Echo

“One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is [unintentionally funny]”

(Reggie and I meet an un-PC but good-intentioned charity outside of Albertson’s in Santa Clarita)

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051129/SPORTS0102/511290423/1127

Damn. That would have been ridiculously sweet for us.

Dana the Wonderdog and our loaner head from CSI:NY on set (11/12/05)

is basic incompatibility the consequence or the cause?

I went from reading about D.B. Cooper to finding this random archive of old stories. A really great, riveting time waster.

So I Guess the Moral Of the Story Is:

If you’re a single parent, don’t date someone who’s super into Star Trek.

Daily Recap

I went to the chiropractor today. I had to take x-rays for my back which is nothing new since back trouble has been a bit of my legacy. What was a new addition was the lead codpiece they made me wear when I took the x-rays. I did my best not to giggle while the chiropractor implied that I had to keep the piece over my crotch by directing it in reference to my belly button. “Yeah, just make sure you keep it a few inches below the belly button…” Just say, over my cooter, buddy. Let’s call a cookie a cookie.

We headed up to Griffith park to visit the animal wrangler who has a dog we’d like to use for our film. She was stuck on set with some huge 600 lb pigs (they were like miniature ponies) so we hung out until she could get away to show us her dog. The thing is cute but totally Disney, all white with brown spots. We need like a wild coyote look and she promises she can dirty the dog up to make it look like a stray. Hopefully it all works out since we can’t really afford more.

Afterwards, we headed over to Hollywood to see Dos Spanish Flies perform. Those guys are awesome. If you’re in LA and you ever get a chance to see them, please do. They’re like Tenacious D with a randy mariachi theme. And the guys, Ron and Eric, are so ridiculously nice; they performed for our comedy show in August and it’s always such a pleasure to see them and watch them perform. I feel like lately, I’ve met so many talented people that I get really excited about my life…being surrounded by such nice, cool and talented people has been inspiring. We gave them a copy of the DVD of the show so hopefully they’re happy with it. If I knew how to upload the video clips, I would. The Dos Spanish Flies are gonna be big some day.

Our final stop for the night was The Abbey, West Hollywood’s most prestiged gay bar. I wanted to show Reggie their pastry case for ideas for our restaurant, and plus, they have amazing fresth fruit mojitos. We ordered a couple of fresh rasberry mojitos and Reggie pretended to be the muscle queen while I played the player lesbian. I got a great picture of Reggie rubbing some guy’s stomach. Meanwhile, I was busy winking at bulldykes. It was a lot of fun. Gay bars are unabashingly meat markets. I love it.

I have to make a prediction here. Lately, I’ve been meeting so many amazingly down to earth, talented people. It’s both inspiring and awe-inspiring that these people haven’t hit it big when meanwhile, a lot of lesser talents are consistently getting work in this town. Our editor, Tito da Costa, is an amazing talent. He’s brilliant, so easy to work with, and such a nice, pleasant person to be around. Check out his reel…if any of you ever need a brilliant editor who will save you a shitload of money, call Tito. I have immense admiration for him. So my prediction…Tito is from Portugal and he has a wife and 2 kids back there who he can’t afford to support out here. He’s hoping to get to the point where he has enough work coming in that he can afford to bring them out here and support him. The guy is ridiculously talented and cutting edge, but just needs that opening. There’s no way that someone like that will continued to be overlooked. Hopefully, he can keep the faith and stick to it, because I guarantee you, by this time next year, he will be able to bring his family over. He is too talented and innovative for this industry to continue to ignore.

I am drunk. I have 2 1/2 drinks tonight, but it’s enough to make me damn near cross-eyed. I’m off to bed. Peace and love and as Brian just said, “Lots of lesbian action.”

I’m out!

I joined myspace. Whatever that means. Most people’s profiles are crazy with too much going on. Mostly, I just look at the pictures of people who comment, and wonder why all the girls look so slutty.

Why Do We Allow the Idiotic, Self-Serving People Be In Charge?

