How I Cheer Myself with Kristen Bell

       Sometimes, when I'm having a crap day, I watch the Youtube of Kristen Bell on The Ellen Show.  I wish I knew myself as Kristen knows herself.  She knows she has a limited range of controlled, mellow emotions. As she blinks back tears, she looks as vulnerable as a tiny kitten.  Adorable. Where are the swollen eyelids, nose and purple lips I sport when I have a meltdown? 

       To complete my session of self-therapy, I'll add the Auto-Tuned version of Kristen Bell on The Ellen Show.  

       Dear Gregory Brothers, please come Auto-Tune my life.  

The Last Issue or Gruesome Lawn Sh*t

       I have a friend who calls pink flamingos, resin deer, painted elves, brightly colored gazing balls on pedestals-- any and all ornamental garden decor-- Lawn Sh*t.  She would be shocked to know that Mt. Sac named its literary and visual arts magazine, Creepy Gnome.

       What thinking went into this?  No idea.  I just know they put out a quality product and they want you in it. 

       The staff, pictured below, 

wants your submissions for their third issue, "The Last Issue".  Is it really their last issue?  Based on personal experience, I doubt it.  Every time I think I've tackled my last issue, three more crop up.

       For further info and deets on how to submit your masterpieces, go to the following link:  https://www.facebook.com/CreepyGnome?fref=ts

The literary and visual arts magazine of Mt. San Antonio College. Send all submissions to cgsubmissions@gmail.com! Click "About" and read the "Description" section for more details on how to send us your work.

       Go on, do it.  Submit.  You'll be in good company.  My work will mingle there with yours.

Why I Became a Writer

        Today, I interrupt my ramblings to take part in a blogathon, in which a number of us are posting brief statements on our blogs and/or websites telling why and how we became writers.

        Please visit my friends and colleagues and leave encouraging comments on their posts.

John Brantingham and Sunny Frazier http://johnbrantingham.blogspot.com/

John Daniel  http://johnmdaniel.blogspot.com

Cora Ramos http://coraramos-cora.blogspot.com/

Melodie Campbell   funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com

Lesley Diehl     http://anotherdraught.blogspot.com 

Jim Callan       www.jamesrcallan.com

Chris Swinney http://clswinney.com

Carole Avila    http://caroleavilablog.wordpress.com/ 

Augie Hicks    http://augiecorner.blogspot.com

John Lewis      http://www.Lions-post.blogspot.com
Eileen Obser   www.eileenobser.com

Charlotte San Juan    http://charlottesanjuan.wordpress.com

Kyle Van Sant          http://pkvansant.blogspot.com/

           On the ride home last night, after the customary Thanksgiving Day foodfest, I asked my mom and Alan why they thought I had become a writer.

       Mama:  Because you already did everything else.

       Me:     I knew you would say that.  When I was a child, did you have any idea I'd become a writer?

       Mama:  No.  I thought maybe an artist, because you drew well.  Or, maybe a poet, because as a kid, you wrote good poetry.  Also, your sons write, so you're trying to show them you write.   

[ Huh? I thought they write because I write!? ]

~        ~         ~

        Alan:  John Steinbeck said it so many times-- writers become writers because they have something to say.  Also, they want to leave something of themselves behind.

***

         They're both right.  They're both wrong.  I always wanted to write.  I always did write-- journals, long letters to friends and the dreaded white person's Christmas letters.  I have the diaries, correspondences and archives to prove it.  I just didn't have the nerve to move beyond personal writing to something more general.

        I don't know that I'm a natural born storyteller, but it's never too late to become one.  As for leaving something behind, I have my two wonderful sons who represent me better than my own words ever could.

       Why do you do what you do and have you always wanted to do it?  Or did you fall into it by accident?

