Taste of Ginger

Emma I am Not.

2012-01-30T11:55:00.000-08:00

Since she became a household name, there is not a day that goes by in this city that someone doesn't compare me to Emma Stone. It's gotten to where I can predict when they're going to say it, even.

I'll be talking to someone I just met, and that person, just into our conversation, will tilt his or her head to the left a little and start looking at me while I gesticulate and guffaw. "Do you know..." they will start to say.

"Emma Stone," I will say.

And they say, "Yeah! It's not just the way you look; it's your mannerisms! You sound just like her, and you're funny."

Me & Emma Stone

My first impulse on this one is to be bummed. "Emma has taken my career!" You see, when I graduated high school at 17, I went to a national talent showcase and was very very popular among the Hollywood agents and managers. A couple of them were all but insisting I move to L.A. immediately. A part of me wanted to, but a bigger part of me wanted to go to college on the scholarship I had just gotten, and just learn and experience as much as possible.

I don't regret it in the least. However, that was the very same year that Emma Stone, a few years younger than me, convinced her parents that she had to move to L.A. and be an actress. I can't help but wonder, would I have been accepting a SAG award yesterday had I come out here ten years ago?

Instead, I was backstage at the SAG Awards yesterday eating a brownie, when a production guy walked by and saw me.

"Taking a much deserved break?" he asked.

"Yep, just for a few minutes," I said.

"Congratulations," he said.

"Thanks," I said, and then laughed to myself.

Let me reiterate, I have no regrets. In fact, I feel the luckier of the two of us. I have a wonderful adventurous life and husband. Emma, having experienced fame before love, will have a hard time deciphering if any guy she is with really likes her or just her celebrity. Emma didn't get that awesome carefree college experience, and she didn't study abroad twice, and I doubt she has a group of friends so wonderful and close as mine. If all it takes is ten years and a lot of focus, I'm closing in on three.

And besides, there's plenty of room in the upper ranks for actors who look alike. Consider these examples, from this AMC gallery:

Toby Maguire & Jake Gyllenhaal

Renee Zellweger & Joey Lauren Adams

Amy Adams & Isla Fischer

Natalie Portman & Kiera Knightley

I Hate Long Vowels

2012-01-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

Talking is not just a way to convey meaning, it's also a way to convey beauty if you do it right. Mind you, I'm not an expert on speaking, but I do get lots of impromptu compliments on my voice when talking to strangers. And I hate long vowel sounds. I just hate 'em! When there is a choice between pronunciations between a short vowel sound and a long vowel sound, I always choose the short vowel.

[I've decided to blog about my vowel preferences because otherwise I'd just be telling you how I found $20 on the ground at the concert I won tickets to, and how it's 80 degrees and sunny, and I just got a job at the college, and I am being pitched to be on a really awesome tv show, I'm working in the green room at the SAG awards this Sunday, and next week I start my yoga teaching certification class. I am having an amazing 2012, but I don't want to you think mine's any better than yours, SO, on to vowels.]

In case you've forgotten, your long vowel sounds make the same sound as the letter itself.
A as in game
E as in complete
I as in Midas
O as in hope
U as in use

While short vowels are
a as in apple
e as in egg
i as in inundate
o as in octupus
u as in umbrella.

Now, here is what I hate:

When people say "AppalAchian" mountains. Anyone from Appalachia knows that all the "a" sounds are "apple" sounds, NOT "game" sounds -- and it makes my stomach turn to hear "AppalAYchun" coming out your yankee mouth as if you had the right to talk about 'em anyway. YUCK!
DATA. Please say it with a short vowel. With the advent of "data plans" on people's phones, I am having to hear this word a lot lately, and most people pronounce it like "dayta." It's not incorrect, but it's just GROSS!
Equinox. It's so much nicer on the ears when you say "eckwinox" instead of "EEKwinocks," and yet when I use my short-vowel "e" to talk about that really cool gym on second street, people look at me like I'm mispronouncing it. Well, Webster says both are correct, but I say quit with the ugly vowels.
Apricot. It sounds slightly Britishy when you say apricot instead of "APEricot," but you're still an American, I promise.

Anyone else have anger issues when it comes to the way people talk?

Punk's Not Dead

2012-01-22T11:46:00.000-08:00

Joe Sib on Complete Control Radio told us to call in to win tickets. We were on our way out the door, but I said, "Wait, let's call-- those tickets are ours." I knew if we called, we'd win. We did. For the first time in about six years, and for the first time with Adam, I was to attend a live performance of two of my long lost favorite bands, No Use for a Name and NOFX.

This may sound trivial, but going to the Sunset Strip House of Blues to watch old dudes with gritty voices melodically ponder "How Did the Cat Get So Fat?" resuscitates of a long-dormant part of me. Punk rawk shows and I have a history. So many high school summers at the Warped Tour bent me into a fanatic. Many's the night before a college exam when Lis, Gem, and I (or some other arrangement of eager college girls) would pile into my day-glo beetle and drive to Cincinnati, blasting music out the moon roof from a tape I made, then stewing for hours in a thumping loud swirling pot of sweaty limbs while screaming out lyrics until we were deaf and mute. If we were lucky, we'd catch the pick they threw out or get a picture with the lead singer.

You know you're old when you think Fat Mike is sexy.
[Photo by Mary Bell.]

Me eight years ago.

..But there was a time when I sadly realized this couldn't go on forever. We were almost college graduates, let's say, and we'd drive to Nashville in a tornado to see Against Me and Alkaline Trio, perhaps, and we'd look around at the kids in the pit and they were kids, all shiny and faux-hardcore and devoid of our worries about the impending real world. We had been posers all along, it was revealed, and if we were real punks, we wouldn't be able to survive outside the bubble of academia without compromising our punkness.

Adam and I wondered, as we drove down Sunset, what the crowd would be like these days. Who are the people who are still paying to see a 29-year-old band that sings about killing the white man? Are they teenagers? Are they geezers? Yes, there were some of each. But mostly they were just people like us, who can decide to be punk on the weekend if they feel like it. That crowded room fostered a lot of excitement, and an old-school circle pit that just wouldn't die.

I remembered how cleansing it was to be part of such controlled oblivion, how the pit of a punk show feels a lot like yoga, a release of everything. Though we can slam into one another randomly and scream and sail over people's heads, our bodies pressed together like lovers, we are all one, and we will not let anyone fall down or lose their keys.

I remembered, as we walked back into the cold midnight, sweaty with smiles on our faces, why for years I had so sought this experience. You leave feeling so human, so raw and part of something, so excited about life, with such faith in humanity and the power that one like-minded group can generate. I can't let it go another six years.

Inviting the Exciting

2012-01-14T12:06:00.000-08:00

Lots of time with friends and family, and a new adventure every week. Those are two things I've invited to hang with me through 2012, and both have decided to attend. Ask and you shall receive.

We're only two weeks in, and already Adam's parents have been visiting, we've taken a getaway down to Oceanside, we've watched whales swimming around our boat off the shore of San Diego, we've eaten so well it's ridiculous. Already we've had a get-together at Joyce's with lots of red wine and food and wonderful friends. Already I have a job interview which, if successful, would bring me some wealth and utilize my brain. I am so thankful for all of it, and also...

In two weeks I get to start yoga teacher training with one of my favorite yoga teachers! It's something I've been wanting to do for a while, and thanks to the love and kindness of the people around me, I will soon be spending three days a week until April learning and moving and strengthening and manifesting. Who knows what great opportunities this will bring!

Here are some others I've invited to my 2012 party; I'm just waiting for the RSVP:
-A helpful, supportive commercial agent!
-Money money money!
-A wonderful new apartment near the beach with a bedroom! And a cat friend.
-So many auditions that I get sick of auditioning!
-Booking a bunch of the jobs from those auditions!
-Lots of quality time with Adam!
-Creativity!
-Love!
-Happiness!

Who are you inviting?

Don't Give Up!

2012-01-08T20:46:00.000-08:00

Even with all the afflictions I suffered as a child (bad hair, annoying voice, general un-cuteness), I kept on keeping on. Take heart -- it gets better!

That's Your Problem.

2012-01-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

I hate my sensitivity, but I truly care if people like me or not. Always have. I would prefer to be friends with everyone. I am very good at being realistic, at noticing details, at categorizing, but I am also really good at seeing the best in people and choosing to go with that as opposed to finding their faults.

And in my interactions with people, I try always to be the most genuine me that I can be, while trying to filter out anything offensive or rude. I am goofy, I am raw, I provide too much information, I compliment freely, I soften blows, I break into accents or into song when I talk. That's me.

So when people don't like me, it's really me that they don't like, not some fake persona I've created. That's why, when I find out someone simply doesn't want to be my friend, I am deeply offended. I've cut myself open and placed myself neatly upon a silver platter for their consumption, and they turn their nose up at it, decline it.

I'm too hard on myself. I love humans so much that I try to be, as Everclear once put it, "Everything to Everyone." (Impossible, of course, and taxing.) Some people are offended by the real, the raw, the honest. Some people would rather you slice off all those little bits of you that make you unique and throw them in the dumpster. They'd rather you be a robot who looks like every other robot. Don't make them think. Don't make them laugh. Don't make them do things any differently. Just ignore any higher functions you may possess, because that will make them uncomfortable, or jealous of you.

Well, as time goes on, I realize that worrying about whether people like you is a lot of trouble for no reason. If I am as authentic as I can be, and as kind as I can be, and you still don't like me? That's your problem. That means you are a bitch. Or you are jealous. Or your IQ is not high enough to deal with someone who thinks outside your tiny, humorless box. So have fun being miserable - you are no longer on my radar.

Let us henceforth only pay attention to those who are worthy of our attention.

Don't Be Scared

2012-01-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

I hate fear; I see it hinder the life-living of so many people I love. I don't have many fears that I'm not willing to face -- just maybe a few things that are uncomfortable to me. But one thing is, I very much dislike playing instruments in public. I used to be awesome at some instruments, but these days I am remedial. So for 2012, I am going to try to record at least one video per month (more, if I feel like it) covering any song that tickles my fancy. I will miss notes and my hands will fumble, and I'll sing out of the corner of my mouth like I was Drew Barrymore, but this isn't to impress you anyway -- it's to impress myself for doing it. I figure that if I get comfortable with other people's songs, maybe I'll get back to writing songs of my own! So here goes the first installment: Moon River on the guitar.

And while we're at it, here is a poem to inspire you. I first heard it from one of my favorite yoginis.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

FAIL-year

2011-12-31T21:30:00.000-08:00

I feel good. What I’ve realized from rehashing my journey through two-thousand-and-eleven is that it has contained the most failures per annum of all the years of my life. So many fails I failed this year! And I’m still here, smiling, enjoying myself, and happy to tell you about them. What I figure is, the more you’re failing, the more you are trying – attempting to do things that are beyond the scope of average behavior. So in failing so epically throughout 2011, I have actually succeeded. And since I lived through it, I think I have a great shot in 2012 to make amazing things happen.

Now, I don't want you to think 2011 was a complete bust. I did marry the most wonderful man in the entire world and spend the weekend with all my best friends and favorite people, and got visits from awesome family and friends who came to California (Karima and Brad, Cameron and Jess, Alex and Lewis, Rowen), and got to go to Kentucky three entire times to see my family. I got an awesome manager who believes in me and finally became SAG eligible. I went to Vegas for a week and worked as a producer on a pilot. I was completely changed when I made yoga a huge part of my life. I got an amazing new job (and friends) at Lululemon. We moved to a nicer neighborhood, went to Mexico, and enjoyed all kinds of adventures around L.A. I am so lucky.

However, if you're looking to feel better about yourself, click below for list of my biggest 2011 FAILs per month (and these are not counting all the things I auditioned for and didn't get). Happy New Year!

January: "San Diego Overnight Fun Fail." Ginger goes to visit Morgan and Stu in San Diego, but things go awry when Stu's uncle begins picking arguments with Morgan, thus instituting a massive buzzkill on the otherwise nice reunion. Then, the friend who Ginger was supposed to stay with bails, and she has to drive back to L.A. at 1 in the morning for lack of anywhere to stay.
February: "Improv Group Fail." Ginger joins an improv group organized by her friend Lynn. Somehow, control of the group gets hijacked by this unfunny beyotch who brings all her friends in and kicks all our friends out. No more improv group.
March: No significant fails, just boredom and work.
April: "Cater Waitering Fail." Ginger has a catering gig-- a wrap party for The Voice. She is forced to buy fishnet stockings and dress like a hooker. Though she leaves two hours early, the traffic is so bad, it takes two hours to get to Hollywood, and then she has to pay $10 to park. She is seven minutes late, and they have given the gig to a backup person. After driving home for another two hours, she promptly quits this pathetic excuse for a catering company, who refuses to refund her parking or gas money.
May: "Dental Emergency Fail." One of Ginger's molars decides to rot out of her head right before she and Adam are about to leave for their wedding. To rid herself of the intense pain, she has to go to an emergency dentist over the weekend who bamboozles her into getting the most expensive crown and costs her thousands of dollars she doesn't have.
June: "Totaled Car and Shady Job Fail." Adam and Ginger go out one evening, and when they come back, his car, which had been parked on the street, is totaled. TOTALED, thanks to some joyriding douche from the Lexus dealership next door. Cue three months worth of legal automobile drama. Meanwhile, Ginger is solicited to work as an "internship" for a casting director workshop company. She only makes it through two days cold calling unsuspecting actors for this shady outfit before she can't take it anymore and decides not to go back.
July: "New Job Fakeout Fail." After the dental bills and the wedding bills, Ginger and Adam are beyond broke. There is one hope on the horizon, though: Ginger had a really awesome series of interviews at Santa Monica College, and she is supposed to hear from them in two weeks, "either way." She knows it's in the bag from the way they talked to her, and the money would turn everything around! One week passes. Two weeks pass. Three weeks pass. She doesn't get the job, and they never even bother to call and say they had filled the position. Hope is dead.
August: "Mexico Birthday Fail." Ginger and Adam go to Mexico. They don't plan anything for Ginger's birthday because, hey, it's Mexico and we will find something cool and spontaneous to do! When the day arrives, they've had it with the Mexican resort food and the fact that there is nobody under the age of fifty in this place. All Ginger wants is to go to Al Capone's former hideout, a pizza place, and have some beer and pizza. They drive through the desert forty minutes to get to the tiny town, and the place has a sign that says "closed on Wednesdays."
September: "Stand-up Fail / Worst Job Ever Fail." Ginger takes a stand-up class. It's so awful she doesn't even go to the last two classes. End of stand-up career. Desperate for money, she also agrees to work for this girl who is opening a store. As it turns out, the girl is the most insane, rude, unstable banshee Ginger has ever met. She forces herself to last one week just to get the paycheck, but by the end of the week, her face is broken out, her brains are scrambled, and she is filled with rage.
October: "Theatre of Fail / Itchy Fail." Ginger is in a play every weekend. She never sees Adam anymore, and the play is not what she had expected. The director/writer/lead actress/producer (yeah, I didn't know this when I was auditioning) is the most stubborn, un-theatrical person ever, and is impossible to work with, insisting that we watch the video from when the play was performed ten years ago and copy it exactly. Meanwhile, Ginger is beginning to become covered with itchy, blistery welts that are taking over her life and sanity. Adam and Ginger have their apartment inspected multiple times before they are finally told they have bed bugs.
November: "Apartment Fail." The bugs drive Adam and Ginger out of the apartment they've lived in for more than two years. Like thieves in the night, they drag their couch and bed and everything cushy they own down three flights of stairs and down the street into a giant dumpster. Adam and Ginger have to steam, microwave, or put into the dryer anything that they have left, which is not a lot. Joyce lets them stay at her house until they find a place, which takes three entire weeks of November. They move on Thanksgiving Day.
December: "Tooth Fail, The Sequel." Before Ginger goes to Harlan for Christmas, that rotten tooth starts paining her sharply. Though she has already paid thousands of dollars for the crown, she now has to get an emergency root canal, because the previous dentist had not fixed the problem. Luckily, she now has dental insurance, and has a job to pay the difference.

Most Loathed Christmas Songs

2011-12-23T18:41:00.000-08:00

To continue my tradition of questioning the quality of certain holiday tunes, here, in order, are the top three Christmas songs that make my ears bleed.

1. Happy Xmas (War is Over)

-The lyrics begin with an accusation: "So this is Christmas and what have you done?" Eff YOU! What have YOU done, and what gives you license to assume that I haven't done anything worthwhile? I've done a lot, actually, so koo koo kachoo yourself on out of here and stop judging me.

-The sound of those children singing "WAAAAR IIIIS OOOOOVEEER..." is actually antithetical to the message, since it's the absolute worst noise I've ever heard. Makes me want to start a new war -- a war on children singing those horrible notes. And Yoko's voice goes in the same category.

-Why do you feel the need to bring the word "war" into my Christmas songs, anyway? Can we just ignore it long enough to deck the halls? Or could we just not use the word "war" in the refrain of a holiday ditty? Stick a fruitcake in it and let's just enjoy ourselves!

2. Santa Baby

-This song goes into the same category with those little red and white fuzzy lingerie items with jingle bells attached. Public service announcement: please, don't try to mix your Christmas with your sex. Nothing is less sexy than themed sweaters, carols, and (grossest of all) family. Everyone who sings this song makes an atrocious attempt at a sexy kitten growl. Do you, Miss Eartha Kitt and infinite cover artists, not realize that Christmas is The Least Sexiest Time of the Year? And your prostituting yourself for Santa isn't an image any of us wants to dwell on.

-Who is this song's target audience? Since we have established that it's the antithesis of sexy, it can't be enjoyed by straight men. I know it's not for women, because I am one, and all of us are annoyed by it. I can only assume that the fans must be teenage girls and/or young gay boys who want to get a holiday crush's attention by performing "Santa Baby" in the school talent show.

3. Do You Hear What I Hear?

-"Said the night wind to the little lamb..." Are you bored yet? I am. And yet, for some reason, this song has been on repeat in every store and on every radio station. I've snored through every verson. Can we please mix it up a little?

Some Notes on Happiness

2011-12-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

My cousin just found out that the baby inside her belly is a little boy, which will pair nicely his adorable two-year-old sister. So I write this note for the forthcoming Preston Mills, and for every baby that happens to be reading this, my advice on how to stay happy.

First, bambino, stay the way you are, living in the moment, looking at everything as if it were the first time you've seen it, and being open to learning something from every person and experience. You won't get bored this way, and you can find a little celebration in every moment if you look for it. If you're having a bad day, that's okay: just look for the absurdity in the situation, and you will probably think it's darkly funny. If you have no sense of humor, get one by any means. The bad day (week/month) will end and if you keep your humor, you'll be back to your happy self soon.

I watched a movie the other day with a bunch of my Lululemon friends, a documentary called The Happy Movie. It followed the lives of lots of happy people all over the world. Some were in communal living situations in Denmark, some lived under tarps in India, some were Bushmen living in the Kalahari, some had overcome great physical trauma...but all of them said "I am happy." These people, along with me, a late-twenties misfit with no established "career" and a mountain of debt, are happy in our situations, and we all have the following things in common.

We are grateful. Instead of comparing yourself to that perfumed lady whose outfit costs more than you make in a year, put your life in perspective and look at what you do have. If you live under a tarp, be grateful that you get the afternoon sunlight from the west. If you are one of the Bushmen of the Kalahari, be grateful that you are surrounded with people who care for you. You will feel joyful if you are happy with what you have.

We stay active. Babies, by the time you are teenagers, there will probably be a Matrix you can hook yourself into and play video games with your mind while your body lies in a pod. Please use this in moderation: there is no replacement for getting outdoors, sweating, feeling like you are using your body the way nature intended; moving makes you feel vital and alive. And stay active mentally, too. Read and watch and discuss and create! Do things when an idea strikes; don't save them for later when the passion has died.

We maintain meaningful social interactions. This will help you stay mentally and physically active, and open your world up to new experiences. Find love, or find friends, or spend time with family or a group of like-minded people. Just talking to others is proven to light up happy parts of the brain that otherwise lie dormant. Get your alone time when you need it, but don't make a habit of it.

We commit kindness. Do things for other people. Be thoughtful. Give compliments freely. Smile at strangers. You never know whose day you're going to save just by letting someone in front of you in line.

And don't expect yourself to be perfect; don't expect anything from yourself that is impossible. If you decide once in a while to stay in bed and have no social interactions and not move except to get the pint of ice cream out of the freezer, don't feel guilty about it--you are human! Love yourself for who you are and own it.

That's all for now--I can't wait to meet you!

G

Salon des Artistes

2011-12-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

We may as well be the Fitzgeralds. With more moderate tastes for alcoholism and insanity, that is.

One of the best things about living in Los Angeles is that art is alive and forever breathing your same oxygen. Though the city is full of amusing offerings to distract an artist --bars, events, movies, beaches, mountains-- it is hard to forget your calling when all the people you encounter are moving mountains in theirs. Every day is like living in Paris during Gertrude Stein's heyday; you may meet a Hemingway, a Fitzgerald, a Picasso.

