Time Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Animals Are Audrey

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







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

Knowing Me, Knowing You

Audrey and I just got back in from a walk. There was a package at my door. Well, there were two. One was The Boatniks on DVD. The other was a black knit turtleneck sweater dress I ordered. I tried it on in the guest bedroom. It reminded me of a charcoal grey knit turtleneck sweater dress I bought and wore around this time of year eleven years ago. But the charcoal grey one fit better. The one that just arrived is probably going back.

Someone nearby is playing ABBA loud enough for me to recognize and sing along. Which reminds me that I just spent the weekend celebrating my older sister's nuptials to her lovely Swedish groom Paul. After the wedding, there were 15 or 20 Swedes (and two American crashers) in my hotel room, playing ABBA on my iTunes playlist and eventually getting security involved. And yesterday, there were as many Swedes lounging poolside at my parents' house, looking perfect in their bathing costumes and wondering if Encinitas is officially paradise.

I was so exhausted, I could barely keep my eyes open driving home from San Diego last night. Like I had to talk myself into not taking extra long blinks, even when I was only a mile or two away from my apartment. That fatigue has stretched on into today. I can barely tell what day of the week it is. Or what hour of the day. It's all chapped lips, sore neck, crooked posture, and indecisive eyeshadow today. I'm looking at this as the painful process required before renewal can begin. Digging in deep to peel off my dragon skin.

Oh. On Friday, I went to San Diego to change my hair again.



I let my stylist take pictures of my breasts for a collection of photographs he is going to be mounting in the salon to raise money for breast cancer research. At least I think that's what the story was. So if you walk into a hair salon in San Diego and see a bunch of boobs on the wall, two of them might be mine. Let's find a cure already. I'm eventually going to have too much self-respect and/or shame to continue this kind of activism.

Anticipation in Disguise

I flipped off a poster of Optimus Prime the other day, and Rob wondered why. "Protect." "Destroy." I'm not sure the world is so binary. This comes from the Persians, you know. Ahura Mazda. Angra Mainyu. The Benevolent One. The Malevolent One. What about the other versions of the universe where bad guys and good guys coexist and are neither all good nor all evil. Where bad guys are sometimes good and good guys are sometimes bad, and there isn't one place that everyone of one kind goes. Like the Hindu gods. Or the Scandinavian gods. Or the Greeks and the Romans. The gods are just powerful. And sometimes they are reasonable. And sometimes they are right pricks. And sometimes they are playfully wicked. And sometimes they are deceptive and self-serving and cruel. Just like the rest of us. They just have the ability to appear to us as a bird and impregnate us if they want to.

This is one of the things that has often been unsatisfactory to me about comic book fiction and Star Wars and all of that. And maybe that's why most comic book heroes end up having an issue or two where they go bad. Maybe I'm not the only one who has trouble buying that the good guys are good because they have to be and therefore they can be nothing else. And maybe this is part of the reason I don't know whether I would be an Autobot or a Decepticon.

I haven't really been looking much forward to the new Transformers movie. I don't expect it to be any good, because of Michael Bay. And, also, I was never that much into Transformers, mostly because I was (and am) a girl. And I only really cared about a robot when at least part of it was being captained by a girl or -- even better -- a small child and when the girl or child and the robot all spoke Japanese. And even then, I only liked those shows because I lived in the Philippines, and we only got one English-speaking television station, and I would watch ANY cartoon that came on. Even Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.

So I haven't been counting down the days till transformation. Although, back in April, I was about to have dinner at Magnolia, and I took this picture of a Christo-esque wrap job promoting the Transformers movie on a building on Sunset.



And then, a day or two later, when it was windier than Los Angeles has any right to be, the entire business was in shreds, as documented by Rob's phone.





Special commendation for having a windshield that clean, Rob. My mom would be proud of you.

Anyway, I was in the gymnasium today, and I saw a commercial for the new Transformers movie, and I have to admit, a tiny, bitter, reluctant, unyielding part of me is mortified that I'm about to tell you that the commercial looked cool. But it did. And I am hopeful that it will be fun to look at it when I can hear people talking in the movie, too. Although I'm almost certain that will be the ruination part. Exciting visual effects shouldn't be enough to get people out of their houses. That shit is run of the mill at this point. You can see fabulous CGI in commercials for soft drinks these days. And wanting to recapture a piece of your youth shouldn't be reason enough, either. Because to be perfectly honest, with very few exceptions I prefer the cartoons I loved as cartoons. Even feature-length animated versions of those stories with the exact same character design and voice acting usually disappointed me. Can't we just love what we loved as it was and stop trying to put it on Burger King cups of the future?

