Awkwardly Social

I have an addiction. Snooze. I’m addicted to snooze. It started off as a harmless once in a while kind of thing back in college. I would hit the snooze a couple of times, give myself an extra 18 minutes of sleep, cut my shower short and go on with my day. It progressed to cut shower short, don’t eat breakfast and get an extra 27 minutes of sleep. Then for a while it was the skipping of the shower, breakfast and coffee to give myself an extra 45 minutes of sleep when I decided I should set my alarm for 45 minutes earlier. That way, I could get my shower, breakfast and coffee and still feel like I was getting the ‘extra’ 45. I thought I could trick myself into it. It ended up being 1 hour and 30 minutes of ‘extra’ sleep still skipping breakfast, coffee and shower and feeling like I had been drinking the night before (which to be honest, might have been the case). This became such a habit that now I don’t know how to get up for the alarm the first time it rings. Nine more minutes really means a lot to you when you’ve only been sleeping for 5 hours. The habit worsened when I got into grad school. I had illusions of getting up early and writing in the morning, or excercising or even reading the assigned reading for the 9am class. So I would set my alarm 2 hours earlier than it needed to be set. Which ended up giving me 2 hours of ‘extra’ sleep, plus the 45 I had become accustomed to and a mood like a wounded bear. One time my sister called me out, had an intervention if you will (which by the way didn’t work) and said, “You aren’t getting good sleep in those two hours, it’s being interupted every nine minutes. It’s really not good for you and you are acting like a total bitch to everyone around you.” I tried everything. I moved the clock to the other side of the room, that only made me stumble across the room and lose an extra 20 seconds of sleep. I got a clock that didn’t have snooze. And proceeded to reset the alarm for nine minutes later every nine minutes. I tried getting rid of the clock entirely and doing a mantra before I went to bed, You will get up at 7, you will get up at 7. Yeah. Late for the next ten days. Nothing worked. I couldn’t kick the habit. So I continue my snooze addiction to this day, hoping some day someone will release me from these nine minute chains and give me a real and true 45 minutes of ‘extra’ sleep.

Have you ever gotten into your car and wondered, "What the fuck is that
smell?" That happened to me today. Something is rotting in my car. I’m
hoping it will just go away and I won’t have to clean it out to find
the rot, but you know, sometimes my dreams don’t come true.

The air was so clear today I felt like I was in a movie about how
perfect and beautiful Los Angeles is. I saw a hummingbird. The swallows
are back, not at our building but one not too far away. I’ll miss their
chirping. Dirty Bird is not back. I’m expecting him soon.

I was
reading Lolita and someone sitting next to me said, ‘Is that the Kubric
movie?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘It’s the Nabokov novel.’

That is all.

So I have a few shout outs to take care of…

First, Dan C. and Dan H. have been accepted into the Ph.D. program in Crit Studies at USC. Big ups to them. I’ll have two doctors living right next door.

Second, some USC sound peeps have been nominated for Golden Reel awards. Big ups to Joe, Wes, Phil, Marcelo, Kevin, and Gentry. Allie’s going to be at the awards dinner, so she’ll clap for me.

Finally, Don Hall is receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award at the MPSE awards. He is a great teacher, a great friend and just an amazing human being. Huge ups for Don.

Clap, clap, clap.

So I can’t think of a worse kind of person than George Bush. He is the kind of kid you went to college with that fucks around in class, makes farting noises when the professor leans on the desk, then asks you if you want to study together, but what he really means is can he borrow your notes. He’s the guy at all the frat parties, been accused of date rape a couple of times, but gets off because the girls who accused him somehow forget they even brought it up. He is popular with the ladies when he isn’t drinking, he’s popular with the dudes when he is. Either way, he’s popular. Your friends all hate him. You and your friends don’t understand why he even bothers to go to college when he’s not really interested in anything worthwhile. He manages to get the best scholarship for god knows what and in the end it’s him making the speech at commencement not the validictorian, because somehow, everyone thought he would be better. But he isn’t better, he is terrible. He’s a sexist, racist, and anti-gay and he really should just shut the fuck up, because somehow people start to believe the things he’s saying and somehow the offensive things he proposes don’t seem so offensive to the rest of the student body. Except your friends of course, but you don’t have that many friends and you think you can’t really do anything about it, but maybe you should try anyway. I don’t usually go in for things sent to my e-mail about signing a petition, but my sister sent me this one, and she is pretty smart, way smarter than me, and I signed it. Maybe you want to too. Million for Marriage. But I’ll leave it up to you, because you get to decide in this country what happens. You don’t have to put up with the kid in college who did all those terrible things anymore, because you get to vote. So do what you will. I’m just saying…

I was a part of the best episode of The Waller Show last night. For those of you who don’t know, The Waller Show is what happens on Wednesday nights during “The O.C.” Als, Mels, Tams and Ands (with the recent addition of Ands girlfriend, Cats) get together, have dinner, watch the O.C. and Waller ‘hosts’ the event. It’s quite a spectacle. Mels named it when Waller was being particularly Wallerific one night by saying, “You’re on the Andrew Waller show,” in a very funny hosty kind of voice, and it stuck. So anyway, last night I rushed into Waller’s house soaking wet from the rain and Waller had a special gleam in his eye. He had a new toy. A toy that would change all of our lives. A toy that brought all of us into giggling heaps on the floor (actually it was just me in a giggling heap on the floor). A Disney Karaoke machine. It started off with just Waller singing the Little Mermaid classic, “Part of Your World,” and kept going when I finally peeled myself off the floor and sang it again with him. Then there was Pocohantas, “Colors of the Wind,” and the Little Mermaid, “Kiss the Girl.” there was also a rousing trio of “Part of Your World,” and a touching duet of “A Whole New World.” The song list went on and on. Actually it didn’t, there really aren’t that many songs and once you’ve sung “A Pirate’s Life for Me” with the actual lyrics, you never, ever want to sing it again, or “It’s a Small World,” which didn’t by the way have the Chinese, Russian, Indian words in there, you really just want to turn the stupid thing off. But then we discovered the voices. That’s right, you can change your voice.

