Okay, so yeah, I’ve been gone for a while. I know. Sorry. I’ve been busy with a lot of things, not the least of which has been the holiday. Quickly running through the past seven days, we have, well…interview at Amoeba Music on Wednesday (went very well, I think); a journey to LACMA for the Diane Arbus exhibit that same day with Sara and her friend Ruth (not successfull–LACMA is closed Wednesdays); went hunting for space invaders that day as well, found two on Fairfax, but didn’t find the ones in the Farmer’s Market and The Grove; got snapped at by Boss on Thursday, who’s annoyed I haven’t been quicker at posting the short film Oscar Saves Hollywood on the Scarefest website–not fun, but he’s just having a hard time becoming clear on the concept; worked Friday, hung out with Jules on Saturday, hunted for and found an Invader on Sunset in Los Feliz, made dinner and chilled at my house watching several episodes of The Office; spent most of Sunday at the beautiful house of Sara’s aunt and uncle with Sara, her brother, Danny, Ruth and her husband Carlos–haven’t been that relaxed in a while; hunted with Sara for a pair of invaders in Sunset Hills–found one, but not the other; worked last night and then tonight…well, see the next post.

Since I haven’t really cooked anything nice for a while, and since I so recently complained about my staggering lack of food, I decided I would treat myself to a homemade plate of shrimp scampi…you know, go all out. Find some good good olive oil, fresh peppers, lots of hot spices and fresh shrimp.

I stopped off at Rocket on my way to the store to say hello to Ryan and Sara and perhaps to get a cheesy Seventies comedy. Sara was miserable. Three hours to closing time and she had a withering headache. I told her I would call her later and if she hadn’t improved, I would come in and close the rest of the shift for her.

Moments later, at my car, I thought about that. It was one of those things we all do, that we all know about– that vague offer of support that we present in such a way as to set up the greatest odds that it’ll be refused. This is how, for example, I was thinking it would play out: I would go do whatver I was on my way to do. Give it an hour, or maybe ninety minutes. And then call up and say, “You still feeling bad? You want me to come in for you?” By that time, surely, Sara would be better. And if not, she would only have an hour or so left in the shift and might likely say, “I might as well finish the shift at this point. I mean, right?” And I would say, “Are you sure? I could come in. I’m just down the street…” No, she would interrupt. “Don’t worry about it.” And I would hang up feeling like, “Well, I offered.”

I’m not saying this would have been a conscious act of sneakery. I doubt that it ever is. We’re so used to teasing and manipulating conversation when we interact we rarely notice when our supposed altruism cloaks all those other motives.

And what was I going to do tonight that was so important anyway? Make shrimp scampi? Sure, I would go home and cook and then I would sit down to eat and it would turn out to be the most bitter plate of shrimp scampi in history because I had the chance to let Sara go home and get some much needed rest and I didn’t take it because…why?

So I turned around and clocked Sara out and clocked me in without the slightest twinge of martyr-tude and sent her home. Ryan was pleased anyway, because that meant we could watch Buffy, which Sara would never in a million years let him do. She’d rather watch Klezmer Kavalcade on repeat all night than watch Buffy.

The rest of the Sunday night, while decidedly shrimp-free, went by smoothly, although my evening began and ended with this German guy who was on the hunt for movies about mother/daughter relationships and sci-fi movies with beautiful cities and happy aliens. Luckily, Ryan got stuck with him most of the time. My only recommendation for the happy alien category was the McDonald’s-financed movie, Mac & Me–that atrocious ET ripoff that actually uses Coca-Cola as a major plot point. I did it as a joke. I didn’t expect him to believe me. Or at least I thought Ryan would talk him out of it. The guy put a bunch of stuff on hold and promised to come back later after he went to find a Blockbuster, since we didn’t have Mac & Me (among a few other things) on DVD. We thought we’d seent he last of him, because people like that rarely come back. But at the very end of the night he returned and declared that Blockbuster sucked and we were great and he would, after all, rent the stuff we were holding. Including, alas, Mac & Me. I feel bad for the poor guy. I shouldn’t joke around like that.

If you haven’t seen Mac & Me, I heartily recommend it. There’s nothing like watching that low-rent, latex alien creature with its permanent look of horrified surprise trundling along on the kid’s wheelchair, its head bobbing like a Slinky and its little rubber ears boinging about for a good laugh.

Man, I listened to the whole Bettie Serveert album while writing this post. I guess I won’t be getting much work done tonight after all.

I thought it might be cool to obtain the actual domain of Hollywoodland for purposes of hosting this site. I checked using Hostsave (my ISP) knowing full well that it would be taken and they said it’s available! I thought it over for a few hours and then decided to go ahead and do it. But when I tried again, they said it was taken. Strange. I checked using a different domain registration webpage and sure enough, it’s taken. I’m not surprised. On a hunch, I tried it again with Hostsave. This time it came back as being available! Knowing that it must surely be a mistake, I went ahead and registered it with them. So as of now I have an account at Hostsave under the hollywoodland.com banner, but I really don’t think it will work. I expect to get an email from them in the next couple days reporting that the domain is, in fact, taken and would I like to choose something else?

