Lucid Dreaming. Birthday Wish.

It's my *birthday and I wake up to a text alert. I sit up and lift the satin sleep mask off to read it. "Good Morning. Go downstairs."  I excitedly swing my legs over the side of my bed and kick off the evening's perfect eight hours of the natural sleep.
As I do so my cartoon bird friends (mostly robins and sparrows) fly in through my open bedroom window between the billowing sheer curtains dancing in the morning's 78 degrees breeze and greet me with their chirpy version of "Happy Birthday To You".  It's an adorable moment.
"Oh you guys remembered!" I exclaim clutching my chest. They flap their little wings with delight and raise their voices an octave higher in a song of celebration (did I mention it's my *birthday?)

A feather falls from the underbelly of the smallest of the birds. The older birds giggle and the littlest one blushes. I know what to do because I met Oprah once....and today is my *birthday.  I take this "teaching moment" and put out my finger inviting my tiny friend to join me so as to renew his self confidence. He does and his little chest puffs up with pride once more.  Now it is the older birds that are ashamed. "I think we all just learned a valuable lesson here," I say gently. They all sheepishly nod in unison.
We continue to watch enraptured as the tiny feather flutters slowly to and fro all the way down to it's resting place......upon Kirby's wet nose. We gasp in anticipation. How will he react? What's going to happen? What will he do? There's a dramatic pause and then quite suddenly, out of nowhere Kirby sneezes. We all laugh. "Oh Kirby" I say.  It is a delightful moment.
Ploopy barks from the kitchen announcing breakfast is ready. She's making me a cup of tea and vegemite on toast because it's my birthday. I call back to her "I'll be right there Snags" I know she's rolling her eyes and shaking her head. She is wearing an apron. The fabric is a pattern of small cherries.

"Ok guys, there's a *birthday to be had. Let's get dressed." I stand up and reach my arms over head. My bird friends hover above with my 'Unknown pleasures' t shirt in their beaks. They release it and it drops perfectly onto my body. I then put my paint stained grubby Champion tracksuit pants on. One leg at a time. Just like everyone else in this crazy, mixed up world. I grab my keys and race downstairs.

This is sitting in my carport. I squeal and open the driver's side door.  This is sitting upright in the passenger seat. The note on the drivers seat reads "Here's your purse. Enjoy the matching gift box. Happy Birthday"

This is pure imagined folly as everyone knows I'll be waking up in Tulum, Mexico for my *birthday.

* September 20th 2013

Cinesausage and the Perils of Getting to School Unraped.

During my teenage years my mother was married to an abusive dullard who was a butcher by trade. He chopped up dead animal carcass in a butcher shop not far from the high school I attended. My mother consistently refused to drive me to school because according to her “It’s your responsibility to get yourself to school”. She was contemptuous of my haughty goal to be the first person in my immediate family to graduate from high school.

During my final year of school circumstances had become such, (due to their sudden decision to buy a new house far from my school), that if I was to continue attending that school I had the choice of.....

1. Getting up at 4.30am to get ready. Then spend a stressful 2-3 hours chasing public transportation schedules and scrambling to make bus and train connections in order to get to school on time. 
2. Getting up at 4.30am to get ready and hopefully catch a ride with my butcher stepfather (who repeatedly attempted to sexually assault me) only to arrive at the same destination although in less than half the time, but with an extra 2 hours to kill before school started. 

At first I went with Option A.  It meant navigating a seedy landscape of creepy bus drivers, flashers in raincoats and public masturbators hellbent on ejaculating onto my perfectly flicked and lacquered 1986 hairdo.  The logistics of this terrain were stressful and the minefield was frightening.  These “Enthusiasts of the Scopophilactic Arts” seemed to be everywhere.  Their favorite beats were the semi deserted public bus and train stations I had to frequent. And their peak trolling times during those winter months seemed to be between the hours of 5-7am. 

Pre-dawn fog creates excellent lurking conditions for sexual predators. A solitary sleepy schoolgirl laded with a cumbersome schoolbag full of unread textbooks makes for easy prey.  

It was still early and well before the first school bell of the day was due to ring out when I walked onto the schoolyard and approached the art room. Surprisingly the room's door was unlocked. I put my school bag down on a nearby table and removed my heavy green coat so I could inspect it for any secondary cum. I didn't see any. “His aim was commendable”,  I supposed silently to myself. 

The paint trough in the art room was deep and fashioned from some kind of industrial metal. Its single spout was positioned high above the center of the sink and the solitary tap was marked with a delicate blue 'C'.  As I turned the tap on I reached up and forward onto my tiptoes to shift my weight and hoist myself up and over the ledge of the receptacle so I could reach my head under the faucet and meet its ice cold content. As I washed the man’s semen out of my hair I stared into the drain watching the strangeness disappear deep down into the black hole.  I wrung out my soaked shoulder length hair, collected my bag and coat and headed straight to the girl's toilets to dry my hair with the one automated hand dryer.  It took a long time and midway through I became bored so I took out the drawing compass from my pencil case and started to poke and scratched away at my inner left wrist to pass the time and feel something more exciting. 

