Remember, you heard it here first.
The other problem is that I really don't have much in the way of artistic talent. There's a certain amount that can be taught, I suppose, but I think too much is just instinct. Perhaps a better instructor could guide me, but the ones I've got don't seem to be capable of that. And I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one that's struggling. I can tell from the occasional groan or blank face that some of my fellow students have.
So yesterday, during a class where (surprisingly) I already knew most of the material anyway, when my friend called me to tell me he'd locked himself out of his house and needed me to bring the spare key, I jumped at the chance to escape. I gave the teacher a bullshit excuse -- the spare key business was true, but I fibbed and said my friend lived far enough away that I couldn't get back in time -- and cut out. That my friend had managed to climb in a window in the meantime hardly mattered.
I guess the real issue is why I feel so compelled to attend when I've spent my money and I'm wasting my time in there. Perhaps those are exactly the reasons, though, but I suspect that's only part of it. There is some side of me that feels responsible to these instructors, I think, as though I'd be directly insulting them by not attending or participating. I worry that I'll hurt their feelings or let them down if I don't put up the best front that I can that I'm learning everything they put out there, when in fact, it probably does a much bigger disservice to them by faking it. Though they may not even care what I do, so long as I pay the tuition fee.
The classes will be over in another week anyway, so I suppose it's not entirely worth worrying about. I'll make some half-hearted attempt to do a final project and that will be that. My main concern, though, is whether I'll be able to actually use the software now that I have started claiming to potential employers that I can. I used to fret that perhaps I should have saved my money and just bought a book on the programs instead of taking these classes, but I justified it under the pretense that it would be good to socialize with some new people. Of course, now having seen exactly how many social activities have sprun from them (0), I suppose I should have gone with the book. But then, hindsight is 20/20, and I can't really worry about it anymore: I have to get to class.
I'm just asking.
At least it's not The Donnas again. He listened to that twice in a row yesterday.
Come to think of it, that's a pretty good metaphor for my romantic life. But I digress.
Today, I finally gave in, and it was thoroughly unsatisfying. For one thing, I ate all three pieces of the meal, which not only left me without the wonderful prospect of leftovers to revisit later, but also gave me that greasy/overstuffed feeling that lingers all day. Even eating a healthy dinner of tofu sausages and salad (okay, and some beans) for dinner, I still feel queasy.
But worst of all, the Colonel's minion forgot my biscuit! Which figures. I should just order biscuits and mashed potatoes next time (mmm... starch), as that's what I really crave when I think of KFC. This time, I only got the mashed potatoes, and there was no way I was going to drive all the way back just to get a biscuit. In hindsight, maybe I should have, because now I'm going to crave KFC biscuits and mashed potatoes until I get them.
Creed Fans Realize Band Sucks, SueDisappointed Creed fans sued the pop band Monday, saying singer Scott Stapp "was so intoxicated and/or medicated" at the band's concert Dec. 29 at Allstate Arena in Rosemont "that he was unable to sing the lyrics of a single Creed song."
"Stapp left the stage on several occasions during songs for long periods of time, rolled around on the floor of the stage in apparent pain or distress and appeared to pass out on stage during the performance," according to the suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
Each of the four named plaintiffs in the suit seeks a refund of the $56.75 cost of each ticket, as well as parking expenses. The plaintiffs also are asking a judge to certify the suit as a class action, so other fans who were at the Rosemont show could also get refunds. If the whole class of concertgoers is certified, the total could be $2 million.
Later on in the story, the paper quotes a statement that the band offered after the concert: "We apologize if you don't feel that the show was up to the very high standards set by our previous shows in Chicago." This is basically a variation on your classic non-apology apology, isn't it? "I'm sorry if what I said offended you." Well, fuck you very much.
While I think substance addiction isn't funny... okay, rarely funny... all right, all right, not nearly as funny as a monkey drinking his own urine, I just hate Creed so much that I have to take some pleasure in this. And before you say it, no, it has nothing to do with their religious affiliation, though their hypocrisy is somewhat galling sometimes (this very article, for instance, points out that "fans might have been surprised by Stapp's alleged drunkenness. The group sings songs with Christian subtext, and Stapp preaches against the evils of alcohol."), but everything to do with their near-omnipresence on the radio (which is somewhat less irritating since I don't listen to the radio anymore -- and they are one prime reason I gave it up), their grating musical mediocrity, and especially singer Stapp's obnoxious mealy-mouthed singing style. Every time I hear him sing, I want to slap him. Hard. With a hammer.
The mention of Rosemont brought back some memories for me, though. It was there, at the Rosemont Horizon, that I saw Roger Waters perform, and met him briefly afterwards. I also got to meet several members of his band, and the production designer, of all people. Mostly I remember meeting Jon Carin, who is the only person to have played tours with both post-1987 Pink Floyd and Roger Waters. (I think Roger's comment was, "Well, he already knows most of the material...") Carin is really something of a musical wunderkind: On the Floyd tour he "only" played keyboards and sang harmony, but in Roger's show, he played acoustic and pedal steel guitars, keyboards and sang lead several times. His slide solo in the second half of Shine On You Crazy Diamond was the highlight of the show for me. I was somewhat dumbstruck getting the chance to meet him, and the only intelligent thing I remember asking him was what David Gilmour thought of him touring with Roger. ("He said 'go for it. It'll be a good opportunity.'") Other than that, I just followed my usual trained monkey method: smile a lot, nod and laugh when appropriate. I was just so bowled over to be meeting the guy that I couldn't think of anything intelligent to say.
