Moving day

A couple posts will stick around.

Everything else is moving to

http://www.fldisinhibition.com

Food and art

I recently had a conversation about food and the importance of it. Art came up in the conversation.

Here’s why two and a half minutes of Miami Vice are better than any food or consumable. Because no one else can do it. No one can create Starry Night again. No one can write Ficciones again. No one can compose Rites of Spring again.

Food is repeatable. That’s mostly the point. You have a recipe, you have a dish.

Wine is at least a rarity. And, of course, so are some food dishes. But if you’re eating rare food dishes, you aren’t reading this blog. Odds are, you don’t even use the Internet. If you’re worrying about how long your Kobe beef was massaged during calf-hood, you aren’t worried about what anyone has to say about … well, much of anything. You probably throw your socks and underwear out after wearing them once. You probably think they just magically appear laid out on your bed too.

Film in general gets the shaft. If you’re of a certain education level, you dismiss most film as populist entertainment. Just look at how Miramax came about in the 1990s and it’s clear there’s a market for hipster movies. And there still is (did anyone see the Brothers Bloom trailer?). Writers are terrible about it. So are academics. I think writers piss me off the most because they tend to dismiss it because it isn’t writing. Look at, for example, Jaws. Super populist. Deeper than almost every hipster movie in the last ten years. Why? Well, simply, because people were smarter then. High school graduates knew more words then than they do now (but not as many as graduates knew in the late 1940s, which is why you don’t get a lot of solid mid-range filmmakers anymore, there’s just no market for them).

With few exceptions, the best filmmakers of today were already working in some capacity in the 1970s. Certainly among American filmmakers.

I go to Table 6 and get the Roasted Lamb Collar because I know it’s good. Because I’ve had it before and they can duplicate it. Nothing duplicatable really compares to this….

And nothing compares to the end of Broadway Danny Rose either.

Notes from 5/13 (lower body)

• They really should have a) not Memento’d, b) used the Joni Mitchell song and c) not sucked on the season finale of House. I wonder if they’re jumping the shark.
• Ok, that’s one guy reading the t-shirt. I should keep a count.
• Forgot the Aleve. Damn.
• Wonderful. Tech support is Calvinist. How lovely. What ever happened to Calvinists? Are they still around?
• A grilled cheese and a blowjob. Wish I’d had the stones to say it. Wonderful, now I’m Kevin Williamson.
• To clarify above: I didn’t actually want either… well, maybe a grilled cheese. But it was the perfect opportunity to get away with saying it.
• Exhausted. What’s that sound remind me of? Oh jeez. Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
• Wonder if anyone ever took a girl on a first date in 1979 to Star Trek: The Motion Picture?
• Got to check the kindle blog thing. Wish you could bookmark a tweet.
• I love how people think the Illiad is the last piece of literature and all there is today is Michael Crichton. Don’t they even teach Dickens anymore? Dickens being important only so you can recognize the references, seeing as how he was another one paid by the word.

A weekend off call?

No fucking way.

I never realize how much I like weekends until I have two on call in a row.

This last one made some money (the one before didn’t); enough I would have gotten the wife that netbook if she’d wanted it. The thing’s so small when I asked if the screen was longer than my cock, she had to think real hard. (the screen won, but I hear it’s the girth that matters anyway). But the money’s only a band-aid. For it to make a real difference, it’d have to be something like … hmm … if 30x=600 … 20 calls. 20 calls, if they weren’t terrible and were properly spaced, wouldn’t be impossible. I think coworker1 got 25 calls over the Thanksgiving weekend last year–when I was enjoying a fine Thanksgiving dinner catered from Le Central, the decent French place (is it snobby to have a decent French place and then the French place you really like).

Speaking of which, am I having the fam in for Thanksgiving this year? I think my dad invited himself. My sister might be busy. I was kind of hoping my friend D would come in because we had such a good time when he visited over New Year’s and this time I wouldn’t have to take any time off, but it’s not looking promising. I saw that and he’ll probably be crashing on my couch come November anyway.

Hopefully, the wife’s mom and grandmother are coming out for Christmas. I say hopefully because odds are I’m going to fuck up by then.

But back to this weekend.

I’m going to read. I already know that.

Sunday morning I think I’m going to get agent queries together and then just print out the pages and use the postage at work on Monday.

I haven’t decided if I’m drinking Sunday. If I were just giving it up because I were trying to be healthy, I’d definitely do it. But the last drink yesterday hit me pretty hard. Could have been the Diet Crush. Whatever it was, not sure I want to be drinking hard Sunday. It might make me real sick, so I could stay up late Saturday and get ripped. But I suppose that move isn’t a wise one either.

Eh.

So what to do with the weekend?

Sleep; read; watch a movie (I was thinking Once and a George Sanders Saint and something else, maybe the Towering Inferno, but then I remembered the podcast movies). No idea when we’re recording the next episode so I guess it doesn’t matter too much.

What else … gym. Obviously. On Saturday

Notes from 5/11 (upper body)

• I think a crash course in history–making more available the popular nonfiction books–like Ben Bradlee’s Conversations with Kennedy, would make crash course books. They give a feel for events scholarly works would ignore.
• need to update the podcast’s facebook page. Brings up an odd thought about how I hope things turn out. What’s a facebook friend? The least committal way to say you’re all right with another person. Or was it the most superficial….
• Really wish the iPhone multitasked right now. Either she’s just pulling my leg or something weird’s going on. Things are perturbing when I guess I had assumed they were plateaued and would be for the foreseeable future. That said a) she’s probably just messing with me and b) I hope the episode’s as strong as I think it is. Just in case
• I really need to edit these before posting them
• Either the vicodin is really working, that trainer’s ass is aesthetically inspiring or I’m totally fucking rocking.
• Ok. Either the steroids are making a big difference. Or something is very different today. Horrified at the thought all I needed was to remember why I liked Mannequin to have a breakthrough.
• It could be the Springsteen live. I suppose it makes me feel nineteen again or something. Or those carrot sticks had something in them
• There are a couple other possibilities. Neither is easily and reliably duplicatable before a weight workout though.
• It’s possible it’s just the exercise too. Can’t forget about that.
• No. Something is definitely going on today. I’m kicking insane amounts of ass. Is the promise of “Simon & Simon” all it takes?
• It’s the chin ups. Has to be. I mean it’s not the vanity. I only now got in front of the mirrors.
• I’m think I’m going to make the deadline. Holy shit I look good. Haven’t felt this vain in … 9? years.

stupid observations

I’m not tweeting these because I’m drunk

And I don’t want to be annoying.

Well, honestly, I don’t want to be annoying to like … four people who follow me.

Because I’m drunk. Ish.

A little.

That probably was like four shots of vodka.

Whatever.

gmail.

Gmail footer dynamically changes. First it said something about importing from yahoo and outlook and now it says to add shit to my contact list. Fuck my google contact list. It has EVERYONE I’ve ever emailed.

You know what my phone numbers, notes and more are for people?

Neither do I.

So I’m editing this picture I took of myself at the gym.

I don’t know why I took it. Oh, wait, yes I do. Because I looked–imo–good. I look like an asshole taking a picture of himself in a mirror with an iPhone in the picture though.

Motherfucker, gmail just changed again. It’s telling me I can get gmail on my phone! Wow. On my rotary dial phone? Shit. I don’t know how to access the browser. Fucking douchebags at google, use the right motherfucking language. cell phone, mobile phone. Whatever the fuck. Not motherfucking phone. Phones have been around, what, seventy goddamn years. They didn’t have “web browsers” until the last ten. At most.

It’s weird to think I grew up with some of this shit.

I have big hands. I never realize it sober. Drunk or stoned, all the time. In pictures too apparently.

I ought to be thrilled, since I was always worried–after Raging Bull–I had small hands.

I also used to be worried I had a small cock.

Amazing how finding out grown women–28 to my … 20?–couldn’t stop talking about it changes one’s perception of things.

Motherfuck. Looking at my gmail footer change again. I’d like to catch it doing it; watch pot and all.

Or something.

Just the right amount.

Notes from 5/8 (lower body)

• lmao. pig mask?
• my work shoes, though technically athletic shoes, look idiotic in the gym setting
• when did I start using these abbreviations? Is it a twitter thing? Unintended side effect maybe
• Wife’s Billy Crudup-looking dude is here. It’s kind of odd.

The pig mask thing is a reference to something Dan Savage said on the Savage Lovecast.

Work shoes… fuck, who makes them? They’re some kind of leather athletic thing. White guy shoes.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

So, back when I was … twenty-two I recut an incredibly shitty movie–Gia–into an incredibly good movie. I think I was twenty-two. That was still when I was going to transfer to NYU and work at my friend’s sister’s editing house. It’s like three fucking lifetimes ago and it’s been eight years.

My DBBF called it The Thin White Girl due to the reliance on music and quiet. It wasn’t exactly easy, because Michael Cristofer is a film criminal of the first order. Thought he was Bob Fosse or something. Douche.

It’s like the only movie where Angelina Jolie is any good. I mean, I suppose she was okay in Changeling, but she wasn’t good.

It was a lot of work. I opened it with “Changes.” Then Michael Mann came along with Ali and stole my opening idea. Great minds and all, I suppose.

Blog’s changing a bit (again). Maybe a lot. Fuck if I know. I’m drinking cheap vodka in a diet rockstar again.

(My title for the Gia recut was The Brightest Angel). But anyway.

Why I hate going to see movies with friends

Someone asked. Well, not just someone, M1.

It’s not all friends.

I love going to see movies with DBBF. And even with my friend D, though he and I don’t really like the same kind of movie anymore.

No, now I’m getting roped into seeing Star Trek in IMAX on opening weekend. Why? Because a friend of mine HAS to see it. But he HAS to see it soon. Like it fucking matters if we wait a week. Next weekend, not this weekend, we’re hoping to see it with this guy I knew in middle school who lives nearby (he was at that party last weekend). I don’t want to see Star Trek twice. Even if it’s okay, I don’t want to see it twice. The era of seeing okay summer movies twice with different sets of friends (I mean, shit, with this first friend, the one from grad school, shit… I had to see Iron Man twice because of him) is long over. It was fine in 1989, when I’d go see Batman and Weekend at Bernie’s multiple times with different friends. It was probably even fine in 1992, when I went to go see Buffy the Vampire Slayer a couple times with different friends. Or 1998–I saw the Faculty a couple times.

But not anymore. And not Star Trek? I mean, nobody wants to go see Redbelt multiple times with me.

Mac vs. PC / uno

PC Specs

• XP, SP2
• Pentium D 2.66Ghz
• 960MB ram

Mac specs

• OS X 10.5.6
• 1.5 Ghz PPC G4
• 512MB ram

The PC had trouble running the following (at once): excel, chrome, tweetdeck, yahoo messenger, itunes and… something else… maybe internet explorer. Oh, and some shitty freeware PDF viewer that lets you do mark-up.

The Mac is currently running: Mailplane, ecto, tweetie, yahoo messenger, Drive Genius, Mail, Time Machine, Growl, iStat.

Guess which one works better? Yeah, the much slower (by the numbers above) Mac. I’d love to install Intel Leopard on the PC but I a) don’t know how and b) probably shouldn’t futz with a work computer so definitively.

Oh, I also tend to have Yojimbo, Excel, Word and Taskpaper open on the Mac without problems.

iTunes is a different story. Since I use SimplifyMedia to play the home library and because that’s another app that’d be running and using up resources, I just have my iPhone plugged into speakers and run SimplifyMedia off it. I can’t search and can’t repeat playlists, but it’s a small price.

So what can’t the Mac do?

