Live From Papa Rico Pizza on Olympic and La Brea

Wed. May 22

Live from Papa Rico Pizza here on Olympic and La Brea, waiting on a Bud Light --and here it is! I'll twist off the cap...And I think I'll pour it in this here frosty mug...Now for a drinky dink...Aahhh.
So what's there to report? Went to Osage to fill out my applications for my State Clear Credential. Yelled at some kids today for talking while I'm teaching, one of those blood vessel-popping yells, and it made a very slight impression on these sixth graders. Only the good kids were frightened and the rude ones went right on being rude. I've already tried the nice guy approach. It's not their fault. Their regular teacher hasn't trained them. They'll be getting still another sub since tomorrow I'll be out on the yard for the psychomoter thing. I bought a bunch of footballs for it at Target. I bought myself some shirts and shorts while I was there. The shirt I'm wearing has sailboats and marlins on it.
The Dodgers will be playing the Mets on ESPN in a few minutes.
Last night I totally shirked on Jim and went instead with Miguel to pick up Suzette the schizophrenic Australian stripper who has made him her chauffuer. We took her to work at the Wild Goose. We stayed for a double Turkey rocks and 3 or 4 Bud Lights and three losses on the pool table to Old George, who's been a fixture there for about twenty years and rarely loses. We left about nine and I came home and got high and played guitar and got a B-day B-job from Sh'elle.
I had been so close to rolling on JC, too. If it hadn't been my birthday I'd've resisted my cravings. I'm planning to just go! go! go! for 40 minutes non-stop + a 20 minute edit just move it along whatever comes to mind. Combinations of this reckless go go go approach with careful planning and editing ought to get me there. Tomorrow I go to UCLA's free-on-Thursday Fowler Museum to see the voodoo exhibit. I've also got to go to the Credit Union. Class on Friday. Payday Friday. Pasadena Saturday. Matinee Sun. Bible study. Monday financial planning, weekly plan, etc. Man, my beer's already gone. Definitely treadmill during the game tonight.
C-ya!

For There to be Color There Must Be Eyes To See It

Tues May 21, 1996

I turned 28 today. I--how old was Keats when he died? 26 or 28. I fell short again on my journal pages yesterday, but I did get a good chunk of cursory life-planning out of the way, if not any actual long term plot structure, be they for fiction or non-. I subbed again for Mrs. Gagliano's class today. We read about Margaret Mitchell, the first woman astronomer. We also reviewed reviewed circles and the frequency of stars' light waves - For there to be color, there must be eyes to see it. That blows me away.
Birthday. I do seem less inclined to to express myself in mere fragments as when I was younger. Perhaps I progress, perhaps I mature. --Noticing this positive attracted an un-named negative which mometarily stalled me.
Onward. The mail is downstairs. I think to stop writing to go collect it, but I don't know what I'll do. I shouldn't stop 'til I'm done. I also sort of want a drink, maybe a good scotch, I want to write, but I kind of want a bourbon, too. At a bar. With a pool table. HAC, Cat and Fiddle, The Spotlight. I already have an intinerary for today, though, that doesn't include alcohol or going out. After this I'm supposed to increase my correspondence, add to JC, and attend to some other habits for a better me. The Dodgers are on tonight against the Mets. There are hockey and basketball playoffs tonight, too. I hear a buzz, a circular saw zcqwring through a sheet of plywood. Remember Mariachi's house by the Christmas tree farm, Cousin Moe and the lugar.

My mom just called to wish me a happy birthday. I thanked her for popping me out. Her voice in reply was a mix of emabbarassment and love and pride.

I've misplaced a sack. I hope it's not on the floor of the titty bar up at Sunset and La Brea. I'm actually ahead of schedule today. So far.

Iceplant crept glacially across the walk.

A few well-placed, if poorly timed, phone calls saved me probably being in traffic right now.

A man in a cul-de-sac had a small area that bordered the street just the other side of the sidewalk from the lawn where a tree or grass or ice plant might be planted, but that risked weeds taking root, and either way whatever grew there would need periodic pruning. Only more work, and the man was of the mind of checking untamed growth. He elected to fill the patch of earth with concrete.

A boy approached the drying cement and kneeled near the string that ran around stakes in the corners to cordon off the perimeter. Four strips of brightly coloroed plastic paper twittered in the wind from where they hung on the string on each side of the hardening concrete. It was almost totally dry, except for a few dark damp spots on the surface of the cement. The boy touched his finger to the rough, unyielding hardness, and rubbed his hand over it, making no impression. He leaned back and regarded the concrete when the man yanked him by the ulna to his feet.
"Have you been playing in the cement?" he growled a few inches from the boy's nose, face contorted, eyes blazing, unblinking, tounge between teeth while he awaited the answer.
The boy looked at the patch of concrete, unchanged by his arrival.
"Yes," he said.
The man turned the boys palms up. They were gray with a thin layer of dust. "Alright, then. I'll let you go for not lying."

Why Didn't I Write About the Chupacabra Debate?

5-20-96 Monday

The U.S. Customs story--I'm hungry. My writing is rushed and scattered. I did treadmill just now. Feel those endorphins. - Why didn't I write yesterday? I was in Newport at Carlos' and then in Placentia. Since my mom lives there I often call it Placenta. Are the words related? Could not the blanket of the womb be a place of pleasance? Wasn't it when things didn't suck?
CSUN has drawn returning champ Fullerton in the NCAA playoff tournament. Tonight I have to dig through a bunch of crap for possible salary point credit. Ugh. Not looking forward to it. Need to get my P-forms signed. It will almost certainly raise questions that so many of my forms are unsigned. I don't think pleading ignorance is going to impress anybody. The Dodgers are losing in the 8th 7-1. I have to call the BCLAD office again. Have to go to the credit union. Have to go to Target for shorts and shirts. Review financial management plan next Monday. I subbed for Gagliano's class today. We debated the existence of chupacabras. I'll be in there tomorrow, too. Also today was a Partners in Education meeting. I'm getting exposed to some quality grant writing, but I don't think Rosa Fujumoto thinks too highly of me. I think she hates white males out of hand. Funny she doesn't recongnize her own racism. I didn't think Principal Cicada did at first either, but now she often compliments me.
Just a general surface connection.
How did my Thomas Guide get up here on my desk when it should be in the car. Oh, well. Who cares? ---Not this 'tude again. Bring me up, Lord. Bring me out of it. Give me enough to get through

Even Wobblier Than Before

5-18 Sat.
On with it, Laggard!
Look at the points over there stabbing out of the pencil can; the would--uh, I mean the wood is absolutely reflective. Oh McDonald had a farm E I O, er, uh, I mean E I E I O. I did a half hour on the treadmill last night, but I didn't write any more after that. I like determined to write with this utterely dull broken pencil when there's those brand new, never-been-used-before, freshly sharpened ones in the can by the Mac. --Just now when I lifted this pencil from the page, as if on cue, the lead --or is it led?--(graphite?) fell out of it, a centimeter length, which I put back in and am writing with again, though even wobblier than before.

Oh my Darling o ma darlin'

omuh Durlin' number nein

You were lost and gone forever

oh my darling Number nine.

I caught a Huckleberry Hound with a pincer claw in the crane game in the lobby of the movie theater (where we saw James and the Giant Peach).~~~I'm about to finish Leveticus and begin Numbers.~~~~~I ought to write a letter to Gramps, plan for forty-five minutes, type for two hours, finish and review the Hall book, do a few more minutes on the~^~^~^That pencil finally bit the dust~ Robbins book, 35 minutes on the treadmill, begin The Writer's Journey book...What first, though? Plan? Do a schedule on the Mac? I went to sign up for some extension courses at UCLA. Where is that info now hid, I wonder. It's 3:33 right now. What'll wuttle I think of next? Feeling that void again. little geeky William Wallace disemboweled, his offal on the public planks. How'd my Thomas Guide get in here? Most likely The One Who Leaves Nothing In Its Place must have gotten to it. gotten her hands on it. On ol beer image the dew on the can flickered in. Triple A dues just showed in the mail. I've got to put this check in the bank. Whooooo $50. Maybe I ought to meet with Gramma Vera for brunch next Sunday. What about tonight? Seedy O is coming from Upland. We were going to see Ray Davies at the Henry Fonda Theater, but it's canceled. Filler Diller Diller
I'm a nerd, the shutters clank angrily
Where is the answer? I want to rest. I feel inconsolable. The Dodgers have won 5 (or 6?) in a row. I don't know who exactly got presented in that interview. Which ones of me did they see? I could eat some fruit with cool whip. The Swamp Thing is home. Adios.

Bad for the Heart

Friday May 17

A cool draft makes a right turn through the living room windows. The Dodgers just knocked the previously undefeated Grace out of the game. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is on the American Movie Classics channel. "A Streetcar Named Desire" comes on next. I took a bunch of kids from my class to see the movie adaptation of "James and the Giant Peach" today. It was hokey. Before I go back on track at school, I'll fill all those manila envelopes with story and mail them out. The Swamp Thing offered to get the postage for me at his office. I should do a half hour on the treadmill. My grandfather wrote to me not to use it anymore. He said it's bad for my heart. Said sell it for ten dollars.
I jammed with Led Zeppelin for a few minutes today. Michelle left with her Coronas.

Or I'll be Fired

May 16
I'm behind writing in here, but I've been very busy. This portfolio interview is going on right now. I'm waiting for assessors representing the state of California to evaluate my portfolio and interiew me. If thye deem portfolio and interview worthy I'll be awarded a California State Teaching Credential. If they don't I'll have my contract voided with LAUSD, and I'll be looking for another job. I was supposed to have been working on the portfolio for the last two years, but I really only started working on it in earnest in the last two weeks. I've been nervous about it, but now I think I'll cinch it. Then I can get the hell out of here and start drinking in earnest.

It's gray today. A surprising prolonged shower cancelled psychomotor P.E. at school today enabling me to write twenty pages or so that I needed to complete this portfolio. Thanks God.

I've got my pencil necktie on. It's the one my neighbors in Pasadena, Mike and Kerry, gave me the day I moved from there to LA. I never saw them again.

I bought a pack of Marlboros on the way here because I was nervous. Dumb.

My brain keeps vacuuming. I don't mean sucking up observations, I mean voiding, vacating, going empty.

What else? I was reading old journals, and I wasn't that unhappy with the process going on there. I've got to get it going for the novel now, but there's this tug o' war between reporting for work to pay my debts and blowing off those concerns to face my word processor.

At school they wanted me to take over for Brett Carol who gave up trying to teach her class. It would be good money, $155 dollars a day after twenty-one days, retroactive to the first day. I hear it's a crappy class. Wild adolescent sixth graders whose teacher was not much different. Everyone thinks I'm the perfect candidate to tame them. Ironic, no? They'll be graduating to middle school in six weeks which will involve report cards and cums and conferences and a bunch of culmination activites. I need a wittle west and wewaxation. I'll settle for a hundred to be able to fill in from day to day and not clean up the mess of some teacher who let the animals run free.

I hope these evaluators don't go too deeply into my journals. Uh-oh. I can see them through the window. There's a man and a woman. The man is reading one of these journals. Shit. I thought they'd just look to see that I'd done them, maybe flip through the pages. He's not actually reading that shit, is he? Oh, God. I have a post interview after this. What could he be reading in there?  I hope they call me in now. I'll have to give some speech about public persona and private, and I'll have to keep referring him to the evaluations my administrators give me. Now they're talking. I can hear the murmur of their voices, especially the hiss of the esses. Here he comes.