracker bags

2010-12-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

.
I have two recurring dreams that work as a combo, a one-two punch. Why these dreams often coincide a collection of hard prints from various stressed-out times in my life is beyond me. But I often remember vividly the thrill, of being in and realizing a few things while I'm there.

The first dream (give or take a few details of the overturn of specifics): I'm in college, in class, it's time for a test, I didn't study. What an awful feeling. I take the test, and in this dream, I actually happen to know most of the answers. On the right side of the paper are google ads trying to sell me merchandise. Class is over and it's time to go to my next class, but I realize I've skipped that class all year, and probably won't pass it. It's my senior year, and I need that class to graduate. Why did I skip it? Everything's fucked!

Dream two: I'm in the cafeteria to get a snack from a vending machine. I find the perfect machine, with loose snacks hanging off the hooks. I look around to make sure no one can see me, and I shake the vending machine, hard, until snacks avalanche into the retrieval slot below. The snacks are fictional fish cracker bags, green twizzler type bites, ginger chips, all from Japan, I assume at the time. I stuff the snacks in my bag, and kill time by exploring the architecture before my next class. I don't know how I'm going to make up for the class I never attended. I'm doing fine in all my other classes. I think about summer school.

The being-back-in-school-unprepared-for-a-test dream has become the most annoying, though it's the best to wake up from, knowing I finished a long time ago, passed all my classes, earned my degrees, and all that's over with. Or is it?

Knowing dreams don't just come from nothing, this might be my subconscious telling me I need to go back to school, that I wasn't finished, that I'm wasting precious time being careless and too happy-go-lucky to think about a Masters.

Plus, I skipped a lot of classes in high school. Had my driver's license revoked for missing over 60+ days of school my senior year. How I even graduated is a mystery. I smoked a lot of pot and thought the cool people were other potheads who attended to live concerts and music festivals back then. It was all about being cool and rebellious and invincible.

My grades were bad, my ambitions were worse, and one-by-one my comrades were dying, dealers, or becoming junkies. I was the only person going to college out of everyone who meant anything to me. And by the time I graduated, I did in fact have to go to summer school to retake an Algebra class I'd failed for the second time. I finally passed with a D for an Associates degree in Art. All of these factors must have a combined effect, of some surreal experience I'm going to have to live with, or at least get used to.

The vending machine dream? It mostly happens when I'm bored of life being too predictable. It represents variety and reward, vandalism and excitement. I've always been fascinated by the contents in vending machines.
.

Buckwheat pasta & cinema

2010-12-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

At this very moment I am doing a few things:

1) letting my mascara dry 2) simmering pasta sauce 3) procrastinating laundry 4) sipping reheated coffee 5) writing a review for the movie Julie and Julia.

The mascara I layered on extra thick because my wonderful husband and I attending an event tonight at the Getty, where Peter Greenaway will talk about his dialogue with the masters, his use of reproductions, and his ideas for the future.

I haven't seen any of his films: The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), a reputation consolidated by The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989), Prospero's Books (1991), The Pillow Book (1996), etc., but I trust this will be an interesting event.

I'm simmering pasta sauce because I haven't cooked anything significant in the last two days, aside from eggs for breakfast and breaded talapia and fries in the toaster oven. Living on take-out, fast food and decadent sushi is great, but guilt takes its toll accordingly, when one's gently striving to be an ideal wife.

Watching Julie and Julia this morning inspired me to make something from scratch, so I chopped a red onion, minced a few garlic cloves, sauteed them with salt and pepper until caramelized, then added Italian sausage, tomatoes, an ample amount of fresh basil from my plant outside, and two medium-sized anchovies.

Now all I have to do is simmer the concoction for a few hours, stirring it, so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan, and let the ingredients melt together for sweetness and depth.

The pasta I will boil when it's time to eat. It's buckwheat fettuccini tonight. Like the guy from Little Rascals.

Regarding the previously mentioned chickflick about Julia Child, writing movie (and sometimes book) reviews has become an addiction, or maybe it's a habit. I've always been a collector, since I was a child, everything from pencils and stickers, to coins I collected and stashed away like treasures. It's fun to diversify.

If obsessions are impossible to dissipate, only to be replaced by other obsessions, perhaps in my adulthood I've learned to collect more practical things, such as skills, friends, or even bits and pieces of culture represented by books and cinema, by trying new foods and drink, travel, or by keeping journals--interesting experiences in general are a great motivational factor for living. That, and love.

A review for Julie and Julia will bring me one step closer at 298, to 300, a solid number. I'm not sure what will happen to my momentum when it's time to write 301. Will I write reviews until I die? Will I have thousands under my belt one day? Imagine having thousands of movies in the brain. It's a nice thought, actually. Or perhaps I will only practice the religion of cinema as long as I reside in Los Angeles. But who knows how long that will be.
.

Solaris--a review

2010-12-15T00:09:00.000-08:00

.
Solaris, yes, I watched it at the New Beverly last night; it's long, and yes, it feels long too, especially when your date is snoozing beside you as soon as it starts, and a septuagenarian's slumped over peacefully catching Zzz's diagonally in the row in front.

That aside, I enjoyed the opening scene of water rushing over flora immensely. It was calm. The movie kept that calm movement throughout with sporadic moments of higher drama.

A psychologist is sent to a space station on an untamed planet bubbling with a mysterious Being of ooze. The ooze surrounds the cosmonauts, studying their minds and habits reciprocating the fact that it's being studied by them. The ooze materializes vibrant memories of lost love as clones to study the cosmonauts closer, to make them vulnerable, so the clones won't be harmed.

The psychologist's wife who committed suicide a decade ago comes back to life, dependent on the psychologist's companionship to exist as more than mere manifest. As time elapses, the wife clone adapts as a progressive, regenerative Being and takes on deeper characteristics of the woman for whom she was made as a likeness: quarreling with her husband over petty matters, doubting his love, and suicidal all over again as the film descends into some semblance of conclusion.

Out of the context of 1976, when the movie was released, I can't even begin to fathom the depth of its effect on people with its premise being so oblique. Scrutinizing every moment in scenes, it was a challenging to stay on track without effort--as if trying to connect a puzzle coming together of an image unfamiliar. Though, there are enough moments, which stick to a mind invested in the premise, to make Solaris a memorable film.

Cons & pros: the directing had some style, the sounds worked well for thrill, the editing needed a lot of work, and the lead had no charisma. I also want a few caged birds now, to place by a window. I don't know if that's good or bad. And upon waking from vivid dreams of people I once loved, I now check the room for specters in the flesh...
.

cricket in a swim park

2010-12-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamed I'd given birth. I held a tiny, sexless baby in my arms in a long white room, where others held their newborn babies. There was a bed beside me with white sheets and pillowcases, the floor was white, the walls white. The baby, a tiny soundless water bottle doll with limbs barely moving as I held it, it began to shrink, until it lay motionless in the palm of my hand. I decided this would make my baby easier for transport. I cupped the baby and exited the building into a water park. Walking past docks, I was weary about slipping on splashed water or being pushed by playing children, the baby was getting smaller, unsteady in my palm. I found a sidewalk path, facing a door which marked my final destination, the baby shrank once more and leaped from my hand onto the ground. I knelt and patted the ground for my baby. it was dark outside, but not quite night. I found my baby on the ground, but my baby was now a cricket. I picked it up and held it in my hand. It leaped off. After a few moments, grabbing at the ground, I realized a cricket couldn't be caught. It belonged in nature. I stood and mourned my loss.

the piece-of-shit gene

2010-12-13T00:11:00.000-08:00

Not having signed into m*space in a while, I signed in and saw I had a moldy message in my inbox from my late step-dad's oldest son. His message read: I can't believe you deleted me.

I can, I'd only met that guy about five times in 15 years. When the step-dad died of a botched gastric bypass operation, everyone showed up either being his sister or parents, or his children with their grubby hands out itching for an inheritance. Especially his children from his first marriage, the children who hadn't called or been called by their dad for years.

Apparently, the favorite sport of assholes is the grudge match/silent treatment, versus all the out bitching match about who's the bigger asshole. But if you ask me, both those games are for ten year-old girls. The future asshole queens of America.

Anyway, my step-dad left no one a cent, aside from his youngest son from his second marriage, and a little to my mom. So guess what his grubby, itchy-handed first children did? They showed up at my mom's house and looted all the stuff that belonged to the guy. Antique furniture, stereo equipment, neckties, they tried to take everything they could, things that belonged to my mother, things that my mother wanted to keep. They called her mom, tried to take his car, his motorcycle, but he still owed money on those things: fat guy died with a lot of debt.

The bank eventually repo'd all the toys he'd made small high-interest payments on. He was shitty with money. It's no wonder why my mom insisted on separate bank accounts. In the end, it was all bad anyway. He was too morbidly obese to fly or sit in movie seats, eating gallons of ice cream dumped into giant mixing bowls, and she was sleeping on the couch every night, working herself to death just to avoid him. I never went there. I'd hated him long before she did, for polluting my life with a perv, wanna-be dad, who wasn't even good to his own kids.

I understand when kids don't want to talk to their father, but a father shouldn't try to win that grudge match. If a father makes a child with good intentions, that father has a responsibility to be the better man in any situation. In this case, "If they don't wanna talk to me, then I don't wanna talk to them either," was a pussy bullshit cop-out. My dad did the same thing to me, so it hits something raw; he stopped calling me when I was 12. But I can't blame his wife for wanting to erase the past.

When I found out from an estranged relative's email that he'd died of cancer, I was pissed-off. I had to tell my mom, too, who yelled at me for not making amends before it happened. All I could say to calm her down was: he didn't want me, mom. He never called. She didn't want to listen because he was her first love. But you didn't see me with my hands out for a used car, or entertainment system or his collection of Green Bay Packers memorabilia. I figured all that stuff was his wife's. Poor lady.

Neither, him or my step-dad left me with a cent or sentiment. And I have nothing to remember either one of them by. Except this problem with trusting men, and a fear of abandonment that fills me with instant rage when someone walks too far ahead of me, the incessant need to be loved to feel self-worth, this co-dependence I try to deny every time I'm alone...

