Heretic!

I'm a nerd, whatever.

the likeness is uncanny.

possible spoilers.

Out of the Blue

My oldest friend, sister person Nandi just returned from South America, where she took pictures of Lamas and saw great old European buildings and beautiful woman making shawls and ate delicious food. During college she lived in Amsterdam for two years with her now husband, teaching English. They travelled to Greece, Thailand, all of Europe. Her parents are the kind of people who believe travel is important and support things like using student loans and credit cards to achieve valuable life experiences. It is not that my parents don't value these things, but every time i had a chance to travel, I got in my own way. The first summer after high school I spent in New York. It was here that I was the most optimistic about the future I've ever been. I was 19, young, slim as a green bean- not that that matters, but I remember feeling light and in turn this made me feel free and untethered. I would skip jump, walk hop to doors and twirl on subway poles and laugh and lean forward and swing back while talking. I was so so happy. It was decided- after much begging- that the next summer I could go to Europe. My father supported the idea and my mom was excited for me. But the next summer I didn't go. I spent the next twelve months after my return, pardon my french, fucking up in the most royal ways imaginable. To be fair, most of this behavior was reactionary, but still, everything turned into a three year blur that only started to clear up in 2006. But before that there was money spent on lawyers, rehab, replacing crashed cars. Going abroad got pushed to the back on the list of important things. Once in New York, I would open credit cards and fly home to visit my boyfriend. Three credit cards maxed out on flying to Long Beach, when I could have flown to Mexico City, or Paris or Japan.
And now I find myself 30, living mere miles from where I grew up. I support myself and it feels good, I like paying my own bills, and aside from one dreadful month this past summer, have been doing so since I was 26. A steady diet of hustling and babysitting. But now in hindsight, I have moments of regret. I of course can still travel, and i will, but not in the way I first imagined in high school, when I bought French maps and pasted pictures in my journal of the Eiffel Tower. If I were to travel tomorrow, I don't know if I would go to Paris, most likely I would visit Berlin, Morocco or Barcelona, or Japan, first. And of course I can still open a new credit card and just go, and deal with it later upon my return. And who knows I still might. But right now I just want to get my feet planted firmly on the ground.
I remember before I went to college I had lots of shame about not having gone, and in all reality, starting college at 23 is nothing to be embarrassed about, but at the time, I felt old, dirty and washed up. It's completely ridiculous if I think about it now. But I don't want to feel that way about travelling. I will leave the country when I'm supposed to. Most likely alone. As I find that I enjoy things best when I can be quiet and look in my own particular way, without the shadow of company. I went to the California Community College job fair last weekend and was told that I need to get a PHD if I am going to be a serious competitor in the college teaching job market. I had already silently conceded to this about a month ago and have decided to apply next fall. But that makes five more years. I can't say where I will be at 35, nor do I want to. I do know that although I regret some of my past decisions, they have all inevitably led me to where I am today. And no matter what anyone says about me, or accuses me of, I know I am a hard worker. I am moments away from achieving my ultimate dream, and that is a powerful awesome feeling that I know I owe to myself, no one else. And I own it. Maybe that will take me overseas. Maybe I am meant to experience Europe on a book tour. Who knows. Eye on the prize. Through all the muck and headaches, I have always had my eye on the prize. You should too.

Yoga handstands in Peru. Nandi is the bomb.

The Beets Go On

The Beets Rule. Nick is really good friends with these doods and they are awesome.

If you live in New York you should see them live. It's actually pretty amazing/epic how awful they are- sorry Nick- live. But it's so sloppy it comes back around to genius.
They make cool music videos like the one above, and this one:

Anyway, I don't know how old the lead singer kid is and i don't want to know, he's hot and looks 19 and spazzy and zonked out on being 19. Which I'm grooving on.
They also have an 'official artist' Matt Volz who is certifiably gifted and makes rad drawings like this:



It looks like a cross between Lynda Barry's Ernie Pooks Comeek- which I have been obsessed with since I was kid- and the Malaysian Lat comics, by Lat, that I have also loved since I was a kid. So basically I love this Matt Volz guy. Who coincidentally is friends with my first roommate ever, Michell Matson, who is the creator of the zine Hands On and most importantly an incredible artist who makes stuff like this:




Michelle is a beauty. And actually, our third roommate Jaqueline, has turned into a pretty successful photographer. You can visit her blog here click me!. So I guess, go us!

It's a small Brooklyn after all.

A Few Good Men

Nick made Latkes for Hanukkah!



I am a rich girl.

