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April 10: The End of the World for Dummies
Religious Studies are not foreign to me, but I forget the pertinent details, living my gal-on-the-go lifestyle. For my own benefit, I have reread the Book of Revelations (or, if you’re theologically kickin’ it old-school, Apocalypse) and created the following list, which I have laminated and put in my wallet for safekeeping. You too might want to do the same.
FIVE WARNING SIGNS OF IMPENDING END TIME ACTIVITY
1. Resurgence of Edgar Winter’s career, possibly with Police video-style set dressing (1:12-14: “I turned round to see who was speaking to me, and when I turned I saw seven golden lamp-stands, and, in the middle of them, one like the Son of man, a belt of gold. His head and his hair were white with the whiteness of wool, like snow, his eyes like a burning flame.”).
2. On a related note, KISS reunites (4:6-7: “In the middle of the throne and around it, were four living creatures all studded with eyes, in front and behind. The first living creature was like a lion, the second like a bull, the third living creature had a human face, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.”). Be advised that, as interpretations vary, this may mean Diamond David Lee Roth rejoins the Van Halen line-up.
3. The Environmental Protection Act is rewritten to give it some teeth, and the agency doubles in size, or the U.S. actually signs the Kyoto Accords (7:1: “Next I saw four angels, standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the world to keep them from blowing over the land or the sea or any tree.”).
4. Kids start going crazy for Fruit Roll-Ups again (10:9-10: “I went to the angel and asked him to give me the small scroll, and he said, ‘Take it and eat it, it will turn your stomach sour, but it will taste sweet as honey.’ So I took it out of the angel’s hand, and I ate it and it tasted sweet as honey, but when I had eaten it my stomach turned sour.”).
5. Racer X wins the Kentucky Derby (19:11-12: “And now I saw heaven open, and a white horse appear; its rider was called Trustworthy and True, in uprightness he judges and makes war. His eyes were flames of fire, and he was crowned with many coronets; the name written on him was known only to himself.”).
Hey, what do you know, I may not be Jack Van Impe, but can I interpret some scripture or what? Okay, so I skimmed a little. But I’m gonna be making some more laminated lists and also composing my in-case-of-Rapture automatic email message, so stay tuned. Unless you want to burn. Meanwhile, I'm watching MTV News as though the future of my soul depended on it.
04/10/02
April 9: Honey, You Just Sorta Stomped on My Aorta
Another ramble through the bramble tonight, as I haven’t had a quarter inch of brain matter to call my own today. That’s the thing with The Man. You promise to give him eight hours of your day, the awake-part even, and he promises to pay you on a twice-monthly basis. It seems a fair enough exchange at the beginning. Plus, health insurance! Muffins on Tuesday! Free, albeit yucky, lunch on Friday! But then, having established a beachhead in your cerebellum, The Man proceeds to colonize. It took a few months, but I’ve resumed having stress dreams about work. I’m a terrific worker, very conscientious and good at my job, but damn, skippy, get out of my dreams. That’s where I’m a pirate.
There’s some compensation, of course, beyond the monetary and the corporate window dressing. I have some structure in my life, which is good for keeping worry at bay. And I have my coworker in another city, with whom I have established the most cozy of relationships. Comrades in arms, we feel free to swear, talk smack, tease, flirt, gossip and ask outrageously personal questions of the other. It’s a variant of the strangers-on-a-train scenario, where you feel comfortable disgorging the most inane or profound thoughts you have ever thunk up, because you will never ever see this person again. He’s thousands of miles away, who’s he gonna make fun of me to? We have a mutually assured destruction pact of omerta, very similar to that I had with my brother in childhood: anything you can tell on me, I can tell on you, faster and with more scurrilous detail.
So the other day, Distant Coworker asks me if I have a boyfriend and I glibly reply that I don’t do boyfriends. I quickly amend that to: I like boys, but I don’t need to rent-to-own one. He’s perplexed by this and asks me if I’m bitter or something. I say no. And then I wonder.