You go to a Christmas party and make a fun friend who casually says she does music, and when you hear her heartstoppingly beautiful songs and find out she is on the Twilight soundtrack and just came off a national tour, you find out just how modest she is. You start taking yoga from a force-of-nature poet who becomes a friend and inspiration, and in six months, she has manifested herself onto Good Morning America, among many other accolades. Two people you've acted with in the past couple years are now regulars on national television shows. You become close to a darling producer when you work on a pilot together, and then find out she is a published novelist. Nearly everyone you talk to has an iron or two in the artistic fire, and every time you see one of them make another creative leap, you feel excited for them, and excited that it could soon be you if you stay committed to these endeavors that stir your soul.

You create whether or not there is outward "success," but of course you want to be known as an Artist as soon as you walk into a room; you don't want to have to explain it and justify your "right" to create. You want people to memorize your lyrics, to laugh and cry at your movies, to quote passages of your words. You make art so it can be devoured; so you can connect with all the other humans who have felt what you feel: give them that gift, and give yourself that gift.

Living in this ridiculous city where everyone holds these truths, as opposed to a place where artists are isolated and misunderstood, reminds you why you don't just give up and go get some "acceptable" job.

"I'm Old" and Other Tangents

2011-12-07T21:27:00.000-08:00

It is absurd to me that we are already a week into December. I don't know if it's Los Angeles that makes the time pass faster, or if it's the coincidence that I am getting older, and when there are so many more years to compare a span of time to, the span seems comparatively shorter.

But I'm convinced that time does whir by more quickly in L.A, at least in illusion. In Kentucky, I could write an itinerary of errands to rival Santa's List and get everything done in a day. The day would seem full and by night, I had been through the gamut and accomplished a lot. And on days that weren't busy, time went slowly because there wasn't much to do. On a busy day here, however, you have to choose a few important duties and forget the rest. You can go to Trader Joe's and get a few groceries, for example, but that's going to take two to three hours of your time. Before you know it, it's 4pm and you've done nothing, and in the winter, the sun sets at 5. Usually, if you don't have to be anywhere, you'll avoid getting what you need just so you won't have to get in your car. Either way, this city makes you more of a patient, laid-back person without even trying. No matter what you're doing, you assume you'll have to wait first. You think, "If I don't get around to that today, I will tomorrow."

But this age I'm at --twenty-seven-- how strange an age it is! I feel closer to twenty than to thirty, but (when did this happen!?) I am actually much closer to thirty. The kids in charge of all the trends were born in the 90s, and I am left out, having never heard a song by Justin Bieber and not knowing how to Dougie. I don't even know what they're watching on TV. I still end up in working situations where my peers are twenty, and I get this thrill: the thrill old people get when they're around the young. It's absurd. The thought creeps into my mind, "If I can impress this kid with my coolness, or if this freshman boy thinks I'm hot, that means I'm still young." I need some sort of touchstone, because it freaks me out when I meet someone and one of the first questions they ask me is "Do you have kids?" I'm thinking, "They can't be serious, right? Do I really look like someone who is capable of having kids, plural?" Surely not; surely I could still put on some fishnets and go to the Warped Tour and make out with a cute boy in the pit, no questions asked.

I wonder if there's ever a time when I'll feel "grown up." Right now, I still feel like every day is an adventure whose outcome I don't know. I feel like I have an ever-expanding toolbox to help me figure out how to get through the day, but I don't know the answers, same as I didn't know the answers when I was a teenager. And I don't want to know the answers.

Mathematics of Dramatics

2011-11-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

Some people's highs are not very high, thus their lows are not very low. They live relatively quiet, even lives; they don't risk much. The amplitude of their life's sine curve is close to zero, close to home base, never far from contentment. Their life's peak moments are the everyday blisses: a good dinner with family, a promotion in the job they've been working for ten years, a new nephew. And their lows are universal upsets: a cancelled TV show, a disappointment when they don't get the job, a death in the family.

Others have a much higher threshold for both pain and pleasure; it takes a lot to fulfill their appetites for happiness. They seek new experiences on a daily basis. Some experiences pay off and send them soaring on the wings of ecstasy: they move to an exciting new city, they change careers, they go skydiving. But when your highs are high, your lows usually mirror them. If you deplete all your money on a week of awesome dinners, you're going to be shut in eating ramen for the next few weeks. If you decide to work a bunch of irregular gigs instead of getting a real job, you'll have weeks of no work at all and then a week where you work so much you can't sleep. If you go to Mexico in the summer, you might end up with bed bugs and have to throw all your stuff out and stay with friends 'til you find a new place. Or, more tragically, if you decide to do a very dangerous drug like Bailey, a former coworker friend of mine, you might hit the ultimate low.

Rest in peace, beautiful Bailey.

My goal for me and my wish for all of you is that you take the risks and revel in the highs and be ready for the lows. They're enjoyable, too, in their own interesting way, and they provide great fodder for future stories. But please always be good to yourself and don't do anything stupid.

Trials of a Volatile Vagabond

2011-11-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you're simply starving for a taste of Ginger after ten days absent of spice, but this has been just about the most crazy ten days I can remember.

Saturday 11/19 - Wake up in Vegas at 6:30 a.m. and flew back to L.A. after an awesome week of pilot producing. Adam and I are still waiting to hear about the two apartments we've applied for (the only two one-bedrooms in our price range in Santa Monica).

Sunday 11/20 - I officially start my new job at Lululemon, kicking it off with yoga in the A.M. and a meeting at night where we talk about a fitness challenge and learn a dance routine to do in the store. These people are great.

Monday 11/21 - My first shift at Lulu is easygoing and fun; I am so glad to have a job that doesn't involve wearing a tie and men's shoes. Our home situation, however, is still up in the air. We have been staying with Joyce for nearly a month now after leaving the bed-bugged place behind and throwing out nearly everything we own. I am very wary of wearing out our welcome--Joyce has been so kind and generous and I want to leave her alone--and I am dying to get our own place again.

Tuesday 11/22 - Joyce's family is coming to stay for the holiday, so Adam and I move over to Cameron and Jessica's apartment to make room. We four have a sleepover in their one bedroom. We get a call saying we didn't get the apartment we had thought was ours.

Wednesday 11/23 - Adam's at work. I've barely seen him this month. I am sitting on the computer at Jess and Cam's looking ferociously for a place and drinking so much coffee I'm shaking. At this point, we've lowered our standards. We used to want a place close to the beach in Santa Monica with hardwood floors, a bedroom, a parking space, and allowance for a cat. Later, we decided that as long as it was a one-bedroom in Santa Monica, we didn't care about the rest. Today, we don't even care if it has a bedroom. Our only requirement is that it is closer to the beach than our last apartment on 15th street, and that we can move in quickly. I find one seven blocks from the beach that could be promising. I go to work at Lululemon, and Adam goes to see the apartment when he gets off work. He likes it--especially the fact that it has a private garden--and we apply.

The courtyard entrance to the apartment.

At night, we go to Lola's martini bar in Hollywood to have a little reunion with my Vegas peeps. (Yes I said "peeps" and I'm not apologizing.) We have a little fun and appetizers, and I get my check, which means we can pay the deposit for any apartment that might come our way.

Thursday 11/24 (Thanksgiving) - We are in our pajamas watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with Cameron and Jessica when Adam gets a call. It's the apartment guy from yesterday saying that if we come and make a payment today, we can have the keys. (Does he realize it's Thanksgiving? At this point I don't care.) Adam and I get some clothes on, get a cash advance from an ATM, and meet the dude, Mr. Doss, at the apartment. It's small, but it's month-to-month and there's a garden courtyard and it's close to the beach and Montana Avenue (one of our favorite streets in the 'hood), and we can move in today, so I say "Do it." Adam hands over the cash and we get the key and go back to Cameron's where Jessica is about to start preparing her turkey.

We are so relieved. We go to Joyce's to visit with her family and we spend a couple hours chatting and having wine and appetizers. We grab a carload of our crap from Joyce's garage and schlep it over to our new place. We stop to get some last minute food items at a couple grocery stores, and these places are full and hoppin'. Then we go back to Cam and Jess around five for dinner. Jessica has cooked her first turkey, and it was literally the best turkey I've ever had. The whole meal was delicious, and the company was wonderful, and I was so thankful for all these wonderful friends who never let us hit the ground when we fall. We went to our new place to spend the night amidst the boxes on an air mattress.

Jessica's delicious Thanksgiving cookin'. Just like Mom's!

Friday 11/25 ("Black Friday") - My day starts with hot yoga at 7 in the morning. All the Lululemon employees are supposed to come, but only about four of us show up. I sweat 'til I'm soaked and it feels good. Adam goes to work, and I try to make our place a little livable. I go to get groceries and I pick up all our clothes and dishes from Joyce's. She gives us a bottle of wine to celebrate. Back at our place, I meet a cute cat, and she comes inside. I pet her. Her name is Honu, and I meet her owner, our neighbor Jane, who is the caretaker of this beautiful garden. We make friends. I put as much stuff away as I can before I must go to work at 3. I like my job. I ride my bike home at 9 (we live so close now!) and keep putting stuff away, but I'm not seeming to make a dent. Plus, there are all these little things we have to get fixed: drawers that don't close, a pipe that leaks, and grossness that needs to be cleaned. Adam and I take drink the bottle of wine and take a night walk. Orion is out and the night sky is perfect. I fall asleep so hard around 11.

We may not have a bedroom, but we have an outdoor dining room!

Saturday 11/26 - I work later today, but Adam is off. We take a walk around our beautiful neighborhood. This is the first time we've really relaxed together in a long time. There is a silver lining right on the horizon of the ocean, the sun is shining, and the sky is so blue. We buy a shower curtain, then come back and make turkey and cranberry salads. The cable guy comes and hooks up our internet. While I'm at work, Adam moves some more stuff from Joyce's to our new place. Most of the stuff makes the trip, but not our big giant mirror or our 36" flat screen TV--those break. Oh well. At this point, I am completely unattached to any material possessions, and that is a good feeling. We'll get a new TV and mirror. I come home and our neighbor Jane has brought us over some fried chicken. Yum!

Today - Neither of us work. Most of our stuff has made it to our new place. We are going to enjoy ourselves today and go ride rides on the pier. We are almost back to homeostasis, and I will soon be regularly blogging again.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Life

2011-11-17T11:14:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this in stolen moments between taking photos of actors and fending off annoying questions I've been asked at least three times already. At least I ate breakfast this morning; I made sure of that, since it's been difficult during the busy-ness of the past few days.

Sunset in the West.

I flew to Las Vegas on Sunday to be an assistant producer this week on a TV pilot. Vegas isn't my idea of a good time--I'm not much of a gambler and I prefer my cultural experiences to be authentic instead of cheesy reproductions--but it's a really fun place to be "at work." Plus, I love staying in hotels, period, even if it's a Super 8 by the highway outside of Nashville. So a plushy room to myself in the Las Vegas Hilton is alright with me.

Vegas from a hotel window at 7:30 a.m.

Yesterday morning I took at eight mile walk down the strip and lost my money. I wasn't gambling; it just fell out of my pocket! That was exhausting, and the rest of the day was, too, as it is now "crunch time" and all these actors suddenly have other obligations which we have to shuffle our day around.

View from my morning jog.

I spent yesterday emailing back and forth with Gilbert Gottfried's manager trying to get him to come on the show. Two nights ago our executive producer bought us ridiculously expensive steak and dessert at a delicious restaurant, and last night I ate Pizza Hut express from the hotel lobby. (What happened to Pizza Hut? Are there no more sit-down restaurants with pizzas larger than Personal Pan? It makes me sad.)

I am busy liaising between actors and casting roles and running up and down stairs and writing documents. Though it feels good to be vital, I am ready to go home on Saturday. And by "home" I mean to Adam, since we actually do not have an apartment to live in right now. But I feel that will change soon, as we've applied to two that we love...though not likely before Thanksgiving. Oh well; things are looking up.

Witness Protection Programmers

2011-11-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

Taking our own little "occupy" stand, Adam and I decided to move our money to a community bank, terminating our two-year stint with Wells Fargo. (You should do it, too.) Not that we have much money; not that the Wells Fargo people are crying at night because they lost our in-and-out paychecks. It's just our way of picking a side.

But as we were sitting on Ocean Avenue, talking to the nice Asian ladies at California Bank and Trust, I began to realize that we seem like sketchy characters. Remember how I had needed a complete life upheaval? Well, it's happening now -- so every question this poor lady asked us had a tentative answer; I'm sure we seemed like people who are running from something.

Bank Lady: So why are you moving banks? Is it the fees?
Us: Well, yes, the fees did just go up...and also we are tired of supporting giant corporate banks...
BL: [looks at us like she has never heard of people who dislike huge corporations, but she is okay with it.]

BL: Where do you work? You didn't fill in a phone number.
Me: Well, I am starting tomorrow at Lululemon, so the paperwork isn't in yet. I don't have the phone number. I will text my friend and find out. Oh, and next week I am also starting a job in Vegas, as a production assistant on a court TV show. The show's name? Oh -- you know what? I can't think of it right now...

BL: Where do you live?
Me: Well, actually, we are staying with a friend at the moment -- we just moved out of our apartment on Sunday. But we are finding a new place as soon as possible. We're applying for one today, in fact.
BL: So you are using your friend's address? Well, as long as you change your address in 30 days...
Us: Oh, we will; we will.

BL: May I see your drivers license?
Me: Sure! [I hand it to her.]
BL: [Studies my drivers license picture.]
Me: Oh -- I had blonde hair and a tan in that picture. And I'm not wearing my glasses. But it's me! I promise it's me.

But the Bank Lady was super nice, and the apartment man was really nice, and the people at my new job were amazing today, and soon I will have more money to put in the new bank...so even though I don't really live anywhere and don't look like my license picture and am moving banks and don't know much about where I work, I feel like a real person.

P.S. - This is my 300th blog post!

Breaking Up

2011-11-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

Over two years of bliss we shared. I will always remember the happy, light-filled times we had. But toward the end, you became different. You were causing me pain and suffering, you wanted more of my money than I thought you deserved, I had wandering eyes; we were falling apart at the seams.

So, dear apartment -- our first apartment in L.A. -- it is with relief and nostalgia that I leave you. I'm leaving abruptly, filling garbage bags full of clothes and getting out before Sunday. I cannot stand your infestation any longer; I cannot be in your presence without feeling uncomfortable and stressed. Even on good days, the tension between us is palpable: you stress me out.

You can keep the bed, the pillows, the futon mattress, and the papazan cushion. I already threw out all the rugs, and now, thanks to you, I am having to bake all our books in the oven and wash and dry everything we own. Which isn't much anymore.

I wish you well, and I'm sorry we couldn't work it out.

Sincerely,

Ginger

Murder / Hedonism

2011-10-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

Three of my friends have been brutally murdered. Not all together, but at different times during my 27 years. This week, a genuinely nice, cool dude from my hometown was slain with an axe. From my bedroom on school nights, I used to talk to Pat Howard on the phone about punk rock.

Four years ago, another Kentucky friend of mine was visiting Boston when she was killed by a bullet in a gang crossfire. Chiara Levin was a beautiful, creative life force of a gal who I befriended at Governer's School for the Arts.

And three years before that, a kind, soulful, summer romance of mine was bludgeoned with a baseball bat while he was sleeping. Jonathan Gleason was tri-lingual and multi-talented, and he kissed me in a Florida Wal-Mart while I was sitting on a bench.

It's trite to say that none of these friends of mine were ready to go. Of course they weren't; they were young and unsuspecting, and all of were far more concerned with living life than what comes after that. So for the lost ones, I implore you: do something right now that brings you joy.

Why don't you infuse every day of your short life with something that makes you happy? Don't say, "Because I have to do what I have to do," and don't mention your crappy job or your obligations. I'm so sick of this "American way" that seems to say that work comes before anything else and "who cares if your time on this planet sucks -- there is a kingdom in store for you at the pearly gates if you just deprive yourself enough of the joys of living to earn it." No; that is not what God thinks. If you're at your crappy job, you can look out the window at the sky or eat all the chocolate in the candy jar. Just do something small, anything that makes you smile.

It could happen to you.

Maybe when your bike seat is stolen, you'll borrow a friend's bike and ride so fast on the beach that you slip on some sand and wreck it. Maybe you'll laugh at the blood filling up your flip-flop and how good it feels to be alive, and you'll sop it all up with some sand and pretend to be a gladiator.

All in a day's work.

Maybe one day you will be lucky enough to get paid for sitting atop your city on a green hill reading a book while watching the waves whoosh out below you. Maybe you'll move someplace that moves you, or maybe you'll just decorate your tiny apartment in a way that inspires you.

Maybe you have a bad day, and the only thing you can think of to bring you joy is to go down to the karaoke bar and drink beer and sing badly. Do it!

I have always been good at knowing what brings be joy. I've always believed in hedonism (definition: "the belief that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life"). Some turd nuggets in this silly society look down upon me for that belief. One person, over five years ago, even warned my future husband to stay away from me because "she is a hedonist."

Yes I am a hedonist, and yes, when asked to make a list of things that bring me joy, I can rattle them off without a hitch. Sunshine, love, chocolate, biking, hiking, yoga, taking walks, music, singing, dancing, friends, acting, creating, writing, reading, traveling, dressing up, stickers, coloring, painting, food, watching movies, the ocean, making out, red wine, feeling pretty, the library-- I could go on and on.

Is it hard for you to think of the things that bring you joy? If so, let me recommend a book to you. Order it immediately, study it, and when you think you've got it mastered, call me and we can hang out.

The Kindness of Others

2011-10-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I was lying on the bottom of the barrel waiting to be scraped off. Someone had stolen parts of our bikes, we were infested with pests and being bitten daily, we were broke with seemingly no prospects, all my time was being taken up by an endeavor that I was not enjoying, and with all these other worries I had no time for being creative, acting, or advancing my career in any meaningful ways. It was bleak.

I had thought I had needed some big whopping event to sweep in and clear away these cobwebs, but then I decided that I was being too dramatic, and all I needed was to keep putting my effort into all these concerns and I would slowly work my way out from under this avalanche.

I hadn't even considered that the positive energy I kept sending out would come back to me tenfold in the form of a giant meteor of kindness from so many wonderful people in my life. Right now, I have a stack of six thank-you cards to send to these people who have made me feel like the world is cradling me in its arms.

A thank you for a kind friend who gave us a gift card to fix our bikes.
A thank you for a life-saver friend who is letting us stay with her until the pest people finish their job (which they're doing tomorrow).
A thank you for an exuberant friend who got me a very well paying gig that will put us back on our feet.
A thank you for a soulful friend who got me an interview for a local long-term job that, if I get it, will keep us on our feet (that interview is in the morning).
A thank you is for a wonderful mother-in-law who always sends a card when I most need it, saying just the right thing ("Enjoy today and every day").
And a thank you for a casting guy who saw fit to make me SAG eligible, after more than two years of my struggle to do just that.

As I lay in savasana in yoga tonight, tears rolled down into my earholes because I was overwhelmed at all this kindness, which has manifest itself all at once. I can't believe how blessed and lucky I am, and all I want to do is pass it on.

Thank you.

Uncorked Manifesto

2011-10-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Got home from the play last night and I still had half a bottle of Cabernet left (having shared the other half with some cast members). Adam and Joyce were exhausted and both wanted to go to bed. I wasn't tired. "What's wrong with me?" I thought...until I noticed it was only 10:00. So I grabbed a Dixie cup from the bathroom (no cleanup!) and finished that-there bottle alone. Problem was, I had nobody to talk to. So I just pulled up the keyboard and talked to myself. I'll have to edit a little, but here are is what I found this morning, my unfiltered ramblings. Enjoy!

I love being on the left coast where late doesn’t come ‘til late. While my sis has been in bed since midnight (9pm my time), I am still rambling maniacal ideas on the computer downstairs. I can hear that Adam has gotten up to go to the bathroom. He has posted a new photo of many blue-eyed kittens on our computer background. This is one of the many things I love about him; his appreiciation for cuteness. Most men ignore it or stay clear of it.

I have been eating cracked pepper triscuits and drinking dixie cup after dixie cup of 2 buck chuck. “Soft white winter wheat” – that is the ingredient in these triscuits. What bullshit. Do you know what my purpose in life is? To be myself. To be as true to that little nugget of pure identity as I can. To find the truth in my actions. "How do I feel about this? Why do I do/say these things?" To find people I can be myself around without feeling odd. this is why I am sometimes apallingly honest. This is why I don’t sheild the “ugly” parts of myself from anyone. Because they are not ugly. They are me.

...I just zoned out. I guess the point is that I accept and love myself for who I am, and I am interested in hanging with people who feel that same way. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate everything that I am, $^(& ‘em. I don’t need those people, because I have enough wonderful people who do. I need love. But i am not a victim or desperate like Marilyn Monroe. I am powerful and I am my own entity. I am like Hemingway. But he killed himself by jumping into an empty elevator shaft. What happened to him? And Fitzgerald was an alcoholic. I identify so much with those people; surely I am not like them, though. Those artists I admire so much: what makes an artist different from a regular person? I have such higher esteem for artists...but in their time, they are considered dysfuctional and they are always poor. All the ones I respect, anyway, at least went through a period of poverty. Look at me; I am doing it. I guess nothing really feels real. I always feel like I’m watching my life from the side. Am I really living in Los Angeles? It is such a city of fables.

