So Much For Staying Sober

The elevator in Pasadena a
Chinese red good luck
anti-evil spirit on the
door tells me I got
off on the right floor

-Get you bong, pour the water
in it through a paper towel,
pop it in the microwave and
to dry it and when it's ready
smoke it.

The dog got a boner watching baseball
The house need s ed a
musical instrument
Keeping track of time
that chix dead now
Using the writing on the walls

"You're Sancho."
-Water trakers, fresh.
A book says Gaugin and Van Gogh
fought. That's g
Pallbeareer's conversion:
6 feet into frozen earth.
-
I don't care if you
burst into flames," he
said when I asked if
I could smoke.
-Our father, my Grandma prays
every night, I should ask her
how and which letters she
capitalizes.
-
937-7477 NASA for Teachers

Thirty-Three Dismal Days Without a Drink

Fri August 2
I slept through a 1/2 hour of AM talk radio when the alarm went off this morning at 5:15. I hustled in and out of the shower, dried, applied pit rub, brushed, dressed, and caught a ride with Shirelle to the bus stop at Olympic and La Brea. I bought a paper at the donut shop there, read a few headlines, and boarded the 212 to Hollywood and Highland. Few commuters yet braved the dismal day aboard the cool bus. I got change at the McDonald's on Hollywood next door to the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum. Then I rode the 420 to Chandler and Laurel Canyon. The US baseball team got clobbered by Japan, nixing a much heralded matchup with Cuba for the gold medal, and the Dodgers blew their lead against the Marlins, losing in the 14th. Out the window, the cloud-deadened sun, absent color, floated through the air. I got off at Terra Bella and walked from Laurel Canyon to school. I ate a biscuit and a ham link from the cafetria kitchen in the teacher's lounge. When class started the kids worked on their book reports. Then we went to the library.
Raul came to visit me from last year. I said, "Raul! What are you doing here? I'm not your teacher anymore. I thought I got rid of you last year."
He said, "Teacher, I'm like gum on your shoe."

Mariachi just called. They want to go out drinking. I haven't had a drink in 33 days. They're coming to pick me up. I'll guide 'em to Musso's, the Spotlight, Off Hollywood, Boardners, the Formosa, the upstairs blues joint, and maybe Dizzy Debbie.
Jeopardy is on. I feel like filling in the rest of this page with obscenities. I should've hit that AA meeting tonight. Tomorrow I have to go to the Norton Simon or the Southwest Museum. Sunday I've got tix for Dodgers/Braves.
The assignment this week is to create a monologue for a character in a magazine photo.

Covert Alcohol School Iguana Dumb Ass Solution to the DUI Problem

July 31 , Wed.
After school yesterday I spent all afternoon programming Yudy Iguana's computer and there is, of course, some sort of error message that can't be gotten rid of or moved past. Then it was Back to School Night, but only three parents came. Roseacea Caplan gave me a ride down the 405 to UCLA. I had forgotten to print the assignment, but I had the disk. I asked a guy in the law library if there was a Mac anywhere so I might be able to print "County Jerks". He said there wasn't any in the library, maybe Kinko's. Finally he came up with Kerckhoff Hall, above the coffee bar, there's a room with Macs for student government only. I found my way there, up the stairs, down the hall, there were the Macs. I felt so covert. It was kind of fun.
I thought class started at 7:30, but it had started at 7:00. The wholesome woman wrote another good piece, this time about a girl who gets smacked with a belt for leaving her bike out. That hit close to home.
Cyndy wrote some comedy about a trip to the hospital with food poisoning. We talked about voice and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person narration; Catcher in the Rye, Bright Lights, Big City-
I got a solution to the DUI problem: There should be a drunk driving lane.
We're watching "Lost Weekend" at alcohol school. Alcohol school, that's so funny. Ray Milland as the pathetic writer/drunk. Hmm.
Dodgers traded for Chad Curtis tonight. Yanks got Cecil Fielder. I need to talk to mi bro. Osuna is in there now for Martinez.
Shirelle will give me a ride to school tomorrow, so I won't have to get up so early for the bus. I have a wet cough. I wish I had more time. I haven't had much time to read lately. I wanted to write a letter to the LA Times magazine about DUI punishments~
Fuck. What else? The Olympics are on this week. Today I was telling Maria what a dumb ass she is. Now Madonna's on TV. She says she's a visual artist. Fuck a duck, chuck. The buck stops where? I've got to hit the hay.

Alcoholics Anonymous

July 29 Mon.
I called the Alcoholics Anonymous directory to see where the nearest meeting was tonight. The guy said 5750 Olympic. I said, "Are you sure? Because that's where you guys sent me last week and I rode my bike all the way there like five miles and there was no meeting. What's another one in the area if the one on Olympic ain't happening." And he says, "Oh, there's a good one at Fairfax and Fountain." "The Catholic church?" "Yeah." so Shirelle drives me to the one on Olympic and it ain't there, so we go up to Fairfax and Fountain, and that one ain't there either. Fucking AA. So I call the guy back when I get home and I say that there was no meeting at 5750 Olympic and he says can I call him on that tomorrow and I go, yeah, and there was no meeting on Fairfax and Fountain neither, and he says, "I know." Fucking recovered alcoholics as dumb and disorganized as all this might as well start drinking again, thinks I.

So I got Rachel's printer up and running. How 'bout the way Phyllis Scanrod thought she fixed the printer in Judy's room?-It was pretty hot today. There's a full moon tonight.-
Costa Rica...
Tomorrow's Back to School night. And then Mrs. Kaplan said she'd give me a ride to UCLA.
Maybe I'll take the bus tomorrow. I have to move my car before Thursday so I don't get no parking ticket.
Mark was smart. he was always smarter than I.
Watched "Happy Gilmore" on video, Adam Sandler comedy. I did part one of that assignment. I wrote a memory of mine in the third person. Tomorrow I'll have to do Sladek's memory in the first. What else? Gotto go to the Norton Simon and Museum of the Southwest soon, class Tuesday and Wednesday, AA Friday, Community service Saturday. Tell Tom about Dodgers/Braves tix. Read the Van Gogh book. Read Chandler.

Empty-headed bullshit waste o' time writing this is.

I should be asleep by now. Muff
ucker. Angles and Saxons were Northern tribes. Charlemagne was a great villain.
Miracle Mile story needs editing.
Screw the pooch.

Lasorda retired.

DUI Consequences

Sun July 28

Crank 'em out if that's all you can do. Me and seven Hispanics started on Third and swept up Western, teams of four on either side, 2 with brooms, one with a shovel, and one with a box of trash bags. I had a broom. There was a dead pigeon among the usual litter: butts, fast food cups and wrappers, furniture packaging left out in front of Korean furniture places, feces here and there. We disturbed one freaky-looking bum, mascara under his eyes. On our break, I had a torta de pastor at una taqueria. Era muy autentica at this place. We wore yellow Hollywood Beautification Team t-shirts, all stained with pain. Some unnameable goo, like rotten banana, I discovered on my arm and finger. I used the shirt to wipe it off. You wonder how well anything is really laundered in jail community service programs. --Ugh there's the mustang. The weep! of the alarm being set, the shink! in the lock, bumbumbum up the stairs, urgh ack and here she is, skeebobtodiddlywop.
What else? If I make up the three transfers I can probably get up close enough to work in Pacoima in one hour. I can consider it two hours of reading time, no? Walk up to the bus stop Wilshire La Brea number 212 at 6:24 A.M. Get off at Hollywood and Highland at 6:36. Wait four minutes for the 420. Get off at Chandler and Laurel Canyon at 7:03. Wait 3 minutes until the 230 comes. Get off at Laurel Canyon and Osborne 7:? I don't know. No time before school.
More of the same to get home. I must attend an AA meeting tomorrow. I'll have to get a directory and then workshop at UCLA on Tuesday. I have to write my memory in the third person and an account of another person's memory in the first person.
He was
Maybe I'll do me one of the sheriff deputies. "You should know better. You think I want to be in here. If you're so smart how did you get in here? If I had your education, I wouldn't be coming to this shithole every day. I'm as trapped here as you are. This place sucks because it' s supposed to suck. You thought you'd be able to just come sit in here and have some quiet reading time? Ha! Go ahead and call me a dick.
How will I not drive for one year? Should I get lawyer? Should I leave California? Should I drive when I need to? At least 30 more days jail and they impound your car if you get caught.

Wealth, Greed, Depression, and the Museum of Miniatures

Sat July 27

From a booth in Punjab Cuisine, an Indian place on Wilshire near La Brea. I'm not sure what I just ate, but it was good. The host here wears a turban and one of those bushy beards with mustache extending well off his face. He must be a Sikh. Imitation tapestries depict what could be early stages of foreplay from the Kama Sutra. He is a Sikh. I asked him. He said it's their religious custom to cover the hair on their head, but that some Muslims and Hindus also wear turbans. Rousing sitar music, inevitably mystic sounding-
I've stopped in here after visiting the Museum of Miniatures. It has a real sense of frivolity compared to the seriousness of LACMA across the street, or the Huntington--Hobby for the wealthy-depresses me, a book in the gift shop that had nothing to do with miniature, How to Live Rich--the proprietress was clearly a woman of greed; It showed in her hair and makeup and fingernails. She was trying to sell a $2500 M'sai doll to an Indonesian couple/ She pointed out the ritual scarring on the doll's face and arms, and I wanted to ask if her clitoris had been hacked off as well.
I learned a little about Louis XIV, how he was born unto parents that openly despised one another, ascended to the throne at 13, restored the French monarchy which become the envy of Europe and sowed the seeds of the French Revolution. I found myself depressed at the reproductions of the palace's opulence.
The more whimsical pieces set me right, the bars and diners and wharves and shipwrecks, the tree town, the brothels and old west saloons, skid row, the military models--where does one find the time to create so much?

I've given up on that Writer's Journey book. It attempts to reduce every story to a formula.

the danger of schizophrenia

Fri July 26
Oh dread, Oh God,
That pasty white tripper, his hypnosis conspiracies and tapped phone theories
I've had a lot of time to think about it and I'm pretty sure it's all fucked up. The phrase "Kiss my sorry ass," keeps repeating itself in my head
the danger of schizophrenia. Rick Monday tells the airwaves it's two one Astros in the bottom of the sixth. Started that UCLA workshop last Tuesday. I wrote about a mushroom a girl got in trouble for trying to make her young neighbor eat.
"outwalked the farthest city light"
They've re-signed Tim Wallach. The computer is on. Ther's a black and blue stack of diskettes here on the desk next to 2 red pens and three yellow pencils on a calendar, the erasers end at my wallet. Mondesi has stolen his twelfth, the tying run is in scoring position. He picked up one of those box cutters. Thirst. Shit. Albert Belle homered. I could watch a porno. There's a double couple Bonnie and Clyde scenario on the fence and platform outside a barn. I've been reading a book on Van Gogh that I picked up off that chest Miguel uses for a coffee table downstairs.
My oh my. I'm soft, need to tread. I've been asked to go down to Cafe Largo with a friend to see her friend sing over there on Fairfax across from Canter's. Eleni is her name.
At school today~ played chess with Levi. I wonder how many fourth graders might enjoy seeing "Searching for Bobby Fisher"? It's 7:10. I've got the Jeopardy Teen Tournament on under the 3-2 Dodger game. I've got to tread.
I watched the Bonnie and Clyde. Flung my stuff into that LACMA shopping bag I've been using as a trash receptacle the last few months.
belt unbuckled around waist. I could do a little bebop tonight.