My meeting with Roger was even less auspicious. He, like Jon and the other band members, came out to see a truck that the owner had meticulously painted with artwork from The Wall. Roger admired the truck, and then signed the hood. The owner said he was going to mount the hood on a wall in the garage (ehm, okaaay...) and get a new hood for the truck. Which he would then have to meticulously decorate, I guess. Whatever. The point was, I got to meet Roger briefly while he signed my tour book. In line with the other post-show people who had stuck around after the show in the hope of meeting him, I tried to come up with something to say to Roger that wouldn't come off as fawning or cloying. I probably should have stuck with "thanks" or something simple, but instead I tried to forge a connection, dropping the name of a mutual (believe it or not) friend, who had produced some radio shows for Roger recently. I'm not sure what I expected to come of this. Perhaps I thought Roger would brighten up at the mention of his colleage and invite me in to the after-show party? We would become instant friends and I would be asked to join the tour as the official mascot? I don't know. I was young and star-struck. What does one say to a man that has sold more albums than damn near anyone else still living? "Floyd roolz, dood?" Hardly.
I saw one more concert at the same arena, but it was hardly as memorable. (What could be?) It was the first of two shows I'd see by Sarah McLachlan on her Surfacing Tour, and I was in the midst of an extended breakup with a college girlfriend who was a fan as well when I bought the tickets. Rather cruelly, I (metaphorically) dangled the tickets in front of her, not as an incentive to get back together with me, but rather to taunt her with what she was losing because of the split.
That was one of two things I did during that breakup that I'm less than proud of. The other one was worse, I'm afraid: During the inevitable argument that usually marks the definite End of Things, I told her I had been in love with her. I never really had, although I liked her a lot. Too many things bugged the living shit out of me, though, for me to ever really be In Love with her. (Her overwhelming attraction to all things "cute," for instance.) But I said it, not out of genuine affection, but to hurt her. Nice, huh?
This, my friends, is why I refer to myself as "emotionally retarded." As opposed to Creed, who are just retarded.
Now I know I'm not the only one to wonder about this stuff. For ages, men have bragged about how they "just lost ten pounds..." This way, they could show you a computer print-out to prove it. Filthy and wrong, I know, but I bet they'd sell a ton of them. (No pun intended.)
It reminded me of a quote from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "The fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave. So every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt."
I seem to recall some case a while back concerning a woman who played Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" repeatedly for days until her neighbors killed her or sued. I forget which. I'm starting to understand the impulse there.
Actually, the overwhelming temptation right now is to cue up my own Donnas disc in the player and blast it, but put it just a second or so off in the tempo of his, to see if it drives him nuts.
Disarming your foes with science.
As I said, this is not the first nor the most painful rejection I've endured. (If it was, I'd be a pathetic bastard, wouldn't I?) However, it seems to have come at a time when I'm apparently mentally vulnerable to this sort of self-doubt, moreso than usual anyway. If I wasn't, though, I probably wouldn't have gone on the date (although I've previously shown myself more than willing to endure humiliation when I think it might yield material) given all the misgivings I had prior to the event. I just can't seem to come up with a reasonable reason why "Melis" (who I've taken to calling "The Troll") would have rejected me so suddenly and definitively. The possibilities are endless and too tempting for my fragile psyche not to ponder. Was I...
I could go on, but you see what I mean. The whole thing just makes no sense whatsoever, and I suspect that no answer she could give me would be wholly satisfactory. Much like how no reason a lover gives for a break-up can be satisfactory; there is still the overwhelming tendency to think he or she is lying and believe the worst regardless. Somehow, in the span of a few e-mails, a phone call and one abbreviated (and that's putting it conservatively) meeting, I've run through nearly the entire cycle of a complete relationship with this woman. (Shades of the answering machine scene from Swingers...) A fucked-up, surreal relationship, but one nonetheless.
Why I've let the Troll situation get to me is obvious I suppose. My brain has always hated me, and always will. Or a part of it does. There's a Mr. Show sketch that springs to mind about the "four voices within us all": an impatient Old Lady, backed up by a Biker, a Gay Guy who "takes it personal and makes it personal," and a Japanese man who "utters nonsensical advice that only our Biker can translate." I'm not sure, but one of them (I suspect the Old Lady) has always kept well on top of the whole Aware-of-My-Flaws-and-Idiosyncrasies thing, sometimes to the point of paralysis. At which point my inner Gay Guy smacks me around until I snap out of it.
At least, that's how it's supposed to work. And lately, it has. I haven't let the Troll thing bother me too much, but I do catch myself looking in the mirror at my hairline a bit longer than usual, or fretting about my skin more, or whatever.
The hardest part, though, is trying to fight the urge to contact her to find out exactly why this happened. This has festered to a degree where my response would either be absurdly antagonistic (I've pondered sending her an e-mail that addresses her as The Troll and says simply, "You're insane, aren't you?") in an attempt to wreak equal psychic damage on her, or pathetically submissive in an attempt to get an honest answer from her. But like I've said, no answer I could get would really be satisfactory, and I just have to let the damned thing go. I refuse to let the Old Lady win, dammit.
Augusta protesters overshadowed by media, police
AUGUSTA--It was a tough battle Saturday -- not between the golfers -- but between reporters and police officers over who had a larger presence at the protest just down the road from Augusta National Golf Club. After 10 months of threats, boycotts and countless media reports against the club's men-only policy, Martha Burk arrived with little more than two-dozen supporters and spent barely an hour before taking off in a Chevy Trail Blazer.
[...]
Throughout the morning, law enforcement officers stood on the perimeter of the five-acre field. At no point did the protest turn violent, though officers escorted Heywood Jablome away after he held up a sign directly in front of Burk that read "Make me dinner" before shouting "Oprah rules."
Since moving to Portland, I've made it a rule to meet just about any dater who was willing, simply because I don't know that many people here, and that seems like a good policy for expanding my social horizons. So far, mostly I've just met the occasional girl here and there, and apart from the baseball girl and one other experience, it's been the One Lunch, Nice Ta Meet Ya thing. Which was fine.
The girl from tonight, named Melissa -- though she inexplicably signed all her e-mails with an abbreviated "Melis" -- actually approached me first, which any guy who's dated online knows is a rarity, unless you happen to be a millionaire doctor on a reality show. She got lost in the minor flurry of e-mails I received in reply to my somewhat witty new ad, but somewhere in our abbreviated correspondence, she sent me her phone number, which I promptly forgot about. Feeling bad about that, though, I called her up last night, and we talked for about a half hour, during which she managed to miss about half of my attempts to spur conversation. She is a young student at a nearby university, and it showed. She reminded me of the misguided girls who declare themselves pre-med at orientation, and quickly switch to English after that first chemistry class.
