Tuesday, June 15, 2004

From 3AM girls in the British tabloid Mirror.co.uk--

BEN Affleck has told how he felt when he found out ex-fiancee J-Lo had married crooner Marc Anthony.

The 31-year-old actor - who split from Jen in January - told Radio 1: "It's the sort of vague calm you get after vomiting, when the unpleasant bit is over and you get a kind of strange peace."

[I'll bet. What a purge that must have been!]

Friday, June 11, 2004

Semi-workie/neighborhood weird occurence alert. This is creepy shit.

I lived in a building in South Dallas for about 6 years in my early to late twenties. I loved the building and only moved when I was about to get married and had some hare-brained notion that I wanted to check out neighborhood living. Eleven years later and I'm back in a loft in South Dallas. *ahem*
anyway. The building had 13 units and was about 100 years old with giant sliding freight doors that residents would padlock from the inside or outside. There were weird acoustics in the building and sometimes inside my loft you could hear a cute girl up the hall named Ginger having knock-down drag-outs with her girlfriend. Sometimes the girlfriend would take all the telephones from the apartment and padlock the door from the outside and leave Ginger locked up for a cooling-off period. Sometimes the police came. It was very strange. I'm sure this acoustic phenomenon must have worked in reverse, although I'm sure I never gave anything so interesting to listen to as pugilistic lesbian antics.
The apartment I lived in last was #13. It was a strange apartment, but had a large basement room that stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. I think of golden times in that space--my sister and I lived there together-- I would get home from the graveyard tour at work as the sun was coming up, and we'd space out and watch the light shift and warm the space while we listened to gorgeous music--the splendors of the new day dawning and anticipating the languorous naps that lay ahead. The upstairs space was painted a wonderful mottled olive-to-dark green color by the previous occupant, and I loved the feel of the room--its high ceilings and tall windows. The basement antechamber was a boiler room(my sister's bedroom), but had some windows and natural light. The main basement room(my bedroom), however, was a concrete bunker and had the makings (unrealized during my occupancy) of a bona fide sex pit. Very dungeons & dragoons. Meow.
I remained loosely in touch with two neighbors from the building - one who is in Houston now and another who manages a restaurant in London. I knew from them that an architect moved into my space when I moved out, and years later someone told me the architect still occupied that space.
Flash forward these eleven years, and the little job I am working has put me in close proximity with that architect. His name is Larry. Larry has been doing some work for my boss, who is planning some townhomes in the neighborhood. I began seeing his name in paperwork early in the days I began working this job, and someone mentioned he lived on Harwood street, and I finally realized that he was the man living in my old space. I was eager to know of the old place and if any of the old-timers were still around there, and though he was generally not talkative to me (more on that in a second), one day he was waiting for the company head to arrive and I asked about the apartment. He told me a Cliff notes version of how the building's community had evolved, and I was pleased to hear news of it. Still, even after that conversation Larry never seemed to warm up to me, which was a trifle offputting. I did admire Larry's energy and passion for Dallas - he was very involved in local urban planning, and maybe his veneer of arrogance sprang from a feeling of self-importance--moving all the little people around like pieces on a chess board. Nice of us all to show up and give him an occupation.

I didn't look at Larry and immediately think he was a gay man, but I came to recognize he had a certain air of a very loathesome stripe of man: The flip side of the coin that says "women are only for fucking" which is the side that says "women only exist to make more gay men for me to fuck." He wasn't a snide or preening ponce in that way--just icily indifferent--no use for women, really, and no need to stoop to petty niceties such as greeting the other human in the room you have just entered if that human is female. He may have been a great guy, but I never saw that. Oddly enough, icily indifferent is how the company head could be described 4 out of 5 days, I'd say. I saw Larry at the office on Friday and it was as if we had never spoken--as if he were following the golden rule of subways the world over: "thou shalt not make eye contact." I shrugged it off, as ever, not taking it personally. After all--was I given the opportunity to choose my gender?

Sunday night my dad called me up and asked if I knew a guy named Wheat from my old building. I said yes, and he said he was talking on the phone when he saw my old building on the news, and that some guy named Wheat was beaten to death in his apartment late Saturday night. Dad said he knew that was our old space they were talking about. Neighbors saw Larry enter the apartment with another man, apparently calmly as if nothing untoward was going on. Then they heard a commotion from within the space and Larry screaming for help. The visitor left the apartment smoking a cigarette, and the neighbors had called police already. Apparently Larry was dying of a head wound even as the ambulance arrived.

