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A girl living, loving and writing in Los Angeles.
August Listening
August Reading
Favorite Places
Copyright 2001 - 2008 by Ann, unless otherwise noted.
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Thursday, March 31, 2005
The Muppets' Wizard of Oz
Am I reaching a state of delirium for having been on the get up and go since 4am, or is it really strange to anyone else that Ashanti is playing Dorothy and Queen Latifah is Auntie Em in The Muppets' Wizard of Oz? And Quentin Tarantino as...himself. Why?
Do actors still exist?
"Where Does The Good Go" by Tegan & Sara
I cut up my right hand at work this morning, opening at 5am. & there's a papercut on my mouth from my own sheer stupidity.
But I am interviewing Tegan & Sara, my current obsession, on Monday afternoon.
& the sky is filled with butterflies. Thousands and thousands of butterflies flocking across the sky like little leaves or feathers, bursting from the wildflowers on campus and smearing across windshields of many a passerbys, including this guilty butterfly-hit-and-runner. I suppose this is what we get for getting so much rain this past year: the catepillars had nothing to do but get busy and lay shitloads of eggs. Now that it's spring with our gorgeous sun and perfect 75 degrees for the next eight months, the cocoons are exploding? I wonder what happens to places that are much rainier (is that a word?), say, London? I bet London would be beautiful if consumed by a flurry of butterflies like the ones we have -- all those marble palaces and gilded monuments swarthed in a gauzy sky of orange and green powdered wings?
Nonetheless, San Diego is pretty gorgeous with the butterflies looking like they're catching us in their net.
So the world can't hate me that much.
FILMS I MUST SEE SOON:
1) In The Mood For Love
2) Delicatessen
3) Saved
4) Sin City
5) Adaptation (must rewatch!)
6) Fever Pitch
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Right now I'm solo, but that'll be changing eventually
Good news: I figured out why I can't sleep. Bad news: It is going to take a lot of will power to stop doing the things that make my world spin and drop out from underneath me.
I got into the portfolio-admissions-only photography class, which was a huge relief since he was only taking 24 students out of 55. If I didn't get in I would have had to drop my photography minor. And I would have had to resent my favorite professor at this school. But luckily, I will have the time, access, and resources to work on two long term photo projects.
I'm also trying to finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius before schoolwork starts to really pile up; now that I've waded through the first 100 pages of horribly depressing yet hilarious stuff, I think it will be easier to digest. I just hate reading/watching depressing things because real life serves enough of that.
Right now I am terribly sad.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Oh! The places you'll go!
I am graduating one quarter early, but instead of thrusting myself into the cold flourescent bosom of the real world, I might apply for the UCDC program. UCDC hooks you up sweetly with a paid internship at a major corporation/organization in Washington, and housing. Two major pluses: I will be able to try out living on the east coast for three months, and I will be able to hang out with Gina for those three months! It's like studying abroad in my own country (the benefit of NO CURRENCY EXCHANGE) with one of my best friends.
Or I will spend the spring travelling through Europe for a few months, staying with my friends all over that continent and gorging myself on H&M and Topshop and depleting my bank account.
Or I will be curled in fetal position breathing into a paperbag at either my parents' house or a small apartment in LA.
Or I could be dead.
I'm scurred about the real world. Honestly, I can't even decide on a class, how can I decide on a future?
Another quandry: do I take LTWR 121: media writing workshop or LTWL 120: Youth Culture in the Age of Rock? I really want to take both but they are at the same time, and would put me at 25 units. This is all my fault for browsing the bookstore and peering at the LTWL 120 booklist which included Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fight Club. Garg.
Hmm so many choices. What if I fuck it up?
Maybe I will just fuck it all and do a pancake tour of the States. Who's coming?
"Extraordinary Machine" by Fiona Apple
New quarter, hurray!
Exciting news: I am seeing Rilo Kiley in April and Bright Eyes & The Faint in June. Whee!
This is me bragging: I totally got straight As this past quarter. Heck yes! Also, I lost five pounds last quarter -- strictly through an all stress, no sleep, lots of anxiety, no time to eat diet! It worked for me, it can work for you!
Two of my cousins are getting married; they are both in their early-mid twenties. That will leave me the oldest single cousin. This means a few things:
1) I am going to Taiwan this summer if my schedule permits.
2) I am going to Santa Barbara for a weekend in October (who wants to play?)
