xtcian

that's a 1976 German syrah

3/31/04

The picture above gives you a good idea of the massive pile or mountains that separate the insane, toxic, seductive basin of Los Angeles with the vastness of the Rest of California. You follow that road clear into the center of those staggering hills, go over the Tejon Pass, and if your car is still working, you can speed up the backbone of the Sierras to Napa Valley, where my dad and stepmom live.

I took this trip because my entire cast – and director – all went to New York and Texas and god knows where else, leaving me to stew in my own juices for two days. So I figgered fuckit, and went to see the folks and the sister, who is currently running the Culinary Institute of America (or at least a chunk of it), which is housed in the ancient Christian Brothers winery.

This school is state of the art – you see all those sinks at each desk? That is where you spit out some of the finest wines the world has ever created. There are also little bowls for aioli, mole dips, pesto, and various other ways to cleanse the palate. They teach a class there called Lord God Master of Wine that only ONE PERSON has ever passed. Here's the final exam: you get blindfolded, taste a glass of wine, and then tell the proctors which grape, which country, which winery, which hillside, and which part of the hillside the grape is from. Or something like that.

My favorite part of the place is the Barrel Room that has been in there since 1888 or so. Get this: behind the barrels are a catacomb of caves that they used to store wine in the 19th century. During a major earthquake, most of the caves, um, caved in, then were sealed. Legend has it the finest wines ever made could be buried in those caves, and several rich people are itching to dig. How motherscratchin' cool is THAT?

And no, you can't write a story about it. I have been SCOOPED SO MANY TIMES over the last five years that if YOU do it, I will FIND YOU and CLOSE YOUR HEAD IN YOUR LAPTOP. SEVERAL TIMES, WITH MUCH FORCE.

1985 revisited, again

3/30/04

For the first time, it had dawned upon me that we might actually have to live in Los Angeles. When we packed our bags and took a few simple things to spend the month of April here in California, it never even occurred to me that our lives could be shuffled out here in a much more permanent way. Now that I'm actually faced with the proposition, I suddenly miss the little farm in Columbia County with the longing of a hundred distant suns. When our manager talked about writing pilots until Halloween, all I could think about was my pumpkin patch.

Obviously it would be the thrill of a lifetime to actually get a job writing for television, the sort of rat-a-tat-tat all-consuming team collaboration that I've been missing since my days at the DTH. It would also be an amazing testament to Tessa, who managed to miss all American television from 1977-83 (just think about that) and can still deliver dialogue with the effortlessness of the natives.

But I'm reminded of the day I came home from a winter school trip in 12th grade, to find that my mother had left town and taken my brother and sister with her. I had no idea she was even looking for another job, I had no idea I'd suddenly be alone in my room, and I felt an abandonment as pure as a puppy.

In her defense, she was offered an incredible job writing, editing and recording every song you ever sang in grades K through 9 (and certainly didn't need my permission) but that sense of "the rug being pulled out" is very palpable, and I'm feeling a bit of it now.

Is it possible to pull the rug out from under yourself? And are there usually nice hardwood floors hiding underneath?

suffer little children

3/29/04

Driving back from a late-night errand last night, I heard a very slow version of the song "Mad World" on KCRW. The same tune has cropped up on several mix CDs over the last year, and haunted the latter sections of the movie "Donnie Darko." The song came up on a discussion group, and one of the members was stunned to find out it was originally written by Tears For Fears.

Now, I have been a not-so-secret Tears For Fears dork for decades now, as I think Roland Orzabal, when he's trying, can do amazing things with pop music. Their first album was "The Hurting," which was a semi-permanent cassette in my first Walkman, featuring made-for-high-school lines like "I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad / The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." Like my brother Sean said, they were "two guys who wanted to create music based on primal scream therapy that sounded nothing like John Lennon's 'Mother'."

Can you imagine any band in this day and age getting together because they wanted to write songs about Primal Scream therapy? Fucking unthinkable, but par for the course in 1982. Primal Scream therapy was developed by Arthur Janov, who believed that most of life's fear, anger and angst came from the horrifying moment we were ripped from our mother's womb, and the only way to be "whole" again was to engage in a ritualistic re-enactment of the birthing process. This eventually led to patients screaming – but not the usual shrieks. These birthing, or "primal" screams were guttural, nerve-wracking and must be heard to be fathomed. The easiest-to-find example would have to be, well, John Lennon's song "Mother."

Anyway, in 1985 Tears For Fears released "Songs From the Big Chair," which had "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout" on it, and it made a gazillion dollars. My favorite song from that album, however, was "Head Over Heels," which I think is one of the greatest anthems to crack the Top 10. 1985 also had my other favorite Top 10 song ever, Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart."

Yes, I know that "Hey Ya" is awesome, and "When Doves Cry" was singular, and "Walking on the Sun" was marvelous – but "Head Over Heels" and "Fortress Around Your Heart" are truly masterpieces of the pop form. Listen to the echoing piano in "HOH" and the swirling-chord gorgeousness of "FAYH."

These days it's hard to make a case for either Sting or TFF. Sting seems to represent all that is wrong with yuppie new-age excess, he writes boring songs, and always comes off as a bit of a tantric yoga asshole. Tears For Fears is drama fag pap to most people.

But let me tell you this: shut up about Sting. He is a clear recipient of the McCartney Rule, which states (in his case) that any man who wrote "Roxanne," "Walking on the Moon," "Message in a Bottle" and "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" doesn't owe you anything.

And thank god TFF are getting a little bit of respect back. On the heels of this great cover of "Mad World," TFF is releasing their first real album since the daisy-age classic "Sowing the Seeds of Love." Fittingly enough, it's called Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. I may not need the adolescent charge of Janovian Scream Therapy to get me through calculus class, but I will still line up to buy the latest offering of some old heroes.

zygotes and syzygy

3/28/04

So it's time for that talk again, the one where we decide whether or not we're going to have kids right now. The truth is this: people have kids all the time, we certainly wouldn't be the first – not even among our friends – and everyone survives it. We've been heartened by those folks in the Industry who have raised gorgeous, excellent 2-year-olds and still manage to have their freedom and their artistic self-actualization.

