C H I C K E N G A T E :

Eagle and Talon Let Go

2006-01-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

It was our first time doing this sort of thing and inside the trailer parked outside a sculptors workshop/warehouse out in east la, nice amiable people were all about working hard to make us to look more like ourselves. Shellacked in hairspray, flesh-toned powders, expensive rouge and strategically enhanced with lash extensions, orange shadow, green liner, kim and i were realler than we'd ever been before.

We were just getting our final touch-ups when Kurt the photographer came in: "So, i think i know what we're going to do. We found this gigantic barrel out back...Alice, we're going to have you get inside it and Kim will be on the outside not really aware you're there, you know, it'll be like...two prairie dogs. It'll be good."

I was giving myself over to being deeply amused when Kim let out a nervous laugh and asked, "are you serious?" He smiled and threw out a reassuring "we'll just try it out okay?"

Okay. (?)

I spent the next hour squatting inside a giant peeling barrel with a totally great outfit on and just my head poking out. Next to my rusty doghouse and totally beyond my line of vision, Kim tried hard to look langorous lying amidst wheatlike shrubs, itchy grass and damp soil. I tried looking at her with evil intent the way i thought an evil prairie dog might do. my feet went numb.

In the end they got rid of the barrel and took another round of pictures with us in fancier (borrowed) clothes that were intended to help explore the scene's "yinyang oppositional" concept. I got into it (as in slight friction) with the wardrobe stylist, but eventually gave up being bratty and just put on the damn chiffony top they wanted me to wear. We took photos for another 45 minutes. I'm sad to say they ended up choosing one from this batch so you won't get to see eagle and talon's suffering in the grass properly documented.

Anyway, i'm making it out to sound a lot more horrible than it was. Truth is, it was really fun and there are worse things than getting pampered and made up by a talented crew and trying out some girly rituals that you've tended to avoid most of your life. Admittedly, I was a little dumbfounded with the elaborateness of the whole production, but maybe that's what happens when things get professional.

I dunno.

Whatever the case, the whole experience was eye-opening in terms of the malleability of image and how there are just so many ways to represent yourself (in print, in text, in life). And sometimes, and i do only mean sometimes, it doesn't have to be such a terrible thing if you approach it with a sense of adventure or happy halloween everybody! or whatever, rather than seeing it as an assassination of who you are.

that said, you won't see me wearing a leopard-print thong in this lifetime (unless it's keeping my head warm or something).

yours,
alice

p.s. the article comes out this sunday in the latimes/west magazine. be nice.

The Cowboy and the Gunslinger

2005-11-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

I'm off to the 1st annual international tamale festival (up on n. spring st and w. ann) with my kid brother and his newly arrived girlfriend (from Korea via Taiwan). we're going to sicken ourselves with cornmeal. It should be delicious fun.

In honor, a dream (from friday night):

Am sitting in some kind of well-lit coffee bar, the kind you find in the bottom of a hotel lobby in some country in asia. There's no smell of coffee, no chatter or rough drafts, just tables and me. A stranger (caucasian, male, jeans) comes up to me asking for an extra pen (to keep). I'm sitting at a round wooden table with a stapled manuscript, a good pen on the left and a clear plastic one on the right . I look at the cheap one - i was writing with it -- "No."

Later he's sitting at a rectangular table next to the window. Now we're enemies and somehow i happen to know that this guy has four balls and I start taunting him about have those two extra testes and he doesn't like that much. But it's not enough to just see him riled and I start calling him "Quattro!" from across the room. That's when he loses his shit and suddenly jumps out of his chair lunging and is in my face reaching for my throat he's gonna rip out my larynx make it stop saying
"Quattro" but my right arm is already fully extended, my right fist, two inches from his nose "Don't or I'll punch your face I'll do it I will!"

Scene.

-a

Psych Lab

2005-11-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

The term "Bambi-Is-A-Snake" I heard a few weeks back at the restaurant. My customer was explaining how his wife worked at Nordstroms and how much it sucked, the hours, the customers, "...not to mention Bambi-Is-A-Snake [referring to his wife's bitchy, but sunny-faced co-worker]..."

Anyway, friends knows this -- i used to be a English teacher in Taiwan. For more than a year, I walked around with stabbing headaches and cheeks shredded by acne --- I'd never been so stressed in my life. Once, before class, my whole torso filled up with, yes, gas and I ended up at the school track, burping for three rubber-turfed laps until I worked off all the anxiety. It was hard being insecure and a teacher.

So, I can sorta empathize with my teacher at LACC. (The class is THTR 001 - beginning acting. Signed up cuz I was scared and curious) She's a short, slight woman, late thirties to early forties, cute, but large pouches under her eyes, skin shiny from lotsa daily moisturizer. Her hair is amber colored, wavy, above chin-length, bangs in the front. She always wears three-quarters length pants.

So there's this girl, M________ all brown curves spilling out of expensive, too-small clothes with nice salon highlights and haircut. Almost sexy. Like Eve Langoria (sp?) with a wrester's build. A total attention hog but amusing and uninhibited and always the first to get up and volunteer to go up when everyone else is feeling pre-noon shyness -- even if she does always preface by announcing that she hasn't prepared and is just gonna have to wing it.

The first week we had to go up and share a life-changing moment with the class. She told us she'd gotten into pot at 13, coke when she was 14 and everything else the year after and was basically a total wreck until her mom forced her to go to rehab and boarding school. And now she was totally cleaned up except for the occasional rendezvous with weed.

This past Monday she walked in, went up and whispered something to the teacher -- turns out she'd lost her voice and would have to do her monologue on Wednesday. She sat down and during critiques, whispered hoarse comments to the guy sitting next to her, which he then rebroadcast to the class. As I was leaving class, I told her I hoped she got her voice back. She laughed and answered in her normal voice.

Yesterday only 6 of us were in attendance. Rain was mucking things up outside. We were discussing different ways to approach our monologues and ended up on the topic of "covers" -- my teacher's term for how we mask feelings we don't want to show -- like busting grins-all-around when we're actually upset about something or making mucous jokes after we've finished crying our eyes out (me) or just staying really stoic when inside we're MOTHERFUCKIN MAD!!

So twenty minutes into the class, M______ pops her head in the door and gesticulates wildly. Something about being double parked...she'll be back in a second.

The discussion continues. Pretty lively. People are rifling their pasts for insight, they're asking the teacher lots of questions. Everyone's engaged. My teacher is standing in front of us, riffing fluidly:

She has a student in another class who doesn't come often but when she does, is always crazy hostile and antagonistic. Later it comes out that the girl's family was displaced to Lancaster after Katrina and her homelife has been an absolute madhouse.

She has a British friend that covers his disappointment with his life and his bitterness with his country's class system with explosive anger. Favorite phrase: "fucking cunt of a whore." Once a plate went flying.

Covers help us feel in control of our situation. We use them all the time.
Like, she continues, if any of us had to, we could easily do imitations of each other. We would just pick some essence of the person that we radar in daily interaction and just act that out -- and essentially we'd be acting out each other's covers. For instance, (she goes over to the doorway), she could do M____. (She crouches a little and waves her arms wildly and makes a goofy exaggerated imitation of our double-parked classmate.)

It's a poor impression. My mouth is registering a funny taste.

