Eagle and Talon Let Go

It was our first time doing this sort of thing and inside the trailer parked outside a sculptors workshop/warehouse out in east la, nice amiable people were all about working hard to make us to look more like ourselves. Shellacked in hairspray, flesh-toned powders, expensive rouge and strategically enhanced with lash extensions, orange shadow, green liner, kim and i were realler than we'd ever been before.

We were just getting our final touch-ups when Kurt the photographer came in: "So, i think i know what we're going to do. We found this gigantic barrel out back...Alice, we're going to have you get inside it and Kim will be on the outside not really aware you're there, you know, it'll be like...two prairie dogs. It'll be good."

I was giving myself over to being deeply amused when Kim let out a nervous laugh and asked, "are you serious?" He smiled and threw out a reassuring "we'll just try it out okay?"

Okay. (?)

I spent the next hour squatting inside a giant peeling barrel with a totally great outfit on and just my head poking out. Next to my rusty doghouse and totally beyond my line of vision, Kim tried hard to look langorous lying amidst wheatlike shrubs, itchy grass and damp soil. I tried looking at her with evil intent the way i thought an evil prairie dog might do. my feet went numb.

In the end they got rid of the barrel and took another round of pictures with us in fancier (borrowed) clothes that were intended to help explore the scene's "yinyang oppositional" concept. I got into it (as in slight friction) with the wardrobe stylist, but eventually gave up being bratty and just put on the damn chiffony top they wanted me to wear. We took photos for another 45 minutes. I'm sad to say they ended up choosing one from this batch so you won't get to see eagle and talon's suffering in the grass properly documented.

Anyway, i'm making it out to sound a lot more horrible than it was. Truth is, it was really fun and there are worse things than getting pampered and made up by a talented crew and trying out some girly rituals that you've tended to avoid most of your life. Admittedly, I was a little dumbfounded with the elaborateness of the whole production, but maybe that's what happens when things get professional.

I dunno.

Whatever the case, the whole experience was eye-opening in terms of the malleability of image and how there are just so many ways to represent yourself (in print, in text, in life). And sometimes, and i do only mean sometimes, it doesn't have to be such a terrible thing if you approach it with a sense of adventure or happy halloween everybody! or whatever, rather than seeing it as an assassination of who you are.

that said, you won't see me wearing a leopard-print thong in this lifetime (unless it's keeping my head warm or something).

yours,
alice

p.s. the article comes out this sunday in the latimes/west magazine. be nice.

The Cowboy and the Gunslinger

I'm off to the 1st annual international tamale festival (up on n. spring st and w. ann) with my kid brother and his newly arrived girlfriend (from Korea via Taiwan). we're going to sicken ourselves with cornmeal. It should be delicious fun.

In honor, a dream (from friday night):

Am sitting in some kind of well-lit coffee bar, the kind you find in the bottom of a hotel lobby in some country in asia. There's no smell of coffee, no chatter or rough drafts, just tables and me. A stranger (caucasian, male, jeans) comes up to me asking for an extra pen (to keep). I'm sitting at a round wooden table with a stapled manuscript, a good pen on the left and a clear plastic one on the right . I look at the cheap one - i was writing with it -- "No."

Later he's sitting at a rectangular table next to the window. Now we're enemies and somehow i happen to know that this guy has four balls and I start taunting him about have those two extra testes and he doesn't like that much. But it's not enough to just see him riled and I start calling him "Quattro!" from across the room. That's when he loses his shit and suddenly jumps out of his chair lunging and is in my face reaching for my throat he's gonna rip out my larynx make it stop saying
"Quattro" but my right arm is already fully extended, my right fist, two inches from his nose "Don't or I'll punch your face I'll do it I will!"


Scene.

-a

Psych Lab

The term "Bambi-Is-A-Snake" I heard a few weeks back at the restaurant. My customer was explaining how his wife worked at Nordstroms and how much it sucked, the hours, the customers, "...not to mention Bambi-Is-A-Snake [referring to his wife's bitchy, but sunny-faced co-worker]..."

Anyway, friends knows this -- i used to be a English teacher in Taiwan. For more than a year, I walked around with stabbing headaches and cheeks shredded by acne --- I'd never been so stressed in my life. Once, before class, my whole torso filled up with, yes, gas and I ended up at the school track, burping for three rubber-turfed laps until I worked off all the anxiety. It was hard being insecure and a teacher.

So, I can sorta empathize with my teacher at LACC. (The class is THTR 001 - beginning acting. Signed up cuz I was scared and curious) She's a short, slight woman, late thirties to early forties, cute, but large pouches under her eyes, skin shiny from lotsa daily moisturizer. Her hair is amber colored, wavy, above chin-length, bangs in the front. She always wears three-quarters length pants.