I'm going to write something down that I thought I would never say in my life: I'm beginning to believe that artistic success is largely arbitrary. There is no "cream rises" or "hard work will get it done" – there is simply Who You Know and possibly Good Luck working for you. This has been one of the most depressing revelations of the last few years, and those of you who have been reading since the heady days of 2001 will know it was a long time coming.

Perhaps in the past, being good actually got you something. I would imagine the finest smithy in Wales was sought out by kings in order to make good armor. Even now, being the best guy to do LASIK surgery will get you an international client list and a booked schedule four years into the future. But there are just too many people trying to make movies and television; as our producer said, "the executives have seen so much product that they will leave the moment you repeat yourself." Use of the word "product" was not lost on me.

What does this have to do with kids? Put simply, there are two aspects of life that used to give me meaning: chasing tail, and being excited about a career. Now that I'm married to one of the greatest people on earth - and now that I have begun to understand that success in my chosen profession is a crap shoot - I have lost my mooring. More and more, my mind keeps coming back to the one thing that is incontrovertible in this world: the act of bringing another soul into it.

Now, don't get me wrong. I assume I will be stuck with this:

That's me in 1968, making life miserable for everyone around me. By all accounts, I was one of the worst babies ever born, with veins full of vinegar, always hurting, screaming at the top of my lungs, refusing to sleep, and generally being such a fucking devil-spawn that certain aunts and uncles still can't take me seriously. In keeping the tradition, I just know that any child of mine will be as bad, or worse. Tessa and I will likely claw our faces off. But it will be real. It will exist. It will be something we can hold, love and know.

I used to think you "got old" by refusing to bend with the times, by showing contempt for new things before you had the chance to investigate them. I thought you got old by becoming more conservative, losing your passion, getting bad knees, losing collagen in your face. Now I know that you get old by confronting your powerlessness in the face of luck.

my advice? take Fountain

3/26/04

This blog goes out to our manager Kevin Kassover, who went to high school with Tessa and is the only buddha who can guide us through this elaborate maze of Hollywood without our heads spinning off our bodies. The only way to do LA after the age of 27 is to be invited, and the only way to survive once you're here is to have someone watching your back. It was Kevin's birthday tonight, so we went to the Jar restaurant and I had a pot roast with horseradish sauce, quite possibly the best meal this trip.

What? You don't believe me about the 27-year-old part? Well, just try it. I came here in 1997 at the age of 29, and was bitch-slapped repeatedly because my boobs weren't big enough. New York will accept you at any age, but Los Angeles eats its children.

One good thing about LA, however, is that hybrid cars are so common, you don't have to show the valet how to drive it. When I left the Prius in midtown Manhattan, I had to give the attendant a 5-minute seminar on "going forward," "reverse" and "park." I mean, it's easier than driving a golf cart, but people are used to a cockpit full of controls.

After a Jack & Coke, I was convinced we were sexier than balls, so I made Tessa drive us up to the Sunset Strip to ogle the Roxy, the Viper Room, the Hustler Book Store and the Whiskey a Go-Go. Believe it or not, I used to wander Sunset by myself in my smelly, shitty Ford Mustang back in the Bleak Years, and it always made me feel better. But big pimpin' in the hybrid? What could be better? I ran out of the car and took a picture of me and the wife, and almost fell backwards into oncoming traffic.

What a way to go. The things I do for you, loyal readers...

Pablo Cruisin'

3/25/04

To our dismay, we discovered that there was no way two functional, career-minded adults could exist in Los Angeles and share a car. I was bumming rides from friends, and even considered trying the bus, something I did in 1990 after my infamous "I'm fucked and my life is over" car accident. But this city absolutely blows in terms of public transit for just doing errands, so Tessa and I bit the bullet and rented a car for a month.

Since my beloved wife lost her driver's license somewhere in New Orleans (have fun buying liquor at the Verti Marte with your stolen I.D., "Tessa"!) – it was incumbent upon me to get a cheapo monthly rental. Actors out here for pilot season swear by a little company called Fox Rental located on the butt-skirts of LAX airport, so I wound up with the shittiest car I've driven since I lived at the Pink House.

It was a skidmark-brown Nissan Sentra that claimed to be a mid-size, but when I got in, my knees were up by my mouth. It also felt rickety and uncontrollable, kind of like a bumper car (minus all the fun). After a day of lower-back-pain misery, I took the car back and asked what else they had.

And now? I'm cruising Jamie Block style, decked out in a PT Cruiser. For only a little bit more for the month, I have graduated into the Midlife Guilty Pleasure Car, and already, other PT Cruiser owners are waving as I go by. What is it with these people? The car is nice, and pretty freakin' stylish, but there seems to be a PT Cult out there.

It has a moderately good environmental rating, but O! How I miss my Prius! I shall think fondly of it as I comb the beach in my Cruiser and score chicks!

eine kleine nacht-reading

3/24/04

One of the books laying around my household is the Alcoholics Anonymous trusty little Hazelden book Twenty-Four Hours a Day. In many senses, this (along with the AA "Big Book") have to be considered the first self-help books ever widely used. "24HAD" is actually a swell piece of literature, especially for 1954: tiny enough to go in your shirt pocket (or thrown in a suitcase), with bite-size nuggets of information that cater nicely to the attention spans of latter-day readers.

While Tessa drifted off to sleep, I cracked open the book and was immediately flooded with memories of my own despondency, and had a very quick, fleeting cognitive resonance with some poor soul reading these chapters for real, some woman in some other part of the country at this very moment, whose life was actually falling apart, with these pages offering the only glue available at this time of night.

