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I'm The One That I Want by Margaret Cho. I was so disappointed that I couldn't make the book fair at UCLA last weekend with my friend Tracey, so she thought to buy the book for me. I missed the one-woman show when I lived in New York, but Tracey and I went to see the film last fall in Santa Monica. If you want to know how much my friends rock, Tracey even had it autographed:
Erica
Good luck in New York!
-Margaret Cho
. . .
I'm also still reading Simple Indulgence: Easy, Everyday Things to Do for Me by Janet Eastman. I'm such a dork, I keep reading the quotes and ideas, but not doing the journalling portion.
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"Someday we'll find it
the rainbow connection
the lovers, the dreamers and me
alllll of us under it's spell."
-Kermit THE Frog
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Stuck in my head:
"Boogie-oogie-oogie get down."
Thank you, Disco Stu! (My favorite Simpsons sight gag-cum-character.)
I heard Britney Spears' "Bottom of My Broken Heart" while making a selection from the feminine hygeine aisle at Wal Mart and exclaimed, "Fucking Britney Spears...Gah!"
That's one of the videos I had to watch about a million times to select snippets for the web site and the enhanced CD single. Ever hearing it again is too much, too soon.
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The Simpsons, The Sopranos & Armistead Maupin's Further Tales of the City. I didn't even realize there were making another one, I just happened to see it listed. I'm going to have to finish the book series now, as I think I've only read through the fourth book and this mini-series is based on the third book.
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While you're visiting the Gallery of Regrettable Food, don't miss Meat!. This one in particular made me laugh until I couldn't breathe. "Sometimes meat likes to dress up and feel pretty."
Swanson Parade of Lost Identity -- women who, in probably their only 15 minutes of fame, were for the most part known only as Mrs. HisLastName.
. . .
Co-Author of The Rules to divorce! So you can't manipulate a man into marrying and staying married to you? Perhaps you have to come into it as two individuals and show who you really are from the beginning? I guess this means that no amount of growing your hair long, pretending not to be smart or funny, and "training" a man will make for a happy marriage.
. . .
Ever wonder where that dollar bill's been? Mine was in Chicago two months ago.
. . .
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Another Elvis dream (I'm doing the Memphis section of my color scrapbook now, but I haven't got to Graceland yet), this one cannibalistic.
What started out as an autopsy to discover THE TRUTH, turned into Elvis Stew. It was rich and beefy. Ewwwwwwwww!
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Why is it that the same personality quirks are taken as crazy and stalky by some, while loveably wacky by others? Is there some litmus test for this, so I stop wasting my time?
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now I'm blogging what I'm eating, whoa.
Still literate as of 9/29/2000 12:20:01 AM
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just what I needed...another dorkblog.
Jeepers, creepers, I last used my peepers on 9/29/2000 12:24:59 AM
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My trip photographs, they're better than expected. Now to get them all organized, it's only been a year!
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Saturday, November 04, 2000
11:11 AM
 not a wunderkind. What happened? I've done nothing with my life and that's really pissing me off. I don't know where all the time went or why I've failed at everything or at least never finished. I don't have to be a millionaire, I just want to do things that I like, that I'm good at and not have someone breathing down my neck and telling me I'm a moron everytime I turn around. I've reached my lifetime quota of taking bullshit.
Is it that my talents just aren't marketable? Or that I don't know the first thing about marketing them? Or, that the very word "marketing" makes me want to vomit, because it's tainted writing, music, film the web and everything else I love? I think it is this last.
There are so many talented people and they are strangled by the age-old dilemna of whether or not they will sell out. Part of me desperately believes they should not, but the realist that wishes she could afford an apartment in a city she loves, to pay her bills, to pay her student loans and maybe even some furniture and a computer that can handle doing the work she's come to love.
I tried slaving away at a job I didn't care about, thinking I could finance my own creativity. Instead, you realize you give your best and most to something you don't care about until slowly, yet suddenly, you realize you care, you care all too much about something that doesn't begin to touch your soul or even fatten your wallet. It is the worst of both worlds and yet, you wake up after two years and realize it's all you have.
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11:17 AM
trying not to be oversensitive, but I can't help it. I need friends here, but it's just not working out. That seems to be my problem wherever I go. I don't think I'm too needy or clingy. OK, so I can be, but I don't think my realistic requirements are that outrageous.
I'd like to have a handful of friends that I see every few weeks on a rotating basis. Instead, I'm here and I'm trapped. My nearest friend is 15 miles away and I have only seen him once in the 6 months I've been here. The next 3 nearest are 30-40 miles away and I did get to see one a week ago and one two weeks ago. I want to go to a movie, but not alone and certainly not with the screaming brigade.
If I took everyone's advice and learned to drive, as if it's some miracle salve, I'd be even more stuck, because then the car would become the carrot on a stick. The price for this alleged freedom (everyone in SoCal complains constantly about their cars, their car/insurance payments and their commute) would never be paid.
There must be some way outta here...I made it to NY alone, but I can't survive my own hometown.
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9:56 PM
so shallow...I'm not sure I fully comprehend the point of "romantic" relationships other than a) sex and b) sharing expenses. Having not been there yet, not really caring for anyone, let alone being cared for -- I just don't know why people go through all the hassle.
Sometimes I'm terribly jealous of my friends who live with someone, because I'm so frustrated at struggling to have the minimums by myself. I know, it's so wrong. But I'm petty like that.
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Friday, November 03, 2000
8:02 AM
so sad about that last entry. Though white herself, my mother doesn't fit any of those ideals. Yet every week she reads People and US and beats herself up for not measuring up to Hollywood's narrow standards.
Would that more women who waste their lives on such drivel and on soap operas would wake up and smell the feminism. Why pour your hard-earned money into things that hate you and want you to hate yourself?
As I do every so often, I read through one of her magazines last night. It was filled with celebrity worship, of course, but the articles on women were the worst. Carnie Wilson is to be applauded because now she is thin and thus married. What happens when the staples in her stomach burst?
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8:06 AM
a genius with a 167 IQ, according to The Spark's IQ test. Of course I cheated, once I realized the way the test worked. I originally scored "83 -- Partially Retarded."
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Thursday, November 02, 2000
1:06 PM
home from school early because we got out half an hour early and I got a ride home. I've been having none of the above for the last 2 or 3 weeks, so I've been pretty wiped out with the commute.
We stopped for lunch and, just as I was about to order some boring old meal combo, I saw the kids meal is Curious George. Isn't the bag cute? I forgot it came with a frosty, it's only about 2 1/2 inches high. Adorable.
Oh shit! I forgot to take a picture of the toy that came with it. I have to dg it out and assemble it, it's got all kinds of action, just like the AJ of the Backstreet Boys' toy from Burger King.
Honestly, I don't eat fast food all that often. I swear.
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1:22 PM
going to have to make room for this on my already-crowded desk, because it's just too cute. He's on a tricycle, balancing a pole with a yellow hat full of bananas on each end.
What really kills me is that they put a hole in his butt to attach him to a peg in the trike's seat.
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1:25 PM
in the midst of redesigning Some Crazy Dame into the community I always envisioned it to be. Any ideas?
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6:33 PM
never going to wake up and be pretty or blonde or feminine, so I wish with all the passion my big, fat, juicy brain can muster that you can accept that. You've never given me the protection or privilege or admiration of a princess, why would you expect me to act or look like one?
I've had to grow a thick shell, just to survive. And be grateful, just to live. I've had to grow and thrive on the smallest crumbs of love you and that beast you chose to father me would spare. So don't be surprised when I don't feel I owe you anything.
Don't compare me to your "adopted daughter" at work and say how wonderful she is to you. If someone was beating and kicking her, you wouldn't look away. If you did, she wouldn't be such a fan of yours, either.
I'm not going to "give" you "grandbabies." You had your chance with me and it was a disaster, why would I subject my own children, should I choose to have any, to the more insane members of both sides of the family.
I don't mean to be a disappointment in every way you can imagine. I don't lie awake nights trying to devise new ways to make you wish I was never born. I just am. I thought that after all I've grown into and all I can do, you could come to see that, as the people who love me do.
But now I realize I'll always be your worst mistake in your eyes. You know what I've realized? That's not my fault, it's yours and it's your loss as well. I have so many wonderful qualities, but you've been so busy finding faults, you've never seen them.
People say I should forgive and forget, but to do so is to deny myself the truth of my history, to blame myself for your actions and lack thereof. It's not my fault, it never was, no matter how much you try to pin the blame for my own existence on me.
In coming back to be part of this thing you so ridiculously call a "family," I see all of this more clearly than ever. I will be gone again soon, but this time I won't beg for you to let me back into your life. You didn't deserve me the first time and you still don't.