Well, most online video apparently. The PC–I think–can. The G4 PPCs always sucked for mpeg-4 and now that youtube’s gone over to it… well, it’s a good thing I’ve got the iPhone around in a pinch. If I just desperately need to watch youtube, because it comes up so often. Though I suppose if someone were to send me a link to a Coldplay music video… like Fix Me… I’d want to watch that.

I can’t play any games on the Mac. I mean, I suppose I could if I wanted to dig up a bunch of three or four year old games. But since I’ve had the iPod touch/iPhone, I haven’t given a shit about computer games to kill the time. iPhone games are much better for the short five minute diversions.

Well crap, Port Map doesn’t work with whatever shitty router they’ve got here. Because it’s ancient, I’m sure (or because I’m connected straight to the DSL modem via wireless). Doesn’t really matter. Don’t need a lot of home access to the work computer. I could set up logmein.

I just realized I could set up Bento to make emergency forms. That’d be kind of neat I suppose. Seems like a lot of work.

So what’s the benefit to the Mac at work? Well, Mailplane’s superior. So’s Yojimbo (Yojimbo actually makes my job–that actual job I rarely do–much easier and faster). Tweetie’s kind of better than tweetdeck. Kind of. There’s a lot I don’t like about Tweetie, but it’s the best native Mac twitter client I’ve used.

Spotlight’s another big deal. I have Google Desktop on the PC but it’s freaking useless; running Leopard, which has a much more intensive Spotlight than Tiger did (and therefore shouldn’t run well on this shitty PPC), I’m able to pull up whatever I want. When I need it.

I’ve never really had a real use for Spotlight. At home, I use it to delete old files I haven’t opened or some shit. But here, at work… in a few days, it’s totally changed the way I do my job.

Of course, I do still have 56 to do items in my email. But I’m slacking on those because I’m lazy and I was lazy on the PC too.

Textexpander. I’ve got textexpander running too.

Notes from 5/6 (upper body)

So, waiting between sets, I figured I’d make use of iStayFit’s notepad feature (since you can’t leave the app and have the timer continue).

Here’s everything from 5/7/09

* * *

A tomato falls

Splats on the sidewalk

I step in it

*

A landing clamp

Open on the floor

Takes me to space

*

Muscles in my arm

I’ve never seen before

Start to hurt

*

I cough up blood

It covers my lips

Not that pretty

* * *

Live twitting the podcast with a designated twitter account?

Listener voted shows?

What the heck is our email?

Tell cohost to think of the next show’s movies so we can announce them

Does port map work on work mini? Can I set up dydns?

Is any external hard drive built to last?

A g4 mini as a work machine. Notes for the blog

* * *

The first series is me working haikus because I’m freaking lazy and I don’t write poetry and I remember how much I liked writing haikus in undergrad with the prominent Japanese American poet who’d rather talk about hamburgers than poetry.

The second bit is a list of podcast-related stuff.

No idea why I want port map working at work. I think so I can reset remotely?

Is any external hard drive built to last is a reaction to something I heard on the macgeekgab.

The G4 Mini as a work machine… I’m thinking about writing about using this ancient, broken machine for work—and having it be superior to the newer XP PC.

Indiana Jones, David Robbins and the M1 go into a bar

So.

My brilliant idea.

It’s my application of someone else’s idea.

I have two monitors at work now, one for the PC, one for the Mac. The M1, just because, sent me this picture she took of some objects. A drink, some stamps, a list of books, etc. It makes for a brilliant wallpaper. Change the list of books to a list of upcoming DVD releases circa 1999 and I think I have the back cover for my novel. Maybe even the front cover, since no one liked my other ideas.

Then the M1 made me this other, similarly awesome wallpaper for the second monitor. Same idea, arranged objects.

About a year ago, the Iconfactory released an Indiana Jones wallpaper. It was supposed to be his desk. I’m not going to do my whole Indiana Jones IV post right now (and probably never will).

In grad school, I took a class with David Robbins (and, wow, if he googles himself and finds this, he’s going to learn a lot more about a student than he’d want to). He was very big on artifice not affecting art.

So, the M1 staged those photos–definitely the second one, probably at least one part of the first one–but it doesn’t matter. They’re great photos. Great wallpapers.

So what about a site of created wallpapers. Or fuck that. That seems like some lame way to make money off selling shit.

What about people making wallpapers for other people. Almost everyone has a digital camera, right? And a bunch of stuff (presumably, I mean, you’re an American and we love our stuff–if you’re not, I apologize for assuming you’d have to be an American to read this blog. Wow, that sounds … German, doesn’t it?).

Like a wife or husband making up a desktop wallpaper, of objects, indicative objects–a collage of a person’s stuff–for their spouse overseas. Or like a cheap ass mix tape, since mix tapes, at least as far as I can tell, require some computer geekery to pull off these days.

I’m going to make M1 a wallpaper (she hasn’t asked for one). I have no idea what I’m going to put on “the desktop” yet. But since hers are so great, I’ll have to do something particularly good.

The Semi Suite thing

I didn’t discover Tom Waits until I was … 17, 18. One of the two. I can’t remember how–maybe through a Jim Jarmusch movie. I hope it wasn’t because I was curious who Renfield was in Coppola’s Dracula–which I’ll admit here and now … I like as I walked home from seeing it when I was fourteen. Or thirteen. How I got into that R-rated movie but couldn’t get into Unforgiven is beyond me.

But at some point I got douchebag best friend to listen to him. He might have started listening to him around the same time.

We were supposed to use Semi Suite in some student film. It’s so lame calling it a student film. What else do you call it? A short film made in undergrad? I mean, for some of them, I technically was a “video production” or whatever the fuck my prestigious almamater called it major. Or pledge.

Whatever.

But it’s frustrating not to know what project is was. Douchebag best friend probably doesn’t remember ….

It might have been the adaptation of Cathedral, the Raymond Carver. Now, I know everyone gets all gooey over Short Cuts, but–as a writer–reading Carver then seeing that movie? It’s one of the worst adaptations in film, because Altman doesn’t get it. And I love (and hate) a lot of Altman. But it’s kind of like that Gary Sinise story about Ken Kesey. Sinise just put on some grandoise Cuckoo’s Nest adaptation and Kesey was blaise about it. Kesey told Sinise his favorite Cuckoo’s Nest production was a high school one. And Sinise mocked him in the interview for it. Who’d know better?

The Cathedral short never happened.

My douchebag best friend, the reluctant actor of so many shorts, didn’t want to headline, didn’t want to give the part to his wife’s gay friend, who was too young.

And we just kind of forgot about it.

But it would have been amazing. I’d been watching a bunch of Fellini at the time–good and bad as Fellini’s are–and it would have been amazing. Funny the best film script I ever wrote was the last one, the one I did nothing with. I don’t even have a copy anymore.

But, no, we weren’t going to use Semi Suite in that one.

In fact, I think the Semi Suite thing was just some bullshit–like my douchebag best friend would play it on the jukebox or something.

Moments in writing vs. film

I’m listening to I’ll Be Gone (Moby + Patti LaBelle)–for a couple reasons, 1) coworker1 hates it and she’s been texting for the last twenty minutes so fuck her and 2) Miami Vice.

Until recently, Mann always had at least one great cinema moment in his films. Thief has one, Manhunter has one (“my man”), Last of the Mohicans (theatrical, not director’s), Heat has three or four, Miami Vice has one (the I’ll Be Gone sequence). Insider doesn’t, Collateral doesn’t. Et cetera, et cetera. Public Enemies will not, Ali doesn’t have any.

Other great moments–The Last Temptation of Christ, the ending. Henry Fool, the ending.

Those are the ones I’m thinking of now … maybe the helicopter rescue in Superman (maybe).

These are cinematic payoff sequences, where the medium just skyrockets in potential. Most movies don’t have things like them, most great movies don’t have things like them (Kubrick never had one of these). They’re somewhat populist moments. I’m trying to think of another example and I really can’t. Mann’s kind of the best for them, just because he understands that kind of payoff storytelling.

In grad school, when I was still working towards a story collection versus a novel, I used to want to write something with one of those cinematic payoffs. It’s incredibly hard to even conceive of a way to get them down in a draft, much less edit them, much less make them successful. I’m trying to think of a novel with one of those moments. Cat’s Cradle has one. Vonnegut has them, but he usually saves them for the endings. In Cat’s Cradle, he does it early. Bluebeard’s got a great one.

Novels don’t tend to work in moments like that. In singularly memorable moments … not even punch in the gut ones, just moments in general.

As a going present, my professor/mentor gave me an annotated copy of Dracula. I fucking hate Dracula. I wrote an essay about how much I hated Dracula–and she read it out loud because I was busy with my mom’s … I guess memorial service is what it’d be called. So I couldn’t figure out why she was giving it to me.

HUGE Dracula reference in the novel. About it sucking no less. And I totally forgot about it. And giving a copy of Dracula as a gift was part of the fucking scene in the novel. I felt like a douchebag. It’s probably the second most thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten. No, first. The only competition was when my dad got me this Muppet Show soundtrack CD. So I douched on this great gift, because it wasn’t a memorable part of my own fucking novel. I mean, I kind of recovered–I blamed it all on being a drunken dipshit.

No big cinematic moments in the novel, the first one (no idea what’ll happen in the second). In fact, one of my advisors told me to put one in–the eureka moment–to make it more sellable and I argued for about two hours to not. It was a funny scene–I mean, I hated this two-faced woman but she did know some stuff and sellable was one of them–because we were in this “family friendly” coffee shop and there was this kid around and we both kept swearing and getting nervous looking, like we’d get 86′d.

I think I’d like to do one of those moments. Paul Pope does an amazing one in 100% (ending). But they’re not easy in literature. I”m pretty sure T.C. Boyle’s never had one, no for Rick Moody. Pynchon has a bunch, obviously, but he always cuts them short. I feel like I just read another one–besides Cat’s Cradle–but I can’t remember what.

Coke and Tom Jones

So, when I was … nineteen? Eighteen, maybe. Not twenty. Maybe seventeen. I’d go up to visit my douchebag best friend and we’d get some coke. We never did the pot thing (seperately, but by the time I had a car and the desire to go up and visit, we’d moved on to coke).

Our dealer connection went like this.

First it was my dbbf’s friend/roommate who’d get the coke from his pot dealer (who got it from someone else). Pot dealer looked like a red-haired Ted Neely.

 

Yeah, because Jesus would have been white. Sure.

So eventually, it got to the point we could go straight to the pot dealer.

Then it got to the point I could go along with the pot dealer to pick up from his supplier.

Apparently, and I only kind of remember this one and I don’t remember it being a big deal, I once scared the living shit out of the pot dealer while fucked up on … ritalin probably and drunk off my ass, speeding through rural West Michigan while blaring Tom Jones in the car.

I mean, I believe a lot of this story. I did used to drive 100 miles an hour (we got it up to 120 once, which fucking rocked). I mean, dbbf was screwing his girlfriend in the back seat. I didn’t really want to drive slow, right? I wasn’t worried about him finishing or whatever, I wanted the car ride to be over.

I did snort a lot of ritalin back then.

I did drink a lot back then.

And I did have a Tom Jones greatest hits CD.

So, I suppose my only problem with the way this story is reported back to me–like I remember it, I was zonked out of my mind on ritalin and fucking hammered–is the pot dealer getting scared for his life. I remember it was a fine, amusing drive, where we discussed the importance of police in society.

 

Tom Jones comes up, this story comes up, because last night M1 did me a favor and named a character for me.

She didn’t go with Delilah, but she went really close ….

We probably didn’t listen to Delilah that car trip though … I always preferred Daughter of Darkness.

I hate snow but . . .

I hate snow.

