It Means "Kid"

One of the perks of LA is brushes with famouses, I guess. Mostly if it is actual good interaction versus creepy watching from far away. Last night I accidentally took part in some of the latter.

My friend switched our bar meet up location last minute. When I arrived she explained that she had heard that one of the wives from "Big Love" was having a birthday gathering there. This one:


This was a tiny hole in the wall place with delicious $2 potato tacos and $3 Tecate cans w/lime wedge. There were maybe ten of this woman's party around the bar. I have no idea how the hell my friend knew about her intimate birthday thing. All I know is I felt like a turd in my pizzeria outfit of ripped jeans, sweater and grubby shoes while all these chicks were wearing pillbox hats and pumps.

Also I saw this guy today:

Carnivorous Flying Pigbats

Vonnegutian.

Where am I? Right here. Where are you? 

Why am I not writing? Child, when God signed up for my data plan he only bought the $30/month one. It is very slow and doesn't work in the trains, not even when we pass through Atlantic Avenue. 

I only have enough storage and processing capability to do one thing at a time. Right now, I am reading. Everything. High brow, low brow, middle brow. I cannot write worth a god damn. 

So I'm not! 

The Economist

Anyone else think this is ironically the perfect metaphor for United States foreign policy? Anyone? No? Okay. It's just me then...

Godzilla, King Kong, and Mothera walk into a bar

What does it mean?

The tick-tock of the eyebrow of the Barnard girl when I'd said I was interested in dating men reminded me of the cock of a quilled feather pen. 

Portrait of Domesticity

A sign that my boyfriend and I need to get out of the apartment a little more:

Let Me Roll It

I spent about 3 precious hours of my evening scouring the internet checking links provided to me by CalArts' student services department for grants/fellowships/funding. I've decided that they don't exist for writers, especially not poets. How come visual artists get all this damn money? I'm trying to bear my soul through the poetic text and I need some damn skrill! I came upon two depressing items:

Exhibit A:
$1000 for LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT. Can't we give them a little more exciting? Maybe like a little statue worth $1000?

Exhibit B:
It apparently takes an Italian poet a lifetime to be worthy of two-thirds of this award. While there are many region-focused awards these days, Marin County (for those of you who aren't CA county savvy) is the fifth wealthiest county in the US, with the average annual income hovering around $100k. What the @*%¡ does a rich-ass Marin County resident need $1500 to write poetry for? They probably earn that in the time it takes for me to take a dump.

I Wanna Be Your Dog

I got a little mag in the mail from my vet along with a reminder that my cat needs a vaccination. I flipped through it while eating breakfast and came upon an article about Jane Seymore (or, as many of us know her, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman). Anyway, blah blah blah, she loves animals, blah. Check out these pictures they put in there of her with her cat:


Although Dr. Quinn's lookin' great these days, her cat clearly clearly hates being held by her. For some reason they decided to use not only the "money"/main shot with the cat, but several others throughout the article:



The kitty tension is palpable. I rest my case.

Upside Down

Would you call this abstraction? I would call it really fucking realistic. 

You Bore Me

I was discussing with my mom a potential poem I am thinking about writing for class.

Dodo Bird: Do you know about L'Affaire Drheyfoose?
Mom [took years of French]: What are you talking about.
Dodo: You know, the Drheyfoose Affair??
Mom: Oh the Dreyfus Affair. Yeah. No one will know what you're talking about if you say it that way.

Mother Nature is quite a lady, but you're the one I need

Some of you may know of the cartoon caption contest in every New Yorker issue. It's on the very last page, and calls for a caption for a cartoon. The person who submits the "best" caption gets a signed and framed copy of their cartoon. My friends and I would often submit the phrase "Dude I'm tripping balls," but somehow never managed to win over the judges. In the spirit of our custom, and a combined rip-off of Married To The Sea's "Dude I'm Tripping Balls" cartoon collection, and my friend's "Don't Ask" New Yorker cartoon blog, I'm going to provide the most appropriate "Dude I'm trippin balls" cartoons I can find. When not much is going on in my life, California, or LA to speak of, I'll just throw one of these up.

I think I may be blowing my proverbial wad with this one:

Notes from My Life

Through experimentation I've learned that the worst possible wine pairing for an openfaced almond butter and strawberry jelly sandwich on whole wheat sourdough is the 2007 Barefoot Vineyards Shiraz (6.99 retail). But however exquisite the sandwich, when one of them has to go- sandwich, you're dispensable. 

