I did it!



This project accomplished many things. Good fiction was not one of them. Proving that I can make things up (sometimes), write witty things unrelated to business and technology (again, sometimes) and finish a task (somet-...no, actually, whenever I really want to) were the highlights.

Congratulations also to fellow NaNo winners Teri and Elke!

It's time for one of those "what [insert media here] is [insert blogger name here] consuming this [insert time period here]" posts. I've been writing this in bits and pieces over the past week when I should have been working on my bad novel. Almost 9000 words to write in the next two days. Going out in a blaze of procrastinatory glory like I always did in college; old habits die hard.

So, tunes.

I am still not tired of that funky Outkast song "Hey Ya." Listening and comprehending the not-actually-fun lyrics has not diminished my enjoyment of the song. Especially since eventually they do stop singing about disintengrating love and go into sublime ridiculousness like "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" and "Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!" (Auntie Jen, what's a Polaroid picture?)

Elsewhere in the LA hip-hop heavy rotation list, I am totally jammin' on the new Wyclef Jean song, "Party to Damascus." Maybe he and Outkast can help take the tired "urban" genres somewhere beyond whiny neo-R&B slow grooves a la R. Kelly, and catchy and fun but ultimately banal booty rap a la Chingy.

***

I revisited a mix CD I made for the road trip. While there are some songs I've started skipping over after repeated listenings both this month and in May, I'm not sure I'll ever be bored with Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower," Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands," or Johnny Cash singing "I've Been Everywhere." They're classics for a reason.

My older readers may laugh at me (or feel old) upon reading this, but I recently got Patti Smith's debut album "Horses" out of the library and listened to it for the first time. I saw her do a free outdoor concert in Boston in 2002, and knew a few of her studio tracks from various miscellaneous places (a mix a friend made for me, the Natural Born Killers soundtrack) but there are few scarier aural experiences than hearing "Land" for the first time on a good car stereo system while driving alone in the dark in LA. This woman is f*cking possessed. Crazy, crazy, but all in the good way.

***

In a more mainstream but equally intelligent punk vein, I've rediscovered Bad Religion. When I was in high school, I played the hell out of their tape (tape!) "Against the Grain" and this month I'm playing the hell out of a few legal MP3s from their website while I write my lousy novel. I love that they're still out there and as recently as 2002, putting out new music, being cool middle-aged people. I also really like what this biography has to say about them: "They are the wise forefathers of a generation of misguided, disillusioned youth that has blossomed into an almost-thirtysomething, disillusioned working class." Uncanny.

If/when I finish NaNoWriMo tomorrow, I think I'll buy myself a Bad Religion album as a reward.

I guess I should also go on record saying I like Linkin Park (the only band in the nu metal genre that catches my fancy, for some reason I can't put my finger on) and Audioslave. I won't tell you how long it took me to figure out why the guy from Audioslave was trying so hard to sound like the guy from Soundgarden. Shh.

What's wrong with this picture?

(Okay, what's wrong with the picture is that I don't have time to resize it so it's legible. But it shows a news article reporting claims that that Atkins diet may be dangerous -- more likely to give you heart disease. Alongside the article is an ad for the Atkins diet.)

There are several different sides to LA. Here's one, and it's the one you've heard the most about:

On Saturday, I worked my first entertainment industry party. This is a world I just don't understand. I usually consider it unfortunate that 49 out of 50 catering workers in LA are industry wanna-be's, but this time it worked to my favor. I asked one woman I've worked with many times before, and like (even though she's an actor), what the deal was with the fake storefronts lining the area of this outdoor party: they were several feet deep with real merchandise, but the back wall was always a photo. They seemed to small to be sets. She told me the whole *street* was a set. Oh!

Later, another one of my fellow waiters told me he'd been "out shooting in San Pedro earlier today." I replied, "Shooting what?" Skeet? Was he hunting? "Shooting FILM." Oh again!

Those two coworkers are cordial enough, but here's an example of why I don't like actors in general. One of them bitched to me about the catering biz, and I replied that I've given myself one more year to get out of it. He said, "You poor girl. Just go back to Iowa or wherever now if you think you can get out of this." I told him I'm not an actor, and his tune changed: "Then you might actually be able to get out of this business. You're not cursed with talent."