The Night of Writing Dangerously

       Never having been, I didn't know what to expect.  Dressed for comfort and long hours of writing, I looked like the Brawny paper towel guy.  The elevator doors opened into the vestibule of the veddy elegant Julia Morgan Ballroom on the fifteenth floor of the San Francisco Mercantile Exchange Building.
       Lindsay Grant, in full-length black gown, and Chris Baty, looking very Philip Marlowe, greeted me with generous noblesse oblige smiles. Behind them, knots of elegantly turned out writers in fishnet hose, peplumed suits and fascinators chatted in bright-eyed animation.  And that was just the men.
       There were marble floors and a roaring fire surrounded by a hearth bearing the words, "Let Friendship Warm Thee."  I grabbed my welcome packet and slunk past twenty gumshoes in trench coats and fedoras.  In the bar area, I searched the crowd for other morons like me, dressed in what we wear to Starbucks to write on a Tuesday morning.  I found them-- more than a handful-- and stuck like glue.
         Drowning my wardrobe sorrows in drink seemed appropriate, so, with my right hand, I signaled the barkeep for a Cosmonovelton while I reached for a bacon-wrapped shrimp with my left.  Next, I'd try a Noveltini.
        The bartender shook his head, and gave a warning grimace.
        "Don't do it.  They're foul.  Have a Lemondrop instead."
        I go with local knowledge, so a Lemondrop it was.  By the time they let us into the ballroom at 5PM sharp, I was dressed in a backless velvet gown, over-the-elbow red satin gloves, stiletto heels and pearls.  I staked my claim near the candy buffet (come on, people, priorities-- PRIORITIES!), and crept under my chosen table, trying to connect my laptop to the power source.  It took some time.  While I was down there, with my backside hanging out from beneath the black taffeta, floor-length tablecloth,  I made friends and influenced not a few people.

        My table of writers (The Femmes Fatales) started out seriously enough, but after dinner, photographers taking author profile shots, cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies, our group concentration on the task at hand flagged.  However, we soldiered on and excelled at word sprints and table word wars, despite the  distraction of too many writers who had the nerve to complete their 50,000 word goal at the event and call attention to themselves by ringing a very loud bell à la checkers at Trader Joe's.
        I ran into Andrew Turner, wearing a victor's crown (one more obnoxious 50,000 word guy) and he introduced me to about thirty of his closest NaNoWriMo friends.

     

By 11PM, I had run out of charm and my fingers were but bloody stumps.  I descended in the heavily ornamented elevators to the street, tired but satisfied, where my chariot waited.  Can't wait to go again next year.

Lights and San Francisco

      I love lights, don't you?  Here's a photo I took from the Griffith Park Observatory a while back.  So noir.

       I wish I had been with the astronomers at the Observatory on the morning of the big quake of '71.  They got the best show in L.A.  As the city rolled and heaved before them, generators all over town snapped and exploded, giving the entire event the festive air of city-wide fireworks.
     I love fireworks, too, don't get me started.  Ooh Ahh, Ooh Ahh.  Here's some  'works I took at a Dodyers game.

       When I arrive in San Francisco, I blast Journey's song, "Lights", on the Iphone and sing along as loud as I can.  The song is about a lonely rock star, surveying the city he loves at dawn.  I never arrive at dawn, so I sing, "When the lights go on in the City, and the moon shines on the ba-a-a-a-y..."
       I was in San Francisco last weekend for the Night of Writing Dangerously, which I have renamed The Night of Eating Endlessly.  At least, that's how it was for me.  Read about that in my next post.
       You might enjoy this Youtube featuring Journey and The City we all love.  

Post Script:  4/30/13  I just checked this post for the first time in eons.  They have blocked my Youtube.  WHY?

Cleopatra, the Ho-Bag of Canopus

A month ago, May and I visited the Cleopatra exhibit.  I was going to do a bang-up job describing the dredged-up treasures on display and the things we learned, but then, in the snap of a wig, my life changed.

I was going to mention how the Romans looked down their long, well, Roman noses at Cleo.  She was a slut to them and she and her Egyptian subjects were all going to hell.  The Romans further hated Cleo for bewitching both Julius Cesar and Mark Anthony.  

     Never mind that she was brilliant, had studied at the famous library of Alexandria, and spoke at least five languages.  After the Romans destroyed her reign, they also destroyed all images of her, so that the world is left with only descriptions of what was said to be the most beautiful woman who ever lived.  

     Imagine the Romans being scandalized by the Egyptians! We think of the Romans as decadent and debauched.  Seems they were trollish little prudes compared to the party-hearty Egyptians.                 