3) I will be engaged in awkward conversations with relatives I haven't seen in a few years, and the following questions will be asked:
a) What are you studying?
b) What are you going to do with that?
c) What are you going to do when you graduate?
d) Do you have a boyfriend?
e) Why don't you have a boyfriend?
f) When are you getting married?
g) Are you a lesbian?
All of which I will promptly respond "42" as I bury my piggy face into a slice of cake and give my mom "Please make them go away" eyes. At least I got some really gorgeous shoes for these occasions. (Except I got them in a much better shade of red and in suede, and for 50% off). I will suffer this until I graduate next Winter Quarter, and spend the following months in Europe spreading my time between crashing with Nicole in Berlin, Matt in London, and Whitney in Grenada.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
"Alameda" by Elliott Smith
The Wayback Machine at archive.org is trippy. I mean, it's not only a walk down memory lane to the things I have archived on this site, it's a Pandora's box of my old guestbook which no longer exists (though interesting to note that I still keep in contact with Raye, Shelby, and Annie), the old domain I owned which was featured in Yahoo! magazine in 1999 (on webmasters under 18), and piles and piles of a weird history that makes me feel like I led a double life. It's weird to see how there really are things (& people) happening around you and underneath your skin that you don't even realize until it smacks you in the face with relevance at a much later time. Life is so strange in the mysterious way the present & concept of time works. I want to break out of it, like in Slaughterhouse Five, and learn to control it so that I could zone in on the moments in the time continuum that I want to relive. Then maybe I could go back to all those nights I spent with my best friends doing silly things and laughing til my throat was raw -- without how I stressed about the future because I know that I'm going to be just fucking fine. And you know what? I still am. And so are you.
Now if only they made a Google for the past...
In other news, apartment-hunting is really fucking exhausting. Good thing Shauna was/will be there to share the pain.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Happy Spring!
"...he paused in the middle when we were doing it and said, 'Oh and by the way, I'm a virgin'."
Though my spring break is not of the Girls Gone Wild caliber, I'm glad I have friends who entertain me with their adventures in sexual deviancy.
Yesterday was the Spring Equinox, the cute boy at Whole Foods reminded me. He also asked, "This is your life, how's it going to be?"
After a pause, I replied, "It's actually pretty wonderful."
I really really really like the new Fiona, particularly "Extraordinary Machine". (Props to Adam for delivering some Apple goodness, and to Jason for the rest). Also, I've been coveting this to myself for awhile, but I suppose it is time to share the wonderfulness that is the new Bright Eyes song & the cutest video I've seen in a long long time: First Day of My Life. It makes me hopeful to someday meet a boy who makes me glad that I didn't die before I met him.
Maybe sometime this week I will redesign the site, I have it all drawn out in my head but the motivation to sit in front of the computer and stare at simple code is majorly losing out to sitting on the comfy green couch and watching TGIF double feature reruns and TBS and MTV all day long; particularly justified when I spend the whole morning making triple shot extra foam nonfat sugarfree vanilla lattes for the frou frou elite.
What I'd like to accomplish this week:
- painting bedroom set in Art Nouveau style
- read Franny and Zooey
- read Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- spend time with Lucy & Pepper, Mom, Michael, & Grandma
- redesign the site
- apartment hunt
- sleep a ton
- love Justin, Laura, Cathy & Danielle
- reply to emails
- sesh with April
- grocery shop
Also: CONGRATULATIONS NICOLE!! Heck yes, graduate school in Germany!!!
Saturday, March 19, 2005
"Truthfully" by Lisa Loeb
In this past ten weeks, commonly known to the college student as the Quarter System, I have managed to:
1) write a 58 page novella
2) work a 120 hour marketing internship
3) The Vagina Monologues
4) develop a really bad case of insomnia
5) write the first act of a screenplay
6) change my minor for the 4th time
7) latte-produce once a week
8) learn the history of photography
9) spend a long weekend in Seattle
10) endure two huge fights with my mother
11) apply for three internships that required five letters of recommendation
12) move
13) house a British boy for a long weekend
14) go to Mexico (with said British boy)
15) go to Disneyland!
After my last final this morning, I spent some time blankly staring at the television, which was Eddie Izzard until I had to return the DVD, in which case afterwards, I had to watch Dawson's Creek.
