Seattle: Sunset: August: Sixth

The light here is brighter. The colors more pungent and the white as blue as Kristin Poms' were in high school, something I always thought to be the result of a slightly freakish accident in the pioneering of Brite Smile technology. I have escaped the kitchen cum makeup room for a cement seat amongst some plants. Some ways down the street a drum line plays on invisibly. I cannot venture out to further investigate the noise, as I have given myself a thirty-foot leash from the venue doors.
A woman walks past sloppily with a tireless seeingeye dog. I wonder of it's self-awareness in terms of good Samaritanship. I hope she feeds him treats at nighttime; little dog treats shaped like dirty brown cupcakes.
Some man in the drumline yells in Swahili or some African language not offered in my high school ciriculum. The older woman in khakis and a white shirt shimmies about, uncoordinated but well intentioned. "Godeh! Godeh! Godeh! Everybody, move it! Animahl!" I am probably a bit off.
A bug crawls on my right wrist. A streetcar drives by. "18th and Lovejoy." How pleasant a destination, I think. A woman's large bottom walks past, perfectly timed with the bass drum I can only hear.

BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM

D.C.

Our taxi driver arrives in front of The Hotel Palomar at fifteen to seven. I sit inside drinking coffee with soy milk and eating the everything bagel I stole from work the day before. Free breakfast. Heather's afraid the cabs are going to be poached by other hotel patrons so we begin to load early, throwing our bags into a 1989 Cadillac station wagon. The cabbie later tells us it is reliable and easy to fix; his third one in his cabbie lifetime. The dense foliage blurring past us, wood sided suburban houses slipping through. In and out, in and out. Jam funk music circa some disco era plays on the stereo. The blue synthetic felt fabric that was once tightly adhered to the ceiling droops overhead. Meg moves it away with her hand a few times. Karen and I share a blue leather bench seat and listen to the cabbie talk about gas prices cutting into revenues. Although he never uses the term "cutting into revenues." He says something closer to "shredding into my money."
Dulles Airport is a mid-century take on "an airport of the future." The main terminal rises out from the surrounding flatness. Inside the ceiling swoops overhead, allowing you to imagine what it would be like to be under the belly of a UFO. We ride from the main terminal to Terminal D in a military-esque transporter as wide as a boat and one story high, riding on wheels the size of a semi-truck or some discarded military vehicle. I'm not usually a sucker for chatzky garbage, but when we pass the general store with 2008 election paraphernalia I can't help but want to buy the GOP Cookies and Democrat Snacks. I buy Danika a visually uninspiring "Barack Obama for President" pin, a Republican and a Democrat "Got President?" mug both decorated with a red, white, and blue version of their party mascot. I now feel vastly more connected to the democratic process of my country.

Models Digest

Yelling over the inane prattle at Hyde one night, I told my MIT graduate friend that my brain was atrophying like the legs of a paraplegic. My prescription came in the form of a subscription to The Economist, a worldly and well written weekly periodical discussing business, politics, the road to global explosion, etc. Having grown up on a diet of The Wall Street Journal and the Financial TImes, it fit well within the boundaries of my regular reading habits. I attribute my rebound into the intellectually capable crowd to a combination of my friend's generosity and my giving up on a six month Vegan bender in which my brain received little protein.
It would seem that the number of people in my field rarely share my enthusiasm. The reading regimen of my peers consists of US Weekly, Star, In Touch, Cosmopolitan (most often read by the Mormon's), and Elle. Generally Vanity Fair does little to offend my senses and when it is present I consider it a step up from the usual fodder. Call me completely self-involved but I care far more about my own life than that of some MTV reality star. I don't give a shit that Shiloh met the twins. The size of Mischa Barton's thighs should really be no concern of mine and I frankly don't understand why it rivets anyone else. Admittedly there have been a few times that flipping through one of these trash mags provided me with a few little gems: a picture of an Ed Hardy clad male model I work with following behind Britney Spears titled "Is Dante the new K-Fed?", a photograph of another male model with Paula Abdul (easily twenty years his senior), and I struggle to come up with a memorable third.