I recommend this exhibit, but I want to tell you about my life.  I’ve been trying to lease out my home in Claremont since May.  While I was visiting Northern California with my college roommate, Joyce, I got the word -- a lovely family wanted to lease my home.  I had to be out in 12 days.

Hello, stress, good-bye Claremont.  I packed boxes, my friends and family packed boxes.  I found the Real Rock & Roll Movers on Yelp.  They put my things in Door to Door storage units and, as their name suggests, they ROCKED!  

      The day of my move was a comedy of reversals and surprises, starting with the flat tire on my van, a steady drenching rain, and continuing with the scary fact that my five storage units were filled within an hour of Robo and his Band of Merry Men’s arrival.  I needed more units.

That night, I was invited to Charlotte’s birthday and the Cleopatra in me was ready to party.  I sat at the bar of Tokyo Something, enjoying a frosty libation and congratulating myself on a day well executed despite the bumps.  Odd... no one I knew was walking through the door.  

       I texted John, who told me they were assembled at a different Tokyo Something.  I arrived stylishly late. Since there was sushi, mochi and sake, and it was John’s treat, things worked out great.

       Now I sit in Playa Del Rey.  I’m on day six here and the shell shock may be subsiding.  It’s hard to tell.  I’m living out of boxes and plan to rely on the kindness of strangers till I find a new home.  I have always wanted a vagrant, gypsy life and here it is.  Whoo-hooo!

     

West Hollywood Book Festival 2012

   It was going to be another scorcher, so  I visited the WesHo Book Festival early.  I was parked at the Blue Whale well before the event opened.
     The weather did not disappoint and, by the time I crawled back to my car, flattening my body like a flounder against the meager shade of nearby buildings in the noonday sun, I thought I might expire along the way. This, despite the fact I was "packing".
     Yes, that's right, gentle readers, I was armed-- with bottles of ice cold water and even my trusty pink spritz bottle, which gets a lot of laughs of derision, followed by, "Would you please give me a spritz of that?"
     My self-proclaimed mission was to "scheck it out", as my favorite disappeared comedian, Jesus Salazar, used to say, so that I could be a better volunteer for the much-anticipated, future, better-than-any-other-book-festival-or-fair San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival slated for Valentine's Weekend 2013 (February 15-17).  How was that for a swift, seamless plug?
     Stalwart but free of actual warts, I stalked the booths and the panels, casting a discerning eye and keen ear over all involved.  I was impressed with the stories that were being told, the poetry being read aloud, the rapt audiences and the merchandise being offered by various publishers and vendors.
     I snuck past my own Sisters in Crime, L.A. Chapter.  Coward that I am, I was afraid they might call me to fill in while hardworking volunteers in the stuffy white tent hiked back to the library for a pee-pee break.  It was already hot, I was already awilt and I can be lame, sometimes.

     I listened to one brilliant panel, Threats of Violence, which featured Gar Anthony Haywood, Jack O'Haloran, Dick Lochte and moderated by Tom Nolan.  T'was a good thing Nolan drew out Haywood and Lochte first, because once O'Halloran opened his mouth, we were all,  audience and panelists alike, glued to his stories of the rich, famous and infamous.
     Nothing, absolutely nothing, can compete with personal stories about dead mobsters, political families, athletes and movie stars.  By O'Halloran's reckoning, there are probably seven people alive in American today, who know the inside scoop on things like the Kennedy assassination, what really happened to Marilyn, RFK and the likes of Jack Ruby. One has the sense Mr.O'Halloran is a guy to have on one's side.
     There was one humorous moment.  Tom asked the authors on his panel if they enjoyed the act of writing.  Gar and Dick said, yes, they liked writing, though a lot of blood, tears and sweat were needed to bring forth their opera magna.
     Not Jack.  He was unhesitatingly enthusiastic about the process.  This, mere moments after he explained to us that he worked with a co-author, someone he had personally selected for his mastery of plot, character, form and style.  Did anyone say peep?  No.
  I was advised to keep my shut, too, but I say, "Horsefeathers.  It's too late for me to die young."