#7 - Los Angeles...

Alarm is set for 3 in the morning. I've got a back up. Have to get north of Sunset to meet my ride before 4. I should get to Dodger stadium by 530, extremely early for the 724 race. I'll lay on the ground and think about times when things have been tough, or when things are going to be tough. Time will fly. I'll line up, minutes before that gun and I'll kneel to the ground, because I do this thing that started a few marathons ago where I take my hand and push it into the ground, twist my knuckles into the pavement until they bleed a little bit, until I can feel that burn and sting before I pull back, before I feel the hurt of sweat covering those fresh parts of my hand for the next 3 hours, because that's how I've found I need to do business. I have never needed a marathon as much as I need this one tomorrow, I know that. Should be a great day.

Opie...

There's a mix that I can make of Modest Mouse - all Modest Mouse that feels what I'm feeling now. Boys are raw - I'm dealing with a severe imbalance right now and things are swinging. The music is roaring on my head and I was going through, always going through when I stopped and let myself come to an understanding that I am fucked this minute, just fucked and I can sit here and watch it and feel it watching me or I could take a drive or pretend like I could go to sleep - or write something down - admitting that I have nothing to communicate to - that I don't have the skills to communicate myself to anything but myself. Watch me feel love. Watch me push. Fucking hard. Watch me spit. Fucking spit. I am dirty. I am filthy. I am a motherfucker. Durban is coming after me. This marathon is coming after me. The life I've been bleeding for is at my door and I either won't open up or it won't ring my bell. I can't understand faces but my own. This is how it happens - a rush, all at once, swirling all fucking around me until I cave or my back snaps. I want to put my teeth into this bloody world and it's making me wait. It's making me wait and nothing is making me wait. I am a coward and fearless. Losing my shit. Never seen things so clear. Ever. I am ready to accept everything these statements imply.

I tried to explain all of this to someone at lunch today and he told me I was in bad shape and dark but that it was all very fascinating...that I do everything I do with the above mentioned and pictured exterior...that he worries about me and worries about that. I told him no one should ever worry about me. Ever. Ever. Ever. I adore bad shape. I am not in bad shape. I write and speak strong words because it's all I know. I want a lot from this world so I have to be unstoppable. Standing still hurts me. It makes me want to cry and kill. I feel like I'm standing still right now. I want to cry and kill and scream and bail and learn to fucking breathe again and find new skin. I want everything anyone has ever had that would cause me envy. I am going to build and destroy the world. I am coming to terms with that. Coming to terms. Repeating myself. Repeating myself.

Quake!

I have these mirrors in my bedroom that stretch from the floor to the ceiling, are quite unstable and also reveal self interested women. They woke me up around 4 today, along with a slam to my dainty roof, and the world shook a little bit - and there's always this moment during an earthquake, no matter how small, where I sit still and tell myself to get ready, that I am about to have to fight for my life. This one was small, and it hasn't happened yet, but what a way to start the morning.

I love LA.

Wow Me Girls, Fucking Wow Me...

Something Pulling Hard...

Usually happens when life's about to change and hard and there's nothing I can do about it.

Mia Wasikowska...

What a heroine, what a talent, what a future. I was at a party some time ago, drunk, so it must have been some time ago where she was being honored for Australians in film. Sweet, beautiful girl. I'd seen her on In Treatment but not extensively and I remember thinking to myself something like can a girl with a name that difficult really conquer this town?

I just watched her in Burton's extravaganza "Alice" with Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter and monsters and magic and she's the one still ringing in my head. That's nothing short of a miracle. Absolutely enjoyable movie. 20 years old. I'll be redundant and say it anyway...genius.

Durban...

Is in my head, hard, all the time these days. He won't relent - we have to go we have to go we have to go. When something creeps into his head, it becomes unstoppable. He knows me, all too well, knows my growing need to flee. I've been trying to keep things from him as best I can - not letting him in on anything until it is absolutely necessary. See, John has little patience. He has no patience. He makes me feel like I have an abundance, which is astoundingly not accurate. The thing about knowing John for as long as I have is that we have something of a shorthand. We've seen a lot of the world, been through a lot of the same shit. It makes this easier, our flow. He's been sending me pictures, one every hour on the hour today saying something like book it already motherfucker what are you waiting for...



