I didn't realize that I was going to be on a chat show tonight, but then all of a sudden I was signing a model release and letting people assign me a model (read: "porn star") name on my friend (don't click the link if you're going to give me a bunch of crap about it being a porn site) Kylie Ireland's show on KSEX Radio. Resorting to the old rule about your first pet's name and the street where you grew up, I was known to the faceless airwaves as...well...someone else. It's a cheat, because I didn't really grow up on that street, having lived all over the place during the formative stages, but it is the street I lived on the longest. And that really was my first pet's name. And that's something.
I'm no pro. I kept getting distracted by the flicker of the monitors with their four-way camera split. I looked foreign. To me. The slow blink of an animatronic. The occasional frozen expression of pursed lips or eyes less wide. I was told later that the webcast is actually at 30 frames per second, so I guess it was a waste of concern. Still, I'm not good at playing it cool when I'm out of my own pond. And live sex chat is a pond to which I am somewhat less accustomed than other frogs. I didn't let them coerce me into any fleshy revelations, but I was almost tempted to. There's something about being in that little room that makes you forget that there are people in other rooms watching. Danger danger.
We were supposed to go to a strip club for a series of reasons, including visiting with Julie Night, but plans went awry like they do. And we ended up trying to talk to each other over the loudness of the Dresden for a bit until it was time to move our nocturne elsewhere. I felt good and nice. A little square. Outdone by all the little things that make me a nervous, tittering child when I should be vain and glorious. The chat room audience said nice things about me. But I never knew what to do with myself.
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
I put diamonds in my pocket to make sure that I never have need of change. A headache is a high of sorts. There are very few french fries so appallingly bad that they aren't worth eating. Who decides if I am gamine or grave? When you tell stories to people who aren't listening, you can tell them again without fear of repeating yourself. Every time I go to the museum, I feel it belonging to me more.
This was written at a previous 3 A.M., but I can't remember what day it was. Tuesday, maybe?
More Shadowy Bits
I still haven't the time to flesh it all out. And I don't want to just drop names. But after greedy museum consumption, I played violin on a recording today in Manhattan Beach. Like a pro. Kevin noticed that I have a very small waist. I forced him to order a marshmallow malt. I stood on the street corner with my violin slung over my shoulder, and I met a man with a dog named Lulu. I never got to hear any of the songs we picked at the Snake Pit.
This was written at 9:30 A.M., after facing off with the night and never being forced to fold.
I'm never nothing.
I can see the aftermath of everything, and it glistens.
Though the impulse only hit me intermittently, when it hit me, it struck hard and I was bruised by it. Whatever that means.
The Anya of the previous post is Anya Marina, and she is the niftiest. We worked together at MP3.com many moons ago. I only wish I had known then how much of a genius she is, for I would surely have tricked her into going off with me somewhere secluded where I could kill her in secret and rid the world of the single greatest threat to my rise to stardom. But seriously. She's splendid. And I do wish I had done her in when I had the chance. I can't wait for her new CD to be released. And I exhort you to carpet the road before her with flower petals and adulation and the crumbs of your own teeth, which you had previously ground into a powder for the sake of an offering to her. She's so wonderful that I want to mash her into a ball and carry her around in my pants pocket. Don't let the references to jealousy, insecurity, and murder disconcert you. I love this girl. And she makes music so lovely that the very birds slit their own wrists in abject surrender and tribute. Don't point out that birds don't have wrists, (a) because you're missing the point, and (b) because maybe you don't know all there is to know about ornithology, Professor Know-Everything*.
*not a real doctor
I made Kevin go with me to a carnival on Santa Monica and Cahuenga. It was the dirtiest, depressingest carnival ever. But I thought it might favor my Lomo. Kevin talked me into taking a ride on "The Zipper." And after being shaken and tossed with such violence that we were literally being pelted in the face with quarters and salt packets as they fell out of the outside pocket of my handbag as the vicious cage we were locked into tumbled against gravity and my objections, I emerged from the capsule a broken woman. Nauseous. Woozy. Hoping for the relief of an upchuck that never came. When I told this story to my mother, she was angry that I didn't go back to collect the quarters. Truth.
We salvaged our dignity with dinner at The Kitchen. And french fries and fri-chi (my adorable nickname for fried chicken) distracted me from my churning guts. Kevin and Mary stayed up too late that night. But who are they to question the clock.
Josh and I were going to go to see Amy Goodman and applaud her, but it was another calendar item that didn't fully materialize. Instead, Krissy and I met Pamela at Canter's, and I felt embarrassingly hyperactive. Caffeinated and Thomas Dolby-ized. I hoped I wasn't woefully trying. I hate it when I can hear myself spinning out of control. I tell all these stories, and I can barely catch my breath. And there are better reasons for breathlessness, I've learned.
