Pimentos and Mayhem

Mon. October 28

Woke up like a tiger today with that extra hour of daylight savings. The sky was a beautiful purple slate; the flat clouds had silver linings.

I feel like a hack now. Suffering another confidence crisis.

I'm on the 21st floor, the top of the building, at Monty's restaurant in Westwood. The sun is going down, different shades of light paint the hills all the way from the ocean to the San Gabriels.

On the TV over the bar, a child molester has led police on a 100 mile per hour chase from Long Beach to Pasadena with slashed wrists, until now, he has broadsided another vehicle while running a red light. A shooting on Western. A Brinks driver was shot in the head.

No more baseball. I guess we'll have to make do with the evening news until basketball season starts on Friday.

The model had bloody ligature marks on her ankles, proving the anal penetration was not consensual. Video as they unearth the body from Angeles National Forest.

Why didn't Brian Moore introduce Judith's alcoholic background earlier in the novel? It's a common device, I think, to first envelop your reader, sit them down and make them comfortable before springing any traps. Maybe. Maybe he was afraid he'd turn off the readers if they knew from the beginning how pathetically inept and hypocritical Judith is.

What else? I had a four seventy-five Turkey rocks. Now a three fifty Amstel lager sits in front of me. There's mostly older, rich looking fucks in here. I should spin up some conversation. This lager tastes skunky.

In the movie "Swingers" I saw last night, one of the jokes was about a character up to be Goofy at Dinseyland, and the characters go to Vegas, and meet with Dorothy, a bimbo-chick like my Tink. So there go my original ideas.

The lights are coming on all over the-- There are so many trees in the hills you can't quite call it a city. The homes are shuffled in with the trees, though there's a line of high-rise apartment buildings along Wilshire, to the left, to the south. Anyway, what can you call the lights other than jewels, gems, gemstones?

It snowed in Cajon.

Martini drinkers here. Their pimentos wink at me.

Behind me, a mirror reflects the evening news on the window in front of me, superimposing the mayhem over the seeming beauty of LA at dusk.

Now I've got to shake off the talk of boxing and football and Butkus and Tyson and the beers and bourbon and go to class and talk about Judy Hearne.

Sunday oct. 27

Out the window among the Spanish tiles and television aerials, the neighbor's tree boasts many oranges. Distant palm trees sprout from the roofline. Looks like LA. Shirelle is moping around the house, unhappy about God-knows-what, and she wants anyone else to be unhappy, too. She's got a little cold, and wants everyone to know about it.

Sister Jen called this morning. She wants to come up from Orange County to see the movie "Swingers" in Westwood this evening. Then my brother called. He's at a friend's over on 6th and Hauser. They're going to smoke pot and watch some football. He said I should come over. I'm going to walk over there when I'm done with these three pages. Tonight, after the movie, from like eight to ten, I'll prepare my assignment for tomorrow.

Last night I read an essay by Stanley Elkin called "Out of One's Tree" which sought to illustrate the infirmity of memory, narrative, and authorship. If he is to be believed, he fell into a psychosis of several weeks brought on my a misuse of the anti-inflammatory drug, Prednisone, that he was taking for multiple sclerosis. I used to take a lot of Prednisone when I was kid for recurring severe bronchitis. No wonder I was and am so fucked up.

Mac did Pete Rose through the lobby.

Pete said he'd get hair plugs before that shit ever happened.

Ryan and his brother did a stewardess on a layover in a closed restaurant while their mother was looking for them. They were at a private party at the Thousand Oaks Marriott, drinking free beer.

"Did you come really fast, or did you hold it?" Mac wanted to know.

"She took it by the base and took the whole thing in her mouth. I held out a little," Pete answered.

"Keep going," Mac said and touched his dick through the blanket where he lay on the couch.

"Hello. Is Princess there?" In the same room here, two different guys with two different cellular phones interrupt each other talking to the same girl with call waiting.

"I was making out with what girl?" Pete asked indignantly.

Mac says, "He's going to play with his steak."

The guy in the stall farted loudly, repeatedly. Everyone cheered and waited for him to come out so they could high-five him.

Onward Christian Soldier.

October 26 Saturday
On your mark. Get set. Go. And he's off, going into the second line, still Nothing to Say leading by a nose--but, uh-oh! Nothing to Say is faltering. Struggling For Words has surged ahead!

An article in the Times told of people who live without TVs.

"I feel like a dumbass," was one of the first lines I turned in to Rob Roberge's class. He said he was going to get it tattooed on his forehead.

"Before you start whining, yes, I would have gone off and had fun without you. Let's just go ahead and save some time and establish that right off the bat," I said to Shirelle. You could detect the red even in her coffee-colored cheeks.

A character that looks for missing persons.

My first day off, I need to find out about subbing at Wilshire Hill Elementary.

I got my face down lower to the page to see if that would help. Tonight is Daylight Savings. I wonder if at two A.M. when the clock is set back to one, do the bars stay open an hour longer?
I should call the department of health services about getting a flu shot.
There's a show at the Roxy this weekend I might have liked to see with Johnette Napolitino and the Heads which remained of the Talking Heads after their settlement with David Byrne. I'm lookin' forward a little bit to a drink later. I'm feeling my arteries are a little bit clogged after that breakfast. I should treadmill today. Homer Simpson had a heart attack the other night. Whatever happened to Joe Garagiola after NBC lost baseball? Shirelle will drive.
Onward Christian soldier!
John Gregory Dunne says he forgets how to get characters in and out of rooms, but that he guts through that period when what he's doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failiure of nerve.  He says there will be a magic time that makes up for three and half years of toil...Everything seems to work.
Shirelle is watching "Rain Man" on TV. I remember when I was in college, Mariachi and I took two girls he knew from St. Paul, and some beers, to see it at the AMC Cinemas on Lemon in Fullerton. Would have been 1988. This makes me wonder what movie it was I saw with Lori Somerveldt when we sat with beer so close to the screen so long ago.

Not Exactly Pursuing Outlaws into the Dragon Mountains

October 25
The hinge screeched through a kazoo with bad lungs. What else? High oh my. I asked the girl here if she would brew up a pot of tea. She asked if she could borrow twenty dollars for cab fare to a party in Beverly Hill to watch the Fashion Awards, whatever they are.
I have an abcessed gum. I haven't showered today. How bout tonight? I'll stay. I was thinking of the difference between my two writing groups.
I heard the drain in the sink bubble. She shoved a hanger down in it.
Two extinguished. Devastating
I haven't washed my hands since coming home from work. I heated up some turkey meatballs and a little garlic mashed potatoes. The Insanity Pepper called from Tombstone. There is a storm there. He says he would be scared to pursue outlaws into the Dragon Mountains. He's there for the big Hell Dorado Festival to commemorate the shootout at the OK Corral. A sunburned man checked on them in the desert with their flat tire. There are a lot of saloons there. Wind in your face.
A kid ran out the door with twleve packs past Derb and the Pepper. The cashier yelled, "Stop him!" All they had to do was put out a foot and trip him, but they let him go. I guess he's right about pursuing outlaws into the mountains.
The Bignose Kate Saloon. Jeopardyz on. I hear the hair dryer. My feet stink.
I read a poem in prose called IN THE DIRECTION OF THE BEGINNING. Striking imagery, it seemed. I can't think. I'm listening to Jeopardy. I haven't watched for a while. The final Jeopardy character category was "Movie Quotes". I think I'll bet toward the high end on this one, although I'm not the movie buff I used to be. I got it right. The clue was, "Name the film with he quote 'It's time Ursula took matters into her own Tentacles.'" The answer is "The Little Mermaid." I was just thinking I should switch to doing 15 minutes of typing as the first exercise of the day instead of writing these three pages first every day. Now I'm doing the old switcheroo between "The Simpsons" and "Seinfield".
I turned the TV off. Shall I shower now? OK. Maybe I'll rent a video tonight. Should I treadmill? No airflow through right nostril.

Just Another Day

Thursday Oct. 24
In the Sharp shitter smellin' it up.  Got to write two pages in two hours about Clay Witter. Paragraph 1 He approaches the carnival. Paragraph 2 Interview with the ringmaster/rejection, Tightrope, elephant shit Paragraph 3 to the fortune teller - the foot gets nastier. The second interview, hired into the freakshow. 4 Falls for the contortionist, who is ringleader's girl. S, Potion # 2. 6 The bitch is too clingy.
Urgh ack ick I'm in the sterile gray-walled classroom at City Walk. The disk I had all my stuff on was damaged somehow, so I couldn't finish the story at school like I wanted and had to go home to do it off the hard drive, driving forty miles out of the way and shaving an hour off two hours of writing time.
The Yankees won Gave Five of the World Series to take a three-two lead.
We talked tonight about a Cheever story "Reunion" about his last meeting with his drunken father. It was funny.
An ambulance blocked the Cahuenga Pass, no accident, no bodies, just an ambulance, and the line of cars waiting to get over were diverted up a convoluted route through the hills over looking the valley. If I hadn't been fucked five ways for time already, I might have enjoyed it.
What the Hell else? Dana has very red hair. I'm not exactly comfortable in this class. Yeardley is being interviewed. I hope I get to read about the gimp, Clay Witter who I invented with an assist from Shirelle. I drank a beer while I wrote it, A Bud Light. What the godamn hell else?
Jo would be Jake. Don't be afraid to use slang in Jim Crack.
My father learned how to hypnotize people for his job, but said it wouldn't work on me, cuz I didn't trust him.

Skip This

Wednesday October 23
I'm supposed to write this story tonight drawing together three disparate images. I flipped through a few magazines and came up with nine images. I'm having a hard time picking just three. I'm tired. A seven-year-old wound aches in my right forearm. Since my car is incapacitated, I had to get up an hour earlier so Shirelle could drop me off in Pacoima before she had to be at Santa Monica Beach at six forty-five for the "Baywatch" shoot. There's an item on the news about kids who have been pinned by electric garage doors. The Yanks came back from a six nothing deficit to defeat the Braves in the tenth inning of game four of the World Series. It's ten o'clock. I need sleep. I didn't finish my story. I'll have to do it tomorrow after school. I have four free hours after school before class. There goes my movie. It's got to be two to three pages.