Category: Uncategorized

On my way to the gym today to go swimming, I passed a guy wearing an ankh necklace.

Really? People still wear those?

So, Barbie and I got to chatting via email today regarding various states we have yet to visit.

The only one we share in common is Oklahoma.

Mind you, she’s not been to 3 states out of the lower 48, while I’ve only got 5 left out of the entire 50.

She also has not been to Kansas. I flew through it once, so I technically count it, but I didn’t really absorb any local flavor. So, we decided maybe we should knock KS and OK out in one punch by zipping through the panhandle, dashing into Kansas, and then to somewhere that was actually worth our time … like New Mexico or Colorado.

Me being me, I knew Liberal, KS, was close to the OK panhandle. What I didn’t know about was this:

Click Here to Make Your Brain Melt a Bit

I mean, c’mon. Are there any cast members of “The Wizard of Oz” who actually turn up in Liberal, Kansas to visit the model for Dorothy’s house and this festival. It’s so gay and yet not gay at all. Barbie and I are completely terrified, and yet strangely committed to seeing this unfold in front of us in real time. I imagine some kind of strange Halloween-esque festival that makes me elated and sad at the same time.

Honestly, I actually really want to do the circle tour drive around Lake Michigan–starting in Milwaukee, up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and down the Michigan side to Saugatuck–oddly the gay place to be in Great Lakes, if you believe this:

Go Saugatuck!

That’s much more my speed than the terrifying Great Plains. But really, which is gayer? Besides, not only is Liberal home to “The Wizard of Oz,” it’s close to Beaver, OK, as well as Hooker, OK, too! Barbie suggested we throw in Cooter, MO, but having already been to Dykesville, WI, with her (where we got ice cream at the Frosty Tip), it may make my head explode.

Not that I want to knock a popular music group that tries to raise money for underprivileged kids, but this one detail in a story about the Black Eyed Peas’ recent charity concert just… well, slayed me:

“The Peas’ concert was to benefit their Peapod Foundation, which provides aid to underprivileged children while also introducing them to new musical and technological programs.

In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week, Peas frontman will.i.am said one of the organization’s main goals is to teach children how to become music moguls.

“I would like to have these workshops all around the world, these music schools, that teach people technology … so that way, they can bring back money into communities,” he said.”

Really?

Your goal is to teach kids how to be music moguls? I hate to tell you this, but music companies hardly inject money back into communities. Judging by the continued obnoxious greed on display by the RIAA (Lower Royalties for Artists) and the fact that many musical acts are essentially indentured servants who can’t make a dime off their art, maybe it’s a better dream to have kids learn how to be self-sufficient music supporters who use technology to be self-sustaining–OUTSIDE the current business model. Huh? Huh?

Teaching them to love (and aim to be a part of) the industry as it is now makes as much sense as telling them to give away 90% of every paycheck they earn.

Maybe will.i.am knows something I don’t. I mean, I doubt it, but you never know.

Ugh.

I’ve been enjoying the absence of life in the apartment next to mine for 5 weeks now. It lulls you into believing that maybe that space is haunted and no one can ever live there. Or maybe, somehow, one unit in my building has been condemned and will remain empty forever.

But no.

As I was so nicely told by my other neighbor on Friday, apparently the unit next to me has been rented by a woman with a 2 1/2-year-old child.

Let the fun begin.

The older I get, the more ornerous I become, I think. I firmly believe these days that the only reason I’d buy a house (could I even afford one in Los Angeles) is to escape the sound of other people next to, above, below me. Now, I am actually pretty lucky in that respect, as I have a two-story apt. so really the only sound I have to contend with is with this apartment that had been empty until now. It shares two big walls with mine–in the living room and master bedroom (which I don’t even sleep in).
The neighbor on the other side of me lives alone thank god and is relatively quiet, so all of my neuroses turn to this proposed new neighbor, who will live in an apt. with no yard, no place for said child to really play, and a two-story living arrangement with potentially obnoxious offspring. Anyone who knows me knows that this prospect–if, indeed, noisy–will drive me bonkers in no time. Simply put, I dislike children. A lot. I could care less that anyone thinks it’s a miracle to give birth. You’re a mammal. It’s not that hard.

Yet, I am trying to stay optimistic. Points in favor include a living being that likely goes to bed early, who will not have parties in the apartment, the sounds of whom are things I can place (as opposed to some neighbors, who, when you hear them, you wonder, “What the hell are they doing!?”), and, well… in general, it’s one less adult to contend with.

Points not in favor: stomping feet running around all over the place. A child who screams. A mother who screams back. A child too young to be out of the house all day. A child who tries to play in the patio courtyard and thus wake everyone up at 7 am. Trust me, if I hear a child playing outside my bedroom at 7 am on the weekend, I will throw open my windows like Joan Crawford and scream my friggin’ head off. I’ll be the scary queen next door.

