Five Days in About Five Pictures--And A Video

So this past week has been crazy. Not in a bad way but between a full Dollhouse, a taste of adventure and various opportunities I have been out and about much more than I should be when I am jobless. But guilt notwithstanding, here's a good summary of the whats and wheres of my adventures.

The R Bar.



This is the Los Angeles pirate bar where you need a password to get in and guts to brave the streets of Korea Town to even park. Edie, Lola and I hit this up on Thursday because the Dollhouse likes field trips and they can't all be shopping ones.
I had a great time. I did not need to know they had a free vodka cocktail hour on Thursday. That is scary.

Next on the list was an impulse stop. Edie had seen a coffee house near the bar and thought we should stop in. This is what I saw after a handful of cocktails.



Its name is Captain Jack and it is a Titanic themed, Korea as first language, heart and love pillowed coffee house that feels like it should be of ill repute. The patio is filled with ugly fountains of cherubs and angels but it gets better.



The waiters only come when you push a button and can only take an order when you point it out on the menu.



The mugs have flashing lights in them and are also covered in little hearts... They have to have the bottoms pressed to keep the lights flashing and I was all over that.


The next night was Friday and Johnno and I decided to butt in on Lola and Sabine's plans to sing karaoke a little bar in Venice near where both Sabine and Johnno live. I went online to find out more about it and read the following on Yelp.

"I only brought $20. I figured, judging by other LA bar experiences, that $20 would be enough to get me barely buzzed. Nope. The fantastic Joules, our tender, would never allow that. Drink after drink came, and I was as drunk as I have been in years. Just obliterated. We start the stumble home and I, being a complete fucking moron, get separated from our group and proceed on my own. At 3am. Through a shady ass area.

Suffice to say, I woke up in a bush hours later, 20 yards off the road with no wallet, keys, or cell phone and a huge welt on my head and no memory of what happened. Yup. Mugged. No shit.

I get an email the next day from a gorgeous girl saying she found my keys and wallet on the concrete in front of her work. I get my stuff, we start chatting, one thing lead to other things...

So you may be asking yourself, after this story, after this asshole got mugged, how in the world is this a 5 star review? Look back up... I brought $20, and was drunk to the point that my dumbass got myself mugged! Off $20! AND I met a cutie out of the deal!'

So needless to say I was a bit leery of the whole thing. And after some internal debate and some sly pushing from Johnno we were off and made our way to the bar



After some nerves and parking lot smokes, we made our way in to find Sabine and Romanna right inside the door and happy to see us. The bar was dicey, some of the crowd seemed rough but after a drink or two I didn't care. Of course I slammed my drinks because the girls had signed me and Johnno up to sing--something I had not expected. Of course, being nervous I went for a song I knew all the words to even if not all the notes.



Everyone took a turn on the mic but the best moment was as we left Molly--a friend of Lola's--found the perfect place to take the last picture of the evening.



This car really summed up our experience.

The next night was Dominic's housewarming party. The Dollhouse was full stacked, stoked and ready to be sauced for the night's adventures.



As you can see, we didn't have time to dress up and went out in our Tuesday casuals (TM Nolan) of fishnets, bandanas and wigs. But at least I didn't stick out too much because the boy was also 'invested' in having a good time at the party.



And a good time we did have. So much so that to put all the pictures would make this blog more of a brag than it already is. But that's just how we roll sometimes.

You know you loves it.

Talk About Bad Drama

From Perez Hilton

The longest running soap on daytime television, Guiding Light, may soon be going off the air!

CBS is looking for a replacement for the show.

Drama!!!!!!


I hate that this story has taken on such legs--mostly because the people reporting this story don't understand what is going on. GL has the highest improvement in viewing numbers of any show right now--which means they are ADDING instead of LOSING veiwer--and all that will be undercut by this story. And the fact that EW-who never has good soap gossip--and Canadian TV Guide --which is known for being wrong--are spreading out this story as true is making it worse.

And what is really sad is the show is AMAZING right now. Between strong and better production values, which are saving the show tons of money, some of the best stories on air, lesbians Olivia and Natalia love story is just why I watch Daytime since it is so detailed, and the return of huge stars and events make it appoitment soap. Like it could be the Emmy winner for next year.

