Just tonight I was saying to my neighbour that I'm incapable of planning things in advance. His question: what am I doing tomorrow? Insanely lame, I know. But then I started flipping through the Georgia Straight and caught wind of an event. I dashed to my computer and in the hopes that there were still tickets. Huzzah! So even though I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow, I know what I'll be doing November 1st.
Today my amazing story editor leaves the sweltering West Coast to join the ranks of the abs&boobs wakeboarding show. When called upon for words of advice, I had a few. Take one apple cider vinegar pill each day to stave off the mosquitoes. Drive to Gimli now and then for pickerel burgers. And prepare yourself for working with the Three Bears. One producer's too hot. One's too cold. And one's just right.
Waiting on my hands for word on work and whether last year's juggle will be replaced with another. Inevitably, the discussion of television comes up: what we watch, what we like (these things aren't mutually exclusive). And while I know there are people out there who eat up Desperate Housewives and House and Gilmore Girls, time and time again I find myself with scribes of a feather. Twin Peaks. The Singing Detective. Freaks & Geeks. Lost. Deadwood. Buffy. Six Feet Under (narm!). Anything that Ricky Gervais has so much as glanced at. Spaced. Rescue Me. And, just so we're all on the real same page: Battlestar Galactica.
Touchstones are important. Not only to know that you're with likeminded people, but that you're headed in a likeminded direction. Take that show from last summer. We all watched or liked the same shows, but had such different touchstones that the thing ended up being a mishmash. The producers wanted to make 90210. The head writer seemed to be going for something more like Dawson's Creek. I wanted Veronica Mars. Another writer wanted to make it like Buffy. The consultant wanted to collect a paycheque. The actors wanted it to be like The O.C. And the directors? I think they had The Beachcombers in mind. All sort of similar in tone, right, but totally different in terms of stakes. The worst that'll happen on 90210? Brenda has a hissy fit and Dylan sulks. On The O.C.? The skeletal chick who went sapphic throws a hissy fit and Chino sulks then picks a fight with someone twice his size. (I gave up midway through second season). On Buffy? Kidnapping, slice'n'dicing, hijinx. We have stakes! On Veronica Mars? Well, her best friend wound up dead. Dead!!! Stakes!!!
Coulda woulda shoulda. So, yeah, I ended up collected the paycheques too. And now that I'm bound to a mortgage and need more furniture, I'm not complaining in the slightest. This is the first week I've had off, truly off, for about two years. Last night, the young hot lad and I went to Crescent Beach. If his every move is learned, as he claims, from the writing staff of a certain show about four women that's really about gay men, then last night's episode was the one wherein Miranda gets with the king of PDAs. So if I didn't know for certain that his parents live in Winnipeg, it wouldn't have been unrealistic to have expected to see them strolling along the beach at about midnight last night as clothes were tossed assunder. Er, um, asunder.
This morning I watched from across the street as a house that had stood for sixty years came down in about six minutes. Instead of feeling remorse for what had been, I felt excitement at the thought of what would come to be. Change is inevitable.
A smart man, the one I'm currently dating (kazow is he hot), called me on my past: the things I'd let go of all too easily vs. the things I'd crazy-glued to my anger. When he laid it all out for me like a sidewalk sale, it looked ridiculous. I've thrown out all the objects that don't fit in my new situation -- and so if I wouldn't keep an ugly dress or carpet, why do I cling to ugly emotions like resentment and disappointment. Emotional clean-sweep, that's what's needed. And if a house that stood for sixty years can come down in six minutes, then it's not so impossible to ditch the remorse in favour of excitement for what is coming to be.
Strange. Whenever I hear this song, which isn't often, it gets me all mixed up. Last year, I was in the thick of the abs&boobs wakeboarding show. I was coming to terms with losing my mother. In short, I was a mess. I drank too much, I smoked too much, I drove to places where the pencil dropped on the map and when I reached my destinations, I drank and smoked until I shoveled myself back into my rental car and then drove back only to find myself parked in alleyways, killing time, cellphone at the ready to call the tried and true back home. I was desperately lonely and awe-fully alone. I went to church twice, spent whole afternoons pounding my fists into the soft earth of summerfallow fields near St. Malo. I watched from a parking lot behind an abattoir as other people, happier people, innertubed down the Red River. I aged ten years in one month. I grew up on the spot. I sped and was caught by camera's glare four times. I stood outside in a downpour so heavy it was like the city was driving through a carwash. I marked the receding mudlines of the Assiniboine as it boiled down. I found solace in rhubarb pie and turkey sausages made by solemn Mennonites in white lace bonnets. I dropped weight like I was diseased. And I was.
And yet when I hear that song, it makes me want to do it all over again. Strange.