My response: "I have other talents, and I don't feel like I need to do them for a living."

Not cursed with talent. Yeesh. And so, so many of them have that attitude. "I *have* to act, I can't *not* do my art." I'm sure there are plenty of talented people who aren't middle class and able to choose relative poverty, knowing they can always go back to mommy and daddy...and what they *have* to do is work regular hours to pay bills. Even I know temping is a luxury in its own way. "Actors" have a level of pretentiousness to rival Boston's most uppity academics, except instead of crowing about how smart they are, they're always on about how they're slaves to their craft. Sorry, kids, the way I see it you're slaves to the hospitality industry!

Anyway, it was the 50th birthday party for this guy who has a very healthy ego, shall we say, and also deposited a used hors d'oeuvre toothpick on a tray full of food. (He wasn't the only one, either. You can't buy table manners). There were "famous" people there, someone pointed out the president of the WB (ooh! whatever) but waiting on rich people is waiting on rich people. The only difference is the red carpet.

This was an outdoor party, by the way, and it rained. All the fully set tables had to be moved under the shelter of tents. The aforementioned red carpet pitched to the center on both sides, so it not only got soggy but collected a giant scummy puddle right down the middle. The red carpet with the pile of dirty muck in the middle. If that's not an LA metaphor, I don't know what is.

The bus strike is over!

I was not personally affected, since the bus Rick and I take is part of a different system. But as you all probably know by now, I feel very strongly about public transportation and about the plight of the working poor. A lot of people's lives just got a lot simpler. Yay.

Via my Brazilian correspondent Andre: ITunes undermines social security:
On college campuses, for example, a new form of bigotry called "playlistism" is emerging.

The invention of students at Wesleyan University, playlistism was first reported by Stephen Aubrey, a 20-year-old student and columnist for The Wesleyan Argus.

Playlistism, Aubrey explained, is discrimination based not on race, sex or religion, but on someone's terrible taste in music, as revealed by their iTunes music library.

This is so Wesleyan I can hardly believe it.

What I literally can't believe is this anecdote:
"This one playlist had a lot of German techno," Aubrey said. "We predicted this was a kid wearing a mesh shirt who wanted to be a Nazi." At a party shortly afterward, Aubrey recognized the playlist and asked whose music it was. "They pointed to this kid in a mesh shirt with a swastika on his arm.

a) Displaying a visible swastika is probably one of the top ten ways to die on campus, along with, as the school newspaper joked one time while I was there, "walking into Womanist House and saying 'Which one of you bitches wants to make me a chicken pot pie?'" I will bet my diploma that the second, punch-line part of that anecdote is fake.

b) I love how even the most politically correct wankers on the planet, who think only half-ironically that judging people by their musical taste is a form of discrimination, still assume that German = Nazi. Go Wes.

I'm late on this, but it hailed in some neighborhoods of Los Angeles on Wednesday. Hailed. This is freaky in SoCal. Photos are here.

This was about 15 miles from my neighborhood. Here, nothing.

Unfortunately, the hail damaged the Watts Towers, nine giant funky folk art sculptures I haven't gotten around to seeing yet. They'll be okay, though.

Went out to a pub last night, an increasingly rare occurrence. Little did I know last night was one of the pub's semi-regular Catholic Schoolgirl Nights. (Irish pub, y'see...) None of the patrons complied -- apparently they have on past nights -- but the bartenders all looked like Britney Spears in the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" video.

If you think this isn't going directly into my bad novel today, you're crazy.

Sweet Jesus, one of my high school class presidents -- we had two; long, boring story -- has sent a mass email reminding me that the reunion, which I am heartily skipping, is in a mere few weeks.

The email is not BCC'd.

Welcome, FLHS class of '93. I double-dare you to leave a comment and admit you were here.

Anyone else: while I am too busy to blog properly, tell me about your high school reunion. Or about dodging it and renting Romy and Michelle instead.

Jen Muehlbauer: Good tech writer. Good columnist. Acceptable journalist. Mediocre blogger. And now, proud to be a bad, BAD novelist:



I hope to hit 10,000 words tonight. I'm not sure why I'm actually doing this. Maybe in December, I'll justify my existence by writing something good!