As I figure it, I’ve only had my heart broken once, a long time ago. And I’ve only broken a heart once, a long time ago, so I’m at zero balance at the Karma Bank. Regrets, I’ve had a few, disappointments too, and lord knows, I’ve been a regretful disappointment on more than one occasion. But that horrible can’t-breathe-can’t-talk-can’t-stop-feeling-like-I’m-dying sensation has only been my condition once. It’s a pain I can recall at a remove, it’s ingrained in muscle memory. As, I suppose, it is for all humans over the age of 20. Some people have experienced it again and again and I am amazed they live to tell the tale. Being thrown out of love is like, I imagine, abruptly enduring cold turkey after a sweet morphine interlude. There should be a retreat in St. Helena like there is for substance abusers, except for recovering dumped lovers. Ninety days of serenity and crafts, with evening meetings to rant about the motherfucker who did this bad thing to your heart. Where’s that on the plan, company-mandated HMO? Can I sponsor a bill in Congress for that to be covered by Medicaid? Because I don’t know if I can feel comfortable being in love again without that. It would be like riding a motorcycle across the Grand Canyon without really quality Major Medical. Until such a time as my government sees fit to reward taxpaying Americans with heartbreak insurance, I will stick to my long-established plan to get married drunk, on a bet, in Vegas, to some guy I meet at the nickel slots with a nice line in bullshit come-ons Why not?
Okay, I’m bitter. But I wear it with style.
04/09/02
April 8: Sexy Beast
T was sweat-drenched after her third set of reps on the bench press. She flexed her impressive biceps instinctively, and then ran her smooth palm down her rippled abdomen. The six-pack from beer keg project was coming along nicely. She reflected that, if she were to do a prison stint, she would definitely be among the baddest mamas on the cellblock, able to snap her fingers and procure any number of cigarettes from various orange-clad hotties, who would fawn over her and iron her dainties. Not that she would smoke them, not after heroically overcoming her addiction to the devil tobacco. No, she would use them to barter for additional goods and services from the less-hot inmates.
Workout complete, she pondered what to do next. Spare time was not her forte, with the poor choice of programming available on her television currently. Oh no. It was about to happen again. The stultification, the torpor. She was about to become very, very bored. She had to take prophylactic measures immediately. She clapped her hands together two times, loudly.
“SCRIBE!”
A wizened, weary husk of a woman appeared Hunched over, seemingly hundreds of years old, a revenant of another, darker age, she shuffled toward the glowing halogen light illuminating the high-tech gym equipment in the center of the room, stained yellow pad clutched in clawlike, veiny hands. It took eons for her to clear the short distance between her straw bed in the damp corner of the large room and the clean, well-lighted space in which T stood in her muscular magnificence. T sighed in impatience. Finally, Scribe got close enough to be heard, her raspy voice like fingernails on God’s chalkboard.
“Yes, Mistress of Goodness From Whom All Blessings Flow? How can I be of service to you today?”
“Scribe, you vex me. I am quite vexed. I have given you ample time to come up with goodly wordings to describe my person, and yet you continue to huddle in your filthy straw, moaning loudly and rocking.”
“My most abject of apologies, Enlightened Being Whose Intellect Illumines the Cosmos. I have been hamstrung mentally by your challenge.”
“Pah! My challenge, you say? For crying out loud, you were able to spin several paragraphs in praise of your poncho, I’m better than a thousand ponchos! The words should flow like my honey-like excretions of perspiration. Mmmm. Damn, I even smell good sweaty. Wanna smell?”
“Erm, I am not worthy, Stern Taskmaster. Perhaps if you gave me a subject to focus on, some place to start?”
“You tire me, Scribe. Why not check in with my lovely girlfriend, she has many fine things to say about me, albeit not in your HTML-savvy way.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“I did that.”
“And?”
“She said you were a little bitch who tickled her fancy. I couldn’t really see anywhere to go with that.”
“Sigh. What about my astonishing sexual technique that makes any woman I want mine? That’s a start.”
“Yeah. Well. Granted, you have shared a great deal about that, during long, Margarita-soaked dinners, after which I was compelled to apologize to several restaurants’ waitstaffs. But I’m not really strong in the arenas of erotica or explicit carnal instruction.”