Little My

From the Moomins. Daniel thinks i look like her now.

Satellite of Love

Heather n Earl. Ripped from C-dogs facebook.

So Fresh and So Clean

Me in highschool. 1996.

Weird Like Us by Ann Powers is AMAZING. If you haven't read it you should. It's beautiful. Ann is just such an incredible, moving, vivid writer. I really really love having people to admire. It feels nice, right? Don't you love having little stars in the sky to dream on? It's a big conversation, through yourself into it!

Woah!

this happened, i went. my mom, god bless her.

1 plus 1 equals too cool for everyone else!

I'm not saying they saved the best for last, but all I'm going to say is that my birthday season of friends is over until June.
Happy Birthday Hee Haw. In the words of grumpy Jack Nicholson to bitchy Helen Hunt in that piece of garbage movie As Good as it Gets, 'You complete me.' Or was that Jerry Maquire?


bitching

bowling

gettin hiiiigh- in the old days of course-

rocking

dancing

philosophising

you make everything better.
ps. your perfect pear and my perfect apple made one hell of a beach fruit salad.

River of Slime

I've been thinking a lot about Led Zeppelin lately- I love Led Zeppelin- and of high school, about the 90's. I'm writing a book you see. That's when it takes place. I might need an intern soon, actually, but that's for another post, another day. And the thing i've come up with is that I have always mourned the past during the present, and that my life in a big way has been spent worrying about the things that are happening while I'm away doing something else, the things that will never be, how things have changed, and the people I'll never see again. But then I become so overwhelmed i throw up my hands and do nothing. Forever trapped in an endless cycle of music listening and mourning. I've had four therapists and one psychiatrist since I was 13 and I had to make sense of that on my own. I'll tell you what I miss so badly, and it's been palatable as of late- I've strangely been around old friends from high school- I miss getting stoned and deliberately saying 'no' no i will not be an active participant in my life. I miss living in my room in my moms house and closing the door and just sinking into my bed to watch TV. It's true what the old folks say, youth is wasted on the young. My mind is a hive of activity for which I can't seem to wrap my arms around. This person I always thought I was, I deep down knew I always wasn't. I'm an asshole. But, I'm not at all. Not all the time. I help strangers every day, I care more about the man who doesn't speak English at the train station, making sure he gets his ticket and gets on safe, even missing my own train to make sure he catches his, than I do about meeting a friend on time for lunch. Because that friend will undoubtedly expect something from me. But that man, he expected nothing. My dad did this shit all the time, my mom always rails at me for being like my dad. I always feel like I'm being left but really, I always do the leaving. My dad once pulled over to pull two fighting men apart, and I watched from the pick up truck, frightened shocked, as he protected the smaller man. My white as white can be dad, pulling apart these two tough looking brown dudes, so that they might get home okay. He made sure each one left separately, who knows what happened later, but in that moment, everything was okay. And then he came home and my mom and him railed at each other. One time he pulled over and pulled a fire extinguisher from the truck and put out another car on fire, on the freeway. Then he would disappear for three days with no word. How he could be so kind and such an ass fuck, I now completely understand. It's easier. lighter, simpler. I want to float through life sometimes that way on a wave of marijuana smoke. I always thought when I'd get certain things I'd be content; published, the perfect boyfriend, a license, whatever, but all I want is the next publication, my boyfriend annoys me, I'm now afraid to drive. I always thought I'd want to birth a baby, but I find myself visiting the CA adoption websites and looking at the faces of twelve year olds and sobbing and it somehow seems more tangible, desirable, than the alternative. I want a house, on a hill that belongs to me, and has built ins. Sometimes when I see an open house sign I stop and go inside. There are lots of them in Highland Park these days. And I take the paper from the real estate agent and I think, this is what I really want. My own home, with my adoptive child. The two of us making our own way in the world, separate but together, and we could get Thai takeout and rent videos and go to museums and get frustrated with homework and argue and then read quietly together in the living room on Sunday, in craftsman chairs, the Times in our lap, and my whole body feels sunny and warm and I can see it and by the time I get back to the car, I've painted and decorated the entire thing in my head. 2011, you're a funny one.
I am falling out of love with so many things it hurts, I am falling out of love with certain aspects of who I am and people, too, of course. And its painful and i cry and I don't want to face these things. But there it is, we are all shitty humans who claw and smell and fight and have golden voices and then one day, don't. I am a morbid, alcoholic, asshole, writer. And no matter how much I cover it up with jokes and smiles and bursts of manic love, I am no more than a not yet burned out Bukowski, or Fante, or Woolf. I am a curmudgeon, I like to be alone, I don't think your jokes are funny, I think you are a racist, I am not easy going, I am tough to love, hard to know and I am suspicious and paranoid and impatient. But, I put the booze on hold five years ago next month, wooo hoo, and the weed is just a memory and I like clothes and movies and music, of course. I love to dance and laugh and sing when I have a karaoke mic in my face. But underneath I am like the sewers of Manhattan in Ghostbusters two- bwauhaha- waiting for one negative vibe too many to send me over the edge. I just, and this is why I hate the internet now, it's gotten too big and this is why I don't want my mom reading my fucking blog and she goes, 'but everyone else can read it, it's all over the internet, I don't understand', everyone else, mom, might as well be nobody else, they are strangers and I don't know them, and they only know me here, and those who do know me, at parties, don't walk up to my face and say, 'hey, i read you're depressed' and so forth and so on and all I want is Led Zeppelin. But you know what I don't do? Slut shame, you know why? Cos sometimes I really wish I was still a slut. Ladies, ladies, that is the one thing we should honestly stop doing, the slut shaming is the worst. Really, the zits pits. And honestly, we should all mind our own damn business anyway. Wear whatever you want, fuck who you please, bite your nails and hike up your skirt, laugh at his jokes when they aren't funny, love that bag from forever 21 and keep it full of makeup and small mirrors. For real, no joke, I love you young lady I don't even know. You are free and alive. Just put a condom on it. I don't give a FUCK. Oh look at me, look at me, so internet tuff.

