Missives From Obscurity

My Internet Hook-Up

2010-09-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

The other day on Facebook I posted that I had just participated in the wackiest thing I had ever participated in and was still unable to pick myself up off the floor from laughing so hard. One of my Facebook friends is frantic to know what happened, so to you, Dan K., this goes out to help you just calm the heck down! Also, I have another friend who gently chastised me recently for not updating my blog, thus keeping her in the dark about what’s been going on in my life. So, Laura S., this goes out to you, as well!

And now:

My Internet Hook-Up

By Joe Lopez

There is something about me that most people who know me don’t know about me. It isn’t some horrible, dark secret full of shame and self loathing. I think 2% of my friends know about it. Or… maybe it’s only two of my friends. I’ve never discussed it with my family, though if this information could be used for maximum shock value, I’d let them in on it in a heartbeat. I suspect that every one of my gay male friends, upon disclosure, would only nod, shrug and, if they didn’t move on to an equally earth-shattering topic like the weather or what’s for lunch, would just need to know a couple of details (Was it hot? Was he hot? What site is this so I can check out his profile?) before admitting that they, too, have done it and by the way… who hasn’t? The secret’s no big deal. It just doesn’t often come up, say, at the PTA meeting or with your coworkers around the Friday afternoon pot luck or in the middle of a yoga class (“Exhale, come into Downward Facing Dog and oh, by the way, did you know…”).

I have, on occasion, had internet sex.

Okay, well, “on occasion”… it’s been twice. Three times if you count that time my friend (let’s call him “Dirk”) Dirk shared a video of himself doing a naughty dance in front of his video cam.

Now, if you feel yourself blushing or getting all flustered, first of all remember that your heart medication is in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and also… jeez, join the 21st century! Internet sex is very now, very progressive. Even, according to various media outlets at various times when they feel that parents need a jolt of fear struck into their hearts, your teenage children are doing it. Your 14 year old son is doing it right now. Why do you think he takes his laptop into the bathroom? He ain’t reading The Saturday Evening Post in there!

Most often, my internet sex activity basically amounts to internet heavy petting. A guy starts an IM session, we exchange stupid, awkward banter like “Hey. What’s up? You’re cute / sexy / hot” until we finally find our way to the inevitable “I’m so horny,” which usually feels to me like someone’s just unwrapped a dead fish and slapped it down on the table. Now, why would you wanna go and do that? We were having a great conversation, swapping scintillating banalities and you pull that thing out of your virtual pants.

But lately, because I’m on a mad, desperate search for my next boyfriend, I’ve been more agreeable to indulging in the stupid banter, even up to and beyond the dead fish moment. In fact, my dead fish moment has even been pushed back to the point when they ask me to send them naked pictures of myself. I always apologize and claim that I don’t have any, sorry, I’m just too proper to have done that, and I always punctuate the sentence with :( (even though I totally have naked pictures of myself. Who doesn’t these days?). I’m so amenable to playing the internet dating game lately that I recently, even without a cam on my own computer, got some guy off, typing how hot he was, how hard I was and yeah, I totally came, too, dude, ah yeah, man, all the while remaining fully clothed, zipped all the way up, chowing down on a handful of those mini cinnamon rolls from Costco and playing a game of Chess Titans in another Microsoft window.

So I know the game. I even know the rules of the game and have opted to play. Which is why the exchange I partook in on Monday night caught me so off guard and why, three days later, I find myself caught up in inappropriately timed giggling fits over what happened. It was so unexpected, and weird and wacky. And I’ll warn you, dear reader, right now: nothing about what follows is a euphemism.

On Monday morning, I was in front of my computer doing some administrative work for my Purple Cat Yoga business (oh yeah, if you didn’t know because it’s been a year since I updated my blog, I totally started my own LLC called Purple Cat Yoga and I’m busy with putting email lists together, marketing strategies, ordering business cards and… but… I digress) and had decided to stay logged on to Facebook and Connexion.org (in case any MUST READ status changes broke out on Facebook, or any cute guys with black hair and blue eyes named Clark Kent wanted to IM me on Connexion). I’m working away, listening to playlists on Windows Media Player, when a Connexion chat window opens up. It’s from Jack (not his real name, in order to protect the innocent… and the embarrassed), and he’s lobbed the ubiquitous “Hey. What’s up?” onto the playing field.

Ah. The game is afoot.

We swap a couple of scintillating banalities, but my curiosity is peaked because he starts to sprinkle multi-syllabic words into the exchange. He asks questions that make it evident he’s read my profile (he can both read and comprehend the written word! Huzzah!). And so far, he seems interested in me for my mind. After ten minutes of back and forth, there hasn’t even been the slightest scent of any dead fish. He asks me about being a yoga instructor and he’s appreciably titillated by the notion of teaching naked yoga. He asks the usual question about erections and makes the standard self-effacing comments about his physical limitations, and then I ask him about his profession. And it’s right here where the wonderfully wacky weirdness begins.

He tells me that he’s not as passionate about his job as I am about mine. Which is weird, because his profile says he’s an actor (we’re not at the wacky part yet), and to be an actor, particularly a working actor, I always assume there must be some passion involved in that. So I ask him about his job. He’s currently appearing in a show with a children’s theater group (still not at the wacky part) that’s touring around. He indicates that the show is really nothing more to him than a paycheck, and I ask him what his role is (wait for it…). He tells me that he’s the guy in the show who takes a pie in the face. His job involves taking a pie in the face twice in every show he does, once at the end of act one, and once later in the show, which is performed at least twice per day. The awesomeness of this bit of information is, I think, unmatched, because I have never met anyone online or in person who’s job description involves the phrase “take pie in face”. WACKY!

It is one of those gems of information you come across from time to time in life as you meet new people that make you think “I have, honestly, never heard that come out of anyone’s mouth (or keyboard) ever before.” And it’s a delightful surprise! It totally rates up there with the guy with whom I was scheduling a time to meet who told me he couldn’t meet on one particular occasion because his mom’s llama was sick, and he had to wait for the vet. I laughed when I heard that. Not because the poor llama was sick, but because how often do you hear that? “My mom’s llama.”

So I tell Jack that this is totally cracking me up (lots of “LOL!” started to pepper my end of the conversation), his job description. He tells me he’s glad his humiliation is so entertaining for me and I admit that yes, yes it is. We talk about the show and how the pies are real pies (banana cream) purchased from a local bakery with maximum splat potential in mind, and that every pie he takes to the face is delivered with great gusto by the actor in the role opposite him, to the great delight and screaming laughter of the 5-10 year old target audience.

In that way of certain topics of conversation (the atrocity of minivan owners’ driving habits, who makes the better Star Trek starship captain, your undying lust for the entire male cast of True Blood) Jack and I find ourselves running with the pie-in-the-face ball, unable to let it go. We start to delve into all the permutations of this staged event, the slapstick history of it, how it’s used in the show as Jack’s character’s comeuppance for being annoying, the humiliation of it, the hilarity of the humiliation of it. I keep giggling and laughing out loud, literally and in print (LOL!) because this has got to be one of the most absurdist conversations I’ve ever had (barring those years of working in bookstores, discussing with customers that one book they’re looking for that they don’t know the title of, the author of, the subject of, but they know it’s got a blue cover with a man on it). I get the sense from Jack that he’s both bemused and highly amused that I’m so thoroughly entertained by the fact that he has to take a pie in the face so often. He says to me that he wishes he could videotape it for me so that I could just watch it over and over again on a loop. Unfortunately, he types with regret, he’s not allowed to film the production. Jack suggests that he could, he supposes, film it with his cam at home.

And right here is where we unwittingly begin to fashion the Frankenstein’s monster of wackiness that we eventually ended up with.

Because when he suggests this, in my mind I thought of all those pictures posted on the internet of cute guys in front of their bathroom mirrors, camera phone in one hand, their other hand lifting their shirts to show off their abs, or pulling their pants down just enough to show off that defined line from their hips down toward their pubic hair, or to just go for the gold and grab onto their erection. And the idea that Jack might post such a picture, substituting his sex appeal in the free hand with a banana cream pie knocked me out of my seat and made me ROTFLMAO. Furthermore, the thought of him filming it, filming himself giving the camera the usual pouting and sighing and bouncing eyebrows, “hey there, how you doing?” and then, instead of jerking off he reveals the banana cream pie and his climax isn’t a huge spurt of semen… it’s doing a face plant into the banana cream pie! This cracked me up no end! When I typed all this into the IM screen, Jack was taken aback. “I wasn’t thinking of doing it myself,” he types to me. “I meant having someone do it to me, like in the show.” But, he has to admit to me, that thought of pieing himself in the face is also hilarious. And then he has to log off, and I need to log off, but before we go, we make a date for later that night. He says he’ll meet me back here at Connexion later. When he will actually do it, pie himself in the face, because I double dog dared him to do it.

All through the rest of Monday I giggled about this, thereby starting this process still going on of giggling at inappropriate times. Because I just can’t believe I made a date to watch a guy on his computer cam push a banana cream pie into his face. Later that night, after teaching a yoga class, out at dinner with some of the guys from class, I start giggling uncontrollably. Luckily, someone at the table had just said something funny, but it triggered the thought of this date I’d set and I couldn’t stop laughing. I had another bout of the giggles on the way home. I’d forgotten about this date for a while, talking about other things at dinner, and then on the way home, driving along I-25, I suddenly burst into laughter when I remembered I had an internet hook up that night. Yeah, baby, to watch a cute guy do a face plant into a pie. That’s so hot.

When I got home, I logged on to Connexion and there was Jack, waiting for me. After a bit of hemming and hawing to get me signed in to Yahoo to better view his cam, there he was, in a video feed that was a bit choppy, but there he was, live. Because my computer isn’t set up with video and audio (so? I have naked pictures of myself and I’ve had internet sex… I can’t keep up with every trend!), we swapped phone numbers so that he could hear my laughter when what we were both here for happened.

“So,” he says over the phone.

“So,” I reply. “Is the pie there?”

“The pie is here,” he says, and in the video he holds it up to the camera so I can see it. Oh, it’s a big one! I didn’t expect it to be so big. It’s even in a real pie tin. “So, how do you want to do this?” Jack asks me. “Should I just go for it, or should we chat a little first?”

“Oh,” I tell Jack, “we should chat a little bit first because when you go for it, you’re gonna be a mess.” And I’m off on a fit of the giggles because there should be an erect penis somehow involved in this scenario, but there’s not, and there’s not even going to be, and for God’s sake, he ACTUALLY went out and bought a banana cream pie!

Which he sets down out of camera view for now. We share some polite conversation. He asks how my yoga class went. We cover some of the same ground we covered earlier in the day, except now I get inflection and I can hear him laugh. He delivers his jokes and sense of humor in a dry way. It’s sort of unfair that I get to both see and hear him as he moves in little jerks in the cam window in the middle of my screen, while he only gets to hear me. But the evening is wearing on and he’s on the east coast and the time comes when we either need to do this thing, or we need to sign off. So we do this thing.

“Are you ready?” he asks me. “Are you?” I ask back, because after all, he’s the one who’s about to make a complete mess out of himself. He says “Yeah” and the banana cream pie rises back into view. Jack looks at the pie and keeps repeating “I can’t believe I’m about to do this. I really can’t believe I’m about to do it.” I start egging him on, though. “You can do it. Go on. Just… do it. Do it like pulling off a band-aid, all in one quick motion.”

And then he does it!

So… he uses his right hand to do it. The pie is in his hand and then in one video feed jerk, his hand is up to his face, with the pie tin between his hand and his face. In another video cam jerk, the pie is lowered and Jack… is a complete mess! Pieces of pie crust are stuck to his face. Pie filling is in his hair. There’s a ring of whipped cream around his pie-splattered head. All I can hear over the phone is him moaning over and over “Oh man, oh, oh, oh my God, oh man.” And I’m … LAUGHING!!! This is fucking hilarious! It’s absurd and weird and wacky and this man needs to be my best friend forever RIGHT NOW! In so many ways this has endeared him to me. And in so many ways this way trumps any dick shot any day. Any guy can whip out his dick and show it to you. Not every guy’s willing to whip out a pie and shove it into his own face for you.

Jack’s still groaning in disbelief or revulsion or shock, perhaps at how low he has fallen for the sake of his art, or for the sake of impressing a new guy. What a pie whore he is! Or maybe the moaning is about the mess he’s gonna have to clean up now. He says to me “Oh my God, there’s pie all over the floor. Oh man, I really went for it. I really shoved it into my face just like it gets shoved in my face in the show.” And he’s endeared to me a little more because he was willing to make the sacrifice and deliver the blow with the same force as he meets in each performance! What a guy! Jack looks at the pie plate in his hand and says “There’s still pie left. Should I do it again? Do you want me to do it again?”

Are you kidding? Does Oliver Twist want more gruel? Do Lesbians show up to the second date with a U-Haul? Do the Village People want me in the navy? OF COURSE I want Jack to do it again! AND HE DOES!!! For a moment pie completely obliterates his face, and then crust and filling slip to the unseen floor, slowly revealing Jack’s huge smile and blinking eyes.

This has been the best internet hook up ever. Jack says he’s gonna go take a shower and clean up. I laugh some more and tell him that if he’s ever in Colorado, I totally owe him a dinner, at least, for this evening’s entertainment. He cracks that he’ll skip dessert at that dinner. We say goodnight and sign off. It’s one o’clock in the morning I can now go to bed, completely satisfied.

The End.

So, to you, Dan, I hope that your burning curiosity has been sated and that it was well worth the wait.

And to you, Laura, now you’ve been updated on what I’ve been doing with my life.

My Summer Vacation

2009-08-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

What I Did This Summer

An Essay

By Joe Lopez

This summer I watched the dissolution of my marriage tear apart everything around it like a tornado sucking up the trailer park of my life, leaving behind scattered jagged debris and a toilet leaning drunkenly atop a pile of rubble that used to be the post office. But I was brave. And stoic. I thanked God that I was alive and had my health. I sought meaning and learning out of the experience and tried to be all Dr. Phil and Eckhart Tolle and Yoda about the whole ordeal and I moved in with my brother and niece into their just-off-the-golf-course suburban sanctuary. I swam at the clubhouse pool. I took long and longer bike rides on the paths through Open Spaces between nearby cities. If the green spaces between Westminster and Broomfield, Colorado can be considered exotic, then this summer I visited exotic locales. I saw more prairie dogs this summer than I have ever seen in my whole life. Rabbits, too. Road kill, too. My PTSD from the breakup snuck up on me and I had a couple of emotional outbursts. During one, I broke the chair I used with my writing desk. During another, I demolished the paper tray I had in my bedroom. But what are those losses compared to a broken heart, a broken, bleeding soul? I got melodramatic this summer.

I moped and whined about my unemployment and my broken relationship. I regressed 18 years and rediscovered the agony and the ecstasy of masturbating desperately, silently in my room behind closed doors so that the family wouldn’t know. I moped in front of the computer while I searched for jobs I didn’t want and jobs I totally wanted for which I was wholly unqualified. I discovered the joy of Facebook quizzes and soon thereafter discovered the let-down of being bored by Facebook quizzes. I watched the entire cast of Six Feet Under die and I wept openly and then moped and wore a lot of black listening to the song at the end of the final episode on repeat for hour upon hour – and I’m listening to it still.

I sought solace in yoga classes and found solace in the surrender of yin yoga, the balance of hand stands and the bare chest of the hot little stud muffin in my Thursday night classes. I thought about dating and filled out a bunch of personals profiles online but then realized there was no way in hell I was emotionally ready for putting up with other guys’ little quirks. I thought about committing suicide but couldn’t figure out which was the best method to carry it out. I thought about going back to church and finding God but ha ha ha… whatever. I applied for unemployment benefits and my spirits soared at the prospect of unemployment benefits kicking in some relief from my financial ruin, but the unemployment benefits department of Colorado had other ideas about that. They balked at paying me because I quit one job of my own volition, the job that fired me refuted my claim of being fired, I didn’t look for enough work one week, I didn’t fill out the right form on the right day during the right weather pattern, I smelled funny, I didn’t eat enough fiber, I didn’t wash with the right detergent, I drank too much caffeine, I ate too much fat, I was Mexican. I have still not received one red cent from fucking unemployment benefits. I flipped off every letter I received from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

I moped. I drowned my sorrows in downloading hot naked pictures of men off the internet and getting lost in Angela’s angst on My So Called Life. I stayed up until 3 in the morning playing Zombie Fluxx at I-Hop with Diane and chatting with Dean online. I wrote exhaustive poems about English moors, vampires, black roses and sad clowns making pancakes for naked girls under tables in flats overlooking the Champs Elysees. I burned all the poems.

I went to the mountains and felt at one with the trees and the wind, the rabbits and the potential elk and the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. I went to the zoo and reached oneness with the wolf and the slow lori, the peacock mother and her chick, and the howler monkey scratching its butt while hanging on the fence in front of its habitat, showing its privates to the crowd. I ate red meat at barbecues like a true blue, redneck, heterosexual, patriotic American male. I grunted and got sarcastic. I shook my groove thing at Pridefest in Denver like a true blue, sequin-striped, homosexual, patriotic American male. I giggled and got sarcastic. I disciplined my self-proclaimed “angry boy” four year old nephew and garnered his nascent resentment and desire for revenge, sweet, sweet revenge against the oppressive adult regime. After three months of unemployed moping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally landed a temp data entry job and now get paid $12 an hour to mope, wail and gnash my teeth in front of a computer doing soul crushing, mind numbing tedium.

Heading home on my bike one night along a lonely country road in the serene respite after the burst of a Colorado summer downpour, I hit a snake in the road. I was crushed. But not as crushed as the snake writhing in agony in the gutter. I stood over its poor body twisting and rasping against the pavement at the side of the road and thought “This is exactly the state of my life right now.”

And that’s what I did this summer.

What I Missed On Career Day

2009-08-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

The question of what career I want to pursue feels like being nine years old, standing on the rock that overhangs the local swimming hole, wet from swimming down below, shivering in wet trunks, wet hair hanging in your eyes, towel clutched around your shoulders. You’re on the verge of running full bore out along the rock to leap off the end of it but… you can’t. You just… can’t. In spite of everyone else having done it, your friends and the older kids leaving you behind, taking the leap and they’re all in the water below, splashing each other and laughing that high pitched laugh that characterizes this as the best time of their lives ever. Some of them stripped their swimsuits off and leapt naked, daring, unselfconscious and you want to join them. Because they’re calling your name and they’re starting to mock you. But your chest is tight and you’re on the verge of tears because you just can’t unhitch your feet from this spot and you clutch your towel like something that flimsy could give you the strength to just do it or the strength to be satisfied staying right where you are. You remain on the verge of taking that leap. You saw the other kids do it, you can hear that none of them died. None of them are broken or bleeding or screaming in agony. You can almost taste the leap into midair and be, for a few seconds, free-falling, in flight, suspended in a moment of pure adrenaline until you smack into the cool water and sink for a few seconds in a world where you’re alone in silence with your joy and the electricity zigzagging through your chest, groin, legs, and throat until you break through the surface, back into summer heat and surrounded by the cheers and back smacking fraternity of those who proceeded you. And maybe you’re even naked.

You know it would be sweet and make the moment of hesitation and fear right before you jumped so insignificant as to be forgotten entirely. You could accept that moment and love and forgive yourself your hesitation. But you remain in that moment, fixed, shivering and unable to fathom what, precisely, is keeping you here. And part of you longs for one of the older kids, one of the teenagers, to put his strong arm around your shoulders and tell you that it’s okay if you don’t jump because it is scary. It scared him, too, and he couldn’t do it until he was 12. But no one’s coming back up to offer any advice or consolation. Even if they did, you wouldn’t feel better because the fact would remain that you humiliated yourself in front of everyone by not being able to do it. And you’re not sure how you’ll face everyone on the way home because they’ll all seem wiser and more mature because of the code they cracked and the knowledge they have that you don’t seem to be able to tap into. And as you walk home, no one will explain it to you because to all of them it was so self evident how to run, leap and go for a swim. They wouldn’t even know where to begin to instruct you on how to do it yourself because they can’t even conceive of not being able to do it because for them there is no piece missing that, once it fell into place, would’ve propelled you out over the edge of the rock.

Back In Kansas From The Emerald City

2009-07-11T19:17:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t sleep at all Thursday night. I woke up out of one of those dreams that leaves you wondering where dream ends and reality begins. Then I couldn’t just drift back to sleep. I had too much music, too many snatches of dialogue from DVD’s I’d watched earlier that evening, and too many lists of niggling concerns that have peppered my emotional landscape since arriving in Colorado running through my head, whispering in the dark. And the dream I had gave the empty, dark house around me the feel that someone was downstairs, standing against the light of a window where I would realize that the shadow was human shaped just before I felt his knife slide elegantly and fatally into my gut. So I rolled over and cuddled Figaro, who was asleep at the foot of my bed. But listening to his contented purring didn’t settle my buzzing brain or hyped up body.

So at 2 o’clock in the morning, I got up. I got online, thinking that would bore me enough to put me back to sleep, but after an hour of checking email and reading blogs, I still couldn’t shut down. The house still felt invaded. There were chores to be done. My money’s running out and unemployment benefits aren’t kicking in as soon as I’d like them to. I wanted to have someone in bed with me to kiss, arouse and nuzzle against to breath in his scent and have him murmur assurances against my neck. And there was a full moon in the sky, beckoning me to be out in the open night air.

I got dressed and grabbed my keys. I got in my car and drove under the full moon’s guidance across country roads that weave around and avoid the cities I live near now: Erie, Longmont, and Boulder. I kept to the dark. I put the same few slow, quiet, sad, but energizing songs on repeat on my CD player, songs that provide the perfect accompaniment to driving on empty highways under clear, starry skies.

I drove through all the ghosts of myself haunting the Boulder county landscape. I considered the juxtaposition of my present self and them and how they never felt truly a part of the dominant Colorado culture (I’ve never been one for hay, sports and sweatshirts with cross-stitched kittens emblazoned across the chest). So my present self hadn’t wanted to come back here. But I did it for love. I did it for commitments I vowed to at an altar in a church in Denver in front of family and friends in a ceremony that continued to live in my heart until its final death by fire in anger at the end of April. I came back for noble reasons. But I didn’t want to. Because of ghosts I wanted to keep buried so that they didn’t undermine who I’d become in Seattle, because Joe in Seattle was all geeked out super witty faggot yoga boy. Joe in Seattle was cool.

As I drove, I looked all those ghosts face to face. Joe sneaking out of the house on summer nights like this one to bike to the local public swimming pool to hop the fence for skinny-dipping. Joe when I wrote prayers to the Virgin Mary in my diary to lend me the strength to resist masturbating for at least one week. Mary and I would start out small and work up gradually to complete abstinence purity. I remembered being freaked out the first time I ejaculated during masturbation. I immediately thought it was some kind of sexual disease. Or like I broke my dick. Oh my God! Pus is coming out of my dick! I had no idea what was happening because I grew up in a family that didn’t talk about these things.

I thought about the first boy I ever fell in love with in high school, even before I had the vocabulary to identify myself as queer. I still remember how he smelled kind of like fresh laundry and hair gel. I thought about my infatuation with a coworker whose eyes were the color of mint chocolate-chip ice cream when they add coloring to make it green. I thought about men I’d dated. Eric, who remains the most beautiful man I dated. Preston who was sweet and uncomplicated and had the biggest dick I’ve ever had the pleasure of trying to go down on. And the man I committed to, Jim, who in spite of everything I still love, even though he’s never read a word of this blog.

I have become obsessed with this one particular song, so I played it on repeat more than any other song as I drove. It’s quiet. It’s sad, about hurting and longing. It played over the final sequence of the series finale of Six Feet Under which made me cry like I’ve never cried for any series finale. Not even Buffy, if Buffy had ended at the fifth season. I think this song is the perfect accompaniment to driving. Maybe because it played over images of Claire Fisher leaving L.A. in her new Prius and heading east. Which is sort of what I did, headed east, leaving Seattle for Denver. It’s a moment, a decision I’ve relived and regretted and wished I could take back so many times. When the car was repossessed, when my temp agency fudged my pay, when my temp assignment bombarded us new employees with negative reinforcement, when Jim couldn’t fit me into his schedule and didn’t include me in skiing plans, weekends in the mountains, and a vacation in Mexico when people invited him to those excursions, when the drunk driver hit us head on going the wrong way down a one-way street. But I cannot ever undo the moment when I committed to moving back to Denver. The moment, like Nate tells Claire at the end of Six Feet Under, was gone even as it started.

Even so, as I drove, I thought about all that has been lost. I’ve heard that 2009, numeralogically or astrologically or according to the Mayan calendar or something, is a year of completion, a time when cycles complete to make way for new things to manifest. I have had much in the first nine months of being back in Colorado come to an end. My life in Seattle. My high paying job in Seattle. I came here and saw the dissolution, which, admittedly, was probably a long time coming, of my fifteen year marriage. In December, I put my nose behind Savannah’s ears, breathed in her scent and kissed her there for the last time before ending her life and leaving her weary little body on the vet’s stainless steel table. That moment was also one of the last moments of emotional intimacy that Jim and I shared.

As I turned my car west, toward the mountains, I reflected on how many experiences have all built on one another to bring me to this moment, to another late night, aimless drive around Boulder county. All the school assignments, family fights, holidays, school field trips, high school dances, speech team meets, college all-nighters, birthday parties, broken hearts, bookstore jobs, bank jobs (jobs at banks… not robbing banks), the flirting that went right over my head, moves from so many apartments, vacations, the sexual discoveries I wanted to revisit and perfect, the sexual discoveries I never wanted to mention ever again, poems and short stories and, so far, incomplete novels, petty arguments, joyous triumphs, endings and beginnings, all the memories racing along the night highway with me, bringing me up to the present uncertainties.

Sia’s “Breathe Me” starts over yet again. I almost ran over a rabbit as it darted into the street. I passed a deer with large antlers casually walking along the sidewalk outside one of north Boulder’s neighborhoods. The full moon became haloed as hazy clouds passed in front of it, and the eastern sky began to lighten. After an hour of driving, I turned the car east, back toward home. I found no answers. I don’t know when the next job will come through. The dishes still needed to be done. The laundry still needed to be folded and ironed. The cat litter still needed to be scooped out. I still didn’t know if these things constituted living a full life. I still wasn’t sure if all that preceded me to the moment driving back to Erie, Colorado constitutes living a life well and fully. Is it a good legacy? Have I been a positive impact in the lives I’ve touched and will I be remembered even when those people who remember me are themselves no longer in living memory?

As I pointed the car east along Jay Road, it occurred to me why Claire had to go east. Because east is where new days begin. Facing the dawning of a new day, my perspective sort of cracked open and I realized that while I’ve lost a lot, while I’ve lost some things by which I defined myself, the loss of those things has made me aware of the things I retain. I retain a body capable of moving gracefully (sometimes not so gracefully, and the result is always hilarious then) from one yoga pose to the next. I retain a creative force capable of coming up with, at the very least, and if I do say so myself, hilarious Tweets, text messages and chats that make other people laugh. I have friends coming back into my life whose absence I didn’t fully realize I’d felt so keenly and friends who never left. I have family that, in spite of their own difficulties, have sheltered, fed and nurtured me.

So by the time I got home at 4:38 a.m., I had dispelled the specters in the house. I was greeted with the exuberance of two cats who were all excited that their human was up with them for their early, early morning run-around-the-house-all-crazy time. And my own mind had come to some peace with the realization that everything I’ve lost and everything I have has quite possibly, as a card my aunt recently sent me says, set me on my own path; all I have to do is step boldly in the direction of what feels right and meet whatever this new dawning will bring.

Sky

2009-01-15T14:56:00.000-08:00

There is one thing I like about Colorado: the expanse of sky that you can see. Mile after unobstructed mile of blue scudded with clouds like ships at leisure slowly getting wherever, because the destination isn’t as important as the going. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a sunny, clear day. Some of my favorite moments in Colorado have been watching storm systems rumble across the great, dark expanse of sky, running rain tendrils across the plains like the grey lace skirts of Victorian girls hesitant about listening in at the keyhole. In Seattle, the sky always felt so close or hemmed in by trees, buildings and hills. But here in Colorado, the sky is vast.

I mention this little tidbit because I’ve been hard pressed to find the positive since moving here in August.

I left a very dull but highly lucrative job in the bustling, thriving core of a city with immediate access by foot, bus or bike to arts, culture, multi-ethnic foods and neighborhoods, yoga classes, universities and some of the most beautiful, green, fern- and tree-rich natural areas within city limits I’ve ever seen. I traded down for a great deal of anxiety over procuring shit temp assignments through a half witted temp agency for miniscule wages the like of which I haven’t earned since 1998 with companies run by middle management like sterile, passive-aggressive nuns harping on kindergarteners about rules of conduct that were outmoded 70 years ago. No water at your desk, indeed! I traded down for living in the farthest flung, Cuesta Verde Estates reaches of suburban Denver out here on the eastern plains with the rabbits, warehouse sized, generically Christian churches with announcement board New Year’s platitudes like “Resolve to let the Lord solve your problems”, strip malls, no Trader Joe’s anywhere at all, in the entire bloody damn state, at least one hour and two forms of public transport away from yoga classes, a decent haircut, bookstores, independent movie theaters, the symphony, the opera, museums and comic book stores. Given this radical change in lifestyle, I spent much of the last four months of 2008 in a black and red wasp-buzzy cloud of depression, anger and resentment. Jim tried to goad me out of it by asking me what was positive about being here. Weren’t the mountains beautiful? Wasn’t it nice to be close to family? Hadn’t we made a nice home in the condo we’re renting from my brother? But I would have none of it and found ways to undermine all of Jim’s positives that he liked about living in Colorado.

Not the most productive way to live. So as the new year turned, after spending time back in Seattle and realizing that my time there is, for now, anyway, over and there’s no way to turn back, I resolved to find the positive about living in Colorado. The sky here is a positive, the expansive, broad blue of it, the expansive, multi-moods of it. That’s something I like about living here.

Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure (In Geek-o-Scope SurroundSound!)(Part Four)

2008-05-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

Previously, on Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure:

“I really got my geek on… at the Emerald city Comicon. On Saturday morning, May 10th… Oh my God! So… many… geeks!... I make a bee line over to Julie Benz’s line… Oh yeah… she wants me! She totally wants me… There he is… Wil Wheaton, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher… I shake hands with Wil and tell him that it’s a pleasure meeting him and I thank him for the book and the autograph… I’m on a high for at least the next four hours… The false line reaction is a phenomenon whereby a small group of assembled human beings is assumed by subsequently arriving human beings to constitute a formal line… Wil Wheaton… read from his book The Happiest Days of Our Lives… it was already three in the afternoon and the last time I’d had anything to eat was at eight that morning… I decided I’d best be leaving to head home for dinner.

And now, the conclusion of Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure:

I didn’t sleep very well that night. I was on stimulus overload. Lots of dreams about activity, activity, activity. And something about Whoopi Goldberg riding a lawn mower through the frosting of a giant wedding cake. But I woke up at four the next morning, unable to get back to sleep because my mind was just churning over and over my meetings with Wil Wheaton and Julie Benz and Gigi Edgley and being so excited because I was going to repeat it all again on Sunday! I got up and wrote for an hour and finally went back to bed to snatch some more sleep before I needed to get up to meet Kat for breakfast at 9:30.

Kat and I met at CJ’s in downtown Seattle. It’s good food for reasonable prices and wildly popular, especially on Sunday… the same Sunday that’s also Mother’s Day. But, surprisingly, we get seated right away. I want something lighter, so I order the bagel and lox, which was the exactly perfect thing to get. I filled Kat in on all the yippee moments from the previous day and after breakfast, we headed over to the Convention Center for day two of the Emerald City Comicon.

The atmosphere on Sunday morning is decidedly lower key. As we enter the sales floor area, I notice that the excitement’s somewhat abated. The noise level definitely is. There are fewer people today. Lines are shorter. The long lines that, coupled with his incredible good looks, intimidated me away from Jamie Bamber’s booth yesterday, are completely gone. So after a hem and a haw, I announce to Kat that I am going to go get Jamie Bamber’s autograph.

I buy one of his pictures and then Kat and I are standing before the man himself. Kat tells Jamie that she and he have actually met before, that he gave her an MP3 player. Jamie asks where that was and Kat tells him it was at the screening of Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which was about six months before here in Seattle. There was a drawing at the screening and Jamie Bamber, along with his co-star in the episode, Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen, made a surprise appearance to hand out prizes for random drawings, like the Halo 3 decorated Zune that Jamie gave to Kat. I was so excited. He touched Kat’s shoulder. I touched Kat’s shoulder after that. Kat was a little weirded out by my behavior. And then later that evening, when Jamie Bamber was standing outside the theater, talking to fans, I stood around to meet him, but chickened out when I realized “What am I going to say to this hot, hot guy that everyone else isn’t already saying to him? I’ll just look at him from here and… stop staring! Stop staring! I wonder how he defines ‘stalker’.” So I moved off, acquired a tiny Cylon, and felt that I’d missed my chance to talk to a hot hunk.