This is the first meditation in the book:

You are so made that you can only carry the weight of twenty-four hours, no more. If you weigh yourself down with the years behind, and the days ahead, your back breaks. [The higher power of your choosing] has promised to help you with the burdens of the day only. If you are foolish enough to gather again that burden of the past and carry it, then indeed you can't expect [the higher power of your choosing] to help you bear it.

Now, you don't have to be an alcoholic to live in constant shame. I can barely make it through my second Jaeger shot, nursing nothing but girl drinks for years, and I still feel incredible bursts of humiliation at the way I've acted over the decades. I think of the stupid things I said at That Internet Job. I think of the way I treated that girl on 86th Street. I remember how quickly I ridiculed homosexuals in high school, and how I picked on Betty Kurtz in 4th grade because she was the only person lower on the social totem pole than me.

The thing is: it's a good thing I'm not an alcoholic, because I think I'd still be one. I find it pretty much impossible to let go of all the shame that bears down on me, not because I need to remember all of these things in order to be a better writer, but because I'm afraid of being blindsided by an event I had forgotten. If someone comes up to me and says "you left me to rot," I need to be able to say, "you are correct, sir, and I continue my penance." I may be an asshole, but don't think I don't remember.

Celexa only does so much

3/23/04

People That Scare Me, In Order of Intensity:

1. Evangelical Apocalyptic Christians
2. Muslim Terrorists
3. Clowns
4. Mormons
5. The Editorial Staff of the Wall Street Journal
6. Jewish Republicans
7. Rural Pennsylvania School Boards
8. Objectivists
9. Hummer Drivers on Interstate 405 through the Sepulveda Pass
10. The Chinese Army
11. Kraft, ADM and Beatrice
12. Hockey Coaches
13. Ralph Nader
14. Tarot Card Readers in the French Quarter
15. Right-Wing Cartoonists
16. Retail Employees Who Work on Commission
17. Dog Kickers
18. Independent Record Store Cashiers
19. My Brother Steve Babysitting in 1976
20. Quakers

Make Room For Larry

3/22/04

The Fox lot, circa 1950

I broke several land speed records across the desert flats of Death Valley today, trying to get back to Santa Monica for the first massive reading of the entire Fox/Naked Angels evening. Stunningly, I was on time, probably the first time that has happened since prep school.

Tessa and I walked into Fox's packed reading room, actually a boardroom that had the faint whiff of Important Decisions imbued in the walls. Truly this was a chamber where careers were made and destroyed, where the Simpsons were greenlit, George Lucas was canonized, and champagne was uncorked after the first airing of "American Idol."

After listening to all seven short plays, I found myself a little lost inside each one, picturing my teenage psyche craving next week's episode. Sure, it is so easy and depressingly ironic to make fun of sitcoms now, but they occupy fully 68% of my cognitive memory regardless (right next to constellations and the French subjunctive). I saw more episodes of "Flo" than you can imagine. "Too Close for Comfort," "Carter Country," "Phyllis" – my ass was so there.

My question is this: what was your favorite sitcom, and more importantly, why? This isn't meant to be one of those blog memes. I really want to know.

3 miles high and rising

3/21/04

in the gondola, about 11,400 ft. above sea level, Aspen

Things I Did Today

- woke up at 5am with my face on fire, because I didn't use sunscreen yesterday on Snowmass Mountain; pain is so bad that I can't turn my head more than 15 degrees in either direction

- took full Benadryl, slept until 11am, then hopped on the gondola to meet Wendi and Alex Yong. Still unable to move face

- wiped out going down Pump House run, slid backwards on my head for about 200 feet (over moguls), coming to rest in Alex's gentle arms

- at the last second, my skis crossed while getting onto F.I.S. Ski Lift; the lift dragged me by the ass for 10 seconds, then dropped me from 15 feet onto a pile of mud

- I became "that guy," you know, the one that stops the lift for 5 minutes to make sure I'm not dead

- undeterred, I do my first black diamond mogul run, and DON'Y EAT SHIT EVEN ONCE!

- left Aspen at 4pm, drove 85 mph through the Virgin River Gorge, reached Las Vegas at 1am PST.

- check into the oldest, crappiest hotel on the strip (the Sahara) and begin a massive rewrite of my Fox TV script, which has a reading tomorrow (actually today) night

- body wrecked, face afire, eyes searing, I write this blog and fall aslee
)*&#*()I :M zzzzzzzzzz

declared value: sentimental

3/19/04

Let me take time out from my vacation to tell Fedex that they SUCK. Unable to fit everything into the car, we shipped some stuff from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and one such box had our souped-up TiVo (that I spent a week upgrading), a $300 microphone, an expensive USB audio input, and two pillows. But it doesn't stop there: wrapped around the whole thing was THE ONLY GOOD SUIT I'VE EVER OWNED, an Armani that we put on our credit card in the immediate aftermath of Tessa's dad's death, so that I'd have something to wear to the funeral.

Most importantly - to me, anyway - was that I accidentally left a mix tape of all the songs I'd written since 1986 inside a Walkman that was also in the box. Unless my family can come up with a copy, it's the only one in existence. I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my throat.

This package was tracked to Pomona, California, where it was STOLEN by Fedex employees, or by someone else due to their unbelievably lax security. I'm so beside myself with rage I can hardly see straight.

Yes, I screwed up. I under-insured it so that we're out thousands of dollars. The box was also the original TiVo box, making it look enticing for whatever motherfuckers were unloading the truck. But Fedex doesn't care. That is the last time I entrust anything valuable to them, and I encourage all of you to do the same.

there are no clocks in there

3/18/04

I'm driving to Aspen to meet some college friends for a trip we planned months ago, long before we knew we'd even be in California. As fate would have it, Tessa is stuck back in LA doing the re-writes and casting for her play, so I pulled into Las Vegas last night as a very unlikely solo aging fratboy.