Absolutely hate it. Hated shoveling it, hated driving it. I once spent six hours in a car on Christmas Eve trying to get home from work (downtown Chicago), all because of snow.

But I will say something for it. It looks good. When it’s snowing, it does look good.

Makes me think of The Ice Storm (film, not novel, just for the visual effect) or, strangely) Ford’s The Hurricane (which just an amazing storm sequence at the end). I haven’t seen any of the recent (are they recent?) weather-related disaster movies–I think the last one I saw was Twister–so I don’t know if CG’s gotten to the point of being able to do good bad weather.

Writing does it well, but it’s a trope so it’s hard to use it anymore.

For some reason, the whole thing reminded me of Days of Heaven, which I’m not a particular fan of, because Malick shot the whole thing–the daylight scenes–during the magic hour. You couldn’t do that with snow. Snow looks good when it’s snowing and then goes to shit and slush when it’s not. I mean, constant snow on the ground–I did grow up in the middle west after all and douchebag best friend did live in Michigan until he was 21 and I hung out up there–looks really great sometimes. But in general, it’s never as asthetically compelling as when it’s falling. 

A good female protagonist piece?

Apparently, I wrote a good female protagonist piece. Not a good piece–there was no comment on its overall quality and it’s certainly not one of the best–I’ll never be submitting it, without serious and almost fundamental revision, for publication as a stand alone–but a good female protagonist. Well, successful.

Have I already talked about why I don’t do the female protagonist? I used to do it a lot more, in undergrad, because at a certain point of writing development, guys really love writing female protagonists. I don’t understand why, maybe because they don’t want to attribute some thought to a male character–like checking out the receptionist’s ass every day–their mother might ask about. Or wife.

So I 86′d the female protagonist all through grad school. No one seemed to miss them.

But I ended up–24 days into the new project–writing two of them so far. The last one was really close. And it got a solid review (as being from a female point of view) from an unbiased female reader.

My concern is I’m going to start using them more, especially as the project has become so multi-layered and confusing already–I don’t know if I have all the characters yet, there could be more still. One of the main characters, a female character, is still unnamed. I’m not going to do the written equivalent of Maris Crane or Norm’s wife on Cheers–I just haven’t figured out what her name is yet. Given how long it took to come up with the male protagonist’s name (thanks to an unintentional Summer School reference) it might take a while. I really can’t justify leaving her unnamed, of course. It needs to be done.

My fear–have I already started a paragraph with “my fear?”–is I’m going to change gender in some of the more edit-friendly pieces to give her some attention after I name her.

These are the things I worry about at work instead of work. Having a real job must be difficult. But it occurs to me, even when I did have a real job–I mean, working at the Options Exchange was a real job–I still had time to think about this kind of shit. More possibly.

Dreams 09-04-21

Couple remembered dreams. Both of them day specific… so I figured a fast post before I got caught up in writing today’s post for the M1, which kind of makes me feel like having to write The Erasers in one drafting, without any notes.

1. Coworker1 forgets to bring me the cup of coffee she owes me. Apparently, I’m very worried about it.
2. M1 asks me dancing–this afternoon–and I keep thinking I can’t go… because I have something to do. Except, I don’t think I do. And, waking up, remembering it’s on call day… I don’t, so dancing would have been fine to schedule.

The return to caffeine and the general lack of sleep (six hours a night) are cutting into what I can remember from dreams. But I’m thinking, depending on what I read next, it could get shaken up.

Designer jeans/clothes shopping

Ok, so… I’m going to get some nice jeans. To show off my fit ass.

Apparently, the last time I wore tight jeans to show off my fit ass, I didn’t realize I had some kind of fit ass, then I found out it was the discussion of many a female college student. Nothing like being told about that, btw. By multiple women. 

But now the wife’s telling me designer jeans aren’t made for women with nice asses. Which doesn’t really make any sense to me. Since jeans on a woman look funny if she doesn’t have a nice ass. I thought I’d heard this complaint, or something like it, years ago, but maybe not.

This was my friend D’s problem with this area–the women don’t have asses. I mean… at all. It’s like invasion of the booty snatchers around here or something. I can’t imagine being single here. I was behind this woman in line at the 7-11 this morning. No ass.

I mean, we hit the mall this weekend to see a movie and for dinner on night (yeah, that’s right, food court–actually no… I don’t want to be thought of as an individual who thinks it’s acceptable to take anyone to a food court for a dinner). But I love clothes shopping. I mean, I can’t figure out how the hell to buy for New Orleans in August (shorts on men just seem wrong). But I could have dropped an easy three grand in one swoop.

Why am I talking about clothes shopping? I can’t remember.

An open letter to Apple

Dear Apple–and Steve Jobs, but mostly Steve Jobs:

Steve… WTF man?

I know you’re on a leave of absence and all–and I’ve got my fingers crossed for an iNetbook or whatever the fuck it’s called because then I could pawn my MacBook off on the wife and have some kind of bitchin’ tablet slash movie viewing slash writing computer or whatnot–but what the fuck?

You take a friend of mine’s iPhone in for repairs or maintenance or whatever and you don’t give her a temp to cover?

That isn’t right, man.

I mean, regardless of the fact she’s some beautiful girl, you really ought to hook the customer up.

With something, man, something.

Really… wtf? It’s not like an iPhone’s just a fucking phone, you know….

My vanity checklist

1. Get a hold of my thought-he-was-gay-but-he-wasn’t costume department friend from under grad. Going to need new clothes for New Orleans. Shame I’m going with my sister.
2. New glasses. This might actually be number one because I can do it myself. These things have to go, and not just because a rat chewed at the eye-pieces.
3. I don’t have a three. Haven’t thought of it yet. A good mix tape for weight lifting might be good. Like with the Rocky theme on stand-by.

This is going to be incredibly boring

WARNING: This post is going to be incredibly boring, unless you’re real interested in web hit trends and movie review websites, so I suggest you avoid it like the plague.
I stopped doing daily updates on my movie website about a week ago. I just remembered I haven’t really looked at how it’s been doing, hit-wise, and figured I’d update the stats.
Basically, it’s not closed, but it’s no longer open for the same kind of business, not as a blog. The majority of the hits come from IMDb and MRQE and google… so worrying about updating it daily for the five or ten regular readers… at least five of whom are friends and family… what’s the fucking point.
It steadily grew through awards season (because I was reviewing stuff I watched on bootlegged Academy screeners) and then died.
So, there was no point in worrying about it (to keep it going on a week-daily rate, I had to watch something like six movies a week, which isn’t really possible if I want to a) read, b) write, c) go to the gym, d) live). I tried dropping it to four or something, then decided it had peaked. I’d finally written the one response I was proud of (and it got taught in a college writing course) and so fuck it. I still have a bunch of responses I’m too lazy to post and I’m sure, you know, if I see Dogma in the theater tomorrow night, I’ll write that up….
But the stats? Since they’ve gotten better since I stopped doing the daily updates. Not a lot, but a little.
The whole point of having a movie blog–at least as I figured it went I started it four or five years ago–was to get a paying gig, but that didn’t happen. I didn’t even get free passes, which blows.

Passover for athiests

So, like I said before, I grew up the child of a couple failed Catholics. Even though I’m pretty sure my dad wasn’t raised Catholic for long. His mom was raised Catholic at some point and it’s kind of always there. My mom was a nun. So… I guess if you quit being a nun for liquor, tobacco and men, that makes you a failure as a Catholic. My father, as far as I know, never went to church except for funerals and weddings. My mom was the same way, though she threatened to go on a couple holidays and rarely did.

Growing up, until high school, I basically knew Catholic people and Jewish people. There must have been protestants in there–I mean, my hometown has a fuck-load of churches–but they never talked about it. I did have a friend who was Jehovah’s Witness or something… he couldn’t celebrate holidays. Anyway.

In high school, I encountered my first churchy. He wasn’t that bad… he thought dogs had a heaven, so obviously, he wasn’t a good churchy.

After high school, I worked with Jewish people and Catholic people. My closest “friend” when I worked on a stock floor was this devout, self-loathing Catholic who was a hoot. Got thrown out of college for robbing his frat’s treasury to buy coke. Hilarious guy. I’m sure he’s dead. He was a bit of a piece of shit, but an amusing one. And he’d talk to me about religion, him being a Catholic. Made me watch The Exorcist once, didn’t understand why I wasn’t as freaked out as he was. Whatever. Solid guy in a lot of ways. Nice to my mom. I kind of miss him. But not really, he was a sexist, racist piece of shit. The Jewish guys I knew were older, they were traders; we had breakfast most days of the week.

Somehow, though, it didn’t occur to me until two days ago I have no idea what Passover is.

I think I got days off of school for it. No idea what it is. Considering I thought Easter was all about the Easter Bunny–no religion in my family holidays, though I did manage to offend my mother, when I was twenty-two, by suggesting a Jesus doll that sang “Hey, now, it’s my birthday” and kicked his legs out to the sides on a cross–I’ve since learned, of course, there’s a connection between Passover and Easter. Somehow. I’m not really interested in that connection, I wanted to find out what Passover was all about.

And, if you’re reading this and you think you know why I want know about Passover or you’re the reason why I wanted to find out about Passover, you’re right. Thanks, you’re encouraging me to learn. That I’m only learning this because of you… eh… ignore that part.

I started at wikipedia, kind of browsing their article. I got caught up with the matzo thing. It seems very complicated, like I might need a diagram. I mean, really, I know the place names from The Last Temptation of Christ, so… it’s kind of hard. I might need a map too.

But, I figured, if the Agnes Moorehead of Colloquial Blogs isn’t for explaining how an athiest learns about Passover, what the fuck is it for? I don’t know if Agnes Moorehead would be proud. I doubt it. It’s not an insult. She’s an incredibly handsome woman. It’s kind of Orson Welles’s fault for never casting her as the love interest.

Anyway. Passover. For Athiests.

So, I found chabad.org’s article, which seems to be written for kids. (I also can’t understand why they allow comments on it–first rule of cheap hits, attacking someone’s religion–which the first comment is–I did this to great effect in a short story once, I was so proud of myself, immediately turned everyone against the protagonist). But, I get it now. Some of it.

Let’s take into account… most of my understanding of Jewish traditions come from things like The Big Lebowski.

Walter Sobchak: I told those fucks down at the league office a thousand times that I don’t roll on Shabbos!
Donny: What’s Shabbos?
Walter Sobchak: Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don’t work, I don’t get in a car, I don’t fucking ride in a car, I don’t pick up the phone, I don’t turn on the oven, and I sure as shit
[shouts]
Walter Sobchak: don’t fucking roll! Shomer shabbos!
The Dude: Walter…
Walter Sobchak: Shomer fucking shabbos.
The Dude: Oh fuck it. I’m out of here.
Walter Sobchak: Dude, come on…
[rolls his eyes at Donny]
Walter Sobchak: BABY…
[Donny nods]

Which does not provide, really, a lot of information.

The chabad page is okay–the links are really neccesary, like the one to the Laws of Yom Tov, for people like me, who also probably learned most of what they know about Jewish tradition from episodes of “Seinfeld,” which might not have had education in mind.

Am I just confused, Christians don’t do stuff like this, right? Do they? There’s the long repetitive thing Catholics do at funerals, which I’ve blocked out (not because I’m a general dick, but because I’m a specific dick–it reminds me what a fucking lousy grandson I was), and some other stuff… but…

I mean, I think I’ve seen The Ten Commandments–but, as a bored kid–so….

I’ll close this with something I think Lewis Black needs to do. He has to do a TV series where he lectures about the New Testament. It’d be fucking hilarious. Here’s his skit about Christians talking about the Torah.

