Echo

I always wanted a big brother.

People who yo-yo diet are the ones who have physiques where the body fat gathers unevenly in targeted areas. Typical A-types, and the B-types who love them.

The Bucket of Truth

The Upright Citizens Brigade did a whole skit on it. Raw, unadulterated truth. Raw, unadulterated truth is purely devastating, in that it questions everything you’ve always thought was real…the tiny assumptions that meld together to form your entire, private subjective world.

I was driving to the Clippers/Wizards game on Friday and I don’t remember how it came up, but my roommate said, “I have something shameful about [your ex] that I never told you.”

He said, “It was around Christmas time last year and I went into Banana Republic…and he was working there. I almost wanted to walk up to him and say, ‘Nice nametag.'”

hehe

I love that Brian deemed it “shameful.” Because my ex is the same arrogant, obnoxious guy who powertripped and always talked about how much money he made as an SAT instructor and thought he was hot shit because he was the right-hand man in a tiny company. Who, after a conversation with my uncles that included him saying that he came out to LA to be an actor but found himself unable to leave SAT instruction because it was a “lucrative business,” prompted my family to tell me that he seemed too materialistic and full of himself.

I’m sure he was working at the BR for the discount. Which seems like a strange thing to do, for someone who loved to boast about making close to six-figures a year…

A review about a local apartment complex from a current resident:

On numberous occasions I have been offered drugs by inhabitants of building #3. Even though I say no and walk away from them, they follow me to my door.

Just last night one of the gang bangers told me, “I want to suck your tits and —- you all night long.” I have informed management about this and they said, “that’s not our problem.”

I’m sorry. I just love Stewart.

Stuff

I figure I’ll call this post “Stuff,” because on our work schedule for this week, it said we’d be starting our week on Monday morning with a “Stuff Meeting.” And indeed, we talked about stuff over croissants and coffee. Nice typo, guys.

Today I’m thinking about interracial relationships.

My parents are open-minded for Chinese parents. In college, they watched me swerve way from business school and major in film and english without uttering a single word of criticism, which shows a great deal of open-mindedness and trust that didn’t go uncriticized by their parental peers. They graciously allowed me to explore an avenue that grated against their own practical senses. But the one thing that they’re not so keen on is the arena of interracial relationships. They’ve already gotten used to the idea that the man I’ll eventually marry may not be Chinese, a notion supported by the fact that I’ve never brought a Chinese boy home (not because I’m not attracted to Chinese men, but because they rarely approach me in a romantic manner. I’ve only gone out with 2 Chinese guys [totalling 2 dates] in my life). So over the years, they’ve revised their stance to–they would obviously prefer if I married a Chinese man, but they would be okay with someone Jewish or white.

Now, I’ve never been one who liked other people being the boss of me and limiting my options. I may not necessarily want to do something, but if you tell me I can’t do it, then by God I am going to fight for the right to do it, just so I have that option even if I’ll probably never use it.

My mom and I are very close but our most bitter fights revolve around interracial dating. She feels that if I wanted to date someone, say, black, I should “just be friends.” But I definitely shouldn’t marry them because “your children will have a rough life because of racism.” Her main point isn’t that she doesn’t like black people, but that, as someone who loves me, she doesn’t want me (or my kids) to deal with the ugly end of racism if I don’t have to. It’s a strange example of maternal protectiveness. The thing that’s bizarre is that she cares a great deal about the black community. She’s always donating computers to low-income school districts and starting educational/outreach programs. She’s always said that when she retires, she wants to work specifically with the education of poor African-American kids to help them rise up in the face of an unlevel playing field. But yet, she’d have a fit if I brought home someone black.

We tend to clash over this quite often. I’m always asking her, “Well if you had to choose, would you rather that I brought home a woman…or a black man?” And she gets really pissed when I get mad at her either way, citing that this shows that her love is conditional. Part of me wants to bring home a black woman just to really fuck with her. But I hate that she’s intelligent and caring and kind and yet, there’s this “thing” that just drives me crazy.