The only rooms left were at the Tropicana, probably the last of the Old Guard hotels left on the strip, and let's just say the place is showing its age. Downstairs, arthritic old grannies in green visors were gambling away their kids' inheritance one quarter at a time, and up in my room – well, the bamboo-lined ceiling-mirrored bed has to be seen to be believed:

I woke up this morning to a sight I'd never seen before: myself. I don't know if this picture does it justice, but if you ask me, I'm having trouble seeing the sexual possibilities in this. It reminds me of old porn that my elder family members used to hide in the piano seat.

The reason for the paltry vacancy is that today was the best day to be in Vegas: the opening rounds of the men's NCAA tournament. Apparently people flock here from all corners of this great nation and spend the next three weeks drinking bourbons in front of thirty giant TV screens. If you think the screams of rabid fans are peculiar, wait until you hear the scrotum-clenching huzzahs of grown men who have just won $10,000 because Southern Illinois University missed their last shot.

I put $20 into a poker machine and within two minutes had four Queens, and left happy. With that money, I happened to make my first bet on a college basketball game, and let's just say that a certain team beat another certain team by 11 points, meaning that they covered the 8.5 point spread, and that I might have done pretty well. It was a nice recovery from yesterday's rant, and now it's on to bigger and better things. I promise not to waver again. I will probably wager again, however.

I was enthralled with the gorgeous college betting scoreboard at Caesar's Palace, but I forgot to take my camera - so I stopped in Mesquite, NV at a shitty casino and took this picture of a really crappy one. Those guys in the picture told me to get the fuck out of there with my camera and I told them to eat me, so they chased me out. Yay!

hark the silence

3/17/04

Roy Williams - coach of the University of North Carolina men's hoops team - had the entire squad over for some of Wanda's dessert while they watched the seedings of the March Madness tournament on Sunday. Apparently when Carolina's name was announced, Roy started jumping up and down and yelling for joy - then stopped, as he noticed the team was stone-faced, drowsy, and his words, "asleep."

The unsubstantiated rumor I've heard from my unnamed sources is that the team is ready for the season to be over, that they still have a hangover from the 3-year Coach Doherty debacle, and that new blood is needed in the program desperately.

To which I say ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? If my own basketball team doesn't care that they're in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three seasons, why the hell should I? These guys have got to understand that they aren't Carolina, they are custodians of a bigger concept. When they put on the blue and white, they aren't just playing for themselves, they are playing for the 17-year-old acne-ridden, psychotic brat named ME in 1985. They are playing for the living legend of Dean Smith, and the changes he brought to basketball and the state of North Carolina. They are merely functionaries in a much bigger religion than themselves, one that has brought me - and so many others - so much joy over the last century.

Bagwell and me, Umstead Park 1991

Yeah, so I'm not on the team. I'm not the one sweating in practice four hours a day. Big fucking deal. We all contributed to the brotherhood of UNC in some way. I wrote a column for four years. Chip help start a credit union. Tessa was Billy Crudup's first director. Andy Bagwell wrote television shows and my brother Sean wrote his wife's papers for her. We've done the work.

I know this sounds moronic and insane to those of you who went to William & Mary or Colgate or something, but in lieu of a functioning, moral universe, I have turned to basketball to give me life's deeper mysteries and meaning, and when my own team turns to me and says they don't really care, then they can all join the Zagreb Mitten Hounds Yugoslavian team for all I care. Give me fifteen Poli Sci majors who can't make a layup, and I'll cheer for them instead.

Thus, I have decided to censure my own team. I am en route to Colorado right now, and I was prepared to drive seven round-trip hours out of my way to scalp tickets for Carolina's first tourney game in Denver, but now I'm staying put in Aspen. Will the lack of my screaming voice make a difference? I guess we'll never know. I'll go back to caring after this game, and be just as much of a wreck as always. But they can do without me tomorrow night.

Radio Free Nouakchott

3/16/04

Last year, my sister Michelle had to make one of the most bizarre choices I'd ever heard: move to Napa, or move to Niger. She got into the Peace Corps, which promptly wanted to send her white ass to Niger (the 2nd worst Peace Corps outpost) – but at the same time, my Dad told her she could live rent free in Napa Valley and work at one of the local wineries.

She chose Napa, and quickly graduated from the wineries to the school affiliated with the Culinary Institute, en route to getting her Master of Wine (or whatever they call it) and moving back to New York to be a sommelier for some upscale joint that needs to have their wine list fully rogered.

But then the Peace Corps called again, and this time they offered her the worst Peace Corps outpost: Mauritania. This is a place that has a life expectancy of 43, can only grow millet, and some villages only have houses made of poop. And Michelle, who basically owns Napa Valley and has a coterie of great friends, still can't shake the feeling that she's supposed to be doing something good in a faraway place.

Michelle, Easter 2002, in a disturbingly fertile gesture

I think the Peace Corps is fine if you're 23, but if you're 31, you've got some major thinking to do. I don't subscribe to the world theory that "everything always works out fine," because whenever I do that, I get dysentery and have to be extracted by medical chopper. I get kidney stones that make me throw up on the ceiling. When I "wing it in a foreign country," I come close to getting career-ending injuries.

Tessa, who is a cheery fatalist, has no use for my anxiety-ridden nihilism, and neither does Michelle. And to be honest, I keep forcing myself into scary positions and try new things every goddamn day just so my brain doesn't atrophy. But the Peace Corps is just not something I could do, ever. I could build a hut made of shit for two months, but not two years. If Michelle's "call to service" is strong enough, however, to lift her spirits out of the blissful womb of Napa Valley, then I guess it's a no-brainer.

I told her my concern: while the Peace Corps would definitely succor her need for service, there might be other ways of doing it. The brilliant Michael Mastro always says to young actors to "get a day job you like" and then use the rest of your time to pursue the Big Dream. My feeling was that Michelle could use her huge Wine Cred to get freelance gigs in New York for seven months of the year, then use the other five months to travel around the world and fix broken bones. I mean, she knows wine, and she likes the business, which is more than 95% percent of Americans can say about their own jobs.