On a completely different side note, this is Tom Hanks son, Chet Haze, and he is a white rapper:

AMAZING.
Tom Hanks, other son, Colin, was in one of my favorite movies, the brilliant piece of cinema, Orange County. Colin looks like this:

He's a dream, isn't he? Anyway, I was like, whats up, mang, Tom Hanks is such a rubber nose, where are all these hot genes he's been storing? And then I googled young t. hanks, because when I became acquainted with him was during the Joe vs. the Volcano and Turner and Hooch, era, I'm a little too young for Bosom Buddies- which even later when I saw re-runs he was in drag and not an opportune way to establish hotness- but low and behold I found this:

Well, color me shocked cos Tom Hanks was hot! I feel like I've been living in the dark this entire time.

Crazy In Love- With a Birthday Girl!

Charlotte is a goddess. She makes the sun shine through the rain. She makes feet happy that they can dance. She makes love easy and familiar and kind and gentle and funny and wonderful. Happy Birthday, Charo, I wuv ru!





Charlotte with a squirrel.
ps. I will marry you in a Panama wedding on a lunar eclipse and Wilma Jane and a sloth will officiate and Nick and Andrew can carry Fats, Tut, Pants, and Marlowe to our beach hut, shut the door after they drop them off and walk away forever into the sunset never to be seen from by the likes of us again. I marry you, I marry you, I marry you!

Little Darlings

My dad loves this song.

I talk about my moms family a lot, but my dad, in all honesty, is pretty great too. Here I am with my dad and grandma last year. They are both amazing people that I love. I think we all look nice here. Were from Los Angeles. That's all.

SECRET SHOP!

The amazing, beautiful, talented Kitty Jensen will be setting up a Secret Shop, Pop Up at Space 15 Twenty for the month of January.
January 8th, Anna Oxygen, Becky Stark, Mira and the Finches will be playing a show to celebrate! Yay! That's actually a kick ass lineup now that I look at it closer. Holy fuck, if you can you should go to this show. Anyhow, its at Space 15 Twenty, January 8th from 3- 7 pm, come, shop and find some finds and enjoy the festivities! click here for address and details.




And if you don't go for the clothes, go for Kitty, cos she's a gem! Sadly though, Ira won't be there.

Conflict of Interest?

Seriously, did Matt Le Blanc just look way better holding a bottle than other actors? Is the bottle a metaphor for the wang? Who knows, but apparently Matt can't advertise anything that isn't cylinder shaped and filled with refreshment and or 'goodness.' He also seems to not mind the 'wait.'

Feliz Coupleanos, Paulito!

Paul, you've got my love locked down. Paul is the sweetest, most talented, kindest, funniest, love ever. You are a gentle, subtle human who's charms and secrets come with trust and time, but once you get them they are ten fold and worth the wait! Being friends with you is like always finding the perfect potted plant at the OSH garden center and having it bloom brilliant colors for weeks to come. Happy birthday in this New Year!