For those wondering if the whole point of this post and my survey into Passover was simply to find out what was up with one person for the next seven days (i.e. level of communication). Yeah, it probably was… I mean, what the fuck, right?

Am I worried this person is going to think I’m shallow? Not really… a little bit, but nothing to be insecure about.

Like I said before, the reason I learn something isn’t as important as that I learned. I only learned to read as a kid because of Penthouse Forum*. The blog’s not called Frontal Lobe Disinhibition for nothing.

• That statement is actually not true. According to my mother, I only learned to read as a kid because I wanted to read about monster movies. The Crestwood House Monster series, actually. By Ian Thorne. I’ll have to thank ol’ boy for getting me to read in some dedication somewhere.

Have I done anything productive today?

I suppose I did some “work.” In fact, I probably only slacked on a little bit (there are a couple people I’m trying to avoid having to call). I had one screw-up that turned out not to be my fault.

I read Cat’s Cradle, probably twenty pages. I’m being a little lame about getting it finished, but only because I can’t sit and read it at work. My best job ever–in a bank mail room one summer in college–I sat around and read Ulysses, Mason & Dixon and at least started Gravity’s Rainbow. And that was fine. Oh, and I read Tales of Ordinary Madness and A Moveable Feast, which just freaking rocks. I need to read that again. I learned how to write dialogue from A Moveable Feast.

What else did I do?

Wrote a post.

Fell on my ass making a mix tape. It started to feel like I was hacking it out so I dropped that. I think that’s the problem with the internet–yeah, the only one–the easy transfer of songs makes arranging a mix less important. 

Tweeted.

Dozed.

Chatted.

Visited the wife at lunch.

Ol’ girl facebook friended me. Don’t quite know how to handle that (the wife doesn’t like me having female facebook friends).

I can’t steal stamps because coworker2 and coworker3 are here–I’m kind of curious just as to what coworker2 has stolen from around here. I figure coworker3 hasn’t taken a thing. But coworker2… I’m shocked she hasn’t taken a computer or something.

I can probably fill the next 30 minutes with… editing. Oh, ha ha. No chance. Damn. Especially since I don’t know WHO last night’s piece is about yet. The one proper noun I used isn’t one I’m sure I want to keep. The thing about using Ulysses as a base text, even just the language, it creates this awkward… tapestry. It’s really the loosest thing I’ve ever written and then again not. It does remind of Lanark, which is nice.

so far…

Well, I got an email back on the shitty story I’m submitting (the one I could cut to 2500 words, the good one I can’t cut anymore). It’s short-listed. That’d be nice. Not particularly thrilled with the wife’s response (“how much does it pay?”), but it’s about what I expected. I really need to fulfill the dream of the Showtime series based on the first novel, just as an eff you to her. Mature of me, I know. At least a pilot.

The daily writing is going fine. Not as many immediate revisions as I thought there’d be. It’s just too soon to see how it’s going to take shape. I finally am getting to write my Lanark though, it just took a hell of a constraint to get me there.

I wonder if it’s all guys who have dating problems who ask out waitresses.

I just went to Starbucks and had to wait for freshly brewed coffee and talked to the checkout girl for three minutes. She was kind of cute–blue hair always reminds me of my first screenplay, makes me nostalgic for simpler times (oh, to write solely for one’s self and think it’s the way to do it!)–and it was a pleasant conversation. Don’t know if it’d qualify as flirting. I don’t think I would.

But I realized my friend D would. In fact, he probably would have asked her out. Sitting there in the drivethough.

I think I already told that story about my other friend who made the joke about having a waitress be nice to him so it must mean she’s in to him. My friend D doesn’t get that. Like, I’ve explained it to him and he still doesn’t get it. Not only does a waitress’s job rely on tips, she probably gets hit on all day. It’s like that episode of the Office where Michael is a boor to the Hooters waitress.

Not being a waitress, I’m only guessing… and considering my track record with waitresses, maybe I’m not the best one to talk about it.

Brief recap:

Went out with both waitresses I’ve asked, the one bartender/waitress I asked (until my Justin Timberlake-looking friend’s fuck buddy cock-blocked me), and the other bartender/waitress I asked approached me after she broke up with her dude, but that didn’t go anywhere.

So, whenever I think about the waitress thing, I realize I did all right with it. Maybe not McNulty all right, but when watching McNulty pick up a waitress and take her home–my friend not believing it–I was at least able to say, “No, that’s plausible. Likely even.”

Wire reference. Sorry.

Can you believe my wife DOESN’T want to name a kid after Stringer Bell? But anyway….

But I went to visit my friend D and he was bitching and moaning about being unattached and I told him we were going to take care of it. Really, really simple plan. He was supposed to go up to women and ask them out. “Hi, I want to go out with you. Can I call you?”

Nope.

I think I gave up after pushing him toward a girl on the street. He was a statue.

Instead, we went to drink and he developed a crush on the waitress. Then he drug me to a strip club–which might have been the most awkward experience of my life, a strip club in Texas–and ended up giving a fucking stripper the money for a lapdance on the promise she’d meet him at an IHOP. I sat around a fucking IHOP for two hours–sober, mind you–on this one.

Where all he really had to do is just ask, what, ten girls out? He’s a little heavy, but he’s not ugly or anything. Got a fine personality.

This all happened like seven years ago and I don’t think he’s had a girlfriend since. Because “Hi, I want to go out with you, can I call you?” is apparently a more frightful prospect than self-abuse for a decade or whatever….

The funny thing about Born in the USA… and no, not Reagan using the term without knowing the song’s content…

The song’s are all first-person (are all Springsteen songs first-person?) , he was a huge sex symbol at the time, but the protagonist in the songs is not. There’s a disconnect, but then there’s not–I mean, just look at the Dancing in the Dark video. 

There’s a complete and utter disconnection between the guy singing the song, in tight jeans (I need to get some tight jeans), dancing with Courteney Cox and the guy the song’s about. It’s like if Al Pacino or Hugh Jackman played a guy who couldn’t get laid. It should be hilarious, like a spoof, but Springsteen pulls it off. But it’s clear why, after Tunnel of Love, he just couldn’t handle it for a while.

cardio vs. muscle

I just realized, it’s been a long time since a porn post.

Huh.

It’s not like I’ve been skipping them intentionally… maybe I’ve just been too busy, between… oh. Yeah. I’ve been working on the private posts instead. Yeah, I guess the porn posts are going the way of the dodo… the private posts are much more rewarding. Which I’m sure will disappoint all those who show up (or so wordpress’s stats tell me) looking for links. And general readers, since the private posts are, well, private.

I’m also wondering if the endorphin addiction has just gotten to the junkie stage–the wife doesn’t have it yet this week–but I’m constantly craving exercise. It’s like cardio isn’t enough because it doesn’t provide enough movement. Thank goodness tonight’s yoga and weights. It’s bad enough I’m excited about the new equipment I get to use at the gym. I haven’t been to this stage in years… like eight of them. It’s relatively bitchin’.

It’s like I’ve been in a funk since writing. It’s a fine enough response… but it’s… eh. (I’m not talking about the private post for the m1–that was fantastic and possibly the most emotionally draining writing experience I’ve ever had… I’m worried it got my thyroid on hyperdrive, ramping up my metabolism and exhausting me). It’s just an okay 573 words. It’s got me thinking of how to edit–right now I print a copy of the response and go through quickly… since there aren’t weekends off, it’s hard to figure when to do a more involved edit–and what to do in a more involved edit. I think I just got overthinking before I was writing–work IS NOT an acceptable writing place, simply because it doesn’t allow me to give the word cloud enough consideration before responding to it. It’s a shitty day, comparatively, but the whole point of separately this thing into 573 was one part could be shitty and get fixed later. I’m sure there are going to be other shitty writing sessions between now and Oct 22, 2010. It just feels lousy. Fucking constraints, this is why I hate writing with constraints, it means you have to keep with them, even when they don’t work.

My problem with the internet

One of my problems with the internet–and this might be a problem with me, but whatever.

The internet, I always say, is about two things–shopping and porn. Porn’s kind of shopping too, but… it always offends people when you say shopping and porn.

It’s really just about shopping.

I had this one class in grad school where the prof let these undergrads in–they made a movie where they danced around naked and I had to wait for the two hour class to ask my friend if she noticed the one guy didn’t have a dick.

But I’ve discovered a new problem, as I came across a copy of Campbell Scott’s 3-hr Hamlet adaptation from 2000.

Now, I don’t like Campbell Scott–at best I didn’t have a problem with him in a bunch of stuff (though I hear Roger Dodger is the thing to see)–but I got this copy. It’s a FREAKING huge file and it’s just going to sit around waiting for me to get the gumption to watch it. Wow, don’t know the last time I used gumption. Anyway… a three hour Hamlet? I’ll watch the Branagh, which I still haven’t seen on DVD or… drool… blu-ray.

Or, for three hours, The Thin Red Line….

But I’m still getting this flipping Campbell Scott Hamlet.

I knew I liked Catholics

No one ever believes me when I saw Catholics are the best of the Christians.

Here’s statistical evidence–from USA Today of all places….

They’re bigger on gay rights, abortion rights, slammins before marriage, stem cell research and kids out of wedlock than the general population.

Everyone always assumed, being raised by a couple failed Catholics, I was just being biased.

But here, statistically evidence.

It’s got to be the endorphins, but I feel great. Better than I’ve felt in years.

I feel like this:

Verse 1:
Yeah, said it’s all right
I won’t forget
All the times I’ve waited patiently for you
And you’ll do just what you choose to do
And I will be alone again tonight my dear

Verse 2:
Yeah, I heard a funny thing
Somebody said to me
You know that I could be in love with almost everyone
I think that people are
The greatest fun
And I will be alone again tonight my dear

In the Bottle Rocket context.

I don’t remember the last time I was as excited about a project as I am the new one.

The four year old movie site is getting the short end of the stick, but it never turned into a paying job and it was a lot of work and it’s just got to chill. I shot the load on the Crossing Guard. That’s a respectable finish. Did I mention it was taught in a college writing course? A good college, much better than the one I went to and can’t even afford to go to for my second master’s.

Home’s good. Made it through wife’s first day back after spring break (thought I needed a hazard helmet for that). Work’s good. I can write there. Only thing pissing me off is really the apartment plumbing’s new foghorn system….

Glad I found an occasional IM buddy in the Mac Aficionado.

Can’t even verbalize how I feel about finding M1–don’t have the vocabulary to do it. (The mix “tape” was for her… hoping she digs it. I’m listening to it right now. It fucking rocks).

I’m even thinking, depending on how the new project turns out… I might do the writing PhD. Shh, haven’t told the wife (only if I get an agent for the first novel first). I’d rather have someone else pay for my degree than take out more fucking loans.

Maybe it’s just because I nailed my weight work out today. I felt like Prince or something.

The last time I felt like Alone Again Or was my personal soundtrack, my life came crashing down. Awful time. Hope that doesn’t happen again.

And I think I’m going to actually work at getting some communication open with ol’ girl. It might be worthwhile.

Just for the ladies

Here’s that awesome scene from Miami Vice.

It ought to just download, but I have no idea. It’s like 20mb.

Just look at the editing, as the camera switches from left, right, to back.

So please, ladies, comment… does this scene do anything for you (in the asthetic, art appreciation sense)?

Do I hate feeling like this or do I love feeling like this?

Or do I love not knowing?

Do I love feeling my heart rise as the music plays?

Do I love the range, the depth, the infinitness of self it suggests….

Wish I could link to the scene in Miami Vice.

It’s the same fucking thing.

the slave to love post

I’m hoping this post will have cathartic results, which might make to incredibly boring to any number of readers. I’m sure if you click on pornstars over on the right, there will be a lot of fine search results for you.

