S n a r k A t t a c k

You Say It's Your Birthday

The pup is 11 years old today.  Seems like only yesterday that I went to visit a litter of puppies and she waddled out and picked ME.  What a good girl.

Teeth Like God's Shoeshine

My mom has big teeth, my dad's are smaller.  I get my dad's mouth and my mom's teeth and so they don't fit in my mouth, which meant that when I was a kid I had to have, like, four of them yanked out as my other teeth grew in. I remember being able to put a pencil in my mouth and close my mouth completely, with either end of the pencil just sticking out.  It could just sit in there where the four teeth had been.  This was before cable, see. 

Then I learned that my teeth have high and mighty crowns and were impossible to clean, so that when the lady came to elementary school to teach us all how to brush properly by giving us these weird red tablets to chew which stained our teeth, after we all brushed our teeth I could NEVER get the red stuff out.  Ever.  Like right then I should have told my folks to start saving up for my dentist bills because the next ten years was one cavity after another until the back of my mouth resembled moonraker.

Needless to say, I was no fan of the dentist, especially after that one in Yuba City who left me alone too long under the gas and I had my first hallucinogenic episode.  Seriously, if you don't know what's happening, there's nothing recreational about the hallucinations - it's just scary, the world spinning around and all you can see is the pale green paper bib and a spit sink. Then there was the time I got braces and every time I got my rubber bands tightened my mouth hurt so much that I would cry.  There was the orthodontist who tugged so hard that I actually punched him in the face, and the orthodontist who had to actually BURN away the gums which had grown over parts of the braces.  Nothing like the smell of your own gums burning to sear (ha ha) the hatred of dental work into you. (I will never forget the word 'gingevectomy' for as long as I ever, ever live.)

So when I left the organized life of law and started paying for my own health (and dental) care, I kind of sort of let all the dental stuff go.  Sure, I flossed regularly, brushed, blah blah, but I figured that the teeth would go one day, catastrophically and there'd be nothing I could do about it, dentist or no dentist. 

And then, thanks to the WGA health plan, I thought, why not go the dentist?  It's on them.  So I went. 

My teeth, apparently, are perfect.  I have no idea how, except that maybe everything that could go wrong has already gone wrong and been removed, sanded down, filled in or otherwise magicked away.  That, or the dentist lied through his impossibly straight, white teeth.

Something the Boy Said

Moving about from SF to Tahoe to LA, then back to SF and then back to LA again - with storage units both official and unofficial in Sacramento and my hometown up north - I have stuff strewn about the better part of the state with little idea of exactly where anything is at any given moment.  I did empty out the storage unit in Sacramento recently - this being the 'official' one and not the one where, say, I store my bike, i.e. my brother's garage - and came back to SF jazzed to have been reunited with two large boxes of CD's.  At last!  Music!

Harrumph.

The boxes are full of CD cases.  It's as though a music fairy had gone through my entire collection, deemed that only so many of them did not suck, and then plucked the CD from the case, leaving only the scuffed carapace of a jewel case behind, for me to find, YEARS later so that I might open the case and scream in rage something like, WHY IS EVERY SINGLE LYLE LOVETT CD CASE EMPTY?!   

The Pantera albums a cousin gave me for Christmas one year and which remain in their original packaging - they're all here.  Weezer's excellent green album is missing, while Maladroit - a substandard Weezer offering - is here, thumbing its 2 star nose at me.  Pretenders' Learning to Crawl?  AWOL.  Pretenders' Last of the Independents?  Present and accounted for. 

I'm so frustrated.

I'm considering hoisting a boxful of empty CD cases out to the curb to watch as passersby - by which I mean members of SF's hobo class - come by and thumb through the jewel cases, at first elated - 'hey, it's Moby's 'Play'!'*** - and then disappointed as they see the case is as empty as my dear, dark heart (incidentally, the name of a Holly Cole album which I actually DO have).    