“My brilliance then. Or my beauty.”
“You are both brilliant and beautiful, Most Exquisite of Peachskinned Goddesses. I could just write that over and over again, how about that? And then you could let me eat a snack or something.”
“Shhhhhhah, right. Last time I let you off with repeating “T is so freaking cool” for five paragraphs, you didn’t write another word about me for months. Instead it was all ‘I like movies’ and tedious entries concerning your iMac. Make me famous on the Internet, it’s not much to ask.”
“I’ll work on it, Amazingly Well-Dressed Scenemaker.”
“See that you do.”
And with that, I scrabbled back to my pile of straw, knowing that, no matter how many haranguing phone calls or excoriating emails I received, there was no way I could do justice to the wonder that is my friend T. I apologize for that. Please know that, despite the cold and hunger I endure at your hands, the greatest punishment of all is that my thesaurus is inadequate to description of your fantasticalhood. Can I have my poncho back now?
04/08/02
April 4th: The Former Miss Denmark Reveals All
Once upon a time, back before I even acknowledged my wicked ways, much less attempted to change them, I appended a bunch of adjectives to people’s first names which stuck, for better or worse. I repent that now. Sorry, Ugly Michael, Bi’fat Dave and Slutty Jake! I meant it with love. Kinda. Some of you even embraced those nicknames, although Lunch Head and He-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named were probably unaware of them. I apologize anyway. Comeuppance is for suckers, not for me, thought I, in my nasty way. Back then. A week or so ago.
Some random universal force, I’m gonna say God for brevity’s sake, has figured out I’m a bit attention-disordered. Therefore, I usually find my karmic payback is whiplash, lest I fail to connect the dots to my previous bad act which caused said payback to be rendered. Snicker at someone’s tripping exit from municipal transit, by the end of the day, I’ve fallen down an escalator. Like that. Usually. This is about a more delayed payback.
Back in 1986, shortly after appending a lot of the nicknames listed above, I was in France for a bit. I was staying with a flighty model pal and her photographer roommate in a studio in the 16th arrondissement. Flighty Model was often gone with her heroin-addicted boyfriend, off to Ibiza where tanning and shooting smack meant fun fun fun. So Photog and I got pretty tight, I even assisted him on shoots as an expert at putting makeup on male models that didn’t look too fruity. That’s a difficult job, getting up every morning to face a former all-Sweden waterpolo player in order to smooth his sharp cheekbones with shine-deflecting powder. It worked out pretty well for me, all those under-the-table payments for illegal alien labor. La vie parisienne, c’est la vie pour moi.
Then Photog got a call, summoning him home to Seattle. Flighty Model was off in Spain again, so I was on my lonesome. And it was that, at first. Stuck in an apartment in a foreign land, my first trip abroad, with only one tape, David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” for company. Rainy, grey, cold. Little money. I wrote some awful poetry for a couple of days. Then the phone rang.
“Uh, hello?”
“’allo, is Photog there?”
“No, I’m sorry, he’s gone back to America. Can I help you?”
Yadda yadda yadda, I got roped into a gig, that would pay me money, to translate some lyrics from French into English for a Polish rock star. This agent, who had previously repped a pre-fame Madonna, he assured me, got me on board to help make the Polish Billy Idol a stateside hit. Oh, I got stories, but this is the short version. So I went to his house, and worked with Polish Billy Idol, and got in tight with a group of well-heeled middle-aged Parisian boy-chasers. They paid me like I was Holly Golightly, giving me obscene amounts for “cab fare” and other amenities. They also treated me like a housepet which, given the French penchant for treating poodles like royalty, is not a bad deal. Anyhow, I got invited to dinner a lot, and it was pretty great.
So there I was, feeling swell about me for being able to function for the first time in my life in a non-U.S., heck, non-Californian culture. The only thing that was inexplicable was that, at some point, everyone started calling me “Miss Denmark.”
My French wasn’t good enough to question the why’s and wherefore’s of that appellation, so I just started answering to it. I didn’t look particularly Danish, nor did I look particularly beauty queenish, but the French are weird. So I just laughed and laughed, and took my cab fare and translated bad French lyrics into bad English lyrics.
