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I'm The One That I Want by Margaret Cho. I was so disappointed that I couldn't make the book fair at UCLA last weekend with my friend Tracey, so she thought to buy the book for me. I missed the one-woman show when I lived in New York, but Tracey and I went to see the film last fall in Santa Monica. If you want to know how much my friends rock, Tracey even had it autographed:
Erica
Good luck in New York!
-Margaret Cho
. . .
I'm also still reading Simple Indulgence: Easy, Everyday Things to Do for Me by Janet Eastman. I'm such a dork, I keep reading the quotes and ideas, but not doing the journalling portion.
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"Someday we'll find it
the rainbow connection
the lovers, the dreamers and me
alllll of us under it's spell."
-Kermit THE Frog
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Stuck in my head:
"Boogie-oogie-oogie get down."
Thank you, Disco Stu! (My favorite Simpsons sight gag-cum-character.)
I heard Britney Spears' "Bottom of My Broken Heart" while making a selection from the feminine hygeine aisle at Wal Mart and exclaimed, "Fucking Britney Spears...Gah!"
That's one of the videos I had to watch about a million times to select snippets for the web site and the enhanced CD single. Ever hearing it again is too much, too soon.
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The Simpsons, The Sopranos & Armistead Maupin's Further Tales of the City. I didn't even realize there were making another one, I just happened to see it listed. I'm going to have to finish the book series now, as I think I've only read through the fourth book and this mini-series is based on the third book.
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While you're visiting the Gallery of Regrettable Food, don't miss Meat!. This one in particular made me laugh until I couldn't breathe. "Sometimes meat likes to dress up and feel pretty."
Swanson Parade of Lost Identity -- women who, in probably their only 15 minutes of fame, were for the most part known only as Mrs. HisLastName.
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Co-Author of The Rules to divorce! So you can't manipulate a man into marrying and staying married to you? Perhaps you have to come into it as two individuals and show who you really are from the beginning? I guess this means that no amount of growing your hair long, pretending not to be smart or funny, and "training" a man will make for a happy marriage.
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Ever wonder where that dollar bill's been? Mine was in Chicago two months ago.
. . .
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Another Elvis dream (I'm doing the Memphis section of my color scrapbook now, but I haven't got to Graceland yet), this one cannibalistic.
What started out as an autopsy to discover THE TRUTH, turned into Elvis Stew. It was rich and beefy. Ewwwwwwwww!
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Why is it that the same personality quirks are taken as crazy and stalky by some, while loveably wacky by others? Is there some litmus test for this, so I stop wasting my time?
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now I'm blogging what I'm eating, whoa.
Still literate as of 9/29/2000 12:20:01 AM
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just what I needed...another dorkblog.
Jeepers, creepers, I last used my peepers on 9/29/2000 12:24:59 AM
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My trip photographs, they're better than expected. Now to get them all organized, it's only been a year!
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Saturday, November 18, 2000
1:51 AM
 thrown aback by a comment someone made to me a few weeks ago. As I've mentioned, I've returned to the community college I went to from 1989-92. A few weeks ago I finally took the time to look up some old professors and coworkers on campus. Everyone was really happy to see me and all said they'd just thought of me recently, wondered where I was and what I was up to.
One teacher whose department I worked in remarked, "Oh, you're just the same. You're still smiling, you were always happy and nice." That was really surprising to hear, because I'm so often told how negative I am, how oversensitive. Well, I don't know, but maybe if you had to deal with racism, sexism, sizism and other social phobias directed at you all the time, you'd get a little sick of representing a type. Sometimes I just want to be Erica.
The funny thing was I felt this so accutely in New York (and, to a lesser extent, in SF) than I did here. I don't know if it's just because people talk more openly about it in those places, or because they tend to compartmentalize things more. Maybe the liberalism and harmony those places preach is hollow.
It's not that I never experienced racism here, I certainly have. However, at some point, people got to know me, saw me for who I am and I felt that I was regarded as Erica and not as a representative for all blacks (a very ill-fitting label for me, frankly, since I grew up without a lot of black people around), women, feminists, dykes (which, unfortunately, I am not, try though I might), etc. This was a place where, by and large, I was Erica -- smart, talented, a great writer, creative, funny, sweet -- not the crazy, crying, torn heap of emotions I was in New York, squeezed between rich South Africans, gays, blacks and Jews without nearly enough understanding between.
I miss New York for a lot of reasons, but I don't miss the derisive place I worked, or being talked to like I was a moron, or not having any time or energy for my own projects. I don't miss Fridays coming so fast and Mondays even faster. I don't miss being accosted on the street by men who presume their attention is flattering.
I do miss Times Square, Disnification or no. I miss the East Village, the West Village, hailing cabs, wandering to Rockefeller Center, The Bryant Park Film Festival (and the HBO dancers!). I miss walking around at 2 am and feeling invincible. I miss the aimless walking, walking everywhere.