I am genuinely happy with who I am as a person and I am only interested in truth. I am 27 years old, I am Ginger Allison Pennington of Harlan, Kentucky, and I bite my cuticles and don’t care about my manicure, and I will pee anywhere, anytime, and I have damaged hair and I say wack things, and I failed at stand-up and I am afraid of heights, and I watch Midsomer Murders and House Hunters International and pretend I am in the English countryside or in Bali or the French Riviera, and I never say Never, and I don't make rules for myself about what I will or will not do on first dates. I like to eat half the brownie batter before baking the rest. I can be cynical. I don’t have a perfect body, but I am still beautiful. I am easily offended; I delusionally assume most people don’t like me or that I’m offending them. I love beer. I love food in surplus. I love staying in my pajamas all day. I hate work. I don’t care about money. When I feel I’m not being paid enough, I take as much as I can to make up for it. I am so proud of who I am. I am good at acting, and I can sing and harmonize and project, and I have a pretty face and I know how to do makeup and hair good and I am athletic and I have sexual prowess and I am not a jealous person as a rule, and I can draw pretty well, though my imagination is not as good as it once was (at least I can record with relative veracity what is actually around me) and I have good instincts and reflexes, and I am kind and a good listener (or at least a pretty good listener) and I want the best for everybody, even people I profess to hate, as long as it’s not harming the people I love, and I love very well and I am good at seeing the good in people. I have hope for my life and I am doing something right now that lots of people wish they had the guts to try and that is really hard, and no matter how many times I get rejected, I still know I have something special. I am a good friend and I am always on the mision of finding the truest truth. That is my goal and I respect anyone else who is trying to achieve the same thing, whatever their means.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

2011-10-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Today in yoga, my teacher Jen, one of the most beautiful people in the world, gave us each a piece of paper and made us write down a "story" we've been telling ourselves that has been hindering our lives. A story that's not true. A story we may have been repeating over and over, to our detriment. I have plenty of these stories circling around in my head like toy trains on a kid's track, but this one seemed the most salient:

"I have been on a bad luck streak for a long time now. My life needs a complete overhaul. Nothing good has happened in a while, and nothing good will happen until a big giant wave of change crashes into my life and washes all the bad luck away."

You see, I am one of these people who catalogues everything. I am not a planner who organizes things before they happen, but after things happen, I like to put them in nice little categories. Lately, I have been overlooking the "GOOD" category because there are so many tiny things to file under "CRAP," so every time another one happens, even if it's as small as taking the wrong exit off the highway, I have a tendency to say "I can't catch a break! That is the fifth bad thing that has happened to me today!" Instead, I could just try to brush it off and find the next good thing to enjoy.

I wrote it down, this evil story, and all of us ripped these stories to shreds and gave them up. Jen took a look at the pile of ripped up papers and said, "This is a pile of shit." Then we released ourselves from those crippling stories through yoga and came up with new ones. I needed it.

I realized that there is so much good in my life. I don't need some gigantic change to happen all at once and whisk me out of the funk...all I need is to know that I am on the path, doing all kinds of small actions that are taking me in the right direction. We all get into ruts, but believing that the universe has a vendetta against me is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Good things are happening for me, and that is my new story.

Where Are You, Halloween?

2011-10-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

To be honest, Dear Reader, I have been away strictly because I've been in a very dark place with nothing but bile to spew for the past little while, and I didn't want to infect you. Remember a couple weeks ago how I had nothing to do but complain about all these little injustices? Well, weeks may have passed, but unfortunately not much has changed, and though I try very hard to "be here now" and find all the little beauties in the moment-to-moment, it is very hard to talk about anything other than how I can't wait for this play to end, how my arms look like I have chickenpox, how I have no bike to ride, etc.

But today feels different.
Here are the things we've done in attempts to get out of this funk:

Adam and I have signed up on the apartment finding website (which costs too much and is a monopoly in L.A.) and we are now actively looking for a new place to live. Though we've had a wonderful two years in our sweet studio, the jet stream of change is pushing me to leave. For two months I've associated the place with getting eaten alive by insects. I need a complete overhaul in the living situation.
We are staying with Joyce at the moment. So that we can stop feeling like we are sleeping naked in the Amazon Rainforest, we are staying with one of our most wonderful friends / family members, the amazing Joyce, who let us stay with her for two months when we first moved to L.A. Not only does Joyce's house come with good company and sans bugs, she also has bike, which I'm about to use to ride in the sun down to whatever beach will free my soul.
I'm working any crappy job that comes up to make up for the fact that I haven't been able to work three nights a week due to the play. Tonight I'm serving at some horrible banquet, I'm sure...but at least a paycheck will be in the mail, and this will all end in two weeks! It will be a loooong time before I ever do a play again. I am counting down the performances (six left!) until my freedom. But now I've learned that lesson, at least. Or re-learned it. Theatre is not for me.

So here is what I think (or what I have to hope):

I see a light at the end of my tunnel, and the light is the jack-o-lantern light of Halloween.

Starting on October 31st, I will gain the precious gift of a weekly Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with which I can do anything I need or want, including working, having fun, and actually seeing my husband! Then, the next day begins a new month, and a new lease on life (and perhaps the END of an old lease on a bug-infested apartment)! Will we tell those un-helpful douches that November is our last month in that hole? Will the new month bring new opportunities? Or will it take longer for things to look up? Will I just have to learn to live with my "new normal"? It could be much worse, I know.

But for now, I have a day in the sun and that is better than most things.

The Dark Knight Rises

2011-10-12T10:41:00.000-07:00

It's kind of hilarious that I always use this pink blazer for headshots, but it works for a "business-like" look and it's not black like everyone else's, so there you go. Hair color changes a lot about how we perceive a person. Don't you think I am much more of a badass now than that lily-white gal a couple years ago? Well, I'm not.

Or maybe I am, simply because, as we get older, I think we learn how to cut the shite out of our lives a lot faster. At least I don't agree to as much rubbish out of obligation, or "just to be nice." And I'm working on getting even better at that, too. Because every hour of my life is important to me, and I don't want to waste my sweet time on people/situations that don't deserve it, just because I'm "too nice" to be a little selfish.

Still Life

2011-10-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

I take pictures sometimes just to capture the details of life in crazy L.A., but then I forget about them. So here is a visual smorgasbord of my life from the past few months.

When your cupboard is bare, you have to get creative. Here is a very interesting meal Adam made for us called "Polished Eggs." It was Asian-inspired, on a bed of quinoa and teriyaki broccoli with almonds.

Fresh flowers always brighten up a room. These I nicked from a catering gig I had worked. Things that also brighten up a room: Mexican skulls and fingernail clippers.

In Venice, there is a place with great beer pitchers and a view of the ocean on the second floor, which is decorated like a frat house, with crusty couches and salvaged end tables. Nobody's ever upstairs, and this piece of art is on the wall, a self-portrait painted by a local Rastafarian who keeps a crow for a pet. You can also watch him from the second-story window.

When we have the time, we like to make mornings special. Here is a breakfast I made for Adam. I know the sausage looks wonky, but it was delicious.

If you want to talk to Jesus, you simply have to go to West Hollywood. The guy you see behind my head is never without his full-length tunic and Jesus sandals, and he only answers to the name "Jesus." I've seen him tons of times and actually met him once. He is supremely kind and always willing to chat with "the least among you." I just wish I could know what he does with his day, what his drivers license says, and what his closet looks like. (A row of white tunics?)

Sometimes, driving down the boulevard, you pull up next to something like this Jay Gatsby-mobile.

And sometimes, you will see a rainbow that seems to end at the West Hollywood Trader Joe's.

The sky last week was beautiful, as fall has brought rain with the sunshine. I took this while walking down Santa Monica Boulevard eating a pepperoni Big Mama's Slice.

And last night, I was on the tarmac of LAX airport, catering to a bunch of aviation buffs, including stewardesses and pilots from the 30s and 40s.

I may not live a wealthy life in the traditional sense, but I make sure to seek abundance in experience and in details.

Monday-as-Weekend

2011-10-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

How beautiful it was to wake up on this blue-skied breezy day and know that I DON'T HAVE TO GET IN MY CAR! Driving to West Hollywood makes me feel trapped in a slow-moving train car. Driving to Hollywood makes me feel stuck in an elevator with a bunch of crazy people. Driving to The Valley makes me feel like I'm in some Apocalypse movie at the end of the earth. But Santa Monica, how I love thee. How I love waking up and walking to yoga with this wonderful guy:

whom I have only been using as a teddy bear during the night lately as I NEVER GET TO SEE HIM otherwise. He is a very huggable animal, but I am so very sick of never seeing him except in passing because he works during the day, and in the evenings I have to hobnob at events and write articles and work catering gigs and spend the whole weekend doing this:

But this evening will be the start of an entire 24-hour period in which I get to enjoy my sweetie's company, and I am telling you now, if you call me or text me, you will not get an answer. (My phone rings at least twice an hour, and it's always somebody wanting me to do something. I'm all for opportunity, but I need the opportunity to be LEFT ALONE!)

As for the bugs and their bites, an inspector came and declared that there were no bugs to be found anywhere in this apartment. I bug-bombed my car, and we have been sleeping on the futon for three nights, and my arms are finally healing from the blisters and blotches. But before we get back into the comfy bed, we are going to bug-bomb the apartment, too, no matter what the landlord wants. I am not going to be food for an army of blood-suckers ever again.

Right now, I am doing some writing gigs because I have to, though I am sick of that, too. If I had a bike seat, I would be at the beach riding. I thought those would be inexpensive, but apparently they cost upwards of twenty bucks, not to mention the pole itself, which was also stolen. I do hope that by now, the thief has fallen down in the street and gotten hit by a bus, and that his or her body has been eaten by crows. But I'm sure karma will take care of that.

Namaste.

Musical Mantra

2011-09-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

When things start to feel as bleak to me as they did yesterday, I have a few cures, all of them my answer to communicating with a higher power.

One antidote to negativity is to take a walk or a bike ride. This "moving meditation" shows you that you're not actually stagnant. You are able-bodied and out in the fresh air; you can't help but forget your troubles for a while, seeing the beauty that's available to you. Anything that comes up, polluting your mind, you let go of and it falls behind you as you keep moving forward. I walk to the edge of America and watch the waves roll in, then I walk back home.

Another remedy for my ailing mind is yoga. There is nothing in my life that makes me feel more connected to the universe through a magical inner light. In yoga, when things get tough, we breathe long and deep, and it soothes us until we reach a more comfortable position. To give up, or to not even try, would be depriving oneself of the myriad benefits. And, as one of my favorite yogis says, "the way you do anything is the way you do everything." You are always comforted by the fact that you will get to rest with a clear mind and supple body at the end.

Lastly and most universally, music is the answer to your problems. I have created a mixtape I call Everything Will Be Fine. I've collected the songs over the years, and almost all of them actually contains the lyric "Everything is going to be alright" or "Don't worry" or something else equally comforting. For everyone who needs an audio cure for the soul, here is my playlist (along with key lyrics). Please don't judge the geekin' nature of this mix of artists; just give it a chance.

Three Little Birds - Bob Marley and the Wailers

"Don't worry about a thing, 'cause every little thing is gonna be alright."

The Middle - Jimmy Eat World

"It just takes some time, little girl, you're in the middle of the ride. Everything, everything will be just fine."

I'm Alive - Kenny Chesney f. Dave Matthews

"I'm alive and well. And today you know that's good enough for me. Breathing in and out's a blessing, can't you see?"

Lullaby - Shawn Mullins

"Everything is going to be alright, rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye."

Things Are Getting Better - N.E.R.D.

"Now it seems that things are really getting better in my life."

This Will Be Our Year - The Zombies

"You don't have to worry, all your worry days are gone. This will be our year, took a long time to come."

It's a Great Day to Be Alive - Travis Tritt

"It's a great day to be alive - I know the sun's still shining when I close my eyes. There's some hard times in the neighborhood, but why can't every day be just this good?"

Ooh Child - The Five Stairsteps

"Ooh child, things are gonna get easier. Ooh child, things will be brighter."

Waldorf Worldwide - Good Charlotte

"Everything's gonna be alright now. Everything's gonna be alright..."

Josie - Blink 182

"I know that everything, know that everything...everything is gonna be fine."

Chicken Fried - Zac Brown Band

"There's no dollar sign on a piece of mind; this I've come to know."

Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys

"Don't worry baby. Everything will turn out alright."

The Remedy - Jason Mraz

"It all amounts to nothing in the end. I won't worry my life away."

Everything Will Be - Relient K

"Everything will be just fine. Everything is gonna be fine."

Don't Panic - Coldplay

"We live in a beautiful world. Yeah we do, yeah we do."

Hope is for People - The Mixtapes

"We might fail. We might sink. We might die, but I think that's the point. So so what? If we try it's good enough. We get scared, so we stay. We're so comfortable in the saddest way. What's the point? It's missing. So let's cut the bullshit and get to living.

Misery

2011-09-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

When I use my blog solely to complain, I feel guilty. I know there are tons of people out there with much worse problems than me. I've seen at least a handful of them as of this morning: the dirty homeless guy toting tons of bags, the Big Lots checkout lady who said she had to go to the mortuary after work, friends of mine with relationship problems, kids having kids, things I can't even imagine.

What an ungrateful snit I can be, neglecting to notice and be grateful for the little things: I have a roof over my head, I live in constant perfect weather, I have the perfect man, I am able to express myself daily through all my creative endeavors and yoga, I have so many wonderful friends and the greatest family ever, and I was given this sweet Versatile Blogger award by the lovely Victoria at Chateau de Victoria (check out her blog if you need some extra beauty or inspiration in your life). I know I have a lot to be happy about.

But I am not happy right now--I can not focus on those lovely things--and I must purge myself of all that is making me miserable, sad, depressed, ready to flay all the skin off my body and jump into a vat of boiling grease. So, forgive me, and stop reading right here if you don't want to read my piss and moan fest.

1. I AM BEING EATEN ALIVE DAILY.

Feels and looks much worse in the flesh.

I have no idea what it is: spiders, bed bugs, fleas, chiggers, lice, allergic reaction to being broke...but it itches like hell and makes me feel like I'm going insane. Adam is not getting bitten by whatever it is. Neither is anyone else I know. I can't find anything anywhere. I have extensively researched the telltale signs of bed bugs and NONE of those signs are present in my apartment or car. I have cleaned everything thoroughly and sprayed it all with Raid. I have found only two little spiders and a few silverfish along the way. Every single day I get more bites, and those bites get blisters on top of them, and they itch all over my arms and fingers. Who do I turn to? A doctor? An exterminator? A detective? A psychiatrist? I feel like one of those people who is seeing a ghost -- it is affecting no one but me, and I am increasingly freaked out and angry about it, not to mention I look like some sort of leper when I go out. I can't think about or talk about anything else, I can't sleep -- I wake up every few hours feeling itchy all over and waking Adam up by shining a flashlight all around the sheets only to find NOTHING. I have at least 15 red bumps / scars / blisters on me at all times. I can't find anything to be happy about with this clouding my mind all the time. This has been happening off and on for a month. I called the apartment people and they are sending an exterminator to check it out tomorrow. I worry that they won't find anything and I'll be forced to just live in this eternal torment.

2. I am just getting over some horrible flu thing.

Adam had it and gave it to me. It's been six days and I'm just now waking up able to breathe. Snot filling up my nose, throat, ears -- I couldn't talk, breathe, or hear anything, and I'm dead tired all day long, which makes me not be able to get things done or work. I worked anyway. Not that it helps, because...

3. I am poor.

First Netflix went up in price. Then our rent went up. Gas prices have never gone down. Now even the price of groceries like milk have gone up AGAIN. My yoga summer special ended (thus the price went up). I have no health insurance to check out these lesions all over my arms. I had recently entertained dreams of moving to a slightly more convenient place. Now those dreams seem to have burned alive, along with any other hope I may have had.

4. My bike seat got stolen.

And Adam's front wheel got stolen. So now we can't even ride our f****** bikes, which was one of my favorite stress-busters...and we don't have the money, of course, to buy replacements right now. Not to mention, they'll just get stolen again unless we carry them up three flights of stairs every day. See why I want to move?

5. The play - A.K.A. The Thing That Took Over My Life and Money

It's just a burden to me right now to perform because I haven't been healthy, so exerting the energy is very difficult. Also, they keep having mid-week rehearsals on nights when I am already working or have plans. I feel terribly guilty not being able to attend them, but I am so tired of being absolutely destitute because of this play; I'm starting to resent it. I spent a month not being able to work because of it. Not to mention my lame duck commercial agent used it as an excuse not to submit me for anything for months. As soon as I get new headshots, I am getting a new commercial agent. Ugh.

6. Stand-up Comedy Suck-fest

I have nothing funny to say; I do not feel like even trying to be funny. I find nothing even slightly amusing about my grave situation. I am trapped in my own body, in this possibly infested apartment, in poverty, in obligations. I had to skip class last week because I was sick, but class is already coming around in two days and I have no new material or desire to write any. I hate everything, and even though lots of comics make a living talking about what all they hate, our class is built around talking about ourselves. And there's nothing about me right now that could possibly entertain anyone. I so wish I could just give up, but I don't want to be a weakling. But I also don't want to look like an idiot.

Oh I'm sure there's a lot more I could complain about. How Adam and I haven't been on a real date in forever, how I have done nothing fulfilling in a while, yet I keep spreading myself so thin trying to find something fulfilling. How I have been a complete drama queen, no fun at all, because I am steeped in such anger and befuddlement as to what I should be doing about all of the above.

I just want to escape. I don't care to where. I just want something to change for the better. I want to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. I want to be able to go to a nice restaurant and not worry about the bill. I want to see a movie. I want to remember how it feels to sleep soundly, and not to be covered in itchy blotches. I want to be involved in a project I really believe in. I want money for it. I want to be happy with myself. I want to feel like I'm contributing something. Please, God, if you are listening, get me out of this rut before I jump off a cliff.

'97 Style

2011-09-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

You know how nostalgic I am. Sometimes I start talking about how ridiculous I used to be during some phase of my life and I long to reenact it. I was trying to explain to Adam the phenomenon of baby-tees under flowered dresses, but he didn't get it! I had to demonstrate.

So here is my best impression of how I looked when I went to school at age 12.

It's very strange that I wasn't ostracized. In fact, once I started dressing like this, the tapered-jeans-n-t-shirt-wearin' popular kids no longer knew what to do with me, and I was considered one of those who "didn't care" what they thought of me. It ended up being a very good outcome.

The ring I would have been wearing.

Inspiration.

I don't think I have such iconic style anymore...I guess it all depends on my mood. Perhaps my style is less obvious and more internalized. I am still colorful, eccentric, multi-ethnic and playful, but at least half the time, you won't know that 'til you talk to me.

Fall Fantasies

2011-09-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

Fall fell upon us today, or what passes for it here on the last frontier. It's a pleasant quietude where everything moves slow through the white air, and where Ella and Louis sing "Autumn in New York" as I drink far too much tea and coffee, dreaming of spicy smells and harvests I've never experienced. The first hint of briskness makes me feel like jazz, makes me want to wear grey sweaters and hats and become someone new. Perhaps it stems from that "back to school" tendency that still hasn't quite fled my consciousness after 19 years of reinventing my persona in the fall amidst the new markers and glue sticks and Trapper Keepers. I used an old Kohl's gift card to buy some new dark jeans and some shirts with sleeves this week; it had to be out of habit. But the jeans have proven to be a good autumnal investment, as they procured me a free grande Pumpkin Spice latte at Starbucks, courtesy of the handsome young black guy behind the counter.

Adam and I go in and out of media obsessions, but right now we can't stop watching Midsomer Murders, which we pick hungrily off the shelves of the library. It's like a British CSI, I guess. I've never watched CSI or anything of the sort, because it is set in the very place and time I live in, which holds no fantasy element for me.

You see, this is my favorite escape: I love to pretend I'm in another country or era. It must be a place with a definite style and culture. I get through my days by fantasizing and adding little hints of those fantasies into my regular life. It's so much fun. For a while we watched the entire miniseries A Year in Provence and ate brie and pâté on baguettes as we planned our future in France. For another while, I read every biography of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, imagining I was back in Old Hollywood amidst the real screen royalty. Mad Men was another of these escapes, fulfilling my wishes for debauched glamour (and I can't wait until that returns). I also enjoy all of Fitzgerald's novels for the same reason: endless partying among the most interesting people in the most interesting cities. But for now, I escape to the villages of Midsomer County, England, where everyone knows everyone, but everyone gets killed in the wood. (Yes, the "wood." They don't say "woods" over there.) I love tea time and village festivals and pubs and houses with exposed wood beams!

What puts you in the mood for fall? What fantasy worlds do you escape to?

No!