That's not all...

Remember how The Rock/Dwayne Johnson is taking himself seriously? His latest film, "The Tooth Fairy" has recently released another poster:
Yup. Serious as a heart attack.

Major case of swamp butt

While taking an accidental way home from a cafe with the BF the other day, we came across a strange sight. These two men were on bikes up ahead, weaving slowly down the street. The progression of our understanding of the scene went like this:

BF: Those guys are dressed weird...
Dodo: They aren't even wearing shirts. Are they in lingerie?
BF: Oh my God...they're wearing adult diapers.

We pulled up along side them, gave them a wave and drove on.

Point 1: they were still wearing helmets -- safety first, right kids?
Point 2: I really hope whatever bet they lost was an important one.

Joycean

"Do you think the Amish drink?" I asked the Librarian. 

"They don't even use zippers," he weighed. 

This is Another True Poem

I hope my sister wins a million dollars of

Insurance money so that

She can spend it all at Baby Phat. 

End.

This is a True Poem

There is a silver lining to my sister's hospitalization. 

While she was unconscious, my mother took the opportunity

To remove her weave. 

Close, No Cigar

The other night at work I was going to say "Good night Rosa" to the cleaning lady as she emptied my trash. Then I looked at her name tag. It said "Alejandra".

Call Ghostbusters

Last night I went out with the guy from the bar. He gave me a list of his top five bands. It started with U2 and ended with Counting Crows. 

I am not seeing him again. 

Can't go wrong with Meat Cat

I have considered The Village Bakery a lovely spot to get coffee and do work -- it's walking distance, decently priced, and they give you raspberry butter and complimentary bread. It's a steal, I say. A steal!

Their "coolness" however, reached a new personal level for me last week when my boyfriend and I went in and he noticed one of the specials was a "cheesy blaster"...as in Cheesy Blasters mentioned in the 30 Rock episode that week. We both stared at the description and were nudging each other about it when the gaunt, serious-looking owner noticed and immediately starting belting out the theme song.



Apparently the Cheesy Blaster a la Village Bakery is a hit. The novelty of hearing people say "I'll have a cheesy blaster" didn't wane during our hour there.

Well I've got news for you -- HE'S DEAD

Seeing as the sticker was on a car at CalArts, I can only hope that its intentions are ironic...

Incinerate, incinerate, incinerate

On Thursday last week one of my friends invited me over to watch Mad Men and eat pizza. I was really excited because he is super-duper-ooper smart and I love talking to him. He is one of those people that I can ask questions about how leaves grow and he will teach me about the way plants read DNA. None of this makes me want to fuck him. In fact I regard the thought of sexualizing with him as an oddity, the way I would regard a wax reproduction of Elizabeth Taylor's genitalia. 

I had to think of a way to un-date-ify the situation, and quick, but nothing was coming-- so when he asked what toppings I wanted on the pizza I saw my opportunity and grabbed it. "GARLIC! LOTS OF GARLIC!" 

It Could Happen To You

This weekend at the Market I observed a home health care nurse purchasing some porn for his quadriplegic charge. 

Will it take you as long as it did me to figure out how disgusting this is? Here's a hint: the man is a q-u-a-d-r-i-p-l-e-g-i-c. 

with a drunk driver driving, there's no surviving

On Saturday at 4:30 am, my sister's car was hit by a drunk driver who then fled the scene. She was extracted from the car with the Jaws of Life. She has a broken foot, fractured hip, and three breaks in her lower spine. Don't worry-- they pricked her toe and it moved. People, she's going to be fine!

I spoke to her on the phone today, and she was druggy. "I've lost my peace," she told me. "I know how that feels," I responded. "Remember that gnarly car accident I was in some years ago? Out of nowhere. You realize that all those plans you made only matter so much. And you think about yourself differently when you consider yourself dead. You think about the people you care about and you think about the people who care about you and how your death would affect them. God I love you so much, this is so scary," I told her. 

"You idiot! I said I lost my TEETH!" she said.

I love the dough more than you know

My friend the Jewess dragged me to Shopsin's yesterday. Shopsin's is a general store that is not a general store. It is a place to eat a big soup while getting heckled by the owner's teenage son. It is a blast. 