But now I’m standing right in front of him, as Kat and he are talking, and he’s a little unshaven and he’s speaking in his native English accent and I have a split-second flash fantasy of taking his stubbled chin in my hand and drawing him in to kiss him. But those kinds of naughty sweaty feelings need to be shoved back down because I can’t disrespect him while I’m standing right in front of him by objectifying his hot body! I’m behaving! I’m behaving! He’s talking about being given an Xbox but not having played it very much. He played a golf game on it but got bored because he’d rather be playing golf in real life. He asks us what there is to do in Seattle and I blather something about “You could go see the Space Needle!” Oh, Jesus Christ, no, no! Don’t speak! You only sound like a big dork! And you trigger the re-emergence above your head of the blinking neon sign with the arrow pointing down at you that says “Huge fucking dork!” But I keep talking and say he could also possibly go to the Icon Grill for dinner. He asks why they call in the Icon Grill and I have to admit… I have no idea. He says that he ate heavy the night before, paid $140 for steak dinner for himself and then felt sordid about it later.

Jamie Bamber, unshaven, saying “sordid” with that accent… the sweaty naughty feelings are back!

He signs the picture I chose and we thank him and tell him it’s been a pleasure meeting him. I touched Jamie Bamber. I shook his hand. This hand, this one typing this sentence right now. This hand touched Jamie Bamber. And I haven’t washed it since. I just really don’t have enough Englishmen in my life. I don’t often enough get to hear words finessed with an English accent like “sordid” and “purple”. As Kat and I walk away from Jamie Bamber’s booth, I glance at the picture he signed. “To Joe, Jamie Bamber.” No little heart with dashes on either side.

But yeah, he wants me… he totally wants me.

While we talk about things geeks talk about, Kat and I mosey around the sales floor. I don’t have anything in particular I need to see, but this is Kat’s first day here at the Comicon, so I wander about with her. We roam through booths, around the artists’ tables, past the gaming tables (geeks!), and end up, finally, back in front of Gigi Edgley’s booth. It’s Kat’s turn to meet her.

Kat introduces herself to Gigi, and Gigi also shakes my hand again. This is what I love about Gigi Edgley… she’s very gracious and meets your eyes and smiles and is very enthusiastic about meeting her fans. And once again, Gigi Edgley geeks out about Farscape with a couple of fans. While she signs a still of her as Chiana for Kat, I ask her if she came up with Chiana’s movement in the show, or if that was dictated to her. And Gigi launches into a long explanation about how she did come up with the movements for Chiana. She tells Kat and I that she was on call one day and then they didn’t need her after all, but she had been put into the costume with everything but the makeup. So she went back to her dressing room and stood in front of the mirror and started experimenting with this character staring out at her, and seeing how she moved, and playing with Chiana’s movements. Kat said it was odd that Chiana was the only Nebari in the entire series who moved that way and Gigi Edgley laughed and said, “Well, you know, whenever anyone else came on the show, they said ‘You’re an alien, move however you want. It doesn’t matter, because you’re an alien.’ But yeah, it was weird that Chiana was the only one who moved like that. Not even her brother moved that way.” She finished autographing the picture of herself as Chiana. She signed it “To Kat” with little hearts. She drew a big thought bubble over Chiana’s head and wrote “Waiting to play on Moya. Shine on!” with more little hearts.

Oh yeah, she totally wants Kat.

And Kat had the same reaction to her as I did: she’s so damn cute! You really do just want to hug her and bundle her up in your knapsack and take her home to snuggle with! And I bet Gigi Edgley wouldn’t define that as stalking at all. Not at all. She’d really be game for that, I bet!

Kat and I then do some more moseying around the room until we find ourselves outside Panel Room Morpheus, waiting to go in to Wil Wheaton’s Q&A session, which will be followed by Julie Benz’s Q&A session. While we wait, Kat and I are witnesses to the slow re-development of the false line reaction. True to form, while Kat and I sit near the door, a line forms behind us. Even when we’re asked if this is the line for Wil Wheaton, even though there is no formal line or any formal need for one, we say yes, yes it is, because, baby, we’re first in line this time! A woman sits down next to us, closer to the door than we do, after a good bit of line has formed. Neither Kat nor I say anything to her because, after all, this isn’t really a line. Suddenly the woman who sat next to us realizes that she’s just cut in this line that’s not really a line, and she actually gets up and joins her friends at the back of the line… that’s not really a line. And like that time when Kat and I laughed ourselves silly about Virginia Woolf: Tomb Raider (“Lara Croft said she would buy the bullets herself”), nothing I can say about what we said while we sat in the line that wasn’t a line will ever be as funny in the retelling as it was when we said it, but we laugh about the line. We laugh over the proclamations that you should respect the line (that isn’t a line), you should love the line (that isn’t a line). The line loves you. The line cares for you. The line will offer you a $600 rebate to help invigorate the economy. Vote for the line. Thus, we pass the time. The line grows behind us. Finally, the panel discussion in Panel Room Morpheus is over and we enter and take seats up front, close to where Wil Wheaton will once again be speaking.

Wil appears and takes his post behind the podium and invites people in the audience to step up to the mike to ask questions. I don’t remember most of them. The only reason I remember one of the exchanges is because Wil Wheaton recounted it on his own website. What I do remember about Wil’s Q&A session is how engaging and engaged he is. He is, very much, one of us. I guess, since I’m not as big a geek as he is, as others are, I should say he is, very much, one of them. But I’m enough of a geek to know what he’s talking about most of the time. Wil is articulate, opinionated and funny. I hope I get another opportunity in the future to interact with him, or at the very least, see him read again.

After Wil’s talk, Kat and I stayed in the room until Julie Benz joined us. Her crowd was smaller than Wil’s. And dumber. Because they asked really dumb, fairly par-for-the course questions. But she treated each person with attention and courtesy. Someone asked her what her favorite moment in Angel was and it turns out that her favorite moment is my favorite moment: in the episode “Dear Boy” when Darla burns angel with a cross and tells him “You see, no matter how good a boy you are, God doesn’t want you! But I still do!” LOVE that scene! Julie Benz also talked a lot about her experience working with Sylvester Stallone and filming the latest Rambo movie. It made her, she said, a passionate advocate for human rights in Burma. And as she discussed this movie, she got a little bit into defensive mode. One guy said that the critics pretty much panned the movie, but Julie Benz listed off several critics who liked it. Someone else asked her if she didn’t think the violence in the film was gratuitous, to which she responded that Sylvester Stallone was very smart and knew what he was doing in making the movie. He was, she said, trying to expose the atrocities taking place in Burma and the violence depicted in the film shows the barest fraction of what’s actually going on there. Overall, the atmosphere in Julie Benz’s Q&A felt strained a little. But when I thought about it later, I have to say that I truly admired her for taking her stand and defending her work. Her attitude, I later told Kat, is exactly what I was missing, and why I would never have made it in Hollywood. Because it’s a stance of determination, edged with some ruthlessness.

With that in mind, the day, and the Comicon, ended for Kat and I, and we went back to her place to kill zombies in a mall.

Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure (In Geek-o-Scope SurroundSound!) (Part Three)

2008-05-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

Previously, on Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure:

“I really got my geek on… at the Emerald city Comicon. On Saturday morning, May 10th, I walked over to the Washington State Convention Center… Oh my God! So… many… geeks!... I’m totally geeking out about Farscape with THE WOMAN WHO PLAYED CHIANA ON FARSCAPE and she’s geeking out about it JUST AS MUCH AS I AM!!!... I make plans to meet Kat the next day for breakfast and then come back to the Convention Center for more Comicon and so that Kat can meet Chiana, too! And then I hang up my cell phone and head for the bank.

And now, on Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure:

The closest Washington Mutual branch is a couple of blocks west of the Convention Center on Fifth Avenue. As I walk over under cloudy skies, I have a little conversation with myself about how much to withdraw. Given that for the past four years I’ve been saying “I need to buy a new computer” and given that for the past four months I’ve been saying “I’m going to save for a new computer”, going to the bank and withdrawing the amount of money I’m contemplating is a little silly. It’s a frivolous expense, purchasing more books (I have plenty, I really, really do) and celebrities’ autographs. But am I not… a consumer of pop culture? Am I not… a capitalist? Am I not, indeed…an American? [Unfurl the Stars and Stripes here]

I AM A CAPITALIST CONSUMERIST AMERICAN!!! It’s my American right to spend, spend, spend on crap no one needs! So with all due patriotism and the strings of my heart swelling the national anthem, I feed my debit card into the ATM and withdraw $100. The guilt that passes through me will soon be washed clean by the obtaining of celebrity autographs and the commiserating with celebrities themselves. So I go back to the Convention Center as it begins to rain just a little bit.

Back inside, I make a bee line over to Julie Benz’s line. The perky convention helper asks me which of the assortment of pictures I would like Julie to sign. I choose one of her more tasteful headshots, money is handed over, my name is written on a post-it that’s attached to the headshot, and I wait to meet the woman who brought Darla in Buffy and Angel to life. A couple ahead of me asks her some question that elicits her response that she’s just gotten back from Japan. So when I’m standing before her (she really is just so beautiful), I ask her if she’s experiencing any culture shock coming back from Japan (to the U.S., to Seattle, to a geek fest, no less). She says “Not really. I was only there for four days for a press junket. I’m just having a hard time remembering what day it is.” I lean down closer to her and say “It’s Saturday. May 10th.” But only in my head, and only when I think of it about ten minutes later. What I really say is “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you!” And she smiles and I feel that this encounter is somehow just so false. It sort of robs both of us of some humanity. The actor in my mind so identified with a character she played, and the geek, geeking over that character, and not the real woman, not really Julie Benz. As I walk away from her table, I glance down at the headshot she signed with a silver pen. She wrote “To Joe – All the Best!” and she drew a heart flanked by a dash on each side.

Oh yeah… she wants me! She totally wants me.

I feel all warm and glowy inside as I take a position at the end of the line waiting to meet Wil Wheaton. The line is long. The line is moving slowly. I just make sure that I have plenty of time before Wil’s reading at 2:00. There is plenty of time and even time to spare! So I stand in line. I listen in on some of the conversations around me. Nothing memorable. Happy geek babble. I watch the people passing. I check out the cute guys. I notice how many men here have man boobs. And speaking of boobs, I notice as she passes, that Princess Leia has put on some weight! And it ain’t in the buns on the sides of her head. And there’s a Queen Amidala and kaboom! Has she put on the pounds! This is like… this is like the Amidala stand in that they couldn’t use because no one bought that she was Queen Amidala. So they put her on security or linebacker duty. And the line dwindles until finally, I’m next.

There he is… Wil Wheaton, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher. The first thing I’m struck by is that Wil’s sporting a beard. Which takes me aback a bit, because I was expecting him to look like he does on his website. That Wil Wheaton’s clean shaven and in a dark, button down shirt. This Wil Wheaton’s bearded and in a Batman t-shirt. This is the geek I’ve heard so much about! And the beard makes him remind me even more of my brother, Mike. Wil Wheaton and Mike really don’t look all that much alike, but there’s something there that’s similar enough to always make me think of Mike in Wil Wheaton’s face. But what am I saying? Now I’m standing in front of Wil Wheaton, daydreaming.

“Hi!” I say to Wil. He smiles gamely and greets me. I tell him I’d like to get one of his books, and I buy a hardback edition of The Best Days of Our Lives. While he signs it (“To Joe. Wil Wheaton” with lots of crazy loopy loops in his signature), I tell him that I’m a big fan of his blog. “Your blog has helped me pass many a boring hour at work.”

“Excellent!” he smiles up at me. “I’m glad to hear that!”

“Yeah,” I say, “Whenever I can’t take the boredom any more, I just sign on to see what Wil Wheaton’s been up to!”

Thank God, he’s laughing at that. Not at that… with that!

“I’m discovering a lot of new music through your blog, too,” I continue. “Like Jonathan Coulton’s stuff.”

Wil’s eyes light up and he smiles a big smile. “His stuff is excellent! His Thing A Week collections are awesome.”

“Yeah, I listened to a lot of those. My favorite is the zombie song.”

“I LOVE the zombie song!”

And I tell Wil, as I’ve told you, dear reader, that I was so excited to see that I could download part of the zombie song as a ringtone for my cell phone. Wil laughs and says that’s awesome while a giant neon sign that says “Huge fucking dork!” with an arrow pointing down appears above my head and starts blinking. I shake hands with Wil and tell him that it’s a pleasure meeting him and I thank him for the book and the autograph. As I move away from his table, the ATM withdrawal-induced guilt is, as predicted, washed clean in the glow of celebrity interaction and autograph acquisition. I’m on a high for at least the next four hours.

With no further celebrities that I care about around to buy and glow from, I wander around the floor and peruse booths. The Dark Horse booth, publisher of the Season Eight Buffy comics. They give me lots of free shit. The gay comics booth. They give me no free stuff. I more carefully peruse some of the booths with toys and action figures and collector’s action figures. I am bemused by the booth of Imperial Stormtroopers. I had no idea that there was an actual organization of Imperial Stormtroopers in the world, the 501st Legion. That is crazy wacky! I bide my time for a bit and then decide I’d best go sit over by the room that Wil Wheaton will be reading in.

I leave the sales floor for the more sterile and quieter area outside Panel Rooms A and B. I think they could have gotten a little more creative with the panel room names. “A” and “B”… come on! Are we not comics geeks? How about Panel Room Superman and Panel Room Batman? Or Panel Room Zippy and Panel Room Ghost World? Or something like that? Even so… I go to the door to Panel Room B, which has been re-designated as Panel Room A (so, someone was getting creative in some capacity, switching signs around like that). I’m twenty minutes early and the room is currently in use by the panel discussion before Wil’s reading, so I sit in the wide, empty, high ceilinged hallway with my back against the wall to wait. About 12 feet away are two women standing next to the sign listing scheduled events for Panel Room A (or Panel Room Morpheus). I pull out my copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five to pass the time and as I read, a woman sits down between me and the women next to the door, thereby setting in motion the false line reaction.

The false line reaction is a phenomenon whereby a small group of assembled human beings is assumed by subsequently arriving human being to constitute a formal line. And so I watch, over the next twenty minutes, as people line up behind me, and the line grows and bends and twists upon itself, when really, there’s no need for a line and there’s no actual line, because the three women and I didn’t consciously line up. At one point, the woman who sat down between me and the two women standing at the door leaned over and said to me “I’m sorry. Did I cut in line ahead of you?” For a split second I consider needling guilt into her heart by saying “Yes. But that’s okay. Whatever.” But instead I confide in her “No. I wasn’t actually in a line.” Although over the course of the few minutes I watched the line form, I did tell people, when asked “Is the line for Wil Wheaton?”, that yes, yes it was the line for Wil Wheaton that I’m fourth in line of, so… back to the end of the line, late coming loser!

Finally, in a tumult of geeks, the panel in session ends and lets out. And I, fourth in place, have prime seating choices and I sit up close to the front of the room. From the tangle of people conversing from the previous panel, being herded out by the crack Comicon staff, emerges Wil Wheaton. He takes up his position behind the podium and is greeted by enthusiastic applause and hooting and hollering. He read from his book The Happiest Days of Our Lives, the very book he just signed for me! He read his story about being propelled back in time, watching kids playing with Star Wars action figures, to when he was a kid, buying Star Wars action figures. As much as Wil Wheaton was propelled back in time, his reading propels me back in time to the day my dad walked my brother Rick and I to the toy aisles of Gibson’s in Longmont. We left the store with one of every one of the action figures that Gibson’s had in stock that day. Wil also read a story about Star Trek conventions and then, nearing the end of his time in Panel Room Morpheus, he began and was, unfortunately, unable to finish his reading of my favorite of his stories: how he met William Shatner. It’s an awesome story, and to recount it here would not do it justice, but you can find part one of the story here, and part two here. Plus, I think it’s even more awesome read in Wil’s own voice. But we ran out of time, and were dispersed to make way for the next panel discussion in that room.

I left, considering popping into Panel Room B (or Panel Room Cthulu) for Jamie Bamber’s Q&A. But it was already three in the afternoon and the last time I’d had anything to eat was at eight that morning. I was starving! And when I’m that hungry, I am mostly incapable of enjoying much of anything. So I decided I’d best be leaving to head home for dinner. As I trudged up 8th Avenue, across the bridge to Seneca, I regretted that I would miss Jamie Bamber, but the next day the regret would be tempered by actually meeting and talking to him.

Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure (In Geek-o-Scope SurroundSound!)(Part Two)

2008-05-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Previously, on Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure:

“I really got my geek on this weekend at the Emerald City Comicon… I’m so much a noob to comics, in fact, that it’s not even comic books that lured me to the Emerald City Comicon in the first place. No, that was Wil Wheaton… I even researched it at ECCC’s website, where I discovered that other cool people were scheduled to appear: Adam Baldwin! Jamie Bamber! And Julie Benz!”

And now, on Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure:

On Saturday morning, May 10^th, I walked over to the Washington State Convention Center. I followed a trickling of geek-leaning-fashion folk past the quietly pattering fountain at the entrance of Pike Street. I ascended the long succession of escalators past closed stores, closed rooms, A Contemporary Theater’s doors, past art by local artists and blown glass displays, up to the top of the Convention Center, where the architecture indoors blends nearly seamlessly with the architecture outside in Freeway Park.

I’ve been in the Convention Center often. I used to take my lunch there to eat because it was quiet and full of natural light. The Convention Center also provided an indoor walkway linked to other tunnels and breezeways for a sheltered walk between work and home when I worked at a downtown law firm and lived at the Williamsburg Apartments at the corner of Boren and Terry. But on Saturday, I passed through doors I’d never gone through before, but had been curious about: the doors to the lobby of the show room. There was a sign there stating that Adam Baldwin was unable to attend. That blows!!! But he was being replaced by Daniel Logan. Yeah, I didn’t know who Daniel Logan was, either. And really, why would you? I’ll get annoyed by this a few minutes later. But for now, I walked up to the ticket booths and bought my two day pass. I was handed a green plastic bag with a free comic inside and the Comicon guide and some other miscellaneous paper, and then I turned and walked past security into the show room floor for the Emerald City Comicon.

Oh my God! So… many… geeks! Of course, I expected so many geeks, but first impression… so many geeks! Fat ones and thin ones, short and tall geeks, young and old, ugly and cute geeks, girl geeks and boy geeks (and when boy geeks are cute, they are so cute!). Look! That geek has thick glasses! That geek has a kilt! That geek has stringy hair, and that geek has no hair at all. Here comes a trio of Imperial Stormtroopers. There goes Magneto who really looks remarkably like Sir Ian McKellen. I had no idea Jedi Knights needed wheelchairs and guide dogs… who’s trying and not doing or doing not? Oh what a lot of geeks there are!

Let’s consult our Emerald City Comicon 2008 Program Guide… cool, the cover shows the Space Needle as a center piece for an epic battle between superheroes and some dragony monster thingies. Inside I discover… OH MY GOD! Gigi Edgley is here! I had no idea! Wait… who asked “Who’s Gigi Edgley?”? Oh man… out-of-the-loopers. SQUARES! It’s Gigi Edgley! At Booth 506! And Wil Wheaton’s going to be at Booth M-04. Where’s Booth M-04? And Jamie Bamber (gosh he’s a cute and sexy-British-accent guy) is at Booth M-02. Where’s the map of this place? Ah, map is the center fold in my trusty Program Guide. But, okay, before I find anyone, this is me… getting my geek-i-con cherry popped, so I must wander, first, before I pinpoint a destination! So I head along the wall, where the M dash oh tables are lined.

The first one I see is Wil Wheaton’s spot… but there’s no Wil Wheaton… it’s early, yet, it’s early. Then I see who Daniel Logan is. Adam Baldwin couldn’t make it at the last minute so Adam Baldwin, Jayne from Firefly, Hamilton from Angel, Adam Baldwin was replaced by… the kid who played young Boba Fett in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones? How fucking… lame! Or… well… good for Daniel Logan, I guess… yay him! Go him! And his minor geek… cred. Ugh. But… LAME! Okay, but at least at the next booth, there she is… the gorgeous, the solemn Darla from Buffy… Julie Benz! And in the next booth, I can completely overlook the disappointment of Daniel Logan because I see the very hot, very yummy Jamie Bamber. I am so intimidated by Jamie Bamber. I came this close to meeting him last year at the screening of Battlestar Galactica: Razor but then… I freaked out! He’s too pretty to talk to the likes of lowly me! It’s enough for me to stand over here and glance his way, watch him sign pictures for other people. Stop staring! I wonder how he defines “stalker”?

I’m wandering! Seeing what’s around: comic book artists sketching and signing stuff. I have no idea who any of these people are. There are lots of booths selling toys and comics and comics related toys and action figures and Cthulu… oh my God! Plush Cthulus! Ahhh… they’re so soft and cuddly! Whose tentacles are dose, huh? Whose tentacles? I am so tempted by the All Hallows Eve plush Cthulu, black with orange detail. But I haven’t any cash on me! (Noob alert! Noob alert!)

And then I see her. Sitting at a table, with a little knot of people gathered in front of her, it’s… Gigi Edgley. Chiana from Farscape. Oh my God she looks so cute! Okay, I’m gonna go talk to her. And I approach the table as the little knot of people loosens and disperses. Except for the person she’s talking to, I have her all to myself. While I wait, I peruse the publicity stills she’s got arrayed on the table before her, her CD, and the publicity booklet for her comic book. I greet the woman sitting next to her, who turns out to be her editor or manager or something. We chit chat. Who cares what we chit chat about? She’s not Gigi Edgley and I can’t even remember. Perhaps it was about the weather. And then I’m talking to Gigi herself! I introduce myself (“Hi, I’m Joe”) and we shake hands. I tell her that I just recently discovered Farscape and really enjoyed it. She beams at me and coos “Oh, a newbie!” and she laughs and she’s just so cute! Then she launches into telling me how trippy Farscape was, that she just had to rewatch the series in big chunks for her [this is lost in the convention room noise] and she’d forgotten how trippy the show could be. She tells me that she was watching and would get caught by surprise by some of what happened in the show. She says “I don’t know why, I was there when we shot it” and her inflection as she says this almost makes me see her in a gray wig and gray makeup, it is so Chiana-esque. I agree that the show’s trippy and say “Yeah, like that episode when John Crichton visits all the alternate universes.” And Gigi Edgley thinks for a second, I see it in her eyes, that dart down to think and recall something from memory. She says “Oh, is that the one with that guy with the eyes… what was his name… Einstein?” I nod enthusiastically and say “Yeah.” Her eyes light up and she says “Is that the one where John’s head is bleeding and then sometimes it’s not?”

Who cares? I’m totally geeking out about Farscape with THE WOMAN WHO PLAYED CHIANA ON FARSCAPE and she’s geeking out about it JUST AS MUCH AS I AM!!!

I think I nod and say “Yeah.” And then Gigi Edgley tells me that that actually happened in Ben Browder’s audition, that his head just randomly started bleeding and trickling down into his eye and that later, the writers used that incident in that episode. And she laughs and even her laugh has that cute Australian lilt. And I laugh. And we laugh and goddamn it she is just so cute I just want to bundle her up into my backpack and taker her home! Instead, I thank her very much and tell her what a pleasure it’s been to meet her. She takes my hand again in hers and looks me right in the eye and says that’s it’s been a pleasure for her as well. So gracious, so warm! CHIANA!

I just beam as I walk away and I need to CALL SOMEONE RIGHT NOW! So I call my friend Kat just to say “I just met Chiana!” And Kat’s all excited and I’m all excited. I wonder if I’m talking too loudly or laughing too loudly. Who cares? This whole glorious geeky place is too loud! And we talk about cons and how when you meet people you’re supposed to buy their autographs and that is when I decide I really, really, absolutely MUST go to the bank. Because I want to meet Julie Benz and she’s signing those kinds of autographs, and I want to buy Wil Wheaton’s book when I meet him and… oh God… did I… just totally gaffe up by not purchasing an autograph from Gigi Edgley? She didn’t seem to care! She was gracious and animated and happy! We had a great conversation! I make plans to meet Kat the next day for breakfast and then come back to the Convention Center for more Comicon and so that Kat can meet Chiana, too! And then I hang up my cell phone and head for the bank.

(…to be continued…)

Joe’s Really Excellent Awesome Emerald City Adventure (In Geek-o-Scope SurroundSound!)(Part One)

2008-05-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

I really got my geek on this weekend at the Emerald City Comicon. For those of you unfortunate enough to be out of the loop, the Emerald City Comicon is the annual comic book convention in Seattle. It was my first time attending. In fact, it was my first time attending any such event, ever. Because for most of my life, I was unfortunate enough to be out of the loop.

I was never much into comic books, you see. Of any sort. And it wasn’t because I thought they were beneath me at all, I just never got into them. I tried from time to time. I bought the odd horror comic book here and there. There may have been some Donald Duck comic books purchased at one time. For a while, I was mad about Mad Magazine, particularly the Spy vs. Spy features, but Mad was more satire than comic book. And I tried a couple of super hero comics, but always felt left out when I was reading along and suddenly an asterisk would appear in the dialogue and at the bottom of the page somewhere, what had been said, which often felt pretty important to know, was referenced as happening in issue 23… and here I was, on issue 147. So I always felt like I was behind the story and had missed massive portions of important content. In 8^th grade, the new kid in class, Chris, was into comic books and when we became friends, I sort of checked out his collection of Silver Surfer, Daredevil and Wolverine comic books, but they were all sprinkled with little asterisks.

So I only ever skirted the edge of the comic book world, and dipped into it only through by-products of that world. Everything I knew about Superman I learned from reruns of The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958) starring George Reeves, from animated Superman’s adventures in the Super Friends during the 70’s, and from the movie Superman starring Christopher Reeve in 1978. All I knew about Batman and Robin I learned from re-runs of the 1966 show Batman with Adam West and Burt Ward and, again, from animated Batman and Robin’s affiliation with the Super Friends. Even Wonder Woman had her own show in 1976, but I already knew about Wonder Woman because… guess how? Nah, go on, guess! Yep… because of her animated self working with the Super Friends! I learned everything I know about other superheroes from Saturday morning sessions with the Super Friends, too: The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman (fish, really? Come on! Against the sinister forces of the League of Doom?), and my favorite, Hawkman. My baby-gay self really liked Hawkman, because he tended to show the most flesh, all bare-chested in that hot harness you just KNOW was finely tooled Italian leather. Plus… wings! Hot! Mmmm… going to my sex-with-Hawkman-naked-in-the-wind-of-his-orgasmically-beating-wings place…

Ahem.

I’m back now.

My Saturday morning comics related cartoon exposure extended to the Marvel Universe, as well, with Spiderman, whom I probably first became familiar with in cartoon form via The Electric Company, who used to run Spiderman shorts during the show. And in 1977, Spiderman also had a live action show starring the very cute Nicholas Hammond (forever marking in my mind Friedrich in The Sound of Music with an extra special kind of glint in his eye).

By and large, however, I didn’t get into comic books until very, very recently, when my awareness of comic books rose along with their higher profile in Hollywood. My most favorite guy ever, Joss Whedon, has mentioned on several occasions the comic book influences that run through Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Heck, Angel very blatantly played off Batman’s dark avenger milieu. Then Joss started releasing Buffy comic books, and then Firefly comic books. And then in 2006, I finally read Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. Suddenly, my interest in comic books rose exponentially. The Sandman was all literary and shit! And look! ISSUE ONE!!! I could actually be fully immersed in the world without ever feeling like the characters were making references that they understood and weren’t sharing with the rest of… me. Furthermore, now Joss has released season eight of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a comic book series, and I happily geek out by keeping track of when each issue will be released and being sure on that day to make a stop at my favorite comic book store in Seattle, Golden Age Collectibles.

Even so, I am still a noob. I’m so much a noob to comics, in fact, that it’s not even comic books that lured me to the Emerald City Comicon in the first place.

No, that was Wil Wheaton. For those of you still pitiable enough to be outside the loop, Wil Wheaton garnered national attention for his portrayal as Gordie LeChance in the 1986 movie Stand By Me. He also appeared as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then sort of slipped out of the limelight. He’s since been making a name for himself as a writer, a blogger and a self proclaimed, out, proud geek. I recently caught Wheaton fandom when I read his reviews of Star Trek: TNG episodes on TV Squad.com, which lead to reading his own blog, WWdN: In Exile. I have found, as I mentioned in my previous post, high entertainment and reading value in Wil Wheaton’s blog. I’ve listened to podcasts and recorded keynote speeches and Wil’s funny, smart and completely accessible. He’s just a big geek, like me! Okay… wait… not like me. He’s a bigger geek than I am, and I say that with all due respect and a tinge of regret that I have not and never will achieve that level of geekdom. I have no clue what he’s talking about sometimes, when he references video games and D&D terms and computer anything. Nonetheless, I am a fan of Wil Wheaton, and when he made mention of his impending appearance at the Emerald City Comicon, I vowed to show up.

I even researched it at ECCC’s website, where I discovered that other cool people were scheduled to appear: Adam Baldwin! Jamie Bamber! And Julie Benz! Oh my good Christ, if you’re still out of the fucking loop and have no idea who these people are, go to fucking Google and look them up! I can’t spoon feed you people all the time!

(… to be continued…)

A Few Of My New Most Favorite Things

2008-05-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

While I’m sure there are more amazing meals in the world, today there is nothing more brilliant than macaroni and cheese with broccoli. A few weeks ago I was, rather randomly, asked, upon first walking in the door of my yoga class, by my yoga instructor, what my favorite comfort food was. I said “Hot dogs” because I was on a hot dog kick at the time and because they are just insanely easy and quick to fix using my George Forman grill. And they’re healthy when bought from Trader Joe’s with hot dog buns also from Trader Joe’s and hot dogs are delicious and comforting with the mustard and the ketchup and some sweet pickles chopped up for relish on top. But today, I would have to revoke my answer and respond, instead, with “Macaroni and cheese with broccoli” because that, I think, is my all time favorite comfort food meal. It’s like Saturday afternoons when I was 10.

And a word to the wise: teriyaki chicken in no way belongs in the lungs. It’s uncomfortable and alarming and makes your eyes water.

In other news of my new most favorite things ever: in search of some most excellent diversion from my least excellent and thoroughly soul-sucking and mind-deadening job tasks today, I went to Wil Wheaton’s most entertaining blog, where I came across his latest Radio Free Burrito podcast, which is dedicated to the music of Jonathan Coulton. Through a link graciously provided by Wil, I went to investigate Jonathan Coulton (who was new to me) on his own website. And it was here that I came across my new most favorite song ever, which, through the magic and glory of modern instant-gratification technology, is now the ringtone on my cell phone!

I love you, Jonathan Coulton!
I love you, Wil Wheaton!
I love you, macaroni and cheese!
And, in the immortal words of Gir:

“I loveded you, Piggy… I loveded you!”

Have Another Double Layer Triple Fudge Cheesecake

2008-04-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

On Monday I noticed a headline on the MSN.com home page that said something along the lines of “Weight gain may be due to lack of sleep.” Because I consider the merit of MSN.com articles to be the journalistic equivalent of a Little Debbie snack cake wrapped in cotton candy, I opted to leave the link unclicked. However, on Tuesday morning, to my dismay, NPR, which I used to consider as my only source of legitimate news coverage, ran a story about how a lack of sleep has been linked to weight gain in babies.

According to the results of a Howard University study that weighed 915 babies at birth, 6 months old and again at 3 years of age, children who slept less than 12 hours a day were twice as likely to become overweight by age 3. Furthermore, NPR’s report continued, these findings corroborate results of prior studies done in older children, teenagers and adults, which also suggest that people who sleep less than 8 hours a night have appetite hormones in their fat cells and stomachs stimulated by their brains to induce hunger and tell the people to “eat, eat.” Hence, as Stanford University psychiatrist Emmanuel Mignot put it, “sleep deprivation stimulates hunger… when you sleep too little, you have a tendency to gain weight.”