I can't believe you deleted me is what he said, but I'm sure it runs in my blood. I can't believe you looted my mother's house right after she just lost her husband is how I felt. It's funny, the piece-of-shit gene. And its heightened sense of entitlement through extremes of poverty and wealth. It's all very funny.

My Name is Mud: Issue #1 will blow your mind

2010-12-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

One of my poems is in the first print issue of My Name Is Mud is out and available to order here.

It features short fiction & poetry from very talented assortment of people including: Kendra Grant Malone, Daniel Bailey , Adam J Maynard, Maurice Burford, TR Deeks, Brandon Scott Gorell, Prathna Lor, Todd Colby, Paige Taggart, Joseph Goosey, & K. Silem Mohammad

Also available is Green, a book of poems by Adam J Maynard

In his first collection of poetry Green, Adam J Maynard is the Grand Marshall of a beautiful parade, swinging the baton as he takes us through a kaleidoscopic realm that is our cultural memory, our obsessions, our emotional uncertainties, our love. This book is dripping with poems that are as lucid as they are baffling. I couldn't help but follow Maynard through the streets of Green, beating my drum in tune to the band, wondering where I was, excited about where I would go.

- Daniel Bailey, author of East Central Indiana and The Drunk Sonnets

Buy them both today!

LA as home, for now

2010-10-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

.
I haven't posted anything here for a while, so I'm going to ramble a little about ll the things I've been doing lately, as if I were talking to a friend I haven't spoken to since January.

First off, I'm living in Los Angeles, in Los Feliz, with my husband, Ned and cat, Barnabas. We got Barnabas from a shelter on Valentine's Day, without exchanging chocolates or cards. His name came from a pirate book Ned was reading when he was researching Black Beard. A ship was named "the Barnabas," for the barnacles, which would plague the scene--that name stuck, and a few months later a frisky cat, among many lethargic cats in a shelter, chose us...basically, and we've been a family ever since.
Is it a strange coincidence that there's a Great Dane named Barnabas, who lives across the street? At this point, without coincidences, I'd think I was doing something completely wrong. But who knows if this just ties in with my lust for the unusual.
Right now Ned's in Toronto, as a guest lecturer for a school. He left this morning and will be back tomorrow night; just in time for a midnight showing of "It's Kind of A Funny Story" which is based on his third book by the same name. I've already seen the movie three times, at various screenings, but it seems to get better every time I watch it. People are talking about it; the previews are everywhere. Even before a Cyndi Lauper video I youtube'd the other night. People at work are seeing it before films, between shows, on billboards. I hope it does really well.
Speaking of work, I've been at the Oaks Gourmet since March, and it's still pretty interesting. I initially got the job thinking I would only be in LA for two months, but now it's been nine months, and we've officially decided to lay roots here. The place isn't bad; it's independently owned, in a great neighborhood, the work isn't hard, and it keeps me busy. I'm learning about wine, food, coffee, beer, and people from tv and movies come in and out all the time.
So far I've met: Thom Yorke, Robert Redford, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Eva Mendes, Rose McGowan, Thurston Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrel, Kathleen Turner, Michael Cera, Colin Hanks, Justin Long, Danny Huston, Katherine Heigl, Ron Livingston, Ron Perlman, Shirley Manson, Jessica Alba, Alexander Skarsgard, Kate Bosworth, Rufus Sewell, and countless others from tv who I don't recognize. What a way to say hello to LA, nestled in the heart of it; people-watching has never been more interesting, and "the industry" has never felt so small.

Pic 1: Barnabas in ramen box
Pic 2: Barnabas the Great Dane
Pic 3: Ned and the giant pine cone
Pic 4: Donte at the Oaks
.

Being There

2010-04-10T01:44:00.000-07:00

Before the Daily Show ever existed, before comedy-for-the-sake-of-being-subversive-without-penalties, within the safety net of "just kiddings," mixed into mainstream tv, Being There came to the party bringing with it an Autistic Gardener with a television addiction--to serve along side an American President's top Advisor, to become the newest, sexiest pop sensation, since soda.

An idiot garner with a heart of gold and the top people in politics will take him for a genius. Does this ring an ominous foreshadowing somehow, or amplify a political past where people were even more afraid than they are now to question authority? Both. Both seems right. And it's unfortunate.

On the other hand, what was with that walking on water bit? That was just wild. A Jesus reference? An invisible pier? I think Peter Sellers' shoes were carved out of pool noodles. They must've had little propellers in them, too, or perhaps it was just a mirage.

everyone is a creep

2010-04-10T01:03:00.000-07:00

.
a Mexican kitchen worker at my job walked in on me hovering above the toilet peeing today and then just stared, down there, without leaving immediately.

It felt like I was in a terrible nightmare.

He just stared down there. I don't know what he saw, exactly.

I could swear I locked the door. I think he followed me back there.

12:45am'Skaidris
everything

hahahahaha

stared

what do ya say in that situation

12:46amSabra
this chat made my tabs crash

12:46am'Skaidris
im a killah

facebook chat always crasheds mine

12:47amSabra
I said, oh excuse me.

And then he stared, at, it.

12:47am'Skaidris
hahhaa

it

12:47amSabra
He stared at _____.

12:47am'Skaidris
ur wang

12:48amSabra
I feel violated is the thing.

Tell me it's just a place; that he's not masturbating to that for months

12:49am'Skaidris
yeah but everyone is a creep your lucky that doesnt happen more often

hahahaha no

im sure he was just in shock

brb
.

Easter egging

2010-04-05T01:21:00.000-07:00

The shock waves of an earthquake hit LA today, but I didn't feel a thing. This makes my life tonight feel extra dull, somehow. But I guess I still sat through an earthquake, whether I felt it or not.

Ned called to ask if I was okay. I told him the ground had opened up beneath me, the house was covered in dirt, and to mail me a shovel; he laughed. It was his birthday today and also Easter.

We spoke on the phone about fertility and the desire expressed by our mothers for me to get pregnant. I said: You know for nine months I won't be able to smoke or drink and I'll get fat, right? Ned said: Oh, I didn't think about that.

But these are all hypotheticals we're dealing with here, and pressure, wrapped up with everyone's quest to own the perfect living doll. I told him I'm going back to school for a Master's. You won't mind being pregnant in Graduate School?

What am I here, some sort of incubation tank? Within six months he says he plans to knock me up. And no, we're not married, and have only been dating since November 09.

My mom won't let up either. A child will be your companion, and if the marriage doesn't work out, there's always child support.

Thanks mom. Thanks for the lesson in relationship protocol. Your eggs are drying out, she says, and sometimes women experience early menopause...even though you're pretty healthy.

So on Easter Sunday, while kids comb through grass for strategically placed hard-boiled eggs, my mother's giving me a lecture on optimum egg moisture age-ranges. Is this nature? Is this obsession healthy? Selfish? What's everybody's problem? Babies are a big responsibility!

I wonder how of this is conditioning, and how much is nature. There's probably a healthy dose of boredom on top of that, too.

There should be a word coined for these factors contributing to the overall urge to plant seeds of progeny. The word should be something like "gravity" or "love" but not gravity or love. The word should be about bullying and badgering with good intent. A concept, much like death, but the opposite.
.

Easter Sunday

2010-04-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

.
My mother called today, as I thought
about her, in the kitchen making ham
sandwiches, on white with Swiss and
mayonnaise and chips. The phone rang
to a stop. She didn't leave a message.

Later in the day, I thought about
calling my mother back, she called
again; and this used to be strange,
but, slowly, I've gotten used to it.

.
.
.

high-proof percentages

2010-03-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

.
Last night was dramatic. With the idea that I "really needed to get out of my head" I sipped what was left of the ten dollar box wine from 7-11, while watching Synecdoche, NY.

Talk about a mindfuck. By the time I got to bed at three, I felt morbidly alone.

I roused Ned to smack me around a bit and then cried in his arms babbling about my lack of family until I fell asleep...blacked out, who knows.

Yesterday was a pretty overwhelming day to put my system into an overload like that.

Waking up the first thing I saw in my inbox was a notification that Jereme had written something on my facebook wall about being a failure AND a bad friend. He'd posted it twice too, so everyone would be sure to see.

All this because of a borrowed copy of Ohle's Motorman, supposedly, but nothing is ever that simple.

I figured Jereme felt as though I'd been avoiding him for some dumb shit reason, so he publicly attacked me without a phone call disclaimer, warning, anything.

He finally came into the wine shop where I work yesterday to buy a cigar and pick up the book. I'm never borrowing, or lending, anything ever again. I've decided.

After that episode, I was asked to stay three hours longer at work, unexpectedly, which led me into a nine-hour shift. But that was fine. I need the money to get out of debt, and Ned shouldn't have to take care of me like some disturbed feline-infant toy.

(I trimmed his hair and beard in the yard today, tossing his course half-Italian hair all over the place. It was all over his back when I was finished, on my face, on the porch.

What's incredibly charming about grooming a shirtless man standing barefoot in the grass checking his Blackberry, is the way he stands perfectly still when scissors are around his ears and lips. I'll have to remember that when he's being incorrigible.)

So I had to think about the family thing I got bugged out about last night--my absentee, estranged and deceased father, my very Korean mother and our gaps in communication.

Half my blood relatives live in Korea and I'd barely recognize them on the street if I saw them.

The other half, my dad's side of the family, well, to them I've been a taboo subject for years after my father remarried the woman he was seeing while he was still married to my mother. The new lady told him to forget about me through many crying fits of jealousy and rage, so he did, for the sake of love and sanity, I figure.

All of this and I find out he's dead of cancer and cremated before I can make amends. I try not to think about these things...

Movies, if they are very good, have a great way of sending a person's mind through a whirl of emotional distress. Synecdoche did that, with the protagonist's family and love life falling in and out of drama, in a world within a world, within a world.

Mix that with high-proof percent box wine, the stress of a nine-hour work day (resulting in a net gross of about seventy bucks sans taxes), add a touch of derogatory "failure", a nice word to throw at someone in their early adulthood who still doesn't know what the hell to do with herself, and we've got a cocktail of undeniable self-hatred.