I also interviewed a woman for an article I'm about to write. And if you throw in the stints of picture-taking and the career-related phone calls and meetings and the little time I set aside to bathe and to nourish and to sleep, I packed a horseload into the cat-sized spaces this past week. And I never asked for mercy or for pity. I never felt it getting the best of me. Even now, weary as I have every right to be, I'm only concerned for my typing accuracy. As an eager, shirtless, one-armed push-up-doing serviceman told me as he tried to convince me not to leave the Thanksgiving party, I can sleep when I'm dead. But you have to say it in a creepy loud whisper to get the full effect.
Season Two of The Office is wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because it is brilliant and real and true but also impossibly, stupidly implausible. Terrible because I can't believe they only made two seasons. And because failure -- as it is portrayed in Slough -- is so heartbreaking. I'm sad they only made two seasons (and short BBC seasons, to boot), but when I contrast that against the tragedy of Friends still being on the air, I accept it with humble gratitude. I don't like Friends much. And I don't think it's just me rebelling against NBC's authority. Tell a girl like me, "You MUST SEE this," and I guarantee you, I will try to close my eyes. But for nearly everyone else, it seems, the "Must See TV" label (and you are correct if you, like me, are bothered by the absence of the hyphen between "must" and "see") is as effective as the Ludovico Technique. In my head, I sometimes shuffle the words around and it becomes can't not watch. But that's when I am most ashamed of the ways I waste my think junk.
I played violin at an engagement party in San Diego this past weekend. My friend Elizabeth and I play violin duets for weddings all the time, but this time we were asked to play for three hours at a sort of garden party, and we were adventurous with our fare. After we had exhausted all of our wedding stock and had begun to fear that the weddingy nature of the selections might give the bride- or groom-to-be foot chills, not only did we play a two-violin arrangement of Meet the Flintstones, but we also played Hot Hot Hot, New York, New York, Tequila, Your Momma Don't Dance, Doo Wah Diddy Diddy, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow, and many other unlikely tunes. Elizabeth drew the line at Mony Mony. We were already laughing like fools when we figured out what The Merry Go Round Broke Down was about eight bars in. Anything more would just have been unprofessional.
After the party, Sarah and I went for cocktails at Charlie's. There was a street fair in Encinitas that Sarah wished we had gone to. I did not share her wish. I am not a fan of street fairs. I can buy incense and kettle corn at Costco. But the ocean was lovely, and we let the wind toss our hair around before I made my northbound exodus. And when I got back home, Kevin and I had beef at the Whisper Lounge (him: Kobe beef in hamburger sandwich form; me: New York strip steak) and hot drinks at the Coffee Bean, and the night thinned out, and he went to bed, and I worked until morning. That next day, we went to see the last in the University of Judaism lecture series for which I had tickets. It was Tom Brokaw with Ari Fleischer and Dee Dee Myers. I despised Ari Fleischer (and, no, I don't mean that I disagreed with his rhetoric or his views -- I mean I hated him as a person). And I found that I liked Dee Dee Myers more than I had expected to. I don't know why I had it in for her before I went to the event. She was the cat's whiskers.
Afterwards, we had dinner and drinks at El Compadre. I don't think our server could have disliked us more. But whatever amount of retaliatory body fluid he may have put into my carnitas plate, it was still yummy. That night, after talking and laughing at DVDs and fabricating every other possible time-wasting device I could muster, I spent the wee hours working yet again.
I'm telling this all out of order. I got two hours of sleep last "night." I always wonder if it shows.
I guess I don't mind working the night through. Even back when I held an office job, I never minded giving dawn the finger if something magical could be had in place of sleep. I like the way it feels to sleep. I like the sheets on my bed. I like the warm and the cool. I like the press of the fluff. I like the descent. I like the way I smell in my pajamas. But I would chuck it all for a chance at immortality. I would toss the sleep if more of my waking hours didn't already feel like somnambulance. But, as in the election of 2000, I know that my vote doesn't count, and immortality gets squashed every time. By Republicans.
But this was all yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Today is just a scar. Today is beginning for some. Ending for some (me). Today is another wasted outfit. Today is another chance I didn't take. Today is as uneasy as the tickling itch on the roof of your mouth you try to scratch with your tongue, but it only makes it intolerably worse. Today is a lost cause. And denial is a river in Africa. I've always hated that joke.
Please don't make me redundant.
