Just found an old interview I did with Jeremy Piven back in college. I thought I was being subtle, but I wonder if the snarkiness was too obvious.

http://www.jeremypiven.net/July%201998%20-%20Daily%20Arts.txt

Back then Cusack was great. I hear now he's ranting about how Cusack is jealous of all his success. If that man's penis were to his body what his ego is to the continental United States...well, just remember the image from that Flinstones opening of what happens when a rib rack is attached to Fred's car.

The thing I left off was when he said that if Michigan gave him an honorary degree, he'd be willing to speak at our graduation. Nevermind that we had already booked Kofi Annan, who, some would say, still has considerably more impressive credits.

Okay, I know it's been too long since I last blogged when I can't remember if I sign on as a new blogger or an old blogger. Apparently I'm a new one now.

I just got back from an impromptu trip to the bay area. I think there comes a point in your life, or several of varying magnitude, when you look at the people around you and you're acutely aware of their immense vulnerability. And suddenly, despite your extreme desire to protect them and make everything right for them, you realize that this whole world is completely open-ended. There's no promises, there's no guarantees, there's no storylines and last minute poetic saves, there's no greater meaning built upon givens that states that if you understand the abstract themes of any hardship, you're rewarded with safe passage. There is no safety net, despite what anyone tells you. Only that anything can happen at anytime, and there's nothing you can do about it. I think that drowning is like that. There's a very specific moment as you struggle when you realize that the only thing you can do is just give in, and let the greater force take you, and this is the greatest relief of all. You relax and concede to ultimate inevitability. I think reaching the ultimate zen state is probably the same feeling.

I wonder if those who are artistic are the ones that refuse to give in to a world that is all incidents and accidents. We deny the facts by insisting that there is more under the surface that will provide clues of meaning, and we build our cases like obsessive blind, deaf and mute scientists...using shapes, forms and colors to create incontrovertible proof of possibility in a malleable world. Sometimes I hope that collectively, we can will the universe into aligning itself out of its violent chaos to finally reward our exhausting efforts by showing us a glimpse of a bigger, sensible picture, that there really is a safety net, and for all our efforts, that there is overwhelming value in idealism.

The good news. Rie is moving to California. The bad news. She's moving to Stockton, aka the Armpit of California. I'm very excited though. I always said that I would end up splitting my time in the bay area, but I'm starting to think I'm closer and closer to that time. I would like to be able to afford a small place up there, so I can stay there and write when I'm there. Preferably some place by the water. It would be great to be closer to my family. It seems like communication in that house breaks down a lot.

I took Michael to the Warriors game on Monday and sat behind the bench. This was my first time sitting in those seats with Michael, since we had previously been too nervous about Michael's irritability with crowds to risk having him sit so close to the team and all of the surrounding security. He was great! He was into the game and smiling a lot, even told me that Biedrins was his favorite player. He was particularly mesmerized by the players' tattoos, while I was particularly worried about the fact that every food item he got (outside of his bottle of water), was fried. One of the players is awkward but always smiling and flirting with me. At one point, he winked but immediately got embarrassed, so he tried to pretend he wasn't winking, but had something in his eye. I didn't want to laugh outloud because he was so awkward, but I did giggle to myself.

I miss Michael a lot. He's working at my parents' place now and he's very committed to working there, so he doesn't want to come to LA if he's going to miss work. He's doing fairly well but I don't think he's ready to join a workforce that doesn't have someone close to him protecting him. His self-esteem has come a long way, and I would like to see him become more confident and mature before I would feel comfortable having him in an unpredictable environment. In the meantime, he'll probably stay up there and work at my parents' until he's ready for the next stage of his independence. I wish he lived closer.

This week we had orders totaling over 240 bottles of lemonade. Our weekly average is between 100 to 200. We need a larger commercial location since we're maxed out in terms of storage. I think a part of me is scared about the responsibility of renting a place and buying all that equipment, then failing. Starting a business in unfamiliar territory is overwhelming. I would have never thought, 2 years ago, that at this time, I would be involved with a beverage company that is growing exponentially faster than we can handle.

On the other (stress) front, our remodeling project is out of control. Some days I think that I'm starting to look at money as water, some days I think, this isn't so hard...it'd be really cool to own an apartment building and fix it up. Then I remember how hard it is to make money, and how it takes a shitload of money to own things.

Our film is in the Boston Film Festival in June so I'll be heading out there right around my birthday. Rest assured, there will be no cancelling of Spankfest '07.

I think I want to go back to working on comedy. I think we're focusing on horror etc. now because it's the best genre to get work distributed, but I'm really not into it. The thing about horror or the thriller genre, is that you can't miss a beat. You mess one thing up--the monster looks too fake, you don't explain WHY the old lady hates hitchhikers, the twist is too predictable--and the whole movie sucks. People aren't into it, or all they remember is that moment where they were taken out of the movie. The only way to make a solid horror is really to make it so emotionally engaging, that it grabs a viewer and doesn't let go. Otherwise, you just hope that people find it campy in a good way, rather than just a piece of crap. The thing about comedy is that if you write 50 jokes and funny scenes, and 2 of them are absolutely hilarious, people will say, yeah, that was a funny movie. If 30 out of 50 things were funny, then people say it's a great movie. You don't worry if some things don't work as well as you had hoped, because the comedy genre is more forgiving. For example, I went out and bought Corky Romano on DVD, just because I liked that one scene where he's coked up and giving that talk to little kids and thinks he should buy a boat. There's only 1 thing funny in that movie and that's it, yet that one scene was funny enough to get me to shell out money for it. Twice. Maybe I'm a big coward. Maybe I don't have what it takes to make an utterly engaging movie. But I enjoy writing comedy more, because unlike horror, I don't sit at home outlining, then get scared that any tiny noise means some apparition is stalking me in my home.

So I want this:

https://secure.officeorganix.com/

I read that this one screenwriter has a set-up like this, so she basically sits in an anti-gravity chair and writes lying down in a dark room. Since I solve most of my script problems by falling asleep with my script pages splayed on my chest, this would be the perfect solution to my creative workflow.

I took the red eye out on Friday night, arriving in Ft. Lauderdale just before 5am. It was hard waking up on the plane, and my heavy head felt disoriented the entire walk to the baggage claim. I took a cab driven by a silent driver to the Mar Lago, a beachside spa resort. It did worry me a bit while he took dark, twisted roads to the hotel, that this stranger could be taking me anywhere. We put a lot of blind faith in public transportation providers if you really think about it. I arrived at the Mar Lago just as dawn was breaking. I had asked my mom to leave the room key with the front desk because I didn't want to wake her, but I ended up having to knock because she'd locked the door from the inside. We were up three hours later to go to the Liz Arden Spa. The company who organized the trip had planned a day in the spa, so everyone could choose two things between a massage, a facial, a pedicure or a manicure. I chose a massage and a facial. The decor of the spa was very zen, with well-landscaped natural fountains and a little meditative garden. Inside, it felt like enlightenment with an edge--you would walk through this low-light, lavendar-scented hall, but if you opened any one of the heavy sound-proof door marked "Fitness," you'd be blasted with the music and clangs of a weight room or a spinning instructor barking at riders. It was a very disorienting sensation.

The massage and facial were good and I met my mom outside on the patio for lunch. We talked about Michael, her family and her company, all secretly sources of great sadness in her, but she has yet to admit this or realize it. The best that I can do is be compassionate and supportive to her, but secretly, it makes me sad a lot, too.

We rode a limo back to the hotel with some other people in the group, and the limo is completely packed. I tried to imagine who these people were. The thing was that they all seemed to be politely trying to figure out where the boundaries were of the business/personal relationship, like, is it okay to drink beer in a limo in the afternoon, should I talk about my kids or make joking sexual innuendo, etc. Some I felt like, had already decided this was a trip out of duty, but secretly, they despised most of the people in the group. I made a mental note of who I thought all these people were, so I could come back and compare what I learned about them over the next few days with what I had thought. I don't want to reveal too much about the people I met since I know that blogging can get you into all kinds of trouble in the business world, but one of the most amazing ways to find a lot of different types of people is to go to a business activity that brings together people from different regions that have nothing more in common than their industry or type of work. You'll get a glimpse into a lot of different human perspectives, some better, some worse.