I keep on telling him, keep on trying to explain my life, how he couldn't understand it and he usually says something like what's there to understand. Then, ditch your fucking crutches. Then, all you are these days are crutches, and weak. Then, writing bitch posts about fucking gingerbread houses and our book that you're trying to sell to New York. Then, fuck New York, they'll never understand us anyway. Then, that's not what this is about. Then, I thought this wasn't about that - or didn't need to be about that - that one would always happen without the other - that nothing is contingent and if you say it is, then you are finished my friend and not only that but that I might not want you as a friend anymore because you used to be so immune to traps - so immune. I usually take a breath and say nothing or say something like Mid May, over and over but for whatever reason, it's never good enough for him, as if I expected it to be - as if he expects me to leave tomorrow, say something like I'm on my way John, see you in Bangkok. I still have a couple ends to tie up in life or so I tell myself. No, I do. The point, I keep telling him is that someone has to sell this book - and he sure as hell isn't going to do it. Someone has got to give us weight, relevance. That's on me, and I keep trying to explain this and he doesn't seem to care, and there's really nothing I can do about that except tell him that my calendar is circled.

Our time will come again. It's approaching. Love you, brother, now leave me the fuck alone for a month. I'm trying to make you famous.

Oh, Absolutely...

Not Sure Why This Makes Me Want To Live In New York...

Wow!

This one snuck up - first post the Olympics. Back to the beautiful. Thank you Bill for sending this - they're gonna burn Rockefeller down!

Shine On You Beautiful Fucking Poet Songbird...

You're on repeat, carrying me into the night. Shine on...

Sugar Cake Houses...

This is what I've been doing for the last 5 years of my life, making Sugar Cake Houses. As you may or may not know, Los Angeles is the Sugar Cake capitol of the world. It's been a fight, no doubt about it. I've been working hard, so hard for a long time, because no matter what I do, the only chase I know is to be the best in the world, or at least shoot for it. So that's what I've been doing. Last year, something crazy happened. My Sugar Cakes were getting very delicious, almost world-class and I was right on the cusp of being a great Sugar Cake House baker. On the cusp and yet something in me felt off and out of sync and unsatisfied, so what I decided to do was something incredible. The white cake I had been using for years had grown tiresome, and so I switched to wheat. A wheat based Sugar Cake House!? That's what people said, people who were familiar with my original recipe, supporters of my original recipe. They said I was crazy. They told me to get whatever I had to get out of my system and to come back to white cake as soon as possible. I wasn't so sure. Something in me said that wheat could not only be delicious, but even better than the famed white cake I had been using for the last 5 years of my life. It took a while to perfect my new recipe, but when I did, the supporters of my white cake came on board, supporting my wheat base with ultimate praise. They didn't know a wheat based Sugar Cake House could taste so good. Neither did I.

One day, an idea was presented. I had been trying so hard for so long to get the Los Angeles community to embrace my original Sugar Cake Houses that I had never even thought to go after the prestigeous east coast wheat based Sugar Cake House community, until recently. Recently, I sent my best Sugar Cake House to of of the world's greatest Sugar Cake House bakers, to get the people in New York to take me seriously, this is what he said...

"Reilly's sugar cake house is shocking and beautiful and true to his generation of bakers. It does what most bakers have forgotten how to do; it takes risks and makes you feel something. In a world full of shit sugar cake houses, we have a diamond."

Now my Sugar Cake House is touring all the Houses of Sugar Cake Houses in New York. If they decide that my Sugar Cake House is delicious, I'll have to say goodbye. It is delicious.

Thank You Mr. Z...

Who has been catching a lot of flak for coming out and saying that the new "We Are The World" song and video should never have happened. A very smart man, he likened the original song to an "untouchable" piece of work, comparing it to Michael Jackson's Thriller. Mr. Carter is a very smart man - smart enough to hide his disdain in the form of a tribute to the late, great Michael Jackson. Very smart man. Also a man who came out and wrote a brilliant and original song of his own with Bono and Rihanna the minute after the Haiti earthquake. So in my book, this guy earned the right to say exactly what he wants. I'm writing him into this intro because I feel like if we sat down and chatted through our feelings on the subject, his would mirror at least a shade of a dimension of mine.

I texted a 10 dollar donation in through my phone. Because of that small decision, I feel I have the right to feel what I feel. Naturally, I'm going to say what I want regardless. I was picking up food from Kings Road cafe on Saturday and saw the We Are The World video playing on the TV. It was fucking grotesque. Fucking grotesque. I have no other words to explain my reaction. I was out with a many times mentioned star on this blog, Miss Lindsey, and I confessed my feelings and told her I felt like I had lost my appetite and that I understood what an awful person that makes me, to see poison in something that's supposed to be so gifting as this. But that's my truth. That's my guts. Evil or not, I have come to accept everything they make me.

