2006-01-29 - 12:52 a.m.
Pah, I missed my chance for greatness, once again. How depressing! It is indeed more than slightly irritating how gutless I am, for even when I am presented with the Opportunity For Greatness, I do not act on it. Instead I just sit there in my little chair and stew. Ah, dear blog-a-licious blog, thou art the repository of my thwarted dreams and missed chances.
But of course, I am waxing overly operatic, considering what actually happened. So there I was, sitting at the Coffee Bean on Main Street and Ashland, drinking my iced latte and reading the morning paper. And, at that moment, in comes Paris Hilton, to buy a big ole soy latte! No, I am not kidding: There was Johnny Darling, the terror of the Zone glory hole room, not ten feet away from the hippest, hottest, most often praised she-bimbo on the entire planet! Can you imagine? And how beautiful she was! She radiated gorgeous glamour from head to toe, like she was the Great and Holy Virgin of Mtinsk or something.
Actually, if you must know the truth, she just looked rather ordinary; I was rather surprised. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she was rather a pretty young girl – but if you walk along Main Street you will see hundreds of other pretty young girls waiting to get into O’Briens who are every bit as pretty, if not more so. Indeed, there were a few days this week, when I found myself awake during the morning and was hanging out at the notorious Starbucks on 7th and Montana, which is inhabited by the most dreadful collection of West LA aspiring actors, actresses, and model types – almost all of them were more striking than the runty Miss Hilton.
I was honestly unable to figure out what was so special about her. But then again, I do not understand the charisma of women in any case, I suppose. And it’s clear that it has had some kind of an impact on me, since here I am writing it up in my Big Blue Blog-a-roo. She was quite nattily caparisoned, too, albeit more in a Santino way than a Nick way. She was wearing these amazing, designer blue jeans that were artfully ripped just so. And over it, she wore this green hoody. Not just a hoody, like you might buy at Old Navy or the Gap -- no no. This was a hoody of some outrageous, glittery sheer green fabric, adorned with little rhinestones of many colors. She looked like the urban version of Glinda The Good Witch of the North.
And how her eyes bugged when I stormed right up to her, and shook my finger in her face!
“Stupid cow!” I roared. “You filthy cunt! You make me sick, you horrible girl. How dare you filter your disgusting way into every single medium, so inculcating the popular consciousness that even a hermit-like recluse such as myself knows who you are? You are everything that is wrong and evil in American culture -- and you are why we are considered stupid and weak all around the world! I wish I could smack you right in the nose! In fact, I think I will!”
And so I wound up my fist, and punched her, BAM, right in the snoot! She reeled, falling against the table behind her, her latte flying out of its cup in a wave of white froth. For a moment she just gaped at me in shock, blood streaming from her broken nose, which was now twisted upwards like a toilet handle before you press flush. And then she started to whimper and then to bawl like a baby. “I’m sowwwyy!” she moaned.
Oh, stop it. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I did not do any such wicked thing. Do I seem that overtly like a deranged psycho to you? In fact, I just sat with my little book and watched as she bought her lattes, paid the clerk with a pleasant smile, and walked out. She really just seemed like a pleasant, if gormlessly rich, kid. And it was most amusing to see her in the Coffee Bean, buying coffee, like a normal person. The little coffee clerks all giggled and gossiped about her amongst themselves, so I knew I did not imagine seeing her.
Main Street these days is becoming quite the location for scandal and outrage. For instance, here’s a story that I love. I love it because – well, because it’s just plain awful. It’s horrible on so many levels that your mind almost reels! Really, you can’t even hear this story without wincing just a bit at the loathsomeness of it all. It’s grotesque. It’s ugly. It made me laugh and laugh and laugh.
So there’s this wonderful radio DJ, Chris Douridas, who used to host this show that Nic Harcourt now hosts on KCRW. He still hosts a show on Saturday mornings, which is quite the rage amongst LA’s hip musical set. He has his fans, he does – and he is high brow, not like Miss Hilton who is famous for reasons that I am not quite clear on, to be honest.
So there was Chris Douridas, at Main Street’s famous Circle Bar, sharing a drink with a young lovely. And while she wasn’t looking, the nice DJ dropped a healthy dose of rohypnol into the girl’s 15 dollar Appletini. As the girl started to become woozy, Chris whisked her under his arm, perhaps pretending to the bouncer that she was just a bad drunk and needed to go back to his place to lie down. He lured her into his car, clearly in preface to a nice session of date rape. I mean, who isn’t familiar with this situation? You have a nice drink with a pleasant-seeming man and then wake up naked and hungover, with goo dripping out of your asshole.
