Pic of my Accident....

Yup. That's my arm. Yup, that's string holding it together when nothing else is available improvise. Yes, I'm traumatized. Did I mention I'm traumatized?

Forethought!!!!

Nothing wows me like forethought. Case in point, I go to LAX to pick someone up who has asked this of me 2 days ago. They arrive from NYC carrying an entire Lombardi's pizza just for me with my favorite ingredients. I think I only mentioned once what they were and here they are before me. :)

The forethought is the fact that it's not a planned thing. I don't have to ask, it just happens and it's known I will really enjoy this. I quite enjoy the effort and feel badly for the fact that I was told he was hounded in business class by really polite people for a slice but would not budge. And I also appreciate that sitting with a pizza box on your lap for 5.5 hours is probably not the most fun. Thank you!!

I edited this post to include the answer to the question asked by the never-to-be-outclassed-and-I-drop-every-pic-into-photoshop-Buckingham:

1. cashmere teddy bear, thank you. Very cute!
2. money
3. pizza menu
4. baggie with keys to handcuffs, 2 zip ties, a package from a surgical scalpel, and a sage leaf. This is an intricate and delicate story that tops the pizza but I can't get into it. ;)

The Zombie Rave Story plus Mud People bonus

Hm......so dig it or if you will, heh, I was all prepped to do not just an audio blog but a video blog. C thought it might be a good idea but i have decided against it for various reasons for now. Who knows, maybe I will change my mind.

This story is good with your own soundtrack anyway.

Ok, so it's like sometime in november years ago. I was at a rave downtown los angeles and ready to head home but my mother this particular evening before I went out threatened to do something if I didn't call her when I was leaving the venue.

Soooo....okay, it's probably about 4:30 a.m. it's now a Sunday morning. I'm in South Los Angeles in a location that no one should really be hanging out in. Thankfully all the drunks and hooligans are asleep at this time.

I think if I was going to get shot, those are midnight hours for some reason. Anyway, I didn't have a cell on me. But I just HAD to make the call before I headed home. Sure I could have driven to a Denny's I guess but I was intent to find THE closest phone period. Yea, like a pay phone.

So I'm alone as usual. I was wearing something one should probably not wear in public and there is not a phone booth anywhere. I mean, those things started dying in the late 80's I guess.

It's pitch black out. There's trash in the street. The buildings and houses all look like something from a zombie movie. There's gates up around retail businesses. It's deserted. No one is out except for me. It's like post-apocalypic so I don't really get scared because deserted is not bad.

It could be worse. And so yea, that's where this story takes a turn.

So I drive more into the deserted zone away from the freeway and there's a closed gas station with pay phone near the pumps. It looked like it had a service bay because there were cars parked near it. No big deal.

I park my car, button my shirt since I'm wearing nearly nothing as it is and scrounge for change. At this time of morning, I'm really dehydrated from dancing and sometimes, I'd see things so I shake my head a bit to clear it and get a couple of quarters to call mom. Remember, she said call ANYTIME but call NO MATTER WHAT!!

I'm wearing heels so the when I step out of my car in the pure darkness, I hit uneven gravel and think, wow this is one fucked up gas station. The hole was about 5 inches deep!

Nonetheless, I shut my door, grab my keys, got my change and attempt to walk from the corner where I parked to the center of the station where the phone booth is. This is probably a good 80-90 foot walk off the street.

So as I step through chewed up concrete my eyes really start to adjust and I see that the entire foundation is kind of messed up. Then I realize, wait a minute, this isn't even a FUNCTIONING gas station - it's ABANDONED!

But I keep walking. Like an idiot. Because the pay phone is so close now. And I can see there IS a phone in it. I turn around to look at my car and it seems like a LONNNG way away now. But what does it matter, no one's out anyway, RIGHT??

Well, I quickly make it to the phone booth. It has part of the glass broken out of it, it's got tagging all in it but oddly, it's clean. So I stick two quarters into the slot and right as I lift my right hand to push the buttons, I see something out of my peripheral vision.

So if this was a video blog, I'd cue some scary music about now. I try to look out of the scuffed up window of the phone booth but it's so scratched up and dark I can hardly see. So I continue to dial...

I then look through a broken out piece of glass and see that the cars 'left' for servicing are not really cars at all...they are shells of rusted out cars with SOMETHING INSIDE OF THEM!

