My Little Pony

Ok. I know. I know. I know. It’s been over a week since my last post. It’s certainly not for a lack of something to write about. Things are just kinda crazy around here right now and I just haven’t had the time. A pitiful excuse, but one I choose to embrace. I do have a post that I wrote sitting in the Las Vegas airport last Saturday. It’s on my laptop at home. I swear. I’ll try and get it put up tonight or tomorrow… I went to a screening of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on Tuesday night. I need to write my review of that as well. (The book is one of my all time favs so the movie could have really sucked, but it didn’t. I liked it. A lot. A more detailed review will come later. I promise.) What I want to talk about today is my new pony. It’s shiny and blue. Did I mention that’s it’s not a real pony? It’s a mechanical one. A Ford one. A Mustang. It’s so pretty. I had a ’65 Mustang convertible that I adored and drove all through high school (and never should have sold), but I’ve always wanted a ’68 Mustang fastback. Well, this is as close as I’m going to get to one of those for a very long while and I have to say I couldn’t be happier. It is sooooo much fun to drive. I’ve wanted one of these Ponies since they came out last fall and just wasn’t able to justify it. Well, some serious cards fell into place in the last couple of days and yesterday I walked onto the lot and bought one. The salesman came up and asked if he could help me and I said, “Yeah. I’d like to take my new Mustang for a spin.” He was like, “Your Mustang?” I just smiled and said, “Yeah. My Mustang. That blue one over there.” So we drove around the block. They appraised my truck. All the numbers worked to my liking and presto-chango I have a new car. It took just over an hour. The salesman’s eyes got really big when I told him I didn’t want to finance the car. I wanted to trade in my truck and pay for the rest. I must say that I recommend just paying for a car outright if you ever get a chance. No credit checks. No hassling. Just the writing of a check. Simple… and kinda fun. A friend told me that I’m a car dealer’s wet dream. A woman who knows what she wants and wants to pay cash for it. Hehe. And no fucking car payments. Woo and Hoo! I admit that I’m leading a charmed life right now. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it will. It’s unavoidable. Karma is a bitch and life tends to be a zero sum game. Nobody wins unless somebody loses. Let’s just hope I keep this winning streak up for a little while longer. I’ve got a potentially HUGE interview next week. I want this job so bad I can taste it. So everybody cross your fingers and toes that my luck holds out just a little bit longer. Happy Friday all!

"A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence." -- Pam Brown

Chasing Kevin Spacey

So I'm in Vegas, baby! I'm down $120, but that's what I get for starting at the $10 blackjack tables. Tomorrow I'll play the $5 tables and at least that should keep me playing a bit longer. It didn't help that we had a really great dealer named Howdy to start but when he went on his break, we ended up with this bitch with bad karma that killed the small winning streak I had going. Oh well, better luck tomorrow... The trip from LA was fun. The weather was great and I rode with the top down the whole way. Somewhere just outside of Barstow, this shiny blue Porsche went screaming past me and when I looked at the driver, I was like, "Dude, that looked like Kevin Spacey!" The Porsche pulled over in front of me and the license plate read "SpacBoy." I had a helluv a time keeping up with him, but did a fair enough job. We barreled through the desert at about 90 mph and played car tag for an hour or so. At one point we got stuck in a constuction jam and he was trapped behind me. It was totally Kevin. So at least I had some amusement on the trip. He lost me eventually, but we picked each other back up just outside of Vegas. He got off to go to the Mandalay Bay and I headed over to the MGM. There's some stuff going on over at Mandalay that I want to check out so that's on the agenda for tomorrow. I think I'll stalk Kevin while I'm there ;)

"Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker." -- Matt Damon - "Rounders"

