Fresh off the plane, where I spent roughly five and a half hours sitting next to the cutest little lab puppies and their super-kind handlers- bred at Guide Dogs of America Los Angeles and bound for a GDANYC trade-off, Keegan met me at Jamaica Station. (Cabs to and from the airport are such a money & time suck, Birds; between the traffic and bad weather, they don’t get you to your destination any faster and cost a lot more.)
From the train, we went to his apartment. (By the way, did I mention to you that I’m back in New York for awhile?)
Birds, can I tell you a secret, since we’re all being inundated via various social media outlets about this evening’s glittery gowns and award winners? (Golden Globes anyone? Pshhhhh, don’t pretend like the excitement of awards season is beneath you. It only makes you seem more pretentious than usual. )
Most so-called “red carpet” events where there’s an actual red carpet are tiny. The Globes and The Academy Awards are two of the few exceptions to this rule.
Take, for instance, this photo of one of the crew (a very nice member of the crew) packing up the ubiquitous red carpet after a film premiere at The Annenberg Theatre in Palm Springs. The entire photocall took place on a small square landing. That’s right, all of the red carpet photos you will see from the festival that didn’t take place at the opening gala, held at the breath-taking Parker, probably took place on this tiny, square patch of unremarkable concrete.
Red carpet events, while in photos they may appear to be glamorous, are really just a bunch of people, most of them up-and-comers, tartlets in tiny, bedazzled dresses (or worse, the ubiquitous bandage dresses), who want to be seen.
Truly famous people, the one who are chased by the paps down Robertson Boulevard, neither need nor like the red carpet. Oprah doesn’t need a red carpet for us to know she’s Oprah.
The red carpet is really about the sponsors, whose names and logos are plastered on the backdrops of such photos, and the unglamorous people who need to appear to be glamorous, e.g. the Lindsay Lohans and the wannabe-Snooki’s lacking a reality t.v. show and a bump-it.
The Red Carpet during awards season is akin to mating season in a tribe of peacocks, everyone pruning and fanning their feathers, hoping to catch the eye of that special mate, be it producers dangling roles, perfumers flush with cash to burn on image building, or other pagans of opportunity.
And with so many people trying to claim a piece of the fame pie, you forget that the carpet upon which they stand is even red.
Maybe a dull, brown shag would be better suited for the lot of them?
So don’t be fooled, Birds, by the mirage. These proud peacocks are working hard for that $$$$$ tonight.
P.S. The only people who’s gowns I’m truly interested in are Rooney Maraand Shailene Woodley. Rooney, because of her no-doubt Vogue-approved transformation and Shailene, because she’s the only one out of this year’s tartlets who has thus far avoided trying too hard, even if she’s flops often.
Go on, complain about the heat and the scorpions; the dry, dusty wind that burns your throat in the spring and summer.
I love it, I love it, I love it all the more.
Which is why I’m back. No, not in Vegas. (I still haven’t managed to get the ciggy-and-booze scent off my clothing, despite multiple washes. “Filth” just seeps into your pores there, you know?) I’m headed to Palm Springs for the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
There’s quite a few films, like Dolphin Boy and A Separation and Run For Life and We Need To Talk About Kevin, that I’m dying to see.
Unfortunately, I’m too late for the Diana Vreeland documentary, but I think the festival has a really solid line up of foreign offerings this year that will fill in the gaps quite nicely.
Pictures, quasi-reviews, and other updates coming tomorrow. I’ll be arounnnnnnnd Birds, and if you’re also in the lo-desert, holla atcha gurrrrllll.
(P.S. the best way to keep up on my #PSFILMFEST hijinks is Twitter. Follow me here. Not lugging around the laptop these days. Blog posts VIA phone can be tedious. Ever try to write HTML on a touch screen with goddamn autocorrect? Failllll.)
The things is, Birds, when life gives you flamingos, you feed them shrimp . . .
And when life serves you a healthy helping of young people, both foreign and domestic- and you happen to live in Southern California, you head to Vegas for New Year’s Eve and promptly get them drunk.
Because just as the all-shrimp-diet keeps our fellow avian friends pink, alcohol generally propels the best parts of us- the youthful, merry-happy shit-shows we aspire to be- to the surface.
And merry-happy shit-shows we were. For a weekend, at least. (Perhaps emphasis on shit-show?)