Boo to the press taking the story out of context.

This Is Sad

From E! On-Line

Andy Hallett, who starred as Lorne ("the Host") on the TV series Angel, died of heart failure last night at age 33, according to his longtime agent and friend Pat Brady. The actor passed away at Cedars-Sinai Hospital after a five-year battle with heart disease, with his father Dave Hallett by his side.

Hallett, from the Cape Cod village of Osterville, Mass., appeared on more than 70 episodes of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff, Angel, between 2000 and 2004. The accomplished actor was also a musician and sang two songs ("Lady Marmalade" and "It's Not Easy Being Green") on the Angel: Live Fast, Die Never soundtrack, released in 2005.

The actor's character on Angel was Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan, or Lorne for short, and he was a friendly demon, who, when not assisting Angel and his team in the investigation of various and sundry underworld mysteries, served as the host and headliner at a demon bar.

Back in 2001, Hallett told our own Jen Godwin that despite constant flirtation with David Boreanaz' character Angel, and the occasional sly Elton John reference, "We don't really know if he's gay. I don't really know. It's funny, because sometimes he's right in Angel's face, and that's when I feel it the most. And viewers would probably think, hmm, what's going on here? This guy's pretty curvy."

Hallett has spent his post-Angel years working on his music career, playing shows around the country. He had been admitted to the hospital three or four times in the past few years for his heart condition, according to Pat.

Another Angel castmember, Glenn Quinn, who played Doyle in season one, passed away in 2002.

A private funeral service will be held for family and close friends in Cape Cod, most likely over this weekend.





You'll be missed.

Fashion Board for the Fashion Bored

So I have been unemployed for awhile now. And as much fun as it is to watch 'Young and the Restless' in live time, work out for an hour twice a day and catch up on the names of the Jonas Brothers'--it has left me next to no cash for my wardrobe.

See, I like clothes. I like to wear them, to mix and match them and (if you ever se my closet) separate them by color, sleeve length, fabric and other OCD crap. But without means to splurge at UO, Heritage or any of my other stores I have revisited one of my past fashion tools.

I spent today pulling out my favorite stylized photos from our many magazines from Genre to Out to GQ and Details while debating if I had the means to pull off the same looks by wearing my own clothes differently. Whether it is about using different textures, colors, or pieces together unexpectedly, I can find a ton of inspiration from layouts, ads, and celeb profiles which then end up being put on display



So now on the back of my door I have a smorgasbord of ideas for any of those nights when I feel like I have nothing to wear. This board has a lot about how to fold up cuffs, unexpected layering with collared shirts, sweaters and sweat shirts as well as a lot of accessories like gloves, vests and shoes being used unexpectedly. It makes me feel like I have a lot more of surprises up my fashion runway.

Yeah--this post is gay and also about being cheap. What were you expecting?

Another Day of Success



The eggs are scarmbled (thanks to Edie for teaching me how.) The lentils are yummy and the recipe found on-line. The veggies are steamed due to a youtube video.

Go diet-go diet.

Some People Are Just Under A Bad Star

Nicholas Hughes, the son of the poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, has hanged himself at the age of 47. The former fisheries scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks had carved out a successful scientific career in one of the remotest parts of the western world, but ultimately he could not escape the legacy of being the offspring of one of the most famous and tragic literary relationships of the 20th century.

Those who know little else about his mother know that she was the American-born poet who gassed herself in the kitchen of her north London home in February 1963 while her one-year-old son and his two-year-old sister, Frieda, slept in their cots in a nearby room. Plath had placed towels around the kitchen door to make sure the fumes did not reach her children. She had been distraught at the break-up of her relationship with Hughes, following her discovery of his infidelity. Six years after their mother's death, in 1969, their father's then partner, Assia Wevill, also killed herself, killing her four-year-old daughter Shura in the process.

Plath's relationship with the future poet laureate has been the subject of numerous literary and personal memoirs and biographies, and even a film, as well as long-running attacks on her husband's reputation and behaviour by some feminists. She addressed one of her last poems, Nick and the Candlestick, to her baby son: "O love, how did you get here? O embryo … In you, ruby/ The pain you wake to is not yours … You are the one." Although Nicholas Hughes's father maintained an anguished public silence about the tragedy, poems written at the time, published in the last year of his life, also spoke of his relationship with his son.

