Don't Record Yourself Popping Pimples And Upload It To The Internet

And don't support people who do.
There isn't enough iro on my hands and feet to make an "ear cyst gusher" or any knowledge of a "bot fly" from PopThat- Zit.com palatable in even the most intimate social situations. Fuck this shit. That shirt is obviously not worth $12.

A Little Recognition From Bjork

Girls Behaving Badly

I spent a week in December visiting my friends in New York. I was happy to see them, but my first two days in town were so painfully cold that I was comforted to know that I would be leaving soon.

Walking down 2nd Ave in the cheek-burning weather, I winced into the street to see a tow truck zipping past with a yellow, checkered taxi SUV attached to it. The hood of the cab had been crumpled in a U-shape, giving a sense of how fast it had been going and raising a question of where the front-right tire went.

For all the death-defying experiences I've had in cabs, I only once considered that they could crash. It was at the height of my New York-based anxiety, right before I moved to Los Angeles. I hailed the first taxi that I believed would accept credit cards, and asked the driver to take me from midtown to Houston.

As he pulled away from the curb, he instantly began driving as if he was stuck in cruise control at 60mph, and that to slow down would bring us a Sandra Bullock-related death. He instantly began making road enemies, with a strong desire to spite them at every opportunity. There was an older, gray Toyota that had somehow angered the cab driver, so he began tail-gaiting it and honking at it and attempting to somehow cut it off from behind. I was leaning back in my seat and my right hand was clutching the armrest - a part of cars I hardly ever note.
"Forget about it," I stated out loud. "He's not worth it."
I don't know if the cab driver heard me or thought I was on the phone, but he seemed to relax a bit after that.

Yesterday I hailed a cab outside of Jenny's apartment and we both got in it. I had two large bags, as I was on my way to JFK, and she had one large bag, and she was headed toward a portfolio-building fashion shoot. I ordered to be dropped off at Grand Central, where I could pick up a bus to JFK for $13, after which Jenny would continue on with the driver to Brooklyn. The cab stopped because of a red light at a three-way intersection, and as the cab stood perpendicular to Grand Central, I decided it was time to pay my portion of the fare and jump out.

I stood outside of the taxi with the door open, one of my bags leaning against my leg as I pulled my other bag out of the back seat. The light turned green at that moment, and the driver of the car behind the cab immediately pounded her elbow into her horn. I closed the car door and stepped back and the cab wasn't even next to drive because of the early-morning congestion and the woman didn't stop holding her horn down. Her noise pollution was so offensive that I did the thing I always do when I'm in New York, which is hold up my middle finger and then yell, "Do you see this? Do you see this?"

I picked up my two bags and trudged to the sidewalk, and then an ugly voice based in the worst area of New Jersey replied, "Fuck you, ya bitch! Get the fuck out of here!" I think it was then followed by a spitting noise, but I may have imagined that.

Stupidly, she drove her car a few feet and hung a left into heavy traffic and then became stuck in the crosswalk that I needed to use to walk to Grand Central. It was as though God Himself delivered the chance for me to stand close to her car window and employ the hand motion and facial expression-equivalents to chanting, "Ooga Booga, Ooga Booga," near her face. In turn, I won the fight.


Horoscope for Virgo:

Temporarily stop shaving your body hair. You need all the warmth you can get.

This Is What Your Dreams Would Look Like If You Were In Love With Me

[Today]

This Is What Your Dreams Would Look Like If You Were In Love With Me

[In 2007]

Look What I Brought Back With Me!

Old Hat

I'm packing and I just found this hat that I bought in ninth grade. It still rules and I'm still glad I didn't get my own zodiac sign.
If I die in a plane crash, CCL should have it. I don't think I know any other good Libras.

Whack

I was wearing shorts yesterday.

Los Angeles Wildfires

"What happened? There's a body shop on fire?" It was 8 am and Terry was hovered over his computer while filling out paperwork with his right hand. The television was on and the news was showing the aerial shot of firemen in a street, and Terry had taken a distracted interest in the story because the words WEST HOLLYWOOD were at the bottom of the screen.

