November 1st is coming, and that means the yearly exercise in awesomeness that is National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. And that means I’m trying to save up all my brain contents in order to disgorge it daily in November without making us all mad. Mad, I tell you!
C’mon! Join the NaBlo train! Choo Choo!
I have been keeping this to myself, except for frenzied emails between my family members and myself. But O MY GOD. Go Red Sox.
There’s been another revolution
here in Boston. Earth has turned
around; the moon is full and clear.
Black holes are turning into stars
within the Red Sox hemisphere.— excerpt from The Red Sox 2004 Championship Poem by grapez
I know. I know! I don’t care. BoSox forever.
“it is the color of baby poo outside”, originally uploaded by hambox
The photo above depicts my pal Violet at my home this past Sunday around 2pm. If you stare at the picture till your eyes ache, it’s a fair representation of what the day felt like. Also imagine hot hurricaney winds whipping ash and dirt into every crevice of your soul. And a pervasive smell of Very Bad Campfire.
The heinous hot dry maddening Santa Ana winds started blowing that morning (knocking fronds into my window and knickknacks to the floor). Within an hour or two the apolocalyptic vibe was complete, what with five separate fires raging all over the SoCal expanse.
At this point (knock charred wood) there are no fires too near me, my place of work, my route to work, or my loved ones. Ventura County to the north is starting to get bad, but, as long as the wind doesn’t blow the wrong way, we won’t get this poo-colored cotton covering all over everything.
I honestly don’t remember SoCal being so damn fiery last time I lived down here.
So, these readings in LA are going really really well. To my local folk, I am doing what I can to bring a similar night northward to the Ventura/Santa Barbara burgs, so that the love can be shared with the more homebound homies of mine. Not that you shouldn’t try to heave your ass over the Conejo Grade, through the Valley of death, and into Hollywood to try to see one of these shows in its native habitat. But I kind of know, secretly, that most of you never will. The 405 interchange is an effective barrier between us and LA — stronger than a diaphragm with a thick layer of Gynol II.
Yet I manage to do it regularly, like that one troublesome swimmer. I can’t help myself.
It’s another eclectic night of music, readings and performance. I will again be conveying excepts from my teenage diaries — this time, Becky goes to the dark side — taken to the river’s edge by the Baddest Girl in Bronxville High, Jane Doe.
The Ukulady’s Ponyshow!
TORNADO OF TALENT
FAKE MUSTACHE NIGHT
Wednesday, October 24, 8pm
Theatre Asylum
6320 Santa Monica Blvd, HollywoodFeaturing the talented Fia Perera, The Neosurrealists, Don Black, Sodomite Radio, Becky Haycox & The UkuLady
[Note: the hinted-at Theme Week is not starting quite yet, I’ll need some sleep before I can get going on it]
Today, I was idly e-wondering to Violet about why my day felt wrong and off. But I knew why. It was the hasty, reactive emails I fired off earlier this morning .. and now realizing (with cooler-headed, post-coffee clarity) how the emails could be construed incorrectly (and by that I mean: come across as totally bitchy and nitpicky. Bitchicky?) The small, rational voice in my head could tell by the clattery and self-important manner of my typing that I shouldn’t click send. But that small voice was drowned out by the sound of me clicking send.
I fantasized about imposing some kind of cooling-off period on myself — perhaps programming some kind of script that, when I try to send an email, would cause a window to pop up:
Are you sure you want to do that?
{I click send again}
Honey, you take a little walk and come back to me before we go any further.
{I look for the send button. There is none.}
The ability to edit and send (or not) should be returned to me in the time it takes to eat a Pop Tart, flounce into Kerri’s office and waste time, or to actually think about how to be a nicer person.
Hmm, nicer person. That’s a clue to something that’s starting on this bloggie tomorrow! It’s gonna be a theme week! Theme week, theme week, YEAH!
Think twice, Originally uploaded by hambox
It’s Blog Action Day:
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.
I have a deep sadness about the condition of our earth. And worse, a deeper pessimism about it ever getting better. I cannot even begin to convey my disappointment at the continual it couldn’t get worse, could it? oop, yes, it’s so much worse free-fall feeling that has been my life, my entire life.
Pull out, zoom in: it sucks at every view. Three G0rges D@m: holy shit. Losing count of the SUVs roaring past me: yuck. The thick pile of shiny, screaming coupons and circulars that are stuffed in my mailbox every single day: fuck fuck fuck.
So, I recycle those circulars and cringe at my commute and pray that not too many thousands of people will die when they complete the world’s worst civil project.
I simply cannot feel happy nor proactive when asked to think about this. And understand: it’s not glibness, it’s hopelessness with a nice hard shell of cynicism.
At least we haven’t been nuked*. We have that.
*Yet.
