July 31st, 2010 at 10:08 pm
I had a dream that I interacted with characters from Daria. We sat on a couch from my house at a nondescript party and Jane informed me that her name was actually Alessandra. Daria’s real name was something that also started with a D and I sat there wondering if I looked dramatically different from my 2D representation. I got their numbers, learned that “Alessandra” also lived in Glendale, and fantasized about how awesome hanging out with them again was going to be. When I woke up, I realized that Jane was a stand-in for a girl I had met at summer camp (she, too, was a fan of Daria and bonded with me when we decided Jane was the shit) and I became increasingly nostalgic for the friends I had made when I was 13.
Seriously though, fuck social awkwardness and everyone’s apparently inability to follow through.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Bubbles
July 28th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
[Name redacted] is the kind of person where if she lived outside of California she’d totally buy into that Katy Perry song and start wearing daisy dukes with bikinis on top
- James Shea
July 27th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Here in my car
More often than not, I look back on my experiences as they are colored by music notes and/or popular narratives. While this framework hides emptiness with whimsy, it also allows me to think of myself as an ‘individual’ while paradoxically subscribing to apocrypha. Subsequently, I’ve been trying really hard to arrive at a more legitimate form of romance. It’s hopeless.
I spent a lot of time in cars this weekend.
When I first learned how to drive, I thought of surrounding drivers as members of the same team. I still do inasmuch as observing intricate choreography at strange intersections, but my initial fantasy of fraternizing motorists was obviously a mechanism in making traveling less intimidating. We’re team members until traffic is bisected by fast and slow lanes.
Michael sent me a punk rock playlist so that I could listen to it on my way up to Santa Cruz. After 1.3 hours, the final track “Pushing the Extreme” by Wipers played and I picked up my iPod to scroll down to the next playlist: a top 40 mix I made for myself. I got pulled over for speeding when I was listening to Lady Gaga. That wasn’t very punk rock, you guys. Making up for this incident, I listened to Au Pairs’ Playing With a Different Sex for the next hour. I went back and forth between being excited about seeing my boyfriend and recalling every incident EVER in which I had gotten in trouble. A bus managed to pass me on the high way.
Michael’s car engine starting smoking when we took it uphill in San Francisco. Anxious bystanders pointed at the dangerous looking vehicle. He had an extended conversation with the tow truck driver about language, Atlantis, the Ming Dynasty, and a ragbag of conspiracy theories. There were a lot of sentences prefaced with the words “they say.” The driver told Michael that he should be a politician and repeated his concern for the next generation. I pretended to sleep. “Are you siblings? He’s a smart guy, isn’t he? Nice meeting you, miss.” Then there was wine tasting in Sonoma County and driving back to Santa Cruz in his dad’s Volvo. And other stuff.
I came back home today on congested roads. Music sounded less magical. I almost rear-ended a jeep with a Texan license plate.
July 19th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Ed Emberley
My dad read in the LA Weekly that there was going to be an Ed Emberley exhibit opening on Sunday, so I pushed my parents to go with me since the artist was actually making an appearance! If you’re not familiar with Ed Emberley, he authored a series of children’s books about drawing technique that emphasizes starting with simple shapes and squiggles. (Here is his official website.) My dad let me borrow a few when I was little and we still have some hanging around our house. Needless to say, it was really exciting seeing the original drawings for his books, and I had the opportunity to speak with him while I got my pamphlet signed. Mr. Emberley was incredibly friendly and even looked at my dad’s sketches! His wife, Barbara, eventually had to tell him to speed things up since there was a line of people waiting to get things signed behind us, haha. My mom also bought a piece of his original artwork as well as two prints–one of which is being given to me! Anyway, here are some pictures I took from her camera.
Ed Emberley is the man on the far right. The other people standing with him are artists who did their own interpretations of his drawings.
:D
The exhibit is running at Scion Space in Culver City until August 7th if you’d like to check it out. It’s free, so I suggest you go!
July 17th, 2010 at 12:45 am
Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites.
We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipop or a toy bear’s worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.
- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
July 16th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Sensory deprivation
I’m hesitant to post my dreams all the time because I don’t want this to turn into a dream log, but they’ve been interesting lately.
- I gave birth to a kitten over the toilet.
- I was close to being strangled in my car until some parking lot Samaritans saved me.
- I had a conversation with my dog.
- I walked around a hybridized San Francisco / Santa Cruz / Los Angeles.
- A stranger handed me fancy camera equipment on a dark bus.
- I explained to someone in great detail why feminists were the real sexists. (To be fair, this is a [mostly satirical] idea I’ve had for a while. I think I had more fun articulating it in my dream than I ever could IRL though.)
I’m planning to pick up the latest Christopher Moore book today. I also want to see Inception (speaking of dreams) but movie tickets are expensive. My parents saw it as a BAFTA screening last night! Jealous.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Oh and here’s a thing I drew yesterday.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
It was 100 degrees today
but then the sky looked like this!
I felt crazy today, the same crazy that happens when I decide to listen to terrible metal really loud in my car as I wind around Beverly Glen, the type of crazy that results in overpriced burrito consumption, the crazy that instills me with thoughts about Brett Easton Ellis characters (and conclusions, that perhaps I emulate the detached personalities in Less Than Zero rather than finding myself in such dispositions on my own)–and then I rolled down the window and it drizzled? I may have imagined it. But I felt a little less crazy with my hallucination.