The original stereotypes about Los Angeles, the ones established prior to current popular television shows that misrepresent the city, are largely untrue. However, the cheesey-breasted, fedora-pinching monsters of your poor imagination do exist in one place: the Sunset Strip.

Everywhere on the brightly lit, bar portion of Sunset Blvd is the worst place I've ever been. When I went to the Wild West-themed bar with a mechanical bull and slipped into the bathroom to relieve myself of the setting and other things, I found that all four bathroom stalls were home to women either sleeping or vomiting. When I went to a show at the Viper Room, I needed to be more cautious of watching after my drink than I'd been anywhere else in my life. When I ate at Mel's Diner on a Wednesday night, a drunk woman, who was accompanied by her two drunk friends after they had all failed at a bar and were at present all failing to notice that their eye makeup was streaked down their cheeks, sarcastically yelled, "Wasn't the election YESTERDAY?" as No-On-8 protesters passed the diner's windows. The only place I like on Sunset Blvd is a strip club.

The Body Shop is an expensive strip club that was made famous when celebrities started going there 30 years ago, which caused it to be mentioned in a Motley Crue song and featured in the movie Striptease with Demi Moore. After that it became a fake mobster hang out, but I always liked it because of how stupid it looks.
There is a rectangular lighted sign to the right of the entrance, which has an animated girl on it. Although from a distance it appears as though she is balancing two basketballs on her shoulders, in the image she's actually covering the lewdest part of her miraculously large breasts.

The stupid feature that made me fall in love with the Body Shop is its sign that faces Sunset Blvd's traffic. In large white letters, it reads, "18 Years Ok!!!"

I couldn't find any pictures of the interior online, and I'll never get to because it burned down this morning at 6:45am. Everyone who hears about it suspects insurance-based foul play.

The following are excerpts from the Body Shop's now obsolete website:

Truth:
Most dancers will lie and say they are single and exchange phone numbers with you. IF they call... its because they want more of your money.

FACTS:
Strip clubs are NOT whore houses.
All strip clubs have a few dancers who are nasty.
Many dancers are not drug addicts or alcoholics. Some are.
Most dancers will NOT go home with you or take money for sex. Some will.
ALL businesses have employees that behave the same way, only its not so
obvious or public (poor Bill got caught in the act)!
Some Strip Clubs are classy. Some are sleezy.

Many dancers are more intelligent than wives and girlfriends!

Top 5 Funniest Parts of the Trailer for Gran Torino

I saw three major motion pictures last month: Synecdoche, New York, JCVD, and Slumdog Millionaire. During each preview session, the trailer for Gran Torino was played, and every time I watched it I'd cackle and hoot.

In New York everyone asks, "Is that movie really worth the $12.50?" but in Los Angeles, going to the movies costs $14.50, with a $2 surcharge if you buy your tickets online or go to the movies on the weekend. They make it up to me by serving alcohol in the theater, sometimes with waitress service at my seat.

So I'm going to save you the sixteen dollars and show you the trailer you've been missing by pirating movies. If you are sometimes unsure of when to laugh at previews, I've listed my favorite parts of Gran Torino below.



Top 5 Funniest Parts of the Trailer for Gran Torino

5. "We've got beer, too." "I might as well..."
4. "What was it like to kill a man?" "You don't wanna know."
3. "What the hell these Chinese have to move into this neighborhood for?"
2. "Thao and Sue are never gonna find peace in this world..."
1. "Why are you bringing me all this garbage anyway?"

People Downtown Sure Are Friendly

Bombay

The black cat jumped into Atiya's lap and began to strut back and forth, kneading Atiya's thighs to make them more tender.
"This cat is so sexy!" Atiya exclaimed, as the cat stepped on her right leg with all four paws and then turned around, the cat's tail whipping her nose, the cats asshole probably grazing her shoulder, and then stepping back over to Atiya's left leg.

