Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Edge at Joshua Tree



my friend A. just reminded me of her favorite celebrity sighting ever:

The Edge at Joshua Tree State Park.

they were camping and came across him, his kids and another couple eating in a thai restaurant.

"it's not like you'd find The Edge walking the streets in San Francisco," she says. "No. you see him at Joshua Tree."

if i was a guy



my most obscure celebrity sighting yet: Karim Rashid.

saw him as guy and i walked towards our gate as we headed out to baltimore last wednesday night at around 11pm. need to look up why he'd be in town. have loved his designs for as long as i've loved design. forever.

i recently read a quote by him, discussing his latest style as "all white. now i only wear white. i was all black, but how boring. now all white." and sure enough, he was in an all-white suit, with white shoes, pulling a beautiful pink hard-cased suitcase.

he saw me see him. i looked. recognized. looked again. he saw me look, and as we passed i said very very quickly to guy, "that's a very famous man there in white." guy turned and saw his back, "the one with the pink suitcase?"

it was such an awesome sighting. karim is super cool. if i was a guy, i'd want to be karim.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Unzipped



when guy handed me the phone with my mom's voice on the other end, and a expression of complete dread and sadness on his face, i said one word, WHAT. my mom answered quickly, crying, she said, "Grady's dead."

i turned away from guy, who was watching my face. i felt nothing. i felt like i didn't want anyone looking at me. my friends were behind me in the living room, maybe they heard that something had happened, i don't know. we had been eating pizza and watching the simpsons when the call came. life, so sweet and simple suddenly became something else.

"grady's dead."

then she went in to details i can't remember. they were words that didn't make any sense. they were words from another place, time, planet. they were words from a movie. after they didn't stop right away, i started to hear them. i did not believe them. inside my body i felt things begin to unzip and fall to the floor. like i had layers of skin and soul tissue and emotion that were unzipping right down the front like a hoodie and sliding off my body like a silk bathrobe before a sexy encounter. unzip slowly, slide down arms, fall at feet.

guy sat with me and held my hand. i kept hearing the words flowing out of my mom's mouth and when she finally stopped i said to her, "i can't believe i'm hearing these words. i...what?!" she was telling me that i would have to decide the next day what to do with The Body.

"what? i don't know...i don't understand what these words are. i don't believe the words i'm hearing."

guy immediately got our stuff together to leave and two girlfriends who had been sweetly eating pizza and watching the simpsons with me, came in to the little room where i had stayed after the call ended, trying to believe the words. the words that told me someone i love isn't here anymore, that this person is gone now forever. that that is it. those words.

the girls came in and held me and cried with me and one said, "can you say anything about how you're feeling now?" i told her i felt guilty. she held me, and my other friend held my hand and cried with me. in my mind, i said "i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry." over and over.

then it was time to go. guy had our stuff together. there were two other men in the house. poor guys. they don't know what to do when tears come out of girls' faces. one of the guys hung loosely around the door leading to the small room that i was in. the other had disappeared somewhere in the house. he might have been explaining what happened, to his young son. he might have been avoiding the words that didn't belong.

i called out, where are you? and said goodbye and he appeared and said, I'm so sorry. those are words that make sense. they are the three most important words when death hits. i said, "it's ok." like it was actually ok, like an idiot. like a robot. "it's ok." right. it has never really been less ok in my entire life, but whatever.

then guy and i drove home. i did not speak. i couldn't. i just stared and felt the emptiness that was suddenly all around me in place of the world that i know.

after about an hour of silent driving, he turned the radio on.