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…and nobody wants your awful recliners, either. originally uploaded by hambox
I’m not even looking for a recliner, but I feel violated, anyway.
I hate ugly couches, originally uploaded by hambox.
The image above represents a mere fraction of the sofas for sale, 99.5% of them fugly beyond belief, on the two local craiglist pages upon which I lurk. As I’ve mentioned before, I am idly looking for a couch, so I regularly pinch my nose and jump into post after post of ugly, shabby, crappy, tacky.
My hatred for bad couches goes into the territory of Unreasonable. I want to punish them for their ugliness. I often visualize the image of Billie Joe stabbing the sofa in that Green Day video and wish, wish, WISH I could do that to the many eye-assaulters out there.
I don’t know why I’m such a persnickity anger-harborer. I never even notice the couches inside the homes that I visit, and happy flop my buttocks down without a judging thought rattling around my harebrain.
But GAHD I am disintegrating at the sight of these poorly-shot photos of scroll-armed, teal leather, chintz, reclining nightmares.
And I feel the exact same way about watches.
This is the first time I’ll thank a photosharing website (and possibly, hopefully?, the last), but I have to give credit where it is due: flickr has been one of the finest things to evolve from the best elements of the internet. It has enriched my connections, made me a better photographer, and wasted a vast part of my life that otherwise would have been devoted to such outre Web 1.0 pursuits as online text adventures, friendster {*eye roll*}, and forwarding important chain emails.
Flickr, in its benevolent omnipotence, also acted as [platonic] matchmaker. Last fall, I spied this picture that had been posted in the Ventura County flickr group:
I got a little shock, as I had taken this picture:
So I commented on this unknown human’s photo, pointing out our fine taste at ironical images. The synchroniliciousness did not stop there; when this human visited my photostream, it was her turn for a little shock. I had posted an image of me holding a bridal bouquet at a Bay Area wedding I had been to:
…in which I pointed out the bouquet I was holding had been hand-delivered to me by the bride [guaranteeing my imminent nuptials, ahem].
This human, who I came to know as Spark and Foam (her flickr ID), told me that she experienced the same bouquet phenomenon, at a Bay Area wedding, on the same day.
And she lives in Ventura. And her name is Violet. And she’s now my real live, brick-and-mortar friend. AND it’s her birthday today.
Hooray! My peculiar little life here has been enriched significantly by the introduction of Violetsparksparkalicity into it. We have had some grand adventures in our short acquaintance. And by “grand adventures” I mean “debauched timewasting.”
The fates gave me a kiss, is what they did — with french!
Happy birthday, my girl. If I had been there for your birth, I would have smacked you on the forehead and shouted “ew! a BABY!” but I’m sure you would’ve understood what I really meant.
My one defense is that I am generating content elsewhere, especially for live audiences, which provides immediate and more satisfying feedback than toiling away on this bloggie, which I have no idea if you (yes you) are reading and/or enjoying, unless you comment on it, electronically or in person. Get it? Just this past weekend two more lurkers revealed themselves to me (yes, you and you) and mentioned they are hamblog devotees. That’s nice — now that I know!
I’m sorry, it’s really annoying when a blogger complains about a dearth of comments. My bad. I hate the phrase “my bad”. Sorry again.
Okay, it’s obvious that the nerves have manifested themselves as grunchiness*. Tonight is another night of me reading my personal, private, teenage diaries. This time I will take the audience on the journey of DD, the Boy on Whom I had a Crush for One Thousand, One Hundred and Seventy Nine Days. Most likely I won’t post these diary experiments here; to hear them, you’ll just have to come to LA or book me for your backyard barn show.
The UkuLady’s Ponyshow: Wednesday, October 3rd at 8pm!
A variety extravaganza of theatrical theoretical magic and Good Times – every week features a new lineup of up & coming talent & special guests with a story to tell…This week features: Traffic ticket attorney & musician Sherman Ellison; The Ranting Heeb, Jonathan Caplan; writer/gadfly Larry Blum; humorist Don Black; Porch Music; diary entries with Becky Haycox! Hosted by Thessaly Lerner, The UkuLady!
WHERE: Theatre Asylum 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles
WHEN: This Wednesday Night 8pm! October 3rd!
HOW MUCH: $7 suggested donationsies!
http://www.TheUkuLady.com
Also, the newest installment of Michael W. Dean’s podcast on which blab endlessly is up and online. MWD, DJ, and I discuss everything under the sun and crack up a lot. I’m surprised that people seem to enjoy the BeckyChat series; I guess it’s almost always fun to eavesdrop on others shooting the shit.
Podcasts, diaries, podcasts, diaries. Do I do anything else? Why yes, I:
*Grunchiness: hybrid of grumpy, grouchy and grinchy, coined by the awesome Leepy Leepybo
And you know, of course, that when I condemn the noncommenters, I don’t mean you, you, you, or you.