CALM DOWN, SKINNY!

October 2, 2009
It's almost the weekend!

It's almost the weekend!

Another Vote

October 2, 2009

Best James Ellroy one-liner of the night:

A) I was born to sit in dark rooms and think about heavy shit.

B) I got my performance skills in junior high giving oral books reports on books that didn’t exist.

C) I am to the pulpit born.

Me, Wishing I Was Pinter: A Love Story

October 1, 2009

Scene One:

A bar.  A girl sits on a pool table.  Boy walks straight towards her.

Boy: Do I know you?
Girl: Very well,  I think.
Boy: (Looking down) Your shoes…
Girl: Yes?
Boy: They’re red.
Pause.
Girl: Yes.

Scene Two:

A park bench, late autumn.

Girl: It doesn’t matter to me what a man does for a living.
Boy: I’m a screenwriter, but the last time I wrote something it turned out to be Persona.
Girl: Hm?
Boy: Verbatim.
Girl: Well.  Pause.  That’s strange.

Scene Three:

Bedroom.  Girl is sitting in front of the vanity slathering lotion on her face.  Boy is taking off his tie.

Boy: I’m going to shower now.
Pause
Girl: Why are you telling me that?
Boy: Because if I didn’t tell you, it would be like it never happened.
Pause
Girl: You were in my dream last night.  I didn’t mention it before.  I didn’t think it would be a good idea.  You tried to stop me from doing something.
Boy: Did you do it anyway?
Girl: Yes.
Pause
Boy: Figures.

Scene Four:

A park bench, winter.

Boy: Did you ever really love me?
Girl: Yes.  I did one day.  We went out to ocean.  It was cold that day, so no one was around, only one man, fishing, at the other end of the pier.  We walked away from him…in the other direction, mostly.  The wind was blowing.  It was moist and I could taste salt on my tongue.  You only said four words the entire day.  “Do you want tea?”  That’s what you asked me…if I wanted tea.  And so we went and got some tea in a dark café at the top of the hill.  When we were walking back toward the train you pulled my hair…you kissed my neck.  Then we left.  That day, I loved you.  I didn’t say it.  I had said it before, but I didn’t say it that day.

Scene Five:

A bar.  Boy walks up to the girl, who sits alone with a cup of water.

Boy: Don’t we know each other?
Pause.
Girl: No.

James Ellroy

October 1, 2009

Tonight my friend HA (Ha!) has invited me to see James Ellroy speak at the Public Library here where I live. The event is being hosted by a fancy young people’s philanthropy group, which inevitably means my old boss, a skinny, saccharine automaton (OUCH!) who is likely to tell me she loves me even though we never speak will be in attendance. Oh, the joys of living a satiric life.

I am excited to see James Ellroy, though I have to admit I’ve never seen L.A. Confidential (and am ashamed of this, now has been moved up on my Queue), but I hear his ego is about as robust as my employer’s, so if he’s boring as hell, I can just imagine the two of them as murderous claymation figures on Celebrity Death Match or something.

When I ask my friend HA about James Ellroy and whether or not she’s read anything by him, she responds that she hasn’t read any of his work, but that he “calls himself the ‘God of Europe’ and other self-congratulatory things.” (On Wikipedia, it says he calls himself, “The greatest crime novelist who ever lived.”) Yeah, well, I’m the Goddess of Asia, a BIGGER continent, so SUCK IT, James Ellroy!

I really enjoy getting into fake fights with formidable literary icons. There has to be some way to capitalize on this…?

There is one topic on which I completely agree with Ellroy, and that is closure! CLOSURE IS FOR IDIOTS!

“Closure is bullshit,” Ellroy often remarks, “and I would love to find the man who invented closure and shove a giant closure plaque up his ass.”

After I read some of his work, I’m going to write a little piece called, “Me, Wishing I Were James Ellroy.” This is a series I intend to do. I have one ready, about Harold Pinter. I can post that now. If you really want me to. Okay, I will.

This outfit is SO splashy!

This outfit is SO splashy!

Who Am I, to You?

October 1, 2009

“Rarely do we achieve such a completeness in the eyes of others…generally one’s sins get diluted slightly by some mitigating act.  Perhaps there is someone to whom I have been without exception kind and selfless, though this person is not coming as quickly to mind.  Don’t we generally stumble through life as ambiguous to others as we are to ourselves?  Always hoping that they will assemble a portrait that in some way accords with out idealized (or at least compassionately understood) self.  Multiple eyes gaze upon you — and in a lifetime of scrutiny from different angles, you are held up and turned in the light like a semiprecious stone, or perhaps a piece of fool’s gold, and over the years if not by one set of eyes but by all together your flaws are seen and your worth assayed.  And is that it?  Are we the sum of people’s conceptions of us?”

~Richard Todd, The Thing Itself

In Case You’re in NYC…

September 30, 2009

Parrot Behavior and Training Workshop

October 10th and 11th at Uptown birds

Between 85th and 86th on Amsterdam Avenue

Call 212.877.2473

A Memory of Her Lodged in Air and Skin

September 29, 2009

A MEMORY OF HER LODGED
IN WET AIR AND SKIN

If the slightly wet air in the skin is the hillside
is wherever I have to forgive what I have forgotten
is error unretrieved from clouds over ponds
is we’re going swimming she said.
What I can’t remember is what I can’t feel —
the same moist air almost going as the cloud from hill to hill
and what she looked like when we had hung about indifferent to time
and place.

We had to forgive the backs of knees when it rained
and you can’t go in during a storm she said
you can’t go swimming after lunch and waiting for her to turn around
in the wet air through the length of a 40 years’ day.

Martha Ronk
(What, you thought me?!  HA!)

Two Things

September 29, 2009

1. Done with Mamet!  Praise Be to G-d!

2. I think the entire world ought to give the cast of The Hills and any of its spin-offs the silent treatment.  Who’s with me?

My Roommate is a Goddamn Genius

September 24, 2009

She thinks TSS is a conspiracy designed to make women afraid to keep a tampon in for too long, thus forcing them to buy more tampons.  Have you ever actually met anyone who has had TSS?  I think someone told me this girl at my camp had it, but I never heard it from her.  I’m going to track her down.  I think her name was Abby.  Stay tuned…

Want to Raise a Handsome Rogue?

September 23, 2009

According to the still-venerable baby name book Beyond Jennifer and Jason

“Good looking names for boys can be divided into two categories: nice guys and not-so-nice guys. The nice guys are sensitive and sweet and tend to offer a goodnight kiss at the door; the rogues don’t call the next morning, although women usually wish they would.”

Handsome Rogue Names

Plus some free association, by me. Obviously. It’s my blog. I get to say what I want. Fuck off.

Addison

Ash

Austin

Bailey

Beau

Brady

Brock (Hudson? Gay, right?  And by Brock I meant Rock.  Sorry, D.  You know all the gay idols.)

Chad (Will never be the same after that election)

Clay

Clint (Eastwood.)

Cody (My mind immediately thinks Gifford, and that’s always funny.)

Dallas

Dalton

Darcy (Do these count if they’re last names, too? I think of Pride and Prejudice. My roommate hearts Mr. Darcy like woah.)

Davis

Denver

Devon

Dylan

Flint (A lot of these names are old guy names)

Gavin

Gray

Hart

Hunter

Jackson

Jasper

Jefferson

Jesse

Judd (Nelson)

Keil (I’m still thinking about Cody Gifford. Ahhhhhahahahahahaha.)

Lex (Luther?)

Logan

Luke

Quinn

Rex

Sebastian

Shane

Wiley

Wolf (Grrr!)

Wyatt

Zack

Zane