In a statement issued late on Sunday evening, Frieda Hughes reported: "It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16 March 2009 at his home in Alaska. He had been battling depression for some time.

"His lifelong fascination with fish and fishing was a strong and shared bond with our father (many of whose poems were about the natural world). He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence for the next project or plan."

A report in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner today by its columnist Dermot Cole understandably celebrates Hughes's academic and personal qualities rather than his literary associations. Noting that his initial scientific training had been at Oxford, Cole says he earned a doctorate at the University of Alaska in 1991: "He made lasting friendships in Fairbanks with those who shared his inventive interests in such varied pursuits as stream ecology, pottery, woodworking, boating, bicycling, gardening and cooking the perfect pecan pie … He spent countless summer hours in his research of grayling and salmon in the Chena river, exhibiting all the patience and wonder that defines a great fisherman. One of his innovations was rigging underwater cameras to get a three-dimensional view of the fish feeding in the passing current."

That interest may seem to pop psychologists an altogether more positive inherited legacy, of Ted Hughes's passionate interest in fishing, and indeed his father made several visits to Alaska before his death in 1998. Nicholas's particular academic specialism was in the behaviour of fish in currents. A 2004 paper explored why larger fish swim upstream in the turbulence of midstream rather than in the quieter waters near the banks: "Large fish swim further from the bank to avoid wave drag, the resistance associated with the generation of surface waves when swimming close to the surface," he wrote.

Hughes gave up his professorship two years ago to concentrate on pottery, although the paper said he continued his research with his partner, Christine Hunter, also a biologist.

Cole wrote: "A few times I called to let him know I would like to write about his life and his family connections whenever a news story about his parents appeared, but he did not think it was a good idea, so it never happened. He deserved his privacy. By and large, people in Fairbanks respected that, which is a good comment on our part of the world. In Alaska he had the freedom and the opportunity to live on his own terms and be recognised for his own accomplishments. Here he was not a literary figure forever defined by the lives of his parents."

In Plath's poems, he was her saviour
The shock and sadness of the news of Nicholas Hughes's death is almost unbearable. In his mother's poetry, he was saviour and life force - at his birth, she wrote, "this great bluish, glistening boy shot out onto the bed in a wave of tidal water that drenched all four of us to the skin, howling lustily", and he was for her the baby in the barn, "the one solid the spaces lean on". She loved her children, but not even loving them could save her, or, it now seems, him. Her son tried to survive her, escaping to Alaska, pursuing the wild fish through the icy rivers, but in the end he swam back up stream to the terrible birth and death place. Plath was heroic, in her struggles to create light and art from darkness, and so, I must and need to feel, was he. Margaret Drabble

Look At What I Did

Sometimes it is just the small things. I'm starting a new low carb regime (Thanks Joy!) and it is all about legumes, protein and veggies which aren't very microwave friendly. Bceause of this I have had to learn how to cook lentil beans, ground beef and properly steam spinach.



I managed to cook this entire meal myself from scratch. you can't tell but the beef is mixed with low fat cheese as well as onions and garlic that I managed to satuee! The beans are a work in progress but I did make them flavorable with some nice stock in the water and it is yummy. And now I have enough for the next few days so cooking only has to happen every so often. It's best for all of us.

Yay me!

Windows

So last night the wind almost broke my bedroom room window. Johnno and I were cuddled up in bed after a long, and in someways hectic lazy weekend, when we were awoken by a loud bang. Too tired to even try and figure things out, we just shifted back into our little ball of slumber and comfort. It wasn't until the early morning when I finally looked out into the park, expecting to see a broken tree or fence.

Instead what I saw was the swinging of a satellite dish from off of the roof of the building, hanging inches away from my window. An inch to the right and the dish probably would have slammed through my window and led to Lord knows what. I stared at it, wondering what to do since it still hung by a cable over the door into the building. I knew I should talk to my neighbors, the managers, but was a bit off due to sleepiness from escorting both Johnno and Lola out into the morning.