Tina, my dear friend from Bensheim, Germany happens to be living in San Clemente, California for a year. Seeing as I hadn’t been down to see her yet since her October arrival upon the fake-breasted shores of Orange County, I invited her to come with me to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve.
As you’ll all recall, my bestfrannnnn Nohea moved to Vegas in October. Naturally, us three little birdies, plus the addition of my cousin, Jordan, went out on New Years . . .
Naturally, because Vegas experiences are always rife with cliches and debauchery, the first night- the night before New Years- we don’t remember much and the second night, three out of four little birdies drank too much while engaging in duplicitous activities.
When the countdown rang out and the fireworks began spouting from the tops of hotels across the strip, Nohea was vomiting her brains out in the Bellagio; a completely hammered Jordan and Tina were backstage at the Guns N’ Roses concert.
Eventually, Nohea and I made it outside, into the throngs of drunks, to take a picture with the fireworks in the background.
(We’re wearing hats some nice man gave us. And no, it wasn’t the guy with the pancake-shaped head who gave them to us. More on friends’ beer goggles later. LOL.)
Then we, as all drunks do, sought food and heated shelter. Chili Cheese Fries? Yesssss please.
Somehow, through massive communication failures (i.e. dead cell batteries), I wound up at the GNR after party without Tina and Jordan. Nohea was bitterly not-sleeping in the car while waiting for four hours for me to return. (So she could take a shit, of course.)
Eventually, at around 7 AM, after dropping Nohea off at home, I finally found Tina and Jordan inside the Flamingo, on the strip, far, far from the Hard Rock, near the ever-elusive Fire Pit. (Don’t ask about the Fire Pit. Trust me, even if we told you, you’d never be able to find it. LOL.)
On the way home, we drove past a cool dude in an ugly plaid hat while getting on the freeway. He was holding a piece of cardboard that read “San Diego.”
Naturally, due to one of the few un-crappy Will Ferrell movies in existence, “Anchor Man,” I immediately thought of whale vagina.
That was enough, I guess.
I turned to Tina while merging on to the freeway and asked, “Should we pick that guy up? San Diego isn’t really that much farther than San Clemente?”
Tina, worn out and exhausted, hastily replied: “I think I’ve had enough adventure for the weekend.”
So I got off the freeway, and we scooped up Vuk, our hitchhiker from Croatia . . . Duh.
Away we went. (Insert Vrrrrrrooooom, vroooooom noises, please.)
There was a brief interlude, because I felt it necessary to introduce both Vuk and Tina to In N Out for the first time. (Yesssss!) I’m proud to say that Tina’s first burger there was a double-double animal style!
We dropped off Tina in San Clemente, with her very nice, very conservative, very Christian roommates.
We drove the extra 60 miles to drop off Vuk, who turned out to be a legit dude who loves his politics and his pot. (Yay for good karma and new friends in the New Year.)
Then I dropped Jordan off.
And finally, I made it home.
A-fucking-men, right Birds? A-fucking-men. First thing I did was hit the shower. (Because we got home after 7 o’clock in the morning, I only had time to sleep, not shower.) Ewwwwwww, the filth that ran off my skin turned the water black for a solid 30 seconds. Not joking.
Now here’s a slideshow, so you can laugh a bit more at our expense.
And so you can see, Pretty Birds, for a little while there, we really were “filthy little biscuits” in Vegas.
Bridesmaids, because I love, love, love that movie.
Wizard of Oz, because I’ve never seen it. Now that I own it, I can watch it all the time and glean countless pop culture references from it.
Entire Daria Collection, including the movies, because even though I’m no longer a teen, I still have apathy and angst to channel via cartoon marathons. (Who doesn’t love Daria, except people that haven’t seen it?!)
OPI Shatter polish: because I paint my nails all the freaking time and wanted this.
GF chocolate-chip cookie mix, because while Nu was shopping with my niece, my niece was worried about what kind of cookies I would eat during Christmas, since I can’t have gluten.
This holiday season was pretty fucking solid. Not just because I got a face scrubber that is AMAZING, but because Nu does a really good job of getting everyone really excited for the holidays.
It’s the little things, like Keegan and Mikkos being in town. Nohea coming down from Vegas twice in December. Uncle George and I, driving his porsche, going on a vino-adventure. Nu and Daryl getting married.
The little things made this holiday season so enjoyable.