I finish dialing my mom. The phone begins to ring and I know she's got usually about 10 rings until she or the machine picks up.

Then I can't ignore this. There are shambling figures slowly, druggedly climbing out from the shells of the cars. They're wearing rags and have stuff wrapped around their heads. I can see about 3 of them coming out of one car but they are so either out of it or drugged that they're having a problem making it out of the car and I'm waiting for my mom to pick up!!!

My sick curiosity forces me to look and I partly ignore the rining on the phone. I'm frozen. I've never seen anything like this and I wonder if the clean phone booth was their bait and i'm the trap!?

I'm not kidding, just as one of the zombie bums begins walking toward the booth my mom picks up with this really annoyed hello. I just whisper , "I'm on my way home!" and hang up and RUN!!!!!!! yes, in heels, yes in chewed up concrete all the way to my car and I again credit my survival to not following the movie script and looking back.

I made it out and never went back to that gas station. And of course, I never told my mom!

*************

okay if you're still reading i have the story of the Mud People. You might be thinking, oh THOSE mud people but no, not even close.

Okay so I'm going to this club downtown alone again as usual near skid row looks nice only a few blocks away. This is where the skid row rejects go. But hey, I love this sort of thing so every building looks abandoned except for one building with a flicking light bulb outside and that's my cue.

I don't want to park on the street so I pull around back and sure enough there's a somewhat empty lot. At the back of the lot there's a ranch-type fence. So I pull all the way forward to the ranch fence and get out of my car. I can see that in front of that fence is a giant mud bog of sorts and as I'm locking my car, I see something out of my peripheral vision to my left. I look and I kid you not, there is a man EMERGING from the nearly 5 feet pool of mud. He's LIVING in it!!!!

Okay, so I don't scream. I have dancing on my mind. And having experienced the REAL rave scene, well, it set my barometer kinda funky. Anyway, he's covered head to toe in mud and has dread locks. He's like some earth creature that has a message for me, some wise words or something. So he says, "You want me to watch your car?".

For some reason, this is perfectly okay with me and I hand him 2 dollars. He takes it, balls it into his fist AND -- Yes! -- he sinks BACK into the MUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I walk around to the front of the club and have a great night. My car was in great shape when I came out. I was imagining if someone HAD tried to break in. How cool it'd be to see the Mud Man arising from his slop.

Okay, I know most people blog about things and such not parking lot adventures like me but, there you have it.

Ow to WOW

I wonder if anyone knows just how important to my happiness this band is. I don't take full credit for bullying them back into touring but I pushed nice and hard, dammit.

Um, like, ow...

Well, i'm kind of glad my phone cam is not so clear because you'd be fairly sick by now. Those chunks are just that, chunks of um, flesh covered in blood. damn, ow.

And More Fall Fun !!

Yes, I AM wearing SPRING colors: pink and white. heh. Take THAT, C.

The beach house.

Swarm o' ducks.

Feeding said swarm.

CZ and her lion.

Fall and Fun? -- REALLY????

Well, despite what I've said about the Fall season, it stands that with good company and some great beach air, anything can be endured.


size 6 and 12.

chasing furry animals.

read my mind.

the abandoned dock in the forest.

The L.A.Riots

How weird it is to post that. I guess I never really spoke to anyone about this but every now and again, a slight memory crosses my mind and I think about that horrible week.

I had just moved out of my parents house. I was technically still a child. I was living in an apartment near Ocean but was living with a man who owned a record store on 4th Street.

The climate before the riots was getting heated and the day before the verdicts were announced, we went to Home Depot and boarded the windows up. The stores next to us were an antique clocks store and a locksmith. Next to them were other quirky retail shops and on the corner a coffee shop and burger joint.

So the verdict was announced while I was doing my internship at a large office in Inglewood of all places. I stood in the lunch room watching and just the general activity of people had me packing.

That's right, I was the ONLY person to leave the building. HR looked at me oddly and I just simply left. Once I got onto the freeway, there was a huge problem. Would-be gang members climbed onto the freeway, smashing car windows; mayhem erupted.

So there I am, me, in my car in bumper to bumper traffic. There was no carpool lane at the time in this part of the 405 and watching the hoards of men breaking into each car they came up to kicked in enough adrenalin (like it should have), that I just got into the emergency lane and drove in the dirt all the way until they were gone.

