kerouac says

am i a cynical new yorker? i have trouble believing i'm a new yorker of any kind. if i'm a cynic, i'm, like, a cynical olympia washingtonian.

but just in case, i am not going to tell you about the terrible haircut i just paid fifty bucks for. rather, please see this photograph i took in amsterdam of me and my father having lunch in the middle of our 30k bike ride out of town, both wearing padded shorts.

new job today!

adrenaline tummy!

and i just consumed doughnuts!

maybe not the best combination!



too late now!

i ordered the couch yesterday. i was going to link to it, but i'm sort of embarrassed by how much it costs. and not expensive like it's super nice and everyone should be impressed, but more like: what business do we have having this?

the best one told me yesterday that where she works with the Richest People In The World, one of her recent tasks was to schedule some guy a helicopter ride to the hamptons for the weekend. i guess a limo was too slow. the helicopter-taxi was eight thousand dollars.

that man laughs at my couch, and i mutter about his priorities.

so, i got a new job. i've been trying to get a new job for months. the job i've been working does not pay well, although they are absurdly kind about my lateness when auditions come up, and is practically full-time. the new job pays better, and is emphatically part-time. it's also a better commute. still, i kind of feel crappy.

for one thing, New Job insisted that i give my old job the shaft by leaving with only a few days' notice. old job happens to be going through a bad week. and they're friends, and good people, and i'm sort of screwing them. i'm trying to make up for it by offering to work mornings here before my afternoons at the New Job for as long as it will help them out, which will mean working some longer-than-full-time days for a week or two.

on one hand, this is all just business crap. and capitalists get business crap sometimes. it's what balances their advantage as capital-holders who can fire people at will. it's the tat for the tit of underpaying me for a year. on the other hand, it kills me to do wrong to someone who's done me right. so i'm just trying to mitigate the karma damage.

also: this new job is software testing, like i did back in the day. i was never a computer head, so back-in-the-day i faked it until i had been around so long i could do enough of the dance so that i didn't stand out while collecting my sizeable paychecks. this new place appears to be balls-to-the-wall. they are for real, yo, and i'm quaking a little. i hope that once again i get big points for being cute and funny and that i can juggle-dance until i get my footing.

which, if experience is a guide, should take 2.25 years. but: unless i am incompetent and get fired, i will be Not A Secretary. i will be a skilled tradesman. i will not answer anyone's phone but mine. i will not be the first line of defense against disgruntled and condescending consumers. and i am amazed at how much difference that makes.

the audition this morning went okay--not sucky, but not as good as i felt in rehearsal, which was frustrating. i like this group, or at least the idea of it, and i sort of wanted to hit it out of the park. still, she asked for a second piece. "something contrasting," she said. i paused, and then asked:

"like, less freaky? or . . . more funnier?"

identifying myself in the space of six words as an unfunny freak who doesn't speak the english so good.

i know commenting on gossip column fodder isn't the done thing in the circles to which i aspire, but this came up on the google news page and i couldn't look away:

"'She announced,' Szish points out, 'that she's becoming a Scientologist and that she's embracing this religion. She's taking it very seriously. She's been passing out pamphlets at a hotel, an apartment building she was staying in, in L.A., and she's really adopted this full force. Hook, line and sinker.'"

so. passing out pamphlets? i'll admit some bias when the hubbardists are concerned, but there are a few things i think being a movie star should mean you never have to do again and one of them is: flyering. this seems like a major comedown. i would never be a part of a cult that asked me to flyer.

the best one has a charming weakness for self-help (i totally just typoed: self-hope) books and infomercial beauty products. one day she told me about this book, and seemed really hopeful that the philosophy of small steps had the power to change the lives of those of us who look at our To Do This Lifetime lists and are immediately so overwhelmed that we are capable only of napping or getting high and watching HBO.

right after she told me about this book, i saw a weight watchers ad about taking "small steps toward health" that actually made me cry. the commercial featured this angelic-looking lady in a big pink sweatshirt who was joyfully and dutifully small-stepping all over the beach while snacking on some raw vegetables.

i've been thinking about all of this, and how i would like it to be me on the beach with the celery sticks, but really, more than that, i would like it to be me able to sleep at night without drugs

(although, item: this one would be less hard if the woman in the next apartment who, i have to say, has terrible terrible hair, wouldn't slam the door next to my head twenty minutes after i've managed to doze off)

and able to coutenance a weekend-worth of duties and chores without going all shit-eyes crazy and stuttering around the apartment making lists and heating up frozen pizzas. i've been thinking about small steps a lot, and realizing just how small they would have to be for me to make a beginning.

i really do try to eat a cookie every day. and most days, i succeed.

the first time i wished the monkey happy bloomsday, he looked at me blankly. and i told him about Ulysses, and the time i was in paris on june 16 in an irish bar where they read it out loud and most everyone was drunk and crying. he said june 16 was better known between his ears as the day he got married. and i gulped, but then we both smiled, and truly, it was all right.

