humans are funny

Category: Venice Beach

  • Attacked by ivory

    Maybe it’s because my father played the piano while I was living in my mom’s belly. Maybe that’s why. He serenaded her on their first date. Music lived in his fingers, and it lulled me to sleep when I didn’t yet know what sleep was. I have cassettes that start with my giggly toddler voice introducing my dad as a great piano player. And then a full SIDE A of him scooting his digits over the keys. I don’t remember what I did while he played. I imagine myself bored or making my He-Man dolls fondle Barbies, but maybe I loved watching his fingers. Maybe I listened then, and maybe that’s why any bit of piano makes me weak now.


    (Sidenote: Check out this photo. I was a baby pianist. Note the ‘A Chorus Line’ song book. I mean… I definitely acknowledge my mom for not listening to stereotypes, but ‘A Chorus Line?’ That’s a pretty gay bunch of show tunes. I’m surprised I didn’t see that when I was two and tell my mom he was gay [inner side note: My dad was gay. It was a surprise.] [inner side note #2: I look horrible in overalls.].)

    There is a pianist I love now who plays down my street. He makes me think. He rolls his heavy wooden piano onto the Venice Boardwalk every single day . He puts out a tip jar, but I’m not sure he plays as much for money as he does for pleasure. He wears a dirty white ponytail and a collared shirt, and he plays. He plays into the night. I see him when I get a morning coffee, and I see him when I take a stroll at dusk. He plays, hunched, letting notes free into the sky. And I can’t walk past him without bursting into tears. No matter what! I’ll walk with my back to him, but his notes pierce my ears, and out come the tears. Sometimes I sit in the grass next to him because I like crying and I like knowing he’s there. And there I’ll stay while salty drops drip into my coffee.

    I sob and I can’t help it.
    I’ve tried to analyze why these tears jump out of my eyes like Olympic divers. Like lemmings. Like ants. They crawl all over me.
    At first I thought the pianist reminded me of my dad.
    And I felt sorry for myself. I imagined how many songs my father’s fingers would know by now. But that wasn’t it. So, I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

    The more I see this man and the more I cry, the more I realize it has nothing to do with my past or my dad or me at all.

    I can’t stop my tears simply because it is so moving to watch someone do something he truly loves. Not for money (he doesn’t even notice when people give tips!). Not for recognition. But for love. This guy loves playing the piano. I don’t know him, but I know that. I see that. I see it in how he breathes out notes. I see it with my eyes closed. In the air. In his songs. Even the blades of grass know it, as I drown them in my tears.

    Surrounded by men who hold signs asking for weed money or men who walk around in Speedos for picture money, this man has found a venue for an art that he has mastered out of love. And it makes me cry.

  • Home is where the LA is.

    I’ve lived in LA for almost 14 years now. I’ve left to go try other places during those 14 years, but I always come back. I never mean to come back, but I do. Here I am.

    Hi!

    Since I’ve been here for so long, I have grown accustomed to my environs. I can easily walk by a pantsless homeless man on Venice Beach or a hooker on Hollywood Blvd and not blink an eye (unless it’s a regularly scheduled eye blink.). Converting to full Angeleno was a big step. I arrived having never seen flip-flops. Now I live steps from the beach. I arrived not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. Now, I totally know (kinda). I arrived when I had just lost my virginity. Now, I’ve fucked {{This sentence has been interrupted by the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test.}}. Since my transition has been so gradual, I haven’t really noticed it. But something happened the other day that pulled the wool off of my unblinking eyes.

    My friend came over with a bag from Whole Foods. She pulled out her carton of sushi and screamed. I thought there was a mouse in the bag.

    “Oh my god.” She exclaimed. “I forgot to get brown rice!”

    She forgot to get brown rice.
    In her sushi.

    The. Horror.

    The starch!

    O. M. G.

    It took 14 years, but now I realize: I AM IN LA. Holy mackerel, am I in LA. (I obviously knew I was geographically located in LA since I see the street signs, but I didn’t realize how unique it really is until lately.) Such an event would not have been a tragedy or even a possibility in the city where I grew up (Addison, IL, a blend of Jersery Shore and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.).

