Well, frenemies. It’s me again, the poor man’s Liza Minelli. What have I been up to? Why didn’t I write the blog, as promised, on Sunday? Why haven’t I updated the “Setting” or “Participants” pages? Important questions, but the answers are between myself & the demon horde holding me captive. If you want a personalized response to any of the above queries, I hear their king is bribe-able, but he takes awhile to respond to letters. Send cash for an answer, & in the worst case scenario he’ll send you an autographed picture.
Anyway, this week my schedule was simple enough (which is a good thing, since it’s hard, as they say, to dance with the [demon horde] on your back). I was being lived by my aunt, Jennifer Tilly (poker champion & actress extraordinaire), & all my directives were fairly straightforward (daily multi-vitamins & journalling, plenty of water, etc.) I “handled it with aplomb,” or at least that’s what your [mother] told me last night. Zing.
I also had to wear a rubber band around my wrist & snap it every time I had a negative thought. I kind of like that idea, very Pavlovian, & I thought it would color the week significantly. But very quickly I realized that I don’t really have any negative thoughts. I, like a lot of smart people, am not a pessimist but a realist. So thoughts like “The apocalypse is imminent” are not negative thoughts. They are just sweet, uncomplicated facts. So I didn’t do a lot of snapping. I’m no good at things like this (snap), I need someone (desperately seeking Pavlov) to do it for me. You can’t expect the dog to ring its own bell before it sits down to eat. At least not this intractable mutt.
The hardest part of the week had to do with drinking. The not-drinking liquor. The drinking of water. Eight glasses of water a day is a lot of water! Three glasses of alcohol all week is not very much alcohol. Goodness. I usually operate with a sort of opposite ratio. On the very first night I went over to my aunt’s house for fried chicken & a movie I used up one lonely glass of wine. I even took a picture to commemorate the occasion.
what discipline!
We watched Crazy Heart. Jeff Bridges was good, but I found the rest of the movie appalling.
Tuesday I just stayed home, watching American Idol & eating fruit & things. Writing in my “Journal.” Taking my multi-vitamin.
, baby.”]
The next day I went on my first one-hour hike in nature with my friend Lauren (running Week 28, as luck would have it), her dog Zoe, & her friend Jason. We went to Runyon Canyon.
Dog on it
Beautiful hike! –
Beautiful company
but I was so out of shape I had to stop to catch my breath partway up, very embarrassing. It didn’t help that I was toting my iPhone the whole way in order to capture photographic proof.
Said proof
But by the time we hit the bottom of the hill I was myself again. Fortunately, we didn’t see any rattlesnakes. Got home, showered, & prepared for an evening out!
Also fortunately, that (Wednesday) evening, my dear aunt revoked the no-drinking rule. No prompting from me! I think prompting is cheating. But anyway this was good. Because on Wednesday I decided to dress like somebody else just to see what it was like. I let her call the shots on this one, since it was her week after all, & she thought it would be fun if I dressed up in cowgirl gear to accompany her to a bar in the Valley where a country band was playing. Maybe not country? Maybe rockabilly? I don’t really know anything about this kind of music.
Anyway, I have never worn a cowboy hat in public in my LIFE & I really think I did need some liquid courage. It was a cute outfit we put together, VERY not me. Pretty black cowboy boots with roses, a belt with a big buckle, a spangled Rolling Stones cutaway t-shirt & a black cowboy hat. Also a silver wrist cuff.
The fraud of your idolatry
She looked very cute in more toned down cowboy attire.
We went for some BBQ before & it was great. I got three kinds of meat & some collard greens. For dessert we had chocolate bread pudding & a bacon cupcake.
Now that's my kind of bakin'
The show was fun too. We were the only two girls in the bar in cowboy hats. But I even danced, with some coaxing, during the last song.
If you don't like pretty girls you won't like us
Thursday was a day much like any other, in that I have almost no memory of it & must still forge a written account. I know I went to the bookstore to pick up the week’s required reading (The Secret & The Sun Also Rises) &, while I was at it, picked up some non-required reading too.
Which of these things is not like the other?
That night I watched a lot of Jersey Shore & made a good dent in The Sun Also Rises before bed. Hemingway now feels like a dear old friend. Oh, I also called someone I’d lost touch with & arranged to meet him on Friday for his birthday dinner & drinks.
Friday morning, bright & surly, woke up & went to the mall where I bought some running shoes & hiking pants. Then I drove to West Hollywood where I met up with Jason & went on my second one-hour hike (Runyon again). It was a pleasure. I wasn’t so weak this time. Jason told me that it’s harder to be, as he was, in the Marines & I don’t doubt it. Can you imagine me in the Marines? You’re right, I’m not really cut out for it. I’m no Jason, I’ll confess.
Later that night I met up with my long-lost acquaintance Grant & some of his friends for drinks. It was Grant’s birthday. We went to the Beni Hana in Santa Monica.
My first sake bomb
If there’s one thing I love in life it’s Japanese steakhouses. Had a good time with the friendly strangers & then got home around midnight. Stayed up till four finishing The Sun Also Rises. You may not be surprised to learn that it’s a very good read.
Saturday I went to the Century City mall to go into a store I pass all the time & wonder what’s in it. I wandered around for an hour. I kind of count this as my third walk near nature because it is an outdoor mall. Eventually I went into CUSP & assuaged my curiousity about its contents. It contains a lot of nice clothes that I can’t afford & mothers with pre-teen daughters who are much better dressed than me.