Monday, May 21, 2007

37 prescriptions in one year



...in chronological order from 5.7.06 to 5.21.07

lexapro 10mg
cipro 250mg
vidodin 5/500mg
percocet 5/325mg
lexapro 10mg
klonopin 1mg
estrogen god only knowsMG
vicodin 5/500mg
cipro 500mg
estrogen ?
vicodin 5/500mg
progesterone ?
estrogen ?
vicodin 5/500mg
klonopin 1mg
lexapro 10mg
progesterone ?
klonopin 1mg
valium 10mg
ambien 5mg
vicodin 5/500mg
vicodin 10/325mg
valium 10mg
lupron ?
cipro 250mg
vicodin 10/325mg
vicodin 10/325mg
valium 10mg
ibuprofen 600s
percocet 5/325mg
vicodin 10/500mg
percocet 5/325mg
lupron ?
estrogen ?
estrogen ?
valium 5mg
valium 5mg

it appears that the real money is in pharmaceuticals. i mean, the legal drug money.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

My response to the Botoxed drill sergeant

Julie,
First, I wish to tell you why it has taken so long to express what I have to tell you: I do not wish to work for you.

On this past Sunday my dad died suddenly. If not for that, I would have written you earlier to tell you that I continue to feel passion for writing for xxx Cosmetics, and feel that I am perfectly fit for such a copywriter position. However, I am apprehensive to to be a part of a company that requests I open and reveal the contents of my personal cosmetics bag as a measure of my qualifications. Everyone to whom i have recalled this story has been appalled as well. You might reconsider that part of the interviewing process.

I write effective copy for menswear for xxx and xxx, but I can guarantee you I do not wear men's clothes.

I do wish to thank you for your time, and for (assistant girl's) time in reviewing, finding interest in, and interviewing me for the position of copywriter. You almost had a loyal, hardworking and talented writer on staff.

My best to you, and xx,
Lou Jones

bio-dad is dead.

his best friend found him in his apartment. he was in bed, eyes closed, asleep, and dead. he had a fan blowing on him and the AC cranked. there were many many bottles of beer in the kitchen. he had decomposed somewhat.

i thought he might have killed himself with the beer and maybe a bunch of pills. he had a prescription that was beyond reason. he received, in the mail, 90 pills of Ristoril a month. then i re-thought that. he loved wine more than anything. beer was his way of saying, "I'm not REALLY drinking." If he was hoping to die, he would have bought some delicious cab.

bio-dad truly loved to drink. i imagine his last night must have felt good. he'd been drinking and gotten drunk. he loved being drunk. lots of people love being drunk. can you imagine being sober for two years, every single day wanting to be drunk, but not doing it? he did that. then he got drunk. then he died.

bio-dad had a hernia sticking out of his belly so far, he appeared to be nine months pregnant. ok, maybe seven. he'd had it for years, but he used to tell me, "Ah, fuck it. it's not doing any damage." finally, right at the point that New Orleans drowned, he'd had surgery scheduled to have it fixed, but instead made way for 100,000 flood survivors in the Baton Rouge hospital, and cancelled his surgery. instead of surgery, he moved to Vidalia, Louisiana, where he had grown up, where my beloved grandparents had spent their last 45 years, where he met my mom.

when the time came and he was ready to have his hernia fixed, they told him he was in no condition to withstand surgery. he had an advanced case of emphysema. they said his lungs would not be able to handle the anesthesia. he thought that was a load of crap, and went to different doctors for other opinions, but found none.

he was a very lonely man. he had no friends, except for one crazy rich lady who happened to be the mayor's wife. they had grown up together. she bought him his car and his television sets. she bought him sheets and blankets, and when i went to visit, she made sure there were brand new towels for me to use.

day in and day out, he watched tv in his kitchen. he sat and chain smoked and played with his two kittens, sparky and runt. he talked to them. he cooked. he read. sometimes he painted. a lot of times he talked about how he should write a book about his life. he talked about that for at least ten years, but never wrote a word.

as a child, his drunk father left him and his mother. she beat him out of anger that he existed. he grew up feeling unloved and unwanted. still, he was a popular guy. he played drums in a band and was a football star. he married my mother, a beauty queen. at some point he joined the army, but never had to go to war. instead he played music in the army band. this took him to alaska at some point and he played tympani in the symphony there.