But I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, because, well... I don't know why, really. It was something to do, I guess. I was rather surprised when, at the end of that first phone conversation (and no more than two e-mails prior to that) she suggested that we meet for a drink. Normally, I don't even suggest that until at least a few conversations, though I suppose her method cuts down on the time wasted on bad matches. We negotiated for quite a while to agree on a place for the drink, and finally she offered to come to my part of town to meet at a pub around the corner.
I'm not sure why, but as a contingency, I worked out an elaborate plan to signal a friend with my cell phone so that he could call me back and rescue me from certain blind date death. I was fairly sure I wouldn't have to use it. I'd never even considered doing that before. I'm usually pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I'm still stinging from a recent date where I was too nice to say no when she said she wanted to see my apartment.
10:30 arrived, the agreed upon time, and I'm waiting near the entrance. Several fairly attractive women walked by, and since I'd only seen one fuzzy picture of her, I asked a few likely candidates if they might be her. No such luck. Then one rather befuddled-looking young lady happened by. "Are you Melissa?"
She seemed awfully surprised by what has to be one of the more common questions one hears during their lifetime, and surely one that she had to be expecting tonight. She stammered the affirmative, but still seemed off-balance. I tried to throw her another bone: "I'm Patrick." Nothing.
I had to recheck my data. Perhaps she also happened to be named Melissa, but wasn't the one I was supposed to meet. It is a common name after all. "You are here to meet someone, right?" She had the expression of a cornered rodent who is clearly outmatched by a much larger predator; striking back is out of the question, the only option is to map out escape routes. "Y-yes," she replied, finally.
I was trying to remain positive in light of the fact that she was acting less like someone on a date and more like the victim of a hit-and-run. I motioned that maybe we should head up to find a seat. Again, nothing. I was starting to wonder if she had suffered multiple head injuries as a child, but I saw no secondary indications like drooling or an inability to dress one's self.
Finally, after I verified her identity one more time, I again suggested we go and get that drink. I'm not sure why I persisted, except that I hadn't really given much thought to what else to do. "No," she said after a leaden pause, "I'm supposed to meet my friends soon, and I think that would take too much time." At this, I came very close to cutting loose on her -- Then why did you agree to come in the first place? -- but the sheer improbability of her response threw me for a loop. However unintentional, she'd pulled a perfect reversal on me. Now I was the befuddled one.
"Well, what would you rather do?"
"I'm going to go."
And go she did. Right back out the door, walking as quickly as she could without breaking into a full run. I pondered going after her to try and suss what just happened, but she clearly wanted no part of it, or rather me. I wasn't going to go upstairs and face the gaggle of pre-Melissas I'd misidentified, so I opted just to head home, which happened to be the exact same direction as she was headed to her car. After about a half-block, I started to feel creepy, walking behind her like that, so I detoured and took a walked off in the other direction for a bit until I was sure she was gone.
To be honest, given her air-headedness on the phone and the physical picture she presented me when we met, I was relieved. From the shoulders up, she was an okay-looking girl, but from there down... well, let's just say "okay" would have been generous. Now, I'm not saying I am Mr. Perfect nor am I any sort of snob when it comes to potential mates' looks, but the combination of her personality and her appearance convinced me pretty quickly that this wasn't going to be a long-term thing, even before she did her cornered rodent act.
Which left me with an unsettling pair of options: Either I confused her so badly that she had no choice but to make a break for it, or I resembled something on the level of the Hunchback of Notre Dame to her. Or perhaps she was just rendered blind and mute by my raw, god-like manliness. (Yeah, sure.) Either way, she couldn't wait to get back to her car.
I'm not going to let it get to me, really. I've been rejected by better. If nothing else, it gave me a chance for a good long laugh when I called back my contingency friend -- not ten minutes from when he and I last spoke -- to let him know not to worry about the rescue call. And he didn't have any insight to offer either. And who could? I doubt even would be able to...
Maybe she does this sort of thing all the time. I envision her and her friends, sitting in the car, drawing straws to see who gets to ditch the guy this time while the other two remain behind with their binoculars and camcorders. They cut through hundreds, maybe thousands of men all across this country, leaving them confused and full of self-doubt while the girls catalogue their reactions for some future project, perhaps a book, a lecture tour or even a reality show. Or even all three, spawning Ditched Date discussion groups, T-shirts ("I got ditched by Melis and all I got was this low self-esteem...") and the inevitable class-action lawsuit. Meanwhile, Melissa and her co-conspirators retire to Hawaii.
You know, I think I should probably stick with the head injury story...
Me: They think they have a case of SARS at the Portland airport.
Me: Yay!
Me: No, wait. False alarm.
Xtop: yay
Me: I guess somebody sneezed on the airplane.
Xtop: good fun
Me: That would make for a fun Jackass prank... go on an airplane from Hong Kong acting like you've got the flu...
Xtop: i think pranks on planes are verboten
Me: All the better.
Me: How can it be a prank if you're sick?
Xtop: what, pay someone to get SARS?
Me: Nahh. Just the flu.
Xtop: paying someone to get the SARS works better, concecptually
Me: True.
Me: Especially if you could pay them to, say, infect certain people.
Xtop: yes
Xtop: like kathy griffith
Me: Or Carrot Top.
Me: Basically, anyone who's done a collect call service commercial.
Xtop: yes
Xtop: except mr. t
Bitch.
I'll get back to that, but first I'd like to explain why today is the first time in five days I've been able to move my head a full 180 degrees. On Thursday, I pulled a muscle in my left shoulder during my usual exercise routine. I say "usual," but only recently has that included a little weight training. I've been slowly working in some strength training along with my normal nightly stretching and jogging. But that day, I guess I was in a bit too much of a hurry, and I yanked something in my upper back. At the time, it didn't seem too troubling, I even managed to go for my run without much difficulty, but in the days since then things have debilitated to the point where I resembled Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein, only with slightly more groaning.