That evening, Colin was in town for the Golden Globes, so I went & had a drink with him & his wife in their hotel room. Afterwards, I headed into West Hollywood & lived it up a little in someone’s apartment. It took me over an hour to get home since so many streets were shut down &, I confess, though I scribbled out three (very short!) poems (a directive I’d forgotten until the last minute) I simply did not have it in me to read The Secret as I’d intended. Frailty, thy name is woman! Maybe one of these days.
Now I’m very pleased with myself. I simply cannot believe that I managed to reconstruct my whole week like this! Particularly because the demon horde makes so much noise when I’m trying to write. Every day is a party for them & I don’t blame them I guess. If I were a demon I’d be enjoying myself too.
Anyway, everything’s picking up, I think. The weeks ahead promise to instruct & delight.
I also did some of this:
& you should too.
Be you on the other side!
I’m glad you’re continuing to enjoy your stay in Los Angeles. And do let me know whenever you want to meet this group of relatives: http://lightweb.com/10Jan10-BeachPhotos/pages/439-Family.htm.
Anytime that it fits into my sched! Your family looks very attractive.
Emily!!! This is such a lovely entry. That photo a few weeks back, of your hotel bed, sat very heavily with me and I was carrying you around in my head with anxious thoughts for quite a few days. But here you are literally bubbling over. I adore your wit and intelligence. Also, this week’s directives look like the perfect follow up to last week’s – both of which are what I would consider life to be about – a combination of looking after yourself (but not to any neurotic extreme) and enjoying yourself – with lots of good reading throughout. Have a wonderful week. (I envy you the t-shirts….we’re still in sub zero temps over here….)
Oh JD I’m so glad you’re still here. You’re, like, the last of the old commenters! That really means something.
Thanks, Em!
Where are Bella and Ptolemy and why were a lot of streets shut down?
Bella is at my brother’s, Ptolemy is MIA, & streets were shut down for the Golden Globes. Isn’t it bleak? But I have it on shaky authority that Ptolemy may return soon… That, at least, we can look forward to.
Great report, as always, on a very Hollywood week.
Indeed, I would have found it difficult to discern just what constitutes a genuinely “negative” thought. To maintain only “positive” thoughts must surely be like losing one eye and thus depth perception. If it has more to do with the emotional than the literal content of the thought, what about all those fleeting inklings which never even reach the point of linguistic definition? I suspect I would have ended up with a very bruised wrist.
And, er, “demon horde”? The speculative mind boggles…
A bacon cupcake? Eww!
I liked this week, it seemed the most laid back. Has anyone told you you look a lot like your aunt? I was also perplexed by the bacon cup cake what did it taste like?
In the early part of winter, she would drink water. The water was not good, for it did not taste like the whiskey that she normally drank, but the water came as a directive, and swallowing it with the knowledge that it was part of a directive made it taste better, and sometimes, as the last of it went down, she would think of the bacon cupcake she would have later, and it made the taste of the water good, even though in truth it was bad, and would always be bad.
Bad, too, were the Golden Globes, and bad also was Crazy Heart, though it was good to watch such movies with her aunt, who understood that movies could sometimes be bad, and understood as well that movies, like cards, are a matter of chance, and that death and boredom could come with each, and the coming and the not coming were all a part of the chance of it, and the chance was good, even when the chance was against you, and it made you feel good, deep down in your gut where the water was, and even though the water itself was still bad.
“I feel bad,” she said.
“You must not feel bad,” said her aunt. “To feel bad is not to possess the Secret.”
“I don’t want to possess the Secret,” she said, and as she did she wished in her heart that there had been rattlesnakes on the trail that day, for when there were rattlesnakes on the trail it was acceptable to feel bad, even in this place where people did not know or understand the goodness of feeling bad.
“I wish that I were a marine, or John Cheever,” she said. And as she spoke she took the band in her fingers, the band of rubber that made her wrist sting when she pulled it and released it after a bad thought. And the pulling and the releasing were both good, though in a bad way.
“Ouch,” she said. “I am so bad.”
Her aunt smiled, and the smile was a familiar smile, for they were at Beni Hana now, and both knew that the genes that were in one were in the other as well, and that her aunt’s smile looked like her smile would look, if she ever smiled.
“Yes,” her aunt said. “You are bad, and you do not possess the Secret. But you can drink, and to drink is good. And if one drinks enough one will not mind that one does not possess the secret.”
And again they smiled, and the little man who always carried the meat came over and gave them the meat. And the man cooked the good red meat on the little stove that sat recessed in the table in front of them. And the smoke rose up and was good to smell in the air of the restaurant. And both forgot, for a time, that anything was bad.
Ptolemy might have stepped into his place.
Ptolemway?
Holy allegories, Batman!
…sigh…my day is now replete….
And he hath written. And it was good.
emily, please promise me that you will visit the nickel cafe for a bacon donut and clifton’s cafe in downtown for the people and ambiance. and i think it’s official-i have a girl crush on your aunt.
Emily, here you have an old commenter and though I am not commenting any more (at least not until now)I am still following every one of your weeks. And I still enjoy them a lot! Don’t you worry…
Your blog has touched in me in ways i have never experienced… for that i thank you. Ps, bodybreak keeps coming on tv, and i just know that behind the scenes they are fighting like praying mantes on a junk off the coast of singapore. As well, just now i had to look up how to make the the plural form of mantis, and there are three different ways. Lord have mercy…
mmmmmmm…….bacon cupcake…….
Wow, thanks a lot for that photo of the bacon cupcake. I will never have peace now until Alex finds/concocts and eats this delicacy. To me it looks pretty nauseating.