How do I hate thee, LA? Let me count the ways...

File it under "What. In. The. Mother. Fuck: Was I Thinking?!" category if you're the anal type who needs everything labeled properly... I'm still going to be here. And I'm still going to be a complete basket case.

Everyone said "L. AAAAAyyy?!" when I told people I was moving... like we were discussing their hemorrhoids and I had just insisted that they would get rid of them much faster (and painlessly!) by shoving a red-hot poker up their ass.

I now know exactly what they meant.

1. SHITTY SHITTY SHITTY music. Newsflash, folks: Hip-hop SUCKS MY ASS.
2. STUPID, SHALLOW, VAPID people (all clogging the freeways while living well within the label-whore clutches of conspicuous consumption). If I see one more trophy-wife/soccer-mom dwarfed behind the wheel of the family Escalade or Land Rover I'm going to have to keep a barf bag in my car at all times.
3. Combined IQ's of everyone living in 90210 can be counted with only a single pair of hands!! Does anyone South of Gilroy read anything that isn't a script for yet-another-stupid-fucking-reality-show (*for those of you whom this is particularly aimed at -- I just made a funny and if this were a script, you would be instructed to laugh out loud. I believe "guffaw" is a commonly used term understood by most of Hollywood. Even the Pamela Anderson's. .. Go ahead. I'll wait.)
4. Weren't the first 3 reasons enough? That's enough for now... even I'm disgusted at this point & need to go for a walk so I can pretend I live near intelligent, useful humans. Easy enough to do @ 1:30 am on a Thursday morning.

I'll have a fresh batch of reasons why LA sucks tomorrow.

Aaaauuugggghh!

PLEASE GOD!! There must be intelligent life in LA!! Please let me meet someone who has actually read a book.

Much less a book discussed recently on NPR.

Ok, ok... at least something a bit more advanced than Dick and Jane Go to School?

LA sucks.

I miss San Francisco. At least there, homeless people could be counted upon to be uneducated drug addicts or illiterate psychopaths.

Vegas here we come...

Can't wait til this weekend... gonna show my girl Kylie the seedier side of Vegas, courtesy of my wingman, Jared.

I think tattoos are in order - for everyone.

Sorry Everybody

Sorry Everybody

What am I looking for in a man?

A.) a pulse.

B.) his own life... in another area code, preferrably.

C.) his own shoe empire.

Okay, that last one is optional, but important if I were currently accepting applications in the boyfriend/lover/one-night stand categories (which I'm not, so don't ask).

Things I miss about San Francisco

1. DJ Boat Parties w/Jared. Two words: Sasha. Rockedit.
2. Broadway Pier. I still wish I had binoculars. All of those tall city buildings with lights on in them... each one a different story. Personal, portable dramas - in each small illuminated square.
3. Embarcadero. Gorgeous. Comforting. Good times. Slanted Door & Bjork concert. Nuff said.
4. Pac Bell Park. I'll never forget Alisha dropping Tucker's personally, hand delivered baseball or all of the city's most gorgeous men lookin' so cute in their baseball caps. Yum.
5. Parties. Guest lists, VIP, backstage and hanging w/tha DJs... so many new friends...
6. After parties. Loft parties, warehouse parties, Johnny Ray parties, Will parties, Paul Tran parties, Raffael & Pierre parties... I could go on but it's all a blur to me now. So many sunrises and lost brain cells.
7. Richie Rich, Tone, Johnny Ray, Linda, Nancy & Ray, Cindy-babes & Dave... all for the love of you know who...
8. Shopping. The girls @ Nordies, Macy's and Bebe... you ladies are the sole reason I have no disposable income anymore, er, I mean -- You're all FAB-YOO-LUSS.
9. Zendo parties. Attending, NOT working. ;)
10. Enricos. Mojitos. Friday & Saturday nights in North Beach observing male and female of the species on their worst behavior. Ever. Estrogen and Testosterone on 2 legs fueled by too many cosmos and stella's.
11. Happy Donuts on 3rd and Embarcadero. "Borders? Eh, they sell books, I sell donuts. That's how I'm doing these days."
12. That breathtaking, clearly defined city skyline as you crest the 280 / King Street hill into the city. Jesus, you say to yourself everytime you see it, *This* is why I live here.
13. The music. As much as I complain about San Francisco House, I know I'm going to find myself singing "Ah think ah feel much bett-ah... at niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!"
14. A certain Giants fan. Baseball. Tension. Damn.
15. Sunrises. Driving home from the city in the morning with some chill music that matches the glory of the clear blue sky and the warmth of the sun as it slowly lifts above the bay. Always a big shit-eating grin on my face for not being too busy or too absorbed to appreciate the frequently overlooked, small, simple, beautiful things around me.
16. Sushi. Sake bombs. Saketinis. Wuh-SAAAAAAAAAW-baaaaaay!

Dear John

Dear John... er, San Francisco,

I left myyyyyy heeeeeart in Saaaaaaan Fraaaaaaancisco.... doobie doobie doo or whatever they play at the end of all the Giants home games.

I'm leaving somethin' alright. Little things like 6 prime years of my adult life. Large, damaged sections of my heart. A few scattered brain cells in the Mission and North Beach. A significant portion of my trust in men and mankind.

It's only fitting that Tony Bennett won't stop singing that stupid, sappy, love song to this city I can't win over in my head, looking at the little waves lapping the side of the Spirit of San Francisco, making random little sparklies wherever they catch the Broadway pier lights.

Fresh blow...

Today, while scrolling through my phonebook trying to find a number, I saw Dave's number and felt a fresh blow of shock and sadness that someone so young and goodhearted is gone.

I can't do justice to describing how it feels to see someone's phone number in your cell phone and have it hit you that you can never reach them again. Ever. And I don't mean "Oh, I can't ever call that guy again cuz he stood me up" or "I never called him back after that drunken grope-fest I'm mercifully maintaining only the fuzziest of details about"... I mean having the thought slam home into your heart that they'll never answer any phone again.

That's happened to me twice this year, but I'm still not talking or thinking about the first.

Hurry up & wait!

Everything seems to be on hold for the election for fear it won't be seen/heard/covered by the press. It better be worth it. Scary thought: what's the competition waiting until after the election to launch? Or what incubating "Next Big Thing" is waiting for the election to be over too?

Manizing.

How come "izing" only comes in the form of women? As in "He's a womanizer"?

I think it's only fair that us girls are allowed to be manizers.

Adventures In Relocation, Part 2...

(4:30 am) Panic. Terror. Can't sleep. Or eat. Fighting OVERWHELMING urge to flee for the airport this morning and just deal with the lack of housing or employment *there* (commonly referred to as "burying one's head in the sand"). I miss "there" already... there is where I am confident (okay, sometimes cocksure but isn't everyone at some point?). There is where I have a safety net of friends and the familiarity of all I know (I'm sick of) and love (to hate) to support my chicken-shit, tail-between-the-legs self.

(This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful life.)

(9:10) Zombie. Sleepless and terrified. Completely neurotic and irrational. I'll be better once I get on the road to the office. Driving always soothes me.

(9:15) Idiot!! Driving in LA traffic couldn't soothe anyone. Even with heavy medication taken prior to the 405.

(Noon) Strange sense of deja vu and a little awe... like the first time I drove around Silicon Valley and flipped out over driving past the likes of Yahoo! and eBay and all of my idolized tech giants at the time. In LA it's more a sense of "Huh. MTV Networks. I wonder if anyone famous is in there right now."

(9:30pm) Foggy haze. Mad apartment hunting produces UTOPIA!! Jesus, I must have cashed in some premium grade karma when I found this place... blissful, peaceful and PERFECT. So perfect I cried on the way back to the hotel. Thank You, Craigslist. You're the best, meng.

Adventures In Relocation, Part 1...

New gig. New city. New and terrifying ways to question my sanity.

Day One:
(3pm) After countless issues and many (MANY) crying jags, I arrived. Five hours after my airplane lands, I'm not so sure I'm diggin the newly assigned job & manager switcheroo, lack of LA sunshine greeting my arrival or how little the new boss seems to listen to or even really like me all that much. *Sigh*. I can still run back home with my tail between my legs and forget all about this utter "I LOVE Southern California and I'm ready for a change" foolishness.

(6:30pm) New boss too swamped to throw me a bone (not so good). Chatted semi-intelligently with cube neighbors (who, unbeknownst to me at this point, are the founding members of my oddball team). Dinked around checking emails & printing Y! maps until it was time to leave. Walked outside to smoke my well-deserved cigarette and was struck dumb. The peaceful, tranquil, incredibly well-landscaped beauty of the building's designated smoking area was completely unexpected and jolted me out of the one-man pity party I'd been hosting all day.

Picture gently swaying bamboo trees, 30-40 ft. high, making a hypnotic swishing, shooshing sound in the breeze. They ringed a courtyard beyond a industrial style sculpture that looked like a big warehouse door. Dotting the lush green landscape and courtyard were green umbrella'd tables, palm trees, aloe bushes, a stepped fountain that sprang to life at random intervals (which startled the cigarette out of my hand and into the fountain, grrrr). This may actually count as the first entry in the "Pro" column; which is, at present, woefully dwarfed by the "Con" column entries. I'm not a pessimist... I'm not the person to ask if the glass is half-full or half-empty because I'll challenge your assumption that there is even a glass at all.

Let's just say I'm capable of skeptical cynicism and just leave it at that.

Lonliness, Part 1

Life is unspeakably, relentlessly, bottomlessly lonely right now. A type of lonliness that has little or nothing to do with the number of friends on speed dial (pitifully few at present). The type that makes me desperately sad sad sad and lonely beyond definition of the word and relentlessly alone - Jesus, when did I last speak to another human who gave a shit about whether I bothered continuing to breathe? Alone - in a room full of people I still feel like a walker in a vast empty desert.

How do I change this part of my life? Is it even possible? Do I just want to be important to someone - even a single person - who cares enough to put in enough effort to find out who the real me is... what makes me tick (cuz, I've gotta tell ya - even I think they're pretty goddamn interesting... the complex, vastly unrelated and wildly unpredictable things that make me tick. Mind boggling really...)? Someone who asks the right questions -- and actually wants to hear my answers -- in a way that doesn't come on too strong, too scary so it turns me off. What if there really isn't a single human being out there who is ready to stop monopolizing the attention, the relationship (it's *not* all about you, around the clock, all the time, all the channels. Doesn't that narcissm get really fucking old after a while?!)? What if I never meet someone who bothers to notice any or all of the stupid little things that make me tick... happy and content (hah! As IF!) like handing me coffee I didn't have to buy or make myself in the morning... or that I prefer being looked directly in the eyes and listened to after soliciting my political views (and not just to start a fight)? Offering to draw a bath for me, using the jasmine-scented bubbles you've seen me use before, simply so you can experience the pleasure of washing my hair for me -- because you love it and not because it seemed like a good (albeit clumsy and transparent) ruse to get me naked and you laid. You'd be better off just straight up bribing me with a pan of Buca di Beppo tiramisu. That way you haven't ruined my enjoyment of having a bath drawn for me forevermore.

Maybe it's all of the heavy duty decisions I've had to make entirely on my own lately. It would have been less terrifying and isolating to have made the decision to move to LA with someone I trusted and felt more than mild ambivalence for -- because they respect, love and cherish me... or even just because I'm important to them for more than sex or picking out the proper tie and shoes in the morning.

Michael

Michael died yesterday. I learned this news via email from a friend of his from San Diego. A friend I'd never met... or heard of for that matter. Which has made it easier for me to pretend it never happened. Like the email never reached my inbox. Or hasn't been opened and sits unchecked in my Yahoo email inbox. Or that this, in true Michael fashion, is just another of his more elaborate and dramatic practical jokes (although, why they're called practical is beyond me... there is nothing practical about trying to feel something -- anything -- and produce the shocked, devastated tears you know wait just below the surface while you're, at the moment, locked tightly and comfortably (thankyouverymuch) in your post-surgery, Vicodin-induced stupor) and he's simply measuring everyone's love for His Royal Fabulous-ness based on how many seconds it takes for us all to rush to San Diego. In which case, I'm probably at the top of his shit list.

Because I don't believe he's gone. Not for a second.

The email (that I never received... never read...) said nothing about cause of death. Phone number of sender was included in email but since I never got the email or read it, I can't possibly call to find out why... how... who... when... where. That kind of phone call will only produce one result. Confirmation that truth or elaborate Michael-hoax, I don't want to know. Ever. I realize that this is a completely selfish, self-preserving act... I'm okay with that. Besides... suicide is the most selfish act anyone could succeed at.

Things to think about while sitting in traffic #2

I wonder if spam is actually helping us fight the war on terror.

Seriously, think about it -- if terrorists are using free, throwaway email accounts to communicate with each other in order to avoid being detected, you just know that they, too, receive a daily onslaught of emails inviting them to buy Viagra, increase their penis size and refinance their homes.

So, 2 questions just beg to be asked:

• How do the terrorists know each others temporary, disposable email addresses?
  
• How long does it take each terrorist to sort through the mountains of spam in their inbox and bulk mail folders every time they're looking for a secret message from someone @ al qaeda HQ?
  

Things to think about while sitting in traffic #1

I wonder what society would be like if everyone made the exact same amount of money - no more, no less - regardless of job title.

