Yes, I love Randy Newman. Yes, I think Howard Shore is remarkably overrated. I have thought this for years. But recently, when “The Natural” was playing in the background while I was putzing around the house, and I heard the theme playing as Robert Redford hit the final home run, it struck me: the brass melody is exactly the same as the one that one Howard Bore the Oscar for “Lord of the Rings.” (Randy Newman did the score for The Natural in 1984!) Why wasn’t there an outrage over this? I want pandemonium! I mean, it’s not just similar. It’s THE SAME GODDAMN LINE!

Listen for yourselves.

Exhibit A: The Natural (starts at about 4:20)

Exhibit B: Lord of the Rings Symphony

FUCK that.

It finally happened!
I’ll provide you with some context.

Last October I was fucked by one of those evil cameras installed at traffic lights. I was lost in Van Nuys. After I had pulled over to consult my Thomas Guide, like a diligent little Angelean, I continued on my way and stopped at a red light. Then I accelerated when it turned green. Stuff a sub-ape could do. Not being familiar with my surroundings, I didn’t realize that it was a double light, and just as I noticed this, the second light was changing yellow, so I went for it. As my rear tires crossed the stop line, BAM. Red. FLASH! Camera-bot. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that I was fucked, but I forgot about it as soon as I triumphed and found my way home. Three weeks later I got a hefty ticket in the mail. I went to traffic court and actually got the fine reduced from four-hundred-some-odd-dollars to a hundred plus eight hours of traffic school to get the points taken off my insurance. Of course, that would include the sixty-four dollar tuition fee for my “education.” I had until April 18 (tax day) to accomplish this mission.

Hell yeah, I put it off til the last minute. You know me. The other day I signed up for online, all in one go, fax-in-your-certificate, kamikaze traffic school (as seen on tv with Kelly Osbourne). It was beyond remedial and I was appalled that there were flagrant grammatical and diction errors throughout the text. Even worse, in the final exam, which was multiple choice, the errors were so egregious that the questions and answers didn’t agree and it made it difficult to even understand (unless I put myself into “think like Australopithecus mode,” and even once that didn’t work). Despite all this bunk, I passed with a 96%.

In the course evaluation form, I let them know how disappointed I was in their poor use of the English language, and if they would like me to proofread their text, for I am all edumacated an’ shit, feel free to contact me. This is not the first time I have left a comment of this nature in an evaluation, and I am always confident it will either be left unread, or dismissed with an “oh, the hubris of kids these days…”

Well, THEY FUCKING EMAILED ME!!!
Right???

The nice man told me that he would love any help I could give in that respect, and he would refund my tuition for my work!!!

FUCK ME!!!

My father, ever famous for his constant stream of bromides, has a favorite: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

In this case, pun included, it finally happened!

Last night a friend called to tell me she’s dying.

I made it through ativan withdrawal. My physical symptoms were hell the first week. As expected. They gradually subsided. I needed friends. I am so fortunate to have you. I still have residual anxiety. I expect to for a while, but I actually do have the strength to handle it. It’s something to be proud of, to be sure, but it feels like small potatoes at this moment.

My friend received her grim diagnosis just hours before she called. I wanted nothing more than to “fix” it. I suppose this is a natural reaction. To think there must be something that can be done. She was already in acceptance while I was in denial. I told her I was, and she laughed. I said, “Let me have my Kubler-Ross phases!” She didn’t want to have the morbid “goodbye” talk. She just wanted to…talk.

I didn’t ask why she chose to call me. She hadn’t even told her family the news. The last she’d spoken with then, earlier that day, she’d told them she was going to be okay. That’s what she’d been told, until a CAT-scan revealed the horrible truth.

Maybe that’s exactly why she called me. Just to talk. Dealing with family would be heavy. Of course I am…I’m…I don’t even know what word to use that doesn’t sound too dramatic or self-involved. Really, I’m still in denial. She’s here, we just spoke. I can’t imagine her being…gone. But she wanted to laugh. To talk, and to keep on. And this, I can understand.