Fast forward. So recently, I’m telling the long version of this story to an acquaintance who was in Paris far longer than I ever was. He starts choking. What? What? He opens his mouth and lets out a guffaw for the ages.
“Kuda! You maroon! They were calling you a slut! That’s what they meant. Danish women are considered quite loose to French men of a certain age. Oh! That’s rich. Excuse me.”
So it came back, the evil nickname karma. Granted, due to a deficient knowledge of cultural mores, it took me a while to get it. But consider this: this afternoon, a stranger told me I looked “haunted" and shook his head all perturbed. This evening, a stranger told me I was “gorgeous” and shook my hand for that. These drastic variations are easily explained as (a) I was tired and (b) it was dark. First impressions are a mysterious and unreliable indicator of personal worth and integrity. I’m not Miss Denmark. And, if you’re reading this, you may not be ugly, unnameable or a big Lunch Head after all. Maybe.
Hrrrrm.
04/04/02
April 3: PLEH PLEH
There’s a lot to be said for being self-actualized. There’s not much to be said for being the sort of putzhead who would actually say “self-actualized” aloud, but it’s pretty groovy if you can get psychiatric personnel to sign off on you being such a thing. Okay, maybe it was “sociopath,” I skipped around a lot in my diagnostic journey through the DSM-IV. At any rate, I can get a random group of people who’ve known me a bit of a while to say that, yep, I have trained my army of neurons to do a lot of their own homework without outside assistance. Also, I don’t like to be aided. On the roadway of life, I am the driver least likely to pull over and ask for directions.
This is not acquired behavior. I was a crappy cooperator from the get-go. I took two and a half days to be born, on account of I kept trying to go the other way. It’s easy for me now to tell my mother why: it’s because I figured out, halfway down the birth canal, that my spectacular in utero capabilities were of no use to me in the unknown space beyond. I don’t know what I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I was a big fish in a small pond back in the womb days, and it worked for me.
Nobody could teach or tell me anything in my youth, and it’s not much better now. I’m good with book-learning, it’s quiet and on my own terms. But try to intervene when I’m in the midst of royally foiling myself mid-task, and I’ll throw up my hands and say “OKAY YOU JUST DO IT THAT’S FINE.” Actually, I’m very cool with people just doing it for me, that doesn’t cramp my style. It’s the working with someone to achieve mastery that causes difficulty. I also learn Socratically--which is fancy for “I’ll have a screaming argument with you and by doing so crib your insight without it being in any way enjoyable for you.”
By the way, I’m still single, if anybody’s falling for me about now. No? I’ll continue.
So, I’ve been hanging with this kid, baby really, who is already a prodigy of doing it himself. He doesn’t want your pity, you condescending tall, hairy person. You can do for him, or you can get out of his way. And oh, the fits if you defy his edicts! I haven’t figured it out yet, whether I am observing my own self in toddler form, or if this is normal human development and I arrested early. It would be unnerving if I didn’t find it amusing. Of course, I’m not his mother.
I saw this Sandra Bullock movie the other day about rehab, where the counselors would put a sign around your neck, like belling a cat, if you were resistant. One of them was “Bust me if I don’t ask for h**p.” I got the chills, afraid at some level that somebody in authority would see fit to do the same to me. Because, like the belled cat, I would probably curl into a ball and await death rather than proceed an inch in any direction wearing such a placard. I got goosebumps again right now, just typing that.
So, lately, I’m working on that, on sending out distress signals as appropriate. I have yet to utter the words proper. Like Fonzie trying to apologize, the words get all hinky in the speaking. Sometimes it comes out kind of mean. I think I’ll figure it out pretty soon though, I’m doing some mouth exercises to stretch my capabilities. And I want to just send a shout-out to my miniature pal: Hey, angry little man, I totally get you and what you’re about, I dig your scene. But later on, when you can talk and maybe even read this, please feel free to tap me for some, um, assistance. Because I won’t tell anyone you didn’t figure it out by yourself, I promise.
P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY MOM THANKS FOR ALL THE LOVE AND PATIENCE AND STUFF.