There’s a dragon voice, a bird voice, a mouse voice and our personal favorite, the pony voice. Now to understand the amount of glee we had at discovering how great the pony voice is, you must know two things. First of all, it has been a running joke that I had a pony as a kid. I did have a horse, but Waller likes to tell everyone that I was a secret rich kid. His evidence always comes out like this, “But you had a pony!” Second, Als, Ands and I all saw Old School together. I at one point stood up and pointed at the screen and almost peed my pants I thought it was so funny, especially the part where Will Ferrell gets
shot with the tranquilzer gun. So now that you know that, the pony voice sounds exactly like Will Ferrell when he gets shot with the tranquilzer gun, and Als made it talk to me like it was my pony talking to me from the grave. Now. I must tell you, Mels and Cats, not so amused with the Disney Karaoke machine, but that did not stop Mels from figuring out a feature on the Disney Karaoke machine that would soon change the way the game was played. No more would we be just singing for the fun of it, no we had competition rules now, baby!!! The singing machine will score your performance. It will give you an actual number grade as you go through the song. 0-100.

So the game was on. Als, Ands and I would sing “Part of Your World.” Best score wins. Waller has a disadvantage. He is a man, with a mans voice, so naturally it’s going to be hard to win. We didn’t give him a handicap. We don’t play like that, men have been winning all throughout history against women, we’re not going to start helping them out now. Waller got a 33. It was brutal.

Als was up next. She was blowing the damn thing out of the water, 95’s, high 80’s. I was sweating. She was good. Her final score. 65. I was worried. I took the mic, took a deep breath and sang
for my life. It was beautiful. 99’s were flashing, high and mid 80’s. Ok an occasional 8 would show up, but I was singing, yo, I was killing. The final score flashed. 77. That’s right. I won. It was glorious.

Everyone started dispersing after that, but not me, I stayed with the machine and decided to try something a little harder, a little out of my range, “A Whole New World.” No one else was in the room, it was just me and the machine. I sang my heart out. I screamed for everyone to
come in and see my final score, they all say they weren’t there, that they don’t know for sure if it’s true, but I know. I know I got an 83. I know that I am the next American Idol. I know it.

I just finished reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and immediately wished I lived in a different time, was a better writer and was friends with Hunter Thompson. Admittedly, I probably should have read this book a long time ago, but you know, sometimes you find things a little late. So stop judging me for not having read it until now. I didn’t know!

I liked all my Christmas gifts this year, and I’m not just saying that
because everyone who gave me a Christmas gift this year reads this.
That being said, I have one gift that has brought me a special little
bit of joy, $20 on iTunes. My sister, brother-in-law and niece gave it
to me. I still have $9.11 left. That’s nine more songs and some change
left over.

Here are some of the songs I’ve purchased:
1. 100 Years-Five for Fighting
2. With You- Jessica Simpson
3. Toxic- Britney Spears
4. Holidae In- Chingy
5. This Love- Maroon 5
6. Tambourine Man- Bob Dylan
7. Everytime- Britney Spears
8. Here without You- 3 Doors Down

and a couple of others that are actually more embarassing than the above to mention. Thanks T, A and F!

I came to the conclusion last night on our front porch ‘not’ smoking three hundred thousand cigarettes that some of my favorite things will end up killing me someday.
1. I love talking really loud- someday I’ll say the wrong thing, loudly, and someone will shoot me dead.
2. I love ‘not’ smoking- lung cancer/throat cancer/emphysema. (See the not in quotes means I’m actually smoking, but not admitting it to the world yet. Wait, I think I just admitted it. Damn it!)
3. I love drinking coffee- I don’t know how this will kill me, but I bet if I read enough on the web about the negative effects of caffeine, I’ll find some way.
4. I love watching television- ok, also may not kill me, but will severely damage my eyesight (is that still true?) and I will be to blind to see the killer stalking me and I’ll accidentally let him into my apartment and he’ll kill me.
5. I love not having kids- current popular medical ‘wisdom’ says women who have never been pregnant and who aren’t married by the time they are 30 have a higher incidence of breast cancer or ovarian cancer or not living as long. I don’t know how to take those kinds of statistics other than I think right wingers who have a lot of money supported the ‘research’ on dangerously single women in order to scare free-thinking/independently minded women into getting married and getting knocked up.

I’m sure I love doing a lot of other ‘dangerous’ things that will eventually kill me so I’m going to go back to bed now and sleep on it. I’m hoping the St. John’s Wort will kick in soon.

Gas is $2.09? What the fuck? I thought we conquered Iraq so we could have lower gas prices. Didn’t we? Seriously, people are still dying over there so I shouldn’t joke about it. To attone for my sin I will post the link to send books to the troops. The other day I was driving home from school and some asshole in an SUV cut me off, and I shit you not, he had a “No War for Oil” sticker on the bumper. Um… was he being ironic?

Yeah, I’m back in LA, I need to start taking the St. John’s Wort again.