Maybe it's just that I'll worry about her. The world is a tremendously fucked-up place right now, and it also vexes me that Mauritania is so Muslim – not because of any percolating anti-Islamism (I despise all religions equally), but because there might be other places where a blonde American wouldn't stick out so much. I mean, isn't there a Peace Corps in Norway she could do?

pants a'fire

3/15/04

I'd like to share with you a tidbit of my "best-case scenario" prediction made almost a year ago today on this blog, right when the Iraq war had started, and Bush's approval rating was at 79%. It goes like this:

...we do a thorough sweep of Iraq and come up with absolutely no weapons of mass destruction; Bush and his team are humiliated on the world stage. Americans begin to think he's a liar. To distract us from this, he tries to enact some draconian conservative agenda (reversing Roe vs. Wade, etc.) to shore up his religious base, but miscalculates dreadfully. Then, one of any roiling scandals (Cheney's Halliburton, Perle's defense contractors, etc.) blows open, and a yet-to-be-named Democrat smokes him in a debate so thoroughly that even hard-core Republicans jump ship. Bush gets shellacked in 2004 and we all wake up from a terrible dream.

Now, I've made occasionally off-base predictions, but this one stands out as a pretty good one, especially considering how despondent we were (and by "we," I mean "sensitive, progressive Americans who abhor killing.") Indeed, we found no WMDs, and Bush was humiliated on the world stage, even if he doesn't know it yet. I'd like to think that the recent Spanish elections - basically a giant, country-wide FUCK YOU to Bush - might give him a hint, but I doubt he'll take it.

As for the "draconian conservative agenda," it wasn't abortion (yet), it was an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage, and I think this will indeed bear out to be a dreadful miscalculation, regardless of polls. Americans may not be won over en masse to the idea of gay marriage, but they don't see this as a viable campaign issue, and it makes Bush look like a fucking wacko.

And the "roiling scandals"? As the Jane's Addiction album title says, "nothing's shocking," and the Repubs may well be scandal-proof. But there is enough bullshit going on with Halliburton and an as-yet-to-be-broken story to give conservatives nightmares come late summer.

The debates? John Kerry has asked Bush for monthly tete-a-tetes, and if W knows what's good for him, he'll fake a slipped disk like Duke University's Koach K did. Kerry will eat him alive, because it won't be enough for Bush to "survive deeply low expectations" (which is how he got past Al Gore in their debates).

I have not let myself get excited about the upcoming presidential election because I still feel like Americans are a profoundly stupid bunch of people when they get together, and I have zero faith in them doing the right thing. But one piece of information has given me a glimmer of hope, as weird as it sounds: the Martha Stewart verdict.

That jury wasn't convicting Martha, they were lashing out at institutions that LIE. The Era of Lying began with Clinton, but people were willing to put up with it because they were making money. It's hard to remember how much antipathy there was toward Clinton by 2000, even from liberals (mostly because we're so desperate for someone like him now), but the lying extended to the smearing of Al Gore, who was painted as an "exaggerator" by Bush and the right-leaning media (which, in itself, was a lie).

The lying continued with Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Adelphia and everyone else. The lying reached a fever pitch with Bush's mention of Niger and uranium. By the end of 2003, pundits were calling it The Year of the Lie.

Now, lying is not something that can be sustained long-term. Pretty soon, people need something to hang their hat on, they need to know something is true. This Martha Stewart verdict was a way to say that people have fucking had enough of lying.

This bodes well for the Democrats, as long as they can continue to work Bush's "credibility gap," which is the nicest way of saying "he's a goddamn liar" I've ever heard. Kerry, unfortunately, has the reputation of being a flip-flopper, but a lack of conviction is way better than being a liar.

Do Americans think Bush is a liar? Sadly, not yet. They think he is perhaps "poorly handled," or "gets bad information from his team" or even that he's too simple a man to contemplate lying. When the American people really find out what this man is capable of, the mask will drop and shatter, and they will see him for what he is. If the Democrats start working on this, we will all wake up from the nightmare, like I promised a year ago.

fox hunting

3/14/04

So Lyle seems to think that I have gone from Breezy Traveler to High Stakes Hollywood Player, and it has reminded me how a blog can sometimes be very poor at communicating the bigger eras in your life. Sure, you get to hear my lugubriation on Hall & Oates, but I forget to tell you the forest from the trees.

First off, in my defense, a lot of freelance work is like having crushes – you don't want to divulge them for fear the information might get back to the object of your desire, and of course there is the lingering "jinx" factor. I couldn't really say what was going on with this Hollywood thing until we were sure it was happening.

So here's the dope: the fabulous Naked Angels theater company partnered with Fox Television to set up an evening of short plays in Los Angeles. Out of a hundred submissions, they chose eight, and as marital bliss would have it, both Tessa's piece and mine were accepted. The show will run for a month in Santa Monica, and at some point, the brass at Fox will show up, see if they like the writing, and perhaps consider some of the plays as possible sitcom ideas.

So, to borrow some 1982 parlance, both Tessa and I are psyched on our bike and have spent the last few days adjusting to the more-intense-than-you-might-think culture shock that occurs when you trade a freezing, neurasthenic day in Brooklyn for the SPF 30 of bright shiny places in Hollywood.

our adopted home for the next two months

My play is being directed by the immensely talented Geoffrey Nauffts, and they're throwing around all kinds of cool names for the two leads (more on that when it gets cast). Tessa is still without a director, but they are offering the parts in her play (two women) to some of the best people in the business.

Casting is a very grueling affair, as you want to make sure that every actor receives your equal attention. Around 6pm, when you've heard the same fourteen lines being repeated by the 43rd hot blonde, you must maintain your attitude and make sure they feel as welcome and as lucky as the first woman on the roster. Casting for The Pink House was a much more intimate affair, with lots of chit-chat, so I've learned a lot from Geoffrey and the casting director's professional demeanor over the last few days.