he loved to tell me that i was a very pretty girl and that i should be a model. i'd tell him, i can't be a model, i have terrible acne-scarred skin and i weigh too much. he was very concerned about weight. he would say, How much do you weigh now? i'd tell him, and no matter what the number, he'd say, Well, you're not that big. he also liked to talk about how smart i am. he was obsessed with IQs and intelligence. he liked to tell me what he thought my IQ is. he'd say, I tested 150, but i've lost at least 30 points from alcohol. I'd say you are about 130. I know, lou, i can tell by our conversations. you're a smart girl.

i never believed him when he talked like this. he was a talker. i know this because i am a talker.

i also love numbers and like him, am very good at remembering tiny details like what the temperature was on october 12, 1984 when we first met. and what i was wearing. sometimes over the phone we would play a game to see who could add big numbers faster in our heads. i usually won. he was both jealous and proud.

he was both competitive and grateful.
he was sick and healthy.
he was kind and angry.
he was self-obsessed and interested.
he was poor and poorer...

he loved drinking, but he wasn't allowed to. he got in too much trouble and hurt himself. he just wanted to have fun, make money and become a person who others admired. those were his life goals. they didn't really work out.

RIP 6.30.44 - 5.12.07

Saturday, May 12, 2007

A botoxed drill sergeant named Julie



ever been grilled in an interview by a botoxed drill sergeant? it sucks. there is no reading of that face at all. there is no way to know what she's thinking, or how you're doing. my interview today for a copywriter position with a very big "6th in the country" cosmetics company was maybe my worst interview experience ever. here is a snippet of what i endured this morning:

What do you think of a woman who likes to wear makeup.

great, if it makes her feel good about herself.

what does sex have to do with makeup?

a confident woman is a sexy woman.

let me see your makeup bag. hmmm, only three lip glosses. you're not very into makeup are you?

it's never been a priority for me. i like skin care. but that doesn't mean i don't know a lot about it. i read a lot and am good at remembering particular beneficial...

your resume says you're a pop culture enthusiast. what does that mean?

i know a lot about music, movies, books, art...

what are you reading right now?

i just finished the Namesake and now i'm reading Wintering, a fictional account of what sylvia plath's life might have been like just before she died.

what is your favorite movie? favorite movie of all time.

boogie nights. i think pt anderson is immensely talented.

hm. what is your favorite comedy.

(i pause because boogie nights is hilarious) well, i like weird-funny. i loved Chuck and Buck. it was mike white's first film. he's more famous for school of rock.

i like wedding crashers. we're not into "dark" here. we are all about the surface...so, you're obviously smart and know how to write, but what i've got to figure out, is what a girl who does not use makeup, and has barely only ever used our product has to offer us. hiring you is a huge investment. it's a risk.

well, this kind of writing comes naturally to me. it's very close to my own voice, and i'm very intuitive.

how do you feel about criticism? i'm very upfront, how will you feel when i send you back three times telling you your copy isn't strong enough?

well, obviously you're more experienced, i would believe that you know better than I and so i would go back to the drawing board, study the voice more, and maybe pick up an InStyle.

so you're not a sissy. you're not going to cry if i critisize. you have a lot of experience, and you're used to it.

yes.

give me 10 words to describe what you felt when you got a whiff of (product name).

this went on and on and on for an hour. she interupted me several times, when she had already gleaned enough information to judge me, or got bored. she reminded me of christopher walken in Biloxi Blues as the drill sergeant who gave matthew broderick an exceedingly hard time in order to "toughen him up."

i say fuck that. fuck toughening up. and you know what? lots of makeup is gross, and totally ages people. ew.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

fear of fibromyalgia



sometime at the end of the 90s i had a job printing stereoscopic photographs. it was really difficult and i only did it because jobs were incredibly competitive and i had just left a lame job as a stand against how they were treating one of my coworkers, ie. immediately. so i took what i could.