Atiya had met the cat before when we lived on Long Island. The cat was very skinny then and would stretch her torso out a lot. At some point we got a little high, and as the cat sauntered around Atiya, Atiya whispered, "I want to see your skeleton."

But now she was in Los Angeles, reunited with the cat after two or three years, and the cat quickly warmed up to her. I had watched a television special on the intelligence of orangutans, as they utilized sign language and successfully played memory games. Near the end of the special, the star orangutan, Thaddeus, was reunited with Sally, the lady orangutan he had known in his formative years but had not seen in over half of his lifespan.
"Will Thaddeus remember Sally?" the scientist said in a voice over, as Thaddeus was ushered into a large habitat-cage where Sally was chewing on something and waiting. The two squinted at each other, unable to believe their orangutan eyes, and then ran at each other and leaped into each other's arms. The orangutans were crying, the scientists began crying, I was alone and became a little visibly emotional as well. Unfortunately, I do not think that that was what the cat was going through when Atiya entered our apartment.
When we first got the all-black cat, we couldn't pick a name for her. My dad wanted Blackey, I wanted Blackula, but my dad's girlfriend, Mia, nixed both of those names and, citing the cat's loving friendliness toward all of us, decided that the cat should be named Family Pet.

Family Pet showed a penchant for constant affection, and would get it any weird way she could. Sometimes she would on top of the refrigerator and wait for one of us [we're a pretty tall family] to pass by. From there, she would jump to our shoulders and get comfortable on them, and we'd walk around slowly and slightly hunched over, not unlike a professional wrestler showing off his namesake boa constrictor.

Some nights the cat would come into my room and get on my lap and begin purring. Then she'd start digging her nails into my thighs, lightly and rhythmically corresponding with her purring. The whole thing did seem kind of sexual, and I would find myself questioning if I was a zoophiliac.

One day Mia brought home the confusing Russian novel, The Master and Margarita. "Look!" she laughed, holding the book up to the cat, "It's Family Pet!"
The cover of the paperback displayed a shiney black sitting upright, not unlike a well-trained pubescent, the cat's back to the viewer. Looking over its shoulder, the cat's eyes were excited and gold, and the cat's tongue, split down the center like a serpent's, was slithering out of its mouth and reaching toward the book's binding.

I imagined Margarita to be the shiny black cat, harboring the soul of a once-luscious woman. Purring her filthy deceit into the ears of the ship captain/lord of the manor, she would drive the man to commit clean murders of those who had transgressed her in her former life. The novel would end, presumably, when he left more of his estate to her than to his hard-working, motherless children.

Unfortunately Margarita isn't the cat, but apparently a woman-turned-witch, carrying on an affair with a writer and often making deals with Satan. The cat on the cover is actually named Behemoth, and is in turn quite large. And like every Russian, Behemoth enjoys vodka, chess, and shooting guns [at the literary elite]. The former does sort of sound like Family Pet, but sadly, the latter does not.

Within the past few weeks I've learned that Family Pet is a purebred Bombay. She had been bred to perform in cat shows but, because of three whispy white spots on her stomach and chest, she and her mother were put up for adoption.

Bombays, a breed that gained popularity in the American South in the late 1940s, were made to resemble small black panthers with pretty yellow eyes. In their genetic makeup is a personality trait of desperate neediness, which breeders have translated to, "good with children." No matter who had adopted her from the North Shore Animal Leauge, Family Pet would have had no choice but to instantly have become one-of-the-family.

Breaking Your Arm - With Style!

Jenny plunged about 5 feet and used her arm to break her fall, which in turn broke her arm. She was prescribed codine, which she said didn't really help, but when she'd call me, it would sound like I was talking to James Brown.

Taking it up a notch, the doctors gave her morphine. One night she called me around 2 am PST [making it 5 am EST] to tell me about the bugs.

