the guez

What's the sound of a black hole eating St. Louis? I need to know. Right now, it sounds like an avalanche, two earthquake rumbles, glass crashing and a fire engine. But a true blackhole wouldn't sound like that. It would be silent. Or at best, every BAM would sound like MAB and the BOOMs would be MOOB MOOB, like a record played in reverse as the sound gets sucked in. OOOD OOOD OOOD. And the people would shout PLEH! PLEH! PLEH EM! But they wouldn't really have a chance to shout would they, because they'd be dead, ripped apart, their quantum components tossed throughout the universe. from myspace:

We were all at the Intermediate company party. Good food, free drinks, and a pretty nice view for LA. But the dj was only playing cocktail music, and we were ready for the dancing. "Do you know who's at the bar downstairs?" someone asked. And that's how I got my picture taken at a Dreamworks party.

     Joe looked concerned. "We went half an hour over budget because it took them a while to find the footage."      "We won't have to pay for the extra time," said the post supervisor. "Don't worry."       "Well, it's sort of our fault. See, I told them we wanted the Jurrasic Shark footage, and they thought we meant Raging Sharks 2 . I forgot to tell them about the title change. So they spent all morning looking for the old Shark Attack shots instead of Hammerheads ."      "Ok," said the post-super after the briefest of pauses. "We'll have to pay for that." I think the number is ten. This company has made ten shark movies in five years. from myspace:

My modern dance teacher has a voice like a drill sergeant. "Pull up! Get your tailbone down. Bat-Sheva, get your butt underneath you. Do you hear me? Pull your butt in! Take a look at yourself in the mirror. Do you see what I'm talking about? You're sticking out!" I didn't have to look. I knew what she was talking about. But I did what she said. I turned sideways and looked in the mirror, and there it was, the bfa, looking as b and as f as ever, and rebelliously sticking up despite all of my strained and sweaty efforts to suck in and tilt down. "You need to go home and practice this," she said, pushing my tailbone down to a point I could barely maintain while standing, let alone dancing. How do they do it? It's not like I was the only in there with a bfa. But somehow everyone else had theirs under control. They can all balance better and turn better and do all sorts of things that my heavy hips and I only dream about. So I resolved to go home and

I tried to clear it, I really did. But it was a white elephant. So while I was listening to my breathing, I was thinking about gingerbread boyfriends and how she's dating her cookie. During the sun salutations I was cursing my weak arms and wondering if I had any more clean underwear or enough change for the drier. I tried to breath through my heart, to focus on one point, to bend a little more and think a little less. Instead, I wondered why it made me feel vulnerable to lift my sternum. I thought about Wilco concerts and shooting dv at the basketball court and how it was more difficult to lunge this week and how some of these poses look more like positions, and maybe I should have taken dance today instead? Finally, finally, during meditation, through some force of will, I found it. The blackness lasted 3/4 of a second. Then I was fast asleep and dreaming about chickens. Chickens! sheesh.

Rain! The first LA rainfall since I landed three months ago! Ooooh, I'm a happy happy girl.

     The inspectors arrived this morning while I was stirring my oatmeal. They had come to fix the smoke detectors and to make sure we weren't keeping anything illegal in the apartment like an undeclared subleter (me) or an undeclared pet (the cat). "I warned Toby I was bringing them today," the manager whispered to me as I rushed for my keys and searched for my glasses. The oatmeal bubbled unheeded on the stove. "What's going on? Who are these people?" Mitten demanded, which came out of course, as, "Mreow! Reeor! Mreeeoooorrrrrrr!!!" I tried locking her in the closet, but she would have none of it. So I shoved her in her travel case, mushing her face down so that I could zip it closed before anyone saw. Then, lugging her down the steps, I hastened to my car.      "Listen, we've got to hide out for a while," I told her.      "Reeoooorrrrrr!!!!" she said pitifully.      "Quiet. Here's the plan. We'll go to Sta

recipe for a seven-headed giant snake: Combine: 4 different kinds of underbrush 2 maracas 1 group of flapping bats 1 low rumble 1 tortured pig static Mix thoroughly. The Track of the Tortured Pig: Fifteen years ago, a designer just couldn't seem to find the sound he wanted. So he and his buddy tied up a pig and tortured it to death, recording the whole event. He was later to win an oscar for his efforts. This is a true story. To this day, the track of the tortured pig is passed from designer to designer for use in monster shrieks, explosions, dinosaurs and dragons. You have probably heard it a hundred times. "It's pretty painful to listen to," Randy told me. "You don't want to be mixing that track alone in the middle of the night."

it was 3 am on the east coast. and he helped me, made a sandwich, and went back to sleep. I feel grateful just to know him and twice as grateful to call him my friend.

few turning arrows no staggered lights and no one friggen lets you go what does this place have against the left? I don't understand it. Do these people only make right turns? Don't they wonder, when they speed past the poor sap stuck in the middle of the intersection, what will happen when they sit at the light the next time around? But roadside karma has a pretty fast turnaround when it comes to the left, and my car and I find solace in that fact.

there are some days when everything is just perfect. I guess I'll leave all the verbal skipping and anne-like exclamations of joy to your imagination and spare you the trouble of reading it.

