Adieu Home Sweet Home

Secretly I've always mentally told myself people who lose their homes should just suck up and deal and move on, and I guess that bad karma is coming back to haunt me. I've finally reached the breaking point in my apartment—I still love the inside, it is my home. I love the neighborhood, it's quiet and lots of trees, but my neighbor (a word I hate to use to describe this evil woman because it implies some sort of goodness and clearly she has none) is an evil succubus. The final straw came last night when the new tenant moved in below me, and cigarette smoke wafted up (I counted at least 5 cigarettes over the course of four hours) and I could hear every footfall as he unpacked. That's it, I'm done. I'm sad because I really liked living there (up until 14 months ago when the evil succubus arrived) and was really hoping I could stick it out until I was ready to buy a place somewhere. Rent was reasonable, and it's the only place I've lived longer than 2 years that wasn't my parents house. But now the search begins. If I had the motivation I'd start a website where people could flame their landlords, so you could get the inside information about a place you were moving to before you got there, but I'm just too lazy these days. I managed to scare off a few potential tenants, but there's only so much I could do. So kitty, start packing, we're on the move.

Tom Cruise is so gonna kick my ass.

So I finally bit that old bullet, and now, currently sitting in my bathroom are 2 vials of doctor-prescribed happy pills. I can't believe how easy it was to get them (well get the prescription for them, overcoming the mental block—going back and forth and forth and back about all the reasons why NOT to get medicated), 30 minutes with a doctor who had never met me, 2 prescriptions: a daily long term happy and a special "as-needed" super shot of happy. But after too many sad days and too much therapy going nowhere, and too much and too many self-destructive acts and too many making excuses for crazy behavior, too many crashes and way too much feeling sorry for myself, now they're sitting in my kitchen. In the hour walk from doctor to pharmacy, I'd psyched myself up for their impending positive effects... post-pharmacy visit, it turns out the daily version: a one month supply totalled $154, my tune had changed. (Fuck you George Bush's America health care plan) Smart pharmacist says, how about trying a 2 week supply to see if it doesn't make you want to fly off the roof before chipping away at that non-generic drug deductible. Brilliant. So tomorrow is the first day of my life, or at least the first day of the next year (or so they claim that I can take this shit for about a year, get better and then get off it) of my life. 364 to go.

Sleep when you're dead.

I thought it was just me hallucinating from lack of sleep last night (anyone want to kidnap a few dogs for me?) but this is an actual ad campaign being run by Folgers. For reals. I don't drink coffee, but now I'm afraid to even smell it. Folger's LSD Trip.

Grab your pleather fuck me boots, you're on in 5.

Thought I'd create a list of the 10 Best Stripper Songs—for no other reason than it's Wednesday.
We can now reveal, in no particular order, the Top Ten Songs for Stripping...
10. "Panama" - Van Halen
9. "Closer" - Nine Inch Nails
8. "Slow Ride" - Foghat
7. "La Grange" - ZZ Top
6. "Manhunt" - (from the motion picture "Flashdance")
5. "Sweet Emotion" - Aerosmith

4. "Pour Some Sugar On Me" - Def Leppard
3. "Erotica" - Madonna
2. "Erotic City" - Prince
1. "Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns N Roses

Open Wide

Checked out Inside Deep Throat, the documentary about the Deep Throat revolution. I'm a bit of a doc whore and I have to say, stylistically, the documentary is one of the most aesthetically pleasing ones I've ever seen. (get your mind out of the gutter, it's about more than just blow jobs.) The doc conveyed that this truly was a film that changed the industry, if not the sexual culture of the country. Great interviews—Norman Mailer, Dr. Ruth (love that little horny pixie), Hugh Hefner, Erica Jong, the crew, the actors, the director. (Though everyone's favorite has to be the Miami distributor who's wife spends his interview segments nagging from a different room but finishes the film sitting by his side alluding to the fact that she has done what was done in the movie). Remarkably, Deep Throat is still the most profitable film of all time: made for $25,000 it's grossed over $600 MILLION. (Even though the director and the stars never made any money off the film.)

One thing I know for sure now, the 70s were REALLY hairy.

Alias, Adieu

So I finally got around to watching the series finale of Alias...
okay granted the finale was a wee bit (Okay a LOT) Scooby Doo ending. And yes, I was kinda wishing for the ultimate cliff hanger (anhilation with no definitive resolution for our heroes...) and what was that afterlife retribution between Sloan and Jack? and Irina reaching for the orb when she knew she could die? SOOOO Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (etc...) and the Sydney and Vaughn on a deserted island was pretty much a foregone conclusion from the time that cancellation was announced, so you just had to accept that that was the way it was gonna end, and that in order for that to happen, ALL the baddies would have to be eliminated. I thought the ending "Thanks for five wonderful seasons" graphic was a nice touch. Don't see that very often.