I spent my time doing what I do during my unemployment; facebook and realtystaff, ecards and emails, before preparing to workout. I was about to sign off when I saw a random eamil in my facebook. I wasn't sure who it was from mostly due to my many FB games and figured it might be someone asking for an add or a question about something gamewise. I wasn't prepared for what came next.

As I read and reread the email I was confused by the familarity of the message since the name didn't ring any bells. It took several minutes before I realized that it was someone from my past who had managed to track me down in the most odd of ways, someone who I never thought I would ever hear from again.

It was the babysitter from my childhood, the woman who had been watching my younger brother Jason Ryan, the woman would had been taking care of him when he died as a baby. I was pushed into shock by her attempt to reconnect; she mentioned that she read my blog and was reaching due to what she felt was her part in 'the truths and tears' of my life that camne out of those past events. to say I was shocked would not do justice to the word or to myself.

For all of my openness in my words, my interactions and in my relationships, there is still a part of me that is seperate from my day to day. I talk from time to time here about my family--my parents bad divorce, my awkwardness with my childhood and my attempts to try and use my past as a way to push myself to be a better person. But at the end of the day, my past sits on the edge of my persona, waiting for its cue to take the stage and do its own little dance of self awareness to the acts of my lfie that I have put to rest.

I slowly stepped away from my computer, from my work out, from my plans for the evening and insted managed to find myself wandering the streets of Studio City. Somehow I ended up with a pack of smokes (something i have cut back on outside of one day a week) a lemonade (to mix with some vodka like I did in high school) and some beef jerky (because 711 always makes me feel like I need something more than smokes so they don't judge my bad habits.)

I eventually found myself sitting on the steps out side of my building, near where the dish hung from my rooftop, on the verge of vomiting and fainting and crying and loneliness. I tried to figure who to call, who could be a comfort, or would be the person to snap me out of my thoughts. Except my thought were in a million places all at once; not just in the past that I keep to myself, the years pre Emerson and my friends, the years pre Los Angeles and the boyfriend, the life pre Rory in some ways. I debated calling my mother but thought of it because I didn't know what I wanted or could ask from her--that it was selfish to drag her back into thinking of Jason Ryan and those years that we have all moved so far beyond.

So often I look at my life as though it is a million littel windows--facets of how I see myself and the world around me. Sometimes it is about my career that pays the bills, sometimes it is about all my hopes and plans for the boy, other times it is a view of my friendships and where they stand and other times it is about my art and creativity. The little slivers of existence that give me hope, give me ambition, give me pause.

I wonder if I am the only one who does that--looks at life in such a segmented way. I imagine we all do this in our own way; that we choose to see things, events, people and ideas in their own sepearte ways because it is too much sometimes to look at the whole. That if we saw the full picture then we might wonder what it all means and get caught up in just the comtemplation of everything. Or maybe we do this to keep things from being too much--that if we saw everything cleary at once we just might never know where to go next because if we're honest we know that each view touches but is so different that they almost don't make sense.

So I find myself looking out the most diffcut window--the fragile one, the one that is almost shattered, the one that even an inch difference could be broken. and I'm not sure what to do with what I see. Maybe I'm not supposed to do anything at all but know that the view is there. To know how fragile and simple and easily broken it all can be.

Book Whore

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read this book years ago back during my Russian novelist phase while still in high school so I knew what would happen but forgot the details. So much of this book is about idealogy and the importance of the induvidual over the mass but also tries to pay respect to what the revolutions were really about,



But what makes this book stand out for me so much is how it seeems to capture the life of a country in such unsettled times. Characters come and go, the smallest details play in such huge ways when the society is pulled apart and the way people think, feel, and decide is so small and yet so understandable.



And of course Yuri and Lara's love story is still as passionate and hectic and uncertain as always. This is one of the few elationships in literature that I understand--foilables and all.


View all my reviews.

Random Music Memory

This is one of my favorite memories of college and possibly the best of me and Little Steve. Beattles are much adored--but none more for me than this song.

Quotes of the Weekend

From Kelly and Valeska's Jimmy Buffet themed party

Valeksa "Then I slurred out of my face...."

Gabe "So I think we shouldn't call 911 when he falls off the unicycle." Kelly laughs--"Wait, what?"

Gabe "I think he got confused and thought it was the jimmy buffet (buffay) as opposed to a Jimmy Buffet themed party. Cause that explains all the men he brought for Valeska."