There is talk and speculation, gossip and paranoia. Nests of yupstarts and artists dotted about this rough transitional tract of town are roiling with the intrigue and despair of tragedy our gated communities always seemed to insulate us from. Sure, people are living and dying of drugs and cruelty just beyond our cloistered existence, but our usefulness to society is an insulating factor. Having escorted the man into his home, the obvious thing to think is that Larry picked the guy up for a quick piece of tail, and things went horribly awry, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, etc. It's a tough old world to be a horny single person on the make. Neighbors got a good gander at the murderer, and hopefully that will be his undoing.

Monday at work I came across an invoice from Larry to my company, and thought of the nearness of it all. I thought of that beautiful place so dear to my heart and the unspeakable horror that happened there. I thought again of the warm glorious mornings there, of the concrete floor where my doggie puked up the half-pound of butter she gobbled while I was bringing in the rest of the groceries (butter puddles are a bitch to clean). I thought of evenings sitting on the sofa or in the courtyard talking to my beau - now husband - and thinking I could move on in the world and move forward with him. I thought of guests and dinner parties and sparkling moments that in no way foreshadowed what would happen there.

It's chilling to think of the murderer going about his life--be it in a home or on the street--inwardly giddy from the shocking thrill of killing someone. It's difficult to conceive of how someone can commit such an act to begin with, let alone stand himself after the fact. In his heart bloom the flowers of evil, fragrant with the stench of a powerful secret. I'm abivalent about the death penalty, but in cases like this, I'll be ok with the chair. I hope they catch the bastard and make him a crispy critter.

The composite sketch of the perp shows a bowl-cut time-warped from a Three Stooges film, rendering a sublimely ridiculous aspect to the unbelieveably tragic. Imagine the bizarre breach of taste that wrought this double-standard: He couldn't deign to talk to females, but would take his chances with a Moe Howard-pated homicidal maniac. But that is unfair of me, isn't it? Larry probably only wanted to show the guy his etchings...

Sunday, June 06, 2004

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Walt Whitman

Friday, May 14, 2004

There's so much I love, but I hate the way we struggle through a life we are not meant to survive.

Saturday, May 08, 2004

OK OK. Don't start worrying about me. Those last 2 entries are way too macro for this gal. Don't succumb to the fear that I'm going to go all political or big-picture on you. This journal is about 3 things: Me, me and me! Don't worry that this disposable bit of fluff is going to boil down to an icy rock of vitriolic lead. Me and my double D's is on the case. However, we reserve the right to bitch about the Machiavellian among us... ...Two days ago I went shopping for panties. It was a glorious orgy of panty acquisition. Seriously, I filled the basket at TJ Maxx with a vertable crayon box of panty selection. Woohoo. New drawers are a thing of wonder and beauty-they make one feel all swishy-sassy. Then I wended my way over to the shoe aisle, and found a Spanish sandal I rilly rilly loved. I bought 4 pairs of identical sandals (different colors) and about a dozen panties. I'm channeling Imelda Marcos. Peel me another grape, Ferdinand. Let them eat cack.
My response to a chain-letter email I received trying to drum up support for Michael Moore:

I remember hearing a story on the news telling of Michael Moore's hoax to stir up publicity by decrying Disney, so when I received your email about poor little Michael Moore vs Goliath Disney, I googed "michael moore disney hoax," and I have quoted below the link some info from the article which sheds light on Moore's methods. Michael Moore lives in a $4 million dollar Manhattan pad, and it's a little fatuous for him to pretend to keep playing the "little guy" a la Roger & Me. He has integrity issues of his own. Perhaps I could have a fabulous Manhattan pad and all the best and finest for my kith and kin if I did a documentary exposing his specious tactics and flagrant dishonesties. Fact is, he couldn't stand up to the brand of stacked-deck scrutiny he deals out. Hope you find it educational.

http://www.antimusic.com/news/04/may/item20.shtml

Update: Michael Moore made a big stink earlier this week when he accused Disney of pulling the plug on his latest film, “Fahrenheit 911”. He decried Disney’s decision not to distribute the film as politically motivate censorship. However, Moore was crying wolf. He admitted in a CNN interview that he knew almost a year ago that Disney would not distribute the film, according to a report from independent.co.uk.
Moore told CNN, "Almost a year ago, after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it."

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Re: Abuse of Iraqi prisoners. One of the most interesting quotes I've ever heard from a man-on-the-street type interview: Marty D. Hitchins of Cumberland, MD, said, 'You don't see pictures of them multilating our guys and dragging their bodies down the street.'