I thought I was safe when I got to Long Beach but by this time, fires and riots had exploded here too. I wanted to drive directly to the record store imagining it would be as bad as I thought and in the process of doing so, I watched a man get pulled off his motorcycle and mobbed by about 5 gang members. I later found out that they beat him to death.

I got to the record store during and it was still light during this whole time which made things seem even weirder because you don't expect to see such things during the day. It's a surreal experience to say that I drove up and parked my car and it was like a warzone. I probably should have just left but I felt I needed to be there. I got out of my car and ran through the masked men with guns and pipes. I have no idea how I didn't get killed.

I was let inside the store by a roommate and found the owner on the roof with a 12 gauge shot gun. I loved this guy. He was a tall punk rocker with a mohawk and one of the most creative minds I ever came across. He had invested all his money into this record store and spent years collecting things that insurance could not replace. It was a crazy rush like out of a video game. It's odd to compare real life to a video game but as it got darker that night, it got much worse.

Fires, and molotov cocktails and beatings happened before us. At this point no one cared about breaking into cars, it was much better to hit the stores. The clock maker had abandoned his shop but once they say the 12 gauge and the scary punk rock guy on the roof, they miraculously backed off.

I clung close to the concrete lip of the building and peered over, watching things that I probably ought not have seen. Later, the owner of the burger joint took to his roof with a shot gun and the coffee shop as well. Who knew shop owners all had shot guns?

It became a triad on the block, keeping the rioters off the street and I remember a group of masked losers yelling up at us, "You gotta sleep SOMETIME!". All this did was fuel the determination to stay awake. Streets around us burned all night long and yet there were no signs of sirens anywhere. The city was in pure chaos with no one to help.

In the early morning hours it was cold but it's amazing how your body just copes and I felt nothing. I was not hungry, I was not tired, I was thinking very clearly and it only made me more infuriated when the guys from the band Sublime, whom the owner had agreed to sell their CDs for them on consignment came by and taunted him about getting some free gear.

It wasn't until this past year that I heard that Sublime song about the riots where the now dead guy sings "Next stop we hit it was the music shop It only took one brick to make that window drop ". Ha, well, I laugh because that guy must have been staring down the barrel of a shot gun and boarded up windows when they all slumped away during the daylight hours. Pussies.

The odd thing is the record store is thanked on one of their CDs but whatever. I do like that song because I lived it. The next day was somewhat quiet. There were still no cops on the streets, riots were still happening during the day, people carrying stuff out. I finally got to my car with my guy and we headed to get food at the only place still standing - the 7-11.

It was getting to be dusk when we walked in there and right as we are already inside the store picking stuff out, we realize two men are using a screwdriver to break into the ATM while the owner is just straring at us. We were in the middle of a hold-up.

Everyone else in the store is just taking things and pocketing them. Right then, one guy at the ATM pulls out a gun, holding it downwards and I make eye contact with him. I don't know why, but I wasn't scared. I looked at my guy and he looked more than a little bothered. We were both kind of frozen for a second in the insanity of this but I just yelled out.

I yelled not at them but with the guy I was with. "What the FUCK!? You bring me HERE to get food?! I want something FUCKING QUALITY. I don't want a fucking TWINKIE! How DARE you!" And I kept going, yelling as I pushed him out of the store. As I left the guy with gun tried to block our way and I just shook my head and hissed through my teeth, "I'M HUNGRY".

We walked to the car with our backs to a man with a gun. I had no idea if he'd shoot but we just got in and drove off. I'm sure there's a million other ways to have handled that scenario but no one was thinking right during this time.

Wow, this is turning out to be long.

The next few days we had the national guard come in and tanks were on the debris-ridden streets. Another very surreal sight. They had great weapons but at night the riots still continued. I stayed away from the record store but I couldn't just stay at home. I heard the VA hospital was getting attacked and they had posted police men who had no weapons to guard it. They were on 24 hour shifts with no food.

I couldn't watch tv so I made up most of the food I had in the house into some kind of meal and drove it to the VA where I found the most beaten down, delerious police men on duty. They reprimanded me for being there but nearly attacked the food I brought them. I went home and could finally sleep.

That is sort of my last memory of the riots. I don't know why I'm thinking of this today but hm. There you go.

I'm usually not cooler than you BUT

seeing this show, I SO was. Be jealous. Yes, yes, poor babies. I felt the power of the gem sweater and gold pants. Leslie and the Lys RULES! Gem Sweater baby. Youtube her now!