Ignoring for a moment the fact that babies from birth to 6 months to 3 years of age generally do, in fact, gain a great deal of weight (it’s called growing up), I am going to go with this. So, you gain weight by not sleeping enough. It isn’t the heaping bowl of Cocoa Puffs you have for breakfast, and the grande Cinnamon Dolce Latte with a molasses cookie you grab at Starbucks on your way into work because the Cocoa Puffs didn’t satisfy. It isn’t the bag of Doritos Cool Ranch chips and can of diet Mountain Dew you scarf at your cubicle for a mid-morning snack. It isn’t the double Whopper with cheese, onion rings, super sized Coke and strawberry milkshake you inhale at lunch. It isn’t the Twinkies and diet Pepsi you suck up when the tummy rumblies strike at 3:00. It isn’t the bucket of KFC with macaroni and cheese, gravy-slathered mashed potatoes and biscuits you pick up at the drive through on the way home. It isn’t even joining your fat spouse and potential 2.5 butterball children for five hours of passive couch potato-ing in front of must-see t.v. while consuming a healthy snack of home-made Chex mix. No… it’s the fact that you only get 6 hours of sleep a night that is ballooning you out into a big fat tub of lard!

Now, I’m no Howard University researcher. Nor am I a Stanford University psychiatrist with a cool French accent. I didn’t even read the report published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, but I have to say: this sounds like total bullshit to me! This is specious reasoning dressed up as scientific research! Lack of sleep doesn’t make you fat, lack of sleep doesn’t make you gain weight… caloric intake that exceeds caloric burn-off is what makes you fat, plain and simple! Why, by the reasoning employed to obtain the results of these studies, I can equally claim that, since these fat babies don’t sleep through the night and thereby disrupt their parents’ sleep patterns and thereby cut into their parent’s eight hours of blissful unconsciousness, it MUST BE BABIES THAT MAKE YOU FAT!!! And since babies are most often obtained via heterosexual sex… HETEROSEXUALITY MUST MAKE YOU FAT!!! Because look at all the hot, athletic bodies in the gay, lesbian and bi communities! While the heterosexual communities are just spreading like urban sprawl and the Southern drawl!

Honestly, the shit that gets passed around as viable news these days.

__________________________________________________________________

Postscript: While researching this blog post, I came across an item on the Little Debbie website regarding refreshments suggestions for a party. If you’d like to induce a toothache without the use of any sugar whatsoever, consider the Little Debbie suggestion for a kids’ party treat: you take Little Debbie snack cakes, say their Creme-Filled Chocolate, Orange or Strawberry Cupcakes, which are cakes with a creme filling, encased in a sweet, sweet, suh-weet coating of icing, and you “paint” them… with frosting!

Can’t you just hear the dentist drill now?

And as long as you get your now super revved up, hyperactive kids to bed for at least 8 hours of sleep afterward, these “Artist Palate Cakes” won’t affect their waistlines one little bit!

I Am Jack’s Cock

2008-03-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

I like my penis. I mean, I really like my penis. If my penis were accepting an Oscar for Best Penis In A Dramatic Role, it would never start its acceptance speech with “You like me, you really like me” because, like, for my dick, my liking it isn’t even a question. It knows it’s liked… nay, adored… even, I dare say, constantly locked in my smothering embrace!

I know… a gay man finds his penis fascinating. And eating nothing but Big Macs and fries makes you fat, Iraq is a troubled nation, and some large swath of L.A. County’s going to burn to the ground this summer. This isn’t news. Hell, even straight guys think their dicks are the bee’s knees. But as a guy who gets totally turned on by dick, it is a constant source of great joy that, hey, look!... I have one built right in! And it comes in all these nifty sizes: bunched up in a tidy little nub, floppy with athletic nudist abandon, stiff prod, feverishly engorged holy-fucking-shit-dude-I’m-gonna-cum! It’s Christmas, my birthday and the Fourth of July all rolled into one!

I mean, by stroking, squeezing, yanking and wagging around which of my other organs can I achieve mind blowing ecstasy? You just don’t get that reaction when you try that shit with, say, your liver. In fact, your liver shouldn’t even probably enjoy an external presence from your body. But behold, the humble, external penis is always at least a quick zip-down of one’s fly away, easily accessible to be slapped up against a shower wall, shoved between sofa cushions, plunged into pumpkin innards, thrust against a giant velveteen carnival-prize Schooby-Doo, or pumped into a Crisco slathered fist so you can go to town on this most fucking awesome faggot cock!!! Whoohoo!!!

...Eleven Months Later

2008-03-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why I don’t write.

Whenever I introduce myself to new people, my answer to the inevitable question “What do you do” is always “I’m a writer.” But I don’t write. And I always follow that answer up with the qualifier “But I work in a law firm”, as if being a writer isn’t legitimate enough. Still, I don’t write. I read… a lot. I watch Netflix rentals… even more. I don’t believe adding my voice to the overwhelming cacophony of hack reviewers will better the world, so I don’t write reviews of what I’m reading and watching. Though I do that ad nauseum in real life to everyone around me. I play video games occasionally. But recounting how awesome that was when I got on the Brute Chopper and rode up the side of the structure on the Sandtrap map and wiped out half the blue team while my teammate, in the other Brute Chopper, took out the other half is like telling someone your very cool dream about the miniature schnauzer you had when you were a kid talking and quoting Nietzsche and your dead grandmother was there juggling goslings. It isn’t nearly as fascinating to anyone who isn’t you.

And I work at my job where I process matter requests. I review the electronic form in the UberCyclone database and click my mouse from page – click – to page, comparing the data in the request to the pre-existing data in our Optimus database. Ensured that no data is duplicated, I finalize – click – the new matter request and review the data once it's transferred into the Optimus database to assure accuracy of the transferred data and, once said accuracy is determined, I type a note in the cleverly named “Notes” tab in the original UberCyclone document to notify my fellow team members that the original request is now prepared for auditing by our senior team member and oh my God it’s a good thing I don’t have easy access to a package of razor blades! And then I do that 57 more times. My job related duties don’t even interest me, how could any other reader possibly find it fascinating? Didn't you, dear reader, blank out around the second sentence? What goes on at my job just isn’t scintillating.

Although I suppose it is noteworthy that the law firm I work for has now secured the bathrooms on the floor on which I work.

Being a law firm, confidentiality and the security of our documents is very important. But the floor I work on is also the floor where the mail room is located. Most of the floor’s departments are already secured with key card entry. In fact, you can’t even get to the 11th floor without a key card. Unfortunately, that was wreaking mass inefficiency for the mail room, since deliveries had to go five floors up to reception. So the policy was reviewed, and it was decided that the elevators would be unlocked to allow access to delivery persons… and therefore, also to any random person off the street. And it was further decided, by someone (or possibly a group of someones), who most likely makes way more money than I do, that the bathrooms, therefore, also needed to be accessible by key card only.

Well… good… now our highly confidential toilet paper is secured.

Meanwhile, the mail room, one door over from the men’s room... the mail room, where all the personal and confidential mail, all the legal, client and case related documents and forms come and go… the mail room remains open all day to any yutz who might wander up to the 11th floor and who might, and I can attest to this because I’ve done it, wander about unchallenged, unmet, unnoticed by our crack mail room staff who are often not present because they’re delivering mail to various other floors and locations.

Yet… yet… I need a key card… to take a whaz!

And now I’ve written (griped, really… I’m in a grumpy mood due to this week old cold I’ve had) about the most noteworthy recent event. So what now? I’ll have to move on to something else I won’t write about.

Food

2007-04-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

I hate my sandwich.

Not like a person, a reasonable person, hates brussel sprouts or cauliflower or the tepid piano stylings of John Tesh. No. I hate my sandwich in a personal way. It's a spiteful sandwich. It is unappetizing on purpose.

Everything I put on it this morning is good, flavorful and wholesome. Organic, even, some of it! Smoked turkey, salami and provolone cheese. The bread is a savory blend of fluffy and dense textures, oat bran crusted with flakes of whole oats. Instead of just lettuce, garnishing the meat and cheese is a salad blend of romaine, frisee, radicchio and grated carrot. Organic yellow mustard, organic mayonnaise and sandwich-sliced pickles lend the sandwich further tang and verve. This should be a delightful sandwich. This sandwich should be a lunchtime love affair with my taste buds!

But even before I take the first bite, the sandwich inspires nothing more enthusiastic than mild interest. It is, after all, food and I am, after all, hungry. Undaunted by the sandwich's dour demeanor, I eat, but halfway through, its insolence overcomes my hunger and I have to put it down. I read. I go for the banana instead and, even while never being my most favored fruit, the banana fills me with some of the joy that this snide, arrogant sandwich has denied me. I conclude that I will not be daunted by a spiteful sandwich, that I will press on and consume this angry thing to turn its spite back on itself! But three quarters of the way through it, I am fighting back the gag reflex. I can barely swallow the last bite I took. With disgust and disdain, I toss the last quarter of the sandwich onto my napkin on the table.

I cannot understand what has happened here. I still like sandwiches, present company excepted, of course. I order smoked turkey sandwiches at Quizno's on a regular basis! None of the ingredients of this... this... demon concoction... are spoiled or stale or wilted. Have I become carbohydrate intolerant so my body reacts instictively in revolt against bread? And yet I don't have this reaction to bread normally. So I can only conclude that the unappetizing state of this sandwich is the fault and willfulness of this sandwich!

The final quarter of sandwich on the table leers at me with a ragged meat and torn lettuces sneer. Stupid sandwich. I ball up my hand into a fist. And pound my sandwich. A squirt of organic yellow mustard spurts onto my white sweater.

It's a spiteful sandwich.

And I hate it.

Nuclear Holocaust Awareness Week

2007-02-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Well, wasn’t that last entry a real let down? A list. A LIST! The last resort for uninspired bloggers. “I know, I’ll feign being witty and evocative by making… A LIST!” Ugh. And such a list, too. 100 items. I really DO get bored at work. Well, it doesn’t help that I have no idea how to throw myself into my work, no matter what the benefits of working are. I haven’t the faintest clue how to elevate my paycheck to such awesome heights of stardom status to warrant the 7 to 8 hours of sheer tedium that is my job. Whichever job I happen to be in at the moment. Whichever job one could choose to focus on in my spotty employment history.

This has been a problem since I first had to look for work. I just did not fucking want to do it. Summer of 1985, the summer I graduated from high school. I remember being hounded by my parents (my mom in particular) about getting a job. Any job. You could work at McDonalds! It got so annoying that once while my mother was stopped at a stoplight, in the middle of traffic, I got out of the car, yelling at her to get off my back, she yelling at me to get back in the car, me firing back “Just go home!” and stalking off through downtown Longmont, Colorado.

Jesus. Teenage temper tantrum with a capitol T and some extra, drama ridden exclamation points at the end.

Since then, I’ve had some jobs I genuinely enjoyed, and some jobs I completely fucking DESPISED (hello Samuel French!). I have yet, however, to find any job I’ve felt completely devoted to. I can’t fathom celebrating my 20 year anniversary at a job. Or, shit, for that matter, my FIVE year anniversary! Nothing has held my affection or devotion for long enough. It’s usually the rules of whatever workplace I’m in that kill it for me. “The customer is always right”… pheh! “We allow you two fifteen minute breaks and one half hour lunch break”… jeez, don’t go out of your ways to do me any favors! “Your schedule is from 8:30 to 5”. The schedule’s usually the big one that trips me up. Even if all I had to do was be at a place for 1 hour a week, I would completely resent the intrusion on my personal by the end of the second week.

But then again, I’ve never been one to comfortably capitulate to expected norms and social conventions. Not, by any means, that I’m a rebel, or a visionary, or so super secure in my identity that I flout social conventions and refuse to be limited by them. Mostly, I think it’s because I grew up a sensitive, introverted kid who got so involved in his own inner world that I wasn’t really capable of maintaining attention and adherence to anything going on outside my own head. If I did follow the crowd or the rules, it was just coincidence.

Which brings to mind this one time when I was in first grade. We were having a drill of some kind. I’m real fuzzy about the nature of the drill. I have a vague, hazy notion that it was one of those nuclear war drills. “In the event of a mushroom cloud, dive under your dinky, non-enclosed, not reinforced steel first grader’s desk. This will save you from certain nuclear annihilation.” But, given the Pomona, California locale, the drill was more likely to be an earthquake drill. I remember the bell ringing to indicate when we should get under out desks. But more vividly, I remember being under my desk, giggling.

Yes… giggling.

Mind you, no one else was giggling. Javier, my friend in the next desk, from under his desk, even hissed at me to shut up and stop laughing. Earthquake/nuclear war drills were serious business! To him, if not me. I have no idea what I thought was so hilarious. And I suppose, even though my mind at the time was obviously not on the business at hand, something of the drill sank in because in February 2001, when a 6.8 earthquake rocked Seattle, I immediately dove under the lunch room table of the law firm where I was then working. And I wasn’t laughing then. I was just worried that the cupboards full of glass above the table might crash down. Or that the building would collapse if the rocking got worse and I COULD DIE!!! Not so funny then.

Still, I think of and react to employment very like the way my first grade self reacted to that nuclear holocaust/earthquake drill. While everyone else seems to take this employment business so seriously, I’m snickering away under my desk. The idea that grown people sit for hours on end cubicled in front of computer screens with nothing to do all day but fill in online forms is completely ludicrous! Grown ups in all seriousness allow other grown ups to go into overwrought detail about how to make their overpriced cappuccino with soy milk spritzed with a light dab of almond syrup and sprinkled delicately with fine ground cinnamon and peppermint without the least hint of irony! College educated adults, in positions that require a college education, spend 40 hours a week bored out of their college educated skulls sitting at reception desks, answering phones and deftly routing calls between moments of playing Solitaire on their Macintosh computers and typing up holiday card lists for businesses that are more concerned about making sure the clients are not offended by the picture on the front of those cards than about offending the college educated individual whose mind is turning to a pink and marshmallow like substance! And why do these adults of all walks of life willing press on with endeavors guaranteed to bore and frustrate them?

Comfortable retirement!

Life and creative forces sacrificed on the ecru colored, pre-fabricated corporate altar that won’t even remember their life long contributions fifteen minutes after they leave for their treasured retirement to a broken down body and depleted spirit and then death.

THAT is laughable. THAT deserves a giggle.

100 Things I'd Rather Be Doing

2006-12-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

So I was at work today, blind with boredom, tacking mechanically away at the computer keyboard, listening to my Cyndi Lauper CD when, across the desert of intellectual engagement that is data entry drifted the thought "There are a hundred better things I would rather be doing right now."

And I wondered... were there really 100 things I would rather be doing than sitting in a cubicle, blindly, unthinkingly doing data entry for the central records department of a large downtown law firm? So I decided to find out by making a list of things I would rather be doing.

100 THINGS I'D RATHER BE DOING
by Joe Lopez

1. Play Stubbs the Zombie on Xbox
2. Read a great novel (like my current read: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro)
3. Bake a pumpkin pie
4. Groom my cats (oh, let’s face it, doing ANYTHING with my cats)
5. Do yoga… even when it hurts and is frustrating and difficult
6. Visit the eye doctor to get fitted for contact lenses.
7. Type out this list
8. Browse Powell’s in Portland
9. Clean the bathroom
10. Read Queerty
11. Write in my journal
12. Work on my screenplay (I’m writing a screenplay... it's going to fabulous)
13. Watch the fourth season of Bewitched on DVD
14. Go out dancing with the cute new friends I’m making in Seattle
15. Shop for groceries at Trader Joe’s
16. Walk with Jim through autumn colored woods
17. Share an awkward silence with a cute guy
18. Bike all the way up the hill to Capitol Hill
19. Go see the doctor for a complete physical
20. Get a haircut
21. Play some Sims 2
22. Attend a UW football game (and folks… I’m not a fan of the football)
23. Do my laundry
24. Jog (even with my bum ankle that I twisted last week… it hurt!)
25. Twist my ankle AGAIN in that drain on the corner of Wall and Fourth
26. Browse the Christian Rock section of a music store (mostly I would just deride it and be very judgmental and pessimistic, so maybe that’s not the best use of my time…)
27. Sew the holes that have developed in my coat pocket
28. Finish up my Christmas shopping
29. Read through someone’s self indulgent 100 list
30. Job hunt
31. “Welcome to McDonald’s, how can I help you?” (Though that’s REALLY pushing it)
32. Check for new email YET AGAIN
33. Balance my checkbook
34. Ironing
35. Apartment hunt
36. Wait for a bus
37. Listen to country music
38. Watch the dreadful “Breakfast on Pluto”… again.
39. Get my Christmas cards made out and mailed
40. Wait in line at the post office to send the box of gifts to my family in Colorado
41. Cut on myself
42. Have an argument with Jim (remember… not what’s joyful, but what’s preferable to the mind numbing job duties) about finances
43. Visit the dentist for a thorough cleaning
44. Jack off to some good porn, like Bel Ami porn (mmm… Lukas!)
45. Take a stroll through the Seattle Public Library and take a good, cleansing breath of… mmmm… just smell the homeless!
46. Meditate with the Dharma Buddies group on Capitol Hill
47. Go to Pacific Place and movie hop for the whole day… even if “Breakfast on Pluto” was showing
48. Repeat my last day at Samuel French bookstore
49. Hell, repeat my last day at Amazon.com
50. Miss my train to work, have the next train be delayed because it hit a car on the tracks further up the line, bike through the rain to work, and have a bird shit in my eye AGAIN!
51. Get stuck and abandoned by our contact in Marseilles and check into that creepy little hotel at the bottom of Le Grand Escalier and take a shower in the closet AGAIN!
52. Take a red Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner to a remote suburb on the edge of the city limits and smash… that… mother… fucker… to… bits!
53. Get an HIV test
54. Soak in the hot tub, steam in the steam room, sweat in the sauna and even dive into the cold dunk pool at Banya 5
55. Ride the ferry to Bainbridge Island
56. Sit at a big table, eating pasta and pizza, at Vitello’s in Studio City, CA, with Stefanie, Joey, Celeste, Aaron, Jenn and Jim.
57. Spend 8 hours with Diane at a Bennigans or Bennigans type restaurant… or, hell… any type of restaurant will do because it’s the 8 hours with Diane that matters here!
58. Go swimming in the 24 Hour Fitness pool… or… any pool, really, as long as it’s heated
59. Help Jim decorate our Christmas tree.
60. Make stuffing using my mom’s recipe
61. Take another stab at reading Looking For It by Michael Thomas Ford… although, shit… I might as well just keep sitting in my cubicle… eh… this one’s too close to call
62. Get a massage
63. Be stuck at Denver International Airport for a protracted airline delay
64. Spend some good, quality time admiring that Communist era-inspired architecture of that town square in Savona, Italy
65. Mmm… have another amazing seafood dinner at that little trattoria in Savona, Italy
66. Throw up… because then I could go home!
67. Do another Veronica Mars marathon
68. Watch all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back
69. Listen to the spiel of one of those do-gooders out on Westlake Center plaza who say “Hi” to you all friendly and then want to discuss the plight of starving little children in Africa, even though I usually tell them to leave me alone… I have a Starbuck’s eggnog chai latte to consume!
70. Attend a Catholic mass
71. Attend another writer’s conference with Mark
72. Say something that would make Mark blush
73. Quote Invader Zim randomly and often.
74. Read this week’s The Stranger
75. Eat a lunchmeat sandwich
76. Wrap Christmas presents
77. Skinny dip in that pool I found access to in Studio City
78. Share another bottle of wine with Yolanda that she won’t help pay for.
79. Try, and fail, to light a fire to roast marshmallows in the Smoky Mountains
80. Be refused service at Dilettante’s again
81. Audition again for Fluffy the Monster at Universal Studios
82. Sort my filing cabinet
83. Do my taxes
84. Answer a telemarketing call
85. Pay bills
86. Bow down, bow down, to the power of Santa to avoid being crushed, being crushed, by his jolly boots of DOOM!
87. Meet my new HotorNot.com contacts
88. Organize a writers’ group
89. Write a play
90. Write some poetry
91. Visit the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries
92. Go to jail for the attempted assassination of George W. Bush
93. Fuck Jim… or Duncan… or Jason… maybe Devon… mmm… or Wade…
94. Watch the torture scene with naked Daniel Craig over and over and over
95. Watch X-Files reruns
96. Analyze, for the umpteenth time, why, precisely, Dr. Bashir is a character AT ALL on Star Trek: DS9
97. Watch The Hours
98. Make a big cup of Bengal Spice tea and cozy up on the couch for a Buffy marathon
99. Doodle
100. Play a game of Pente

Well, look at that. There ARE 100 things I'd rather be doing than sitting at my cubicle, doing my job.

Huh.

Collectively Unconscious

2006-09-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

The other morning waking up was a long, drawn out process for me. I kept dreaming about waking up, instead of actually waking up, all the while aware that I did need to get up to go to work, with the dizzying feeling that I was already late. It’s an unpleasant, strangulated experience.

The awakening part of your mind realizes that the dreaming world you’re partaking in is fundamentally flawed. Like, you’re walking down Fourth Avenue, past Macy’s, but you’re having a conversation with your coworker and best friend, Cillian Murphy… and you’re naked. Or, like, you get up out of bed to feed your cats but the walk to the kitchen is through the halls of the elementary school you attended… and it’s raining inside. Or your roommate is level with the bed, just staring at you, waiting for you to get up, while you burrow into your blankets further… and Cillian Murphy is naked behind her. You’re aware that something is off kilter. Meanwhile, the dreaming part of your mind gets frustrated by your complete lack or inability to give yourself over fully to which restaurant Cillian’s recommending for lunch, the fact that you can’t get the bag of cat food out of the art class cupboard without shattering the ceramic dildos packed inside with it, or your roommate’s hushed “cootchie-coo”.

This is what working at a mind-numbingly dull job is like. Sitting in one position at an office desk behind a cubicle for seven hours a day (or more), part of your consciousness is pre-occupied with the fact that the data entry tasks (or the billing tasks, or the filing tasks) are wholly devoid of any significance outside of the immediate circumstances of your job description, that in the real world they are pointlessly repetitive and ultimately not very worthwhile, while another part of your mind prattles on, enticing you with promises that this is a good and right expenditure of your valuable life force that keeps you gainfully employed, health insured and financially stable.

It is such a relief to emerge from that dreaming-you’re-waking-up state, to have the world solidify and stabilize (and Glory Hallelujah Hosanna sing-it-from-on-top-of-the-mountain if on top of that, it’s also a Saturday and you don’t actually have to go to work after all!). You know where you are, you know that your next course of action will yield logical results. You know you’re naked (at least, I am when I wake up) but you don’t have to pretend that Cillian’s Taco Bell suggestion is anything but vastly inappropriate and disconcerting. You know the cat food is located in the kitchen, through the living room, in a cupboard full of nothing more than plastic bags, cat toys and cat treats, none of which are even remotely phallic. And you see that your roommate is still in bed, asleep and would never even utter the phrase “cootchie-coo” to you in real life, let alone freaking you out with it… right?... she wouldn’t… right?

Similarly, it is such a relief when the clock strikes five (or six, or whatever time is time to go home) and you can emerge from your job-induced stupor, shake off the sluggishness, and awaken to a world where you can preoccupy your mind with light, air, water, music, poetry, sex, food, anything other than billing codes, proper encoding procedures and ten key speeds! You are reminded that you have a body built for sensuality and self expression through physical exertion, a mind buzzing with creative potential and the capacity for great acts and immense empathy, and a soul so expansive that you could never be measured by such insignificant standards as a salary, job title status, dress code adherence, or your proficiency with Microsoft Word.

(P.S. Weirdly enough, I was recently coming home from work for lunch, walking down Seattle’s Fifth Avenue, under the monorail tracks, when, coming toward me, was a naked man, shuffling down the street. He was tall, a bit overweight, hairy all over and I don’t think he was entirely aware of what he was doing. This incident inspired my reference to walking downtown naked in the above blog entry. I guarantee you, there’s nothing quite so disgruntling as to have to wonder… so do I exist, or am I merely a figment of that man’s fevered dreaming while he’s in bed, dreaming he’s waking up?)

Derka Derka Truffle Jihad

2006-08-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

My war with Dilettante Chocolates is over.

Dilettante Chocolates on Broadway in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood is the dessert place to be, if you’re just trendy enough for a touch of pretentiousness and bohemian enough to temper the pretension with some class. When you enter the café, on your left are shelves of foil wrapped and boxed Dilettante Chocolates. To your right are tables draped in maroon tablecloths, surrounded by black chairs. In front of you, dividing the room, is the cash register and, on the right side of the cash register is the candy counter with the dessert case, displaying cakes, pies and fruit tarts, on the left. It was into this refined and hip atmosphere that my partner, Jim, and I, with a friend of Jim’s, entered on fine autumn day in 1998.

I don’t remember Jim’s friend’s name. I remember she regularly got very friendly with her herbs and she was a singer a the University of Washington. Let’s call her Charlotte. What the hell?

So, on a fine autumn day in 1998, Jim, Charlotte and I came into Dilettante Chocolate’s on Broadway and took a seat. The restaurant that day (I believe it was a Saturday) was packed. The single waiter in the place wheeled past our table and deposited menus like a B-52 bomber dropping relief supplies on war torn Germany. He was clearly overwhelmed and as I watched him negotiate the tables and the customers, I determined to tip him well and also to treat him with all due sensitivity. Jim, Charlotte and I chatted and considered our options amongst the delectable contents of the dessert case. The waiter… now, let’s see, what was his name? I don’t remember. Let’s call him… Quentin. Quentin the waiter, all huffing and sighing, made his way to our table and said he was ready to take our order. Jim wasn’t actually at the table, still peering in at the promises of creamy decadence in the dessert case, and Charlotte was still considering her menu. When Quentin asked “Are you ready?” I stammered that one of us wasn’t present as I tried to get Jim’s attention. Charlotte responded with a half-articulated “I’m not quite” or “Not just yet” or maybe it was “I don’t see any marijuana brownies” when Quentin snapped “Fine!” and ejected himself from our presence.

That was my first inclination that Quentin was, in fact, one of those prissy, snappy little food service fags.

Jim rejoined us at the table. We chatted. We drank our waters. We discussed what we were going to order. We watched Quentin swish and dart between tables, seating people, taking orders, and bussing tables. Where was this man’s help? Where were the other waiters? We tried to get his attention and he lawn-darted a “I’ll be right with you” our way. I think, perhaps, I might not have become annoyed but for the fact that time was of some essence. I was supposed to be at work later that afternoon. And then I noticed that the tables around us were emptying and being replaced by new customers. And then I noticed that Quentin sat two gentlemen down at the next table and took their order while we continued to wait (by then ten minutes after his lobbed promise to attend to us directly) for him to return to take our order. It was then, as Quentin finished taking our neighbors’ orders, that Jim caught his attention and said “We’re ready to order.” To which Quentin responded tartly “I can’t help you now.”

To which I responded, as he whisked away and after a moment of stunned silence shared between Jim, Charlotte and I, “Oh no she didn’t!" I stood up and followed Ms. Thang across the room.

Now, mind you, at this point in the story, I am perfectly calm. All I want is my lemon coconut cake with a hot chocolate! Clearly some misunderstanding had taken place, or Quentin the quickly-losing-his-snippy-waiter-fag-charm was just overworked. I am willing to work through this. I say to Quentin, when I catch up to him, “Excuse me, we’re ready to order.” To which our Quentin responded “I can’t help you.”

I think I may actually have cocked my head. This simply did not compute.

“Why not?”

“You’re not at my table.”

I was not, until then, aware that you could gain, verbally, the effect of snapping your fingers dismissively. Plus, hello!, “We’re not at your table?” I asked. “But you were going to wait on us earlier.”

“The person who waits your table didn’t come in today. I can’t help you.”

At this point, a gentle ripple rolled across the serene surface of my calm. Barely a ripple. Almost… merely… a shimmer. Still… a disturbance. So I said “I don’t see how that’s our problem. We’ve been here for over half an hour and I’ve watched you wait on every other table but us. You’re even serving customers who came in after we did. So why have you suddenly decided you can’t serve us?”

“I think it’s time we parted ways, sir.”

In spite of any and all pacifist tendencies and aspirations I may have, there really are times when it would be wholly satisfying to slap a silly waiter bitch, pop him in the gob with a good slug of your fist and kick him repeatedly in his balls. But, because at this point in the story, I am still calm, I did none of those things.

“Parted ways???”

I think I even managed to vocalize the multiple question marks.

“Why? All we want is some desserts and a drinks. And you’re being belligerent.”

“It’s time for you to leave.”

Wobble that head any more, Quentin, and it’ll be easier to knock your faggot block off. Still… if by this point I’m not screaming at a motherfucker that he is, in fact, a motherfucker; if, only in retrospect, do I even consider that this guy is a complete asshole, that even in the midst of the conversation I didn’t even think to think of any epithets, insults or abuses, then I consider myself to have still been calm. Oh, I’m sure ripples were disturbing my calm all over, shore to shore, but mostly, I couldn’t believe I was being thrown out of a restaurant for… expecting the waiter do wait on us, for wanting lemon coconut cake and a hot chocolate, for calmly, rationally (hey, I was as surprised about that as anyone!) trying to work this out with a fellow swish.

“Why?” I demanded of Quentin. “What have I or my friends done to warrant being thrown out?”

“It’s time for you to leave.”

“Okay,” I conceded with a shrug. “But I’d like your name, the name of your manager and how I can reach him or her.”

“I’ve been working here a long time.”

Okay. Still gonna complain.

Quentin wrote down the necessary information and Jim, Charlotte and I left. That same evening, Jim and I both wrote letters complaining of the treatment we’d received. In my letter, I suggested that amends might be made with a gift certificate for each of us in the amount of $5. My lemon coconut cake alone would’ve cost that. I didn’t think it an extraordinary request. At the very least, Jim and I hoped to receive a written or telephoned apology. We never heard anything.

So my war with Dilettante Chocolates was on. I told everyone I knew in Seattle the story. I even rallied some friends to my cause and they swore to join our boycott. I never stepped foot inside that café or their stores ever again. I never purchased their chocolate. I became an even more avid fan of Godiva Chocolates. By God, that would show Dilettante’s!

They didn’t close down for lack of business. They remained popular as ever on Broadway. I even continued to see Quentin waiting tables inside. He wasn’t fired. Nor, probably, I suspect, even reprimanded. I wondered how often he gave the manager a blow job. Or were they related somehow? The years went by. I moved to Los Angeles. I re-vilified Dilettante’s every time I saw their products when I visited Portland or Seattle. My hate burned so cold.

But then I experienced living in Los Angeles. I experienced being hit by cars twice while riding my bike. I experienced working for Samuel French and Bed Bath and Beyond. I experienced the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governorship and George W. Bush to the presidency… twice. And I suppose that this led me to conclude that there are worse things in the world than, oh, say, being thrown out of a café because some waiter targeted my group as his venue for venting his frustration over a coworker’s irresponsibility, leaving him working a Saturday afternoon rush alone. There are worse things in the world so much so that they landed me in therapy, where I sorted out some of my values, feelings, and preconceptions and came out the other end in Seattle, Washington, ready to embrace a more vibrant, compassionate and positive outlook on life. Thus, on Wednesday, August 2^nd, my war with Dilettante Chocolates came to an end.

After enjoying an evening improv performance at Freehold Theater with my friend and roommate, Kat, we wandered through Capitol Hill and along Broadway, talking of improv. We laughed about the improv performance and the guy we passed on the street who was telling his friend about his retarded turtle who had long toenails, so he named the turtle Freddy Krueger. The night was just rife with possibility and humor, so when Kat suggested stopping in at Dilettante’s, I felt an initial twinge of the old grudge, but then I thought “Wait a minute.”

In Los Angeles, at the end of my various types of therapy, I decided to try new things and to let my fears or prejudgments stand in the way of living a fulfilling life. Here I was, about to deny myself and a friend of a continued happy evening because of an eight year grudge over some prissy fag’s bad behavior! It was time to unclench.

So unclench I did and joined Kat at Dilettante’s for a wonderful evening of discussion. Quentin has been replaced by demure, gracious Asian women who are efficiently attentive to customers. I ordered a savory black forest ham and cheese sandwich on rustic bread, and followed it with a slice of lemon coconut cake and a hot chocolate.

Abrupt Transitions

2006-07-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

The woman at the next table mentioned Seattle, WA. She looks like she just came from the 24 Hour Fitness across the street, with her tasteful little gym bag and snazzy work out outfit or, since she doesn’t look like she’s sweated in them, maybe she’s on her way to exercise. Then again, this being West Hollywood, maybe she’s merely dressed for fitness success, sporty and hip with her bouncy ponytail and impertinent little breasts. Anyway, she’s on her cell phone talking about Seattle. She’s been explaining to whomever she’s speaking to that Seattle is in Washington state… no, no, there are two Washingtons: Washington D.C., the capitol of the United States, and Washington state, which is north of California above Oregon. Oregon is north of California, too. Yeah, Seattle is in Washington. Seattle is the capitol of Washington.