Naturally, none of the dozen or so massage therapists or chiropractors that have offices within the two or so blocks from my apartment were open on the weekend, so I just had to suffer through it. I spent a lot of time in awkward positions on the couch trying to get the heating pad in just the right spot without burning off my ear. I suppose, in other circumstances, it might be nice to take a break from my usual daily routines, but mostly I just wished I had somebody else around to rub my back. I tried rubbing it myself but I only managed to make it look like I was doing the old "making-out-with-myself" gag.
Speaking of having someone else around, there are a few developments on the Quest for Companionship '03. On Saturday, I got a surprise phone call from a girl I'd gone on a few dates with previously, and she wanted us to go to a Beavers baseball game. In spite of my back pain, I agreed to go. First, it sounded like fun, but more than anything I was sick of staring at my walls. Maybe getting outside and a few ballpark beers would loosen me up.
I was about half right. The beers and change of scenery did do me some good, but the hard plastic seats were starting to make my back feel like it had been repeatedly forked to test my cooking temperature. Strangely, though, she seemed more eager than I to call it a night. She'd been at practice (softball or baseball, I can't recall) all day, and was starting to fade. Or so it seemed. I doubt my hunchback imitation was giving off the most romantic vibe.
To be honest, though, I have been getting mixed signals on that front. I just can't tell whether she's genuinely disinterested in that sort of relationship or just not the type to express it. I always have trouble interpreting those sort of signals (and show me a guy who doesn't and I'll show you an egotistical bastard) unless they're blatantly obvious. On one ambiguous date last year, I seemed to be having what seemed like a perfectly platonic dinner until she excused herself to go the bathroom. We had been sitting opposite one another during the meal, but when she returned, she plopped down right next to me. It seemed obvious right then and there that she had expectations for where things were going. Unfortunately, it's not always that apparent, and of course neither party wants to risk the embarrassment of actually, you know, communicating about intentions up front. To paraphrase Billy Wilder, "If I don't say anything, then I can always tell people you fucked it up."
Anyway, I'm not in any hurry. My life seems so chaotic that adding another complication right now would just be stupid. Not that this stops me from trying...
You see, I went ahead and e-mailed that über-girl on Match that I'd been fixated on. Even though I think I overwrote my letter, making the end result somewhat saccharine, she still responded and we've been exchanging friendly e-mails since then. I don't know if it'll go any further, but since I didn't even expect her to reply at all, everything else seems like a bonus.
Those were the only bright spots in an otherwise fairly miserable weekend. I found out too late that I'd missed my friend's baby shower party because the organizer never got me my invite. And Friday was another one of those "reset days," where I try to shift my hopelessly muddled internal clock by staying up for 24 hours or more. I was more successful this time than others, making it all the way to 4 or 5 PM (I forget). I only meant to take a short nap then, as I had to go take a friend's dog for a walk. Instead, I slept right through my alarm and woke up at 9. (The dog didn't seem to notice; I still felt like a jerk though.) And ever since that supposed "reset" I've been sleeping four hours a night, only to then be wide awake, at least until I collapse in mid-evening. Tonight, I was only supposed to take a short nap (again), but I managed to sleep through the alarm (again), and miss my night class. Meaning that I just slept away 1/6th of my tuition.
Although I'm not thrilled about the financial loss, I've been hitting critical mass on those classes anyway. Without the chance to use the knowledge on a regular basis, most of the information doesn't even make it past my auditory canal. At least I feel marginally competent in the Photoshop class. There you're essentially working with pre-existing elements. All that my Illustrator class has taught me, though, is that I lack anything resembling design instincts. Hell, I can barely match my clothes without sweating.
The instructor's not helping matters, honestly. She seems content to photocopy exercises from a book, all of which is well and good, but I don't have the book, and with all the procedures laid out there for you, the lack of problem solving means that retention is practically zero. She hands out evaluation pages at the end of every class, and each time I suggest letting us work things out for ourselves more, but I guess it clashes with her teaching style. So instead of paying attention like I should be, since it is my money paying for this, I wind up feeling like I'm back in high school, just putting in my time.
It doesn't help matters that I don't have either program on my home computer, and I have neither the financial resources to afford them nor the computing power to run them even if I could.
As it stands, the original point of the class is basically scuttled anyway. I could have just as easily bought the books and, um, borrowed the software, but I needed a new social outlet. Unfortunately, in these advanced classes, the number of students is significantly diminished, and almost entirely populated by married women. There was one girl who joined the advanced class but was not in the beginning section that I swore couldn't have been older than 16, until I overheard her talking to her neighbor about her fiancé. Kids today...
Still, so I missed a class... so what? It's not like I didn't need the sleep, especially after the rubdown. This morning (after awaking early, natch) I called around to all the different massage offices in the area to price sessions and finally settled on the one that happens to literally be right outside my window. She was the only one who offered half hour sessions, and happily, had an opening today. The treatment proved to be just what I needed, even though my back was basically on the way to mending itself anyway. She even did an excellent job of making me feel relaxed. I am always uneasy getting massages from strange women, though nothing could top my discomfort that one time I injured myself and no one else was open but this short, hairy male masseuse.
But this woman did the trick and now I have full range of movement again. The only downside to this is that now I have no legitimate reason to beg women to give me backrubs.
Then again, who needs a reason for that?
Damned Trekkies. IT WAS MINE FIRST!
Just saying.
Anyway, on to the real story. Tonight, while cooling down after my run, I happened to turn on HBO to see, of all things, a documentary on methamphetamines called Crank: Made in America. It caught my attention because it was shot, at least partially, in Windsor Heights, Iowa, which happens to be the next suburb over from where I grew up. Suddenly I was very glad not to be in Iowa anymore. The kids in this doc had nothing to do but drag race, putter around in faux wood panelled basements and, I guess, shoot crank.
