they say nothing's really free

Broken Social Scene is playing a free concert in Westwood Plaza at UCLA at noon. Come and watch confusion cloud the faces of frat boys.
the logistics are here

Cell-phone finally overdoses; survivors torn between grief and loathing; suicide not ruled out

For the past couple weeks, I've been far too good. I've been exercising like a maniac and laid off the booze (unfortunately, I think it now shows in my subpar writing style), however, a certain drug-addled, alcoholic object of mine appears to have moved onto harder things. Little did I know that while I was on the elliptical machine, it was autodialing a drug dealer for smack, not to mention dipping into a moet & darvoset cocktail of its own creation (and, i am loathe to disclose, my own inspiration). Today my cell-phone injected air into its circuit-board veins and flat-lined. I'd like to think this death is accidental, but the truth is, I'll never know.

Maybe if I wasn't so self-obsessed in my exercising I'd have understood its sadness. Retrospectively, I can see that the time I found my cell phone in a glass of chardonnay was really a cry for help. And I did nothing. I am so sad and ashamed. And, most importantly, I have now lost all of your phone numbers. Except for the ones, of course, that I have appliqued Emily Dickenson-style to my walls, desk, notebook, and corpse of a cell phone. So, in conclusion, deluge my e-mail box with all of your now-missing numbers. Maybe we've never talked before but you found this blog while looking for advice about your own self-destrctive electronic gizmos. Well, we can talk now. In fact, I welcome it.

The funeral date will be announced. Flowers are always appreciated, or you can make a donation to Betty Ford if they take/need such things.

Love the bomb

So apparently I shouldn't go to the westside pavilion today even though I live about 6 blocks north of the federal building anyway (constant helicopter noise has made me feel daring in my ordinary chores). Upon looking at the store directory for the Westside Pavilion, I can't find a single store that i couldn't live without. So, please, by all means, blow up the mall. Just don't get dust/debris inside my apartment, and spare The Apple Pan if you can, OK?

Provided my vintage china isn't under a heap of rubble is anyone else game for a "we got bombed/we almost got bombed" drink-fest at palomino's this evening?

(Update: Isn't it a little depressing to think that the only "bombable" thing in your city is a mall? We go to all the trouble to build disney hall and they try and blow up a mall which might get torn down in a few years anyway?)

camping, but with take-out

Warning signs will be posted about mountain lions in griffith park. This is why i love Los Feliz; one minute you're in the woods, and if you drive two blocks you're in little Armenia. I'd love for a mountain lion to run amok through Los Feliz village though to knock the rent down and enact a little population control.

oh...great...

The heat has not only managed to thaw out my hard little heart, but also secured that there will be NO WAY i can get a last-minute brazilian before I head to an art collector's daughter's wedding in La Jolla this weekend.

Worst Double-Feature Ever #1

So many places do it right. The New Beverly Theater and the Egyptian are spot on in their choices for double-features. But what about the people who do it wrong? In the first of a (hopefully) weekly series, I will propose a completely ill-fitted pairing of two films. These may be successful in their own perverse way, but watching them together is, generally not recommended.

This week's choice is

Nights of Cabiria and The Virgin Suicides
Not only are the decades and locales of each film entirely incongruent, but the subject matter of each will make you want to kill yourself. It's a warm summer night and you pop in a Fellini film. It's the beautiful, depressing, non-musical version of Sweet Charity without the hot Fosse dance scenes. The film ends and you call your bank broker to seal your funds. Follow it up with the uplifting Virgin Suicides and you'll be throwing yourself off of the Pasadena bridge in no time.

I guess that's the weiner coming out...

Antique Gallery-owner and gourmet hot-dog stand proprietor (scroll down to the yellow section where it says "weenie gram") has a gorgeous house on Strathmore. A house i never knew you could get simply by managing 30 budget rent-a-cars. Despite all of the classiness--the minimalist sculpture, the books on Cy Twombly, and ancient roman sculpture--he still has "The Da Vinci Code" prominently displayed on his bedside table. I guess that's the hot-dog stand budget rent-a-car side coming out.

Come on, craigslist!

