DEAD THE WHOLE TIME

I've been pretty down lately, as there isn't much time that I don't spend worrying about dying, money, or Lisa moving to Connecticut, but this weekend was something else.


- On Thursday I took Lisa to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages here in Hollywood. Lisa had seen the show a few times before but I had never seen it and I enjoyed it, especially seeing it with someone who's such a big fan.

- On Friday we went to Disneyland for Lisa's birthday. Neither of us has been in a while and we stayed the whole day, ate a very tasty (and very pricey) lunch at the Blue Bayou, and rode everything we wanted to. We really had a blast.

- Today I hosted my first-ever Oscar party and it went off without a hitch. A bunch of friends showed up and we enjoyed the show, even though there weren't really any thrilling surprises and nobody was too excited about the movie selection this year.

- Also today I was notified by a friend of a potential job opportunity that I just now applied for over the internet. If I were to get this job it would seriously be a dream come true. The drawback is that I don't have much experience in "the industry," but I have worked for this company before (hint, hint) so maybe that will make my resume stand out above the other applicants as it says that would be a plus in the job listing. I'm really crossing my fingers on this one. Wish me luck.

1 - The Fall
2 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3 - Let the Right One In
4 - The Dark Knight
5 - Man On Wire
6 - Frost/Nixon
7 - WALL-E
8 - Transsiberian
9 - Doubt
10 - The Wreslter


Honorable Mentions (In Alphabetical Order)

Changeling
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Snow Angels
Synecdoche, New York

Why are they* cutting down all the trees around our apartment building? Specifically, why are they cutting down the one that blocks the sunlight from coming through my window in the early mornings? And why are they doing it in the early morning on a Saturday with an ear-piercing rusty chainsaw? And why are they doing it in such a way that sends each branch crashing into my window before it plummets to the ground below? And why is it taking them so long? And finally, why, if life and work demand that I be nocturnal, am I not at least allowed to sleep late?

Occasionally** I feel like someone is out to get me.



* By "they" I mean the hired workers who are arguing loudly in Spanish between cutting down each branch about (I assume) how to go about cutting down the following branch so that it will crash directly into my window before falling to the ground.
** By "Occasionally" I mean always.

I wish I could get a little sticker that says "I Am Self-Righteous" next to an American flag so I can wear it on election day.

I am roughly a day and a half away from departing the Eastern seaboard and once again heading west, to rejoin those somewhat more like-minded individuals than the family and friends I've mingled with while once again living in my home town.

As to my health, I'm still not exactly back to normal. I've become convinced that an antibiotic I took last fall (in an attempt to battle my ongoing IBS) has permanently damaged my liver and that's what's been causing my discomfort and related issues over the past ten months. Whether this effect can be reversed or will fade with time remains to be seen. I've been pretty upset and stressed out about it lately but I'm going to make a go of it back in L.A. and see if I can distract myself enough that I might enjoy my life on some level despite my several chronic maladies.

In addition to immediately returning to work at the Arclight upon my return, I'm also (at the insistence of my mother and ex-girlfriend) going back into therapy, probably as soon as I get back. I think I can admit that I have some serious emotional and mental issues that probably need to be dealt with as soon as possible before I really lose it.

Nevertheless, I'll be back in sunny California come Wednesday. Who knows what adventures this go 'round will bring.

Well, the summer is quickly drawing to a close. And with it I am departing New York and heading back to Los Angeles. That's right folks, I bought my plane ticket last night. Three weeks from tomorrow I head back to the City of Angels. I (may) have a job and I (might) have an apartment that I will (possibly) be able to pay for. It's almost exciting how tentative everything is. But that's me. I like to live life on the edge. Right.

Thankfully I've been bit by the creativity bug again and have been writing up a storm lately. I've got a video sketch ready to shoot with my friends when I get back to L.A., I've been writing some new stand-up material, and even the one-man show that before this summerhad been gathering dust in the murky corners of my brain has been coming along nicely. I hope I can keep the momentum going once I'm back out west. It'd be nice to actually make something of myself for once.

Both of the previous two posts have ended with "L.A." I guess that shows where I'm focusing my attention nowadays.

It's nice to be able to look forward to something again.

Looking back over some entries from the fall, it's becoming a little more clear that the breakup may have triggered a bit of a breakdown, as it were. It's sad that it's taking me up to a year to get over it, but I guess that's the way it goes.

