Wednesday, July 31, 2002

I have determined that my job is bad for my physical well being and therefore bad for my mental well being. But how could a desk job be bad for your physical well being, you may ask. And I may tell you. Right now.

I sit at a desk all day. Eight and a half hours per day. Five days per week. This increases the size of my ass – sit on it all day and it grows. Plus, the lack of physical activity allows whatever I had for lunch, be it tofu stir-fry or a cheeseburger, to go directly to my ass and take up permanent residence. Add to this the fact that I am sedentary for eight and a half of the prime hours of the day. This means that no matter how many leg lifts and butt clenches and donkey kicks I do when I get home, my ass still grows while I am at work. It’s a vicious cycle that only leads to non-well being as I sit on my every growing ass that makes me feel bad about my physical appearance which makes me sit on my ass feeling sorry for myself which makes my ass grow and so on and so forth.

You thought I was going to talk about carpal tunnel, didn’t you?

Remaining sedentary for eight and a half hours per day also allows any muscles you may have exercised the night before to cramp up to the point where stretching no longer helps. So I end up walking around like a gimp, which inspires me to sit on my ass and avoid the pain, which makes my ass grow…you get the point.

The problem is, there are very few things that I can think of that a person could do for eight and a half hours a day without risk of injury. Standing all day can be hard on your back, legs and feet. Driving all day can be hard on your back, legs and feet. Lifting things all day can be hard on your back, legs, arms, feet and hands. Typing all day can be hard on your fingers, wrists and hands. I think you see where I am going with this. People need variety in their lives, in their jobs, in their day to day activities. This is why I love acting. No day on set is like any other day on set. You walk around, you sit, you run, you do silly things like dunking your foot in an aquarium or having a water fight, you have lunch, you go to costume fittings and have your hair and make up done. You are constantly doing different things and you seldom do one thing for so long that it will cause damage. Granted, some of the things you do could kill you instantly, but that’s usually just if you’re a stunt person or working on a non-union film (I love indie films, I am non-union, though I do know that if The Crow had been a union film, Brandon Lee would still be with us. I’m just sayin’). But it is interesting and varied and ultimately better for your physical and mental well being to be an actor.

Unless y’all are better actors than I, in which case lemme tell you how hard the industry is and how great it is to have job security at a large computer corporation.

Tee hee.
Things That Make Me Happy, Make the World a Better Place, or at Least Make Me Smile on a Pretty Consistent Basis


The Gilmore Girls
Tofutti Cuties
Pay day
My cat
Cicadas
My apartment
Instant messaging with my Jersey girl friend
Having dinner with my surgeon friend
Long weekends
Sleeping in
Playing my guitar and singing
Indoor plumbing
Long walks at night
Moby
Daydreaming or talking to myself (and yes, I answer)
Wallace and Gromit
Pencil puzzles
A fire in the fire place in the wintertime while the lights on the Christmas tree bathe the room in a soft glow
Ducks
Pickles
The Simpsons
Knowing that people read this drivel and like it
Wearing green
Rain
Visiting with my mom
Thai food
A good, silly dance with my favorite silly dance partner
Character development and rehearsals for a performance
Amelie
Monkeys
Fresh fruit
Good thumping techno music
Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World”
Small children
The sound of a man's wingtips on gravel
Old couples in love
Thanksgiving with my family

And, of course, a whole slew of other things that would turn this blog into an epic novella. If such a thing exists. Can a novella be epic? Can a list be classified as a novella? Can a list be epic? I’m guessing “no” for each of those, but I can dream, right? That’s on my list already isn’t it? Dreaming? If not, it should be.

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

So I was right – it was the English Groove. This charming film called Human Traffic made up for the fact that Groove has a better soundtrack by having a better plot and such. Why is it that the English and Australians and Scots and so forth make films with similar motifs to American films but make them so much better? Is the American film industry too concerned with big box office numbers to care about putting out a quality product? I don’t know enough about any of the politics involved in any of the aforementioned film industries to have a theory on this and considering I would like to one day be considered a part of the American film industry (or the English/Scottish/Irish/Australian/etc film industry), I should probably refrain from saying anything too derogatory on the subject. What I do know is that Priscilla kicked Too Wong Foo’s ass and Human Traffic had a better plot than Groove. And just for the record, out of those four films, the only one I really didn’t enjoy was Too Wong Foo. But that’s me.

But anyway, Human Traffic. It is fun and colorful and witty and well shot and decently acted and I dunno. It’s just fun. I would recommend it. And, it has one of the most wonderful ending couple of lines, which I would like to quote here if you would be so kind as to let me:

Girl: “Darling, it’s only going to get better. Now kiss me.”
Boy: “I am going to fuck your brains out.”
Boy kisses girl.

You just don’t find romance like that anymore. And no, I’m not being facetious. I really dug this film. So go check it out. I’m guessing you’ll like it, too.
I love people who ask me to not forget them once I’m famous. They crack me up. Because first of all, they seem to be functioning under the assumption that I will become famous, yet very few of them have actually seen me perform. But also because they are functioning under the assumption that fame would change me into some hideous beast of a person.

I can understand how someone like Moby would not remember everyone he meets in a day because he meets hundreds of people, particularly when he is out on tour. If I ever achieve that level of fame, try as I might, I may not remember everyone I give an autograph to, about which I am sure I will feel small pangs of guilt. Hell, there are times at big dance weekends and such when I don’t remember the names of everyone I danced with and I do feel bad about that. At the very least, though, I usually remember their faces and I’ve gotten pretty good at making an ass out of myself and asking someone’s name in retrospect. But as far as people who I see on a regular basis and have conversations with, I will not forget those people. Probably ever. Unless I get Alzheimer’s in which case I think I should be allowed some slack.

I remember my friend Kristen and I used to fight in pre-school over who was going to marry Peter. Peter went to my high school and I don’t think he recognized me at that point, but I still remembered him. I remember the girls I used to eat lunch with at school. I remember the boys who tormented me. I remember my teachers. I remember my honorary brother and sister and their whole families. I remember the guy I went on my first date with and I remember the guy I went on my most recent date with and all of the guys I had crushes on in between. I don’t forget people. I may not stay in touch forever, but I don’t forget people. And if Peter or Kristen or the guy who used to call me “Gato Rosado” were to walk up to me on the street when I become famous, I would say hi, ask how they were doing, and go on about my normal life. I’m not the snubbing kind of person.

So yeah, I won’t forget you when I’m famous. And I’m not going to stop dancing, either.

Monday, July 29, 2002

Melted gum is not what one would call "pleasant."
I certainly seem to have sex on the brain recently, don’t I? Whenever I think about sex from an academic standpoint, I always remember that episode of My So-Called Life wherein Jordan is pressuring Angela to have sex and they end up breaking up because she doesn’t want to. At the beginning of the episode, Angela is walking through the halls at school and thinking something along the lines of, “Sex is something that people just have. Mrs. [something] has sex. Mr. [something] has sex. They could have sex together. Ew.” I know, I probably horribly misquoted that, but you get the point. It was odd to her that sex was something that people just had.

It sometimes occurs to me that it is a little bit odd that people just have sex and how many presumptions we have about other people’s sex lives. “Those two have been dating for a week and a half, so they must be having sex.” “My parents never had sex.” That kind of thing. Relationships, too. One day you don’t have one, the next day you do. A few weeks later, you don’t. Or I don’t, but then I’m the odd one, remember?

I don’t know. I’ll try to stop talking about sex so much. There are other, more interesting things going on in the world. Or are there? Have you ever noticed that pretty much no matter what you are doing or talking about, someone can/will/does say, “You could be doing something more interesting,” or “Well, there are worse things that you could be doing.” What is the absolute worst thing a person could be doing? And I’m not talking murder or anything. I’m talking about cleaning port-a-potties. In the rain. When it’s twelve degrees outside. And it’s dark. And you don’t have gloves. Or nose plugs. Is there something worse than that? I’m sure there is, I just don’t know what off the top of my head. A scummy Scottish man peeling and eating his own skin? Thank you for that one, Mike Meyers. I had the heebie jeebies the rest of the night because of that.

Anyway, getting back on the topic of sex, I’m going to try not to talk about it so much for a while. Meaning this blog is now over.
Is it wrong that I don’t use the word “sexy” to describe things? More things, any things. I don’t use the word “sexy” to describe things very much. Which, of course, has made me think about why not?

To me, to describe something as “sexy” implies that it either inspires the person using the word to want to have sex with said object (this definition usually works best when describing another person, but hey, if you find sheep sexy and that’s your thing, more power to you) or that said object brings up feelings akin to those present during/immediately after having sex. In the case of the first definition, there are very few people/things that make me think, “Oh yeah, you and me, let’s go. Right now.” There have been times (usually when large amounts of alcohol have been consumed) that I find a particular person sexy, but that’s just the perpetually single woman in her mid-twenties side of me acting up. I don’t act on those impulses and they go away. There are very few people who I look at and consistently want to have sex with. I’m thinking this is one of those tidbits that should either go on my Mutant Resume, or that I should keep to myself.

And in the case of the second definition, there are very few things that feel like having sex other than sex (in any one of its various forms, or multiple forms if you’re in to that kind of thing). For example, I love hummus. Trader Joe’s Roasted Garlic Hummus is one of the great pleasures in my life right now. But to say that it is sexy hummus kind of taints both the idea of sex and the idea of hummus. You will not hear me refer to my hummus as sexy, ‘cuz let’s face it, hummus is not sexy. Now, hot man naked in my apartment covered in hummus may very well be sexy, but hummus by itself is not. Sorry, hummus.

