Cops

I did nothing bad, but I ran a stop sign because I was running out of gas. At least that's my logic. The cops didn't find it logical though and I had to walk and then talk my way out of going to jail, when they said my eyes looked bloodshot and shifty. I said I had one drink and I have allergies and I'm just a shifty looking kind of person. Then they noticed I'm not from around here and we talked about the Autobahn a bit and exchanged a bit of racism about illegal aliens. I think that got me off the hook. Thank you!!! Nevertheless, my mind keeps going back and back and back to the image of myself on the corner of Figueroa and Ave. 50, against a fence with three cop cars surrounding me, and the Mc Donalds sign in the corner of my eye and the near fatal brush with a DUI. The stuff of nightmares.

Pissing on Larchmont

Men are from Mars. I've always been one to defend the weaker sex, but the fact that they think they can piss anywhere...? I may need to reconsider. Got my tall nonfat latte before work on Wed. morning and as I waited at the red light on the corner of Larchmont and Third, a man pissed onto a telephone pole. It was 9:20 a.m.

Go Swork Yourself

If you choose to work on your laptop on your pointless screenplay at SWORK, which bills itself as a place for little kids with a play corner and tons of toys and all, and you hear my child cry because he fell, don't give me several dirty looks you feckin asshole. Go work at home. Or get a job. You loser!

Other than that, Swork rocks!
http://www.swork.com/sworkland/

Happy Thoughts

dead leaves
M's drawings
green tea
shoulder pads
halloween
Wagner
Waldorf
Weleda body wash
the horrors
Monique Lange

Swastika Eyes

Swastika Eyes is a song by Primal Scream. I was just thinking about eyes, because mine have been itching like crazy and I'm starting to have eczema around the eyes, which looks like wrinkles. When I was much younger, I worked for a film magazine with a girl whose eyes were so wrinkled from eczema that she looked like a lizard. I will never forget her face. So just now I Googled eczema images and found one that almost made me throw up my salmon and spinach dinner. It is too gnarly to post. I must count my blessings.

More Death

When I was little, I was obsessed with death. I had a calendar and when I heard in the news that someone died, like someone being bombed by the Baader-Meinhof gang, I would mark that day with a cross. Last night I cried about the child of a rock star who died. The rock star was someone I took care of when I first moved to L.A., after he had abdominoplasty. I hated his band and music and we made fun of him because he had gotten fat (hence the need for abdominoplasty). And last night I read that his little girl died from a horrible disease and I felt guilty for making fun of him ten years ago.

Perverse Perspective

A. took the last two surviving baby turtles to Echo Park Lake today, to the spot where we usually see other turtles. He said they seemed happy. I feel crushed. In fact, I feel sick to my stomach that two had to die from neglect. I almost feel as bad about the turtles as I do about the little girl who was killed on Figueroa two weeks ago. I mean, where is my perspective?

Doc on the Nod

Yesterday I saw a doctor in Beverly Hills. I had to wait for half an hour. When it was my turn, she had me sit at a little table and took notes while I answered questions such as: Have you ever had a transfusion? She kept falling asleep mid-sentence. At one point, her pen skidded across the whole page. It took 40 minutes. Then she wrote out my prescription, which took a full ten minutes. She scribbled, nodded off, scribbled again, right on top of the previous word, and then nodded off again. I would have thought she was on heroin, had she been younger and skinnier. I didn't know if I should say something. I didn't. So I just sat in silence and waited as she dosed. You think we need health reform?

PMS and the Infinite Sadness

You know you've got PMS when you start sobbing at "Puff the Magic Dragon."

Self-Loathing, again?

I'm not good at being sick. I get into fever dreams despite a temperature of 98.3. My heart beats too loundly. I sweat like I'm scared. The world seems too much and too large and too dark. I hate myself. Or rather I hate the package I'm wrapped in.

Matt Damon

Matt Damon is channeling a schlumpy Philip Seymour Hoffman. To get an Oscar?

Red Lisptick

There was a time when a woman was never too old to wear red lisptick. Now that we are used to the plump mouth, red lisptick on unenhanced lips past their due date looks dirty. I caught myself on Tuesday and looked like a clown. Of course, it isn't fair.

I Had a Dream

My mind has been too busy to let me sleep. My unconscious is growing fleurs du mal. I had a dream of a man who ate himself to death, because he had lost his wife. He ate himself to death by cooking all of her favorite foods and eating them every night, including a whole chocolate cake. He grew a head the size of a boat, in the shape of a bread loaf, and then he died. His wife died when they went on a melancholy walk on the beach. She weighed 300 pounds. The surf caught her by the ankles and tossed her about. She was too fat to help herself get on her feet and she was too heavy for her husband to save her. So she drowned in the shallow end.

La Chamade

I read two beautiful books in a row where the protagonists do absolutely nothing. And I felt such kinship, because that's my natural inclination, too. Not so much these days, as I speed from daycare to work to Fresh n Easy and back, but looking at my life as a whole, I was much like Pauline in "La Chamade", living only for love and books, or maybe Graham in "The Informants," lounging at the beach, the meeting friends for dinner and drugs. It's a perversion of the Zen idea of just "being," as it's more like wasting, thick with lethargy and idleness.

Wayfarers

If I were a Joan Didion type, the recent apocalyptic fires and heat waves in California would have inspired me to write about the strange effects on Angelenos, the ash on the street and the yellow halo around downtown L.A. As it was, I just shut the doors, ran the AC, went to bed at 7:30 p.m. and scratched my eczema, longing for cool, dark German forests. Now I have emerged and realized I survived the summer completely without Wayfarers. And this while reading "The Informants," where the word Wayfarer appears on every third page. In fact, I was relieved I didn't buy any when all the idiot kids on the season premiere of "90210" sported turquoise, pink and yellow versions. Gag me with a spoon. Like, totally.