M__ apparently never finds a way to un-double-park her car because with thirty minutes left in the class, she's still not there. As the discussion winds down - teacher brings our missing classmate back into it:

"Take M____ for instance - here's a person who has very few or almost no covers" (Two students in front look at each other quizzically and chime "or just one big cover!") The teacher keeps going.

"That's what makes her kinda this free personality," she gesticulates to conjure some related essence, "and frankly" she strolls over to her desk, "kind of... fucked up." Really matter of fact like. Like she's not telling us anything anybody doesn't know. Somebody laughs.

The Armenian kid who told the butt-shaped avacado parable during Week 2 and a girl with long turquoise fingernails who looks a lot like Nico go up and do their two-minute condom skit.

We're instructed to think about "covers" over the weekend.

I duck out early to move my car. Wednesday street cleaning. Meter's almost up.

--alice the worm

Seed Freak

2005-09-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

Things are very specific. Cappucino is too lite and frothy. Espresso is too strong and too hot. A latte is kinda feyish and in all the jokes about over-priveleged folk. Perfection on a hot sluggish day I guess is then a a double shot of espresso over ice with a small splash of half and half and a quarter packet of sugar. A brownie or something chocolate-y and solid is good company too.

So I've just spent too long at the art store trying to differentiate between cream, banana, sahara and eggshell paper stocks. But I leave the store with two large sheets of color paper in hand. Time to reward my decisiveness. I swing by the Beverly Coffee Bean (which alanna hates and boycotts soley because she hates the font) and order the usual double espresso over ice, one of the shots decaf please. The kid who makes it needs the order repeated. Clue 1.

A little about the beverly coffee been. It's a small one. Hyper space conserving. Really an angular enclosed coffee stand with one way traffic indoors and a small outdoor seating area. It's not a real coffeehouse. Whatever. It gets the job done.

So I'm waiting behind the plexiglass which keeps steamed milk particles from coating my specs and keeps my mouth vapors off the stainless steel espresso machine. The kid who's making my thing turns to the curly-haired gentleman in front of me and asks whether he wants water added to it.

???

The man affirms. The kid goes to the back, near the ice machine, adds water, smacks the cup on the counter and announces that my double espresso with a shot of decaf over ice is ready. I look at the watered down mixture floating an inch over the ice and ask if he put a SHOT of decaf ESPRESSO in there (as opposed to some unpotent decaf coffee?) He says YES, sans flinch or hesitation, zero indication that anything is wrong.

Okay...

[The sad little girl goes outside to the patio to dress her coffee.]

Outside, I look at the tan colored water again. I taste it... -- well still fairly strong, maybe I saw/heard wrong. Okay. So I add some half and half (a little less than usual-- just in case), stir it up, examine the coffee a few more times as I walk out of the place and grow increasingly perturbed by the thought that the kid MUST HAVE have added water to my afternoon life elixir. I get in the car drinking my now increasingly weak and watery- tasting coffee, going back and forth on what just happened. Maybe there's a possibility that he didn't do what I SAW him do.

Though my memory is auto-repeating the scene:
"Do you want water added to this?" said the Coffee Bean's slim novice to the curly-haired gentleman as the unwitting asian girl stood by watching. "Sir, would you like water added to this?" "Sir, water to ruin her coffee?" The barista strides to the back to add water.

Revisionist history. The Holocaust. 1984 and the Ministry of Propaganda. I am here in sunny, happy privileged, Los Angeles away from female hurricanees, drinking the key to the seed.

The REVISING of reality to explain/make sense of an unexpected or undesired reality... In my world view it made absolutely no sense for a barista to add unsolicited WATER to my espresso and then ask somebody ELSE if it was okay. Why would he do that? He must not have done that. My coffee must be okay.

Despite the fact that it's weak, thin, not okay.

Does the evening weather report later reveal that ice had a lower melting point this afternoon causing water levels to rise in coffee drinks to unexpected levels?

Who know.

Well, I"m home now. Blogging, drinking an anemic iced double espresso, listening to recently downloaded "Maneater" and now "Suburbia." Melodies were amazing back then.

My woes are definitely trivial.

Still, insofar as a bad cup of coffee unleashes diseases of the mind, everything

AVEC PLAISIR

-alice

microfiche

2005-07-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

I like technology. I like watching it bring in new day-to-day rituals for the american public. I like the easy or messy transitional period and how it eventually gives way to a time when such and such technology is implicated into our lives as something we do without thinking -- like coughing between movements at Roy O., putting the stick between my groceries and hers, swerving to avoid the smashed up squirrel.

So, yes, yes, Google has changed library sciences and IMDB is an indispensible party tool ("what other movies has Emilio Estevez been in?") Somehow, more is known with books being opened less - thank you, Internet. Not everyone can be as cool as you...Still:

The other day i was in my car, driving out of the labrinth underneath Best Buy and Target (near La Brea) and there was an express line for people who'd already paid for their tickets at kiosks. You get a ticket going in, you pay a dollar into a machine on your way out, you find the lane with no operator and stick your card in, the bar lifts, you look at the guy with the walkie talkie helping out drivers trained in their old way of life -- (the way that still involves a minimum wage parking attendant, sometimes smiling but often not, who slides your magnetic strip through a card reader, takes your money, tells you to have a good day) -- you're amused while you look at walkie talkie guy cuz you're smart and you don't need his help but America (California) ((Los Angeles)) (((West Hollywood))) will continue to need him for probably at least another half a year (actually maybe shorter if Best Buy higher-ups eventually realize they can streamline the process with bigger signs, cashiers reminding shoppers to pay for their tickets and more strategically-placed kiosks. But either way) a whole category of boring employment will have been phased out on the corner of Santa Monica and La Brea. You exit the parking structure. Culture evolves in small and mundane ways.

i went to a party a month and a half ago. it was public, well-attended and at somebody's apartment so smoking was allowed cuz the whole operation was illegal to begin with. It all flooded back. how "going out" used to mean coming home with clothes that were permanent pressed with a gross amalgam of sweat, smoke, and vaporized beer. sore feet and odor were the price you paid. and then you got used to it... same way you're now used to california, the producers leaving bad tips, atkins keeping bread off the streets, TJ's herb salad mix, band friction, band release, traffic patterns on beverly, strawberry crepes, things happening slower than you expect blah blah bluh bleh buhhhhhhhhhh...

-a

Simple Statements

2005-05-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

A few things:

My uterus is trying to fall out.
I fell asleep on the couch with the lights and glasses on.
I am still wearing my lavender blazer.
I am still tired.
A mosquito wafted by as I lay on my red couch.
I watched it and thought about working tonight.
I felt a feeling of dread.
I closed my eyes and realized i don't have to work tonight.
It's true. I'm going to a party. Everything's taken care of.
last night's gig was super-fun.
It was at skooby's.
Run by brothers John and Stephen Hooper.
Siblings ventures are a worthy thing.
Mike was MIA, but the people came and smiled anyway.
In turn, we were loud and sloppy.
As a throwback to earlier days, we flew by the seat of my (XL) underpants.
This is not the way to run large corporations or build a dam.
But it sometimes works for music.
We ate potato leek soup afterwards at a noisy cafe.
It was creamy and buttery -- made with attention or tenderness.
Speaking of tender/buttery, lately i've been making crepes at home.
I ate four crepes in one day.
My stomach was full of strawberries.
Don't dunk a salmon in a stomach full of berries.
You will want to poo and then you won't poo.
Do take advantage of strawberry season.
The fruits are currently extremely affordably -- and succulent to boot.
Beyond trawberries, this season also brings strange alignments.
To be vague: things have been having strange relevance to each other.
What i mean is, pebbles coated in honey have been scuttling down a dirty mountain picking up non-random debris that coat and pack into avalanche rocks.
Messages from the mountain!!!

Welcome to May!

thank you thank you,
alice

Concussed in the Back

2005-04-22T00:56:00.000-07:00

er something like that.

Hey! I've decided to be punctual again. I realized the propensity for staring at my car clock (set 11 minutes fast -- it works!) while speeding -- gas meter hovering on empty -- toward whatever destination i'm about to be exactly 10 minutes late for and then parking, jumping out of the car and running the final leg when my heart has no wish to palpitate this fast and my gambs are most often used in the service of WALKING to procure FOOD -- it's just no good. Plus being late induces stress and fiasco.

Fiasco-most-recent:
Tuesday. Just before noon. I'm only five minutes late to work and am in fact congratulating myself as I walk up to the restaurant only to find the front door locked. bummer. must go round to back.

Go round to the back gate. Locked. What is this?!

I start shouting the names of cooks cuz i can hear activity in the kitchen but the only person whose attention I get is a grumpy young guy who lives in the back house adjacent to the kitchen's alley. He sticks his head out his window and barks out in this hating life tone how he's trying to talk on the phone and would i stop yelling and go in through the fucking front. He doesn't actually say "fucking." He's one of those guys who doesn't have to punctuate his words with expletives and it still sounds like he's said them. cuz his heart is FULL OF POISON.

I gather he's a misanthrope. Or maybe he's just existentially dissatisfied and doesn't know what to do about it. No, at that moment he's a misanthrope and I definitely kind of hate him.

I calmly explain to Jerk that it isn't my purpose or joy to be stuck outside yelling like this and the front door idea was duly entertained, look, would he like to yell on my behalf so I can shut up or what? He barks ineffectually then ducks back into his house. After about 8 more minutes of yelling, Cuyo, the shrimp prep chef comes out but instead of taking the five steps forward to unlock the gate, he tells me to go round to the front again.

Guess what? Front door still locked.

Back to the back gate, more yelling, same cook finally lets me in.

I stomp in ranting about idiots only to see my boss and the other waitress already inside. Apparently, my boss has decided that morning to lay down the law and teach all his chronically tardy employees a big fat lesson by sealing the restaurant entrances at exactly 11:30 am and ordering the punctual employees not to let anyone in. His smugness and sense of justice served and lack of remorse make me livid. To think that all the yelling and getting yelled at and running back and forth around the building were due to my boss's inability to have a civilized conversation with his employees. Ire!!!

So i crashed around the restaurant, throwing forks next to plates and fluffing napkins, crying and calling my boss immature, and chastising him for not just stepping up and being boss enough to talk to us like adults, saying how mean it was to just let me stand out there yelling with no clue what was going on and making me get yelled at by the mr. alley asshole...
The hysteria went on for a good half hour. Then I calmed down, we talked, we apologized. Everything's okay now. I still have a job. I'm still not mature.

In other news: I was almost late for being on time to work this evening, but after I backed my car out, I had to close my garage door to keep evildoers out. It's a heavy garage door where you have to yank down on this metal handle on the inside that cuts into your hand as you grip it and i use the inside handle even when I'm trying to close the garage door from the outside because it's easier to reach. And then when you get the door partway down, you duck under and finish closing it from the outside.

For some reason, I forgot to duck and brought the garage door crashing straight down on my head. The cranian is apparently really hard b/c although i was quite positive i'd caused some nice lateral cracks, my brain remained inside my head and I was able to drive to work. Thank the goodness for skulls.

I have no feelings to talk about right now. Just woeful anecdotes that may explain why i suddenly start showing up to places early all the time and why I can't remember my name.

booooooooooo

Life-like

2005-03-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

Today, on the way home from Fascinoma practice in Little Tokyo, I stopped at Koo Koo Roo, the chicken palace on the corner of Larchmont and Beverly. The car was loaded with gear, the kick drum was indiscreetly hidden under a dirty maroon bedsheet, the high hat stand was collapsed and getting grease on the backseat upholstery. I was totally exhausted.

It had been manic music days all week, Saturday had been what that famous fem artist Barbara Kruger might term "incredibly life-like," and the prospect of going to work (waitressing) in less than an hour in this state made it imperative that I get some good franchise food in my body.

I've been at this Koo Koo Roo exactly twice now, but the affinity is not a new thing. When I lived in Taiwan (2 yrs ago), I hung with a rough gang of expatriot ultimate frisbee players and Sundays after our pick up game, we'd sometimes go to dinner. Once we went to Koo Koo Roo (or what is logged in my memory as such, but as I'm writing this, I'm beginning to wonder...whatever, anyway) the seed was planted there when I had one of their delicious chicken fajitas. Then I crossed the pacific, to sweet L.A.

In early 2004, back when Fascinoma was still Linister and Eagle and Talon had just begun to play out, I somehow got pulled onto a strange side project that involved two guys and me pounding out relentless, repetitive metal riffs and a successful animator in his 40's putting on a flesh-colored bodysuit custom outfitted with a giant (again "incredibly lifelike") prosthetic penis -- complete with painted warts & pubes -- (theoretically) improvising spoken word delights to an enraptured audience that would appreciate the unlikely pairing of such content and visuals. Unfortunately, the whole thing was a bit of a bust (read: DISASTER!!!) and suggested that the contemporary public-- and the guy's Industry peer group -- did not enjoy seeing a grown man flail about in a penis costume, screaming beer-laced obscenities while pretending to crap on stage through creative use of his magic "snake-in-a-can." Worth noting: the prosthetic genital was the size of a large forearm and was outfitted with a plastic tube that enabled the wearer of the penis suit to spray his audience with warm beer. (Homage to urination?!)

In retrospect, there were many reasons not to be involved in this project, but somehow I ignored them all -- (the hazards of an open mind and a mouth that leaks "yes"). So the project lasted exactly one very well-attended gig after which bass player and I politely excused ourselves from any future involvement, the guitarist stuck around out of kindness, and the band leader admitted to the possible presence of accumulated anger interfering with his ability to make enjoyable transgressive art. But the point the point! is that I still fondly recall the days I'd speed up the 101, exit Lankershim, pass the lighted sign of Koo Koo Roo which was just adjacent to our rehearsal space, careen into a parking lot, and dart into the Boston Market of California to get a side of macaroni, garlic mashed potatoes and green beans before heading up to practice -- which consisted of the guitarist, bassist and me working out our parts and playing our three "tunes" for a stamina-building ten minutes each, while the lead singer sat and listened and made sure we were laying down the appropriate bed of sound for him to improvise on come The Big Night. But he never actually sang with us during rehearsal, a fact which now clearly seems to prophesize the project's necessary doom, but we'd all heard him waxing lyrical and poetic and hilarious on old recordings and it was clear from the archival stuff that the guy really had something.

The fact that "old" meant "from the seventies" somehow failed to phase any of us. So Tuesday night band practice, despite resembling an evening of karaoke at a karaoke bar with no patrons and no participants, just a dangling mic and a broken machine spitting out vehement instrumentals at maximum volume, went on like that. We all willingly proceeded on faith and maybe the notion that genius lasts... Then the performance came, shame was felt, and Penis Man rehearsals and my once-a-week romance with Koo Koo Roo in North Hollywood came to an end.

So yesterday, back at Koo Koo Roo, the Penis days far from my mind, but faith sort of hovering in the foreground (I'd dropped Alanna off at morning mass earlier that morning), I pulled out the copy of God, Guilt, And Death I'd grabbed off alanna's shelf. It was a formidable looking paperback with GOD, GUILT, AND DEATH printed in big navy blue letters on a stark white cover. Talking to my food was boring, so I read the preface.

The book (dense, but lucid) basically deals with the phenomenology of religion, that is, not the truth or falsity of religious tenets, but the Experience of religion, the forms, the significance and the existence of religiosity and spirituality in humans. Alanna had raved about the book last year - - it had been one of her favorite reads -- but I'd been cultivating a distance from religion since my junior year abroad (in a surprisingly secular Scotland) after which I stopped being tortured about my non-faith. I'd become what I cagily referred to as an "atheist with agnostic leanings" and came to adopt a general disinterest in any topics concerning religion, even though I'd sometimes marvel at the good works of certain religious institutions and even though Alanna/Pastor Mindy Chiu is a respectable woman of faith.

(Cleveland Metroparks & Mindy Chiu, Nov. 2004)

Anyway, apart from my dad's occasional attempts to argue proofs for the existence of god during a family hike in the Cleveland metroparks last year and my parents predictably volunteering me to lead prayer before holiday dinners, I no longer agonize over God or first causes and universal morality, the problem of evil or whatever. The pressure's off as far as religion's concerned, so the claws have retracted a bit, and dismissiveness has just recently given way to mild curiousity. Admittedly, I've sort of treated religious friends/siblings I regard as intelligent and cool as freak accidents, whose religious proclivities are just a glitch in the wiring (to be acknowledged then passed over.) The thing is: it's not something I actually understand and I kinda want to at this point. Seriously. Like for modern people, what is the whole god thing about?

(Mom and Dad Lin)

I'm only a few pages into the book and have no plans to start counting beads or asking anyone to be my personal savior, but the author's already brought up some really intriguing ideas re: the function and creation of the sacred and I'm very excited about the insights the book might yield. Anyway, I'm in for a very good read. Maybe you are, too. For those interested , it's officially (and scarily) God, Guilt and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion by Merold Westphal.

Something to poo to!

-alice

Don't Be Nervous

2005-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

There was an green iguana on my back. I was doing dishes at the kitchen sink, at a party with a bunch of taiwanese kids. I'd woken up just as one of them was putting what i thought was a pot of flowers on and around my back (why?) only to realize the flowers were a reptile, heavy like lead-injected playdough, evil and sliding forward over my shoulder. Help!

The girl ordered soup. I was messing up everything. Her chicken and bok choy was ready, but I still had her soup. It was in an ugly oversized white bowl. It would look more appetizing in a red bowl. I transferred part of the soup, got distracted, came back to find the red bowl filled with rice and mushrooms. Shoot! I'm screwed! I only had half the soup left and it was getting cold and the girl was still waiting with her boyfriend and they were both very nice but she was starting to wonder where was her soup? Somehow the soup ended up in an ice cube tray that kept sloshing over the edges as I ran around the restaurant. Was any of this sanitary?

Three people handed me their credit cards to run. They had businesses listed under their names. Me and alanna hopped in her car and drove to one of the businesses in search of an on-site credit card machine only to realize that there was no need -- there was one at the restaurant. We drove back. People were waiting. New customers had arrived. We hopped back in the car and headed for another business, an arcade cafe/bar on sunset blvd. Traffic was light. We were feeling good about making good time. It wasn't until we pulled into the parking lot that we realized we'd done the same exact thing again! Just then, we ran into an old high school friend. After quick hugs, we jumped back into the car and sped back toward the restaurant. (We'll swipe our cards there!)

I went back home. Used the bronze key. Was there a good five minutes before I realized the windows were in the wrong place, the bathroom was not mine, and the comforters on the floor in front of the tv belonged to a female japanese exchange student who was out of town. So where the heck did I live?! ...Down the hall apparently. The door opened with the blue key. It was the same only very masculine suddenly with 3 giant pieces of new mahogony furniture bought by my roommate jamming up the living room. We'd talk later. But first I had to get my stuff out of that girl's room!!! Just then I realized that one of the doors of my apartment led to the bathroom of another one. Were our two apartments connected? I tried to enter, but there was resistence from the other side and a male voice whispering "don't come in." Vary scary. I went via the hallway and realized the secret door didn't lead to the exchange student's apartment but the one across the way. I didn't feel so safe anymore.

-----
Your dreams are always more interesting to you. But they pretty much evaporate into the ether if you don't bother to narrate them to your roommate or your sister or your blog. Hence this. I'm pretty sure those (plus a few unretrieved plotlines) happened between 5:30 and 8:30 am. During r.e.m sleep -- and the grinding of teeth. (According to the root canal specialist who is not my friend, my back two molars are showing signs of attrition.) What does this all mean?

On a recent medical questionaire they asked whether I considered myself a nervous person. Up until that question, I'd been circling "no's" without blinking, but I hesitated for a moment, revisiting a couple recent times when I'd been a little more than pleasantly highstrung, and circled "no." When I lived in Taiwan, I used to walk around the nearby track, burping continuously while doing laps to purge anxiety before teaching. I drive with my shoulders up. Sometimes I wake up with my fists clenched (more baby than fighter). This begs the question: (as a friend likes to say ) Am I lie?

Gnashing of Teeth: The Age of Regression

2005-02-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

The key is to not drive yourself crazy.

Funny the triggers.

Tuesday night Fascinoma practice. Got there 5 minutes before official start time. Just me and Alanna in the Tokyo apartment. Had just drunk a coffee at Groundwork, the Killsonic website had had some breakthroughs, thought I was feeling good.

Two minutes in though, I was complaining about the mean endontist?/root canal specialist who treated my tooth the day before. The words were flying fast, I was successfully recounting, reliving, re-riling while Alanna shuffled around, prepping penne and spaghetti Bolognese. At some point she attempted some gesture to slow/calm me down, but I ranted right through it, rushing to detail how Dr. P----- started out nice but quickly became unpersonable, how he’d perfunctorily asked me if I had any more questions (which I did, like: did the fact the other dentist shaved down my tooth make his job harder, was my general dentist’s explanation of the x ray incorrect, (is he a fuck-up?), how much is this going to cost? etc…) which were all made decreasingly intelligible by novacaine and responded to with answers scant on information, heavy on impatience. It was an unpleasant visit. Alanna didn’t care.

And I didn’t care that she didn’t care so I continued to completion and waited for empathic words to fall on my ears, but instead Alanna just paused and said – “you seem to have a lot of stories of…disenfranchisement, lately.” Slow. Thoughtful. Alanna.

I shut up.

I raged.

Disenfranchised!? What does she mean? What's she trying to say?!

Maybe: (You’ve been talking non-stop about your stressy dental escapade since you got here. Last week it was your ongoing struggle with earthlink and web design headaches, in texas it was your infected gums and bad filling; the week before was the chiropractor with the bad touch and dirty towels and the sadist acupuncturist, before that the Mercedes SUV driver that rear-ended you in the rain. Your life is chaos, you’re a complainer, you’re a negative presence. YOU BRING NO JOY TO OTHERS.)

Or so it went in my head.

So the drums got set up in total silence. Mike arrived a few minutes later. He walked into all that rancid air, sensed the struggle immediately, and was like “oh no…” to which we gave assurances that everything would be fine and alanna said sorry (which assuaged the beast for a split second) and explained she was just feeling irate and upset on my behalf, but I
(knowing how easily concern for someone transmutes into annoyance and resentment towards the object of your pity) was not buying it. So I continued to speak not at all, choosing instead to quietly let the eyes leak all over the place while I adjusted my drums and mike and alanna shot the shit . Meanwhile, snot levels rose. Their conversation became punctuated with sniffling (and the soft pinging of tears on the ride)...

I was MADMADMAD at Alanna for making her rather accurate comment during my Time of Need. I was low on sleep and stressed about the future of my gums and teeth. I didn’t want to be called a complainer but I wanted to COMPLAIN!!!!

Eventually the drums were in place. I wiped my face and sat at the table and ate penne while Mike and Alanna continued to talk about fictitious business names, silkscreening and whatnot. But as I chewed only with the left side of my mouth, I thought about the mess that was going on across the way, the exposed dentine on molar #30 and the loose expensive crown on molar #29, the unfinished root canal re-treatment on the same, the soreness of my jaw, my nice but possibly incompetent dentist, the mean but maybe capable? specialist and my fear that health care is practitioned by a bunch of greedy, untalented hacks who don’t feel or understand their patients' sorrow, the tears started up again and I cried into the penne like someone just diagnosed with Extreme Syphilis and I knew this was a real bum way to start rehearsal (especially for Mike who’d actually bothered to take a nap for the sake of band harmony that night).

Finally, Alanna got up and handed me a tissue and said, “Alice…” and immediately the teary pitter patter gave way to thirty seconds of full-on crying with ground beef particles sputtered mostly in the direction of Mike’s (lustrous brown) hair and me semi-asphyxiating, bawling “I don’t know why I can’t stop crying….”

But I do know why. Quick review:

1. Came in feeling sorry for myself.
2. Expected sympathy, incited irritation.
3. Listener/sister's use of “disenfranchisement” was construed as offensive and condescending
4. Suspicion/concern that I was becoming a “complainer” were confirmed through above use.
5. Wrong time for confirmation.
6. I felt shame.
7. Matters of the body are emotional matters as well.
8. Matters of the body piggybacking matters of failed dsl and auto accidents are tough on a wussy camel’s back.
9. Assymetrical chewing is aggravating.
10. Sleep deprivation compensated by caffeine is a poor foundation for a stable moods.
11. Felt guilty for ruining practice at the very beginning of practice.
12. Was filled with many emotions; didn’t know what to do.

Anyway, after the classy opener, we started practicing. The sisters were possessed twice more that evening (volley to Alanna, volley back to alice to close out the night). Mike stayed resilient -- like old times. In the end, we sat around exhausted and decided that all 3 of us are prone to repression and we should aim to not be. We mustered enough energy to make a plan for the following week.

The mature days are to come?

Universal love and so on,
Alice
"documenting unglory as a service"

I'm Determined to B-B-B-B-log!

2005-01-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

This is my new post. It's been a two month hibernation. Not that I haven't thought or felt anything for 60 days-- just a general failure to organize and articulate that swirly cumulus into something intelligible for the blogship. But threats and ridicule from peers and bandmates and self-guilt have combined to get the best of me. To celebrate the new year, I'm coming out of my hole.

Various things:
I'm now 28. I still get carded. I now own a small container of facial moisturizer. Thanks dad.

It's 2005. I've been in LA for slightly over 2 years. This year, according to one dead self-help guru, i'm supposed to take stock of my "true singular obsession" (true unsingular obsessionS?), then work up the discipline to make them manifest in physical reality. 2005 is the year of The Game Plan. Goodbye meandering pastry-obsessed lifestyle. Hello SUCCESS!!! -- for my mom's sake. (On the phone a coupla months ago: "I know you guys will always be successful, but please have some success soon so i can tell my friends Mommy was right." (re: letting us do what we wanted with our lives and not interfering too much.) )

My brother's getting married in Houston at the end of January. Alanna and I will wear light pink satin and walk the aisles as bridesmaids. I will try to behave. I will use the opportunity to think more about love and how the heck people commit to existing as non-separate entities. I will wonder if I'll ever meet Mr. Alice Lin, and if we'll have kind-hearted children and if my kids and alanna's kids will live in the same neighborhood and be best friends (or enemies). Wondering: Is it safe to have my brood at 50? Do I need to start doing morning stretches to keep the vitals elastic?

Fascinoma is meeting today. We are concretizing. Drawing timelines. Figuring out what exactly needs to happen to make an album that's been (in a way) many years in coming. Being in a band is a dramatic occupation. There's a lot of negotiating that goes on with all that intimate personality intersecting. It demands that you act mature when you feel like shooting turds in your diapers and it makes you have to be humble when you pride is trying to get all the attention and it makes you act like a Jerk-baby when you're pushing almost-thirty and supposed to be better than that, and it makes you realize a lot of people throw away beautiful things cuz they don't know how to work things out, BUT..

... if you really love something and you love the people you're working with and you're willing to blood sweat and tears it toward the thing that you all collectively want and if you master talking shit through and splice that talent with a little foresight and planning, there's a chance for survival and possibly even some excessive flourishing. I want fascinoma to excessively flourish in 2005.

What else? Much else. Kim gets back in a few days. She'll be tanner. I'll be chubbier. Eagle and Talon will commence it new year strategy to Not Waste Time. As with Fascinoma, recording's the order of the day. That and figuring how to reduce the number of guitars required for a live show. Mystifying really. But the girls will prevail.

So anyway, that's the reportage. Other upcoming renovations for the new year are in the works. Rumor is that Alice is going to get a little Protools on her computer so she can manipulate some of the voices in her head for a mike corwin style recording project. Quote me on that. Blogging will attempt to be more regular. A populist library is in the incubator.
Perspiration will reach record highs this year.

Everyone: please have a beautiful day this Day One of the new year. Spend some time talking to yourself; think about what you really want. Throw some kindness (in thoughts or $) toward all the folk dealing with the post-tsunami aftermath. Love your loved ones.

Back,
alice

Embalmer's Delight

2004-10-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here’s a scenario: your life is plodding along. By all counts, things are good. The externals on a one-sheet stack up like the modeled food they put in display windows of Japanese restaurants in Taiwan. Slick soba noodles, slick rosy pickled ginger. Slick greens. Slick sesame beef. Everything slick. All the cracks spackled. Everything feeling so reasonably decent barring the little flares (that I’d forgotten about until right this moment right this now trying to write about the perceived flat-lining of my life. )

(I apparently sometimes speak only semi-accurately about my experiences. Noted.

Anyway,) have been rehearsing lots and not reading much lately. I mean, I had a short love affair with Alain De Botton a few weeks back and before that Thomas Lynch and between, Chucky B. (everybody's favorite poet/day-puker). Felt the requisite inspiration. Internalized a small fraction of what I read. Announced to the world the need to read a little each day to feel good. Then stopped reading every day. Started to languish. Yesterday I crawled back in bed with Thomas Lynch, poet/undertaker.

How I feel about this: really excellent. It was Monday and I woke up with no particular motives for the day except a pronounced craving for cherry chocolate scones and coffee, so I got dressed, grabbed the keys, pulled a book off the mantel en route to the front door and drove to Susina’s (a tasty bakery on Beverly where they give free refills on big mugs of Italian coffee) Then I reopened Lynch’s The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade and backtracked a little from where I’d left off a couple months ago.

I want to talk about the last of the 3 essays I read that morning. It was about toilets and taking shits in the Irish hillside under a huge gaping sky and the tangible difference between that and having your excrement whisked away from you in a little whitewater circus at the bottom of a porcelain bowl. About how these are analogs to our relationship to things like decomposition, death, and the inevitable cycles of life. He goes on to talk about homes and how they used to be these multi-generational units with babies being born in one room while great-grandmothers struggled with tuberculosis in a bedroom two floors above. How life and death, beginnings and endings existed side by side so that people had a better sense of their own mortality and possibly (I think this is what the author was suggesting) a better grip on life.

I dunno. Reading his essays sorta reshuffled my brain temporarily and shifted things into some sort of perspective. I’d stop every few paragraphs to think about the people in my life and how nice it is that I have them and how nice it is that I have a life. Also couldn’t stop pausing just to notice how recent conflicts were losing their barbs, like how all the stuff that'd been harassing my brain had -- within the span of an hour and a half of reading-- become pretty utterly trivial and distant, like What’s it worth if we’re all gonna die?

So, thanks to Thomas Lynch and his willingness to synthesize his craps with meaningful thoughts, I was thrilling on life again.

Of course an hour later I made it clear to Alanna who showed up to our Fascinoma meeting wearing my black sweater that "I really need my black sweater back because you’ve had it for like four months and I really used to wear that black sweater all the time!” And it wasn’t enough to keep me later that evening from frantically loading gear in angry repressed silence while I thought of all the reasons Kim was solely to blame for yet another manic Journey to the Gig..

But in both of the above instances, harmony/stasis was found much more quickly than I’m historically known for, so Alice-dog does appear to be learning a few new tricks.

Not dead yet,
alice

Broken Bao

2004-10-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

It's still pouring down. All this rain after me telling a customer earlier that it doesn't really rain rain in los angeles. Somehow i forgot that it rain rains in the winter. Maybe it's an early winter.

I'm on my way to my bedroom from a four-hour sleep on the kitchen couch. The windows were wide open. My sweater was too short. I imagined flea attacks. I thought about brushing my teeth, but the aftertaste of dried cranberries was kinda nice too.

What is NOT nice is the fact that sometime yesterday evening, our darling Mike Corwin, the bassiest third of the FascinomatheBand, got into a car accident. Some rabid left-turner who didn't know what he was doing (perhaps due to rain-induced deviance/perhaps due to inherent problems of dumbness) hit little do-gooder Potty Pants on his way from playing fairy godmother/guitar amp supplier for Eagle and Talon. See reportage from Kim.

I'd therefore like to take this time to meditate on the traumatized and advertise to the world that Mikey C. is an extremely rare find for a person so prone to moustaches. He's a little powerhouse hero with this incredible penchant for helping/saving people. Don't tell him you need something. He'll pull it out of his rumpus on the way to being punctual for his next appointment. He's also pretty damn good on the social harmony front. His basic way of operating is positive and proactive and all uncheesy rendering of self-help terms, and putting down the anxious/hysterical/overwhelmed rebellions of me and Alanna is apparently the name of his game. He deserves some medals (and a big ham) for the way he cut through the dire inter-sister/intra-band funk that descended on Fascinoma practice this past Monday night. Woah. Miracle of miracles.

Anyway, Sexy Bao (man of many nicknames -- "bao" is chinese for steamed bun by the way) is a joy and blessing to his new friends and I blog this formal appreciation because:
1. I (and the world) adore Sexy Bao
2. Sexy Bao has been unfairly struck with whiplash, a hurt hand and a smashed front end, causing parasympathetic pain and (in lieu of actually bringing over matzo ball soup) the strong desire to comfort through effusions on how great the Bao is
3. I'm not going to be this nice forever, so bask while lasts, Sonny-boy...

So, if anyone sees Mike slinking around their neighborhood, be sure to shower him with an extra dose or two of love and affection (even you heterosexual straight guys) to help speed his recovery.

"When bad things happen to good people, put good shit in the sequel."

mightymightymighty.

-alice

Body No. 1

2004-10-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

(I’m feeling a little BLOGMANIA today. This is perhaps due to the fervent blogging activity of my bandmates and others in the LA musical community of late. I blame all of you.)

Woke up wrapped in a sleeping bag and a comforter with a fan blowing cold gusts over the “bedspace” (foam squares over a layer of acoustic soundboard and carpet padding crowned with a sumptuous feather bed) to defend against the fleas in the cracks of my bedding. Apparently they’re the fittest of those who have survived the fumigating that took place like two weeks ago. Yep, the exterminator came and gassed the place and still the invisible guys are taking little stabs at my legs whenever the tube socks are off. A-holes. This week I’m buying myself a bed. A good foot or so off the ground. Away from the little jerks till winter comes and freezes them proper.

I know having fleas is a recipe for pariah and therefore probably not something I should publicize, but most of my friends know anyway, and beyond the fleas, I’ve also got a bad case of BLOGMANIA whereby I’m compelled (like physically) to share the inner workings of my mind with my online peeps. Unfortunately the thing on my mind is fleas because they make my physical existence extremely uncomfortable (Evangenital Julie understands) and it’s hard to focus on more transcendent things when your leg is an inflamed war zone. Matter over mind. As my grandpa liked to say in short passionate speeches: “Body Number One!” The self-actualization kids shout “mind over matter” and they’ve got a point, but you’ve also got to respect the fact that at the end of the day, we are corporeal and that the stuff’s all connected.

Noted:

1) I am a black hole of negative energy and non-inspiration when I’ve had no sleep. I become what is affectionately known as The Poo. When I’ve slept, I’m (according to bandmates Alanna and Sexy Bao), “a completely different person.”
2) A visit to the gym or circumambulating Pan Pacific park three times have been shown to significantly reduce stress levels in lead singers of bands I play in and possibly normal people as well. Exercise brings endorphins and oxygen and tension release bring peace to the those “creative types” freaking out about life and future and destiny.
3) Snacks are the oil for smoothly functioning Fascinoma/Eagle and Talon rehearsals. Me and Kim discovered a while back that when things, i.e., we, started getting peevish or when we started hating our music, a trip to the kitchen and gorging ourselves on Sour Cream & Dill Kettlechips and Double Rainbow Double Chocolate ice cream could quickly reinstall harmony and band faith . And Fascinoma rehearsals are pretty much book-ended by meals and then punctuated midway by a visit to the Japanese market to get treats! (chili shrimp chips, gyoza, bubble gum and sierra mist). Eating makes us happy. Happiness makes us want to make more music.

So anyway, the examples could go on and on, but this is all just to say: Your body’s involved in your life. No way around it. Therefore, be attentive to the “temple” and its needs. Yes, life is still going to get whirlwindy sometimes and in the midst of all the strive and fervor, you’re sometimes gonna have to pull out the old mind-over-matter trick, but a matter-AND-mind mode of daily operations deserves serious consideration…

She can talk but can she execute?

-Alice

Daily Bread

2004-10-11T17:23:00.001-07:00

Today I bought transmission dipstick & a quart of transmission fluid. Transmission fluid is pink. It helps your car’s gears shift. Transmission sticks are short. They should be checked with the car running said Alfred, the guy who did my smog check. He’s Middle Eastern and has 19 credit cards and tapes little scraps of paper with how much he’s spent to the face of each card. He’s going to flee the country in two months.

My car passed the check. We were both happy. Me ‘cause now I can renew my registration and drive my car into the ground as I originally intended and I can continue to have the gasoline/carwash/insurance expenses which I’ve become accustomed to and therefore bring me comfort. Much. And, yes, Alfred is happy too because he doesn’t have to deal with me eyeing the failed smog test report and saying (not-at-all-insinuating-anything) “but it passed two years ago” and him having to say, “look lady, two years ago Saddam Hussein was still in power, I still had a full head of hair, and I didn’t have an army of prescription drugs to take and you had 10,000 miles less on your odometer…”

Funny. How time is always changing things. Funny how much of this week I’ve spent trying to revive my Nissan Stanza after many months of neglect. The lessons of this year are manifold, but one for sure that keeps asserting itself is this: Life takes maintenance. To think otherwise, is to be the dumb headless chicken I’ve been for most of my life. For some reason, contrary to your education and basic observational powers, you think that everything’s resilient as worms. Auto-regeneration. You get offended when your car starts rioting after you haven’t given it an oil change in 9 months. You wonder how your love handles got to be so plush. You’re bewildered by tartar. See, I have this tendency to treat upkeep like it’s this terrible waste of my precious time. Like errands are for sissies; defragging your hard drive -- for the weak. But it’s foolish to think this way cuz neglecting the fact that entropy happens, that food molds, that in LA, fan blades get tarred and feathered spinning all that cool smog-infused air into your living room, means you inevitably end up dealing with AFTERMATH. And suddenly you’re devoting your Precious Time to putting out fires that could’ve been avoided – if you just retired that policy of cumulative neglect.

So, I’m working on it. On breathing deeply while I drive east on Hollywood Blvd with real live palm trees flanking the streets (I’m a real citizen of LA!) and feeling good that I’m on my way to North Hollywood to pick up a transmission dipstick. I’m working on liking to get up and brush my teeth when my body’s already collapsed on the couch whoop-assed from a day spent rehearsing with bands comprised of people I have the honor of really loving (Alanna, Kim, Mike, (Me)) or an afternoon building balloon websites for the unequivocal Addi Somekh. Lots of work and working on.

On good days, I remember not to whine.

In the next issue of chickengate: Alice processes the Eagle and Talon Bye Bye Bush and The Heavenly Service of Mindy Chiu shows that went down this weekend and helps the world to understand the wonderful burgeoning music scene that's in LA and the best way to slaughter procrastination. Stay tuned.

Love and sprockets,
alice

Middle Mouse Squeaks

2004-10-07T01:39:00.001-07:00

So if you're reading this, you probably already know that Fascinoma has a new critter in its fold. But were you aware that Critter also has A BLOG? Yes, announcing the blog of new Fascinoma bass player man, Mikey C. aka MoneyinMyJeans: Founder/writer of Middlemouse.blogspot.com. MoneyinMyJeans promises juicy gossip and detailed analysies of the Fascinoma triumvirate among other things. Assurances were given that the first blog entry would be published before he went to bed tonight (Get on it, MC!).

Ladies, discover the man behind the sheeny hair. Men, discover the rich inner life that you wish you had. Yah yah, the blurts and sputters, the filters, the fogs, the Fascinoma geeks with their Blogs...

-a

Classics 101/Holy Maus

2004-09-30T14:15:00.002-07:00

So I read Euripides way back when and don't remember much other than how much i liked him compared to the other major Greek playwrights, but I do remember The Bacchae a bit and the wild swooning feasts and festivals that the Bacchites (an all gal sect) were known for. Anyway, who would've known that Los Feliz would host a little late night dance orgy (no sex! just a comparison!) in the middle (and perimeter) of the little Derby's skimply little dance floor. Not possible? Possible.

Yes, yes. Those of you lovely wimpies who went home early on the pretext that you had to work the next day missed what those intent on marathoning it to LA's 2 am nightlife threshhold didn't: namely, the night John Maus brought religion to the vaulted ceilings of the Derby. Goes like this: things were winding down when John Maus (pronounced "mouse" as in "church mouse") hit the stage. One song. Two songs. A smattering of dancers. Nothing out of the ordinary. And then BAM! it was like somebody tripped the frenzy switch -- all of a sudden the smattering was joined by bodies along the perimeter and the dance floor was suddenly full of butt wigglin, pogojumpin, limb twirlers maniacs all riding Maus's groaning baritone and errratic synth interpretations toward what appeared to be the more primordial parts of man.

Definitely something in the air/in the drinks/in our systems because it's really difficult to explain how the group began The Dance and how it continued for some time before escalating to the point where John Maus was crouched on the tight Derby stage like some Silverlake prophet singing his last "tune" and everyone just started crawling toward the stage, draping over the monitors and each other, arms out, palms open, fingers splayed and wriggling jazz-amoeba hands fashion, collectively undulating while Maus hovered over his mike behind a shield of dirty blond hair trying to keep it together while wondering to himself how the hell is this really happening is this for real? and really, the song could have ended right there everybody up there by the stage like that, but instead the crowded waited for Maus to let out a final wail, then fell back from the stage scattering into their individual drunken moves before the music officially ended and what could be said except "!"

Anyway, a night I don't think I could forget even if I wanted to. (I don't want to.) Oh, yes and Fascinoma had an amazing time playing to so many shining faces and with our lovely new bass player Mr. Mike. Wow. Low end. What a difference. And I also have to say this: Crowded elevators/subways: no. Evangenital and Hidden sandwiches: yes please. Not that it matters so much to anybody else, but I had so much fun last night I'm still riding high on endorphins from the music and the human interface. Mental note: being in good company is a luxury not to be taken lightly. Everyone, please luxuriate whenever possible.

hoho,
alice

NYC City. Rio Grande River

2004-09-08T13:13:00.001-07:00

So we (Eagle and Talon) are back from the mighty nation of NYC. Friends inevitably ask whether it was awesome did we have an amazing time and when I’m feeling lethargic I answer affirmative. When on an honest streak I explain it had its peaks and valleys and I’m glad to be home. Truth is, it’s like a lot of things that occur in my life or (everyone's) life where any main experience (such as a trip to nyc) is made up of a whole bunch of (hard to cleanly delineate) baby experiences. Some babies are wonderful, some mediocre, some not so good...

We got the worst over with two days into the trip with the worst gig of our lives at a club called Siberia. Walked in, apart from the charming door guy who looked like a doughboy in the wrong clothes (all black), the swirl of beer, smoke, aging vomit and non-descript punk music raging from the basement did not bode well for the evening. Only the most loyal of friends managed to stick it out to the 2:00 am start time (an hour late) where the curly-haired bartender/soundman opted voice his indifference by staying behind the bar while those little girls of Eagle and Talon played through tornadoes of feedback and bewilderment at how the world (the soundman!) could be so cruel. We ended our set early and spent the next few days believing that the gig had gone so completely badly that we didn’t even feel traumatized. Only Kim stopped feeling excited about music.

That was Gig No. One. Thankfully things picked up after that. I will write more on those (to balance the complaining anecdote above) when I’m not just procrastinating.

-alice

The Evangenitals

2004-09-10T10:17:00.002-07:00

They take it slow and even. And when your head's cocked to one side and your breathing's a little deeper then usual and you're standing with all the other entranced people in the crowd, you know their little nylon army and jeff jones on bass! have gotten you real good. I think we (Fascinoma) may be playing with these little lovers on the 29th, at the Derby. We'll confirm in next coupla days.

See Evangenitals footage from the 9/5 Kerry benefit HERE (11.9 MB Quicktime file)

The neighbor's g-spot

2004-07-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

Somebody nearby is getting some. Regular. The sister can be lying on the couch about 30 ft. from the windows and the (highly motivated) "ohhhhhhhs" and squeals are suddenly in the living room coming straight out of the coffee table. The acoustics in the apartment are weird.

All this audio started up about a month ago. If i'm at the computer and the sun's gone down, all the necessary factors are in place for the sex soundtrack to roll in. A. suspects the whole thing's maybe staged, some voice thrower or some pervert/prankster who records uncomplicated radio plays and plays em out the window...Possible. But i think it's just hot when you're rolling around on your futon with another body so they've got it rigged (invisible pulley and weights) so that the windows always go up when the pants are off.

Another thing....

2004-07-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

is I'm supposed to buy an air conditioner today. this after those 2 1/2 years in taiwan where the collective pollution of motorcycles and scooters and fermented tofu joined with subtropical temperatures and people with their a/c units ramming hot air into the overheated streets made me vow to break out the electric fans and the water spritzers and ice packs or simply to sweat it out silly before i'd mount an air conditioner in any room window of mine....but two years later, trying to find scraps of inspiration in the boiler room that triples as bedroom/our practice space, the decision has been made by joint committee. So the personal morality gives way to necessity and what to do but break a few promises in this lifetime. Maybe a new convenant whereby in exchange for not having to suffer and sweat so much while making music, we'll turn the thing on only when absolutely necessary and maybe start bringing our own silverware to picnics.

Something-proof

2004-07-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

today i served a big table of serious drinkers, read: 5 1/2 rounds of bacardi 151 mai tais and they probably all could've walked the line and passed. the leader of the pack explained how when you've been throwing back the alcohol since the age of thirteen (they were in their late forties) you learn to hold your liquor well -- it just costs more and you gotta have a real job to afford to drink towards all the mirth... though I suspect there was more than just 151/myers/schnapps/brandy cocktails to all the joviality. Given that violence, jackassdom and self-loathing are easy paths when you're drunk, I'd say this group's mirthfulness was a default m.o., deep-tissue exuberance greased with a little late-night liquor...

"why be a wet napkin when you can be happy?"

-alice

The Flusher

2004-09-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yah, it's true. The circular atrium of the sunlit guggenheim was 3/4 covered in water.
I know cause i was there. I know cause i was THERE there.

A little backstory: a few years ago when i was fielding a little obsession with ethics and moral behavior i decided to target public bathrooms as my cause du jour and it just became this thing where now i can't really leave a public restroom without picking up the loose bits of paper towel or strewn toilet paper that accumulate. So, my friends think it's weird (and dirty) but I figure why should every person who comes in after me have to see the same mess that i see, plus disarray breeds greater disarray/disrespect -- people see a place gone to shit and even the good kind ones miss the wastebasket and say "eh" or leave the sprinkle on the toilet seat or don't flush all products down.

Anyway, it's this issue that i tried to address this past monday after kim and i made it to the guggenheim an hour before closing and decided not to see the artwork and instead to go jack ourselves with caffeine in the museum cafe --"oh but lemme just run in here a second..."

So kim waited outside. Inside the empty corridor connecting the atrium and the cafe, a small line formed.

Inside: I had done my (lite) business, deligently wiped the seat till it was gleaming, activated the auto flush, and saw to her chagrin that the toilet bowl was now filled high with shredded toilet paper. not to standard. But the water looked high and i thought about waiting till it went down a bit. naw. life is about the little risks, no?

I bypassed the autoflush pressed the button above the sensor and watched as water ripped out (normal) and raged (no, no, not normal) upward toward the lip and out, spilling over the seat and onto the floor first forming a puddle around the base of the bowl then into the area beneath the sink then towards me and the door then right past my semi-submerged sandals into the hallway past one security guard then two security guards and kim and everybody are watching in disbelief and mild horror at what is going on (i don't know guys!!) i rush back into the burning fire, no fountaining waters and look for some sort of tap to close but the toilet is roaring white water still and there are no signs of letting up. back into the hallway where walkie-talkies are dispatching help. I look at the whole wet mess one last time.

We slip out the side door, walk past feather earring vendor and hang around the scene of the crime while I grapple with guilt and mild shame. when we go back to check the (once glorious) circular atrium is pretty much covered with a slick 1/2 inch of toilet water except for a small crescent of dry marble near the entrance.

Very pretty.

So yah. I flooded the guggenheim. All i can say is with indigestion, things could've been worse.

Oh Eagle and talon.

(we'll be back from nyc on saturday. see y'all then.)

love,
alice

How Proust Can Change Your Life

2004-08-12T00:39:00.002-07:00

So really, I have little to say except to share that i'm realizing more and more that in order to love my life more, I require an inexact amount of mental stimulation and goading through reading every day. When i don't respect that need, a funk starts to fester inside -- quiet and discreet-like so you don't really notice it gaining ground till suddenly one day it occurs to you that the world has been less lovely for quite some time now and the ease with which you slide into passive-aggressive, infantile, scape-goating, nothing-is-possible behavior is cause for suspicion and worry...

anyway, i started reading again. this time: How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. It's labeled self-help literature, but the writing is smart and delicious and not at all standard self-help faire, and the guy takes an in-depth look at some of the ways and means of marcel proust and relates it to relevant human issues and there's lots of potential for revelation and self-betterment here, plus it's just a fascinating read -- a semi-genius distilling a genius, and as if those two things weren't enough, it has occasional illustrations of ladies getting their quotidian exercise by jumping off walls.

I love this book and you should get a copy and start reading it immediately so i don't have to jump the wheel of suffering all by myself.

much love/good nights,
alice

LA agriculture

2004-07-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

There are several things i'd like to say. One: for the record, LA, despite its reputation for being a smog-enveloped soul-less hellhole, is a very good place to live. So many great people that my mind (being mine) couldn't have ever concocted/anticipated... This past month in particular I feel a little tender and grateful for what i've got out here -- cats regularly peeing on the hood of my car, insomnia soundtracked by neighbors' sex-a-thons, afternoons spent building empires that [I worry] will never exist, music music music & all the dear, unobvious people...

a