Awkwardly Social

Sitting in a car for 12 hours with someone leads to long discussions about life and relationships and what you’re looking for. I, as it turns out, am looking for a unicorn.

The Los Angeles Male is a strange breed. Generally speaking, The LA Male is not so much a manly man, as a man who kind of thinks, “You should maybe look at your car yourself because I haven’t really ever seen the inside of an engine and I have no idea if I could really give you a second opinion on what you were thinking was maybe wrong with it maybe you could give yourself a second opinion and oh dear god is that fluid leaking from your car woah wait a second why won’t my landlord hang this picture for me no one ever told me that I might actually have to hammer in a nail because my manicure is actually a secret but I do get manicures and I really like the way the lady rubs my arms maybe you could give me a manicure and scalp massage but no I don’t really want to see you next Tuesday because that’s when I play poker/XBox Live/hang out at the comic book store but I really do have interests in things like sports if you consider skateboarding and surfing sports yeah I’m really into surfing because it like gets me closer to nature in a way that I never thought I would feel maybe I should go surfing tomorrow before we meet for lunch no I don’t have any food aversions except I don’t like anything that has ever touched any sort of spice that might be considered a little hot or even you know flavorful sure you can bring your dog I LOVE DOGS except only pit bulls like manly manly pit bulls that YIKES did you see that pit bull just tried to look at me so really to be honest I actually only like chocolate labs the best what do you mean they’re the stupidest of all the labs because they were bred only for color what are you some kind of dog expert oh you are well guess what I’m an expert in indie bands of the early 2000s that’s right I go to Coachella and I occasionally smoke weed hold on that’s my weed dealer on the phone right now no I won’t share my weed with you because you told me you quit smoking last year oh it was two years ago even more reason to FUCK that reminds me did you guys see that sweet street art exhibit last week because I heard it was awesome no I didn’t go I was at a meeting with this guy who thinks maybe I should really consider finishing this script I’m writing and also I should give him some more of the rad photographs I’ve been taking because he really thinks there’s like a market for them in like Japan and my mom told me that I was a really talented photographer but I didn’t believe her until that guy like totally made me believe in myself and you are sort of pretty looking at me like that maybe I’ll try to awkwardly hold your hand and then make a move but it won’t be an obvious move because I don’t want to come off like I’m really into you because that would give you the wrong impression but I am into you and maybe if you just sort of stop acting like you might be into me we can get something to eat later this week but I’ll call you right before I want to eat something and you’ll have already eaten so maybe you’ll just order a drink and then you’ll be drunk and did I ever tell you how awesome it is when you’re drunk except when you get too drunk I like you only slightly drunk like barely drunk do you have change for a five because I think I used to mess around with that waitress’s roommate and I don’t want to tip her this whole five even though she’s working pretty hard back there it’s a thing I have about food service.”

What was I saying again? Oh yeah. I’m a little unsure how I’m ever going to meet any one in Los Angeles ever.

The End.

P.S. I know it’s not really their fault. We made them this way. Now if someone could just show us how to make them the other way, you know, the good way, I’d be ever so grateful. Unless of course it involves me having to change, then fuck that noise I’ll be over here with my dog and my retro unitard.

P.P.S. I don’t even HAVE a retro unitard I just wanted to use that word in this post. Which is probably why the LA Male acts the way they do. I have uncovered the secret now and all will be right with the world and my unicorn is going to meet me at 3rd and Fairfax even though it’s a little trite to meet there, but whatever it’s post modern trite.

1. The remote for my stereo was not broken.  I had just put the batteries in wrong.
2. I’m almost positive that my curtains are too sheer.
3. I’m absolutely positive that I don’t care that my curtains are too sheer.
4. Chocolate and twizzlers and white wine do not a healthy dinner make, yet I continue to choose them for dinner.
5. The panaderia across the street has the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted.  Including that sip of coffee I drank with a cigarette butt in it.
6. Not having cable is not as bad as I expected.
7. I hate telling people I don’t have cable, or television reception, because then they think I’m one of those people who thinks TV is beneath them.  And I have to explain to them that I’m just trying something out right now, and then they really think I’m a totally hipster snob.
8. I need a hanging pot rack.  And someone to install it.
9. I need a vintage dresser.  And someone to deliver it.
10. My bed needs about 7/8ths of an inch more clearance for my luggage to fit under it.  I have no idea how to accomplish this.  Wood?  Risers?  Does this mean a trip to Home Despot is in my future?
11. Parking in my neighborhood is ass.  But in kind of a fun and ridiculous way.  I like solving a good logic puzzle every now and again.
12. The garnet is working.  I don’t feel abandoned.  Lonely, worried and sad, but definitely not abandoned.
13. I danced in my apartment last night.  In front of my sheer curtains.  With no pants on.

