Day 218: Day of Rest (Love Hangover).

Burst of Brilliance - 6/29/06

Near the end of last night's Radiohead show, I crept along the aisle that separates sections B and C (my seat was back in C) to get a better shot.

I happened to click the above picture just as a light show effect blasted out from the stage.

The concert has stuck with me all day. I've been hearing riffs, flashing on images ... I feel lucky to have been there.

As I write this, George and Jackie are at tonight's second show. It probably started about 20 minutes ago.

The Greek Theater is three miles away, but I swear I can almost hear "Kid A" from here.



P.S.
The recording isn't stellar, but this new song (All I Need) brought tears to my eyes last night ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL203b6be4o

and here's Idioteque live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGW0OdJR_E

Day 217: How to Disappear Completely.

You'd never know it from this cell phone shot, but that is indeed Radiohead lighting up the Greek Theater earlier tonight.

It might be strange for some people to contemplate going to a concert alone, but I used to have to do it all the time (believe me - no one wants to be your friend when you have to review the Michael Bolton/Kenny G double bill). It doesn't bother me. I kind of like slinking in whenever I want to, wandering around if and when I so desire, and watching all the people go by (the women's bathroom was especially interesting tonight). But most of all, I like disappearing into the music.

That last bit was never an option with good old Michael B, even though I do have a soft spot for the guy (a high point of my music critic career was when he held up an article I'd written about him and got 12,000 people to boo me).

But when the band on stage is Radiohead, disappearing is a profoundly excellent thing to experience.

I went alone because the show sold out in (I'm not exaggerating) 90 seconds - when Radiohead plays a small venue like the Greek Theater, there aren't many tickets to go around. George somehow managed to finagle an extra ticket (he and Jackie are going tomorrow night), and he was kind enough to throw it my way for face value (he could have gotten three times that on eBay).

The show was amazing and held several high points for me - The National Anthem and Idioteque were particularly memorable, Paranoid Android took me someplace else, I liked the tripped-out, sped-up version of the OCD anthem Everything In Its Right Place, there was a new song about needing nothing more than love that almost made me cry - but a killer rendition of How to Disappear Completely is what's sticking out in my mind. (I'm still crushed they didn't do Pyramid Song, which I'm listening to as I write this, but I'll get over it.)

So, was seeing Radiohead sober as good as seeing Radiohead stoned? Well ... no. Being stoned contributes to the whole feeling of being transported by the music, and I missed it. Some good stuff certainly wafted my way a few times, but there was nothing in the way of a "contact high" - I was 100% straight for this one.

In the end, maybe that's why I never disappeared completely during tonight's show. But I definitely lost myself a few times, and that alone was worth the price of admission.

Day 214: Day of Rest.

Questioning God from Way Back - 1969




Challenge: Day Eight
Walk: 33 mins
Sit-ups: No
Water:48 oz
Food (with Points):
latte: 1
Rye Krisp crackers: 2
Leftover kabab with mango salsa: 5
Weight Watchers choclate mini-bars: 5
latte: 1
Popcorn: 3
Sushi: 7
Salad: 2
TOTAL POINTS: 26

Day 212: Shut Up Already!

Into every life a few sucky dates must fall, and last night, I experienced one of those dates.

Jill was vaguely attractive and not stupid (both good starts) ... but over the course of four hours, she simply could not seem to shut the fuck up. Even worse, it was a largely uninteresting stream of babble, from details about her schoolwork (like I care about operating a radiology machine?) to stories about her old job as a limo driver (yeah, most famous people tip like shit, I get it) to theories about why she and her ex broke up (uhm, maybe because she got tired of listening to your mouth run 24/7?)

As if talking me into a waking coma wasn't bad enough, she must have smoked 22 bowls of pot in front of me - and this after I'd told her about my year-long marijuana sabbatical. I didn't mind that she wanted to get stoned (sometimes people burn out and stop talking when they get high), but to smoke that much? And to keep offering it to me? Even worse, the weed didn't slow her monkey chatter in the slightest.

Now, you're probably wondering why I stayed as long as I did. Well, I'd driven 30 minutes to meet her, and I sincerely hate driving (I vastly prefer to be driven). If I'm going to travel that far, I want it to be worth the investment. Basically, I kept hoping the date would get better ... and I was dreading the drive home.

Perhaps I didn't think that one through.

The evening ended with a vaguely awkward romantic overture, one that confirmed my suspicion that Jill's ability to read the moment was pretty much on par with her respect for silence.

My respect for silence, meanwhile, seems to have suddenly grown. Go figure.