Last night I listened to Bryan Ferry’s Slave to Love (not prominently featured, but featured nonetheless, in 9 1/2 Weeks) for the first time in eight years. Seven years. Eight years.

I used to listen to it all the fucking time. Every Wednesday my sophmore year of undergrad, my friend and I went to this bar and got shitfaced for five or six hours. I actually don’t remember much about these evenings, except that we had them–and the one time we invited another friend along he spent our money on brandy, the prick–we kind of flirted with the Wendie Malick looking bartender (I almost hooked up with her later on until the prick’s fuck buddy cock-blocked me–bringing up the twenty year age difference… I mean, what the fuck, how’s that cool….), drank a lot–probably gins and tonic–and I played Slave to Love maybe three times a night.

I was harboring, afflicted by, suffering from–I was in love with someone who didn’t love me back. 

But anyway, I’d play Slave to Love maybe three times a night on the jukebox. Ol’ girl loved 9 1/2 Weeks, loved the song. What the fuck, I was a drunken moron. I’m sure my friend had a great time.

After the breaking–which, unfortunately, is punctuated with a visit to the WTC bar, ruining my life-long positive feeling about the Twin Towers–I tried playing the song again. Nope. I was done with that business.

Last night, I didn’t just start listening to Slave to Love again, I even emailed ol’ girl. It’s been eight years… she’s a Mickey Rourke fan, maybe the only other one who can fully appreciate the Wrestler comeback, so I figured what the fuck. Emailed her.

Why am I being a grown-up? Wait, I’m not being a grown-up. I’m turning the other cheek or something, aren’t I? What am I doing–it’s the cheek thing.

Why am I listening to Slave to Love all the time again?

I think it’d be fun to slow dance to with M1. I’d definitely need to brush up on my dancing… the last time I danced was with ol’ girl at a mutual friend’s wedding and I was so exceptionally drunk I’m shocked I didn’t get us killed driving home.

Off to do the laundry. Boo!

I’d pay for coffee delivery

Some coffee shop ought to come up with coffee delivery service, modeled after an old milk delivery system. You get some kind of keep-the-heat-in (that’s the technical term) thermos, which you put out every night, they bring a new one filled with lovely, caffeine-rich coffee every morning. I’d easily pay $25 a week for that service.

It’s like in Oregon, where they try to create jobs by not letting you pump your own gas.

This is almost as good as my idea for the print on demand DVD service… which freaking Warner Bros. stole from me. They did have a film library, but come on… I had that idea like six years ago.

The Lady Sascha Interview

The Lady Sascha Interview

The Worley Round

Favorite color: Probably one of the hardest questions you’re asking. I’m a very visual person, and colors are important to me…
Maybe a grayish federal blue, like the sky before a storm.. Or the seafoam green of my grandfather’s vintage ’63 Chevrolet with wings.
Or the deep velvety purple of pansies as they are framed by surrounding sunshine-yellow of their fellow pansy flowers.
Blue. Just let’s say blue =)

Favorite movie star: Another hard one. Probably Johnny Depp, not just because he’s hot, but because he takes chances in his movie roles. And because he seems to be a thinker. And makes wine. And is nice to little girls
Favorite music: Oh wow. Depends on the day.
Anything from classical to classic rock to glitter rock to hip hop to industrial to tribal to blue/r&b to alternative.
Shameless plug: I just put Jimi Hendrix’ “Radio One” album on my Amazon wishlist.
Turn-ons: Men who want to cherish me. Men who really like women. Having my toes licked.
Turn-offs: Men who want to top from the bottom. Men who are passive aggressive. Anyone who keeps petty little hurts bottled up inside and then throws them out like darts in an argument. People who keep score.

The Interview

FLD: What’s a day in the life of a phone domme like?

LS: Oh wow. Pretty unstructured actually, because I never know when the phone rings. But here’s a (sort of) schedule. All times are PST.

noon – wake up

noon – 1 PM: drink coffee. continue waking up. answer emails. read forums. read twitter.

1 – 2 PM: get ready for the day. shower, put on makeup.

2 – 4: mostly “me time”. I’ll go to a dance class or get my nails done, that sort of thing. Sometimes I will have a playmate here.

4 PM till 2 AM: Take calls. I will be doing other things as well – cooking, eating, might still have a playmate over.

Between taking calls, I might be blogging, coding my sites, working on graphics, interviews with horny men, etc.

FLD: You wear wigs for added anonymity. How do you pick out which ones you wear?

LS: Wow! You actually did read my site, lol! Just a hands-on thing. Going to the wig store with a friend who will be honest, and trying it one. Each wig has a name and a personality, I hate to say (yep I’m a little weird).

FLD: What’s the thing you’ve found most surprising about being a phone domme?

LS: The amount of technical knowledge I need to know, especially to market myself. I came into this thinking it was all just taking calls, and that’s actually a small part of it. I am learning though =)

FLD: What’s the hardest part of the work? Besides the obvious.

LS: Your funstick? Oh that was the obvious, wasn’t it? Being my own boss. Making myself stick to a schedule.

FLD: Has there ever been anything you’ve discovered in a session and carried over into your personal love life?

LS: Well this is more of a reinforcement than an actual discovery. But that men need a connection. Women tend to think of men just as compartmentalizing things and just having sex for the sex itself (not that that’s bad). But men need a connection as well. If not, then why call me? Go out and rent a video, it’s cheaper, and you can watch it multiple times. But I’m a real person that will call you by your name, remember you, and listen. Men need women to listen to them, not just vice versa.

FLD: Considering there’s no sensation for them, why do you think some women enjoy wearing a strapon?

LS: Actually I prefer wearing a double-headed dildo of sorts like the Share which goes up inside of me as well. Also I think it is just the fact that we are making our men be submissive that is such a turn on. For example, I’ve had one male submissive suck another man’s cock, and even though I am not part of the sexual dynamic per se, it’s so exciting, I will have to masturbate while watching.

FLD: You don’t do a lot of nude shots on your blog. There’s like one topless shot, and some shots of your tush. But it’s clear you stay in shape–how do you do that?

LS: Well I’ve always been athletic – taken ballet since I was six, and I still go to dance class at least once a week. I love to swim, hike, and play ultimate frisbee as well. I’m actually quite a tomboy, and always have been. Also sex will burn a calorie or two

FLD: You tweeted the other day about needing a caller for mutual masturbation. Do you do that a lot?

LS: As far as mutual masturbation, it depends on the caller. Most of my calls, I need to stay in control. I do masturbate to some degree simply because domination makes me horny, but I tend to edge myself.

As far as needing it, hmmm, not really. I usually take care of that with a (human) pet, or with my Hitachi wand =D. Now if the caller does want me to masturbate for him or for us to get off together, I have no problem with that. Unless I am already very worked up, I’ll be honest and tell him I need a certain amount of time to get there, and also a vibe will help things along as well. I don’t fake orgasms very well. I’ve never had to in real life, and I have tried to for my customers a couple of times, and just got tickled.

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About Lady Sascha

Lady Sascha is a lifestyle Dominatrix, who also does long-distance phone training, both on Niteflirt, and on her toll-free line for money.

Some of her specialties include: sensual domination, edging, cuckolding, humiliation, tease and denial, orgasm denial, chastity, small penis humiliation, incest, mommy fetish, strict discipline, bondage, anal play, body worship, foot fetish, giantess fetish, crushing, asphyxiation, stomping, and trampling, just to name a few.

Feel free to contact her at ladysascha@gmail.com if you have any questions about her service.

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Lady Sascha links

Lady Sascha, a Cocktease Extraordinaire.

Lady Sascha’s blog, Cocktease Phonesex Mistress

Word count

Fiction and Nonfiction Submissions: No more than 2500 words, double spaced.

I just got a notice of a new literary journal looking for submissions in my weekly mailing list bullshit from my grad school program. I guess since it had this notice, it wasn’t the regular bullshit. I’ve actually gotten so many mailing list emails since my rant yesterday, I’ve just gone back to reporting them spam to google instead of taking the time to unsubscribe. I’ve probably gotten, including the writing department one, eleven of them.

2,500 words is, figuring 250 words a page, a ten page story. In under grad, we didn’t even pay attention to people who couldn’t break thirteen pages. In grad school, of course, a one page story could be great and a twenty-two page story could be awful. But in under grad, where people rarely finished their thoughts, thirteen was the number.

So my best story isn’t 2,500 words. The shortest version of it is five or six thousand. There’s no way to cut half of it.

My second best (polished) story, one of the ones I presented anyway, is currently 3,021. I thought it be fun and miserable to notate what I could cut from it to get it to the magic number.

• It drove him nuts—the singing—the good food he was fine with. Not the singing though.
• Henry had felt bad and he’d wanted to sing again, but he knew he couldn’t go back.
• Henry knew the robe—it was thick and dark purple and had a hood. “I’ll look like a Jedi, Dad.”
• Just put it on
• He always meant to ask and thought about it again, shuffling along in his Jedi robe, but
• though Henry did not keep a list.
• Henry flipped up the hood on the robe. “See, all I’ve got is the Force.”
• Her father gave him a confused look, so did she. His own father rolled his eyes. Henry put the hood back down and
• He slammed the door, then tested the knob.
• The angle of the porch ceiling and the sun and the smell.
• It wasn’t the warmth, it wasn’t a Christmas thing, too early.
• then. Even Halloween.
• The toilet water, how it smelled both fresh and old at the same time, sterile but unable to hide the vomit it would soon contain.
• “Sort of. I need some catharsis and you’re apparently willing to listen.”
• “I had something else,” Henry said, “but I forgot what it was.”
• On the way out, back to find their fathers, she stopped him and asked if they were ever at Easter.
• “The investor guys, no. What? It’s family time, that’s why I have to go. You couldn’t get someone to put a couple hundred grand into my aunt’s cherry glop. It goes bad after a couple hours.”
• Valerie looked in some more windows along the way, only stopping again in a bookstore. She didn’t find anything, but Henry got excited when he found a copy of Taxi Driver.
• “I collect these. Anything with a movie poster for a cover that wasn’t a book before hand, I’ve probably got it.”
• “You’re one of those people who has a bunch of stuff in their house they can talk about, aren’t you? My dad’s got a bunch of baseballs, all signed by different people, and—I swear, he and your dad were in there for an hour going through it all. Your dad does not know his ballplayers.”
• “No, he doesn’t.”
• “So do you keep all your movie books separate or do you not read anything else?”
• “I don’t read them.”
• “I keep them on a DVD spinner rack. You know, they’re not books, they’re movies.”
• “How did you get this hobby?”
• “They’ve had the festival for years, but the free beer and tourists are a recent development.”
• (who looked like a Herbert to Henry)
• He started to tell her how the coffee didn’t get good until a few years ago, but he could tell she was sick of stories so he dropped it.
• Henry could smell the sugar substitute coming off it from across the table.
• His father told him he was nuts, but Henry was sure he’d spent a fortune cleaning the place.
• long enough Henry knew it was his father.
• His father never stopped knocking, Henry realized as he opened the door. It had been a constant rapping.
• He never knew the words.

And there you go… down to 2,497.

This story, titled The Holiday Special, is one of my favorites because it’s complete bullshit. I didn’t finish it because my wife interrupted me while I was writing it, writing it for a class where all the material was supposed to be new, but everyone just used it to workshop stories from undergrad.

The ending is bullshit and there’s some bullshit lines in it–I cut at least one of them–where I just put in whatever I, not the character, was thinking. It really pissed off the class who read it, because they took it to mean I wasn’t taking the story seriously.