So yeah, I seldom describe things or people as being sexy and I’m wondering if this is a bad thing. Is it that I’m not thinking about sex enough? That I’m not in close enough touch with my own desires and fantasies that I don’t know what is sexy to me? I don’t know. But maybe I should start paying attention so I can find more things that can appropriately be described as sexy. It would be, in my opinion, sad to live an entirely un-sexy life.
So it was a weekend of movies for me. I was a bum. I hardly left my house. Except to go to dinner with my surgeon friend and to go to a dual bachelorette party. I love visiting my surgeon friend when she has time to go out. I met her through swing dancing and have seen her at parties and stuff and it is fascinating to me to listen to her talk about her job. It is this whole other life of hers that is completely foreign to me. I feel so lucky to have a friend who is actually out there doing things to make the world a better place. I can’t imagine being a doctor, though. If I had one patient die on me, I think I would have to quit. I couldn’t take that.

But anyway, I watched a bunch of movies. Amelie on DVD. Such a charming film. I’m so glad I own it. I wouldn’t call it earth shattering or revolutionary or anything, but it makes me happy. And if I watch it enough times, maybe I’ll learn a few choice phrases in French. “Fifteen.” Tee hee.

I rented and watched Waking Life and I’m not sure what to say about it. The first half of the movie had me completely confused and then I thought I was getting a hold of it, but the end left me baffled. I think I was expecting more of a narrative story as opposed to the presentation of one theory after the next, so I should probably watch it again when I’m feeling more artsy-fartsy and I’ll get something new out of it. But the animation was astounding. There were times when it looked like they had shot the whole film live-action and then animated on top of the existing film and then other times when it was so stylized that they didn’t look like people at all. I was very impressed. Though using a mixture of “known” actors and “unknown” actors threw me off a little bit. I spent one entire scene trying to figure out who this one guy was because I knew I recognized him but couldn’t quite place him and it was a scene that could have used some more rapt attention on my part. So now that I know it is the guy from Boston Public, I should watch that scene again. So at this point, I don’t know if I can say I liked Waking Life or not, but I am glad that I saw it. I need to see it again. Maybe I’m getting dumb in my old age and I can’t grasp these new-fangled concepts the kids are puttin’ out in pictures anymore. Gimmie Charlie Chaplin fighting the Communists, gosh darn it!

Kidding.

And then it was really hot in my apartment, so I went to see Goldmember. Not my first choice for what to see, but seeing as I had already seen two of the four movies at the theater by my house and the other one I hadn’t seen was that new Harrison Ford war movie and I didn’t want to sit through two painful hours of Harrison Ford doing a bad Russian accent, I saw Goldmember. I laffed. I think that “laugh” should be changed to “laff” in most occasions. At least when it is being used to describe laughing at toilet humor or things that are blatantly stupid and trying to get you to laugh, but are still smart enough to make you laugh despite yourself. Like Austin Powers. But it was fun and bright and colorful and had Brittany Spears’ head exploding, so I think it is safe to say that fun was had by all. Fun and laffter.

And since I wasn’t feeling like quite enough of a couch potato, I then returned to my sweltering apartment and watched L.I.E.. I know, you’re probably asking, “What the hell is that?” just like I did when I saw it on the shelf at the video store. It was good. Very well done. Well acted. Makes you think about things like relationships and sexuality and for what segment of the population is life actually like this and so on and so forth. The ending was a smidge unsatisfying, but it is another one I am glad (in retrospect) that I have seen. That, and I get this strange pleasure from watching movies that most people haven’t seen or heard of. Makes me feel cultured. And, if I don’t watch their obscure movies, they won’t watch mine, so it’s a weird selfish cross-promotional thing.

So all in all, a successful trip to the video store. I do have one more at home that I rented that I need to watch still and I’ll let you know how it is. If its bad, it could, conceivably, blow the whole trip to the video store, but I’m thinking I’ll probably enjoy it anyway. I’m anticipating the British Groove, but I could be wrong. Actually, I think I am wrong, because now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think it is a British film. I think the box said it takes place in LA. Oh well. I’m still looking forward to watching it, so there.
I went for a jog this morning.

*GASP*

Yes, I went for a jog this morning. And no, that is not the sound of hell freezing over, that’s me trying to catch my breath again.

Kidding. Though it did take me an unusually long time to cool down. When I exercise, my face gets really red. Always has, always will. No matter how good of a shape I am in, my face gets really red when I exercise. This morning, after my twelve minute mile run (I know, a twelve minute mile is pretty sad, but when you consider the fact that this is the first time I have run since gym class in high school, I think I did okay), I took a shower, got dressed for work, and my face did not return to its normal pasty-whiteness until I got to my office. That’s an unusually long cool-down time and I wonder if I should be concerned. Or I wonder if I should chalk it up to the fact that it’s hard to cool down in an apartment that is six million degrees Fahrenheit.

Regardless of cool-down time and the unpleasantness of glistening with sweat (if men sweat and women glow, I was glowing so bright this morning I was mistaken for the morning star) immediately upon getting out of the shower, it was fun to go for a run this morning. Made me feel like I am actually doing something for myself.

I wonder if that has been my problem all along. I went shopping this weekend prior to going to a dual bachelorette party (which I’ll tell you more about later) and I determined that I really don’t like shopping. It’s depressing. My hips are too big for all of the fun clothes so I feel like a beached whale. Walking around in my everyday life, I am okay with what I look like, but when it comes time to shop…hello, Lipodoc? Yeah, just suck all that shit out of there and leave me with the baggy skin. That will tighten up later. But every time I say I am going to finally do something about it so that my clothes will feel better and I won’t have those, “Wow, what a cow” moments in the morning anymore, I never follow through with it. But now, I have already changed my diet. My dinner last night was fresh veggies, pita, and hummus. It was wonderful, low in fat, low in cholesterol, low in carbs, yet still satisfying. And then to get up and jog this morning – not a marathon, mind you, but enough to get the blood pumping – it felt really good. So maybe that’s where I’ve been failing before – I try to take on too much all at once. Baby steps, right? Have to make changes gradually or they won’t stick. Though I have no guarantees that this will stick, either, but it’s a new theory that is worth investigating.

And if you see me out running and I look funny or you think to yourself, “That woman should NOT be wearing those pants,” please keep your comments to yourself and try not to laugh at me. I’m doing the best I can with what I have. I’ll get better one day, I swear.

Friday, July 26, 2002

Okay, here’s a question for you. My girl friends and I were talking about this because we needed something to talk about while we were stuck in a car with each other for twelve hours and you can only make fun of pork billboards for so long.

Men spank the monkey. They stroke the bishop. They say hi to their one-eyed trouser snakes. They jerk off. They whack off. They wank. They have a million and one euphemisms for masturbation. Can you name one euphemism for female masturbation? Is “jerk off” an appropriate term for a woman to use? She doesn’t really have a one-eyed trouser snake. So why is it that there isn’t a good euphemism for female masturbation?

I have a couple of theories.

The first is that not a lot of women want to admit that they masturbate. I know a few who even claim they never have. That’s fine. Whatever. Point being, for some reason it is still not totally socially acceptable for women to masturbate. Women don’t brag about masturbating the way that men do and it is not automatically assumed when you meet a single woman that she masturbates thirty times a day to keep from going crazy, you know? So since women don’t talk or brag about it, the need for euphemisms has not come up.

My other theory has to do with slang terms for female anatomy. There really aren’t any nice ones. You either get the ultra-watered-down ones like “down there” or you get some really nasty ones that then become referred to as “the c-word” and so forth because people just don’t want to say those words. In a lot of instances, even the proper terminology for female anatomy is considered an icky word that people don’t want to say. Why is this? The female form has long been considered more aesthetically pleasing than the male form, yet the male form has more fun words to describe it? Is it to even the playing field? Since we may or may not like looking at penises, we have to come up with other fun words for them to keep them from feeling ugly? And since the female form is so aesthetically pleasing, we have to use derogatory words to describe it to keep it from getting to large of an ego? Please. But seriously, what fun is it to say you were “petting the pussy” when that has such an icky connotation? Perhaps if we had more fun terms to work with, we could come up with better euphemisms. Like “the most fun place on the planet.” “Yeah, I was hanging out in the most fun place on the planet when you called, which is why I didn’t answer.” That’s a little better.

I don’t know. Its one of those things we were talking about as we were hurtling through space at about 80 miles per hour (or 65 miles per hour if you happen to be a cop) and its something that I think deserves some thought. If someone comes up with a good phrase to describe female masturbation, I’d like to hear it. Until then, I may just use “playing in my lunch box.” When I need such a phrase, that is. Yeah. Um. You know what I mean. Nevermind. I’m stopping now.
Okay, here is a link to the picture of Moby and I. I can't look at this picture and not smile. I'm so glad it turned out okay. So thank you to my friend who took the picture and to Walgreens for developing it for me.

Hi, my name is Kitty and I'm a dork.

Thursday, July 25, 2002

One more quick tidbit before I go home.

The toilet here in our office is rapidly becoming the bane of my existence. It is one of those low water usage toilets which essentially means you have to flush it seventeen times to get anything to go down. I'm not trying to flush parakeets or large amounts of shreded files that we are trying to hide from the feds or anything. I'm trying to flush toilet paper. That's it. Just toilet paper. And it won't go down. So in their efforts to invent a toilet that works more efficiently and saves water, the engineers of this marvel of the technological age have succeeded only in inventing a toilet that doesn't do its job. We are honestly using more water flushing the damn thing thirty-seven times to get a smidge of toilet paper to go down it than we would be using if we had a normal high water pressure toilet. You know the ones that sound like they are going to blast a hole in the wall when you flush them? Yeah, gimmie one of those anyday.

Sorry. I have this thing about toilets and their functionality or lack thereof and the one we have in the office here is particularly bad.
So I was just on hold with Walgreens and I heard Sarah McLaughlin as done by Muzak artists. There’s an oxymoron for you – “Muzak artists.” Who makes Muzak anyway? What person in their right mind takes a song like “Possession” and thinks to him/herself, “Isn’t this a great song? Let’s take out the interesting drums and replace them with a drum machine, remove the guitar and piano and put in a synthesizer, and instead of her sexy, sultry voice, let’s put in a stale, staccato saxophone. We’ll make millions!”

Of the two things that can happen to a song that becomes popular – it is turned into Muzak or has dance remixes made of it – I much prefer the dance remixes. I have to admit, the other day I was listening to the radio and “Silence” came on and I barely recognized it because it wasn’t the Oakenfold remix. Anyway. I’m rambling now.

On the up side, however, when someone did pick up the phone at Walgreens, I was informed that my pictures have come back. So hopefully I’ll be able to share with you tomorrow the wonder that is the photograph of me and Moby. I hope it turned out and I hope my face isn’t beet red. Though I’m guessing my hair still looks like shit in it because it had been raining and whatnot. Oh well. I’ll post it somewhere for you all to look at anyway. Thank you, Walgreens!
So I went grocery shopping last night with money that I don’t have before I went over to my dad’s house. Why am I spending money I don’t have? Because I need to eat. I can postpone buying new shoes to replace the ones I have that are falling apart. I can postpone buying new sheets to replace the ones my cat has ripped holes in during his bouts of kitten-ness. I cannot postpone eating. And I will be getting money soon (hopefully) so it’s all good. And that’s what credit cards are for anyway, right?

I’m kidding! Credit card debt is a horrible thing and in a lot of ways I believe that credit cards are products of Satan because they make you think you can buy things you don’t have money for and then you end up owing the evil evil credit card companies tons of money for the rest of your life and you can’t buy a house or a car or a swing set for your kids because every day when you go to work, you are working to pay off the debt that the credit card companies let you rack up like it was nothing. Needless to say, I used my debit card to buy groceries.

But anyway, the kind of funny part was that my dad and stepmom wanted to see what I bought. I thought it was kind of cute that they wanted to see what a soy hot dog looked like and my Tofutti Cuties. I think they were also shocked to see that my food looks a lot like their food, just a different brand name on the package. And I think they are coming around to the idea of me being on a vegan diet anyway. They really listened and were happy when I told them that I really do feel good doing this. So perhaps progress is being made. Yay progress!

I didn’t tell them, though, that I bought a vegan facial cleanser with tea tree oil in it. If I go for the whole lifestyle at some point…I dunno. They might not care, but I think I should work them gradually into the change, just like I am doing with myself. And I have to say, although it is not the best smelling cleanser in the world, my skin feels fabulous this morning and has a really healthy glow to it. Maybe there’s something to this whole vegan lifestyle thing
I think it is now official. I am the world’s worst person. I am selfish. I know what I want and I will not encourage or pursue things that I don’t want. Even if someone gets hurt in the process.

Does it help that I feel remorse for hurt feelings? Does it help that I know I’m an a-typical human being? Or is this one of those instances wherein I need to forgive myself for my own humanity? I’m not sure. But I feel like a horrible person today and have since yesterday evening. I know it will go away, but I don’t know. I wanted to say I’m sorry or something. For whatever it’s worth, I know it’s my bad.

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

It is fantastically easy to be honest. It is a pain in the ass to tell and then maintain a lie. Given this information, why would anyone lie?

I'm just sayin' is all.
Speaking of being creative, I had a kind of weird moment last night.

My little song that I’m very much in love with? Yeah, there’s a link to it a couple of entries down. Anyway, I have a copy of it on CD, too, so I can listen to it at home. So last night as I’m folding and putting away my laundry (how rockstar of me, huh?), I kept listening to my song over and over and over again and singing along with it and playing with possible back up vocal harmonies and such. I almost went so far as to pull out my clarinet and see how that sounded with it, but I think all of my reeds are cracked. Which they should be. I haven’t played the thing in years. I think the last time I played my clarinet was after I heard Lee Press On and the Nails’ version of “Sing, Sing, Sing” wherein the clarinet player works the “Imperial March” from Star Wars into his solo in the middle of the song. So I, of course, went home and pulled out my clarinet to see if I could figure out how to play the “Imperial March” on it. Which I can. Or could. It’s been a while, so I’m probably rusty.

But anyway, I had a “musician” moment. I do not/would not classify myself as a musician. Yeah, I can play a bunch of instruments and carry a tune and I’ve written some stuff, but I’m not one of those people who knew at age five that I would spend the rest of my life making music. I’m an actor. With limited musical talents. But it occurred to me when I was debating pulling out my clarinet that this is what it would feel like to be a musician. Write something and record the bare bones of it. Then play with it until it is fleshed out to the point that you want it to be. If you don’t like something, you don’t have to keep it. You can try a million different instruments, a million different sounds, a million different voices until you find the ones that make your song complete. Then you record that and try to sell it. I don’t know that I’d be good at the selling part, but the rest of it could be fun. It made me wish I had more instruments, the knowledge to play those instruments, and recording equipment so I could play more. I have no percussion stuff, I have no cello, I have no piano, no bass, no flute. I have two guitars, a clarinet and a didjeridoo (and no idea how to spell didjeridoo, apparently). Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t record some of my experiments. But I’m excited to be making music, as slow as the process is. It is a lot of fun and very rewarding.

So then I catch and episode of American Idol and promptly learn that I am not a superstar. I’m an actor. With limited musical talents.
I danced on the news this morning. Kind of a nice way to start the day. Almost made me think I should get up early every morning and exercise. Though, I’m really not a morning person so that thought will probably only last until my alarm goes off at 5:00 tomorrow morning.

But there were these four little boys and their mom there watching us dance. So while the camera was off, a friend of mine and I went and asked the boys if they wanted to learn to dance. The five-year-old and the eight-year-old (I’m guessing at his age – stupid me didn’t ask how old he was) came out and we taught them a basic swing dance step. It made my morning.

Start ‘em young, that’s what I say. Start them dancing and singing and drawing and expressing themselves creatively at a young age so they will have that with them their entire lives. I’m not saying push your kids to be superstars by age 10, but give them the option to do creative things if they so choose. Dendritic growth is one of the most precious gifts we can give each other as human beings and creative endeavors encourage dendritic growth. So there. Be creative.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

I have that “Schpedoinkel Day” song stuck in my head again because it really is beautiful outside. Bright blue sky, nice breeze. Okay, gusting winds, but if it wasn’t windy, it wouldn’t be Chicago, right? And seriously, it’s sexy to have wind-tousled hair, right?

Anyway, it’s gorgeous outside.
Okay, enough feeling glum. Here's a pretty/happy thought for today:

As I was driving into work this morning, U2's "Beautiful Day" was playing on the radio. It was kind of gray and drab, but there was a nice cool breeze that was quite welcome after the sweltering weekend we had. Anyway, I was stopped at a stoplight and just as the chorus of the song hit, the clouds parted and sunlight hit my car. It somehow seemed so apropos and it put a smile on my face.

So there. Not everything is bad. There is still a lot of beauty out there to be seen if you just take a moment to notice it.
When I set goals for myself, I try to set reasonably realistic goals in the hopes that I one day might be able to achieve them. I’m not setting a goal for myself of becoming a multi-millionaire, I’m setting the goal for myself that I want to be able to make enough money off of acting work to live. I’m not looking for Prince Charming, I’m looking for a real man with his own life who will fight with me every now and again, but from whom I can also learn things and who I can teach things to and share things with, you know? The only problem with setting realistic goals, though, is that I have this tendency to then achieve them and then I don’t know what to do. I’ve achieved a lot of my goals already:

I went to Australia by myself.
I fell in love.
I graduated college in three years with a 3.9 GPA.
I recorded one CD.
I’ve taught people how to dance.
I’ve made beautiful clothes for myself and others.
I made the switch to a vegan diet.
I got my own apartment.
I starred in an independent feature film.
I was part of two professional dance troupes.
I met Moby.
I saw my face on the big screen.

And so on and so forth. And by themselves, these things have all been fantastically rewarding. To achieve something that you have put your heart and soul into for any length of time is one of the greatest feelings in the world. But its like Inigo Montoya said, “I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.” There is always that feeling of “now what?” once something is over.

When you’re working on a play, strike helps get rid of the “now whats.” After throwing a big fundraiser, there are a bunch of financial things that need to be straightened out that help get rid of the “now whats.” Its like the preparation for those events is the build up, the event is the climax, and there is a weaning period afterwards to help get you back to your normal life. Same with relationships after a break up – there is that period of time wherein you’re still checking up on your ex-significant other and all of those leftover questions get to be asked and whatnot. It is a gradual re-assimilation to your normal life.

I have a really bad case of the “now whats” right now. I was so looking forward to meeting Moby and then I met him and now what? Go back to my regular life, of course. But sitting behind a desk in an office is so much easier to handle when you have the anticipation of meeting one of your heroes to look forward to. I’m looking forward to getting the picture back, but its not quite the same. And if I were to ever meet him again, would it live up to the first meeting?

I don’t know. I’m rambling. I’m bored. I need to keep my mind occupied and I don’t usually like to dwell in things that have already passed. I did it. I accomplished a goal. I met Moby. Now I need a new goal to work towards.

My god, I sound like an obsessive freak, don’t I? Maybe I should just go take a nap.
Thanks to my wonderful, generous, very technologically savvy friend with too much time on his hands, you can follow this link and listen to my little song that I'm kind of in love with. Please bear in mind that it is a recording that was done when I was drunk at a friend's house so it is just me and a guitar. Were I ever to market this song, I would flesh it out a bit. But as it is, I think its a nice, sweet little song and I hope you guys enjoy it. And if you don't, I'm not sure I want to hear about it.

Okay, yeah. Nevermind. Constructive criticism is a good thing. I am good enough. I am smart enough. And gosh darn it, people like me. Criticize away!

And make sure you thank my dear sweet friend for hosting my little song on his site. Or at the very least, go check out his film production company and donate money or something. *smooch* Thanks, honey!

Monday, July 22, 2002

Ooo! I had another kind of trippy experience yesterday.

I went to a little gathering at the house of a couple of dear friends of mine. It was in honor of yet another couple getting engaged. I know way too many people who are engaged. But anyway, I went over to my friend’s house last night for a little gathering.

The man who lives in that house (my friend) is a really talented musician and he has let me play a couple of my songs at a couple of his shows in the past. It’s good fun. Anyway, he just recently got all kinds of recording equipment so he can lay down a demo CD and perhaps get some gigs. So he and his band spent some time yesterday afternoon laying down drums and bass for a few songs and my friend was eager to show off his new toys to a fellow musician. And he let me listen, too. It was pretty cool. And I, of course, mention to my friend’s wife (another dear friend of mine) that I have a couple of songs that she hasn’t heard yet and I had enough alcohol in my system that I would play one of them for her. So I did. And he recorded it. Man, was that weird. To hear my song played back for me. And then it was promptly erased, much to my friend’s wife’s dismay. So it was determined that we should re-record. My friend pulled out his microphone and mike stand and all these cords and headphones and stuff. I was standing there in the middle of his office listening to myself record a song through the headphones and when it was played back, it sounded just like I had heard it. So bizarre. I kept chuckling at how “rockstar” I felt. I think it was the headphones.

But anyway, my friend then burned that song to a CD. Which another friend has ripped to an mp3. So if I can figure out how, I may just post my mp3 right here on this very blog. Though please keep in mind, it is just me singing and a guitar. Were I ever to sell/market/publish the song, I would beef it up – background vocals, maybe some strings and something along the lines of percussion. I dunno. But yeah, I think it would be neat to have an mp3 up here, don’t you? I could post it with my picture of Moby and me. It could be the Kitty Day Post. Yeah, like the rest of these entries aren’t Kitty Day Posts.
I have decided that life is infinitely more fun when you live it in a completely un-self-conscious manner and I am going to do my best to live the rest of my life not being self-conscious.

I know, that sounds both wonderful and potentially harmful to other people, so let me make a little semantic distinction here. There is a difference between being conscious of your self and being self-conscious. Being conscious of your self, in my book, means knowing where your body is and what it is doing. Being aware that you are a being taking up space, interacting with other people and the world around you and whatnot. I believe that this is essential. Maybe I feel that way because I am a dancer and I need to know where my limbs are all the time and I have to maintain my balance and whatnot without throwing my partner off. But I do think that it is important to be conscious of your self.

Being self-conscious is a whole other ball of wax. Being self-conscious entails listening to that little voice in the back of your mind (or maybe the front of your mind, depending on how self-conscious you are) that tells you to not do something because someone might be watching. The voice that really does nothing but make you feel bad and guilty about doing the things you would really like to do. This, I think, can be a detriment to leading a full, fun life.

Granted, some of the things your self-consciousness voice encourages you to do may not be good. Like ramming your car into the rat bastard who just cut you off. But there are times when that voice tells you not to dance when the music moves you or not to stop and smell the flowers as you walk past them and I, personally, see nothing wrong with telling the voice to shut up on those occasions.

This whole epiphany was brought about at the Moby concert over the weekend. I danced, as I said before, with reckless abandon. I jumped. A lot. I flailed my arms about. I did some really bad popping/locking type stuff. I looked like a complete and total freak show and you know what? I had a blast. I started to wonder if I would have had so much fun had I just stood there, watching the show, feeling the urge to dance and not dancing and I decided that no, I would not have had so much fun. So I am going to try to live my life being conscious of my self (when I was jumping, I jumped straight up and down so as to avoid injuring the people around me) but not self-conscious (I jumped a lot. And yelled. And flailed my arms. And it was wonderful). Make sense?
I wrote this one on Friday night about an hour after leaving the Moby concert in Columbus, Ohio.

I can no longer call Moby the cutest man I’ve never met because I met him. I met Moby. Granted, he doesn’t know my name, but he may remember me as the woman who tried to give him a book he already had after his concert in Columbus, Ohio in July of 2002. He may remember me as the woman who had him sign her Play CD cover and then asked for a picture. Then again, he may not. But I met him and had him sign my Play CD cover and I tried to give him a book that he already has (the book I told myself a man had to have read without me telling him to read it before I married him) and then my friend took a picture of Moby and I. I was not in the least bit scared. I was not intimidated. He is a very sweet man, just like I thought he would be. I don’t think he wanted to be out signing autographs and such, but he was pleasant and personable nonetheless. He signed something for everyone who was there and chatted for a minute before returning to his bus. And walking away from the whole experience, I couldn’t decide if I should laugh or cry, so I think I did a little bit of both.

The concert was phenomenal. Azure Rae was okay. I think they need to get used to being on stage and then they will be more fun. I very much enjoyed hearing “Great Escape” live and it was somewhat satisfying to see that I’ve been playing it correctly on my guitar – just one key higher.

Dirty Vegas was worth the price of admission. What an amazing set! If Azure Rae was soothing us all to sleep with their gentle, dreamy melodies, Dirty Vegas woke us up and got us pumped up for Moby. Dirty Vegas has obviously done live shows before and very obviously enjoys doing them. And the music…I found myself dancing with complete and total reckless abandon and not caring. I was the guy in orange again. Which was particularly fortunate because a really cute “candy kid” came and started dancing next to me. I found myself feeding half off his energy and half off the band’s energy. It was amazing. And apparently my reckless abandon dancing paid off because after about the third Moby song, the Candy Man gave me some candy. Meaning he gave me a bracelet of fluorescent multi-colored beads. He himself was wearing probably ten or fifteen on each wrist. I felt so honored – my first bit of raver paraphernalia earned by dancing like an idiot to Dirty Vegas and Moby. Thank you, Candy Man.

So by the time Moby came out on stage, I was flying. I was soaking wet with a combination of sweat and rain and I looked like shit, but I would not have wanted it any other way. Somehow, seeing Moby at an outdoor event while it rained on us made the whole show that much more special, that much more perfect. He played for two hours and covered everything I wanted to hear him play live except “Run On.” I was nearly brought to tears during “Signs of Love” and “We Are All Made of Stars” and I’m not even sure I could tell you why. The shock of being that close to a man I respect so much maybe. Or the fact that the first of those songs is very dear to me and the second (based on his intro to it) is very dear to him, so to hear them played live was that much more special. And there were moments when I was laughing so hard I squeaked. It was an amazing show and very surreal in a way. I can tell that my brain is storing it alongside most of my nocturnal dreams as we speak, which is why I wanted to write most of this down before I forget it.

So it was an all-around very special night for me. I think this even tops Boingo at the Metro in 1995 for being the best rock concert I have ever been to. And then to get to meet Moby and have him be just as wonderful as I thought he would be and to have such a sweet and gentle aura around him…words cannot express what I felt at the end of the night nor what I’m feeling now. It was amazing. So thank you to my friends for driving six hours out to Columbus with me. Thank you to my friend for letting us crash at his place. Thank you to my friend for going to the concert with me. Thank you to Dirty Vegas for kicking some serious ass. Thank you to the Candy Man for my new jewelry – I don’t want to take it off. And most of all, thank you to Moby for your music and your comedy (the twain can meet) and your spirit and your passion and your enthusiasm and your kindness and your tolerance and your understanding. You are an amazing human being and the world became a better place the day you were born. I will see you at Area2 in Chicago!

Thursday, July 18, 2002

There are some people who just shouldn’t have children. I know that (in this country, anyway), everyone has the right to reproduce, but there are some people who you just want to smack upside the head and say, “Stop having kids!”

We spent the majority of our lunch today talking about the horrible things that have happened to children recently. A little girl snatched off her own front porch by a strange man, her body found the next day. Two kids left to suffocate in a hot car while their mother had her hair done. That girl who was tied to the radiator and fell out of a third story window (she died a couple of days later). The woman whose now seven year old son used to shake and twitch as he was going through crack withdrawal as a baby, and still has three younger siblings. How could you watch your child go through that and then have more kids? More crack babies. I don’t understand it. How could you leave your kids in a hot car while you’re getting your hair done? How could you tie your child to a radiator? How could you snatch a kid off of her own front porch and drive her seventy-five miles away so you can kill her? I don’t understand these things. I don’t understand the strange part of “human nature” that allows certain people to behave like this. What is your justification for bringing life into the world when you can’t even handle your own life? What is your justification for taking life away? Ever?

I do, one day, want to have children. My goal, however, is to be completely financially stable before I have them, though. What would really make my day is if I am a financially stable, very marketable actress with a financially stable, very marketable actor husband. Then I can take time to have my children and raise them and he and I can alternate who takes care of them. Phrased like that, it sounds horrible. But if he was offered a film that would require him to go to India for two months, I could stay home with the kids for those two months. Then let’s say I get a film that requires me to be in London for two months, he can stay home and take care of the kids for those two months, you know? We would both be raising our kids and both working at the same time. This is, of course, adapted directly from the ever-growing volume Kitty’s Fantasy World Wherein Everything Works Out The Way She Wants It To. It’s a much happier read than The Real World Where Daycare Costs Twice Your Annual Salary.

I dunno. I want to be a good mother. I want to be able to give my kids whatever they need. I will not do anything during my pregnancies to potentially mess up my children for the rest of their lives. I’ll wait until they are born and spout psychobabble at them to take care of that.
So my brother’s ex-girlfriend (who is also a friend of mine) calls me up last night to say that she needs one more woman to make the numbers even at her Hurry Date event. So me, being the good friend that I am, I go down there to participate in Hurry Date, free of charge.

Please keep in mind that the last thing I would do is pay someone to let me talk to 26 different men in one night. I think we’ve been over this before. I’m not all that big into dating in the first place and when I do go out with someone on a date, it is usually someone I met through “regular” channels – while out dancing, a friend of a friend, that kind of thing. But generally speaking, I don’t date much and that is fine with me.

So I go to Hurry Date, get my number and my “scorecard” and grab a table. I am promptly moved to another table, just to make the flow of things go a little better. The way this whole thing works is this: last night, there were 26 men and 26 women. The 26 women each sit at a table that has a letter of the alphabet on it (I was W). The men then pick a woman and sit down across from/next to her. Each of these pairings has three minutes to chat about whatever they want to chat about (they have suggestions of questions on the tables, too, if you get stuck). At the end of the three minutes, the hosts blow a whistle and the men rotate one letter through the alphabet. While the men are rotating, each man and each woman circles “yes” or “no” on their scorecard, meaning, “yes, I would like to talk to this person again,” or “no, this person is a freak show and I will live happily the rest of my life never seeing him/her again.” This process is repeated until all 26 men have talked with all 26 women. At the end of the night, the hosts collect the scorecards. Within a few days, the hosts tally the results and if there were any matches, both the man and the woman are e-mailed the other party’s e-mail addresses and it then is entirely up to the couple to contact on another/arrange for a date.

The phrase “unwashed miscreants” kept running though my head, though I’m not exactly sure why. There were some interesting, intelligent men there. There were also men for whom it was no mystery why they were having problems dating. For some men, three minutes was just enough time to get to the interesting part of the conversation, making me wish I had just one more minute to finish a thought. For other men, three minutes was about a year and a half. Some guys were there with friends because god knows they would never want to come and do something so ridiculous. Other guys had done this a time or two before and threw themselves back into the mix to hopefully meet a greater variety of women. There were a few from other countries who came to the United States to study one thing or another and just plain wanted to meet some people. Some talked about music, some about movies, some about relationships, some about alcohol. There was laughter. There was beer. There was one man who I think should look into the gay Hurry Date coming up in a couple of weeks. I think it was safe to say that fun was had by all.

I did feel a smidge odd telling every guy the same thing. “I’m an actor and a secretary” and letting the conversation run from there. But it is one of those instances, I guess, where this guy has no idea what I told that guy, so if I tell everyone in the room that I was an extra in Road to Perdition, its all good.

So what did I learn from this whole experience? I’m not big into dating. There are a lot of people out there looking for something and not finding it. I’m not even looking. If a great opportunity to spend time with a great man falls into my lap, I’m not going to scoff at it, but I feel fortunate that I don’t necessarily need to be with someone all of the time. Also, as I was sitting there telling absolute strangers a smidge about my life, it hit me once again that I lead a very interesting, full life. I’m an actor. I’m a dancer. I go out quite a bit and socialize with a great group of friends. I don’t have problems meeting people. If anything, I meet too many people and occasionally someone gets left by the wayside (about which I feel awful. If I could clone myself so that I had more time to spend with everybody, doing everything, I would. As long as my clones made as much, if not more money that I do. I couldn’t support many mes. Not on my salary).

Will I do Hurry Date again? Probably not. Unless my friend calls again and needs me to fill an empty slot. Will I e-mail any of the men I marked “yes” for if they also said “yes” to me? Probably not. Like I said, I’m not really looking and none of the guys there inspired me to change my mind about that. Would I hang out with them socially? I dunno. Maybe. Sure. Why not? Never hurts to have another friend, right? But this whole thing made me realize, once again, how odd I sometimes feel in “normal” society and how so many typical societal goals and aspirations are simply not for me. Though I may go to a photography exhibit that one of the guys is having on Sunday, just to see what kind of work he does. It’s always fun to meet another artist. And maybe I can ask him a question or two about galleries to help out with my screenplay.
[singing]
I gedda see Moby tomorrow, I gedda see Moby tomorrow...
[/singing]

I am very excited to see my first Moby show. I fully plan on hanging out after the concert to see if I can meet him. But like I said before, I'm not sure what I would say to Moby. I feel like I should bring a book or at the very least a business card or something that I can give him. Giving someone a gift or piece of information is usually a good way to start a conversation. But yeah, so I'm nervous and excited, but more excited that nervous. It will be a good show, I can pretty much guarantee that. Even if it does rain. And I'll tell you all about it on Monday. So yeah, if you don't see any updates from me tomorrow, it's 'cuz I'm driving to Columbus. So have a good weekend everybody!
Today is Hodgepodge Day on Blogger.com!

Meaning I have a lot of stupid bits of wisdom (or non-wisdom, as the case may be) to impart to you today, but none of them are really related, but since I’m anticipating a really boring day at the office today, I thought I would share these random tidbits with you.

Let the frivolity begin!

Apparently, if you mix baking soda and sugar together, you can kill cockroaches. Powered sugar works best. But mix the two together and sprinkle the mixture in your corners, or wherever the roaches are coming from. When a roach walks through the mixture, he/she will lick his/her feet to get the sugar off of them and in the process, will ingest baking soda as well. Since cockroaches are non-flatulent beings, the excess gas produced during the digestion of the baking soda will eventually cause the roach to explode. Hopefully, this happens when the roach is back in the roach nest inside your walls and not when said roach is, for example, clinging to the ceiling above your stove or hanging out under your bed. I have heard tell that you can actually hear them explode. Pop.

I know, I know, it is cruel and evil and wrong to kill any form of life, even cockroaches. I am not advocating trying this method of extermination, nor have I tried it myself. I just thought I would pass it along as an interesting chemistry/anatomy lesson. That, and cockroaches gross me out. Any other bug, I am fine with. Cockroaches, no.

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Okay, I need to rant today.

I have a friend who is a total knock out. I wish I was shaped like her, she is gorgeous. Curvy where she should be, muscular where she should be…according to her boyfriend and me and just about everyone else I know, she is hot. But not according to her. So she has signed up to go on a diet plan where she will be eating 1000 calories per day until she gets down to her desired weight.

Consider, if you will, that it takes 15 calories per day to maintain one pound of body weight. This means that a person weighing in at 100 pounds must eat 1500 calories per day to maintain those 100 pounds. My friend (five-foot-two or five-foot-three, fully grown, active, adult female) is paying someone to put her on a diet that would sustain a sixty-seven pound child. Maybe. I called her on it. I begged her to eat at least 1200 calories per day (enough to maintain eighty pounds). She replied that if she wanted to get down to her desired weight, she would have to do the 1000 calories per day thing. She also maintains that the people she is paying to do this to her will provide her with three square meals, two snacks, one dessert, and two salads per day or something like that. What she may be failing to take into consideration is that one of those square meals is a half a chicken breast and two stalks of asparagus, you know? I’m sorry, but if they are fitting that much food into a 1000 calorie diet, there have to be a lot of empty calories involved, or portions so small she will not be getting enough of the nutrition she needs from those foods. Yes, a large bowl of iceberg lettuce may constitute a salad, but the nutrition in any lettuce comes from the green, leafy part of the vegetable, not the crisp white part that is largely water. She would do better to drink a tall glass of water than eat bowl after bowl after bowl of iceberg lettuce – at least her body wouldn’t then have to deal with all of the un-digestible cellulose in it.

I’m sorry, but this is something that has bothered me for my whole life. My. Whole. Life. Women’s body issues. Yes, I have them, too. I see my ass on screen and I cringe at its size. But you know what? I am not unhealthy. My doctor laughed at me when I told her I wanted to lose some weight. My friends maintain that I am attractive. The man I am dating thinks I’m gorgeous. The only real reason I would have to lose weight would be either to make myself happy or to get cast in different types of roles. But you know what? I’ve been hearing more and more stories about these women who wanted so long and so desperately to lose weight, believing that if they could just be small enough, they would be happy, only to discover upon losing the weight that they were still miserable and now depriving themselves of the things they really loved (chocolate being a big one). So what’s the point? If you’re not a happy person, it won’t matter how much weight you lose, you still won’t be a happy person.

I want to know where the whole “women have to be stick figures in order to be attractive” thing came from in the first place. As recently as during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, it was considered attractive to be on the heavier side – it meant you were wealthy enough to eat. They would have twelve-course dinners (and yes, even the ladies would eat all of it) to show off their fabulous wealth. But somewhere along the way, it was determined that women had to be skinny to be attractive. The appearance of having not eaten in weeks became desirable and I want to know where that started. Is the advent of cameras to blame? The camera adds ten pounds, you know (an optical illusion created by showing a three-dimensional object in two dimensions). But even then, why is skinny/unhealthy attractive? Is it a subconscious “wow, she’s tiny, therefore she must have great self-control” thing? Or a “wow, she’s tiny, therefore she must have enough money to do nothing but work out all day” thing? I don’t know. I don’t get it. Women should have curves. Women are supposed to have a higher body fat percentage than men. These are evolutionary adaptations to ensure the survival of the species and increase the chances that a woman has of living through the birth of her own children.

So why would a woman who, by everyone’s estimation, is a knock out, who has a wonderful boyfriend (I have heard them both say that they are pretty sure this is “the one”) who tells her that she is beautiful want to pay someone to put her on a 1000 calorie per day diet?

It pisses me off. It pisses me off that society has programmed women to need to be thin in order to be beautiful. It pisses me off how many beauty products are available at any given store. It pisses me off that physical appearance and the ability to be loved are so closely tied together in so many instances. It’s bullshit. It is ridiculous to think that you can only be happy if you look like Callista Flockhart. Women aren’t supposed to look like that! I have a cousin who, when she was about seven years old, was playing with her Jasmine doll (from Aladdin) and said, “I wish I looked like Jasmine because then I would be beautiful.” This girl’s smile literally lights up a room when she walks into it. She is/was the most adorable child I think I have ever seen. And at the age of seven, she was already wishing she looked like someone else because she believed she would then and only then be beautiful. It breaks my heart. It pisses me off that I have friends who still think that way and literally makes my heart ache that they believe in this so much that they can’t be reasoned with.

I will admit that I wish my ass was smaller than it is. I will admit that I still sometimes look in the mirror and think, “What a cow.” But you know what? I’m working on getting rid of those thoughts, not on starving myself until those thoughts go away. I don’t want to deal with the symptoms, I want to deal with the root of the problem. And you know what? Since I switched to the vegan diet, I really haven’t been so worried about my weight. I am eating to stay healthy and if that means I have to eat fruit and vegetables and nuts and something soy based every day to make sure I’m getting the vitamins I need, then so be it. I’m not going to deprive my body of the things that it needs in the hopes that one day society will find me attractive. The part of society that I am familiar with does find me attractive and the part that judges me based solely on my physical appearance is not the part I want to spend a whole lot of time with, you know? I say enough. I’m not going to diet anymore. I’m not going to feel guilty if I go to bed early one night instead of going for a walk. I’m not going to get plastic surgery or Botox treatments so I can look like the women on Friends. I am going to grow old gracefully and you know what? I think I’ll be beautiful when my face is covered in smile lines and my hair is soft and silvery. I want to, one day, look like a grandmother because hopefully by that time, I will be a grandmother. And society can call me a mutant all it wants to for not wanting to subscribe to its unhealthy ideals, but you know what? I already know that I am a mutant and I like being one. So there.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Okay, I have another fasion tidbit to share with you. It's not a look that I would really recommend for anyone, but I love doing it because damn, is it comfy. The Hot Sexy Frumpy look. For example, I'm wearing a beautiful, long, white, flowy dress today with cute little white espadrilles (at least I think that's what these shoes are called -- whatever they are, they are comfortable and cute and I dig them. So there.), but since it is constantly freezing in my office, I put my big, soft, frumpy lookin' blue sweater over it. So I have that, "Damn, she'd be hot if she wasn't wearing that sweater" thing goin' on for me. I love it. That little bit of mystery. The sweater that makes people take a second look at me to see that yes, I do have the potential to be a knock out. Because we're not interested in falling in love at first sight, right? It's the people that take the time to really see you and then fall in love with you that make for lasting relationships.

I don't know. I got nothin'. But I'm comfortable, yet gorgeous today and it feels good, so I'm just going to enjoy that.
I was busy at work this morning. I know, hell must have frozen over, right? No, I just have a co-worker out sick right before the Board meeting so I had to do her work this morning. And you know what? In a really strange way it felt good. To be doing things. I know that in the grand scheme of things, my job is really fantastically unimportant. But to be helping out other people who truly believe that this stuff is important feels good. They get happy, I get happy.

Why couldn’t I have a job where I’m busy all of the time? Not that I don’t enjoy blogging, but I could get a laptop or something and blog from home. I’d like to have a job that kept me occupied. If I could have one that kept me occupied and challenged and interested…okay, yeah, I’m waiting for the day when I can become a full-time actor
Okay, so I have kind of a gross little tidbit for you. You remember I told you about my falafel-related injury? Yeah, well, it was a nice red mark on my arm. A friend of mine told me it would probably heal within a couple of months, not leaving too bad of a scar. That’s cool.

So last night, I go dancing. It was a good night. I had some really fun dances. A bad one or two, but a couple of really good ones which makes me happy. All I ask for in a night is one really fun dance. And I had that. Plus a couple more. So it was good. But I get home and my falafel related injury has filled up with fluid so it now looks like a small pink boil on my arm. It was kind of disturbing. I didn’t know if I should sterilize a needle and puncture it or just let it be or what. I don’t like having strange growths protruding from my arms. It’s not very attractive and I get all paranoid about scraping them on something and causing a large mess and/or massive amounts of pain. I’m not good with pain in massive amounts. In moderation, maybe. But large amounts, no.

So I am once again faced with the choice of going to work looking like a gimp with a Neosporin-soaked Band-Aid on my arm or looking like a gimp with a small pink boil on my arm. Let’s just say I brought a sweater to work. But by the time I got here, the boil was gone. Deflated. Withered away to a small red mark once again.

I’m wondering if it blew up as a result of the physical exertion of dancing last night or something. Or maybe I scraped it on something and massive amounts of pain did not ensue. Whatever the reason, I am back to my small red mark and no one but me will ever know of the small pink boil. Unless it happens again. Or they read this.

Monday, July 15, 2002

I’m sorry, I’m really random today. I can’t blame it on lack of sleep ‘cuz I slept like a rock last night. The weird thing, though, is usually I set my alarm for 5:00am and snooze it until about 6:30. This morning, however, I set it for 6:00am because I have a houseguest and I didn’t want to wake her up unnecessarily early. But my body still went though the whole “getting ready to wake up” thing that it goes through every morning starting around 5:00. So sad. That my body is so conditioned to wake up at 5:00 in the morning that even when there is no alarm to wake me, I wake up. Or try to anyway.

But back to the point of this blog. This blog has a point? Um, not necessarily, but stories are so much more enjoyable for the listener if they have a point. But then, this really isn’t a story, either. Anyway.

I’m apologizing for my randomness. I have a lot going on in my head that is in many ways freaking me out, but that I can’t really post about here so I’m trying desperately to post about other things and I guess I’m failing miserably. I’m going to Columbus this weekend to see a Moby concert. Two in one summer. Should be a good summer and a good time. Maybe part of my randomness is excitement about that. But a friend of mine asked me while we had dinner on Friday what I would say to Moby if I ever met him and I couldn’t answer that. I don’t want to say, “I’m your biggest fan!” or “I’ve read all of your journal entries at least twice!” or anything stupid and stalker-esque like that. I think I would start by saying, “Hi, Moby, my name is Kitty” and just go from there. I would like to give him a hug. But yeah, that’s about it. I’m not preparing a speech or anything. Chances are I won’t meet him anyway, so it’s a moot point. But yeah, I thought it was kind of odd that I would have no idea what to say to this man who I hold in such high esteem. Good thing I have a background in improv, huh?

So yeah, please bear with me. I should one day soon have wonderfully structured entries full of observations and commentaries as opposed to this pathetic drivel. I’m just kind of out of it today. Not necessarily in a bad way, just kind of out of it. Sigh. I should go pretend to work.

I’m wearing my squeaky shoes today. I can’t sneak up on anybody, which kind of sucks. I don’t know exactly who I would like to be sneaking up on, but I like to keep my options open, you know? As it is, when I walk I sound like the school nurse in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off who goes to tell Sloan that her grandmother has died. At least my shoes aren’t orthopaedic. They’re these cute little Mary Janes. I’m wearing my Amelie dress today. Incidentally, Amelie comes out on video and DVD tomorrow. I may have to splurge and visit Amazon.com today. It’s such a lovely film. So gentle, so funny, so not what you think of when you think of a French film. Or at least not what I think of when I think of a French film. But yeah, I can relate to Amelie in a lot of ways, so I wore my Amelie dress today. That, and I have to do laundry. But my squeaky shoes are the only ones I really feel I can get away with wearing with this dress. So I can’t sneak up on anybody. But I feel cute. Except for the squeaking. This is a completely unsexy squeaking noise. But cute things aren’t sexy anyway, right? You’re either cute or sexy and never the twain shall meet. Should Moby then be concerned that he is the cutest man I’ve never met? I don’t think so. Considering I’ve never met him and have about a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting into a situation where whether I consider him cute or sexy would make a difference, I’d say no, he shouldn’t lose any sleep over it. And neither should another friend of mine who I know is reading this and will most likely bring it up in conversation later. You know who you are. *insert cheesy grin here.*


Friday, July 12, 2002

Is it wrong to refrigerate shampoo?
I’m kind of a gimp today. Well, I’ve been kind of a gimp for a couple of days. Wednesday night was kind of rough for me. So here I am at work with Band-Aids all over my body. Well, two. One on my thumb and one on my forearm. The one on my thumb is keeping Neosporin on a scratch that my cat gave me. I was holding him and he wanted down, so he jumped and one of his hind claws gashed my thumb. Like, drew blood gashed. And the one on my arm is keeping Neosporin on my falafel-related injury. I was cooking falafel for dinner on Wednesday night and as I flipped one of the patties, a few drops of the scalding hot oil that were in the pan emancipated themselves directly onto my forearm. It was then that I realized that I have no idea how to treat a hot oil burn. I have a friend who is a surgery resident in the burn unit doing skin grafts and such and I have no idea how to treat a hot oil burn. Do you put butter on it? I ran it under cold water and am now keeping Neosporin on it in an effort to reduce the scarring. I don’t think it will require a skin graft.

So yeah, if I seem a little gimpy or out of it, you now know why. I should be on an upswing, though, ‘cuz they say bad things happen in threes and I woke up on Thursday morning and slammed my elbow into my nightstand. Unintentionally, of course, but it hurt nonetheless. And hopefully, it completed my karmic set of injuries for a while. Yay karma!
Okay, so fuck everything I said yesterday. It was so fuckin’ cool to see myself in Road to Perdition last night! I am clearly visible on screen for about three seconds. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but three seconds in movie time is long enough to register that it is me, look around and see all of my other friends who were in the shot, come back and look at me again, and then pick up the conversation of the film in the next room. I was so geeking out. I wanted to rewind the film and point out all of my friends to everyone in the theater. "I'm going to their wedding in a couple of weeks. And these two teach together. And these two are both engaged, but not to each other." And so on and so forth. It was great.

The rest of the movie is wonderful. I have a feeling I would have enjoyed it even more had I not read the book first. But the acting, the scenery, the effects…brilliant. It is not often in movies that you see a significant part of a scene happen without words – where all of the action is taking place in the eyes of the actors. There are a couple of crucial moments like this in the film and I have to applaud the actors for being able to do it and Sam Mendes for letting them. There is so much that can be said in a silence.

One of the coolest things for me, though, was that I got to see this movie with my brother. I don’t remember how many of my various performances he has seen, but I know it’s not a lot of them. So to have him there and geeking out at seeing his little sister on the big screen really meant something to me. He had that, “I’m so proud of you” look on his face after the movie that almost choked me up. So thank you to my brother for coming. And to his/our friend for inviting us.

And go see Road to Perdition, if not for me, then because it really is a good film. I can always tell a good film because I walk out of the theater wishing I could have been a part of it. This one I know was good because I walked out of the theater proud that I had been a part of it, no matter how small a part.

Thursday, July 11, 2002

Okay, this is just a funny that I can enjoy for now and the rest of you will have to snicker at later.

Here on Blogger.com, in the "edit your blog" mode, it says "Sorry, publishing is temporarily unavailable" and then there is a little link to find out why publishing is temporarily unavailable. If you click on the link, a pop-up message shows up that reads, "Server went boom."

Annoying as that is, it made my day. And that's also why these posts won't show up until later. *sigh*
So yeah, I have a film opening tomorrow. All over the country. You may have heard of it -- Road to Perdition. Yeah, it was me, Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, directed by Sam Mendes. Its gonna be big. That’s all I have to say.

Tee hee. I’m such a dork. Yes, I was in Road to Perdition. As an extra. You might see me on screen for about three seconds in one scene. Or you may not see me at all. But I was there for the filming process of that one scene. All fourteen hours of it.

What amuses me the most, though, is how excited other people are to see this film because I am in it. How many people have been paying attention to the reviews and such because I am in it. Not because it promises to be a great film (how could it not be with 23 Academy Award winners working on it?) or because it was shot in and around Chicago. These people want to see me on the big screen. In a film where you could miss me if you blink at the wrong time.

I will admit that I am looking forward to seeing it and I am horribly flattered that so many people are that excited to see me on the big screen. (I should put that under the “special skills” section of my resume – “I come with a built in fan base/audience.”) I get to go to an advanced showing tonight, so I can tell you tomorrow if I’m even visible. But out of all of the films that I have done in the past couple of years, this one doesn’t even show up on my resume. You know why I was cast as an extra? I look Irish and I know how to dance. I know someone who vouched for my dancing ability and I have red hair and pale skin, therefore I got to be part of the set dressing in a Sam Mendes film. It is in its own way cool, but what I think is a lot cooler is that I was cast as the lead in a feature-length improvised independent film. I got to spend eight days in a row waking up, going to the set, acting, going home and sleeping for two hours only to get up and do it again. The only way anyone is going to miss my performance in that film is if they don’t see the film at all. Is the average viewer going to see the character work I put into Road to Perdition? No. The average viewer won’t even notice I’m there because they will be watching Tom Hanks, as they should be. Will the average viewer see the character work I put into Celia in Leftover Voices? Yes. And they’ll notice me as Emily in Dancing with Gaia and as Zoe in Mix Tape. A few may have even noticed me as Denise in Numinata. But other than being a really frickin’ cool experience, Road to Perdition will not add anything to my career. Unless Sam Mendes decides he really needs to go find that girl with the “really great laugh.”

This entry was not intended to be my resume. C’est la vie.

I don’t mean to sound bitter. I loved working on Road to Perdition. I loved the rehearsals and going in for a costume fitting and having my hair and make-up done for a twelve hour shoot. It was such a high. I remember holding this woman’s robe as she used the port-a-potties because she really didn’t have much on under the robe and she didn’t want to flash anyone. It was an all-around phenomenal experience. But it will not be a career maker for me. I will not be offended if my friends and family don’t see this film. And I mean no disrespect to anyone when I say I am more excited about the films wherein I have an actual speaking role than I am about this one.

But I’m still excited to see this one tonight.

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Hi, my name is Kitty and I’m addicted to hummus.

Hi, Kitty.

This is my first meeting of Hummus Anonymous and I would like to take a brief moment to point out that when a Hummus Addict goes to Hummus Anonymous and runs into the sort of person who likes to acronym everything, you are left with HA HA.

I’m gonna go have some hummus now.
I have decided that it is very uncivilized to have to get up in the morning and that alarm clocks are Satan’s minions. Not that waking up isn’t a good thing. Waking up is a very good thing. But having to wake up at a specific time so that you can shower, eat, get dressed, and get to work at another specific time is very uncivilized. One should be allowed to wake up when one has finally had enough sleep, dawdle in bed for a while, read the paper, drink some coffee, bathe, shave, pick out whatever clothes are most comfortable and put them on and leisurely stroll out into the world to tackle the day. Take a moment and imagine how much brighter everyone’s moods would be if they got to start every day the way they start a weekend day. *sigh* Isn’t that so much nicer?

Who was it who decided that “normal business hours” should be 8-5, Monday through Friday anyway? Who was it who decided that people should have to work during the nicest hours of the day? I have an idea.

Everyone measures time in hours removed from Greenwich Mean Time, right? For example, here in Chicago, we are six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time. What if, as a planet, we said “fuck this shit” and everyone kept time on Greenwich Mean Time? So no matter where you were in the world, it would always be the same time. How would this solve the working woes, you may ask. I’ll tell you. If everyone is on the same time schedule and business hours remain 8-5, Monday through Friday, then those of us in Chicago would be working from (in the time we are now used to) about 2am-11am. We would have the whole afternoon to goof off. Granted, you’d want to be in bed by about 7 or 8 pm (according to our current clocks), but in the wintertime its dark by then anyway, right? The whole “daylight savings time” thing would go out the window, too, because instead of trying to scrounge up an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings during the summer, we would automatically get between five and nine hours of sunlight after work, depending on the season. And I, personally, am more productive at about 2 in the morning anyway. And if you didn’t like the hours of the day that you had to work, you could move to a different place so that your body clock and your work clock were more in sync. “So why’d you move to Poland, Bill?” “I was sick of working in the middle of the night.” “Me, too.” *clinking coffee mugs* What lovely conversations those would make. And cities would be populated not necessarily with one ethnicity or another, but with people whose body clocks preferred to work at different times of the day. All the crazy night people would live in, say, California, and all those obnoxious morning people would live in Spain. Talk about integration…

And another benefit of this whole deal – you wouldn’t have to worry about calling someone in the middle of the night and having him or her be asleep. You wouldn’t have to go in to work and wait for three hours until your Hawaii branch is open before conducting business. Everyone would be on the same time clock.

I realize that there are probably a few kinks in my system, but I thought I’d just throw it out there. If for no other reason than to complain about the fact that I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

I have a guilty pleasure that I feel compelled to share with you even though it may sully your image of me. Oh well. That is largely what this site is about, isn’t it? Sullying my own semi-public image? Why else would I call it “The bowels of Kitty’s brain?” That, and I like the word “sully.”

Anyway, my guilty pleasure. I get this sick enjoyment out of auditioning for first time/student filmmakers. You can tell when you walk into the room that this director has never held auditions before and is just as nervous as you are. You know when you walk in the room that the director is expecting first time/student actors and is praying that the film will turn out okay despite lack of acting talent. You know when you walk in the room that you have the upper hand. And in a really sick and twisted way, I love it because I know the director was not expecting me to come in and audition. The director was not expecting an actor with multiple films under her belt who knows when she walks in the room which character she is going to get. The director was not expecting an actor who can play more than one character. The director was not expecting an actor who barely needs to look at the script after reading it through twice in the hallway. And I love watching these directors try to contain their excitement at having a real actor in the room. I love watching the look in their eye change from “this is a cheesy-ass student film” to “oh my god, my film might actually turn out well!” I love it. I love feeling like I gave that director hope for his/her filmmaking career.

I know, it’s sick of me. I feel like I’m running around deflowering virgin directors for the sheer enjoyment of it or something. But I like to have a director’s first experience with me and with film be a good one. So if I can help a student filmmaker make a great student film, that makes my day. Kinda goes back to the whole “there is no such thing as an altruistic act” thing, but we weren’t really expecting me to be altruistic about my filmmaking anyway, were we? I’m an actor because I love it – it is 100% selfish of me. But if I can help other people love filmmaking, too, it’s like a bonus.

Okay, I’m stopping now.

Monday, July 08, 2002

I danced with a legend this weekend. He may not be nationally known or he may not have won awards or competitions or anything, but he is about 85 years old, mostly blind, and mostly deaf and one of the most fun leads I have had the privilege to dance with. Scared the crap out of me to even ask him to dance, but I did and I’m glad I did. Thank you to my other friend for forcing me to do so.

You may wonder why it scared the crap out of me to dance with this gentleman, knowing that I myself have been dancing for a little over three years, I was part of a professional swing dance performance troupe, I taught East Coast Swing for about a year, I was on the Chicago Shag Team that took second place in the Cabaret division of the 2000 American Lindy Hop Championships, and Johnny Lloyd (THE Johnny Lloyd!) likes my dancing. I have four words for you: I get intimidated easily. I think most dancers do, or at least most of them that I talk to on a regular basis. You know who is at approximately your skill level, you know who is a notch or two higher and you know who is a notch or two lower. And for some reason, it is always scary to ask someone of a higher skill level to dance. Usually, that reason is that you are scared you will bore your partner during the dance. This, in turn, makes you nervous and tense, which, in turn, affects your dancing, making you stiff and awkward and the dance usually suffers. Whereas if you had been relaxed and not scared, the dance would have been fabulous because really all anyone wants from a dance, regardless of skill level, is to have fun.

So what is the point of this entry? I’m not exactly sure myself. I had fun dancing with said legend. He was so gracious. And I guess it is also to encourage everyone to ask everyone else to dance, keeping in mind that a relaxed partner is a fun partner. Kind of like kissing. But that’s a whole other entry.
So last night as I’m singing to my cat, it occurs to me that You are My Sunshine is a really depressing song. Not the chorus, mind you, which is what most people know, but the verses. If I may:

“The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms
When I awoke dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and cried.

I’ll always love you and make you happy
If you will only say the same
But if you leave me to love another
You’ll regret it all some day.

You told me once, dear, you really loved me
And no one else could come between
But now you’ve left me and love another
You have shattered all my dreams.”

Thank you, Jimmy Davis and Charles Mitchell for writing such a desperate, co-dependent, stalker-esque song that we all sing to our kids to put them to sleep.

When did that happen? When did people stop singing the verses and adopt the chorus as the ultimate “I love you” song? How long have we all been so snowed?

I wish I knew these things.

Friday, July 05, 2002

So did everyone have a good Fourth of July? I got sunburnt. Though I guess I’m doing better than I have been in years past, because I usually get burnt once in about April or May (first really nice day of spring) and then have to hide the rest of the summer so as to not repeat my lobster impression. So to not get burnt until July…maybe I’m making progress.

I have to admit that while I doubted anything major would happen on the Fourth of July, I’m glad that it kind of went off without a hitch. Though I do feel for the families of those people who were killed in LA. But no more monstrous attacks on the United States was nice.

We’re really lucky, you know? To live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s one of those things that I don’t really think about all that much because I’ve always lived here. I don’t think I’ve ever really even visited an oppressive state. I know somebody told me before I went to Morocco to be sure to wear a bra that day because supposedly a woman can be arrested for not wearing one, but that’s about as close as I have come to having my rights and my freedoms taken away. (And for the record, there was one woman in our group who was not wearing a bra and she was not arrested, so it could have been hearsay/false information.) And I feel guilty for taking my freedoms for granted, but I know that I do it. I don’t feel overly patriotic on the Fourth of July. There are a lot of things that my country does that I am not proud of and I guess I have a tendency to get caught up in those things so much that I forget that I live in a place where it is okay to hold hands in public or where I am allowed to own property and hold a job. Where I am allowed to say things in my online, public journal like, “there are a lot of things that my country does that I am not proud of” without being thrown in jail, you know?

So I guess I just want to take a moment and say I am glad to live where I do. In a country that does allow me so many freedoms as an individual. In a country where I can learn and study and question anything that I want to. That’s pretty incredible, you know, and I should be more appreciate of that. Now if only we could fix all of this other crap that isn’t so cool…
There are days when I think I would make a really good vampire. Beyond the fact that I am fish-belly white to begin with, I think I could do it. Seriously. The whole nocturnal-can’t-be-in-sunlight thing would be a piece of cake. Actually, if I could live like that now, I sometimes think I would. Yes, I do like sunlight. I like to be able to look at it. Though a window. Or be in it for about ten minutes at a time. “Why?” you may ask. It goes hand in hand with the fish-belly whiteness thing. And the fact that skin cancer runs in my family and I got a really bad sunburn just about every year when I was a kid. Meaning I will probably have skin cancer as an adult. But yeah, I go out in the sun and turn beet red in about fifteen minutes. If I’m wearing sunscreen, I might have a half an hour. I actually found this really kick-ass sunscreen in Australia that works wonders, but still. I hate bathing in sunscreen in the morning just so I can walk around outside like a normal person. I’d rather go out later in the afternoon or evening when the sunburn factor is naturally lessened. So yeah, being a vampire wouldn’t be all bad. Except for maybe the whole killing people and drinking their blood thing. I think that might weigh on my conscious pretty heavily. Oh well. Maybe I should rephrase and say, “There are days when I think I would make a really good wombat.”

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

All hot and humid and no sleep make Kitty something something. Get cranky? Don’t mind if I do! *insert early Daffy Duck impression here*

Truth be told, I do mind. I don’t like being cranky. Which makes me crankier. I don’t sleep well when it is this hot and humid. I wake up about every twenty minutes to try to find a cool spot on my bed, or at least one that hasn’t been sweat upon yet. For all intents and purposes, I went to bed at about eight-thirty last night, so I should have gotten about ten hours of sleep. I feel like I got two. Though it was easier to put in my contacts this morning than it would have been had I gotten two hours of sleep. So that’s good. But traffic was horrible on the way into work, I’ve already spent about an hour on the phone this morning…I don’t want to do any more work today and its only quarter after nine. This does not bode well. I should shut my door, listen to Moby, enjoy my almonds and raisins, and play with Photoshop.

There have been several people who have offered their air conditioned apartments to me, saying that if I need to escape the heat for a little while, I can go hang there. I appreciate those offers very much. But I find myself weighing the inconvenience of schlepping all kinds of my stuff to someone else’s house against the inconvenience of not really wanting to move in my apartment ‘cuz its too stinkin’ hot. And then there’s Owen. I know he isn’t enjoying the heat any more than I am. What would I do with him? I’d feel guilty going away to enjoy recirculated air while he stays home, trapped in his fur coat. Plus, if I went somewhere else to spend a night, I’d have to get up that much earlier in the morning and whatnot. And if I go somewhere else just for a little while, I still end up spending hot, sleepless nights at my place. And at this point, I’m so freakin’ cranky, I think I should stay home and not subject anyone else to my own crankiness. That’s really not fair to them when they have made such a generous offer to me.

So what are my options? Deal with guilt, deal with heat and humidity, or get an air conditioner. At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably just deal with the heat and humidity. But please pardon my crankiness in the meantime. It is supposed to rain later today. If it does, I am going to make a point of going out in it. Being outside in a summer rainstorm is really nice. I think that would calm me down and make me happy. Or at least less cranky.

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

I don’t really have a lot to say today. Okay, that’s not true, I do have a lot to say today, but I don’t think it is appropriate for me to post it in a public forum. What is this, you may ask? Miss Kitty isn’t going to share all of the gory details of her life with us today? No. I’m not. Though most of you can probably guess about it anyway since you were there last night. I apologize if anyone was made to feel uncomfortable – I will do my best to not do that again. Or at least not very often. Just please keep in mind that at least from my perspective this is a good thing, at least for now. I’m happy and that’s what counts, right?

So let’s talk about something else, shall we? The Cubs perhaps? And how they seem to be the only team in baseball who can consistently maintain a last place standing, yet still pack the stadium when they play at home. Why is that? Why do we so desperately love such a horrible team? My theory used to be that Cubs games are always entertaining to watch because they usually involve a slaughter of one sort or another. As in, either the Cubs are winning by about eight runs, or losing by about twenty. Usually the latter, but it is still much more fun to watch a slugfest than to watch a game full of strikeouts and meetings on the mound with an occasional grounder to second. A friend of mine presented another theory last night, one having to do with the feeling one gets at Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field is the best ballpark in the country. Undoubtedly. I don’t care what Bostonians say about Fenway, Wrigley has ivy. And that classic baseball feel. And really good hot dogs. And when you go to a Cubs game, its like time is suspended for a couple of hours and all that matters is the game and your beer. Wrigley Field is an absolutely lovely ballpark and maybe my friend is right that people go there more for the park than for the Cubs. Regardless, even though they lost 11-1 last night, following another loss wherein they gave up an 8-0 lead to lose 13-9, or some ridiculous thing like that, I will still always love the Cubbies. What can I say, I’m a northsider.

Monday, July 01, 2002

Oh! I remembered what else it was that I wanted to tell you about today! I went to my first Pride Parade yesterday. What a hoot!

Okay, antiquated expletives aside, it was really a lot of fun. Bright colors, loud music, plenty of sexual innuendoes…what more could you ask for? Though probably the most interesting thing to me was that it seemed to be more a day about celebrating who you are than celebrating homosexuality. Everybody was welcome there, as long as they had an open mind. It was fantastic. I even wore shorts. Body image acceptance therapy, or BIAT as I like to call it. Though I have no idea what BIAT means. But anyway, I thought it was wonderful. We should all be so comfortable with ourselves and we should all celebrate that as often as we can.

I did have one bad thought while I was there, though. There were a lot of teenagers marching in the parade – kids who, in my judgmental opinion, are probably not old enough to know themselves well enough to know if they are gay or straight. So I wondered how many of them really were homosexual and how many say they are so they can feel cool, or like they are part of a group, or so they have a reason for their own feelings of social awkwardness.

I know, it is horrible of me to even think those things, but I did. I started thinking for myself at a pretty young age, but I still don’t know that I would have been able to say if I was a lesbian or not when I was twelve. Hell, there are times when I’m not sure now. Though do find myself attracted to boys more than girls, so I’m guessing not. But who knows? Maybe I just haven’t found the right woman. But I felt for those kids who might need so desperately to belong that they latch onto whatever group allows them to wear the most fun clothes, you know? Seriously, that parade almost made me want to be gay so I could belong to that group of people. Though, I guess it is kind of the same reasoning why some high school kids are afraid to come out. Or I could be totally wrong and every one of those kids who said he/she was gay is gay. I don’t know. But it was a thought that occurred to me and one I am not proud of, so I thought I would share it.

Don’t you love that I share things I’m not proud of with you? Tee hee. I’m going to go celebrate myself with some grapes. Whatever that means.