The Most Shocking News Ever!

According to a "news" story today: "Intelligence has nothing to do with wealth, according to a US study published Tuesday which found that people with below average smarts were just as wealthy as those with higher IQ scores."

Have these people been living in caves and not seen anyone with money recently?

On the Subject of Subject

I can't help but think this year is supposed to be one of extremes--of pushing myself way outside the lines that had been drawn around me. But apparently it's also the year of me being sick.

Can you fucking believe it?

I woke up Monday AM and felt disgusting--lethargic, congested, scratchy throat. I looked at myself in the mirror (something I don't do a lot of I admit), and I looked just thrashed. How the hell did that happen in 8 hours? I felt fine on Sat. night watching "Flowers in the Attic" and "Hercules in New York" (though, admittedly, both movies would make anyone feel sick, I suppose).

I gave it a day and today I woke up the same way. "Fuck this," I thought. "I am getting my ass some drugs."

So I call Kaiser and my doctor is unavailable, but I can easily get in to see another if I like.

"Please," I tell the woman on the phone.

"OK, well Dr. ------ is available at 3:10 p.m."

"Excuse me? What was his name?"

She repeats it.

"I'm sorry. I know I am not feeling well, but can you spell it for me?" I hate to say it, but I thought maybe her accent was just making me unable to understand.

"Of course. It's S-u-b-j-e-c-t."

"Dr. Subject." I say it and don't quite believe I am saying it.

"That's correct."

"Really?" I ask.

She doesn't laugh. "Yes."

"OK, Dr. Subject it is."

I thought of how this would be the perfect name for a study aid at Sylvan Learning Center, or the character to whom you can ask any question in a Sex Ed class without shame.

By the time I made it to the office, I was feeling worse. My sinuses killing me, my throat raw. I knew I had a sinus infection, and began to suspect I've had it all along.

Dr. Subject was totally normal looking. Maybe a tad short. Sensible black shoes. A nice way of asking questions. But then he pointed that weird light instrument up my nose and all he said was "Oh, my."

Bingo.

He asked me if I had sinus pressure, but I am never really sure what's out of the ordinary since I have allergies and my life is spent oscillating between more congested and less congested. The whole "pressure" question means nothing to me at this point.

"Tell me, Dr. Subject..." I wanted to begin, but couldn't will myself to do it.

Instead I just said, "So, this is something I've possibly had all along, isn't it?"

"Possibly. Why didn't you come in before?"

Well, good question, Dr. Subject. I don't know. Because I'd have nothing to complain about on my blog? I had no answer.

But here I am 6 hours later starting a 10-day course of a hefty dose of antibiotics, armed with nasal spray, Sudafed, and Claritin. I'm going to decongest everyone and everything within a 5-mile radius at this point.

I can't wait to have my energy back. The stomach ache from the Amoxicilin will be worth it.

At Midnight, a Memory

Late Sunday night: It starts to rain and I am lying under an open window, looking up at the foliage outside, quiet, almost reverent, just listening. I think of the smell of water coming off of fir trees in Oregon, the damp earth and salt air near the ocean, the persistent light hiss of water filtering through all the trees I'd stare at on car rides through the mountains. I've missed the rain, the sound of water. I close my eyes and think about it. I start to laugh because I feel a drop on my face, bouncing through the screen on the window and it surprises me. But I don't move. I hear myself breathing. I listen to Ryan. We both say we'd forgotten what the rain sounds like. I think I've forgotten how much of my life is tied to this sound--people, places, smells, discoveries. I wish it could rain just a little every night so I could fall asleep listening and remembering.

I Have to Be in Touch With Everyone, All the Time

Um...I don't have a BlackBerry, so maybe I am just being a jerk with this post, but really, if service goes out for 10 hours (which it did recently for 5 million BlackBerry users), can't you just thank your stars that it's 10 hours in which you don't have to CONSTANTLY BE IN TOUCH WITH EVERYONE...?

I'm, frankly, a bit worried about how flipped out everyone gets when any little thing goes wrong with their cell phone, BlackBerry, what have you. Take this quote from the NY Times article on the BB service outage:

Elaine Del Rossi, chief sales officer for HTH Worldwide, an insurance company, reacted to the severed electronic leash with several panicked calls to her office in the belief that the company e-mail system was down.

"I quit smoking 28 years ago," she said, "and that was easier than being without my BlackBerry."

OK, that's just sad.

The article goes on to detail people who freely admit about how completely flipped out they were by this service disruption, panicking, running around their hotel rooms like the building was on fire. A: I love that the NY Times had to run a huge feature on this; B: Get a life, people.

Read a book.

Go see some art.

Go volunteer somewhere.

Catch up on your cleaning.

Listen to some music.

Watch TV.

I don't care. Just do something other than stare at your handheld idiot box with your drool forming at the edges of your open mouth. If you can't handle a BlackBerry blackout, it doesn't exactly bode well for the rest of us when a real tragedy or natural disaster occurs.

Triangles vs. Charm School

What a weird week--like existentially weird. Everything has just kind of spiraled...not downward exactly. Maybe it's more like sideways. Is there some planetary alignment issue I need to know about? Insomnia, coupled with the shootings in Virginia and the fact someone swiped the back bumper of my car in the parking lot at work (and unhinged the bumper, costing me, oh, $1,000) have just kind of stacked on top of each other. I've felt out of sorts. And I looked at the calendar and kind of freaked out that it was April 19th. How did that happen?