We went to an event at the convention center called Taste of the NFL. For every NFL team, that city had a booth that featured a past or present football player signing autographs, a chef from one of that city's famous restaraunts presenting a sample of a tasty dish, and a wine steward pouring a wine specially picked to be paired with the dish. There was also a DJ and a dance floor, and all the open bars you could stumble into. The concept was ingenius. I kind of wish the NFL players hadn't been there, because I felt responsible to carry around a football and get it signed by all these players, yet I was more interested in the food and the wine. The food was amazing and the selected wines were all very good. I just noticed that even though the food was supposed to be representative of each particular region, I think cuisine in general in the U.S. is turning into a master cuisine of fusion-everything. Even though there are still clear examples of regional dishes, there was nothing distinctive about any of the dishes that would tie them to the region, except Chicago maybe, and its lamb pierogi's. Later Styx played, with all the band members looking embarrassingly too old to have long teased hair and tight pants, but I didn't know who they were at first because I was playing Madden at the Xbox 360 area. I learned that guys either love it that a girl is good at video games, or get very, very angry. I won both games I played in. The first guy was cool, but the second guy started getting really irritated and snarky. By the time I left and found out that the band was Styx, I had already accidentally drowned my digital camera in a pool of water (a bottle that the attendant slightly uncapped without letting me know). So I sat there watching people, glad Styx only did a short encore. I ran into my uncle at the end of the evening and he keeped saying this was so fun, over and over like a little kid. Sometimes I think when you surround yourself with people who are angry, down or cynical, you forget how much fun things in life can be.

We went to the hotel bar after the event, which had an open bar. It was all these business people getting drunk, and I spent an hour talking about fantasy basketball just because my mom told then I was a former champion. Again, guys will either love or hate the fact you know a lot about something that is in their guy territory, and I have serious (in my mind, educated) beliefs about teams and players. It wasn't my favorite subject to talk about in a bar, but it beat having to small talk with a bunch of business people I didn't know. I got cornered by this really sloppy drunk old guy who looked like what you would find in the encyclopedia (or wikipedia at least) as a color illustration of a sloppy drunk old guy. He was tall, with a messy mop of dark hair (a la Greg Brady), a craggly, baboon-red face, and a very generous red nose that looked like a mound of raw clay slapped onto his face. His eyes looked like two glass eyes. I had seen him smiling and looking at me earlier, like he was trying to get my attention, but I wouldn't make eye contact. He overheard me talking about basketball and he sits down and starts talking to my breasts about the sport. He says something about how he's not hitting on me, but that I remind him of his daughters. The fact that he's telling my breasts this makes that statement more disturbing. I'm trying to get away with him and the next thing I know, some random white guy was yelling that I had to go. He was standing next to my mom so I assumed that she had asked him to pull me away. He kept yelling at me while this guy followed me up and blocked me, wanting to tell me "one more thing" and then the guy comes over and pulls me away. I thank him and he said that my mom was trying to go back to the room and wanted to help get me away from that drunk guy. In the room, as we got ready for bed, my mom mentioned that that guy had said that all Chinese people are liars, and that he had said to her, "C'mon, you know what I'm talking about." She said it so casually in passing, that I didn't think it was anything more than an unfortunately in appropriate joke, until later.

We got up early on Super Bowl Sunday. We met in the lobby to go to a yacht club, where the group had arranged for us to have a champagne lunch, and where some NFL players would be available to sign autographs. We showed up at a waterfront bar, with our room facing the water. There was an open bar, as always, and a buffet of Cuban fair, Cajun fish and amazing key lime pie. Shawne Merriman, James Lofton, and a guy from the Packers came to hang out. The Fridge and Javon Walker had been scheduled to appear but they never showed. We piled onto our bus at about 2pm to head to the stadium, and while there were rumors that we would be getting a police escort to the stadium, I had no idea what it would really be like. The police cars and motorcycles had their lights flashing. They started in front of us, but then spaced out, so that cars in front could stop in intersections to hold cross sections while another car would usher us through. Many times the cops blared their horns at anyone who wasn't moving to the side, or even got out of their cars and waved specific cars to get off the street. Once we got on the freeway, it was like a presidential motorcade, with the cars flanking us and the motorcycles riding ahead. It was pretty unreal. I mean, it felt really excessive, like, it was wrong to misuse authority this, but it was the most grossly mesmerizing thing to see all those police cars clearing a path for us. I had mixed feelings about it.

The energy at the Super Bowl was amazing. The rain had been on and off and the parking lots were all mud. People had been tailgating for a while, so there were lots of drunken taunting between Colts fans and Bears fans. I will say that Bears fans are more passionate. And scary. Our seats were in section 116, row 17, very close to the field. I couldn't believe how close they were. This was my first NFL game, and this must be the most ridiculous way to pop your NFL cherry. They had a Cirque du Soleil pregame show with Gloria Estafan, and Billy Joel singing the national anthem, with Marlee Matlin doing the sign language interpretation. Hester ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown and it was utter disbelief in the stadium for the next few minutes. The rain started pouring down and we had to don our plastic ponchos, which may be the most uncomfortable pieces of clothing, second only to metal mesh thongs. The rain never stopped coming down hard, and it put it's own twist on the game, with the ball being slippery and the fumbles aplenty. By halftime, most of us were soaked, the rain having gotten through our ponchos. Prince was solid but my favorite was the marching band. They had passed out these lights to people in certain seats, and I think that combined, it was supposed to make a bigger design. I have a feeling it didn't work though, since most of the people in our section had left their seats, so no one there was wearing the light. The 2nd half was exciting, and the Colts stepped it up. The rain kept coming down and by then, my pants were completely wet and my underwear soaked through. I needed the Colts to beat the spread because I had bet on the Colts. They pull away, and the Chicago fans are silent. Later, I heard one guy mutter, "If I ran into Rex Grossman, I would choke him to death." It's a very scary thing to hear.

At the end of the game, I left my seat to call my mom to tell her where to meet us (she was in a different section). I was in the main concourse area when the guy from the night before followed me out. He said that he heard that I was good at fantasy basketball. He said he was really into "fantasy." I said I'm only good at fantasy basketball, and he said he likes "all fantasy." The way he says it is creepy to me, like it means more. I say, I can't talk about all fantasies, just basketball and, he said he doesn't "like basketball...do you know why?" I ask him why and he said, "I hate basketball. They're all Negros who want to mess around and smoke weed. They're complete pieces of shit." I have to take a second to think about what he just said because it was so offensive, surely he must be joking. I say that while the NBA does have an image of being thuggish, there are smart players, like Michael Curry who has a master's degree, and all of the players who are entrepreneurs and community spokespeople. He repeated again that they're just pot smoking pieces of shit. I got angry and I started ripping on him about generalizations. He again stood by the fact that the NBA is all blah blah blah, and that he wasn't making a generalization. I said all is an all-inclusive statement, and considering a large percentage of players are international players (which he exclaimed, I like them. I have no problem with them), that therefore not ALL NBA players could be black thugs. He tried to get me to admit that they were all drugheads and I said that my boyfriend is black and this conversation really offends me. Then I called him ignorant and a racist. Long story short, he followed me the rest of the way into the parking lot as I looked for my mom and uncle. We were with the entire group, but at one point, I thought they were behind us and he swore they were way in front of us, so he hurried me up. We never found the group. He was telling me that it was hot that I was beautiful and smart, and that I was like my mom. He said something about me being mad at him for what he said, and that he bailed me out the night before so didn't I owe him something? I deflected him for the most part, but he was definitely creepy. I found my mom and suddenly, he went missing. We got to the bus and everyone was there already except him. They sent out a search party, but they came back and said the guy had caught a ride with another bus and would see them back at the hotel. I told my mom about him and she brought up what he said about Chinese people the night before. She said she thought he just didn't like minorities. I told her that I thought he was a predator and to be careful around him.

We got home and my pants were still soaked through to the underwear. I have to admit though, for as miserable as the weather made me, I knew the hot shower would probably be the best one of my life. We got cleaned up and went down to the bar, where they had made sandwiches for us and of course, had an open bar. That creepy guy didn't show up, but there were plenty of other drunk businessmen, so we ate quickly and went to bed.

My mom and I had both extended our trip by one day to see Miami. We went to South Beach but while it was cool, it was a Monday night so I felt like we were only getting a hint of it. I walked into a street sign while I had my head down and was texting, cutting up my fingers. My mom laughed but kept talking on the phone and walking, not realizing until she was a block and a half away that I was still kneeling on the ground. I'm kind of glad though. I was very embarrassed. We headed to Coconut Grove where we had dinner at this cute french bistro, Le Buchon, where the waiter was so cute (I asked him how much was a glass of chablis and he waved me off saying, Don't worry. I'll bring it to you and you'll drink it. At the end of the meal, you say you don't like it and I'll take it away.). I had this chicken that was stewed on top of mushroom risotto that was rich and delicate, and my mom and the roasted duck legs with potatoes. I learned from a framed newspaper article on their wall that this was Brian Grant's favorite restaurant in Miami.