Boring but true. I’ll keep y’all posted. In the meantime, listen to the latest music mix, willya?

Morissey hasn’t put out anything new in seven years. He’s been chilling here in Los Angeles (rumor has it down the street from me at The Cat and the Fiddle.) You Are The Quarry is almost worth the wait. I mean, come on. Seven years is a long time! He used to put them out once a year, like Woody Allen movies.

And a double dose of Juliana Hatfield this week. Her new solo album, In Exile Deo, is out, and it’s blowing me away. A great collection of songs. Juliana has a gift for melody. Click on the link to read Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s glowing review of the album over at Allmusic.

In discovering the beauty of In Exile Deo, I came across another Juliana project that I’d heard nothing about. Some Girls is one of her side projects, this one teaming her with Heidi Gluck and fellow Blake Baby, Freda Love. It’s a more straight-forward, stripped-down rocker that acts as a nice counterbalance to Deo.

Man, she looks skinny, doesn’t she?

Lately I’ve been eating very little. I suppose it’s got something to do with having no money. As my firend Mandy, the dietician says, “That’s one way to eat less.” But for some reason, I’ve been able to make do with less food. And eating less makes it easier to eat less, if that makes any sense. Sometime around Christmas I sliced carbs out of my diet altogether, just to see what all that fuss was all about. I lost weight, so I guess there’s a correlation there. But in the months since, and with an erratic financial status that sometimes makes it more practical to just get a taco at The Cactus taqueria on Vine, I’ve not been so good about keeping carbs at bay. It doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in getting all keto-happy with the funky breath and all the other benefits. I just wanted to cut them out where I didn’t need them.

But the way things have been going lately, there’s simply no room for anything resembling a menu plan. In fact, here’s what my refrigerator has looked like this week:

Pretty paltry. It looks like I should be starving, but of course, I’m not. I manage to get food from various quarters. I’ve got a little vat of meal replacement formula (cookies & cream flavor) that Boss gave me so I knew what product I was designing a webpage for. I wake up in the morning, mix a couple scoops o’ that stuff in with some protein powder and that last me until about one, at which point I make another one. Then hunger for real food settles in and I’ll fix a simple salad out of half of one of those prepack lettuce things (the Santa Barbara blend, which someone somewhere decided was butter lettuce and raddichio.)

The real problem comes later at Rocket. Blood sugar levels drop. I get ravenous. The only thing within arm’s reach are S’mores candy bars, Rice Krispy treats and jawbreakers. That’s fine for the short term. But once the rocketing blood sugar levels peter out, the crash leaves me a trembling dizzy-headed mess. When I get home I immediately scramble two eggs. I can afford eggs. In fact, I don’t know how Trader Joe’s keeps their egg prices so low; they sell them for about $1.69 when everyone else can’t seem to drop them below three bucks. Does Trader Joe’s have a chicken coop in back of the store? How does that work?

In times of plenty, I have chicken and vegetables. Sometimes I make a sizzling fajita feast with delicious onions, peppers and chicken strips, seasoned with pepper flakes and hot sauce so fiery that it stretches the meal out for about an hour and through three or four glasses of water. No tortillas. Sometimes I make a delicious oriental stir fry, which is exactly the same as the fajitas, only with soy sauce instead of molten lava hot sauce. No rice. But that’s only in times of plenty, which come around once every few months, and then only for about ten minutes.

It’s all kinda pathetic, and if I weren’t doing good work at the keyboard I would be worried. But it’s all part of being in the Hollywood game. I make my choices based on that. I certainly don’t have to toil away at the jobs I do, or focus on the craft to the near-exclusion of almost all else, but I do. The hope is that it’s not in vain.

And to prove to myself that I still do have something of a social calendar, Sara and I are going to do some exploring tomorrow. First up is a swing through Los Feliz. I want to show her the evidence I found the other day of the ongoing invasion:

…and then we’ll see if we can locate the one that’s supposed to be in Griffith Park. Then we’re off to LACMA to check out the Diane Arbus exhibit. We’ve been trying to make it for a month and a half now. It wraps up at the end of this month, so it’s gotta happen soon.

I’ll post some pics of that if I can.

Just wanted to post a picture of a Homey I bought at Wacko today. He was just a buck. For scale comparison, I posed him next to my cell phone.

Oh, and something to brighten your day:

Awful Plastic Surgery

The stuff in the right column is pretty cool. But be careful with this healthy dose of nightmare fuel. It’s beyond belief (and yes, it’s real.)

Check out this pack of cigarettes. They’re Marlboros from Brazil. Apparently down south they don’t mess around when it comes to warning labels. I got this from Sara, whose friend brought her a carton when she returned from Brazil. She’ll give me more as she finishes them.