Monday, March 29, 2010

Things that could go wrong at our wedding:
  1. S.S. shows up, objects during ceremony
  2. Andrea decides to arrange all flowers herself
  3. S.C. dies of acute ganache overdose
  4. Dads collectively get mad at not being able to give away daughters, go bowling together
  5. Rings lost by Nevada, ring bearer cat
  6. Giblets poops on everyone in flower bunny promenade
  7. Andrea's dress splits across the ass while walking down the aisle
  8. Andrea gets her period, stains the dress
  9. Andrea runs out of ativan 3 days before the wedding
  10. Dad insists upon slideshow of naked baby pictures of A
  11. Aunt Joan
  12. Tsunami
  13. Heat stroke attack during ceremony, death count: 5
  14. Stephen doesn't show up because he went on a date
  15. Katie contracts rabies, tries to eat Andrea
  16. Omar & Gabe sneak off to hook up
  17. Between Omar, Stephen, Matt & Gabe, major altercations in type of attire.  Stephen insists upon wearing shorts, Matt wants a cummerbund, Gabe prefers a bow tie, Matt vetoes, Omar wants to wear green and bring his dog Darla
  18. Katie pre-orders tuxedo, upon arrival it is lavender and tent-sized.
  19. Pregnancy
  20. Andrea's heels are too tall, she falls into cake.  S.C. cries.
  21. Bridesmaids organize bachelerette party involving Lynn Breedlove jumping out of a cake and us getting matching tattoos of each other's faces.
  22. Jai and Vinnie Greenpeace show up demanding their Victoria's Secret catalogs
  23. Caterer screws up,  makes only vegan food.
  24. The only location we're able to book is cowshwitz
  25. Bouquet is thrown, caught by Stephen's father
  26. Caterer screws up, serves ez-shatter plastic utensils, someone gets shanked.
  27. Ipod death, no dancing
  28. Location screws up, thought we were the clown theme wedding
  29. Performance art act hired by Stephen offends all guests over 35
  30. Our mother decide to do a celebratory dance wearing seashell bras.
  31. Our parents get along a little too well - swappage.
  32. Awkward inter-familial drunkenness
  33. Single guests hook up after too much champagne
  34. Nobody dances
  35. Everybody dances, party goes overtime, costs $2,000 extra.
  36. Honeymoon switcharoo ends us in Tahoe Inn
Last night Liza died, my little rat friend. She was with me since my breakup with Tod, she and her sister Athena were with me through the North Hollywood apartment, through Sarah's tenancy.  The first date I went on with Katie I lured her over to my apartment with the promise of rat babies.  Rat babies.  She is an old rat now.

Liza was named for Liza Minnelli, the diva who did one thing brilliantly and rode on it for as long as she could.  It strikes me that she is still alive.  She played the Hollywood bowl last year, Gabe and Jerry went.  At Thanksgiving Jerry told me that her voice was gone, strained, but she worked the crowd with that echo of memory.

Liza Lambert is just an echo, now, her heaving, emaciated body, struggling to breathe, now silenced.  When K and I returned from our Nevada trek, she and her sister did not look well.  We had left them in good hands, pet-sitting, harspichord playing, friend and neighbor S. had managed our zoo quite well. 

But Liza.  That day she barely moved, refused food, sat still on the highest level of the cage.  She was a wonderful creature in her youth, scampering around my apartment, tunneling on the bedsheets, never biting.  I admit that she was my favorite, the first to arrive.

We knew that the prognosis wasn't good when the vet tech ushered us in to a room painted with a clumsy pet heaven mural.  Cats, dogs, unspecified rodents and bunnies were hopping down a path in recklessly irregular perspective.  Some large, some small, a snake in a sort of Eden-esque tree, we looked for apples, there were none.  There was a choice to be made and it wasn't good.  They brought her in in a pink blanket.

The worst moment was the last moment, holding her before she was to be put down.  She was so sick that her fur had fallen out in patches, wraithlike, her teeth grinding.  I cried.  I could not look away.

We buried her at Echo Park lake, letting the box drift farther and farther down in the dark water.  She was still wrapped in the pink blanket, flowers woven in the tiny carrier, the same one in which I had first taken her home.

Sleep well, dear Liza.


Saturday, March 13, 2010

fashion post!  I am feeling happily consumptive today, after spending a little time in Los Feliz yesterday.  While sometimes it's just all too miserable blah blah whine whine to think of such things, yesterday was a hypomanic glee.  I went shopping.  I DID.  I rarely if ever do, but I went to Ozziedots, Goodwill and Skylight, and found things I'm really happy with.