Thank god Wednesday brought "Top Model" and Lesley forcing me to sit through "The Flavor of Love Girls go to Charm School," or whatever that show is called (and which Mo'Nique hosts; she's fabulous). At first, it felt like someone had thrown a feral cat at my face and it was clawing my eyes out, but by the time these trashy ladies were camping in the Angeles National Forest and having nervous breakdowns, I was completely hooked. Almost as hooked as I now am on "Instant Beauty Pageant," which I stumbled across at Ryan's (this is why I do not have cable!) and by which I was instantly entranced. Maybe you've seen it: The hosts find women at malls around the country and give them 3 hours to get ready to be in a beauty pageant, which most of them think is kind of dumb at first, but then they become prima donna pitches competing for (get this), a $1,500 crown (which is made of cubic zirconia and shown sitting on a fraying blue silk pillow) and a couple of nights in some crappy hotel in Acapulco or something like that--some place where The Love Boat always docked.

Someone keep me away from the TV, please.

Then again, TV is the only thing so far this week that seems to be keeping me feeling sane. Studying for the GRE certainly isn't. God I hate antonyms. There. I said it. I then glanced at the math section of my book I am using and my eyes literally crossed. Oh, geometry, how I've always hated you. And who the fuck cares about the dimensions of an Isoceles triangle? If you're one of them, I can't wait to never talk to you again.

The flip side there (and don't bring this up with me in person, as I'll deny I said this) is that I miss studying like this. Maybe because I get to be alone and sit in a quiet room and it's not about convincing media to write about something. But it's peaceful, if distracting in a brain-freeze kind of way.

There's too much to do today and tomorrow. I have to drive to hell and gone North Hollywood (like out near the train tracks) to get my car appraised today. Fun. That should yield a story of some sort, don't you think?

What Sucks and Why

I usually hate getting hungry at midnight for something that's not within easy reach, but after watching "Dolly: Live in London" with Ryan and enjoying "Two Doors Down" and "Jolene"--as well as Dolly's super-'80s press conference Q&A--we both decided we needed cookies and milk and decamped to Pavilions to find something with no corn syrup (me being the boy in the bubble and having an allergy to corn, etc.).

As we wandered into the "Snack Time" aisle (yes, that's what it was called), I saw a woman who I knew instantly was a big piece of crazy. She was stooped over scanning the rows of cookies and her shopping cart was full of Kleenex, yogurt, tissue paper, and other incongruous things. She looked normal-ish: too much makeup, jeans, shirt, reading glasses, albeit reeking of bad perfume. As we stood there reading the ingredient list of Nutter Butters she turned to us and said very loudly, "Do you guys see Mallomars anywhere?" More jolting than the question was the almost New Jersey accent in which it was uttered.

I, of course, went into shutdown mode, refusing to look at her for fear of erupting in laughter and because she was utterly annoying. Ryan was nicer and said, "Um, no. But the packaging is really distinctive, so you should see them fairly easily." And then all 3 of us were scanning for Mallomars. We got caught up in the hunt for a moment before silently agreeing to leave the aisle and head over to the refrigerated cookie dough.

Even after we got over there we could hear her squawking to anyone she saw, "Have you seen the Mallomars?" It literally gave me a chill and Ryan started imitating her a bit too loudly, which was cracking me up as we looked at Nestle Tollhouse cookie dough.

Finally finding something I could eat, we grabbed milk and went to the checkout aisle and Mallomar Lady appeared behind us with her weird shopping cart bumping up against me. As we started our transaction, she leaned in toward the checker and asked, "So, are you guys out of ice!?" (loudly, again). Ryan looked at me and I just stared at him like I'd lost all ability to do anything.

The checker responded, "Yes, we are."

Mallomar Lady responded swiftly: "Well, that fuckin' sucks!"

I wanted to turn and look at her, but I couldn't. We paid and briskly walked out of the store. I looked at Ryan and asked, "Who buys Mallomars and ice at midnight?" He didn't have an answer, and I guess I didn't expect him to. But we both had a nice new catchphrase to use at will, which we did for the next hour: "Well, that fuckin' sucks!"

But the cookies didn't.

My Romantic Evening, Courtesy of the LA DWP

I'm all for a romantic evening full of candlelight, but when said evening is actually dictated by the LA DWP and the fact that wind of about 35 mph managed to knock out power to 150,000...well, it doesn't feel so special. In fact, you kind of start to wonder why the L.A. power grid is so fragile. It rains. The lights go out. It's windy. The lights go out. It's like the electricity would go out if you got mad at the lights in your house and thought bad thoughts about them.

Steve was home by the time I got home and was half-asleep on the couch, an LA DWP bill in front of him--clearly a sign he was trying to find out what was going on and couldn't.

We decided to use the darkness as an excuse to go have dinner across town in Silverlake at one of my fave Thai places. How nice to have a dinner and catch up with my friend, right? Well, halfway through appetizers, all the lights went out.

"Which restaurant do you want to go to next?" I asked him.

Fine. No, no, it's OK, LA DWP. I was still a believer in you at this point. I felt in my heart that your gumption and can-do attitude would save the evening.