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Wednesday, November 01, 2000
1:20 PM
finished with my Photoshop class, but I completely forgot to post my final project. We were to take a photo of a friend or family member (or ourselves, but even I'm not that ego-maniacal) and create a magazine cover for a real or made-up magazine. I chose this theme because I fell so in love with New Orleans and because Dora had mentioned this Voodoo Music fesitval in a couple of her recent entries.
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8:50 PM
Staying home from school far too much. I'm tired, even when I sleep 8 hours, I crave 4 more. What's wrong? Why am I so exhausted? It's not as bad as I felt at my job, but then that was an entirely miserable experience. I like my classes and am learning a lot of important skills.
I guess it's just the 2-4 hours of commuting everyday that are killing me and I just feel too ambivalent about the whole driving thing. My thoughts keep taking me back to New York and San Francisco, where I was independant and engaged in life most of the time.
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Tuesday, October 31, 2000
9:16 AM
staying home from school because I'm just too damn tired. I went to bed two hours earlier than usual, but am just as wiped out.
I don't know how I used to work 40 hours a week and get to school. I just don't seem to have it in me anymore. Maybe I'm just a quitter.
I'm rationalizing it as time to get my work done as I spent most of the weekend and yesterday reformatting my hard drive, reinstalling Windows 98 and all my hardware, trying to get my devices to work, etc. The really weird thing is that the scanner now works, but the Zip and the printer do not. Guess what was more important?
I can scan all day, but without a printer or a way to get the files off the hard drive, I'm sunk. It's going to get really expensive really fast if I have to turn in all my assignments in on CD. staying home from school because I'm just too damn tired. I went to bed two hours earlier than usual, but am just as wiped out.
I don't know how I used to work 40 hours a week and get to school. I just don't seem to have it in me anymore. Maybe I'm just a quitter.
I'm rationalizing it as time to get my work done as I spent most of the weekend and yesterday reformatting my hard drive, reinstalling Windows 98 and all my hardware, trying to get my devices to work, etc. The really weird thing is that the scanner now works, but the Zip and the printer do not. Guess what was more important?
I can scan all day, but without a printer or a way to get the files off the hard drive, I'm sunk. It's going to get really expensive really fast if I have to turn in all my assignments on CDs. I guess I could do that, but it's only a stop-gap. I just want the damn thing to work. How do people who've never had computers before have so little trouble and I have so much, I just don't get it.
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9:43 AM
posting this in honor of Fang on this, one of her favorite days all year. Here are the all-black Converse I finally bought after wanting them for about 8 years, since, oddly enough, I actually lived in Orange County. She shares me love of unusual Converse (she had the velvet, I was so jealous!) and she would love that they are black, let alone 100% black.
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Monday, October 30, 2000
12:24 AM
convinced, after reading this, that I should marry Jen's brother. Now, if it's for the apartment in New York or the fresh-baked pastries, I can't decide.
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Sunday, October 29, 2000
1:36 AM
not a groupie, but that's the best narrow minds could conjure. It's amazing to me now, in hindsight how innocent it all was. Who else but Erica Jackson could hang out with a rock band at the age of 15 and not be corrupted in any way?
It caused me to realize a lot of things about people I might not have otherwise. For this I am grateful, but at the time, seeing people who'd treated me like dirt either start sucking up to me, or reach new depths of cruelty with attempts to besmirch my reputation was a sad, horrible, comic display. "Why else would a band want her around?" is how the rumors began, I shudder to think where they went from there.
Some of them want to use you,
some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you,
some of them want to be abused I am astounded at the number of pages, the endless words, as frequently as everyday, that began with me in a corner, a stack of college rule notebook paper on my trusty clipboard and the simple salutation, "Dear Guys." I remember many times people asked me, thinking they were clever, "Is that a letter to all guys in general?"
No, it was addressed to a handful of very special men who touched my life in ways I cannot even describe, who showed me that men can be tender and not just violent, intelligent and not just selfish -- they were all so kind to me, so smart, funny, talented and unique. I hope they know I'll never forget them. I hope they know how thankful I am that they came into my life, just when I needed another model for manhood. I know my own beliefs are partly responsible, but the warmth, kindness and light of recognition in their eyes helped me avoid the future of abuse to which I'd seemed fated.
They were the first "cool" people to like me, the first non-teachers to appreciate and praise my gifts, humor, words, enthusiasm and love. That they reciprocated is nothing short of a miracle, considering where I came from. I had long prayed for the impossible: a big brother. Suddenly, I had 8 of them (and later a ninth).
Now, 14 years later, I'm only in touch with two of them, but I hope that Chris, Pete, Teddy, Tommy, Jesse, Danny and Pat know how much I love them and that everyday I wake up and go on is largely a tribute to their belief in me when no one else cared, except to tease, torment and beat me. It was never a question for me of self-esteem, but of finding soul connections with people who thought as highly of me as I did of them.
It's amazing sometimes to consider the role of fate. If I'd not switched my radio loyalty from KIIS to KROQ so I could listen to Rodney Bingenheimer's show, I might never have heard their music. True to form, it was their words that touched my soul. and my words that brought them into my life. That seems to be how it begins for me.
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1:46 AM
never sure where it goes from here and so I wait and wait and wonder if I've missed the boat or driven it away or mistaken it for something it was not. It is the same with people and jobs and nearly every opportunity and so I foolishly watch it slip through my hands. Maybe it's time to change.
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2:44 AM
up until nearly 4 a.m., though only 3, as I watched the clock turn itself back. It's going to be dark so early, I hate this time of year.
I wonder if it's from being a kid and having to come in the minute it hit dusk, which will now come earlier and earlier, until it hovers right around 4:30.
Short days, the holidaze and another new year. It's all going so fast with nothing to show for it.
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11:34 PM
not especially inspired to write and Jennifer said she wanted to see a long column on Monday morning, so here are the pictures from Saturday, spent behind the Orange Curtain.
Perfect blue skies at The Block (formerly "The City," but closed down for a few years and renamed...so now it's a hot spot!) at Orange.
You can see the back of one of the numerous billboards in this reflection. I was trying to get my reflection and that of the giant guitar, but got distracted when the people inside the shop started to heckle me, because they thought I was trying to take their picture, rather than my reflection.
I love the nostalgic sign at Johnny Rockets, but even more I liked the billboard behind it that reads "Work Shouldn't be Work." I couldn't agree more.
You know, my dad always said I'd eat anything, even ants, if they were covered in chocolate. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but most things are better with chocolate. So I couldn't resist the fudge factory. We bought chocolate-covered nutter-butters and Pringles, pictured here:
It was actually 4 or 5 Pringles together.
Ron Jon's surf shop has a wave-shaped roof with surfers around the outside.
These footprints in the cement led from the parking lot around the corner to the entrance of Ron Jon's.
. . .
After the movie we went back to Jen's and hung out with her husband, played with the rats and watched "The Crow," which I'd somehow managed to never see, despite its apparent cult status among my generation.
Here's the most you'll ever see of Jen, with one of her adorable little rats. She's right, too often people think of dirty, oily, diseased subway scavengers when they hear the word "rat." Hers are so fluffy and cute and sweet.
I wish I'd remembered to write down all their names, but here are two of her boys on the verge of escape.
I loved watching the little suckers climb up the side of the cage. Their little hammocks (bottom right hand corner) also cracked me up.
The last time I visited her, I forgot to go back to her place and get my extra Backstreet Boys Burger King crown. The rats seem fascinated with it.
It's like a little rat inner-sanctum.
. . .
Finally, proof that I do, in fact, save everything. I just found this receipt somewhere recently, possibly (just to be completely ironic) even from a book or something I brought back from New York.
The Windmill, as anyone over age 25 from The Empire will remember was this shacklike structure (the wooden structure seemed all the more so, as most of the front was open) across the street from our then-dismal little mall and just behind Mad Platter, the only indie record store on our side of town.
Though it always seemed to me their main clientele was the hardcore headbangers, the Windmill always carried plenty of Duran Duran merchandise. There was also the sex shop in one restricted corner of the store as well as the Rock Pit out front, which I was somehow convinced was a place to buy drugs.
The receipt is for a concert photo close out, which I'm sure was a picture of John Taylor, be still my heart. It was 53 cents with tax and, in hindsight, I feel bad they had to fill out a receipt for such a piddly purchase. It is dated September 13, 1986, probably the weekend before I started my sophomore year of high school. That was about a month before I wrote my first letter to Dramarama and the same month I saw The Monkees in concert for the first time, which led to my discovery of Dramarama. Now there's a moment in time.
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