One thing is for sure: you know what you want when you see it. There is always someone who walks through that door and brings something to your writing that you didn't know was there. That's what makes every bit of this so worthwhile. As a writer new to television (and wanting to keep as low a prima donna profile as possible), I've kept my major opinions to myself, preferring instead to see how this all plays out.

I believe you can move to New York without a plan - and with a lot of work, something will fall into place. As for Los Angeles, you have to be invited. I was not given an invitation in 1997, and thus my three years here were marked by despair, humiliating meetings, johnny-come-lately social scenes, and deeply depressing girl drinks. This time, I walked into the commissary of the Fox movie lot and saw the spectacle: the suit-perfect D-girls sipping coffee while holding four big projects in manila folders, the schlubby editor boys with imported beer love handles and untucked shirts, the actresses clinging to their last seventeen months of being able to land a sitcom, and the graying Hollywood men with impeccable tans from decades in a convertible.

I got my latté, and my first thought was more self-satisfied than I ever allow – despite all the flogging, the like-minded friends drifting off to other careers, and the detours through dot-coms and nervous breakdowns, I'm still in the game.

Real Time with chopin blake

3/12/04

The casting process for my show began today, so we made it onto the 20th Century Fox lot and saw a laundry list of actors, each of whom brought something different and fascinating to the table. I know this sounds confusing if you don't know why we're here in Hollywood (I'll explain it all next week), but being on the other side of auditioning – i.e., the side with all the power – is such a superior experience. They say baseball is a game where missing the ball 70% of the time makes you a superstar. Acting is a game where missing the role 98% of the time makes rent. I don't know how these people do it.

A few weeks ago in Brooklyn I swore that I'd attend a taping of "Real Time With Bill Maher," and as luck would have it, our manager is good friends with the executive producer. Thus, we went over to CBS and sat in the green room, furnished with chicken teriyaki sticks, shrimp tempura, and oatmeal cookies. The green room is where it is fucking AT.

This was easily Maher's best show of the year so far, featuring a line about Teresa Heinz that has to be heard to be believed. George Carlin was fabulous, naturally, and the ex-Prime Minister of Canada was stunningly brilliant, simple, sweet and could almost make you cry. Even if Bush wins again and we move to some mountaintop in the ass-crook of France, at least I know there was a show that spoke some truth for a time.

I would write more, but the Enemy of Fun™, Chopin the dog, overdosed again on Rimadyl, the Doggy Advil. He only took about ten pills this time (as opposed to the 80 or so he snarfed down in 2002) but it still left us in the animal hospital until the wee hours. I do hope he understands that just because we're in Hollywood, doesn't mean he has to go out like Marilyn Monroe.

the heisenberg exhaustion principle

3/11/04

Venice, CA

There is a feeling you get when you go to a strange country; you plop your suitcases down in your "bedroom," wander the cold hallways, smell unfamiliar plants in the night air, and suddenly realize that you have planned for everything except actually being where you were going.

The skies are cloudy, gray and cold – the surf pounds outside in a forbidding manner, and I have forgotten everything I've ever known about this city. I left it in 2000, so humiliated and angry I couldn't see straight, and now I've been invited back, and the feeling is so different that it might as well be Eastern Europe.

I have checked the phone; the dial tone sounds the same. The power outlets all give forth 110 volts. The people on the windy boardwalk speak English and the gas was measured in dollars. I know I'm here, but I'm not entirely sure where here is.

bottom of the country

3/10/04

The Desert Southwest is a deeply creepy place. I'm writing to you from a Flying J outside Phoeniz, AZ and it's warm and bizarre. Tessa and I are frazzled beyond belief and hope to have a warm reception in the Los Angeles basin. Right now, even a double soy latté with hazelnut syrup is hard pressed to keep my synapses firing.

What I want to know is: why did two truckers just give me the finger?

poker? hardly know 'er

3/9/04

Man, is there anything Republicans get right? According to a study released today, kids who take that "virginity pledge" not to have sex until marriage will break that vow almost NINETY PERCENT OF THE TIME. Not only that, but these so-called "pledgers," wearers of those cheap-ass mall shitty "purity rings" bought for them by their fathers, are also more likely not to use any kind of protection, or seek help if they get a disease.

Why have Republicans been on the wrong side of history every time since the Civil War? Seriously, what makes them such control freaks? Do they actually believe they are going to stop gay people from getting married, and stop teens from fucking? Their sense of historical perspective is so WHACK that it beggars the imagination. As I said before, history views the restriction of basic human desire as a virus and works around it.

Teens fuck. That's what they do. The only person in America who was a virgin at 21 was ME. You can't look at teenage sex as an example of a nation gone soft, you have to see it as a foregone conclusion and then do everything you can to make sure they know what's what.

Oh, but your friendly neighborhood asshole Republican doesn't think so. He's not satisfied with ordaining your teen into sexual monkhood, he wants them to have no knowledge of STD's, pregnancy options, condom usage, or even the whereabouts of the clitoris. Blissfully, today's study has shown that the only result of this sort of thinking is a bunch of guilty kids at the Abercrombie store who have genital warts but don't know what the hell to do.

If I'm lucky enough to have children, I'm going to have diagrams of the vas deferens and the labia majora in their playrooms. They are going to know exactly what they're getting into, and I will never ask them to make promises I know they can't keep. If we do our job right, we won't need to. My daughters are going to fuck, bless their hearts, and by God, they're going to know what they're doing.

Ian'z New York Kornerâ„¢

3/8/04

I'm not trying to be a lazy blogger, but my buddy Daniel from Prince Edward Island is coming to New York City with his girlfriend, and he wanted recommendations on where to stay and what to do. In these cases, I try to give specific advice (no lengthy laundry lists) so that people know exactly where to go, and they can freelance from there. I had enough fun writing back that I thought I'd post my response here, and you hipster kids can fill in the blanks.