I’m fighting the plague that has descended on Los Angeles and is making everyone sound like death’s door is not down the hall, but rather, their door, and someone’s knocking at it.  Loudly.  (Wouldn’t it be creepy (and awesome) if it really was a plague and this was like the last dispatch from the front lines and then you could all make a movie about a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, using the real post-apocalyptic Los Angeles?)  I have this crazy sexy voice right now.  I’m turned on by myself.  Like Lindsay Lohan without all the baggage.

I spent the last hour and a half actually writing.  After spending 12 hours in a car with an agent I realized, if I want to sell something, that something sort of needs to be written, and awesome.  I know, most people don’t need to spend 12 hours in a car with an agent to realize that, but I’m what you call a slow learner.  So I wrote.  I’m taking a break right now.  Listening to Garth Brooks, Hole and Smashing Pumpkins (don’t ask), mocking people’s ‘art’ and generally feeling less sorry for myself than I thought I was going to feel tonight.

As I was driving home I was pretty sure tonight was going to be a big ol’ Tamara wallows in self pity night.  I don’t know why I thought that, I just did.  It hits me every once in a while that I’m going to be alone.  Possibly for a long while.  And yeah, I mean sexually.  I don’t worry about being alone otherwise, because if I want to hang out, I have rad friends who will go to weird German documentaries about theme parks in Vienna or go to sweet movies about dancing in the street, or just drink wine with me while I tell them that I want to be the best writer ever.  LIKE EVER.  I get emphatic when I’m telling them about the writing.  And how GOOD I want it to be.  Especially when I’m drinking.  But I get a little sad when I think about being without hot, hot sex for a while.  It’s fine.  I’m a daughter of the revolution.  I am not afraid to have an orgasm alone.  But you know, sometimes it’s nice to share it with someone.  This is awkward talking about my orgasms.  So I’m going to change the subject.

I’m always curious about where people find inspiration in their lives.  Specifically when they need to fill the well, where do they turn?  Me, I turn to arty hip magazines like Flaunt and Vice and my over-stuffed bookshelves.  What do you do?

Speaking of Flaunt there was this quote I can’t find now, it was in a back issue I don’t have by a photographer whose name I can’t recall, but it was good, you’ll have to trust me.

There was a time in the not so distant past when if someone told me I was going to have to ride in a car for six hours (each way!) with someone I was barely even acquainted with (by myself!), I would have done everything in my power (including but not limited to lying compulsively) to get out of it.  But the new Tamara just put on a smile, thought about how it would be bad to miss your dear friends’ Big Sur wedding and hopped into a VW beetle with four dress options, a cup of coffee and a wish to the gods that we’d have something, anything to talk about.  It was delightful.  My road trip companion is a gem.

Big Sur is a strange little place on the California coast.  Cold and rainy for our trip there, but strangely soothing and simultaneously wicked.  Sunday morning before the brunch I slipped down to the restaurant and sat by the fire writing in my journal.  I walked into the hippie gift shop after I had  obliterated my non-fat latte and was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tiny stone replicas of the human penis.  I was dying to ask why one would need a tiny stone penis talisman but chickened out.  Instead I was drawn to some garnet jewelry.  My birth stone.  The crazy hippie gift shop owner told me that garnet is a very healing stone.  I told her I needed it.  She asked me if I had been faced with an unwanted change last year.  I told her that I had, to say the least.  She told me her husband of 34 years walked out on her and she doesn’t even know him anymore.  We had a moment.

She pulled out a gigantic hippie reference book on stones and we read the entry on garnet.  “Garnet resolves all issues pertaining to abandonment.”  I bought the ring.  Goddamned entrepreneurial hippies preying on stupid sad girls like me.

Dude, I swear to Curious George, this site is totally reading my MIND!

