Here's to a strong weekend

I've got some stuff on my plate, starting in about an hour.
But first:
Two night ago I got off work, drank some beers and had some conversations before crossing over the void through the darkness via Metro public transportation. There's select individuals who ride the LA city buses after 1 am, and most of them friendly if you don't look them in the eyes for too long. Sitting on cold concrete, city fog was blowing overhead I had a long conversation with a sound engineer who turned out to be a homeless boy named Greg. Heavily informed about the music industry, I could tell he spent his life not doing exactly what he wanted. Now he's working his way up. Dreamin big.
Getting on the bus, a drunk Mexican guy with tattoos for sleeves kept grinning and punching me across the shoulder, saying "white boy's got a big dick swingin!" over and over. I found it amusing, and went along with his catch phrase. He made me say "big dick swingin!" to the bus driver as I was stepping on, putting money in the change box. He reassured me that she was all cool with it, so I said it to her sheepishly, and surprisingly she smiled wide-eyed with a "you crazy!" and let me on. a priceless middle-of-night moment.

The journey between innercities is a dark luxury. Like unadulterated chocolate so heavy in cacao it gives you an ache in your neck. I sat there, soaking in the Los Angeles fever of night. Next to me a homeless man with big eyeballs found something interesting in me to look at. Across the seat a wild fallen Armenian woman dressed in tight black slacks with a sweaty face was holding out a twenty "scuse..scuse me.." she was talking to me "change for twenty? change.." I said no and looked away, knowing I had a wad of tips in my backpack from my work shift that night. Disclosing such a treasure trove would surely result in my immediate mugging,
as we ventured over the river Styx.
Pasadena rolled into view; the closer I got to the shopping mall and downtown, the eeking more lightness my heart lifted.. til I saluted the driver and stepped off the bus for an effort and jaunt to my front door, into the apartment complex, threw my stuff on the and enjoyed returning home once more.

Waking up, I almost didn't remember the prior night like a long dream that you barely can't recall. I walked around town for a bit, drank some coffee, did my thing, and called Dan. We were supposed to go to Joshua Tree for the day (it being Thursday) but we'd both slept in far beyond the departure time. I asked if he was down for a bike ride.
Next thing you know, it was afternoon and I was rolling in my Kia (Misty) between trucks and brake lights on the freeway, cursing the terrifically bad drivers of Eastern Los Angeles. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person out there who weavingly refuses to tolerate random braking and stopping. It's far too common to watch a car brake and slow when traffic is otherwise steady.
I get to Dan's, in wonderful Claremont. There really are different worlds here. In the newer Zelda games (by Nintendo) you travel briefly between these massively different environments, so that one minute you're climbing the peak of Death Mountain and the next you're in the squalor of Hyrule Castle city, and the next you're dancing with green fairy folk in a particle-driven forest glen. Los Angeles is a Zelda game. Think of this: one evening you're waiting amongst crowded bus lines between skyscrapers, next morning you're walking a dirt trail in the tree-lined country hamlet beneath the mountains. There is every climate of human blowing between, and you've never earned all the pieces of heart or bombed every secret wall... there is much journeying to be done, and it's all within reach. Your horse might not start all the time, but there are trains and buses and friends to get you to your next level. It's not a city, it's a land. For some a playground, for me it's a journey. and I'm trapsing my own trail through the foliage of each passing moment. Ah Los Angeles.

As I pull up to Dan's cottage by the trees, smelling of sweet jasmine and kitty litter, he was pissed because he'd lost his gloves. But in 5 minutes we were careening on our bicycles, singing through our throats to the setting day and feeling like children once more! In swift intensity, we climed the long Mountain Ave, up the steep incline till we reached the trail head that would take us into the uncharted fields of lower Mt. Baldy. The amazing thing about having a bike is the pure natural freedom you may attain from it. It becomes an extension of yourself, allowing you access to places your feet nor horse could take you.
So we spend 2 hours exploring, hiking, riding over dismantled riverbeds and around the occasional jogger. It was an exhilirating match with the setting Sun, and we barely survived.