Vivian "I've got to go. I just had 4 jello shots and want some more. But I have to run a 5k in the morning."

Joy "Well Hitler likes barbaques. (silence) Oh no."

Kelly "What do you with 50 pounds of sand?" Johnno "Make the world's biggest litter box?"

Gabe "They're 'dudes'. It's confusing cause we don't normally party with 'dudes'. But in an hour they'll be douchebags and it will be fine. Used to that."

Winnie "So there I was on a date in the woods right off the highway." Nick "In our community we consider that a sex trade."

Gabe "Oh--my head hurts." Valeska "That's what happens when you flamingo-bong a marguirita." Gabe "But it STILL hurts."

Henry "You have a boyfriend?" Gabe "He's right over there." Henry looks and then back confused. Gabe "He's not imaginary, he's on the other side of your wife." Herny "Oh. That's good to know."

Johnno "That kid can't STOP showing his tits!" RE: the 6 year old covered in beads.

How I Sleep

The weekends when we can stay together are the best. It's you and me in a full bed, arms over shoulders, hips attached to hips, fingers intertwined. Of course at some point we separate to the outer edges of the mattress but we always hook our feet into each others’--something always touching.

And in the brief lulls between the radio alarms, the struggle to stir and start the day, you sometimes roll into my back, your head against the slope of my neck as your arms encase me. I feel the little, light flutters of your eyelashes against the sensitive skin and I wonder what you're dreaming. Because I dream about you all the time.

My mind seems set on putting you in all the places of my life you weren't apart of. Suddenly you are with me in a tree in Boston as we watch Edie and Skylar play Frisbee on the edge of the Charles River, other times it's me at a party at Lizzie and Kelly's apartment back on Camarillo as I make my way past various friends and up to the rooftop deck and there you are on the landing in a toga. (This freaks me out because those were the times of Samuel and I but yet, when I see you, it's like the most profound thing in the world.)

Every other dream is like a 'Quantum Leap' except it's you just popping into all the things I have said and done and it should be weird or off setting but instead it is the most natural of things. You should be at Tumbleweed with me and Naomi and Ruby, you should be on the lawn playing badminton with my brother and of course you're in every forward look of my life as common place as furniture and walls and sky and air.

But the best part is when the dream pulls away and I don't want to wake up but there you are--a deep breath on my back, a weighted limb across my torso and suddenly all I want to do is make everything I dreamed for the future to be true and make sure that the all of my memories have you in them.

Quote of the Day

This is from Kelly in response to Valeska's question of how blunt to be with random Facebook person from past who would like to get more 'in touch' though they have not seen each other since 13 years old.

The man feeds his parrot cereal.

I think you could be as bitchy as you want and he'd still be just fine with it.

I agree with Kelly--he probably has a thicker skin they one might guess

Confessions

-- Sometimes making my bed is the only accomplishment of the day. I should probably feel bad about this but most people I know never make their bed so it's like I have an upper hand.

-- I feel weird about how I let 'Bridget Jones' Diary' make me feel so sloppy romantic. Every so often I freak out at how overly simple this makes me but then I have to wonder why being happy about a guy is some code for weakness.

-- When I wear a crazy outfit I expect someone to make a comment but instead they usually roll their eyes and never say anything. Sometimes I think this is par for most interaction with my core group.

-- I like trying with people who don't seem to like me because it makes them uncomfortable on some level. This is something I tend to do with certain past coworkers and present neighbor with a mixture of interest and curious and eagerness.

-- Facebook Ads always give me a moment where I debate what would happen if I did just run off to Canada? Jumped on a gay cruise? Tried a Christian dating site? Maybe someday I will do all three--who knows

Crazi Boi

I feel like I have ADHD at the moment. I am bored and bouncing and yet I don't want to work out or behave... What I really want is



But since this would defeat the purpose of working out--I would possibly like this



Except with me and the boy involved. But since that will not be happening either I could imagine I would enjoy this



Or this



Or this



Hopefully something can be worked out

Music Whore
Using song titles from one artist (your choice), answer the following questions and Share.