I'd like to know why people can't seem to come up with slightly better nicknames for their drugs. They all sound too much alike: Crank, crack, coke... What if a drug-addict-on-the-go wants one, but his dealer mishears? The addict runs off all happy to shoot up but gets a very unpleasant surprise in his baggie when he does. And as any retailer will tell you, when the customer's unhappy, the seller's going to wind up unhappy, too. Pretty soon, the junkie's blown up your custom van, the cops come and arrest everyone on the scene, and you're in a cell with a behemoth who calls you "Nancy." That is why you've got to distinguish your products, people!
Anyway, I'm told the reason the meth problem is so bad in Iowa is that it's on the intersection of two major interstates, I-80 and I-35. I'm not entirely clear on why that only increases the flow of meth and not just all drugs, but if I had to guess, I suppose it's because meth can be produced at home instead of grown somewhere down south and imported. Take that, Columbia.
The show took great pains to reinforce the fact that Meth kills brain cells, which seems terribly obvious to me, and somewhat of a useless statement when you consider that pretty much all drugs kill brain cells. It's what they do, and we have pretty much come to terms with that. No one seems to mind when beer offs a few of the plucky bits of gray matter with the misfortune to stand in its way. Why the creators didn't quantify this better, I don't know.
Documentaries always seem to have this dual effect on me, and this one was no exception. On the one hand, they cheer me up to no end about my lot in life. They generally don't make documentaries about hot supermodels with too much money, unless it's a swimsuit special on E! No, usually they follow around some down-trodden fool with a life far worse than mine could ever be without some real effort. I mean, these people are overacheivers at screwing themselves up, and how can you not feel superior to that?
Unfortunately, the other side of that coin is that, well, there is now no ignoring the fact that you have to share a planet with these jerks. Sometimes, like in the case of this doc, even a zip code. I probably saw some of these very same assholes at football games, peeling out their Trans-Ams with the empty cans of Natural Light in the back, blasting Journey's Greatest Hits at window-rattling levels.
So the question is, if these shows make me so manic, why do I keep watching them? I suppose it's the same reason addicts try crank: because someone gave them pot in high school. No, wait... That's not it. No, it's probably all tied up in the same impulse that causes people to stare at car wrecks or watch American Idol: There's a wicked, undeniable fascination with other's misery, particularly if its self-inflicted. (Which may also go a long way towards explaining why I write this weblog, but I digress.)
It's not nice to laugh at people's misfortune, but sometimes they make it so damned easy. I remember watching another documentary on HBO with my roommates back when I was in college. It was about prostitutes in New York, and it wasn't the original Hookers at the Point, but some sequel, like Return to the Point With the Hookers Who Are Still There Fifteen Or So Years Later, or something. And it's a miserable existence, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but very often these people make some excruciatingly stupid decisions. Besides the thong-with-thigh-high-boots fashion choices, I mean.
This one prostitute was relating a fairly horrific story about getting assaulted at gunpoint by one of her johns, but she smartly managed to get the upper hand and get out of the car. At this point, we, the audience, is cheering for her. "I made it out the door, and I was free and clear." Yay, hooker!, right? Well, no:
"Then I went back for the shoe..."
...
She went back for a shoe. No, really: a shoe. A SHOE. Look, honey, I know money's tight and all, otherwise you wouldn't be hooking. (I don't think.) But regardless, when your choices are...
A) retrieving the shoe but also getting pistolwhipped by a maniac;B) freedom, minus one shoe.
So amongst my roommates, "going back for the shoe" became shorthand for doing something irredeemably moronic and damaging. Say someone (okay, me) called up his ex that day, the inevitable response was, "Aww, hell. You just had to go back for the shoe."
We all go back for the shoe now and then. It's inevitable, I suppose, if only from a statistical standpoint. Nobody's perfect. The key is, I think, when you know ahead of time that you don't need the shoe that bad -- like, say, when someone offers you a hit of a drug named after a car part -- you opt to just let it go, man.
Downstairs neighbor music update:
All played at the kind of volumes to suggest that he's proud of
these selections.
Dammit.
Regardless, I was Mr. Popular today, though, to be honest, a lot of it was people returning my calls. What I can't figure out is why they all called either when I was trying to nap or on the other line.
One of the calls, easily the most tiresome of the bunch, came from my former neighbor, the divorced ex-Mormon Chilean stripper. She was calling to thank me for taking her to her plastic surgery appointment last week. I can't make this stuff up, folks.
The whole story really starts a week ago this last Friday, which, looking at my calendar, would have been the 28th. Not one of my proudest days, by a long shot. It's no secret that it's been a struggle making (and, more importantly, keeping) friends here in Portland. And on that particular night, that aspect of my life was feeling particularly bitter. I was having an allergic reaction to my isolation, and proceeded to call every local I could think of to head out for drinks, a movie, whacking ourselves with a hammer in public... whatever. So long as I didn't have to do it in my apartment.
The sum total of my Portland Little Black Book consisted of about three working numbers. It didn't take long to exhaust those possibilities. One didn't answer; I left a message. Another was, apparently, permanently grafted to his couch. The third had responsibilities relating to his sister's upcoming wedding.
Naturally, I did what anyone would do in those circumstances: I started drinking.
Well, not right away. First, I moped. Then I started mixing drinks based on the available contents of my fridge. I hit upon a not unpleasant concoction consisting of gin, orange juice and Diet Squirt, which sounds awful, and probably is, but the overpowering citrus hides most of the noxious flavor of the gin. I don't know why keep buying that stuff, but now I understand the appeal of wine coolers a little better. Why drink alcohol when you can drink Kool-Aid?
At some point, I decided it was time to reconnect with some Portlanders I hadn't spoken to in a while. Mostly this meant the divorced ex-Mormon Chilean stripper that I used to be neighbors with. Our personalities are somewhat like the vegetable oil and vinegar in Caesar dressing. Sometimes, if the conditions are right, we mix, most of the time we don't. But when you're desperate for company, you'll try anything. Or at least, I will.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your take on the outcome, she wasn't home. So there would be no stripper fraternizing (or would it be "sororitizing"?) that night. That's mainly the reason I pal around with her, truth be told. I keep hoping I'll get invited to one of her stripper slumber parties-slash-lingerie tickle fights. The odds are, I know, slim. Far as I could tell, she never had one during the months I lived next door, and she hasn't expressed an interest in them in our limited conversations since then. Actually, there's really only one conversation topic she has ever expressed an interest in: herself. Sometimes for hours without stopping to breathe.
