State of the Union Undressed

- Home again, Home Again Jiggedy Jig: My drive to work is broken into four parts, with those four parts emphasized on the way home. The first is the leg from work to Olive, the second on Olive to the end of the Warner Brothers lot, the next from WB to the 101, and the last leg from 101 to home. Usually the first two parts are the quickest. Sometimes I get lucky and it's only a 20-25 minute drive (as it is on the way in) other days it's 40, though generally not much longer. Of late the soundtrack to my driving has been You Forgot it in People, but this week has seen some Nick Cave, Radiohead, Explosions in the Sky and The Stooges in the mix.

- I'm Dirt: Speaking of The Stooges , I've been listening to a lot of Fun House lately. It's such a sexy album. It should be noted that Iggy Pop (aka James Osterberg) came from Michigan, and he was inspired by the industrial noises around him at the time. It's interesting to think that the two of the most influential sounds of all time (Iggy and the Motown sound) were born in of all places Michigan. On some level I see a parallel between the two. Listening to Fun House, the paramount of Iggy's career, is like listening to hard passionate sex. "Ooh, I've been hurt / And I don't care / Ooh, I've been hurt /And I don't care / Cause I'm burning inside/ I'm just a dreaming this life / And do you feel it? Said do you feel it when you touch me? Said do you feel it when you touch me?"

- "The undefined ennui" Life is weird right now. As I guess it should be. I've been working steady for over two months now, and I've been in Los Angeles for seven months (a little over the day). The thing I had to accept about the move is that, unlike Portland, it would take a long while to be in the position I was in in Portland: Surrounded by friends, and well connected. Here I have friends, but they're spread out, and not as oft brought together. In Portland I was well liked, here I'm forced to make new friends, and have to essentially audition more. That's the fun of it, though. But, in the move, I had to admit certain things to myself and one of them was that it would probably be a while before I met someone that might be worth considering dating. Though there have been brief flickers here and there, momentary chemistries, the move proved me right, and as I have spent some time struggling to know the city and its locales, I have yet to get to a place that has put me in the right sort of contact. Added to that is that this town is big on money and power, two things I have in relative short supply (I hope to move to a town where one's knowledge of Howard Hawks makes you a God among men), and yet anyone I meet I'd hope wouldn't find me attractive for those things. Though things are looking way up, my circle of friends doesn't include a lot of those opportunities, and even though I'm an incredibly picky dater, it's nice to even have the illusion of an almost relationship to draw upon. As I look back, there's usually someone that if I'm not dating, that I'm circling. Mixed in with it is that my schedule is usually ass backwards, Monday through Thursday night I generally either don't get home until 9 or 10, or get home briefly and get back by 10 or later, whereas my weekends tend to be more open (which has been good as it gives me the time to write, which I always have things to write about).

The big thing is, as I realized while conceptualizing this blog entree, was that life is filled with contradictions, and it's best to just shut up. When you're in a relationship you want to be single. When you're single, you want to be with someone. When you're out sometimes you want to be home, when you're home, you want to be out. As Renton said, I guess the best cure is heroin.