The Big Apple, redux

The last time was just a little over five years ago. (And it was so great, I had to write about it not just once but twice!) And here I am, back at an airport bar (my favorite!)--this time, in a wine bar at SFO--contemplating my return trip to New York City.

It'll be yet another whirlwind adventure, for sure. I'm catching the red eye to meet Thespian and his bro (and his bro's assistant and publicity manager), who are conducting yet another media frenzy thingamabob for their upcoming TV series ("Weed Wars," premiering this Thursday at 10pm on Discovery Channel and Discovery Fitness & Health). They're doing a bunch of print and radio interviews, as well as a couple TV talk shows (including "The O'Reilly Factor"! Eek! Watch Monday night at 8pm and 11pm EST/PST!).

I'm going to provide moral support for Thespian. And, you know, check his wardrobe and hair. Give some final words of encouragement. Kinda like a fluffer! Well, not like... OK, yes, sorta like that.

Anyway, while he's doing his professional cannabiz media stuff, I'll be traipsing around NYC, gloriously consuming that city of cities while trying not to look too freaking happy about it lest my cover as tourista be blown.

Wish me--and Thespian, his bro, his bro's assistant and publicist--luck!

(I'll post pics for these, uh, posts, when I return.)

Sweet dream...or a beautiful nightmare?

So it's been four years since I left Maui. It was a hard move but one I felt needed to be made, in order to pursue--or continue pursuing--my writing career. But, like, on a bigger scale than sweet, small-island Maui could afford...

I should probably explain something first. When I refer to "writing," I'm not saying that my ultimate goal is to publish a factory of bestselling novels, which I pen from the balcony of my delightfully luxurious Manhattan penthouse suite, from the luxuriously delightful desk of a strapping young man's taut and toned and creamy smooth backside.

Although, of course, that would be fine, too.

Writing, for me--at least the kind that I enjoy most--means that I get to deepen my experience of living. It means that whenever I enter a situation, meet a person, eat a meal, have an emotion, think a thought, travel somewhere, get a new job, talk shit about my co-workers (I mean, er, WITH my co-workers), go out on a date, visit the parents, have sex (um, not in their house or anything), I have this format through which I can process and examine and share, sometimes appreciate, sometimes laugh at, sometimes cry over, these experiences. And what's important to me, I've discovered, is the possibility and hopefully achievement of connection. Such a hokey word, I know. But I want people to read something I've written and either relate to what I'm expressing, or be inspired to look at their own lives or to go out in the world and discover that thing (or restaurant or person or sexual endeavor) for themselves.

And so anyway, for whatever reason, the simple act of returning to Maui has elicited yet another checkpoint for me--reminding me of why I left, what I had there on that magicaldysfunctionalbeautifullazy utopia, how far I've come (or not) and where I'm at now--as far as the writing dream is concerned.

To review, the past four years:
- I spent the first three months broke, unemployed, cold, haunted and perpetually in my ratty bathrobe.
- The subsequent three months I worked in a big, corporate daily newspaper by day; by night, vulnerable to the vagaries of living with my parents and/or running into ghosts of my past in the Southern California desert.
- A couple more months of voluntary unemployment, albeit happily back in San Francisco, before accepting a return to alternative newsweeklydom in Marin County, home of the rich and environmentally progressive-as-long-as-it-didn't-interfere-with-pilates-or-Botox-procedures.
- Eventual selling of writerly soul in order to accept a higher paying gig (AGIRLSGOTTAPAYTHEBILLSOK??) in the medical cannabis industry.
- Soon after, newfound freedom in the form of paid unemployment--this time, happily, with an understanding and supportive partner, slightly warmer (in the East Bay), unhaunted, more than occasional freelance writing and editing gigs, but still with that damn bathrobe...

Not necessarily the "bigger scale" I set out to achieve. But still, with its own simple, cyclical blessings.

...

OK wait a minute... Did I really just quote Beyonce up there in the title? See what the mainland is doing to me?? Either way, I don't wanna wake up. Ahem.

My So-Called Life as a Reality TV Schlump

I am notoriously camera shy, to put it mildly. To be fair, it's mostly a vanity issue--and I am not very photogenic. It's not that I think I am unattractive, it's just that I don't think my special "charm" that makes me somewhat aesthetically pleasing gets captured in a two-dimensional frame taken from a split-second of time. Plus, it feels forced, shallow--unreal, really. And so I have developed this obnoxious phobia, whereby I see a lens and become horribly, painfully, sometimes angrily...um...anti.

And so, imagine my shock and horror when, because of Thespian and his family's prolific role in the medical cannabis industry, I find myself in the middle of ongoing filming for a documentary-style, reality television series.

Of course I watch some reality TV shows. The affliction started with The Real World and went on to Blind Date, Miami Ink, American Idol, LA Ink, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance, Top Chef, What Not to Wear, and yeah, okay, even America's Next Top Model, Rock of Love, Millionaire Matchmaker and The Bachelor. But I refuse to watch any bobbleheaded Housewives of... and Laguna Beach derivations--I have my scruples--because most of these shows play up to, as CBS News so aptly points out, "a hunger to watch people with no discernible talent, no discernible insights, but who are willing, eager to be seen and heard doing... nothing."