Whatever.

They liked it fine before I told them.

Nope

Chatting a little w/ the Mac afficiando but I can’t get any post verbosity going, still geeked off the chat with M1.

Wow

Just chatted with M1 for an hour and twenty minutes.

Wow.

Wow.

FLD just became, if it were acting talent, the Hayden Christensen, of colloquial blogs. Sorry.

Wow. Ee. Ka. Zow. Ee.

On the Kitchen Floor, Part 2

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dust jacket blurbs

One of the (only, maybe the only) benefits of lollygagging on the selling of the novel is it’ll give some of my colleagues from grad school time to make names for themselves so I can use them as dust jacket blurbs.

I’ve already got two of my more famous instructors doing blurbs, whether they like it or not, but they’re not going to be as awesome as the ones I’m hoping to get from a couple of my peers:

• “This novel made me, a feminist, brag about my tits.”
• “Oh, God, what if he [the author] really thinks this way?”

Hazel.

The M1′s eyes are hazel.

Stupid mailing lists

Another post to go straight to M1′s ego (something someone else commented on, well, sort of… not specifically the amount of posts dedicated to M1, but the attention I give her).

So, I finally got to chat with her–my precious M1–which seemed like it was going to be amazing and all sorts of awesome and, of course, she vanished. Out into some sunny Pacific timezone wherever. I might have even found out what color her eyes are… or, gasp, maybe her middle name. But then she vanished. Poof. Off to spend time with whatever lucky person or persons get to spend time with her. Gets to make her happy, spend evenings with her, make her martinis, listen to Van Morrison with her, smell her skin after a day at the beach, read the papers on a Sunday morning… a rainy Sunday morning or pepper her belly with baby kisses.

And, obviously, to plagiarize, for the second time in one day, from the movie Beautiful Girls. But my plagiarized sentence is better written than their script.

And I’d want to listen to Astral Weeks with M1. So there, that wasn’t in the fucking movie so it’s not plagiarism. And we can drop the Sunday papers thing too while we’re at it. If I were in a position to spend rainy mornings, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday with M1, I can damn well guarantee I wouldn’t be reading a fucking newspaper. There are more important things than being well-informed.

See, if I’d gotten to chat with her, I might have asked M1 if she’d ever heard Astral Weeks, which I only heard for the first time last year or something… because I’m lame like that.

But I didn’t and whatever, it’s fine.

Here’s what isn’t fine:

Getting a bunch of damn mailing lists, all of them ringing my inbox indicator, every one getting my spirits up a little.

For all the time blog-time she gets, I don’t really know anything about M1. That’s why she’s Mysterious. And I’m hoping when I call her My Precious Mysterious One, she’s not bothered by the use of the possessive adjective. I get excited when I get to talk to her, because it doesn’t happen a lot.

I don’t get excited about getting fucking mailing list offers–mailing lists where you have to log in to confirm you don’t want them, mailing lists where you have to click through to a link, mailing lists where you have to respond with “UNSUBSCRIBE” in the message line, mailing lists where you have to log in to confirm you don’t want them and then log in again to confirm you want to cancel them, mailing lists where you have to log in, click through and respond with–fuck them. That’s the problem with the internet and mailing lists. If everyone took the time to call the companies who are sending him or her mailing lists and told them to fuck off, I’ll bet it’d stop. No more logging in, clicking through, responding with. Inbox indicators wouldn’t go off for bullshit sales on movie posters, software updates and announcements of vibrators that play O Come All Ye Faithful.

M1 was having a rough day and I’m hoping she’s all right. Admittedly, the movie posters, software updates and vibrators that play O Come All Ye Faithful aren’t getting in the way of her being all right or even her telling me she’s all right. She might not be telling me because she’s being made happy or a made a martini or listening to Van Morrison or having wonderful smelling skin after a day at the beach or having someone pepper her belly with baby kisses. The lucky fuck.

But still–I don’t want to hear about the movie posters, software updates or vibrators that play O Come All Ye Faithful right now. I want my inbox for emails I want to read.

It occurs to me, between M1, the Mac Aficionado and Lady Sascha, the blog’s changing a bit. It’s getting a cast of characters, it’s developing, perturbing and becoming–it’s in a constant state of becoming. Not to mention the emphasis on the writing. I mean, I fucking love this post. I haven’t been as happy with my colloquial writing since I was in undergrad and my writing professor tried to get me a newspaper column. I feel sunny inside over my colloquial writing style on this blog. It’s lovely. If it were a girl… well, okay, I mean, if it were a girl it wouldn’t be that great of a girl. I don’t know if I’d even ask my blog out if it were a girl and I wasn’t married. But, it’d be a good looking girl or a handsome woman. It’d be a handsome woman. It’d be the Agnes Moorehead of colloquially written blogs if it were a woman. Agnes Moorehead was a great looking woman, but I imagine her roles kind of killed her as a sex symbol, whether it’s as Charlie Kane’s mother or aunt Fanny, not the hot roles–if you think about it, Welles didn’t really have hot roles until he was married to Rita Hayworth.

But anyway. The CliffsNotes version of the piece–#1 fuck mailing lists. #2 M1, wherever in the Pacific timezone you are, I hope you are feeling better and wish I could do something do make you feel as such.

And motherfucker if I didn’t just get a fucking mailing list from Technorati? Who the fuck wants an email from Technorati? They don’t sell movie posters, they don’t sell software updates, they don’t even sell vibrators that play O Come All Ye Faithful.

The Going Down thing

I’ve only been with three women who were shocked when I headed south of the border. One was seventeen, one was twenty, and the other was twenty-eight.

The seventeen year-old, I can understand.

The twenty year-old. The twenty year-old asked me if it was all right if oral sex was reciprical. Maybe even that clinically. She’d been with at least four guys, one of them a long term boyfriend. I mean, I was probably going down on her the first time we fooled around, but I was taken aback by the question. This is long before I ever heard Dan Savage say oral sex was a standard. I think I was twenty-three at the time. This girl and I hooked up for a while, then stopped. About seven months later, we hooked up again a couple times–each time she was shocked when I went down on her. She asked me if I remembered that I went down on her before.

The twenty-eight year-old was a few years earlier. She was shocked too and that’s the one I really don’t get. If you’re a twenty year-old hooking up with an older woman, one would expect her to be the more experienced one. I think she was actually in a long term relationship with a douchebag and cheating on him with me (for a week), but again… what the fuck? Are there really guys out there who don’t like going down on a woman?

Not to be politically incorrect, but that’s fucking gay. And not gay in the “gay means lame” sense, but gay as in the homosexual.

The whole impetus for this post is some Dan Savage wrote about it, where he implies straight men afraid to go down on women are hesitant because they’d rather be going down on a dude.

When I was in high school, I used to listen to guys complain about it. I’m not necessarily sure any of them were doing it… my high school was one of those were the girls usually went out with slightly older guys and these guys wouldn’t have been, if I’m remembering right, been going down on seventh graders or whatever the equivalent would have been.

I’m trying to remember if I ever thought it would be gross–coworker1′s kid still thinks girls are gross. I’m pretty sure I remember finding out what 69ing was when I was eleven and looked forward to that, so I must have been cool with going down then.

Why the hell wouldn’t a guy go down on a woman? I remember being nineteen and talking to this guy at work–he was a porn fiend, probably had a terrible influence on me because he had a seemingly normal life–and the first thing he ever said about Jenna Jameson (she was new in those days) was how much he wanted to lick her pussy. That was the first place his mind went.

I’m just really confused about it. I mean, remember in Office Space when the neighbor asks what Ron Livingston would do if he had a million dollars and he says “nothing.” I’d have a girl sit on my face all day. When she got feeling generous, she could reached down and take care of me. That’s the first thing I thought about that Chris Brown Rihanna thing… why the fuck was he driving a car? He could have a limo where he was her seat cushion in the back.

I mean, obviously, I realize it’s not possible to–well, no. I mean, if you had ten million dollars and could live off the interest, I’ll bet someone could eat pussy for… what, at least two hours straight, no problem…. and as for a break, what would you need… five, ten minutes tops? If she’s stradling your face, you should be able to go for three.

Also, I guess I misread the Dan Savage thing–he was saying it was acceptable for guys not to eat pussy until after college. I disagree. Unless girls aren’t expected to give blowjobs until they’re out of college….

The only guy I know who’s really weird about it is a friend of mine who won’t take reciprocation (i.e. no blow jobs). We’re convinced he’s gay and trying to prove to himself he’s not (he won’t do anything with a woman, he says, he could do with a man).

But what the fuck? What’s the percentage of women who only have clitorial orgasms? Sometimes Dan Savage really confuses me.

concert/drug stories

I’m fiddling with Simplify Media again (they finally got a buffer on it and the iPhone version works great) and actually getting to listen to my music, instead of coworker1′s top 40 station that inexplicably plays that Natalie Imbruglia Torn song three times a day, and it reminded me of when a (male) friend and I went to go see Sarah McLachlan.

I’m pretty sure, at this concert, she talked about how that song Possession is about a creepy stalker thing… which made the fact we were stoned, drunk and railed out of our minds a little more inappropriate than usual. My sister and her friend were going to go to this concert–we had tickets, but I had a great job so we got some better seats–my sister and I have never, as far as I can remembered, had a drink together. But this friend and I, we fucking drink–we once begged a six pack off a store employee a few minutes after legal sales ended so we could drink and drive across a state (I haven’t done anything that stupid since I met the wife… I don’t think… I’ve gotten to be a really lame driver when she’s in the car–but what’s up with Atlanta drivers being polite? When my friend and I were there, we really wanted to piss off other drivers–one time, he tailgated a guy in the car with his family to the point the guy was screaming obscenities at us, all while his wife was trying to get him to stop swearing in front of the kid. But in Atlanta, when you drive amped up and aggressive, people politely get over. We couldn’t figure it out). So my sister and her friend didn’t go with us. Which meant we were going to do drugs too. With her there, we would have just drunk. Getting stoned, snorting coke, slamming whiskey for a Sarah McLachlan concert. I did get to run into this high school teacher who absolutely hated me and have an awkward “hello” exchange with her. That was fun.

The other big drug/concert story isn’t even one I realized was a story until my friend was telling my wife and his wife about it the last time I saw him. We dropped some shitty acid–when I drop good acid, I end up naked, back to nature, attacking technology… which brings up a whole other story, but I’ll skip it–and, for twelve years, I’ve always said it was shitty acid. To which my friend said, “I don’t know, it did something. That was the only time I’ve seen you dance.”

(When I dance, it looks a pterodactyl trying to take off).

And I did dance another time… a lot. But I had also had twelve cocktails and like nine beers. It was an amazing display of fortitude. (Open bar at a friend’s wedding and I was on a bad date).

What the hell was wrong with me today?

So… my posts for the day got a lot less readers (well, according to wordpress.com, which isn’t actually–when compared to google analytics–a good source, but I can imagine they got a lot less readers). They were all fucking downers, maybe even starting with the one last night. Or maybe not… that was two nights ago. Looking back on the day, no one wants to hear about dead mothers on a blog where pornstars is the biggest word in the tag column. I’ll accept some of the blame for myself, but I think I got off to a bad start with the Billy Crudup remininesnce and then an hour and a half of work where I kept getting interrupted–writing a private post for M1 (which, fingers crossed, she enjoyed–and hopefully she did, because they’ll be another one tomorrow I think)–by work. Obviously, a job is for work, but coworker1 is late on Wednesdays, coworker2 is on vacation and no one at corporate will talk to coworker3. So… I had to answer all the calls, do my job, do coworker1′s job, and try to write a reasonable post. Now, I always assumed being a writer–trained to be a professional one no less–well, no I didn’t. Long before I ended up in graduate school for creative writing, back when I used to just be a really good writer in the fiction department and the best in the history department… I thought it would be easy to write something for someone else. A poem or a, well, post of some kind. It’s not. Being a writer is about writing for the largest possible audience without sacrificing yourself. When we want to be high and mighty, we call that writing for ourselves–but we’re not. We’re writing for an intended audience, whether it’s two people, which is how many I tend to write for (I am a Leo and I thought being egotistical was a Leo trait but maybe it’s not… stupid google)–my friend and my professor, both of whom are good judges of fiction overall, so I figure if they like it, whatever, some other people will like it too. That’s not the same as writing for one person and not caring if it carries over to other people. It’s like writing a 500-word inscription on a book.