I’ve only been living in 201 for a month. I’m not even completely unpacked. But last night I got a bee in my bonnet and decided I wanted to change it up. I also hung pictures at 9:30PM. I hope my neighbors don’t go to bed early. I’m pretty proud of my eye measuring here. I didn’t use a level, or a tape measurer. I just held up the center picture, pounded in a nail and the other two fell into place nicely. They look a little crooked in this picture, but when I look at them at home, they’re totally straight. Maybe that’s because I have a switch in my brain that doesn’t let me worry about stupid things like straight pictures and dusty book shelves.

The top of this book shelf used to be occupied by my stereo, but I moved it to the shelf above my desk, so that whenever I want to blast a little Chicago’s Greatest Hits, I can easily plug in my computer.

Louie wasn’t really into tchotchkes, but I am. I love little things that remind me of places I’ve been and people I knew. I think the only thing missing from the top of this shelf now is a vase for me to put fresh flowers from one of the many florists in my neighborhood. I have the day off on Monday, and I plan to spend it digging around in thrift shops looking for the perfect thing.

I really love this apartment.

Tomorrow is the two month mark. I haven’t cooked since Louie left me. I guess partly because I wasn’t really eating anything other than a take-out meal here and a handful of crackers there. Occasionally I would open a can of black beans and heat it up with some cheese and salsa, or shove some spinach in my mouth while trying to get that last bit of work done for the job I don’t talk about here. It’s been a busy two months, a sad two months and a messy two months.

I told myself I wouldn’t cook in my new kitchen until I had everything put away. But now at the one month mark of living here with two boxes left to unpack and 2 boxes’ contents to wash, and a free Saturday afternoon, I decided to let myself off the hook.

That is one half of my counter space. I’m not exaggerating.

This is the other half.

I decided that if I could roast a chicken in this mayhem, I’d be OK. And roast a chicken I did.

I used Mark Bittman’s recipe for standard Roasted Chicken. I set off the fire alarm several times. I hope I didn’t give myself salmonella.

Mark Bittman’s Roast Chicken Recipe

• 1 whole (3-4 lb.) chicken, trimmed of excess fat, then rinsed and patted dry with paper towels [I rinsed it, but didn’t do much fat trimming or paper towel patting, probably the reason my fire alarm went off.]
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme, rosemary, marjoram, oregano, or sage leaves, or 1 teaspoon dried



• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Chopped fresh herbs for garnish [didn’t do]

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.
2. Place the chicken, breast side down, on a rack in a roasting pan. Begin roasting. Mix together the olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper.





3. After the chicken has roasted for about 20 minutes, spoon some of the olive oil mixture over it, then turn the bird breast side up. [This is when I opened the oven and my fire alarm got angry.] Baste again, then again after 7 or 8 minutes; at this point the breast should be beginning to brown (if it hasn’t, roast a few more minutes). Turn the heat down to 325 degrees F, baste again, and roast unitl an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh [??? WTF! this was my same problem during our turkey roasting/wine drinking disaster of ‘07, I wish I knew what this ‘thickest part’ business meant. Gargh!] reads 160 to 165 degrees F. Total roasting time will be under an hour.
4. Before removing the chicken from the pan, tip the pan to let the juices from the birds cavity flow into the pan (if they are red [they were… very bloody….ick] cook another 5 minutes). Remove the bird to a platter and let it rest for about 5 minutes. While it is resting, pour the pan juices into a clear measuring cup, [why a clear measuring cup? Also, who has an opaque measuring cup?] and pour or spoon off as much of the fast as you can. Reheat the juice, carve the bird [FAIL!], garnish, and serve with the pan juice.

I don’t know. After buying a free range organic chicken, factoring in my spices used, my time and frustration with the fire alarm, it’s totally cheaper to get a rotisserie chicken from Gelson’s. I’m also probably less likely to give myself salmonella and more likely to end up with a clean kitchen.

It felt good to get in the kitchen. It’s been too long. Tomorrow night Allie is cooking Sunday dinner, I’m helping. Hopefully we’ll do better than I did tonight.

My mom sent me an essay this morning that perfectly sums up my feelings on the media today. Please have a read.