So what's the problem? It's insincere. It's fucking gross. It's every publicist in town making a mad dash to get their clients in this berserk assembly of note competing, hand waving, fighting for camera time madness. It's madness, fucking madness. Watch this thing, really watch it. All I know is that if I were an artist in the position to do something like this, and I heard about what it was going to be, I wouldn't even hesitate to pass. I'd write a check and walk it down to the closest red cross (which I know, many of them have) or whatever and then I'd sit at home and try my hardest, my fucking hardest to grasp what catastrophic destruction would feel like if it happened in my own backyard. That's what I did. That's what honoring their world meant to me. To each their own, I know...and I respect that, more than anyone, believe me. But still. Still.

If someone came up to me and told me I was an awful person, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves, maybe fight them, spit in their faces, tell them they know nothing about me. Not a fucking thing. This is all right. Correct. Founded.

Wow...

Why I will always wear Nike, ultimate respect for what they try to say, always. Because on a day where I told myself I would do nothing, they make me want to run a hard 20.

Fucking amazing.

Really Wish I'd Thought Of This...

Genius.

Broken Up By This One...

I had it circled on my calendar for about a month and tonight came and I've been all fucked up because change is coming and it's freezing and raining and I feel like I just had my heart broken which is funny because that's not possible right now. I was going to see St. Vincent at El Rey on this Tuesday night. I taught class and was going to rush over there but I couldn't do it. There's too much circling - too much shit - too much do you really want to do everything you set out to do well here is your chance don't fuck it up right before you step up to the plate type of angst circling in me. And I've been trying to figure it out, keep telling myself that a good night's sleep will clear everything away and I know this to be true but it doesn't excuse the fact that I was all poison today, somewhat still poison right now. The culprit isn't necessarily change - I find I embrace and crave and seek change well. It's the sweeping form. The last time I felt like this - to an extent, I swapped jobs, lost a girl, got my script kicked and someone died - all at the same time. Now, it doesn't feel like that and like I said, I'll wake up tomorrow morning excellent, convinced of my bi-polarity and get on with the thousand things I have to get on with. Just my style. This is just how I behave.

But I really wanted to see this song tonight - because it's one that I could set on repeat and let it roll and let it roll and it just grabs deeper every time, something I can't really define. I think that's what we call genius around here. But I didn't, so I'll be stomping around YouTube tomorrow hoping someone taped it, hoping I don't wake up in the morning and regret the relentless work I'm chasing right now. I won't. That's just not how I behave. So beautiful though, would have been nice to collect. Another time, another place.

Happy Almost American Holiday Everyone...

I Don't Care...

If you don't watch television, if you don't believe in it. I don't care if you haven't watched the previous 5 seasons of Lost. I don't care if you don't know anything about anything about anything. The final season of Lost starts tonight. Season 6. It's going to go down as the greatest season of the greatest and most ambitious television show in history of television. I know these things. Just watch it. Just watch it.

Chansanity...

Sometime this morning I got out of bed and came to my computer. See, when I write I listen to music - it helps to fill in the empty. I was hearing some things for about an hour or two before I put on Cat Power's above cover of "I Found A Reason." I think this began around 10 AM. I heard it once and then another song came on before I set iTunes to repeat and clicked it again. Then I got into a groove until 1230 and realized that I had been listening to the same song for the past 150 minutes. This is a 2 minute song so I listened to it 75 times this morning. I can't really explain this. After lunch, I sat down at about 130 to get going again. It had been a good and tough and crushing day of work (seriously) and I didn't want to fuck with that so I did it again, the same thing. The same song. It's 630. 300 minutes divided by 2 means I've listened to the same song 225 times today. 225 times. Beautiful song, fucking beautiful, but even for an obsessive like me, I'm worried I am Chan Marshall right now. I fucking have to be, right? Whoever she is and whatever she does in real life is now my burden to wear at least for the rest of the night. I feel like I have to be sultry and wandering somewhere, like downtown around skid row, into the early hours of the morning, sleeping on the street, looking for either good meth or a good lover.

Wow Times 2...

Just swimming in it these days, swimming.