I asked the big Shopsin what's in mire poix again. "I'm not telling you," he said. I pointed out the Eyeball Man figurine on the counter. "Not eyeballs-- BOOBS! What, you got two boobs, you can't tell a boob man when you see him?" Jr shouted at me. He insulted our dinner plans. "You're going to Little Italy to eat Italian food? You'll find better Chinese!" We ordered the Slutty Pancakes. "Who's the slutty one here?" he said, and slapped them down right in front of me. 

At the end the Jewess wanted a picture. "No fucking pictures! I don't do that shit!" he said. "I been so nice to you this whole fucking time, now you want a picture too?" 

So I took one of boob man. 

Why is this under Blog?

Sometimes, I just really, really love the internet. These little gems of "internetness" present themselves to me, and my heart just swells. Maybe it's more about humanity, and pettiness/silliness. How seriously we take ourselves.

I found this example when searching for a decent microphone for my workstudy boss.

Let's just take a moment to absorb this...the informative forum posting from, apparently, Chucky (holding the rank of Supreme Overlord Commander) is pretty great in its own right. But then, of course, some newbie like "crispybishop" has to point out Chuck's mistake.

I love me some internets.

Sing it, man

This song came up on my Pandora today:

Big thumbs up!

What a waste, you're so chaste

Since becoming single I have been on an unprecedented roll. I exude a ballsiness and confidence that gives men hard erections. Everyone wants to sleep with me. 

Like yesterday on the train. I saw a guy reading a Berthold Brecht play. I shimmied up slowly until I was practically on top of him and reading the book over his shoulders. "You like Brecht? Me too. He won a Nobel Prize three or four years ago," I told him, mistaking the author for Gunter Grass. "He's been on my reading list since I heard him on a radio interview a little while ago," I said batting my eyelashes. Brecht has been dead a long time. "What are you reading it for?" I asked. "Class," he replied, really getting into the little thing we had going. "Where do you go?" I asked. "Stuyvesant," he swaggered.

Stuyvesant College? University of Stuyvesant? I had never heard of Stuyvesant. "It's a high school," he explained.

Served the bartender, walked out with the tip cup

I stopped in for one beer at a bar last night with my friend the Jewess, but we ended up staying the night because the owner started giving us drinks and shots. I think it was because I told him that I have daddy issues. "So I love to fuck," I shrugged my shoulders. 

He also gave me his phone number. This could be the start of a really healthy relationship. 

Barren and Harpooned

My boyfriend is a cinematographer. Unfortunately -- especially in this economy -- he is not always able to act as cinematographer on gigs (sometimes assistant camera, etc). He currently has such a job. I remember him telling me about it:

BF: "I got a job on a Discovery Health Channel show."
Dodo: "Oh...my..God..!!!"
BF: "No...it's not what you think."

It wasn't what I thought -- it was "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant." He shoots dramatizations of women giving birth into toilets in fast food places, unaware they were ever pregnant. The show always has happy endings. He's almost barfed on set a couple of times. Mostly I'm surprised that Discovery would invest in something so tacky. But everyone knows this show. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E.

Apparently they have been really ramping things up on IDKIWP recently. "This week there's a woman who had her baby in a boot!"; "One woman has a baby in her pants and a doctor has to announce it with great surprise." Tomorrow he is working on one of the latest pregnancy-wowzer shows: "Pregnant and Impaled."

Let's just get right to the point with our title, right people? "Pregnant and Impaled." Not too many surprises in that one I'd think. Except for the impaling of pregnant women.

Looking righteous in a tight dress

"Did you know, that the best indicator of unhealthy behavior, is not actually illegal drug use, but cigarette use?" said the guy to the left of me. 

"It's because they're socially acceptable but so unhealthy. You can publicly proclaim your hate for yourself," said the girl to the right. 

"Oh totally! Yeah! Hate them. Would never do it," I said as I faked a cough and shoved the Ultra Lights pack deep into my purse. 

Shore do- two 22s in my shoes!

I had dinner tonight with a man who I knew would terrify me. My uncle. Not because I owe him money. Not because I kicked his dog. Personal reasons. 

I sat at the table at the Russian restaurant, laughing with the others about the singer, her dress with paillettes. I made small talk about the interesting thing that happened at work. I thought about his arrival. 