***I also want to note that this is an eclectic mix of empty cases. Not into Moby?  There's Carol King's seminal 'Tapestry.'  Folk not your funk?  How about some Fugazi?  Some Rage Against the Machine?  No?  Then you must love some Liz Phair and her Exile in Guyville...  I am beyond bummed. 

Saving grace is that Jeff Buckley's Live in Sine somehow managed to make it through to the other side, but unfortunately did so along with that paean to self-indulgent, twat-twisting, twee mandolin playing - I give you the source of today's post title: Ten Summoners' Tales by STING.  STING!   What sort of Windham Hill-listening, drunk-on-estrogen moment made that purchase okay?  Ugh.

Our House

We're looking for a new apartment in Los Angeles.  It's a pain, but a necessary pain - we got the apartment clearly as the 'first place in LA' kind of thing, with a premium on the right neighborhood (West Hollywood) and dreams of using amenities the building offered, amenities we have almost never used.  So we're looking for another, better place, but as so often happens in these sorts of things, another, better place is difficult to find.

What is not difficult to find, however, is the shithole that I checked out yesterday afternoon.  It promised a nice guest cottage in a nice part of town.  It promised a private, fenced-in yard.  It promised - well, let's not dwell on the fantasies described on West Side Rentals.  I can tell you, however, is that it turned out to be the ugliest house on the street of beautifully well-kept homes.  The front house looked like a crack house.  Sure, people say, 'crack house,' and just throw these terms around without really thinking, 'does this seem like an actual crack house?'   Whereas I, having grown up in the methbasket of California, I like to think I know of what I speak when I say that the low-slung house that's not been kept up, the one with the giant black Ford F-150 dripping oil all over the driveway, the one whose 'private yard' is actually a concrete-filled patch behind the main house - yes, that one - THAT one looks like a crack house.  Did I mention that one wall of the house had a handle?  Apparently, in the not-so-distant past, the 'guest house' was a 'garage.'  The bonus room was probably where the tools were kept and where - distressingly - the current occupants had showcased various trophies and extra-large bottles of booze.  While the broker was trying to show me all the wonderful storage in the place, I couldn't get over how the current tenants were using the storage - for their collection of booze.  Uh, yeah. 

I tried so very hard to imagine the place vacant, scrubbed clean, a liberal application of bleach... and yet, no.  I'm sorry, lady.  That place is not worth $1600/month.  Seriously?  No. 

And the search continues...

Accidntel Deth

It Ain't Necessarily So

Maybe it's just because my people like to get it on in the summertime, but lord, don't these next several weeks bring on the birthdays, mine included.  Getting older - feh - no biggie, though I have wondered, should I be eating more fiber?  Should I buy myself a Gameboy so that I can use Brain Age and keep my brain extra supple?  Should I just start using a scooter to get around the Piggly-Wiggy?  I think not. 

But what I have been wondering at right this very moment is why it took me a full ten minutes to remember why the guy I ran into just now looked so familiar.  Seriously, people - I strive to live in the moment. I am living in the NOW. I am living mindfully, blah blah, cherishing each bite of high fiber cereal every morning, just thinking about how I am right now chewing a spoonful of high fiber cereal and wow, doesn't it taste exactly like cardboard.  Perhaps it IS cardboard. 

This, of course, made me wonder about money-saving additives that turn out to be beneficial, healthwise.   Take carrageenan, for example.  I know what you're thinking - it sounds like a nice Irish girl.  A nice lass, perhaps, from the County Meaght, just over - well, not yonder, but you get the drift.  It's a drive. 

Anyway, so carrageenan is derived from seaweed, and seaweed being all gloppy and uncomfortable-making with its general slipperiness and its strong association as the locus of many a sea otter sexing-up, it should come as no surprise that it's used as a binding agent.  Exciting, yes?  The sea truly is the breadbasket of the world, especially if you like supersalty mercury-laden bread.  But: did you know that seaweed is actually good for you?  No?  Well, join the ranks of the corporate cheapskates who were deciding between coal slurry and carrageenan to use as a thickener for ice cream.  Yes, you just think on that. 