    Since the rice catastrophe, I have been hyper aware of my surroundings. For example:

    I stumbled across these screenplays in a bar bathroom garbage can. What? How? How did those get there? “Oh, Larry. I’m sick of lugging around all your screenplays. You’re never gonna sell ’em. I need to find a bar bathroom to throw them out.”  “Miranda! You go throw out all my screenplays. I don’t even want them anymore. Did you see that they’re not printed on brown recyclable paper? The. Horror.”

    Oh, LA, you are so mysterious.

    And then there’s the food. When I go back to Addison, I say I’m a vegetarian, and the waitress says, “Okay, you want chicken or fish?” Sometimes in LA you have to ask a restaurant if they serve any meat at all. Here people eat seaweed chips. And I walk to get wheat grass shots in the morning.

    It must work because there are no fat people here. It’s a cliche, but so true. I stood on my corner the other day and looked for some for an hour (read: three minutes). Okay, there are two. But one has a thyroid problem and one is Tyra Banks wearing a fat suit.

    You think maybe someone thought they’d get discovered if they threw their screenplays into a bar garbage? Or maybe it was a trick, and I would have won a prize if I had pulled one out? Dammit, I always miss out on prizes.

    My friend got married in Malibu last week. He said it was great except for the stunt man who was practicing diving off the cliffs right behind them. Over and over again, he plunged to the ground, suspended by ropes. He’s right behind the happy couple in their wedding pictures. I should make a joke here about taking a plunge, but instead I’ll make one about lamps: Lamps are so skinny. They belong in LA. (Nah. Plunge would have been better.)

    And isn’t this the thinnest grilled cheese? LA, not EVERYTHING must be thin.

    And the namedropping. I’ve realized it’s unavoidable in LA. Even though it’s sometimes a necessity, it doesn’t lose its douche factor. I mean, there are helicopters because Lindsay Lohan lives next to me. And I locked eyes with Jake Gyllenhaal. I cannot help drop some names once in a while. (ahem, I also saw Arnold while eating that skinny grilled cheese.) (Please note: it was still a good grilled cheese. Gone in aprox 4.3 bites).

    And the laptops. In any LA cafe on any given day, you can find a smattering of writers pecking away at their laptops.They are the people who will spend hours perfecting some blog that won’t even earn them a penny. There’s so much hope and opportunity in those people. You can’t spend your days wilting atop your laptop if you don’t believe in possibility. I bet if we took the amount of ambition and hope in LA and tied it all together, it would go around the world twelve times. Or Maybe thirteen. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.

    That doesn’t happen in too many other places.

    So, yeah, I’m in LA.

    And it’s a weird place. But I love it anyway. Did you see how skinny that grilled cheese was? Why do they even slice bread that thin? Such a travesty. Bread! I sometimes have to drive two hours outside of LA to get bread. Not really. That would be weird. But I do walk to get wheat grass, which is a bunch of grass they grow inside the restaurant. And then they mow it down right in front of me, squeeze it until green water comes out. And then I drink that water. And then my burps smell like summer all day long. That’s LA, baby.

    Please, come visit. Or don’t.

  • Stop looking at my soul. It feels weird.

    Today I had a somewhat life-altering phone call to make. I knew whatever this person on the other end of the line said would be filled with either opportunity or disappointment. I decided to go sit down in the perfect place on Venice beach in order to brace myself. I bought a lemonade. Lemonade always helps when bracing yourself.

    I dialed the number.
    It rang once.

    Just then, a man approached me.
    “You’re destined for greatness,” he said. He looked like a regular old Jewish father. His T-shirt and shorts did not peg him as the average crazy from Venice beach. I didn’t sense he was on meth.

    I thought the timing was strange because I was just about to make a phone call that would tell me whether or not I am destined for greatness. I hung up the phone to hear what he had to say. Maybe this stranger would tell me the size of the greatness or the exact kind of greatness.

    “I see your soul,” he said.
    I just spent a year studying Spritual Psychology, so I am all about souls. I decided to give him a chance.
    “Your soul says you are headed in the right direction,” he said.
    Yes! Yes! Please tell me more!! Validate me, fine sir.
    “I just got off the phone with Madonna. She was crying about her 13 million in real estate she lost. Money is not the answer.”

