Holidays Chapter 2: "Are you going to take your bag out of your hood?"

So, after girly, girly night (which, in case you missed it because it was back-dated, is here), it was holiday gauntlet running through the rest of LA. All of which was fantastically fun.

This is not where it gets interesting ...
The day started with brunch with Shimmy at our most favorite bad for you diner in Long Beach. The place where they double stuff potatoes for breakfast and, after serving you a plate of food big enough for three people, then slap down an order of French Toast with cream cheese stuffed inside to top it off. The coffee there is terrible, but it's worth it. We are full ... well ... overfull when we leave.



This is not where it gets interesting ...
Next stop, Shadalan's for an annual card reading. She has a lovely new place that looks out over the ocean. Very peaceful. And also, very insightful.

This is not where it gets interesting ...
Then, Santa Monica for the most reasonably priced fantastic Italian meal I've had in months. Dinner is with Darren and Brooke and they are possibly the single most charming couple you will ever meet. And then Joe and Helen showed up for dessert. And I was a happy girl.

This is where it got interesting ...
And then I drove to Topenga Canyon. Listen, I'm absolutely getting the bad drunk driving habit out of my system in 2008. No more scenes where shamus and RJ have to yell at me in a parking garage to get me to give them my keys. No more DUIs. And certainly no more of this driving to Topenga Canyon after getting loaded up on my arch nemisis red wine. But I drove to Topenga Canyon to see J-Flo and K-Flo and Justin nonetheless. And when I got there, I got confused about where to park, so I ended up parking almost two blocks away. But J-Flo is waiting outside for me because he'd already fielded a couple of my lost and drunken phone calls that night. So he sees me park two blocks away and rolls his eyes and starts to walk toward me to retrieve me. And while he is doing that, he is treated to this scene:

I have become confused about which buttons on my car remote pop the hood of my car versus the trunk of my car. And I am repeatedly popping the hood of my car, and then looking at the hood. And then looking a the trunk. And then shutting the hood. And then repeating the process. And when J-Flo gets down to the car, he is already snotting and laughing. And I look at him, lost, and say, "I can't figure out how to open my trunk. I think I'm going to have to put the back seats down and drag my bags out from the back seat."

And somewhere between snorting out beer and sitting down on the ground because he is laughing so hard, J-Flo says, "Why don't you just put the KEY into the trunk?"

DUH.

After looking at him blankly for a moment, I suddenly realize that I am a drunken idiot. And open my trunk. Like a moron. I haven't lived this one down yet. I doubt that I will any time soon.

J-Flo and K-Flo are a great team with their son, Ju-Flo. It's amazing to watch. I had the most amazing time falling asleep on their couch while drinking wine and eating Cheetohs. I love them. I wish we lived closer. Though, I still get physically ill when I think about how much food J-Flo was able to put down at IHOP the next morning. That's not even right, ya'll. I want to be a part of their team! Just not a part of their IHOP eating team.




Finally, the last stop is Charles and Luci's. As if IHOP weren't enough, when I get to Charles and Luci's, I find that we are having MEAT for lunch. MEAT on the grill. And wine. Let me tell you how I stuffed it down. Not pretty. I may have gained 10 pounds in the weekend alone. And then there were video games and pictures and all kinds of fun things.




LA gauntlet was spectacular. It was like a real Christmas but with sunshine. And then, I headed to PA and things got REALLY crazy ...

 

I Innundate You With Pop Culture: 90210, MySpace, Blogs and Filipino Inmates

1. Do you ever get sick of my talking about Beverly Hills 90210? I hope not, because watching that show often gives me the same sensation as standing in front of a Cezanne or listening to "The Love of Three Oranges." I don't know that there has ever been a greater season of television than the second season of 90210. It starts in the summer, with the kids on the beach. Then there is the first day of school. Emily Valentine and her crazy stalking of Brendan. The first appearance of Jake Hanson (played by our boy, Grant Show) lusting after a seventeen-year-old Kelly. And then, the season finale where Jim Walsh tells Brenda and Dylan that they aren't allowed to see each other any more. Dylan smashes a bottle of Jack Daniels against the wall, runs out, LEAPS into his Porsche and drives away. Cut to Brenda, distraught, confused, hurt, on the Walsh family lawn, looking after him. And...black screen.

Don't tell me greatness is limited to art from centuries past. 90210 will prove you wrong.

2. What would you rather read while I'm gone? You know, in the great tradition of Jocelyn Loving Jocelyn and believing that you will all kind of wistfully hit your "I Love Paul Jack" bookmark while I'm gone, hoping that perhaps I have found satellite dsl in the wild and posted, I was going to post some non-dated content while I was away. I'm so delusional, right? Right. But in the event that you want to humor me, what would you rather read while I'm gone:

a. I recently found some very old journal entries from back in the day of about four journal incarnations ago. By which I mean "the last time I was single." By which I mean "when I was 23 or so." It's amusing to read them now.

b. Some fiction. Of yet undetermined which fiction, but not the most recent fiction. Something probably from the last three years.

c. Transcribed entries from a journal I keep in which I create imaginary dialogue among my cats.

I mean, really, your move while I'm gone is to follow Trick on Twitter. But if you have a preference among those other three, let me know.