So, we hit Trader Joe's and naively bought food and take it home, quickly opening the fridge to grab stuff, make salads and drink beer by candlelight. And, really, our apt. looks amazing by candlelight. I prefer it, in fact. And it was SO quiet. No washing machine, no humming refrigerator, no TV, no computer. I was enjoying it. And then 11 pm rolls around and still no lights. I called the DWP number on the bill to get a recording that literally said "Due to the volume of power outages, we have no estimated time for when power will be restored. We apologize for the inconvenience. To find out more, visit our Web site..."

Um, sure, I'll visit your Web site--WHEN MY POWER IS BACK ON.

I felt like the DWP was that cute guy that wouldn't call you back after a date; it just all seemed so ridiculous. I even had Lesley on her computer on the phone with me looking up "Wind + Los Angeles" on Google. We ironically enough, got an article from the Daily Breeze all about THE WIND and how the places affected were x, y, and z, but not Koreatown apparently.

Anyway, so Steve and I talk some more and then it's 12 am and he goes to bed, me close behind. I snuggle into the blankets and think of breakfast, only to wake up and have the lights STILL out. Are you fucking kidding me? It's now been 20 hours.

What is up, DWP? Really, did an errant branch wipe out power to that many people? And how do you construct your electrical system so that WIND, which is a mainstay of living in L.A., always seems to casually blow up transformers while you sit there utterly stupefied?

I just know my power still won't be on when I get home.

Which means I'll have to throw away all my food by candlelight.

'One of the Side Effects Is Death'

So I am STILL completely congested. And lord knows, I blow my nose diligently enough and take my antihistamines at bedtime, and this snot will just not go away. I am sure my co-workers love the sound of me honking away in my office.

Anyway, I take off to go get my allergy shots today at lunch. I kind of dread them, though they do always make me feel better in the end. The time I came in February, however, I had what is known as a systemic reaction to the three shots I have been getting on a maintenance dose for months upon months. My eyes nearly swelled shut, I was dizzy and nauseated, and all sorts of general unpleasantness. In the exact science of the medical world, they decided this meant my dosage was too high and the allergist cut it back.

OK, fine, fewer allergens injected into my bloodstream. I can handle that.

But today, a woman I don't know very well is giving me my shots and she appraises me as I approach the counter in the allergy office at Kaiser.

"How are you?" she asks.

"Good," I say. "Getting over a cold so a bit congested but fine..."

She interrupts: "How congested? What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing. Like I said, it was just a cold. I'm fine."

She looks me over, hand on her hip. "Well, we can't give you a shot if you don't feel good."

"I feel fine. Just congested."

Stares. Beat. "'Cause you already had one systemic reaction. You get another and we gonna stop the shots."

"Oh," I say. "I didn't know that."

She looks at me. "So if you're sick..."

"I am not sick. I am done being sick."

"All right. But you know... one of the side effects of these reactions is death."

We stare at each other for a second.

"I'm just keepin' it real," she explains.

I am not sure what to say? Do I get a shot that ultimately makes me feel better and yet might kill me, or do I just say "In the spirit of keeping it real, then, I'm outta here"?

I debate this for a few seconds, unsure what I should actually do. I hadn't known I could keel over and die from having tree and grass pollen injected into me. It seemed so innocuous until now. Now I have to play God with my self and think that maybe by allowing this woman to give me 3 shots, I may be self-administering some lethal injection.

I sigh and roll up my t-shirt sleeve, revealing my tattoos, and turn to her: "Well, I guess we'll have to see what happens," I proclaim too happily.

She looks annoyed and then gives me the worst shot I've had in a while. My arm still hurts like hell. But I have not keeled over. My eyes are not swelled shut. I am
not nauseated.

Death: 0
Me: 1

In Spite Of

I know I should be concerned it's been so damn dry in California, that the world is warming, that there was a raging fire near Hollywood yesterday (that I could see with so much clarity from work), and just general other environmental/social issues we are all facing right now, but you know what? It's sunny and 75 degrees. I woke up feeling better, rested, happy. I love spring in Los Angeles. And I registered for the GRE today: D Day is July 28, 2007. And even that made me excited. I like a challenge.

I'll go back to fretting tomorrow, I promise.

I Think I'm Gonna Be Sick

...oh, wait, I am! AGAIN.

Fuck.

Woke up today with a massive head cold. First that crazy fever. Now this. It's almost resurrecting my hypochondriac sensibility, which had taken me 20 years to shake.

Of course, I could just be sick because I got the Hilary Duff CD sent to me in the mail with this press release (excerpts below):

"Dignity isn't for sale. It comes from within. Hilary Duff has always carried herself with dignity, from her 2001 TV debut starring in "Lizzy Maguire," through big screen hits like "Cinderella Story" and "Cheaper by The Dozen" ...

At 19, Hilary has matured into a sophisticated singer and songwriter. Hilary has co-written all the songs on "Dignity", [misuse of comma is in the release] always aiming high and ultimately creating an album of depth and consequence...

Her music--and upcoming tour--remain front and center these days. And that's just how she wants it. Hilary Duff has always connected closely with her audience. Now, she's saying more--much more than ever, and with dignity--with her music."