Note: Meeting Eileen has been moved to Saturday night. At least I think it has ... I sent an email proposing the delay (I start teaching a summer class tomorrow morning and I'm tired from last night) and haven't heard back yet.

Challenge: Day Five
Walk: No walk.
Sit-ups: 20
Water: More than 64 ounces.
Food (with Points)
latte: 1
Lean Cuisine pizza: 7
Chinese Chicken Salad with Fresh Gourmet dressing: 5
Whole Grain Pretzels: 2
Two squares dark chocolate with 1 TBS peanut butter: 6
8 oz fat-free organic milk:1
Green Beans w/ Spicy Sauce: 6
Whole Grain Bread: 2
TOTAL POINTS: 30

Day 207: The Pedometer Diaries.

Don't they look healthy? Despite a diet high in fat and sugar, the Amish have a 4% obesity rate (compared with 31% in the regular U.S. population). Their secret? An average 16,000 steps per day. The average American office worker, by comparison, takes just 2,500 steps per day.

Steps 0-94: I wake up at 7:03 a.m. and decide that today is the day - I'm finally going to remember to wear the pedometer George gave me and see how many steps I take in a day. Why? Well, according to Weight Watchers, "women who consistently clock 10,000 or more steps per day have lower percentages of body fat, body mass indexes (BMI) and waist-to-hip circumferences." Cool. I'm all for a lower waist-to-hip circumference.

Steps 95-562: After basic morning stuff, it's time to walk the dogs. The fact that I can't find my keys causes me to spend 15 minutes searching the house. I am secretly pleased because I'm logging so many extra steps. I finally arrive at the park and get started.

Steps 563-3,591: A 3,027-step walk? Oh yeah, baby. Now we're talking. As I walk, I think about why, if the Greek root word "Ped" clearly means "foot (pedestrian, pedal, pedometer), the word "pedophile" exists.

Steps 3,592-3,610: Since these 18 steps accumulate while I'm driving to the market after the park, I am now aware there is a margin of error to consider.

Steps 3,611-4,701: My oblivious side serves me well as I must criss-cross the supermarket several times in order to get everything on my list. I wish I could say I was trying to log more steps, but I really am that scatterbrained at the store.

Steps 4,702-4,911: Once home, I adjust the outside sprinklers, put groceries away, feed the dogs and make coffee. I feel there should be more steps involved, as I have gotten a lot accomplished.

Steps 4,912-5,807: I prepare breakfast, make a few changes to the manuscript, and watch a stupid movie on HBO in the background (National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage and some hot blonde chick who keeps me from turning it off. Uhm, I've never seen or read The Davinci Code, and I still know this thing's a ripoff.). Sprinklers are moved, dogs are played with, general walking around the house occurs.

Steps 5,808-6,133: My Ex picks me up to go see a movie. After parking and picking up our tickets, we head over for a quick pre-movie stop at Amoeba Music.

Steps 6,134-7,701: Amoeba is a big store, and I walk around looking at all the things I can't afford. I finally wind up grabbing the first season of The Larry Sanders Show for a very reasonable $19.99 (Hey now!!) before heading back to the theater and taking our seats.

Steps 7,702-8,173: I'm tempted to stand up and walk in place to keep my steps going, but the movie - a Seattle high school girl's basketball documentary called Heart of the Game - is so good I forget all about my pedometer. Seriously. Go see this movie.

Steps 8,174-8,740: My Ex and I stop at Trader Joe's (another market) on the way home from the movie. Worried that 10,000 steps is out of reach, I'm tempted to make several laps around the store, but I restrain myself.

Steps 8,741-10,124: A stroke of good fortune befalls me when, as I approach my house, I see both a smashed toilet in the gutter (five streets away) and a cordoned-off area populated by five police cars (one street over). I hurry inside, put the groceries away, grab my camera, and have the Ex drop me back off at the toilet. After taking pictures there, I walk to the crime scene and find out they're looking for a hand grenade that was reported to be in the neighborhood. They're still looking for it as I head home. I'm careful to watch where I step.




Steps 10,125-10,797: More sprinkler moving, more throwing the frisbee for Denny, more general cleaning up and walking around. I read my book for a little while (Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, which I've only just begun), but this bothers me because I know the pedometer is stagnant. I can't focus. This period is ultimately marred by the realization that the pedometer is no longer hooked into my pocket. Crap! I search the house, extremely annoyed that Lord knows how many steps aren't counting/haven't counted, and finally find it beside my desk chair. The Lost Steps are a blow.