I miss my independance, I miss the Staten Island Ferry and getting to ride on it and see the Statue of Liberty for free when I was depressed. I miss Johny's pizza pitas, Chinese food on every corner, the bagels aren't the same here, I haven't had a knish in forever (As someone said the first time I went to Yonah Schimmel's, "Noah's [Bagels] doesn't know from knish!" I miss egg creams.
I miss Brooklyn accents. I miss the subway and how I took them for granted, never leaving early enough. I miss living in midtown and being able to get around to just about anywhere quickly.
I even miss all the paranoid delusions you can't help but have in New York -- that someone's following you, that you're going to get mugged (where have all the muggers gone? Long time passing...Where have all the muggers gone? Long time ago. Driven out by Guiliani, every one) -- I lived in New York for two years (and visited twice before that) and I never got mugged. I got asked for directions the first day, in that part of the West Village where 12th Street meets 4th Street and it really shouldn't. I went into the White Horse to pee and eat and saw Gregory Hines.
It was like that. Cameron Diaz in the West Broadway station, Lili Taylor walking down into the subway at 14th and 7th, Bruno Kirby in the garment district, Michael Musto turning onto St. Mark's, Robin Quivers on the Upper East Side, Gabriel Byrne stealing my cab, Keith David giving me a back rub. New Yorkers are so blase about celebrity sitings, but the thing of it is, it's hard to not feel you are in the middle of this big thing.
Sometimes I wondered if it wasn't all an experiment in controlled living. Sometimes I fancied that it was the world's most sophisticated police state. The Truman Show was one of the movies I saw the week I moved to New York and months later it seemed as if we all were unwitting stars of this 24 hour network that is New York. I felt as though the cameras were always there and that's no great stretch of the imagination.
I miss that, too.
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Thursday, November 16, 2000
5:09 PM
so pissed off. I've been getting a ride from a classmate most Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It's been great, it saves me almost 2 hours over the bus and $20 over the cab. I generally offer him cash or to buy him lunch, but he refuses about half the time.
He's young and most of the time I'm lost in the importance he assigns to car bodies, customization and fancy paint jobs. He seems to take a great deal of pride in his truck and I've never got that. But hey, I take a lot of pride in my writing and site and most people don't get that at all. So, I figure, to each their own.
As usual, he got uptight about some trifle that I didn't even notice. For some reason, the car in front of him didn't go when the light turned green. I said, "I wonder what the problem is."
"Oh, she's just playing games because I rolled her."
See, even the lingo makes little or no sense to me. Moreover, why would she sit through 2/3 of the light, just because he got a little too close to her back end? Move on, for crying out loud.
As it turned out, she made all the exact turns we did and kept ending up in front of us. Waiting to turn from the city's main street onto a smaller, but still busy street, she backed up about 5 feet into his front bumper. That's when I started to get irritated and a bit worried, as we were getting close to my house.
"What are the odds," I thought, "that she'd make all the same turns as us." Indeed, since she even turned onto my street. I don't know if she lives in the area or if she was just trying to get away from him by turning onto a side street. We passed them at the far end of my street (it's uninterrupted on my side for about 1/8 -1/4 mile) and figured that she was either home or just turning around.
My house is on the left side, and, instead of making a U-turn there (it's a dead end on the side of my house or a right onto the adjoining street), he pulls to the left, leaving me to get out on the street side. I hate this, actually, but I never say anything, because well, it wasn't so important and my street isn't so busy that it's a big danger to me.
Except for today. As soon as I got out of the car and stood up from bending to get my backpack, the girl pulled up to me. She and her boyfriend kept yelling, "What's your problem!"
I'm scarcely out of the truck when her boyfriend gets out of the passenger side and starts reaching in his pants. Maybe he was just reaching to pull his stuff up, I don't know. I immediately thought, "GUN!" and high-tailed it into the house. "Fuck him," I thought, "I'm not getting shot over this shit!"
Wouldn't it be ironic? I've lived in all five boroughs of New York City and never had a problem I couldn't handle, but I get shot in front of the house in the boondocks I begged my parents not to buy.
When I got around to the front door (I came in via the garage, it was closer) with the phone, they were pulling away and my friend was walking up to the house, his cheeks covered in blood. The guy hit my friend (not sure if my friend hit him at all), leaving a half-inch cut under each eye.
"I hate ___________ ," my classmate said, referring to the city in The Empire where I live.
"Yep," I said, "all of the violence of a city, none of the culture, convenience or public transportation." It's not much cheaper, either, much to my dismay.
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5:14 PM
glad I'm not 20 years old any more. The only fights I get into are when men follow me on the street. I don't think defending myself is a bad thing.
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Wednesday, November 15, 2000
7:11 PM
completely thrown off by the early darkness this time of year. I had dinner ready at 4 pm! We usually don't eat until 6 or so. It's really screwing me up.