I mean, that last sentence alone... jesus christ. Where do I start? Where's the bucket to keep next to my bed?

And yet, Hilary's smug--albeit DIGNIFIED--face is staring at me from my desktop and I feel like I did something to deserve this. Maybe it's penance and I need to find out what I did wrong.

There's little else to tell, really. The end of the month means mania at work, which was reflected in the weather today, as winds raged and hail came down and I tripped over tree branches..briefly interrupted to stare at some cute guy working on the roof of my office building. Oh, the weakness for my blue-collar brethren.

It's 9 p.m. and I feel like I've been up for days. Time to put Ms. Dignity into my "to sell" pile, pay some bills, and call it a night.

Is This What It's Come To?

I couldn't believe I was actually asking Tim if he wanted me to pay for a "day of beauty" for his birthday. Manicure, pedicure, waxing if he so desires.

Is this what I do for people's birthdays now?

Well, apparently, yes.

What I love so much about Tim, though, is that he was totally into it. Bless him.

I guess it's a sign of real friendship when your friend looks you in the eye and says what basically equates to: "So, how's about we both go fag out in a salon and I pay to have hair removed from your unwanted places? Happy fuckin' birthday, man!"

And honestly, I can't wait either. I think I need a little pampering myself.

What a Fever of 103 Hath Wrought

In 1995, I swore I would never return to academia.

I toyed briefly with the thought of grad school, and then seemed to shock some people by not going. I guess I always seemed the type. At least an MFA, said one of them. I balked.

I had been so sucked dry by Bennington that I just could not imagine school continuing past what I referred to as the 16th grade. I also couldn't imagine "tests" and having to be judged on some arbitrary numerical system that told me that what I created was an "A," "B," and so on.

Then why the hell am I sitting in Los Angeles at the age of 33 considering that I should indeed go to grad school?

Well, I could draw a flow chart or something, but it wouldn't do you any good. The serpentine path would make no sense. And the majority of it revolves around my fascination with death, design, and maps--like so many other people's dreams, I am sure.

I've been beating myself up for a while on this stalled death book. I write a paragraph; I erase a paragraph. I write a page; I erase 50% of it. I stare at the computer; I read the news on every Web site I can find.

And then, over the last few months, it's really dawned on me as I struggle with a variety of things that vaguely relate to my "purpose" or whatever you want to call it--the invisible pull toward something. I have always known writing will factor in there somewhere, but I can't try to make my living that way. And yet, there's death... sitting there, popping up around me in ways I am sometimes unaware of until I read the pages I've written.

Last weekend, I was quite ill--a fever of 103 that literally had me flat on my back, sweating buckets, shivering, crawling to the bathroom to fill my water bottle, too tired to make it downstairs to the kitchen. And in the midst of that fever, I had a flashback to my father's illness, to the moments when he could do nothing but look at my mother and I from bed, his whole face betraying the labor his body was enduring.

I hate to say I had an epiphany. I am not sure I believe in them. But I sat there in my sweaty stupor unraveling everything that had seemed like a giant knot two days prior, including what had been gnawing at me about death: I simply hated the way, after my father died, I was expected to stand in a sterile national cemetery and look down at a simple brass plaque on the ground, like thousands upon thousands of others, and remember him. In that context, he became no one to me. I couldn't remember anything--none of his jokes, his long legs in his shorts he wore to play soccer, his incredibly lanky frame stuffed into a Volkswagen Beetle.

So with my fever still raging, I began looking up cemeteries around the country that perform so-called "natural burial." In short, these spaces are more like parks or land preserves--with plants, trees, animals--in which un-embalmed bodies or cremains are buried, perhaps marked by a rock, some other natural form or object that can be engraved, and left in a space that can be enjoyed by the living as a beautiful sanctuary, a park, a befitting place in which to remember someone.

The one I fell in love with is near Syracuse, NY, one of maybe 5 in the entire country that stay true to this philosophy. It was everything the cemetery where my father is buried was not. Instead of careful manicured, pesticide-fed greenery made banal by row after row of headstones and markers, pinwheeels, vases of flowers, this was somewhat wild, peaceful, and yet carefully considered.

And why aren't there more of these spaces in the world? Why are we so fucking hung up on pumping bodies full of chemicals, throwing them in hardwood caskets (that help essentially cut down forests) with steel, brass, and bronze fittings and lowering them into the ground, chock full of pictures, jewelry, and gaudy dresses? How much does the funeral industry (which is essentially a handful of major companies--akin to Wal Mart) brainwash us into thinking the best way to remember a loved one is to spend $10,000 at least to never see them "dead" and throw them in the ground of a fake, lifeless place?

Yes, I know. A fever. 103 degrees. Delirious. And yet, I've felt this way for a while.

I just never suspected I could actually do anything about it.

Hence the word I had avoided for 12 years: school. Could I combine, say, urban planning, landscape design, environmental studies, and sociology and study ways to build more and more natural cemeteries? Can I possibly convince some people that honoring the people who pass away in our lives should include more than a cheap-looking plot in a corporate-run cemetery?

The spark has been illuminated fully.

I am not sure what's next. But I feel like there's some elemental truth to this idea for me. It's as if it's inescapable. I never wanted to admit that I thought I was destined to do something that would help others. After all, I tend to hate most people. But there's that optimist in me. We can always learn, right?