My therapist asked me to write a list of things I like about myself. I don’t know what to write.

Watching the news at the Laundromat put me into a foul mood and I don’t know why, but it’s led me to the eternal question, the eternal question that, as I fold my underwear and towels, I try to evade by stuffing it into the dryer warm laundry, but the eternal question hounds me: why am I here? What is the fucking purpose of my life? I’ve become what I feared most that I would become: a mere cog. Or, no, it’s worse than that, even, I’ve become pointless and empty. Just another pointless, empty creature staggering around this bloody damn city!

I joined a gay men’s depression group. The facilitators, Hal Sparks and Ben Kingsley (because that’s who they look like), took us on our first guided meditation. They asked us to find a quiet place outdoors in our minds, a glen or a meadow or a lagoon, but someplace where it’s peaceful and tranquil. And see it in as rich of detail as possible, the plants, the trees, the rocks, the water, flowers, are there any clouds in the sky? Whatever your place is, envision it fully, embrace it fully, smell it, feel it. Now imagine that in this place there is a cave mouth. Go into the cave and imagine it fully, feel it, is it dark, or light? Is it rocky or mossy? What’s your cave like (in a group of gay men, my answers to myself were all inappropriate)? You come across an animal in the cave. What animal is it? See that animal, feel that animal, this is your inner animal, your inner self. So afterward, we discussed what our inner animals revealed themselves to be. The big, fat, hairy guy saw a bear (big surprise), the mousy little guy who I’ve become convinced is a dyed in the wool NAMBLA member, saw a “precious, just precious” baby seal. There was an Emperor penguin, a bald eagle, a snowy owl, a dolphin and a wolf. Ben Kingsley may just as well have said “You come across an animal in the cave. Insert New Age Current Marketing Favorite Endangered Animal here.” I saw nothing, though. My cave was empty. There was just a fire in the middle of a sandstone cave, with deeper, darker shadows beyond the firelight. But I didn’t want to say that out loud. I lied and said I saw a sea turtle. The other fags ohhed and ahhed appropriately.

I began naked yoga classes. It’s tough, sweaty work, but I enjoy it immensely, the feeling of freedom and moving my body and getting in touch with my physical self… plus, bendy naked guys!

Jesus loves me; ask me about my schadenfreude!

About an hour and a half into my work day my mood soured. Doing what I’m doing at Ascent Media is such a goddamn waste of time! I’ll be working away and suddenly, WHAM!, I realize how fucking pointless and stupid it all is! I spend 40 hours a week reading sheets of paper from which I glean no relevant, nurturing or life sustaining information. All for a paycheck. Being a post production whore isn’t as fulfilling as I had hoped.

This guy in line at Starbuck’s in North Hollywood got into a conversation with the barista. I think they were flirting. They were probably flirting. Heterosexuals are always flirting and frothing at the mouth at each other… they’re so promiscuous! Anyway, Barista girl (an attractive young woman, black hair just alternative enough for Starbuck’s but just not-alternative enough for L.A.) asked him what he was reading (the book was in his hand and he’d been reading in line behind me). By this time I was at a table far enough away to catch most of the conversation, but not all of it. He announced to her that he’s a screenwriter like being a screenwriter is a STUNNING REVELATION OF MY BRILLIANCE when, in North Hollywood, it actually means you’re just like everyone else. The book he was reading was on Buddhism because he wanted to incorporate Buddhist principles into his screenplay (which, I gotta give him points, would be really cool). He mentioned some of the Buddhist principles and she asked him “What’s that?” to which he responded “It’s sort of like being a Jedi.” Strike the points. And I guarantee that will be how he pitches his movie: “It’s about Buddhism. It’s sort of like being a Jedi.”

Life experiences are like quarters… you lose both when you’re sitting on the couch. Jambaism #15. It’s a cheap sentiment, particularly on the side of Jamba Juice cup, but still relevant.

My grandmother celebrated her 100^th birthday on May 21^st. My cousin David and his wife Julia organized a big surprise party at the Pomona Valley Mining Company (which was way more elegant than it’s name suggested). The banquet room we gathered in overlooked Pomona and the 10 freeway from the hills bordering Frank G. Bonelli Park. The tables were draped in white linens and Julia had put together small pink and purple gift bags for each setting. When my dad and my aunt Eleanor brought Grandma into the room, all the assembled family, extended family and friends shouted “surprise!” and sang “Happy Birthday” while my grandmother stood in the doorway, laughing (I assume… I was too far away to actually hear her, but I know her and she was laughing because she was, in fact, taken by surprise) and waving at everyone. She looked very small next to my dad.

Another guided meditation. Back into the cave… for me, my empty cave with only the crackling fire to keep me company. You come across your spirit animal (when did our animals find religion?). Sit down across from your spirit animal. I sit down on the dirt of my cave and look across the fire pit, toward where the cave goes black with dark. I notice the skeleton of some small rodent tossed carelessly against the wall back there… great, my spirit animal not only was a small rodent, but it died! Hal Sparks is guiding this mediation, and he says “Sit across from your animal and ask it a question. It can be any question you want. Don’t be impatient if the answer doesn’t come right away. If your animal is unresponsive, ask yourself how you feel, how you feel your animal feels.” And at that precise moment I realize that my inner animal, is, in fact, in this cave. It’s watching me from the darkness at the back of the cave. It’s something huge, something with rows of fangs, something most likely deformed and monstrous… and it wants to kill and eat me. When Hal asks what our animals told us, what feelings came up for us, I lie and say my sea turtle just told me to not eat meat.

I gave notice at Ascent Media on June 20^th, on my one year anniversary.

The Monday after her birthday, my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She was admitted to the hospital and came through surgery so well that she amazed the doctors. The primary physician marveled at the excellent condition of her heart. My aunt Eleanor joked that it is the condition of her heart that’s keeping her alive (because for at least the last three years, Grandma Lopez has been telling everyone that she doesn’t know why she’s still alive, and why God won’t take her). A week later, she was moved to a convalescence home, where she stopped eating and drinking. On one of my aunt Eleanor’s visits, Grandma asked her where she was. Eleanor reminded her that she was in a convalescence center and Grandma told her that she thought she was home because the little girl that came into the room asked her if she wanted to go home. My grandmother told the little girl “Yes” and the little girl promised to take her, but then my grandmother woke up in the convalescence home again. On June 14^th, my grandmother passed away.

At work, there is just so goddamned much negative chatter all the time! My headphones died, so I’ve had to listen to all the chit chat between my fellow billers. The Princess runs the gamut of negative to inane, with a couple of side trips to petulant and a stop over in insincere. Ashrafa’s running commentary is, admittedly, hilarious, but she’s so negative. And Queen of Negativity herself, Wilma, doesn’t stop with her negativity about work, about herself, about life, about the world. I think if Wilma had something good and happy happen to her and she actually just gave over to the full enjoyment of the event, her head would explode.

Watching TV with Jim, it dawned on me that something must have happened during the day to put him in this funk that I mistook for post-nap haze. I mean, what was Jim doing napping in the middle of the afternoon when his book was full of errands and there was so much packing to do for our move out of L.A.? I asked him what happened. He got a phone call from his mom telling him that his dad has been diagnosed with late stage colon cancer. His dad has been given at most one to two years left to live.

I recognized Mikhail when I first met him at my naked yoga class, but I couldn’t for the life of me place him. I kind of figured maybe I’d seen him online as I perused personal ads. He’s got striking blue eyes and he’s beautiful in a wolfish sort of way (there are some guys I see who I just think “God, he would make a fucking beautiful werewolf”… Mikhail is like that, dark features, striking blue eyes). He’s trim, lean and I’ve seen him naked! He has a couple of tasteful tattoos, a stylized Egyptian owl on his right shoulder blade, the Japanese character for Mercury on his left hip, and a Greek band around his right ankle. During one of our yoga classes, the instructor had us go into the boat pose. To make the pose last a good amount of time while we strained and struggled to maintain it, the instructor asked us to go around the room and say our name and where we were born. Mikhail said he was born in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Later, I realized where I recognized him from. Jim was packing up some of his stuff and going through some old magazines. Mikhail was on the cover of one of them, and appears in an ad for porn videos. Mikhail is Preston Steele. I don’t know how I expect a porn star to behave, I suppose in a preconceived, stereotypical way (slutty, conceited, but dumb), but Mikhail is nothing like that. And then one day in class I looked across the studio at him and saw him as he was as a kid. It happens sometimes. I just look at person and the child they were shines through, sometimes, I think, because they never outgrew their inner child, they never let go of what makes being a child great. I saw Mikhail walking through the studio and I could vividly imagine him as a kid, the pretty little boy in Ft. Collins, Colorado, his sweetness, his sensitivity, and I imagined, because this is how he is, that he grew up a bit quiet, and reserved, but essentially interested in other people’s well being. And I wondered what his path in life was like, that that kid from Ft. Collins, Colorado, would go on to become a porn star in Los Angeles.

My grandmother’s wake was June 25^th. Her body was so small that there was probably an extra two feet in the coffin. They made her up very nicely with her glasses on, a nice dress and a simple, thin white sweater, exactly the sort of thing she would wear in life, say if she needed to dress up for a wedding. Her funeral was at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Upland, CA, complete with the gentle brogue of an Irish priest. I served as one of the pall bearers and nearly lost my composure walking toward the front of the church when I realized that I’ve now borne the bodies of both paternal grandparents. My second cousin, Jude, gave the eulogy. His mother, Julia, the same woman who the previous month hosted my grandmother’s 100^th birthday celebration, read a poem about and to my grandmother. The windows behind the altar looked out on the San Gabriel Mountains in the early morning sunshine. My last memory of my grandmother is hugging her goodbye in her home after her birthday party.

Lasts: The last movie I saw at Grauman’s Chinese restaurant was Superman Returns. My last day at Ascent Media was Friday, July 7^th. I did my laundry for the last time at the Laundromat on Lankershim on July 8^th. I attended my final West Hollywood naked yoga class on July 9^th. I drove Mulholland Drive for the last time (at least as a California resident) on July 10^th. That evening I went to LAX for the last time (ever, ever, ever, I swear to God because I hate that fucking airport!).

Rim job training Academy cadet.

On Tuesday, July 11^th, I drove out of Los Angeles in a U-haul truck, bound for Seattle, WA.

Koko

2006-02-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

I wonder if it's cool to be an ape who knows sign language.

Do they know how special they are?

I wonder if they really care how special they are, always signing for "banana" and "telephone" even though they can't use a phone.

Why don't they teach gorillas sign language for "rend" and "tear" and "destroy" or "To Serve Man is a cookbook."

And then maybe it would be cool to be an ape who knows sign language.

The Dining Hour

2006-01-16T11:04:00.000-08:00

Living in Los Angeles hasn’t always been the star studded Entertainment Tonight segment I’d hoped for. But L.A. does have at least one feature to recommend it: great restaurants. NO matter where we’ve lived or visited, my husband Jim and I have a knack for finding great independent restaurants. Denver, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Berlin, Urbania, Italy, Reno, even Cheyenne, Wyoming all have gems that became favorites. Los Angeles has proven to be no exception.

Within only a few blocks of our Studio City apartment are two of our most often visited places: Lazlo’s Hortobagy and Vitello’s. Lazlo’s offers Hungarian cuisine in an unpretentious, cozy European style atmosphere. Their menu includes such delectibles as their simple, but savory, cucumber salad topped with paprika, clear broth soups of lentils, vegetables or, my favorite, a liver pâté dumpling. The main courses are hearty affairs such as sausages, meat and cheese platters, sauerkraut and spaetzle, fish, rice, duck, mushroom pasta dishes and potato dumplings. Jim and I have always been delighted to find a restaurant in which the wait staff can readily recommend complimentary wines that are native to the region from which their cuisine originates, and our regular waitress at Lazlo’s (sad to say I don’t know her name) has never disappointed in this regard. Every wine she has recommended has been a tart, fruity delight. Dinner at Lazlo’s can be rounded off with simple, flavorful desserts such as baklava, cheesecake, ice cream and the unique hazelnut purée. The only drawback to Lazlo’s Hortobagy is that they have quite possibly the smallest parking lot in the state of California.

Vitello’s parking lot, while larger, remains difficult to navigate because they are nearly always full, and with good reason! Jim and I discovered Vitello’s in a search one night for pizza. Vitello’s is now our number one choice for pizza nights at the Lopez-Myers household. However, their menu extends well beyond their excellent pizza. Each meal begins with hot, fresh bread with butter delivered to your table. Their minestrone and garbanzo-topped salads are equally delightful and savory. I particularly enjoy their blue cheese dressing, which is made on the premises. I’ve never had a meal at Vitello’s that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. All the Italian mainstays are represented: lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, spaghetti along with various other pastas smothered in meat or cream sauces; as well as some unique dishes named for celebrities. Here at Vitello’s, the wait staff not only provide some of my favorite eye candy, but are equally knowledgeable about the wines which line the walls of the restaurant’s foyer. You can always count on your waiter to recommend an excellent Italian wine to accompany your meal. I’m sorry to say that I cannot speak to the variety of desserts available at Vitello’s because the first dessert I tried hooked me and hasn’t let go: their amaretto truffle is one to be savored. It’s amaretto ice cream rolled in small white and milk chocolate chips and peanuts. Simply to die for!

A few miles away, down Ventura Boulevard, in the next city over, Sherman Oaks, is our favorite Los Angeles restaurant, The Great Greek. On a recent visit I told Jim we always had to make sure to save up for the Great Greek because we never leave having spent less than $100. The prices aren’t outrageous at all, but to go to the Great Greek is to celebrate Greek cuisine, and the more people you can take along, the better! You do not go to the Great Greek with the intention of eating sensibly. The Great Greek is for reveling in food. One must begin with an appetizer or three. Because I’m not a real food critic and don’t take extensive notes, I don’t know what it’s called, but our favorite appetizer is the Greek cheese served in brandy and set on fire by your waiter with the exclamation of “Opa!” Since it is always difficult to decide which dish to order for your main meal, I recommend the sample platter which includes the signatures of the restaurant: lamb, dolmathes, moussaka, rice, and spanokopita. Even their simplest dish, a potato on the side of most of the meals, is delicious and flavorful. You want wine? The staff here, too, knows their wines and has never failed to recommend excellent Greek reds. The older the waitperson, the better the wine recommendation, as well! I highly recommend eating only half of your meal (the portions are large) so that you can fit in one of the excellent, simple desserts: rice pudding, crème brulèe, cheesecake or the decadent strawberry Romanoff. And go to the Great Greek prepared to enjoy a raucous environment: they feature live Greek music and dancing waiters who often entice patrons to join them in a Greek dance around the dining room. It’s a lively, delicious, thoroughly satisfying affair.

Whether it’s God or fated magnetism toward la dolce vita, Jim and I unearth restaurant gold and are currently, frankly, blessed with a multitude of offers right in our immediate vicinity in addition to these three I’ve just described: Ernie’s Mexican Restaurant, Le Petit Chateau French restaurant, Matsuda for some of the best sushi I’ve ever had, the Magnolia Café has an excellent breakfast, Kung Pao China bistro offers excellent Chinese fare which includes my favorite dish there, the mango shrimp. For 1950’s style diner food and atmosphere, the Original Bob’s Big Boy is nearby in Burbank, just down the street from Patty’s, another tasty diner. And now I can add to this pantheon my newest discovery: the Down Home Country Town Yeehaw Buffet.

The Down Home Country Town Yeehaw Buffet (not it’s real name, obviously, but trust me… you’ve been in such a place at least once in your life, even if your therapist successfully worked you through the shame and safely sealed the memory in a dark, deep cavern of denial) is decorated in 1970’s calico. The carpet adds the right touch of countrified sophistication just because it’s dark green. Quaint curtains patterned with ducks ruffle along the top of the dividers which create a sense of open coziness between the three sections of the large dining room. All the light fixtures are elegantly shaded in green plastic. One might expect dulcet country twang over the sound system, but as I remain country appreciation challenged, thankfully, instead, it’s Phil Collins singing Cyndi Lauper covers. The clientele is retirees and those whom George W. Bush both rallies to his Christian, God fearin’ causes and legislates right out of their already meager health care and education. Still, they will always implore God to bless America, and in case you doubt that they will, just listen closely as they unabashedly say grace over their fried okra. These folks are the salt of the earth, folks for whom dining attire consists of sweat pants, tasseled loafers with white socks and jerseys blazoned with pro football team logos. When they really want to get gussied up, they tuck their jerseys in. These are the solidly lower-middle class, God love ‘em, not poor enough to be considered ghetto, exactly, but not rich enough to dine at places with real cloth napkins, either. So what, you may be asking yourself, is the appeal of the Down Home Country Town Yeehaw Buffet to someone like me, someone who knows not only the difference between pinot noir and merlot, but can also spell “pinot noir” and “merlot”?

Well, it’s the homage to my humble, trailer park roots… on my mother’s side of the family… distantly… Plus, you just can’t beat the under $8 price for all-you-can-eat. And the food, in spite of its Americana vulgarity, is decent, stick-to-your-ribs fare.

The classiest item on the menu is the seafood pasta salad made with Krab. While I usually partake of the green salad bar (which includes the exotic “spring mix greens”) I would definitely recommend you not pass on the carrot salad with raisins, a plains state Thanksgiving tradition. From the brightly lit, steaming buffet one has several choices of food colors, consistencies and textures: carrots, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes and my favorite: neon orange-yellow macaroni and cheese. If you choose to include a meat with your side dishes, you can partake of fried chicken, country style barbecue chicken, chicken fried steak, chicken nuggets, fish patties and the surprisingly delightful meatloaf accented with an amusing tomato base sauce. The desserts come in as colorful a variety as everything else: carrot cake, chocolate cake, various hot fruit crisps such as peach, cherry and apple, cookies and soft serve ice cream that never fails to delight the kiddies. While you won’t soon find wine on the menu at the Down Home Country Town Yeehaw Buffet, the mostly Spanish speaking staff is happy to show you where you can select from a variety of soft drinks, including Coke, Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew. If you leave the Down Home Country Town Yeehaw Buffet without your gut spilling out from under your stained t-shirt, you haven’t taken full advantage of what they have to offer! With the variety of restaurants I have to choose from, it is gratifying to know of one where they take the time to learn their customers by name, where I can, with each and every visit, count on being greeted by the 18 year old assistant manager with a hale and hearty “Good afternoon, Mr. Orfenowsky!”

(Well, you didn’t think I dined there and used my own credit card, did you?)

New Year's Day, 2006

2006-01-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

I rang in the New Year by myself, home with my cats. I drank nothing, I kept the television off. Dinner was an In-and-Out number one combo (double-decker with fries and a Coke) with strawberry ice-cream for dessert. I played the Sims Hot Date. I built up my downtown area more to my liking, building a couple of new restaurants, one called Poseidon’s Grotto and one called The Atrium (very posh, the Atrium) and touching up the public swimming pool I built downtown. I worked my Sims (Steve Python and Adam Eden) hard to make their relationship work while keeping them in their jobs (Steve has already lost two, computer hacker and pickpocket, and is now back to hacking computers) and also making friends (these goddamn Hot Date Sims are so fickle and difficult with their interpersonal lives… they kiss and hug and play footsie, but you invite them home and it’s drama thrown all over the room about how far you go and how disgusting your behavior is… drama bitch queens!). Around midnight I finally got Steve Python to move in with Adam Eden. The combined household finances allowed them to move to a more fabulous property. After six hours of playing (oh, don’t even judge me!!!), at 12:30 a.m., I shut the game down, shut the computer off, and went to bed.

If, one year, you, dear reader, are out in your BMW, driving from New Year’s party to New Year’s party, being witty, being clever, being divine and being fabulous, surrounded by gorgeous men in tuxedos and stunning women in glittering gowns (or stunning men in glittering gowns and gorgeous women in tuxedos, depending on which clubs you frequent), sipping the best champagnes and the cheapest whiskeys, kissing the sensual lips of your randy, sometimes kinky date/spouse/roommate/hustler/drunken-mistake-of-all-time-the-morning-after-horror in a sea of confetti, noise makers and fireworks you suddenly take pause and wonder to yourself “Huh… I wonder what the sad, lonely, pathetic set are doing this New Year’s Eve”… now you’ll know! They’re playing video games at home alone.

Happy New Year to my loyal readers, those I know and those of you who remain very, very quiet. Thanks to all those readers who’ve kept at me to get my ass in gear and write something more past the 100% Natural Guy! Thanks to those of you who I’ve never met, who’ve left your little fingerprints on my Blog with your comments. And to all of you my best wishes for 2006, because 2005 really sucked rotten, ugly eggs and ass for me, and I’m hoping we all see a brighter year this year (and maybe the impeachment of our George W. regime)! Good luck! God/Buddha/Allah/etc. bless you and keep you! Cheers!

100% Natural

2005-06-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

This is how it happened when I told the story to my coworker, Lucy:

Last night a psycho customer came in and said that he spoke to John, who told him we carried 100% natural comforters.

“John?” Lucy said. “There’s no John here.”

I know! That’s what I thought. I told him I didn’t know a John. But this guy wanted comforters that were 100% natural.

“What does that mean?” Lucy asked.

I don’t know. I mean, comforters don’t grow on trees, you can’t buy them at roadside stands picked fresh this morning from the comforter vines. He said he wanted a comforter that was 100% cotton inside and out. I explained to him that we didn’t carry any such thing and he insisted that John told him we did. But I think psycho-man must’ve been looking for trouble, probably even before he picked up the phone to make this call to phantom John because he started ranting about how he knew John had only read the package’s claim of 100% cotton, instead of spending time to read the whole label which states that the fill is 100% polyester. And that he knew our employees wouldn’t be properly knowledgeable about our products and that he made this trip all the way to the store and that he could find 100% natural comforters online in two seconds and where’s the manager?

“What a jerk.”

Exactly, Lucy, exactly.

“So what did you do?”

Well, I called Keir, the manager on duty to come over and deal with this guy.

“What did Keir say to him?”

Well, first of all that we didn’t have an employee named John and then I didn’t really wait around to find out the outcome. Sheesh! Why would I? What a nut case!

But this is how it really happened:

The nut case did in fact call and he talked to me. He asked me over the phone if we carried 100% natural comforters. When I stammered, trying to fathom first of all what “100% natural” could possibly mean in a comforter (no dyes? No pesticides? No MSG?), and secondly whether or not we carried such an item, he clarified that he wanted a comforter that was 100% cotton. I said we did because, as he would observe later, all I did was read the package which states on the front “100% Egyptian Cotton”… even better that normal cotton… Egyptian cotton, and if that isn’t all natural, then really, what is? I mean, this is the cotton kings were mummified in… it has to be good! He made me double check. I double checked. “100% Egyptian Cotton.” He asked me what colors we had and as my ire went up ever so slightly (because at this point, this is called “shopping” and I do not get paid to do anyone’s “shopping”), I ran the litany of colors for him: blue, black, red, white, and this pale green and before I finished saying “green” he was informing me that he would be in.

Now, I don’t know why, but when I tell people my name is Joe, so often they hack the bridge of the “e” off, turn what’s left on its side and slap the bridge back on the end to make an “n”. Jon. The “h”, if indeed an “h” there is when they spell it in their heads, comes from the ether and slips in to make a cute flaming twink into a rugged man’s man cowboy: John. In college I had the same teacher for three semesters. For most of those three semesters she insisted on calling me John until one day during roll call she was looking for my name and she said “John, I can’t find you on my attendance sheet.” And I responded, “Cordelia, of course you can’t… my name is Joe.” She laughed at herself and after that never made the mistake again. But people do it. I’m sure if I changed my name to “John” they’d start calling me Joe, just to be spiteful. Anyway, I know for a fact that Mr. 100% Natural Comforter made this mistake.

After being told by a coworker that there was a customer needing assistance by the pillows, I approached this bald, unshaven man with annoyance already written on his red, round face. He pounced on me with the story that he spoke to John and that John must have lied to him about the content of the comforters. What I told Lucy about how the conversation went was mostly true. Mr. 100% Natural Comforter said that John hadn’t been properly trained because the fill was polyester, not cotton. I responded with of course that’s the case and Mr. 100% Natural Comforter railed against this John, where was he, he’d like to give John a piece of his mind, and he claimed he’d specifically asked John to check the fill content and suddenly I saw that Mr. 100% Natural Comforter was as good at filling in false details as I was. He never asked me about the fill over the phone. He never once clarified what it was he meant by “100% Natural”. There we stood, one liar fussing and fuming at another. His lies were lies of invention; mine were lies of omission as I never corrected him about the identity of who he spoke to over the phone. I prayed that in his ire he would overlook my name tag, blazoned with “Joe” and therefore never upend the “e” and realize his mistake. While he railed against monopolies that the polyester companies had and badly trained employees and conspiracy theories, lies flew to my lips like bored housewives fly to closed department store doors just before the White Sale at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. My lies were as eager to cover my tracks and, should I be found out, dig my grave deeper as my mind was eager to find some way out of the path of this man’s purple rant. I finally abandoned all the new lies elbowing each other behind my teeth and responded to an out that he gave me: I called a manager and let Keir deal with him.

Keir’s first task was to inform Mr. 100% Natural Comforter that no John worked at our store. I heard Mr. 100% Natural Comforter mutter something about “must have misunderstood his name” and that’s when I began obsessive-compulsively straightening sheet sets on the shelves. I lost track of the conversation as I burned with shame that I hadn’t been able to salvage the sale or, worse, that I hadn’t been man enough to admit my identity and admit any lapses in my training or handling of the situation and, further, stand up for myself in some regard. I wondered why lies and life histories for John came more readily to my mind than any sense of self esteem or, at the very least, masculine bravado, because I spell John with an “h”. And there was some shame at having put one over on a clearly delusional man, pretending that I’d known all along that comforters came with polyester fill, cursing the name of that damned John right along with the customer, shaking my head and making noises that sounded like support for the poor, put upon customer who, after all, only wanted a 100% natural comforter… damn that John! And these questions plagued me until the next night, after I retold the story to Lucy, when I realized why I hadn’t set any records straight.

Because what I said or didn’t say was more tame and proper than the things that in my heart and the heat of the moment, I would prefer to have said. What I wanted to say was “You must be an asshole because all I hear coming out of you is a bunch of shit!”

I wanted to say “Motherfucker, I get paid $8.50 an hour for this job and it’s not enough for me to care about your precious fucking comfort you think you’ll get from a 100% cotton outside and inside to your bloody fucking comforter!”

What I wanted to say was “You’re a fucking liar! You never asked me to check the fill, you never mentioned the fill!”

What I really had first at the door, even before the bored housewives got there, was “You’re dead on, sir, I didn’t get proper training at this shit hole job. Three fucking months, you’d think someone could inform me about how fucking testy grizzled bald fucks like yourself get over the fill of a goddamn comforter, but not one thing was said, not one manager ever took the concern and care to inform me that polyester fill might make some puerile child in a 40 year old’s body piss himself with disgust! And motherfucker, if you know where you can find it on the internet in two seconds then why on God’s blessed green and blue Earth would you drive your raggedy withered ass over here just to cause a ruckus and a scene? I ain’t getting paid no $175 an hour to counsel your motherfucking neuroses, bitch!”

That’s why I lied. That’s why I opted for omissions over admissions. Because the alternative would’ve been venom, faces on both sides contorting into ugly welts of anger, and possible violence. Our society, the expectations of social interaction and, especially, retail interaction and the expectations of the retail environment, hinge on a delicate web of lies, deceits and slights of hand that keep everything calm, smooth and amiable. Rather than disrupt it and chance the unhinging of the very fabric of reality, I chose safety, calm, and creating a fiction that, I hope, plagues Mr. 100% Natural Comforter and keeps him from sleeping soundly because he just… cannot… remember that guy’s name!

Laundry Day

2005-03-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

It is still dark when, like a trick after a one night stand, I steal out of the house with my dirty laundry. I arrive at the laundromat just before six, when it opens. There are three other cars in the parking lot this morning, their occupants waiting for the doors to be unlocked, chomping at the bit the way unsupervised Weight Watchers wait for the fresh, hot Krispy Kremes to hit the supermarket shelves. I pull right up to the front of the laundromat and start unloading my laundry because I know that the doors are usually unlocked before six. I’m right, but I’m not the only one who knows this, and I’ve been careless with my knowledge.

I’m shoved aside by some surly little Mexican woman with her hair in curlers carrying a laundry basket as tall and round as she is. There’s a scuffle. We bump against the laundromat plate glass window. I land a strategic blow with my laundry bag that bumps her laundry basket to one side and I slip through the door… ha ha! But the scuffle detained me and another woman, floral print laundry bag in one hand, sleeping toddler in the other, gets in the way of my progress to the choicest machines. I’m no longer feeling generous and I elbow her in the chest. She emits a startled Minnie Mouse “Oof!” I gain on the machines and some shuffling little old Mexican woman comes from out of the blue, quarters extended to take my place… I’ve never seen shuffling done at that speed! But I whack her upside the head with my box of detergent and knock her away. Wielding my detergent like a mace I yell “Back, back mujeres, back I say!” and I conquer my four washing machines, leaving disgruntled Mexican women to scuttle back and fight amongst themselves for lesser machines.

I load the machines with soap and laundry, congratulating myself for the number of wounds inflicted. I’m doing better than previous visits… no blood was drawn this day. I look up and Curlers is giving me the evil eye and cursing me out soundly in Spanish. I flash her a picture of the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe and to her horror she is unable to prevent one final “pinche cabrón” from assaulting Mother Mary’s unblemished visage. Crossing herself rapidly, asking forgiveness, Curlers falls back in a faint. I’ll have no more trouble from that one.

I settle in for the next half hour with my book on anal health and pleasure. Such reading material not only keeps potential chit chat with the occasional homeless person who wanders into the laundromat at bay, but it also, and more importantly, scandalizes the other laundromat denizens. Even so, however, it’s difficult to read in here, what with the two televisions jabbering, one on the north wall tuned to a Mexican station, the one on the south wall tuned to an American station… the most American of all American stations, in fact: Fox.

Jarring me out of my book is a travel show on the Mexican station. It’s flashing lots of bouncing graphics and emitting a number of cartoon whoops and clangs but it’s an adult travel show about the Great Pyramids in Egypt. As far as I can tell with my limited Spanish, the two hosts, like the Mexican Regis and Cathy Lee, are getting into as much depth about travels and sights in Egypt as Keanu Reeves gets into analyzing his characters. “Whoa.” So while it’s not surprising when they show up, I am completely mystified when the rapping midgets come onscreen as to their significance to the rest of the program.

Across the laundromat, on American t.v., a bland Fox bimbot is giggling about her in-depth review of tanning spas in Beverly Hills. Her male counterpart, all animatronic seriousness, reports on a murdered woman in Tarzana, but, no need to fret, because in today’s weather we have good news: 80 degree highs! And now to their on-location reporter, a Robinson-May’s mannequin wobbling next to a fish pond at a Japanese restaurant in Monterey showing a couple of eighty year old koi with human faces.

Jesus Christ! At 6:45 in the morning do I need to be subjected to this unsettling surrealist assault of koi with human faces?! Do I need to be subjected to that over there, on the Mexican station: a woman in her forties dressed like Shirley Temple in her single digit years, singing in a Minnie Mouse pitched voice while a fat matador prances around her, pulling faces and exclaiming things that make the studio audience scream with laughter. I don’t know how they’re related to the stoic priest and the irate looking plumber. But, thank God, a commercial comes on and some hootchie mamas shake their bikini-clad tits at the camera to sell… is this for toilet paper?

Thank God… distraction! My wash is finally done! I grab a cart and wheel it over to the first of the four washers I used. I pull my sodden clothes from the washer and move on to the next. An older Mexican lady pounces on the vacant dryer as I unload the second one. I think she came from the ceiling. With assembly line precision, she follows me, loading her clothes into the machines as soon as I empty them. I’m too slow on the last one though, and she pushes her way in, removes the last of my clothes for me, lifts her black, low heeled shoe up to my ass and, face drawn in stoic concentration, gives a mighty shove that propels me and my wheeled cart over to the dryers. I think she’s been over-stimulated by the pulsating graphics of Mexican t.v.

I load my clothes into two massive dryers and notice as I do so that the laundromat has become a microcosm of Southern California in the regard that here, too, the Mexican population has exploded. Clumps of comadres chat together over coffee and donuts from the bakery a few doors down from here. Expressionless Mexican men methodically attend to the laundry they have no woman to help them with. There’s one guy transfixed by his revolving quilt, around and around and around. Several people stand vacantly adoring the televisions which soothe the viewers with Kanamit promises of serving man. I start my dryers and hop up on a counter. I try to lose myself in the chapter on rectal stimulation but with all the noise of the comadres, the machines, the bimbots going on about 90% chance of 10% of 5% of the population of Los Angeles county contracting some life threatening flu from some exotic country somewhere on Earth, and the Mexican station’s rapper videos, I just can’t concentrate!