That time two weeks ago, when I was at his home, when he was abroad, when I was taking pictures with nature when I found myself straddling that bough in that high-up tree, wearing a fluorescent pink wig and completely butt naked, when the cop arrived regarding that tripped alarm, and the photographer ran away screaming, "MY WEED!" leaving me to slide down the tree, butt naked, only to realize my shirt was in the tree, causing me to re-climb it, butt naked, in the pouring rain, so that when I met the cop, my inside-out shirt clinging to my rock-hard nipples and my body ravaged by dirt streaks random branches and blood, and extended my hand and said "Hello Officer," it was almost disrespectful-- did he find out? Did the neighbors tell? 

Apparently not. 

Halloweenie

I'm struggling with my Halloween costume this year. My past two have been pretty awesome. Two years ago, I was the Hunchback of Notre Dame:
Going into bars with hooches all around me, I definitely enjoyed this one.

Last year I was Popeye, my boyfriend Bluto, and my two friends Olive Oyl and Wimpy:
[Sorry, my boyfriend's face got all weird in the editing process of that one]

Mostly my issue is that my hair is suddenly LONG. The Nico option seems just too damn lame. Recently I've been considering Frida Kahlo, cuz who doesn't love a femme-stache and uni-brow? Also, I guess she did important stuff for art, or something.
Yup. A winner. Also a reason to buy clothing and jewelry I will wear again...

Outreach

Advertisement located at an Arco on Hoover and 23rd Street [ie. South Central]:


SOMEONE got confused about their demographic.

I have no words

I guess my only question is...does this mean that Facebook users can now become "fans" of Auschwitz?

Starts with Gal, ends with kis

One of the greater things my boyfriend introduced me to was the comedian Zach Galifianakis. An example of his brilliance, from an article that had been sitting at the bottom of my purse for months, when describing his North Carolina home:

[Galifianakis'] relationship with his home state is a complicated one (he refers to a nearby town, for example, as "The mouth-breathing capital of the world")

There's a mouth-breather that lurks my workplace. I know exactly what he means.

OrnaMental

Sometimes I think I don't belong in my workplace...

As my bones grew, they did hurt

When I was 19 I went to Vancouver for a liquid vacation. One night at a diner I was going to the waitress decided to give me and my boyfriend free pitchers of straight-up martinis. As martinis are known to improve one's IQ by a factor of 10, I drank almost an entire pitcher. I thought it was hilarious.

For years afterwards I cited this waitress as the coolest I have ever encountered. Now I think she may have been playing a cruel joke. 

Super Peoples Day DXVI

We don't have school on Monday for "Indigenous Peoples Day." I thought this was really exciting and moderately cool, giving the big F-U to Columbus and lame holidays the guvment throws at us. Then when I looked it up on Wikipedia, I was just redirected to Columbus Day.

This is similar to how in Virginia they had MLK day originally as "Lee-Jackson-King Day," thereby managing to celebrate MLK's birthday right along with two Confederate generals. Shouldn't they just be...completely completely disassociated?? Arizona actually voted against honoring MLK day (against) in 1990. Then, after we were all so excited that the Super Bowl was going to be played in the hometown of myself and Pointer, the nearly all-African American teams realized that that shit wasn't so cool, so the Super Bowl XXVII was played in Pasadena that year instead. Arizona swiftly voted the holiday as legit in 1992 and by 1996 got Super Bowl XXX to Tempe. I remember they canceled school for that shit.

In club sauce

A jovial obese guy walks in to our pizza place.

Guy: You guys sell wings?
Us: No, sorry, we don't.
Guy: Man...you guys know anywhere nearby I can get them?
Manager: No, but in Fancy Associated Restaurant we have chicken tenders.
Guy: Chicken....tenders? No. No I don't think so.

A person who works in the back whose teeth look like whittled scrimshaw more than something that should grow from a gum spends the next 3 minutes trying to talk to the guy about how you can't have anything else feed the wing desire except for wings themselves.

We run an excellent establishment. Like a well oiled machine.

Overheard in Atwater

In a cafe in Atwater, two workers at the counter. One is a rosy-cheeked gentleman, the other is a lean New Yorker-looking mature woman -- probably the owner.

A customer walks up as ABBA blares over the speakers. The owner professes her hatred of ABBA. The gentleman and the customer say they love it, and start to sing along.

Owner: Is this seriously happening? Am I in an alternate reality??
Customer: You're in the ABBA reality.
Owner: NO. I've never been there, and never will.

Eat Shit, Bastard

If you have the balls to tell me "I happen to like Miles Davis," when I ask you to turn it the fuck off because it can be really pretentious when played in certain contexts, like this one-- especially when you got the CD out of My Fucking Case, then you can go fuck yourself and die. I really mean that.