The drive home was long and I got kind of grumpy when I got lost. We got home safely, and my mom woke me up at 7:30am this morning to kiss me goodbye and tell me she was on the way to the airport. I think we will never get so old that it doesn't hurt your heart to some degree to say goodbye to your mother.

It was raining again so I decided to go to the airport for the day, even though my flight wasn't until 5pm. I managed to lose my ID and find it again, which relieved me because I feel like I'm always losing things. I finishedThe Devil and the White City before nodding off.

I arrived at Atlanta and waited at baggage claim next to a team of college basketball players. I wanted to ask them who they were, even to the coach who kept staring at me, but I didn't. All I know is that they have a close to 7 footer who looks European.

So now I'm in Atlanta now for a trade show, in this huge hotel room that could be a posh apartment (minus the kitchen). Reggie keeps telling me to be careful here, and when I look outside of my balcony, I see these boarded up houses that would be perfect locations for a horror movie. I asked my coworker if he would go into one of those houses if he and his friends were drunk and they dared him. They looked like scary, abandoned houses. He said he wouldn't because he has no interest in what goes on in them. I asked him if he was more scared of meeting violent people or ghosts and he just said he wouldn't go in them. I think I'm more afraid of ghosts. I looked at the house and the firt threat I saw were ghosts; didn't think of the possibility it could be crack fiends in there. But also, there's something old and dark about this city. Even though there aren't that many people out and about, you always feel like there's a lot out there, or that there are many invisible things around you.

How is it possible I could potentially be involved with two lawsuits? All I want is my roof that's been leaking for over 3 years fixed, yet I don't understand why certain people would rather drag these things out and not deal with them in a proper, professional manner. I think some people demand that things get escalated because they have no professional integrity. As for people who rear-end others in traffic, ignore calls from their insurance company for weeks and then come back with a lie that the accident was caused by the victim, that's just bullshit. So now, instead of sitting in the slow lane in rush hour traffic and getting rear-ended, apparently I cut someone off and hit THEM. I personally would never lie about these types of things because I'm afraid of karma, but I see some people have no problem with dragging their integrity through karmic manure.

On the positive, I made a really kick-ass pot of minestrone last night.

I just switched over to this new blogger, and for a few hours, I got really scared that I'd erased my blog, since I know my template isn't an official blogger template so it always has problems with it. In fact, it's been so long that I've had this template that I chose as a joke (what the hell happened to my little kitten that shit paw prints), that I guess people know me by my super gay peach-tones. The new blogger does have some new features that I have yet to explore, one of them being a label function for your posts, with the suggested label, "scooters, vacation, fall." I felt obligated to comply.

5 more days before I leave for Miami for the Super Bowl. My mom has requested that I not wear anything low cut because her work associates will be there. I argue that I MUST wear all things low cut because professional athletes will be there.

I was at a mall this week and I turned around and thought this guy standing behind me was Shawn Marion of the Suns. My legs went weak. It turned out it wasn't him but it really surprised me that should I ever meet Shawn Marion, that my legs would go weak. I always thought I was an Amare kind of girl. I love the Suns.

I just finished up my Final Cut Pro class so I have my Sundays back. I do need to go through all the lessons at my own pace to feel like I have a handle on the basic things, but at least the whole process isn't as daunting. I'm hoping this is my first step to becoming more technical. I'm also simultaneously learning Dreamweaver, which could mean trouble.

I'll tell you, remodeling is a process. I got a quote of $45K to remodel two bathrooms and a kitchen of a two-bedroom condo, and I just about fainted, because we didn't even want that much done. Needless to say, it was laughably over my budget. I did some research on the internet and the average cost to remodel a master bathroom with decent material in LA is between 21K and 24K alone, which is disgusting. I'm learning that contractors are as bad as lawyers in that they can basically charge you whatever they want, and you have to be ready to give up your first born. The good news is Reggie knows someone who can do it for much less, and there are certain things we can do ourselves. Like paint. I like to paint. I can't say this process isn't fun though. I can't wait to see my little ex-crack den transformed into something nice.

In other news, still need to find that restaurant space. We need a larger kitchen for the lemonade production stat.

There are days when I feel like letting my job know that it's time for me to go, because I can't stand living above water anymore, that it's killing me. I think about those whales in captivity with their fins all limp and that's how I feel inside most days. I haven't visited those dark places that scare me in so long, that I barely believe in their existence anymore, like monsters under your childhood bed that you've driven away with adult reason. But maybe they aren't so much as dark, as they are a murky unknown. They serve a purpose, and if you're brave enough to delve in, you get to walk a different path, embark on a different journey. I haven't been able to look at life askew, and without it, it makes me feel like I can't see things the way I used to, where there was a top side, and a deeper truthful underbelly. I think at some point you have to go to the edge and decide if you want to stay with your feet safely planted on the ground, or if you're going to jump and trust that whatever rushes up to meet you, is what was meant to be. And maybe, despite all your doubts, you could fly after all. The dark side terrifies me. But I think I need it, because I don't think this is the right path that I'm on.

No amount of money is going to make me feel safe. Responsibilities will always be there. My brother's life will be his no matter if I'm there to catch his every fall, and I have to accept that. And I know full well I can't deal with regret when it's inevitable. So then, what's holding me back?

Sometimes I think that people look towards other people to display that passion for something, that true belief in something that is beyond this world. I look at people who fervently create art, even fucked up, psychopathic terrible art, and I think, despite what I may think about it, despite all the people who laugh at it, that person has an indescribable drive that demands they create or else...Or else. And that's something that I imagine to be akin to when our species first discovered fire...something that was so miraculous, so dangerous yet so beautiful, that you were just as terrified of it as you were terrified to be without it. What happened to all the underground bloggers? The ones that were tiny points of light on this darkened highway, bleeding out their truths? They've abandoned their faces, but they're still out there. The poets, the bleeders, the optimists, the ones just tearing at their tired masks. I wonder if they've found anonymous venues when the intimidation of attention sent them looking for safer corners. Or if they refused to abandon ground, but found their voices stifled. What happened to all the bare naked truth that used to float around here? I hope you guys are still out there. We are all still very, very human, each and every one of us, and all delusions aside, we have no idea what the fuck is going on. And I think every person deep down craves that reassurance that it's not just them, that it's all of us.

I am a coward. If I weren't, I would quit my job. If I weren't, I wouldn't be pushing other people to get their lives in order and I would get my own, or define the life I want regardless of external pressure. I would stop giving other people advice that I'm too scared to live by. I once drove all the way to Vegas, dropped $100 on a blackjack table in 5 minutes, then turned around and drove home, just because I was sad and didn't know what else to do. And in hindsight, I don't know why I did it, but at least I did it. That existence is so much better than one where you're numb. I went a whole year without background music (I still have the same CD's in my car changer from 2002), and it shocks me that I didn't notice. How can you live without music to guide your subconscious spaces? I didn't realize until Whit made a comment one day, that one of the things that helped our creativity when we lived together was that we always had music on, rather than the TV. And then I realized, wait, what happened to the music? Because the TV is ALWAYS on now. The internet is always there. And there's always time to waste.

Fuck this over-domestication crap. If this world goes to shit, I'll never survive in the wild. I propose a psychic revolution, a emergency alert for awareness. Look around at all the ways your life has numbed you, and decide what purpose does it serve--is it helping you or hurting you? Use your psychic antennaes, reach out to your world, your people, your life path. Get reconnected and start evaluating the why's and the how come's in your life. Because if you notice that things just haven't been right lately, that there's been this overwhelming feeling of dread that you can't put your finger on...you have to ask yourself, is it out there? Or is it in here? Because I have a feeling that I'm not the only one that's feeling like the world is off kilter but we've all been getting too sedated and numb to pay close attention.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6380092?FSO1&ATT=HMA

Stephen Jackson? The man is locker room cancer. He's a bad influence on any team with a plethora of young players. He's Allen Iverson without the skills. He's got legal issues right now related to a shooting in Indiana. No one would trade with the Pacers up until now, because every deal required that the other team take Jackson as well. That's just great.

Glad to get rid of Dun-nothing, but this is all we can do? A headcase and an overrated sidekick (Harrington)?

Actually, it's a good trade for the Warriors, all things considering. We didn't have to give up the players we like (Ellis, Biedrins), and we still have JRich as trade bait for something else. Harrington and Jackson will fit well (at least better than our two Great White Hopes) in Nellie's system, and we'll at the very least have an exciting run and gun team. Do I still secretly prefer watching the Suns? Of course. But at least we got rid of two of Mullin's biggest contract mistakes without giving up anything devastating. Now if we can find some way to move Foyle...