Craigslist seems to be remarkably low on the heat metaphors in the casual encounters and missed connections sections. Come on! I want to see "It's hot and I'm hot...let's sweat" or "m-33- seeks woman to tan with" or "check out my continuous mystic tan"

These LA people are not mining the wealth of messages that the weather alone provides.

See What the Internet Can Do

NYU gives housing to their homeless student and then has the NY Times write a story about it. Here in the PR business, we call this damage control. You can't have EVERYONE know that just because you pay $40,000 a year in tuition, it doesn't include housing. I, however, deem this kid an idiot for not going to a public university. Granted, I did that and it was probably a huge mistake, but at least I graduated completely debt-free.
Permalink to earlier post re: NYU student
Register to read the NYT story

The Peril of the Morning Commute

I am in a wicked mood. Perhaps it's the morning commute that's done this to me. The heat, the bugs flying kamikaze-style into my face, the pervasive smell of heated dog shit everywhere, the construction blocking my way. Maybe it's the broken elevator or the 100 degree heat or the fact that I still have to work on this excruciatingly boring project with little/no end in sight. Perhaps I've simply gone too long without alcohol.

It's nearly summer in LA and everyone is in their juicy couture pants. The men are wearing flip-flops and shorts. Fat girls are wearing sweatshirt-inspired miniskirts and tight tanktops. As I drink my chai latte in my 85 Farenheit apartment I wonder, "why would I ever move?"

the calm before the proverbial storm

the floodgates of my brain are currently jammed, but go see giant drag at spaceland tonight. it's totally free, which means more money for booze.

who needs private audiences with high-powered editors?

Certainly not me. And this is why I am glad that I didn't hear about the Q&A last friday until today. But, apparently nobody under the age of 50 did. I did, however, hear the preliminary line-up for next year's reading & shop-talk with Mona Simpson. So far the line-up includes David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore and perhaps Alice Munro.

Only 3% Accuracy!

I've been working on this mailer project for work for months. I have looked at the copy in excruciating detail. despite all this, people have still filled out the forms in various retarded ways and mailed them back in retardedly as well--placing stamps on a "no postage necessary" mailer, folding in half and stapling, etc. Sadly we've only gotten one skinhead/teret's "victim" response (who lives on 102 Jew Faggot Perverts Avenue in Holyland, Hollywood found in the State of Queer--no joke) and the rest are incredibly dull and unituitive.

While going over this project with my boss yesterday, I asked what to do if someone requests info from the Hammer and thinks they are also on the mailing list. What if they are not on the mailing list? Do i include each of these bizarre responses? Guide me!
My boss, looks at me and says "Uhm, accuracy is not what we're going for here."

So now i'm filing things in an inaccurate fashion which i'm sure I will have to re-do.

And that's why I'm not posting much today.

the H-Bomb

The governator, our Arnold S., has proposed a "hydrogen highway" by 2010. Sadly, this is not a hoverboard solution to our overcrowded freeways (which seem to be extra bad lately; people need to stop moving here), but a promise that there will be hydrogen gas stations running along the whole state. "Your government will lead by example. As I have said many times, the choice is not between economic progress and environmental protection. Here in California, growth and protecting our nature beauty go hand in hand."
Arnold has already retrofitted his H2 to make it burn hydrogen fuel, making it the first least fuel efficient natural gas car.

rachel, not tony

i am currently humping rachel kushner's leg like an annoying toy dog in heat over her fiction (the managing editor of BOMB magazine). Why the hell isn't her book out?

There's a solution to every problem

Back when NYU graciously refused to augment my financial aid with anything greater than my pittance of a scholarship, I gave up my dream and have now led a marginal error-filled existence in LA. I should have just done what this guy is doing. Had I gone to NYU, I'd probably be "directing" and starring in some kind of avant-garde conceptual theatre piece from the 1950s in which there is no script but only sounds instead of writing trip-hop songs to postmodern texts which I perform wearing vintage lingerie and a marlene dietrich scowl. At least in my current living situation my alcoholism looks vaguely glamorous and nobody raids my stash of percoset; can't say that about living in a library.

like a literary food-fight

no martin amis and christopher hitchens for me as i've spent all afternoon cataloging literary allusions and hearing about kerouac's one night stand with gore vidal at the chelsea hotel. plus I have benji franklin's autobiography in front of me (read: moet & chandon for one) and an evening of compulsive gym ahead of me (read: pink panther DVD box set), not to mention band rehearsal--how many ways can you sing the word "hottentot"? Give it a try. But, if you go, do tell Mona Simpson that I am there so she doesn't yell at me come Monday.
martin amis & christopher hitchens (ucla live)

Thank God it's in writing

Yankee Pot Roast publishes excerpts from a new hipster law treatise. Commit it to memory and laugh at people at star shoes. F.Y.I. My perm and lust for luxury items exempts me from this mocking, but I am now prey to a whole new type. hit me!

Exercise at your own risk

Thanks Craigslist. Because of you I am now working out in fear.

This post is to all the hot women that either work out or walk-by above the racquetball courts while I am playing, causing me to lose concentration and forfeit many points.

Introduce yourself with a pic. Perhaps we could workout together?

who are you, crazy racquetball man? I admit, sometimes, i may look at you, but it's only because there isn't a TV in front of the elliptical machine...really!

my life is so small

that I have to complain about really minor things. REALLY minor things. Firstly, the Pink Panther special edition DVD collectors set appears on the outside to be thoughtfully packaged. The cover of the books is vinyl, which comes in handy when you're me and spill booze all over your toys and electronics (how this keyboard still works is beyond me), but the DVD's are two per fold-out which means that in order to watch "A Shot in the Dark," I have to take "The Pink Panther" out of its space, get the movie below and, what? snap my movie back on top? screw up chronological order and put it on the bottom? I can't figure it out!

Secondly, while I really really really loved some of the pieces at the erotica reading last night, the harrowing short story about putting rubber bands around a little boy's penis and then shoving G.I. Joe parts up his urethra was, while original, quite horrible to deal with....and I don't even have a penis.

See...my life is so meaningless that this is all I have to complain about. I'm going on a drama quest this week in a desperate attempt to add spice to the tofu scramble of my life.

"Pae" sounds like "Pie"

The Hammer museum is having their second "Hammer Bash" tomorrow (friday), from 6:30pm-midnight. Enjoy the extended hours, giveaways, music, hot people, and cash bar!

Bring your astroglide on Sunday (@ 5pm) for "Love Stories and Erotic Tales: Rowdy Tops and Bossy Bottoms" featuring
Jennifer Bolande, Glen David Gold, Micol Hebron, Mary Beth Heffernan, Stanya Kahn, Rachel Kushner, Simon Leung, Nick Lowe, Paul McCarthy, Shaun Caley Regen, Julie Reyes, Jan Tumlir, Paul Vangelisti, and others as they present readings and performances of works embracing erotica, love, lust, and the extremes of sexual behavior.
Both events are free
Hammer Museum

more on Jeffrey Vallance

re: Jeffrey Vallance, Thomas Kinkade, and the "lack" of irony from the upcoming exhibition

Apparently Jeffery Vallance believes irony can only be true if it is unconscious.

yep.

open message to Nylon mag

Nylon, you're slipping. For years I have savored you over the exercise bike and later, the elliptical machine. I have gazed at your skinny models and called myself "fat girl" to make myself run faster. I don't even mind that you sketch cosmetics in your magazine, making it hard for me to find the product at Sephora--nothing looks the same as the colored pencil versions. Your ads are snappy and feature people with haircuts like me, people i could fit into one leg of my marc jacobs jeans... but no matter. Nylon, I have spent hours anaylzing the maps of Berlin, fraternizing with newsstand employees so as to get your magazine for a discount (or even free), because while I love you, I'm no Thomas Kinkade. Plus, my address seems to change weekly.

Only you could have made looking like 90210 Shannen Doherty seem like a good thing...and normally i revel in your unique and interesting monthly fashion icons, but this month, you really lost it. Not only is your magazine abnormally thin (did everyone go on vacation? do you need more writers? more ideas? i can help) but you chose Tina Chow as your private icon.

Don't get me wrong, I love Tina Chow. For a while I was even wearing black trousers and white t-shirts, but this was back in October when Style.com ran their bit on Tina Chow as a beauty icon. Now, I can understand if it happens the same month, like your article on new products for curly-hair coinciding with Vogue's article on the return of curls, but this style icon thing is just pure laziness. Most offensive of all, you used the worst photo of Tina Chow possible simply because it had Andy Warhol in it. Oh Nylon, I am dismayed! you can not let Anna Wintour and the Conde Nast conglomerate (my future employers, hi!) beat you on things like these. The battle against Anna is all too important.
Tina Chow, Beauty Icon (style.com)

Why can't the painter of light do las vegas?

The walls of the art gallery at Cal State Fullerton are painted Kinkade green, the same foresty background used by his galleries to show his art. The campus location features paintings of Christmas scenes and an enormous lighted pine tree covered in Kinkade ornaments made of china and paper. A Kinkade electric train is posed under the tree along with Kinkade coasters, stockings, greeting cards, cocoa, coffee and toys. A dining table is set with a Kinkade table runner, candleholder, fruit bowl and salt and pepper shakers. A Kinkade spice rack hangs on the wall.

I am trying not to feel badly for Thomas Kinkade. I hate the trailer trash-turned-multimillionaire as much as the next starving artist. I mean...he's got those Christians on his side, and I may love Jesus as much as the next girl, but the only levitating cross i want to see is the one hovering over a mountain in Los Feliz. At least we can all rest safe in knowing that he'll never be respected in the long run, even if he did make over $100 million last year. As the Danielle Steel of the painting world, Kinkade can have the big house, sure, but no one will remember him. Or we could...

I had been able to compress my disdain for Mr. K for quite some time now, that is, until Jeffrey Vallance got his Guggenheim and decided to do a show of Thomas Kinkade.

Vallance insists that the exhibition was never meant as a tongue- in-cheek commentary. "It wouldn't be a good show if you did it with irony," he says. "The thing that most intrigues me about Kinkade is the way he markets his objects and the way that he infiltrates himself into the lives of everyday people. He multiplies his images on everything. These are in millions of homes around the world. It is what Warhol wanted to do but Kinkade has done it even better."

Does Thomas even get it? Does he care? It's amazing that a show about the most widely-represented living artist today can cause an uproar, but I know several people that are boycotting it, calling it mean-spirited. But, like Mrs. Miller, William Hung, and all the people on the gong show, it seems like we need Kinkade to not get it. We need him to continue mindlessly oblivious, dimming his lights as he paints to make sure he gets gaslamps nuances right, so we can laugh at our own elitist inside joke. I'm not against this by any means (as anyone who knows me could tell you), but i do this we should at least admit it among ourselves...Come on society, grow a spine!

Vallance seems to pick up an interesting point. If re-painting and arranging Brillo boxes, putting ones initials on a urinal, and stuffing a shoppingcart with stuff can be art, why can't Thomas Kinkade be an artist? There comes a point, usually with exhorbitant success, when it becomes easier to think of the subject as a non-artist. It's a comforting thought that keeps me sleeping and binge-drinking most nights, because, like existentialism, the alternative (that we all just completely suck) is too terrible to fathom.

Back to the show...I reccomend going. I myself may be able to handle it from a literary distance as I am only minimally cobblestone and ivy-friendly, but if i can slip a flask of some strong liquor in there, I may be able to hack it.

stop whining about reality TV and be on it

Edit 6/27/04: there comes a time when a person shoots themself in the foot. Such is the case with the person who wrote a press release, sent it to me, and asked for distribution. the press release was poorly written and more poorly edited. A couple months later, I receive a call from this person and am asked to remove said press release because it is "damaging her career." Now, is this my fault if someone releases a shoddy press release? Am I to blame for posting an unedited version of it (aka: the version as it appears in my inbox)? The answer is No. If the LA Times gets a press release of mine it is with my full understanding that any and all words may go into print and that the release is a reflection of my diligence and effort.

This is why, my dear friends, I have removed said humorous press release from a person nobody cares about working for a channel nobody watches for a show that will never be made. Sometimes it seems a little too much like people in LA shoot themselves in the foot and then blame someone else for the blood.

shanghai richie

Some truly wonderful people have sabotaged Nicole Richie's wedding registry guest book. Click to read entries from Adam Sandler, George Michael, George W and Laura Bush, and Courtney Love, to name a few.

the byproduct of a Puritan work ethic

I may go down in fame as the only person completely unable to handle a four-day work week.

not just vodka anymore

In keeping with my apparent theme of drug-addling, operating on the brains of the mentally ill is being touted as "a screwdriver for the brain." Link forthcoming (in that "don't hold your breath" sense).

we call it the "total immersion" hangover

There's nothing quite like coming to work in the morning only to realize that you are still slightly trashed from the evening before. Last night I threw my contacts on a bathroom rug before i crawled--yes literally crawled--to bed. Now I can't see and I swear something in my head just popped like a speaker being turned on. The tissue in my head is loose, or just flapping, flapping, flapping in the breeze. I may still post up a storm today...or at least until my skin grows tight, my face hardens, and i feel like a taut and salty cocktail olive.

Oh good, we can stay

(Preface: i'm very behind in my print articles. I've got stacks of magazines littering my desk. It's enough to make me go rent another one. I am well aware that March 2004 in blogger-time is roughly equivalent to the Mesozoic era, but I will continue on in my own stubborn way and hope that eventually I invent the wheel.)

In the March 2004 issue of the innappropriately-titled Artweek magazine Peter Frank says, "For the first time perhaps ever, Los Angeles is a painting town. Photography, video, installation, and performance are not 'the next big media:' pigment-bearing substances are." Painters, good news, you can stay in LA...Peter Frank has vindicated you. As for the rest of us, well, I guess I put my Leica on EBAY just in time.

Better Homes and Gardens of Gethsemene

an elaboration upon a conversation with Ben Lev on a bench yesterday. (note: By "bench" I mean the sculpted back of an aspiring actress. Actual benches do not exist in Hollywood, but people to suppress by reclining upon them do...in droves)

The question really is, do you hate "The Passion of the Christ" or do you hate Mel Gibson? I personally dislike Mel Gibson. We never got along after I broke it to him that I hated "Mad Max," a film commonly included among his best (which, I suppose is saying that there's room in our culture for mainstream fetishist fashion). And, while Mel and I have our tiffs, I saw his TPOTC (The Passion of the Christ) and let the font of my Catholic guilt fill to the brim.

What I'd really like to see, however, is Tom Cruise's "The Passion of the Christ" produced, directed, written, and starring...Tom Cruise. I envision this film as a BC version of "Mission Impossible 2" (MI 2 being far more offensive than the first), guaranteed both to make Tom Cruise's package look huge, and be completely "inaccurate"--as much as that word means in Hollywood anyway. Unlike Mel's chaste Marys, Tom's film would contain a whole world of Marys...all heaven-bent on obtaining the loin-throbbing Jesus Tom. Steamy sex sequences ensue. The miracles would also be played up quite a bit; the Lazarus sequence being a must. Tom would also have an opportunity to show off Jesus' Kung-Fu technique: an intricately choreographed fight with the Pharisees involving wire-work to the tune of Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" is in order, as well as a final show-down with Lucifer, shot in an epic style.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go say 12 Hail Marys and kiss the cross now.

Now you can waste time and pay for it

Remember the good old days before we blogged? Before the internet? Or at least, when the Internet was an irritating dialup away and not constantly hovering wirelessly over our heads like a methane cloud? Remember when we wished we could get work done? Of course not! According toDailyCandy these days are all over. Rent a desk and head on over to "The Office". In promising a place free from the distractions, this Santa Monica location has sealed its fate as the new place to blog from--being paid to blog from an actual office is so passe.

things I would write if someone actually read this

I'm not bitter...I know you're out there. Eurotrash rips people up better than I ever could

Art is for sissies

brilliant article about art and manners in new york. it makes me long for those sweet days when i was ignorant enough to clap between movements.

happy birthday, cellular leash

my cell is a year old today. a year ago I didn't even want a cell phone. I was presented with it as a way to spend my recent raise (mini cooper? who needs one?). Today I'm fielding phonecalls from all walks of life--male animals from the LA Zoo get my phone number off of the wall of the monkey house--much to my dismay.