Salad Days

I live in one hell of a dirty apartment. The habitation experience here is similar to an experiment in second-world living for the urbanite. I would move out, except I'm poor. What I'm getting at is that nothing in this apartment works right. 

The shower this morning took two weeks to get warm. I waited in the tub, letting the cold water run over my hand, rolling my eyes. It turned lukewarm and I thought this might be the warmest it would get, so I turned on the shower, and it was fucking cold. "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing!" I shouted, drawing inspiration from the Hellen Keller quote while invoking her sensory handicap. I jumped into the cold shower. 

I think this marks a new phase. 

I've been struggling a lot with blogging lately because I had the recent realization that I have nothing to be cynical about, and in my heart I am really not cynical. It is hard to be cynical when everything you want, you have. I need to figure out how to write joie de vivre without sounding like a fucking pansy. I am trying.

Oh, by the way, as I was basking in the cold shower feeling like a goddamned pioneer the cold stream turned to steam and burned the fuck out of me. Shit. 

Pack bags, call cabs, hurry home to me

You know that PBS show, Sunrise Earth? I vote they make a sister show, called Rainfall Patio.

The Stinky Cheese, Man

I found my "group" late in college. Initially I knew these people only peripherally. Then when I came back from studying abroad I needed a place to live, one of these people was going abroad herself, so I took her spot in an apartment. It was in a building called "Habitat Soo Zee" -- we just called it "The Habitat." The Habitat had become a strange place where lots of people would kind of wander in and out, but there were always the core Habitaters. We were almost all budding artists of some kind, partied like crazy, totally nerdy, and it was some of the best times of my life in that shitty apartment.

Senior year we all got a house together, 10 people. We tried to name it other things, but it ended up just being The Habitat. We had many big parties, and all (save one, thrown for the bitchy person we all hated by the end of our lease) were successful and fun. I never realized how many people even knew about The Habitat until after graduating and running into a USC professor at a book reading. A few of us from The Habitat were there, and mentioned how we lived in the house, and he knew it by name.

Needless to say, those were my "college glory days" or whathaveyou. I had never felt so connected with a group of people, all artists/writers/musicians, and we just had a great fucking time. Then we graduated. A few left, but a majority of us stayed in LA, a few of us lived together here and there. Then what I call "the great migration of 2008" happened, and almost everyone left, mainly to NYC and northern CA. I hadn't realized there were only two of us Habitat people left in LA until yesterday, when the other guy told me he was leaving. Today. Then, to top it off, he said, "you're the only one in LA now!"

So here I am. The last of the fucking Mohicans over here, late into the clan to boot. I guess the cheese stands alone.

Why you lick me? I do sixty!

"Oh, Toast? Todd Frost? That guy hated me--" 

"No, that was Styles. That was the guy that really hated you. You were telling him that you were going to take the Wetboys style and copy it and market it to Wal-Mart. He didn't like that."

"Yeah that guy hated me too."

Awkward silence. 

Gradumacation

Important skills I realize I have lost since my undergraduate career: knowing how to use the library, talking to people, not rambling about American history/writers/nerdy things when nervous.

CalArts is known for its nudies, at least that's what I'm told. So far this has proved to be true. I went to the President's picnic yesterday, and apparently (no joke) it was advertised as "clothing optional." We saw some people walking away with full plates of southern food in one hand, and a walking stick of some kind in the other, tan lines aplenty. On registration day I barely missed (har) the nude procession of drummers through the registration tables at 9AM. Most people told me about it with mingled amusement and disgust, finishing with "I mean, God. I haven't even had my coffee yet." Nothing like seeing a stranger's ball-sack in the morning.

WTFLA

It was so unseasonably hot I had boils in my armpits last week (thanks to the Santa Anas), and now it's chilly? Where was the glorious two weeks of perfection I was promised upon signing up for this southern California bullshit??

Eid Mubarak!

So Ramadan ended last week. It's great to complete the month of fasting and go down to my boyfriend's family home and eat like crazy and have a nice day with them. However, a slightly awkward moment occurred this year.

In the car, nearing the mosque parking lot:

BF's sister: Hey guys, look at that white guy! What is a white guy doing here??
Dodo: Well I guess I don't have to wonder what everyone is going to think when I walk by!

Also, I discovered that bangs really don't work well with head scarves, especially when adamantly trying to completely conceal one's hair in the name of God.