What is it about vintage Betsey Johnson?  Katie mocks me for being a label whore, but her clothes have just the right amount of stretch and whimsy.  There's three frocks in my closet from various thrifting trips that bear this label, and I really enjoy them.  Her current jewelry line is a bit overkill on the bows and leopard prints, try to avoid that one.  But there's a denim blazer that I've had since, oh, I think, 2002, soft fabric but fitted and puff-sleeved and sharp angled lapels.  It was one a staple of my disco nights.

I like dresses in soft, stretchy fabric that can be worn over leggings. Sweater-dresses, especially. Will leggings die?  Yes, of course they will, and they will go the way that skinny jeans seem to be drifting.  That's okay.  I enjoy them now.

Other things.  These boots:  Love them.  Waiting for them to arrive from modcloth.

In other non-fashion-related news, Giblets got a bath.  He was not pleased, but went with it.  To quote Ms. Katie Jacobson:


Giblets came into our lives this February a dirty, assertive rabbit. He was, to quote Giblets himself, "four pounds of tough bun." His fur was matted and urine-stained from his time on the mean streets, where he is rumored to have run with the 49th street Crips. Upon arriving here at the treehouse, he quickly began to defend the territory as his own, pouncing on and terrifying the cat.

However, we began to see a slow change in Giblets as his testosterone eventually waned, following his mandatory castration. Now, the cat was the one dominating him, even to such an extent that they had to be separated for Giblets' safety.

Per the doctor's orders, we were not to bathe Giblets. He may have borne the physical grime of the street, but it was clear he was on the road to being a changed rabbit.

Then, the day finally came when Giblets could get the stitches removed from his former testicles. We returned home and prepared for Giblets' final step toward domestication.

The photos you see here represent the culmination of a rough but ultimately successful journey. We are all very proud of Giblets, and hope you are as well.
Location: The W.C.
Note the echos of pulp juvenile delinquent.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

StorytellingWatching Storytelling and finding it an uncomfortable experience. Watching my rats jump and fall in their cage.
Up at 7:45 this morning to wait for the couch.  After much searching we settled on one from St. Vincent's.  Orange and green velour swirlies, and it's quite retro-sixties looking.  I'm drinking strong fresh-ground espresso and really fired up.

I got an urgent call from Cousin L yesterday, and at first I was worried, "uh oh, who died?" Luckily the news was good, very good.  She and her parents, and brother, his girlfriend, and the people down the street had all had a gaytervention with grandma at Sunday dinner.  Dear, beloved grandma, had reacted a little less than favorably to my announcement that Katie and I were getting married.  Not angry, not exactly disapproving, but saying she didn't believe in "that kind of marriage."  Which, considering she's 92, is not that strange.  Grandma probably has never met a lesbian.  Apart from my sister and I.  This newfangled lady-marriage is indeed peculiar when I imagine her coming of age in the 1930s.

However, luckily, after a long discussion and many citations of how happy and good for each other K and I are, grandma seemed to come around a bit.  I was just so touched that my family decided to intervene for us, they are awesome and I love them.

The clincher was that Grandma took my uncle aside and told him that she had found a rolled up sleeping bag full of porn, lesbian porn, on her back porch, and that it was (L emphasized the quotations here) "Two women standing there with their CUNTS hanging out!".  Grandma said the C word???!!!????  So this occurred only days before my engagement phone call, and disturbed grandma quite a bit.

Katie noted that the issue is definitely not her not believing two women have sex.  Which I had thought might be it.  Instead the sneaky pornicopea she discovered was part of her reticence.  (We think, anyway).

So, with all that hanging out, as it were, we are going to go visit her in Reno on the 19th.  Even more exciting is that my little sister, D, will be there with her girlfriend.  And my aunt C!  It will be tons o fun.  Reno is a charming place, snowy and sleazy and full of spooky dive bars and casinos.

Bang on the door and there's the couch.  Alas, we can't get it up here until the neighbors move their cars.  It's on their lawn right now...hm...

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Blogger's block?  Really?  This is part and parcel of over-thinking things, methinks.  Last night I regretfully missed the Mommy Mommy reading, but ended the evening making cinammon buns.  Trying to write as usual, amid a flurry of time-wasting activities.  I started a livejournal on Katie's urgings, but after the initial fun of setup I've returned to the good old faithful blog.

Ways in which I waste time:
    Meet the Ladies of Charm School
  1. pacing
  2. arguing about things on my support group website
  3. dithering about format vs. generating content
  4. watching charm school reruns
  5. housework (this is not actually a waste, more of a distraction)
  6. looking at trashy gossip blogs like dlisted.
  7. staring into space
Wow, this list could really go on for quite a while. Filling in units of space with letters, numbers.  The heat is on finally, filling the room with soft buzzing.