Steps 10,798-11,843: After making dinner (grilled swordfish with homemade mango salsa - it was so good the other night I felt the need to do it again), I putter around on the computer. Turns out that while the Latin term "paed" used to mean child, nowadays, "Ped" can be used either way. I can't tell you how wrong I think this is. I play with the dogs and then work on the blog while Larry Sanders plays. Now that I know the first season only has 13 episodes, the price doesn't seem so nice. I'm vaguely wishing I'd bought the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show instead ($19.99 for 24 episodes).

Steps 11,844-12,138: When 10:09 p.m. arrives, I decide to call it a day. There will be more steps before I lay my head down, but I want to get finish the blog and get a good night's sleep. I am sad that I am not quite Amish, but happy I topped 10,000.

I will be able to sleep tonight.

Day 206: Finally, a Real First Draft.

I don't have a lot to say other than, "It's done."

Well, an official first draft is done ... I'm sure there will be many more rewrites and edits to go before it's ready for an agent.

I don't know if I'm more thrilled to be done or more afraid to move forward.

Either way, I'm just ... done.

For now.

If you're interested in reading it, let me know - I'll never be one to turn down a fresh set of eyes.

It feels good to be done.

At least for now.

Day 203: I Love the 80s! (189.8)

Things I love about the '80s:

Ms. Pac-Man, Ordinary People, the introduction of Post-It Notes, the last episode of M*A*S*H, the Mets winning the World Series, Live Aid, jelly bracelets, Baby Jessica being rescued, Dynasty, koosh balls, the US Hockey team beating Russia, Luke & Laura's wedding, the birth of MTV, Ozzy's infamous bat-head bite, Milli Vanilli's Best New Artist Grammy ...

But more than anything, I love the '80s because - as of this morning - it's my new weight class.

That's right, for the first time in forever, I'm back in the 80s. I don't remember the last time I was here (I abandoned all scales during my steady march to heavyweight status), but I sure am glad to be back.

(Side note: I was looking at my legs today as I sat outside, and I've decided they definitely look smaller than they did a month or two ago. This makes me happy.)

Now that I think about it, I definitely prefer the '70s to the '80s (as far as decades go), and I guess that's a good thing, since I hope to be back in the '70s by mid-summer. (It's too early to even start thinking about life in the '60s, but let's just say the term "Summer of Love" has a nice ring to it.)

I'm plagued on a daily basis by the knowledge that I'm behind in the weight-loss goals I've set forth in the blog. I'm well aware that weeks like this one - in which two pounds drop - are way too rare.

Maybe that's why today feels so good.

Day 198: Day of Rest (Totally).

Totally Compton ... 6-3-06

Day 195: Working the Polls.

I don't read many other blogs, but there's one I follow in which the writer (she comments here as molly) frequently wears her liberal heart on her political sleeve. I always feel vaguely lame when I read her impassioned pleas for people to get up off their asses and get involved, which is partly what prompted me to state (in this blog) that I would say kaiten! to my pattern of political laziness.

The answer came when I read something about how nobody wants to be a pollworker anymore. (Really? People don't want to earn $55 for 14 hours of work? No way ...) I impulsively made the call, and was then genuinely shocked when someone from the Election Board actually called me back. I procrastinated and stalled - unwilling to make a commitment - but knew deep down that I had no choice.

Before I knew it, the weekend before election day had arrived, and I found myself sitting in a Compton church getting my 90 minutes of required pollworker training.

And then came today: election day. I arrived at the voting precinct (a community rec center five blocks from my house) just after 6:30 a.m., one of four pollworkers. None of us had ever done it before, which made us all nervous. I was given (okay, volunteered for) the job of signing in the voters. I greeted them with a friendly (but never perky) "Hello," found their names on the roster, and showed them where to sign. Since it was a primary election, voters splashed their "Inka dots" along registered party lines.

My three co-pollsters sit at our table while two voters do their thing.

This went on for 13 hours ... and only 181 people came in to vote. Since most of them came before or after work, the day felt very, very long and very, very boring.

That's not to say it wasn't kind of fun. We were a good team and got along well, and there's already been talk of getting the band back together for the November election.

Here are some facts and highlights from my day:

1. Basic Stats: Of the 161 people in my neighborhood who voted (630 were registered), 120 hit the Democratic booth, 24 chose the Non-Partisan line, 13 went Republican, 2 were Greenies and 2 were American Independents. Six people changed their affiliation to Democrat after arriving. No one turned Republican.