Distorted Reality

LA is a weird fucking place. Nothing is ever what it seems. I can’t decide if my trip out here has been a good thing or a bad thing. At the very least, I don’t know that it has really given me the perspective I was looking for. Since I got here on Saturday, I’ve spent a large portion of my time hanging out with a friend of mine who lives out here. I’ve gotten to see LA as he sees it; as he can afford to see it. It’s warping my perceptions a bit. He and I live in very different worlds. I’m debating whether or not I can afford a $500 a month studio apartment and he’s looking at multi-million dollar beach houses. This is not a judgment. It’s just a statement of fact. He is far and away one of the nicest, most grounded, down-to-earth guys I have ever met. If you didn’t know he had money, you would never know he had money. It’s just weird for me. I’m trying to determine if I can realistically afford to come back here, and hanging out with him has made that decision harder to make. I know my life won’t be like this once I move. I just have to keep reminding myself of that. I will have to get a job. I will have to live on a budget. I won’t be hobnobbing with the Hollywood “In” crowd every night... I have some seriously important decisions to make in the next few weeks. In the short term, Option #1 would be the easiest and that would be to just do nothing; stay where I am now and accept my fate as a corporate slave. That’s really not a good option though, unless you all want to watch me slowly lose my mind. That might be fun for the rest of you, but it’s not something I particularly want to do. Option #2 is to quit my job and find something else to do in Atlanta. That would save me the stress (and expense) of packing up my horse and all my stuff and moving across the country to somewhere that I have no job and know virtually no one. It still leaves me unemployed and in Atlanta, so I’m thinking Option #2 is out. If I’m going to stay in the ATL I might as well be employed and unhappy rather than jobless and unhappy. This brings us to Option #3. The one where I say “Fuck it!” and throw caution to the wind and just do this. Option #3 scares the shit out of me. The thought of just letting go of everything that has become so familiar to me and exchanging it for some dimly envisioned dream of a life out here on the coast turns me to ice. I spent a couple of hours out on the Huntington Beach pier yesterday afternoon watching the surfers. While I did that, the ice melted. My brain stopped the centrifugal spinning it has been doing for weeks now. My soul just breathed in the sea and the sand and halted its meteoric plunge into the abyss that it has been on. I’m happy here. I like me here. I need to just get past these fears, no matter how legitimate they may be, and find my way back here. I know it will be hard. Everything will not be sunshine and puppies and red Mustang convertibles. Still, I think it’s the right thing for me to do. At this point, I need to worry about feeding my soul rather than padding my bank account. I would rather be happy than rich, which is good, because at this rate, I don’t think that is something I’m ever going to be ;)

“I don’t want to earn my living; I want to live.” – Oscar Wilde

That Shade of Blue

I wrote the first 10 or so lines of this poem forever ago and then stopped. I knew it had somewhere it wanted to go, but its path was unclear at the time. It finished itself the other night while I could not sleep. I jotted it down on Post-It notes while sitting on the deck at a friend’s house watching the angry waves of the Pacific crash against the shore and he slept peacefully in the other room…

Law-Abiding Ice Cream Men

The sky was my favorite color last night.
That shade of blue you just can’t quite describe.
On days like this, I could live here forever.
I know I mostly drive the wrong way
down the one way streets.
I scare the law-abiding ice cream men
who don’t believe in happy accidents or
the coincidence of memory -
and who seem to be perpetually
one block away.
I’m craving salt today, but
that doesn’t stop me from chasing the ice cream truck
down the street -
in the vain hope that
this time I’ll catch up.
Looking back over the distance I ran,
I can’t believe I got this far without passing out.
The ice cream in the cone
is soft,
and creamy,
and phallic.
It satisfies my licking fetish,
but does not fix
my salt problem.
How did I come to find myself alone
in a desert with no oasis
with ice cream running over my fingers
and melting
into my eyes?
It’s dark now.
When did night fall?
I think I may be blind.
This doesn’t feel
- or taste -
like ice cream anymore.
It’s coppery and thick.
Blood on the moon.
Blood in my eyes.
I somehow don’t think the ice cream man can save me now -
even if he does miss me
and realizes that
he left me here
all alone
and comes back
to help the bloodhounds search for my body.
It will be way past too late by then.
Do you think the sky will be that shade of blue
again tonight?
I feel the sun begin
to scorch
and bleach
my bones and
I’m not craving salt anymore.