And trying to rationalize all that into being a good thing...Maybe ten years ago. But now it seems sillier than ever to romanticize suffering.

Talk about fires under asses. I've been nothing than a sponge for literary and film input lately.

Hopefully, the mix will be useful, eventually, aside from just making an imprint and then fading away into answers for Jeopardy.

I really like this song from the film

***NOTE: As an afterthought, my Aunt Meg got in touch with me today on facebook, my dad's oldest sister. We're not even friends there. She found me and now we're communicating. Good timing on her part. I'll take this as a sign that it's time for old wounds to heal. And to let bygones be bygones...we'll see.

pentagonal trapezohe-huh?

2010-03-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

What's the deal with uber nerds and decahedrons? Ten-sided dice in roll-playing games? I looked up (googled) decahedron and it led me to this. (I admit--I still don't get it.)

Ned's most recently gotten into playing Magic again, after about a ten-year hiatus, with Ken Baumann.

Ken, a drop of golden sunshine, just started his own non profit press called Sator.

The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney--described as a "multi-sensual audiobook" is it's exciting debut release by Christopher Higgs, who I've heard to be from a hearty handful of sources to be one of the coolest Academic geniuses of the world, as is, now.

He's also into art.

Here's his blog Bright Stupid Confetti.

If he's into decahedrons too, I'm going buy my first patent and call it Christopher Higgs. And since we're both happily smitten with our love-lives, and owning humans was abolished by the sixteenth president Mr Five Bills like a million years ago...

the document is all I want.

I'll place it next to my certificate of my adopted star, Melvis, and sell them on ebay as a set when I'm eighty. By then both will be sustained with artificial cores anyway. Attached to one-dimensional screens by projectors and subtitles. This will mostly be for the Japanese.

book review -- White Noise

2010-02-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

"I know how you feel. But the tough part is yet to come. You've said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does a person say good-bye to himself? It's a juicy existential dilemma."

"It certainly is."

We walked past the administration building.
(Excerpt--Chapter 37)
-------------------------------

Pondering a juicy existential dilemma past the admin building? Is that what some subset of Academic intellectuals massage their pool cue to, while pondering despair and meaningless for recreation? I have to admit--I felt dumb with most of my attempts at trying to read and finish White Noise.

Escalating from the first few, seemingly harmless, chapters, it became increasingly difficult to comprehend what was going on in a narrative sense within each well-manicured sentence, within every well-stacked paragraph--perhaps telling an actual "story" was beside the point.

My discombobulation was comparable to how a child might feel staring out a window, watching dense and flaky snow fall, waiting for it to stick during a surprise storm in February, hoping for a snow day; all while denying the intuition that the snow was actually couscous; the child itself being a ghost--trapped, inescapable, in a torrential and toxic pale food hurricane.

By the time I got to chapter 19, the story made just as much sense reading it completely backwards. I began reading chapters 20-24 backwards as well, until I decided against patronizing DeLillo's art, and resumed putting the contents of White Noise in my head, in a more organized and respectable manner.

There were glimpses of the narrator's pillowy wife, a tawdry Mr Gray affair, a no-fear-of-death Dylar pill, novelty lists of collected this & thats, a cute trickle of brand name name-drop time-lining, and a black funnel mass of déjà vu inducing hysteria.

If talent is determined by how complicated it would be to duplicate an artist's style in a piece, then I can see why DeLillo's White Noise is placed on a pedestal as a must-read, 1985 National Book award winning, work of post-modern fiction.

It reeks the kind of complicatedness that could be perceived a modern cousin of Ulysses--as far as tone is concerned, but with much less rhythm, which explains it's inability to be more cohesive in it's overall structure.
.

phone sex

2009-12-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

.
We consummated
with language
last night's
Harlequin details,
(our listening
the risk
of real bodies
meeting
resisted)
shortly after 9
with the lights on.
.

book review -- Sombrero Fallout

2009-12-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite books, Sombrero Fallout alternates two stories into one -- between 1.) a frozen sombrero that mysteriously falls from the sky into a small town causing a commotion and 2.) a writer's obsession with a Japanese ex, whose well-illustrated dreams of her father and familiar places are guided by the bedside purring sounds of her cat in marathon bouts of sleep.

The stories are a mix of realist, absurd and whimsical happenings, which Brautigan's voice executes with a smart, romantic and unpretentious flare. His lines are simple and repetitious. His tone is gentle, thoughtful, and silly. His observations, at times profound in their relatability, are dolloped with notions of extra mayo tuna fish sandwiches, an erotic house key incident, a magnifying glass and a black strand of hair, an earless librarian, lines and lines of ornamental poetry, and Norman Mailer crawling out of a tank covered in the blood of decimated soldiers.

Here is one of my favorite passages: "I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was too complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it.

She wanted her next lover to be a broom."

I laughed out loud close to a dozen times reading Sombrero Fallout. Had five epiphanies about my own life, fell in love twice, and couldn't put it down while cooking an elaborate breakfast with sizzling eggs and real buttered toast, or commuting on a sidewalk by five o'clock traffic. I could say the book is dangerously distracting, but I'm sure I'll risk my life to read it again and again, regardless.

Williamsburg restaurant window

2009-12-08T23:09:00.001-08:00

3 ads in this month's Elle

2009-12-03T17:39:00.000-08:00

A thousand foot tall woman wearing a gold curtain holds a bottle of perfume. The wind blows her blond hair back. Her crotch is hidden by a shadow. Her legs stand in front of windowed towers, offices, apartments, 30-40 stories. Her lips are parted. Her eyes look like wild sex eyes.

Her sunglasses are framed blue and covering half her face with red lenses. Her lips are red. She's looking casually to her left with one arm akimbo, the other bent, holding her own hand. Her dress is tropical. Blue with white flowers. A shadow is covering her crotch. Behind her a tan, shirtless man with perfect pectoral muscles and abs stands with one knee bent. It looks as though he's removing his top. His white pants are rolled at the bottom, above brown feet.

In her black lace underwear and black heels, she straddles a tan man's leg. He is shiny and wearing white briefs. She is also tan and shiny. Perhaps more greasy than just shiny. Her head is on his nipple. The other shiny nipple is exposed. She looks halfway asleep and halfway awake, aroused and drugged. Her oily hand is clawing at his white briefs. He seems a bit agitated. Perhaps she is snoring, or her crotch which his leg is barely covering is crawling with fire ants.

A curious girl

2009-11-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

.
A curious girl walks her terrier Victor pushes a button stop in a pocket an alarm goes off on Thursday the curious girl tries not to cry.

A curious girl walks. Her terrier, Victor pushes a button stop. In a pocket an alarm goes off. On Thursday the curious girl tries not to cry.

A curious girl walks her terrier, Victor, pushes a button stop in a pocket; an alarm goes off on Thursday. The curious girl tries not to cry.

A curious girl walks her terrier. Victor pushes a button. Stop. In a pocket--an alarm goes off. On Thursday, the curious girl tries not to cry.

A curious girl walks, her terrier Victor pushes a button--stop, in a pocket; an alarm goes off. On Thursday, the curious girl--tries not to cry.

drew a rabbit running on 8:35

2009-10-25T17:57:00.001-07:00

book review -- the Sound and the Fury

2009-10-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

Goddern Fuckner

I bought tS&tF in 1999, after it was recommended by my Tennessee Community College English I&II prof--to broaden my horizons (so to speak). This was the same professor who got mad at me and kicked everyone out of class whenever I became narcoleptic during Hamlet. Aside from that, the guy was cool. The kids in his class called him Jerry. He'd taught my Psychologist step-dad poetry too, like two decades before me. Before my step-dad passed from a botched gastric bypass operation.

So, back to tS&tF, admittedly from the onset, getting through the slush pile of dialogue between the children disenchanted me into abandoning the book to my shelf often, where I'd occasionally pluck it back out, sip some dialogue, then lose interest again, to something with an easier narrative to follow.

(This was when I was more about stepping into vicarious experiences as a reader than say, learning and testing tricks as a writer. But even now, a little goes a long way when it comes to gleaning heavy hitters like Faulkner.)

In 2007 I finally made it to the highly stylized dense paragraph watch business. It took me eight years. But once I got there--I was in such awe that I never got past the first paragraph; it stuck me like quicksand! I was mesmerized, begoggled, humbled into mush and terrified. Basically, after that it came to me that tS&tF was simply unreadable. I gave up--realizing that a damn book had kicked my ass!

A person asked me just today in discussing literature, "Did you like the Sound and the Fury when you read it?" Slightly ashamed, I had to say, "No, it's absolutely awful and beautiful. A clusterfuck." I explained how I couldn't get through books that complicated without taking part every technicality that the author had to administer in the rendering of the style in the first place, layer by tedious layer. "The process induces a sense of schizophrenia that whirls me," I said, though his short stories have often been good to me amongst others in the scholastic curriculum.

Faulkner is definitely a grand master of stylish, innovative prose, whose pinches of flavor are distinct and extremely succulent when mimicked or added to any word casserole--and for that he is a big daddy that can't be denied. I hope to try the book again someday when I'm less frustrated with what growing up in Tennessee has done to me and more patient with the world in general.
.

consequences & trajectories

2009-10-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I go against the way nature intends things to fall naturally, my entire life can feel off. If I'm lucky, the off feeling only lasts for a day (or a few hours, some consequences mending accordingly from a diverged mess.) There seems to be less wasted time following the straight path. Short-cuts lead to missed details. It's hard to trust trajectories when surrounded by others following paths more conventional. Do they get the same tugs and shoves on their backs too? Are they alive enough to recognize the signs?

I youtube'd and listened to Ginsberg read aloud America today from Howl. Twice. The first was a studio reading that sounded clean. The second was a live reading with an audience. The audience laughed so much in places that didn't seem funny to me, I thought about canned laughter in cheesy sitcoms.

People who laugh when they are uncomfortable makes me uncomfortable. (It's as if they are acutely too aware of their own hand placement, therefore they must laugh to proliferate laughter in a crowd to drown their own thoughts from being obsessive.) People are mostly terrified against the birth of their own unique opinions. I don't think it's their fault. But I don't think they mind either. Naturally humanity has a tendency to herd together for a feeling of safety, as they say, in numbers.