Still, even with points in favor mildly outweighing those against, I can’t help but share Ryan’s sentiment of: “That’s it. We’re moving.”

But move where? I’ve built my renting life in L.A. on finding apartments that share the least number of walls possible with neighbors. It’s becoming a bit “Beautiful Mind” to obsess over layouts of apartments versus location, amenities, and commute time.

For now, I am trying to just go with it. It’s not the end of the world. I could be gravely ill, or living in a really shitty place, or still dealing with my old neighbor pounding on the walls. But there is one more thing my neighbor relayed to me which makes me fearful: Apparently the new tenant owns a Hummer. A sure sign that whoever this person is, she and I will never be friends.

Who ever said communicating with your friends was easy?

Right before Christmas, I received this in the mail:

It was, ostensibly, a Christmas card. Or, rather, it HAD been a Christmas card.

I stared at the pieces of gayly decorated strips of paper stock in front of me as I arranged them on the dining room table. There had been no envelope. Oh, wait, a strip of it was included, I think. But not the part with the return address. And not the part that told me who it was from. I felt bad for not immediately recognizing the handwriting, but, honestly, how many of you would know your friends’ handwriting by sight these days?

I detected the words “Santa,” “hat,” and “gay,” so I deduced maybe it was from a *gay* acquaintance. But then, many of my female friends would use “homo,” so it was a toss-up.

The kicker, really was this:

No, no, let’s zoom in closer:

I mean, it’s nice to get an apology from th US Postal Service ‘n’ all, but I love the fact that they have the nerve to say that they are “aware” of how important my mail is so they are “forwarding it” in an “expeditious fashion.” Because everyone wants scraps of mail that look like they’d been shredded or put through a wood chipper. As if, upon opening the envelope they sent it in, I would just say, delightedly, “I know! I’ll make a semi-holiday themed mobile with these scraps of Christmas cheer!”

I was so close to just posting this around Xmas with a “Did you send this to me?” message blaring as the headline, but… well…. I got lazy. And the power went out Christmas Eve, and then work, and then I was tired, and… you know how that goes.

But then, like a delightful surprise, I got another card, and attached to it was the return address portion of the original ripped up card, and evidence that Mr. Jeff White–the mystery holiday well wisher–received strips of card as well.

So I pieced it all together, Encyclopedia Brown-style and voila!

Now we see my address and Jeff’s. Well, you don’t. We don’t want you lining up at our doors for photographs and autographs.

Yay! Mystery solved. And I got TWO cards telling me Happy Holidays. Sometimes you only need mere scraps of sentiment from your friends to feel loved. And, if you’re like me, you are totally satisfied with getting an anonymous scrap of a card and just thinking, “Well someone likes me! That’s nice. I wish I knew who it was, but it doesn’t matter, because someone likes me!”

Granted, I am sure there is more I could write that was not about a holiday that was nearly a month ago. How about those caucuses (or is that cauci?). How about that crazy Iran and their speedboats? How about the Golden Globes? Yeah, I didn’t miss them either.

I am slow in getting 2008 going for anything. I need to bribe some folks to help on the visuals of the blog. I need to swim more. I need to stop playing video games. But, alas… I am off to New York next week, though. For work, but also for some fun drinkin’ with Megan, Darren, Keith et al. I can’t promise the best photos, but I’ll try. If I don’t find my coat soon, it’ll be images of me holding myself like an orphan from a Dickens novel against the cold.

1. New Year’s Eve day spent hiking on the beach in the warm sun finding snail shells.
2. New Year’s Eve-ning spent eating, drinking, and making cookies.
3. Planning a trip for later in the year and having the dilemma be: Vietnam and Cambodia, or just Costa Rica? (I’m already so excited.)
4. Reading “The Canon” by Natalie Angier and realizing science is actually cool and not as terrifying as it used to seem.
5. Redecorating my apartment.
6. Getting ready for a visit from Lissa and Tom.
7. Sex, good booze, and cookies. Not necessarily in that order. And having all three with good company, to boot!
8. Watching “Aliens” on Christmas Eve and feeling like it was the most appropriate Christmas movie.
9. Preparing to change the look and feel of this blog, with new! improved! fun! features.
10. Believing that some good will ultimately win out over all the other crappy things that have been happening in the world lately.

Ryan just showed up in the chilly bedroom with a skull mug full of Good Earth tea with honey–exactly what I needed after one of the most frustrating days in recent history.

Some of you know already that every time I go to the doctor I seem to have some completely asinine conversation with someone who is apparently a “medical professional.”

(And as an aside, the end of my day is now being made more joyous by someone’s car alarm going off right outside my apartment for the last 15 or so minutes.)