We've got tickets for the Clippers/Warriors game tonight. Since the trade went down today, that means GS won't have Dunleavy, Murphy, Diogu, McLeod, Harrington, Jackson, or Sarunas J. tonight, so with injuries included, their bench will be skimpy. I hope it's at least a close game. I hate it when GS gets blown out by either LA team.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/12/content_5600294.htm

"Oopsies."

Today I discovered that dropping Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke causes a glorious soda geyser.

Today I remembered how much pyro-fun can be had with lighting non-dairy creamer with a cigarette lighter.

Today I had a loud-volume conversation with my mom about prenuptial agreements.

Today I realized that the cost of remodeling is very expensive.

Today I learned that changing to a new cellphone number because Sprint screwed up your plan but not telling anyone means getting left out while your friends go ice-skating downtown.

Today I indulged in a beautifully luxurious afternoon nap.

Today I watched a French movie about futuristic cannabilism, but I spent most of my time looking at the actors and wondering what constitutes "good-looking" in France.

Today I tried to play NBA 2K7 on xbox, then quit, blaming my poor performance on a faulty controller.

Today I feared that my brain may be at its limit of capacity.

Today I wondered when extraterrestrials would finally make contact again, and if us humans could manage to behave in a calm and civilized manner when they do.

Today I vowed to be in bed by midnight, but lost ground when I spent half an hour looking up photos of Britney's new man on the internet.

I think one of the beauties of having a 9-5 is knowing that you've entered into an implied agreement with your employer that 2 days a week belong strictly to you, when you aren't owned by anyone else. My only regret today was not being able to make it to Costco in time to get econo-sized packages of Mentos and non-dairy creamer. And getting the message about ice skating a day too late.

When I was in my early-20's, my aunt once told me, don't dick around while you're young because once you turn 25, time goes by fast and the next thing you know, you're already 30. I know, right? I can't tell the difference between 2005 and 2006. I used to identify the years and seasons within by who I was dating at the time, but since being in a stable relationship, the years just run together.

I just finished Suspect Zero which dealt with two of my favorite subjects -- serial killers and parapsychology (in this case, remote viewing). Ben Kingsley plays an ex-FBI agent seriously disturbed by his stint as an agency remote-viewer used to track down serial killers via psychic empathy. First of all, Ben Kingsley is brilliant and probably nuts. You have to be to be able to get that deep into a character, and he has my full respect and admiration. His commitment as an actor is beyond words. The movie was shot very artistically and had some great dialogue (check out Kingsley's monologue when he's got the movie's protagonist tied up). The DVD has a really interesting featurette about remote viewing and its scientific background, though since it's a featurette to promote the movie, it doesn't go as in depth as I had hoped for.

I got rear-ended on the freeway on Friday on the way to the gym, which sent me right back home. Woke up this morning feeling like I'd played 6 hours straight of basketball, which led me to the doctor's as a precaution. Having been rear-ended before (in my car, I mean), I expected that I would probably have a sore back and shoulders this morning, but I've got these back spasms that have me predicting another round of chiropractic visits and physical therapy. I was really irritated about the accident...we're in stop and go traffic in the slow lane of the freeway, and this guy still manages to hit me hard enough to bash up the left back side of my car. He got out and suggested we not report this to insurance and he would give me $200 for the damages. I didn't feel like telling him that $200 would only pay for the taillight that was completely shattered. Hell, my sideview mirror that this lady tore off while trying to park her car had cost $600. I hate dealing with the logistics of a car accident. The bonus was that I was prescribed Vicodin, but I'm not really big on pills so the score of this is lost on me.

Shik Do Rak is my favorite restaurant right now. It's Korean BBQ, except you wrap the meat with some grilled onions & mushrooms, lettuce, kim chi and chili sauce in this wrapper that's like a wonton wrapper, but made with rice and with the consistency of a large panel of pho noodle. If you bring more than 2 people and get the larger combo meals, it comes with a bottle of Soju. The food is incredibly messy, but for about $20 a person, you get a really unique and filling twist on Korean BBQ. The host (owner?) Roger, is the cutest little guy who will make you feel like you're a guest in his home. I saw countless guests thank him with a hug when they left. I can't say I wasn't tempted.

Why aren't more people watching 30 Rock? Alec Baldwin is genius (on being sold a pager by Tina Fey's loser boyfriend: "Excuse me, I'm expecting a call from 1984") and the show is really quirky and hilarious. I love the writing. I'm hoping the show stays on for a while so it makes it worthwhile for me to write a spec, as I would prefer not to go through another Andy Richter Controls the Universe disaster.

The use of cellphones while driving is now a ticketable offense. Don't know if that includes bluetooth use, but watch that cellphone use when you're behind a wheel, and if you see someone else doing it, feel free to call 911.

People gravitate towards anger because it's the most accessible and instant means of verifying that one can still feel, with fear/anxiety following as a close 2nd. Other feelings are more abstract and subject to interpretation, and can not help you verify whether or not you're operating on auto-pilot.

People are either pushed or propelled through life. Some let external forces push them, some let inner forces chase them. Either way, you can experience both while being completely numb.

There's something very unsettling to me about being still.

I am afraid of the dark, particularly in any room that features a mirror or open doors. I tried to confront that fear last night by turning off the lights of my bathroom. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, trying to focus on the fact I was in a safe place and that there were people in the house who would protect me, and that it's rare for an entity to manifest itself in a physical enough form to hurt me. I panicked anyway.

When I was young, I would sleepwalk. Sometimes I would be in mid-conversation with someone, and slowly realize that I was sitting in the dark on the couch in front of the TV, and that there was no one there. Yet, I would feel like there was someone there. I would go to sleep every night with the covers over my head, even if it was hard to breathe, and be scared that I would wake up in the living room talking to people I could feel but couldn't see. I finally stopped doing that in high school, though I would still sleepwalk out the front door sometimes, which was always so much less scary than those times I would wake up in the living room. It's terrifying to wake up to find you're not in the place you're supposed to be, and you swear there's someone else there in the dark with you.

Once when we were little, my brother and I were playing and I accidentally knocked him on the side of the head. He had been really bouncy and happy, but all of a sudden, his eyes just dulled and he slowly crawled into bed and went to sleep. I was scared because what happened with his eyes was weird. He had a seizure later that night, and I called 911 because my parents had gone out to dinner with friends. The paramedics came and asked me if his head had struck anything recently and I told them he had a history of seizures (which was true), but I knew I caused it. They carried him out of the room. I don't remember how I got to the hospital. They put him in this bin and hooked him up to IV's, and he was really pale and weak but he still laughed when I played with him, until the nurse came over and told us to be quiet. My parents came and they looked so scared. I told them I didn't know what happened.

Do ever think back about something that happened in the past, and your heart beats faster, you start to sweat and you get terrified even though you know that at the end of the scene, things turn out okay, but when you're reliving it, there's a part of you that doesn't believe it? Thinking about that night still scares me. It happened at the hotel by Disneyland. I hate Disneyland now, and I've never told anybody the reason why.

Reggie saw a ghost when he was younger, walking up the stairs of an old house in which a man had died. It scared him so much that he had trouble going to sleep in the dark, well into adulthood.

My baby cousin has been seeing things in their house, in the corners and high in the air. He gets scared and cries, and it's disturbing his parents because they don't see anything, yet my cousin will point and cower. He calls them "Bugs" and says they're very large. They have taken him to eye specialists, neurologists, priests and spiritual gurus, etc., but no one can tell them anything. The priests just said that we share this world with things that are both good and very bad, so it is very important that we pray and stay connected and aligned to positive forces.

People don't have to believe in ghosts, but the phenomenon of being haunted is indisputable. Whether it's something you've seen, experienced, believed, done, thought...we carry these things with us the way we carry our shadows, and these are the things that visit us when our minds and beings are still. I wonder what else we would see, if we weren't working so hard to stay numb, to focus on only the things that are in front of us or that we put in front of ourselves to keep us looking forward. I always look at people and wonder, what are the things that haunt you?