To be so independent from humanity, to risk alienation, humiliation, excruciating loneliness, is a key that leads to a plane of unique discovery. The sort of discovery, which might be so unrelatable that it is basically invisible, like cracks in sidewalks, or cracks in sanity, if in the facade consists of a healthy dose of complacency.

dream about powerlessness

2009-10-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

.
Last night I had the most violent dream to date.

A naked demon with the armor of burned and slick red flesh was chasing a man who was putting up what seemed to be a good fight. Until the man was stuffed through a wall in an upstairs hallway using a heft of velocity from the demon's telekinetic architecture. The man, impaled back first through the white wall, head, feet and arms cramped on one side, his lower back and ass out through the other side, was snugly lodged. From my astral view as an invisible bystander, powerless from both fear and the lack of a physical presence, I stood where I could see from the side by the doorway like the scene was vivisected. I saw the contents of the wall, its wires, spongy insulation, the wooden boards--these material devices did not obscure the man's midsection, about to be broken into several pieces. (Everything I didn't want to happen was going to happen, so I could see what was coming even with my eyes closed, through my hands over my closed eyes turned away.) The scalded red demon began beating the man from behind with a large hard ceramic lamp, shade and all. Thwack, thwack, thwack, repeatedly. When the lamp broke into a large shard, the demon beat the man harder and harder with his sharp weapon as the man screamed and screamed and screamed, as blood gushed from his pulp of a back gored and ground; his backbone was broken everywhere with ceramic all over his guts from behind.

It was a hard time waking up today and getting going.
.

how tolerance works

2009-10-07T01:35:00.000-07:00

See it's like when you go to the beach
when summer first starts and you see the water and the water looks so blue and beautiful after all the sand, after you lay your towel down and walk to where the water meets the damp part of the sand and stand there with your feet scrunching; then you see a big wave and see the water coming and know it's about to cover your feet and splash your ankles; and it's freezing, so you inch your way in an inch of a body part of at a time, thinking: yes, oh jeezus, yes, that's cold; the entire time looking back to the beach where you started, where you see your towel sitting, and you finally put your head under, holding your breath again, since who knows when the last time was, or maybe when you didn't want to breathe in the exhaust from the bus beside you, because it looked so thick and you were afraid of getting cancer, even though you smoke occasionally when you're drunk, but you hold your breath and listen to the loud nothing of the ocean's fucking eternity, dark and pulling you wherever it wants you to go, and the first time you do something again after you haven't done it in a while is kind of scary, but you know you have to breathe to live, and that's the least you have to do aside from eating or joining the NRA, so you come up to breathe and hear the ocean from outside, you take the water from your eyes, slick back your hair, lick your lips for salt, lift your legs and just sort of float there until a wave comes, and then you either get pounded on a little and your hair gets messed up again, and there's more water to wipe from your eyes, or you jump when it comes, and then you look around and everybody else sort of jumps around the same time as you, and maybe that's where the wave came from at sports games, but well, of course that's where it came from, but just the water part, even without the people all jumping around the time that I jump, all the way to the point where they're at the shore just getting wet, when the water feels much colder than it does on me after it got my hair, and then I think: now what, I can just kind of jump around and float some out here and tread water, but now the water will never be cold again until I dry off, and maybe eat a sandwich and come back in, but probably only once more, since I don't want my butt to be too wet, when I'm trying to get home.
.

we get along

2009-10-06T23:25:00.000-07:00

.
I spoke to Zeke
tonight on the telephone.

We do this every month,
have a three hour talk and
over books and movies and life
then we exchange I love yous
and hang up.

We maintain
our relationship on
facebook with comments on
notes and pictures and
reading each others' status
updates.

I have never met
Zeke, nor do I want to,
my best friend for at
least four years now.

He translates
writing; he loves
Vollmann, Updike; he
loves to talk about power,
getting women as a writer,
he talks about Zizek.

He'll probably have three
PhDs by the time he's fifty,
my Scholastic Fantastic.

I told him I met you. How
we've become acquainted
how I'm excited about it.

He said: He just wants your
pussy. I said: Who doesn't.
He said: You're right,
I'm sure he's nice.
I said: Thank you.

And then we talked
about Polanski.
.

we high-fived and I walked away

2009-09-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

I often wonder what's wrong w/everyone;
knowing they probably think
the same thing about me.
A man was playing a game
on his iPhone at the bar.
When I caught him staring at my ass,
I asked him How are you?
Caught he said, I've been trying
to get past this level on my game
for three hours and it's driving me crazy.
I extended my hand for his phone
which he surrendered to me grinning.
Within a minute I solved his puzzle
and handed the phone back to him.
Going nuts. He said You're a genius!
You're a rocket scientist!
What do you do with that brain?
You must do great things!
I said Nothing really.
I'm not a scientist because I don't care
about space or bombs.
I said I do like to make things.
I like to invent. I like to write.
I believe you he said,
then we high-fived and I walked away.
I told my ex co-worker Hannah about this
when I sat back down with her Jamesons
and my Maker's in rocks glasses.
I bet you got him to buy our drinks she said.
No Hannah, nothing is free I said.
I think you're some kind of savant.
I'm an idiot.
She said since I haven't seen you in a month,
I forgot what an alien you are.
Would you like to sit
on my upright pez dispenser? I said,
pulling a pez dispenser from my purse,
placing it on the table with our drinks.
I love you said Hannah.
You and all your nasty candies.

me & Travis talk about a dream

2009-09-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

me: Tell me...

Travis: If we had just smoked a joint, I'd be back in undergrad.

Coffee and pot was awesome.

And then it all went away...

7:20 PM le sigh

But I'll tell you.

Go. me: Do you ever have recurring dreams where the settings are childhood living spots--rooms or yards you spent a massive amount of time scouring?

Travis: I have.

I actually had a really weird dream.

Set in this gigantic temple.

And I drew it for my father.

And it turned out it was the exact floor-plan of my uncle's house.

Which sort of made sense.

me: Yes.

7:21 PM That's great!

Travis: What place recurs in your dreams?

Let me guess: Under the bleachers.

me: That and...

7:22 PM Travis: Or: the dumpster behind the Subway.

me: and that too and...

7:23 PM this house my mom got for us, our first house after the divorce and exodus from California; it was on a cove in an area by projects where I used to play kickball after school after watching the Cosby show.

7:24 PM It had a fenced in back yard, grass in the front. It keeps coming back, the laundry room by the back door leading out to the other door where we kept the push lawn mower

and the corner where she used to make me raise my arms for an hour if I came in after dark if she had a bad day and felt like taking it out on me...

7:25 PM we had this pendulum clock

from Korea. In the dream I heard a tick, tick, tick, tick

I followed the sound to the wall and the clock was warped, nailed all asymmetrically

Travis: You are what Joseph Campbell would call a Deep Dreamer.

7:26 PM With the right drugs, you could be a shaman.

Although they don't have much in the way of retirement.

I've been having these crazy system dreams lately.

I'm making a system, but I don't quite understand the components of it.

7:27 PM me: So, I stopped the pendulum and then realized my mother wouldn't be able to tell time. But it kept ticking after it stopped and the time stopped and it kept ticking and everything froze and I realized I was dreaming, woke up and the tick, tick, tick was the ceiling fan above me on Kamby's couch

Travis: Oh--weird.me: Yeaaah. I know.

Travis: When the outside gets into the inside.

me: My subconscious is screwed.

Travis: Maybe you're cool without the drugs.

me: Maybe it's too late.

7:28 PM Am I a weirdo?

Travis: As weird as they come.

me: But you adore me?

Travis: You and Gonzo = birds of a feather.

Even more than I adore Gonzo.

me: Godzilla

7:29 PM You're a great listener.

I can tell you've missed me.

Travis: It's been too long.

of Blooms's admiration for water

2009-08-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

I got the bottom quote from Jimmy Chen's HTMLGIANT post re: James Joyce, from Ulysses-- an art piece that's influenced my life heavily.

A few years ago, when I was an unhappy girl living out the tail end of my second decade in Tennessee, I kept a handwritten journal, which eventually turned into a stack of speckled composition books. I've transcribed some entries on another blog: Life's Mischievy Unraveled.

The most interesting thing to me about these journals is the evolution of my writing style, influenced by various college courses, experiences and books I was reading at the time.

At one point I was compelled to pick up Ulysses after a short story called the Dead made me take notice of Joyce's complicated, yet moving prose. The story floored me; it changed me; I bought a hardcover of Ulysses and slowly tried to sink through it latching onto morsels of narrative here and there and mind bursts of images. I took the book with me everywhere, read a paragraph at a time, absorbing, digesting. I was making love to Ulysses, whereas other books I would fuck right through in an hour or two.

In a slow progression, my journal entries became extremely esoteric. I was writing myspace blogs for a while, which attracted about a hundred followers and they started to express confusion as to what the hell I was talking about. A few people in real life even looked at me funny when I spoke, as if I was spouting what sounded like nonsense gibberish. Talk about pretentious.

A few excuses I used to continue my strange new behavior was:

1. Some people actually understood me. Of course I decided these people were geniuses and pitied everyone else as ignorant.

2. I claimed any writing worth teaching in the world of higher education had a strong thresh hold of interpretive leeway. And here I thought everything I was writing was the new Prufrock. My poor ego back then; before I learned the grace of humility.

After a while, something in me decided to try to lean more toward being coherent--to appeal to a larger demographic, since I thought I had important things to say, revolutionary things, which would go to waste going over heads and splatting and drooling down walls. (I know, I know...)

This is when I decided to put Joyce away and take him out only occasionally for small doses. I began alternating between different styles of literature so not to mimic any one to obviously. This was my attempt at pacing the impressionable sponge living in my ever starving mind.

I suppose this was four or five years ago. Since then, the most fun I have when writing's with the great phenomenon of flash fiction--where ironically enough, condensed esoteric prose actually works best.

Once in a while I still crack Joyce, and I admit, the romance is as strong as it ever was.