In terms of gravity, I cannot imagine facing anything close to what my friend is experiencing. In dealing with the panic of coming off ativan, though, the thing that helped me the most was to get out of my own head. To talk to friends. To step out of my situation. To laugh at myself. The absurdity of it all. To think of myself, on the phone with Lees, saying “I can’t breathe!” while I’m sitting there, breathing just fine. Watch crap tv. Do the dishes. Do the fucking laundry. The goddamn motherfucking loathsome laundry. Stop fucking philosophizing, because that’s how I got into this hole in the first place.

I may be straying from the point. What is the point? Does anything mean anything? Am I philosophizing again? Am I about to write the sequel to “Waiting for Godot?”
How can an existentialist play even have a sequel?

I did something really difficult. And my friend is dying. She’s looking into hospice options.
Is life just stupid?

My place of residence is now a one woman rehab facility.

I’ll explain.

As you probably know, I am fucking nuts. To temper my nutsness, I am on psychotropic medications. One of these, the benzodiazepine, ativan, is to placate my panic attacks, and as it’s highly addictive and I’ve been on a steady dose of it for christ knows how many years, my doc (when I say “doc” or “doctor” here, I refer to my psychiatrist) and I have decided to start tapering me off it. We started a slow taper a few months ago. It was working all right, though a symptom of being off an anxiety drug is, of course, rebound anxiety. When I experience anxiety, what do I do? Take my anxiety med, of course! It’s a really goddamn difficult habit to break. (Insert Chicago song here.)

Yesterday I ran out of ativan. As it was a Sunday, I couldn’t reach my doctor, and I didn’t have any refills on it as that is part of the taper arrangement. (It’s too boring and involved to write out the whole plan.) At first, I was playing it cool. “I can do this, I feel weird, a little jumpy, but I know it’s just slight withdrawal, it’s cool, man, I can make it till tomorrow,” etc. Two hours later? Bona fide freak show. One ongoing panic attack. I took benadryl just because I knew it made me tired. I got in bed because it’s kind of a safety zone. I felt the bed shake with me. I tried breathing exercises, but those just made me more cognizant of my gerbil-like heart rate. I left a voicemail for my doctor telling him I was losing my shit and that I can’t do this, I just came out of a months-long depression and I can’t deal with kicking my anxiety just yet, I have work to do that I can’t fuck up, blah blah, blah, freak, cry, blah. Thank shit, finally the benadryl konked me out.

This morning I expected to find a sympathetic message from my doctor, the prescription called in, and the world to be back on its axis. Not to be. I called the pharmacy to see if maybe he just called in the script but had to meet with patients before he called me. Nope. Fuck! I balled up under the covers and wondered what the hell I was going to do. I wasn’t dead. Maybe I wasn’t going to die from this. Maybe.

I got out of bed. I felt like I was out of my body. Okay, this is just depersonalization, a common withdrawal symptom. I felt like I was on drugs from not being on drugs. Maybe I could enjoy this…

Aaron offered me a cup of coffee, and for a moment I wondered if I should accept something that causes jitteriness, but hell, I’m addicted to that, too. One thing at a time. I read an article in the New Yorker. I felt whacked out, for sure, but not as pants-crappingly frightened as I did last night. Things always seem worse at night. Being in a more stable state of mind, I recalled that the worst symptom of benzo withdrawal is seizure, and that two of my other meds, in addition to being anti-depressant/anti-psychotic, are also anti-seizure. I called my doctor again.
Maybe I can do this. What if I just go cold turkey from here? I did taper, though somewhat erratically. I do feel weird, but I got some work done, proving I can concentrate, though my typing is a bit clumsy (as likely demonstrated here, go easy on me).