2011-09-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

The thing I learn a little more every day -- and it makes life easier and life more joyful -- is how to say "no" or "not right now." That you have to take care of yourself first, and you can't do everything. It's been another of those weeks, obviously, where I've had no time to blog, and where the world has asked way too much of me.

I quit that hellacious job at the end of last week, and my life is so much better. But this week, there was still rehearsal every day for four and five hours. And in LA, it takes you an hour or more to get to the place you're going, so make that six and seven hours of my day -- gone with the wind. That leaves about seven or eight hours a day (minus 1-2 hours driving time) for me to squeeze in time to make money (at least 6 hours), and do all my little hobbies like blogging all over town (1-2 hours) and doing yoga (2 hours) and catching up with friends (1 hour), plus keeping up with eating, personal hygiene, etc. (1-2 hours), and actually seeing my husband for whatever's left over. I don't know if you're adding this up, but if I actually sleep at night, I'm going to have to say NO to many incidentals that come up on any given day.

Thank God we did our first preview of the play last night which means NO MORE REHEARSALS! Knock on wood. I could actually have my first week of utter freedom in forever: an extra seven hours added onto each day! Imagine all I could do!

This week, in addition to the responsibilities of the play, I did work a couple jobs, and I did blog a little, and I did spend time with my husband and go to yoga a couple times and take a bike ride, and I did go to an audition, and I did make sure to eat and take care of myself and always sleep a full night. I also got bitten by a poisonous spider, got sick and left rehearsal early, called in sick the next day, asked for an extension on a writing job, procrastinated my stand-up homework, ignored a million phone calls and a few social obligations, didn't finish reading the twelve books I was supposed to review, and didn't get around to an entire list of to-dos.

Usually, my instinctual feeling is "I've failed" if I have to postpone something or cancel something or choose my own thing over what someone has asked me to do. But that is the wrong feeling; when I say "no" I have actually succeeded in keeping my sanity, health, and happiness. And since our days are numbered, those are the things I want to make sure to seek every day for my short time on this earth. I don't want to spend my life living for anyone but me, and I won't apologize for it.

This Will Be Our Year

2011-09-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

I feel blessed this Monday morning because I'm alive and I'm at home, drinking my coffee out of my ceramic Harlan Dragons cup instead of gulping it from a to-go cup in the car. I am lucky enough to be lying in my bed writing and reflecting while Adam sleeps -- instead of sitting stiffly at a table with someone barking orders and me and yelling shrilly into a phone, getting carpal tunnel from typing and atrophy from not being able to take breaks, and getting new wrinkles from cringing, and wasting my gas and having to pack an all-day bag so bulky that I feel like a homeless person.

I have narrowly escaped, and now I am grateful for every second of my freedom!

I started stand up comedy class Saturday, and I am frightened. I have a good sense of humor, that I know, but I don't tell "jokes." I never knew what a formula there is to getting laughs. I am seriously starting from scratch, and I will have to learn a whole new way of writing and speaking. I will have to learn to deviate from the truth and use my imagination, and give the people what they want.

Eat your heart out, Rivers Cuomo.

I am listening to The Zombies album, "Absolutely the Best." You should check it out, but you will also need to download a supplementary song, "This Will Be Our Year," which is the best song and not on the greatest hits album. What a band! The music is still so relevant and modern sounding. I hope to leave at least one piece of art that will outlive me, too.

But instead, I am leaving you with this: My guest post at Children of the 90s. It's a more comprehensive list of heartthrobs than the flashback from a few weeks ago, minus my too-personal musings.

Broke, Not Broken

2011-09-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

You may wonder what it is you're spending all your money on. "Where does it all go?" Well, as someone who is more broke than I have been since graduating college, I can tell you what you're spending your money on, because that's the same stuff that I am not spending my money on.

You spend it on a cheap coffee when you need a jolt of caffeine, you spend it on takeout when you don't feel like cooking. You spend it on going to the movies, or on your Netflix subscription that just went up in price. You spend it on gas. If you ain't got no money, you're eating minimal groceries from the 99 Cent Store and looking for any way in the world to make enough just to pay your bills.

I'm broke for many reasons, the main one being my own art. We got back from our honeymoon (expensive anyway, and a week away from work), and then when we returned, I had to go another week without working because I had jury duty. Then, the play I'm in began rehearsing every night, so both my money-making jobs were out of question, as neither of them are day jobs. Effectively, all our money's been coming from Adam for a month, so not only am I broke, I also feel guilty and terrible, there's nothing I can do about it.

That is what led me to accept a day job that has made this week a living hell. When I was at my most desperate, this unbearable, overbearing, narcissistic-personality-disordered, shallow, irresponsible, rude, joyless, unsympathetic person called me and said, "I have a job for you."

I knew, of course, that she was characterized by all of the above adjectives when I said, "Sure." I have worked with her before at two events, both of which I left saying, "I am never working for that bitch again."

She's offering me an opportunity to make money during the day, and I have $5 in my bank account. Of course I will at least try it; what else could I do?

So I've spent every day this week starring in a low-rent reenactment of The Devil Wears Prada. If you haven't seen that, it's where Anne Hathaway gets taken advantage of, snapped at, ordered around, and shut down by a stone-faced boss with no friends, for insignificant wages. Her life is no longer her own, and she has no time to pursue anything in her life that makes her happy.

My job so far has consisted of calling all kinds of people who the Devil needs to build a relationship with since she is opening a store (something for which she is unprepared, yet wants to make happen in a matter of days). Every time she talks to anyone on the phone, I cringe and wish I could tune it out: she barks shrilly at everyone from the get-go, assuming they are a "peon," talking about what an idiot they are, interrupting them over and over, and demanding to speak to their manager. She is the human equivalent of a giant, noisy lawnmower that annoys all the neighbors and slices through flowerbeds. What's more, this is how she expects me to talk to people. Not gonna happen.

She also doesn’t give me ANY breaks all day long, expecting me to eat a sandwich while I’m sitting at the computer, where I’ve been sitting for the past six hours. When I say “I’m going to go take a walk.” She says, “What’s wrong?”

NOTHING IS WRONG, I JUST NEED A BREAK FROM SITTING HERE WITH YOU AND THE TENSE DESTABILIZING AURA THAT FOLLOWS YOU LIKE A CLOUD OF STINK! Oh, not to mention, breaks are a mandatory part of the working process.

Oh, and if you have any questions or concerns in this work environment, go ahead and tell her. She literally doesn’t even acknowledge that you have spoken. She will sit in silence and just ignore anything you say until she is ready to tell you another of her brilliant ideas, and when she does that, she speaks as though the two of you are best friends, so you are forced to say “Cool!” and “Great idea!”

Another great thing is that she will tell you to do something, like “GET SO-AND-SO ON THE PHONE” while she is already barking at someone else on the other phone. I’m sorry, but what do you want me to DO once I get him on the phone? I am not calling some poor dude and saying, “Hello, ___ wants to speak to you, but you are going to have to hold.”

It maybe should have tipped me off that I am the only person helping her with this store-opening process. Because, obviously, I am the only one desperate enough for cash to agree to spend even five days in the same room with her.

I have an enormous amount of guilt for not being able to take this crap, thinking I should be stronger, (and I even have extra guilt because when I quit, who is going to help her? Nobody!) but every day this week I have thought "I am not going to last until the end of the day." Even though I spent the two hours of my errand-running yesterday crying and feeling sorry for myself through the aisles of Staples, I decided to make myself last until Friday -- today! -- just to get my meager check (which is the same amount of money I can make in one day as an extra on a commercial).

So here I am, counting down the hours until I get that check. It's 1:13; if I can just make it to five, I am going to leave the keys in a strategic place and get the hell out, leaving a message tomorrow about the instance of my never going to show up again (I would woman up and just tell her face to face, but I know she will steamroll me, guilt trip me, and make me offers until I agree to stay). This has been the longest week, and is going to be the longest six hours of my life, but thank God I will have my life back next week.

...Coming soon -- a podcast! I will include audio of some of her phone calls.

Look at Me: I'm a Guest Blogger

2011-09-05T10:56:00.000-07:00

I ain't bloggin' for you today -- not here anyway.

If you want, though, check out my post at The Struggling Actress!

A Rare Acting-Related Post

2011-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

I don't usually write about the whole mechanics of trying to act in this here town, but

a) I had something to contribute to Zuri Bella's guest post at my friend Lira's blog, The Struggling Actress,

b) I am pimping the website for the good people at CAZT who are now not only provide the audition space, but also the means to submit for Los Angeles auditions,

and

c) In the middle of my writing of this post, I went and had a meeting, and I am now the proud client of a go-get-em manager who really really believes in me, who thinks I am worth taking a risk for, since I am, he says, genuine, funny, multi-talented and not bad to look at, either! *Cue Hallelujah Chorus*

So, that is all I will tell you about C for now, for the deal's in the works, but as for A, I am going to talk about my hair now. It's so absurd to anyone with a brain to consider one's hairdo as a topic of conversation (we've all heard some bimbo boring her date to death with the conversation: "...and it was short, but then I let it grow out, but then I wasn't sure if that looked good, so I dyed it blonder...") but it really does influence your life, people! As the gorgeous Zuri discussed in her post, one can outgrow a hairdo when she notices that people are not seeing her as the person she feels like she is inside. This is especially critical for actors, because from your headshot, the casting directors think they're calling in the "hot blonde," and when you get there, you're actually the quirky weirdo who happens to look sorta like a hot blonde. That's what was happening to me, anyway. I was getting fed up with going to auditions where they were looking for an Anna Nicole or a Paris Hilton. 'Cause when I read the lines, that ain't what it sounded like. I sounded more like a Janine Garafalo or a...I dunno; an Emma Stone at least. You're rarely allowed to be funny when you're a "hot blonde." (Anna Faris is one of the few exceptions I can think of.) I have been feeling like a brunette for a year now, but I felt like I was stuck as a blonde because I came here as a blonde and, headshots are expensive and, I go in my agent's "blonde" category and, I dunno, I was scared. But there was a day a few weeks ago when I said, "eff all that; I don't just need a change, I need an upheaval." I came home from yoga and went directly to CVS where I bought a box labeled "brown-black" and did this:

I may or may not be on the toilet right now.

I did it to inspire a karmic change in my life, and man, it worked. Before, I was sitting on a dock with over ten fishing poles in the water, and now, I've got nibbles and bites at the end of a bunch of those lines! I just feel more like my raunchy, natural self, too.

Now, as for B: CAZT is a place I have auditioned a billion times. Okay, I guess more like almost ten times. I've only booked one job out of all those auditions, so I felt like..."sheesh, my energy must not jive in that atmosphere," or something. (It's a fine atmosphere: there are fluffy couches and lots of other actors outside rehearsing for their auditions). Now that I am subscribed to the service and can read all the comments from the casting directors and watch the video footage of my auditions (some of the perks of being subscribed), I know what's going on! Well, for one, I know that I looked great on the video and I did a great job at 9 out of 10 auditions, but, as per the casting directors' constructive feedback, I just wasn't the right gal for the roles I didn't get. Also, I am now able to submit for tons more roles via their casting notices, so we shall see how that goes.

What Adam? What? We are going to Trader Joe's? Well, that brings this dramatic post to an end.

"What Do You Do?"

2011-08-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

I am meeting a friend out and I haven't heard about her new job yet. She's been working it for over a month now, and it's a really great paying job; I am jealous of her stability and her professional-sounding title. I ask, "So how's your new job?"

She hates it. "I love everything about the day besides 8 to 5," she says.

Another of my best friends also gets a new job; she is really excited about leaving the old one. I email a few times to see how she likes it, and when I finally talk her her, she says, "I already hate my job." We discuss the possibilities that a) the two of us are simply non-funcional members of society who will never "like" a job, or that b) nobody likes their job; jobs are not to be liked. We comfort each other with assurances that we are "paying our dues" and our futures will be brighter and better.

Among my group of friends (who are all brilliant, good-looking, great people) not one of us is where we thought we would be if you asked us ten years ago, when we were starry-eyed and brainwashed by the American dream, having been told since we were five, "You can be anything you want to be."

They did a good job of brainwashing, because I still follow that old mantra. But in the meantime, while I follow my dream of actually getting paid for doing something I like (acting, writing, singing, traveling, making jokes, emoting, anything you want, as long as it's something that comes naturally to me, for goodness' sakes!) I have to pay the bills, and the things I do to pay them are not the things that I enjoy.

I could take the route my friend Strother has taken. He, too, is an artist, but he has a lucrative career as a massage therapist / spa manager right now, and though it's not what he had thought he'd be doing when he was a whippersnapper back in our small Appalachian town, he enjoys it and it affords him many opportunities. I'd say that those opportunities will even include artistic endeavors in the future, because he is making money, and money equals ability to travel, take time off, take classes, etc.

The truth is, I'm afraid to get myself a lucrative career "in the meantime."If I get comfortable and if my passions are not included in that comfortable existence, what will become of them? I can see it now: I have every material need met, working some job that doesn't bother me, living for the weekends and vacations. I decide to pop out some kids because I better do it while I can. I consider writing or singing or acting once in a while, but there's no time. I just beguile myself instead by flying to Paris and admiring other people's art...because I can afford that now with my lucrative career. I just satiate my need to create by putting my kids in piano lessons and community theater. I claim that I have "no time" or that I am "too old" to follow my dreams at this point, and then I will force those dreams upon my children, who will just follow in my footsteps, loving the arts, but only as long as they can while being "comfortable."

So, to avoid this nightmare scenario, I am living the typical boom and bust lifestyle of a "starving artist," working a couple crap jobs that are flexible so that I can have the time to be in a play or audition for parts or take classes or go record songs or spend days just getting inspiration. My confidence in my endeavors, like the money and the gigs, comes in waves.

This brings me to the subject that Strother's post inspired in me: a pet peeve of mine that is inevitable in American culture. (Have I written about this before?) You meet someone. "What's your name?" is the first question, usually. The second question, naturally, should be something that tells you a lot about this person you just met. And the second question is always

"What do you do?"
Because, you know, the thing that you do that puts food on your table is who you are, right? NO! WRONG! I hate being asked what I do to make money! What is it going to tell you about me when I say that I bartend for special events? That I am a non-aspirational person who is uneducated and happy to serve, right? Well that's NOT ME!

So "what do I do?" I live. I act, I paint, I sing, I write, I run, I do yoga, I eat, I drink, I love. Those are the things that describe who I am, and unfortunately, at this stage of my life, I don't get paid for most of that.

Sloth

2011-08-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

I can't do a flashback every Friday, so get off my back! Remember those Levi's T-shirts from 1992 that said in big neon letters, "Get off my back"? No; no, you probably don't.

I have deemed today a Lazy Day, and there will be no flashing in any direction. All I've done is lie in bed reading, barely making a dent in this stack of twelve books I'm supposed to review by September 21st. By then the play will be up, too, which is exciting.

I exhausted myself last night doing a fight scene repeatedly until my head hurt from hair pulling and my throat hurt from screaming, and I felt raw from crying on cue. My director said when we began the scene, "You know, when we actually do this, you'll really have to get emotional -- there will have to be tears." It's something I've been able to do before, maybe, but it's very daunting to cry on command. I have dry eyes from wearing contacts since age 12, and I don't cry very often in real life (just once a month when hormone overload convinces me that I am a complete failure and there is no hope for me). But I gave it a shot, and... success! I cried so convincingly that I made everyone else in the room sad, too! How so, you ask? My way is to choose a mental talisman to meditate on for a couple minutes. Something concrete that you can remember that makes you feel sorry for someone or reminds you of something sad. Not an event, even. Maybe a stuffed animal you remember or a place. (How absurd that actors choose to do this!) But it is empowering to know we can control our emotions at times, and comforting to know that I have a soul. But the point is, this was all exhausting. Plus, some bug is going around and everyone in the 'hood seems to be sneezing and coughing. The echinacea tea and Emergen-C have been flowing like wine.

Some days, I find it necessary to permit myself to be as slothful as I want. Especially Fridays: they have that "this is the weekend! Let it all hang out!" feeling, or gloomy days, which have that "I don't even want to try if the sun ain't coming out" feeling--and today is both.

So this morning, while Adam faced the gloom by playing that Erasure song that is either called "I'm So In Love With You," or "Respect" and dancing around well before I even considered caffeine, I decided I was going to be ambitious in my laziness.

It is as if I have made myself a challenge: How lazy can I be? Dishes needed to be washed yesterday; we have no spoons left. I won't wash them today... I will use a fork! We have no food in the house. I will eat peanut butter on a slice of bread...and then I won't even put the food back where it goes! The place is a mess. I won't even make the bed! I won't get dressed until afternoon, and I will then choose my outfit from the pile on the floor! Showering? HA! Why would I disrupt my comfort to get WET?

I think I am succeeding in the challenge. You know, you can do anything you set your heart to.

Envy & Illness are the Same Color

2011-08-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

You start to get spoiled. You start to think "I haven't had a new dress in forever; I am sick of everything in my closet." You start to want all this stuff, when you had been content, and compare yourself to people who have that stuff. You begin to count things up and realize how unfair life is.

You fill in this form with your bitter thoughts:

Why does _[insert person you're jealous of]___ have this [circle one] job / opportunity / wardrobe / life / living space / pet / espresso machine that I want when I work so hard and put myself out there and am more [choose one] talented / smart / wonderful / funny / good looking?

And then you are sitting at the beach getting paid to ride your bike back and forth in the background of some show, and you think: how many people with crappy jobs and no ocean wish they were getting paid to ride their bike at the beach right now?

And then you are sitting on the bluffs with your amazing husband when a homeless guy in a leprechaun suit comes and sings you a song, and you think: What a jerk I am, complaining about my lack of new fall cardigans, when this guy is stuck wearing a halloween costume and asking me for a dollar.

And then you are with your friends who always seem to have it all together, and they are downtrodden and out of money and need expensive dental work and have family drama, and you think: None of us have it under control all the time, but we will all survive.

I didn't get this job I thought I had in the bag. I had such a good interview -- I left them smiling in my wake and everything I said was on point. Not only did I not get the job, they left me hanging for THREE WEEKS without telling me either way. I ended up having to call them and ask, just so I could get on with my life. It's probably a blessing that I didn't get it; it would have been an every day affair, this job, in which I would have had to spend every morning at a college, helping teach English to the language-challenged.

But I had been planning out a cornucopia of changes based on the new income I was sure I was about to have. Really, that's the only reason I wanted the job -- I'm sick of being poor. Otherwise, why would I want to go to the same place every day and do the same thing?

The plan in my head was, I'd get the job, thus doubling my & Adam's funds, and then we'd find a new apartment -- ideally even closer to the beach in Santa Monica, ideally with a parking space so we don't have to worry about the parking tickets this city loves to dole out willy-nilly, ideally with a dishwasher and a bedroom and a balcony and a pet allowance so that we could get a kitty cat. This was my little fantasy...but I didn't include in my fantasy the fact that my days would be spent doing something that has nothing to do with acting or music, my passions. That is how I will look at it now -- not as a missed opportunity, but one that was not right for me.

One of the keys to happiness, says the Dalai Lama, is comparing yourself not to those who have more than you, but to those who have less. I have to remember to put things in perspective the next time I'm whining about my dress being last season. And planning -- What was I even thinking? How can you plan the future when you don't even know if that future will exist? You'd think I would have learned.

Flashback Friday, Episode 14: Pre-teen Dreams

2011-08-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

It may seem a bit pathetic that my male obsessions have always helped define my changing personas throughout the disparate periods of my life. I can't remember my brain before it loved men; even my first diary is crowded with their presence. But why should it be pathetic, this life force that drives us? It's just something I (have always) enjoy(ed) and never felt the need to keep secret, unlike so many of the frail delicate flowers of my gender who still think it taboo to proclaim one's lust.

In fourth grade, I was reading these very magazines in Mack's supermarket while my mom shopped for cornmeal and Gushers, and once in a while she was sweet enough to buy me one of my very own to take home with me. Oh, how I loved to go into my room and carefully extract the pinups of Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Devon Sawa (who I later came face-to-face with on three different occasions) and hang them on my closet doors as I read little articles about the favorite colors and potential boyfriend merits of my many beloveds. I did in fact own both of these covers, and I was ravenous to find out what J.T.T. had in store for me. Turns out it was nothing. Oh, well.

On many occasions I was persecuted by the prudishness of society, but once in particular that I can remember. I had arrived at daycare after school, my backpack full of Bop and BB, and, since I am creative and a writer, I had decided to create my very own book to categorize the boys I adored so. The idea was that each page would have a photo of the gentleman in question, and a sort of profile on him: where he came from, a list of his favorite things, what he's famous for. I probably recruited a couple other nine-year-olds girls to sit around the miniature wooden tables with paper, markers, and glue sticks, cutting out our favorite photographs of Devon and J.T.T. and Jonathan Brandis and Joey Lawrence, too. But I was the mastermind.

I finished The Boy Book (that was the title I gave it) just as I had finished so many little books before it about topics of my interest -- Grover, dancing, giraffes -- this was just another hobby of mine. But when the overlords of my daycare saw my masterpiece, they were aghast. How dare this child be attracted to other children! They actually waited until my mom came to pick me up and "had a talk" with her about what a juvie slut I was, and how I had spent my afternoon making this "Boy Book" -- they looked at it like it was a turd on a fork.