That being said, I am about to embark on an attempt to adapt a novel (or two) from my adolescence into screen fodder. I never said I wasn't a hypocrite. I just said I don't like Michael Bay. And I stand by that.

Time Waits for No Man

A few weekends ago, I missed the Star Wars birthday. But I thought about it and watched a lot of zombies instead. And I began proving my hypothesis that bloody marys make time dilate on the weekends. As long as you drink them in the daytime, and as long as I'm the one who makes them.

I should have gone and bought those American flag cupcakes. They're always a hit.

The Jacaranda trees are in bloom, scattering their lavender blossoms over everything that lines the streets, leaving outlines where parked cars were, like crime scene chalk drawings. The value of negative space.

My father told me about how my mom used to admire our neighbor Pete's Jacaranda trees, and that Pete confided in him that they may be pretty, but they are a pain in the ass. We sold that house. And Pete moved back to the Midwest. And I notice that when you move away from a place, it disappears from the map for you. A great void where once a house was. Or a street. Or a town. That was the house I parked in front of when some kids went along smashing car windows (including mine) on prom night. And the house I parked in front of when I came back from failing my driving test and angrily yanked my hand brake so hard that my mom had to use a hammer to get it to release. I go back to the surrounding neighborhood because Beulah still lives around there, but I've stopped looking off in the direction of that house. The end of the earth drops off where my memories end.

That same weekend, I carried a camera the whole time, but never had much cause to use it. Except for the hours I spent at Tom Bergin's celebrating Tricia's birthday, half of which I spent wondering why my camera kept alerting me that my card was locked. And then I noticed that the card was in fact locked.

Jessie and I stopped for Damiano's after the party. Got the worst table service I've had in some time. But that didn't have the same quality of "it's so bad it's great" as the Taco Bell run we made the following weekend. When the drive-thru attendant handed me our food, the smell in the car was so atrocious, I asked whether one of us had accidentally ordered a Diaper Supreme. That didn't stop us from eating what we ordered. It just made us laugh a lot while we were doing it.

This went over well the other day.

Incubatrix

A month ago today, I took a bite of a nicely packaged blueberry nutrition bar my mom gave me, and I had to take a second look at it to make sure I hadn't actually bitten into a piece of shit. Looking at it wasn't all that convincing, either. It was a Blueberry Noni Think Green bar. I don't know what "noni" is, but in this bar's enthusiasm to deliver to me all the nutrition in my recommended daily serving of vegetables, it really missed the boat on being delicious or even palatable. I said to several people that day, "I'm pretty sure this bar has been digested at least once."

The up side is that my mom gets these things for free. So if you don't like something you found in her kitchen, you can probably just let it fall out of your mouth and into the trash can without even offending her. My mother represents gourmet food companies and has a handsome selection of wonderful -- and often dismayingly healthful -- products that she enthusiastically markets to upscale supermarkets all over the place. But she also goes to a lot of food-related trade shows, where she gets remarkable amounts of things for free which she then brings home and stores in the kitchen and the front bar area of her home, fully intending guests and family to help themselves to whatever random bounty is on the top of the pile. I ate something over there a few weeks ago, and I told her it was really gross, and she shrugged and said, "I don't care. It's not my line."

Of course, if she'd paid for the thing you just ate and didn't like, she would probably try to offer you a fix. A condiment or a stint in a fry pan -- whatever might make it suddenly delicious to you. Because it's only ever okay to spit something out if it was free.

You and Your Water

Dexatrim Max2O (that 2 should be subscripted, but go jump in a lake, will you?) runs these spots on television encouraging you to sprinkle this stuff in your drinking water and thereby become thin and energetic and wonderful all around. "Gives me and my water a boost!" says one chipper young fellow before taking an enthusiastic draught from his water bottle. And the voiceover instructs you to "max out your water" with Dexatrim Max2O. It may be inappropriately old world of me, but this only makes me think of urine.