So, in a critical error in judgment, I left her a note and went home to drink more.
The night wasn't a complete loss, though. Rather than mope, I opted to do something productive, namely update my online personals profile. Snicker if you must, but it's been surprisingly effective, especially since that Friday, I discovered the formula for the World's Most Effective Personals Ad.
Hang on. You don't seriously expect me to reveal my secret do you? Not a chance. But since I posted this, the activity on my profile has expanded exponentially. It's been viewed something like 150 times since I posted it, and about 10 percent of those women went ahead and wrote me. Not a landslide, but still better than I had been doing. I think the major difference is that so many of the women's ads I look at are so incredibly homogenous. I figure, though I haven't investigated it personally, that the men must suffer from the same. It's not unlike politics, where polls and consultants have paralyzed all the candidates from being distinctive, even from the other party. I think people are just too afraid potentially offending someone, and so no one stands out. Everyone likes good senses of humor, everyone likes going out for a nice dinner, and everyone is sometimes up for going out for a nice hike or curling up on the couch to watch a video, depending on their mood. We know these things, okay? They should outlaw putting them in a personal ad. Are all the singles really this similar, or are they just deluded into thinking that those things somehow make them different?
Perhaps its really all this homogeneity that keeps them single? How ironic would that be?
I am really the wrong guy to ask, though. I'm far from an expert. I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as "socially retarded." To be my age and have the weak relationship history I do is either a sign of pathetically bad luck, emotional damage, or both. Or possibly I have a horrible deformity that no one has been able to tell me about, but is invisible to my naked eye.
But I have faith that my luck is going to change. I have to, otherwise I'd just slit a wrist right now and scrawl Schopenhauer quotes on the walls in blood until I blacked out.
Anyway, I'm glad I finally got the profile revision out of the way, because there's a young lady on there that I've been dying to respond to, only I was afraid my profile was too goofy, too out-of-date, too... well, me. All the me that I don't much care for when I look in the mirror, anyway. Now it's improved somewhat, at least more up-to-date; I suppose the goofy is hard to get rid of. Ditching it would probably be tantamount to false advertising.
This girl embodies everything about the kind of girl that I used to get mad crushes on in high school, and that I still have some sort of primal response to in women to this day: She's brassy, she's bold, she's vivacious. She seems to have some sort of sense of humor. But I've spent so long trying to come up with a suitable replacement for my profile that I'm afraid I may have built her up so much in my head that I won't be able to approach her without (metaphorically) spilling my drink on her.
I'm probably overthinking this. In fact, I know I am. I always do. People often accuse me of thinking too much, which I find to be a peculiar insult. Would you rather I thought too little?
But enough about that, back to the divorced ex-Mormon Chilean stripper. Earlier this week (I can't remember whether it was Sunday or Monday), she called me out of the blue and said that she'd received my note and was out of the country at the time. (In Chile, naturally.) After some extensive chit-chat about, well, her, she asked me what I was doing at 7 AM the next morning. As it was about 10 when she called, I replied probably nothing. Except, you know, sleeping. She informed me that her car had broken down and that she needed a ride to the doctor. To do what, I asked, hoping it wasn't contageous. She danced around the subject a bit (no pun intended) and finally revealed that she was "having her lips done." With the amount of embarrassment she put into this statement, I assumed she meant the lips only her customers get to see. I'd heard of some women, unhappy with the, I don't know, less-than-ideal appearance of their vaginas having them altered. Seeing as how Oregon strippers get completely nude, this could be, I suppose, a very real business concern.
I didn't press the subject and agreed to pick her up at 7, with the promise that she'd fill up my tank as a reward. With gas prices as high as they are, this wasn't a bad deal.
Somewhat surprisingly for me and my overactive need for sleep, I woke up 15 minutes before the alarm. The trip there went surprisingly smoothly. Traffic was nearly non-existent, and though Chili was as talkative as ever, I had my CD player to keep my mind busy while I nodded and uh-huh'ed. I was paying enough attention, though, to stop her from popping a Vicodin before the surgery. She believed it would help with the pain after she was done, which is true, especially if the anesthesia and the Vicodin mix and kill you during surgery.
Bolstered by this victory, I went ahead and asked her which set of lips she was having done. Thankfully, she was having the top ones done. Not collagen, but some other futuristic treatment that makes your lips puffy. To which I can say, "Well, whuppity shit." Who cares about the hood ornament if the car's got no engine?
The surgery went quickly and without cardiac arrest on her part. Unfortunately, she looked like a domestic abuse victim, and for a woman who's had a kid (haven't all strippers?), she had a remarkably low tolerance for pain. We went to the store across the street, but since it was still early, the pharmacy wasn't open yet, so we got her ice packs, then we stopped at a 7-11 a few blocks away to get her real ice since the ice packs weren't cutting it.
You know, when you do this shit for your sister or your girlfriend or whoever, it's easy to overlook the complaining and the effort, but it's amazing how much of that relies on affection. I managed to be kind and understanding, but not far from the surface was a lecture about withstanding pain that I was tempted to unleash. And today she had the nerve to call me up and lecture me about how men don't have to deal with as much pain in our lives. Pardon? I've never heard of a man going out and getting injections in his lips. And don't tell me that women do that shit for us. Find me a man who cares and I'll show you a shallow prick.
Still, I put up with it and played the understanding surrogate boyfriend because that's how I was raised, and I hate to see any woman in pain. It's a guy thing, and women should count themselves lucky we have that response. Just cry a little and you can get anything you want. Except maybe the presidency.