Next quarter, 21 units:
1) LTWR 110: Screenwriting
2) LTWR 121: Media Writing
3) LTFR 2B: Intermediate French II
4) VIS 164: Photographic Strategies
5) LTWR 195: Instructional Apprentice for Poetry
+ 20 hours of barista-ing.
This week, I intend to read a bunch of books, find possible locations for my apartment next year with Shauna, start work again, clean, finish some scarves and hats, redesign this site, and fix this insomnia problem. Honestly there is nothing worse than insomnia.
Who wishes I dished more gossip?
Thursday, March 17, 2005
"Don't Panic" by Coldplay
Too bad you can't fight gravity.
"Life will be easy as long as you're perfect," She says, straightening my collar.
"Love will come easily as long as you're perfect," He says, kissing me on the forehead.
Because the moment I show flaws, I know you will call me on them. I can count on it, like I can count on waking up every morning nauseous and not being able to sleep til 4am no matter what time I go to bed. One, two, three, fifty. Bruises and scars, you're looking and poking at all of them.
What a way to be ready for an 8AM final.
On a much happier note, HECK YES: Whitney in Spain next year!
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Spring Break Reading List (or books to read/finish when I should be studying for finals)
1. Franny & Zooey, J.D. Salinger
2. How To Leave A Country, Cris Mazza
3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
4. The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst
5. The Prophet, Kahil Gibran
6. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Someone recommend something not depressing.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far.
I want to be in England again, I want to walk down cobblestone steps in ridiculous heels, I want to have wine with my professors in front of Christopher Marlowe's room, I want to sleep in an attic room in the alleyway of Botolph Lane, I want to have tea at Granchester Orchard with Virginia Woolf's ghost -- maybe we would talk about poetry or pain or love or death, maybe we would talk about the weather because it is British to do so. I want to see Sondre Lerche at really small venues in London, and I want to almost run him over on my way to the bathroom because I hear he is a beautiful beautiful boy but on the small side -- and I would love to run into him in a hallway and hold him against the wall and lean up to kiss him (because I am on the small side as well) and his sad full eyes and maybe smear a bit of that beauty into my skin so that maybe I could also be hauntingly beautiful too because I am not a pretty girl.
I want to be in England again, where I could leave so much of this baggage and bullshit behind, what a weight I left behind, what unbearable lightness of being. I need to read that. I've got nothing here for me but weight.
"Nothing Better" by the Postal Service
Nothing goes better with a 9:30am lecture than all my organs deciding to rearrange themselves. Yesterday, everything tasted like rubberbands and I felt like I had swallowed a whole bag of them. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Also, my not watching television the past couple years hasn't been a real problem for me until recently -- when I realized that in order to work in the industry, especially as a screenwriter (which I have discovered a newfound love for after this quarter's class), often times your job application asks for a spec script from a current TV show.
I knew I should have spent more time watching TV and less time reading.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
"Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes" by Beck
Me: "I think I'm going to sweep the floor right now."
Alice (my roommate): "I think I just came."
Week of Anti-Capitalism/Consumerism
After all my gluttonous spending this weekend, I've decided to challenge myself with an anti-capitalist/consumerist week. I am not allowed to buy anything or spend more than $25 on food. So far I've spent $16.36 today though, goddamn Girl Scouts. I bought Samoas that have gone up to $4/box now! Even better, the 10 year old girl scout reassured me, "Don't worry though, luckily the prices are plateauing for awhile." I smiled, but really I meant to say, "What the fuck? You're ten years old. You shouldn't know words like 'plateauing'! Stop being such a little enterprising capitalist and go back to your backyard and play with your Barbies!"
& I was not the answer, so forget you ever thought it was me.
I love that finding hidden musical tropes for certain phases of life really is like opening up Pandora's box. I've resorted to listening to the radio last week because I hadn't changed my CDs in years it seems, and they are playing a lot of music from 2001-2002. I had forgotten how absolutely perfect "Here Is Gone" by the Goo Goo Dolls had categorized a certain time. I feel like life gets so wide sometimes that you forget about all the minute details, and it's a great comfort that smells and songs will always bring me back in aching detail. It's nice to stand still and look back at how far you've come.