The World According to Me

Another Saturday. Another flight west. I think we’re somewhere over New Mexico right now. It’s somewhere very deserty-looking from 32K feet up anyway… I’ve turned into a real jetsetter in the past couple of months, haven’t I? Not that I’m complaining. I love to travel and wish I had the resources to do it more often. Especially Europe. I would like to spend some time in London… and Amsterdam… and Prague. It doesn’t help that Delta’s in-flight magazine has a whole article on Amsterdam this month. Now that I am (hopefully) moving back to the Earthquake State, Europe is going to have to wait. If I travel anywhere it will be to come home to see Lindy and the family or to go visit a friend of mine who is moving to NYC. It’s going to be hard having him all the way out in NY when I’m in LA. He’s become a very dear friend and I like having him around to talk to. Hopefully his career will bring him out west from time to time at least… Of course, the next few days will be pivotal. I need to nail down this apartment thing. I need to try and secure at least some form of employment. The thought of moving without a job lined up in advance scares the fuck out of me. Doesn’t mean it will stop me from doing it. At this point, I’m not sure what would stop me. I am in a total California mindset now. I want to be back out in LA. It’s become an almost drug-like craving. I need for the puzzle pieces to fit into place. For all this to fall through now would be bad. Really bad. I have too much of my soul invested in this endeavor now. It’s kind of like when I really fall for a guy. I fall hard. I rush in with both guns blazing. There is heat. There is passion. And it’s great. Until things go badly. I get my hopes up and am left crying on the bathroom floor when it doesn’t work out. I’ve stopped doing that when it comes to men. I’ve become much more cautious. But this whole California thing feels like that. It all happened so fast. I’m just waiting for things to start to fall apart too quickly for me to be able to pull them back together. It’s like riding a Tilt-a-Whirl. The adrenalin gets going and is coursing through you so hard it’s making you sick, but man, what a fucking ride. Well, when the ride stops this time, all I can do is pray that I’ll still be able to walk… Let me clear something else up. I am NOT doing this for a guy. Yes, I have a friend out there that happens to be male and I like him a lot and we’ve become very close over the last few weeks, but contrary to popular belief, he did not prompt this sudden plan to move. I have been talking about going to LA for months (actually years) now. I found a great deal on an apartment and a place to keep my horse a few weeks back and that was my motivation to try and pull this together now. I’m not going to lie and say that his being out there is not a definite added bonus. Ultimately do I see our relationship going anywhere? No. It won’t happen. We will be great friends. We have too much in common not to be, but it won’t be anything else. Not only is he out of my league, but I don’t think we are even playing the same sport. We may have a lot in common, but we live worlds apart. I understand that. He recently got out of a long and sorta fucked up relationship. I am an amusing diversion for him right now; a shiny new toy for him to play with. As long as we salvage a friendship out of this, I’m ok with that. It’s been nice just having his attention for a little while… This has been a borderline schizophrenic post hasn’t it? Not sure why traveling always makes me muse on my life like this. Something about the journey of mind and body maybe? To quote Indiana Jones, “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.” That’s what my life feels like right now. I have a script. I know what my lines are supposed to be. But in the end there’s always some improvising involved and ultimately it’s all about leaving things up to the vision of the director and just going along for the ride. Here’s hoping that this little movie at least has a happy ending… And what the fuck is with all the analogies today? It’s not often that someone compares their life to a movie, an amusement park ride, and a bad relationship all at the same time. Welcome to the world in my head. It’s a nice place to visit, but I don’t think most people would like living here…

“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” – George Sheehan

Lex-cellent

I really should be posting my review for “The Amityville Horror,” but I’m just not in the mood to write a long review of it. So here’s a brief one. It was pretty good. Ryan Reynolds rocked and is really fucking hot. The movie is worth seeing just to watch him do the whole Jack Nicholson, descent-into-madness thing… I’d much rather talk about last night’s episode of “Smallville.” I’m the first to admit that this season has been really weak. There have been 4 or 5 good episodes and all the rest have been forgettable at best. Last night was one of the good ones. Michael was in practically every scene. It was all Lex, all the time, and that’s never a bad thing. It’s all anybody has talked to me about this morning. They all want to discuss how fucking awesome Michael was. The script was not particularly well written, but he took what he got and ran with it. Here’s what Michael himself had to say about the episode:

"I'll be honest, I freaked out when I first saw this script. The first thing I do when I get a script, I don't read it, I go through and see how much I'm in it, like every other actor. ‘My line, my line, bullshit, my line.' I started looking at it and realized, 'There are 50 pages in this fucking script, and I'm in 47 of them.' I freaked out and took a Xanax."

What can I say? He’s a funny guy. If any of you missed this ep, it’s worth catching on a re-run this summer. It was called “Onyx” and it reminded me why I watch this show. Next week’s ep does not look promising. Lois is back. Ick. Michael will barely be in it. Double ick. The week after that may be ok. Lex gets to betray Clark as his ultimate descent into darkness really begins. Here’s hoping we get to see much more of Lex’s dark side next season. It makes things soooo much more interesting…

“You were right about me all along, Mr. Kent. I am the villain of the story.” – Michael Rosenbaum – “Smallville”

A Masters Serenade

So at exactly midnight my cell phone rang. It was a friend of mine out on the left coast calling to wish me a happy birthday. He had me on speaker phone, had his guitar, and sang to me. He belted out a pretty fabulous rendition of the Beatles song, "Birthday." (You know the one. "You say it's your birthday [inset guitar lick] It's my birthday too...") I don't recall telling him when my birthday was, and I don't like people making a big deal out of my birthday, but he gets total brownie points for the effort. I've got to admit, I sort of dig having a guy sing to me. It was a very "Say Anything..." kind of moment :) The midnight serenade was great and appreciated, but let's just gloss over the fact that it's my birthday and go on about our week as usual... Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Move along... Sorry I have not posted much in the past week. I just have not really had much to say. I've got a lot going on in my life right now, but I'll try to be better about posting. Right now I'm just trying to keep from pulling my hair out over a variety of things... I can't wait to get out of town next weekend. I'm going to LA for 4 days and then LV for 4 days. It should be a hell of a trip and I soooo need the time away from work... So what else to report? Some friends and I went to The Masters. We spent all day Saturday at Augusta National wading through the mud. I said we need to have t-shirts printed up that say, "I slogged through the back 9 at Augusta - April 2005" and then wear them next year when we go. Still, a good time was had by all and we saw some great golf. I'm not usually a big golf fan, but Augusta National is a great place to just walk around. It's a beautiful course. It's also fun to taunt my friends/family who are HUGE golf fans and have never been able to get tickets to go. I'm evil that way ;) My cousin is a hell of a good golfer and has a real shot at being the amatuer champion sometime in the next couple of years. How fucking cool would that be? I would love to be able to go to The Masters and actually be related to someone playing. Maybe he could even set me up with a press pass so I could take some pictures... Ok, so that's it for now. I need to get to bed seeing as how I have to work in the morning. Ick. It should be agaisnt the law to work on your birthday... even if you don't want to make a big deal out of it. But then again, I'm always looking for an excuse to get out of work. Arbor Day. Flag Day. Bastille Day. Fuck it. We should have them all off...

"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -- Robert Frost

Spiritus Mundi

I'm just so fucking tired again today. Yesterday kinda sucked. I feel like I spent the whole day running in circles and that no matter what I did I just couldn't make anyone happy. Fuck 'em. Today will be better. I will it to be so... So for today you get more poetry. This one is not mine. It's W.B. Yeats. It's one of my favs... I swear I will try to come up with something interesting to post tomorrow...