Saturday, April 24, 2004

Easy Virtue... A word about my teeth: Vanity. Weight fluctuates, hands and feet show the care and wear of the years, eyes and hair look bright and dull in equal measure, but my little pearlies have never failed me. This is an easy vanity, as I have merely cleaned and flossed regularly and been blessed with very good enamel. My teeth have never been completely straight, but their slightly askew stance against the world suits my own disposition. Dentists and orthodontists have told me that I need to have braces, and even that I need my jaw broken and re-positioned surgically and I have never taken this advice seriously because my teeth are something I've thought of as wonderful about my face. I have always had about a 1.5mm gap between my eye teeth, and I rather like being a gap-toothed woman. In the middle ages, women with this dental phenomenon were thought of as loose and wild, and though my life rather resembles that of June Cleaver more than I would prefer, somewhere buried in all these folds of tedium and propriety lurks my inner Hellion, pawing the earth like a randy bull and ready to upend the china shop at any moment. Whether I feel like hot shit or not, I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, and one day a few months back I suddenly noticed the gap between my teeth had widened considerably. Now I like a little gap, but I don't aspire to eat corn off the cob through a picket fence, so I asked last time I went to have my teeth cleaned. My dentist recommended a superb orthodontist who seemed more competent and knowledgeable than others I'd seen. I went to him on Wednesday, and he diagnosed my need for braces, etc., but he is the first among them to say the surgery may not be necessary. He did say that my teeth have arrayed themselves according to the bone structure of my face, and that because my bite is so uneven I may have cracked molars soon because they have borne the brunt of biting/chewing/tearing all these years without the help of my canines or incisors, which don't meet. The threat of losing my teeth is something not so easily shrugged off--to suddenly have a lot of tooth-related pain is not something I'm going to be able to abide, I fear. He also said the corners of my mouth turn down because of this. I was shocked when he said that. I said "I didn't know the corners of my mouth turn down--I thought I looked cute." I was kind of reeling from this, actually. It made me wonder if I look like I smell something unpleasant all the time. [If you've read much of my blog, you know I have a nose which is easily outraged, but I don't want to look like I'm outraged all the time!] I feel like a hideous little puppy that doesn't know it's ugly. This has all made me think about how I'm perceived by others rather more than I would prefer. It's too easy to be self-obsessed and constantly rearranging oneself to meet with the approval of people who (should) have no bearing on one's existence. I curdle at the idea of tugging and snipping away nature to reveal the inner plasticene goddess because it is so fucking false. Look at Courtney Love's original face in the film Sid & Nancy, and look today at the latter-day punk priestess-cum-Gloria Swanson blinking like the Bride of Frankenstein in an unflatteringly lit courtroom near you. We're so pretty, oh so pretty vacant. Oh, yes, I'm getting the braces, but if you ever find me running off to shrink myself in cling-film in attempts to meet some standard of beauty that is in opposition to my physiology, please do me a favor and slip me some hemlock.

Sunday, April 04, 2004

I had just drunk the Last of the Mojitos, and communication skills were at an ebb, when...

Wow. Last night all the neighbors and a few visitors were hanging out on the deck at my apartments, and two idiots started trying to out-do each other with gross-out/taboo jokes. What is UP with that? Where is the sport in that? They were all groaners anyway, none of them laugh-out-loud. It was ugly and unkind , until one of them told a joke about black people, and then half the group laughed heartily, and the oxygen was sucked out of the room (which was the great outdoors) for the rest of us. *gasp* It was very uncomfortable because it was so unkind and uncalled for, whether or not there was a black person present, which there was. He sat like a statue, not dignifying the idiocy with a response. And the joke had come from a woman I would never in a million years have expected to hear that from. To make matters worse, her visiting friend brought it back up minutes later saying "that black guy joke was so fucking funny!" A blunt, clever neighbor retorted loudly "I don't know why you say it that way - why don't you just say 'nigger?' That's what you mean, and yeah, nigger jokes are really fucking funny." The black man high-fived the blunt woman, and I think they will probably be friends for life, now. I don't know if the drunk joke-tellers will remember the rebuke, but I wonder how you recover from that. I suppose we'll all learn something from it. I wish I had been bold and clever enough to front her at the time it happened, but I had not all my faculties. Disappointing, but satisfying that someone could at least point out the insult eventually.
um. OK. I'll prolly come back and edit this post later, but for now I've got to get this down: Two films are slated to be made by competing studios depicting the life of Janis Joplin. Think of who in Hollywood has the looks and chops to carry it off (begging the question will they be providing prosthetic natural looking teeth for the role? Sick of unnatural looking teeth in film. Sick to death of it. Like fake tits, people in general seem to have lost touch with what looks right on humans - It'll be unsurprising when people start buying veneers for their dogs and cats--what nature endowed couldn't possibly be adequate for optimal attractiveness.) OK. Janis was an earthy looking woman and wouldn't have been described as a natural beauty. I'm thinking for sheer acting chops alone the obvious choice would be Kate Winslet, who no doubt could throw herself into that role believeably, even though she's never bordered on less than ravishing. Even as the dowdy Iris, she was ineffably lovely. Perhaps a touching tribute would be a ruggedly beautiful portrayal by such an actress. OK. Scale it down a bit. Think Pink. Think Renee Zellweger. Yep. WTF??? I swear I'm not making it up. Um. [shudder mode "on"]