Birds, quite a bit has happened since I wrote the last post.
Many a road trip has slaked my wanderlust and many a shit-shows have confounded my imagination.
So much to tell you, but I have so. little. energy. (I went from LA -> Palm Springs -> Twentynine Palms -> LA -> Twentynine Palms -> San Clemente -> LA -> Vegas -> San Clemente -> San Diego -> FINALLY LA AGAIN AT LAST AND FOR GOOD.)
Know what I’m sayin’?
As for you guys . . .
I hope you all had a crazy, if not lovely, New Years.
Thanks for reading over the years. Here’s to a kick-ass new year, hopefully filled with more shit-show-y madness than you could ever hope for!
Birds, my favorite holiday is rolling around this Thursday.
My first official year of college (not the middle school or high school college days), I exclaimed to my roommates how much I loved Thanksgiving, and they all looked sort of blankly at me.
I asked them, “What’s not to like about Thanksgiving? In fact, I don’t know a single person who hates Thanksgiving.”
But of course, the girl from Long Island who eats over-priced, vegan cupcakes was like, “I don’t really like Thanksgiving.” Blah, blah, blah, she’s not that close with her family and thinks everyone eating together is awkward. (That should have been a sign right there that I was probably not going to fit in with some of those particular roommates. Lol? Yesssss.)
Anyways, aside from her (now a comic book writer, BTW, so check her out by clicking the above link, buy stuff, SUPPORT THE ARTS!!!!) and others who probably live alternative lifestyles (e.g. vegans, veggies, Extreme Right Wing Christians) purely for the sake of being contrarian, because they’re from the ‘burbs and don’t have better shit to do, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like Thanksgiving. (Are you lol’ing? Because in my head, I’m totally lol’ing about that last fragmented sentence, knowing full well that my Extreme Right Wing Christian friends will be mortally offended at being compared to those animal loving veggies/vegans.)
What’s not to love about Turkey Day? You get together with people you love (allegedly, but it doesn’t have to be your blood relations, just people you appreciate), eat a delicious meal, and rejoice about all the positive things in your life.
But positivity is obviously not the point of this post, Birds; it never is, now is it?
A friend asked me the other day, while ruminating about the upcoming holiday ”Jacqueline, those people that seem to have it all [the generically good-looking significant other, the child(ren), the middle-class jobs, the dog], do you think they’re really as happy as they seem in their [absurdly high number of] Facebook photos [like, Holy Fuck!, they have like 1000+ photos]?”
I told him the truth. “Who knows? Most folks are just one step from the edge, just one step from cataclysmic craziness.”
I believe that, you know. I believe that people all around me have the ability to be just as happy or just as miserable as I do on any given day. I might not believe in God, but I believe in the range of human emotions. Most notable of those emotions is not love, but shame.
The white picket fence, the 2.5 children, the steady job, and the generically good-looking significant other is the dream for some people, but to others it can be quite a burden. To some people, the smiling pictures are really grimaces and the daily routine is really a thinly veiled daily grind.
That mythological cornucopia of happiness, that life of perfect, blonde abundance is real, but to some people, that iteration of bliss might as well be labeled “ungrateful incarceration.” Sometimes, and it happens more often than we would like to believe, Pretty Birds, we are shamed into Thankfulness.
Sometimes, life comes along and flips you upside down, and upside down becomes right side up. Sometimes couples really are just as miserable and lonely-seeming as their single counterparts, but prefer to live in the land of the deluded. Some people like to pretend that playing house, playing husband, playing father, mother, sister, or brother is enough. Some single people will pretend that singledom is the best thing in the world and some of those without child(ren) will cry.
The general rule of Thanksgiving is that no one should eat alone and everyone has something to be thankful for, is it not?
While I do believe that we all have things to be thankful for, I want you to know, Birds, that if you’re NOT feeling grateful for the things you should be grateful for, it is A-OK with me.
It is ok to be unrelentingly ungrateful and steadfastly thankless on Thanksgiving, because the beauty of Thanksgiving is that even if you hate the world, and many of us do, many of us this season have absorbed one too many injustices . . .
The beauty of Thanksgiving is that you can just continue to evade questions by shoveling food into your mouth everytime someone asks you, “What are you thankful for?”