I'm excited to see what this colorful world tosses at me next. I mean, I do already have an agenda.

buses

I think the gov't should invent a transportation system for the elderly,
and call it

For Unfortunate Citizens:
Kindly Inviting Nice Grandparents, Stay Long Our Way

List of things to do today:

1. Laugh often and much
2. Win the respect of intelligent people
3. Win the affection of children
4. Earn the appreciation of honest critics
5. Endure the betrayal of false friends
6. Appreciate beauty
7. Find the best in others
8. Leave the world a bit better
9. Know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived

Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Get Drunk! Birthday song

Wake up in the morning feelin like an Elf King
put my loaf in the sack, and I grab my gold ring
then I open the doorhole, don't you call me a rabbit
for today is my birthday, I'm the thief you call Baggins

I'm talkin bout
turnin those trolls to stone stone
getting lost all alone lone
gonna wander way far from home home

then stop now
findin' my favorite Ring Ring
stealing it from the Swamp Thing
with the power of Invisibility

Get Drunk! Have fun! I'm Eleventy-One!
Tonight! Dance a jig in the Hobbit village!
Proud feet! Hear a speech! Everybody watch me, now

Oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh

Ain't got no family in the world but my nephew here
Ain't got nobody but the Sackvilles, and they strike me with fear
And now the Wizard's pullin up in his horse-drawn wagon
I see the party's getting started with his firework's dragon

I'm talkin bout
Missing adventuring -ing
Gandalf's tryin' to touch my Ring
Gonna smack 'im if he takes it from Me Me

Na-now
gonna leave it here on the ground ground
where it probably will be found found
by Frodo cuz he's in town...

Get Drunk! Have Fun! I'm Eleventy-One!
Samwise! Dance with her till you see the Sunrise!
Farewell Hobbit Hole! Now I'm goin out my door now..

oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh

Get Drunk! Have Fun! I'm Eleventy-One!
Frodo! I didn't know it belongs to Sauron!
Clik-Clak goes my staff on the cobblestone road now..

oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh

saturday

I worked for 10 hours last night. And you know what's funny? I could definitely have gone longer. I guess the only reason I left was because I wanted to get a beer at Dillon's across the street so bad. So I asked to go - which they let me amidst total parking insanity - I changed into my street clothes and hopped across the street to Dillon's, which was packed, for a beer. I was mildly disappointed though. I mean, it took me 15 minutes just to get a beer (A Hoegaarden, which was $3 like every single beer they have on tap there) but even after holding the cold pint in my right hand, I was unsatisfied. There must have been 300 people surrounding me, and I didn't have the spark in me for a single conversation worth having. So I strode up the stairs and found myself standing facing a pool table and two men having a fight. On the table was a white cue ball and the black 8-ball, sitting equidistant in the center of the table. One man with his curly black hair was chanting "you lose! you will lose! I am the winner!" and the other half-smiling was less enthusiastic "fine I lose. I lose you win". I know little about pool, but i don't think anyone had won yet. It took 5 minutes for the second man to take his shot..and he landed the 8 ball perfectly in its opposite pocket. Like a good sport, he shook the guy's hand and that was that. I threw back my last gulp of beer, and waltzed out of Dillon's.

On the sidewalk, backpack slung over one should I could see the Capitol Records building glowing red and blue. A few stars twinkled between the city-lit clouds overhead, shining clouds in a silvery tint and few droplets sitting still in the air, like soft rain put on pause. A few blocks from my secluded march to the car I could hear the echoes of a city pounding to the beat of a Saturday night's life. Hollywood lives and breathes at night, especially on the weekends. Staring at the sky I thought about the valet boys I had abandoned for my one Hoegaarden, and almost regretted leaving my shift at their disposal. But 10 hours is a long shift. Long enough.

Magenta Misty sat nestled amongst dark cars in the crumbly filth of Yucca ave; a street I admire, tucked beneath the 101, 2-hour parking never checked. I slid down the driver's side rear window, lifted the latch and hopped in. and she started!! Misty started, and didn't even skip a beat. (After a full previous 24 hours of setting her sail in my mind, it was a miracle that now she'd lived twice again beyond her death - a death I'd conceded to two nights previous when her starter had failed and her engine unrevivable). The night suddenly tasted sweeter now that I knew i had a way home. I pulled away from Yucca, onto Argyle, under the freeway to Franklin, down through the empty streetlights of Los Feliz to the 5. Merged onto an empty freeway, and took the little trek back to Pasadena.