So here's the deal - getting housing in Manhattan can be cost-prohibitive, but here are a few ideas:

The Incentra Guest House
The Abingdon Square Bed and Breakfast

These two are in our old neighborhood, right in Greenwich Village, near all the subways, and the rates are reasonable by NYC standards. Tessa also said to check the Gershwin Hotel and Washington Square Hotel, but we haven't heard their prices lately. A lot of young soy latté-holding backpackers seem to be in attendance.

If you're going to be in the Village, you should eat pizza at John's (b/w 6th and 7th on Bleecker), Thai food at Pad Thai (8th Ave. and roughly 16th St.), and cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery (Bleecker and W. 11th). You can't go wrong with any Italian eatery in this neighborhood.

Hop over to the East Village for a night and get a drink at Karma (1st Ave. and roughly 3rd St.), eat at the Yaffa Cafe (1st Ave. and St. Mark's Place), and get Indian food at Haveli (2nd Ave. and 6th Street). Find a hole-in-the-wall sushi place, as they are all terrific.

Wandering neighborhoods: Soho. You can start at the Apple Store (Mercer and Prince) and wander east until you hit Little Italy. Along the way, Broadway has some great shopping. Any side streets in Soho are fun (Mulberry, Thompson, etc.) for outlandish fashions you'll never, ever buy.

Chelsea: 20th-22nd Street and 26th Street between 10th and 11th Ave. is probably the aorta (or the duodenum) of modern cutting-edge art in the world. You'll have to explore a little, but some of the stuff therein is batshit-crazy enough to tell stories back home.

Way Downtown: take the 2 or 3 subway to Park Place, and you'll be right at City Hall and the Woolworth Building (the world's tallest structure in the early 20th century). Across City Hall Park is J & R, one of the biggest, best computer/stereo/every gadget on earth emporiums in America. I spend hours in there, maybe you will too. A few blocks away from there is Ground Zero, if you want to have the slice-of-modern-history experience. Walk from there toward the southern tip of the island and hit Battery Park, where you can picnic, or take a boat over to the Statue of Liberty (more fun than you might think - NYC's waterways are quite dramatic).

Quick side note: If you really crave an hour or two of pure techie ambrosia, go to B & H Photo Video on 9th Ave. between 33rd and 34th Streets. It is run by Hassidic Jews and thus has screwy hours, but that place is simply amazing. I get high in there on the fumes of the future.

Things to do: go to the TKTS booth in Times Square and get cheap seats to a fun musical. You owe it to yourself.

Also, the Met (80s and 5th Ave) [corrected - see comments] and the Museum of Natural History (81st and Central Park West) are totally awesome, the latter featuring the Rose Planetarium if you are an astronomy geek like me.

See a movie at one of the big, crappy, googleplex theaters on 42nd Street. Buy a large popcorn and find yourself gradually becoming complacent like us Americans. Then go to the Film Forum (Houston b/w Varick and 6th) and see a brilliant indie that will never make it to Prince Edward Island.

To sum up, don't go above 14th Street unless you're seeing museums, plays or B&H. Stay downtown, and you'll have more fun. Wander Greenwich Village. Take the subways. Use cabs if it's after 10pm. Treat yourself to one really nice dinner (Balthazar or Pastis). Download Vindigo for your Palm, and you'll never be lost. Blog all about it!

lone star state o' mind

3/7/04

If you lived in Center Point, TX today, there was only one thing going on: that's right, the birthday of Sandy Blake – mother of my beloved wife – at the American Legion Hall at 4pm sharp. No presents please; all she wants is a batch of tasteless birthday cards.

Since I'm here in Center Point (so-named because it is the center point between Kerrville, Comfort, Bandera and Fredericksburg, but I'm sure you already knew that), I tried to blend in with the locals, so I decided to forego my usual bowtie and get a bolo tie - you know, the ones that are a string of leather held up by a fancy clasp, like all the cowboys wear when their ladies come a-callin'.

Sandy's boyfriend Jim and I took his white Comfort Van (bed in back, TV set, quadraphonic sound) around to look for a bolo tie, but they didn't have one at the Walmart, nor the Schreiner's, and the chicks at the J.C. Penney didn't even know what the fuck we were talking about. All the country/western stores were closed because of the Sabbath, and the chick at the mall said she hadn't seen one in a while. Who knew how hard it was to find a bolo tie in Texas?

So I put on my usual prep school aging fratboy garb and went to the party, where it was already a hootenanny. Couples were two-stepping (a very elegant dance, actually) and Sandy was toasted by the whole town. Of course, my favorite part (besides singing a Beatles song on karaoke) was THE SALMON MOUSSE. You have to have seen Monty Python's The Meaning of Life to understand why that's important, but I took a picture for those who do:

Near the end of the evening, a man named Clyde (the owner of the local antique store) had heard of my abortive search for a bolo tie, and had driven home, grabbed one of his best ones, and brought it back to the party for me. Needless to say, I was overcome.

The last big number was Tessa and her mom singing "Old Time Rock'n'Roll" on the karaoke. Normally, the sound of Bob Seger throws me into paroxysms of nausea, but watching those two can be very contagious.

On the way out, I approached Clyde and thanked him for letting me borrow his bolo tie. He told me it was mine, and wouldn't think of taking it back. Man, some small towns are really goddamn cool.

erin go braggadocio

3/5/04

Austin, TX

Royal St., French Quarter, 8:43am

I mean, you have to hand it to New Orleans. Like New York, it just keeps working despite all the crime, accidents, infamy, debauchery and an infrastructure from the 18th century. This morning, as we were packing the car at 8:30am, a drunken parade of young Irishmen filled Royal Street with music, beads, and shouts of joy. No, it's not Mardi Gras, or even St. Patrick's Day. They were simply showing solidarity with the Sicilians who are having their St. Anthony's Feast day later. Seems the Sicilians and the Irish were bonded through their various famines, and now assuage their ancestors by getting drunk whenever they possibly can.

