You Can't Take the Small Town Out of the Girl, or "Down the Street From Folsom Prison"

Everything has a dark side. An underbelly. An unsightly mole...so to speak.

Every record collection holds a few shitty tracks. Every family has a retarded aunt no one ever calls (right?). Every PG-13 movie has at least one F-bomb, and every clean, quiet, suburban town has what my parents might call an 'Element.'

Element shmelement. I call it the good part.

When I go home, it is to the only place I've ever really known as home. I eat dinner at the table where I did my kindergarten homework, in the house my family has lived in for the last 18 years.

The living room carpet is newer, as is the paint on the kitchen walls, and snazzy granite now rests where once-fashionable pastel blue tile graced the counter tops. But underneath the updated decor are the same beams and sheet-rock that saw me grow up.

When I drive through my neighborhood, I see myself at different heights, like one of those diagrams depicting cavemen evolving over thousands of years from monkeys into men. At 4'6" I'm an orangutan hunting down a cat in the empty lot next door. At 5'2" I'm a biped gorilla picking a bug out of her eye on the way home from school. At 5'8" I'm a full grown human girl, trying to convince her parents that later curfews aren't necessarily the cause of teen pregnancy.


I know all the shortcuts and all the potholes. It's safe. It's clean. It's suburban. Sure, some things are different, but mostly they are the same.

And there is something very comforting in that.

....By the way, how gross is that picture... I had to.

However.

Until just last week I had not seen how unbelievably shady my suburbia is, and has always been, just beneath its shiny surface.

See, while the El Dorado Hills / Folsom Area is indeed a nice place to live, you can still find a backwoods, trailer-trash, whiskey-swilling, hillbilly element if you look in the right places. Those places are called bars. Maybe it's because there's a major state penitentiary--Folsom Prison, of Johnny Cash fame--just a few short miles away, or maybe it's because you can still find cows grazing in between cookie-cutter housing developments*. Whatever explanation you try to come up with, it's damn near impossible to answer the question What makes this place so special?


Oh, oh... it's magic?

That's really all I can think of. I don't think it's the prison.

The other night, I had the unique pleasure of going out [read: drinking lots of beer] in Old Town Folsom. Folsom is indeed a very old town. Right down by the river, where 49ers used to pan for gold, is a tiny street that is home to a few carnival-like watering holes. Growing up, when the concept of grown-up entertainment is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, I had no way of knowing the magic that existed just beyond the saloon-house doors.

Walking in, I immediately got the sense that the night would be the stuff of catchy country songs... this was one of those "low places" where Garth Brooks probably parties down with his hick friends.

Which was fitting. I am probably still at least 7% hick.**

It had to be magic, not hairspray, that kept the mullets in the room stiff to perfection. It had to be magic, not good taste, that kept the cowboy hats from falling off. And it had to be magic, not alcohol, that made every person there, present company included, dance like an imbred assclown to the 80s cover band.

God, I love 80s cover bands.

What I didn't know as a child was that while I was in my backyard collecting rocks and jumping on an over-sized trampoline, fun-seekers of all ages (21-150... I think some of those people may have actually been 49ers) were drinking themselves into a jubilant stupor just a stone's throw away.

From the prison. Which is incidentally a stone's throw from my backyard!

Sarcasm aside, there's a hometown subculture there I'm really glad exists. One that lets everyone play the village idiot and never turns away an eager drinker from joining the parade. Only on the dark side can you watch an intoxicated man in a cowboy hat beat two overweight women in their 40s in a Tahitian dancing contest just before the band turns on their homespun fog machine.

I don't mean to make it sound precious, because I'd take long necks and bad hairdos any night of the week over the bullshit of waiting in a line at pretentious club on Sunset, only to be judged for not dressing like enough of a whore by some starving asshole actor wearing an artificial ball-sack and bad cologne.

Seedy hometown fun is hard to beat. Especially when you're down the block from a maximum-security detention facility. Hicking-out actually doubles as a celebration of freedom.

And it's really fucking fun.




*It's true. Cow-tipping is a real pastime and was once common practice in my hometown.
**Which makes me 93% sophistication, and 100% awesome.