The thing is, a bystander at the bar had spotted Chris pouring the dope into the girl’s drink. And he alerted the bouncer, who quickly nabbed the DJ as he was preparing to drive off. They checked the girl’s ID, and – surprise! The girl was only 14! And so, now Chris Douridas, the star of KCRW, has been accused of kidnapping, statutory rape, attempted poisoning, and god knows what else. It’s quite amazing what people get up to, really. KCRW is apparently letting him continue on his show, pending the actual results of the trial, which I think is rather two faced, considering they fired the brilliant Sandra Tsing Loh for just using the word “fuck” in one of her radio commentaries.
And just now at the Novel I found myself sitting behind this table of about four women in their mid-30s, all of whom were quite fashionably attired, though perhaps dressed in a manner that was a tad youthful for their age. They were sitting at a table, earnestly designing one of those role-playing sword and sorcery games for some upcoming pitch for a games company. However, because they were women, the game they were designing was was not going to be one of the standard Sword and Sorcery epics of the sort in which Thrackus The Warrior fights Randolf the Good Wizard.
One prissy-looking lady – tall with a bleached blonde Buster Brown hair do and tightly drawn, beak-like features – was talking about how the character of Rhododendron the Dwarf would have the Magical Power of Teamsmanship.
“I love that Rhododendron will teach little ones the proper benefits of working as a team!” she squawked in her most harpy-like accent. “And then there will be Groofus the Elf, who will symbolize the Value of Generosity! And QuackQuack the dragon who shall have the magical power of Respect. Oh! Kids will LOVE this game. It’s fantastic! We shall sell so many copies – generosity. Generosity and teamsmanship! That is what is most important in the world! Generosity and teamsmanship! We will also create little children who know how to behave and will think the right thoughts!”
Ugh: I can think of nothing more tedious than some prune-designed role playing game that teaches the value of teamsmanship and generosity. Lecture us more, why don’t you, bitches? Idiots force us to learn about teamsmanship and generosity when they are too stupid to know anything else to teach us. What are folks thinking these days?
Anyway, what else do I have to tell you. It occurs to me that it has been some time since last we spoke, dear blog of mine, but I shall try to excuse myself by noting that I have been unusually busy, though perhaps with meaningless work that won’t seem important to you. I have had no end of scripts this week from this new little production company, the one that’s been started by the former president of Pathetica. Isn’t this a disgusting situation? I am back working for the same person I was working for about a year ago – except now I am not being paid half of what I was being paid before. To whom do I write to complain about this? That isn’t right.
As I get older, I start to realize that the world is really very different from the way we are told it is – and what we are told of the world is mostly myth, invented to keep us from falling into despair. I am, of course, talking about the idea that Things Are Will Always Get Better and Better, which is patently false. When I was invited to read for this production company – and also for that goofy guy’s script consulting company, frankly – I accepted the gigs with just a shrug and a wince. These gigs don’t have any future. The gig after that won’t have any future, either. Even a studio gig wouldn’t have any real future. There is no future in anything. I have basically squandered the most vital and energetic years of my life doing toil that is little more than dead end drudge.
A day or two ago, I Googled the name of the guy who is my ostensible immediate supervisor at the little production company and I discovered that, um, he is a former Stanford University track star and Male Cheerleader, class of 2003. How delightful! And he is best known for his Trail Blazing Work as the film reporter for the Stanford University Campus Newspaper, for which he at one point interviewed the guy who directed Yours, Mine, and Ours (the remake, not the original). Taking orders from this fellow, well, that is my life right now.
So, when he calls up, and squeaks into my ear, “Excuse me Johnny Darling, can you read me a script? Oh I mean, can you read a script for me?” I have no choice but to intone, like Morgan Freeman in the front seat of his Driving Miss Daisy limo, “Yassa, little massah, I be happy to read yo’ script, cuz I shooor do know how you can’t read it yo’self, massah! I indeedy do! You too busy with Sundance, massah, and then you gots the dinner at Mortons!” I am angry and as you know, particularly full of resentment.
At the Accademia in Venice, I saw this painting by the Italian artist Rosalba, of an old beggar woman, holding a cup forward, towards us, as though we are her benefactor and have given her some scraps from our table. What is striking about this painting is the old woman’s expression, a heart breaking mix of rage and resignation. She hates having to ask for our charity and is bitterly resentful of our giving it to her, but she has no choice about it. She needs to eat so she has to beg.
But even though we clearly are feeling charitable, she isn’t especially grateful for our help – she hates us, even as she needs us. And that, dear pets, is precisely how I feel about this revolting job. I hate it, even as I need it. I must confess that I find my own sense of diminished expectations to be somewhat disturbing, and I do not quite know what to do about it. Perhaps I shall devote some thought to this matter and come up with an answer for you next time. Until then, I wish you all well, dear blog-a-licious blog.