My bus hit a detour on the way home from work today. They were shooting something on Hollywood Boulevard again. There's nothing glamorous about the amount of work this town does to perpetuate its own myth. "So stupid," I muttered to myself as I footed it through the crowds. But then I saw the giant robots. Ok, there were GIANT ROBOTS dueling each other in front of the chinese theater. I tried not to be impressed and to maintain my artists' scorn for all things hollywood. But man, that was awesome. They must have been a hundred feet tall! (migrated from myspace:)

I was the only one who had to come in on Saturday. The office was dark save for one lone cubicle with its light on and the radio playing. I tiptoed around the corner to see what soul shared my fate, and to see if he or she would share my company, but there was no one there. The light and radio were left on from before the power-outage yesterday. I parked my stuff in suite 4, turned on the avid, and under the whir of all that machinery, tried not to feel what I was feeling. But in the end, all it took was a minidisk player hooked into the sound system and some good music played at full volume to make it all better, at least for the moment. Playing your music at full volume is really all one can do when faced with an empty office and a day spent alone. Except for maybe working naked. But there's always that risk that somebody might come by to pick up a contract or check their e-mail.

"European girls," my LA cab driver informs me on the way back from the airport, "are better than Los Angeles girls." In case you were wondering, here's why: 1) they're more feminine 2) they dress better 3) they're easy "I'm not such a good looking guy," the cabbie explains, "but these girls in Europe, they come up to me and dance with me. And when they like me on the dance floor, they don't waste any time. 'Your place or mine?' they tell me. But these L.A. girls, they make you do so much work. You've got to take them to dinner and buy them drinks. They won't go home with you until you've spent all your money on them." So what do you say folks? Is he right?

Lost: One Medium-Sized, Tape-Bound Notebook With Unlined Pages To the Atlanta Community Member Who Finds My Notebook: Hello. You seem to have become a person of some importance to me. You see, the notebook which has for some reason come into your possession has been part of my life for the past few weeks. I'm not sure where I lost it or how, but I feel its loss quite strongly. And I have to say, it feels very odd to think about it in your hands, you being a person I have never met. In case you were wondering, the section in the back with all those pages about aliens is work I've done for a screenwriting job. I don't actually believe in aliens, at least not the kind that come to this planet to rip out people's eyes. I just want to make that clear to you. And please understand that the alien scheme is copyrighted, and not by me, but by a bigshot director out in hollywood. He'd probably sue you if you tried to sell the story. Not that you'd want to, it isn't

Atlanta gave me a present today. It rained. Everyone driving by got a chance to stare at the drenched girl grinning stupidly to herself on the path alone.

1. Today was the first day that I didn't look at the mountains with a "where the hell am I?" sense of displacement. Driving along the freeway with the borrowed freedom of a beat-up rental car, surrounded by the crag and brush of the hills of glendale, while speeding upwards above the smog to the cooler air and better views, the mountains suddenly seem familiar. And by being familiar, they let me love them, just a little bit. 2. Do you ever look at a map and automatically assume that East is where the water is? It's so confusing to think that if I want to find the beach, the direction to drive is west.

It's one of the easiest tasks there is. And I SUCK at it.

15 hours of eye burning, shoulder-aching tedium later, we discover that the computer hasn't been saving the files. and so I begin again

1. roommate: "I've got a 9:30 bus" 2. librarian: "Can I see some I.D?" 3. coffeedude: "Out of five?" That's about it. sigh .... but THEN, a voice out of the dark: "What are you reading?" (It's coffeedude) "Oh, Nine Stories is great. You know what else is great? Camus' The Stranger" (huh? but I'll take it) Thank the good lord for friendly people-- and the motives they have for talking to me. (migrating over from myspace:)

1) There is a form of yoga called barbarian yoga during which the subject sits cross-legged on the floor and convulses his spine while making all kinds of whistling noises. If you ever get the chance to watch your roommate perform this routine, I highly recommend it. 2) The woman who picked me up at the airport last week was five foot five, weighed 113 pounds (by her own admission), had platinum blond hair, wore sunglasses indoors, and put on white satin gloves when she drove (to protect her hands from the sun). She arrived at the "Roar" lion film screening dressed for a fashion safari. Despite this, she's a proud Democrat and we both breathed easier at this discovery. 3) My librarian got all teary-eyed today when she learned that I moved here from Brooklyn, her own home town. "Why did you ever want to leave?" she asked.

I started my second week sitting by the pool and thinking about aliens. One could get used to this I think.

Items purchased today: half an order of buffalo chicken wings, a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and a one-way ticket to LAX for monday august 2nd. Next week I am off to cast my fortune based on the authorization of a man whose last comment to me included the statement: "everyone knows what a screenplay is in LA. it's so great!" He's not paying me enough, and they're hiring somebody to do a much-needed rewrite of the script, so that when/if the money gets the balls to actually hit the bank, it will be at least five weeks before production starts. But August's rent has been paid, and there's really nothing to lose. In the meantime, the man says that he might be able to get me a job with MTV...

Today MY MOTHER cut her own hair. I win! I win!

So they tell me they're half way there.... It has something to do with half of the money arriving in the bank by the end of this week. Which means I could be flying out in a little over two weeks. Maybe.

What is it about Boston that turns me into so many of the things I hate?

A year later and I'm back in Canton. it's like nothing has changed. But in fact, everything kind of has.

Today was better. There were only two slugs today.