My saturday night.

Saints

I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Monica, California.
Two days ago I sat beneath the rainy black ocean night of Santa Cruz.
So many Santas, so little presents.
In Santa Cruz, everything is recognizable. The night smells of seaweed and mist. The cars slow to a steady creep, the downtown lights illuminate February's fog like red and blue searchlights.
I had arrived with hopes to mend a broken stone with tape. scotch tape. wet scotch tape. I zipped my little rented Hyundai down Mission street, next to Planet Fresh, past the old familiar two-story parking garages and into the Vallarta parking lot (Vallarta is a taqueria that's tried, tested, true, and gives you food poisoning 1/250 times). Stepping out and clicking the beeper, my little car was locked and it flashed its lights to let me know that things were OK.
Ahh electronic devices, always there when you need them.
Often, I like electronics more than humans. They have their character-traits (you have to squeeze them or shake them to make them work) but they turn on when you need them to. They enjoy your company, and quietly obey and flash their lights when you push a button. so you know that everything is going to be OK.
I walked away from the car and immediately ran into Alanna Brostoff, someone I had texted less than two hours earlier from the center corridor of California, hoping for a secondary place to sleep. She hadn't written back, and so I coincidentally ran into her in person (rock ducky anyone?) and we chatted. But she was tired and so I headed on my way around downtown Santa Cruz with wet scotch tape hand. I found myself standing at the bar of a little corner restaurant called 99 Bottles. I ordered an Old Speckled Hen and walked outside in my black coat to gulp some sprinkles of night air. My stomach hurt from the wreck that my life was slowly becoming, and from the odd culture shock of Santa Cruz, from the long drive, too many tortilla chips and having no one to talk to about it.
I drank my beer in long daughts of a certain desperation, like the cowboy who downs a doubleshot of whiskey before heading out the saloon doors to face a draw. The wind was gusty, and spits of ocean dew pelted my face and coat. The beer was warmer than the night, it tasted bland and flat. So I finished the pint and set the glass down to go.

The next morning, my misshapen heart took to the road yet again, curling through the green trees and fog of highway 17, down into San Jose and across the bulbous hillsides of the outer Bay Area until I could see towering Mt Diablo on the horizon with it's shoulders shrouded in a blanket of grey. My wipers blinked, and soon I was driving through into Walnut Creek for my acting job (the reason I took this trip).
A delightful 6 hours was spent acting and playing.
Then I was stoned, tarred, feathered and hung with unsticky scotch tape dangling from my fingernails.
I drank a football that night, and woke up with it in my stomach.
On my way out of Santa Cruz the next morning, I wondered if I might know what it feels like to watch a member of your family get frozen in carbonite - ie, die and still be alive, frozen to death while living. You watch them go from moving and living to a frozen blank stare. a nothingness. You knock and call and beg and plead, but they can't hear you because they are no longer there.
Driving back to Los Angeles, with raindrops spewing over my windshields, I couldn't stop thinking about Han Solo's face with mouth half-open.
I arrived at Union Station barely after 2pm, after driving maniacally to the finish line between downtown high-rise buildings and the ghettoest of ghettos. I dropped off the Hyundai's keys in Budget's dropbox, and walked to a sunny court yard beneath downtown LA, where I fell to the ground. Heartbroken. despondent. shaken. exhausted. Unfixable. damp tape peeling from my wounds.
On the train I watched through the window as the sunny countryside rolled below. Across were lines of soft tall mountains topped in white, lit by warm sunlight. I passed villages within subvillages, birthday balloons and broken old tow trucks. Families playing in their yards. children on their bicycles. A couple kissing. A grandmother sleeping. The railway rolled on and dipped beneath the streets, into the ground. my warm world faded to black.

"SHAAAAAANE!! SHAAAANE PATTERSOOOON!!!!"
to which he answered with nothing.

