left column announce guest larry today: mike. He funny
man. Not as cute as left column, though. Right ladies?
there for him
I just had lunch again with clinically depressed friend Bill and Charlie. Bill is now on Prozac and is feeling much better. He’s turned a corner, says he. Not so much though that my poor ass didn’t still have to bring him lunch. Charlie arrived an hour late. (Charlie was 2 years ahead of me in high school in Berkeley. We did plays together. He’s an actor, lives here in L.A.)
Charlie got a call just before he came about his mother. His mother is an alcoholic who is now starting to have health problems. She’s working, but she claims she’s not drinking though a doctor told Charlie she now requires a constant stream of alcohol to function. A maintenance alcoholic, he calls it.
Charlie is ready to cut her off. His brother also lives down here and they’ve driven to Berkeley to confront her – it did no good. Cut her off. Painful. Awful. But easy… except.
Her father, Charlie’s grandfather, lives with her. She "takes care" of him. Cutting her off would require cutting him off as well. He enables her drinking. He’s an excuse for her drinking, because taking care of him is a stressful thing for her. Charlie wants to get his grandpa down here, to take care of him, or hire someone to take care of him up there. Grandpa refuses both. He has money. He just refuses. So what can Charlie do.
What do I do, he says.
Bill talks: You lay out the options one more time. To her. To him alone. And if he doesn’t take them, he will not see Charlie anymore. There will be no more Charlie in either of their lives. Until she gets help.
What would you do, Stee? And I am reluctant to say anything so I don’t. I shake my head.
Here’s my instinct. Fuck her. To hell with her. She wants to kill herself, you can’t stop her. You cannot stop her. Help yourself. Live your life.
Here’s what I say: I’m lucky my father died.
And I cannot believe I said it. But I feel I mean it. He killed himself what he did to himself. And I’m still mad as hell at him for it. But I’m glad it happened quick and sudden. The chances for guilt are less. Guilt kills, as far as I can tell. Anger does other things. I still don’t know what all anger does.
So I listen. I’m "there" for him. But it all feels like bullshit. I want to weep for his situation. I want to jump for joy that I’m not in it. I want to kick her ass for doing this to her son – to my friend. Grow up, I want to tell her. Grow the fuck up or you will lose much more than your liver function. I want run and keep running.
I’m there for him.
…And this being done for the day, for me, I feel dangerous again. I’m sure there are feelings getting close that I do not want to deal with, but I feel mean and happy and strong and loud. I feel like weeping. I feel like dancing all night. I feel like robbing a store or stealing a car or painting a picture on the side of the freeway. I’ve been feeling this way a lot lately. Sort of like a dangerous Spring Fever. This weekend I was able to channel it into extreme creative energy. Writing like a motherfucker all weekend.
…Therefore now allow me briefly to channel this energy a different way…
…OK. I admit I can come across as a pretty negative person here. But this is not my goal. No. Not at all. I want people to understand that I’m a complex, multi-faceted guy who feels love and happiness just as easily as repulsion and anger. Because it’s true. It really is.
So I’ve decided to look back on a few things I’ve repeatedly stated in this space that I dislike, and try to name at least five good things about them. Here we go:
Scientology:
- They’re dedicated.
- They do some charity work.
- They don’t advocate Pedophilia (to my knowledge).
- They haven’t yet gotten to Jeff Bridges or Cate Blanchett.
- The make me laugh.
Los Angeles:
- Almost all released films play here, and promptly.
- It’s close enough to Berkeley.
- Sitton’s diner in North Hollywood.
- Need a Slurpee? A 7-11 on every block!
- Haven’t had a race riot in over 6 years.
My job:
- All the Web Surfing you can eat.
- Climate controlled.
- My immediate group is made up of really great people I actually like.
- Don’t have to answer the phone, can leave whenever I want, overtime as needed.
- Virtually no duties or responsibilities whatsoever!!!
My neighbors:
- A couple of them are pretty.
- A couple of them have nice doggies.