I got stranded at home one more night than I thought I would be because of torrential storms in San Diego; consequently, I had to miss out on the Vagina Monologues cast party -- which I was greatly devastated about, let me tell you. But I think it was for the best, because the Cold War between my mother and I is over. We went shopping on Saturday afternoon, and she bought me adorable heels from the Banana Republic, a hot pink blazer from J. Crew, and a few shirts from the Gap. And then I went grocery shopping in my parents' fridge and pantry, being broke as I am.
The washing machine in our apartment is broken, and I discovered this halfway through my load when two hours later I realized the machine hadn't buzzed at me yet. Much to my dismay, I had to fish my (luckily light) load out of the washer and rinse and wring them out in the bathroom sink to toss into the dryer. Rawr. Domesticity sucks.
So much more to say, but lack of desire to say it. So much to do. I'm going to go to a coffeehouse, write for awhile, hope I haven't been stood up, and watch the sunset. I sure could use a little bit of your love.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
"Trouble" by Ray LaMontagne
"Not only that, you're like said as a part of a chain of women."
I've been throwing up and having pains in the kidney region. I would go to Student Health or a doctor or something, but I'm fairly sure the diagnosis will be pregnant or kidney stones again. So that must be it. I'm either passing a child or passing something as painful as a child soon.
Things should stop fucking blindsighting me and punching me in the stomach until I feel like all the wind is knocked out of me and my veins ache because I can't catch my breath again.
I'm going home, for the first time in two and a half months. My mother has been really fucking mad at me for the past month and a half. It's time for me to start acting like a fucking grown up and do some damage control.
You can know all the facts about me that you want, but you can never really know about me. You can be a lurker, in fact most of you are, & you can know all this and think what you want. You can know that I travel a lot, and that I am too dependent on friends. You can know that I hated high school and I was/am a terribly huge nerd; that I'm awkward and always had people laughing at me. You can know that I made the only boy I've ever thought was worth dating cry in front of me, I broke his fucking heart just because I could, you can know about the boys who have dumped me by saying "I don't want to have a girlfriend right now" just to get a serious girlfriend the next week (4, with 3 relationships still going strong). You can know how many drugs I'm on. You can know what my grades are. You can know I studied at Cambridge, and will be graduating early -- you can know that I plan to do nothing with all of it and go to art school. You can know that I've tied the most intimate position of my mind up in the most deceiving and emotionally abusive relationship in the history of relationships for the past three and a half years. You can know what my bank account currently holds ($175.34) and my current credit card bill ($150.86). You can know that I have terrible anxiety attacks and that I am obsessive compulsive. You can know how many boys I've kissed (12), how many girls I've kissed (3), and how many nights I've been so drunk I don't remember them (0).
Most of you will probably think I am very stupid for all the things that I have done/am currently doing. But luckily, most of you will also never know me. The only way to find out how much it burns is to ask me. I have no discrepancy.
People who are obese have a high risk of suffering brain atrophy, at an earlier age and at a higher percentage. I wish I were obese.
"Little Red Corvette" by Prince
I'm cooking to Prince. Curry vegetable stir-fry, and I'm not even setting off the smoke detector. Who can be more fun than me? Who?
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
"Not About Love" by Fiona Apple
So get this: I am going to be a tutor/TA for the lower division poetry class next quarter. I, who hated poetry more than calculus, will be helping impressionable young college coeds find their way with poetry. Don't panic.
The main reason is because I really want to work with this really awesome professor. I had her for my very first fiction class over a year ago. Her first poetry reading was at CBGB, she ran for president in 1992, she is a distantly related Kennedy, and she is known as the rock star of the poetry world.
I'm also peeing my pants with excitement right now as one of my darlingest friends set me up with leaked songs from Fiona Apple's New-But-Never-To-Be-Released Extraordinary Machine. That's my favorite manhater.
Instead of doing any work, because I hate my fucking novella so much that I want to burn it and erase all evidence that I had ever had anything to do with it, I'm going to keep reading the two books I got from Bluestocking (a used bookstore in Hillcrest) this past weekend: Kissing In Manhattan by David Schickler and How To Leave a Country by Cris Mazza. I'll let you know how it goes (I'm currently working on the first one).
Oh God how I need to work to pay for my exorbitant habits of travelling, used book stores, and shoes. Oh God, shoes. I got the most adorable pair of gold shoes this weekend too. And probably some weird skin disease from Mexico as I have three bug bites on my legs. Whoops there I go oversharing.
Stay classy, San Diego (& everywhere else).
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