But anyway, I think I did a good job. Not sure if M1 noticed, but there was some wonderful sentence structure and alliteration in there. I’m hoping she wasn’t paying attention to those things though. No, no one else can read it

This afternoon, literally, around 12:15, things started to turn around as I got into this wonderful, four hour highly arousing IM chat with a fellow Mac afficiando. We weren’t talking about Macs. Admittedly, I did get a little upset when coworker1 interrupted me when I was finally ready to crank one out at my desk, which would have been something (it was a fine IM chat).

Then I got home, went to the gym for a couple hours and, as I got my ass kicked in yoga, finally got completely out of my funk.

It’s been a while since I had such an “I’m in an assy mood, boo hoo” day and I was probably overdue, but why the fuck did I think anyone wanted to read about it? I wouldn’t want to read about it (I do not, in fact, read any of my former colleagues blogs about being a miserable post-MFA in Creative Writing person who can’t find a job and hasn’t published a novel–it’s just too damn depressing).

I’m seriously thinking about buying that little thing of fruit to take a picture of it balancing on my cock so I can call it art–that’s for you, the reader.

Oh–and the other awesome thing today–I think one of the trainers at the gym (female trainers) was coming on to my wife. I was probably projecting a certain naughtiness to her body language, but if some girl sat like she was sitting next to my wife sat next to me, I certainly wouldn’t have gotten up without her phone number. I’m going to monitor that situation closely.

Now… and this is the last time I’ll mention anything about the downer posts of today–will someone of the female persuasion please, pretty please with strawberry preserves licked off her nipples, explain why women don’t like Josh Hartnett? Seriously.

concept soundtracks

I’m listening to Tom Petty’s soundtrack for She’s the One, which has to be one of the only soundtracks I listen to with any regularity–or take the forty-five minutes to transfer from home to work.

(I also don’t know why today’s FLD posts are the usual filthy smut… it’s a mystery).

Didn’t this kind of soundtrack used to happen a lot? The filmmaker went to a band or artist and had them put something together–obviously it peaked with Aimee Mann and Magnolia, but it seems like since then it just hasn’t happened. 

It’s too bad. It’s like how those Postal Service guys should have been given the whole Wicker Park soundtrack instead of a cover they didn’t even use in the movie.

Yeah, I can’t think of any other recent examples….

What a worthless post this one was… umm… boner! boner! boner! There, now it’s more at home.

I might just be having a shitty day; the drive into work was incredibly bad–lots of dead mom stuff came up for whatever reason, which probably explains that Billy Crudup post. I think I remembered she liked him from something, but I have no idea what. Maybe the Hi-Lo Country?

The wife doesn’t like to hear about the dead mom stuff. Her dad died a couple years before my mom and she never’s once talked about it, to anyone as far as I know. She calls it dwelling. The people I’ve talked to all say dead moms are worse than dead dads. With my mom, I fucking bailed. Not really, we were living with my parents at the time to help out, but I was in graduate school and I bailed. I kept lying to myself (oh, it’s the medicine causing the dementia–which was a reasonable self-deception… medicine had caused dementia before). This time was the cancer in the spinal fluid swishing up into her brain though.

The thing that really pisses me off–the thing I just can’t reconcile–is that her doctor fucked up. Her doctor failed to find the cancer at one point. Why’s there no accountability for that sort of thing?

Now, that’s a real downer.

How to get it back on track…

Fuck it, I don’t think I can.

It was that damn CD. I never realized it (or I’d forgotten), it’s a complete fucking downer!

Tomcat in Love by Tim O’Brien

I don’t know why I’m thinking about Tim O’Brien’s novel (probably what’ll be his last good novel), Tomcat in Love.

While it’s still about Vietnam, it’s a comedy about this professor who’s life is in shambles, partially due to the revelation he keeps a journal of every female encounter he has (nothing lavicious, just women he passes on the street). I guess it got terrible reviews from scholarly readers–one of my professors savaged it (but she liked my novel, which basically features a far less likable, far more manipulating, but similar, character).

It’s a fun novel, from the late-1990s, when footnotes were still relatively new in modern literature and came without any pretense.

I haven’t read it in nine years I guess, so maybe it is a piece of shit (post-grad school), but I doubt it. I’m pretty sure the professor in question didn’t like Kurt Vonnegut either.

I’m thinking about starting writing again in April (just like I meant to in January, February and March) and I’m thinking about doing a comedy, one I don’t have to research (which puts the World War I absurdist comedy epic on hold once again) because I’m lazy.

I’ll probably not do it… but I am supposed to present some writing to a friend’s undergrad class in a couple months and it’d be nice to have some writing newer than three years ago.

… I wonder if that post I wrote for M1 would work… I’m thinking no… but it’d be hilarious to present it as a first person, future tense piece.

(and now I remember to email my friend back about her party this weekend… see, stream of thought posts do work out)

the mooch test

Following up on yesterday’s Henry Miller post… I think I’m going to ask coworker1, who’s coming in late, to pick me up a coffee on her way in.

and it worked!

Yay, coffee!

Preoccupied

Woke up with a hard-on, put on gym clothes with a hard-on, drove to the gym with a hard-on. Thankfully it deflated before I went in wouldn’t want the Billy Crudup-looking dude the wife thinks is so cute thinking it was for him.
Had to crank one out before I fell asleep last night. Way too turned on. Wife’ll be in trouble once her period’s over. She’s been helping out a lot but she has no idea…
I am a little worried I might have been too blunt in a tweet to the Mysterious One.
Can’t wait for another day of an eight hour erection….

mischeviously mysterious

So the mischevious one has requested a name change to Mysterious One. She suggested an MO for an abbreivation, I’m throwing M1 back out there….

I’m sure getting a blog post dedicated to her name change will go to her head, but there’s very little I can do about that (she’s quite wonderful).

She doesn’t think she’s all that mysterious… but I disagree. While I might now her height… I don’t know her eye color, her middle name (which kind of reminds me of a friend who could always guess girls’ middle names–but he needed the last name and I wouldn’t ask her for that–whenever I tried it I failed too, so what good would it do), favorite animal or almost anything

In short, I think mysterious works.

I found some doll house fruit.

 

for my version of a Caravaggio....

Sorry, no penis pictures–wordpress.com wouldn’t like it.

The only question, with the fruit bowl, is if it’s worth six bucks…

I mean, it’d be artistic, right?

Is a picture of my dick “artistic”?

According to cafepress’s policy, items cannot have images with “Inappropriate content or nudity that is not artistic in nature.”

Does that mean I should balance a doll-sized bowl of fruit on it or something?

All the discussion of my penis–and the various terms I (think) have used for it recently–dong, dick, cock, pecker, John Thomas–remind me of this book that came out between the first and second seasons of Twin Peaks, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.

Considering my mother didn’t let me listen to music with sexual content–like the word sex–only three years before (I think my dad de facto ixnayed that one when he refused to take the time to dub the tape and edit it)–I can’t believe I never got busted for the book. It was incredibly explicit (and freaking disturbing after a while, given the subject matter, but definitely cool). There’s a whole thing about how she decides to call it cock because everything else sounds silly. I’m pretty sure one of the bonuses of pricks is how many things you can call them….

I think peppy is one of the best. (From Multiplicity).

None of this answers the question of whether or not a picture of my… funstick is artistic enough for Cafepress to put on a set of postcards for my wife.

I don’t get the Megan Fox thing.

I don’t get the Megan Fox is super-hot thing.

I guess she’s okay. She gave an all right performance in Transformers, especially since the script was so douchey (the dude was going to dump her because her dad was in jail… what the fuck was that all about?).

But the whole thing of her being super-hot… I don’t get it. I don’t think Megan Fox is hot enough I would ask her out (when I was single). I’m seriously confused.

 

Megan Fox... not that hot....

I think it’s in Sexus…

I didn’t know Sexus was about Henry and June. I started reading Henry Miller because I thought it was supposedly to be good writing in the same sense as… Hemingway or Pynchon. Actually, Miller’s really a lot more like FLD. He just lives this awesome, terrible life and writes about it. I never read Nexus or Plexus because they’re probably like Sexus, a whole lot of fun, but not really the kind of narrative venture that would help my own writing.

Maybe after I’ve given up on a writing career or am old, I’ll sit down and have a great time reading Miller.

I think I was a sophmore in undergrad when I read it and I used to put up all these terrible quotes on my dorm room door (this was a door plastered with a collage of offensive imagery–Hitler, the Nazis and the bigots were not, according to my female dorm dwellers, as offensive as the handful of pornographic pictures). So no one read the Miller quotes.

But there’s a great bit in Sexus about not buying anything for yourself. You bum money off people–I never did get this one down–and never get around the repaying them. My failure at the time could have been being ostracized for my dorm room door, but who knows… at least one person came up and told me how awesome it was.

Anyway, the whole bumming things off people. Apparently, it really pissed coworker1 off. I used to bum Ibuprofen off her and coworker2 and eventually she got all pissy and asked if I ever “bought anything for myself.” Obviously, given my wife wants $150 butt toys for herself, something’s going to get forgotten.

But I hadn’t even realized I’d become someone so capable of bumming. I’m proud of it. I only had to go get the coffee today because the boss is coming in even later than usual and so I can’t make him go get me a cup.

I’m really going to miss things about this job (free coffee, not really doing any work).

that’s why…

In Peter Farrelly’s novel, The Comedy Writer, there’s a line about God doing men a favor by making it impossible for them to pee while erect.
Unfortunately… I’ve been drinking water all morning, need to go to the bathroom before I run out for coffee and my boner hasn’t gone down.
That’s just from regular twitter friends.
I’m worried it’ll tear through the jeans when mischievous one is around.

It’s hard to do research for an interview with a phone sex domme with coworker1 is walking around all the damn time!

It’s already started

I made it forty-five minutes before the hard-on became a fixture…
Not sure if I’m proud of myself or disappointed.
I have a roll-out keyboard tray… which I can’t sit under anymore. Yay… didn’t realize it was going to be on display!

It must be some kind of a record

This must be some kind of a record. As a young man of seventeen, I once managed ten orgasms in one day–they stopped being fun at five or six.
But I’ve had an erection for the entire afternoon it seems like–whether from chatting about an interview with a domme or the various tantalizing tweets… It’s freaking nuts.
Then the wife–right before we leave for the gym–asks me if she can get this butt toy for herself.
I was scared it’d stuck at attention all through yoga….

The DELiCiOUS_BiTCH Interview

The DELiCiOUS BiTCH Interview

The Worley Round

Favorite color: Pink.
Favorite movie star: Johnny Depp.
Favorite music: I love all music.
Turn-ons: A good sense of humor, lips and arms.
Turn-offs: Complete idiots and bad breath.

 

The Interview

FLD: So you’re eighteen?

DB: Yes, I just turned eighteen last week =)

FLD: How long have you been on twitter?

DB: Almost a month.