I watch the rappers, with their faces painted black on one side, white on the other, who knows why? The bobbling graphics blink here, too. I think this Mexican station conceives of its audience as toddlers and programs accordingly. I turn to American t.v. to find the 7:14 to 7:16 slot filled with an in-depth retrospective on the many faces of Michael Jackson with background music by Menudo. I see. Fox conceives of its audience demographics being slightly brighter toddlers.

I turn to my laundry and watch it tumble. I get lulled into a vague childhood memory. I must’ve been four or five years old, with my mom at the laundromat in Pomona that is still standing and in operation. Although my adult mind can fill in obscurities about the memory (like my mom’s age being 24 or 25, how the family’s financial situation must’ve been since we must not yet have had a washer in the house, whether or not my brother was around), I only remember certain details: the height of counters because I was below them, the desire to play in the laundry carts, asking my mom for candy out of the vending machine (this was, at that time in my life, a supremely cool thing), and just being happy, being excited about this adventure I was on at the laundromat, and my mom was happy, the atmosphere was just… happy. As I watch my clothes swirl around in the dryer I have to admit to myself that there are vestiges of that four year old still here who, in spite of the early hour and the battle of wills over available machines, still finds coming to the laundromat fun and adventuresome.

My dryers wheeze to a stop. I come to my senses.

Giddy As A Schoolgirl

2005-03-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

I have a crush.

On this guy who started work this week in my department. Evan Bumsenkerl. When Evan comes into work I am driven to distraction. I just want to spend the day looking at him and sitting next to him and feeding him grapes. He is, as my gay coworker described him in a covert email, a cross between Brad Pitt and Fabio. He’s tall, tan, Nordic and if he isn’t gay I’d be more than happy to indulge his bi curiosity. I Googled him and found his resume on an acting and modeling website (you can Google “Evan Bumsenkerl”, too, but you won’t find the real guy ‘cause, you know, alias and all). He has his headshot posted there and also a picture of him shirtless and HOT! God should prove just how loving and just She is by making it so Evan can come to work shirtless. I keep sighing over Evan. Who can concentrate on billing work orders when Evan's around? I’ve had a wide range of daydream fantasies about Evan… my Evan… my dear Evan… Mr. and Mr. Joseph and Evan Lopez-Bumsenkerl… fantasies in which Evan and I share deep conversations about the art of acting as we stare deep into one another’s eyes and smile and flirt; fantasies in which Evan waits for me outside in the pouring rain to confess his equal obsession with me and would I like to come over to his place for drinks and hang out in our underwear and he SWEARS… nothing will happen; fantasies of Evan coming over to my place to talk and confessing his deep, dark secret pain which causes him to break down in tears then leap up to flee but I hold him back and tell him, gently caressing his tear stained face, that it’s okay, that I understand, to just rest here in my arms, babe, and we kiss and make out and I console him right out of his clothes and into sweaty sheets and wild grunting monkey sex!!!

Crush behavior is so absurd.

What am I? TWELVE?! And a girl?! I wonder if straight people experience crushes like this. I mean, I know gay men do. Gay men develop whole crush fantasies on just a picture of a guy’s dick in the chat rooms of www.wildgruntingmanmonkeysex.com. At least my guy is whole and three dimensional. Even so, I feel simultaneously ashamed of myself and bouncy buoyant. That’s a crush for you! One wonders where my 37 year old rationality has gone. What of my jaded view of gorgeous actor/models in Los Angeles? Oh, well, there it is, right beside other, darker feelings that are elicited when I analyze my reactions to Evan: envy, jealousy, insecurity.

Well, those feelings have lurked right near the surface a lot lately. Times like right now, as I sit at my desk and reflect on them, I suddenly realize how trivial and pointless the insecurities are. Why should being in the presence of a young Balder like Evan make me feel inadequate? Why do I feel rejected and insignificant if I don’t receive a response from guys I think are hot when I IM or email them from gay websites? It’s a little bizarre, isn’t it? It’s like being back in high school, yearning to be graced by acceptance from the in-crowd, the jocks and golden children of the high school pantheon.

This July is my 20 year high school reunion. There’s a website for the Niwot High School class of 1985 to post pictures and information about what we’ve all been up to since graduation. I can’t believe the number of people procreating! Especially since I still imagine these people as 17 and 18 year olds. A few weeks ago I spent about an hour and a half going through the various biographies, passing judgment on people’s choices, the number of kids they’ve had and the religious re-birthings. My pettiness suddenly snuck up and astounded me. More than that, the fact that I’ve held on to some of the old wounds and insecurities from twenty years ago astounded me. I felt jealous of the careers and accomplishments of others, ashamed that I might appear inadequate in comparison, wondering what I will say at the reunion to these gold crowned adults, completely unable to see what I have accomplished myself, unable to appreciate my accomplishments on their own merit. It’s like feeling inadequate in the presence of gorgeous men, not realizing that I am in their company with just as much physical appeal.

This year I’ve been reading some self help books. I just finished “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. At times the book sounds a bit New Age, ding ding the chimes hokey, imparting the ancient wisdom of the Toltecs to today’s self help guru seekers, but there was some real wisdom to be gleaned from it. Part of that wisdom has to do with not making assumptions about other people’s motives and perceptions, not trying to live up to those false standards, and overcoming a Judge/Victim stance in life. It’s unfortunate that I’ve mastered that stance because, really, it’s high time for it to be dismantled. All this comparison to other people and feeling inadequate makes me just miserable… and miserable to be around, I’m sure… or at least trying at times. I have built such a web of self deprecation and inadequacy that I find it difficult to escape into a reality in which I stand on my own two feet and can embrace honor myself.

I think the Toltecs have sunk in… perhaps in too deep.

And since no one reading this is getting paid $150 an hour as my therapist, I’ll move on to this point: that there are others out there who can relate to what I’m saying. I’ll continue on my path of discovery in the hopes that I can attend my reunion without judging everyone there when they tell me about their missionary work in Cambodia, founding businesses of their own, and expressing pride in giving up their careers to raise children. I’ll smile and congratulate them in their life’s work. And I will, without the least bit of shame, relate my tales of working raves in Berlin, hiking the Alps, publishing my writing and co-running a writer’s group in Seattle with other vampire slayers.

Perhaps I’ll leave out the bit about the vampire slaying.

I look forward to transforming my life in accordance with ancient Toltec wisdom so that I might release all this negative energy and reclaim my strength so I can stop being such a pussy and start auditioning and writing and doing the things that will make me proud to stand as my own man on the windswept cliffs of adulthood (sheesh… sorry about that… I’ve got a John Williams compilation playing as I write this and I was just overcome with Rebel forces/Indiana Jones heroic inspiration)!

In the meantime, I’ve got to get going. Evan and I are going hiking up to Lake Hollywood where we’ll have a very masculine picnic, make out on the red and white checkered picnic blanket, and then giggle off into the bushes to ravish each other!

Thursday, February 24th

2005-02-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I really like Los Angeles. Like today, sitting at Poquito Mas, this Mexican restaurant that’s really an elaborate taco stand, with a patio and great food. The weather was warmish, dry, clouds mottling the clear sky, playing peek-a-boo with the sun. Poquito Mas is wildly popular and usually packed, but I delayed going to lunch until 2, so by the time I got there the crowd had dispersed and there were only enough people there to give a nice, rolling sound of conversation to the atmosphere, under the Ottmar Leibert Christmas music (what is it with these places the play Christmas music out of season?). There was a cute guy to look at a few tables over. The traffic was at a drowsy hum. This was nice. I felt relaxed, with a plate of good food in front of me (steak enchiladas, rice, beans, guacamole and chips). Living here a few more years, pursuing an acting career, making new friends, living as a fulfilled artist… it all seemed possible on a day like this, it all feels imminent, just beyond the boundary of this warm little spot.

But days like this are the exception. More often Los Angeles has been abrasive, my path muddied (muddied? Sheesh… downright obliterated by collapsing cliff sides of tribulations!). So I lingered at Poquito Mas during my lunch hour. The music finally changed; still Ottmar Leibert, but now one of his folk tune selections. The cute guy left which left me as the only cute guy in the place. I sipped the last of my Pepsi and headed back to work for only three more hours.

This was an excellent lunch!

And Now... This Update

2005-02-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

I’m sorry. Oh, I am so sorry. Hello! I apologize for having neglected you, loyal readers of the Labyrinth of Meat Coils. Well, I guess I’ve been a bit distracted. By finding work. By ducking my creditors. I’ve been concentrating on other things, I suppose, like maintaining a positive, affirmative outlook on my life in L.A., trying to keep the cracks from developing. Oh, well, and… I’ve been trying to meet men for sex, whoring around… or, well, trying to whore around. This worm’s not getting any bites from any of the fish… or chickens… except… well, trying to meet other men, only to discover that my husband and I still have a few very pleasant surprises in store for one another, breaking new sexual ground, mixing it up, har har har, chicka bowm bowm.

But, so… what’s new, what’s happening, what’s popping?

I’m working back at Ascent Media. AppleOne, my temp agency, got me an assignment back on the same floor, working in Billing with people I already know from November and December. The job’s fine. Lots of stress goes on there. I actually contemplated a Blog more than once to chronicle the atmosphere and the people. Perhaps I still will. Because it’s very entertaining, the things that go on at Ascent Media, the stresses people whip themselves into for no discernable reason.

It’s been raining a lot here in L.A. Torrential downpours that are washing multi-million dollar homes into the ocean and down the hillsides of various exclusive neighborhoods. Of course it’s tragic that people should be losing their homes. There have been deaths in mud slides, and not all the people affected are wealthy… hell, the very fact of their home probably keeps them slaves to unfulfilling jobs, most of them. But I have to say: People! This area is KNOWN for mud slides and earthquakes and unstable cliffs on the coast! I’m not suggesting you deserve what you get for building where you’re building… I’m just saying… I’m just saying!

I’ve been reading a lot. Clive Barker’s second Abarat book. Novels about gay men that have high praise for them on their covers but that I feel are just the same claptrap: “I’m horny and gorgeous let’s go to the bar and get shit faced and fucked and then mope about what a burden it is to be young and gay… don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, don’t you dare hate me because I’m so fabulous!” Fuck… who writes this shit? Worse yet, who reads this shi—oh, wait, I read this shit.

I’ve been sticking to a regular schedule, the theory being that discipline needs to be introduced into my life, that through discipline I will realize my goals and my dreams, that through discipline I will finally know that every choice I make is in accordance with the divine pattern of full life and happiness. I am getting in touch with my inner grasshopper, wax on, wax off, luminous beings are we!

And watching a lot of movies that I get from my newest toy: Netflix. I love Netflix!

But I think my time in Los Angeles is coming to an end. Perhaps even sooner than I know. There are forces at work that indicate a move to the East coast within the year. Opportunities are opening for Jim in Rochester, New York and he’s giving them very serious thought. He asked me to give it serious thought. I didn’t even give it all that serious of thought and an opportunity opened up for me there, as well.

Two fucking years of hoping and praying and sweating and bleeding and crying for opportunities in Los Angeles… even opportunities to just keep my head above water in Los Angeles only to hit rock bottom (almost literally that day I was on the cliff in San Pedro) and I’ve only just NOW finally entered the film industry… and then the very back seat of the last bus on the furthest highway in the remotest boondocks (okay, that metaphor’s a little overwrought, I think… still…) of the film industry! But less than one week of sort of thinking about Rochester and a prime position pops open. So perhaps it’s time to embrace opportunities outside of Los Angeles, before I end up like that guy who wrote to Dan Savage after ten years of trying to make it here and not succeeding and being suicidal. Dan told him to leave. I think Dan’s got a point. And so maybe I should follow the advice.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen! Well… that’s life, I suppose. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You just live it, try to find happiness in whatever situation you’re carried through, keep the hope alive that someone will finally bring ultimate ruin to the Bush administration, and Blog your little heart out… and maybe get a blow job over a saddle once in a while.

Well, that’s a bit personal… and on that awkward moment… adieu for now LOMC readers! I have some living to do.

Elegy For 2004

2005-01-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

In Seattle, Washington I met a band of fellow misanthropic writers with whom I burned vampires on the beach. Or, more accurately, a vampire, one, in the singular. This was in Long Beach, Washington, which is vastly different than Long Beach, California. Fewer queers, for one. Our group raised the queer quotient for Long Beach, Washington for the next forty years with our weekend visit. But I diverge. We immolated our vampire by a trash can chained to a pole at the end of a road where the road met the beach. I don’t remember how many of us were there. I remember four distinctly because we were the core four of the group, the ones who’d been around the longest, Kat, Elaine, Matt and I. I think Barry and Bruce were there, and Andy, too. We huddled around the shivering Carfax so that the match would catch. We set it to Carfax’s blue and white skin and he caught. We nurtured the flame and he shriveled into black curls outlined in winking orange. He was so past coherency that I don’t think he even knew what was happening to him. He went without a sound. The frigid wind buffeting the beach carried away a few smoldering tatters. We stamped the ashes to completely douse any potentially mischievous embers and deposited the ashes into the trash can chained to the pole. Matt lit a cigarette and our ceremony was over. A new chapter in our lives was begun, all our regrets, mistakes and shames of the previous year burned away with Carfax.

On December 31^st, 2004 in Seattle, Washington, as I watched the Space Needle burst into fireworks brilliance, I sighed a very satisfied sigh of relief that the regrets, mistakes and shames of 2004 could now safely be deposited into a metaphorical trash can on a metaphorical midnight beach swept by a metaphorical frigid wind. I am energized for this new year. I’ve made resolutions. Just two weeks into 2005 and I’ve even already experienced some results of those resolutions. I have job possibilities I’m actually excited about. I’ve had three job interviews. I went roller skating!

I realized the other day that I missed marking my second anniversary in the L.A. area. Two years ago, on a blustery January 5^th, Jim and I drove into Pomona, CA just in time for the Santa Ana winds. I thought that the winds’ turbulence reflected the turbulence of the Cosmos as I returned to my birth place and righted the path of my destiny. How silly of me. It was just meteorological phenomenon. But my arrival in Pomona was, like the siring of Carfax, full of so much promise, so much optimism for the future. It was an act of bravery and faith! However, again like the sad saga of Carfax, everything went so horribly wrong. I’ve muddled through divergent paths that dead-ended, brilliance that fizzled in the face of overwhelming idiocy, poetry that was mocked by common rabble, monikers that were mocked by my literary peers, the development of multiple personalities, until I, like the ill-fated vampire, ended up on the precipice of a cliff, contemplating suicide (I only just realized this parallel and, frankly, it creeps me right the fuck out!).

The morning after we burned Carfax at the pole, I woke up before anyone else. I slipped out of our crack whore’s den of a hotel room and went for a walk on the beach. I longed for Jim’s company on that beach. I considered what lie before us now that Carfax was safely a pile in the bottom of a trash can. The sunrise that I watched carry the ocean’s color from purples to blues to oranges and back to blues filled me with great optimism for that weekend in Long Beach, Washington. That weekend developed awesome bonding experiences that later allowed us to publish our own little chap book of sorts.

As our flight brought Jim and I back from Seattle to Los Angeles on January 1^st, 2005, I tried to remain optimistic. I won’t pretend I didn’t dread coming back to Los Angeles. In Seattle we have friends who adore us, fellow writers who adore me, friends who happily will get drunk with me, and it’s a city that understands that mass transit must be serviceable and where behind-the-counter employees readily and handily conduct customer service. It was hard to greet Los Angeles in the new year, but it was a new year. So I gritted my teeth and realized as January 2^nd dawned, that this was another sunrise moment and that 2005, I think, will end with the same results as that weekend in Long Beach, Washington.

Happy New Year to all my loyal readers and in 2005 I wish you all prosperity, peace, and joyous celebration!

Ho Ho... Ahhhhh, Fuck It!

2004-12-07T22:58:00.000-08:00

I don’t have anything to say. I have even been unable to write the Christmas wish list that Jim requested over a week ago. My dreams at night involve discomfort, violent storms, unsettled places haunted with threat. I do not feel the Christmas spirit, either the shopping frenzy or the goodwill of giving of myself to others. To give goodwill, you’d have to care… to shop, you’d have to have financial resources. Yesterday I looked in the mirror in the bathroom at work and for the first time in my life I saw myself as a mortal creature. I will die. I am aging. I am susceptible to disease and physical decline. I feel small, insignificant and inconsequential to the world through which I navigate. I’d like to say that this is the result of mindless endeavor, of working in billing, hunting down bits of purchase order paper that, if you flew a 747 into the side of the building, wouldn’t mean a goddamn thing against the violent snuffing out of human lives. I find it odd that when I’m at work I can watch planes leaving Burbank airport and find them gracefully inspirational. I am overwhelmed with the massive swath of ennui that has been cut through the center of my life lately. I’d like to blame poverty (as if living in a $1300 a month townhouse full of brand new furniture and a baby grand piano in Studio City, California composing Blogs on my personal computer with the flat screen can be considered impoverished)… or should I say “debt” since debt is what’s really at the heart of my financial constraint (which, more than likely, is what contributes very directly to my loss of Christmas spirit. “I can’t afford to give! Buh hoo hoo hoo!”). I’d like to blame my parents because they created and raised this creature that has found, early in his 37th year, that he is incapable of feeling anything but a mass of self pity and remorse over his lost, spent years… Jesus Christ, how’s that for histrionics? Or… oh, this is rich… you know who I could really blame? Hollywood. Yes! The American Dream Machine itself! Their DVDs and TVs and multiplexed silver screens and their Julia Robertses and Brad Pitts and Catherine Zeta-Joneses and Tom Cruises… they have entranced me and sucked out my imagination, my will to live and my soul!

(Odd little sidebar, here… the other day I was really bored at work… catatonic with boredom, in fact… so I typed into Google “I have lost my will to live” and among the results was a letter written to Dan Savage posted on PlanetOut.com. I read the letter because Dan Savage always amuses me greatly, and the letter was from this guy who moved to Los Angeles to write and he really hated it and was in massive debt and had… well… lost his will to live!!!! And I thought “I don’t remember writing to Dan Savage!” Dan suggested that the guy move out of Los Angeles instead of committing suicide… hm… but I digress… and now, back to the miserable room:)

Hollywood sucked me! They have entranced me and sucked my imagination and drive and energy and breathing, pulsing life has fled and all that is left of me is a Sim given no personality and only the most basic of commands: “Use the toilet, take a bath, eat breakfast, go to work, get the mail, watch t.v., go to bed.”

I had sex last week. With a man not my husband. Oh, don’t any of you loyal readers go getting your panties into a bunch. Jim knows about it. We have that kind of arrangement. Any moralizing can go three flights down and several doors over with the Christians waging war against heathens, faggots, Democrats, liberals, abortionists and anyone else against good clean Christian soccer moms and their precious, blessed children’s rights to view God’s most holy and sanctified Super Bowl Sunday without being exposed to bare breasts (because those are so unnatural and lead to impure thoughts… especially from those good ol’ NASCAR dads)! So I had sex last week. With a beautiful man with a beautiful cock and a killer cute smile and during our time together, I felt some of my old vibrancy. Jacob (in the grand tradition of Labyrinth of Meat Coils, not his real name) didn’t complete me, but the pleasure of him lasted into the next day until, by 6, when it was time to come home, it was gone again, just a pleasant memory because all real feeling had been purchase ordered out of me. I don’t want to long for men who cannot have me. I just want men, naked, happy, smiling men. I just want those moments of first meeting someone you know you’re going to sleep with, or those moments, like when I first said goodbye to Jim after our first date, when you know you’ve fallen in love but for the sake of not scaring him off with seeming desperation, you just shake his hand good night and offer to call him the next day. I just want to feel proud of my job like when I took great care to staighten books and magazines and clean the popcorn machine at closing at my first bookstore job at the City Newsstand in Longmont. I don’t want to look in the mirror and see 40 already bleaching my hair grey, or see 60 clawing creases under my eyes and be horrified because I’m so bored that preoccupation with fading looks is all I have left to occupy my time. I want to celebrate my living, breathing, fully functioning body (just ask Jacob… or, fuck, just ask Jim, for that matter!). I want to look forward to Christmas like the Who’s down in Who-ville, the tall and small, who wha-who-wha-who-dah-who-doreyed Christmas into glowing warmth even without ribbons, without tags, without packages, boxes or bags! I want to be as enticed by Christmas as I was when I was a kid entranced by the cardboard fireplace my parents bought and the popcorn we strung on the tree. As much as I love “Buffy” and “Firefly” and my new Netflix account giving me access to thousands of titles, I wish there were more to my life than other people’s dreams. This is not the morbidity of this summer’s flirtation with suicide. That was severe depression. This is panic. This is fear. This is facing a life that is unraveling into a colorless jumble of uneventful yarn. This is becoming hyper aware of the passing of time. This is not seeing how good I’ve got it. This is wishing for a locus of blame for the hole in my heart and soul that keeps me from fully engaging the rich tapestry of life going on around me.

I am entirely too goddamn morbid for the holiday season. Where’s the eggnog?

Wheezy Death Throes

2004-11-28T11:25:00.000-08:00

I suspect my social life is not so healthy.

My cats receive the bulk of my affection. I only see one person on a regular basis, and even he works a lot, so I don’t see him all that often (my husband). I occasionally see my aunts and cousins, but it’s not really all that regularly… like, about once a month. Of course I interact with coworkers at my temp assignment, but I’m a temp and I relate to them only on purely work related levels. Otherwise, I spend a lot of time at home, alone. I make attempts at meeting new people… online, which end up in unfulfilling exchanges that so far have resulted in few in person meetings and certainly haven’t developed into full fledged friendships. Perhaps they pick up on my desperate-for-human-contact vibe. All wild eyes and overly loud laughter. Also, perhaps it has something to do with my outlook on human beings in general. I suppose I should make a concentrated effort to become less of a misanthropic, judgmental bastard.

This comes as an odd reflection, too, on my part, given my recent successful interaction at a party last weekend. Carefree, I talked with people I just met. I pigged out at the buffet table in front of total strangers! I believe that the people to whom I spoke found me witty, engaging, cute and interesting. So why do I have this view that my social life is sagging and panting next to its coffin, bewildered by its lack of energy to just climb in and DIE?

People who spend this much time thinking and alone end up on the eleven o’clock news being described by their neighbors as “such a nice guy, kind of quiet, kept to himself… I can’t believe he’d do something like this… I just can’t believe it.”

To Kat: On Writing

2004-11-16T01:42:00.000-08:00

There are any number of reasons to be thankful that my friend Kat is in my life. She’s one of my most critical readers. She’s a fellow writer, misanthrope, nihilist and bohemian. She makes the best eggplant parmesan I’ve ever had. She understands the need for hour upon hour of Halo. And, to get to the point of this essay, she gives me days of contemplation from the simplest tossed off statements. To this day I wonder, even more poignantly so now that he’s governor, what sort of texture you would encounter if you boiled and ate Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’ve sent the demons in my latest short story to therapy to figure out their emotional arcs. And the other day Kat responded to my emailed admonition about not maintaining her Blog by stating “I don’t feel I have anything to say.”

I keep a journal; have kept one off and on since high school, but kept one steadily since 1997. I try to write in it every day, though this week I haven’t made a single entry... until today, with this Blog entry. There are mornings (because I most often journal in the morning) when I sit before the next blank sheet on my notebook, having marked it only with the day, month, year and time. Then: nothing. There are days when I stare into space, stare at my bookcases, out the window at the two palm trees that stick out above the rest of the trees across the parking lot of the apartment building next door, stare at pictures hung in my writing room, just waiting for something to come, anything important, anything trivial, anything… but my pen and my mind do not collude to produce something on the page. There are times when I do write and even in the very act of creation, the very act of drawing the pen across the paper, I think “I have nothing to say.” What I’m writing sounds so idiotic, banal, just more of the same fevered, meandering internal monologue about my trials, tribulations, gripes, frets and insecurities. Basically, it’s all just whining, petulant bullshit!

I worry that, in a town where every waiter, bookseller, bus driver and even homeless person has a screenplay in the works, that I have nothing. My poetry has flown the coop this past year. I finished a new short story and in this time between it and the next one, I worry that perhaps “The Commuter” was the last of my literary inspirations. All the writers I know, have known and, I suspect, will know, at some time conclude that they have nothing to say. Equally as devastating is the fear that we have nothing to communicate.

Who reads these Blog entries? Who will read the poems and short stories (maybe novels some day) that I write, outside of a close circle of friends and family upon whom I foist my wares like some desperate rent boy on Sunset Boulevard on a Saturday night? And will even that tight circle of friends and family be moved by what I write beyond familial and platonic obligatory support? My experience of writing, which has been echoed by fellow writers, is that writing is an isolated, treacherous path to travel. I don’t know whether or not it is the most difficult of the arts, but it seems the most solitary, the most ephemeral in terms of payback and gratification. There is no cheering section. In fact, often, there’s a tiny, red faced, piggish little man in a black suit sneering at me from the darkness of my brain, sniffing that I have nothing of importance to convey, that horror stories are pubescent inanities, that poetry is dead, dead, dead to the American public and that online diaries are for misfits with the social grace of congealed, cold oatmeal.

I really hate that little sniffing fuck!

In spite of him though, I remain compelled to put pen to paper and write. Nothing else makes me feel as sane. Nothing else makes me feel as ordered, elegant and intellectual. Even when I’m filling notebooks with observations on the weather, the temperature, my sexual arousal (or lack thereof), the chores I need to do, lists of past meals, or repetitive litanies of the wrongs visited upon me by Samuel Fucking French and Universal Studios!

(Jesus... when I die, someone’s going to have a really boring read when they unearth my journals)

Really, this is more about me and my processes about writing than about Kat, but on a personal note… I don’t think Kat has nothing to say. She further explained in her email that she hasn’t maintained her Blog because she fears that it’s taking the place of normal, healthy human interaction. Feh, I say, feh! There are worst things to interfere with normal, healthy human interaction… like beheading everyone who doesn’t share your world view… or going to war with everyone who doesn’t share your world view… or religion, or drugs, or perversions of the flesh like lying with George W. Bush as one lies with woman… ew… ew… EEEWWWWWW!!!! Also, given some of the humans I’ve interacted with lately in my life, I say let Blogging take the place of human interaction!

Blogging or DVDs… which brings me to my next point:

I bought The Hours on DVD for my birthday. I watched it tonight. It is one of my favorite movies not only because of the awesome performances, the story, and the music, but because writing plays such a vital role in the movie. I bought the special edition DVD, which includes a special feature documentary about the life of Virginia Woolf. In this short feature, the son of one of Virginia Woolf’s close friends recalls that Virginia Woolf told him “Nothing has really happened until it has been described… Therefore… write a lot of letters to your family and friends. Keep a diary… Don’t let a day pass without recording it whether anything interesting has happened or not. Something interesting happens every day.”

I suppose this is why I keep a journal… to try to capture the interesting things happening, even if I won’t notice them until later, when I read the journal over. It’s part of why I’ve begun to Blog. It’s an inspirational quote to keep me writing even in the face of that little squeaky voiced, sour prig of an inner editor. It is, on a personal note, my offering to Kat to get her to keep Blogging because I want to read her Blog, damn it! Think of your fans, Kat! Think of your fans!!! She has filled some cyberspace with humor, insight and a few disturbing urban legends of the future (see here).

I don’t know if Kat will continue to work on her Blog. But one thing I do know is that because of her, I’ve spent the better part of a week engrossed in one of my favorite activities: contemplating the nature of writing and the nature of being a writer. If nothing else, that proves to me she does have something to say and I have something to say. That has made a tremendous difference to me this week and should well buoy my spirits until my next empty page suggests otherwise.

Holidays

2004-11-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

Autumn's most significant harbinger is the appearance of pumpkins in grocery stores. Choosing an October pumpkin gives me as much a thrill as buying the flowers herself gave to Mrs. Dalloway. Quietly, humbly, pumpkins herald holiday whimsies and pleasures.

Jim and I bought two pumpkins this year. One dominated our dining table Halloween centerpiece. As sunset darkend to Halloween night, we carved both pumpkins. Jim carved the frightening face, I carved the happy face... although happy sort of looked more startled and nervous about the scary face than I'd intended... little knife slips, you know? Anyway, we lit candles inside them and by their orange glow and burning squash aroma we watched The Sixth Sense and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

The next morning my temp agency called with a three week data entry assignment at Ascent Media in Burbank, a 20 minute bike ride away. Ascent Media is a post production company conducting an audit of their accounts. I'm one of about eight temps tracking down invoices and work orders. It's such a different environment than my stint at the Ethan Rayne Bookstore. It's nice to know that in Hollywood there really are people who understand and implement professional behavior in a stable environment. No worries at Ascent Media about who forgot to take their meds that morning [by the way, for my loyal readers the real identity of the Ethan Rayne Bookstore can be found here]. I'm working in Ascent Media's customer service and billing department. It has a great view of Burbank and the mountains. The office is relatively nice, as nicely appointed as a cubicled call center can be. In spite of some corporate dissarray and discontented mumblings from the worker bees, everyone is friendly, courteous and, barring the rubber band snapping fights, professional.

On Tuesday the entire floor buzzed with election anticipation and anxiety. Constantly monitored radios and web sites throughout the office followed exit polls and voting trends marching coast to coast across the country. Little Old Glory stickers that proclaimed "I voted!" popped up on lapels and shirt fronts as people came back to work from the polls. After work, anticipating long lines, prepared with my copy of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, I rode to my polling station at St. Anne's Catholic Church. I zipped through because there was no line at all, but I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to read some. And hey, I got a little sticker that said "I voted!" for my very own!

I have mixed feelings about voting. George Carlin, in a recent interview on NPR, said he doesn't vote because voting doesn't change an inherently flawed system (or something to that effect... I'm seriously paraphrasing, here). I subscribe to this train of thought, but I continue to cling to the notion that my vote does count. What for, exactly, though, does continue to niggle at me. No matter who takes office, they are of the ruling class, of the wealthiest 10% of Americans. In the case of this past election, no matter who won, the vote still went to a privileged, white, heterosexual, Christian male. I keep holding out for the day when my vote can go to the black, Buddhist lesbian who dragged herself out of New York City (or Chicago or, heck, Los Angeles) slums by working with non profit clinics and hospitals. I know, I know... back to my Buffy DVD's, which have an equal chance of actually taking place. Still... I'm a little unresolved about the effectiveness of American democracy.

When I finally got home that night, I worried that the jack-o-lanterns would rot before I could use them for cooking. On Wednesday morning, making slow progress toward moldering grimaces of distaste over the results of the election, the jack-o-lanterns visibly creased and softened. George W. Bush won the popular vote. Unless you've been living under a rock the past week, you know the ripples of discontent and further schism moving through this great land of ours as a result of Bush's win... and the successes of measures to block gay marriage... and the proud declarations of non-critical thinking voters who praise the P-- the P-- the... yeah, I can't quite get it out for another four years... who praise G.W.B. and voted him in because of his Christian beliefs. Because of the strain on my nerves and the way it tends to develop hemorrhages in my brain, you'll have to imagine my vitriol inserted here: !!!!

California went to Kerry and Edwards. Stunned disbelief festooned the Ascent Media office like the previous week's fake cobwebs. I don't believe anyone attended to their work for the first two hours of the day because they were too involved in huddling in small groups, shaking their heads and muttering about moving to Canada and cursing the motherfuckers who changed Peter Jenning's map of America into a red swath of Republican self righteousness, American imperialsm and Bush administration smirking arrogance. When I got home, the withering jack-o-lanterns pleaded with their empty eye holes to be put out of their misery.

On Thursday night, while waiting for my friend, Mark, to arrive for his weekend stay, I put the pumpkins out of their misery. I cut out patches of fuzzy mold and gelatinous rot. Slicing the squash, stripping it of its orange skin, dicing it and putting it on the stove to boil was a meditative act. Preparing complicated food usually is as you contemplate the meal or dish you are about to serve, your sustenance, sustenance you'll share with others, the chemically magic moments when raw substance becomes fine cuisine, delicious dishes, elaborate delicacies. Cutting into pumpkin connects you to generations before you, to the first people to make pumpkin pies as they slaughtered the first people to use pumpkin as sustenance during the autumn days before whites brought Jesus and infected blankets to these American shores.

Okay, I guess you don't have to imagine my vitriol after all...

But I digress...