Of course, you can't think of carrageenan without thinking of Montmorillonite clay.  Sure, they add it to our dog's super expensive/Gary Danko-for-dogs dog food  as the third ingredient, right after rat anus, so you know there's, like, a LOT of clay in the food.  But, as it turns out, the clay is used by people - actual, real live, hemp be-clothed people - as a dietary supplement. Apparently, clay contains mad minerals which are good for the digestive tract (again with that guy).  Plus, every morning Mr Toilet will present you with a lovely Lladro in the bowl.  (FYI, it's usually a sleeping snake, so don't get too excited about it.)

But that made me realize that I'd gotten the dog food from Best in Show - the Castro's own pet store.  And it was just another fourteen logical steps until I figured out that the guy I just ran into works there. 

I am just so glad I'm not showing any signs of age, like - I don't know - memory loss.

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Listening to: Dinah Washington - The Blues Ain't Nothin' But A Woman Cryin' For Her Man
via FoxyTunes   

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Listening to: Aretha Franklin - It Ain't Necessarily So
via FoxyTunes   

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Listening to: Billie Holiday - Autumn In New York - LP Take
via FoxyTunes    

Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing

Distressed to find this in my inbox yesterday: Lindsay Lohan's homage to Marilyn Monroe.  Unless you happen to work at Defamer or "work" while at a cafe, this is probably not safe for work.  And if you care for Marilyn Monroe at all, it's also not safe for you because this is the photographic equivalent of Madonna covering "American Pie," a song which does NOT need to be covered, and then still doing it so terribly that even she saw her shadow and immediately emigrated to the UK where, in quick succession, she adopted a British accent and a guy named, well, Guy.  All this in service of a movie which she did solely to show off how good she was at yoga.  Madonna, you get an A for bendiness and an F for acting and song choice.  Even Paula hated you and she never hates anyone. And Randy thinks you're pitchy, or at least that's what it sounded like.

In other news, we got a bunch of stuff delivered via UPS the other day - boxes and boxes of home goodies - and all of it was packed in what I considered to be an unreasonable quantity of styrofoam peanuts (5:1, peanut:goody).  Worse, when I started to unpack the first box, the peanuts, freed from their cardboard prison, were suddenly high on static electricity and too many Prison Break reruns: they began to CRAWL up my arms.  Trying not to lose my shit, I brushed them off and they returned in force - and the ones that didn't started to STICK TO THE WALLS.  I'm sorry, but I don't care how well adjusted you are, but when inanimate objects begin to make a run for it, I get a little anxious. 

I fought to get them into a plastic bag, but they fought back, and soon there were peanuts everywhere.  Just scoop them up, right?  Just deal with it and move on, right?  Wrong.  (I feel like the word should be German just to convey to you how wrong this was: wrongfahrt.  Wrongfahrtgruven.  Like that.)  As I tried scooping them up, they stuck to everything I used to scoop them up - my arms (again and still - oh, still so incredibly unnerving), a paper bag fashioned into a shovel, a swatch of cardboard bent into what I thought might be a humane peanut-catcher. 

But no.  Twenty something minutes later and the floor was still covered in peanuts.  A lesser soul might have thought that these were sentient beings, sent to torture me.  ("They'll never suspect packing material," said Commandante Duct Tape, as the UPS store was rendered into HQ...)  Not I.  I thought, it must be dry out!  Low humidity!  Nothing weird about - hey, is that a peanut on the ceiling...?

I went to Plan B.  Sometimes, Plan B's can be good.  Sometimes, Plan B's can even be great.  You go in, not expecting much - it's Plan B after all - and when it comes together, you feel like a genius and like the world has smiled upon you.

This isn't that Plan B. 

