Don’t Tell A Soul

I love this picture, even though Fern’s wacky wide-angle lens stretched my elbow to enormous proportions. I have no idea what Anthony and Joe are doing in the background.

I bought a bicycle last week. I didn’t mean to, though I had been thinking about the concept of having a bike for a while now, it just kind of happened. I have no intention of being a serious biker, I just want to cruise leisurely around Santa Monica looking cute, having some fun, and maybe getting some exercise.

It’s scary to ride in the street though, even in a bike lane. Too many people on the sidewalks, plus I hate people who ride bicycles on the sidewalk, ever since I got hit by one in the 5th grade. Slammed from behind, and straight to the ground. The next morning: a sprained wrist, and the left side of my face is a giant scab. Needless to say, I stayed home on school pictures day the following week.

Since I’ve been riding around, you wouldn’t believe how many things I’ve found in my own neighborhood which I hadn’t seen before! There’s a hardware store, and a key-making place, a cute cafe, and a liquor store much closer than where I usually go. The fire station is really close too! That makes me feel better. They even have one of those “safe haven” abandoned baby drop-off spots. So in case I ever find myself furtively giving birth in a school bathroom, I won’t need to just leave it there.

People who have lived in LA for a long time are very nonchalant about these things but, I won’t lie, I was scared! Today’s quake was the worst I’ve felt since I’ve been out here. While it happened, it seemed like no one had any idea where to go or what to do. We all just kinda sat there waiting to see if it was going to get stronger or stop.

When it’s over, people talk about it, and share memories of past earthquakes. Then they just go about their business. After work I went for a bike ride down the pretty streets lined with tall palm trees, and told myself “I love LA”, despite not being able to even count on the very ground beneath my feet. So what else is new?

 

 

I had a great holiday at my family’s marina up in Oxnard. Boats, beers, and bikini- the perfect ingredients for summer fun  

 

Sometimes I just want put everything in storage, take all of my money, and travel around the world for a year to “find myself”. But then I think, what if I didn’t find myself? What if I came back broke, with no job, no Santa Monica rent-controlled apartment, and no great novel to show for it?

It was a lot quicker to get from 5000 to 6000, than the last thousand miles were. This time, on the 10, just west of downtown. John Lennon is Sunday afternoon music. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go. Go home and ruin your latest project for the 3rd time, but remember a good artist can always fix their mistakes.

I saw these guys on Donny Deutsch the other night, talking about how to “find your passions” and “live your dreams”, and that sort of bullshit people use to sell books. So how do you live your dreams? I was on the edge of my seat to find out.

First, they had the actor / writer / comedian who left his job as *VP of Time Warner* because he didn’t like the direction his life was headed.  Now, it’s all well and good for someone with VP money to one day decide to fuck it, and focus on writing, but how exactly do regular people do that? He got the idea to quit while he was having lunch with someone about a pilot he’d been working on. Next time I do a pilot, I’ll remember that. 

The other guest living her dreams was once a trader on Wall St. by day, a law student by night, and got by on 4 hours of sleep. So already I know she’s some kind of Type-A nutjob. Now she bakes cookies and sells them in those gift tins you buy for the Secret Santa party at Christmas.

The first step to living your dreams is asking yourself what you enjoy doing, and then identifying a career including those. For example, do you like helping people? I don’t particularly. I like going out to restaurants. I like colorful drinks. I like watching Lost and Torchwood. Going shopping. Driving on the PCH for no reason. Art projects. Pointless blogs. Magazines. Books about royalty. Staring out windows. Listening to music. Taking pictures. So it would seem I am ideally suited for … I don’t know, maybe writing some bullshit book about how other people can improve themselves.

Do you ever feel like moments of your life are like scenes from a movie? It could be as simple as a certain glimpse around a corner, or a snippet of some furtive conversation. I look at the walk down a long hallway, the nonchalant stance in the elevator, the tightly wrapped coat hurrying past the jacaranda trees at night, or the drive through the lonely desert… Moments I’m recording, but unable to string together into a cohesive narrative. All of these scenes, for a story that doesn’t exist. Does that happen to everyone, or is that just me?

I’ve been listening to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory lately, and just marvelling at what an excellent album it is. Even with artists I really like, there’s always at least a couple songs on the album I fast-forward through, but this is one of the few in which every single song is fantastic. Version 2.0 by Garbage is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head.

Killing time while stuck in traffic on the 101 yesterday, I tried to think of what my top 10 favorite songs are. The criteria is that I had to have loved it for at least 5 years, not my favorite song of the week. In no particular order:

• “Tumbling Dice”, The Rolling Stones
• “Night Of The Swallow”, Kate Bush
• “She Makes Me Wanna Die”, Tricky
• “God”, John Lennon
• “Josephine”, Tori Amos
• “To The Kill”, Violent Femmes
• “You Look So Fine”, Garbage
• “The Ledge”, The Replacements
• “Over The Hills And Far Away”, Led Zeppelin
• “The Bewlay Brothers”, David Bowie

Honorable Mentions: “Marys Of The Sea”, “Stray Cat Blues”, “Bent Out Of Shape”, “Free Money”, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, “Oh You Pretty Things”.

 

Destiny is a fickle bitch.