Anyway, I’ve had a cold for nearly 3 weeks now and it’s all stayed in my sinuses. Now, my sinuses and I are well acquainted so I know this is likely a sinus infection. I finally go in to the doctor today, arriving at 1:55 p.m. for my 2:10 p.m. appointment. My temperature is taken at 2:20, followed by my blood pressure and then….it’s 3:05 p.m. and I am still in the front waiting room. So, me being me, I finally go hover in the nurses’ station and ask when I’ll be taken to a room. They ignore me for a minute and then finally:

Nurse #1: “Are you here to see Dr. S—-?”

Me: Yes.

Nurse #2 (shakes head): Dr. S—-…. oh… (sighs) she’s so backed up; we don’t have rooms.

Nurse #1: We don’t have a room yet.

Me: You told me that 45 minutes ago.

Nurse #1: Let me check on Room #4.

Nurse #2 (to me): There are no rooms.

Me (in my head): What is this? A hotel?

Nurse #1: Follow me.

So, yay!… a room. And there I sit for another 30 minutes. I nearly walked out, but still feel poorly enough that I feel like a prisoner. Finally, the doctor shows up,
and barely utters an apology and asks me what’s wrong with me. I suck down the vitriol I have in my throat and explain. I tell her I also have bad allergies so I wanted to be sure this was something else and not just my “normal” congestion. She looks up my nose and at my throat, “hmmmmm”s to herself and says “Well, you might have a bit of sinusitis. Or maybe not.”

Um….

Me: “So, is it something other than just normal congestion?”

Her: Well, you say you have tenderness in your sinuses…. (trails off)

Me: Um, yeah. I’ve had what seems like a cold for 3 weeks.

Her: Oh, well, then, yes, it could be. But you know, it may clear up.

Me: So……?

Her: (types on computer)

Me: SO…. do I need antibiotics?

Her: Well, I will fill out a prescription, but maybe you should wait and see if it gets better.

Me: It’s been 3 weeks. I feel out of it and lethargic and congested.

Her: Well, you know, we don’t just like to prescribe antibiotics…

Me: I understand…

Her: You know, with that superbug (laughs).

Me: Excuse me? That’s a staph infection, right, not sinusitis?

Her: Yes, but if you take too much penicilin…

Me: So are you telling me NOT to take this?

Her: Well, I will write the prescription and you can fill it if you need to.

Yes, it’s all a wonder I did not throw myself out the window by this point. Let’s tack on 40 extra minutes for going to the pharmacy, and then waiting for them to post my name on the LED board, which they never did, so 30 minutes after it should have been ready I finally braved the huge line and they say “Yes, of course, it’s been ready for 20 minutes!”

I left the parking garage at 4:30 p.m., ready to punch anyone who possibly got in my way.

And now I have penicilin. And a fear of the superbug. And hatred for this doctor. And a headache.

Hence the tea that Ryan so sweetly set in front of me. Sometimes it only takes a skull mug to make it all better.

At the risk of sounding… oh, like a Republican (shudder), why is there such a sudden interest by Congress and the White House in helping out people who bought houses at inflated prices with bad credit who knew their mortgages would re-set?

Oh, right… not only is 2008 a Leap Year, it’s Election Year.

The best part of all is that once you get past the lame AP headlines of “White House Announces Plan to Aid Those Ailing in the Ailing Housing Market” etc., you get nifty little nuggets like this:

“Bush said that 1.2 million people could be eligible for help under the plan, developed in negotiations with the mortgage industry led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. But only a small fraction of that number will be subject to the rate freeze.”

So this is helping the market how, exactly?

“Also, the aid will only come to those who ask for it, he said. Thousands of borrowers who are falling behind on their payments have been sent letters about the options, and Bush also urged people to call a new hot line: 1-888-995-HOPE.”

I see. If I buy a house and know my mortgage is re-setting, then I send out the bat signal, I mean, call a hotline.

“Bush originally gave the wrong number for the hot line; the White House later corrected him.”

My guess is Bush couldn’t spell H-O-P-E or completely lacks understanding of what the word means, since nothing he’s done the last 7 years inspires any in anyone.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I am considerably cranky today.

I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner, but I finally just deleted my Friendster account. Remember Friendster? It was Myspace before Myspace morphed into Facebook…or something like that. It hardly matters; you know what I mean.

I seem to remember being really excited when Friendster first appeared because it seemed so novel–the whole “connect with people online” thing that wasn’t about trolling for sex (though you could have used Friendster for that, I suppose; I never got enough profile views for it to matter).

I labored over that profile–trying to make myself sound as eclectic and yet attractive to the general populace in the hopes that I’d somehow be validated by this computer-based socializing. There was a whole “Electric Dreams” element to it, really…as if the computer on which I was creating all of these cheeky, super-cute descriptions might accidentally fall in love with me. And then I’d totally spurn it, of course.