My stomach dropped; I had done nothing wrong: this was a perfectly valid creative venture! The other kids had spent their afternoons watching cartoons or pretending to shoot each other with pretend guns, or maybe coloring inside the lines in a Disney coloring book. I had done something new, something authentically driven and smart, and here I was standing behind my mom, listening to these ladies speak to her as if I wasn't there.

I hated adults, always speaking like I wasn't there. I always understood everything they were saying and what they meant by it. Instead of being patronized and underestimated every day, all I wanted was to be treated like a real person.

So much for that. I don't remember if they confiscated my book, or if I was just so ashamed that I threw it away. I do know that this was one of the first times I had been smacked down by The Man and asked to repress my true nature in favor of what prim and proper girls "should" be like, and from that moment, I knew I didn't have to, was never going to, go along with it.

Guest Blog Post!

2011-08-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Today is a special holiday for 20-Something Bloggers. Every year, this community has a Blog Swap. I was lucky enough to be partnered with Laura, a vivacious Floridian who has recently moved to NYC, who has written a hilarious blog (and sing-along) for you! Our assignment was to write about summer -- so without further adieu, I present to you Laura from Musings of an Orange Sheep. Go visit her blog if you want to live vicariously through her experiences as a new New Yorker!

______________________________________

Hello Taste of Ginger readers, I am so excited to be swapping blogs today to share my favorite part of Summer! Here is a quick background of me: My name is Laura, I am 24 and went to school to be a teacher, I love cats, and I am a Leo. I blog over at Musings of an Orange Sheep and am in love with making people laugh. In June, I packed up two suitcases and moved to New York City. I am fulfilling a dream that I have had for many years, but life in NYC is a little different than the life I had in Florida.

A few weeks back, Summer officially took over New York and the heat was crazy. Residents finally turned their AC’s on blast and tourists wore their sandals sans socks. The sweat index hit a peak and bottles of water were a fashionable accessory. Being from the Sunshine state, I have experienced a hot Summer or two, but this Summer was a whole new ballgame. Even though the heat felt unbearable at times, my favorite part of the Summer was exploring my new city and the wonderful things it has to offer. I even wrote you guys a song.

Summer Movin’

(Feel Free to hum to the tune of Summer Lovin’)

Summer movin' had me a blast

Summer movin' happened so fast

I moved to a city crazy for me

As far from Florida as I could be

Summer days driftin' away, to uh-oh those New York sights

Uh Well-a well-a well-a huh

Tell me more, tell me more

Did you ride the train?

Tell me more, tell me more

How often does it rain??

Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh

I took the ferry, saw Lady Liberty

I saw Times Square, it’s pretty dirty

I walked a lot, I wasn’t lazy

I took the Subway, I saw many crazies.

Summer sun, something's begun, but uh-oh those New York sights

Uh well-a well-a well-a huh

Tell me more, tell me more

Was it as fun as they say?

Tell me more, tell me more

How much did you have to pay??

Uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh

Took a trip to the Jersey Shore

Didn’t turn orange and look like a whore

I rode the coaster at Coney Island

Ate at Nathan’s and my life was brightened

Summer days, are nearly a haze, but uh-oh those New York sights

Uh well-a well-a well-a huh

Tell me more, tell me more

Did you see anyone good?

Tell me more, tell me more

No, but I don’t really live in that hood

shoo-bop bop, shoo-bop bop, shoo-bop bop,shoo-bop bop, shoo-bop bop, shoo-bop bop, shoo-bop bop, YEH

I got fruit from Union Square

I try not to breathe in the polluted air

I saw some bands playing for free

This song is starting to bore me

Woah!

Summer heat, girl you don’t lie, but uh-oh those New York sights

woo, woo, woo

That was fun and I hope somewhat entertaining. I really have had a great Summer moving and exploring New York. I am so excited to finally be living here and experiencing extreme seasons such as Summer! Thanks for reading and feel free to visit me at Musings of an Orange Sheep!

The Sit-com Style Sleep Deprivation Conspiracy

2011-08-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

We were exhausted, Adam and I. We had just returned from a long day of adventure and were too tired to even shower. We got straight into the bed and drifted away into sleep.

I woke up an hour later needing a glass of water. I went to the fridge to get the Brita pitcher, and lo, the refrigerator light was off. The digital clock's face was black. Our electricity was out.

"Our electricity's out," I said to Adam, who is a light sleeper.

I got back in bed, sat my water on the red table, and closed my eyes.

Soon, I was pierced by a loud "BEEP!" coming from our ceiling. The smoke detector. No, it wasn't detecting anything; it was just letting us know that the electricity was off. I ignored it; I was so tired.

Thirty seconds later, "BEEP!"

"I am ignoring you," thought I, "and you will stop soon."

Thirty seconds later, "BEEP!"

I sighed loudly. Adam told me to put the earplugs in, so I did.

Thirty seconds later, a muffled "BLOEP!"

"My gawd."

I got up, threw the earplugs on the floor, and pulled the ottoman over to stand on, thinking I'd twist the #&*!@$ thing off the ceiling and take out the battery. But our ceiling is high. And it was dark, as it was the middle of the night and there was no electricity. The ottoman wouldn't work. I got a flashlight and a chair. The chair was the same height as the ottoman. The hand that wasn't holding the flashlight was a mere inch or two from victory, but no good.

"BEEP!"

"The broom. I will beat it to death with the broom handle," I thought.

Adam was finally starting to take notice and got out of bed to help. He was able to push a tiny button on that evil machine with the broom handle, and just then, we got silence.

We both got back in the bed, victorious and so tired. We had defeated the thing. We had ... zzzz. Zzzzz.

"BEEP!" I had been dreaming that I was a prisoner with a plan to break out. But now I was awake again and that piece of crap smoke detector was still just out of reach and in the dark and beeping. The electricity was still off.

"What the @&#$!?"

We both got out of bed again.

I climbed on the ottoman, and with sheer will, I reached the final two inches and pulled the thing down until the wires were hanging out of the ceiling.

But still, "BEEP!"

"Help me drag the love seat over here," said Adam, naked and mad and wearing his mouth guard.

We drug it to the center of the room. I held the flashlight again, and with the other arm, I held Adam steady as he had climbed up onto the back and arm of the displaced love seat, reaching for the offending instrument.

He found the battery chamber and pulled the battery out. A nine-volt. It was still attached.

"BEEP!"

"Get me something to pry it off with - a knife or a screwdriver," Adam demanded.

I got a knife and went back to holding Adam and the flashlight. He pried away the battery, and at last, it was out! No more beeping without a battery! He got down and I pushed the love seat back to its rightful place.

"BEEP!"

"You have to be kidding me."

Adam went back and pulled out the loveseat again. I don't know what he did with the knife and the flashlight, but he detached the smoke detector from the bunch of wires poking out of a hole in the ceiling. He laid the smoke detector on the couch. We both looked at it.

Nothing.

We got back in the bed.

The refrigerator kicked in and started humming. The clock was back on. "The electricity's back on," said Adam.

Then, "BEEP!" The disembodied smoke detector said from the couch. I felt the distinct inclination toward committing a heinous crime.

"BEEP BEEP!"

"That was two beeps," said Adam. "Maybe it's done."

And it was done. No more beeps.

But then, just outside, "WHEEOOOWHEEOOOWHEEOOWHEEOOO!" a car alarm started going off.

I swear I'm not making this up. It kept going for a full five minutes or maybe ten. I got up and shut all the windows, blocking us from the nice summer breeze. I put the earplugs in and just surrendered. By the time I had given up on life, it finally stopped and I fell asleep.

Flashback Friday, Episode 13: Damn the Man, Save the Empire

2011-08-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

Remember Flashback Fridays? 'Cause I had forgotten them. As I told you, I'm not to be counted on if you're looking for regularity. ("A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Emerson [I have quoted that how many times?])

If you wanted to know me as a teenager, all you needed to know was this guy.

Ethan (Randall) Embrey as Mark from Empire Records.

From age, let's say, 13 to age, let's say, 16, I lived Empire Records, and Mark was my favorite character. I mean to tell you, I watched this movie at least three times a week if not more. I can still act the entire movie as a one-woman show. (Hmm...maybe that would be a good career move...)

It's not just that I was in love with Mark. (Of course that was true.) But I think truly, I wanted to be Mark. This alter-ego still occupies a little chunk of my psyche.

I just recently rewatched the special "Fan Edition" on Netflix (chock full of extra footage that I couldn't quote along with!) and, my goodness, this movie still makes my heart go pitter-patter. It's not that the plot is superb.

(Joe: Say it again, Lucas.

Lucas: Superb.)

Of course the plot is ridiculous! It's about a motley group of teenage record store cashiers who throw a big party to save the store from being sold to a corporate douche. Not Academy fodder, by any means.

What is so wonderful about it is that every stitch of dialogue is so lovingly written for each of these absolutely worship-worthy characters, each of whom is an outcast with issues.

(Gina: Well Sinead O'Rebellion! Shock me, shock me, shock me with that deviant behavior.

Deb: I swear to God, you get smarter the shorter your skirt gets.

Gina: Well, you get smarter the shorter your hair gets, so I guess it's a good thing you went with that.)

You've got Corey, the all-A daddy's girl who is a closet speed freak and wants to be deflowered by the washed-up pop singer Rex Manning, Gina, the slutty wannabe lead singer of a band, Deb, the suicidal tough girl who shaves off all her hair to a soundtrack of "Free" by the Martinis, A.J., the heartthrob artist who is desperately in love with Corey, and Lucas, the metrosexual orphan pocket philosopher ("What's with today today?") who steals $9,000 from the store in hopes of saving the store with his gambling earnings. (Then there's Eddie, Birko, and Warren, the characters nobody remembers.)

But, ah, Mark. He was sweet, gentle, and playful. Always smiling (mainly because he was high, I guess). So passionate about music, but always getting Vetoed when he puts on a song. He was wild and unpredictable, the type of dude who would start moshing in the middle of the store. He had big dreams for his future band, "Marc." He was ever-so-slightly dopey, and had this killer I-don't-care style.

I declare, there was a point where I had hair the exact same shade of orange as Mark's and I actually owned an orange shirt with white piping almost exactly like his. If only I had my sophomore school picture, I could prove it.

I was so obsessed with this movie that at one point, I made replica "I Work Here" tags for my sister and me. I had to pause the movie at the precise point where A.J. is putting Warren's label on his name tag. I was very crafty. And lived in a small town where there was nothing better to do. My sister still has hers. (She was also a huge fan, though her favorite character was Lucas.)

What is the moral of this story? I'm afraid there is none -- except that healthy obsession never hurt anyone, life should be accompanied at all times by the most perfect soundtrack, everything should end with a party, and the fat man walks alone.

Doody

2011-08-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

After 9 blissful years of avoiding it, I am on jury duty this week. So far, it hasn't been bad, because this is how it works in Los Angeles: you are put on the list for a week, M-F, and every night at 7, you must call to see if you have to report to the courthouse the next day. There's a chance you won't ever have to report, and I am knocking on wood every night at 7, hoping that I will escape this week of civic duty without having to show my face. It's quite annoying, though, for anyone who, say, NEEDS MONEY...because I can't work this week, because I have to be available just in case they decide they need my judging expertise.

If I did get called in, I would never, of course, lead the court to think that I am an unfit juror. That would just be dishonest, if I were to, for example, answer all their screening questions like a crazy person might. So I wouldn't consider it. Nope.

I have made it to Wednesday, and that's something at least. Tonight's my first rehearsal for the play I got cast in, and I look forward to feeling like I'm doing something worthwhile, as well as hanging out with a group of the same creative people every day. There are so many wonderful people to meet and talk to every day in this city, but to see the same person more than once a month, you either have to work with them be in some sort of exchange of passion with them. This is the most difficult city in which to have "buddies." It ain't easy like it used to be at Harlan High School, when my friends and I got to walk to lunch together for four years and lived two minutes away so we could have sleepovers at a whim. Or Centre College, where my buddies and I occupied the same building and congregated nightly to watch bad movies and paint our faces with glitter and neon eyeshadow. But then I've only lived here for just over two years. Maybe after four years I will have found that sense of community again. I do miss it.

Un Noy Ying

2011-08-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

All I have time to give you today, as I've been writing a lot outside this blog, is a pet peeve. I have so many to choose from, but here is the most annoying ad campaign in existence right now. It's for the Monte Carlo hotel and casino in Vegas, and it is somehow both pretentious and nonsensical.

I can't drive anywhere in L.A. without seeing a billboard of this sort, and it basically embodies everything I hate about Vegas, which is, well, everything.

I mean, what are we supposed to take from these ads? That the ideal weekend involves hanging out with people who cannot spell, let alone shower or use napkins?

Well, in that case, how ACK YUR UT!

For Granted

2011-08-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

A ten hour drive got us back from Mexico yesterday. We left as soon as the sun rose.

Last night we went grocery shopping and made salmon and asparagus and quinoa and salad and bread with brie and had red wine and took a night walk in our breezy, comfortable, beautiful city--Our City--where people were out doing interesting things and going interesting places. Anytime you hear people conversing in Our City, there is a 60% chance that you will eavesdrop and smile, thinking, "I could be friends with these people."

The air felt like a friend walking arm-in-arm with you, rather than a giant slime monster smothering you with an unwanted vice-grip hug.

Adam said, "I think we were meant to go on that trip." We had needed something new, and we had needed to get away for a while and explore, but even better, it meant that we saw Our City with new eyes once again. And even if they just raised the rent, and Netflix had doubled their prices, and our internet connection is so slow lately that it feels like using that dusty old Compaq Presario at your parents' house where it takes fifteen minutes to load a page; even if these loud dogs have appeared somewhere in the neighborhood and wake us up barking daily, and one of my student loans stops being deferred this month, and our nation is crumbling financially and things are only going to get worse: I am happy to be where I am.

I am in a place where I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or who I'm going to meet, but where opportunities pop up every few days for me to consider. Where water flows freely and drinkably out of my very kitchen sink, so I can drink as much as I want. Where not one, but three or four grocery stores are in walking distance, and full of food that I can cook myself in my dear old kitchen, whose refrigerator keeps things cold! Where the ocean and sand are an 8-minute bike ride away, and my bike sits outside attached to a road sign, and there's yoga eight times a day and enough hiking trails nearby to count on two hands! Where my lavender-smelling bed is so comfy I can sleep for nine hours straight every night if I feel like it, with the windows open so a lovely breeze can blow over my face. Where most of all, I feel an overwhelming sense of freedom. I literally can do anything I want. I could walk down the street wearing a Captain America costume and a fanny pack, like one of my neighbors was doing yesterday, and nobody would even judge me -- not out loud anyway. Maybe I will try it.

...Porque Yo Hablo Bien Para un Gringo

2011-08-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

¿Por qué visitan otros países los Americanos? Porque queremos sentir exótico -- ése es por qué. Claro, we want to feel like we are in a different country. It is funny to me how accommodating to gringos these lovely Mexicanos have been. Of course, they want business -- and I am here to give it to them. And most of their American business comes from football-tee-and-Keds wearing Arizonans who drive down to "Rocky Point" because it is their closest beach. Probably, those type of vacationers do not want to eat traditional Mexican food every day, and they probably want to speak English the whole time, except when ordering an "Adios" at the bar.

Not that I am more interesting. I, too, am just a whitebread blonde girl who drove down from the states as a newlywed with her husband and an endless supply of Arrowhead bottled water. (Well, not that endless, since we only have one bottle left as I type this). How cliche.

But, come on, mis amigos hispanicos, ¡Quiero usar mi español que estudiaba por OCHO AÑOS de mi vida! I don't speak it grammatically perfect. I speak despacio and full of pauses and wrong word choices...but por favor, ¡no hable conmigo en inglés! If you would just speak to me in Spanish, I would probably get good at it. But alas. Globalization is here to stay, and in a visitor-friendly town, even an "Adios" is written on the menu as a "Goodbye M.F."

We drove down on Saturday, wondering once again on the way how anyone could possibly ever live in Arizona. It baffles me -- nothing but desert in all directions, with one fake town of probably less than 800 people stuck in the middle of nowhere like a screwed-up Pleasantville. We had needed a car trip, though. It feels amazing to be in a car and actually be moving when it's L.A. you're used to. The weather fluctuated between 100 and 105 degrees the whole way, settling, finally, on Hellfire as its final temperature as we approached Mexico.

Hoy es mi cumpleaños -- my birthday again. I can't tell you everything about our trip so far, but I will tell you that we have: relaxed a ton, swum in a big pool, participated in a beach dance party in which we did a line dance to Achy Breaky Heart in Spanish ("No rompas más mi pobre corazón..."), sung karaoke where the only artist names we recognized in the book were Shakira and Julio Iglesias, eaten a lot (though not all Mexican food), read a lot, laughed at a TV full of dubbed-over Spanish translations of The Klumps and Paula Deen, and seen the most star-filled sky of our lives -- maybe the Milky Way, too. I saw at least SIX shooting stars in one night as we lay on the hot beach.

Waves of Synchronicity

2011-07-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

If the ocean's waves didn't recede back into the dark water, they wouldn't be able to wash up warm on the sand. Such is life; mine especially. I was feeling downtrodden and broke and without any opportunity in the world, but I trucked on, making the best of it, until the waves spilled out onto my figurative shore. When your waves are out to sea, it sometimes seems like forever before they come back in again. But there would be no crests if there were no dips; am I right?

Yesterday, I didn't get a parking ticket for once when I should have. That's how my day began, and as it went on, I got to hear the audio result of a song I had written and am quite proud of, I wrote a few little articles and got paid for them, I got booked on a couple silly jobs for the next few days, and I got a call from a local college wanting to interview me for a permanent part-time teaching position, which, if I got it, would only take up the hours of 8-1:30, and which would amend the problem of my brokeness whilst also allowing me time to audition and to be in this play I just got a part in. (This opportunity arriving over a ringing phone was synchronicity* at its finest; I have been thinking for the past few weeks that I need a new job. My hatred for the event catering industry with all its douchebaggery and hit-or-miss wages and slave labor had grown so exponentially over the past month that I actually bid farewell to the people I was working with at some soul-sucking bar gig at the WB a couple weeks ago, saying "Nice knowing ya." That's when I started applying for freelance writing jobs...and the universe must have been listening.)

Photo by Fluid Frame Photography

Adam and I went to a contact yoga class last night with one of my favorite gurus of yoga and self-expression, whose birthday it was. We created all sorts of positive vibes and sacred energy and all that bongo-playin' soul stuff, and then we went to Zanzibar, where after being serenaded by the Indian-inspired and poetic voice of Ava Nahas and her percussion ensemble, we danced like we didn't care to the DJ's funky world beats. It was an evening utterly devoid of the sarcasm and irony that I usually carry around with me like a purse. (No judgement either way...I happen to like irony.) But I had to be going, as I was to have a photo shoot at 8 this morning in downtown.

The photo shoot was ridiculous easy money in which I had to dress up as an oncologist and hold syringes at the perfect angle while trying to breathe behind a surgical mask for some medical company. I was done with work by 10 a.m. and returned home to hit up Taco Bell with Adam before he had to work, and then I wrung out the last drops of a Target gift card on groceries and toiletries. I needed a nap after a four-hour night's sleep, but after I got home and wrote a couple articles, it was time to go visit with the previously mentioned yogini and her didgeridoo playin' friends. I made friends with the most gorgeous Italian gal (again, synchronicity: in the upcoming play, I will be playing a gorgeous Italian gal, and my new friend said she'll help me with the accent) and the two of us made plans with our new soulful African guy friend to go see the Tim Burton exhibit at the LACMA. We said goodbye, but I ran into her on our beach cruisers again in ten minutes, so we rode down to look at the ocean from the bluffs, talked some more and said goodbye again.

On the bike ride home, the burgers at Father's Office smelled so good I vowed I must make something similar, so I cooked up the most delicious spicy burgers and crispy battered fries ever to come out of this kitchen. Adam was happy. And now he is watching Blackadder and I am falling asleep at the screen after such long days of lavish returns, so I must to bed, full and grateful.

*Synchronicity (n.): That thing that happens when you have been fishing for something with your mind -- when you have been focusing effort or energy or juju toward one thing -- and, seemingly magically, events align that take you closer to where you need to be.