See, I decided to vacuum.  For one, we've got a great vacuum cleaner (sidenote: I adore vacuuming. Don't ask me why, but I love it) and secondly, I've vacuumed up these suckers before and knew the trick - only vacuum up the little pieces of styrofoam and not the entire peanut, for the peanut, when laid crosswise, is exactly the same width as the diameter of the vacuum's hoses.  Which is to say, one perfectly positioned peanut and you will lose all the suck out of the vacuum.  And, like Condoleeza always says, the peanuts only have to be right once which is why you must be naked to get onto a plane.  Otherwise the terrorists win.  And so, frequently, would Mr. Blackwell.  (If I see one more applique sweatshirt on another flight...)

Armed with all of this information, I started to vacuum.  This worked for a patch of carpet roughly 6"x 8".  After that, the vacuum didn't lose suction but rather began to PULVERIZE what little bits were on the floor. It was though I had set the vacuum to liquefy when really, no, I wanted a completely different household appliance experience altogether.  Pulverize suggests that I'm about to have a delicious breakfast smoothie.  Liquefy says, 'hey, you lucky lady - it's Margarita Tuesday!'   When it's the vacuum that's doing these things, you understand that something has gone horribly awry and no margarita shall be forthcoming.

To really get a sense of the damage, I will have to share with you a crappy photo that I took with my cameraphone.  And don't think the dogs didn't manage to become completely covered in styrofoam, because they did, and then walked - as they will - all over the house, ensuring maximum dispersal.  (The carpet is supposed to be a dark brown, btw, but what I dig about all of this is how the Attack Bichon looks like some non-recyclable CFC-laden miniature Yeti.)

Un Año de Amor

Take this for example - a gorgeous ad for the Madrid Metro.  Whether or not you believe that yes, they do have the best metro in the world, you will never for once doubt that Spanish men have the best voices in the universe.

When I lived there for a year during college, I was in that tiny minority of American females who had never seen more than one episode of Beverly Hills 90210.  References to the Peach Pit in later years I got sheerly through context. I'd nod dumbly, praying that we'd move onto referencing something I'd actually seen.  Like Tales of the Golden Monkey, starring Stephen Collins, a show I loved so much that I'd cut out of my 4-H meeting a few minutes early and run home so as not to miss anything. 

So when I arrived in Granada and lived in a boarding house with a dueña named Charo and several female Andalusian law students, I was immediately treated to the latest craze to hit Spanish t.v. - Sensación de Vivir, known in these parts as 90201. 

Seriously, I had no idea what Luke Perry sounded like in real life, but in Spanish he had this gorgeous, deep voice - authoritative, sexy and rich.  Not my thing but I could sort of see how someone like that might be rather attractive to, oh, I don't know, ANYONE WITH EARS.   And then I got back to the States and caught a rerun of 90201. Excellent, I thought - I am now familiar with the antics of Brendan, et al. 

Holy Mother of All That Is Good And Righteous.  Luke Perry in English is the WORST.  He makes Walter Payton sounds like a baritone.  Michael Jackson has a deeper voice.  THIS? This is what American girls are clamoring for? 

Not that the Spanish should be exactly congratulated for the excellence of their native t.v. offerings, which seemed to consist mostly of a version of America's Funniest Home Videos which was itself mostly clips of bulls falling onto cars, running into cars, running into each other or just generally falling down.

On second thought, I would totally watch that.

Better Version of Me

Suffice to say, I'm right now backing up my entire hard drive.  And lest that external hard drive give up the ghost, I'm backing up the entirety of my "My Documents" folder onto a thumb flash drive - 8gigs! 

I am now officially chastened by this whole thing.  And exhausted.  Jeez, that was a stressful way to spend the day.  It's one thing to be unproductive - a precept for which I am generally in favor, given the right time, right place, blah blah, but when you're unproductive despite all efforts to actually BE productive, then stress ensues.  I am now drinking something containing taurine and creatine.  Neither here nor there, but if the productivity sneaks up on me, I shall be ready to lasso it and ride it into a future of completed scripts.  It's also an homage to Roger Clemens who I've never liked, especially after he hucked part of a broken bat at someone.  CP - you remember that game I'm talking about?

Every Day is a Winding Road

Well, no sooner had I posted that last bit of drivel, when I got a call from Central Computer.  The laptop is ready!