So there's this girl, M________ all brown curves spilling out of expensive, too-small clothes with nice salon highlights and haircut. Almost sexy. Like Eve Langoria (sp?) with a wrester's build. A total attention hog but amusing and uninhibited and always the first to get up and volunteer to go up when everyone else is feeling pre-noon shyness -- even if she does always preface by announcing that she hasn't prepared and is just gonna have to wing it.

The first week we had to go up and share a life-changing moment with the class. She told us she'd gotten into pot at 13, coke when she was 14 and everything else the year after and was basically a total wreck until her mom forced her to go to rehab and boarding school. And now she was totally cleaned up except for the occasional rendezvous with weed.

This past Monday she walked in, went up and whispered something to the teacher -- turns out she'd lost her voice and would have to do her monologue on Wednesday. She sat down and during critiques, whispered hoarse comments to the guy sitting next to her, which he then rebroadcast to the class. As I was leaving class, I told her I hoped she got her voice back. She laughed and answered in her normal voice.

Yesterday only 6 of us were in attendance. Rain was mucking things up outside. We were discussing different ways to approach our monologues and ended up on the topic of "covers" -- my teacher's term for how we mask feelings we don't want to show -- like busting grins-all-around when we're actually upset about something or making mucous jokes after we've finished crying our eyes out (me) or just staying really stoic when inside we're MOTHERFUCKIN MAD!!

So twenty minutes into the class, M______ pops her head in the door and gesticulates wildly. Something about being double parked...she'll be back in a second.

The discussion continues. Pretty lively. People are rifling their pasts for insight, they're asking the teacher lots of questions. Everyone's engaged. My teacher is standing in front of us, riffing fluidly:

She has a student in another class who doesn't come often but when she does, is always crazy hostile and antagonistic. Later it comes out that the girl's family was displaced to Lancaster after Katrina and her homelife has been an absolute madhouse.

She has a British friend that covers his disappointment with his life and his bitterness with his country's class system with explosive anger. Favorite phrase: "fucking cunt of a whore." Once a plate went flying.

Covers help us feel in control of our situation. We use them all the time.
Like, she continues, if any of us had to, we could easily do imitations of each other. We would just pick some essence of the person that we radar in daily interaction and just act that out -- and essentially we'd be acting out each other's covers. For instance, (she goes over to the doorway), she could do M____. (She crouches a little and waves her arms wildly and makes a goofy exaggerated imitation of our double-parked classmate.)

It's a poor impression. My mouth is registering a funny taste.

M__ apparently never finds a way to un-double-park her car because with thirty minutes left in the class, she's still not there. As the discussion winds down - teacher brings our missing classmate back into it:

"Take M____ for instance - here's a person who has very few or almost no covers" (Two students in front look at each other quizzically and chime "or just one big cover!") The teacher keeps going.

"That's what makes her kinda this free personality," she gesticulates to conjure some related essence, "and frankly" she strolls over to her desk, "kind of... fucked up." Really matter of fact like. Like she's not telling us anything anybody doesn't know. Somebody laughs.

The Armenian kid who told the butt-shaped avacado parable during Week 2 and a girl with long turquoise fingernails who looks a lot like Nico go up and do their two-minute condom skit.

We're instructed to think about "covers" over the weekend.

I duck out early to move my car. Wednesday street cleaning. Meter's almost up.

--alice the worm

Seed Freak

Things are very specific. Cappucino is too lite and frothy. Espresso is too strong and too hot. A latte is kinda feyish and in all the jokes about over-priveleged folk. Perfection on a hot sluggish day I guess is then a a double shot of espresso over ice with a small splash of half and half and a quarter packet of sugar. A brownie or something chocolate-y and solid is good company too.

So I've just spent too long at the art store trying to differentiate between cream, banana, sahara and eggshell paper stocks. But I leave the store with two large sheets of color paper in hand. Time to reward my decisiveness. I swing by the Beverly Coffee Bean (which alanna hates and boycotts soley because she hates the font) and order the usual double espresso over ice, one of the shots decaf please. The kid who makes it needs the order repeated. Clue 1.

A little about the beverly coffee been. It's a small one. Hyper space conserving. Really an angular enclosed coffee stand with one way traffic indoors and a small outdoor seating area. It's not a real coffeehouse. Whatever. It gets the job done.

So I'm waiting behind the plexiglass which keeps steamed milk particles from coating my specs and keeps my mouth vapors off the stainless steel espresso machine. The kid who's making my thing turns to the curly-haired gentleman in front of me and asks whether he wants water added to it.