Keep the Drama on the Stage

2011-07-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

My life is always in flux, and if it wasn't, I don't think I'd be happy -- I'd try to create some flux. The unexamined life is not worth living, and the life that's too boring to even examine? What is the point? I got a part in that play, and I am very proud of myself, because I haven't even auditioned for a play since like November of 2006 or something (and hey, I got that part, too), and hadn't thought about the theatre until, in my morning writing, I discovered that I would love an opportunity to act for the pure enjoyment of it again, just to remember why I want to act in the first place, which is not for the money, though I could certainly use some, and definitely not so that I can go pretend to be some sort of cowgirl at a floor-cleaner commercial audition or read the inept script and get rejected from some short film by some kid who can't even correctly spell "definitely." But look at me, y'all, I am in the tenth anniversary of an acclaimed play in West Hollywood now, and I am going to contact yoga and a dance party on Thursday, a peaceful protest and a photo shoot on Friday, and a Dodgers game on Saturday, and Mexico in over a week, and I have been applying to freelance writing jobs online and not working that demeaning cater-waitering crap, and I just ate a Lunchable from the 99 Cent store after getting off a depressing phone call from my Mom reminding me of all the student loans I am never going to be able to pay (hence removing the pride I felt in myself for actually getting a part in a play and also trying to find more enjoyable work -- after all, what did I think, that they were just going to "evaporate"), and I am going to karate yoga to kick out some of this gloom that's covering the Santa Monica sky and in turn my soul.

Karma Gettin'

2011-07-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

I don't even want to write this or anything else...I've been sitting here on this sunny Sunday just applying for many a freelance writing job online, and I have that cabin fever feeling where I can't sit at this computer a minute longer without my legs twitching themselves into a breakdance. I don't know why I had dismissed freelance writing as a money-makin' possibility; obviously I love to write, and obviously I hate being micro-managed by some over-the-shoulder authority. I hate being managed at all, in fact, and I hate driving up to two hours to get to these six-hour-or-less crappy bartending gigs where they treat you like doo-doo, and I hate feeling like a servant, but I love having most of the day to myself and I work splendiferously on deadlines, because there's an end in sight, so if I can get paid by the word, count me in. That's my current goal--not to have to leave the house unless I want to or unless it's for an audition or acting gig. How bout it.

I can't hear myself think right now because there is some kind of DJ-and-food-truck event in the parking lot across the street and this guy keeps getting on the mike and describing barbecue sandwiches and so forth.

I should be washing dishes and/or clothes, but I have the evening. I have been distracted on this Carmageddon weekend -- what a crock was this Carmageddon hype -- I rode my bike 7.5 miles to West Hollywood for an audition yesterday "just in case" and even on the way back, there was NO traffic at all. The bike ride was enjoyable, though, and my booty is consequently super perky today; you could rest a tapas plate on it. I don't know about the audition or how I did; they surprised me with a scene I'd never seen when I got there. Oh well. I watched Pretty in Pink when I got home, resting my feet on a tuffet and eating Dubliner cheese and smoked salmon.

The hype was good for a couple things, though. There were tons of "Carmageddon" deals around town. We ordered a large Dominos pizza last night for nine dollars and ate it while painting a joint oil painting, me and Adam. Then we went to a birthday party for one of his Apple employee friends and it only took us ten minutes to get there. Everyone has been in a good mood this weekend; it feels like Karma Gettin'. We saw the last Harry Potter with one of our awesome L.A. audiences the other night. So good, of course. Have I mentioned how much I love going to the movies in general in L.A.? Everyone loves movies so much in this town that they clap at all the right parts and yell at the screen, making it feel more like a live theatre performance, like we are part of something much more important than just a bunch of disconnected people sitting in the dark together.

And now if I don't get out of my pajamas, I may die.

Strangers With Absolutely No Candy

2011-07-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

What is it that gives appallingly ugly creepsters the confidence to so aggressively approach pretty young gals, repeatedly making advances which are always ignored or scorned at?

I cannot count the number of times some garbage truck driver or mustachioed Joe Schmoe in a hoopty has slowed down to five miles per hour as I walked by and beckoned me to "come ovah here and talk to me for a minute." I speak not just for myself, but for all my beautiful sisters when I say, WHY on God's green earth would this person think he has a shot with me, a well-dressed, pretty young lady who is obviously ON HER PHONE or ON HER WAY SOMEWHERE? What in the entire world would be in this deal for me were I to accept this offer of coming to "talk" to said person who I obviously have nothing in common with? At least when strangers lure kids, they offer candy...all you're offering me is this conversation, which I've had in some form at least weekly since I was 17:

"Heyyyy baby, excuse me. Excuse me!"
"Yes?" (I used to sometimes indulge the person, just to make sure they weren't going to tell me I dropped something important or that I left my car lights on or something.)
"What's your name?"
"Trisha." (I would never give my real name.)
"You sure are pretty."
"Thank you, but I am in a relationship."
"I don't mind."
"Well, I mind."
"You wouldn't want to give me your phone number just in case you ever break up?"
"No."
And then this goes on and on until I walk away.

Well, I have learned my lesson after so many of these tiresome conversations with idiots, so now I just keep walking and pretend to be deaf, or I pretend to be Italian and I say, "Io non capisco l'Inglese." But sometimes it STILL doesn't work.

Today, for instance, I was on the phone with my mom, walking back to my apartment after parking my car a block away. This brown lecher-mobile with two wingnuts in it slowed down and followed me, hollering, for a block, ("Excuse me! Excuse me!") while I, with my sunglasses on, plugged one ear so I could try to decipher what my mom was telling me about the U.S. Postal Service Flat Rate Boxes. They drove, hollering like this, all the way to my door, where I let myself in, slamming and it behind me. But you won't believe this -- these idiots actually got out of their car and tried pounding on the door to my apartment building! I ran up the stairs, locking my apartment door twice, and prepared to call 911 if needed, but no need.

This is so ridiculous: even if those morons ever thought they had a chance with me at first (because every girl dreams of being picked up on a street corner from someone in a moving car...), how could they possibly think they'd have a chance with me after I ignored them and went into my apartment? What-- did they think that pounding on the door would incite me to open it, saying, "Oh, do come in! What can I do for you? I live on the third floor -- follow me!"?

Moreover, none of these superficial gorditos would be able to even hold a conversation with any of these pretty ladies they see on the street. I don't think they honestly ever think this method is going to work; it's just a sport for them to see how many points they can rack up or something.

Little do they know that if they actually did get to know me, they would find me fifty percent of the time looking like the photos below. Please enjoy this absolutely unflattering gallery of photos from my wedding weekend that depict my face in its various and sundry positions. Most of these faces occur in nature and are not done for show (click to enlarge).

The MushyMouth Granny

The Neener Neener Boo Boo

The I'm Ahead

The Boozin' Butler

The Ghastly Gasp

The Raptor-Palsy

The Peepin' Shiva

The Chris Klein

The Stroke Victim

The Prize Pony

The E.T.

The Can't Touch This

The Bellyachin' Elvis

The SeeFood Snarl

It is for these reasons, among many others, that I am so very lucky to have found a beautiful, wonderful man to love me.

My Wedding: A Photo Essay

2011-07-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

So, I told you I would supplement my earlier (whiny) wedding post with a more nostalgic, comprehensive look at our wedding weekend once the official photos* arrived. The time is now, and there couldn't be a better time -- so here, without further adieu, are the highlights of our wedding weekend, May 28th, 2011. (If I had time, I'd show you more!)

This is my mom, listening to some crazy babble from Adam while I talk frantically on the phone to one of my friends / bridal party, trying to give directions to this middle-of-nowhere farm before the rehearsal. you can see the insanity building already.

They found their way! These are the most special people in the world, Julia, Lis, Kate, Ann, Strother, and Holly, all together at a wedding rehearsal on a farm in Kentucky after traveling from Germany, Washington, DC, and other bits of Kentucky. One of them is my wonderful sister, the rest are the family I chose.

Adam and I rehearse our end-of-wedding procession, marriage license in hand, while Mom and Holly look on smiling. Is it time to eat yet?

Yes, finally! Our rehearsal dinner, hand-prepared by Adam's wonderful family at their house.

Dusk fell, we were enjoying a keg of Abita Amber and full bellies. Adam and I gave our bridal party some cool L.A. made flasks with Dia de los Muertos skeletons engaging in person-specific activities.

After a night of fitful sleep, it was Saturday, and we were still running around getting things together, prettifying the site.

With lots of help, the tent was finally ready and the lanterns up.

Adam's entourage was taking pictures while I was off somewhere freaking out from stress.

My friends and I had gotten ready for the most part at the hotel, but we had our own room at the wedding site to put on the finishing touches and unwind with some cheap American beer someone brought in.

We goofed around in the fancy farmhouse, just like we used to before heading to the parties in college.

We decorated each other and enjoyed being together for the first time in years.

My sister kept telling me how pretty I looked. She got married last summer and knew all the right things to say.

The house dog invaded our photo shoot, so we cuddled a little.

And at last, we were ready.

The guests were arriving and Indian sitar music was playing in the background. We slipped outside.

Adam and I got a chance to hang out before the wedding; I don't know what I would have done without his calming presence.

He reminded me "This isn't about anybody else. It's about you and me."

I've only seen Dad in a tie twice ever: at my sister's wedding, and here.

We ended up just telling the wedding party to get any dress or shirt they wanted, as long as it was red, orange, or hot pink. It worked out very well -- they looked gorgeous.

The girls definitely outnumbered the guys, but Adam is at home among females, as you can see.

After pictures (before the ceremony, because I hate buzzkill receptions where people are sitting, waiting for the wedding party), we were rarin' to get this thing started.

The Indian sitar music stopped and "Baby I'm Yours" by The Arctic Monkeys played.

Adam and his parents walked in first, followed by...

Lis, Alex, & Julia

Will & Kate (not the ones you're thinking of)

Adam & Ann

Margaret Ann & Strother

Adam's "Best Girl," his sister Rowen

My Sister of Honor, Holly

Then, the music changed to Glasgow Love Theme by Craig Armstrong (you shall find it on the Love Actually soundtrack). Adam saw me from afar and was excited.

Both my parents walked me down the aisle, and there was no silly "giving away," as I think that is ridiculously old-fashioned and ill-fitting of me.

My friends, his friends, and the audience looked on as we said our vows, which we wrote ourselves and delivered as surprises for each other.

And at the end of my vows, I had a well-kept surprise. I had recruited some of my girlfriends to help sing a barbershop quartet style doo-wop medley of love songs.

He liked it, I think.

And our wedding party lei'd us with marigolds as we all danced back down the aisle to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True."

The crowd mingled, excited about going into the tent for food and fun.

We, our friend and officiant, the Rev. Jillian Embrey, and our sisters, signed our marriage license.

The shoes were coming off.

The keg was being tapped.

The two families were now united officially.

The food was all the doing of our Moms, and it was delicious.

Margaret Ann and Will even made us an elephant for the occasion, Penelope.

It was nice to enjoy the food, and sitting down, and the tent we had worked so hard to make pretty.

We even had a cool tuffet throne to sit on during the toasts and eating.

There were at least six toasts, maybe more. These people are amazing.

We finally cut the cake. Delicious layers of lemon, strawberry, and orange dreamsicle! We barely ate any, though, with all the hugging and "thank you"ing.

There was a delicious groom's carrot cake, guarded by Leonardo.

Adam was congratulated by his dad, Tony, who worked tirelessly during this whole affair.

The work seemed to have paid off.

We danced until midnight, at least.

We couldn't believe that this day, which we'd been planning and thinking of for so long, was here and almost gone.

There was quite a party, complete with drunk guests and loud singing of "Come on Eileen."

The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Around 8:00, it started to get dusky.

The sky turned purplish, and the lights twinkled.

Friends and family who had never met were having fun together.

The coolest surprise came from Strother, who had choreographed an Indian-style Bhangra dance in our honor.

He had sent the choreography to our friends far and wide via online video, and they blew our minds! Even our moms were in on it! I almost cried!

It was, all in all, one of the most beautiful, love-filled, exhausting, exciting days of my life, and neither of us will ever forget it.

*All the lovely photos you see here were taken by the illustrious Adam Taylor Brown!

Guilty

2011-07-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

Place the mask on yourself before assisting others,
or you will both be gasping for air.

Today in the mail I received a free sample of Guilty perfume by Gucci.
"How did they know?" I thought, and then I rubbed it on all my pulse points, confirming everyone's suspicions. I am guilty, or at least that's how I've walked around feeling for over a month.

The past month has not belonged to me. As Regina Spektor sings, "Somedays aren't yours at all. They come and go as if they were someone else's day. They come and leave you behind someone else's face, and it's harsher than yours, and colder than yours."If you give your day (or your month) away without taking the time to do what you need to do for yourself; if you try to be too generous with your time or your concern, you will not be happy.

I agree with my darling Mommy that one of the sweetest feelings in the world is what ensues when you are kind to others. But here is something that I know: you must help yourself first, or else, you won't have the strength to help others. If you have no cornerstone (that's you, strong), anything you try to build will fall and you, having neglected yourself and your own needs for so long, will finish the song: "I'm not here. Not anymore. I've gone away -- don't call, don't write."

The guilt feeling comes because you can't believe how selfish you are -- not wanting to skip another yoga class so you can do this thing for this person, not wanting to spend four hours not working on your songs or writing your screenplays or submitting yourself for jobs because you are too busy doing that thing for that person, or entertaining people during every second of free time you get between work. You feel guilty because you don't have enough time to do everything that everyone needs from you. You feel guilty for needing your own space, after more than a month of having other people all up in yours.

But you should not feel guilty for these basic human needs; feeling this guilt, as Julia Cameron writes in The Artist's Way, is self-destructive. Writes Cameron,

For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without it, the artist in us feels vexed, angry, out of sorts. If such deprivation continues, our artist becomes sullen, depressed, hostile. We eventually become like cornered animals, snarling at our family and friends to leave us alone and stop making unreasonable demands.

...

We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone. When we can't get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we're there. But our true self has gone to ground.

I'm not saying that we should live in some Ayn Rand-like world, always looking out for Number One. I am just saying that we should listen to our own needs as much as possible and make sure they are addressed before spreading ourselves so thin that our whole being becomes translucent and unrecognizable.

Driving Forces

2011-06-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

This society makes it so easy to get wrapped up in the stupidest, most pointless reasons for living. People spend most of their existence on this earth at jobs they hate, or with people they don't really like, or putting off doing things they truly enjoy. Why? I've said it before and I'll say it again. This is not a dress rehearsal, people. If you're waiting for the money to materialize, that's probably never going to happen, and if it does, you'll just waste it on more creature comforts like fancy cars to alleviate your miserable trips to your miserable job, or big plasma screens so that you can zone out when you get those few hours at home, because you don't have the energy by that time to actually do anything worthwhile.

I noticed how easy it is to be influenced in this way yesterday, when I was out running loathsome errands and then had to go to work. There was about an hour when I was free, and I wanted something to make me feel like I had free will; something to make me feel like an important person and not the slave laborer I feel like half the time when I'm working. What could I do in an hour? Bed, Bath, & Beyond, of course! (I had a gift card in the car.) And I told Adam this -- how crazy it is that our society is set up that way. How crazy, that, even though I myself am self-aware and think this behavior is ridiculous, I myself am prone to it sometimes. You work and work, and then spend your money on these--oh, now I sound like Tyler Durden, might as well say--duvets, and designer colanders. What for!?

Anyway, as we were walking along last night enjoying the breeze and our ability to move freely, we discussed the fact that there is a driving force behind each person. Most people are driven by the need to accomplish things. (Again I ask why?) Or the need for money. Or power. These things I do not understand.

I am driven by two things: 1) The need for freedom and autonomy. Time is the most precious thing for me; you can do anything when you are on your own time. I hoard it, steal it, and carve it out, and I get angry at the things that take it from me. I want my life to be my own. 2) The need to be remembered as someone important, someone who did good things. I understand why people want fame (but not just for the sake of fame; not infamy, or idiocy, like these reality TV idiots who will be forgotten quicker than the names of the kids on Charles in Charge). But I don't care about fame; I only want to be remembered in a positive light...I want my time on earth to be for a purpose. I want to do something to leave a lasting impression of beauty and passion. Do my driving forces oppose each other? I will consider it.

At Last.

2011-06-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

Adam & Me. ALONE.
FINALLY.
We haven't been alone--just left alone together to sit around in whatever we do-or-do-not want to wear, or just to walk down to the pier and having late date happy hour at the Sake House with spicy wontons and Sapporo on an easy summer night as a couple (one who has now been married for an official MONTH), or to just leave the dishes in the sink or go see that new Woody Allen movie (which was wonderful)--NO, WE HAVEN'T BEEN ALONE SINCE THE WEEK BEFORE OUR WEDDING!

[Our first day alone together without insane 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. work schedules or people to entertain or things expected of us, we slept in 'til one p.m. and then walked to Hooters and then walked to the movies, then back to take another nap, and then we woke up to read books in bed and afterward went straight back to sleep.]

And I love our friends and I love our family and I love spending as much time as possible with them, of course I do! But imagine--just imagine having this wonderful man you've spent all these years enjoying, and deciding to marry him. How exciting, you think, we will get to be closer than ever! And imagine that the whole week before your wedding you are, of course, too busy to see each other because you're working and you're seeing your friends and staying with your family (that's a given). Then, right after your wedding, he must go back to Cali to work while you must stay home to be in your cuz's wedding -- so you look forward to seeing him when you get back. That's two weeks apart. And then when you get back, you have (wonderful, lovely, happy-to-have-them, though any other time would be much better) guests for over two weeks. If you total that time up, that is A MONTH that I haven't gotten to spend alone time with myself or my new husband. 'Nuff said.

But thank God this month is over; maybe things can go back to normal, whatever that is.

Summer Experiments

2011-06-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

Rowen and I bird-of-paradising atop
Solstice Canyon (see ocean in the distance)

Adam and I gettin' crunk on a Sunday night -- my shirt is leftovers from age 17.

My new Italian leather shoes & blue
dress from Salvation Army Boutique.

I barely remember what life was like before the wedding. Not that it was much different from now, just a month or two ago. I remember it seemed like a bit of a grind. It was just him and me and we were working and planning stuff and looking forward to this one particular day in the future and not thinking much past that, and mortaring fun between the bricks of work and sleep to hold it all together. I guess you can't go back and I don't particularly want to...but I am still trying to remember how to live and what to focus on and what to aim for and how to spend my days now that the wedding is not on my docket anymore and I am allowed to be in the moment instead of held captive in some moment months into the future.

It's strange, the recovery period after such a huge event.

We have been hosting guests for the past week, two of which are going to be moving here in a couple weeks, which is great for us -- more Kentucky transplant friends close by. We still haven't had an opportunity to feel "married" yet, save for two or three little dinners alone at home. It feels more like since our wedding, we have decided to go off to some summer sleepaway camp where you pack activities and work in all day long and never get into a routine, or if you do, it's not one that feels normal. But sleepaway camps are fun, despite the insanity. I went every year to a church camp during middle school, and for me it was sensory overload, a daily fashion show of my own design, gossiping in the cabins with girlfriends, winning the Swim Dash, and staring at 7th grade hotties all week long, working up the nerve to talk to them. High school summers were much the same, with Governer's School for the Arts and the Governer's Scholars Program and whatever else I could get myself into, singing Weezer covers in just-for-the-summer bands and sidewalk chalking the streets, cutting up t-shirts and working on monologues, watching fireworks, makin' out in the piano practice rooms, seeing shows every night, and videotaping it all to satiate my own cataloguing fetish.

Perhaps I will look back on this post-nuptial period with the same wistful fondness. Look at what we've done in just a few days, even if it doesn't include quiet Blockbuster nights cuddling as newlyweds on the couch. We saw some improv at UCB with our friends after eating at Birds. I went to yoga. We rode bikes down to Venice one day and up to Malibu another, just me & Adam. We hiked with Rowen up Solstice Canyon, having driven there in the swank Lexus SUV the dealership lent us after a crazy incident in which Lexus workers on a "test drive" smashed into Adam's little car, which was parked on our street. Rowen and I went thrifting and I came away with all kinds of loot, including some daring $315 high waisted shiny silk pleated pants with the tags still on 'em. We bebopped over to the Misfit for some more of those chorizo-sauce mussels. We got colonics. We sang karaoke at the Gaslite until we couldn't stand the particular breed of people there anymore. I worked at the Hollywood Bowl and got myself some auditions and tried a new sort of "internship" which didn't like and am quitting. I got my new tooth put in, and we went to a premiere party for a short film I was in. Maybe this isn't what married life is supposed to feel like, but it is indeed what summer should feel like.

Post-nup Hilarity

2011-06-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

We're good. We're workin'. We're making the most of June Gloom. We have three visitors now -- so many we are lending them out around town! Two of them are most likely moving here (Cameron & Jessica) and we will be SO excited to have more friends close by! Rowen's here (Adam's sis), and both of us would love to have her stay a Californian, too...maybe we can convince her? Friends & family are everything.

Speaking of -- a friend of mine asked me the other day to give her a list of our best RSVP responses. You see, we sent out slightly unconventional RSVP cards for our wedding, which included a line for "exclamation." Here is my sister's card, for example. She added illustrations. Some added stickers, some just had really great exclamations. Here, in no particular order, are the best of our RSVP responses:

-hot damn!
-alas!
-oh no!
-Shwing!
-Well Slap My Taint!
-OMG!
-Wicked!
-Wooohooo!
-Zoinks!
-Huzzah!
-Holy Balls!