Merry Christmas Song!

I hope you get everything you wanted, and a few things you'll have to return.




Love,
Lisa

TV on DVD Will End Your Mind, or "I'm Not Bored I'm Just Wasting Time"

There are only 24 hours in a day and not all of them are completely useful.

If you know Jack Bauer, or a recent fan of his like I am, you probably love Jack because he might be the only human ever to really make the most of his day. He takes 24 hours and really jams them full of activity, every minute of which is so emotional, so physical, so...sexual?* If he's not fighting terrorists, he's making important calls on his cell phone, or discovering important facts, and goddammit if he ever takes a minute to eat, or pee, or breathe. Heroes don't need that shit, and I love him for that.

I guess I don't love him as much as I love the idea of him. He's just so productive, you know?

And now that I have a job and spend most of my day on very unproductive things, I find that now more than ever I want to maximize my free time. I really do. Truly, madly, deeply do. It is a precious gift, to be spent wisely. So a few weeks ago I decided to watch all of the first season of '24'. Because it makes sense. Also because spending (not wasting) time watching '24' doesn't feel counter-productive. It feels like I'm helping, so it may as well count as community service, which we all know is very productive.

If sitting on the couch for hours at a time witnessing one man save the world from mayhem and destruction is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Of course, while exercising my talents in voyeurism can be both stimulating and fulfilling**, there are times when even I, the most dedicated of TV on DVD viewers, can step outside of Jack and his swashbuckling world to realize that Hmm, maybe my muscles haven't been used all day, and whatever alcohol remaining in my system will probably be converted to fat before my very eyes. Maybe actual exercise is actually necessary.

So I get up, and I run.

Or jog. Whichever. I don't have enough money to join a gym.

This familiar cycle of TV-induced anesthesia followed by guilt followed by exercise most recently happened over the weekend. At 2:00pm on Sunday I was halfway up 26th Street, jogging my way back toward San Vicente, pondering the nature of time... what it means to spend it, what it means to fill it, to use it wisely, to waste it. Is 24 hours to me the same as it is to a child laborer in Indonesia? Is time a discrete series of snapshots, or do we all exist on some sort of continuum the way Kurt Vonnegut writes in 'Slaughterhouse Five'? Am I real? Is any of this real? Am I still high?...

I continued jogging.

I was proud of myself for choosing genuine productivity over my distorted version in the half-world I had created on my sofa, right in that perfect ass-shaped dip between the cushions...Right where I wanted to be sitting.

I needed to know what happened between the hours of 6:00pm and 7:00pm on the day of the California Presidential Primary.

Jack, I'll never let go...

This is where I noticed something quite peculiar. So what if I was busy philosophizing the nature of time and existence, far be it from me not to notice the details. It was fascinating: All up and down 26th Street, on every electrical box, every manhole, every available non-concrete surface, written in what appeared to be industrial strength whiteout was this simple phrase:

"Satchmo '07."

'What.. the... fuck?' I asked myself; the first in series of questions, followed by, 'Why, God, did this person choose to tag his name in whiteout on every available surface for the full length of this Santa Monica street?' 'Who is Satchmo?' 'What does he want, and why has he declared '07 to be his year?'

I'm pretty smart, but I had a hard time with this. Ordinarily I guess I'd just overlook something so retarded, chalk it up to a crazed jazz enthusiast trying his damnedest to make sure the legend of Louis Armstrong lived on forever, and focus on the pain in my hip. But something bigger was happening inside my pretty little head. What this phantom tagger made me realize was how selfish and pompous I had been. Here I had spent all this time congratulating myself on finding new and exciting ways to waste time, when really I'd missed the boat.
Satchmo's boat.

Whoever this guy was, whether his name really was Satchmo or Bill, or Ted, He had figured it out. Not me. I thought that spending the best years of my life plopped on a caved-in sofa in front of a pathetically small television fighting off feelings of guilt while an overpaid actor pretends to stop humanity from ending itself was the time-waster to end all time-wasters. What I had attempted, he had achieved, and all I could do was bring myself to a reverent stop in the middle of 26th Street and thank Jesus for creating a human who truly knows how to waste this precious gift we call

Time.