Below, is a great example of what I'm talking about. A gliding complexity perfected from the chapter Ithaca.

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.

Joyce. You will never cease to amaze me and the rest of the world as a master. Whatever made you, to me, defines miracle.
.

the casket rolled inside

2009-08-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

A cardiologist died and was given an elaborate funeral.

A huge heart covered in flowers stood behind the casket
during the service. Following the eulogy, the heart opened,
and the casket rolled inside. The heart then closed, sealing
the doctor in the beautiful heart forever.

At that point, one of the mourners burst into laughter.
When all eyes stared at him, he said, “I’m sorry,
I was just thinking of my own funeral…I’m a gynecologist.”
That’s when the proctologist fainted.

.

District 9 review

2009-08-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

With an immense demographic variety responding with positive regard to the now critically acclaimed District 9, I'm surprised, and bewildered, that I thought it was just okay. Though, it was a bit lengthy, the documentary style filming technique with unknown actors (and Peter Jackson's name) worked well. Then there's a lot of talk of whether or not there will be a second movie, with people sounding very intelligent lately, saying things like,

"I like District 9 for being an original sci-fi movie with social commentary on post-colonial theory--regarding appropriation of cultural commodities, authoritative hegemony, technological and semantic disconnect, colonial points of impact, etc; but if the plan is to release a second film, I will quickly take back my positive regard for the film because I'll know then that the film makers are just trying to make money off people with the lack of closure they provided from an open ended conclusion and very ambiguous sense of what happens to all the nasty characters which we grew to adore..."

I've got a question: Who would really gives a damn about a second movie? So the bug people led by a smart bug named Christopher get rescued and chibber-chabber on another planet with a butt load of hoarded cat food and that jerk main character changes into the jerk main character again; then what? The Nigerians who curiously act like feral cannibals eat everybody to get their powers and slice cow heads like butchers in Mad Max and the science research people who love killing things for the sake of figuring things out start a revolutionary square dance contest...

District 9, to me, was way over hyped over kitschy sci-fi bug drama. It reminded me of the movie The Fly with Jeff Goldblum, mixed with a dash of Men in Black and ET, even though the floating ship in the poster just sits there--out of gas, or something.

I admit my favorite part had to be the miniature alien bug baby computer prodigy. Thank goodness for that guy. Without him, the overall cuteness of the film would've relied mostly on a squishy semi-mutated monster hand and back door alien porn in headlines alone. Though, the high tech robot suit with rocket launchers and space lasers was great too; bringing with it the very necessary component of combusting violent military people like human pinatas. And what's a good time without pinatas? Sheeeit.

a two minute play written on the back of a receipt

2009-08-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

Setting: In a bar; it's raining out; Maggie & Dean are stranded watching a movie sequel on TV. The one where Sandra Bullock is a cop pretending to be a beauty pageant contestant.

Maggie: Will this rain ever end? It's been like this for hours.

Dean: This is why the world invented magazines.

Maggie: Um, what the hell are you talking about, Dean? I thought you hated magazines.

Dean: I do hate magazines, Maggie. That's not the point.

Maggie: *sighs (her hand is cupped under her chin, thoughtfully) I used to love magazines when I was a child.

Dean: Where did the love go?

Maggie: Where does anything go? Where does the rain go when it's over? It evaporates, and this is a reality. It runs its course, it gets everyone wet. And when the day's over we're all masturbating in the dark--just to get a good night's sleep!

Dean: The sad thing is, I can't disagree with you, Maggie. You're so right sometimes; it's ridiculous.

Maggie: Yeah, I know; it's a curse. Just like this shitty weather.

.

i adore your schizophrenic expression

2009-08-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

.
this is a compilation of a week's worth of my favorite text messages:

Hard making list. Happy as clam.
Kisses on your clam.

Shoulder squeezes and neck kisses from behind.
Sexy monster style.

I fixed a career, a marriage, a computer
and a motorcycle today.

Yeah, no kidding. I don’t even know you when you have a new boy. So what you’re saying is that you dumped the artiste after he painted you in the sunshine?

Susanna will LOVE you. We’ve got dinner and red wine plans with her Friday night. Exciting!

What’s your shoe size?

Zombie lovings! Thriller-ing!

Ahh the will to live returneth! Coffee,
my mistress, wraps me in her arms.

Hoarde me like a dragon.
Delicious with fire-licked lips.

Get me something to have at the office?
Nothing Elvis!!

Tuck hardbender, pretender of the dong.

Man. Feeling mighty nice.

It has everything to do with ninja Jedi. It’s the same thing but makes you puke because it’s so sweet and cute. Causes cataracts if not viewed with proper eye wear.

Have u both turned into coconut scented puppies?
With ultra violet eyes and poop fruit candy?

Has the awesomeness of your new relationship caused a vortex that has pulled you both into another dimension yet?

The love I have for you was always something I dreamed of when I was a kid. Have a safe and beautiful trip this summer. Talk to you soon.

Work over.
Scooter flying on carebearjoy clouds.

Tiny finch playing in leaves.
Right hand worn out from clicking.
Heal me, lover.

Yoga yoga go go go!
Just closed bank account. Lost faith.

I know a painter man who's going to pee
a little when he lurks those photos.
.

they made us make air punching motions

2009-07-29T00:01:00.001-07:00

.
I was in a car the other day with three friends and with the way they were jiving bubbly we-did-whats about Saturday, I punched the NOTES key on my iPhone and began butterfly netting and tip-tapping everything. These word salads are the result:

You know how they do that thing
where they touch your back in that very uncomfortable place
& then there's a big hole? I was on my bike for ten hours & now my back & butt muscles have been compromised. Less muscle tenderness is what I want. And spandex padding to reduce the pain from chafing. I can't even push through. The people who go to the gym are very normal or our age or clean cut or younger. I met them at a scavenger hunt. One was at the end of pier 45. A cover band invited me to their acoustic gig at Arlene's Grocery. It was like Bon Jovi karaoke. It was a relay race. A pole dancing mini class. Sometimes they made us make air punching motions. They had strip bowling to get us down to our socks & shoes. Bullriding. Pogo sticks. Everyone stayed around for the afterparty. The winners got second place last year. They won
roundtrip tickets on Southwest to whereever.

&: Did you hear about the python that ate the alligator?
The alligator busted out of the python's stomach while it was asleep & it died. Pythons are taking over the Everglades. The largest spiderweb subsided cannibalism for a little while after a big rain. There was a feeding frenzy. Spiders were feeding & spinning. There were dead mosquitoes everywhere. They were sharing & combining webs from an abundance of food. When I was a child, you know how they have those mints in bowls when you're leaving restaurants, I reached for a mint & began chewing it until I realized it was a piece of chalk;
it was the worst thing I've ever tasted in my life.

book review - A Jello Horse

2009-07-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

.
I won a copy of Matthew Simmons' book A Jello Horse in a contest http://themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/winners.html

He asked contestants to submit photos of, or write about, people playing pinball. Since I love pinball, and have for a while, I had a few pictures and videos nestled conveniently in my archive and decided to submit them and participate for the fun of it. I also love books and getting books in the mail, and trading art for art, so in my mind, contests like these should exist all the time.

I first heard of Matthew Simmons as the "Man Who Couldn't Blog" in August '05 through a lovely guy in Houston named Gene Morgan. I'd most recently discovered the joys of blogging on myspace when a good friend of mine in Tennessee named Eric Todd, who'd had a few poetry classes with Gene at U of H, introduced me to his blog "pompadoured."

After I got in touch with Gene, we corresponded for a while before I stayed with him as a guest in Houston for a summer week where he was a gracious host--taking me to parties and art and food. This is when I was introduced to other blogs like Tao Lin's "Reader of Depressing Books" and Christopher Monks' "Utter Wonder."

Since all of that business of making friends through networking and moving from city-to-city, I've kept tabs on Gene's projects such as "Bear Parade." This is where I found the one-and-only Youngstown genius Noah Cicero and his blog "the Outsider" from an Omega Man-like zombie story posted there. Read Treatise; it'll let you think, and spark respect for Noah Cicero.

I'm still discovering others as well, through various links and honorable mentions--like the insanely creative and proseful Blake Butler, whose "Win a Copy of Ever with Your Nasty Mind" contest I won effortlessly (being the dirtiest mindedest perv ten worlds over) and the great, fun and crazy-in-an-ALMOST-bad-seeming-way-but-not-really-Sam Pink. Both are brilliant individuals.

Stemming from the pioneering voices mentioned above--I've been fortunate to find friends to admire and find interesting. They appeal to my sense of artistic/intelligent style and not-too-serious whimsy. And above all, the ones I've met, or haven't met, seem like they are good people; fundamentally speaking--even though--they are--after all and everything...writers. ;)

Now, without further delay, here is my review of A Jello Horse:

Matthew Simmons’ delicate prose in his book “A Jello Horse” is a wondrous read on a quiet night within an hour of lying around relaxing. After reading each pretty paragraph, going back and reading it again out loud is recommended to add to the magic of listening to the unraveling of a heart-touching story of a man dealing with a traumatic suicidal event affecting himself and his closest friends. On the road, we observe his recollections of past love’s failures. We are also exposed to his vivid perceptions of the world through the mind of a child who has grown; who continues to grow through death, disease, and empathic observation. His search for absurd beauty between nights in cheap hotels and pinball, takes us through stretches of dreamlike images from an imagination filled with fierce but friendly creatures: the famished antelope grazing city rooftops, slack-eared Jackalope in a Village discovered by roadside billboard, and a flying lion named Richard--all melting into the stark contrast of circumstances in the human condition. “A Jello Horse” is an inspiring coming-of-age tale which is well-worth reading repeatedly.