I decided then to choose the hostile company of the sexual predator I was familiar with over the ones I did not what to know any better. And whose hands, at least, I could observe for the time I had to spend with him.

This Option B meant riding shotgun with a reluctant chauffeur.  I had to be sitting there at the kitchen table at approximately 5.30am, coat on, school bag in lap ready to head out the door when my stepfather nonchalantly lumbered down the hallway jiggling his keys. He didn’t call out for me or ask if I was ready to go. I simply had to be in earshot of his jangling keys because that was the sign he was leaving. If I was in the bathroom or accidentally fell back asleep while waiting I simply missed my ride. 

His truck was drafty and he rarely spoke to me for the duration of these frigid trips.  He did allow me to tune the truck radio to the station I liked (3RRR) but only because he got a power kick out of abruptly turning it off if some “poofter music” (either ‘The Smiths’ or ‘The Cure’) happened to mince its way across the airwaves and intrude onto “his radio”.  The truck was a grubby white F100 and had blue racing stripes that ran the length of the cab and long bed.  This ride had been christened ‘Pisser’s Puller’.  Its name was painted on each side of the vehicle towards the back end of the truck either side of the clunky tailgate that had to be slammed violently at least twice in order for the latch to catch securely. The truck’s matching toy was a souped up inboard speedboat called ‘Pisser’.  Riding in the truck as it pulled the boat behind it and onwards to yet another summer holiday at Lake Eildon,  I would stare out my passenger window and pretend I was a performance artist participating in a moving portrait of a dysfunctional family.  Like we were really together on family vacation, ironically.

Those additional 2 hours I had to kill hanging around the gory pit stop I spent painting the shop's daily specials on butchers' paper. They'd then attached my artwork to the sandwich board located directly out front of the shop.  I would paint 'Pork Chops $2.99 kg',  'Sausages .99 kg', 'T-bone $3.99 kg'. Those hours spent hanging around that butcher’s shop before they were open to the public meant I literally watched how sausage was made. 

Cinesausage can make boring films seem interesting and great films even more admirable.

‘The Canyons’ and ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ belong to this first group and ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and ‘Russian Ark’ belong to the second group. 

In 2001 Alexander Sokurov made ‘Russian Ark’.  It’s the most extraordinary example of cinesausage EVER! A story told in one single consecutive 87 minute take. It’s so remarkable a production that there was a film documenting it’s creation as it unfolded. A documentary that is just as compelling as the film it’s documenting ended up being. I cannot describe my awe for this piece of art properly so I’ll instead encourage you to watch both the documentary ‘In One Breath’ and then the film ‘Russian Ark’ in that order. 

And so concludes my 'The Canyons' review.

At The Turn Of The Century I Sojourned At The Cecil Hotel.

In the summer of 2001 I called The Cecil Hotel home. I had landed there for the same reasons everyone else had. I was destitute and didn’t give two shits about living amongst addicts, prostitutes and the mentally ill. I signed the registrar as had fellow anonymous denizens before me. The more notorious sleepovers guests include Jack Unterweger, newly deceased Richard Ramirez and the most recent being Elisa Lam. 

 The desk clerk was behind glass. She didn’t ask me which view I'd prefer or if I wanted a smoking or non-smoking room she just encouraged me to pay the extra fee for a room with it’s own bathroom. She did emphasize that I do not use the elevator because, as she put it “it’s probably not a good idea for you”.  

My room faced onto Main Street and was directly above the entrance. The room's only view looked directly down onto the vestibule's original awning that had become the final resting place for a dead pigeon. The room was clean enough but rank street smells wafted up in through the slightly ajar window and had filled the room with the scent of fresh despair. There would be no light raps on my door accompanied by singsong coos of "housekeeping". And the only room service available would be provided by courtesy of dialing 9-1-1. I settled in by opening and closing wobbly empty drawers, pulling aside the shower curtain and peering under the bed. In my search for assimilation I found a crack pipe. 

There were a few residents that “watched my back” and walked me up the large staircase to my room at night. “I’ll walk you up” They’d say. Self appointed security guards. Paternal types that the desk clerk would gesture OK for me to accompany by giving me the nod through the glass from across the lobby. Protocol for guests was to hand your key in when you left the premises and collect it again upon returning. The request made me feel like management cared about my comings and goings.  In reality it was a way for them to prevent pimps passing room keys around amongst their working girls. 