It was an hour later, and I was standing outside Shane Patterson's house with my warming container of Ralph's salsa. He couldn't hear me. I didn't have the entry code for his apartment complex, and my cell phone had died minutes before. So there I stood in the waning Sunday afternoon, green jacket and warming salsa under my arm, notebook in hand. Out of tape. Looking for beer.
After a half hour of shouting I uttered some curse words and took off at a sprint down the 6 blocks to my house in Pasadena. I was still exhausted, but wanted friends and a beer to cover my heartache. The sprint landed me, after 8.5 hours of travel, to the front door of my own place in Pasadena. I banged through into the hallway, shoved open my living room door, dropped my book, switched my phone battery, tore my bike from the wall, grabbed my warming salsa, locked the door behind me and Lance Armstronged it back through the streets of Pasadena to Shane's impregnable apartment complex. He texted my phone "#2500" which I hastily entered, bashed through his front door, grabbed a beer and some chips and fell off a cliff until 7am this morning.

The Saints won. My commercial didn't air. Candice wrote me "#66".

The End.


Epilogue

The Saints won the Superbowl, and there are Santas and Saints and Sans everywhere you look. But nobody is a Saint, and nothing is Saintly. There is little good in this world, and it is coupled with so much deceit and little effort that I wonder why anyone even tries. Why I keep trying.
But still, Bob Dylan serenades me in this warm sunlit Starbucks in Santa Monica, and the sun is setting and people are shopping and talking and pressing their car alarm buttons knowing that everything is going to be OK. And I think, so do I.
My alarm button is this blog, and I write all curled up and calling out to you as I always have, to whatever gods or angels or deities that will hear me, to say that I'm not perfect but I'm trying to do good.
When my car doesn't start, I will forgive it and try another time,
because I love it so much. Every time it sputters, again and again,
I will forgive it while writing "I Love You" across its dash.
Because that's how I am.

Hey guys, It's mikie

I decided to switch my blog name for various reasons. If you don't mind, it's gonna be this

http://beattyland.blogspot.com

from now on.

So don't forget to check!

Muchas gracias

Mikie

curses

The only thing constant in my life is this cursed lack of constancy, this endlessly inconsistent array of events. Nothing stays; nothing remains the same.
Because I have an Anti-Constant Bazooka (ACB), with its crosshairs scanning the horizon for any sign of normalness...and as soon as some's spotted then SWOOSH...BOOOOOM! it's gone into smithereens of precious matter scattered irreparably into clowds.
I hate it.

I wish that I could write down every thought and reason for everything that I do, every moment that happens to me since a certain point. I feel like then maybe certain people would understand why I do what I do - all the honesty would be completely spread out in a tableau of Logic..then for those certain folk it would all make perfect sense and they could have this moment of epiphanal "Ahhh! Now I totally get it, I totally understand where you're coming from."

Then the things that I do wouldn't seem bad or mysterious or hurtful, but for good reasons.

How is it that the world changes around me but I never ever change? I can sit in the same Borders, year after year and reflect on the things that happened knowing that after all of this I'm still exactly the same as I ever have been. Maybe I grow a little inside, maybe I meet new people. But my ability to love is unwavering. My desires remain stationary within me. It's sad because I reach to others as I watch their loves waver and their desires shift like the old ketchup over new. Helplessly reaching because my grip is too forgiving.
I'm horrifically cursed to know exactly what I want. It's a terrible terrible thing to only love without bounds. So many others love based only on conditions. Sometimes those relationships are very important, like when dealing with a business. But I don't believe a true love, such as within a family or between intimate friends should rely on conditions or rules.. I wish people could love each other with all-accepting love that can't be shaken up.

RAH!

itinerary:
(subject to change)

2/5 - Exit my house into torrential downpour
search for the nearby subway station
head to downtown Los Angeles
rent Ford Focus
drive to Pasadena, Hollywood, Beverly Hills
drive 6 1/2 hours north to Santa Cruz
2/6 - wake up in 12 hours
drive an additional 1.5 hours to Walnut Creek
act in 50 pages of scenes
back in the Ford Focus
drive 6 1/2 hours south to rainy Los Angeles
2/7 - sleep, wake up
drive to Union Station
drop off the Focus
ride the train back to Pasadena
go to SuperBowl party
watch the Budweiser commercial I was in
sleep
2/8 wake up memorize a Disney script while driving
work valeting expensive cars
2/9 sleep, memorize
2/10 6am, step into black Lincoln
meet interesting driver
drive to LAX
wander security, Starbucks and news stands
fly to Orlando
say Hi to Andy
be escorted to my room
2/11 shoot epic 365
have a marvelous dinner
kind of sleep
2/12 board early flight from Orlando's to LAX
be picked up by a black Lincoln
drive back to my apartment
put all my stuff down.

aaand GO!