But then I thought about this–if I were to bring home a black man that treated me incredibly well and was everything I’ve always wanted in a partner, then it would be hard to ignore that I’m happy and this person is clearly a good person. But what if, down the road, that person fucked up? What if he cheated on me, turned into a jerk or turned out to be financially irresponsible or draining? Then it becomes this thing where my family can act like I-told-you-so, based solely on the color of his skin. A guy could be Chinese or white and possess the same good traits, but the moment things go sour, it’s unfortunate. But if the guy is someone who is already fighting an uphill battle because he’s gotta be a saint to get my family to look past the color of his skin, and then he turns out to be a fuck up, then it only affirms their mistaken blanket stance on race. That’s a lot of weight to place on a partner’s shoulders. And it makes me angry at how stupid prejudice is. Expecting a person to carry the weight of an entire group on his shoulders, with every action scrutinized. It’s so unfair.

*****
I was out until 4am last night. I went to a surprise birthday party at Boardwalk 11 (a karaoke bar). This girl was rocking out to a Journey song, totally into it, doing high kicks and straddling the mic stand like she should have had teased hair and a leather one-piece jumpsuit. I was staring at her in awe and admiration and said to the guy next to me, “My God…I think she has a penis.” And she must have heard because she looked over, looked me in the eye and shook her head, not missing a beat. THAT. Is commitment to character.

So I’m really tired and all my posts today have probably been written poorly, for which I apologize. I’ll go over them later. In the meantime, I’m supposed to be writing an article about the self-storage industry, which is fucking boring. I’ve realized that even when these articles get published and they send me a copy, I don’t even read them. I’m so bored with the subject that I can’t even get through my own article.

That’s pretty sad.

*****
Michael is coming into town today. He’ll be staying with me for 10 days. I’m sure there will be anecdotes to come.

*****
I’ve lost my exercise priveleges. Hurt my back again so I’m banned from working out for 2 weeks. I’m going crazy. I can FEEL my fat cells multiplying. You fat fuck, I hear myself saying. Just go to the gym. Shoot some baskets but just walk after the ball. YouR doctor will never know if you don’t tell him.

But it’s sick. It’s an addiction. I’m an exercise junkie, the worst kind of junkie, the ones that never even get to find themselves passed out on a dirty mattress in a crackhouse with a dead hooker on the ground next to them.

*****
Good God, I’m so sleepy.

I’ve always said that I don’t really believe in predictive astrology (or astrology that predicts events) versus psychological astrology, which I think is a powerful tool for self-awareness and therapy, but then I read certain things and they blow me away.

I was in the shower this morning and I suddenly remember reading a previous monthly horoscope from Astrology Zone which provides very well-researched and detailed monthly horoscopes. I remember it had said something about unexpected tension at home. Seeing as things were completely fine with my dad and completely blew up last month, I looked up last month’s horoscope. I’ve already posted that other one I found that was uncanny. This one was crazy, too.

Despite the lovely tone to this month, the full moon on February 24 may cause tensions to arise at home. This full moon will fall in Virgo in your home and family sector, in opposition to Uranus. Virgo is not an easy placement for you.

The problem is, Uranus will send a direct challenge to this full moon. Whatever comes up will be something completely unexpected. Try to keep your schedule light around this time, for you won’t want to be distracted with too much office work. If your actual physical home is not the problem, it will have something to do with a family member, roommate, or someone connected to your home, such as a landlord, decorator, contractor, or broker. If you have any situation brewing at the start of the month, try to get a handle on things before the full moon’s complicated dynamics come into play.

Full moons either bring a finish to an endeavor (in this case, such as a move or renovation) or bring feelings to the surface (for you this month, in your relationship with your Dad or another person connected to home or family).

That timing was that week after I came back from being up north when my dad went out of his way to ignore me and I realized how much shit I was carrying from growing up with him that wasn’t even mine.

I think astrology gets a bad rap from those stupid unresearched blurbs in newspapers and magazines. Most of it is just analysis of patterns based on thousands of years of data and observations.

I Found It!

The thing that drove me nuts in Switzerland because I had fallen asleep and left the TV on, and every 10 minutes, this came on (open the file for “The Annoying Thing.” I believe it was an ad for ringtones). It was driving me crazy, yet I was too lazy to get up and turn off the TV. I must have heard it a good 18-20 times.