Seat 7F Virgin America STAC to LAX

The red paint encasing the engine to my right glides past the blue. Seattle beneath me. I watch as it dips further to the side, now contrasting against water and green. A beautiful city although a bit sad. After pulling out my camera to document the view I feel sick; the trail mix swishing around with the latte I had earlier from the chocolate shop. These trips never fail to sap my energy and ravage my otherwise decent complexion. Even though the hotel was user friendly and aside from the first morning (a 4 am wake up for a 6 am flight), the schedule wasn't necessarily grueling. Not grueling like working in a Chinese computer recycling camp or a diamond mine in Ghana, and probably not as grueling as my high school tenure at Robek's Juice. I suppose I'm tired from the three days of community complaining about this job and all it entails. "This shit doesn't pay enough" followed by "fucking __________ ." The food sucks, the money's shit, the traveling blows, the fittings are long, and the rehearsal is tedious. We are a bunch of insolent children in our mid-twenties.
The woman the seat in front of me is watching CNN. Barack Obama greets hundreds of Berliners: shaking hands and smiling. "Obama is widely popular in Europe" the tag line reads. I try to imagine a foreign political figure being greeted in such a way stateside; that we Americans would put aside our self-centeredness long enough to care about the politicians of another country. The Germans look at him with the kind of hope only generated by those of us who will eventually be able to punch is name in a ballot card.
Her son, this woman's son, has Alvin and the Chipmunks on. I never realized how ridiculous the basis of the cartoon's storyline was until seeing Jason Lee pick up a stack of waffles leaking maple syrup from under a rug and glower at three seven-inch tall squirrels. I would watch my own TV but I am stuck in the window seat with an overweight woman plugging up my exit like cork in a bottle of Merlot. The boy's headphones don't work and the mother tells him to be patient, saying she will get the flight attendant for help (which she never does). She continues to watch CNN. I can't help but think that my mother would have switched seats with me so that I could watch the movie.

United Flight 324

Every now and again, or rather, again and again and again and again I am subjected to the rather tiresome exercise otherwise known as flying.  The chore has become increasingly tedious as the mode of transportation has gone from a fairly selective to utterly pedestrian.  I am, in short, aboard the equivalent of a public bus 40 thousand miles above the ground.  The democracy of aviary travel is ruining my life.

This flight, in particular, has become particularly noteworthy.  Maybe it's due to the fact I have woken up at 4 am, 1:30 am, and 3:30 am the past three days.  Maybe I'm being oversensitive.  But maybe, just maybe, this really is the flight from hell.

What I Am Currently Disliking (Strongly) About This Flight:

1.  There are two hours remaining.  

2.  Over the course of the last three hours I have been forced to listen to the child sitting next to me ask such questions as:

"Mom, why is she sitting here?" 

"Are we even moving?"

"Is my water going to be cold?"

And conversations similar to:

"How much longer do we have?"

"An hour and fifty minutes."

"An hour?"

"An hour and fifty minutes."

"An hour?"

"A little less than two hours.

"Less or more?"

"Less."

The highlight being simultaneously entertaining and depressing:

"Are we going down?"

"Yes."

"Is someone going to shoot us?"

"No."

3.  I have had only two three ounce servings of water served to me since I boarded.  I am far too cheap to shell out $4 for a bottle of Desani from the airport and I forgot my empty 1.5 liter Trader Joe's water bottle to fill up with tap water.  The ravages of dehydration are setting in and I am beginning to feel my lips recede past my gums like a Victorian corpse in a wooden box.  

4.  The Taiwanese man that I switched seats with when asked by his wife, "You switch with my husband, okay?" has left his seat reclined into my lap the entire trip.  The person in front of him (aka the person who I should have in front of me per my United Airlines e-ticket) has kindly left his erect.  That's the last time I do you a favor, buddy.

5.  I am starving.  And no, Airlines, I don't want your shitty hot meals.  The last time I got a treat like that, a female flight attendant threw a cheese burger wrapped in plastic, burger sweat fogging up the expanding container.  What I would like is a granola bar, a bag of nuts, something that I don't have to pay for whilst in the middle of a five hour hunger pang.

6.  Rest assured, I am not naive enough to believe such fare will be provided for me.  Before boarding I bought my go-to trail mix which is now making me painfully gaseous.  I attribute this to the raisins.

7.  Our movie options were Horton Hears a Hoo and Gold Rush.  Enough said.

8.  I am close enough to the restroom to experience what I believe to be people passing gas en route.  I suppose the freedom I feel in having one foot of empty space to the right of me is only beneficial when said air is not full of methane gas.

9.  The state of the singular bathroom servicing sixty coach passengers was already in poor form one hour into flight.  The crevices in the floor corners collected piss like a rain gutter in Lilliput.

10.  While attempting to nap, a child stepped on my sandal-clad foot while running down the isle.  I am lucky he was young and light, not one of those super-sized children I read about in Time.  Children are quite fat these days.  Not to continue the barrage on the mother/son team next to me, but I was a bit befuddled when the mother tried to up sell Coke to her child and questioned his only wanting water.  He ended up with cranberry juice which I thought to be a sugary compromise.