So I got her home, by which time she was thoroughly doped on two (or more) Vicodin, and I went about my business. Later that day, though, she called and asked me to come over and jumpstart her car so she could take it to get fixed before (wait for it) her hair appointment. Once again, I obliged, in spite of the fact that I had my night class coming up all too soon. I got the car started, and with just 45 minutes until class started, she asked me to tail her to the mechanic to have the electrical system checked out. Again, I obliged, because I'd already come that far, and I damn sure wasn't going to get counted out of any slumber parties for not doing this much. But then she managed to put three cars between us after turning the first corner. By the first stop light, she had ditched me completely, running a yellow light. Having no idea which mechanic she was going to, only the general vicinity she was talking about, I drove around a bit, but never even caught sight of her again. And I was late for my class.
In our conversation today, she informed me (very casually, I might add) that, at the time, she was not only still dosed on Vicodin, but also stoned on pot. Wonderful. I guess that explains her poor judgment, but not why she thought it was a good idea to be driving or making hairstyling decisions.
The moral of the story is, I guess, no matter how lonely you are, choose your friends wisely. Either that or take the bus.
Honestly, the movie's so painful that I've never been able to watch the entire thing without fast-forwarding, but since I get asked about it so frequently (possibly because I find myself referring to it or my time in LA relatively often), I find it handy to have one around. And while it's nice to now have a copy with decent resolution, I more prize my "bootleg" copy (given to me prior to release by my supervisor on the movie, Ted) that has copies of the auditions on it. If you think the movie as it exists now is bad (and it is), you should see the people who didn't make it in...
So, having nothing better to do while I ate lunch (Campbell's vegetable beef soup and peanut butter & jelly between two pieces of bread -- which is to say that the PB&J betwen the bread, not all three, but you knew that), I popped it in and immediately regretted it.
As you saw above, the film has been retitled "Reckless + Wild," but for some inexplicable reason they kept the theme song taken from the original title. Okay, not that inexplicable. It was undoubtedly a financial decision. Why they retitled it that, though, I'll never know. "Desperate But Not Serious" is fairly cumbersome, but "Reckless + Wild" is just dumb, although I suppose the latter promises slightly more sex than the former.
Not that the movie delivers on that one bit. The closest you get are a lot of lame sex jokes and two shots of the lead actresses adjusting their breasts. Inside their clothes, so don't get too excited.
(Guess the marketing to the sexually frustrated worked fairly well... Check out this comment from one IMDB user:
This childish escapade featuring a couple of California bimbos shouldn't appeal to anyone, thanks to the labored humor and mindless performances. What this picture lacks is what it really needs: the leads should have taken their clothes off as often as possible to offset their acting abilities. Everyone is noticeably taller than Joey Lawrence in this movie.
The movie was supposed to be a female version of Swingers, but where that film was somewhat clever and also the singular vision of one writer, this script had more hands on it than a stripper at a bachelor party. Hell, even I got to write a line. I feel sorry for the actual credited screenwriters, not only because their names are attached to this, but because the final version is probably nothing like what they wrote. (And here I should apologize to one of them, Abbe Wool, who is probably best known for writing Sid and Nancy, and who I once erroneously credited with the first draft. She e-mailed me to correct my mistake, but I never changed the corresponding page. Until now, that is. Sorry, Abbe.) I don't think I'm breaking any Writer's Guild bylaws by revealing that the final writers on the project were Rodney Lee Conover, a standup comic and sometime actor, and Jeffrey Hause, whose biggest credit was scripting the Jim-Carrey-Before-He-Was-Jim Carrey film Once Bitten. (From looking them up, I see that these two had another movie produced in 2002, BachelorMan, which appears to star relatives of some of our best and brightest B-movie and sitcom actors. Check out the IMDB comments page, with its suspiciously glowing reviews, and compare that to its middling average rating and something smells fishy. To me at least...) I find it hard to blame Jeff and Rodney, though; they were nice enough guys, and really just cogs in the whole machine of bad moviemaking.
If you had to find the point where things started going wrong, it would probably start with the involvement of this woman:
Though she's nearly unrecognizable, that's "supermodel" (defined as: a model from the planet Krypton) Claudia Schiffer, best known either for pushing out her breasts and looking pouty for Guess Jeans or schtupping David Copperfield. Notice nowhere in that description does it mention "acting." Because, you know, she couldn't. As one person on the set put it to me, "Claudia couldn't walk through an open door without explicit written instructions. And those you'd have to read to her." But without Claudia, the film probably wouldn't have been made.
...
I'm sorry. I had to ponder that last sentence for a bit.
You see, in foreign (read: not America) markets, two things will always sell: "Boobs and bombs." Or more accurately "boobs and explosions," but "boobs and bombs" has that nice alliteration. I mean, check out this poster from Norway, where they substitute Playboy Playmate Stacy Sanches for Christine Taylor (who mysteriously still gets credited), and you'll see what I mean:
Given her prominence on the poster, one might be led to believe that Sanches has a somewhat significant part in the film, but she only has two lines in one scene. (And thank God for that. If anyone were to steal the Worst Acting in This Film Award away from Schiffer, it was Sanches. I wish I could relate how painful it was watching all six-foot-plus-in-a-miniskirt of her try to say the line "I just loved 'Crash Test 2.' It was so... so... crashy" with any feeling. The editor deserves an Oscar for somehow making it seem like half a performance.) While there's no actual nudity in this film, just the name "Claudia Schiffer" has enough sex appeal associated with it to insinuate that there might be nudity.
That promise is enough to sell the film to hundreds, possibly thousands of non-English speakers (and they really ought to be glad they don't understand the dialogue), and maybe a few domestic masochists, that canny overseas marketers were willing to give producers of the film money up front in exchange for the right to sell the video to unsuspecting suckers in their respective countries. And since the money is provided prior to production, the distributors have no guarantees of the quality of the resulting project.
Poor bastards.
Claudia was truly a nightmare by all accounts, my own included. It's somewhat ironic (in the Alanis sense of the word) that I mentioned a peanut butter sandwich earlier, as that just happens to be what Claudia insisted upon having in her trailer before she arrived. Creamy peanut butter and without the crusts if memory serves. She rarely ate it, but threw a fit anyway if one wasn't there. Now, if you're going to be a diva, you should at least be able to bring the goods, but Claudia couldn't even play dumb if that's what the script called for. Her concept of acting seems to be saying her lines and seeming bored. Her performance is so stiff and wooden that one might mistake her for a cardboard cut-out.