Today's not the first time that I've thought about how much I love/hate it, either. If I could, I would glue rhinestones to my phone like paris h., but for now I have to be content with making phonecalls before I can get my voicemails, an office that magically depletes my cellphone battery and sparse reception. maybe it's the jet parked underneath the sculpture garden, maybe it's my cell...who knows? In the past year I have performed several exorcisms on my phone and poured enough alcohol on it to ruin a human's liver. This phone has the Honda Curse--staying power beyond all desire. Happy birthday to the baby-leash of my twenty-something life, keeping me tethered to society while I try to play in the bushes.

there's nothing wrong with hush money

I'd like to get a job as a discreet secretary for a lascivious producer/director/agent. But what I'd really love to do, what I feel called to do, is quit the job and write an expose "novel" entitled "The Revenge of the Casting Couch." I could then be plied with millions upon millions of Weinstein dollars....
Ah, to dream.

Firesign Theatre Roasts Industry

Industry types galore--the type that half-smile at you because they can't be sure if they've met you before or not--at UCLA Live's "Feasting on the Firesign Theatre" last night in which an ensemble of about 20 tackled the work of the 4 original firesign-ers. Hal Willner maintained a more steady show than the last one i saw. In the last Willner show I saw, the "suprise" finale consisted of three topless (and not really all that attractive) women painted blue while the center one sang a heavy-metal version of "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic.
This new show was hit & miss but generally managed to be funny especially when an actor that knew how to use a microphone was performing. Without those select few, I'd had a grimace permanently stuck on my face. The best part of the evening was when a rousing song was sung about President's Day. "There have been too many George's . . . my country's a mystery on President's day." He got a standing ovation midway through the left-wing song and a little flutter went through my heart. the same type of feeling when you realize people actually go to the theater on Thursday. Although, you know any show will be good when David Sefton tells you that you can leave your cell on...you won't be able to hear it anyway.

a Ph.D does not a genius make

A FORMER INSTRUCTOR at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a
teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, pleaded guilty
on Wednesday to charges of larceny after allegedly swindling
$600,000 from co-workers and others, according to wire
reports. But Boston police officials say he may have lost the
money after investing it in a phony Nigerian "business
venture."
I'm still shocked that someone fell for that Nigerian e-mail scam.

Like Cancun, only with less breasts

The perm is here and I am back from vacation. I shuffled off without a warning (some people thought I was in San Diego, some in the Valley, some on the west side, some in San Fransisco, and at least one was convinced that i had in habited a small cave) because this past week had quickly spiraled out of control.

Sure, I had my perm, and it was big and fabulous, but it was also draining; too draining to get me to go to the farewell party for the plastic factory downtown. By Saturday I had crashed a magazine party, gone to the F.W. Murnau screening (thanks flavorpill!) at LACMA, drank liquid cookies at the bigfoot lodge and rounded out the evening at my perennial fave...the bounty.

However, it wasn't until later when i was spooning ice cubes out of my scotch and playing a perverse version of hockey with it, invited a guy over to chat, and re-worded REM songs, that I realized it had gone too far. I crawled back to my apartment, muttered something about my own alchoholism to myself and dozed off. Sure my band meeting went off without a hitch, but by Sunday my hair resembled a ratty carcass and I needed to leave town and self-medicate with lofthouse cookies, makeover shows on Style channel and old movies courtesy of TCM.

Now I'm back, of course, and more than ready for what the week has to offer: photo shoots, an ex-boyfriend's birthday party, other exes friendstering my friends, more exes slyly asking my friends my whereabouts (don't play dumb!). I can handle the stammering coworkers as they murmer about my big hair, I can stand the desolate neighborhood (in fact, I quite enjoy it). I can't stand this zipcode project at work, however....