I vaguely remember an interview on, I think, This American Life but certainly an NPR program. It was a Jewish fellow who is famous for something now. I don't remember what. He may be a musician. He and his sister visited Israel when he was a boy, and their knowledge of Hebrew was sometimes jeered at because of how formal their diction was. He gave an example of excusing himself to use the restroom and saying something essentially to the effect of begging someone's leave so that he might go make water. I think. I really don't remember this memory well enough to recount it, I'm realizing.

Anyway, so I know of this phrase "to make water," and I know that it was once said to mean "to go pee pee." And as a result, hearing about your water or my water or even someone being described as "a comedienne of the first water" (as was just done on a page of Henry Miller I read last night) generally makes me cringe. I'm evolved enough to know that this is my problem and not Dexatrim's or Henry Miller's for that matter. But I'm self-centered enough to complain about it publicly. So there you go.

You and your water go do what you need to, but please don't do it near me. I have a thing about other people's pee.

Dog-Eared Pages and Missing Zeroes

When I first moved out on my own at the unfortunate age of 19, I was poor. I didn't live like I was especially poor, but that's what helped make me really poor. When I finally ran out of cash and ran out of credit and never managed to scare up the ingenuity to pull off a major heist, I often spent time flipping through pages of catalogs and marking the things I would in theory buy. For some reason, the mere act of choosing partially sated my desire to actually have. And in a way I could go around feeling as if I already owned these things. I had pointed at them. Circled them with a pen. They were mine.

I am downright grateful I didn't actually acquire the majority of things I once thought I wanted. I no longer have the mountains of mail-order literature stashed away, but I carried a lot of those rags around with me for years mostly as a result of bad filing. They would end up in a box that was filled primarily with magazines with some amount of keepsake value, and I would run into them some amount of time later and think, "Poo. Why would you want to wear that thing?" or "What an absurd upholstery choice." So allowing some time for incubation is probably the most critical factor in staving off bankruptcy for me even now.

Cut to yesterday afternoon when I received Anthropologie's new catalog in the post. It's called print, and it is now my nemesis. With the exception of a few of the furniture pieces and a dumb handbag, I literally want every single thing in this catalog. Maybe I'll outgrow the want. Maybe the colors will grow garish. Or the platform wedge sandals will seem clunky and dated*. Maybe I will join a militant political group and never wear anything but camouflage. But at this very moment, with my current opinions and my current tastes, this catalog is a lesson in the things I don't have. Happily, this retailer isn't a purveyor of more metaphysical items. Or I'd be able to carrot that sentence with the word "all."

This will be the death of me.

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

Philately

I gave my mom a sheet of Sugar Ray Robinson stamps to give to my father. At first, she was livid. She thought I had made the stamps myself. The Christmas before last, I had some custom stamps made at Zazzle.com with a photograph of me and my two sisters, and I gave the stamps to my family members, and my mom was both grateful and angry, because it costs more than twice the face value of the stamp to have them made. And apparently, that's not worth it. So, she looked at this sheet of Sugar Ray Robinson stamps and was all prepared to disown me, until I explained that I bought these stamps at the U.S. Post Office and paid exactly what they say they cost. Then she was pretty nice about it. What's most amusing to me is the idea that I would have spent money to design and print a Sugar Ray Robinson stamp.

My father emailed me a couple of days ago thanking me for the stamps, and also said the following:

Ray Robinson was one of the greatest boxers and champions at a time when you had to be great to be a champion. I was watching ESPN's Sports Classic Channel last night and they showed a short clip of a knockout when Ray took back the championship from another classy champ who was more like Joe Frazer in his style. ESPN had interviewed him recently and he said after Sugar Ray knocked him down and he was counted out they carried him back to his corner. When he came to he heard everyone screaming and asked his trainer what round it was. He didn't even know he had been knocked out. My memory is bad so I can't remember his name but he was from Utah.

We also discussed the Mosley-Collazzo fight, which we both watched. My dad said, "Sugar Shane gave him a 'whoopin' as Mohammed Ali would describe it."

"Another classy champ." How great is that. My dad couldn't not be awesome if it was required by law. To not be awesome. Admittedly, this statement lacks clarity.