Mark arrived and as the house filled with boiling pumpkin scent, we caught up and chatted about Los Angeles, acting, screenwriting, Buffy, Firefly and the future.

Yesterday, Saturday, I baked pumpkin pies, which filled our home with the rich, brown cinnamon and cloves scent of autumn and home, an appropriate smell for Jim and I to celebrate our eleventh anniversary. The smells of autumn on November 6th are evocative of the night in 1993 when two young strangers came together at Market Street Station in downtown Denver, full of hope for romance, little realizing the depth of emotion and range of experience they were about to embark upon together. The warmth of baking pumpkin pies also evokes other memories: Matt thinking boxed potato flakes were sufficient accompaniment to the Thanksgiving table when members of my Seattle writers group went to his house for the holiday; the cracking of ice encrusted trees during three or four days of no power during a Christmas visit to Jim's parents in Portland, Oregon; cluttered towers of dishes lining the sink of my mom's kitchen as the family scooped pie and ice cream into more plates; the Thanksgiving I had to provide yams for my cousin's Thanksgiving get-together because no one else thought to make yams... and learning that the reason for that was that no one likes them... which was nearly as traumatic and disillusioning a revelation as the candidate who won the popular vote on Tuesday. The smell of baking pumpkin pies calls to mind friends and family: Gino, Chris, Karen, Carole and Jim, Mike, Puddy, Kat, Portia, Orlando, Gordon and Lois, Michele, Mark, Acacia, Rick, Mike, Mom and Dad, Savannah, Schnuffel, Celeste, Stefanie, Joe, aunts Anne and Connie, Eleanor and Joe, my grandmother, and Jim... those with whom I've shared my pumpkin pies.

In a few weeks, pumpkins will disappear from grocery store bins. It always makes me a little sad because it signifies the approach of the end of my favorite time of year. In the meantime, this has been a momentous week. I don't know if any of my dreams came true, or if any of the actions of this week will lead to great wealth or the fame promised to me by an East Indian man selling fortunes told outside of Starbuck's, but I do know that this year's pumpkins oversaw memories that next year's batch will call forth when I once again choose a pumpkin in October for our Halloween table.

Two Days: Animus, The Conclusion

2004-10-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Previously on Labyrinth of Meat Coils:

"The terror is over."

She swayed, seduced, caressed herself, pinched the pulpy hunks of flesh dangling from her jutting ribs.

The night it came over to his side of the street was a stormy one.

One morning he awoke to find blood stamped on the glass of his balcony door.

A red starburst splayed against the glass and as Russ watched, the man was stripped of clothing and flesh in one immense yank.

The street was quiet again. Stilled. There weren’t even monstrosities on balconies.

And now, the conclusion of “Animus” by Joseph T. Lopez:

Russ gripped the neck of the vodka bottle. After that night, nothing happened. The sounds in the building went silent. Flickering light behind blinds on either side of the street ceased. A week went by. Russ didn’t even see anything move in the maple’s branches. So he started to feel better. He actually slept a full night once or twice. Then tonight, he thought he’d write it down, get it all out of his head, maybe excise the images. He sat down with vodka, orange juice, his pencil, and a pad of paper. He wrote “The terror is over” and, searching for how to proceed, he glanced up.

Russ tipped the bottle to his lips and drank. He wondered if he could hit the light switch with the bottle. He gripped it by the neck more firmly and lowered it. Then he twisted, clumsily rose out of his seat, and lunged for the light switch, using the bottle like a club. Vodka sloshed along his arm, onto the carpet. The bottom of the bottle clinked as it smacked into the plastic plate around the switch. His chair toppled over backward as the apartment plunged into darkness.

Russ slumped against his wall. His back tensed, anticipating a blow. He opened his eyes and stared into his dark kitchen. He listened, then turned around slowly.

Nothing was on the balcony. He dropped the vodka bottle and sank to his knees. From this vantage point, he could see only the edge of the maple’s outermost branches across the street. He glanced at the tree. He swiped an unsteady hand across his forehead. He shook his head and took a deep breath. He ran his hand through his hair and then stood up. He glanced again at the maple tree. He scanned the building across the street, the balconies of his own building. All quiet and still, as they had been for a week. He moved toward his sliding glass door to shut it, and froze.

His eyes widened. A breeze passed through the screen door, caressing his hot face. Strips of the screen fluttered in the breeze, whisking together quietly. Russ whirled around and peered into his apartment darkness. Black motion rippled along the ceiling in the far corner of his livingroom. He twisted violently and lunged for the screen door.

His scream was cut short.

The breeze fluttered the shredded screen door again. The vertical blinds clattered together.

-- The End --

Three Days: Animus Part III

2004-10-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

Previously on Labyrinth of Meat Coils:

It just pressed against his screen and stared.

The night it came over to his side of the street was a stormy one.

Another spray leapt across the wall behind the plant. The light deepened to maroon.

People marionette dancing, flesh leaves, closing blinds, and Russ shrieked.

And now, part three of “Animus” by Joseph T. Lopez:

Russ picked up his pencil and scrawled “The eyes” on the page in front of him. Tears dropped onto the paper, spotting it below the two pencilled phrases. Sweat beaded his brow. He marveled at his own apathy. One morning when he glanced between his blinds, he saw Laurie from apartment 105 hurry across the courtyard carrying two suitcases to her Toyota, parked out front. She swung the luggage into the back seat, with boxes already loaded inside, took one quick look at the building, then got in and drove off. Russ wondered whether she saw something, the shape even, or had she just felt that something was horribly wrong? Russ had seen everything and still he stayed. He poured himself another glass of vodka.

After the night of the storm, his building began to sound very different. He heard screams. Strained, twanged music played through the walls at all hours of the night. He kept his blinds drawn, his windows shut, and his lights out. A phone rang incessantly in one of the apartments, its sound carrying across the courtyard. Russ heard water run in the pipes at all hours. The pool gathered drowned bugs and leaves that no one removed. One morning he awoke to find blood stamped on the glass of his balcony door.

He eventually succumbed to his voyeuristic urges and resumed his watch, peeking through the slats of his blinds at night. He saw a lot of drawn blinds with red light flickering behind them. He eyed the maple tree. His curiosity got the better of his fear of that shape’s eyes, and he again began to pull open his blinds, just slightly, his binoculars once more up to his eyes.

He saw it enter the lighted apartment of the Wallaces. It slid through the screen door, across the pale blue carpet, and enveloped Mrs. Wallace as she turned from doing her dishes. She didn’t even have time to look surprised. The apartment’s interior wavered like Russ was seeing it through heat. Red blossomed across the cupboards above the sink. The apartment washed pink. Out of the undulating black flew a hunk of meat. Russ gagged. The apartment flooded red. The blinds drew across the glass door as the room grew dark.

Later, Russ saw Mr. Wallace park his car out front. He carried a bag of groceries into the building and Russ never saw him again. He wondered what Mr. Wallace found upon entering the apartment. The shape hadn’t left. Light flicked on in the Wallace’s apartment. Just as suddenly it winked out again. A few moments later the shadow flew over the railing of the balcony and vanished into the maple across the street.

On another night, Paul, or Bob, Russ couldn’t remember his name, mounted the stairs to his third floor apartment. He unlocked his front door, entered, and his door shut behind him. The light in his apartment went on and he appeared at his balcony door. He moved out onto the balcony, stretched, unbuttoned his shirt, and yawned. In the time it took him to turn, the shape moved from the tree, crossed the street, scaled the side of the building, and followed Bob, or Paul, back into the apartment. He closed the balcony door behind him, shutting himself in with it with no idea that it had even passed him. It reared up behind him and slammed him into the sliding glass door, which cracked in a jagged web around him. A red starburst splayed against the glass and as Russ watched, the man was stripped of clothing and flesh in one immense yank. Then the carcass jerked into the now dark apartment. As the blinds shut, Russ looked away and scanned the other apartments. Three blinds shot open. He screamed out “No!’ and closed his eyes, but not before he saw the dancing, mottled corpses.

Finally, the police came.

Russ was in bed, steadily emptying his mind. Sleep offered little haven, but a little was better than none. He began to relax into the mattress. To tire himself out, he had cleaned his apartment immaculately. His eyes fluttered. Lysol pine hung in the air. He closed his eyes. Images shuffled in his mind: blinds, shadows, sponges, dishes, dim memories from before the shape entered his life. He slipped, drifted, his breathing deepened. The strained music in other parts of the building lulled him.

A tremendous thud above him startled him awake. His eyes flew open. Someone screamed. Thuds staccatoed across Russ’s bedroom ceiling. Music strained into his room from above. He lay in bed, breathing quick and shallow. He gripped his sheet.

He heard another sound. He tried to tell himself that it was the wind tapping branches against his window, except that there were no trees just outside his bedroom window. The tapping came again. He rolled his eyes up toward the window. A long, lean shadow stretched across the blinds, cast there by the street lamp in the alley outside. The shadow raised a limb. Tap tap. The blinds began to rise.

Russ screamed and flew out of bed. He slammed his bedroom door shut behind him and stood in his dark hallway, shaking. He listened for sounds of entry. All he heard was the broken harmony of music coming through the walls.

Another scream, high pitched, cut into his apartment. The wall he had his back to rumbled. It startled him and he moved into his livingroom. Pictures on his wall rattled. One fell off as the wall boomed again. He heard his neighbor, Linda, screaming “Oh God, what is this?” Her words devolved into a wail. Something massive crashed next door. There was the short, muted exclamation of breaking glass. Then that music, like fevered, sluggish electric guitars, and a high, rising wail. Russ crouched in one dark corner of his livingroom. The rising wail abruptly cut off and there was the pulse of red and blue light against the blinds of his balcony door. With a jolt of realization, Russ recognized the wail as a siren, and the flashing lights as an emergency vehicle that had just pulled up outside. He flew to his balcony door and looked out between the blinds.

The police patrol car sat in the middle of the street, headlights glaring. Its overhead light flung blue and red flashes across parked cars, the faces of both buildings and the trees lining the street. The car’s dome light winked on as two burly officers opened their doors. They got out of the car, their eyes turned up toward Russ’s building.

The shadows on Russ’s balcony shifted and rose onto the rail. He jolted backward, leaving the vertical slats to scissor back and forth. The shape vanished and Russ shoved the blinds aside to watch.

The shape hit the officer on the passenger side and shoved him back into the car. The driver went for his gun, but was jerked into the car by his utility belt before the pistol even cleared the holster. His chin slammed into the doorframe, snapping his head back violently. As the driver disappeared into the car the horn blared. Shadow and uniform wrestled inside. The car rocked on its tires, its headlights flickering. The horn bleated in harmony to the shocked bleep and whir of the sirens. Gunfire popped, exploding the back window. The rotating overhead lights flashed once more, froze, and winked out. The doors slammed shut simultaneously. The headlights went dark. The car sat still and quiet in the street.

Russ whimpered, his sweaty forehead pressed against the glass. Movement out of the corner of his eye diverted his attention from the street. A corpse whirled on a balcony, pink and maroon light pulsing from inside the apartment behind it. Russ shuddered and jerked his gaze back to the patrol car.

It was lit inside again by the dome light. Even so, the back seat shadows remained impenetrably black. The driver, head twisted backward, lolling against the headrest, stared bug eyed into that black. In the passenger seat sat the other officer, skull flayed, jaws leering, eyes bulging. He turned and looked up at Russ. The car lurched forward, then cruised out of sight. The street was quiet again. Stilled. There weren’t even monstrosities on balconies.

-- To be Continued... tomorrow, the finale of "Animus" --

Four Days: Animus Part II

2004-10-27T22:16:00.000-07:00

Previously on Labyrinth of Meat Coils:

"The terror is over."

Light didn't penetrate or accentuate it.

It just pressed against his screen and stared.

The tenants... across the street never suspected that he watched them.

Too late. He saw it. In that glance, he saw it cock its head.

She swayed, seduced, caressed herself, pinched the pulpy hunks of flesh dangling from her jutting ribs.

He... got sick in the toilet.

And now, part two of "Animus" by Joseph Lopez

The hard tabletop under his forehead was beginning to hurt. He exhaled quietly and lifted his head. He slowly ran his fingers through his damp hair. His eyes roamed over the page, useless words, dormant pencil, empty glass, and the vodka bottle half emptied of its clear fluid. Burning oblivion, if he had anything to do with it. He could still see it in his peripheral vision, sitting there. Here was his perfect opportunity to really study it, with a good, long look, and he didn’t dare. He didn’t want to meet its eyes. If he did that, he would be lost. Maybe he already was. He poured himself another glass.

On the other hand, perhaps he wasn’t lost. He was, maybe, privileged. He saw it coming, after all. The others had been unsuspecting. Maybe that was why he could sit here, casually drinking it away. For all he knew, this thing would allow him to write a whole novel called “The terror is over.” Russ closed his eyes and drank.

The night it came over to his side of the street was a stormy one. Wind rattled windows, shook the building with its gusts, and whipped trees along the street into frenzies. The maple’s shadows writhed and coiled. Russ glanced at the condominiums, still for a few nights, other than lights flickering behind drawn blinds. He turned his gaze back to the maple tree. Lightning flickered in the roiling sky.

Shadow slipped from the maple’s leaves and started down the trunk. Russ caught his breath and lifted his binoculars. The shadow spiraled down the trunk like a stalking cat. It was long, lean, shifting as if limbs, a tail, and a head were in motion, but light didn’t delineate any textures, musculature, or features of any sort. It was just a silhouette. It prowled to the bottom of the trunk. A tentative… paw?… reached down and rested on the grass. The head flicked side to side. It had a long, sharp profile. The shadow shot across the street. It flowed over the brick wall bordering the sidewalk and into the courtyard of Russ’s apartment building. It slunk around the pool, and then was blocked from view by Russ’s balcony.

Thunder rumbled. A gust of wind rattled the balcony door in its frame. Russ let his binoculars hang from their strap around his neck. He was pressed against the balcony door. He scanned his own apartment building. His gaze swept across either arm of the “U” his building formed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a rectangle of white light wink out. He turned.

He could see as far as one corner into an apartment catty corner to his own and one floor down. A potted rubber plant sat on the tan carpet, against the white wall. The vertical blinds were half drawn. The light in the unit blushed. A red splash shook the rubber plant’s leaves. The apartment light’s hue darkened. Another spray leapt across the wall behind the plant. The light deepened to maroon. The blinds jerked sideways and drew across the door. The light behind them went out.

Above the apartment, Russ saw Mrs. Elrod come out onto her balcony in her bathrobe. She pulled her robe close around her. The wind unfurled some of her curlered hair. Her face was worried. She glanced down into the courtyard, up at the sky, and then she shrugged. She went back inside.

The blinds in the unit below hers flattened against the glass balcony door. Russ held his breath. The blinds fluttered. Then that black form slid out of the darkened apartment and onto the balcony rail. Russ jolted back into the shadows of his own apartment. The shape was huge, ferret like, perched on a rail too narrow for its bulk, but perched unwavering just the same. Russ’s muscles ached as he fought the urge to draw his blinds and snap on the lights.

Suddenly it was gone. Russ searched the faces of his own building, scanning the balconies and lit windows. He eyed the maple across the street, the way it moved in the wind. Seconds passed. Lightning flickered. He swiped hair off his damp forehead. His breath shuddered out of him. He cleared his throat and glanced again at the balcony door of the apartment just vacated by that shape. He stepped back up to his own balcony door and stared at the one below. Red light flickered beyond the drawn blinds. The churning clouds growled, refusing to release any rain.

Russ was suddenly staring into its eyes. It shot over his balcony rail and in a flash was pressed against the balcony door, not even an inch of glass separating them. It never blinked.

Worlds revolved in its eyes. Flaming oceans ran fire rivers through charred continents. Pale roots squirmed across black soil beneath blighted white trees. Cracked and powdering streets zigzagged between skeletal high rises with flickering windows. Walls met floors and ceilings at Dali-esque angles. Chords of gnarled lamps met sockets, sparking and popping. Lampshades and overhead bulbs wept pink, red, maroon. Orgasmic men and women jittered, crucified on warped floorboards, their hearts thrumming in their gaping chests. People marionette dancing, flesh leaves, closing blinds, and Russ shrieked. He bolted backward, his foot catching in the legs of a chair. He tumbled and sprawled on the floor, momentarily knocking the wind out of himself. When he caught his breath and looked up again, it was gone.

-- To Be Continued --

FIVE DAYS

2004-10-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

Happy Five Days Before Halloween!!!

Okay, okay, so I said I would devote time to my Blog for Halloween related stories and poetry and then I haven’t done it so far but for one silly high school poem. Well I’ve been busy! I’ve been unemployment’s bitch with the soap operas and the porn surfing and the mid day commercials for technical colleges and places where my bad credit doesn’t matter and… I mean, with job-hunting, with job hunting.

However… I present to you now a serialized version of my 1993 story “Animus.” Over the next few days I will (I promise, I swear, no, really, on someone’s mother’s grave, on a stack of Bibles) post sections of this (one of my favorites) story. Some of my loyal readers will recognize it. To those of you for whom it’s new, I hope it gives you nightmares. Did I say “nightmares?” I meant “happy shiny good readin’ Halloween chills!”

Be scared, okay?

ANIMUS

by Joseph T. Lopez
copyright 1993

The light switch was behind him. One quick twist, two steps back, his apartment could be dark again. Russ strained to hear anything over his own breath. The vertical blinds on his balcony door clacked together. A breeze through the open door cooled his sweaty brow. He swallowed. The black hulk pressed against his screen door still just stared in at him. He stared at the tumbler of vodka tinted with orange juice before him. He didn’t dare even the slightest glance at the immobile shape outside. Moving just his eyes he looked at the words scrawled on the yellow legal pad between his frozen fists.

“The terror is over.”

Light didn’t penetrate or accentuate it. It had no features. Russ opened his fingers toward his glass, second-guessing every action. He wasn’t sure what might set that dark mass in motion, even after all this time. He grabbed the glass.

He thought about the people around him, how they would move past yellow windows, making beds, talking on the phone, watching TV, getting dressed, eating, smoking, fighting. His face sagged over the pad of paper. He scraped the glass across the table toward himself. A breeze slithered through the screen door. A breeze, Russ persuaded himself, the wind. Not breath, not motion. It hadn’t moved. It hadn’t sighed. It just pressed against his screen and stared. The top of his scalp prickled under its stare.

The tenants of the condominiums across the street never suspected that he watched them. He spied on romantic dinners. He watched them plead with one another, barbecue hamburgers and chicken, vacuum, do aerobics in front of television, masturbate. Then, one night, something passed across the view through his binoculars. He lowered them and scanned the building without them, but couldn’t see anything to account for that dark blot of motion. He raised his binoculars again and sought out the fifth floor couple into cop fetishes. As his binocular view swept up, he saw it again, a quick blur of action, so fast he almost mistook it for just the blurring of moving his binoculars. It passed across a lighted window. The light tinged pink, then red, then went out, and the blinds were drawn. Intrigued, Russ glanced at that window without his binoculars. As he looked, out of the corner of his eye, he would have sworn he saw something move in the maple tree across the street.

Russ shut his eyes and put his glass to his mouth. He downed the drink. The vodka burned in him. He set the glass down. He faced the pad of paper and forced his eyes open. The penciled words lie passively on the page.

“The terror is over.”

He reached down next to his chair and wrapped his fingers around the neck of the vodka bottle. He lifted it and refilled his glass. The bottle’s neck jittered against the glass with quiet clinks. The urge to scream “Close your eyes!” mounted in Russ. He drowned the urge with straight vodka. Better. This was getting better.

Russ continued his surveillance of the building across the street. He started to notice other windows wink out, blocked momentarily by a quick blur, then wash pink, red, then go dark. Tenants appeared on their balconies, heads rotating, listening, and then they slipped back inside, shrugging. He trained his binoculars on the maple across the street in front of the condominiums. He never saw any distinct shapes, but sometimes the shadows in its branches shifted and settled in inexplicable, independent ways.

Russ also noticed his own neighbors oblivious to the activity across the street. No one watched like he did. They just swam in the courtyard pool. They laughed, played music, talked on their own balconies. He wondered why they couldn’t also feel themselves being watched from the cover of the maple’s leaves.
Russ poured more vodka into his glass. He closed his eyes and slammed the drink into his stomach. He set the glass down. When he looked at the pad of paper, the letters swam. A breeze rattled the blinds. His stomach clenched. He instinctively looked up.

With a jolt, he averted his gaze, closed his eyes, and dropped his head, bumping his forehead against the table. Too late. He saw it. In that glance, he saw it cock its head. He breathed rapidly. Tears squeezed out of his clenched eyes. He tried to steady his breath. A scream bubbled in his throat. He wanted to explode in rage, run, escape, charge it with fists flying, challenge it. Words shriveled and died in his mouth, though. Rage squiggled through his body and fizzed out in his clenched teeth and fists. His throat clutched and strangled the scream, because at least he was still alive. A sob whined out of him.

For his neighbors, the summer nights passed easily with swimming, parties, even strolls past the building across the street, beneath the maple tree. He scanned both building and tree with his naked eye and his binoculars, but couldn’t fix on the darting black form. It shifted behind tree branches and wide leaves, but he never caught it leaving them or returning to their shelter. Windows blotted out as it entered them, but he never was able to trace a full journey, tree to window, and back again. It was too fast.

Then the window… the window. Determined to view the whole progression, Russ glued his focus on that third floor window, vowing he’d drop the binoculars the second it reappeared to see it cross the building’s face. The window’s light blushed, then went red. The blinds were drawn and the light went out. Russ sat in his dark apartment, staring at those blinds. His body quivered with tension as he readied to drop the binoculars when it reappeared. He tried to steady his hands. Across the street, the bland, pale blinds swayed, stilled.

Then suddenly shot up, the window blazing white light. She stood there, like movie women being stalked, always naked in front of a window. She turned, dancing a slow, jerky marionette dance. She swayed, seduced, caressed herself, pinched the pulpy hunks of flesh dangling from her jutting ribs. Muscle contracted across her flayed skull. She pursed her almost nonexistent lips and blew him a kiss.

Russ screamed, dropped the binoculars, and jumped back from his window. When he looked again, the blinds in that window were drawn once more, with no light behind them. As he watched, a man in a bathrobe appeared on the balcony above that window and whirled there. Russ shuddered. The man whirled, whirled. Russ drew his blinds in a clatter. They slapped against his windowsill. He made sure his door was locked, retreated to his bathroom, and got sick in the toilet.

-- To Be Continued --

Halloween

2004-10-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

There was a time when, each Christmas, I would write a new Christmas poem. That lasted a few years. I used each poem in my Christmas cards and sent them out together. I got some great stuff out of it.

But Christmas isn’t my favorite holiday. It’s number 2. Halloween is my favorite. Because not only does it start the whole holiday season, but it’s a holiday concerned chiefly with dead things and horror and the supernatural. This is just my whole outlook on life in general. Tim Burton’s conception of a world concerned wholly with the creation of Halloween was brilliant! And combining that world with a Christmas world was genius!

Point being, though, that I find it odd that I’ve never devoted any writing specifically to Halloween. I suppose this is due in part to the fact that I write horror fiction. Even my poetry tends toward the dark side sometimes. So I figure I’m always writing Halloween sorts of material. But I’ve never dedicated a piece to Halloween itself. Or written in that vein, with the pumpkins and the leaves changing color and the ghouls and goblins cavorting in the graveyard.

But now I have this Blog. And some people are reading it. And I thought, since it’s my favorite month and Halloween is approaching, why not devote some space here to things of a Halloween nature. Because I’m currently embroiled in a short story and would rather not take any creative force away from it to create a whole new Halloween piece, I decided I might try some poems, maybe something Halloween based, maybe some pieces just on fear itself, or dealing with the dark. And then it occurred to me that I have some poems like that already. I started going through my old work and YIKES!!!! Ha ha, you want a good scare, go through your old work! But more fascinating than that is that I did find some poems I’d forgotten about. I wrote a werewolf poem in 1991. I’ve written on the subject of demons and used vampiric imagery. I have a poem about a creepy night. And, from the deep, dark, scary annals of high school, in 1984 I wrote a poem about a ghost.

That poem follows. I warn the reader now… it’s pretty bad. It was an assignment in my creative writing class (my very first such class). The assignment was to write a narrative poem. I’m not entirely sure why it’s in the rhyme scheme it’s in (especially given how horrible it is!), but the story’s sort of fun and revisiting this piece is very funny. So I hope any of my loyal readers enjoy this slice of (probably best unearthed) history!

To Halloween!

The Ghost of Munroe High

Beware, O Janitor,
Of the ghost of Monroe High,

For tonight you’ll be its victim
Because it’s seeking its revenge.

O Janitor, you’ll die,
For that night ten years ago.

That night on which you killed a boy,
A boy of popularity.

You killed poor Greg McCoy,
With your hammer to his head.

They never did find Greg McCoy
The search and case both forgotten.

But now you’ll meet your doom.
The ghost, it still remembers.

Be on your guard, O Janitor,
With your deep, dark insanity,

For you are all alone
In a dark and empty school.

But now you hear a quiet sound.
A sound from down the hallway.

Wonder, O Janitor,
As you leave your tiny room,

Who is it in the silent school,
Who makes the sound of rasping leaves?

Sir, do investigate.
No one should be in the school.

Be careful my dear Janitor
As you walk to the dim hall’s end.

You come to this hall’s end
And scan the one adjoining.

Midway down this hallway of dark,
There walks a figure clad in gray.

As you see this shadow
O Janitor, you shout “Hey!”

But the figure, it ignores you,
And at a corner disappears.

Beware, O Janitor
Of the ghost of Monroe High.

After the figure, Janitor!
Around the corner it too went!

But, my god, what is this?
Down this new hall, no figure!

From science room 110 – a crash!
The room in which you killed McCoy.

Beware, O janitor,
Beware, beware Greg McCoy.

Hesitantly walk to 110,
And peek into this science room.

Broken glass on the floor,
Yet no one inside 110.

Beware, O Janitor
Of the ghost of Monroe High.

In the window in 110’s door
Appears suddenly Greg McCoy.

Scream, scream, O Janitor,
It’s the ghost of Monroe High!

Only a quarter inch of glass
Separates you and Greg McCoy.

His face is quite haggard
One of a corpse from beyond.

A hole where the left eye should be—
The place where your cold hammer hit.

Beware, O Janitor,
The ghost of Monroe High.

Stumble and fall, O Janitor,
As the ghost phases through the door.

Your screams won’t help you now,
For the school remains empty.

The ghost of rot stands before you,
Grinning with a maggoty mouth.

This ghost is quite a sight,
No longer the handsome lad.

It glows intensely with anger,
Reaching out a skeletal hand.

Goodbye, dear Janitor.
The ghost has had its revenge.

The next morning, poor Janitor,
We find you in a body bag.

The policemen wonder.
Your death is a mystery.

Yet tis said that two ghosts exist,
Forever fighting in room 110.

Each night, tis said they fight,
Janitor against McCoy.

So remember, all Janitors,
Work only if you’re not insane.

And recall wariness
Of the ghost of Monroe High.

-- Joe Lopez, ©1984

[Tee hee… thank you, thank you. I just love the personal relationship the narrator has with the Janitor! I like “Sir, do investigate”… that makes me laugh. This guy could’ve used Buffy, boy! Those “O Janitors” are kind of queasiness inducing, though, aren’t they? And it’s so sad that the crazy janitor doesn’t have a name. That admonishment at the end to future janitors is hilarious, too: “Work only if you’re not insane.” That should go for everyone everywhere across all the fields. I should’ve heeded it when I took the Ethan Rayne Bookstore job.]

KABOOM!

2004-10-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

Even in repose the majesty of the mountain cannot be denied. Crowned in a white mantel, draped in pine robes, the mountain is a king lying in state. Except that this king has the life and slumbering force of a mighty usurper. Its heart rumbles. The earth shakes. A plume rises out of its craggy, cratered peak. For any inhabitants in the area the question becomes if or when the volcano will erupt.

Volcanoes are Nature’s terrifying force. Their violence cannot be predicted and that violence has the capacity to bring cities to ruin, even to extinction. But such cataclysmic consequences may be able to be predicted, saving human lives. Volcanoes issue a warning that scientists believe they have finally decoded.

All volcanic explosions are fuelled by molten rock, magma, which flows into a volcano through the Earth’s crust. With hot gas, magma rises. If the volcano’s top is sealed, pressure mounts until it hits a critical point and the volcano explodes. Volcanologists use seismologic readings in an attempt to track the magma to determine how close it is to the surface. As magma rises, there may be hundreds, even thousands, of small earthquakes each day. As scientists pored over seismographic signals, one, the “A-type,” stood out as a possible predictor of volcanic eruptions. Easily recognizable, the A-type had a clear beginning and trailed off quickly: the sound of rock breaking.

As magma rises, it breaks through rock. It was hoped that A-type earthquakes, or rock fracturing events, could reveal the location of the magma and how fast it was rising to the surface. But the seismic blur revealed no consistent pattern. Each volcano’s pattern was unique and could not serve as a definitive prediction of when it would blow.

But Bernard Chouet noticed hidden in A-type signals another signal, the B-type, which no one knew how to explain. B-type signals had no clear beginning and trailed away slowly, often merging with other signals, making them hard to detect. To Bernard Chouet, however, they represented a “long period event,” a slow onset, gradual build up of energy and then a slow decaying single tone which lasts for a while. “What we’re seeing here,” says Chouet, “is resonance.”

Chouet realized that what he was looking at was each new injection of magma or gas as it filled the cracks of volcanic rock. Scattered through seismographic records are hundreds of long period events, more and more as volcanoes get closer to erupting. Long period events are a countdown to the eruption.

On July 9th, 2004, my hiring at the Ethan Rayne bookstore set into motion a series of rock fracturing and long period events until I exploded on October 6th and laid waste to my employment with the Ethan Rayne bookstore.

I don’t really know what happened. I was in a good mood immediately prior to the event. Jim even noted how good a mood I was in. I even joked that it wouldn’t last long. But at the time I figured my good mood would wear away slowly over the course of the day and that by six I would be one worn out, frustrated, possibly annoyed and angry, individual. Because that’s been the pattern. The Ethan Rayne bookstore’s been quite the energy drain! And nothing puts one out (at least, this one) like being unable to overcome the glaring flaws of a workplace while dealing with customers who themselves may be terribly flawed. So the good mood ebbing is not an unexpected thing (although, and this is also ironic, lately I’ve been able to retain the good mood in spite of whatever’s going down at work!). But I never expected to lose it so fast. And then really LOSE IT so fast!

I arrived late. By one minute. 10:01. The store was barely opening. Customers were milling around a store without all its lights turned on yet. There were no drawers in the cash registers. This had ceased to annoy me. It was typical. But on Wednesday there was a new snag. The safe where the cash drawers were kept wouldn’t open. I saw four people, including myself, try to get into it. It was jammed. It simply would not open. There were customers up front waiting to pay with cash. Because I was scheduled to be on the registers first thing in the morning, it meant I got to be the one to give the customers the bad news. One man was waiting patiently. I told the people lining up that I could ring up anyone with a credit card purchase, so I rang up a few sales. But then Mr. Annoyed showed up. He was annoyed (and, frankly, with all good reason) that he had to wait for a transaction that should’ve taken less than five minutes. I agreed with him, but then he started to take his frustration out on me, which was a bad thing, because I was already equally as frustrated with the situation as he was… more so, because I knew that this was just par for the course at Ethan Rayne bookstore. I apologized to him and when his litany continued, I told him that I didn’t do this to him and furthermore that I didn’t get paid enough to be subjected to his vitriol.

So much for my high and mighty stance on excellent customer service.

Well, I thought I should leave at that point, because he wasn’t the only one jumping down my throat over the situation. The patiently waiting guy had joined him. So I left. I announced to what coworkers were milling about that I was out of there. I went to the back of the store and my anger mounted. Those long period events were slamming one into the other, steam was escaping from the lava dome in my brain and when I hit the back office, I hit it running and yelling. I left the store and crossed the outside courtyard to the other office area, where they keep the money, and I erupted. I erupted all over one of the supervisors (now, here’s what I wanted to know later, after I calmed down… why the fuck were all the supervisors over in the office when they could have been delivering some amount of money, anything, not even a whole drawer full, but enough to let us operate until the previous day's drawers could be counted down and delivered, or, barring that, why weren’t they over there explaining the situation to customers themselves… but I digress on a petty, petulant tangent).

I have quite a temper when I’m pushed to it (or when I suppress it and suppress it and then it comes out like this), and when I do erupt I erupt in a lava flow of swear words that do no less singeing and broiling damage than actual lava flows. And this supervisor that I had cornered received all of my vitriol. From the back of the office I heard Sybil yell at me “You’re out of here!” and I took my cue. Even in that moment of blind fury, I was elated because I got fired, which makes me eligible for unemployment payments.