Matthew drew a surprise rabbit for me. I found it when I reached the part of the story about the Jackalope Village. Also included in the book is a haiku about breakfast. And this is all because I love pinball and reading and hand-drawn rabbits and winning things. Yes! for that.

we went to the beach

2009-07-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

insomnia

2009-07-09T22:19:00.000-07:00

.
One of the worst
sounds in my life
is the rush of sleep
coming for me; it's
screaming paralysis
flickering and hissing,
I jerk my head.

there were demons
before the Church
saved my Savior in a
Sunday dress; in some
handsome weeks I
closed my eyes to drift
away, lucid landscapes
faceless friends stepping
silent paths, incredible
trees, floods low enough
to wade through.

walking before waking,
a hand through a wall
behind a switch for light,
my sinking feet, jump
back paralyzed with a
shadow on my chest,
faceless, holding my
breath to shift an inch,
to replace that hiss
with the sound of a heavy
heart sprinting, sitting
suddenly upright shaking,
staring hard into my hands.

One of the worst
sounds in my life
is the rush of sleep
coming for me
between silent
winds in clouds with
arms outstretched
and the silence of
a dark place to rest
before the sun says
it's tomorrow.
.

socializing with guests

2009-07-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

.
One wicked season
in one night of my personality:
the lover and the love-maker meet,
recognizing and asking after a hard
week's work socializing with guests, and
demons--to lay there beside you
to absorb subtle nutrients from you
in sips and sighs between light sleeping;
then waking before sunrise to leave--
to really get some sleep on Sunday.
And he knows you are capable and bright;
that's why he leaves smiling and needs
you, the most when he feels like dying,
and he says he's been shattered
and ripped to a mess
tortured to a shell, tail tucked
in gutless guilt lined suits,
just once and she kept it broke
and she wouldn't swallow
and there will not be coffee;
with anyone who is not so useful.
It's the opposite of being worthless
according to the extremes of being,
and the way they we fall
I tell myself this all the time.

.

These birds are us...

2009-07-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

except we are flesh colored without feathers, probably have much more interesting personalities, and we wouldn't hunker so close on a stick like that staring into a void.

book review - Old Man and the Sea

2009-07-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

I finally read Old Man and the Sea, for the first time, taking it seriously, after years of ignoring the book and the author, as some boring mainstream pop culture hoopla.

My instincts said: Hemingway's stories were over-admired and misogynistic, about baseball and war with no real pizazz or pragmatism for escape; that my life would be better off without them.

Boy, was I wrong.

Old Man and the Sea is not about an old fisherman trying to catch fish, even though it really is just that too.

Explaining the beauty of its decadent meter is like trying to explain how the multicolored facets give luster and depth to a fine diamond, or why the robustness of an aged Port with its subtleties of smoke and asparagus fall so well on the glass and tongue. As an adult there's a beauty in simplicity that makes more sense than when we are younger and more impulsive.

Old Man and the Sea is a lesson in the appreciation of rhythm, like in the sounds of cicada approaching and withdrawing intensely while standing in grass near a tall tree'd landscape--in the flawless white powder covered back yard feeling smooth and blinding on the eyes in the morning crawl of a lazy day; in the whisper of an intuitive lover before climax, framing the moment into rapturous memories oft remembered before some nights of rest.

In other words: as experience refines the palate--maturity and elegant simplicity are Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.

Here, a few lines that wrecked me into reverently triple reading them:

"The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden box with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were bought alongside."

Those very lines had me optimistic in imagining reading them to my future children before bed; they gave me hope for raising progeny in what has felt like a falling apart feeling world; with its poetry in a story about a man and his quest to catch the perfect marlin making the world seem lighter; less intense.

#2 transcribed from scraps

2009-06-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

.
I told the Athropologie phone operator to cancel a green shirt I ordered after deciding it probably wasn't meant to be. I said there was a good chance it would've offended somebody and they might've put a curse on me giving me weird ticks for life or something. That it might've given someone a seizure, or enraged someone's gentle pit bull in an outfit taking a shit on the sidewalk causing it to birth a hemorrhoid.
*
She laughed; the phone operator said: that's the first time I've ever heard anything like that. She had depth in her laugh.
*
Then there was the citicards guy from South Africa sounded like a British robot, even though his facebook picture shows some skinny black kid in t-shirts. I still can't believe he added me. We talked about mongeese being the equivalent of squirrels in the U.S. Is that how it's pronounced? Mongeese.

Last night at a hotel bar we lied and told the waitress wearing a very slinky dress that it was my birthday.

If someone asked me what my opinions were about drugs and people who used them, I would say my opinion's based on what the drugs were, how much I like or disliked the person using them, and how functional or dysfunctional their lives and the lives around them were subsequently affected.
*
I realize some people are immediately turned off by the idea of drugs, i.e., in terms of youthful experimentation, perception expansion, recreation, escape, self-medication, etc.--because of fear; but to me, regardless of the people's lives that drugs have destroyed, fear is one of the greatest weapons against progress.
*
I sound like an infomercial for cocaine & LSD. Shipping & Handling Not Included. Don't try drugs if you have an addictive personality and hate your life. Or if you're bored and have more money than you know what to do with. Okay, nevermind...drugs are bad.

#1 transcribed from scraps

2009-06-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

.
All of the combined elements in personalities of being extracted to make one source of nourishment minus excess in the same way we build our personalities from specks of essences of people we collect: monogamy, independence, compromise, compliance, boredom, temperance, awareness, honesty, conditioning, romance, intimacy, gluttony.

Missing someone before they're gone is much worse than missing someone once they're actually gone because you know you really like them enough to try to brace yourself for the missing once it comes. Gravity has a way of fucking with people who don't practice habits of suspecting.

She could give a man a look that made him want to kill himself and everyone he'd ever loved. Once a man called her a petulant teenager at a bar while she was sitting deliberately alone having a whiskey to get sleepy. She stared him straight, dead-on in his pupils and didn't say a single word. The man felt his dick shatter; on his way to the end of the bar he tripped on the floor shards; he walked to retrieve his tab and coat and left immediately.
*
(The time-release effect on being called "petulant" a great hindsight response versus what Hannah said she did in asking what he meant by the remark thus encouraging the small talk to continue. Though: it's good to see someone utilizing their word-of-the-day calendar, would have worked too. But then they would have ended up the the bathroom going down on one another.)

Please don't lick my teeth anymore; that's what toothbrushes are for, and that's only in the morning.

I had to take Lariss's gift of Sweet Mint gum out of my purse today. The strong smell of spearmint kept whooshing me back to the time I was less than ten, my mom's sidekick in Korea; when she used to take me to commissaries, and rec centers, when I crawled around military bases. I hate going back there. I don't want to go back to times when I was fascinated with the variety of delicious treats in vending machines. Calls on payphones were ten cents. My mom smoked Kent 100's, long, white cigarettes, 60 cents a pack way back when I could eat a whole small pepperoni pizza by myself. I continue to have recurring dreams with vending machines in them. And floods, but I don't know why I have those dreams.

It took three years for him to fall in love with me permanently. Three years of trying not to care.

I do not want to say hello to the cross guard on N 4th because I know she will think we have formed some sort of relationship. One day she misinformed who knows how many people into riding taxis or buses to work,when the train was running fine because her mother didn't love her enough. But, I still feel guilty ignoring her.

Dear David, (part ii)

2009-06-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

.
DB: Sorry, kitten--Okla called and we were figuring out some printing specs for this stupid book we said we'd design for someone, and then there was some financial talk, discussions of possible perjury, etc.

I knew that already. It's okay. There are three billtion trillion important things hovering in your mind right now, I'm sure. Listening to me talk about prostitutes will be more fun when we're fifty anyway.

billtion = the new: Creedence.

DB: When I brought up the butt-sniffing, our art consultant was like, "What else do dogs do?" I was like, when's a jackal and a whale gonna be hanging out? Shamu would surely be offended.

I think New York's making me feel crazy. I lived on the LES, explored most parts of Brooklyn, cat sat while earning a salary on the Upper East Side, a fling with a banker in Chelsea looking after an autistic man, yoga every Monday in the East Village, love affairs with artists, writers, a guru of unconditional joy; these parties, those parties, avoiding awkward gazes with books, walking, walking, walking, poetry readings, concerts in the park, museums, street food, fine dining, taxis--looking under all these rocks, this place is getting smaller by the minute, and the more reclusive I get for the sake of spring cleaning in quarantine, the more I realize I could do a lot of my favorite activities in any small place, as long as there's a healthy internet connection and enough love to keep my heart from drying up and dying.

It's definitely sniffing that whale's butt. I can make art for you.

DB: The suburbs are the new Williamsburg. A house like three doors down from me just got converted into a warehouse.

A key thing to understand for surviving in New York is one word: proxemics--meaning personal space. This is what decides tourists from the locals--the way one swings one's arms in relation to someone's salad outside a diner on a narrow sidewalk, compacting your breath so not to brush a whisp of the person's hair two inches in front of you on the train for the 8:30 rush.

It's about something else too, but this can apply to a lot of other places and situations, but I think I've found the meaning of life in flourishing as self-aware individual making conscious decisions regarding consequences in time-management; it's about pacing.

I feel like I have a lot on my mind.

I might be like three years late in coming here.

DB: You sort of just blew my mind--I'll get you next time.

The consequences of time absolutely rule my life. And mostly I've come to live in fear of these consequences, and the ensuing depression makes pacing more difficult to manage, which reinforces said fear and said depression until it's now time to make some sort of radical career shift. I can't say enough how sincere and urgent this change is. And yet I have no idea how to begin.

I don't even remember bringing up law school, but it's a fact, jack: I *am* a Raymond Carver protagonist. With a few secondary characters from Denis Johnson thrown in--Johnson's characters are so much more honest about their anxiety and desperation, which we appreciate.

I heard wind turbine maintenance guys make six figures easy, though, so there might be a way out yet. Or if someone buys my film script--those guys go for 35K just to option.

Dear David,

2009-06-29T00:13:00.000-07:00

.
Oh shit, DB. I feel like I'm dying every minute behind my desk job not doing jack and making more money not doing jack than most high school teachers or cops make in my hometown praying for lunchtime to come around as a mile marker for a two mile crawl.