My doc called back fairly quickly, apologizing for not getting back to me sooner, he was slammed and all. He’d just received my second message and agreed with me, saying this is what would happen if I was in rehab. I’d be taken off the drug right away and be given something supplemental, which I already had. There would be people there to hold my hand through the rough spots, and he’d be happy to be that person. Though he can’t be here with me, I can call and check in with him any time, and he’ll get back to me whenever he can. I also have Aaron (poor, poor Aaron) and my therapist, and my parents, and my friends (watch out, you guys), to turn to for support. So, hi, everyone! I’m in rehab! Just like Janice Dickinson on that show with Dr. Drew! (She was withdrawing from ativan, too.)

I made my doctor promise I wasn’t going to die from this. He said I most certainly was not. Right now I do have a headache, though. Coffee and Advil, I reckon.

Fuck me.

“Can we please stop with Randy Newman already? He sucks and he has had zero impact on the music industry aside from insulting short people and making sucky songs for movies, which people forget about as soon as the film is out of the theaters. Stop trotting out flippin’ sucky Randy Newman.”

I read this in an email and nearly flung my iPad across the room. The ignoramus who wrote it was referring to Newman’s Oscar win for Best Original Song in a Film. She is also a music industry veteran. She also is the originator of a networking group for women in entertainment in the LA area that has over 1,000 members. I am one of these members, and the above quote was a post to the email list for said networking group.

Her statement made me angry for so many reasons, and I tried to reply. I lifted my hands to the keyboard, but put them down again. Then lifted them…then lowered them. Up, down, up, down, what the fuck? I couldn’t do it! Why?

The next day I reasoned that there was just too much to say, I didn’t know where to begin, and I was so disgusted that someone so involved with music could be so mothercunting goddamn ignorant of Randy Newman’s enormous impact on music. Folks who only know him for “Short People” live in hovels and only have AM radio.

I’m sure I am preaching to the choir as my readership is comprised of super-genius music buffs. I’m also sure many of you are thinking “What? You’re actually surprised someone in the music biz has her head up her front butt?”

I know, I know. I just thought she was, you know, SMART. Or at least educated about her business. She talks the talk, but man, she just blew it to hell.

Although you, my comrades, are brilliant, and I am writing a blog entry, not a response to her uninformed, stupid-ass message, allow me to enumerate the ways she is mistaken about Mr. Newman.

1. “Short People” is a satire about prejudice. He has made statement after statement about that, but the masses failed to hear his message. (Even though the chorus actually says “short people are just like you and me”) Some radio stations even banned the song. Newman grew to dislike “Short People,” despite its commercial success, because of its misinterpreted message.

2. Randy Newman has been writing hits since the 60s, most of them chart hits for other artists: Gene Pitney, Cilla Black, Three Dog Night, Peggy Lee, Dusty Springfield, to name a few. He’s in the songwriter’s hall of fame.

3. Some of his songs, recorded by himself or other artists are fucking gorgeous. He’s one of my favorite songwriters, and believe me, I’m a tough customer. Dusty Springfield’s version of his song “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today” is just beautiful. In fact, he wrote a handful of tunes on “Dusty in Memphis,” which is required listening for anyone I consider a friend. If you haven’t heard it, I will force it on you. I will. Speaking of his beautiful songs…

4. His album “Good Old Boys” is fucking fantastic. One of my favorite songs ever, “Marie,” is on it. Not only is this a brilliant album, but it’s an important one. It came out in 1972 and it’s a concept album, written from the perspective of a black man from the deep south. There is also a satirical song about rednecks oppressing black people, and he incorporates historical events, like the Louisiana flood of 1927 and Huey Long’s Governorship into the lyrics, as well. Amazingly, this album saw commercial success. (Often, brilliance of this calibre is lost on the public.)

5. He has scored a shitload of films, not just the ones Ms. Poopypants derides. Good ones, too. “The Natural,” “Ragtime,” “Parenthood,” christ, the list goes on and on. Just…look up his discography.

I could blather on but I think I’ve made my case. Randy Newman is a heavy hitter. Don’t you be tellin’ ME he’s had “zero impact on the music industry.” Why don’t you actually learn your shit before you open your ASS mouth to trash him, Big Wig Industry Weasel?