Laptop is healthy!

(Laptop apparently hadn't registered the dismissive comments I had made about it because laptop cannot read!  Laptop is bundle of circuits and magic!  Laptop is fixed!  HUZZAH!)

Okay, in honor of this escape from sadness and the spectre of increasing debt thanks to writers' strike + cancellation + resistance to boxed wine, I shall leave you with some of my favorite links of the week.  Huzzah!

Dare not to laugh at wine making gone awry - a classic.

Spongebob and Squidward have greater range than anyone might have imagined.  Indeed.

And I dare you not to think that this raccoon is simply reenacting the final scene from There Will Be Blood.  I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE, cat.

I will now get laptop and reflect that today would have been nearly as productive had I gone to Reno, played some Keno and taken some Beano.  And then driven home, low on gas. 

Karma Police

Let me just serve as the cautionary tale - backup your work, my lovelies, for you never know when you might be greeted, as I was this morning, with the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.  Forget the momentum I'd acquired over the last several days, writing writing writing, in anticipation of the end of the writers' strike (for the show's been cancelled so I'm looking for a new gig).  Forget all the lovely good thoughts in mind of wickedly smart dialog or maybe just wickedly okay dialog or perhaps even just stuff that people could maybe say in real life, stroke victims excepted, and even them, sure, why not? 

But all of that is gone - gone! - as my laptop sits, alone, in the back of Central Computer on Howard Street.  Sure, the guy back there has at best a tenuous hold on the English language, his grip loosening more still when confronted with a choice of prepositions - of, over, about? - but he seemed completely unfazed at my predicament: this computer tells me that I have a corrupt or missing registry file.  Why?  Why why why?  He mumbled something comforting, along the lines of he'd seen it before which made me feel better but then he put the fear of death into/above/around me by asking if - and I quote because you too shall know the fear - "There was any data on this computer that you want to keep." 

There are not enough exclamation points in the universe, known, unknown or dreamt up by that autistic kid in St. Elsewhere, to convey the horror I experienced in that moment. But I kept my shit together, people.  I kept my cool. 

Yes, in fact there are several files that I care very deeply about/around/of.  Please, can you copy them for me?

At press time, he's going to try to copy my entire My Documents folder, but he didn't have any idea how long it would take to fix the laptop or even - gulp - if it IS fixable.  But as I stew and freak out about the script that was very nearly finished or the various treatments I'd worked on over the last month or so, and how the strike is over and I should have stuff ready to go soon, and how my agent and managers are looking for PRODUCT from me, I think the previously unthinkable: 

I love the laptop, don't get me wrong, and I'm practically whispering as I type this lest it hear me from the shelf in the back of the store and shove off this digital coil, but: I don't care about the hardware.  I just want my data.

Incidentally, I've no one but myself to blame - I backed everything up about a month ago and everytime I do, I feel like a putz for wasting my time, which really makes no sense, like resenting putting on a seatbelt because you've never gotten into an accident.   Yet I'd looked at my external hard drive repeatedly over the last couple of weeks and thought - well, I guess I figured 'what's the point?'  Point taken. 

Sigh. 

Come on little laptop.  You can make it, buddy.

p.s. A huge thank you to the GF for lending me her laptop so I can continue to work, and to the folks at the Writers' Store (and purveyors of Final Draft - screenwriting software) who talked me down off the ledge and assured me that I could just download the software again to the GF's computer, no worries - and no additional license fee. 

You're My Best Friend

BTW, the pup's been on vacation with my folks and I'm getting her back this week.  I've totally missed her - what a good dog.  Plus, the attack bichon pines for her, which is sweet.

Again, I'm loving the camera that the GF got me for Xmas (she gets me this incredible camera; I got her a... ball of lint that I'd amassed during the strike.  "Here, honey!")  Here's a great pic of her pup doing the 'bichon buzz' - something they all do, apparently, when they run like crazy people.  Assuming crazy people run around in circles while growling in a way that can only be described as the opposite-of-threatening.)