Artist: Missy Elliot

1. Are you a male or female? Hot Boyz

2. Describe yourself? I’m Really Hot

3. How do you feel about yourself? We Run This

4. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend? Back in the Day

5. Describe your current boy/girl situation? Lose Control

6. Describe your current location? Get Ur Freak On

7. Describe where you want to be? Work It

8. Your best friend is? She’s A Bitch

9. Your favorite color is? Hot

10. You know that . . . Gossip Folks

11. What’s the weather like? The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)

12. If your life was a television show what would it be called? Let Me Fix My Weave

13. What is life to you? . Shake Your Pom Pom

14. What is the best advice you have to give? Pass That Dutch

15. If you could change your name what would you change it to? Ching-A-Ling

For Jack

Copy the list below and replace the answers with your own, then tag [an arbitrary number of] people and the person who originally tagged you so they may see your answers. I tagged either fellow bookish types or those who recommended some of the books to me on this list.

1. One book that changed your life?
“Tales of the City”. It is a simple book but one that really moved me in ways I never expected. It not only had the weird magic of San Francisco or the pop culture trappings but was my first exposure to a great gay character in Michael ‘Mouse’ Tolliver which was a rarity in what I had read up to that point. It was also my first real exposure to the serial style format which included jumping from character with no main focus, unexpected storylines disappearing but then re-connecting much later but prepared me to read other serial styled authors like Charles Dickens much easier.

2. One book you have read more than once?
“Gone With the Wind”. It’s easy to make this novel be all about Scarlet and Rhett with curtain ball gowns and long sweeping staircases but that’s not why I need to reread this book once a year. It is a detailed and nuanced portrait of what happens when a society falls apart and really goes into the psyches that exist in such a situation—between Scarlet, Rhett, Melanie, and Ashley one is allowed to see and be exposed to the pathos of what we call society and what collapses in terms of morals, manners, expectations and emotions when society is gone. I still cry when I read the list of the dead because of how much you care about people and what they are fighting for. It’s not about what the North or the South stood for —it’s about people in time of crisis.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
“Henry and June”. I think there is no other book-fiction or non-that makes me think about relationships like Anais Nin’s journal. Her beautiful language, her musings on creativity and sexuality, and the overall unique and universal understanding she has for love and lust, hunger and heartache is just so beautiful that to be able to read and reread it would quite fine with me.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Anything by essayist Michael Thomas Ford. I find his musings about life, sexuality, family and relationships to be quite funny. Whether it’s his multi essay attempt to live life like a porno flick, his musing about breaking up with his long term boyfriend or his explanation about how writers don’t write for art much as they write to not be caught slacking—he cracks me up.

5. One book that made you cry?
‘House of the Spirits’ is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read and makes me cry so many times through out the story. It’s has a sense of spirit and pathos strung together with such a musical and lyrical sense of prose that I can’t help be drawn in for days on end only to be deeply sad when the story does end. It has one of my favorite first lines of any novel and one that pops into my head fairly often.

6. One book you wish you had written?
‘Boy Meets Boy’ is the type of young adult book I wish there was more of. Not since Francesca Lia Block (of the Wheezy Bat series) has there been a writer so talented at creating their own world, their own style of prose and a unique feeling of existence. David Levithan has a handful of other books (‘Nick and Nora’s Infinite Play List’ among them) but this one still stands out as his best in creativity, emotion and depth. I wish I could paint the music like his characters seem to—or write like him some day.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
No such thing. I think all books have a place and audience. (Though if a gun to head—the fourth ‘Twilight’ book.)

8. One book you are currently reading?
‘Dr. Zhivago’ I have a crush on Russian literature currently and have been rereading all of the epic stories that I can. The only thing about this book that bothers me is I always only picture Omar and Julie as Yuri and Laura—damn that film!

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
‘Tropic of Cancer’. For some reason Anais Nin’s journal has made me much more interested in trying Henry Miller again. The few times I have tried to delve into his work I have found myself either very put out or bored by how dated it feels.

10. One book that was difficult to read?
‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ I will not get into my feelings about this book outside of that the scope of the story is so huge that I would have nightmares of keeping track of imagery, symbolism and characters. I should read it again—after I get back through all my Ayn Rand.