I’m right, she’s wrong, forever and ever, amen.

Listen

Listen
To the wind
You think it speaks to you
Just as you think He does
The grand coincidence
The fortunate few
Not me but the yous
Hold on to the wind
Its vapor cradle
Will only carry you
To familiar places
When I listen
I hear spaces

We have a house drink.
It was created by accident.

One night, while were still living in Cambridge, we made a shit-ton of hard boiled eggs and invited a group of friends over so we could test out our new purchase: “The Eggstractor (as seen on tv).” For those who aren’t familiar, it consists of a plastic accordion-like thing and some sort of vacuum. Its claim is that when you put the egg in and smoosh the accordion thing down, the egg will plop out, perfectly peeled.

Of COURSE it didn’t work.
It was fucking hilarious, though.
We had been drinking vodka tonics. Somehow, someone had the idea to add blue curaçao into the mix. The result was basically a blue vodka tonic. Not just any blue. Ty-D-Bol blue. We found this hysterical as we were already in the voidka. The drink, naturally, was dubbed “The Ty-D-Bol.” The garnish is a pipe cleaner, looped at the top and stripped to the wire on the other end, so as to resemble a toilet brush.
A house drink was born.
I suppose that renders the purchase of The Eggstrctor not entirely pointless.

Still, the Ti-D-Bowl isn’t half as funny as a drink some other friends came up with.

Moxie and Jaegermeister, a.k.a. “The Black Hairy Fuckin’ Death.”

Lees: Merry Christmas, cuntsmear.

PK: Merry Christmas, ass-castle!

Lees: If I’m the ass-castle, that makes you the gashmoat.

PK: With a fart fortress! And I’m texting you while I pee.

Lees: My taint is the drawbridge. Just pee?

PK: Yes. Would you like me to text again when I take a crap? Or give myself an anal douche?

Lees: Anal douche is actually Gaelic for “rim job.”

PK: Really? I thought it was Swahili for “drink my baby batter.”

Lees: Actually, it’s Welsh for “ass to mouth.”

PK: Oh, I think you’re right. In any case, do you want me to text you from the can?

Lees: Yes please. With pics.

PK: Very well.

I’ve never really given much credence to all the New Year hoopla. I don’t make resolutions. I make changes when I feel ready to, not because the date happens to be January 1st. I’m not into reflecting on the past year and making changes for the new one, bla bla bla. Again, I know when I need to reflect and think and set new goals, and it’s not merely because I’m changing my goddamn calendar. You all know there’s a big “BUT” coming, right? Well, here it is:

BUT…

2010 was certainly one of the worst years I’ve ever had. Actually, the craptasm began around November of ’09. Every month, every week, even every day was a struggle. Yes, it ebbed and flowed, but it just seemed like one blow after another for fourteen months. I did some fucked up things. People did some fucked up things to me. Fucked up things I had never experienced, that I never thought would happen to me. There were times when I thought this feeling of utter, helpless oppression would never lift. I would stay in bed for days at a time, despondent. I felt so sad, so hurt, I had a physical pain in my center. I pleaded to the skies to relieve me. I pleaded to God, and I don’t even believe in God. “What must I do? Please, just let this time be over…”

My circumstantial distress became a months-long depression. And it wasn’t just me who was suffering. Poor Aaron had to be around me, the brooding, fatalistic me, and I know how difficult I am when in that state. I didn’t see my friends very often. I retreated. At times I didn’t even want to leave the house, go to any social events, see any people. Usually I can put on a brave face and socialize, but I just knew I wasn’t able. I began to believe that this palpable oppression was just how it was going to be. So this is my life now. How long will I be able to take it? How the hell can I get out of it?

And one week, toward the end of the year, it started to fade. I thought I’d better not say anything so as not to jinx it. But it faded more and more. I did have a med change, which was a help, but also, time and distance from the horrible events were, and are, curative. Not to say I am cured, but I have begun to heal.

Again, I am not a New Year’s resolution maker, but, as it happens, my break from the cocoon did happen to coincide with the end of 2010. Also, 2010 was fucking shitty, rancid crap, and I celebrate its having ended. I am not making a resolution for 2011, per se, but I have learned from my Year of Fecal Matter, and I intend to use that knowledge to prevent myself from making the same mistakes again. To change behavior patterns, tough as that is.

This is where the “getting off my ass” comes in. Not surprisingly, throughout the course of last year, I developed some rather nasty habits and dropped some good ones. I stopped taking care of myself. I started smoking. I became self-injurious. I wasn’t cutting, but I was drawing blood using my bare hands. It seemed daunting to stop these behaviors. I wanted everything to stop at once. “My depression has dissipated,” i thought, “so why am I still doing this?” Learned behavior doesn’t just stop on its own. These artifacts from my YOFM had to actually be addressed, one at a slow, motherfucking time.

My self-injuriousness is all but gone. I needed to tackle that one using a behavioral approach: wearing hats and gloves and such so I physically could not harm myself. it took a while, but the urge calmed down. Then the smoking…I’ve done mini-quits, and now I am about a week into what I’m thinking will be a proper quit. I hadn’t even been smoking for a very long time, comparatively, and it’s still a bitch to stop.

Then there’s starting good behavior. I know I need to get into an exercise routine. I’ve tried…well, I’ve tried to try, but I haven’t done it yet. When I lived in Cambridge, I went to the BEST gym ever. It was all women, for one. It was close to me and it offered great classes (kickboxing and regular boxing, for example). It was clean. I haven’t found anything close to it in LA. I’ve started looking for local sports teams I could join, or some neat-o dance classes, so there would be a degree of fun in my workouts. There are options. I need to just pick one and do it. It’s a bit scary after all this time. Certainly intimidating. But…there has to be something out there for me.

Yes, 2010 blew ass. Yes, I am determined to make 2011 better, not as a New Year’s resolution, but as a life one. Rebuilding, one brick at a time.

Sometimes when I’m trying to tell a story about my family, I get interrupted by people asking, “Wait, your brother’s named WHAT?” and, “Hang on- that’s your sister’s name? What’s your other brother’s name?” and the like. It’s incredibly disruptive and the object of people’s curiosity is something I’ve been trying to downplay for years, as it’s, at best, irrelevant, and at worst, horribly embarrassing.
My not-so-secret secret?

*sigh*
If you must.

The names and pecking order of my parents’ spawn is as follows:
Peter
Paul
Pamela
Paula

Ha ha ha, yes, it’s hilarious, isn’t it? What were they thinking? Oh, ho ho ho.
Right. My whole conscious life I’ve been trying to avoid using my siblings’ names in conversation, lest suffer the inevitable, “Why aren’t you named ‘Mary?’” and hilarious questions of the sort. My parents said they didn’t plan to have us all have “P” names until they got to me, the fourth. At that point, they said, they didn’t want to disrupt the pattern.
Whoopee.

Even stranger, though, is that my brother, Paul, married a woman who has suffered the same fate! Her name is Karen, and her siblings are Kurt, Craig, Courtney, Kristen, and Kevin. (Yeah, they’re Cs and Ks, but they all have the same hard consonant sound.) Oh, and their given surname is Collins. Heh heh.

And THEN…

I dated four guys named Matt. All in a row. (One of them had a sister named Paula, one’s middle name was Paul.)
I married a fellow named Aaron, much to my relief. But…wait…not only is his middle name also Paul, but he has a brother Matt who married a woman named PAULA!!!! AAAAAGH!!!!!1111
Thank GOD I never planned on changing my surname.
The gist of this is preemptive. For, hopefully in the future, if you find yourself conversing with me about my family, you’ll have laughed at me already and saved me from potential embarrassment and/or hating you.

Thank you.