while there, i met several stereoscopic photographers and some digital artists who wanted to see their work in 3D. one guy, shawn, i dealt with only online. we emailed to communicate, and he put his work up on an ftp site for me to download. i enjoyed his work, so we talked art, but it wasn't long before he revealed to me that he had a severe case of fibromyalgia. ever since i've been very fearful of getting it. scientists don't know the cause and maybe that's what scares me. or it was his descriptions of how it felt.

he said that it was like his skin had been sewn in a repeated zigzag stitch to his musles in several places on his body, so that when he moved, it pulled. that the pain was so horrendous, that all he could do sometimes to feel better was sit in the sun because heat helped, but hot water hurt. that he couldn't take hot showers, or sleep. that he had become addicted to heroin for several years as a way to deal with the pain, but one day he gave it up because "that wasn't living." that his every single living moment is about dealing with a pain that spreads throughout his entire body every time he moves, or breathes, if he's in a certain position.

and there's nothing anyone can do. there is no treatment.

i only realized recently that this story has lived in me for years and has now become a full-blown obsession. it's because of my finger.

i cut my finger open and got three stitches about 2 months ago. the cut was perfectly situated right down a wrinkle of skin on my left index knuckle. paranoid of bacteria getting into the very deep cut, kept me extremely vigilant about bandaging. maybe too vigilant. i kept a bandage on it for 3 weeks, at which point the stitches were gone and i had gone swimming in the ocean, thus healing the last bit of sliced epidermis. after taking the bandage off, it was clear that i had consequently lost movement in the finger, due to knuckle skin flattening out. i could no longer bend my finger! at night it hurt especially when i would turn over and the finger would be forced to bend. this reminded me of "that artist, shawn" and his fibromyalgia. i imagined it to feel similar. a pain all of it's own, not one related to any other kind of physical pain.

while my sick mind thought up awesome torture techniques like bandaging all of someone's fingers straight for a month and rendering them essentially fingerless, i started to slowly stretch the skin, performing my own physical therapy, that, naturally, no doctor had pointed out that i would need.

now it's been two months and i still can't bend all the way, and truly, it seems that some of the skin has adhered to the muscle or bone, or whatever is directly underneath it. i have shown people, most of whom look at it cluelessly and shrug, but i have found one person who says yes, she has heard of skin adhesions and that it does look like there might be some adhesion action here.

i really have got to stop doing this to myself. this has happened before. i made something bad happen once with tampons because of a story i'd been told, but that's a story for another time. or never.

A life more fit in Fairfax.



i wanted to shove broken beer bottles into my eye sockets for about two weeks just a bit ago. all my thoughts were so negative due to various hormone roller coaster rides, that it seemed obvious i should stay away from publishing.

that's all different now.

guy and i are now standing on greener grass, and we haven't even arrived to our new town yet. the town of fairfax, widely known as Mayberry on Acid.

in fairfax we will have a real life actual house. when guy called yesterday to tell me, i was standing on the platform in the underground as train after train went by, completely full, unable to take any more riders. the platform was so completely packed with people, it resembled an overstuffed oreo, thick in the center with people getting pinched out the sides.

he called and i answered and he said, "we got it!" and my first thought was, oh my god. no more buses.

Here’s to no more buses.

Here's to no more stepping over bodies sprawled on the sidewalk; people passed out from alcohol poisoning at 8 in the morning.

Here's to no more expensive cab rides.

Here's to no more cold summers.

Here's to no more hetero-discriminating bars and restaurants.

Here's to no more battling 2 million people who descend upon the shopping areas on saturdays and sundays.

Here's to no more having to pay a yearly fee, in order to park in our own neighborhood.

Here's to having the space for family to come at thanksgiving. or even more than six people around the dining room table.

Here's to guy and i being able to watch two separate tvs without hearing both of them.

Here's to overnight guests not having to walk through our bedroom to go to the bathroom.

Here's to having a vegetable garden.

Here's to 16 years in san francisco ending.

Here's to living in a place where people won't steal my plants.

Here's to no more self-conscious hipsters.

Here's to having a fireplace that works.

Here's to a life more fit for people who've had enough of all the people.


well, at least we hope so.