Except, that is, when she's writhing on stage, pretending to be a singer. And here is where things are truly embarrassing: Claudia sings like she's got a severe head cold, and she writes lyrics in a manner suggesting she was chugging NyQuil. That's right, they let her pen her own lyrics. Apparently Ms. Schiffer's idea of good rock lyrics is "Rock out/slice him up/Yeah!" Though I suppose this could have worked for early Whitesnake.
Perhaps she intended to play a mediocre singer singing high school-poetry lyrics. But I highly, highly doubt it. It's hard to ascribe intent to anyone who changed her mind so randomly and so often about what type of character she wanted to play several times. When the script was first written, the Gigi character was written as a supermodel, which, the producers presumed, would be easy enough for her to play. But Claudia decided instead that she wanted to be, first, a writer, and then a rock star. (There were possibly other changes that either I don't recall or I'm not privy to.) I'm glad they didn't go with the writer, as that would have pushed suspension of disbelief to its limits. Regardless, her waffling cost the producers more than one script rewrite, not to mention their share of headaches. I think that's why, in the final script, there are more than a few snippy comments about Gigi, added, no doubt, by frustrated screenwriters. Which may explain why there were so many of them.
Good for them, I say. Claudia was far too busy pitching fits about sandwiches and coming up with disturbing hair, make-up and costuming ideas to notice. In the film, she looks like the love-child of Rob Zombie and the post-drowning Laura Palmer. The posters you see here are all severely color corrected, to add skin tone that Schiffer worked extremely hard to eliminate. The cumulative effect of her character decisions and her wooden performance give the impression of a female version of the dead guy from the Weekend at Bernie's films.
All this could have been workable, I suppose, if the writing weren't so forced and the directing so impotent. On the set, the director, Bill Fishman (whose previous credits include the fine Tapeheads and the wretched big-screen version of Car 54, Where Are You?, made in the frenzy of big-screen TV adaptations that followed hits like the Addams Family hits; as one IMDB reviewer put it:
Oh my god! This has to be the worst f---ing movie I've ever seen! I saw this when I was 10 years old and this gave me a stomache ache.... Honestly! I'm not kidding. That's how bad it is. Serious. I'm a fan of John C. McGinley, but what the hell was he thinking?! Aaaah! I think this is the worst movie ever made!
Surprisingly, the rest of the crew was top-notch, as was most of the cast, who have done and will undoubtedly do better work. (It would be hard not to.) John Corbett was in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Christine was in Zoolander, Paget has been absolutely hysterical in Andy Richter Controls the Universe, though its future at the moment is woefully uncertain. The two funniest people in the movie, though, are easily Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn, who both did work on the best sketch comedy show since Python, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and who continue to do excellent stand-up and supporting work in sitcoms.
As it stands, though, I personally have relatively little, if any, responsibility for the quality (or lack thereof) of the film. I wound up working on the movie through a series of coincidences. I was in LA for an internship on Movieline magazine, which I discovered was staffed exclusively by stuck-ups and ass-kissers who had no interest in showing the interns the ropes, preferring instead to use us as indentured servants. Fortunately, the internship only took up two five-hour shifts a week, with a good portion of that spent killing as much time as I could get away with on whatever errands they sent me on. So when some film company wanted to shoot on my street in West Hollywood, I approached them and offered to work for free.
Now, as bad as the final product was, I had a blast on the set. Usually. Several times, for reasons I don't fully understand, I was often given "security" duty, which entailed standing (alone) by the film truck for hours on end because they didn't want to lock it. Apparently the ten seconds it would take to lock and unlock it when they needed more film from the truck would put the film irretrevably behind schedule. After a few days of that, I wised up and brought a legal pad and pen with me so I could write letters while I waited to be relieved.
But, like I said, there were good times, too. I made some really good friends, mostly the other interns and PA's. In particular, I bonded with Bob, Amber and Gina, as well as our boss, the head PA, Ted, and Christian, the office coordinator. We called sarcastically referred to ourselves as the "I-Team," as in "Intern" (this was the year after Lewinsky), but also "not quite good enough for the A-Team." We managed, in that month until I had to go home, to have more fun than I'd had the other two months I'd been there. One weekend, Christian offered all of us a choice of the LA Confidential location tour or the Swingers location tour. We opted for the latter, and proceeded to break the smoking ban at several of LA's finest bars.
I had a terrible crush on Gina, but I'm fairly sure she didn't fancy me back, and I was never very overt about my feelings. Amber was a sweetheart too, but she had a real thing for the camera assistant, Ray, who I just found out went on to do some work on the Lord of the Rings movies. They wound up moving in together not long after the movie wrapped. And then there was Bob, who was my comrade-in-arms, my right-hand man. We most of our time on the set laughing at the absurdities of the goings on. We were a regular Statler and Waldorf. Last I heard, Bob got frustrated with the red tape in Hollywood, moved back to Ohio and made a low-budget film called The Last Cowboy, I believe. Good for him. I wish I was still in touch with him. Hell, with all of them. It's a bit bittersweet to see this movie again and see us in the backgrounds, and remember the odd things that went on just before (or sometimes during) shooting.
Yeah, I got to meet some semi-famous people (Henry Rollins seems to be the one most people want to know about, but I was also thoroughly impressed with world-famous music producer Daniel Lanois, who did Claudia's backing tracks), some decent actors, a supermodel and a Playboy Playmate of the Year, but if I had the choice, I'd rather have lunch again with my friends than any of them.
I-Team, if you're out there... I hope you're all doing well. Maybe sometime we could get back together and make another crappy movie. You know, for old time's sake.
For the last week, he's listened to nothing but the new Donnas record, and I thought I'd be happy when he changed to something else. But then he put on ABBA, and now Cyndi...