And I can apparently entertain the idea of an academic pulse existing past the 16th grade.

Lonely Is as Lonely Does

I decided since I am half brain-dead I should just title entries based on lyrics of songs I am listening to when I post. This one is from the song "Fish" by Throwing Muses, which (yikes!) is 20 years old now. My favorite lines in the whole song: "Lonely is as lonely does. Lonely is an eyesore. The feeling describes itself." I have never known what it means, and yet I somehow know all the same.

I've been cooped up in the house for over 24 hours, batlling what was at one time a 103-degree fever that had me lying on the floor in the living room sweating like crazy and watching the room tilt at an odd angle. After chugging some Tylenol, though, it finally broke and my temperature steadily dropped, until it was (oddly) 97.2 last night. I woke up today with what is (apparently) a head cold. Oh, how I love viruses.

I'd been looking forward to the weekend, as I was working all last weekend and was just exhausted by Friday, but, no, my body had other plans. I missed Tim's birthday celebration as a result. It's 85 degrees today and I can't do much other than sit here and look outside.

I feel like it would only take 72 hours of being ill and alone before I started creating imaginary friends in my head. The last time I was sick as I was yesterday was probably a year or two ago and I remember I was a pill then, too. Whiny, nearly infantile at points, and generally cranky.

I am still young enough to think that my body is somewhat infallible, even though I feel it creaking and groaning more often when I am playing tennis or when I am trying to run for more than 35 minutes at a time. Yet when I get sick to the point of being incapacitated, I am reminded how easy it is for something microscopic to bring you to a grinding halt.

No big epiphany, and probably not too interesting, either, I know--which is why I should go back to lying on the couch with my bottle of water, watching multiple episodes of The Golden Girls on DVD. I never realize how social of a person I actually am until I am forced to be home alone.

Faggot-ing

There's ohhhhhh so much I could say about Ann Coulter essentially calling John Edwards a faggot.

I'm not surprised. Oh, no. That piece of crazy has been flying around in front of any TV camera she can find for years.

What I find more reprehensible is that she was invited to speak at the event where she made the comment and all the likely Republican presidential candidates were there and NOT ONE of them has said anything against her.

In a way, it's tres delicious, as we get to watch all these rich, stuffy white guys hem and haw while bony Ann cackles away in the background. The more uncomfortable they all get, the better.

As for Ann, nothing would make me happier than having her syndicated work pulled out from underneath her. Nix the syndicate that publishes her. Nix her book deals and recycle all of her stupid-ass pabulum that reveals her depth to be about that of a mud puddle. I'd also love to see that woman last more than a couple of weeks in a working-class, racially diverse neighborhood that might even include some homos on food stamps.(My favorite thing right now is her stupid diatribe about global warming on her Web site, in which she keeps trying to position herself as one of the "people" by making fun of the liberal elite who have homes in the Hamptons. But take a look at her bio:

"A Connecticut native, Coulter graduated with honors from Cornell University School of Arts & Sciences, and received her J.D. from University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of The Michigan Law Review."

Just the words "Connecticut native" are enough to know that, in all likelihood, she comes from at least an upper-middle class background, and knows jack shit about what it means to be a working-class person living in America.

Or what it's like to be gay, for that matter.

But can't you smell the reality TV show pitch already happening somewhere? C'mon, Bravo, where's your episode of "Project Runway" in which all the gay men try and make Ann look pretty and she has a complete meltdown when they start touching her?

If we can't truly dump her in the middle of Detroit and see how she survives on welfare (hey, Ann, how about you show us how "Nickel and Dimed" was part of the liberal agenda!), at the very least, please bring her to my house so she can call me a faggot and I can slap her.

Just once.

Pretty please?

I'd Rather Be Road Tripping

Oh my god, as I started to write this, "Winter Kills" by Yaz came on my iTunes shuffle. Geesh. I promise not to go all 1982 pre-teen goth in this post, despite the soundtrack that's kicking it off. And warning: this could be a long one.

I haven't often considered this blog to be a diary, but the last several days have had my emotions all over the place that I kind of stopped working midday today and spent a good five minutes looking at my shoes, like someone reached into my spine and flipped on On/Off switch.

(Great. Now I'm even alluding to myself being like Vicky from "Small Wonder.")

I was originally supposed to have gone to San Francisco last weekend, but that vacation, as much as I wanted it, would have been turned into 4 days of me being totally stressed out due to all the work that I needed to get done by tomorrow and before I have to go to Boulder for work Thurs. AM. Essentially, there was just too much to be done, and good martyr than I can sometimes be, I decided to actually finish everything on time rather than be a basket case. Plus, a certain client right now is making me so angry that I've been on the verge of hanging the phone up on people, and I needed to see if there was some way to put an end to that. (Alas, no, but whatever...)

Luckily, what it did mean was a chance to go out with Marc on a bona fide date Friday night. Not that our previous night out and about wasn't kinda sorta a date, but this was, like, dinner and a movie--something I haven't done with a man in a long while, I have to say. After meeting me at my place we took my car (he apparently spilled DayQuil in his passenger seat, which brings up interesting images, but I didn't ask) and headed to (gulp) The Grave (aka The Grove). Upon trying to find any food and essentially having windows slammed in our faces as everything closed, we decamped to Whole Foods to listen to Doug E. Fresh play on the PA system as we had sandwiches made and then nibbled salt and vinegar potato chips before heading off to see "Reno 911: Miami," which is exactly what you'd expect--i.e., funny but not necessarily worth $13.