Thursday, April 01, 2004

New wave of fleas is afoot. bastards. My one-woman show is up in a gallery this weekend, and I'm nervous. I feel so unprepared. Note to self: must change my lazy ways.

Friday, March 26, 2004

Someone tried to steal my truck a couple nights ago. About 1am a drunk homeless guy came to the gate and started telling my neighbor Jason he ditched his truck in the parking lot when he was running from the cops, and now he needed to get back in so he could get it. He was holding a giant key ring with dozens of keys on it. Jason said "which truck is yours" and he pointed to mine. Jason said "really? You have the key to that truck? Let me see." So the guy put his arm through the gate and Jason deftly took the big key ring and called 9-1-1. Of course, the guy took off, and it was all kind of funny, but a little creepy... A new development in our neighborhood is the man who is pimpin' on the front of our building. I saw a very dark-skinned lass with him Wednesday in a baby blue get-up that was not at all flattering, though it was the perfect complement to the white platform sandals she was obviously suffering from. Now this chick was not a tiny girl and the ensemble was some knit material and extremely tight. If you put a razor blade near that, there would have been hind-end all over the place. The high price of keeping it real.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Last night was karaoke madness. My dearest friend and I made a delicious hash of "Tainted Love" (it would have been much better if it were just her singing without me) and her fiance has sworn that next time he'll do "Genie in a Bottle." I can't wait. I love to sing, but I hate singing into microphones--it's annoying.

Monday, March 22, 2004

A close friend has gone over the edge, apparently. Sadly. Being home in the daytime I see a lot of the comings and goings in the building. Don't start thinking I'm like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched - meddlesome neighbor. It's just that my huge window is right by the stair, and a crackhead neighbor who used to live above me would come home on his lunch break for about five minutes every day, and I began to realize he wasn't coming home to whip up a tunafish sandwich. In fact, he lost a lot of weight and began acting a bit jumpy and less personable - much out of character. Finally, he moved to another loft in the area, and when he did, a much more beloved neighbor began hanging out at the guy's new pad. I can be a bit blunt, on occasion, and today I was bringing up the subject of gossip with another brutally frank neighbor, and she said "oh, were you going to tell me that jameson is on crack?" Having no intention of the kind, I was floored by this statement. Jameson is a lovely person who grapples with demons, but I've always held out hope he would get a grip and just be himself and learn how to be happy. I think he wants to have a different life, but is pinioned by the fear of wounding his backwoods Baptist minister father with his lifestyle choices. I asked her what she meant - if she was serious, and she said that she smelled some burning chemical wafting from his open window a few days ago, and that besides he has a smell like crackheads get - she knew this because a friend's mother and another friend had been addicted and she recognized the odor, which seems to ooze from his pores 24/7 lately. (and here I thought it was just the beer and chain-smoking that made him reek) I wish Jameson would just embrace his gayness and pinch off the downward spiral. I'm the last person to judge someone for choosing their own poisons, but dammit-- he's not even having a good time! He drinks the shittiest beer imaginable to a state of stupefaction nightly. He obviously is self-medicating and needs to deal with the real problems in his life and get on with it before he pisses it all away. I realized in December he had gone to the dark side of stupid when he made a crap comment to me, and I honestly believe he intended the comment to be helpful. I must have had a look on my face like I was about to give birth to a litter of yaks, because after flattening me with his unwanted advice, he began to cry and beg me to please not be mad at him because he just wanted to be helpful. Jameson has been a dear friend for five years and I found myself looking into his eyes and thinking "who is this motherfucker?" Anyway, I was too flummoxed at the time of the revelation today to remember that I had predicted Jameson would also become a crackhead when he began spending a lot of time at the crackhead's loft. Husband reminded me of my prediction later. I wonder what the future holds, but it's hard to imagine anything good coming of this. I wish I were wrong, because this feels like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion.