21 july 2000
what i didn't mean to write

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Tonight, all she'd have to do is say ... "I want you ... now."

And I'd be like "Um .. yeah, let's go."

Of course, somewhere along the way to the bedroom (or the sofa, or the rug, or the kitchen counter, or the subwoofer), my conscience would take over and call the whole thing off.

"But I hardly know you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we've just met. Shouldn't we be friends first? Are you sure you want to do this? Why me?"

"WHY ---- ME?"

Groucho Marx said it best: "I'd never join a club that would have me as a member."

I recently remembered that quote, in an email I sent about a week ago. And now it's sticking with me.

~~~

Standing outside on the back deck tonight, smoking a cigarette, I call to my roommate, who is esconsed in VH1's "Black Crowes: Behind the Music."

"Yo. Take a look at this." Suitably animated arm motions follow.

He gets up. I'm staring out to sea from our little hillside. Over the roofs of the Malibu Colony, there's a string of lights. It looks like a home on a mountainside. But there's no mountain. I'm looking at the Pacific Ocean. What the fuck is hovering out there, I wonder....

The roomie comes out. I point. He lights a cigarette of his own. He stares for a good ten seconds and runs back inside ...

... only to reappear with binoculars.

"Could be a UFO," he says nonchalantly, peering through the dual lenses. "I can't focus. You try."

I take off my glasses and lift the binoculars. After about a minute, I find a good focus.

"Whatever it is, it's moving. Very slowly."

He takes the lenses back, and rests them on the balcony rail to steady them.

"It's a boat. Big-assed boat. Probably a cruise ship -- take a look."

So I did, and confirmed. The "Love Boat" theme went through my head for a second. Oh well, no aliens, just a stupid optical illusion aided by the perspective from our hillside perch. My "flying saucer" was actually on the water.

"Disco Volante" --- flying saucer ... the name of the yacht used by SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) in the two James Bond Movies "Thunderball" and "Never Say Never Again," both with Sean Connery, the latter a remake of the former. I'm such a geek, aren't I?

Let's let my imagination run wild. SPECTRE, led by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (that bald dude with the white persian cat), has commissioned an enormous yacht called the "Disco Volante" (aka "Flying Saucer"), currently stationed in Santa Monica Bay, just off the coast of Malibu, to serve as Command Headquarters for a vital mission to sabotage the Groaning Mona performance at the "Best of LA" festival, tomorrow at 2pm, at the Santa Monica Civic Center. But of course, our hero, James Bond, will save the day at the last minute by drinking vodka martinis shaken-not-stirred as provided by the festival management, using his new-found alcohol-induced strength to stave off SPECTRE at the last minute before Groaning Mona takes the stage.

Groaning Mona keyboardist and occasional lead singer amaebi, of course, will buy James Bond an additional round of shaken-not-stirred vodka martinis at the festival bar for preventing said catastrophe.

~~~

So yeah, I'm kinda worried about the gig.

Wouldn't you be worried if you were going on stage in front of 12,000 people, even if most of them weren't really there to see you?

The real bummer is, I gotta wake up around 9am for this shindig. 9am. On a Saturday. I don't even own an alarm clock. I'm debating calling 976-WAKE.

And what will I wake up to? My beloved bedmate. An overstuffed Garfield (tm), who's been sharing the bed with me for almost a month, since Ice Fairy gave him to me and I had no place to put him.

Can you conceive how humiliating it is for me to continuously wake up to four-foot-tall stuffed animal in my bed?

This is not what I imagined "thirty-something" to be.

Then again, in a lot of ways, it's better than I imagined it.

And at the same time, it's a helluva lot worse.

I'm going to make peace with this soulless cat. Someday. I swear to it.

It's much better than breaking a nine-year-old girl's heart...

21 july 1999: : didn't write

21 july 1998: selfish bitch : For some reason, I thought I needed to completely throw out everything that defined me, and I did.