-crap!
-SH*T!
-Yee ha!
-Weyl I'll Be!
-Super!
-Holy Tamale!
-F*** YEAH!
-Whoa! Ging Got Knocked Up!
-Zounds!
-What about them Bears!?
-Oh Fiddle Sticks!
-Awesome pants!
-Cowabunga!
-Sweet leapin negroes Batman! (Don't worry, this was not from a white person.)
-Oh Snap!

We also had a bunch of "Yay"s and "Congratulations"es and such greetings. And as further proof of how awesome our friends are, here are some photos of new stuff around our house since the wedding, thanks to them.

Settlin' Down, But Not Really.

2011-06-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've been back in Santa Monica for a week now, and this right here is the first time I've had even a second to do what I want all alone, hence the lack of blog updates. I've been working a lot more than I'd intended, for one, and then my spare time has been hijacked by various enterprises; namely the hundreds of thank you cards suffocating me like bubble wrap. I don't write half-ass thank you cards, you see, because I have personally received too many of the ones that just have the little manufactured poem inside and then the bride just signs both their names at the bottom of it, no message or anything. And I throw it in the garbage and think, "Why did they even bother? How impersonal and trite!" So my thank you cards are not like that. I must actually write a decent personal message (and I mean, FILL THE CARD) to each person. But it does take a while and after about five in the "done" pile, it starts to give you that itchy I-am-gonna-scream-if-I-don't-get-out-of-this-chair feeling.

So there's that.
And then there's all the stuff. We are ballin' with all our new housewares and our new bikes. But I've been having to waste ample time organizing everything, Goodwilling the old to make room for the new, buying necessary accessories (like bike locks), making trips to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to exchange this for that and use our gift cards on things we've been needing. We've barely had a chance to use our new bikes; we rode them to yoga class yesterday -- but we've yet to have a day off together. It's strange that since we got married, I haven't gotten to spend much time at all with him. But it will happen in the next few weeks, we hope. We have had two homemade dinner dates complete with Two Buck Chuck in our new wine glasses, and we hit up this great new restaurant in our neighborhood, The Misfit, one night for delicious mussels and gourmet mac-n-cheese. I love L.A. Though I wish this June Gloom would end (!), I love being myself and riding my bike around and going to yoga and getting paid for sitting around and going to the beach and seeing shows and meeting new people and eating at new restaurants and hosting guests.

But then there's the infinite dishwashing and laundry and grocery shopping that goes on forever and ever amen. If I had lots of money I would hire an assistant just to do those three things so that I never ever had to touch a dirty dish again or walk down the aisles comparing prices or carry the laundry basket up and down the three flights of stairs. I HATE IT! But look, I am drinking the coffee out of the very last coffee cup as we speak, there is only one roll of t.p. left, and the new brown wicker hamper is vomiting out the whites...so I need to git 'er done and then perhaps I will have a day of my very own.

Storm Before the Calm

2011-06-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

I know I'm supposed to talk about the wedding, but I'm going to wait until the pictures come back. By that time, nostalgia will have set in and I can use the images to make things more linear and highlight the highlights. In short, the ceremony and reception were exactly what we had dreamed of, beautiful and full of joy and love and life. The time we got to spend with our favorite people on the planet all at once was almost so great that we didn't feel it could possibly be real.

Adam and I were writers, designers, producers, carpenters, stage managers, and performers in this production -- a ridiculous amount of work to have taken on. The stress was outshined by the joy most times, but much of the time, I didn't enjoy this strange position I was in. Even with all my best friends together, I, with all my stresses and people demanding things of me left and right, felt like I was inside some sort of snow globe looking at the reunion through the glass. These four or five days were some of the most stressful of my life. Take heed, all do-it-yourself wedding planners; don't plan on feeling like the stereotypical Bride.

Prepare to have doors slammed in your face as you carry your own luggage out of a hotel in which you had no room of your own. Prepare to feel grateful but constantly guilty for all the work people are doing for YOU (all you want is them to have fun, but unfortunately you need them because they are the only efficient people within miles). Prepare for at least three other people who think this is THEIR wedding and who try to make annoying decisions without even asking your opinion, and others who keep bothering you every five minutes with what you want them to do, when you are busy and just as out of the loop as anyone. Prepare to offer to carry heavy things in your wedding dress because no one else will; prepare to sob for an hour before photos feeling sorry for yourself because of this. Prepare to be so freakin' tired at the reception that you are all but sleeping on your new husband's shoulder during the slow dance. Which is the first time you have talked to him in four days. Which gets interrupted. Prepare never to get to go to the bathroom or find caffeine during the reception, and to have a sore throat from saying "thaaaank yoooou" so much. Prepare to have someone steal the water out of your hand when you're sweaty and are finally getting a drink, because it "doesn't make a pretty picture." Prepare not to consummate your marriage because you could die from exhaustion. Prepare to wake up early the next morning and work until the afternoon to take the whole mess down...and still not get to spend any time together. And then after that, you have only a matter of hours before you have to separate again for a week, and people are trying to infringe on that time, too!

Oh look. I ended up talking about it. Well, please don't take this as the final word. I have so many wonderful things to say, too. But if you keep the truth under wraps, it will rage into a fever, so I had to get it out so I can move on.

Really, it was wonderful. I will do a full photo essay later, so please don't let this taint what you perceive to be my opinion. It's just...I am not fully recovered, and I am away from Adam since Monday, and I did this to be with him, and that is what I want. To be with him.

Ruminations over Gin and Tonic

2011-05-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

So glad not to be in L.A. right now. Not that I don't love it. It's just the type of place you need a couple weeks off from once in a while. I would say why, but then I'd have to think about it, and I'd rather keep it far from my mind so I can relish in the authenticity of this place with these people and the memories that whisper to me every time I visit.

One must take stock of one's life before such an event, which is no big event for me, since that's what I do all the time anyway. But when one is scanning photos from childhood for some public photoframe slideshow, it's especially vital to have a well of memories to dip into.

I have a ridiculously sharp memory. Not only can I remember the lyrics to any song I ever knew and remember the look and smell of the places I've been -- I also remember what was running through my head at the precise moment of any dialogue that was taking place. I remember my little ego being angry at the adults who laughed at how "cute" I was when I was four years old. ("I am a person, just like you," I would think, in a less apt vocabulary, "Why does everything I say get patronized?")

Kentucky is rife with thunderstorms followed by sunshine and heat. Such a different feel and smell -- what a wonderful smell; that of honeysuckle, grass, and wet asphalt drying in the sun. I am so happy to have slept in my very bed last night, and to have been taken care of by my family, especially my Mom, the only person in the world who can do what she does. Three days til rehearsal dinner. My stomach squirms anxiously when I think of it -- the first time in five years that all my best friends will be reunited. And ever better -- all the special people in my life pastiched together in one gorgeous collage.

Aaaaahhhhhh!

2011-05-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning way way early is only three days away. We still have to finalize our playlists for ceremony, eating, and dancing, (we refuse to have a DJ kill the party with his cheesy talking and Chicken Dance), and get those groomsmen gifts (how difficult it is to get something original and useful)!

May Gray is here to stay by the coast, it looks like, though the sun does continue to poke through once in a while, further away from the Pacific.

We had a day off (finally) yesterday, and bowled with the lowest fervor for competition (neither of us broke 100 score-wise) and a pitcher of Miller Lite -- class all the way -- before eating steak and seafood at tiny, charming Chez Jay on Ocean Avenue and walking home and watching Four Weddings and a Funeral. (How weird is Andie MacDowell in that movie? Every line she says sounds like it's her first try at speaking English.) We needed a silly date; I feel like all I've done lately is work. Gag. I'm even working the next three days before our trip home. Unfortunately, the money is needed. That's how it works, they tell me.

I feel like I'm living in a strange fantasy bubble where nothing is real. I feel like this building excitement is for something that's not really going to happen. Surely my best friends in the world are not going to be reunited after five years? Surely this day isn't built around us? It was so simple to decide, so simple to invite people. Why don't we do this every year?

Then again, there's a weird feeling that I'm inconveniencing people. I invited a lot of people who couldn't even be bothered to respond. Am I a complete doofus? I took the time to get their addresses and send out the invites I created myself, and spent money on postage and even stamped an RSVP card which they only had to drop in the mail. Then these people (who I thought were my friends and would add something to our wedding) received my invitation and said, "Why did they invite me to their wedding? Do they think we're actually friends? Hahahaha. Idiots," and just threw away all that hard work and goodwill without so much as acknowledging the receipt of it. It makes me want to-- to-- to unfriend them on Facebook, frankly. And I'll do it, too.

Spring Kriya

2011-05-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

The past month has blinked by like a strobe, but not without me noticing everything that's happened in both the dark and the light. Every Saturday this month I was working late, and every Saturday this month, I'd be driving home at the same time, exhausted, removing my shoes, listening to Complete Control Radio (which only comes on very late on Saturdays and makes me nostalgic for my silly punk-rock years) and thinking, "where did the week go?" I worked and played a lot, bartending, doing yoga nearly every day, making art, writing songs, enjoying guests, auditioning, planning weddin's, eatin' food, driving way too much and paying for the gas, getting my teeth drilled, talking to friends, blasting music, looking forward to things that hadn't yet happened.

The spring is always an awakening that way for me, packed with so much volatile energy -- it ever makes me sick and a tad bit overwhelmed. But summer's almost here, heralded by none other than my own celebration of love (two Saturdays away), for which we are flying to Kentucky this Saturday. I'm starting to get nervous about everything, not least of all that feeling of being a weary traveler where you can't get any space for yourself and you just feel dirty and fat and unhealthy because you're on everyone else's time. Why is that worry already niggling my brain? I'll just make the effort to take my space as needed without offending anyone, and to be clean and fit and healthy on whatever time I can get.

The main thing is, we are going to have fun, and so many people from so many parts of our lives are going to be corralled together in a big bright ball of goodwill, and they and my old Kentucky home shall reinvigorate me and send me back to L.A. with a smile and my sweetie, as usual.

Should Have Stayed in Bed

2011-05-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

I am not going to give a second look to yesterday, that mud puddle of a Tuesday, except to tell you what ELSE happened to make my day hell. Not that I want to "brag" about what a terrible day I had, but it's kind of hilarious (in a sick, sad way) that in one day I endured all you see here, plus:

-I went outside to go to yoga class (and turn my day around!) and there was a TICKET on my car. Not even a ticket I deserved, for that matter! I was cited for "Preferential Parking," even though I have the required sticker ON MY BUMPER that says I am allowed to park ON MY STREET. And when I called the stupid SaMo Parking Ticket demons, they told me I had to write a formal letter to contest it and include pictures of the sticker on my bumper.

-I huffed all the way to yoga, but thought my day would be great afterward, as there was space inside my head and I had a little lunch with Adam and then walked home in the sunshine and bought a Cherry Garcia ice cream for myself. BUT...

-I went in and got my camera, then walked outside to take the stupid picture of that stupid bumper sticker. I took the photos and was about to insert the key into the gate to get back into my apartment, when I realized I HAD GRABBED THE WRONG KEYS. All I held in my hand was a key to Adam's stick-shift car which I am nervous as hell to drive. Also, I was wearing Adam's ill-fitting flip-flops, so no way I was going to walk the 1.5 miles to the Apple Store to get the keys from him.

-So I had to face the stick shift. I drove it halfway (there was no way I was going to attempt stick-shifting in a parking garage, and Vons was the only good place to park), and then walked the rest the way in the ill-fitting flip-flops which I kept slipping out of. Mind you, I had to work at 4pm.

-After reversing that journey and getting back home with the keys, there was no parking on the street for Adam's car because the street cleaner was about to come. I had to wait around for this douchey truck to get out of my space. There was an hour on the clock counting down until I had to be at work, to bartend across town. In the meantime, I had to eat something, make my sweaty, disgusting, stressed-out self look presentable, and take Adam's key's back. Oh, and when I got in the car, the gas light was on, so I had to stop and get gas lest I run out on this shite day.

-Of course. I was 15 minutes late for work. After driving for 45 minutes toward downtown L.A., I received a call saying they wouldn't be needing me because they were using a backup instead. So I got to drive back to my house for another needless HOUR in the car.

But honestly, even though I wouldn't be making any money to pay the dental extortionist from yesterday, and there was not yet a solution to the glasses/contacts problems, and I generally wanted to kill everyone in my path as if they were zombies in House of the Dead 2, I was happy that I had the evening at home with Adam to recover.

And I thought, "at least the weather was perfect during this Ninth Bolgia of a day. If I'd-a been in Kentucky, I literally would have been DEPRESSED because the weather would have been rainy and terribly uncomfortable," and I thought, "at least I have arms and legs," and all those other comforting perspectives one needs to have in order to stop feeling sorry for one's self.

But today is WEDNESDAY, and my tooth doesn't hurt and I am going to badger this eye doctor until he gives me the right prescription, and I am going to do what I want in the sunshine, write songs, read, and make sure I have a hair appointment and not think about money.

Half Broke

2011-05-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

Does everybody feel like a fraud? You look around and the people you see look so put together and fancy and contained. What's under all that? Debt, worry, unhealthy things...

Me, I don't know if I look contained or nice, but I can tell you I am one falling-apart twentysomething scraping the bottom of the barrel all too often. Not that I don't enjoy most every day of my life--I make sure to at least do that--but at once, everything is tore up right now.

Do they know, when they look at my meticulously Maybelline'd blue eyes, that these eyes are not very good at seeing, that I just had to waste lotsa money on a new shipment of contacts and that I got new glasses, but the eyedoctor got the prescription wrong, so now I am waiting nervously for him to amend that prescription that I PAID him for, so that I can stop having terrible headaches while wearing said glasses?

Can they tell that behind my white-shiny smile, there was a tooth just falling apart wayyy back in the back of my mouth, and that I got basically extorted by the dentist yesterday when he insisted on putting an expensive crown on it instead of just pulling the bugger as I would have wanted? I'll be paying for that for a while.

Do they realize when I am looking so zen coming from a yoga class or smiling as I run in my sweet shoes down the boulevard, that inside I am worried to death about jury duty which was assigned during my wedding, and if the wedding won't turn out at all, and fretting fretting fretting about all this money that I don't have, and how I wish I had enough to get myself health insurance or a regular doctor to check me up when I needed it and enough to keep my hair healthy at a salon instead of just DIYing everything in my whole dang life, and enough to get a new fan belt for my car, or hell, even pay for gas, which is now $4.30 everywhere I go.

I frankly don't care if they know or not, whoever they are -- I'd rather share than feel all alone in my lack of maintenance.

Adopted

2011-05-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday, and that should be a lazy sleep-in day, but look at me, waking up at 7:45 and twitching 'til 8:30 when I finally just gave in and got up because my hunger outweighed my laziness. I ate my Special K and put on my new glasses, and accidentally walked past a mirror, where I glimpsed a cavewoman clothed in a raggedy nickname t-shirt from her freshman year in college. My hair, as they say, is in a state. I was writing in my stream-of-consciousness Morning Pages journal and around the topic came to me being adopted. Did you know?

Well, on August 3rd a score or so ago, a bouncing baby me was born, and I went home with my Mommy and Daddy three days later. Thank God there was never any lying, cover-up, or big blow-out "you're not of my blood" discussion and subsequent depression at age thirteen.

As early as I can remember, my sweet parents told me stories of how they went to "pick me out" behind the glass in the hospital, how I was the prettiest baby in the lot and they wanted me more than anything, but they thought I was already promised to someone, as my crib had a name on it. Lucky for all of us, the name was my nurse's name, and I was soon placed in the arms of my momma, who says I was so tiny she was afraid she might break me.

Mom and Dad told me these stories often, about how happy they were to finally get me, so from an early age I felt special and loved. For this reason, it was all the more annoying when, at school, if the topic of my being adopted would come up, the adults would treat me like a fragile orphan, and the kids would say, "I'm sorry." I'd say, "Why?" (After a while, my Mom helped me devise a proper response, which was, "Your parents got stuck with you...mine picked me out.") They'd say, "Who's your real Mom and Dad?" Now those were fightin' words. My real Mom and Dad are the only Mom and Dad I know: the ones who made sure I was never hot or cold, who stayed up all hours of the night when I was crying, who gave me everything I have in this world outside myself, who nurtured every inkling of creativity I ever had with art lessons and piano lessons and diaries and microphones and little league basketball. So don't you dare insinuate that there's anyone else I should call my parents, you fourth grade neanderthal!

My mom also gave me this poem, which I haven't seen in years but just found thanks to Google.

Legacy of an Adopted Child
Once there were two women who never knew each other
One you do not remember, the other you call mother.
Two different lives shaped to make yours one
One became your guiding star, the other became your sun.
The first gave you life, the second taught you to live it
The first gave you a need for Love, the second was there to give it.
One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name
One gave you the seed for talent, the other gave you an aim.
One gave you emotions, the other calmed your fears
One saw your first smile, the other dried your tears.
One gave you up, it was all that she could do
The other prayed for a child and was led straight to you.
And now you ask me through your tears
the age old question through the years,
"Heredity or environment, which am I the product of?"
Neither my darling, neither,
Just two different kinds of Love.

I don't know who wrote it, but it really sorted things out in my younger mind. And it touches on an added bonus for the thinkers who were adopted: you become a walking case study of heredity-versus-environment. Especially me, since I have a control group to compare myself to -- my little sister Holly, who my parents hatched themselves. The verdict? Of course it's half-and-half. There are innate character traits, it seems, that no environment can affect, and others which can be influenced. My seester and I are proof, as I am fearless and artistic and liberal (purely my genes, as nobody in my family fits that description), and she, like my parents, is conservative, well-behaved, and not much of a talker by nature. But (environment!) when she's around me, my sweet sis becomes a nut, as quirky and hilarious as anyone you ever saw, and me, I would have absolutely no boundaries were it not for my family, who instilled in me the values I carry today as the dearest to me: love, kindness, truth, and the drive to "make something of yourself."

My "adopted" status has definitely shaped who I am going to be, in a positive way. My favorite thing about it is that it allows me to be a self-made lady. Most of you have some kind of future staring you right in the face: parents with their temperaments and their chosen paths and their expanding waistlines. I, on the other hand, have nothing to look to when it comes to what I might be like when I "grow up." I can imagine that perhaps it was the combined DNA some screen siren and some rock-n-roll royalty that yielded me, and I can pretend that aging won't happen; nay, not to me, the baby brought by the stork! Since I have no template, I get to be the trailblazer: to me there are no limits, because I don't know mine.

This way, I can ignore the cro-magnon woman in the morning mirror, and identify myself instead with the person I create: the spritely afternoon nymph.

Distraction as the Goal

2011-04-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

Today's day seven of the yoga, and I feel more than ever like a flower whose roots are firmly planted in the ground, and whose stalk has grown way up into the clouds and blossomed in the sun. My practice has even aided my journey of creativity, as I've been meditating daily on manifesting love and self-expression...so I've been writing, drawing, dancing, singing, and writing songs like the two new ones HERE. My talented friend Lucky makes the instrumental magic, I write the lyrics and vocal melody, and sing of course. This newest is a country song (my first), called "Waiting for You." It's not in line with my usual punkrawk 'tude, but I am trying new things. And meanwhile, listen to our other (rock-n-roll) song, "Funeral," whose lyrics, melody, and vocals are also courtesy of moi. (And listen 'til the end!)

What's more, a new development I've been waiting for on the acting front has finally panned out. I don't usually run around talking about all this junk, but, as an actor only now reaching my second anniversary here in L.A., one of the greatest hurdles I've been recently attempting to jump is becoming SAG eligible. Lots of people like to pretend it was so easy they didn't even have to try, and maybe for them it was. For me, it has been a bit of a battle for the past...uh...year. You see, I have a commercial agent and even a reel, but I need a theatrical agent (the kind who can submit you for real part in legit movies & shows), and those agents usually will not even glance sideways at a non-union talent. So I've been slaving away as an extra here and there, looking for my very last SAG Voucher (to become eligible this way, you must somehow collect three SAG vouchers; it's like a twisted board game), and yesterday, I got it at last! Now soon I may move on to the next space on the board -- the one where you send out a million headshots, looking for theatrical representation. And there are intimate spaces after that, and no winner in this game except the one who enjoys playing it!

The trick to getting the eligibility was giving up. Navigating the entertainment industry is much like obtaining the interest of men: one mustn't appear that they want or need whatever they want or need. About two weeks ago, maybe a month, I said to my friends and lovers, "I'm not even going to think about that stupid SAG voucher anymore. I am going to go about my creative business and enjoy myself. I am going to start submitting to no-pay short films again if they have interesting roles, just for the love of acting. I am going to let my creativity out through other art forms, and trust that it will happen when it needs to." And that's what I've been doing -- hardly even thinking about obtaining union status except when it's relevant (like when I'm submitting for things that could help me get it). Lo and behold, a few short weeks later, (during which I cranked out a bunch of art), I am finally in a nicer boat.

Breath of Gold

2011-04-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

Life's timing is hilarious sometimes!

Like how I just made a huge roast in our new Crock Pot yesterday, and we suddenly had guests to enjoy it on our new dishes and silverware! (An impending wedding is an excellent means to enjoy new housewares.)