A phase is a phase is a phase.

I don't cook as often as I used to. Sometimes I even convince myself that I don't really enjoy it as much as I used to. I've gotten lazy. My kitchen isn't very modern. I want for counter space. But this past week, I caught the bug.

I had chicken that had to be cooked to make room in my freezer. So I made this casserole that my mom used to make. A chicken and rice thing with cream of mushroom soup and Lipton Onion Soup Mix sprinkled on top. The other half of the chicken I fried in a pan. Both turned out great. I didn't really eat much of either. They are in my refrigerator.

Yesterday, I made linguine carbonara. A specialty of mine that really shouldn't be made very often as it is the most fattening possible dish one could hope to eat, short of a bowl of solid fat. And then today, I made meat sauce like my mother taught me, only I don't substitute turkey for the beef and pork (and veal when I can get it). And I had enough meat to also make a bolognese sauce that I haven't made in years. And that sauce calls for a Sicilian tomato sauce recipe that I also had to make. So that's three sauces simmering on my stove all day today. And then I made a tonnato sauce, because I saw the recipe, had all the ingredients, and managed to drop and break a jar of Italian tuna in olive oil -- enough so that it needed to be used but not so much that I'm worried about accidentally eating shards of glass.

I was on my feet in the kitchen all day. I used and washed numerous appliances and pots and pans and then reused and rewashed them. I kept very busy. The Incredible Mr. Limpet was playing on the television for some of the time. My upstairs neighbors were arguing up a storm. And then they weren't. And then they were again. I have a little kitchen timer in the shape of a pear. It was ticking all day. And then it would buzz like crazy. And then I would wind it up and it would begin ticking again. I picture the day going by like in those time lapse films where the sun rises and sets and rises and sets in a matter of seconds. Civilizations came and went. Wars were fought and won. Fashions were established, discarded, and then revived triumphantly. Music stayed mostly the same.

By the time eight o'clock came around, I had finished cooking everything but had no real interest in eating any of it. I didn't even boil any noodles. I just made all the sauces and put them away. And then I cleaned up and went to a party where Ryan and James made me laugh and laugh. It was cold outside. But it was too warm inside to stay in. There was a ham rotting on the mantel. Festively. I photographed it. I didn't photograph much of anything else. Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf. A temporary one. Well, leaves are largely temporary anyway.

"Save a Life -- Yours."

Amazon.com suggested that I get myself a Life Hammer with the following approach:

"Don't be trapped in your vehicle in case of accident--the Life Hammer is designed to help you escape by easily smashing your window and cutting your seatbelt."

Despite my upbringing, I'm not really the sort of person who expects misfortune to find me. But this is precisely the sort of marketing that ignites fantasies in my brain in which I have just driven off a bridge into an ice cold lake which also happens to be teeming with water spiders, anthropomorphized fecal matter, and murderers in diving gear.

The Life Hammer comes in several colors.

"A real squared-away guy."

My dad and I spent a few days hanging out after the new year began. I cooked dinner a few times, and we would watch movies. The Maltese Falcon. High Anxiety. His company delights me. It wasn't hard for me to stretch my misplaced Christmas out for days and days. And on the day I was finally determined to load my car up and head back to Los Angeles, we had a conversation that somehow led him to show me the CDs he had bought, which were essentially cruise books from when he was a Seabee in Vietnam that someone had scanned and packaged for sale.

My dad paged through the PDF and made comments as they occurred to him. This commanding officer was a real squared-away guy. This one...well, he wasn't one. This guy really had a tough job, because his men were the worst slackers and layabouts in the bunch. Look, the Seabees had a pet bear.

Well, I copied those PDFs and clipped out the images I found with my dad in them. This is him as a guy in his thirties. He sure was handsome and great.

I was going to crop out these images and write this post more than a week ago, but it -- like everything -- wriggled free of my volition for a while. And then I was watching a vintage featurette about The Dirty Dozen today, and the narrator kept referring to Lee Marvin and the other stars of the film as "action men." And I loved it. And decided to pay some small homage to a time when men were men of action, and Tim Allen was nowhere to be found.