*Did I take it too far with that? I don't know anymore.
**Ah. I wish everything was both stimulating and fulfilling.

Are Those Melons For Real? or, The Fruit Is Always Sweeter Anywhere But Here

If there's one thing about Los Angeles I can't stand it's how artificial everything feels.

No, I take that back, it's the traffic.

No. Maybe it's the shallow people I meet everywhere... Wait, is that the same as what I first said?

Dammit I'm confused.

It never rains here, so from the perpetual sunshine distracting you from the fact that the planet is indeed in orbit, to the fugly blond trophy wives that clumsily drive around in their absurdly large Range Rovers, very few things and people give you a sense that you're living in a real world, and that you all actually exist. The city itself is arbitrarily stitched together with concrete and asphalt, and the only thing that distinguishes a "good" part of town from a "bad" part of town is that someone, somewhere made a decision a long time ago that Beverly Hills would be a place that should make you want to vomit, and anywhere east of the 101 should make you fear for your life.*

Speaking of the 101...

Not long ago, after drinking a few beers and singing a few tacky karaoke songs, I found myself abandoned on the curb in front of the Pig 'N Whistle in Hollywood very late on a Thursday night--a very unfortunate and distressing situation that more or less forced me into taking a cab back to the west side. This sucked. Also, it cost me $35, which sucked even harder.

And it's too bad, because it was a really fun night...

The full-length story leading up to my cab ride home is actually pretty entertaining, but lucky for some people, that is not the enlightening life-anecdote I've chosen to try to learn from tonight.** Rather, I'd like to discuss the cab ride itself.

It was a very average looking cab, yellow on the outside and musty with the scent of hundreds of other weepy, abandoned late-night karaoke addicts, with a very average looking Armenian driver. I sat in the backseat, so as to spare this quiet man the pathetic little display of tears I was indulging. Also, because I think sitting in the front seat of a cab is one of the most uncomfortable situations a person can find him or herself in and should be avoided at any cost.

I was pretty upset, but even in the throes of childish whimpering I knew there was nothing more girly and pitiful than crying in the back of a cab. Upon realizing this somewhere between Fairfax and La Cienega, I figured it wouldn't hurt to sack up and make some friendly-ish conversation with my driver. I was sort of drunk and disheveled, and ten minutes earlier a nicely dressed but rather short businessman had seen me crying on the sidewalk approached me offering money (for a cab of course, you asshole)... so I was hard up for a ride, but at least I wasn't in the driver's seat of a Yellow Cab at 1:30 AM, you know. If anything I was doing this guy a favor.

"So where are you from?" I asked.

This wasn't rude of me. It was a good question. He was clearly not from America and there is absolutely nothing racist about that. I just wanted to know which kinds of generalizations I could make about him and whether or not I could guess what he'd eaten for dinner that night.

"Iran," he replied.

Fuck. I thought he was Armenian. Oh well, close enough.

"Oh wow, that's far," I said, like a complete moron. "So do you miss it?"

This question also made me sound like a moron. I guess since I miss living in Northern California, I falsely assume that anyone not from here would naturally pine for the place they call Home. Even if that's Iran. Remarkably, he responded the way I had predicted, mentioning that Yes sometimes he did in fact miss living in Iran, mostly because he missed being close to family, but in 1989 when he left the country it had gotten too dangerous to stay...and after having been a soldier in the Iranian military for two years, moving to the United States looked like a good option...

Hmm. Iranian military...I guess he needed a change of pace?

We continued down Sunset, the boulevard of broken dreams, and the snot on my cheek was almost fully dry when he mentioned one last thing he missed about his homeland, in the form of something he didn't like about LA:

"It seems like nothing here smells good. Flowers are all pretty but...no smell. Same with the fruit. I go to Ralphs, buy very big apple, but I not smell it."

Dude. That was deep.

Sitting in the back seat of that musty cab, I thought about my life, and all of my fruit buying experiences. I too have purchased many a very big apple, and it's true that even at Whole Foods they are almost never fragrant. In all their bio-engineered goodness, even fruit loses it's authenticity living in this city.