But despite a lackluster finish, I think back on all the funky wigs, exotic accents and sexy outfits our gal Sydney has adorned over the run, I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed the show. Granted the fact that JJ Abrams had abandoned it in favor of his new love Lost was utterly apparant, and the show lost some steam when Syndey/Bennifer pt.2 aka Garfleck got pregnant, but the whole mystique of the show carried me through watching every episode. I'm thinking back tonight, maybe because it was I could relate to Project Christmas (the adolescent CIA(?) training program that papa-Jack put his daughter in to essentially train her from age 6 to be a spy) because I flash back to a moment in my own childhood where my mother enrolled me in a brief psychology study at Holy Cross (I remember little but puzzles and I have a mental snapshot of the room that springs up every so often) or maybe it's because running hard to a syncopated beat is fucking sexy. Or maybe because the desire to lick Michael Vartan from head to toe is very very strong. Or that Sark is a dead sexy ringer for my ex? The mythology, the intrigue, the suspense. Alias, I shall miss you. (P.S. Garner, pick your projects wisely, don't think you need to cover those gambling debts yourself. That's his problem.

Day 37 on the Lot of dreams.

I think it's around Day 37 (that's the number that popped into my head when I tried to guess, then a quick check yielded the same # so I thought I'd go with it.) here on the Paramount Lot and still no sign of the past. He's here somewhere, unless of course he's moved on from editing Dr. Phil, but I think he's too much of a pussy to go out and actually get another job. It's been 8 months since we spoke, and I'm just hoping that bumping into him here will force him back into talking to me again. Yeah I know. REAL healthy. But how do you turn off a 5 year friendship like *that*? How do you walk away from your best friend and not look back? How can you go from talking to someone every day for hours, to never hearing their voice again? I think 10 months is the longest we went without speaking before, and we're getting dangerously close to that. Every day I think of something I want to tell him but I wait. For him. To be the first to make a move (despite the foolish IMs I slip and send every so often. They go unanswered and leave me more confused each time.) There are so many triggers—I see the car he drives, it's the hockey playoffs, a promo for Dr. Phil, my hurt shoulder reminds me of his broken collar bone. So I wait. Eager to learn if he is ever coming back to me.

Ch Ch Ch Chhanges...

So a friend's announcement yesterday that she may be "done" with L.A. and hence moving back east got me to thinking. Granted a reactionary judgement is I would be really sad here alone without her and quite honeestly I probably wouldn't have made it this long here without her friendship. But... on the other hand, I'm really starting to enjoy my career here—and yes, I'm well aware that my job has a very high burn out rate, and that many of my friends have stayed on working years after they should have moved on, but for now I enjoy it. So I got to thinking (it's what the Brain Purge does best) and thought why not do the bicoastal thing. Six months here or however many consecutive months I can get steady work, then buy a house somewhere back east and hole up there the rest of the year. Catch a few NYC gigs if possible. My life is pretty compact right now. The only issue is where to get my new house...

How do we feel about...

So the other day (something like my 423rd day of physical therapy) it was 7 am on Tuesday and I've got the guy OT working on me. If we flash back to about Christmas, I had a little crush on him...and thought it was kinda mutual. Went through the whole, is it ethical to pursue something like this. Since that time it's sorta dissipated because I realized he talks A LOT and then there was that one time where he CRIED in front of me (okay I realize remembering your grandmother's death is sad, but seriously, grow a pair.) Flash forward to Tuesday, where we're alone in the room and I've convinced him to look at my beat up shoulder to see if there's any lasting damage. And don't you know there's a little spark there again. Maybe it's just the possibility of a good shoulder rub. So how do I feel about him seeing me in only a gown top to tape my shoulder? I may be a little turned on by that.

Yeah, I got addictions, does that surprise you?

So I heard some rather strange and disturbing news from a guy I do business with yesterday... he's the guy in Hollywood who makes the copies for all the TV variety and specials in town. He's pretty much the only guy who does it, so he's got that niche carved out. It's a thankless job, but in relation to mine, it's a godsend. (I sure as hell ain't fighting with the crap copier at 4:30am when ESU is at 7, F. that.) Irregardless, one of his only steady gigs is for Days of Our Lives (or DOOL to the initiated) and he mentioned sadly that there was a rumor going around that NBC and CBS were going to stop production on soap operas entirely. My heart dropped. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a closet Guiding Light fan since I was 12. I easily blame my grandmother who has been watching CBS soaps since before television existed. That's right, GL is the longest running media program in history, beginning on radio in 1937 and the moving to TV in 1952 where it has remained ever since. That's SIXTY-NINE YEARS. And that's probably why I latched onto it out of the choices that CBS had to offer (I like the staying power of the underdog). Sure I tried General Hospital for a few years, and I think I spent a summer watching Days, I even interned at Young & Restless but through it all, for the last 20 years, I have taped and then watched Guiding Light. Oh sure it's been a quiet secret and I don't often tell people about it, but in the privacy of my own home, I love it. Characters frustrate me, storylines leave me shaking my head, but 20 years with these characters, they truly are a part of my life. Through the chaotic cross country trekking, different jobs, different friends, this show is a touchstone—a constant in the chaos. But now it all might go away. Granted daytime television is a vast wasteland that the viewers are slowly dying off and not being replaced with new younger viewers with buying power. The nature of the entire tv business has changed with the advent of Tivo. Now there is no second chance. I can't imagine what the broadcast networks would do with the hours between 12:30 and 4 now, more Maury? Dr. Phil marathons? Dialing for Dollars Movies? And I'm hoping that all the closet soap fans will come out of hiding if and when the axe is dropped. Sigh.