Oops…

Update

I met with the potential producer and the line producer yesterday. The producer and I were talking about trust and responsibility and I was saying how I need someone I can trust is taking care of the things he’s supposed to take care of so I can concentrate on the things I need to focus on, and how I see everything from the perspective of teamwork, and he was telling me how he’s very trustworthy–he once sailed a boat to the arctic and in that situation, you learn that you have to recognize that every person’s actions affect everyone else, sometimes in life or death situations in the face of a hurricane or things, and that that was a situation where he understood the value of being trustworthy and responsible. And I’m like, dude, you sailed a boat to the arctic? I…played sports. The earliest he’s available is August because he’s about to be greenlit for a feature shooting in June, but I’d like to work with him so I might wait until August for the short. It’ll give me more time to raise funds and prepare, anyway.

Working with the Actors– Gameplan

I’m so excited about working with actors. This is my favorite part, the melding of psychology and creation. I’m very method and like actors with that background. The way I want to work with the two leads who have a very strained marriage with passive-aggressive resentment (the man cheated on the wife), is to put them through a simulated therapy, with me as the therapist. When I work with actors, they need to be able to be so immersed in their characters, any question I ask them about themselves, they will be able to instinctively answer and know it jives with the truth. What was your biggest fear as a child? What is your darkest secret? How do you feel about where you are in your life at this very moment? Is it where you thought you would be when you looked towards the future when you were younger? What do you like for breakfast? What is a trait about your best friend/wife that you secretly find utterly irritating? What kind of people are you secretly prejudiced against? etc. And then once they get comfortable answering these questions (more so with the act of answering and knowing that what they said was true than the actual answers themselves), then I tweak it by asking them questions that imply certain things that they have to adapt to, implying events, like, “How did you feel when your husband told you he’d cheated on you?” etc. This plants certain things in their characters psyche, which affects their psychological outcome and performance.

I want to work with them separately, fine tune their own characters without the other knowing what exactly has been created, build up their positions, discuss their marriage and their resentment of the relationship and their partner from their own subjective perspectives, really delve into that resentment. Then put the two together. I don’t want each person to know what the other has said about him or her. But because it’s been talked about, it’ll color their interaction. It’s like, each person knows the other talked shit about him. But they don’t know exactly what, creating an underlying tension and resentment. Furthermore, I plan to keep them fairly separated throughout the preproduction process and during production. During the “therapy” stage, I’ll schedule one after the other with a slight overlap, keeping the other waiting in another room so each person is well aware that the other is talking about them. I also plan to have an exercise where they sit together in an empty room facing each other, but aren’t allowed to say a single word to each other. I’ll do this the first day, make them as uncomfortable around each other as possible. Since this couple is passive aggressive, by the actual actor not knowing exactly what the other resents him or her for or where the other is coming from, it should create a genuinely passive-aggressive and tense interaction to work with, which is what I need to carry this film. And then we can all go out for beers when this is done.

I’m so freakin’ excited.

Rejection

I watched Remember the Titans for the first time tonight. What an awesome, uplifting movie! I’m partial to sports movies anyway, but not since Monster’s Ball have a cried like that while watching a movie. It’s such an inspirational story, with amazing characters. The fact that it’s based on a true story just makes it.

Afterwards, I was watching the DVD features and they talk with the screenwriter. He tells a story about how, after writing the script, his agent said, “If this doesn’t sell, we’re in the wrong business,” and then they go out with it, and it tanks. It was turned down by every studio, even multiple times by some, and everywhere they went, they only got a “No.” The screenwriter talks about how he was trying to drum up the courage to tell the guys that the movie was based on that no one in Hollywood was interested in making their story, when Bruckheimer called and asked to see it, and it all went from there. They get a sound byte from Bruck saying how sometimes, you just need one person to believe in a project to get it rolling.

What an amazing story. If you’ve seen the movie, then you know that in itself, the events are wonderful and tragic and uplifting. But to hear that such a great tale was rejected over and over by the powers that be in Hollywood, is a reminder that as a writer (or director or actor or whatever you are), you can’t let that stuff get you down. You can’t take the No as a reflection of your work. You just have to believe in it, and sometimes, things that seem dead in the water are given new life when the timing is right. You just have to keep the faith.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the movie, watch it.

Why Brian is a dialogue-machine:

(on his co-worker being in Amsterdam):

“He’s probably smoking some hash right now while watching some skank juice oranges with her cooter.”

Last Night’s Dream

I was in my high school, which was actually this large, multi-level building like a large mall rather than the flat shitspread that it actually is. There had been a serial killer loose there for a while, and I was the criminal-behavioral psychologist who had been profiling him. I had recently made public statements that the killer was a latent homosexual and most likely impotent, trying to rile him up and push him into making a mistake.

I was hanging around the school, hoping to catch him lurking when I saw some people suddenly screaming and running. Knowing it was him and that he had been pushed into a killing spree in broad daylight, I tried to sneak into the area to try to catch a glimpse of him. Unfortunately, he saw me and started chasing me. We ran through the halls and up stairs and he was one level behind me. I knew that if I slowed down even a little bit, he’d catch me. He was a tall, lean guy in his 30’s, very wiry and fast (looked like that dude from Scissor Sisters but not flaming). So we’re running and I’m on the verge of getting away by faking him out and going down another staircase rather than up and creating distance between us, when for reasons I had no idea, I decided to stop running, even as my brain screamed, what the fuck are you doing?!?

I stopped and turned around abruptly. He came running around the corner and stopped, looking kind of confused but nevertheless, thrilled with his good luck. He approached me menacingly.

I said to him, “I know you’ve been watching me and the things I’ve said about you in the press. We’ve been playing a little cat and mouse game, haven’t we? But let’s be honest–you didn’t come here to kill me. You came here to fuck me.”

And sure enough, there was that sexual tension sitting between us that was now out in the open and on the table and boom…he rips off his shirt and that man was ripped.

So we’re back at my parents house, in my room, having sex, but rather than this being a sex dream, I’m in my head thinking…the impotence was a profiler bluff but the homosexuality was something I believed to be a part of his profile. And here I was having unprotected sex with him. So I asked him if he’d had unprotected sex with men and he said he’d been with two men. I asked him if he’d been tested and he said no. And I flipped out that I was at risk.

Dawn was breaking and I knew I had to get him out of my house before my parents woke up so I walked him out, but when I came back in, I saw my mom wandering the hall in her pajamas. I could tell she was looking for me because she had probably looked into my room to check on me as a mom thing that she does and had seen that I wasn’t in my bed. I was also worried that she had noticed, um…stains on the sheets or something and would know what I had been up to.

I Own It!

I have been hesitant to post about this since originally talking about it because I didn’t want to jinx anything…but it finally came in the mail today and it’s official: I now own the rights to the story, “A Good Head for Murder” by Charles Runyon. The signed agreement from his agent just came in the mail today!

The next step is filming it. There’s a Michigan film competition in June that I want to try to get in for. Prize is $2,000 worth of Fuji film which would help me out with the feature I’m trying to put together at the end of this year, but who knows…maybe the thing is rigged anyway since they all know each other in the U-M coalition. I’m meeting with a producer tomorrow to talk about these projects and he seems really cool–a down-to-earth Australian. I’ve got a line producer who’s going to break it down soon so hopefully, we can shoot in the next month and I can have it done by June. I’m psyched!

In case you’re wondering, the story isn’t about a blowjob gone wrong. It’s about a woman and man in a strained marriage, who are driving down a dark, desolate rural road in Mexico when they start seeing what may or may not be severed body parts lying on the road. It’s a pretty freakin’ cool story.

Stay tuned!

3/18/04 Crime Notes

Palo Alto, CA– A cellphone was stolen from a student’s backpack at a local Palo Alto School. Student Michael Shih returned from lunch to find his Nokia cellphone missing from his bag; the theft was immediately reported. An extensive search enlisted the help of school staff but turned up no results. Later in the day, the owner of the phone called his own cellphone repeatedly in an attempt to pin down the identity of the thief, but calls were answered by an irritated woman who angrily asked the young man to stop calling her. The young man’s sister has put in for a gang hit on this woman, and is asking that anyone with information on her identity, to report it through the underground.

This Week’s New Releases:

12 Donkeys

Bruce Willis plays a man from the future who goes back in time to that fateful night in Tijuana, where an errant flying banana at a donkey show takes out his eye and gives him a case of eye-crabs that destroy his marriage. Unfortunately, he goes back too far and is mistaken for a male sex slave and is imprisoned by the club owner, so that on that fateful night, it is he who is the opening act that his past self is watching. See Meryl Streep’s Oscar-Nominated performance as a pair of crotchless panties.

Dude, Where’s My Colostomy Bag?

Aston Kutcher and Clint Eastwood pair up in this buddy comedy. After a nurse accidentally replaces Clint’s oxygen with a tank of nitrous oxide, Clint and grandson Aston go on a binger to end all bingers, waking up with no clue as to where Clint’s colostomy bag and Aston’s acting career went. They attempt to retrace their steps while meanwhile, a group of evil alien models offer humans oral pleasure in exchange for a missing anal probe that turns its recipients into raving O.C. fans.

Kill Billy Elliot

After The Bride kills the man responsible for the deaths of her friends and fiance, she turns her vengeful eye on Billy Elliot, her too-cute-for-his-own-good childhood arch-nemesis from ballet class. Lucy Liu returns as a pair of evil leotards.

Animal Farmhouse

John Belushi is resurrected to find his beloved frat has been turned into a barn. He leads the animals in a revolution, decreeing that “All Keg Stands Are Created Equal, But Some Keg Stands Are More Equal Than Others,” especially the one that leaves you naked in the trunk of a car, lying in a pool of your own piss. After making a pact with the pigs, the gang slaughters the other unsuspecting animals in their sleep and have a huge cookout with the all-wet-tshirt/all-the-time sorority down the street. Hillary Swank appears in a cameo as a horse.

4 Weddings and a Funeral and an Eye-Gouging and a Twelve-Dollar Blowjob From a Hooker in a Porsche

When Hugh Grant’s constant eye-batting turns Andy McDowell violent after their first week of marriage, she gouges out his eye with an omelet spatula. Without his good looks, Hugh sinks into a dark depression that sends him on a downward spiral that begins with a twelve-dollar blowjob in the front seat of his porsche, and ends in a police shootout in a crackhouse in Detroit. Wackiness ensues.

Being Julia Robert’s Bitch

A piercing documentary about the life of Danny Moder.

He. Tried. To. Hug. Me.

(i shouldn’t even need to say who)

Whatever happened to Mighty Mouse? I’d like to see a live action version starring David Faustino titled, “30 Years and 30 Trips to Rehab Later.”

I’m sitting here putting my 2004 financial picture in order because I’m heading over to H&R tomorrow, and I’m reminded how much I love this stuff, handling money. But I’m also reminded of how piss poor my organization is, since I always wait until the week that I’m supposed to go in to prepare taxes to actually go through my bank statements, checkbook and credit card bills to organize everything and inevitably, nothing ever balances because I have no idea what all these vague purchases and deposits were. And all I can hear in my head is my dad saying, “You’re going to get audited.”

And then I’m reminded that this Saturday is my rich uncle’s 60th birthday, and my entire extended family will be here (all ninety of us), including my father. And how it’s been about a month since I last spoke to him, and how he will probably be ignoring me, with my cousins coming up to me asking me why I can’t be a more filial daughter since my poor old man looks so lonely getting drunk all by himself in the corner and harassing my baby cousins, as he’s known to do at large family gatherings. And it makes me tear up, amid my sea of bank statements and receipts, because it’s sad. But what has being compassionate ever gotten me with him? How far has digging deeper to find that lifeblood well of love gotten me with him?

I hung out with Urethra, her boyfriend and her visiting father a few weeks ago. We went to the House of Blues Gospel breakfast that featured an all-you-can-eat Southern brunch followed by live gospel music that put us all in not only a great mood, but gave us a need to dance in a way only Steve Martin from The Jerk could understand. The walk to House of Blues was about a mile each way, which we figured was to our benefit considering, again, it was an all-you-can-eat Southern brunch and Asians are the foremost experts in how to most efficiently (and gluttonously) attack a buffet. Walking there, I spent some time talking to Urethra’s dad, who was a pleasant fellow and an easy conversationalist with plenty to say about basketball, television and anything random this Gemini could switch subjects to. I concluded, Urethra has a nice dad. And I realized, even though it’s always been quite obvious, I do not have a nice dad.

It wasn’t until recently that I thought about, if my dad weren’t my dad, what would I think of him? This is a question I have never really wanted to delve into with the needed objective perspective, as I didn’t want to ruin the inherent love and need a daughter has for a father and frankly, I’m afraid of him. It’s one of those deep-seated fears cultivated in childhood that even adult perspective, distance and intelligence can’t quite shake. This one is rooted within the emotional muck deep inside a person that no logic or intellectualizing can quite force into more appropriate decorum. It belongs to that vulnerable little kid who exists within each and every one of us.