And the beauty of that ignoble human emotion, yes shame, is that you’re not alone in feeling it. While another person asks you that lazy, obligatory question, while you stuff your face with delicious trimmings and try not to act irritated with them, it’s almost guaranteed that some poor, sad sap will come along and try to mask their hum-drum desperation with syrupy overcompensation. It’s almost guaranteed that everyone else will morph into that annoying kid in class who raises their hand to answer every damn question, because the shame of being perceived as ungrateful might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Because if they don’t tell everyone else how incredibly thankful they are for what they might not actually value in the first place, they might find air beneath their toes; they might fall off the cliff and into the dark, swirling abyss.
As Henry David Thoreau once said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
This Thanksgiving, Birds, I’m empowering you. I am telling you that if the only song you hear this Thursday is the rhythm of your teeth grinding, gnashing food to bits, it is A-OK with me.
We won’t tell anyone about your unsung swan songs, and I promise to take them to the grave with me, because I’ve been there.
So Happy Thanksgiving, Pretty Birds.
And I want you to know that this year, I am especially thankful for my sister-frannnnns. I am thankful for these amazing, considerate women in my life who do the little things day in and day out. They bring me mini gluten-free pumpkin pies. They make dinner for me and watch television with me when I’m sick on the couch. Slowly but surely, inch by inch, they’re changing the song inside of me. Each day it’s a little bit brighter and a little less ashamed. Each day it’s a little bit lighter and a little less of a pain.
Now go forth and cook (if you dare) an eat, eat, eat!!!
Birds, I find myself re-becoming a nerd these days.
They (the ever-elusive they) say that the pen is mightier than the sword.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say whether or not they are full of shit, because war still rages on, viral plagues continue to sweep the continents, and all the while, basic intelligence is surely suffering. BUT, I’m a rather devout pacifist, so methinks it mandatory to err on the side of caution and say yes to the pen and chant a resounding ”BOOOOOOO!” to the sword.
. . .
Today, I went to the library and checked out lots of books. Today I read lots of books. Tonight I will watch things for smart people on Hulu (hey, no one is perfect), but more and more, I find myself really, realllllly want to write AND read.
This is very, very good.
Thing is: I cannot write with other people around me. I find their presence in my life exhausting during these times. Nohea was complaining to me about a vaccuum situation once, while I was writing, and I was like, “Can’t talk now, sorry, but writing.” When I’m writing and people want to talk about real-life things, like vaccuums and organic produce and blah-blah-blah-blah shit that I could not give a flying-fuck about in ordinary life- let alone, writing time, it becomes very difficult for me to restrain myself and not throw things at them. (Poor them, right? NO. POOR ME. lol. VACCUUMS AND PRODUCE?! Gahhhhhhhh.)
So, into the cave I will go, day after day, night after night, hopefully to scribble down some things (or type? I prefer to hand write a rought draft always) that actually make sense. We’ll see how this endeavor fares.
I think it’s time to get back to the daily writing routine, what do you think Birds?
Forcing myself to put the almight pen to paper on the regular might be benificial, might help me get a rhythm going again. (Also, MAJOR cause for concern: I just typed that last “again” as “a gen”, because I was spelling things phonetically, realized the error, and of course, was like, WTF?! I AM GETTING SO DUMB. SCREW COLLEGE!)
Thank goodness for bear caves and writing utensils and fall weather in Southern California. (You thought it was a myth, but I tell you, it does exist! That’s why I’m inside on a Saturday night, snuggling a Fat Dodie Bear- best dog evahhhhh!!!, drinking hot chocolate, procrastinating as usual.)
Anyways, as I’m sure you can see, this post has no message, no agenda, and so it’s over.
Peace Birdies! May the force of the pen be with you . . . (However much that is? Infinitely debatable.)
And yeahhhhh, I’m totally going to see Twilight and a million other movies tomorrow.
Suck on that! (Clearly, maturation comes with age.)
The other evening, Pretty Birds, while on my way into a Big Box Store to pick up a couple of tubes of my favorite exfoliating cleanser, a woman walking to her car, sandwiched by what appeared to be her two children, stopped in the middle of the parking lot to tell me, “Oh my gosh, you look so beautiful. OH MY GOSH, so beautiful, I love your hair!”
