Thanskgiving and the Inside of My Head

So, having lost my voice completely, I've been contemplating how different my inner monologue and outer words are (and those moments when I'm tired, tipsy or sated on something and the inside and outside voices co-mingle to an unsettling degree).

My inner monologue without any sort of startling interruption (like the current one shouting move out, move out, move out omg so you don't kill him with the broom) goes sort of like this:

"That step should work, why doesn't it work, it works in my head... oh my god -insert name of editor, art director, staff member, etc - are you trying to make me crazy? Right right. Nothing's personal. Nope that's personal... C'mon, c'mon, e-mail me dammit!! ...Character A should do this, it would totally... oh now what? No, no we are not doing that. Tell him no! Seriously. No. Oh god, please tell my boss to stop singing Barry Manilow next door, Mandy, Angel sang Mandy. Angel was not as hot as Booth... I wonder what my odds are of getting laid this weekend are... No, you still cannot do that... Seriously, Are you stupid? ... Oh god, Dad, becoming a Dodgers fan is not really a legitimate reason to call me... Why can't I remember how to say fuck you in Latin this morning. I knew it yesterday...nope, that still means to fuck sheep. Dammit."

Honestly? If any of my co-workers knew how often I was contemplating either a)shoes b)writing c)sex or d) their IQs, they'd be appalled. Particularly at the vast and sundry combinations of a, b, & c that occur at the same time, occasionally when I'm talking to them (these intersections never involve the co-workers. Rest assured. They'd also be appalled at how often I swear in my head. Although, given my tendency to swear out loud, they probably wouldn't be surprised. (I don't necessarily advocate that kind of language at work, but it's sort of become a necessary evil of working entirely with men who will push to find out if your metaphorical balls are bigger than their actuals).

Also, this week is Thanksgiving, a favorite holiday of mine, and is always a time to be grateful for what I have: health, opportunity, friends and family whom I love, who love and support me back, a giant black cat who survived this year's excursion, a job, a vehicle, a good brain and the will to use it, a place to live and food to eat. None of those things are to be taken for granted.

Finally, I have started a countdown clock on the Facebook.com account for moving out of the apartment. I feel like I need a lot of things around me to encourage this change. I... I've never looked for an apartment for myself. These things have always fallen into my lap, and now I very much need a sort of impetus and direction that is unusual to me.

We're Definitely Not on the PC Vacation Schedule

We didn't have Monday off for Veteran's Day, which is what happens when corporate America sets it's holiday schedule sometime in the early part of last century. We did have Columbus Day off, but the whole thing is an odd trade (normally it's a Columbus Day/MLK Jr. day trade off).

When you're on a month long production cycle that's forecasting two months ahead though, it's hard to live in the actual month.

As a result, I hadn't much thought about the day (until realizing somewhat late into it that Veteran's Day explained the lack of traffic and the quiet around the internet). And driving over to a friend's to do my laundry (60 pairs of underwear, four hours, two eps of Cold Case, 1 HIMYM, and catching up on Dexter later), I heard a piece on NPR about homeless vets and how that issue extended back all the way to not only our Civil War, but the English Revolutionary war. That armies have always pulled from those who don't have a lot of other options, that there are rarely places to come home to. The piece mentioned the GI Bill, and how that forestalled some of the homelessness, providing two years unquestioning unemployment to both resettle the returning soldiers and to allow the economy to readjust. It talked about the WWI vets and how Hoover had them swept from the streets of Washington DC out of fear that they were communist sympathizers.

And of course, I did start to cry. I'd like to say thank you to the soldiers who've gotten such a poor welcome over the years and centuries, the people we send to war, use as political and cannon fodder and fail to support when they return. My grandfather was in WWII, fought in Japan, this young kid from Western Wyoming, naming my dad after a friend of his who'd died in the war - John Luckey, ironically enough, and everyone has always called my dad Luckey instead of Theo. I've no idea how the war changed my grandfather. He doesn't talk about that sort of thing, instead is the gentle little old Greek man, ridiculous about animals, handsome and short, and plays guitar all around town, unintentionally wooing the ladies and mourning his wife of 60 years who passed the winter my father had his stroke.

The writer's strike made me cry for a different reason, the United Hollywood blog was giving a list of FAQs, and one of them was whether or not non-union members could help picket and there answer was unanimously yes, and for some reason that just made me ridiculously teary. Labor relations are definitely an old pinko commie issue, and one I'm fully in support of, and it makes me happy to see people supporting the striking writers. I hope the support continues!

My dad was part of the teacher's union growing up, was in charge of it for awhile, and I distinctly remember them striking on cold and snowy days, marching unhappily and resolutely for equal pay and treatment for people tasked with educating children. I've never forgotten that, how conflicted they all were, and united none the less.

Oh, and BTW, thanks to Mom and to Michael for the Bob Dylan additions:)

One of the joys of being a Dylan acolyte is that everyone I know has sent me this, and I've loved seeing everyone else's message.

Here's mom's:

I Dare You Not To Laugh

Just spent my evening helping Lori Ann pack up the rest of her place to move (unexpectedly, and gratefully I might add because I didn't think I'd get to see her for ages).

She gave me all their booze, which was mostly vodka, Jack, Kahlua,
Bailey's and some cheap brandy.

I just took a bath, went outside to smoke in my bathrobe with a modified White Russian (we don't have milk. The Bailey's had to substitute).

Realized, as I sat on the porch at quarter to 1 a.m. : I have become the dude.

(This story is funnier if you've known me for ten years and were around for the years that we'd routinely come home to find Mike in his plaid bathrobe and long hair, joint lit and White Russian in hand).

I never thought it would happen to me!

Striking a Blow

Shari and Sophie helped Bob Dylan send me a message:




I've also become obsessed with Facebook lately. I think it's the zombies. Definitely the zombies. Mostly, it's the nutty ability to pull all the people you know into one big pile on your desktop and see how the trivialities of their day is going without the overstimulation of MySpace. I claim that I'm trying to do professional networking, but I think the zombies probably have erradicated the validity of that claim.

The WGA is striking, picketing in front of all the major (and minor I assume) studio spaces, and it reminds me of being young, sitting inside the CSTA office waiting for my dad when he was head of the union. Teachers' strikes are always awful messy things because no one feels worse about the situation than the teachers, and yet, it's nearly impossible not to agree with their demands which are generally just adequate pay, adequate facilities, the respect and hours and rights they deserve.

But man I spent a lot of time waiting around for them.

I'm adamantly pro-union, though, and I fully support the writers on this issue. Finally, while my two readers don't actually have live television, a link to how TV shows are going to be affected by the strike:
LA Times Overview of the Writers Strike

Rambling About the Weather

It's grey here, feels like Fall someplace else. Actually, Los Angeles has felt like someplace else since the end of the summer, the air and light just... off. Or it could be me. Maybe I'm just off, my compass skewed, my perspective hampered.

That happens.

Fall's my recess. The time when everything creeps up and curls and I sink into this sort of hazy malaise of depression and reaching and needing change without the impetus to enact it. Blogger found my old old blog for me and I stopped posting nearly to the day of when I started this blog. Funny huh? How cycles are so... pervasive. I read those old words and I could have written them today.

Got this link from shoi1045.blogspot.com : Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990

It's a fascinating collection, a spectrum of the city that is sort of haunting and wonderful and weird.

I picked up a t-shirt from underneath the pile of dirty clothes on my floor, ready to put it on just to run outside and it smelled so strongly of sunscreen that I put it on and wore it the rest of the day, trying to get back some of that feeling of summer and happiness. (Fortunately, I think it must have not been on me long the first time because it smelled like sunscreen, but not like me).

Let's Try This Again, Shall We

Having abandoned this site some years ago for other, snazzier blogging sites, I've returned to try another stab at telling my own Los Angeles story.

In that vein, a review in this morning's LA Times discussed The Two Jakes, claiming that while it's no Chinatown, it in fact stands up better than expected to the test of cinematic time. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I will say that I remember being intrigued by the socio-political issues being raised and the paper tells me that Robert Towne planned a third film to be set in the 1950's and deal with the aftermath of a city built on cars and corruption.

That will be one of those "wish they'd done it" movies for me. I'm fascinated by the development of the city, frequently trying to sell it's charms to those from elsewhere, and often getting only that raised eyebrow snobbishness of East Coast denizens, that look that says, "Los Angeles doesn't look like MY idea of a city."

The city itself continues to be both lovely and heartbreaking. Sometimes I feel like I've found a home, other times I feel like I can't even play dress up well enough to fit in here. Sitting at Coffee Bean yesterday (an LA pastime that gives me little pleasure, therefore I rarely indulge), I saw a woman cause an utter commotion, one of those self-involved, unthinking moments when she pushed into someone else's space like she was a semi demanding the right of way from a poor innocent Echo. When the men had given up their space (nicely at first, then outrageously later when she couldn't get the idea that they were DOING HER A FAVOR), she was rude. Very rude. And when called on her behavior by a couple sitting near by, promptly told them to fuck off. I watched with horror, trying to hide in my coffee and newspaper, and then, when she left her cocker spaniel and went to get coffee, commiserated with the couple. "Who behaves that way?" we said, and shrugged.

But later, when she was sitting with her friend, talking, I heard her say, "We go to this party, and there are all these women in these little dresses, all this skin, and they're so beautiful, and how do you compete." And I still hated her, but I understood, this flickering of compassion for this tiny pretty awful little woman sitting a table away from me, looking out and seeing the same sort of... thing. I don't compete. Couldn't. Wouldn't if I could. But it's hard not to judge yourself by a standard of demands that says, "You are your body." A set of standards that somehow regressed from the halcyon Hollywood days of women being major industry players.