3. So, MySpace: You know, we'll be talking about awesomeness later, but in an effort to collect awesomeness, I was talking to K-Flo and she said:

"Something has happened with the help of this device called myspace... although I am not always a big fan of it, I will sing its praises for the friendships that have been rekindled, lost friends who are now found and the ability to make each other laugh on a daily basis...even when it seems like there is nothing funny in the world!"

I have to agree with her (and about facebook too, moreso maybe). How many wonderful people are back in my life, or more in my life, or even in my life at all, because of those sites? Sure, those sites, can be used for evil. But they can also be used for good, and there's a lot that goes on over there that makes me happy daily. You can decide for yourself if the fact that I posted the following two pictures of J-Flo and K-FLo and then J-FLo and Me from 2002 on MySpace is good or evil for yourself.




If want to play, friend me. If you're not on MySpace or Facebook, pick Facebook.

4. So, Darren's Blog: Right. Is here. And now in the side bar. I'm not sure what one says about the sheer coolness that is Darren and his perfect life other than to simply copy and paste our exchange in the comments section of this blog for you, in case you don't read comments:

Darren:
Ah, Jocelyn. How I've missed you. Remember when we went to that gay sex club and you told the straight dude hitting on you that I was your husband and then, separately, I told him that it was okay with me if he jumped you and he said "Dude, you are so open minded!"? Yeah.. good times.

Jocelyn
DARREN!!!!!

I missed you too! I often speak of that night in the gay sex club, but usually I'm telling the story about how my friend and your friend went to the kitchen to "get a drink of water" and an entire euphemism was born. I will write you soon and we will all have drinks next time I'm in LA!

5. No playlist, but some YouTube: That playlist crap takes time and I'm listening to opera right now anyway (The Love of Three Oranges). While I enjoy Prokofiev, you may enjoy Filipino inmates who are forced to dance to the choreography of music videos from the 1980s as prison yard exercise. Again, only funny because it's true.

Thriller, complete with some poor inmate who is now the girl inside and outside of the cell.


As if that weren't enough, RADIO GAGA. No joke.

 

Five Perfect Moments

I'm doing this exercise in therapy where I make a timeline of all of the individual moments in my life that I remember as being perfect. Seriously? I have A LOT. A lot more than a girl deserves. Some of them, we'll cover periodically here as they come to me.

Remember the Spin Doctors?
One summer, Pookie and I went to see the Spin Doctors. Part of me thinks that we may have had J-Flo with us, but I'm not sure. And I'm not even sure why we went to see the Spin Doctors, because they had all of two songs. Hell, I think that they still have all of two songs. But it was summer in Western Pennsylvania, and we all know that summer nights in any part of the midwest are more beautiful than summer nights anywhere else and there's possibly nothing better than dancing to live music on grass with stars above you in the then-Starlake-now-CocaCola amphitheater during those nights. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we went to the Spin Doctors' show with very little expectation. And it ended up being this perfect night. You know how sometimes you're at a show, and the band actually just connects with the audience, and everybody is feeling it? And you dance with strangers and sing at the top of your lungs and then people fall asleep in the car on the way home with the windows down? It was that kind of night. And months later, Pookie was watching MTV in Pittsburgh and I was watching MTV in Indiana and we both saw the same news report with the Spin Doctors. And the Spin Doctors said that their favorite show on the tour was in Pittsburgh. And Pookie and I were both like, "Yeah."

Speaking of Driving in the Midwest
Which is one of my favorite things to do, driving in the Midwest. These long roads lay out in front of you and you can just move, cover ground. This one time, Catwoman and DivaMae and I were taking a road trip where Catwoman and I were going to drop DivaMae in Indiana to visit his brother and then the two of us were headed to Louisville. It was summer. And we decided to drive all night. As the sun was coming up the next morning, Catwoman and DivaMae were both dead asleep in the car. And I was having a "moment." It was summer. We had driven all night talking about relationships and dreams. Two of my best friends were asleep in the car and the sun was orange and coming up over the cornfields and all was right with God. And just as I'm having this moment, DivaMae wakes up, reaches over to the cd player and turns FREAKIN' LORDS OF ACID ON AT FULL VOLUME, waking up Catwoman and destroying all the peacefulness in the sunrise. And yet, somehow that moment was perfect.

Speaking of DivaMae
One night, DivaMae and I decided that every time we heard the song "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, we were going to strip our clothes off. And so we did.

Speaking of Being Naked
Wait. I don't even have one for this, and it was the only logical place that I could take that last one. Let's restart.

This one time, at band camp...
Band camp being one of my favorite times of the year every year in high school. And I was a freshman and TimR was a senior and a REBEL and he drove this blue drug van and everybody who was cool would have lunch in the drug van and sneak liquor after band camp moved to the football field during the second week. And I got invited to hang out with the cool kids in the van and then the next day TimR drove me home on his motorcycle and my mom FLIPPED OUT. That was a good summer.

Speaking of TimR....
There was a marina that his mother owned in Five Town that was named after him, and one day J-Flo and ChuckA and some of our other friends took J-Flo's boat out onto the Mon with more liquor than any group of 18-year-olds should ever have. And there was Zima. And ChuckA and I both drank so much Zima that by the time we docked at TimR's marina we were sick and embarrassing to be around AND we never drank Zima again in our lives. But I remember that that was one of the last days that we were able to all spend together as a group before people all started leaving, and it was sunny and fun and I still remember it.

See how I cycled from J-Flo back to J-Flo? We'll jump to another time era later.