How fucking grim is that?

Three months ago my time at the Ethan Rayne bookstore began in a torrential temper tantrum from Sybil. I suppose I was just returning the favor. I suppose it was fate bringing me full circle. Such an outburst, though, flies in the face of my new studies into Buddhism. Buddhists don’t usually resort to violent fits of temper and language that makes strong women cower, do they?

No they do not.

So my Ethan Rayne experience is now at an end. I was home by 10:57 that day and that kind of wigged me out. Everything had taken place in less than an hour… including having to walk to the train station, ride the subway, and walk home. Now that it is at an end, what have I learned about myself? I’m still sorting that bit out. So I’m back on the job search trail. Heavy sigh. But relieved sigh, too, that now I can give my full attention to finding a position in which I and whatever clients or customers are being served, will be treated with deference and professionalism. I’ve already submitted my resume to the L.A. Opera and to a company that places people in legal offices. Perhaps, since it’s so close to my birthday and it’s my favorite time of year and all, the stars will align and this surreal fucking landscape I’d landed myself in will dissolve and give way to the Universe opening up, cracking wide open and maybe, maybe, this time the eruption and long period event will be in a more positive vein.

Now I’m going to just go over to the bed, there, and cuddle with that sleeping kitten! Fuzz therapy.

[Much of today’s extended metaphor was extracted or reworded from the transcript of NOVA’s “Volcano’s Deadly Warning” which aired on L.A.’s PBS station KCET on the evening of October 5th. To find out more about this program you can log on to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/volcano/. Hopefully, it won’t be as portentous for you as it was for me.]

Egg Nog

2004-10-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

I understand the impatience, the answering of the siren call of counting down to happy events. On September 18th, every year, without fail, I start counting down to my birthday a month later. I greet October 1st with the shuddering joy-saturated anticipation of a virgin kneeling to give his first blowjob. October is my favorite month for so many reasons: my birthday, autumn hits full swing, the very air turns orange, pumpkins appear in grocery stores, and horror seeps from our collective depths, lays itself bare in the orange sunlight, and drapes itself in orange and black crepe in our homes, malls and shops. On October 1st I begin the countdown to Halloween by having Horror Movie Nights every preceding weekend until the big night. Jim and I dutifully followed tradition this weekend with screenings of “Halloween H20” and “Alien: Resurrection.” Hm… in the resurrection vein, perhaps next week we’ll screen “The Passion of the Christ” as our horror flick.

Point being, I get it! Great events deserve long, drawn out red carpet treatments of welcome. But on Saturday… October 2nd… Jim and I walked into Ralph’s, the local grocery store (the implications of a grocery store bearing a moniker which is also a euphemism for vomiting never cease to amuse me… and the seeming obliviousness to this double entendre of the Ralph’s corporation never ceases to grieve me… but I digress…)…

Jim and I stopped in to pick up a few things. Now, I didn’t know it at the time, but I was running a 101-degree fever. I knew I felt like trampled shit on hot pavement, I knew I was sick, and if, as we meandered through the over-bright produce section, I’d known I was feverish, I would’ve attributed the sleigh bells I heard to the fever. I still might have dismissed the woman… maybe it was Anne Murray… crooning about snowflakes on city sidewalks (in L.A., you stupid bitch?!) as hallucination induced by the fever except that, just to check my perceptions, which I DID know were altered by feeling like flat poo, I asked Jim “Is that Christmas carols I’m hearing?” (Okay, but you have to imagine the tone, too… like asking “Is that a maggot in my open wound?” or maybe “Is that Dick Cheney jacking off in the corner of the pre-school day care center over there?”) So I asked Jim in that half horrified voice “Is that Christmas carols I’m hearing?” Jim was still caught in the thrall of fresh tomatoes and onions and broccoli and avocados. He looked up and looked around the produce section for a woman named Carol that we might know, but who did we know named Carol except his mom, but why would Mom be here in Los Angeles without telling me, I don't see anyone who looks like Mom, what did Joe say, is that “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow” I’m hearing, why are they playing Christmas carols already?

Ding! Jim confirmed for me that yes, yes, God help us all, on October 2nd they were, in fact, playing Christmas carols in Ralph’s. I suppose it was to compliment the display of Christmas decorations they had up already.

Now, like I said at the top of this essay, I understand the anticipation. I understand the marketing ploys (“The Day After Tomorrow” is released on DVD in 7 days, which gives you plenty of time to buy it for me for my birthday, Jim!). I mean, my ghost figurine and my black cats and jack-o-lanterns table runner are already out! But attention Ralph’s managers: Listen to me! Holidays in their proper order! Do not think you’re so high and mighty, Ralph’s motherfuckers, that you can trample Halloween right into the ground to get to your big consumerist holiday, buy buy buy! Why must this be said? Skeletons and banshees before we stuff our faces with yams and turkeys before the overweight senior citizen with lousy fashion sense deposits our overdose of materialistic commercialism under our dead Douglas firs God bless us every one! It’s the nightmare BEFORE Christmas… go watch the movie again and please, please learn Jack’s lesson and leave the holiday blending to the dead and Tim Burton.

And this is why this all has me so concerned: this morning I woke up with Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” in my head.

You Ralph’s bastards… you won’t strip me of my Samhain! You won't! You won't!!!

The Blinding Light of Enlightenment

2004-09-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

I have spent all week in a black cloud. Not a black cloud of fluff, or an industrial column of black waste product, but a cloud like a black, buzzing density of gnats or flies. It has colored every experience this week and from it I once again viewed the precipice upon which I stood a few weeks ago.

I am in a massive struggle for sanity. I keep thinking it’s a struggle with Los Angeles, a place where sanity is not in control. Sanity isn’t even in the immediate vicinity! I keep thinking my struggle is to find sense in a workplace ruled by gremlins and berserkers. The Ethan Rayne bookstore is a convergence of both the city and the workplace aspects of my struggle. It’s like a heightened awareness of what I’m struggling with.

We have no computers at work. Our entire inventory can only be referenced by looking things up on a card catalog. Look… I’m all for quaint ideas, but it’s 2004! Get a goddamn computer! I’d forgotten, in my years away from retail, how stupid people can really be. Why must they call bookstores and state after the obligatory salutations “Yeah, um, I’m wondering if you can help me, I’m looking for a book.” And they stop there. They don’t continue. They must be prompted and spoon-fed through the rest of the inquiry. When customers call in an order, they routinely have to be prompted for their information. When asked for their address they state their street number and name and stop, figuring that with that tidbit I’ll just figure out the city, state and zip code. I’m just not as gifted a mind reader as customers seem to think I am. Yesterday I received a call from one of L.A.’s bubbles to say she was on her way to the store from Pasadena and she knew she wouldn’t make it before we closed at five and she was wondering if we close promptly at five or if anyone’s still in the store for half an hour afterward so that when she got there we could let her in. I was recently told by my coworker, Stephanie, that when I retrieved a book for a customer, instead of sending the customer to find it herself, that it was great customer service but I needed to make customers find the books for themselves, otherwise they would come to expect that level of service and would never do the work for themselves.

I hope the readers of my Blog share my moral outrage over that one.

As I watched a group of teenage actresses bobble into the store yesterday, I decided that, like wolves have packs, like buffalo have herds, like unicorns have blessings, that Los Angelinos needed a special word for their groupings. I decided that a “vacancy of Los Angelinos” was entirely appropriate.

Anyway, I keep thinking my struggle for sense and sanity has been because the outside world of Los Angeles is skewed horribly toward the sense of a booby hatch. But yesterday it suddenly occurred to me that that isn’t the problem at all. It occurred to me that the struggle isn’t with what’s wrong with Los Angeles, but with how Los Angeles illuminates and mirrors what’s wrong with me.

My all-consuming financial concerns that fill my days with seeming passion are ultimately no measure of my worth. My days consist mostly of home and work, home and work and at home it’s TV, Buffy DVDs, The Sims and surfing personal ads on the Internet. I reach out to no one real, even when I’m only half an hour away (with no traffic) from relatives. I don’t reach out to anyone to whom I owe emails, letters and phone calls. The vacuous, vapid populace of Los Angeles is perhaps receiving my contempt not for how they actually are, but for how they reflect my own vacuity. It suddenly occurred to me that my highs lately are because I talked to Vincent Kartheiser and I saw Eric Stoltz at Bed, Bath and Beyond. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, such encounters are ultimately void of real human interaction or connection. Like Hollywood (the physical city, the psychology of the city and the behemoth that is the movie industry), my current life feels very much like a very pretty wallpaper bisecting a room. It’s delicately patterned and meticulously beautiful, but one accidental punch through and you’re faced with the empty, unadorned other side of the room.

I’ve thought often lately that in order to not succumb to the blackness of depression, I must remember that life is a journey and a process. Even in the gaping silence of the Christian God’s response to my questing inquiries into the nature of my life, even as I wade through the bubble antics of this trendy, giggling vacancy of Los Angelinos, I keep seeking some deeper purpose to my experiences in Los Angeles. I am absolutely abandoning Christianity because Christianity is too much like Hollywood: a massive international influence that infects dreams and minds with historical, mythic, sexual and moral inaccuracy, ambiguity and paradox and leaves people under its thrall more rabid, stupid and insufferable than they generally started out to be… both Christianity and Hollywood rob humans of their full human potential and beauty. I’ve begun a search for knowledge, substance and spirit in Buddhism. I suspect, from these first few meager steps, that Buddhism has more to say to me regarding the nature of this spiritual journey and why I am experiencing what I’m experiencing in Los Angeles that Christianity or Hollywood ever could. Furthermore, I suspect that Buddhism will inform my creativity in a more substantive way that Christian Hollywood (or is it Hollywood Christianity?) ever could or ever has been able to do.

I suspect that I will not succeed in Hollywood. I can’t network and have no desire to kiss all the right ass. I’m not a helium filled blow up doll. I think I’m angry with this place for showing me that while I will never be able to play the role of Peter Pucker-Up, that I am playing the role of something just as empty: a box. A sad, black cardboard box. But even under the perpetually sunlit WB billboards and gleaming network and film production logos, life continues to take me quietly along to show me that it is absolutely possible to fill my black box, even to transform my box into some form better equipped to fulfill whatever true destiny I am here to realize.

Like a mutant ninja werewolf angel of death with a heart of gold that teaches plains state farmers how to behead Mary-Kate and Ashley clones and West Hollywood gym bunnies.

Heh heh.

Buddha and Jesus just exchanged exasperated expressions.

Seeing Stars

2004-09-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

Last week Vincent Kartheiser came into the Ethan Rayne bookstore. I used to pride myself on being so above the whole celebrity thing. I used to pride myself about being better than all those silly, silly 12-year-old girls and dizzy 45-year-old fags who go all weak and wobbly in the knees over celebrities. But I, by God, jumped at the chance to help Vincent. Fuck, I try not to give in to fan adoration but when I’m faced with someone from one of my two most favorite TV shows of all time I just become a quivering bowl of Jell-o, incapable of all but the most fundamental gurglings of adoration and praise. Even so, I chatted with Vincent Kartheiser and I still feel very special.

For you unfortunate, misguided sods who never watched “Angel”, Vincent Kartheiser played Angel’s miracle child, Connor.

Well, I was ready to chalk the encounter up to another random, chance encounter with a Buffy/Angel cast member (I’ve had a few since moving to L.A.: Juliet Landau, Clare Kramer and Tom Lenk). But then yesterday happened.

My husband, Jim, never watched Buffy while it was on network television. He caught a few episodes, but he always pooh-poohed it as fluff, for which he usually received sharp rebukes and harsh retorts. But now that I own the DVDs (“rabid fan” is such an ugly phrase), we’ve been watching them together from the beginning and I am happy to report that I’ve made a convert! We’re halfway through Season Two. On Sunday we watched “Phases”, the episode in which Oz, played by Seth Green, discovers he’s a werewolf. A werewolf hunter, by the name of Cain, played by Jack Conley, also comes to Sunnydale to… well… hunt werewolves. During the course of events, Xander has a locker room confrontation with Sunnydale High’s jock bully, Larry Blaisdell, played by Larry Bagby, about Larry’s nocturnal activities only to discover that Larry’s not the werewolf, he’s just a closeted homosexual who comes out to Xander, who Larry now thinks is also gay!

Not the most obscure of trivia, but as I watched the episode, I had a moment of “Where have I seen him before?” while watching Jack Conley play Cain… and in blinding recognition, I realized that he also played Sahjhan, the inter-dimensional demon who tried to kill Angel on “Angel” for a season.

So anyway, then yesterday happened.

Now, I grant, that since I’ve started working at the Ethan Rayne bookstore, I’ve had a number of celebrity sightings. You can’t swing a dead cat without smacking a celebrity or two (my formal apologies to Ms. Roberts… should’ve stayed down looking for that Mamet play, Julia). I’ve seen Dan Butler, Christopher Lloyd, Lauren Ambrose, Ray Wise, Richard Portnow and John Glover. But yesterday, I had three celebrity sightings of cast members from the Buffy/Angel milieu.

Jack Conley was at the register when I came back from my ten-minute break. For just a split second I wondered if he was hunting werewolves. I thought perhaps he’d read my previous Blog entry. And then I got all giddy about “Hey, it’s Jack Conley and I saw him on Buffy just last night!”

Later in the day, John Rubenstein, who played Wolfram and Hart lawyer Linwood Murrow spent some time browsing in the store. I would very much like to have spoken to him but all I could think of for a conversation opener was “Hey! You were beheaded in ‘Angel’!” And “rabid fan” is such an ugly phrase for a first impression.

After work, on days when Jim has the car, I have to ride the Metro Red Line home. I walk home along Hollywood Blvd. Last night, Hollywood Blvd. between Highland and La Brea was closed because of the “Ladder 49” premiere. The sidewalks in front of Grauman’s Chinese theater were clogged with people ogling celebrities, snapping pictures of them as they went into Disney’s El Capitan theater for the premiere festivities. I was mere yards and a barrier of security and limos away from Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta (and damn the luck that ever since the restraining order I’ve had to leave my dead cat at home!). But more exciting than all that bling-bling stardom was the fact that, as I made my way through the crowded sidewalk, I passed within mere inches of Larry Bagby! Who I’d also seen on Buffy just the night before!

Sahjhan, Linwood, Larry… all in one day! Following so closely on the heels of meeting Vincent Kartheiser. Although I’ve forsaken Christian theological constructs and have long since ceased to imbue astrology with any validity, I want these four sightings to mean something. Perhaps I’ve found my new religion: celebrity! Because I want to believe that the stars are aligning this way as an omen to greater things for me. Perhaps my Hollywood door is about to open. Could this mean that Our Father in Hollywood, Joss Whedon, is seeking an assistant and these four men, like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are the harbingers of Joss appearing to me and delivering final judgment upon me and finding me worthy to work at his right hand? Jesus, Buddha and Visnhu, I sure hope so!

Because if not… then… Fuck! I was this close to them all and failed to procure even ONE autograph!

The Silence Broken

2004-09-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

I must remind myself that this is all part of the journey. It’s like traveling cross-country. Some places offer stunning views: blood red mesas rising above dawn purple deserts, waterfalls cascading blue over gray slate boulders, oceans crashing against black, craggy cliffs. Some places offer culture and rich heritage: New York theaters, New Orleans architecture, Seattle environmental awareness and grunge, Santa Fe folk arts, Chicago music. And then some places are dull as their dust colored, endless horizons, with little going for them other than their occasional dark undersides, bodies left in car trunks in the middle of cornfields, teenage boys left to die on fence posts, the Peacock family.

In my life’s journey, I’m at about Grainfield, Kansas. Which, given my actual, physical location of Los Angeles, California, is fairly grim. Life has been reduced to a rut… a great big, long, deep, dusty, insignificant rut running through a field of obscurity.

Five days a week I wake up late. I dash out a journal entry, hurry through a shave and shower, choke down an inadequate breakfast and go to work. I am drained of all energy by my eight hours of Ethan Rayne bookstore experiences… idiosyncrasies of coworkers’ dramas and melodramas, supervisor temper tantrums, idiocies from customers, and the general air of intense negativity that no amount of celebrity sightings in the store can dispel. I go home, make dinner, eat in front of TV, play some Sims and then go to bed worn out and feeling unproductive, uncreative and worthless.

Days off, I get up and journal, make little stabs at finishing a short story I’ve now been working on for four years, get some house cleaning done, run errands. I eat decent meals on days off. But I get bored around three in the afternoon and the rest of the day goes to The Sims… the bloody, damn, insufferable and thoroughly addictive Sims!… and TV or, barring TV because I find the commercials infuriating and “reality” TV excruciatingly insipid, I throw in a DVD and let Buffy or Angel, or the Terminator, or Lt. Ellen Ripley soothe away my self deprecation and depression for a few hours.

Occasionally, on this stretch of Highway Jesus-Christ-I’m-Pathetic, there have been some Points of Interest and little rest stops along the way.

I had a job as an extra. I was part of the audience for Ladies Night II of the World Poker Tour. I made $54. Yes, Virginia, even the audiences in Hollywood are fake and are made up of paid extras (because, frankly, how else are they gonna get anyone to watch this shit?).

I published a poem in a national magazine. My poem “The Cologne Cathedral” appeared in the summer issue of Sculptural Pursuit magazine.

My relationship has improved and we are making every effort to take care of one another in this perpetually sunny, plastic city of Botox and traffic and bubbles with cell phones attached to every ear they have.

I’ve hiked above Malibu, in the desert along Upper Big Tujunga Canyon, through Griffith Park. I sunbathed nude at San Onofre and in the dry riverbed along the side of the road in the Upper Big Tujunga Canyon.

I’ve spent time with my cousins, grabbing meals out, seeing movies, eating dinner at their homes, partying in West Hollywood. I lose sight, down here in this rut, of the wealth that lies in family ties.

Earlier this week I received a letter from my friend, Kat, in Seattle that reminded me of some fundamentals I’d forgotten. I may not make it here in L.A. As the weeks have progressed, I’ve begun to think of that possibility as an inevitability. But where I work doesn’t matter. That I work, that I produce, that I communicate to an audience through my writing and my acting, is the most important thing to keep in mind. Kat said in that letter that she continues to be inspired by my work. I am greatly bolstered by this, and she will be receiving a letter in response. This helps me put my petal to the metal and speed out of this metaphorical Kansas toward someplace more interesting, perhaps a metaphorical Paris… or, depending on the election results in November, a very literal Paris! Because ultimately, all this shit I’m going through… it’s part of the journey and where I am will change because the most important part of the journey isn’t the road so much as the conveyance, and when I stop at the rest stops I realize that my vehicle and my appearance when I’m driving is amazing.

I am a mad, naked, half-transformed werewolf with hoop earrings in each pointed ear, hair dyed flaming orange and red, neon pink boa fluttering in the rushing wind and I’m driving a suped up, purple Great Big Electro Who-Cardio Fluxe that makes ear splitting noises deluxe… with yellow fins and electric blue side walls. And I am that driver in that vehicle even when I can’t pay my creditors and have to convince Tiffany and Dakota that “Romeo and Juliet” was a play long before Leonardo DiCaprio made the movie and that Steven Spielberg did not, in fact, write it.

Hopefully, Kansas in metaphor is not a bigger state than Kansas in reality. Come on, you purple mountains majesty, rise on that horizon… rise on that horizon!

Sparkle Motion

2004-08-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

Some may ask "Why the change in format?"

Because!

I wanted Links, damn it, LINKS!!!!!

Besides, what better way to avoid suicide than to change things around, shake things up, dazzle the eye, bling bling and...

because I wanted Links, damn it... links.

Swan Song

2004-08-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

I decided to commit suicide.

Everything I counted on in life has failed me in sunny Southern California. Jobs, finances, artistic expression, love, faith have all amounted to broken, thrashing disintegration. I need a new paradigm. Death has the beauty and simplicity of reliability.

I revisited Point Fermin’s “sunken city” recently. A portion of chain link fence is cut and pulled back to allow access to the tumbled landscape of the once posh couple of blocks. There is an eerie stillness about the place, like the hush of mourners after a gruesome death. Nature created a grim whimsy when the cliff dropped out from under the area. Suessian towers, some of them topped with altar-like, jagged slabs of concrete raised into the wind swept sky, lean and jut above the rolling pathways. A road’s smooth progress can be reassembled mentally from the dipping, rising remains until the road shoots out over a chasm that drops to the rocky beach below. Trees still line the broken street, proud, decorative palms, their roots exposed and supporting them over trash choked black gaps in the earth. Graffiti paints every sidewalk and street surface canted into walls. Broken glass winks in the sun from every human laid surface. The bowl of the place gives rise to disquieting thoughts of human vulnerability in the face of Nature’s power. Nothing about this ground assures stability. As I stood in a dip of ground, nearly able to envision the drowsy, elite street this once was, I realized that the anxiety I felt there was the exact same anxiety I felt in my life in Los Angeles.

Circumstances have spun out of control.

I never counted on three months of unemployment. In the past, applying to a temp agency was lucrative. I was assigned work within two weeks of applying with the agency. One assignment even led to my hiring at the best job I’ve ever held as the receptionist for Gordon Murray Tilden in Seattle, Washington. Even without the services of a temp agency, I have never gone more than a month without work. Three months and four temp agencies in Los Angeles resulted in mounting debt and only five hours of work. Six weeks of intense job hunting resulted in a desperation grab for a customer service nightmare run by a temper tantrum-throwing madwoman so that I could afford my rent and groceries. And I’m still unable to afford everything I owe toward.

The love of my life seems ready to wane. November 6th will mark 11 years of being with my husband. Our relationship has always been close, affectionate, playful, loving and respectful. We have prided ourselves on our ability to communicate openly. The communication has shut down in a flurry of recriminations and accusations. We’ve withdrawn from one another and over the past year our love has soured. Whatever changed soured even further during my three months of unemployment, when Jim was the sole breadwinner and financial support in our family. During my first week at the Ethan Rayne Bookstore, Jim left for a six week European vacation. We parted in anger and bitterness and subsequent emails and communications have not dispelled it, though it looked as though they might.

Artistically, I don’t have the money to pursue acting classes. My writing is dried up. Even my journal writing, which I try to do every single day, has sputtered to a slow dribble. You can’t hide from your own journal. It all comes out on the pages, so I’ve avoided it. In my resulting depression, I’ve avoided any blank page that can accuse me with lack of artistic passion or more rumination on how I’ve gotten so detoured from what I felt was my true path in life. So I’ve buried myself in movies I’ve already seen and hours upon hours of television and computer games. I even abandoned the computer games for a while because those goddamn Sims are too much like me in Southern California: it never rains, it’s always work, work, work to keep your head above water, the toilets back up and that bloody mail carrier just keeps bringing more bills!

I used to believe in God, too. After some major top ten hits in my life like bringing Jim and I together in the first place, procuring the awesome apartment we currently live in, and bringing $5,000 into my life when I most needed it, I thought God a surefire support for the rough times here. Instead, I think God has left the building. When I search for God, I find only an empty room. No quiet voice, no gentle hand, and the only Messiah I’ve seen lately was splashed in gore, terrorizing old Christian women at the multiplexes.

So what was to keep me here on earth? Suicide provides an end to the suffering, and an end to too many hours of “Trading Spouses” and “Dr. Phil.” My debt would evaporate. Shit jobs would end indefinitely. I could use my suicide as the ultimate artistic expression. I decided on the method. I decided on a date, timed perfectly to avoid my cats being abandoned to hunger and neglect. The tumult of emotion and thought over my disintegrating marriage would come to an end, as well. I’d rather be dead than face the failure of so momentous an achievement. And if there is a God, then deciding my own demise would be a great “Fuck you!” to a deity evil enough to gift me with artistic sensitivity in a mediocre, commercially cold world like this one.

Depression is an oppressive motherfucker. It colors everything and turns you inward so far that the world proceeds like set pieces against cartoon backdrops. The sunniest days, the kindest words, the most intimate gestures do not dispel the cold vacuum in your chest. Your senses are deadened and not even sunburns or cat claw scratches make you feel alive. So the next logical step, since you already feel dead, is suicide. And when you make that decision, the world kind of takes on a new spark, like the lighting of a Soderberg film. It’s lit, but through a heightened filter. The day after I made the decision was full of power knowing that nothing outside of me would affect me ever again. The stupid bitch of a customer was muted, the harpy screech of your supervisor is laughable, and the troubles in your marriage are neutralized. All is irrelevant as you feel the soothing quiet of your soul’s sweet release imminent.

I decided to commit suicide on August 24th, the day that Jim comes home from Europe.

When Point Fermin fell into shambles, it must have ended so many dreams. When it happened the first time in 1929, so many fragile, fragile dreams must have ended and devastated someone, on the verge of a national Depression. I wonder if lives ended because of the sinking of the Point Fermin neighborhood. Unsettling and upsetting though it is and has been, though, Point Fermin still thrives, even though not in the way first envisioned. Weeds and grasses proliferate the sunken bowl. The trees may be lying on their sides or shading their own roots, but they’re still alive, tall, proud, and strong. Lizards have replaced retired, wealthy Californians, and replacing retired, wealthy Californians can only be a good thing. Squirrels dart around the towers of earth. A hawk perched on the side of an upended slab of street watched me silently, its stately head cocked until it flew off gracefully out over the coastal cliffs.

When Point Fermin bottomed out, life didn’t end.

I’ve bottomed out. Not as badly as some, much worse than others, but for me in my life, this is bottoming the fuck out! A few weeks ago I threatened to topple off the cliff and into the crashing waves and jagged rocks below.

I think it’s a good thing I took the cats into consideration. It postponed my actions and gave me time to rethink my position. That makes the second time in my life when concern for a cat kept me from suicide. I’m going to owe them big in the afterlife.

In the weeks since making my decision, I have been reminded that there are some great things in life. Beaches, for example (that don’t shift underneath you and have easy fun happy gentle waves). Nude beaches, for example. Yesterday I received a call from a woman looking to hire at Sony Pictures. My aunt, my cousin and a friend pitched in to give me $300 in grocery and Target store gift certificates. Buddhism is overcoming my Christian sensibilities. My relationship… my marriage to Jim is difficult and unresolved, which means that, like it has always been, it is a work in progress. I had a long talk with my brother about the nature of depression and his own depression last year and how he came out of it. Everything, he reminded me, changes. Everything is transforming and mutable and he asked me to please not give in and to stay here.

I won’t be meeting my August 24th deadline. Everything I believe in has been rocked into shambles and split wide to the elements. But there are still hawks to move into the territory. I’ve begun to back away from the precipice. I think I will eventually climb back up the trail to where my car waits. I’ll drive home to good food, warm cats, and messages on my answering machine from family and friends.

The Undermining of Hollywood Dreams

2004-07-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was an exclusive neighborhood at the southernmost point of Los Angeles County. In 1929, the base of the cliffs atop which the neighborhood was built eroded and the land slipped. It slipped further in the early 1940's. Left behind, according to Day Hikes Around Los Angeles, is a "surreal landscape," a "jumble of rolling land with palm trees, isolated slabs of old road, tilting sidewalks, streetcar tracks, and remnants of house foundations, and chimneys above the surf swept rocky seashore."

The book said nothing of the fence keeping you out of the surreal landscape! Still, it looked pretty cool and I sorely wished I was only six inches wide so I could fit through the fence. But that's not the point... I digress.

San Pedro is the modern city above the eroding cliffs. A few miles west of Point Fermin, where the ruins are, is White Point Park. Plaques in the park describe the spa resort that occupied the land in the 1920's. I imagine the Royal Palms Hotel as looking like the Overlook in its heyday, all glitterati and big band sounds that might have continued but for an earthquake in 1933 which shifted the ocean floor and sealed the hot sulphur pools that made the hotel famous. The Great Depression and a fire finished off the hotel and only groves of palm trees, foundations, remnants of gardens, and a fountain remain.

My new job at the Rupert Giles Bookstore is a lot like the slipping landscape around San Pedro.

The Rupert Giles Bookstore specializes in film, writing and acting books and plays. It is a job with much promise for an actor/writer like myself. The resources are rich. The promise of hob-nobbing with industry insiders is vast. Directors, gaffers, screenwriters, actors, boom operators, playwrights, producers... this is our clientele! I saw one coworker make a connection with a producer right there at the registers! This is potentially a fabulous place to work.

But we give such shitty customer service!

Years ago, I worked at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. I have always credited the Tattered Cover for the best customer service training I ever received. In the early 1990's, when I started at the Tattered Cover, new employees were required to take two weeks of training before ever hitting the sales floor. Some tenets of the Tattered Cover's customer service philosophy have served me well over and over again through the years, at various jobs I've held. Being back in a bookstore, I am remembering those tenets very well as applied to the very type of business at which I learned them. And because I'm seeing them be ignored daily.

Good customer service means (among other things): a) personal conversations cease when a customer approaches employees; b) when a customer asks for product, employees walk the customer to the location of that product and put it in the customer's hands; c) employees who are scheduled to open arrive at least fifteen minutes before opening to make the store ready to serve customers; d) emotional outbursts are never, ever okay within earshot or viewing of customers (and generally anywhere on the premises); e) never, ever, EVER should customers hear foul language. D and E are part of the code that makes your workplace a safe, comfortable place for customers. And coworkers, by the way!

The Rupert Giles Bookstore... in fact, Rupert Giles would never stand for this sort of behavior! I'm changing the name to something more suitable!

The Ethan Raynes Bookstore is not a comfortable place for customers to be.

My first day was one massive, slamming earthquake that very nearly knocked the cliff right out from under me. The cliff held but now I'm in a surreal landscape of isolated slabs of actual customer service, tilting customer service values, and remnants of customer satisfaction. Customers at the Ethan Raynes Bookstore are regularly ignored, waved away to fend for themselves, sent to sections of the store with cryptic directions like "over there," "alphabetical by author," or "toward the back of the store." I have one coworker who, no matter what comes out of his mouth, greets customers with the attitude of "Can't you see how busy I am maintaining relaxation?" Customers are daily regaled (whether directly or because they happen to be standing there) with how much everyone hates their jobs at the Ethan Raynes Bookstore. Coworkers have sworn at callers once the caller is on hold, but while in-store customers are quite present and standing at the counter! I've heard coworkers swear at malfunctioning machines or elusive titles with no regard for the presence of a customer. I've seen the simplest customer requests unfold into negatively charged confrontations because the sales clerk didn't want to take the time to answer the question or help the customer in any way.

Yesterday morning the store opened and I (the new, untrained guy) was the only one at the registers... which had no money in them! I couldn't do anything about it because I have no idea how to open the registers yet. Eventually, someone brought some drawers up and I could function, but then I was left for the first twenty minutes alone, answering the phone, helping customers, putting daily newspapers away. In twenty years of working customer service related jobs, I have NEVER been left alone without proper training at the opening of business within the first week of my being at a job!

The ground is definitely sliding straight into a pounding, merciless surf. All the glories promised by the location and Hollywood dreams infusing the Ethan Raynes Bookstore are crumbling. I predict that this job will fade into oblivion before too long. I found a message on my answering machine last night when I got home. It was from one of my temp agencies. There's a position in West Hollywood they're considering me for. Even though it's temporary, I've a feeling that it's the path away from broken ruins and up the hill to higher, more stable ground.

I've begun the construction of the fence to keep me out of the once glorious neighborhood.

Pay Dirt

2004-07-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I got a job.

The reader will note the absence of an exclamation point and the presence of the preceding and ambivalent "Well." I had a hard week last week. I became overwhelmed with depression. I questioned my reasons for moving to La La Land. I questioned the existence of God because if there were a God, I would be working by now! I started hanging out in the Hollywood Forever cemetery, moping around the graves of Cecil B. DeMille and both Douglas Fairbankses. So, the news that I was being offered a position in a Hollywood bookstore came as a welcome reprieve from poverty, but not as a welcome reprieve from jobs that have nothing to do with film making. In the interest of not burning bridges, should this ever get back to anyone at that bookstore(I've had trouble with grapevines in the past), the names (are you surprised, dear reader?!) have been altered to protect my own ass.

It all began on Friday, July 9th. At 10 a.m.

Still feeling the lingering effects of a heavy depression, I arrived at the Rupert Giles Bookstore for my first day. The woman who hired me, Sybil, was nowhere to be found. No one knew who I was or what I was doing there. It gives you such a warm, cozy feeling about the job you just accepted when you say you're the new guy and they respond "The new guy? We hired a new guy?" This also boosts ones confidence in the communicative nature of the management at the new job. Since no one really knew what to do with me, Stephanie, one of the sales clerks, took it upon herself to show me around. She gave me a cursory tour of the store and the warehouse, showed me some basic opening procedures, where to turn on the lights, where to find magazines delivered by the suppliers, and she introduced me around. We waited for Sybil to get off the phone and I had to wonder, after 45 minutes of this, why the hell Sybil hadn't come looking for me herself.