Tessa after being feted by the Irish

We drove straight through the heart of Texas today, stopping in Cut and Shoot (yes, that's the town's name – see here) to visit Tessa's grandmother Nonnie, who rules the roost at the Conroe Nursing Home. Just as cliché would have it, the theme from "Matlock" was blaring on the TV at 115 decibels as we walked in. Must use that for best-selling screenplay taking place in nursing home.

Powered by my last adenosine-triphosphates and the backwash of a Code Red Mountain Dew, we drifted into Austin, where I hope to slumber, as I have, to paraphrase the Beastie Boys, not slept since Brooklyn.

laissez les bon temps tombez

3/4/04

New Orleans, LA

We were pretty excited about this trip: we bought a trailer hitch for the Prius and strapped our skis on the back, and hoped for the best! Here we are, about to head South!

Of course you know why we were stoked - we were going to travel deep into the Bayou to fulfill a lifelong dream. That's right, we were going to Ski New Orleans!

Yes, yes, we heard that there was some good food down there, and some occasional drinking on Bourbon Street, but we were going to stay focused and ski what we believed to be one of the premiere runs in America: The French Quarter.

Here's Tessa unloading our skis at our "lodge": The Cornstalk Hotel!

After spending a few days on the slopes, I admit my buzz is totally crushed. The snow SUCKS here! There don't seem to be many lifts, and the runs are terrible. And people keep telling yelling at Tessa to "show her tits!"

This has been the worst vacation ever. I am going to have words with that travel agent. That's one $3,850 check I'd like to have back!

love american style

3/3/04

Slidell, LA

Okay, so we didn't quite make it to New Orleans tonight, but thanks to the Enemy of Fun™, i.e., our dog Chopin, we had to stop at a La Quinta Inn just outside Slidell. For those of you not privy, Slidell is just above Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans and was once a total shithole – but then the lake flooded the town and the insurance companies bought everyone a new house. Now it is a delightful charter member of the New South, complete with organic grocery stores surrounded by red cedar mulch.

Not content just to be a raconteur to our journey, I have provided some pictures of superlatives we've seen on our way down. First up:

The Most Insane Cracker Barrel Piece of Americana Shit 2004

Tessa tries to eat her Chicken Fried Steak Fried Chicken underneath this monstrosity cobbled together by forty-five grandmothers with way too much free time (or the Tuscaloosa Federal Penitentiary Labor program). We try not to eat at Cracker Barrel because apparently they hate homos, but the salads are excellent. The decorations, however – Dr. Pepper signs from 108, weed threshers from the Dustbowl Depression – are simply awful. One family was dining underneath a gigantic ancient 2-person timber saw, and I swear to God that shit is going to fall on somebody someday, and that will be the end of it.

The Most Depressing Evangelical Cross in Tennessee

This thing was about fifty feet high, made of rusty steel tubing and some kind of opaque plastic, meant to give off the feel of a brand new Jesus, but instead, it just looks like a broken-down relic of the 1972 Winter Olympics. These people could learn a thing or two from the Mormons, who not only build their temples within peeing distance of the major interstates, but do it with such flair that tourists think they've stumbled upon a Masonic Temple.

The Worst Motel Towel, Ever.

I've been to a lot of fucked-up motels, and I've even lived in England, Home of Shitty Bathcare Products. But nothing could prepare you for this artifact – a towel, threadbare and ripped, unable to do anything but push dirty water around your body. Lacking not just in absorbency but also in size, this towel smells bad just out of the laundry. What do you deal with a towel this legendarily bad? You STEAL it, of course. Viewings will be held in Brooklyn upon our return.

I Heart Truck Stops, Part XVIII

3/2/04

I am writing to you from the parking lot of a Flying J Truck Stop at 2:30 in the morning, using their delicious Wifi service. I can't imagine why Flying J decided to provide this service, as I'd wager there are very few truckers with a tangerine iBook, but perhaps my demographic research is a bit inaccurate.

To wit, a few things: my Mom got out of surgery fine, was nauseous after the anesthesia, but had one of those anti-metics that knocks you out for a few weeks. She is reported to be eating Jell-o as we speak.

Second thing: if you put two pairs of skis on the back of your Prius, be prepared to ride the seas of I-81 like the back end of Master and Commander. With a good tailwind, it feels like you're flying, and with a side wind, you need, well, an anti-metic.

Okay, Tessa only let me stop at the Flying J for a few minutes. I have to get a little closer to New Orleans. Love from the road! Does anyone want any presents from the Big Easy? Except Bud, who already ransacked the place?

connected to the thigh bone

3/1/04

My mom goes into surgery today to get her hip replaced. She did the same thing in 1993, but the warranty just ran out, so they have to go in and give her a firmware update. Apparently the hips they're putting in people these days are WAY cooler than the ones they had ten years ago, but that's what happens when Moore's Law is in effect.

Yes, I realize I just used Moore's Law incorrectly.

When I was young, I convinced myself that there was no God because of the arbitrariness of medical invention. Put simply, I couldn't conceive of a God that would let one child die of polio in 1951 just because he wasn't around the next year when Salk discovered the vaccine. I think of Sylvia Plath, who was one Welbutrin away from keeping her head out of the oven. The sheer randomness of medical discovery unveiled to me a universe that was without a good manager.

We live in the Dark Age before the cancer cure. People will be reading about us with the same sense of disdain we have for the doctors who killed George Washington through bloodletting. My hope is that we will live long enough to see that random, arbitrary breakthrough that renders this bugaboo obsolete. Sure, we will find other ways to kill each other, but it won't have to do with any of our pancreases.

Here and now, I'm thankful for my mom's supercharged new hip made of space-age polymers. If there are any Gods, I would like to pray to the Goddess of Anesthesia, to bring her quietly in and out of the dream world while she gets her axles re-aligned.

It's Mormon Hair Week on the blog! My Aunt Marilyn, Joanie, and my mom's singing group, circa 1950