Wouldn't It Be Nice

Lent was going to usher in a new period of abstemious behavior - no beer, no red meat, no sodium benzoate, no high fructose corn syrup - but the only thing I gave up for Lent has been...Lent.  As the GF pointed out, it's nearly impossible to quit HFCS as it's in practically everything except for water and some brands of toothpaste.  Once you start looking for it, it's a little disconcerting to realize its ubiquity.  (I LOVE that word. U-bi-quity.  Lo-lee-ta.)

Of course, all this began when I was thinking, you know, this wouldn't be a bad time to shed a few pounds, stop blaming the dryer for shrinking my pants, etc., and giving up such foods is the sort of thing that's like a diet but sounds more like a high-minded attempt to eat BETTER.  Not a diet, per se.  Diets are for fat people.  This is merely a minor lifestyle change.  No, this is a small move in the direction of self-improvement, a crossing of the street from Burger King to Whole Foods, from combo meals to salad bars and their smudgy sneeze guards.  But a diet?  No, not a diet. Heavens no.

But it turns out that HFCS is in everything and well, per my doctor, my cholesterol's never been lower despite my love of bacon and red meat, and sodium benzoate's not really as toxic as they'd have you think... All of which has made me rethink my Lenten intentions.

 

Shame, though, that our dryer is shrinking my clothes so. 

Rock and a Hard Place

From the WGA office of difficult decisions, here's a snippet from the 2008 WGA ballot.  What would YOU do?

Update: I'm leaning very heavily towards the Wire, but it's hard not to throw a little something Mad Men's way.  Or Dexter's way, for that matter.  And I wonder how many votes the Sopranos will get.  While it's hardly been ignored by various awards, I feel like any sense that 'they've gotten enough awards, make way for someone else,' may be trumped by David Chase's masterful ending. 

Eh, still.  It's gotta be the Wire.   Omar returns!

 

	DRAMA SERIES Instructions: Vote for no more than one (1) series in each category. Dexter Friday Nights Lights Mad Men The Sopranos The Wire

Milk

The rain finally subsided which must be happy news for the cast and crew of Milk, the Harvey Milk movie which is currently shooting here in a our very own Castro.  I'm home all day, and you're not, so I thought you'd like these pix I just snapped when I was out walking the attack bichon.  The set design folks have done a masterful job of recreating the late '70's in the 'Stro, including some rather distressing pricing information.  But the Castro Theater looks like a million bucks and yes, apparently the Poseidon Adventure was showing at the time.  (Click on the pix for a larger, more glorious version.) 

Our favorite wine shop in SF is right across from Milk's old camera shop so they converted back to looking like its previous incarnation - McConnelly Wine & Liquor.  Funny that it's still a wine and liquor store now, but while you can't really see inside on this shot, it's super dark in there, like someone's finished basement - all wood paneling with a tiny b/w t.v. set, the walls lined with bottles of brown liquors.

And next door to the Castro Theatre, where Quickly currently is, it's a realtor's office.  (Quickly being a shop that sells shocking items such as shrimp balls, which always makes me giggle, as well as hotdogs for 79 cents.  Which seems worrisomely cheap to me for a meat product already suspect.)

People, brace yourself: 

Too Darn Hot

The other night I compared the Westfield Shopping Center (nee the San Francisco Shopping Center) to the Seventh Circle of Hell.  Which serves beautifully as a simile for what was a rather dispiriting and NOT AT ALL JOLLY consumer experience.  But then I thought, was it really the Seventh Circle?  What of the Sixth?  Could it have had some nice moments and thus warranted something less harsh, like comparison to the tamer circles of hell, i.e. second or third?

So, let's consider this.

The Seventh Circle of Hell, as you know, comes from Dante's Inferno.  Lovely book - a poem, technically - which, like you, I haven't read but which I feel free to reference frequently in order to demonstrate how much my parents paid for my education.