LA is all about size and style. You can't even buy an everyday watermelon without having to purchase it leather boots, leggings, and a pashmina. Even then, it's probably not the right pashmina...

Oh, and by the way your melons better be huge. And expensive.


Perhaps on some level I have an "If you can't beat 'em join 'em" mentality. I mean, I do have more than 2 overpriced purses (I just love them!), and maybe I care more than I should about how I look when I go out, but fuck you if this place doesn't give you a complex.

But even I, the eternal pessimist, can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I won't live here forever.

Plus, what would I blitch (blog+bitch) about, if not my scorn for Southern California?

Today it was all of 78 degrees.

Nothing here feels real.

Except maybe for my melons.


*Ew, I hate everything east of the 101.
**For those of you who've never read my blog, that's what I do. I learn from my life. You should try it some time.

Home for the Holidays With No Hope For a Normal Future, or Their Blood...My Veins

I am doomed.

It sounds dramatic, but in my case it just might be true.

See, living away from home, you have the luxury of fooling everyone you meet into believing that you somehow don't have a family. Maybe you were one of those dumpster babies, or maybe you were independently minded and emancipated yourself from your parents shortly after moving to solids or being potty trained. Maybe you're what happened when lightning struck the ocean and DNA magically came together. Who cares. Whatever your story is, no one in your life has to know where you come from, or more importantly, whose genes are actually responsible for the person you are today.

But I'll always know...

And thank God there's the Thanksgiving holiday to remind me!

Thing is, it's taken me years to get this comfortable in my own skin. If you were to have told me as a chubby little nine year old with offset front teeth and frizzy hair, alone in my craft room hot-gluing art projects together for hours at a time, that I would actually turn out to be somewhat interesting and not completely plagued with self-loathing, I probably wouldn't have believed you. It may sound like a lie, but I'm a real life grown-up.* I live my life, and now that my car starts and I have a job I don't hate, I'm actually starting to love my life. I still complain about a lot of shit, and I know my behavior can be more than a little off-beat, but God forbid I take full credit for it.

This year, like every other year and/or any occasion that my extended family is calamitously brought together, Thanksgiving was a fucking crazyass carnival shitshow that made the truth of my lineage shine brighter than the warm fire at our hearth. It also made it burn just like that fire. Or maybe that was the alcohol I wouldn't...stop...drinking.

Just take another sip, don't panic.

Your mom's 48 year old confirmed lesbian cousin just made another suggestive comment about you being her lover. Gulp. Uh-oh, your 3 year old cousin just hit you in the face again with the bean bag. Aaaaand there goes his hand up your shirt. He just touched your boob. Don't panic. Shit, what next? Grandma is drowning in a puddle of her own self-pity, and that's right, your questionably retarded aunt is crying in the corner because no one will look at pictures of her cats...again.

Keep drinking. Do not panic.

Shh, it's ok, Lisa. You'll be ok. This is just a nightmare and soon you're going to wake up...

Except here's the thing: I didn't wake up. The nightmare I seemed to be having wasn't a nightmare at all. Nope, I was fully awake, and with my father reminding me hourly that his blood ran through my veins, I was all too aware that my ancestors had apparently been doing their swimming on the shallow end of the gene pool.

This sad fact became apparent as I was halfway through jamming my face full of stuffing at our opulent feast and nearly choked. And it certainly wasn't because of the food. My mother succeeded brilliantly, once again, in preparing a most decadent spread for our family, and 15 of our closest distant relatives. Including good old Uncle Bob.

All too often we don't give credit where credit is due. My 78 year old great uncle may be as old as the hills of Westwood, but he can still remember with unsettling clarity his days as a young buck at UCLA. This is is quite funny, you see, coming from a man who actually doesn't remember how old he is.

His plate was clean, and the mashed potatoes were long since gone when he brought up the very appropriate subject of venereal disease.

See, the old folks always have some story to tell about Life and Love with the kind of insight that only comes with age...

"Now, I can remember when I was at UCLA. There was one guy at the fraternity who would screw pretty much anything with legs--"

This is where I sort of inhaled a chunk of yam. WTF Uncle Bob!? He continued, not noticing...

"--and he tried to get me to go out drinking with him down at the bars near campus...you know, drink lots of beer so we could get the girls back home and in the sack. But I didn't want any part of that. I didn't want to get any venereal disease. That shit scared me to death. I wanted healthy kids."

Stuffing. Stuck in nasal passage.

Uncle Bob then segued into his not-so-misguided thoughts on young people today and how crazy it is that we all run around doing keg stands and drinking shots of tequila from each others' cleavages and how that's something that would really get him pretty excited, ya know...

I didn't know how to respond, and perhaps I'll never know how to respond. I couldn't very well corroborate the caustic rumors with a polite, "Why yes Uncle Bob, I do enjoy a good body shot," or offer to demonstrate my upside-down beer drinking skills.** All I could do was hope that somehow, somewhere deep in the double helix of my DNA, whatever genes I shared with this lovable 78 year old man had randomly mutated.

Hope is all I have.

I love my family, and look forward to next year, and every idiot parade to come, but for as long as I live, I will shudder at the thought of what we share...

Absolutely everything.


*Eff you. I pay bills, I am a grown-up.
**I am very skilled in many things including keg stands.

A Note To My Family Before Thanksgiving, or Sometimes Soy Just Isn't A Suitable Alternative

I can tolerate lactose.

Lucky for me, I don't get gassy when I drink milk, or eat yogurt, or add cheese to my beans. I can eat as much dairy as I want. I could bathe in cream, and if I get sick I can automatically rule out lactose intolerance as a possible cause of illness.

And I'm glad about this, because life is already hard enough.

I'm one of the lucky ones, unlike the poor soul in front of me at Whole Foods today. As I was waiting to purchase my standard salad + water bottle lunch, I noticed that the elderly gentleman standing just in front of me had a mixed basket of non-dairy dairy products, all of which appeared to be artificially engineered using soy. Soy milk. Soy sour cream. Soy American cheese.

My heart bled for this man.

Here was a man who clearly loved dairy. I can imagine him as a child as the ice cream truck passed through his neighborhood. His little feet scampering to the door at the sound of cheery music making its way through balmy summer air down what I'm sure his parents referred to as 'The Avenue.' He watched behind his screen door as the kids next door rushed down their lawns, fists filled with quarters in a hopeful race against time. He would have been right there with them, if it weren't for his lactose intolerance. "You know how you get when you eat that ice cream," his mother would say with a knowing grimace.* And oh boy, he knew...

Poor kid.

This man and the fictional life-story I made up for him while I waited steps behind of course got me thinking about life, and the everyday expectations and disappointments we all must survive. The lactose we must tolerate, if you will. See, this cheese-loving man was no different from me in a lot of ways. He wanted what he just... couldn't... have.

I may not be lactose intolerant, but there still things that make my tummy hurt. And with the barrage of questions I'll undoubtedly have to answer (with a smile) at this year's Thanksgiving familypalooza, there are a few things I wish I could address to my relatives before we break bread:

1) Yes. I have a job and so far it's okay, but at this point I don't know what I really want to do with my beautiful mind so please don't ask, it makes me uncomfortable. I left the entertainment business because it sucks and I don't any patronizing "I told you so" speeches. Thanks anyway, please pass the yams.

2) I make less money than I would like to make.

3) I don't really date because I feel strongly that Los Angeles is a soulless wasteland nearly devoid of viable options (I hope I am wrong). Regardless, I have no intention of telling you anything about my personal life. Which leads me to...

4) No, I do not have children, or plans to bear children in the near future. Comments or complaints about our family replenishing itself with new life and how great that would be will be disregarded and considered personal assaults on my inability to find a suitable mate. Meeting men at bars is not only unlikely, but unwise. When my children ask me someday about how I met their father I don't want the story to start off with, "Well, Mommy and Daddy were wasted at a bar one night and Mommy was so good at karaoke Daddy just knew she was the one!"

Enough about me, let's talk about you. Oh, you feel like yams, too? Yeah, I thought so...

I guess the difference between me and the Soyophile is that the things I must deal with are at least within my sphere of influence. I have no genetic pre-disposition to not knowing how to constructively harness my ambition, but we all have to decide at some point to what extent we are willing to let our limitations dictate our expectations. What concessions can we stand to make and what are we willing to settle for? At what point do we stand up and say "No! I love cereal and I won't let my body's aversion to milk stop me from eating it! Ever!"

I expect to be happy. I expect to be rich.** I expect to marry and have several children.

I expect to have my ice cream, and eat it too. I will not settle for soy.

Not today. Not ever.


*She was referring to his violent dairy-induced diarreah.
**No, not really.

Incoherent Musings on the Issue of Coolness, or Pounding Jello Shots with Senior Citizens Is A Great Way To Spend A Weekend

What the fuck does it mean to be Cool?

My entire adolescence reads as an Odyssey of sorts, a fumbling about in the dark, a long and winding road that hopefully dead ends at some point with an answer this puzzling question.

But I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.

See, it's always been a mystery to me, what makes someone truly cool. Just when I think I've identified an actual cool person, just when I've outlined in my mind the key factors that make that person cool, they'll blow it and do a magic trick, or be into race-cars, or have a girlfriend--and in an instant the wind is swiftly swept from my sails, and again I am left to wonder...

There's a lot of confusion surrounding the issue of Coolness. Lines are easy to cross, and the shades of gray...well, they are many. Like, it's cool to watch 'The Office,' but it's not cool to make awkward jokes at work (ala Michael Scott.) And what about drugs? We're taught that they're definitely NOT cool in elementary school, but then the rules abruptly change and in junior high it's like, only the cool kids smoke pot and sneak their parents' booze. The definition of the word, and whatever attitude it implies is so fucked up and challenging and I've never fully grasped it...

And yet Coolness, while it remains an intangible mystery shrouded in a dense fog, is also the only real thing I know exists.

So really. Someone please tell me. I'd kind of like to start implementing some changes.*

Because there is no Rosetta Stone for this kind of thing. No rules or regulations. My high school calculus teacher may have been the coolest man alive, but the same could be said of John Lennon, or even my Dad on a good day. In the milieu of fleeting trends and unbearable fads, bandwagons and here-today-gone-tomorrows, it's hard to know what actually qualifies. Is coolness based on what you wear? What you listen to? How attractive you are? Is it owning nothing but vinyl or having the newest iPod? Is it knowing how to play the guitar, or having a boyfriend who does?

Hmm. I don't have any of those things. Fuck. See why I need help?

Try as you might, you may never actually learn how to be it, but you sure as shit know cool when you see it.

And last weekend, I saw it. In the most unlikely of places.

Last weekend while I was hanging out at my aunt and uncle's house, I saw cool happen. My visit happened to fall on the same day as an annual get together they host for a group of friends who have apparently all known each other since high school. Keep in mind, that's a helluva long time; these people all qualified for AARP like, 20 years ago. So they gather at the house, eat greasy lasagna, drink cheap wine.... and (drumroll, please) do Jello shots.

Seriously. Jello shots.

Maybe I'm over-stating my reaction when I say I was blown away by this, but at first I honestly didn't know how to respond. When a gray-haired woman with intimidatingly blue eyeshadow and imposing bosoms shoves a tray of those things in your face, the experience alone can make you dizzy with surprise.

"I'm sorry ma'am, shouldn't you be a 20-year-old frat boy? Where is your bunk-bed and your ulterior motive? Can I trust this Jello shot? Should I be worried about my reputation?...Wait, are you my grandma?"

I guess the point, and really the humor of all this lies in the fact that even though the Jello Shot-Fairy was at least 67, probably diabetic, and in severe need of some hair-dye--things that would usually land you in the uncool category**--she was undeniably the most clued-in guest at the Lasagna Party. Her very presence and the intoxicating gifts she bore flipped all my notions of coolness upside down. Again.

And you know, so what? So maybe there is no formula for being cool. Maybe it's totally possible and it's just a matter of time before I'm 67 and diabetic and force-feeding my overweight, geriatric friends Jello shots that could potentially kill them.

At least being cool is totally possible.

Someday...



*Preferably sooner than later, because at some point I'd like to get married and maybe even have kids, and I think being cool would help me achieve those goals.

**Sorry, Diabetes is not cool.