Goodbye to All That (#2) by Robin Morgan

I support Hillary Clinton. I have heard all of the reasons why you don’t. Spare me your hope. Spare me your worries about her electability. Spare me your concerns about her being part of the political machine. Think about why you really don’t like her. And then wonder why you have to want to hang out with your President in order to vote for her.

If you had a desk with a little paper sack adorned with pink construction paper hearts sitting on it, I would put a card in it.

I want to hold your hand

and pet your head

and kiss your neck

and refresh your drink

and get you a blanket

and grab your ass

and tickle your armpit

and hook my finger through your belt loop

and sit in your lap

and catch your eye from across the room

and get your inside joke

I want you to be my Valentime.

Happy Valentime’s Day.

xoxo

I thought to myself a few weeks ago that I just wouldn’t participate in the weird dynamics of the internet anymore, specifically the linking and the commenting and the trying to be the next cool thing. I wouldn’t worry about traffic or if the popular bloggers knew who I was or if I was saying the right thing or the perfect thing or anything. I thought, “Hey, if I want to comment somewhere, I’ll comment, but I won’t do it because I think that if I say the right thing then they’ll read my site and I’ll get popular and then one day I can do this for a living.” I decided this because I heard this sad story of a group of popular, powerful bloggers leaving out another blogger, who thought she was their friend, in kind of a spiteful and immature way. It broke my heart, because I have been the kid who was walking towards her bus and saw a group of girls I thought were my friends all getting in the most popular girl in school’s car. Sleep over! Who’s not invited? Oh, yeah, me. I mean, I couldn’t go anyway, because I had to go home and feed all of our cats. You know how it is.

Uhh… Anyway, that long interlude of weirdness is because I got tagged for a meme. Meme is a word I still don’t understand but use anyway. I pronounce it MeeMee, but I don’t know if that’s even the way you’re supposed to say it. Meem? Meemay? That one’s funny. (Say it in your head like Timmy on South Park would say it - Timmmaaaay!)

The Palinode is one (of many) of my favorite writers on the web. He reads like a good novel that you’ve jumped into at just the right page. I find his style reminiscent of the best combination of Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, and David Sedaris with a little Vladamir Nabokov thrown in. It doesn’t hurt that his wife is Schmutzie. I want to have someone box them up and export them to Los Angeles so we can sit on my fire escape and take telephoto pictures of the drunks in my neighborhood. I guess what I’m trying to say is, he tagged me. So, here I am, participating in internet shenanigans that I vowed I would avoid! I’m so complex and unpredictable!

Here are The Rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Here is what The Palinode had to say about the rules {snort}: Those were the rules. I don’t quite understand why rules 3 & 4 aren’t collapsed into one rule (ie. Post sentences six, seven and eight) but I’m not going to argue with rules. Especially meme rules, which are tinkered with at the user’s peril. I understand that Jenny B. from Rapid City tinkered with the rules once, and the next day she developed hives, and the hives developed mouths, and the mouths wanted to watch the special edition of Ghost with the cast & crew commentary, and through the nights and days they screamed and lowed and ululated for Ghost, until eventually she broke down and bought a copy, and you know what? It sucked. That’s twenty-five bucks she’s never getting back.

And now the mouths rest quietly, waiting for the 3-disc box set of Pretty Woman.

And without further ado: The book closest to me is (thank god it’s not the Mary Kay Letourneau exposé I’m actually reading, that one is all cuddled up with Lula at home, she has a thing for older ladies) The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God - which I shoved in my bag in an earnest attempt to find time to actually take a lunch break today, I still have not cracked the spine - and the sentences read as follows:

“I could see him rocking on the backs of his heels. A strand of flesh and bone, wavering, but not quite willing to capitulate to the whims of a summer breeze.

When Leonard, saw me approaching, he reacted by lobbing the ball up to the basket.”

I like those sentences. I like the name Leonard, I had an Great Uncle Leonard. Now I can’t wait to read this book!

And finally, I’m tagging no one! I’m breaking the rules! I hope I don’t get hives that turn into mouths, but honestly if they want to watch the DVD commentary of Ghost, I’ll comply. I want to know what the director has to say about that scene on the subway. Also, I enjoy a little young Patrick Swayze from time to time, especially if it’s in the context of him finally telling his damned life partner that he loves her instead of pussing out and saying, “Ditto.” GOD, dude, grow the fuck up!