    Hmmm…. I am pretty sure there are other ways to teach me about money without dropping names. But, it’s LA. I gave him another shot. Maybe he could be my guru.

    “Tell me your father’s first initial?”
    “J.”
    “Yes, that’s what I thought. I am a see-er. I see everything around us right now. Your father is right here. What was his name?”
    “James.”
    “Yes. That is correct.”

    What?

    Of course it’s correct. I know my father’s name, and, yep, that is sure it. I wanted to tell this ‘see-er’ that HE was supposed to be the one to do the naming. He was doing it all wrong. He said that he is a Kabbalah master for all these celebrities including Steven Spielberg and Bla Bla and Bla Bla.

     And he could see my soul.
    All I could see was a yacht ride with Madonna as we tied on each other’s red bracelets and laughed about adoption law in Africa.

    After bragging many times that he speaks fluent Hebrew, he told me he could fix all my problems. He said that the ‘other side’ did not want me to reach my goals but that he could fix that by doing some healing work on my lower back.

    “I’m going to go get a water. You make your phone call. I’ll come back and ‘treat you.’”
    “I’m not sure,” I said.
    “You’re not sure? Well then, forget it.” He got up, pissed, and walked away.
    “I mean, can we maybe meet up later?” I called after him.

    Was my chance at being a big deal walking away? What if this Kabbalah guy really was a healer and everything holding me back in life is stuck in my lower back? WHAT IF?

    But I was really hungry and wanted to make a phone call. So I let him walk away. And now that I am home, I am so happy I did not agree to some lower back servicing. I mean, come on! DUH! I don’t even like Madonna. At all. How did that work on me? I am such a fucking sucker, and I’m sick of being a sucker. I paid $50 for a car wash the other day because it was a special detail ‘just for me.’

    In India, a similar ‘see-er’ approached me. He said he could read my mind. He really hooked me while I was lamenting that his underarms emitted quite an onion scent. He said ‘I think American girls smell bad. It’s just a cultural thing.’ HE DID READ MY MIND (I was not thinking that all Indian men smell like onions– only him, but it was close enough)! And my mind was talking shit about him. So embarrassing.

    I spent ELEVEN days under his guidance. We spent ELEVEN days eating meals together that I paid for. We talked about life, and he told me when I was being negative. That’s it. Those were his services. They were actually really helpful. After gaining my trust, he said my problem was that I needed to feel unconditional love. And he said that would happen by us laying in bed together hugging.

    Come on!
    I understand that I may look gullible. Or stupid. There must be something about me that tells all these people I will fall for their schemes. And maybe I do sometimes fall for their schemes. BUT LAYING IN A BED with a smelly Indian stranger to experience unconditional love? Um, sorry. I could buy a dog, or I don’t know… call my friends and family who love me unconditionally! When I said no, there was a similar angry huffing like Kabbalah Man’s. As if passing up an opportunity to lay in a bed with a stranger in street clothes (barf!– I wouldn’t lie with Javier Bardem in street clothes on my bed) was the most unbelievable thing anyone could ever do.

    They must teach that in sales school or something. Because, damn. Getting angry at rejection really makes people (or maybe just me) feel like they’re missing out on something big.

    Well, I am not falling for it anymore. Done. Today’s Hebrew-speaking name dropper has shown me the light. I think what these people see in me is my lack of trust. If I am looking to some stranger to tell me I’m destined for greatness, that must mean I’m lacking some confidence in myself. Fuck that. I know I am destined for greatness. Who isn’t? I don’t need anyone else to tell me. No see-ers. No gurus. No phone calls. Nobody but me. I happen to know myself really well, and even though I wear pajamas most of the day and sometimes forget to brush my teeth, I am fucking destined for fucking greatness, dammit.

    The next person who tries to give me a deal ‘just for me’ gets a crotch punch.

    This is my Indian guru on the top of a mountain. This wasn’t just any mountain. This was a ‘special’ mountain where he only took ‘special’ people. 

    When looking through my India photos, I noticed this guy. I think this is India’s version of white people. Thankfully, most of us don’t really look like Spicoli with blue highlights.

    _______________

    blog news! You can now enter your email over there to the left so that you will get a notice every time some words get posted here.
    Also, I am now blogging about life every Wednesday here: Stratejoy 

  • Let’s shoot up! Or smoke up! Or however you injest meth! I actually don’t know.