- They haven’t yet tried to steal my car or break into my apartment or kill me.
- If I’m too lazy to turn on my own music, I can always just listen to theirs through the walls.
- Screaming fights in Arabic = cultural enrichment.
John Travolta:
- He’s "married" to a babe.
- He’s can be very good. (At acting. Sickos…)
- He can fly his own plane.
- No more Look Who’s Talkings.
- Still hasn’t tried his hand at Shakespeare.
Meanwhile…
…The Hannibal casting rumor-mill continues. Now that Jodie Foster dropped out, they’ve been kicking around names for the new female lead. Recently it was, horribly, Angelina Jolie (I wish she’d just do porn already). Well, the newest rumor is this: Cate Blanchett!!! Do I have to mention again that I’m in stupid-ass drop-to-my-knees love with this woman? No. OK.
Elsewhere…
…The National Society of Film Critics announced their final picks.
PICTURE: Tie. Being John Malkovich. Topsy-Turvy.
DIRECTOR: Mike Leigh.
ACTOR: Russell Crowe. The Insider.
ACTRESS: Reese Witherspoon. Election.
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christopher Plummer. The Insider.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Chloe Sevigny. Boys Don’t Cry.
SCREENPLAY: Charlie Kaufman. Being John Malkovich.
FOREIGN: Autumn Tale.
DOC: Buena Vista Social Club.
In Cyber-World…
…Stee knows nothing about computers. Stee is having two problems:
Stee bought a computer that supposedly has 4 gigs. Stee is getting messages that says he’s almost out of space. Stee looks in Properties on his C: drive. Stee has 2 gigs. Stee asks you this: Where are the other 2 gigs?
Stee got his domain a while ago and is having trouble moving everything over to the new host and shit. Stand by for that. Someday.
And while Stee knows little about computers, he can type like a motherfuck. OK, watch. I will now attempt to type the first paragraph of a New Yorker review of a William Gibson book as fast as possible:
"A tubercular derelict who is also a world’class hacker is cruising the datasphere from insdie a cardboard box in a tokyo train station when he detects in the pattern of worldwide information flow "the mother of all nodal points." Somehow, a down-on-his-luck rent-a-cop, a veritie filmmaker, a virtual Japanese dogess, an autistic llatino child fascingated by watches, a nameless assassin, and a mysterious public-relations blillionaire are all connected. In this not quite sequel, characters from Bigson’s last two gooks, "Idoru" and "Virtual Light," converge upson the twenty-first-cenury shantytown occupting the Golden Gate Bridge to confront something momentous-though what, exactly, remains shimmeringly slusive. The pleasure is less in the plot, however, than in Gibson’s coolly elegant prose, which creates a future that looks like Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers: a science fiction constructed from glittering, borken artifacts of the present."
DUDE! Fine, I’m not that great a typist, but I think my typing errors are actually a whole new language only revealed through this stupid exercise! Like some odd Ouiji board. Like the encoded messages in Contact. Fucking scary. These words are even better than what I was trying to type. Say them out loud. They’re cool:
"dogess" "cenury" "fascingated" "occupting" "slusive" "borken" "upson"
Greetings earthlings, from the Grand Dogess of Yuki Upson. Having searched for 8 Borkens for a way to somehow slusive this message to you, we have come across the malleable, and oft sodden brain of one stee. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his complex mind, is a bizarre occupting hiccup, which will allow us to transmit our message of cenury one day when he is ready. It will probably either be fascingated in freckles on his back, a tattoo he’ll drunkenly attempt to give himself, or the typos he makes during one of his pitiful attempts at humor. We really have no interplanetary news or secrets to reveal to you, except for this: let it be known that Canada will soon explode, Diet Coke is actually really really good for you, and the Olsen Twins… in 3 years they’ll be hot. That is all. -Grand Dogess. PS: Fucking hard to believe, I know, but Scientology… it’s all true!!!
Finally…
…to my Michael Chiklis expert Sarah. The email address you sent me isn’t working.
The Larry King Happy
Song Corner