???

The man affirms. The kid goes to the back, near the ice machine, adds water, smacks the cup on the counter and announces that my double espresso with a shot of decaf over ice is ready. I look at the watered down mixture floating an inch over the ice and ask if he put a SHOT of decaf ESPRESSO in there (as opposed to some unpotent decaf coffee?) He says YES, sans flinch or hesitation, zero indication that anything is wrong.

Okay...

[The sad little girl goes outside to the patio to dress her coffee.]

Outside, I look at the tan colored water again. I taste it... -- well still fairly strong, maybe I saw/heard wrong. Okay. So I add some half and half (a little less than usual-- just in case), stir it up, examine the coffee a few more times as I walk out of the place and grow increasingly perturbed by the thought that the kid MUST HAVE have added water to my afternoon life elixir. I get in the car drinking my now increasingly weak and watery- tasting coffee, going back and forth on what just happened. Maybe there's a possibility that he didn't do what I SAW him do.

Though my memory is auto-repeating the scene:
"Do you want water added to this?" said the Coffee Bean's slim novice to the curly-haired gentleman as the unwitting asian girl stood by watching. "Sir, would you like water added to this?" "Sir, water to ruin her coffee?" The barista strides to the back to add water.

Revisionist history. The Holocaust. 1984 and the Ministry of Propaganda. I am here in sunny, happy privileged, Los Angeles away from female hurricanees, drinking the key to the seed.

The REVISING of reality to explain/make sense of an unexpected or undesired reality... In my world view it made absolutely no sense for a barista to add unsolicited WATER to my espresso and then ask somebody ELSE if it was okay. Why would he do that? He must not have done that. My coffee must be okay.

Despite the fact that it's weak, thin, not okay.

Does the evening weather report later reveal that ice had a lower melting point this afternoon causing water levels to rise in coffee drinks to unexpected levels?

Who know.

Well, I"m home now. Blogging, drinking an anemic iced double espresso, listening to recently downloaded "Maneater" and now "Suburbia." Melodies were amazing back then.

My woes are definitely trivial.

Still, insofar as a bad cup of coffee unleashes diseases of the mind, everything

AVEC PLAISIR

-alice

microfiche

I like technology. I like watching it bring in new day-to-day rituals for the american public. I like the easy or messy transitional period and how it eventually gives way to a time when such and such technology is implicated into our lives as something we do without thinking -- like coughing between movements at Roy O., putting the stick between my groceries and hers, swerving to avoid the smashed up squirrel.

So, yes, yes, Google has changed library sciences and IMDB is an indispensible party tool ("what other movies has Emilio Estevez been in?") Somehow, more is known with books being opened less - thank you, Internet. Not everyone can be as cool as you...Still:

The other day i was in my car, driving out of the labrinth underneath Best Buy and Target (near La Brea) and there was an express line for people who'd already paid for their tickets at kiosks. You get a ticket going in, you pay a dollar into a machine on your way out, you find the lane with no operator and stick your card in, the bar lifts, you look at the guy with the walkie talkie helping out drivers trained in their old way of life -- (the way that still involves a minimum wage parking attendant, sometimes smiling but often not, who slides your magnetic strip through a card reader, takes your money, tells you to have a good day) -- you're amused while you look at walkie talkie guy cuz you're smart and you don't need his help but America (California) ((Los Angeles)) (((West Hollywood))) will continue to need him for probably at least another half a year (actually maybe shorter if Best Buy higher-ups eventually realize they can streamline the process with bigger signs, cashiers reminding shoppers to pay for their tickets and more strategically-placed kiosks. But either way) a whole category of boring employment will have been phased out on the corner of Santa Monica and La Brea. You exit the parking structure. Culture evolves in small and mundane ways.

i went to a party a month and a half ago. it was public, well-attended and at somebody's apartment so smoking was allowed cuz the whole operation was illegal to begin with. It all flooded back. how "going out" used to mean coming home with clothes that were permanent pressed with a gross amalgam of sweat, smoke, and vaporized beer. sore feet and odor were the price you paid. and then you got used to it... same way you're now used to california, the producers leaving bad tips, atkins keeping bread off the streets, TJ's herb salad mix, band friction, band release, traffic patterns on beverly, strawberry crepes, things happening slower than you expect blah blah bluh bleh buhhhhhhhhhh...

-a

Simple Statements

A few things:

My uterus is trying to fall out.
I fell asleep on the couch with the lights and glasses on.
I am still wearing my lavender blazer.
I am still tired.
A mosquito wafted by as I lay on my red couch.
I watched it and thought about working tonight.
I felt a feeling of dread.
I closed my eyes and realized i don't have to work tonight.
It's true. I'm going to a party. Everything's taken care of.
last night's gig was super-fun.
It was at skooby's.
Run by brothers John and Stephen Hooper.
Siblings ventures are a worthy thing.
Mike was MIA, but the people came and smiled anyway.
In turn, we were loud and sloppy.
As a throwback to earlier days, we flew by the seat of my (XL) underpants.
This is not the way to run large corporations or build a dam.
But it sometimes works for music.
We ate potato leek soup afterwards at a noisy cafe.
It was creamy and buttery -- made with attention or tenderness.
Speaking of tender/buttery, lately i've been making crepes at home.
I ate four crepes in one day.
My stomach was full of strawberries.
Don't dunk a salmon in a stomach full of berries.
You will want to poo and then you won't poo.
Do take advantage of strawberry season.
The fruits are currently extremely affordably -- and succulent to boot.
Beyond trawberries, this season also brings strange alignments.
To be vague: things have been having strange relevance to each other.
What i mean is, pebbles coated in honey have been scuttling down a dirty mountain picking up non-random debris that coat and pack into avalanche rocks.
Messages from the mountain!!!

Welcome to May!

thank you thank you,
alice

Concussed in the Back

er something like that.

Hey! I've decided to be punctual again. I realized the propensity for staring at my car clock (set 11 minutes fast -- it works!) while speeding -- gas meter hovering on empty -- toward whatever destination i'm about to be exactly 10 minutes late for and then parking, jumping out of the car and running the final leg when my heart has no wish to palpitate this fast and my gambs are most often used in the service of WALKING to procure FOOD -- it's just no good. Plus being late induces stress and fiasco.

Fiasco-most-recent:
Tuesday. Just before noon. I'm only five minutes late to work and am in fact congratulating myself as I walk up to the restaurant only to find the front door locked. bummer. must go round to back.

Go round to the back gate. Locked. What is this?!

I start shouting the names of cooks cuz i can hear activity in the kitchen but the only person whose attention I get is a grumpy young guy who lives in the back house adjacent to the kitchen's alley. He sticks his head out his window and barks out in this hating life tone how he's trying to talk on the phone and would i stop yelling and go in through the fucking front. He doesn't actually say "fucking." He's one of those guys who doesn't have to punctuate his words with expletives and it still sounds like he's said them. cuz his heart is FULL OF POISON.

I gather he's a misanthrope. Or maybe he's just existentially dissatisfied and doesn't know what to do about it. No, at that moment he's a misanthrope and I definitely kind of hate him.

I calmly explain to Jerk that it isn't my purpose or joy to be stuck outside yelling like this and the front door idea was duly entertained, look, would he like to yell on my behalf so I can shut up or what? He barks ineffectually then ducks back into his house. After about 8 more minutes of yelling, Cuyo, the shrimp prep chef comes out but instead of taking the five steps forward to unlock the gate, he tells me to go round to the front again.

Guess what? Front door still locked.

Back to the back gate, more yelling, same cook finally lets me in.

I stomp in ranting about idiots only to see my boss and the other waitress already inside. Apparently, my boss has decided that morning to lay down the law and teach all his chronically tardy employees a big fat lesson by sealing the restaurant entrances at exactly 11:30 am and ordering the punctual employees not to let anyone in. His smugness and sense of justice served and lack of remorse make me livid. To think that all the yelling and getting yelled at and running back and forth around the building were due to my boss's inability to have a civilized conversation with his employees. Ire!!!

So i crashed around the restaurant, throwing forks next to plates and fluffing napkins, crying and calling my boss immature, and chastising him for not just stepping up and being boss enough to talk to us like adults, saying how mean it was to just let me stand out there yelling with no clue what was going on and making me get yelled at by the mr. alley asshole...
The hysteria went on for a good half hour. Then I calmed down, we talked, we apologized. Everything's okay now. I still have a job. I'm still not mature.

In other news: I was almost late for being on time to work this evening, but after I backed my car out, I had to close my garage door to keep evildoers out. It's a heavy garage door where you have to yank down on this metal handle on the inside that cuts into your hand as you grip it and i use the inside handle even when I'm trying to close the garage door from the outside because it's easier to reach. And then when you get the door partway down, you duck under and finish closing it from the outside.

For some reason, I forgot to duck and brought the garage door crashing straight down on my head. The cranian is apparently really hard b/c although i was quite positive i'd caused some nice lateral cracks, my brain remained inside my head and I was able to drive to work. Thank the goodness for skulls.

I have no feelings to talk about right now. Just woeful anecdotes that may explain why i suddenly start showing up to places early all the time and why I can't remember my name.

booooooooooo