    I went for a run last night on the Venice boardwalk in the dark, one of my favorite pastimes.
    I passed a group of homeless meth heads (yes, I know they were meth heads because they looked like [THIS]), and the bald one yelled out to me:

    Hey, baby! You ever see a grown white man naked before?

    This sounded strange to me. I didn’t know whether to be:

    1. Excited because he must have thought my supple skin to be of virgin quality.

    2. Insulted because he must have thought I hadn’t been able to get anyone to undress in front of me before.

    3. Insulted because he must have thought I was a pedophile and had only seen non-grown naked white men before.

    4. Flattered because he must have thought I was a lesbian (I’ve always felt I’m not edgy enough to be a lesbian.).

    Involuntarily, I screamed, ‘Yes! Yes, I have.’

    The group burst out in meth head laughter.

    But then I thought about it.
    That meth head knew me so well.

    Methy was almost correct in his skepticism.
    Now, I’m:

    5. Amazed that he could tell I have a black/brown man fetish.

    I have actually only seen one grown white man naked. (If you’re reading this, yes it’s you. [see how I did that to make him feel special when I’m actually just covering my ass in case I missed one?]) Genius.

    Meth heads are so brilliant. I need to get me some of that. I’ll age prematurely, but I’ll be able to see into the sexual partners of others, an invaluable talent. If this blog gets incoherent and choppy, you know why. But if my face skin starts sloughing off at dinner, can someone please get me on that intervention show so I can have a miracle recovery and then finally get a book deal?

    Shit. My future just got so bright. Meth for everyone! On me!

  • Sex at the Salad Bar


    Thanks, friends, for your concerned emails and for looking at me with that signature head tilt as if I’m a Haitian orphan. It’s sweet. I get it. I sound lonely and pathetic. Two weeks ago I admitted to trolling the Craigslist Missed Connections and last week I wanted someone to hold my hand while I fell asleep. If I’d read this blog, I would have been barfing all over the place and then weeping for pathetic old me.

    Sigh.

    It’s true that I want to be in love. I said it last week, and I can’t take it back.
    But you know what’s worse than NOT being in love?
    Dating.
    It’s much, much worse.

    Dating has so much potential to be amazing– the excitement of this new person who could possibly end up playing a huge role in your life. But then there are the smiles that melt into pained grins. And the guys who arrive an hour late. And the same conversations about siblings and birthplaces and parents. And the fake offering to pay the check. And the men who let me. And the texting afterward.

    It’s all so gross.
    And although I do want to be in love, I don’t want to be a dater. In fact, I’d like to announce that I’m done dating. I’m out-dated. I’m a Dater Hater. I hereby declare that I am retiring from the dating scene until 2011. No more no more no more.

    This means, of course, that I should probably stop shopping at Whole Foods.

    Shopping at the Whole Foods in Venice beach is no ordinary grocery experience. This particular Whole Foods is a meat market. And it also sells meat.

    There are more single people in this place than produce. And the cornucopia of promiscuity is obvious with every squeeze of a cantaloupe. There are skinny girls in daisy dukes, tan yogi men in scarves, salty surfer boys, and hipsters in V-necks. They’re all dripping with sexual tension as they measure out the bulk flax seed. Scooping peas from the salad bar is the new porn. You can’t pick out a bok choy without someone complimenting your pink aura or saying, ‘You must be tired because you’ve been doing downward dog in my mind all night.’

    It’s just disgusting.

    And also really fucking exciting. Because there’s nothing like the hope that fills your whole being when you spot that man with the smoldering eyes in the freezer section.

    THAT is the best part of being single– the hope, the anticipation, the numbness, the excitement of walking into the cookie aisle and knowing that any one of the men eyeing the gluten-free chocolate chips could be the man you wake up to for the rest of your life (And the fact that you can eat two PBJs for dinner in complete silence while naked.).

    Was someone saying something about love? Maybe I prefer a lifetime of titillation at the salad bar. Now that I’m rethinking it, I can’t give it all up– the hope, the men, or the Kashi cereal. I think it’s about time I come out of retirement.

    Who wants to take me out to dinner? I promise to offer to pay and not really mean it.