04/03/02
April 1: Movie
My momma done told me when I was a young girl that my best feature was my playful good nature in the face of adversity and bad news. Actually, she didn’t. She said that, faced with a stint in a death camp, I’d probably start the Dachau intramural volleyball team. She didn’t say it in a nice way either, more in a Forrest-Gump’s-got-nothing-on-you in the cluetrain doesn’t stop here anymore department. But being as I am full of boundless love, I realize it is not in the best interest of anyone for me to shake my tiny fist at God, so I’m abstaining from big-league opinionating tonight. Instead, I am going to tell Hollywood how best to make a movie that appeals to me. Pencils in hand, Dreamworks minions? Here we go now.
It must have a futuristic setting. Preferably dystopic but great to look at, rainy, smoggy, harshly lit in flashing neon. And do it with models, will ya, I can totally see the CGI lines. Someplace I wouldn’t want to live in or visit, but I can stare at with wonder at the exacting attention to detail a small army of artists have brought to a miniature world whose every specific is immediately apparent. See “Blade Runner.” Again. See it two more times. Now watch it on the big screen. You got it. Go.
Plausible love story is a must. No geriatric meets nubile streetwalker, not if you want my hard-earned dollar. I’m still smarting from when Kathy Bates was rooked out of a role THAT WAS WRITTEN EXPRESSLY FOR HER so that Michelle Pfeiffer could play it. A little hope for the unwashed 99.7% wouldn’t kill you, you can make that Britney falls for Steve Buscemi movie later. It’s been eons since James Spader fell for a less-than-at-her-best Susan Sarandon in a flick. I don’t need Keanu Reeves humping on Bea Arthur, I’ll take Ed Harris smooching his own dang real-life wife Amy Madigan and call it four stars.
You know what was a good score? Joe Jackson’s score for the film “Mike’s Murder.” Get him on board. The Newman Brothers can go in on a time share with Howard Shore while John Williams plays piano in an airport lounge to atone for his many sins. Or get one of the many indie bands that are currently re-scoring classic silent films, like Clubfoot Orchestra. Hell, Superchunk’s doing a score for a 1915 Japanese silent. Take a listen, it won’t kill you.
Can I have some banter please? Real banter? Fast, quippy banter? Somehow, you all got the idea that we want characters to speak “realistically.” I listen to people talk realistically for free, I ain’t paying cash money for it. Or else the actors have
been burdened with all the expository duties, so entire sequences of conversation can go as follows:
“You are the sister of the man who took all my father’s land back when this was a Spanish colony. The man they called ‘El Diablo,’ whom I seek still, riding from town to town, assuming a fake identity and taking odd jobs.”
“Yes, I am his sister, but you must know that I was stolen as a child from a band of gypsies and thus do not share his tainted blood. Instead I am full of music and wild passion. But I can never love a man so long as the man who wronged me, a man I know only by the scar on his cheek, walks this Earth. It is my mission in life to kill him.”
“We have much in common.” (Extended sex scene, with partial female nudity.)
I like it rude and fast. Give me some snappy patter, I’ll give you a dollar. I’m not asking for “His Gal Friday,” at this point I’d settle for “Pillow Talk.” Hell, I’d settle for “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows.”
And here’s my big caveat: I would like the filmmakers, all of them, the whole team, to seek no award greater than the completion of their work in its best possible form. No blatant hunger for a trophy must be apparent, or I will make hooting noises and turn my cell phone back on in the middle of a crowded movie theater, don’t think I won’t. By now, anyone who can read an IMDB list knows that none of the truly amazing works that have stood the test of time have won anything. Oh, maybe a prize for best gaffing by a non-union Australian, but nothing that makes the newspapers the next day. I realize there’s a big payday coming if you work on an Academy approved film, but shoot for the stars, swing for the fences, kids. A lot of you wanted to be artists. Don’t leave the films to the French. Give me one movie a year that makes me go “wow,” that makes me tell all my friends. I promise to see it at full-freight at least three times. Because I’m there for you, like the bright-eyed April Fool I am.
04/01/02
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