You know...law school won't make it right for you. I fear it'll make things worse, actually. You're going to have to cram SO MUCH JUNK in your head to max capacity and purge that junk--with no room to exercise your creative muscles, and once you make those A's, which I know you'll relentlessly score, your integrity might get slaughtered for the sake of some cheesy dime, and then what will you do? By then your heart will have the mange, and you'll try to find peace in being some little league coach and Maggie and Joe will come over for dinner every Friday night and hopefully I won't be too long distance away when you're in your hand-made bomb shelter sipping bourbon, so you can call and say: what happened? I'm old now and my knees hurt. And I'll say: Bring your knees to me and I'll kick your knees, you ass.

ps. I mean that with much love, DB. The most even

pps. I'm not trying to make it worse, I just want you to think about what would make you happy--let's say utilitarianism is a dirty whore we found blowing P-Diddy at Piggly Wiggly. I want you to be happy, and I know you were raised too conservative to let yourself become full blown bohemian, though you've got a romantic bohemian heart aching to sing songs under a cherub perched tree & all that, and there's nothing wrong with being an adult and being responsible--you know, I think, speaking of pacing, you're just tired from taking on too much this last semester; it'll get better. You're a baddass professor, I'm sure of it. I mean, you've been teaching me and you've barely even tried.

ppps. YOU'RE GOING TO TURN INTO A RAYMOND CARVER PROTAGONIST, DAVID BOWEN. IS THAT OKAY?

pppps. You haven't been pacing yourself properly and you're burning yourself out, maybe.

ppppps. I think law school's going to be another bumrushfeast. Are you trying to age prematurely? Is that your masochism? Seriously...
.

olfactory mnemonics

2009-06-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

.
A surge of the scent of mop water filled my nose and head,
with the days I served my time as an indentured servant
with Stockholm Syndrome, for my family's petroleum business.
"What's that disgusting smell?" said Mel, really not
knowing where to begin in only recognizing it as gross.
But I knew. I knew if you didn't wash a mop
and squeeze it dry after scrubbing a dirty floor with it,
it would smell sour the next day, and that that very smell
was the smeared stain of laziness and neglect
for the sake of who-knows-what of doing a half-assed
cleaning job to any building's floor.

babe, switch & bull

2009-06-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Chinatown NY from Sabra Embury on Vimeo.

40 seconds on youtube

2009-06-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

My morbid curiosity, while surfing a networking site, made me watch a 26 year-old woman die in front of a camera after being shot by militia during an Iranian protest.

Watching blood spill from her eyes and mouth, sprawled in shock on the ground, people nearby in grief and panic, I was instantly traumatized; the moment felt like déjà vu in my compliant familiarity of it all; and in that: it made too much sense to disregard it as another casual incident of war in the media, of people blowing people up with suicide bombs, AIDS in Africa.

And for weeks people in New York were sick and scared to death of dying from a sneeze or cough on the subway, breathing into their sleeves, wearing masks, terrified by a swine flu from Mexico.

My thoughts attempting to grapple and digest the incident said: She must've suffered a severe internal injury, she's hemorrhaging through the orifices in her face; and I can't recall where I learned about that particular side-effect of being shot in the chest, since I studied mostly Art in school, but certainly and without a doubt, this was real. Anyone with even half a brain could see that.

This was on youtube, someone filmed this; it wasn't Apocalypse Now; it wasn't some R rated street fight whateversploitation kickboxing flick; and it certainly wasn't ER, or a forensics show with an indignant-gun-happy-tough-guy-cop named Mancinni.

A very disgusting fact about my life is: I watched a beautiful young woman die on a day that I was mad at the weather for not being bright and warm enough to enjoy. On a day I casually discussed boredom as a noxious disease, over a miso soup and fried dumpling dinner, while complaining that my donation-based yoga class was too "extra sweaty" as a reasonable fitness strategy.

What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is this obnoxious product of idle human waste I've become? It's terrible. And now I can't shake this weight-laced guilt of taking up too much space in society as a worthless, unproductive American.

To think: that tragic scene of real blood and death was displayed on the same medium where I watched David visit the dentist only a few days before. Where in a 7-minute horror film spoof, a few friends and I get shot down and slashed to death by machetes on rural soil by the hands of vicious redneck marauders.

Imagine all the incidents left unrecorded. Undocumented history. Unknown incidents that slide by undetected. This girl had blood pouring from her face. Everyone was screaming. She was at a rally. For Freedom. All recorded on a cellphone camera.

Had Neda ever even heard of youtube? I'm hoping that question's not completely ignorant. But then again, what if she had?

Either way, her dramatic "faces of death" scene has burned a vision of tragedy into the eyes and souls of the world's attention, and in the untimely death of a beautiful, young Iranian protester, a new media martyr is born to stir a drowsy, distracted mass--awake.
.

darling, we were a mess

2009-04-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

.
Today I called an eight year
friend from what I knew would
show as an unknown number.

hello? he said

Do you remember when
I was an alcoholic?

half a pause and
---yes, darling,
I remember.

I owe you a hamburger,
or a veggie burger,
or whatever.

You do?

From when you were
n Austin last summer.

Austin?----Oh yes,
you do don't you.

Come to New York and get it.

Well, I am in desperate
need of a vacation, so I just
might take you up on that.

Are you in Houston
right now, teaching
students how to
take tests better?

Yes, actually, that's exactly
what I'm doing, and I really
should get back to it.

And I'm not always here,
I'm just here right now.

I'm at work too, you
know. See why I rarely call
you? If I think hard enough
about what you're doing,
I usually just know.

It's rare that I'm here
doing this, even though
I am doing it all day today.

Hey, I said: Hey.
Who would've thought
all those bullshit experiences
in the past could be harnessed
and become so useful
for us as adults?

Yes, we were a mess
in Jackson, weren't we.

Come to New York
and I'll buy you a burger,
with fries. It's getting pretty
here, the cold air's dissipating
and the Forsythia's sprouting
yellow bursts everywhere
like peeled bananas.

You know, I'll definitely
think about it: he said.

Go teach. Go
teach those kids
how to take tests.

Okay. I will. And hey, you
know you can call me later
tonight if you want to.

Yeah, maybe,
I don't know.
I probably won't
call you tonight.
But have a nice day
at work, and try to
come to see me before
summer gets
too hot,

and I love you a lot
my darling. It was nice
to hear your voice

.

the NY breakfast barrier commute

2009-03-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

.
I work in the Journalism Department at Columbia University, which is about an hour commute from my Brooklyn apartment, which I share with two roommates; it's a typical NY situation.

Every morning I wake up around 7, take a shower and assemble myself while listening to itunes on shuffle; I leave the apartment at 8, walk from S1st St. to S7th and catch the L train to 6th avenue in Manhattan; I transfer to the 1 train from there, if I'm not in a rush (but if I am I take the 2 or 3 express trains and transfer back to the 1 on 96th St) and read or write in my moleskine until I get to 110th St; from there I walk to 116th St, usually with a large coffee from a market right outside the subway entrance. I start work at 9, and work from a desk until 6pm.

This morning, since I got a pretty early start and all the trains were on time, I got off on 103rd St to enjoy the sunshine of an early Spring day with a 13-street stroll, to admire dogs flashed out in their adorable outfits looking for various places to sniff and relieve themselves onto, to stop off at my bank's ATM for cash.

I walked by a McDonalds and felt tempted; and I could not resist the temptation; I looked at my watch, hoping I didn't have enough time, but had plenty of time; I went inside and got in line with this mixed feeling of excitement and shame.

A Mexican girl about 5'2" asked if she could help me; she looked 16, but I figured she was probably more like 23 with a kid or two in daycare; she seemed young though, in the way a person looks if they've never had to deal with things like suicidal goldfish, like she still had the all same friends from elementary school, in her life, as her friends, now; her eyes looked impatient and curious like that--spoiled-stupid and completely unaware of psychology.

I said, "A Deluxe Breakfast
and a large black iced coffee, please."
She said, "black?"
I said, "yes, black."
She said, "iced?"
"Yes, iced, please."
"With no flavoring?"
"No."
"No flavoring, at all?"
"No, just black."
"Would you like sugar
or liquid sweetener?"
"No. Black."

She turned and said something in Spanish to another Mexican lady, looking flustered; the other Mexican lady said something in Spanish back, unemotional, as if she were used to and exhausted from explaining the ways of the world to the younger girl. They were standing in front of the 2 for $1 apple pie warmer.

A moment later the first girl slid what looked like a clear cup of iced milk with a tinge of brown to me and said, "Here you go."

I looked at the cup, slid it back to her and said, "black."
She looked shocked. "No cream?!"
"No, black."

Then I started to mumble something about needing it more for the caffeine than the calories, but decided the communication barrier was already too complicated and let the general notion evaporate into a sad series of tired ellipses.

She took back the coffee, handed it the the second girl who she'd spoken to earlier in Spanish, then glanced back at me like I was holding the Grim Reaper's sythe while he was doing jumping jacks beside me; she said something in Spanish again.

A few moments later she finally handed me the large black iced coffee I felt like I'd been waiting my entire life for.

"Thanks," I said.

She looked at me as if I'd already ruined her day as the strangest human alive she never wanted to meet again; she finally handed over my Deluxe breakfast with pancakes and a hash brown.

I asked for ketchup; she looked scared, reached down without breaking any indirect eye contact and handed me three packets.

"Thanks," I said again, and walked away looking for a straw.

When I finally got to my Columbia desk, after passing two of my usual AM coffee places along 13 streets strutting the walk of shame with my golden M bedazzled bag of pure delicious nonsense, I wasn't in the mood for a Deluxe Breakfast anymore; but after slathering the crisp, greasy and salty piece of potatoey work, with two-of-the-three packets of fancy ketchup, I devoured the hash brown that came with it, in two-bites anyway.

I took a sip of my watered-down coffee from its straw and rolled the brown taste around my tongue and teeth before swallowing it.

As I suspected--perfect.
.

I have an eye infection

2009-03-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

I am bed-ridden, home from work with a massive eye-infection caused by either: stress, sleep deprivation, passing out w/eyeliner caked on after a hard-core night of Friday night birthday karaoke; or maybe even popping a sty with a sewing needle & squeezing it--without having a bowl of boiled water around, or peroxide.

