Happy Birthday, Jesus!

In the holiday spirit that likes to wax nostalgic, I rummaged through my parents box of "Santa Letters" (how Santa has time to write "return to sender" is beyond me) and found one I think that best represents Mini Me, actual spelling included:

December 24, 1980

Dear Santa Claus,
Well, my sister has a good letter so I don't know if I can top it off. well, I'm sitten here listening to Abba and writing your letter. I don't care what you get me except don't get me somethin dumb. Please!
Love,
Me

P.S. Please sign here for my autograph book.


(By the way, Readers, he flew away WITHOUT leaving his signature)

reasons...

Since the proverbial cat is out of the bag, I thought I'd list some reasons why I left NY. I cut out two separate things from New York's paper:
Sharon Jones, the songstress, answered the following upon being asked What could be different about New York to make it better?
"In my 20's and 30's, I thought, I love New York; I don't ever want to leave. But now it's just so hard, watching people struggle, unhappy, working two or three or four jobs just to pay rent. It was nice here at one point. I still love it here, but I'm ready to settle down, buy a home. What can you own here? Nothing. If they decide they want back the land you're on, then you're out. That's not how it should be. People should be able to work one job, make a decent living, pay decent rent. Feel like they're someone."
The second article I cut out was from a long time NY resident, a writer, Luc Sante, calling himself a "haptic poet:"
"I still get people asking me to write about New York, which I basically don't do anymore. For awhile, I was consumed by this sort of angry nostalgia, remembering the New York I knew. But now it's just gone. So I can marvel at what they're doing to the Bowery and Little Italy, putting up these pocket skyscrapers on these blocks of six-story tenements. Fuck it--let 'em do it. The more they erase my New York, the further it's emotionally removed from me, the better. Let them turn it into Bejing."
And tertiarilly, I quote Chuck Palahnuik from Diary: "The way people are coming...more and more every summer, you see more litter. But of course, you can't cap growth. It's anti-American. Selfish. It's tyrannical. Evil. Every child has the right to life. Every person has the right to live where they can afford. We're entitled to pursue happiness wherever we can drive to, fly to, sail to, to hunt it down. Too many people rushing to one place, sure, they ruin it--but that's the system of checks and balances, the way the market adjusts itself."
Personally, I prefer recalling the old fashioned rat experiments of the seventies: Put two rats in cage, they get along swimmingly. Add another, OK, they can still cohabit peacefully. But those scientists kept on adding rats and soon they were eating their young.
Just thought I'd write that so everyone knows.
Despite all my rage, I was still just a rat in a cage.

It's not funny, but it is....

I won't say where but I worked at a certain Cabaret/Cirque/Variete Show for a year and a half. It was very dark in that tent. There wasn't any glow tape. People fell. Old People. It was funny.
Cheese of Nazareth! It still makes me giggle like a Stoner. One minute this tubby lady with a half-cocked Cosmo in her hand is ordering around her dumb-struck husband where to sit and then, boom. Down she goes. Dove like Louganis into a dark pit of 2 X 4's on table 105. And I think that's hilarious.
Call me a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but that's what they get for thinking the tip was included.

A Black Fly in Your Chardonnay...

I booked a paid acting job playing, guess what? A Food & Beverage Manager.
I'm thinking the irony is just too too!

This is Your Spleen...

The weather today is slightly curious with possible chance of sousing, and scattered maudlining. I am yanking up my boots, rouging and dousing, and taking myself out on a date. I'm going to see some Improv (WITH pie: that means, yes, they are actually serving up pie) and I hope they got hooch.
Check 'em out!
http://www.myspace.com/theliberatorsimprov

ThanksGimme

OK, can I brag? (not like I haven't before) But I am preparing a whole feast all by my widdow self! I shopped, diced, baked, chopped, strained, oh, lord, you know the routine -- you've seen those Bonzai Chop infomercials, you know what I'm talkin' 'bout. So here's my menu:

Premiere Course
Curried Pumpkin Apple Soup
Wild Field Green Salad dressed with Tahini
Main Course
Stuffed Cinnamon Dusted Cornish Game Hens with Sweet Potato Risotto
and
Whipped Cauliflower & Potatoes
and
Sourdough Clover Rolls
Dessert
Trio of Pumpkin Pie
Mini Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes
Morello Cherry Pie

Can you believe? I feel pretty fancy and I better go so I can finish all this slaving for four hungry gobs.

This Mysterious New Land

My placenta-fresh lease on life has forced me to take myself out to various local clubs and bars; I don't know, maybe it's the just the cherished vision of Myself, fast-forward 30 years as a mascara-running Boozie that just puts a knowing smile on my face, but I sure do like drinking alone. And then meeting friendly strangers. I think the odds are in my favor as all the models must have vacated south or east for the weather approaching. Last night I told the cab driver to just take me to a cool wine bar. He took me to this place which barely had a sign, save for this one mysterious, lone letter of the alphabet: "M." I open the door to a room the size of a steam bath, it was the Gary Coleman of bars and I knew we would be fast friends. The gal behind the itty bitty counter offers a $3 DOLLAR glass of a lovely sangiovese. Then this guy who everyone knew walked in with his dog, literally named "Rin Tin Tin" (which I thought was funny). Rin Tin Tin jumped up on my lap and proceeded to curl up on me like a sweet little urine stain. Guy goes, "I guess you passed the test. Wanna go on a date?" while he. was. on. the. phone. I said, "Yeah, right, like you can handle your phone and this." And then I left. Tee Hee.

Life is Primo, Grade-A, Cherry...

I moved to another part of the country. I have the upstairs of a house and a huge backyard all to myself! I have an audition with an agent on Tuesday and I'm writing the weirdest, off-colored screenplay. Not very many people know where I am and I dig that. I went to Best Buy yesterday and saw older guys, one of them in their 30's, feverishly playing video games in the middle of the aisle. I'm thinking, what were you doing at home? "Dude. I'm bored of these videos, let's go to Best Buy and play some for free!" "Yeah, man. Let's just go to Best Buy and hang out there for awhile." "I need to pick up some Kool's anyway." Speaking of non-sequiturs, do you ever find yourself driving along, looking for a radio station and you find this really nice emo rock, just a guy or girl and their guitar and it’s really pretty and then you recognize “Jesus is my savior” in the lyrics!? You’ve just willingly subjected yourself to listen to GodRock and YOU LIKED IT! I hate that. I also hate it when you buy something at the grocery store and you notice the "Peel & Save" coupon, but then by the time you get to the register, you forget to peel it off and then you don't save. That doesn't even make sense, "peel & save!" If the coupon is right there, stuck to the product itself, then just lower the friggen price and don't make us go through the hassle of peeling anything.
Just so you know, all this complaining doesn't belie the fact that I'm actually pleased as punch with my New Life and although things didn't work out like I thought, they worked out better.

The Worst Day everrrrr

This day sucks so royally bad. It was like a pool-shark's effect of ricocheting bad-news balls. The terrible events of October 19 ran like an obituary of a cursed (wo)man's life. Somewhere in Haiti there's is a pissed voo-doo witch sticking pins into a corn-husk doll that must look exactly like me. I woke up with a teeny, fetal hangover to nurse, but nothing an iced skim latte couldn't render. I returned 3 movies and the shy, seemingly nice counter girl scolded me for bringing them to the front counter when there's a perfectly good drop off box located at the front of the store. Then I skulked back home to find an e-mail awaiting about this trade/craft/livelihood/métier I interviewed for the day before (when they shook my hand and congratulated me on the gig) telling me that, upon further investigation of their agenda, they now find that they are, indeed, full up. So I moon a little. Hours pass. And then I get my mail. A credit card account I closed six months ago found a hidden accidental credit (from March!) and I owe them $200.00. Of course, Me: Glutton, I call them and get transferred to people other than inmates at the womens's prison, perhaps their supervisors, and Clayton (a homo) and I throw down. Who do you think won? Clayton did. So I have to mail the Bank of America (SHAM! FRAUD! SCAMMERS!!) $200 bones I'll probably have to prostitute myself out to earn. After all this ranting, I'm pretty hungry, so I walk to Whole Foods and pick me up some dinner where I'm waiting in line to pay, and just like out of a movie, this little kid was laughing and playing with his mother in the cart, looks over to me and sticks his tongue out at me, but goes back to his mother and pretends like he didn't do anything. It was really like he knew what kind of a day I was having and wanted to twist the knife in a little harder, with his precocious little eraser pink f-ing tongue. I go home and my sister (who's apartment I'm staying at, for $600 a month, on a broken, spring-poking couch in a 10 X 10 room that is the go between every room) and she tells me to f'ing "straighten up my area." And then we get into it: I go, "I hate it here." She goes, "Then leave." And I go, "Maybe I will!" She goes, "You should!" And on and on. Then I go to the movies, hoping I'll catch something in time, anything, and what's on? The Halle Barry movie about how her husband dies and she takes care of his heroine-addicted best friend. Sunny, uplifting. On the way to the movie, however, I pick up a sugarless chocolate at a health food store. When I stand up to leave the movie, poo tries exiting my anus with great force and determination. I go to the bathroom. The poo gets shy and doesn't want to go swimming just yet. So I race home, and that's when Poo decides he wants to come out and play all over the pavement of New York. I barely made it home to the porcelain god, but as I sat there releasing the toxic poison chocolate, I almost wished I never made it. Because what better ending to this story than, "And then I shit my pants!"

It's harder than you think...

So, recently I went on a series of auditions to be the host for the Discovery channel's new show "Wasted" about renovating homes into "greener" versions. I really wish their show was just about getting wasted, because I think I would've done much better. I love my Mother Earth and all, but I'm no tree-hugging hippy. Anyhoo, they had me do some weird things like go through garbage and tell people what they could've recycled or not used at all. Their direction to me after a few takes was, "Be like Louis C.K.!" "No, we need more Denis Leary!" I'm like, "What the F? You want me to fire one up and start telling these people they can shove their plastic bottles of water up their diamond-tight ass-holes?" I mean, it was just so bizarre! 'Hey, Actress, we want you for our show! Can you lob banana peels and batteries at these total strangers, and make sure you tell them how to properly dispose of type 2 plastics!!!!!!!!!' Whatever, Discovery Channel. Then it dawned on me (like a CFL lightbulb) Hosting is a lot harder than it looks! We watch all these retarded reality shows/make-over shows and see these well turned hosts never skip a beat. And then it dawned on me some more. I think everything is harder than you think and I'm going to go through life just saying that about every new thing I try, so I won't look like such a failing ass-hole. "Oh, going grocery shopping? That is a lot harder than you think! You have to get a caaarrrrttt. Then you have to pick out stuff on shelvessss and then you have to pay. It's really tough. I know! You wouldn't think so, but it is." Or, "Actually, getting cash out of an ATM isn't as easy as it looks, folks. There is a vertiable montage of things that could go wrong." And, "If I can just accomplish returning this video back to Blockbuster, then I know the hardest part of my day is over."

How Unemployment Insurance mocks us...

Since my cabaret is closing down for a little while, Gigi gets to take advantage of some free filthy lucre. But here's the catch: each week, I must log onto the UI page and make my weekly claim to get my measly duckets no one could live on save for homeless, dieting people like me. I love the series of deriding questions it poses in its clinical, governmental way: Did you make an active search for employment this week? (yes) Were you physically able to work each day? (well, I was hungover, bleary eyed and all I could do was eat greasy food and drink Vitamin Water and watch back-to-back "Weeds" episodes and surf the World Wide Waste of Time, but YES! I probably could get out of bed and show up somewhere -- lord knows I've done it before.) But what I really enjoy is how they, like a shuffle-footed ex-lover, beat around the bush: They say,"Did you make an active search?" But what they mean is, "What the Fug have you been DOING with your time, you lazy bitch?" They mean, "Seriously, you slothful whore, crusing Barnes & Noble DOES NOT constitute a J to the O to the B." When they say, "You proclaim you made an active search making at least 3 job contacts in the last week?" They mean,"WTF, Gigi?" And then they make you prove it -- furthering their doubt of your productivity and genuine yearn for gainful employment. They scold, "So you're f'in telling ME, the Washington State Government, that you mailed out a measly 3 whimpy, flacid resumes to fancy restaurants who won't even look at you without your modeling portfolio and a proper BJ to the doorman and expect to get work?" "Oh, jeez, good job, you indolent C-You-Next-Tuesday." "Shit." "Well, here's your check! Go out and buy yourself a 40 ouncer and a strap into a Silm Jim. Treat Yourself! On US."

Another dream...

Last night I had a dream that people are like countries. France exports wine, Germany and Washington: beer, China: cheap tee-shirts, Zimbabwe: tobacco. Each coutry specializes in it's own export product for financial stability. Then I realized that PEOPLE are a lot like these countries. We must find out the few things we are really good at producing and focus on those. Jonathan Ames deicided he was a decent writer, and from the beginning, just stuck with that for awhile. Ellen Degeneres or Gilda Radner sought after being comical, and that's what they focused on. I must decide what few things I am best at producing, like what grows best in my forestry and climate conditions, and produce only those things. Like, if I were a country with mild seasons, decent rainfall and a lot of grapes: I should make wine. If I were a small country filled with depressed and creative black people, I should produce blues music. Get my drift? Then, at the end of the dream, I believe Lex and Dalen showed up, somone said, "What about all that Canada imports and exports?" Which is nothing. And I turned it into a joke and said something like, "Yeah, 'cause everyone knows what a huge importer/exporter Canada is!" Anyway it seemed funny in the dream. Politically funny, which I'm ususally not.

sometimes i want to be darker

I've been thinking about my short film, about an anti-superhero and I have to make it normal for everyone in the class to want to make it -- everyone has to agree on the script before it gets made. Most of the ideas are so mundane and rote and beige. I love Tracy Emin. She is my favorite artist and I want to be her. I realized SHE is my Superhero. Drunk and pioneering. She found her calling and it's Confessional Art. She doesn't give a shit about wearing cute clothes or staying thin and what everyone else cares about. I'm not hanging around the right people. I need to hang around people like her. My head's not in the right place. And this is why I'm depressed. I'm going to go order her book right now. I love her.

My Own Little Paris Hilton Story...

It was the top of January, 2001, and I was hanging out in my Seattle studio when my friend “Melissa” (who, behind my back, was a stripper in Vegas) called me from her Santa Monican home, begging me to meet her in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Melissa’s one of those zealous gals who will cajole you into one madcap situation after another by conveniently telling you what to expect after you get off the plane.
This was the case as my Airporter van ascended the snow/cocaine-capped mountains of Utah while I rang her on the celly to see where, exactly, I’d be staying.
“No problem. We’re at The Hugo Boss house. There’s plenty of room!”
I interject, “And I’m expected, right?” Pause (always with the pause).
“Ummm, not exactly. But it’s NO PROBLEM. I’m staying with the CEO of Hugo Boss and he totally won’t mind.”
The last night this happened I was verbally bitch-slapped by David Spade at Kevin Costner’s house. Seriously.
So, naturally, my nerves kicked in. Turns out it wasn’t nerves speaking but a psychic sixth sense that was screaming in my head, “You have just been avalanched with crazed celebrities, trays of ecstasy, snotty anorexic PR girls and you are stuck here as a party-crasher!”
I was dropped off at The Hugo Boss House to meet this afore-mentioned CEO. He could’ve been an *NSync member’s grandfather, sequined headscarf and all. And he was a total dick. See, he invited Melissa after seeing her strip, thinking she would sleep with him if he treated her with the Sundancian good life. She wasn’t about to sleep with old-man chubby-pants. Melissa also invited this Italian looking biscotti of a girl with a great set of cans. So, there were two strippers and me. CEO Boss literally referred to me as “the ugly one.”
Of course that’s also how he mentioned one of Paris Hilton’s friends, of which none was ugly. So I’d only need some therapy, not massive amounts.
Plenty of free, sponsored cocktails into the evening, the big double doors whishhed open and boom: there’s Paris clad in a leopard print onesey (mind you, this was ’01 when the Vanity Fair exposé had just surfaced of her looking “ironically” like a starlet overdosed on a beach). This Hugo Boss party was her coming out, so to say.
What happened next was magical. People began shoving products into her face, forcing her to hold them up and pose for a picture. The coyotes were in heat and Miss Hilton was the biggest celebrity at the party, holding up whatever they handed her: fancy bottled water, lipsticks, adrenaline-rush drinks, tampons… anything. She just blithely raised “product” to her face and smiled in her famous slanty-eyed, pouty way.
Melissa, CEO Gramps, Biscotti and I all camped out down the street in a condo away from the party house. Paris teetered home sometime around 5am in a new outfit (at some point in her festivities she had a costume change; this outfit was more prom-girl-gone-bad, with a gigantic netted skirt suffocating anyone who had to sit next to her). Paris had been partying, for reals. Someone helped her up to bed and she passed out. The next day we all nursed our hangovers with pizza, save for CEO Gramps, who whined on the phone about what a disaster this trip was, as he wasn’t getting laid. It was, like, 2pm and Paris still wasn’t up. I went in to check on her, just to see if she was still breathing. She slept all damn day, that debutante. Finally, it was 8 o’clock at night and we were all about to leave for dinner when I peeked in on Paris one more time. She was still asleep. After dinner we all went to another Sundance party, and all I’m thinking about is, “Geez, is Paris OK? She’s missing all the fun!”
I needn’t have worried about Little-Miss-Rich-Girl. About 11pm she entered the room like before, all Sunset Boulevardian, fully done-up to the nines and the routine starts all over again: products shoved in her face and more posing. She clearly relished the attention, but the emotional observer in me still saw a hint of, “Shit. This again??” in her eyes.
CEO Gramps was “let go” for allegedly embezzling millions of dollars from Hugo Boss and spending it on?? Yup, strippers and drugs.
Paris Hilton…well, we all know how that story ends…

I need...

I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$ I have a million $dollars$
I'm really trying at this Secret Thing.

Singing Waitress Wanted...

My beau Jackie & I saw "Spiderman 3" tonight (his idea, I'm more of a Year of the Dog girl) but...I relented. There was a part in the movie when M.J. got fired from her Broadway gig only to be subjected to getting a job at a nightclub as, you guessed it, a singing waitress. Cue the sad music and pan to M.J. sitting on a bench looking very, very depressed, like, "Man...it's come to this??" Truth be told, I work in Dinner Theatre, as a fan-dancing waitress, and I found it alternately humourous and humiliating that this was the character's low point in the film. Have I been living at a low point for a year and a half? probably. Oh well, it is fiction, right?

Phone Candy: by Gigi

Hi -- Last night I had the weirdest dream. I was in France with friends, then I was in Italy and met with the Boy-Everyone-Warns-You-About, an Italian milkdud in a pine green shirt on a scooter. But I have a real boyfriend in real life, Jackie, and I felt guilty about getting on the back of the scooter (if you know what I mean) of this hot, young Italian stud. He wanted to kiss me "down there" and that's where I drew the line. Then I found myself first in line for the French version of American Idol but I'm in my 30's and I'm about as tone deaf as Helen Keller. But there I was in a strange common area with these international kids and I was first in line. Then I realized I had to leave tomorrow for the states to return home, only I wasn't sure if it was tomorrow and I definitely didn't know the time. So I kept calling Alaska Airlines' 1-800 # over and over, but it was hard because the French don't have 1-800 numbers. So I was calling my friend, Meri, to see where she was: back at the hotel and she'd just drank one of my expensive bottles of french wine I was planning on taking home with me. Then James Earl Jones called, but I let it go to voice-mail. The the coordinator of the French A.I. came in and asked if everyone had enough, "phone candy." I guessed this referred to the several big bowls of m&m's, red vines, gummies and other assorted candies laid out everywhere for us to snack on while we waited, talking on our phones.