Lisa and I have had our battles since then, mostly because I took advantage of her kindness or was unwilling to wake up to reality, but in the end I feel like our relationship has settled into a very solid friendship. And as much as I hate to admit it I think this forced physical separation has done wonders to facilitate that.

That being said, I'm really looking forward to her 5-day visit in September. It'll be a good opportunity to put the current state of things to a more practical test, and also to set a precedent for how things should hopefully carry over to my move back to L.A.

I've decided that my maturity level is about ten years behind where it should be. My teenage years were really just an extension of my childhood, as I mostly just collected action figures and played video games. Then my twenties were my teenage years, wherein I got drunk for the first time, had my first real jobs, and experienced my first genuine relationship. Now, at the age of 28, I finally feel like I'm entering into adulthood. The past year in particular, between breaking up with Lisa and this most recent health crisis (possibly brought on by said breakup), has been very sobering for me. With the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm actually feeling a bit more confident and self-assured than I've been in the past. I'm hoping that this new outlook will help me be a bit more responsible once I get back out to L.A.

Hi blog. Nice to see you. I haven't really posted much of anything here in a long while. Who knows if anyone even checks it.

Anyway, I've been in NY for the past three months or so. Around Christmastime last year I started feeling really sick, then I thought my liver had become permanently enlarged. When that didn't go away after a few months I started panicking, missing a lot of work, and then I kept going into the hospital where they couldn't find much wrong with me. So I was racking up a lot of expensive health care bills that I couldn't afford. I also couldn't pay my rent or my taxes because of the work I'd missed. Around late March I decided I was going to let my Hollywood apartment's lease expire and move in with my mom in NY, where I could apply for Medicaid and live rent-free until I felt better.

So I've been here since late April. I've been seeing doctors, but they haven't been much help. At certain points I've been 100% convinced that I have certain terminal diseases, and the doctors have run all sorts of tests and concluded that there's nothing really seriously wrong with me. As you can imagine, this is pretty frustrating. Now I've kind of come around to the idea that I'm either dying of some yet-to-be diagnosed malady or I'm a severe, raving hypochondriac. I know a lot of people are leaning toward the latter, and for the first time I'm ready to admit that I see it as a real possibility.

In the meantime I've gone back to my old job at Rockefeller Center, hung out with some old friends, attended Billy Joel's "Last Play at Shea" featuring Sir Paul McCartney among other rock legends, and in general just sort of sat around feeling sorry for myself.

So I'm in a bit of a quandry. I don't want to live like this anymore. As much as I love New York, I feel like I'm in limbo here. I don't care much for living with my mom. I mean, I definitely appreciate her taking me back in, but her house is tiny and there's not much privacy. I also really, really miss my friends in Los Angeles, even though a big part of the reason I left was not being able to enjoy my time with them because I felt the way I did. I miss feeling like I have a life outside of my job and movies. I still feel physically the same as I did when I left, which is to say not great, but I've had enough of this and I'm ready to go back.

I'm currently planning my return to Los Angeles. At first I was going to move in with my friends Doug and Aimee at the Hollywood House (where I would occupy the tiniest of rooms), but they needed me there by August 1st, and then September 1st. And I wasn't going to be ready by then. So I had to back out. Then my friend Alex announced that he was looking for a new roommate in his regular-sized apartment, so I asked him if I could possibly move in October 1st. He agreed since this was technically the end of his current rommate's lease, and she would be responsible for finding a sublet in the interim month of September.

Now I have a place to live that I feel good about even though I will probably need to either find a better-paying job than the one I had or work a second part-time job in order to afford it. I also feel pretty guilty about leaving behind the Hollywood House because of my uncertain return date just to wind up a couple blocks west of there a mere month later. I will feel even worse if they don't find someone to take that spot by September or, worse yet, October. Maybe I shouldn't continue to get worked up by it, but I feel awful for what might be perceived as abandoning the room there for better digs, even though that's not quite how it happened.

Either way, for the time being my health concerns have become eclipsed by a gnawing guilt. I guess that's something. I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but it's something. I mean, I've committed far more inconsiderate slights against my friends and been forgiven for them, but that doesn't mean I won't worry about them thinking bad of me. Hell, I probably deserve it.