I, taken back by what she said (most people just stare a little and some tell you they love it, but this woman’s enthusiasm was unexpected), just sort of pause and looked at her. She was tall, tan, extremely thin, wearing tight, stretch skinnies, stacked, strappy heels, and a white t-shirt. Being in Orange County, none of this would be considered out of ordinary. I, with my buzzed head and knubby, mold-colored sweater would be considered out of ordinary in this strange, bizzare part of the world, but she would be de rigeur, dressed in uniform.
However, because I am a woman of details, I noticed that her eyebrows were lacking, practically missing, looking very sparse, etc. etc. etc. The wig on top of her head, dyed a couple of shades too warm for her tan skin, almost looked convincing, but then, I have a rather well-trained eye.
So after I stood there, staring at her, listening to her tell me that she loved my hair and that I looked gorgeous with my haircut, she then exuberantly informed me that her hair was the same way.
The same in what way? I thought. As she rattled on, she lifted the crown of the wig, and said, “My hair is the exact same way.” Underneath the blanket of fake hair, I saw skin, scalp, and small tufts of weak looking strands. The hair and the eyebrows are thin; Is she sick?
I find that the more I go about my daily life behind The Orange Curtain with my newly shorn locks, the more other women donning wigs are taking them off around me. This isn’t the first time a woman has confided in me that she also is buzzed, and it probably won’t be the last.
So as the woman at the Big Box Store removed her wig completely and walked back to her car, her children in tow, all three smiling broadly, I contemplated the politics of being a buzzed, near-bald woman.
Granted I don’t know if the woman had any illness, but she looked like someone who either had some sort of autoimmune disorder (known to more than occassionally cause hair loss) or had recently gone through radiation, also known to make your hair fall out.
There is the third possible reason for her baldness, and that is that she is almost the same as me, and she just buzzed it for no darn reason. However, I didn’t buzz mine for no reason. I buzzed it because I have a skin condition that is currently making it damn near impossible to grow it out longer than a few inches, and because I am too pre-occupied and don’t care enough to do my hair when it gets long.
Regardless of whether or not she has the same motives as me for shaving her head, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with her immediate projected intimacy, as if having buzzed heads makes us kindred spirits.
I’m not sure how I feel about being a rather mundane symbol for bald women (whatever the cause may be for their general lack of hair).
I suppose if she’s smiling and seeing another buzzed woman makes her comfortable enough to not be ashamed of her lack of hair, then all of this is okay.
If eschewing my lovely locks might possibly mean that another woman out there might find the courage to accept her body for what it is- the only one she’ll ever get, then I am okay with it.
Every time I buzz my head, a couple of thoughts cross my mind: If more women weren’t afraid to be bald, if more didn’t accept having long hair as a standard of beauty, then women who, due to illness, lose their hair wouldn’t feel so ostracized from society. People like me, who just have buzzed heads, also wouldn’t be taken for seriously sick people. We’d just be another plain ol’ person with no hair.
You see, Pretty Birds, even if I’m a woman with no known agenda, that doesn’t mean that the agenda of others won’t be projected onto me, know what I mean?
So, for now, I’m okay with being okay about other woman making a positive example out of me, but I remain weary of what strings are attached to all of this.
I will add to that the truest statement you’ll read today:
So, Pretty Birds, old laptop works, thanks to a couple of tech savvy guys whom I paid a minimal amount of money.
But it hardly works. Like if this was a automobile, if would be a jalopy. If this were a jalopy, it would be the jalopy to end all jalopies. And so here I be, at a crossroads. Too broke to get a new computer, but desperately wishing I had a MacBook Pro. Happy my piece of $h!t works, but sad because I know it will, for awhile at least, be an amputee (broken fan has been removed, super-cool USB cooling pad has been gifted to me by queen of awesome, Elizabeth).
I know not of this thing people call tech-salvation. I dwell in purgatory, wondering why everyone who is so convinced that technology makes your life easier doesn’t understand that it, in fact, makes your life so much harder. Just when you’ve got the latest gizmo mastered, some new gadget or other comes out and the sheep all have to have it.
What does all of this mean for, Pretty Birds?
A) More regular posting.
B) More ranting.
Put your seatbelts on, Birds, we’re headed to CRAZYTOWN!
Welcome to RogueRanting.com.
Yes, that is me eating a hotdog. Yes, this is my blog.
Yes, my head is buzzed. No, I don't have cancer, just a shaved head. Need to know more? Bio here. You tweet? I tweet.
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