Car Alarms Are Really Sensitive Presents:

A Cultural Lesson About:

Japan

This site makes me want to throttle stupid people:

http://www.raptureready.com/index.php

everyone who is around you wants something from you. whether it’s something superficial such as your money or your attention, or something deeper such as your love or your nurturing. sometimes it’s something as simple and non-emotional as wanting to be near another human being so as to not feel so alone. maybe they hope to catch glimpses of themselves in the reflections of your eyes.

but everyone wants something from you, or they wouldn’t be drawn to you.

sometimes i think about the people who approach me, the people who spend time with me or the people who have fixed stations in my life; i wonder what it is they want from me. then i wonder how honestly they would answer me if i asked them, or if they would even know.

why are we drawn to each other?
what is it we seek?
what is it that makes it so hard for there to be honesty between people?

love,
julia

It’s been raining the last few days. I know there are a lot of people who don’t like the rain, but I love it with all of my heart. There is no cleaner or more truthful time than when it rains. I love the smells, the sounds, the feel. I love how people walk around lost in their own worlds, and I wonder what these worlds are like. The past comes back to say hello, as though now, finally, is a safe time to say goodbye. And everything at all seems to be at ease.

Most of all, the echoing stops.

(you miss it, don’t you? whatever it is that once captivated every imagineable particle of you)

Today God granted everyone in LA a free car wash. What more can you ask for than that?

Weekend Recap

We held our second round of auditions for the short on Saturday morning. We’ve cast the female role and we’re still waiting for word from Danny Trejo’s agent regarding the villain role, but we’ve had a ridiculous time casting the 45-50 year old Caucasian male (intellectual bully). Some actors come in and you can tell that they really don’t care if they get the role or not because it’s a short. Others are incredibly eager but are wildly underwhelming in their auditions. Some people are amazing, but just not right for the role. We had one guy who was the second coming of Tom Sizemore. He gave a terrifying performance and left no doubt that when his character gets home, he compulsively and viciously beats and/or rapes his wife. Unfortunately, we’re looking for a narcissistic academic pussy. The whole process was frustrating since this is our 2nd time around and with the shoot only a month away now, we still haven’t cast one of the major roles. The person who gave the best audition had a strong English accent so we’ve requested that he work with a dialogue coach next week and if he can come to the call back next week with a very convincing American accent, we’ll be able to go with him. Meanwhile, Reggie is going to give a certain TV actor a call to see if he’d be willing to do this project. I’m just praying that we have the right person for this role by the end of next week so we can keep everything moving.

We locked down the special fx guy from CSI: NY to create the decapitated head and severed arm that will be integral props to our film. I’m really excited to work with this guy and for someone with such a creatively morbid job, he’s a very bright and enthusiastic personality. I always love talking to him on the phone.

Saturday afternoon was spent location scouting. We’re looking for desert dirt roads and the search has filled each weekend in the last month with road trips out to the BFE extensions of Southern California. But Matt, our UPM, found us this place in Agua Dulce (which I had never heard of), which is this area just north of Santa Clarita filled with horse and film production ranches. The good news is that it’s relatively close to LA, so we won’t have to put people up during the shoot.

We went and saw Domino on Saturday night at the Crest. Well, first, we went to the Arclight because we were scouting the area as a potential location for our restaurant (love it!), and we assumed that everything plays at the Arclight, so Domino would be there. Well, it wasn’t. But who WAS there, was Jake Gyllenhaal and his other cast/crew mates from Jarhead, there for a cast and crew screening. He was standing outside so I called Digit Whit who loves him to tell her that he was here. Funny enough, she happened to be heading over anyway. Jake was drawing quite a circle of admirers. Meanwhile, Elijah Wood, who seemed to be impatiently waiting for a friend, was standing just a few yards off with no admirers . Reggie asked me if Elijah was gay, because he stands just like his gay cousin. I wasn’t sure. Since Brian loves celebrity sightings, I felt it was my duty to call him. I left him message saying, “Hey, I’m at the Arclight. Jake Gyllenhaal is here and so is Elijah Wood, who looks really, really gay.”

Later today, I asked Brian if he had gotten my message; he checked his voicemail but apparently it never showed up. Strange. It’s like the message had somehow gotten routed to some phantom message limbo, or to some random stranger somewhere out there who got the cryptic message, “Hey, I’m at the Arclight. Jake Gyllenhaal is here and so is Elijah Wood, who looks really, really gay.” I think I would be tickled maroon if I got a crazy, random message like that.

So anyway, back to watching Domino at the Crest. The Crest is this cool little theater on Westwood Blvd that has a large mural of Hollywood spanning three of its walls, and twinkling “stars” on the ceiling. I was really looking forward to Domino since I love screen girls who kick ass. The first 20 minutes of the movie were badass (check out the scene where she asks the sorority bitch if she’s had a nose job…) but the rest of it focused on a convoluted and complicated heist plot that completely buried Domino and drove me crazy. Brian Austin Green getting punched in the nose while playing himself is priceless though.

Sunday morning found me waking up to my new iPod alarm clock (Trent Reznor’s mix of Enigma’s Sadness). Went and had S.O.S. (shit on a shingle) at Doughboy’s with Brian as I flirted with my usual waiter, then headed over to Starbuck’s to do some writing and work. Reggie met me over there and we went over the business plan for the restaurant. We headed over to his friend Elvis’ sister’s BBQ, where we watched a dog hump a stuffed bone for an hour and then came back to our car to find a praying mantis on the tire. Came home, watched Spartan with Val Kilmer and Al Bundy (I’m convinced that David Mamet’s films point to a psychology characterized by a control freak who relies on intellectual dissection to deal with his personal and existential anxieties. But then again, doesn’t that describe us all?)

And now, onto the moment you’ve all been rolling your eyes at:

Fantasy basketball season is about to rear its ugly head and our leagues draft tomorrow. Reggie and Alex are going to take me on this year. My secret must-have picks are Baron Davis (I think he’s going to stay healthy this year), Ron Artest (he was a fantasy monster before he got suspended last year) and Dwight Howard (who I think may show flashes of Amare). For those of you playing fantasy, I think the sleepers (people you’ll get relatively cheaper than their true value) this year will be:

Rafer Alston (trade to Houston where Bobby Sura is just about done with his career will benefit him. Watch out for his bad FG%)

Donyell Marshall (will be available late because word is that he’s playing behind Drew Gooden. But honestly, how long will it take Gooden to work himself into the doghouse?)

Emeka Okafor (since my definition of sleeper is someone you can get cheaper than their true value, he’s going to give you consistent double-doubles while stay healthier and have more stamina late in the season)

Andrei Kirilenko (don’t forget about him…there are sexier picks this year but don’t forget he started out last year averaging close to 5 blocks per game)

Bonzi Wells (I’m not a big fan of his but he’s going to be a big part of the Sacramento offense. He’s known for inconsistency, but when he’s on, he’ll give you big points and steals)

Rookies:

I like Hakim Warrick.

Actually, I love Hakim Warrick.

That’s because I love Shawn Marion.

Why don’t people say more about the fact that Dwyane Wade’s name is spelled wrong? It’s Dwayne, Dwyane. You know, I know, everyone in the world knows, so I think it’s about time someone told your mama.

I’m out like Bradley Cooper doing his “girlfriend”‘s Tae Bo videos.

Blog of a Sex Offender

Did any of you hear about this story? This family was found bludgeoned to death with two of the youngest children missing, and then 7 weeks later, the little girl was found with a 42 year old convicted sex offender in a diner. The other little boy was believed to have been murdered.

So apparently the guy kept a blog. Here’s a news article about the responses to his blog shortly after he was arrested.

I randomly found his blog and was reading it from the beginning because he described himself as a convicted sex offender, and his prose was lucid and intelligent. I found it riveting. It was an amazing glimpse into a person’s psychology and his unique experience of life. I didn’t find all the news articles and the “epilogue” of his story until I did a news search to try to figure out what the original crime was that he often alluded to.

It’s amazing. There are posts on his blog that are incredibly noble and powerful, that makes you feel for human beings and worry about our society as a whole. And then as the blog progresses, he rants more and more about the injustice of society, with the posts in the months leading up to the end of the blog (right before the crime was discovered) being discordant with a heavy theme of desperation and a brooding rage.

Our society fails on so many levels, but seeing how everything unfolds, you get a strong sense that there really is no clear cut magic-wand solution. When you read his blog, you feel the desperation of a caged animal who feels ostracized and discriminated and then you see the tragic outcome of his angry retribution towards society directed at strangers. I’m horrified by his actions but I don’t agree with posters who don’t understand how something like his blog was allowed to be published. Suppressing expression isn’t the answer. His blog gives us an amazing chance to see what happens inside a person who has valid points and opinions and feelings, and how a person gets pushed towards making the decisions he made. It doesn’t all make sense, but the pain does. His pain is excruciatingly human.

Was it fair for someone who was desperate for rehabilitation and acceptance to suffer continual adn systematic police harassment? How does a person integrate himself into society if the stigma the powers that be force him to wear prevent him from forming healthy, intimate human relationships? Is the supposed high rate of recidivism high amongst sex offenders in part due to the public quality of their humiliation, limiting their ability to truly rehabilitate and reintegrate? Does our society create a cruel hypocrisy of desiring rehabilitation of our wounded factions, but turning a blind eye to or encouraging a police state that promotes the cruel breaking down of a wounded person’s spirit? Did we fail an innocent family when our neglect of a wounded member of society spawned displaced mindset riddled with desperation and rage?

They say that how a person treats others is a reflection of how one treats himself. Groups such as countries have the same psychology. If the U.S. is officially the “policeman” of the world but more accurately, the “bully,” then does that same cruel exterior/cowardly interior explain our love affair with fear and our mistreatment of our weakest parts? Sometimes I think the U.S. is a country that secretly hates itself because it never makes a wholehearted effort to soothe its internal rifts and integrate all of its pieces. You can cut off your hand because you don’t like the way it looks, but by doing so, it doesn’t cease to exist.

This whole story makes me feel frustrated and sad. It’s not about sympathy for one person or another, or about blaming or judging. It’s about compassion and awareness for the truth of life experience, and how there are a lot of things in this world that aren’t fair and don’t make any sense. I try really hard not to judge anything anymore. No one in this world really has enough facts about anything, unless it’s something that happened to them personally. And even then you can only be sure of one perspective.

I think a person can pull into themselves and become selfish when they’re trying to maintain their own boundaries. It’s like that little kid who huddles under the blankets trying to squeeze himself into the tightest ball possible to give the monsters outside little to take. Sometimes you can get so afraid that whatever you put out there, someone will take from you so that you have very little left to save for yourself.

As the heart of Fall approaches, I’m dying to get creative. Fall is always the most creative time of year for me, the season where I sit in candelit rooms with the door open to the storms outside, listening to music, writing poetry or playing guitar. These are the times when I truly feel alive, where the world inside of me is as rich and complex as the world outside.

But here we are, with 90 degree heat outside, no rain clouds in sight, lots of crap on the radio and I can never seem to get a moment to myself to feel out what’s going on in my own headspace. I don’t know if other people are feeling the same way, and this is just a phase all of us are going through–what with all the natural disasters, the planes crashing, the terrorist bombings, etc., it just seems like the world is going through a rough patch. I hope it’s just a phase. I haven’t felt this desperate and lonely in a while, just praying for some equilibrium and that calm, steady feeling of overall well-being.

People can have trust issues when they find out that the people who were supposed to be their advisors or mentors growing up were mostly using them to serve ulterior motives. Now these people and their motives could have had harmless intentions, like parents who want to live vicariously through their kids with sports, music, academics, etc (I excluded the stage mom category as stage moms are basically insane). But as these kids grow up and realize that not everything they were told was necessarily in their best interest, they lose faith in the counsel of others and have no confidence in their ability to determine whose advice they can trust as having no personal or idealistic agenda.

My family is always giving me advice. I know for a fact that their advice is often tainted by ulterior motives and stained with manipulation, from how they use “advice” to manipulate my brother. While some of the advice is in his best interest, it is often in his “best interests” that are his best interests as subjectively viewed by someone else, not necessarily what will make him ultimately happy. Do we put our happiness in the hands of others when we ask them to advise us on what they believe will make us happy? Are we basically signing our happiness over to someone else out of fear of responsibility? What if that advice is tinged with ominous warnings that the decisions you make on your own will take you down a tragically unhappy path? Doesn’t this tactic automatically weaken a person’s confidence in making decisions for themselves?

Perhaps my problem is not that I don’t see things clearly, but that I don’t trust myself. I recognize the importance of other perspectives to help a person see their life journey clearly, and if I can’t figure out which voices to heed and which to discard, then basically, aren’t I just an idiot swimming in circles until I inevitably drown? I often feel like an aimless idiot.

What I would do for one long thunderstorm to quiet this place for just a second so I can retreat into my world and think.

Did anyone else see the previews for next week’s Arrested Development and think that clip of Scott Baio as the lawyer Bob Loblaw was the most brilliant thing in years to hit television? If you don’t know why that’s funny, visualize Scott Baio in what looks like a Jacoby and Myers commercial saying (say it outloud with him), “Hi, I’m attorney Bob Loblaw.”

Great article on Laveranues Coles and his announcement about being a survivor of sexual abuse.