Having a Crush and More

Glad Tidings

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

Repetitive Motion Injury

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

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

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

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

If I can recall properly, here was our menu:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

I voted. Did you? If you did, (a) bravo, and (b) send me a photo of your "I Voted" sticker presented in some interesting fashion. I will do something with it. And maybe reward you with something for your participation. Maybe.

P.S. If you're the sort that expects access to private photos, you'll have to specify that. And I will take any such notification under advisement.

The cream on the mashed potatoes.

A few weeks ago, Sarah and Paul were in Anaheim and wanted to visit Disneyland, so I drove down to shepherd them around on a Saturday night. It would have been much more fun had it not been Gay Days. Not because we have any problem with gay people, make no mistake. I love me some gays. Truly. It's that I have never been to Disneyland that late at night and seen it that crowded. As a result, we didn't really get to do much but wait in line and elbow our way through red-shirted crowds. But we still had a good time. And while we were waiting in line for Space Mountain, Paul was teaching me some of the idioms that the Swedes have that approximate ours. For instance, where we would say "bite the bullet" to reference the act of enduring something painful or unpleasant, Swedes would say the equivalent of "bite the sour apple." And where we might call it "icing on the cake" when something great comes after something already very good, Swedes would call that the "cream on the mashed potatoes." I love this. And I loved the fact that, even after our somewhat stressful Disneyland visit, Paul sent me a lovely email and told me that I was in fact the cream on the mashed potatoes.

While I'm on this language instruction kick, here are some additional Swedish idioms you can use at your leisure or when you're hanging out with Paul.

"The important thing [here] is to get away alive."
Det gäller att klara sig undan med livet i behåll.
It shrieks to clear one self out of the road with the waist intact.

To totally abandon someone.
Lämna någon vind för våg.
Leave someone wind by wave.

A cheerful expression of surprise.
Hej hopp i blåbärsskogen!
Hello, jump in the blueberry forest!

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
Bättre en fågel i handen än tio i skogen.
Better a bird in your hand than ten in the woods.

"Don't count your chickens until they hatch."
Ropa inte hej förräns du är över bäcken.
Don't yell hi until you're over the stream.

A party that got out of hand.
Det var ett riktigt sjoslag.
It was a real sea-battle.

"You're in deep shit now."
Nu är det kokta fläsket stekt.
Now the boiled pork is fried.

"Run like hell."
Lägga benen på ryggen.
Put your legs on your back.

To make things worse
Att lägga lök på laxen
To put onion on the salmon

"Calm down."
Kiss och gå lägg dig!
Pee and go lie down!

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
Det är skönt med den goa värmen, sa kärringen när stugan brann.
It is nice with the heat, said the old woman when the house was on fire.

"Now, you've done it!"
Nu har du trampat i klaveret.
Now you have stepped into the accordion!

To come into a lot of money
Lägga rabarber på klöver.
Lay down rhubarbs on clover.

Talking nonsense
Han pratar i nattmössan.
He is talking in his nighthat.

"Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades."
Nära är bara bra med en atombomb.
Close is only good with an A-bomb.

"Good gracious!"
Milda makter!
Mild forces!

"It doesn't work."
Den är paj.
It's pie.

"Fat chance!"
Inte en sportmössa!
Not a sportscap!

"You'r talking out of your ass."
Nu är du ute och cyklar.
Now you are out and cycling.

"Caught with his pants down"
Med skägget i brevlådan
With his beard in the mailbox

"No kidding!"
Dra mig på en tallpinnevagn.
Drag me on a pine-twig wagon.

"You've really made a fool of yourself."
Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpet.
Now you've shit in the blue cupboard.