11. Favorite childhood book?
‘The Fox and the Hound’ was the only Disney film I was allowed to see as a child and this book was one of the last one’s my parents ever had to read to me. I still find myself thinking about Copper and Tod’s story and get a bit misty when I think about how it all ends. Yes it is an allegory for race relations but I love it to this day.

12. Popular book you have no desire to ever read? I have really tried with the following authors but just cannot get into their stuff--Stephen King, John Grishom and Danielle Steele. While they each had books I enjoyed, they seem to be dried out as artists. It worries me because it makes me feel out of touch with the mass markets.

Rory Hobby or Lists Lapointe

I have been trying to get myself back in schedule. Being unemployed can leave you at loose ends and being in full flush about a boy can leave you without any thoughts at all. (Besides him of course) But Edie and I ahve always had this theory that schedules really help keep a person going when they have nothing adult like a job.

It's not just about killing time but a lack of time gives you too much time to sit about and think about not having a job. That's the part that gets most in my head because after a certain point I just start feeling like a loser instead of enjoying the free time. So I have found it easier to keep moving as to not get bogged down a negative cycle when I know I am trying my best. Add to this that whenever I first get involved in a relationship I am in such a bliss spot that I kind of forget that I have things to do; keeping up with friends and family, working on my writing, not eating everything insight and possibly working out.

Which leads me to this past weekend with all it's drinking and smoking and social whirl I realized I needed to get things back in a perfect order. I have been so good about cutting back the smoking and might actually be close to being done, I have the ab lines started that I have always wanted but they're starting to fade, and I was just eating so much better. So I realized I needed to work on a better schedule of working out quite a bit more, making long needed phone calls to my nearest, more time with my patch when in social situtations and taking time to read more (less facebook and the nets) which, in turn, makes me inspired to write more.

I am also debating getting some new hobbies. I have always felt what mnakes people feel old is being bored and in a routine and that is the one thing I detest most in the world. So in this vein, I am making a list of things I would like to get started with during my free time so I can be well into it by my next job. Maybe learn how to cook meat properly, try and retake up painting for a bit, buy a kite kit to build and use in the park and even looking into doing some roller skating lessons. But the list is in flux and hopefully will be settled before my next job.

But my biggest goal is to be better here--with words and clips and pictures because I find when I let myself think I am boring I don't blog. But when i force myself to blog when bored I always find something new about myself. Which is a good hobby to have.

Art Is Awesome

Orca Or Aren't Cha?

I had the strangest dream last night. I am sure it is because of the reappearance of the patch but last night my mind was fixated on the idea of killer orca whales. Not just that-but that somehow I was in a fish themed horror movie and yet was aware I was in a fish themed movie. I spent most of my dream Cassandra like and trying to warn of impending doom at the hands of the Orca which led to my fellow fish food trying to convince me I was confusing the Orca's with a 'Jaws' film.

The most surreal moment was when I headed up to the beach cabins-with the only cute guy who believed me thus adhering to the horror film formula--and when we turned back we could see all the other people standing alongside a beach cliff where all the Orca had come up to be pet. I remember a chill running up and down my back as thought about how this was leading to a 'false sense of safety'.



The reason I knew this was a dream? I was on the island with Carly and Bobbie from 'General Hospital' except they played lesiban lovers instead of mother/daughter. I tried to ask about the lesiban/dolphin thing and they broke character to tell me they didn't know either. Weird

Focus Change, Twist the Kaleidoscope

I am very content today. It's weird--not because I don't like it--but mostly because I so often just touch the tip of this feeling. It's not just about the boy (though that helps) but all the little things that seem lined up today, in this one second of my life. It's about having Edie here for so long that it reminds me of why she is one of my best friends, it's about being on the cusp of several very good job leads and knowing that by trusting in my talents (as opposed to running around like a headless chicken) that waiting for the right job is paying off, it's about having great friends who make me smile even when they're driving me nuts.

I didn't even realize how good I felt until I made my way down the street for a soda and I just couldn't help smiling and walking with a slight bounce in my step. Life isn't perfect--I smoked this weekend, I ate a bit too much, I should have remembered to bring Raquel's birthday card and bought her a cocktail--but it is enough for me. I like this feeling and will try to remember it when I have my doubts and questions. Now that I know it is possible, i need to focus more on that goal.