Now my eyes are hot and swelled shut and leaking goop and I can't do anything with myself but lay in bed clutching a book trying to doze off into a world of dreaming, until I get a text of sympathy for my warped and mutated-looking condition.

Earlier, I could barely stumble across the street to buy juice, and living near Bedford in Williamsburg, even though it's difficult to admit, I had to kick off my gray death sweats for more appropriate black pants, I threw shawl around my shoulders and applied some lipstick; mother would have been so proud.

There were a few younger Italians in that place, buying 40's of malt liquor; they already smelled of booze and it was barely 6pm; they were attractive boys who looked like they played soccer in one of the nearby Brooklyn parks on warm Saturday afternoons; a posse of dark skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed Adonises; and even with my swollen eyes, thankfully, I got the proper attention I'm used to receiving with their silent stalking once-overs.

One day I will not receive that treatment anymore when I am older, unless I find a way to molt my flesh like some crusty sock and drown myself in expensive creams that actually do what they're advertised to do, or by then, perhaps, some company will have a pill, or a duplicate will be available that shares the same conscience as me, like in that Battlestar Galactica show.

Hopefully by then though, I will be settled with a loyal love of my life, my story collecting behind me and on pages for the world to read, settled, no longer wild; still and relaxed.

I sent a few texts to my oil painter today, as I was stranded quietly in my bedroom, eyes too sore to read, attention span running rampant all over the place, everywhere for the sake of mischief.

I'd call him my "ex," but I hate the way that sounds when people bring up "their ex," as if they only have one, knowing these gorgeous people I talk to have many actual "exes."

It makes them sound hung up in the past of some love affair that's hopelessly incomparable to anything the present or future could offer--my "ex." Give me a break.

So my oil painter is a lovely, lovely man whose lovemaking and patience spoiled me into spending a good deal of personal time with him, watching movies, sipping wine, eating cheeses and sleeping; though, I'd have to say one of my favorite things about him was the way he was an elitist, so aloof in every sense of the word, in public, so elegant.

Girls, ladies, and men alike became smitten with his presence at any event; they would ask him to talk about his art and try to find a way to become close to him, to obtain and ounce of his attention...and he was relentlessly bored with them, calling them sycophants to me later when we were alone, if they acted too much like excited puppy dogs filled with unwarranted glee.

It's not that he was a bad person; he was raised by a Mormon mother in a good family in Utah; he had old-fashioned values--just as a second generation painter who'd studied at Cambridge, he didn't have time for bullshit with people; he was too busy for that.

The only people he considered his equals were also beautiful, talented, brilliant people constantly immersed in projects.

I fully and finally developed my people palette with him, after many transitions and transmogrifies in my own constantly evolving world of never-ending heartache, brought upon by repeated tests of mortality, and morality.

These efforts were to obtain useful ways to bend the world and the people occupying it, according to my seasoned wants and needs; for my tired memoirs begging excitement, drama--lessons which others would subsequently regard as useful in contexts of stories.

It made sense that the artists let me in, wrote songs and stories about me, painted me, let me play in their films and listened to my opinions respectfully. It was nearly impossible for me to start and finish a project of my own from an my inability to take myself seriously as a feral, self-taught miscreant of sorts, and always having a finger in other people's projects from being curious.

I became a muse who loved to drink and make love, and did a lot of this; and my heart knows how it feels to be satisfied and enraged and worshipped, and when it is neglected I feel very empty.

So I sent texts to my oil painter, after barely communicating with him every so often--because he knows all of this about me, and knows what I know about him, which is everything, and in the texts I said, "I miss wine and movies with you, and your lovely body, hope you are well, New York is fine" and his response was, "thanks, I like you too..." amongst other sentiments, and my life seems sad and perfect like that a lot, and ridiculous.

Today, I spoke on the phone with another man, whose Manhattan place I spent a few warm nights in, before our relationship took confusing twists with third and fourth parties, in experimenting with something called an open-relationship, and now we are back to trying to be friends again in an effort to salvage something that seemed worth starting in the first place.

I admire his effort; he's one of the brightest and sexiest people I've met in a while, though he has a history of dating ditzes and air-head doormats for some easy reason that I don't have the time or patience to think about and try to understand.

This made me weary among other issues, but his shit taste in women did not make sense for someone who seemed to have all his cards in a stack, and I judged him harshly as being "shallow" for not caring what's "upstairs" as well as caring about what's below.

Hence, my sabotage radar shut me down, shutting him down, in a big smoke bomb of mystery, from which we sift little pieces to stare at blankly to this day, in wondering what went wrong.

From my new found attempts of progress from my own merits, which had little to do with what he had to offer in status and stability I realized what I needed was as much inspiration and outlets for personal artistic growth, as I could absolutely muster; and I saw him as a potential source of confinement or what I call a Property Manager Type.

On the phone today, "PMT" told me I should get out and date, like some imperative order, after I chastised my love life as being a huge source of my dissatisfaction with the world lately--as if it's really that easy for me, as it would be for him to sponsor some toy to play with for a while, with field trips of this activity or that.

I basically told him I'd rather sit alone in my bedroom and rot than to waste my time on a date with someone much less than extraordinary by standards of wealth in personalities I live by.

For me, the new partners I elect to be my lovers are people my former lovers would approve of and nod their heads yes to, as if it made complete sense in so many ways, why I would chose to spend time with that person; and immediately, with no question, that person would be assumed to be brilliant and very good at something, if not many somethings, and a fantastic lover to boot to appease my voracious sex drive, which goes to maximum levels, when I am attempting to be monogamous.

I am trying not to play with my eyelids right now. They are itching and I don't want to agitate them more than they are already agitated. I wonder if David Lynch would date me? I think we would get along, but maybe I should try to publish few novels first, or get really huge implants, or something else drastic like that.
.

taste, talent, and Amy Winehouse in 2009

2009-03-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

.
Venturing out to pick up a load of laundry after sifting through the hamper for repeated wears of already worn socks with livable muck on the bottoms, I met a new comrade at the liquor store buying scotch on the way home; he's a musician, and a very nice young green-eyed human overall, from what I can tell so far.

Calder Hulse (isn't that just lovely?) gave me a delicious Jewish-culture-inspired triangle-shaped raspberry-filled cookie to snack upon, while standing amongst bottles of wine and other boozes, and another to take home with me.

In an hour-and-a-half, we exchanged what had to be the best conversation I've been part of in a while; as well as contact information, to be in touch for more conversations.

What impressed the most about meeting this young man, initially, was his somewhat pretentious confidence in explaining the differences between various whiskeys, scotches and wine.

I told him what I was looking for in reds: not too sweet, a cherry or raspberry versus citrus tone, not too dense, semi-transparent, less peppery, and most importantly--affordable. I stressed my search for the ultimate flavor in a bottle ranging between 10-14, that I preferred Pinot Noirs to Cabs, and then that whites were a rare craving, but mostly a summertime affair.

His take on this was that I drank more like a man than a girl, which was interesting to him, that I wasn't complicated to please in that I actually knew what I wanted, that what I was describing was what pricier reds brought to the table, but that it wasn't impossible to help me find what I was looking for.

After that, our discussion went by the way of how decent new music these days seems to be, and has been, in hibernation with all the pop and eighties and nineties sounds holding strong within its manifested realms of anti-originality.

Whether for the sake of nostalgia or to build a sense of community, hoards of individuals are confused, their identities strongly relying on the way their jeans fall around their carefully picked footwear; their left or right comb-overs looking amazingly effortless; their seamless sense of ennui perfected in times where the rest of the world seems to be in shambles compared to the luck and freedom we have in our lives as Americans.

I told a story of being in DC for a seminar discussing solutions for treatment for the mentally insane, how while waiting in a Renaissance Marriott restaurant for two $5.50 hard boiled eggs for a Nobel Prize winning panelist, an instrumental version Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" played like classical music over the speakers as I stood there in disbelief.

I juxtaposed that incident with one of waiting in a rat infested subway for a train to take me home two days later back in New York. There was an aged homeless black man playing the sweetest version of "Fur Elise" I'd ever heard in my life on what looked like a steel drum banged into shape with a mallot out of a garbage can.

A small child danced as if in a ecstatic trance, while the man pummeled his drum with home-made sticks, spinning and twisting his hips back and forth; his mother occasionally yanking his hoodie to bring him close to her again without even looking up.

It's as if some built-in mom radar sensed he was wandering not dangerously, but rudely, into passersby dropping dollars into the open backpack sparsely littered with dollars and change. The next song the man played, in his tattered, dirty bundle of clothes, was something familiar and Celtic by the one and only Enya.

The story I got back from Calder was about a world famous violinist who played these extravagant sold-out shows on a violin that was valued worth millions. There were people who decided to do an experiment and put the violinist in a subway station in plain clothes, to see if anyone would notice or appreciate the exquisite sounds of someone so revered by the sophisticate community.

Ultimately, the violinist was ignored for the most part, aside from random commuter children who would stop in their tracks and dance to his music as if possessed; or the occasional theater aficionado who would recognize the musician, whereby being flabbergasted and giving him piles of money as if he were downtrodden and begging for handouts.

What these conversations boiled down to was the idea that real technical talent is often unidentifiable by the masses, that they're more likely to be engaged by popular gimmicks, or catchy formulas rather than inventive ingenuity.

That people are so caught up in trying to fit into some category of intelligence or fraternity, their perceptions aren't inclined to fully develop in ways to branch beyond what they learn in books, or from positive social experiences that might make room for a-little-to-some practical impressions on their personalities.

Calder and I agreed that whether the art or music or literature we made was good or bad according to the opinions of others, we needed to proceed in producing what we considered to be "beautiful" regardless--with the confidence to create and define compositions with and by our own unyielding standards.

How else are we to get out of this rut of pop songs about "Rehab" playing in $300 a night hotels charging $5.50 for two hard boiled eggs? I'd like to think that the best music our kids are listening to these days aren't what they catch a glimpse of on route to daycare.

Hopefully wine tastings and glockenspiel infused Indonesian music events with Calder are on the horizon, as well as more conversations regarding the progression of art against formulaic odds within the creative spectrum of New York and beyond.
.