Not that I cared. I was thrilled to be out with a handsome, smart man who wears cute clothes. Short supply in these woods lately. The mystery of how one ever manages to meet people with whom they click is something I've thought about a lot since that night. It just amazes me how sometimes the pieces kind of fall into place--and someone with whom you've chatted online is actually equally engaging in person.

The rest of the weekend wasn't so exciting... basically a full day of work Saturday and watching... oh god, what was it? ... some stupid movie with Lesley.... Oh, wait! "Blood Moon." Good god what a dumb horrible AUSTRALIAN movie. I am still not clear if it was a horror movie or a 1990 episode of "Beverly Hills 90210." With bad accents. And permed hair. And a really slow middle section. Wait, that totally IS "Beverly Hills 90210."

And as much as I have to love the fact that a lesbian (really, a dyke!) was hosting the Oscars (something I never thought I'd see 10 years ago), god they were boring and almost no one looked good. I don't care what Tim says, Gwyneth Paltrow looked like something a scallop would throw up. And Naomi Watts looked like a cinched stick of butter. And then Nicole Kidman.... oh, Nicole, what did you do? You looked like you had an umbilical cord wrapped around your shoulder.

Thankfully, the fashion horrors were all nicely offset by Jeff and Co., who provided great commentary, good ravioli, and a tasty champagne cocktail.

Jumping backward in time, however, I forgot to actually mention last Thursday, which felt like the final meeting of the original incarnation of RAG, aka The Pink Ladies, aka A Bevy of Gay Media Boys. I don't know how many years it's been now since Jeremy, me, Rick, Matt, Darren, Chris and (originally) Dan first got together--our bond being that all of us in one way or another contributed to gay media/publications. Mike soon joined us too, and the merriment continued--monthly or bimonthy get-togethers that involved lots of bitching and alcohol. Kind of our own Dorothy Parker thing, it was always nice to recognize myself as a part of this group of men. I never had a large circle of male friends at any point in my life. Maybe college out of necessity, but this was really a group I knew and chose to be a part of--us homosocial homosexuals.

Darren and Matt leave this week for New York and who knows what will become of us. I am sure we all love an excuse to have a good cocktail, but it doesn't quite seem the same.

We shall see. We've already discussed opening a New York chapter.

Damn... that's a lot to cram into a few days... and I didn't even fit in a client telling me something I wrote looked like it was written by an 8th grader and that I "used to be a writer or something like that." Charming, non?

Oh, wait, I just did manage to fit it in, didn't I? The best part is that then I found an egregious spelling error on a printed piece of their collateral material.

And on that note...

A chapter definitely feels like it's closing as Matt and Darren leave. They have been part of my L.A. fabric for some time. I will miss having them nearby. But, to complete the cliche, a new chapter may have indeed opened. If being told I wrote something like an 8th grader spurs me onward to other things, if a cute young man with good taste can make me laugh, if I can continue to appreciate the people I have in my life...

No more Yaz on my iTunes.

Now it's "My Life in Art" by Mojave 3--a dusty tune made for late night road trips--the kind I wish I was taking right now across the desert of the same name.

A Week in Music

It's amazing the soundtrack you can amass and encounter over a week:

Monday
Wake up from a dream involving Jennifer Hudson singing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." Christ, is that gonna be the theme for the week?

Tuesday
Schizo music day:

1. It's OMD Appreciation Day: "Dazzle Ships," "Architecture and Morality," and especially "The Peel Sessions." Delicious '80s avant-garde synth pop.

2. It's Old-School Rap Appreciation Day: Drive back from business lunch with Jessica and listen to Salt 'N' Pepa's "Hot, Cool, and Vicious," telling her about how Susan and I bonded over "Tramp" in, oh, 1988...

Wednesday
Slightly morose and tired. It's Valentine's Day, after all. But that evening, at The Spotlight--a dive of a hustler bar in Hollywood--Jeremy and I grab Coronas and hear some delicious jukebox tunes. Why am I surprised to be hearing The Pixies in a divey gay bar in Hollywood? Oh, RIGHT, because it's a divey gay bar in Hollywood and the Pixies, of all things, are on the jukebox. What the...?

Thursday
Jody Watley's "I'm Looking for a New Love" is on 92.3 FM. I totally think it's Whitney Houston for a minute and then change the station.
I keep listening to "Big Judy: How Far This Music Goes, 1962-2004" by Judy Henske, one of the most criminally underrated female singers ever. I am lucky to have met her, too, which makes listening all the better.

Friday
Morning: "Love Is a Battlefield" is on the radio. Turn it up.
Gym midday: "Divorce Songs" playlist. Split my eardrums listening to Sleater-Kinney's "The Fox" *and* "War" by Celebration (during which I make a total ass of myself by singing out loud my favorite line in it: "Got more guns than anybody!"). Oops.
Evening: Stop talking in the midst of the going-away party for Matt to listen to "Furious" by Throwing Muses on Tim's stereo. Upon leaving and driving home, the iPod shuffles: M. Ward: "Headed for a Fall"; Lavender Diamond: "You Broke My Heart"; "Dirtywhirl" by TV On the Radio; Belly: "Low Red Moon"; and (ahem) Expose's "Point of No Return."