FLD: Why’d you pick such an amazingly hot profile pic?

DB: Ha ha, thank you. Because I love that pic, I think it flatters me.

FLD: You’re a beautiful girl.

DB: Thank you.

FLD: I don’t usually like 18-year-old girls, but you look like a woman. Does that make sense?

DB: Yes, it does. lol.

FLD: What do you do? Are you still in high school?

DB: I am a full time student; I am in college.

FLD: Do you have a major yet?

DB: No.

FLD: Any ideas?

DB: I want to be a social worker for children.

FLD: That’s awesome. Do you have a boyfriend?

DB: Complicated. But at this moment, yes, I do!

FLD: Do you get a lot of guys following you on twitter? I mean, of course you do, but are you cool with it?

DB: I only have like 117 followers… so that’s not a lot, but I am cool with it, they’re all cool people =).

FLD: What’s your favorite thing to do?

DB: I love to go to the beach. I love the ocean.

FLD: You live in LA, right?

DB: Yes, I live in LA.

FLD: Do you like it? Have you always lived there?

DB: Yes, I love LA. I was born and raised here.

FLD: I’ve only been there once. Didn’t get to do very much. If someone should do one thing in LA when they visit, what should they do?

DB: Umm… it is a tie between eating In-N-Out burgers or going to the Griffith Park Observatory… Lol, those are the two things I love doing.

FLD: (I almost got to eat at an In-N-Out Burger then didn’t) What’s your favorite–and least favorite–class in college?

DB: Least favorite–English. Favorite–French… so far.

FLD: French is great, isn’t it? I almost minored in it. Is there anywhere you want to travel?

DB: Europe.

FLD: You could do a French exchange at some point, that might be cool. What else do you like to do? What’s a normal day like for you?

DB: I basically sleep, work out and school… Lol, I am a lazy person most of the time.

FLD: I was going to ask if you worked out.

DB: Daily… but it isn’t normal working out. It is “stripper pole” working out at Flirty Girl Fitness… lol.

FLD: That’s so incredibly cool. Is this your first interview?

DB: Yes.

FLD: What’d you think when I asked if you wanted to be interviewed?

DB: I was flattered =).

FLD: Did you used to use myspace or facebook? Your profile says you don’t anymore.

DB: Yes, I used to have myspace and facebook but it was too much drama so I deleted them.

FLD: Twitter’s better?

DB: Yes, twitter is no drama to me so far.

FLD: You’ve got a Blackberry?

DB: Yes.

FLD: Do you like it? I’ve got an iPhone and I use it all the time.

DB: Yes, I like it. I live on it.

FLD: Did you ever think about modeling?

DB: Not really.

FLD: Last couple question. Your boyfriend knows he should appreciate you, right?

DB: Umm… I wish he knew… lol.

FLD: Well, he should–you’re an awesome person.

The Tina Tyler Interview (yay!)

The Worley Round

Favorite color: In general, British racing green. For a penis, black.
Favorite movie star: Living, Robert De Niro. Dead, Bette Davis.
Favorite music: All kinds, but I listen to classic rock most frequently.
Turn-ons: Witty banter, intelligent conversation and being seduced.
Turn-offs: Ignorance, hate and having to do all the work in bed.

 

The Interview

FLD: You’ve started doing new scenes–the first one I was aware of was at Cougars in Heat. I wasn’t actually sure it was a new scene until I saw you were also had one up at Naughty America. You took a few years off from performing, why the comeback now?

TT: With the explosion of the MILF/cougar market, it seemed silly not to jump in for a bit and capitalize on the trend.

FLD: Is shooting for a website basically the same as shooting for a movie? Are the production values comparable?

TT: The only real differences from a performer perspective is that for a web shoot there are A LOT more photos to pose for and the sex scenes tend to be shorter.

FLD: Since you’ve been gone (from performing), the MILF/cougar genre has sort of skyrocketed–when you were last acting, it hadn’t yet. Were you surprised by how much it’s taken off? I remember when Marilyn Chambers did her comeback, no one thought a 48-year-old woman would be a successful draw… now it doesn’t seem to be an issue.

TT: When I first started in porn, I was considered old by several directors… I was only 27 at the time. Age is something I had to battle for 11 years on camera and now, at 43 (almost 44) my age is being embraced by most directors and it feels good. I really never expected the genre to exist at all, but thanks to American Pie and Jennifer Coolidge as Stifler’s Mom, all of a sudden it’s cool to lust after older women. While I am not into younger men, I do appreciate the boon it has had on my career.

FLD: You were always very upfront about your age (I think you said you were proud of the way you looked and why wouldn’t you want people to know how old you were). Do you think with the rise of that MILF/cougar genre adult film actresses will be less hesitant to give reveal their age? Has the increased familiarity with actresses through the Internet–websites, social networking sites–changed the dynamic? I’ve always thought of… I guess porn enthusiasts is the right term… I’ve always thought of them as very loyal fans.

TT: Interestingly enough I know a few women who are now saying they are older than they actually are so they can shoot MILF scenes. Will women never tell the truth about their age? Either way a lie does a disservice to women around the globe. How are we supposed to know what 40 looks like if women from 35 to 50 are claiming to be 40? I am very lucky that my fans (or enthusiasts) have stuck with me over the past 17 years. Many of them have grown up with me. Now I’m garnering a whole new fan base of men who are under 25 and it’s so unexpected, but very welcome. I have had a web presence for over a decade now and it’s been an invaluable tool for me to connect with my fans, both old and new. I feel it’s important to allow fans access, so they can get their questions answered, find out about new things I’m doing etc.

FLD: There’s a question or two here, even if it doesn’t sound like it at the start: You’re in great shape–I wasn’t sure if that Cougars in Heat scene was new or five years old–do you have a strict workout regime or is it just genes? Also, you never (at least not from the look of it) went in for plastic surgery. Was there a lot of pressure to do it? If so, how’d you deal with it?

TT: I do yoga three times a week in my living room, but other than that, no dedicated work out time. My diet is total crap. I eat one meal a day, usually fast food. The best work out I get is shooting video camera… it’s like doing tai chi with a fifteen pound weight. As far as plastic surgery is concerned, I have not had anything invasive done. I do admit to loving my botox injections, but I am far too terrified of being cut open to go further than that.

FLD: What is your favorite and least favorite yoga position? I don’t know what my favorite is, but I think downward facing dog has to be the one I dread the most.

TT: My favorite yoga position is the fish, least favorite is the lotus… if only because I can only do a half lotus.

FLD: You’ve been directing. I remember reading an interview you gave about your 2002 movie, Going Down, and you were very excited about directing. Is it still exciting–are you going to keep doing it?

TT: I like directing even more now that I shoot my own camera. There’s nothing getting lost in translation that way. If it’s good, I take credit, if not I take blame. I’m definitely my own worst critic, but I do make a concerted effort to be technically better with each scene I shoot. Over the past 5 years, you can really see the difference experience makes. What’s better for a natural voyeur than being paid to film live sex?

FLD: When you started directing, how did you prepare for it? Was it enough to have just been in front of the camera? And what got you interested in directing to begin with?

TT: When I was talent, I rarely hung around with my costars, preferring instead to hang with the crew. I learned all their jobs during my tenure in front of the camera, asking questions watching intently etc. So when I first helmed my own shoot I was about 75% prepared for the gig. The other 25% is just knowing how to put out fires quickly and seamlessly.

FLD: Why and when did you start shooting your own video? I shot some student films in college and I think there was only one time I ever wasn’t behind the camera (I was forced into doing a cameo by the cast)… it felt like I didn’t have any control over what was going on. Is there a rush in the reverse, when you all of a sudden are in total control?

TT: As a control freak, myself, I completely understand what you mean here. I started shooting my own video with the first movie I directed for Mercenary Pictures, Iron Head #3 (the first 2 in the series were compilations). When I look back on that title, there was so much technically that I did wrong, but so much was good too. The directing I had done previously was from behind a monitor, and this was the first time I didn’t have a middle man between my thoughts and visuals and the talent in the scene. You can’t imagine how freeing that was, knowing I was getting what I wanted to see.

FLD: Candida Royalle started her production company–erotica for women–back in 1980. Many actresses have become directors and eventually formed their own production companies to varying degrees of success. Has the female influence on adult films changed the industry? It would seem with the Internet, which people used to claim had a democratizing effect, would be a perfect outlet for such a venture… but it doesn’t seem like it’s happened yet.

TT: I can only speak for myself, but I do think that the female influence has given female performers something to shoot for after they’re done with performing. As for changing the industry, if I may toot my own horn for a moment, with my series Handyman, I created a genre that I wasn’t seeing… male solo masturbation aimed directly at the female market. It’s interactive in that the men talk directly to the camera like it’s their woman. I’ve shot 7 of them so far for a total of approximately 70 men in the series and, if I do say so myself, the series is doing very well worldwide.

FLD: On Nina Hartley’s forum, a fan commented she was the reason he became attracted to older women–he was a fan from the 1990s. She didn’t seem to be aware she had that affect. I remember reading lots of comments in strap-on forums with fans making similar comments about you. You’re how I got interested in it as well. Female-on-male strap-on has gotten considerably more popular in the last five years or so, both as far as adult entertainment and general practice goes… though I’ve never seen a porn movie use the “pegging” term Dan Savage and his readers coined. But–as far as I know, and I think my research on the subject’s exhaustive–you’ve only done one scene not in a bi-movie. I guess the question–finally–is are you surprised that it’s caught on for straight males? Did you ever think, back when you were doing those bi-movies, eventually it’d cross over?

TT: NEVER! American men tend to be a lot less open about enjoying rectal stimulus. It has always seemed odd to me that more men don’t openly enjoy this, as the prostate is where the male orgasm begins, and stimulation of the prostate can give a man a much more intense orgasm, but homophobia runs rampant in the U.S., so there you go.
I hate to correct you, but I have done 2 strap-on scenes that weren’t bi. One for the Boss Bitches line and one in a feature movie directed by Thomas Payne (don’t recall the title)

FLD: You’ve had your yahoo group for years (10 years?). I know there’s a website with your name, but you don’t have anything to do with it. Did you ever think about starting a website? Is the fan interaction from the yahoo group better?

TT: I have toyed with the idea of a pay site for many years now, but it has always seemed presumptuous to require people to pay for being fans of mine. I much prefer the interaction I get from the yahoo group and my myspace page.

FLD: Last one… you agreed to this interview right away. If you’d looked at my blog, you’d have seen it’d been open for a day when I emailed you. Which makes you totally awesome and everything, but–if it’s not too personal or uncool–what’s it like getting interviewed by someone who not only adores your nude form but also asks questions involving his fantasies involving you pegging him?

TT: LOL! I am always up for an interview, regardless of where it’s posted and how many (or few) people see it. I do, however, prefer it when the person asking questions is a fan (or enthusiast), the questions seem to be much more intelligent. As far as your personal fantasies are concerned, I wouldn’t have participated in those types of scenarios if I didn’t think it was hot. I have always prided myself on never doing anything on camera that I didn’t already enjoy at home (which is why I never did anal). I believe the camera is the best lie detector there is and if you’re not into whatever you’re doing it SHOWS.

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About Tina Tyler

Tina Tyler has been an adult film actress, off and on, for the last seventeen years. She’s been directing adult films for the last eleven. As a director, her credits include the Handyman, Black Moon Risin and the Super Whores series (among others) for Mercenary Pictures. She’s recently returned to the other side of the camera, performing in Milf Magnet 3 for Mercenary Pictures and appearing in scenes posted at Naughty America and Cougars in Heat. She is awesome.

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Tina Tyler links

Naughty America

Cougars in Heat

Mercenary Pictures