New Year's Goals (in no particular order)

1. Finish a feature script by March
2. Finish said script's outline by December
3. Complain less at work.
4. Yell at boss less at work.
5. Remember to close office door when yelling at work.
6. Learn to be vicious without raising my voice like Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada.
7. Afford Prada.
8. Make six-figures and not spend it all on bubble wrap for de-stressing.
9. Go to gym more.
10. Go to gym for more than 20 minutes more.
11. Have the guts to take dance-oriented aerobics class and not feel like that fat girl in junior high who split her pants in PE.
12. Strengthen my knees so I can drive to the basket more.
13. Dribble better with my left.
14. Dunk
15. Windmill dunk
16. 360 windmill dunk
17. Stop using the same water bottle for 3 months.
18. Think of clever name for a restaurant.
19. Open said restaurant.
20. Quit job to sit in corner of said restaurant with laptop, thinking about wanting to write as I sip my own overpriced cappucino.
21. Expand J&R's Lemonade.
22. Learn web design to aid expansion.
23. Buy a manufacturing plant.
24. Enforce a hair net rule.
25. Find a doctor who can help Michael with his weird allergy symptoms
26. Find Michael a job.
27. Buy a Treo and get organized.
28. Learn to back up files.
29. Learn Adobe Photoshop.
30. Make animated penguin movie where they all have my face.
31. Set aside time every week for fun reading.
32. Stay in touch with people better.
33. Figure out what I want to do with my life.
34. Buy another condo.
35. Learn more about property management.
36. Shoot something on HD.
37. Eat a gallon of ice cream in one sitting.
38. Throw it all up.
39. Ponder how hard/easy life must be for Nicole Richie.
40. Direct another comedy show.
41. Be nicer to Reggie.
42. Spend less time surfing the net.
43. Find a direction that I'm comfortable with.
44. Be okay with not doing anything.
45. Be more focused and limit multi-tasking to only when it's efficient.
46. Update He Looks Like at least once a month.
47. Blog more.
48. Limit snoozing to less than 4 times each morning.
49. Get up earlier so I can sleep longer in the shower.
50. Don't be so afraid of people.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6063982

Are you kidding me?

The night before Christmas Eve, Michael threw a tantrum in the parking lot of a grocery store in Fremont because he was hungry. Anyone who knows someone with autism, they know that they have occasional tantrums that include irrational screaming, cursing, and sometimes aggressive behavior (hitting, throwing objects). These tantrums can be very rare in high functioning people like Michael, but given the right circumstances, if the autistic person's mind gets "locked," they will feel backed in a corner mentally and the ensuing episode can be likened to that of a trapped animal -- they are fighting for their lives, rationally or not. The tantrums usually last for a few minutes, with the beginning being the most intense when you're not sure of the level of aggression the tantrum will feature, whether he will be screaming/cussing only, or if he will swing at you. The major things that need to be controlled to mollify the tantrum are 1. Noice Level (people talking, loud noises, and 2. Eye contact. You can not make eye contact or the tantrum will escalate. You have to pretend you don't notice him. The cycle of a tantrum begins with him yelling and cussing, daring people to look at him. But if you do look at him or say anything to him, it escalates the tantrum even more so it's a really wicked cycle. The hardest thing to control are strangers. Crowds will look, which will escalate the tantrum and draw it out longer. It's much easier to handle for us in private than in public, where the circumstances usually cause the tantrum to escalate, and we can't give him his space to cool down because we are trying to shorten the scene.

In this instance, the parking lot was fairly empty, though cars would come and go for last minute shopping. My mom went to talk to Michael while Reggie and I took each side, blocking his eyeline so he couldn't make eye contact with other people. If he sees them, he'll usually flip them off and ask them what they're looking at, and with the wrong person, you have a confrontation (a young punk at a movie theater trying to prove something to his hoochie girlfriend once stepped up and tried to pick a fight, and that resulted in the police coming out). Anyone who drove up and tried to look, we intercepted and explained that Michael was autistic and to please not look at him. I talked to the manager of the store who had come out and I explained that this was a tantrum cycle--it starts with cussing, etc., and usually ends up with him crying because he's embarrassed and doesn't understand what happened and why he couldn't control himself. At that moment, a car alarm nearby went off and Michael yelled, "Shut up!" The manager laughed and said, "Did he just tell the car alarm to shut up?" I said, yeah, people with autism don't like loud noises. The guy was cool and said Merry Christmas and walked back into the store and most people were understanding and just walked away. There was one old lady who drove up, and by then, Michael had calmed down and was just talking heatedly with my mom. She got on her cellphone and Reggie thought she might be calling the police, but when we got close to her, she dropped her voice and started talking about "dinner."
My mom finally talked Michael down and we got back in the car.

Usually after a tantrum, we don't speak and we wait for him to talk about it. He usually needs time and space to gather his understanding of what happened. We got home, took the groceries upstairs and started dinner, while Michael gathered himself in the car.

Michael finally came upstairs, super contrite, and I went to change. I heard a loud thump which I didn't think anything of, but when I came out about two minutes later, there were a couple of cops standing in our entryway. Apparently, that old lady had been calling the cops, and thinking that it was a domestic dispute, they traced our license plate and showed up at our house.

I missed the bulk of what happened--the cops had rang our doorbell, Michael had answered it and when he saw they were cops, he had tried to slam the door on them. The cop blocked the door (thus the THUMP) and yelled, "You can't close the door on the police!" Michael ran away. Luckily, Reggie and my mom had run in and blocked the police as they tried to chase after him, yelling that Michael's autistic and afraid of policemen. The police stopped in their tracks and said they had gotten a call about a man threatening his wife. Reggie explained that it was Michael throwing a tantrum and my mom was calming him down. My mom said they were welcome to talk to Michael to show him that the cops are his friends, but when he yelled, "Michael? You wanna come talk to us?" Michael screamed, "Nooo! Go away!" Reggie and I kind of laughed about it like, "haha...well...this is what we deal with" to make it seem like this was routine and no big deal. They were nice about it, saying how hard our house was to find and how they had gotten lost going down the wrong street. As they walked out the door, they yelled, "Merry Christmas Michael!" and Michael yelled, "FUCK YOU." We all laughed, wished them a Merry Christmas, and closed the door.

We were scared shitless.

The tantrums are hard to explain, and can be scary if you've never seen one and don't know they are short-lived and non-violent with the right type of handling. If he does hit anyone, it's usually one of us, because he's a coward and knows we won't hit back in public. Michael is also a big guy, and when he throws one, most people don't understand and can get scared. This has been a great burden on our family, and something that keeps me up a lot of nights. I don't understand why Michael has never thrown a tantrum when he's in LA with us, but he's like an emotional landmine when he's with my parents. My greatest fear in life is those confrontations with the police. The first thing we do when he has a tantrum is surround him, and we explain to people that he's autistic, and he's just throwing a tantrum. A handful of times, a security guard has come over or the police have arrived, but they have been mostly understanding, and Michael usually runs away from them, apologizing later. But I worry about the wrong police officer showing up, the one that's trigger-happy. Michael's tantrum behavior is completely irrational and verbally aggressive. Michael is always carrying something in his hand, be it his keys, his toy cars or his toy airplanes. All it takes is for him to have something in his hand to justify a police shooting, and for them to say that they thought he had a gun.

The scariest thing about that night was that we had left Michael alone in the car to cool off and think. I didn't go change until he had finally come upstairs, and I heard that THUMP about two minutes later. If those officers hadn't gotten lost trying to find our house, they would have probably arrived while Michael was still alone in the car and confronted him there. No one would have been there to explain to him that he's autistic and unarmed, outside of toys in his hands. Who knows what would have happened, because Michael would have freaked out, being trapped in the car with nowhere to run, and acted irrationally. I still stay up late, wondering if I would have heard pops instead of a thump that night while I was changing. It really, really terrifies me.

My mom says each time gets closer and closer. I really don't know what to do. I'm trying to move him to LA, not knowing if I can handle having him here, or what he's going to do to fill his days--all I know is he's NEVER thrown a tantrum here without his parents around and that's the only hope I have. But what if he throws a tantrum down here? What will that mean? And what will happen, knowing that LAPD is so much more reactive than the police back home? We know that if he's in the middle of a tantrum and the police come, we have to take him down and pin him just to show that he's subdued, which is so fucked up but the only thing we can think of to make sure that the police don't do anything stupid. But what if we're not there?

I spend so much of my time looking up specialists, researching his medications and trying to figure out the best way to work with him to allow him to bypass the impulse to throw a tantrum. Every time he comes down here and does so well, I hear about him throwing at tantrum at home. I don't want him to get killed by the police. Knowing my parents, they'll jump in the way and get killed, too. Will moving him away from home, away from his past and his emotional scars be the answer? Do his medications help or hurt? Where is the answer for this so I can sleep at night?

