the slack daily

Love Means Never Having to Hide Your Farting.

Valentine's Day is past, and the flowers have died and the chocolates have been eaten and Vermont Teddy Bears (again, WTF?!) has been sacrificed and the token blowjob has been proffered* and Visa bill has been and all of the tokens that the Hallmark Universe instructs us are love are all gone.  Most of us agree that while little gifts can be nice, these things aren't really lovelove.  It's more like "stuff."

I returned from my vacation refreshed, rested, and ready to tackle my husband who I hadn't seen in over a week.  He greeted me with the two words granted to make anyone recoil: stomach flu.

Hallmarkian Holidays aside, love, and its more committed corollary, marriage, are about chemistry and compromise and communication. 

But sometimes it's just about crap.

I wasn't a huge fan of Sex in the City (mostly because I thought that main character was an idiot who I wanted to slap at least three times per episode, and yet I watched...so that really makes me the idiot, yes?) but this was sheer genius:

The SlackFamily is an FF - a Farting Family.  If they like you, they'll fart in front of you.  Which seems backwards, but it's all about a level of comfort, so you should be honored when you're let into the farting circle.  However, I'm all about leaving the room.  It's certainly not due to the fear that I lack femininity (that's what boobs are for!)  Perhaps it's my throwback state of manners? 

Either way, love, true love, means knowing that sometimes your partner has explosive diarrhea.  And waiting at the door with a shot of Pepto instead of a gin and tonic.

...

The rumors are true: Will has shut down his blog for the time being.  Like me, he is working on a couple of Sooper Sekrit Projects which will hopefully end in a paycheck.   As I told him the other day, the only difference between him and a bestselling author is that he hasn't written a book yet.  So it's time to get to work.  For both of us.** 

*An implied, not explicit, part of the Hallmark Universe.
**I'm sticking around.

Should I Move?

Pensacola Airport:

-Free WiFi.

-Women's bathroom smells like cake batter.

My House:

-Will pays for WiFi.

-Bathroom smells like farts and sunshine.

However--

Pensacola Airport:

-No Will.

-No Daisy the Wonderdog.

Solution:

-Will and Daisy the Wonderdog should move to the Pensacola Airport.

You Be the Judge.

Places I Might Have Been Last Night:

1. A Junior League Tea.
2. An Italian Restaurant with a bunch of Junior League members, one who might know someone who knows people I know in LA.
3. A practically-empty Trader Vic's with a bunch of fabulous gay men drinking Malibu and lime Juice (?!) Lady-and-the-Tramp style out of a huge ceramic bowl while a 22-year old woman might have declared me "hot" and "wanted to take me home."
4. A bar in a seafood restaurant with a Pink Floyd Cover Band.
5. A bar that smelled like a Frat House Basement that had a $10 cover that might have been paid by someone else, thumping techno music, guys in cutoffs with backwards baseball caps and the smell of date-rape clinging to the air.
6. Whataburger.

You Are Here.

The view from the deck, Fort Walton Beach, FL.

It's raining here.  It has been since yesterday, when my flight was delayed leaving Houston.  I discovered this fact not from the monitors at the airport but from the flight alert I had sent to my phone.  Thankfully I hadn't given up my seat at the bar in the all-too-packed Chili's (with other stranded travelers) and ordered a second Bloody Mary.  As SlackMom is fond of saying, Bloody Marys = nutrition.

I arrived in Pensacola three hours late in the middle of a rainstorm, but SlackCousin C. was waiting at the curb to pick me up.  On the 45-minute drive she informed me that SlackMom and SlackDad, as well as SlackAunt, SlackUncle, and SlackCousin L. with her daughter in tow would be meeting up a local restaurant.  Because our family doesn't miss a single opportunity to have food, we called in our order to SlackAunt and when we walked in, I was met with steaming bowls of mussels and a bottle of wine.

This is vacation.

More later.

Being Genuine is the New Irony.

My husband has a saying, and that's Being Genuine is the New Irony.  We invoke it when we encounter hipster douchebags, people who think that they're cooler/better/awesomer (okay that's not even a word)/funnier/savvier/worldier/just plain better than everyone else because of the cocktails they drink, the concerts they attend, the new media people they know, the guest lists they're on, the places they hang out or the fact that they got a table AND got served during rush hour brunch at Doughboys.  And of course we mean Irony in the most unironic sense, because even irony ain't what it used to be.

Last Saturday saw Will and I heading out to West Los Angeles to the Skirball Museum.  I was taking him to see Bob Dylan's American Journey, where not only do you get to see part-and-parcel of Dylan's life but you even get to sit in with his band.  We watched movies and played drums and  generally Bob Dylan'd ourselves out.  As we trekked over to the opposite side of the museum to grab a late lunch, we passed a sign for an exhibit about balloon hats.   I caught a snippet of the sign as I passed by. 

BALLOON HAT EXPERIENCE? I said to Will.  I gotta get a photo of this.

Like a hipster douchebag, I took a photo and chuckled smugly to Will.  I told him we just had to go in to see the ludicrousness of the "balloon hat experience."

I walked into the brightly lit room and saw the first photo and I couldn't catch my breath. Have you ever read the phrase overcome by emotion?  There were photos from Kosovo, photos from Rwanda, photos from Nigeria.  There were photos from New Orleans and photos from Oklahoma.  There were photos taken amidst poverty and tragedy, photos of old people and photos of children, and they were all smiling.

Laughing.

While wearing balloon hats.

It was real and it was pure and it was joy, and it was mostly in places where you wouldn't expect joy to exist, much less survive.

I react to art in a visceral way, but I've never had the experience of walking into something fully prepared to make fun of it and been knocked flat on my ass in mere seconds.   Had I been alone, I would have just let the tears leak down my cheeks but I choked them back, shaking my head over and over, repeating this is amazing. 

It was a small moment in a series of moments in my life where I am forced to remind myself that I am lucky - and every one of you who is reading this right now, YOU are lucky.  For the most part, we live in a world of our own creation. We have a roofs over our head and food in our bellies and opportunities at our fingertips if we just reach out and grab it.  We have families and if we don't have families we have friends and if you don't have friends you've got people in this electronic universe who care about you.

How amazing is that?

And for me, that's the balloon hat experience.


The Inflatable Crown runs until April 6th, 2008 at the Skirball.   

Striking Distance.

As most of you know, the WGA's vote to end the strike action passed with a whopping 92.5% approval.  While everyone's back to work, everything's technically not over until we ratify the deal that's on the table.  While it's not a perfect deal (DVDs were taken off the table), it does finally open the door to New Media payments.  There's also another small clause that was mentioned in an email sent out from my fabulous Strike Captain Aaron Solomon:

* Fair Market Value

 

   - Writers will get residuals based on the going industry rate, rather than the terms of a specific sale (to avoid situations like "The X-Files" being sold to FX for a cut rate and the writers having to get paid based on that)

Which is exactly what happened with Lizzie McGuire when it got sold to WGN.  Lizzie was immediately taken off Disney Channel and can be replayed on WGN.  I believe we received a small percentage of the licensing fee, rather than payment each time an episode aired.  The long and the short of it is that had this been in effect, I wouldn't be working four part-time jobs.  Let's say it's the difference in money is significant.  It's a victory for the Next Me.

Of course, I'm still here.  While I work and I write and I believe and I bust my ass to get that next job, I'm not getting any younger, I don't have a rags-to-riches (or stripper poles-to-screenplays) backstory and the only thing I can say about my Manager at least ten percent of no money is, well, no money. 

This isn't oh pitiful me, I have no money.  Money is never about money, it's about freedom.    Freedom to head out for dinner if we don't feel like cooking.  Freedom to attend one of my good friend's wedding in Hawaii because she and her fiancee were two of the thirty-some people we had at our teeny wedding, and I'd love to be a part of hers.  Freedom to not choose between bills to pay, but to just pay the damned bills.

Heading to Florida on Thursday, which sounds bizarre in light of what I've written above.  But the SlackParents parents are visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins and told me they'd spring for the ticket.  A ticket that at 35 years old, I feel like a failure that I cannot afford (since I could afford it sans probleme at 30) but I swallowed my pride and said yes, thank you. 

But one of the best parts about working was being able to handle it all on m y own, and then some.  There are some days that I am so fucking proud that I can keep it together and work multiple jobs and keep up two blogs and a workout program as well as two sooper-seekrit projects and some days I think I'm a fucking idiot and maybe I should learn to cut my losses.  One of the things the strike taught me is that this is what I want to do,  This is what I've done.  This is what I've committed myself to.  So if that means more years of alarms set at 4:45am and telling my friends I'm tired or I'm busy when I really mean I'm broke but please don't make me say it, well, then that's what it takes.

Because the other thing I've learned doing what I do is that if you want to get your shot you gotta do the work, and if you do the work, well, the closer your shot will come.

I know I owe an update on the Post-Apocalyptic Workout.  Tomorrow, je promis.

Love Juice, Amongst Other Things.

It's Valentine's Day, which means blog posts will be either dripping with the love juice like a firm, fleshy peach or condemning the crass commercialism of diamond commercials and absolutely moronic idea of one day of forced romanticism.

Even when I was in a relationship, I fell into the latter category.  Every day should be Valentine's Day, I thought, letting your partner know that you're the luckiest person in the Universe.  While I haven't totally changed my tune, I do finally get how sometimes life can get in the way and maybe a day to step back and remind ourselves why we're with someone isn't a terrible thing. 

However, those Vermont Teddy Bears are.  Seriously, these things - and their ads - creep me the eff out.

I'm pretty sure that that red doesn't occur in bear nature, meaning that they're probably breaking 823743 different stuffed animal cruelty laws.  Just step away from the bears, guys.  This bear - the "Horny Devil" - is $69.95.  Plus shipping. 

If you're looking for something to send, check out NBC's American Gladiator Valentines, Scientific Valentines, and the classic Law & Order: SVU Valentines.

In honor of my husband, I'll leave you with a little MST3K.  Enjoy your day, even if it's only Thursday.

Close Encounters of the NON-Celebrity Kind: Diablo Cody, Part Three.

Further to my run-in with Diablo Cody's #1 Fan, I present to you video of the event to show you that I do not make this shit up:

I didn't realize my friend Patty was taping us until about halfway through the video.  At the end when you hear Tomàs answer that phone call?  He totally faked that to get me outta there.

Could I sound more nasally?

Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind: Scott Baio

A conversation about what TV character you'd want to get it on with over at The CDP a few days ago led Mrs. CDP to admit that she always had wished that Charles had been put in charge of her. 

The suspenders get her hot.

Which led me to share what is probably my favorite Celebrity Encounter in Los Angeles.  It was a Friday night in 1995, maybe 1996, and I stopped at the Chevron on Sunset to fill up my battered silver Jetta before heading out to Santa Monica to meet my friends.  The second I got out of the car I spotted Scott Baio at the gas pump ahead of me.

Celebrity Encounters are par for the course in Los Angeles, and my M.O. is to usually smile and nod and leave it at that.  Scott Baio doesn't even make my smile-and-nod backup list, but he clearly looked as if he wanted to be recognized.  So I smiled.  And gave him a short nod.

He looked me up and down.

NICE TITS!

I shot back:

Thanks, Chachi!

He grimaced, swore under his breath and drove off, clearly pissed.

Next time on Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind:

Fred Savage tells me I have a nice ass, but I was asking for it.

"And why are YOU here?"

If you were thinking to yourself "self, wow, I miss when the slackmistress vlogs" you can check out the most recent one here.

Carry on.