I have always said, there is no good reason for me to be on TV. I am a writer; I am mostly in my head, my wit and propensity for verbosity rarely comes out in public speaking situations, unless I am in a dive bar, amidst the slatternly good-natured drunks and creatively minded misfits with whom I comfortably associate. But none of that translates well for television. Not in a way that's suitable for the kids anyhow.

But, here we are. Because I am involved with a man who is immersed in a fascinating subculture that stirs up controversy, I, too, am getting caught up in the marijuana maelstrom...and over the next few weeks, I imagine that I will want to share with you (as I am wont to do) the process of having our lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting, um, medicated.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Embalming, racecars and Cirque du Soleil: Viva Las Looking for Love, Bachelor-style!

A texted conversation during tonight's episode of "The Bachelor"...


ME: "Shawntel: My kind of girl. Emily: *sniff*. Michelle: Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

FRIEND: "Yeah Michelle is nuts!! Chantel is my fave."

ME: "She's all drunk right now. But still cute."

FRIEND: "Yeah... A little. They need to stop drinking."

ME: "No doubt. Ohmigawd women are craaaaazy!!!"

FRIEND: "It's soooo annoying, honestly in all the seasons I've watched the women on this one are the most dramatic!"

ME: "They've got it down to a science!

"I wish I could write about strains of pot in relation to various reality show characters. That would be TOO awesome."

FRIEND: "Seriously! Michelle would be Hindu Skunk!"

ME: "Hahahahaha! Ha!"

FRIEND: "Is Ashley O. even old enough to be in Las Vegas?

ME: "Oooh, our two ladies on the bed together, talking 'bout...ladies."

FRIEND: "This is f-ing stupid."

ME: "Yep, it's gonna take a whole bottle tonight, I think. Fucking show."

FRIEND: "Haha... So true! I'm enjoying some sparkling red wine."

...[LONG PAUSE, WHILE BRAD CONSULTS WITH HIS SHOW-APPOINTED PSYCHOLOGIST]

ME: "I think I want to be like Brad's therapist when I grow up."

FRIEND: "I missed it... I was too busy ordering shoes online."

Dear Cashiers of the World,

I know your job sucks--especially during the holidays--but trust me, it sucks for most of us on the other side of the counter, as well. And if one more of you snot-nosed brats gives me attitude when I am clearly being nice and respectful to you, then you will only have yourself to blame for the bloody, tinselled, 50%-off, you're-lucky-you-have-a-job carnage that follows.

Merry X-mas.

Love,
Me

The Writing Process

Wake up in a panic about the writing workload ahead. Lay in bed thinking about how to proceed. Get up, wash face and brush teeth--deliberately forego shower. Slap on clean-ish clothes from pile, go get extra-strength coffee. Return, eat leftovers or errant cookie. Sit down at desk, check emails briefly. Put on Pandora, classical. Open research sites but don’t read them. Stare at hard-copy outline. Take deep breaths. Stretch. Go to bathroom. Pluck eyebrows. Sit back down at computer. Check phone. Open work in progress, read latest paragraph. Change an adjective, delete a transition. Write next sentence. Consider failure at writing, contemplate photography. Look up word in thesaurus. Write another sentence. Check notes. Get a glass of water. Scan Facebook and Twitter. Write rest of paragraph, think it’s pretty good. Change mind 15 minutes later. Look up another word in thesaurus. Check fact online. Delete last sentence. Write down cool words that will never be used. Look at photos of subject. Review outline. Rewrite last sentence. Wonder how much everyone will hate what’s written. Write outline for next paragraph. Masturbate. Eat a piece of fruit. Call boyfriend. Repeat.

The autumn of my discontent...

It's a week like any other week following two life-altering bombs dropped by close friends--one involving birth; the other, parental death--and some fairly innocuous digestive problem after an unfortunate late-night excursion to a dubious North Beach eatery. Fast-forward past my subsequent 36-hour colonic and a day languishing in front of bad daytime TV and a traumatic viewing of "Letters to Juliet," and witness me, weak-brained but at work, zombie-walking from meeting to meeting with rooms full of idealistic go-getters.

By the time the last meeting turned words to mush in my head, I was feeling the crash. It's that feeling one imagines is like in the movies, when a car flies off a bridge in slow-motion, brutally barreling into the dark, tumultuous waters, where it drifts poetically and with certainty into a never-ending abyss.

Yeah, like that. Full of cliches.

And so it was today that I mumbled my goodbyes, decided to forsake all plans to attend luminous Litquake events in the city, went straight home and crawled into bed, where I: a) pulled the blankets over my head and sighed gratefully, then b) wept for about 15 minutes for no reason, wondering if I was sad because I was sick or if I was sick because I was sad, then c) realized that my weeping and all of life's events in the past week was forcing me to address the same old problem I'd faced--to be honest, my whole life but more specifically, ever since I thought it would be a good idea to ditch my low-paying but full-time writing gig in what everybody was saying was a "dying industry" to launch myself into a "growing industry" in which I could help create history--oh, but I can't write about it. See, 'cause, there's an NDA we'd like you to sign...

OK, fine. There are lots of other things to write about. So what's my problem? Apparently, for me, the freedom to write about anything I want with no deadlines whatsoever is absolutely inhibiting. And so I find myself in this tragic spiral of feeling invisible at work, like I have no identity at all, so I live in a bubble of complacency, which kills my drive, and I feel lost and worthless--so I don't express myself at work. And I don't write.

Not birth, not death. Just the murky gray matter in between.