Bodies of Water

Another Day in the Valley

I hate my apartment.  I can't live in it, can't exist in it.  I can't walk in there and take off my sandals in the hallway anymore. I can't stand to look across the 17 foot gap of air and concrete separating me from the 30 unit stucco piece of shit adjacent to my 30 unit stucco piece of shit.  And if I have one more dinner consisting of 1/4 cup of roasted garlic hummus, half an avocado, and some odd ounces of Trader Joe's precooked rotisserie chicken, I will kill.   I. Can't. Take. It. Anymore.

So when I have a day off from subjecting myself to castings and auditions, I drive the 25 miles to my mother's house in Woodland Hills.  My Audi takes Premium gasoline.  So my premium trip to the outskirts of Los Angeles costs me roughly $4.37 each way.  Nonetheless, at this point in my apartment-existing life the benefit of a poolside coffee and web surfing bender is priceless.

12:08 pm

I leave a casting for a cheesy LA t-shirt company.  Will I get it?  Who the hell knows.  I get on the 10 West to the 110 North to the 101 West.  Traffic.  This city is ridiculous.  Traffic breaks up after people figure out how to merge.  I estimate that the process generally takes 2 miles.  It should take a matter of seconds, but the synapses of the people coming from Interstate 5 flicker on and off like the light bulbs in a trailer home.  Traffic backs up again around Laurel Canyon.  An accident.  I drive...and drive...and drive.  

1:01 pm

Arrival to Mom's gated house.  I'm starving.  Her refrigerator is predictable, as is my diet.  I help myself to an iced latte with almond milk.  Over the course of my stay this afternoon I will have consumed 3 double shot iced lattes.  That is a lot.  By the end of the day the Costco-sized bucket of Sabra hummus is almost out.  I eat hummus daily.  Hummus with crackers, hummus with carrots, hummus with pita, hummus on a spoon, hummus on chicken.  I am turning into a chickpea.

1:35 pm

I frantically scour the Internet for reasons to live and things to do with my life.  Currently I am looking for apartments with my boyfriend which means I have an unhealthy addiction to Craigslist.

3:57 pm

Tyler sends me his friend's user name and password for Westsiderentals.  The layout gives me a headache and the apartments similar to the one I am running away from.  I anticipate mild usage of the website.

5:02 pm

I realize part of the reason I travel to this godforsaken part of the San Fernando Valley is the cheap dry cleaner I've been using since high school.  I take in the sweater my mom stole from her ex-husband (my ex-step dad) and that I have now stolen from her.  I thought I would treat the fuzzy wool thing to a chemical bath.  My boyfriend is as cheap as I am so I have demanded that he give me his dry cleaning: 1 black Gucci dress shirt, 1 pair black Helmut Lang dress pants, 1 black Helmut Lang knit sweater.  When they tell me that they're sorry they've lost the 2 dresses I left with them last time I don't get mad because I can't remember what the hell I left there.  My boyfriend will be mad if they lose his.  I hope they don't.

5:19 pm

I drive to the cheapest gas station on Fallbrook to fill up.  I pull in as a man in a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee tries to attempt the same from the other side.  He gets mad.  He yells.  I tell him I will just back my car up.  I do.  He kisses my ass.  What an idiot.

5:27 pm

My mom left her reading glasses at the vet.  I'm picking them up because she works 15 hour days plus commuting time to downtown.  She will come home later and have 3 glasses of wine, 2 chocolate chip cookie "dunkers", and frozen yogurt topped with strawberries and mangoes.  This is her dinner.  This is her life.

6:30 pm

Dinner.  Tuna.  I open the can and squeeze out the juice.  It sprays all over my jumper and gets on my feet.  At one point in my life I considered myself to be a gourmet.  This is one of my lower moments that presents itself with greater regularity.

6:45 pm

My car's filthy.  I wash it.  

6:59 pm

Mom comes home.  I go buy the aforementioned frozen yogurt.

7:11 pm

I come home to my mom spying on the neighbors through the guest bedroom window.  The lights are off so they can't see her.  She mumbles something about them removing the stucco under the eaves of their roof and calls them something along the lines of "fucking weirdos."  She crawls off the bed and I hand her the white paper bag with her frozen yogurt inside.

7:48 pm

We sit outside and I show my mom all of the apartments I've been looking at on Craigslist.  I have my third and final latte.  My head hurts.