Truths and Open Letters

November passed without incident this year and surprisingly made very little stir. Which was surprising to me as November's historically been a very difficult, complex month, yet when it doesn't take me to those dark, hidden places, I feel like I've lost out on something hugely incomprehensible. Like I complained so much about November being a hard month, that I wasn't invited to the secret ritual this year. You bitch too much about anything in your life, you'll regret the day it's gone.

Television is self-medication...it keeps you in such a passive state, you can't feel anymore, and you start to lose touch. I think the more life gets to people, they struggle to find ways to withdraw without realizing it. Jobs, relationships, drugs, alcohol, rituals...they're all just temporary escapes. It's hard being present these days. It's hard to really look at people, at things, at situations, at greater truths, and not be intimidated by the rawness of things that are exactly what they are. It's like we're always assigning values and facades to things, even values and facades that are greater than the nature of the object, because the sheer act of admitting a truth as a Truth is terrible. It means you've given in to the fact that there's no magic in the world.

It's been a while since I've been able to say anything truthful.

Open letters. Stream-of-conscioused.

Things have been great considering I'm living a stable life, have a well-paying job, a mortgage, a relationship, and reports from the parents and their separate universe have sounded positive and civil. The past is the past, the future is painted with monetary figures, interest rates and desired investments, and the present is a list of to-do lists. Overall, mood has been stable, no disassembling bouts of anguish. No threats against self or others. I take that back. One threat to other, but I can't remember what it was over, and as always, it was purely imagined rather than verbalized. The nights have been getting dark earlier, thus my departure from work every day around 3:30. They need to understand, I have to be home or in a safe environment when it gets dark, otherwise, I feel unsettled for the rest of the evening. Taking technical classes. Trying to convert my mind to logical thinking is hard because my mind turns to mush and starts thinking about the abstract.

*****
I understand that I need to work harder.
*****
I thought what mattered to her was that she have things to brag about, and I spent a lifetime trying to keep up with the things she was saying so that people weren't disappointed, or they wouldn't think she was a liar. And then I realized it was really hard. I wonder if I'm sleepy all the time because it's tiring to dedicate a person's life to this.
*****

I know I haven't really been available, or in touch with people. I don't know why. I really don't. I don't want to be that person who's on the outside because no one knows if she's coming or going, but I have no idea. Everything just seems really far away right now.

Plus, I crashed my computer and destroyed my cellphone by accident recently. They say I have very bad luck with computers. I sometimes wonder if it's subconscious, or this external force that follows me, and allows me to enable it to make it difficult to communicate, so then it's easier for me to forget my connection to other people. I was happy to get in touch with Ethan, since I didn't want to lose touch with him. Cheryl, I need to write back. Muskrat...I need to figure out how to contact you. How the hell do you lose touch with someone in this day and age? It's kind of one of my biggest fears, losing touch with people. Then if that's the case, why am I always losing their contact information?

******
Congratulations, Lauren. I really, really hope it's as good as it seems, and that everything works out. It's important to me.
******

I'm frustrated about what happened at work today, because it seems like every time it's time to discuss my new deal, it's such a fight. It's like having a boyfriend who says every year that he's not sure he's going to make it to your birthday (we'll get to that later), and after dragging you through all the not knowing, always shows up anyway. It doesn't matter that he's been there every year; he jerks you around, and it's hell every year.

Why have I been fed up this year and not realized it. I enjoy having my own office and the fact that I've left early from work almost every day now, and no one has said anything. My time is mine and if I worked hard to finish early, then I'm not going to sit around, pretending to work when I'm really playing desktop games. Am I just daring someone to say something? Maybe subconsciously. Maybe a part of me thinks no one notices, and the other part wants you to confront me, so I can tell you how unhappy I am. I don't even know if I'm unhappy. Happiness and unhappiness reside within my mental blindspot. But I think after our verbal battle today about my deal for next year, I realized that I didn't want to play games anymore. Not because I haven't been given great opportunities, and treated with respect, but because you still bargain with me, and in doing so, belittle true contributions even just for 10 minutes, just so you can make an extra buck for the company. I'm tired of lying to customers and telling them that something is on the way, when deep down I have a feeling you're bullshitting me when you tell me we'll have stock in a week, and then realizing this is my integrity on the line. I've never been one to offer something which I truly believe couldn't be delivered, and it's giving me a huge internal battle because the one thing that is very important to me, is being sacrificed for you to do business the way you do. And it doesn't make me feel good. I never felt I was disrespected in terms of treatment; in fact, you've given me a lot of dues and love to show off my creative efforts with the company to partners and potential investors. But it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I've offered this company incredible value in my work ethic, commitment, efficiency and expertise and have been very successful year after year, and have brought incredible GROWTH as you prefer to measure things, and every year, we have a conversation in which you lowball me. It's disrespectful. If I'm not making six figures easily next year, then I truly believe you are not a man of your word. And I'm not the type of person who ever trusts people based on their words.

*****
It's scary to think about it. The enormous responsibility of ownership.
*****

Mike, I don't think about it because I just don't. That's why I don't remember, but I might be able to if I tried, but I don't try because it has a nagging habit of lingering and causing me to waste time. So that's why I don't remember details, or for what reason I was mad at you that you were hinting at, because you did a lot of shitty things that I'm welcome to dredge up in a rotation and be mad at. But I don't, even though I love being pissed off in general. It's a secret passion of mine, like a closet cocaine habit. But since you asked, I do remember when I saw you with your "friend" a few months ago but something about the whole thing seemed kind of sad, which is why I didn't want to talk about it. And I wanted to be nice about it by not thinking too much about it...I know how it never made you comfortable when I really looked at things about you because it made you feel exposed. But if you ask, the last time I saw you, I think you were in a place where it was important for you to be with someone harmless who looked up to you, which is fine. But I think you were well aware of how much of a band-aid that was, and that knowledge is the hardest thing of all. The greatest hurts have a way of being slippery.

Trying to numb yourself, trying to hide yourself within your drives--for successful, for expensive things, for the respect of those who have more power than you--... it's a dizzying force that wraps you in so much momentum, that the walls around you become fuzzy. Even when you quiet your mind, it's all still fuzzy, an illusion of blankness. You've had it for so long, you'll have it for much longer. I don't see you letting it go, because every time you invite someone in, you have to destroy them, so really, it's a hard security system you've set up. "You will know him by his trail of wounded." haha...for me, that stage was destructively fun for me. I was a sadistic little fuck at the time, and in many ways, I have regrets. I looked at the time with you in a way as being the restitution I had to pay for that, and a chance to see how things looked from the other side. Then I learned it was really about my own growth rather than any successful redemption for you because that's your own journey. So I figured I wouldn't be such a jerk about it just because I felt entitled to finish it. So you let it go. Sometimes a rock is just a rock. You can talk about its incredibly complex (scientific) history of how it became a rock, but it's really only as interesting as a rock. Which is, not very much.
*****

There's something about a man standing at the top of a telephone pole in the middle of nowhere that embodies the entirety of isolation.

(you were warned)

This is so wrong. Maybe not as wrong as raping your pit bull and getting caught on camera by your wife, or even getting arrested for fucking a dead deer after you've been previously arrested for killing a horse while attempting to sexually assault it, but it's pretty wrong.

But then again, at least you don't have the name, Lucius Pusey

Just days after UCLA upsets USC to give us a chance for a rematch against Ohio State, the coaches decide they don't want to see a rematch and send Florida into the championship bowl. As one analyst said on ESPN yesterday, you can think of many reasons why Florida should be playing for the championship, but you can't find a single justification for why Michigan is not. It's just a huge disappointment.

I'm thinking about what this point in my life means. No, this isn't a reference to the Michigan travesty...I'm not that diehard about the things that are trivial within the big picture. Do I stay at a job where they will continue to groom me to move upwards, and watch my earnings slowly expand from comfortable to enviable, even though I'm well aware that I am helping someone else achieve his goals and dreams? Or do I trust my own abilities to set out on my own and live and die by my own capabilities. Am I really capable of getting organized with the administrative aspects of life and running a business, which are completely daunting to me? Or am I completely not smart enough to handle these things? And what about Michael? He needs to move out of our house in Fremont soon for his wellbeing. Is this the correct instinct to fight for? What if I'm wrong? Can I really support him here in LA, with his medical needs and all the details that I will have chief responsibility for? Can I hold down a full-time job, have outside creative aspirations, and still take care of him and support him as he ventures out into the work world? What if he becomes too attached and we start stunting each other's independent growth? Sometimes I feel like we were one soul, divided, and I selfishly took too much of the awareness. And he followed me into the woods when he shouldn't have, just because he wanted to be next to me. And now here we are, in a hostile world, neither very prepared. So where does that leave room for anything else in my life? Can I just take off and disappear, become someone invisible/completely new, appearing and disappearing within corners of the universe, continually reinventing myself and experiencing and re-experiencing different people, facets and paths of life? Is this true way of the artist, to become a shadow, to have lived a million lives within one lifetime, so that there is actual Truth to relay back to those who are stationary? This is where my heart is.