Up to Speed

If any of you are as bored as I am (at 1:30 in the am, with a glass of wine following a bottle of beer, as well it should) then read on.
For here between these spaces will you be able to follow up on where I have been, what transpired, and how that's created the Now.

Not more than a month ago, the holidays ceased to exist. Now, I don't know about the rest of you but this round of Holidays were just about the sweetest, loveliest and more adventurous set of festivities that I had seen in years. We had SUCH a wonderful season, did we not?
Then January rolled back it's weighty eyelids, and post-celebratory realism set the stage once again..for those dreamy folks among us that like to live from lily pad to lily pad.
Let's begin with the beginning of January:

I set forth on a train from Sacramento, driven with dad to the station and scurrying into the new Year like I was rolling through a gloomy irish folk tale.
I got to Santa Cruz, and spent a full day helping Candice move into her new house in La Bahia. She has an amazing place, and as is typical, she created a full-fledged home in under 24 hours. Then Daniel and Melissa swept by in Scion and gathered me up to head back down south to not-so-sunny southern california.

I remember when I stepped back into my newly-unfurnished room for the first time post-holiday season..it felt a tad foreign and I didn't like that. But I knew I had my work cut out for me, so -
for the next week and a half I spent every waking moment scouring the WWW for jobs and asking every employer in Pasadena if they were hiring. Nobody bit, not once. At the same time, I geared up for an unknown journey that i was finally invited to join: assistance in making the Day 1000 film directed by Alex Calleros. It would be shot in Arizona, and it would take 6 people on the journey that may never set them back down...that's pretty dramatic.
Anyway, two days before setting sail on the adventure (around the 12 of January) I was offered TWO (you heard that, TWO) interviews for jobs - the first as a barback at the Yard House in Pasadena, and the second as a mysterious valet for a mysterious company for some Hotel somewhere. Because I had landed these interviews, I decided to postpone my journeying to Arizona for a couple of days. The night before all the boys set out, I attended the final pre-production meeting and assisted in getting all the necessary things together for the shoot - including my very own homemade Prop: the Journal (that ultimately took several hours of work to complete). I stayed up until 4 am working on the journal, and the boys stopped by at 6am to pick it up on their way through to Arizona. I slept, and that day I had two interviews - one for Yard House (which I GOT!) and the second for LAZ/Sunset Parking (which I also got!). Staying behind seemed to have paid off, and the following evening I was in a taxi cab with a man named Mr. Nick, escorting us to LAX where we would board a short flight to Phoenix, Arizona to spend the next 6 days on a hell of an adventure.
I didn't sleep well in Phoenix that night for fear that I would be stung by scorpion tails beneath my covers. Every time i turned, I imagined a little black demon aiming at my toes.
The sun hadn't come up by 7, and I feared it was the apocalypse. "WHO are you texting this early in the morning?!" Nate Sillyman bellowed from the bunk beneath mine in his room, "um...your sister. It's time to wake up" I said. Because it was. Coffee was necessary, and then after a quick sunrise climb to the top of Mt. Doom we were off on the Arizona highways, past saguaro cacti and endless mountain ranges to the dusty town of Peyson, Arizona for a Wal-Mart stop. Then we ventured onto Pine and then Strawberry, where we found Addie's parents' cabin for the movie shoot.
Instantly I was put to work. I knew from a young age that when presented with a problem I could find some make-shift version of solving it - I maybe never fully appreciated that skill until the making of this film. See, there was a director, a DP, a sound operator, two actors and ME. All crammed into a cabin in the snowy woods of upstate Arizona. So I had some work to do, to keep this movie moving smoothly. Which it did, and I can happily report that all shooting went as planned and the film shall be a success once cut and finalized. I was covered in blood and scrubs. And saw Orion a lot.
Getting back to California felt like a journey in unto itself. The desert has these huge raindrops that drown out the the dirt..it smells like clean laundry and sage everywhere you turn your head - there's a freshness that comes with desert rains. And plants that have the scent, once you press it between your fingers, like raindrops. It's amazing.
Back in California, I jumped immediately into job trainings. I spent two hours filling out paperwork for LAZ, a parking company that was outsourced to do the garage valeting for the W in downtown Hollywood, and an additionaly two hours filling out paperwork for the Yard House. Both jobs seemed pretty cool.
Then on the following Tuesday it came down to me deciding to keep either the job as a barback at Yard House, or the job as a valet at the Hollywood W.
After much deliberation and tribulation, I decided to keep the valeting job at W and drop the Yard House venture. Why? Because I believe you should follow your heart no matter where it takes you, and my heart was in the valet job over the barback job. No offense, Bill - you could have been the coolest boss ever. I just wanted to try something totally new and see if I could be good at it.
Before I knew it, I was in Hollywood training amongst the best as a valet for the swanky W Hotel. For those of you who don't know, the W is the first fancy hotel experience I ever had with Disney. When going to New York for one of my first shoots, I was booked up in the W and was blown away by the swankiness (yes, I used the word "swanky" at the time) of it all. Now I work for them too.
Training to be a valet means parking strangers' expensive cars perfectly (say that 10 times fast). Which I didn't do. In fact, I knocked over the coffee cup they'd set up as a guide. Oops! Well, if you know me, then you know I am a stupidly meticulous person about details for a job I respect. So I spent the next two training shifts getting in the mindframe of being a perfect valeter - so when opening weekend happened (this past weekend) I was ready to park the cars of millionaires...which is EXACTLY what I had to do.
I remember the first time I had to figure out how to take the keys out of a BMW, by pressing the brake pedal and putting it into park. More complicated than you might think when the millionaire owner is standing over you, watching.
We hosted, as valets and W staff, two Grammy Parties on our opening weekend. A successful opening. I had really worked my way up to that.

I've skipped over a bunch -
like the extreme financial horror that was in rapid approach..then snuffed out by an unemployment check and a promise for a Disney gig in the beginning of February.
Or the massive angst that's ridden my soul over my emotional dissonance.
Or the total non-failure that is Misty, my car...still putsin along.
Or my lack of communication with my family.
Or my endless preparation for the Glee audition, singing Come Sail Away by Styx hundreds of times in my house.
Or my awesome friendships I've made in LA.
Or the dozens of times I've driven through the lighted skyline of Los Angeles in total blissful admiration for the half-tragic town that I'm living in.
Or the piss-test I took for my job in a weeeird doctor's office somewhere randomly in Glendale.
Or the time last night when I met Jack Black after watching Will Ferrell dance to Popcorn.
Or the time when Wes Anderson said my name.
Or all the delicious Subway sandwiches I've sinken my teeth into.
Or the weird movie-esque encounter with Denise D.
Or the beautiful sunsets.
Or the amount of Love I have welling up inside of me

I guess that about sums up my new year so far.
this barely scratches the surface.

so there's my drunken self-dialogue. Hope you enjoyed it.
No editing!!!!!


Love Mikie

I'm on a Mancycle

and it is THROWING OFF my game, big time. Life has been ok, and then suddenly out of the blue WHAMMO! Hit by a rush of Manstrual. Now I'm mopin around town, drinking sodas and checking my Facebook every 25 minutes. It's like, where's my HaagenDazs and action flics. Where's my beer-buddies, snowboarding and rockclimbing partners. Where's my acting motivation! I swear, you feel it creeping up on you like a tsunami, then woooosh it lifts past your knees and drowns you.
Best I can do is wait for the waters to recede and get back to work. Ohh emotionally-charged body, you're a real douche sometimes. I guess this is my punishment for drowning my thoughts away too many nights in a row. ;-)

I need to get out of town for a weekend. Lucky me, I'm doing just that next week - twice!
Peace