The various circles have to do with how bad you've been, i.e. the higher the number, the lower in hell you've fallen and the higher the likelihood that the soles of your Skechers will get all melty.   The higher circles include people who've misstepped only slightly, such as pagans or the unbaptized, which means it's basically Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a bunch of babies and my cousin's girlfriend who freaks me out with her insistence on giving me an 'angel card,' usually accompanied by a too-loud declaration that 'it's 4:20 somewhere!'  So that's the first circle.

Second circle of hell is populated by folks who are overcome by lust while the third circle is full of gluttons.   I imagine this is like having Dore Alley spanking/getting spanked on a plane located just above the City of Houston, Texas.

Fourth and fifth circles are all about the greedy and the slothful, i.e. people who make daytime t.v. and the people who watch it. 

Now, the sixth and seventh circles apparently occupy their own tier of hell, for who knew that hell was a subdivision?  These are for sins which are more active than passive, which is a distinction I don't get because what's more active than sexing each other up (see, circle #2)? 

The sixth circle was Reserved Seating Only for heretics, which seems a bit much, frankly, especially since it's another judgment call.  Why not lump them in with the pagans, who are much cooler, four levels up in the second circle?  Sounds like the sixth circle is for felony non-believers.  Seriously, people, this is why sentencing guidelines suck ass. 

And this brings us to Nordstrom, or as Dante knew it, the seventh circle of hell - which is apparently where the people who have been violent against property or people are banished. People so scary that you'd have us believe that a minotaur is guarding them.  These are some bad folks, right?  All locked up like a bug in a maximum security rug in some divine version of Pelican Bay, where everyone's all tatted up and have nicknames like 'Cornfed' or 'Mayhem.'  Guys whose necks are the size of Rosie's thigh, who would never say 'bless you' after you sneezed, who wouldn't even call the guards after they'd seen you get shivved in the laundry, blah blah blah. 

But that is not these guys.  No, per Dante, the seventh circle includes those who are violent against people and property - including sodomites (!), suicides and usurers.  Elton John, Kurt Cobain and Countrywide Mortgage - benvenuti! 

And then there's the eighth circle of hell.  This has gotta be awful stuff right?  People tearing the faces off of babies, telling you that Dennis Kucinich really is awesome or that you shouldn't eat so much bacon* - but no.  The eighth circle is for the 'fraudulent' - the ones who knowingly committed an evil act. 

Hello, my name is Paris Hilton. 
Hi, Paris!
I released an album on Warner Brothers after making my engineers rape AutoTune.  Wait - where are you taking me?  No, my manager told me I was going to Bungalow 8, not Circle 8.  Aieeeeeeeee! 

(*The antibacon hordes, I think, charitably, believe that they're doing a good thing, ditto the Kucinichettes.)

This also includes the flatterers, so forget trying to lie to someone and tell them that no, their car does not make their butt look big; the fact that their ass is causing a solar eclipse in Bangalore is what makes their butt look big. 

You can say that I said so.

I'm just trying to keep you out of hell.  Now go out and save the date, you crazy kids! 

 

Invisible Ink

What is it about tattoo parlors that they have the best signs?  I'm walking through the Mission and look up to see this most excellent neon sign, a big red arrow with the word TATTOO inside of it, which makes me immediately want to go inside and get inked up. 

And I don't even want a tattoo.

Of course I've thought of it.   Everyone's thought of it, right?  But I would never actually get one.  Don't get me wrong - you go ahead and get your full-on sleeves.  I'm just saying that I could never get one.  I'm simply too indecisive - what on earth what I possibly want tattooed on my body for the rest of my life?   I haven't a clue.   

I feel like I've spent the last twenty years wondering what I'd get, tattoo-wise, ever since I saw that first gloriously appealing sign.    I'd probably be on my death bed when it would hit me:  EXPIRATION DATE - with that day's date.  No - better yet, the next WEEK's date, so they could always say that I went before my time.