They say whatever you do, just commit to it. Is my overwhelming sense of responsibility holding me back, or is it just an excuse to mask a fear of being alone with myself in a world that has no clear, singular answer, where safe passage is never promised?

I've got a friend who's feeling down. Everyone likes her significant other so much, because he's so nice and unoffending, that she doesn't feel like she has anyone to talk to and is afraid that people wouldn't be willing to give her support or hear her doubts. She's feeling pretty lonely. I tell her, yeah, that's life, so get used to it.

Why is November consistently such a hard month? It's those tiny short circuits in my head, the little fugues that make me unsure of which is reality and which is a collective of fear, anxiety, doubt and wish-fulfillment.

Maybe this whole daylight savings thing isn't such a great idea. You have a few months of spring/summer where you think life is bright and stable, that no matter what, there's a positive force on our side because there's excitement in the air and the promise of infinite possibilities. And then its end, when we're suddenly plunged into premature darkness, those drives home that make you feel so achingly empty and alone, especially when you look around into the cars surrounding you, and you can feel that the people around you share the same ache Is there anything worse than that first workday after we turn back the clocks and we leave work to find our worlds engulfed by the night? Every day that I step out of my office, I feel a sense of loss.

My mom never goes to movies in the afternoon...she says it's an awful feeling when you come out of the theater and it's completely dark outside. The same thing with taking afternoon naps too late in the afternoon so you wake up after the sun has gone down. I think it affects our sense of equilibrium when we aren't gradually eased into the transition of light to darkness. I think we mentally have to prepare for the darkness. Maybe it's lodged in our primitive subconscious, the parts of us that still remember what it meant when night fell, that the darkness was our greatest enemy against our physical survival. Maybe the disorientation comes from not knowing which senses to believe when your suddenly thrust into darkness, your primal instincts or your finely cultivated intellect. Because isn't intellect just an abstract collection beliefs based on logical assumptions gathered throughout the history of human communication, agreed upon to some degree to be universally true? And what if the original basis of these assumptions, the very foundations, are misdirected or misplaced? Then what relation does our intellectually perceived world have to an actual universal order? Regardless, I don't like it, this brutally sudden fall of the curtain on the day. I suspect I like it when it rains in the fall because I feel like the rain provides cover. Maybe, hidden somewhere deep in my evolutionary code, I feel like when it rains, the predators are at bay so I can rest more peacefully at night.

Chasing the White Rabbit

I guess in my old age, my mind can only celebrate Halloween once, since after going to a Halloween party on Saturday, I’m having trouble understanding why people are still talking about Halloween and why the costume stores are still open. I forgot that we've still got a couple more days to go before the real thing. I think my quota is dressing up once per year, and then I’m done. I'm ready for Thanksgiving and all the fattening that comes with it.

So Saturday marked the beginning of the last mercury retrograde of the year. For people who don’t know what mercury retrograde is, it’s an astrological phenomenon that occurs three times a year, lasting for about 3 weeks (plus/minus a week before and after for its effects). It affects travel, communication and anything electronic or mechanical, so expect flights to be delayed, snark-fights to erupt between friends, family and coworkers, and computers, cars, phones, DVD players and toasters, etc. to malfunction. Even if you don’t believe in astrology, keep an eye out for mercury retrogrades because kooky things will happen. And make sure you back up your computer.

Like right now. For the first time ever, blogger crashed and wiped out my post, and now I’m recreating it in Word like I should have done in the first place.

So on Saturday, Reggie and I decided to dress up as Dr. Burke and Dr. Yang from Grey’s Anatomy for AD’s Halloween party since it was comfortable, required minimal investment, and we fit the racial profile. I managed to get my hair really curly like Sandra Oh’s, but I couldn't mimic her blank, indifferent expression since my blank look naturally looks somewhat pissed off. We get to the party and there are some really great costumes from this girl who dressed up as the Tivo Icon (the black TV screen with Tivo written across it) and Shaun from Shaun of the Dead, to Cruella DeVille, the boss from Office Space and K-Fed. I tried to think what Dr. Yang would drink, and I figured she’s the kind of girl who likes the hard stuff, so I started with a Jim Beam and Coke, and followed with a tequila shot. About 10 minutes after the tequila shot, I remembered that I’m not a hard stuff kind of girl, or an anything-with-alcohol-content kind of girl and I started feeling sick. So I went outside, found myself a dark corner by a tree, and did the whole, I think I’m going to throw up, okay, no I’m not. Okay, maybe I will. Okay no I’m not, bit. So I’m huddled up by the tree in the shadows, when suddenly, I see a rabbit hop into the middle of the street. I’m talking a big fat white bunny rabbit with floppy brown ears, just sitting in the middle of an urban street not far from the gnarliest LA freeway, twitching its nose at me. So I’m whistling at it and making non-threatening sounds, trying to get it to come close enough for me to pet it. It takes a while but it slowly makes its way over, until it’s about 4 feet away, just outside of arm’s reach. In my drunk head, I’m thinking about how funny it would be to go back to the party with a bunny in my arms, and all I want to do is pet that damn thing cuz its fur looks so soft, so for no reason in particular, I jump the bunny.

The bunny takes off down the street and I’m booking after it, until it crosses into someone’s front lawn. There’s a crack in the sidewalk that’s got one portion raised significantly higher than the lawn, and I step right on it, spraining my ankle and landing on the lawn in a heap. Now spraining an ankle is no fun, no matter how much hard liquor you’ve got in your system. Reggie comes running up and at first he thought I was joking because all he could see was me hunkered down by a tree one moment, and booking down the street the next. He asks me what the hell I was doing and I told him I was chasing a rabbit. He looks at me like I’m crazy and says matter-of-factly, “Julia, there’s no rabbit.” I tell him there was a rabbit, and he says, “There’s no rabbit.” Now he’s looking at me like he’s really frightened for me, like there might be something seriously wrong but he doesn’t want to scare me by pointing it out. So he’s picking me up, and my body’s screaming with pain, but I’m yelling that there was a rabbit that was white with brown ears. We go down the street back to the party, and on the lawn next door, finally, is that damn rabbit, sitting there in the grass like nothing was wrong. Reggie stares at it and finally says, "I guess there was a rabbit." Reggie went back to the party to tell everyone we had to go because I sprained my ankle chasing a rabbit, and the best answer had to be Matt's, who said, "Do you mean chasing a rabbit metaphorically?"

So I must have been really out of it by the time I got home, because for the next couple of days, I couldn't find my cellphone until Brian woke me up one night to tell me he just fished my phone out of the washer. It had been in the pocket of my scrubs.

We went to Sprint the next day on my lunch break, and being Sprint (worst in customer service), we waited an hour and a half until we were helped. So I'm trying to find out if there's any way that they can pull my phone numbers from my dead phone, when this big black guy who looked like Bernie Mac starts getting irate. He's asking the girl to get the manager and she tries to tell him that there isn't one on duty. He's mad because there are 15 people waiting in the store, he'd been there for a couple of hours himself, and there wasn't a single salesperson on the floor actually helping anyone (this girl appeared to be "training" the one guy standing at the front of the store taking names of people who came in. Literally, they were just standing there waiting for people to come in, despite the fact that the only other 3 employees I'd seen in my time there had all been in the back for a very long time). So he's getting angry and she's telling him that he doesn't have to be rude. He says it's his perogative if he wants to be rude and there had better be someone out on the floor to help him right away.

Finally this guy comes out and says he's the manager (of course it's gotta be the guy helping me). So the black guy is saying how he's been waiting and the service is awful, and the manager says he's rude and that he should leave. Now the girl is chiming in and telling him, "Just get out." So the guy gets mad, though, he never gets emotional. All of a sudden, he's slammed the computer monitors at the register onto the floor and he's saying, "Do I have your attention NOW?" He grabs display phones and pulls them out of the wall. "Is this what I need to do to get some service around here?" He starts grabbing computer equipment and flinging it off the desks. Sprint employees start coming out of the woodwork--flying out of the backroom, running down the street. One even screeches up in a car. There were only 3 employees there the entire hour and a half I was there (not including the 2 that did nothing but stand by the door and take down names), and suddenly there were about 15 of them. The guy even pointed it out, "Oh now all of a sudden this place is full of Sprint employees." It was pretty ridiculous how all of a sudden there were all these attentive Sprint employees who must have all been on "break."