Saturday
Kristin Hersh live at Amoeba Saturday afternoon--get chills listening to "Winter."
Neko Case live at the Henry Fonda Saturday night--get chills during almost every song. The vocals make me melt.

Sunday

Catch up on new purchases: Lucinda Williams' '"West"; Band of Horses' "Everything All the Time"; Beirut's "Lon Gisland" EP"; Nina Nastasia's "On Leaving"; Bows' "Cassidy." Make new playlists for iPod. Look at my CD collection and think, "Fuck. Maybe I should stop buying stuff."

A Cackle and Some Krispy Kreme

"People come, people go
Sometimes without goodbye, sometimes without hello
She's got one magic trick
Just one and that's it
She disappears..."

I don't want to write a downer post.

It's why I haven't written in a week. I've mostly felt like an exposed nerve, open to the air, a dull pain coursing through me: one minute I'm fine, the next stricken by an unexpected feeling of loss.

I was both close and not close to Aslan. In the years I worked with her, she taught me a truly immeasurable amount--about semicolons, about the blessings of good espresso, about what it means to be proud to be gay...and why it will *always* be political, god damn it. At her memorial service on Saturday, it at first felt like an awkward reunion of people with whom I used to work very closely and some I really had not wanted to work with closely. Wayne was there too, which was both a comfort and weird, as I wondered sometimes what year it was, and how his connection to these people was borne of my time at Frontiers, a time that feels like a former life.

But I thankfully found myself laughing almost immediately in remembering Aslan, who was truly hysterical in the best sense. And she knew it, as well as loved being the center of attention. I used to call her a troublemaker and she would let her smile fade for just a few seconds and nod her head solemnly: "I am. I'm terrible." A beat. And then a cackle would erupt from her mouth.

So many people had great stories to share that it truly felt like a celebration of a life: firery, funny, smart, frustrating, incorrigible, endearing, inspirational--all the things a person is and should be.

I even had to share one story with the crowd. I am not one for standing in front of people and talking, but when I first interviewed at Frontiers, I came in for my second interview and Aslan was there, grinning devilishly at me... asking good, thoughtful questions, and making me feel very much at home. And then she says to me: "How do you feel about working with crazy people?" I probably blinked. And then said: "As long as they don't try to share their medication with me, I'm fine." She laughed. I laughed. A bond was instantly formed.

Leaving the service and going home, I felt lighter... ready to actually enjoy my evening, which I did immensely--from a gin and tonic at the Good Luck Bar to a beer at the Eagle among other shenanigans... it was an evening made memorable perhaps even more so because of the nature of how it began. I was feeling like I had to enjoy the moment instead of worrying about it and thankfully was in very good company.

The flip side of a memorial service? A baby shower the next day. And yet, it's Nicole and Michael, and the tables at the shower were decorated with stacks of Krispy Kreme donuts. No games, no frilly bullshit. Just a buffet, donuts, conversation, and unwrapping presents.

I suppose I could wax poetic about life and death sharing my weekend. But anyone who's experienced either the birth of a baby (or a friend's, family member's, etc.) or mourned and celebrated a life knows the magic of those feelings both good and bad.

And Aslan would hardly want me to sit here typing about how maudlin I've been and what I'm learning. She'd tell me to get up and go do whatever it was I wanted to do... get out there and live your life, honey. Good for you.

And then she'd let loose another cackle.

I Hate Saying Goodbye

Within 20 minutes of each other today, I found out my friend Darren is moving to New York in 3 weeks and that Aslan, one of the co-workers I actually liked at Frontiers, passed away over the weekend.

I could go on at length about both, of course. Darren, at least, I know I will see again--and I could not be happier for the career move he is making. I know the guts--and the intelligence--it takes.

Aslan, I never saw enough after I quit the magazine in 2005. The last time we spoke, I was standing at a car wash on 3rd Street. It was a warm, overcast day, and Aslan was talking about how she was getting ready to go back to work after being ill and in a convalescent home. We didn't dwell much on work, though.

Instead, we laughed.

I want to remember that right now, juggling all of these competing memories: On the phone, listening to the traffic, my fingers reaching out to touch bougainvillea blossoms spilling over a fence, Aslan's voice telling me about her crazy roommate in the convalescent home, and the hearty, infectious laugh coming through loud and clear.

The Cat's in Heat, but the Music's Fine

And no I don't mean me. I mean it literally. The normally docile, quiet puffball of a cat in my house is yowling uncontrollably and making me want to lock her in a room for the next 4 days. I love my roommate. He's a good friend. But damn if I don't wish his cat would vaporize right now. If he'd actually ever bred her like he intended, maybe I'd be more forgiving, but after an 11-hour work day, I don't want the cat slinking after me making hideous noises that remind me of horror movies.

Speaking of horrors... my thing to hate today is those god damn dancing silhouettes that pop up everywhere online these days as part of "lower mortgage" offers. In Yahoo! news stories, next to my Hotmail inbox, and so on. I literally had a dream that I encountered a dancing silhouette with the dollar amount $150,000 scrawled acoss it. I'd like to think I impaled it with something and vanquished it a la bad-ass Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens." But I woke up. And was totally annoyed.