2. Neighborhood Factoid: There are 32 registered voters named Rodriguez in my hood, 10 of whom voted. That means the Rodriguez name alone was responsible for 6.21% of my precinct's results. Add in the Hernandez and Lopez voters and that number jumps to 12.42%.

3. Best Moment of the Day: When a father who was a registered Democrat happened to see that his son (on the line below him) had registered as a Republican, he shook his head and muttered "Jesus Christ" before heading to his booth.

4. Worst Moments of the Day: The bastards brought donuts. Twice. I resisted. It sucked.

5. Weirdest Voter Award: The man pictured below asked me to look him up in the voter roll as "God's Gift to Women." He was serious about this for far, far too long. I drew the line when he began to pull up his jeans to show me his legs.

6. Strangest Comment: When a short, slim woman stepped up to sign in, her five-year-old daughter looked me in the eye and said (quite seriously), "My Mom is small."

7. Silliest Boredom Alleviator: During the height of the slow times, one of my fellow pollworkers (Jillian, who ruined my status as both the youngest worker and the only white person) became so bored she began rounding off the "I Voted" stickers and arranging them into various flower patterns.

I finally walked out of the polling place at 8:45 p.m., and I have to say, I felt pretty good about the whole thing. I had, for once, actually contributed to the process. Kaiten!

That said, I'm a little relieved that there are five months until the next election.

Okay ... more than a little.

Day 192: Day of Rest.

City of Angels - Rooftop View (6-3-06)

Day 190: Horsing Around.

Yours truly, a 12-year-old criminal in a badass jacket.

Like so many little girls, I was horse-crazy. I read books about them (Golden Cloud: Palomino of Sunset Hill rules to this day). I drew them in my notebooks. I dreamed about them. I begged for one of my own. I wanted to be a jockey (don't you dare laugh. I was short and tiny back then). And every summer, I went away to camp and learned how to ride.

Later, when I was in college, I taught horseback riding at one of the camps I'd gone to - the same camp where I met Garp. I have wonderful memories of rounding up the camp's 21 horses every morning - there's nothing like waking up at dawn in the Colorado Rockies to make you feel good about being alive.

Over the years, I always seemed to find ways to ride. When I moved to L.A., for instance, there was a place called the Circle K over in Burbank. You could take a horse out for a couple of hours in Griffith Park - by yourself, no guide - for a very reasonable rate. When insurance issues forced them to shut down maybe eight years ago, that was that, and I haven't ridden since.

I guess that's why I was so happy to discover the horses that live at the top of Elysian Park. Every morning, I take my dogs up the trail, and three-quarters of the way through, I arrive at the bottom of a vaguely daunting incline (some mornings it's way more daunting than others). I try to ascend this stretch as quickly as possible, and what keeps me going every time is the knowledge that the horses are waiting at the top. I usually just look at them and smile as I walk past, but sometimes, I go over and talk to them.

I'm often tempted to hop the fence and ride them - after all, that's what my best friend Kathy and I used to do when we were kids.

Kathy lived near a run-down, 15-acre piece of farm property, and on that property were a couple of horses (a dark bay mare and a ragged old shetland pony paint mix named Nancy). We knew the girl whose father owned the place, but they lived in town, and the property was dilapidated and almost always abandoned.

Kathy and I used to sneak in and go for joy rides several times a week - no bridles, no saddles, no nothing. We'd just hop on, get the horses going to a full gallop, and hang on for dear life. They'd run wherever they wanted to - we were just passengers.

The junior Maude hair is what kills me. Really. It literally hurts to post this picture - and if it didn't give such a great sense of the property, I wouldn't.

This went on for several months, to the point where we felt like the place was ours. We'd play in the old barn, hang out with the horses, and spend hours talking about how we'd have stables of our own someday. Nice stables.

And then, one afternoon, everything changed. Kathy and I were walking up to the barn, obliviously chatting away, when all of a sudden, a man with a shotgun stepped out of the barn and aimed it straight at us. He told us to get the hell off the property and never come back ... and he meant it.

We almost shit ourselves, and couldn't get back over the fence fast enough. I'm telling you, I was terrified.

Needless to say, we never went back again. It was a sad loss of innocence that fittingly preceeded a summer I refer to as "The Summer of Soda Pop" (but that's another entry).

I doubt I'll ever hop the fence at Elysian and take the buckskin I fancy on a joy ride, but I certainly like to think about it. In the meantime, I guess I'll settle for taking a quartered apple in my pocket and bribing him for a little attention. Hopefully, no one will shoot me for that.

Hopefully.

The buckskin who lives at the top of Elysian Park: