Reality TV vs. Erotic Urban Literature, or "Is Your Thong On Fire, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?"

I think I often take my education for granted.

No, I'm not claiming to be the world's smartest human, nor would I want to be. Boys don't like smart girls (duh) so, to such a station I shall never aspire. But that doesn't necessarily detract from the fact that I have enjoyed what some might consider a "lavish" education, thanks to my own naive ambition* and the great state of California.

I went to college, ladies and gents, and every once in a while I am reminded of this.

Like today.

Unfortunately our receptionist at work is out sick this week (I miss her), and so we have a temp girl filling in. Candace is her name. For the three days Candace has been working the phones, filing the mail, giving me whiteout when I request it. She has been polite, pleasant - albeit somewhat confused - and coridal.

"Good morning, this is Candace. How may I direct your call?"

She pretty much nails it every time, and I like her.

Today Candace impressed me even more. More than I ever thought possible in a million years... Witness the exchange, if you will:

Me: (Preparing a fax cover sheet) So, how's it going up here? Getting the hang of it?

Candace: Yeah, it's been pretty slow today.

Me: Well that can be good and bad. Slow can be a lot less stressful. But it can also be --

Candace: Boring. Yeah, that's why I brought a book (gestures to open book on desk).

Me: (Interest piqued - she's a reader! How interesting!) Oh cool, what are you reading?

Candace: "Thong On Fire."

The unassuming interim phone operator then lifted her book up revealing its scintillating cover.


Ho-ly-shit.

This is when I lost it. In my head, at least. Really I can't remember what was said next because all I could think was oh my God, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen and please don't laugh out loud at this PLEASE. I raced back to my office where I Google'd this literary gem to read for myself what it was about.

I strongly suggest clicking here because you will not be disappointed, and no amount of wordsmithing on my part could make the actual fact of this book's existence any more hilarious.

However, I will say this much... "Thong On Fire" was written by the National Bestselling Author of "Thug-A-Licious."

Joking aside, Candance is a sweet girl. And to be honest, no matter the content I'm just glad that she's reading. More people should choose to read to keep themselves busy and entertained. In a culture that pumps out the mind-numbing shit like "Moment Of Truth" and "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" it's good that Candace is at least sticking it to The Man by picking up a book - that no fifth grader should ever, ever read.

I mean I suppose she could be spending her free time at the switchboard watching Youtube clips or playing Scrabulous...

But then she'd be just
like
me.


*A young girl has no way of knowing that no man will ever ask her how many AP classes she took.

New Years Resolutions and the Inevitable Disappointment That Follows, or Building My Muscles...Breaking My Spirit

For better or worse, at the beginning of every year I inevitably find myself making a list of New Years Resolutions.

In the past they have mostly been impossible tasks like Wake up every morning at dawn and run 5 miles, or Write a Novel, or Stop Drinking Coffee, or Go Out on Every Date I'm Asked...

And yet about a month into the new year, every bit as inevitable as the act of me making these resolutions, I start hitting the snooze button 3 or 4 times before dragging myself out my bed. I get as far as maybe a paragraph into the novel. My unhealthy caffeine addiction nags at me with debilitating mid-day migraines, and when I glance at my calendar all I see are blank spaces or little pencil drawn notes reminding me that I've effectively replaced a fulfilling relationship with a man with self-pity and such spinsterly activities as reading, painting, and cooking elaborate dinners for myself.

Yeah, LA can pretty much suck it.

At least I haven't resolved to end the parade of bitterness.

This year, like many years in the past, I made another list of things I think I should do to shift the focus inward and make myself more awesome. And here, 14 days into 2008 - the year that I'm declaring will be the best of my life to-date - I'm actually holding up my end of the bargain.

Meaning, I haven't disappointed myself. Yet.

But I know it's coming...

With holiday party backlash rearing its ugly head, one of my standard resolutions is to "be healthier," which is really just a euphemism I like to use for "lose weight." But it makes me feel like I'm doing it for the right reasons when really it's mostly out of vanity because isn't everything we modern humans do out of vanity and isn't it always swimsuit season in Southern California....

So, as someone whose scorn for Socal knows no bounds, I did the worst thing I could have possibly...ever...done.

I joined LA fitness.

This is a picture of what it feels like to join LA fitness.

I know! I know what you're thinking. It sounds so miserable. But it's actually going to be great. I've resolved that it will be great, and I've also resolved to keep all resolutions. So I'm not bitching out on this one. I got a really terrific discount on the enrollment fee, and the monthly charge amounts to one dinner out which is doing me a favor anyway. They'll even validate my parking for 90 minutes. Lord knows what a treat that is!

What's funny about the whole thing though, isn't the fact that I joined a really toxically shallow gym. What's funny is that I've actually become toxically shallow.

Just kidding.*

Really though. Yes, there are 12 foot high glass windows paneling the cardio room facing Wilshire Boulevard - one of the most heavily trafficked sections of boulevard in Los Angeles. Yes, the clientele shows up habitually overdressed (probably for everything), but one thing I have seen over and over and over again when I go work out is that no matter where you are, fat or thin, suburb or city, actor or waiter (probably both), everyone wears the same awful face. I call it...

Gym Face.

It's a phenomenon similar to that of O-Face. Meaning you wear it only in certain situations, it is similar across demographics, and it is ridiculous. Once you've identified said phenomenon, and if you haven't already you will, it's impossible to see anything else because all gym-goers for some inexplicable reason walk around with the same blank, self-conscious stare.

Gym Face typically reflects one of several attitudes, including but not limited to the following: "I'm working out, and I'm really fucking proud of myself." Or, "I don't know how to operate this machine, but I don't want anyone to know." Or, "Do I look like the kind of girl who gets off the crosstrainer after 20 minutes? Bitch please..."

At LA Fitness, this face alone makes it possible for me to make harsh, sweeping generalizations about my fellow Westsiders without conscience or remorse.

Case in point...

It's Monday night. The after work crowd has poured itself into said fishbowl cardio room. A good-looking-from-a-distance guy walks toward me as I wreck myself on a stationery bike. Tallish, sandy blonde hair, 5 o'clock shadow. Hmm, I think to myself. He's not bad. I wonder if he's nice. Smart? Charming? Would he make a good father? Could he love me forever? [Insert judgement] Eh, prolly not. Looks like a frat boy...

He comes closer. Damn, I can see the letters on his t-shirt - a dead giveaway. Frat confirmed.

Gross.

And with each he takes step it gets worse, but it isn't his shirt that seals my disgust. Nay, I would be a fool to dismiss a prospective gym-crush for such a slight infraction as this. I could forgive the Boy he may have been in college for the Man he is today. But I'll never get that far. Not with this one.

Because plastered across that stubbly chiseled jaw is that face. That arrogant, self-involved, iron-pumping, fuck-you-and-your-resolutions face. Gym Face.

He glances at himself in the mirror and conspicuously flexes his calves.

And as I ferociously pump the peddles on my bike, as my heart beats a tribal rhythm inside my chest, a small part of me dies. Sacrificed to the god of botox, modeling agencies, and LA Fitness.

I break my gawking at the asshat's disproportionately large calves and resolve to press on. He may be one of a thousand disappointments I'll have to endure this year, but I'll be damned if any one of them comes from me.

It's been 20 minutes and there's a line of women waiting for my machine...

They can wait.

I reset the timer, gather my strength, and stare blankly ahead.

Happy New Year.



*Please don't tell me that you believed me even for a second.

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.