Thankully, some things turn up in life that make the annoyances feel smaller. I saw Bruce and Chris for the first time in months over the weekend and I finally took Bruce a mix CD I'd had sitting on my computer for weeks. I'd meant to give it to him when he left his job at The Advocate...oh, 3 months ago. I didn't even give him a play list or name it, let alone create a cover for it--all of which I usually do when I give people CDs. But Bruce had been sounding less than chipper and I just hoped it would cheer him up a little.

The background here is that Bruce was my first "professional boss," in the summer of 1995 at Out magazine when it was still based in SoHo. I had been in Manhattan 2 months and was determined to work in the gay media. I interned for Bruce while working full time at Starbucks. In the process, I learned a shitload about writing and editing. And simultaneously I subjected Bruce to all of my music--eagerly bringing in the new CDs I purchased when I could: Throwing Muses' "University," The Amps' "Pacer," Bjork's "Post," and so on... indie rock, girl rock, obscure, odd pop. And Bruce always listened. Even if he hated something he still listened. And I learned then--as well as during the year I would live with him when Chris had moved to L.A.--what Bruce liked.

Flash forward over 11 years and I hand him a 19-song CD and get the best email I've received in a while about it: "Thank you thank you x 19 for the CD! It's amazing."

There was much more in the email, of course--much that reminded me what an effect music has on people, how much I like assembling sonic collages for people I care about, and why Bruce and I get along so well.

Thinking about it right now makes the horrible howling coming from downstairs a tad more tolerable.

Drinks, Rain, Aliens, Dates vs. "Dates"

Things making me happy right now:

1. Kristin Hersh's Learn to Sing Like a Star CD, which has a kick-ass title and which has one song that includes both the lyric "If you lived here, you'd be home now and suicidal" and "You messing with my head makes a terrible noise."

2. Patty Griffin's Children Running Through CD (out Feb. 6). Love, love, love her.

3. My new hat, found on a rainy day in Burbank. It's damn cute, I must say. Self-portrait to come.

4. Art for Empty Walls: Nicole's awesome little website that I am helping promote (therefore: see www.artforemptywalls.com).

5. Hanging out with friends. A simple statement, but a necessary observation for me right now.

Last Friday I was exhausted, having had a long day at work and wanting to just ignore the world. But I knew Joe was getting people together for birthday drinks at the Figueroa Hotel downtown, so I called Lesley and we decided to go. And what a lovely evening--to see people I always enjoy and whom I do not see often enough, in my opinion. It being Lesley and myself, there were many pictures taken. A smattering of mine include a hot closeup of Ms. Maness, a blurry self-portrait, a handsome shot of Brett, a charming one of Stephen surrounded by beer bottles he did not empty, and bizarro abstract shots of the sky:







How did I not get any pictures of Jeff, Jeff, Juan, Bryan, and the birthday boy? Oh, right, I was busy taking pictures of CLOUDS. Well, I at least brought my camera, which is better than I have been doing...

Saturday it was rainy, cold, misty and Lesley ventured with me to Ikea to be profoundly disappointed by the bed frame selection (sigh for me), but she did make me buy the aforementioned hat (brava!), and thus ensued an insanely chaotic night of us in and out of her apartment trying to entertain ourselves, ending up at Hollywood video on hands and knees digging through the 10 for $10 VHS clearance tapes. Now you all know how we find the bad movies we find. It's hours of arguing over which tape looks worse; "I think that one knows exactly what it is, which means we'll hate it"; "Sci-fi is always tricky. It has to be serious yet stupid"; "God, do we really want to watch that, though?" and so on and so on.

Totally self-satisfied, we headed home to eagerly watch "Stranded," a 1988 alien movie the cover art of which looked like it could be a mix between "E.T." and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." No such luck.

Here's Lesley's synopsis:

"It's about a bunch of aliens with mullets who hole up in some old lady's house with her granddaughter. And rednecks try to kill them. Also trying to kill them is an alien disguised as Geraldine Ferraro. And Ione Skye's in it. And they all learn the meaning of friendship."

Now you know.
And have been warned.

But, really, I think what annoyed Lesley most was that I really got emotionally involved in it, even with the alien who looked like Martina Navratilova in the '80s and then turned out to be male and wanted to kiss Ione Skye at the end. EVEN with that, and the fact it was essentially a hostage movie with aliens, I was riveted.

The unusual weekend bled into today when I spontaneously went on a dinner date with a man I'd been chatting with online on and off over the last few weeks, but who was not clear as to whether he wanted to just have a platonic get together or if it was somehow romantic. He's cute, horribly intelligent, and a bit odd, so of course I am terribly intrigued, but it was clear once we were seated that he saw this as a friendly get together, at which point I wished I was a horrible enough person to just dab my lips with my napkin, stand up, and say, with no hesitation whatsoever: "Since it's clear this is going nowhere I want it to go, I think I should just leave." Or better yet: "I am not getting what I want, and therefore I am no longer interested."

I don't know. For me, the function of the Internet right now is not really to find new friends. So why, then, does it lob intelligent, attractive men at me who want to be? Stupid irony.