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Demon Rabbits From Hell

Not feeling very creative today so here's a poem I pulled out of the vault in my head since I can't think of anything else exciting to post... Besides, I figure what the fuck? I haven't shared any poetry in awhile :)

I dreamt about the rabbits again.
I hold Joss responsible…
(Although, come to think of it,
Hazel & Fiver & Blackberry
probably had something to do with it as well.)
I don’t know why I dreamed them.
I don’t particularly like rabbits…
(nor dislike them for that matter), but
sometimes they seem to get inside my head
(like that damn “Fraggle Rock” song), and
they won’t go away.
It’s way past Easter and these bunnies
should be gone.
Back to Watership Down, or Hell, or wherever
it is they came from.
So, go away rabbits.
(To a Galaxy far, far, away preferably)
I don’t want to get a cat.
I just want to sleep…
(To sleep and not to dream)

Good and Gruesome

As all of you already know, I’m a huge comic book fan. I have been since I was a little kid. While most other girls were playing with Barbie dolls, I was buying comic books. I read a little of everything (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, the tiny little independent labels, etc). That being said, I never really got into Frank Miller’s noir graphic novels, “Sin City” until recently. I picked up one book a few years back but it was in the middle of the series somewhere and although I liked it (you can never go wrong with Frank Miller), it just didn’t excite me enough to really get into the series. When I heard that Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller were going to do an adaptation of these books, I got more interested. So I went back to the beginning of the series and started reading the books. I was hooked. They are dark and violent and gritty. Pulp fiction. Film noir. Really fucking great works. Rodriguez was the perfect choice to direct this. I like his work a lot. He’s a great filmmaker who plays by his own rules and doesn’t let the big studios tell him what to do. He’s a visionary. A revolutionary... So the film opened this weekend. I of course went and saw it. Twice. I loved it. You could tell from the trailers that visually the film was going to be stunning and it was. It is a live action comic book. The Marv story in particular was frame for frame out of Book 1. The casting was great. I approved of every choice that was made - except maybe for Britney Murphy. She was particularly annoying to me for some reason – Mickey Rourke was the definite standout though. He was Marv... Clive Owen demonstrated that he really can act when given the correct material... Benicio Del Toro was brilliant as usual and managed to pull off creepy and funny at the same time... Hartigan is the type of role that Bruce Willis was born to play. He's got that tortured cop thing down pretty good now... It was a little disturbing to see Alexis Bledel go from playing sweet, little Rory Gilmore to playing an Old Town prostitute, but she was really good... Then there was Elijah Wood. I adore Elijah and I loved his character, Kevin. He was one of my favorite characters in the books and Elijah was the perfect choice to play him. Good career move. He went from playing a Hobbit who saved Middle Earth to a serial killer who eats prostitutes. I don’t think type-casting is anything he’s going to have to worry about :) Is it wrong for me to say that I thought he was really hot in this movie? Probably. So I won’t. Just pretend I didn’t say anything… This is not a movie for everyone. It’s black and white (mostly). It’s bloody. It’s gruesome. It’s film noir on a bad mescaline trip. It is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart and I loved every fucking frame of it.

“It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying, sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.” -- Clive Owen - "Sin City"

In A Quandry

Can someone please explain men to me? Right now I have 2 guys in my life (family excluded) who I absolutely adore. The rest of the male species can go fuck themselves. I’m not going to go into an elaborate explanation of what prompted this little epiphany. Suffice it to stay that men are stupid. They are reactionary. They can escalate a heated discussion into something even uglier. I’m not saying women are much better. We are the fuel that feeds these rages. I know that. I’m not stupid and I’m certainly not innocent or blameless. Mainly I’m just disappointed. I often try to convince myself that we live in a civilized society and on the surface maybe we do. But we don’t. Not really. Underneath it all, those dark, primal urges lie in wait and eventually they always rear their ugly heads. It’s unavoidable. Confrontation is in our nature. We strike out in anger and the people that always get hurt are the ones closest to us; the ones in our direct line of fire. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But I don’t think it’s going to change… Sorry, just needed to do some vague ranting today. Let some demons out. Go see “Sin City” this weekend. It’s all about violence and primal urges. It should be a hell of a ride... If you want to read something funny, go check out Google's April Fools Day joke.

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side." -- Yoda