I can honestly say I never really felt afraid and after about a week I was comfortable living there. The muffled sounds of sex and violence were a familiar lullaby and I never felt the presence of ghosts of which it is reported, are plentiful. The only thing I was nervous about was the possibility of hearing people weeping, crying or sobbing. That was what frightened me. Thankfully that didn’t happen. 

About two weeks in I had a neighbor who was constantly in an intense dispute with some “fucking whore” he “promised to fucking kill” He screamed at her all the time and I became invested in the hellacious sounding pillow talk because I never heard her yell back at him. One day he kicked her out throwing her into the hallway slamming the door closed on her. She still didn't utter a peep. Things fell silent for a moment so I opened my door to peek out. Her remains where scattered about the grubby carpet violently ripped into crude pieces. 

My neighbor had apparently broken up with his pornographic magazine.

The Cecil Hotel has been was built in the mid 1920’s in what is today referred to as the ‘Historic District’. The hotel never got her chance to shine because the Biltmore Hotel soon came along and stole the spotlight. The Cecil was remodeled in 2007 and is presentable these days in keeping with the area’s gentrification. The gruesome discovery this past February of a young girl’s body identified as Elisa Lam found in the water tanks located on the premises rooftop suggests despite the paint job the Cecil Hotel's ambiance is set to remain in it's spooky and ominous condition.  

Daft Punk and my Automatonophobia; The Four Robot Archetypes.

I’ve had a fear of robots for a long time. Not toy robots or robots in a position of cooperative servitude like Robby the Robot or Hymie, the kind that I call Type A robots. But the malevolent, fascist Type B malfunctioning robots capable of operating with sinister intentions.
This is the story of how Daft Punk's new album 'Random Access Memories' has helped me understand and overcome my Automatonophobia

The ED-209 from the movie ‘Robocop’ (1987) is the quintessential example of the much feared Type B robot. As they're described in the movie, “...robots with emotional problems...”  

The ED-209 was co created by the film's Visual FX Supervisor Phil Tippet specifically to appear “... to have a certain dumbness, like a utilitarian stupidity.”  This dumbness and utilitarian stupidity personified my father and mother. To a child it was an obtuse fascism and indeed frightening and dangerous. Just like the ED-209 if they locked onto you as a target you had “...20 seconds to comply....”
These Type B robots also live in car manufacturing plants and have been known to disguise themselves as Type A robots by posing as motion control camera equipment and hiding on film sets.

Then there is theType C Robot. This robot is the exploited, resentful human/robot hybrid.

Lost in Space’s 'Robot' is a great example of this sympathetic robot. ‘Robot’ was objectified so much that he didn’t even have a name. He was habitually assaulted both verbally and physically by the cowardly Dr Smith (my family’s surname also.) This caused me no end of anxiety and sadness. 'Robot' was manipulated and exploited constantly for his superior intelligence and fortitude. I couldn't bring myself to "abandon" 'Robot' by simply not watching the program even though watching it made me very anxious and gave me chronic headaches. I empathized with him and wanted to rescue him but I was a helpless child. I identified with him absolutely. And then the whole ‘Star Wars’ happened and things were ratcheted up a notch.

Darth Vader was my first crush and mentor. He showed me that I could take my feelings, that at the time I didn’t understand to be resentment and shame, and detach from them by turning them into destructive superpowers and by doing so empower myself and ward off any perceived threat to my safety.

I would get very defensive while we played 'Star Wars' at school when my fellow playmates would tell me that Darth Vader was the “bad guy” in the movie. I would get into fights with other kids about it. “He wasn’t the bad guy. You just didn’t get it.”

I was in love with Darth Vader and wanted to crawl up into the dark shelter of his womb/cape and be lulled into slumber to the sound of his breath ebbing and flowing like the ocean. He'd say to me “Stay here. You’re safe now.”  I planned to hibernate there until I was old enough to take care of myself.  I implemented this lifestyle plan when I was 12 years old.

The Darth Vader life plan for success worked great until the human prototype of the ED-209 Type B robots arrested me 19 years later on the other side of the planet Earth.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos.

So this mean that robots too are made of the same stuff. They are inside of me and I am part of them. And we are all made of stars.  What does this have to do with Daft Punk’s new album? 

Daft Punk are the new Type D human/robot hybrids. (The Silver Surfer  falls into this category too.) As two human beings they have consciously recreated themselves into robot forms in order to fully express themselves as emotionally evolved human life forms. 'Random Access Memories' is a siren song of sorts. A call back to the basic humanity inside all of us. The message is to collaborate and celebrate that which fundamentally drives the human spirit. 

Feeling and expressing emotions by physically feeling and touching one another through the act of dance. 