Magic Magic Magic
Friday night, I went to The Magic Castle to help my friends Kevin and Chris celebrate their birthdays. I am not a fan of magic. I find the melodrama and lavish hand gestures to be the height of overdoing it. I especially don't like the Vegas-y variety of comedy and magic that The Magic Castle seems to be famous for. (Incidentally, is it The Magic CASTLE or The MAGIC Castle?) The first time I ever went to The Magic Castle, I had only lived here for a month or two, and my office had our Christmas party there. I had dinner, and then left before the magic show. I had tickets to see Tenacious D, Naked Trucker, and Spinal Tap at the House of Blues that night. And that was far more magical a prospect.
I did actually like the Close-Up Room, where the show is more about sleight of hand, which I can truthfully appreciate very much. Our magician in the Close-Up Room was a lady named Suzanne, and she was really good. And not at all covered in glitter or self-tanner. I think sleight of hand and magic are very different things. Where one of them is a good and cool thing and the other is a thing that makes me want to punch my fist through a hat. And frankly, it really comes down more to the issue of whether or not you are really good at it or whether you have one of the two hairdos magicians are apparently allowed to have. The guy in the Parlor of Prestidigitation was not funny, not skillful, and not someone who is not a hunchback. I had had enough to drink that I was probably not a very gracious audience member. And a fat guy glared at me at one point because I was having a good time but not in synch with the rest of the group. I think we also annoyed the young lady whose bosom would have received a marriage proposal from Chris, had she not liked magic so much.
I also don't like being asked to participate in the show. I don't even like it when this happens at comedy shows. Or at restaurants with especially gregarious servers. I hate being put on the spot. And I'm always convinced I will do the wrong thing. So I was relieved to not be wrangled into doing anything to support the magic. I had warned Kevin before the event that there was no way I was going up on stage for anything. Especially not to be sawed in half. It also occurred to me that women are always more at risk at these events for the simple reason that women are considered less likely to be -- or worse to think they are -- funny. So you get a lady up on stage to hold your tablecloth, sprig of baby's breath, and bewitched hat stand and you can do your schtick uninterrupted. You get a dude up on stage, and there's a very good chance he will find himself a chance to do a one man interpretive scene from Top Gun. (Probably either the You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling part or the part where Goose dies.) So maybe I resent this tradition.
In the end, I had a nice enough time. A lot of whiskey helps. I also started out the evening with a Campari soda at dinner, and I haven't had one of those in years and years. It was nostalgic and good. And afterwards, Kevin and Chris and I went to the 101 Coffee Shop and argued about my Guitar Hero skills (though Chris has never played) and whether or not mac and cheese should be soupy. I'm a fan of the crispy/chewy variety. Chris prefers the soupy version. But everyone agreed on the onion rings. Although the boys ate theirs with mustard, while I ate mine with ranch. And I drove home quite certain I would never need to -- nor should I -- ever eat again.

It's probably a whiskey tumor.

Last night, my friend Tim's short film Slideshow screened at Garage Comedy. I took all the photos featured in the film, and the film is very funny, so I felt especially proud when I saw my name come up in the credits. I remember the day we shot those photos. It was a long, long day and included me getting a little toy dog out of a coin-op machine. There were many characters to choose from. A variety of breeds. Even one named "Duchess" who was nursing pups, but you had to get the pups separately. But the one I wanted stood out.

His name was "Craps," and he's in a shitting position. Which I can't believe was ever mass-manufactured. But it only took me three tries and $1.50 to win him, and now no one can ever tell me he doesn't exist.

So that was a fun day, as I recall. And it was already long enough ago that one of us could have had a baby by now. The blasted passage of time. I guess I like getting past the awful things, but the good stuff just whizzes past, too. At least we have this to show for it.



So last night, I went to Garage Comedy. It was a little chilly out. Fall weather that scolds me in advance for the sweater I don't feel like carrying. I was tired and out of sorts all day. Too many cocktails and too little sleep. For days and days. I haven't been to El Cid for a while. Mondays have become problematic and vied for. I always end up saying no to at least two things. But good ol' Garage Comedy. I always see so many friends there. I am a fan of that.



That above photo is a link to the photo set from last night. If you are not my friend on Flickr, you won't be able to see them. If you would like to become my friend on Flickr, click this link and use your powers of instruction-following and deductive reasoning to make it come to pass.

El Cid kicked us all out before midnight, which was unexpected and unwelcome. The persistent partygoers among us went over to 4100 and continued doing what it is we do, just in more dimly lit surroundings and with more places to sit.

All in all, I drank too much. I smoked too much. I have limited my hopes today to becoming hydrated.

Memory Lane is not aptly named.