So the guy's tearing up the store and finally the cops come and arrest him. The guy was smart though, he never threw a punch even though the manager did shove him and try to fight him. A bunch of us customers were milling around because the store had our phones and we couldn't just leave, but the consensus was that, while this guy acted pretty inappropriately, this is the kind of thing that happens when your customer service is ridiculously terrible and your employees are apathetic and rude. This isn't the first time I've seen someone flip out at a Sprint store (I've wanted to shake some of these people myself sometimes), but it's a shame that the guy who flipped was black, so they could write it off as a stereotype. I hope some of the customers write the CEO a letter about this incident the way they said they would. Sprint needs to run a tighter ship.

So needless to say, I'm still without cellphone. When I get a replacement phone, I may not have your numbers so please email me your #'s or if you call and leave a message, please leave a number so I have a way to call you back. At least until my phone stops going straight to voicemail, which will mean I've finally gotten my phone back.

Back from My World Work Tour

So my full-time job (aka, what I do during the day because I find the starving artist bit so trite) has ramped up my responsibilities and required more dedication and time than I've really ever been prepared to offer. Suddenly, it's the high-maintenance mistress who's decided she's madly in love with me and wants to spend the rest of her life with me, at least until I'm 56 and can run away from her with my IRA to the Bahamas. Now I find myself spending 5 days out of the week sleeping in a hotel bed that I suspect would stink of certain unnamed bodily fluids if a housekeeper named Maria didn't drench the linen with the sweet smell of clean. I kid you not. I think the housekeeper has been named Maria for every one of my hotels except one. Anyway, I digress.

The security trade show in San Diego was pretty cool because there were robot guns and bulletproof vehicles and lots of ex-cops named Chuck who wanted to debate the merits of the war. Plus, the new guy we hired used to live in San Diego so every night was a different bar and restaurant to visit.

NACS in Vegas was incredible. This was the trade for the National Association of Convenience Stores. You know those zombie movies where everyone's looting from the supermarkets and AM PM's because it's the end of the world, and you're sitting there like, look at all that shit. I want all that shit. I mean, were you one of those people who used to fantasize obsessively about how you would strategize and maximize your time if you won a shopping spree? Well, I was. And this was a fantasy come true.

Imagine 2 and a half Costcos filled with booths featuring candies, cookies, chips, beef jerky, energy drinks, coffee drinks, slushies, sodas, beer, liquor, condoms, cigarettes, cigars, blunt wrappers, pretzels, pizza, pizza rolls, hot dogs, subs, burritos...everything you can buy at a convenience store. Now imagine some mega-booths set up like mini convenience stores, complete with refrigerated displays, racks of edibles and porn magazines. Now imagine 1:30pm, the very end of the last day of the show, when no exhibitor wants to bring their shit home. Yes, 1:30pm that Wednesday was my dream come true. Suddenly people who were giving away samples by the crumble were throwing bulk boxes of their goods at you screaming, "Take it! Take as much as you want!" Those who flew in to attend the show could just stand and watch as those who drove there (in an SUV like us!) brought out our dolleys and started carting away cases of beer and energy drinks. At 1:30pm, people were running through the aisles, grabbing anything that wasn't bolted down and stuffing them into ultra-large shopping bags provided by Coke with anything and everything, whether they really needed it or not (ie my 24-count display pack of tiny blue fake-Viagra. I have no idea what I'll ever do with that). Thankfully, Reggie had driven in the night before so we could buy a display tub from one of the exhibitors for our lemonade, and he had plenty of room left in his truck for all of our booty. We got about 4 24-count cases of Sol, Tecate, Heineken, Dos Equis and a flat of Monster Energy Drink. We got entire bags of beef jerky, candy, chips, cookies, energy bars and flavored cigars. Overall, it was enough stuff to cover the entire floor of my bedroom. When we got back, threw a football party that looked like we robbed a 7-11.

It wasn't so much about the stuff, since most of that junk, other than the invidual servings of soy milk and energy bars, I won't touch on any given day. But it was just about fulfilling that shopping spree fantasy, of being able to run through a place filled with all this stuff, and being able to take whatever you wanted. It's bizarre, but it was a really fulfilling high to have that experience. And I also won my coworker's son a skateboard by lasso-ing a Snapelope at the Slim Jim booth so that was solid.

Last week found me on this crazy midwest tour that involved going to 5 states in 3 days to showcase our new technology. My boss and I left on the red-eye to Chicago on Sunday night, arrived at 5am and had 4 meetings back to back to back before leaving on the last flight out to Indianapolis. Of course, because we were leaving from O'Hare and it was storming, our flight got delayed by 3 and a half hours and we didn't get into our hotel until 3am. We got up at 7 the next morning to head to our next meeting in Indianapolis, then drove to Dayton, Ohio for an afternoon meeting. We flew out to Iowa via Minneapolis where we got in just before 1am. I ended up going through my work email until 3am. I was given one of those handicap access rooms where the shower isn't partitioned from the bathroom by a tub. Usually those shower floors slope towards the drain or have long curtains to contain the water, but apparently, the Marriott in Davenport didn't consider these things. So at 7am, I turn on the shower, go into my room to grab some clothes, come back in to suddenly find myself wide awake and on the floor, having landed hard on my butt. In the minute that I was gone, the water from the shower had drenched the bathroom floor. This was pretty scary for me as, falling isn't a sensation you expect when you're half asleep, and I had fallen close enough to the toilet to slam my hand against the seat and then the floor below it. I was pretty grossed out by having touched a hotel toilet, but I was pretty scared at the thought of how, if I had landed just a little bit differently, I could have easily hit my head on the toilet and had a serious accident.

We headed out to our first meeting where the guy chose to completely ignore me and small talk with my boss despite the fact that I'm actually an executive in our company and I was making a one-on-one presentation to him. Caveman. We rushed to the airport straight from that meeting to catch a flight back to Minneapolis for 2 more afternoon meetings, before taking a late flight back to LA.

Highlights of the trip were: Pre-negotiating a big salary for next year; seeing the Mall of America; bonding with my boss.
Lowlights: You really can't wash your hands enough after you've touched the underside of a hotel toilet.

I'll tell you...there is nothing better than sleeping in your own bed after having been away for so long.

For anyone who's going to be traveling any time soon, the new liquids that you can carry-on rules are somewhat tricky. Just know that if you're going to carry on liquids or gels, the containers themselves have to be no more than 3 ounces, so even if you have a larger bottle but only filled half of it, it's going to get taken away. You should either check your things in, or make sure you buy empty bottles whose capacity are clearly marked as being 3 oz or under and put your things in there. I had SO many things taken away because my boss insisted on not checking in luggage. What was weird was that no airport was consistent. At almost every airport, they found something else to take away.

Last week we had the screening from Pieces which went really well. Many thanks to everyone who came out and an apology to those who didn't get the evite. Since I was traveling the week before, I didn't realize that so many people hadn't gotten the evite until about the day before and the day of. It turned out that most of the crew didn't know about the screening which is pretty awful.

In other news, TR Knight (George O'Malley) got outed by a fight on the set of Grey's Anatomy. For those who are not familiar with ChokeGate, Isaiah Washington got in a fight with Patrick Dempsey and made reference to a gay castmate. Easy deduction would lead to the conclusion that TR Knight was the cast member in question, which promptly led to his releasing a statement about his sexual orientation and his hoping that his sexual orientation wasn't the most interesting thing about him. It's pretty sad how things came about, how TR was forced to make an announcement that he wasn't necessarily ready to make or wanted to make. But the big thing for me is that Isaiah Washington is quoted as calling TR a faggot, which I think is just as bad as if Patrick Dempsey had called Isaiah the N word. It's incredibly offensive and ignorant, and as I write this, the show's PR department is spinning its little heart out over this. But if a white actor had called a black actor the N word, there would be outrage and that actor would very likely be out of a job. Meanwhile, the F word and a cast member's privacy violated gets buried. Sucks how things can turn out. Then again, I don't claim to be close to the situation and to know the truth of it, but it is intriguing. I hope that TR's role on the show doesn't suffer, and that they let his character continue and evolve naturally the way he has so far, rather than letting the fact that he's a gay actor affect it. George is one of the best, most endearing characters on TV right now, and I'd like to see him continue his development unhindered.

Lastly, Kaiser Permanente sucks. SUCKS. SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS. I want Blue Cross back.