Just so you dress appropriately for the Daft Punk Mothership keep in mind it looks and sounds like a yacht shaped U.F.O.
I will paint myself in silver and wear Halston. The Silver Surfer will meet me on this aforementioned yacht and we will finally have the sex he promised to have with me in a dream I had about him as a teenager. My robot companion 'Hans' will be pissed about this but he'll get over it once I get close enough to him to give him a hug. I will then be able to push the reset button located on his lower back. He knows I'm going to do this when I look up at him as he feels my fingers slip underneath the band of his underwear. He prefers me not doing this but I can't have him upset with me. 

The man who would be Los Angeles City Attorney... again?

I had a rather bizarre conversation today with Los Angeles’s City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. He’s up for re-election in a couple of days and it’s a tight race.*

I recognized him as he walked over to me and I was all prepared for some bullshit "vote for me" claptrap. But that wasn’t what happened at all.

In lieu of the usual introductions he instead bounded up to me and launched into a heartfelt story about he came upon his dog ‘Lucky’. He had rescued him from wandering along a busy Los Angeles freeway. He came across as reflective and a little melancholy, not the gregarious “wiseguy” I was kind of expecting to be confronted with. After he wound up his delightful story I gladly put out my hand to introduced myself. 

“My name is Kathy Ashe and I live here in North Hollywood. I’m the owner Of L.A. Pet Tech.” (I had a sign up with my logo on it.)

He shook my hand and said “ People call me ‘Nuch’” he then curiously dropped the volume of his voice and followed up with a relatively mousey “I’m the City Attorney.”

I knew who he was and I wanted to say “Not for much longer” but instead responded with “Funny, you don’t talk like Carmen Trutanich”

He laughed loudly and then asked me what I was doing at the market. I told him I was volunteering my time minding dogs for people as they walked around the farmers market because, as he may or may not know, it’s unlawful for people to take their dogs inside. Being one of the city’s top law enforcers I thought he’d be impressed. Instead his response to this was... 

“Well you know what they say?” 

“No, what’s that?” I asked curiously.

“Dogs are great chick magnets” he announced.

As soon as he said this he realized how inappropriate it was and he scrambled a little by looking over at his driver/bodyguard for the proverbial “am I right?” validation much like a stand up comedian would do. The validation was was not forthcoming.

It was such a spectacularly awkward moment for him mostly that I felt guilty languishing in the  delicious silence. So I folded and chose to show some mercy putting him out of his misery.

“Is that why you called your dog ‘Lucky’?” I quipped.

He was instantly relieved and laughed again louder dropping his guard even more.

“You’re funny!” he said.

“You’re welcome” I replied.

I should mention at this point there were no cameras and no reporters with him. At this exact moment, as if scripted, he reached into his pocket to look at his vibrating phone. “It’s the newspaper” he told his interrupting device. No one else was in earshot of us other than perhaps his security detail who didn't acknowledge the comment so I felt obliged to presumptively respond “Do you need to take that?” He put the phone back in his pocket and simply launched into another wonderful story about the way his cat ‘Max’ came into his life during his first campaign trail. The near feral street cat repeatedly jumped into his lap each time he sat down. It was remarkable!

From there we segued into a candid discussion about personal responsibilities to one’s community, the impact of smart phones on children’s developmental abilities and what does it mean to “get out of ones own way” amongst other things. The flow ended when I busted out with a sigh, what I thought was a common quote. “Youth is wasted on the young” He was taken aback and enthusiastically replied as if hearing it for the first time. “You’re right. It is!” 

I hesitated for a minute then admitted “Yeah, Carmen, I didn’t come up with that. It’s a George Bernard Shaw quote....or maybe it’s Dorothy Parker....I’m not sure.”

He seemed to ignore this clarification as he drifted off into his thoughts momentarily returning to say in an absentminded fashion...

“Oh Kathy, If I had known then what I know now”, he paused, drifting off again even further “I would have been unstoppable......absolutely unstoppable. I’m sure of it.” 

This sounded prophetic and ominous coming from a politician days away from a hotly contested election. 

I hesitated then gingerly offered up “It sounds to me like you think you won’t be re-elected.....and maybe that’s for the best?”

He laughed and put his hand out “It was great to meet you. I really enjoyed our conversation”

“Me too. Thanks for coming over to say Hi” I said. I meant it too. 

I was left thinking. “Is he a closeted Socialist or a closeted Sociopath?”

I gave the nod to his security detail and he gave me the nod back. Marking the exchange unofficially terminated.

As they disappeared into the market a fellow vendor raced up to me exclaiming “Holy Shit, do you know who that was?” before I could answer he continued “What were you talking about all this time? I mean, was he hitting on you?” “Did you tell him about the bullshit parking restrictions on the market’s permit?”

“No.” I said. “But if he gets re-elected I am going to call in a favor he now owes me”

* As I’m re reading this I'm debating whether posting this would be inappropriate as I’ve just read his mother passed away and his campaign has been suspended. I think it's OK.