Get Up, Stand Up

Last night I went to Industrial Light & Magic's theater at the Presidio for a screening of "I Am Legend."  One of the perks of being in the Writers' Guild is that you get to see movies for free, courtesy of the studios who want you to help their films gets nominated for stuff.  No one's sent me any ballots for anything but so long as they invite me to special screenings to movies under the guise of "For Your Consideration..", I'll happily go.  Better, maybe, is that I've started getting DVD's of these movies, which I thought was mostly going to be smaller, arty flicks that were hard to find in theaters, but then I got a copy of 'Knocked Up' (including a copy of the screenplay - woot!) and that theory went to hell.   

So far I've gotten 3:10 to Yuma, Away from Her, Zodiac, the Kite Runner and a couple of others, all of which I'm looking forward to watching in the comfort of home.  Paycheck, smaycheck - at least we'll be entertained.

As for the screening, it was neat just seeing something at ILM because I am precisely the kind of geek who gets excited about things like a life-sized model of Darth Vader.  Or Boba Fett.   Or the Ethan Allen-y bookcases which feature a number of light sabers used in the Star Wars films.  That's just cool.   

In January, I think one of the films I RSVP'd to see - Juno - will be at Pixar, which is along the same lines in terms of 'how excited I am about the venue' versus 'how excited I am just to see the movie.'  In other words, the venue is total icing on the cake.   

BTW, I never saw Omega Man, so I don't have that to compare it to, but I will say that I Am Legend kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time, to the point where after one particularly harrowing sequence, the guy next to me looked over at me and I could feel him laughing at how tense I was.  After the movie was over, I told him I felt like I just ran a marathon, and we overheard a bunch of other people talking about how exhausted they were.  Seriously, the movie had me hooked. 

In other news, like you, I have been shopping.  (I say 'like you,' because I like to think that you are not heartless meanies and have people for whom you would venture out into the great unwashed masses at Borders, Macy's and the Gap.)  Perhaps unlike you, I found myself at the fragrance counter at Macy's, because the GF and I had left various perfumes in LA and thought perfume up here in SF might not be a bad idea.  So I was on the hunt for something new.

People, when I shop, you can tell I am on a mission.  I do not dawdle when I am on a mission and I do not mess around.   Which was picked up on by the sole man - straight! - working the perfume counter at Macy's.  After some niceties were exchanged, niceties which were rote and insincere on both sides - I just want to discern as quickly as possible whether this man can help me or if he'll just be a waste of my time, while he just wants to make the quickest sale he can - we established that I was a bona fide customer, someone actually in the market for perfume, the very thing he was charged with selling that day.

My question to you, then, is DO I LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO SMELL LIKE PARIS HILTON?

Walking in LA

Yesterday I drove back down to LA for the express purpose of picketing with my fellow strikers.  And to pick up mail.  That too.

You're gone from a place for a few weeks and you are surprised at what you notice.  I never knew that coffee left sitting in a pot would actually grow mold.  I forget that coffee is technically a food and an organic one at that, susceptible to bacterial breakdown, blah blah blah.  For me, it's just a delicious source of fuel.  I thought it was impervious to such mortal concerns but there you go.  Observation one:  Do not leave coffee pot less than spotless before taking off for three weeks.

Observation two:  I'm sure it will have something to do with the quart of milk that's in the fridge.  I will put that particular horror on hold until later today.

Observation three:  If there's a way to opt out of those penny-saver mailers that the mailman routinely shoves into everyone's mailbox, I would like to know. 

Observation four:  Do not forget to bring the big dog's bed lest you spend the night listening to her getting up and walking over to where her bed usually is, and where it most certainly isn't at the moment, and then laying down and sighing DEEPLY.  She will do this every twenty minutes just to remind you of her deep displeasure at your oversight.

That said, it's weird to be back here, and will be weirder still, I'm sure, heading back to the lot today to march with my colleagues.  First though, I'm going to meet a pal over at Disney who's marching with friends in front of that studio.  Again, this is all so weird.

Latest rumor is that there's a deal in place and they're just hammering out details but then, that's where the part about the devil comes in, yeah?

That's Why They Call It a Union

Knives out, motherfuckers!

(We're going on strike.)

And if anyone asks why, direct them here.