I've never liked this time of year much. I have enough trouble knowing what day it is, but when it gets dark so early, I find myself losing track of time, ready for bed at 8 pm and generally feeling even more out of it than usual.
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7:22 PM
amazed that my father's birthday today was just another day. I am so ambivalent about the whole thing -- part of me is glad I don't dwell on his death. The other part thinks that's somehow wrong. Yet another part of me has frequent nightmares that he never died at all and that it was all an elaborate hoax to get me to come back to this house so they could finish me off, once and for all.
A friend in college told me I had a persecution complex. Well, if people would stop persecuting me, maybe it would go away. These nightmares I'm having aren't just some fantastic, self-important fantasy. They are all too realistic reenactments of actual beatings. That pisses me off. I wish my safety and mental well-being had been a bigger priority. I doubt my mother would have looked the other way if someone were beating Paul McCartney.
That's a sad fact I think of often -- how our own children so often are our last priority.
I guess maybe the nightmares mean that my father hasn't actually died at all. His rage, insanity and inexplicable need to control every last detail are alive and well in me. I'm no more possessed by them every moment than he was. When they hit, however, watch out! That's what makes me saddest of all.
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Tuesday, November 14, 2000
12:06 AM
one of the Cool Girls. I met up with Jennifer and we headed into La-La Land to meet up with other fans of Pamie.
These pictures were actually taken on the way home, but I'm putting them in a more thematic order. First, you see the skyline.
Well, actually, first we saw some sort of tool store with a picture of a very strong and erect bolt chasing a shapely nut, which amused us no end. I wish I'd been able to get a picture of that.
Then you start to see the limos. You see them out where I live only at prom time and sometimes the day of a big concert. In L.A. they are as common as a can be.
One thing I missed in New York was the Spanish-style homes. These just off of Melrose are tiny. The car looks almost as wide as the house because it is.
I never hung out in Melrose much myself. It's the kind of area that makes me feel decidedly unhip. When I lived here before, I could rarely get into the city because of the lack of public transportation. When I could, my $5.25/hour income prohibited me from doing much more than buying lunch.
Maybe it's just me, but it seemed more upscale before. This time, it struck me as younger and, hipper than ever.
We had lunch at Tommy Tang's. I had the Peking Noodles. The duck was great, but it had all the veggies I don't like (green peppers, red peppers and mushrooms), so there was much left uneaten.
Another of the attendees, Alopekis, also wrote about it here.
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12:27 AM
broke and lost at the moment. Going into L.A. just reminded me of how much I miss city life. San Francisco is getting out of control, to say the least. The most recent figure I have for what my old $591 rent-controlled studio goes for now is $1300. I'd have to pay twice as much to live in one room than I did just 28 months ago. It depresses me to think I'll never earn enough to have my simple life somewhere I want to be.
I just can't help but wonder who the hell these young kids are who can afford to live in San Francisco, the East Village and in the desireable parts of Los Angeles. I thought Southern California was going to be the cheapest option for me, but really it seems the three places are neck and neck.
Actually, that's not true, with $800-1000 1 BRs, Queens is the most viable option. It may not be Manhattan, but the 10 minute commute to Midtown is by far the most economical and convenient option I've seen thus far. You could probably even get something way up in the Inwood area of Manhattan for around $800. If the construction on the A is finished, it won't be nearly as bad as it was a year ago.
Bless my soul, but I'm actually considering working for 6 months and schlepping all my stuff back to New York. With the economy the way it is, I am reaching new depths of bitterness over couples, because at least they have the advantage of two incomes.
I am now starting to fantasize about finding a small cottage or somesuch in a truly sleepy college town where I can walk or bike everywhere. That isn't such a far off thing because I could very well finish my degree in the next year or so and start applying for grad school. Of course, I mostly fantasize about places I've been -- both Boston and New York have fine universities, but I'm open to more of a small town as well. Any suggestions?
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12:36 AM
looking at the Elvis fan in Jezebel's Mirror.
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Monday, November 13, 2000
11:23 PM
a Tim Tam fan. One of my favorite bitchies, Netra, sent me some last week in the airport in Sydney as she was rushing for her flight to South Africa, where she is vacationing this month. Awfully considerate of her.
There had been this great debate about the difference between American and Australian biscuits and cookies, so Netra suggested she send a pack to anyone who was curious. Never one to turn down chocolate, let alone when it's free and imported, I gleefully accepted her challenge.
I thought Tim Tams were going to be rolled wafer cookies filed with chocolate, since Netra had described the "Tim Tam Slam" in which one is able to suck up hot liquid through the Tim Tam. So naturally I was confused when she pointed me toward the company's web site and I saw that they were rectangular.
I lined up the first victim. The ends were bitten off to facillitate the "slamming" process.
The Tim Tams square off with a mug of warm milk.
The Tim Tam is slammed.
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