I'm looking forward to being back in California. I'm much less lonely there and I feel at home among those guys, much more than I do here anyways, which is ironic because I grew up here. I just hope everything kind of settles down after a while and things can get back to normal. Or as normal as my life can get these days. Maybe I'll even feel better physically once I have these emotional issues ironed out. Lisa seems to think that'll help, anyway.

Regardless, I wanted to post this here just to have a way to get it off my chest, as I've been trying to schedule a therapist appointment for months to no avail. I do sort of miss writing in this blog, but I won't say I'll do it regularly from now on because then I almost certainly won't, as you've no doubt witnessed several times in the past.

I'm less than ten hours away from seeing Indiana Jones 4, a movie I've waited almost twenty years for, and I'm not too excited about it.

Part of that may have to do with not being allowed to eat anything today. I imagine I'll be pretty grumpy by midnight.

1 - No Country for Old Men
2 - The King of Kong
3 - There Will Be Blood
4 - Ratatouille
5 - Sweeney Todd
6 - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
7 - Superbad
8 - Michael Clayton
9 - My Kid Could Paint That
10 - Zodiac


Honorable Mentions

Gone Baby Gone
Juno
Once
Rescue Dawn
The Savages

I seriously need a haircut. Like, really badly.

I've come to believe that once I do finally get a haircut all of my anxiety issues and emotional anguish and health problems will disappear with the mop of hair that has accumulated on my skull, like some kind of reverse Samson.

I feel a whole lot better right now. I'm sure much of that has to do with finally getting a decent amount of sleep.

I may actually clean my apartment.

I took the bus down to Little Bar for trivia night this evening, and a bunch more friends showed up than I'd expected. In fact, the bar was much more crowded than usual and there wasn't even a major sporting event playing on TV. It was a lot of fun but we came in 4th. Out of a whole bunch of teams, though, so that's not bad at all.

It's nice to get out of my apartment. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love sitting around by myself watching Futurama and playing Super Castlevania IV as much as the next guy, but those things are even better in moderation.

As you may or may not have guessed, I've sunk into a pretty deep depresssion lately. I haven't seen much of friends, I've been working weird hours, and I spend all my free time and days off just puttering around the internet. Last night I spent a good four or five hours (!) watch all the videos on the Angry Video Game Nerd website. They're hysterical, and the guy looks so much like a college-era Brent it's sort of fascinating, but wasting so much time still made me feel like crap. And today hasn't been much better so far.

I've decided to take some steps to help me feel a little bit better. For one, I'm submitting to be a member of a "Maude" sketch writing team at UCB. I know I haven't even been to the theater in over a year, but I got an e-mail about it and I figured why not give it a shot. Secondly, I've discovered that I really miss writing in this blog, as sad as that may sound. I was going through parts of the archive earlier and I realized that I like having a day-by-day record of my life. So expect a bit more activity 'round these parts.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the website. I've neglected it lately and that sucks, but I just haven't felt funny or creative in the least for the last month or so. I'm going to try to come up with a better way to add content on there. I'm not sure about the drawing thing any more. I think it just makes me angrier. You can tell how sloppy I got near the end there. But don't worry, I'll come up with something to put up. I hope.

Anyway, my birthday's coming up and I figure it's about time to get back into the swing of things. Wish me luck.

Sorry about the lack of new comic yesterday. It's been a really rough week. With the new erratic work schedule it's going to be tricky finding a regular time when I am not at work, overtired, or too miserable to be creative. Hopefully I'll strike a balance soon. Peace out.

Hey hey! New comic is up and running!

Also please check out the newly-christened "MEDIA" section while you're visiting the site! Right now there are only a couple old videos and one awesome song, but there should be more stuff up there eventually. Enjoy!

I'm gonna have to put the comic on hiatus for a little bit. I'm just not feeling it right now.

I hate having an irregular work schedule. It usually means I sit around all day on a Thursday or whatever, wasting time on the internet or watching TV or playing video games and not getting tired, so by the evening when I want to hang out with friends there's nobody around and I'm still stuck inside by myself. And then on the actual weekend when people are doing things, I'm at work, sometimes until very late. I just don't know what to do with myself these days.

I did buy Guitar Hero 3 today with my paycheck money, but these things aren't all that much fun by yourself. It's actually kind of depressing.



Have I mentioned that I hate religion?