In my case, "Lane" carries too much of an air of quaintness and small-towny quiet. Memory Lane is a street in which kids can play ball without worrying for being run over. I guess because any cars that venture down that apple tree-lined stretch require a hand crank to start and may be delivering blocks of much-needed ice. Where my memories reside, there are four full lanes, a double yellow line (not for crossing), and room enough along the curbs to park and or ride a bicycle. And not one of those bicycles with the one really large wheel. Memory Lane, for me, is huge and heavily trafficked, and I've received many citations there, both for cruising and for loitering.

I am staying at my little sister's home in San Diego. She and her boyfriend recently moved into a very nice place in Carmel Mountain Ranch. I used to live in an apartment nearby, so this visit is filled with familiarity, right down to the smell of a September morning. It's cool out. The grass and shrubs are covered in beads of dew. In the shade, it feels like autumn. And in the sun it feels like spring.

I used to live here. I used to go running just down the road. I used to smell jasmine and eucalyptus in the shade, and I used to like it when the mist from the sprinklers caught me in the face. I used to wake up earlier than I intended and wonder how the days would go. I used to manufacture reasons to do just about anything for fear of sitting still.

Five years ago, when September 11 didn't yet have a name of its own, the air was a lot like this. The sun a lot like this. I fully believe in global warming, but you can't always feel climate change from one year to the next. It seems like this morning is just like the other September mornings that found me awake very early and heavy with the looking back. That was the last September 11 I lived in this city and in this neighborhood. Every subsequent anniversary, I have been elsewhere, except for one when I was here, but in the capacity of a visitor. I even went to a baseball game that time. And the Padres even won.

This is always the time of year I stumble back into old messes. There are milestones on previous calendar pages. Proximal moments with like elements. The spans between them converging as the point of looking back grows further from them and the idea of a beginning loses its meaning. I have always felt this way. I have never felt this way. I am assuming a brand of feeling that may never have been. Mostly, I just know that there are times when I have been unhappy and there are times when I have been reluctant to admit that I was not unhappy, and neither of them felt as foreign as the times when I was sure everything was wonderful, and unhappy was only worth understanding for the sake of its antonym.

Saturday night, I noticed people wearing sweaters, and I was thrilled. I celebrate the return of fall weather. And all the melancholy it brings. I have needed a break from the heat.

 

Nothing is awful. Nor is anything awesome.

After a week of sequestration and a night of mistrust, I drove to San Diego this morning to spend some time with my family. It was very family-ish and good. My dad gave me sincere hugs and said he loved me, and he smelled very nice like he always does. Beulah showed me the slide show she made in memory of Tasha, and we cried together over it. Sarah and Beulah and I went swimming, and Audrey came with us, and everyone delighted in what a funny little goofball she is. Especially when riding around on a kickboard. I experimented with my Canon 30D and took extraordinary pleasure in selective focus. And my mom seemed delighted to have her three girls all together in the same room. She taught us to make jiaozi (I'm pretty sure Sarah already knew how). And she congratulated us when the dumplings were pretty and Chinese-looking. And she clucked gently when they weren't. When we ate them, Beulah was in charge of the background music, and she decided to play a lot of Beach Boys songs. Somehow, the topic of my historically non-working digestive system came up. While we were eating. And Beulah delighted in making fun of me by replacing Beach Boys lyrics with words about poop wherever possible. I helped. I'm a good sport, and I know a lot of words. But I couldn't help but wonder why it's okay for us to talk about this at the dinner table when no one in the family seems to be able to stand a photograph of me with my dog's tongue touching my mouth. My mom also minds a great deal when I tease her about her garage sale and estate sale "findings." She showed me an impressive lambswool rug she bought for five dollars, and I said, "Someone probably died on it." And she boiled our handmade jiaozi tonight in a really huge Calphalon pot she got for forty dollars. I said, "I'll bet some old people used to boil their dentures in it. And they're dead now." Those little japes really get under her skin. But sing a Beach Boys song with the bass line replaced with repetition of the word "bowel," and I guess you're fine. Maybe she would have minded if company had been there. Or maybe she was just riding out the high of having been proud of us. I think it really meant something to her that her three daughters were helping her make dumplings. I heard her announcing it to her sister-in-law on the telephone as we were finishing up. And she mentioned wanting to make a tradition of this. I'm for it. I love jiaozi. And I love knowing how to make those perky little dumplings with my own two hands.