At 11:30, Sybil came from her office and the back of the store to talk to one of the other sales clerks, and saw me standing at the front of the store behind the counter. She had a fit. She went off on Stephanie for not contacting her immediately. Sybil said it was outrageous, inexcusable and ridiculous that I had been put at the registers. Stephanie attempted to explain the situation but Sybil would have none of it. Then Sybil went off on the other people at the register, demanding to know why I was being trained on the cash registers. She kept apologizing to me and I wondered why she wasn't apologizing to the customers who were all within earshot of her tirade... or how about apologizing to the people she was yelling at, who'd done nothing to warrant this reaction. The demands and accusations proceeded to the back of the store as Sybil questioned me about who had told me to go there and who had told me to do that and for every question she asked me she interrupted any chance of a response so I went idly and quietly along for the tirade like Harry Potter in the wake of Professor Snape. Sybil's tantrum continued in the back of the shop, where she demanded of everyone there why I hadn't been brought to her and in the middle of all this a quiet voice told me "Say it... just tell her... tell her you don't understand what the fuss is about because, after all, it was HER RESPONSIBILITY to meet you and begin your training! She's the one who dropped the ball." And suddenly my depression grew.

I've worked for a number of bookstores over the years. They always attract a staff that is highly intelligent, well read, cultured yet operates wholly like a dysfunctional family. In every bookstore I've worked in, save one, there was always the Witchy Woman. Her outward appearance is like that of a witch. Not Margaret Hamilton witchy, but more like Ogra in the "Dark Crystal", the truly classical witch, a woman of intense intelligence who knows the secrets of Mother Earth and the Universe. She wears formless dresses and her hair is unkempt and frizzy out to here. Her eyes are troubled and fathomless because of the knowledge stored in her soul. Except, in the modern day version, it's because of the lunacy kept under close wraps so that they can get the power of position at some local bookstore. Sybil is the Witch at the Rupert Giles Bookstore. I suddenly realized that I'd been thrust back several years, back into retail, back into a dysfunctional bookstore family.

After everyone scattered for cover and I was left alone with Sybil, I seriously considered telling her I didn't want to fill out the I-9 and W2 forms because I just didn't need this sort of emotional distress at my job. I'm not getting paid $75 an hour to act as the Witch Woman's psychiatrist. I suddenly realized why there was a black cat that lives at this bookstore. It's her familiar! And God help me if that cat gets online and finds this Blog entry, because the cat will know... the cat will know!!!

But, goddamn it, I need the money! My creditors send hired thugs to my house, now! I have to disguise myself as a blind old beggar woman to get home! So I filled out the I-9 and the W2 forms. And I worked the rest of the day. And yesterday, I went for my second day. But as God is my witness, I will not stop sending my resume out to film production offices. Because I know that in film production offices, they'll be kind and gentle. They'll take care of me and soothe my jangled nerves. Hollywood people, show business people, know how to treat one another with respect and love.

I've seen the Simpsons! I know it's true!

As God is my witness... as... God... is... my... WITNESS!!!!!!

Kissing Toads

2004-06-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's like in movies when a character is searching for true love. All around our lovelorn protagonist are couples. They're smooching over candlelit dinners, strolling arm in arm through moonlit parks, having whispered conversation over champagne. Our hero escapes into a local movie theater and it turns out that he or she has ducked into the date movie of the century and the theater is full of giggling, snuggling couples. So our hero runs home, home to t.v., only to discover that every late night movie is "Sleepless in Seattle" or "Moonstruck" or "Casablanca" or something along those lines. So, dejected, our hero throws him or herself into bed with a tub of something fried or gourmet ice cream.

That's how my job search is going. I'm desperately waiting for that third act scene in which I and the Hugh Grant of jobs collide and we begin our incredible journey of discovery with each other.

That job... shit, even the INTERVIEW for that job... continues to elude me. I have filled out applications at a movie theater, a Starbuck's, 3 bookstores, 2 restaurants, 9 hotels, and the gift shop of the Catholic cathedral in downtown L.A. (talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel... and IMPALING yourself on the nail poking out of it!). I have submitted my resume to two universities, television and radio stations, production companies, a mortgage company, the L.A. Philharmonic and the L.A. Opera. I've even gone the matchmaker route and registered with four temp agencies who specialize in placing people in film production offices. As with our hero and sex, everyone's putting out, just not putting out for me! Every company I've applied with has announced that they're hiring... they're just not hiring me. I write my love letters and they don't respond. I give them my phone number but they never call me! In the past three months I have only had two interviews. It would've been three but after enticing me with hot young guys that whore of a theme park flashed her big tits and used them to shove me out the door!

As I traverse this city, I see everyone else happily employed, buying lunches and shopping, flaunting their steady incomes! I see them enthusiastically punch their time cards as I fill out yet another application: "Yes! In your face! I have a job and you don't!" I see movie productions sprawled across closed streets gainfully employing people who aren't me. Total fucking idiots muddle through the simplest transactions: "Uh, um, r-r-r-ree-fffffffund? Duh, I don't, duh, um... let me call my manager on the telephone. One, uh, um, duh, four... um..." And while I'm filling out my application at the Catholic cathedral I ask God "Why? Why do dumb asses have jobs and I don't? Why does the guy at Amoeba Music who took a call on his cell phone in the middle of helping Jim have a job and I don't? Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., John Travolta... why can theives, addicts and cultists maintain high paying careers in this town and I can't even secure a job at the Arclight Cinemas?"

God doesn't answer. Silence even to my application for spiritual enlightenment!

At the end of each fruitless day, I go home and feed myself comfort food: grilled cheese sandwiches, sloppy Joes, gelato and chocolate striped shortbread cookies. I watch t.v. but even Rachel Green and Homer Simpson have jobs. So I fire up a Buffy DVD and it reminds me that there are greater things in life than having a job. Like energetic kittens, good health, moms, slaying hyena possessed shaman, and... love. And I can go to bed, fortified for the next day, secure in the knowledge that Buffy will prevail over the Master, my kitten will always greet me at the door at the end of the day, my mother will... ah, who the fuck am I kidding?

Pass the tub of Ben and Jerry's!

Fluffy the Monster III: The Interview

2004-06-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

Mulholland Drive twists and turns along the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. Along the drive, one is privy to spectacular views of Los Angeles, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. You pass elegant homes and elaborate mansions tucked into sage and pine tree lined hills and cliffs. Occasionally, you're treated to the appearance of a coyote or a grazing deer on the side of the road. Then Mulholland ends. Bam! It just ends at a metal gate, like a border crossing gate, thrown across the road which becomes a dirt path beyond. And you're thinking "What the hell? This can't be right! Doesn't this go to the coast? What happened?"

My interview for Fluffy the Monster was a lot like Mulholland Drive. Or it would've been.

Tuesday dawned hazy and cool. I had plenty of time to journal, breakfast, shower and dress before my interview. I made sure I had everything I might need: I.D., social security card, pens, copy of my resume, flavored condoms. I left home with plenty of time to walk over to Universal Studios, ride the tram up the hill to City Walk and still have fifteen minutes to spare when I arrived at the Staffing Offices located above the Abercrombie and Fitch store. I informed the twink at the reception desk that I was there for my 12:30 appointment with Thurston Hammond (you got it... protecting the innocent). Danny McQueen asked me to have a seat, he'd tell Mr. Hammond I was there. So, I sat.

The Staffing Offices reception area was busy with other applicants, people coming and going, names being called, t.v.s playing "E.T." At the point when E.T. goes trick-or-treating with Elliott and Michael, Danny McQueen called my name. I approached the reception desk, where Mr. Hammond stood, smiling. He held out his hand and introduced himself and then dropped the BIG RED FLAG.

You can only apply with Universal Studios online. My application had expired. I needed to re-apply and then Mr. Hammond would be happy to see me. "Do you have any time restrictions today?" I'm unemployed. Yeah. Whoo, boy, I don't know, if I stay and fill out your online application, I might miss out on my highly valuable bon-bons and soaps hour! "No, no, I'm under no restrictions today!" Mr. Hammond beamed at me and Danny sat me down at a computer so I could fill out the application right there!

For the most part, the application's about what you would expect: name, social security number, address, education, blah blah blah. But then there's the personality disposition portion of the application. Twenty online pages of questions like "I enjoy small talk," "When my friends have problems, I like to get involved," "I like to be around big crowds" and "When I'm trying to solve a difficult problem, I take frequent breaks." These questions are to be marked by the applicant as "I strongly disagree", "I disagree", "I agree", or "I strongly agree." This sort of questionnaire on an application, I feel sure, is formulated by corporate analysts without enough numbers to crunch and the personality that even a blow up sex doll would reject.

I finished it, though. I wanted to interview for Fluffy the Monster, goddamn it! I let Danny know I'm done. He asks me to wait. I watch Elliott and friends outwit federal agents in a chase through a housing development, levitate to fly dramatically across a blazing sunset, and rendezvous with E.T.'s Christmas ornament mothership. Just before E.T. advises Gertie to "Be... good" a perky, busty twenty-something woman called my name.

"Hi, Joseph," she said, her eyes large as a doe's grazing along the side of Mulholland Drive. "I'm Tiffany!" She smiles like a weather girl on the Fox network. Then a smudge of concern darkens her salon perfect features. "I need to discuss the results of your application with you."

Apparently, the personality disposition portion measures reliability and customer service skills (HOW?!?). I didn't score high enough to make the Universal Studios cut. On either my expired application or the one I just finished filling out. So, Tiffany informs me, giving me a Disney-esque look of compassionate, apologetic concern, I unfortunately cannot be considered for a position.

BUT I WAS ALREADY SCHEDULED FOR AN INTERVIEW!!! Call up my references! Ask them about my customer service skills! They'll reference real life examples instead of the fact that I merely agreed instead of strongly agreeing with "People fascinate me!" They'll tell you I could out customer service 90% of the dim bulbs currently working for Universal Studios! I could out customer service YOU, Tiffany! You and both your tits! I brought flavored condoms!!!! And hey... WHAT CUSTOMER SERVICE DOES FLUFFY THE MONSTER HAVE TO CONCERN HIMSELF WITH?!?! Since when was stellar customer service part of lumbering around in a cyborg bunny outfit going grr, arrgh, menace, menace?

Tiffany gives me the same nod beauty pageant contestants give over the plight of starving puppies in Eastern European kennels. She wishes me good luck. She thanks me for coming in. I didn't even get to interview with Thurston Hammond! And, like Mulholland Drive, BAM! There's a large breasted gate thrown across the road and I can no longer proceed in the direction I thought was a sure path.

That night, when I collapsed on the stairs on my way up to bed, I thanked God. I thanked God for Mulholland Drive. I thanked God that E.T. made it home. I thanked God for all the bottles of wine Jim and I have that help make the unpleasantness go all away and help me drift off to Sleepyland on a cloud of marshmallow foam.

Fluffy the Monster II: The Audition

2004-06-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

Significant events are often the simplest of actions. In years to come, I hope to recall June 19th, 2004, as the day of such an action: my first official Los Angeles audition. Appropriately, it happened on a grey morning, in a humble, thoroughly unglamorous warehouse to which no one passing on the 134 or on the Metrolink would give even a first glance.

It began quietly, too. My fellow auditioners were silent as we filled out yellow 8 x 12 cards, pasted a numbered sticker to our chests and had our pictures taken. I was number eight. I was nervous. My competition ran the gamut from athletic to fat, gorgeous to frumpy. I began to judge people. I chided myself for judging people. I avoided the gazes of cute guys. I studied the posters on the walls. I wondered if there was a warehouse where every audition space in the world went to buy furniture because every audition space and theater seemed to have the same shabby furniture that no sane person would ever actually own for their own livingroom. I was glad I wasn't the only one who showed up 45 minutes early, but I regretted all this extra time to build up anxiety, doubt, nerves, hunger and avoiding the eyes of the cute guys.

At ten o'clock, a door in the back of the waiting area opened and five people came in from the rehearsal space. Because I'm inexperienced (or an idiot) the names and functions of these people mostly escape me. Jack is the head guy, Ellen supervises the Special Effects Stages at Universal Studios, Bill runs the auditions and Dinah and Missy lead the dance routines. I've changed the names of people to protect the innocent and the inexperienced idiot. And by the way... dance routines?!

I'm auditioning for Fluffy the Monster. What dance routine? It's "grr, argh, menace, menace." It's got a nice rhythm but Fluffy the Monster does not dance! I feel like I'm in "A Chorus Line" and I left my tits, ass AND my leg warmers at home!

We all filed into a room that looks like a dance studio on a curtailed budget. Bill says we're going to crank up the music and turn this space into a gay club. Nervous twitters from the hyper-masucline 20-somethings. Our job, Bill says, is to line up in order of our numbers and when the music starts, we each will dance, individually, across the stage. Missy, Dinah, could you demonstrate?

Oh sure, they're professional dancers. Of course they look cool, confident and hot expressing themselves as they move. This, Bill informs us, is what they're looking for: how we express ourselves. Maybe keep in mind a kind of character while you do it. Well... I'm comfortably sure that Fluffy would express himself by decaptiating audience members as he lumbers across the stage, but I'm equally as comfortably sure that that's not really what Bill and Co. are looking for.

The music starts. One, two, three go across the stage. What am I gonna do? What's everyone else doing? Four, five, six. He's hot, he looks like Queen Elizabeth, she rocks, he's a dork. Seven. I'll just do it. Gay club, gay club, and I go and I dance my little heart out and then I'm done, I'm on the other side of the stage, and rather than falling down dead of embarrassment, I'm exhilarated and really, really thirsty. Nine through 32 dance across the stage, showing off, doing ballet, looking so embarrassed he hardly dances at all (sorry number 26, you don't get the part). Even the fat kids are dancing and moving. I suddenly realized that this, this right here, this ridiculous behavior... THIS is why I love to act! Acting is the license to be a fool, to be crazy, to look at the world and say "Fuck you! I'm a nut and I'm going to revel in it!"

But there's more dancing to be done. Dinah and Missy teach us a few dance steps. Right foot forward, cross with the left, back, step, repeat, turn, turn back, lindy step, kick, pirouette, end with a pose. Simple. Then we had to do it to music and go! Right foot, left cross, back, step, step, shit!, I mean repeat, lindy, fuck!, cross, kick, twirl, damn it!, lindy, cross, pose and TA DA!! This, this right here, this is exactly why I'm an actor and not a dancer. Then we had to do it four more times. I was failing miserably until, half way through the third time, I had an epiphany.

I took voice and speech classes as part of my acting classes in March. The voice and speech instructor said I was excellent while I did exercises but that for some reason I lost it when I read text aloud. She suggested that this was due to the fact that the "Fuck It Factor" wasn't kicking in. As I mangled Missy and Dinah's routine, though, the Fuck It Factor kicked in and I decided, appropriately enough, to just fuck it and move, just move however I moved and fuck the steps and timing! Which is exactly what I did.

The dancing ended (thank you, Jesus, for these, your bountiful and merciful, gifts) and we were asked to step back out into the waiting room. A general migration to the water cooler took place. People kibitzed, giggled, stretched, made jokes about how Reese Witherspoon looks like a dog fish. I felt hot, awake, alive, my body thrummed, my tension was eased. Solidarity grew amongst some of the auditioners. Then the door opened in the back of the room and Ellen came out with our yellow cards in hand and she addressed the room.

"If I read your number, we'll need you to come back inside. If you don't hear your number, you're free to go."

She read number eight first out of about 15 numbers. Back in the rehearsal studio, Ellen read 7 numbers and asked those people to stand in front of her, Bill and Jack. She read number 8 first again. Everyone else was asked to stand aside a moment. Ellen surveyed our group of seven guys and said "You guys are being considered for Fluffy the Monster and Shrek."

I was in! I'd made it, shitty dance stepping and all! On Tuesday, the 22nd I'll attend an interview to finalize everything and try on the Fluffy suit to see if it's really what I want to do (shyeah, like I'm not gonna wanna do this... I'm not exactly in a position to pass on it... no one's knocking down my door to play the ACTUAL Shrek!... damn you Mike Myers!)

Now, in the history of the world, in the history of Hollywood, this is not the most amazing role ever. Even should any of you... three... who read this Blog ever come to Universal Studios, you won't know if it's me or not in the Fluffy costume. So I'm being rational and pragmatic about this. Fluffy is not my barbaric yawp sounding over the rooftops of the world.

BUT FUCKING A, I ROCK AND I'M PLAYING FLUFFY THE MONSTER AT UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!!!!!!

Hotel Staff

2004-06-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

My lack of income has reached the "Holy Fucking Shit" stage. I know this to be true because of my cold sweats, short breath, panicked stare and serious consideration of food service, hotel and janitorial work. I am Jack's unemployment.

Yesterday I applied at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in Studio City and the West Hollywood Ramada. The Beverly Garland said they would contact me within the week. The Ramada looked promising, sounds a bit like they're desperate. The very attractive young man at the front desk (I'll call him Dirk) informed me that someone just left without giving notice. The general manager pounced on me before I even wrote my full address down on the application. These are positive signs that I may well be employed within the week there! Plus... Dirk! He was yummy.

Today I applied at the Universal City Hilton and the Universal City Sheraton. At the Hilton, their human resources department is in a hallway off level 1 of the parking garage. The hall must have been down a bit from the garbage because I kept getting a faint whiff of it. The HR office was nicely appointed, but the hallway in which I was filling out my application was done in early Industrial sanitarium. Across the way and down the cliff from the Hilton, at the Universal City Sheraton, I filled out an application while sitting at a white tablecloth draped table perched on the loading dock. There was no question where the garbage smell was coming from there.

Don't I already feel bad enough with no income, no job and no prospects beyond an audition for Fluffy the Monster (although... that's a happy thought... Fluffy the Monster... yay!). Do I HAVE to be filling out applications for Front Desk personnel in some hole of shame and garbage? Do these elegant, luxury hotels NOT have some conference room with a view or some back hallway with carpeting in which I could sit to fill out an application? Perhaps this is a subtle, unconscious sign from the management: we treat employees like garbage left out on the waiting dock.

The Beverly Garland had a cozy little office foyer for me to sit in, where I could hear the HR person speaking French! The Ramada in West Hollywood let me sit at the bar... at the bar, for Christ's sake! Unconscious suggestion that the Ramada is the happening party place to work? Happening party place with cute young men smiling at me... I hope they call.

Although... I'm still holding out for Fluffy the Monster or a Van Helsing Haunted Maze Scaracter.

Fluffy the Monster

2004-06-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

In February I quit my job in Covina, CA to pursue my acting goals. I enrolled in a four week intensive program in Hollywood. During one of those weeks, the scene I was given to work on with a partner was a scene from the movie "Swingers" in which Rob tries to cheer up his buddy Mike. I played Rob. One of my lines, after Mike has complained bitterly about the quality of roles he's so far played, was "At least you didn't get turned down for Goofy." Rob was a little down and out and had auditioned for this coveted role at Disneyland, with the aforementioned results.

Nearly two months later, my life is imitating art. I still have no job. I'm registered with three temp agencies and on Tuesday I have an interview with a fourth. I've worked a total of five hours in the past two months, and that was just this past Wednesday. My husband, though he loves me dearly, is impatient with his sole income supporting the both of us. Our situation has become less financially abundant now that his university position has ended due to the summer holidays and his hours at the church where he acts as music director have been cut. The need to get myself into a paying position has become rather dire.

On Thursday, June 10th, Universal Studios began it's first day of a three day SUMMER HIRING EXTRAVAGANZA!!! While I was neither hired nor feeling particularly extravagant, attending the event did prove helpful. I applied with Universal Studios online previously. Upon reviewing my online application, Mitzy (not her real name) discovered that I was applying for a tour guide position. She let me know that I needed to audition for that position and to do so I needed to call the audition hotline. I called it. On Saturday, June 19th, Universal Studios will be holding auditions for body suit cartoon characters, look alike characters, atmosphere characters and a number of other things, including Fluffy the Monster.

Fluffy is a giant, mechanical rabbit who wears blue shorts. During the Universal Studios Special Effects Stage tour, Fluffy is brought out and demonstrated. A member of the audience (a girl of about 6 when I saw it for the first time) is outfitted with special cyberspace headgear and gloves to control Fluffy. Everyone ohhs and ahhs over the marvel of modern movie making technology, and then, during a ghostly "possession" Fluffy "comes to life" and threatens the audience and, as I recall, kills one of the Universal Studios Special Effects Stage tour tour guides. It's family entertainment at its finest, as far as I'm concerned. If only the animatronic President Lincoln at Disneyland would do the same thing! ("Kill me in a theater, will you? TOURIST BASTARDS!!!" Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!!!)

Well, on June 19th I'm going to audition for Fluffy the Monster. I'm reminded of the desperation of Rob's audition in "Swingers" and wonder if I've reached a similar pathetic moment in my life. 'Course not, I tell myself, because this is different! I WANT to audition to be a mechanical, maniacal robot rabbit! This isn't an issue of being forced to it... even though not paying the rent is looming large on the all too near future. I should be more concerned that I'm pathetic for WANTING to be an eight foot tall, mechanical, maniacal robot rabbit. That just screams horror movie nerd! Well... no matter. Rob wasn't pathetic for auditioning for Goofy (or... then again...). He was pathetic for being turned down for Goofy! So I won't wallow in self pity just yet. I'll wait to see what happens. Because even if I get turned down for Fluffy the Monster, there's still a chance that I could be snatched up to play a "Scaracter" in the Van Helsing Haunted Maze! And that would be "money", baby, that would be "money!"

FIGARO

2004-06-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

Figaro has arrived.

The blessed event took place Wednesday, June 2nd at approximately 1:07 in the afternoon. Figaro was delivered approximately 12 hours later than originally predicted.

Bringing a new kitten into your life is truly a great moment. Don't ask my other cat, Savannah, about her opinion on that subject. It's all just hissing and moping with her right now. A new kitten is so much fun! A new kitten is so very tiny, and excited by the most mundane things: shoe strings, feathers on the end of a stick, houseflies... yeah, Figaro, kill it! KILL IT!!!!!!! Eewww... that one was carrying babies. No! Figaro! Don't eat the maggo... uh... eww.

Figaro is an orange and white striped male kitten. I don't know what he weighs, but it seems like nothing. He has the cutest little pink nose and blue eyes. Currently, he hides out in a drawer when he wants to be incognito. He slept through his first night home. Well, anyway, I slept through it until about 4 a.m. when I woke up to pee and then he thought it was play time and I didn't get back to sleep until about 4:45 a.m. He likes to climb... ow!... right up... eech!... my leg... mmph!... with his tiny... eeurch!... pinprick... ow!... claws. Hi, Figaro!

Jesus fucking Christ... I really need to get a job.

Faith

2004-05-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

Born again Christians talk about finding God. What's that process like? You're rooting under sofa cushions for change and gasp! oh my GOD! It's... GOD! What are you doing in there? Is that a quarter?

Or is finding God a violent, penetrative act that rips your heart asunder and causes profound agony followed by profound euphoria? Is it the euphoria what gives so many born again Christians that blank smile while they serve you coffee cake and milk at their church socials? If I found God, I wonder if I would find myself burning to join thousands of overweight men in a football stadium for praise music and solemn prayers to please, God, make me the worthy husband to my honored, cherished and obeying wife. Hey... if I found God, would I have to become straight? Straight, fat, married with 3.5 children (.5 because she's expecting, God bless!), a minivan and a job only 1/10th as fulfilling as Sunday picnics with the parish but that I can withstand because I'm a warrior for Christ... I dunno... doesn't sound particularly enticing to me.

I've been looking for God even so, though. I have a sneaking suspicion that I want to confirm: I think I am already on very intimate terms with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Almighty Creator.

I saw the Virgin Mary on the 605, driving along happily one Saturday night in her white sedan. I knew it was her because of the vanity plates: VRGN MRY. I was visited by a messenger of Christ at the Hollywood/Highland Red Line station while I waited for the subway. She told me all I had to do was seek His face and it would shine on me. She wasn't homeless or anything. I think she was a grad student at UCLA.

When Jesus was chatting up the apostles, no one really got what he was saying. He marched to his own celestial choir. I, too, am not understood by the common person. I told the cashier at PetCo that I wanted to exchange one litter box for another and instead of making any sense, she reinterpreted my words, cast her own meaning on them, and wrote them down in red ink on my receipt. Just like what the writers of the Bible did to Jesus.

Oh, don't get all bent out of shape... I'm not claiming to be Jesus Christ because that would be crazy! I'm just saying that maybe me, God and Jesus aren't so separated. I mean, I've never attended a 15,000 member church service waving my arms in the air like a nut, but I still get my prayers answered. The rain stops, money arrives, I get the job I want... God even gave me the husband of my desires. I think born agains would be appalled at the actions of God on that one.

But, George W. Bush is claiming to be doing God's work alienating every nation on the planet, raping natural resources, sending our kids to be butchered, sending our kids to do some butchering, changing the constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman... for the sin I am about to commit I beg your forgiveness, Lord... I mean, Jesus Christ!!! So if Georgie can make that claim, than why not some L.A. fag make the same claim while I'm fucking my husband's ass, shopping at Trader Joe's, taking acting lessons and auditioning for Raisin #3 in a cereal commercial?

If God is all powerful, can create and unmake whole universes, then what's to prevent God from choosing both George and I at the same time to do the Almighty's work?

Oh...

Oh man...

I really wish I hadn't thought that.

Well, I'm going now. I need to take several aspirin to prevent the fear induced headache sure to follow on the heels of that terrifying revelation.

An L.A. Love Note

2004-05-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

I was invited to lunch and some shopping today. The sun's heat was tempered by cool breezes in which palm trees waved, like lazy hands stroke a dozing cat. Jacaranda trees in full bloom, like surprise party decorations, line streets and you can't help but give in to their purple exuberance. I felt alive to everything today: guacamole in my Baja Fresh burrito, a cup of cooling water, Eric's sexy beard stubble, the glimpses of Tim's tight waist, his treasure trail, when he lifted his shirt to check how low the Levis low rise jeans rode on his hips, the Triceratops fountain on the 3rd Avenue Promenade, being turned on by the pale green eyes of the dark-complected salesman at the Diesel store. Now as the sun goes down, I'm sorry to see this day end.

City of Angels

2004-05-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

I wonder what prompted the Spaniards to name it The City of Angels? Because, as far as I can tell, it's namesake has long fled. I haven't had even the slightest inkling of any experience with the divine in Los Angeles. The constructed city (concrete, glass, steel; freeways, strip malls, suburbs) overwhelms natural elements of the landscape. Ancient gods have been paved over. Modern gods have been commercialized out of power. It's difficult to wield mystery and hold sway when you're cheek to jowl with advertising for cigarettes, celebrities and "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire." Because the energy of Los Angeles comes from the purely manufactured, the subtle direction of the divine is lost. Human natural tendency (maybe we could even call it instinct) is bombarded into silence by media outlets at every turn (I just went bowling this weekend at a bowling alley with big screen t.v.'s at the END of every lane! Do you know how unnerving it is to be lining up your shot and suddenly Severus Snape is glaring at you?).

Recently I was at the corner of Hollywood and Highland. The corner of Hollywood and Highland is one great big mass media celebrity centered orgasm spilled out all over the street. Gigantic video screens hawk Pepsi, Levi's jeans, and Swiss watches. The stores at Hollywood and Highland are all the trendiest chains: The Gap, Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger. Fake, run down looking celebrities roam the streets. Wax museums, the Walk of Fame, Ripley's Believe It or Not and countless little shops run by immigrant families selling plastic Oscars and t-shirts printed with pseudo witty sayings lure the throngs of tourists. The corner of Hollywood and Highland is a middle America's wet dream about touching the stars (both celestial and celluloid).

On this corner, I gave an interview to a faith based t.v. show. I didn't mean to give the interview. Not to a faith based t.v. show produced by Kirk Cameron. But I was already doing it when I realized what exactly I'd gotten myself into. The interview began with a quote from William Shatner that you cannot know the mind of God. When an interview starts with a quote from William Shatner about anything, let that be an ENORMOUS RED FUCKING FLAG TO YOU!!! By the end of the interview, the good Christian men (why are the fundies always good Christian men who are white and overfed? And why does Christian conviction always seem to permanently fix a glazed look into your eyes?) conducting it had themselves convinced that they knew the mind of God because they read select verses of their Bibles and that I was doomed to Hell because I'm a liar.

Nope, nope... still not feeling the love of Jesus, still not feeling the presence of God here.

I think that there are decent people in Los Angeles. There are people here who work terrible hours, long hours, hard hours to provide the barest necessities for their families. Many of those people believe fervently that there is a god of some sort taking care of them. There are people here who really do commune with the divine. Really commune, not just pay lip service to it or slap a bumper sticker on their car for it ("Jesus is My Navigator"... that Jesus! He sure is cross trained well... navigator, carpenter, savior, Mel Gibson's blood soaked masturbation fantasy). I haven't become one of those people, yet, though. I don't know where those people are and I don't know where they're finding God's voice. Maybe I will some day. Maybe it's a within oneself sort of thing and I'm looking in all the wrong places. I think the divine, though, isn't here. Los Angeles has been called The City of Lost Angels. I used to think that was a quaint way of saying that the populace were all angels who've lost their way. But right now I think it means, instead, that the city has lost the angels that might have once dwelt here.

Still looking for some divine intervention... signing off!

Pounding the Pavement

2004-05-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

I moved to Los Angeles in June of 2003 after a brief stay in Pomona since January of 2003. I was working in Covina, CA until February of this year. I finally quit my Covina job because the commute from Covina to Studio City was making me crazy. Also, I was working in a manufacturing industry (notice how I very artfully am NOT mentioning the name of the company?) and I was bored out of my ever lovin' mind. I was writing policies and procedures (boring) for a manufacturing company (boring) in Covina, California (oh my HELL, how BORING!!!). So, to pursue the real reason why I moved to this particular circle of Hell known as Southern California... which is to be an actor... I quit my well paying but insipid and boring job. I enrolled in acting classes in Hollywood and spent my savings (right, right... laughingly called "savings") and my retirement fund to attend acting classes. Now the shit's flying toward the fan after nearly three months of being jobless.

My husband's annoyed that he's had to pay our bills for this long. Understandable. I'm artfully dodging the creditors. Irresponsible. And I have no funds for the up coming blockbuster season of movies!!! Regrettable. Up to a point. Actually... I'd rather be spending money on, oh, I don't know... groceries? Who needs to see another effects-laden plotless "epic" trying unsuccessfully to be the next Lord of the Rings... although, Brad Pitt in a skirt.

So I've begun the job hunt.

Yesterday I had an interview at a movie theater in Hollywood. If you're in Hollywood, you know it. It's big. It's fancy. It's expensive. Yes, that one. I want to work there. They called me about a week ago and gave me an over-the-phone interview with questions like "Why do you want to work here?" Pretty mediocre questions, really. Then there was the group interview.

I don't understand the reasons for a group interview, except perhaps to watch how candidates interact in, you know... a group. Collectively, the ages of the people in the room, including those giving the interview, I don't think added up to my age. I was the only one present in a dress shirt, tie and slacks. I've been in L.A. long enough now, I should've known not to go so professional. The activities we had to perform were, at best, inane. Designed by 22 year olds to test the teenagers coming in for the interviews. The interviewers were a lovely bunch, though. Sam (names have been changed to protect the unemployed desperate for any job) had been with the company for eight months and was already in H.R. Which gave me hope... I could move up FAST. He was quite nice but young. Lydia, the leader of the group, articulate, beautiful eyes and perky. And the other woman, whose name I do not remember but she looked like she might be of Indian background, like from India, you understand. They were all very cute. But I left feeling like I'd just deposited myself for an hour at the local kindergarten. Taught by high school students. Even so... I would really like that job.

But I'm really, really, really holding out for the job at UCLA, which I applied for yesterday. That would be a sweet job, and it pays what I'm used to getting paid. The $7.75 that the theater would start me out is not happy making when I'm faced with thousands of dollars in debt, rent, groceries, car payments, insurance, and online porn fees! Even so... discounted movies. It's the American wet dream!

I have chosen the hard road... reaching for my acting dream.

This will be okay. I'm like a cat. I sleep all day. I mean, no... I meant: I land on my feet. I've been here before and I'm not dead yet. I'm not even homeless yet. And my man... he's still with me and still willing to blow me, so... it can't all be bad, right?

Right.

Is anyone reading this?

Wish me luck!