Would social class and status completely melt away? Would race become the primary culural delineation again, as it was before the civil rights movement? Or would one's religion replace a rolex as a way of signifying which side of the proverbial tracks one is from?

I mean, understandably, making sense of the world around each of us and how we're supposed to fit into it is best learned when we can establish frames of reference... if you take away class status, will society simply replace one frame of reference (what defines this person? where do they come from? what is their life like?) for another?

So, if everyone made, say, a million dollars a year regardless of job title, education or family name, what would the new frame of reference be?

I am *so* over technology...

I've had it with technology.

No, really - I've completely had it. Our entire industry is having a collective brain fart and we're desperately clinging to things that were successful (or in most cases, not) in the past -- to the exclusion of an innovative future. I no longer feel like a contributing, socially responsible member of society... tangibly making a difference in the world, even if it isn't the next "Big Thing"^tm.

I mean, we're all practically killing ourselves developing products with a frenetically decreasing shelf-life. Things that may or may not get launched - let alone be useful to anyone - are obsolete before they can get unpacked from their boxes at Fry's. All for what?!

Stock options?! Hah!

An IPO-jackpot? Unless you're at Google - your odds of becoming an overnight paper millionaire are significantly lower than those of the Bush administration eliminating the national debt - ever.

A little bit of geek-street cred? That only goes so far - do *you* remember the name of the guy who invented the < BLINK > tag??

Well, I for one think it's all just greedy, shallow nonsense and it's time to change gears to an industry that I can make a difference in.

Fashion.

Yes, that's right. Doing my part to ensure that the emaciated, botoxed, liposucked, face-lifted doyennes of upper eschelon urbane society look as unapproachably, impossibly fabulous as their well-bred/well-married status implies is exactly how I want to make a difference and change the world. One trophy wife at a time.

So much for the Computer Science degree (sorry, Dad!).

Surfs up. Dude.

Its almost time. From the second I stepped off the plane at SFO after my week in L.A., I cannot shake the feeling that I'm no longer at home here. That this has never really been home. Its quite jolting to realize just how willingly I've been sleepwalking through the past 6 years here... San Francisco's incredibly beautiful and seductive place, but for for me - it's filled with so much pain... heartbreak, confusion, sorrow, deep lonliness, self-loathing, inadequacy, self-doubt, self-destructive patterns... And for fuck's sake - I've HAD it with the men here!!!

It's time to grow up, er, I mean wake up - first.

So, I know my time here is short. I've never stayed put so long in my entire life... I guess I wasn't missing much all that time moving around. San Diego... LA... Huntington Beach... hell, even Mexico is calling to me. Talking to a small but sensitive spot, deep inside of me, my heart... or wherever that place is that feels like you're at home, when you don't know where home is...

The beach where I left my happy, carefree soul for safe-keeping 6 years ago is whispering louder and soon it won't be a whisper. I can't take the constant reminders anymore -- all around me -- of a failed past, a stalled future.

Dude. Can't wait to surf.

Bleeechhhh. Pardon me while I hawk up great big green loogeys. Pneumonia sucks ass, especially when you've got no one to whine about being sick to.

No one to bring you chicken noodle soup. No one to make hot tea and bring you coloring books just to make your day less BORING. Poor me. Life sucks. Hard not to feel like nobody loves me except for the dogs (and frankly, they're a more than a little frightened by the ungodly coughing spazzes that produce something far more disgusting than the dead worms they seem compelled to roll their bodies around in.)

*sigh*. All I need now is the return of my paralyzing depression and I'll be just about hammered into submission.

Just shoot me now.

Are you kidding me? International Product Manager for shopping.com?! You mean people get paid to do that? And all this time I thought there was just no way to combine all of my strengths into one single job. Keep your fingers crossed - I've even got my pinkie toes crossed. Which, if you think about it, makes it extremely difficult to wear my fabulous new Jimmy Choos, but whatever...

My absolute favorite thing to do in the morning is when both dogs are sleeping under the covers and they're just 2 little rounded lumps under the massive down comforters... I slowly peel back the covers from one of those lumps and find Nichi or Yoda all curled up in a ball, with their paw covering their eye (and if it's Yoda, his little ping tongue kinda hanging out the side of his mouth). They open their other eye and immediately turn over on their back and stretch all slow and stuff - it's like opening a sweet, warm, cuddly, kissing furry present every morning. I love how they smell all warm and sweet under the covers... especially Nichi. Cuz she's like me -- mornings are best left in the care of a really comfy bed under mounds of down.