Or like how I just got my first-ever jury summons from the California Superior Court...and it's for the week of my wedding. Funny, funny. If they don't let me out of it, I guess I'll just be blogging from jail in about a month.

But my humor is intact, for today is my fourth day in a row of yoga, and it has already been a sweet journey. The first day was "Flow and Glow," an intimate, exploratory experience with just the right amount of sweat. Then there was "Manifestation Flow," which was an intense, funky, laughing celebration of self expression. And last night I did "Relax and Restore," which was a spiritual, breath-focused mindcleanse. I feel so much more centered and heart-driven and creative and positive. I don't even mind that I read the sides for my audition today and decided they were quite horrible and not worth auditioning for. Nor do I mind that our brief summery weather has given way to a gloomy Monday. That's just how it's supposed to be.

I actually look forward to yoga every day! I could never have said the same about the gym. I love the sensual oils and incense and hippie talk of energies and chakras. I love feeling fit, and not crunched-up when I wake up in the morning. I love being told, "picture your breath as liquid sunlight, flecked with gold glitter, and let it rush to the places that need it most," and "allow your spine to rise straight and tall, like an antenna, because that's what you are, a conduit of energy flowing from the heavens."

But, whatever works for you. I did a silly drawing with oil pastels a couple days ago when the sun was pouring over us on the beach. Here you are.

Two Commitments from the Commitment-Deficient

2011-04-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

As discussed yesterday, I am going to stop complaining and start creating! Per suggestion from my wise and perky blogosphere friend, Lira, (check out her amazing blog if you haven't already), here you have my first Freehand Friday! Now, it's not meant to be "art." It's just meant to get me doing something. Today, I have attempted to sketch in my sketchbook this awesome dude with a rippling moat of terrific wrinkles. (He's not done...I need a lot more shadow-n-light, but my pencil died and then I got hungry.) I found him in a LIFE Magazine from 1962, which I bought somewhere for fun.

I am only sharing these things with you for my own accountability -- I need to be held responsible for doing things, practicing things, just getting things out into the ether. Keep in mind that they might suck, but don't tell me so.

You know? I won't even limit it to Fridays, in fact. And I won't limit it to drawing. I will just call it Show-n-Tell (that way I can share with you my new songs, poems, stories, or memories, too, as long as it's something I created) and I will make sure to do it once a week. How 'bout it? That's Commitment Number 1

Commitment Number 2 is this: I am going to attempt to go to yoga class EVERY DAY for the next month. You know why? Because I bought a yoga Deal that is good for a month. I usually go once a week or so, but since I paid for it in advance, and since I need extra sanity and fitness seeing as how it's only about 40 days 'til my wedding, let's up the ante.

And...GO!

Just Waiting for the Fun Part of the Rollercoaster

2011-04-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's just that I have been busy planning this nuptial shindig, I tell myself. It's a lot of work, and so all my other creative outlets have had nothing plugged into them of late. Writing, songwriting, music practicing, monologue learning, auditioning, drawing -- I don't have enough back burners to put all these simmering endeavors on, so some have been stored in the back of a fridge and are growing mold.

I'm an artist in recovery, Julia Cameron would say. Just as every Single Gal needs to reread He's Just Not That Into You every few years to remind herself of the caliber of partner she deserves, every Artist should solicit Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way periodically to remind herself of all she could be creating at any given moment. I just bought a hardback copy bound with two of her other books to remind me to see -- and comment on -- the magic in my everyday.

Because when I'm not happy with the quality or quantity of what's coming out of my old brain box, I am not happy in general. I start to project my dissatisfaction on my surroundings -- I'm unable to see the forest for the douchebags. So, I'm sorry for all my complaining as of late. I've felt like Alice when she first enters Wonderland and nobody is helping her and she can't connect to anyone sane...only my Wonderland has been less colorful and interesting, a stagnant cardboard box of ennui. I've been an Eeyore in a neverending circle of beat-down, just going to work and coming home, dispassionately working out, trying to enjoy my free time, mourning the fact that I'm not getting any interesting auditions or opportunities to showcase my skills...and I need to break out of this continuum STAT.

So here I am, smiling during my last paragraph. Smiling, you know, triggers your brain into thinking it's elated! I'm still smiling! Today, I am not thinking about money or lack thereof, or my urgent need for medical and dental insurance, or my hourly journey toward a possibly success-free old age! Nay! I am an artiste! I am going to live life while I've got it, and make things, and love, and just be!

See? I've almost convinced myself.

Quoteable Quotes About Working

2011-04-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

Me: "Number one...this granola cereal is the bomb. And number two: Nothing is Everything."

Adam: (Gesticulating wildly): "Yes! On the scale-y-ology of life, work is--"

Me: "It's way down at the bottom."

Adam: "It's way down at the bottom! Even just LOOKING AROUND is way up here toward the top."

Adam: (still talking for a long time while I'm trying to type this.)

Me: "Um, could you stop talking so I can type this, and save it for later when I am ready?"

Adam: (Minutes later, laughing.) "You just told me to stop talking."

Me: "Okay, I'm ready now. What were you saying?"

Adam: "...People think that...their jobs matter so much to them because they've got nothing in their brain, or their heart, or their soul, that their only considerable notion of how to treat people who are at work is like crap! I just had a bad day."

I tell him we should be happy all the bad customers came in one day, because that means the next day will probably be clear. I know this because, after literally mourning the way this collagen-faced-old-hag-millionaire treated me the other day at a brunch at her mansion (Most pathetic person I've ever seen! No one will ever love you, so enjoy making your servants bring room service to your cat!*)

...anyway, as I was saying, after not being able to shake that scarring experience, I got the best gig ever. Making / drinking margaritas for Robin Thicke (in case you don't know, sexiest musician alive -- what Justin Timberlake wishes he was) at his dad, Alan Thicke's (the dad from Growing Pains) house, while Robin ran around with no shirt on all day. I was treated terrifically (Robin hugged me and introduced me by name to all his family and friends), given a nice tip & copious Mexican food, and solicited to go on tour by his bandmates.

That's just how work is...until you are actually doing what you want to do: a crapshoot. (Though it's usually just crap that makes you want to shoot yourself.)

*She really does require cat room service.

Vigilante Justice

2011-03-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

I simply believe in justice in this world! I know karma takes care of it for the most part, but sometimes I like to put my two cents in and help it along. Let the scuzzbuckets know that they are scuzzy.

Like when my bike got stolen -- you remember how I left a note for the thief.

Well, this time, it's something else driving me to "punish."

Okay. We have street parking where Adam and I live. We have these little dangling passes that go in our windows, and you have to dangle them (NO LYING THEM ON THE DASHBOARD!) or else you get a $68 ticket from the city of Santa Monica. Also, you have to move your car every Tuesday and Wednesday for street cleanings, or else you get a $68 ticket. These City of Santa Monica parking tickets are teal green and so prevalent that one checks under her wiper blade with gritted teeth every time one gets in the car, sighing with relief if no "gift" has been left there.

As you might imagine, there are parking issues. Namely, there are a bunch of inconsiderate turd nuggets who, when there is a curb that could fit three cars, park as if nobody else is going to need to park there.

So, lets say this [ ] is the car and this _______ is the curb. If there is a curb that's this long _________, one should pull all the way up or all the way back, leaving spaces for two more cars, like so:
[ ]_____ . Then, two more cars will fill in and it will look like this: [ ]_[ ]_[ ] . However, THESE morons will just park like THIS: __[ ]__ , wasting all that space, so that instead of parking in front of my apartment building, I get to park TWO BLOCKS AWAY!

My punishment capitalizes on that scare that one feels when one sees there is a teal parking ticket in his window. In order to bring the culprits' idiocy to their attention, I have designed a "ticket" that looks almost exactly like the city's parking ticket. When I have to park blocks away due to careless drivers, I plop one of these under their wiper on my walk home:

It may or may not solve anything, but at least these buttcakes know they are being watched.

Good People Days

2011-03-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

You have your Good People days and you have your Bad People days. On the Bad People days (like the one I was obviously having a week ago), nary a pleasant person crosses your path, but on the Good People days, everyone you meet is smiling, or familiar, or they have interesting things to say. Unlike me right now. I am devoid of anything interesting. I am a Bad People blogger today, and yet I feel I must blog something because I haven't in over a week.

This week has been a Good People week for me. In short, I began by bartending at WB Studios for a screening. Then my forever friend Karima came to visit (one of the most fun, giving, thoughtful, gorgeous, and culinarily talented people in the world), brought her delightful man with her, and the two introduced us to their local friends, all of whom were lovely. We together encountered other Good People out in the wild, like someone at Sprinkles Cupcakes who let us get away without paying. I audited a stand-up comedy class with a Good People stand-up comedy teacher this week and decided I most certainly will take it, as soon as the scheduling works out. It's a frightening prospect, but I have a wellspring of true hilarity to draw from, so if I'm not funny, it's my own fault and at least I tried. Yesterday I got paid for sitting the beach all day sunning myself and drinking Diet Pepsi while talking to Good People, be they hackers, renegades, or bikini models.

Today I wept independently in the middle of a darkened theatre while I watched Jane Eyre return to the now-blind Mr. Rochester. Jane Eyre was my favorite book at age 14, thanks to Mrs. Ball, lover of literature and enthusiastic teacher. I even wrote a paper answering the prompt "Which character in a book reminds you of yourself?" I said Jane Eyre because, like me, she was "courageous, passionate, and forceful," and supported my thesis with instances from both our lives. Jane is Good People, mos def.

But I haven't done anything I'm proud of in quite a while. I haven't "gotten anything done," so to speak, which bothers me sometimes, though I know it shouldn't. There are so many paintings to be painted and songs to be written and jobs to get. One cannot force it, though. I should simply go about my day surrounding myself with Good People, mirroring Hemingway's zen attitude:

"I knew I must write a novel...I would put it off though until I could not help doing it. I was damned if I would write one because it was what I should do if we were to eat regularly. When I had to write it, then it would be the only thing to do and there would be no choice. Let the pressure build."(A Moveable Feast)

Misanthropy

2011-03-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Am I a snot head?

I walk around my daily life looking around and enjoying all the beautiful things life has to offer and enjoying all of them---nay, basking in them! I am a joyful person and there is so much to be joyful about!

But the culture I live in...90 percent of it makes me retch.
When I'm not smelling a flower or tasting a delicious cheese or daydreaming about traveling or reading a thought-provoking book; when I'm not sitting across the table from a wonderful person, having great conversation, I am judging. I am looking at the other tables in the restaurant, at the people on dates who are both sitting there staring at their smartphones and never looking up, and I am dying to go up to them, snatch the phone out of their numbskull hands, smash it on the ground, and say, "Glad I'm not on your date, you vapid waste of space!"

I am having a listen to the top 10 songs on iTunes (only one listen, because that is all I can stand!) and thinking, "Wow, you imbeciles actually think this new Rihanna song is edgy? Besides the fact that this junk is so overproduced it is unlistenable, the subject matter is something I could have written in eighth grade! And you actually choose to listen to it!"

I am avoiding "viral videos" like the plague (along with Justin Bieber -- whose music I still have never heard). I don't have cable. I hate hipsters and how hard they try to be "outcasts"...because I don't have to try, nor would I -- not since I was a teenager, at least. And because my mind naturally lives on the very fringe of society (even though I still read celebrity gossip without irony), I feel superior, and enjoy it in a way.

Isn't that sick? Maybe I will grow out of it.

Renaissance Gal

2011-03-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it’s good to hit your own reset button. For me, there were a few things that did it. I spent all day in bed yesterday, literally sleeping until 3 p.m. It rained so much it eventually washed away the smog of redundancy surrounding my mind. I went to yoga this morning and inhaled life back into the hollows of my body, and when I came outside again, the sun was finally shining. Now I’m ready to return to the land of the living.

About five days ago I was working, and I was thinking:

We don’t live in Victorian England, but there are still all these unspoken social contacts that make it impossible sometimes to get to know someone. Adam and I had watched A Room With a View again (also one of my favorite books), and I couldn’t help but relate to the Emersons, who eschew the mandatory stuffiness of society in favor of just being honest, finding the truth and beauty in life, no matter how outsiderly that makes them.

I admire almost anyone willing to communicate an honest thought, no matter how unseemly, ugly, or sad. These are the thoughts I was pondering this week at one of my many monotonous and lonely jobs, waiting like always to be home and reunited with my unpretentious touchstone, Adam, so we together could get back to finding the smallest things that make us the happiest (taking walks and looking at houses, cooking something delicious, roaming our apartment at night, listening to music and making sporadic conversation). As I waited, reading, watching the sun go down at seven instead of 6 (nice), I found myself feeling kindred, as usual, with Hemingway in A Moveable Feast.

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be the happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

The prerequisite for my friends is that they are as good as spring itself. I’d rather be alone than with a one-upper or a disingenuous, boring or desperate person, or someone with nothing to say, whether or not they insist on talking. There are so many people out here who couldn’t be genuine if you held a gun to their heads. This may be why I have few true friends in L.A. It’s my own doing, certainly. Last week, one of my real friends asked if she could throw me a wedding shower out here. I told Adam, and we said, “Yeah – that would be great.”

Then we realized we only have about two other friends out here that we could comfortably invite. Now don’t feel sorry for me. Like I said, it’s my own doing. I have many fun-time friends I could call to go to a bar or an event and be fashionable or drunk. But I don’t even know if those friends even know Adam, or that I’m getting married to him. I don’t see them enough to have had the chance to tell them. Most of my real friends and I talk over email or the phone, thousands of miles in between us, and we never try to impress each other. I’ve never been a “networker”—these phonies who are only interested in making themselves more connected and therefore more upwardly mobile. And I am at that age when I value my time above all, so that if I am sharing it with you, you have to be special, or at least have the potential to be. Call me a curmudgeon, but when you meet at least 10 new people every day, you begin to become choosy. I guess it’s also a time issue. The people I’m closest to, we’ve been friends now for five, six, ten, twenty years. I guess I can’t expect to delve into the depths with people I’ve only known for less than two years (which is how long I’ve lived here).

Anyway, all this analyzing isn’t getting me anywhere.
The real spring is here, and today I am going to avoid making engagements, so that today shall have no limits!

Mystery Solved

2011-03-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

I have been too busy to communicate properly, but at first glance, I have nothing to show for it. It's been trippin' me out a little trying to figure out where my time's been going. Aside from recovering from a brief sick and working about the same amount as usual, I haven't been particularly social, and unfortunately, I haven't been very active in the acting community of late (aside from joining an improv practice group and going on a couple ill-fated auditions). I have engaged in a little housewifery (laundry, dishes, shopping, cooking) and a bit of working out (yoga, running, workout videos on Netflix -- all balanced by my love for Hooters wings and decadent cheeses). Other than that -- what has been keeping me so busy?

Well, it occurs to me, as I feed sheets of RSVP cards into the printer to fit into pink and red envelopes I carefully chose earlier today after stopping by the print shop to drop off the invitations I designed myself, that I have been planning a wedding without realizing it. Besides morsels of creepy gleaned from autobiographies written by addicts (my latest book craze, evidently), this impending wedding has been occupying my every stray thought. Oh. I'm getting married in May, by the way. I have been shopping for little details, like Indian wedding bells and little brass elephants and jewelry and makeup to go with my dress. I have been updating the two helpful moms with our every thought and idea, sending them pictures, writing my vows, designing a custom autograph-style guest book, picking out the poems and readers and songs and cake flavors and foods. Adam helps, of course. But since he works more than me, I have more time to think about such details.

While beautiful, this is not what our wedding is going to be like.

And let me assure you that I never would have seen this coming. "Bridey" has never been a word to describe me. I'm very romantic, but I like to keep it between me and the romancee. When Adam and I first decided (yes, decided) to get married, I was all about going down to city hall and gittin' er done, but he indicated that he'd rather do it up right. I am not one of those women who spent her little-girlhood gaga-ing about my future wedding and how I wanted it. Barf. White dresses do not interest me, nor does public romance, which always seems either disgustingly performative, or just lackluster and dry. I don't have any desire to wear a blood diamond anywhere on my body, least of all my fourth finger, which is so cliche (why should my love be symbolized the same way everyone else's is?). When TheKnot.com tries to peddle its wares to me, like monogrammed napkins using the initial of my "new last name," I could puke. I love my future husby more than anything in my life, but I am not changing my identity here, people; I am still going to be Ginger Pennington, saucy and untethered, a name and persona which will continue to suit me well, whether or not I'm a Mrs.

That said, we are so excited for our special day--even just the fact that we get a special day--where people are coming from all over the world to celebrate something we celebrate every day anyway! It is ridiculous to me. In a cool way. Since we do have people coming from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Michigan, D.C., Germany, England, Florida, and more, we are determined to make it worth the trip. So it has gotten bigger and bigger, with more and more fanfare, and a lot of that has been my own doing.

These, however, are on the guest list.

Sometimes I bartend at people's receptions, and I balk at how run-of-the-mill their weddings are. This is your one socially approved day to go all out and have the party of your dreams without anyone being allowed to say anything negative...and you decide to play the same music lineup that everyone else plays at every wedding ("Play That Funky Music White Boy" and "The Chicken Dance" are strictly forbidden at ours, thank you very much), while wearing the same thing everyone else wears, decorating the same way everyone else decorates? It's just not for me. Or Adam. Which is probably why I want to spend all my days with him.

Epipha-Not

2011-03-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Q: What phrase is a) always true and b) always guaranteed to make you feel like the moment you're living in is positively indispensable? I discovered this while I was in a yogic trance in a painful Temple pose yesterday...get ready for it:

A: "Your entire life has been leading up to this moment."

It's so weighty!

And yet it is never untrue. My entire life has been leading me up to this very moment, typing this pointless blog post.

And this moment.

Look -- those moments are gone. They're in the past.

But my entire life has been leading me to this moment! How profound.

The problem is, when most people use that phrase, the "moment" they are speaking of is not this moment, but a moment in the future that may or may not happen. That's the one way to make the statement untrue. Because, for instance, if you're sitting there waiting for your Academy Award or whatever, and you say, "My entire life has been leading up to this moment," but what you are talking about is the moment seconds in the future in which you are hoping you'll receive that award, that moment might not ever be. And thus, your entire life would, in fact, not, be leading up to such a moment.

So let's keep it in the present, people. Recognize each moment for what it is -- fleeting -- and make it count.

Love,

Your Armchair Philosopher

Summer Breeze Makes Me Feel Fine

2011-03-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Finally I coughed up the last of that upper respiratory infection. I woke up able to breathe and ready to take on the world! Finally, the sun is back with that faux-summer breeze and blue sky. Finally, after a month of phone tag, I talked to Strother on the phone, and I had a day off to relax yesterday. I walked around in the beautiful day and got a dress, skirt, shirt, and pants from Goodwill, and four books from the library.

I read one of the books in a few hours. It literally kept me awake last night, preventing sleep because a) it was an easy read page turner, and b) it was nightmarishly disturbing: mix The Perks of Being a Wallflower with Requiem for a Dream or Last Exit to Brooklyn and throw in a little of The Bell Jar, and voilá, you have this terrifying young adult fiction (?) 1970s drug diatribe in diary form, Go Ask Alice by Anonymous. Don't read it unless you want to lose a night of sleep. Luckily, I have a few other books which should cleanse my palette after that: My Booky Wook by the adorable Russell Brand, Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.

This whole time I've been sick, though, don't presume I have just been lying idly by. I wish. I've worked every day (mind numbing / surrounded by idiots*), had an audition and a callback (which went very well**), and been taken care of by my sweet sweetie, Adam, who makes me the luckiest.
_________
*When you work mind-numbing jobs for your dough, such as catering or extra work --things any twit can do-- you will find yourself surrounded by the most disingenuous, egocentric nutjobs and rude uneducated wastes of space this fine world has to offer. You have to either keep to yourself or look closely to find the genuine, nice people, and they do not come in the packages you expect.

**Saying an audition went very well in this town is tantamount to nothing. Even if you leave the director speechless in a heap on the floor; even if the room is silent and stunned by your performance until he finally stammers, "Wonderful," and then, "Thank you so much for reading for us; it was magnificent to meet you." Even if all that happens, you still might not get the job -- they might have someone else in mind altogether -- someone über skinny or brunette or Russian or whatever.
Thus, the only attitude to have as an actor is one of what I call Hopeful Pessimism. You can't be completely pessimistic, or else you won't have any reason to keep going, but you can't be naively hopeful, either, because your dreams will keep being dashed over and over again until you are chewed up and spat out.

If you just try to completely forget every audition after you've given it your all -- if you just move on with your life and don't give it a backward glance, and if you keep knowing your own worth doesn't depend on anything around you, but only what's inside you -- you will be fine. Because if you forget you even did the audition and you never hear from it again, WHO CARES; you're busy with something else! Conversely, if you forget you even did the audition and then you DO hear that you got the job, then lucky you! You had forgotten all about it -- it's like getting something for nothing.
Say to yourself after an audition, "I did a great job, but they are probably looking for something else, so I'll move on." I promise that this way, you will never get down on yourself, and you will keep going until you get what you're looking for.