Looking back at my Friendster profile last night, I, too, was underwhelmed. No wonder I never saw any action as a result. “Is that me?” I wondered. Then I looked at Myspace and Facebook and saw a similar profile and wondered if I should just delete all of them… BUT, I like playing Scrabble with Tim and Blaise on Facebook, so I kept that. And Myspace had better pictures of me, so…

Or is the truth that I, too, no longer know how to be alone? (How’s that for technologically induced existential angst?) There’s something so validating about knowing someone’s looking at you online and “interacting” with you and telling you how great you still look–which is a lovely by-product, I admit. And I do genuinely love quasi-reconnecting with folks to whom I may never send a postcard. But how far does that interaction go? I guess only my Scrabble win/lose record will tell me.

I can be a bit obsessive.

Like the time I had to drink nothing but Crystal Pepsi for a few weeks (and, in tandem, came the magical journeys into Bennington, VT, with Barbie to find it). Then I had to smoke Camel Wides. Then I had to play Addams Family pinball obsessively. Then it was Pin Bot. Then I had to buy everything 4AD Records ever released (well, almost). Then I sat on my knees on the dusty carpet in Amoeba Records and bought tons of movies that I honestly think were never seen by more than 2 other people. Then I went to the beach nearly every weekend this summer. OK, so I have some problems.

I often think of my particular musical obsessions, especially since I no longer work at a magazine and therefore have a hard time justifying spending my time surfing online looking for obscure bands who have upcoming album releases.

But I have so few musical heroes, really. That surfing was me always looking for an album that would give me a chill. I’ve found a few here and there: The Glee Club, The Places, Corrina Repp–all artists I am sure you have heard about, right? Almost all of them seem to be women who have failed to conform to some kind of model of what the music business wanted them to be. I am sure I could draw the typical correlation between me being a big homo and how my living “outside societal conventions” makes me feel like the long lost brother to these women. Or whatever.

But the older I get, the more I realize that in general I have a hard time being a good, predictable consumer–and therefore am very much ill at ease with marketing and advertising. Don’t get me wrong: I will happily buy an iPod or a pair of New Balance shoes, but I can barely handle watching car commercials, let alone “Extra” or “Entertainment Tonight” or pro sports. There’s just no pretending anymore. We’re supposed to entertained by Paris Hilton and Evanesence and Carrie Underwood and want to buy people diamonds because we’re in love and houses and fat cars and fatter clothes and cute dresses at trendy boutiques–i.e., those Daily Candy.com will write about next month–and slim ties because now they’re back.

Music, for me, is particularly prickly. It always seems like a total accident when a smash hit–like Rihanna’s “Umbrella”–is something I, too, like. But mostly I just know way too much about the music labels in this town and what it means to be popular. And it doesn’t seem to be getting much better. Granted, I am 34 and it’s not 1985 anymore. I am much more jaded. But I am also much more aware that there is a ton of music out there that I need to find. Music that will move me. Music that still has the ability to give me a chill.

I was sharply reminded of that tonight, reading something written by Kristin Hersh, who is something of a mini hero to me (mostly because I am amazed by her guitar playing and can’t figure out how a mother of four has made something like 20 records in 22 years). Her voice is a “love her or hate her” proposition, I know–something often said about some other women with particularly strong voices, such as Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney… go figure, since Kurt Cobain and Black Francis got away with it.

Anyway, the point of this is that Kristin Hersh can essentially not make any money in the record business model. A woman who should be considered a trailblazer (no one would hate Corin Tucker’s voice if they hadn’t hated Kristin’s first) basically is nearly broke after working for 20 years. Her last CD from early ’07 just didn’t even blip on the radar and she nearly lost all of her money on tour.

So what does she do? Well, she begins recording music, offering it online (as she’s done for years), and sets up a model to basically act as an organic farmer of music– homegrown, sent directly to the consumer, even going so far as to say you can be named an executive producer of her new CD if you front the money (like many in the business anyway). And yet none of it seems gross. In fact, it seems like all the bones of the music-making process are now laid bare. She even has her Pro Tools stems up online to let people totally remix and re-record the song.

If she was a shitty musician, it would feel embarrassing somehow. But it’s simply not. And as much as I like collecting physical albums (yes, vinyl) and CDs, this feels like it’s the way it has to be. If you love your music and someone says “Here, you can have this” for a small fee and there’s not Warner Bros., no Interscope, no Universal shoving it down your throat, what do you do?

You obsess over it, of course…which is what I’ve been doing with this:
Krisitn Hersh: Slippershell

And for the record:

The Glee Club

The Places

Corrina Repp