I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

as if this attempt weren't scary enough, microsoft and a number of other blog providers--including, according the NPR report i'm listening to, yahoo and google, the parent of blogger--have built censorship tools into their interfaces. words not allowed in blog or post titles include:

taiwan
falun gong
democracy
dalai lama
human rights
freedom

given the contexts in which freedom is invoked these days, it's a little bit hard for me to defend the word with a straight face--i keep thinking of john ashcroft and lots of bunting. still, though. i'm chilled.

tim curry walked by while i was standing in line outside the equity building. i was the only one who noticed, and i was on the lookout for some fellow-feeling from Mr. Body, but then realized he's not from here and probably doesn't know this building or the line of people outside it has anything to do with actors. anyway, i wanted to be the cool one who sees the genius and slyly winks at him without blowing his cover, but i couldn't get it together--i started blowing him a kiss, of all things. small scale, you know, in order not to spoil his anonymity, but he looked away at the wrong moment and i think it looked like i was sucking on my hand.

my audition this morning was awfully half-assed. i remember this casting director from before. he was the one who made a cell phone call during someone's two minutes and cancelled a full day of auditions--after we'd all gotten up early and waited in line--because the a/c in the studio was broken. this time he interrupted the very first group of actors to use the bathroom. and i was like, guy? you couldn't have gone before we started? five minutes is an eternity when the shot you're guaranteed is ninety seconds long. three draggly hopefuls from the alternate list could have been seen in the time it took you to mosey to the toilet.

and then i thought, what if he has prostate cancer? i'm a terrible person.

and then i half-assed it. i feel like if i ever had a day off to work on my shit, i could do a new monologue once in a while without feeling like a hack.

actually, i have to pee right now myself, and i feel like i can't go over and use it for a while because i literally just went (giant bottle of diet dr. pepper and yes, i'm a hypocrite) and i don't want the guys who sit next to me to think i have a drug problem.

or prostate cancer.

if you know me from back when, you know that when i found that this guy was advertising on breakdown services for people for his next music video, i got a little excited.

i am not joking when i say the shoot pays twenty five bucks. but i don't care. the last music video i did paid one gin and tonic. i saw this guy play the crocodile cafe in seattle at the very beginning of his solo career, on a night when i had a 102 degree fever. he makes me dance when i sing along in the shower. he likes robots. come on, sir. reward my devotion.

i had a pretty good audition this morning. it lifted the funk a little.

and not just because i did well (or at least okay). also because one young woman near me in line told a story about her stifling apartment, and how she'd woken early and gone to the kitchen to make coffee only to find her roommate's hairy naked boyfriend sleeping on her couch--apparently, he'd left the roommate's bed to look for a cooler spot.

and i was thinking: most likely, never again. no more roommate's boyfriends, no more roommate's dishes, no more roommate eating my peanut butter. only me and mine from now on. and while i do wish he would remove his hair bundle from the shower drain after bathing, i generally have few complaints.

i went to see Crazy Agent Man last week. he's less of a lecher-clown in his office, although he's . . . dotty. hard to follow a couple of times. the monkey asked his agent about this guy (i just wanted to make sure he wasn't a porn person or something) and she said,

"he's still alive?"

it turns out this guy is primarily a literary agent, but he's kept his franchise and does work with a few actors. he nattered on for a while, and then clued me in on the way he "did business": actors call in at 4:30, he tells them what there is for them in the breakdowns that day, and then they do the actual mailing--he gives them his official-looking mailing labels and authorizes the use of his name. so . . . i guess the envelope *looks* like an agented submission, even though all the clerical work is done by the actor.

and then he said that if i was interested, i should prepare the opening monologue from Getting Out and come back to see him in a week or so.

this whole operation sounds a little less than ideal, but i'm hardly in a position to turn my nose up at it, i guess. the kicker, though, was the piece he asked for. i have a terrible history with plays like that one. anytime some character is an ex-con or high school dropout, tough, severely damaged and speaks with an accent, i suck. i was assigned a scene from danny and the deep blue sea in grad school, and six weeks later was summarily kicked out of the program. at one point while we were working on it, the teacher yelled out, "you're not in private school! lose the diction!"

no can do, apparently. so i think this frog-molesting monologue is not necessarily going to show me off to great advantage. the monkey said, "it's good. it'll be a stretch for you." except stretching is not really what you want to do in the guy's office. you would prefer to nail it, even if as an agent, he makes an excellent self-serve gas station.

on top of it all, i suddenly want to go home so bad. again.

and if i want to be in seattle so stronly, maybe this grad school idea is a bum one. i've been hearing a lot about the terrible awful academic job market. if it's really true, and i'd be lucky to get a teaching position somewhere in KillMyself, Alabama, i'm not sure i'll be happy. if a view of puget sound is absolutely necessary, maybe i should be training to be a ferry captain.

i didn't come here with a zillion contacts and lots of relevant past experience. i am, let me be clear, pretty much at the bottom of the ladder. so when it turns out that one thing i did--actually, something i loved, in a totally corny and sincere way--back home might put me in an advantageous position when the same play gets produced here, i get excited.

but i shouldn't, because the fact that a twenty-four year old with great skin and a longer resume has already been cast in the role i originated shouldn't be so ouchy, or even so surprising.

it wasn't my part to lose. it's just that so rarely do i have an inside connection to anything out here, and this is exactly the type of thing that is supposed to lead to some kind of break. and, also, i really did love that play. stories from my life are in it. it was one of the first things i thought i was good in. i feel a little like i finally met my special celebrity crush and he actually liked me back, and we spent the night together, and it was spectacular, and then he started dating my sister.

tom delay should be a doonesbury character, but he is actually for real.

someone let me know today what was listed as the word-of-the-day on a popular vocabulary-building email service two days ago. i don't mean to belittle anyone's efforts towards self-improvement, but perhaps the president would be better served by starting small.

i give it six months before "not tell the truth" is listed as a secondary but accepted definition of "disassemble," and possibly also for "nu-cular."