In our second semester of junior year and first semester of senior year, Jenny had a hamster named Boss. When she first brought Boss home, she couldn't stop taking cell phone pictures of her and playing the Kelis song, "I'm Bossy." In her cage, Boss would run on her exercise wheel all night long, but we'd consider the sound soothing and adorable. However, by the beginning of senior year, Boss had gained a lot of weight and become crotchety. She'd bite people's fingers and they'd bleed a little, and then I'd get my cell phone and take a picture of it.

Jenny took Boss home with her during winter break. Boss had developed some sort of illness named after a human disease [hamster AIDS or hamster colon cancer] and it caused her to get little red welts on her hamster face. Jenny came home from work one day and her apartment was crawling with fruit flies. She went into her room and discovered that bugs had, at an earlier date, laid eggs in Boss' scabs and that now baby bugs had hatched out and moved onto her walls. Boss gave up soon after that and was buried facing Mecca.

I referred to the incident as, "the time Bossy got infested," and it made Jenny get really mad at me. Boss was her little, sickly baby, whose PetCo inbreeding was more at fault for her unfortunate life than any lack of parenting on Jenny's end.

"Jenny, you're not infested!" I told her on the phone, referring to Bossy, but she didn't seem to notice because of the morphine.
"No! Listen, listen. Okay. So I found this bag of clothes on the street" - Jenny finds really good clothes on the street - "and they were cool, y'know? Like kind of worn, a lot of denim. They're cool. So I bring them home and do you know what I found in the bag?"
What?
"An avocado!" she giggled. "And part of a pretzel!" I could picture her laughing and scratching herself and it made me really want to try morphine.
"Jenny, bed bugs don't eat avocados!"
"But I feel them on me. I'm so itchy." She began to whisper:"And you know how I know it's them?"
How?
"Because I'm scratching but there isn't any red marks."
Is that a thing?
"Now my mom's gonna make me throw out all my stuff. I'm so depressed!"
"You don't have bed bugs. The morphine's making you itchy! If those clothes you found had bed bugs, there would have been a sign like: DO NOT TAKE THESE! THEY HAVE BED BUGS! Like with mattresses."
"But what if someone did it on purpose to be evil?"
"Honestly, those clothes probably belonged to somebody who's dead. Maybe his ghost is making you itchy."

Jenny had a cast put on today and txted me a picture. She opted for a black cast, which I think is really smart because it's comparatively sleek and blocks all the assholes we know from writing, "GR8 JOB" and "I said On The Rocks for AFTER we went skiing."

I clicked around and found a company called Broken Beauties, which sells fashion for the comfort and healing of broken bones. You can order walkers in hot pink, spruce, or sapphire that come with fabric covers made from Hawaiian shirts. There are Crutch Buns, which are velvety covers for the cushion of your crutches, and also Crutch Muffins, which stylishly cover your crutch cushions and the length of your crutch in neutral tones, jungle animal prints, or exciting patterns similar to tapestries you'd find in a world music store.

Aside from the Cast Cuties, which are cast covers for broken toes, the largest selection for communicating personal style is in Cast Covers and Fashion Slings. Broken Beauties can order "Arm Candy" in orchid tie-dye, paisely, pink skulls, or ocelot [which they consider different from cheetah]. The arm slings come in eight prints of floral, four kinds of animal, and two types of optical illusion, plus camo and a skull-and-rose pattern. They totally beat the shit out of the navy blue waterproof slings gimps-of-yore were forced to use to support their injury. There is also a decent sling selection for children, which offers dinosaurs and sporting balls, and a business section with pinstripe, plaid and tweed slings. You can also order Chinatown slings in Gucci or Louis Vuitton.

I finally realized how much middle-aged women like cheetah prints. I thought back to picture frames from beachfront gift shops and jackets designed by Suzanne Somers [for K-Mart?]. Do these ladies wish jungle beasts were not endangered so they could wear the furry spots for real?

Peri just G-chatted me that Jenny plans on having her cast studded with spikes, presumably so she can use it as a late-night weapon, or to make people assume she was crippled in a motorcycling accident. Either way, she already is a Broken Beauty and I'm excited for her to heal.