Last month, the therapist I went to see said, you can sit here and intellectualize and analyze and make a laundry list of grievances, but at the end of the day, you need to come to terms with that fact that plain and simple, you had a shitty father. I’m not saying he’s a bad person, but he was a father who was too busy putting his own issues on other people and taking care of himself to take care of you, and you got gyped. And plain and simple, that really…sucks. So once you’ve recognized and grieved for that loss, you pick yourself up and do all the things you ever wanted to do because now…you’re free. Because your life, your choices, are still in your hands.

And it all was too simple, but it finally seemed like something be done (overcome), probably because I’m finally in the right place to take this whole thing on.

My brother just happened to call right now, interrupting the post, and I was sitting here all stuffed up. I talked to my mom and told her I’m not going to the party on Saturday. I decided that while writing this post. Choices are just that easy and obligation ain’t worth shit. Obligation is an invisible force that doesn’t even exist, and being a slave to it at 26 is tantamount to being afraid of the dark or afraid of boogiemen under my bed. It’s laughable. I told my mom that I’m so sick of my dad’s act every time we’re around his family, of him appearing so tortured because he has a family that just torments him with their lack of love for him, or the flipside, of him being the generous, gregarious uncle that everyone just loves, who’s willing to big-brother everyone, willing to flash a hundred-dollar bill and buy cigars or expensive whine or an entire banquet meal, acting like he’s finally found people he likes because my mom, my brother and I are such a shithead, disappointing family. After 26 years? Yeah, eat it.

When I was young, I would often wish my father would die, or mentally prepare for his death, telling myself it that at the end of the day, it would be for the best. I would always feel horrifically guilty about it, and I thought maybe this was a product of how he would always tell me that he had a heart condition or that we were causing him life-threatening stress, but usually, I thought I was a malicious little shit who had the capacity to wish people dead. And I felt guilty about it my entire life, how someone supposedly so nice and kind could think life would be better off without her father.

I reread that IM between my mom and I last night and that part where she says getting conditional love is worse than no love because at least with no love, you don’t expect it, and it made me think about having a father–how having a father who was emotionally absent most times, often volatile and habitually emotionally and physically abusive is so much harder because you still have hope that one day, things will turn around and the love will come pouring forth; but if your father died, you would know that you no longer have a father, so you would mourn and move on. In hindsight, I don’t think I wanted him dead, specifically. I think I wanted the not knowing to end; I think I wanted to be able to move on in my life, instead of always being stuck in one place, being stuck in the same precarious emotional state, of wondering if–I change, things change, he changes–suddenly things will open up and I’ll have a paternal figure who loves and appreciates me. I was tired of the stress of thinking that I was the root of a slow miserable decline towards death anyway, because no one in my house seemed happy (trick mindfuck. We all die anyway). Dead father= no father. Easy to face. Live father who doesn’t know how to love you = maybe something will open up tomorrow. And then you start to hate the part of you that holds on to hope, the part of you that’s so STUPID and UGLY for believing in love and kindness, for clinging to despicable vulnerability.

Fuck that. Baggage whores are pussies.

If you can get away from the things on the outside, the things in your past, the people and things that claw out your faith in yourself, your purity of heart and your belief in the great love that connects everything in our universe, you give yourself the chance to be something special and powerful in this great big world.

So why not try?

Creative Differences

Sandra Oh and Alexander Payne are getting divorced. Amicably. Some words of advice to Alexander:

New pussy can’t cook!

*****
Speaking of Sandra, here’s my favorite performance of hers. It’s from Six Feet Under, Season 1, when she plays a “Porn Starlet” giving a eulogy at a dead porn star’s funeral:

Porn Starlet (Sandra):

When I first met Viveca, I met her on “Deep Diving.”

[Everyone claps]

Thank you. And I had never gone down on a girl before, so, naturally, I was nervous, but Viveca was so warm and relaxed about it. She really put me at ease. Well, her and the two Zanex she gave me. (laughs) And when I first had to do a double penetration, I was like a total wreck. But Viveca came through like, you know, like such the pro she is…I mean was. (She starts to cry.)