{takes nap}

(returns)

In sleep, projects take shape.  I wake up and they are gone.  Outside the freeway runs, the lake shimmers, palm trees wait.
Photo by Erica Jackson

Saturday, March 06, 2010

So we just got back from the urgent care, where the wuzh got her ear looked at.  For some reason it took three hours, so here we are back at home with the rain pouring down, about to make linguine carbonara.  All I can say is YUM.

All there is in my stomach is coffee, fudgy grahams, and a lot of rain. 

One of the techniques I've been thinking about was in The Other Hollywood: The uncensored oral history of the porn film industry, and involved using different oral testimonies to tell increasingly interlocking and compelling stories.  I stayed up till 6 am one night reading it, simply fascinated by the fact that it was all true, and primary source material.  Paragraphs from different voices, layering together to tell the stories.

Katie and I experimented a little bit with taking a story she had written about the two of us, and me adding in my viewpoint in alternating paragraphs.  It was a fun exercise, and I should really finish my portion.

I think the Ocho Y Media project, for which (other to do list) I have to fill out an interview, is projected to form a similar oral history formatted narrative.

To do lists, aie.  I saw Stephen Van Dyck perform at Sea and Space the other day, and he read from his worry list.  I'm fascinated by lists, making them, reading them, the different types of lists, etc...

What would my worry list be:
  • getting mugged walking around echo park
  • never leaving the house as I have no car now
  • slipping on wet steps and losing my front teeth
  • running out of ativan and not being able to get more
  • the car eating the bunny
  • the rats dying of depression
Hmmm...that's about it.

Friday, March 05, 2010

And a very good morning it is. With one little drawback - puffy eyelids.  In the name of fashion, in the name of trying experimental beauty products, in the name of why the hell not, I put this nair-like cream hair remover all over my eyebrows last night.  Now I have teeny tiny eyebrows and giant pink puffy eyelids.  Awesome ann.

Cabaret: Original Soundtrack Recording (1972 Film)That's really okay, though. I'm determinedly trying to bounce back from the car theft, mainly by trying to have fun despite it.   There's nothing I can do at this point, it's gone. Whether, as dad put it "It's in a chop-shop in Mexico by now," or it's just joyriding around LA, I don't know and there's nothing I can do.

This morning we made bacon.  Katie just remarked, "I'm thinking of all the bacony possibilities"  "Oh yes it's true, we're living in delicious sin." - Liza Minelli in Cabaret.  I think spaghetti carbonara is in my future.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

A few things I am excited about right now:
  1. these tumblers with bees that were an engagement gift, now filled with sweet tea vodka.
  2. the fact that Katie just said, "Nevada, stop giving yourself cattilingus in front of everyone."
  3. The book  The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored oral history of the porn film industry by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osbourne.
  4. Katie and Nikki's thesis reading, which was tonight, and which was really really good
  5. Kara Murphy's new blog, I Love it, SF.
  6. The fact that not having a car will force me to get lots of exercise and hopefully become that lithe little minx I used to be.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Drinking vodka like it's water, which should contextualize the otherwise vomit of bitter events of the last few days.  Actually, not all bitter and not all to be defamed.  First up. My car got stolen from outside a friend's house, and I've been crying on my dear girlfriend's shoulder and worried I may never drive LA's fair freeways again.  It really struck home when I couldn't leave the house to get a bottle, as we live all the way up on a hill, and I felt like such a teenage loser, or a mentally disabled adult in depends, unable to get my whiskey fix.

I pull the ring off. It itches.  I pull it on again.  I am in love.

Again and again there have been these moments that make me wish I wrote my blog entries in amicable word documents, only released when they were perfect.  No, this flies out raw from the vodka maw, which is to say, unusable and likely embarassing.

But ANYWAY.  I was turned away from the reading at Beyond Baroque this weekend as neither I nor my cohorts had the $5 necessary for entry.  We had driven miles out to Venice, in Stephen's car, I had parked my car at his house, from whence it was to be robbed.  I was so full of anticipation - Christine Wertheim puts on an amazing show! But alas, there was a cover.  I was overdrawn at the time, my finances are never good and often truly humiliating for a woman of 33.  I'm not exactly a functional adult if you hadn't guessed that yet.  The Disability check comes and it goes to rent, bills, vodka, and  that's about it, maybe a drugstore eyeliner if I'm feeling especially plush.  I did get my food stamp card today.

But anyway.  My feeling at the time was that I had too much dignity to spell out my long sad sob story to the long-haired teens at the register, I couldn't and wouldn't sneak in, and so Katie and Stephen and I made our way out and to a party in Orange County.